Mark Clark [00:00:01]:
Hey, everyone, Mark Clark here. Welcome to the Mark Clark podcast. Hopefully your day is going awesome. Today's episode, we are jumping into a very important topic. It is week three of the four week series called Trapped, where we're exploring four of the seven deadly sins. And today we're diving into the sin of lust, which is so prevalent in our culture today for a whole bunch of different reasons. From billboards to tv shows to social media, lust is everywhere, impacting our thoughts, our relationships, and our spiritual lives. I'm going to share some stories from marriage counseling, scientific insights, psychology, the Bible, philosophy on how lust affects our brains, and powerful biblical teaching that offer a way out of this sin that so easily entangles so many of us.
Mark Clark [00:00:46]:
We will explore how to shift our desires, find freedom in Christ, and live a life defined by purity and true connection to God and others. So let's get started on this super important topic, that of lust. Let's go. Today we are talking about the sin of lust. Now, I know you don't think this is probably very relevant in our culture, but almost every billboard you go by, every television, every song is driven by the sin of lust. That defines our culture in more ways than any of the sins that we're talking about. It's crazy. So how do we actually deal with the lust that is our lives and the constant temptation around our culture? Okay, listen, I'm doing marriage counseling.
Mark Clark [00:01:23]:
I do a bunch of marriage counseling. And recently I did marriage counseling where she was looking at the ground. He looked at me and he said, I ended up cheating on her. I said, how did that happen? He said, well, it began small. It began by looking at things in the Internet. And then I started engaging my fantasies a little bit. And then it was all private. I never think it was going to amount to anything.
Mark Clark [00:01:41]:
And now here I am, multiple cheating. The secret sin of lust, it starts small, guys. And then it grows and it grows and becomes real, and we can't stop it. At least in this person's life, his fantasy life actually started to then affect others, affect him and his relationship with God, him and his relationship with his family, him and his relationship with the world itself. This is why the sin of lust is so important. Let me define lust for you. It is a strong passion or longing, especially for sexual desire. That's the dictionary definition when we objectify another person for our own personal pleasure.
Mark Clark [00:02:17]:
Of course, in the garden of Eden, this actually happened where they were looking at the tree and so on. It was pleasing to the eye. It had an aesthetical power over Eve and Adam, and it deranged their minds, so she wasn't thinking straight. And that's why they fell into sin. That's lust. It can derail us, right? That's how we feel. We can mess up our marriages by getting involved in lust. We can mess up our very souls by getting involved in lust.
Mark Clark [00:02:51]:
I remember going to a grocery store near our house and going down the aisles. I was talking to someone, and someone said, you know, if you come into this grocery store after 06:00 p.m. and you flip over a pineapple and you put it in your cart, and you walk down the aisle, everyone knows that that's what the swingers do. So then they'll invite you over, and you'll have a swinging party, and you'll start trading out your spouses. And I was like, what? That's crazy. So I got up on stage on a Sunday in that neighborhood, and I said, guys, there was thousands of people there. I said, everybody needs to go to this grocery store at 06:00 p.m. flip a pineapple over, and let's confuse the sin in our city.
Mark Clark [00:03:26]:
Let's. All right, this is kind of what kind of messed up culture needs to go out and do this? Flip pineapples over. But here's what. Where we are. So there's a couple big ways this thing plays out in our lives. Pornography, promiscuity, can derail people's lives. Two most vicious attacks on the God ordained version of sexuality are these things. God creates sexuality in this beautiful thing.
Mark Clark [00:03:51]:
The context of marriage wants us to flourish in it, and then we take it and we twist it into this thing called lust. Its lives end up driven by it so much that people literally become enslaved to it. Soren Kierkegaard, who is this philosopher, talked about the idea of, you have the aesthetical life and the covenantal life, and the aesthetical life is basically just living what makes you feel good. And our culture is right there. They say, do whatever makes you feel good, versus a covenantal life, which I've covenanted myself to something even when I'm not feeling it. And the irony, Kierkegaard says, is people in a culture who lives according to their feelings are actually enslaved. They're the true slaves because they're enslaved to how they feel, even though they think they're free. They're enslaved to the sparkle.
Mark Clark [00:04:34]:
They're enslaved to the constant comparison. It's never ending, because there's always someone hotter and sexier to make you feel this way or that. And it doesn't end. So when we follow that instinct, we die. But of course, there is a way out of it. As we've been saying through this series, the gospel is what's going to get you out of it. A spirit filled life. Romans chapter eight, verse 13 says this, if you live according to the flesh, you'll die, but if by the spirit you put to deeds the death of the body, you will live.
Mark Clark [00:05:04]:
So let's explore both sides of this life according to the sin and death and how it brings life. When we actually kill this sin, it gets in between your relationship first with both people and God. What does God say to do? Flee it. Fight it. Run from it. Be killing sin, John Owen said, or it will be killing you. Second Timothy, chapter two. Flee also.
Mark Clark [00:05:28]:
Youthful lusts pursue righteousness, faith, love, and peace. First, Peter two. I urge you, as aliens and exiles, to abstain from the desires of the flesh that wage war against the soul. See, it's your soul that is actually in the midst of this war. One Corinthians six. Shun fornication. Every sin that a person commits is outside the body, but the fornicator sins against the body itself. First.
Mark Clark [00:05:51]:
Thessalonians four. This is the will of God, your sanctification that each one of you know how to control your own body in holiness and honor, not with lustful passion like those who do not know God. Matthew, chapter five. This is one of the biggest and most convicting into our culture. But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lust has already committed adultery with her in his heart. This is what he's trying to say. See, this is why this. Why does God say all this? Why we struggle with this sin so much.
Mark Clark [00:06:22]:
That's why God talks about it, because he wants to save us from struggling with this sin. It's first, it's because of us. We are sinful in our nature. We're fallen. We have proclivities towards sin and pleasure and stuff that short term wins. Even to stuff God says run from. It's like, we need to figure it out for ourselves. Like, my kids don't skateboard without a helmet.
Mark Clark [00:06:41]:
And then they go, I'm cool enough. Boom. And it's like, dummy, right? It's like, you need to figure this out for yourself. Are you kidding? So it's a personal, individual problem. We feed it. We see the naked person. We see the billboard. We see the porn.
Mark Clark [00:06:57]:
Instead of turning away, we feed it. And it starts small and it grows. And every time we feed it, it grows. And so what do we got? We got to starve it. We watch that thing. We know this even scientifically, science is finding all of this stuff is actually damaging our brain process the way that we think. We're carving out the realities of our brains called neuroplasticity. And if you do studies on how pornography is affecting our culture, how lust is affecting our culture, it's a rewiring process.
Mark Clark [00:07:26]:
And one writer I was doing this thing. Just as plastic is changeable and malleable, we can change the shape of the brain. Your brain is actually constantly changing and molding itself. It's called plasticity. So everything you do makes pathways and connections so we can go faster next time. It's like when you're doing a golf swing, it's constantly you're carving out things in your brain. The brain can change itself. It can be a different brain today than it was yesterday.
Mark Clark [00:07:53]:
And so one writer has said this. Who speaks into this issue often, we can train our brain in something and then grow that area, which means we have more capacity in that area to process incoming stimuli. So if you train a lot of math, your brain area to respond to math calculations is going to grow and get better at this. Everything that we do each time and every day shapes our brain to what it is. If one watches porn or lustful images, they train their brain regions responsible for porn processing it a lot more. So we need more. We need to understand we're actually feeding it and shaping our brain. So we actually need to fight that reality and stop feeding it so our brain doesn't actually start craving it.
Mark Clark [00:08:32]:
It's like when you're eating carbs, you're going to start craving carbs more and more. The only way to actually stop craving it is to starve yourself of them. Secondly, so it's not just because of us, it's because of them. And what I mean by them is the world itself. It's not just a personal challenge, it's a social challenge. We live in Babylon, right? We live in the context of a culture of lust. We don't live in heaven yet. We live in a culture defined by this sin.
Mark Clark [00:09:00]:
Every commercial, every advertisement, when we scroll, we can be on news. We can get CNN, Fox News. There's half naked people on there going, hey, buy my product. It's connected to money. We know sex sells. So people who struggle with this sin are constantly fighting it. And we got to recognize that and we got to realize it's a thing. We can't be naive.
Mark Clark [00:09:21]:
I remember I was in this men's group, like, 15 years ago. And one of the guys handed another guy this book that talked about lust and sin and how to kind of fight it. And the guy took it home and he threw it on his bedside table. And his wife came by. He had gone to work, and she picked it up. She's like, what's this? And she reads this book for the day. And of course, the opening story is about some guy driving a jaguar. And he cranks his neck around because he sees some girl jogging and he crashes his jaguar.
Mark Clark [00:09:52]:
And he's like, oh, shoot. And, you know, the opening story is like, basically I crashed my jaguar by looking at this girl running in Lululemons or whatever. And he gets home from work and his wife's like, what is this? And he's like, I don't know. Some guy. She goes, what's his name? He's like, Matt. She's like, Matt, sick. I never want you hanging out with Matt again. And she tosses the book in the garbage.
Mark Clark [00:10:13]:
It's like, guys, we can't be naive to the reality that this is a fight in people's lives. And it's normal. That's why it's one of the seven deadly sins. It didn't just arrive this year. It's been around for 2000 years. And long before that. And long before that long. And Jesus knows this is a thing.
Mark Clark [00:10:33]:
That's why he says, when you lust after a woman, it's adultery in your heart. And I'd rather you pluck out your eyeballs than go to hell with two eyeballs. That's in the sermon on the mount. There is a thin line in our reality. We have to understand between beauty and fantasy with that beauty. This is what I love about my wife. Right? She knows if we're at an airport or restaurant, she knows even if my back is turned to the restaurant, I already know that a beautiful woman has walked in the restaurant. It's like I got, like, spidey senses or something.
Mark Clark [00:11:04]:
Like, it's like we can't be naive to the fact that this is inherited in us. God made women beautiful, made men beautiful. I mean, you look at, like, the creation itself. Women are actually the peak of creation. He, like, makes all these things and he makes women last. It's like he's not done with creation until he creates the woman. It's like, yes. Amen.
Mark Clark [00:11:28]:
Let's go. The women in the crowd are like, what's up? Yeah, I got men, but okay, women. Now, creation's very good. And we know that I could be standing at the Grand Canyon. Sorry, not me, because I'm a pastor. But you guys could be standing at the Grand Canyon, looking out at the Grand Canyon, this beautiful thing. And a woman could walk by and you'd look away from the Grand Canyon. That's just, that's what happens.
Mark Clark [00:11:51]:
And women know this too, by the way. They know that women are the greatest thing because, and one writer pointed out years ago, in the fifties, that women, they don't dress up for men. By the way, I know all you men in the room. Oh, that woman put a lot of space time into herself today. She must have been doing that for me. Women dress up for other women. That's the reality. So here's the culture that we're living in and why this is difficult.
Mark Clark [00:12:17]:
I'm going to give you some stats on pornography. So $3,075 is spent on pornography every second on the Internet. At least 30% of all data transferred across the Internet is porn related. There was an average increase of 24% in traffic during the lockdown. During COVID of pornography, more than 50% of people engaging in online pornographic interactions admitted to losing interest in sexual intercourse. In real life, porn sites receive more regular traffic than Netflix, Amazon and Twitter combined. Each month, 90% of teens and 96% of young adults are either encouraging, accepting or neutral when they talk about porn with their friends. 64% of young people actively seek out pornography weekly or more often.
Mark Clark [00:13:07]:
Most of them hide online behavior from their parents. 51% of male students and 32% of female students viewed porn sites before their teenage years. The first exposure to pornography among men is twelve years old on average. And within the church, 64% of christian men and a high percent of christian women say they watch porn at least once per month. Those are the facts. Growing up, it was very different for me, right? You'd find some weird porn magazine behind the convenience store and it was all, you know, it'd be like, oh, now it's like it's on the Internet. It's a different world that we're living in. So here's a couple random facts.
Mark Clark [00:13:41]:
The overall favorite time for viewing pornography is 11:00 p.m. on Sunday nights. Pornhub, which is the biggest porn site in the world, ranks in the top ten visited sites globally. Out of every website on the Internet. 42 billion visits a year. ABC News Nightline talks about the idea that Hollywood's x rated cousin is a $12 billion a year industry. Pornography. There's estimated 370 million pornographic websites on the Internet.
Mark Clark [00:14:10]:
370 million. It's easier to access than fast food industries try to convince you that it's harmless. So here's what we have to point out over and over again. It's hard because we live like in Babylon. We live in a world that doesn't value the things that Jesus values. So Brian Walsh points out this. He says, we live in this kind of world, that in all of its piety, it serves to give an air of normality to an idolatrously constructed culture, functioning as a polite cover up for a comfortable life in the empire. The crisis of Christianity is that Christians, by and large, accept the empire that they live in as normal.
Mark Clark [00:14:49]:
Christians should feel disjointed and out of place in the civilization which divinizes things. The practicing Christian should look like a martian in this world. He or she will never feel at home in the commodity kingdom. If the Christian does feel at home, something is drastically wrong. See, this is a different world now, and this is the world we actually live in. And this is why no amount of accountability could keep you from it. Yes, get accountability, but you've got to change what you want to do. That's what has to change if you don't want to be someone defined by this sin.
Mark Clark [00:15:25]:
That's why Jesus goes. The gospel doesn't work on your externals, just commanding you of things. It works on your heart. It not only changes what you do, it changes what you want to do, it changes what you take joy in. It changes what you celebrate. And there's even science behind that, which can give you hope, because those feelings actually need to change. The major ways that porn can and lust can rewire your brain can actually be reversed, can actually be retrained. That's what the scientists and the psychologists tell us.
Mark Clark [00:15:57]:
So in a sense, Aristotle got it wrong. He thought our whole essence is in our heart, but the reality is the brain ends up being the command center. I find it funny when people are like, hey, my heart, you know, I can learn something, but my heart, it's like, this isn't anything. This pumps blood through your physical body. Your heart is up here. This is your heart, your center, your soul. It's all in your thinking life and how you train. What you put in is what's going to, what you're going to put out.
Mark Clark [00:16:25]:
That's the reality. So Nicholas Tinberger, a biologist who won the Nobel Prize in 1970s, most famous for coining the term super normal stimulus, he talks about it's describing something that's bigger and greater than what someone would see in their normal, everyday, natural lives. The reality is that's what a lustful life actually gives you, something that way different than you would see in your normal, natural lives. And one of his famous experiments was this. He took butterflies, and they were attracted to the color and pattern and shape of the female's wings. So he made a cardboard butterfly wing and then painted them brighter and made them bigger than nature ever would make it. And the male butterflies then tried to mate with the cardboard. In fact, when the females were present, the males would just ignore them and stay focused on the big cardboard.
Mark Clark [00:17:16]:
And Tinberger discovered that the brain could be manipulated by doing the following. Figure out what stimulates the brain. Create an exaggerated version, and the brain will often come to prefer the exaggerated version. That's what's scary, the biological discovery about the brain. Any brain works, butterfly or human. Whenever we have the opportunity to exaggerate what stimulus or entices us, we take it. So you compare fashion dolls 50 years ago to barbies today. Todays are way thinner.
Mark Clark [00:17:51]:
They got curves, they got makeup. Action figures in the eighties. Here's what they look like today. More muscles, more exaggerated. Eventually, we prefer the super stimuli and ignore what is normal for what is exaggerated. This is the problem. One writer has said we have a dopamine factory in this primitive old part of our brain, and it sends brain wires up to this reward area, and it literally powers the brain with desire. So, hopefully, here's what a writer says.
Mark Clark [00:18:22]:
An interesting study showed that within a year or two of recovery, these shrunken areas actually enlarge again back to more normal volumes. So we know the brain actually heals. We've actually been able to visualize recovery in the brain when it's been affected by pornographic images. You can actually regrow the brain back. So my point is, there's hope for people who have fallen to the sin of lust. It's difficult, and we need to give grace and help rather than scold and come down on someone, because it can actually grow a life and affection back to the way that God intends. Here's the point. In a sense, this is a thing in all our lives.
Mark Clark [00:19:02]:
This isn't like some porn problem. This is all of us. Those who say it isn't are lying or dead. This isn't a male problem. A woman I like, this isn't a man thing. I talk to women about how lust plays out in their lives, and they're the same situation. Lusting after this embodies and all the classic ways. But there's another angle for women, too.
Mark Clark [00:19:21]:
There's reading 50 shades of gray. I know a girl who was actually sitting on the beach, and I said, what do you read? She's like, and she had a different book cover. And I looked at, say, you read 50 shades of gray. It's like I tied her up, and it was like, ooh. It's like, that's what she. And she had some, you know, book cover, like New York Times. It's like what we can become those people. It's.
Mark Clark [00:19:44]:
See, the point is, it's you. It's not just visual, either. It's inner thoughts. It's fantasies outside your marriage that this isn't enough. So you store up ideas about what your life should be like. It doesn't even necessarily have to be sexual. We can lust after what he can provide for you, what she can do for you. A lot of affairs, they're not just physical.
Mark Clark [00:20:06]:
You lust emotionally after someone first. And so one writer has said, there's a reason why Satan works hard to get you to have sex before you're married. And then once you get married, he works everything to get you to stop. He gets men focused on being the man and being successful. Women, distracted by different things, destroys the purity on that side of marriage. Still can happen. By the way, you know, Hebrews says, keep the marriage bed pure. You can destroy the marriage bed even in the context of marriage, because you're not after each other.
Mark Clark [00:20:41]:
Now, see, we start to lust after someone else's life. We go after the big cardboard and forget the real thing in front of us. I want that house, that spouse, that boat, the nice eyes. I'm after their life. Everyone is guilty of it. That's why we need to give grace. It wasn't the evil side of temptation that killed Adam and Eve. It was the good side.
Mark Clark [00:21:02]:
No one says, I want more lust in my life. It's that I want more sexual pleasure. This is what I want. And then there's a corruption of a good thing. We're filling an emptiness because we're kind of endlessly not full or satisfied. If we are at last for a bit, and then we rev back up again so we don't judge. Let's realize there's a way forward, though free from sin, that so easily entangles. St.
Mark Clark [00:21:31]:
Augustine said, give me chastity, but not yet. He was a guy who struggled with lust. Go read his book, confessions. Give me chastity, lord. He goes, but not yet. I was afraid you would heal me too quickly. He says of the disease of lust, which I prefer to satisfy than suppress. That's what Augustine says, so why does God tell us to flee? Is it because God's anti sex? No.
Mark Clark [00:22:00]:
He is so pro sex. Read song of Solomon. I remember years ago, I was prepping for a marriage conference, I was reading solid Solomon, and my assistant walked into my office and she's like, hi. I'm like, ah. And I kind of jumped. I'm like, I'm like, sweating. I'm like, sorry, what do you want? Needing something? It's like, I'm reading song of Solomon here. I got to turn the lights on and like, oh, okay, what's going on? It's like the Bible's not giving you some image of, like, okay with insects.
Mark Clark [00:22:25]:
You just got to make sure it's in the same this and the same that. And it's winds. It's got. It can be erotic, it can be evocative. He made Adam and Eve. Part of the mandate was to have lots of sex and to love it. Be fruitful and multiply. You're not going to do that.
Mark Clark [00:22:38]:
I mean, sex once every six months. Be fruitful and multiply. Let's go. The other day, my non christian friend said, God wouldn't have liked what we were doing the other day. And he's married. I'm like, yes, he would have. He would have been like, what's up? I'm the most pro sex person in the universe. This is who God is.
Mark Clark [00:22:56]:
My kids, the other day, I got three daughters, asks, is sex good or bad? Well, let me ask you a question. Is fire good or bad? See, it depends where it is. Is it in the fireplace or is it on the rug? See, a house can be a warm place for everyone. If the fire remains in the fireplace, things get out of control and the fire burns down the house. If it's sitting on the rug. See, we lose the original benefit of the fire and it takes complete control over us if we don't put it in the right context, in the context of marriage. And when we approach sex in the context of our marriage, we got to understand we are like Philippians two talks about, we're serving the other person. We have the person in front of us.
Mark Clark [00:23:37]:
We're saying what's best for them. God is pro sex. He loves sex in the context. Even secular studies show that the best sex is married sex. One of the ways we fight lust is to make sure our sex lives are on point. First Corinthians, chapter seven. Paul talks about this the regular basis. And actually, we did a study.
Mark Clark [00:23:57]:
7000 people filled out a study at our church. A couple years ago, we did a marriage conference, and they said, not only do I want regular or not only is regular sex important to me, but the quality. So not just quantity, but the quality of sex. And making sure we're always doing autopsies in our sex life in the context of our marriage. And the reality is God says, make sure that's in one corinthians seven. Make sure it's regular as to fight off the attacks of temptation. People aren't having sex in the consequences of marriage because they're dogs, right? It's because this is how we were made, that it's not just for procreation. It's not just for protection.
Mark Clark [00:24:38]:
It's for pleasure. This is what God has wired us to be. And so we have to recognize it becomes a sin only when we let it be corrupted. See, we've got to understand that sexual desire is not sinful in itself. In fact, it's a gift from God. He wants us to have the most pleasure and fulfillment, which is why he says, stop chasing lust. It's incompatible with the ways of Christ in the world. It's incompatible with happiness in the world.
Mark Clark [00:25:05]:
Doctor Gary Rosenberg wrote a book years ago who writes a lot of marriage books, and he talks about, you know, what the first step toward divorce is. He gives a bunch of D's, and he says, every marriage, when it ends up in divorce, it starts with a dream. And then the first step toward divorce, he says, is disappointment and then discouragement and then distance and then disconnect and then discord and then divorce. And he says this focusing on what you're not getting out of the relationship and how your partner fails to live up to your expectations can kill your marriage in two to three years. And this is true sexually, too. I sat with a man recently. He's crying. And I thought it was going to be about this.
Mark Clark [00:25:47]:
And he's like, man, I just. There's no fulfillment in my life. I have to go traveling in order for my wife to have sex with me. And I've sat with women saying the same thing. My husband isn't interested. And when we dug into it, it's because he's getting satisfied by these other things. And he's. See, half of marriage counseling when I'm working with couples, is working with this sexual disconnection, which first corinthians seven saying is one of the solutions to being tempted by lust from Satan himself.
Mark Clark [00:26:16]:
See, God knows how we can flourish in the long game, how we end up old men and old women with kids and grandkids being proud of our legacy, that we're people who are faithful. In the end, even though lust is there and can grab ahold of our life, we have to have the perspective of getting to our last day, because lust is the thing that gets you alone and depressed and isolated. It's one of the definitions of hell on earth because it's nothing but selfish and God wants to save you from that sin. The myth we tell ourselves about lust is it's not hurting anymore, but it does. It destroys our relationship with others. Ask spouses whose lives are destroyed by lust and cheating and these things that happen, spouses feel like they couldn't live up to what their spouse wanted and they're hurt by it. And then people who are watching a lot of things on the Internet, not realizing that sex trafficking is actually driving that whole industry. I just read an article recently, certain website that a woman had created.
Mark Clark [00:27:25]:
She had uploaded stuff on it, and she's seen as a sex worker. And her goal is to normalize uploading all these things to the Internet and to get paid for it and stop shaming this industry. And so she upped her price and she got pushback from all of, like, our cancel culture because it took away from some of the profit that these other women were making as sex workers. And she's like, sorry, I'm going to put down my profits. So all the Internet and the Internet was celebrating this is the great liberation of women that now we can do sex trafficking online. Do you know many of these women are actually owned? It's such a hypocritical culture. Let's be against slavery, but let's give money to sites with sex slaves, beaten drug addicts. Half these videos of women doing all this crazy stuff, they're getting paid for in a bag.
Mark Clark [00:28:09]:
This is not just people winging it, wanting to do this, falling into this life and being liberated. It's a messed up thing. Our culture has got to. When we pat ourself on the back for doing all of these things. These aren't private sins. It destroys others lives. Spouses, kids, people viewing these things, people in this industry. A couple I counseled recently, husband, ended up with a prostitute.
Mark Clark [00:28:39]:
Another woman told me the same story. She ended up. It's like, how did that start? You don't just all of a sudden go from zero to sleeping with a prostitute. It started with fantasy. It started with lies. It started with isolation. It birthed the action in the end. That's why the Bible comes at this sin.
Mark Clark [00:29:04]:
One of the reasons why you feel so alone in life at times is because you actually end up taking sexuality, which was meant to be a communal experience between you and the other, and you make it an isolated event. And yet, if you read Genesis, sex was actually created to solve loneliness. Back in Genesis, when God had created Adam, God looked at Adam and said, it's not good for the man to be alone. He created the woman. Sex was originally invented to deal with loneliness, one of the reasons. So it's absolutely natural for you to try to deal with your own loneliness through that by yourself. When you misuse sex, it works backwards. Always remember that instead of making you less lonely, which is how it's supposed to work, lust actually makes you lonelier.
Mark Clark [00:30:00]:
It always does. I doubt there's anyone who's being honest who will deny that reality. People tell me this all the time when I'm doing marriage counseling with them, because it destroys our relationship, not only with people, but worse than anything with the God who made us. Sin. Like this habitually kills our spiritual life because we get the shame, we get the guilt. The sin comes between you and the Lord, and you slowly start to drift because it's can't. It's not just sexual, it's spiritual. This is always about that.
Mark Clark [00:30:34]:
As one writer has said, this is all connected. This is why in one corinthians, Paul says, when you sleep with a prostitute, it's actually a spiritual event that's taking place. Your bodies are becoming one. Well, that obviously doesn't mean you're not walking around with them now. So what happened in this moment? Something happened where you became one. See, in the first century, you had, like, dualism that said, physical world, good, our bad, spiritual world good. Let's keep those separated. You can do anything you want with your body, and never the two shall meet.
Mark Clark [00:31:05]:
Christianity uniquely comes and says, no, the two are tied together. Sex isn't just a physical act. It's an emotional, spiritual act where the two become one. And the only place for that is when you can become one in every way, economically, geographically, to the world. I belong only to this person. That's what sex says. And that's a beautiful critique on our world and how it functions, because look at the worldview of the tv shows we watch. Look at friends, some of you parents, you're like, I'm going to keep my kid from seeing really bad things, like things on the Internet or violent movies.
Mark Clark [00:31:39]:
And it's like, and rated our movies that throw the f bomb around. You know what might be more damaging to them? Watching friends. Because the worldview of that show is you just sleep with everyone, and that's how you get happy. And we laugh ourselves. We, as one writer said years ago, we amuse ourselves to spiritual death. We have corroded to the point of normalcy so that all this stuff is just normal. Sex isn't something that is all about you in the end, though, not about just your pleasure, not only just about taking. It's about giving.
Mark Clark [00:32:18]:
It's about protection. It's about them. It's about life. So how to fight it? We got to be ruthless with it, John Owen. Be killing sin, or it will be killing you. Jesus, cut out your eye. You have to starve it. You got to delete the apps that push you in that direction.
Mark Clark [00:32:35]:
You got to get the accountability technology on your computer or your phone, covenant eyes, triple x, church, whatever. You got to change your behavioral patterns. Plug your phone in downstairs. Know yourself, know the temptation, know the time of day. Know if it's when you're tired. All of these things that keep you from engaging in it. I was watching a movie with a buddy. We were in a movie theater, and it was interesting because we're watching the movie, and then there was, like, this sex scene, and.
Mark Clark [00:33:04]:
And I looked over at my buddy, and I was like a minute into it, and I'm like, okay, I gotta kind of look away. And I looked over to him, and he's been sitting there like this for the whole time. I'm like, man, this guy is like Jesus to me right now. This guy's, like, legit. He's not even looking at this. This is crazy. So good. This is what I'm talking about now, we didn't stand up and say, hey, what's happening here? Right? What's going on? Make sure we shut off the projection.
Mark Clark [00:33:29]:
This was his moment, his fight as a person. And this is what you're in the middle of the fight every day to take responsibility for yourself. A lot of you are sitting there piping around about everything that's wrong with our culture. We're talking about you now to change your behavioral patterns, that change your heart, that set you up to flourish with Jesus. CS Lewis said this. The moment you wake up each morning, all your wishes and hopes for the day rush at you like wild animals. And the first job of each morning consists of shoving them all back, listening to that other voice, taking that other point of view, letting that other, larger, stronger, quieter life come flowing in. That's the challenge of the christian life, because the world is on hd video, guys, and Jesus is just on audio, and it's harder to follow the audio.
Mark Clark [00:34:29]:
Lust ends up destroying the thought, life and then your real life. That's the warning, which is why Paul says in Philippians, take every thought captive to Christ. That's a crazy challenge. When you feel a thought sneaking in, start talking to Jesus. Be practical with yourself. The narrative that I'm too weak, this is always going to be me is a lie that Satan is telling you. No, it won't. You have the spirit.
Mark Clark [00:35:02]:
Whenever I pray for someone's physical healing, they have cancer, they have a tumor, and they're in my office, and I pray for them. I say the same prayer. The same spirit that rose Jesus from the dead is the same spirit that is alive and well and can heal this person right now. And it's the same spirit that can heal your brain and your affections right now. If this lust has defined your life, if it is this sin of lust that has derailed you even privately, so that nobody knows the same spirit that rose Jesus from the dead. This is the solution to every addiction that we talk. It's to. You start to love Jesus, and he starts to take your affections away from this thing that you've defined your life by and put them onto him.
Mark Clark [00:35:46]:
Because Thomas Chalmers says it talks about. He's an old preacher, scottish preacher, he says. He calls it the expulsive power of a new affection. And he says the only way you get rid of one's affection is not by just looking at it and saying, getting out of my life, you have to displace it with something you love more. That's the only way that you ever defeat this sin, is that you love Jesus more than you love the sin. And he starts to, as we've been talking about in this series, change what you want to do, do change the kinds of things that you take great pleasure in. Lord Jesus. I pray that in the midst of a culture defined by this sin that can so easily derail us, that you would save us from these temptations, that you would save us from going down the route that can destroy us so easy, men and women that are watching this, listening to this right now, who are wrestling with this, silently, quietly isolated, I pray that you just, right now, just give them your voice and a peace that says, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.
Mark Clark [00:37:02]:
You don't have to stay down, stand up, defeat this thing. Tomorrow's another day. Let's be people defined by the person in the work of Jesus on the cross who defeated this sin, who rose again to give us victory over this sin. Rather than wallowing in self pity and the fact that, yeah, yesterday you might have fallen to this. Today is a new day. The spirit can give you power to stand on your feet and defeat this. That you would give us encouragement and the tools and the conviction and the discipline to win this. So when we stand before you on the last day, that kind of purity of mind would be the thing that defined us rather than the lust of the eyes that would destroy us.
Mark Clark [00:37:48]:
In your great name we pray. Amen.