YOUTH GROUP: Avoiding Adultery

The Word Search

Avoiding Adultery

Matthew 5:27-30

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Intro:

Message

Matthew 5:27-30 27 “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall not commit adultery.’ 28 But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart. 29 If your right eye causes you to stumble, gouge it out and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to be thrown into hell. 30 And if your right hand causes you to stumble, cut it off and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to go into hell.

1. More than an

Matthew 5:27-28 27 “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall not commit adultery.’ 28 But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart.

What is Adultery?

A biblical definition for Adultery is a person, married or unmarried, having a sexual relationship with a married person. This goes for men and women. In Exodus 20 the 7th of the Ten Commandments is do not commit adultery. Deuteronomy 5:18 echoes that. In Numbers 5 there are laws women must go through if they are suspected of adultery by their husbands. In Leviticus 20 and Deuteronomy 22, The Old Testament Law stated, the man and woman who commit adultery are both to be killed. Leviticus 18 is all about being pure and avoiding adultery in all sorts of circumstances.

If you haven’t been able to discern yet, Adultery is a major sin. Not only is it a major sin, because God has on multiple occasions told us not to do, but it is destructive to every part of a person. I’m going to share a verse tonight that will be a very important verse next week as well.

Matthew 19:4-6

4 And He answered and said, “Have you not read that He who created them from the beginning made them male and female, 5 and said, ‘For this reason a man shall leave his father and his mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’? 6 So they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore, what God has joined together, no person is to separate.”

Adultery separates two people that have been joined together. This is a major reason we need sex to stay within the confines of marriage. Sex is great and it is a gift from God, and God uses it to bind two people together! To commit adultery, is to rip yourself, or someone else away from what God has joined together. It will leave emotional, mental, and spiritual scars for life.

I don’t want you thinking that sex outside of marriage is okay either. Because again, you are joining yourself with someone, and it is unacceptable in the eyes of God, it is a sin outside of marriage. 1 Corinthians 6:18-20 is just one passage that tells us that. Odds are you will not marry that person. You are therefore robbing your future husband or wife, and their future husband or wife of what God had intended for them. It is wrong through and through.

The thing with adultery though is it is not something that you don’t suddenly realize you have done. It is an of unfaithfulness and it starts way before the action occurs. Adultery starts in the eye and the heart of the offender.

The and The

Mark 7:20-23 And he said, “What comes out of a person is what defiles him. For from within, out of the heart of man, come evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, coveting, wickedness, deceit, sensuality, envy, slander, pride, foolishness. All these evil things come from within, and they defile a person.”

These intentional choices are made for a variety of reasons and none of them are acceptable. Whether it is a lack of feelings that were once there, whether it is a lack of attention from the spouse, or a desire to do something reckless. The excuses are endless, and again all of them will fail to justify your actions in front of God. Turning things now away from us and to focus again on God.

More so than a spouse, God is jealous for His people.

Deuteronomy 4:24 For the Lord your God is a consuming fire, a jealous God. The analogy of the bride is used multiple times in Scripture to describe God and His Church. That is all of us. Revelation 19:7 “Let us rejoice and exult and give him the glory, for the marriage of the Lamb has come, and his Bride has made herself ready;” God is our protector and provider. Our comfort and assurance. He never leaves us nor forsakes us. He is the very example we use for relationships between one another. Yet time and time and time throughout scripture we see God’s people turn from God to pursue other things. God’s people prostitute themselves (give themselves) to other gods and idols in search of what only God can truly provide.

God’s people can be so aware of adultery physically, which is good, but they can just as easily fall into spiritual adultery.

Idolatry, covetousness, and apostasy are spoken of as adultery spiritually

Jeremiah 3:6, 8-9

6 Then the Lord said to me in the days of King Josiah, “Have you seen what faithless Israel did? She went up on every high hill and under every leafy tree, and she prostituted herself there. . . 8 And I saw that for all the adulteries of faithless Israel, I had sent her away and given her a certificate of divorce, yet her treacherous sister Judah did not fear; but she went and prostituted herself also. 9 And because of the thoughtlessness of her prostitution, she defiled the land and committed adultery with stones and trees.

King Josiah was known as a good king of Israel! He brought back the scriptures and tore down altars and shrines, but even then that did not stop them from worshiping false gods. They built more and committed spiritual adultery over and over. They were so committed to themselves that their adultery was thoughtless, it was second nature to them.

Ezekiel 16:30-32

30 “How feverish is your heart,” declares the Lord God, “while you do all these things, the action of a [o]bold prostitute! 31 When you built your shrine at the beginning of every street and made your high place in every public square, in spurning a prostitute’s fee, you were not like a prostitute. 32 You adulteress wife, who takes strangers instead of her husband!

Ezekiel is calling out the Idolatry of Israel. They had let foreign people come into the midst and they began to worship their gods. The Israelites, what little faith they had, they began to give it away to whatever looked like it could be powerful. Shrines were built up as places of worship to the false gods. At every corner, at every town square, there were even shrine prostitutes that they would pay to grow closer to a false god. They worshiped these false gods with everything they had and nothing was kept sacred for the Lord.

Hosea 1:2:3

God had one of his prophets marry this prostitute and his life, which Hosea lived faithfully to God and His wife, was to be an example of how Israel treats God and God’s continued faithfulness despite having everything necessary to leave them.

An apostate church is an adulteress

 

Isaiah 1:21 21 How the faithful city (Jerusalem) has become a prostitute, She who was full of justice! Righteousness once dwelt in her, But now murderers.

Even in the time of Jesus the Jews were labeled as an Adulterous Generation!

Matthew 12:38-39 38 Then some of the scribes and Pharisees said to Him, “Teacher, we want to see a sign from You.” 39 But He answered and said to them, “An evil and adulterous generation craves a sign; and so no sign will be given to it except the sign of Jonah the prophet;

The cure for adultery is not found in the presence of a new partner. It is not found in the power of miracles, signs, or wonders. The cure for adultery is found in the absence of it. The cure for it is only found when you make the willful choice to get rid of it!

2. Get of It

Matthew 5:29-30 29 If your right eye causes you to stumble, gouge it out and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to be thrown into hell. 30 And if your right hand causes you to stumble, cut it off and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to go into hell.

Is This Literal?

Allow me to do a little teaching here. Lighten the mood just a touch. There was a Greek, his name was Origen, and he took this to be a literal command of Jesus. The man cut off his dominant hand and made himself a eunuch all to try and follow this command of Jesus. What Origen discovered was that the desire and temptation to sin did not come from merely having the means to. The desire to sin exists because we live in a world with sin and we all have sinned. It is inevitable. Jesus was tempted. Temptation is a part of life!

Jesus is not advocating for us to mutilate ourselves. He is saying that sin is worth being avoided at all costs! Your eye and your hand is not what causes you to sin. It is the decision that your mind makes. You cannot place the blame away from your own decisions. Well the big dog stepped on my foot so I kicked him. No you kicked him out of anger, not because he stepped on your foot. You sinned.

Well it was because they told me that I was wrong in front of the class, and that was why I lashed out and swore at them. No, you swore at them because you were prideful and couldn’t take the critique.

We are in control and cannot be playing the blame game when it comes to our actions. Don’t live in the victim mentality. You are not a victim. You are an overcomer by the blood of Jesus Christ and by the word of your testimony!

So should we take this literally in the sense of mutilating ourselves? By no means. But I want you to consider that Christ literally was mutilated and beaten, and tortured because of our sin. So the repercussions of that sin is very real and was lived out by Christ. But the desire to change has to come from us. Why should we obey what Jesus says at Get rid of it?

Why should we “Get Rid of It?”

I want to give you my reasons as to why you should get rid of it. The first one is that there is a life full of freedom waiting for you on the other end of that sin. Your sin is holding you back from doing what God has predestined you to do.

Galatians 5:1 It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery.

Hebrews 12:1-3 Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles. And let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us, 2 fixing our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of faith. For the joy set before him he endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. 3 Consider him who endured such opposition from sinners, so that you will not grow weary and lose heart.

Christ died to set you free from sin. Throw off everything that hinders you and the sin that so easily entangles you. Let nothing hold you back from serving God and doing His Will!

Deuteronomy 28:1-14 is all about the blessings God gives His people for following His Commands! God gave those blessings to the Israelites and we still see those blessings today. We should get rid of everything that may cause us to sin because the blessings for our obedience are so great!

The second reason to Get Rid of It, again, being temptation and the desire to sin, is that it isn’t worth it. There is no sin worth doing. Not in the short term or the long term. Sin is destructive completely and is in no way worth living in.

Romans 6:23 For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.

In the story of Ananias and Sapphira, both of them lied about what they had given to the Lord and both of them died.

Achan’s sin (Joshua 7) not only cost him and his family’s lives but it also cost thousands of other people’s lives.

Our sin will cost us our lives in eternity with God. Sin isn’t worth it. The consequences aren’t worth it. If you can, as a middle schooler or highschooler, start to look at things from an eternity perspective, your life will radically change. You will stop doing so many little things. The petty fights begin to stop, the gossip begins to stop, anger and pride begin to fade away, you become more generous, your priorities shift from self centered to selfless, and so much more.

I contemplated putting a third reason down. The third reason would be “Because Jesus said so.” Yet, if you don’t already feel the need to get rid of the sin in your life, knowing that Jesus tells us to do so, will not change that. You have got to allow the Holy Spirit to convict you and show you just how desperately you need God. You need an awareness of the state of your depravity. You need to be aware just how much you really need God.

Pastor Jeff, our lead pastor at the church, shares about his experience with this when he was a little kid. He was so convicted and aware of his sin and need for God as a child that he was crying his eyes out, ask his pastor to help him know Jesus as Lord and Savior.

My moment came when I was a Junior in College. Cami and I were in Spain and in one of our learning sessions, God gave me a little vision of my heart which was dead and rotting within my chest, yet as I prayed to God and really let Him be Lord of my life, my heart was given life again. When I gave my life to God, He gave me life.

You all should have a moment like this where you become so aware of your sin and need for God, that you have no choice but to change.

3. How Can We ?

Romans 12:1-2 Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God—this is your true and proper worship. 2 Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will.

In order to change you need to live for God. Offer yourself as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God! That is true and proper worship. As you live for God, resisting temptation, reading the Bible, praying more and more, doing good works, obeying God’s Word, your mind will be renewed. Your desires will change. The temptations will lessen, and your ability to stand firm against the enemy will get stronger and stronger!

Only then can you test and approve God’s Will. What that means is that only then will you be able to look back and see how perfect, pleasing, and good His Will is, and approve of it over your life and others.

Let me show you three things in Scripture that will help us change.

Give

Money

Proverbs 11:25 – “A generous person will prosper; whoever refreshes others will be refreshed.”

2 Corinthians 9:7 – “Each of you should give what you have decided in your heart to give, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver.”

What you can give, you should give. I’m not telling you to give everything and save nothing. What I want you to see is that a major way to change is through your money. What you put your money toward is what you truly value.

Matthew 6:21 “For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also”

Even if it is just a little bit every week, making it a habit will always be a benefit to you. When i started tithing consistently, I saw a real change in my heart towards the Lord and a desire to see people come to know him. I invested in the Kingdom, I now had skin in the game, and I began to take things way more seriously. I believe that the Lord honored that with me and He will honor that with you.

Time

Ephesians 5:15-16 15 Look carefully then how you walk, not as unwise but as wise, 16 making the best use of the time, because the days are evil.

Time is a hot commodity. Everything in our culture is based around time. Do you have the time? Do you have time this week to hang? I don’t have time for this. Let me see if I have enough time to do that. I was raised that if I wasn’t early to events, meetings, work, I was wasting other people’s time. Time is crucial, so what are you doing with yours?

The Bible tells us we are to make the best use of our time, because the days are evil. What that means is that we are to be wise and discerning, following the Lord, learning His Word, doing what it says, making the most of the time we have because there is sin in this world and it is full of lost people who need to hear Jesus.

When you have some down time, instead of being lazy, read your bible. If you find yourself doom scrolling, look up some godly content to scroll on. If you have a lot to do, put in some earbuds and play worship music. There are many ways to make the most of the time that you have.

Give more of your time to God and watch how He will change you. When you give of your time and your money, this is how your heart is transformed.

Grow

Read the Bible

Colossians 3:16 Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, with thankfulness in your hearts to God.

Pray

Colossians 4:2 Continue steadfastly in prayer, being watchful in it with thanksgiving.

Discuss

Ephesians 4:29 Let no corrupting talk come out of your mouths, but only such as is good for building up, as fits the occasion, that it may give grace to those who hear.

Reading your bible, prayer, and talking about God’s word is how your mind is transformed. This is a major component of overcoming addictions and thought patterns. This is a major way to overcome swearing, cursing, gossip, and slander. Do these things and God will change you. I have seen it in my life, my father’s life, my friends lives, and in some of your lives. Doing these things will never be a waste of time.

Go

I only have one category for this and it is to serve. When we go, we go as servants. Whether it is a missions trip overseas, or an average Wednesday night service, we go to serve those around us.

Serve

Romans 12:13 ESV Contribute to the needs of the saints and seek to show hospitality.

James 1:22 ESV But be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves.

This and giving money are what I have seen that stops a lot of Christians from continuing to grow in Christ. People have the selfish desire to be served and to be stingy. People have a selfish desire to take and to never give.

As Christians we are constantly told to give of ourselves. Our time, our money, our talents, our wisdom, our testimony. It is by giving of ourselves that we build one another up! It is by how we serve each other, that we build up the Church. And on the other hand it is by how we serve each other that we tear down the church.

How you serve matters. If you serve matters. We need to serve. When we serve it forces us to place ourselves at the feet of Jesus and give Him all the glory. It forces us to humble ourselves and point everything back to God. Serving is a guaranteed way to deepen your relationship with God and to see yourself changed by His Spirit.

Altar Call

Would you stand with me tonight?

Matthew 5:27-30 27 “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall not commit adultery.’ 28 But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart. 29 If your right eye causes you to stumble, gouge it out and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to be thrown into hell. 30 And if your right hand causes you to stumble, cut it off and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to go into hell.

We have an issue. That issue is lust. Our world objectifies men and women and wants us to see one another as little more than objects for our own fantasies. That is ungodly, and it is sinful not only against God but also against one another. The issue stems from the desires we have in our hearts, the thoughts in our minds, and the things we allow ourselves to watch.

Jesus says to get rid of these things! It is better to give up something precious to you than it is to keep it and fall into sin. Get rid of the things that bind you and hold you back from doing all that God has destined you to do. When you get rid of those things, replace them with Godly habits that will help you go further, change more for the glory of God.

Give to God of your time and your money. Prove with actions that your treasure is stored up in heaven. Grow more through reading your bible, prayer, and discussing the word of God! The more time you invest growing with God, the more you will be changed. Go more and serve the Lord in all that you do! You can get plugged in serving here with the youth group. You can serve on the sound a tech team, you can serve on the worship team, If you want to preach a sermon, lead a bible study, read some scripture we would love to have you talk to us. You can also serve on Sunday mornings with our livestream, slides, sound board, nursery, children’s church, greeting people at the doors. There is so much you can do with the talents you have!

Will you let God change you?