The Sin of Adultery | Matthew 5:27-30

Scripture

• Matthew 5:27–30

About this sermon

Introduction: There is no clearer indicator of God’s abandoning wrath in the life of a nation than when He turns that society over to sexual perversion. The abandoning wrath of God is God taking the common grace restraint from the minds and hearts of fallen people and allowing them to run headlong into their own moral insanity. Romans chapter one maps that out for us. IDOLATRY LEADS TO MORAL INSANITY. IDOLATRY LEADS TO A WORTHLESS MIND. ESV Romans 1:28 And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a debased mind to do what ought not to be done. Debased - ἀδόκιμος “failing the rest, rejected, worthless” ESV Romans 1:32 Though they know God's righteous decree that those who practice such things deserve to die, they not only do them but give approval to those who practice them. Our own nation gives evidence of that judgment from God. Our nation has experienced a freefall into the moral abyss in the last fifty years. There has been an explosion of sexual immorality, the implosion of the nuclear family, and most amazingly, a great portion of our culture that just shrugs at it. Or worse yet, celebrates it. What is at the root of this IS REBELLION. The sexual revolution is not really about sex. It is about rebellion against the Creator and His design. In fact, the spiritual aspect of this of this judgment (a giving over to the darkness of Satan) is evidenced by an increasing momentum to “Christianize” all these perversions. It is becoming increasingly evident that the lines in the sand regarding things like women pastors, homosexuality being considered a sin, and marriage being considered sacred, ARE MOVING among professing evangelicals. Sometimes the soft line is seen among PROMINENT evangelicals. In our country we have seen this slide march on one step at a time. In the last fifty years we have seen the rejection of the Creator’s design for men and women (the women’s movement), that women’s movement produced the current attitude toward abortion. This has been followed by a sexual revolution, a homosexual revolution, and now we have arrived at a place no one would have ever imagined. We have arrived at the place where many in our nation refuse to acknowledge the self-evident truth that God has made mankind male and female. The perversion has reached the place where people are defending the insanity of gender fluidity, not only in the case of adults, but in the case of adults who want to project their perverted views on to children. BUT THE POINT THAT I WANT TO MAKE TODAY, THE CONCERN THAT IS ON MY MIND AS WE APPROACH THIS TEXT, IS THIS QUESTION. WHAT HAS BEEN THE AFFECT OF THIS ON THE CHURCH? What has been the affect of this on genuine believers, genuine churches, when it comes to what God says about sexual faithfulness? When you’re living a time where the entire world has lost its moral mind, it is IMPERATIVE that we not be the proverbial frog in the kettle. It is IMPERATIVE that God’s people refuse to be pushed into the world’s mold. ESV Romans 12:2 Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect. It is imperative that God’s people not be lulled into an attitude about marriage, and about sexual faithfulness, that falls far short of the standard of genuine righteousness. We must not become desensitized to what GOD HATES. We must not be careless about what GOD LOVES. We must not think about any issue in a way that falls short of genuine righteousness. REMEMBER, THAT CONTINUES TO BE THE ISSUE IN THE EXAMPLES THAT JESUS GIVES IN THE SERMON ON THE MOUNT. THE CONTRAST IS BETWEEN WHAT PEOPLE WERE FAMILIAR WITH IN THE NAME OF GOD’S LAW, VERSUS THE TRUE RIGHTEOUSNESS ON DISPLAY IN GOD’S LAW. It is a contrast between a superficial, insufficient, reading and application of God’s law (an unspiritual one), driven by the deception of a works righteousness approach to justification, AND THE TRUTH OF THE LAW AS GIVEN BY THE SON OF GOD, that will drive men to see their need for God’s grace. The law, rightly handled, slays the sinner. SV Romans 7:9 I was once alive apart from the law, but when the commandment came, sin came alive and I died. 10 The very commandment that promised life proved to be death to me. That truth brings the sinner to the place of crying out for the mercy of God, and hungering for the righteousness that must be given as a gift, the righteousness of the Savior Himself. ESV Romans 7:24 Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? 25 Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, I myself serve the law of God with my mind, but with my flesh I serve the law of sin.

Topics

• Repentance
• Purity