Seven Deadly Sins

Lust

I can’t remember ever having been so uncomfortable when preparing for a sermon. It is not my intention to embarrass or offend, and I will make every effort to try to avoid doing so, but this subject will, by its very nature, take me to some places where there is the possibility that might happen. I don’t normally believe that a preacher should  apologise for their message, but on this occasion I do apologise if I do embarrass or offend.

Perhaps to set the tone I could first read an entry from the Sacred Diary of Adrian Plass?
<read the Lust incident>.

Remember! If anyone looks uncomfortable this morning, it may just be that they have mislaid their fruit gums!

I chose the clip from the Disney film “The hunchback of notre dame” which we have just seen because, even though it is from a U rated children’s film, it really captured the essence of lust. Judge Frollo lusts after Esmeralda, but to him she is just an object of desire – he doesn’t care about her, just his lust for her. If he can’t have her for himself, he will burn her alive...

Lust is unrestrained sexual craving

Although we see the term used in many other ways (e.g. “lust for blood” or “lust for power”), those are not the primary meanings of the word, and as attractive as the idea is of concentrating on those... less uncomfortable subjects... I don’t think that I can do the subject justice – and do you justice – if I do that.

So I want to talk first about lust as unrestrained sexual craving; quickly survey the state of the world at the moment as well as the way that the Bible speaks of it, and then move to happier territory – the antithesis of lust – and I want to suggest that the opposite of lust isn’t merely chaste abstinence, but rather the proper enjoyment of sex in a relationship that God is pleased with.

However, lust isn’t just sex out of a proper context – it starts as aspect of our thought lives which can spill over into our physical lives. Why do I say it is an aspect of our thought lives? It is because that is where lust starts. Like pride and the other deadly sins, it starts as a sin of attitude. Why do I say insatiable? Because for lust, enough is never enough. I’ll talk more about that later.

Jesus explains the importance of our thought lives in Matt 5v27ff where he says “You have heard that it was said ‘do not commit adultery’ But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart”.
I don’t think Jesus is talking here about our attention being grabbed by the clothes someone is wearing (or the amount of flesh they are revealing). Looking at a woman lustfully is when someone looks at a woman and starts fantasising about her, letting imagination run free, ‘meditating’ on the idea, as it were. As with all fantasies it dehumanises the subject and it can spoil your own ability to maintain and develop relationships – after all, fantasy relationships escape from all the complexities which are true of real relationships with real people.

Rather unfortunately for men, we tend to be very visually oriented (I obviously don’t know whether this is true to the same extent with women). Advertisers know this, and I’m sure that you have heard it said that “Sex sells”; A cursory glance at the covers of magazines selling electronic gadgets or motorbikes reveals a wide range of semi-clad women, airbrushed to a designers view of ‘perfection’.

Things are even worse when we consider the internet – The market research group “Hitwise” says that in America about 13% of ALL website visits were pornographic in nature. The online porn industry was valued at $1 billion in 2002 by America’s National Research Council. Visually oriented fantasies available at the click of a mouse to all and sundry. Pandering to the tendency towards lust which lives inside each of us.

Lust is a problem because it dehumanises

In the last few months there have been a number of cases reported in the news where the police have tracked down and caught internet paedophiles. On one of those occasions a police representative explained that the reason that it was so important to capture people such as this was that even if they were just looking at pictures now, time and time again it leads them into putting their horrible fantasies into practice.

Psychologists say that even standard pornography has a similar effect – that those who seek it out find that after a while they don’t get the same stimulation so they start to seek out more and more hardcore pornography. There is never enough.

Lust is a problem because it is insatiable

If you have an itch, you know that you mustn’t scratch it because it is going to end up itching all the more. Lust is like that but more powerfully so. It is insatiable, and anyone who gives in to lust... it is like attempting to get out of a hole by digging deeper and deeper.

Recently Stephen Fry fronted a program about AIDS, and it was both interesting and disturbing to hear about the change in public perceptions since the 1980’s. But I was shocked by some of the other information that I heard – that on the gay scene it is not uncommon for someone to have up to 5 different partners in one night, several hundred over the course of a year. This sounds to me like the embodiment of insatiable desire; the act of sex taking precedence over any kind of relationship.

I will just mention without further comment the words written in Romans 1v25-27

“They exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshipped and served created things rather than the Creator-- who is forever praised. Amen. Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural relations for unnatural ones. In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed indecent acts with other men”

I’m not pointing a finger and saying that this is only a problem for those kind of people over there. It is a problem for Gods people, in normal heterosexual relationships too... and always has been.

Consider David – the man after Gods own heart – ...and Bathsheba.

David falls to temptation

You can read about it in 2 Sam 11. For the first time David didn’t go off to war with his generals. He lazed around at home instead. And one evening, walking around the roof of a palace he spotted a woman bathing. He needn’t have taken that second, lingering look. He could have averted his eyes and carried on... but he didn’t. It says that she was ‘very beautiful”. Already David’s mind was following the wrong tracks, already lust had taken him in its grasp. David sent messengers to get her, and he slept with her.

Was that in his mind from the beginning, or was it a step by step thing? We don’t know, the Bible doesn’t say. But we know that Bathsheba fell pregnant. David attempts to cover it up by calling her husband home from the war, but he is such a dedicated man that he refuses to enjoy the legitimate pleasures of being home with his wife while the army is out at war. Contrast that with the illegitimate pleasures David was recently enjoying. David even gets him drunk in an attempt to allow nature take its course, but Uriah remains honourable. So David sends him back with secret orders to ensure that he is killed in battle. What a bastard.

David pays the price. The son Bathsheba bears falls ill and dies; David is warned by the prophet Nathan that YHWH is going to bring calamity upon him, and he will be publicly cuckolded by someone close to him – his son Absalom as it turns out. The kingdom will nearly be rent asunder.

...How often have church leaders fallen prey to lust, and it has ruined their ministry, their lives and the lives of the family and children.

Without looking at the tabloids I can think of three cases involving people that I’ve met.

You know the proverb “the devil finds work for idle hands”. Well, the devil finds work for idle minds too, and that work is lust. It has been used to destroy the effectiveness of many Christians.

So there is our warning. But the warning poses us some questions too – what can we do? What is the opposite of lust, how *should* we be living?

Joseph avoids temptation

The old testament provides us an excellent example from the days before even the ten commandments spelt out Gods hatred of adultery.

Consider Joseph and Potipher’s wife (Gen 39v6-12). Joe was a fit young man, and Potipher’s wife fancied him, so she says ‘come to bed with me’. Although it is far from unknown for people to progress in business today by sleeping their way to the top, Joseph recognises that this would be a sin against her husband and a sin against God and refuses. She doesn’t give up though. The bible says she spoke to Joseph day after day – yet he refused to go to bed with her, or even to be with her. Then the time comes when he is alone in the house with her and she launches herself at him, grabbing his cloak and saying come to bed with me! But he wriggles out of his cloak and runs for it.

Powerful temptation coming against Joseph day after day; he does his best to resist it, he even tries to arrange things so that he isn’t even in the position where temptation can come. At the last, he flees directly away, and resisting temptation lands him in prison. But does anyone doubt that he did the right thing?

1 Cor 6v18 says “Flee from sexual immorality. All other sins a man commits are outside his body, but he who sins sexually sins against his own body.” And as we saw at an early point, lustful fantasising is right out too.

It also says in 1 Cor 10v13 “No temptation has seized you except what is common to man. And God is faithful; he will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear. But when you are tempted, he will also provide a way out so that you can stand up under it.”

Single Solutions?

Is lust more of a problem when you are single? I’m not sure. I was single until I was 38, and I remember thinking that lust must be much less of a problem if you’re married – but it turns out to not be the case. Because of the ‘fantasy’ aspect which is behind lust, both single and married people can fall prey to it. Sexuality and the single person is a huge subject, which can’t be dealt with in detail today, but I notice that the Christian community is much more aware of the problem now than it used to be, and there are a wide range of books attempting to help. I can only mention that while I was unmarried I drew great strength from the knowledge that Jesus was not married – and nobody ever suggested that he had an unfulfilled life!

I think it is right just to say something positive about sex here. Far too many people think that the Christian church is ‘anti-sex’, as well as being ‘anti-fun-of-any-kind’. This is not so. First of all, sex is Gods idea, it is part of his plan for a couple enjoying a loving married relationship. Secondly it is affirmed throughout the Bible (most notably in the rather explicit love poem, the Song of Songs), and not just for procreation either. The Bible says that sex is a problem when it is outside its God-given context.

Little leopards become big leopards

I guess I’d like to close with a paraphrase of one of the ‘Jungle Doctor’ stories – Christian stories for children written by Paul White, a medical missionary in Tanzania.

Perembi the hunter is searching for a leopard to kill. Leopard skins were worth many cows at the market place. A leopard is found and successfully killed. It was a mother, and its baby was nearby, a very young leopard kitten. So cute! Perembi takes the baby home as a pet for his children. The village chief is not happy! He warns that “little leopards become big leopards, and big leopards kill”. Perembi ignores the advice, saying that they will teach this leopard differently. They bring it up on milk and other stuff, and the leopard grows to an adult and is kind to the children – until one day when it licks a wound and tastes blood. Then its true nature became evident, it kills the child and slays Perembi too. The chief fought the leopard and was badly wounded but eventually kills it.
Little leopards become big leopards.

Lust is an insatiable sin, we might think we have it tamed and under control but it can grow and grow until it controls us.

 

Alex White