Purity of the Heart

The Sermon on the Mount and Righteousness of the Heart

Turn once again to our text in Matthew's gospel. We must take care that the text that we have for today found in verses 27 through 30 are again read in light and within the context of the larger argument that Jesus is making as he progresses in the Sermon on the Mount.

Previously, a few weeks ago, we worked through verses 17 through 20 where Christ declares to us that he did not come for the purpose of abolishing the law, but rather to fulfill the law and the prophets.

In that same statement, he upholds the authority of God's word. He also warned against the loosening of the commandments that have been given and declared that the righteousness that is required for entrance into the kingdom must surpass the greatest amount of righteousness that we could possibly think of.

And for the Jewish people in that day, that would have been the righteousness of the scribes and the Pharisees. Last week, we started in verse 21 to begin working through the six examples that are given to us that helps flesh out what this actually looks like in the life and how in our life and how we go beyond this outward conformity into a true transformation that finds its root in the heart of individuals.

And so last week, you will recall in verses 21 through 26, we dealt with murder and we went beyond the external command of physical murder to the inward command so that we avoid the ability as moral people to just say, oh, well, we were obedient to the command in the sense that we never took a life.

We went deeper because the text takes us deeper. Christ teaches us that this murder that ultimately is a physical act begins in a place much different where anger and resentment and hatred and contempt and bitterness exist within the heart and then become an outworking.

And so we see that the problem is not necessarily the physical act, although the physical act is a problem, it is a problem that begins within the heart. So it's not just what the hands have done, it's what the heart has harbored.

Adultery, Coveting, and the Heart of the Seventh Commandment

And so as we move forward this morning into the next few verses, 27 through 30, we see Christ applying the exact same principle to a different command. This time, our command is specifically the seventh command around not committing adultery.

And within that, we also bring in the 10th command regarding covetousness and not coveting a neighbor's possession. So what we see here is that this command that Christ, as he begins working through this, is that we cannot reduce these commandments that God has given us to simply the final physical action that results, that the commands given to us by God in the Decalogue, the moral law that has been passed down to us and written within the heart of man moves beyond those outward actions to the very desires where things begin.

Now, this particular thing is one of those truths that we cannot narrow so tightly that we miss the breadth of what's being taught here. And so as we go through this, we'll unpack that conversation a little bit more.

But when we look at the seventh command, we're not just looking at a negative aspect of not committing adultery. We are also looking at the positive aspect of what that calls us to, where it calls us to purity and faithfulness in the whole of our life.

Yes, beyond a shadow of a doubt, it speaks to being married. It speaks to being single. It speaks to any relationship that we have, but it also speaks to what we see and entertain in our minds, in our conversations, in our relationships, in our thoughts, in our contentment with God's providence.

Being satisfied with what we have been given and then to whether or not we honor others around us as image bearers, or we use them for our own self-gratification. Throughout this whole section, throughout the remainder of chapter five, we will continue back to this same pattern where we will realize that although we have been given this picture that seems to say that it exists in the outward physical action, that the reality is that it runs more deeper.

We are going to be tempted to locate righteousness at a boundary that we can achieve, okay? For example, last week, thou shalt not commit a murder. If we go around this room, hopefully we, and we ask that question, hopefully the answer we get from everyone is that we have never committed a physical act of murder, right?

That's the hope. If anybody has anything otherwise, we'll just see me after service and we'll deal with that later. But we also need to understand that it goes beyond that. Just like this morning, the question, if we go around the room and we ask, have you ever committed adultery?

We all think of the physical act, yet what we're taken to is something much deeper. Christ repeatedly presses beneath the surface of our life to the very heart. We may avoid murder, but we may cherish hatred.

We may avoid adultery, but at the same time, we are cultivating lust in our heart. We may speak words that are technically true, but we are still being deceptive in the way that we live. Our outward lives as Christians matter, but it is not just our outward lives that matter.

Our inward life, our private life, is what drives our outward. Ultimately, yes, you may refrain from a physical act, but the longer that you cherish the hatred, the longer you cultivate the lust, the longer you trade truth, the more likely it is that you ultimately end up committing the outward actions that we see.

At the end of the day, the heart of the matter is the heart. The scribes and the Pharisees were the people who were the representation in that day of being the pinnacle of righteousness. Christ is not calling, was not calling them, and he is not calling us to be better scribes and Pharisees.

What he is describing is a righteousness that is generated from a different character, a different place, one that reaches or begins inward because the grace of God has begun inward and generates an outward transformation.

And this is what makes the passages that we have before us searching. This is what makes those same passages hopeful because what we see is that the King who exposes all of these things in our lives, these hidden desires, is the same King who serves as Savior and cleanses the guilt from our heart and transforms our life.

His spirit teaches us to pursue holiness that he commands. And so taking all of that into consideration, let us now turn to the word of the Lord Jesus Christ found in Matthew's Gospel, chapter five, beginning in verse 27 and following.

If you will, please stand with me in reverence for the reading of God's holy, inerrant, infallible, authoritative, sufficient, complete, and certain word. Matthew chapter five, beginning in the 27th verse, we read these words.

You have heard that it was said, you shall not commit adultery. But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman to lust for her has already committed adultery with her in his heart. But if your right eye makes you stumble, tear it out and throw it from you, for it is better for you to lose one of the parts of your body than for your whole body to be thrown into hell.

And if your right hand makes you stumble, cut it off and throw it from you, for it is better for you to lose one of the parts of your body than for your whole body to go into hell. Heavenly Father, we come before you asking that your spirit and your word search us and expose that in us which we would rather hide.

Lord, we pray that we are guarded from measuring righteousness by outward actions only. That we would not be as concerned with the outside of the cup at the moment that we are neglecting the inside. Give us ears to hear the words of Christ in humility, to hear them in faith.

Father, where there is sin in our life, we pray that your spirit would bring conviction. Where there is temptations that we are facing, that you would grant us strength through the power of your Holy Spirit.

Lord, where there is remaining guilt or unconfessed guilt, that you would lead us simply to the cleansing blood of Christ. The only one who can truly save. Father, we pray that you teach us not merely to admire holiness as this outward action, but something that we pursue.

Something that drives us to put to death the sin that remains in our body by the power of your spirit. Lord, that our eyes are fixed upon Christ. Christ, our perfect righteousness, our faithful savior.

Lord, that we are conformed into his image more and more each day. We ask these things in your precious and heavenly name. Amen. You may be seated. So as we open our text this morning, beginning in verse 27, Christ once again begins with the words, you have heard that it was said.

The Seventh Commandment and Its Original Meaning

Christ takes us immediately back to the teachings that had been garnered through the life. In fact, directly given in the seventh command by God to Moses on the Mount of Sinai. We see in Exodus chapter 20, verse 14, the seventh command is given.

It's repeated again in Deuteronomy chapter five and verse 18. But what we see is that just as in the previous verses and just as we recall, because we are again reading this text in the context of the greater picture, understanding verses 17 through 20, we understand that Christ is not trying to teach that there is anything wrong with the command.

He's not saying to the people sitting around that, well, you've heard that you weren't supposed to commit adultery, but that's not really the case. Here's the actual truth of the situation. This is not what Jesus is working toward.

In fact, he is pointing to the fact that the defect actually lies within the way that the law has been received and reduced because the people had reduced it to the command of this simple outward action.

In fact, religious people, and we'll use that word religious people in quotations because these are people who religion is the most important thing, not faith, not Christ, not God, but religion, the outward actions, the outward movement have always possessed a remarkable ability to take the wording of scripture, to reduce it in its effect while retaining the words so that it really is meaningless and pointless and never actually disturbs the conscience.

This is why we have to be so careful and ensure that we allow scripture to interpret scripture. This is why when we come to a passage like Matthew 27, or Matthew 5, 27 through 30, we don't remove it from its context and examine it by itself, but yet we consider it within the whole.

And in this situation, as I have said, verses 17 through 20 must serve. They must be the framework by which we look at the rest of this passage. Again, Christ teaches us that he does not come to abolish the law.

And if he was teaching that there was something wrong with the original law, then he is abolishing it and instituting something new. That's not what he is doing. So he cannot now mean that Moses taught this shallow morality and that he has come to replace it.

Rather, William Perkins makes the point in this way. Here, our Savior Christ goeth about to restore the seventh commandment, touch adultery to its true sense and meaning, and so to its proper and right use by purging it from the false and erroneous interpretation of the Jews.

He's not correcting the words of Moses. He's correcting the reduction of Moses's words. God not only forbids the act, but Christ is teaching that God forbids the desires that lead to the act. The same law that governs the body governs the heart.

Christ does not import a new spirituality into the Decalogue. What he does is uncovers the spirituality that was already present, the unity that was already there. So often as we look at things, we are by nature, because we're people, prone to first observe the things that are prohibitive.

These are the first things that catch our eye because immediately when we have somebody tell us not to do something, our first instinct is, well, you know what? I'm gonna do it anyway. And so the first thing that we look for in things becomes the prohibitive.

However, what we should see in this particular commandment is not the things that we have been prohibited, but the good things which this commandment protects. Now, in order to do that, we need to understand a couple of things.

Marriage, Sexuality, and the Positive Requirement of Purity

The first thing that we need to understand is that sexuality is part of creation. That all of this began in creation. That God made male and female, instituted marriage all before the fall ever occurred.

So as we look, the first thing that we need to understand is exactly what we are defining. Genesis chapter two presents for us a one-flesh covenant union between male and female only. That is what the commands of God present for us.

Later in Matthew chapter 19, when we get to that point, Jesus will appeal to that and we'll deal with that much more in the fact that it is part of the created order of reality. Sexual union has a God-given meaning within covenant faithfulness of marriage between one man and one woman.

The seventh commandment then protects marriage. It protects fidelity. It protects chastity. It protects honor. It protects the dignity of the neighbor. The Baptist catechism summarizes its positive requirement in this way.

When we get to the 76th question, as we're working through on Sunday mornings, we'll deal with this in more detail. In fact, the 75th, 76th, and 77th question all deal with the seventh commandment. So in this particular question, 76, the answer that it gives is that the seventh commandment requireth the preservation of our own and our neighbor's chastity in heart, in speech, and in behavior.

That phrase shows that there is a moral reach of this command that goes beyond the physical action of adultery. However, the Pharisee, the religious person, is always searching for the smallest, simplest definition of a sin.

In this case, adultery can be reduced to a physical act. Then an individual can say, I have not performed that physical act. Therefore, I have kept the command. Therefore, I have been obedient. Therefore, I can pat myself on the back and congratulate myself and check that one off my list.

However, Christ does not permit us to walk away with that because he moves from verse 27, where he says, you have heard it said, you shall not commit adultery, directly into verse 28, where he says, but I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman to lust for her has already committed adultery in his heart.

Christ's Authority to Judge the Heart

And so let's take a look at that particular verse for just a few minutes. Christ begins once again with this phrase, but I say to you. An important word in that passage is the word I. Now, for us in the English language, the word I is the word I, and I always refers to a personal individual.

But you need to understand that there are delineations within other languages. And so one of the things that Christ does is as he uses, and as we see throughout the Greek, what we see is the term ego being used for I.

That term is also included in the I am statement, ego e me. The point is, is that when Christ says this, he is giving us a statement from a point of authority. If you go to the end of the Sermon on the Mount and you look at what the people said as they heard this speaking, they marveled.

Verse 28 of chapter seven says, now it happened that when Jesus finished these words, the crowds were astonished at his teaching, for he was teaching them as one having authority and not as their scribes.

In other words, he was not as a preacher standing up with God's word and saying, God says to you, he was saying, I say. I, the creator of all things, not appealing as a rabbi or presenting an opinion among many, but as the divine son of the living God, the king, the final and full interpreter of the law, the law that he came to fulfill.

Calvin wrote that the law of God not only has authority over the life in a political view to form the outward matters, but that it requires pure and holy affections of the hearts. There are those who have been polluted by, polluted their eyes by an immodest look or then adulterers before God.

Calvin in this statement is very attuned to what Christ is bringing into this public place. That it is not just the outward public conduct of the people of God that is a concern here, it is the secret purposes of the heart that ultimately are fully known in the presence of almighty God.

Deliberate Lust and the Difference Between Temptation and Sin

But again, like everything, we must be cautious not to overcorrect. There is the one side where we cannot excuse a deliberate visual indulgence simply because no physical act follows. In other words, we cannot look upon a woman less for her and say we haven't committed adultery.

By the way, this also goes in reverse. It's not just men looking at women, women it's you looking at men too. We cannot have that in our heart, but at the same time, we also have to be very careful that we don't confuse a look with a look.

So we have two different kinds of looking here. If we look at the scripture, if we look at the passage, Jesus is very specific in what he says. He says, but I say to you that anyone who looks at a woman, to lust for her.

So the weight here that's carried in the Greek construction points to a purpose. That the entire reason that the individual has looked at the woman is so that he can cultivate lust in his heart so that he has this desire in order to produce this desire.

Same thing is true when it is reverse. William Perkins again distinguishes carefully when he reminds us looking at a woman, just looking or looking at a man, just looking is not a sin. I'm standing up here today, I'm looking out across the crowd the fact that I see you and you see me is not sinful.

What is sinful is if I see you or you see me and we are harboring lust in our hearts for the other individual. That is when it begins. The abuse turns to sin. The look is abusing sight by increasing lust.

It is for the purpose of building this up. We see Christ, we went through the temptation of Christ and we know that Christ was still without sin. So we must understand that temptations arrive uninvited.

Things happen in life. We are not excusing things but a sight may enter your eyes before the will has chosen it. So the question is how do you deal with it? A thought could suddenly arise, a moral question is what does the heart do next?

That's how you determine. Is the response that you give when the situation arise, does the eye turn? Does the heart reject or does it linger? Does it rehearse the thought? When we look at other people, do we see them as image bearers before God or do we see them as objects to be consumed in the imagination of ourselves?

This is why lust is fundamentally opposed to love. These are two fundamental opposite terms. These cannot exist in the same place. Love seeks the good of the neighbor under the authority of God. Lust on the other hand, ask how can that neighbor be used for self-gratification?

Love honors the boundaries that God has established. Lust resents those boundaries. Love receives God's gifts with gratitude. Lust covets what has not been given. The word lust translates, the word that is translated lust here in verse 28 belongs to the language of desire and coveting.

So one of the things that we look at when we see this is we're not just looking at the seventh command that says thou shalt not commit adultery with your neighbor's wife. We're also looking at the 10th commandment that says you should not covet.

The heart that lust is not admiring, it's grasping. Inwardly, it is reaching for what God has forbidden. Now outwardly, something may never happen. There may be a lack of opportunity, maybe fear, consequence, maybe our love for our own reputation prevents us from performing an outward act.

But the reality is within the heart, the sin has already occurred. Which means that it is entirely possible that only one party has any part to do with this. Often when we talk about the physical action of adultery, we make the comment, well, it takes two, right?

But the truth is adultery, because it begins in the heart, really only takes one. It's that immediate thing. It's that point where we cross the moral boundary and we desire something and we covet something that doesn't belong to us and we do it in such a way that it is dishonoring.

Matthew Henry described it like this. Where the lust is dwelt upon and approved and the wanton desire is rolled under the tongue as a sweet morsel, it is the commission of sin as far as the heart can do it.

That language should search us. Because what it does is it moves us past whether the temptation appeared. It asks whether you welcome the temptation, whether you hold on to the temptation, whether you return to the temptation, did you savor the temptation?

What it also means is that heart adultery and outward adultery cannot be confused nor separated. Yes, absolutely, 100%. Outward adultery has different consequences. Physical adultery adds bodily enactment, covenant betrayal, deception, injuries, and often public consequences.

But the fact that it offers and brings in different physical harms, earthly harms, does not make the reduction in those earthly harms make inward adultery less corrupt. Christ points us directly at the moral root.

The outward action simply grows from that inward corruption. Scripture gives us this picture repeatedly. Proverbs chapter four verse 23 tells us to guard your heart with all diligence for from it flow the springs of life.

Then in Proverbs five through seven, well five and seven, we have this depiction that does not merely say to us don't commit adultery. What it does for us is actually warns us about the path, the door, the words, the opportunity, the lingering, the foolishness that goes along with this confidence that this sin can remain secret and safe.

Joseph, David, and the Contrasting Paths of Fleeing or Feeding Lust

We look at Joseph's life and David's life, we get two very vivid pictures. In Joseph's life, in Genesis chapter 39, we see Potiphar's wife pursuing Joseph repeatedly and Joseph refuses. Joseph will not listen, Joseph will not lie and ultimately we see Joseph running away, removing himself from the situation.

He was strong but he did not continue to test that human strength. David, on the other hand, in second Samuel verse 11 did quite the opposite. You see, he saw Bathsheba, he inquired about Bathsheba, he sent for Bathsheba, he took her in, concealed his sin and then ultimately murdered her husband because of it.

You see, one man fled, the other one fed. In David, we saw that the desire was cultivated, grew into action, deception ultimately leading to death which naturally brings us to verses 29 and verse 30. You see Christ here exposing the heart problem says to us what repentance requires.

Radical Repentance and the Call to Mortify Sin

What does real repentance look like? Now, you'll notice that there's no mention of this particular word in here. So if you take a look at 29 through 30, it says but if your right eye makes you stumble, tear it out, throw it from you for it is better for you to lose one part, one of the parts of your body than for the whole body to be thrown into hell and if your right hand makes you stumble, cut it off, throw it from you for it is better for you to lose one of the parts of your body than for your whole body to go into hell.

He never says this is anything about real repentance but yet this is exactly what Christ is teaching. What he is giving us is language that intentionally is meant to shock us. Language that is intentionally meant to grab our attention.

Language that immediately makes us think how could I simply remove my right eye and throw it away? What are the implications of doing this? Now, we first need to understand this is not a situation of Jesus saying to us, well, you should do self-mutilation.

That's not what this is about. What this is about is something that is deeper. Later on in Matthew 15, 19, Jesus says that evil thoughts, murderers, adulterers, sexual immoralities proceed from the heart.

The high and the hand here are instruments of the heart. These are not moral independent agents, okay? So what we need to understand is these are instruments that the heart is using and the hyperbolic language here intensifies the command.

Anything that is dear and precious to us is what is being signified, okay? So we're not talking about you going home today and because you've done something bad this week, lopping off your hand, chunking it away because quite honestly, if you approach it that way, you'll come back next week.

Well, you probably won't come back next week because you'll be cut everything off. That's the reality. So what we're talking about here is something that is near and is dear and is precious to us. Perkins is also helpful here because he explained the command in this way.

Restrain and govern that which is dear and precious to you most carefully. Though it be to thine own great pain, loss and hindrance, for better is it for thee that one of thy members perish, than thy whole body should be cast into hell.

The point here is not mutilation. The point here is mortification. The point is that nothing that should be so precious, so useful, so convenient, so enjoyable, or so familiar that it should be preserved when it repeatedly serves as a avenue of rebellion in our life.

Now, I'm gonna tell you something, those are hard words because most of us tend to look at this verse and go, oh, well, you know, I don't really lust after people. I don't do this, I don't do that. I avoid these things.

But what about true purity of your heart? Are you really willing to toss away anything that becomes an avenue for rebellion? Are you really willing to evaluate yourself? Spurgeon stated it very plainly.

I love Spurgeon. That's one of the great things. I really would love to have just sat down a little while with the man because he just, in his writing, if he was as blunt in his speech as he is in his writing, he would have been a joy to talk to.

Because he says this, that which is the cause of sin is to be given up as well as the sin itself. If it's something in your life that causes you to sin, give it up. Don't just give up the sin and keep doing the action thinking that you can avoid it.

Because the moment you continue to do that, guess what you do? You continue to put temptation in front of yourself and ultimately you're gonna rely on yourself. Anything, this is Spurgeon again, anything, however harmless, which leads me to do or think or feel wrongly, I am to get rid of as much as if it were in itself an evil.

That's the force of Christ's words. This is a thing that in and of itself is not dangerous. It is not unlawful. But yet the use of it or the involvement with it or the being, holding on to it becomes spiritually dangerous to you, then you must eliminate it.

Removing Avenues of Temptation

Jesus uses the right eye and the right hand because he doesn't want us to hide behind general complaints about culture. Listen, we very easily can go to the excuse game, right? Because we can very easily talk about the over-sexualization that we see in culture.

We can easily talk about the changes in the way that other people present themselves. The lack of modesty that exists in modern society. We can say, oh, well, look, listen, if they weren't walking around that way, I wouldn't be looking that way.

Jesus says, guess what? This is about you. This command is personal. What is your avenue? What is it in your life that you repeatedly permit to become fuel for lust or any other sin? What are things that we have called harmless even though we know where it leads?

In culture today, society talks with addicts about things called gateway drugs. Small drugs that ultimately lead to a bigger problem. Things that maybe don't have quite as strong of effect, but then when they're introduced into a person who has certain things in their life, they become much greater.

This is the same problem. You see, we love to go back and point at our Christian liberties while excusing the fact that those same liberties are causing us to sin in our life. For some people, it may be simply unrestricted access to a device.

For someone else, it may be a specific social media platform or a particular form of entertainment or a private conversation, a relationship that is marked by secrecy, a travel pattern to bring you into the presence of someone else, a memory that is deliberately revisited, an imagined scenario that is rehearsed.

You see, it doesn't have to be something physical. The applications differ, but the principle doesn't. If there's an avenue, remove it. Don't just remove it. Notice Christ's words. He didn't just say cut it off and leave it right beside you.

He said cut it off and throw it away. How many times have we cut off things in our life because we know that they're bad for us, yet we keep them within arm's reach? Just in case. I've seen the alcoholic carry around the bottle of alcohol as proof that he could avoid alcohol, yet the reality is what is it doing the entire time?

It's right there within reach. So they can be consumed. We want repentance, but we want an emergency exit. We want accountability, but we want a private exception to that accountability. Maybe we even want to end the conversation, but we want to preserve the contact, or we want to confess enough to quiet our own conscience but not enough to make returning to the same thing difficult.

Christ says throw it from you. In Romans chapter eight, verse 13, says that believers are to put to death the deeds of the body by the spirit. Colossians chapter three, verse five, commands us to put to death sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil, desire, and greed.

Galatians five, verse 24, says that those who belong to Christ have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. John Owen's classic treatment, dealing with mortification of sin when he treats Romans eight, verse 13, makes this point relentlessly that the believer must actively mortify sin rather than make peace with it.

But at the same time, Romans eight, verse 13, at the same time that it commands us to mortify the sin in our life, it also keeps us from turning mortification into self-salvation because it tells us that we are to put that sin to death by the power of the spirit.

It's done by the spirit. Christian sanctification is not passive resignation nor is it self-reformation. It is all done through the work of the spirit. The believer acts, why? Because the spirit is acting.

When we pray, when we confess, when we flee, when we remove access, when we renew our mind, when we seek help, when we use the ordinary means of grace, we do so precisely because we are dependent upon Christ.

That's why we do these things. External safeguards in our life cannot regenerate the heart. You can put all the external safeguards you want in place. You can lop off your hand, your eye, your foot, whatever.

You can throw it a long way away from you, but if your heart has not been regenerated, you just cut something off for nothing because your physical actions do not transform your heart. Your heart must be regenerated and a regenerated heart will not despise wise safeguards.

Sin, Final Judgment, and the Better Way of Christ

And so Jesus brings us finally to the reason for the severity of his statement. Notice what he says in both 29 and 30. For it is better for you to lose one of your parts of your body than for your whole body to be thrown into hell.

It is for it's better to lose one of the parts of your body than for your whole body to go into hell. The warning repeated twice for the purpose of ensuring that we feel the weight of this truth. The term here, hell, is the word gana and it's a struggle against lust that he is placing in light of final judgment.

Christ is placing this in a position where we cannot speak about sin, sexual sin, merely in terms of embarrassment, merely in terms of damaged relationships, merely in terms of loss of reputation, merely in terms of emotional consequences, but in terms of eternal damnation, eternity is at stake.

Listen to me, brothers and sisters, persistently cherished, defended, unrepentant, sexual immorality belongs to the road of destruction. In fact, all cherished, unrepentant, defended, immorality belongs to the road of destruction.

And you notice the words that Christ uses, it is better. In our life, as we go about our life and as we view the world around us, we see sin is always presented to us as the better option. You have more fun if you sin.

You're not as stuck up if you do these things. Fantasy feels better, the secrecy feels better, the relationship feels better, the access feels better, the preservation of reputation feels better, but your calculator's broke, your calculations are wrong.

Christ says that it is better to remove this thing, better to lose the convenience than preserve the sin, better to endure the humiliation of confession than to preserve a hidden life of rebellion, better to lose what the flesh calls freedom than to keep walking in that freedom towards judgment.

But again, this is not salvation by amputation. This is not us cutting off something to get there. This is a result of what has already occurred. If perfect inward purity were the ground of our acceptance before God, we all fail.

Brothers and sisters, I don't care who you are. When you read verse 28 this morning, you were condemned already. There is not a man or a woman in this place who has not at some point in their life looked upon someone else with the purpose of lust.