WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:07.820 So, this week we are continuing a series that we started at the beginning of the season of Lent, 00:00:07.900 --> 00:00:13.919 looking at the seven deadly sins. Three guesses as to which sin we're focusing on this evening. 00:00:14.740 --> 00:00:18.699 The readings make it pretty obvious we're going to be talking about the sin of lust. 00:00:19.559 --> 00:00:26.100 Now, when people talk about sin, that's already a kind of archaic idea. But certain things, 00:00:26.100 --> 00:00:33.859 things like murder or exploitation, those are things that society takes very seriously. We don't 00:00:33.859 --> 00:00:40.060 often, hopefully, joke about those kinds of sins. But when it comes to lust, people kind of respond 00:00:40.060 --> 00:00:45.280 with a bit of a wink and a nod. There's been a massive shift in our society over the last 50 00:00:45.280 --> 00:00:52.000 years in attitudes toward sex and sexual desire and lust. And many people see these as all being 00:00:52.000 --> 00:00:58.859 synonymous terms. Sex in our society has come to be almost seen as a form of recreation. 00:00:59.659 --> 00:01:06.239 And so, people look at Christians and they say, what's their problem? Why do Christians continue 00:01:06.239 --> 00:01:14.400 to be so hung up on sex? Why do they have to be so prudish and legalistic? It's interesting, 00:01:14.400 --> 00:01:21.660 though, when we look at people like Alain de Botton, who is an atheist, and he's a philosopher, 00:01:22.260 --> 00:01:29.920 and he's in the UK, and listen to what he says about sex. Most people believe the idea that we 00:01:29.920 --> 00:01:36.480 belong to a liberated age and ought by now to be finding sex as straightforward and untroubling 00:01:36.480 --> 00:01:42.280 matter, a little like tennis, something that everyone should have as often as possible to relieve the 00:01:42.280 --> 00:01:50.280 stresses of modern life. But the narrative of enlightenment and progress skirts an unbudging 00:01:50.280 --> 00:01:58.840 fact. Sex is not something we can ever expect to feel easily liberated from. It is a fundamentally 00:01:58.840 --> 00:02:04.799 disruptive and overwhelming force, at odds with the majority of our ambitions, and all but incapable 00:02:04.799 --> 00:02:12.979 of being discreetly integrated within civilized society. He goes on to say, tame it though we might 00:02:12.979 --> 00:02:19.939 try. It tends to wreak havoc across our lives. It leads us to destroy our relationships, threatens our 00:02:19.939 --> 00:02:26.139 productivity, and compels us to stay up too late in nightclubs, talking to people we don't even like. 00:02:28.180 --> 00:02:34.340 Only religions see sex as something potentially dangerous and needing to be guarded against. 00:02:34.800 --> 00:02:40.180 Religious people are often mocked for being prudish, but they wouldn't judge sex to be quite so bad 00:02:40.180 --> 00:02:48.040 if they didn't also understand that it could be rather wonderful. This is no Puritan talking. This is an 00:02:48.040 --> 00:02:54.880 atheist philosopher who's making a very honest and counter-cultural observation that as much as we try to tame 00:02:54.880 --> 00:03:04.600 sex and treat it like a normal part of our recreational life, it refuses to play by the rules. And any cursory 00:03:04.599 --> 00:03:13.799 glance at the headlines on any given Tuesday show us that unrestrained lust, as he says, can wreak havoc. 00:03:14.840 --> 00:03:19.719 And so tonight we're going to look a little more closely at lust. And we're going to do that by 00:03:19.719 --> 00:03:26.459 looking at a case study of a man in the Bible in the Old Testament named David, King David, and a 00:03:26.459 --> 00:03:32.120 sordid affair that plays out with a woman named Bathsheba, a very famous story. And as we look at this 00:03:32.120 --> 00:03:38.480 together, we're going to see three things. We're going to see the nature of lust. What is it? And then we're 00:03:38.480 --> 00:03:45.819 going to see the dynamics of lust. How it actually works and why it's so dangerous, pernicious. And then finally 00:03:45.819 --> 00:03:52.120 we'll see the answer to lust. How do we respond? How do we gain freedom over this in our lives? Let's pray. 00:03:52.120 --> 00:04:05.020 Father, a topic like this engenders many different reactions. Some of us scoff, some of us roll our 00:04:05.020 --> 00:04:15.120 eyes. But for others of us, this brings to the surface deep shame, deep hurt, maybe even a sense 00:04:15.120 --> 00:04:25.019 of hopelessness or futility. But Lord, we know that yours is not a kingdom of shame, that yours is a 00:04:25.019 --> 00:04:31.639 kingdom of freedom, people who have been liberated through the power of your gospel. And so we pray 00:04:31.639 --> 00:04:37.579 against shame tonight, and we also pray against indifference. And instead we pray that by your 00:04:37.579 --> 00:04:44.439 power alone, we would leave this place experiencing the freedom that can only be found in you. 00:04:45.120 --> 00:04:47.500 And we pray this in your Son's holy name. Amen. 00:04:49.220 --> 00:04:57.100 So the nature of lust. The first thing we need to do is to differentiate between lust and sexual 00:04:57.100 --> 00:05:01.840 desire. Because as I said a moment ago, a lot of people treat them as being interchangeable, 00:05:01.920 --> 00:05:10.300 but they're not. Despite what most people think, Christians actually simultaneously have a higher 00:05:10.300 --> 00:05:18.960 and more realistic view of sexual desire than virtually any other philosophy, religion, or worldview. 00:05:19.960 --> 00:05:27.400 Some people in society across history have had a very low view of sex. And that comes from the idea that 00:05:27.400 --> 00:05:34.680 the spiritual aspects of life are superior to the physical. And so sex is seen as being bad and negative and 00:05:34.680 --> 00:05:41.160 evil and shameful and base. And a lot of people think that that's what Christians believe. But in fact, 00:05:41.220 --> 00:05:46.319 that's not rooted in Christianity. That way of thinking is rooted in Greek philosophy. It's a 00:05:46.319 --> 00:05:51.780 platonic way of thinking. And then there are other schools of thought, and this ranges, you know, 00:05:51.819 --> 00:05:58.960 everybody from Freud to the American public school system, who view sex as simply a biological drive 00:05:58.959 --> 00:06:04.279 alongside hunger and thirst. And it's okay to do it as long as you're safe and use protection. 00:06:05.000 --> 00:06:10.099 That's the kind of naturalist view. And then there's a third kind of response to sexual desire, 00:06:10.239 --> 00:06:18.120 and that's the romanticized view of sexual desire that treats sex and love and desire as being among 00:06:18.120 --> 00:06:24.879 the highest, if not the highest good. Sexual desire is a form of self-expression. It is one of the 00:06:24.879 --> 00:06:32.139 greatest virtues, the greatest ideals in society. And so these three ways of thinking about sex, 00:06:32.199 --> 00:06:38.819 you can find them in various combinations all throughout our society. And the Christian vision 00:06:38.819 --> 00:06:45.719 of sexuality that is rooted in Scripture gives us a vision that is in some ways similar and yet very 00:06:45.719 --> 00:06:52.560 distinct from any of these other ways of thinking about it. Because on the one hand, unlike people who 00:06:52.560 --> 00:06:59.780 say sex is bad and evil and negative and base, the Scripture actually shows us that sex is something 00:06:59.780 --> 00:07:06.340 that we were created to enjoy from the very beginning of the world, that God created us with the capacity 00:07:06.340 --> 00:07:14.379 and the desire for sexual union. And that He created us not simply to do this for procreation or out of 00:07:14.379 --> 00:07:21.319 necessity, but to enjoy it. Some of you who go to, many of you know that we just finished a series a few 00:07:21.319 --> 00:07:29.040 weeks ago in the Song of Songs, which is an entire poem devoted to sexual intimacy that exists within 00:07:29.040 --> 00:07:35.800 a marriage between a man and a woman. And this vision of sexuality is breathtaking. It's uncomfortable 00:07:35.800 --> 00:07:43.339 at times. Frankly, the translators, by and large, chicken out when it comes to translating this into 00:07:43.339 --> 00:07:49.199 English, because there are very clear, explicit references to male and female physical arousal that 00:07:49.199 --> 00:07:54.479 kind of get glossed over, you know, and it's uncomfortable to read. And these are not people 00:07:54.479 --> 00:07:57.740 who are doing it out of necessity. These are people who are delighting in one another. 00:07:59.680 --> 00:08:04.879 And so the Gospel and the Scripture show us this incredible vision, this incredibly high view of 00:08:04.879 --> 00:08:10.639 sexuality, where it's actually seen as being a spiritual act, a sacrament that reflects the love 00:08:10.639 --> 00:08:17.039 between Christ and His church. So it's much more than a biological drive. It's much more than just a, 00:08:17.039 --> 00:08:22.579 you know, a thing that we do out of necessity. And yet, on the other hand, unlike the romantics, 00:08:22.939 --> 00:08:29.279 Christians don't enthrone sexual desire. As high a view as we hold of sex and sexual desire, 00:08:29.339 --> 00:08:33.480 we don't enthrone it. In other words, we understand that there is something inherently broken 00:08:33.480 --> 00:08:40.279 in human sexuality, that everybody is sexually broken, and that we cannot trust our desires to lead us to truth. 00:08:40.639 --> 00:08:47.819 That they often lead us astray. And this brings us into the topic of lust, which is interwoven 00:08:47.819 --> 00:08:54.039 throughout all human sexual desire. And we see a little more about this in the story of David and 00:08:54.039 --> 00:09:00.299 Bathsheba. Just to catch you up on David's life, David is a complete, total rock star in the Old 00:09:00.299 --> 00:09:07.120 Testament. He is, by this point, the greatest king Israel has ever known. He's, in their mind, 00:09:07.120 --> 00:09:13.940 the promised king. He's a man after God's own heart. He's God's chosen king, chosen vassal. 00:09:14.659 --> 00:09:20.679 And at this point in 2 Samuel, the first nine chapters, David has built Israel into this great 00:09:20.679 --> 00:09:26.679 nation. Their enemies are bowing before them. And when we get to chapters 10 and 11, David is in the 00:09:26.679 --> 00:09:32.539 midst of a war against the Ammonites. And the fighting had ceased over the winter, but in early 00:09:32.539 --> 00:09:38.879 spring, David sends his armies out once again to lay siege to Rabbah, which is the capital of the 00:09:38.879 --> 00:09:45.919 Ammonites. But the scripture tells us all of the soldiers go, but David remains behind. Now we'll 00:09:45.919 --> 00:09:50.480 come back to that. It's very important. So one morning, David goes out for a stroll on the roof, 00:09:50.620 --> 00:09:55.159 which is the highest point in the city. You can look down on anybody else's house from that point. 00:09:55.159 --> 00:10:03.139 And he looks and he sees this beautiful woman who's bathing on her roof. Turns out she is the wife 00:10:03.139 --> 00:10:09.879 of his best friend and one of his most trusted soldiers, a man named Uriah. But at this time, 00:10:10.139 --> 00:10:18.759 Uriah is off fighting David's war. And so David ends up sleeping with her. And it's very unclear 00:10:18.759 --> 00:10:24.360 whether she's able to give consent. And then afterwards, she becomes pregnant. And she tells David 00:10:24.360 --> 00:10:29.700 that she's become pregnant. And he realizes he has to cover things up. Because otherwise, people 00:10:29.700 --> 00:10:35.580 might know. As if every servant in the castle doesn't know, right? And so he has to cover this up. 00:10:35.620 --> 00:10:40.899 And so he tries to trick Uriah. He calls him in from the battlefront. And he gets him drunk. And he 00:10:40.899 --> 00:10:45.460 says, why don't you go spend a night with your wife? And then you can go back out and join the fight 00:10:45.460 --> 00:10:50.639 the next day. But Uriah has way too much integrity for that. He says, I can't do that while all of my 00:10:50.639 --> 00:10:55.939 comrades are sleeping in the dirt. And so he refuses. And so David is a last resort, 00:10:56.939 --> 00:11:01.419 pens a message, gives it to Uriah, tells him to take it to his commanding officer. And what does the 00:11:01.419 --> 00:11:08.539 message say? Send Uriah into the most dangerous part of the battlefield. Send him on a suicide 00:11:08.539 --> 00:11:16.120 mission. Make sure he doesn't come home. So his commanding officer, Joab, obeys. And David and a 00:11:16.120 --> 00:11:21.620 number of other soldiers are slaughtered needlessly. And then David takes Bathsheba into his home 00:11:21.620 --> 00:11:31.019 and makes her his wife so that nobody will know. And this text practically begs the question, 00:11:31.259 --> 00:11:35.960 how could this happen? David was the best of the best. He was a man after God's own heart, 00:11:36.200 --> 00:11:38.600 God's chosen king. And yet in this story, 00:11:38.600 --> 00:11:46.120 he's no different than any of the men who have made the headlines, people like Harvey Weinstein. 00:11:47.320 --> 00:11:56.379 And in fact, arguably, he's worse. Israel's great hero. So how do we make sense of this? 00:11:57.279 --> 00:12:03.940 Well, this is what lust looks like. And there are two things that make lust distinct from sexual desire. 00:12:03.940 --> 00:12:11.520 The first is this. And we see this very clearly. Lust is not just a desire. It is an over-desire. 00:12:11.920 --> 00:12:17.880 It's an excessive desire. It's a kind of desire that overwhelms your rational faculties and your 00:12:17.880 --> 00:12:24.060 better judgment. In Matthew 5, that passage we just read a moment ago, Jesus says in verse 27, 00:12:24.480 --> 00:12:28.100 you have heard that it was said you shall not commit adultery. But I say to you that everyone 00:12:28.100 --> 00:12:33.620 who looks at a woman with lustful intent has already committed adultery. Now that word lustful 00:12:33.620 --> 00:12:42.539 intent, the Greek word there is epithumia. Epi means over. Thumia comes from thumos, 00:12:42.620 --> 00:12:47.980 which means desire. So epithumia is an over-desire. And that's exactly what we see in David. 00:12:49.200 --> 00:12:55.940 At that moment, he's not thinking about anything else because he's overwhelmed with desire. His better 00:12:55.940 --> 00:13:01.620 judgment has been compromised. And then the second thing that makes lust different from sexual desire 00:13:01.620 --> 00:13:10.500 is that while sexual desire is focused on another person, lust is primarily oriented toward one's own 00:13:10.500 --> 00:13:19.960 sexual gratification, your own desire. It's a consumeristic way of seeing another person as an 00:13:19.960 --> 00:13:25.600 object or a means to get your own needs met, to get the pleasure that you are craving. 00:13:25.600 --> 00:13:34.800 And so David, again, is clearly not focused on the welfare of Bathsheba or of Uriah or of the other 00:13:34.800 --> 00:13:42.779 soldiers or of his family who pay a massive price for this down the road, nor is he concerned about 00:13:42.779 --> 00:13:48.100 his relationship with God. The only thing he cares about in this moment is getting his own needs met. 00:13:48.100 --> 00:13:56.220 And this is lust, a textbook example of lust in action. So here's the difference that we need to 00:13:56.220 --> 00:14:02.680 be clear on. Sexual desire is a good and a natural and an amazing and a beautiful part of what it means 00:14:02.680 --> 00:14:11.200 to be a human being created in the image of God. Lust, by contrast, is an excessive desire for one's own 00:14:11.200 --> 00:14:16.180 sexual gratification. So I just want to give you a few examples of how this plays out in our life. 00:14:16.179 --> 00:14:21.539 The first and most obvious example is pornography, right? Pornography, by the way, is not just a 00:14:21.539 --> 00:14:25.399 men's issue. More and more women every year are accessing, using, and becoming addicted to 00:14:25.399 --> 00:14:30.939 pornography. So it affects everybody, and it's ubiquitous. And, you know, porn sites you may have 00:14:30.939 --> 00:14:39.659 seen now receive more regular traffic than Netflix, Amazon, and Twitter combined every month. It's an 00:14:39.659 --> 00:14:44.899 enormous amount of traffic. So porn is the ultimate example of lust because it's driven 00:14:44.899 --> 00:14:55.639 exclusively by excessive desire, and it is purely about self-gratification. It doesn't even involve 00:14:55.639 --> 00:15:00.939 another real person, right? So this is the classic example. But there are other examples. 00:15:02.699 --> 00:15:09.360 Sex outside of the covenant of marriage invariably will ultimately become a form of lust. And I know 00:15:09.360 --> 00:15:13.940 that that may be controversial for some of you, but I want you to understand that sex in a marriage 00:15:13.940 --> 00:15:21.860 covenant is a means of or a way of giving yourself to someone. And sex in a marital covenant is connected 00:15:21.860 --> 00:15:31.379 to a larger life of self-donation, of service, of sharing, of building a reality and an existence 00:15:31.379 --> 00:15:37.879 together. When it comes to sexual intimacy that is outside of a covenant, no matter how much you may 00:15:37.879 --> 00:15:44.539 feel love for one another or no matter how much you may be committed to one another, inevitably you're 00:15:44.539 --> 00:15:50.820 saying, I want the physical pleasure, I want the gratification, or I want the feelings of worth 00:15:50.820 --> 00:15:58.340 that being with you gives me. And yet I'm not fully willing to give myself fully to you. 00:15:59.639 --> 00:16:05.379 So it ultimately becomes a form of taking. Because if you're not willing to get married to someone that 00:16:05.379 --> 00:16:10.720 you're sexually intimate with, what you're ultimately really saying is, I'm with you until someone 00:16:10.720 --> 00:16:19.039 better comes along. So ultimately it is driven by getting our needs met until they're not met, in 00:16:19.039 --> 00:16:26.779 which case we leave. And by the way, also lust can actually exist within and hurt marriages. This is 00:16:26.779 --> 00:16:32.440 not to say that marriage is exempt from this. And not only can people who are married struggle with lust for 00:16:32.440 --> 00:16:39.000 people who are not their spouse, which is a part of all marriages, part of being human, but it can also 00:16:39.000 --> 00:16:46.400 exist between a husband and a wife. If you're not emotionally intimate with your spouse, if you're not 00:16:46.400 --> 00:16:52.820 committed to loving and caring for and serving and meeting the needs of your spouse, then there could be a 00:16:52.820 --> 00:17:01.860 kind of disconnect in your sex life. And some couples really struggle with this. There is a difference 00:17:01.860 --> 00:17:10.900 between lovemaking and mutual masturbation, where you're using one another's bodies for sexual 00:17:10.900 --> 00:17:16.440 gratification without any of the loving and serving and commitment that is meant to contextualize it. 00:17:17.360 --> 00:17:21.839 Right? So these are some examples of how lust actually can play out in our lives. But this is the 00:17:21.839 --> 00:17:30.279 nature of lust. This is what makes it distinct. Lust is an excessive desire for one's own sexual needs 00:17:30.279 --> 00:17:37.519 and sexual gratification. So this brings us to the second point, the dynamics of lust. How does lust 00:17:37.519 --> 00:17:44.700 actually work? Jesus says in Matthew 5, a pretty strong statement, right? He says in Matthew 5 that 00:17:44.700 --> 00:17:49.519 unless we deal with lust, he says, do whatever you've got to do. Cut an arm off, take an eye out, 00:17:49.599 --> 00:17:54.639 whatever you've got to do, because otherwise this is going to lead you, it's going to plunge you ultimately 00:17:54.640 --> 00:18:00.340 into hell. And you know, we hear that and it's sort of a bracing statement. That's a pretty extreme 00:18:00.340 --> 00:18:06.800 thing to say. But the word that he's using there for hell is actually the word Gehenna. And Gehenna was 00:18:06.800 --> 00:18:13.500 a very specific image. Gehenna is an actual place outside of the city where all the trash is taken out 00:18:13.500 --> 00:18:19.500 to be burned. And so the image of Gehenna is of a couple of things. There's an unquenchable fire, 00:18:19.500 --> 00:18:25.259 fire that is constantly consuming, constantly burning, but never going out, just burning, 00:18:25.380 --> 00:18:30.680 burning, burning. And then there are worms that are constantly consuming the garbage, 00:18:31.099 --> 00:18:38.099 consuming and consuming and consuming. And so this is actually a very fitting image for the dynamics 00:18:38.099 --> 00:18:45.259 of lust and how actually lust works and why it leads into a kind of hell on earth. Because, 00:18:45.259 --> 00:18:51.700 well, to give you another example, in C.S. Lewis's Screwtape Letters, Screwtape is a demon who's 00:18:51.700 --> 00:18:58.400 teaching a younger demon how to enslave people. And at one point the topic of pleasure comes up. 00:18:59.059 --> 00:19:04.180 And Screwtape says, listen, you need to know that demons cannot create pleasure. He says, 00:19:04.220 --> 00:19:10.700 we've tried and tried and tried. It always fails. Only God can create pleasure, including sexual pleasure. 00:19:10.700 --> 00:19:16.500 He says, so what we have to do as demons is we have to get the humans to misuse pleasure, 00:19:16.720 --> 00:19:22.240 to abuse it, to use it in ways that God never intended it to be used, to use it in ways that 00:19:22.240 --> 00:19:31.080 are disconnected from God. And listen to what he says here. An ever-increasing craving for an ever-diminishing 00:19:31.080 --> 00:19:39.440 pleasure is the formula. Isn't that a fantastic definition? An ever-increasing craving for an ever-diminishing 00:19:39.440 --> 00:19:47.059 pleasure. That is what lust is. That's how lust operates. It's an ever-increasing craving for an 00:19:47.059 --> 00:19:53.120 ever-diminishing pleasure. It's a fire that is always consuming, a worm that is always feeding, 00:19:53.279 --> 00:20:00.480 but is never full. And you see this clearly with pornography, right? Porn is highly addictive. 00:20:00.900 --> 00:20:06.420 And over time, many people who use porn regularly, they find that they need more and more extreme or 00:20:06.420 --> 00:20:12.160 deviant forms of pornography to get the same high that they got when they first began to use it. 00:20:12.759 --> 00:20:19.400 You build up a tolerance. Your brain actually does this. I don't know if anybody has seen the recent 00:20:19.400 --> 00:20:25.660 comedy special that came out from Chris Rock, but he gets very honest at one point about his porn 00:20:25.660 --> 00:20:32.779 addiction. He says this. This is Chris Rock. I was addicted to porn. When you watch too much porn, 00:20:32.779 --> 00:20:39.980 you know what happens? You become like sexually autistic. You develop sexual autism. You have a hard 00:20:39.980 --> 00:20:46.119 time with eye contact and verbal cues. You get desensitized. When you start watching porn, any porn 00:20:46.119 --> 00:20:51.660 will do. And then later on, you're all messed up and you need a perfect porn cocktail to get you off. 00:20:52.579 --> 00:20:58.240 That's a very honest and very realistic description. And then he goes on to talk about the fact that his 00:20:58.240 --> 00:21:02.960 marriage is falling apart, that he committed infidelity and slept to the number of women 00:21:02.960 --> 00:21:08.200 and ultimately ended up divorcing this woman he's been married to for years. He's very honest about 00:21:08.200 --> 00:21:15.839 all this. You know, porn use is, some studies show that it makes you 300 times or 300% more likely 00:21:15.839 --> 00:21:25.240 to cheat on your spouse. Researchers can now see that porn use actually rewires your brain. And so a lot 00:21:25.240 --> 00:21:29.339 of people who are not Christians or religious in any way, shape, or form are nevertheless arguing 00:21:29.339 --> 00:21:35.160 that porn is a public health crisis, like smoking, and that we need to take this very seriously. I 00:21:35.160 --> 00:21:41.400 fully agree with that. But again, it's not just porn that we're talking about. Any sex outside of a 00:21:41.400 --> 00:21:45.039 covenant can follow the same pattern. And I want you to bear with me as I make this point. 00:21:46.240 --> 00:21:50.279 Initially, just think about dating. Just think about, you know, think about meeting somebody, 00:21:50.279 --> 00:21:53.420 dating somebody, but getting to that point where the relationships start to get physical. 00:21:53.420 --> 00:22:01.500 Initially, there's this thrill. There's this rush, right? It's this new person. It's this new life. 00:22:01.500 --> 00:22:07.300 It's this new body. It's this new set of experiences that you've never had before. And for some people, 00:22:07.420 --> 00:22:12.460 there's the thrill of pursuit. And for other people, there's the thrill of being pursued and being 00:22:12.460 --> 00:22:18.800 desired and being wanted. And it makes you feel worthy and good. And there's that thrill and it brings 00:22:18.799 --> 00:22:27.500 this great dopamine hit. And the novelty is wonderful. But then that begins to fade and it 00:22:27.500 --> 00:22:33.379 gets more familiar. And people will hook up with people that they don't even really like because 00:22:33.379 --> 00:22:41.220 they want that thrill. But over time, that thrill begins to fade and it fades and it fades. And then at 00:22:41.220 --> 00:22:46.980 some point, you have to move on and find somebody else if you want that same thrill again. Because 00:22:46.980 --> 00:22:52.500 no matter how hard you try and no matter what you do, that thrill won't last. It's like the thrill 00:22:52.500 --> 00:22:57.240 that comes from looking at pornography or using drugs or any of the other things that we can begin 00:22:57.240 --> 00:23:03.960 to become addicted to. There's a high that we can never quite achieve again. And so over time, 00:23:04.039 --> 00:23:10.000 it fades. And so eventually, unless you have a covenant and you've committed to building a life 00:23:10.000 --> 00:23:14.420 together, which is an entirely different way of loving and enjoying somebody, you need to go 00:23:14.420 --> 00:23:18.700 elsewhere to get that same rush again. A lot of people just chase that thrill of novelty. A lot 00:23:18.700 --> 00:23:22.880 of people who get married continue to fantasize about that thrill of novelty, thinking that that's 00:23:22.880 --> 00:23:30.299 something to actually prioritize. Not realizing there's nothing compared to years and years and years 00:23:30.299 --> 00:23:36.740 building a life together. But this is why lust is so dangerous. Because it's never satisfied and it 00:23:36.740 --> 00:23:41.839 creates this restlessness. And the more we feed it, the more it burns and the more it longs for 00:23:41.839 --> 00:23:49.279 something more, something better, something more extreme, a better high. And so unless we deal with it, 00:23:49.740 --> 00:23:54.079 it will hurt not only us but society as a whole. It will plunge us into Gehenna. 00:23:56.079 --> 00:24:02.799 You know, in David's life, you see that lust hurts his relationship with God. Lust leads him to 00:24:02.799 --> 00:24:09.740 severely mistreat Bathsheba. Lust leads him to murder his best friend and several other soldiers. 00:24:11.259 --> 00:24:19.619 This leads to the death of his child. This down the road, this has an impact. The Bible implies that 00:24:19.619 --> 00:24:27.259 there's this impact on his family that goes outside of him and it spans generations after David. You see 00:24:27.259 --> 00:24:34.019 four of his children who suffer either violence or death. An extreme example is his own son Amnon. 00:24:34.900 --> 00:24:39.819 Amnon rapes his half-sister Tamar. And the Bible sort of quietly suggests that there's this 00:24:39.819 --> 00:24:45.400 generational connection between David and the sin and the suffering of his children. 00:24:46.700 --> 00:24:51.720 You know, and it just keeps getting worse. It's like an ancient Near Eastern version of Breaking Bad. 00:24:51.720 --> 00:24:57.940 And then if we look at our own society, we see a similar kind of thing. We see that marriages are failing. 00:24:58.720 --> 00:25:06.480 Porn addiction is on the rise among men and women. Sexual assault continues unabated despite centuries. 00:25:07.319 --> 00:25:12.799 Despite all of the money that even in the last few decades we've spent and all the education and all the 00:25:12.799 --> 00:25:18.920 legislation, it continues basically unabated. The hookup culture is making people miserable. 00:25:18.920 --> 00:25:25.740 This is what drives sex trafficking, which has destroyed innumerable lives. Some of you work on that issue. 00:25:27.900 --> 00:25:37.820 Right? These are glimmers of Gehenna. Right? We're creating a hell here. So what is the answer? 00:25:39.300 --> 00:25:47.160 Well, the answer is not easy, but it's there. The answer begins when we start to recognize 00:25:47.160 --> 00:25:54.980 something that is true not just about sexual desire, but all desire, all pleasure. And that is this, 00:25:55.920 --> 00:26:04.380 that no earthly pleasure can ever satisfy that longing in us. Pleasure cannot satisfy that longing 00:26:04.380 --> 00:26:11.640 because it was never meant to satisfy it. And you see this in John chapter 4. Jesus comes and he meets 00:26:11.640 --> 00:26:19.420 a woman by a well and they begin to talk about water. And Jesus says, well, there's a kind of water 00:26:19.420 --> 00:26:26.060 that if I gave it to you, it wouldn't be like this water. So you keep drinking this water and you keep 00:26:26.060 --> 00:26:30.580 getting thirsty again. But there's a kind of water that if I gave it to you, once you drank it, you would 00:26:30.580 --> 00:26:35.680 never be thirsty again. The woman, like any reasonable person says, give me this water. 00:26:35.680 --> 00:26:41.880 And Jesus curiously, and it almost seems like he's, you know, like we've cut and pasted two 00:26:41.880 --> 00:26:48.920 unrelated bits of text together. Jesus says, bring me your husband. Why would he say that? 00:26:49.660 --> 00:26:55.900 And then she says, I don't have a husband. And he says, well, you speak truly. In fact, 00:26:55.940 --> 00:27:01.759 you've had five husbands and the man you're living with now is not your husband. And we begin to see 00:27:01.759 --> 00:27:08.079 what Jesus is doing. When he talks about her drinking water that will never satisfy her, 00:27:08.160 --> 00:27:12.900 he's not actually talking about the water in the well. He's talking about these men. And he's 00:27:12.900 --> 00:27:18.980 talking about the way that she has gone from one man to the next looking for a sense of worth, 00:27:19.740 --> 00:27:25.720 looking to feel loved, looking to feel chosen, looking to feel desired. And again and again and again 00:27:25.720 --> 00:27:32.559 it has failed to deliver. And he says, stop drinking from that well, that trash. 00:27:34.900 --> 00:27:43.000 And he invites her, come, bring your life, bring your husband, bring your desires, bring all of this 00:27:43.000 --> 00:27:50.640 to me. And I will begin to give you a kind of water, a kind of nourishment that will lead to your 00:27:50.640 --> 00:27:57.980 ultimate satisfaction in a way that none of this could. And it's this amazing moment where we begin 00:27:57.980 --> 00:28:04.800 to see the answer to that longing in all of us. And this is actually what we see happen to David. 00:28:05.300 --> 00:28:10.560 You know, David is doing it, you know, halfway through the story he's doing anything he can 00:28:10.560 --> 00:28:17.700 to keep this sin hidden. And that's human nature, right? When we know we've done something and we feel 00:28:17.700 --> 00:28:23.559 guilt and shame, human nature is to hide that thing. And he's hiding it from everybody else. 00:28:23.620 --> 00:28:27.880 He's killing his friends just to make sure nobody knows about it, as if, as I said before, 00:28:27.980 --> 00:28:33.360 everybody doesn't already know. It's like the emperor with no clothes, right? He thinks that 00:28:33.360 --> 00:28:38.180 people actually don't know what happened. And then he's trying to hide it from himself. 00:28:38.180 --> 00:28:47.779 And we see that in a second with Nathan. But at the very end of the chapter, chapter 11, it says, 00:28:49.100 --> 00:28:54.259 but this thing that David had done greatly displeased the Lord. And we see that God is 00:28:54.259 --> 00:29:00.480 not done with David. So God sends a prophet, the prophet Nathan to David. And Nathan tells David a 00:29:00.480 --> 00:29:04.980 story about a rich man and a poor man and how the rich man had all of these things. But when push came 00:29:04.980 --> 00:29:09.960 to shove, the rich man came and stole the one beloved possession, the one beloved treasure 00:29:09.960 --> 00:29:17.360 from the poor man. And David hears this story. And even though the law would say that when that kind 00:29:17.360 --> 00:29:23.819 of thing happened, that the man who was robbed should just be paid back fourfold, David greatly 00:29:23.819 --> 00:29:31.180 overreacts. He explodes and he says, this man deserves to die. And you know, I mean, long before Freud, 00:29:31.180 --> 00:29:37.480 we're seeing reaction formation in the Old Testament. Reaction formation is what Freud called, 00:29:37.759 --> 00:29:43.060 or actually his daughter called, our way of defending ourselves against things that we don't 00:29:43.060 --> 00:29:47.880 want to accept about ourselves. Right? So instead of accepting some hard truth about myself, I project 00:29:47.880 --> 00:29:53.180 it onto you. And I get really angry about it when I see it in you. And David is trying to suppress 00:29:53.180 --> 00:29:58.340 and hide this shameful thing that he's done. And so when he hears this story, it triggers all of that. 00:29:58.339 --> 00:30:05.500 And it comes out aimed at this fictitious character that Nathan has created. And once that anger comes 00:30:05.500 --> 00:30:10.099 out, the trap is sprung. And Nathan, in one of the greatest lines of the entire Bible says, 00:30:10.439 --> 00:30:20.019 you're the man. And David is unmasked. What some of our greatest fears center around being unmasked, 00:30:20.299 --> 00:30:25.000 being found out, being discovered. And yet for David, this was the greatest thing that ever could 00:30:25.000 --> 00:30:32.799 have happened to him. Because he falls to his knees and he repents. And Nathan says, it's okay. 00:30:33.339 --> 00:30:39.539 God has forgiven you. God has put away your sin. And we say, well, how could God just put away sin 00:30:39.539 --> 00:30:45.380 like this? You know, he abused Bathsheba. He murdered her husband. How could God just overlook this? And the 00:30:45.380 --> 00:30:50.059 truth is, God doesn't just overlook it. This is the good news of the gospel, right? 00:30:50.059 --> 00:30:59.440 That from David's lineage, God would one day raise up a greater king. Greater than David. And this king 00:30:59.440 --> 00:31:09.119 would be named Jesus. And this king, Jesus, would ultimately give his life, sacrifice himself, so that 00:31:09.119 --> 00:31:16.379 God could forgive all of the sins of all of his people for all time. And so you see this amazing 00:31:16.380 --> 00:31:25.320 contrast, while David is willing to kill in order to take Bathsheba for himself. Jesus was willing to die 00:31:25.320 --> 00:31:34.800 in order to set his beloved free. And that is the difference between lust and love. That's the 00:31:34.800 --> 00:31:42.520 difference. And so as we encounter that love, the love that comes to the cross, the love of Jesus Christ, 00:31:42.519 --> 00:31:48.119 that begins to change our hearts. That's the place to come with our shame and our longing and our guilt. 00:31:49.319 --> 00:31:55.599 And we meet Jesus at the cross. And he deals with it. He takes it away, puts it away for all time, 00:31:55.940 --> 00:32:00.579 and sets us free to begin to learn how to drink the kind of water 00:32:00.579 --> 00:32:08.660 that will ultimately lead to not just our satisfaction, but our humanness, our wholeness. 00:32:08.660 --> 00:32:16.259 So just to give you, I just want to end with a few concrete ways we can fight against lust in our lives. 00:32:17.800 --> 00:32:27.060 Number one, be vigilant. Be vigilant. This doesn't just happen to David. He doesn't get jumped. 00:32:28.460 --> 00:32:33.019 Right? The text specifically tells us that while David sends everyone else to fight the war, 00:32:33.019 --> 00:32:39.700 he stays behind. And this is a very important detail that the author uses to show us David's complacency. 00:32:40.500 --> 00:32:42.019 You know, he's worked hard. 00:32:43.240 --> 00:32:46.099 He's put good years in. He's been faithful to God. 00:32:47.019 --> 00:32:49.019 And you know, you can begin to take little liberties. 00:32:50.779 --> 00:32:51.099 You know? 00:32:51.759 --> 00:32:53.680 Just, I deserve this. 00:32:53.920 --> 00:32:56.019 I've been so faithful for so long. 00:32:56.220 --> 00:32:58.500 I deserve just to go out one night and have a good time. 00:32:58.799 --> 00:32:59.859 I've earned this. 00:32:59.859 --> 00:33:02.059 He becomes complacent. 00:33:03.099 --> 00:33:05.039 And this is the author's way of setting us up. 00:33:05.119 --> 00:33:05.859 Oh, goodness. 00:33:06.319 --> 00:33:07.519 Something bad is going to happen. 00:33:08.359 --> 00:33:08.519 Right? 00:33:09.500 --> 00:33:11.859 Why was he out walking on the roof in the first place? 00:33:12.259 --> 00:33:17.199 Is this really the first time that David ever realized that he could look down 00:33:17.199 --> 00:33:19.419 and see women bathing on the roof? 00:33:19.979 --> 00:33:22.379 You think this was an aberration? 00:33:24.339 --> 00:33:28.419 Vigilance means that we take the threat of lust and other sins very seriously. 00:33:28.420 --> 00:33:33.160 It means that we don't put ourselves or even expose ourselves to content or to situations 00:33:33.160 --> 00:33:35.940 that might inflame that within us because we take it seriously. 00:33:36.259 --> 00:33:39.259 We know that it can so quickly overwhelm our higher faculties. 00:33:39.480 --> 00:33:41.539 That we can so quickly lose our minds. 00:33:42.380 --> 00:33:44.500 You know, Billy Graham, who recently passed away, 00:33:44.980 --> 00:33:48.539 one of the things he was most known for was the Billy Graham rule, 00:33:48.680 --> 00:33:52.580 which said that he, you know, he said he would never travel alone with a woman who was not his wife. 00:33:52.579 --> 00:33:56.079 And people like Mike Pence, you know, kind of followed that logic. 00:33:56.359 --> 00:33:59.639 And, you know, Graham and Pence and other people who have done that publicly 00:33:59.639 --> 00:34:01.559 have been mocked and criticized. 00:34:04.119 --> 00:34:11.380 But how many people can say that they had a 60-year career with no scandals? 00:34:12.539 --> 00:34:13.920 You don't often hear that. 00:34:13.920 --> 00:34:17.760 So vigilance, very important. 00:34:18.539 --> 00:34:19.700 Number two, accountability. 00:34:21.840 --> 00:34:24.240 Everybody needs a Nathan in their life. 00:34:25.539 --> 00:34:28.139 And Nathan is not just somebody who says, you know, I just want to check in. 00:34:28.200 --> 00:34:29.519 Is everything okay? You doing all right? 00:34:29.740 --> 00:34:32.460 A Nathan is somebody who can smell your BS a mile away. 00:34:32.460 --> 00:34:37.639 And that's why people with sex addiction who are really, really, really, really, really good 00:34:37.639 --> 00:34:45.159 at BSing their way along, almost by definition have to go to an anonymous group. 00:34:45.679 --> 00:34:49.820 Because that's one of the only places you're going to find people who can actually see through you. 00:34:51.599 --> 00:34:53.860 But we also have at our church, we have triads. 00:34:54.220 --> 00:34:59.059 This is a way that we encourage people to build relationships of accountability and mutual encouragement. 00:34:59.059 --> 00:35:04.219 If you want to be in a triad, talk to the men's or women's ministry leaders. 00:35:04.759 --> 00:35:06.400 They're equipped to help you find a triad. 00:35:06.460 --> 00:35:07.759 We've got people signing up already. 00:35:09.239 --> 00:35:13.460 You know, there's a great illustration of accountability that comes from the Odyssey. 00:35:14.360 --> 00:35:15.960 I love this. I've used it before. 00:35:16.340 --> 00:35:19.759 But in the Odyssey, at one point, Odysseus really wants to hear the sirens. 00:35:20.320 --> 00:35:24.659 But he knows that if he hears the sirens, hears their call, hears their song, 00:35:24.659 --> 00:35:28.539 that he will be compelled to go there and to stay there. 00:35:28.539 --> 00:35:31.820 And he'll run his ship up on the rocks and they'll all die. 00:35:32.539 --> 00:35:34.340 And so he knows that he will lose control. 00:35:34.440 --> 00:35:39.559 And so he tells his men, before I hear the call of the sirens, I want you to lash me to the mast. 00:35:40.500 --> 00:35:41.320 Lash me to the mast. 00:35:41.380 --> 00:35:43.920 And then I want you to all stop up your ears. 00:35:44.259 --> 00:35:48.480 And when we come within range of the siren song and I begin to hear it, 00:35:48.699 --> 00:35:51.519 and I begin to beg you to let me go, and I beg you to take me there, 00:35:51.519 --> 00:35:54.639 and I beg you, and I threaten you, and I say I'm going to flay you and kill you, 00:35:54.639 --> 00:35:58.719 and all of the threats that I make, no matter what I say, don't listen to me. 00:35:58.900 --> 00:36:02.400 Because I'm out of my mind, and if you listen to me, we will all die. 00:36:02.920 --> 00:36:04.420 And so sure enough, that's what happens. 00:36:05.000 --> 00:36:08.339 And he gets within range, and he hears it, and he begins to thrash and freak out, 00:36:08.400 --> 00:36:11.099 but he has good men who do what they're told. 00:36:12.099 --> 00:36:13.339 And they don't let him go. 00:36:13.340 --> 00:36:18.660 And the hard thing about being a human being is we are all intelligent, reasonable, 00:36:19.000 --> 00:36:20.680 most of us very well-educated people, 00:36:21.480 --> 00:36:27.180 and yet we have to realize that at some point in our lives, we will all lose our minds. 00:36:27.620 --> 00:36:29.880 And you need somebody to lash you to the mast and say, 00:36:29.980 --> 00:36:30.600 I don't care. 00:36:30.840 --> 00:36:32.160 You're not getting out of this marriage. 00:36:32.980 --> 00:36:33.640 You're not. 00:36:34.260 --> 00:36:36.039 I don't care what you feel for this person. 00:36:36.940 --> 00:36:39.059 I'm not letting this happen, right? 00:36:39.059 --> 00:36:43.259 I'm sorry I smashed your laptop on the pavement. 00:36:45.199 --> 00:36:46.579 I'll get you another one. 00:36:47.380 --> 00:36:49.099 But for right now, you can't handle that. 00:36:49.799 --> 00:36:51.639 We need people to lash us to the mast. 00:36:53.039 --> 00:36:53.559 Accountability. 00:36:53.860 --> 00:36:57.799 Lastly, thirdly, finally, a lifestyle of confession and repentance. 00:36:58.980 --> 00:37:00.400 It's not just a one-time thing. 00:37:01.980 --> 00:37:06.139 The instinct with sin is always to hide it and minimize it. 00:37:06.139 --> 00:37:12.599 But if you read Psalm 32, you see David's joy when he finally confesses to the Lord. 00:37:12.679 --> 00:37:14.699 You see the liberation that that brings. 00:37:14.779 --> 00:37:16.219 And that's why we do this every week. 00:37:16.299 --> 00:37:17.839 We come before the Lord and we confess. 00:37:18.400 --> 00:37:23.480 We offer an opportunity to repent and then to hear the mercy of the Lord spoken over our lives. 00:37:23.519 --> 00:37:30.639 And this is how we don't get driven by that shame cycle where we sin and then we hide and then we shame and then we sin and then we hide. 00:37:30.940 --> 00:37:32.440 And this is how we break out of that cycle. 00:37:32.539 --> 00:37:33.420 We confess to the Lord. 00:37:33.500 --> 00:37:33.960 We repent. 00:37:33.960 --> 00:37:35.199 We hear of the Lord's mercy. 00:37:35.199 --> 00:37:36.179 It liberates us. 00:37:36.439 --> 00:37:45.699 And we take steps, progressive steps, toward freedom so that we're no longer enslaved in Egypt under the slave master of lust. 00:37:45.779 --> 00:37:50.939 But rather we're learning how to live in the wilderness as God's promised people moving toward his promised land. 00:37:51.719 --> 00:37:56.460 And we can always come to Jesus with confidence knowing that the moment we go to our knees in confession, 00:37:57.000 --> 00:38:00.119 Jesus is already lifting us up in his embrace of mercy. 00:38:00.119 --> 00:38:04.420 And that is the place where all of our longings will one day be satisfied. 00:38:05.299 --> 00:38:05.940 Let's pray.