Handling Our Sexuality

I show you that clip this morning because it captures, I think, a little bit of what
happens when a partner in a marriage commits adultery.
An adultery is, of course, having sexual relationships with somebody other than your spouse.
When it involves a married person, we call it adultery.
When it involves unmarried people, we call it fornication.
But both issues are addressed really in the seventh commandment where God says, "So clearly,
you shall not commit adultery," that is to say, "You are not to violate the sexual norms
God has established in a covenantal relationship."
And it's to this seventh commandment that Jesus now turns in discernment on the mount.
As he continues to try to explain to his disciples the difference between leaving by the letter
of the law as opposed to this spirit of the law.
And again, how he puts it, "You have heard that it was said, do not commit adultery,
but I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery
with her in his heart."
Notice again the contrast you have heard it was said, "But I say to you."
And the contrast there, of course, has to do with the teaching of the scribes and the
Pharisees in the days of Jesus, people who appealed to the letter of the law.
And as far as they were concerned, if you didn't actually hop in bed with somebody other
than your spouse, if you didn't do the dastardly deed, you could pat yourself on the back and
say that you were keeping the seventh commandment.
Jesus comes along in his passage and he says, "It isn't just a matter of keeping the letter
of the law.
I want you to learn how to keep the spirit of the law."
An adultery in fornication is not just doing the dastardly deed.
It is also dealing with the underlying emotions and feelings that are the ones that bear fruit
eventually in the actual action.
And so he says, "I say to you, anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed
adultery with her in his heart."
And it's very easy for you and me to sit here today and say, "Well, you know, I've never
violated the letter of the law.
I've not fornicated.
I've not participated in adultery, but how many of us in this place can honestly say that
we have not only kept the letter of the law, but also this spirit of the law.
Because the spirit of the law says Jesus has to do with looking lustfully.
That is not only concerned about the outward, he is also very much concerned about our inward
heart and our inward attitude."
And so that in mind, what I want to do with you this morning is look a little bit more
closely at those words that Jesus gives us here.
What does it mean to look lustfully?
What does it mean to violate not merely the letter of the law, but how do we violate
the spirit of the law?"
Well looking lustfully involves allowing our eyes to linger where they should not.
Now one of the most graphic and tragic stories of the Old Testament, I think, is David's
adultery with Bathsheba recorded for us in 2 Samuel 11.
Perhaps you remember the story.
It was springtime, the time Scripture says when kings go to war, but for whatever reason
David remained behind.
And even while his soldiers were out of the battlefield fighting, David was hanging around
on the roof of his palace when he happened to see Bathsheba, a beautiful woman, taking
a bath on the roof of her flat-roofed house down the hill from where the palace was.
And instead of averting his eyes as he should have, he allowed them to linger.
When lingering eyes produced desire, he invited the lady over, one thing led to another.
Pretty soon they were in bed having sex together.
She was a married woman married to Yoraya, one of the commanders in David's army.
They thought they could cover it up.
Unfortunately, she got pregnant.
Send word back to David that she was pregnant.
David didn't know what to do, tried to get Yoraya to come home and sleep with his wife,
but Yoraya was committed to the battle he wouldn't do it.
And so if you know the story, then David gave command to Joab, the commander of the army,
to make sure that Yoraya would be killed in battle, which is precisely what happened.
And David then got Bathsheba married her.
Bathsheba eventually became interestingly enough the mother of Solomon, not David's finest
hour.
And if you want to read in Scripture how he felt about that later on, read Psalm 51 because
it is the confession of a man who sined, stares him in the face.
But it all began with a lingering eye, and particularly for men, though not exclusively
for men, we are stimulated by the visual.
And there are many men who allow their eyes to rest in places where they ought not.
And you only have to talk to women sometimes about how uncomfortable, uncomfortable they
feel around certain men because they are being ogled, they feel they are being undressed
mentally.
And of course today with internet pornography, the power of imagery is all around us.
And rare is the person whose eyes have not lingered in places where they ought not to.
And Jesus says we can pride ourselves all we want, that we haven't hopped in bed with
the wrong person, but we're already violating the spirit of the law by allowing our minds
to go places where they ought not.
Lingering eyes is where it begins, and then it carries on with entertaining illicit desire.
The book of Proverbs says, "Can a man scoop fire into his lap without his clothes being
burned?
Can a man walk on hot coals without his feet being scorched?"
And of course the implied answer is no, sexual desire dwelled upon, grows in strength and
grows in power.
Now let me be very clear from the outset that sexual desire as such is not wrong.
There are people who have been so shamed and there are church traditions that are so repressed
that every stirring or every feeling or every appearance of sexuality is thought of as dirty
and ought to be pushed out of the way as quickly and as fast as you can.
That's not biblical.
God has made us male and female.
He has given us sexual desires.
And sexual desires set free in a committed trusting, marital relationship is God's provision
to enable us to enjoy the blessings of our sexuality.
The problem is not everybody is married.
Not everybody that is married has a very satisfying sex life.
And even those that have satisfying sex lives don't always keep the fire in the fireplace.
They will sometimes spread their fire elsewhere.
And so handling sexual desire is one of the incredible challenges that God places before
every man and woman, every boy and girl because it is like fire put it in the fireplace
it can light up and heat your home but let it get out of control out of the fireplace
it will burden you down.
And so if we don't learn to follow biblical guidelines in handling those desires that
God has given us, if we allow them to get out of control, then all kinds of very serious
and significant things begin to happen.
And if for men the temptation is to let their eyes wander into images that are not wholesome
and that stimulate illicit sexual desire, then women don't automatically get off the
hook because for women it will often take the form of fantasy or some other kind of dream
world where we imagine what it's like to be cherished and you can commit adultery
in a thousand and one different ways without ever hopping into the arms of another man
or another woman.
And a illicit desire is one of the things that Jesus is talking about here when he says
if we look at a woman lustfully we have already committed adultery with her in our hearts.
And then it includes any other form of lasciviousness and that's a fascinating old fashioned
word.
You don't hear it very much anymore but it's just the right kind of word because literally
what it means is to stir up lust and to be a lascivious person is to generate sexual
desire as well as any other kind of desire that cannot be legitimately satisfied.
Now remember in a committed marital relationship sex is a very good thing.
Sexual desire is a very good thing and there are few things more tragic in the world than
people who are unevenly matched in passion and desire in marriage.
And God wants us to delight in those kinds of relationships but lasciviousness means stirring
up things that cannot be legitimately satisfied.
And so when a young couple goes too far gets all hot and bothered and then if they want
to be duplicately true have to stop short of sexual intercourse they are stirring up things
that cannot be satisfied.
Certain kinds of kissing, certain kinds of touching, certain kinds of sexual innuendo
conversations that are meant to play on illicit sex and that are just inappropriate to the
occasion, all things that are intended to stir up and titillate fall under the category
of lasciviousness and the world is full today with images and with movies and with literature
that is calculated to stir us up and here's what scripture has to say about that.
Among you there must not even be a hint of sexual immorality.
Can you imagine that not even a hint or any kind of impurity or of greed because these
are improper for God's holy people.
For should there be obscenity, foolish talk or coarse joking which are out of place but
rather things giving.
For of this you can be sure no immoral, impure or greedy person such a man as an idolater
has any inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and of God.
And then just to make sure that we get it he adds verse 6 and Ephesians 5, "Let nobody
deceive you with empty words for it is because of such things that God's wrath comes on
the sons of disobedience, not enough, not to do the outward deed, our inner attitude that
tends to lead to such deeds must be under control of the Holy Spirit and our hearts must
be pure and clean."
Before God here is how our catechism puts it in response to the question, "Does God
into seventh commandment then forbid only such scandalous sins as adultery?"
Now listen to the answer.
It says, "We are the temples of the Holy Spirit, body and soul, and God wants both to
be kept clean and holy." That is why he forbids everything which incites unchastity, whether
it be actions, looks, talk, thoughts or desires.
He forbids everything which incites unchastity, whether it be actions, looks, talks, thoughts.
Or desires, who of us here can even pretend that that is fully true of us, if it's true
of you, come see me afterwards, I want to learn from you because the reality is how do
you keep fire in the fireplace and how do you keep from burning down the house?
Not good enough to keep the letter of the Law says Jesus.
Now he wants us also to keep the spirit of the Law.
And you can see that again what he means when he says, "Unless your righteousness exceeds
out of the scribes and the Pharisees, he will never enter the kingdom of heaven."
Thank God for Jesus because apart from an outsider he am, we'd all be in big trouble.
Now I want to take this a step further and I want to try to address the question then.
What is wrong with looking at a woman lustfully?
And understand this isn't just addressed to men because women in their own way struggle
with their own sexuality even if perhaps it comes to a different expression.
What's wrong with letting your eyes linger?
What's wrong with playing fantasy in your head or with your heart or what's wrong in seeing
how much flirting you can do and how you can draw attention to your body or somebody else's
body?
Now let me put it this way, there was a time not very long ago when even secular society
at least understood the difference between right and wrong.
People by and large understood the danger of sexual sin getting out of hand and they
at least knew what to do or what not to do.
It didn't mean that they weren't doing it or that they were doing it right but at least
they understood the difference between right and wrong.
But the more a society spirals downward into sin the more we end up where the book of
Romans ends up in chapter 1 where it tells us that they not only do such things but they
also approve those who do them.
And you know as well as I do there's a world of a difference between doing something wrong
and feeling guilty about it and knowing that you ought not to be doing it and then getting
to a point in life where you no longer bet an eyelash at it because now you have so reworked
reality that you not only do it but you also approve it because it has become normal.
And today increasingly in our society the use of pornography, the breaking of marital
bonds, premarital sex, all of the issues that scripture addresses in this commandment,
they're so out there and they are so out in the public mindset that hardly a person bats
an eyelash at it any longer. I mean even Christians are not immune to being shaped by the values
of the world and it's like that proverbial slippery slope you take one step at a time
it's like the frog in the kettle you know by the time it dawns on you the water is being
heated you're already dead because you have been immunized a step at a time.
So what's wrong with this kind of behavior? Why is scripture so categorical on this issue
of sexual sin? Let me give you three reasons. First of all it offends God. Now that doesn't
persuade a lot of people because most people don't worry too much about what bothers
God but look at it if you will from God's point of view. Here you are you create this
whole world to share your joy with you give people the gift of sexuality you create
safe structures within which that sexuality can truly flourish and contribute to the
well-being of society and your heart is filled with love and you take a great delight
in people who love properly and then what do people do? Well they throw your love back
in your face they ignore your law they take matters into their own hands and to their
own stubborn destruction they go their own way and we don't understand very clearly why
God gets so angry particularly with sexual sin. Now sometimes people have said to the
church you're preoccupied with a seventh commandment. Sexual sin is often thought in the church
to be worsted any other sin and there's some cause and reason for saying that. I mean
some people here will remember in olden days when a young couple God caught being pregnant
outside of marriage they would be hauled before a church council they'd have to confess
their sin. Sometimes even share it publicly with the church and that in and of itself
is not necessarily so bad but what typically happened was that the seventh commandment was
the one that was singled out because people never got dragged to the best of my knowledge
before church because they got a speeding ticket or because somebody defrauded somebody
or stole something it was very much sexual in nature so there's some truth to that charge
but that having been said all commandments being equal there is a tremendous emphasis in
Scripture about the importance of keeping fire in the fireplace and learning how to handle
our sexuality properly why because God has structured society to work in a certain way
and the commandments that he gives us are not commandments to make our lives miserable
no they are to protect us from much damage and much heartache and why's are the people
who know that they're not wiser than God. Why is it wrong to look at a woman lustfully?
Why is it wrong to entertain wrongful desires? Why is it wrong to stir up things that we cannot
legitimately satisfy? Because God says it's wrong and that ought to be enough for you
and for me if we're the children of God yielded to the authority of God if you love me says
Jesus you will keep my commandments it not only offends God but it destroys intimacy
Michael Leigh is with campus crusade for Christ international and during the last couple
of years he's been going around with a multimedia show called porn nation goes to secular campuses
it's actually a Canadian program has a huge following even among kids who are in Christian
and it tries to address this issue of why is pornography such a hindrance and he is
in an unusual position to address it because beginning at age 11 for the next 10 years
pornography was an incredible addiction in his life here's just a little sound bite of
that presentation give it a listen to and so when Paddy and I married and we started to
move through the early years of our marriage I can remember even from the very start a shocking
discovery in fact it was on my wedding day that I first realized that this may not turn out
quite as I thought you see even in the lobby of the hotel that we were going to spend our wedding
night our first night together on that I noticed that I was starting to look around at some of the
other women that were walking through the lobby and even on our honeymoon as we were on the beaches
the Bahamas hopefully spending like the most glorious time of our lives I couldn't keep my eyes off
of some of the women that were walking in bikinis along the beaches and the thought life that I
had was kind of spinning through some of the images and the videos and the pictures that I'd been
feeding myself for the last 10 years because see although I'd only had a year relationship with Paddy
before we married I was also bringing a 10 year relationship with pornography into the marriage
and that's when I started to get a very subtle wake up call that started to say things may
not turn out the way you were planning show me a marriage where the man is heavily into pornography
and I'll show you a wife who is lacking in intimacy show me a marriage where the wife is lost
in the fantasy of soap operas or some cheap trashy novel or some other aspect of a fantasy world
and I'll show you a relationship where intimacy has begun to suffer you show me two kids
who have moved from holding hands to kissing to have in sexual relationships before marriage I'll
show you two kids for whom conversation increasingly disappears in favor of making out together
violate what God has established and what happens is that we begin to suffer the loss
in the intimacy of experience in the year 2003 there was a meeting of the American
Academy of Metrimonial Lawyers 2/3 of the 350 divorced lawyers who attended made the observation
that the internet in recent years plays a significant role in the divorces that they had witnessed
in the past year they claimed that excessive interest in online pornography contributed to more
than half of the divorced cases which they handled whereas six or seven or eight years ago
pornography was almost a non-existent force in the breakup of relationships it destroys intimacy
it offends God and it causes irreparable damage on virtually every level of our lives first
of all it does damage to ourselves spiritually it impacts our relationship with God you show me
particularly a Christian man or a Christian woman boy or girl who allows the lusts of the flesh
in this regard to go on unchecked and I'll show you somebody who is not only not growing in their
relationship with God they're going to go backwards every time you try to draw near to God your
conscience convict you and when your conscience stops convicting you it's not because now you have
become so you know holy or righteous that it doesn't bother you anymore know your heart has
become hardened and God's out there and you're here and you're well on the slippery slope to
destruction because there is nothing inside that stirs anymore we sometimes don't like our conscience
and sometimes wish we could shut it off but I tell you it's a very good thing to have a conscience
because it means that we are not yet hardened by the deceitfulness of sin don't ignore your conscience
or it'll shut down and then you have no inner compass to drag you back to where you need to go
emotionally it destroys us and it destroys our trust factor if you listen to that first clip
with which we began to service did you notice how she said on the one hand she could no longer trust
people and on the other hand she could no longer trust God you know why that is
because our hearts and our sexuality are very closely tied together and the way God has
designed sex is so that in vulnerability we come together and we find an incredible joy in that
kind of intimacy but if you've ever been in a relationship where you've opened your heart to
somebody where you've given your body to somebody and now all of a sudden they walk away they pretend
they don't even know you now all of a sudden you are torn a sunder and in those places where you
have become one all that is left now is a huge aching holo you know why there are so many people
married people whose sex lives are the pets it's because they had way too much sex before marriage
not enough after and they damaged internally that ability to trust and to give your heart
and while that can happen to men as well as women it is particularly women who suffer in this
and so now we live in a culture where increasingly people don't know how to do the dance of intimacy
they don't know how to give their hearts to each other because they're filled with images
and pain and distrust that has broken their heart we are finely tuned instruments
violate it we pay the price and of course physically there is a price to pay there is the
danger of sexually transmitted diseases there is the danger of HIV AIDS 40 million people
around the world suffering from that today 12 million orphans in Africa
6,000 young people infected around the world every day one in four kids who begins to experiment
sexually we are told statistically we'll pick up a sexually transmitted disease at one point
or another and now here's the real irony I just found out these figures yesterday
do you know what is the fastest growing segment in the population suffering from STDs you might
think it's young people it's not it's the seniors and the seniors today are divorcing at an
unprecedented rate and they're in the hinky-pinky at an unprecedented rate I mean you know you think
they get smart enough and slow down but what happens is that all their lives they have tried to
toe the line I think now they have the material success and the ability to follow their dreams and
and some of them are jumping out of their marriages and they don't have to worry about pregnancy so
they're jumping into each other's beds and they're suffering from sexually transmitted diseases
at an unprecedented rate in our society it does great damage not only to ourselves but of course
also to others one woman at her nine o'clock service who saw this clip that I began to service
with said to me afterwards it doesn't even get close to touching the pain of what happens when
you're betrayed in a relationship and if you've ever been in a relationship where you have given
your heart and then it's been thrown back in your face your trust has been violated your whole
life has been turned upside down then you will know that adultery is far more damaging in some
instances than is death itself because see if your if your spouse dies that is painful and that
is a huge loss and it can take you a long long time to grieve that but at least it's no reflection
on you personally but when your spouse takes up with another man or your spouse takes up with
another woman and of course today it can be same sex as well as opposite sex it cuts to the very
core of who you are and makes you ask a thousand questions what is there in me that is undesirable
what have I done to drive him or her into somebody else's arms and even though your head
might tell you it's his business or it's her business for your heart to settle down in those
places and to try to sort it all out that's incredibly painful and then of course there's the whole
question of children and the children of divorce we know apart from God's grace often live with
an incredible amount of guilt because children often think it is their contribution that has made
this happen it does damage to ourselves it does damage to others and of course it does
incomprehensible damage to the whole fabric of society what makes a society function
well it's healthy people with passion and with goals and with vision who know how to keep
firing the fireplace where do healthy people come from well healthy people by and large come from
healthy families where they are rooted and grounded in love and where their needs are met and
they can grow up learning how to be significant contributors to society and part of the tragedy
of the violation of God's biblical norms for marriage is that the very fabric of society
gets broken down and we raise a whole generation of broken people why are there so many people
who are refusing to commit themselves to marriage they would much rather live together because
they know they don't have what it takes to do relationships everybody in this world
becomes so involved in satisfying their own needs and their own passions they have nothing left
for their spouse they have nothing left for their children and then we wonder why those children
grow up carrying on fornicating breaking the law and otherwise getting themselves in all kinds
of trouble not infrequently ending up in jail and I've said this before but I for one cannot
understand given the level of our knowledge even in secular circles today about the importance
of the nuclear family that the powers that be on a provincial and a national level
don't do much more than what we appear to be doing to try to ensure that the nuclear family
gets as many resources and encouragement and support as it can to raise a society that is healthy
because you know by the time we catch on to the fruits of our misdeeds a generation has gone by
and to undo that witness the nations around the world where there is nothing but trouble
to undo that takes untold effort energy incredible pain and sometimes simply cannot be done
because the damage has been too great Jesus said you've heard it said of old
you should not commit adultery but I tell you anyone who looks at a woman lustfully
has already committed adultery with her in his heart and he doesn't lay that on us to fill us with
despair and to say woe is me because there's simply no way that I could ever leave that way there
isn't one of us in this room that can live this way certainly on our own that's why we're so
incredibly grateful that Jesus died on the cross and shed his life's blood so that all our sins
can be washed away and this place and other churches are filled with sinners far and wide who have
violated the commandments of God not only in action but also in thought word as well as
deed and we have received the amazing gracious forgiveness of God to give us a new beginning isn't
that the good news of the gospel not only that but he gives us the power of the Holy Spirit
so that we can learn to see things from God's point of view and we can learn to take the steps
that we need to take to avoid the pitfalls that are so prevalent in our world today and Lord
willing when we come back to this subject we're going to look at what Jesus says about the solution
to this and it's a very drastic solution because he says if your right eye causes you to sin
pluck it out if your right hand causes you to sin cut it off it's hyperbole it's an exaggeration
he's trying to make a point and between now and when we come back to this Lord willing give that
some thought what are the provisions that God makes in Christ so that not only will we not be pulled
down by the spirit of the age we can rise above it and by God's grace in some way model a handling
of our sexuality in a biblical way that can point a light to a fallen world.
So we have God well now within my heart, within our birth, through the world.
So we have God in our heart, within our body, within our body, within our body, within our body, within our body.
So we have God in our heart, within our body, within our body.
So we have God in our heart, within our body, within our body, within our body, within our body, within our body.
So we have God in our heart, within our body, within our body, within our body, within our body.
Change the rising of the rebel sun, teach me the patience of our prayers for God.
So we have God in our heart, within our body, within our body, within our body, within our body, within our body.
So we have God in our heart, within our body, within our body, within our body, within our body, within our body.