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Let us give reverent attention now to the reading of God's Word as it is recorded in Paul's letter to the Colossians, the third chapter. I begin the reading at the verse number one. "If then you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set

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your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth. For you have died and your life is hid with Christ in God. When Christ, who is our life, appears, then you also will appear with him in glory. Put to death therefore whatever is earthly in you, fornication, impurity, passion, evil desire, and covetousness

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which is idolatry. On account of these the wrath of God is coming. In these you once walked when you lived in them, but now put them all away, anger, wrath, malice, slander, and foul talk from your mouth. Do not lie to one another, seeing that you have put off the old nature with its practices and have put on the new nature

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which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of the Creator. Here there cannot be Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave, free man, but Christ is all and in all. Put on then as God's chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassion, kindness, lowliness, meekness, and

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patience, forbearing one another. And if one of you has a complaint against another, forgiving each other. As the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive. And above all these, put on love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony. And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which

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indeed you were called in the one body, and be thankful. Let the Word of Christ dwell in you richly. Teach and admonish one another in all wisdom, and sing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs with thankfulness in your hearts to God. And whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus,

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giving thanks to God the Father through him. And may the same Spirit that inspired these words incline our hearts to their understanding. Pray with me. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, amen. I think the handwriting indicates that it was a man. This handwriting is angular,

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not as smooth and flowing as most women's handwriting is, and probably young, because the message is very terse. It just says on one of our few "I wish" cards, "I wish that the minister would preach a sermon on lust. I need help." Lust is the wrong side of love. Lust is selfishness. It is centered in the ego.

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Lust manipulates and coerces and deceives people. Lust turns people into things. Love says, "I love you and offer myself to you." Lust says, "I love me and I want you." Now I recognize that not all within the sound of my voice at this moment are troubled with lust. It may very well be that the sin with which you

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struggle is of an altogether different order. Yet we're concerned in this series of sermons in Lent of this year with victorious living, and it is quite obvious that some people are being defeated by lust. Take the testimony of this young man. "I need help," he says, "or look about you." Increasing divorce,

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increasing adultery, increasing fornication, increasing pornography, increasing incest, increasing rape, increasing illegitimacy, increasing venereal disease. The testimony is on every hand, but the problem of lust is all about us. James says in the first chapter of his epistle that persons are

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tempted, lured and enticed by their own desire, and this gives birth to sin, and sin brings forth death. And as we look about us, we see many people dying from the sin of lust. Furthermore, we are all sexual beings, and even if we are not being tempted by lust at this particular time or circumstance in our life, this

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does not mean that we might not be under attack at some other time or under some other circumstance. So I turn to this theme, "Lust, the Wrong Side of Love," and ask you to think with me of what Scripture says of it. Now we've got to recognize that sex is not a principal theme in the Bible. The Bible is not a

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sex manual of any kind. Most of the time when the Bible is talking about sex, it's talking about pagan religions which went on about the Holy Land, those religions, most of them, worshipped in a kind of sexual orgy. Or again, when the Bible speaks of sex, it's talking to legalistic individuals who think that

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lust is something only of the body, and they do not recognize that it is also of the Spirit. But the Bible, while it doesn't make sex a principal theme, certainly is concerned about each one of us and about what we, by the grace of God, can be. And therefore, it does have some things to say on this subject, and I

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select from these things one of the most beautiful for our thinking this morning. What Paul writes to the Colossians, "Put to death what is earthly in you, immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, put them away. Put on compassion, kindness, lowliness, and meekness, and patience, and above all, love. Let the peace of Christ

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rule in your heart. Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly." Now notice, the first thing Paul says is this, "Put off, put off immorality, impurity, passion, and evil desire." The word "put off" means literally to disrobe, to remove from yourself, to lay aside the garments, the ugly garments of ungodliness. And notice

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that when Paul lists the things there to be put aside, he lists not only physical things but also attitudes of the mind. See, we don't often realize that what goes on in our minds is just as important as that which goes on in our bodies. You see, if your mind is free of lust, then your body will be much more

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easily controlled in staying away from it. But if your mind is fed by lustful thoughts, then it is much easier for your body to follow after. Remember what Thomas Aquinas said, "The soul is colored by its thoughts." Let me put that to you this way, and this is a very careful thing to notice because it's the first

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step in overcoming lust. If I were to ask you to rate sexual sins on a scale of 10 to 1, 10 being the worst and 1 being the least bad, how would you list them? Well, I think most people would say the rape of a child would be the worst of all things. They'd make that a 10. And maybe they would make homosexuality in one form or

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another an 8 or a 9. Perhaps they would put adultery at about a number 5. Fornication they might put at a number 3. And then lustful thoughts, they would probably score very low, a 1 or a 2 or perhaps a 0. That is contrary to what the Bible says. Jesus says to us, "Don't even look at another person in a lustful

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manner, for if you do, you have already committed adultery with that person in your heart." And Paul echoes this by telling us to put off lustful thoughts. Now, that doesn't mean that we are going to be able to go through life without any lustful thoughts. I mean, think of what goes on about us. I mean, every time

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you look at a perfume ad or an ad for blue jeans or underwear or cigarettes, every time you go to the movies, every time you turn on the television set or pick up a magazine or perhaps even go to a place of culture to see a fine painting, again and again temptations to lustful thoughts are in front of us. And

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so lustful thoughts will come into our minds. That happens to all of us. And we ought not to think that that's what's being referred to here. You know, Charles Spurgeon, one of the greatest Christians of the century, used to have such thoughts on occasion. And he actually began to think that he might not be a

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Christian because he had those kinds of thoughts. And then he talked to his grandfather, who was a very saintly gentleman, and that man said to him, "Nonsense. These are not your thoughts. They are the devil's brats. Don't own them as if they were your own ideas. Give them neither house room nor heart room."

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Now what the old man was saying, and what we need to remember, is this. Lustful thoughts will sometimes come to us from the outside. When they become dangerous is when we begin to dwell on them, when we turn our imagination loose on them, when we begin to fantasize concerning them. Of this, Paul says, "Put that off."

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Because attraction can become a form of captivity. Now the way to put these thoughts off is by what we call substitution. Our minds are so made that we cannot simply say to ourselves, "I'm not going to think that thought again," and instantly stop thinking of it. I mean, if I say to you, "Don't think of a

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banana wearing a fur coat." I mean, even not to think of that, you have to think of it. We can't just say, "I'll stop thinking of this or that." What you do is you substitute some other thought for the pernicious thought. What I mean is this. Suppose you look at the temptations of lust that come to you. You notice that

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they come at certain places or certain times or in certain situations. So what you do is you seek to break the chain of events that leads up to those times and to those situations. If, for example, a certain soap opera tempts you to lustful thoughts, then that's the time of the day when you go for your walk. Or if you find

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a particular secretary that leads you in that way, then you never allow yourself to be in your office with that woman alone. Or if that can't be avoided, you make sure that when she is there, there's a great deal of business that must be done so that your mind cannot wonder. You are substituting, you see, that which is

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pure for that which is impure. Or perhaps when you get into a very difficult time, you have some Christian brother or sister whom you can call so that they can give you support and encouragement in the time of weakness. This is very much like the principle of Alcoholics Anonymous. When you find yourself in a

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difficult place, you summon help. You put off, you see, by a process of substitution. That leads us immediately to the next thing Paul says, because having said "put off" these wrong things, he goes on to say "put on" compassion and kindness and meekness and most of all, love. What he's offering here is a kind

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of catalog of substitution. And the one that interests me the most is meekness. You know, most people think that meekness is to be sissified, lily-livered, weak. That's not the meaning of the word at all. Meekness means to be disciplined, to be guided and directed by God. A great war horse ridden by a warrior into a

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battle, when that horse was in the midst of battle, even though all kinds of tumult was raging about it, that horse was still expected to respond instantly to the slightest command by pull of the reins of the warrior. He could not be diverted by other things. He had to be instantly responsive to his master. A

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horse that was like that was called a meek horse. You've heard people say that the strongest person in the world is the person that can master himself. Well, there's a certain amount of wisdom in that. But the Bible says something grander than that. The Bible says this, that the greatest person in the world is

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the person who offers himself to be mastered by God. That's what Jesus meant when he said in the Beatitudes that the meek shall inherit the earth. The meek are those who respond to the leadership of God. And this is what is key in this process of substitution that I'm talking about. If lust is the wrong side of love,

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the opposite of lust is chastity. Now, of course, as soon as I say chastity, people immediately think of a colorless, anemic kind of ludicrous lifestyle. Lust is very much in these days and chastity is out. But that's very weak-minded thinking. You see, the person who is truly chaste still loves, still has passions, still has

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desires and urges. The difference is that this person has allowed his desires and urges and loves and passion to be controlled by the will of God. Let me put this in very practical terms. If you find yourself thinking too much about another person, if you find yourself comparing your wife or your husband to that other

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person, if you find yourself fantasizing about that other person, if you plan ways to be with that other person and the plans are kept secret, if you find yourself in conversations with this other person becoming more and more personal and sometimes sensual, if you give secret gifts that you don't let

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your wife or husband know about, if you find yourself wanting to be in physical contact with this other person, holding hands, sitting very close, if a boy says to you, "If you love me, you'll do it," or if a girl says to you, "I'm going to treat you like a piece of fruit. I'm going to peel you and squeeze you and take all

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the juice out of you and then throw the rest away," if you find yourself doing what Jeremiah warned against, selective perception, so that you hear only what you want to hear and see only what you want to see. Paul's counsel is, "Put that off," and you put it off by putting on compassion and kindness and meekness

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and love. That is, you work harder at building your own marriage or you enter properly into those things which are appropriate to a person of your age and in your relationships and in your situation. See, what I'm talking about is not repressing sex and not indiscriminately releasing sex, but rather

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redeeming sex by accepting the authority of God in all of your life. Paul says that this is done by letting the peace of Christ rule in your heart, by letting his Word dwell in you. Now let me take just a moment to review. We've called lust the wrong side of love. We've noted that it's prevalent. We've noted that the

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Scriptures have some things to say about it. Principally, it says to put off lustful thoughts by a process of substitution. This substitution is occurred by putting on those things which are good and especially meekness, which brings you into response to the will of God. Now what I would add to that, and the last

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thought I want to share, is this is accomplished by letting Christ into your heart. By letting Him in, not out of obligation, but out of genuine love. John Seeley, an English author, has a book called "Ecce Homo" and in that book he pictures two patriots. Now one man is a patriot out of a sense of duty. He feels

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it is the obligation for every person to be willing to stand up for his country. That's his patriotism and he does it. The other patriot genuinely and profoundly loves his country. He's willing to offer himself out of his love for it. Now in the story, a person comes and attempts to bribe both of these people to betray

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their country. The first, the man who is patriotic only out of a sense of duty, he finds his palms itching and he thinks to himself all that he might do with the money that is offered for his treason. But the other patriot, the one who loves his country, the very suggestion of betraying it is so repugnant to him that

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he instantly and immediately and without argument rejects it. Now that's putting off. And you see the difference between the two men is love. The one does what he does out of duty, the other does what he does out of love. Let Jesus Christ be the love center of your life. You know psychologists are agreed that happiness

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is not best found by pursuit. I mean happiness comes about not so much in what we go after this way as it does in surrendering ourselves to some person or to some project that is greater than we are. Self-love turns to ashes. Ambition robs you of friends. Power corrupts and the more absolute it is the more

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corrupt you become. Wealth has a way of inhibiting compassion and lust eventually moves to a secret kind of disgust. But when you offer yourself lovingly to someone or something that is greater than you are, then you discover the bliss of living. This is what Jesus meant when he said, "Anyone who will save his life

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will lose it and only that one who is willing to lose his life for my sake and for the gospel's sake will find it." The point is you've got to love God more than you love yourself and the only way that can happen is when Jesus Christ by the Holy Spirit lives in your heart. Because you see he disciplines a life. He

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brings a life to point and purpose. He brings it to purity. He crystallizes your will and that's what purity is. Purity is to will one thing. God's will. And the scripture says of such ones, "Blessed are the pure in heart for they shall see God." My friends, you know sex is not real. You can't weigh it. You can't put it in a box.

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You can't hold it in your hand. Sex has no actual identity. It only exists because we are sexual beings. It is only part of us. It has no other existence. Therefore, to make it central in life is to worship a non-thing, an illusion, a lie. What Jesus Christ does when he takes over sovereignty in a life is to replace

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illusion with the reality of his love. And that shows pointedly and perfectly that lust is a lie. So when sex presents itself as a Savior or lust presents itself as a Lord, let Christ's words, as Paul says, dwell in you richly. Think, for example, of that time when he was in the wilderness being tempted. Let the words

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that were his then become your words when you find yourself in a wilderness of lustful temptations. Do you remember what he said? He said, "It is written, 'Man shall not live by the things that feed the body alone, but by every word that comes forth from the mouth of God.'" And do you remember what he said next? "You shall

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not tempt the Lord your God." When Jesus Christ is in you, you see, to allow yourself to be tempted or to enter into some lustful activity is to involve Christ in that thing. And Paul says, "This we must not do, for it profanes not only us but him." And Jesus sums it up by saying, "You shall not tempt the Lord your

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God." And then, there in that wilderness of temptation, Jesus said, and we can say after him, "Be gone, Satan, for it is written, 'You shall love the Lord your God, and him only shall you serve.'" When you address any lustful temptation that moves into your life like that, in the name and the power and the Spirit of

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Christ, in his very words, you will have victory over it. I hope this helps my young friend who wrote his "I Wish" card. I hope it gives him victory over lust, for lust is the wrong side of love. Let us pray.

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Thoughts are easiest words, our easier deeds are most difficult. Father, translate thy Word into our deeds. Grant that we might so experience the reality of Christ in our lives that we might be able to put off evil thoughts and deeds by putting on the things he would have us do, by letting him reign in us. We

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praise thee that thou hast given us the beautiful gift of love, and sex is a way of expressing it. We pray that thou wilt enable us to so hold up and honor your gift that we might not profane it by anything less than you would have us do, and to you be the honor and glory forever and forever. Amen.

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