We are a few weeks into our new series on chasing our dreams. And what we do when there's a plot twist, when the script flips on us, if you have or haven't been with us, I'll quickly try to get you up to where we are. Week one, hopefully what we discover together is that free people, people have been set free, they are allowed and can begin to dream again. People in captivity can't.
People in exile, they oftentimes merely exist. But people who have been set free and have been returned in a sense home and brought near, they can begin to dream again. We saw this in the Old Testament in the history of God's people when they return from their captivity, their exile in Babylon. They would sing of that story to remind one another about it, at the annual festivals, as they would begin to walk up the steps into their temple, in the Psalms, it was known as the Psalm of Ascent.
As they climbed those steps to that rebuilt temple that Babylon had destroyed, when we get to step seven, they would pause and they would sing. When the Lord restored the fortunes of Zion, we were like those who dreamed. Our mouths were filled with laughter in our tongues with songs of joy. You see it in the New Testament too.
Jesus, when he first begins and launches his ministry after being taken into the desert, to be tempted, he walks into the synagogue, he grabs some of the scrolls that were there, specifically from the Old Testament prophet Isaiah, and what scrolls he choose to read from, but the one that contains this. The Spirit of the Lord is on me, Jesus said, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor, and he has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners, a recovery of sight for the blind, and to set the oppressed free. Free people dream. Is there any wonder that when the church is launched and God's Spirit falls on his people?
Jesus' disciple, Peter, explains to the witnesses who were watching these supernatural things take place. He says, don't you see this is what the prophet Joel foretold in the last days. God says, I will pour out my Spirit on all people, your sons and your daughters will prophesy, your young men will see visions, and your old men will dream dreams. Jesus came to set us free, not just so that we might dream again.
Jesus came to set you an eye free with the expectation that we would dream again. Big, gaudy, God-sized dreams. Where God, in his infinite wisdom, chooses to partner with you and I to do his work of restoration and renewal in this world. But as we looked at last week, we often with our lives choose, we might have big dreams, but oftentimes we choose so much less.
We settle. We choose little dreams. Oftentimes, self-centered dreams, self-aggrandizing dreams, where we're at the center of them, and the outcome, the best case scenario, are the desires of our own hearts. These are not the dreams that God had for us, and these are not God's desired outcomes.
We began to see last week as we moved into the story of Joseph, the story of this one man who takes up such a significant portion of the book of Genesis, the story of our origins. And why does the author, why does God, who's working through the author, why does he give him so much print, so much space? And I think it's because God wants us to see our story in Joseph's story. What you'll see, and you've seen already, and we'll see again this morning, is Joseph's temptations that could wreck his dreams are the same ones.
Well, they're the same ones that we fall prey to, and they wreck ours. We began to see that last week. God gave Joseph a dream. But Joseph thought the purposes of God's dreams for him were his glory and his grandeur and his elevation.
You might remember, he went out and he told his brothers and his mother and his father that God had given him a dream, and the way he interpreted the dream was that all of them were going to one day bow to him. If you were here, what we saw is that God, Joseph, beat up by his brothers, thrown into a pit and sold into slavery in Egypt. The world empire of its day. Now, in his captivity, in his bondage, really in his slavery, there in Egypt, something began to happen to Joseph.
He began to reorient the dream, reorient himself to the dream God had given him, because it was there where he was greeted with a second temptation. The first was to make, and it's common to us, we talked about last week, to make his dreams all about him, his second temptation was to judge God's faithfulness, God's trustworthiness, God's goodness, God's providence, heck, even God's existence based on his current set of circumstances. Think through what those were. This is a man whose brothers wanted to murder him, whose family sold him to some human traffickers that dragged him into Egypt to a land he did not know with a language he did not speak.
He was sold as a slave to the second most powerful man in the empire, a man named Potiphar, and he winds up being accused of rape by Potiphar's wife, which he did not commit. He's put into jail for a crime, again, he did not commit. And all along the way, the author, every time one of these sets of circumstances pops up, every time the author tells us two things. The first is that because of Joseph's obedience to God, that everybody that he's around is being blessed by God, the Potiphar's house, the prison ward, the copter and the story.
But the second thing was this, given the worst possible set of circumstances and outcomes, giving what seemed like the silence and quiet of God, yet somehow, the author says it four times so we don't miss it. God was with Joseph last week. We began hopefully to dream together what our lives would look like. If we began to believe that despite our circumstances, God was still with us.
Joseph lived like he believed it. He lived in captivity. He lived in his circumstances. He lived at the bottom of a pit.
He lived in captivity of Potiphar. He lived in the cell of the prison, like a man that despite his circumstances looked around and somehow still believed that God was with him. And get this, that the God who gave him that dream was still going to be faithful to fulfilling it. Joseph overcame the temptation that you and I are prone to, which is to give up and to give in and to throw in the towel.
He did not embrace the temptation to say, how could I believe in a God that would let something like this happen? Joseph was able to get to a place where he somehow believed still that God was faithful and trust where he despite his circumstances. And so he kept walking. He kept his dream alive when almost everyone would have laughed at him and told him he was crazy.
My guess is that during these years of exile and captivity, he began to refine and redirect and reoriented his life to that dream so that he was no longer at the center of it as he had first perceived it. But God and his redemptive plan for the world now was. Today, what I want to share with you is two truths that have seen play themselves out and circumstances in my own life this week. And two other temptations that you and I often fall into when it comes to our God-given purposes and those God-given dreams.
Here's what both the story reveals and what I would share with you oftentimes my life reflects. We give in to the temptations of power and pleasure, the temptations of power and pleasure. And as a result, we settle all the time for something so much less than what God has ordained for us, the dream that God has for you and your life. Erwin McManus in his book, The Broken Arrow, explains our pension for trading in God's purposes and plans for our lives, for the pedestrian and the common pleasures of the day.
Listen to this. He wrote, I do not believe anyone is born average, but I do believe many of us choose to live a life of mediocrity. I think there are more of us than not who are in danger of disappearing into the abyss of the ordinary. The great tragedy in this, of course, is that there is nothing really ordinary about us.
We might not be convinced of this, but our souls already know it's true, which is why we find ourselves tormented when we choose lives beneath our capacity and calling. Here's the painful reality he wrote. We will find ourselves defined by the average if we do not choose to defy the odds. We can refuse to be average.
We must refuse to be average. We must war against the temptation to settle for less because average is always a safe choice and it's the most dangerous choice we can make. Average protects us from the risk of failure, but it also separates us from the futures of greatness. I like this conclusion.
He wrote, most of us underestimate how much God actually wants to do in our lives and through our lives. If one day we are to have a conversation with God about the measure of our lives, I would rather have him ask me why I tried to do too much than to have him ask me why I settled for so little. Isn't that good? This morning I want to touch on those two temptations, which cause us to settle for this average.
And then I hope to offer you a solution. Temptation one is power. If you fully grasp what's going on in the story of Joseph, what you begin to realize is that Joseph, despite the fact that he is in exile, in captivity, in Egypt, the current world power, the empire, because of Potiphar, the man who bought him as a slave, Potiphar is the second highest ranking official next to Pharaoh in Egypt. Because of Potiphar's trust of and in Joseph, Joseph winds up rising to incredible heights of power.
Here's what the author wrote. Joseph found favor in Potiphar's eyes and became his attendant. Potiphar put him in charge of his household and he entrusted to his care everything he owned. From the time he put him in charge of his household and all that he owned, the Lord blessed the household of the Egyptian because of Joseph.
Notice the sentence. The blessing of the Lord was on everything Potiphar had, both in the house and in the field. So Potiphar left everything he had in Joseph's care. With Joseph in charge, he did not concern himself with anything except the food he ate.
What the writer is trying to tell us over and over is that despite his circumstances, that the Lord was with Joseph. And what does Joseph do with the blessing that the Lord is providing him with? He persistently, he consistently blesses others. The blessing of the Lord was on everything Potiphar had.
Joseph was blessed to be a blessing, which would make a lot of sense if you know the story of God. When God called Joseph's great grandfather Abraham to be the one through whom God would reestablish his relationship with humanity and eventually deliver the Savior of the world. Here's what the call was. He said to his great grandfather, I will make you into a great nation and I will bless you.
I will make your name great and you will be a blessing. I will bless you and you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you and whoever curses you I will curse and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you. Joseph is beginning in his captivity to change.
You see the story begins with him making up some stories about his brother and the Hebrew. It's clear that he was lying about his brothers to his father and their work ethic and he was doing it because he wanted to win the affections of his father. Eventually winding up with that dream coat we talked about and all of it. He's having these dreams from God and he's interpreting these dreams about well he thinks it's about his greatness that they would somehow bow down to him.
But somewhere in Egypt sometime in his capacity, Joseph who is still not given up on this dream, he is now reinterpreted in light of God's purposes in the world. Joseph was not being blessed by God in order that others might bow to him. Don't miss what God said. God had told his great grandfather, all peoples on earth, good and bad, Israelites and Egyptians, all people will be blessed through you.
You see Joseph has risen to incredible heights of power. God has granted it to him and in and with that power he is choosing to use it to bless others. Even others that he could have cursed. We actually have in Joseph's story a perfect counterbalance to this.
It's seen in the the wife of Potiphar, the Mrs. Robinson of her day. When I wrote that I thought two-thirds of the people are going to have no idea what that means but for the rest of us old people we can yuck it up. Mrs.
Robinson, I mean Potiphar's wife, she too has great power and influence. She is the wife of the commander of the Egyptian army. What does she do with her power? Well we began to tell the story last week.
Now Joseph was well built and handsome. I can picture Dustin Hoffman in this role. And after a while his master's wife took notice of Joseph and said, come to bed with me. And again in verse 12 she caught him by his cloak and said, come to bed with me.
I was telling you last week in the Hebrew that's in which this was written. It was just really two words and they were essentially commands sex now. You know who you are and I know who I am, bow down to me. See here's a truth to reflect on.
The only thing perhaps more seductive than sexual pleasure is power. She has it and like Joseph power has changed her but unlike Joseph she's not leveraging her power to bless others. She's leveraging her power. Again I mean so we all she's leveraging her power for her for her wants and her desires.
Power has not only gone to her head power has changed her heart. Being able to get what you want when you want using that power to pursue the dreams that God has for you rather than your own wants, needs and desires. It's a very very seductive trap. In fact I would argue as I reflected on it this week that it's a trap that almost all of us fall into.
We don't even see it. We're blind to it but we all fall prey to it. And when we do, here's what I want you to see. When we fall victim to the trap of power it winds up making us settle for so much lesser of a dream.
In fact I'll take it a step further. Not only do we settle for common dreams and common lives, boring lives really. What we tend to do is when we screw up and fall prey to the temptation of power, what we wind up doing is trading the freedom that Jesus purchased for us on the cross. This freedom from slavery to sin and death.
And we wind up the scripture saying like a dog returning to his vomit. We wind up going right back into captivity. We trade our freedom away because of our desire for power to slavery again. Now you may hear that and go well I guess it.
I guess that could be true. In fact I would love to know if it is because I don't have any power. I would like to give it a shot. But see that's the subtlety of power.
No one actually thinks they have Tim Keller gives a great example of this and it was powerfully convicting to me this week. He spoke of a young couple moving to a new city and meeting with a real estate agent to begin to look for a new home. Maybe you've looked for a new car recently because the same conversation takes place. The agent's first question was, all right well what is your take home pay?
And why was that the first question? It's the first question because your take home pay determines the price of the home you're looking for. Your take home pay will decide the prestige of the town you're going to live in. But there's a clear underlying assumption that's built into the culture is captured in that question.
You will purchase a home you will determine where it is you and your family will live by spending up to the amount of mortgage that your take home pay will permit. It's just assumed everybody does that. I mean you want your kids in that school system and not this one right? I do.
No one asks nor dare assume that you might choose something less or so. So that perhaps you might take the blessing of the money that you make so that you might take the power that that money affords you and leverage it to benefit somebody other than yourself. Because if money is power then based, if money is power then based on the cars we drive and the homes we live in and the schools that we send our children off to, many of us have been seduced into using the power that God has given us. We could use that power, right?
We could use that power to partner with God in the restoration and the renewal of all things. We could use that power to bless others, to build His church, to make His kingdom come on earth as it is in heaven. We pray that. We could use this power to make God's eyes dreams of purpose come true.
But instead we exchange this freedom for oversized jumbo mortgage payments, car payments, student loans. That wind up ensuring we will have no free time or money to do with any of it, right? What could have afforded huge God-sized dreams in our lives? We will live under the pressure of the payment.
We will bear the yoke of its slavery to its to debt and its demands. Do you see how subtle it is? Joseph used his power. His power did not use him.
He took power, but he wasn't corrupted by power, like Potiphar's wife was. And so the question is we look at this this morning is what dreams have we just set aside? What dreams have we canceled? What dreams have we crushed that God had for us?
That maybe you had one at one point because we weren't able to say no to the elusive call of power. Because when you begin to see the power that you and I have been given with our time and with our money and our positions and our possessions, our birthright in this country, how so many of us have moved from owning them to them owning us? And you begin to understand what makes dreams die. We just settle, like settle for very common, very pedestrian lives.
Saint Augustine, the Bishop of Hippo from 396 to 430, he was an early church father. He wrote in his book City of God that in every human city there are actually two cities. There is within every city, it's true here in Menom and Chester in Long Valley. There is a heavenly one and an earthly one.
There is the city of God here in the city of man. And he said what marks citizens in each of those cities is that the supreme motive of the city of heaven is love for God. And the supreme motive in the city of man is the love of self. But then he made it practical.
He said here's the practical difference of how those citizens exist. It's how they use their power. He wrote the citizens of the city of God were the best citizens in the earthly city. Why?
Because in every area in which they existed, in business, in agriculture, in medicine, in the arts, in every area, they used the power God had granted them to bless others and not to serve themselves. And so Joseph Life begs us to ask ourselves a question, which city are we living in? And is it possible that we have sabotaged our own dreams because of the subtle lure and lie of power? Speaking of lures, let me get to the second way that we sabotaged these God-given dreams for our lives.
And it's this, we often, if not always, choose pleasure, sometimes even momentary ones, over purpose. We talked about it last week, Mrs. Potiphar put Joseph in a no-win situation. Say yes to her, and when the word gets back to Potiphar, he dies.
So you know to her, and she has the power we just spoke about to, not just to bless him, but to kill him. And easily could have succumbed to what most young men given those choices, right? Well, if I'm going to die either way, right? Might as well just go out this way, but he didn't, but he refused.
With me in charge, he told her, my master does not concern himself when anything in the house. Everything he owns isn't trusted in my care. Nobody's greater in this house than I am. My master has withheld nothing for me except you, because you're his wife.
But here's the key line here. How then could I do such a wicked thing and sin against God? I want you to see how Joseph is framing his choice. It was not a choice between Potiphar and his wife.
He did not say, after all, Potiphar is gone for me. How could I possibly sin against Potiphar? Joseph, despite as we said last week his circumstances, he saw this somehow, and I'll show you in a few minutes, he saw this somehow as a choice between the pursuit of pleasure or the pursuit of God. He was going to be sinning against God.
He was unwilling to sell out his dream, to settle for pleasure and exchange for purpose. Which I know we read this and we're like, well, yeah, I mean, obviously, who would do something like that? It sounds so easy, right? I mean, when you read it about every date line, every TV show, when you read it and see it in other people's lives, modern day news accounts, right?
How many of us have watched all these things take place and go, geez, how could he do that? Like how short sighted? How could you possibly? What an idiot.
How could you be so stupid? But yet the list of human beings who have given up all of the dreams that they had, family and faith and fortune and fame that have given it all away at the altar of a momentary pleasure. I mean, I'm like a million times I've got, how could I, could you be so stupid? But these things often leave to lifelong pursuits and addictions.
That list of human beings goes on and on and on and it grows day by day by day. And what I need you to see and believe about yourself this morning is every single one of us is capable of making this same stupid trade given the right, sad or maybe the wrong, set of circumstances. And God's dream for your lives, the people that will be impacted by God's dream for your lives, starting in your own home. They will die on the altar of pleasure.
Jesus came to set us free from these desires that so easily ensnare us to free us from these passions which so often enslave us. What we have to begin to take seriously though as a people is that there is a spiritual truth. And oftentimes we give lip service to this but we don't really reflect on it. Here's what I want you to understand is happening.
If you felt that compulsory pull almost to do something that you know will wreck and ruin your life. Here's the truth. If there is a God who sent his son to set us free from slavery to sin and death, then there has to be another whose desire for us is to keep us ensnared to sin and to death. There is a war in the cosmos.
There is one who desire nothing more for God's people than that they live common average, ultimately meaningless lives of self-seeking. There is a war afoot and your dreams hang in that balance. Did you listen to the language Jesus used when he introduced himself in the synagogue? He said, he has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners to set the oppressed free.
Prisoners are oppressed. He is talking about you and I. There is something going on here. I will give you another one.
It is a parable. You rarely hear anybody talk about this parable. It is called the parable of the strong man. Jesus was trying to explain what he is doing here.
Why he has come. Could he explain his ministry? And Jesus said, let me tell you a story. He goes when a strong man fully armed guards his own house, his possessions are safe.
But when somebody stronger attacks and overpowers him, he takes away the armor in which the man trusted and he divides up his plunder. Friends, you and I in that story, our hearts and our souls and our minds and our dreams are the things that the strong man has possessed and believes are safe until a stronger man came to win you and I back. Now, I don't know if you've tasted how strong that enemy is, but I know some of you have the strength of your addiction, the power of your temptation. This morning, they might seem stronger than you.
I join the eternal chorus of never again. I won't, not never again. And some of us get to the point where you've said never again so many times you've just given in and just said, well, I guess it's going to be always. But the story of Jesus is that there is one stronger that is now on the scene and he has come to destroy the work of the strong man in your life and set you and I free to dream again.
We talked about it last week. I mean, this kind of battle was first foretold in Genesis right after the fall and when God shows up and he speaks of one that would come the seed of the woman who would come and crush the head of the enemy. How did he do that? He didn't do it by violence.
Jesus came and did it by trading his freedom for our captivity, by trading his life for ours, by taking on our behalf on the cross the sin and the death do all of our injustices free you and I from from guilt and shame and sin and death, inviting us to dream again, inviting us to join with him just like in the garden to play a role in the redemptive mission. But jeez, do you and I get sidelined in our freedom and so many of us get enslaved, tricked, trapped by the pursuit of momentary pleasure. So what do we do? How do we overcome these things?
The siren call of pleasure that is so strong. Almost every single one of us is dealing with something that is so hard for us to shake. It gets us hooking us. It's always right there.
It's just always right there. You try not to look at it, but it's always tempting and calling and waiting. You actually see it in the story of Joseph. And though she spoke to Joseph speaking about Mrs.
Robinson here and though she spoke to Joseph day after day, he refused to go to bed with her or even be with her. For Joseph, what the writer wants you to see is this is not a momentary temptation. It was she was to Joseph a daily temptation. She never left.
She never went away. She came back again and again and again. So what did he do? Well the first thing he did was to put up some boundaries.
Not only did he refuse to go to bed with her, he refused to be with her. Apostle Paul wrote to the church in Rome with this same idea. He said, but put on the Lord Jesus Christ and make no provision for the flesh to fulfill its lust. Make no provision for the flesh.
Joseph didn't set up times when he knew he'd be alone with her. Joseph figured out ways to ensure he wouldn't be by her. So the story of Joseph's teaching us first is you've got to move away from the place of temptation. You've got to stop making allowances for it.
Stop putting yourself in the position to choose that kind of thing. But here's the truth. This is a story of what the story about, the denial of illicit sexual pleasure. And if you and I read the stories of trainwrecked lives from the boardroom to the church altar, what wipes out more men and women, CEOs, pastors and priests than any other temptation.
So often it is this one in a room full of people like you and I. This singular temptation is not only powerful, it is alive and well. It's so powerful. What did Joseph do?
He said one day he went into the house to attend to his duties and none of the household servants was inside. And so Mrs. Potter, for a quote by the cloak and again demanded sex now. But he left his cloak in her hand and he ran out of the house.
Joseph in the face of this sexual temptation, which is, as the scripture describes over and over, it is a temptation in a sin like no other because of the power that it has in us. Joseph didn't stand against this. Joseph ran. And this is a truth not lost on the New Testament writers because they reference this story over and over.
Paul to the church in Corinth, flee, run from sexual immorality. All other sins the person commits are outside of the body. But whoever sends sexually, sends against their own body. Timothy wrote, he knows this truth too.
Here's what he wrote. Flea, the evil desires of youth and pursue righteous and space, love and patience, along with those who call on the Lord out of pure heart. But I want you to notice something about what Timothy wrote there. Timothy points out something that is key to overcoming temptations and it will help you not settle for common dreams.
And it is something more powerful than your willpower because unless your willpower is a lot better than mine, you're going to wind up in the same place again and again and again. It was not just flee, it was flee and pursue. Flea this, pursue that. Timothy was saying you've got to run from this but then you have to run to that towards something.
Jesus and brother James expounds on this concept. The concept, he actually explains the whole process, how this happens to us. The process of temptation in its pull on us, how strong it is. Why do grown mature men and women so often wreck their lives?
How could smart mature people with so much risk do something seemingly so stupid and hurt so many? Here's how James says it goes down. He said, when tempted, no one should say God is tempting me. For God cannot be tempted by evil nor does he tempt anyone.
So again, take a note, God's not tempting you but there is an enemy that is. There is a dream killer alive and well and it's not God. But each person is tempted, pause. Each person, can I, you know, again I've looked at this in the Greek.
Do you know what each person translates to correctly? Each person. That means every single one of us in this room has an enemy that is tempting us. But each person is tempted.
This is happening to you. When they're dragged away, other translations use the word luord. When they are lured away by their own evil desires and enticed. Luord away, I like that wording because it seems like that's what happens.
Luord away by their own desires. There is an individuality to my desires and your desires. My desires might be very likely are different than your desires. But you have an enemy that somehow in some way is aware of how you work.
And he has a lure just for you. What do you do with a lure, right? This week I was studying this. I was thinking about my brother-in-law.
Some of you, if you're friends on the social media, you might be aware that I lost my brother-in-law this week. He was 48 years old. I was just with him a few weeks ago. He's a wonderful man of God.
Found out on my deck till two in the morning talking about Jesus and our families and our kids. Talked about one day we would retire and maybe we could live close together and and Joan and his wife, Ellen, Joan's sister. Maybe they could live together close by. We could drive our golf carts to one another's house.
And my brother was a, or my brother-in-law, he was like a brother to me. He had a PhD in fishery science. He was a professor at Michigan State. But for a long time he had run like the great, the fisheries into the fish.
I would make fun of him all the time about this. But he was like Mr. Fish in the Great Lakes. Like you looked up his name, right?
Like it was like Fish and Chris Vanderboot. And I started thinking about Chris because Chris loved to fish. And I think that when I tell you this story about what temptation does to our lives, my brother-in-law was only 48. And I could hear him saying, don't waste your life.
You can waste your life falling for this lure, right? Like, what is a fisherman? Some of you are fish. What do you do with a lure, right?
Like you cast it out there. And the first thing you're doing is you're just kind of presented. See, you have an enemy that is doing this. He's presenting to you some kind of lure.
He chooses just the right place, like a fisherman. Just the right time, right? Morning, evening. I don't know what it is.
And you present that lure at just the right time in such a way that it's designed to get the fish's attention. And not just his attention. It's not that he just looks over and goes, oh, look at that squid-like object. He looks at it and goes, that looks good.
It arouses within him and an affection. The goal is to get the fish to stop doing what he's doing, to pull himself away from his other fish friends who might be warning, don't do it. Remember what happened to Jimmy, right? But he's in time.
Like, I could give you the list of pastors that have fallen. Don't do it. Remember what happened to him. But you see it.
And it's enticing. And you move towards it, right? And once he's, here's what James says. James picks up what happens once it's presented, once we become enticed.
James says, then after desire has conceived, it gets birth to sin and sin when it's full-grown. It gives birth to death. The fish bites. And once he's hooked, he has him.
You see, the fish never saw the lure. The fish never saw the hook. And then you have him, right? And the fish, just like you and I.
The fish, just like you and I, never understood that there was an enemy on the other side of the line, just duping you. I don't know what your lure is, right? Like, but I'm telling you, there's another one out there. They all look a little different.
And they're all set just for you. The imagery James uses in Greek is actually stunning, as I understand it, Greek is a gendered language. And so when he writes of desire, desire is a feminine word. And James says, when you unite with your desires, she conceives a baby and she gives birth to a child called sin.
Sin is a feminine word too. And so he says, when sin now is fully grown, she brings forth she births death. It's meant to be, for the original readers, a shocking imagery, to give birth to death. It's meant to wake up the readers to the reality of their situation.
It forces us to think through enticement before uniting ourselves to it. To think through it, it says, what kind of baby is this going to leave? What kind of child am I about to make? That's a powerful image.
What will this give birth to? James ultimately says, it's death, hearts and souls and minds, to families, careers, to hopes, to promises and dreams. You have to know your own heart. We have to know what it is, what the lures are for us, what tempts us, what entices us, what lure gets us every time.
And we have to begin to do what Paul said to the Romans. You have to make no provision for it. You can't go well, maybe. I can't tell you how many addicts we do so much at work with Mark's Remission.
I can't tell you how many of my friends, and these were true friends of mine that I've sat in diners with, and they'll begin to tell me, oh yeah, I'm doing great. I'm doing great. And I'm like, tell me about it. Oh, it's great because I've really learned to control my drinking, right?
And I'm always like, no, you haven't. It's just dude, it's a lure. It's a lure. And it just led them right back down to the road to death.
I have had friends that have died from that lure. I could tell you their names. We have to understand what it is. We have to put up those boundaries.
But I'm telling you, those things, self-control will not be enough. Timothy said there had to be more, that we need to move from one thing, but then we have to move towards. We have to move away from one thing and move towards something else. James has the same ideas.
He goes, boundaries are good, but they're not enough. Boundaries are good. But here's the thing. Boundaries don't change anybody's heart.
What does? To where must we move? To whom? Shall we go?
James goes on. Don't be deceived. My dear brothers and sisters, in other words, you're being lied to. Somebody is lying to you.
Do not be deceived. Every good and perfect gift is from above. Coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights who does not change like shifting shadows. The lie that is out there and that you and I have fallen for a time and time again is the same one that's in the garden, that God is not good, that he is not holding out for.
That lie fuels our temptation, that God is not a good God, that God does not love us, that God does not want good for us, that God does not have better plans for us. We believe the lie that he won't take care of us, that he can't be trusted, so we better grab on all the power that we can and leverage it for our own good. James is saying, and he goes on. He goes on.
He chose to give us birth, James, right? Here's the imagery. Sin is not the only one that's having babies. God has brought forth through Jesus the new people and I am telling you, God loves you.
He's brought them forth through the word of truth that we might be a kind of first roots of all he created. Boundaries, yes, but there's something that we have to move towards. And it's what Thomas Chalmers called the expository power of a new affection. We've got to begin the fight, the lie that God does not love us, that he's holding out on us, that God is not good, and we have to begin to see him for who he is and how much he loves us.
Jesus and what he's done for us must grow in our hearts and our minds so big and so beautiful and wonderful that the lures of the enemy just lose their attraction in the light of his glory and his grace. Somebody looks at the lure and goes, it looks like a rotting squid to me. I'm not interested. Some of you know the story of Joseph's father, Jacob, he fell in love with Joseph's mother, Rachel, that in order to get Rachel to win her from her father, he had to go and work for her father for seven years, hard labor, backbreaking, thankless, unpaid day and day out seven years.
And yet here's what the scripture said. So Jacob served seven years to get Rachel, but they seemed like only a few days to him because of his love for her. Was he during like Joseph? Was he tempted to give up, give in, go home?
Sure. Was he tempted to walk away and settle for someone else? Something less? Probably.
But what kept him from giving it to temptation? Was it boundaries? No. It was his love for Rachel.
All other things paled in comparison. Friends, you may have tried self-control over and over. It will ultimately fail you. But what you and I need is a Rachel because when we find our supreme love, when God becomes so beautiful in our eyes, when he becomes our supreme love, when we desire him more than all these other things, we become like Joseph who told Potiphar's wife, no, not because it isn't right, not because I could lose so much, not even because I owe it to Potiphar.
He said, no, I've got God. I want you, Mrs. Robinson. Tim Keller once said, self-control is not good.
It's oppressing the desires of the heart, but a supreme love will reorder them. We have to fight the lie that God is not good, that he's holding out on us, that God does not love us. You and I have to begin to see him for who he is. And I'm telling you, if we get it right, it changes everything.
It will reorder our loves. Pause that because we have to show something here. Yesterday I saw this, some of you know my daughter Courtney had twins this week and it was a wonderful event and we kept Landry for a couple of days. And so, Courtney Ryan went home and we had Landry, we were bringing Landry to their house.
So we were bringing Landry to the house. And what I didn't know was that on their way home, Courtney and Ryan had been crying. And I said, why are you guys crying? This is such a joyous event.
And they said, it is joyous and it's wonderful, but we love Landry so much. And the thought that when she came home now, she wouldn't be the sole focus of our attention. In some sense, we're going to have to divide some of our time and our space. It was hurting our heart so much.
And so I walked Landry in yesterday and I'm working on this talk. I watched this take place and I thought to myself, this is the love that God has for each of us. And if we could ever understand it, man, when we wanted to go home, watch this. Mommy needs a hug.
Mommy needs a hug. Thank you. Good Mommy hug. Hey, Miss Kate.
Are you happy to be home? Those boys are beautiful. Let's go see. What do you think?
That's your sister? That's Kimmy. She's cute. She's like baby.
Oh, that's so nice. Go see Charlie? Yeah, let's go see him. He's where your baby is.
Oh my goodness. You got two babies. You're going to play with her? Mom and Dad, they don't really have any more time for you now that they have this baby.
They didn't really love you that much anyway. Why don't you just go take it to the streets because there's a better life for you out there. That's where you can get everything you're looking for. Ryan and Courtney would go not if somebody did that to her.
But you and I believe that lie about our dad. Don't settle for the last their dreams. Raise up God so high. I'll close with this last quote.
It's so good. Augustine who wrote about the city of God. Turns out Augustine also struggled with sexual issues. Some people have even said that he was a sex addict.
He wrote about it in his book Confessions. But do you know what cured him? Here's what he wrote. How sweet all at once it was for me to be rid of those fruitless joys which I once feared to lose.
You drove them from me. You who are the true, the sovereign joy. You drove them from me and took their place. You who are sweeter than all pleasure.
May you know the love of God and laugh in the face of temptation. Let's stand close together.