Purity Talk: Every Man’s Struggle (cont.)
Strategy:
We must reject the lie that we can indulge in sensual lust without sacrificing the future on the altar of the present. The person who lives for pleasure is ‘dead’ even while they live (1 Tim 5:6).
Redeeming our sexuality: our sexual desire is not to be eradicated—you couldn’t do that anyway, though more than a few monks tried to in the Middle Ages. Our sexual desire is to be redeemed and reclaimed for the glory of God—that’s what takes place when we use God’s precious gifts within the moral context He has given them.
How to be pure: the best way to beat a bosom sin is to cultivate delight in God.
EX. The Thomas Chalmers story—struggling with a stale, stagnant congregation. We must cultivate satisfaction and delight in the Lord. Chalmers’ most famous sermon was “The Expulsive Power of a New Affection.” That’s what Chalmers did—he parted the heavens and displayed the beauty and desirability of Christ. He opened up the treasure chest of the precious things of God and showed how by the Father’s love they are offered to the unworthy.
EX. John Howe—his comprehensive treatise on delighting in God unfolds the truth that since God created you to be a worshipper—your heart affections are made for an object of desire. Your heart refuses to live as a dry salt waste—it must be fixed upon an object of desire. We were created to have our affections take in the glory of Christ so that your heart is ‘staggered’ by majesty and supremacy of our Savior (the sheer vastness of Him who became flesh for us).
We are involved in a struggle to watch over our heart with all diligence—your heart is your most sensitive tool/instrument for worship and for ministry. I meet ‘Christian’ men all the time who take better care of their lawn, truck, and dog than they do their heart.
Lust has a deception factor built into it: that’s why they are referred to as the “lusts of deceit” in Ephesians 4:22. The lust lie is that seeking pleasure directly and illicitly brings fulfillment. We must learn to deconstruct the lie behind lust’s deceit so we won’t fall prey to the deception. Like a parasite; they can’t operate without a host.
EX. Remember the movie “Alien?” Who can forget the astronaut sit down dinner. It is one of the most powerful metaphors for the parasitic effects of lust I have ever seen.
EX. Samson is also a very powerful parable for the enslaving weakening effects of unbridled lust. Delilah’s relentless questioning drives Samson to tell his secret. It costs him his freedom, his eyesight, and eventually his life. The blind grinder in prison is the parable of sexual sin weakening a man to the point of abject slavery. I think if Paul the Apostle were asked the secret behind strength to say no to sin, in part we would find his answer in Acts 24:15-16. (Read and comment.)
Don’t live with un-confessed sin: I often ask the young men I disciple “Do you have a clear conscience this week?” That’s a critical question/issue because without a clear conscience it is very difficult to build a protective perimeter around the heart. A clear conscience is tied to (what you love) your love to the Lord and it is also connected to the ability to say “no” to sin—they are all bound up together.
Abiding in Christ involves living a sin-judged life. Keep short accounts with God (make sure there is nothing between you and heaven that is interrupting fellowship). Our problem is that we have remnants of guilt circulating in our conscience from past lusting. This low level guilt kills us with condemnation as ‘background noise.’ It erodes our motivation to pursue holiness/sanctification. It obscures our view of God’s love and grace toward us.
EX. I like the observation by James Haldane—if we have even one sin ricocheting around in the conscience it can kill our confidence that God desires to bless us and it can prevent us from mortifying the very sin about which we feel guilty. What is the answer? Run to the atonement—don’t wait. Christ exists as our Great High Priest who keeps cleansing His people. The new covenant inaugurate in His blood contains an endless provision for ongoing forgiveness. The blood of Christ is so powerful it cleanses every fold and recess of the conscience (Heb 9:14).
That is the first qualification of purity—maintain a clear conscience by Christ’s atoning blood. Don’t disqualify yourself for cleansing because your sin has been repeated. Go back to the Lord immediately and receive the cleansing and restoration to full fellowship. And bring repentance with you—determine by the Spirit’s power that you will not make a provision for this lust. You cannot ‘fix yourself up for Christ.’ As John Owen says, “When you keep taking Christ for the reasons He is offered in the gospel, you are having fellowship with Him. Go to Him and exchange your sin for His righteousness.
Isaiah 55:1-3ff. talks about the folly of ‘bogus bread.’ What is ‘bogus bread?’ It is fake bread—that which cannot provide a single calorie of value to the soul. The prophet argues in this section of Isaiah, “Why do you take your God-given resources—the very best of your time talent and affection and spend it on that which is not bread?” That’s what lust is—bogus bread. It cannot feed a single grain of nourishment to the soul—like nicotine, it leaches nutrients instead of providing value. Lust only leaves you parched, hollowed out and weakened.
For many of us—it is time we form these truths into sermons and preach them to our own souls so that as we enjoy freedom in Christ, and we might help the young men who are depending upon us. In reality the lust versus purity struggle is a litmus test—giving in to lust is a symptom of not enjoying intimacy and with Christ and the Father’s love. Lust is an attempt to gain pleasure illegally—therefore it means we are not banking upon God holding us in His heart of love. It is time to go back and preach to ourselves that Christ has removed every obstacle to the enjoyment of a love relationship with God.
The labor of mediation is involved in order to ‘see’ with the eyes of the heart. God wants you to perceive with the eyes of your heart the ‘dimension-less-ness’ of Christ’s love—but it takes faith to perceive. Lust is immediate—it requires only the sensate. To meditate so as to feed upon Christ involves the effort to get into the Word with the express purpose of gathering heavenly manna—it is our job to feed on the manna of things above instead of the bogus bread offered by the world. Feed your soul on the real food of the Father’s love for us who has given Christ for us.
Meditation on the Word prepares us to ‘preach sermons’ to ourselves. This is vital because there must not be much of a gap between what you teach and what you love.
Young men are watching us. Our qualification to influence others spiritually in no small part is due to our habit of using the Sword of God’s Word on ourselves. If you would equip, train, and admonish—then you must be in the habit of composing sermons which you regularly preach to yourself—sermons which are composed in order to overturn the most seductive lies of our culture (whether they be visual, spoken, or in print). There is no other way to avoid becoming a sensual opportunist.
Our young men are looking to us for answers on how to work toward purity. If you know how to preach grace-driven sermons for purity to your own heart; then you may indeed be ready to help younger men. Those are the steps; meditate on Scripture; compose sermons to preach to your own heart—sermons which answer both your heart’s yearnings and cravings and the world’s lies.
God wants to use you; but He only uses clean vessels (2 Tim 2:21-22). If you pursue consecration, purity, God will use you in the sphere in which He has placed you. EX. When I was single with four roommates, you would have thought it was a frat house rather than men from a conservative Christian college. The dirty dishes in the sink with only one clean vessel for ice water—a lowly peanut butter jar high in the cupboard. The next generation is depending upon us. We must go to war against our bosom sins. Christ wants to reside in our hearts without competition. We need to give Him full permission to re-arrange the furniture in our hearts to His liking—that means heart idols are to be carried out with the trash (1 Thess 1:9-10). Turning from idols to serve the living God means we have become useful to the Master (but the war against idols continues—we are ever mortifying our lusts until glory).
Thomas Chalmers got it right; your idol won’t budge until you find a higher source of happiness. Idols won’t go otherwise. The best way to be pure is to fight for joy in God. And the best way to be satisfied in God is to cultivate delight in God—go to the Word for the express purpose of finding delight in the Lord. Tell the Lord you want your soul thrilled by Him so that you are lost in wonder, awe, love, and praise. Ask Him to help you love Him more. Men this is deadly serious—the next generation is depending upon you to tell them that the highest object of delight is not illicit sexuality.
The two prayers of Paul in Ephesians form at least six “access points” (or portals) to delighting in God.
Christ took our place in order to give us access to His own joy in the Father. Because of His redemptive work our future in Him is glory; at the consummation of the age Christ’s own joy in the Godhead will spill over and fill the universe.
Christ is like the sun in our solar system. (In this analogy, planets represent the goals, desires, and responsibilities of the believer.) Christ’s majesty is like the blazing glory and gravitational pull of the sun; the orbits of the planets are held and guided by His preeminence. When Christ is central in our lives; the ‘planets’ of our desires and goals and labors are ordered by Christ and put into their proper orbits.
When we are captivated by the supremacy of Christ and ravished by all that God is toward us in Christ and all that He has promised to be toward us in Christ, then our hearts are enlarged to take in more of our Lord. The more that happens, the more the soul is broadened to take in the majesty of our God. As we grow in that direction; God is big; and lusts are small – sexuality, with its ‘little’ thrill, assumes its proper size and orbit in our life; sexual lust loses its power over us.
Now, by contrast, the believer still dominated by sexual brokenness and lust is giving evidence that he has a ‘small soul.’ Little souls make little lusts into big and powerful forces that dominate like a tyrant.
The solution to this pervasive problem is drawn from our created purpose; the human soul was created to find unending satisfaction in Christ; for in Christ God gives us Himself. Only the supremacy of Christ is big enough to enlarge the soul; majestic landscapes (the Grand Canyon, the Himalayas, the Milky Way galaxy) can inspire, but not expand the soul.
Our problem today is that churches are full of folks with little souls. The evil one knows this; he is opportunistic; he is using the world to send tsunami waves through the back door of the church – we’re awash in lust and sexual addiction.
There is a clear reason for this. If we were created for soul-staggering grandeur; and our hearts and minds are disconnected from that majesty that is the supremacy of Christ; then it is not surprising that hearts have settled onto trivial things.
The human heart was made to be lost in wonder, love, awe, and praise – if the heart is not staggered by the supremacy of Christ, then it will tend to reach for the greatest natural high it can get – sex.
The deepest cure for sexual lust is to be emotionally staggered by the supremacy of Christ. The sheer weight of Christ and eternity constitutes the gravity of what life is all about. So heavy is that weight, that to have felt the tiniest portion of it makes it almost emotionally impossible to go to the internet to view porn.
To the degree your heart and mind are awakened to the glories of Christ’s supremacy, your power potential for purity is ever greater. Our moral regimes and behavior modification approaches to fight lust have a note of futility about them. For the heart was created to pursue satisfaction with all its might. We must press on to know the Lord; if you are seeing and savoring Christ then He is the object of your desire and satisfaction (temporal objects of desire pale in comparison).
You were created to see, to savor, and to find your satisfaction in the supremacy of Christ; you must know this to be pure. AMEN.