Hear now, the word of the Lord from Matthew 5:27-30.

27 “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall not commit adultery.’ 28 But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lustful intent has already committed adultery with her in his heart. 29 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. 30 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.
Matthew 5:27-30, ESV

The grass withers, the flower fades. But the word of our God endures forever. Well, in early 2020, before the whole world shut down, I had the privilege to go on a trip to the countries of Kenya and Rwanda on a mission trip where I took part in some training for some pastors there. After I'd finished the first week of training in Kenya and before we traveled on to Rwanda, I had the privilege of staying at Maasai Mara a national game reserve in Kenya. It's probably the most beautiful place I've ever been to. I felt like I was on the set of The Lion King. It was just absolutely, absolutely gorgeous. We stayed at a game camp there.

One of the two nights that we were there, a friend of mine that I was with on this trip, came to me and said, You've got to come with me and talk to this person that I've been talking to. So I said, okay. And so we went and we met the gardener there. Now, this gardener was unbelievable. He had this incredible organic garden that supplied 40 to 60% of all of the fruits and vegetables that were served to the hungry tourists who were there at this game camp. He had this incredible process explaining to me, some of you who are farmers would understand better than I did what he was talking about, but he made sure that the right crops were planted beside other right crops so that the nutrient balance would be right. He made sure that certain plants were planted beside other plants so that the smell of the one would keep the wrong bugs away from the other. It was an incredibly thoughtful, strategic way and it was an incredibly fruitful garden.

One of the really interesting parts of this was then he took us over to where they treated wastewater from the camp. Anything that went down a sink or a toilet from that camp had to pass through this wastewater treatment area before it could be drained back into the park. So he showed us first a large rectangular lagoon where all the water would first gather. I think they cultivated some bacteria, maybe some grasses were planted and around it. It was a couple of years ago and I didn't take good enough notes in my mind to remember all that they did. A lot of it was just from the sunlight, but they cleaned up that water to some degree. Then the water flowed over into another area, which was this rock garden where there were grasses planted in the middle of it, I think to leach up some of the nitrates before that wastewater was then clean. They had this tested every year to make sure that it wouldn't pollute the park. He said it was incredibly effective, the system that they had built.

So I said, oh, so could you drink this water after it's gone through this purification process? He said, Oh, no, this won't hurt the vegetation, it won't hurt the animals, but this would make you very sick if you were to drink this.

Now I think about that balance there. They're not quite making it good enough for human consumption, but it is perfectly good so that it won't do outright damage to the park. When we come to the passage that Jesus is talking about here today. He's talking about the seventh commandment. The commandment, you shall not commit adultery. He says it is one thing and it's certainly important to do everything you can to avoid the kind of outward, physical actions that would do outright damage to a marriage. Do not commit adultery. Jesus goes on to say, don't think then that once you have made sure that you haven't engaged in those kinds of outright actions that would do deep, direct damage to a marriage, don't think that you have thereby fulfilled the commandment you shall not commit adultery. It goes much further than that. Goes much deeper than that.

Jesus says there's an additional element to this that understand you haven't purified this as far as you need to. There is still the sickness of sin that lurks deep in your heart. Understand that the Seventh Commandment pierces all the way down to the depths of your soul. We talked about this last week when Jesus talked about the Six Commandment against anger. Now Jesus gets far more personal in this commandment that we do not commit adultery. Jesus says it goes all the way down to the recesses of our hearts. Then our hearts need to be further purified from the lust that resides deep inside.

Now, Jesus's words are hard, they are demanding they are searching. There's a tendency to look at this passage and to say, well, what am I supposed to do with this? But our big idea today is this, it's good news that Jesus came to purify our desires.

Now as we look at this passage, that's rather short for four verses. We're going to split these up into two parts. First of all, forbidding adultery in verses 27 to 28. Then to the second part, fighting sexual sin.
1. Forbidding Adultery
2. Fighting Sexual Sin.

Forbidding Adultery

So in this first part, forbidding adultery, Jesus cites the seventh commandment. He says, "You have heard that it was said you shall not commit adultery." But Jesus then turns and gives another one of these antitheses. We see this in in these six sections about the Ten Commandments that Jesus teaches on. He gave an introduction the first part and then the six following sections, seven total sections on the law, Jesus regularly gives his antithesis. You've heard one thing, but I say to you, and here Jesus gives his authoritative interpretation as the Son of God on what this commandment actually means.

What He says is just like murder wasn't merely something that forbid the external, outward, physical act of murder, but it descended all the way into the anger that lurks within our souls. So the seventh commandment against adultery is not only against the external physical act of adultery, but it pierces all the way deep into our souls. Now, we probably should have known this if we knew our Bibles, if we knew the 10th Commandment. Because the 10th commandment in the Ten Commandments makes this very clear. It says, You shall not covet your neighbor's wife. You shall not uncover your neighbor's wife. What Jesus is saying is that isn't only something that the 10th commandment commands. If you rightly understand the Seventh Commandment, this will make the same point. "Whoever looks at a woman with lustful intent has already committed adultery", not just covetousness, but adultery "with her in his heart."

Now there are a number of questions about this passage, and I go deeper into some of these in the sermon notes. But the one that we have to grapple with today is to ask, what's the relationship here between the looking and the lust? There are essentially two ways to take this. One is to take the lusting as the purpose for the looking. So why does someone look? Well, because they do so out of a purpose to lust after another person. By the way, this is about men lusting after women, but this is equally true about women lusting after men. So we have to keep that in mind.

Is this a purposeful thing? Whoever looks purposely and that's the way it's translated here in the ESV. Everyone who looks at a woman with lustful intent. Is it an intentional look for the purpose of lusting or is a result in view? Is this a person who looks at a woman and out of that, somewhere deep in his heart, whether bidden or unbidden, chosen or chosen, desired or undesired, something starts stirring in this person's heart of lust for this other person. Whether or not this person has decided to lust, purpose to lust, is it still adultery of the heart when those first stirrings of the heart move us to lust after another person?

Now, most commentators think that the purposeful lusting is in view here. That it's the lustful intentionality, the deliberately willful, lustful looks that Jesus is talking about here. But two of the best technical reference works about Greek grammar say that in fact it's the result in view. It doesn't matter what you intended. If you look at a woman and you feel lust arising in your heart already, you're guilty against the second commandment, which forbids adultery.

Now, this isn't only a question for Greek geeks. This is a very practical question for us, because it asks us is the most undesired on chosen, we might call it non-volitional to use a technical term. If I don't choose to lust after another person, am I already sinning or is it not sin Unless and until I choose to lust, I choose to carry on that feeling? Now, this is a doctrine that Christians have talked about for many centuries. It's called the Doctrine of Conquests. You may or may not be familiar with that term, The Doctrine of Concupiscence, it's not really an English word, it's a Latin word. It means simply desire or lust. It's the doctrine of what we believe about the desires that we have deep in our heart and Christian theologians have wrestled with this. When is it sin? When does sin begin? In all of this are the first stirrings of our heart toward sin, sin, or is it only sin when we decide I'm going to keep going with this?

Now, this is actually one of the major questions that split the Protestants from the Roman Catholic Church. Because the Roman Catholic Church has taught that occupations, these desires toward sin are not sin until we actually choose, until we actually make an act of the will to continue on what's happening there. So in 1546, I want to read to you from the Council of Trent. This is from the Roman Catholic Church. In 1546, this was the Council of the Roman Catholic Church called to respond to the Protestant Reformation. The Council of Trent said this, "But this Holy Synod confesses and is sensible that in the baptize their remains concupiscence (that sinful desire) or an incentive and inclining toward sin. Which, whereas it's left for our exercise, cannot injure those who consent not (who do not consent)." Unless you consent to keep moving through with that lust, it can't hurt you, it's not sin. "But resist manfully by the grace of Jesus Christ. Ye who he who shall have striven lawfully shall be crowned. This concupiscence which the apostle. (talking about the Apostle Paul) sometimes calls sin, the Holy Synod declares that the Catholic Church has never understood it to be called sin as being truly and properly sin in those born again, but because it is of sin and inclines to sin."

Now that's a very technical definition, but it's really, really important that we understand what's being stated there because it's really significant. They're saying we recognize that the Apostle Paul sometimes calls these desires in us concupiscence. He calls these concupiscent desires sin. These first stirrings of the heart toward lust toward another person who is not our spouse. He says the apostle Paul sometimes calls these stirrings sin, but the Roman Catholic Church then turns around and says, but we actually don't think that it's really, truly and properly sin.

Now, that's an astonishing thing. That's an astonishing thing, especially in light of some of the passages where this word shows up in the scriptures, especially Romans 7:7, where the Apostle Paul writes, "Yet if I if it had not been for the law, I would not have known sin." Paul is saying I might have had some idea about the external requirements of the law, but I would never have known the true heart of sin, what sin is unless the law told me what sin is. Then he goes on in Romans 7:7, "For I would not have known what it is to covet." In the Latin translation, that's concupiscence. I would not have known what it is to have this concupiscence if that law had not said you shall not covet. Again, that's the word for concupiscence.

Paul is saying the law doesn't tell us merely that external things are forbidden by God. It says even this concupiscence desire, this desire that inclines us towards sin is sin. The Roman Catholic Church at the Council of Trent in 1546 says we've never taught that. We've never actually taught that this is truly and properly sin.

Well in the Protestant Reformation, and this is included in the Westminster Confession of Faith, which is our church's confession of faith. 100 years later in 1646, writes this, "This corruption of nature or even our desires are disordered. "This corruption of nature during this life does remain in those that are regenerated and although it be through Christ pardoned and mortified, forgiven and put to death to some degree. Yet, both itself, the corruption itself and all the motions thereof, (all the lurches, all the twitches, all the inclinations that draw us towards sin), all the motions thereof are truly and properly sin."

The Roman Catholic Church says this is not truly and properly sin. The Scriptures teach that this is truly and properly sin. Now, why is this important? Well, because this word shows up in our passage. If you were reading this in the Latin, you would read that when Jesus talks about the one who looks at a woman you would read, then concupiscence. He can keep a scandal room toward the lusting after her, toward concupiscence related to her. So what's Jesus saying? Is it only once we decide to do this thing or the first concupiscent desires that incline us in this direction, is that already truly and properly seen?

Well, this was forbidden in the Old Testament in the 10th commandment. You shall not desire. Paul teaches it clearly in Romans chapter seven. If I didn't know that the law told me, do not desire, I wouldn't have known the true reality of sin. So as we let Scripture interpret Scripture, we realize Jesus must be saying, that even unintentional and unchosen, undesired desires, if they incline us towards sin, already we violated the seventh commandment in our heart, "You shall not commit adultery."

That was true when we were simply angry at our brothers. Already we violated the Sixth Commandment, "You shall not murder." Jesus says, if you look at a woman and lust arises in your heart, you're already guilty of violating the Seventh Commandment. Our own denomination, a couple of years ago published a study report and again I've included a long quotation. I'll just read it here, just part of it. Our own denomination wrote this. "We affirm that impure thoughts and desires arising in us prior to and apart from a conscious act of the will, are still sin. We reject the Roman Catholic understanding of concupiscence whereby disordered desires that afflict us due to the fall do not become sin without a consenting agreeing act of the will. These desires within us are not mere weaknesses or inclinations to sin, but are themselves idolatrous and sinful. Truly and properly sin."

Now, if you read the rest of the quotation, it goes on to say that to be sure, we need to have compassion on people who struggle with these sins, especially in various kinds of different sort of lusts. But we must affirm, as Jesus affirms here, he's showing us the infinitely highest heavens standards of the law. That desires toward sin are truly and properly set. If you've ever felt a tug, a stirring, a lurch of your heart of sexual desire for someone who is not your spouse, Jesus says already you're guilty of violating the Seventh Commandment. T

he classic example of this, of course, is the story of David and Bathsheba. In The second Samuel 11, we read that David acted originally foolishly. We're told that this was the time of year when kings go out to war and yet foolishly, David's stayed home. Then we were told that David, he was minding his own business so far as we know. He was looking over the roof of his palace, and he saw a woman and saw that she was good looking.

Now we know that from that point on, David made his sin far, far worse. First, he violated the eighth commandment by stealing his friend's wife. Then he took this woman and committed adultery with her physical adultery that was an explicit violation of the Seventh Commandment. Then he broke the Ninth Commandment by lying about it. Then ultimately, he violated the Sixth Commandment by murdering Bathsheba husband, Uriah, his friend. All of that began, even unintentionally, when his heart looked in idolatrous, sinful lust toward this woman violating not only and the 10th Commandment, but even the Seventh Commandment, you shall not commit adultery.

Now, again, this is very heavy. This is very hard. Frankly, the idea that our desires, our emotions that rise up within us would be sin in themselves, this is a concept that is entirely foreign to our culture. We say we can't help it, that's just how I feel. Sometimes people go so far as to say, I was born this way.

Well, it may surprise you as we think about the way that our culture talks about emotions, that the word emotion is really a word that is only 200 years old. Before that, people didn't talk about emotions. We sort of have this catch all term that captures our feelings and our desires, and we call them emotions. Before that, people didn't talk that way. They talked about the feelings that we had as products of the soul, the motions of the soul. Not emotions, but the motions of the soul.

So we talk about the passions of the soul or the affections of the soul with the recognition that this isn't something that my body is doing. This isn't a product of my hormones; this isn't a product of my psychology. This is something that my spiritual soul is doing. About 200 years ago, philosophers wanted to divorce the feelings that we feel from any theological, spiritual notion of the soul. So they created this word emotion. This became the catch all term, where now don't talk about your soul and what your soul is doing. Now we talk about what my body or my hormones or my psychology is doing. It's a purely naturalistic, even atheistic explanation for what we feel. Sometimes I go so far to say that emotions are for atheists, and I mean that. It's a word that was invented to cut God and the spiritual notion of who we are out of the picture.

So for a long time, people talked about emotions as contrasted with our reason. So people would say things like, I know that it would be wrong to leave my wife and to go after this other woman, but I feel that it would make me happy. So why shouldn't I? We know what's right rationally, reasonably, but then we have this other desire, this emotion. For a while, people said, well, I should probably do what my reason or rationality says. Then eventually says, well, why shouldn't I do what I feel, what my emotions tell me? Why shouldn't I follow my heart instead of my head?

Now we get to the point in society where people say, if you want to know truth, forget what you think. Forget what's going on in your mind. Forget what the Bible tells us. Instead, I feel, therefore I am. The truest, realest part of me is in my emotions. People used to say, I think therefore I am, now we say I feel therefore I am. But Jesus says you feel therefore you are responsible. That is your soul at work. If it happens, if it stirs in your soul, you are already guilty.

Now again, this is so heavy. This is so burdensome. Who can claim purity in light of this? Who can claim to be innocent in light of what Jesus says here? If truly the standard of God is high as heaven itself, how do any of us escape this? But Jesus really does condemn the slightest twitches of our hearts towards someone sexually who is not our spouse. Even the first inkling of sexual desire is already adultery of the heart, and God hates it because it cuts against his good design for marriage and human sexuality. If you thought Jesus's command was heavy. Just wait till you get to what he says, what he instructs us to do about it. It's not just heavy, it's horrifying. Look at what Jesus says in the second section.

Fighting Sexual Sin

Fighting sexual sin in verses 29 through 30. What are we supposed to do with this? Well, Jesus tells us, "If your right eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away." It's horrifying. "For it is better that you lose one of your members then 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 then that your whole body go into hell."

Now, the overall message here is very clear, right? Jesus says, do whatever it takes, absolutely whatever it takes. It's far better that you should lose something of your body than that you would be entirely thrown body and soul into hell forever. That's very clear. But are we really supposed to mutilate our bodies? Are we really supposed to gouge out eyes and cut off hands?

Well, there are two unsatisfying ways that I think we could approach this. The first unsatisfying, the first bad way to interpret this would be to say, well, clearly, we aren't meant to take this literally. Now, that relieves part of the problem. If I just say we shouldn't take this literally, well, then you don't have to gouge out your eyes and cut off your hands and you can all relax, right? Let out a breath of air and you're safe. Your members and your organs are safe.

But it creates another problem, namely that the whole point of the Sermon on the Mount that we've seen this so far, is that Jesus is showing us the infinitely high as heavens standard of the law. He's telling us the law goes much further than you think it does. So if we say, well, this isn't literal, what do we do about what Jesus has already said back in verse 22, for example, that if you are angry with your brother, you are already liable to the death penalty. You've already committed murder in your heart. Was that not literal as well? And the answer is, of course, Jesus is saying you're already guilty of violating the Six Commandment.

So it doesn't really work just to sort of wave a hand and say, this isn't literal. We can't just wish this away. The other thing is what Jesus says here actually makes sense. If it were true that cutting off a hand or gouging out an eye would save us from hell, then what would make more sense? What would be more reasonable? If someone realizes that they have cancer in a part of their body, or that gangrene has started to spread in one part of their body before it gets to the rest of the body, it is a reasonable thing to cut off that member of the body. To save the life, you lose a member of your body. That makes sense. Why then shouldn't we follow what Jesus says here?

Well, if the first unsatisfying, bad way to interpret this, is just to say, well, don't take this literally. The second bad way, unsatisfying way would be to unthinkingly do precisely what Jesus says here. Because we never read anywhere else in the Bible that God actually wants us to gouge our eyes out or to cut off our hand to avoid lust. There's only one place that even comes close to this, and it shows us this isn't what we are meant to do. It's in Galatians 4:15. Paul praises the Galician church for their deep love that they were willing to do absolutely anything to help him. He said, if possible, you would have gouged out your eyes and given them to me. Well, that shows us that, first of all, it wasn't possible. That wouldn't have helped anything. Second of all, they didn't actually do it and yet Paul praises them. So we're never told that we're supposed to mutilate our bodies in order to protect ourselves from sin.

So if we're not supposed to just dismiss this away as non-literal, and if we're not supposed to unthinkingly do what Jesus says, how do we interpret this? Well, the better way to do this is to understand that the literal sense here, the plain, the natural sense, is a form of speech called hyperbole. Jesus is saying do absolutely whatever it takes. But then Jesus wants us to start thinking about this.

The question is not whether it would be right to amputate an organ or limb of our body before the gangrene of sin spread to the rest of us so that we be cast, body and soul into hell. The question that Jesus wants to think is, so if I cut off my hand, if I gouge out my eye, and notice it's only the right hand and the right eye, we still have our left eye and the left hand. If so, would that actually get rid of the problem of sin? The answer is no because sin isn't locally located in my hand. Sin isn't locally located in my eye. You get rid of the external members of your body and you don't deal with the problem because the problem is much deeper in our heart. We need a heart transplant. Again, not just of the physical blood pumping organ. We need Jesus to take our spiritual, cold, hard heart of stone and put in its place a warm, soft heart of flesh that responds in joyful obedience to the whole law of God. The real question is where can we get this kind of heart surgery to heal the problem of sin lurking in our hearts?

Some of you know that my family and I moved recently. One of the things that attracted us to our home is that it had a newly finished basement. It was really beautiful, a nice area, brand new carpet put in. We really loved this space. So we bought the house and moved into the house. Days after moving in, I was horrified to discover that we had a water leak and our basement was just filled with water. This nice new carpet we had to rip out and pull up and bring an air blower to dry out. We had to cut out and throw away the carpet padding because we didn't want it to mold or corrupt or cause further damage in our home. So we hired a home inspector. In the current market, you don't hire the home inspector before the purchase, but after, it's a wonderful system. This home inspector gave us a few things to do to plug possible ways that water might be getting into our house. So we patched those areas of our home and we thought we were safe.

Then a few days later, actually, as we were reinstalling the carpet, we discovered that that part was wet again. There was more water in our basement. This time we hired a leak detector. This man's only job, he's a water engineer, and he's niched down so far that all he does is try to identify where water is getting into a house for a leak. We hired him and he gave us other things to do. We thought we were safe until one day I came down again and I'm totally paranoid by this time, just checking it multiple times a day. It was soaked, sopping wet. But this time I was there and I caught in the act.

All this time I thought water was getting in from the outside, from external. But inside we had an old furnace humidifier that wasn't set upright and water was just shooting out of it when the weather got really cold so that it was inside our house where this leak was coming from. I was willing to do whatever it took. I would have hired one of those insanely expensive companies to dig up the foundation of my house if I had to, to repair this crack, but that wasn't the issue. It was inside the house, not outside.

It's the same way for us. The problem is not outside your body. It's not in your hand. It's not in your eye. The problem is spiritually, in your soul. How do you deal with your heart?

Application

Well as we take all of this and try to apply it. The application here is that we must look to Jesus to purify our desires. Bodily discipline, even going so far as to gouge out our eyes or cut off our hands cannot cure sin, because the true roots of sin go all the way down into our hearts. We sin before we are conscious of it, before we intend to sin already. Already when sin is stirring in our hearts, that is already a violation, truly and properly sin before God.

If we start thinking about all the places where this happens, all the points throughout our lives, all the points of our day where this happens, suddenly we are praying with the psalmist in Psalm 130:3, "If you O Lord should mark iniquities oh, Lord, who could stand?" Now, that's a very intentional word there, iniquities. You see the word transgression, that requires us to actually transgress one of God's commands. To do something beyond what God has commanded. But iniquity is not external, iniquity is internal. It deals with the corruption and the pollution of our heart. The Psalmist is praying out, Oh Lord, if you took stock of all of the corruptions and pollutions and pollutants in my heart, oh, Lord, who could stand before you? If my skin goes that deep, who could stand before you?

So we have to ask, how can we transform our hearts from the inside out? You know, once again, I mentioned last week, we sometimes forget that Jesus is the one speaking here. We know these are his words. We study them as his words, and we sometimes forget to see him in this passage. Where Jesus is trying to get us to think through, the fact that mutilating our own bodies will not solve our problem of sin. We must never forget that Jesus Christ took a human body so that his body could be mutilated to solve the problem of our sin.

When Jesus Christ came into this world, he took upon flesh, he took upon blood, he took upon bones, he took upon nerves precisely so that his body could be broken and his blood could be shed. So that by the sprinkling of his blood, our hearts could be cleansed from the deepest impurities. From the root of sin that goes all the way into the depths of our souls.

Last week we sang the hymn together, Rock of Ages. In that, there's that great line where we ask Christ to be of sin the double cure. What's the double cure? Well, then the hymn goes on to say, "Cleanse me from its (sins) guilt and power." To be cleansed from the guilt of sin is what we have in forgiveness, but to be cleansed from the power of sin is where Christ cleanses us, where he heals our sinful desires, where he purifies our desires to cleanse us from the power of sin.

You see our culture very much believes that sinful desires are fixed and they are unmoving, and that far from trying to get rid of these desires, we should give in to them. In fact, you cannot be fully human unless you give in to your sinful sexual desires. That's what the world says. What Christ says is the Gospel promises healing. It promises forgiveness and it promises healing. Christ can purify heterosexual lust as described here. Christ can purify homosexual lust. Christ can purify gender confusion. Christ can purify all of the various ways in which our sin takes our sexuality that God gave to us as a good gift and twists it. Jesus is all of those sins are condemned in the seventh commandment; you shall not commit adultery. At the same time all of those sins, I promise healing when my body is broken and my blood is shed for you. That's the gospel that you can be forgiven in your justification and cleansed in your sanctification.

Now I want to give you a strategy. It's not just a technique of something you can do and do this three times a day and things will be fixed for you. I want to show you what the Bible tells us about how we are to relate to these concupiscent and these sinful desires that are truly properly sin in themselves.

If they are sin, then when you feel the first stirrings of some of your soul, that's the time to repent. That's the time to identify that stirring of sending your soul and say, God, I hate this. There's my sin rearing its ugly head again. I hate this. God, forgive me. Be of sin the double cure. Cleanse me from the guilt of this that's rising up in my heart and cleanse me of its power.

With David, we pray like in Psalm, 51:1-2, "Blot out my transgressions." Again, transgressions, that's where the things that I've gone too far and what I've done. This is where David is praying for forgiveness for what he did with Bathsheba that we talked about earlier. "Blot out my transgressions, wash me thoroughly for my iniquity, (my internal pollution and corruption), and cleanse me from my sin." That's all the ways that I've gone astray. Then later he prays, "Create in me a clean heart of God and renew a rights spirit within me" in Psalm 51:10.

We say, God, I hate this sin, forgive the sin, cleanse this sin and give me a new heart. Take out that hard heart of cold, dead stone and give me a new and living and warm and soft heart of flesh where your law is written on that heart. Where I respond to your law with joy and faith and obedience, and I don't turn away from it in rebellion and iniquity.

As a pastor, I can't surgically remove your sin. I wish it could. As a pastor, I can't even surgically remove my own sin. I wish I could. But the Christian life is where God is constantly taking his word and he's holding us up the full requirements of what He requires. To expose to us just how deep the rabbit hole of our sin goes. So we once again have to fly to the cross, to flee back to Jesus to say, please forgive me, I am a sinful man. Forgive me, cleanse me. Jesus is preaching this sermon so that you don't miss just how deep your sin goes. He's doing this so that you will once again be reminded of him, the one whose body was mutilated, whose body was broken in blood shed for you. To lead, you to turn from your sin once again and to look to him in faith.

Well, Christian, take this in seriously. What Jesus literally wants you to do is to do whatever it takes to root this out of your heart, which you cannot do for yourself, but will require from you a miracle from God.

Let's pray that God will do exactly that in our lives. Heavenly Father, we pray that you would be gracious to us. Father, we are so helpless and weak. We are enslaved to the sin that we not only unconsciously commit, but that we willingly carry the ball forward for. Forgive us, Father. Cleanse us. We pray that you would do this according to the sprinkled shed blood of Jesus Christ. Whose body was broken in bloodshed for us, and that you would not only forgive us and cleanse us, but that you would create in us a new heart. A soft heart, a warm heart, a heart of flesh, where your law is inscribed on that heart so that we willingly and joyfully do what is pleasing in your sight, but your powerful Spirit working within us that which is good and pleasing. We pray this all in Christ's name. Amen.