SPEAKER_00: It is uh good to have you with us, uh though uh recognizing that it's not the same, is it?
SPEAKER_00: Um it is uh not the same, and it would be better, uh would it not, were we to be back together.
SPEAKER_00: I'm still praying that uh I'm still uh longing that uh for that.
SPEAKER_00: I didn't uh I didn't become a pastor or church planter uh so that I could pastor a green light um uh or pastor you via pixels uh on your screen, uh but to be with you in person.
SPEAKER_00: And so let's continue to pray that the Lord would hasten the day until we are back together again.
SPEAKER_00: The Sermon on the Mount is like I said before Jesus' manifesto for creating a uh a counterculture, a new community, a new society.
SPEAKER_00: And it's so strange, isn't it, that we don't get to express that community life together uh right now.
SPEAKER_00: And uh so it's it's good and it's right to to long for that and to want that.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, but nonetheless, uh God's word is not bound and we're still able to open it together.
SPEAKER_00: I'd encourage you to keep uh Matthew 5 open as we uh consider uh Jesus' words on lust.
SPEAKER_00: Um and why don't we pray as we jump in together?
SPEAKER_00: Uh our Father, we do pray that you would uh speed the day until we're able to be together again uh in person.
SPEAKER_00: Uh Father, we pray for uh our land, for our government, that you give them uh just uh so much wisdom and uh an insight into how best to uh to lead people uh through uh through these uncertain times and be with those who are uh who are suffering and and comfort them.
SPEAKER_00: We pray.
SPEAKER_00: We pray for ourselves now as we come to your word uh that you would do your work, that your Holy Spirit would convict and encourage and show us our our need of your grace and uh and in doing so also remind us of the just the abundant and readily available grace that there is in the Lord Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: And we pray these things in his name.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
SPEAKER_00: Now you may be uh maybe tuning in and thinking, oh gosh, what's uh what's this pastor, what's Mark going to say about uh about lust?
SPEAKER_00: Uh maybe it is you're sitting there and you're watching it with with other people and you're kind of sinking into the the seat uh a little bit.
SPEAKER_00: Uh sorry about that.
SPEAKER_00: Uh it's gonna get worse before it gets better, probably.
SPEAKER_00: Um there is this misconception.
SPEAKER_00: Perhaps you're just exploring uh Christianity and or have just this has come up in your newsfeed and you're clicking on it.
SPEAKER_00: But there's this misconception out there, isn't there?
SPEAKER_00: The Christians are a little bit obsessed with sex, uh, that it's uh what we love to talk about, maybe because we're uh you know so physically uh repressed and uh frigid that our preference would be actually uh to ruin everybody else's good time, uh, that we're never happier than when we're uh sticking in our noses into other people's business, uh, particularly if it's uh the business of uh of your private life.
SPEAKER_00: Uh there is that misconception out there, is there not?
SPEAKER_00: But Jesus uh speaks about these things uh not because he's obsessed or is encouraging his followers to be obsessed.
SPEAKER_00: No, he speaks about things like lust, things like anger, things like uh worry and anxiety that we'll get to in a couple of weeks' time, because well, frankly, they're all things that we wrestle with.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus is meeting the uh the longings and the issues that there are in our hearts head on and confronting them and showing us a better way.
SPEAKER_00: And that rings true in the area of sex, sexuality, and lust, doesn't it?
SPEAKER_00: Things like innuendo, sexualized imagery, sexualized talk are everywhere that we turn.
SPEAKER_00: Sex sells us things, sells us products.
SPEAKER_00: You do this, eat this, try this, try this workout plan, buy this product, say these things, read these things, and you will live a better lifestyle.
SPEAKER_00: And in living a better lifestyle, more people will want to find you desirable, more people will want to sleep with you.
SPEAKER_00: The technology that we have, the technology that you're watching this sermon on makes uh sexual exploration and expression and gratification easy to achieve.
SPEAKER_00: Just a couple of taps on your smartphone, dating apps, hookup apps, even the misuse of misuse of normal social media platforms like Snapchat or uh is anything called TikTok.
SPEAKER_00: Um I'm still on Facebook.
SPEAKER_00: So what?
SPEAKER_00: What does it matter?
SPEAKER_00: Maybe you ask that question, it's like, well, why are we having a sermon on this?
SPEAKER_00: Because what does it matter what I do in the privacy of my own home when I'm not hurting anybody or the other person is consenting or whatever?
SPEAKER_00: What has that got to do with anybody?
SPEAKER_00: What's it got to do uh with what I watch on television or uh in the cinema whenever you get to go there again?
SPEAKER_00: What does it matter uh who I chat with anonymously and what I say?
SPEAKER_00: Why does any of that matter?
SPEAKER_00: Well, we'll get to that.
SPEAKER_00: I promise that we'll get to that through the course of this sermon.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus tackles the issue of lust because it's not just an outside other person thing.
SPEAKER_00: There are two types of people watching this sermon.
SPEAKER_00: There are those who readily admit that lust is an issue for them and liars.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, those are the the two types of people.
SPEAKER_00: And Jesus meets those head on and says that it's not just a uh an out there thing.
SPEAKER_00: Yes, the culture is awash with with sex and sexual imagery and sexual talk and all of those things, but they're not incidental.
SPEAKER_00: That's not an accident, it's a result.
SPEAKER_00: A result of what?
SPEAKER_00: It's a result of uh of our heart.
SPEAKER_00: Culture is an expression of what's going on in here.
SPEAKER_00: Culture is an expression of what we believe and what we value, and then we we project that as it were, we externalize that in the cultural images and the things that we create, and so it is something that is ingrained in us, and so Jesus again, just like last week, is taking aim not at external religion, but at our hearts, in the same way that it wasn't just enough to say, Well, I've never murdered anybody.
SPEAKER_00: So, in terms of that commandment, uh, tick, uh, one down, nine to go, and you might come to uh to this one and think, great, and get two down.
SPEAKER_00: Never committed adultery in my life, and so tick again.
SPEAKER_00: I'm well on my way to God liking me more.
SPEAKER_00: And Jesus said, Jesus says, No, that's not how it works.
SPEAKER_00: It's not just enough to have to have your external deeds right, it's that your heart needs to be right.
SPEAKER_00: It is our hearts that matter, and so again, Jesus holds up that mirror, doesn't he?
SPEAKER_00: And what he shows us in that mirror is that we all have a problem, we're all not so blameless.
SPEAKER_00: So let me do uh an act of confession for us all.
SPEAKER_00: The simple fact of the matter is that according to Jesus' definition here, we are all adulterers.
SPEAKER_00: I am, and you are.
SPEAKER_00: That's just the truth of the matter.
SPEAKER_00: Why?
SPEAKER_00: Because we have all looked at someone, whether in real life or virtually, with lustful intent, with lustful desire.
SPEAKER_00: And so if that's true, and we're willing to admit it to ourselves, where do we go from here?
SPEAKER_00: This talk has three main sections.
SPEAKER_00: The first is to think, well, what is lust?
SPEAKER_00: The second is to ask, why do we lust?
SPEAKER_00: And then thirdly, and finally, to explore a little bit about how we can turn aside from our lust.
SPEAKER_00: What is lust?
SPEAKER_00: Why do we lust, and how do we turn aside from it?
SPEAKER_00: Because it would not be enough, and it is not Jesus' desire simply to uh to feel beaten down, but to offer us a better way to offer us grace that we might make progress in this area of our life.
SPEAKER_00: So, first of all, what is lust?
SPEAKER_00: Well, the word that Jesus uses here, you know, when he says in verse 28, but everyone who looks at a woman uh with lustful intent, that could just be uh anybody that looks at anybody else with lustful intent.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, but the word that he uses for lustful or lust here is simply the word for desire.
SPEAKER_00: It's the word for desire.
SPEAKER_00: And of course, if that's the case, then naturally some desires are good.
SPEAKER_00: But in this context, Jesus is talking about a uh a distorted desire, a desire that is running along the wrong tracks, a desire that doesn't work right.
SPEAKER_00: And the reason why I bring that up is because some of you might be watching this and thinking, well, you know, can I not find somebody attractive?
SPEAKER_00: Is that is that wrong?
SPEAKER_00: You know, how else would you begin to kind of go out with somebody?
SPEAKER_00: It's normally you see somebody and you find them attractive and you think, well, actually, I'd like to uh go and have a conversation with them or uh or that sort of thing.
SPEAKER_00: Can I not find somebody uh uh attractive?
SPEAKER_00: Or you might think, well, uh, well, I'm married and I uh I find my I find my spouse quite desirable and uh I like being with them, so is that is that wrong?
SPEAKER_00: Can I not can I not do that?
SPEAKER_00: Of course those things are okay.
SPEAKER_00: That is not what Jesus is taking aim at.
SPEAKER_00: Rather, Jesus is addressing the feeling that we all in our hearts know, the feeling and desire that uh we have all felt sweep over us, and that that feeling or that desire of looking at someone who is not our spouse, and not just finding them attractive, but going further than that and longing for them, longing for them physically.
SPEAKER_00: It's that look that goes beyond a glance, it's the image or the fantasy that plays in your daydreams.
SPEAKER_00: It's the image that we call up on our devices.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus is saying that that is adultery.
SPEAKER_00: Last week, uh, when we looked at anger, we thought about anger in terms of it being murder in miniature.
SPEAKER_00: And maybe that proves to be more shocking because when we think about murder, we think murder's really bad.
SPEAKER_00: Like there's the kind of bad stuff, uh, like pride and greed, uh, and maybe a little bit of lust, but murder, it's it's in the really bad category.
SPEAKER_00: Not only that, but murder's illegal, right?
SPEAKER_00: Um and so the adultery language maybe doesn't have the same force, it doesn't have the same kind of shock value because well the world is awash with adultery, marriages uh don't tend to last.
SPEAKER_00: A greater and greater percentage of people are unfaithful in their marriages, to say nothing of the fact that adultery isn't illegal in our world.
SPEAKER_00: No one dies when you commit adultery, and so we feel the force of it less, but that would be a wrong way to think about it.
SPEAKER_00: One of the reasons why Jesus says, as he does here, to if you lust to cut off your hand and to pluck out your eye is to communicate something of the seriousness of what is going on here.
SPEAKER_00: The reason why he says, cut off your hand also is because actually, adultery is a form of theft.
SPEAKER_00: Adultery is a form of theft.
SPEAKER_00: Now let's think about this.
SPEAKER_00: When you commit adultery by Jesus' definition, that is, when you look at somebody in that objectifying, consuming way, one of the things that you're doing is that you are stealing from that person their dignity, the dignity and value and worth that God had given them.
SPEAKER_00: You overlook that, you diminish the humanity of that person.
SPEAKER_00: You you take from them.
SPEAKER_00: No one ever looks at uh pornography and thinks about the value of the human being in front of you when the cameras are rolling.
SPEAKER_00: We dishuman dehumanize them, we uh degrade them.
SPEAKER_00: That's what lust does.
SPEAKER_00: It's a consuming of an image bearer that you have no right to consume.
SPEAKER_00: It is believing that they are simply there for your own desires.
SPEAKER_00: It's not only stealing uh dignity from them, uh it's stealing also from that person's spouse or future spouse.
SPEAKER_00: You are mentally taking that which should only be given to the person who makes a lifelong faithful commitment.
SPEAKER_00: You find somebody that you uh that you see in a class or a colleague in work that you uh that you lust after and that you indulge those fantasies for, you must think am I prepared to be committed to that person?
SPEAKER_00: If the answer is no, then you have stolen something.
SPEAKER_00: But more than all of these, you're not just stealing from the person, you are stealing from God.
SPEAKER_00: See, here's the reality of the Christian life, here's the reality of being a human being.
SPEAKER_00: You and I owe God our worship and devotion.
SPEAKER_00: He is worthy of our worship, he is worthy of our praise, he is worthy of our fidelity, and yet when we devote ourselves to image, to fantasy, to lust, we are robbing God of those things and giving it to something else, to somebody else.
SPEAKER_00: And that leads us on to this idea of why we lust.
SPEAKER_00: That's the second point.
SPEAKER_00: Why do we lust?
SPEAKER_00: We lust because you and I are made with desires, and we're made to have those desires met.
SPEAKER_00: We're made to be captivated, to be captivated by by beauty, by awe-inspiring, transcendent wonder, and those desires are supposed to be met by God.
SPEAKER_00: He is the one who should captivate our hearts, that we would behold him with awe and wonder, that we would give him praise and glory, and then in that context, that we would enjoy creation, we would enjoy the good gifts that he is given us, including marriage and sex, as the gift that they're intended to be.
SPEAKER_00: But human beings have doubted God's goodness.
SPEAKER_00: That's what happened back in the garden.
SPEAKER_00: Eve believed that that God was withholding something good from her, that he was a bad actor, that he was not operating in good faith.
SPEAKER_00: And when we lust, when we desire something else, we are in essence saying, I believe that God is holding something back from me.
SPEAKER_00: I do not believe that he is as good as he says he is, I don't believe that he will meet my desires, I don't believe that he will satisfy me.
SPEAKER_00: And so the object of my desire can't be him, it must be something else.
SPEAKER_00: And so we allow our affections, our desires to be captivated by another human being, and when we do that, what do we discover?
SPEAKER_00: We discover an emptiness, we discover a uh a hole at the core of our being.
SPEAKER_00: We discover that we are lacking in some good way, and what's more, we resent God for that feeling of lack.
SPEAKER_00: We resent God all the more, even though we are the ones who have turned from Him.
SPEAKER_00: We resent Him for not giving us the desires of our heart.
SPEAKER_00: We resent Him for that empty feeling that we have, for that lack of fulfillment.
SPEAKER_00: We believe, like with Eve in the garden, that he has held something back from us.
SPEAKER_00: And that perception of lack, that you are lacking something, it arises in us desires that if God won't give it to us, we will take it for ourselves.
SPEAKER_00: It arouses desires for somebody else, for something else.
SPEAKER_00: In one sense, that it could be anything really.
SPEAKER_00: Human beings fill their heart not just with sex, uh, fill that empty hole not just with uh with sex, but with many things success, money, power, family, comfort.
SPEAKER_00: But Jesus here is addressing lust.
SPEAKER_00: And so when we lust, we are in essence saying to ourselves, I lack a sense of fulfillment, a sense of satisfaction.
SPEAKER_00: God is withholding that from me.
SPEAKER_00: He is not good, he will not satisfy my desires, and so I need to look to this person, this experience, and if I indulge that, I will feel more full again, I'll feel less empty, I'll feel more satisfied.
SPEAKER_00: When we say to that image, we don't say it out loud, obviously, but it's kind of this is basically where our heart goes, where our mind goes.
SPEAKER_00: We are saying to that image, to that person that we are longing for, you are more worthy of my time right now.
SPEAKER_00: You are more worthy of my attentions, my desires, my affections.
SPEAKER_00: Than the God who loves me and who made me.
SPEAKER_00: And so we rob God of those things.
SPEAKER_00: And what's the consequence?
SPEAKER_00: Everybody knows it implicitly, don't they?
SPEAKER_00: Things like this, all of our idols, but perhaps sex and lust in particular, offer much and deliver little.
SPEAKER_00: They promise life and deliver death.
SPEAKER_00: They do not leave you feeling full for long.
SPEAKER_00: Again, the appetite, the thirst comes.
SPEAKER_00: And we find ourselves right back at that place of longing.
SPEAKER_00: That place of robbing God, of doubting his goodness.
SPEAKER_00: Not only that, but our sin not just leaves us feeling empty, it actually harms others.
SPEAKER_00: Either it's the person known to you, damages your friendship with them, damages uh your uh relationship that you are in with your uh with your spouse, the marriage that you're in, because you find yourself emotionally being more attached to somebody who is not your spouse, and that is a that's a destructive thing in your marriage.
SPEAKER_00: Or things go further and you begin to actually destroy their marriage and the relationships that they are in.
SPEAKER_00: It can be tempting, can't it, to think that the person that you don't know on the screen that there's no way that you're harming them, don't be fooled.
SPEAKER_00: There are untold ways that those people are being harmed in order for you to be gratified.
SPEAKER_00: In the end, you find yourself no more fool than you were.
SPEAKER_00: You find that you are still empty, but it's even worse.
SPEAKER_00: You're now alienated, you're alienated from the people who love you because of the shame that you feel.
SPEAKER_00: You're alienated from God because you feel like you cannot go back to Him.
SPEAKER_00: And ultimately, the consequence of that alienation is the same as for the murderer, the angry person in the passage before.
SPEAKER_00: The warning here is the same.
SPEAKER_00: It is that of hell, that that persistent earthly alienation and estrangement from God would be confirmed forever in eternity.
SPEAKER_00: Cut off from his goodness, cut off from his presence to bless.
SPEAKER_00: That is the consequence of your lust, my lust.
SPEAKER_00: So, what is lust?
SPEAKER_00: It is desiring something other than God.
SPEAKER_00: Why do we do that?
SPEAKER_00: Because we have longings as image bearers of God that were meant to be made by Him, or fulfilled by Him rather, and yet we seek after created things.
SPEAKER_00: So, where do we go?
SPEAKER_00: How do we fight?
SPEAKER_00: How do we fight our lust?
SPEAKER_00: Well, Jesus' answer is here in verses 29 and 30.
SPEAKER_00: If your right eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away.
SPEAKER_00: For it is better for you to lose one of your members than for your whole body to be thrown into hell.
SPEAKER_00: If your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away.
SPEAKER_00: For it is better for you to lose one of your members than your whole body go into hell.
SPEAKER_00: I guess the question here that immediately comes to mind is this uh does Jesus mean this literally?
SPEAKER_00: Is this what Jesus is literally talking about now?
SPEAKER_00: Uh some in the past have thought, yes, uh, most famously, a uh a church father, as you call them, to say uh a teacher of the church, uh, a man called Origen.
SPEAKER_00: Uh he thought so.
SPEAKER_00: Uh he thought that Jesus' words here were uh were literal, and so he castrated himself uh in order to cut off the member that was causing him to sin.
SPEAKER_00: That perhaps is not what Jesus is encouraging you do you to do.
SPEAKER_00: You'll be relieved to know that that if you're taking notes, that is not the application of today's sermon.
SPEAKER_00: Not only is that extreme, it actually doesn't solve the problem.
SPEAKER_00: Again, it's kind of focusing on the external, not to put too fine a point on it.
SPEAKER_00: Because as every lustful person knows, if you plucked out your left eye and threw it away, in time your right eye would uh find a way to seek out something to lust, and so you'd be forced with the decision of having to pluck out that eye too.
SPEAKER_00: And would that solve the issue?
SPEAKER_00: Of course it wouldn't.
SPEAKER_00: You'd be going around blind, and yet, in your mind, as uh every man, and I'm sure not a few women uh know as well, is that there is more up here than ever exists in there, and so what are you gonna do?
SPEAKER_00: You're gonna start plucking out your brain?
SPEAKER_00: No, there must be something else in mind here that Jesus is talking about.
SPEAKER_00: What he's saying is in the same way that you look at the murder one, you think, oh, that's really bad.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus is pressing home the seriousness of this one.
SPEAKER_00: He's saying, your actions in order to combat the lust that will alienate you from the people who love you and alienate you from your God, the actions that you need to take are drastic and dramatic.
SPEAKER_00: What Jesus is saying, in essence, here is don't flirt with your lust, don't be fooled into thinking this isn't harming anyone.
SPEAKER_00: Don't ask, how far is too far?
SPEAKER_00: Or how close can I go?
SPEAKER_00: How far can we go before I'm sinning?
SPEAKER_00: Then those are the wrong, wrong questions.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus is saying, wage war against this sin, take decisive action.
SPEAKER_00: Why?
SPEAKER_00: Because your soul is on the line, your soul is at stake.
SPEAKER_00: He's saying you pluck out your eye so your whole body doesn't go to hell, your soul is at stake, and so don't play with this sin, take decisive action, Jesus says.
SPEAKER_00: Now, how might we do that?
SPEAKER_00: How might we take decisive action?
SPEAKER_00: Well, the first thing that you need to do, as with with anything, is to admit that there is a problem.
SPEAKER_00: To admit to yourself, certainly, to admit to admit to a trusted brother, sister, pastor, elder, that there is a problem that needs to be addressed here.
SPEAKER_00: Why would you do that?
SPEAKER_00: You do that because sin loves to grow in the dark, and it begins to shrink when it is brought out into the light.
SPEAKER_00: Not only that, but you are combating the lie that you are all alone and nobody else is dealing with this.
SPEAKER_00: That is not true.
SPEAKER_00: The Christian community is a community of redeemed people who are all struggling with a whole host of issues, but we all to various degrees are sexually broken and deal with lusts of various sorts and kinds.
SPEAKER_00: And so talking to somebody else is admitting that you're right there too.
SPEAKER_00: Can I encourage you to seek someone out to talk to?
SPEAKER_00: Whether that's in the prayer group that you're in, somebody from the community group, me, one of the other leaders, to talk to someone.
SPEAKER_00: That is the first step.
SPEAKER_00: To admit that there is a problem.
SPEAKER_00: The second decisive action that you do and will do through your entire Christian life is this fight desire with desire.
SPEAKER_00: Fight desire with desire.
SPEAKER_00: Most people, when it comes to things like lust, uh think I have to have certain things in place.
SPEAKER_00: I need to uh I need to put my phone uh outside my room, I need to lock down my app store, I need to have accountability partners that I meet with uh every week, I need to have uh covenant eyes on my laptop, on my phone, on my tablet, in my brain.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, I need to do these external things.
SPEAKER_00: Now, don't get me wrong, those things are good.
SPEAKER_00: Those things are good in the same way that CPR is good for somebody who's just had a heart attack.
SPEAKER_00: If you need to get covenant eyes on your uh on your phone or on your laptop, I would encourage you to go to that website.
SPEAKER_00: It uh there's a subscription fee, find some trusted brothers or sisters, contact me or Philippa or someone like that and say, could you take my email report every week and ask me how I'm doing?
SPEAKER_00: Those are good things to do.
SPEAKER_00: But but we all know that the reality is that you could throw your computer out the window, and the lust in your heart would still remain.
SPEAKER_00: The lust in your heart would still take you captive, and so the answer is not just to do physical outward things, it is to replace one desire with another.
SPEAKER_00: It's to replace sinful desires, sinful affections with new affections, with new God, Godward, excuse me, affections, desires and yearnings, to long for what he offers, for the joy and satisfaction that he gives rather than the fleeting pleasures that leave you empty.
SPEAKER_00: Remember what Jesus says to the woman at the well, the woman at the well who is coming day after day after day to get a drink, which in essence is a metaphor for her own uh spiritual thirst, and she's looking for it in the places of intimacy.
SPEAKER_00: She's had four different men, and she's now living with a guy who's not who's not her husband.
SPEAKER_00: What does Jesus say?
SPEAKER_00: He says, Whoever comes to me and asks me for a drink, the water that I would give him would well up in him to be a spring of eternal life.
SPEAKER_00: That is, that you would be consistently, persistently, eternally nourished and satisfied by the goodness of God.
SPEAKER_00: What does that look like practically?
SPEAKER_00: How can you begin on that journey?
SPEAKER_00: The first thing that I would encourage you to do is to think about and then reject the lies that your sin is telling you, the lies that you believe that drive you to your lust.
SPEAKER_00: Lies like God isn't good, He's withholding something from me.
SPEAKER_00: Lies like, excuse me, if I had my coffee cup somewhere, I would take a drink, but I don't.
SPEAKER_00: Great.
SPEAKER_00: Um lies like I just can't say no.
SPEAKER_00: I I can't I can't help myself.
SPEAKER_00: Lies like I need this.
SPEAKER_00: I just need this now.
SPEAKER_00: You don't understand how how hard it's been today, this week, in my past.
SPEAKER_00: I need this.
SPEAKER_00: Or the lie of but I'm all alone.
SPEAKER_00: I'm so lonely, and this this takes the edge off.
SPEAKER_00: You need to recognize those for the lies that they are.
SPEAKER_00: Sin always lies to us.
SPEAKER_00: What does Jesus call Satan?
SPEAKER_00: He is the father of lies.
SPEAKER_00: You are being told and believing lies in those in those moments, in those days, in those hours that fuel your lust.
SPEAKER_00: The serpent told Eve lies in the garden, you won't surely die.
SPEAKER_00: God knows that when you uh eat of it, you'll become like him.
SPEAKER_00: You are believing lies about this.
SPEAKER_00: So, what are the lies that you're believing?
SPEAKER_00: What are the lies about yourself?
SPEAKER_00: You're not worthy of anybody to love you, you're just spoiled goods anyway.
SPEAKER_00: So you may as well live like this.
SPEAKER_00: That's a lie.
SPEAKER_00: You discern the lies that you believe.
SPEAKER_00: I feel like my water is coming.
SPEAKER_00: There it is.
SPEAKER_00: Thank you very much.
SPEAKER_00: Little cameo uh from my glamorous assistant.
SPEAKER_00: You discern the lies that you are believing, and the second thing that you do is you combat and answer those lies with the truth.
SPEAKER_00: You answer those lies with the truth that God has spoken over your life.
SPEAKER_00: He is good, he does love you, you are worthy, or he makes you rather worthy.
SPEAKER_00: He loved you, he laid his life down for you.
SPEAKER_00: It is possible to say no if you are a believer in the Lord Jesus and you have the Holy Spirit indwelling you, it is possible to say no to sin.
SPEAKER_00: It's like a muscle, it needs to be exercised.
SPEAKER_00: Say no, and a lot of your confidence and your dependence on God to be strengthened.
SPEAKER_00: Taste and see that the Lord is good.
SPEAKER_00: The truth is that God gives the Christian grace to turn from sin and to turn to God.
SPEAKER_00: Do not believe that you are alone.
SPEAKER_00: Not only is God with you and for you in Jesus, but you have a community of people who love you.
SPEAKER_00: And so perhaps in your admitting, in your talking to uh to your friends, to your brothers and sisters about this, one of the questions that you might ask of one another is what are the lies that you're tempted to believe about yourself or about God?
SPEAKER_00: So that in those moments when when you feel the pinch and the temptation and the longing, that that person can remind you of the truth and that you can combat the lie.
SPEAKER_00: The truth is that God is not just bigger than your lust, he is better than it.
SPEAKER_00: What he offers is much richer, more joyous, and more satisfying.
SPEAKER_00: You were made to have your desires satisfied.
SPEAKER_00: You were made to be in awe of his beauty, to be captivated by his glory.
SPEAKER_00: And so can I encourage you to seek that out, to seek him out as he reveals himself to you in his word, as he reveals himself to you in the people that you love, in the community of faith, in the little things that you've lost sight of that you can thank God for.
SPEAKER_00: Seek those things out, seek out his beauty and his goodness in everyday things, behold his glory and goodness in the amazing family of faith that he has placed you in.
SPEAKER_00: Marvel at what he has done for you.
SPEAKER_00: Come back again to the cross of the Lord Jesus and see the love of God displayed for you and allow that love to overwhelm you, that you hate your sin and long to turn from it.
SPEAKER_00: See, as Paul said, the God who loved you and gave himself for you.
SPEAKER_00: It is only when you are captured by this better vision that the images that fill your mind begin to pale into insignificance, and you begin to see how tarnished and despicable and unfulfilling they are.
SPEAKER_00: What are the lies you believe?
SPEAKER_00: And meet them daily in community with the truth.
SPEAKER_00: Finally, let me note just three challenges that you will face.
SPEAKER_00: Because this is a marathon, not a spread.
SPEAKER_00: This is not something, you know, I'll be this will be fixed next week.
SPEAKER_00: It's not gonna happen.
SPEAKER_00: So let me show you three as we close potholes, landmines, challenges that you will face as you follow Jesus away from lust and towards him, pursuing him.
SPEAKER_00: The first challenge that you will face is the challenge of self-reliance.
SPEAKER_00: That you'll say to yourself, This is an act of willpower, and all I need is more willpower.
SPEAKER_00: No, the fight against lust is not about greater inner strength, it's about greater dependence.
SPEAKER_00: Gratitude fueled dependence on the strength that God provides.
SPEAKER_00: The moment you think I've got this is when you trip, it's when you fall, isn't it?
SPEAKER_00: The second challenge that you will face is the challenge towards self-justification.
SPEAKER_00: That I've had a hard day, things haven't been going well uh in work or in my romantic life, and so this just needs to happen, or you begin again to resent God because you believe that He is withholding something from you, or that He has taken something from you, or the other way that we self-justify is that we look at our circumstances and we look at our upbringing.
SPEAKER_00: Say, well, if you'd had the experience that I've had, if you've been through what I've been through, if you only knew my family and how messed up I am because of it.
SPEAKER_00: We blame our upbringing, we blame our biology.
SPEAKER_00: I was made this way, can't help it.
SPEAKER_00: It's all self-justification.
SPEAKER_00: It's right back to the lies that we're believing about ourselves.
SPEAKER_00: You are not your parents, you are not simply your upbringing.
SPEAKER_00: Yes, we have all had things that we need to carry with us that we deal with and that we work out in the context of community and before God, but they are not an excuse.
SPEAKER_00: Do not get pulled into the challenge to that pothole of self justification.
SPEAKER_00: The third challenge that you will face will be one of self pity.
SPEAKER_00: The reality is in dealing with lust as with anger is you will fail.
SPEAKER_00: You will fall.
SPEAKER_00: This is not a linear line of progression to ever greater holiness.
SPEAKER_00: There will be hell pit marks in that graph.
SPEAKER_00: The temptation when you falter and when you fail is to say, well, what's the point?
SPEAKER_00: And to just give up.
SPEAKER_00: Do not be given to self-pity.
SPEAKER_00: It is God who lifts you from the mire and sets your feet again upon the rock.
SPEAKER_00: In all of these challenges, and in all of this our battle, Jesus offers us grace.
SPEAKER_00: Again, this is what you need to know about the Sermon of the Mind.
SPEAKER_00: If the Sermon of the Mind is just about this is what you need to do under your own strength, it's crippling, isn't it?
SPEAKER_00: Because which of us can escape?
SPEAKER_00: Which of us is not looked lustly, lustfully at somebody?
SPEAKER_00: In all these things, we are driven again to the grace that Jesus offers.
SPEAKER_00: Again, Jesus holds up that mirror and shows us our spiritual poverty so that we might run to his riches.
SPEAKER_00: He is not here trying to grind us into the dirt, but to show us our need of him, our need of grace, and then in our acknowledgement of that need by faith and repentance to lavish that grace upon us.
SPEAKER_00: Grace for our self-reliance, grace for our pride, grace in the midst of our failures.
SPEAKER_00: The battle is one of daily returning to Him in faith and repentance, coming back to that cross and beholding the love of God for you.
SPEAKER_00: See God stretched out for you, and who, when you fail, doesn't beat you up but loves you still.
SPEAKER_00: Let that love eclipse all other earthly loves.
SPEAKER_00: Let that satisfying, awe-inspiring goodness quench your deepest longings and thirsts.
SPEAKER_00: If you would like to do more uh reading or thinking about these things, I could point you to uh a couple of resources.
SPEAKER_00: Um, two by the same author.
SPEAKER_00: You could pick up uh Tim Chester's book, You Can Change, which is about a general kind of uh change project.
SPEAKER_00: If you think that there are uh things that are uh not quite right in your discipleship areas of your life that you are struggling to make progress in, you might pick up You Can Change by Tim Chester, or if you would like to uh to think more specifically about uh about pornography and those sorts of things, you might read his book uh captured by a better vision.
SPEAKER_00: And uh there are other websites like uh like the Gospel Coalition has lots of great resources on Lust.
SPEAKER_00: If you search Lust or pornography in the search bar, uh there are lots of really helpful articles there that could get you uh that you get you started and thinking.
SPEAKER_00: Please do talk to us, get in touch with me if you'd like to talk.
SPEAKER_00: Um, like I said at the start, I don't want to pastor a green light, I want to pastor real people.
SPEAKER_00: And so do not feel like you are alone in this.
SPEAKER_00: Come, let's let's fight together, let's pray now.
SPEAKER_00: Heavenly Father, we thank you uh for the honesty of the Lord Jesus, uh that he uh shows us our true need of him, that he knows our hearts, he knows the desires that we have, the longings that we have that get corrupted into sinful desires and longings.
SPEAKER_00: Thank you that he died for us to free us from those things and to make us new, to give us a new heart with new longings.
SPEAKER_00: May He overwhelm and satisfy us with His grace.
SPEAKER_00: Thank you that you are good.
SPEAKER_00: Forgive us for when we doubt your goodness.
SPEAKER_00: Help us by your Spirit to depend on you more and more, we pray in the name of Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
SPEAKER_00: Amen, everybody.
SPEAKER_00: God bless you.