I saw a YouTube video where all you see is this man at a zoo, specifically at a lion exhibit. And as you look at him, you see his back turned, and behind him you see a lion who's basically in hunter mode at this point. He has his eyes dead focused on this man. And you just see him crouch down, sneaking up on him inch by inch. And after a few seconds, the man turns around, looks at the lion, and you just see the lion sit straight up and start playing dumb. And so the man starts to laugh. He clearly knows what the lion is up to at this point. So he begins to make a game out of it. He begins to toy with the lion. So he purposely turns his back once more and instantly, without hesitation, the lion just goes back to sneaking up on this man. So a few more seconds pass, the man turns back around, looks at the lion, lion does the same thing. And this whole thing cycles over several more times. At the end of the video, It ends with the lion just leaping for the kill only to smash his face against the glass wall. My question for everyone here is how often do we treat sin the same way that man treated that lion? Where we presume upon this glass wall of God's sovereignty and we deceive ourselves into thinking that we can have the pleasures of that sin in our lives and have God. in a way where we think we can keep that sin under control enough where we can keep it as a pet. So my goal this morning is not to preach on how to be a better person. It's specifically, I wanna preach on the three realities of sin we see in this text we're gonna be in. So go ahead and turn with me to Matthew 5. We're gonna be in verses 27 through 30. 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. If your right eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away, for it's 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's better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body go into hell. You know, One issue that I tend to see whenever people are preaching through this specific text is they take Jesus and the gospel completely out of their creation. They turn this into a very man-centered message where basically the whole point of this is three tips on how to not let pornography affect your marriage. Five ways on how to be pure as a single person. And obviously those are implications from the text, but I don't think that's the main point at all. You know, one thing we need to make sure we do is practice good hermeneutics as we read texts like this so that we don't fall in that same trap. You know, and one of the key ways we read scripture is we read it in light of what we read before it. So as we look at the beginning of the sermon that Jesus is preaching to his disciples, it begins with him preaching on a description of what the believer looks like. You know, he describes them as peacemakers. He describes them as those who are persecuted, those who hunger for righteousness. And he describes them as a people who had this utter sense of awareness of their complete lack of spirituality. They had this complete awareness of their spiritual bankruptcy. And then the next factor that Jesus addresses is the believer's relationship to the world. He describes us as salt of the earth. He describes us as light in this world filled with darkness and lies. And now we get to the section where we're gonna be preaching from today, which is the believer's relationship to the law. And the irony is when people preach this in a way where it's all about being a better person, they're preaching it in the exact same way that the Pharisees taught it right here. In the exact same way that Jesus is trying to correct in the very text that these people are preaching from. And so I think the purpose behind this is not this is how you be a better person. I believe Jesus is saying this is what it looks like to follow me. This is what it looks like to have a righteousness that exceeds the Pharisees. And not only that, this isn't merely a suggestion, but this is what I expect of you if you're gonna claim to follow me. So the first reality of sin we see in this text is that sin is a heart issue. We see this in the first two verses. Specifically, in verse 27, we see the Pharisee's view of the law. You have heard that it was said, you shall not commit adultery. You know, a lot of commentators, they take note of this, but it's interesting to see the phrasing that Jesus uses every time he addresses something like lust or anger or divorce, where he doesn't say you have read it in scripture, he doesn't say you have heard it from the prophets. He says you have heard it said specifically from the ancestors. In other words, you have heard it from man's own man-made tradition. And as Jesus is addressing lust and divorce and anger and all these different things, he begins with giving man's view of what the law is. And then he corrects it with what he intended the law to be. And not just in this time, but what he intended the law to be for all history. And so what the Pharisees had a tendency to do was they continually added to the law. So it got to a point where they added hundreds and hundreds onto what God has already revealed the law to be. And you look at the laws and some of them are just complete absurdity. You know, there's something called the Talmud, which is essentially a compilation of all these hundreds of laws. And just to give you a picture of how ridiculous it is, one of the laws is that on the Sabbath, you cannot look in a mirror. And the reason for that is because if you look in a mirror, there is the possibility that you could find a white hair on you, and you would be tempted to pluck it out. And that's work. That's working on the Sabbath, exactly. And then the Pharisees had these other debates where, in this theoretical situation where a man had a prosthetic leg, a wooden peg, if his house caught on fire on the Sabbath, is he gonna be permitted to pick up that leg as he was running out of the house? Or is that gonna be work? And we hear that, and we can laugh about it, of how absurd it is, but the reality is, during the time, these were the religious MVPs of the day. The way you, for anyone that knows Paul Washer, the way that you guys view Paul Washer is the same way that these people view the Pharisees. As a man who is so spiritually out of the league, they can never level up to it. So the fact that Jesus is saying that you need to have a righteousness that exceeds the Pharisees, this was a big deal for them. And, you know, we all need to be on guard of that Pharisee that's in all of us. And if you're here and you don't think you have a Pharisee in you, then that's probably because you're the biggest Pharisee in here. You know, Christians, they have a tendency where we judge off of preference and not off of scripture. And occasionally we may throw a little proof text in just to prove our points, but the reality is we're making ourself the authority rather than scripture. You know, a perfect example of this is the whole mandates with masks and vaccines and all this stuff, on both ends, not just one end. You know, you have Christians telling other Christians that you're commanded to love your neighbor. And loving your neighbor means you have to wear a mask. Loving your neighbor means you have to get this vaccine, the three vaccines that come after that, and all these booster shots. And if you don't do that, you're disobeying God. And then you have Christians on the other side that are saying, if you get the vaccine, you're not trusting in God's sovereignty. You're sinning because you're putting your hope in that mask rather than God. So do you see what both people are doing? They're adding extra layers onto the law. So just to get practical, here's a two-fold test you can do to make sure that you're not being a Pharisee. The first is when you're making a judgment off of someone or something that someone's doing, can you pick out a specific text that clearly lays out your position? Or at the very least, an implication from the text that makes it clear, and it's not just a gray area, that makes it clear that what you're saying is biblical. You know, 2 Timothy 3.16 talks about how all scripture is God breathed, they honor us, and how it's sufficient for rebuke, for teaching, for admonishment, for equipping you for every good work. So everything that you need to know on relating to the Christian walk, relating to salvation, relating to sanctification, everything you could possibly need to know is gonna be in scripture. Therefore, if you don't see what you're saying or what you're asserting in scripture, it's probably not biblical. It's probably just your opinion. And the other test is, is your goal behind addressing the issue to build that person up? Or is it just to puff up your own righteousness like the Pharisees did? You can be a Pharisee and still speak biblical truth. You know, 1 Corinthians 13 talks about how you can have all the knowledge, you can sacrifice everything, all your belongings, all your house, your money, your time, everything, even your own life. And if you have no love in the midst of that sacrifice, you're just a frustrating, annoying symbol. So we need to make sure that we're not just speaking truth, but that we're speaking in love. And what the Pharisees did by adding to the law is they basically nullified it. They took away all the spiritual aspects and they said that sinning was just the mere action of committing adultery. And it's interesting, because that's the exact world that we live in today. That's America. We live in a country that says the design factor on what is right and wrong is whether or not that action affects other people. You know, you see that with people in homosexuality. Who are you to judge who someone sleeps with? They're not affecting you. But the reality is God doesn't just care about actions. You know, for something to qualify as a righteous work, as something that's pleasing God, it has to be, as Votie Bauckham says, the right action, done in the right way, with the right motive. And, you know, just a piece of advice for all you parents, especially you new parents, don't raise a Pharisee. You know, don't fall in that trap where out of your desperate desire for your kids to stop fighting, for your kids just to stop acting up in church or at the grocery store or wherever, where you no longer care about the motives, you just care whether or not they obey you. And then out of your desperate desire to not put up with a prodigal son, you end up raising his older brother. And then all your kids, just so that you don't feel left out. Make sure that you're not putting your hope of salvation in the same thing that the Pharisees did. Grownups aren't the only ones in hell right now. If your hope for your salvation, kids, is whether or not your parents are Christians, is whether or not you get emotional doing some sermons, whether or not you go to church, how much you read the Bible, you're gonna burn. If on that last day, if God asks you, why shall I let you into heaven? If you say anything other than it was all Jesus, then you're not gonna make it. You're not gonna hear very many churches preach that. As we look at verse 28, we see God's view of the law. And same thing, it's interesting to note the phrasing. Again, he doesn't say you have read in scripture, you have heard from the prophets, but you see him say, I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lustful intent has already committed adultery with her in his heart. In other words, prophets can't talk like this. This is God saying, in other words, that while self-righteous man has the audacity to say, this is what right and wrong is, I, God himself, the very standard of right and wrong, say, this is what I command of you. Not just the fact that you don't commit actual adultery, but the fact that you don't even desire it. That's what I expect of you. And as we look at that, we see that sin doesn't start with your actions, it starts with the heart. That's the root source of it all. Proverbs 4, verse 23 says, above all else, guard your heart, for everything you do flows from it. Matthew 12, verses 33 through 34 says, either make the tree good and its fruit good, or make the tree bad and its fruit bad. For the tree is known by its fruit. You brood of vipers. How can you being evil speak what is good? And then note this, for the mouth speaks out of that which fills the heart. Basically, your actions, your thoughts, your words you speak are a good odometer for the state of your spiritual health. And that's important to know because that's how we change. Change starts not with your actions, it starts with that heart. And Matthew 23, 26 says this, you blind Pharisee, first clean the inside of the cup and the plate that the outside also may be clean. You know, in counseling, when you have someone coming to you with an issue, there's always two issues that are gonna be brought to the table. And before I talk about that, I don't want you guys to shut down the second I mention biblical counseling and have this false assumption that biblical counseling is just for Pastor Robert, Pastor Steve, or Pastor Cole. It's all, every one of you, every one of us is commanded to be a biblical counselor. Because think about, what is biblical counseling? It's admonishing, it's encouraging, it's rebuking, it's teaching. Biblical counseling is just doing the one another's. Everyone is commanded to do it, and you're commanded to be good at it. But there's always gonna be two issues that are brought to you, whether it's you counseling your friend over the phone, or over coffee, or in a counseling room, or whether someone's counseling you, there's always two issues that are gonna be brought. The first is what I refer to as the presentation problem. This is when the counselor comes to you saying, I'm struggling with pornography, I'm struggling with yelling at my kids every week, I'm struggling with anxiety on a daily basis, And the reality is this isn't the issue. This is just a symptom of a bigger issue. Which brings us to the second problem. The second issue is the root issue, the heart problem. This is that source of cancer that's causing all these other manifestations of issues in your life. And you see this all the time. You're gonna have that person with a dysfunctional life come to you, and they're gonna have hundreds and hundreds of issues in their life. But as you look at all those issues, you see it all tied to one specific sin usually. And if you can figure out what that sin is that they need to kill, all those other problems are gonna go away. And this is why it's so important for you to ask questions. That's how you figure out what the heart issue is, because it's not gonna be the same for everyone. If you don't address the correct heart issue, and you end up only addressing the symptoms, that person is always gonna either relapse back into that sin, or they're just gonna switch that idol out for another idol. And sometimes the questions you have to ask are very uncomfortable questions, where you get even more uncomfortable answers. You know, Proverbs talks about it's to a fool's folly and shame to give an answer before he hears. Don't try to help someone until you know the details of the issue. And don't just be passive about it. The second reality of sin we see is that sin requires radical amputation. So let's ask ourselves, what is radical amputation? Well, I wanna be clear, it's not you literally plucking out your eye or literally cutting off your hand. It's not you maiming yourself. Even if you pluck out the eye, you still have the other eye to lust with. You still have your mind to lust with. Jesus here, he isn't telling you to cut off body parts. He's using a hyperbole to illustrate how serious sin is. He's describing how desperate you need to be to kill your sin, especially habitual sin. So back to the question, what is spiritual amputation? Well, it's burning the bridges that lead you back to that sin. Romans 13, 14 talks about this. But put on the Lord Jesus Christ and make no provision for the flesh in regard to its lust. You know, and this could look different for everyone. For some people, someone struggling with pornography, it could look like you ripping your dough off your dough frame to sacrifice all of your privacy. It could look like you putting accountability software on your phone so that your pastor sees all your search history. It could look like you just confessing your sin. You know what lie the devil loves to spew around in the church? is that if you confess your sin to a brother, if you seek help, then it's over for you. If you take off that righteous mask, then your relationship is done with. They're never gonna look at you the same way. That is the filthiest, dirtiest lie from hell. God designed us where we're codependent on each other. He designed us where you need the church and the church needs you. You know, it's so ironic because when you confess your sins, that doesn't hurt the relationship, that makes it stronger. You know, there might be some of you here that you've been here for years and all you have are just shallow relationships. And I would ask you, are you inviting people in your lives to fight sin? Are you entering into other people's lives to fight sin? Because you usually see a correlation of you're not doing the one another's and you're not having any meaningful, deep relationships. And you know what tendency people tend to have? They don't have this picture of cutting off your hand and throwing it away. They have this picture of you slowly easing, with a butter knife, just slowly easing off the hand, where you're just keeping it, where you're more focused on doing the bare minimum and keeping as much pleasure as you can, rather than doing away with that sin once and for all. You know, you have this picture of a guy who he's looking at his phone, one thing leads to another, he falls into sin. And then as he's weeping, as he's talking about how he can't believe he did this for the umpteenth time, all you see him is slowly putting his phone back in his pocket. You know, Jesus doesn't tell you to cut off the hand and then put it back in your pocket. He tells you to throw it away from you, to distance yourself from it, make it to where you can't even go back to it even if you wanted to. You know, and we need to be sympathetic because this is a hard thing to do. When you cut off a hand or pluck out an eye, it should feel like a divorce. It should feel like you're losing a part of you. You know, for those of you who struggle with drugs or pornography addiction or any kind of enslavement, you know what I'm talking about. That sense of just, it feels like you're giving up the only thing in your life that's ever brought you satisfaction. And Jesus doesn't just say, cut off the hand or pluck out the eye. He says, the right hand and the right eye. He says, cut off your dominant hand, the hand that's most useful to you. If your version of amputation doesn't hurt, you're probably not doing it right. And there's probably a lot of people who are saying like, Luke, you're taking this too seriously. It's just a little sin. It's just a little pride. It's just a little lust. Well, think about amputation from a medical standpoint. When you amputate a leg, are you only gonna cut off bad flesh? you inevitably are gonna cut off good flesh as well. You're gonna be more focused on cutting off whatever you know that's gonna absolutely give you confidence, you're not gonna lead back into sin, rather than more focused on what's the bare minimum I could cut off. You know, about a year ago, back when I was still at Grace, we were supporting a missionary who passed away last year, left behind two kids, a wife and a baby on the way. And my pastor, he was on the phone with him, ministering to him, trying to encourage him, because he had cancer. And at the time, he had bone cancer that was up to basically his wrist. And he was given a few months to live. And all he told my pastor was, I'm willing to lose my whole arm if it's gonna keep this cancer from stripping me from my family. That's the desperation we need for sin. If that's how desperate someone is over just a physical malady, how much more serious should we be about a spiritual malady that's gonna send you straight to hell? And when you sacrifice this thing that's so precious to you, that's only poisoning you, that's a fragrance to God. You know, Psalm 51, 17 says, the sacrifices of God are a broken spirit and a broken and contrite heart. Oh God, you will not despise. You know, just picture the way God looks as he's looking at a child who he's in anguish, he's weeping, he just cut off the hand, in his head he's thinking he gave up everything he has to live for, but the whole time his heart's saying, God, I'll go through this for you. God loves that kind of devotion. You know, Christ gave up everything for you. In hindsight, is it really, I mean, aren't you willing to give up that Netflix account for him? Or give up your phone or your dough or your pride? You know, when we spiritual amputate, that takes a supernatural power. That takes a godly sorrow that is only given to us by God. And 2 Corinthians 7 talks about this, about the difference between a worldly sorrow and a godly sorrow. You know, worldly sorrow is what you almost always see, even in counseling. A lot of times when you're counseling, you gotta spend three weeks just talking to the person about what sorrow actually looks like. And when you have worldly sorrow, the only thing you care about are the consequences. All you care about is the broken relationship your actions have caused. All you care about are the bad feelings you got from that sin. All you care about is your financial situation that derived from your actions. You don't care about how it affected God. And Paul talks about this is the sorrow that leads you straight to hell. You know, you look at Judas. He just betrayed Jesus, and what does he do? He goes to the people who gave him the money, and he says, I have sinned by betraying innocent blood, and he throws the money down, runs off, and hangs himself. I mean, what's wrong with that? He confessed his sin, right? He acknowledged that he sinned. Why is he in hell? Isn't that all you have to do to go to heaven? Well, no, because the only thing he cared about was that guilt he felt. He didn't care that he sinned against God. But then you have a picture of godly sorrow. You know, this is that intense yearning to be free from the sin, not just from the consequences. This is that intense desire to do away with just self and to have nothing hindering your relationship with God. This is where you are willing to do whatever it takes to be rid of that sin once and for all, not just to suppress it. You know, you look at David, he just committed adultery with Bathsheba, he just murdered. And part of the consequences of that is that God killed his son. Mm-hmm. And how does David respond to that? He doesn't wallow in self-pity. He doesn't just sin even more. After he pleads with God to spare him of the consequences, and he still has to go through them, he goes straight to his chamber and worships God. And sometimes the consequences you have to go through, which by the way, if you're not willing to go through the consequences of your actions, you're not repentant. Sometimes the consequences may be legal. You may have to pay fines or go to jail, whatever. Sometimes it's broken relationships where you have to earn that person's trust back. And sometimes it's just humbling yourself where you sacrifice your reputation. Don't come here and play church if there's sin in your life you know that you're not addressing. If you live, and I'm not talking about you occasionally stumbling to sin as you fight, that's a different story. I'm talking about if you're living in sin. Stop trying to figure out what 10% of your paycheck was last week and give God a sacrifice he actually wants. Psalm 66, 18 says, if I had cherished iniquity in my heart, the Lord wouldn't have listened. That is not for the unbeliever, that's for you. In other words, if you're living in sin, God's not listening to your prayers. If you're not faithful with the amount of knowledge God's given you, why do you expect he's gonna give you any more knowledge on how to deal with other trials in your life? The third reality of sin we see is that sin has a high cost. You know what's scary about sin? Sin doesn't drag you to hell as this unwilling victim who's just kicking and screaming. Sin, it leads you to hell, where you're a willing victim, where you're eager to follow it. You know, every time you divulge in sin or those sinful pleasures, that affects your thinking, that clouds your judgment, that makes it where you can't think scripturally, and you become more dumber. And not only that, but that sin becomes more and more captivating. There's more allurement in that sin. So you always have this picture of you're on the 50th step of your righteousness scale. You fall into sin and now you plummeted back to step one. You know what the world's advice for handling pornography is? Because there's still a bit of common grace where some people in the world know pornography is bad for you. The world's advice is if you fall once a week, just try to fall twice a week, and then gradually fall three times a week. Just slowly wean your way off of it. That's not scripture at all. You need to starve that sin, not give it any provision. You need to put it in a cage, put it to death, run away from it, not be anywhere near that sin. You know, as we look at James 1, 13 through 15, we see the process of sin. We see the mythology it uses. Let no one say when he is tempted, I am being tempted by God, for God cannot be tempted with evil. And he himself tempts no one, but each person is tempted when he is lured and enticed by his own desire. Then desire, when it has conceived, gives birth to sin, and sin, when it is fully grown, brings forth death. You know, you have this picture of the seed meeting the sperm and producing just a life. You have this picture of, it begins with that wicked desire that's already existing in your heart, that meets opportunity, and then that produces sin, which then produces enslavement and death. You know, this is why it's important to nip sin in the butt from the very get-go. Like, don't wait till it gets to phase 10 of that sin. Stop it at phase one. You know, when people struggle with pornography, pornography is not the actual issue. It's something you're getting from pornography that is your idol. For some people, it might be comfort. For others, it might be the sense of power and control. For others, it just may be just self-pleasure. It's different for everyone. And the battle doesn't start when you get that sexual temptation. It starts in the beginning of your day where you have that moment of discontentment. It starts at that moment of the day where you start self-pitying yourself over how bad your workday's been. You know, when you fight sin, Ephesians 6 describes it as putting on the armor of God. The worst time to put on that armor is when the battle's already started. You gotta put it on like a week in advance. And on top of that, when you look at the Greek for the word they use for putting on the armor, it's not the sense of you put it on once and that's it, it's the sense of you constantly or actively putting it on nonstop. And you know, as we hear all this, this should produce an urgency to kill sin. You know, if you knew someone, if a terrorist group was gonna come to your house tonight and kill you, your family, everyone, you're not gonna be sleeping. You're gonna be putting up barriers, you're gonna be trying to run away, you're gonna be putting up every barrier you can and just plan out an attack strategy. You know, and you shouldn't just have an urgency for the sin yourself, you should have it for your brothers and sisters. You know, you look at all these big ministers who have fallen, usually to sexual sin, where they just lost their entire ministry, and now you have all these Christians that are, like, they're just in turmoil because they're thinking, if this guy fall, what about me? Am I gonna fall? And one thing you always see for these big names that fall and lose their ministry is you see someone in their life that saw glimpses of what was going on in their life and never said anything. You see someone who claims to be their friend, but never asked the hard questions. You know, we live in this post-modern culture where I think it affects everyone here, including myself, more than we realize. You know, you look at a lot, And the Bible describes him as a righteous man. But living in Sodom, living in that wicked city, that did something to him. And you see that by the fact of how he offers his daughters off instead of his guests. When those men came and he offered his daughter up, that didn't come from scripture, that came from something else. Living in that culture affected how he was thinking. And I think what living in this post-modern culture does is it makes us where we think it's no longer loving to confront sin. Where it's no longer loving to disagree with someone. Where the loving thing to do is to be passive and let go and let God. Which obviously God's solemnity is something we need to take into account, but God makes it clear that he works through means. You know, and the reality is, If you're gonna have the mentality of, I'm not gonna confront that sin, I'm just gonna pray for him, which obviously prayer is something that we all need to be doing. But, I mean, if it's God's will to free that person from that sin, and you're slacking, he's just gonna use someone else to do his will. And you're gonna have to give an account on that last day of why you were just passive. As we look at this text, we need to ask ourselves, if keeping something even as precious as our sight, as our hand, that's gonna cost us a soul, is that even worth it? What's the profit to have the whole world and then lose your soul? So, in conclusion, don't flirt with the lion. Don't turn your back on the line and make a game out of it. The thing that always interests me about this text is you see Jesus preaching to his disciples that if you don't cut off the hand, then you may go to hell. And obviously I'm a firm believer, and obviously Jesus is too, that once saved, always saved. And yet you see him telling his disciples this. And I think the reason for that is he's telling his disciples, don't presume upon me. Don't use my mercy and my grace as justification for you living in your sin. So as we go about this week, if there's something you need to cut off, cut it off. And as you're fighting sin, don't focus on the sin. You need to focus on God. The remedy to killing sin is not to have your eyes laser focus on it, it's to switch that focus onto something else. It's not to be a better person, it's to confess your sins to God and let him do the work. Let's go to God in prayer. Father, we confess our apathy. we confess how much we just abuse the gospel. Father, we ask that you change us. We ask that you fix us. We ask that if there is sin in our lives that need to be addressed, that you deal with it, you reveal it to us. And Father, I ask that for all the rest of us, that you give us a sense of urgency and a sense of trembling at the seriousness of sin. Give us wisdom on how to handle it. Give us wisdom on how to confront our brothers and sisters. And Father, I pray that you not make our, that if there's a Pharisee in us, that our spiritual motors behind our life is just being a good person, that you strip that from us. Father, I pray that you make us more dependent on you, especially in regards to our sin. Father, be with us all throughout the week, and I pray that you use this sermon, amen.