Lust
1 Thessalonians 4:3-7
Three ministers and their wives went out to dinner and were in a terrible accident, and all six were killed. They came to the Pearly Gates of Heaven and were greeted by St. Peter. "I know you are all men of the cloth," said St. Peter, "but as a matter of protocol I need to look up your records." He punched a few keys on his computer and studied the screen. He looked at the first minister's record, and grimly shook his head. "I'm sorry. Our files say you lusted after alcohol, and though you never drank, lust is just as bad as the deed itself. It says here your lust was so strong that you wouldn't get married until you met a woman named Sherry." Poof, the minister and his wife were banished to Hell. He checked the next minister's record. Again he shook his head and said, "I'm sorry. Our files say you lusted after money, and though you never had any and lived as poor as church mice, lust is just as bad as the deed itself. It says here your lust was so strong that you wouldn't get married until you met a woman named Penny." Poof, the second minister and his wife were banished to Hell. The third minister overheard all this and spoke up. "St. Peter, don't waste your time." He turned to his wife and said, "Come on, Fanny, let's go."
Today, we’re continuing our series on the 7 Deadly Sins and we’re going to focus our attention on lust. Lust was considered to be the least deadly of sins though when you look at the church’s discussion of sexuality, you would think that it would be much higher. But it wasn’t. Our sexual desire is a gift from God. In Genesis 3 when Eve is created, it tells us that Adam and Eve cleave to one another and they become one flesh. That was sexual intimacy and was seen by God to be a good thing. In the story of Abraham and Sarah, Sarah is told that she will give birth to her first child at an old age and her response is, “Will I have paradise again with my husband?” The paradise means sexual intimacy. The Song of Solomon speaks of the virtues and blessings of romantic and erotic love, right there in the middle of your Bible. So sexual desire is a good thing. God intended sexual desire and the uniting of a man and woman to be something which helped to cement the love and covenantal relationship of a lifelong commitment to one another. There’s something spiritual about that and it’s meant to bond you with one another. The joy, passion, and even laughter that sometimes result from sexual intimacy was intended by God. It is a spiritual, holy and sacred act bonding two people together.
The problem is that when we change sexual intimacy into something which it was not meant to be and that is about my needs and my fulfillment. What we end up doing is feeding and satisfying ourselves through lust. So you bond with a person and then pull away and it’s a one night stand. And then you do it again and again. Some have likened it to putting two pieces of duck tape together and then trying to pull them apart. You can do that but it’s never a clean break. There’s always something stuck because they gave themselves wholly to you and you did as well. False expectations might have been formed. You objectified the other person and used them for your own gratification, and they may have you as well. What happens is you can loose your capacity to bond. And what we find is that the misuse of the gift trivializes sex. And when we do that, sex becomes about gratifying our needs without any concern for anyone one else. That’s contradictory to the call to be like Jesus who lived a life concerned with others.
Now all of us struggle with lust and perhaps some of us even know people who have given into this. I recently heard about two friends whose wedding I did. After more than 15 years of marriage, she got pregnant by another man. When the news was discovered by her husband, he then went out and had an affair of his own for retribution. And the marriage was destroyed. That’s what lust does. It takes the good gifts of God and causes us to sin, destroying our relationships, hurting others and distancing us from God. I think about a woman I knew in college who dated and slept with one guy after another until one night she slept with several men consecutively. After college, she went from one relationship to another until she had a mental breakdown. Now in her mid 40’s, she just pulling her life together. I think about a friend of my wife who in her 20’s and 30’s would meet a man in a bar and then sleep with him before they ever really started dating. She was desperate to be in a relationship and get married but because she distorted and misused God’s gift, it wasn’t until her late 30’s that she finally married. These stories show us the deadliness of the sin of lust and it’s impact on our life.
Adam Hamilton tells the story of moving into his house after it was built only to discover that it was infested with mice. So he got glue traps which have a scent that attracts the mice. They step on it and then are stuck. Then the mice need to be killed and disposed of. He was very successful in using them until he found a mice struggling to free itself and actually gnawing off its foot to do so. And then he writes, When I think about lust and its power in our lives, it smells good, feels good and looks good. And we find ourselves stuck in the glue trap. We pull and try to get away and we can’t quite break free. We die a slow and painful death when we’re in the glue trap.” And that’s what happens to us.
We need to understand that the problem doesn’t start when acted upon but rather starts in our thoughts. Jesus reminds us that this starts first with the thought life. This is why Jesus said, “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.” Matthew 5:26-39 Now Jesus doesn’t mean for you to literally cut off your hand but what he is saying is that this is serious business. It can put at risk the people around you and your soul so don’t! Walter
Wangueran is a Lutheran pastor writes in his book, “As for Me and My House.” In it, he tells the story of a time when he found himself attracted to one of his parishioners. When he was home, he was just the normal guy who married his wife. But when he was at church, he was super pastor. Every time he would see this woman at church, she would tell him what a wonderful pastor he was and made him feel really special. Their conversations became more flirtatious. He found himself wrestling with feelings for her but he never acted on them. What he realized was that the danger came in the moment of the ‘maybe.’ It was not saying no instantly but instead was playing the idea of it. The longer I played with it in my mind, the more likely it was that I was actually going to act on it. I had to stop the thoughts. This is the way sin works in our lives according to the Book of James, “One is tempted by one’s own desire, being lured and enticed by it.”
Second, temptation is not sin and it is not a losing battle. Tony Campolo tells the story of a cowboy who came to faith in Christ. That preacher came to him and asked how he was doing in his walk with Christ. The cowboy says, I feel like my heart is being torn apart by two teams of horses, one pulling one way and the second pulling the other. The preacher asked which one was winning. The cowboy answered, “To be honest, whichever one I say giddy up to.” That point teaches us that we can resist sin. It is not a futile battle. It is possible to resist the devil but you have to act on it by choosing which one you’re going to say giddy up to each morning. Paul writes in his letter to the church at Rome: “We know that the law is spiritual; but I am unspiritual, sold as a slave to sin. I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do, I do not do, but what I hate, I do…. (But then he gives the answer) What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body that is subject to death? Thanks be to God, who delivers me through Jesus Christ our Lord!” Romans 7:14-20 Part of what we have to decide is who we are going to serve each morning: ourselves and our desires or God’s desire for us. So it begins with answering the question of “Who is Lord in your life?” We’re all tempted but what we need to answer is how we are going to respond to that temptation.
So how can I resist temptation? First, remember who you are. You are a child of God. It is Christ who lives in you. You may also be someone’s spouse or someone’s child but first and foremost, you are a child of God. So you have to ask whether this activity is consistent with my identity as a child of God. Second, realize the consequences of our actions. So many times when we are tempted by sin, we get blinders on and all we can see is the gratification and we fail to ask what is going to happen after that. How will I feel after this act? Will I tell others about it or will I hide it? Will I hurt other people or bless other people? Third, remove yourself from the situation. Fourth, rededicate yourself to God. Pray, Lord, you know that I am struggling right now, the feelings I have in my heart and the thoughts going through my mind, but now I commit myself to you and your will for my life.” Praying in the midst of temptation is like taking a cold shower. Lastly, reveal your struggle to a trusted friend. It may be a close friend or a group of people if you are in a small group. But something happens when you tell somebody else that you’re struggling with this thing. If you confess it, the power seems to disappear altogether. The power of sin is its secrecy so when you confess it, its power begins to dissipate. This is what James means in 5:16, “Confess your sins to one another and pray for one another that you might be healed.”
The church found that it was important to not only name the 7 Deadly Sins but to paint a picture of the will of God which they called the 7 Heavenly Virtues. When we turn to the Scriptures, we find 1 Thessalonians 4 captures the answer to lust: chastity. “For this is the will of God, your sanctification (that is what will make you holy) that you abstain from fornication that each one of you know how to control your own body, in holiness and honor. (So self control is one of the virtues we are to target.) That no one wrong or exploit a brother or sister in this manner.” God may be disappointed when we hurt ourselves with sin but the anger of God rises when we use or harm another sexually. “The Lord will punish all those who commit such sins, as we told you and warned you before. For God did not call us to be impure, but to live a holy life. Therefore, anyone who rejects this instruction does not reject a human being but God, the very God who gives you his Holy Spirit.” So we are to pursue chastity and holiness in our thought life, actions, words, and deeds because in doing God’s will do I find peace to have self control when a temptation appears before us. To control our bodies, not to exploit other and to be holy and pure in heart when it comes to our family and friends.
Being tempted is not a sin. If you find yourself tempted, you’re alive. That’s OK. There are moments when you are going to find yourself attracted to someone else, someone will make your heart flutter and you’ll feel like you’re in high school all over again. That’s life! That doesn’t mean you have an affair with them. Just because it smells right and feels right, doesn’t make it right. Ask the mouse in the glue trap. So temptation is the common experience. It’s what you do with the temptation that matters. Are you going to make mistakes? Yes. The hope is that you don’t make this mistake and leave the lives of others in your wake. So the aim is to avoid these mistakes altogether.
But what I want you to know is that even after you have made such a mistake, there is grace for you. The angel told Mary and Joseph, “You shall call him Jesus, because he shall save them from their sins.” This is why He came and all we need to do is turn to him and ask for His forgiveness. We remember that he was called a friend of sinners and hung around people who had made terrible mistakes. There are many people in the Scriptures who committed adultery but God loved them still and God still used them to accomplish His will. His desire is that they hit the mark he had set for them and if they missed it, he still loved them.
The story of King David relates this to us. David was staying in Jerusalem in the Springtime while his forces went off to battle. He was walking on his rooftop and as he looked out a woman taking a bath caught his eye. He began each day to go out and watch the time she took her bath. She was Uriah’s wife, one of David’s soldiers. One day after watching her, he called his servants and told them to go fetch that woman for him. And he slept with her. Several weeks later, she came to him and said she was pregnant. Uriah hadn’t been home for a long time so the King sends for Uriah and tells him to go home and be with his wife. But Uriah, realizing that his fellow soldiers were still on the battlefield, sleeps on the King’s front porch. When he can’t get Uriah to sleep with Bathsheba, David sends Uriah back to the battle with a sealed note for the General. It is his own death sentence. The General is to put Uriah at the front of the fighting force and in the heat of battle all of the soldiers are to retreat, leaving Uriah out there on his own to be killed. Then David marries poor Uriah’s widow.
So David has not only committed adultery but also murder and you would think that would be the end of him as a man of God. But he came to a place where he was broken by his sin and in the midst of this dark valley, he wrote one of the most penitential and beautiful Psalms, Psalm 51. “Create in me a pure heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me. Do not cast me from your presence or take your Holy Spirit from me. Restore to me the joy of your salvation and grant me a willing spirit, to sustain me.” God forgave even this and if God can do that with David, he can do that with you.
Confession card. Write down “Lord, please forgive me for…” or “Lord, please help me with….” If lust is really not at issue for you then name what is an issue for you and write that down. Let me them write it down for 60 seconds then close them with prayer.
