How Do I Handle My Disordered Desires?

00:00:00.000 | (upbeat music)

00:00:02.580 | - Well, to be a Christian is a wonderful thing.

00:00:06.480 | It's the greatest thing, in fact.

00:00:08.760 | To find forgiveness in the cross of our Savior,

00:00:10.780 | to be united to Christ by His Spirit,

00:00:13.560 | to have the Father as our own Father,

00:00:15.480 | and to commune with Him as His child.

00:00:17.780 | These are the greatest gifts a creature can receive,

00:00:20.440 | and so we give thanks.

00:00:22.680 | And yet we also look forward to our resurrection

00:00:25.080 | and to new bodies that will enjoy God forever

00:00:27.860 | without any sinful impediments,

00:00:30.200 | to our giving God all the glory He is worthy

00:00:32.600 | to receive from us, and in that,

00:00:35.200 | experiencing the fullest possible joy

00:00:37.800 | we can experience in ourselves.

00:00:40.600 | Cannot wait.

00:00:41.600 | But for now, we wait.

00:00:44.440 | Because for all the incredible gifts and blessings

00:00:46.620 | we now have in Christ, to be a Christian in this life

00:00:49.200 | doesn't mean we are free from our disordered loves.

00:00:53.360 | We're not.

00:00:54.200 | We're not.

00:00:56.200 | And every Christian feels it, feels an ongoing civil war

00:00:59.360 | on the inside in our twisted loves and longings.

00:01:03.200 | We both love God, and we find in us the remains

00:01:06.680 | of a treasonous impulse against the God we love

00:01:10.920 | and our attraction to sin.

00:01:13.080 | The Bible explains this civil war.

00:01:16.120 | Arguably, Romans 7, verses 14 to 25 makes the point.

00:01:19.640 | Less arguably, Galatians 5, 16 to 17

00:01:22.960 | makes the same point, too.

00:01:25.080 | So then, what do we do as Christians,

00:01:27.000 | redeemed by Christ's blood, sealed by the Spirit,

00:01:29.600 | adopted by the Father?

00:01:30.800 | What do we do with the disordered loves

00:01:32.960 | that we still find at work inside of us?

00:01:36.000 | Pastor John explained at the end of a sermon

00:01:39.080 | on Romans chapter seven, preached in 2001,

00:01:41.600 | here he is drawing out pastoral application.

00:01:44.640 | - In view of all that the Bible says to us

00:01:48.060 | about our condition, our fallen condition

00:01:54.680 | with this body of death, and our sinful condition

00:01:59.680 | with the body acting in treason to join forces

00:02:05.080 | with the power of sin to tempt us,

00:02:09.360 | in view of the fact that there's a law of sin still active

00:02:13.880 | and there's a body of death,

00:02:16.320 | we should not be surprised or thrown off balance

00:02:23.120 | when we meet in ourselves and in our children

00:02:27.480 | and in our spouses and in our loved ones

00:02:30.380 | and in our colleagues and our roommates and our neighbors

00:02:33.880 | some really excessive and distorted bodily desires.

00:02:40.420 | Let me give you some examples

00:02:50.520 | and then say how I think we should respond.

00:02:52.720 | Remember, we are being redeemed in stages.

00:02:58.320 | Guilt is taken away right now.

00:03:03.160 | All your sins are forgiven right now.

00:03:06.400 | The Holy Spirit is dwelling in your life by faith

00:03:09.040 | if you're a believer right now.

00:03:12.180 | No condemnation is hanging over you at all right now.

00:03:17.120 | And yet we wait for the redemption of our bodies

00:03:21.880 | and those bodies are bodies of death

00:03:26.360 | and places where sin sets up a base of operations often

00:03:30.720 | and tempts us with excessive and distorted bodily desires.

00:03:35.720 | For example, we see excessive desires for leisure,

00:03:46.080 | tempting us to laziness and sloth.

00:03:49.840 | We see excessive desires for food,

00:03:53.760 | tempting us to gluttony and all of its damaging effects.

00:03:58.760 | We see excessive desires for drink,

00:04:03.300 | tempting us to alcoholism.

00:04:07.240 | We see excessive desires for sex,

00:04:10.560 | tempting us to lustfulness and fornication and adultery.

00:04:15.940 | And on top of all of those excessive desires,

00:04:20.940 | this law of sin operating in our members

00:04:27.860 | produces distorted desires.

00:04:32.460 | That shouldn't surprise us either.

00:04:34.300 | The whole world is bent out of shape under the fall.

00:04:38.460 | That's much of the point of Romans 1 to 3.

00:04:41.060 | It's much of the point of part of Romans 8.

00:04:44.860 | For example, we see distorted desires for food.

00:04:49.860 | My father-in-law treated people before he died

00:04:57.260 | who had this incredible hankering

00:05:03.020 | for gray river clay in Georgia.

00:05:07.120 | They ate clay until it filled their bowels

00:05:13.340 | and they died.

00:05:14.980 | He would warn them not to take laxatives

00:05:19.300 | because it would kill them.

00:05:20.660 | Why would anybody wanna eat clay?

00:05:25.740 | Or the whole issue of binging bags of cookies and so on.

00:05:32.300 | Those are distortions of a good thing

00:05:37.900 | called appetite, desire.

00:05:41.620 | Or we know about distorted desires of sex.

00:05:46.540 | The desire to have satisfaction with one of your own sex,

00:05:50.980 | whether homosexuality or lesbianism or bisexuality

00:05:55.980 | is one of many kinds of fallen distortions.

00:06:01.460 | Another example would be the distortions of desire

00:06:07.140 | for pleasure, a kind of high,

00:06:10.140 | and people resort to marijuana or speed or cocaine or LSD.

00:06:15.140 | Why?

00:06:18.420 | What are these distortions,

00:06:19.620 | these artificial ways of getting some kind of satisfaction

00:06:23.860 | and happiness?

00:06:24.900 | The world is just shot through our bodies.

00:06:28.500 | These bodies of death are shot through

00:06:31.780 | with excessive desires and distorted desires.

00:06:35.740 | There's not a person in this room

00:06:37.260 | who doesn't have one of those.

00:06:39.820 | Now, what do we do?

00:06:41.540 | I'm calling you, pleading with you week after week

00:06:44.620 | for a biblical realism in Jesus Christ.

00:06:49.340 | In Christ, by faith, we are united to him.

00:06:55.220 | Before any of this is fixed, you hear this now,

00:07:01.180 | by faith, we become united to Jesus, faith alone.

00:07:07.180 | We are united to him and his purchase pardon

00:07:12.180 | becomes perfectly ours and his perfect righteousness

00:07:16.820 | close this excessively desiring,

00:07:19.060 | distortedly desiring body.

00:07:21.940 | First, this is the gospel.

00:07:25.100 | Now, what's the issue there?

00:07:30.620 | The issue in your life, believer,

00:07:33.820 | is not do I have excessive desires

00:07:38.820 | or do I have distorted desires?

00:07:42.540 | I say it with joy in my heart

00:07:46.860 | for those of you who struggle with homosexuality

00:07:51.860 | or with eating disorders or with drugs

00:07:57.420 | or with laziness.

00:08:00.860 | I say it with joy in my heart.

00:08:05.260 | The issue is not whether you have those excessive

00:08:09.900 | and distorted desires.

00:08:11.980 | The issue is, will you say,

00:08:16.740 | who will deliver me from this body of death?

00:08:20.220 | And look away from yourself and your resources

00:08:23.780 | and say, thanks be to God through Jesus Christ

00:08:28.340 | who gives the victory.

00:08:31.340 | And will you not make peace

00:08:36.340 | with the law of sin and find yourself at home

00:08:41.980 | in the body of death,

00:08:44.380 | but rather make war all your life

00:08:49.380 | until your body is finally redeemed at the resurrection?

00:08:55.180 | That's the issue.

00:08:58.340 | So you walk up to me at the end of the service

00:09:00.700 | in five minutes and say with trembling,

00:09:05.500 | I'd like you to pray for me

00:09:06.620 | because I've never told anybody,

00:09:09.380 | but I really struggle with homosexuality.

00:09:13.660 | I'm not gonna be surprised.

00:09:16.220 | Happens a lot.

00:09:17.660 | You say to me, nobody knows about what I'm doing with food.

00:09:22.540 | Nobody knows.

00:09:24.460 | I'm not gonna be surprised.

00:09:26.740 | Nothing surprises me anymore.

00:09:28.820 | But I will call you to a massive hope

00:09:33.060 | that through faith there is justification

00:09:36.860 | and through faith there is forgiveness.

00:09:38.980 | And then by that same Christ comes incrementally,

00:09:43.220 | sometimes in leaps and bounds

00:09:45.020 | and sometimes through long agonizing wrestling,

00:09:49.180 | a triumph that will be secured the last day

00:09:52.300 | because of the blood of Jesus.

00:09:54.260 | - Powerful pastoral application

00:09:55.820 | taken from the end of John Piper's sermon

00:09:57.380 | preached on August 19th, 2001.

00:09:59.740 | A sermon titled, "Who is this divided man?" part five.

00:10:03.020 | Part of a series on Romans chapter seven, verses 14 to 25,

00:10:06.020 | which raises again the ongoing debate

00:10:07.740 | over whether or not Romans seven

00:10:10.180 | is speaking of the struggles of a believer

00:10:12.020 | or the struggles of a pre-believer.

00:10:14.820 | Pastor John says, of course, believer,

00:10:16.420 | but we've only briefly talked about that debate here

00:10:18.940 | in APJ's 802, 1183, and 1438 for what it's worth.

00:10:24.660 | But we should cover that in the future more directly.

00:10:27.180 | But this is a great clip from a listener with this note.

00:10:30.540 | Dear Pastor John and the APJ team,

00:10:32.780 | hello, my name is Svetlana and I live in Greece

00:10:35.020 | where despite deeply rooted prevailing heresies

00:10:37.660 | in the religious culture here,

00:10:39.240 | the work of Paul the Apostle is still bearing great fruit.

00:10:41.980 | And praise the Lord, I've been immensely helped

00:10:44.500 | by your service to God, Pastor John,

00:10:45.980 | in your personal examples and in your sermons.

00:10:48.380 | I have listened several times to your series on Romans seven,

00:10:52.060 | "Who is this divided man?"

00:10:54.820 | And what especially resonates with me

00:10:56.820 | was this honest admission at the end of part five.

00:11:00.020 | To my sorrow, I struggle with food sins

00:11:03.340 | that I've not shared with anybody, not until now.

00:11:06.320 | This clip has served me in incredible ways over the years,

00:11:09.200 | and I would be humbled if you would share it

00:11:11.320 | about the civil war we fight within our flesh

00:11:14.660 | with love in Christ from Greece.

00:11:17.500 | Amen, thank you, Svetlana, and we hope and pray

00:11:20.620 | that you will be open with the struggle

00:11:22.260 | with the people in your life now too,

00:11:24.060 | your Christian friends and pastors as well.

00:11:27.020 | That was a great clip, a great find from Greece,

00:11:29.980 | sent to us via email.

00:11:31.020 | If you have a clip, email me, I need your location,

00:11:33.640 | first name, sermon title, and the timestamp

00:11:36.420 | of where the clip happens in the audio.

00:11:37.860 | Also tell me how it impacted you.

00:11:39.200 | If it did, put the word clip in the subject line of an email

00:11:42.740 | and send it to me at askpastorjohn@desiringgod.org.

00:11:46.460 | That is an email address, askpastorjohn@desiringgod.org.

00:11:50.600 | Well, speaking of our bodies,

00:11:52.080 | can we make ourselves more holy

00:11:54.600 | if we treat our bodies more harshly?

00:11:58.320 | It's a great question about asceticism,

00:12:00.400 | and it's up next time.

00:12:01.400 | I'm your host, Tony Reinke,

00:12:02.800 | and we are rejoined in studio with Pastor John on Friday.

00:12:06.280 | See you then.

00:12:07.120 | (upbeat music)

00:12:09.700 | (upbeat music)

00:12:12.280 | [BLANK_AUDIO]

How Do I Handle My Disordered Desires?

Chapters