Assessing Your Sex Life
Written by Ed Allen
Saturday, 20 April 2002 19:00
Matthew 5:27-30
(27) "You have heard that it was said, 'Do not commit adultery.' (28) But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart. (29) If your right eye causes you to sin, gouge it out and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to be thrown into hell. (30) And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to go into hell.
Overview of the series
Overview work
You will find fulfillment in your job not by finding the right kind of job, but by being the right kind of employee.
We said that means:
1. work with diligence - careful obedience and thorough industriousness, but not in such a way that work dominates your life.
2. Work with integrity - consistency, truthfulness, devotion and pure motives.
3. Then know who your boss is - you work for the Lord.
Overview morals
We surveyed the book of 1 Corinthians and discovered 5 ultimate questions that help us assess our morals.
This morning we are covering Matthew 5:27-30 and assessing our sex life.
1. Sex is out of your control.
Illustration: Jimmy Carter
Culture says "we're in control."
Jesus says "oh really?"
Illustration: sta
c. This is what life is all about - loving and being loved. But lust is impersonal! People become objects. Dehumanizing.
4. Since lust is so damaging and so powerful, we need to remember that great sex requires vigilance.
1) There is an image that is important for us as we think about our sexuality and its place in our lives.
a. Jesus calls himself our bridegroom.
b. Also says he's our king. But if king only, then the dynamic of our relationship with him is dry obedience.
c. But if he's our bridegroom, then the dynamic of our relationship is like one of romantic love.
d. My experience with grooms seeing brides
e. That's how Jesus looks at us.
f. This knowledge heals us!
g. This is the picture that must organize and drive our sex lives.
h. That's why he says "you've got to be careful about how you see things and about your habits."
2) We have to be vigilant about our thought life and about our habits.
3) More than that, he actually says if we are in trouble in otistics
- Pornography is $20 billion business.
- An estimated 10 million children worldwide are already involved in the sex industry and the number is growing.
- US highest teenage pregnancy rate in the world according to US Department of Commerce.
- 61% of high school seniors have had sexual intercourse. 21% with 4 or more partners. About ¼ of those who are sexually active become infected with an STD (3 million cases each year).
- In fact, people under 25 account for 2/3 of all STD cases.
- Sexual assault is one of the fastest growing crimes in America with an annual rate of about 1 in every 1200 women reported being sexually assaulted annually.
Of course, I could go on and on. And recent events have demonstrated that we cannot even go to the church for solace.
Clearly, you are not in control. "But are we really going to hell for our lust? Come on Jesus. Get real."
Jesus actually uses the word Gehenna here. Gehenna was a graphic, symbolic word used for hell in Jesus' day, because it also referred literally to the garbage dump outside of Jerusalem. It was the place where things that were rotting and decaying were burned. That is certainly an aspect of hell.
But Jesus is doing more than spewing out hell fire and brimstone. He's saying something incredibly powerful here. He's saying: "look, sex is so powerful, and mysterious, so unique and untamable, that unless you learn how to deal with it properly, its going to spread all sorts of decay and destruction in your whole life."
Our problem, according to the Bible, is not that we have too high a view of sex. We have too low a view! We don't see it properly. Our culture says sex is just another appetite - but that's just not true!
Illustration: "Safe Sex Lies" article from New York Times magazine
Illustration: Sugar is an appetite But that's not how it is with sex. We have to have it. It's out of our control
Illustration: pop music - has to talk about sexual love in eternal themes.
2. Sex involves your mind and your heart as well as your body.
First of all, we need to understand that Jesus saw our relationship with God as a completely comprehensive thing. He said you could summarize the whole requirements of God in the idea of loving God with heart, soul, mind and strength. One of the more significant influences in the Judaism of Jesus' day was known as Pharisaism ?
Pharisaism tended to legalize everything. And it tended to compartmentalize everything. Jesus broke down the compartments. "this is holy, this is sacred." "no," Jesus said, "it's all sacred." You are an integrated whole and whatever you do involves and impacts your whole person - most especially sex.
You've heard ? don't commit adultery
But I say ? no huge line of distinction between interior life and world of behavior.
I believe 2 reasons for this:
1) What we dwell on internally eventually makes its way into our behavior.
Illustration: orange in reverse. You may think you can be an orange on the inside and on the outside an apple, but just doesn't happen.
2) The interior world is not hidden from God. He sees the reality of it all the time in full view
illustration: young child playing peek a boo. Thinks if she cannot see you then you cannot see her. But she had a huge stain on her pants, wouldn't go away because she hid her face. So us with God.
Turns out when we want to tell ourselves or others that its just a physical thing - we're wrong. In this way the pagans and the prudes are really just alike!
Sex involves your mind your heart and your body. Which is why lust is so damaging. It brutalizes God's design. God intended sex for the complement and completion of committed love. He made Eve for Adam and Adam for Eve. God arranged the first blind date and he arranged it in part for sex. That's why lust isn't about sexual desire ?
3. Lust is inordinate, impersonal desire.
1) Lust is not about sexual desire.
a. Bible is unblushing in its praise of sexual desire.
i. Adam's song to Eve Genesis 2:23
ii. Song of Solomon 7:6-9
2) Lust is inordinate desire.
a. Other words he could have used for lust.
b. The word he uses is epithumia
i. Used 62 times
ii. Only twice in connection with sex.
iii. Means to have deep longing for, negatively to covet. It is often used in the context of passionate defining kind of desire
iv. For example, Matthew 13:17 Jesus talking to his disciples: "For I tell you the truth, many prophets and righteous men longed to see what you see but did not see it, and to hear what you hear but did not hear it."
v. Or ? Luke 15:16 story of Prodigal: "He longed to fill his stomach with the pods that the pigs were eating, but no one gave him anything."
vi. This is life-defining desire.
vii. Jesus is saying if you look at a woman (or a woman looks at a man) and ask her or him to give you what only God can give, you're in deep trouble. Your life is headed for Gehenna.
3) Lust is inordinate desire. And lust is impersonal desire.
a. "Anyone who looks at a woman ?" unnamed, object of desire nothing more
b. So much of what Jesus revealed to us had to do with loving and with being loved. Know we're disciples by ?
ur sex lives, we must do violence in order to bring them into health.a. It's so important and potentially so damaging we can't mess around with it.
b. If eye offends pluck it out. In other words, guard your view of sex.
c. Joseph
d. If hand offends cut it off. In other words, guard your habits.
e. Cut the hand off or pluck the eye out because if you don't eventually the fire will spread and burn up your life.