Part of the chapter that I'd like to focus on is beginning in verse number 12 where the Bible reads,
But these as natural brute beasts, made to be taken and destroyed, speak evil of the things that they understand not,
and shall utterly perish in their own corruption.
Look at verse 13, it says, And shall receive the reward of unrighteousness,
as they that count it pleasure to riot in the daytime, spots they are in blemishes,
sporting themselves with their own deceivings while they feast with you.
And look at the next phrase, this is the title of my sermon.
This is the title of the sermon.
It says, Having eyes full of adultery, and that cannot cease from sin, beguiling unstable souls,
unharmed they of exercise with covetous practices, cursive children.
The title of the sermon this morning is this, Having eyes full of adultery.
Eyes full of adultery, you say, how is that possible?
What is adultery?
Well, adultery is basically when someone basically breaks their marriage vow
by being with someone else other than their wife,
or being with someone else other than their husband, respectively.
It's when someone commits a, I don't want to go into it obviously,
but commits a carnal act, lie carnally, as the Bible says,
with someone else's husband, someone else's wife.
But the Bible says it's possible to have eyes full of adultery.
Look at Matthew chapter 5, and I'll show you what I'm talking about.
Look at Matthew 25, this is of course Jesus speaking at the famous Sermon on the Mount.
It says in Matthew chapter number 5, and this is a pretty famous verse,
but it talks about the fact in verse number 28,
But I say unto you, that whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her,
hath committed adultery with her already in his heart.
So everybody knows that adultery is wrong.
Even the world, and although I wouldn't put anything past the world today,
we're living in such strange times,
but even the world in general would realize that it's a wicked thing to commit adultery
for a man who's married to be with another woman,
or a woman who's married to be with another man,
or to violate that trust, to violate the sanctity of marriage.
But he says here that if you just look upon a woman to lust after her,
you've committed adultery with her already in your heart.
And that's how it's possible to have eyes full of adultery,
but I wonder if people think about that when they turn on the TV.
You know, there are all kinds of married women on there,
and all kinds of married men are watching and so forth,
and they see all kinds of women on there that are on there for the purpose of getting men to lust after them.
That's the way they're dressed, that's the way that they act,
that's the way they're being portrayed on television, in magazines, newspapers, billboards,
and yet do we wonder that we are committing adultery in our hearts if we're to lust after them.
That's what the Bible says.
And people try to always make light of sin,
and the day we live in tries to downplay sin all the time.
And often we're met with people who will say,
well, you know, just because I've ordered, I can still look at the menu.
You know, they try to make a joke out of it, they try to make light of it,
but it's a wicked sin, and Jesus Christ condemned it here and said it's adultery.
You know, don't look upon a woman to lust after her that you're not married to.
But we live in a society that's filled with lust.
He said in 2 Peter 2.14, you don't have to turn back there,
but he said, having eyes full of adultery and that cannot cease from sin beguiling unstable souls,
and he says this, in the heart they have exercised with covetous practices, cursed children.
You see, the Bible says the love of money is the root of all evil,
and because we live in such a covetous society where people are greedy
and they want to be, kind of like I preached last week about on the Christmas season,
it's all about what you can get and what you want and your wish list
and everything that you covet and desire for yourself.
That attitude creates a society that has eyes full of adultery,
and that's why everywhere we look, we're confronted with these wicked images.
Look, if you would, at Proverbs chapter 6.
You see, this is not just a New Testament teaching.
When Jesus preached, he said, you heard that it was said,
by them of old time, thou shalt not commit adultery.
But I say unto you, that whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her
hath committed adultery with her already in his heart.
This concept is also found in the Old Testament, though,
because it says in Proverbs 6.24,
to keep thee from the evil woman, from the flattery of the tongue of a strange woman,
lust not after her beauty in thine heart.
Neither let her take thee with her eyelids.
Go to Job. You're in Proverbs. Just go back a few pages.
Job, Psalm, Proverbs. Go back to the book of Job 31.
I'll read for you from Psalm 101, verse 2.
It says, I will behave myself wisely in a perfect way.
O when wilt thou come unto me?
I will walk within my house with a perfect heart.
I will set no wicked thing before mine eyes.
I hate the work of them that turn aside.
It shall not cleave to me.
Job 31.1 says this, I made a covenant with mine eyes.
Why then should I think upon a mate?
Here's Job, a married man.
Here's a man who said, I made a covenant with my eyes.
He's saying, I've sworn an oath with my eyes.
You will not look upon a woman to lust after her in your heart.
He made that covenant with his eyes.
And this is an Old Testament teaching. This is a New Testament teaching.
This is something that God talks a lot about in the Bible because it's important.
You see, sin often starts with the eyes.
Look at David and Bathsheba, the famous story.
Remember when David committed adultery with Bathsheba?
It all started because he was bored.
That's the first problem that most people have. They're bored.
They don't have anything to do and we need to stay busy.
And we need to stay working and we won't be bored like that.
I think the biggest reason why people fall into sin is abundance of idleness.
That's what it says in the book of Ezekiel about the Sodom and Gomorrah.
People lived in Sodom. It's an abundance of idleness.
So they're just sitting around, nothing to do.
And when you have nothing to do, you get into trouble.
And an idle mind is the devil's workshop.
Often children, when they're on Christmas break, maybe they're at school all the time,
then they go on Christmas breaks, they have nothing to do.
And so they get into all kinds of trouble.
I don't put my children in school.
My children are home schooled, but we still have to keep them busy.
We have to work to keep them busy or they get into trouble.
And so idleness led David to just be walking around doing nothing.
He should have been out fighting the battles and so forth with his men that he had sent out.
But instead he's just walking around on the roof of his house at night.
Just bored, just looking for kicks.
And what does he do? He looks and he sees off in the distance.
He can look through a window and he sees a woman bathing herself.
And what he should have done at that point, you know, it's not necessarily his fault,
but at that point he should have looked away and not looked back.
And that's what God expects us to do.
He should have inverted his eyes.
And look, the world we're living in in 2010, you're going to accidentally see images
that you ought not look at.
It's going to happen because they're crammed down our throat.
But when you see that image, you should look away.
It's when you take the second look that you've committed sin.
And that's what David did. He took that second look.
And then his sight led to covetousness and lust and then it led to action.
Why? Look at Ecclesiastes chapter number 6.
Ecclesiastes, actually go to Ecclesiastes chapter 1 first.
Ecclesiastes chapter 1.
So he's up on the roof, he sees something that he shouldn't have seen,
then he looks at it more, then it feeds his lust,
and then he commits the awful sin of adultery.
Physically, he actually committed the act.
That led him to commit murder and other sins.
But look at Ecclesiastes chapter 1. Here's why. Verse 8.
It says, all things are full of labor. Man cannot utter it.
The eye is not satisfied with seeing. Did you get that?
The eye is not satisfied with seeing, nor the ear filled with hearing.
You see, when you see something and you continue to look at it,
eventually that's not going to satisfy.
And looking at the wrong things and looking at the wrong images continually
will lead you into sin.
It will lead you into further sin because of the fact that the eye is not satisfied with seeing.
It's not like, well, I'm just going to feed this appetite of the lust of the eyes and then I'll be over it.
No. When you feed this appetite of the lust of the eyes, it will only get worse.
That's why he said in 2 Peter, having eyes full of adultery and that cannot cease from sin.
He didn't say their eyes are full of adultery and then they got tired of it and then they moved on to something else.
He said they have eyes full of adultery and they cannot cease from sin.
Because it will not satisfy and it will get worse and worse just like any other sin.
If you feed it, it just gets worse, it gets worse, it gets worse.
And that's why you have to do like Job. You have to make a covenant with your eyes.
You have to decide that you're not going to look upon that which is wrong.
We're going to get into that a little bit later. What is wrong?
But look at Matthew 6. I'm going to show you why it's so important, what you look at and the things that you put in front of your eyes.
Because we don't want to have eyes full of adultery.
We want to be like David and say, I was setting a wicked thing before my eyes.
Okay, he made a mistake at one point in his life of setting something wicked before his eyes and it caused him to go into sin.
Last week we learned about the story of Achan, the son of Carmi.
Achan followed a three-step process in his sin.
It says, I saw, I coveted, I took. And then he stole what didn't belong to him.
Look at Matthew chapter 6. Look how important Jesus says your eyes are.
And this is right after he just finished in Matthew 5 telling you that if you look on a woman to lust after, you've committed adultery with her already in your heart.
It says in Matthew 6.22, the light of the body is the eye.
If therefore thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light.
Watch this, but if thine eye be evil, thy whole body shall be full of darkness.
That's a pretty strong statement, isn't it?
He said if your eye is evil, that will destroy your whole body.
He said your whole body will be full of darkness.
And he says if therefore the light that is in thee be darkness, how great is that darkness.
Turn to the book of Luke, just a few pages to the right, Matthew, Mark, Luke.
It looks like the eye is pretty important. He says the light of the body is the eye.
If therefore thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light.
But if thine eye be evil, thy whole body shall be full of darkness.
Look at Luke 11.33. He says pretty much the same thing in Luke, but he ties it in with something else.
He ties it in with your testimony and your preaching the gospel to others.
He says in verse 33, no man, when he had lighted a candle, puteth it in a secret place,
neither under a bushel, but on a candlestick, that they which come in may see the light.
The light of the body is the eye. You see how he's tying it in with letting your light shine before men?
He said the light of the body is the eye.
Therefore when thine eye is single, thy whole body also is full of light.
But when thine eye is evil, thy body also is full of darkness.
Take heed therefore that the light which is in thee be not darkness.
If thy whole body therefore be full of light, having no part dark, the whole shall be full of light,
as when the bright shining of a candle doth give thee light.
Basically what he's saying here is if you have an evil eye, it's going to darken your testimony to others too.
It's going to make you ineffective preaching the gospel.
Because when he talks about letting your light shine before men, he said that they may see your good works
and glorify your Father which is in heaven.
The opposite is true if you give you a bad testimony and ruin your presentation of the gospel and your testimony to others.
If you indulge your eyes in that which is wicked, it will ruin your testimony.
It will ruin the light shining that you should be doing.
Look at Ecclesiastes chapter 11.
Sorry I'm having you jump around the Bible a little bit here.
Go to Ecclesiastes. We're going to be in that neighborhood for a little while here.
Ecclesiastes chapter number 11.
And by the way, let me give you another point of why it's so important what you look at.
In Acts 4.20 Peter and James said, or Peter and John said,
we cannot speak but speak the things which we've seen and heard.
He said the things that you see and the things that you hear are eventually going to come out of your mouth.
He said we can't help but speak the things which we've seen and heard.
Jesus said something similar when he was listing off the works of the flesh
and the things that come out of the man in the file, the man in Mark 7.
He listed an evil eye. He listed adultery. He listed cupboards.
He said these come from within, from the heart and defile the man.
So he says in verse number 9 of Ecclesiastes 11,
Rejoice, O young man, in thy youth, and let thy heart cheer thee in the days of thy youth,
and walk in the ways of thy heart, and watch this, and in the sight of thine eyes,
but know thou that for all these things God will bring thee into judgment.
Therefore remove sorrow from thy heart, and put away evil from thy flesh,
for childhood and youth are vanity.
So the things that you look at, you're going to be brought into judgment for those things he said in the eyes of God.
He considers it a sin to look upon what's wrong.
That's why he said in 1 John 2.15, Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world.
If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him.
For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life is not of the Father, but is of the world.
Those are the three primary categories he's listing for sin.
I mean, one of the Ten Commandments, thou shalt not covet, is desiring what belongs to someone else.
And he said, thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's wife. That takes place in your heart.
He said, thou shalt not commit adultery, and he said if you look on her and lust after,
you've committed adultery with her already in your heart.
Look at Proverbs 27. Proverbs 27.
And while you're turning there, I'll read you Proverbs 23.
It says, Who hath woe, who hath sorrow, who hath contentions, who hath baffling, who hath wounds without cause, who hath redness of eyes?
They that tarry long at the wine, they that go to seek mixed wine.
Look not thou upon the wine when it is red, when it giveth its color in the cup, when it moveth itself aright.
At the last it biteth like a serpent and stingeth like an adder.
Thine eyes shall behold strange women, and thine heart shall utter perverse things.
You see how those two things go hand in hand? Beholding strange women, your heart uttering perverse things.
Because what goes into your eyes and what goes into your ears goes into your heart.
And it becomes a part of you. And then eventually it comes out of your mouth.
Eventually it controls your actions. And so we need to guard our eyes. We need to guard our ears.
Look at, where did I have your turn? Proverbs 27. Look at verse 20.
Hell and destruction are never full. And then look at this.
So the eyes of man are never satisfied.
You see what happens when you feed that appetite of feasting your eyes on the wrong things?
It's just going to get worse. It's never going to be satisfied, he said.
Go back to Proverbs 4. Proverbs chapter 4.
Your eyes will not be satisfied with seeing.
And it will be a downward spiral where you cannot cease from sin if you get in the habit of looking at bad things.
Look at Proverbs 4 verse 23. It says,
Keep thy heart with all diligence, for out of it are the issues of life.
He's saying, your heart is what controls the course of your life.
Your heart is the most important part of your body.
More important than the flesh or protecting the physical.
You know, you might put on a helmet when you ride a motorcycle.
You might put on other protective gear.
But he said, the thing that you ought to really be guarding in your life is your heart.
Protect your heart.
And he said, there are two entrances whereby the devil will enter your heart.
Through the eyes and through the ears.
He said, keep thy heart with all diligence.
He's saying, you have to be diligent. You have to make an effort and work on keeping your heart pure.
Guarding it. Look what he says next.
He says, keep thy heart with all diligence, for out of it are the issues of life.
Here's how you're going to do it. Verse 24.
Put away from thee a froward mouth.
That's a wicked mouth.
And he says, and perverse lips put far from thee.
He says, look, if you want to keep your heart, don't listen to perverted lips.
And don't listen to a wicked mouth.
Because he said, things that go into your ears are going to corrupt your heart.
But then he goes a step further. Verse 25.
He says, let thine eyes.
So he's explaining the two ways to keep your heart.
He said, you've got to protect your ears from hearing perverse things.
But then he says, let thine eyes look right on.
And let thine eyelids look straight before them.
What is he saying there?
He's saying you need to control your eyes.
Because in order to make them look straight eyes, control them.
Don't just let them wander is what he's saying.
Just go left, right, wander.
And you see, when you drive down the road, there are all kinds of billboards.
And a lot of them are wicked.
And you've got to look right on.
You've got to control your eyes and look straight on.
When you go to the airport and you're walking through the airport,
you know, all the magazine aisles and all the rack,
you know, what, the grocery store, the gas station.
You've got to make a point to look right on and look at that cashier,
look at the road, look at what you're doing,
and don't just let your eyes wander to every magazine,
to every advertisement, to every TV screen.
And I try to teach this to my children from a young age.
We don't have TV at our house, by the way.
We haven't had TV since any of our kids have been born.
We haven't had TV since we've been married.
We don't watch TV.
Because we don't want our eyes to be full of adultery.
We're just trying to keep our heart with all diligence.
That's all.
But because of this, our children, they don't watch TV.
They've never watched TV.
And so we'll go out somewhere and they'll see TV.
In a restaurant or places like that.
And it's like they're drawn to it like a magnet.
And whenever we go out to eat, we try to position it,
like we'll sit right under the TV so that you can't see it.
You know, we try to position ourselves.
But constantly you'll find that it's just like a magnet drawn to it.
And we're constantly telling them,
don't look at the TV, don't look at it, don't look at it, don't look at it.
You know, we're trying to teach them, you have to control your eyes.
Oh, I'll just do whatever's natural.
You know, you're just going to sit down and watch TV all day then.
You know, because you're naturally lazy.
You're naturally a sinner.
You naturally are going to light all the flashing lights and all the pictures.
And I try to teach my children.
And children listen up right now while I'm preaching all over the room.
Every child in the room wants to listen to me.
This is the thing about TV.
Because sometimes they'll look at it and it'll be something really interesting.
Right? You know, we're in a restaurant or something,
because that's pretty much the only place they're exposed to.
You know, there'll be an animal or something.
You know, there'll be a whale swimming, you know, or whatever.
Just some benign image.
But I try to tell them, I say, look, those images that are on there that you see
that are just maybe people playing a game of basketball
or maybe it's just a whale swimming or maybe it's just a man cooking or something.
You know, I said those images are there just to get you to look,
just to get you to watch it.
And then, boom, something bad is going to come up.
That's how the TV works.
You know, they get you sucked in with something that you like,
that's interesting, that's pleasing the eyes.
And then, boom, next thing you know, a commercial comes on
and it's all kinds of nudity, it's all kinds of filth,
it's all kinds of adultery.
And that is what's on TV.
You can try to justify it.
You can lie to yourself or lie to me about it.
I haven't watched TV in a long time, but have they cleaned it up?
Because I don't think that they have.
It's probably worse.
Because whenever I hear about it, it blows my mind
that the kind of stuff that people tell me is on TV is even on TV.
I can't even believe it, that it's some to that level.
But you see, there's someone who has an agenda of corrupting your life
and corrupting your morals, and his name is Satan.
That's right.
And he is the ruler of the darkness of this world, the Bible says,
and he has an agenda to try to get into your home.
Now, he doesn't want you to just have your home totally cleaned out
of anything weird, you know, just totally sanitary,
totally normal environment, just clean books and the Bible
and family and board games and fun.
No, he wants to creep in with it.
He wants to creep in with something where he can get into your heart.
And some of the best ways is going to be through the TV
and then also through a lot of websites that he can get you to go into.
Because a lot of times people, they won't have a TV,
but then they'll watch a lot of the same movies
and watch a lot of the same programs on the computer today.
Because, I mean, it seems like the technology is there
where pretty much you can watch.
I don't know if this is true or not,
but I think you probably pull up just about anything, right?
I mean, you probably pull up all the movies and TV on the Internet.
And so it's like the computer has become like a TV in a sense.
The difference is, of course, you can control the content.
There's a lot of legitimate use for the computer.
You can go to faithforwardbaptist.org.
That's a site that I recommend.
Other than that, no, I'm just kidding.
There's a lot of sites out there where you can do business,
you can do research, you can read good materials,
look stuff up in the Bible, whatever.
But you know what?
There's pretty much all the same garbage that's on TV.
It seems like you can find it on the computer if you want.
You can't let the devil have an inroad into your heart.
Don't let him in.
And he wants to get in there,
and the TV is the way that he has successfully gotten in
for the last 60 years.
Christians, 99% of Christians probably, if you look at it,
99% of those who are saved probably watch TV almost every day.
And basically they're just saying,
Devil, just show me what you want to show me today.
Teach me what you want to teach me today.
And our eyes have been taught adultery.
And we're to the point where we're desensitized to it.
We're desensitized to nudity.
We're desensitized to adultery because we just see it.
We're desensitized to sodomy
because we just look at it and look at it and look at it and look at it.
You just get used to it, just like Lot did,
where he just kept looking at Sodom every day
and pretty soon he was desensitized to it.
But we need to keep our heart with all diligence.
We need to make an effort to look right on,
to make a covenant with our eyes
that we will not look on what's wrong.
And let me tell you, when you see that image
and you take a second look, you've already committed sin.
God said in Proverbs 23,
Look not on the wine when it's red.
He's telling you, don't look at it.
Don't look at it.
You say, well, as long as I don't lust after it, then I'm okay.
That's what a lot of people will teach.
Even Christians today will teach in church.
They'll say, you know, it's okay to look at it, but just don't lust after it.
I've heard pastors so-called stand up and say,
you know, they watch all kinds of TV
and the nudity comes on and everything,
but they have a pure enough heart where they can handle it.
You know what?
Okay, let's say you can handle it,
which I don't believe that for one second
because the heart is deceitful above all things
and desperately wicked, who can know it?
He said, from within, from within the man.
Turn to Mark 7.
I'm going to show you this in Mark chapter 7.
This is Jesus Christ preaching.
He's preaching about the heart.
He said in verse number 20,
He said, that which cometh out of the man, that which cometh out of the man.
Verse 21, Mark 7, 21.
For from within, out of the heart of man,
out of the heart of man, proceed evil thoughts,
adulteries, fornications,
murders, thefts, covetousness, wickedness, deceit,
lasciviousness, an evil eye, blasphemy, pride, foolishness.
All these evil things come from within and defile the man.
He's saying they come from the inside
because we're born sinners, we're sinful creatures.
It's the flesh that causes us to sin.
And just because you got saved, yes, you now can walk in the Spirit,
but you still have the flesh.
And you still have these things inside you that can emanate from within.
And that's why we have to mortify the flesh and walk in the Spirit.
We have to put off the old man with his deeds and put off these things.
But they are inside. They're in the heart.
And so these people who pontificate and lift themselves up,
like, oh, I can handle it, you know, I would never do something.
It's within your heart.
And Jesus Christ is saying that comes from within, man,
because man is a sinner, because man is a sinful creature.
And so therefore, you can't handle it.
But let's say that you could handle it, just for sake of argument.
Go to Leviticus, chapter number 18.
Go to Leviticus 18. Let's say that you could handle it,
which I don't believe for one second that anyone can handle
watching all the bedroom scenes and all the nudity that's on TV
without having an adulterous thought or a lustful thought.
But what I want to tell you today is that even looking at it in the first place
is a sin in and of itself.
And this is what most Christians today have forgotten.
And that's why I'm preaching it today.
Because I have to stand up here and preach something
that should be so basic and fundamental,
it should be like me getting up here and saying, you know, the sky is blue.
Like, do I really have to get up here and say that the sky is blue
and I can prove it from the Bible?
Do I have to get up here and say that water makes you wet or something?
I have to get up here and tell you that the Pope is Catholic or something.
And the Bible here has all the answers, though,
in case you want to get down to that level of baseness
where you want to deny that looking at nudity is wrong.
And Christians today all over, so-called Christians,
and so-called Christian preachers and teachers
teach that it's okay to look at nudity
as long as you keep a pure mind while you're doing it.
And so we have to go back to the spiritual kindergarten
and teach you that looking on nudity is wrong
no matter what is going through your mind
because it's just intrinsically a sin in and of itself.
Nakedness is a sin on its own.
The Bible commands us to be clothed.
Now, let me read for you this scripture.
Before we get into Leviticus 18,
in Genesis 2.25, it says,
They were both naked, the man and his wife, and were not ashamed.
This is the first mention of nakedness in the Bible.
This is Adam and Eve. They're married.
It says they were both naked, the man and his wife,
and they were not ashamed.
Now, everywhere else in the Bible,
when he talks about being nude before the opposite gender,
it's associated with shame.
Now, they were not ashamed because within marriage,
nakedness is okay within marriage,
and that's why they were both naked and not ashamed.
But that is the only time that nudity is okay between the genders.
You as a man should never be nude in front of another woman and vice versa,
and if you look upon nudity, you're insane just by looking at it.
Let me read you some other scriptures.
Stay in Leviticus 18. I'll get there in a moment.
But he says in Exodus 28.42,
Thou shalt make them linen britches to cover their nakedness.
Talk about the priests.
From the loins even unto the thighs they shall reach.
Exodus 32.25,
When Moses saw the people were naked,
for Aaron had made them naked unto their shame among their enemies.
It says in verse number...
Well, let's go to Leviticus 18.
But all throughout the Bible, he associates nakedness with shame.
I've got some other verse, so I'm going to read in a moment on that.
But in Leviticus chapter 18,
and again, the first five books of the Bible, the Mosaic law,
he's giving a lot of basic things.
He gives a lot of government things.
And he also just gives a lot of basic morality on right and wrong.
He gives the Ten Commandments.
He gives laws on stealing.
He gives laws on murder.
He gives laws on adultery.
He gives laws on all these different things.
Well, here, he's basically explaining
that you should not have your nakedness uncoupled.
And he has all these different places.
He says in verse number six, he goes through this big litany.
None of you shall approach to any that is near or kin to him
to uncover their nakedness.
I am the Lord.
Verse seven...
She is thy mother.
Thou shalt not uncover her nakedness.
It is thy father's nakedness.
The nakedness of thy sister,
the daughter of thy father or the daughter of thy mother,
whether she be born at home or born abroad,
even their nakedness thou shalt not uncover.
of thy son's daughter, or of thy daughter's daughter,
even the nakedness, even their nakedness,
thou shalt not uncover, for theirs is thine own nakedness.
The nakedness of thy father's wife's daughter,
begotten of thy father, she is thy sister,
thou shalt not uncover her nakedness.
Thou shalt not uncover the nakedness of thy father's sister,
she is thy father's near kinswoman.
Thou shalt not uncover the nakedness of thy mother's sister,
for she is thy mother's near kinswoman.
Thou shalt not uncover the nakedness of thy father's brother,
thou shalt not approach unto his,
thou shalt not approach to his wife,
she is thy aunt.
I think what he's saying there is that by
uncovering your aunt's nakedness,
you've uncovered his nakedness because of the fact
that they're one flesh and so forth.
So he's basically there commanding against
seeing the nakedness of your aunt.
He says, thou shalt not uncover the nakedness
of thy daughter-in-law.
She is thy son's wife, thou shalt not uncover her nakedness.
Thou shalt not uncover the nakedness of thy brother's wife,
it is thy brother's nakedness.
Thou shalt not uncover the nakedness
of a woman and her daughter.
Neither shalt thou take her son's daughter
or her daughter's daughter to uncover her nakedness,
for they are her near kinswoman.
It is wickedness.
Neither shalt thou take a wife to her sister
to vex her to uncover her nakedness
beside the other in her lifetime.
Also, thou shalt not approach unto a woman
to uncover her nakedness as long as she is
put apart for her uncleanness.
Now, stop for a moment.
People will say to this, they'll say,
well, Pastor Anderson, that's just a euphemism
for committing a sinful line with that person
or carnally line with that person,
but hold on a minute.
That's not what it says, because look at the next verse.
It says in verse number 20,
moreover, thou shalt not lie carnally
with thy neighbor's wife to defile thyself with her.
Okay, now, if God wanted to say lie carnally,
couldn't he have said that all these other times?
But he chose to say uncover their nakedness
because of the fact, and you say,
well, that's just talking about an illicit act.
Yes, it is an illicit act to uncover someone's nakedness
that is not your wife or that is your close relative.
And that's listed there.
And look, this isn't the only scripture in the Bible.
This is just a place where he lists over and over again
that you're not supposed to be nude
before the opposite gender.
And he explains there that even if someone's
your family member, if it's not your wife,
you're not supposed to uncover their nakedness.
And he goes through and lists this whole litany.
And here's what I think is funny right here,
that we have a bunch of Bible preachers
and Bible theologians who don't know
what they're talking about today.
And they call it rightly dividing the word of truth
and pervert God's word there when God, you know,
the right division of the word of truth, okay,
is the division that God has laid out
of Old and New Testament.
But let me tell you something.
We don't throw out the Old Testament in this church.
Because are you gonna tell me,
and I've literally heard people say,
that if a commandment is not restated in the New Testament,
we don't have to follow it.
Do you really expect God to have restated everything again?
I mean, look, that was painful to read the first time.
You know what I mean?
You think he wants to restate that again?
By the way, let me just restate
that looking at your aunt naked is a sin.
But today these Bible preachers will literally get up
and say, well, we only go by the New Testament.
Okay, so you're telling me that it's okay to be nude
in front of your aunt and uncle?
Is that what you're saying?
Are you saying that it's okay to be nude
in front of your sister and nude
in front of all these different people?
Look, it's garbage.
God is saying here that it's wickedness
to be nude in front of the opposite gender.
He said, even if it's your family, it doesn't matter.
You should be nude in front of your wife only
or your husband only.
You shouldn't just be totally nude
in front of the opposite gender.
He said in Revelation 3, go to the New Testament,
Revelation chapter 3.
Revelation chapter number 3.
And we're having to lay down the basics here, okay,
because of the fact that we live in a society
that's so strange that they would question
the natural instinct that everyone knows,
that you hardly even have to teach your children
that once they're old enough to understand,
once they're out of diapers,
they automatically don't want to be seen naked
because it's an innate, instinctive thing
that God has given us to cover your nakedness, to wear.
That's why people pretty much wear clothes
all over the world.
I mean, maybe some weird satanic tribe somewhere
that's a cannibal is naked,
but almost everywhere in the world,
any culture, even the most godless atheists wear clothes.
I mean, the most God-hating atheist today
in Phoenix, Arizona wears clothes
because it's just obvious.
So yeah, God doesn't necessarily go to painful details
in the New Testament.
But let me ask him, how many times does God
have to say something before it's true?
Just once, okay?
Look at Revelation chapter 3.
Look what he says in verse number 17.
He says, because thou sayest I am rich
and increased with goods and have need of nothing,
and knowest not that thou art wretched and miserable
and poor and blind and naked.
Now let me ask something.
Is it possible to not know that you're naked
according to the Bible?
He said right here, you don't even know
that you're wretched and miserable
and poor and blind and naked.
I counsel thee to buy of me gold tried in the fire,
that thou mayest be rich, and white raiment,
that thou mayest be clothed, and watch this,
and that the shame of thy nakedness do not appear.
Now God is saying here that the shame of your nakedness
should not appear.
Isn't that what it said?
Look at Revelation chapter 16.
It says in Revelation 16, 15.
Behold, I come as a thief.
Blessed is he that watcheth and keepeth his garments,
lest he walk naked and they see his shame.
So you see how throughout the Bible
it's associated with this?
He says if you walk naked, they'll see your shame.
He said don't let the shame of your nakedness appear.
Be clothed.
Put clothes on.
Don't uncover the nakedness of others
that you should not be uncovering.
Only your wife's nakedness, only your husband's naked.
Within marriage, that's it.
He said in Nahum 3.5, you don't have to turn there.
Behold, I am against thee, saith the Lord of hosts,
and I will discover thy skirts upon thy face,
and I will show the nations thy nakedness
and the kingdoms thy shame.
So you see how it's just associated throughout the Bible.
Now look, isn't a person naturally,
if they're caught naked, aren't they ashamed, naturally?
Just, you know, you're going to be naturally ashamed.
God says the man and his wife were not ashamed.
But everywhere else, if people are
exposed to the opposite gender, they're going to be ashamed.
That's just the normal reaction.
But you see, in Jeremiah, we'll not
turn there for the sake of time.
But he said that they had become so wicked,
they were not at all ashamed.
Neither could they blush.
He said they committed war on them.
He said they're not even ashamed anymore.
And that's getting to the place where we are in our society,
where people are not ashamed.
And they don't even think that nudity is a sin today.
And they'll watch TV.
Nudity's there.
Doesn't bother them, right?
Well, if it doesn't bother you, sir, you're just telling us,
hey, it doesn't bother me, because it doesn't
bother me to disobey God.
It doesn't bother me what the Bible says.
I'm not going to let God's word bother me
when I want to look at nudity.
And the fact that somebody could say, I can look upon
and just have all clean thoughts is a lie in the first place.
Because Jesus said, out of your heart is an evil eye.
Now, go to Titus.
Go to Titus, chapter 115.
Now, here we're talking about unsaved people.
Because look, we know for sure.
Because you can say, well, a Christian
is righteous and godly.
And look, a Christian who's saved, they do have the new man.
But the flesh is still there.
The unsaved flesh is still with them, the unregenerate flesh.
And they have to choose to walk in the spirit
and not fulfill the lesson left.
Here's a verse about unsaved people.
This is about Jews who did not believe
on the Lord Jesus Christ.
That's the context in the book of Titus.
And these Jews were basically considering
the Cretans as unclean.
You remember later, Peter would get a vision
where God taught him not to call any man common or unclean,
not to look upon a certain race of people
and say that they were common or unclean.
Because they had this Jew worship
where they thought that they were better
than all the other nations.
And that they were somehow righteous and pure
just by virtue of being a Jew.
And by the way, Brother Gary and I,
remember how a couple months ago I knocked on the door
of United States Congressman Harry Mitchell?
And I gave him the gospel.
I gave him some scriptures.
And he rejected it.
And then Arizona rejected him.
He's not the Congressman anymore.
But anyway, we knocked his door a couple months ago.
Brother Gary and I were out soloing this week.
And we knocked on the door of, this time
Garrett was doing the talking, not me.
We knocked on the door of State Senator Shapiro.
What's his first name?
Does anybody know?
Robert?
David Shapiro.
Thank you.
This guy's not as well known because he's just
the State Senator.
But we knocked on the door of State Senator David Shapiro.
And we knocked upon his door.
And we thought it might be him because we
saw all the campaign signs stacked up in his driveway.
And he's a Democrat Senator.
And he actually was re-elected this last time,
unlike Gary Mitchell.
But we knocked on his door.
And Brother Garrett was doing the talking.
And he came to the door.
And sure enough, I saw him because I'd
seen all the campaign literature.
Because I live in Tempe.
So I've gotten his face tons of times in the mail.
And he comes to the door.
And Brother Garrett tries to give him the gospel.
And he said, well, I'm Jewish.
And the name Shapiro, you can tell that that's his descent
also.
And he said, well, I'm Jewish.
And Brother Garrett said, do you know for sure
if you've died today, you'd go to heaven?
And he said, absolutely.
And he said, well, how do you know
or what must we do to be safe?
And he said, well, I'm Jewish.
And all of God's people are going
to go to unto Abraham's blism, is what he said.
Because we're God's people.
We're going to go to Abraham's blism.
So here's a Jew who thought that he's on his way to heaven
simply by virtue of the fact that he's a Jew.
Is that not what he told us?
He told us, that's how I know I'm going to heaven.
Because I'm one of God's people.
And we're all going back to Abraham's blism.
You're not going to Abraham's blism, David Shapiro.
You're going to the blism of the earth
unless you believe on the Lord Jesus Christ.
And you say, oh, you're not loving him.
We're the ones who went and knocked on his door
and tried to give him the gospel because we loved him.
How are you doing?
He tried to preach the gospel unto him.
And so he's not exactly someone that we would like at all.
I mean, really not like.
I mean, he's a total abortion, you know.
I mean, promoting filthy, liberal, socialist,
communist devil.
And we still gave the gospel unto him.
We still tried to preach it to him.
Did we say, oh, let's not knock this door?
No, we went there, and we knew it was him.
And yet we tried to give him the gospel.
We tried to preach the gospel to him, but he's going to hell.
He needs to get saved.
Being a Jew doesn't mean anything
when it comes to salvation.
But let's go back to this.
He's warning these people who have this David Shapiro
mentality.
He's talking about these people who basically, they
think that they're somehow special because Abraham
is their father.
And basically, he's saying, not giving heed to Jewish faith.
These are the ones who ripped on every creation
just because they're a creation.
They must be wicked.
We shouldn't have that attitude, by the way,
about any group of people.
We shouldn't say, oh, Mexicans are this,
or all black people are this, or all Chinese people are like,
they all eat rice.
No, I'm just kidding.
We shouldn't just label groups of people as wicked.
Because here he says, the Christians are always liars.
And Paul said he should rebuke those people to their face.
They shouldn't be saying that about a whole nation.
You know what I mean?
Just lumping them all in.
But he said in verse 14, not giving heed
to Jewish fables and commandments of men
that turn from the truth.
Under the pure, all things are pure.
But unto them that are defiled and unbelieving
is nothing pure.
Did you get that?
Let me read that again.
But unto them that are defiled and unbelieving
is nothing pure.
But even their mind and conscience is defiled.
Is it possible for an unsaved person
to have a clean mind, a pure mind, and everything's pure?
No, it's not possible.
It can't happen.
Now you say, well, what about a believer?
See, a believer can either walk in the Spirit
or walk in the flesh.
But let me ask you this.
If you're in the process of committing the sin,
of purposely looking upon nudity,
what do you think you're doing at that moment?
Walking in the Spirit or walking in the flesh?
While you're in the process of disobeying God,
you're in the flesh.
And so are you going to be able to keep a pure mind
while in sin?
No.
Because the only way to keep a pure mind
is to walk in the Spirit, to put on the new man,
to put on the Lord Jesus Christ.
And that's something we have to do every day.
Nobody's perfect.
Everybody's a sinner.
The Bible said, and this is coming from the mouth
of the greatest apostle, John,
the one that was right with Jesus, the right-hand man.
He said, if we say that we have no sin,
we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us.
So none of us can say,
Job also said the same thing.
We don't have to try that, but he said,
who can say I'm pure, I'm free from sin?
Even in the Old Testament, Ecclesiastes 7.20,
there's not a just man upon the earth
to do with good and sin at naught.
We're all sinners.
None of us is perfect.
But especially an unsaved person
is not gonna look upon nudity with a clean mind, are they?
No.
And yet today, we think that nudity is not a sin
and we accept it and we allow it.
And look, back to the gist of the sermon.
What was the sermon called?
Having eyes full of adultery.
He said, if you look on a woman to lust after her,
you've committed adultery with her already in her heart.
You say, well, what if you look on her
but you're not lusting?
You've still committed the sin
of looking upon the nakedness,
of seeing the nakedness of the opposite gender
that does not belong to you.
My wife belongs to me.
She doesn't belong to you.
She doesn't belong to anyone else
and no one else's wife belongs to me.
And yet all kinds of young people today
are looking on the screen
and those women have been married several times.
So you're definitely committing adultery
and you lust after them.
And notice he said he's committed adultery
with her already in his heart.
You know, women, ladies, you need to make sure
that you dress in a way that's not inviting the adultery.
Because if you're walking around
with your nakedness uncovered,
you're basically inviting men to commit adultery
with you already in their heart.
Sounds like you're involved in it.
If you're gonna wear, as the Bible says
in Proverbs chapter five, the attire of a harlot,
the clothing of a harlot.
You say, well, what is the attire of a harlot?
Do we need a history lesson?
I'm sure you can figure it out.
It's obviously revealing clothing
that shows your nakedness, obviously.
And the Bible says that in order to have
your nakedness covered in Exodus 28, 42,
you should have from your loins to your thighs covered.
So having your thighs exposed,
according to the Bible, is nakedness.
And you see, God draws a different line
from what we draw on what nakedness is.
We might draw a line and say,
well, somebody think we have no clothes on.
Well, what if they're wearing a wristband?
You know, are they naked?
Yes, they are.
Because there's gotta be a standard
more than just wearing nothing as nakedness.
And that standard is laid out in the Bible,
and God explains that from your loins and your thighs,
He said that's nakedness.
And if that's what you're looking upon,
if you see a woman that has her thighs exposed,
you should not look upon her.
Look right on.
Avert your eyes.
You know, you see a woman in short shorts, short skirt.
You see the women that are scantily clad,
whether it's in the flesh or whether it's on a billboard,
whether it's on, you know, you shouldn't look at,
you can't just sit there and look at it and say,
well, my mind's pure.
You're a liar.
Quit looking at nakedness today.
Don't have eyes that are full of adultery.
And we need to protect our heart, men,
because when you look at these images, they stick with you.
You ever have an image in your mind
you couldn't get it out of your mind?
Nope.
Because things go in and they don't go out, don't they?
You ever have stupid songs stuck in your head
that you hate?
I like it.
And just keep playing it.
I don't want to get the stupid song out of my mind.
But that's what it is, to have a heart.
Things come in and they stay there.
That's why God says the answer is not to get things out.
You can't get it out.
He said the answer is to keep it.
Protect it.
Guard it in the first place.
Keep thy heart with all diligence.
And look, today everybody wants to make all the exceptions
to God's rules.
And they'll say, well, you know, I'm totally against nudity.
You know, I'm totally against being scantily clad
and not dressing right.
But then all of a sudden when they go to the beach,
all bets are off.
You know, all of a sudden the bikini goes on,
the bathing suit goes on.
Wait a minute.
Where is that in scripture that you must be clothed,
you must be modestly clothed, ladies,
unless you're at the beach.
Then you can put on your underwear and go swimming.
And that's really all it is, just a colorful underwear.
No, Pastor, it's a bathing suit.
Well, you can call it what it is,
but if it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck,
it's a duck.
And today we're being desensitized today to nudity.
And we're being taught, we're being brainwashed
that it's OK.
And it gets you used to it.
Because if a woman walked in here today in a bikini,
it would be shocking.
People would flip out.
People would be upset.
And I'm sure that at the beach it probably started out
that way decades ago.
But now if you went to the beach,
nobody will raise an eyebrow.
Because it's become acceptable.
It used to be that no girl would walk down
the street in short shorts.
It used to be that even the public school system,
even in the 1970s, has standards of a knee-length skirt
and all these rules about clothing.
And yet the girls today can walk into school
in a pair of short shorts.
They can wear whatever obscene clothing.
They can have their lowrider-type pants on.
Because we have no standards anymore.
Because we're slowly, slowly being brainwashed
and desensitized.
And then we're being taught that there's all these exceptions.
All these exceptions.
Like, for example, you go swimming.
It's OK to be good.
And then there are also a lot of women
who will go to a male doctor.
They could go to a female doctor.
There's plenty of female doctors and midwives.
They'll go to get their private parts examined
by a male doctor.
Now look, you say, how would you bring that up?
How is it that most Christian women do that?
And you're mad that I'm bringing it up?
I'm mad that this is considered acceptable
in Christian circles.
And today, we need to get back to the shame and decency
and modesty and propriety of the Bible of saying, look,
we're not just going to expose ourselves on the beach.
We're not going to expose ourselves in the doctor's
office.
And you know, I remember when I was a kid,
I had to go to some female nurse one time.
I'd been injured.
And they'd take me and some female nurse,
and I'd hold on your panty.
And I did it at the time, but you know what?
I was ashamed of it.
And it was embarrassing, it was humiliating.
And afterward, I realized it was wrong.
And I should have just said, no.
Get a man in here.
I mean, the decency used to be that men
would be present with men during situations
where that was necessary, when you've
got to have a syringe stab you in the backside.
Wouldn't it have been more proper,
like a man with a woman, so that you're not
exposing your nakedness to the opposite gender
and committing sex?
But today, we just have no decency.
It's just considered normal, just to go in there,
hold on your panty, whatever.
That's still a human being, and they're probably not saved.
And therefore, they probably do have a wicked mind.
And yet, ladies will go in there and say,
oh, he's a really nice guy.
And they'll get all their exams done.
They'll get all their prenatal checkups done.
And no, he doesn't think a bad dog.
He sees it every day.
Is that what the Bible taught?
You see it every day, it gets better, right?
Well, you know what?
We stink at seeing it every day, too, in our society.
And it's made us worse and worse and worse as a nation
from seeing it every day.
It's made our nation become more wicked, not better, not cleaner,
not more righteous.
And this kind of preaching isn't popular.
But I read a whole chapter of the Bible.
That chapter's probably not that popular, either,
in Leviticus chapter 18.
It's probably not what's being preached
at the successful many churches of America today.
They're probably not going verse by verse through Leviticus 18
today.
But it is in the Bible.
It is God's Word.
It is something God.
I think I did read about 50 scriptures today, at least.
I don't think that I pulled any of this out of my hat.
I'm not making any of this up.
This is all Bible preaching.
And today, we have to the point now where,
not only do we make an exception for the beach,
and not only do we make an exception for the doctor,
but now the government's little goons at the airport
make an exception for them.
And today, we have government goons at the airport,
starting this month, November 1st,
that will view you through a naked body scanner
just when you're trying to fly through the airport.
My mom, my mother, my mother was asked
to go through a naked body scanner a few weeks ago.
And thankfully, this was before November 1st,
before they started punishing you for not going
through the naked body scanner.
Now if you don't go through the naked body,
by doing a very invasive pat-down,
and I'm not even going to go into what it is,
it's so horrible that I'm not even going to bring it up.
It's so obscene and filthy what they do.
So this was before that, thank God.
She walked up and she said, what is that?
And my mom is a flight attendant, by the way.
So she goes to airports all the time.
They said, oh, just go right through here, ma'am.
They don't tell me anything.
It's just step right here, go forward, that, yeah.
And she's like, well, what is it?
She's like, is that a naked body scanner?
Because I had taught her about it.
And so she's like, is that a naked body scanner?
And they said, oh, well, yeah, you know,
because that's not exactly what it says on the literature,
the product literature.
That's not exactly what the official name of it is, you know.
And she said, you know, is that a naked body scanner?
And they said, oh, yeah, you know.
And she said, I prefer, and she said it as loud as she could.
So everybody here said, I prefer to be seen
with my clothes on, thank you very much.
All opt out, you know, and she wouldn't go through it.
She didn't do it.
But today, people are just lining up
and going through the thing.
They're not even being warned what it is.
And we're told it's for our safety, it's for our protection.
You know, well, who's gonna protect us from the protector?
You know, who's gonna safeguard us from them?
I mean, when they're sitting in a booth somewhere,
and by the way, the booth is hundreds
and hundreds of feet away.
They're sitting in a booth somewhere
just viewing people go through,
just viewing their nude body on the screen.
And that's really what's happening.
That's disgusting.
And it's being taught that it's necessary.
You know, well, you've gotta do it.
You know, you've gotta just submit to it.
And you know what it really is?
It's just they're trying to humiliate us.
Because, you know, nudity is a shame, isn't it?
Isn't that what the Bible teaches?
And so they're trying to humiliate you
by just bringing you down.
You know, first you have to put off your shoes
from off your feet, because the place
where I'm gonna stand is this holy ground.
You know, then you have to go through this,
yeah, be humiliated.
You know, and be patted down in a way
that's humiliating to you.
And it's all part of the devil's plan
to just get you used to being violated,
get you used to being nude,
get you used to all these exceptions
and all this situational ethics and situational morality.
No, God is a God of absolutes.
He's the God of absolutes.
What's right is always right,
and what's wrong is always wrong.
And we shouldn't have these situational ethics
where we have all these exceptions
for why nudity's okay,
and all these exceptions why it's okay to look at nudity.
We as Christians, that's the world for you,
and I'll close with this,
we as Christians need to have our own standards
and not let the world give us their standards.
You know what I mean?
Just forget what the TV says,
forget what your school teacher says.
Well, you know, the evil terrorists are gonna get you
if you don't go through the naked body scanner.
You know, the evil terrorists are gonna get you
if you don't get patted down.
You know, and this isn't a normal pat-down, folks.
This is a brand, and you say, well, I've been patted down.
I've been patted down about 10 times at the airport
and there was nothing to it.
This just started November 1st, folks.
They're taking it to a whole new level.
It used to just be a quick little, you know, no big deal.
I've been, we've all been through it.
We've been patted down at the airport, just a normal pat.
It wasn't anything weird, was it?
Is this normal?
They'd have a man come over and he goes,
okay, you're good to go, no big deal.
Not anymore, folks.
They're taking it to a whole new level.
It's disgusting.
And all kinds of little school teachers
and all kinds of little government perverts
are out there educating everyone, telling them,
it's okay, it's normal.
You know, it's normal for them to touch you
if they're a doctor, if they work for the government,
or if they, you know, pretty soon everybody's gonna work
for the government the way things are going.
You know what I mean?
And so we need to just decide,
hey, I'm gonna have my own standards.
I'm not gonna let the world give me their standards.
And if you think I've preached something wrong
from the Bible this morning, then you know what?
You study it yourself and you tell me
where the Bible condones this stuff.
But I've studied it, I've looked it up,
I've studied it for years.
I've read the Bible many times and I've seen over and over
that the teachings on nakedness and they're pretty clear.
Keep it covered.
It's only for marriage for it to be uncovered.
Keep it covered before the opposite gender, that is.
And so we need to get in the Bible
and decide what we believe and decide, number one,
we're gonna keep our nakedness covered.
We're gonna keep our clothes on, especially the ladies.
You say, well, this sermon was more geared at the men.
You know, you're right,
it was probably more geared at the men.
But the ladies can take something from this too
and say, you know what?
I'm gonna make sure I'm not a stumbling block,
make sure that I'm not causing someone
to commit adultery with me in their heart,
so I'm gonna dress properly and be clothed in such a way
that is not gonna excite people to take a look at me.
So number one, stay covered.
And number two, don't set any wicked thing before your eyes.
Don't have eyes full of adultery, gentlemen.
Because one day, young man,
you'll regret looking at the images
that you might be looking at right now.
You know what I mean?
You're looking at them and you think it's no big deal.
And I'm not just talking about pornography.
I mean, you don't just go
to looking at pornography overnight, folks.
It starts out with the pornography
that's played on television.
Starts out with the pornography on a magazine rack.
According to God, that is pornography.
And that's where it starts.
And if you're indulging in that stuff,
you better nip it in the blood now
and decide, yeah, I'm gonna keep my heart
with all diligence,
because I don't wanna become a pervert someday.
I don't wanna become a wicked person
that cannot cease from sin.
I don't wanna wait until my eyes are full of adultery
and realize that I have a problem with my eyes.
I'm gonna look right on.
I'm gonna make a covenant with my eyes
and keep my heart and mind pure
by not looking upon wickedness.
Let's bow our heads and have a word of prayer.
Father, please just help this sermon
to sink down into our ears, dear God.
Not exactly a fun sermon,
but it's a necessary sermon today, dear God.
We're living in perilous times.
We're living in strange days.
And we need these reminders, dear God,
to keep ourselves pure,
to keep ourselves covered and not look at unity,
to not just let our eyes wander
and look at every female that's out there, dear God.
Help us to keep ourselves clean and pure
and unto our wife or husband only, dear God.
And we love you, and in Jesus' name we pray, amen.