Proverbs III: Lust vs. Love

Intro:

Happy Father’s day — we didn’t plan on preaching a sermon on lust because of Father’s day, but here we are. We don’t want to use Mother’s day sermons to be gentle and kind and exalt mother’s only to rebuke and knuckle slap dad’s on Father’s day. We want to bless you and encourage you and equip you for the fight. You are eternally significant.

Wives, bless your husbands today with your words. As we have been reading in Proverbs, “A word fitly spoken is like apples of gold in a setting of silver” (Proverbs 25:11, ESV). Use the precious gems of fitly spoken words and give them away freely, knowing that you are blessing your home, your husband, your children. Be lavish with encouragement. Thank him for the responsibilities that he takes. Thank him and encourage him for the sacrifices that he makes.

Proverbs: Lust and Love

What Is Lust?

Proverbs takes for granted that we know what lust is. You might be thinking that this is a sermon specifically on sexual lust. In many ways, the word lust has become ubiquitous with sexual desire, but a study on lust in scripture isn’t limited to a purely sexual nature.

Let’s look at the 10 commandments in Exodus 20.

10th commandment: “You shall not covet your neighbor’s house; you shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, or his male servant, or his female servant, or his ox, or his donkey, or anything that is your neighbor’s.”” (Exodus 20:17, ESV)

It’s an application of the 1st commandment: “You shall have no other gods before me.” (Exodus 20:2–3, ESV)

Covetousness wants something so badly that it considers taking it. It’s jealous and it’s a thief. But it does this by creating a shrine or altar out of the thing desired. Then, it worships at that altar in the hopes of getting what it truly wants. It’s a cult.

Inordinate desire — God didn’t make us simply cold and rational beings; he has made us as beings who desire and who are motivated into action and belief by those desires. As Peter Leithart says, “desire is the combustable power that moves human life.” (Peter Leithart, The Ten Commandments, p.117).

“For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.” (Matthew 6:21, ESV)

Paying attention to wisdom regarding lust, especially for the young man, can help him avoid derailing his life.

Maybe you’re thinking that you don’t struggle with lust. James 4 has an interesting test that I believe is worth our time.

James 4 helps us to see where we might have lust

“What causes quarrels and what causes fights among you? Is it not this, that your passions are at war within you? You desire and do not have, so you murder. You covet and cannot obtain, so you fight and quarrel. You do not have, because you do not ask. You ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly, to spend it on your passions. You adulterous people! Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Therefore whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God. Or do you suppose it is to no purpose that the Scripture says, “He yearns jealously over the spirit that he has made to dwell in us”? But he gives more grace. Therefore it says, “God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble.”” (James 4:1–6, ESV)

You might not think that you are entangled with lust, but do you have fights and quarrels in your life? Why is that? James says it’s because you have inordinate desires.

The test is this: Are there things in my life that I want so badly that I am willing to sin in order to get them? Maybe it’s respect, or love or satisfaction of some kind.

We are also told that God will not help out the adulterer. He isn’t answering your prayer because it’s like you are asking him for money to spend it on a prostitute. He yearns jealously for us and opposes our pride. And He desires for us that which satisfies. Because that’s one thing that we can learn from lust. Our passions have a goal — to be satisfied. But they only find their satisfaction when pursued in correct ways.

Lewis Illustration:

“Supposing you are taking a dog on a lead through a turnstile or past a post. You know what happens (apart from his usual ceremonies in passing a post!). He tries to go to the wrong side and gets his head looped round the post. You see that he can’t do it, and therefore pull him back. You pull him back because you want to enable him to go forward. He wants exactly the same thing—namely to go forward: for that very reason he resists your pull back, or, if he is an obedient dog, yields to it reluctantly as a matter of duty which seems to him to be quite in opposition to his own will: though in fact it is only by yielding to you that he will ever succeed in getting where he wants.”

[Lewis speaking to dog]

“‘My dear dog, if by your will you mean what you really want to do, viz. to get forward along the road, I not only understand this desire but share it. Forward is exactly where I want you to go.

“‘If by your will, on the other hand, you mean your will to pull against the collar and try to force yourself forward in a direction which is no use—why I understand it of course: but just because I understand it (and the whole situation, which you don’t understand) I cannot possibly share it. In fact the more I sympathize with your real wish—that is, the wish to get on—the less can I sympathize (in the sense of ‘share’ or ‘agree with’) your resistance to the collar: for I see that this is actually rendering the attainment of your real wish impossible.’

“When we are thinking of a sin in the future, i.e. when we are tempted, we must remember that just because God wants for us what we really want and knows the only way to get it, therefore He must, in a sense, be quite ruthless towards sin.” — Letter to Arthur Greeves, September 12, 1933

Proverbs are like glasses that help us see what is hidden.

Lust Reveals

Proverbs 4:23 (ESV) — 23 Keep your heart with all vigilance, for from it flow the springs of life.

Proverbs 27:19–21 (ESV) — 19 As in water face reflects face, so the heart of man reflects the man. 20 Sheol and Abaddon are never satisfied, and never satisfied are the eyes of man. 21 The crucible is for silver, and the furnace is for gold, and a man is tested by his praise.

Lust exposes what the heart wants. Lust exposes who you really are —”the heart reflects the man” — “from your heart flow the springs of life” [remember that phrase!]

God isn’t trying to kill your desires. He’s trying to rightly orient them.

C.S. Lewis’s image of someone content to play in mud puddles because they can’t imagine a holiday at the sea.

It’s like someone lavishly praising saltine crackers when they haven’t tasted Irish butter on a french baguette. And they say, “yes, but have you tried a saltine?” Weirdo.

Lust Makes You Stupid

Proverbs 6:23–28 (ESV) — 23 For the commandment is a lamp and the teaching a light, and the reproofs of discipline are the way of life, 24 to preserve you from the evil woman, from the smooth tongue of the adulteress. 25 Do not desire her beauty in your heart, and do not let her capture you with her eyelashes; 26 for the price of a prostitute is only a loaf of bread, but a married woman hunts down a precious life. 27 Can a man carry fire next to his chest and his clothes not be burned? 28 Or can one walk on hot coals and his feet not be scorched?

Proverbs 7:21–27 (ESV) — 21 With much seductive speech she persuades him; with her smooth talk she compels him. 22 All at once he follows her, as an ox goes to the slaughter, or as a stag is caught fast 23 till an arrow pierces its liver; as a bird rushes into a snare; he does not know that it will cost him his life. 24 And now, O sons, listen to me, and be attentive to the words of my mouth. 25 Let not your heart turn aside to her ways; do not stray into her paths, 26 for many a victim has she laid low, and all her slain are a mighty throng. 27 Her house is the way to Sheol, going down to the chambers of death.

Lust is going to cost you, big time.

Something as trivial as an eyelash, or a short skirt, or flattery can make you swallow poison and end your life.

Why would someone reach into a fire and wrap both of his arms around a flaming log? That’s a ludicrous thing to do, but it’s what the lustful man does. And he gets burned. And he does it again and again and again.

Here’s another lesson from this verse: You can’t walk on coals an expect not to get burned. You can’t look at trash online or in movies or let your eyes linger with lust and expect to keep control and holiness. You’re being tricked and you’re being stupid.

Our verse here says “do not desire her beauty in your heart”. We repent not only for lustful looks, but for the root of lustful looks: lustful desires. We do battle at the level of our desires.

Lust Makes You Duplicitous

Proverbs 9:17–18 (ESV) — 17 “Stolen water is sweet, and bread eaten in secret is pleasant.” 18 But he does not know that the dead are there, that her guests are in the depths of Sheol.

We tend to nurse our lusts privately, like Gollum in his cave with his precious.

In private, we might think that this isn’t harming anyone, but this is where the path of the dead are. What we do in secret is who we really are.

Lust makes us little atheists - we don’t believe that God is telling the truth about our satisfaction.

Or, it makes us avoid him while we indulge our lusts. If we saw Jesus coming down the hall we would want to avoid him, or push him out of the way to get to our idol.

Lust Rages And Devours

Proverbs 25:28 (ESV) — 28 A man without self-control is like a city broken into and left without walls.

Unbridled/unrestrained lust is the undoing of a man. Not only does lust destroy its object, but it also destroys the one doing the lusting.

Lust is a consumer - it devours, uses, degrades, all in service to the self. It’s the opposite of love that gives and builds and serves.

But lust also devours the one lusting. It plagues with passion unfulfilled, discipline untamed, and often peoples lives undone.

Getting To Christ:

[recall when I said to remember the phrase from Pv. 4:23 - Proverbs 4:23 (ESV) — 23 Keep your heart with all vigilance, for from it flow the springs of life.

John 7:37–39 (ESV) — 37 On the last day of the feast, the great day, Jesus stood up and cried out, “If anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink. 38 Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, ‘Out of his heart will flow rivers of living water.’ ” 39 Now this he said about the Spirit, whom those who believed in him were to receive, for as yet the Spirit had not been given, because Jesus was not yet glorified.

In Christ, our lusts are severed by meeting the one place where they can be satisfied.

In Christ, the sin of our lust is paid for. The shame of our lust is removed.

The inner desire for lust is turned towards the right direction. The hard heart becomes soft. The appetite for other idols begins to sour.

In Christ, everything finds its orbit and proper place. Everything gets put right. All of the shattered pieces that you could never put back yourself get placed in just the right spot to make us whole again.

Confession:

Jeremiah 2:13 (ESV): 13  for my people have committed two evils:

they have forsaken me,

the fountain of living waters,

and hewed out cisterns for themselves,

broken cisterns that can hold no water

Assurance of Pardon:

1 Peter 1:3–5 (ESV): 3 Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! According to his great mercy, he has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, 4 to an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you, 5 who by God’s power are being guarded through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time

1 Peter 1:8–9 (ESV): Though you have not seen him, you love him. Though you do not now see him, you believe in him and rejoice with joy that is inexpressible and filled with glory, 9 obtaining the outcome of your faith, the salvation of your souls.

Communion:

Quotes on lust:

“What is a lizard compared to a stallion? Lust is a poor, weak, whimpering, whispering thing compared with that richness and energy of desire which will arise when lust has been killed.” — C.S. Lewis