Hey, podcast listeners. Thanks for streaming today's podcast from Pathway to Victory. Pathway to Victory is a nonprofit ministry featuring the Bible teaching of Dr. Robert Jeffress. Our mission is to pierce the darkness with the light of God's word through the most effective media available, like this podcast. To support Pathway to Victory, go to ptv.org slash podcast and click the donate button or follow the link in our show notes. Now here's today's podcast from Pathway to Victory.
Thanks to the horrific attack on Israel. I've written a brand new book called Are We Living in the End Times? Go to ptv.org to order your copy. Welcome to Pathway to Victory with author and pastor, Dr. Robert Jeffress. Few blunders create so much regret and devastation as sexual sin.
An intimate moment between two people when shared outside of God's boundaries of marriage can destroy relationships and ruin plans for the future. Today on Pathway to Victory, Dr. Robert Jeffress explains how to pick up the pieces after committing sexual sin. Now here's our Bible teacher to introduce today's message.
Dr. Jeffress. Thanks, David, and welcome again to Pathway to Victory. Before we get started with today's message on saying goodbye to regret, I'd like to remind you that Pathway to Victory publishes a magazine.
Did you realize that? And I'm hoping you'll reach out today so that you can benefit from the spiritual enrichment contained in this exclusive publication. Pathway magazine is filled with articles on Christian living and even daily devotional thoughts to guide you every day. And when you go online to ptv.org and follow the simple instructions, I'd be happy to send your first edition at no cost to you.
Your first copy of Pathway magazine is my gift to you just for getting in touch with us today. And then I've written a best-selling book that I'd love to send you as well. In my book, Say Goodbye to Regret, I'll help you address one of the biggest hangups in the Christian life. You see, lugging around the emotional baggage caused by regret is exhausting. I can't promise to erase whatever problems or sins that caused your regret, but I can certainly show you God's plan for helping you release it. Maybe it was a bad financial investment, perhaps a poor career choice. Whatever the case, I want you to own this 200-page book, Say Goodbye to Regret.
It's yours when you give a generous gift to support the ministry of Pathway to Victory. Some people carry regret over shameful sexual behavior. It lingers in your mind like a bad dream. Well, today we're going to talk about this intimate part of our lives, and I'll help you see God's plan to transform your shame into forgiveness. I titled today's message, Say Goodbye to Sexual Regrets.
It wasn't long ago that I received this letter from one of our viewers that really sets the stage for the message today. The man wrote, Dear Dr. Jeffress, three years ago I got involved with a woman at work. My wife never knew what was going on, but I was crushed with such unbearable guilt that I voluntarily ended the affair. I confessed my sin to God and felt like He forgave me, but that didn't seem to be enough. I felt like I needed to tell my wife what I had done and seek her forgiveness as well.
That was two years ago, and she still has not been able to forgive me or God for allowing the affair to happen in the first place. I know that God has forgiven me, but my question is this, why hasn't God erased the consequences of my sin? God's forgiveness doesn't seem to mean much if my wife and I are doomed to feeling this unbearable regret for the rest of our lives.
Perhaps you can identify with this man. Perhaps in your past there is an act of sexual immorality that resulted in some very unwanted circumstances, the breakup of a relationship, an unwanted pregnancy, a sexually transmitted disease. And even though you've asked God and you believe you've received from God forgiveness for that mistake, the consequences keep going on and on. Every time you think about that mistake, you want to kick yourself mentally, but your anger toward yourself is tempered by your anger toward God.
If God really forgives us, completely forgives us, why doesn't he make the painful consequences go away? That's what we're going to talk about today as we look at what the Bible says about saying goodbye to sexual regrets. You know, in my experience as a pastor, I have found that regrets about immorality tend to rank among the top regrets that people have.
Why is that? Let's talk about the why of sexual regrets for just a moment. You know, one of the downsides of preaching for many years and writing books is that people can go back and find what you've said in the past. And some of the things I have said in the past I wish I could retrieve, but they live forever on videotape or on the printed page.
One of the things I would change that I used to say all of the time is this. I used to say, God doesn't grade sin. All sin is the same in God's eyes.
Well, there's a technical sense in which that's true. Any sin, no matter how small we think it is, is enough to separate us from God. But it's not all true that all sins have the same consequences. Some sins have more consequences than others. For example, we know from our study of the Sermon on the Mount that if you hate somebody in your heart, Jesus says that's the same thing as murder. But nobody's ever fried in the electric chair for anger. That's never gotten somebody convicted and executed. We know from Jesus' teaching that lust, lusting after somebody is the same as committing adultery in your heart.
But nobody's ever gotten pregnant from a sexual fantasy. So there are different consequences. All sin is not the same. And it's certainly true that sexual sin is not the same as any other kind of sin. Listen to what Paul says in 1 Corinthians 6, 15 through 19.
Look at this carefully. Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ? Shall I then take away the members of Christ and make them members of a prostitute?
May it never be. Now this word prostitute doesn't mean somebody who stands on the street corner selling sexual favors. That is a prostitute, but it's a word that means somebody loose in their morals. Verse 16, or do you not know that the one who joins himself to a prostitute is one body with her? For God says the two shall become one flesh. But the one who joins himself to the Lord is one spirit with him.
Flee immorality. Every other sin that a man commits outside the body, but the immoral man sins against his own body. Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit who is in whom you have from God and that you are not your own? You know, critics of Christianity say, you Christians, you're just so hung up about sex. Why do you make a big deal about sex? I mean, sex is a physiological action.
It's no different than eating food or taking a drink of water or going to sleep. It's just a function of the body. Why make a big deal about sex? Well, sex is more than just a physiological function. There are now physical consequences of immorality. It is something that is doomed to consequences if you dabble in immorality. Unwanted pregnancies, sexually transmitted diseases are some of the things that we experience and can experience if we disobey God in this area of sexuality. Now, I know some people say, well, that was back in Paul's day, but we're so smart today, we can prevent those kind of physical consequences of immorality, just use a condom. Well, I did some research this week, did a little internet search to find out the statistics about condoms. Did you know condoms fail 18% of the time? Now, just imagine you went out to DFW Airport. You're about to get on board a plane and the ticket agent said on the intercom, now before you board, you should know that there's an 18% chance this plane is going to crash today. How likely would you be to get on the plane?
Probably not very likely. Listen, there is no safe sex when it comes to God. You cannot safely sin against God without consequences. One of those consequences may be the physical consequences, but that's not all. There are emotional consequences of immorality that leave regrets in our heart.
Why do those emotions run so hot? Because sex is not just the joining of two bodies together. It's the joining together of a person in body, soul, and spirit. And God said that about marriage in Genesis 2 24. So then they are no longer two, but one flesh.
What God has joined together, let no man tear apart. And there is emotional pain that is associated with sexual immorality. Finally, there are spiritual consequences of sexual immorality. That's why it's different than any other kind of sin. Look at what Paul says in 1 Corinthians 6 19. Or do you not know that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God, and that you're not your own? When you are a Christian, you have the Holy Spirit of God dwelling within you. And when you sin, any kind of sin, you're asking the Holy Spirit to join in that sin as well. That's why Ephesians 5 says, do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God. But when you're involved in sexual sin, now this is going to be blasphemous to some of you, but just think about it, when you join yourself to another person, you're inviting the Holy Spirit of God to participate in that act of immorality as well.
You say, well that's impossible. The Holy Spirit of God can't sin. If he's in you, he can't sin. Well, where does he go then? Does he abandon you? No, that's heresy to say that the Holy Spirit abandons somebody who's been baptized with the Spirit of God.
Where does he go if you're involved in sexual immorality? Listen to James 1 verse 15. We're going to study James next year, but here's a preview. James 1 15. He's writing to Christians, by the way. He says, when lust has conceived, it gives birth to sin. And when sin is accomplished, it brings forth death. The result of sin, especially sexual sin for a Christian, is death. That word thanatos means separation.
What kind of separation is he talking about? Physical death? Physical death is the separation of our spirit from our body. Do we die the moment we sin? Thankfully not.
It would all be six feet under this morning. He's not talking about physical death. Well, then is he talking about spiritual death? Spiritual death is the separation of our spirit from God. Well, not if we are in Christ Jesus.
We don't have to worry about eternal separation. What kind of death is he talking about? I believe when a Christian engages in continual unrepentant sin, he goes into a death-like kind of existence, where there is a separation in some spiritual sense between that person and God. I think it's a separation Jesus experienced on the cross when he voluntarily took on our sins. He experienced the abandonment by God.
Remember what he said? My God, my God, why have you, what, forsaken me? James is saying in some sense when you're involved in sin, especially immorality, and it's unrepentant sin, you are separated from God. When sin is accomplished, it brings forth death. No, all sex is not like all other sin.
There's a special consequence of sin, both physically, emotionally, and spiritually, especially sexual sin. We've got a great illustration of that straight from the Bible. In 2 Samuel chapter 11, the story of King David.
Remember David's story? He was at the zenith of his power as king. He had just recovered the Ark of the Covenant. He had captured or defeated the northern kingdom.
Jerusalem was the new capital. It had never gotten any better than what David was experiencing. And yet at that high point, that's when temptation came. One night when he should have been out fighting with his men, he was taking some time off. He was just resting when he looked out his window and noticed a beautiful woman bathing on the rooftop of her house. Her name was Bathsheba, and you know the rest of the story.
He ordered her to come over to his place. They engaged in immorality. She conceived a child. David tried to cover it up by having her husband killed. The Bible says eventually David sought and received the forgiveness of God. But for those six to 12 months he tried to hide his sin, he experienced physical, emotional, and spiritual consequences of his sin.
For example, he talks about the physical consequences. It was as a result of his sin that his child, Bathsheba's child, was born dead, died shortly after he was born. Not only that, they experienced the rebellion of a kingdom, a divided nation. All of those things were physical consequences of David's sin. And interestingly, he continued to experience those consequences after he was forgiven by God. Not only that, there were emotional consequences for his sin.
Listen to what he writes in Psalm 32 verses 3 and 4. When I kept silent about my sin, my body wasted away through my groaning all day long. For day and night your hand was heavy upon me, and my vitality was drained away as with the fever heat of the summer. We know all about the fever heat of the summer, don't we?
Isn't it just draining to even walk outside to open the door? It just saps the energy out of you. Well, David's talking about the emotional vitality that God sapped out of him the moment he refused to confess his sin. You see, worry drains us, physically and emotionally. If you're involved in sexual immorality like David was, you're always worried that somebody's going to find out, or somebody's going to read the text message, or somebody's going to overhear a conversation.
You're afraid that if your deed is found out, you might get expelled from school or you might get fired from your job. It's worry, worry, worry. That's exactly what David experienced when he tried to cover over his sin. Those were the emotional consequences.
But there were spiritual consequences as well. He said during that time that he didn't confess his sin, he said, God, your heavy hand was upon me. There are some of you here, some of you watching on television, you're feeling the heavy hand of God. You're engaged in sin and you've covered over it instead of confessing it, and you feel like the sword of Damocles is hanging over your head. You just have this sense that God is not going to let you get away with this, that discipline, punishment is coming. And so every ache and pain you feel, every sickness you experience, every upheaval in your family, every financial setback you experience, you're thinking, is this God disciplining me?
That's what it means to feel the heavy hand of God. Now, David ultimately found God's forgiveness, but forgiveness did not erase these painful consequences. Why is it that God allows us to experience his grace, but that grace doesn't erase the consequences? Chuck Swindoll has a great word about the difference between grace and consequences. He writes, grace means that God in forgiving you does not kill you. Grace means that God in forgiving you gives you the strength to endure the consequences. Grace frees us so that we can obey our Lord. It does not mean sin's consequences are automatically removed. If I sin and in the process of sinning break my arm, when I find forgiveness from sin, I still have to deal with the broken bone. There's some of you right now who have great regret over a sexual mistake you've made and you're wondering, how can I deal with that? Is my life going to be miserable from here on out?
No, it doesn't have to be. But many of you are here at this stage in your life and you're wondering, how can I prevent regrets about sexuality in the future? And we're going to talk about both of those. First of all, if you are guilty of sexual immorality, number one, acknowledge your need for God's forgiveness. Acknowledge your need for God's forgiveness. We have to acknowledge that if we're going to be forgiven of our sin, we have to acknowledge that we need God's forgiveness, that we can't pay for it ourselves. And that leads to the second thing we need to do, and that is we need to receive God's forgiveness. Now here's the great news of the gospel.
Even though I can't deposit anything in my heavenly bank account, there stands somebody who can and is willing if we ask him to. That's what Jesus Christ did when he died on the cross for our sins. In 2 Corinthians 5 21, remember that passage? God made him Jesus who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in him.
I used that illustration a few weeks ago of the two books with the two covers, the story of Robert Jefferson, the story of Jesus Christ, and how God switched the covers at the cross so that Jesus took all of my spiritual debit, so to speak, and he gave me all his righteousness credits so that when I become a Christian, God takes all of the righteousness of Jesus and he deposits it in my spiritual bank account. So it doesn't matter how many checks I write against it, I cannot deplete the wonderful riches of the grace of God. That's what becoming a Christian means, but if I'm going to receive God's forgiveness, I have to ask for it. 1 John 1.9, if we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us of all unrighteousness. We must acknowledge we need God's forgiveness, but secondly, we must receive God's forgiveness. The moment we become a Christian, God forgives us. Look at Colossians 2, verse 13. When you were dead in your transgressions and the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made you alive together with Christ, and here's the best part, having forgiven us what?
All. All our transgressions. When Christ forgives you, he doesn't forgive you just of those little itty-bitty sins.
I'm sorry I didn't smile at you today. Not just the little sins. He forgives us of those humongous sins. He forgives us of that sin you hope to God nobody will ever discover. All of those sins he has forgiven.
He has nailed to the cross of Jesus Christ and said to Telestai, paid in full, it is finished. That's the great news of the gospel, and that's the forgiveness that awaits everyone. Well, Pastor, you said I'm forgiven, but that doesn't erase the consequences. How can there be anything positive that comes from these painful consequences? Even the consequences, ladies and gentlemen, is a sign of God's grace.
Let me show you what I mean. Number three, view your adverse consequences from immorality as a vaccination against future mistakes. Solomon talks about that over and over again. He has a word for consequences.
They're called reproofs. Throughout the book of Proverbs, you find Solomon saying that we need to learn from the reproofs of life. God allows us to experience the faithful consequences of our sin to inoculate us against future similar mistakes. Historically, maybe the church has been too careful in addressing sexual regrets, but in a world that's spinning out of control, I'm convinced that God doesn't want me to be silent. So thank you for allowing me to talk about this highly personal subject. There's still much more I want to say, and we set aside tomorrow's Pathway to Victory to continue.
Please be sure to join us then. Then remember that I've written a best-selling book in which I dig deeper into this topic and nine others as well. The book is titled Say Goodbye to Regret. The subtitle is Living Beyond the Would-Haves, Could-Haves, and Should-Haves. If you're ready to face those sad things that occurred earlier in life, and if you're ready to let God guide you through them, then I highly commend this book to you and your friends. And I'm pleased to send you a copy of Say Goodbye to Regret when you give a generous gift to support the ministry of Pathway to Victory.
It's January, and many of us are making resolutions and getting a fresh start. Along those lines, I'm inviting you to become one of our loyal monthly givers. We call them our Pathway Partners. By signing up and giving a much-needed gift every month, you become the vehicle God uses to beam Pathway to Victory into your town and even around the world. David will explain all the details for becoming a Pathway Partner, and I look forward to hearing from you today.
David? Thanks, Dr. Jeffress. Today, when you give a generous gift to support Pathway to Victory, we'll say thanks by sending you Dr. Jeffress' best-selling book, Say Goodbye to Regret. Plus, if you opt to make your gift a monthly donation, your generosity will have 12 times the impact over the course of one year, and you'll be helping us to get one step closer to our goal of 1,200 Pathway Partners for the month of January. To request resources or to become a Pathway Partner, call us toll-free, 866-999-2965, or visit ptv.org.
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Again, that's P.O. Box 223609, Dallas, Texas, 75222. I'm David J. Mullins, inviting you back Friday for part two of the message, Say Goodbye to Sexual Regrets, here on Pathway to Victory. Pathway to Victory with Dr. Robert Jeffress comes from the pulpit of the First Baptist Church of Dallas, Texas. Even though we don't know the date when Jesus will return, we need to have our finger on the pulse of what's happening today. So, in response to the war in Israel, Dr. Robert Jeffress has written a brand-new book. It's called Are We Living in the End Times?
In light of increasing chaos, division and warfare in our world, this really is a fair question. Request your copy of Are We Living in the End Times by going to ptv.org. You made it to the end of today's podcast from Pathway to Victory, and we're so glad you're here. Pathway to Victory relies on the generosity of loyal listeners like you to make this podcast possible. One of the most impactful ways you can give is by becoming a Pathway Partner. Your monthly gift will empower Pathway to Victory to share the gospel of Jesus Christ and help others become rooted more firmly in His word. To become a Pathway Partner, go to ptv.org slash podcast and click on the donate button or follow the link in our show notes. We hope you've been blessed by today's podcast from Pathway to Victory.
