Lust
Matthew 5:27-30
Introduction
In 1875 three balloonists left Paris with one thing on their mind: to set a new altitude record. They wanted to rise higher in their balloon than anyone before them. They’d been warned to take pressurized oxygen and so they loaded their oxygen gear for the flight. But as their balloon rose and rose as they gained altitude, hypoxia set in making them delirious. By the time they reached 7500 meters, they were in serious trouble. One man sat helpless on the floor of the basket. Worse, the lack of oxygen had affected his mates’ reasoning. Not only were they still dumping ballast to gain more height, but they also threw their oxygen equipment overboard. By the time the balloon landed, both men were dead. Only the man on the floor of the balloon survived. He said, ‘towards 7500m the numbness you experience is amazing, you become indifferent; you no longer think of the danger, you just want to rise and rise’. Chasing the thrill beat their logic, with deadly consequences. They literally threw away their lives.
If you’re struggling with the sin of lust, that’s the danger. Lust is that deadly. Just about all Christians face sexual temptation at some stage. If you are you’ll see yourself in that story. Not because you’ve ever been ballooning, but because that’s the perfect picture of how your lust consumes you, drives you, and clouds your thinking. The grip of lust on your heart, it’s just like starving oxygen to the brain, it leads to thinking just as irrational, actions just as foolish and consequences just as deadly. Proverbs 6:26 says, “Do not lust in your heart after her beauty or let her captivate you with her eyes, for the prostitute reduces you to a loaf of bread, and the adulteress preys upon your very life”. They say the chase is better than the kill. Well, with lust, not only is the chase foolish, but the kill is you.
I. The Problem
• Make no mistake as we hear God’s Word on lust, this sin is deadly.
o It destroys lives, it destroys families, it destroys children, it destroys you.
o Proverbs 6 concludes that “a man who commits adultery lacks judgment; whoever does so destroys himself”.
• But what is the problem?
o What is the sin we’re to turn from?
o Is it just sex?
o Does the Bible saying sex is wrong?
o That’s the impression some Christians give you.
o In fact some people even came up with the silly idea that sex was the original sin.
o And as for the world, they think they invented it!
o Magazines like Cleo and Cosmo seem to think sex was only discovered in the 1960s.
o But we find a very different story in the Bible.
o We find that God made sex and that it was part of the world He called good, it wasn’t an accident.
o Adam and Eve didn’t think it up!
o They didn’t have to hide it from God.
• In Genesis 1 we see that God made the gift of sex.
o God makes Adam and Eve male and female, sexual beings.
o And he says to them “be fruitful and increase in number”.
o The first command from the God of the universe to humankind is … multiple in number!
o God isn’t again sex.
o Sex between the man and the woman is a good and proper thing, within the boundaries of a marriage.
o Don’t believe the lie that God’s some kind of cosmic killjoy.
o From page one of the Bible, God says of sex, go for it!
• But there’s a pattern isn’t there?
o There’s a context, there’s a place sex belongs.
o Go for it – yes, but in this way: one man and one woman, in a marriage relationship together.
o That’s where sex belongs: one man and one woman in a lifelong, monogamous, committed, exclusive, relationship.
o That’s God’s chosen place for the expression of sexuality.
• You can read more about God’s design for sex in 1 Corinthians 7; it’s a great chapter about marriage.
o It’s about how a husband and wife are to look after each other.
o They’re to serve each other.
o And because they’re sexual beings, a big part of serving each other, is serving each other sexually (1 Cor 7:4).
o The wife’s body belongs to her husband – for his enjoyment.
o The husband’s body belongs to his wife – for her enjoyment.
o It’s not just so children can be born.
o Sex is for a man and woman to express their love for each other, to give to each other, in the context of marriage.
o It’s a great gift from God, that’s how it’s to be used.
• Which brings us to the real sin of impurity.
o The sin of impurity isn’t sex itself but the wrong use of sex, taking the good gift of sex and treating it like its worth nothing.
o The original sin of Adam and Eve wasn’t sex, or anything to do with sex originally.
o It was disobedience against God and His Word.
• The management revolution came first, followed by the sexual revolution.
o First we rejected God then we rejected his plan for sex.
o Sex, like everything else, turned bad very quickly.
o We now use God’s good gift in all the wrong ways.
o Shows like Big Brother celebrate promiscuity.
o Music “videos” are glorified pornography.
o A President can do what he likes with a junior staffer and people say, ‘it’s a private matter – it didn’t make him a bad leader’.
o What’s the message we are teaching, when we buy into that kind of thinking?
• Society’s got plenty to say about making sex safe but absolutely nothing to say about making sex good.
o Any fool can have safe sex but only God’s Word shows us good sex, right sex.
o Sex belongs in a committed, lifelong, marriage relationship but we live in a world that has rejected God and his Word.
o Nowhere is that seen more than in the area of sexuality.
o You’re told it’s okay to sleep with your girlfriend/boyfriend before their your marital spouse – when God says it’s not.
o You’re told it’s okay to commit adultery because we just call it an affair, a fling, just finding space – but God says it’s adultery and it’s wrong.
o And you’re not only told lust is okay, you’re beckoned to feed it, to feast your eyes and feed your mind with all kinds of images.
o The lures, traps, the temptation is everywhere.
o Billboards, TV ads, newsagents, movies, video clips, and worst of all now: the Internet.
o Lust is always hungry but now there’s so much more to feed on.
o Pornography’s always been there but more than ever you don’t have to go looking for it, instead you have to fend it off.
o And that’s the call because God says it’s wrong.
o They’re images that God says you shouldn’t be looking at because intimacy, even like that, even with the eyes, only belongs in marriage.
• Our instinct, however, isn’t to fend it off so much as cover it up.
o It’s kind of awkward just talking about it isn’t it?
o It’s not a subject we find easy to be honest about.
o But it’s such a public issue, it’s everywhere you look, but we want to make it private, and not talk about it.
o This is the great cover up.
o And it’s been happening since Adam and Eve.
o Adam and Eve after they sinned, hid in the bushes, trying to hide their sin and accused each other instead of confessing their sin, pathetically using fig leaves to cover their shame.
• Lies, accusations, deception: anything but the truth.
o The great cover-up begins.
o It’s interesting isn’t it?
o Sin ruins everything, As sin enters the world, it ruins sex straight away.
o You can see how sex is ruined through Adam and Eve’s shame.
o It had been so pure, but through sin but suddenly their nakedness becomes shameful.
o They’re no longer for each other but against each other, not trusting but deceiving, not serving but using, not open but hiding.
o The great cover-up; that’s how we try to deal with sin, especially sexual sin and temptation.
• Shane Warne a famous cricket player in England is an esteemed role model to a lot of young people, but he epitomizes what we’re talking about. Here’s a man that lives by only this rule: thou shalt not get caught. Only if you get caught do you admit to something, and even when you do get caught, you don’t admit it’s wrong. Listen to Warne, when he had to admit he’d engaged in phone sex with an English woman: “it was probably the wrong thing to do but I thought it was a private matter. I didn’t think it was going to become public and now that it has become public I suppose it’s a mistake. If it had stayed private then it wasn’t a mistake”.
• The great cover up.
o Fig leaves 21st century style.
o Still trying to hide in the bushes, still trying to say that sin is ok.
o Just the same as Adam and Eve—reject God’s Word, do what you know is wrong, don’t confess it just cover it up because the only real problem is getting caught!
• That’s exactly the story of the life of David (2 Sam 11) where he attempts the same cover-up.
o David who was “a man after God’s own heart”, yet he fell into sexual sin and thought his only problem was how to cover it up.
o His slide into sin starts with a lingering look (v 2).
o He allows a glance to become a gaze – he feeds the lust.
o He makes enquiries (v3) – fantasy becomes a plan.
o Even when he’s told that Bathsheba is a married woman, it doesn’t matter.
o Lust has replaced listening to God.
o He’s only thinking of now: just the thrill, just the chase.
• Like the balloonists, he doesn’t think of the consequences, he doesn’t think the kill will be him.
o That’s the way the devil’s temptation works: he shows you the beauty, the excitement, not the destruction, heartbreak, pregnancy, or STD, or the total destruction of your family.
o So David has sex with Bathsheba.
o But then of course, he has a problem because she’s pregnant.
o And that’s when the cover up begins.
o Trying to get Uriah to sleep with Bathsheba, so his sin won’t be discovered, getting Uriah drunk and finally having him murdered.
o One thought: cover-up, hide the sin, don’t admit guilt, hide in the bushes.
o It’s the Shane Warne approach: sin but don’t get caught.
• If we’re honest, it’s you and me because we cover up too.
o We try to hide our sin from everyone else but there’s a problem with the cover-up— it doesn’t work because it doesn’t take away the real problem of sin.
o The real problem isn’t just the unwanted pregnancy.
o The real problem is the sinful heart that caused it, the broken relationship with God.
o Covering up the consequences, doesn’t take away the sin.
o Trying to hide your sin from God, is as pathetic as Adam and Eve trying to hide in the garden.
o Your lust, your impure thoughts and desires can never be covered up from God.
• David finds this out (2 Sam 12:9) and the real sin is made clear, he’s despised the Word of God.
o That’s the heart of sin and there are consequences for sin.
o David will be punished (v 11) just as God punished Adam and Eve.
o David’s punishment is that he will lose his son.
o David’s tried to hide his sin, his lust and its consequences, but God wants to bring sin out into the open (v 12).
o God drags it out in the open, judges it, deals with it but he doesn’t just pass judgment on David’s sin, he forgives it too (v 13).
o David confesses his sin against the Lord, and then the promise, “the Lord has taken away your sin”.
II. The Solution
• David’s confession is found in Psalm 32.
• About how he turned from cover-up to confession and he celebrates God’s forgiveness at the start by saying “Blessed is he whose transgressions are forgiven, whose sins are covered, whose sin the Lord doesn’t count against him”.
• He stopped covering up and God covered over his sin.
• But how does God cover over his sin?
• How is David forgiven for his lust and his adultery?
• Did David pay for his sin himself – through the judgment of losing his son?
• No but through a judgment passed on the true son of David.
• Forgiveness came when God really put an end to the cover-up, where he really brought sin out into the open, where the sin of the world was truly exposed in broad daylight, where Jesus hung on a cross naked and in shame, murdered for our lust, crucified for our impurity.
• Don’t ever think forgiveness means God turns a blind eye.
• It’s not covered up our way – by hiding I—but by his way— bringing it out, lifting it up, nailing it in, killing it off.
• God says to end the cover up!
• Listen to what John (1 Jn 1:8-10) says to us: “If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness. If we claim we have not sinned, we make him out to be a liar and His word has no place in our lives”
Closing
We need to end the cover up and let God truly cover over your sin and forgive it. There’s no sin that God won’t forgive, no sin the blood of Jesus isn’t powerful enough to cleanse but you must end the cover-up. Come to God in confession. That’s how we become a Christian and that’s what it means to live as a Christian.
