Love Sex and Lasting Relationships - Love and Sex: Why Knowing the Difference Makes All the Difference, Part 2

You know, God created a beautiful, beautiful gift for His people, called sex. And it's been exploited. It's been cheapened.

It's been defrauded. And I believe God looks down on so many of His children that are living together, that are hooked on pornography. And with tears in His eyes, He says, Oh, I long for you to have sex how I intended, intimacy and love and connection. If you'd like to learn how to have that kind of sex in the right relationship at the right time, stay with me. Thanks for joining us for this Edition of Living on the Edge with Chip Ingram. Living on the Edge features the Bible teaching of Chip Ingram on this international discipleship program.

I'm Dave Druey. And today Chip continues his series, Love, Sex and Lasting Relationships. He's about to finish the message he began in our previous program.

So if you missed that, it's available on our website, livingontheedge.org under the broadcasts tab or on the Chip Ingram app. Well, let's get started, shall we? Here's Chip with part two of his message from Ephesians chapter five, Love and Sex, Why Knowing the Difference Makes All the Difference. Far from wanting to limit sex, God's heart, stop experiencing such second rate sex. Logging on to an imaginary site with people that have been pumped with stuff and where they're blowing fans and they touch up the body and create these worlds that don't exist.

Having affairs, living with someone where, you know, there's no real commitment and you say all kinds of words, but it's just convenient, but it's really about you. He says all those things reduce, reduce, reduce, reduce the capacity for what God wants. You matter to him.

We read it earlier. You're his workmanship. You're like a prize painting. You're like the most classic car. You're like a beautiful mansion.

You're like a Rembrandt. You matter more than anything. He wants the best for you. And he's saying, don't destroy this. And here's the reason. Sexual impurity destroys relationships.

It's that simple. Sexual impurity will destroy your relationship with God. Sexual impurity will destroy your relationship with yourself and sexual impurity will destroy your relationship with others. Notice what it says in verse five, for this you know, put a box around the word no.

I'll tell you why in a minute. With certainty that no, notice the repetition, no immoral, no impure or covetous person, by the way who is an idolater, has inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and God. And then here's a warning. He's saying to a sex saturated culture, this is counterintuitive and I'm laying out, this is God's plan and he loves you, but there's a lot of people that are blowing smoke. They're fooling you. They're deceiving you.

They've got you in situations where you won't experience God love and you're not going to experience good sex. He says, let no one deceive you how with empty words. And then there's the warning, not only not to be deceived, but the consequences for because of these things, what things?

Immorality, impurity and covetous because of these things, the wrath of God comes upon the sons of disobedience. I said, put a box around the word no in Greek. There's two major words for no. One is a fact. This is just a fact. The other is knowing by experience. So certain things I know because I've experienced them. Certain things are I can feel him or not feel him, but two times two equals four. That's this word. He's saying you can know with certainty.

Okay, here's what I want you to know. People, they can say they love God. They can raise their hands. They can come to church occasionally.

They can pray a little prayer. People who are living habitually immoral lives, habitually impure lives and habitually covetous lives will have no part in God's kingdom. I mean, he's saying they're not, and he doesn't, it's not like God's kingdom coming. It's God's kingdom, God's rule, God's favor, God's blessing now. And then he says, don't let people deceive you.

Don't, don't, don't let them tell you stuff like if it's safe sex is okay, or if we really love one another, it's okay. See, did you notice that one little word? It's a person who covets. Coveting has to do with I want something that's not mine and isn't mine rightfully. He says that person who is immoral or impure or covets, and then did you notice that little phrase is an idolater. An idol worshiper is someone who worships the creature instead of the creator or something they make themselves.

And when you think of idols, don't you usually think of like a little something that, you know, people put on a stand or like the old Indian movies. Remember a totem, a totem, you know, they would worship. They might have a lion and a bear and, but every totem, every idol you can, you can worship success. You can worship your body. You can worship your kids. You can worship your work.

You can worship ministry, but any idol that you have, you can go down through that idol at the very bottom of the idol. You know what's right there? A mirror. And when you look at the bottom of that idol, guess who you're really worshipping? You. Guess who I'm really worshipping?

Me. If I would choose to log on to an internet site, if I would choose to flirt with someone, if I would choose to let my mind go, because this isn't just our actions, right? Jesus said, Matthew five, if I lust for a woman in my heart, I've already committed adultery. Jesus said the pure in heart will see God. Solomon would say that as you think, and I think so we will become when I do those things or when you do those things, that is all about me worshiping me and me getting off and thinking there's something that will deliver that's different than the woman that God gave me in the context of our relationship. And so here's what God says.

I love you too much for that. Paul's saying to the sex saturated world in Ephesus, you will never experience God's favor and God's love and God's freedom. You will end up like a little girl who's 20 and clinically depressed and can't figure out why life is meaningless because she's been exploited and used because she got her virginity over with.

You don't want to be someone that inside of your marriage, and it's rampant in Christian marriages where you don't talk about sex. It's not very fulfilling. You don't know what to do about it. And you're chatting online with old high school boyfriends and girlfriends. He doesn't want you to be like someone who's playing the little game and let's pretend we're really committed.

Your parents divorce, my parents divorce. So let's live together for a while. That works out great for you, but there's no commitment. And if there's no commitment, there's no safety.

And if there's no safety, you can't really let the other person know all of who you are. The great majority of all the people we'll talk about it next week that cohabitate do not end up getting married and do not end up staying together. Would you please hear, if you hear because of your background or my background, I didn't grow up as a Christian, okay? When I first heard, literally, when someone told me no sex before marriage, I'm just thinking, I don't know about that Christianity, but that's not for me. You should probably laugh right now with sort of that, yeah, that's how I think too, but you're way too holy.

I appreciate that. Really, I mean, I just thought God had a bony finger and arms crossed and you know, like, I thought God was up in heaven when sex occurred, like, oh my gosh, Gabriel, what are they doing? You know? The Bible says he's up in heaven and the marriage bed is holy and he looks at a couple that's spiritually committed, walking with Christ, knows one another, loyal, and they're having sex and God says, hey, Gabriel, guys, look at this.

It's awesome. You know why? Because sexuality and spirituality are so closely tied. There are few things you experience ever in your entire life that's akin to your intimacy with God, like having sex with your wife or a husband without guilt, without baggage, without stuff, and without junk.

And God says, that's what I want. Why? Because you matter. Don't treat yourself like you don't have any respect for yourself. Don't treat yourself like you don't matter. You matter to me.

And so I want the best for you. The consequences, the wrath and the word wrath, all it means is you're made in God's image. So here's what happens when things that are beautiful or things that you made or things that you've worked hard and things that you know are supposed to be wonderful. When someone comes and destroys them, you get mad, don't you? Right? Any of you parents have some other kids or a school or someone start to really mess with your kids?

I mean, and really start to damage them? Tell me about those emotions, will you? What do you do? You get mad. When things are unfair, you get mad.

Why? Because you're made in the image of God. When we do things that are destroying our lives and destroying relationships and breaking up families, God gets angry. In God's anger, it's not like God has an anger component and a love component. Theologically, God is simple.

And what that means is that he is absolutely holy and loving and simple and righteous and compassionate and just perfectly all at the same time. And so out of his love, he allows consequences to happen when we're sexually immoral in our mind or in our speech or in our behavior. And he allows these consequences to get our attention. And so there's certain diseases that you get. Those are physical consequences. There's depression and guilt and baggage. Those are psychological consequences. There's spiritual consequences. You know, if you've gone too far, if you're logging on internet sites or if you're living together and now we can push down our conscience, right?

We can sear it. But I got news for you. There's a lot of people that when you've done something that you know is wrong and violated sexual boundary, you can open up this book and it's just like words off the page. It doesn't speak to you. Try praying really from the heart and experience God's presence. Try wondering, why don't I see vivid answers to prayer? Why don't I have any power over temptation?

You can't live in both arenas. God says, I care about you so much. I don't want you to be conformed to this world and its consequences.

I want you to be transformed by the renewing of your mind that you could experience my will, the good, acceptable and perfect will of God in your sex life, in your married life, in your single life, in your thought life, because you matter that much. I have a friend of many years ago and the illustration is the consequences. And we were playing basketball throughout South America and he was a West Coast guy, played for one of the, I think it was called the Pac-8 or I don't know what, there's Pac-12 now and I mean major, major school on a basketball scholarship. But he was an amazing athlete so he was also a baseball player.

And so he played like double A ball in the summers, made money. And his story, I'll give you sort of the truncated version was, you know, I found some playboys early on and I kind of got involved in some soft porn. I found in high school that girls were pretty attracted to me and got with a group of guys and we kind of played a silly game about how many girls in high school could we sleep with. So we did that and went to college and I played the same game. I was kind of the big guy on campus and it was, there's certain men don't say this a lot, but he was like out of a poster, okay?

You know, like 6'3, bronze body, California, blondish type hair, good looking, amazing athlete, nice personality. It's sickening actually, you know, for the rest of us. And then he said during the summers when I played pro ball, I became addicted. This is before the internet was big and on and he said, the game I played was how many women could I sleep with in every town each day. And he said, I just, I'm ashamed at the numbers.

Because you know, you're a baseball player, you go to these towns and you kind of have groupies and I mean, for a lot of guys to think, this sounds like the life. And he said, this trip is my last stop. I said, what do you mean your last stop? He said, I live that way and then I'll never forget something happened and you know, I know about God and I know about right and I know about wrong, but I mean, I just couldn't stop and then something snapped and broke inside of me. And he said, I went completely numb. And he said, I didn't have any desire, I didn't desire for sex, for God, for people.

I had no feelings whatsoever. And it scared me. I just felt like I'd given everything away. I had no capacity to love and no capacity to feel and I was completely bankrupt and I went before God and I begged and begged and begged for his forgiveness and I don't feel a lot, but I started getting the Bible and started to memorize some passages and then I got into church and I guess you could call it growing, but I've got this chain that I'm carrying behind me. And he said, I wanted to come and serve God.

I'm not playing baseball this summer. I wanted to serve him. And he said, I'm praying that someday, some way he could restore that broken part inside of me. The wrath of God is his kindness and love providing the kind of consequences to help you understand that you may not want that much love, but he will keep loving you because he cares and he will bring increasing levels of consequence to get your attention so that you will become sexually pure so you can experience the very best. Now, as you turn the page, we need to then ask, where do we go from here, right? This is a big, big day. For some of you, it's like, if this guy talking right now had any idea where I've been and what's going through my mind and my present situation, what I'm currently doing, right?

Can you hear something before we go on? God loves you if you're addicted to pornography. God loves you if you're living with someone right now. God loves you if you're sexually active with your boyfriend or girlfriend. God loves you if you're currently having an affair. God loves you if you have homosexual leanings and identity issues. God loves you if you're involved in a homosexual relationship. God loves you if any of those things are true of you today, but you must understand that love will bring about consequences and to habitually continue in that destroys your relationship with God and your opportunity to experience him. And so he wants to forgive you. For some of you, you're involved in those things and you realize what you really need to do is realize, oh my, I never saw it as being covetous.

I never saw it as being exploiting or using. I've confused lust with love and it's what I've ever seen and known and heard. And you need to ask God to forgive you once and for all, not just for your sexual sin, but for all your sin and invite him to be your savior and he'll forgive you and he'll come into your life in the person of the Holy Spirit and he'll give you a brand new life. For others, you're here and you're born again. I mean, you know God.

You know the story. You experience him. You read the Bible some, you pray some, but you're living with someone. And you know, the empty words, the deception, we really love one another and we really can't afford to and on and on and on. And for others, I hope the statistics are wrong, about 25 or 30% of the men, you're logging on to porn sites at least once a month, more and more frequent with women. So here's the deal.

God didn't bring us together. So you go, oh wow, man, I'm a jerk. I'm a selfish, unloving, lustful, exploiting user of other people. Well, you kind of got to see that, right? If you don't accept the bad news, you can't get the good news. And so now here's his word.

Are you ready? A word to those that are uninvolved. I mean, you're not involved in any relationship. Today, make a commitment and you don't have to wear a ring and you don't have to go through a ceremony. If that helps, great, but make a commitment to say, I'll be sexually pure in my mind, my thoughts, and my relationships. And next week we'll talk about developing a game plan. If you're in a relationship, meeting someone or living with someone, just do what's right.

This is not rocket science. If you're living with someone, you know, I had a very long conversation knowing this was coming up and I sat down with a guy that I love a lot. He's a great friend.

He's living with someone right now. He's a great friend and we've talked about this. And so I sat down earlier this week and I said, Hey man, I really love you. This is what I'm going to share. You're going to be here. Your girlfriend's going to be here and you're going to come to a crossroads.

And you know, he gave me all the empty, you know, where we can't afford to move apart and we really love each other. I said, look man, you can say what I get it, right? You either obey God or don't obey God. So what you're telling me is you believe that God, I mean, he's great guy. You believe God is powerful enough to create the universe, right? Yeah. You believe he's powerful and loving enough to send his son to die in your place, right?

And rise from the dead, right? But you don't think he has the power to help you guys deal through living apart, figuring out whether this is really the right person and supporting you financially. So I just want to make sure I get this right so he can create the world, but there's no power for you to obey. He said, could we sit down and talk and work this out?

I said, my wife and I'll sit down with you and we'll, we'll help you go through the steps of what to do. But some of you, that's the decision and this isn't one of those. I'm going to think about this. This is today. We're not going to live together for some of you today.

I'm not logging on anymore today. The affair stops. And by the way, don't meet with them to tell them it's over.

It never works. You never break up with a text in a casual relationship, but a text is good for this affair is over. I've disobeyed God. I've damaged my life. I'm sorry.

We're done. A word to those that are in crisis. If you're in a marriage that's really not working and this just sort of exposes it or if you're in a relationship where you feel like, honestly, I mean, honestly, you're in a relationship and you're scared because it's not just sexual, it's abusive. Get help.

Talk to someone today. Talk to a pastor, Christian counselor, get help. And then finally for those that are married and all I can say is Christians are funny people. I didn't grow up as a Christian so I can say this because I've been there.

We'd rather pretend than get real. And I've done a lot of counseling. I don't do a lot of it anymore. I've met couples that are in their 70s that have never talked about sex.

Walk with God 40 years. She never ever told him, you know, when you do this, it really doesn't really help me at all. Or when you do that or we haven't really talked about it and it's this big white elephant and it becomes a barrier.

And people don't wake up and just say, hey, you know, I think I'll give up on this marriage or I think I'll have an affair or I think I'll just give myself to the kids or I think I'll become a workaholic. God wants your emotions and your spirit and your bodies to be connected in a way that sustains and is loving and deep and great. So go to one of these marriage classes.

Pick up a book on sexuality. My wife and I have gone through so many books, these books included, to help us in every area of our life. Love, giving another person what they need the most when they deserve it the least at great personal cost. Sex, a beautiful dynamic bonding gift for procreation, pleasure, and beauty. For one man, one woman inside of marriage to have the light and intimacy that your creator wants for you.

Chip's going to be back with his application. But just a quick reminder, this message, Love and Sex, Why Knowing the Difference Makes All the Difference, is from his series Love, Sex, and Lasting Relationships. In these messages, Chip shares the candid truth about romance, sex the way God designed it, and true love. Because we long to love and be loved, this series will help you discover God's way to make a good match, grow in intimacy, and build a love that lasts a lifetime. For a limited time, resources for Love, Sex, and Lasting Relationships are discounted, and the MP3s are always free. To order your copy or to send it to a friend, visit us online at LivingOnTheEdge.org or tap Special Offers on the app.

For additional information, just give us a call at 888-333-6003. Well, Chip, what you're describing about how to be the right person and how to find the right person is 180 degrees from what we see in the movies and television. What's the best way to move this teaching from head knowledge to convictions that actually affect our choices? Well, Dave, what I've seen, because it's been out for over 10 years, is that when people go through the book, something dynamic changes. I've had lots of people communicate with me, write me, tell me, email me about the content of these messages. And what they tell me is, I went through the book with the person that I was dating. I went through the book with my fiancé. And then they tell stories about how God radically, radically changed their relationship.

Well, what's a good example? I've actually had some people say, I went through this and it made me see I'm not in love at all. I'm just infatuated. This book is available right now.

It's an easy to read and it answers the kind of questions. How do you know if you're really in love? What's the prerequisite for a great relationship? And then how do you find that right kind of person?

I think this is one of the most important things that a single person can do right now is have a game plan from God about love, sex, and lasting relationships. Makes sense. A plan that moves our intentions into action.

Thanks, Chip. Well, for a limited time, all the series resources are discounted, including the book. It's our desire to get this resource into the hands of as many people as possible. So we hope you'll take advantage of the discounts today. Maybe get a copy for yourself to read with your kids or grandkids. And maybe you want to give to a parent you know who could use a little help getting the conversation started with their kids. For all the details, visit us online at livingontheedge.org, tap special offers on the app, or give us a call at 888-333-6003.

That's 888-333-6003. Now here's Chip with a final thought. Today's program was one of those programs that made some of you feel very uneasy. For some, it's like, I didn't know anyone still talking about Christians being sexually pure. And for others, you're downright a bit hostile inside thinking, you know, I don't really know about all that. And I think that's sort of old-fashioned, et cetera, et cetera. I often have, you know, people tell me, so how do you know this is really true?

And of course, we could go into lots of reasons. But in the last 15 to 20 years, I cannot tell you how many Bible studies in my house I've had with 20 and 30-somethings. They're from all over the world.

They're people with all kind of backgrounds. And what I can tell you is both inside and outside the church is a relational world of people hooking up, being damaged, lacking intimacy, and deeply struggling. I often had someone say, does the Bible really teach an old-fashioned no sex before marriage? Let me say unequivocally, the passage that I taught today makes it clear. Sex outside of a monogamous marriage between one man, one woman, who are married is wrong, period.

It is missing the mark. It is sin. Now, is that because God is a prude and gave us desires and doesn't want us to fulfill them?

Absolutely not. It's because He's so good, He wants the very best, psychologically, physically, spiritually. For some of you, you are deeply aware that what I've shared is true.

And like at the end of the story, an arrow has pierced through your heart. And what I want you to know is God forgives and there's restoration and the consequences of sin are real, but healing and restoration are just as real. Turn to Him today with all your heart.

And can I encourage you, choose today for your relationship and for the honor of God to be sexually pure. You know, a great way to stay engaged and connected to Chip and Living on the Edge is with the Chip Ingram app. You'll get free access to all of Chip's recent messages, his message notes, and much more. And not only that, but it couldn't be easier to call or email directly from the app. We'll be with us again next time when Chip continues his series, Love, Sex, and Lasting Relationships. Until then, this is Dave Druey saying thanks for listening to this Edition of Living on the Edge.