Myths That Make Us Miserable V, The Truth About Lust and Love

Welcome to Lifelines Tapes, a ministry of North Way Christian Community in Wexford, PA, where Dr. Jay Passavant is Senior Pastor. All of our teachings are available on cassette tape from the Lifelines Resource Center by calling the church office at 412-935-6800. The following message is the fifth in a series of messages entitled, Exploding the Myths That Make Us Miserable. Today's message by Dr. Passavant is from the Sunday service of November 27th of 1994 and is entitled, The Truth About Lust and Love. And now, here's J. We've got a problem. We need to talk. What is it? I found something in Eric's room. What did you find? What? This. Sue, you scared me half to death. My heart is pounding. This doesn't scare you? I thought it was drugs hidden in here or something. Well? It's sports illustrated. It's sex illustrated. It's just girls in bathing suits. Those are not bathing suits, Bill. Those are remnants of bathing suits. Honey, relax. It's okay. How can you say that? Look at this. It's worn. It's circled, starred, highlighted. Yeah, well. So are you going to talk to him or not? And what am I supposed to say? Tell him he shouldn't be looking at pictures like that. Tell him we won't allow it. I am not going to say that. I mean, granted, it's a little bit racy. It's a little. But it's no worse than what he sees in the flesh at the pool. I don't like that either. Actually, I think it's kind of a healthy sign myself. Healthy? Look, if we keep pushing this issue, pretty soon he'll be bringing home penthouse and playboy and what? So we should just ignore it then? Basically, welcome to the world of teenage boys. No, I won't accept that. Sue, trust me in this. If you don't drop this now, you'll make a big mess out of it. Oh, will I? Absolutely. What is it with you men in this thing with women? What are you talking about? You buy those magazines, you share stories in the locker rooms, you ogle at everything that wiggles within 100 feet of you. What have you been doing, reading Gloria Steinem books in there again? Don't deny it, Phil. I've seen the way you're riveted every time a woman walks by. You know, the thing is, she doesn't have to be beautiful or anything. She just has to have the legs of the, you know. I am not riveted to other women. What is this? You look at them. Okay. Okay. So I look at them, but so does every other red-blooded American male. It's no big deal. You don't look at me that way. You're my wife. I mean, I see you every day. It's no big deal. I did not say that. You didn't have to. Besides, I don't do it that often. It's the fact that you do it at all that's a problem, Phil. You know, I go to aerobics three times a week. I spend hundreds of dollars on makeup, wrinkle cream, under-eye concealer. I get the gray in my hair colored once every three months. I try to buy flattering clothes so that I look nice, all so that my husband can say, I look fine. I can't compete, Phil. You don't have to. But I do because the older I get, the younger and more attractive the girls get. Sue, honey. Oh, and it doesn't even have to do with the getting older thing either. You've always looked, and I've always tried to ignore it. Figured that's just what men do. Boy, honey, I'm sorry. I had no idea what this does to you. What about what it does to you? To me? Yes, Phil. Women are more than physical objects. Okay, okay. So I get carried away once in a while. That doesn't mean I want them. But when you look at them, it tells me that you do. I don't know how to make you understand. It's so hard. I get scared sometimes. I guess it is pretty silly, me getting jealous of a model in a magazine. Well, maybe it's not so silly, honey. I mean, I never looked at it from this angle before. This is all new information for me to process. I know. It's just when I found the thing in his room, it just shook me up. Tell you what, I'll talk to Eric. Thanks. And please realize, I love only you. I don't have eyes for other women. I know. Well, I'll let you get back to your game. It'll be over in a bit. Okay. And remember, I'm only going to look at one woman from now on. She's right here on page 23. Well, with that backdrop, let's turn to Matthew chapter five. Thank you, Kent and Ruth for looking in on our lives. Matthew chapter five, picking up in verse 27. This is our fifth week in the Sermon on the Mount. If you're new to us today, we are going through these powerful words and teachings of Jesus. Here we go. Matthew 5.27. You've 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. And if your right eye causes you to sin, gouge it out and throw it away. For it's 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 sin, cut it off and throw it away. It's better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to go into hell. Well, how many of you have had an enjoyable Thanksgiving vacation time? I'm so glad for you. While you were enjoying your weekend of relaxation and recreation and relationship building, I was slaving over these verses. And I'd like a collective sigh of compassion, please. You need to know that I really tried to talk the Lord out of this sermon, especially for today. It's difficult, not just because of the graphic and extreme language that we just encountered, but because it seems to have so little that's really positive to say. I mean, every pastor loves a passage where you can bring in themes of victory and faith and the glory of God, and everyone claps and feels good and goes out for the day. This just talks about body parts in hell, you know. But the Spirit wouldn't let me leave this theme, and he didn't relent, even though I prayed he would, for several reasons. Number one, if you're taking notes here, I think this is on the notes, isn't it? It's a very relevant passage for today, isn't it? I mean, it's all about the world we live in—adultery, lust, sexual images. We live in the most visually stimulated, sexually charged, lust-filled culture in the history of the world. Few, if any of us, are immune from this. Number two, there are more sexually oriented problems out there than just about any other kind. They're hidden. They're rarely talked about, but if the truth were known, they're in the minds of many of us, even this morning. Number three, if I didn't talk about it, you could assume that this church, like many others, was dodging the tough issues, afraid to talk about real life, and happy that we didn't in some ways because it wouldn't bother you. Or, even worse than that, you could assume that this is some secret problem with me, and that I'm just afraid to talk about it, or that I'm having some kind of problem with adultery, or I'm leaving my wife, or something like that. It's not true. I hope it doesn't disappoint anyone, but I mean, that's just the way—I mean, we have—we jump to these conclusions. It reminds me of this story that I read about two monks who went to a monastery. One was there for a long time. The other one followed along, and the requirement of this monastery was perpetual silence. The monks were only allowed to speak after two years, and then they were permitted to only say two words. After two more years went by, then they were allowed to say two more words, and so on. Two years, two words. Well, after the first two years had passed, the new monk was called before his superior, the one who preceded him, to make his first two-word statement. After two years, the monk's first two words were, bed hard. Two more years passed. His next two words were, food bad. Another two years passed, and his next two words were, I quit. And the superior looked at him and said, you know, it doesn't surprise me at all. All you've done since you've been here is complain, complain, complain. Now, when we don't talk, people can assume the worst. But actually, the fourth reason, and one I suppose is very much in my heart today, is that this happens to be a Sunday when many, many young people are here, because colleges have given some kids time off, and most of us are home, and that kind of thing. And so, if we could possibly spare some of our young people a huge sorrow—I mean, if something in this message helps you to get a hold of something that God could use in your life and spare you some grief in the future, it will be worthwhile. And the reason I say that is very important. Listen, please. The most troubled people that I counsel on a regular basis, without any exception, are the ones who are dealing with sexual problems in their lives. When sexual sin is involved, when habits or involvements have gotten into their lives, it greatly complicates what is otherwise, in many cases, a very normal, fruitful, sometimes even overtly successful, even Christian life. There are more people with regrets, big-time regrets, in this area of sexual sin than any other. I mean, I can't tell you the last time someone came to me and said, you know, Jay, I'm just having a real hard time getting free from the guilt and the shame and the condemnation of having cheated on my final exam when I was a senior in high school. Or, Jay, I'm having a really difficult time unburdening myself from the guilt of having shoplifted when I was a teenager. Or, I'm having a real hard time, Jay, you know, I hate my parents and I can't seem to ever get over the guilt. I don't have any of that. But I can't tell you how many times I've had people come to me and say, Jay, for some reason, I can't shake the guilt and the shame and the condemnation I feel because of my sexual exploits, because of the problems I've had dealing with the relationships I've had in the past of my life or in a situation that I'm in right now. When people tell you all sin is the same, don't believe it. They say, well, yeah, it is in God's eyes. You know, all sin required the sacrifice of Jesus on the cross. So in that sense, yes, it is all the same. But not all sin affects us the same. I can tell you categorically that sexual sin affects us like nothing else. It isn't that there's not forgiveness. There is. But you see, dear one, sexual sin so touches you at the core of your being. I mean, it touches you at the very center of who you are. It touches you at your point of created identity. It touches you at the point of your deepest passions and emotions as a human being. And it touches you at the point, listen now, of your highest creativity. Men and women are created in the image of God. And such we have been given the ability to create other life. And sexual sin, you see, involves even that function. And that's why I believe, by the way, there's such an assault by the enemy in this area, because he doesn't have that function. He doesn't have that ability. And so because of that we, in God's likeness, have all of this treasure in us, Satan hates us and attacks us at this area most violently. And people rarely understand, when I hear about the casualness towards sexual involvement today, and it's not that it wasn't there 20, 30 years ago, but it's more so today than I can ever imagine having been when I was in college or high school. I don't think people begin to even have a clue of understanding what it does to the makeup of their personhood. And so for these reasons, I just want to go through just a few points in this passage today. And I want to touch on what Jesus was getting at here, because he makes it clear that it's not just a matter of the physical act, but it again is a matter of what's going on inside of you, in your thoughts and in your heart. Remember last week we looked and we saw how Jesus said you can murder someone with a sword or a spear, but you can also murder them with your words or with the thoughts of your heart. Jesus is saying throughout the Sermon on the Mount, I want a people whose hearts are pure and loving to the core. Loving-hearted people are what the kingdom of God is all about. And lust is contrary to love. Jesus is saying you can commit adultery naked in a motel room with someone that's not your spouse, or you can commit adultery fully clothed in your office, classroom, or even right here in the service today by what's going on in your mind. If you have a lust-filled, self-seeking heart, Jesus is saying you're not going to be able to fulfill the law of love, which is the rule in my kingdom. And it's so difficult in today's culture with the sexual messages that are so confusing. So I want to just have a brief little sex talk today with you. No, I'm not going to talk about anatomy. I'm not going to talk about... I have no mannequins back here. I'm just going to refer to a few things. Let me talk first of all about God-designed relationships. That should be this one. It's this one. Okay, that's right. God-designed relationships. Okay. I know you may not be able to read that in the back, but it's on the overhead. God-designed relationships. What did God intend for men and women? You see, when we're in this side of the continuum, we see that God wanted men and women to relate as whole beings one to another. In other words, God wanted us to have an appreciation for the opposite sex intellectually, spiritually, emotionally, relationally. He wanted us to involve one another as whole beings. I'm sure the physical sexual side was part of it, but it wasn't everything. It was just a part of it. And in the original design of God, he intended that we connect at all those levels and have an appreciation at all those levels. And that's why the Bible says, by the way, in Genesis 225, that Adam and Eve were naked and without shame because they fully understood each other in the completeness of God's purpose of His design relationship. Now, this is the ideal that God would want us to relate this way, that we'd have value and appreciation of each one at all those different levels. But as you know, we live in today the real world, the sin-stained world. After the fall of man in Genesis 3, things have changed radically in the world, haven't they? We know that even though we should be relating this way because of the constant bombardment of TV images and suggestive and seductive models and magazines and movies and these kind of things, we're constantly stirred up in that one physical sexual area that's always getting stimulated in our lives. No one's immune. We don't live in a cocoon. Even because we're Christians doesn't mean those things shut down. We all have these unexpected surges of sexual energy. Now, we know there's more to it than that. We know what God wants, but we find ourselves kind of always on the alert. I mean, and as soon as we're prompted, we just tend to go that direction. It's kind of like the other night. We went out to eat, our family did, and I didn't have a real thing in mind for dinner that night. The first thing I saw and the first aroma that I smelled as I walked in was Mexican. I smelled the spices and I saw this rather nicely prepared dish. I looked at this menu with all these different things on it. There was an Italian and a steak, but what do you think I ordered? Yeah, Mexican. It just got in there. That's just the thing. That's the way it is with us because of the constant stimulation of all of our senses. We are prone to respond at the physical sexual level and not as a whole person. We're not that curious about the rest of that his or her beliefs or creativities or her humor relationships. Now, we can make the choice, but we oftentimes, I mean, we have the capacity to choose. Now, I'm going to engage another person as a whole person, but many times because of what's already been stimulated, we go kind of right toward the physical, sensual, sexual side. Now, we know what we should do, but we really have to be intentional. We really have to focus on it if we're going to do it. Otherwise, we tend to go right toward sizing up another person in the physical realm and kind of stay in it. You see, that isn't God's design. That's not what he wanted us to do as redeemed people, created beings. He wanted us to appreciate one another in wholeness. And the third side, if you keep moving on this continuum, is this. It's what we're going to call lust-filled relationships. From God-designed to real world to lust-filled relationship. And it's no surprise, is it, that there's probably more of us over here today than we'd like to admit. For us, you see, it's not just an occasional leaning into the direction of the physical, sexual. It means that you are basically riveted to this whole area of the opposite sex. I mean, it's what fills most of your thought life. It's what happens when you meet someone, you immediately focus on that and just kind of stay focused. And you walk away from an encounter just fantasizing, what am I going to do? How's this going to play out? How can I go ahead and make something happen? And if you're living in the lust-filled area, and by the way, those of you who are single and think, well, you know, if I was married, it wouldn't be a problem. Wrong. It keeps on happening in our lives. See, if the truth be known, if you're living over here, you don't even give a rip about the emotional, relational, intellectual, spiritual side. You just are interested in a body and that's what you're kind of focused on. You know, it's this kind of single, unidimensional focus that fuels the pornography industry today. Because you see, in the pornography industry, all that you're worried about is what that body is. You're not worried about the person. You don't think about the rest of them. And so you can have a relationship, as it were, with a body and forget about the whole person. And that's what keeps it going. Now, what I want you to understand in this continuum, dear ones, is this. How you see yourself in this today is very relevant to your spiritual life. Hear what I'm saying. Let's not pretend that we don't deal in these areas. And let's not shut down and say, well, you know, I mean, it's something that occasionally I think about, but, you know, it's no big deal. Can I tell you something? If you're somewhere in here, where I'm standing right now, or over here a lot of the time, and this is where you kind of live, the Bible would say you have more of a problem than you think you might. In fact, the Bible would say you're probably in pretty big trouble. And I want to tell you why that's true. Number one, lust always violates the law of love. Now, you know, last week we talked about the power of love in God's kingdom, the power that love brings to change people. By this will all men know that you're my disciples, he said, by your love for one another. And there's a quality and a depth and a purity of love in God's kingdom that isn't seen anywhere else. Man to man, woman to woman, man to woman and woman to man. I mean, it's supposed to be the fabric of the kingdom. Let me say it this way. Love is the kingdom trump card. Love is what we have to offer the world that the world can't offer. Where do you find these kind of relationships in the world? You don't. Love between brothers and sisters in Christ is defined as this kind of love. I'm sorry, this kind of love, not this kind of love. All right, right side. Well, it says right side in my notes and that's, but it's your right side. You get it. Okay. Anything else violates the love that God, the law that God has for us. So you see, lustful relationships are always reducing people down to one dimension. And if you're living in here, that's how you're seeing people all the time. Jesus says, if you're doing that in your mind, it's just like you were doing it in the flesh. Now, men have a more difficult time understanding the demeaning nature of this dealing than women do. In my discussions with women about this, for example, if I have the kind of relationship with a woman who, and let's say that she's walking to her car in the parking lot in the mall and a group of guys drive by with the windows down and they make some kind of suggestive comment, some kind of sexually charged comment. Women will basically say to you that particularly if it was, you know, somewhat lewd, they'll say to you, you know, that was repulsive to me. There was nothing, nothing that kind of just maybe, well, at least they noticed me. No, there was nothing redeeming about it. Men don't seem as, as I think the drama portrayed, they don't seem to understand the gravity of these things. Let me just give you an illustration of how deep this goes. At the health club where I work out, I watch when an attractive gal comes up on the track and walks around and gets on a piece of equipment. As a general rule, every guy kind of just, I mean, watches this whole thing play out. And you can just watch the wheels turning. You can almost, if you could read their mind right then, it would be probably, you know, way down there somewhere, okay? I see it all the time. Isn't it interesting in today's culture, isn't this true? Women get so fed up with it. Isn't there sort of a string of women's only health clubs? Isn't it? Or just women, like the Victory Fitness Center, just women go there. They're tired of the men looking at them when they're working out. Does anyone know of any all-male health clubs? I don't know of any. I don't know. Men, hey, this is great, you know, let's do it. Well, the woman said, get out of here. Don't let me alone. I just want to work out. And it's symbolic to me of the difference of orientation in this whole thing. So number one, lust always violates the law of love. Number two, lust is progressive in nature. You see, what I mean by that is, if you're living here, it's going to require more and more and more lustful images, more and more involvement with sexual things to give you this same fleeting gratification and pleasure. This would be a letter that someone wrote about this struggle in their life. They said, I am an emotional invalid. Lust is eating me up. It paralyzes my spiritual life. It perverts my view of women. It distorts my social life. It wreaks havoc on my emotional stability. It destroys any possibility of God using me in this church. But I just can't stop it. And recently I've become even addicted to pornography, which has intensified the problem. And the sad part is that I know that lust and pornography promise everything and produce nothing. But I still can't seem to stop. Now, see, there's a person that probably started here somewhere and basically over time was pulled because of the progressive nature of lust farther and farther to the right or to your left. You see, and lust has this addictive kind of power to it. Every bit as much as alcohol or drugs or other things. You see, your whole life can start revolving around gratifying that lust. And it's a mocker. In the end, as he said, it promises everything but gives you nothing and basically spits you out and mocks you. And I don't know of anybody, especially who has a sensitive heart toward God, that doesn't leave a lust-filled kind of encounter without feeling some measure of internal shame and guilt before God. It affects you deeply. Lust needs to be exposed for what it really is, dear ones. It's a relationship busting, love-diminishing, self-destructing dead-end street. And what tends to happen with people who lust a lot is that they undermine the design of their sexuality and they surrender the beauty of God's gift, which is to be freely enjoyed in the context of marriage. Listen, God isn't against sex. He created it. It was his idea. He knows what it's to be about. But lust-oriented people end up sacrificing it and not being able to enjoy it freely. And if it's not dealt with, it leads to deeply troubling, totally unsatisfying, high-risk, sometimes disease-infected relationships which make life a sexual nightmare. And if you want my evaluation of much of America today, that's what it is. It's a sexual nightmare. Lust can drive you to do things and to think things that will seriously damage your body, soul, spirit, and relationships. And that's why, if you're over in this area somewhere, it's so important that you deal with it. And I want to close the message by just giving you three or four things that you can do to be set free. This is what Jesus was getting at. Number one, you've got to take drastic steps. Let me read this again. Verse 29, If your right eye causes you to sin, gouge it out and throw it away. What's he saying there? Mutilate yourself? No, he's not. But he is saying this. He's using hyperbole to make a point. And that is this. You need to starve yourself or do whatever you have to do to separate yourself from whatever it is that's feeding your lust. You need to take a drastic step. You need to shut it off. If you want to turn off a diesel engine, what do you have to do? You've got to shut off the fuel supply. And it's the same thing. If you want to shut off those lustful images, you've got to cut off the supply. You've got to take that step. Starve what it is. Videos or magazines or books. In today's culture, even the computer is feeding all these images across. Places that you go to. Jesus is saying, if those things are causing you to lust, go blind to them. Shut it off. If your hand is reaching for the car keys to go to a place where you know you're going to fall into lust again, you know, act like an amputee. If your feet are going to carry you into a bookstore or someplace where you know you shouldn't be because lust is going to be stirred up, act like a lame man and don't go. Take drastic action. And someone's got to be thinking, well, you know, why don't you just lay it out for us, Jay? Tell us what's acceptable and what's not. I mean, you just draw the lines and, you know, people, it's a funny thing. People want to be told this is right and this isn't. And yet it's that very thing that produces sort of a legalism of heart. And I'm not going to do it because mainly Jesus didn't do it. Jesus said, look, here's the principle. You apply it to your life. And the other reason I'm not going to do it is this. Different stimuli for you may not affect me at all and vice versa. So it wouldn't work if I gave you my rules because they may not affect you. It's pretty easy today to put sort of a blanket condemnation against most, you know, kind of videos that come out in movies in many cases. And even that, even, you know, the whole system of rating things doesn't really always tell you the whole story, does it? But there's a whole lot of different ways to get, you know, lust-filled things going without ever, you know, I mean, for some people, you know, reading a novel really gets the thing going or getting a long conversation with somebody about someone else and just talking for an hour or two. I mean, what may be okay for you may not be for me and what's okay for me. It just, you know, it may be really get you going. I have to be honest with you. The Diet Coke man doesn't do anything for me, you know, but apparently for millions of women, he's like, wow. And you know, they just, I can't, that's it. Jesus says, starve whatever feeds that lust. And by the way, can I say, if you find that you can't even take that step, let me, I'm going to say something very important here. It may mean that you need some help to be set free from a spiritual bondage through the stronghold in your life of lust. You may need what the Bible calls deliverance. You may need to be freed from that spiritual power. And there are people here in our church who are trained to help you break out of that, to be set free from it by the authority and the power of Jesus Christ. It's important that you know that. So number one, starve what's feeding your lust. Number two, fill your mind with positive and constructive images and information. I mean, in case you haven't learned it yet, it's almost impossible to tell someone, don't think about that. Don't think about that. Don't think about it. What happens when you do that? You do it, right? Rather than just try to stop thinking about it, you know, fill up your mind and displace lustful thoughts with good and pure and lovely things. As Philippians 4, 8 says, if we could put up that scripture, read this with me. Here's what Paul writes. Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable, if anything is excellent or praiseworthy, think about such things. See, as you start to fill your mind with those kinds of thoughts, it pushes the lustful things out and lets them drain off to the side and set your mind on a positive course. And dear ones, this is why Paul writes in Romans 12, be transformed by the renewing of your mind. You see, your mind is going to control your thoughts and actions. It's so important that you focus in on that because what you put in there is going to determine what comes out of you. I've seen it. I know you've experienced it too. We have lots of opportunities in our culture today, don't we, to give ourselves positive things. If you don't have a selection of praise music and cassette tapes of teaching in your car, then it's very easy for you just to fall into the least objectionable stuff on the radio and just kind of hang in there with a drivel of talk radio, if you'll forgive. I mean, it just keeps going and on and on it goes. How much better to be filling your mind with the things of God as many times as you can so that when you're drawing upon it, there's something there. And by the way, if you need some help with that, it's not done yet, but you can see where our new resource center is going to go and you can go in there and just pick up tons of resources to help you. Or come here on Wednesday night and hear the celebrant singers and enter into a worship time and get your mind cleansed and focused so that you can get through the week with a sense of being lifted before God. Number three, starve your lust, number one. Fill your mind, number two. And number three, recommit yourself to building truly loving relationships. And I want to underscore this point, dear ones, because you know what? I don't want us to leave today thinking like, well, here's one of those things that Christians just have to shut them down. We can't have any fun. God wants believers in Christ to enjoy relationships together in a God-designed way. And as we commit to this, the Holy Spirit deepens our desire to be truly loving in this way. We can have relationships where we value the whole person, the intellect, the creativity, the emotions. I want you to know there's some wonderful people in this church. I don't want this to be a church where the men do their thing only and the women do it. And we don't dare ever cross over because we're afraid that we're going to violate some law. That's immaturity. But the relationships that we build have to be bounded somehow in a way that's God-honoring. And you need to work at that and cultivate it. And I have to tell you something. If we can't do it here in God's church, how could we ever think about doing it out in the marketplace? You know, let me just remind those of you who may be from a different generation. In today's marketplace, men and women are cross-pollinating a whole lot more than they did 20 or 30 years ago. And if we can't build positive God-designed relationships here, how are we ever going to make it out there? In fact, the more you are comfortable in seeing people as whole beings here, the better off you'll be out there. You won't be as tempted to just be drawn into this kind of a thing, this lust thing, if you know how to look at someone and to receive them. I had an incident a while back. I was at a waiting area in an airport, waiting for a flight home. And a flight was delayed a little bit, and the waiting area was getting all filled up with people. And there was one seat left, and this very attractive flight attendant headed over toward the seat. I mean, she was very attractive, okay? I'll use a biblical term. She was beautiful in face and form. That's okay if you say it that way. That's how pastors talk. You know, you don't say she was really a, phew, man, hot. She was beautiful in face and form. And this woman who was beautiful in face and form came over to my seat next to me, and I was looking up, and she said, is that seat taken? I got right up and said, no, no. She said, so I meant the one next to you. I said, okay. Sit down. And she sat down. And, you know, I got back to