Adultery in the Heart
By M.T. Clark — P-2096 | 10/16/2026 – Today’s Audio Podcast
Today’s Message on YouTube:
Today’s photo of a quiet autumn stream with yellow and orange leaves hanging over the water and a soft reflection of the sky on the surface comes to us from an anonymous Facebook friend who shared this scene on social media back on October 10, 2022.
Well, it’s Friday, thank God, and this photo of a quiet autumn stream came across my social media feed from a friend a few years ago, and its simple beauty grabbed my attention and gave me a moment of peace.
There is a lot of scrolling we can do in a given week that could leave us with feelings of lust, humor, or anger. The worldly memes, short video clips, or social media posts out there are created to grab our attention and create a craving for more, but because they are based on fleshy pleasures, they usually leave us feeling dissatisfied and empty. But every once in a while, though, the Lord uses somebody else’s small moment of beauty to quiet us down for a minute and remind us that the world He made is still out there and is still His. I didn’t take this photo or visit this stream, but because one of my friends did and shared it, the Lord blessed me through it anyway.
Speaking of what we feed our eyes with, our series “The Beatitudes” continues today with the second place where Jesus takes a well-known commandment and goes to the heart underneath it. He moves from murder to adultery.
Adultery in the Heart
Jesus moves from the sixth commandment to the seventh and does the same thing He did with murder. He takes the behavior everyone knew was forbidden and traces it back to the heart. Matthew 5:27-28 (NKJV) tells us:
“You have heard that it was said to those of old, ‘You shall not commit adultery.’ But I say to you that whoever looks at a woman to lust for her has already committed adultery with her in his heart.”
The old commandment was clear. Do not have sex with a woman who is not your wife. Jesus upholds that commandment and then raises the standard by looking back to what happened before the act. He tells us that the looking and the lusting in the imagination that treats another person as an object to use has already crossed the line in the eyes of God. The body may have never gone there, but the heart has already gone too far.
Staying sexually pure is a lot harder in our day than it was in Jesus’ time, not because our hearts are different, but because we have an unprecedented amount of visual material competing for our eyes every single hour. Easy access to pornographic material and scrolling is where a lot of the modern lust problem comes from. Our phones, automatic social media feeds, and images designed to grab the eye all work together against what the Lord would want for us. None of this world is neutral ground spiritually, and that includes our phones. Every one of us who takes our walk with Jesus seriously has to come to terms with what our eyes are being fed and be diligent to guard ourselves against what the world would want to put into our hearts and minds through the things it wants to show us.
Jesus next words tell us how serious this matter is. Matthew 5:29-30 (NKJV) tells us:
“If your right eye causes you to sin, pluck it out and cast it from you; for it is more profitable for you that one of your members perish, than for your whole body to be cast into hell. And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and cast it from you; for it is more profitable for you that one of your members perish, than for your whole body to be cast into hell.”
We have to be careful here because if we don’t let God transform our hearts and just try to overcome our sin by extreme measures, there will be a lot of one-eyed and one-handed people out there! Jesus is not telling anyone to literally remove an eye or to cut off a hand. That is not what the passage is about, and the church has understood this from its earliest days. Jesus is using the strongest possible language to tell us how seriously God takes our sin, and how far we should be willing to go to remove whatever keeps feeding it. If something in our lives is dragging our eyes and hearts into places God has said not to go, we need to deal with it, and we have to take our repentance seriously. We deal with our sinful proclivities before they cost us more than any amount of self-denial would.
For a lot of us in our modern era, the practical application of this involves the devices in our pockets. It may mean filters that block what we know we cannot look at responsibly. It may mean accountability software that tells somebody else what we are seeing. It may mean deleting apps that we know are feeding the wrong appetites. It could mean switching to a flip phone instead of a smartphone for a season. These are not legalistic add-ons to the Christian life. They are practical strategies to be obedient to what Jesus said about being ruthless about what we look at and allow into our hearts.
We should also understand that we are not in this fight alone. Whatever is dragging our eyes into the wrong places is not a problem that the Lord is surprised by, and it is not a problem He is unwilling to help us with. The grace He offers is not conditional on us being clean enough to deserve it. It is offered to us, because we desperately need it. The gospel is for people who have fallen short of the standard Jesus is proclaiming in this passage, which turns out to be all of us.
So, what do we do with this teaching today? We get honest with somebody about our struggles. If necessary, we humble ourselves and put the filters in place. We delete what needs to be deleted, and we ask the Lord to change our hearts and to move us to walk in His ways of purity and righteousness.
If we want to be serious about our walk with the Lord, we have to be serious about our sins and to trust God to help us to overcome them.
God is faithful to help those who ask, so keep on walking and talking with Him.
— M.T.
*******************************
Wrestling with something today? Ask M.T.’s Digital Mind any time, day or night: mt4christ.com/digital-mind
Check out our past Podcast series or teachings via The MT4Christ247 podcast playlists on YouTube at MT4Christ.com!
The MT4Christ247 audio podcast is available on YouTube, Apple, Amazon, Spotify, iHeartRadio, Podbean, Audible, and many more podcast platforms!
Subscribe to The MT4Christ247 Channel on YouTube!
Email me at m.t.clark@mt4christ.com with any questions, comments, or to inquire about our Christian Life Coaching or Prayer Ministry Services.
“The views, opinions, and commentary of this publication are those of the author, M.T. Clark, only, and do not purport to reflect the opinions or views of any of the photographers, artists, ministries, or other authors of the other works that may be included in this publication, and do not necessarily reflect the views or positions of any entities the author may represent.”
Encouragement for the Path of Christian Discipleship
Support MT 4 Christ Community Freedom Ministry!
To give via PayPal, go to the MT4Christ Donations Page
Or Give Via Venmo or the Cash App by scanning the QR Code below:
Leave a Reply