Dennis Tuuri

through chapter 2 verse 5. Romans 1:16-25. Please stand for the scripture reading. Romans 1:16-25.

For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ. For it is the power of God unto salvation to everyone that believeth, to the Jew first, and also to the Greek. For therein is the righteousness of God revealed from faith to faith, as it is written, the just shall live by faith. For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who hold the truth in unrighteousness, because that which may be known of God is manifest in them. For God hath showed it unto them.

For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and godhead, so that they are without excuse. Because that when they knew God, they glorified him not as God, neither were thankful, but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened. Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools and changed the glory of the uncorruptible God into an image made like unto corruptible men and to birds and four-footed beasts and creeping things.

Wherefore God also gave them up to uncleanness through the lust of their own hearts to dishonor their own bodies between themselves who changed the truth of God into a lie and worshiped and served the creature more than the creator who is blessed forever. Amen. For this cause God gave them up unto vile affections. For even their women did change the natural use into that which is against nature. Likewise also the men leaving the natural use of the woman burned in their lust one toward another, men with men working that which is unseemly and receiving in themselves that recompense of their error which was meet.

And even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a reprobate mind to do those things which are not convenient, being filled with all unrighteousness, fornication, wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness, full of envy, murder, debate, deceit, malignity, whisperers, backbiters, haters of God, despiteful, proud, boasters, inventors of evil things, disobedient to parents, without understanding, covenant breakers without natural affection, implacable, unmerciful, who knowing the judgment of God, that they which commit such things are worthy of death, not only do the same, but have pleasure in them that do them.

Therefore, thou art inexcusable, oh man, whosoever thou are that judgest. For wherein thou judgest another, thou condemnest thyself. For thou that judgest doest the same things. But we are sure that the judgment of God is according to truth against them which commit such things. And thinkst thou this, oh man, that judges them which do such things, and doest the same, that thou shalt escape the judgment of God, or despise thou the riches of his goodness, and forbearance and longsuffering, not knowing that the goodness of God leadeth thee to repentance, but after thy hardness and impenitent heart, treasures up unto itself wrath against the day of wrath, and revelation of the righteous judgment of God.

Okay, we continue this afternoon with our series of sermons through the seven deadly sins. We’ve come this afternoon to the seventh, finally, of the seven deadly sins. Hopefully by now you remember the seven in order. The first three were pride, envy, and anger, the cold sins, so to speak. The fourth was sloth, and then that was the segue into the three hot sins at the end of the list of the seven deadly sins: those sins being greed, gluttony, and now lust.

And these last three are linked in a way, which we’ll talk about toward the end of the talk this afternoon. I’ve chosen Romans 1 because we see in Romans 1, among other things, what I’ve described as lust’s slippery slide into hell. Probably shouldn’t have used so many s’s. It’s kind of hard on me. Lust’s slippery slide into hell. And I suppose it’s good to have a hot day to talk about this hot sin and recognize some of the problems that come and how Romans 1 describes the intensification of the sin and God’s judgment against it in this passage going into the second chapter.

It’s interesting having these huge fans here. Dante in his Inferno pictures those who are in hell because of lust as beings blown about on the winds. So we’ll see how well you stay seated as these strong fans blow.

Lust begins with warm lust in the heart. I’ve described it in verse 24 of Romans 1: “God gave them up to uncleanness through the lust of their own hearts.” And the word used there for lust is a word that simply means a strong desire to set one’s heart upon something. And it can be either negative or positive depending on how it’s used in scripture. So there are good lusts and bad lusts in the sense that this term is being used here. Obviously in this context they are bad lust, but they can be good lusts as well.

Let me give you a couple of examples of that. Jesus told his disciples in Luke 17 that the disciples would desire—lust after, as it were—one of the days of the Son of Man after he had gone away from them. In 1 Timothy 3:1, if a man desires—lusts after, as it were—the office of a bishop, he desireth a good thing. No condemnation in that verse, at least not apparently. In Hebrews 6:11, the writer of the book of Hebrews says that we desire, we lust, we have a strong heart toward this fact, we have warmth, we want this to occur, that you show all diligence and move on to maturation.

And so desires can be a good thing or a bad thing depending upon what they’re set upon. And it’s a very important statement to make at the beginning of a sermon or two or three on lust: you’ve got to realize that there are proper desires in terms of sexual desires and improper ones. And so desire isn’t always bad. And certainly the scriptures nowhere teach that sex is bad. Sexual action between married couples is, by the providence of God, a wonderful thing. It’s a gift of God. Lust, in the sense we’re using it today, is a perversion of that gift.

Two verses that sort of sum up this good and bad use of lust are in Psalm 112:10 and Proverbs 10:24. I’ve put these references on your outline. I’ll just read them. Psalm 112:10 says that the wicked shall see it and be grieved. He shall gnash with his teeth and melt away. The desire of the wicked shall perish. The desire of the wicked—that same Hebrew word in the Old Testament is used in Proverbs 10 to speak about the desire of the righteous.

We read there in verse 24: “The fear of the wicked, it shall come upon him, but the desire of the righteous shall be granted.” Same word, analogous to the word we’re using here in the Romans 1 passage. The same Hebrew words used in those two passages. Psalm 112 says that the desires of the wicked will perish, whereas Proverbs 10 says the desire of the righteous shall be granted. And so really, it’s the object of the desire and whether it’s a sinful or an appropriate desire that’s wrong.

Lust begins in the heart. And you remember that there was a reference in the gospels. Our Savior said that I tell you anyone who lusts after a woman in his heart has committed adultery with her. And that’s the same term used here. Lust begins in the heart with evil thoughts, evil intentions and is then put into motion, as it were, through the organs of sight—at least in that example. I bring up that verse to demonstrate what this word can mean.

But I also bring it up to point out that, as far as I know, this is the only one of the seven deadly sins that has been publicly confessed to by an American president. That president was of course Jimmy Carter, who said that he had lusted in his heart after other women. And it’s interesting, of course, that this statement about lust—that is one of the seventh of the seven deadly sins—was confessed to by an American president in a publication that is known for lust, Playboy magazine.

I think President Carter had a funny idea of that verse, thinking somehow that Jesus said it’s all okay, not recognizing that Romans 1 says that against such lust, God’s judgments come and we’re to repent of such things and endeavor to be delivered by his grace from them.

So lust begins with a warm lust in the heart that can be appropriate, may not be appropriate, but Romans 1:24 starts with an inappropriate lust and it moves on quickly to an intensification of the heat, as it were, and the intensity of that lust and increasing judgment from God upon that lust.

Verse 26: “For this cause, God gave them up unto vile affections, for even their women did change the natural use into that which is against nature.”

And so we have a ratcheting up here going on. There’s a movement from the term meaning just a warm desire in the heart, so to speak, of the first term to a term here that means a strong passion. A much stronger term is used. There’s a ratcheting up from probably illicit sexual relationships between men and women talked about in verse 24 to now lesbian relationships talked about in verse 26. There’s a ratcheting up of the adjectives applied to it. The dishonor in this passage is a stronger word for dishonor than was found in verse 24.

Lenski, commenting on this verse and particularly the use of the term for lust here, the hot lust as I’ve called it in the outline, says this: “Whereas Paul first spoke of lust and of uncleanness in general, he now advances to vile passion and specifies the vilest of these. So also after saying that God abandoned men in their lust, he now says that God abandoned them to their passions.”

Lenski is very known for his excellent exposition in the Greek text and he notices the change there in the prepositions as well. He says that God had abandonment in their lust in verse 24. He now says that God abandoned them to their passions using a stronger word: epithymia. That’s the Greek word for the first kind of lust, the warm lust in the heart. An epithymia is a single evil desire. A pathos would be—one way to remember that: a pathos, which is the term used in verse 26, is a constant burning passion.

The former may be checked like a fire that’s just starting. The latter is a conflagration overwhelming all constraint and controlling a man completely. God removed all constraint so that the desire grew to passions and from desires he gave them up to these passions. The judgment, Lenski says, is increased. Base desires carry man into acts of vilenesses, but reaching their climax in passions, they not only plunge men into scattered vile acts, they drown them in their vilenesses.

And so you have this ratcheting up being shown in these verses in the actions and the judgments of God. And then the third step is this slippery slope: from warm lust in the heart to hot striving and passion and a pathological sort of desire that is extremely unclean and bad.

We see then in verse 27 a further ratcheting up to burning lust that grasps burned out lust, as it were. Verse 27 says: “Likewise also the men leaving the natural use of the woman burned in their lust one toward another, men with men working that which is unseemly and receiving in themselves that recompense of their error which was meat.”

And so we have a further ratcheting up here of the term used for lust: burning in their lust. Vincent says of the term that’s translated burning that these terms are terrible in their intensity. Literally, he says, this means to be burned out, burned out or consumed—a very hot, all-consuming flame. The preposition Vincent says indicates the rage of lust.

So here we have not the warm lust in the heart, but here we have a term meaning an eager desire, a lustful appetite, burned out but still—and the word means kind of a grasping out at something—burned out in its passion but still grasping after what is completely non-satisfying. Burner commented on lust saying that lust is the craving for salt of a man who is dying of thirst. Craving for salt of a man dying of thirst—burned out lust, continuing to grasp after what is completely dissatisfying at that point in time.

C.S. Lewis in his Screwtape Letters, which I’ll probably quote from again in this series on lust, Screwtape of course is a demon who is counseling his young nephew how to hurt Christians and how to get his hooks into them, so to speak, and lead them into sin and keep them in sin. And Screwtape counsels his nephew in C.S. Lewis’s book, saying that an ever-increasing craving for an ever-diminishing pleasure is the formula for success in this endeavor. An ever-increasing craving for an ever-diminishing pleasure.

And that’s what’s being pictured here. This downward descent, this fast descent into hell that’s pictured in Romans 1. The craving goes up, the satisfaction goes down. You end up with being burned out and numbed to pleasure in itself.

The result of these final phases of life then indicated by this text is a numbing—a numbness even to pleasure in and of itself. More and more titillation is necessary for men that fall down, or women who fall down this slippery slope, this descent into hell that starts with warm lust in the heart and with a casual glance at a woman or at a man in an inappropriate way. To such who fall down the slippery slope, more and more titillation is necessary, and hence the downward spiral of these actions.

In verse 27, it’s also worth pointing out here that God uses the term in holy writ to the men and then verse 26 of the women. He doesn’t use the terms to speak that would be associated with our “men” and “women” or “father” and “mother” or “men” and “women.” He uses the terms that would be biological in nature: male and female. And that’s very important here. The text indicates the deep dehumanizing effect of this sort of lust and God’s judgment upon it.

The terms male and female are here used, not as I said the normal terms for men and women, but instead, in the words of Lenski, they descend the people in these texts who followed into this slippery slope, descend to the brutish level of being nothing but sex creatures. So there’s a depersonalization, a dehumanization process that goes on as well.

H. Stefan Schumacher in his book on the seven deadly sins, speaking of lust, comments on the fact that the Hebrew word for sexual relations is the same as the word to know something or somebody. And Schumacher says the following: “If I desire another sexually without wanting deep knowledge of the other and wanting to be in living communion with the other, then I am using the other as an object.”

That’s worth repeating as a definition, as a tentative working definition for lust. He said, “If I desire another sexually without wanting deep knowledge of the other”—remember the two terms are the same in the Hebrew—”and wanting to be in living communion with the other, then I’m using the other as an object, as a female as opposed to a woman, or as a male, simply a sexual creature as opposed to a man.”

Lust is sexual desire set apart from personal commitment. Lust is sexual desire set apart from personal commitment. Schumacher comments that really a better term for it is autosexual, self-sexual. Even when coupled with another body, it is still autosexual. It is totally consumed in our own desires, our own passions, our own thing. And we’re using the other person or we’re using pornography or whatever it is simply as objects for our own delights.

And so this slippery slope is described in that way as leading to a dehumanization of people as well. In Proverbs 6:26, we see that the results of lust is men degraded into being merchandise. Verse 26 of Proverbs 6 reads: “For by means of a harlot, a man is brought to a piece of bread, and the adulteress will hunt for the precious life.” Man becomes a commodity to a harlot, and vice versa is true as well. The dehumanization occurs.

So in lust’s slippery slope, slippery slide rather, into hell—into the alienation that’s spoken of here from men to men and from men to God. In this slippery slope, the cycle downward begins with warm lust in the heart. Increasingly, God then turns them over to a stronger lust that is much intensified and is now a way of life as opposed to a single act. And then the final phase is burned out and still grasping after what no longer satisfies it all.

This downward cycle is seen in Romans 1. It’s also seen in the newspapers in the last few years. Certainly, Ted Bundy’s interview with James Dobson and showing the effect of pornography on his slide into the hell that is characteristic of the fall into the seventh deadly sin shows this cycle downward beginning with pornography. There was an article in Leadership Magazine, a mainline evangelical publication in 1978 I believe, where a man talked about the same thing—his sins and how they began with pornography, with warm lust in his heart, occasional glancing at pictures, then through a progression to increasing sexual lust and destruction to himself and others.

Some of us who received the publications from Tyler, Texas a number of years ago, they had articles in there by a fellow in jail, I think in Texas for rape, I believe, who again talked about this same process in his life. Man, I’m trying to let you know here that Romans 1 shows us that this is a very deadly slide that started quite easily by not being very careful in the initial stages of lust and improper use of it.

The fella in Texas talked about his descent into sin, sexual sin, through pornography, then through sexual affairs and then finally into rape itself. Now, this man was not some loser. He was very much a professional in his work, etc., a married man. Most of these—a lot of these men who fall into this sort of trap are.

You see, it’s a very slippery slope that leads down to hell for one who isn’t very careful with what he does in terms of sexual relations and his glances of his eyes. Even the fellow in Texas, I thought very appropriately, talked about his repentance from his sin and that his writing these articles and warning other men was part of his fruits of repentance before God. He now felt that he wrote in the article, I thought a very good thing, that any man who’s been involved in sexual sin ought to try to commit sometime equivalent to that—to helping men avoid that sort of sexual sin.

So he was doing that with the rest of his life, devoting it to try to help men to avoid this slippery slope, this downward slide and spiral into hell that results from an improper glance.

Job in 31, Job 31 talks about this. Job says: “If mine heart has been deceived by a woman or if I have laid wait at my neighbor’s door”—in other words, you know, looking for sexual adventures—”then let my wife grind unto another and let others bow down upon her. Lex Talionus, the principle here of God’s justice being sin for sin, continues on in Job 31. For this is a heinous crime. Yay, it is an iniquity to be punished by the judges. For it is a fire that consumeth to destruction”—just like Romans 1 tells us—”and would root out all mine increase. It will eat up all the blessings that God give us if left unattended in our garden, so to speak.”

Hell is pictured in Job 31, Romans 1, and the heat, the intensity of God’s wrath against sin. It’s pictured in the alienation that we’ve talked about that comes as a result of lust from God originally, of course, but then also from men and from women themselves. Everybody turns into an object. We become autosexual. We become alone, and we are driven into really, early hell, as it were.

Now, I want to point out here before we move on to the next point of the outline that these things start in the heart. Warmth starts in the heart with our thoughts. Our thoughts—frequently we think that we don’t have much control of them, but in fact God calls us to subject our thinking to the mind of Christ. And we’re going to take control of those thoughts that come into our mind. Specific reference here to thoughts of lust: control those thoughts. Don’t let your mind think along certain ways of thinking. You control them. You can do that.

Secondly, I point out that if you have trouble doing that, get help. One of the ways that Satan works this process is that you become alienated from other people and you become so shamed over your actions that you get further and further away from the covenant community that is the source of blessing, that’s the source of encouragement and exhortation to you to remove yourself from these sins.

So men, women, if you have problems in this area, get help. If you don’t want to come to one of the officers of the church, if you don’t want to come to myself, go to a friend, find a buddy one-on-one. I talked—I think I mentioned this last year—Jay Grimstead, head of the Coalition on Revival, talked about how he had problems in this area many years ago now, I guess a few years ago. And he solved them because he found a buddy at church and they would agree that if any of them slipped, they’d call the other fella. If they went down and bought a bad magazine or something or had impure thoughts, they would call the other one up, confess that sin, and hold each other accountable and encourage each other to righteousness.

Remember that these things start with thoughts. Get help if you can’t take care of this. Steve Samson and I were talking a few weeks ago about the political situation here in Oregon and across the country. And he was saying that one of the broad themes that we have to recognize in the destruction that’s happening to our country is first you have a splintering process, an atomization, as it were, a breaking up of people away from solid groups of community and after you break people away then the state controls them.

So the state attempts to break down institutions and then take those individuals and control them on the part of the civil state. You see, that’s just a mirror of what Satan does. He tries to break you out from the covenant community through sin and then as you’re cut out from the flock, as it were, then you’re controlled by him. Stay close. Stay in place.

Okay, so much for this side of the descent down. It’s very important that we recognize that this descent is real. As we’ve just pointed out, it is dangerous. But it’s important to recognize that it is governed by God. And that’s the second point of the outline.

God brings this to pass for two reasons at least from the text. The first is to reveal his wrath. It’s why we started a little earlier talking about how in verse 17 it says: “For therein—that’s in the gospel of Christ—is the righteousness of God revealed from faith to faith as it is written, the just shall live by faith.” And then in verse 18: “For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men.”

God reveals his grace through the gospel and through the work of Jesus Christ. He reveals his wrath temporally in the world among other things through what we’ve just described: this downward slippery slope into hell that comes about as a result of lust. A commentator named Tolak, quoted by Paj in his commentary in the book of Romans, wrote that in both the Old and New Testament, sin is the punishment for sin. The reward of a good deed is a good deed and an evil deed an evil deed. In Haj’s words: sin follows sin as an avenger.

Now, this is real important. Sin follows sin as an avenger because God is revealing his wrath against men who refuse to acknowledge him. That’s where the whole process starts in Romans 1. And God reveals that wrath through this giving them over to these lusts and sending them down the slippery slope into hell.

Now, it’s important here to see in homosexuality and in the prevalence of homosexuality in America today, it is important to recognize—sure, the great sin involved—but it’s also important to recognize that it is a sign that God’s judgment is in this plan. He is revealing his wrath against a nation that said we can go our own way and we can do our own thing apart from God and apart from his scriptures.

God, when we remove ourselves from him, he turns us over. That’s what Romans 1 says he does to these various sins. He punishes us by demonstrating his wrath. And that wrath is demonstrated by the increasing sin that men find themselves involved with. Homosexuality then is a sign of God’s wrath against this nation and we should think of it that way. It’s God’s working out his judgment in individuals’ lives and the lives of the country. The very fact that they engage in homosexual activity—that’s what Romans 1 seems to me to be saying quite clearly.

When we see these things, we should see the wrath of God. And secondly, we should see these things as present judgments from God. He reveals his wrath and he does this through present judgments. Verse 24 says that God gave them up to uncleanness and the lust of their heart. Verse 26 says that God gave them up to vile affections. Verse 28 says that God gives them over to a reprobate mind.

These are the judicial actions of God in history, in time, in space, on earth today being worked out. Calvin commenting on these phrases says: “God by his equitable judgment so arranges things that they are led and carried into such madness by their own lust as well as by the devil. He therefore adopts the term give up, which word they forcibly rest who think that they are led into sin only by the permission of God.”

For as Satan is the minister of God’s wrath and as it were the executioner, so he is armed against us, not through his own contrivance, but by the command of his judge. Calvin says that if you want to look at this as God just permitting these things to happen, you’ve missed the mark. God actively turns people over to these sins. He turns them over to the one who controls hell, as it were, who brings hell to pass in people’s lives: Satan.

Satan, as Calvin says, is the minister of God’s wrath. And he is the executioner, he says, armed against us, not through his own contrivance, but by the command of his judge, by the command of God. Very important to see this.

We must then see homosexuality through biblical lines as God’s judicial pronouncements revealing his wrath against those who refuse to bow the knee to him. God brings this to pass. And he brings this to pass as a warning to us, certainly to reveal his wrath, but also as a warning to us.

If you understand to this point this slide—God turning men over to these sins—and recognize that these men start with failing to acknowledge God with warm lust in their hearts and God delivers them over to increasing lust and he brings things into their paths in his providence that increases their temptations, increases their fall into sin and increases his judgment, puts them into hell on earth, as it were.

If you understand these things and you understand that people have been plagued with lust for 6,000 years, you should be fearful at this point of your own self, recognizing that God may well bring these judgments to pass in your mind. And that’s just what God wants us to do.

He says in chapter 2: “Therefore, thou art inexcusable, oh man.” Verse 3: “And thinkst thou this, oh man, that judgest them which do such things and doest the same, that thou shalt escape the judgment of God?”

It is easy to read Romans 1 and use it as a device in which to rail against homosexuality—and it should be railed against. But remember that homosexuality is the end of the cycle that God has turned people over to for this warm lust in their heart, apparently with relationships between men and women earlier on. And even that is preceded by men refusing to acknowledge God. And God brings these things to pass. He turns them over to these sins.

Homosexuality is linked in this text to all sexual lust. It’s the extended judgment of God against men who entertain lustful thoughts and actions, men and women who entertain lustful thoughts and actions.

There is great danger in the deadly sin of lust. And there is great power in this sin. Chaucer, you probably won’t remember, but remember he said that the devil, one of his hands is reaching into the man’s stomach, as it were. He said gluttony has five fingers on his hand. He says, “On the other hand,” in terms of lust, Chaucer in the Canterbury Tales talks about how his other hand has the five fingers of lust. And it’d be good here to point out those five fingers according to Chaucer.

The first is a glance. Noting that the lust of the eyes follows the lust of the heart. The second finger on the devil’s hand of lust is touching. The third is vile words. The fourth is kissing. And Chaucer says there, “What fool but would kiss a red-hot furnace? What fool would kiss the mouth of hell?” And yet people do it all the time. And the fifth finger of the devil’s hand of lust is the act itself.

The devil’s five fingers of one hand grab into a man’s belly—gluttony. And with the five fingers of lust, the devil grabs the man by his loins to throw him into hell. Serious stuff. Be warned.

Important to notice as he says here that glance is that first finger—glances. David and Bathsheba: a case in point where a glance, a view of a woman, an inappropriate view, then letting himself think on these things and take action. A glance was the first finger of the devil onto David’s loins, as it were, to pull him into sin. The glances are the beginning. Not quite. We’ll get to that in a minute. But in terms of the process here—

And so we read in Job 31:1, a very important verse. Job says: “I made a covenant with mine eyes. Why then should I think upon a maid?” Make a covenant with our eyes. Men, women, if you’re plagued by these sins, if you fall into these sins on occasion, make a covenant with your eyes that they not look upon a maid or they not look upon a man inappropriately.

We have young children in our household. They’re very good at this. It’s interesting. You watch TV sometimes and one of my sons, Elijah, will sometimes say, “Oh, that’s bad.” And he won’t—as soon as he sees something, and it’s usually a gal not having enough clothes on or something, he closes his eyes, runs away. He’s got a sensitivity to these things that God’s Holy Spirit is bringing to pass in his life and through the instruction of his parents.

Now, we don’t do that. We sit in front of the TV and we see ads and almost all ads these days use the seven deadly sins to sell them—certainly lust more than any of the other ones. And we watch it, we think, well, it doesn’t tempt me. Why doesn’t it tempt us anymore? Maybe because we’re jaded. Maybe because we’re reaching that third phase there of burned out lust. It’s so numbed over to the whole thing. We need great titillation for any sexual activity from this point on.

You see the dangers of getting at ease with this stuff. Men, make a covenant with your eyes in reference to the television as well. And not just with your eyes. You have responsibility for the eyes of your wife and the eyes of your children. Make a covenant with God over their eyes. Protect them from the things that may not bother you on TV but bother them.

You see, when you realize what a slippery, fast slope destruction lust is, you will want to be very careful—very careful—about exposing your children’s minds to these sorts of thoughts. Now, we live in an age in which that seems foolishness and our children don’t see all the movies that other children see. And I think the people in this church are much more sensitive to these things, but we got to keep reminding ourselves: yes, okay, it’s in the world. Our children don’t need to see these things, not to have those impure thoughts.

Make a covenant with your eyes. Make a covenant with God over the eyes and mind of your children and your wife as well to protect them. This is serious business. This will put you right in hell, right into the drink. Okay? Statistics show that one out of four ministers are involved in sexual sin or on the verge of it. This is a bad deal. I don’t think the flocks are much different. It’s a bad deal in this country. It is everywhere.

Be very careful. Be very diligent to protect yourself and your family. Chaucer has a great line. He says: “Often and often I counsel that no man trust in his own perfection in this matter unless he be stronger than Samson and holier than David and wiser than Solomon.” All three men had problems in this area: strength, holiness, wisdom—not able to save them from these sins.

God does these things as a warning to us. But he brings it to us as a warning to us to bring to us the revelation of his grace. He brings us to the revelation of his grace.

Following up in verse 4 of chapter 2: “Or despise thou the riches of his goodness and forbearance of longsuffering, not knowing that the goodness of God leadeth thee to repentance?”

God brings us unto the elect this judgment, this acknowledgment, this warning for the purpose of leading us to repentance, to turn, to confess our sins, to get straight, and to get back to God. These things, the end of these things for the believer is repentance. And so the scriptures are full of such stories.

John 4: Jesus talks to the woman at the well, who had a number of husbands. The man she’s got then is not even a husband. John 8: Jesus talks to the woman caught in adultery. Says, “Your sins are forgiven. Go sin no more.” Luke 7: the prostitute wets his feet with her tears and anoints him with expensive perfume. Many pictures of sexual sin and forgiveness on the part of the Savior, recognizing that sexual sin is linked to idolatry, that all of us have forsaken God in and of ourselves. We’re all spiritual adulterers and it’s a grace of God sometimes that leads men into physical adultery to bring them into awareness of their sins and to repentance, is to lead us to repentance.

Many pictures of forgiveness for those who turn and repent. Unlike the failure of illicit lust to satisfy, Jesus tells the woman at the well to drink from his water and you’ll never be thirsty again and out of your belly will flow streams of living water. He is satisfaction.

Dante in his Purgatorio describes the seventh cornice of lust. There’s an incredibly hot flame on one side and an abyss on the other. The penitent on that cornice who are repenting of their sins of lust are in the midst of the fire and the souls, and the pain of the purifying fire, sing forth praise: “God of clemency supreme, imploring God to be clement toward them, to be graceful and forgiving to them that they might be given chastity in place of their lust.”

They sing of Mary in that song as they go through the fires that purge them of their lust. Mary who said, “I knew not a man,” to the angel who announced the conception of our Savior. They sing of various husbands and wives who were chaste in that fire in Dante’s vision.

It’s useful to point out also by the way that in Purgatorio there are homosexuals. It’s interesting because in this fire next to him that he’s going along, there are these creatures, these people who are being purged of the sin of lust who are normal lustful people. And then another band comes the other direction—coming the reverse way, a picture of homosexuality doing unnatural in opposition to what’s appropriate thing to do. And they meet these two bands and they kiss each other.

And what Dante is showing is a couple things. First of all, homosexuals are brought to repentance by God. For them, for the elect of the homosexuals, he brings these judgments upon them to bring them to their knees and forgiveness. And so there are homosexuals in purgatory, homosexuals in heaven. Very important for us to recognize that when we see somebody who is a homosexual, this is the advanced stages of God’s judgment. And for some of them, it will be to repentance.

But then secondly, Dante pointed this out to show the kissing was a reference to the verse where Paul said to salute one another with the holy kiss and they were learning how to be chaste in their relationships one to the other. Very important.

So God does all this to bring us to repentance and to bring us to redemption. And beyond redemption, he brings us to deliverance from the sin as well. God redeems his people for the purpose of delivering from these sins.

It’s interesting that Romans 1—I said that a glance is the beginning of much lust, but really it goes back to verse 21 of Romans 1. In verse 21, the whole process here begins because “men which knew God, they glorified him not as God neither gave thanks but became vain in their imaginations.”

They failed to glorify God and to give thanks. That’s what we do on Sunday, isn’t it? That’s the pattern. That’s the ritual. It prepares us for a week of glorifying God and giving thanks. We meet here and we praise God. We glorify God in the worship service. We meet downstairs and have communion and we thank God. I have thanks and glorifying him in both elements.

But you see what I’m saying? The two services that God’s word tells us should be part of Sunday worship give us the model here for glorifying him and thanking him into the week. And those people that are delivered over to sexual lust and into increasing lust are those who fail to give thanks to God.

Now I said earlier that lust is really seeking sexual relationships for your own sexuality essentially, without really wanting to know the other person. And I bring this up now because it’s very important that in terms of the deliverance from the sin of lust in our own lives personally, we recognize that some of that deliverance may be very personal for us.

Lust can be exhibited toward your marriage mate. Anything in the marriage bed is not okay necessarily. There’s a correct way and an improper way and we approach that as well. And of course by now if you’ve been tracking you’ll see that the inappropriate way is simply autosexually for your own gratifications, your own desires, and not to know, not to continue growing in your knowledge of your mate. That’s the purpose of correct sexual relationships.

Now I bring this up in relationship to this thanksgiving aspect that led people into this sin—to say this: that in terms of your life, if you’re married in this church, part of the process of deliverance from lust is to thank God for your mate, to be thankful for the mate that God has given to you, and so be satisfied in that mate.

In Ephesians 5:33, God tells us to be devoted to the one that God has in his providence brought us into the marriage relationship with. Tells men: “Let every one of you in particular so love his wife even as himself, and let the wife also see that she reverence her husband.” A godly contentment with our mate is important, part of the solution to the problem of lust.

And then in Proverbs 5:18 and following, we read: “Let thy fountain be blessed and rejoice with the wife of thy youth. Let her be as the loving kind and pleasant robe. Let her breast satisfy thee at all times, and be thou ravished always with her love. And why wilt thou, my son, be ravished with a strange woman, and embrace the bosom of a stranger?”

God says: “Give thanks to your mate. Be devoted to your mate as a cure to sexual sin and enjoy the great delights that God has brought you in terms of knowing another person fully and moving on in your relationship with that person.”

For the ways of man, going back to Proverbs 5, the ways of man are before the eyes of the Lord, and he pondereth all his goings. His own iniquities shall take the wicked himself, and he shall be holden with the cords of his sins. He shall die without instruction and in the greediness of his folly, he shall go astray.

Speaking of those who refuse to delight in the mate that God has given to them, who instead delight themselves in somebody else, in some other woman, in some other bosom. God says: “Delight in your mate.” And recognize that ultimate value isn’t really found in the body either.

It’s interesting that to the church at Corinth, where sexual sins were a real problem, there were various different ways of sexual sin. Some people said that all sex was bad and so they wanted to have celibate marriages. Some people said all sex is good and so you know it doesn’t mean it’s cool—you can have sexual relationships with various fringe elements that probably characterize California today in the same way.

But in any event, Paul in the epistle to the Corinthians corrects all this and he says you’ve got it all wrong. The body is not a temple to be worshiped. It’s not a deity that is to be worshiped. Nor is the body something unimportant to be despised, something bad in and of itself. Rather, what does Paul tell him in the book of Corinthians? He says: “The body is the temple of the Holy Spirit, the temple of the Holy Spirit.”

And he brings back true, good biblical sexuality to the marital relationship. Not in the lust, not in the hot seeking after your own sexual pleasures, but in knowing the other person and in the covenant that you have together and in the wonderful gift of life that brings forth.

You see, people who sin by way of lust are very similar to those who sin by way of greed and gluttony. The greedy—remember Jesus—we talked about how Jesus said the Pharisees swore by the gold of the temple instead of the one who resides in the temple itself. Greedy men stop at the value of the external—of the temple, the gold—instead of seeing the presence of God in the temple.

The glutton stops at the food on the altar, the thing that’s sacrificed part of which he gets to eat. He sees ultimate value in food instead of what the food represents: the altar, which is a picture of God and of his Christ, the will of the Father, the Spirit in the kingdom of God is what food is a picture of to us.

And the man who lusts puts ultimate value in the physical body of himself or of another instead of seeing behind that. God says the temple of the Holy Spirit. Again, drawing us back to ultimate reality—ultimate value, rather, in the person of God. And that’s what we’re to delight in when we get to know another, the person, and then proper double.