Breaking Free
Fireproof Your Relationships: Sermon Four
1 Corinthians 10:11-13
Good morning!
Today’s message starts with something I have never spoken about before from the pulpit. I want to talk with you about parasites! Has anyone here ever picked up a parasite?
The South Africa military field exercises were often conducted in tick infested areas and bilharzia infested waters - not intentionally but simply because so much of the outdoors is infested with these parasites. So when you came in from field exercises you would have to check yourself for ticks - and it would not be unusual to find 4 or 5 or even up to 10 or more ticks crawling around on you and in your hair. Tick bite fever can be a terrible deadly disease if not treated - and rather debilitating even when treated. There were always a few guys running around the infirmary with tick bite fever. The thing is that when a tick gets on you, it finds a comfortable spot and then starts chewing its way into your skin.
And, as you know, once a tick has bitten into you, you cannot simply pull them off. They bite so deep and so hard they clench their teeth down and simply will not let go. Their bite is so strong that if you keep pulling you will break their heads off in your skin - and it will turn septic. There are only two ways to simply remove a tick from you once it has bitten into you. The one is heat - you can use a match or a lighter and if you hold the flame close to the tick long enough (without burning yourself) the tick cannot stand the heat and will open its mouth. The other is to suffocate him - cover him with some Vaseline or petroleum jelly so that he cannot breathe and after a while he will let go of his own accord.
Now ticks are easy - you can feel them and you can remove them. But there are a bunch of parasites that are not as kind or pretty.
For instance, take this little blighter - Hookworm.
This picture shows a hookworm feasting on the inside of a human intestine. They normally enter the body through the skin and migrate through the bloodstream to the lungs or the intestines. He will kill you from the inside and you will not even know he is there.
Here is another bad boy - Roundworm.
This is staggering - according to WHO - the World Health Organization, about 25% of all adults in the world are hosts to roundworm. These fellas also live in your intestine and can grow up to 15 inches long and lay 300 000 eggs per day inside of you.
Pinworms
More than 500 million people (mainly children) around the world share their bodies and their beds with this beauty. Measuring in at about 1/3 of an inch, this guy wakes you up in the middle of the night with intense anal itching. The reason for this is it sneaks out at night to lay their eggs on the fertile skin surrounding the anus.
Schistosoma/Bilharzia
Next to malaria these parasites are the greatest danger to humans. You can find them in affected open bodies of water where they quietly burrow into your skin and make their homes in your blood vessels, bladder, rectum, intestines, liver, spleen, and lungs - or pretty much anywhere else in your body. About 200 million people are home to these nasties.
Tapeworm
And here’s my favorite - the familiar parasite of choice - the familiar tape worm. These friends can grow more than 20 feet long. Check out this picture from the Oprah show - where Oprah and Dr. Oz are holding a single specimen of this monster. By the way, you can hook up with these guys up by eating, amongst other things, beef. And they have bad old nasty symptoms that go with their bad old nasty selves.
Now fortunately, because of where we live and our level of hygiene, most of us do not have to worry about these guys very often. But parasites are very real and diminish the quality of life for millions of people on our planet.
But what we do need to worry about in America, and what does diminish the quality of life for millions of people in our country are relational parasites.
In the film we’ve been talking about for the last few weeks, Fireproof, Caleb Holt struggles with one of these parasites in his own life. Watch this clip and you’ll see what I mean.
Show Clip 4 - clip length = 2:16.
Watch out for parasites. A parasite is anything that latches onto you or your partner and leeches from you. In other words, it makes unreasonable demands on your resources (like time, money, thought life, affection) without giving anything useful or adequate in return. It will suck the life out of your relationships.
These parasites normally come in the form of addictions like gambling, drugs, or pornography. They promise pleasure but produce pain, they offer delights, and then grow like disease. They progressively demand more and more from you and consume more and more of you. They persuade your mind that they are insignificant and that you are still in control, and that the price they demand is a small consideration for the pleasure that they offer. What they will not tell you, however, is that all their promises are vain and all their pleasures empty. And the true cost is not what you paid to get in, but what it cost when you could not get out. That cost may be financial ruin, or perhaps even more significantly, emotional, social and relational ruin. Not only will it sap your finances and destroy your career, it will devour your marriage, and your relationships with those you really love.
Gambling, drugs, pornography… parasites.
Sadly, sociologists are telling us that gambling and other addictions are rising at an alarming rate. More than 1 in 4 people in North Carolina have gambled in the last six months with 140 000 or 1.2% recognizing that they have a significant gambling problem. Alcoholism and drugs remain a significant challenge in our country with conservative estimates suggesting that more than one third of all colleges students smoke pot and a full one half binge drink. Counselors estimate that more than 80% of males are involved at some level with pornography.
Fireproof calls all of these "parasites." Since parasites naturally diminish the quality of a person’s life, I want to help you with them today.
Please open a Bible with me and turn to 1 Corinthians. 1 Corinthians is a letter written by the Apostle Paul to friends of his in the church in Corinth. Paul wants to help them in every way he can.
In chapter 10, he begins to talk to the Corinthians about lessons to be learned from the Old Testament. In verse 11 he has this to say . . .
Read 1 Cor. 10:11-13
Allow me to repeat that last verse for you please:
"No temptation has seized you except what is common to man. And God is faithful; He will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear. But when you are tempted, He will also provide a way out so that you can stand up under it."
I want to make a bold statement for you this morning. Here it is: The greatest threat to human life on this planet is not nuclear or biochemical - and nor is it famine, disease or natural disaster. The greatest threat to our existence on this planet is personal temptation. Those other problems are real, and they do require our attention and require a significant investment of our resources. But our biggest challenges are not from without but from within. They are not a set of external circumstances, but the internal condition of our hearts.
Temptation is both a global challenge as well as a personal one. It is the greatest challenge you are facing, and the greatest challenge I am facing.
There are three things we can glean about temptation from this passage:
Three Facts about Temptation:
1. Every Temptation You Face Has Been Faced by Others. We are not alone in our struggles - and nor is your temptation unique. It may feel unique but in truth it is just the garden variety.
2. You Have Never Been Tempted by Something You Did Not Have the Power to Resist. It may seem at the time like you are powerless, but that’s just a lie from the evil one, trying to lower your resolve and your resistance.
3. God Provides a Way out of Every Temptation. Our job is to look for that way out and take it the minute you find it.
Let’s talk about this for a moment. Because if we can get a handle on what holds us back, we’ll be set free.
The Bible says there are really only three kinds of parasites - three kinds of temptations in this world. "Everything in the world - the cravings of sinful man, the lust of his eyes, and the boasting of what he has and does - comes not from the Father but from the world." – 1 John 2:16
There Are Only Three Kinds of Temptation:
1. The Cravings of Our Bodies
2. The Lust of Our Eyes
3. The Pride of Our Hearts
You’ve never ran into a temptation that didn’t fit into one of these three categories.
The cravings of our bodies are what we call, "Materialism," or "Sensualism." Materialism is the temptation to consume things in excessive measure that do not belong to us or were not meant for us. Sensualism is the desire to stimulate our senses beyond what God intended or in ways God never intended. Sexual lust falls into this category.
The lust of the eyes we call, "Greed." Greed is the temptation to possess things that are not ours or that we do not need.
The pride of our hearts is called, well, "Pride." Pride is the temptation to want to be well-thought of. It’s the temptation to elevate ourselves in the eyes of others in ways that sometimes even put others down, make us appear better than we are, or compete with God’s rightful place and glory.
In a few moments I want to give you seven steps you can take to resist temptation. But before I do - I want to grab the guy’s ears.
Men, let’s talk - just for a minute. Guys, we are tempted in the same three ways women are, but the way those temptations come are a little different from for our female counterparts.
If we’re honest, we’ll admit that our two biggest temptations are usually pride and lust. Pride of the heart and lusts of the body. We’re not immune to wanting to possess more, we’ve got that one too, but more often than not, our competitive nature makes us want to look more important than we feel we are, and the desires of our body make us want to experience feelings and sensations we’re not entitled to or qualified for.
Our addictions, on the material side, tend to be about achievement, which gets us into workaholism and status symbols, and sometimes out-and-out lying about what we’ve done or achieved. And on the sensual side, our addictions are about pleasure - drugs, or alcohol or pornography. Usually we slip into one or more of these without ever meaning to. It just feels so good, we don’t notice until we’ve built habits that are hard to break.
What we often don’t realize until we’re ensnared is that our habits damage our character and hurt those we love. Workaholism consumes our time and energy for friendships and family relationships, alcoholism short-circuits our ability to love and care for people, and pornography desensitizes us to the wonders of the true and right feelings of intimacy God intended us to find with Him and with one special woman to whom we’ve pledged our faithfulness for life.
Men, if I was talking to an average group (and I know I’m not; I know you all are well-above average in everything that’s good) I would be confident that more than 85% of us would have some sort of parasite attached to us that is significantly diminishing the quality of our lives and relationships.
If you are here today and struggle with any of the parasites I’ve mentioned, I want to tell you that there is hope. I want to tell you that what you are experiencing has been experienced by countless others. I want to tell you that you have the power to resist and overcome the parasites in your life. And I want to tell you that God has provided a way out so that you can resist the parasites that want to cling to you.
In just a minute, I’ll tell you how.
But first, I want to give some words to the women here, and the parasites they struggle with. The only problem is, I’ve never been a woman. So I’ve asked my wife, Michele, to come and spend just a few minutes talking about the parasites that tend to hook up with the ladies.
Michele
When Emile first asked me to speak this morning on sin and temptation, I was a little reluctant. If you ask him, he can tell you that my response was, "No." Not only is it a difficult topic to talk about, but I do not like talking in front of people. But in the end I agreed because I think I understand the parasites us ladies face.
Some of the things I run across as Emile and I counsel and in talking with other ladies and look into my own life make me realize that we face parasites in exactly the same areas as the men do . . .
1. The Cravings of Our Bodies
2. The Lust of Our Eyes
3. The Pride of Our Hearts
The Cravings of Our Bodies parasites manifest themselves in our lives just as much as they do in men’s lives. That is why women love shopping so much. It is, if we are honest, materialism. Another way I sometimes see ladies struggling with the Cravings of the Body are in the whole realm of our emotional needs. I think we sometimes share parts of our lives with others in an emotional intimate way in order to receive from the affirmation. That would be better if it was just our husband, but we are in danger if we share in a similar way with other men things that we ought to only share with our husbands.
Lusts of the Eyes - is it not true ladies that shopping can be a part of that as well. I think shopping helps fill a need for significance because we sometimes derive a sense of security from being able to purchase things and have them.
One of the ways I think the Pride of Life is expressed in us ladies is the unnecessary preoccupation with our bodies. Another way we sometimes express the Pride of Life is by judging others, especially men by their clothes, their homes, their jobs, their cars and the like. What we are doing is using external things to evaluate internal worth. A last way I want to suggest we express the Pride of Life is our struggle to be in submission to our husbands, as if that were some expression of weakness on our part. This, too, is not healthy.
In the Garden of Eden, after Adam and Eve sinned, God spoke with them and told them the consequences of what they’d done. To Eve He said, "Your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you." Genesis 3:16
When God said that our desire would be for our husbands, what He was saying, and this is clear from the Hebrew, is that our desire will be to control our husbands, to rule over them, but that they would rule over or lead us. For us women, temptation can come in a different way than for men.
Gary sent Emile a funny email recently about a father’s rules for dating his daughter. You may have seen it. Here are some of the rules this father gives to any young man wanting to take his daughter out.
Rule One: If you pull into my driveway and honk you’d better be delivering a package, because you’re sure not picking anything up.
Rule Two: You do not touch my daughter in front of me. You may glance at her, so long as you do not peer at anything below her neck. If you cannot keep your eyes or hands off of my daughter’s body, I will remove them.
It’s easy to understand why these are so funny and appealing. Good fathers love and protect their daughters, and want the very best for them. What they want for their daughters in a relationship is a man who will value, commit to, love and protect their daughters as much as they themselves would.
Ladies, we have a heavenly Father, and He’s very loving and protective of us. And God Has Rules for Dating His Daughters. You can read those rules . . . (hold up a Bible) - they are in this book. He loves you and has the best plan for you and me. And in this book, men, He too has rules for how to be married to one of His daughters - and one of the greatest ways you can honor God and love us as your wives is to follow these rules for dating or being married to one of His daughters.
Thank you for letting me share with you today!
Thank you - Emile
Folks, Paul says, "There’s always a way out of temptation." I want to show you the way. Here is how to break free from temptation:
How to Break Free from Temptations:
1. Pray That the Lord Will Keep You from Temptation.
Jesus taught us to pray this in the model prayer: "Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil." Matthew 6:13
2. Make a Covenant with Yourself.
Job, in the Old Testament says, "I made a covenant with my eyes not to look lustfully at a girl." Job 31:1 (NIV)
Ladies, this may not be a covenant most of you need to make, but if you’re going to break free from whatever is slowing you down, you’ll need to make a covenant, a pact, a deal ahead of time with your mind that you will not start the process of indulging in that which has previous tempted you.
Men, make a covenant: When you see an attractive female, you will not let your mind go anywhere where it would be embarrassing if your wife could read your thoughts. This will enable you to win the battle and brush off the parasites.
3. Look for the Way Out.
1 Corinthians 10:13 "and God is faithful; He will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear. But when you are tempted, He will also provide a way out so that you can stand up under it."
Usually, there is more than one way out of a temptation. Men, for years I have found that one of the ways to kill lustful temptation is to pray for the woman I may feel tempted to think in a less wholesome way about. Thank God for her beauty, for her family and ask God to bless her father and her husband, to fulfill her dreams, and ask God to keep creepy men with creepy thinking from thinking creepy thoughts about her.
Or I simply manually and deliberately refocus my mind and rather sing praises and worship, or I recite Scriptures I have memorized. This leads us to the next step.
4. Divert Your Thoughts.
Paul says: "We take every thought captive to the will of Christ." 2 Corinthians 10:5
Elsewhere he says, "Whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable - if anything is excellent or praiseworthy - think about such things." Philippians 4:8
So think about your favorite team winning the Super Bowl, or of a pretty sunset. Think about Jesus and all that He’s done for you. Intentionally divert your mind to wholesome things.
Romans 8:6 says, "The mind controlled by the spirit is life and peace." That’s what we want, isn’t it? Life and peace.
5. Remove Yourself.
Paul puts it very simply to a young man facing temptation. He says, "Flee the evil desires of youth and pursue righteous, faith, love and peace." 2 Timothy 2:22
Do like Joseph - book it outta there. Don’t hang around the opportunity to sin or it will hang around you.
6. Evaluate When You Fall Down.
The truth is that we all fall in one area or another. Even Paul says he did (Romans 7.) John says in 1 John 1:10 that ‘if we say we do not sin, we are liars and the truth is not in us.’
So if we are going to fail - lets fail successfully, let’s fail forwards not backwards. In other words, let’s learn from our mistakes. Is it not true that we normally fail in recurring patterns? It is when we drive past that particular bottle store that we are tempted to drink, or past that particular bill board that the lustful thought process starts. Precious believer, simply drive another way.
7. Ask Forgiveness, Resolve to Do Better, and Start Again.
1 John 1:9 says, "If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteous."
Lamentations 3:23 tells us that ‘God’s mercies are new every morning.’ Every day we get to start again, on a new page. Don’t let your past beat you up. Instead, let your present start you over.
Let’s wrap it up with the Love/Dare Challenge of the week.
Here is your Love/Dare #4
Love/Dare Challenge:
Is There a Parasite from Which You Need to Break Free?
On Your Message Notes, Circle Whichever Steps You Want to Begin Practicing this Week
Let’s make good covenants with our minds and determine to find ways out and think better thoughts while flat out fleeing if we have to. Some of us may need some counseling about our parasites. That’s okay - let’s get that going. Just give me a shout if you would like somebody to come alongside you.
Friends, God is with us and He is faithful. He will not let us be tempted beyond what we can bear. But when we are tempted, He will also provide a way out so that we can stand up under it. He has done everything we need and given us everything we need to position us for victory. Now the choice is simply this - do we really want victory or would we prefer to stay with our sin. It is as simple as that.
Amen!
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