Red Letters 19 - "Committed in the Heart"
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Proverbs 4:20-27 English Standard Version (ESV)
20 My son, be attentive to my words; incline your ear to my sayings.
21 Let them not escape from your sight; keep them within your heart.
22 For they are life to those who find them, and healing to all their flesh.
23 Keep your heart with all vigilance, for from it flow the springs of life.
24 Put away from you crooked speech, and put devious talk far from you.
25 Let your eyes look directly forward, and your gaze be straight before you.
26 Ponder the path of your feet; then all your ways will be sure.
27 Do not swerve to the right or to the left; turn your foot away from evil.
1 Thessalonians 4:1-8 English Standard Version (ESV)
1 Finally, then, brothers, we ask and urge you in the Lord Jesus, that as you received from us how you ought to walk and to please God, just as you are doing, that you do so more and more.
2 For you know what instructions we gave you through the Lord Jesus.
3 For this is the will of God, your sanctification: that you abstain from sexual immorality;
4 that each one of you know how to control his own body in holiness and honor,
5 not in the passion of lust like the Gentiles, who do not know God;
6 that no one transgress and wrong his brother in this matter, because the Lord is an avenger in all these things, as we told you beforehand and solemnly warned you.
7 For God has not called us for impurity, but in holiness.
8 Therefore, whoever disregards this, disregards not man, but God, who gives his Holy Spirit to you.
Matthew 5:27-30 English Standard Version (ESV)
27 “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall not commit adultery.’
28 But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lustful intent has already committed adultery with her in his heart. 29 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. 30 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.
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Last week we spoke on how all people were created in God’s image. From the beginning of time God created man and woman to come together in a covenantal marriage. This marriage was given to symbolize the beautiful self-giving relationship between Christ and the Church, His bride, which is echoed throughout Scripture from beginning to end. He created them to be bound in a divine love… Which has become perverted and distorted by sin. As a result we live in a world where everything is over sensualized and sexualized, where sex is used to sell almost everything.
However there is a growing awareness of psychological and emotional impact that this has on people. Addiction to pornography is a real problem that is impacting millions and millions of people. And so I am thankful for those who are standing up against the exploitation of people in this way. The #Traffickinghub campaign, founded by Laila Mickelwait and powered by the anti-trafficking organization Exodus Cry, is a non-religious, non-partisan effort to hold the largest porn website in the world accountable for enabling and profiting off of the mass sex trafficking, rape and exploitation of women and minors. There have been over one million people who have signed the petition across 192 countries and is supported by over 300 child protection and anti-trafficking organizations as well as experts on, and survivors of sex trafficking. We praise the Lord for those who are fighting the good fight in these difficult areas.
For many, myself included, Christian education reduced the idea of lust to a set of dos and donts. You didn’t look at pornography. You abstained from premarital sex and masturbation. You didn’t go to clubs or watch certain movies. You put on a purity ring and committed to remain a virgin until you got married. etc. But I think that the unfortunate side-effect of this kind of, almost legalistic black and white view of what you did not do as a Christian, often made the issue a self-centred one.
I did not do this. I promised to do this. I did not watch this. etc.
However, this kind of thinking often misses the point that Jesus makes. When we previously talked about anger, we explored how Jesus’ primary concern is not for the self. His concern always pointed to the other; the person that my feelings and deeds are affecting. And in all that we do, Jesus, by modelling the ultimate self-sacrifice, is asking us to do the same. In essence, to consider just how my words, my actions, and how even my own secret hidden thoughts, impact others, and how we honour, or in this case dishonour them.
The Proverbs tell us to: “Keep your heart with all vigilance, for from it flow the springs of life” (v.23) Jesus says the same thing in Matthew 15:18 “But the things that come out of the mouth come from the heart, and these make a man `unclean. ' For out of the heart come evil thoughts”
Do you see what Jesus is saying?
How we think about a person… How we hold them and care for them… How we uphold them… How we respect and honour them… Begins in the heart
It is not enough to just respect a person in deeds. It is not enough just to protect ones dignity by actions. It is something that needs to be cultivated in the heart. And this calls us to examine closely how we feel about certain people and the stereotypes, prejudices and bias’ we carry about them.
When Jesus talks about adultery, He speaks not of the physical act. He says that even just looking upon a person with lust is committing adultery within the heart. We have to remember that for Jesus
Everyone is imago dei (the image of God) So you can imagine the heartbreak He has for His children who look upon each other in such ways. Because to look upon a person with lust is an act of dehumanizing, objectifying, and reducing them to a tool or product and object of ones personal gratification and pleasure.
And therein lies the problem.
Jesus is not only concerned for the person who is doing the looking and how allowing ourselves to do this can poison ones heart. But Jesus is deeply concerned for the one who is being looked upon; for their dignity and divine image of God bearing beauty. Once again, Jesus takes something that people have simply reduced to a “do not” and rightfully elevates it to a holier standard.
We may be tempted to simply say: “Well it doesn’t hurt anyone.” Or “What they don’t know won’t hurt them.“ But that’s what people were doing with the commandments and laws of the OT. They were taking the rules and laws and using them either for the purpose of their own self-righteousness or negotiating with them while asking “How close to sin can I get without sinning?” But Jesus’ is saying that the curse of sin and death is more than just what bubbles up to the surface. Sin has a toxic effect on ones heart and when it is allowed to fester there, hidden away, it not only poisons the individual, but it distorts and perverts the wholistic, loving, caring, community, the Church of God in a subversive, quiet, toxic, way.
Jesus cares about this so much that He says, that even if your eye or your hand causes you to sin, it is better to tear it out and cut it off and throw it away. Now we would be hard pressed to believe that Jesus actually meant this literally. Because we know that if He did require that we chop off every bit of ourselves that causes us to sin, then there would not be much left of us!
But Jesus says this to highlight the severity of this sin; the objectifying and dehumanizing of a person for our own pleasure. That it is an atrocious thing to look at a person and not see and value them for the person who is created, fearfully and wonderfully made, in God’s Image.
I have grown up, often unaware of how movies and shows have portrayed races according to certain exploiting stereotypes. Asians are often depicted as fragile and obedient or mysterious and mystic. Blacks are depicted as exotic and wild. Each time further pushing the enemies agenda of segregating people and dividing them according to man-made categories, making other human beings object of our hate or even our fantasies.
This becomes a theme for what Jesus is preaching. He said that to call someone a fool is just as bad as murder. And now He says to look at someone with lust is the same as exploiting them. Because this is what sin does. At best it leads to our dishonouring and degrading of another human being and at worst, it leads to the absolute exploitation and abuse of others.
But sin does not stop there.
Paul writes that the disregarding of the call to live holy, righteous and pure lives… Does not only disregard the person… but God Himself. Then to look upon a person with lust does not only exploit the woman or man you look upon. But God Himself, for they carry His likeness. It is a perversion and distortion of what God created for purity and holiness. And while the things that happen in secret and in the dark and behind the closed doors of our minds and hearts are easy to hide… We know that sin, especially hidden sin, has a way of tainting and poisoning the heart when left unconfessed before the throne of Grace. And those kinds of sin, when left unrepented, eventually find their way to the surface in how we treat ourselves, and treat others, and how we live faithfully, or not, to God. And the cost of sin, is eternal.
And so the call is to repent.
To repent of the hidden lustful intent of our hearts whether past or present.
It is a call where we ask the Lord to help guard our hearts with all vigilance because it is the wellspring of our lives. It is a call to, like Job, keep a covenant with our eyes so that we would not look upon another with lust.
And that in our repenting, we also ask the Lord to give us not eyes of this world but the eyes of God. So that we may view each person, created in Him image, and precious and wonderful. Worthy of all dignity and honour and respect. To live honouring others and never dehumanizing them, never de-imago dei-ing them. Never robbing them of their image bearing nature.
Jesus’ sacrifice and torturous death was to put an end to this kind of exploitation and abuse. Jesus’ life was to show us the absolute value of all people. Christ made a way, when things were impossible for humanity. For the forgiveness of our adulterous ways, and the power to live purely for His glory.
It seems now more than ever, we must learn then to:
25 Let your eyes look directly forward,
and your gaze be straight before you.
26 Ponder the path of your feet;
then all your ways will be sure.
27 Do not swerve to the right or to the left;
turn your foot away from evil.
Amen.