The Sin of Ginger and Amnon

by Dave Wilkinson

2 Samuel 13:1-17, 1 Corinthians 6:9-20

August 12, 2001

The Seven Deadly Sins Theme

Tune: Gilligan's Island Words: James Mitchell

Today we meet another sin

The deadly sin of Lust

We think we have desires when

Desire's having us.

Now Ginger was a movie star

Who had a clever plan

To use desires like hidden wires

To handle any man.

(To handle any man).

King David's son, old Am-uh-non,

said passion couldn't wait

And then found in indulging sin

his love turned into hate.

(His love turned into hate.)

We run aground when we are found

inviting these things in

There's Sloth, of course

And Gluttony

Our Anger, and our Greed.

The lure of Lust,

Pride and Envy, the

Seven Deadly Sins!

We live in a sexually supercharged society. A walk past a magazine rack is a walk on the wild side. Actresses almost fall out of their dresses at the Emmys, Grammys and Oscars. After a while, you'd think we'd get tired of showing and looking. But we don't.

Sexuality is one of the most confused facets of our confused age. This means that as the people of Christ living at the start of the 21st century, we badly need to think and act out of a biblical perspective. We need to know and express not only what God says about sex but also why He says it. So I want to lay a quick foundation and then we'll get too the theme.

What does God's Word tell us about sexuality?

First, that sex is God's creation -- Genesis 1:27: "so God created human beings in His own image -- male and female He created them"

Second, the Bible says that sex is good -- Genesis 1:31: "and God saw everything that he had made -- including maleness and femaleness -- and behold, it was very good."

Third, and this is foundational for everything else the Bible says, that God intends sex to be a deeply uniting experience between a husband and a wife. It is much more than the temporary uniting of two bodies. It is a total union of two persons. Genesis 2:24 and Matthew 19:5: "Therefore, a man shall leave his father and mother, and shall cleave unto his wife, and they shall become one flesh."

And fourth, that God's word makes it very clear that some sexual behavior is forbidden. For God tells us in His Word that sex goes very deep to the core of who we are as human beings. Abstinence before marriage and faithfulness within marriage; is God's standard. God doesn't forbid other lifestyles because he's anti-sex. He lays down rules because he values us and our well being so highly. God wants us to use His good gift the right way -- in ways that will help us grow, not bring us down.

We are looking this summer at the Seven Deadly Sins. These sins -- pride, envy, anger, sloth, greed, gluttony and lust -- are seen by the church as particularly deadly because they are originating sins -- mother ships for the lesser sins. All other sins flow out of these seven.

As we have seen in previous weeks, each of these deadly sins, is modeled by a character from Gilligan's Island. Ginger is identified with sexual lust because sexuality is the primary way she relates to the world. There are other types of lust but we're talking about the sexual variety today.

There she is on an island -- not with Survivor type hunks but with the likes of the Skipper, Gilligan. Thuston Howell and a professor who is clearly much more interested in gadgets than in her collection of sarongs. But she just can't tone it down because she is the movie star and projecting sexuality is the only movie star trick she knows. It's her road to power and popularity.

Is this lust? Yes, it is but in a uniquely feminine form. This is not just lust in an of itself but the desire to arouse desire in others.

C.S. Lewis and D.H. Lawrence, the author of Lady Chatterly's Lover are seldom quoted in the same sermon. It's probably never happened before. But in this they agree. C.S. Lewis wrote in a letter: "The idea of female beauty is the erotic stimulus for women as well as for men. A lascivious man thinks about women's bodies. A lascivious woman thinks about her own. What a world we live in." D.H. Lawrence wrote: "When Eve ate this particular apple, she became aware of her own womanhood, mentally. And mentally she has been experimenting ever since. So has man. To the rage and horror of them both."

Remember Jimmy Carter? He knew that Jesus said that "anyone who looks at a women, continually, to lust after her, has committed adultery with her in his heart." We'll touch on this verse again at the end of the sermon.

Carter read those words and, as a good Baptist, admitted to the sin of lust in an interview published in Playboy. Just two weeks after the interview appeared, Carter was signing books on a campaign stop. An attractive young woman in a skimpy top approached the table and leaned way forward to get her book signed. Then she smiled sweetly and said, "I hope I managed to get you to lust in your heart."

It's not always so overt. But those women who relate to the world through their sexuality know what they are doing when they're doing it -- unless it is so much a part of their lifestyle that it is no longer a conscious choice. As Britney Spears finally admits about inciting desire in her "Oops, I Did It Again": "I'm not that innocent." No, she's not. Neither, apparently, is singer Jessica Simpson. I've put copies of two articles on Simpson's choices on the back table that will be well worth reading -- especially for parents.

Now Ginger is an extreme case. Most women aren't like her. And, than God, most men are not like Ginger's Old Testament counterpart, Amnon, the son of David. There are a lot of terrible characters in the Bible. Amnon is the worst.

David has a beautiful, virtuous daughter named Tamar. Her half-brother Amnon is consumed by lust for her. Verse 1 says he loves her. That's the way the word is translated because the Hebrew language is limited. But what he feels isn't love. It is lust. He doesn't know what true love is. He has never seen it -- certainly not from his father David who used women.

The law of God says if a half-sister and a half-brother marry, they are both to be slain. If a half-brother violates a half-sister, he is to be slain. But what does Amnon care? His dad not only committed adultery, which violated that law, but also murdered the woman's husband, which violated that law. And David got away with it. Why should Amnon observe the law of God? I'm not saying that Amnon's right, but that's his point of view.

By constantly dwelling on his desire and feeding the flames of that desire and not being able to satisfy it, Amnon becomes so frustrated he actually makes himself ill. He shares his problem with his cousin Jonadab who suggests rape. He knows marriage is illegal. He suggests a way that will force David's hand. If Amnon rapes Tamar, the only thing David can do to fix the problem is to use the law of the violated virgin from Deuteronomy 22:28. If Amnon rapes Tamar, David will be faced with either putting his son to death or marrying the two. This was the kind of reasoning that went on in the palace.

Once Amnon lures Tarmar into his room he grabs her. "Come, lie with me, my sister." Imagine how shocked and surprised Tamar is. She has done nothing to trigger this or invite this. This is not an "Oops, I did it again." But she answers with remarkable composure, "No, my brother, do not violate me, for such a thing is not done in Israel. It happens in Egypt. It happens in Canaan. But we are called to be different. We belong to God. Do not do this disgraceful thing! As for me, where could I get rid of my reproach? And as for you, you will be like one of the fools in Israel. You are the first born, the heir apparent to the throne, yet you want to disgrace us?"

Then I think she sees the determination in his eyes and adds: "Now therefore, please speak to the king, for he will not withhold me from you." She has sensed also that in spite of the law that you can't marry a half-brother and half-sister that David would cater to Amnon's desire and would marry them. However, Amnon won't stop. He gives his lust full reign.

Then, just as soon as he starts thinking with his brain, Amon reveals that he had never felt love for her at all. "Then Amnon hated her with a very great hatred; for the hatred with which he hated her was greater than the love with which he had loved her."

Why? I think that Amnon recognized the wisdom in Tamar and her inner strength and integrity. When he looks at her, he now sees his own wickedness like a dark reflection. Tamar reminds Amnon of his failure and his evil, and for that, he now hates her. Amnon said to her, "Get up, go away!" But she said to him, "No, because this wrong in sending me away is greater than the other that you have done to me!" Yet he would not listen to her. Then he called his young man who attended him and said, "Now throw this woman out of my presence, and lock the door behind her." You may be glad to know that Amnon gets killed 12 verses later.

Now we aren't Amnons. We aren't Gingers. But each of us in our own way wrestles with the problem they took to extremes. In the words of one preacher, "It's depressing to realize that most of us are like the rest of us." This is because we are all sexual beings. And our good, God-given sexuality can lead to honorable love. Or it can be twisted into the lust which is he perversion of love. And often the two exist side by side in the same person.

How do we deal with it before God?

First, we realize that lust doesn't deliver what it promises. If we were to live out our fantasies, we would not experience ecstasy. Instead we would experience the filthy side of personhood in a heightened sense. Soren Kierkegaard lived out one of his sexual fantasies by visiting a house of prostitution. He wrote in his diary: "Tonight I paid a woman in order to experience my own despicableness."

In Romans 1, the Apostle Paul explains that lust drives people into such things as witchcraft. A study of Satan worship will reveal that in most cases, people get into it as a make-believe ritual that is part of perverted sexual games. Only later do they begin to view their satanic worship as a religious experience.

Perhaps the most deceptive aspect of lust is that the more a person tries to satisfy it, the more intense it becomes. To feed lust is to generate an even greater hunger for its gratification. The person who yields to lust finds that the more the lust of the flesh is fed, the more demanding it becomes. When it comes to sexual lust, the more one gets, the less one is satisfied. This is why Frederick Buechner defines lust as "a craving for salt is a person who is dying of thirst."

This means that we need to help our children learn to relate to the opposite sex in other than sexual ways. We must counter the unhealthy emphasis on physical appearance and inappropriate sexual expression in the Britney Spears' marketing package. Our culture bombards young girls with highly unrealistic appearance pressure before they've even started the journey through puberty. By the time they get there, the visual image of what they must look like if they are going to be normal, loved, desired and accepted has already seared itself on their impressionable minds. Cornell University historian Joan Jacobs Brumberg, author of The Body Project: An Intimate History of American Girls, says, "If very early on you are encouraged by the culture to be sexual -- not necessarily sexually active, but engage in sexualized behavior, with language and clothes -- it changes you. Girls who get into this are seduced by the idea that their appearance is the critical thing".

Some women thrive on the attention they get through sexuality because, like Ginger on the island, they are temporary winners at the game of "Who is the sexiest?" So they are eager to play the game regardless of the costs. And the game is costly. The day always comes when those attributes that enabled them to win the game fade away. When that happens, such women are no longer of any value to the watchers and, therefore, have less worth in their own eyes. Is it any wonder that the suicide rate for women over the age of thirty five is disproportionately higher than for men over the same age?

Our kids have to be loved for who they are, not what they look like. And lest we think this emphasis effects only girls, think again! There's an entire population of young boys watching. What they're learning are unrealistic culturally-defined standards of female beauty. We should be teaching them to look past the surface to the heart.

In our own lives, the thing we need to do to battle lust is to run away. That's what the Bible says again and again. God tells us that the only way to fight lust is to refuse to feed it and to run from it -- to flee temptation and not leave a forwarding address in case we later change our minds.

In his book, Temptation, Dietrich Bonhoeffer strikes at the heart of the problem that you, I and the rest of the human race wrestles with. He writes:

"In our members there is a slumbering inclination toward desire, which is both sudden and fierce. With irresistible power, desire seizes mastery of the flesh. All at once a secret, smoldering fire is kindled. At this moment God is quite unreal to us. He loses all reality and only desire for the creature is real. Satan does not here fill us with hatred of God, but with a forgetfulness of God ...the powers of clear discrimination and decision are taken from us. The questions present themselves as: "Is what the flesh desires really sin in this case?" and, "Is it really not permitted me, yes, expected of me now, here in my particular situation to appease desire." It is here that everything within me rises up against the Word of God. Therefore, the Bible teaches us in times of temptation in the flesh, there is one command: "Flee! Flee fornication. Flee idolatry. Flee youthful lusts. There is no resistance to Satan in lust other than flight. Every struggle against lust in one's own strength is doomed to failure."

Hear that? If you do not run, you will fall. It's only a matter of time. When you run from temptation, lust backs off. But if you try to fight it, be it in the media, the Internet, or in person, you will fail. It's only a matter of time.

Now when Jesus said that "anyone who looks at a women, continually, to lust after her, has committed adultery with her in his heart," He was not talking about momentary attraction. That is unavoidable if you're human and alive. He's talking about fixation -- how you allow your mind to move from attraction to fantasy. We can't avoid attraction -- just as we cannot keep birds from flying over our heads. But we can avoid letting birds build nests in our hair. And we can avoid allowing attraction to become lust.

And if you have given way to a pattern of lust in your life but don't see the issue, remember this quote from Lewis Smedes: "There are only two situations in which people feel no shame. The first is a state of wholeness. The other is the state of illusion." You feel no shame if you're whole. You also feel no shame if you are living a lie."

God offers forgiveness and healing for sin -- including all sexual sin. And even if you've left parts of yourself all over the place through misused sexuality, God knows where every part of your soul has gone. Some of you don't even remember all the places you've left pieces of yourself. But God does. And God loves you enough to find every piece of every part -- whether you gave it away voluntarily or it was taken from you in a hurtful relationship. He will bring it back to you. He will perform soul surgery. He will sew your soul back togther and make you whole.

You can rebuild in God's grace. Janet or i will be glad to talk with you about this. But it's so much better to have never torn down. It's not so easy starting over.

God intends sex to be a deeply uniting experience between a husband and wife. It is much more than the temporary uniting of two bodies. It is a total union of two persons. For sexuality is not just physical. It is also spiritual. It goes very deep to the core of who we are as human beings. And God wants us and our marriages to be whole.