Lust

Tonight, we are talking about overcoming lust and desire.

I know, it's a really big topic, with so much shame attached to it.

And I feel like I just felt every muscle in the room tighten up when Hamish said we were talking about lust.

But, God's grace is sufficient for us to face it, tame it, and live lives that are set free.

So, let's just get straight into it.

Our text for tonight is James 1, verses 13 to 15, which Courtney just read out for us.

Thank you so much.

And our first point for this evening is that desire is directional.

Now, desire can and often does set a course in our lives.

We lust for sex, for food, we desire joy and comfort.

And we know that we are constantly barraged with information, images, and ideas about what the world tells us to lust after, what we ought to desire.

We are relentlessly encouraged to be a person of desire, be it the neoliberal obsession with entrepreneurship or the self-help obsession with goal setting.

The world tells us that to have desire in life is good.

It means you have purpose.

It means you have direction.

In verse 14, we see the directional nature of desire, but each person is tempted when they are dragged away by their own evil desire and enticed.

By its nature, desire pulls us in the direction of what we set it upon.

We wake up thinking about what we desire.

We spend our money on it.

We work and walk towards it.

So, let me ask you right away.

Where are you headed?

Are you headed towards evil desire?

Is all desire evil and dysfunctional?

Now, we have to acknowledge that this is the temptation in the global church.

We often see the baby thrown out with the bathwater, and we hear lust is evil and all desire is bad.

Now, I think it's well established that we were not made as desireless beings.

And this no desire mentality frequently leads to frustration and failure, as we struggle to conform to an image that we were not made for.

Now, it's a question that I have often asked myself.

As I struggled with this, I've asked, why did God give me desires?

Why did God make me this way?

Why did He set me up to fail?

But in verse 13, James answers me, when tempted, no one should say, God is tempting me.

For God cannot be tempted by evil, nor does He tempt anyone.

God's not trying to trip you up.

James argues that God cannot be the source of our temptation, because He isn't evil and unkind.

He isn't trying to lead us astray.

Instead, James says it's our own sin that directs us into dysfunctional desire.

Now certainly, Satan uses lust and our inclination to desire to try and entice us away from God.

But James doesn't give us that out here.

He says it's us who allow lust to take over and walk in the direction of dysfunctional desire.

So when lust takes over, what does it want?

Well, the short answer is everything.

Desire is always dissatisfied.

Verse 15, then after desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin, and sin, when it is full grown, gives birth to death.

There's a progressive intensity to desire.

We constantly long for more and more and more.

The world tells us that we must want more, and more of everything lives in our pocket.

Any astute reader of Ecclesiastes will know it's all a chasing after the wind, that the eye is not satisfied with seeing.

Desire is always dissatisfied.

Why did God make us this way?

Well, we weren't made for this.

Desire's design is not fulfilled by the world we currently live in.

We are dissatisfied by this finite world because we were made for an infinite God who satisfies everything we could ever lust for in his perfect personhood and provision.

Augustine puts it like this, You have made us for yourself, and our heart is restless until it rests in you.

And Dallas Willard puts it like this, Desire is infinite, partly because we were made by God, made for God, made to need God, and made to run on God.

When we fall away from God, the desire for the infinite remains, but it's displaced upon things that will certainly lead to destruction.

While we live as the world demands, fallen away from God and with ourselves at the center, we are burnt out on lust that never satisfies, directed towards dysfunction, and ultimately, destruction.

There just has to be a better way.

You know it's coming.

There absolutely is a better way.

It's His perfect grace.

But grace is a word we hear a lot.

Are you bored of it?

Are you sick of hearing it's the answer, and then going home and still struggling with lust?

Are you tired of feeling like His grace is sufficient on Sunday?

But not on Tuesday.

I think many of us aren't partaking of God's grace properly.

Particularly in this sin, many of us are in the throes of struggling with lust, legalistically repenting, and trying to atone for our own sin by saying, next time I'll get it right.

Next time I won't cave.

I'm so lustful.

I'm so broken.

I need to fix this.

We meditate on our sin day and night, but we don't meditate on our saviour who made us right.

Now, some of us may be struggling with the, if only, excuse.

If only I was married.

If only we didn't have kids.

If only we didn't work so hard, then my desires would be fed.

But desire is never fed until it is fed in Christ himself.

I know it seems simple, but we have to get this right.

Grace is the answer to this.

His grace is sufficient, because God in his person is sufficient for us.

The way he designed us was for unity with each other and unity with him.

Even if we get to unity with each other, it's still insufficient until we have unity with him.

And we can only have unity with him because of Christ, through his grace.

Why?

Because we have a costly debt before the throne of a holy God.

We have a laundry list of lapses into lust and looking inward.

But in Christ, that list is not only torn up, it's wiped away as if it never existed, totally clean.

And I think we need to hear that.

You are clean in Christ through the power of his grace.

And now, we are made pure and holy and righteous.

Clothed in the righteousness of Jesus, we have freedom to approach the throne of God and have our desires met in him.

Because it's only there that we can be satisfied.

We need to experience the grace of God.

And if we experience it, it must transform us.

So, let's talk transformation.

You may remember these circles from our Wayform series, where we looked at transformation of the whole self.

So, we're going to work our way through them now and look at how grace affects the whole person, every area of who we are and gives us that freedom and satisfaction that we so desperately need.

So, first things first is grace is directional.

When we allow grace to affect our will, our capacity for choice, it helps direct us to the choices that will glorify God and transform our lives.

So, invest in letting the grace of God affect you.

Sit with the cost that Christ paid and how that costly grace is freely given.

Sit in silence with His grace.

Cry over His Grace.

Rest in and remember His Grace.

Allow it to point you to your Savior and away from your sin.

Secondly, His Grace is functional.

It works.

The life of obedience is good.

When we take hold of Grace and obey Him as a response of love, our life can truly flourish.

Now, our mind is the first battleground where we must remember this.

2 Corinthians chapter 10 verse 5 says, We take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ.

And back to James in verse 15, Sin when it is full grown.

We can catch sin before it is full grown.

Many of us know the ways that sin can grow and become habitual and more powerful.

But we have the opportunity to capture it, submit it to Christ, and live the better, more functional way.

We must create strongholds of grace in our mind that assert that we are clean, that we have a father who we want to obey and honor.

Live that out and see how much more beautifully functional it is.

Next, his grace is satisfying.

It is a balm to our restless souls, and he uses those around us to reflect his love and goodness.

Now, sometimes it breaks my heart when I can't hug God or experience his physical presence or physical voice when I'm in a moment of weakness.

But God's grace moves through those around me to give me a reflection of his satisfying grace and then point me to him alone.

So who speaks grace into your life?

Who reminds you that you are saved and made holy and you should act like it?

Later in James, we hear this.

Therefore, confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed.

Who is that for you?

Remember, this social context, this world will try to call to you with things that it claims will satisfy.

But we know that only God satisfies.

Be sensitive to what you can engage with safely.

Surround yourself with information, images, and ideas about whatever is true, whatever is lovely, whatever is pure, whatever is good.

Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.

Finally, his grace is part of his good design.

A story he carried through from start to present, and a story he will finish.

The soul is who we are.

Our whole self is part of the design of God.

Our desire is part of the design of God.

To desire him, to love him, and serve him only.

In the here and now, our whole self must be set on him.

So do what you must with all of you, to know him and his all-surpassing worth.

Take your Sabbath days.

Sit with him.

Write to him.

Listen to him in his word and in creation.

Let him be sufficient for you.

Let his grace be sufficient for you.

Let me pray that over us.

Lord, we pray that we would allow your grace to be sufficient for us.

God, please help us to remember that Christ has paid the debt.

Help us to remember that we don't have to do double duty.

We need only receive and respond.

Father God, when we forget your grace, we become anxious, restless, directionless, dysfunctional, frazzled, and hungry.

I invite your grace now in all its perfect power to overcome us, to give us direction, to guide us to obedience, and show us how good and functional that life is.

I pray you would pour out your grace on our relationships with others and use it to reconcile us to yourself, that we may have power to live now in the perfect design of unity with you because of the sacrifice of your son.

And it's in his name, because of his all-sufficient sacrifice and perfect blood that we pray.

Amen.

‍