The Heart Of The Matter | Cornerstone Church | Pastor TJ McConahay

I did not plan that. That was a wild that was a wild sigh in this room. We get to talk about specifically what Jesus has to say about adultery. And so before we jump into all of that, what I wanna talk to you guys about is I wanna tell you a story It's my one of my favorite stories to tell.

I met the girl of my dreams when I was still a teenager. Okay? I came into church late. I'd known Jesus just for a little bit of time and there was this beautiful girl on stage and she was singing to Jesus, but kinda to me too, you know? And

it was awesome. My buddy was there. I said, what's her name? He said, her name is Britt. And I said, I'm going to have a massive crush on Britt from here on out. He looked at me and he said, me too.

I was, there's a problem with me pursuing Britt at this time. I had just graduated from high school and I was pursuing youth ministry and I did My first job in youth ministry was to be my church's youth intern and youth intern is like the coolest job in the world. You play guitar

and halo and nerf and then you preach like once a month. It's great. It's a great youth pastor and training job, but here's the thing is, I was still a teenager. I was just graduated, 18 years old and Britt was 16 years old and she was still a student in the youth ministry and my youth group had this crazy policy

that you weren't allowed to date students in the ministry if you worked for that ministry. Now you need to understand, I know why that's a problem now. Okay. I get that. I get that, but the heart wants what the heart wants. Yeah. So you know, I just kept letting this friendship develop

and it got to a point like six months into my internship where I wanted to date Brit. So I went to my youth pastor with this dilemma. I told him, I said, I want to be youth pastor. I love my job here, but I also really like this girl named Britt and I want to date her and he repeated to me the policy

and he said, you know, but I also could see that you guys should be together And he goes, so if you wanna quit to date Brit, you can do that. And so I said, okay, well then I quit. He said, Joe, just like that. And I go, yeah. Yeah. Just like that. He goes, well, do you know if she wants to be your girlfriend? I

don't actually know about that. He goes, well, you're not getting your job back if she says no. So now I'm nervous. But I decide I'm gonna take her on this beautiful walk

and I'm gonna talk to her and you know, I'm not like like the thing that I have in life is I'm a good talker and I'm kind of funny. Okay? That's what I've gotten my whole life has been about those things. So I decide the way that I'm going to land Britt is I'm gonna talk her into it. I'm gonna walk with her

and I'm gonna preach a sermon to her about our love And I had this whole thing planned. I was like, God is up here and me and you were down here and we're far apart from each other and we're far apart from God. But if we move closer to God, we're also moving closer

together, you know? Had this whole triangle thing built out to it. And but the problem is is I'm an auditory learner which means that when I'm thinking through something in my head, the words tend to come out of my mouth. I talk to myself and I used to think I was crazy but then my kids started doing it so I realized it's hereditary, you know?

And so we get out there, I'm super nervous and I'm rehearsing in my head as we're walking in silence. Here's the problem is, it's not really silence. It's coming out of my mouth in like a mumbled tone.

So from my perspective, it's just a sweet little walk in silence. From her perspective, I'm nervous, I'm sweaty and I'm mumbling.

And

I look over and she looks scared. Guys, I don't have a job anymore. Okay? Okay. This this is So I'm like, okay, well better launch into this sermon and I start and I'm so nervous that the words that are coming out of my mouth, they don't make any sense.

I can't connect words to meanings right now and she looks even more scared right now. She's probably looking, this is a psychopath or he's having a stroke, you know? Those are the two things and so we get to the end of the walk, it has not gone well and I realized I've just got to send it

And I looked at her in the eyes at the end, I said, well, I guess what I'm trying to get to is will will you be my girlfriend? And she said, yes. She did. And then I looked at her like, what is wrong with her now, you know? This is this was not a good showing on my part. I've been dating that girl ever since.

I have we've been together for we've been married now nineteen years.

It's been a beautiful, beautiful thing. And the reason I tell you guys that story is this, because most of time I get up here and I tell you a story and you can hear a theme in most of my stories. Most of my stories are this, that God can take broken things

and he can turn them into beautiful things. He can heal the broken. That's been my story. But God gave me this wonderful woman to be married to. And my marriage and my dating life was never broken. And so there's another point that we have to make, which is this, if we do it God's way, things don't have to be broken.

They can just be beautiful. They can just be beautiful.

Now with that as the backdrop, I wanna launch into the text. This is what Jesus says about adultery and this is his plot twist for the day. He says this, Matthew five twenty seven through 28, we're gonna go all the way through 30 today and it says this, you have heard that it was said, you shall not commit adultery.

This is the plot change, but I tell you anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart. Jesus gives the most strictest version interpretation of adultery and so why does Jesus do this? Is he trying to make it hard on everyone? The reason is this, the religious leaders of that day

controlled people through a veiled sense of righteousness. It wasn't real righteousness, but on the outside they looked pretty good and so they could go around saying, I didn't commit adultery. I never murdered anyone

and so they could just on the outside they look better than everyone else and then they put heavy weights on the backs of everyone else and they control people through it. So the first thing Jesus is doing is he's he's taking apart that sense, that facade of righteousness

from the Pharisees of the day and he's saying, you are no better than anyone else because even if you have lusted, you are well on your way to the act of adultery. That's that's the that's the that's kind of the first thing

that Jesus is doing but but he's also doing something else which is kind of crazy here is he's pointing to the start of where all sin begins. The origin story which is the heart. I want you to hear this. The first step that you will take away from your marriage is a step that you take in your heart.

The first step that you take away from your marriage is step that you will take in your heart. You will let your heart hover on a social media profile of somebody who is not your spouse. You will laugh with them at the late night work thing. You'll start to work your way towards this adultery long before

the act is ever committed and so what do we do with that? I was scrolling on Instagram the other day and I was My algorithm is mostly like boats and fishing and baseball. Okay? That's what it is. So when something new kind of pops up on my thing, it's kind of jarring for me, but what popped up was a call in

radio show for people with bad marriages. Basically, like his whole shtick is that he's like the Dave Ramsey, but instead of that, instead of people having bad finances, these people have bad marriages. And so this lady calls in and she says, I have to tell you something, have never told my husband this,

but a little more than a year ago, I started an affair. And at first I just thought it would be just a little of fun and it would just be something that I kind of just did and then it would just be like a one night stand and then I can just go right back. But I have to tell you that I didn't realize

what I would feel towards this other person. And now I've developed these really deep feelings towards this man who is not my husband. And then she said this, so now I'm in this crazy spot where I love two men. And the guy jumps in and says, don't do that. Stop. You do not love your husband. You don't, and in fact,

you probably haven't loved your husband for a while. You might love the idea of him, you might love the protection and the provision, you might love him as a father, but this is not how you love him and if you're honest with yourself, you left your husband long before a year ago. And you know what she said? She goes,

you're absolutely right. What's going on in that real, what's happening? He's doing the same thing that Jesus is doing. He's pointing back to this place where adultery starts. And it's just a slight movement in the direction that is not your marriage. And so we look at this and we can go, we can go one of two ways with it.

We can hear the hard teaching of Jesus and we can say, well, hey, if I've already committed adultery, the second my heart starts going that direction, what's the big deal if I just do the full thing? Well, ask your spouse if that's, there's a difference there. But Jesus isn't trying to

make it easier for you to sin. He's trying to make you understand where your sin comes from. So here's the other point. The first step that you will take back towards your marriage is also a step of the heart. The principle is this, you've got to guard your heart.

Proverbs four says it this, above everything else, guard your heart. Jeremiah is funny because he kind of says the same thing to start off his little idea about the heart. He says, above everything else, the heart is deceitful in every way. So wait, wait, wait, wait, we're supposed to guard this thing that wants to trick us.

We're supposed to protect something that wants to get us lost and that's absolutely true. One year at summer camp, our camp cook brought a dog to camp and this dog existed as a joke. I'm actually pretty sure we bred this dog as a joke. It's called a basset hound. Have you guys ever seen these things?

It's got all the things of a hound dog but a low rider suspension. Its belly drags on the ground. Okay? But it doesn't know that it's a joke.

It thinks it's a hound dog. Now here's the thing is hound dogs are working dogs and they're so so good when you put them to a task because they have this incredible sense of smell. They could sniff out bombs and drugs and they're super good for hunting, but when you have one as a pet, they're just menaces

because what they do is they just follow their nose, they get lost, they find something dead and they either eat it or roll in it and then they and then and then they head off to the next thing. So this whole week, this dog, his name is Smokey,

he just wander off into the forest and we had to stop our camp with a 100 kids and go looking for Smokey and pretty soon what ends up happening is everyone in the back of their heads, they start keeping an eye on Smokey because if he starts heading for the forest, you gotta go get him and bring him back. Guys,

we got hound dog hearts. We do. They want to chase things that are not good for them. They want they want to go after things as we have to learn above all else to guard them. What does that look like? How do we guard our hearts? You want to see how I guard my heart? I pointed in the direction that it ought to go.

Can I show you guys a picture? This is this this is my family right here.

I love, I love these guys. This is my whole world right here. If you, if you on your right there, you'll see Max. Max is 14 years old. Okay? His whole life is girls, cars and baseball and Jesus fits in there somewhere. Okay? Yesterday, Max had a great game. He pitched a perf Not perfect game, a no hitter and he got his team

into the city championship. Pretty awesome deal. Pretty awesome kid. I love him. So what I do with this heart that wants to wander is I point it towards him. I think about him. The next, the next is there. You follow it down there at the bottom right there. That's that's Macy in the middle.

Macy is our middle child and she is a natural born leader.

Okay? She is the head of every friend group she's ever been a part of. She organizes and she's done this since birth. She was like boss baby from the very, very beginning, and we're pretty sure, Britt and I are pretty sure that she's either gonna end up being president or like a mob boss. Those two things, maybe both

in a way, but Macy just tried her hand at acting. She acted in one play, she got like a minor role and then she acted in one more and she was the starring role just after doing just two plays. Man, I love

love Macy. And so what I do with the hound dog heart that wants to wander is I point it towards her. The next you see that big head right there on the bottom right there, that's Maverick. He's nine. He's a giant. He's always been six to six inches to a foot taller than everybody else in his class.

He is what you would call a nine year old frat boy. K? He doesn't understand why everyone wears shirts. He's always looking for the party and he loves baseball because his older brother loves baseball. Yesterday, he had his playoff game too. You know what happened? His team was this is no joke. His team was down four runs

with two outs and they're about to lose, but here's the thing is Maverick came up with the bases loaded and that big dude swung at the first pitch and he launched it 20 feet over center field for a grand slam to tie his his team. Right? He sent it into extra innings and his team ended up losing, unfortunately,

but it wasn't because of Maverick's effort. Guys, I love that kid. And so what I do with a heart that wants to wander away is I point it towards him. At the top middle right there, that's the queen of our family. That's my wife. I love her so much. We've been together through so many things.

I have a million stories I'd love to tell her about her, but I would just start crying in every way. But what you need to hear is this, I love her. And I point my heart, which wants to wander towards her. Why? Because I need to protect it. What you need to know is this, Satan is after families.

He wants to destroy every member of this group up here and he knows that he has a silver bullet that if he can, if he can get one of those two parents to commit adultery, then he can blow up the planet to which my kids are living and all of the blessings go away and what is installed is doubt and despair

and pain and worry.

Satan wants to destroy this whole thing.

So what do we have to do? We got to guard our heart. What you need to know is this, is that when there's infidelity in a marriage, 60% of those marriages don't last another five years. Satan has formed a weapon called adultery and it prospers 60% of the time. I'm going to say it again guys.

God gave me this wonderful marriage and this wonderful family. It's like the one piece of my life that hasn't been broken and he's repeated to me over and over and over again is, is not everything has to be broken and restored. If we do it God's way, it can just stay a blessing. It can just stay beautiful.

Men, can you hear me?

Stop positioning your hearts towards Instagram models. They don't want you anyway.

Point your heart towards the blessing that you have in our family and I believe that God, God will build up your family. He will make it a fortress and no weapon formed against it will prosper.

Let's jump back into teaching because Jesus starts saying some pretty crazy things, okay? In verse 29, he says this,

if your right eye causes you to stumble, gouge it out and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one part of your body than the whole thing be thrown into hell and if your right hand causes you to stumble, cut it off and throw it away. Okay, wild teaching.

This would have been a massive plot twist to everyone listening to Jesus. This would have woke up the crowd at that point. Did he just say poke your eye out? Yes. So he said, no. Now Jesus has a surface teaching, but then he has this beautiful veiled teaching here. He gets a double teaching moment for Jesus.

The first is this, yeah, the way we apply this is the things that you access sin through, you should get rid of. If your smartphone causes you to sin, maybe you should get a flip phone, you know? If Instagram causes you to sin, maybe you should delete it, You know, if your friends

cause you to sin, maybe you should get new friends. If alcohol or drugs or those things, throw them away, get rid of them because they're going to lead you down a path of destruction.

And of course, that's absolutely true and I believe it wholeheartedly, but there's this kind of veiled teaching in here that's even more beautiful than you thought, okay? And it goes back to what we just talked about with our hound dog hearts that are prone to wander. You have to ask the question,

when has an eyeball ever caused you to sin? An eyeball doesn't have a will, it doesn't have desires, it doesn't have a heart, it's an agent of your desire, it goes where your heart goes. Your hand can't cause you to sin.

It goes where your heart causes you to sin, it goes where your desire is. So if you're gonna cut out the thing that's gonna stop you from sinning, it's going to be your heart. And if you do that, it's good night. So what's the point?

The point is what Jesus has been saying all along, what the prophets have been saying all along. Way back in Ezekiel 36 through 26, it says this, I will give you a new heart and put in you a new spirit. I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. Guys, God doesn't want amputation.

He wants heart transformation. It's what he wants. He wants to give you a new heart because if he gives you a new heart, then he's going to give you a new everything else. You want a new marriage. Start in your heart. Let Jesus transform you from the inside out. That's the beautiful piece of what this gospel is,

is that we have a helper who comes and lives in our heart. He's made his dwelling place in here, why? Because he's making all things new and if he's making all things new, then he can most certainly make your marriage new. Guys, maybe you walked in here with some pain. There is

a miracle big enough that only God can get the credit. It's only available in the name of Jesus Christ. God isn't just interested in saving your soul. He wants to save your marriage. He does. And he's gonna start by saving your heart. There's one last piece here, guys. One

last little piece. And Jesus actually repeats this once in Matthew five twenty nine. And then again, in Matthew five thirty, he says this point, again has a teaching to it. It is, if you guys have a physical Bible, I want you to underline a couple of things here. It is better for you to lose one part, underline lose one.

It is better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to go into hell.

Underline the word whole body. Now, I want you guys to hear this, right? Of course, he's just talking about what he just said around, hey, if this causes you to sin, you got to get rid of it. Yes, that is for sure there. But he's also pointing to a bigger truth that is sometimes,

and actually it's all the time, it's better for one thing to die than the whole thing go to hell. Can you think of a story that sounds a little similar to that? Jesus. Jesus is claiming in this moment that he is your savior. It is better for me to die than the whole body go to hell.

We are called the bride of Christ. Did you know that? When we say yes to Jesus and we join the saints and when the role is called up yonder, we get to be there.

But then what we do is we join this awesome thing called the church and we are grafted into it and guess what happens when we're grafted into it? We get to be called the bride of Christ. So the point is this, and it's a hard one, but it's true. Christ died for an unfaithful bride. Christ died for an unfaithful bride. Now,

you heard me say it today that broken things don't have to be broken, they can just stay beautiful. But maybe you didn't like that because you know that your marriage is broken, you have committed the act and maybe it's even worse for you because you didn't commit the act, but you're the one who somebody cheated on.

Man, I am so sorry for your pain. So sorry that you are going through that. And I don't want to make light of any of those things, but I wouldn't be doing my job if I didn't tell you this. If Christ can die for an unfaithful bride, if he can return forgiveness where there was unfaithfulness,

then you, through the power of the Holy Spirit, have enough courage to walk in that forgiveness. That forgiveness can be a miracle big enough that only God can get the credit for it. Now, I want you guys to think about this story in closing. Right after I asked Britt out,

one month after I got invited to her family's fourth of July celebration at the lake and this year, they had this wonderful, awesome new toy that everyone at the lake was so excited about. It was a jet ski.

Okay. First of all, so I saw a bunch of smiles in here, right? You can't, you can't, it's like wiener dogs, like you can't not think of this thing and smile, right? Jet skis are like cheat codes. It's so much fun. It's like incredible

amounts of fun. It's like should be illegal the amount of fun that this thing is. And the crazy thing is you can go so fast, you could turn and if you fall off and you hurt yourself, it's just water.

You just you just kinda you just go splat you know and the worst thing that kinda happens you usually on those jet skis is is not very much and so I'm out there on the jet ski and Britt's on the back of the jet ski. Okay. Before a month before this, I was just a lowly youth intern without a girlfriend. Now,

I'm on top of the world because I got this hot babe on a jet ski with me right here. It is awesome

and we're going to having all sorts of fun. It's great. It's so cool. We fall off a couple of times. We get back on. Then one time we're trying to get back on and we realize the back of the jet ski is a little bit underwater.

Wait, what? We try to start the jet ski, it won't start and we sit and we watch for a while and and for sure enough that jet ski is sinking.

Okay. We're in the middle of the lake on July 4 and the jet ski that every so, of course, you know, this expensive thing is sinking, so that gives us panic. The other thing is if the jet ski sinks, we're in the middle of the lake and we could sink too.

And even the boats that you can see out there, sometimes you're scared because on the July 4, there's only two people who are driving boats, drunk people and 12 year olds.

So you you're scared and there is this sinking feeling that Britt and I had right at the beginning of our relationship. Are we going to sink too? Is that it for us? I think that some of you guys walked in here with sinking marriages. And so you know exactly what that feels like. What you need to know is that a boat did come by,

didn't just rescue us, rescued the jet ski somehow, tied it up, pulled it to shore.

When we got to the shore, there was a massive hole in the bottom of the hole of the jet ski. Okay? Now, we don't know how that got there. Her family forever claims that we put it there, like we hit a log or a small child. We don't remember that happening. But here's the thing is, the first was the rescue.

The second was the repair, okay? You may need rescue in your marriage. That's only available in Christ Jesus. Cry out to him and allow him to speak mercies to your soul, and we have a God who will rescue you and rescue your marriage. The next is repair. Okay? The next is repair.

We are a church that has something for everybody, and we don't wanna just have emotional experiences around God, but we wanna discipline ourselves towards the intention of becoming better. We want to strengthen your marriage.

And so whether you are somebody who just took that first step and it's like, know, you watch your heart and you're just trying to trying to guard it and you're trying to stay in a good thing and you just need like a little tune up in your marriage

or you're all the way down and you feel lost and you have that sinking feeling like it's all gonna go under eventually, we have a class for you. It's called re engage, and we want you to be a part of it because we want to be a church that has healthy marriages and healthy families. We want to be a place that helps you heal,

and so if you want to be a part of it, it starts in August, I want you to pull out your phone. Again, this is for anybody who wants to do a checkup. Britt and I will be part of this class in August. I want you to pull out your phone and I want you to text the word marriage to 21999.

And if you do that, you'll get information on what it takes to register. Now probably by the end of today, that class is going to fill up, so you need to do it soon. Again, pull out your phone and text the word marriage to 21999. Guys, will you stand with me as we close?

If you got your person here, grab ahold of them. We get better reception when we pray this way.

Guys, let's let's pray for God's strength over our marriages. Jesus, will you be strong where we are weak? God, will you fix what is broken? God, will you pour out blessing upon blessing? Will you fortify these marriages and will you make them strong so that the enemy cannot prosper in this place.

Jesus, we ask that in your name, the enemy would be bound and these families would be safe and your grace would abound more and more and more. God, we pray for strength upon strength, peace upon peace, courage upon courage, and God, we ask in this moment

that you would perform miracles in our midst and we will praise your name. God, if there's a marriage in here that's barely hanging on, I pray that in this moment, your holy spirit will wrap around them, and you would speak mercies to their soul, and you would say what you said in revelation. I'm wiping every tear from your eyes. There's no more sin or death. Behold, I'm making all things new.

Jesus, in this moment, I pray for those marriages that are strong. Fortify them even more. May they be beacons of light. May they be the salt of the earth. May we look at them and draw courage for them. And God, may the family be blessed. God, will you make it so that our hearts are only after you and after our families?

And as you do this, we believe that you can do anything. God, give us all right now in this place a new heart. We love you, Jesus. We pray all of these things because you live in Christ's name and all God's people said, Amen. Amen. Amen.

Amen. Guys, the prayer team's up front. I'll be with them. If you need prayer, come talk to us.