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Ginger - Lust
Matthew 5:27-30
Last week when I preached on gluttony, and following services we went
with a group to Subway for a meal. Then on Monday I was taken out for
lunch, Tuesday Dan and I visited and I was offered cookies, and pie,
then Dan and I went out for Lunch, Wednesday evening there was a bag of
candy left on my desk, and then again on Friday I was invited over for
lunch. I am beginning to wonder if you are trying to monitor if I
practice what I preach.
For those of you trying to fatten up the preacher thank you. The food
and goodies were very good. I was left wondering though where were you
people when I preached on greed? Well that’s another struggle?
Tonight we will look at the sin of Ginger and it is likely to be the
most uncomfortable twenty minutes in the entire series. Lust is a
difficult subject to talk about in mixed company, even though both
genders struggle with it.
Most of the time men and women lust after very different things, but
that's just quibbling over the specific objects at which lust is aimed.
The intensity of the desire, the damage it can do and the solutions to
it are all the same. So even though this isn't going to be just loads of
fun, we all need to hear it.
A part of the problem we have in confronting this seventh deadly sin is
the same one we've had all along in the series. We have to wrestle with
two definitions; the original, biblical, classical sense in which the
word is used and the contemporary usage. Today, if you ask people on the
street what the word lust means, they will say it means sexual desire.
And that's not an altogether wrong answer. It isn't completely right
either, but we'll get to that.
In the Bible, the word lust itself is morally neutral. The context
determines whether it describes a sin or not. For example, if I asked
you, Did Jesus ever lust? You'd say, "No, he never lusted. He may have
noticed how beautiful Mary Magdalene was, but he never permitted that
observation to take root in his heart."
And you'd be mostly right, but not completely right. Turn with me to
Luke 22:15 and there we read And he (Jesus) said to them, “I have
earnestly desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer.
The words "earnestly desired," are one word in Greek; epithymia.
Now turn to Ephesians 2:3 among whom we all once lived in the passions
of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and
were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind.
Passions of our flesh is the Greek word epithymia.
And one more this one is in 1 Thessalonians 4:5 not in the passion of
lust like the Gentiles who do not know God;
Here Paul uses epithymia again and it is translated "passionate lust."
So I need you to understand that lust, in the Bible, is a rather
flexible term which means craving or strong desire. Our battle today is
to keep our desires pure. It always has been.
The Bible contains some rather steamy tails of men and women losing that
battle and giving in to their desires. Judah and Tamar, the men of
Sodom, Amnon and a different Tamar, David and Bathsheba, Absalom and the
entire harem, to name just a few.
The battle with lust has always been difficult, but it is being waged in
different, more challenging ways today. I know that Solomon said there's
nothing new under the sun. I don't intend to contradict him, but there
is at least one technology that has enabled us to commit old sins in a
more efficient manner.
The internet provides 24 hour accessibility, anonymity, affordability
and immoral extremes. According to Alexa Research, the number one search
term used in search engine sites is the word "sex." Users searched for
"sex" more than the terms "games, travel, music, jokes, cars, weather
and jobs," combined.
More than half of all requests on search engines are adult oriented.
Adult entertainment on the internet is the third largest sales sector,
surpassed only by computer products and travel. In August, 1997 there
were 72,000 sexually explicit sites on the Internet and an estimated 266
new sites every day.
By the time a young person graduates from high school they will have
spent 15,000 hours watching TV and 12,000 hours in the classroom. The
average American adolescent will view nearly 14,000 sexual references a
year, yet only 165 of those will deal with birth control, self-control,
abstinence or the risk of pregnancy or STD's.
This week congress received a study that says that 70% of all programs
on American television were found to contain sexual content. The "family
hour" of prime-time TV (8 - 9 p.m.) contains on average more than 11
sexual incidents, over 5 times what it contained in 1976.
Want to take a breath? It's overwhelming. I didn't even mention the
magazines at the check out line in the grocery store or the billboards
along the routes you drive to school, work and church, or the movie
channels on your cable service or the epidemic of immodest apparel.
Perhaps this is as good a place as any to remind you that sex was God's
invention. It was God in the grand scheme of things created them Male
and female. It was God who told Noah and His family as they left the ark
to be fruitful and multiply. As I thought about our lesson this week I
was concerned that as we hear all the statistics I've just given you,
our knee-jerk reaction is to label our sexuality as the problem.
You see in our list of steamy biblical stories we mentioned earlier we
forgot to mention one person, Eve. You see Eve's undoing was immediately
attributable to lust. "When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was
good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining
wisdom, she took some and ate it."
Eve was also undone by lust. Because sex isn't the problem in lust any
more than food is the problem in gluttony.
Like I said earlier I believe that our definitions of lust are too
limited and too limiting. We talk about lust in sexual terms. Maybe we
do that for a reason. I read the other day that therapists suggests that
men think about sex every three minutes and women think about it every
six minutes.
At its core however, there is much more to lust than just sex. I think
that it goes much deeper than sexuality. A broader and more encompassing
definition of lust is this: an overwhelming desire, as in Eve’s lust for
knowledge, or power.
Jesus addresses the issue of power, authority, and influence. In the
Gospel of Matthew 20:25-28 But Jesus called them to him and said, “You
know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their great
ones exercise authority over them. It shall not be so among you. But
whoever would be great among you must be your servant, and whoever would
be first among you must be your slave, even as the Son of Man came not
to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.”
Our problem with lust is that we believed that power gives us control.
We supposed that we can control the situations in our life and that we
are in control of our destiny. We think that just because we have the
power to do something that it must be acceptable, and that our own
self-interest holds the highest value.
This power takes away every thought of consequences and we give no
bearing on the consideration of the dangers that wait for us. We become
blinded by this lust for power. And in the end, the lust for power
doesn’t provide us with control, it strips us of it.
We must face our own inclinations to use each other for the fulfillment
of our own desires. We are here, as Jesus said, to serve and not to be
served. We are here to put the needs of others first. We are here to
consider the requirements of others before our own. We are here to feed,
more than we are here to be fed. We are not the center of the universe.
It is not all about us.
When we lust after power and the ability to lord that power over other
people, in whatever guise that presents itself, the slide into sin
becomes easier and easier. When we use each other to get what we want,
we get tangled in the sin that clings so closely and we tend to be
driven into even more sin to try to cover up.
The lust for power can only lead to a downward spiral of sin upon sin,
whether those sins be sexual in nature or otherwise. By contrast, the
pursuit of the capability to control our lusts leads us to an ever
closer relationship with Jesus.
The reason that Lust is a sin is that it affects our vision and then our
mind. Paul said in Romans, we renew ourselves in the mind. And the first
act of renewal needs to be getting in touch with reality, which is
something that lust knows nothing about.
Let’s look at this once again from the side of pornography and I want to
show you the power that is offered there.
If pornography was just about the visual it would only appeal to men,
who were created to be enticed visually. That’s why a man doesn’t have
to be hungry but when he sees that thanksgiving turkey his belly starts
rumbling. But women make up 45% of the pornography market. So it must be
something else.
I believe that the power offered in Pornography is that there you can
find a partner who is always beautiful, ready, willing and able.
They enjoy doing whatever you enjoy. The only answer they ever give is
"Yes." Their eyes say yes. Their bodies say yes. Their lips say yes.
There is not a “no” to be found.
But then there are the sexually tame, but romantically charged movies,
soap operas, and novels that women turn to, and they are no more
realistic. They present a man and woman in a relationship so far removed
from reality that it's laughable.
Ever notice that people in movies and novels never belch, or go to the
bathroom? They barely eat. Their fingernails are always clean. They
don't even need deodorant.
They live in a fantasy world where the victim is always rescued, the foe
is always vanquished and the tender, guy has all the time in the world
to sit and cuddle with you for hours while he listens and shares his
true feelings.
It’s a yes Men are drawn to pornography, and a yes that women are drawn
to in books, and on the screen. Yes I am available to do whatever you
want to do. You are in control and I am at your beck and call.
But let’s look at this with a little reality.
First, the women in pornographic pictures are not partners. They are
models. And the men in the books and on the screens are in invention of
a writer.
Second, if we were to meet one of those people in real life they
wouldn't give you the time of day.
Third, when I say these people are impossibly beautiful, I mean that
literally. No one ever looks like the models in magazines or internet
galleries. In fact, the men and women who model for the pictures don't
even look like that until the production artists and computer software
gets through with them. No one does. So it is an unreal world.
Actress Michelle Pfeiffer appeared on the cover of a magazine a few
years back with that caption “What Michelle Pfeiffer Needs Is …
Absolutely Nothing”
But a reported later discovered that she did need something after all.
She needed $1,500 worth of touch up work on that cover photo. Here is a
list of things that was done by the touch up artist to make her
beautiful.
Clean up complexion, soften eye lines, soften smile line, all color to
lips, trim chin, remove neck lines, soften lines under earlobe, and
highlights to earrings, add blush to cheek, clean up neckline, remove
stray hairs, Adjust color and add hair on top of head, add forehead.
Total price $1,525.00
So my first suggestion is, get real.
Second, get serious about what you put into your mind.
Job is the oldest book in the Bible. In chapter 31:1 Job said he had
made a covenant with his eyes not to look with lust upon a young woman.
Eve should have done the same thing.
We need to get serious about what we let in through the windows of our
souls. When my dad was in the NAVY they used to say “Garbage in, Garbage
out”
Do the things that we watch and read enhance our desire to be a servant
or does it make us long for power by using people for our purposes.
We have been called to be servants, and you can’t use someone and serve
them at the same time.
Thirdly let's get compassionate.
Lust is one of the sins we don't permit people to talk about much. We
have associated it so closely with sexual sins that we would toss the
sinner and his sin both out of the church.
Jesus didn't do that with the woman in John 4. He didn't do that with
the woman caught in adultery. He didn't to that with the sinners and
prostitutes that came the party Levi hosted.
Jesus knew that there are people in our world that are empty and looking
for somewhere to take their broken souls. That’s why God gave us this
family, and that’s why we have been called to serve. We are to treat
those who struggle with a lust for power the same way we need to be
treated when we are caught in one of our many sins.
Paul writes in Galatians 6:1 Brothers, if anyone is caught in any
transgression, you who are spiritual should restore him in a spirit of
gentleness. Keep watch on yourself, lest you too be tempted.
Notice two things in that passage:
1) We should restore them gently
2) we need to keep watch lest we too are tempted.
Lust is the sin of Ginger, but probably not for the reason you
originally thought. When Sherwood Schwartz wrote the character he wanted
a cross between Marilyn Monroe, and Lucile Ball. But what she evolved
into was something entirely different.
Sure she was good looking and the beautiful movie star but there was
also another side as well. Ginger was the most powerful castaway on the
island. She used her looks to get her way with the men castaways, used
her youth to get her way with Mrs. Howell, and used her knowledge to get
her way with the little farm girl Mary Anne. She thought that she was
the most important person and that everyone was there at her disposal.
You see the reason that Lust is so deadly is because it elevates our
opinion of our self, and no proud person has ever humbled themselves at
the cross and found forgiveness.
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