Sex and Marriage - Proverbs 5:15-29 - The Wise Family

All right. Hey, my name is Pastor Bobby and we are in the last week of our wise family series. And if you're at one of our campuses, let me just welcome you today. I am so excited to be able to finish this sermon series. And I know Pastor Andrew from talking to him is super excited to be back next week to kick off back to school weekend. So let me be a little honest with you today. Last weekend, when I was trying to figure out what this week's sermon was going to be on, my wife and I have been kind of joking around because we were bummed because our kids are in Florida for the week at Nana Camp. And my boys, they love to hear when I preach and they love to hear the illustrations and they remember them.

And so we were bummed that they were going to be gone. And then last Saturday, I looked at the topic and I said, we are actually talking about sex today. That would have made them being here a little different, hearing their origin story. So then my wife tells me that she was very excited that I was preaching on sex.

And I said, I really honestly do not know what that means that may give new perspective to them being gone at Nana Camp for the week. The only reason I could think that Pastor Andrew gave me this topic because he knows that I am way less easily embarrassed than he is. So all joking aside, this is a very important topic today. We're going to be in Proverbs Chapter five. And this is a very important text on sex. And so before we actually jump into the text, let me say a couple of different things.

I think it's just worthwhile to note on the front end. The first one is when you read Proverbs five, you're going to realize this could be five sermons out of Proverbs five because it's talking about so much. And so you just have to know today that I'm going to be way narrow in scope. And so let me just apologize ahead of time because some of you are going to be like, I wish you address this or I wish you would have addressed this. Or we really could have talked about this. And if we had five sermons, we could do that. But we only have one sermon.

So it's going to be very narrow in scope. Another thing to note here is that we don't do shock jock or crude preaching here at Mercy Hill. This is certainly going to be a sermon on sex. And that's what the text addresses. And so we're going to address that head on. But I'm not going to be saying a bunch of stuff outside of the biblical text about sex. We're going to be addressing exactly what Proverbs five addresses. So let's go ahead and jump into our text today. We're going to be really going throughout the whole chapter of Proverbs five. But specifically, our main verses for today are verses 15 through 19.

So let me go ahead and read them for us today. Drink water from your own cistern, flowing water from your own well. Should your springs be scattered abroad, streams of water in the streets. Let them be for yourself alone and not for strangers with you. Let your fountain be blessed and rejoice in the wife of your youth. A lovely deer, a graceful doe. Let her breasts fill you at all times with delight.

Be intoxicated always in her love. It's funny. I think I just saw some of the men maybe taking notes for the very first time here at Mercy Hill. So what we're going to see today from Proverbs five is that sex is an extremely powerful gift from God. It's a beautiful thing. It's a wonderful thing, but it is extremely powerful. That really is the message of Proverbs five.

Let me give you one way to sort of think about it on the front end here. So my wife has sort of she's begun to get embarrassed by me because we love to take these vacations where we go to these different locations where we love to hike and run in the mountains and national parks and all of that. And I've gotten into this bad habit. It's happened three times now of arguing with the park rangers.

OK. I'm not normally a person like that, but we go to these places and a lot of times they don't understand we're there not to hike, but to run. And so I'll begin to talk to them.

And some of these places you have to get a permit to go here or you got to get a permit to go to the top of this peak. And I remember one time I got there right before the park closed and I was telling the lady, hey, I'm going up to the top and back. And, you know, she's like, well, that's going to take you four hours. I said, it's going to take me two hours.

And she had this real country sort of accent. She says, sir, that's impossible. And I was like, no, it's actually not. We're going to run to the top and back. So I've kind of gotten this habit of, you know, they don't know the idea of like we're actually going to be running in these mountains. So recently we were in Colorado about four weeks ago and my wife really wanted to go to the Black Canyon. It's very similar to the Grand Canyon. Here's here's a picture of it.

Amazing, beautiful. It's about a two thousand foot just sheer drop off all the way down to the river there. And so when we went to the park, we were like, we've got to go to the bottom. Like we have to go to the bottom.

So we came back two days later. And of course, I began to get a little scuffle with the park ranger. Because, one, you've got to get a permit to hike a trail. And I'm like, why are you going to get a permit to hike a trail?

This is America. But you had to get a permit. They only give out 19 permits per day.

And we got the last three permits. So me and the two older boys, it was 11 a.m. And she was very concerned about us starting our hike that late. She's like, I strongly advise you against starting this hike at 11 a.m. She said, it will take you no less than six hours to get to the bottom and back. And not only that, we had to sign this thing that stated all the ways that we could die in the Black Canyon. And my two sons who are 10 and 8, she's making them repeat back to her, hey, do you realize the first signs of dehydration are a headache and diarrhea?

And making them repeat it back to her. And so we go and we hike it. We go all the way to the bottom. Here's a picture of us at the bottom.

It was so amazing. But I will tell you, coming back out, it was about 2,000 feet of gain in less than two miles. And my kids did a lot better than I did. But by the time I got to the top, I was so worn out.

And I told my wife afterwards, I said, I'm surprised they let anybody go down to the bottom. Because what happens on these sort of trails, especially in canyons, this is why so many people die at the Grand Canyon, so many people die at the Black Canyon. Because they're so beautiful, they're so enticing, and at the beginning it's the easiest part. You're just kind of walking downhill. Walking downhill and you don't quite realize once you get to the bottom, you have 95% of the work left to get back up to the top. And so many people just end up dying.

I mean, you just look it up. Every single year, dozens of people die at the Grand Canyon. The reason is, is because how dangerous it is, they're attracted by the beauty, they're drawn in by the beauty, but they are not prepared at all. And in many ways, sex, we're going to see from Proverbs 5, is very much the same way. It's awesome, it's beautiful, it's a gift from God, but it will destroy you if you underestimate its power. So I'm going to have to be, unfortunately, the park ranger today from Proverbs 5, warning us about the beauty, the wonder, but also the dangers of sex. Here's the big idea for today's sermon. Wise families understand the power of God's design for sex. Wise families understand the power of God's design for sex. You see, sex can bring destruction, life, joy, sorrow, and wise families understand this.

And because they understand how powerful it is, they know how to protect it outside of marriage and pursue it within marriage. Okay, let me hear everybody say these two words. Everybody say, protect. Everybody say, pursue.

Okay, if you remember anything today, leaving the sermon, those are our two big points. Protect and pursue. This is what Proverbs 5 teaches.

A really good quote I heard this week that kind of summarizes Proverbs 5 and the message it's trying to get across, and the message I'm going to try to get across today is this. The enemy's plan is to get you in bed before marriage and to keep you out of bed after marriage. If the enemy can do that, then sex will be distorted in our lives, and instead of being a blessing and a joy, it very much will be a curse for us. So let's look at this first big rock of protecting it outside of marriage. Wise families protect sex outside of marriage. Can I clarify?

I think the language is very simple, but it can be confusing. I don't mean like protected sex. We're not talking about contraception. And the point, what we're saying is, wise families, we protect ourselves from sex outside of marriage.

Okay? We protect ourselves from sex outside of marriage. Remember, sex is like the Black Canyon.

It's beautiful, it's wonderful, but it's extremely powerful and dangerous. It's so wonderfully powerful that the Bible teaches that marriage is the only thing that can actually handle it. And that's the reason we should protect ourselves, our kids, our friends from pursuing sex outside of marriage.

Because the only relationship that can handle it is a marriage relationship between a man and a woman. I remember when I was a little kid, and I was at my friend's house, and it was just me and him, and his mom left us for a little bit. We were pretty young.

We were like eight or nine years old. And they had a treadmill in their living room. And she's like, whatever you do, when I leave, do not get on or touch the treadmill. So of course, as soon as she left, we're like, I'm getting on the treadmill. Okay? And so I'd never been on a treadmill, and that was the point.

That's why she didn't want us on it. I'd never been on a treadmill. So I stand on the sides, on the rails, and I tell my friend Josh, I'm like, crank it up. So he cranks it up. I think he gets it to ten or six.

It basically was like ten miles an hour, about a six-minute mile. And so it's going, and I don't know any better, and I just jump on. And of course, what happens, I immediately fall down. And I'm holding onto the handles, and I'm just dragging my knees on the ground. You know, it's just dragging me.

And I remember this, even though this was like 31 years ago. Just dragging my knees on the ground. I'm like, I don't know what to do. I don't know how to get off. And so finally, you know, I was 70 pounds soaking wet.

Finally, I just let go, and the thing just literally just shot me, and I hit the back wall of the living room. The point was, we weren't old enough, we weren't wise enough, we weren't smart enough to handle the treadmill. And the thing with sex is, the only relationship that can handle it is a married relationship, because of the power of it. And you see, people are so confused by this in our culture today. You know, they think that God is this killjoy when it comes to sex. Or Christians are anti-sex, or anti-sexuality, when in fact it's literally the opposite. God created sex for our pleasure in the building of families, and no one is more pro-sex in the right context than Christians. Because God created sex to be a blessing. God created sex not to ruin our joy, but to bring us joy.

And every one of us of the appropriate age today, this is the question we should be asking. Young, old, single, married, what am I doing to protect myself from sex outside of marriage? Because within marriage it brings blessing, outside of marriage it brings destruction.

We must protect ourselves from sex outside of marriage because, as we're going to see in Proverbs 5, the consequences. The consequences are so high. It's like the Black Canyon. It's beautiful, it's wonderful, but the consequences of you going down to the bottom, not being able to get back up, means you die at the bottom of the Black Canyon. And that ranger, she was very serious, you know, making my boys recite all the ways that they could die in the Black Canyon.

But I'm sure that speech has saved somebody's life before. And so Solomon, here in Proverbs 5, he's going to be the park ranger. Of like, hey, sex, it's beautiful, it's wonderful, but he doesn't want his sons, he don't want us to have to learn these lessons about sex the hard way. Because we're going to see that many of these lessons about sex, they're life and death lessons. These aren't small, little, tiny lessons.

These are serious lessons. Look at some of the scriptures. Look at Proverbs 5, verse 3 and 4. For the lips of a forbidden woman, they drip honey. Her speech, it's smoother than oil. But in the end, what? She's as bitter as wormwood, sharp as a two-edged sword. Proverbs 5, 5. Her feet, they go down to death.

Her steps follow to the path to Sheol. Proverbs 5, 11. This is what a life of sexual sin looks like. At the end of your life, you groan when your flesh and body are consumed. This is how the chapter ends. The iniquities of the wicked ensnare him. He's held fast in the cords of his sin.

He dies for lack of discipline and because of his great folly, he is led astray. You see, sex, outside of marriage, it can destroy both body and soul. I mean, just look at those words from Proverbs 5. Two-edged sword, Sheol, flesh and body consumed, ensnared, death.

These are all words that Proverbs 5 uses to describe sex outside of marriage. The point is, we must take very seriously the real life consequences of this. And for me, I don't think there's anywhere that the Bible has proved to be more true than here. I mean, we just see this all around us, the consequences of sex outside of marriage. I mean, we could literally just sit here for days and list all of the consequences. Disease, divorce, unplanned pregnancies, abortion, losing your family, hurting your kids, losing a job, falling out of ministry, becoming depressed.

The list could literally go on and on and on. This was written 3,000 years ago, but this is how you know the Bible is true. Not to mention the invisible scars that so many people carry around with them because of sexual sin. So the stakes are extremely high. So how can we actually protect ourselves? Proverbs 5 gives us some very, very wise sort of principles that we can follow to protect ourselves. So we're going to look at four super practical tools to protect ourselves. And so, you know, if you're single, if you've been married for a long time, if you're a teenager, like you need to write these down because this is universal wisdom from God who created us of the ways that we can protect ourselves and protect those around us from sex outside of marriage. So four tools to protect ourselves from sex outside of marriage. The first one is this, incline ourselves to the Bible's teaching on sex. This is verse 1. My son, be attentive to my wisdom, incline your ear to my understanding, that you may keep discretion and your lips may guard knowledge. It doesn't matter how practical the tools are that we're going to get after this. If your heart is not inclined to want to obey God, none of it matters.

Like none of it matters at all. And so every one of us, before we get into some super practical stuff about how to protect ourselves, we have to ask the question, do we want to obey God's desire for us? You know, because Satan would want us to believe, going back all the way to the garden, that God's desires for us are not good. And so do we want to trust what God says in his word? Are we willing to do whatever it is that the Bible tells us to do? That's a decision we have to make right at the beginning. And that's why Proverbs 5 starts with this.

Because the practical tools don't matter if you're not inclined to want to obey God's teaching on this. I'll be super transparent with you guys and I'll do this throughout the rest of the sermon because I feel like it could be helpful for some people. I remember my wife and I, Allison, were first dating. This was about 20 years ago. Both of us had sexual sin before we dated. And we both brought that right into our relationship, like so many people do. And so, of course, we were not obeying God's word. We were in sexual sin. And I was probably 18, 19 at the time.

And I hadn't been a believer for that long. And I had this long struggle over, God, can I actually obey you in this area? Like, God, can I actually trust you? You know, as a 19, 20-year-old young man, the hormones are so strong.

Can I trust you? And for so long, we were just not obedient in this area. And me, being this, you know, very immature but also wanting to kind of obey God at the same time, once I started really trying to obey God, I just broke up with Allison.

No notice, no explanation. I was just like, I don't have the maturity to stay in this relationship and for this relationship to be pure. And so I just, like, broke the relationship off. And God really used that in our lives over the next year so that we could be people when we got back together, even before we were married, we could be people that were self-controlled, you know, that had the spirit of self-control. Because if you don't have self-control before marriage, you certainly are not going to have self-control in marriage.

And so, you know, I just had to make that commitment of, like, God, I want to obey your word on this even though it's extremely hard. The second thing that we can do, and there's where it gets super practical, we should guard our speech. Look at Proverbs 5, 3, for the lips of a forbidden woman, they drip honey.

Her speech is smoother than oil. Let me clarify one thing here so we're not confused. It's not that, like, women are just the tempters or anything.

This is Solomon writing to his son, so he's talking about a woman here. But men or women both can tempt each other into sexual sin. Let's just be super clear about that.

In my experience, I've seen way more men tempting women into sexual sin than the other way around. But obviously, it could go either way. We must guard our speech. You know, many, many affairs start not with the actual affair, but they start with words, you know.

They start with, like, words over a coffee pot at the office or words over a lunch meeting. And so, are we guarding what we say to the opposite sex? Because that's extremely important, you know. If we're married, it could just be simple flirting with the opposite sex. Or something else, we must guard our words. And what I'm saying is, I'm not saying, because sometimes people will say this, that, oh, well, you can't have a genuine friendship with somebody of the opposite sex.

I'm not saying that at all. What I am saying, if you're going to have a genuine friendship with someone of the opposite sex, there should be light on that relationship and there should be accountability around that relationship, especially if you're married. So we must guard our words. The third thing is, we must guard our location. Guard your location.

Look at what verse eight says. Keep your way far from her. Do not go near the door of her house. Does it say, don't go in the door of her house? That's obvious. It says, don't go near the door of her house.

You know what that's assuming? That you and I, every single one of us, are flesh and blood and have a sinful nature. So the command here is not just go in, but don't even go near the door of the house. And so for all of us, I think we need to say, what is that door of temptation for us?

What are the places or the areas where you're most tempted? Is it a certain person's house? Is it a certain place? Is it the internet?

Is it your phone? Is it a group of friends? What is it saying here in Proverbs five?

Don't even go near the door. So who here today needs to change your location, needs to change a job, or change even having a phone, if that's how you're accessing pornography, or change the group of friends that you have? You see, in so many times, I've been in so many of these counseling situations where you begin to bring up, hey, I work out of town, I travel, I struggle with sexual sin when I work out of town and I travel.

And we say, okay, you should quit your job and find another job. Well, I can't do that. I mean, the consequences are way too high for that.

What are the consequences here in Proverbs five? I mean, literally using words like death. Or you talk to a college student that's addicted to pornography maybe. And you say, hey, if you just literally got rid of your phone, you stayed away from the door a little bit more, it'd probably be a little easier. There's no way I could do that. There's no way I could do that. There's no way I could live in 2022 without a phone.

It's like, okay, yeah, that would be a huge pain to not have a phone. But what's worse, I mean, look at what Proverbs five describes in terms of the road that sexual sin leads down. Remember what Jesus says in Matthew 5.30, if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off. Let that sink in.

Cut it off and throw it away. For it's better that you lose one of your members than your whole body go into hell. I remember for me when I was going through this struggle that I mentioned earlier, the first two years of college, it wasn't just sexual sin, it was just a host of just struggling to live and honor and glorify God. And I came to realize after my first two years of college, I was kind of away at college like many students are.

God just so convicted me. I was like, I got to just, I got to leave school. Like I got to just quit school, move back home and go to school somewhere else.

Because of the group of friends, because of where I live. Like I had just, I was just bound up in all these sinful habits. And I'm like, the only way, the only way that I'm going to get freed from this is to just totally change my location. And so some of you, if you're dealing with some, you know, maybe sexual sin that nobody knows about, you just may need a total location change, whether it's job, phone or whatever else. The fourth one about protecting ourselves is to know that God sees your ways.

You know, I think Solomon mentions this on purpose. For a man's ways are before the eyes of the Lord and he ponders all his paths. You know, if we follow God, we need a healthy fear that all of our lives are lived before the Lord. God sees our dorm room. He sees us when we're online.

He sees us when we're on a work trip. He sees our thought life. God ponders our paths. So we may be able to keep this stuff secret, right, from our spouse or our kids or our friends, but God is letting all of us know that he certainly, he certainly sees it. So these things here, these four things, they will go a long way in protecting us from sexual sin if we're willing to walk this path. Let me say a couple things before we move on to the second point of today's sermon. There may be some of you who are teenagers or college students. You're young and you're like, man, I hear what you're saying and I believe what Proverbs 5 is saying.

Like, I believe it. I realize I shouldn't act out in sexual sin. But when you look forward, you're like, man, I may not get married for 10 more years.

You know, like what am I supposed to do? And one thing I would just say, because I think we often can get confused about this, you know, you may be craving intimacy or you may be lonely. A sexual relationship is not the only way to be fulfilled in that. God created us to have intimacy and relationship with him. And that really can fulfill our hearts. And even intimacy among friends, it's not just a sexual relationship, but we can have this deep community with other people that's not necessarily sexual. And so I just think we need to keep that in mind as you are struggling through this.

And yeah, maybe you're not going to get married for 10 years. You can still pursue a deep relationship with God and with others and be fulfilled in that. Sexual sin will only make your soul thirstier. I promise that it's not going to fulfill what you actually think it's going to fulfill. Let me say this, too, before we move on. This is going to be a little controversial, but it is absolutely true. Marriage is not a cure for sexual sin.

There are some of you today, I just know it, that you're living in a relationship, you're not married, maybe you're engaged, whatever. You're living in sexual sin and you both are telling each other, certainly when we get married, it will solve this. I promise you, it will not solve it. Will it temper it?

Yes, I think possibly. Because Paul is very clear. Being married and the desire for sex, it's kind of like a firewall. It's going to help when you are married with those desires. But a firewall does not keep the fire out forever.

It's not like a fire extinguisher. And he says this in 1 Corinthians 7. But because of the temptation of sexual immorality, each man should have his own wife and each woman her own husband.

The husband should give to his wife her conjugal rights and likewise the wife to her husband. So does being married help deal with those desires? Yes, absolutely.

It's very clear from here. But if you cannot control yourself, if you don't have self-control, you're not going to get married and all of a sudden have self-control. That's just the reality of it. And I would just say this, like obviously people can change, people get married, they grow, they can change. But I would be extremely cautious about marrying somebody that does not have self-control. Because that will play out in a number of very reckless ways once you actually are married.

I see just as many married men that are addicted to pornography as single men that are addicted to pornography. Getting married doesn't just solve the sexual sin problem or issue. All right, so we've seen that outside of marriage, sex must be protected.

But now let's look at the other side of the coin. While it should be protected outside of marriage, it should be pursued inside of marriage. Remember, it's like the Black Canyon.

Not that you can't go into the Black Canyon, but you just better understand what you're dealing with. And sex is the same way, that's why marriage is the only thing that can handle it. So point two, wise families pursue sex within marriage.

This may embarrass you all, it's not going to embarrass me at all, okay? Unfortunately, there are many marriages where sex is so protected outside of marriage, but the same effort is not given to pursuing it within marriage. And Proverbs 5 is very clear that it absolutely should be pursued and prioritized within marriage. There's a big issue if all the effort is going into protecting it outside of marriage, if you're married, but not pursuing it within marriage. And these verses, I think, give us at least two ways to pursue sex within marriage. The first one is this, with intentionality.

We must intentionally pursue one another in marriage. Look at verse 15 and 16. It's both sides of the coin. It's not talking about, like, just what you shouldn't do, it's actually talking about what you should do here. Drink water from your own cistern. So it's not just saying, hey, don't drink water from that one, it's saying drink water from your own cistern. This is talking about sex.

Flowing water from your own well. Should your springs be scattered abroad, streams of water in the streets, let them be for yourself alone and not for strangers with you. So I think the question I want to ask all of us, if you're married, is the pursuit of your spouse the most intentional thing you're doing in your family? Not your kids, not their sports, not your job, not your business, not your finances, not your hobbies, not your ministry.

Let's not be confused about any of this. All of those things crumble without a healthy marriage. And there's a million stories and examples of that.

And this is missed so often. You get married, you have kids, you have a good job, and all of those things end up becoming the priority. When in reality, the foundation that all of that is built on is a healthy marriage. And so it's not just being intentional about sex, it's about being intentional about the relationship. Like, being intentional with your spouse.

Good marriage, good sex life, none of that happens by accident. And here I know some of you are saying, here's what some of you are saying right now in your mind, you're not saying it out loud. Or maybe you're nudging your spouse.

And these are just examples. Some men may be saying, or some women may be saying, yeah, Pastor Bobby, but you don't get it. Like, my husband doesn't emotionally engage with me. And some men may be saying, yeah, but my wife won't have sex with me. Or she's disrespecting me, and the wife says something, the husband says something.

So that's why I'm not pursuing them probably the way that I should. And I'm like, I understand that. Like, I understand how those things can become a real wedge in a relationship.

But you know what that is? That is literally the death spiral of marriage and intimacy. Because what Ephesians 5, Christian marriage, Gospel Center marriage, you know what Ephesians 5 teaches? That you don't look at your marriage from the perspective of what can you do for me? What have you done for me lately?

How have you treated me this week? Even though that's primarily how most of us actually think. That's the death spiral for any relationship. What Ephesians 5 says is, no, we should look at our spouse and say, how can I serve you?

How can I intentionally serve you whether you're serving me or not? That's the only way to break the chains of that death spiral of intimacy. The second way that we can pursue sex within marriage is with enjoyment.

And let's just say that, with enjoyment. Look at what verse 18 and 19 says, let your fountain be blessed. Rejoice in the wife of your youth, a lovely deer, a graceful doe. Let her breasts fill you at all times with delight, be intoxicated in her love.

What is this saying? Enjoy your spouse. Marriage is not a job. Like, it's a blessing from God. I mean, listen to these words, blessed, rejoice, be filled, be intoxicated. God has given us a spouse so that we can enjoy them and rejoice in them.

They can never replace God, but they are certainly such a wonderful gift from God. Delight in your marriage. You see, the thing is, marriage is such a wonderful, beautiful gift from God. And so many of us, we are numb to that.

God has given us this wonderful spouse, and we are literally numb to the miracle of marriage. You know, I've shared this before, I hate to fly, okay? I do fly, but I hate to fly, okay? So, when I'm flying, all I'm thinking about is, we're literally in a metal tube going 500 miles an hour. And I have to be looking out the window just to know when we're about to crash or if I see any flames or anything like that. I mean, it's a modern miracle that you're flying through the air in a metal tube at 500 miles an hour.

And anybody that's sleeping while we're flying, I'm like, that's a psychopath right there. We're experiencing a modern miracle and you're just over here sleeping as if this is normal? The thing is, honestly, that's how many of us get in the rut of our marriage. Of, like, we have this beautiful gift, Ephesians 5, that literally pictures Christ's relationship to the church and the gospel and God has given us this miraculous gift and we're like numb to it.

We're just totally numb to it. And so, I think for probably all of the couples here today, as you leave, you need to have a conversation of how are we being intentional with one another? How are we pursuing one another? How are we enjoying one another? And some of you, I'm guessing today, you literally need to get out your Bible and in the front or in the back of it, you need to make a note and you need to literally say, starting today, I'm gonna pursue my spouse with intentionality and with enjoyment because that's what God has created for us in marriage.

So we've seen the two big rocks today from Proverbs chapter 5. What do we do outside of marriage? We detect sex. What do we do within marriage?

We pursue sex. Remember that quote that I started with today? The enemy's plan is to get you in bed before marriage and to keep you out of bed after marriage and let's make a commitment today to not let that happen. I wanna close today by really speaking directly to people that believe today that you're never gonna be free from the sexual sin in your past or you're never gonna be free from the guilt of that sin in your past.

I just wanna speak the gospel message directly to you because I know a text like this, there's hundreds of people in our church that are in sexual sin maybe right now or they are wracked with shame and guilt over what has happened in the past. And you see, the way Proverbs 5 ends, if the Bible ended that way, would be horrible for all of us. I mean, this is how Proverbs 5 ends and all of us have iniquity. The iniquities of the wicked ensnare him. He's held fast in the cords of his sin.

He dies for lack of discipline and because of his great folly, he is led astray. You see, the reality is all of us, sexual sin, some other sin, all of us are condemned by our own past. Like we are condemned exactly because of the sins that we have committed before a holy and righteous God. But see, the thing is, we can be free from that. And many of you, you have been made free from that and today you just need to start to walk in that, to live in that.

Contrast the end of Proverbs 5 with Isaiah 53 verse 5. This is about Jesus, what he's done for us. He was pierced for our transgressions.

Just let that sit in. The abortion, the adultery, pornography addiction, some other sexual sin, he was pierced for every single bit of our transgressions. You can't think of one, you can't come up with one that Jesus was not pierced for. He was crushed for our iniquities. All of those sins, as heinous as some of them are in the sight of God, all of those sins, upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace. And with his wounds, we're healed.

Some of you today, you need that peace for just the very first time. You need to just say, Jesus, you died for me on the cross. Like, my sin was that bad that you had to literally die for it.

But you did that because you love me. And then you were buried and resurrected and if we believe that, we can have new life and Jesus can cleanse us. Like, our sins are as far as the east is from the west. Some of you guys today, maybe at one of the campuses, you need to believe that for the very first time. And there's no chain that Jesus can't break. But some of you, that's not the issue of believing it for the first time. You just, you have believed that, but you're just having trouble just walking in that. There's just shame from something in your past. There's guilt. You're like, I can never feel like I'm clean. But you can be, and Jesus can give you that. And so, I don't know what you need to do today in terms of belief-wise.

Like, man, come forward at the end of the service and talk to somebody. Maybe sit there in your chairs, we're singing, and just open your hands. Because if you have turned from that sin and repented and trusted Christ, you are forgiven. You are righteous. You are a perfect son or daughter in the sight of God. This song that we're going to sing to close today, and it's going to go into baptisms, and baptism, obviously, the perfect picture, the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus. But here's what one of the verses say, and I really want us all to internalize this today as we sing it. It says, now you're making me like you, clothing me in white, no matter what we did. Clothing me in white, bringing beauty from ashes, for you will have your bride, free of all the guilt, rid of all the shame, and known by her true name.

And that's why I sing. Let's pray together. God, I pray that you will bring freedom and healing and cleansing today. If we've trusted you, Jesus, I just know that Satan would want so many people here today to just continue to sit in the shame and guilt of their sin.

But, Jesus, you don't see them like that anymore. Because you have died for them, you were buried, you were resurrected from them. And so, Holy Spirit, I pray today that you will give people freedom, freedom from the current sin maybe that they're dealing with, or freedom from a sin from 20 years ago. Because in their gospel, there really truly is freedom, and I pray, God, that you would do that here today. I pray for the singles in our church, that you would give them strength to remain pure. I pray for the married couples, that you'd give them strength and endurance to remain pure and to pursue sex within their marriage and to pursue their spouse. God, I pray that you would bless the marriages of our church, and I pray this in Jesus' name. Amen.