All I Want for Christmas Is a Clean Heart
The Gospel of Matthew • Sermon • Submitted • Presented
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Sermon Title: All I Want for Christmas Is a Clean Heart
Scripture: Matthew 5:27-31
Occasion: The Lord’s Day
Date: December 21, 2025
PRAY
Heavenly Father,
We come before You in this Advent season, aware of our own hearts.
You see us fully—our longings, our desires, our secret glances.
We confess we have loved poorly and wanted wrongly.
But we thank You that You did not leave us in our sin.
You sent Your Son, Jesus Christ, to save us from ourselves.
As Your Word is opened, open us.
Give us ears to hear what the Spirit says,
and courage to receive the diagnosis,
and faith to embrace the cure.
Meet us here by Your grace, for Your glory.
In Jesus’ name, amen.
Introduction: When Christmas Gets Too Close for Comfort
If you’re visiting today expecting a classic Christmas text—you know, shepherds, angels, “O Little Town of Bethlehem”—you might be thinking,
“Pastor… lust, hell, and divorce? In December? Really?”
It feels a bit like opening what you thought was a Christmas present… and finding a fire extinguisher and a smoke alarm inside.
“Uh… thanks? I think?”
But if you think about it, this text actually very Advent-appropriate.
Advent is about the coming of the King—
“You shall call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.” (Matt. 1:21)
Not just from other people’s sins.
Not just from sins “out there.”
From the sins that live in here—in our hearts, our desires, our bedrooms, our search histories, our marriages.
If you’ve walked through a mall lately—or scrolled your phone for more than about ten seconds—you’ve noticed that Christmas has a way of selling desire.
Everything is curated to stir longing:
Longing for comfort
Longing for romance
Longing for beauty
Longing for escape
And that’s not accidental.
Christmas marketing knows something true about us:
We are desiring creatures.
But here’s the tension—and this is the main idea of the sermon:
King Jesus doesn’t merely restrain our desires; He redeems them.
And nowhere does Jesus press that truth more deeply—or more uncomfortably—than in Matthew 5:27–32.
So if you’re taking notes, the title is:
“All I Want for Christmas Is a Clean Heart”
And here’s the outline Jesus gives us in the text:
A Deeper Diagnosis of Adultery (vv. 27–28)
A Drastic Defense Against Sin (vv. 29–30)
A Devastating Warning About Divorce (vv. 31–32)
Jesus is showing us what kingdom righteousness looks like—not behavior modification, but heart transformation.
Context: Righteousness That Surpasses
Before we touch verse 27, we must remember what Jesus has already said.
In Matthew 5:17–20, Jesus tells us:
He did not come to abolish the Law, but to fulfill it
Entrance into the kingdom requires a righteousness that surpasses that of the scribes and Pharisees
That righteousness is not less law, but deeper law—law that reaches the heart, not just the hands.
And that’s exactly what Jesus does here in our text.
1. A Deeper Diagnosis of Adultery (vv. 27–28)
“You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall not commit adultery.’
But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lustful intent has already committed adultery with her in his heart.
Now, lean in here.
Jesus is moving from what you’ve “heard” to what “He” says.
And there’s a world of difference between the two.
The religious leaders of His day were experts at defining adultery by the act.
They had it all mapped out—the legal boundaries, the physical lines you must not cross.
And if you managed to stay on your side of the line, you could check the box.
Righteousness achieved.
But Jesus, the King of the Kingdom, walks up to that neat, tidy fence and He doesn’t just move it.
He shows us that the fence was never around the act; it was always supposed to be around the heart.
“You have heard it said… but “I” say to you…”
That’s the sound of Sovereign authority.
That’s the King amending the public record.
He’s not offering a new opinion; He’s revealing the original, terrifying, glorious intent of the Law.
He quotes the Seventh Commandment:
“You shall not commit adultery.” (Exodus 20:14)
And everyone listening nods.
‘Yes, Lord.
We know that one.
We haven’t done “that”.’
But then He drops the blade:
“But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lustful intent has already committed adultery with her in his heart.” (v.28)
Now, we have to be very careful here, because this is where many get lost.
Jesus is not saying that sexual attraction is sin.
Let me say that clearly.
God created us male and female.
He created sexual desire.
It is good.
To look at your spouse and be attracted, to appreciate beauty in God’s creation—that’s not what He’s condemning.
The problem isn’t the look; it’s the “lustful intent”.
The Greek phrase here is powerful.
It’s not a passing glance.
It’s “looking in order to lust”.
It’s the gaze that lingers with a purpose.
It’s the stare that says,
“I want to take this and nurture it in my imagination.
I want to feed on this.”
It’s the look that objectifies a person—a bearer of God’s image—and reduces them to a tool for our own gratification.
That look, Jesus says, is adultery of the heart.
Why?
Because adultery, at its core, is a violation of the marriage covenant.
Adultery is therefore an act of unfaithfulness.
Unfaithfulness doesn’t start in the hotel room; it starts in the heart-room.
It starts when you give your heart’s allegiance, your desire, your longing, to someone or something that is not yours to have.
That man looking at a woman who is not his wife, nurturing desire for her—in that moment, he is being unfaithful.
He has broken trust in his heart.
And the woman who does the same—this applies equally—has done the same.
This is the deeper diagnosis.
The Pharisees were treating a skin rash with ointment.
Jesus says, ‘The problem is in the bloodstream.’
The act is just the symptom.
The disease is in the desire.
He’s exposing the truth that we are not just what we do; we are what we want.
Our actions flow from our affections.
Let me give you a picture.
Imagine a tree that keeps producing rotten fruit.
You can run around all day picking the bad apples off the ground, but you’ll never stop.
The problem isn’t the fruit; it’s the root.
Jesus isn’t interested in us just cleaning up the fallen fruit around our lives.
He wants to heal the root.
He’s after the heart, because if the heart is changed, the fruit will change.
This is why this is such an Advent passage.
What do we sing?
“O come, O come, Emmanuel… and ransom captive Israel.”
Captive to what?
To external rule-keeping?
No!!
Captive to sinful hearts, to disordered desires.
The King comes not to give us a better list of rules, but to give us new hearts with new desires.
He comes to fulfill the promise:
“I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you.” (Ezekiel 36:26).
So, what’s the application?
It’s not ‘try harder not to look.’
It’s a call to honest diagnosis.
We must ask the Holy Spirit to shine His light into the rooms of our dark hearts.
Where are you looking “in order to lust”?
What feeds that gaze?
Is it the websites you visit?
The shows you watch?
The conversations you have?
The social media scroll?
The call is to repentance—a turning FROM that gaze and TO the God who satisfies.
It’s to cultivate a hatred for the look that dishonors others and destroys your own soul.
And it’s to embrace the grace that is greater than all our sin.
Because the One who diagnoses the disease is the One who bore its curse on the cross.
For everyone who has committed adultery in their heart—that’s all of us—there is forgiveness and power for change in Christ.
You see, the gospel doesn’t just forgive the act; it transforms the desire.
It offers a clean heart.
That’s what we need.
Not just better behavior, but new wants.
That’s the kingdom come.
Transition:
And that leads us directly to our next point.
Because if the heart is the battlefield, Jesus tells us we must be radical in its defense.
We must move from diagnosis to drastic action.
2. A Drastic Defense Against Sin (vv. 29–30)
If your right eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away. For it is better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body be thrown into hell.
And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away. For it is better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body go into hell.
Now listen.
What Jesus has just done is given us a devastating diagnosis.
He’s shown us that the cancer of sin is not just in our actions; it’s in our affections, in the very look of our eyes.
And you don’t treat a cancer with a band-aid.
You don’t respond to a heart attack with aspirin.
The diagnosis demands a drastic response.
So Jesus moves immediately from diagnosis to defense.
And His language here is shocking.
It’s graphic.
It’s violent.
“Tear it out. Cut it off.”
He speaks of eyes and hands—the very instruments of the sin He just described.
The eye that looks to lust.
The hand that reaches to touch.
And He says, if these gateways to your soul are leading you into destruction, deal with them.
Radically!
Now, let’s be absolutely clear.
This is hyperbole.
Hyperbole are exaggerated statements or claims not meant to be taken literally.
Jesus is not commanding literal self-mutilation.
The history of the church bears witness to that.
There were some in the early centuries who took this literally, and the church rightly corrected them.
Why?
Because the problem isn’t the physical eye or the physical hand.
The problem is the sinful heart that uses them.
Plucking out an eye won’t pluck out lust.
Cutting off a hand won’t cut off covetousness.
You’d just be a blind, maimed sinner!
No, Jesus is using the most drastic physical imagery imaginable to teach us about the spiritual war we’re in.
He’s saying:
“The value of your eternal soul is infinitely greater than the value of any earthly pleasure, any habit, any relationship, or any possession that leads you into sin.”
He’s teaching us the principle of what I will call “radical amputation”.
If something—however precious, however useful, however ingrained—is a conduit for sin into your life, you must be willing to sever it completely.
Notice the stakes.
Twice, He mentions hell.
V. 29 & 30
This is serious business.
Jesus is not negotiating.
He’s warning us that sin is not a trivial slip-up; it’s a soul-destroying poison!
It’s a pathway that, if left unchecked, leads to eternal separation from God.
Paul echoes this in 1 Corinthians 6:9-10, listing the sexually immoral among those who will not inherit the kingdom of God.
This isn’t scare tactics; it’s true love.
It’s the urgent warning of a physician telling a patient,
“The disease is fatal if untreated.”
So, what does this radical defense look like in practice?
It’s asking the hard, practical questions:
What is your “right eye”?
What is your “right hand”?
For many men—and Jesus specifically addresses men here, taking responsibility off of the woman and placing it on the one with the “aggressive gaze”—the “eye” is the smartphone, the laptop, the television screen.
It’s the pathway to pornography, to illicit images, to the digital stare that feeds lust.
Jesus says, if that’s causing you to sin, get rid of it.
If you can’t control it, remove it.
Cancel the internet.
Install radical accountability software.
Lucas Evans recently informed me about this great website called “7 Pillars of Freedom by Pure Desire.”
Look into it, get the help that you need today!
Get rid of your smart phone and get a dumb phone.
Friends, It is better to go through life with a technological “handicap” than to plunge your soul into hell because of what you watched in secret.
For others, the “hand” might be a relationship.
It might be a friendship that constantly flirts with emotional or physical boundaries.
It might be the hand that types the compromising text message.
Jesus says, cut it off.
End the relationship.
Change your patterns.
It is better to feel the acute pain of that severance now than to suffer the eternal consequences of a sin it facilitated.
This principle applies to all of us.
What is the thing you think you can’t live without, but that you know is killing you spiritually?
Is it an app?
A website?
A certain group of friends?
A place you go?
A time of day when you’re vulnerable?
Jesus commands us to have a wartime mentality.
In war, you don’t negotiate with the enemy at the gate.
You don’t reason with a Trojan horse.
You destroy it.
You burn the bridge.
This is the opposite of the world’s advice.
The world says, “Moderate. Manage. Just a little won’t hurt.”
Jesus says, “Amputate. Eliminate. Whatever it takes.”
The world says, “You can handle it.”
Jesus says, “You can’t, so don’t let it get started.”
This is the righteousness that surpasses the Pharisees.
They built fences around the Law.
Jesus calls us to burn down the whole road that leads to breaking it.
But here’s the gospel in this drastic command:
This radical action is only possible because of a radical new affection.
We tear out the eye of lust because we have been given the eyes of faith to see a greater treasure:
Christ Himself.
We amputate the hand of sin because we have been grasped by the hand of a Savior who was pierced for our transgressions.
The power to be drastic comes from being utterly captivated by something—Someone—better.
The Puritan John Owen got it right:
“Be killing sin, or it will be killing you.”
But we only find the strength to kill sin when we are alive to the fact that our sin killed Christ.
And He rose to give us His Spirit—the very power of a new, resurrection life.
This isn’t about white-knuckled willpower.
It’s about Spirit-empowered warfare, fought with practical, drastic obedience.
So, the application is direct and uncomfortable.
Conduct a spiritual audit.
Ask the Holy Spirit this morning in real-time (right now as you are listening to the sound of my voice):
“What is my ‘right eye’?
What is my ‘right hand’?”
And then, in reliance on God’s grace, take the drastic step.
Delete the app.
Cancel the subscription.
Have the hard conversation.
Install the accountability.
Flee.
Run.
It is a drastic defense for a deadly danger.
And this drastic defense of the individual heart has everything to do with how we protect the most sacred of human covenants.
Because the sin that begins in the secret glance, if not amputated, will eventually wound and destroy the one-flesh union of marriage.
Transition:
Which leads us to our final point, where Jesus shows us the devastating societal consequence of unguarded hearts.
3. A Devastating Warning About Divorce (vv. 31–32)
“It was also said, ‘Whoever divorces his wife, let him give her a certificate of divorce.’
But I say to you that everyone who divorces his wife, except on the ground of sexual immorality, makes her commit adultery, and whoever marries a divorced woman commits adultery.
Now, we have arrived at the logical and tragic conclusion of the path Jesus has been tracing.
He began with the heart’s lust that is adultery;
He moved to the radical defense against that sin;
and now He shows us where that sin, left unchecked and un-amputated, inevitably leads:
To the tearing apart of the most sacred human covenant.
This is the social and covenantal consequence of personal sin.
Jesus begins by quoting the concession:
“It was also said, ‘Whoever divorces his wife, let him give her a certificate of divorce.’”
He’s referencing Deuteronomy 24.
Now, listen carefully.
In Jesus’ day, this single verse had been stretched into a vast theological loophole.
The rabbis, particularly from the school of Hillel, had turned it into “divorce for any cause.”
A wife could be dismissed for burning dinner, for speaking to another man, for aging, for anything a husband found “indecent.”
Divorce had become cheap, easy, and entirely one-sided, protecting male power while devastating women and families.
And into this culture of casual covenant-breaking, Jesus speaks with devastating clarity.
“But I say to you…” (V.32)
Again, the Sovereign divine authority.
He’s not offering another rabbinic opinion.
He is correcting the misinterpretation and revealing God’s original, creational intent.
He says,
“Everyone who divorces his wife, except on the ground of sexual immorality, makes her commit adultery.”(V.32)
And then He adds,
“and whoever marries a divorced woman commits adultery.” (V.32b)
This is hard.
This is completely counter-cultural.
This feels severe.
But we must understand what Jesus is doing.
He is not first and foremost giving a new list of divorce rules.
He is restoring the weight of marriage itself.
He is pulling back the curtain to show us what divorce actually IS in God’s eyes:
Divorce is the violent rending of a one-flesh union that God Himself has joined.
To understand this, you have to go back to the beginning.
In Matthew 19, when the Pharisees test Him on this very issue, Jesus doesn’t start with Deuteronomy 24.
He starts with Genesis 1 and 2.
He answered, “Have you not read that he who created them from the beginning made them male and female,
and said, ‘Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’?
So they are no longer two but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate.”
That’s the foundation.
Marriage is not a human contract.
It is a divine covenant.
It is a “one-flesh” union orchestrated by God.
To divorce is not merely to end a legal agreement; it is to attempt to tear apart a living unity that God has created.
It is man trying to separate what God has joined.
And because that one-flesh union is still considered binding in God’s eyes, to marry another person while that union is unlawfully severed is to commit adultery against it.
Now, what about the exception?
“EXCEPT on the ground of sexual immorality.” (Vs. 32b)
The Greek word here is *porneia*, a broad term for sexual immorality.
Why does Jesus include this?
He is acknowledging the tragic reality of a fallen world.
Sexual immorality—adultery, fornication, perversion—is a fundamental, physical violation of the one-flesh covenant.
It is a unilateral tearing of the union.
In such a catastrophic breach, the innocent party is not CAUSING adultery by divorcing; the adultery has ALREAD BEEN committed against them.
The divorce, in this case, is a painful recognition of a covenant already broken by sexual sin.
BUT—and this is crucial BUT—the exception is not a recommendation!
It is a permission grounded in the hard reality of human hardness of heart.
Jesus says this explicitly in Matthew 19:8.
He said to them, “Because of your hardness of heart Moses allowed you to divorce your wives, but from the beginning it was not so.
Divorce exists because of hardness of heart.
The ideal, the creational intent from the Garden, is lifelong, faithful, one-flesh union.
Every divorce, even a biblically permitted one, is a tragedy.
It is a stark monument to the devastating effects of sin—the very sin Jesus has been diagnosing in the heart.
So, what is Jesus’s point here in the Sermon on the Mount?
He is showing us that the kingdom righteousness He brings is redemptive.
It doesn’t just manage the fallout of sin; it aims to restore the original design.
A heart transformed by the gospel—a heart that refuses to nurture lust and takes radical steps to kill it—is a heart equipped to foster covenant faithfulness.
It is a heart that chooses forgiveness over bitterness, reconciliation over resentment, and perseverance over flight.
The application here is profound and must be handled with both truth and grace.
For those who are married:
Your marriage is not your own creation to manage as you see fit.
It is a sacred trust from God.
Therefore, defend it with the same radical intensity Jesus commanded for your personal holiness.
Nurture it.
Protect it.
Pour grace into it.
If your heart is drifting toward hardness—toward resentment, bitterness, or wandering desire—that is the time for drastic action.
Seek counseling.
Pursue repentance.
Extend forgiveness.
Fight for your one-flesh union, because it is a picture of Christ and His church.
For those who have experienced the tragedy of divorce, whether biblically permitted or not:
Hear the gospel.
The grace of Jesus Christ is sufficient for every sin and every sorrow.
In Him, there is forgiveness, healing, and a new identity.
You are not defined by your past.
The church must be a community of compassion, not stigma, for the wounded.
For all of us:
Jesus’s words here are a sobering reminder that our personal sin never stays personal.
It ripples out, destroying trust, breaking covenants, and wounding others.
The “lustful look” uncut leads to the broken home.
The kingdom come is an invitation to a different way—a way where our redeemed hearts make us covenant-keepers, promise-honorers, and grace-dispensers, foreshadowing the day when all things will be made new.
Transition:
This brings us to the end of our text, and to the heart of Advent.
We have seen our desperate need:
A clean heart.
We have seen the King’s radical demand: a drastic defense.
We have seen the tragic consequence: broken covenants.
And in all of it, we see our profound inability to achieve this on our own.
Which is precisely why the King had to come.
He came not just to proclaim the law, but to fulfill it.
Not just to diagnose the disease, but to bear its penalty.
Not just to call us to radical amputation, but to be amputated for us—cut off from the Father on the cross—so that we could be joined to Him forever in a new covenant.
The clean heart we want for Christmas is found only in the Christ of Christmas.
Conclusion:
For the person who feels the weight of this text and knows you are guilty and Christ is not your Lord and Savior.
You’ve seen the adultery in your heart this morning.
You’ve coddled the sin you should have cut off.
You’ve contributed to covenant-breaking.
Today, stop excusing it.
Stop hiding it.
Repent.
Turn from it.
And look to the Savior who was wounded for your transgressions.
There is full, free, and immediate forgiveness at the cross for every confessed sin.
Come to Jesus.
He saves His people from their sins.
He gives new hearts.
He makes all things new.
For the person who is in Christ.
You have been forgiven.
You have the Spirit.
Now, walk in the radical, practical obedience this text demands.
Conduct that spiritual audit this morning.
Ask the Lord:
“What is my ‘right eye’?
Show me the pathway of temptation.”
And then, in the confidence of your justification and the power of the Spirit, take the drastic step.
Delete the app.
Cancel the subscription.
Have the hard conversation.
Install the accountability.
Flee.
Fight for purity.
Fight for your marriage.
Be a covenant-keeper.
Do it not to earn God’s love, but because you are already lavishly loved in Christ.
Do it as an act of worship, a living thank-you for the grace that saved a wretch like you.
Finally, see the Advent hope.
This hard teaching is not the end of the story.
It is the roadmap for the kingdom come.
It shows us what life in the new creation looks like—a world of pure hearts, faithful loves, and unbreakable covenants.
Every time we, by the Spirit’s power, reject a lustful look, it’s a declaration that the King is here.
Every time a marriage is preserved by grace, it’s a signpost pointing to the eternal marriage supper of the Lamb.
We are living now in light of that day.
So, yes, all we want for Christmas is a clean heart.
And the good news of Advent is that the Christmas gift has already been given.
His name is Jesus.
He was born to save us from our sins.
He lived, died, and rose again to make it possible.
And He will return to finish the job, to make us fully and finally pure.
Until then, we fight sin with ruthless grace.
We cherish our covenants with tender fierceness.
And we long for our King with hopeful hearts.
Let’s pray.
Father,
We thank you for the piercing, precious words of our King.
We confess our sinful hearts, our undisciplined eyes, our wandering hands, our hard hearts.
We have no defense.
We throw ourselves on the mercy of Jesus Christ, our righteousness and our redeemer.
Forgive us, cleanse us, and renew us.
Give us the courage to be drastic in our war against sin, and the grace to be faithful in our care for one another.
Fill us with your Spirit, that we might live as children of the kingdom, longing for the day when we will see our Savior face to face, with clean hearts forever.
It’s in Christ’s holy name we pray, Amen.
