How to Be a Human Being - Impulse Control
The other day someone said “I think this season of earth has lost its way. It’s like they fired the writers and hired a bunch of sadistic lunatics who don’t know how to tell a story. Worldwide pandemic but where are the zombies? Mayors of major cities joining rioters and tearing down their own communities—it’s just not realistic. Why even introduce the Murder Hornets if they’re not going to play a role in the story? It’s just sloppy writing.
It’s all like a bad soap opera.
My mom and my grandma used to watch their “stories.” Every day. Wouldn’t miss them—back then, if you missed your show you missed your show. That was it. No way to record. Everyone in those shows were always sleeping around, cheating on each other, scheming, lying, plotting. I think my mom learned the fine art of conflict management from Days of Our Lives—you just say what you have to say in the meanest, nastiest way possible, give ‘em a dirty look and light a fresh cigarette. That was back when everyone smoked on TV.
Soap Operas became reality TV shows and reality TV shows became reality. People scheming and plotting and cheating and fighting and taking their clothes off. Everyone seems to have learned what relationships are supposed to look like from soap operas, too.
Anyway, now it seems like the whole world is a poorly written TV show. It’s such a mess. Everyone’s so ugly all the time.
Seems like no one remembers how to be a human being. So we’re taking a deep dive into what we call the Ten Commandments—God’s absolute moral standard of what a human life is supposed to look like.
We’ve talked about how it all starts with understanding that God is God and we’re not. God establishes the standard for what a human life means, He’s the only true North. If we look to anything else, we’ll be hopelessly lost.
The Ten Commandments pretty much boil down to worship God and control your impulses.
There's a famous psychological study called the Stanford Marshmallow Experiment. You’ve probably heard of it. A doctor took a bunch of elementary students, put them in a room by themselves with a marshmallow on the table in front of them. He told them if they waited and didn’t eat the marshmallow that he’d give them two marshmallows—then he left them alone with temptation for 10 minutes.
Some kids waited and some kids didn’t. He tracked their progress with grades and college and careers and marriage. The kids who at an early age showed the ability to practice impulse control, who could defer gratification—they not only got two marshmallows, they also got better grades, did better in school, went on to more successful careers, and were more likely to succeed in their marriages.
It’s amazing what a little impulse control can do. This study has been brought out to illustrate the importance of deferred gratification ever since.
But another study was done several years later. They did the same basic test but they included more kids from broken homes, poor kids—the first study was mostly done with the children of staff at Stanford University. The study didn’t debunk the original findings but it did complicate them a little. They found that poor kids and children from broken homes were less likely to trust the doctor enough to wait. The marshmallow in front of them is a sure thing and the promise of a future marshmallow didn’t mean as much to them.
I think that’s very interesting in light of the commandments.
God says our life will be better if we do what He says. But we have to trust Him.
Like the kids in the test, those of us who show self control are going to do better at life—God has promised to bless our lives. He’s promised that the things He told us to do will actually be a blessing to our lives.
But do we trust Him? Maybe we should just go ahead and eat the marshmallow that’s right in front of us. It seems like a sure thing. Do whatever makes us feel good in the moment.
Today we’re looking at a tough one. Exodus 20:14
“You shall not commit adultery.”
It’s a tough one because if someone has cheated on us, we’re probably still upset about it. It’s too painful to think about. It’s also a tough one because if we’re the one who cheated on someone else, we probably feel a lot of shame and regret. In both cases, we’re well aware of the permanent damage adultery does to our family, our self image—and all the waves of destruction that ripple out from it.
It’s also a tough one because even if we think we haven’t broken this command, Jesus says we have. In Matthew 5:27-28 He says,
“You have heard the commandment that says, ‘You must not commit adultery.’ But I say, anyone who even looks at a woman with lust has already committed adultery with her in his heart.”
Then He says,
“if you tend to look at people with lust, undressing them with your eyes, you should probably pluck your eyes out—better to enter the kingdom of heaven blind than to go to hell with your eyes open.”
Jesus was saying that adultery was a big problem. Lust was a big problem. He knew they all struggled with it.
And they didn’t have a 15 billion dollar a year pornography industry like we do. And that’s just the legal, track-able side of the business by the way. That’s more money than ABC, NBC and CBS make combined. It’s more money than the NFL makes. And that was based on last year, can you even imagine what’s been going on during this COVID lock-down?
I’m going to get to grace and the Gospel in a minute, so don’t tune me out. But some of you don’t need much imagination to picture how bad the porn problem has been during this quarantine—all you have to do is remember how you spent some of your private time.
You may be rolling your eyes at me. You may be thinking, “what’s the big deal? I’m not hurting anybody. Everyone does it.”
But listen, it’s not good. It’s not good for you and it’s not good for the world. Every girl in every video is someone’s daughter. Every person in every video is trapped in a world of abuse and hopelessness. Followers of Jesus shouldn’t have anything to do with pornography. It’s feeding your mind with all kinds of poison. It makes it so easy to walk around undressing people with your eyes, lusting in your heart. It’s just feeding your soul darkness. It will change how you look at the people in your life and how you treat them.
Ephesians 5:12 says,
“It is shameful even to mention what the disobedient do in secret.”
So we’re not going to spend any more time talking about it. Other than to say, “stop it.” Repent. Turn away from doing the things that would deeply embarrass you if everyone found out about them. Things that would put your closest relationships at risk. Things that poison your mind and cause you to have an unhealthy view of the people around you, and an unhealthy image of yourself. Making you walk around in shame and self condemnation because of your dirty little secret.
Jordan Peterson has a brilliant talk on selfishness. He’s a Psychologist who wrote a book called “12 Rules for Life.” He says there isn’t any such thing as pure self interest—because none of us are alone. He says first of all you have to ask who’s self interest are you talking about? Are you talking about the self interest of the you that’s in the here and now—just impulsive pleasure? What do I want in the next few seconds and to hell with everything else. He says, “Well obviously that’s a stupid way to behave and everyone knows it.” You can do short term, gratifying things like snort cocaine, punch someone in the face, have all the sex with anyone within reach—but it’s not going to work out for you in the long run. It might be fun for a little while but it’s going to go really bad for you eventually. If you’re truly acting in your own self interest, you have to think, “over what period of time.” Your self interest in the next second? Your self interest in the next hour? If we don’t have self control, impulse control—we’ll pay for that. Like when Homer Simpson eats a jar of mayonnaise and drinks a bottle of vodka—while Marge and Lisa are trying to talk him out of it, telling him it’s going to make him sick. Homer says, “that’s a problem for future Homer, I sure don’t envy that guy.” Real self interest means you have to take all of the “yous” into account: now you, you in the next five seconds, in an hour, next week, next year, old you. Eternity you.
But it’s not just about you. Future you and the people in your life that you have to live with are very closely related. This is why Jesus said to love your neighbor as yourself. To really act in your self interest then you have to act in the self interest of the people around you. Otherwise they won’t like you and your life will be miserable. So you want to do what’s good for you now, and what’s good for you next week and next year. And you also want to act in a way that’s good for your family and your community now, and next week and next year. And you have to do all those things at the same time. That’s what constitutes proper moral judgement. There’s no difference between what’s good for you and what’s good for the people around you.
You have to love people. But we’re only going to know how to do that if we start by worshiping God. All this would be too hard to figure out on our own. That’s why God wrote it down for us.
So this sixth Commandment is really important because it’s how we protect some of our most important relationships. “You shall not commit adultery.” Which Luther said means we should fear and love God by leading a chaste and decent life. We should live a pure life. We should love and honor our spouse. We should protect and honor holy marriage. Christian marriage is the lifelong union of a man and woman, made one flesh by God, instituted by His Word.
Our culture has done everything in its power to destroy the idea of marriage. I say that, and most of you will think of the big progressive enemies of traditional marriage. We all know what those are, we need to fight them—with our votes, with our words, we need to speak the truth in love and make God’s Word known and honored in our country.
But we also need to live it out. We need to actually be faithful in our marriages. We need to act like Christians. Believers.
Ephesians 5:3-4 it says that followers of Jesus shouldn’t be having sex outside of marriage. Shouldn’t be doing all the filthy, foolish things that the people who don’t know Jesus spend all their time doing.
You watch pretty much any TV show or movie and you’d think it was normal and good to go straight to sex after the first date or two. Only some kind of loser or weirdo is a prudish freak who doesn’t get naked with their boyfriend and girlfriend, right?
2nd Peter 2:14 has us nailed to a “T.”
“Having eyes full of adultery and that cannot cease from sin.”
That’s not who God saved us to be. He will create a clean heart in you. He will renew a right spirit within you.
A follower of Jesus is to
“Flee from fornication.” 1 Corinthians 6:18,
“Keep yourself pure.” 1 Timothy 5:22,
“Run from youthful lusts.” 2 Timothy 2:22.
Fuzzy Logic Our culture confuses love and sex. “I feel like making love.” We confuse the idea of feeling an emotion toward someone, “falling in love,” with a commitment to love someone. This confusion is the fuzzy logic that leads to adultery in all its forms.
There’s no difference between what’s good for you and what’s good for the people around you. And in marriage, there is no difference at all between what’s good for you and what’s good for your spouse. The two shall be made one flesh.
Love is A Promise C.S. Lewis said the idea that if ‘being in love’ is the only reason for remaining faithful to your marriage then that doesn’t leave any room for marriage as a contract or promise at all. The vows. If feeling "in love" is all there is, then the promise doesn’t add anything; and if it doesn’t add anything, then it shouldn’t be made. We all know this when we’re in love. People who are in love are the most eager to make eternal promises—love songs all over the world are full of vows of eternal faithfulness. The sixth commandment isn’t forcing something on the passion of love, something foreign to its own nature: it’s demanding that lovers take seriously the thing their passion inclines them to do. The promise to love and to cherish as long as you both shall live, commits you to being faithful even if you stop feeling "in love." A promise is about things we can do—actions: no one can promise to go on feeling a certain way. Lewis says, “We might as well promise never to have a headache.”
This is very important for us to understand, not only so we are faithful in our marriages, but also because one of the primary ways that God wants us to understand our relationship with Him is the relationship between a husband and a wife. Marriage vows.
The Bride All through the Old Testament, He said that His people were unfaithful to Him like a wife who goes whoring after false gods. The book of Hosea is the story of a prophet that God tells to marry a prostitute, to keep taking her back even though she keeps running away and chasing after her old life and other men. It’s an amazing illustration of God’s faithfulness and love for His people even when we are unfaithful to Him.
In the New Testament, the church is called the bride of Christ. The Gospel can be explained as God the Father arranging a marriage between His Son and a whore. Which is good news for us because you and me are the whore.
You need to let that sink in because God is not surprised by the stains you have all over you and the shame you carry in your heart. He will keep taking you back.
Ephesians 5:25 says that not only are we the Bride of Christ, but He loves us so much He gave up His life to make us holy and clean. We have been washed by the cleansing of God’s Word. Baptized. Rescued. Presented as a glorious bride in a pure white wedding dress without a spot or wrinkle or any other blemish. Presented as a pure church. Jesus has called us to Himself and made us holy, made us perfect, and without fault. He continues to love us and forgive us and care for us. He has given us His Word. He has given us His name.
Live Up To Your Name We didn’t earn His name, He gave it to us. But now we have the opportunity everyday to live up to it. So, all those little sexy sins, those lusts, those instant gratifications—we will still be tempted but we have to run from temptation. We ask that God leads us away from temptation and delivers us from evil.
There will be moments that we will want to give into impulses. We will want to satisfy something in our flesh, something we see with our eyes, something that will only pay off in the next few seconds—putting our future at risk. Our relationship with our spouse, with our future self, and with our God. I pray that we will be strong. I pray that we will be wise. I pray that we will be faithful. And here’s the thing, because of Christ—you will be. You shall. Remember, shall doesn’t only mean “must.” It’s the Father proclaiming who we are going to be in Christ. “You shall not commit adultery.” That’s a promise for all who will stand with Jesus Christ, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world at that great marriage supper of the Lamb at the end of time and the beginning of eternity. Because of Jesus, on that day, you shall. Thanks be to God. AMEN.