Lust and Sexuality

Summary:

The sermon, inspired by Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount, emphasizes “The Narrow Way” found in Matthew chapters 5 to 7. It calls for a deeper spiritual journey beyond mere rule-following, critiquing the church’s tendency to offer simple solutions to complex problems. Embracing Jesus’ teachings can lead to a life of grace, peace, and transformation. The text stresses the importance of relying on Jesus and community over self-sufficiency, aiming for a profound connection with Jesus for true joy and freedom.

Revival is portrayed as a transformative church process driven by the Holy Spirit through prayer and action. Individuals are encouraged to actively participate in fostering revival, renewing faith, transforming lives, and impacting communities.

The sermon also discusses following God’s calling, addressing life’s brokenness with Jesus’ presence, and tackling issues of shame and judgment. It criticizes culture’s focus on sexuality while advocating for a balanced understanding rooted in Jesus’ teachings on love. Jesus challenges traditional views by highlighting the need for love and harmony beyond avoiding extreme behaviors like murder or adultery.

Finally, the sermon underscores Jesus’ strong stance against lust, promoting a life aligned with His teachings characterized by faithfulness, love, and renewal without shame or judgment. It invites individuals to embrace Jesus’ path for transformation and fulfillment.

Transcript:

We are in a series that's called The Narrow Way, in which we are working slowly but surely through the Sermon on the Mount, which is a sermon that Jesus preached. It is a concise sermon that takes up chapters 5, 6, and 7 in Matthew. There are a lot of famous things that Jesus said that are part of this sermon, whether we realize it or not. But this is not an isolated event. And what I mean by that is that we see components of this sermon, we see thoughts of this sermon echoed throughout all of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John as Jesus spent time teaching and living out the gospel, living out as the way, the truth, and the life in the neighborhoods that he was in. And so this sermon really is, for those of us who are serious about following the way of Jesus, it really is the foundation for how we understand what that looks like. So I want to invite us this morning, if you've been around Journey for a while, this phrase will not be new to you, but I want to invite us to do a little call and response a little reciting of a phrase in order to set the table for what we are conversing about today.

The phrase is, if it's good enough for Jesus, it's good enough for me. All right, let's say that together. If it's good enough for Jesus, it's good enough for me. How many of us, hang on just a minute, I don't know if you can hear that, but I can hear it and it's driving me nuts.

Okay, are we better maybe? How many of us would say that we are very happy when we can check boxes? Yeah, we got some of us in the house today. On a to-do list, maybe if you organize your life in that way, you have things that you have to do and you get to check a box or cross through a to-do item. Or one of my favorite things in my house, I do most of the grocery shopping and I put the grocery list on my phone and it is like, I don't like being at the grocery store, but when I get to go through the list on my phone and just push those buttons and watch the whatever I'm supposed to buy disappear off of my screen, that is a great experience. It is a moment of peace that everything in that particular sphere of the world is right and good and just. When you're grocery shopping, checking boxes is great.

When you're doing a to-do list, checking boxes is great. When it comes to our spiritual lives and our journey with Jesus, checking boxes is a terrible way to go about it. But for many of us, we are so focused on productivity. Checking boxes gives us a way in which to measure our progress and we probably more than we would admit it, like a faith that gives us just boxes to check and then move on to the next thing. When it comes to our journey with Jesus, if we are just checking boxes, we are missing out on the whole narrow road that Jesus invited us on. I want to be honest with us for a moment this morning. I've tried to be honest the whole time, but specifically in this time.

I've been around the church most of my life. I've had some moments where I was away, but I'm very familiar with the church. I grew up going to children's church and then took a pause, but then later on in my high school days, came back to youth group and then went to university to study ministry and have been a part of the church ever since spring break of my senior year in high school. Oftentimes, the church, either because of lack of creativity or understanding or in some cases, it's just laziness, the church can struggle to offer clear alternatives to real issues that affect all of us, other than just simply saying no. It's the equivalent to when you're raising a child and you've told them not to do something and they come to you and they say, why? And your response is to them, because. The church oftentimes can get into a rut of operating that way when it comes to significant issues. We can just say, well, the answer to your question is just say no. And just saying no is generally a great strategy, but it's oftentimes not realistic.

It oftentimes does not get down to the depths of the issue. And so understanding this in our day and age, it gives us a little bit of hope, hopefully, to understand that it's not a new problem. This has always been the problem. And this is why, actually, Jesus offered this sermon, the Sermon on the Mount, and why he called us to the narrow way, because Jesus put together a sermon series where he went issue by issue to go over the human experience and what does it mean to be people and what are people tempted by and where are areas where brokenness generally has its way with us, and offered us a compelling alternative to the existing arrangement. He even did what every pastor is trained to do and gave it a nice and catchy title, inviting us to the narrow way. And Jesus, in this way, is inviting us to a life where we are able to learn from him how to live from a relaxed and peaceful center, all the while limiting the effects of brokenness in our lives, in our neighbor's lives, to the extent that we are able to offer hope and peace and in the world in which we live. But it seems like many of us are comfortable just checking the boxes and allowing this narrow way to escape us and relying on our self-sufficiency and ability to get things right.

Now, when it comes to doing your job, when it comes to knocking those tasks off of your list, self-sufficiency is important, right? We don't always want to have to rely on somebody else, but again, as box checking is detrimental to our spiritual journey, self-sufficiency is equally as damaging to our spiritual journey. You cannot live the life that Jesus called you to live on your own. We have to understand that we need the presence of Jesus in our lives by the power of the Holy Spirit to help fulfill the things that God has called us to do, but also the community of one another, which is the church. It is not a nice thing to have. It is a requirement. We are often tempted to become confident in our own abilities and kind of make it seem like as long as we stay away from certain extremes or certain taboos or certain boundaries, then everything is good.

So we simply settle in for being people who don't murder, who don't commit adultery, and attempt to erase the bad words we speak with good words, right? And we sort of can get in that rut of settling for that type of faith or that type of relationship with Jesus, but God does not want us to settle for good enough. That's not what God invites us to, and in fact, he offers to us a transformation into pure lives which renders our hearts full of grace and peace and joy. Now, that doesn't mean perfection, right? But it does mean a life of expanding grace and peace and joy with Jesus. In Matthew 11 30, Jesus writes this, and this is the message translation, but I love how he's—how Eugene Peterson quotes Jesus. He says, Isn't that the dream?

To live freely and lightly, not because you have it all together, not because you have accomplished great things and have all of these accolades on the wall, but because you are submitting to the grace and truth of Jesus. What's good enough for Jesus is good enough for me, and that is how I'm going to live my life, and what results from that is a life that is lived freely and lightly. This comes to us when the kingdom of God is our center, when we live from that center, when that is the the center of our lives, not living from the center or not living as a moderate, but living grounded in the center of the kingdom of God. That is the most full and free way to live, but we will never get to that point. The Spirit will never be able to lead us to that point. We will never be able to find the narrow way that leads us there if our focus is too narrow. If we are focused either on box checking on the religious side, or if we just sort of, you know, it's just the way that it is on the secular side.

If those are where our thinking is relegated, we will never be able to journey with Jesus on this narrow way. We have to open our minds and our lives to the way of Jesus so that the Spirit can transform us in the depths of our being into the image of Jesus. What is most true is the life and truth and way of Jesus. That is the most true reality in the world in which we live, and when we commit our lives to pursuing that truth, allowing that truth to be nurtured in us, that is when we are on the narrow road. So last week, God was gracious and delayed our conversation on adultery and lust, right? This week I tried to find a way out of it, but couldn't come up with so here we are. But part of the detour last week was something that I believe is our church is heading towards, and that is to a spirit of revival.

So I wanted to bring this back up, and you'll see why in just a second. But we talked about four marks of revival, or four things that we're talking about when we're talking about revival, and I wanted to remind you of them. We won't spend too much time on them. I'd love to have an in-depth conversation sometime in the future. We probably will, but for now we're just going to tick through them. In revival, lives are changed, faith is renewed, the neighborhood is impacted, and because of the life changing, the faith renewing, and the neighborhood impacting, God gets the glory for that. That's a beautiful picture of renewing, reviving our land, reviving our hearts, reviving our church.

That doesn't just happen by accident, right? We have to put forth an effort.

I love how Dallas Willard says it. He says grace is opposed to earning, but it's not opposed to effort. We have, we can't earn revival, but we can put in the work that God blesses and brings about revival. So here's how that comes about. First of all, it's people, individually and collectively, hungering for the Holy Spirit. Now this is not, hungering for the Holy Spirit is not just get a little bit of God when you're together and go about and hope that things work out. Hungering for the Holy Spirit is something much more than that.

It's being present to the Holy Spirit. It's focusing on the Holy Spirit. It's patterning our lives that throughout the busyness of our weeks and the things that we are going through, we have time for pause to collect our thoughts, to reflect on who Jesus is and what Jesus is calling us to. It's much more than a fleeting desire. To hunger for the Holy Spirit is something much more involved in that. The next part of that is humbly receiving the Holy Spirit. Humbly receiving the Holy Spirit is when you understand the Holy Spirit calling you to something, you do it.

It's not look at me or look at us, but pointing our lives towards Jesus. It's trusting that when Jesus says to do something, that it will result in our freedom if we do it. So we do it. It's humbly receiving the blessing of the Holy Spirit. And then all of that is put into motion through two things. And this has been tried and tested and played out over and over again throughout the centuries. There are whole communities that have centered their communal existence on these two things, and that is prayer and work.

Now prayer is a very general term in this instant. It's this moment here as we are gathered together in singing and prayer and scripture and sermon. It's those moments in our lives where we pause and spend some time in reflection. Those moments when we spend some time in silence. It's intercessory prayer. It is all everything that draws our attention to God and the work of the Holy Spirit in our lives and the work of the Holy Spirit in our neighborhoods and in the lives of others. That is what that term prayer is encompassing.

And then work. It's not just sitting in your closet praying and then going about the rest of your life. It requires our work. It requires our effort. In the scripture that Carlene read about the exchange of Jesus in conversation with his disciples, he says, the harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few. We say as a church, we sign up to be workers, right? We want to do the things that God is calling us to do.

We want to be the workers for the harvest. But then God gives his disciples the authority to go and to be involved in their community, to offer a healing presence. And God offers to us that same authority to go and to be present in our community and through the work that the Holy Spirit is doing in our lives, bless our neighbors. That is what fans the flame of revival. So I want to invite you. We'll send out an email tomorrow as a reminder, but I want to invite you to spend time in prayer this week, specifically for this spirit of revival to capture us. And part of that work is not just doing things for other people.

We also have to do the things that God is calling us to do in our own lives. So when we think about how we use our words and how Jesus talks about that in the Sermon on the Mount, as we're going to talk about it today, when we think about lust and adultery, trusting Jesus and doing this work, trusting the Holy Spirit to move us to where God is calling us to, that is part of that work that brings about revival in our own lives and in our neighborhoods as well. So as we are talking about hungering for the Holy Spirit, we have to understand that this is simply a desire for God to move, but it is working as if God is on the move.

See the difference there? It's not just sitting back and saying, God, do something. It's actively doing the work that God has called us to do. So our role is to pray and work and do what God calls us to. A church historian who has written a lot of great things recently on the church wrote this. I love this imagery here, that the church is called to plant gardens in the cracks of the secular. The church is called to plant gardens in the cracks of the secular.

We look at our society and it is very easy to identify the cracks that brokenness has caused, right? There are also, if we're able to have moments of introspection, there are also cracks in our own lives that brokenness has caused. And so we enter into this work of planting gardens in those cracks that take that void and instead of allowing it to be filled with more brokenness, fills it with the presence of Jesus, the calling of Jesus, the grace of Jesus. And what blooms out of that brokenness is something beautiful to behold. So all of that in mind, let's talk about lust. So first and foremost, as we sit here today, we have to remember, talked about this last week, that there are two emotions or things that we experience or things that we feel that are very common, but are not sourced in the kingdom of God. Those two feelings are shame and judgment, right?

Shame and judgment. When we experience shame, Jesus has never shamed anyone, right? The Holy Spirit has never brought shame to anyone. Shame is a byproduct that comes from brokenness. And so when we experience shame, we have to understand that that is not coming from Jesus. Now, that shame might point to something that we need to work on or get right in our lives or confess to Jesus or invite the Holy Spirit into. That's definitely true, but the is not sourced in the kingdom of God.

Jesus also made it clear that judgment, as far as it is us pronouncing judgment or us being judged by one another or judged by others, that that is also not in the kingdom of God. The only one who can judge is God. Jesus gave up his authority to judge. That authority belongs to God, and you and I are never, ever, ever asked to pass judgment, either on ourselves or on one another, right? And we have to understand that, that when we are passing judgment or feeling judged, that equally is not sourced in the kingdom of God. So, as we work through this, understand that what Jesus is inviting us to is a way of freedom, and the source of this conversation is love. Love and freedom is what Jesus is inviting us to, okay?

So, first of all, as we talk about what does it mean to be a human being, what does it mean to a child of God, what does it mean to live in this world, we have to first note that God designed the human experience to include sexuality, right? It is a part of us, just as much as our emotional being, our physical being, our intellectual being, our spiritual being. Sexuality is a part of the human experience. It is a part of God's design. But it is equally important for us to realize that sexuality is only one component of all that makes up our being, right? It is one component. It is not the source of our identity.

It is not all of who we are. In popular culture, and if this is comforting to you, I don't know, but actually through most of human history, when it comes to secular ideas about sexuality, it oftentimes will promote sexuality to a place that it is overemphasized. It is giving too much to one area of our lives. It's like the high school kids who sign up for the football team, and they start weight training, and, you know, they're getting ready for the summer and the pool season, and all they do is curls and push-ups, so they can get biceps and pec muscles, but their legs are super skinny, right? They're not paying attention to the muscles in their legs. If we overemphasize any component of our identity, it will have negative effects for us. We have to focus on our whole beings, and that's important for us to understand in this conversation.

So, in much of human history, cultures, secular cultures, have overemphasized sexuality. In contrast, religious circles oftentimes suppress it, right? We oftentimes suppress it. So, this is very simplistic, but here is kind of a guide for us as we move through this conversation. Religious circles suppress cultural circles. There are few boundaries, right? There are boundaries, but those boundaries are few and far between.

There is an idea in the church that abstinence and monogamy are what it means to be holy people, right? That if you are abstinent when you need to be abstinent, and you are monogamous when you need to be monogamous, that, you know, you are living a holy life. Now, abstinence and monogamy are part of holiness, but they do not equate to holiness, right?

We have to understand that. And if we are caught in a process of suppressing sexuality in our lives, it will likely lead us astray. So, while the church struggles with suppressing, as we said, our culture often overemphasizes it. And where the church's message tends to be deny, deny, deny, no, no, no, our culture's view on sex is equally as unhealthy. The idea of do what makes you happy, or what you're caught up in in the moment, or, you know, you can separate your sexuality from the rest of your identity, any of those ideas are equally unhealthy, and oftentimes lead to scars that never fully heal, scars of being used, abandoned, neglected, objectified, and many of us can identify with that. So the question for us today is this, is there a better way? Now, you all have been around church long enough to know that if there is a question in the sermon, there's probably going to be a follow-up that points us to what Jesus has to say about it, and that's what we are doing today.

So, yes, there is a better way. It's not suppressing.

It's not overemphasizing. It is trusting in what we are calling today Jesus's sexual ethic. That might sound kind of strange, but Jesus had a sexual ethic, was very clear about it, and that's what we're going to look at today. Jesus's sexual ethic centers on love, as defined by Jesus—we have to make sure we understand that, because cultures all have different understandings of love, just like everything else—and communion, as understood by Jesus. Sexual ethic is about love and communion. So, with all of that in mind, let's read what Jesus has to say here, understanding that the culture that he is in is very similar to ours. Religious cultures throughout history tend to be conservative on issues.

It's the same as it is with Jesus—suppress, suppress, suppress. No, no, no. Secular cultures tend to overemphasize the Roman culture, in which Jesus lived in, was probably even more sexualized than our culture is today. And so, it is in this that Jesus is speaking, and here is what he says.

Matthew 5, 27. You have heard it said, you shall not commit adultery, right? That's one of the top ten. The Ten Commandments, not committing adultery is one of them. But I tell you, Jesus says, anyone who looks at a woman lustfully is already committed adultery with her in his heart. Now, we're not going to get too far into this. It's very interesting that Jesus is addressing primarily men in this passage, right?

That's not a grammatical error. That's not only because there were men around him. This is primarily—this problem is—it equally affects both male and female. But for men, because men over the generations tend to have power, they tend to be in charge, they oftentimes will put whatever is askew in them in this conversation. If there is lust in their hearts, they will oftentimes blame the women for that, right? Jesus is not allowing that to fly. He says, he continues on, he says, If your right eye causes you to stumble, gouge it out and throw it away, it is better for you to lose one part of your body than your whole body to be thrown into hell.

Jesus is not mincing words here. And if your right hand causes you to stumble, cut it off and throw it away, it is better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to go into hell. Pretty serious words that Jesus is offering to us in this passage. If you remember a couple of weeks ago, we talked about anger. Very similarly to anger, the commandment is not, don't be angry. The commandment is do not commit murder, right? When Jesus is dissecting these ideas and these temptations, he understands the reality of how corrosive emotions like anger and emotions like lust can be in our lives.

In fact, if you look at the beginning of the Bible in Genesis, in the first several stories, we see how creation literally is broken by anger and lust. It's prevalent in the beginning. It is a part of the human condition, something that Jesus spoke seriously about. So in the same way that he talked about anger, the religious leaders would offer kind of an exemption clause for themselves, right? They would say, do not murder. And so as long as they didn't cross that line, anything else went when it came to their anger, right? The same here with adultery.

As long as you don't commit adultery, anything else is fine. You're not crossing that line. So we're not going to address these other issues. But left unaddressed, anger and lust both will corrode and corrupt our lives, even if we never cross the boundary. So we can see here the hypocrisy and the danger of this approach. So Jesus completely changed the conversation. And he says the goal of being the people of God is not just simply being people who don't murder or who don't commit adultery, right?

As admirable as those things are, there is something more going on here. The standard for being the people of God is, going back to what we said is Jesus' sexual ethic, love and communion. So when referring to lust here, this is also important for us to know. Jesus is not talking about passion. He's not talking about passing attraction, right? Just to put it bluntly, like we are physical beings. Everyone else who has ever lived is a physical being.

And there are people who we interact with, who we find attractive, who whatever the makeup of their body, the appearance of that is pleasing to us. And we notice beauty all around us, right? That is also equally as part of a normal human experience. It's where that beauty takes us or what we do with that, that either maintains the integrity of the individual or begins to plant the seeds of lust in our lives. So to simply understand this, Jesus is talking not about passing attraction, but stoking illicit fantasies. And the reason why this is so important to Jesus is because where lust is present, there cannot be love, right? Where lust is present, there cannot be love.

I love this comparison that Pastor and author Rich Valotis offers to us about the differences between lust and love. Here's what he says. Lust is about consumption, love is about communion. Lust is about taking, love is about giving. Lust uses, love honors. Lust diminishes the other, love cherishes the other. When we understand what does it mean for us to be followers of the ways of Jesus, people who live in the kingdom of God, we understand that the measurement of that is as God intended in the beginning, peace and harmony, right?

But it's not just peace and harmony with God. It's peace and harmony for sure with God, but also with ourselves. It's peace and harmony with our neighbors. I heard a couple of weeks ago, somebody was talking about loving their neighbor and they said, my first neighbor is my family. I love that understanding. It's peace and harmony with the world in which we live. Peace and harmony with God, with ourselves, with our neighbor and with the world in which we live.

And if there is lust in our hearts, we will not be able to live in that peace and harmony. It will wreck our peace. And Jesus, knowing that, speaks very strongly here. I don't think I have to say this. He's not speaking literally when he's talking about cutting off and throwing out. But he is highlighting the seriousness of lust and the issue, the havoc that it wreaks on our lives. So throw it off, throw it out, cut it off, gouge it out.

Might seem like strong and exaggerated language, but it shows how Jesus takes, how serious Jesus takes this issue. In the Old Testament, there are many places where the Israelites, the nation of God, the people of God are referred to or are caught up in patterns. It plays out to where they have turned their backs on God. They are called an adulterous generation. That's the language that is evoked when it comes to the Israelites turning their back on God. There is a whole book in the Old Testament where God instructed a prophet to go out and marry a prostitute. And the prostitute, after marriage, remained a prostitute.

It was not faithful to her husband. In fact, the story goes that the husband would have to constantly go out and find his wife and bring her back home. This is the seriousness of which God is relaying to the people of his commitment and his covenant to us. God pursues us. God promises to be faithful to us. And no matter how well we perform in our lives, no matter what we accomplish or what we achieve or the bad that we do, that will never change. Right. God will always pursue us.

But what is much better than just simply that is that in that pursuit, God's not just calling us or pursuing us to use us. God is joining his life to our life in his faithfulness. And furthermore, what Jesus invites us to on the narrow road is for us then to live our lives faithful to the way of God in return. That is what Jesus's compelling message is when it comes to these topics in which he is addressing, is not just check the box, but in turn, be faithful to God. And in doing so, you will learn to live lightly and freely. You will find a faith that is renewed in your life day by day. Lust will devour you.

Communion will set you free. According to Jesus, Jesus would never call us to do something that he would also not be able to work in our lives to accomplish. Right. And a lot of times in our lives, I'm a human just like everybody else. I understand this too. A lot of times in our lives, when it comes to these very significant issues, it is very easy for us to approach them with defeat, either because of failure that we have experienced, because of feelings and emotions that we have a hard time controlling or letting go of or whatever the issue is. Oftentimes, we can feel like this is a insurmountable mountain.

But according to Jesus, it is possible for us to be remade into his image, to where instead of being consumed by our appetites, we are learning to love God with our whole being and our neighbor as ourselves. And as we surrender to this narrow way, the Holy Spirit does this work deep in us to change and reform us at the core of who we are. So what should we do with all of this today? Well, first of all, as we said earlier, it's very easy in conversations like this for us to feel shame, for us to feel judgment. And so just a reiteration, if you are feeling that now, that is not what Jesus is leading you into. Again, that might point towards an issue that you need to deal with, but Jesus is not judging or shaming. Jesus is inviting us, and he's inviting us to a purity of heart where we experience love and communion.

And that, by the way, is how we live out the way of Jesus in the relationships that we find ourselves in, in our lives. God will meet each one of us where we are at. And all we have to do is just simply say, here I am.

Here I am. And that is the first step in having the longings of our lives satisfied by the presence of Jesus.

Just simply, here I am.