Lust
This morning we are beginning a new series called virus where over the next 3 months, we are together going to look at some of the viruses that attack our world today as part of our vision to tackle topics which are relevant and applicable to life today. We are not looking at viruses in a biological sense, but rather the viruses that attack our Christian ethics; the viruses that unless we acknowledge them and then tackle them, will cause destruction and pain. Viruses such as anger, power, gossip, self-esteem, arrogance, money, dishonest. Together both on a Sunday morning and in our small groups we will explore what the bible says about these viruses, and how we can each be both prepared and protected again a fresh infection.
Now I appreciate that some of these topics are a little sensitive, and could bring to the surface all sorts of feelings and emotions; I am going to speak candidly with you, and we are going to touch on some subjects that would not normally be mentioned on a Sunday morning in church but friends I firmly believe that God wants us to tackle these. I would encourage you to hook up with our small groups, because it is in this environment where I hope you will really get to grips with some of the issues we are touching on over these next three months. We have now a total of 7 small groups meeting on Tuesday, Wednesday or Thursday nights and I encourage you to check out the small group board at the side entrance and see which group you are perhaps geographically closest too.
This morning to begin the series we are looking at the topic of lust. Do you realise how difficult it was to search for a clean image to depict lust? I don’t know if you can make out the image on the screen, but I went for a fishing hook, and hopefully during the course of the sermon you’ll see why. First, let’s open God’s word – we are going to be in and out of the bible this morning, in fact throughout this series so it may be a good idea to get into the habit of bringing your own bible along – but we do have some church bibles which should be under your seat.
What is lust (powerpoint)
The bible contains quite a lot about the subject of lust. Perhaps the most obvious passage that springs to mind is David and Bathsheba so why don’t we jump in there. Turn with me if you will to the Old Testament, 2 Samuel chapter 11. It is on page 314 of the church bible.
Let me set a little context; David and the Israelite army had been pretty successful in their battles so far. Their last battle had ended in 40,000 enemy foot soldiers dead and 700 chariots destroyed – it had been a rout – but there had been a gap in time between chapters 10 & 11. Spring was now here, which meant an end to the rainy season and the time for armies to begin moving out again kind of a mopping up exercise, but David chooses not to go. Up to this point David had pretty much been the model king.
Read 2 Samuel 11:1-5
Many of us if asked to define lust would think pretty much immediately about lust in a sexual capacity. Most dictionaries define lust major on the sexual nature, or points to it being one of the 7 deadly sins – but believe me all sins are deadly!
The Encarta reference dictionary defines lust primarily as a sexual desire. It is clear that David’s desire for Bathsheba was sexually motivated. It would seem from the passage that he really wasn’t interested in a relationship with her. Notice in verse 4 how he sends a messenger to get her, and then after the act neither of them were interested in chatting – she goes off home. Her husband is away, David is at home at a lose end and sexual desire takes hold of both of them. This is not a love story but rather a one night stand; the desire for sexual indulgence.
Please hear me right, there is nothing wrong with sexual desire; it is a God given gift – but when a person fulfils that desire in a forbidden, abnormal way – then it is wrong. Sexual encounters based on lust invariably lead to all sorts of problems. In this biblical example it leads to David breaking the 6th, 7th, 9th and 10th commandment. This was a big problem at the time, unfortunately in our society today sexually motivated lust is viewed as less of a problem, in fact in certain quarters it is practically encouraged.
I read a statistic the other day which said that 94% of sexual encounters depicted on UK soaps do not involve people who are not married to one another, but rather are products of lust. This is what we are watching and many of our kids are watching. Now I don’t want to get all prudish, but this kind of statistic should shock us.
Let me speak for a moment to all the red blooded males out there because I suspect this is more a male thing – I may be wrong, but this is my suspicion. I think generally us blokes pat ourselves on the back and congratulate ourselves for monogamous relationships with our wives, or the fact that we have not slept around – but lust is not just the actualising of a physical act. Because of the portrayal of sexual images by the media a lot of lust is kind of slipping under the radar and going unnoticed and unchallenged. Turn with me to the Sermon on the Mount and Matthew 5:27 – page 969.
Read Matthew 5:27-28
These are tough words. I hold my hands up and say ‘Lord Jesus, guilty as charged.’ (Pause) My suspicion is most of us have had these kinds of thoughts at some time. I heard a statistic the other day that men are distracted by a pretty girl on the pavement 42 times per week; women are only distracted by a good looking man 17 times a week. Guys, it is a fact of life that we are more likely to be susceptible to lust, and unless we begin to address this issue, pray about it and listen to God’s word, this virus will spread even further.
Most of us have computers either for work or for personal use at home; guys it is so easy to get taken in by the various pornographic images on the web. It might begin with pretty harmless stuff, but lust is like this hook – it will snag you and drag you deeper and deeper until you find the harmless stuff has become a little more hardcore.
Try any image search within Google and even with the safety filter on you can get some rather dodgy images. You can receive spam email encouraging you to open a variety of pictures with embedded links there to intentionally hook you deeper and deeper. In my 8 years as a minister both in training and fully qualified, the major pastoral problems encountered by males under the age of 60 is internet porn. It has badly damaged marriages of close friends and it has impacted their children.
On our church website when you go to the messages section there is a link to some free accountability software which you can download to your PC and then set up an accountability relationship with a trusted friend, perhaps your wife – or someone in the church. I want to encourage you all to do this – and I will too, because any of us in a moment of weakness are susceptible to temptations in this area.
Sorry, that all sounded rather heavy – but it is important that we cover these kinds of issues.
So we have identified lust as a sexual desire, however to leave it here is perhaps too narrow, and reduces it to simply a male vs. female problem. Encarta helpfully goes on to define lust as being eager for something. Lust is not just a strong sexual desire.
Anyone here a fan of the TV programme Top Gear? They have a feature on the show called the cool wall where the hosts rate each car for their coolness – the range is from seriously un-cool to sub zero. What I thought we’d do is to have a lust wall this morning and rate various pictures from nahh to Drooling.
(powerpoint)
First up, Sean Connery Beyonce nice motor yacht Kirsten Scott Thomas iphone Daniel Craig Bugatti Veron Emma Thompson Jordan DB9 Aga Natasha Kaplinsky Hayden Panettiere mountain bike George Clooney Chocolate Nice house
A bit of fun, but lust is not just about the sexual – the best definition of lust I came across was from the Dictionary of Christian ethics and pastoral theology.
Lust is anything that “captivates and consumes a whole person to the exclusion of other interests unrelated to that particular interest.”
Why is it so bad?
That definition helps us begin to understand why lust is so bad because it consumes us and becomes in effect idol worship. Let’s open God’s word again and turn to 1 John chapter 2:15-17 this can be found on page 1226.
1 John 2:15-17
‘Do not love the world’ writes John. Now some followers of Jesus over the years have taken that pretty much to an extreme and ban all sorts of things, but I’m not sure that this is what John is meaning here. Nor is John implying that we shouldn’t be bothered by the damage being done to the created world with our use and abuse of fossil fuels. The phrase that John uses for world comes from the Greek word KOSMOS which means world system. John is saying don’t fall in love with world system, effectively the things in our world which leave out God.
In the world there are many good things given to us by God. Things like sex, things like money, the blessings of our homes, things like our careers. These things in themselves are not evil, but when we are consumed by them, overcome with desire for them in exclusion of all else we shut out God. We replace God with an idol. Instead of loving these things and lusting after them, we should turn our attention to the provider of these things – our loving heavenly Father. As Jesus pointed out we cannot serve two masters – and many of the things that we lust after can be very demanding masters.
Lust is bad because it replaces God.
Lust also brings about quarrels. Flick back a few books to James 4, keep your thumb in 1 John as we are coming back here. James is a really practical book – if you ever are at a loose end one day, take yourself off with the book of James and allow God to speak to you through it.
James 4:1-3 (read from NLT)
We live in a hedonistic culture; life is for living so the advertisers would tell us. It is no problem to desire good sex in the context of a healthy marriage, to desire a nice house to live in, to desire a rewarding career, but when we lust for these things it is often for very selfish reasons. We desire good sex for our own benefit, we desire a nice house because we want nice things, and we want a rewarding career because we like the position and wealth that come with it.
Did anyone go to the Eden Lilly sale? I did – nice comfortable Saffron Walden with its well behaved people suddenly changed that morning. Mothers were using buggies as battering rams, little old ladies were using walking sticks as weapons – it was war. All because people wanted the bargains for themselves. There was no “after you….no no no, after you!” I saw a couple of well respected ladies pulling the same duvet as if it were some giant wish bone.
Our culture really promotes this. We are the most important person in the world – and this is wrong. God gives us what we need; not necessarily what we want. Let me show you a video put together by Christianity.com website which for me highlights how advertisers are encouraging us to just go for it.
Lust replaces God, brings about arguments and also brings about destruction. Flick back to 1 John 2, and look at verse 17. “The world and its desires will pass away” writes John. Paul in Romans 6 is even more pointed, he says in verse 16 of Romans 6 “Letting sin be your master leads to death.” Chasing after lusts will lead ultimately to premature death; the bible is bang up to date.
I don’t know if any of you saw the BBC news story this week about a study carried out by Liverpool University of some 1050 pop stars. They discovered that pop stars are twice as likely to die young. Artists such as Jim Morrison, Kurt Cobain, Elvis Presley all pursued their lusts which ultimately led to their deaths. Perhaps that is why such a lot of fuss is being made of Amy Winehouse who seems to be heading towards an early grave.
David’s lusts that we read earlier in 2 Samuel led to the death of his son as well as the death of his lover’s husband. God warns us throughout his word about lust not because he seeks to be a cosmic kill-joy, but because he wants the best for us. He wants to spend eternity with each of us, he loves each of us and is pained when we follow our lusts and bring about destruction.
How to overcome it
So we have defined it, we’ve looked at why it is bad for us but how do we actually overcome it?
Firstly, and this is mainly to do with lust of a sexual nature - we need to watch what we watch. Turn with me back to the Sermon on the Mount and Matthew 5:29-30. (Read)
Is Jesus really suggesting we mutilate ourselves? If we take this passage in a literal sense we miss the point because believe me even people who are blind still lust. No, what Jesus is driving at here is dealing drastically with the thing that causes us to sin. Download the accountability software to your PC’s – don’t dwell on the attractive man or lady in the street – overt your eyes.
Raise your hand if you have sky or cable TV (await response). In the UK every hour of television after 6pm carries at least 6.7 scenes of sexual nature per hour. There are certain channels after a time of night which carry not particularly helpful content. Last Thursday Bravo was showing “adult swim” from 1am to 3am – it doesn’t take a genius to work out that it will have very little to do with improving your front crawl. Don’t watch those kind of programmes, don’t go there. engage a parental lock – how about using 1215 to signify 1 John 2:15.
If you travel for work, ask the hotel where you stay to shut off certain channels on your television. Take a picture of your family with you and place it by your bed.
Second way is to move away from temptation. When we were in Spain a few weeks ago we went to a water park to keep the kids happy. Now I don’t mind swimming, but I don’t do heights – really. Anyway, Dom decides that he and I are going to go down some of the water shoots - there was one called the black hole, and actually it was pretty tame. Another one was kind of a bit of oversized drainpipe that just dropped about 40ft – it was horrible. (powerPoint)This is not it, but it was the closest picture I could find. All the way walking up the steps to the slide I could have turned round; there really weren’t that many people who were attempting it. I could have gone back, but no for some mad reason I kept going forward until I was sitting at the top of this drainpipe clinging on to the sides realising there was now only one way this would end. I declared my praise for the Lord at the top of my voice as I descended at a rapid rate of knots.
What has this to do with avoiding lust? Lust is like a huge water slide – you can turn round right up to the moment before you seek to satisfy your lusts, at which point it is too late and you need to deal with the consequences. David could have seen Bathsheba taking a bath, and turned away – but he chose to go down the slide.
If someone in your workplace smiles at you and lets their hand linger on yours as you discuss the latest deadline set by your boss, you can move your hand away or allow it to remain and begin down the slide. Paul writing in Philippians 4 says this;
“Finally, my friends, keep your minds on whatever is true, pure, right, holy, friendly, and proper. Don’t ever stop thinking about what is truly worthwhile and worthy of praise.”
Or as the chorus so eloquently puts it; Turn your eyes upon Jesus, look full in his wonderful face and the things of earth will grow strangely dim in the light of his glory and grace.
Thirdly, get an accountability partner. James, Jesus’ brother writes this;
Make this your common practice: Confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you can live together whole and healed.
The small groups are great places to begin to think about getting an accountability partner, but a husband, wife or other trusted person could be equally as good. My only advice would be to ensure unless it is your husband/wife, get someone of the same gender. Be honest with them about the times of stress and tiredness, as invariably this will be when your defences will be at a low.
If you are struggling to find someone to be an accountability partner and I accept it is not necessarily easy for everyone, and you then find yourself faced with a lustful situation, a helpful exercise is to imagine Jesus standing beside you at that very moment. And in your imagination look into his eyes, what do you see? If you see pain and hurt, then chances are you are engaging in a thought process or activity which is not helpful.
Let me finish with a word of hope if you find yourself in the position of giving in to your lusts or snared in a pattern of behaviour that you know is unhelpful. There is a way back, and David who gave in to his sexual lusts with Bathsheba demonstrates it.
Turn with me a final time in your bible to Psalm 51, and I would like us to read together the first 12 verses. You can find psalm 51 on page 573 of the church bibles.
Read together
pray
Closing words
The words we have spoken with our lips
May we believe them in our hearts
And what we believe in our hearts
May we show forth in our lives
Through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
PowerPoint available from minister@sw-bc.org
