Fighting Lust

Today we are talking about lust. We will be touching on topics and using language which may be inappropriate for young ears. We have our kids programs on today and if you feel that you want to make use of our foyer for this morning- you can watch back later on online.

I also want to start off with a disclaimer of just be aware of some difficult situations present at this time in the life of our church. Lust, as we will see, is a distortion of the created image. It feeds the brokenness in our world and is in many ways the root cause of abuse in places that are supposed to be safe. If that is you, absoluteness no stress if you feel you need to leave the room if this conversation brings up hurt from your experience.

If you’ve missed the last couple weeks let me frame this section up for you:

Jesus is speaking now to his disciples and a crowd who have gathered around. He mentions that for someone to enter the heaven, their righteousness must exceed that of the pharisees and scribes- a group of people who were excellent at keeping the rules. Jesus begins a series of “you have heard it said” statements. Each one he is unpacking and explaining that the purpose of God’s Law was not just to call us to holiness, to be a distinct people, but to recognise our need for heart transformation. Our need for someone outside of us to come and rescue us from ourselves.

As you heard, today Jesus to tackling the topic of lust. For us, we need to be aware of our own cultural lens as we read. Lust isn’t just sexual desire, Jesus certainly isn’t calling us to have boring sex lives lacking any desire or enjoyment! Lust and desire are different things. Desire, for one’s spouse, that’s healthy. Lust, in its original meaning, is a desire for that which is forbidden.

Anecdote: My fight with porn.

I was 11 years old when I saw pornography for the first time. Like many young people, I was at a friend’s house. He had an older borther. I got up in the middle of the night for a glass of water and he was on the family computer. It was what people call ‘soft porn’ but coming into early pubescence it sparked my curiosity and set me on a path I didn’t realise would be so destructive. A porn addiction is debilitating and it’s effects are far reaching and often linger past its usage. As lust is a distortion of healthy desire, porn is a distortion of healthy and safe sex.

Thankfully I have a wife who looks upon me with the eyes of mercy, and echoes the words of my King who says I’ve been washed clean.

Pornography, over-sexualisation, sexual abuse, even unwanted sexual advances are the result of lust in our hearts. They’re a destructive distortion of God’s original image.

Ever since the 50’s, the modern sexual revolution has given way to a staggering reality of normalisation and cultural adoption of sexual promiscuity. It’s ultimately in many ways a celebration of unrestrained sin.

I saw a meme the other day about a movie adaption of the book “Scott Pilgrim vs the World”. The premise of the film is that the guy, wants to date the girl. A classic. However, to do so, he must defeat the 7 “ex’s”. A play on the 7 deadly sins. Anyway, the meme was “remember when we thought Ramona was a floozy”. Referencing that 7 sexual partners used to be a lot. It’s now below average our current cultural context. The global average is reported at 10-11, the Australian average sexual partners is now over 13, over one’s life. Now, I’m not passing judgement- for lot’s of people, they were following what culture told them was good and should be the normal experience. Let me weave this all together.

Most teens have viewed pornography by age 13. A large portion of boys at age 8. Fight The New Drug, an independant advocate and research entity against the use or pornography reported this about porn viewership: “Now porn sites consistently remain some of the top most used websites in the world. As of May 2024, Pornhub was the leading adult content and pornographic website for global users. It averaged about 5.49 billion monthly visits. Xvideos ranked next with about 4.02 billion monthly visits.4 That’s an average of 92 billion visits for 2024. That’s 252 million visits a day. 175 thousand visits every minute. So if it took you six minutes to read this article, Pornhub and Xvideos would have already received over a million visits.” By the end of this sermon- 5-6 million views.

The sexualisation of mainstream media, tv, films even our ads and advertisement tactics coinciding with pornographic use and higher sexual activity has been shown to directly increase the sense of loneliness, feed mental health issues including anxiety and depression, aversion to long term romantic commitments, the increased permission of abuse and cheating in sexual relationships, less satisfaction of sexual activity, increase in non-consensual contact and abusive sexual activity, distortion of relationships including the sexualisation of friends and family and inhibiting one’s ability to connect intimately with a partner. And that’s not even talking about the porn industry feeding global sex trafficking. Trafficked persons account for almost 1/3 or all persons depicted in pornographic content.

Needless to say, these are all symptoms of a world far from the image of it’s creator. Sex and sexuality are a gift of the LORD and intended for the upholding and sanctifying of the individuals involved.

Again, I just want to take a moment to speak to you if you have felt the impacts of broken sexuality in your life. Perhaps you’ve suffered at the hands of an abuser, felt objectified as a sexual thing rather than a person, if you’ve felt the debilitation of the bondage of porn addiction or have been left brokenhearted by the infidelity of a trusted partner. If you have ever felt like a ‘broken thing’, know that our God loves you, redeems you and moves toward us in mercy and compassion.

1 Corinthians 6:9–11 ESV

Or do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor men who practice homosexuality, nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God. And such were some of you. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God.

Psalm 147:3 ESV

He heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds.

If you are unconvinced, let my testimony stand. He could have cast me aside according to my sin, he could have disqualified me from faith or service. Instead, he called me and appointed me to preach grace to you. Not I, but what Christ has done, can do and is doing.

Let’s look at our text.

The Sanctity of Marriage & Sexuality as distinct

Matthew 5:27 ESV

“You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall not commit adultery.’

This is the pattern Jesus is teaching with. He first goes to the old testament text of the 10 commandments, Exodus 20:14.

Exodus 20:14 ESV

“You shall not commit adultery.

Remember,the Law has not been done away with, Christ has come to fulfill it. However, the Law served a function in the covenant between God and Israel. God’s call to his people was to make them ‘distinct’. There was some liberty here, it permitted polygamy. This was likely for practical purposes as many men died in labour intense jobs or on the battlefield. A single man was then able to father multiple children with multiple wives to allow for population growth. Parts of the Bbile, like this, to our modern judeo-christian context are rather heinous. It’s important to not allow our cultural lens to cause us into thinking ourselves better that the ancients, we have the benefit of living post-Christ and with His Word in our hands. However, the LORD begins to add things to the ‘forbidden’ pile. One of them, is adultery. Pastor Brad will hit this in more depth next week, I don’t want to detract from that message, but marriage is sacred. It’s God’s created design and it is a picture of our covenant with Him.

In the same way we feel cheated and violated when our sacred relations are disregarded and those whom had a responsibility to us abandon us, that is how God frames our rebellion against him. These are brutal words but listen to this from Jeremiah 3.

Jeremiah 3:6–8 ESV

The Lord said to me in the days of King Josiah: “Have you seen what she did, that faithless one, Israel, how she went up on every high hill and under every green tree, and there played the whore? And I thought, ‘After she has done all this she will return to me,’ but she did not return, and her treacherous sister Judah saw it. She saw that for all the adulteries of that faithless one, Israel, I had sent her away with a decree of divorce. Yet her treacherous sister Judah did not fear, but she too went and played the whore.

As we are to be faithful to our spouse, so too are we to be faithful to our God. However, faithfulness isn’t just tied to a physical action. We can be faithless in our emotions, our mental space, money, etc. For the Pharisees and scribes whom Jesus has referenced, the way they approached adultery would have likely been ‘you can lust and desire, but so long as you don’t actually do anything, there is no sin!” However, Jesus will expand the OT Law to include the thought and motive behind the deed as the real issue. Biblical teaching tells us these thoughts and motives of a person originate from the heart.

Heart

Matthew 5:28 ESV

But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lustful intent has already committed adultery with her in his heart.

Firstly, the phrasing is important- Jesus is explicitly talking to men in this situation, who are intentionally lusting, desiring after a married woman in his heart. It’s not just an affair, but those who, knowing they couldn’t act on it, determined to satisfy the desires of their heart by lusting after her in thoughts and fantasies. Now, is this the only way that lust committed, no, so why does Jesus specifically teach it?

Consider again the passage from Jeremiah 3:6

Jeremiah 3:6 ESV

The Lord said to me in the days of King Josiah: “Have you seen what she did, that faithless one, Israel, how she went up on every high hill and under every green tree, and there played the whore?

That is not a fun passage to put into a PowerPoint, however, the LORD uses the imagery of His people being like a faithless wife spouse for a reason. And not just faithless, whore, suggests that His people would be intimate and give themselves to many others and yet wouldn’t even simply be faithful to the LORD who called them and made them His.

It paints a stark and confronting image, but it sets the stage for grace. The LORD hasn’t set in motion the greatest of all redemptive narratives for us to simply he a bunch of law-abiding people, but to be redeemed, renewed and restored to the created image. As we have highlighted the last couple weeks, God intends to transform our hearts as a fulfillment of His promises.

Ezekiel 36:26 ESV

And I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh.

So, what good is it, then, if we for an hour, hour and a half- no longer than that or we’d complain, sit here and worship Him but then through the week and give our time, effort, attention and resources to something else. To career, or making money. To pursuing a successful family image or status. These things aren’t wrong in and of themselves, in fact some come from God but if they take precedent over following Jesus, if that is the reality of our heart, are we not just an adulterous people? If we claim to love God but seek after idols are we not an adulterous people?

Exodus 34:14 ESV

(for you shall worship no other god, for the Lord, whose name is Jealous, is a jealous God),

He is jealous for you. Jealous here means to fight for or to have zeal toward- zeal being an energetic or enthusiastic pursuit of something or someone. Put this in your own perspective. If your spouse gave you their heart, for half a day a week, and then gave it to all their other pursuits and desires the rest of their week, would you not be jealous?

The LORD God Almighty, maker of Heaven and Earth, is jealous for you. He wants you time and attention and your desire for Him. It is not a paradox then, that when we surrender our hearts to Him, only then we are set free.

Fighting Lust

Matthew 5:29–30 ESV

If your right eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away. For it is better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body be thrown into hell. And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away. For it is better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body go into hell.

So- not to be read as literal. Please no dismemberment after the service, okay? The eye and the hand are considered the main two members of your body that will lead you into sin. “Cause to sin” in the Greek is the word skandalizo, right what English word is that like? Scandalous. Your, that is to be your guide, your hand, that is meant for strength and action, can lead you into morally or legally wrong situations, that’s what scandalous means. In other words, Jesus is asking you what are the things, places or people that are perhaps placing your in places of temptation, possibly leading you into sin? Cut them off. Cut them off? Isn’t that harsh?

“Better to lose one of your members than your whole body be thrown into hell.” This is the wisdom: remove yourself from situations, through prayerful discernment, lest you find yourself in a disaster. A good example of this is when emotional affairs turn into physical affairs. Close work friends, go onto a work trip and you’ve probably heard of examples of what happens next. Drastic steps to cut off temptation may seem harsh, it isn’t harsh if drastic steps save you from disaster- if it were to save your marriage or to save yourself from emotional harm. Our sexuality is a deep, important part of who we are. It’s not a surprise that it’s sexual sin that often leaves the deepest scars- and Jesus, is calling for spiritual wisdom and maturity to protect you from that.

Jesus words are a call to resistance. For me, I was 17 I think, I had this iPod Touch and it was how I often accessed pornographic content. I was really struggling and one time I prayed this prayer: “God, break my heart for what breaks yours”. I suddenly felt this grief over my sin so I put it into the vice of my Dad’s workshop and smashed it with a hammer, put the pieces in an old dog bowl, laced it with petrol and sit it on fire. True story. It’s not just about acts of trying not to sin, but rather open rebellion against your sin, fighting back against the desires of our flesh- a declaration of, “I’m not your slave!”

Romans 12:1–2 ESV

I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.

Father’s Heart

Let me finish with this. God has a heart for our own heart. He isn’t some absent, distant archaic rule giver. But a God who deals in heart transformation. He loves you, and real love cannot be passive. I believe He is heartbroken at the state of human sexuality here on earth, and I bet He is itching to pull the trigger on Christ’s second coming, to bring about His promised end to suffering. However, we are not there yet. And it would be wrong to put off God’s calling to be transformed to a later date. Let’s end with this account from John 8:1-11. The religious leaders bring a woman accused of adultery before Jesus. According to the Law, she ought to be stoned to death. Jesus says to them, “He who is without sin, throw the first stone.” The end of leaving the woman alone. Jesus final words to the woman: John 8:11

John 8:10–11 ESV

Jesus stood up and said to her, “Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?” She said, “No one, Lord.” And Jesus said, “Neither do I condemn you; go, and from now on sin no more.”

In church world, we have often handled sexual sin quite poorly. Sex has been treated like a taboo and many people have been left ill-equipped to navigate how to follow Jesus well in the midst of a sexualised culture. I also feel that we have been slow to respond to the growing change of sex and sexuality as depicted in pop-culture and social media. It’s likely you have felt condemned by the church or how sexual sin has been handled or depicted in a church setting.

So, pay close attention to Jesus’ words. You are not condemned because of any sexual sin you have committed or that has been committed against you. Our sexual experience is so deeply intertwined with our person-hood, that misconduct in this space so easily leads to feelings of shame, guilt and regret. You are not condemned but it is for this reason that Jesus commands us to go and sin no more. The Father’s heart is to protect His people, that they may experience and join of sex in safety and security. It’s for this reason He tells us to fight. The reason he warns against complacency and to cut off temptations and protect our selves- o treat our bodies as holy and sacrosanct. It’s actually considered a form of worship.

What is it that you carry? Have you suffered from abuse? Are you struggling with addiction? Is your desire wayward or warped? The Heart of the Father is that His Law is designed to lead us to redemption, not condemnation. He does not condemn you, but welcomes you. He makes you whole- He sent His Son Jesus to die for you, that by the blood of His death you might be washed clean. You have been restored to the created image but let His command to transformation stay with you: go and sin no more.

NOTES:

Woman caught in adultery. Counter cultural.

Marriage to Jesus not reflection of earthly marriages, our earthly marriage is supposed to be a reflection of our marriage to Jesus. Oneness, faithfulness.

Father’s Heart. He wants you to be safe in your sexuality.

Colossians 3:5 ESV

Put to death therefore what is earthly in you: sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry.

Romans 6:13 ESV

Do not present your members to sin as instruments for unrighteousness, but present yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life, and your members to God as instruments for righteousness.

Romans 12:1–2 ESV

I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.

Romans 13:14 ESV

But put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh, to gratify its desires.

Exodus: An Introduction and Commentary b. The Ten Words (20:1–17)

14. You shall not commit adultery. The law allowed polygamy (perhaps a necessary social institution to secure the protection of unattached women), but it never allowed polyandry (the taking of several husbands simultaneously by one woman). For a man to have intercourse with another man’s wife was considered as heinous sin against God as well as man, long before the law, in patriarchal times (