Lust

You are listening to a message from Thrive Community Church, a church located in Southwest Florida. For more info, visit us at thrive-fl.org. So, we're in this series, Seven Deadly Sins, and I think sometimes a little hesitant about even using that title and going in this direction, because I think it almost puts the focus on the sins rather than on the Savior. Do you understand what I mean by that? And there are a lot of churches, well I don't know, I've heard a few messages myself, maybe I've even preached a couple, where the emphasis seems to be on the thou shalt nots, and it's more or less a berating. We're not trying to do that at all with this sermon series, at all. We're not trying to berate you or kind of don't even think about it, kind of, for these seven. Especially today, this is probably, in one sense, I don't know, I think greed will be, too, a very difficult one. But in one sense, this one is the one, when you think of sin, this is the one people always think of. Which one is? Lust, or sex, right? Or whatever way you want to say that. And talk about touching what I would say is the third rail in our culture. It's touching on this. It's like, boom, and it can go in all different wrong ways. So, a lot of Christian churches and a lot of Christians have been seen as judgmental, prudish, repressive, when it comes to sexuality and sin in general. And on the surface of what we're going to read today, what Jesus says in the Sermon on the Mount may come across that way. But we're not looking at just what Jesus said. We're also going to try to explore what he means, and in the context of what he is talking about. And I think what we're going to find is that the Bible is very holistic, balanced in its understanding of love and sex. And it's when lust distorts that, that we have problems. And it gets into the issue of how deadly that can be to your relationships. And how deadly it can be when a whole society is consumed by these types of things. So, we're going to read in Matthew chapter 5, just a very few verses on what Jesus says in the Sermon on the Mount. And the whole Sermon on the Mount was to explain to his disciples how blessed it is to follow him, to trust in him, and to live the life of love. And in every aspect of life, whether it's in your relations to your neighbors, it's in relation to prayer and to giving and tithing or whatever, how you can be the light of the world, how you can be the salt of the earth, how you can show love. And that includes even our sexual selves. And so let's read Matthew 5, 27 to 30. This is what Jesus said, You have heard that it was said, You shall not commit adultery. But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lustful intent has already committed adultery with her in his heart. If your eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away. For it is better that you lose one of your members than your whole body be thrown into hell. And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away. For it is better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body go into hell. Wow. These are from the lips of Jesus. He's not so meek and mild in these verses. And on the surface, you almost get the feeling that what Jesus is saying is you don't even think about it because if you do, you're going to hell. And so a lot of people in our culture, in our society, look at church and think, Wow, they just have such a negative view of sex and desire. But I think that's a misunderstanding. Now, I'm not whitewashing his words or downplaying his words in any form. But I think that actually the biblical understanding of love and sex is one of the most attractive things about Christianity or can be. And you go like, what? Yes, it can be. So we're going to explore these three things from this text. The integrity of sex, the deceit of lust, and then the future of love. So first, the integrity of sex. And Jesus says it this way. You've heard that it was said you shall not commit adultery. Now, this assumes he's saying he's building on a foundation of the what you would say is the Old Testament or biblical view of sex and marriage and love and how that is expressed. So Jesus builds on that Old Testament sexual ethic. And that, you know, then begs the question, well, what was it? What was the Old Testament sexual ethic? And I think it comes down to one word we seldom use in English. But to one word called covenant. OK. And it so is one of those words that nobody else seems to use. Covenant, that sex was a covenantal relationship. It was based on the covenant that God made with the children of Israel at Mount Sinai, that God had covenanted himself to his people and then called on them to live in such a covenant in their marriages, in their relationships. And you might go to me, well, why can't you come up with a better word these days? Can't you translate? No other word works in our English language. Every other word that we might use for a relationship often...