THE SERMON - Men Sin, But Devils Tempt ｜ The 7th Commandment
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Length
1 hour and 7 minutes
Words per minute
149.53058
Harmful content
Misogyny
20
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Toxicity
56
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Hate speech
66
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Summary
In this sermon, we continue our series on the Sermon on the Mount. This sermon is a continuation of the previous three weeks and continues the theme of the sermon series, "The Law and the Prophets." Today's sermon is from Matthew 5:27-30, where Jesus teaches us about the role of the law of God in the life of the believer.
Transcript
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Series through the gospel according to Matthew.
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Our text for today will be Matthew chapter 5, verse 27 through 30.
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Again, that's Matthew chapter 5, verses 27 through 30.
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When I finish reading the text, I'm going to say this is the word of the Lord,
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if you would respond by saying thanks be to God.
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One final time, our text for today is Matthew 5,
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But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman
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with lustful intent has already committed adultery
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For it is better that you lose one of your members than your whole body be thrown into hell.
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And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away.
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For it is better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body go into hell.
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By way of introduction, I've written the following.
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This is really a continuation of the last three weeks now, as we've been in the Sermon on the Mount.
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And what Jesus is ultimately doing here is he's helping his disciples and all those who are listening to this sermon
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for them to properly understand the law of God and the way in which the law of God functions in the life of a believer.
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I've written by way of introduction the following.
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Jesus has now finished making it abundantly clear that Moses and the prophets remained
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authoritative. We saw just a couple weeks ago where Jesus said, not one jot or tittle,
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not one iota of the law, not one dotted eye, not one cross T, nothing from the law of God,
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Moses and the prophets will pass away until heaven and earth pass away, that the word of the Lord
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endures forever. The flower fades, the grass withers, but the word of the Lord is immutable.
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That means it remains unchanging. So Jesus says explicitly that he did not come to abolish the
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law of God, but rather he came to fulfill the law. So Jesus upholds a right understanding of the law
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of God. Jesus, as a second member of the eternal trinity, the son of God himself, Jesus, his
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disposition towards God's law is simply this. He loves it. Jesus loves God's law. So far be it
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from for us or any Christian today, any evangelical Christian to say that we don't love God's law,
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That we think that the law of God is burdensome or that we think that the law of God is legalistic, those who would seek to follow God's law.
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Legalism as a heresy, which it is, legalism is the attempt or the teaching that man can achieve a right standing with God and therefore eternal salvation by his own obedience to the law.
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that is legalism and that is rightly condemned as a heresy for anyone to say by your own obedience
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you can merit the favor of God by your own meticulous observing of the law of God you can
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achieve reconciliation with God right standing with God and eternal salvation to say that
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is legalism and it is a false gospel however to say that we are saved by grace and free grace alone
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That is to say that we're saved by grace alone,
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And yet still having been saved freely, we should strive to live obedient lives to the law of God.
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And to think that it's not to think that advocating for obedience to the law of God,
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to advocate for obeying God's law as gratitude,
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the freshman classes, the 101 Christianity basics anymore.
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The average Christian has been radically deceived.
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So we need, by God's grace, to do whatever we can to right the ship.
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The law of God is good. God loves His gospel, and He loves His law.
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Both. The law doesn't save us. The gospel saves us.
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But upon being saved, God points us back to his law as a lamp unto our feet and a light unto our path.
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And we we traverse this path so that when we get to the end of it by obeying really, really hard, God might love us and save us.
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No, no. The start of the path is grace for those that God has already saved.
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We then are turned back to the law, not as a means of salvation,
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but as a path to follow, as a response, because we've already received salvation.
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It reveals to us God's holiness by way of consequence, our sinfulness,
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and therefore it shows us our massive need for a Savior.
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it restrains outward deeds of lawlessness that make individual lives and families and whole
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societies a bad place to live. And third, the law of God is a compass. It's a guide. It shows us the
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path, how to live, not to achieve salvation, but how to respond for the free salvation we already
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have. Mirror, shield, compass. Mirror, shield, compass. Mirror, oh wow, God's really holy. I'm
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not? I need Jesus. Shield. Wow. The world is a bad place. And when the law of God is legislated
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righteously and upheld, it restrains evil of the heart so that people don't outwardly
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commit heinous acts so that it's a safer and better place to live. Mirror, shield, compass,
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where to go? Where to go to gain salvation? No, where to go as a response of gratitude for
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salvation. That's the law of God in its three uses. Jesus has made it abundantly clear that
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Moses and the prophets remain authoritative for all people and especially his disciples.
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He is now proceeding to expound upon the law of God. Christ's primary principle was to show that
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the law did not only prohibit external actions, speech and behavior, those outward actions,
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But the first use of the law of God was to address the heart.
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Jesus demonstrates in the Sermon on the Mount and in our text today this overarching principle that he hasn't come to abolish the law and that the law applies inwardly as well as outwardly.
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Jesus is expounding upon this principle by beginning to offer as specific case studies certain laws.
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He starts with the Sixth Commandment. That's what we saw last week. Thou shalt not murder.
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And Jesus shows how that first begins with the heart, that it's not just outward actions that the Sixth Commandment prohibits,
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but it also prohibits murderous anger internally at the level of the heart.
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Now Jesus is doing the same thing. He's again articulating, espousing the overarching principle that the law of God is to be upheld.
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And now today he does it with the seventh commandment,
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They were not legalists who overstretched God's law.
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But if anything, they were antinomian, those who hated God's law,
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How did the Pharisees and Sadducees and religious rulers of Jesus' day shrink the law?
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So there is a sense in which they were legalists.
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But then with all of these laws, both the man-made laws and the divinely inspired laws,
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they limited, they shrunk the law's application.
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So they went from 10 commandments to 600 something commandments.
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But then with all of these commandments, they said, you know what?
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These commandments only divinely forbid the full extent of the outward behavior.
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So thou shalt not murder means you cannot kill someone who is innocent.
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In murderous hatred internally for that person,
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going around and killing them metaphorically,
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with a wrongful, unfounded, without cause,
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Well, at least one example would be with Jesus.
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is the perfect example of the religious Jewish leaders of Jesus' day
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obeying, according to them, the sixth commandment of not murdering.
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As far as they were concerned, they didn't murder Jesus.
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However, Pilate does not bear more guilt than the Jews.
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The Jews are the ones who orchestrated the murder of Jesus.
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But the facts still remain that the Romans would not have killed Jesus
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if it hadn't have been for the Jewish leaders of Jesus' day.
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They hated Jesus. They had murderous anger of the heart.
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And so they they set the stage for someone else to physically murder Jesus.
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Right. Really, you know, technical theological way of arguing a pretty simple point.
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That's what Jesus is getting at in the Sermon on the Mount, pretty much the whole Sermon on the Mount.
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but especially the latter half of chapter 5 is Jesus simply showing again and again and again
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with specific case studies. Sixth commandment, today now, seventh commandment, and he goes on,
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so on and so forth, to argue what? The religious rulers of his day, on one hand, are legalists who
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produce new laws that are not God's law, but on the other hand, this is what the evangelical church
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today misses, they're not just legalists, they're actually also antinomian. Ironically, the guys who
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are separating out a tenth of their spices, right? They're on the salt and pepper rack, and they're
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cutting off, you know, drawing lines, and separating, measuring it with a ruler, and separating a tenth
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of their salt to give as a tithe. You don't typically think of those guys as being, you know,
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antinomian. You think of those guys being legalists, but they were also antinomian. As much as they
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were legalists, they were as much, and I would argue more, antinomian, those who didn't just
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create new laws, but actually hated God's law. And how do we argue that? It all comes down. Don't
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miss this, brothers and sisters. It all comes down to one realm, application.
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And if you haven't picked that up by now, you need to. You're a little bit behind. The name of the
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game, as we look at the church in America as a whole and in the world as a whole, there are many
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things where we've gotten off the rails, many problems, many, many things to write. But a big
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one, a common denominator is this application, application. How does God's words actually apply
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But we have it so backwards today that we look at the Pharisees and we're like, well, Jesus said the Pharisees were the bad guys.
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And then we think, well, what are the characteristic marks of the bad guys?
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So we're going to be the good guys by not caring about the law of God.
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it minimizes the grace of God, because if the law of God is puny, then the sin of man, which the law
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reveals, is puny, which means the gospel that covers man's sin is puny. So it actually is an
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insult to the gospel, an insult to grace and mercy of God, but that's what modern evangelicals, that's
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what we do. So we say the Pharisees were the bad guys. What was their chief mistake? Caring too much
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for the law of God. No, the Pharisees, brothers and sisters, hated the law of God, and although
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they stretched it in one sense, creating new laws, they shrunk it in the only sense that really
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mattered, its application. And you can do the same thing as the church today. We can be modern
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Pharisees by saying, we care very much for the law of God. Very, very much. Meanwhile,
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Well, by vocation, you're in the realm of finance
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to the poorest of the poor with credit card loans.
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If there's any sin of choice for the theonomist,
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And so you can be theonomy, which theonomy is law.
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So you can literally be the guy who claims to love law and yet be lawless.
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There's a lot to learn from the Sermon on the Mount.
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There's a lot to learn from the religious rulers of Jesus' day
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who pretended to be all about the moral code.
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it became a moot point. How? How can you actually add laws, have more laws, and yet at the same time
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strip all the teeth of the law in the realm of application? In the realm of application,
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the law of God doesn't really, at the end of the day, there are many laws, and we care so much
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about it, and we wear special robes, and we have tassels, and the law of God, but at the end of the
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day, it doesn't really apply. Not in any practical sense. That's antinomian, not just legalistic,
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but antinomian against law. Okay, so Jesus is making that overarching point. And the biggest
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idea that Jesus is bringing forth, if we go to his 30,000 foot principle, get the big view,
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is the law of God first begins with addressing the heart. It addresses outward speech and actions,
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But first it addresses inward heart at the level of thought, intent, desire, motives.
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Sixth commandment, it's not enough to just not stab someone to death.
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It also is important that you don't want to stab someone to death.
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It is unfortunate, the world that we live in.
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and I think there are a lot of good reasons for why.
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You know, like someone's running down the hallway
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and then we have to actually address the real world.
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We can't address the pretend world that we made up.
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The real world is not a world in which everyone is equal.
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and is equal in terms of eternal dignity and value.
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Of course. But not everyone is equal in temporal regard.
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And not just equal outcomes, but even in terms of equal opportunity.
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Guys, I don't know what to tell you, but I was not born with equal opportunity to Elon Musk.
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do you think I'd be able to beat Michael Jordan
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and I don't really have much control over that.
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among you. You know why you'll always have the poor?
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Are you saying that the poor are poor because of sin?
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I'm not saying that in every case it's because of their sin.
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And in this country, I would argue most of the time, it's their sin.
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But I would never say of the poor in North Korea,
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you know, those North Koreans are just not working hard enough.
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Now, you can be poor also because of other people's sin.
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At the end of the day, whether it's your sin or another's,
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And the only reason there's a lack is not because God failed in his role of provision,
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but because man failed in our role of living upright lives according to his law.
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To say that poverty doesn't track back in one way or another to sin
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And so then what is the Christian obligation
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to make everyone equal by making everyone the same?
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You can't bring up certain people on the bottom.
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So what you have to do is strip people at the top.
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And so we're going to have to tie your hands behind your back.
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The only way to get equality is to go down to the lowest common denominator.
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Do you know that in the last two generations, for the first time in American history, IQ is going down.
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That we have, millennials, are the first generation in American history that on average, financially, will make less than their parents.
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It's like, oh yeah, but we had 17% interest rates in the 70s.
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And not tying the most gifted people's hands behind their back,
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you know what that does for even those on the bottom of the totem pole?
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It allows that person to soar and to thrive in such a way
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that they're able to boost the welfare, not state welfare,
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You can't live in never, ever land with Peter Pan.
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and then say, like Francis Schaeffer did once upon,
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Gratitude will always produce more generosity than guilt.
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Guilting everybody will not ultimately lend towards generosity
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And the position, the disposition that we should have
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They're fallen men, fallible men, but they were also better men, better than us.
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We should work hard for the good of our posterity, our children, just as they did.
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And by God's grace, as we're able to accumulate wealth and resources and these things and lay up an inheritance for our children's children, as the Bible says,
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then with the excess, we can also be generous to our neighbors.
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It applies financially, economically, politically, culturally.
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The Pharisees are those who want to ultimately shrink the law of God
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If you limit the law that narrow in its application,
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well, it allows for the Jews to kill Jesus
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because they never lifted a hand to do it.
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And you pressured Pilate, who was up for re-election in your jurisdiction.
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You pressured him in order to get his goonies, the Roman centurions,
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to do something that later on, not years later, but just the next day,
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one of those Romans says, I think we messed up.
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The law of God is useless if we limit its application.
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and one of its chief realms of application is the heart.
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Matthew Henry says this, getting to the seventh commandment.
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Now, we have here an exposition of the seventh commandment
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given us by the same hand that made the law, Jesus, God.
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And therefore, he's fittest to be interpreter of it.
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The command is here laid down, thou shalt not commit adultery,
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which includes a prohibition of all other acts of uncleanness
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We'll get to that in a moment. Concupiscence is the theological word.
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But the Pharisees, in their expositions of this command, made it to extend no further than the act of adultery,
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suggesting that if the iniquity was only regarded in the heart and went no further, then God could not hear it.
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That God would not regard it. The iniquity, the sin.
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So if you have an adulterous heart, if you're sinning with lust in the heart, the Pharisees would insist that God had no regard for sin at the level of the heart.
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And therefore, they thought it enough to be able to say that they were not adulterous, which is what they said in Luke chapter 18, verse 11.
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We are here taught that there is such a thing as heart adultery, adulterous thoughts and dispositions, which never proceed to the act of adultery or fornication, and perhaps the defilement which these give to the soul.
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This command, the seventh commandment, forbids not only the acts of fornication and adultery, but all appetites.
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There it is again. Desire, appetite, affection, want, all appetites to them, all lusting after the forbidden object.
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This is the beginning of the sin, lust conceiving.
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Now, I want to give you guys real quick, I'll do my best to briefly exegete, but a string of cross references to make a whole biblical argument.
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So we're going to do a lot of Bible real quick.
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James chapter 1, verse 14 through 15 says this.
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But each person is tempted when he is lured and enticed by his own desire.
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Then desire, when it is conceived, gives birth to sin.
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And sin, when it is fully grown, brings forth death.
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What James is saying is that there is actually a process to sin.
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The Bible tells us it begins in the heart with desire.
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desire is like desire eventually conceives and gives birth to sin so so desire is like sin in
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utero but it's still sin it's still sin at the level of desire and it needs to be combated
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it needs to be mortified before it conceives to sin so at the beginning sinful desire which is
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a sin in and of itself. Desire. Desire conceives, gives birth to sinful actions, speech and actions,
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word and deed. And then if these go unchecked, eventually that sin will bring forth death
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in a spiritual sense, but also quite literally in a physical sense. Sin, unchecked, unrestrained
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Okay, now Romans chapter 13, verse 12 through 14 says this,
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The night is far gone, the day is at hand, so then let us cast off the works of darkness and put on the armor of light.
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Let us walk properly as in the daytime, not in orgies and drunkenness, not in sexual immorality and sensuality, not in quarreling and jealousy,
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but put on the Lord Jesus Christ and make no provision for the flesh to gratify its, there's the word again, desires.
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So here, and John Owen famously, he wrote on this in The Mortification of Sin,
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He also preached whole volumes, whole sermons on this one concept.
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And the concept is this, make no provision for the flesh.
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Allowing provision for the flesh doesn't just allow opportunity for sin,
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but allowing provision for the flesh is already a sin.
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This is what the church has argued down through the ages
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Is it only sin when it comes out of our mouth in word?
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Is it only sin when it comes out of our hands and feet in the realm of deed and actions?
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Or is there a way to sin even at the level of desire?
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And the church in exegeting texts like these, Romans 13, 12 through 14,
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it says make no provision for the flesh to gratify its desires.
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If we were to back up just a little bit in verse 13,
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I'm being tempted by God for God cannot be tempted,
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The preceding verse for this verse on temptation.
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Well, because James knew that people in his day
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And also, sadly, a bunch of idiots today on Twitter as well would argue that Calvinism and a high view of the sovereignty of God somehow indicts God as being morally culpable for the sins of men.
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James is basically just making a theological argument and hedging against stupid Arminians.
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Because that's what you will hear again and again.
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And that's what James and the apostles heard again and again.
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Read Romans chapter three. This is what Paul hears again. Paul says we are being slanderously
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set of. Why not do evil so that God might bring about good? Their condemnation is just and
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deserved. What is Paul saying? He's saying there are people 2000 years ago who thought that this
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was a good line and 2000 years later, nothing has changed. They still think it's brilliant.
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It's cute that they think that, but they do. They think that the line is this. If God is sovereign
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over all things, then when people sin, you must be, God must be responsible rather than the people.
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That's not what the Bible teaches. Now, the Bible also does not teach that people are robots and
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that they have no human agency whatsoever. Here's the deal. When it comes to moral culpability,
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people are free. This is the line of argumentation. You cannot be morally culpable unless you are
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freely making the choice that you're making. But then the question becomes this, what constitutes
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freedom? There is the view of libertarian free will. Libertarian free will ultimately asserts,
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this is where the midwits come in, libertarian free will ultimately asserts that you cannot
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freely make any decision unless there is a viable alternative. So unless you are capable
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of choosing something else, and there's another choice that could be chosen, then you cannot be
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held morally responsible for the choice that you made. There has to be a viable alternative.
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That's not what the Bible teaches. The Bible doesn't teach that the linchpin for moral
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culpability, why we're held responsible. The Bible does not teach that the linchpin for moral
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culpability is libertarian free will, an alternative choice. Instead, what the Bible teaches
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is that the key ingredient that makes man morally culpable for his sin is not that he could do
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otherwise, but that he is doing precisely what he wants. The key ingredient is not alternative
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choices, libertarian free will. The key ingredient is desire. And that's what the root of sin is,
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desire. That's where temptation begins in its origin, desire, meaning that you are freely doing
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whatever it is that you happen to be doing, so long as what you're doing is the thing you want
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to do. It does not matter at the end of the day if you were able to do otherwise. All that matters
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is that you're doing what you want. And because you are doing precisely what you want, you are
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morally responsible for that which you are doing. You are guilty for doing sinful things because
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sin is, at that given moment, your chief desire. You may be a Christian in your heart of hearts.
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But you find this law at work within the members of your being.
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That when you want to do good, evil is right there present.
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So that the good that you want to do, this you cannot carry out.
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Because in the moment of sin, although you want to do good, you want sin more.
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At any moment, you and I are only ever doing that which we want to do most.
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of your strongest desire at any given moment winning out.
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Say, well, I don't like that that represents me.
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Everything you have ever done is precisely who you are.
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You have only ever done exactly what you wanted to do.
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in the way that the modern philosophers would like to think.
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let God be true, and every man a liar. Or, who are you, O man, to talk back to God?
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Does the clay have the right to say to the potter, why did you make me like this?
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The Bible sees well ahead of time. It predicts this common objection, and it addresses this
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common objection. Sin begins at the level of desire. And you and I are morally responsible
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for every sin we've ever committed. And at the same time, God is sovereign over all of it.
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All of this is biblically true. So make no provision for the flesh. Fight sin before it's
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fully conceived and certainly before it grows up and springs forth to death fight sin inwardly
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fight sin at the heart fight sin at the realm of desire making no provision for the flesh
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genesis 3 6 now so when the woman saw that the tree was good for food and catch this a delight
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to the eyes the eyes and that the tree was to be desired there it is to make one wise she took of
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its fruit and ate, and she also gave some to her husband who was there with her, and he ate. Going
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on, 2 Peter 2, verse 14, they have eyes. There it is. So there's a threefold temptation in the garden.
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1 John addresses the same thing. It's the lust of the eyes, the lust of the flesh, and the boastful
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pride of life. All three of those were present in the garden with Eve on that fateful day. She saw
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the fruit and it looked pleasing to the eyes, lust of the eyes. Also, she was convinced that it would
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be good to the taste. It would taste good. It would satisfy the lust of the flesh. And it was useful
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for making one wise, exalting oneself, the boastful pride of life. All three. And this is what John
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in his first epistle defines as the three characteristics of one word, namely worldliness.
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To live in town in a subdivision next to other people?
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It's the lust of the eyes, the lust of the flesh,
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And all three of those characteristics, those types of temptations were present in the garden with man's original fall into sin.
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Eve saw the fruit. She's like, that looks tasty. Lust of the flesh.
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She also saw the fruit. That looks pretty. Looks shiny.
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Nowhere in Scripture does it say it was an apple. We always imagine an apple.
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This is an antediluvian world, pre-flood, before sin has entered the world.
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this piece of fruit, it could have had glitter. I don't know. It could have been shiny. It could
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have been shooting off lights and glowed in the dark. And I mean, it was obviously a tempting
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piece of fruit. And not just because it made one wise, but it apparently tasted good and it looked
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good. So the lust of the eyes is present right there in the garden. Genesis 3, verse 6. Now look
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Back to adultery, 7th commandment, 2 Peter 2, verse 14.
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They have, speaking of the wicked, they have eyes full of adultery.
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Because you would think they have bodies, flesh, that engages in adultery.
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At the level of sight, at the level of temptation,
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There is a way of having not just adulterous hands, but adulterous eyes.
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And those eyes, if they go unchecked without fighting diligently, vigently to make no provision for the flesh,
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those adulterous eyes will quickly, quickly continue to feed and grow an adulterous heart.
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And that adulterous heart, fueled by those adulterous eyes, will eventually land you in a situation with adulterous hands.
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And elsewhere in Scripture, 2 Peter 2, verse 14, adultery is specifically named as one of those propensities of the eyes.
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Now, on the flip side, as a counter, what does Job say?
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Chapter 31, verses 1-4, I have made a covenant with my eyes.
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What would be my portion from God above and my heritage from the Almighty on high?
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Does not he see my ways and number all my steps?
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And men and women especially are different.
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Men, you need to guard your eyes a hundred times more.
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we are not the same can be we have children i feel that was pretty good right i just
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but that's enough and that's the difference there are other differences of course but that
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is one of the differences so women sure but men certainly making a covenant with your eyes
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is guarding the windows of the soul the intake the door that allows adultery to come in and
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fill the heart that later would conceive sin and come out in action and that action if unchecked
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eventually will bring forth spiritual death if it's ongoing unrepentant sin spiritual death you
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will go to hell that's how that our chapter or our text ends i'm going to get there in a moment
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literally ends warning about hell but also it can bring forth physical death
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how many diseases that bring forth literal death ultimately stem from adulterous lifestyles
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we can pretend that's not a thing like oh there's an epidemic and like oh what do you have to do to
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to make sure that you're you and your kids and family are safe uh just live completely normal
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lives and maybe maybe don't visit san francisco what why san francisco i don't get like
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Yeah, it turns out living like a degenerate heathen
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has temporal consequences as well as eternal consequences.
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And God gives us his law to say that same statement
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God gives us his law not only for eternal blessing,
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want. You don't need to obey God's law at all. You just need to believe faith. Faith. Name it and
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claim it. Right? Like Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz. Tap your ruby slippers three times and say,
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there's no place like a Ferrari. There's no place like a Ferrari. No place like a Ferrari. And if
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you believe hard enough and you manifest strong enough, then God will function as a genie in a
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bottle and do exactly what you command. God works for you. And you just name it and claim it. That's
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a prosperity gospel what the bible teaches though see and here's the problem anti-prosperity guys
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which is good to be an anti-prosperity guy because it's a heresy but we went too far didn't we so
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what we started saying is you know what there's no there's no quid pro quo whatsoever in the
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entire bible really like there's never a principle in the bible ever ever that says that walking in
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faith and in obedience to the Lord and loving Him and living in fidelity to Him, that that never
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produces any earthly blessings ever? Like, go home and feel free. Take 50 years. Grab your Bible. Take
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50 years and try to make me that argument. You can't. Of course, obedience to God's law brings
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blessing. Not always, not as a guarantee, you can obey God and get hit by a truck. God is sovereign.
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But ordinarily, lives of obedience bring forth more temporal blessing in this life than not,
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than lives of rebellion. Ordinarily, lives of obedience to God's law bring forth more
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temporal blessing than lives of utter rebellion.
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This is a quote. Believe it or not, I didn't make it up.
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Joel Webbing. It's like a Michael Scott kind of thing, if you ever, if you know what I'm talking
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about. Wayne Gretzky, Michael Scott. Here we go. This forbids also the using the seventh commandment.
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So it forbids lust at the level of the heart. It forbids wandering eyes for men, for women too,
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but especially men. But it also, if it forbids the wandering eyes of men, then it certainly also
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forbids women dressing and behaving in such a way that would attract the eyes of men. It's a two-way
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street, okay? So this forbids also the using of any other of our senses to stir up lust. If ensnaring
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looks are forbidden fruit, then much more unclean discourses. He's talking about flirtatious
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conversation with someone who is not your spouse, and wanton dalliances, that is a casual romantic
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relationship with someone who is not your spouse, the fuel and bellows of this hellish fire.
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And if looking be lust, they who dress and deck and expose themselves with design to be looked
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at and lusted after, like Jezebel, who painted her face and tired her head and looked out
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at the window, not to see what she could see, but rather to be seen and to tempt.
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And those who do that, if lusting be sin, then those who are stirring up lust are no
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And then Matthew Henry says, men sin, but devils tempt to sin.
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For men, the Bible seems to say this, if we were to sum it up into two words, one word for men, one word for women.
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For men, the word that men should avoid at all costs, with every single breath and every fiber of their being,
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the thing that they should avoid in a single word, if you're a man, is this, weakness.
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The full thrust of Scripture is on strength for men.
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Be strong, spiritually strong, physically strong.
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In every way, be strong, strong for the Lord and strong for your wife and strong for your children.
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So if there's one word that a man should avoid, it would be the antithesis of what the Bible says
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as it speaks to men. It would be weakness. If there were one word that women should avoid,
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it's the antithesis of what a woman should be as the Bible speaks to women. The word would be this
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loud. For men, don't be weak. For women, don't be loud. A woman, now you might say, well, wait a
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second, strength for men, to state it in the positive, and beauty for women. Doesn't the Bible?
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Yes. And the opposite of strength is weakness. So I see how you got there, Joel, but the opposite
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of beauty is ugliness. You could say ugly is the one word for women to avoid. However, I think that
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it's helpful so that people don't miss the point to define ugly in biblical terms. And we can do
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that by looking at the opposite of how the Bible defines beauty for women in biblical terms.
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First Peter chapter three says this, do not seek imperishable beauty that fades, right? Beauty is
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deceptive or charm is deceptive and beauty is fleeting. But a woman who fears the Lord is to
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be praised. First Peter three says, don't, don't concern yourself. Don't obsess, overly obsess
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about outward beauty that is perishable, but rather the imperishable beauty of the heart.
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And then it goes further to define that inward beauty, and it says, which is pleasing in the
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sight of God. So what is the inward, true, imperishable beauty of the heart that God
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calls subjectively beautiful, that God sees? It is this, a quiet, see there's the opposite of loud,
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quietly. You can speak with a quiet way. This doesn't mean that women don't talk.
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There's a way of talking and asking questions and being a social butterfly, and yet at the same time
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not having a loud spirit. The last thing that I want to get to as it pertains to the seventh
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commandment, our text today, is this. There's a way not only of living loudly, talking loudly, but also
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dressing loudly. Loud dress. Loud apparel. Like a golden ring in the snout of a pig,
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so too it is with a woman who is not modest. There's a way of dressing loudly. A way that
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Jezebel painted her face and said, look at me. Look at me. She is being loud. But the Bible says
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are so very dangerous and destructive to the soul
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Jesus says this, do not fear those who can kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather,
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fear him who can destroy both soul and body in hell. Here's the idea. I remember once upon a time
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I was a gospel-centered man. And to be fair, in the technical, biblical, theological sense,
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in an objective sense, I'm still a gospel-centered man. But what I refuse to be is a gospel myoptic
01:02:39.560
man, a gospel exclusivist man. The Bible does not just talk about the gospel, what God has done
01:02:46.580
for us through Christ Jesus. It also talks about the law, what God demands and requires of his
01:02:53.080
people. And for that matter, the moral obligation to God of all people. And what the Bible does is
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this. The Bible, it pushes us towards righteousness, both with promises of glory and with threats of
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terror. The Bible does both. So, you can be, here's a gospel-centered mechanism, and it's biblical,
01:03:15.000
it's faithful, and it's perfectly legitimate. And we should use it, and think of it, and hide this
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in our hearts. 1 Corinthians chapter 6, you were bought with a price. Your body is not your own.
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You were bought with a price. Therefore, honor God with your bodies. What is the indicative,
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the mechanism for motivation to live a pure life with your body.
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Jesus died to purchase not only your soul, but your whole being.
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And also, not as a substitute, not either or, but both and.
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When Jesus is trying to help people not fear man,
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the opinions of man and living for the praise of man,
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well, there's some temporal reasons to fear man.
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They can beat you with sticks and kill you.
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God can kill you and cast your soul into hell.
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where they condemn every sermon that Jesus preached.
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and as a woman trying not to dress loudly,
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