Come on guys – let’s visit the good news at Sinai: God says to not commit adultery and to not covet our neighbor’s wife (Exodus 20:14, 17). Why does God command me to be content with the wife that he gave me? Because God knows the propensity of my heart – he knows that I will not be content with the wife that he gave me. And God knows that if I allow discontent to swallow my heart, not only will I be discontent with Him, but my heart will grow and grow to become a selfish beast that will exploit women, turning them into toys for personal pleasure. To be truthful, as a man I can feel the temporal pleasure of what it would be like, as much as lies within me, to never allow my heart to feel discontent sexually. Like a hundred options for toothpaste at the department store: get tired of one, switch to another! Or better yet: buy them all!!

Hugh Hefner is famous, wealthy, and dripping with gorgeous seductive women all over him because this is the personification of a lustful heart that has been set free to be as covetousness as it pleases. It’s where your heart and mine would be but for the grace and peace of God that satisfies the discontented, coveting heart. God told me for my good not to covet my neighbor’s wife. In lovingly commanding me to obey him, he tells me that he sees what, I am at times unwilling to admit: and that is that there is a little bit of Hugh Hefner in my heart, sadly. Apart from restraining grace, there is an idol factory in the heart that is active enough to manufacture the ugly icon that this man has become. And at the same time, the lust of the flesh wants to know what it would be like to be an aging man with all the playmates that money can buy.

But do I believe, trust in Jesus more than my flesh? Do you believe that Jesus is dead-serious when he says that it would be better for you to go through life as a one-eyed, one-armed man and enter his eternal pleasures whole, than to live this life like Hugh Hefner and lose your soul? (Matthew 5:27-30). I trust Jesus. I not only trust Jesus, I turn to him for the righteousness that I am not capable of producing. On my own, I’ll never be able to live as I ought – so I need forgiveness of sins and I need his Spirit to produce godly affections that are in line with his.

BTW – if you don’t trust Jesus then you have to believe that Jesus is lying. Are you willing to bet your eternal soul on that? Dear Mr. Hefner, if I can be forgiven so can you. There’s more than enough grace at the cross for those who turn away from their sin and by faith turn to Christ for all the righteousness that is required. Turn away from coveting and taking what is not yours and believe that Christ is better than unbridled sexual fantasies. “At his right hand are pleasures forevermore” (Psalm 16:11).