Is lust as evil as adultery?
Hi, welcome to another edition of Little Lessons, a special Burma edition of Little Lessons.
I'm at a house of some very poor folks in Burma who have opened their house to a little
girl who was living in an orphanage that Heaven's Family have been involved with for many years,
but we're now involved with trying to reintegrate children back with their families, because
so many children in orphanages around the world, they're not orphans at all.
They have living parents, but if they can't go back to their parents because there's some
problem in the family or something wrong with the parents, we try to get them back with
close relatives who love the Lord.
We're at a house right now of a relative of a little girl who has been reintegrated, and
she and her grandfather actually being interviewed right now to make sure everything's going
good.
I'm just kind of sitting on their little back porch here.
There's their water source, a pump that, that's where everything happens right there as far
as washing and bathing and drinking and so forth.
All right, a little background.
We're going to keep on looking at some things that Jesus said in Matthew chapter five.
There in the Sermon on the Mount, you know, he's got six statements where he said, "You
have heard it was said," or, "You have heard the ancients were told, but I say to you."
You know, some folks skim over the surface of that and come to the conclusion that Jesus
was altering the law, but as you look at it a little more closely, you see that he's not
altering the law, he's bringing back his disciples to the standards that were always there in
the law and in the original intent of the law of Moses, and our question today about
lust and adultery revolves around that very thing.
Is lust as bad as adultery?
Well, some folks say it is, because they read from Matthew chapter five where Jesus said,
"You have heard it was said do not commit adultery, but I say to you whoever looks at
a woman to lust for has already committed adultery in his heart."
Again, Jesus didn't say that lusting is just as bad as adultery, but he's pointing out
something here that is really the original intent of the law of Moses.
God didn't mean, the law of Moses, when he said, "Thou shalt not commit adultery," He
didn't mean, and forgive me for saying this, He didn't only mean, "Just make sure you don't
penetrate someone of the opposite sex with your sexual organ men, or vice versa women,
but anything right up until that point is okay."
That's not what He meant, we all know that.
Being involved in sexual activity with a member of the opposite sex to whom you are not committed
in a covenant of marriage is wrong.
All right?
Anyone who has the crazy idea that it would be okay to go right up to the point of intercourse
and actually not technically commit adultery, but that would be okay, is fooling themselves.
Right?
Right.
Jesus is just taking it all the way to its logical end.
Adultery always begins with the thought of adultery, the desire of what we term lust.
He wants us to cut that off, cut adultery off at its source.
He wants us purged of all sexual immorality, not just including the actual act of intercourse,
but everything that leads up to that.
Any kind of sexual activity with a member of the opposite sex to whom you are not married,
all the way back to the very source of when the thought enters the mind, the lustful thought
that if you yield to that, that it leads on to worse things.
Is lust as evil as adultery?
No, no, of course not.
Jesus is giving this warning to prevent adultery by cutting it off in its very early stages
of lust.
That's the kind of purity that he expected, not just under the law of Christ, but of course
under the law of Moses.
We're fooling ourselves here if we say, "Well, this is a new standard."
Oh, come on.
This is not a new standard.
This is implied in thou shall not commit adultery.
Don't get anywhere close to even the beginnings of what leads to adultery.
Job had that figured out.
I don't know the exact verse.
I think it's Job 31, I think it's verse 31 of chapter [inaudible 00:04:41] but I'm not
sure about this, but he said, "I made a covenant with my eyes that I will not look upon a virgin."
What's he talking about there?
I have made a decision I'm not going to be mentally undressing the young women that I
see.
Goodness, the Ten Commandments.
Don't covet, one of the things that God says, don't covet your neighbor's wife.
What's that all about?
That's thoughts.
That's desires.
That's in your heart.
That's in your mind.
Why might you be coveting your neighbor's wife?
Well, come on, it's pretty obvious.
Lust is forbidden.
This is not something new under the new covenant, it's under the old covenant.
That theme keeps on going as we read all of Jesus', "You have heard it was said but I
say to you," statements, it becomes very clear, not a new standard.
Standard can be found in the law of Moses.
All right, so Jesus gives some very practical advice about what to do to obey him in this.
He says, "If your right eye cause you to stumble, cut it out."
Better to enter into Heaven missing an eye than be cast into Hell with both eyes.
If your right hand cause you to stumble, cut it off.
Better to go to Heaven missing a hand than go to Hell with both hands.
He's not literally saying, of course we know this, to pluck out your eye, cut off your
hand.
What he is saying is that, lust is a damnable sin.
The guy who's full of lust and always lusting, maybe not acting on that lust and actually
raping people or getting involved in adultery or fornication, still guilty of immorality
and it's a damning sin.
What to do about it?
Get rid of what it is that's causing you to stumble.
Obviously, your eye can't literally cause you to stumble, neither can your hand, and
so we're not literally cutting those things out, but there are things that can cause us
to stumble.
Get rid of those things.
If it's a place where you drive by every day and you see something that would cause you
to stumble, stop driving by that way.
If it's a TV show that you watch and that cause you to stumble, stop watching that TV
show.
You might want to just stop watching TV altogether.
Okay?
Here I am in Burma, and I travel an awful lot.
I spend a lot of time in hotels.
I just have made a covenant with myself, I don't turn on the TV.
Why?
Because I'm by myself, got the channel flipper, I might be looking for something totally legitimate
but see something that's not legitimate and then be tempted.
I cut it off, you know, not going to turn it on, not going to allow myself to be tempted
in that regard, following Jesus' instructions to help me avoid lust or immorality.
Okay?
All right.
That's today's Little Lesson.
Thank you so much for joining me.
God bless you.