Sound Doctrine

Guest (Male): Lust and potato chips. How do they go together? Here is Pastor Jeff.

Jeff Johnson: Whatever lust that you have that you're wrestling with this morning, it's always the type of thing that's never satisfied. It just gets hotter and hotter and you say, "I'll just feed it one more time," until all of a sudden you find that you yourself, you're devoured with the flame. It's like Lay's potato chips. You can't just eat one. You figure you'll just eat one more, one more, one more, one more, and then the whole bag's gone. You've eaten the whole bag and you feel so sick and you can't believe you ate the whole bag.

Guest (Male): This is Sound Doctrine, a ministry of Calvary Chapel Downey. Today we'll once again turn to 2 Samuel chapter 13, as Pastor Jeff Johnson shares more details of a very tragic scene. Sexual assault is a serious crime. In the day and age we live in, it's treated very seriously. Well, back in the days we're looking at in 2nd Samuel, we see a scene in which Amnon lures his half-sister Tamar to his sickbed and assaults her. It's a story with several tragic results. Tamar's life is shaken to the core and Amnon ends up dead. Here is Pastor Jeff with the details.

Jeff Johnson: What does the enemy usually tell us? Well, "You can't speak on this subject. Who do you think you are? You've fallen in the same way. You're just as guilty. You can't make a judgment here, so zip it up." So David is just going, "Oh, man. Yeah, yeah, so I'm not going to say anything." So he doesn't. As parents, think about it. We might have fallen. Maybe we've had premarital lust when we were kids and we fell into sin. Maybe we had extramarital affairs in the past and we were in lust and had an addiction. Maybe we had a problem with drugs, or maybe you've got a problem with smoking.

Maybe you've got a food lust and you lust after food and you think, "Well, I've got this addiction and I know that's an addiction that they have, so I can't really say anything about this. I have no right because I failed myself." But let me suggest to you that truth is always truth, regardless of who's telling you the truth. It still remains the truth. If a smoker was to come up to you to warn you of the dangers of smoking and here he is wanting to tell you, "Don't smoke these things," and he's taking a big drag off of it and he can hardly breathe himself, does that make it any less of a truth because of who said it?

No. I think we should heed the warning because he ought to know. Look at him, he's dying of it. It's killing him. So truth is always truth. Satan's trick is always to get us to just zip our mouths and say nothing, saying, "You have no right. Don't even think that you can change them by saying anything." And David listened to the enemy and so he gave in when he should have dealt with the issue at hand. Why? Because if anyone was to know the dangers of lust and the results of lust, it would be David.

Wouldn't he be the one to nail this situation once and for all? But he didn't do it. And I think as parents many times we do the same thing. We let things slide because we did the same thing. But truth is truth and it needs to be dealt with. Verse 22: "And Absalom spoke neither good nor bad to his brother Amnon, for Absalom hated Amnon because he had forced his sister Tamar." And it came to pass after two full years—I'd like to stop there for a moment because Absalom let this knowledge that he had of what had happened go for two long years.

This is the type of guy that doesn't get mad right away, but he gets even. He sits on it and he plans it out. He just takes all this in and he knows exactly what had happened, but he just says, "I'm going to bide my time because I know that time is going to be set up where I can deal with this issue and deal with it once and for all." And so he carries around this root of bitterness in his own heart, this anger and this hatred and this unforgiveness for his brother for two long years. Do you think it had an effect in his life or what?

It's not good to carry that kind of stuff around. He should have dealt with it and should have confronted his brother and done away with it, but he held onto it and that anger was eating him alive. It goes on to talk about how the custom was when you had sheep shearing times where you'd call everybody in to a big party. And so Absalom's plan now was coming into effect. He would have this big party and he would try to see if his father was coming, see who was coming. He went to King David and he asked King David if Amnon was going to be there.

He kept asking King David, "Is Amnon going to be there?" David said, "What are you so concerned about Amnon?" He thought, "That's weird. Why does the brother want Amnon there? It's a big deal. I don't know if he's going or not." And Absalom kept saying, "I want Amnon to come." I think David knew something was up, but he couldn't put his finger on it. What Absalom had done was bring Amnon to the party and there, on the way to the party, he hired some hitmen. Those guys went out and they killed Amnon, slaughtered him, wiped him out.

So two years later, be sure that your sin will find you out. Amnon had his little fling and then two years later it catches up with him. Lust always brings the loss of life and Amnon was killed. It is a fire, this lust that he had been yielding to, that the more you feed it, the hotter it gets until eventually it burns you. Whatever lust that you have that you're wrestling with this morning, it's always the type of thing that's never satisfied. It just gets hotter and hotter and you say, "I'll just feed it one more time," until all of a sudden you find that you yourself, you're devoured with the flame.

It's like Lay's potato chips. You can't just eat one. You figure you'll just eat one more, one more, one more, one more, and then the whole bag's gone and you've eaten the whole bag and you feel so sick and you can't believe you ate the whole bag. You try to rationalize it. You try to say, "Well, just one more," and then all of a sudden you hate yourself for what you've done. I'll tell you what's going on. Lust always blinds us to what's happening. It's so driven and this road always ends in hatred. It always ends in bitterness and in death.

How do you overcome this lustful thing, this power of lust? How do we overcome it as individuals living in this filthy world, in this dirty world that we're living in? Well, Peter has an answer for us. In 1 Peter chapter 2, verse 11, Peter says, "Dearly beloved, I beseech you, I beg you, as strangers as pilgrims"—he's talking about living in this world—"that we're to come out from amongst them and be separate," says the Lord. We're to look at ourselves as pilgrims and strangers. He says, "Abstain from fleshly lusts which war against the soul."

So victory over this powerful thing called lust is to see that it wars against your own soul. To see what it's doing, to see what it's trying to do, and it's trying to devour your soul. Now, it is interesting that in Genesis, way back in the very beginning, it says in Genesis 2:7, "And the Lord God formed man out of the dust of the ground and he breathed into his nostrils the breath of life and man became a living soul." So God created man out of the dirt and he breathed into him his Ruach in the Hebrew, which is his spirit, and man became a living soul.

What is the soul of man but your personality? It's your mind, your intellect, your emotions. That is the soul of man. It's interesting to me that God would use the lowest thing that he made, which is dirt, and he mixes it together with the highest thing that he is, his spirit. He mixes it together and it equals the soul, and he brings forth a living soul, man. So man was created basically as a triune being like God is a triune God. God made man spirit, soul, and body. He's controlled by his spirit.

Remember it says in the very beginning that Adam walked in the garden with God. Beautiful, beautiful picture. Just having fellowship with God. His spirit ruling and reigning in his life as he went through that garden talking with his Heavenly Father. His soul fed on his spirit, and of course the body was way down here underneath, so it just followed along, followed the soul and the spirit. It was under submission, ruled over. But man sinned in the very beginning and that triology of man flip-flopped as soon as he sinned.

All of a sudden we see because of man's sin and his disobedience to God and the way that God prescribed that man became then, as it flip-flopped, body, soul, and spirit. Something terrible happened to man's fellowship with God and also to man's capability of controlling himself. Now man is out of control. He is body, soul, and spirit. He now is ruled by his flesh. His body lusts war against his soul. Remember in Ephesians chapter 2, verse 2 and 3, it talks about at one time we were led about with the lust of our mind and the lust of our flesh.

So man was led about with his body lusts which war against his intellect, his psyche, his soul. It wars against it. It's seeking to have victory over it and to consume it. But when you become a Christian, it says in Ephesians 2:1 that God's Spirit quickens my dead spirit and makes it alive. So what happens? The inversion flip-flops again. When you receive Christ, when you're a born-again Christian, a new creation in Christ, you become spirit now, soul, and body. Your dead spirit, which was once dead, has now been made alive.

This is the way God intended it to be: that you would walk spirit, soul, and body, now led by his Spirit, instructed in the Word of God how you're to be living as a Christian. But sin is our enemy, isn't it? Always it's our enemy, attacking our soul, seeking to pull us back again into the realm of confusion which at one time we were in, with the body domineering our life, leading us around by the nose, just lusting after things, just out of control, not able to go from one thing to another and just feeding on this world and the things of this world, never being satisfied.

But when you look at this whole thing, it is a choice that we make. You can either be led of the Spirit or you can be led of your lusts. Really, it's a choice of who we allow to control us: your body or the Spirit of the Lord. Are you led by the body lusts? Are you going after materialism? Are you going after the things of this world? Are you going after the sex of this world that it always is revealing? "Come, get involved, be a part of this." Are you going after power that this world offers? This world's always got a carrot out after everybody trying to get them to go after it because you never get there. It'll never satisfy.

Lust wars against the soul. These things will war against your soul. You say, "Well, what can I do? I see it. I see people getting wiped out all the time. Even myself, I've been burned a number of times and I don't want to get caught up in it again." Well, let's look at what Paul said to Timothy in 2 Timothy chapter 2, verse 22. Paul, talking to this young pastor going into the ministry, gave him some very important direction. Knowing this battle is on for my soul, daily it's on going after each of us, what are we to do?

I don't think we're to give in. You give in, the only thing you've got promised to you is death. If you go in and get into this world, the end result is always going to be death. Don't give in. Listen, he says to Timothy, "Flee also youthful lusts, but follow righteousness, faith, charity, peace with them that call on the Lord out of a pure heart." He says flee youthful lusts. You say, "But I'm an old person, then I don't have a problem with this." No. There's no age limit here. It just says these are youthful lusts. David at the time he fell was over 50 years of age.

We're all vulnerable. None of us are immune to this thing called lust. It's a war that is raging, that is out of control in our nation, in our city, in our homes, that needs to be dealt with. It is seeking to devour your soul, your intellect, your being, your emotions. What does the Bible say? "The flesh lusteth against the Spirit and the Spirit against the flesh, and these two are contrary one against the other." And there's a battle going on and the battle is for the souls of men. Madonna sang a song that she went and in singing the song she said we all live in a material world.

You say, "Well, that's true, it's a material world." Well, it's not though. It's a lie. Don't you see it? We don't all live in a material world. Some of us are aware of the spiritual things that are going on around us, that there's two worlds in one world here that we're dealing with. It's not just a material world. Olivia Newton-John was wrong when she sang the song "Let's Get Physical." She should have turned it all around and said, "Hey, let's get spiritual." Let's get into the things of God. Let's don't get into the things of the world.

But no, that's what's happening today. The world has always been wrong, always stressing man's earthiness, always looking at that. Well, you've got to see that we came out of this slime and we were one big eyeball, and then from the eyeball we got up on the dirt and somehow, some way, we turned into a human being. And so in our schools as evolution is continuing to be such a—now they're coming up with some more things, which is interesting. They've recently come up with a new theory and that is they're looking at maybe man was developed from the earth, as Genesis says, that God from the dirt created the man.

But our kids are getting a bunch of junk out there: humanistic, evolution type of theory that is just a bunch of gunk. And when they start to think about it, they feel like, "Well, they say that I came out of dirt. Okay, well, then if I'm just dirt and they say that we evolved, so I evolved from an animal. If I'm an animal, I've got instincts, and if I've got instincts, I go for it, man. Just go for it. I mean, we're here and we have these instincts, just whatever you do is fine because we're animals anyhow." And isn't this what our society is acting like and what's going on, driven by their body lusts? Look what has happened.

But God says this: "I have given you my Spirit." He sent his Son that if we would believe in him, we would not perish but have everlasting life, that we could receive his Spirit. And so the counsel here is don't fight it. Don't fight this thing called lust. It's too powerful for you to fight it. Flee, he says. Get away from it. Don't struggle with it. It's too overpowering. Split, take off. Joseph is the greatest example. Joseph in the midst of pressure, being pressured daily by Potiphar's wife to come and lie with her, he said, "How can I do this great wickedness and sin against my God? I'm taking off," and he fled from her very presence.

He got out of there and that's the answer. Run. But when you run, don't just run anywhere. "I don't know, but I'm getting out of here!" And so you try the next door—"Uh oh, not that!" No, no. He says, "I want you to flee, but then I want you to do what? Follow after this." We've got a direction, guys. Follow after these things: follow after righteousness, follow after faith, love, peace, and fellowship. So we're to flee and we're to follow and hang with those who have been touched by God as you've been touched by God.

Gather with them, worship with them. We need to be Acts 2:42 Christians more than ever in these last and final days, guys. We need to get serious about this spiritual warfare that we're in. We need to see that we desperately need the Word of God. We desperately need prayer in our lives. We need to have a prayer life. We desperately need to gather together, not forsaking the fellowship of the saints, as a manner of some is out there. There are guys playing golf this morning, just saying, "I'll get there next month, maybe," or "I'm too busy to come to church."

Listen, the Bible says we should come even more so seeing that the day is approaching, the day of our Lord. We desperately need to be as the early apostles: they were in the Word of God, they were in prayer, they were in fellowship, and they were taking communion. Basic things but needful for us to do. Follow after these things. He says flee. Why? Because the wages of sin is death. It will always be that way. And I'll tell you something, the Bible also says the way of the transgressor is hard. It's hard, it's tough when you allow sin to rule in your life and you're just going for it. It's the toughest life.

But run to the Lord, he says, for the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord. And this is not just eternal life for the sweet by and by, because we're talking about some joy and some peace right now. We're talking about a quality of life now for you and your spouse and your family. We're talking about experiencing what Jesus said, "I've come to give you life and that much more abundantly," right here in this dirty place. We can experience a taste of Heaven if we'll just run to the Lord.

Maybe you've failed. Maybe you've blown it like David. Maybe you haven't given good counsel like you know you should have done. Maybe you shouldn't have listened to Jonadab like Amnon did, and you did though. And maybe you got caught up in a trap. But Jesus wants you to know this morning that he died to set you free. He purchased your salvation to break the chains of bondage that have held men and women for centuries on centuries. Some people go to their graves still under bondage. You don't have to be under bondage anymore. You can be free. You can walk in the Spirit of the Lord. You can be led by God's Spirit in your life to do those things that are righteous and holy. You can have faith. You can experience God's love.

Guest (Male): All you have to do is ask. Have faith in God, express that faith to him, it'll change your life for eternity. Pastor Jeff Johnson will be back in a moment to wrap up today's program. And this is Sound Doctrine. Pastor Jeff's messages are archived for you at SoundDoctrineRadio.org. That includes all of 2nd Samuel. Our programs are also accessible at OnePlace.com and on Spotify and Apple Podcasts. If you enjoy the teaching you receive through Sound Doctrine, you can show your support through a financial gift and thank you for whatever the Lord lays on your heart. There's a place to give at SoundDoctrineRadio.org. SoundDoctrineRadio.org. Now here is Pastor Jeff with the closing thought.

Jeff Johnson: I'd like to end with this scripture in Romans 8. Would you turn there with me? Romans chapter 8 and verse 13. This is so true. Paul says it so well here. "For if we live after the flesh"—if we go after the things of the world, if you get caught up in this false value system that we're living in today and you start to believe it and go after it—notice what he says: "you will die." You will die. That's guaranteed. "But," he says, "if you through the Spirit"—I want you to notice that, it's through God's Spirit, it's not you doing anything.

We can't fight against this thing. It's too overpowering. We're talking about your body and the lusts of your body. But through the Spirit, through a spiritual, awesome, supernatural experience, you can have victory. It's through God's Spirit. You can put to death—and that's what that word mortify means—you can put to death the deeds of the body. You can get it under control and you shall live. And Paul said, "I bring my body under subjection." Why? Because his spirit's on top and his intellect is submitted to God's Spirit, blessing his spirit, leading him in his way by the Word of God.

He says, "For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God. For you have not received the spirit of bondage again to fear, but you have received the Spirit of adoption whereby we cry, 'Abba, Father.'" And so the Lord says, "Come." He's a father, he's our spiritual father. He says, "Come, be my child." So you can cry out with rejoicing and say, "Abba, Father. You've done so much. You've set me free. You've broken the chains that were in my life that were destroying me. You did this, Lord, and I'm your child." Flee the flesh and follow your Father and you won't believe what God will do in your life.

Guest (Male): Our study of 2nd Samuel resumes next time on Sound Doctrine with Pastor Jeff, a daily presentation of Calvary Chapel Downey.