I know there's not a lot of children in here, but kids, if you happen to be listening, and especially young people, teenagers, young adults, this chapter, particularly for you young people, was explicitly written, spoken to young people.
That's the original audience.
It applies to all of us.
However, young people, this is as if it was custom made for you.
So listen very, very carefully.
And kids, if you're listening, draw a picture, listen carefully, tell your mom and dad at least one thing that you learned from the sermon today.
Let's pray together and ask God's blessing upon the preaching of his word.
You have exalted above all things your name and your word.
Oh God, I'm so glad that verse is in my Bible.
Thank you that you have promised to exalt your name and your word above all things.
God, please do that today in our hearing.
Exalt your name and your word in our minds and hearts.
In Jesus' name, amen.
Well, have you ever noticed that good things come in threes sometimes?
Red, blue, and yellow, primary colors.
There's three of them.
Aramis, Athos, and Porthos, the three musketeers.
Larry, Moe, and Curly, the three stooges.
Steve Martin, Chevy Chase, Martin Short, the three amigos.
Good things come in threes.
My grandmother had a rule of threes of her own.
She, it was kind of her rule of thumb that if she heard something three times, about the same thing, about three times within the span of, you know, a couple of days or weeks, she's like, I think God's trying to get my attention.
Regardless of how helpful that necessarily rule of thumb might be for our lives, three occurrences of something does sound like more than a coincidence, doesn't it?
Today's passage is not the first, not the second, but the third extended warning in the book of Proverbs against sexual immorality.
And that's not even counting a little mini warning in chapter two.
Now, if the Bible says something just once, we ought to pay attention.
But if it says something three times, with a lot of ink dedicated to it, we definitely ought to pay attention.
Now, let's remember why we're studying this book in the first place.
Proverbs is a book dedicated to the training of God's people in the skill of living in a way that pleases God.
It is geared toward our concrete everyday lives.
It meets us in the kitchen, in the dining room, in the streets, in the sidewalks, in the grocery store, in the car.
And one very, very important dimension of our daily concrete lives is our sexuality.
God made us sexual beings.
He likes it.
He's glad he made male and female.
He's glad he made sex.
If it was a big deal to make sure you got sexuality right in Solomon's day, 900 years before Jesus,
then I think it's probably safe to say it might even be an even bigger deal for us today.
It doesn't really take a graduate degree in sociology to figure out that our society is obsessed with sexuality.
It's in our music, our literature, our films, the celebrities we idolize,
the abundantly available pornography that we manufacture,
and perhaps most concerningly the very flippant way that we feel that we can redefine our sexuality in whatever way suits our fancy.
For the average ancient Israelites, there were limited ways where one could go astray from God's good design for sex,
which is supposed to be only in the confines of a heterosexual marriage, man, woman, together for life.
But for the average 21st century American, the sky is the limit.
It's kind of a choose-your-own-adventure book of how you want to find personal happiness through your sexuality.
Now, please don't hear this as like some, you know, stuffy, puritanical guy bemoaning the good old days
when it was easy to know what was right and wrong.
Just hear God's word this morning.
Hear an urgent plea from God's word for us to give heed to God's original design to be the creature he made you to be.
He has a good and pleasing and satisfying path for us to walk in,
and every other road that we would choose leads to self-destruction.
That's why we must listen to the wisdom, the three-repeated wisdom that's in these God-breathed pages.
So with that, let me give you just the main idea of this passage in Proverbs 7,
which Tom just read for us, and then I'll unpack it from there.
Here's what this passage is about today in a sentence.
Guarding God's wisdom will guard you from sexual self-destruction.
In other words, if we diligently take God's word seriously,
and we develop the skill of living well in the fear of the Lord in the world that he has made,
then that skill that's internalized within us will guard us from making decisions that are self-destructive sexually.
And the way that this big idea gets communicated in this chapter is in the words of the wise father addressing his son.
Now, the whole first half of the book of Proverbs is the father giving speeches one after another to his son,
and this is actually the last one that we're going to hear.
The next two chapters before we hit chapter 10 with all the different random Proverbs
are kind of a climactic celebration of wisdom.
So this is his last speech to his son.
That means we've got to listen really carefully.
So there are three parts to his speech, three movements.
The first is the father's appeal.
That's in verses 1 to 5.
Then the father's story, verses 6 to 23.
And then the father's warning in verses 24 to 27.
Let's first take a look at the father's appeal.
And his appeal is very simple.
Guard God's wisdom.
Look at verses 1 to 5.
It's obvious that this is an appeal.
Notice the multiple commands the father gives his son.
Keep my words.
Treasure up my commandments.
Keep my commandments.
Keep my teaching.
Bind them on your fingers.
Write them on the tablet of your heart.
Say to wisdom this.
Call insight that.
This is a passionate paternal appeal.
You can just feel the urgency in his voice.
Do this, son.
He's actively preparing his son for a temptation that is most certainly going to cross his path
in the near future.
He's calling his son to urgent action.
To train himself.
So that when the event comes upon him, he'll be ready.
But what training is he calling his son to?
What kind of training?
Well, it's to guard his own words of wisdom, which are pointing the son to God's words.
Notice that what the son is being urged to keep and guard.
My words, my commandments, and my teaching.
Those last two words, commandments and teaching, are just basic synonyms for God's law in the
first five books of the Bible, the Torah.
But how is the son supposed to do this?
How is he supposed to guard God's wisdom, the commandments and instruction?
Well, it's this.
He is to value and internalize God's word.
Look at verse 2.
Keep my teaching as the apple of your eye.
The apple of the eye refers to the pupil, which is the innermost part of the most tender
and precious organ of our body.
I love to wrestle with my kids.
It's one of our most favorite pastimes.
It's getting increasingly more painful.
And they love wrestling with me because they see it's getting increasingly more painful.
One of my kids, who will remain nameless, goes right for my eyes.
The kid is just like zeroed in.
He knows my weak spot.
And so he just brings his nails to my eyes.
And I go, wow.
I close my eyes instinctively.
I cover my face because I really want my eyes to be protected.
I can't let them get hurt.
We always do that with our eyes.
They're very precious.
And that's how passionately the father wants the son to guard God's wisdom as the most valuable
thing in his heart.
The most tender and precious thing has to be God's word in his heart.
Just like we guard the apple of our eye, we want to guard God's words in our hearts.
If we lose our eyes, we lose everything.
If we lose God's words in our hearts, we lose everything.
We must fight to learn the discipline of valuing God's word and putting it in the supreme place
of affection in our lives.
And he also wants the son, therefore, to internalize God's word.
When we value something, we bring it close.
We bring it in.
Look at verse 3.
Bind them on your fingers.
Write them on the tablet of your heart.
This speaks to the need to memorize and to digest God's word consistently, to get it in us,
to maintain a steady diet of God's truth and wisdom.
The binding on the fingers just refers to the old practice, before we had smartphones to
remind us of these things, of tying a string around your finger so you would remember to
do something.
It's to get a physical reminder in front of you of, oh yeah, God's word, it's right there.
It's right in front of me.
It's a reminder to get God's word physically in front of you often.
And as he gets God's words and wisdom in front of him, the son will also, therefore, write
God's commands on the tablet of his heart.
He'll internalize their truth.
It will become a part of him.
It will be infused into his very personality, his values.
And then the father says a funny thing to kind of cap it all off in verse four.
Say to wisdom, you are my sister.
Call insight your intimate friend.
This is how much the father wants the son to value and internalize his God's wisdom.
He wants him to marry wisdom.
Vatican biblical times, instead of calling your wife honey or dear, you could call her sister.
It was kind of like a term of endearment.
And that is what the father is proposing the son do.
Get so close to God's way of living that if God's way of living were a girl, you could marry her.
Get intimate with the skill of living well in God's world.
You've probably heard a child taunt another child on the playground who has just confessed
that they love ice cream.
Oh yeah, if you love it so much, why don't you marry it?
Well, I've heard that before.
That's basically what the father is saying.
Son, I want you to love God's wisdom so much that if she were a woman, you'd marry her.
But why?
What's so much at stake?
Look at verse five.
To keep you from the forbidden woman, from the adulteress with her smooth words.
Do you see the play on words there?
Keep God's commandments, and God's commandments will keep you from her.
Ah, now we see the urgency.
Now we see the reason.
He sees a horrific danger looming very close in the young man's path that the young man doesn't see.
And he's saying he knows that nothing but God's internalized wisdom in the young man's heart,
incorporated into his core of his personality, will prevent him from getting massacred in the path.
And now, as he's appealed to him, now he switches gears to make his appeal come home.
He uses a parent's most effective teaching tool.
This is for you, Mary Jo.
Storytelling.
He tells a story.
Stories are very effective, and this one is particularly effective to teach.
So now let's turn to the father's story in verses six to twenty-three.
This story is the sad tale of sexual self-destruction.
We're going to move quickly through three parts of this story.
There's a gullible guy, a treacherous temptress, and a frightful fate.
I employed some alliteration just so you can remember it.
A gullible guy, a treacherous temptress, and a frightful fate.
Look first at the gullible guy in verses six to nine.
The father starts telling this story in verse six as if this is a situation he has just personally observed.
He was looking out his upstairs window one day, and he happened to see this whole scene unfold.
And what he sees is a young man who is among the other simple young men who was in the city,
and this young man was lacking sense.
Literally, in Hebrew, he was lacking heart.
Keep that in mind.
In Proverbs, the simple, they aren't hardened fools.
They're not desperately wicked, but they're in danger of making bad decisions because they have badly formed character.
They are in need of wisdom.
They're in need of writing God's commands on their hearts, binding his commands to their fingers.
When it comes to evil, they are gullible.
They are easily swayed to do wrong because they lack the right heart toward God.
So here we have this gullible guy.
He's walking down the street, and that street just happens to be going by her house.
In the text, there's no indication that the guy necessarily was going there on purpose.
It's possible, but the author's not trying to really direct our focus that way.
He's just kind of minding his own business, wandering along his way.
But it's dark.
Look at verse 9.
It's dusk.
It's in the twilight.
Darkness and night are quickly closing in.
That is a literary way to say bad things be a coming.
It's also a way to say bad things are going to happen under the cover of darkness,
and this bad thing is going to really affect this guy very badly.
And now, who comes on the scene?
Verse 10, the treacherous temptress.
The word behold in verse 10 is meant to arrest our attention and focus us on this woman.
The father wants us to notice some particular things about her.
First, she is perversely self-promoting.
She's calling attention to herself in her appearance and in her manner.
She's dressed as a prostitute.
She initiates the meeting.
She jumps out of the shadows.
She accosts the gullible guy.
She is asserting herself, trying to entice him visually and with her words and with her manner.
Verse 13, she is very assertive to this gullible guy, grabs him and kisses him.
She boldly announces her presence and her intention.
So she's perversely self-promoting.
Secondly, she's got ulterior motives.
In verse 10, we see she's wily of heart, carrying hidden motives that this gullible guy can't see because all he sees is the flashy exterior.
Look to it, verse 11 and verse 12.
She's shifty.
She moves here.
She moves there.
She's offering herself on this corner.
Now on the next, she's lurking around to snatch a gullible guy, any gullible guy.
She's not content with her assigned role as a wife and a caretaker of a household, but she is driven by her selfish lust.
She doesn't care about her husband being faithful to him.
She doesn't care about the well-being of this young man.
She just wants to do what she wants to do.
Third, she emphasizes the pleasure and downplays the consequences.
She emphasizes the pleasure and downplays the consequences.
Look at verse 18.
She invites him to a feast of lovemaking, emphasizing how delightful it will be.
And then, as if to head off any objection in his mind of getting caught by her husband, she says in verse 19,
Oh, my husband?
Oh, he's long gone.
He's gone for a few weeks.
He's far away.
He'll never know.
Nothing bad could ever come of this.
So she emphasizes the pleasure, downplays the consequences.
And we don't really know if she's telling the truth or not.
Lastly, and most deadly, her flattering speech appeals to his appetites and his pride.
Notice that the father gives just four verses to kind of describe her approach, and then seven verses of her own speech.
That sounds very enticing to this gullible guy.
That's what the father has warned the son about back in verse 5.
Her smooth words, her flattering speech.
And it's also what he says in verse 21.
It's what finally gets the guy in the end.
Her seductive speech.
Sorry for giving away the end.
I figured you'd guess it by now.
She starts by laying out this banquet of sensual appeal.
She's appealing to his appetite.
She starts with his literal appetite for food.
That's what verse 14 is about.
She says, I've had to offer sacrifices.
I've paid my vows today.
We're like, what's that got to do with anything?
In the law, in the law of Moses, there were some food sacrifices for some offerings that you would make at the temple.
And you offer it to the priest.
And then he offers it to God.
And then he returns part of it to you.
And it had to be consumed that very day.
So basically, what she's saying is, hey, good looking.
Are you hungry?
I got some food to eat.
And I need somebody to help me eat it.
So first is the appeal to his stomach.
But after the initial hook with food, she starts hinting at something more.
Well, not just hinting.
The soft coverings on the bed.
The visual appeal of colored linens.
The lavish aromas of spices on the sheets.
She's inviting him to a feast for all of his senses, including his sexual appetite.
But her speech doesn't just snag his appetites.
It snags his ego.
She's particularly good at appealing to the gullible guy's own sense of self and vanity.
Makes him think that she might put all this forethought into preparing an evening of pleasure for him and him alone.
Look at verse 15.
It's just sick.
She says you so many times.
Now I've come out to meet you, you big strong guy.
To seek you eagerly.
And now I've found you.
She's like, you're the one I've been looking at.
I've been spying you out for weeks.
It appeals to his pride.
But the father knows, as he's telling this story, he's seen her do this before.
Back up in verses 11 and 12, she's constantly on the lookout for any guy.
It's not just him.
He just happens to be the one because he's a poor sap who wandered by her door.
And he's brainless enough to let her keep talking.
Finally, look at this gullible guy's frightful fate in verse 21 to 23.
Just the sheer volume of her flattering speech has worn him down.
And this gullible guy is without heart and without moral strength.
It comes from internalizing God's wisdom, so he finally gives in.
And all of a sudden, as he follows her into the house, he doesn't realize, look at verse 22 and 23,
that his life is now over.
The ox doesn't realize its life is over when it happily trots toward the slaughterhouse.
The stag doesn't realize that its life is over when it steps into a trap and a hunter releases the arrow.
The gullible guy is like the bird flying quickly and carefree into a snare.
He doesn't realize it will cost him his life.
It's a powerful story.
His observations of the situation, his understanding of the characters are profound.
It's very worthy of our attention.
And it leaves us feeling sick.
That this terrible fate would befall this poor guy.
We're horrified at what is happening.
And to be honest, we're slightly shameful because there's parts of us that are intrigued by what this woman is offering.
And then we realize what a horror that leads to if we say yes to it.
Well, let's listen as the father finishes up with his third movement of his speech.
Let's look at the father's warning in verses 24 to 27.
Now, sons, listen to me.
Be attentive to the words of my mouth.
Let not your heart turn aside to her ways.
Do not stray into her paths.
For many a victim she has laid low.
And all her slain are a mighty throng.
Her house is the way to Sheol, going down to the chambers of death.
What's the warning the father wants us to listen to so importantly?
Don't let your heart, there's that word again, turn aside to her ways.
Don't stray into her paths.
If you haven't noticed, the heart plays an important role in this chapter.
Back up in verse 3, the father says,
Son, make sure God's words, God's wisdom are inscribed on your heart.
They're written into the core of who you are.
Make sure that they are internalized.
And then back in verse 7, we're told that this gullible guy did not have that kind of heart.
Literally, he's not just lacking sense, he's lacking heart.
He lacks a strong moral core that's reinforced by the rebar of God's wisdom.
And therefore, he falls prey to the woman who has a wily heart.
A crafty core that's driven by sinful motives.
This warning of the father is directed to the core of who we are.
To our hearts.
Solomon's already warned us back in chapter 4, verse 23.
Guard your heart.
Tend to your heart with all vigilance.
Why?
Because your heart is the control center of your life.
It's the control tower where all the decisions get made based on what you love.
Based on what you want.
Based on what you desire and have affection for.
We must, we must pay diligent attention to our wants.
To our desires.
To what is in our hearts.
The gullible guy made a decision in his control tower.
In his heart.
Because the treacherous temptress won over his desire.
And she hijacked his heart.
In other words, our hearts is the seat of all of our affection and desires.
James 1 has great insight on this.
James says, each person is tempted when he is lured, just like the gullible guy was, and enticed by his own desire.
Then desire, when it is conceived and gives birth to sin.
And then sin, when it is fully grown, brings forth death.
Parenting has given me a front row seat to this process.
My son's attention gets focused on a toy that his sister has.
And you can almost see, because kids aren't good at disguising their desires,
you can almost see, jumping out of his heart, the desire, and it goes onto his face.
His eyebrows narrow, his mouth tightens.
That desire has already shifted from a want to a must-have.
And the desire has now conceived, and it's giving birth to the sin of envy and covetousness.
And it's going to get grown up real fast into violent hate.
It happens like that in a human heart.
And it kind of makes us smile, that story, because it's familiar to us.
We see that happen in kids all the time.
But don't we also know that process in our own hearts?
If we do not pay close attention to our wants, to our desires, to question them,
to assess them in the light of God's word,
then those desires quickly get directed to the wrong objects,
sin gets conceived, grows up, and gives birth to death-like consequences.
So here, the father warns his sons,
Watch your desires.
Guard your hearts.
Make sure your heart is internalized God's wisdom,
so that you can ward off the defense,
or the seductions of lustful desire.
And we see why in verse 27.
Her house is not the doorway to delight.
It is an entrance to hell.
Her embrace does not bring ecstasy.
It brings agony.
The treacherous temptress who promises life can only bring death.
And by the way, son, the father is telling his son,
you wouldn't be the first.
History is littered with the corpses of those that she has brought low.
It's telling that the very last word of this chapter
is the doom of those who don't have enough heart to resist her.
Death.
I didn't touch on it earlier, but look back to verse 2.
We feel the full effect of this now.
The father's appeal is to guard God's wisdom.
Why?
Look at verse 2.
Keep my commandments and live.
He doesn't want his son to die.
He wants his son to live.
And if we do not actively guard and protect and treasure and delight God's good words
that bring freedom, our desires will bring us to death.
Let's hear this warning.
Let's listen to this appeal, brothers and sisters.
It is life to us.
Guard God's wisdom in the central control tower of your life,
and you will live.
Now, how are we going to respond to this?
I'm guessing some of you might be thinking something like this.
Well, Billy, this is really good,
but I don't really get propositioned by wily adulteresses in the street every day.
So, it's good, I guess, to know in case that happens,
but what do I do with this?
Well, it's true.
That doesn't happen to us every day or ever.
The wise father is actually less concerned about the temptress,
and he's more concerned about our temptable hearts.
The woman in this story is representative of a danger that lurks inside us,
that every single one of us faces daily, even hourly.
It is the danger of lustful desire.
From the look on my son's face when he wants a toy that his sister has,
or to a schoolboy or schoolgirl's ache
for longing to be popular or recognized,
to the hint of jealousy in your heart
when a co-worker gets the raise and you don't,
or to the second look you give to an attractive body
you're seeing walk down the street or on a magazine cover,
the human heart is constantly flitting
between overgrown and misdirected desires
that give birth to sin,
and if allowed, will grow into death itself.
And it all started back in the garden.
There's an extraordinary amount of similarity
between the treacherous temptress
and the seductive serpent in the garden.
When Satan confronted Eve,
he too had ulterior motives.
He had terrible motives to cause as much destruction
to God's image bearers as he could for his own self-promotion.
He too emphasized the pleasure
and downplayed the consequences.
He said, you will not surely die,
downplay the consequences,
and emphasized the pleasure.
Rather, you will become like God,
knowing good and evil.
And he too used flattering speech
to appeal to Eve's appetites and her pride.
She saw that the fruit was beautiful with her eyes,
she anticipated its wondrous taste,
and she saw in her heart
it was to be desired to make her wise.
And then all of a sudden,
like an ox to the slaughterhouse,
like a stag in the trap,
and like a bird in the snare,
she grabbed the fruit
and acted out of her desire
and gave birth to sin.
And she did not know it was going to cost her her life
and lead to the death of billions of her children.
All because of lustful desire.
And it lurks within.
You see, dear friends,
our hearts, the control towers of our lives,
have a fundamental flaw.
We were originally made to find our greatest joy in God.
To be satisfied with him every moment of the day,
who is our good creator, our ruler.
He is our exceeding joy.
He is our highest good.
He is our source of life and happiness
in every good gift.
Every good thing you have experienced
since you woke up this morning
is a kind gift from the creator
and the father of lights.
But because of this horrible deed in the garden,
our hearts follow the pattern of our ancestors
and they seek to find our own definition of good and evil
apart from God.
We believe that our greatest good is worshiping self,
not God,
and placing self on the throne of our hearts,
not God.
We hunger not for God's glory,
but for self-glory.
And therefore,
the desires of our hearts
naturally flow out of an orientation
towards serving and glorifying self,
not serving and glorifying God.
And this is true for all desires.
All desires of the human heart,
in one sense,
are to be suspected,
to be suspect,
because of this orientation of our hearts.
They get hijacked.
Hijacked.
What were originally meant to good
to become hijacked to serve self.
But it's also particularly true
of our sexual desires.
We fundamentally believe
that our sexual desires should serve self
as acts of self-worship,
not a grateful gift
that we receive from our good creator,
who, by the way,
owns the copyright for sex.
It's his idea,
and he loves it.
But the more delightful the gift is,
the more horrific the consequences
of corrupting it.
This is why unholy sexual desires
are so strong,
and its consequences are so destructive,
just as the Father warned the Son
in the chapter.
The internal shame and guilt,
the loss of reputation to others,
the weakening of our moral resolve,
the potential loss of family or our jobs,
all of these are on the table
when it comes to saying yes
to the forbidden woman.
And many of you know
the death-like sting
of these consequences of sexual sin.
You felt them because of your own sin.
You felt them because of the sin of others.
And that sting is real
because our sin is that bad.
Our unholy desires
really do lead to self-destruction.
And that would be the end of the story, friends.
That's where we would stay.
We would be facing
the death-like consequences of our sin
sexual or not.
If someone had not come
whose desires were perfectly holy and right.
Psalm 40 puts words
in the mouth of this someone.
Behold, I have come.
In the scroll of the book
it is written of me,
I delight to do your will.
Oh my God, listen.
Your law is within my heart.
When Jesus came,
his heart was fully controlled
by a desire to delight
in God's will above all else.
He submitted his desires
completely to the Father's will,
delighted in the Father,
obeying him and loving him,
being satisfied in him
his entire life.
And he delighted so much
in the Father's will
that he obeyed it
all the way to the cross.
He knew it would cost him
his life
so that we could be forgiven
and healed.
We should be horrified
by the frightful fate
of the gullible guy
because of his sexual sin.
But we should be equally,
if not more, horrified
by the frightful fate
of the morally perfect God-man,
Jesus Christ,
who was crucified
for our sexual sin.
When I think
how Jesus chose
to endure
the Father's burning wrath
for my perverse
sexual desires,
it makes me tremble
at the horror
of my own sin
and the tenacity
of his love for me.
Every time we say yes
to the forbidden
lustful desires
of our hearts,
it's an affront
to God.
Every image we lust over,
every sexual imagination
we have
with someone
that we're not married to,
every thought or act
that's calculated
to get us noticed
by someone
who's not our spouse,
it's relenting
to the flattering speech
of the forbidden woman.
And Christ died for all.
He found a way.
God, in his mercy
and his grace,
found a way for us
to be forgiven,
cleansed,
and healed.
So, dear friends,
hear the appeal
of wisdom today.
Here, there are three
brief ways
I just want you
to consider acting
on God's word today.
First,
hold your heart up
to the light
of God's word
and confess
any lustful desires
that you find there.
Pray like David did
in Psalm 139.
Search me, O God,
know my heart.
Try me
and know my thoughts.
See if there's
any grievous way in me
and lead me
in the way everlasting.
Ask God
to weigh your heart
to give you godly sorrow
over the lustful desires
of your heart
that lead you
into self-destructive decisions.
This is especially true
for unholy sexual desires,
but it is also true
of other desires
that you are allowing
to have too much control
over your heart.
Secondly,
if there is sin
to confess,
find someone else
to confess it to.
Confess it to your spouse
if you have sinned
against him or her
by desiring
someone else sexually
or acting on that desire.
Find another person
in the church
of the same gender
to confess that to as well
so as James says
that they may pray for you
and you may be healed.
We need each other
to fight this fight together.
And speaking of the fight,
lastly,
fight lustful desire
with Godward desire.
There's a pastor
named Eric Raymond
out in Boston.
He wrote a really helpful article
called Fighting Lust with Lust.
And what he means by that
is fight unholy desire
with holy desire.
I posted it
on the Facebook community board.
If you're not on that,
then if you want to see it,
email me.
It's really, really helpful.
And what he says is
the only way you can effectively
win a battle
against unholy desires
is by filling your heart
with holy desire.
You were built
to desire
and be satisfied
by God and God alone.
And if that
is present
in your heart,
at least in small measure,
in growing,
then your heart
will be able
to fight
unholy desires
because you've tasted
the true goodness
of true delight
in God himself.
The best way
and most primary way
to do this
is by communing
with your God
in his word
and in prayer.
there's just no substitute
for encountering
the living God's
love for you
in Christ
in the pages
of his word
and then responding
back to him
in prayer.
But there's another way
that I want to encourage you
to pursue.
It's a daily thing
and I'm learning
the discipline
of doing this.
It's to delight
yourself in God
in and through
his good gifts
that you receive
from him every day.
every sip of coffee,
every ray of sunlight
coming through the trees,
every song of a bird,
every sound of laughter
of friends or family,
every meal.
It's a channel
that God has given you
to give thanks to him
and to enjoy him
for his good gifts.
And by doing so,
it weakens
the unholy desires
of your heart
because you start
to taste and see
that the Lord himself
is good
and the only thing
that's good for you.
So find your heart
satisfaction in him
through your spouse,
through a good book,
through a cold glass
of water,
through friends,
through a fresh breeze
on your face.
We were made
to delight in him
at all times,
even in our work.
So keep your heart
steadily gazing at him
and you will live
and not die.
Good things come
in threes,
so listen,
give heed,
and trust God's
holy word,
dear people of God.
Let's pray.
Thank you, Father,
that you are good.
You have exalted
above all things
your name
and your word
because you are good.
Lord, would you weaken
in our hearts
unholy desires?
Would you weaken
those desires, Father,
by showing us
how truly good
and satisfying you are
through Jesus,
our Lord.
Help us to delight
in you now
as we sing
and praise your name.
In Jesus' name,
Amen.