Matthew 5:27-30 "You have heard that it was said, 'Do 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 sin, 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 sin, 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.
Introduction
Questions
Matthew 5:28 anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart.
What constitutes a lustful look? Is it adultery every time a man looks at an attractive woman and likes what he sees? If you see someone who is attractive, and you are attracted to them – is that adultery? We know it is not a sin to be tempted, and yet it is sin to have certain desires, so where do you cross the line into sin? Is it wrong to appreciate the beauty of a beautiful woman?
And what if you are not married or she is not married? Or what if she Is not even real – just an image on a piece of paper (or in your mind)? And why do we all still have both hands and eyes? Is it because none of us struggle with looking with lust?
The two “easiest” commands condemn us
We are studying verse by verse through the Sermon on the Mount and in this section Jesus is indicting the Pharisees and Scribes on six counts of inadequate righteousness, and the first two are from the Ten Commandments. And they are the two that most people naturally think of as the biggest ones– commandments # 6 and 7 – Thou shalt not murder and Thou shalt not commit adultery. Both are capital crimes in the Old Testament – they get the death sentence. And even in the world - almost everyone agrees those are two of the worst sins you can commit.
And not only do most people think those are some of the worst sins, but most people also think they are completely innocent of them. Very often people will use these two commandments as examples of their goodness and innocence. "I’m a good person. I never killed anyone; I never committed adultery…"
So Jesus takes two of the most wicked sins, the two we are so proud of ourselves for not committing, and indicts us on those very sins. He exposes the fact that all our innocence on the outside is a sham. He peals back the covering over our heart and exposes the truth – that inside our hearts the sins of murder and adultery are rampant. King Jesus extends the scepter of His awesome authority over our desires and motives and innermost thoughts and attitudes and inclinations. He regulates not just our sexual actions, but also the way we look with our eyes and the way we feel and what we want and even why we want it.
Internal righteousness
In the last section we saw that the sixth commandment not only forbids physical murder; it also forbids mouth murder and heart murder (being angry and calling names). And here Jesus is going to show us that the seventh commandment not only forbids physical adultery but also eye adultery and heart adultery (looking in order to lust). Adultery is a sin that is located in the heart, and it is carried out physically by the eyes.
What is it? Clinging to forbidden desire
What is the difference between godly enjoyment of beauty and sinful enjoyment of beauty?
But how, exactly? It is OK to look at a woman. And it is OK to look at a woman and regard her as attractive. You can do all that without committing any sin at all. But the moment you look in order to lust you have already committed adultery. So where is that line? If we cannot answer that question we will never have victory over this sin, because we do not even know what the sin is.
The word translated lust is the same word for “covet” in the tenth commandment. It refers to any forbidden desire – desire for something that God said you cannot have. It is a desire that resists and strains against God’s will. God says, “That’s not yours. You can’t have that – I don’t want you to have that.” And you respond by saying, “OK, I won’t take it” – but at the same time your soul is saying, “I don’t like this.” You have no plans to seize it or take possession of that forbidden thing, but your soul continues to cling to the idea of having it. In your heart there is not acceptance of God’s will. You do not embrace it and love it – you just kind of knuckle under it in a kind of grudging way. Physically you will not lay hold of that thing, but the arms of your soul are wrapped around that desire tightly, and will not let go.
So on the outside you are submitting, but not really on the inside. That kind of inner resistance to God’s will is covetousness. And where there is covetousness in the heart, you can hold yourself back from going after that forbidden thing somewhat, but if it ever becomes very easily available – then you might just help yourself. In Exodus 34:24 the word “covet” is used to describe the attitude of Israel’s enemies, who would not attack and take the land by force, but who might grab it for themselves if it were left unattended. That is what coveting is. So in the context of a person of the opposite sex, a coveting heart will not make any advances- may not do anything inappropriate – but it still hangs on to that desire. It does not take any action, but it clings to the idea having some kind of sexual enjoyment of that person. And the result is if that woman you are attracted to ever made some advances – if she came and made herself available, there would be a strong probability that you would fall to temptation.
The Significance of Looking
A certain way of looking – purpose or result
That is what coveting is – allowing that hidden, low-lying, desire for some forbidden thing to remain alive in the background of your desires. Now, what is interesting is Jesus does not just forbid coveting. He does not say, “But I say unto you, any man who lusts or covets is guilty.” What He says is “Any man who looks…” Jesus is going after a certain way of looking.
The literal translation is “Anyone who looks toward covetousness.” And the word “toward” in this context can mean either for the purpose of or with the result of. So what kind of look is Jesus talking about here? He is saying, “Any man who looks for the purpose of stimulating desire” or “Any man who looks with the result of stimulating desire” – is guilty of adultery. In practical terms it ends up meaning pretty much the same thing either way. You look at the woman in such a way as to stimulate desire.
Usually we think of a lustful look as the kind of look that is designed to satisfy desire that is already there. You have a desire to enjoy looking at her body so you look in a way that indulges that desire. But what Jesus is taking about is prior to that. Before the lust is even there, you look at her in such a way that it results in the awakening of that kind of desire. Even that kind of looking is adultery.
Looking is part of exclusive sexual love
It is adultery because it is part of sex. And we need to talk about this, because a lot of women tend to be kind of naïve in this area. It is hard for a woman to understand because the visual aspect in marital love is much different for women than for men – by God’s design. It plays some role for the woman too, but I don’t think most women have any idea how much pleasure is involved for the man through the eye-gate – and how much of a role the visual part God designed to play for the man in lovemaking. If you read through the Song of Songs it is obvious that the visual is a major part of God’s design. Three times the man describes her body from head to toe, and the descriptions are very explicit.
That is part of God’s design for marital intimacy. It is a crucial part of lovemaking. Looking is one of the main ways God designed men to enjoy their wives sexually. And while I said some women seem to be naïve in this area – they are not completely naïve. On the one hand they seem to be unaware of this based on the fact that they do not put a whole lot of effort, very often, into seducing their husband visually, or working to satisfy this part of his God-given sexual appetites, which makes it seems like they do not realize that this is supposed to be part of marital love. But on the other hand, I think deep down all women understand something about the role looking plays in the whole process. And the reason I say that is because of what happens when a wife catches her husband gazing at another woman’s body. A woman sees her husband doing that – whether it be photographs in pornography or a woman in person – you find your husband seeking visual enjoyment of another woman’s body and you feel angry and hurt and betrayed and belittled. Why are you so upset when that happens? You are upset because deep down you know intuitively that that kind of looking – that kind of activity from your husband’s eyes is something that belongs to you and to you alone. It is something you want, and something that belongs exclusively to you and no one else.
Why is that? You are not jealous of the way he looks at a spectacular sunset. It does not bother you when he is wide-eyed over some amazing athletic feat that he sees. You do not get angry if he gazes longingly at a steak dinner. But the look of desire directed at a female body – when he gives that to anyone but you – that is something that hurts you because you know intuitively that that kind of looking belongs to you alone as his wife.
Why does it belong to you alone? It belongs to you and to you alone – it belongs within marriage and nowhere else because it is part of sex. His handshakes do not belong to you alone – he can spread those around. There are plenty of things he can do with other people that do not make you jealous. But that kind of looking is yours alone because it is part of marital intimacy, and that is why you feel betrayed when he gives it to another woman.
And that is why Jesus calls it adultery here. You see, this is not a metaphor – it is literal. Is it as severe as having intercourse with the person? No. Does it have the same consequences? No. But is it the same sin? Yes – just as hostile anger has the same DNA as murder, so looking at a woman in this way has the same DNA as sleeping with her. It is the exact same sin – just at an earlier stage of development.
Belongs to your spouse alone
Just as your body belongs to your wife, so do your eyes – your desire-creating looks.
1 Corinthians 7:4 The wife's body does not belong to her alone but also to her husband. In the same way, the husband's body does not belong to him alone but also to his wife.
That principle is not restricted to your body – it is talking about every part of you that is involved with the act of sexual intimacy, including your eyes. Looking in a way that generates, stimulates, results in desire is something that you owe to your spouse and to your spouse alone.
Intension
And that is why Jesus speaks here not just of the act of unfaithful looking, but also to the motive. It is wrong to look for the purpose of stimulating desire. The intention itself is unfaithfulness even if you do not succeed. You are flipping through the channels, or paging through a magazine, clicking on a link online, and you tell yourself you are just curious to know what is there, but secretly you are really kind of hoping to come across something racy. You are walking down the street, you see a woman out of the corner of your eye, and it looks like she might be somewhat exposed, so you turn your eyes in her direction – what are your eyes hoping they might see? And if they do not see what they were secretly hoping to see, do you pat yourself on the back for not having looked at anything bad? Jesus is saying the moment you look with that intention – looking in order to lust - you have already committed adultery.
Different ways to commit eye-adultery
So now let’s get back to the question of exactly where we cross the line into adultery with our eyes. When is a look sinful?
Looking that stimulates sexual pleasure
Clearly the look is sinful if it is an act of sexual enjoyment. A man sees an attractive woman and uses his imagination to picture that same view of her – except without the clothes. The most beautiful thing God created in the physical world is the female body, and seeing it can bring such intense pleasure to a man that there is a powerful temptation to use the imagination to remove whatever gets in the way of seeing it.
That is why pornography is a $97 billion industry, which is bigger than Amazon, EBay, Yahoo, Apple, Netflix, Microsoft, and Google all combined. If you decided to view all the pornographic web pages on the Internet – if they stopped creating new pages right now, just to view all the ones in existence already, and you spent thirty seconds on each page and kept going twelve hours a day seven days a week, 365 days a year it would take you eight hundred years to see all of them. And the really staggering thing is none of these statistics include the porn that our society does not classify as porn. You can rent an R-rated movie that shows all kinds of close-ups of full, frontal nudity in sexual contexts and it is not even classified as soft-core porn by our culture. Not very long ago those would have been rated X, and now they are not even classified as soft-core. The standard is not our culture’s norms. The standard is what Jesus is teaching right here, which is this – if it is wrong to do, then it is wrong to imagine. Sometimes men will say, “It’s not even a real woman – it’s just an image. It’s just ink on a page.” It does not matter. Even if there is no image at all – anything you do that excites desire is adulterous – even if it takes place one hundred percent in your mind. Would it be adulterous to meet a woman in a room and watch her undress? Of course. Well then, it is adulterous to imagine. If it is wrong to do; it is wrong to imagine. So any action you engage in that will start your mind up with imagining is adulterous. So any kind of sexual enjoyment of someone you are not married to is sin – whether it is with your body or your eyes or your mind.
Looking that stimulates discontent
That is the most obvious kind of lustful look. But there are other ways we violate this command. What about looking at a woman in a way that has nothing to do with sexual desire, but that triggers other relational kinds of desires? You see a woman who has a real outgoing, fun, bubbly personality, and you look at her in a way that makes you wish you had a wife with a personality type that was not so quiet and reserved. Or maybe you are married to a woman who is real extroverted and vocal and you see a woman with a gentle, quiet demeanor and think about how much greener that grass looks than yours. You look in a way that stimulates not sexual desire, but some kind of discontent with your spouse. Remember, the word Jesus uses here is not the typical word for lust it is the word for covetousness. It is not just talking about sexual desire – it is talking about all kinds of coveting.
Women’s lustful looks
And it is not restricted to men either. The issue of looking in a sexual way is mostly a problem with men, so the men are addressed here, but the principle applies to women too. Women can look in ways that awaken forbidden desire as well. You see a man who is good looking, or who is really romantic, or who is especially considerate or chivalrous or masculine or strong or funny or respected or rich or whatever – and by the time you are done looking you look back at your husband and you desire him that much less. That is looking with lust – even if there is not a hint of sexual desire involved. It is adultery. That kind of looking belongs to your husband alone – not to any other man. And when you give that kind of look to another man – whether it be someone at work, someone on TV, someone in a movie, or in a novel, or in your own imagination – it is unfaithfulness.
Make no mistake - our culture is loaded with pornography for women. It does not get as much attention because it does not seem quite as scandalous. Women tend to be more tempted with relational kinds of things than with pure visual stimulation, so porn for women comes in the form of soap operas or novels or love stories or various fantasies that involve romance rather than nudity. But it is every bit as adulterous. Would it be wrong for you to go out to a romantic dinner with that man of your fantasies? Yes, and if it would be wrong to do then it is wrong to imagine.
So what is the answer to our first question? What is the difference between enjoying the beauty of a woman in a godly way and the kind of looking Jesus forbids here? Where do you cross the line from innocent looking to looking that moves toward lust or coveting? What Jesus forbids here is looking in a way that stimulates forbidden desire, or to look at someone in a way that stirs up longings that are contrary to God’s will.
And as far as I am concerned, I think that makes any looking at the body off limits. If you think looking at an attractive woman’s body is not likely to stimulate desire or push your thoughts or imagination in an impure direction, you are kidding yourself. If your wife could get behind your eyes and see exactly where you are focusing, or if she could see all your thoughts displayed on a screen, if what she would see is something that would grieve her or anger her or make her feel betrayed; or if the result of your looking is likely to be more discontent with your spouse, if the result is a sense that you are missing out because of who you are married to – any of that is strong evidence that you have crossed the line.
What’s so evil about it?
So now that we know what this kind of looking means, we have another big question to answer: What is it about looking with lust that is so evil?
Lust seems like love – does not seem evil
The sin of a murderous heart seems a lot different from the sin of an adulterous heart. The murderous heart is repulsed by the other person, but the adulterous heart is attracted to the other person. Hatred feels evil. But attraction feels like love – so much so that the world has absolutely no clue the difference between love and lust. Love is the most beautiful, beneficial, righteous, and pure reality there is in human relationships, and lust is one of the filthiest, most vile, wicked, and ugly realities in human relationships and the world has no idea what the difference is between the two. You can put them side by side and people in the world cannot even tell which is which.
And that puts us at a real disadvantage in fighting this particular sin. It is a lot easier to fight a sin when it seems like a sin. But when it does not seem bad, does not seem like it is hurting anyone, does not feel evil – that makes it hard to fight, because at the moment of temptation it is so easy to rationalize. If you are only about seventy-five percent sure that something is a sin, then when the really strong temptations hit, you will fall like a house of cards every time.
And that happens a lot in this area because at the moment of temptation it just does not seem all that evil to simply look at a picture – especially if it is an image that our culture thinks is no big deal –– the R-rated type, or the PG-13-rated type. The type that can come on the screen in a movie while your wife is right there in the room and she does not think anything of it – but you know the effect it has on your desires.
But still - it seems so harmless. Stealing – that hurts people. Murder – that really hurts people. Sleeping with another woman – that is bad. But just looking? It just does not seem like anything that is especially wicked.
Sex is holy
So what is the big deal? Are we Victorian prudes who think that sex itself is just dirty? Do we refrain from this because as Christians we have a low view of sex? No. We refrain because we have a high view of sex. We regard it as not only beautiful and delightful and good, but as holy and sacred in God’s sight. We have the highest regard for sex, and so we refrain from anything that would pervert or mar or disfigure or contaminate that which is so lovely and so beautiful and holy and good.
The world justifies their lust by saying, “It’s no big deal, it’s no big deal – it’s just biology – it’s no big deal.” And what they end up with is something that is really nothing special.
Marital love is exclusive (uniquely)
But to us it is a big deal, and here is why: Let’s think through why marital love is so exclusive, why it is unique if you think about it. Other love relationships are not exclusive (and by “exclusive” I mean it excludes everyone else and focuses on just one person). Usually love is not like that. If I sit down for dinner, and I look down at that nice, tender, sizzling steak hot off the grill, and my mouth just starts watering, and then I glance over at the hot, buttery dinner roll fresh out of the oven, the steak doesn’t say, “Hey, get your eyes off that roll!” There is nothing whatsoever wrong with me loving that steak and that roll simultaneously. And the craving I have for the roll does not in any way diminish the craving I have for the steak. In fact, they actually go together quite well.
And it is the same way with loving people. I have never had one of my kids come up to me and say, “Dad, you can love me or you can love my sister but not both. You need to choose!” No – none of my kids are offended at my love for their siblings. Nor does my love for their siblings diminish my love for them. The man with ten kids does not love his children less than the man with two kids. That kind of love is not exclusive. It grows and deepens and expands as it is multiplied among others – so that the father of ten may very well love each of his ten kids more than he did back when he only had two.
Nobody questions my love for rafting just because I also really enjoy Jeeping. All the loves in this world can be spread around without any problem – except one. Think about it – suppose you went to your husband’s work to surprise him with a visit one day and as you walked in you looked down the hallway and witnessed a confrontation between your husband and a female co-worker. And she is pointing at another female employee and yelling at him and saying, “You can be friends with me or with her, but not both – you have to choose!” What would you immediately assume about that woman’s relationship with your husband? And what if your husband felt the same way toward that woman – full of jealousy and anger if she was friendly with another man? You would say, “I’ve got a case of adultery on my hands.” Why would you say that? You have not witnessed anything physical – no kissing, no hugging, no hand-holding. The only thing you witnessed is exclusive love. And on that basis alone you can see that it is adulterous, because exclusive love is a property of marital intimacy alone. In every other context love is not exclusive.
Why? Because it pictures love for God
So why is marital love exclusive? Why is it so bad for your husband to also be in love with another woman? Or for that matter, what would be wrong with him having another wife – one wife at home and another wife at work? You might answer – “That would be bad because it would take away from his time with me.” Well, the time I spend with one of my children might take away from the time I spend with the others, yet that’s OK. “His attention would be divided between me and her.” Well, as a father my attention is divided between my kids. My time is divided, my thoughts are divided, my resources are divided – yet no one who knows Scripture would say it is unloving for me to have multiple kids. With other relationships it is possible to love more than one person at a time without that being a betrayal – but not in marriage. Why?
The reason marital love has to be exclusive is because marital love exists for the purpose of putting on display the kind of love relationship God has with His people. And that is a love that has to be exclusive and faithful and loyal. That is why the first two of the Ten Commandments are about idolatry.
Commandment #1 -
Exodus 20:3 "You shall have no other gods before me.
Commandment #2 -
4 "You shall not make for yourself an idol in the form of anything in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the waters below. 5 You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God
We are to love God with an exclusive love. It is not acceptable for us to love the true God and love some false god. Or to love God some and love the world some.
It would be cruel of God to allow us to do so. Giving any of your love or allegiance or loyalty to a false god is something that not only dishonors the one true God, but it also does great harm to you. If there is one spring of fresh drinking water and a whole bunch of poisoned springs, it would be cruel for God to say, “Drink from whichever ones you like, as long as you also drink a little bit from the good one.”
God absolutely will not accept anyone on any terms other than one hundred percent exclusive devotion. If a person is half-Christian and half in the world – that person is one hundred percent lost. You cannot love both God and this world at the same time. God wanted us to understand that. He wanted us to understand exclusive love, and so He invented a relationship different from all other kinds of human relationships that is the one relationship that requires exclusive love – marriage. That is why you do not feel betrayed or cheapened when your parents love both you and your siblings, but you are devastated to find out that your spouse is in love with someone else. One of the reasons God gave us marriage was so that we could understand adultery. That is why throughout Scripture idolatry and love for the world is always called adultery against God.
James 4:3 When you ask, you do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, that you may spend what you get on your pleasures. 4 You adulteresses! Don't you know that friendship with the world is hatred toward God?
God will not accept you if you come to Him without turning your back on the world anymore than your wife would have said yes if you would have proposed by saying, “I’m still in love with my old girlfriend, but I’d like you to be my wife on Tuesdays and Thursdays.”
When Scripture tells us that marriage exists to display the relationship between God and His people, does that include the sexual aspect of marriage? Is that part of the illustration? Absolutely! Sexual imagery occurs frequently in Scripture describing that relationship. For example, when Genesis 2 says that husband and wife become one flesh, we know that refers to sexual union. We know that because of 1 Corinthians 6:16 Do you not know that he who unites himself with a prostitute is one with her in body? For it is said, "The two will become one flesh." So the two becoming one flesh refers, at least in part, to sex. And that same one flesh imagery is used of Christ and the Church.
Ephesians 5:31-32 “For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh." 32 This is a profound mystery--but I am talking about Christ and the church.
That is not to say we have sexual feelings toward God. But it is to say that the joys and pleasures and profound oneness and union that are present in the sexual union between husband and wife are designed to illustrate the joys and pleasures and profound oneness and union between God and His people. That is why sex is so holy and sacred. It is wrong to treat sex in a common or vulgar way – not because sex is dirty or evil or obscene, but because it is so sacred and holy.
So why is it considered such an evil thing when you commit adultery against your spouse? It is evil because of how it perverts and distorts the picture of exclusive love that God designed in marriage. Marriage exists to display the relationship between God and His people, and that picture is destroyed when we are unfaithful. And we are being unfaithful any time we give to someone else that which belongs to our spouse alone. And looking in such a way as to awaken desire is something we owe our spouse alone. We owe our spouse total faithfulness – including eye-faithfulness.
What is so evil about looking in a way that sparks desire? It is unfaithfulness to your spouse, it is sex outside of marriage, it is the expression of a coveting heart that is resisting God’s will, and it makes a train wreck out of the purpose of marriage – to show the love between Christ and the Church.
Conclusion – The Faithfulness of God
So now we understand the problem. But Jesus does not leave us there. He is going to give us the solution in the next couple verses. And there is a lot more to it than meets the eye at first. There is a lot more to Jesus’ solution than just taking radical steps to fight sin. And we will plan on delving into that in detail next time. But for this morning, let’s wrap up our time thinking about what a tremendously beautiful thing it is when we follow in God’s footsteps in this area of faithfulness. We have talked a lot about being unfaithful; let’s talk about being faithful – especially with regard to thinking about the significance of marriage being the living picture of the love between Christ and the Church.
Christ and the Church
Do you ever sit and think about that? I mention it in sermons fairly often, and most Christians have some awareness of that as a theological fact. If they took a theology test and there were a question about whether marriage exists to display the kind of love that exists between God and His people most of us would get the answer right. But is that knowledge the kind of knowledge that has found its way into the grid of your daily thinking so that it has an effect on attitudes, desires, impulses, and actions? Have you ever just taken a week to really think through the implications of this truth? If you do not spend time thinking about this, then your conception of what marriage is will not be shaped by God’s Word. You will just absorb your attitude toward marriage from TV – or movies or the news or the people at work. It is inevitable. You have no choice. If your way of thinking and feeling about marriage is not built by Scripture then it will just be absorbed by the influences of the world. I have been convicted this week studying this in realizing how little I think about the purpose of marriage in my daily life. What kind of impact would it have if this truth were part of our daily thinking?
I tried it this week, and this is what came to my mind: As I meditated on this I realized, my marriage is a skit – that is why it exists. The reason God ordained for me to marry Tracy is for the purposes of a skit. You know what a skit is – a little play – a drama designed to illustrate some truth. And I imagined the Lord as the Director of this little skit of my marriage. I am short with Tracy, or do something that is inconsiderate or whatever, and the Lord Jesus Christ stands up and stops the whole skit and reminds me about the character I am playing. Think about this. You are talking to your husband, and you are getting annoyed with him and talking to him like a child, or you are short with him or whatever and Jesus stands up and says, “Cut! Cut! Cut! OK, let’s go over this again. You’re playing the role of the Church – your husband is Me. Now, let’s try this again – Christ and the Church, take two – Action!”
How much time would pass, guys, before Jesus would jump up again, “Cut, cut cut! Try to remember – you are playing the part of Me. She is the Church, and you are playing Me. Now let’s try this again – take three…”
If we thought that way about marriage, what kind of impact would it have on our attitudes? The message we absorb from the world is that marriage is all about self-fulfillment. You have some sexual needs, some companionship needs, financial needs – so you hook up with a partner whose job it is to provide all that. And if your partner starts doing too much taking and not enough giving, you need to take action to retrain them to love you better. And if all else fails, threaten to divorce, because that is the best way to gain control over them. That is what the world thinks marriage is. But God says, “No, marriage is designed to be a unique kind of love relationship that shows in living, vivid color what is going on in My heart when I love My people. And what kind of attitude believers have toward the Lord Jesus Christ.”
If we think that way are we going to be unfaithful? I talked before about the faithfulness and loyalty of God’s people toward Him. The Church honors Christ and is devoted to Him alone, and we worship no other gods. If we are unfaithful to our spouse we are illustrating idolatry, rather than illustrating the relationship between the Church and Jesus Christ.
And that is on the woman’s side of the illustration. Think about the other side. What are we saying about Jesus Christ, men, when we are unfaithful to our wives? Is Jesus Christ unfaithful to His Church? Does He break His covenant? Does He lie to us about who He really is and what is in His heart? Is His love for us in word only and not in deed?
God’s Faithfulness
Today will prove to be one of the most profitable, worthwhile days of your entire life if you spent the whole day rejoicing and delighting in the faithfulness of God. Think of what a precious thing His faithfulness to us is. One of the great sorrows of life is unfaithfulness and unreliability. When you lean all your weight on a staff thinking it will hold you and it collapses – like when the income you were counting on is suddenly gone, or people you were depending on betray you – or the worst of all – your spouse is unfaithful. The more you have felt the stinging pain of unfaithfulness or unreliability the more ability you have to appreciate what an absolutely amazing thing God’s perfect faithfulness is.
Have you ever thought about how amazing it is that God is faithful to us? It is amazing because faithfulness implies obligation. We don’t say someone is unfaithful because he fails to do something he was not even supposed to do. Faithfulness is reliability with respect to an obligation – you can be counted on to do what you are obligated to do.
And so it makes sense that we should be faithful. We ought to be faithful to God because we are obligated out of duty to Him. But why should God be faithful? What obligates God? In one sense it almost seems blasphemous to speak of God’s faithfulness. It seems ridiculous to say, “God would be unfaithful if He failed to show me love and give me joy and bless me greatly.”
But it is not blasphemous or ridiculous because God actually is obligated to bless us. He obligated Himself to bless us by promising to bless us. God did not have to make those promises. He could have just given us what He gives us without promising it beforehand. But the promises make His gifts much more wonderful, because without the promises we would not have anything to serve as the foundation for our trust in Him. We would have nothing to count on. God’s promises enable us to have the joy of the gifts prior to even receiving them. The world experiences all kinds of wonderful gifts from God – but not as promises. They cannot hope in those things or rely on them or count on them or receive them as gestures of fatherly love. We can! We can rely on them one hundred percent because the Lord Jesus Christ purchased those promises for us. All of His many, many great and precious promises are not maybe or probably or more than likely or almost certain – they are all yes and amen in Christ (2 Cor.1:20).
The next time your eyes start to wander, let everything in you that longs to be like Christ rise up and say, “Cut!” Remember your role in this skit of marriage. If you have to, put your hand up to your eyes and remind yourself, These belong to my spouse. She is counting on me to be faithful. God has never been unfaithful to His Church, and I will not be unfaithful to my wife. And just as the church worships one God and one God only, so these eyes are for one person and one person only.
Benediction: 1 Corinthians 1:8 he will keep you strong to the end, so that you will be blameless on the day of our Lord Jesus Christ. 9 God, who has called you into fellowship with his Son Jesus Christ our Lord, is faithful.
Summary
Looking with lust means looking in a way that sparks or intends to spark covetousness (forbidden desire that resists God’s will). That kind of looking belongs to your spouse alone (it is exclusive because it is part of sex – the one exclusive kind of love). Marital love is (uniquely) exclusive because it reflects the relationship between God and His people, in which we worship only one God, and God is utterly faithful to us.
