Matthew: The Eroding Nature of Light

We are making our way through the Sermon on the Mount, which is the core of Jesus' teaching.

We're in this section called the antitheses.

The antitheses that Jesus is speaking these new teachings.

He's taking us into the inner life.

He keeps saying things like, You have heard this taught, but now I am telling you this.

So last week we looked at this teaching where he says, You have heard it said, Do not commit murder, but I am telling you, don't even find anger in your heart.

So he's taking us into the inner life.

Today's text, Matthew 5, 27 through 30, let's get into it, verse 27.

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 right eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away.

For it is better that you lose one of your members than that 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.

Well, verses 29 and 30.

Pretty intense.

I I don't think they're saying that if you have an affair, you're going to hell.

I have friends, I have Christian friends who have been in hotel rooms.

They had no business being in.

And I don't think they're going to hell because of that.

But this is a commentary.

This is Jesus speaking with such intensity on these issues of adultery and lust and the actions that come out of that because of the destruction it produces, the shame it creates.

And we know this.

You know this.

We know this because we've seen it.

We know it because we've experienced it.

Maybe you've caused it.

Maybe you're living in the middle of it.

A year ago I read this quote.

It hasn't left me.

It might be the most insightful words I've ever read on adultery.

I read it when we spoke about this topic last year.

It's Dr.

Esther Peeler.

She's a researcher and sexual therapist, and she's writing about extramarital affairs.

And here's what she says.

Very often we don't go elsewhere because we are looking for another person.

We go elsewhere because we are looking for another self.

It isn't so much that we want to leave the person we are with as we want to leave the person we have become.

This is why Jesus takes us from adultery into the inner life.

Because you can't talk about adultery without recognizing this is all about your inner life.

Jesus understood the heart to be the center of who you are.

And he's showing us that your life and your actions flow from your heart.

So since we're talking about adultery and lust and sex, such a fun topic for us to talk about.

Now it is interesting that millennials are having less sex.

You would never guess it, right?

I'd be fascinating, right?

Millennials, ages 20 to 35, are having less sex than any generation since the 1920s.

So this is according to the Archives of Sexual Behavior.

It's a journal.

The research came out last month.

I know you devour that journal every month.

Well, the research was in last month's Archives of Sexual Behavior, the millennials having less sex than any generation since the 1920s.

This has been written about in CNN, Washington Post.

It's everywhere because everyone wants to figure out why.

Why is this going on?

And I think maybe it's because of the distraction of technology.

So if you have a kid ages 20 to 35, thank you, Minecraft.

Maybe it's the proliferation of porn and technology.

Maybe it's just an overly obsessed achievement culture.

We don't know.

But the sad news is this while millennials are having less sex, they are more open to extramarital affairs.

So the behavior has changed, but the heart of lust is still there.

Okay, so if we're going to talk about lust, we need to define lust.

We need to talk about sexual urges.

Now, sexual urges are interested in sex, and we are sexual beings.

No need to blush.

What this means is it means that our sexual urges should not be connected to shame.

You don't need to blush.

They're private and they're personal, but they're not shameful.

Not the urge, not the desire.

God created that in you.

God didn't have to make reproduction so incredible for us.

He could have made it as enjoyable as folding laundry while watching Jeopardy.

Now, some of us probably enjoy sex as much as folding laundry.

Don't raise your hand, and some of you might enjoy folding laundry more.

Please don't raise your hand.

This is probably because you've attached some shame to sex and to sexual urges.

And that's wrong.

Just as lust is wrong, attaching shame to sexuality or sex inside of a marriage is wrong.

Can I get an amen?

Okay, so a few points.

A few points coming out of this text.

Why does Jesus take us from adultery to lust?

Why is he talking about lust?

Why is he talking about the inner life in the heart?

Point number one, lust erodes meaning.

Lust erodes meaning.

Lust is an unmet need in the heart of a needy person.

So last Monday we were out at my in-laws and we're swimming and we're cooking out.

A new neighborhood is being built over to the side of their property, just on the outside of a bunch of trees.

And so we all pile, Christy and I and our three girls, we pile on a golf cart, their golf cart.

Everybody loves a ride on a golf cart, doesn't matter how old you are or how achieved you are.

If you see people on a golf cart, you want on.

And so we're on the golf cart.

We drive up the driveway, up to the street, down the street, and then back down to this new neighborhoods being built.

And it's on the side of this mountain, so the side of this huge hill.

And it's just like stair steps going down, just house after house after house, just going down this huge hill.

So if you're the top, if you're the top house, you're you're loving it.

You're reigning over all these other houses.

But as we drive down this hill, you just start to feel for the houses at the bottom.

Maybe you own a house at the bottom, and you know, you know this because you own a house at the bottom.

Where the water goes means everything.

I had a friend who bought a house at the bottom of one of these neighborhoods, and it's all about you're just trusting when you buy that house that the water will channel to the right places, that the water will channel to the drains in the streets and the sewers.

But for him, it ended up in his yard, and it began to erode his foundation of his home.

See, there are channels that lead to meaning, and there are channels that erode meaning.

You know this, and this is what's going on.

That's why I'm talking about this neighborhood.

This is my point.

Channeling rightly means everything.

Channeling rightly means everything.

We have to do it with our HDMI cables, you have to do it with your bank drafts, the energy you give to your job and your family and your God-given sexual urges.

Because sexual urges that are misplaced unto lust begin to erode at the foundation of the very meaning of sex itself.

So I've been reading this week about Victor Frankel.

Frankel was a personality theorist from Vienna.

He wrote a book called Man's Search for Meaning.

Somebody handed me this book last year.

I read it.

It's fascinating about his survival out of concentration camp.

And he had this theory called logotherapy.

This was what he practiced with his patients.

He had a huge success rate.

It was a therapy of meaning.

He said that it isn't pleasure we are seeking, but meaning.

And he said we only seek pleasure when we can't find meaning.

So we use pleasure to numb our hearts from the pain of not having meaning.

Now I think this has everything to do with sex and lust.

That's why I'm talking about it, because sexual urges are innate and good.

I mean, men, pour your wife a glass of red wine or sweet tea, whatever's in your home, and tell her you have a reading for her from the holy scriptures of God.

And you open up Song of Solomon chapter 4, and you start to read.

Song of Solomon 4 · chapter mention

You are a spring enclosed, a sealed fountain.

You are a garden fountain, a well of flowing water streaming down from Lebanon.

I mean, come on, that's good material to work with, men.

I mean, this is the passage.

When you were in middle school, you remember when you found it.

But now it tells us how God is for sex.

And wife, oh godly Christian wife, listen how the wife replies in Song of Solomon.

She replies, erotic and she replies, sexual toward her husband.

She says this, awake, north wind and come, south wind blow on my garden that its fragrance may spread everywhere.

Let my beloved come into his garden and taste its choice fruits.

So sex is needed and good, but there is a channel.

And the channel doesn't exist to diminish pleasure, but to merge pleasure with the highest possible of meaning and the least possible destruction and shame.

Great, meaningful sex where you give yourself to another is only in the context of a safe, secure covenant marriage which creates the greatest possibility of vulnerability and security and meaning.

Lust brings great moments of pleasure.

Nobody will deny that or argue that.

Lust brings great moments of pleasure, but it can't deliver it with meaning.

So there will always be an isolating self-centeredness to it.

The design of God channels our urges not to immediate pleasure, but to pleasure, coupled with the greatest possible meaning of who you are and sex itself.

So that is point number two.

While lust erodes meaning, sexuality and sex are full of meaning.

I sit in conversation after conversation where this issue has and is creating destruction for families and relationships, grown-ups, parents and kids, and it's left the poison of shame that so many of us are walking around, shackled by.

I'll never forget a conversation I had with a good friend of mine.

He sat me down, he said, I need to tell you my story.

I I want to tell you my story.

He said, I I would have never guessed the distance between that first playful text to that hotel room that could have been so short.

We may always have lust, but we don't have to obey it.

And we don't have to be shackled by it nor the shame it creates.

Maybe you live in the shame of that thing.

Listen, you aren't defined by your actions.

You are defined by God's love toward you that is outside of you and given to you, and it's defined by Christ's actions for you.

You, messy, broken you.

You are his beloved based on his work for you.

He really loves you.

And listen, we have to get a handle on this.

But we get a handle on it by letting go, then diving in.

That's the phrase that kept coming to me this week.

We let go so we can dive in.

We let go so we can dive in.

Okay, so letting go, meaning we have to let go of trying to satisfy our lack of peace with sexuality.

And deeper than that, stopping the search for meaning and love and acceptance with what you produce or what you see.

This is just a form of justification by merit.

It is exhausting whether you do it with achievement or religiosity or lust.

Have you ever surrendered that pursuit that's so exhausting over to God who loves you from outside of yourself?

This is the context of these antitheses.

Jesus saying, in the beginning of this, two Sundays ago, we talked about this.

Jesus says, I completed the law.

He lived up to all the shoulds in life, all the things we should be.

He says, Hey, I lived up to those things for you.

And in all of this, he is breaking it down.

Last week with murder, not anger.

This week adultery, yeah, yeah, yeah.

But lust.

He is taking us into ourselves for us to see we are broken and we need a love and a righteousness, a redemption from outside of ourselves, which is God's love to us.

We know it in Christ crucified for us.

All of our brokenness put upon him and his righteousness put upon us.

So we let go.

This is how grace frees, but we let go so we can dive in.

Now that we are secure in love, no matter what, you can dive in and you can face your lust.

Point number three is this the grace of God disarms lust.

The grace of God disarms lust.

Henry Nowin, great mystic writer, chaplain.

He was taught at several Ivy League schools.

Incredible, incredible writer.

He wrote this.

How do we befriend our inner enemies' lust and anger?

By listening to what they are saying.

They say, I have some unfulfilled needs, and who really loves me?

Instead of pushing our lust and anger away as unwelcome guests, we can recognize that our anxious-driven hearts need some healing.

Our restlessness calls us to look for the true inner rest where lust and anger can be converted into a deeper way of loving.

There is a lot of unruly energy in lust and anger.

When that energy can be directed toward loving well, we can transform not only ourselves, but even those who might otherwise become the victims of our anger and lust.

This takes patience, but it is possible.

Here's what he is saying.

Lust will teach us if we dare to face it rather than obey it.

Meaning this.

You can ask, what lie is generating this lust?

What do I think I need that I had back then?

I experienced back then, and I think I need it again today.

What lie is generating this perceived need?

What do I think I missed out on that I think I need today?

What lie is eroding the very foundation and the meaning of the good things in my life?

What lie is producing this lust?

God is telling us something through our sexuality and our sexual urges.

He's telling us something because those things are good.

He's telling us we long to be accepted.

And out of that longing, we are a factory of needs.

And some of those needs are these core needs that God meets, but some of these needs are perceived needs.

And one after another, they just arrive.

They're just arriving inside of ourselves.

We're just producing these needs.

And we think at first we should be able to meet all these needs, and we run to try to meet all these needs in all sorts of ways, and we fail.

We're exhausted in the pursuit.

Then we think Christianity and Jesus should be able to meet all these needs, and then we become disillusioned.

And then listen, here's the rescue.

Here's where we must land and end up.

The grace of God itself nullifies the entire process.

We don't come to the grace of God for all of our perceived needs to be completed.

We come to be free from having to have all of our needs completed.

Because we are accepted and beloved even while we have needs being unmet.

So, my brothers and sisters, may you walk in the way of grace that Jesus gives, healing you from your shame no matter where you've been or what you've done.

May you live secure as God's beloved, accepted before you act, being freed and learning from the very brokenness that attempts to shackle you.