WEBVTT 00:00:00.300 --> 00:00:10.702 So over the last few weeks, we've been looking at how believers in Jesus Christ should approach the issues in culture. 00:00:10.702 --> 00:00:15.553 Where culture is yelling at us that we need to conform, we must conform. 00:00:15.553 --> 00:00:18.248 There's pressure everywhere for that to happen. 00:00:18.248 --> 00:00:29.952 We learned that we have a strong foundation to stand on because Jesus Christ is absolute truth and he also inspired a Bible to be written which gives us instructions on truth. 00:00:29.952 --> 00:00:36.284 Then we talked about the fact that, as much as truth is important, we must also have the motivation of love. 00:00:36.284 --> 00:00:44.771 It should matter to us what happens to people right, and so the gift that we've been given of truth we want to give to others. 00:00:44.771 --> 00:00:48.950 We want to do it in a loving way, in the way that represents Christ very well. 00:00:48.950 --> 00:01:10.257 Last week, john and Derek did an amazing job talking about family and really how families can talk to each other about cultural issues that are so much a part of everyday conversation that happens almost everywhere that you look Television and internet school systems at work almost everywhere. 00:01:10.257 --> 00:01:24.870 The conversations that need to be had in homes are happening outside of the home, and so we want to create an atmosphere where families again begin to talk about things and have open dialogue about the most important issues of life, amen. 00:01:24.870 --> 00:01:29.570 So I'm going to pick up on that and start talking this morning. 00:01:29.570 --> 00:01:33.034 Our subject is can we talk about sexuality? 00:01:33.034 --> 00:01:34.599 Can we talk about sexuality? 00:01:34.599 --> 00:01:36.286 And this is a two-part message. 00:01:36.286 --> 00:01:41.986 We'll start this morning and then we'll finish up next week, so hope you can join us for that. 00:01:41.986 --> 00:01:44.307 So what is culture saying about sexuality? 00:01:44.307 --> 00:01:45.885 What does God say and what? 00:01:45.885 --> 00:01:47.269 How can we talk about it? 00:01:47.659 --> 00:01:54.563 Genesis 2, verses 18 through 25, says then the Lord God said it is not good that the man should be alone. 00:01:54.563 --> 00:01:57.567 I will make him a helper that is fit for him. 00:01:57.567 --> 00:02:11.709 Now, out of the ground, the Lord God had formed every beast of the field and every bird of the heavens and brought them to the man to see what he would call them and whatever the man called every living creature, that was its name. 00:02:11.709 --> 00:02:18.263 The man gave names to all livestock and to the birds of the heavens and to every beast of the field. 00:02:18.263 --> 00:02:22.929 But for Adam there was not found a helper fit for him. 00:02:22.929 --> 00:02:39.603 So the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man and while he slept he took out one of his ribs and closed up the place with flesh and the rib that the Lord God had taken from the man, he made into a woman and brought her to the man. 00:02:39.603 --> 00:02:42.266 And then the man said this is at last. 00:02:42.266 --> 00:02:46.102 This, at last, is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh. 00:02:46.102 --> 00:02:50.468 She shall be called woman because she was taken out of man. 00:02:50.468 --> 00:02:58.485 Therefore, a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife and they shall become one flesh. 00:02:58.485 --> 00:03:02.808 And the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed. 00:03:03.860 --> 00:03:13.870 Let's pray, father, god, we thank you that this subject is not something that is embarrassing to you and it's not something that we should be ashamed of to converse about. 00:03:13.870 --> 00:03:24.088 But, Lord, we know that we are surrounded by many evils and many perversions of what you say is true and right and holy and pure. 00:03:24.088 --> 00:03:40.829 So today, lord God, would you create an atmosphere in our hearts and minds where we would be ready to receive your truth, to recalibrate the idea that we have concerning sexuality, especially if it's in a negative connotation. 00:03:40.829 --> 00:03:43.385 And, lord, we just pray that your kingdom would come. 00:03:43.385 --> 00:03:45.691 Your will would be done here in this service. 00:03:45.691 --> 00:03:49.495 Take the words that are spoken, holy Spirit, and do the work that only you can do. 00:03:49.495 --> 00:03:52.701 In Jesus' name, we pray, amen. 00:03:55.080 --> 00:04:11.383 My first introduction to sexuality happened when a neighborhood kid molested me, and I don't say that this morning in order to create some form of a shock or to engender sympathy, necessarily. 00:04:11.383 --> 00:05:39.432 The reason that I bring this up is because of the fact that, for the thousands of years, many people have been introduced to the area of sexuality in the wrong way, from the wrong place, and, instead of hearing about it from church in a holy way, in a way that represents Christ, or hearing about it from their families, most people have either heard about or experienced sexuality, especially for the first time, from a stranger, from somebody doing something to them that they didn't want to be done to them, or even from hearing about it through watching a movie, a reading, a book or magazine, whatever the case is right, and so it's very important for us, and for me in particular, because of what I went through, to help people to understand that God does have a plan, and it's a great plan, it's a perfect plan, it's His original intent for humanity, and there are ways that we can come back from things like I experienced in my life, and I am not here today to determine how many of you have experienced things in your life that have been negative in this area, but I can guarantee you that many of you have, and I want to say right from the start I'm sorry that you experienced something negative concerning sexuality in your life before you experienced what God intended for it to be. 00:05:39.432 --> 00:05:54.610 If you have even experienced that up to this point there is hope, there is healing, there is forgiveness and there is a day of new beginning, right, and that's the type of thing that I want to start with at the very beginning this morning. 00:05:54.610 --> 00:06:07.725 It's interesting, though, how an experience like that early in your life can kind of mask or can kind of distort the way you look at something for the rest of your life if God doesn't intervene right. 00:06:08.319 --> 00:06:11.670 So, growing up after that happened to me, I never told anybody about it. 00:06:11.670 --> 00:06:14.303 I didn't tell my parents about it, I didn't tell my brother. 00:06:14.303 --> 00:06:15.367 I was ashamed. 00:06:15.367 --> 00:06:17.387 I felt like there was something that I had done wrong. 00:06:17.387 --> 00:06:21.790 I should have known that what was happening was wrong and I should have stopped it. 00:06:21.790 --> 00:06:27.151 I should have been able to somehow make this not happen in some way. 00:06:27.151 --> 00:06:28.685 It had to be my fault. 00:06:28.685 --> 00:06:41.149 I was the one to blame, and so, because of that, I lived in this shame in this area of my life in a distorted view of what God created and what he intended from a perfect standpoint. 00:06:41.149 --> 00:07:06.870 And that included, as I grew up, being exposed to pornography and also, later in life, as a teenager, having a relationship with a young lady that was not holy in a sexual way, and all of those things were like hidden in the darkness in my life, in the shadows, in this shame-filled space that nobody I thought knew about. 00:07:06.870 --> 00:07:11.766 But God knew about it all along, and God had a purpose and a plan. 00:07:11.766 --> 00:07:23.237 Not that he caused that to happen to me when I was a young child, but he had a purpose and a plan for my life and part of that story of my life I even found out from the first service. 00:07:23.237 --> 00:07:33.790 There's somebody that came up to me and shared that they had a similar experience and that God was working in them, even now and since they've been a part of this church, to bring about healing and restoration in that area. 00:07:33.790 --> 00:07:36.307 And, to be honest with you, it's all worth it. 00:07:36.307 --> 00:07:57.526 It's all worth it if we're able to see people's lives transformed by the gospel of Jesus Christ and also by the word of our testimony, and being able to express to others how great our God is in the midst of horrible, terrible things that you wouldn't wish upon anybody else on the planet. 00:07:57.526 --> 00:08:03.846 There is hope for America, there is hope for the next generation and there's hope for you. 00:08:05.016 --> 00:08:14.327 If you've experienced these things, maybe your first exposure to sexuality was dirty jokes that you heard, or sex outside of marriage, or pornography. 00:08:14.327 --> 00:08:17.637 Whatever the case might be, I'm here to tell you there's a better way. 00:08:17.637 --> 00:08:19.440 There's a better way. 00:08:19.440 --> 00:08:21.425 That's such a distortion. 00:08:21.425 --> 00:08:24.858 What the world has to offer in this area is such a distortion. 00:08:24.858 --> 00:08:29.949 It's such a falsehood in comparison to what God created. 00:08:29.949 --> 00:08:32.499 So it's a broken area in life. 00:08:32.499 --> 00:08:38.597 All of this that we're talking about is manifest brokenness in the world that we live in. 00:08:38.597 --> 00:08:40.562 And so how do you fix something that's broken? 00:08:40.562 --> 00:08:48.650 You go to the manual, you go to the Creator and you ask how do we fix this broken thing? 00:08:48.650 --> 00:08:50.735 And so the Bible is what we do. 00:08:50.735 --> 00:08:51.639 We go to the Bible. 00:08:51.639 --> 00:08:54.191 So God's original intent for human sexuality. 00:08:54.191 --> 00:08:57.779 We're going to look at what God planned and what His plan is. 00:08:57.779 --> 00:09:00.404 Even today, it's not outdated. 00:09:00.404 --> 00:09:03.519 It's been 6,000 years or so and it still works. 00:09:03.519 --> 00:09:09.817 It's still God's perfect plan, and he wants us to initiate it and to live out His perfect plan in our lives. 00:09:10.620 --> 00:09:15.629 So the first, not good, of creation was for man to be alone. 00:09:15.629 --> 00:09:19.750 Every other day of creation God did wonderful things. 00:09:19.750 --> 00:09:24.984 He created the heavens and the earth and the animals and all of the things that we read about in Genesis, chapter 1. 00:09:24.984 --> 00:09:31.250 And after each day he subsequently would say you know, this was the end of the first day and it was good. 00:09:31.250 --> 00:09:38.993 But here is the first time that God looks at His creation and he says it's not good for man to be alone. 00:09:38.993 --> 00:09:42.585 And the men say amen, that's the right answer. 00:09:42.585 --> 00:09:43.648 Thank you very much. 00:09:43.648 --> 00:09:45.735 It is not good for man to be alone. 00:09:45.855 --> 00:09:47.519 And Adam was experienced that. 00:09:47.519 --> 00:09:51.528 He was feeling that he was going about his daily work in the garden. 00:09:51.528 --> 00:09:56.331 Isn't it interesting that he wasn't floating on a cloud, he wasn't strumming a harp. 00:09:56.331 --> 00:09:58.559 God actually gave him a job in the kingdom. 00:09:58.559 --> 00:10:15.719 He was naming the animals, he was involved in all of that kind of work with the plants and trees and stuff, and so all of that is happening and he's experiencing this and he literally is learning the lesson even of the birds and the bees, right as he's looking at all of this creation. 00:10:15.778 --> 00:10:21.395 But for himself there wasn't any kind of partnership like that it was just him. 00:10:21.395 --> 00:10:24.523 He was alone and God looked at that. 00:10:24.523 --> 00:10:27.447 And God said it is not good for man to be alone. 00:10:27.447 --> 00:10:31.245 So God created woman out of man and brought her to him. 00:10:31.245 --> 00:10:33.472 This is an exciting thing. 00:10:33.472 --> 00:10:43.687 It's interesting that God created man out of the dust of the ground, but he caused Adam to go to sleep and he took a rib out of Adam's side and that's what he created Eve with. 00:10:43.687 --> 00:10:48.639 So, ladies, when you call your husband a dirt bag, you're being literally accurate. 00:10:48.639 --> 00:10:57.803 I'm not saying you should do that, but I am saying we are Men, were made from dirt and men. 00:10:57.803 --> 00:11:05.308 If you call your woman a pain in the side, in your side, you're accurate as well, because God took a rib out of Adam. 00:11:05.308 --> 00:11:08.558 Don't encourage you to do that or to say that at all. 00:11:08.558 --> 00:11:13.355 That's another whole sermon that we could get on to talk about how to respect one another. 00:11:13.355 --> 00:11:18.565 But Adam was so excited when God brought Eve to him. 00:11:18.565 --> 00:11:23.139 He was so excited that he actually he a poem came out of his heart. 00:11:23.139 --> 00:11:24.663 It's like the first hallmark moment. 00:11:24.663 --> 00:11:31.148 He said this at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh. 00:11:31.148 --> 00:11:48.686 She shall be called woman because she was taken out of man, amazing what a great gift it was for God to breathe life into Adam and then into Eve and to bring Eve to Adam to be his wife. 00:11:49.388 --> 00:11:56.615 When Amy and I first got married on our wedding day, I decided that would be the first time that I ever sang a song on a microphone. 00:11:56.615 --> 00:12:00.722 I mean ever in my life. 00:12:00.722 --> 00:12:03.668 No karaoke, no, you know anything. 00:12:03.668 --> 00:12:08.845 And so I decided to do that and I was thinking beforehand how am I going to be able to do this? 00:12:08.845 --> 00:12:14.123 I'm not a great singer, I'm an okay singer, but I'm not a great singer and I've never done this before. 00:12:14.123 --> 00:12:14.683 And I'm singing. 00:12:14.683 --> 00:12:20.586 You guys may remember Leon Patilov probably none of you over here will know who that name is, but he did. 00:12:20.586 --> 00:12:24.451 He wrote this song called you Are Bone of my Bone and Flesh of my Flesh. 00:12:24.451 --> 00:12:24.913 We Are One. 00:12:24.913 --> 00:12:25.756 Do you remember that song? 00:12:25.756 --> 00:12:34.279 And so that was the song that I sang to her, and the only way I could do it was to turn my back to the crowd and just to stare at her. 00:12:34.279 --> 00:12:44.650 And when I did that I was able to just let it rip because I was singing to her and that, huh, oh, you want to hear it now. 00:12:44.650 --> 00:12:56.119 Okay, come back tonight at 5 pm for the servant's heart banquet and you may or may not hear a rendition of you Are Bone of my Bone and Flesh of my Flesh. 00:12:56.119 --> 00:12:59.529 I'll sing it if Scott will do the interpretive dance. 00:12:59.529 --> 00:13:01.775 You guys ready for that? 00:13:01.775 --> 00:13:04.660 All right, okay. 00:13:06.202 --> 00:13:23.648 Now, since this morning I've actually changed something about the way that I refer to my wife, because in the past, before this morning, sometimes when I was joking, I would say that she was my prime rib because she was a rib that was taken out of man. 00:13:23.648 --> 00:13:29.556 But I have decided since then that that's really not appropriate, not a great way to describe my wife. 00:13:29.556 --> 00:13:34.556 So from now on I will not be referring to her as my prime rib and she can hold me to that right. 00:13:34.556 --> 00:13:39.666 I will only tell the story of when I used to call her my prime rib. 00:13:39.666 --> 00:13:43.206 I will not any longer call her that in the present tense. 00:13:43.206 --> 00:13:46.125 Okay, but really I wish that I had thought of this. 00:13:46.250 --> 00:13:55.099 But Matthew Henry, the great commentator, wrote this description of what it was like for God to choose a rib to form Eve out of. 00:13:55.099 --> 00:14:12.919 She was not made out of his head to top him, she was not out of his feet to be trampled upon by him, but out of his side, to be equal, with him, under his arm, to be protected and near his heart to be beloved. 00:14:12.919 --> 00:14:25.347 Isn't that a great description of what a Christian marriage, a godly marriage, should be like A partnership, one helping the other. 00:14:25.347 --> 00:14:34.010 And so God instituted the covenant of marriage between one man and one woman, between one man and one woman. 00:14:34.010 --> 00:14:42.697 Therefore, a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh. 00:14:43.418 --> 00:14:52.647 Now, if there was ever a time in all of human history that there could have been an argument made for there not to be a need for a marriage, it could have been Adam and Eve. 00:14:52.647 --> 00:14:53.856 Why is that? 00:14:53.856 --> 00:15:00.759 They were the only two human beings on the face of the planet as far as we know, as far as creation is concerned. 00:15:00.759 --> 00:15:02.683 Also, they didn't have mom and dad. 00:15:02.683 --> 00:15:04.106 God was their father, right? 00:15:04.106 --> 00:15:06.659 There was no need for a white dress. 00:15:06.659 --> 00:15:08.504 They were fine without any clothing. 00:15:08.504 --> 00:15:10.155 There was no need for flowers. 00:15:10.155 --> 00:15:11.379 They were surrounded by flowers. 00:15:11.379 --> 00:15:12.181 They were in the garden. 00:15:12.181 --> 00:15:17.019 No reason for any kind of a ceremony or celebration in that sense. 00:15:17.019 --> 00:15:21.256 But God still wanted to institute something with this first family. 00:15:21.256 --> 00:15:27.840 That would be something that would be carried on, should be carried on throughout all generations that were to follow them. 00:15:27.840 --> 00:15:35.039 And so God instituted not a contract, not an agreement or a legal agreement. 00:15:35.039 --> 00:15:41.299 He instituted a covenant between Adam and Eve, between husband and wife. 00:15:42.923 --> 00:15:48.618 Heterosexual monogamy is the divine pattern for marriage that God established at creation. 00:15:48.618 --> 00:15:53.287 Amen, and a woman being married for life. 00:15:53.287 --> 00:15:54.688 That is God's intent. 00:15:54.688 --> 00:15:57.260 That is God's intent. 00:15:57.260 --> 00:16:01.052 God's pattern for marriage wasn't devised by Adam. 00:16:01.052 --> 00:16:02.115 He didn't come up with it. 00:16:02.115 --> 00:16:03.577 It wasn't Eve's idea. 00:16:03.577 --> 00:16:04.841 None of that. 00:16:04.841 --> 00:16:14.489 There's a traditional marriage ceremony that states it like this Marriage was born in the loving heart of God for the blessing and benefit of mankind. 00:16:15.355 --> 00:16:39.528 His heart, what was in God's heart, was to bless His creation, to bless them in such a way that they would be fulfilled in every aspect of life, and so one of the ways that he did that was by implementing the covenant of marriage, and we hold in such high esteem in 2023, believe it or not the covenant of marriage that God set in place. 00:16:39.528 --> 00:16:51.018 You see, no matter what the courts may decree or society may permit, when it comes to marriage, god has the first word and he will also have the last word. 00:16:51.018 --> 00:17:00.158 Marriage is defined by God, not by me, and not by you and not by anybody else on the face of this planet. 00:17:00.158 --> 00:17:04.209 God didn't need any help with that, he did it Himself. 00:17:04.209 --> 00:17:09.681 So the act of sex within a heterosexual monogamous marriage is holy. 00:17:09.681 --> 00:17:21.472 It's holy, it's set apart, it's designed by God with us in mind, and the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed. 00:17:21.472 --> 00:17:24.142 Can you imagine a world with no shame? 00:17:24.142 --> 00:17:36.557 Can you imagine a world where there's no need for conviction of any kind or condemnation that Satan would try to apply to people's lives, because there was perfectness, holiness. 00:17:36.557 --> 00:17:53.948 Everything that was around them, around Adam and Eve, was pure and pristine and perfect and holy, and every aspect of their union together and their life together was perfect and holy and set apart by God, for God and with His blessing. 00:17:53.948 --> 00:17:55.794 With his blessing. 00:17:56.656 --> 00:18:10.096 How many of us have grown up with a negative connotation in our thought life concerning what sex is, not understanding or believing that somehow God could actually be behind this and that it's his idea? 00:18:10.096 --> 00:18:14.434 In so many ways we feel like we're trying to hide this aspect of our lives from God. 00:18:14.434 --> 00:18:15.678 We don't want him to see. 00:18:15.678 --> 00:18:29.301 We close the curtains, we turn off the lights and then we do whatever we're going to do God in Christian marriage, in a godly marriage, he intends for us to enjoy this aspect of his creation. 00:18:29.301 --> 00:18:35.380 This is not a boundary of oppression, but of love. 00:18:35.380 --> 00:18:37.266 We're different than the animals. 00:18:37.266 --> 00:18:46.693 God created us to be monogamous and to have a heterosexual marriage between a husband, a man and a wife, a man and a woman. 00:18:46.775 --> 00:18:55.482 Because of our tendency to think about sex again from a perverse point of view and our own experiences, or even, to be honest, the way that it's been presented in church. 00:18:55.482 --> 00:19:06.837 Most of the time when the word sex is talked about in church, it's talked about don't do it, and for young people we agree don't do it. 00:19:06.837 --> 00:19:10.973 But that doesn't mean that it's something that's impure or unholy. 00:19:10.973 --> 00:19:15.703 It's precious, it's a blessing from God. 00:19:15.703 --> 00:19:23.989 It's something that he gave not only for procreation, which was for us to be able to be fruitful and multiply, to have children. 00:19:23.989 --> 00:19:28.480 I know some that haven't been able to have children, and that doesn't make you any less of a person. 00:19:28.480 --> 00:19:36.755 Many have adopted and other things that they've done in their lives spiritual fathers and mothers, right, but procreation was part of it. 00:19:37.036 --> 00:19:50.292 But he also created sexuality and the act of sex for our enjoyment, for mutual enjoyment, something that God planned and instituted and wanted to be a part of our lives. 00:19:50.292 --> 00:20:01.837 So if you think about sex only from a shameful, dirty, perverse way, stop it, just stop it, just stop. 00:20:01.837 --> 00:20:06.125 That's not the way that God intended for us to think about it. 00:20:06.125 --> 00:20:13.626 It is wholly impure when it is exercised and done within the confines of marriage. 00:20:13.626 --> 00:20:17.816 Think about how precious it is that God made us different than the animals. 00:20:17.816 --> 00:20:37.752 The fact that we even from a, from the standpoint of our anatomy, the way that we fit together in this aspect, the fact that we look at each other face to face, that our heart beats and the other person's heart beats and we feel that together. 00:20:37.752 --> 00:20:42.344 What a romantic, intimate, beautiful thing. 00:20:42.344 --> 00:20:51.440 This gift that God has given us of Christian marital sexuality Beautiful. 00:20:51.440 --> 00:20:54.884 So the downward spiral of how we get here. 00:20:54.884 --> 00:20:56.613 How did we get here? 00:20:56.613 --> 00:21:04.602 It's hard to picture how far we've come from that beautiful image of creation, isn't it From the Garden of Eden, with everything just so pristine and pure. 00:21:05.790 --> 00:21:13.820 Not only according to culture is this an ultra-limited idea of human sexuality, what we just talked about, but it's outdated. 00:21:13.820 --> 00:21:19.815 It's also hated by many who want to decide for themselves how to define sexuality. 00:21:19.815 --> 00:21:28.798 This culture is all about defining for themselves what sex is what it looks like, how it's done. 00:21:28.798 --> 00:21:30.259 Now. 00:21:30.259 --> 00:21:44.616 The Bible, believe it or not, addresses almost every single one of the issues that you can find in our culture today, and so we're going to look at some of the biblical words for sexual sin for just a minute, and we'll give definitions for these things. 00:21:45.199 --> 00:21:46.805 So the first one is fornication. 00:21:46.805 --> 00:21:48.289 What is fornication? 00:21:48.289 --> 00:21:51.784 According to Scripture, it is sex outside of marriage. 00:21:51.784 --> 00:21:54.050 This is the downward spiral that I'm talking about. 00:21:54.050 --> 00:21:59.551 This is where we go when we don't follow God's way of doing things Right. 00:21:59.551 --> 00:22:11.133 So fornication is sex outside of marriage, which adultery is sex with others while married Pretty easy, two sides of the same coin fornication and adultery. 00:22:11.133 --> 00:22:14.903 There's also prostitution, which is sex for money. 00:22:14.903 --> 00:22:20.761 Abuse and rape, which is sex that is unwanted and harmful. 00:22:20.761 --> 00:22:26.069 Self gratification, which is self sex with oneself. 00:22:26.069 --> 00:22:30.438 Sodomy is sex with one's own gender. 00:22:30.438 --> 00:22:44.184 Pedophilia, sex with children All of these things, by the way, the culture is holding up as the standard. 00:22:44.184 --> 00:22:52.309 None of these things are taboo within the extents of what culture is saying. 00:22:52.309 --> 00:22:57.190 We're going to talk much more about this next week, as we get into the darker side of this. 00:22:57.190 --> 00:23:06.492 Today, we're going to be focusing primarily on what God said and how we've gotten to the point where we're at now. 00:23:06.492 --> 00:23:10.943 There's also bestiality, which is sex with animals. 00:23:10.943 --> 00:23:13.712 I'm sure that I'm missing some. 00:23:13.712 --> 00:23:24.223 Those are the major categories of sin when it comes to sexuality and there are so many times, in so many ways, that people are involved in these different activities. 00:23:24.223 --> 00:23:27.496 And there's hope today because there's freedom. 00:23:27.496 --> 00:23:33.152 We don't have to walk according to the flesh To gratify the flesh. 00:23:33.152 --> 00:23:40.147 We can walk according to the Spirit of God, and that's what we believe and we want you to experience that in your life. 00:23:40.675 --> 00:23:49.722 So if you take your Bible and just flip it over one page we just finished Genesis, chapter 2, and you just turn the page and at the beginning of Genesis 3,. 00:23:49.722 --> 00:23:54.403 We don't know how much time went by between the end of Genesis 2 and the beginning of Genesis 3. 00:23:54.403 --> 00:23:55.665 Maybe it was hundreds of years. 00:23:55.665 --> 00:23:58.220 There was some extent of time that went by. 00:23:58.220 --> 00:24:10.327 And remember, god had given the commandment to Adam that he could eat from every tree in the garden, except for the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for in the day that he would eat of it, he would die. 00:24:10.327 --> 00:24:18.979 And so Adam explained that to Eve and they both understood we can eat every other fruit, every other tree, but this tree we're not supposed to mess with. 00:24:18.979 --> 00:24:22.508 And then you go to Genesis, chapter 3, verse 1,. 00:24:23.255 --> 00:24:28.674 Now the serpent was more crafty than any other beast of the field that the Lord God had made. 00:24:28.674 --> 00:24:34.868 He said to the woman did God actually say you shall not eat of any tree in the garden? 00:24:34.868 --> 00:24:45.434 And the woman said to the serpent we may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden, but God said you shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the midst of the garden. 00:24:45.434 --> 00:24:49.506 Neither shall you touch it, lest you die. 00:24:49.506 --> 00:25:02.156 But the serpent said to the woman you will not surely die, for God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened and you will be like God, knowing good and evil. 00:25:02.156 --> 00:25:17.342 So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food and that it was a delight to the eyes and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of the fruit and ate, and she also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate. 00:25:17.342 --> 00:25:25.924 And then the eyes of both were naked and they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loincloths. 00:25:27.307 --> 00:25:28.750 Wow, what a departure. 00:25:28.750 --> 00:25:46.400 What a rapid decline and departure with just one conversation with Satan, who personified and who personified himself as a serpent, one of God's creations, talking to them from this tree about the fruit that was in this tree. 00:25:46.400 --> 00:25:48.124 So how did Satan do it? 00:25:48.124 --> 00:25:49.688 How did he change their minds? 00:25:49.688 --> 00:25:52.840 How did he convince them of something that was a lie? 00:25:53.403 --> 00:25:56.916 First of all, satan sowed seeds of doubt about the word of God. 00:25:56.916 --> 00:25:59.121 He said did God actually say? 00:25:59.121 --> 00:26:01.566 Did God actually say? 00:26:01.566 --> 00:26:07.390 You know, a lot of times, culture today is even separating out Jesus and Paul from the Bible. 00:26:07.390 --> 00:26:11.445 Well, jesus didn't actually say anything in particular about that, paul did. 00:26:11.445 --> 00:26:14.156 But we don't like Paul, so we're going to pay attention to Jesus. 00:26:14.156 --> 00:26:28.067 We don't read the New, the Old Testament at all because it's got way too much stuff that that's against what I want to do and who I want to be, so I'm going to focus on the words of Jesus, not understanding the heart of Jesus behind the words that he spoke. 00:26:28.067 --> 00:26:30.375 Right, we cannot do that. 00:26:30.375 --> 00:26:31.832 That is not our place. 00:26:31.986 --> 00:26:40.219 But Satan will always attempt to twist the word of God, truth, in any way that he possibly can to distract us. 00:26:40.219 --> 00:26:55.778 Satan was kicked out of heaven by God because he said to himself I will make myself like the most high, and God said no, sir, probably didn't say sir, and he kicked him out of heaven. 00:26:55.778 --> 00:26:58.224 And so Satan not able to get to God. 00:26:58.224 --> 00:27:00.655 What's the next best thing for him? 00:27:00.655 --> 00:27:07.588 To try to get to God's children, adam and Eve, his creation, his children, god's children. 00:27:07.588 --> 00:27:16.202 Attacking them in this way was the only way that he could see to try to get back to God and unfortunately it worked, didn't it? 00:27:17.607 --> 00:27:18.790 He's the father of all lies. 00:27:18.790 --> 00:27:22.563 There is no truth found in him, and we must understand that. 00:27:22.563 --> 00:27:25.150 He tries to make himself like God. 00:27:25.150 --> 00:27:26.273 He tries to be clever. 00:27:26.273 --> 00:27:28.199 He's not, by the way. 00:27:28.199 --> 00:27:29.782 He has no creative power. 00:27:29.782 --> 00:27:33.071 He has no unique thought. 00:27:33.071 --> 00:27:36.461 All that he can do is pervert something that he sees. 00:27:36.461 --> 00:27:41.980 He can try to cause confusion and chaos by speaking lies, and so that's what he attempts to do. 00:27:41.980 --> 00:27:51.315 The Bible even says that in the end, when he's revealed to all of the nations, people will look at him and say is this the one that caused all of the chaos in the world? 00:27:51.315 --> 00:27:55.404 And they'll laugh at him because he's a lie. 00:27:55.404 --> 00:27:57.109 He's a lie. 00:27:57.109 --> 00:27:58.894 He's the father of all lies. 00:27:58.894 --> 00:28:08.304 He's real, he's very real, but all he does is speaks lies, and he loves to twist scripture more than anything else, to cause confusion and chaos. 00:28:08.885 --> 00:28:15.426 And so you see that in Eve and her response, did God truly say she says what God said, but then she adds to it. 00:28:15.426 --> 00:28:20.869 Not only did he say we shouldn't eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, he said we shouldn't touch it. 00:28:20.869 --> 00:28:27.693 God never said we shouldn't touch it, but they were adding to it, it was being added to in her thought process. 00:28:27.693 --> 00:28:37.902 Right, this chaos, this confusion was beginning to work and to take root in her, and Satan planted a denial of the word of God, next a denial. 00:28:37.902 --> 00:28:41.809 So doubt first, now denial you will not surely die. 00:28:41.809 --> 00:28:47.446 Wow, it's one thing to say, well, did you understand what God said. 00:28:47.446 --> 00:28:50.638 It's another thing to say he's lying to you. 00:28:50.638 --> 00:28:52.683 So the get this. 00:28:52.683 --> 00:28:57.755 The father of all lies is calling God, our father, a liar. 00:28:57.755 --> 00:29:01.022 So what's the truth? 00:29:01.022 --> 00:29:03.931 Who's the actual liar here? 00:29:03.931 --> 00:29:08.482 Satan is lying to them and saying you will not surely die. 00:29:10.910 --> 00:29:30.842 All of this was being used to lure Adam and Eve into the next and final steps, which is Satan then planted a delusion, a delusion opposed to the word of God, for God knows that when you eat of it, your eyes will be opened and you will be like God, knowing good and evil. 00:29:30.842 --> 00:29:34.166 So what card did he play? 00:29:34.166 --> 00:29:36.289 He played the victim card. 00:29:36.289 --> 00:29:40.300 He said you're victims of God. 00:29:40.300 --> 00:29:49.621 God is attempting to oppress you and to keep you from everything that you could have. 00:29:49.621 --> 00:30:00.108 Your fulfillment is not nearly what it could be if you would just follow my plan and my way instead of following God's plan in his order and his directives. 00:30:00.108 --> 00:30:03.584 So again, he's not a creator. 00:30:03.584 --> 00:30:05.148 There's no game that's different. 00:30:05.148 --> 00:30:15.122 In his game it's the same thing over and over and over again, maybe new renditions and new words and new vocabulary, but it's the same thing. 00:30:15.122 --> 00:30:16.888 And so here he is. 00:30:16.888 --> 00:30:21.542 He wants them to believe that there's something good that God doesn't want them to have. 00:30:21.542 --> 00:30:23.888 He's holding out. 00:30:23.888 --> 00:30:41.792 All they need to do to break his spell, to break this bad God's spell, is to eat of the forbidden fruit, and then all that they could ever imagine they could have in an instant they could be just like him. 00:30:41.814 --> 00:30:51.182 Now, if you remember from Derek's message last week, in Genesis, chapter one, he said what that mankind was, that mankind was made in the image and likeness of God. 00:30:51.182 --> 00:30:56.337 So who is Satan to be the determining factor on us being like God? 00:30:56.337 --> 00:31:12.876 God already created us in his image and likeness, and not only that, but we know that later on the story, through Jesus Christ, that God continues to make us like Jesus through sanctification, those who believe in Jesus Christ through the process of sanctification. 00:31:12.876 --> 00:31:16.786 So it wasn't that what he was saying was an evil thing, necessarily. 00:31:16.786 --> 00:31:19.038 It was the root that he was saying to take. 00:31:19.038 --> 00:31:21.949 It's just like when, when Satan tempted Jesus. 00:31:21.949 --> 00:31:31.979 Remember when he came to him and he said just bow down and worship me and I'll give you all the kingdoms that you can see of the world to be yours. 00:31:33.383 --> 00:31:34.025 What a liar. 00:31:34.025 --> 00:31:36.231 What a liar. 00:31:36.231 --> 00:31:37.335 Do you think he would have done that? 00:31:37.335 --> 00:31:41.003 First of all, were they even his to give? 00:31:41.003 --> 00:31:48.467 He was like the manager at that point in time because of the sin that came in the world. 00:31:48.467 --> 00:31:49.290 But God already had a plan. 00:31:49.290 --> 00:31:50.075 I don't want to get ahead of myself. 00:31:50.075 --> 00:31:54.907 We're going to get to the plan that God had to bring about redemption. 00:31:54.907 --> 00:32:00.223 They could be like God and then guess what? 00:32:00.223 --> 00:32:07.038 They wouldn't need God anymore because the final stage is they would be God. 00:32:07.038 --> 00:32:12.065 Adam and Eve, just eat of the fruit. 00:32:12.065 --> 00:32:17.912 You don't need God, you can be your own God. 00:32:21.871 --> 00:32:39.539 To use modern day vernacular, satan was attempting to convince Adam and Eve that their patriarch, god, was oppressive and cruel and was marginalizing them and making them victims of his own evil plan to keep them from reaching their fullest potential. 00:32:39.539 --> 00:32:41.615 That sound familiar. 00:32:41.615 --> 00:32:53.935 Nothing new friends, maybe new applications or new ways of distribution, internet and instant everything, but there's nothing new under the sun. 00:32:53.935 --> 00:33:01.762 It's the same plan to discount God that Satan attempts to do throughout all of history. 00:33:01.762 --> 00:33:10.551 Unfortunately, as we know, adam and Eve gave in to the threefold temptation that all human beings face. 00:33:10.551 --> 00:33:26.941 So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food and that it was a delight to the eyes and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate, and she also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate as well. 00:33:27.990 --> 00:33:29.655 First John, chapter two, verse 16. 00:33:29.655 --> 00:33:31.674 Many of you probably know this. 00:33:31.674 --> 00:33:36.141 It talks about temptation that everybody faces, and there are threefold. 00:33:36.141 --> 00:33:41.441 There's a threefold temptation the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eye and the pride of life. 00:33:41.441 --> 00:33:52.361 And here, in this one story, we have all three of the temptations that are facing Adam and Eve as they choose whether or not to give in to this, to Satan's lies. 00:33:52.361 --> 00:33:55.013 So, the lust of the flesh, which is. 00:33:55.154 --> 00:33:57.339 They looked at the fruit and saw that it was good for food. 00:33:57.339 --> 00:33:59.374 It looked like they wanted to eat it. 00:33:59.374 --> 00:34:01.833 Right, the lust of the eyes. 00:34:01.833 --> 00:34:03.258 It was pleasant to look at. 00:34:03.258 --> 00:34:08.681 It must have had a special sparkle to it or something that made it appealing. 00:34:08.681 --> 00:34:13.181 Just the no word, probably no, you can't eat from that was enough. 00:34:13.181 --> 00:34:16.679 Right, it was appealing to them, to their eyes and the pride of life. 00:34:16.679 --> 00:34:21.778 If they just ate of it, they would become even wiser than God himself. 00:34:21.778 --> 00:34:44.876 They took the fruit and ate it, and that sentence, right there, explains the root cause of all sickness, all disease, all sorrow, all suffering, all fear, all guilt, all perverseness and death that we see and face in this world that we live in. 00:34:44.876 --> 00:34:51.097 They took the fruit and ate it. 00:34:54.449 --> 00:34:59.382 What God meant to be, the beautiful union of husband and wife, was instantly perverted by sin. 00:34:59.382 --> 00:35:01.295 Listen to the phrase. 00:35:01.295 --> 00:35:04.195 The sentence is here In the eyes of both were opened. 00:35:04.195 --> 00:35:09.092 Adam and Eve's eyes were opened and they knew that they were naked. 00:35:09.092 --> 00:35:13.639 And they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loincloths. 00:35:13.639 --> 00:35:19.190 Wow, can you imagine what a moment? 00:35:19.190 --> 00:35:35.599 Never experienced shame in whatever time that they had as created beings, never had experienced shame, never had felt the desire to hide or to pretend None of that perfect perfection. 00:35:35.599 --> 00:35:45.137 And yet, in this moment, as soon as they disobeyed God, the veil was torn and they recognized now that they had been duped. 00:35:45.137 --> 00:35:49.360 Satan, the father of all lies, lied to them. 00:35:49.360 --> 00:35:53.159 They believed his lie to be true and they ate the fruit. 00:35:53.159 --> 00:36:09.432 And since that time, every human being except one has been tainted, has been born dead to God and outside of right relationship with him, because we all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. 00:36:10.253 --> 00:36:15.434 Right God shows up on the scene. 00:36:15.434 --> 00:36:18.896 Can you imagine? 00:36:18.896 --> 00:36:20.855 Is there trying to hide from him? 00:36:20.855 --> 00:36:22.114 How are you going to hide from God? 00:36:22.114 --> 00:36:27.454 How are we going to hide from God? 00:36:27.454 --> 00:36:34.039 They try to hide from God and God calls out to them basically what happens. 00:36:35.829 --> 00:36:42.293 And Adam being the brave man that he was the provider of his family, the covering says it's the woman you gave me. 00:36:42.293 --> 00:36:46.637 He's playing the blame game. 00:36:46.637 --> 00:36:49.195 It's interesting. 00:36:49.195 --> 00:36:54.992 He's blaming his wife, but he's actually blaming God, the woman you gave me. 00:36:54.992 --> 00:37:05.791 God, we were fine before she came into the scene, really, don't you remember? 00:37:05.791 --> 00:37:13.599 He looks at Eve and Eve blames the serpent. 00:37:13.599 --> 00:37:17.045 She says the devil made me do it, literally. 00:37:17.045 --> 00:37:23.731 Yeah, how many times have we actually said that the devil made me do it. 00:37:28.030 --> 00:37:29.956 Separation from God and death now inevitable. 00:37:29.956 --> 00:37:32.233 Was there any hope to be found? 00:37:32.233 --> 00:37:41.719 This is the end that Satan had in mind. 00:37:41.719 --> 00:38:01.202 He would have loved for the story to end with the death of Adam and Eve, but I want you to know that, as God was passing out sentencing and judgment, it was she had to do, as a righteous God and a holy God, for himself to remain pure and holy and just. 00:38:01.202 --> 00:38:05.179 He had to punish the sin that was committed. 00:38:05.179 --> 00:38:27.021 And so, as he was giving those punishments out to Adam and to Eve, he also turned to the serpent and he said to the serpent something that gave hope to even to Adam and Eve, in the very moment that they had gotten busted for committing the greatest crime in all of history. 00:38:27.021 --> 00:38:38.954 He said of himself I will put enmity between you and the woman and between your offspring and her offspring. 00:38:38.954 --> 00:38:41.516 He shall crush your head once. 00:38:41.516 --> 00:38:46.436 Translation says or he shall bruise your head and you shall bruise his heel. 00:38:47.632 --> 00:38:52.101 I don't even know that God was not surprised by what happened in the Garden of Eden. 00:38:52.101 --> 00:39:00.112 It's not like they had an emergency session of the Trinity to determine what in the world they're going to do now. 00:39:00.112 --> 00:39:08.856 They had a plan, before the foundation of the world, of how this was going to play out and how redemption was going to be found. 00:39:08.856 --> 00:39:22.644 And I'm telling you, jesus Christ himself is the hope of the world and for any of us to experience health and life in any area of our lives. 00:39:22.644 --> 00:39:27.038 The only way that we can do that is to be in right relationship with him. 00:39:27.038 --> 00:39:38.541 So I encourage you today if you don't yet know Jesus Christ, if you are not a follower of Jesus Christ, if you've not submitted your life to him, do it today. 00:39:38.541 --> 00:40:06.322 Choose today to follow after him, call out to him, ask him for help and for the rest of us, jesus is the promised hope of redemption, who came to overturn Satan's plan to steal, kill and destroy by making a way for us, through faith in him, to be restored to right relationship with God. 00:40:06.322 --> 00:40:17.739 That, my friends, is the good news about every area of life, but especially as we talk today about human sexuality. 00:40:19.235 --> 00:40:25.007 Now I left you with the beginning of my story, but I wanted to give you the rest of the story. 00:40:25.007 --> 00:40:39.827 So I met a young lady named Amy French, and as I met her my heart jumped on the inside because I had given up any thought of ever being married. 00:40:39.827 --> 00:40:42.469 I was a part of the group called the Bachelor's to the Rapture. 00:40:42.469 --> 00:40:43.818 I don't know if you ever knew about that. 00:40:43.818 --> 00:40:53.420 I had put myself in that category because I could not trust myself to make wise decisions when it came to relationships. 00:40:53.420 --> 00:41:03.143 So God brought this young lady a year later into my life, and the first time I met her, god was so gracious to tell me in my heart you're going to marry her. 00:41:04.394 --> 00:41:07.302 But then I'm thinking what about all this stuff? 00:41:07.302 --> 00:41:15.246 What about all the years of living a lie in different aspects of my life? 00:41:15.246 --> 00:41:29.847 Because now, if I'm to be real with her and to be honest with her, I'm going to have to tell her how I've chosen to live my life in every area, and especially in the area of sexuality. 00:41:29.847 --> 00:42:08.739 And so we sit down together and we pour out with each other the backstory of our lives and, to be honest with you, one of the greatest areas of healing that ever happened to me was when she heard me tell her about the things that I had done and been a part of and the things that had been done to me, and she looked at me and said I love you, in spite of the love of Jesus manifest in her and through her to me, was part of the healing that God gave me. 00:42:09.717 --> 00:42:18.121 The other thing that happened is that a little bit later on, the Lord began to deal with my heart about what had happened to me when I was a child. 00:42:18.121 --> 00:42:45.985 And it's interesting because that person that did that to me probably had no idea how much that cost me in my life, how difficult it was for me to just live in a Christian home with a pastor as a dad and around all of these Christian people who were talking about sin as being evil and not evil, but sinful and wrong. 00:42:45.985 --> 00:42:48.521 And yet I had had these things experienced. 00:42:48.521 --> 00:42:51.836 That I had experienced and that I must have allowed happen to me. 00:42:51.836 --> 00:43:04.289 Somehow it was my fault, and for the Lord to preciously help me to understand that really I was the one who needed to forgive. 00:43:04.289 --> 00:43:11.766 How in the world do you forgive somebody that has done something so wrong to you? 00:43:11.766 --> 00:43:37.846 You know, what I recognized is that I was in a prison of unforgiveness and because of that I wasn't able to fully understand the love of the Father for me or to express that love fully toward other people, even to my wife the way that she deserved, and so I chose, through, by God's grace, to forgive this young man. 00:43:37.846 --> 00:43:38.998 You know what the Lord said to me. 00:43:38.998 --> 00:43:42.541 He said he was doing what was done to him. 00:43:42.541 --> 00:43:46.242 Does that make it right? 00:43:46.242 --> 00:44:11.280 Absolutely not, but it gave me just a little bit of compassion and understanding that maybe this young man, who didn't have Jesus, who didn't have a family that cared about him in the same way that my family cared about me, that he'd gone through something very traumatic himself and was just expressing that because he thought that this was what was normal. 00:44:14.594 --> 00:44:20.626 I went back to Wyoming with my young family a few years later and I drove down that street. 00:44:20.626 --> 00:44:39.021 For the first time since it happened to me, I was able to breathe as I drove by that house and I could say to my family this is where I lived, without even mentioning the trauma that had happened to me on that street. 00:44:39.021 --> 00:45:03.605 This is where I lived, this was a part of my childhood, and that's when I knew that the work that God was doing in me was getting to the point to where I'd be able to help other people with my story, and that's why I'm sharing it with you today, not so that you can say, well, tyler has all the answers, or he's figured it all out Absolutely not. 00:45:03.605 --> 00:45:14.364 But so that you understand that God turns everything around for good for those who love God and are called according to his purpose. 00:45:14.364 --> 00:45:24.945 If you are a child of God, there's nothing in your life that he can't turn around and use it for his glory and for his purpose and for his kingdom. 00:45:24.945 --> 00:45:29.447 And so I'm going to close today just by praying for all of us. 00:45:29.574 --> 00:45:42.449 I'm going to ask the prayer team to come in just a minute, and you might find yourself in a few different categories, and next week we'll spend more time talking about what culture says, what God says and how could we talk about it. 00:45:42.449 --> 00:45:51.105 But I really felt like it was important for us to lay this foundation out so that we really understand that we're not defending something we feel. 00:45:51.105 --> 00:45:56.465 We're not defending something that's been passed down from generation to generation from our families. 00:45:56.465 --> 00:46:11.023 We're standing for truth that was intended and directed and established by God himself, the maker of heaven and earth, and if it's his truth, it's worth standing for. 00:46:11.023 --> 00:46:14.382 Amen, I'm going to pray for you. 00:46:14.635 --> 00:46:23.244 Maybe you find yourself in a category, like I was, where you have some form of hurt that's come into your life in the area of sexuality. 00:46:23.244 --> 00:46:30.221