Lust, Sex, Pornography, Masturbation … What Did Jesus Have to Say?

You can LISTEN for FREE to this here, or DOWNLOAD for FREE here

First of all let me tell you that Sex was God’s Idea. And Sex is Great! God designed it to be Great! To be pleasurable, fun, meaningful and fruitful. He designed it that it might produce oneness between a man and a woman. The bible tells us that “the two shall become one” and sex does that amazingly well. Sex is great! 

However, we have substituted the truth for a lie[1] and now in this day and age we worship sex. It has become the God of this age. Everywhere you look the god of sex, sexuality and sensuality is worshipped. We worship the beautiful people and desire what we should not have. We obsess over how we look in order that we will be more desirable to others and not our spouse. We promote sin in our schools thinly disguised as Sex Education where we teach our children how worship the god of this age.

Sex has been made a god. People worship it rather than the God who created it. We abuse it and use it for personal and selfish reasons rather than to create oneness as God intended. We have taken something amazing, something beautiful and exchanged it for a dry shrivelled up old rag!

Mat 5:27-30 ESV  “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall not commit adultery.’  ⁽²⁸⁾  But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lustful intent has already committed adultery with her in his heart.  ⁽²⁹⁾  If your right eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away. For it is better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body be thrown into hell.  ⁽³⁰⁾  And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away. For it is better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body go into hell.

The Pharisees and Scribes were constantly looking to reduce the commandments of the Law to a simply and single act. Do No Commit Adultery in this case. Limiting it to the physical act, but here again Jesus is emphasising the motive of the heart as being the issue. Later on in Matthew he speaks even more clearly and directly on it.

Mat 15:19-20 ESV For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false witness, slander.  ⁽²⁰⁾  These are what defile a person. “

The Scribes & Pharisees show an amazing lack of understanding and learning in that the 10^th Commandment, Do not Covet – specifically addresses the issue of lusting after your neighbours wife. Clearly this needs to be taken in conjunction with Do Not Commit Adultery! This was either not understood by the Pharisees or conveniently overlooked for the sake of comfort!

Jesus is saying that for us to be RADICAL we are not looking to be those that simply CONFORM to a set of prescribed rules and regulations, but we are to be those who understand the motives that result in these prohibitions and that we radically deal with them. We seek the spirit of the law, not the letter!

This is an extract from my recent sermon on LUST where I tackle issues such as Pornography, Masturbation, Sexual Immorality, Fornication, Adultery from this passage in Matthew. You can LISTEN for FREE to this here, or DOWNLOAD for FREE here

---

[1] 2 Peter 2:14

---

Is Masturbation a Sin?

FREE MP3: To listen to a talk on this issue then press here, or download here.

Clearly masturbation is not directly referenced in the bible. There is no “Thou Shalt Not …” for this. Equally the scripture “Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with all your might[1]” is not a scripture to support it either.

When this action takes place it is rarely, and I would use the word never, that lustful thoughts and imagination (commonly porn too) are not present too. That being the case, Jesus words in the Sermon on the Mount clearly and directly apply – If you look lustfully, either with you natural eyes or your minds eye, then you are committing adultery with her in your heart. If you tell me that you don’t have lustful thoughts etc and simply think about cars or something then one might argue that you have bigger problems.

Let us remember that sex was created by God and it was good. He created it for us to enjoy, to allow us to reproduce and to produce ONENESS. In Genesis it says .

Genesis 2:24 ESV  Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.

Let me be clear ONENESS is not ONE (being on ones own), but TWO becoming ONE. All sexual experiences that produce ONENESS within the context of marriage between one man and one woman are legitimate. Thus any sexual experience outside that context is not legitimate because it is outside of the context within which God designed and planned it to occur.

So is masturbation a sin? It is if you consider sin to be doing things that God has said not to (LUST), or doing them outside the context or environment that God intended and communicated to us (Self Gratification, not producing oneness between a husband and a wife) then yes, it should be considered a sin.

FREE MP3: To listen to a talk on this issue then press here, or download here. 

---

[1] Ecclesiastes 9:10