Lust Series

I read a statistic the other day which said that 94% of sexual encounters depicted on UK soaps do not involve people who are not married to one another, but rather are products of lust. This is what we are watching and many of our kids are watching. Now I don’t want to get all prudish, but this kind of statistic should shock us.

Let me speak for a moment to all the red blooded males out there because I suspect this is more a male thing – I may be wrong, but this is my suspicion. I think generally us blokes pat ourselves on the back and congratulate ourselves for monogamous relationships with our wives, or the fact that we have not slept around – but lust is not just the actualising of a physical act. Because of the portrayal of sexual images by the media a lot of lust is kind of slipping under the radar and going unnoticed and unchallenged. Turn with me to the Sermon on the Mount and Matthew 5:27 – page 969.

Read Matthew 5:27-28

These are tough words. I hold my hands up and say ‘Lord Jesus, guilty as charged.’ (Pause) My suspicion is most of us have had these kinds of thoughts at some time. I heard a statistic the other day that men are distracted by a pretty girl on the pavement 42 times per week; women are only distracted by a good looking man 17 times a week. Guys, it is a fact of life that we are more likely to be susceptible to lust, and unless we begin to address this issue, pray about it and listen to God’s word, this virus will spread even further.

 Most of us have computers either for work or for personal use at home; guys it is so easy to get taken in by the various pornographic images on the web. It might begin with pretty harmless stuff, but lust is like this hook – it will snag you and drag you deeper and deeper until you find the harmless stuff has become a little more hardcore.

Try any image search within Google and even with the safety filter on you can get some rather dodgy images. You can receive spam email encouraging you to open a variety of pictures with embedded links there to intentionally hook you deeper and deeper. In my 8 years as a minister both in training and fully qualified, the major pastoral problems encountered by males under the age of 60 is internet porn. It has badly damaged marriages of close friends and it has impacted their children.

On our church website when you go to the messages section there is a link to some free accountability software which you can download to your PC and then set up an accountability relationship with a trusted friend, perhaps your wife – or someone in the church. I want to encourage you all to do this – and I will too, because any of us in a moment of weakness are susceptible to temptations in this area.

Sorry, that all sounded rather heavy – but it is important that we cover these kinds of issues.

So we have identified lust as a sexual desire, however to leave it here is perhaps too narrow, and reduces it to simply a male vs. female problem. Encarta helpfully goes on to define lust as  being eager for something. Lust is not just a strong sexual desire.