"Matters of the Heart" Part 3: Lust

Matters of the Heart Part 3: Lust Matthew 5:27-30

In our culture sex sells, just about anything, billboards ads, magazines, TV commercials internet ads. Any product from milk to underwear, sex saturated images hit our eyes. In a Texas A&M University survey said that the average American is exposed to roughly 850 advertisements a day. Lets just say the only 25% of those are advertisements with sexual content. That is 212 ads a day. These are not considered pornographic this is culturally acceptable advertisements. Mainline stores are issuing catalogs that by standards of 40 years ago would be considered pornographic.

John Lahr Theater Critic for The New Yorker Mag
“Society drives people crazy with lust and calls it advertising.”
Why is there such a decline and what does it do to our spiritual lives. Is this a big deal or is this something that should concern us.

Romans 1:22-25 The more people turn from God the more God allows them to be turned over to the lusts of their heart.



Matthew 5:27-28 Jesus raises the bar. You think you have it all down because don’t commit adultery well I am saying to you if you lust after someone you have already committed that adultery in your heart. Unmarried can commit adultery

Jesus is talking about “Matters of our hearts” God does care about our actions but more then that He focuses in our heart motives. Just like if we do the right thing for the wrong motive He is unimpressed and we are unrewarded. He is concerned about our hearts because it reveals the person Matthew 15:18-19

You are sinning if the intention is in your heart “For as he thinks in his heart so he is” Proverbs 23:7a

You may say that is ridiculous a person cannot possible stay away from sin then. You are right and that is exactly why we need Jesus’ death and resurrection to pay for our sins. Gospel

Or some may say “I don’t act on the intention” and that is good to some degree, but it is still sin and if the heart is not made right and worked on eventually you will live it out

What is Lust?
Lust is looking at another person for the purpose of stimulating desire. It is also distorted thinking about love and sex, which leads to guilt, shame and broken marriages.
John Maxwell defines lust as "any thought that, if you actually carried it out, would be a sin."

If it's wrong to lust, it's wrong to deliberately create lust. John Stott points out to women that it is one thing to make yourself attractive. It is another thing to make yourself deliberately seductive. The Bible warns those who give drink to a drunkard that they will be held accountable. In the same way those who intentionally stimulate lust will be answerable for their contribution to sin.
Charles Spurgeon once made a parable. He said, "There was once a tyrant who summoned one of his subjects into his presence, and ordered him to make a chain. The poor blacksmith -- that was his occupation -- had to go to work and forge the chain. When it was done, he brought it into the presence of the tyrant, and was ordered to take it away and make it twice the length. He brought it again to the tyrant, and again he was ordered to double it. Back he came when he had obeyed the order, and the tyrant looked at it, and then commanded the servants to bind the man hand and foot with the chain he had made and cast him into prison.
We are fashioning our own chain of lust to be eventually bound by it with unrealistic expectations which lead to more sin and harsh consequences
We start the chain by loving the thoughts and idead of what the world says is attractive and acceptable “lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes.” 1 John 2:15-16
Maybe you are somewhere on that spectrum you are forging a chain that eventually you will be bound with, maybe your deeper then that your lust have found you addicted to internet porn or emotional relationships online or with a person in your life.
1 Peter 2:11 says that fleshly lusts wage war against our souls
Christian author and speaker Richard Exley,
Lust is not the result of an overactive sex drive; If it were, then it could be satisfied with a sexual experience, like a glass of water quenches thirst or a good meal satisfies appetite. But the more we attempt to appease our lust, the more demanding it becomes. When we deny our lustful obsessions, we are not repressing a legitimate drive. We are putting to death a sinful course. Lust is to the gift of sex what cancer is to a normal cell. Therefore, we deny it, not in order to become sexless saints, but in order to be fully alive to God, which includes the full and uninhibited expression of our sexual being within the God-given context of marriage.
Bottom line is that lust is a heart problem
I have good news, the Bible tells us that it does not have to be that way.
You don’t have to be bound by that chain or continue to form it God can and wants to break that chain in your life.
“Walk in the Spirit and you shall not fulfill the lust of the flesh” Galatians 5:16 “Put on the Lord Jesus and make no provisions for the flesh, to fulfill its lusts” Romans 13:14
Walk and put on are action words so we have to take action.
Step 1 Confession 1 John 1:9 God will deal with your sin
Step 2 Matthew 5:29-30 Take drastic measures to rid your life of lust, you know what promotes lust in your life, you have to get rid of those things or steer clear of them. That means changing what you are doing now.
Step 3 1 Thess 4:3-5 learn to control yourself. Sanctification means being set apart. As believers we are going to be set apart from the world that means that what we look at and do will be different from the world. One of the fruits of the Spirit is self control. In the desire series I did a message on self control.
Step 4 Psalm 119:9-11 Strive for purity, living by the Word and memorizing the Word. Topical memory system, or take verses that help you in the struggle you are having with lust. Post them on computer, desk at work or where ever you are having lustful thoughts
Step 5 Prayer Matt 26:14 Our flesh is weak by God is willing to help us. We are in desperate need of help from the Lord and we cannot have victory over lust and break that chain which is binding you.
There must be a daily act of breaking the chain in order for us not to be bound by it.