Love Sex and Lasting Relationships - Sexual Purity in a Sex-Saturated World, Part 1

Is it possible to be sexually pure as a follower of Christ in the world that we live in? I can't tell you how many people have come to me with guilt and shame and struggle and basically say, how? I've tried. How do you be pure before God?

That's today. Welcome to this Edition of Living on the Edge with Chip Ingram. The mission of these daily programs is to intentionally disciple Christians through the Bible teaching of Chip Ingram. And that question you just posed is a struggle every Jesus follower faces.

In a culture saturated by sexual perversion, it's very challenging to be uninfected by it. But today, as Chip picks up in his series Love, Sex, and Lasting Relationships, we'll learn why purity is vital to God and how we can discipline ourselves to live holy lives. But before we get started, if this is your first time listening to Living on the Edge, or you want to learn more about what we do, go to livingontheedge.org. You'll find resources on tons of topics and countless programs to enjoy. Or if you prefer, the Chip Ingram app is also a great way to get plugged in with our ministry.

Okay, go in your Bible to Ephesians chapter five as we join Chip with his talk. When you really, really love someone, you want to give them something that you know will really make them happy. And I remember maybe the first time I really got this from a father's perspective, I have twin little boys and they were hitting that like five, six, seven year old age. And I was in seminary at the time and we were just, I mean, dirt, dirt poor.

I was working full-time, going to school full-time and Theresa was home with the kids and we were making a little under a thousand dollars a month. And my little boys, they wanted, remember your first bike? I mean, do you remember like the first Christmas when you got your first bike? Well, I wanted to get my little boys a bike and so I started saving, saving, saving and Christmas came and we bought a pretty cheap couple bikes that granddad came and he helped me put them together.

And then, you know, we went outside and we lived in this apartment complex and that was a really large government subsidized apartment complex where they'd have like buildings with a couple three stories and then it had sidewalks that would go around each building like five, six, seven, eight, nine sidewalks wide and a tree here and there. And so, you know, that morning the boys got up and my father heart was bursting and, dad, I can't believe it. We got a bike. We got a bike and shiny little bikes and they were just about like this, about this.

And so, you know, what do you do? You go out with them and, okay, okay, so now you're ready to do, okay, you're okay, you're okay. You know, so literally, you know, it was a little late for bikes for them.

So, I mean, within a couple hours they got it down. And then I had to do something that was really hard because I just saw their face and I was so excited and I gave them this really special gift and then I had to be sort of like, okay, now there's some rules. As you know, like really good gifts usually come with some rules. And around this place where you could go around the circle it was pretty safe but, I mean, just beyond it was a highway with five lanes. I mean, just absolutely unbelievable.

I mean, my kids could get killed really easily. And not only that but this was a very interesting place. It was a sort of a rough neighborhood. There was a lot of students but also right above us was a drug dealer. And I remember at one point in time hearing a thump, thump, thump, thump, thump and it was him dragging a woman by the hair down the stairs.

This is a very true story. He had his shirt off and there were claw marks all over him and I came out to see what was going on and he looked at me like, if you want to hurt, stick around. And I said, are you guys okay? And, you know, they walked away.

I still remember this picture of him walking barefooted, no shirt in the snow. On another occasion I heard some really strange sounds and I came outside and as I got outside this guy had a gun and he turned it on me. I'm like, oh my gosh, I thought I was going to die. He goes, oh, I thought you were someone else.

And apparently a deal had gone bad. So I'm telling my boys, look, if you guys go outside this circle you are in more trouble than you can imagine because I'm very fearful for him. Secondly, this is our building around this building.

The guy upstairs meets with the other people in those buildings. That's not safe. If you ever, ever, ever, like ever, ever go past this building, your dad will recreate your whole life in a way that you'll never forget. And I mean, you know, I was just, because I just knew if they ended up over here, I mean, drug dealers are not nice people. And if they end up over here five lanes of a highway, this is my beautiful gift to them.

But it's not going to be good. And I want you to know that as a father and as a parent, the reason you get such joy out of giving gifts that delight your children's heart is because you love them. And the reason is that you're made in the image of God. And He loves to give us gifts that thrill our hearts. And one of the gifts that He gives us is sex.

It was never intended to sell stuff. It was never intended to have a one-night stand and fulfill some temporary lust. It was a gift that would bond a person's mind and heart and soul and emotions and body with another person for a lifetime that seals that relationship and creates a bond that God wants to never break. And so we're talking about love and sex and lasting relationships. You know, last time we talked about that a loving relationship demands sexual purity. And when I got done last time, I had a young couple here and other people here and people out there. I had all kind of people say, you know what, I really, really get it, like I'm living with my boyfriend right now. Or, you know, one guy said, can I be honest with you? I said, well, sure. We were just kind of outside that door and he kind of told me where he was really at. And each one of them basically said, I really want to do this God's way, but are you kidding, man?

How do you do that? You know, we talked a little bit. But the one warning I have is, and I didn't grow up as a Christian. I never opened the Bible until I was 18.

And if you happen to be visiting, like just someone invited you and you thought to yourself, you know, the band was pretty good and it seems okay so far. It's a little different for me. But now you kind of look at these notes and you're actually, in your mind, you won't say this to the friend you came with, is this guy actually going to get up and say that sex before marriage is not only wrong, but stupid? I mean, this is the 21st century. Is he like going to say that out loud? And I bet if he does, he'll probably, you know, pull out some old book that I don't necessarily even believe in and give me all these reasons from this book of why, and I'm just going to think to myself, you know, I don't come to church a lot, but I probably won't come back.

Well, let me just do something just for that group because that was me a number of years ago. And so let me give you some research that isn't from the Bible. It's all secular research about sex and sexual fidelity and some reasons why you might want to reconsider your position even if you didn't believe in the Bible. On the front of your notes, I'm put here, five facts about sex. Fact number one, those who abstain from sexual intercourse before marriage report the highest levels of sexual satisfaction in marriage. Now, I'm not sure how they measure all this, but a whopping 31% higher level of sexual satisfaction, and that was by the Bethesda Research Group and reported in the Washington Post. Fact number two, those who cohabitate or live together before marriage have a 50% higher divorce rate than those who do not. That was a research study by UCLA. Fact number three, those who abstain from sexual intercourse before marriage have the highest rates of fidelity in marriage.

That was in a study done at the University of South Carolina. Fact number four, the introduction of sex into a dating relationship almost always ushers in the break of that relationship. Dr. Les and Leslie Parrott, counselors and teachers, and just as they've done surveys with thousands of students, you're in a relationship, you're dating, you start to have sex, the probability that that relationship will end skyrockets the moment that happens. Finally, sexually transmitted diseases, including AIDS or genital herpes, can remain dormant for up to a decade or more, but be passed on to others during that time. So in other words, you can have no symptoms, the person you have sex with has no symptoms, they may have had sex with other people, and you may never, ever know, and you can actually get it, pass it on, and wake up 10 years later HIV positive or something else.

Here's all I want to say. This may be an ancient book, but it's filled with wisdom. And I will tell you that if you didn't even believe in the Bible, and you're sitting here and you said to yourself, well, okay, I don't know if I buy the Bible yet, but the best research says if I want the best sex, if I want to have a 50% lower probability of divorce, if I want my partner to be not running around on me, and if I don't want to catch some diseases, and if I really like the person I'm dating and I don't want it to crash, hmm, what he's actually going to teach about not having sex before marriage is really kind of the picture of a beautiful, wonderful gift like fire that brings light and warmth and heat, and when fire is in a fireplace, amazing and wonderful things happen, but the same fire, if you take it out of the fireplace and stick it in the middle of the living room floor, it burns your house down. And so we're going to talk about how to live a sexually pure life in a sex-saturated society because you're smart, okay?

Now wouldn't you agree, at least from the research, smart people would do this, and even more importantly, because you want to be holy, you want to get God's best. Anything less is second-rate sex. You're listening to Living on the Edge with Chip Ingram, and we'll continue a series Love, Sex, and Lasting Relationships in just a second. But first, whether single, dating, or married, God has a clear blueprint for relationships that he wants you to know. So keep listening after this message to learn about a resource we've developed to help you get a life full of genuine love and intimacy. You'll want to stick around.

With that, here again is Chip. The question I want to ask and answer is how to say yes to love and no to second-rate sex. Anything apart from a guilt-free, passionate, aligned with God, aligned with one another, from the heart sex is second-rate. Now there's going to be three things you need to know to have God's kind of love and eliminate second-rate sex. Number one, a bit on the review side, is that loving relationships demand sexual purity.

Now you can lust and you can be about yourself, but I mean loving relationships. Notice what it says, the command, walk in love just as Christ also loved you and gave himself up for us as an offering, a sacrifice to God as a fragrant aroma. So to walk in love means you're giving, caring, sacrificial, unselfish. You want to put the needs of this other person ahead of your own. That's loving.

That's the positive side of walking in love in a relationship. He says now, negatively, those are some things you do. Here's some things if you really love someone you don't do. But do not let immorality or impurity or greed even be named among you as is proper among the saints. And there must not be any filthiness or silly talk or coarse jesting which are not fitting but rather the giving of thanks. That word immorality, we get our word porn from, it's porneia in Greek. Impure extends that and basically what he says is any sexual relationship or activity, fornication, adultery, same-sex relationships, anything apart from one man, one woman inside of marriage violates God's command because he's got this gift. And he says there's a five-lane highway out there that when you violate this you get killed and there's spiritual drug dealers out there that'll wipe you out. And so that's the command.

The reason is for this you know. Verses five and six, with certainty that no immoral or impure or covetous person who actually is an idolater has an inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and God. And then he says let no one deceive you with empty words for because of these things the wrath of God comes upon sons of disobedience. In other words there's consequences. God loves us so much that when we violate what he says about human sexuality in relationships he says it makes him angry.

That's all the word wrath means. It makes him angry and when a parent is angry he disciplines those he loves to bring about the kind of behavior that will protect them from danger. Now most of you will be completely shocked knowing the wonderful parent that I probably was at 28 or 29 that even after I told my two little boys with these shiny new bikes that they could only go around this circle around the apartment and they should never ever never ever I mean like never go beyond that building you'll be shocked to find out they didn't obey me. Obviously there's something in our human nature that if someone just says draw a line don't cross it I may have never thought about it before but when they say don't it just makes me want to doesn't it you? Now as a father a very irresponsible thing to do would have been saying to my six or seven year old boys you know as they were on this oh well you went out into the highway it's only five lanes you didn't get killed it seems to be okay I hope you're just as lucky next time.

Or you know what hey you went cross that building and there were only three drug dealers and a big deal didn't go down and they seemed even kind of nice to you in fact they offered you something to try. Now what you would say to me is you're an irresponsible idiotic stupid uncaring unloving father and you'd be right. You see when I caught them going beyond the circle I actually enforced the rules I provided consequences I started with sort of like consequences to get their attention and they weren't very responsive and so I increased the intensity of my consequences. I did some things in loving ways to help my kids know I don't think I ever want to go beyond that circle again. At one point in time I just said you know what you can't even use that bike for 30 days unless you're willing to obey me.

Why? Is it because I'm trying to keep something good from them or do have I given them a gift that with it has huge opportunity but great responsibility and great danger. What would happen what would happen instead of you thinking that God has made all these rules about sex that keep you from quote the good time and you started realizing wow God wants me to have great sex with the right person at the right time with no hang ups no pain no baggage no issues no diseases and the reason he has these rules is because he wants me enjoy the gift and that's would be the truth but you listen differently if you believe that. So he's given us a command walk in love he gives us the reason and then now that he gives us the application he's going to say not only do you need to walk in love but I want you to walk in the light therefore do not be partakers with them circle the word in your notes partakers. For you are formerly darkness but now you are light in the Lord walk as children of the light and then he explains well what would it look like I mean parentheses if you walk as children of the light what would that look like well it'd be for the fruit of light in other words the fruit is the evidence of something the fruit of the light is all goodness and righteousness and truth trying to learn what is pleasing to the Lord would you underline the word darkness and then would you underline the phrase you are light. That word partaker is very interesting word in the original language literally the idea is don't even associate with them therefore walk in love why because there's consequences that are from love he says now therefore how do you behave don't even associate don't go to places don't watch things don't think things don't hang out with don't put into your mind and into your heart people and information and videos and books and magazines that pull you away and keep telling you that out there in the five lanes is where the action is or where the spiritual drug dealers are hanging out and then he gives the reason he goes formally you were formerly darkness he doesn't say you were in the darkness you were darkness but now you are light remember what Jesus said I'm the light of the world he says don't stumble because of me I'm the light of the world and then what did he say to us later he said to his followers you are the light of the world he didn't say go be the light of the world or act like you're the light of the world you are the light of the world he says me living inside of you manifesting the power and the presence and the love and the holiness of God you're the actual light of the world now so he says walk that way this is how Christians live like Christians in their sexuality and he gives us three words let me just briefly highlight what they are he says all goodness all righteousness and all truth goodness is moral excellence it's not just being nice or kind it's moral excellence with a sense of kindness and generosity and wisdom when you're walking in the light you're morally pure before God someone is meeting someone who's good and generous and kind he says that's what it means to walk in the light you're looking for the needs of other people your your words and your and your life are telling the same story you're walking in all goodness in fact not only just goodness but righteousness or you're living right the literal meaning of the word is giving another person what's their do so if it's respect you give them the respect their do if if it's a commitment it's the commitment that's do it's doing your duty before God and doing your duty before men you're the kind of person that's right you're righteous you you're just you're fair and then the next one is truth it talks about integrity so it's a beautiful word for truth it's not just doing the right things with some sort of little narrow I'm gonna do what's right this is true it has the idea of an integrity where there's peace in your heart and where there's a desire for what's beautiful and what's right and what's good and what's kind see a lot of us struggle a lot with our sexuality and what issues in the Christian life and in walking with God because we have this deal inside of us is that we all hate hypocrites don't we I mean I think it's just inborn I mean I hate it when people tell me one thing then they act another way I hate it when someone gives me a compliment and then say this about me don't you but what the startling thing happened in my life was I realized I hate all hypocrites but I even hate it when it's me you know when I shave and I'm looking in the mirror and I'm thinking about what kind of man am I really and how do I really treat my wife and where do my thoughts go and am I really walking integrity and in light of the last 24 hours am I doing what is right and just and living in truth you know when there's a real high level of alignment there's a peace and not only that I mean in the good sense I like myself then a lot of you don't like yourself and you don't like yourself because that level when it's not congruent when it doesn't line up you know in your head in your mind in your lips this is what I say I believe and what I think but this is how I'm living it just produces tremendous tension and walking in the light doesn't mean you're perfect walking in the light means you're responding day by day and moment to moment what God's shown you about what's true so people that are living together go oh wow I need to walk in the light people that are hook on pornography go wow you know I need to go get some help people that are walking light say you know I just find myself at work lusting after these guys or these women and you know God I want to change that and we're gonna talk about how but the application is there's something powerful and winsome to be at peace and to have your conscience clear and have relationships and to look people in the eye and not always feeling like there's something or someone or five lanes where the real action is and you kind of have these little hidden portions of your life this is Living on the Edge with chip Ingram and you've been listening to part one of chips message how to be sexually pure in a sex saturated world from our series love sex and lasting relationships chip will be back shortly to share some helpful application for us to think about the pursuit of true love is everywhere we look it's overly romanticized in the movies and TV shows we watch the books we read and the songs we listen to in this study in Ephesians chapter 5 chips gonna expose the love we see in culture as a mirage of the real thing stay with us as we uncover God's design for finding staying and growing in a genuine love that can last a lifetime to learn more about this series or our resources visit Living on the Edge org that's Living on the Edge dot o-r-g well I'm joined in studio now by chip and chip out of all the books you've written why is love sex and lasting relationships still one of your very favorites well Dave what I have to tell you is it's what God has done with it I was in Germany this summer and we partner with a group that's reaching the global youth and I mean there's like 200 of their staff from all over the world and I'm teaching every morning and all different countries and all different backgrounds and this young gal comes up to me and in sort of broken English and she goes I wanted to show you something and she pulls up on her phone a picture of love sex lasting relationships in Russian and then she points me to a guy over there and she says you know in our world how we have looked at relationships you know you find the right person you fall in love you put your hopes and dreams in them and then it doesn't work and I was in that cycle and then I read this book and I discovered God's way and three years ago we got married and they both came up and hugged me and I've just met so many people Dave who have been on the merry-go-round of breaking up finding the right person trying to look sexy all the rest and just have heartbreak after heartbreak after heartbreak and I think it's one of my favorite because there's few things as precious to me then seeing a couple that gets connected from the heart that does it God's way and experience incredible joy to learn more about this valuable resource visit special offers on the chip Ingram app or Living on the Edge dot org if you're ready to experience God's blueprint for intimacy romance and security then you're gonna want to get your hands on this book again to order your copy of love sex and lasting relationships go to special offers on the chip Ingram app or at Living on the Edge dot org okay chip let's get to that application we promised well what I want you to know is is that trying hard is not a remedy all the research we know what happens inside of the brain in terms of pornography is not unlike crack cocaine it is an addiction and it grows and it requires stronger and stronger and more perverse hits what I can tell you in our time together is one you have to have a game plan this is not like I promise I promise I'm not going to do that again or if it's not porn you know we're sleeping together and I promise I promise I won't do that again that will not work as most of you already know so you have to have a game plan and the first step is what we talked about a conviction there needs to come a time where you say I want to be sexually pure I remember in this struggle in my life I kept Oh God Oh God Oh God and the Lord whispered as I was praying hey chip do you do you want me to answer this and my honest answer was no not really well then stop praying it and and for some of you that's where you need to start is do I really want to be you know all the right reasons you know the shame and the guilt that follows but that's step number one step number two is you're not gonna lick this on your own you need help you're gonna need accountability you need a plan you need a conviction and you need help one of the resources that has been really helpful that grew out of my own personal struggle and with a lot of men I did it a men's conference it's called how to slay the dragon of lust and that is exactly what it is it's super practical very very specific and I think it'll give you the tools to take those first steps to overcome this thing that so many of you struggle with and you long to be free so what I want you to know is there is freedom there is power but you make a decision you need help and I would love to be a part of the journey if I can thanks chip and for those guys who want to know more about the message he just mentioned how to slay the dragon of lust go to special offers at Living on the Edge org or the chip Ingram app you'll learn how to identify weaknesses and sinful patterns in your life and build safeguards to protect yourself and your home from this dangerous enemy again go to special offers on the chip Ingram app or Living on the Edge dot o RG to listen to chips two-part series how to slay the dragon of lust well thanks for listening to this Edition of Living on the Edge with chip Ingram next time we'll continue chip series love sex and lasting relationships I'm Dave Drew and I hope you'll join us that