Theology of Sex+ Week 3: Sexual Idolatry

Use this guide to help your group discussion as you meet this week.

Sexual Idolatry

Chet Phillips

Transcript

Well good morning my name is Chet I'm one of the pastors here grab a Bible go to Genesis chapter one we're going to be in Genesis 1 and 2 and then we'll be in Romans 1. but this sermon is a little bit different this whole series is a little bit different than what we normally do we usually work through books of the Bible so we just finished Exodus we're going to start Malachi as soon as this series is over and then we're going to be in Philippians next year and the reason we do that is that we believe that the Bible all of it is helpful and all of it is needed and that we.

Often if we just pick on our own ask the questions we want to ask we miss things that the Bible needs to tell us but we don't ask the right questions it's it's one of the reasons why you don't let elementary students pick the topics they're going to learn it's because they won't pick the topics they need to learn there'll be things that they would pick that they're interested in like if you let my third grade son choose what the school curriculum was he would know a lot about dinosaurs and wrestlers and Pokemon.

But he would never have been like teach me math he just wouldn't have asked for it and we believe that that's how we would approach the Bible that there are some questions that we ask that we're interested in that we want to know answers on but there's a lot that we should that we don't ask but in this series we're just taking a moment to say look our culture has a lot of training that it is giving us on sex and gender and sexuality that every single day.

If you ride down the road and look at Billboards if you stand in line at a grocery store and glance at the magazines if you watch your television or listen to the radio you're going to be coached up on some amount of how you ought to think about sex and gender and sexuality and we're taking some time to say hey what does the Bible say does it help us out and can we get our footing so if you came in a little late and you smuggled in a fifth grader or down I would encourage you unless you want to have interesting conversations.

For the rest of the day you may want to take them to kid city that is up to you but we are talking through what the Bible says about sex and we're talking about what our culture says about sex and so it just depends on where you are in those conversations as to where how much you want to be here this morning with those at that age I've that's probably covered it all right here we go um we have said so far in this series we've said we are created image bearing embodied and distinct people made.

For complementary co-rule with God we took the first two weeks to try to flesh that out and say this is the way God designed us and now we're going to take a moment to say where are we culturally in our thought processes what's going on around us and so this sermon even as this series is distinct this sermon will be a little more distinct because we're going to talk a little bit about what the Bible says but we're also going to try to take some time in the middle to Define where we are culturally.

But let's start with the Bible Genesis 1. verse 28. we've read this every week so far he says and God blessed them that's humanity and God said to them be fruitful and multiply and fill the Earth and subdue it so the First Command that we see here given to humanity is to be fruitful and multiply that that part of this design of God that men and women would be complementary to one another is a reproductive design that we for Humanity to move forward need one another we need men and women to be able to reproduce and that was part of the way.

God designed this and that he built this and blessed it sex is not something that Humanity discovered it is something that God designed on purpose and blessed and made it the way he made it on purpose or Genesis 2 verse 24 and 25 it says therefore man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife and they shall become one flesh and the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed that verse 25 naked not ashamed we said points to the fact that they existed in their own bodies comfortably and that sin has broken that we no longer exist in our own bodies comfortably like we once did.

But that God designed sex and sexuality and he blessed it and he brought them together and that they will come together and they will become one flesh and that's this picture of sex it's also this picture of reproduction that in children you have legitimately taken two sets of people two people and made one new person that is the image the United image of those two people who have come together that God did this on purpose Tim Keller who's a pastor in New York recently passed away.

But he says this he says in Genesis 1 28 God tells Adam and Eve to be fruitful and multiply so procreation is obviously a large part of God's design for sex but he also made sex feel good and the Song of Solomon is full of references to the rapturous pleasure found in a sexual relationship between man and wife sex and the pleasure that comes along with it are designed to reinforce the connection between a husband and wife creating a stable bond.

For a family in a safe atmosphere to raise children the pleasurable chemicals released during sex are meant to remind the participants of their wedding vows that they belong to and are attached to one another that they mutually serve one another if the Covenant of marriage is that all of me belongs to all of you for all of our lives sex is meant to be a covenant renewal ceremony a covenant remembering ceremony it's meant to be that same thing that we're giving all of ourselves to one another and that.

God designed it that way on purpose and made it enjoyable on purpose Tim Keller goes on to say that this is one of the reasons why we uh when we enter into sexual relationships to people we aren't married to it's one of the reasons why we stay in bad relationships longer than we should because we've been telling ourselves through our physical acts that we belong to each other in a covenantal way and it's one of the reasons why when we break up it hurts more than it should.

Because we've been enacting covenantal relational activities rather than keeping that where it's supposed to be so one of the the general views of the way Christians think about sex and sexuality is that we think it's dirty and bad and wrong that the Church teaches sex is dirty and bad and wrong save it for your spouse that's not the Christian teaching on this we actually believe that sex is more beautiful and more powerful than our culture does and therefore it ought to be guarded and not be in the right place and it's to be celebrated and enjoyed in the right context we don't agree with our culture that it is the the only way to have.

A happy life and the only way to to exist the Bible celebrates celibacy and singleness as you are a full human I know culturally we're told if you if you've never had sex you're only like a half a person you don't really exist until you've done this you don't really get to be a real person until then that's not true it is it's a gift but it's not ultimate and you can see how if this is our approach to sexuality We Stand contrary to our culture this and our culture doesn't really like our position on sexuality and this isn't new this is uh C.S Lewis talking 80 years ago in in a completely different continent.

He writes this Chastity that's this approach to sexuality is the most unpopular of the Christian virtues there is no getting away from it the Christian rule is either marriage with complete faithfulness to your partner or else total abstinence he says that's Christian's approach to sexuality and people don't like that he actually goes on to say it's difficult so difficult and contrary to our instincts that either the Christian rule has to be wrong or we have to be wrong and we've we've made it worse.

Because we've added either marriage between one man and one woman to further differentiate and clarify our position with complete faithfulness to your partner or else total abstinence and if you're familiar if you've been in the United States for more than about 30 minutes you realize that's not the cultural approach and so we stand contrary to our culture and we say a thing that's not very popular and most cultures have rejected this approach to marriage because our approach to sexes wrong as C.S Lewis would put it contrary to this ideal that.

God gives us an interesting thing it used to be that as Christians held this position the culture around us viewed us as more moral than them that we were prudish or we were too strict but that this position was more moral so they might would make fun of you or they might would exclude you from things but they didn't see you as less moral they saw you as more moral but recently the cultural position on the Christian view has shifted so the Christians are.

Now likely to be viewed not as more moral but as less moral that our position is actually harmful that our position is actually oppressive that's interesting and I want to take a moment to try to understand how we got there and why our culture views thus that way because the Christian approach to this hasn't changed my grandad's name was Chester Phillips he was a pastor and when he taught on the Christian approach to sex he would have taught this marriage with faithfulness or total abstinence we haven't thrown a curveball in here we've clarified a thing.

But we hadn't we hadn't changed our position but the culture shifted around us so that their view on our position has changed and that's interesting we need to figure it out first I want to explain one quick aspect of where this is and then we're gonna have to spend a little more time on another one the first one is this we've bought into the idea of the pursuit of happiness and honestly we're kind of built that way as humans and God actually designs us to have ultimate happiness in him and he assumes that we're going to pursue things that are good.

For us and things that we see is valuable this is one of the reasons why he'll tell us to pursue treasure in heaven rather than treasure here it's not that he says treasure is bad he says to get your priorities straight understand where you'll have the most Joy the most Delight so we've got this idea of pursuit of happiness but here's the problem when we use the word happiness we often mean two separate things there's happiness as in joy as in contentment as in everything is good and I don't need anything else and there's happiness as in pleasure which is this is really good I want some more.

And if you in the book The hacking of the American mind there's a pediatric endocrinologist who wrote the book and this pediatric endocrinologist argues that we have subtly in the U.S swapped out the word happiness for the word pleasure we've just taken happiness and filled it with the word pleasure and he says the reason that is is that pleasure is controllable and sellable we're consumers we're designed to be consumers that's what America runs off of you buying things and it runs off of you buying more shoes than you have feet like we're designed to own too much stuff as an American Consumer the the culture around us doesn't want you to say I'm happy.

I don't want any more I'm at peace also just so you know that version of joy happiness is harder to attain it's less controllable by you I want to feel content is way harder Target to hit versus the pleasure button y'all sugar caffeine caffeine with sugar in it we know how to press this button and that's our approach to sexuality is just pleasure not contentment stability enjoyment Joy we just know how to press the pleasure button and so we've been sold on happiness as a Pursuit pleasure as a replacement.

For that because that's the one that's controllable and sellable and sex is one of the primary ways to accomplish that and that's where we are culturally that's what pornography is that's what a hookup culture is it's the ability to go after pleasure because pleasure is in some ways controllable attainable sellable achievable and we hope that if I mash the pleasure button enough I'll get the contentment but our skyrocketing addiction and depression shows us that just mashing the pleasure button doesn't make us content all right we need to understand that's going on in our culture.

But the next thing we need to understand and the reason why because that was already happening the reason why our culture has shifted its view on our view is because of this I want to read this quote to try to help you understand kind of where we are this is from Carl Truman and Strange New World and he does a really good job of trying to articulate this but he says this indeed it can seem as if things that almost everybody believed as unquestioned Orthodoxy meaning truth reality the day before yesterday that marriage is between one man and one woman.

For example he says things that we used to believe that we were all on the same page with we were all because of the day before yesterday but give you an example you know how political positions shift depending on what everybody thinks um if you didn't know that there you go uh when Barack Obama ran for president in 2008 that was his official position the marriage was between one man and one woman that's not to take a shot at Barack Obama and try to help you understand how quickly we've shifted our position on this that that idea.

For example are now regarded as heresies advocated only by the dangerous Lunatic Fringe he goes on to say when I was young religious people were often regarded as foolish or hypocritical by The Wider culture but I do not recall any widespread belief that they were as a class dangerous hate-filled bigots who represented a threat to civil order he used to be viewed as more moral now we're being viewed as less moral why the reason why is this we are currently in what some social scientists and philosophers would call the age of authenticity or the age of expressive individualism what started with Renee Descartes saying I think.

Therefore I am placing existence inside of us and then Rousseau who took that and ran with it Russo at one point says I'm going to do something that's never been heard of I'm going to do something that'll shock the world I'm going to write a story but I'm just going to talk about what's going on inside of me is that shocking to us no that's a diary man like that's just that's the way that's the way we think about the world is that I'm the main character and what's going on inside of me is primary and it wasn't something that was new uh Saint Augustine had already done it Christians believe that you have an.

Inner man we're not against this idea but that the seat of reality exists inside of you is new but what we've done is we've said that the primary thing that matters is who you are on the inside so we say things like you have to be true to yourself you need to just believe in yourself we talk about you can't argue with someone's lived experience if they've actually experienced it you can't tell them they're wrong we say things like this is my story this is my truth.

Because it's seated in us there's a Canadian philosopher his name is Charles Taylor and I thought he put it well he says this expressive individualism believes each one of us has his or her own way of realizing our Humanity and it believes that it is important to find and live out one's own and that's what he's talking about one's own way to live out your Humanity as against surrendering to Conformity with a model imposed on us from outside by Society or the previous generation or religious or political Authority I give you the plot to most of the movies you've watched in the last 30 years that's the books we read That's the movies we watch.

That's what we believe is that you have to figure out what's going on in you and you have to express it you have to impose yourself on the rest of the world and that anybody who tells you you're wrong is the enemy you see what we've become to believe and usually that other what we've come to believe is this we can't really know right or wrong we can't really know things about God we can't really know things about eternity we can't really know any of those things objectively all we really know is who we are and what we want and what's going on inside of us and since we can't really know things outside of.

Us but we can know what's inside of us then we might not have right and wrong but what we can have is power and oppression what we can have is someone else who imposes their will on yours and anyone who poses their imposes their will on yours is oppressive and abusive and harmful anybody who tells you that you can't be the you that you want to be is oppressive and abusive and harmful and the Church has been the bad guys from Footloose onward probably before that that's just the one I know about that's what the Church does is it comes in and says no there's actually something wrong inside of you and you need some.

Objective reality to guide you to change you you need to submit your will to something outside of you that's not the stories we tell that's not the advice we give it sounds weird to us to give the exact to say the opposite like if you were coaching someone up and you said look don't be yourself yourself is bad so stop it you go out there and you be what your parents expect you to be high five don't be yourself don't follow your dreams your country needs you submit to the will of your country don't be yourself don't find out what's true to you and express it do not sing a song into a.

Well look at me do not sing you do what your ancestors want from you you do what your religion tells you to do that sounds like a monologue of the bad guy that's what we've been trained in now Christianity believes that you have an inner self and Christianity believes that your inner self you have value and dignity and worth that you are an individual you're not a cog in a machine that you exist individually and personally the Christianity agrees with those things.

But then Christianity steps in and says but there's something wildly broken and wrong and sinful in your heart and you cannot trust yourself which puts us completely sideways with our culture and once you take our culture's approach to pursuit of pleasure and sex and our culture's approach to individuality and self-expression and for lack of a better word marry those things together we have what we have now which is the Church is oppressive and abusive I want to read this this is Carl Truman talking about that coming together he says this in short the sexual Revolution does not simply represent a growth in the routine transgression of traditional sexual codes or even a modest expansion of.

The boundaries of what is and is not acceptable sexual behavior not at all rather it is the repudiation of the very idea of such codes in their entirety so what what he's saying is this the sexual Revolution wasn't saying hey we've made the line too too rigid too too narrow on what good sex is and we need to move it out we need to be able to talk about it a little more we need to be able to change the boundaries what he says the sexual Revolution is is any line drawn is bad we got to get rid of the lines and we currently really only have like one cultural lines left pedophilia and bestiality.

And we're wavering on both of these and you're actually going to start hearing the arguments for why those are bad not based in they are morally repugnant and intrinsically Wicked sins against your dignity as a human it's not what you're going to hear we're going to start hearing more arguments about the problem is consent because we only understand how to talk about power and oppression and it has to do with individual expression and so the issue is not that these are bad on their own.

But how are you going to define consent okay he keeps going more than that it has come in certain areas such as that of homosexuality and transgenderism to require the positive repudiation of traditional sexual mores okay so not just we got to get rid of them we actually now have to announce that any of those lines were actually evil they were bad they were oppressive that's what positive repudiation means it's come to we have to do that to the point where belief in or main maintenance of such views trying to keep the line has come to be seen as ridiculous and even a sign of serious mental or moral deficiency the Church is oppressive.

Less moral he says and to understand this how we got here we need to see the sexual Revolution as a particularly sharp manuscript manifestation of the characteristics of expressive individualism if the individual's inner identity is defined by sexual desire then he or she must be allowed to act out on that desire in order to be an authentic person so when the Church says we think you're wrong this desire is bad the Church is articulating we see you as separate from your sexual desires.

But our culture no longer does that our culture says sexual desire is identity and even when we talk about it one of the reasons you feel uncomfortable is you've been coached by our culture and how to think about this and the younger you are the more coaching you've received this is why people who are older than you can say things that make you go oh you can't say that this is why if you go back and watch old episodes of sitcoms you'll go oh you can't say that and they weren't they're not that old.

But you'll be going and you realize oh I've been trained for example if I said there are most people and they're Chipotle people and chipotle people are wrong you would first of all probably agree with me who wants to pay for chips I don't get it but you would not hear it the way that you would hear there are straight people and gay people and gay people are wrong because Moe's and chipotle is a thing that you desire it's not who you are do you.

See how we've shifted to Identity and Christianity says no no who you are is an image Bearer made in the image of God who you are has desires who you are needs Jesus and we love you enough to wherever your desires are crossed Away With Jesus to say oh please come to Jesus and not because he hates you and not because we think we're better than you but because we think that what you're chasing is harmful and that Jesus is better.

But that's not the language or culture speaking so we come across and are seen as oppressive and abusive because it's a personal attack you are wrong at the core of who you are and anybody who's out there saying you are wrong is equivalent to a racist is equivalent to someone who is saying just by the nature of how you exist you are wrong and it's seen as wickedness and we're right about racism culturally and we're wrong about this so because of this and this we are more sexually liberated than we've ever been in this country you are more free to pursue sex to pursue pleasure and we're told that.

If you can freely nobody's going to put any restraints on you and if you can freely pursue pleasure you'll be happy that's what we've been sold on you gotta get your parents to not tell you what to do you got to get Society to not tell you what to do you got to get religion to not tell you what to do if you can have all those things you'll be happy is our culture happy has it worked we're told that pornography.

For a long time it's just a normal thing it's a social good it'll reduce people who would otherwise commit sexual assaults it um it's a normal craving it's in the privacy of your home like we've been told all these things this is fine this won't hurt us it's good it's a desire it's a it's like an appetite you can just you know you get hungry you eat this is this is fine for us but has pornography been a public good for us we have an increased amount of addiction we have an increased amount of abuse and addiction and depression we have an increased amount of young men who are.

Now having to seek medication because they no longer function properly sexually because of their pornography addictions it's increased depression it's increased social anxiety because it's a very bad representation of how men and women should interact it's increased the objectification of people it's increased the commodification of people the buying and selling of people we have hookup culture which is just find as many people to sleep with and that's a that's a route to Joy visit has it been has this been a good.

For us we have stories now of people who are using apps to to sleep around and they've met somebody they sleep with them and they're in the bed with them and open the app back up because it doesn't lead to satisfaction we were told that if we had the pill and if we had contraceptives and we had abortion we could help cut down on the number of children that are born out of wedlock and the reason why we want to cut down on the number of children who are born outside of a married couple is.

Because all of their statistics are bad they're worse you can you can succeed from that position but your chances for poverty for violence for abuse being abusive and being abused all increase we were told though if we had the pill if we had free sex if we could just get it to where it wasn't we would fix these problems we now have the highest rate of children born out of outside of wedlock in the U.S we've ever had it's nearing uh it's 40.

So it's almost half of all children born or born into a situation that's worse for them we have sexual assault and rape which we've always had the world has had that forever but it's on the rise and we're told culturally that what we need is more we need more freedom we need to get rid of where people are still saying things like we got to get to where we can talk about sex without it being taboo is that our problem that we don't talk about sex enough we're not free enough with how we talk about it every single show we've watched every single movie you've watched every single everything you've participated in has sold you.

On the idea that that sex is free and easy and simple and if you could just have more of it you'd be happy and we're told we need more that this is freedom and this is satisfaction and I think we ought to look around and say if this is freedom and this is satisfaction we don't want it and I think we ought to look and say thankfully that the Bible looks at this and says this is not Freedom or satisfaction this is called idolatry and slavery those are the words the Bible is going to put to this.

So go to Romans 1. because God loves us he helps tell us that things are bad for us I love my children which means that I often stand between the pleasure button and shoe them towards Joy my kids are convinced if they only ate Candy and didn't have a bedtime their life would be magical they're convinced that they could speak to their parents however they wanted to their life would have more freedom they're convinced that if they had to go to school and weren't forced to brush their teeth life would be good and I'm.

Well aware that all of those things will mash the pleasure button and will never ever head them towards Joy and God stands in between us and our Twisted desires in his infinite wisdom and love and says no no no that'll match the pleasure button but it'll never ever head you towards Joy Romans 1. we read some of this earlier we read all this earlier we're going to pick up in verse 21. this is talking about Humanity it's talking about what all creatures under the Earth have done and how this has worked out it says.

For although they knew God they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him but they became futile in their thinking and their foolish Hearts were darkened I want you to understand one of the things that Christians believe is that we have foolish hearts you have lied to you more than anyone else has you have caused you more problems than anyone else has you have caused yourself a problem and then lied to yourself about it we have foolish hearts it says their foolish Hearts were darkened claiming to be wise they became fools and exchanged the glory of the immortal.

God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things so rather than submitting to God worshiping God delighting In God we said no we want something else and we swap it out that's idolatry the idea that I'll be the person who decides what's right I'll be the person who's in charge is not new it's actually quite old that's the thing we did in the Garden of Eden that's Genesis chapter 3. that's where they say no we'll choose right and wrong we'll be in charge of Good and Evil thank you very much we'll decide.

So our culture is saying hey you're the final Arbiter on the right and wrong good and evil it's like didn't a snake tell us that a long time ago that's where we are we exchange God for something else and sometimes this shows up in straight up the way we think of idolatry a totem pole bird something that you're lighting incense to but also we've replaced it for images resembling mortal man my own intelligence my own reason my own Inner Man and also physical bodies of other people and it says.

Verse 24 therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves and y'all our approach to sexual sin is a dishonoring of our bodies and that's what he's talking about he's going to go further and say more about sexual sin he also says that he gave them up to all kinds of sin but that's what happens when we reject God often he'll say you can have which have it and it's not good.

For us it's actually his wrath on us to give us what we want at times it says because they exchange the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator who is blessed forever amen you are worshiping something and you are serving something you are a slave to something this is how Humanity works you have something that you set out in front of you and say this is good this is desirable this is the right outcome this is who I want to be this is how I think want things to work that's worship that's this this is what is most wonderful and delightful in the world.

And then your track to get it and enjoy it is your service or slavery so that Peter's going to say things like whatever overcomes a person to that he is enslaved or later in Romans in chapter six he's going to say you're a slave to the one whom you obey he says it's either God or it's to sin which leads to death and culturally we are told if you can think about yourself and you can think about sex in these ways you'll have freedom you'll have joy you'll have Delight This Is Our.

God come let us worship and Bow Down and we have not been blessed by our cultural approach to sex you have not been blessed by our cultural approach to sex it has not been good in your life or added to your joy for many of us most of us we were introduced to sex way too early it ruled in our imagination way too early our introduction to sex if it was through pornography completely Twisted for us what it is supposed to be.

Because rather than being something that is participatory and covenantal and enjoyable between two people it became voyeuristic and you were separated from it became a commodity it became only about pleasure and nothing about Covenant or sacrifice or the giving of yourself it came only about self-service rather than service and kindness and graciousness and generosity and sacrifice and belonging if we went from relationship to relationship if you're currently going from relationship to relationship sexual relationship to sexual relationship or not even a relationship just sex to sex.

If you're currently looking at pornography daily it might hit the pleasure button but it is not added to to contentment to rest peace it is not added to your joy it's one of the reasons it's so confusing because you've potentially been convinced that it would so maybe you're not doing it right or maybe you need more or maybe it's got to be different or maybe you've got to find the next approach to it that that makes you send out more dopamine maybe next time.

But it will not satisfy more and more when we do pre-marital counseling or when we do marriage counseling we are not dealing with people who have only had sexual relationships with each other and their previous sexual relationships have not added to their Joy it has not added to contentment it has not added to Delight it has not added to the picture of what God had for us our objectification of each other and buying and selling of one another has only added to the Brokenness around us.

If sex and individuality are our God we need a new one because this one has not blessed us this one demands more worship more sacrifice more service always promising to at some point finally satisfy satisfying us saving us fixing us and it will not ever deliver and by God's grace we will see that sooner rather than later Jesus says in John chapter 8 Jesus answers them and he says truly truly I say to you everyone who practices sin as a slave to sin and the slave does not remain in the house forever the sun remains forever and he's playing on a concept they understand here slaves don't inherit the end of the line.

For a Slave is not inheritance rest and Delight that road leads to more slavery but the Sun remains forever and then he shifts and he starts talking about himself and he says so if the sun sets you free you will be free indeed do you want freedom do you want satisfaction do you want joy do you want to learn how to quit just trying to chase after pleasure and find contentment and Delight that lasts not only last for this little life as we walk this out.

But last for an eternity because it has been purchased for us not by us but by him then you need the son to set you free you need Jesus to pay your debt to rescue you to forgive you and to make you his forever one of the reasons we can say that we know with definitive Clarity that God loves us when he stands between us and pleasure is because he sent his son to die on a cross for us that he came to suffer.

So that he might pay our debt and set us free there's a beautiful story in Luke chapter 11. Luke tells us that Jesus is in the house of a religious leader and a prostitute comes she falls on the ground and she begins to weep she begins to weep on Jesus's feet you ever had really dusty Sandy dirty feet and put a little drop of water you know that little line that runs through them that's what his feet looked like but more lines more lines more lines I don't know.

If you've ever just wept and you've cried to where it's just dripping she's just weeping on his feet and she starts using her hair to clean his feet because there's so many tears she had been chewed up and spit out by her culture's approach to sex she had been run racket she had been wiped out she had approached something that was supposed to be good for them and it was horrific and and the religious leader thinks to himself if Jesus was really a prophet he would know what kind of woman this was and he wouldn't let her touch him we're looking in the pages of our Bible and we know that he's not only a.

Prophet but he's the son of God and you're struck at that moment oh he knows exactly what kind of woman this is and he welcomes her and he forgives her and he Delights that she would come to him and in this room right now we may have some significant sexual Brokenness because you have been poorly trained by our culture about what satisfaction and Delight look like and I want you to know that you can fall on your face at Jesus and he welcomes you he does not hesitate he wraps you up and says it's.

For you that I died it's for you that I came that I might cover your shame that I might clothe you in righteousness that you might shine forever with me and all of this can be taken away so do not hesitate do not feel dirty do not feel ashamed but run head long to Christ and to his Redemption and may we be a people who begin to understand what our culture is training Us in so that we might speak well to them.

And so that we might speak well to our hearts to know that we need Jesus to set us free let's pray Lord Christ we praise you and our hearts lie to us and deceive us and lead us astray and Lord we're tired we're tired of biting the hook and being reeled in and being promised satisfaction and being promised fulfillment and being promised that if we just had this we'd be happy and it always falling short and Lord we're hurt we've pursued sexual sin or we've been actively harmed by the sexual sin of others.

Well we're in this room today and we've been marred we feel bruised and abused we feel like we've dirtied ourselves and been dirtied by others and Lord we praise your grace that Jesus shed his blood that we might be clothed in righteousness and by the power of your spirit by the working of the cross may you be at work right now for every person here who is holding on to sin that they might repent that they might weep at your feet and be restored that they might come humbly that they might be lifted up and that we might leave here with new worship and new service in rejection of a false.

God we've asked this in Jesus name amen Matt's going to come up as a Church we're going to sing he's going to take a moment to play while we reflect we're going to take communion and communion is a celebration that Jesus came and that his body was broken and that his blood was shed and that he was made to suffer on our behalf and to cover us through his work and so I'd like for you to take a moment that before you take communion before you come to the feet of.

Jesus she would take a moment to repent that you would take a moment to praise him for his sacrifice for you for his covering of you some of you right now have felt shame creeping up on you and I want you to know that if you're in Christ there is no condemnation there is no guilt because he has paid for it you are made holy and righteous and new if you've trusted in Jesus if you've repented you don't have to dredge all this back up you get to walk free you've never brought it to him come surrender.

So that you might be made new communion is for Christians for those who place their faith in Jesus if you have not trusted in him we'd ask for you to to not partake in it but we would ask you to come to Christ but if you place your faith in him today you can walk over and take communion and celebrate that he died for you that you might be made so take a moment where we are and pray and then Delight in the salvation of Christ.

Lust

Lust

Chet Phillips

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Transcript

Well, good morning. We'll be in Proverbs chapter 5. That'll be on page 341. If your Bible looks like this, go ahead and get over to Proverbs chapter 5. We've got a good bit of work to do today. We're going to be talking about lust in our Killjoy series and about how our approach to sexuality and our approach to lust has begun to rob us of our ability to have joy, to have peace, to rest in God.

And so we've got a good bit to go through. I'm going to pray, and then we're going to hop in. God, we thank you that you're good. Lord, we thank you, Lord, that your word speaks about topics that we need to learn. That you don't leave us on our own to figure it out, but that you speak to us, that you lead us, that you give us wisdom that we would not have on our own. And so, God, we praise you.

We pray that we'd listen and we'd follow. In Jesus' name, amen. Verse 1 and 2, I love how this starts. It says, My son, be attentive to my wisdom. Incline your ear to my understanding, that you may keep discretion and your lips may guard knowledge. First little thing I just want to throw out there for us as we get started this morning.

This starts off, it's Solomon writing. So he was a king and he was very wise and he's writing to his son. Later he says, sons, for the parents in the room, you need to have some conversations about sex that start off with my son, my daughter. You've got to talk to your children about sex. I came across some statistics this week I want to share with you. This is from the National Center of Biotechnical Information.

I don't expect you to know what that is. I don't know what it is. It had a.gov website, so it's important. They do good things, I guess. They basically took television shows and it says they coded them. They tried to see what kind of material was in them.

So, for example, a recent content analysis found, this is a quote, that 82% of episodes coded contained sexual content. However, only 2.9% of episodes with sex, so 2.9% of that 82%, contained messages about sexual patience and 5.2% had messages about taking sexual precautions. So 82% of the episodes they looked at talked about sex and only a very small portion of those talked about any sort of waiting or at least taking precautions. It says the American youth, and I don't know what age group that is, it just says youth, see 14,000 references to sex per year. 14,000. That's like 38 a day.

One source I saw said that about 156 of those, so right at about 1%, will actually be references to sex inside of marriage. So 14,000 references to sex, the average age that an American youth engages with pornography for the first time is 11. That's sixth grade. That's the average age that someone first sees pornography. Parents, you've got to talk to your kids about sex. You've got to talk to them about sex the way that Solomon does, which is both here's what's dangerous about it and here's what's good about it.

And I do want to give you some encouragement. The number one impact that they've studied, children growing up or whatever, the number one thing that has impacted them is parental conversations. That has the biggest impact. It's the biggest assigning factor on how they're going to view sex. They are hearing about sex. They are learning about sex.

It's not like you can wait until they're older and then be like, oh, let me explain this to you. They already know. At this point, they might know things you don't know. Like, I don't know. I mean, they're handing out iPads to sixth graders. Praise Jesus they never handed me an iPad when I was in sixth grade and told me to do all my schoolwork on it.

Like, we've got to start having some conversations, but parental conversations actually impact them, have an effect. Now, is it going to be awkward? Certainly. If it's not awkward, you didn't do it right. Like, of course, talking to your kids about sex is going to be awkward. I remember my parents sat me and my two brothers down, and I was in the middle.

So one was older than me. One was younger than me. I was pretty young. I don't know how young I was. I mean, like, eight or ten or something. And they're like, all right, you're hearing about sex.

Let's talk about this. And so it was my mom and my dad. They drew pictures. Not stick with me. My mom was a nurse. So they drew, like, what happens inside.

So, like, there's nothing that takes the mystique out of sex like phrases like fallopian tube. But, like, they talked to us about how everything worked. And then when it got a little more intimate, I don't know. Like, my dad just, he was like, he took the back half of the conversation. He was like, let me explain how this works. And I remember he's telling us, like, this is how, you know, you learn the science.

Let me explain what it's going to, you know, you're not going to be thinking about fallopian tubes. Let me talk about, you know, the other stuff that happens. And he got done talking to his three sons, and I went, no, that can't be right. Like, that is not correct. And my older brother, Logan, who is one of our community group leaders, hit me and said, shut up. He knows what he's talking about.

He's done this three times. Here's the thing. I grew up in the United States. My parents did not do a whole lot of governing what we watched on television. I'm one of the people who has seen 14,000 references to sex a year, if not more. And I remember very distinctly the four or five conversations that my parents had with me about sex.

Parents, we've got to start having some conversations that start off with my son, my daughter. We need to talk about something. Sure, it'll be awkward, but it's going to be very, very good. Secondly, as we get started, I love that it starts off with my son. This is God who cares about us through the Holy Spirit authoring this, and this is the conversation he's having with us. He's saying, my son, my daughter, listen to me.

I care about you. He's not bringing the hammer down. He's not mad at you. He's sitting us down and saying, let's talk. Let's have a conversation about this.

Now, in our Killjoy series, we're going to approach this a little bit differently. Our culture, every time we talk about sex, we have to say so much because our culture has already said so much. When we start talking about, in a couple weeks, when we talk about worry and anxiety, and we're like, hey, worry and anxiety are bad. Like, we need to work on this. Everybody in the room is going. When we stand up and say, hey, sex outside of marriage is bad, we're like, hmm, I don't know.

Seems kind of great. We just have to do more. We have to say more to help explain what we're talking about here. So we did a series at the beginning of the year called The Theology of Sex. I would really encourage you to go back and listen to it if you have questions about where we stand on things. We talked about masculinity, femininity, gender, homosexuality.

Like, we tried to do as best we could for seven weeks. Open the Bible. Here's what it says. Today, specifically, we're going to do a little bit of work to just say, here's what the Bible says about sex, and here's how we as Christians who are trying to follow this can find some freedom and some joy in what God's called us to. So before we jump in, I think we've got to take just a second to talk about what the Bible says is the framework for sex, what the Bible says positively about sex.

So the Old Testament sex ethic and the New Testament sex ethic are the same, and here's how it works. No sex of any kind outside of a covenant, period. All right? Let's talk. What's a covenant? Do we have a modern equivalent word for that?

No. Here's how a covenant works. A covenant is a relationship with a commitment. So it's a relationship with a legal commitment so that the relationship is actually better, made stronger by the legal commitment. What we're most used to are relationships and contractual consumer relationships where both of them are based off of what am I getting out of this. A covenant is the opposite.

A covenant is where I say, here's what I'm going to do, period. It doesn't matter what you do. Here's what I'm going to do regardless of how you respond, how you act. That's what a marriage covenant is. It's where a man and a woman say, I covenant with you to give myself to you, everything I have to you forever. That is where sex belongs.

In the Bible, sex is a covenant good, meaning that sex only happens inside of a marriage covenant. Now, that sounds crazy to our culture. And for us who've grown up and even like we've listened to the 14,000 messages a year, we're going, yeah, okay, I know that the Bible says that. Let me tell you a few things really quickly just about us as a church and why we open this every week and spend so much time talking out of it. This has authority over us. If we come to this and we get to pick and choose what we like and what we don't like and what's in date and what's out of date, we're in charge.

This isn't. And let me explain something to you. If we get to do that, if I get to approach the Bible with I'm in charge, let me say what I like and let me skip what I don't like, what we're doing right now is a waste of time. If we get to be in charge of the Bible, studying it is a waste of time. If the Bible is in charge of us, then it's absolutely valuable, although sometimes frustrating and difficult. Okay?

Is that fair? We believe that Jesus is in charge, so we spend a lot of time studying his word. What the Bible says about sex makes us seem crazy. Now, if you're a Christian and you actually believe the Bible and you're trying to follow it, I have good news for you. Christians have always seemed crazy when it came to sex. Does that make you feel better?

That's how it started. The original Christian sex ethic seemed crazy to their culture. We actually have a letter that was written where somebody was trying to explain, okay, let me try to help you understand Christians because they're a phenomenon now. They're all over the place now. The whole Roman Empire is crawling with these people. Let me start explaining to you why they're weird.

One of the quotes from that is he says, one of the things that's weird about Christians is they have a common table but not a common bed, meaning they'll share their table with anybody. You can go over to their house. You can eat a meal, which was completely opposite from culture because eating a meal meant you and I are on the same level. And they said, but they don't have a common bed, meaning that they only sleep with the person they're married to. Isn't that weird? That was the point he was making because in their culture it was the opposite.

You could sleep with whomever, but you didn't share your table with everybody. And Christians showed up and said, no, anybody can come to my house. Anybody can eat with me. We're on the same plane with everybody, but you leave my bed alone. So I hope it makes you feel better.

We've been weird for thousands of years. Let's, as a church, continue that and find out what it's supposed to look like. Here's the thing. We're used to consumer relationships, meaning that whatever I get out of this relationship matters. My needs matter more than the relationship. So some of you iPhone people, we have iPhone people in here.

Like raise your hand. You can participate. You got iPhone people. Okay. Any Motorola. What is it?

Nokia. What is it? What's the other one? Android. Not Nokia. Android.

Man, I miss my Nokia phone, y'all. It's like a brick that made phone calls. It was amazing. Android people. Okay. So some of you, you had an iPhone.

They keep updating it. Eventually, they made a new one that bends when you put it in your pocket and doesn't have a headphone jack. Now, you weren't like, no, I'm committed to iPhone. I've got to stick with it. Some of y'all realize that Androids have that little thing where you don't have to pick up your thumb when you're texting. Have you seen Android users' text where they just go, and it's like magic, and your iPhone keeps auto-correcting words to nonsense so it doesn't make any sense?

And so you were like, I'm going to get an Android. I'm going to get a Samsung Galaxy. And then it turns out that those are flammable. You bought an expensive Molotov cocktail. You didn't stick with Samsung anymore. Like you went and traded that one in.

You were like, good, y'all fix it. This one isn't going to catch on fire. And they were like, well, eh. And that one's still calling fire. And so you moved back. You went to a different one.

Some of you saw the commercials where you were with Verizon, but with Sprint you can cut your bill in half. And we've moved because our needs matter more than the relationship. None of us are committed to Samsung so much that even though they're recalling their phones and their washing machines, you're like, I'm sticking with it, even though it's going to set my house on fire and somehow harm my children. Like you're not doing that. We're used to consumer relationships where whatever I want, whatever I'm getting out of this matters more than the relationship. And that is not a covenant.

A covenant is the relationship, the commitment matters more than what I get out of it. And that biblically is where sex was designed to take place. In the Bible, the guardrails for sex are high and narrow. But once you're on that road, it's the Audubon. Go for it. That's the biblical approach.

That's why later in this chapter it's going to get a little intense. So let's read a little bit about what this says here. Jump to verse 15 because I still want to show us the biblical picture for picture for where sex is supposed to happen. And then we'll walk back through and talk more about lust. So 15 drink water from your own cistern.

Flowing water from your own well. So this is in the context of sex. What he's saying is be married. He's going to later say the wife of your youth. He says be married, have a husband, have a wife. And that's where you drink water.

Flowing water. Morning water. Evening water. Afternoon water. Drink some water. Should your springs be scattered abroad?

Streams of water in the street. That's a rhetorical question. The answer is no. Your water at your own place. Not out in the streets. Let them be for yourself alone.

Not for strangers with you. So, is this person my spouse? This is my husband. Is this my wife? That's the sexual question. If this is your spouse, then yes.

Go for it. Any other people. Any other strangers. Any other anything. Isn't allowed in there. It's just you.

Sex was designed by God to be a sacrament in some ways. A sacrament is a physical act that reminds us of a spiritual reality. When we take communion, that's a sacrament. It's a physical act that reminds us of the broken body and the shed blood of Jesus. When we have baptism, that's a sacrament. That's a physical act that reminds us that we were buried with Jesus.

We rose again. When you have sex, it's meant to be a sacrament for your marriage. Which is a physical act that says, I give everything to you. My whole life. My finances. My economics.

My social standing. Everything. We share everything. I'm completely vulnerable with you. Everything I have. Everything I'll ever be.

Everything I ever was. I'm giving to you. I'm committing to you. That's what sex inside of a marriage was meant to be. A covenant renewal. All of me belongs to all of you.

C.S. Lewis says that sex outside of marriage is like chewing food and then spitting it out. Sex outside of a covenant is kind of like bulimia. In bulimia, you eat food, but then you make yourself throw up. So what you want is the flavor.

What you want is the taste. But you're not committed. You don't want the calories. You don't want the trans fat. That's sex outside of marriage. When somebody wants to sleep with you, but not commit to you, what they're saying is I want your flavor, but none of your baggage.

I don't want any of your trans fat. A philosopher, Immanuel Kant, he's a central figure in modern philosophy. He said it this way. Sexual love makes of the loved person an object of appetite. As soon as the appetite has been stilled, the person is cast aside as one casts away a lemon which has been sucked dry. But that was never meant to be how sex worked because sex is in the Bible a covenant good, not a consumer good.

It exists inside of a covenant, not a consumer relationship. Keep reading verse 18. Let your fountain be blessed and rejoice in the wife of your youth, a lovely dear, a graceful doe. I love that he says that. He says the wife of your youth, the person you married a long time ago, that's your wife forever. That's your husband forever.

Let me explain to you. If you're married, let me answer a few questions for you. A lot of times in our culture we ask the question, is this person the one? Are you married to them? They're the one. You found them.

Good Job, you guys. So proud of you. If you're married to them, that's the one. That's your one. Stick with them. That's it.

You got the one. You don't have to keep asking that question. And what's your type? Well, are you married? That's your type. When you started, your type was athletic.

Now your type watches sports. That's your type. Your type's gotten bigger. You like bigger. Your type went bald. You love bald.

You're into bald. Your type got old. Your type got wrinkly. Your type changes its hair color every month. You change your type every month. Sometimes you got to check.

I don't know. I might be in the blondes. I hadn't seen her. She went to the thing. I don't know what I'm going to be into when she gets home. But when she gets home, I'm going to be into something.

Mom, that's how that works. You enjoy the wife of your youth, the husband of your youth forever. Verse 19. A lovely dear, a graceful doe, let her breasts fill you at all times with delight. Be intoxicated always in her love. People give Christians a hard time and they'll periodically say, you take the Bible literally, sometimes it has its benefits.

Here's what it's saying. Nowhere else. Nowhere else do you enjoy sexual relationships. Nowhere else do you go to find any sort of sexual fulfillment in the covenant relationship with a real person that you've committed your life to. A real person that you've committed everything you have to them. The person that still like cries at every sappy movie even if they've seen it a hundred times.

The person that's still secretly into 90s boy bands. The person who has road rage issues. The person who at the end of a hard day sits next to you and knows exactly what to say. Or always knows how to make you laugh. Or the person that consistently sticks their foot in their mouth. That real person that's going to change throughout your life, that's the person you're committed to sexually forever.

A real person that you know that you've committed everything to. There's a John Legend song that says, Because all of me loves all of you. Love your curves and all your edges. All your perfect imperfections. Give your all to me. I'll give my all to you.

I don't know if he had covenant marriage in mind. That's what he just described. Everything I have belongs to you. And sex out of that context is saying, I want your flavor. I want some of you. But I'm keeping me back.

I don't belong to you. You don't really belong to me. I don't want any of your baggage. I just want to physically enjoy some of this. And it's holding back. It's not giving.

It's not free. 20. Why should you be intoxicated, my son, with a forbidden woman and embrace the bosom of an adulteress? So as we go back through this, we're going to start back up in verse 3. We're going to talk about the forbidden woman. And here's the forbidden woman biblically.

Here's what lust is. It is a desire sexually for anyone who is not your spouse. A desire sexually for anyone. A covetous desire sexually for anyone who is not your spouse. So the New Testament is going to use the term porneia, which is translated a lot as sexual immorality.

It just means all sexual anything outside of covenant marriage. Jesus is going to say, don't look at another woman lustfully who is not your spouse. So it means any sort of desire sexually for someone you're not married to. That is the line that the Bible draws. Sex is supposed to be, I do forever, not you'll do for now. That's the Bible's approach.

Now our culture wants it to be a consumer good. It wants it to be just a physical appetite. That's what we're told over and over again. Go to verse 3. We're going to start talking about our culture a little bit. Try to understand where we are.

What we've been told, for the lips of a forbidden woman drip honey and her speech is smoother than oil. Okay, that's imagery. That's a picture. Do her lips actually drip honey? No. Does she actually squirt oil out of her mouth when she's talking?

No. He's giving imagery. He's saying this is what it seems like. What he's saying is the forbidden woman, the person that you're not married to, seems amazing, sweet, healthy, enjoyable. She drips honey. Have you ever wondered why all the other husbands are not idiots?

You ever wondered why they do such a good job parenting? Have you ever wondered why they treat their wife so well? Have you ever wondered why this guy seems so great? It's because it's a lie. You ever wondered why their wives never talk to them like this? You ever been up until 2 o'clock in the morning arguing?

You got mascara running down your face and then at some point you get on Facebook and you see these pictures of people on vacation and you see, look at how magic that is. It's a lie. Nobody's taking a selfie at 2 a.m. after an argument. Hashtag exhausted. Hashtag 2 a.m. life. Hashtag depressed.

Nobody's doing that. The person you're not with, the person you're not married to, the person, and if you're not married, anybody you're not married to, they drip honey. Smoother than oil. The way they talk is like Barry White. Hey, baby. Like it's smooth, seems great, but it's a lie.

That's the point he's making. It seems wonderful. See, we're told that sex is just physical, but that's not why we go to it. It's not why we chase after it. See, we're pursuing sex to be free, to be loved, to not be alone anymore. I'm not alone, at least not right now.

I'm wanted. I'm desired. I'm approved of. I'm cared about. You don't go back to porn over and over again just for some sort of physical pleasure. You've got to be comforted.

You've got to be in control. You've got to have someone desire you and long for you. See, we're on a soul-level pursuit when it comes to sex. That's why Fifty Shades of Grey was the fastest book ever to sell a million copies. How many people read that book or went to that movie with this question? Am I missing something?

Am I missing out? What am I missing? Because we've begun to believe that sex gives life, fulfillment, satisfaction, and that we have to have it. But it keeps going. Verse 3. For the lips of a forbidden woman drip honey, and her speech is smoother than oil.

But in the end, she's bitter as wormwood. Wormwood is just a plant, a spice that's very bitter. Sharp as a two-edged sword. Her feet go down to death. Her steps follow the path to Sheol. That's the Old Testament word for the pit or the place of the dead.

So it's hell. He's saying her path goes to hell. She does not ponder the path of life. Her ways wander, and she does not know it. And I would argue that this is us in our culture when it comes to sexuality. We've been promised life.

We've been promised fulfillment. We've been promised honey and oil. And we're wandering off the path of life towards hell, and we don't even know it. We've been promised satisfaction and freedom. And we've wandered off, and we don't even realize it. There was a quote from a lady.

It's an article that went viral for a little while. It said her name is Jamie Varon. The article is called This Is How We Date Now. It starts off this way. They've always said there are so many fish in the sea, but never before has the sea of fish been right at our fingertips. On OkCupid, Tinder, Grindr, Dash, take your pick, we can order up a human being the same way we order up Pad Thai.

Those are dating websites or apps. I'm not saying those are wrong, but I am saying that our approach to dating has changed. That's the point she's making here, that we've begun to approach it as approaching a buffet. She says, if we commit, we are still one eye wandering at the options. We want the beautiful kind of filet mignon, but we're too busy eyeing the mediocre buffet because of choice. Our choices are killing us.

We think choice means something. We think opportunity is good. We think the more chances we have, the better, but it makes everything watered down. Never mind actually feeling satisfied. We don't even understand what satisfaction looks like, sounds like, feels like. We're one foot out the door because outside that door is more, more, more.

We don't see who's right in front of our eyes asking to be loved because no one is asking to be loved. We long for something that we still want to believe exists, yet we're looking for the next thrill, the next jolt of excitement, and the next instant gratification. Sex has offered us an endless buffet of satisfaction, and it's robbed us the ability to ever actually be satisfied because we've got one foot out the door, one eye on our options, and we've forgotten how to covenant. And we've taken sex out of a covenant relationship, put it in a consumer relationship, and it was never meant to be there.

The New York Times actually ran an article entitled The Downside of Cohabitating Before Marriage. They did some research, and they found that 20-somethings, half of 20-somethings agreed that they would not ever get married unless they had lived with someone first to see if they were compatible. And about two-thirds said that they believed moving in together before marriage was a good way to avoid divorce. And then the New York Times article goes on, and it's walking through this pretty well and trying to not get too far. It's New York Times. They've got to kind of thread the needle here.

But basically their point is that's not actually true. Cohabitating before marriage increases your negative statistics, increases the chance of divorce. And so they're basically looking at it and saying, okay, we know we have the cohabitating effect. That's what they call it. And they're like, why? What is living together before marriage?

How does that affect things? And here's one thing. This is a quote. One thing men and women do agree on, however, is that their standards for a live-in partner are lower than they are for a spouse. And that's because they're consumers. They've got one foot out the door, one eye on their options.

The lady interviewed said this, I felt like I was on this multi-year, never-ending audition to be his wife. They end the article with, a life built on top of maybe you'll do simply may not feel as dedicated as a life built on top of the we do commitment of marriage. See, sex in that kind of a relationship is marketing. It's a desire to keep someone focused on you. At best, it's you holding back while trying to take, but also trying to have enough sex so that you're on an audition. Sex has promised us security and love, and what it's given us is year-long auditions.

It's given us years of insecurity trying to keep someone when it was never meant to be in that relationship in the first place. Sex has promised us freedom. It drips. Honey, it's smoother than oil. It promises us freedom. But more and more scientists and neurosurgeons have come out, and they're looking at neuroscience, which is the study of the brain, and they've begun to understand about neuroplasticity, which means that your brain can change.

It can physically change. This is what happens in addiction. Your brain physically rewires itself throughout your life. One of the ways that it was explained in an article I read was if every time you hang out with your uncle, the first thing he does is give you a hug, and then he hands you an ice cream cone, and pretty soon your brain is going to rewire around my uncle is awesome. Because when you get a hug, your brain releases oxytocin. When you get ice cream, your brain releases dopamine, and your brain begins to set up, based on the circumstances, what caused this feeling, what caused this emotion.

When you have sex, your brain releases dopamine, oxytocin, vasopressin, endorphins, and it begins to rewire your brain. Oxytocin is a bonding chemical. Here's what that means. Here's what they're saying. Sex rewires your brain to be addicted. It works like a drug.

If you're in a covenant relationship, that's beautiful. That God designed sex to make you more and more addicted to your spouse. More and more addicted to them so that your brain actually rewires to where that's the person that I'm hooked on. That's beautiful. But if you take sex out of a covenant relationship, that's terrifying.

They actually said that sex becomes like taking a piece of duct tape and wrapping it around the hairy arm of a large man and then peeling it off. You get a lot of hair. You get a lot of skin flakes. Because sex was meant to bond. So it's like duct tape.

It's sticky. And then they said if you take it and wrap it around someone else's arm and then peel that off. This is in the book Hooked. It was written in 2008 by some neurosurgeons who were studying this. They said if you keep doing that, eventually the duct tape loses its stickiness. What they were arguing for is that brain science says – they're not Christians.

They're not arguing. They're just saying brain science says that sex with multiple partners actually makes you less sticky, makes sex work less the way it was supposed to. This is actually why pornography is so addictive. There's a website now called Fight the New Drug. They have a lot of really good statistics. Basically, pornography addiction works like a heroin addiction.

It changes your brain's chemistry so that pornography becomes the thing you're absolutely addicted to. It works with the same reward loops and the same addiction centers. Basically, what happens is your body during pornography and during sex releases a bunch of dopamine. So your dopamine receptors are overloaded. Eventually, if you keep doing this, your body takes away dopamine receptors. So you need more and different to continue to feel the same feeling.

That's how heroin works. That's how pornography works. You need more and different. And because your body has less dopamine receptors, your brain has less dopamine receptors, other things don't seem as good anymore. That's why pornography has become such a crippling issue. I saw a statistic that said one survey said that 50% of Christian men and 20% of Christian women reported feeling addicted to porn.

I want to say this. Pornography is not just a man problem. One of the issues we have in the church is that we have females who are addicted to pornography and they feel this extra layer of shame that I can't tell anybody because this is a man's issue. It's not. It's a human issue. It's a sin issue.

And Jesus saves sinners. We need to begin being able to talk about these things. Here's the thing. Sex was meant to be addicting. And inside of a covenant relationship, praise Jesus, that's beautiful. But when we move it from the right context to the wrong context, it breaks down and doesn't work the way it was supposed to.

We were promised freedom. And it's enslaved us. One of the articles I read, it was absolutely devastating because sex has promised so much for us. It's promised security and love and connection. One of the articles I read is called Sex Before Kissing. They interviewed 600 females from the age of 15 to 19.

This was from Australia. They're asking these females from age 15 to 19, what's it like living in a world where all the guys are addicted to porn? That's the question. How does this affect relationships? How does this affect dating? 15 to 19-year-old girls.

This is a quote. Some see sex only in terms of performance, where what counts most is the boy enjoying it. I asked a 15-year-old about her first sexual experience. She replied, I think my body looked okay. He seemed to enjoy it. Many girls seem cut off from their own sense of pleasure or intimacy.

The main market of a good sexual encounter is only if he enjoyed it. Girls and women are under a lot of pressure to give boys and men what they want, to become a real-life embodiment of what the boys have watched in porn, adopting exaggerated roles and behaviors and providing their bodies as mere sex aids. Growing up in today's porn culture, girls quickly learned that they are service stations for male gratification and pleasure. We're wandering towards hell. We've left life and joy and fulfillment and satisfaction and security and love. We're not there anymore.

We've started wandering towards hell and we don't even realize it. What was supposed to be freedom? What was supposed to be so good? What was supposed to end repression? Seventh-grade girls are asking questions about bondage and S&M. Many of them have seen Fifty Shades of Grey and wonder, if a boy wants to hit me, tie me up, and stalk me, does that mean he loves me?

Girls are tolerating demeaning and disrespectful behaviors and thereby internalizing pornography's message about their submissive role. Sexual conquest and domination are untempered by the bounds of respect, intimacy, and authentic human connection. Young people are not learning about intimacy, friendship, and love, but about cruelty and humiliation. One of the arguments for pornography is that it teaches sex education, and I would argue that it does, but it's a bad education. It teaches about aggression, dominance, and bad sex. No intimacy, no love, no kissing, no talking, no friendship.

Teens who have had sex, this is a different article, are three times more likely to be depressed than teens who haven't. Female teens are three times more likely to commit suicide, this is in the U.S. Males are eight times more likely. That's not causation, that may be correlation, but we've got to start asking some questions. We were promised love, we were promised security, we were promised freedom, and we've gotten everything but, because we've left the path of life and we've started wandering towards hell. That's what the Bible says about sex, that it was meant to be beautiful and addicting and good.

You can't argue that the Bible is anti-sex. You cannot make that argument. It begins with a God who creates a man and a woman naked, brings them to each other. The man begins to sing or just make up some poetry, which seems like an appropriate response. God brings a naked man, a naked woman, brings them together, and the first thing he says to him is, be fruitful and multiply. And that's just how the Bible starts.

There are sections in the Song of Solomon, which is about the enjoyment of married sex, that every time translators get to it, they kind of shy away because they're given some imagery that's really graphic. And so they tone it down as best they can. But if you can read Greek, which I can't, but I've been told, it makes people blush. But we've been lied to. We aren't secure. We've got one foot out the door.

We keep having to sell other people on our benefits. We're not satisfied. One of the pictures that the New Testament gives for hell is a place of unending thirst. And that's where we are in the U.S. when it comes to our sexual desires. We have an unending, eternal, unsatisfied thirst. One of the things, if you look at magazine covers, they used to say you need to be having more sex.

Now what do they say? You need to be having better sex. Why? They sold us on more sex. Are we satisfied? No, we must be doing it wrong.

Sex hasn't led us to heaven. It's led us towards an unending, unsatisfied thirst and longing, which the Bible says that's hell. We're not free. We've been enslaved. We aren't loved. We're used.

We aren't known. We're sucked to dry and thrown away. Chewed up and spit out. Our progressive, free, enlightened approach to sex has not delivered. It's dripping honey, but it's as bitter as wormwood. It promised life.

It's leading us towards death. It promised heaven. It's led us towards hell. My wife, when she was in high school, the first time she ever filled up her car, she had a big Ford Explorer, and the first time she ever filled it up, it was on E. She was all excited. She was going to fill it up.

She filled it up. She drove across the street, and her engine stalled out and died. So her dad had to come, and they were like, does it have gas? Yes. Is it overheating? Like, it took them forever to realize she had filled it up with diesel.

Ford's floors are big. They're not that big. The reason it didn't work was because she put diesel in a gasoline engine. That's what we've done with sex. We've taken a covenant good and put it in a consumer setup, and it's not going to work. It's not going to provide.

It's not going to do everything it promised. So what do we do? How do we respond? If we're caught up in lust, if we're caught up in pursuing the person we're not married to, if we've already done this, if we're addicted to pornography, some people in the church have been addicted to pornography for decades. Began when you were 15, 13. It's been decades of lust.

Decades of, well, this is normal. This is the way guys are supposed to be. Or this is, every woman does this. Or this is how it works. And we've been told over and over again, 14,000 messages a year about how sex is supposed to work. It's robbing us of joy.

It's not freedom. It's slavery. There's a pastor in New York. His name's Tim Keller. He says that whenever someone comes to him and they say, a young person unmarried, and they come to him and say, I'm not a Christian anymore. I'm leaving the church.

He says his first question is, who have you been sleeping with? Immediately they're like, what? What does that have to do with anything? And his response is, nine times out of ten, the reason they're leaving the church is because they've been caught up in sex, and willful disobedience to the Bible makes God's presence unnoticeable, imperceivable. Some of us would say, I am a Christian. I follow the Bible, but when it comes to sex, we've bought in hook, line, and sinker to every message we've heard in our culture.

The Bible's repressive. The Bible's outdated. I follow it in these areas, but not this one. And it makes following Jesus joyless and difficult. So what do we do?

Solomon gives us some help. Verse seven. First thing we've got to do. Listen to what the Bible says about sex. Verse seven. And now, O sons, listen to me, and do not depart from the words of my mouth.

A lot of churches don't talk about sex. We've talked about sex a decent amount this year. We've devoted eight sermons to it, but you'll hear 38 messages on sex today. Eight isn't a lot. It seems like we talk about it a good bit, but our culture is pounding us with the ideas of sex and how we ought to think about it. It's aggressively telling us what we've got to believe, and we've got to start opening our Bibles and reading and meditating on what God says about sex because otherwise we're going to believe what our culture is telling us.

He says, listen, don't depart. That sounds crazy. It sounds prudish. It sounds restrictive. Yes. Yes.

But true freedom is found inside the bounds of healthy restrictions. That's how that works. Birds can fly because they're restricted by little body weight and thin little bones and wings. Fish are most good and okay in underwater. They're restricted by that, but that's where they find freedom. That's how it works.

Great pianist has only become that by practicing hours a day. They become free on a piano because they've completely restricted themselves. That's how sex is supposed to work. We've got some restrictions, but that's what leads to freedom. Verse 8. First thing we've got to do is listen to what the Bible says about sex, which means some of us need to open our Bibles and begin reading, trying to find out.

Verse 8. Keep your way far from her and do not go near the door of her house. We've got to take drastic steps. We've got to take drastic steps. Don't go near the door of her house. Keep far away from her.

The way Paul's going to say this in 1 Corinthians 6 is flee. The way Jesus says it, he says if you lust, pluck your eyeball out. That's crazy. He says cut your hand off. That sounds crazy, but he says it's better to have life and be maimed. It's better to have life and only one eye than to be led astray towards death and hell.

We have to take some drastic steps. Martin Luther says if your head's made of butter, stay away from the fire. We got a lot of butter heads in our church that are just sitting next to a fire and we need to make some good decisions here. Some of you, next week when you show up, you need to be showing off your new flip phone. Some of you need to save $9 a month and get rid of Netflix. When I counsel some of the guys in our church and they're struggling with pornography, one of the questions I've asked before is how many times, you got roommates?

Yeah. How many times have you looked at porn at your kitchen table? Zero. Good. That's where your computer stays from now on. On your kitchen table.

Some of you, your biggest temptations at night with your smartphone, put it out, put it out in the hall, sit on the table. Well, yeah, but I use it as an alarm clock. Walmart sells ones that just have red lights on them and they sound like this in the morning. Eh, eh, eh, eh. That will wake you up. Some of us need to take some drastic steps.

Some of you are in relationships. You need to break up. You need to move out. You need to leave their house at 8 o'clock at night. I heard one pastor say that he's got daughters and he tells them, don't believe anything a guy says after 8 that he doesn't say during the day. If he says it after 8 p.m. but he doesn't say it the rest of the day that it's not true.

Some of us just need to leave the house sitting up, watching a terrible show on Netflix until 2 o'clock in the morning that you're not really interested in next to your boo isn't staying far away from the door. Let me take some drastic steps. Now, that's not going to change your heart, but it can let you catch your breath enough to start trying to pursue Jesus. A couple of other drastic steps that need to be taken. Some of you, for the first time, need to tell your community group. You need to have someone in your group, some ladies in your group, some guys in your group that you say, I'm struggling with this.

You need to be honest. Sexual sin is sin, but it's just sin. And Jesus saves sinners. There's hope for us. 1 John 1, 6-9, we'll have it on the screen. If we say we have fellowship with Him while we walk in darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth, but if we walk in the light as He is in the light, we have fellowship with one another and the blood of Jesus, His Son, cleanses us from all sin.

That we can bring things into the light. Sin grows in the dark, so what you've been told over and over again is you can't tell anybody this. You've got to win it on your own. You've got to fight this on your own. What if they find out? What if they know?

Bring it into the light so that we can have fellowship with each other and then Jesus can cleanse us of all sin. There's not a single thing that you can bring into the light that He can't handle. There's not a single thing, groups, when y'all get together this week and somebody confesses this, don't look at them like a lobster just crawled out of their mouth. We're together because Jesus saves sinners. sinners. Yeah. People in your community group struggle with lust.

Absolutely. In our culture, if you don't struggle with lust, it's amazingly difficult and you're special if this isn't one of your issues. Praise Jesus, but we've been bombarded with message after message about sex and sexuality and lust. And we need freedom, but Jesus saves sinners. Keep going. If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us.

If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. Some of us need to have conversations, bring some things into the light and find some freedom. Quickly, and we've got to keep moving. Some of you need some friends. Not just friends you confess your sin to. You need that.

Some of you need some friends of the opposite sex. C.S. Lewis says one of the quickest ways to get rid of lust is to get to know a person. It's hard to lust after a person you actually know. Some of you need some friends of the opposite sex. Now, there's some wisdom to be applied here.

I don't do counseling with females alone. There's some things that you need to be aware of, but one of the teachings that has happened at least throughout my life growing up in the church is guys, you can't be near girls. Can't be friends with them. Sex. Girls, stay away from guys. Can't be friends with them.

Okay. If one of our problems is that we treat the opposite sex like an object, running away from them and being absolutely afraid of them because if we get alone with them, sex will magically happen is a pornographic fantasy and it is also still treating them like an object. We need brothers and sisters, mothers and fathers. That's how Paul says to treat people in the church. If they're older than you, they're a mother. If they're older than you, they're a father.

If they're younger than you, brother or sister. You know what's beautiful about those relationships? Sex is completely off the table. If you are not married to them, they are a brother, a sister, a mother, or father. Dating relationships. If you are not married, brother or sister, mother or father.

If you need to know how that practically applies to your dating relationship, I'd love to talk with you about it. I'm serious. We can talk about it. We need some actual friends. We need some actual friendships with people of the opposite sex that we treat like a brother or a sister. brother. He keeps going.

He's going to say throughout 10 through 14, he keeps going back into, so he gives some advice, seven and eight, and then he keeps going back into some issues and struggles you're going to have. Get back to 15. We read this a minute ago. Drink water from your own cistern, flowing water from your own well. Third thing we need is we need a better well. We need a better well.

Tim Keller, I quoted him a second ago. He says this about covenantal marriage. He says that in covenantal marriage you're given three things that you can't find in any other type of relationship. One is you're given a zone of security. You do not have to continue to perform. If you actually have a covenantal relationship, you are not performing to keep somebody.

Two, when you've committed to someone beyond your feelings, deeper feelings grow. The only other relationship we have like this is parents to children. You know how this works, right? Like you have children. They bring nothing to the table. They're kind of the worst.

I've heard comedians say that having a child and a really drunk roommate is the same thing. That's pretty true. Then they keep getting older and they keep getting older and you keep sacrificing and you keep giving and you keep loving them regardless of your needs being met. They aren't meeting your needs as like the most special amazing children. You're not getting anything out of this relationship. You're giving and you're giving and you're giving and you're giving and then when they turn 14 you tell them a rule and you say you can't do this and you know what they say?

You hate me and I hate you and you've never done anything for me. And so you choke them but you keep giving and giving and giving and sacrificing and sacrificing and sacrificing and it's one of the most beautiful pictures of unending sacrificial love that we have because when you are in a relationship beyond what your needs are deeper feelings grow and that gets to happen in a covenant marriage and in having children and that's it. When you commit to someone regardless of what you're getting out of it and you say I'm here no matter whether you're sick or healthy, poor, or rich, nice, fun, not fun, mean, I'm here you actually get deeper feelings that get to grow. The third one he says he says if you're you actually get freedom in a covenant relationship because in all other relationships you're a slave you're a slave to your feelings.

You have to feel it to stay. And he says that makes you a slave because you're not in control of your feelings. Sleep habits what you've eaten your body chemistry your physiology have a lot to do with your feelings. He says if you want to be free from your feelings make a promise and you can actually be free. That happens inside of a covenant relationship. Married couples you need a better well meaning that the Bible's going to say repeatedly that married couples should have sex.

They should enjoy sex. They should continue to have sex. They should have conversations with each other be open about it. Some of the married couples in this room the way to apply this sermon is to go home have a conversation be open and honest with each other repent of sin and selfishness repent of fantasies and lust and then have sex. That is a good way to apply this message. You're welcome.

That's what the Bible says. We need a better well. Healthy marriages is not just a gift to the people inside of them. It is a gift to the church. We need healthy marriages of people that love one another serve one another are committed to one another in a covenant relationship and that help the single people in our church see what that's supposed to look like and know what how to walk in one of those in the future. It doesn't mean you need to be real graphic or open about your sex life.

I'm not saying that. You don't need to be talking bad about sex. You don't need to be mistreating your spouse. You need to be open and honest and inviting single people and dating couples into your home to share a meal have an open table have conversations and help them begin to see what marriage is supposed to look like because our culture is telling them a whole lot and we as a church have to begin to model what this is supposed to look like. But all of us need an even better well.

We can't I don't know if y'all know this we can't talk about sex without talking about Jesus. If you've been a part of our church for a while you knew that was true. If you're here for the first time surprise Jesus is better than sex. Sex is just a poor representation of what we can ultimately find in Jesus. Jeremiah 2.13 says this for my people have committed two evils they've forsaken me the fountain of living water and they've honed out cisterns broken cisterns that don't hold water. A cistern's a big well that catches rain water and what he says is I'm a fountain where all of life and fulfillment and joy and satisfaction come from and you've dug a hole and you're trying to drink out of it and it can't give you water.

Here's what we've done culturally as Americans we've said sex is the good life. It's where joy and satisfaction and freedom and hope and life come from and we've been told that over and over and over and over again. It's how you know a relationship is good. It's how you know your life is good. You're missing out if you're not having this. We've been told this over and over and over again and we haven't quenched our thirst yet.

We're continuing to drink from a cistern that will never satisfy us because it was never meant to. Jesus is better than sex and ultimate freedom is only found in him. He is a fountain of living water that fills us up. The Bible steps in and says something to us that I think is so helpful for us as a culture. You can have a full fulfilling and complete life and never have sex and never masturbate and never be addicted to porn. You can have a full fulfilling and complete life without sex.

You can have a full fulfilling and complete life and never have sex. The Bible tells us that repeatedly because fulfillment comes from Jesus. The only thing we can ever look at and say I have to have you to be okay is Jesus. Everything else is optional. Romance, relationships, sex, money, everything else is optional. The one thing we can look at and say I have to have you to be okay and to be fulfilled is Jesus.

As we've been talking this morning some of you have had shame and guilt welling up inside of you. When we talked about the duct tape analogy you began to ask is that me? When we talked about pornography you begin to feel overwhelmed and enslaved. Sometimes when you talk about sex people begin to ask the question am I lovable now? Am I damaged goods? Am I broken?

There's so much pain that goes along with sexual sin and here's the answer to that question. Yes you are loved. Yes you are wanted. Jesus loves you and desires you so much so that he went to a cross to die for you. To cleanse you and to make you his. That Jesus is the fountain that both cleanses us and satisfies us.

There's a song we sing periodically that says this. There's a fountain. This was written in the 1700s. It says there is a fountain filled with blood drawn from Emmanuel's veins and sinners plunge beneath that flood lose all their guilty stains. Jesus is the fountain that pays for our sins that sets us free and that satisfies us completely. But until we're satisfied in Jesus we will forever be stuck trying to quench our thirst in sexual sin.

You can learn all the rules. You can take all the drastic steps you want. You can get all the blockers on your computer that you want. Until you're satisfied in Jesus you'll continue to be addicted. Until you begin to realize that Jesus is the only one that can set you free. The only one that can give you hope.

The only one who loved you so much that he died for you. That he was buried in a grave and that when he rose again he conquered your sin on your behalf. You are loved. You are wanted. You are pursued. You just need a better well.

You are not going to find in sex what was only ever meant to be found in Jesus. I've got one more quote because why not? I've had a thousand today. John Dunn wrote this poem. I think it's helpful. But I'm betrothed unto your enemies.

He's talking to Jesus. Divorce me. Untie or break that knot again. Break up this relationship. I'm chasing after your enemy. I'm running after sex and lust.

Break that up. Take me to you. Imprison me. For I except you enthrall me never shall be free nor ever chased. That means sexually pure. Except you ravish me.

He's talking to Jesus and he says unless I'm so overwhelmed by your love, unless I'm so engulfed in you, imprisoned by you, enthralled by you, I will forever believe this lie. Matt and Raz are going to come back up and here's what we're going to take just a second to pray together. We're going to pray that we'll begin to believe that what the Bible says about sex is true and that we'll be so overwhelmed by the genuine love of Jesus and his death on the cross for our behalf that we won't chase after anything else. We'll be so satisfied in him that we can actually begin to truly in our hearts believe that we can have a life without sex and be okay.

Let's pray. God, we thank you that you save sinners. God, we hate sexual sin, but we thank you that it's still sin and that your blood cleanses us from all sin, that we can be free. God, I pray that we would be a church that you bless with healthy marriages and people that believe what you say about sex, that it's good. It's just not ultimate. It won't satisfy.

It won't fix us. God, I pray that we would see the cross and the empty tomb and your glorious throne in such a way that we'd be satisfied in you. We'd be enthralled with you, imprisoned by you, overwhelmed by your love for us, your death on our behalf. God, I pray that you'd help us to, in our groups this week, be open, honest, bring some things in the light and find some freedom. Confess, have fellowship with one another, genuine, true love and connection based off of truth and not hiding, based off of knowing someone and caring about them. God, I pray that you'd help us to find freedom from our lust and that we as a church would begin to tell a better story about sex than our culture has to offer.

We love you in Jesus' name. Amen.