Defeating Lust
Sermon Transcript
0:00:00.0
Well, during his run for the presidency, Jimmy Carter made headlines when he sat down for an interview with Playboy magazine. Now, keep in mind, this was in October of 1976. Things like this made headlines back then. Maybe not so much today, but back then the soon-to-be president said, "I've looked on a lot of women with lust. I've committed adultery in my heart many times. This is something that God recognizes that I will do and have done, and God forgives me for it." Now, I've got to appreciate President Carter's honesty and his transparency. But I still, after all these years, find it a bit strange that somebody who claims to be a born-again believer in Jesus Christ and who is running for the presidency of the United States of America would give an interview to a magazine known for promoting a hedonistic lifestyle, an anti-Christian philosophy, and then would even go so far as to admit "that I've looked on a lot of women with lust." I give the president applause for his courage and his honesty and his transparency.
0:01:24.9
He also said in the interview that he believed Jesus created a standard that was unattainable. Well, did He? Did Jesus say something in His Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 5 that is unattainable for we as human beings to achieve. “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." Ladies, we could flip the gender pronouns there and say that any woman who looks at a man with lustful intent has also committed adultery in her heart. Is that a standard too high? Did Jesus go too far? That was Jimmy Carter's assessment back in 1976.
0:02:18.2
We all know that Jesus was not into the kind of showy religion that the phony Pharisees put on display. He drilled deeply into the issues of the heart. We saw this last week, for example, when He said, "You have heard that it was said, 'You shall not kill.' But I say to you…" And then He defined anger as murder in the heart. Wow, that puts you back a few steps, won't it? But He was raising the bar in righteousness. He had already said that your righteousness must exceed the righteousness of the Pharisees that were all into show and a phony display of religiosity. Now Jesus exposes adultery as having its roots in lust, something that is easily hidden in the deep recesses of the human heart.
0:03:06.0
I sometimes wonder how the men 2000 years ago back in the 1st century might have received what Jesus said. Did they raise their eyebrows? Did they whisper among themselves? Did they think to themselves, I'm never going to get this one right; never? I mean, if that's the standard, I'm going to fail all the time. The Jews knew the commandments well, didn't they? They even knew this one about adultery. They had the tablets from Sinai drilled into their heads from early childhood. They heard them in the synagogue. They heard them at home. They heard them at school. Everyone knew about the prohibition against adultery. But I just suspect that their ears perked up just a little bit when they heard Jesus suggest there is more to this commandment that meets the eye. And He raises it to the level of something as dark and as insidious and as hidden as lust in the heart.
0:04:05.3
Well, I'm in a series of messages called "Undefeated: How to Overcome the Deadly Sins that Drag Us Down." And we've been talking about a list that appeared many centuries ago back in the 6th century. Pope Gregory was the first to sketch it out, seven deadly sins. It's gone through some revisions over the time, but they include pride, anger, lust, laziness, gluttony, envy and greed. Throughout this series we've said that we want to end up undefeated. We want to defeat pride. We want to defeat anger. Today we want to defeat lust. We want to experience an undefeated season. We want to go 7-0. We've said that to do that we've got to look to Jesus, who is the undefeated One. He was the One who, on the cross, said, "It is finished." It was a victory cry. He didn't say, "I am finished. They got me." No, He says, "It is finished." The plan and the purpose of God was completed. The victory had been won. Paul says in 1 Corinthians 15, "Thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ." And he says this after waxing eloquently about the resurrection of Jesus Christ. When Jesus died on the cross, was buried, rose from the dead, He won the victory. And that victory is ours as believers in Jesus Christ.
0:05:24.9
But how do we live an undefeated life. How do we go from singing "O victory in Jesus" to actually experiencing it in our day to day life, even as we struggle with pride, anger, lust, laziness, gluttony, envy and greed? We are more than conquerors in Jesus, we said in week 1. But we've come to week 4, to this particular deadly sin called lust. This one maybe gets us more than any other.
0:05:59.1
Let's define it. What is lust? According to the dictionary, it is "an intense sexual desire or appetite, one that is uncontrolled or illicit in its desire." And, again, Jesus said that lust is adultery in the heart. He takes it to that level. He dares to do so. Some, like President Carter, would say, "It's a standard that is unattainable. I'm never going to get this one right." Is that true? Well, we'll talk about that in a moment.
0:06:37.6
But just as back in the 6th century and the centuries that followed, these deadly sins and these vicious vices as we've called them were often laid alongside the heavenly virtues. What are the heavenly virtues that correspond to this deadly sin called lust? Well, one we could talk about is fidelity. Fidelity comes to my mind. I bet you haven't heard that word in a while. It means to be faithful to obligations, duties or observances. It speaks of one's loyalty and the keeping of a trust or a promise. Fidelity in marriage is something we need to pursue in order to counteract the deadly sin, the vicious vice called lust.
0:07:23.2
I remember years ago I invested my money with Fidelity Investments. It's a well-known investment firm, and they do a pretty good job. I like their historical returns. I like their investment philosophy. But I also like their name because it suggested to me that they were keeping a trust when they managed my money. Fidelity in marriage suggests I'm keeping a trust, a covenant that I've made with my wife or my husband. And we're pursuing fidelity even in marriage.
0:07:50.7
By today's slipping standards, fidelity seems old fashioned and prudish, especially when applied to marriage. But fidelity is exactly what a marriage needs to survive the sex-saturated world in which we live. Lust and all the images that we come in contact with everyday remind me a minefield. You don't dare just rush into the field. You might step on a mine and blow your leg off or your arm off. So, the world today is filled with lusty images everywhere, maybe even more so than in the 1st century when Jesus highlighted this. It seems like everywhere we go we're drawn in by provocative images.
0:08:36.4
I remember years ago when we lived in Houston, Texas, at that time the 4th largest city in America. I think now it's the 3rd largest. But it's a city of billboards. Everywhere you travel on the freeways that crisscross the city there're billboards, one billboard after another. And it wasn't unusual to catch some lusty image—because sex sells, right—out of the corner of your eye. You couldn't even drive down the freeway without the image bombarding you. Now, you have sex selling across the media platforms, including books and magazines, billboards, television, the internet. It's like a minefield. Everywhere you go, watch where you step, watch where you click. Fidelity in marriage.
0:09:23.7
You say, "Well, Pastor, I'm not married." Okay, here's another word. Purity. Purity is another virtue we can and should drop into the conversation to counter the deadliness of something like lust. Single adults need to lasso their passions with purity until matrimony, and then within marriage enjoy the gift of sex that God has given with fidelity. Can I say that again? Single adults need to lasso their passions with purity until matrimony, and then enjoy sex within the bounds of marriage while maintaining fidelity.
0:10:05.1
Before we go any further into this subject, let's just remember that marital love is a gift from God. Sex is a good thing when it's enjoyed within the context for which the Lord intended it. Hebrews 13:4 says, "Let marriage be held in honor among all, and let the marriage bed be undefiled. For God will judge the sexually immoral and adulterous." God created sex, and He gave us sexual desires. The sex was God's idea, not Hugh Heffner's, and it certainly wasn't Satan's idea. Lust is the devil's perversion of a beautiful gift from God meant to be enjoyed within the marriage relationship. And for that reason, the Bible comes with all kinds of warnings. Not because the Bible is prudish, not because the Bible is not in keeping with the times. No, because the Bible understands the minefield that we walk in and the dangers of exploring our sexual desires outside the proper context.
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For example, in Proverbs 6, Solomon compared sex with a fire. He asks, "Can a man scoop fire into his lap without his clothes being burned? Can a man walk on hot coals without his feet being scorched? So is he who sleeps with another man's wife. No one who touches her will go unpunished." What Solomon is saying is simple enough for a child to understand. If you play with fire, it will burn you. Keep the fire in the fireplace where it belongs and it will warm your home.
0:11:40.7
Well, the same is true with sex. If you enjoy it within the context for which it was created, which is the marriage relationship, enjoy it, and it will warm your relationship and your experience in your home. You play with it outside of that context, and it will burn you every time. It will scar your soul, and this is the warning of scripture.
0:12:06.7
Before we get to some ways to defeat lust—and that's where we ultimately want to go—we want to have a game plan for defeating this deadly sin. Let's talk a little bit about a negative example in scripture of someone whose life was hindered if not destroyed by uncontrollable lust. I'm talking about a guy named Samson. Remember Samson in the Old Testament? His story is recorded in Judges 13-16 of all the judges in the Old Testament. These judges were kind of a combination of spiritual leaders and political figures at the same time. But of all the judges mentioned in the book of Judges, Samson gets the most editorial space, 13-16. We learn about his birth and his parents, who longed for a child there in chapter 13. But Samson is the strongest man in the Bible. This guy had muscles in places that we didn’t even know we had places. He was just a strong man. Some people describe him as a he-man with a she-weakness. He was strong physically, but he was weak when it came to controlling his passions.
0:13:25.1
The first indication we get of this is in chapter 14 beginning in verse 1, where it says, " Samson went down to Timnah, and at Timnah he saw one of the daughters of the Philistines. Then he came up and told his father and mother, 'I saw one of the daughters of the Philistines at Timnah. Now get her for me as my wife.'” A lot of cultural things going on in this text, one of which is back then it would have been common for Samson's parents to arrange a marriage. They were looking to marry their son to another Israelite, another Hebrew, someone who was part of the community of faith that they were a part of. But here in verse 1 is says Samson when down to Timnah. It was not only a geographic reference, but it was a reference to the downward trajectory of his life from this point forward. He went down to Timnah, and he allowed his eyes to wander into enemy territory. He saw with his eyes a Philistine woman, and he said in his heart and later to his parents, "Get her for me. I want her."
0:14:39.5
This is the first indication that Samson's desire for women is just a little off tilt. He's let his eyes wander into enemy territory. Later in chapter 16 and verse 1…and this is the most notorious of Samson's story. It says that Samson went to Gaza. Remember the Gaza Strip? Have you ever heard of the Gaza Strip today? It's in the news quite a bit. Well, that was Philistine territory. And it says he "went to Gaza, and there he saw a prostitute and…went in to her." First, he let his eyes wander into enemy territory. Now, he is physically there, and he sees a prostitute. And he indulges himself. Of course, the prostitute is Delilah. Samson and Delilah. I mean, what an infamous story. Nobody names their daughter Delilah, and there is a reason for that. She's a woman of the night, and she tempts Samson. It's an easy temptation.
0:15:44.8
And she wonders, as some of her friends wonders, what was the secret to Samson's strength. Samson loved to toy with people. He loved to kind of deceive them into believing that the secret was this or the secret was that. And he does this with Delilah night after night. And she was in cahoots with the Philistines. She was a Philistine woman herself. And she is trying to set him up for an attack. Finally, he tells her what the secret to his strength is. He says, "I took a Nazarite vow from the day I was born." And this takes us back to chapter 13. The Nazarite vow had to do with the length of his hair, that razor would never touch his hair, that he would never allow his lips to touch the fruit of the vine and would not drink alcohol, and maybe some other stipulations as well. He would not come in contact with a dead carcass. Throughout Samson's life, he violated his Nazarite vow several times.
0:16:54.0
But he is playing with Delilah here. And finally, he says, "Well, the secret to my great strength is my hair. If somebody cuts my hair, I lose my strength." Well, he fell asleep that night, and the Bible says that while Delilah learned about Samson's long hair and his Nazarite vow, she sent word to Philistine rules, who came back that night and cut off Samson's hair. And they subdued Samson. Then Delilah calls out before and says, "Samson, the Philistines are upon you." And then what follows are some of the saddest words anywhere in the Bible. It says, "Samson awoke from his sleep and thought, 'I will go out as before and shake myself free.' But he did not know that the Lord had left him."
0:17:42.5
Now, understand that the ministry of Holy Spirit who had come upon Samson earlier in his life and ministry and had empowered him, the ministry of the Holy Spirit in the Old Testament is different than in the New Testament. In the Old Testament He came upon certain people for certain tasks and for certain empowerments and sometimes left. But Samson was, we would say, filled with the Holy Spirit from birth and carved out for a divine purpose. But when it came to this point in his life where he violates the final aspect of his Nazarite vow, the Holy Spirit says, "I'm done." And He leaves Samson.
0:18:22.2
We as New Testament believers never need to fear that the Holy Spirit will leave us. He resides in us as the down payment on our salvation from the moment of salvation. But the New Testament warns that we can grieve Him, that we can quench the Spirit, that we can resist the Spirit in some way and nullify His effect in our life and end up in the same sorry place that Samson was. If I were to summarize Samson's sad tragic life, I would say that Samson fulfilled his purpose, but he failed to reach his potential. He fulfilled his (0:19:00.0) purpose because we know at the end of his story it says the Philistines seized Samson after he had asked for one more show of strength from the Lord. And he was put on display, and he was grinding, as it were, in the prison. And they brought him to a party and kind of put him on display like a toy. His eyes were gouged out. But he grabbed the two pillars in that room and pulled them, and the facility came down on the Philistines that were there. It was one last show of strength in Samson's life. He fulfilled his purpose as he was used of God to take down the Philistines, as many of them as he could. But the sense is that Samson never reached his full potential. He's like a runner in the Olympics trying (0:20:00.0) to run with ankle weights on. He just can't quite get going because lust had the best of him.
0:20:12.3
A negative example. We'll get to a positive example in a little bit. But the question is this- how do we defeat lust? How do we go and have an undefeated season? We've defeated anger. We've defeated pride. But what about lust? And back to Jimmy Carter's notion about an unattainable standard, was he right about that? Or did Jesus provide any remedy, any game plan for how we can defeat lust? Well, the good news is Jesus did provide some instruction. He didn't just raise the issue that lust is adultery in the heart. He provided us some instruction here as well.
0:20:54.0
So, let's talk about two or three ways that we can defeat lust. Number one, starve the lust monster. Starve the lust monster. I call him the lust monster because he has a voracious appetite. The more you feed him, the hungrier he gets. And he just grows and grows and grows. You think he's satisfied, but he's not. So, you've got to starve him.
0:21:20.2
Here is what Jesus said in Matthew 5:29, back in the Sermon on the Mount. He says, "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." You read that, and you go, "What in the world is He talking about? Are we to maim ourselves physically? That if our eyes are wandering into enemy territory, just gouge your eyes out. Is that what Jesus is talking about? These are strange, strange sounding words. But is this His remedy for lust? It appears to be. Did He really expect us to do this?
0:22:12.4
Well, some in church history took these words literally. They engaged in what's known as self-mutilation. For example, Origen of Alexandria self-mutilated himself. He castrated himself we know from history. Now, fortunately, wiser heads prevailed, and such behavior was denounced at the Council of Nicaea in A.D. 325. They said, "No, I don't think Jesus is telling us to literally gouge out our eyes or chop off our hands." Haddon Robinson, more into our day and age, a former professor of mine, makes a smile when he comments on Jesus's Sermon on the Mount here. He says, "Suppose I'm having a problem with lust. I poke out my right eye, but no evidence exists that one-eyed people are less lustful than two-eyed people. I'll chop off my right hand, but no studies verify that one-handed people are less lustful than two-handed people. I could gouge out my left eye too, but sexual fantasies will still play on the cinema of my mind. Even if I am blind, I could go the whole way and amputate both arms and both legs. But torsos are not exempt from lust." Robinson goes on to say, "The problem isn't with body parts." And he's right.
0:23:36.5
It's best to understand that Jesus uses a literary tool here known as hyperbole, or exaggeration, to make a point. Have you ever exaggerated something just to make the point even stronger? That's sort of what Jesus is doing here. His point is this- adultery fueled by lust is serious enough to put somebody in hell. Furthermore, I think what He's saying here is that sin dealt with radically is sin dealt with effectively. These are radical words on the heels of His discussion about adultery and its tie to lust. And He's calling us to radical action. It may seem radical to us today to take the kind of measures that are necessary in order to starve the lust monster. But if you really want victory in this area, if you want to starve the lust monster, you'll need to take some radical steps.
0:24:32.2
Let me suggest a few. First, you might need to get of cable television, or at least those premium channels that entice you. You say, "Oh, I know we just kind of look all past all that." No, it impresses something on your mind and on your memory. It might mean staying out of the movie theater all together or away from the magazine rack or placing strong, protective filters on your use of the internet. I'm talking about your laptop or your desktop or your tablet or that so-called smart phone. Maybe the dumbest thing you and I are doing are carrying around these so-called smart phones that give us just unfiltered access to the minefield that is in fact lusty images today that can pop up anywhere.
0:25:25.3
And you say, "Well, that just sounds like legalism, Pastor." No, it's not legalism unless you take your list of what you do or don't do and impose it on somebody else, and then walk around rather self-righteously and sanctimoniously like you're more spiritual than others. That's the heart of legalism. No, this is just making smart choices about how to guard your relationship with the Lord, how to starve the source that feeds the lust monster. Because he just gets hungrier and hungrier and hungrier. And whatever it took to satisfy him yesterday, it's going to take more today to satisfy him. So, you've got to starve that lust monster as best as you can. It's not about legalism, but it's about smart choices.
0:26:11.7
Secondly, protect your eyes. We're talking about a game plan here, a game plan for how to defeat lust and to live an undefeated life. Job 31:1 are some wise words from this man named Job in the Old Testament. He says, "I made a covenant with my eyes not to look lustfully at a woman." Yeah, ladies, we could flip that around. "I made a covenant with my eyes not to look lustfully at a young man." Lust cuts across the genders. Job made a decision here. He made a covenant.
0:26:54.3
Covenant in the Hebrew culture is stronger than a contract. A contract can easily be broken, quite frankly. We talk about marriage being a covenant. A covenant between God and man, a covenant that you make in marriage that, even if your marriage partner is not acting with fidelity and breaks the covenant, you stay true to the covenant. He says, "I made a covenant with my eyes not to look lustily at a woman. I drew some boundaries." I think of Habakkuk the prophet who said of the Lord, "Your eyes, O Lord, are too pure to behold evil." Are your eyes more like the Lord's or like the lusty world in which we live?
0:27:38.6
I mentioned earlier maybe taking some digital steps to protect yourself. I think of one internet filtering system that borrows its name from Job 31:1. It's called Covenant Eyes. Maybe you've heard of it before. It's one of those internet filters that you can connect to any of your devices, a laptop or a desktop or a tablet or a phone. It intercepts your access to any of those images. Parents, put it on your home computers. Kids today are getting access to these images at a younger and younger age. If you don't have some kind of filtering aspect on your home, you're just putting an open minefield in front of your kids. Even as adults we need this kind of thing. One of the things that Covenant Eyes eyes…and I think they put their finger on an important leg in a three-legged stool when it comes to defeating lust is that measure of accountability. So, you can put it on your device, but that doesn't always stop you, right? But Covenant Eyes asks for an accountability partner, somebody who will get an email sent to that accountability partner every week to update you on how you're doing. Or if you go into an area you're not supposed to, "ping," your accountability partner gets pinged. As I have read and studied and interacted with this subject, I really do believe they're on to something there. Filtering without accountability doesn't get it done. The accountability needs to be there.
0:29:24.5
Now, let's talk a little bit about accountability. I'm talking about a trusted accountability partner. I'm not talking about your wife or your husband. This needs to be a same-gender kind of accountability. Parents, obviously you're the accountability to your kids within the home. But at the adult level, find a trsuted accountability partner. And when I say trusted, I'm talking about somebody who's not going to tweet about it. They're not going to put it out there on social media. They're going to be tehre to pray for you, to hold you accountable. Maybe there's a mutual accountability that you set up there. "I have made a covenant with my eyes not to look lustfully at another woman."
0:30:10.5
The world is not going to tell you to do this. This is going to sound so prudish and so old fashioned, so out of step with the enlightened world we're in today where you need to indulge all of your desires and experiment with. Not if you're a follower of Jesus. Not if you want your soul to be full of the wellness of God's grace and all of that in your life. 1 John 2 talks a little bit about the minefield that we're all walking in. "For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes and the boastful pride of life, is not from the father, but is from the world." It goes on to say, "The world is passing away, and also its lusts; but the one who does the will of God lives forever." I'm looking forward to the day when heaven is a place where the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes and the boastful pride of life doesn't smack me in the face every day when I get up. But this is what we're facing. We are in a spiritual minefield. As we get up in the morning, as we walk out into the world, the enemy of our soul is the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes and the boastful pride of life. My mate is not my enemy. My pastor is not my enemy. My politician is not my enemy. This is my enemy- the world, the flesh and the devil. And we have to have a game plan. We have to have a strategy for how to win this battle.
0:31:49.5
There's a popular book out, and I recommend it. It's called Every Man's Battle. And it's appropriately titled, because this is every man's battle. But it's also every woman's battle, or at least some women's battle. The difference is men are much more visually stimulated than women are. That's just a reality in the way we're made up. But it is everyone's battle, and you've got to have a game plan. Yours might include a digital game plan, and I strongly suggest that you go in that direction.
0:32:25.7
Starve the lust monster. Protect your eyes. Finally, leave lust Vegas. Leave it. Leave it behind. Vacate the time. Leave lust Vegas. How do you do that? 2 Timothy 2:22, "Now flee from youthful lusts and pursue righteous faith, love and peace with those who call on the Lord from a pure heart." I love what Paul says to Timothy here because it brings together everything we've been talking about here. Circle the word "flee." We're talking about run. Get out of lust Vegas. Run, Forrest, run. And this is not a cowardly thing to do. No, it's the wise thing to do for men and women. If your eyes are wandering into enemy territory, run. If you're physically wandering into a place where you can be tempted, run. Put the brakes on, risk the relationship, and say, "No, I can't go there with my friends tonight. I'm too tempted." Or, "I need these kinds of digital boundaries set up." And it maybe strange to everybody else, but you've got to figure out how to flee youthful lust while at the same time do something positive. Pursue righteous, faith, love and peace.
0:33:50.8
And then the accountability comes in. Do this "with those who call on the Lord from a pure heart," the community of faith. The trusted accountability partner comes into play here. Part of what we're doing with the accountability partner is bringing out of the darkness into the light something that's been kept hidden for a long time. You keep any sin in darkness, and the devil…oh, he's got a foothold there. But if we confess our sins, 1 John 1:9 says…if we bring it into the light, "He is faithful and just to forgive us of our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness." The devil loses some of his power when you bring something out of the darkness and into the light. Now, again, be careful about who you bring it into the light with, a trusted accountability partner. But you have to flee youthful lusts. Run, Forrest, run. It's the wise thing to do.
0:35:04.7
Now, Samson was a negative example from the Old Testament, an example of a life that was destroyed by lust. The positive example is Joseph. Remember Joseph in the Old Testament? I'm talking about the book of Genesis. Abraham, Isaac, Jacob. And then Jacob had 12 sons, and one of them was Joseph. Joseph was the apple of Jacob's eye. Joseph was the youngest until Benjamin came along. And when Joseph was 17 years old, his father gave him a special Armani suit, a coat of many colors. It got to Joseph's head a little bit. He pranced around in his beautiful jacket, and his brothers got a little jealous of him. You remember this story? They threw him into a pit. It's a hard thing for a 17-year-old boy to go through, just the rejection from his own brothers.
0:35:53.4
Later, they sold him into slavery. This caravan was coming along, and, "Hey, we can get a little bit of money for our brother." They sold their own brother into slavery. Joseph ends up in Egypt. And he ends up in a pretty nice position for a slave. He is serving in Potiphar's house. Potiphar was a high-ranking official who worked for Pharaoh. And if you served in Potiphar's house, that was a pretty good gig for a slave like Joseph.
0:36:22.4
But he's working in Potiphar's house. And now in Genesis 39:11 it says one day Joseph "went into the house to attend to his duties." In other words, he goes to work one day. "And none of the household servants was inside." Pause there, and I'll come back to it in a moment. "She [that is, Potiphar's wife] caught him by his cloak and said, 'Come to bed with me!' But he left his cloak in her hand,"—and here it is—"and ran out of the house." Joseph is the Old Testament Forrest Gump. Run, Forrest, run. He runs. Now, Mrs. Potiphar had a lustful eye. This is long before the "Me Too" movement when it was all about women being, inappropriately so, taken advantage of by men. This was thousands of years ago when a powerful woman, Potiphar's wife, took advantage of a young Joseph, who was a strapping young boy. Maybe you picture the muscles bulging everywhere. She'd been watching him come to work, and she went after him one day. And Joseph did the smart thing. He didn’t linger. He didn't say, "Oh, I can handle this." He ran. He ran so fast she reaches up and grabs onto his cloak. He leaves it behind.
0:37:57.1
The next day, she falsely accuses him of rape. She goes to Potiphar, her husband, and says, "This Hebrew you brought into our house, he tried to attack me and rape me." What do you think Potiphar is going to do? Is he going to side with a Hebrew slave or side with his wife? He's going to side with his wife. And Potiphar threw Joseph into prison. Yeah, sometimes you do the right thing, and things get even worse. He is falsely accused.
0:38:27.0
But I want to go back to verse 11 and suggest it didn't even have to get that far because it says, "One day Joseph went into the house to attend his duties, and none of the household servants was inside." If Joseph had just stopped right there and said, "I'm not going to be alone in the house with Mrs. Potiphar; I'll wait for my other workers to come," it would have avoided all this.
0:38:52.9
I think it was Billy Graham who said throughout his ministry one of the ways he maintained fidelity and purity was he never traveled alone, and he was never in a private place with a female who wasn't his wife. He always traveled in threes. When he checked into a hotel, somebody went into the room ahead of Dr. Graham and made sure nobody was going to pop out from behind the shower curtain and snap a photo and put it on the news. He put boundaries out there, protected himself.
0:39:27.4
Recently, Vice President Mike Pence talked about the same protections that he's put in his life, and the media vilified him, called him sexist for suggesting that he wouldn't have breakfast, lunch or dinner with another female just one on one without his wife present. And then the "Me Too" movement hit. Apologies to Mr. Pence and to Billy Graham because they had it right. I've practiced that over the course of my ministry for 25 years. I don’t have breakfast or lunch or dinner with a female who is not my wife. And if for counseling reasons or anything like that I need to meet with a female, either my wife is there or another member of my staff. Today I don't meet with anybody one on one in my office alone, male or female. You just never know when the false accusations are going to come.
0:40:26.0
You've got to put those kinds of boundaries around your life, your ministry, your reputation. But Joseph stepped inside the house. Maybe he didn't assume this would happen, but it did. He got falsely accused and spent two years in prison before the Lord promoted him from now prisoner to the prime minister of Egypt. Joseph had interpreted a dream that Pharaoh had, and it was a dream about seven years of famine that were coming. And then Joseph had a plan. "Pharaoh, why don't you store up all this grain for seven years. Store it in these storehouses over here. And then when the famine comes, you'll be able to feed everybody in Egypt and, really literally, the world." And Pharaoh heard that, and he says, "Joseph, that's a great plan. Guess what? You're in charge." He was now the prime minister. Joseph goes from the pit to Potiphar's house, to prison, now to the prime minister, second in charge. What a great story. Joseph is the positive example of a man who kept his youthful lusts under control. And when he found himself in a precarious situation, he ran like Forrest Gump.
0:41:42.8
Flee youthful lusts. Pursue righteous, faith, love, peace, and do it with those who call upon the Lord from a pure heart. Hang out with people who are in the same battle you're in, but they've got a battle plan as well. Find a trusted accountability partner. Share some vulnerability there. Again, a trusted partner, and do battle together.
0:42:09.6
You know, we've been talking in the series about living an undefeated life. We've said we can't do this without Jesus, who is the undefeated One, who on the cross declared, "It is finished," a victory cry. We sing "O victory in Jesus." Paul says, "Thanks be to God, who gives us the victory in our Lord Jesus Christ." Does anybody want victory over lust and anger and pride or, in the weeks to come, laziness, gluttony, envy and greed. I mean, these are the seven deadly sins that not only threaten but will drag us down if we don't get ahold of this. It's not about pulling yourself up by your own bootstraps. It's not about trying harder and doing better. That's trying to defeat the flesh in the power of the flesh. No, we have the Holy Spirit. But are we living by the Spirit? Are we walking by the Spirit? Or are you grieving the Spirit and quenching the Spirit and resisting the Spirit? No, walk in the Spirit. Do your part. But the Holy Spirit does His part to sanctify us and to make us more and more like Christ.
0:43:17.0
I'm not saying it's an easy battle. No, we live in a world that is like a minefield- the lust of the flesh and the lust of eyes, the boastful pride of life, the world, the flesh and the devil. These are our enemies. We have to have a battle plan. We have to have a strategy. It starts with a personal relationship with God through faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. That gives you the equipment that you need in the person of the Holy Spirit, who says, "I am here to help you live an overcomer's life, to live an undefeated life."
0:43:50.9
And then there are some practical things that we do, even practical things that Jesus taught us to do that sound so radical to a sex-saturated world and the liberated world in which we live. No, uncontrolled lust is what enslaves us. It doesn't liberate us. And when we come to that understanding and that realization, then we'll starve the lust monster. We'll do whatever it takes to protect our lives, and we will leave lust Vegas as soon as we find ourselves even coming close to the vicinity of that so we can sing "O victory in Jesus," right? O victory in Jesus until He comes and takes us home to a place where there is no sorrow and no tears, no illicit images, no minefields to walk through, because heaven is that perfect place.
0:44:49.9
Between here and there, it's dangerous out there. It's dangerous. It's dangerous for our kids, for our grandkids. It's dangerous even all the way through married life, from the womb all the way to the tomb. It's a fallen world in which we live that wants to entice us in. We've been given all the tools we need in Christ Jesus to defeat lust and anger and pride and laziness, gluttony, envy and greed. We'll get to all of those. But we do this through the power of the risen Christ and the victory that He gave us at the cross.
0:45:33.4