2026.08.02 Sermon Notes: The Battlefield Within

Westside Family Church

THE BATTLEFIELD WITHIN: Fighting for Freedom in a World Built on Fantasy

Pastor: Jonathan Hansen

Communion 🍞 🍷Sunday 

We live and die by the God's Word.  We go wherever the Bible takes us!

  

This generation has MORE ACCESS to fantasy; to pornography than ever before!

You have heard that it was said, 'You shall not commit adultery.' But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart. 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 for your whole body to be thrown into hell. And if your right hand causes you to stumble, cut it off and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to go into hell.

Matthew 5:27–30

The Odyssey; fed the lotus, daily, forgets the pain of his past.  
Lust and Fantasy does the same thing.

Odysseus on Calypso never forces him to stay.  He convinces himself he doesn't want to leave; he doesn't want to go home to his wife and children

False sense of reality. Every day he would walk the shoreline, and collect the wood.  The lotus will help you forget, won't help forget the deep part.  THAT IS THE IMAGE OF GOD!

The danger of Lust is that it doesn't just make you break God's commands. It makes you forget where you're going. Jesus isn't trying to ruin your pleasure. He's trying to remind you where home is.

Every act of adultery begins long before the bedroom. It begins in the heart. Jesus isn't just trying to change your behavior. He wants to transform your heart—because that's where this battle is actually being fought.

Notes: 

1. HEART - Winning the Internal Battle.

You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall not commit adultery.’ But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lustful intent has already committed adultery with her in his heart.

Matthew 5:27-28

Proverbs 4:23

23  Keep your heart with all vigilance,

for ^ofrom it flow ^pthe springs of life.

The battle for your life is fought on the battlefield of your heart.

The word “lust” simply means "desire." Desire becomes lust when it reaches beyond God's good boundaries and craves what isn't ours.

The main Greek word translated as "lust" in the New Testament is epithumia (noun: ἐπιθυμία) or the related verb epithumeo (ἐπιθυμέω).

Notes: 

Desire gone wrong! Lust is desire that has wondered outside the will of God.  Lust doesn't have to be sexual.  We live in a culture that lust can be almost anything!
It makes you want things you don't have and makes you stressed that you don't have it.  Makes you discontent with the blessings God has given you.  We live in a hyper-sexual society. 

Martin Luther: Temptation and Lust aren't the same thing.

Guard your Heart!!!

David committed adultery with Bathsheba (2 Samuel 11-12)

2. EYES - Guard Them.

If your right eye causes you to sin (stumble), tear it out and throw it away. For it is better that you lose one of your members than your whole body be thrown into hell.

Matthew 5:29

Jesus is not actually wanting us to mutilate our bodies
Don't be casual about guarding your eyes.  

The eye is the doorway to the heart. 

What you feed your eyes becomes what fills your heart. Your eyes are influencing your heart, every single day, whether you realize it or not.

Lust destroys our ability to enjoy real life by replacing it with a fantasy life that will never actually satisfy.

Jesus is pleading with us to stop escaping life, and start building one.

Notes: 

Passion is drained.  You are becoming a shadow.  You will never be satisfied.

3. HAND - Take Radical Action.  WAKE UP - GO TO WAR!

And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away. For it is better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body go into hell.

Matthew 5:30

“Be killing sin, or sin will be killing you.” ~John Owen

The real danger was NOT that you might commit adultery. It's that your love for Jesus gets quietly replaced by an obsession with something smaller. That's how faith dies—not in one collapse, but in a thousand small compromises over many years.

Notes: 

Give me weird ALL DAY LONG!

Consequences are High! Reward is EVEN HIGHER!  That is the fight of faith!

We can't do this alone! Don't fight from shame.  God loves you through the journey.

GRACE.

We don't fight for forgiveness. We fight from forgiveness. We don't fight for grace. We fight from a place of grace we already stand in. But grace never means we stop fighting. Grace is what makes the fight possible, not what makes it optional.

Notes: