Purity and the Precious: Matthew 5:8 and the Idol of Sex

Here are my notes from the sermon I preached on the Idol of Sex...
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October 31st 2010

A. Introduction: 
The Ted Haggard scandal... Here’s what Haggard said in his resignation letter: [read from p.1] From what he said, sexual sin was a big problem. But it wasn’t the only problem. In fact, it turns out it wasn’t even his main problem.
[Read Matt 5:8] There are a lot of Christians who hear Matthew 5:8 as an amazing promise: it’s a source of hope and encouragement. But for some, it’s a source of discouragement, and defeat.

I. The Problem of Impurity
1. The problem is here – not “out there”. 

• Men: More than half of the men in this room will look at sexually explicit images on the Internet this month - on purpose. These aren’t just young single men; they’re in their 40s / 50s, sometimes older. Most of the time, they’re doing it at work, where they earn an average income of $60,000 a year. When they’re not looking at work, they’re doing it at home and masturbating, even though many of them are married and could have the real thing. That should be upsetting – especially if you’re that guy’s wife. These are men you know; they want to please God. They want to serve God, but they’re overcome with guilt and shame; they’ve got this dirty little secret, and for it to be exposed is the worst thing they can imagine. 
• Women: Many of you women feel insecure and unattractive because of your husband or father’s use of pornography. Our daughters are more afraid of becoming overweight than they are of nuclear war, cancer, or losing you. Because of the advertising images you’ve seen, most of you women are dissatisfied with your appearance. By the way, a third of all pornography users are women. 
• Children: The average age of first exposure to internet pornography is 11. And if you have children between the ages of 8 and 16, they’ve probably seen pornography online already; for most of them it was an accident – either at school, or on your computer at home, which is upsetting – although most of us aren’t using any kind of internet filtering software on our home computers.
• Retirees: Could we be funding the problem? If you have RRSPs, mutual funds, etc., in Canada, and if you haven’t intentionally gone with funds that are designated SRI’s, then your investments are almost certainly making money off of the production and sale of pornography. That’s your retirement plan. That’s your kids’ inheritance. 
• Kingdom: George Verwer, who was the head of Operation Mobilization named sexual sin as the reason why young people are not passionately involved in reaching the world for Jesus:

“There’s a tragic number of people who at one point in their lives dreamed of radical obedience to Jesus and were joyfully willing to lay down their lives and sacrifice anything to make Jesus known among the nations. But they’re fading away into useless, North-American prosperity because of a sense of unworthiness and guilt over sexual failure that gradually gave way to spiritual powerlessness and the dead-end dream of the middle class security and comfort.” Goerge Verwer


2. This is our problem.

• Level 1: There are really blatant forms: having an affair, pre-marital sex, hiring prostitutes. [These involve other people, planning, and effort. You have to go out of your way to make these happen.]
• Level 2: Then there are less obvious forms: guys/girls who are players / flirts, sexual jokes with friends, or in movies; staring at billboards or magazine covers on the newsstand, dressing seductively, taking indecent pictures of yourself to give to your boyfriend or girlfriend. These are more subtle because they’re acceptable in our culture. They don’t have the same stigma as having an affair or hiring a prostitute, but they’re still sin.
• Level 3: But then there are even more subtle forms: various forms of pornography, phone sex, masturbation, late night cable television, or stealing quick glances at women or men walking by; stealing glances at those magazine covers. These are your own little secret. They’re not visible to anyone but you, which makes it that much harder to repent, because if you want to be accountable, you need to be humble enough to confess it.
• Level 4: Then there are the most subtle forms; these are the most dangerous because we don’t always do these on purpose: fantasizing about people you know; thinking of someone else while you’re being intimate with your spouse; comparing your spouse to others – imagining what it might be like to be married to him or her instead of this dud; bringing up scenes from past sexual experience – replaying them in your mind to relive the thrill; etc. These are completely invisible; they happen in the mind. No one knows but you, and sometimes even you don’t know when you’re doing it. The images and feelings are just there. 
• Illustration: Remember Gollum?  The ring divided Gollum’s heart: he loved it and couldn’t bear to be without it on the one hand; but he hated it at the same time. Eventually it destroyed him. Some of you know what that’s like. You’re like Paul in Romans 7, where he said: “I do not do the good that I want to do, but I practice the evil that I do not want to do.” (Rom 7:15 CSB) 

And it may make us upset; we may not like to talk about it, but here’s the big idea: as a church we are way more affected by the idol of sex and the sin of lust than we realize; it’s all of our problem. We’re all affected, and all our effort to fight this on our own, in secret isn’t working.  

II. The Path to Purity
 "You have heard that it was said, Do not commit adultery. 28 But I tell you, everyone who looks at a woman to lust for her has already committed adultery with her in his heart. (Mat 5:27 CSB)

“What then is necessary before I can see God? Here is the answer. Holiness, a pure heart, an unmixed condition of being. Yet men and women would reduce all this to just a little matter of decency, of morality or an intellectual interest in the doctrines of the Christian faith… nothing less than the whole person is involved.” D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones

1. God wants to be enthroned in the hearts of broken, discouraged people.
[ Psalm 24] Psalm 24 tells of the return of the Ark of God to Jerusalem after they had failed to take care of it.  “Lift up your heads! Look! Open up! so that the King of Glory may come in. Yahweh is back, and wants to take his rightful place in the heart of Israel! Let him in!” And so a thousand years before Jesus, King David wrote this psalm to remind Israel that just when they thought: “God has given up on us; God has forgotten us; God wants nothing to do with us. We’ve worshiped idols; we’ve become impure. God won’t use us because of how badly we’ve blown it;” that’s when we see God breaking in and taking his rightful place at the center of their lives. They don’t return to him; he returns to them.

2. God provides the purity he requires
 "For I will take you from the nations and gather you from all the countries, and will bring you into your own land. 25 I will also sprinkle clean water on you, and you will be clean. I will cleanse you from all your impurities and all your idols. 26 I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you; I will remove your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. 27 I will place My Spirit within you and cause you to follow My statutes and carefully observe My ordinances. 28 Then you will live in the land that I gave your fathers; you will be My people, and I will be your God. 29 I will save you from all your uncleanness. (Ezekiel 36:24-29 CSB)

• In Matthew 5:8, what Jesus say is saying to his disciples – and to us – is something like this: “You can try all you want to overcome your impurity – whether it’s from lust, or whatever the idol is – but if you want to see God, then what you need isn’t stricter rules and stronger willpower. You need to let God take his rightful place on the throne of your heart! You need to ‘lift up the ancient doors, so that the King of Glory may come in!’” 
• In Christianity, we don’t have a God who tells us how badly we’ve blown it and leaves us there. Idols do that. The devil does that. And in your life, and your struggle for purity, maybe your friends or parents did that. Maybe someone in the church or a pastor did that. But that’s not who God is. God requires purity, and he achieves it for us

III. Conclusion: The price of purity
Lots of Christians who struggle with purity hear Jesus’ words in Matthew 5:8, and are discouraged. You prayed the prayer, and you’re still struggling. You’ve been coming to church, singing the songs, going to growth group, and you’re still struggling. You’re still feeling disqualified, defeated, and discouraged.

• The price of purity may be your pride. Do you think the worst thing to happen to you is for this to be exposed? No way. That might be the best thing for you. 
• “What did I learn? I learned that what I had been teaching others for years is true: We should all live our lives as though there is no such thing as a secret. …I was so ashamed of my struggle with sin and concerned about the impact it would have on everyone I loved and who depended on me that I tried to battle it on my own and failed. Secrecy empowers sin.” Ted Haggard
• Illustration: Celebrate Recovery. Each week people walk into the room defeated and discouraged, and walk out fired up for Jesus, and ready to fight sin. You know what the difference is between our friends at CR and the rest of us? They’re not hiding anymore. 
• I know what it’s like to struggle in this area, and wait to feel “clean” before dealing with it. It’s a mistake. You’ll waste your life. Maybe you’re waiting to feel more “worthy” before you step up and get involved in God’s Kingdom work. Maybe you’re waiting till you can go a month or two without falling before you tell someone. Maybe you’re waiting till we don’t need you anymore, or you’re waiting till you’re no longer as tempted before you volunteer your time here. 
• Don’t. Don’t wait till you’re better. Why? Because it’s probably pride. ***All you’ll have done is replaced one sin – one form of idolatry – with another.***
• Who do we think we are?! Are we going to tell God who he can and can’t forgive? Is God so small that he can’t use you in spite of what you’ve done? Are you the exception to his grace? Is your sin so big that Jesus didn’t conquer it on the cross? 
• Illustration: King David – not that long after he wrote Psalm 24 he slept with another man’s wife and had her husband killed. Centuries later, this psalm is being used in synagogues as part of worship. Do you think the people of Israel don’t know what David did? Of course they do. But God uses people like David, Abraham, Moses, Peter, and Paul, and he’s got something for you, too.
• If we won’t humble ourselves, and let God forgive us – not as something we deserve – but as his sovereign gift of grace, then we haven’t really repented of sin. And if the worst thing you can imagine is having your sin exposed, then you’ll never really open up the gates, and let God come in. …not all the way in. We’ll be like Gollum – wanting freedom, but not being willing to let go of our precious – even though we know it’s killing us, and keeping us from something far better.