Hello, and welcome to this week's episode of
Trinity Sermons. This week we are continuing
our sermon series titled The S -Word, where we
dive into the seven deadly sins. And this week's
sin is a little bit awkward to talk about, but
also really important. And that is the sin of
lust. And so join us as Rob talks to us more
about what lust is, what it looks like in our
lives, and most importantly how we can move forward
from shame into the freedom that Christ offers
us. Today's reading, Trinity, comes from the
book of Genesis chapter 39 verses 4 to 21. Joseph
found favour in his eyes, and became his attendant.
Potiphar put him in charge of his household,
and he entrusted to his care everything he owned.
From the time he put him in charge of his household
and of all that he owned, the Lord blessed the
household of the Egyptian because of Joseph.
The blessing of the Lord was on everything Potiphar
had, both in the house and in the field. So Potiphar
left everything he had in Joseph's care. With
Joseph in charge, he did not concern himself
with anything except the food he ate. Now Joseph
was well -built and handsome, and after a while
his master's wife took notice of Joseph and said,
Come to bed with me. But he refused. With me
in charge, he told her, my master does not concern
himself with anything in the house. Everything
he owns he has entrusted to my care. No one is
greater in this house than I am. My master has
withheld nothing from me except you because you
are his wife. How then could I do such a wicked
thing and sin against God? And though she spoke
to Joseph day after day, he refused to go to
bed with her or even be with her. One day, he
went into the house to attend to his duties,
and none of the household servants was inside.
She caught him by his cloak and said, Come to
bed with me. But he left his cloak in her hand
and ran out of the house. When she saw that he
had left his cloak in her hand, and had ran out
of the house, she called her household servants.
Look, she said to them, this Hebrew has been
brought to us to make sport of us. He came in
here to sleep with me, but I screamed. When he
heard me scream for help, he left his cloak beside
me and ran out of the house. cloak beside her
until his master came home. Then she told him
this story, that Hebrew slave you brought us
came to me to make sport of me. But as soon as
I screamed for help, he left his cloak beside
me and ran out of the house. When his master
heard the story, his wife told him, saying, this
is how your slave treated me. He burned with
anger. Joseph's master took him. and put him
in prison, the place where the king's prisoners
were confined. But while Joseph was there in
the prison, the Lord was with him. He showed
him kindness and granted him favour in the eyes
of the prison warden. This is the word of the
Lord. Thanks be to God. So we're working through
this teaching series on the seven deadly sins.
And we've talked about pride. We've talked about
envy. We've talked about sloth. We've talked
about greed. We've been there. We've done that.
You can watch them all on YouTube. And today
we come to the deadly sin of lust. And therefore,
there's probably like three different groups
of people here who are in the church this morning.
There's one group who is genuinely interested
to hear and watch me squirm up here as the pastor
tries to talk about lust. In fact, you've been
waiting for this one. You've been rubbing your
hands and you've been. and like this is gonna
be good. There's another group of people here
this morning and those are you who are visiting
or you're new here this morning and right about
now you're beginning to think you've made a horrible
mistake. And then there's a third group of people
here, basically my own children, who right now
are burying their head in their hands. They are
just mortified that their dad is going to stand
up in front of hundreds of people and talk about
lust. They're going to be scarred for life. But
listen, as Salt and Pepper said in the 90s, let's
talk about sex. And you know, there is, at the
beginning of that song, I didn't realize, but
they have this little exchange. They say, yo,
I don't think we should talk about this. Come
on, why not? Well, people might not understand
what we're trying to say, you know, but that's
part of life. Yes, that's actually true. It is
part of life. And even though this is awkward,
the very fact that it's awkward might be a sign
that we need to talk about it more, not less,
because not talking about it hasn't worked out
that well either. And in fact, it was Howard
Hendricks who said that we should not be ashamed
to discuss what God was unashamed to create.
And that's the thing, God made us this way. God
made us this way and so of course in your life
sex is gonna show up and of course lust is going
to show up and sometimes when we least expect
it. Like a vacuum cleaner salesman who knocks
on the door, you go there and he was uninvited
and he was unexpected and yet here he is. Lust
has a habit of showing up often at the most unexpected
times and it's not just for guys and it's not
just for young people and it's not just for Hollywood,
It's for all of us and it can happen in the midst
of really good times or it can also happen when
you're rock bottom in the middle of bad times.
Now for Joseph, Joseph's life was going along
just great. He was at like the height of good
times. He had found favor in his master's eyes.
He was put in charge of his household. Joseph's
life had finally turned a corner. He was finally
getting somewhere and then guess what? There
was a knock on the door and who was it? Oh, it
was sex. It was lust. It showed up and it was
unexpected. It was uninvited. But when it shows
up, you've got to figure out how to deal with
it because the way that you deal with it will
actually either make you or break you. And so
today we're going to talk about sex and we're
going to talk about lust. And actually I'm not
going to do so much of the talking, but three
other people are going to do most of the talking
this morning. And that's going to be you and
you. and you. No, the three people that are going
to talk about it. We're going to listen first
to Potiphar's wife. She's going to talk about
revealing what lust is. Then we're going to talk
to Joseph. And Joseph is going to explain us
how to deal with lust. And then Jesus is going
to help us understand healing from lust. So there's
the revealing of it, dealing with it, healing
with it. Let's start with revealing. What is
lust? Now, of course, the Bible even would say
you can be lustful about lots of things. You
can be lustful about power. You can be lustful.
about status, but when it comes to the seven
deadly sins, I'm sorry to say, lust is speaking
about that nitty gritty thing called sex. It's
like when Jesus says that to have even, you know,
when you think of someone lustfully in your heart,
you have committed adultery with them. That's
the connection that we're talking about. So here
is a good maybe definition of what lust is. Lust
is the disordered desire for sexual pleasure
that treats people as objects rather than persons.
Now notice what it does not say. Does not say
that lust is sexual desire. It's a disordered
desire. Lust takes something that is good and
twists it and makes it destructive. So again,
lust is not. sexual desire itself. The Bible
never says sex is wrong. The Bible never says
that sexual desire is wrong. In fact, if you
were to compare the Bible and Christianity to
other religions, you would actually realize that...
has a really, really high view of sex. In fact,
in Genesis chapter one, we read that God actually
created sexuality. He created male and female,
and when he had created male and female, he said
it was very good. He was happy with what he had
made, and in fact, he said, now go, be fruitful,
multiply, go and do it, for lack of a better
word. So God created it. And then in the New
Testament, you got people like Paul who almost
commands husbands and wives to be sexually into
each other. He says, you know, is it good to
have sexual relations? Certainly, Paul says.
And then there is this book of the Bible called
the Song of Solomon that's so graphic in its
talk about sex that little Hebrew boys and girls
weren't even allowed to read the book until they
got older. Stuff like kiss me, let the king bring
me into his bedroom, you know. If you go home
today and your kids are all of a sudden reading
the Bible, really, they're really into the Bible,
you might just want to check what exactly that
they are reading. So it is really, really unfortunate
if the primary message that Christianity gets
across to people is that somehow sex is negative.
It is not. It is not sinful, right? Sex was God's
idea. He invented it. It's not wrong. And actually,
when you do look at the list of the seven deadly
sins, that's the reason why lust is never really
at the top of the list. Pride, envy, sloth, wrath,
those things are unnatural. We weren't built
to kill each other. We weren't built to steal
from each other. We weren't built to hurt each
other, but we were built for sex. So, what does
this mean? What does this mean? What is it about
sexual desire that can go wrong and turn into
lust? Well, the first thing that we see is that
sexual desire becomes lust when that craving
is absolutely out of control. Potiphar's wife,
let's look at her, right? She was out of control.
She wanted Joseph so badly, she threw caution
to the wind. It didn't matter. She didn't matter
that she was a married woman. Didn't matter that
this might destroy her marriage. Didn't matter
that, you know, in that kind of culture, it could
have destroyed her. Didn't matter that Joseph
was saying, no, no, I don't want to do this.
She was out of control. She was willing to take
all those risks. And although we have so many
jokes in our culture about sex, ha ha ha sex,
out of control lust is no joking matter, right?
It will destroy you. It will destroy everything.
It will destroy your mind. It will destroy your
heart. It will destroy your family life. It will
destroy your marriage, your relationship, your
reputation. Even this story, it can make you
violent when it's out of control. We are told
it all just started when Potiphar's wife took
notice of Joseph. See, it just says she took
notice of him. You might say that doesn't seem
fair, just taking notice of someone. That doesn't
seem like that should be a sin. But you have
to understand that in the Hebrew there, that
word essentially means she cast her eyes on Joseph,
which is way different than noticing. That is
fixing your gaze on someone with desire. desire
and longing. Oh look, he's well built and handsome,
right? AKA, he's got a great body and he's got
a great face to go along with it. She was focused
on this. She could think of nothing else. The
way to think of it is lust is not a passing glance.
It is a practiced gaze. Or put another way, she
didn't fall into lust. She fed into lust. And
that's the thing about our culture. There are
so many ways that we can feed into lust, whether
it's internet pornography, whether it's OnlyFans,
or maybe you're just watching Game of Thrones
or something like that. It is absolutely everywhere
you look. Here's a good example. I don't know
if you guys watched the Oscars this year, but
the best picture at the Oscars this year was
a film by the name of Anora. I haven't seen it.
It might be an amazing film that makes some really
incredible But the point is, the story is about
a young stripper from Brooklyn. The film is full
of graphic nudity and sexuality. In fact, on
the IMDB, the Internet Movie Database, under
sex and nudity, it says severe. This is the best
picture of the year. This is the Oscar -winning
best picture of the year. It's the one that everybody
needs to see, right? So it's where we cast our
eyes either feeds into lust or leads out of lust,
depending on what we do there. Thomas Aquinas
said that lust is like a lion staring at a gazelle.
All it can think about is its next meal. And
Potiphar's wife was staring at Joseph. Joseph
was her next meal. And as Tim Keller said, she
had gone to bed with him so many times in her
mind. that finally she just had to go to bed
with him in reality. She couldn't stop herself,
right? Because lust is craving without control.
Now, you might say, bro, come on. Sex is a normal
appetite. You're right, it is normal. It should
be normal, but this is not normal. C .S. Lewis
has this great way to imagine how out of control
our appetites are. He says, imagine you went
to visit this different, strange country. And
when you got to the country, you went to a convenience
store and up on the top rack, you know where
all the nudie mags are usually kept, where the
little boys and girls can't see them, there were
these magazines and the covers and people would
come in and they would take these magazines and
they would take them home and then at night they
would unfold these amazing high glossy pictures
of hot dogs and hamburgers. And then in the college
dorm rooms, the guys are all putting these posters
on their walls and they're running around from
room to room staring at these posters of like
spaghetti and lasagna steaming and dripping with
cheese. And then people at night in their dark,
they pull out their phones and they start scrolling
through their phones where no one can see them.
And they're looking at these high -res images
of baked potato and steak. And then actually
you can go to these little clubs, dimly lit clubs,
where for a price, a girl will come over to you
and slowly and seductively reveal a plate full
of cake and pie. If you visited that country,
you'd be like, something's not right here. Right,
what is going on? Yes, it's okay to enjoy food,
but this is excessive. In fact, you'd probably
say the people in this country must be starving,
but they're not starving. They've actually got
lots to eat. The problem is, is that the appetite
is completely out of control. That's what love
is. That's what lust is, pardon me. It is not
craving. It is not craving sex. It's an out -of
-control craving, out -of -control appetite for
sex. Okay, that's the first thing about lust.
The second thing you gotta know about lust is
that it is passion without a promise. Passion
without a promise. You see, it is great to be
passionate, but sex was meant to take place between
two people who have made a promise to each other
and that promise is called marriage. Joseph knew
that. Joseph knew that. Look, Potiphar's wife,
she says, let's go to bed, Joseph. Let's do it.
But look at what he says. My master's withheld
nothing from me except you. Because why? Because
you are his wife. And how could I do such a wicked
thing? He says, we can't do this because you
are his wife, AKA we can't do this because you're
not my wife. That's the problem. Joseph is saying
this is not a sin because it's sexual. This is
a sin because we're not married. And the Old
Testament and the New Testament are crystal clear.
Sex is designed to take place in an exclusive
permanent commitment that is called marriage.
You can't have the passion without that promise.
Oh, Rob, you know, I thought Trinity was relevant.
I thought we were kind of a forward -looking
progressive kind of church. This sounds so old
-fashioned. Even high schoolers today are talking
about body counts. What's the big deal? Well,
it's actually a really big deal. See, sex is
supposed to be a way of creating a complete life
unity between two people. The physical union.
It's supposed to go along with the emotional
union and the legal union and the social union
and all those personal unions. They're all supposed
to go together. Sex is a way of saying these
two people have become one in every way, not
just in one way, not just in one way. And that's
why Paul says this. Paul says, don't you realize
that if a man joins himself to a prostitute,
he becomes one body with her? The two are united
into one. Sex is supposed to be a way of saying
all the parts of my life are joined together
with all the parts of your life, not just the
physical part. Potiphar's wife, she just wanted
the sex part. She didn't want the commitment
part. She didn't want the ongoing relationship
part. She didn't want the emotional part or the
legal part or the social part or any of those
parts. She says, just give me that part of you.
Joseph says, I can't give you that part of me.
I can't give you one part of me without giving
you the whole of me. That is, in fact, the Christian
view of sex. You can't rip one part off of the
whole part. Sex in the Christian view holds together
body and soul, body and spirit, body and emotion.
It won't let you separate them. Potiphar's wife
wants to rip one of those apart and just do that.
And that actually, if you talk to somebody who
has been involved in a lot of sex without commitment,
that's how they feel. They feel ripped apart.
You've ripped one part of this off of the rest
of it. Again, C .S. Lewis, he has a great way
of talking about this. Again, he likes to talk
about food, but he says, imagine someone who
likes to chew, chew, chew food just to get the
taste out of it, but then they spit it out. They
don't want to actually ingest it. They don't
want the food to actually go in and become part
of them. They just want the pleasure of tasting
it. Now, when that happens with food, you know
what we call it? We call it a disorder. But is
that okay then? Is it with sex? No, it is also
a disorder when it comes to sex. Hookup culture
is a disorder. You can't just separate the physical
pleasure. from the spiritual and the emotional
and the legal even side of this. The passion
and the promise have to go together. And that's
the last thing to know about lust is it's not
just craving without control. It's not just passion
without a promise. It's also pleasure without
the person, right? Lust is the opposite of love.
Love says, I want you the person. And the pleasure
is optional. But Lust says, I want pleasure,
but the person, you the person, are actually
disposable. And that's exactly what you see happen
with Potiphar's wife, right? When she realizes
she can't get the pleasure that she wants, guess
what? She says, I don't want the person either.
She accuses him of something that's actually
a capital offense. She's willing to send this
guy off to his death because. He wouldn't give
her the pleasure she wanted. And when that happened,
she didn't actually care about the person, Joseph.
It was just what he could give her. And so, because
he won't give it to her, he's gonna discard him,
right? So sin, this is what it does. It takes
a really good thing, sexual pleasure, sexual
desire, and it turns it into craving without
control, it turns it into passion without a promise,
and it turns it into pleasure without a person.
Now, that's what we learned from Potiphar's wife.
But what can we learn from Joseph? What can Joseph
teach us about how we deal with lust? When it
shows up, because it will show up. And he's gonna
essentially show us two things. That the way
he deals with it is by, first, controlling his
actions, and secondly, focusing his thoughts.
First, what he does is he controls. He does a
couple of really important things here in the
heat of the moment to deal with lust when it
came knocking at the door. The first thing he
did was he just stayed away. He didn't just refuse
to go to bed with her. He refused to even be
near her, right? Look at this, right? And though
she spoke to Joseph day by day, he refused to
go to bed with her or even be with her. Now,
some people, again, will say, oh, Joseph, you're
so weak. Come on, you're such a prude. How cowardly.
You can't control yourself, but no, Joseph is
not being weak here. He is being wise here. He
knew that proximity breeds vulnerability. In
fact, it takes more courage for you to set some
kind of boundary when it comes to sex than it
is for you to tiptoe all over the boundaries
to see how close you can get to the edge, how
long you can linger in the wrong place without
caving in. And I think if we're honest, Are there
places you're hanging out online or in person
where your integrity is being eroded and when
you are getting worn down? Joseph teaches us
just stay away from those places. But it doesn't
even work for him. He tries to stay away but
he can't, so he has to do the next thing which
is run away. He left his cloak in her hand, and
he ran, ran, ran out of the house. When she made
her move, Joseph didn't stick around to, let's
talk about this. He didn't stick around and say,
listen, let's pray about this. No, he just ran,
and sometimes the most spiritual thing you can
do in these situations is just run like crazy.
You may only have a few nanoseconds to make this
decision, but as Paul says, flee from sexual
immorality. You know, don't overestimate your
self -control. Oh, I can handle it. Can you?
No. Instead, just... But it wasn't just Joseph's
actions, it wasn't just that he stayed away,
it wasn't just that he ran away, but also Joseph
had focused his thoughts on this matter and that
is also what saved him. It wasn't the momentary
decision he made in the heat of the moment, but
it was, he had decided well ahead of time what
he believed about lust, what he believed about
sex, and what he believed about marriage. Joseph
had clearly thought through the meaning of marriage.
He knew what he thought about it, right? He says,
how could I do such a wicked thing and sin against
God? Why is Joseph bringing God into this, into
sex? Because for Joseph, sex wasn't something
that was casual. It was sacred. It was a God
thing. My question to you is, is God part of
your thinking about sex? Do you think it's sacred?
You don't have to agree with Joseph, right? But
you just need to know that for the past 2 ,000
years of church history, whether it's Orthodox
or Protestant or Roman Catholic thinking, they
have all understood, they've all agreed on this.
Even Judaism and Hinduism and Islam for centuries,
these religions have disagreed on many, many
things, but they all agree. Sexual intimacy is
a God thing that belongs in marriage. So like
Joseph. You gotta bring God into your thinking
about sex and marriage and let Joseph do it ahead
of time because the backseat of a steamed up
car is not the place to think about what do I
think about sex and what do I think about marriage?
So Joseph had clearly thought through the meaning
of marriage, but he also, or at least we also
should consider the mystery of marriage. You
see, lust says sex is purely physical, but the
Bible says, no, no, no, actually, something deeper
is happening, right? When two people become one
flesh, there's a mystery going on. And the mystery
is, it's about Christ and the church. What this
means is, let me try to explain, sex isn't just
union between two people, it's actually a symbol
of the intimacy and the love that God has for
you. In fact, Ronald Rolheiser, he goes so far
as to say sex is a sacrament. Just like we come
to this table, today we're gonna come to this
table, communion as a sacrament to remember and
to kind of relive the reality of Christ's sacrifice,
that's this sacrament. Sex within marriage is
a sacrament that points us to the reality of
God's covenant love for his people. where he
called his bride in the Bible, right? So this
is a love, this is a love that no spouse or no
fantasy or no partner could ever match. So the
point is that lust is not just wrong, it's actually
too small, right? It aims too low. Lust seeks
this moment of pleasure when we were made for
this eternal intimacy with God and sex is meant
to be a pointer, a sign, a reminder of that love.
So, so. How do we deal with lust? Like Joseph,
control our actions. And like Joseph, we focus
our thoughts. You gotta be ready to run when
the time comes, but you also gotta do some thinking
now. But what is the meaning of marriage? What
is the mystery of sex? Understand that before
we get ourselves into hot water. But there's
one more thing we just gotta say before we end.
And that is, Well, frankly, some of us are less
like Joseph and we're more like Potiphar's wife.
We've let lust control us. We've suffered and
other people have suffered too as a result. And
you may be sitting here and you feel actually
wounded or betrayed or dehumanized because of
the lustful behavior that someone inflicted on
you. So the question we have to end on is, is
there any healing for this? Is there hope for
people who are suffering from lust? And the answer
is, of course there is. Jesus meets us not in
our perfection, but in our sin, especially he
meets us in our sin. You know, in John chapter
eight, a woman who was caught in the act of adultery
was pulled before Jesus. And according to the
law, she should have been stoned to death. But
what does Jesus do? He looks at her and he says,
I don't condemn you, go and sin no more. Only
Jesus can say something like this, by the way.
Only Jesus can on the one hand call sin a sin
and then say, but I don't condemn you for that
sin. And why is that? Because Jesus himself was
already condemned on the cross for all of your
sins and all of my sins. So there is hope because
Jesus meets us in these moments of struggle and
sin. But there is also hope because your story's
not. If you looked at Jesus' family tree, you
would actually be shocked. It is filled with
people who struggled and in many cases struggled
sexually. These are not people of perfection.
They were shaped by lust over and over again.
You got David, who lusted after Bathsheba. He's
in the family tree. He slept with her. Then he
covered it up by murdering her husband. And then
Judah, he slept with a woman that was actually
his daughter -in -law. and his daughter -in -law
had actually pretended to be a prostitute so
that she could sleep with her father -in -law.
It was all so screwed up. Solomon, he lust took
over for him so much that he had something like
700 wives and 300 concubines. These are not side
characters. These are the people through whom
God brought Jesus into the world. He didn't skip
over them. He wove them into the story. And you
know what, your story might be messy too, but
it's not over. If you've fallen into lust, you're
not disqualified from grace. You are exactly
the kind of person that Jesus came to redeem.
I'm gonna end with a story about a guy who really
struggled with lust, but found healing. His name
was Augustine. And before he became one of the
greatest theologians in Christian history, before
he was a bishop, before he was Saint Augustine,
he was just a young man struggling with lust.
In his teenage years, he became sexually active.
He had girlfriends, I think one girlfriend he
had for a very long time, for years, but he refused
to marry her. He eventually sent her away, and
then he replaced her with somebody else that
he could sleep with. He was longing for meaning.
He was longing for love. He'll actually say he
was longing for God, but he could not imagine
living without the pleasures of lust. And once
he even prayed this prayer, he said, Lord, make
me chaste. But not yet. Not yet. Now that's an
honest prayer, right? That's a deeply human prayer.
But then came the moment that everything changed
for him. One day he was in a garden in Milan
and he was just grieving. He was weeping in the
garden, so tormented by the weight of all this.
And then he heard the voice of a child singing
over and over again, take and read, take and
read, take and read, take and read. Seemed weird,
but then he realized this was actually God speaking
to him. And so he ran inside and he opened up
his Bible, take and read. He opened it up and
the very place he flipped to was Romans chapter
13. And when he opened it up and said this, he
said, let us behave decently as in the daytime,
not in carousing and drunkenness, not in sexual
immorality and debauchery, rather clothe yourself
with the Lord Jesus Christ and do not think about
how to gratify the sins of the flesh. And in
that moment, Augustine would later write that
a light, a light flooded into his heart. and
all the darkness and doubt vanished away. Now
his temptations didn't vanish overnight, but
something has changed. His desires had been reoriented.
His heart had been captured not by lust, but
by a greater love, the love of God in Jesus Christ.
He would eventually write this. He would say,
God, you've made us for yourself, and our hearts
are restless until they rest in you. So listen.
Wherever you are in this struggle, whether you're
resisting like Joseph, whether you've fallen
into a mess like Potiphar's wife, or whether
you've lived years with this like Augustine,
story's not over. Lust doesn't have to win. There's
grace for the broken, there's healing for the
ashamed, and there's a new start for all of us
as we turn to Jesus Christ. Thanks be to God.
Amen. Thank you for listening to this week's
episode of Trinity Sermons. This sermon was recorded
at Trinity Church Streetsville in Mississauga,
Ontario on April 6th, 2025.