SPEAKER_00 0:00

Well, if uh if the money series wasn't challenging enough for us, maybe this next one will be. Um we're gonna talk about sex, okay? Uh now I grew up in a church home, and my dad was a student pastor for about 17 years and then was a pastor. Um and when I was in student ministry, my dad was my student pastor, and so uh every now and then they would try to talk about sex and it got really awkward, and my dad was up there as the student pastor trying to talk about it, so it was really awkward for me. But I remember that, and then I remember I became a student pastor uh working with teenagers, and I did that for about 10 years in several churches uh through college and then out of college, and um when we would do series talking about sex, it was our highest attended series we would ever teach. I mean, kids would come out of the woodwork because they wanted to hear us talk about sex. What is the church gonna say about sex, right? And so all these kids come flooding into the room uh that hadn't been in church uh forever just because they wanted to hear us talk about it. Uh so I know that's why all of you are here today um because you wanted to hear us talk about sex, right? Now more nervous laughter. I'm gonna get used to that, all right? Um now, our our life group this week, we were there at our life group, and uh my wife she said to our group, she said, Hey guys, um I'm getting a little bit nervous about this upcoming sex series. I I know that my husband is pretty honest and open and he likes to use personal illustrations, and um I'm getting a little nervous. Can y'all pray for me? And uh I I assured the group that I would only talk about our honeymoon, nothing more, nothing less. So I'm just I'm just kidding, I'm just kidding. Um I'm not gonna do that this morning. Um I'm just trying to get you guys loosened up a little bit, all right? All right, we need to do that. But I I do pray that God would help us to be appropriate in how we handle this. Um and and speaking of appropriate, um, we learned a valuable lesson this week about this issue because my uh my wife was was working with one of our children on this issue of appropriateness. Uh we had uh a visitor to our house, a lady that came by, and and our son, it was his birthday. Uh I'm not gonna tell you which son, but you'll probably figure it out if you know my children at all. Uh, he ran up to this lady and he said, Um, ma'am, uh basically he knows her, but I'm not gonna say her name, but he said, Hey, where's my birthday gift? And uh it was one of those great moments as a parent where you're like, oh, parent fail, you know? Uh we just totally blew that. Um so it was a good teaching moment, and my wife said, Hey, buddy, like that's not appropriate. You can't you can't say that. And she's like, Do you understand what appropriate and inappropriate you know means? And there happened to be another little kid there, and the little kid that was uh next to my son said, Yeah, like it's inappropriate to hit someone in the face. Yes, that's right. You got it, you got it. Don't hit people in the face, that's inappropriate. To which my son needed to chime in because he he's very engaging and and verbal, and he says at this point, yes, like it's not good for me as a boy to look at a girl's penis. Um and he said it with like complete honesty, like honest authenticity, like there was nothing for him that was like silly. Now, we have another conversation to have after that, but he did get inappropriate and inappropriate, like he understood the concept, okay? He just needs some other help, and we'll talk about that. Um, so now that we're all red and now we're laughing, um, and we've got some of that nervous laughter out, let's talk about sex, okay? Um, if you have your Bibles, I want you to open up to 1 Corinthians chapter 5. And seriously, we are going to be very open, very honest. We are not going to be crass, we're not going to be rude, we're not going to be um brash on this issue. We want to be very careful because this is a major, major issue that we want to handle, handle in a way that honors God. And so um I want you to understand that our hearts in this, and my heart in this, is really just to say, um, like, let's ask God to help us. And so I want to just stop again before we even read this text and ask God to help us understand his agenda, his plan for our sex, okay? And why we're even talking about this. So let's pray. God, thank you so much for this opportunity this morning to open your word. And I pray that you would help us, that you would lead us, that you would guide us through this discussion. Um, I pray that you would speak to us clearly over the next six weeks. How are we to understand this gift of sex and how are we supposed to uh interact with this and in with you, God, and help us to be just humble and honest before you. And we pray that you would bless this time, even this morning, you would teach us. We love you. We pray it's all in your name. Amen. All right, so 1 Corinthians chapter 5. There's some Bibles under your seats if you need one. Um, you can pull one of those out, or you can read on the screen above me. Uh, but also uh just so you know, I'm reading from the Holman Christian Standard Bible, that translation. So if it doesn't match with yours, that's what I'm reading from. But here's what it says in 1 Corinthians chapter 5, and if you didn't know this, we're working through the book of 1 Corinthians, and that's why we're at 1 Corinthians 5 this morning. Uh we've been working our way through the book. Here's what it says It is widely reported that there is sexual immorality among you, and the kind of sexual immorality that is not even tolerated among the Gentiles. A man is living with his father's wife, and you are inflated with pride instead of filled with grief, so that he who has committed this act might be removed from your congregation. For though I am absent in body, but present in spirit, I have already decided about the one who has done this thing as though I were present. When you are assembled in the name of our Lord Jesus with my spirit and with the power of the Lord Jesus, turn that one over to Satan for the destruction of the flesh, so that his spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord. Now, there's a lot in that, and we're not gonna get to all of it. Um, in fact, we're gonna basically be covering uh a lot of uh text in 1 Corinthians over the next week in your reading plan at your life group discussion. But I am gonna read a few verses from this chapter 5, I'm gonna read a few verses from chapter 6. And I want you to hear uh the words that God is trying to speak to us, because in this situation, what's going on is Paul has already been sort of ramping up his instruction to the people at Corinth, to the believers, the church at Corinth. And he saw some issues that were there that he's been trying to address. And he continuously comes back to this issue of pride. But in this particular occasion, he's talking about the issue of sexual immorality. Now he says that in verse 1 of chapter 5, he says, It is widely reported that there is sexual immorality among you. That sexual immorality, that word is the word pornea, okay? Um, and this means any kind of sex outside of a covenant relationship of marriage that God intended. Okay? So it covers, it's kind of a junk drawer, if you will, for all these sexual sins. And so this is used consistently throughout the New Testament, this word pornea, which is interesting, by the way, that this is the word that now has been translated uh down the way into our culture as the word pornography, right? We get our word pornography, we derive from this. And I was thinking about that this week, and that um isn't it interesting that the pornography industry just calls itself what it is? Sexual immorality. Porn. Okay, that's that's what it's saying. So we understand that that's what was going on in this early church uh in Corinth. And Paul sees this and he's like, man, guys, we have to deal with this. We have to deal with this. It was a major issue. Uh in fact, he says, what's going on to get more clear, if in case you didn't read it uh or didn't understand what he was saying, is he's saying there's a man in your church and he's sleeping with his stepmom. Uh he's we we would think, but according to the scripture, but according to the way it's worded here, it's not his biological mom, but apparently his dad has married another woman, and now he is having a relationship with that woman who is his dad's uh next wife, so it'd be his stepmom, and he's in this relationship. And Paul's like, how can you sit back and tolerate this? This is horrible, this is terrible, this should not be happening. I mean, it's like a Jerry Springer episode, right? It's like crazy that this is actually going on. Even the Gentiles, it says there, that they couldn't even believe it was happening. Meaning that the people who were not believers that were around them in Corinth were like, wow, like that church is crazy. Like, there's people in there who are sleeping with incestuous relationships, sleeping with their own uh stepmom. So Paul says, you've got to deal with this. You have got to work on this. And I would say to you guys that the truth is this we have a big problem with sex today, but it's not a new one, right? We have a big problem with sex in our current day, but it's not a new problem. If you've read your Bible at all, then you know that there is all kinds of sexual dysfunction, all kinds of sexual issue in the scripture. And in fact, what you would find is that it was only a few chapters into the Bible where Lamech uh it's in the genealogy there, he actually chooses to have multiple wives. And it's really this first situation where you start to see in the Bible uh this sexual dysfunction, sexual immorality start to emerge. And so it's all through the Bible, but it's also all through our culture today. There is so much dysfunction, so much difficulty, so much confusion, uh, so many ways that sex is not what God intended for it in the world today. Now, um the one thing that you would ask is why is sex such a big problem? Why is it such a difficult thing? Uh why is it such a pervasive issue? And I would just simply say this is because we as human beings, in our sex uh drive and that was God given, uh, find that it is easily one that is easily perverted. It's a good thing that becomes easily perverted. Um it's it's uh I was reading through C. S. Lewis's book, Screw Tape Letters, this week, a section of his book about this issue of temptation, and I thought it was insightful where if you've ever read C. S. Lewis's uh his work, Screw Tape Letters, it's this odd but very helpful in some ways uh book that's not, by the way, true, but it's it's a book of his own explanation of how it works in terms of temptation and the enemy trying to tempt people to do things they shouldn't do. And in the book, the uncle is giving advice to his nephew on how to tempt the human beings and to fall into sin. And he writes this uh the uncle writes this, he says, Never forget that when we are dealing with any pleasure in its healthy and normal and satisfying form, we are in a sense on the enemy's ground. All the same, it is his invention, not ours. All we can do is encourage the humans to take the pleasures which our enemy has produced, at times or in ways or in degrees, which he has forbidden. An ever-increasing craving for an ever-diminishing pleasure is the formula. Are you reading that? Are you hearing what I'm saying? So these two demons are having a conversation about how to get people to fall in temptation, and it's saying we take the good things that God has given, and they even acknowledge the fact we can't create pleasure. God created pleasure. We want to use that in an unhealthy, a perverted way so that people begin to use God's good things and turn them into things of worship. And therefore they get perverted and they have an ever-diminishing pleasure about them. And that's exactly what's going on in our world today, isn't it? People take something that God has given that is good and they've perverted it. We've bought the enemy's lies, hook, line, and sinker, that somehow there's a better way outside of God's way to use this gift. And I would even say to you guys that that's it's not that we have too high of a view of sex in our culture, it's that we have too low of a view of sex in our culture. It's not that we have too high of a view of cul of sex in our culture, we have it too low. Now, I should say this because I was thinking about this even last night. Isn't it a little bit paradoxical that in the world, when you think you look at culture, um, on the one hand, you've got people saying sex is everything. And on the other hand, you've got saying people saying, well, sex is nothing. No big deal. On one hand, you got people saying sex is where you get all of your value, your worth, your identity, your satisfaction. And on the other hand, it's like, it's just sex. Because the culture has such a skewed view, a messed up view of sex, a misunderstanding of God's plan and his design for it, that that's their best attempt to say, either one, to escalate it, to see I'm gonna find my acceptance, my worth, my value, my identity in sex and my sexual identity, or to go to the other extreme and just simply say, well, you know, it's just uh a biological thing. You're a human being, you have a sex drive, and you just act on your urges. That's what sex is, and so it's just this thing you do, right? And I would say to you guys, and I think you know this, but God's word says that's not the case at all. We're very confused. We're very, very confused because sex is not just a physical act. Um, it just is an illustration of how our culture sees this sometimes as just purely a physical act, but you see this tie to how we look to it for so much pleasure and joy. You may not know this, but um, there's uh a guy named Ed Sheeran. It's the number one song on the charts right now, right? And his number one song, if you turn on the radio at all, and I'm guessing some of you in this room could sing it. Uh, and and it's it says this is some of the lyrics from his song, all right? The club isn't the best place to find a lover, so the bar is where I go. Me and my friends at the table doing shots, drinking fast, and then we talk slow. Come over and start up a conversation with just me, and trust me, I'll give it a chance. Now take my hand, stop, put the van, the man, on the jukebox. That's what you all listen to, I know. And then we start to dance. And now I'm singing like, girl, you know I want your love. Your love was handmade for somebody like me. Come on now, follow my lead, and I'll be crazy. I may be crazy, but don't mind me. Say, boy, let's not talk too much. Grab on my waist and put that body on me. Come on now, follow my lead. Come on now, follow my lead. All right? Now, anybody getting comf uncomfortable yet? Alright, just making sure. This is what our culture sees sex as. I'm not doing this to be uh to be crass. I'm not doing this to just simply make us feel uncomfortable, to be uncomfortable's sake, but this is what's going on in our world. This is the idea. In fact, he goes on, because I know you guys want more. Um, he says, This is the chorus of the song, which is very, very catchy, and I hear kids singing it all the time. Teenagers, young little kids. I've seen, heard them. I was in Walmart, I heard this little kid singing this song. Okay, like probably under 10. Here's what it says It says, Um, I'm in love with the shape of you. Alex, you gonna sing it for us? Okay. I'm in love with the shape of you. We push and pull like a magnet do. Although my heart is falling too, I'm in love with your body. And last night you were in my room, and now my bedsheets smell like you. Every day it's discovering something brand new. I'm in love with your body. It sounds like Song of Solomon without the holiness, right? So it's like the idea here is that our culture just simply wants to elevate sex into this position of worship, or again, in this position of it's just two biological creatures doing what people do. That's a problem, people. That's a problem. And the church cannot sit back and be indifferent to this kind of rhetoric and to this kind of ideology because this is not what God designed for sex. You see, every time the Bible talks about sex, it talks about the importance and the significance of sex and how it points us to the person of Jesus, how it points us to God, how it points us to the hugeness and the awesomeness of who God is. In fact, N. T. Wright, a theologian, says this. He says the male-female relationship woven so centrally into the story of creation in Genesis 1 and 2 is not an accidental or temporary phenomenon, but it is rather symbolic of the fact that creation itself carries God-given life and procreative possibility within it. Even to consider the question from this angle poses a sharp contrast to the way in which our present culture, sexual activity, has become almost completely detached from the whole business of building up communities and relationships, and is degenerated simply into a way of asserting one's right to choose one's own pleasure in one's own way. Let me, this last sentence, I'm gonna read it slowly. Catch this. To put it starkly, instead of being a sacrament, sex has become a toy. Instead of being something where we experience the grace and the goodness of God, it simply becomes something that we play with and we toy with and we miss what God has intended. And I I have to say, guys, like it's really sad when I look at the culture and I see how many people are getting ripped off with this cheap imitation of what God intended. You see, every time the Bible talks about sexual immorality, it uses the language lay with a person. So lay with a man, lay with a woman. Because it's just purely a physical act. But when it talks about intimacy and connectedness and oneness inside of a covenant relationship, it says knowing the person. Like in the beginning, it says Adam knew his wife Eve. It didn't say just laid with Eve, it said he knew her. Why? Because it's much deeper than just a physiological act, it's a spiritual act. In fact, sex is not merely a matter matter of biology or physicality, it is a spiritual reality. And the church needs to wake up and remember that. We need to be a voice to say to that. Culture, you're getting ripped off. You're getting a cheap version of what God has for you. I'm not surprised, just so you know, I'm not surprised that we hear lyrics like I just read. I'm not surprised that we see TV shows. I mean, if you guys have sat down and watched any sitcoms and you've really turned on your brain, you can see the narrative, can't you? You can see it. I know we're desensitized to it. I know we kind of just start to laugh at stuff that's not even, should not be funny. But we get desensitized. And I'm not throwing rocks, I'm not a separatist, I'm not a fundamentalist who thinks we just need to escape the culture, we just need to create a Christian bubble, and that'll solve the problem. Because the problem's not out there, the problem's in here. The problem's not just outside the church, the problem's in my heart, in your heart, the problem's inside the human heart as we take God's good things and we pervert them. So the point is this it's not gonna help us just to throw rocks at the culture and say, man, I can't believe the culture has such a bad view of sex. You know, the fact is that if you're not a believer, I totally get it. This is what you see. This makes sense. If you're not a believer in God, if you're not a believer in Jesus, if you don't have the Holy Spirit in you, then sure, you're gonna take God's gift and you don't even see it as God's gift, you're gonna use it however you see fit. But God has something so much more. And if you're a believer, we ought to be living with such a bigger view, a better view. But here's the thing pride has kept the church from dealing with this issue, but we must deal with it. Pride has kept the church from dealing with it, but we must deal with it. Notice what Paul says in chapter in verse 2 of chapter 5. He says, And you are inflated with pride. He's gonna go on and say that two more times over this next section that we're reading over the next couple weeks. He says, You are inflated with pride instead of filled with grief. The church ought to be broken and sad over the sexual immorality that we see. We ought to be stirred, we ought to be aware that that sex is being cheapened, that sex is being misused, that sex is being abused, that people are being abused through sex, through through the means of sex. And it's not just in the sex trade, it's in marriages, guys. It's not just in uh single people, it's in married people. It's being misused, it's being abused. And we have to, as a church, step up and deal with this. We can't just sit back and idly um be passive towards this thing. We've got to help people, and we've got to preach God's word. That's the key. We've got to preach God's word and say, God, what does your word say? And let's get under your word. Okay. Now, um, it seems like in this text that Paul is saying that these people were so prideful, they were so puffed up with pride that they weren't dealing with the issue. And in fact, we get the idea here that they were actually celebrating this because they were thinking, we're Christians, we have freedom, we have liberty, we're forgiven, so we can do whatever we want. And we know later in chapter 6, Paul says, No, you can't. Your body was not is not your own body. Your body was brought bought with a price. You know what that price was? The blood of Jesus. That's how high price he paid for your body. He purchased it, and now our bodies belong to God, and they're to be used for things that glorify and honor God. So we have to talk about these things and we have to help people understand. In Acts chapter 15, um, it's the early church where they're wrestling through how to disciple new believers. And this council is Jerusalem. And in Jerusalem, they're having a discussion about these Gentile believers as they come to faith, because originally all the believers who came to faith were Jewish. But all of a sudden, there's now Gentiles coming to faith, and we're praising God for that today that the Gentiles came to faith, because right, this is not just Jewish people that can come to Christ, but Gentiles, and we're Gentiles, and so we're thankful. But as they were thinking about how to disciple them, one of the things it says in Acts 15, I won't take you right. There, right now, is it says that they were, they determined that one of the key areas of discipleship that needed to take place was to tell them to avoid sexual immorality. You can read it for yourself. He says you got to teach them how to avoid sexual immorality because it is such a big deal. Part of our discipleship, as in helping people learn how to follow Jesus and become like Jesus, means we have to disciple and teach people on how to avoid sexual immorality, especially in a culture that is full of lies and deception about this issue. But also, 10 of 13 of Paul's letters, he addresses sexual immorality head on. Hebrews, the writer of Hebrews, addresses sexual immorality. First and 2 Peter both address sexual immorality. Jude addresses sexual immorality. You see the point that I'm making is that if we're going to disciple, if we're going to become mature, if we're going to be God's people who are called for God's purposes, then we need to address this issue and just quit assuming that it's just going to fix itself because it's not. Now, a word about that. Um, parents, we have got to, got to, got to take responsibility for training our children. We've got to. They are learning so much bad stuff theologically from the culture. And if we're not engaging with them, we have got to step up. I I my parents didn't talk to me personally about this. They didn't talk to me about money much, they didn't talk to me about sex much very much. But come to find out they actually had a lot of both, okay? But here's the thing some of you guys got that. This took you a minute. You're slow on the gun this morning. Listen, um, we have to talk about this stuff, and we need to talk about it in a way that is not trying to embarrass them, it's not trying to make it awkward. I know. It's like, you know, I see parents, we say you got to talk to your kids, and they're like, oh, great. It's the sex talk, you know. Um, listen, it shouldn't be that way. And there's some great resources out there. My wife and I own a set of books from Nav Press, and from the time our kids are young, when they start to get old enough, we start to teach them. Clearly, my story from Cray earlier, we must not have done a very good job, but we are working through this, okay? We're working through trying to teach our kids and have open, honest conversations with them about sex and about their bodies and how it's a gift from God. They need to hear that over and over that it's a gift from God. You see, most of the time the church just says, sex is bad, sex is bad, don't do it, don't do it, sex is bad, okay? What do you think that does to a kid that grows up in church hearing sex is bad, don't do it? Well, they're just gonna be curious, they're gonna go find it, they're gonna be rebellious, they're gonna go after it, right? They need to know it's God's gift, but it's within the confines of God's plan and his purpose is that sex is good, and that it's a good gift from God, right? So we need to we need to talk about it. And students in the room, I see there are some students in here, and I'm glad you're in here. If you don't understand things, if you are struggling with some of it, you're not clear, or even things that we say over the course of the series kind of like create curiosity, please, please, please talk to your parents, right? Do not talk to your friends. They are stupid, okay? They do not know what they are talking about. Your friends are so dumb, and they will say things that do not mean anything because they do not know what they're talking about. And they probably learn it from their friends who are also dumb, right? And the point is that we've got to, as parents, be the ones who are primarily teaching our kids about sex, okay? We have to. And we and we we it's not just a have to, it's a get-to. We should get to teach them about the good things that God has offered and then it's made available to us. So, um, I was thinking about the fact that when we talk about this, we've got to do it with honesty, we've got to do it with humility. We've got to stop tiptoeing around the issue. Um, we've got to be very honest with each other. You know, I understand that there is difficulty sometimes in church because we don't want to be seen as having issues. But the truth is we all have issues, okay? I have issues. Now, those issues are different maybe than your issues, but we all have different issues in our lives where we are struggling with sin. And I want you to know that this is a place, Point Community Church, when I say this, this community here is a place where we hope you don't have to sanitize your testimony, okay? Where you don't have to try to like only tell uh the very limited components to it because you're fearful. Listen, God sees everything, he knows everything, and this is a safe place to be honest. In fact, the Bible says we should confess our sins to one another, we should pray for one another that we might be healed. And I hope that you know this is a place where you can do that, where we can be open and honest that we're struggling in this area. Maybe, though, it's not just about struggling with sin in this area, maybe it's the fact that statistics say one in five women have been sexually abused. And maybe that today there's a woman sitting here, maybe many women sitting here who've been abused, and they've never had a place to go with that information. They've never had a place to go and be find healing and hope and redemption in that. And my heart aches for the women who feel like they can't say anything about this, who can't get honest about the fact that they've been wounded deeply. And it's not just women being sexually abused, it's men being sexually abused. I know stories of multiple men in this congregation who've shared with me at different times that they went through sexual abuse in their life. And if that's you, my prayer is that this series, this time of teaching that we go through might be a turning point for you. That you might find freedom, you might find hope, you might find redemption, you might find restoration in the person of Jesus. It is a process. It doesn't happen overnight. It is a challenge, it is difficult, it is awkward at first, it is painful at first, but it is free to turn to Jesus and know that he loves us, that he is for us, that he will help us if we will turn to him. So we've got to get honest. And we have to be honest about where is our information, our content coming from? Are we taking the culture's view or are we taking God's view? So we've got to come to a place with a honesty and a humility, a grace, right? A grace. A grace with one another that look, we're all, again, all in works of in process. We're working through this. We're works in progress, all right? Um I like to think of it this way. Um sometimes church is treated like it's the waiting room before the interview, the job interview. And really, the church should be the place that's like the waiting room in the doctor's office. Because the truth is that in the waiting room for the job interview, we're trying to put on our best foot forward. We've got we're like trying to impress everybody. We're raring to go to make sure everybody thinks we're the best of us. But in the doctor's room, where it's like we're sick and we need help. And that's the church, right? We're sick and we need help. We need God's help, we need God's strength. And I hope you know this is a community that if you're struggling with this issue, and by the way, um I know the statistics. I know how many men inside the church statistically struggle with porn addiction. I know how many men, and I'm not talking, by the way, this might even help you, how many men, not just average church attenders, I know the numbers of men statistically who are in ministry, the pastors that are struggling with porn addiction. And the the percentages are crazy to me. But it's not surprising that the enemy would continue to try to keep people sidelined from God's mission by the shame and the guilt and the fear that surrounds this issue of sexual immorality. I think next week Matt's gonna bring some more stats to us and give us some insight on what's really going on in the picture in our culture, but I would just simply say to you guys that we have a major, major problem and we've got to deal with it with honesty. We've got to deal with it with humility. We can't just keep playing and acting like it's not there. So, a couple questions I want to answer as we close out our time today, the last part of our time together today. Why does our sexuality matter to God? Why does our sexuality matter to God? Well, I think we've already answered this question to some degree, but uh let me dig in just a little bit more for a second. God is the one who created sex. Did you know that? Okay? Go back in the beginning. God makes man, he makes woman, and he puts them together in this beautiful garden and he says to them something. He says, He says, be fruitful and multiply. Okay? He says, be fruitful and multiply. So he tells them, I want you to get together and to procreate, to have sex, right? And so we know God is the one who created it. And because God created it, he knows how it works better. He knows what it was intended for, intended to do. And being that, God has a very vested interest in how his people, who he also created, use this gift, use what he has given us in sex. And I would say to you guys this morning that many people look at God and we just say, it's like we scoff at God, like God, you don't really know what you're talking about. Like, God, you really don't know about my sex life. You don't know how I should use it. Now, I think there's a lot of you in this room who do believe that God has wisdom and you do believe that God knows what he's talking about. But let me just reiterate the point: God is wise. God is the designer. Um, thinking about this at a practical level, you know, there's a lot of things in our world today that are designed by inventors, creators, and they make things, and those things um then of course become a product that we use in our everyday life. And there were multiple things I thought of this week that we use in our everyday life that we use in a particular way because that's the way the designer created it. And I was thinking about even phones. Um, and these phones are everywhere, right? And uh it was reminded that this even this morning that this phone uh it's not designed to be a paperweight, right? It's not designed to be a paperweight, it's not designed uh to just simply be a uh it's not designed to be a weapon, although I could probably hurt somebody if I threw it at them, right? Could use it like a weapon and try to whack somebody with it and protect myself with it, but that's not what it's designed for. It's designed to call people, right? It's designed as a tool to use in my life. Um, and of course, now it's designed to get on Facebook, it's designed to do ESPN.com, it's designed to do all kinds of fun stuff, right? But it's designed for other things. Now, if the person who designed the phone, or at least the this iPhone or the cell phone, um, you know, came in the room and they saw us trying to use it as a defense mechanism, like a tool uh to hack somebody or to hurt somebody to get them away from me, like they're looking at us like we're crazy, right? Why would you throw that piece of technology that I didn't design it for that? And I think sometimes God looks at us and he says, like, I gave you sex, why are you using it that way? That's not what it was gifted for. That's not what it's supposed to be for. It was a it was a tool, it was a gift, but you're using it in ways that are not like the designer intended. The point is that when we actually use God's gift of sex in an inappropriate way, um, we will find ourselves in a place of hurt. We will find ourselves in a place of destruction. I think there's a lot of men particularly, but also women, and they walk around with a tremendous amount of shame and guilt. A tremendous amount of fear, fear of getting caught, fear of getting found out. There is a tremendous amount of that. That is a byproduct of using sex in a way that's not honoring to God, not the way that he intended. And I would say that God has a lot to say to us because he wants to set us free. He wants to set us free. He wants you in this room today. My hope, again, over the next six weeks is that some of you would get free for the first time. That you would no longer worship sex and put it in its inappropriate place and try to find your identity, your value, your worth, your hope, all in your sex, in your sexual identity. But to find it in God, then when it finds its proper place, sex can actually be the good gift, God intended. Does that make sense? God wants that for you. He cares deeply about you. I care deeply about you. I'm not up here trying to make you feel worse. You got an enemy trying to do that. The enemy is the accuser. He's the one who wants to keep you in shame and guilt and in the darkness. God's saying, come into the light and find freedom, find hope. We've got so many people that are addicted, like I said, to like pornography, and they are not free. They're struggling with it. And God is saying, come and be free. Come and find hope. So, what is God's vision for sex? I'm gonna just give you a broad vision, and it's interesting. I titled today's sermon, A New Vision for Sex, or for uh something to that effect, and the word new is kind of funny there, but the reason I'm saying it, it's actually not new. It's old. It's the original plan, but in our culture it's new because we've gotten so far from the picture of what God has. And I would just simply say this: sex is a gift from our good creator that brings the blessings of children, oneness, and intimacy into a lifelong marriage between a man and a woman, and to teach them about the goodness and commitment of their God. Okay? That's a lot, it's a mouthful. There's a lot of blanks there, so give you just a second. But this is what we're gonna be talking about over the next five weeks after this is what does God want for our sex? What is his vision, and how does this play out? And I'm telling you right now, this is not the culture's view. And I'm telling you right now that it's not popular to stand up and say this. But this is what the Bible shows us that sex is a gift from our good creator. He is a good creator, right? He's a good creator, and that we can have children and we can have a oneness. Like that when I said when Adam knew his wife Eve, there's a oneness, there's a glue, there's an intimacy, there's a connectedness there in a lifelong marriage. Now, when I give you this definition, there's some of you in the room who feel offended. Can I be honest? There's some of you who might feel offended by that. And I want you to know that as we say here, we're gonna do everything we can to be as faithful to this word as we can. Faithful to God's word. And if you are offended or confused by what we're saying this morning, that this is God's vision for sex, I would simply challenge you and ask you to do this. Do not run away and hide. Do not just take your ball and go home because you don't agree with where we're coming from. Okay? My encouragement, my invitation to you is to engage in this discussion and ask God to show you the truth. Ask God to help you. Because the culture, if this is, if the culture's view is very opposite of this, it feels awkward when you start actually talk about what God's desire is. But we've got to have an open, honest conversation. And even if you're struggling with this being your definition, right, this doesn't mean that God stops loving you. God will help us understand what he is trying to say and what he has given us in the gift of sex. God has a better plan for our sex than we do. Teenagers? God has a better plan for your sex life than you do. Men and women, adults, God has a great plan for your sex. And he wants us to experience more of him. May sound odd. He wants to experience more of him through sex. He wants us to actually worship him with our sex. And we're gonna talk about that. But I want to close out our time in the end of, in chapter 6, verse 9 through 11. So if you still have your Bibles there, you can look at it. It's also again on the screen. Chapter 6, verse 9 through 11. Paul's been addressing some of the issues that come out of the circumstances surrounding this man, but also others, and he's saying, listen, guys, you've got to know how to deal with conflict, you've got to know how to deal with uh sin, and you can't turn a blind eye to it. It's impacting you, it's causing your witness to be messed up. But he goes on in verse 9 of chapter 6 to say something that's really hard, but it's good. He says, Don't you know that the unrighteous will not inherit God's kingdom? Do not be deceived. No sexually immoral people, idolaters, adulterers, or anyone practicing homosexuality, no thieves, greedy people, drunkards, verbally abusive people, or swindlers will inherit God's kingdom. Okay? So notice that he's not just saying sex is the only issue. He doesn't even say homosexuality is the only issue, which by the way, the church sometimes kind of goes, that's the big issue. No, he gives a whole list of things that are the issue where men take God's things and they turn them into gods. But he goes on to say, and some of you used to be like this, but you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God. Isn't that good? Let me tell you what the hope is we have in the face of sexual immorality. We have the hope of salvation, we have the hope of restoration and redemption in the person of Jesus. The reason we don't have to buy into the culture's view, the reason we don't have to be stuck in addiction, the reason we don't have to just keep walking this thing out and feeling all the destruction and the pain or secrecy and the darkness, the reason we don't have to do that is because we have the grace of God in the person of Jesus. That he loves us, that he's forgiven us, that he wants to set us free. And my hope is that you would experience that. That you would experience the life that Jesus offers you, and you would experience the vision that he has for you and your sexual identity, your sexuality. So I would just simply again say as I close today, uh, this has really been a setting the table for the rest of the series, and I realize that already we've stirred up some things. I realize already we've created some awkwardness, but we cannot, as the church, again, sit back and let people destroy them their lives. Um we have to step in. Moms and dads, we have to step in. Grandparents, we have to step in. We gotta speak truth, and we gotta speak truth in love. We gotta speak truth in love. Some people think that when you love someone, that means you're soft on their sin, or that you just are indifferent to their sin. But that's not true, is it? The truth is that if you love someone, you want to protect them, you want to help them see what is destroying their life, what's hurting them. And this is an area that's hurting a lot of people. And we do not want to be the church at Corinth who just turns a blind eye or even celebrates something that is so offensive to our Holy God. Let me pray. God, I thank you for your word. I thank you for this issue that you've brought before us so that we can get free. Thank you, God, that you don't leave us in our sin without any hope. I thank you, God, that this morning you are calling us to obey you, to follow you, to trust you, even if it doesn't make sense or compute. Um, God, I pray for your church, your people, to believe that your way is the best and to have the courage to follow you in that way. God, I pray against the bonds and the shackles and enslavement that many people in this room have felt and are maybe are feeling today in the area of their sexual struggle. I pray, God, that you would set people free. I pray that you would restore marriages. God, I pray that you would restore people and their singleness to see the beauty of singleness and how it can be used for your glory in purity. I pray, God, that you would please help those who are hurting today. That those who maybe are dealing with past wounds, God, I pray that we can be a resource to them to point them to professional counselors who are teaching the Bible, not just counseling, but teaching the Bible and pointing them back to God. I pray, God, that you would help people get free and push past the fear of rejection, uh the shame, to stop sanitizing their story and to get honest and real and to be free and find the hope that's in you, Jesus. Thank you, Jesus, that we were lost in our dysfunction, but now we have been washed, we have been sanctified, we have been justified in the person of Christ. Thank you, Jesus. Thank you for loving us, even in our sinful state. Yeah, so rescue us, help us, God. We need your help. We love you so much. Praise your name.