8/11/13  KINGDOM LIVING

Purity – God’s Best Option

    In his book Glorious Mess, Mike Howerton tells a story about a childhood experience playing “mud football”. After a huge downpour, he and his buddies found a gully filled with two inches of standing water. He describes what happened next:
    We had a blast. Every tackle would send you sliding for yards and yards. The ball was like a greased pig, which meant tons of fumbles and gang tackles and laughter.
    I remember tackling one of [my friends] and watching him skim across the surface of the water for something like four miles and thinking, “I might be in heaven.” When he got up, I noticed something stuck on his shoulder. I peered closer, wondering, “What is that?” Now, there was a huge, concrete sewage runoff drain right next to the gully. And apparently during heavy rains, all sorts of things got backed up, and I don’t know if the apartment complex immediately next to the school burst a pipe or what, but I do know we didn’t really pay attention to the flotsam in the gully until I noticed that something on Craig’s shoulder. I peered closer and suddenly realized it was a soaking piece of toilet paper. In that same instant I realized the smell surrounding me was a bit more pungent than a typical mud football game ought to smell. I yelled out, “We’re playing in POOP WATER!” and we bolted for home as fast as we could.
    Talk about an instant of mental transformation.  Sometimes in life we need our thinking transformed. Sometimes we think we’re having fun until we realize we’re rolling around in sewage.
Mike Howerton, Glorious Mess (Baker, 2012), pp. 101-102
    God has given us something awesome, and, as usual, the enemy is making it something awful.  God has given us the beauty of personal relationships and a beautiful thing called marriage with all its benefits, and they enemy gets it all twisted up.  What appears to be beautiful and extremely fulfilling becomes a source of destruction and desperation when we break God’s ways.
    KINGDOM LIVING -- Purity, God’s best option
Matthew 5:27-32 NKJV
27 You have heard that it was said to those of old, ‘You shall not commit adultery.’ 28 But I say to you that whoever looks at a woman to lust for her has already committed adultery with her in his heart. 29 If your right eye causes you to sin, pluck it out and cast it from you; for it is more profitable for you that one of your members perish, than for your whole body to be cast into hell. 30 And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and cast it from you; for it is more profitable for you that one of your members perish, than for your whole body to be cast into hell.
31 Furthermore it has been said, ‘Whoever divorces his wife, let him give her a certificate of divorce.’ 32 But I say to you that whoever divorces his wife for any reason except sexual immorality causes her to commit adultery; and whoever marries a woman who is divorced commits adultery.
Matthew 7:13-14 NKJV
13 Enter by the narrow gate; for wide is the gate and broad is the way that leads to destruction, and there are many who go in by it. 14 Because narrow is the gate and difficult is the way which leads to life, and there are few who find it.
    In His sermon expressing the foundation of His Kingdom, the constitution of the church, Jesus taught about something we all deal with - desires of the heart.
    I want to challenge you with the blessings of obeying God’s laws.  What we allow into our hearts, what we dwell on, will set the pace for where we go in life.
    This message today is built on the foundation of one of the beatitudes. 
Matthew 5:8 NKJV
8 Blessed are the pure in heart, For they shall see God.
    The pure in heart have dedicated themselves to the Lord and are free from sin’s power.  They live to please God.  Pleasing God loves what God loves and hates what God hates.  This is living in tune with God.
    God is looking for purity in His followers.
1 Samuel 13:13-14 NKJV
13 And Samuel said to Saul, “You have done foolishly. You have not kept the commandment of the LORD your God, which He commanded you. For now the LORD would have established your kingdom over Israel forever. 14 But now your kingdom shall not continue. The LORD has sought for Himself a man after His own heart, and the LORD has commanded him to be commander over His people, because you have not kept what the LORD commanded you.”
    God blesses pure hearts who love righteousness.
Hebrews 1:9 NKJV
9 You have loved righteousness and hated lawlessness; Therefore God, Your God, has anointed You With the oil of gladness more than Your companions.
    Jesus taught about our thoughts and desires.  We must make them pure according to HIS standards of holiness.
28 But I say to you that whoever looks at a woman to lust for her has already committed adultery with her in his heart.
    As you read the Bible you see many references to this topic of adultery.  There is physical as well as spiritual adultery.  What is the big deal?  Why is the Bible so strongly against it?
    God gave the most special human relationship to a man and woman in marriage.  It is like no other.  You can be friends, business acquaintances, neighbors, meet people at social gatherings, friends at church -- and nothing comes close to the special relationship found in marriage.
    God used marriage as a picture of the relationship believers (the church) have with the Lord.
    This very special and awesome relationship found only in marriage is the foundation for society.  It is the foundation for an orderly society.  It is the way that truth, righteousness and godliness are to be passed from generation to generation.  The strong desires a man has towards his wife are counterfeited by sin and lead to the destruction of the home, the lives involved and eventually society.  These strong desires in marriage are good and come from God.
    This is why Jesus said that a look of uncontrolled passion is just as destructive as physical adultery.  What starts out as a thought often leads to an action.
    I have never heard someone say “I’m sorry I was faithful to my wife for all these decades.  I wish I’d had an affair.”
    Men, let’s be honest about what is all around us. Entertainment is filled with everything destructive.  Let’s be honest, pornography is destructive to your life.  The research confirms what the Bible teaches – men who consume porn enter into many destructive behaviors.  It is central is countless breakups of families.  It treats women like play toys to be discarded.
    A request to women: please be careful how you dress.  Make an effort to understand modesty.  Be careful what and how much you show in how you dress.  Yes, it really makes a difference.
    It is not just porn that pollutes the mind.  My observation is that the majority of entertainment today is based on a world-view that mocks God’s moral standards.  Don’t waste your time watching the stupid programs, but do some research to the story lines and settings of the TV programs coming out these days. As a Christian, you should be shocked and disgusted.  And you have to be even more careful with movies.  What are the laugh lines?  Often they are about things the Bible calls sin.
    I recently saw an ad for a frozen dinner.  The implication of the ad was that the woman promoting this product was naked.  I wonder, is their product that bad that they have to try to trick people into buying it? What kind of a perverted mind would conceptualize that ad?  And what kind of pervert would approve it to represent the company?
    Again, the Sermon on the Mount:  Jesus isn’t calling for physical abuse, but note these verses and see the over illustration of what should be done to prevent sin from destroying a person.
29 If your right eye causes you to sin, pluck it out and cast it from you; for it is more profitable for you that one of your members perish, than for your whole body to be cast into hell. 30 And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and cast it from you; for it is more profitable for you that one of your members perish, than for your whole body to be cast into hell.
    Hell is no joking matter.  Those who participate in immoral behavior face horrible destruction and torment in hell.
    The things we are talking about today are God’s laws.  Many are sick or even dead because they have ignored God’s moral laws and have fallen prey to the lies of the “fun” of sexual sin.  You can’t break God’s laws without paying the price.
    This year there was a plane crash in Michigan.  Our son, Matthew, called us about it.  He had flown the plane that went down and four people died.  There was nothing wrong with it.  A young pilot took some family members for a ride and overloaded the plane. Even though there were four seats in the plane, it couldn’t handle that much weight.  The plane never got more than 100 feet in the air.  It crashed and all died.  Matthew’s insightful comment:  you can’t break the laws of physics.
    You can break human laws.  You can never break God’s laws.  Whenever someone tries, they will crash and burn.
    One of the beautiful and special features about marriage is that God uses a Divine super-glue to bring the husband and wife together.  This is why it hurts so much when it breaks.  Jesus said in Matthew 19:6 that God does the joining in marriage.
31 Furthermore it has been said, ‘Whoever divorces his wife, let him give her a certificate of divorce.’
    Jesus was talking about religious teachers making it easy to divorce for any reason.  The prophet, Malachi, wrote that God hates divorce. He hates it because of the pain it brings.  Especially among believers there must be a way to work things out.
    I have tied together verses about God’s moral law with His statement about the narrow way to heaven.
Matthew 7:13-14 NKJV
13 Enter by the narrow gate; for wide is the gate and broad is the way that leads to destruction, and there are many who go in by it. 14 Because narrow is the gate and difficult is the way which leads to life, and there are few who find it.
    Two opposites here: life and destruction.  We are either heading towards one or the other.
    Narrow and wide.  Is it more important to be popular and be considered “in” than to obey God?  The popular way these days is basically immoral.  The younger generation thinks boyfriend/girlfriend living together is just the normal thing.  Even some who call themselves Christians are doing it and thinking nothing of it.  Why?  Because that is what everyone else is doing.  And, our culture lives for instant gratification.  Don’t wait, I want my fun now.
    God’s ways are always the best.  It is easy to get negative on moral topics and make it seem as if Christians/the Bible are against everything.  That is not so.  God is FOR us and gives us the way to be most successful.  I love a statement I heard on a radio program once:
Once you throw away God’s best, all of the options stink.
QUESTIONS
What are the moral principles God wants us to understand and obey?
What do you say to someone who says Christianity is narrow?
Is “narrow” really an insult?
What is modesty?
What is the world not understanding about God’s design for marriage and physical intimacy?
APPLICATION
Ask God to speak to your heart to help you see how you can live a life that receives the blessings of Biblical morality.