Lies We Love, Lies That Hurt Part 1

Let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith. Driven by our desires, we can become experts at self-deception.

We'll do whatever it takes to satisfy sexual urges, and then justify what we do by believing blatant lies. Today, the list of lies begins, so fasten your seat belts. From the Moody Church in Chicago, this is Running to Win with Dr. Erwin Lutzer, whose clear teaching helps us make it across the finish line. Pastor Lutzer, in your series on restoring the soul, you've brought us to message number two. It's all about lies we love, lies that hurt. Dave, before I respond to what you've just said, I want to speak to all who are listening today and remind them that this series of messages is surely among one of the most important I have ever given. And I mention that because when it comes to sexual matters, of course, all of us know that we're living in a sex-saturated society. When it comes to these matters, we love to tell ourselves lies, and we love to live with self-deception. And of course, this message uncovers those kinds of things that are true within every human heart. So I encourage people, get on the phone, tell your friends about this series, invite them to listen. But yes, as we open the Scriptures today, we are reminded of the fact that Paul kept always saying to people, do not be deceived.

And usually he used that expression as he began to talk about sexual matters. Now let us listen carefully as to what God has to say to us today. This is the second message in a series titled Restoring the Soul.

We want to have positive healing in an age of brokenness. And I know in advance that some of the things that I say are going to cause a great deal of conflict in many hearts. Many are going to wonder whether or not they can pay the price of obedience, and therefore I invite you one more time to bow your head with me that the Holy Spirit of God who is here may grant us the strength to do what we should for his glory and honor.

Would you join me? And even as you pray, would you ask God to grant you the strength as I pray that he gives all of us the strength to be obedient to his word? Our Father, we ask in the name of Jesus now that your blessed Holy Spirit would give us enlightenment and understanding and conviction and hope. We pray for those today, Father, who struggle because of disobedience, and we ask that this message may be loving but also helpful and transforming. And we pray that the grace of Christ and the strength of Christ would abide with us, overcome all the resistance that there may be to what will be said, we pray. In Jesus' name, Amen.

Amen. You and I are basically desire-driven. Even though we may think to ourselves that we are rational human beings, the simple fact is that we do what our desires want us to do even if we know that it is wrong. And then we recruit our mind to come and to help us and justify what it is that we want to do.

And there's no area in which we are more willingly deceived than in the realm of sexuality. Now you know that this is the second message in a series entitled Restoring the Soul. If you were not here last time, I want you to know today that the message that was given on shame is absolutely essential as a first step. Because unless we deal with this matter of shame, what you'll discover is that you will constantly be going back into your own hiding place.

Shame must be shamed, as we learned last time. Now why is it that I preach this message to you today? Let me quote from a letter that I received from a radio listener. He says that he received Christ as his savior when a teenager but drifted away, and now he struggles, he says, with all of his might to obey God's word. He said it was as if he had awakened from a bad dream that lasted 20 years. All that time, he says, was wasted in sin and self-indulgence. So many acts I rationalized or considered natural, but not evil.

I'm horrified at how I ruined my life as my heart gradually hardened and darkened. Satan says to us, it won't hurt if you enjoy a little of this. You'll be able to stop whenever you want to. God will forgive you.

Why not do it? He says that is the road to self-destruction. At one time when I was a teenager, I wanted to be one of the greatest evangelists and teachers, not for my glory, but because I loved Jesus and hated promiscuity, filthy talk, and lies. Now I consider myself perhaps the greatest Christian failure who ever lived. Yet when I was backsliding and pursuing worldly pleasures, I thought I was having fun. What a cruel deceiver the devil is. I wish all Christians clearly understood how extreme the devil's hatred for them is and how straying from God is guaranteed to lead to unfathomable misery and indescribable sorrow. The purpose of this message is to help us to be kept from unfathomable misery and indescribable sorrow, and I might add to bring us to a point of real healing.

That's the agenda. Today we're going to talk about five lies. Now I want you to know that the sin that Adam and Eve committed was not the sin of sexuality, but because sexuality touches the deepest part of who we are and because of our desire to connect, it is in this realm as perhaps no other that we tend to deceive ourselves.

We rationalize because our desires go in one direction, our better intuition goes in another direction, and therefore we recruit the mind and we say, come up with a lie so that I can do what I want to do. Let me now give you the five lies. Three of these lies are based on Genesis chapter three. I told you last week that we'd be coming back to that passage because it is Eve who introduces us to the whole business of deception and lying.

Lie number one is that we can control the consequences of disobedience. You remember the scripture says that God said to Eve and Adam, you will die if you eat of the fruit of this tree, but the serpent said, you will not die. And when the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took it and she ate it and gave it to Adam who was standing with her and together they ate it.

Wow. Now, Eve had no idea what God meant when he said that you would die because there had been no death in the creation. And so she thought to herself, well, you know, I can control the consequences. What she did not know is that her disobedience was going to trip a series of dominoes. She could not foresee World War I, World War II, the Holocaust and an eternal hell that her disobedience would actually ultimately end up in. She could not foresee that.

All that she saw was a beautiful piece of fruit and she ate it. Now, oftentimes it's possible for us to think that we can control the consequences of our disobedience. I remember a man who was about to commit adultery.

He said to me, tell me the worst thing that can happen if I do this, because what he was thinking is this, if I can control the consequences, if I can lessen the pain, maybe my disobedience will be worth the price and it won't be so bad. And so we think to ourselves that the consequences are in our hands. And so how do we try to control the consequences? We try to control it by hiding as Adam and Eve did by lying and by denying. And we take all of the guilt feelings and all of the restlessness of our consciences and we stuff those down deep in our soul and we learn to manage our sins thinking to ourselves that surely what we can do is to get by because we can hide and we can manage it. How much better it would have been if Eve had just believed God's word and just simply said, I don't understand what the consequences are going to be, but God said it, I believe it, I'm going to obey him.

How differently things would have turned out. Lie number one, that we can control the consequences of our disobedience. You are free to disobey God. What you are not free to do is to control the consequences. Those are then out of your hands and they will oftentimes show up in unexpected places at unexpected times and those consequences are ultimately now in God's hands and not yours.

We cannot control the consequences of our sin. There's a lie number two. Lie number two is if it's beautiful, it must be right. You'll notice again the text says when the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eyes.

Let me ask you a question. Was this a good tree? The answer is of course it was good because everything that God created was good. It was good and it was beautiful. There was no doubt about the tree.

It was inherently no different from any of the other trees that were there in the garden. Of course it was a beautiful tree pleasant to the eyes and Eve thought to herself something that is beautiful can't be wrong and so she went ahead and she ate it. I remember many years ago a man who was committing adultery writing a letter to me. I've never forgotten this story because it was so directly related to this whole issue of beauty. He said I am living in a desert in my present marriage and now I have found an oasis and you're telling me to go back down to the desert.

He said I in effect I can tell the difference between sand and water. I know when I have a beautiful relationship and so he divorced his wife to marry this beautiful relationship. Ten years later he wrote me one of the most agonizing letters I have ever read telling about all of the strife all of the hurt and how a relationship that was so beautiful turned so ugly. Beautiful does not make it right. Two lesbians both from Christian families they and from a wonderful church said that they are in a beautiful relationship. Let me quote you their words exactly. We are more certain that our relationship is honoring to God than we are of anything else and so what they were saying is our relationship is beautiful. You're going to argue with them? Don't they know what beautiful is?

Don't they know what fulfilling is? But from Genesis chapter 3 we learn something don't we that even something that is beautiful incurs God's judgment if God has forbidden it. Beautiful does not make it right. Counseling a man who was addicted to pornography he said because of the beautiful body that God created the beautiful bodies he said all that I'm doing is really admiring get this now admiring God's creation and isn't God's creation beautiful? Yes God's creation may indeed be beautiful but beautiful does not make it right Eve looked at it and she saw the fruit of the tree that it was pleasing to the eyes but God had attached a penalty to something that was pleasing to the eyes. Beautiful does not make it right.

Let me give you a third lie that we often believe. I'm entitled to my own happiness. I'm entitled to my own happiness.

I'm only going through life once and because I go through life once I want to do what is fulfilling to me. If there's anything true in our society it's this idea that somehow life and God and you and me we all owe one another happiness. Eve turned away from all of the blessings of God in order to disobey. So far as we know there were hundreds of trees in the garden from which she could eat there was only one from which God says you shall not eat of it and so what the devil did is he focused her mind and her heart on the one thing that she was not to do and she closed her eyes to all the blessings of God around her with the idea that I need to have my own happiness and I think I know where my own happiness is found. It is found in the fulfillment of my desires she thought and her desires which were more present to her than God's word as a result of that she was trapped into disobedience. You know it's very interesting that another thing that goes into this undoubtedly is curiosity. See Eve was saying to herself if I say no to this tree that is so pleasant after all it's so pleasant how could it be wrong but if I say no to it why then indeed for the rest of my life I am going to be wondering what would it have been like if I had eaten of that fruit.

I want you to know today that Eve has many daughters. I've heard young women say I always wondered what it would be like and so I decided to give in to my boyfriend's demands because I thought to myself first of all if I don't we might break up the relationship and I wanted to keep him and secondly surely if I don't I would always wonder what it would be like and then they spend the rest of their lives weeping and regretting and wondering and trying to rebuild the sense of dignity they once had. Yes I want you to know today that it is very possible for people who say to themselves I am going to go for happiness and I think I know what happiness is to disobey and they use their minds to rationalize their behavior. Now there is such a thing as happiness but the Bible talks about happiness as being found in God.

Blessed is the man who walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly. Delight thyself also in the Lord and he shall give thee the desires of thine heart. There is an inner kind of happiness that comes from God that is perfectly legitimate and right but let me be clear in saying that we do not have the right to find happiness wherever we think that happiness is going to be found. I can't tell you the number of divorces that have taken place in marriages that had a lot of hope because somebody said well you know I think I'm entitled to happiness and I'm not happy. Happiness is not your greatest desire. Happiness means obedience and finding delight in God.

Let me give you a fourth rationalization that's used. The fourth one is simply this because God understands me he overlooks my indiscretions and my sins. I mean after all God knows that we are weak. The scripture says he knows that we are dust. He knows that he created me that way. He knows I've tried to change. He knows I'm entitled to happiness.

He really knows me well and and he knows how weak I am. I want you to notice the words of the Apostle Paul very carefully because Paul repeatedly talks about self-deception and every time that I can think of that he does it he's talking about this realm of sexuality. This is Ephesians chapter 5 verse 3 but among you there must not be even a hint of sexual immorality or any kind of impurity or of greed because these are improper for God's holy people nor should there be obscenity foolish talk or course joking which are out of place but rather giving thanks for this you can be sure you ever wondered and say you know life is so unsure give us something sure all right here's something sure that no immoral impure or greedy person such man is an idolater has any inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and God let no one deceive you with empty words for because of such things God's wrath comes on those who are disobedient therefore do not be partakers with them television is filled with empty words and deceptions filled with empty words about fulfillment filled with empty words about thinking that you can control the consequences of your disobedience the man responsible for MTV said that when it comes to young people we don't talk logic we don't talk reason all that we try to do is to stir up their desires and then everything flows from there filled with empty deceitful words so people say well you know because God understands me and you know he's gracious he overlooks my indiscretions well did you hear the passage of scripture I just read of course God forgives us we'll be talking about that in a few moments but the simple fact is God's not in heaven saying well you know I understand you therefore it's okay well this is pastor Luther I'm sure that you are aware of the fact that these kinds of words from the scripture are so desperately needed today young people need to be listening to messages like this to understand the depth of our self-deception especially when it comes to matters of sexuality my wife Rebecca and I have written a book entitled life-changing bible verses you should know now that title could be a little bit misleading because it isn't just bible verses it's really bible topics and since we're talking about sensuality as I look through the various topics that we deal with one is sensuality sin temptation actually there are about 30 different topics in this book each topic perhaps two or three pages it's a marvelous book if you are interested especially in helping new believers understand the Christian faith it deals with doctrine it deals with life it's entitled life-changing bible verses you should know now for a gift of any amount it can be yours here's what you do I hope that you have a pencil handy you can go to rtwoffer.com that's rtwoffer.com of course rtwoffer is all one word rtwoffer.com or you can pick up the phone right now and call 1-888-218-9337 let me give you that contact info again rtwoffer.com or call us at 1-888-218-9337. It's time now for another chance for you to ask pastor Lutzer a question about the bible or the Christian life setting needed boundaries is a crucial component in resolving certain kinds of relational issues listen to the story of this anonymous listener you sometimes speak about families needing boundaries if there are in-laws or relatives who are toxic and inject themselves into the life of another family my husband's mother leaves nasty voicemails in the phone and she tries to control us in other ways my husband is ambivalent as to what we should do since he does want to respect his mother what do you mean by boundaries and how do they work excellent question to demonstrate exactly what boundaries are your husband needs to step to the plate here and defend you and have a good talk with his mother and what he should do is to say mom I love you thank you for all that you've done but at the same time you can no longer interfere in this marriage I don't want you to leave voicemail messages I don't want you to continue to control our lives you have to let us live our life and if we make mistakes we make them but one thing is sure though I love you very very much my first commitment is to my wife the bible says that you are to leave and you are to cleave and right now your husband doesn't know what to do he's trying to cleave and he hasn't really leaved I might put it that way so what you need to help him do is to see what his responsibility is now with regard to what are boundaries exactly what are boundaries well boundaries are rules that you set up that you don't want your relatives or someone else to violate simply say mother it's unacceptable for you to leave these kinds of messages mother it's unacceptable for you to interfere with our decisions and there are instances I know of where couples have even had to put down boundaries and say to the in-laws you can't even come and see your grandchildren because of your attitude because of your criticism because of your desire to control us that's what boundaries are and that's the way they are intended to work some wise counsel perhaps even some tough love from Dr. Erwin Lutzer thank you Dr. Lutzer if you'd like to hear your question answered go to our website at rtwoffer.com and click on Ask Pastor Lutzer or call us at 1-888-218-9337 that's 1-888-218-9337 you can write to us at Running to Win 1635 North LaSalle Boulevard Chicago Illinois 60614 if it's beautiful it must be right and after all I'm entitled to my happiness those are lies by which we rationalize our disobedience to God's commands about sex next time on Running to Win more ways we twist the truth to justify doing what our hormones demand this is Dave McAllister Running to Win is sponsored by the Moody Church