Kingdom Heart Series: Covenant with Your Eyes. Job 31: 1-8; Matthew 5: 27-32

Transcription

1 1 2 nd Lent 03/16/14 Avondale Meute Kingdom Heart Series: Covenant with Your Eyes Job 31: 1-8; Matthew 5: Pearl: Jesus way insists on respecting others by refusing to indulge lust. Function: To move worshippers to make a covenant with our eyes so that we might respect others and not use them by indulging lust, fornication, and adultery. We are seeking after the kingdom heart that Jesus taught would cause us to do far better even than the Pharisees in right living. Last week we tackled the twin scourges of the earth : anger and contempt. Today we go to what may well be the next most difficult and pervasive challenge for any person of faith living in the USA: a sex-saturated society. We are learning that Jesus took the law and intensified it. 1. 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 lust has already committed adultery with her in his heart (Matthew 5: 27, 28). a. We remember former US President Jimmy Carter one time quoting this very teaching when asked about his moral character. He admitted to being guilty of this sin as Jesus described it. President Carter is well-known for his exemplary Christian commitment and long tenure as a Sunday school teacher. The pervasive temptations of our sex-saturated society certainly challenge all who seek a kingdom heart. 1. I really don t have to enumerate all of the ways in which sex continues to be used in our culture to influence us. The sexual revolution which occurred in the 1960s means that I have lived my whole life in its wake. 2. The envelope continues to be pushed all of the time in the use of our natural, God-given human desires and appetites to manipulate us.

2 2 a. As an example, there is an agency which sends s encouraging married people to have affairs with other married people. This way both are equally motivated to keep it secret. 3. Even though our current culture is riddled with pervasive sexual temptations, there is really in the words of Solomon nothing new under the sun. 4. During Jesus lifetime he saw that the Pharisees and teachers of the law were diligent to observe the letter of the law in regard to adultery while missing the spirit of the law which is found in the kingdom heart. They made being holy a matter of possibility and achievability in the realm of intimate physical love. They considered themselves and others righteous simply by not having actual sexual relations with anyone outside of the marriage bond. a. Jesus intensified the holiness which amounted to truly loving a neighbor. He said that if you even lusted after a woman or a man, you then committed adultery in your heart and so disrespected that neighbor. We can make a covenant with our eyes, that is, we need to make an agreement with our eyes that we will not dehumanize another person. The problem with indulging lust into what Dallas Willard calls fantasized desire is that it disrespects another person. 1. By indulging the look at a woman or a man we treat that person as an object. And so we disrespect him or her. 2. Jesus Way, the way of the kingdom heart is thoroughly humane. Don t miss that! Jesus showed us what it meant to be human. Sin dehumanizes. Jesus sought to repair humanity, restoring the image of God in us and revealing what is humane. 3. Our culture is very dehumanizing! People are expendable. People are used for all kinds of reasons. This is due to a basic lack of respect for others and even for self. 4. The kingdom heart does not take advantage of another person. Treating others as sex objects literally or in our imaginations does not flow from a kingdom heart but from a hard heart, that is, a heart darkened by sin.

3 3 5. Recall what Jesus said about the handling of divorce. Men were able to discard wives for the slightest whim and all they had to do was give them a certificate of divorce. It subjected women to a most precarious life. It was inhumane. Jesus told them it was because of their hardness of heart that this arrangement existed. a. Jesus meant that they did not possess the spirit of the law; their hearts were hard. Such hardness of heart needed to soften in order to become a kingdom heart. 6. The kingdom heart has deep respect for other people. a. As Aretha Franklin made it famous; we all need a little R-E-S-P-E-C- T. Actually, we need more than a little; we need a lot of RESPECT! Even if some ask for us to indulge our desires or our imaginations we should refuse to do so out of respect for them. 1. I am reminded of the biblical book: Proverbs. There is a recurring theme through the book which warns about the woman and we can add man who seeks to entice us to sin. The wise avoid indulging in fornication, adultery, and lust out of respect for others. a. Say to wisdom, You are my sister, and call insight your intimate friend, that they may keep you from the loose woman, from the adulteress with her smooth words. b. For at the window of my house I looked out through my lattice, and I saw among the simple ones, I observed among the youths, a young man without sense, passing along the street near her corner, taking the road to her house in the twilight, in the evening, at the time of night and darkness. c. Then a woman comes toward him, decked out like a prostitute, wily of heart. She is loud and wayward; her feet do not stay at home; now in the street, now in the squares, and at every corner she lies in wait (Proverbs 7: 4-12). i. Even to give in to the temptation of those who are asking for it is inhumane and disrespectful of them and is not the way of the person who has the kingdom heart.

4 4 d. Proverbs continually warns the young man or woman of the seducing spirit in another. e. It is not just an issue for the young, though. One time I walked into a senior care home to visit someone. I knocked on the door and the man told me to enter. When I walked in he was viewing pornography on his computer screen. When he saw it was me, his pastor, he quickly and awkwardly turned off the monitor. 2. As our hearts and minds become more and more like the heart and mind of Jesus heart and mind, we will refuse to disrespect another person through actual behavior or the lustful imagination. We will do so out of respect for them. Perhaps it will help them respect themselves as well. We make a covenant with our eyes, that is, we make an agreement with our eyes that we will not dehumanize another person. The biblical book of Job is likely the oldest book of the bible. We learn how to do this by taking a lesson from Job. 1. Job was a man tested by God. He lost everything and everyone important to him. He lost great wealth and possessions. He finally even lost his wife who told him to curse God and to die. Job refused to do that. 2. What Job did do was demand an audience with God. As amazing as that seems, Job was a righteous man in God s sight. Job did an inventory of his life and he found no reason for all of the misfortune that had come upon him. He demanded that God present the reason for his undoing. a. I tell you about Job because of his method in the realm of the sexual. b. Job stated before God, I have made a covenant with my eyes; how then could I look upon a virgin?...let God know my integrity! if my step has turned aside from the way, and my heart has followed my eyes, and if any spot has clung to my hands; then let me sow, and another eat; and let what grows for me be rooted out (Job 31: 4-8). c. Job knew what Jesus would teach many years later. Job knew this intensified law; he knew the spirit of the law.

5 5 3. We who aspire to the kingdom heart make a covenant with our eyes, or said another way; we make an agreement with our eyes not to indulge the lustful imagination. Every time that we are tempted we remember the agreement, the contract, that we made with our eyes and we refuse to disrespect another. Not only do we remember our covenant but we remember our Lord Jesus the Christ and the kind of heart that his followers have. By the power of the Holy Spirit in us we can keep the agreement that we make with our eyes, with our minds, with our hands, and with our feet. When we fail, and we will fail, we can start over again through the grace of Jesus Christ. God help us to have the kingdom hearts that Jesus revealed in his teaching and which we find in his red letters which teach us that There is love in the red letters; There is truth in the red letters; There is hope for the hopeless; peace and forgiveness; There is life in the red letters. ( Red Letters DC Talk)