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our scripture reading tonight is on page 8 from the gospel of Matthew 5: 27 through3 you have heard that it was said do not commit adultery but I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart if your right eye causes you to sin gouge it out and throw it away it is better for you to lose one part of your body than for whole body to be thrown into hell and if your right hand causes you to sin cut it off and throw it away is better for you to lose one part of your body than for

your whole body to go into hell this is the word of the Lord all right now you read heard the text you know the music at offering very hard to sleep through and you're going to and this particular text in sermon would be also pretty hard to sleep through Jesus um in The Sermon on the Mount is telling us how he wants to live in every area of life well love and sex is one of those areas life and so he gets to that here and when you first read it makes would be natural when you hear this R to have a negative response because it looks like on the

surface Jesus is saying if you have sexual desire you're going to hell and it would be very natural for somebody to say aha see that's that negative view of sex that everybody says Christians have but that's a great misunderstanding and I'm going to show you that the biblical or Christian understanding of sex while it is very different from that which the culture gives you nevertheless in the grand scheme of things it's one the most attractive things about Christianity three things we see here the Integrity of sex the challenge of

lust the future of love Integrity sex the challenge of lust future of Love Now first Integrity the Integrity of sex why do I talk about this as Integrity look he starts by saying this you have heard it said do not commit adultery and then he goes on says but I say to you and he's going build on that which very clear he's accepting the Old Testament principle the Old Testament law Thou shalt not commit adultery now what is the Old Testament sex ethic what's the biblical sex ethic I can give it to you we have to understand it because Jesus is

building on it I can give it to you in one word no sex outside of a covenant or more positively let's try to be positive tonight sex only inside a covenant that is to say the Bible says no sex outside of marriage so somebody's there saying ah Covenant that's a kind of archaic word could you could give me a more upto-date word a more modern and my answer is no I can't because Covenant not just a word it's category of thought and there isn't any other word I know that conveys this category of thought and what is that category a

covenant is a covenant creates relationship it's a relationship far more loving and intimate than a merily legal relationship but it's also far more binding and enduring than a merely emotional relationship a covenant creates personal relationship which is more intimate and loving because it's legal it's more loving because it's legal let me make my case you say how is that let me explain a consumer relationship in a consumer relationship you relate to a vendor and you have a relationship as long as the vendor is giving you a

product at a good price but you're always looking for an upgrade and so what you say to your vendor is we have a relationship but you better keep adjusting to me because if you you don't meet my needs I'm out of here because my needs are more important than the relationship we have a relationship but my needs are more important if I can get my needs met somewhere else that's where I will go but a covenant relationship is the exactly the opposite a consumer relationship says you adjust to me or I'm out of here a covenant relationship

says I will adjust to you because I've made a promise and the relationship is more important than my needs are less important than the sustenance of the relationship now if two people get into a relationship one as a consumer and as a covenantor that'll be bad for the Covenant or that Covenant will be exploited so if you get into a relationship if you're not both covenanting it's exploitative but if both of you get into a relationship and say we're done with a consuming relationship we're in a covenant relationship which is what it

means to get married if you into a covenant relationship oh my let me there's three things that result the first is you finally have a zone of security a zone safety place where you can finally be yourself see in a consumer relationship you're always marketing you're always selling yourself you've got to perform you meet the other person's need or they're out but in a covenant marriage covenant you finally have a zone of safety you can finally get rid of the facades you can finally let them know let her know about your insecurities you

can finally let be yourself you have a zone of safety place where you can actually stop spinning and marketing and stop selling start being yourself secondly in a covenant relationship ironically when you are committed to a person in spite of your feelings deeper feelings grow if you are committed to a person in spite of your feelings deeper grow grow so for example uh the other Covenant relationship between except besides husband and wife is the relationship between parents and children and all of you know whether

your parents or not all of you know that in parenting uh you get very little back for a long time and they never catch up you give and and you never it's not a consumer relationship at all you adjust to them you give and you what's weird is you do it and and so you're invested in your children that even when they really in no way act in a lovable you love them there's a deeper richer kind of feeling because you're invested in them and in the same way if you treat your marriage if you treat a relationship between a husband and wife as

covenant relationship if you're committed in spite of feelings deeper feelings grow and the third thing that comes the first thing is you have a zone of safety where you can be yourself secondly you have a place to develop the Richer deeper feelings that come when you commit in spite of your feelings and number three there's a freedom covenantal relationships bring freedom and here believe it or not I'm relying on kard the Danish philosopher kard put it like this he says if you're in he didn't use the term consumer relationship of course but if

he if you're in a relationship which I have to feel it if you're not meeting my needs if I don't feel the love don't feel fine well then I'm out of here he says if you're in a relationship like that you are a slave you're not free you're a slave to what your feelings you're a puppet on the string of your feelings and think he says where do your feelings come from huh these things you're out of here if I don't have the feeling anymore oh so now you're controlled by your feelings and where do the feelings come from they

come for your physiology to some degree your body chemistry they come from your past she reminds me of my mother everybody else saying well there's nothing wrong with her she reminds me of so what well you know she reminds me of my mother these bad feelings because nobody else has a problem you do in other words your past creates feelings your physiology creates feelings your circumstances create feelings do you want to be a puppet on the string says kard make a promise say I'm here I don't you adjust to me I adjust you because the

relationship is more important than my feelings and my needs and when two people do that together you have a place for you to be yourself have the New Freedom you have richer okay what's this got to do with sex everything because what the Bible says is sex is a cons not consumer good it's a covenant good a consumer good is way you keep someone in a relationship because they have you a need I sex every so often is a way for me to feel good about myself it makes me feel adored and loved so I go out and I find somebody who will meet

that need sex is a consumer good the Bible says sex was not designed to be a consumer good it was designed to be a covenant good and here's what that means see in a covenant when you have made a promise sex becomes like a Sacrament like a Sacrament when I say like a Sacrament what's a Sacrament is an external visible sign of an invisible reality it's a symbol an external of an invisible reality that's why it's so meaningful when you use sex inside a covenant it becomes a vehicle for engaging the whole person in an act of

self-giving and self-commitment when I in marriage make myself physically naked and vulnerable it's a sign of what I've done with my whole life because by giving up my Independence and by making this promise you're not just uh sex is sex is supposed to be a sign of what you've done with your whole life and that's the reason why sex outside of marriage according to the Bible lacks Integrity you're asking someone to do with their body what you're not doing with your life you're saying let's be physically vulnerable to each other

let's do physical dis disclosure but not whole life vulnerability that's the reason why CS Lewis puts it perfectly this is a perfect um description of the biblical sex ethic he says the monstrosity of sexual intercourse outside marriage is that those who indulge in it are trying to isolate one kind of Union the sexual from all other kinds of Union which were intended to go along with it and make up the total Union to have physical without having whole life Union is a lack of integrity and if you have sex inside a covenant then the sex becomes

covenant renewal ceremony it becomes a commitment apparatus it becomes something that you're getting married all over again you're giving yourself all over again it's incredibly deepening and solidifying nurturing but if you use sex outside of marriage where it really see if you say in marriage when you're having sex you're really saying I belong completely and exclusively to you and I'm acting it out that's what sex is I'm giving you my body as a token of how I've given you my life I'm opening to you physically as a

token of the fact that I've opened to you in every other way that's how it's supposed to work and then sex becomes a deepening thing a nurturing thing it it's like Covenant cement it's like Covenant glue it's a covenant renewal ceremony but when you use sex outside of marriage what are you saying you're is I love the feeling that I get when I'm with you you're taking not giving receiving and holding on to your life you're holding on to your Independence so you're receiving and not giving it's a consumer good and when you

use sex like that you damage its ability to be a commitment apparatus um John White Christian psychiatrist years ago wrote this he says the listen this is very much like what lwis said the bodily exposure that aroused and accompanies sex can be profoundly symbolic and powerfully healing if it's the concrete sign of what's happening in the whole relationship so it only makes sense that sexual relations be confined to marriage for Mutual discl Ure and tender acceptance is not the activity of a moment but the fabric of a lifetimes

weaving and each time sex is physical disclosure without being complete personal disclosure and commitment some of its lifegiving and healing nature is destroyed in other words it that you damage your ability to use it inside this is one of the reasons by way why there's all these books coming out I'll refer to a couple of them in minute and articles coming out very carefully even in places like the New York Times pointing out that cohabitation seems to be counterproductive uh there was a very carefully worded article in just April

14th um in the New York Times it was was written by clinical psychologist it was called the downside of cohabitation pointing out the fact that there's more and studies showing that people who live together before they get married are more likely to divorce than people who don't which is totally counterintuitive to the average young adult especially in New York City because 2/3 to 3/4 of all young adults say that if you live together before you're married more likely to make a good decision because you'll figure out whether you're

compatible the clinical psychologist very carefully points out that's impossible here's why she says in the article one thing that men and women she was doing a lot of interviewing and studies of men and women who live together one thing men and women do agree on is that their standards for a in partner are lower than they for a spouse and as one woman said quote I felt like I was on this multi-year NeverEnding audition to be his wife now here's what she says if you're living together it's a consumer relationship why because you're

always looking can I do better than this so you're trying to find out whether you're compatible was a nice way of saying I'm trying to figure out whether this person is good enough to marry or whether I could do better so you're looking out for an upgrade so what is sex in a situation like that it's marketing it's attracting enticing it's trying to keep the relationship going it's not trusting it's not resting it's giving which means sex outside of marriage in no way prepares you for sex inside marriage it's not the same thing and what they're

doing in the cohabitation is they're learning to live together as consumers instead of as married Partners Covenant Partners which is a completely different thing now look I see some of you like this know what I'm doing I realize realize how difficult this is to listen to and I also realize how absolutely completely countercultural it is and counterintuitive this is but that's just the first point the Integrity of sex is there must be an Integrity between body and life you must not do with your body what you're not willing to do your with

whole life and that's the first point that's just the ethic of sexual activity but now Jesus says on top of that all right you've heard it said you mustn't have sex outside of marriage but he says I want to talk you about your mind and your thinking and then he goes on and says but I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart ah now right away people say oh there we go by the way some of you are too young to even remember this but years ago Jimmy Carter when he was the president

made a comment you know he was Sunday school teacher in a Baptist Church Georgia and he made a comment that sometimes he was guilty of having lust in his heart for women and I'll tell you the the comedians you know night the late night comedians had a field day for months with him and he was just trying to be honest on the other hand what they think he means and they think Jesus means here is that any kind of sexual desire to find somebody sexually attractive or phys physically attractive is terrible and you're going

to hell but that's not what Jesus is saying first of all we know that because there are perfectly good words that he could have used for sexual desire but he doesn't use them doesn't use Matthew who translated this into Greek Jesus who spoke in Aramaic there are perfectly good words that he could have used he doesn't use uses a particularly interesting word we'll get to in a minute but the other point is if you look at the whole Bible there is no way that the Bible is negative about sexual desire in fact I'm looking at my time if

I had the time and I had the desire it wouldn't have been so distracting so even though you're New Yorkers if I go to passages of the Bible and gave you literal translations of what it says I could even make you blush I could do it it let me just listen in the very beginning of the Bible Genesis 2 chapter of the Bible what do we have remember when do you remember God brings Eve to Adam and Adam bursts into song He into a poem love this is now at last his bone of my is flesh flesh it's either a love poem or song do don't forget they're naked and

so you start the here's how Bible starts with a naked man singing rapturous Love Songs over a naked woman in the presence of God and that's how the Bible starts and that's just the start and if you get to go Book of Proverbs BS it's a great passage where it says a wife needs husband to be ravished with his wife's breasts there's kind of No Way Around that one and then you get as somebody wants to a lot of people say you're not one of those fundamentals that takes the Bible literally are you and so well sometimes there's an

advantage to taking the Bible literally you and if actually go to the great love poem uh which many of you may have heard of The Song Solomon which is a rapturous celebration of the glory married sex sexual love there are plenty of poetic places where the translators kind of chicken out there's plenty of places where it's very clear that poetically uh a man and a woman is being described in a state of physical arousal and they're being described as being in a state of physical arousal see my point is the Bible is filled with barefaced exuberant

rejoicing in the glory of sexual love and therefore there there's just no way you can get out of the Bible a negative view of sexual uh desire per se but that's not what Jesus is saying here Jesus uses a word and it's an unusual word to be used with in connection sex it's a word that means idolatry and particularly greed he's using a word that is us always means idolatry and usually refers to Greed if you want to understand the kind of attitude toward sex that Jesus is talking about let's think Greed for just a

second greed is there something wrong with making money in the Bible or having a lot of money no that's another sermon all right but the point is like Abraham job lots and of wealthy men uh people with money who were blessed by God so the idea of having making money and having a fair amount of money isn't necessarily wrong well what is greed then first of all it's the desire to have the money for selfish reasons you're selfish you want it for don't want it to share and you it for you want to acquire things it's selfish number one two it's

addicting greedy people are addicted to money they have to it must have it so they'll cut Corners to get they'll trample on people to get it they'll work too hard to get it they'll be Workaholics they're addicted so first of all greed is selfishness with regard to money secondly it's addiction thirdly there's fantasies one of the ways you know you're greedy is always fantasy fing about what you're going to do if you make this much or you have this much you're fantasizing I'll buy this I have I'll be able to retire I'll be able to do

that in other words you're looking to money to give you the kind of deep affirmation and deep security that only God can give you that's greed and Jesus says it's very possible to have that same idolatrous attitude toward M sex how do we then see what is he talking about when he's talking about an idolatry making sex into an idol like greed something that is used selfishly something that is addicting something that is filled with fantasies some way in which you're looking to sex and sexual love to give you what only God

can give you what are the forms of that let me give you four number one pornography and masturbation with the pornography listen if I just remember we just said sex is not for consuming it's not a consumer good it's for giving for serving it's not just for receiving it's not just for your self- fulfillment my goodness well think about pornography and masturbation I mean it's so completely focused on yourself you don't even have another person is a consumer good par excellance you have it in the way when you want

you know in the particular kind you want it you know buy it it's frictionless it's everything the Bible says sex is not supposed to be it's the exact opposite of everything is it addicting sure is it selfish absolutely does it bring about fantasies I guess okay here's the second form all sex outside of marriage to some degree remember we've already talked about this all sex outside of marriage is essentially using sex selfishly rather than using sex unselfishly it's also certainly you know uh there's a book that you need to read I'll mention it

again uh two sociologists wrote a book great book Oxford University press an empirical book a scientific Mark Mark regnerus and Jeremy uker it's called premarital sex in America a sort of a snapshot and in the book they mention that the vast majority of people who have sex outside marriage when asked why are you doing it say in order to keep the relationship going in other words we've been going together for a certain number of weeks gone together for a certain number of months and at a certain point you have to do it just

to keep it going which is the consumer approach of course which is that you adjust to me or I'm out of here or I'm looking for an upgrade of course that's what is that a self assu of sex of course it is it's not there for serving it's not there for renewing your Covenant it's there selfish here's a third version by the way just the belief when I'm talking about sexual idolatry just the belief that you can't be a whole person and have happy life without sex just to believe unless every so often I'm having sex I mean not a

whole person I can't be happy the only person object that you can look at if you're a Christian and say I have to that be happy as God to say anything else well I need God but I also have to that be happy anything else you're putting that thing up to where God should be and don't believe what the culture says which is it's absolutely impossible for you to be a whole and developed person and to have a happy life unless you have sex and lastly here is the most subtle form of sexual idolatry all it doesn't feel sexual a

bit do you have in your mind this fairy tale dream of having the perfect marriage having the perfect little family perfect children home you just does that make you say if all that happened then I'd finally be happy then I'd finally feel good about myself that doesn't seem to be a sexual fantasy at all but you're making sex and romantic love into an idol oh yes you are I'll get back to that one second why is Jesus so strong about sexual idolatry these various forms look suddenly he goes into this tiate it looks like he's

getting into he says if you're right eye causes you to sin gouge it out and throw it away it's better for you to lose one part of your body than for whole body to be thrown into hell if your right hand caused you to sin cut it off and throw it away it's better for you to what is that now he's not speaking literally telling his disciples to pluck out their eye to cut off hand but he is talking about drastic Behavior why this book by regnerus and yuker called premarital sex in America has a certain SE has a section in which it

shows that scientifically uh these particular myths are untrue so they make a list of commonly held beliefs about sex and they show that scientifically they're just not true empirical evidence is not one of them is this one the things that they hear all the time from people is pornography won't affect your relationships you can have use pornography and it's not really going to you know it's your private thing not really going to affect your relationships and they counter say quote on the contrary pornography now

affects virtually everyone's relationships everyone not just the people who use pornography pornography now affects virtually everyone's relationships and they say three things they can prove empirically number one people who use pornography have crushingly unrealistic expectations regarding physical appearance and sexual performance first of all crushingly unrealistic expectations about what a part A a love partner marriage must look like and how they must perform secondly they said it says a significant number of male porn users experience a

diminished tolerance for the difficulties of real relationships and the shrinks the marriage pool for women they say Studies have proven that men who use pornography are far less interested and willing to get out into the messiness of real relationships and as a result far more U pornography diminishes people's desire to get married and is one of the reasons why the marriage uh that why the pool is shrinking and why the marriage uh number of people who are getting married is going down and here number three all

women they AR we argue is a quote all women we argue are increasingly being forced to accommodate sexual behavior and their appearances to the images and style of pornography whether you know it or not the fashion industry is doing it your boyfriend's doing it other people are doing it women they argue are increasingly being forced to accommodate sexual behavior appearance sexual behaviors and their appearances to in style of porn now you see why Jesus says look how this damages you this damages us and when he uses the ey

in the hand he's just saying it does be drastic what does it take do you have to do what lengths you have go to who do you have see whatever it is get it out of your life stop it the idolatry of sexuality and love will destroy you the learning to use it selfishly making it a consumer good getting addicted to it looking to it give you the kind of deep affirmation and closure consolation that only God can give you and that leads us to the last Point how are we really going to be delivered how can we be Jesus hints at it when he talks about

hell some people say this is over the top why does he talk about hell well you know there's several words he could have used for hell and the word he uses here is the word gehenna and it's a word that one of the images for hell in the Bible and there really was a gehenna place it a place outside of Jerusalem where the garbage was burned and so gehenna gets at the idea that hell is a place of unquenchable thirst and unfulfilled longing when you God we were built to know him and therefore if we lose God the ability to have our deepest

needs satisfied we lose as well and so hell means when you lose God this is only one aspect that the Bible tells us about hell it means among other things means unfulfilled longing deep unquenchable thirst and what Jesus is saying here is sex outside of marriage points toward that does it not because sex holds out the promise of such consolation of such closure affirmation and yet as we've seen sex outside of marriage destroys your ability to really be yourself it makes it destroys your ability if freedom and so there's a certain sense in which

if you're out there having sex thinking sex is going to give me what I really want you're a little bit like person dying of thirst on a raft in the ocean water water everywhere and not a drop to drink and Jesus says if sex outside of a covenant points toward hell sex inside a covenant points to what why is it in Romans 7 why is it in Ephesians 5 the Bible says that most rapturous sexual love between a husband and wife is just a dim foretaste and pointer to what it's going be like fall into the arms of your true spouse

at the end of time when Jesus was talking to the woman at the well Samaritan woman in John chapter 4 he says I have got a water that if you drink it you will never thirst again in other words I can satisfy your deepest needs those unfulfilled longings and needs I can satisfy them I have a water that if you drink it you'll never thirst again and she says sir give me this water remember what he says then bring me your husband kind of a nonse her she says sir I don't have a husband he says no you've had five husbands and the man you're living

with right now is not your husband why does he is talking about her messed up sex life and the answer is he says I can satisfy your longings she says well tell me how I can have my longings satisfied and what he's actually saying is you've been looking for it in men you've been looking see this is lust this is what Jesus talking about you've been trying to find in the arms of men the kind of deep consolation love and deep closure that only I can give you and she said to him sir I see that you're a Prophet this morning at the 9:15 service

my wife Kathy was sitting right over here I looked down at her and she knew what I was going to say and that this if she doesn't love Jesus more than she loves me she's not going to be able to love me well why even inside marriage you can be guilty of sexual idolatry if she doesn't love Jesus and get from Jesus at a level if her relationship with Christ is not more important than a relationship with me then she's going to look and I'm going to look her if I don't I have to do the same thing of course if we're going to look each other

fulfill each other in a way that only God can do it and we're going to crush each other everything that goes wrong anytime she doesn't live the way you know I it'll fall into a consumer relationship you have to adjust me no you adjust to me see in other words if Jesus isn't our my main spouse if Jesus isn't her main spouse if the spouse of Love Of Christ isn't the main thing that gives us a place of accept where we can be ourselves the main thing that gives us freedom the main thing that gives us that deep rich sense of being loved that

I'm going to make even my own marriage I'm going to I'm be guilty of sexual idolatry I'm going to be trying to make Kathy into something that only Christ can be for me and she's is going to do the same thing for me you will never be well married unless Jesus Christ is the spouse of your soul and his love is the most important thing in your life and you will never be well you'll never be single well you'll be married well sir she said I see you're a prophet look to his spouse of love and then and only then will you be in a

position to avoid the Great danger that we have especially in this culture that we're living in and our Approach To Love and Marriage will be a pointer to our relationship with him let's pray Our Father uh a great subject an important subject a difficult subject many of us are sitting here thinking about our lives and Lord I pray that you would speak to every person here and encourage them say this is the way I want you to go this is the way in which I will meet you and help you grow father forgive us for what we've

done in the past be with us to move into the future and help us as a church be counterculture showing forth the world a whole different way to think about all these matters in the way which we live our lives together pray it in Jesus name amen for more of this series and other resources from Timothy Keller and Redeemer Presbyterian Church please visit www.gsp.ro