Relating to Sex and Sexuality

Genesis 2:18-25 and/or John 8:1-11

Transcript

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You're listening to RUF at TanaSew Podcast. Alright. If you have a Bible, you can go ahead and open up to the book of Genesis, chapter 1. But heads up, we're going to be looking at a lot of different passages tonight. So they'll be on the screen. You can follow along there. We'll be ending in John chapter 8. So if you want to kind of bookmark that, we'll be starting in Genesis and ending in John chapter 8. And hey, if this is your first time with us, we want you to know that we're doing a special series this semester on relationships. Normally at large group, we go through a book of the Bible, but we wanted to focus in on relationships because the Bible has a lot to say about them. We all live in relationship with God, with other people, and we need a lot of help, we need a lot of wisdom to navigate those relationships. So we started off looking at our relationship with God, our relationship with our sin. We looked at our relationship with friends. And then like the last couple weeks, we were looking at our relationship to dating and as well as our relationship to marriage. And I encouraged y'all to actually consider uh asking each other out, and I'm sure that just introduced all sorts of chaos here in RUF. But you know, I'm sure everything's working out right. Y'all been dating each other, yeah? Everything's going well, not awkward at all. Alright, silence. Okay, so definitely awkward. Uh all right, but tonight uh we're hitting on a pretty heavy topic. We're going to be talking about sex and sexuality. Uh, and let me kind of give you just the main thing I want you to take away for the whole series before we get into the scripture, which is that you were created by God to love and to be loved in relationship with God and with others. That you were created by God to love and to be loved in relationship with God and with others. Alright, let's turn our attention now to Genesis chapter 1. Then God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness, and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the heavens, and over the livestock, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth. So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him, male and female he created them. And God blessed them, and God said to them, Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens, and over every living thing that moves on the earth. Now Genesis chapter two, starting in verse twenty. But for Adam there was not found a helper fit for him. So the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and while he slept, took one of his ribs and closed up its 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. Then the man said, This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh. She shall be called woman because she was taken out of man. Therefore a 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. Alright, Genesis 20, verse 14. You shall not commit adultery. Matthew 5, 27 through 28. You have heard that it was said, You shall not commit adultery, but I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lustful intent has already committed adultery with her in his heart. And finally, John chapter 8. But Jesus went to the Mount of Olives early in the morning. He came again to the temple, and all the people came to him, and he sat down and taught them. The scribes and the Pharisees brought a woman who had been caught in adultery, and placing her in the midst, they said to him, Teacher, this woman has been caught in the act of adultery. Now in the law, Moses commands us to stone such women. So what do you say? This they said to test him, that they might have some charge to bring against him. Jesus bent down and wrote with his finger on the ground. And as they continued to ask him, he stood up and said to them, Let him who is without sin among you be the first to throw a stone at her. And at once more he bent down and wrote on the ground. But when they heard it, they went away one by one, beginning with the older ones. And Jesus was left alone with the woman standing before him. Jesus stood up and said to her, Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you? She said, No one, Lord. And Jesus said, Neither do I condemn you. Go and from now on sin no more. This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God. Alright, so uh on the front end, I want to give just a little bit of a disclaimer, uh, because tonight we're talking about sex and sexuality, which can be a heavy topic, it can be an awkward topic. Uh, we all kind of bring baggage to it. So I want to just state my heart up front for this talk, uh, which is my goal is not to like get into a massive debate. My goal is not to shame someone. Uh, my goal is not to claim any kind of moral superiority that I have done this right in my life and everyone else is doing it wrong. No, my goal is to preach the gospel when it comes to this topic and how it applies, and hopefully bring some clarity to it. And hopefully, through the power of the Spirit, maybe even some healing. Uh, so if there's anything I say tonight that you're uncomfortable with, you struggle with, just know I would be happy to meet with you next week and talk about it. Grace would be happy to meet with you, Bruce Wood. Um, you know, we don't want you just left confused or angry or anything. We want to process this together. Alright, that being said, uh, I have three points tonight. Three points. They're uh, sorry, uh three points tonight. What is true about the Bible's view of sex, uh, what is good about the Bible's view of sex, and what is beautiful about the Bible's view of sex. And at each of those, we're actually gonna look at like the opposite of it. So when we get to true, we're also gonna look at the lies of this world. Uh when we get to good, we're gonna look at how this world cheapens sex. And when we get to beautiful, we're gonna see how this world can make uh sex out to be this ugly thing at times. So let's start with true uh and let's look again at those Genesis passages. Alright, so when it comes to the Bible's understanding of sex, uh the first thing I want you to see is that God created it. Uh lots of times people think, okay, like the Bible is very kind of anti-sex, it's very negative about sex. You know, Christians maybe have a bad history of uh coming off a bit like negative about it or shaming. But the reality is when the Bible talks about sex, it's generally positive because it's seen as a gift from God. Uh I don't know if you caught that back in Genesis chapter 1, but God creates all things. He creates male and female, and then the very first command he gives them is be fruitful and multiply. So the first thing God tells Adam and Eve is, get it on, y'all. Like that's in creation before sin is there or anything. So if God is somehow anti-sex, uh, I have a hard time squaring that with this passage. We are created in the image of God. And look, we've talked about this before. God is a, we believe in a triune God. He's in community with himself, God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit. And if we're made in his image, then that means we are hardwired for relationships, and we are hardwired for intimacy. That sex, in a way, is a metaphor of the intimacy that God shares within himself that he wants us to experience as well. We're not sexually God, but we're speaking to the way he designed us. That you are hardwired for intimacy with God and with other people. So therefore, it's not inherently sinful for you to desire sex, for you to desire physical intimacy with another person. That is how God created us. And look, once again, the Bible is actually pretty positive about this. We have a whole book of the Bible, Song of Solomon, that's erotic love poetry. If you've ever, you know, flipped through it, uh, it's it'll make you blush, uh, you know, like I didn't read it tonight, because it gets a little uncomfortable just how descriptive it is about a couple being in love and enjoying each other within their marriage. So if there's a whole by a book of the Bible about erotic love poetry, then I don't think we could say the Bible is just completely against it. If you get to Proverbs chapter 5, you know, sometimes you go to Proverbs and you're like, oh, sweet little sayings, wisdom. Then you get to Proverbs chapter 5 and you're like, whoa, some of wisdom here is actually pretty erotic. Like uh the encouragement of like husbands and wives to enjoy one another is pretty bold there. Or even Paul in the New Testament in 1 Corinthians chapter 7 tells couples, hey, don't deny each other physical intimacy. Don't deny each other that. Like it's a good thing to come together in this way. So, the Bible is pro-sex uh within marriage. God created it, it's a gift for us. But we see that God directs our use, right? That it does give guidance on how we should engage it. We don't want it to become an ultimate in our lives. That ultimately being physically naked with someone is the natural end of being naked with them on every other level. We talked a bit about this last week when we talked about marriage. Right? That a covenant marriage is ultimately committing ourselves fully to someone else, stripping down fully with them, whether that's socially, emotionally, financially, spiritually, and yes, physically. It's the natural result of all of those things joining together in two lives. Alright, so why does Jesus care so much about our sexual lives though? Why do Christians sometimes bring this up a lot? Well, like ultimately we see that Jesus wants us to experience it in the way that he created it for. Alright? He created sex, he created pleasure, it's a good thing, and he created us a male and female in his image to engage in this. Right? Adam and Eve were having great sex in the garden before the fall. Uh, Jesus cares because he knows how powerful and how precious this can be for us. So that's the truth about sex and sexuality when it comes to the Bible, but let's think about the lies. So let's think about the lies that our culture often tells us. And sometimes these take different forms. So I kind of want to focus on three things right now that are really hot topics. So the first one is uh lies that our culture tells us about sex, that like we're just animals at the end of the day, and that sex is just like a physical impulse, and you know, just like eating or something like that, or going to the bathroom. Uh, and so it's fine for you to engage in it. It doesn't have any deeper meaning, uh, it doesn't reflect on you morally in any way. It's just like a physical reaction, just like any other animal would engage in. The second one we're gonna look at is that sex is your ultimate identity. That's a hot topic these days, right? Identity politics and the way that sexual identity plays into this. That if sexual identity is my ultimate identity, then no one can tell me otherwise. And then finally, sometimes there's been some bad Christian teaching, right? That sex is a dirty, a shameful, a sinful thing. You should avoid it at all costs. So let's look at that first one. Uh, that sex is ultimately just like this animal act. There's a great quote by Woody Allen, the movie director. He said, Look, I don't know the question, but sex is definitely the answer. Uh what he's getting at there is like, look, you know, uh, at the end of the day, like, sex is the goal of life. Uh, you know, it's this animalistic urge that feels great. And as long as you're having sex, you're good. And if you're not, you're a loser, right? Like, if you want to live your best life, have sex and have it with as many people as possible. That ultimately, this idea of it's this animalistic impulse. You shouldn't limit yourself in any way, you should engage in it as much as possible. It becomes the definition of a good life. And ultimately we see like this lie affecting us all the time. You know, we can play it off as okay, like, it's just about hormones, you know, there's no emotional component to it. But the Bible gives us this clear understanding that like sex has more to do with the heart than it does hormones. Right? It it cuts deep within us, it affects us deeply. And I love how one writer, Christopher Yuan, put it, he said, look, don't take your moral cues from animals, because after all, some animals cannibalize each other, and others eat their own children. So if we're taking our moral cues from animals, we're probably setting a bad example for ourselves. Alright, but let's look at the second line that our sexual identity is the most important thing about us. It's ultimate, and we get to determine what that is. Um look, we do think God creates us male and female. We see that in the passage in Genesis 1. Uh, so we do think your biological sex is a key part of who you are. It's how you're wired, it's God-given and actually shouldn't be denied. Uh, it's a lot like your ethnicity in that way. You know, I think Christianity applied rightly would say, hey, like if you're created in God's image, whatever skin color you are, whatever country you come from, like that's a reflection of God. And so we shouldn't be prejudiced towards one another. And in the same way, your biological sex is something that God has created you in. And we shouldn't be denying that towards one another, we shouldn't be mistreating anyone on the basis of their biological sex. But I think the confusion and the lies that we often face today is more about our understanding of like our culture's influence on what we call gender, like the way we understand what is masculine and feminine. Because I think there's a lot of people out there who are a little confused by this because they're like, look, I don't feel like a very masculine man, and so therefore, maybe like I'm not a man, or I don't feel like a very feminine woman, so therefore maybe I'm not a woman, and like my identity is all mixed up in that. And look, those kind of gender constructs are deeply culturally informed, less biblically informed. That the reality is if you're a man and you love Jesus, then guess what? You're a godly man, full stop. You don't need to be a special forces soldier or love football or something like that. Like, at the end of the day, if you are a man and you love Jesus, then you're a godly man. Or if you're a woman and you love Jesus, then you're a godly woman full stop. You don't need to be a 1950s housewife, you know, who loves dresses and high heels and makeup, loves to bake. No, not at all. Like, if you love Jesus and you're a woman, then you're a godly woman full stop. That we don't have to put these cultural understandings of what it means to be more masculine and feminine on it. Now, at the end of the day, God has created us in a certain way, and we don't want to deny that. These this kind of terminology is ultimately from like Sigmund Freud way more than it is from Scripture. Even our terms like heterosexual and homosexual, it's not in the Bible, it's from Sigmund Freud. And yet we put this so heavy weight on these terms and how we define ourselves. I love how one of my professors in seminary put it. Uh, he was saying, look, like at the end of the day, I'm not a heterosexual or a homosexual, I'm a Linda sexual. That's the name of his wife. He's like, I love my wife Linda. I want to be physically intimate with her, and like that's the end goal of it. You know, yes, I was born a man, I'm hardwired to be interested in women in that way, but like at the end of the day, my desire is for my wife. And I love how he put it. He said, look, I'd rather learn hundreds of ways to love and please one person than figure out one way to please hundreds of people. I thought, what a great way of putting it. We put so much weight on these different terms, different identities, and at the end of the day, in Christ, right, that's our identity, and it should shape how we think about how we engage this. C. S. Lewis, who I quote a lot, and I'm probably going to quote a lot tonight, said it like this: Look, without love, then sexual desire, like every other desire, is just a fact about ourselves. But within love, it's rather about the beloved. It becomes almost a mode of perception, an entire mode of expression. It feels objective, like something outside of us in the real world. And that's why love, though the king of pleasures, true love always has the air of regarding pleasure as a byproduct. Love obliterates the distinction between giving and receiving. What he's saying there is: look, sexual desire separated from love ends up just being like ways we try to categorize people, ways we try to define ourselves and our whole identity. But he's saying real love actually causes us to think less of our own identity because we're more concerned about the other person and how our two lives are coming together. When we define ourselves solely by our pleasures, by our sexual preferences, things like that, we're feeding a self-focused understanding of love and relationships instead of seeking who God wants to bring into our lives. Alright, the final lie I want to look at here is some bad Christian teaching. We think there's really good biblical teaching, but sometimes Christians have talked about sex in a really negative way. And often that looks like sex is sin, so like stay away from it. If you engage in it, you'll be ruined, you have no hope of future marriage, you'll be hated by God. It's all about fear. Puts our fear of sex and shame of sin in the place of God's word. And I love how one writer put it, he said, look, there's an unspoken rule in many homes and churches that sex is not to be talked about unless the conversation serves to put the fear of God in children about their participation in sex before marriage. That talking about sex solely in the context of prohibition, however, sets a child up for madness. A child needs to hear sex talked about in a way that honors the natural, God-given changes and desires that will accompany them from childhood to adulthood. And look, I know I'm talking to a room with lots of different experiences. Some of you maybe grew up in Christian homes and like actually had a parent talk to you about sex in a relatively healthy way. And that's awesome, that's a blessing. Some of you did not grow up in Christian homes, and so if you did talk about sex, it was not like this at all. And others maybe somewhere in the middle. Maybe you grew up in a home where if it was brought up, it was don't do it, don't think about it, don't talk about it, just act like it doesn't exist, you know. It's like a hot stove. It's like just stay away. The reality is the Bible's understanding of sex is it's how we were made. It's a good gift from God. It should be talked about, it should be considered within marriage, yes. And it doesn't have to be something we live in fear of constantly. That sex is powerful and as a tool of intimacy, it belongs within covenant vows of marriage, where you can be free to be fully known and vulnerable. Alright, so let's move on to the second point, which is uh how the biblical understanding of sex is good. So these are the passages from Exodus and Matthew. The first thing I want you to see is that sex is enjoyable, it's a good gift. Uh like this is gonna sound a little scandalous to say, but trying not to be too salty, but you know, just hang in there. Uh God didn't have to like give our genitals such sensitivity. Like, he didn't have to create those parts with so many nerve endings. Uh, and yet he did. Like, we could reproduce as a species in the most like bland, boring, non-interesting way possible. In it, he's like, hey, I want you to be fruitful and multiply. And guess how you get to do that? Like, it's an exciting thing, it's a good thing. Uh, that there is great joy that it should be uh experienced there. Alright, but the other good thing I want you to see is that sex serves a good purpose. Within the context of marriage, it grows a couple together in unity. That just as you're bringing your life together in so many other ways within a marriage, whether it's social, financial, spiritual, you're also coming together in this physical way. And this is something we need to consider like that's unique to love and unique to marriage. Um, that book I've referenced before, C. S. Lewis's Four Loves. He gets the idea of four loves because in Greek there are four different words for love. We've talked a little bit about this. Um, so like there's one word for love that means like affection, the word is storge. There's another word uh for friendship that's filia. Think of like Philadelphia, the city of friends. Uh, or a word for charity, or like the highest love is agape, maybe you've heard of that. Alright, but then the word for erotic love is arrows. And if you think about all those other loves, if you think about affection, like that's something you share widely. You can have affection for your favorite water bottle, or you know, affection for your favorite sports team, or affection just for like a beautiful day outside. Or friendship. It's good and healthy to love your friends. You should love your friends well. And also, even agape, like this is often we talk about this as like Christian love, a sacrificial love. It's love, yes, for our enemies, but also love for God. But those are all loves we share widely. But erotic love, eros love, like that's a love that only happens within the context of a marriage relationship. Like I love my wife. I love that she has affection for a cappella music and enchiladas. I love that she has deep friendships with people going back decades. I love that she loves Jesus and is thoughtful about how we can love our neighbors. But I would be devastated if she loves someone else with erotic love. Like that's not a love you share widely. That kind of love we reserve for each other alone. That's where it's appropriate within the context of marriage. Sex is a wonderful tool of intimacy, but like all tools, when misused, it does terrible damage. You know, you all probably have iPhones or some kind of smartphone. It's great for making phone calls, texting, doom scrolling, whatever you do with it. But if you try to use your phone as a cheese grater, not gonna work very well. If you try to use it as a hammer, you're probably gonna do some damage. If we understand sex is this wonderful tool of intimacy, it has a context in which it's appropriate. God knows how good and powerful sex is and how vulnerable we must be with each other to engage in it well. That's why he reserves it for within a covenant marriage. Because the reality is, you know, you can get married and finally get to enjoy the marriage bed, but it's still gonna be work. Like a good marriage and good physical intimacy requires communication. It requires sacrifice. It's not like you just get married and then magically, like, you know, everything's crazy and awesome. Like it does take good work. So ultimately, God's saying, hey, if even sex within marriage is gonna take work, then you need that context, you need the boundaries of vows to help keep you safe within that. And this is ultimately to dignify you in it. It's to show that God values you, He treats you as worthy of love and care, that your sex life is not just some, you know, cheap thing that you can engage with with anyone or at any time, right? But it's this valuable thing. Uh there's a movie that I don't know if I quite recommend. Uh it's interesting and weird. It's called Vanilla Sky. But there's this great line in the movie uh where, like, so the main character is Tom Cruise. He's kind of this hotshot guy, and you know, he's kind of sleeping with all these women and stuff. Uh and one of the other women in the movie that he's been sleeping around with, you know, he just kind of treats this as a fling. What are they, what do the young people call now? Situation shifts. Yeah, is that right? No, everyone's saying no. Okay, I'm embarrassed. Um yeah, it's just a hookup for him, but she's thinking this is way more serious. And she confronts him about it and she says, Don't you know that when you sleep with someone, your body makes a promise whether you do or not? Don't you know that when you sleep with someone, your body makes a promise whether you do or not? Like that's why it's so important to engage in sex within marriage, because you've already promised your lives to one another. And think about you experience this in breakups. If you've ever gone through a breakup, especially in a relationship in which you've been physically intimate, it's devastating. You feel like you've been lied to, you've been betrayed by the other person. Because it feels like they've made this promise with their body that they didn't keep with the rest of their life. And so, if sex is a good gift from God, we often treat it cheaply. Right? That we make a promise with our body that our relationship cannot handle when we have sex outside of marriage. One of the purposes of sex is to draw you closer to each other emotionally. But like the further you go physically, the more cranked up your emotions go. You know, you start feeling things towards each other way too quickly, communicating those feelings to each other. This is why, like, when some of you start dating and you cranked up the sexual activity on day one, then after a week you're already telling each other you love each other. Uh, that's insane, y'all. Like, you don't love them. You say you love them, but you don't even know this person. You don't know them. You just love the way they make you feel. And so if you're not bound to each other in marriage, there's always in the back of your mind that insecurity that this person could leave. And that insecurity means that now you have an incredible amount of pressure to keep your relationship exciting and interesting and engaging. And that affects sex as well. Sex outside of marriage essentially becomes marketing. You're doing PR for yourself to make sure the other person stays with you. What if this time we hooked up it wasn't good, or it wasn't pleasurable, or it was awkward? That there's this terrible pressure to perform. And again, you're performing not for their sake, but actually for yours, so that they stay with you. And so sex becomes utterly selfish. There's a great story I found of this lady. She went to go see a therapist. Uh, neither of them were Christians, but the lady would say, Man, like, I'm having so many problems in my dating relationship. Just seems like we fight all the time, we don't get along at all, you know, but like then like we'll have a great sex life. Uh, and I don't know, I don't know how to understand this or navigate it. And so the therapist was like, Well, alright, why don't you try this? Why don't you stop having sex for like a week and just see what happens? Just take that component out of the relationship. So the lady does that, comes back a week later, and she's like, We broke up. Because there was nothing to the relationship other than that. It kept making us feel bonded, but when we didn't have that element, there was nothing keeping us together. Ultimately, we see that we turn sex into this commodity, this thing that we want to buy and sell, exchange. And the truth is it's freely available all around us. You know, there's porn on the internet, there's apps like Tinder, we're just hooking up in general. Like, why do the hard work of committing yourself to someone when you can get this aspect of intimacy so easily? Once again, I love how C.S. Lewis puts it. He says, look, sexual desire without love, it wants it. It wants the thing itself. But true love wants the beloved. That sexual desire is all about I just want a certain sensation, I want a certain feeling, but I don't really want the person at all. What are some ways that you have treated sex like a cheap commodity? Or maybe even what are some ways you felt treated that way? When we do this, we treat image bearers of God, both ourselves and others, as objects to be bought and sold, not people worthy of dignity because God created them. My friend put this in a pretty spicy way. He said, Look, at the end of the day, you gotta ask yourself, do you want to orgasm with this person or grow old with this person? Some of our deepest wounds are when people have treated us like this. I mean, think of the Me Too movement a few years ago, like so many women coming out saying, like, I have been abused, sharing painful stories of how men have treated them. Uh, and I definitely recognize, like, as a man trying to talk about this, like, this is a loaded topic. Uh, women often face the brunt of this way more than guys do. And look, maybe you're sitting here tonight and you're like, okay, but I'm not sleeping with anyone. Uh, I think I'm good on this commandment to not commit adultery. Alright, well, that's why I put that Matthew 5 passage there, because Jesus shows us that the problem is not just our outward actions, right? It's within the heart that we often harbor lust, which is really just greed for the pleasure that someone can give us and not for any relationship with them. And sometimes when we talk about lust in Christian circles, I don't know, we just get a little weirded out. Uh, so let's define it briefly here. Uh look, lust is not noticing beauty. Right? God has created beauty and God has created us in his image. Right? It's totally appropriate to just have eyes and recognize, like, oh wow, like, you know, this person is beautiful in their own ways, and that's awesome. But lusting is actually like it's the second look, it's the prolonged gaze, it's when you greedily can't stop looking. It's taking it to the next step, it's going even farther. And that's the thing that Jesus is calling out on us. He's saying, look, it's agreed that I want more and I want to take it. And we got to battle that. Uh, Jesus calls us out on it, and we do have, by the power of the Holy Spirit, an ability to resist that. And I love this prayer I found. It's from a book called Every Moment Holy, uh, talking about like when you see a beautiful person, how to pray through that. Uh, and so it says this it says, Lord, I praise you for divine beauty, reflected in the form of this person. Now train my heart so that my response to their beauty would not be twisted downward into envy or desire, but would instead be directed upward in worship of you, their creator, as was your intention for all such beauty before the breaking of the world. I love that. It's honoring the beauty of how God has made someone, and then also recognizing our heart's tendency to want to twist that and draw it downward, and instead to prayerfully seek to bring that upward in praise of God. That ultimately we battle with lust all the time. And let me give some kind of just like very practical advice for those of you maybe who are in dating relationships right now and navigating that. Uh, because the truth is, like, you know, the longer you date, the more you're probably gonna get engage in physical intimacy. And often I'll get questions from students who are like, all right, where's the line? Like, how far is okay to go, you know, and where should we stop? Uh that's often the wrong question. Uh, because really what we're looking for is like, how much can we get away with and still feel good about ourselves? Um the truth is, the moment you've started any kind of physical intimacy, whether it's just holding hands or kissing or whatever, uh, you're like, you know, it's like a roller coaster uh like building momentum as it's going up, up, up, up, up, and then eventually it's gonna go down, right? Like, you've started this process, and it's gonna be hard to slow it down the longer this goes on. That's why we highly encourage you to like wait to date until you're in a serious season of life because marriage should be the end goal. Like, often dating couples will, you know, try to think like, ah, you know, we're trying to be careful about how we engage in physical intimacy. So, like, we made out for three hours, but then we went home. And I'm like, alright, look, uh the truth is married couples don't make out for three hours and then go home. Uh a little spicy here, my wife's gonna be mad. Uh, married couples make out for like ten minutes and then go and have sex. Like, that's what that's the end result of that kind of physical intimacy. And you're playing with fire when you think you can engage in that level, that intensity of physical intimacy, and then just walk away from it. Like, you are not wired for that. God wired you to want that and desire that and move towards that. And hence that's why we say when you're thinking about dating, understand the end goal is marriage, which is where to enjoy sexual intimacy as well. Alright, sex is a good gift from God, not to be treated cheaply. It's one way God blesses us, but when twisted by sin, it often leaves us feeling guilty and ashamed. That brings me to my final point here, which is uh how the Bible's understanding of sex is beautiful and how our world can treat it as ugly. So looking at that John 8 passage, this is a great one here. Jesus, he's just hanging out, and the Pharisees, like the Pharisees do, roll up with a woman that they've caught in the midst of committing adultery. So she was engaging in physical intimacy with someone who's not her husband. And just like, imagine that in your minds. I mean, this is like this woman is living probably everyone's nightmare that you'd be dragged out and exposed like this completely. And of course, they don't bring the guy, like it's such sexist, you know, reality, that they only try to punish this woman. They want to condemn her, uh, you know, they want all the judgment to fall on her. Uh it's all shame, it's all embarrassment, it's all guilt. And it's fascinating the way Jesus engages with her. Because at no point does he deny what she's done as sin. No, but he does say, look, uh, who here is without sin? Because if you are, then you can start the judgment process. And I love how you just kind of waits soundly, like, any day now. I don't want to start the judgment process. Uh I wonder what he's writing on the ground. I don't know if it's like some scholars like, maybe he's writing the Ten Commandments. I like to think he's writing like Jesus was here or something. But the point is that they all recognize that none of them are without sin. And the levit says the older ones walk away first. Uh, that these older Pharisees, as maybe self-righteous as they are, recognize their own sin a little quicker than the younger, more zealous ones. And finally, no one is left there. And Jesus looks at her and he says, Has anyone condemned you? She says, No one. He says, Neither do I condemn you. Go and from now on sin no more. Now, that's a beautiful picture of the gospel there. Uh, and yet you can see from that, like, how the world often wants to treat sex either as it doesn't matter at all, or the minute it does matter, uh, it has to be like regulated and judged and commented on and treated as this ugly thing. But that's not at all how Jesus approaches it. You know, it's Jesus doesn't treat your sexual past as a deal breaker. No, he says, look, let me redeem it and make something more beautiful out of it than you could ever imagine. That this woman, right, was terrified that she was being exposed. And often we live in that reality as well. You know, we can relate to this woman being on the ground here in the sense that, you know, the last thing we want is someone to know our search history on our computer or our phone, to know that we're sleeping with our boyfriend or our girlfriend, to know that someone has done something unspeakable to you at some point, and that you're understandably terrified about telling anyone about it. And like, let's be honest about one specific aspect here. Like, we have all been shaped by pornography. You know, we I live in this world too. Uh, and we need to recognize just how much that's affected how we think about this topic, how porn has impacted the way we approach sex and sexuality. But like, let me just say tonight: hey, if you're here and you're struggling with that, uh, I want you to know you're not alone. And that actually, in God's providence, you're in a good place uh to face it in community. That we want to help you battle this by the grace of God. That you don't have to face this alone. So, like, please come and talk to me at some point in the next week. Talk to Grace, talk to Bruce. The worst thing you can do is hide, out of fear that you'll be exposed. And instead, let us walk with you through this to see Jesus' grace be the power to help you grow. Because ultimately, we see Jesus approaches our sexual sin and shame not from judgment, but from a place of redemption. Where the Pharisees demand that Jesus pass judgment, his answer is actually, I do not condemn you. How can he say that? Like, Jesus is the only one here actually without sin, so he should be the first one to pick up a rock and chuck it at her. But instead, he doesn't do that. He actually sends her on her way, he tells her to sin no more, but he does not condemn her. How can he do that? Well, it's because Jesus has ultimately taken the condemnation on himself. He's saying, look, instead of you being stoned for this one sin, I'm gonna be stoned for all the sins of the world. I'm gonna be nailed to a cross for every time that someone has committed adultery. I'm gonna be nailed to the cross every time you've looked at porn and looked at porn and looked at porn. I'm gonna be nailed to the cross anytime you looked at someone on the beach and had impure thoughts and felt ashamed of yourself. I'm gonna be nailed to the cross when someone has treated you unfairly or unjustly in your body and you didn't know what was going on. I'm gonna be nailed to the cross for each and every one of these sins. That he can tell her she is not condemned and sin no more because Jesus was condemned in her place and in our place. Isaiah 53 5 says this. Jesus was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities. The punishment that brought us peace was on him, and by his wounds we were healed. So this is why we can see our sexual lives not as ugly, but actually as beautiful, because Jesus can bring healing and redemption there. There's a great story uh from a website called Covenant Eye. Some of you maybe are familiar with it. It's uh like a website that helps uh with like porn blockers and stuff like that. But they also have just really good resources on the topic, and they have this great video of this woman who was saying like she had been struggling with pornography her whole like you know, teenage years into her young adult years, and she was so embarrassed. You know, she's like, I thought this was an issue that only guys had, and yet like she had struggled it with it for years and years, and she had grown up a Christian too, and she was like, I was so ashamed because I thought every time I engaged in this, God must hate me. God must be mad at me. And it was only when another Christian came into her life and she finally was able to be vulnerable and share her struggle with this, that the other person pointed out, actually, what you're doing is you're putting your sanctification in the place of your justification. You're looking at what you struggle with now, and you're saying that that determines God's love for you. When in the reality, God's love for you determines his power to change you. Right? That you have been justified completely in Christ. That his love is not going to change based on how you're doing day to day with this, because it's based on Jesus' life. That that's a love that can truly transform. That Jesus ultimately throws the stone on himself so that we can experience mercy and we can flee from sin. Or to give you one more quote, because I know I've given so many quotes tonight, uh, from Jay Stringer's amazing book, Unwanted. The gospel tells us that our belovedness will never change according to our wanderings, but that our belovedness is intended to change our wanderings. That because you are loved by God, you can change. And look, the Bible, when talking about sex and intimacy and all these things, it actually ends with a wedding. If you read the book of Revelation, one of the last chapters is the wedding of the Lamb with his church. And how did the church get there? Because it was perfect? Because it never struggled in any way? No, because the Lamb, the husband, sacrificed himself to purify it out of his abundant love for us. That's what Jesus has done for you. And so, look, if you're here tonight and maybe you have shame in your past when it comes to your sexual history, or maybe you're embarrassed on even how to talk about it, just know that Jesus loves you wherever you're at in that. And does want to see change and does want to see growth in you, and he can do it by faith in him, by the power of the Spirit in you. Let's pray. Father God, we thank you for your word and the ways that it challenges us, but also hopefully gives us clarity and encourages us in our faith. So, Lord, we pray that you would help us as we navigate this difficult topic. In your name. Amen. Let's stand and sing.