The Great Adventure - Lust? Series

The Great Adventure?

The 7 Deadly Sins

February 11, 2018

Have you ever asked the question . . . “What's wrong with me?”

It's a question we all ask ourselves from time to time. When we blow up at our kids or at our spouse, we wonder - - - what's wrong with me? When we come home from the store with something else we don't need and can't afford - - - what's wrong with me? When we wolf down that extra donut in the break room - - - when we fantasize about someone else, when we hear about someone’s good fortune and we become angry instead of happy for them, when we realize we've wasted another evening channel-surfing . . . whatever it is - - - we find ourselves asking “What’s wrong with me?!”

Something's not right - - - somewhere deep inside our heart and spirit - - - we know, we’re not really happy, but it’s deeper than that. There’s no inner peace, there’s no joy. Sometimes, we’re not sure how we got there, but here we’re there. Physically, our vital signs are good, but something’s wrong inside. What's wrong with us?

The unpopular answer is - - we're sinful. It's not a popular diagnosis, but it's the truth. And no matter how much we protest, no matter how much better we may seem to be than other people, deep down we know something’s wrong — and it’s killing us. Ahh - don’t you love my uplifting messages?

Well, we’ve moved into the season of lent. Lent officially began on Valentine’s Day! What a day to start a season of preparation. Preparing to draw closer to the works of Jesus as He leads us to the cross. During the season of lent, the Christ follower is to pray, repent, maybe give up something or take up something . . . all with the purpose of becoming more like Jesus.

We ask the Lord to search our hearts and spirits to help us determine what’s wrong with us and how we can rid ourselves of our sinfulness. We’ve already started this process, and we’re going to continue through Easter to look at our sinfulness. But not just our sinfulness, but how we can overcome it. To do that, we’re going to use the seven deadly sins as our tool.

There is nothing in the Bible which explicitly states these are the 7 deadly sins. In short, the list of these sins began in the monastic movement around the 3rd century. Those who were in the monastic movement tried to remove themselves from the temptations and sinfulness of humanity. So, these monks and others would move to the desert and live in caves and huts, living like hermits.

But they realized no matter how much they distanced themselves from people, the sins they were running from, always seemed to show up and would destroy their communion with God and one another.

They discovered this sinfulness was in them. Wherever they went, that sin went with them. They could never outrun it.

It was Pope Gregory the Great in the 7th century who popularized the list, putting it in its current form and applying it to the daily lives of ordinary people. He actually wrote an eight-volume work on the sins! Wouldn't that make for some nice bedtime reading?

So, that’s a little background to the 7 deadly sins. Now, my hope over the next weeks is that we would not dwell on how bad we are, we would not obsess on the sin, but we would focus on the cure. For every sin, there’s a corresponding virtue and in a sense a prescription to start to be healed.

Here’s a list of the 7 deadly sins ~

Pride

Lust

Gluttony

Greed

Sloth

Wrath

Envy

We’ve already talked about the sin of PRIDE. We spoke about that for 2 weeks. As a reminder, the antidote for pride is humility and humbleness. It’s when we seek to worship God and truly place God as Lord and Savior. We admit we are not God, never have been and never will be. God is God and we seek to worship Him by drawing closer to Him, loving Him and loving our neighbors as we consider them as more significant than ourselves.

Today, I want to look at the second item on that list. UGH! Nobody wants to deal with this one. Yet, in our world today . . . lust is front and center, even though we don’t want to talk about. I believe lust is one of the hidden demons in the #Metoo movement. I don’t say that to mock the movement. It takes courage to admit you’ve been abused because those who have been sexually abused are often made to feel guilty - - that they brought it on themselves. Those who have been abused should never be made to feel like the culprit.