Love, Sex, and Everything in Between: Sex is Covenant Intimacy

Check out this latest sermon from RUF Live as Pastor Jermaine unpacks a biblical theology of sex! #LoveGodLovePeople

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

So, um, for our sermon series we've been going through for the fall, we've been going through the sermon series called Love, Sex, and Everything in Between. It's basically our relationship series: Love, Sex, and Everything in Between. We've been talking about the fact that God is a God of love. And God, as the triune God, has revealed Himself as a God that is a relational God. And he makes relationships with himself for the sake of making relationships. We know we can't do this life alone. And he's made creation, he's created man and woman to reflect him and to reflect him in knowledge, righteousness, and holiness. And we've talked about ways that, man, God is the only person who can fulfill our every need. That's why singleness is a gift that's been given to all of us to secure an undivided devotion to the Lord. And in that singleness, we're enabled to make friends. And we talked about what is a good friend, what makes a good friendship, and how to navigate loving God and loving our neighbor in our friendships. And then last um last RV of Live, we had a guest preacher, Russ Whitfield, who talked about how marriage is a picture of Christ's love for the church. This week we're celebrating Easter, preparing for Resurrection Sunday, and we're really preparing to celebrate like we do every Sunday, like we do every day. Jesus is the great bridegroom who has married his bride and secured her union to him, even when she goes after other gods or is lackluster in her devotion. When I'm talking about her, I'm talking about you, talking about me, talking about us. Jesus is still a faithful bridegroom. And so if that was a picture of the covenant, the covenant, the agreement, the bond between man and wife, the bond between Christ and the church, well, now we're talking about covenant intimacy tonight. Now we're talking about not love, not the in-between, but we're talking about sex tonight. Talking about a biblical picture of sex. So if you've got any questions that come up even before I've started the sermon or as the sermon goes throughout, um please hit that QR code. Um that'll take you to an anonymous um Google form, and we'll have a time of QA after the sermon where we talk about what we've talked about. And so let me just say this to frame uh our time. Some of you who have been coming to RUF Live, you've been waiting for this topic because you're so curious to hear what the word has to say about sex and sexuality. Some of you are skeptical that the word has anything relevant to say about sex in this cultural age. Some of you may be that, maybe in that place. Some of you are ready for this topic so that you can get more ammunition to go and judge your neighbor. Maybe that's some of you here. And maybe some of you have thought about skipping this RUF live when you saw the story on Instagram because you feel so much shame about your own sexual sin and the ways that you have been sexually sinned against. Wherever you are, I want to thank you. And I want to thank you sincerely for bringing your authentic self into the room tonight. I do believe that Jesus, the Jesus that we see from the scriptures, is a God of grace. And he's a God of mercy, and he treats even our sexuality with care and love and redemption. And so I want to think through sex and covenant intimacy through the lens of four distinct biblical words. Four distinct biblical words. These words are concepts. As we know, words are all concepts, they're packed with meaning. And so I think we can think through sex and God's view of sexuality through these four words. And they're gonna sound like I'm speaking gibberish, but that's because I'm I'm I'm kind of bringing you into the world of the scriptures, but we're gonna break it down. Alright? So these four words, and you can just write them. If you're taking notes on your phone, you're taking notes, just write them how they sound. Okay? They're gonna sound weird. The first word is called yada, yada, yada, like yada yada, yada, y-a-d-a. Yada. The second word is naff. N-A-P-H, Naf. The third word is probably a familiar word. Messiah. Messiah, M-E-S-S-I-A-H, Messiah. And then the last word is pornea. Porneia. P-O-R-N-E-I-A. Pornea. Right? So these are these are like English translations of Hebrew and Greek words, because the Bible is written originally in Hebrew and Greek. But these are going to be kind of our frame of how we think through sex and sexuality. The kind of the main point that I would say is that because Christ has lived a perfect, sexually whole life to the day he died, to when he rose again, because he's lived that perfect life, you can live into a life that moves after his sexual wholeness and after his perfection. That's the trajectory. But before we get there, I'll say that again in another way at the end. Let's think through this first word or this first concept, man. Creation. We'll always think through our RGF live sermons this semester through four different points. The first one is always creation. How has God designed sex? How has God designed sex? So Genesis 4.1, Genesis 4.1, first book of the Bible. Genesis 4.1 says, Now Adam knew Eve, his wife, and she conceived and bore Cain, saying, I have gotten a man with the help of the Lord. I want you to zoom in on that first part, and I think all the verses are on your handout. Genesis 4.1, Adam knew Eve. That's what that word yada means. That's the first word. Adam knew Eve. It doesn't say that Adam had sex with Eve. It doesn't say Adam made love with Eve. Adam knew Eve his wife. And that word yada gets at this aspect of sexual covenant intimacy in the bond of marriage. Yada means to know, to learn, to perceive, to find out, to know by experience. It kind of gets at the sense that sex is intimate. It's a knowledge exchange, it's soul transferring, it's mind pretzeling, it's body-intertwining love-making that is a gift from God.

unknown 6:38

Dr.

SPEAKER_00 6:39

Sarita Lyons, she's an African-American theologian, she says that God created sex. Think about that. God of the universe, God of the cosmos, God who made the heavens and the earth, created sex. And he created sex in such a way, as Sarita goes on, she says, God intended sex to be shame-free, pleasure-drenched, deeply unifying, and honored by all. God created sex and intended sex to be shame-free, pleasure-drenched, deeply unified, unifying and honored by all. That's the vision that God has designed for sex. And I think Eve knows that. And Eve knows that her help can only come from the Lord. Eve knows, I think, that Cain doesn't come from her orgasm, doesn't come from Adam's climax, Cain doesn't come from the good fertilization of Eve's eggs. Cain comes from the help of the Lord. Eve is a believer. Even though she's just fallen, even though her and her husband have just fallen in Genesis 3, I think Eve knows that her help comes from the Lord. And that Yahweh, this Lord, is the source of all life, even life in sex. Yahweh gives sex its purpose. And when I say Yahweh, you may not be familiar with that term. Yahweh is just the Hebrew word that means God, covenant God. That's where we get Jehovah from, God is Father. But God gives sex its true purpose.

unknown 8:17

Dr.

SPEAKER_00 8:18

Sarita Lyon, she lays out maybe five different aspects of sex, per sex's purposes. Number one, she says that sex is designed and purposed for procreation. Pretty simple. Genesis 128. God blessed them, blessed Adam and Eve, and God said to them, Be fruitful and multiply, fill the earth and subdue it. Sex is designed so that the world will be filled and multiplied with worshipers on the face of the earth. Number two, sex is intended, it's purposed for pleasure. For pleasure. Proverbs 5, 18 through 19. Let your fountain be blessed and rejoice in the wife of your youth, a lovely deer, a graceful doe. Let her breast fill you at all times with delight. Be intoxicated always in her love. This is from the Bible. This is from inspired word, comes from the Holy Spirit, the Holy Scripture. Getting at the fact that God has designed sex in such a way that it should be pleasing. What's the third purpose? God has designed sex to purpose protection. Protection. 1 Corinthians 7, 2 and 5 says, But because of the temptation to sexual immorality, each man should have his own wife and each woman her own husband. Do not deprive one another, except perhaps by agreement for a limited time that you may devote yourselves to prayer. But then come together again so that Satan may not tempt you because of your lack of self-control. Essentially, in a sexless marriage, separation is bound to follow. And I've seen this even in my own life. I went to college with some guys and we graduated, and this guy, I won't say his name, but man, he went off to play in the NFL and we he got married to his hot college sweetheart. And then maybe four or five years later, I ask about him, and I'm like, hey, what's what's going on with so-and-so? Oh, they actually got a divorce. Well, why did they get a divorce? Well, they had a lot of stuff going on, but at the bottom line, they hadn't had sex their whole marriage. Could you imagine living in a marriage and not knowing your husband, not knowing your wife in that yada type way? Sex is meant to bond and to protect marriage and those involved in it from the devil who hates good marriages. Fourth purpose, sex is designed for physical unity. Genesis 2.24. Therefore a man shall leave his father and his 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. And that nakedness is not really just getting at the physical body, it's also getting at the exchange of the neurons and chemicals that are expelled when you have sex in marriage. That not only are you naked physically, but you're also naked spiritually, naked mentally, naked socially. It's a beautiful exchange of one person fully knowing and fully seeing you, and the other person fully knowing and fully seeing you. And they see you in all your flaws, all your idiosyncrasies, all your quirks, all your dirtiness, and they still say, Hey, I love you. And I love you enough to not let you go. And then lastly, sex is designed for peace and comfort. Peace and comfort. 2 Samuel 12, 24. Then David comforted his wife Bathsheba and went into her and lay with her, and she bore a son, and he called his name Solomon, and the Lord loved him. Now we're gonna talk about how David and Bathsheba got to this point, because if you know the story, they had a really turbulent time getting to this point. But suffice it to say that sex is designed for comfort, for the warmth of a marriage bed, for the security of a marital house. The Bible gives you and gives us a positive view of sex and the covenant of marriage between husband and wife. These are all the benefits that you see that sex has been designed for. When I think about my family, and I'm gonna go back to my life a lot in this sermon, um, because it's kind of his home for me. But when I think about my family, like really the only picture I had of a good marriage or um, yeah, the benefits of sex in marriage was really my uncle and my and my aunt, my great uncle, my great aunt, Sylvester and Pam. And for what I could look and to observe and to see, they had a good marriage. They had a long marriage, they've been married for more than 50 years. Their sex life led to three kids, and it seemed as if they not only were there just to have sex with one another, but they also loved being around one another. They liked being in each other's presence. And yet there are so many other relationships in my family that don't reflect that positive vision of what sex looks like. And I'm sure that's been your experience as well. I want you to think about this. Think about how have you viewed sex? How have you viewed sex in the past? What is the purpose for sex? What have you thought the purpose of sex was? How is God opening your mind to all the benefits of responsible, biblically sound, pleasure-drenched, unity-forming covenant sexual relationships in the context of marriage? I think it's fair to say from the verses that we've read, from Dr. Sarita Lyons, from the Word, that God is sex positive. God is sex positive. He's sex positive in a sense to where he's positively framing sex in its proper place. The marriage bedroom of husband and wife. But the problem is that sin has snuck into the marriage bedroom and taken sex out of its proper context. And that gets us to our second point. How has sin corrupted sex? What is the fall of sex? So that gets us to our second word, uh, Nath, which I'm gonna get there in a minute. But essentially, when we think about the scripture's moral code or an Israelite's moral code, an Israelite, just a son of Israel. Um, you often see the Israelites known as the Jews or known as the people of Judah. Um, is basically God's people, and God gives his people in love a code to live by. He says, I've I've freed you from slavery, I've liberated you from Egypt. Now go and live a liberated life, and that's the Ten Commandments in Exodus 20. We're gonna zoom in on the seventh, because I think that brings into clear focus what sexual sin really is. Exodus 20, 14 says, You shall not commit adultery. You shall not commit adultery. And that word adultery is that word naph. Naf in the Hebrew. Basically, clear definition of adultery, meant it's voluntary sexual intercourse between a married person and a person who is not a spouse. Voluntary sexual intercourse between a married person and a person who is not a spouse, which sounds very clinical and sounds very narrow, but this would have been the reality of an ancient Near Eastern believer, like an Israelite believer in the Old Testament. And some of you maybe have had parents who have been guilty of this. Maybe some of you have parents who've been in marriage, and then you come to find out, hey, we gotta have a conversation because our parents are, mom and dad are separating because mom's been fooling around, dad's been fooling around. Maybe some of you have experienced that. But I think also we all are guilty of this deeper commandment. Jesus deepens this commandment and deepens the force in Matthew 5, 27 through 28. Matthew 5, 27 through 28, he says, 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. So do you see that, like, you might read the seventh commandment and say, oh yeah, well, I haven't cheated on my spouse, I'm not even married. I'm good. But really, Jesus is saying, no, no, no, it's not just that you have taken the steps to actually commit adultery in your marriage, though you're guilty of adultery, you're guilty of naph. But really, if you've looked with anyone with lust and lustful intent, you are guilty of this commandment. And I would define lust. My pastor gives a my pastor and redeemer, he gives a good definition of this. Lust is an over-desire for that which is not ours to possess. Lust is an over-desire for that which is not ours to possess. So, so so to put it another way, you know, you might look at somebody else's life. You might see somebody else's scholarship, you might see somebody else's car, you might see somebody else's major that's not offered at Jackson State, and you lust after them, not even in a sexual way, but in a way that gets at your desire. Oh, I want them. I want that life, I want that space, I want those opportunities. And you're not content. You're not content in what you have. But especially when we think about lust, it starts in the mind, doesn't it? It starts in where we look, what we see, what we think, and it always ends in death. Let me give you a clear picture. Let me give you a clear picture of what we're talking about. 2 Samuel 11. 2 Samuel 11. I told you we go back and think through David and Bathsheba. So let me give you a clear picture of the steps of lust, and how that leads into lust, adultery, and death. So this is what happens. 2 Samuel 11. And it reads, It happened late one afternoon when David arose from his couch and was walking on the roof of the king's house, and he saw from the roof a woman bathing. And the woman was very beautiful. And David sent and inquired about the woman, and one said, Is not this Bathsheba, the daughter of Eliam, the wife of Uriah the Hittite? So, do you see what's going on? Like David, he's he's king. And at the time, Israel is at war. So as king, David should have been fighting with his people. That's what was the expectation of kings in that time. He should have been on the front lines, like in the thick of it, giving orders, sharpening swords, cleaning his men, and getting them ready to go into the battle. He should have been in the thick of it, but he's not. He's left his kingly responsibility, he's left the calling that God has called him into, and he's on his roof. And he sees a woman that's not his wife, he sees a woman that is not his, he sees a woman that he's not made vows to, and he desires her. And it's an over-desire. Because then he brings his servants in and say, Hey, who is that woman? Who is she? She's the daughter of Eliam, the wife of Uriah the Hittite, who's David's best friend. So what does David do? He backs off and he doesn't get with Bathsheba. He says, Oh, that's my best friend. That's my best friend's wife. I'm cool. I'm not touching her. Is that what happens? No, that's not what happens. Um, 2 Samuel 11, verse 4. So David sent messengers and took her, and she came to him, and he lay with her. So that's clear adultery, right? But I also think another aspect of this, did Bathsheba have any voice? Could Bathsheba turn down the king? No. Absolutely not. Bathsheba is a subject and a citizen in Israel. So she's obedient to the king's desires and wishes. So really, this is not just a case of simple adultery. This is a case of actually sexual abuse. Bathsheba has been sexually abused by David, unfortunately. And what does that lead to? It leads to death. It leads to death. Something that started in the mind has started has led to death as we go on later on in 2 Samuel 11. In the morning, David wrote a letter to Joab and sent it by the hand of Uriah. In the letter he wrote, set Uriah in the forefront of the hardest fighting, and then draw back from him that he may be struck down and die. Do you see the depth of David's sin? That because of what he wanted in his head, because of his overdesire for something that he did not possess, that led him not only to sexually abuse a vulnerable woman, but also, and we didn't talk about this, but in 2 Samuel 11, he gets her pregnant. But then not only does he do that, but he says, you know what, in order to cover up my sin, I'm gonna kill my best friend in order to cover it all up. That's wicked. That's evil. That is the heart of lust. Though God has designed sex to be a place of unity for the married, sin has turned sex into a place of shame for the lustful. Because I think also there's some shame working in David's life and working in our lives when we struggle with lust. So just like I said, I'm gonna be going back to my own life. Um, I got exposed to pornography when I was five on the VHS tape. Y'all know what a VHS is? Um I got ex I got exposed on a VHS tape. And I didn't know what was going on, but then that turned into an addiction when I was in middle school. I learned about masturbation on a school bus. I had sex for the first time in high school. School and it brought a lot of sexual baggage into my own dating and married life. Though I wanted to live and be in a place of purity for my wife, that was not the reality. The reality was I've been here, I've been there, I've been everywhere, but I have not been in the presence of the Lord for a sustained amount of time. My lust was out of control. And maybe you felt that way. Maybe you've been there. Let me ask you this: in what ways do you play with your lust? In what ways do you overdesire that which is not yours to possess? First Corinthians 6, 9 through 10 says, Or do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived, neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor men who practice homosexuality, nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God. Y'all, lust is serious and has serious consequences. But even though lust leads us to death, even though our sexual sin brings up shame and reminders of how we have failed God, God has not left us there. God has not left you there. Now we get into the key. We get into redemption. The third point. How does Jesus redeem your sexual sins? How does Jesus redeem your sexuality? So look, look at on your handout. Look at John 4. So John 4 is a beautiful passage. It's a beautiful passage because Jesus is relating and sharing the gospel, bringing a sexual sinner into covenant relationship with him. John 4. John 4, 16 through 18. I'm gonna just read, read the whole story. I'm gonna skip back and forth, but you're gonna get the gist. So John 4, Jesus is talking to this woman, and Jesus is Jewish ethnically, and he's talking to this Samaritan. So this would have been like if somebody somebody black was talking to a white woman in 1920, and Jesus said to her, Go call your husband and come here. The woman answered him, I have no husband. Jesus said to her, You are right in saying I have no husband. For you have had five husbands. This woman gets around. And the one you now have is not your husband. What you have said is true. The woman said to him, I know that Messiah is coming, he who is called Christ. When he comes, he will tell us all things. Jesus said to her, I who speak to you am He. And many Samaritans from that town believed in him because of the woman's testimony. He told me all that I ever did. So I want you to see this, right? That Jesus knows her private life. Jesus knows because he's God of the universe. And know that she is deeply immoral by her own culture standards and by Jewish standards. So there's a good study Bible, the NIV study Bible, has a lot of translators, a lot of commentators. They say this. And three, she was in a public place. So no respectable Jewish man will talk to a woman under such circumstances, but Jesus did. Jesus did. So Jesus, though he knows her private life, those though he knows that she's been around, he still in a public place in view of everybody has a conversation with her. Which in his culture was basically saying, Whoa Jesus, you mix it with the unclean. You yourself, you you you you know, you you you might be getting around as well. But Jesus has a greater vision. Jesus brings more of her city into the kingdom because of her faithfulness. So after she realizes that this Messiah that she's talking about, this is the one that she's been praying for, what does she do? She goes and shares who he is and says, Hey, y'all been praying for the Messiah. Y'all been praying for this anointed one, y'all been praying for this Christ. Come see this man who told me everything about me. Despite her past acts and history of unfaithfulness, Jesus proved himself faithful because she herself has faith and is sharing her faith with those, probably those who have believed a terrible record about her and have cast her aside and said, You're too dirty, you're outside the kingdom of God, you have five husbands, you're getting around town, you're unclean. Yes, she goes and shares the gospel with them. She has true faith. But lastly, and this gets at this third word, right? Jesus reveals to her his anointed status, and she believes in him. She believes in him. That gets at our third word, Messiah. Messiah. That word merely means that Christ is the anointed one. And what is Jesus anointed to do? He's anointed to save sinners from their sin. He's anointed to save sexual sinners from their sexual sin. He's anointed to repair sexual brokenness. He's anointed to eliminate sexual baggage. He's anointed to restore sexual wholeness to everyone who believes. And this woman does, and if you believe in the Messiah, your sexuality will be redeemed. Your sexual thoughts, life, and mind and actions will be restored. If you believe in Messiah, he will transform you. That's a promise. Hear this, y'all. No matter what your sexual past or present looks like, Jesus is near. And he's not ashamed of you. He really is not. Believe in him. No matter where your mind goes, no matter what is in your search history, no matter where you've laid your head in the past, no matter where you've gone, Jesus is near and is not ashamed. But because of his faithfulness, because of his love, because of his sexual wholeness, he has redeemed you, Christian. He is the Messiah, the anointed one who brings real change to real people in real time. And if you don't know who he is, please, let's talk about it. Please, let's talk about it. So what does this real change look like in real time? What is this real encounter? Well, now that you have faith or now that you believe in Jesus, right? What does it look like? What is real change in real time with the real God, Jesus the Messiah, actually look like? That brings us to our final point. Man, what does a biblical theology or understanding of sex look like in real time? What does it look like? We can say a lot here. There are a lot of books, a lot of podcasts, a lot of YouTube videos that if you reach out to me, I can send them to you. I'm gonna say a little, I'm gonna crack the egg, and then we can get to the rest of the uh the eggs later. 1 Corinthians 6, 18 through 20. That's probably a good verse to park on for the rest of our time. 1 Corinthians 6, 18 through 20 says, flee from sexual immorality. Every other sin a person commits is outside the body, but the sexually immoral person sins against his own body. Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God? You are not your own, for you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body. And so that kind of gets at our last word, pornea. That word pornea is just a word coming from sexual immorality. Sexual immorality, pornea. And that's where we get our word pornography from. And it describes a broad range of sexual sin, whether it be adultery, homosexuality, bestiality, lust, sensuality, prostitution, adultery, lust, lewdness, all of it is kind of wrapped up in this word pornea. Suffice it to say that we live in a pornographic world. We live in a world where sex sells and where those who sell sex make buku money, so they keep selling it again. We live in cities that are known for sexual gratification. We live in a world where people can buy all types of sexual content online or at Barnes and Noble or wherever. This is an apt description of our world and the temptations of sexual sin and what does Paul recommend? What does the word recommend? Doesn't beat around the bush, it says flee. And that word in the original context has a tense that means it's an imperative command. So it's like if your professor or if your uh general or if your coach told you something. Flee. Right? We don't we don't fight the dragon of Pornea with a sword. We we fight by fleeing. And why? Why do we do that? We do that because your body is a temple. It's been bought with a price. In a sense to say that you don't own your body. How could you? You didn't create yourself. But if you believe in Jesus, then Jesus has redeemed your body. He's bought back your body, and he's a great uh owner of your body. Because he's the creator, he knows everything that your body needs, right? Hebrews 9:12 says, He entered once for all into the holy places, not by means of the blood of goats and calves, but by means of his own blood, thus securing an eternal redemption. Basically, what Hebrews is saying is that because Jesus has shed his own blood, not the blood of previous animal sacrifices that were good for a time, but not really, because he used to shed his own blood, that is sufficient for your body to be redeemed, and for the Holy Spirit to live inside of your body. And maybe you've even experienced this. Maybe you've experienced the Holy Spirit moving in your mind, moving in your body, moving and telling you, hey, you probably shouldn't watch that. Hey, you probably shouldn't go there, or hey, you probably shouldn't do this. Let's think through this instead. Man, that's evidence of the Holy Spirit changing your desires. Sarita Lyon says again that your desires are not your master. Jesus is. Your desires are not your master, Jesus is. So let me going back to myself, like this process of sexual brokenness, sexual recovery, holy sexuality, like all of that, this process of moving towards a point to where I was no longer addicted to sex, addicted to pornography, it took a while. It took like eight years after I believed in Jesus in college. And man, there's no silver bullet in fighting sexual sin. You know, like when you're fighting a werewolf in a movie, and you got to find a silver bullet because that's the only thing that can kill a werewolf. A lot of times people think that that's the same with fighting um sexual sin. But like if I can only find that one trick, that one remedy, that's not the actually the way it works. It actually takes a more uh an ecosystem of tools and devices in order to walk out recovery or walk out sobriety and sexual sin. I think that's the same with every sin. Um, but but man, every fight looks different. So I'm gonna give you some just what worked for me, but also you should be exploring, like as you think about your lust, as you think about your relationship with your sexuality, what will work for you as you deny yourself, pick up your cross, and live into righteousness. So for me, you know, I've I've sold TVs, I've burned laptops, I got a dumb phone, a light to phone, I've gone on fast from secular music, I've stopped watching particular shows, stopped watching Game of Thrones, stopped watching the boys for a time. But really, all of that is external stuff. Seriously, like all of that is external stuff. The internal stuff, I think, is what makes lasting self-control and sobriety take hold. And that inner stuff, that inner work for me looked like trusting the Holy Spirit, memorizing scripture that specifically spoke about sexual desire, sexual righteousness, or 1 Corinthians 6, 18 through 20, Proverbs 5, Psalm 16. Um man, yeah, having a thriving prayer life, a prayer life where sometimes I was just crying and didn't have any words to say. I was just like, bruh, you know, you know me. You know what I just did. I'm sorry. Forgive me. Um, getting involved in my local church, asking myself, why do I want sex? What do I want out of it? Understanding my lust. Instead of trying to like fight my lust because like we're we're always gonna be a sexual being because it's part of our body. So instead of like trying to suppress sexual desire, because we know that God has created sex and blessed it, actually, when lust comes to your door, you really should ask, Well, why are you here? What do you want from me? What are you trying to get? Um, finding healing from deep wounds, uh from deep emotional wounds, from deep father wounds, mother wounds, people that bullied me in high school, like that, and that was kind of feeding into why I was using pornography, why I was using fornication. Like, that's the deep work, that's the deep healing that takes time. But just because it takes time doesn't mean it's not worth doing. So let me ask you this: what does good fleeing look like? And how will you flee from sexual immorality? And it's not just a turning from, it's also a turning towards. So my hope is that as you think about fleeing from lust, that you also think about what are you going to turn towards? How will you turn to God? How will you turn to a thriving relationship with Jesus and what will that look like? So the last thing I say to y'all is that man, sex is a gift from God. It really is. Sex is a gift from God, and it points to how good God is. And in sex, we see God's heart for multiplication, pleasure, faithfulness, and covenant intimacy. And by believing in Jesus, I do believe that your thoughts, mindset, and actions regarding sex can change. And you might be thinking, well, well, well, that's just the way it is. That's just this college life, that's just how Jackson State is. So what? God has called you to be in the world and not of the world. And what does that mean? It means that when you want to live differently, and you actually take the commands of Jesus seriously, especially for your sex life, people will look at you weird. They'll look at you funny, they'll judge you, they'll ostracize you, and they won't understand. And I would say, you look like Jesus when you do that. Because Jesus had so many people that you would think would understand him, and you would think would cling to him that didn't. You look like Jesus. And I do say that in Jesus' community, that's one of the ways that he provides hope and help for those who follow him. Your change, your sanctification, becoming to look becoming like Jesus reflects God's design for sex. So trust him and watch how God blesses you with the Holy Spirit who changes your life. Amen. Amen. Let me pray. Oh, Father God, you are good.