The Sexual Captive, Part 2

Today on Summit Life with J.D.

Greer. Jesus liberates you from the power of sin not by holding out a reward in front of you for liberating yourself because you could never do that. Your captivity to sin was too great. Jesus liberates you by becoming your sin and suffering all of its consequences in your place. His last words on the cross were not go fix yourself.

His last words were it is finished. That is how he breaks the power of canceled sin and sets the prisoner free. The 1960s are often described as a period of sexual revolution when traditional morality was actually tossed aside and pieces of clothing were burned. And while that area definitely reframed the way sex was discussed in the public forum, the truth is that sexual sin is as old as time. I mean, shoot, just read the Bible and see it wreak its havoc. We're in a series called Can't Believe looking at different factors that hold people back from saving faith. And today's message is titled The Sexual Captive. Here he points them. John chapter 4, verse 4. Let's begin there.

The animosity between the Jews and the Samaritans stretched back nearly a thousand years. This woman was a Samaritan. And notice, by the way, the detail about it being the sixth hour when she went to the well. You know what hour that is? That's noon.

Ever been to the Middle East? You know what happens at noon? Everybody goes inside because it is way too hot to be walking around outside. That's not the time to go outside and do your daily chores. The fact that this woman is coming at noon, scholars say, is an indication that she's a social outcast. Jesus said to her, give me a drink. For his disciples, verse 8, had gone away into the city to find a Zaxby's or a Chick-fil-A or something to get some food. The Samaritan woman said to him, how is it that you would you ask for a drink from me? Verse 10, Jesus answered her, if you knew the gift of God and who it is that is saying to you, give me a drink, you would have asked him and he would have given you living water. Now at this point, of course, she thinks he's talking about H2O. So she says to him, verse 11, sir, you got nothing to draw water from.

Where are you going to get that living water? And are you saying that you're greater than our father Jacob? Is that what you're saying? He gave us, us, the Samaritans, he gave us the well and drank from it himself just like did his sons and his livestock. You hear that edge in her?

You hear that? She don't like him. Verse 13, Jesus, ever unflappable, said to her, everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty again. And the water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life. So the woman says to him, sir, give me this water so that I will not be thirsty or have to come here to draw water anymore.

Verse 16, so Jesus goes on. Jesus said to her, well, okay, go call your husband, get him, bring him back, come here, and I'll tell both of you about it. The woman looks back at him for probably another several seconds, awkward stare, and then she answers him, I have no husband. And Jesus said to her, you are right in saying I have no husband, for you have had five husbands, and the one that you are shacking up with now is not your husband. And I just wanted you to know that I knew about that, so in the statement that you made that you don't have a husband, what you said is true, boom roasted, that is in the Greek for that last part. But then, listen, then I think all at once, I think it suddenly made sense to this woman.

This whole water discussion, it made sense. You see, just like this woman came daily to this well to get water, this woman has gone to the well of romance, she has gone to the well of sex to satisfy the thirst of her soul. So verse 19, the woman now with a little more understanding says to him, sir, I perceive that you are a prophet.

Quick one, this one, yep. Verse 20, our fathers worshiped on this mountain, but you say that in Jerusalem is a place where people ought to worship. You see what she is doing? She doesn't want to go five marriages down deep into what is really wrong inside of her. She would rather fly around up here in the intellectual with hard theological doctrinal questions. So Jesus, see, calls her out on that, which leads to this long conversation that basically ends with Jesus telling this woman that God wants to know her in spirit and in truth, spirit and truth.

This woman wants to be known and loved, but she has never been able to find it. Jesus is going to give her that love, but he knew everything about her. He showed her that by the questions with the husbands, and he spoke complete acceptance to her. From there, I want you to flip over in your Bible and go to John chapter 8.

Let's look at the second of these really, really quickly. We're going to look at the beginning of verse 3. The scribes and the Pharisees brought a woman to Jesus who had been caught in adultery. And placing her in the midst, they said to him, Teacher, this woman has been caught in the act of adultery.

Now, in the law, you see, Moses commanded us to stone such women. So what do you say? They're setting up a test for him to see what he's going to do. And so Jesus, if you know the story, kind of kneels down. He starts to write in the dirt. What was he writing in the dirt? I don't know. Nobody knows.

Anybody that tells you they do know is just making that up. But after a while, Jesus looks up and he says, all right, you want to stone her? Let he who was without sin cast the first stone. Now another awkward silence pursues as they all kind of stare at each other, knowing that they all have sinned, and one by one they drop their rocks and go home. So then this woman looks back at Jesus and she says to Jesus, essentially, are you going to stone me too? And Jesus said, you see the rocks in my hand?

Where are your accusers? And she said, I have none left, Lord. And he says, verse 11, What is probably the most remarkable statement that gives us the greatest picture of the gospel that you might ever have heard, Neither do I condemn you. Go and from now on sin no more. What captivates me about Jesus' response to her, listen, is the order of what he said.

Do you see it? Neither do I condemn you. Go and sin no more.

What captivates me is I would tend to flip the order of those. I would say, if you don't go and sin anymore, then I won't condemn you. But he was telling her to change, not in order to gain acceptance.

He was telling her to change because she had been accepted. You see religion does the opposite. Religion always, every religion in the world, all of them tell you that change comes first and your acceptance with God is conditioned upon the change. But the gospel flips that on its head. It tells us that change comes from acceptance, not toward it. You see, Jesus knew that this woman would never have the ability to break free of the idolatry that led her to adultery until she felt the embrace of a God that was better than what she had sought in the arms of the adulterer.

Listen, this is very important because this is what makes the gospel message absolutely unique. God's acceptance is the power that liberates us from sin. It is not the reward for having liberated ourselves. God's acceptance is the power that liberates you from sin. It is not the reward for you having liberated yourself. Salvation is a gift that is given to undeserving people while they are undeserving, like this woman.

And it is that gift that lifts them out of their captivity to sin. Which means that when I talk to a high school girl who has lost her virginity, I don't just tell her about the dangers of venereal disease or the shamefulness of the act or what she is doing to mess up her future marriage. I also tell her that there is a God who cared about her so much that he left heaven to come after her, who took upon himself the shame of her sinful actions so that he could wash her in his precious blood and make her pure and holy again in his sight. Because I know the only way she will ever break the stronghold of idolatry that led her to those disastrous decisions is by seeing that there is a father whose attention is better than what she craved in the arms of a boy. Or to the guy who has fallen yet again to pornography.

Or girl. I tell them yes. Yes, I explain how damaging pornography is to them. But I also tell them to the man, 1 Corinthians 11, 7, that according to what Paul says, you are the glory of God and Jesus died to make you the glory of God. He died to wash you. He purchased you so that you would be the glory of God. He made you a new creation in him that is called the glory of God.

Which means you are not an animal. You are the glory of God. You are not a pervert. You are the glory of God.

You are not an addict. You are the glory of God. You are not a victim. You are the glory of God.

You are not a fool. You are the glory of God. Jesus purchased you to make you such.

Now live that way. That is the way the Gospel speaks. And his acceptance is given to you, my brother, as a gift regardless of whether you ever in this life overcome that struggle with pornography.

Because his acceptance is not conditioned on how well you do with various simple struggles. His acceptance is based on the end that Christ made to sin once for all. You see, Jesus liberates you from the power of sin, not by holding out a reward in front of you for liberating yourself because you could never do that. Your captivity to sin was too great. Jesus liberates you by becoming your sin and suffering all of its consequences in your place. His last words on the cross were not, go fix yourself. His last words were, it is finished. That is how he breaks the power of cancelled sin and sets the prisoner free.

That is the way we sing it in the old hymn. Because his blood releases us from the penalty of our sin which cancels it, but the greatness of the sacrifice releases us from the power of sin that enslaves us. You see, the Gospel of the Gospel of John is that at the end of this book, as at the end of every Gospel, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, Jesus would pay the full penalty for the sexual sin of both these women. In him, they would be fully known and fully loved. He would become their shame. He would be displayed naked. He would be exposed. He would take their sin and their sorrow and make it his very own. He would become their shame so they could become his righteousness.

He would be clothed in their sin so they could drink from him the living water that satisfied their soul. So see, from these stories I have three, what I would think are revolutionary ideas for those for whom sex keeps you from fully following Jesus. Three revolutionary ideas for those who are sexually captive.

The first one is this, number one. You've got to understand, number one, that sex is not just a physical thing. It's not just a physical thing. You see, in the pagan world, and again in our world today, in the pagan world outside of Israel, the kind of world that Paul was going into, they thought sex was just, it's just a body, it's an urge, it's biology.

It's like eating a meal or taking a nap. The Bible took a much, much higher, much more exalted view on sex. Paul says this, 1 Corinthians 6, look at this, flee from sexual immorality. Every other sin that a person commits, watch this, is outside the body.

Let me think about the logic there. If I steal from you, then I've taken something from you. I've done the damage to you.

You lose, I benefit. He said but the one who, watch this, the sexually immoral person sins not only against the person that he is having sex with, that too, but he sins against his own body. He does something destructive to his or her own body. The Bible presents sex as a covenant relationship in which physical oneness is to be accompanied by oneness in every other area. Financial oneness, spiritual oneness, emotional oneness, oneness of residence, by a lifelong covenant. Sex outside of that kind of covenant is half human.

It is oneness in one area without the other. It only takes one part of the way that God designed the human being and makes unity in it. It's like a zombie. You know what makes a zombie scary? They kind of look human, they walk, but then they don't have a soul.

That makes them scary. When you have sex outside of this covenant of lifelong marriage, it's like a zombie version of sex. Because there's a body, but it's just without the soul union that God designed it to be a part of that. God designed human beings as a psychosomatic unity, which means a unity of body and soul. Which means body, mind, emotions, and soul are all interconnected.

And thus physical oneness is to be matched by oneness in every other area, united in a lifelong covenant. Having sex outside of that full person covenant unity tears apart the integrity of the person. It rips you apart. It disintegrates you. I've been reading a book recently called Hooked. It's a scientific study written by a couple of neurologists showing that multiple sexual partners, having multiple sexual partners, especially when you're young, showing what it does to your brain. And they make the case that it actually rewires your brain in a way that makes genuine, lasting, selfless relationships much more difficult. By the way, this is not a Christian book, and the writers appear to have no Christian or religious agenda at all.

It's just a scientific study. They say this, I quote, Listen, the individual who goes from sex partner to sex partner is causing his or her brain to mold in such a way that eventually accepts that sexual pattern as normal. The pattern of changing sex partners, therefore, seems to damage their ability to bond in a committed relationship. Which is why they say, they do this whole thing about young girls who have sex early, end up having multiple sexual partners and a real inability to ever, many of them, have real trouble having this kind of covenant loyalty, this kind of bond with their husband. The kind of attachment damage that occurs after repeated sexual encounters is, in many respects, more pernicious than pregnancy or STDs.

Because it typically goes unperceived by affected individuals while causing ongoing difficulties in establishing a lifelong and satisfying relationship. The authors use the metaphor of tape, which you've probably heard before. You think if you took a piece of duct tape and you put it around my arm, which has a lot of hair on it, and then you ripped off that piece of duct tape, this is not a pleasant experience for me. Because when you have ripped off that piece of duct tape, I've got little pieces of the tape that are on my arm and a lot of my arm and a hair that are now on that duct tape. And so you need to take that piece of duct tape that's got pieces of me all over it and you go over to somebody else and you wrap it around their arm, and you do the same, it's going to have a little bit of the same effect but not quite as much because it's lost some of its stickiness.

You do that seven or eight times and then it has no more ability to be able to unite to the arm that you're putting it around. And these authors say there's something like that happening in this sexual act. That what is happening is the brain is actually being rewired so that it's not able to form that kind of bond as easily. They say you can no more try out sex than you can try out birth. The very act of sex produces a new reality in you that cannot be undone. You don't want to read the book and say congratulations, you came up with the exact same thing the Apostle Paul said in 1 Corinthians 6. The one who sins immorally and the one who sins sexually sins against his own body. There was an article in the Telegraph which is like London's New York Times, and the article was praising the sexual revolution in the 1960s and saying basically that we need to go ahead and finish it. We need to go ahead and finish it, marriage needs to be at least minimized. The author said this and I quote, Sex is no more a moral issue than eating a good meal.

The fact that we eat most meals at home with spouses and partners does not preclude eating out in restaurants to sample different cuisines and ambiances. Really? Is that all it is? Intuitively you know that's not true.

You know that intuitively. In fact I thought this was fascinating. A couple of weeks ago if you were paying attention to the news a woman died by the name of Helen Gurley Brown. Anybody remember her? She was in the 1960s, she was one of the most outspoken advocates of the whole free sex, free love, you know hippie movement in the 1960s. She became one of the leading voices for the ongoing sexual liberation and was the editor of Cosmo magazine for a couple of decades. Well she died when the Atlantic ran an article in her last week that said this, listen. She as a major, probably the major proponent of the sexual liberation movement was also a living contradiction. Who argued that being the single girl was the ideal but then she married. And argued that married men were fair game for adulterous affairs but then drew the line with other women at her husband.

C.S. Lewis said one of the ways you know people's philosophies don't work is when they don't live according to it themselves. When they have to borrow from other people's systems of morality because for all their vaulted philosophy when it comes down to actually get through life it just doesn't work. The Bible presents sex as a profound union between two people and I would submit to you that even those of you in here who don't consider yourself Christians, if you have to choose between those two realities which you really have to, it's nothing but biology or it's part of a whole person union, all of you know. All of you know that that latter description is the right one.

I don't mean that to be heavy handed, I'm just saying look at your heart. You know that's how you're made. The Bible presents sex as a profound union between two people. Girls when a guy wants to have sex with you outside of marriage what they're saying to you essentially is this, I want union with your body now but I don't want the rest of you.

C.S. Lewis had a great analogy for this. He said the guy who wants to have sex with a girl without marrying her is like the person who likes to taste food but then doesn't want the calories from it so he regurgitates it. So girls, when a guy wants to have sex with you and not marry you it means that he looks at the real you the way that you would look at the saturated fats and the empty calories in a bag of Doritos. He just likes to taste. That's why I tell girls like never believe anything a guy says after 8 p.m. If you didn't say it before 8 p.m. he don't mean it.

It's just a way to get one part of you. He doesn't want the rest of you. Oh but we love each other. Then let him put a ring on your finger and make that a lifelong covenant.

If he doesn't have the backbone to do that you and he both know he can walk away at any minute. That union is brought together as a lifelong covenant. Now y'all before I go on to our next point. What I'm trying to do in that point is just get you to see that God's rules are not arbitrary. God's the designer. God has reasons for what he does.

That's all I'm trying to get you to see. But I also need you to see that at the end of the day we obey what God says not because it makes the most sense to us. We obey it because he's God. Because there may be some of you that aren't convinced by what I just said.

You're like ah the tape thing I don't buy that blah blah blah you know whatever you just make stuff up. Fine okay if that's where you are I want you to the reason that we obey is because Jesus is God. And because Jesus makes the rules. And Jesus gives his word. Hebrews 13 4. Marriage is honorable and all and the bed is undefiled but the sexually immoral and the adulterous God will judge. I've often said to you that if you're the kind of person who has to be persuaded that Jesus is right about something before you'll obey him.

Then you probably need to seriously rethink the whole concept of lordship. Jesus did not come to give a party platform that you're supposed to vote on. He didn't come looking for followers to ratify his platform. He came as the Lord who gave commands and said these commands are to be obeyed. And we obey him not because his ideas make better sense than the other ideas out there in the marketplace.

We obey him because he is the God of the universe who died for our sins and was raised from the dead. So I just want to make sure that we keep that in perspective in all this. And I say this, listen, as your pastor having seen this so many times that it's hard to even. It's beyond description. There is nothing, nothing that will destroy the work of God in you faster than sexual sin.

Nothing. You may say that you can't believe because of the sin in your life, the guilt and shame are too much. But in Christ, you have the absolute approval of the only one whose opinion actually matters.

Jesus lived and died and most importantly defeated death so that we can be forgiven. In fact, that's what we celebrate this weekend. He is enough. Thank you for joining us today for Summit Life with J.D.

Greer. And heading into Easter weekend, we want to make sure that you have a local church family no matter where you are. At the Summit Church, we've set a goal to plant 1000 new churches in our generation, but we're not doing that just to get more Summit churches, right J.D.? Yeah, Molly, we embraced a while ago the understanding that for us to fulfill the Great Commission and what's going to happen through the Summit Church getting larger and larger, it's to be a part of a church planting movement, a disciple making movement. Our desire is to lift up other churches, to bless other churches, to spawn other movements, to raise up leaders from our own church and send them out to plant new independent churches. We would love for you to be a part of that mission because there's a reason we think that you're listening to this program.

We want to invite you to go from just being a listener to being part of the mission. And we've actually got new churches beginning in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in Miami, Florida, Nashville, Tennessee. If you're in one of those areas, and many of you right now are listening in one of those areas, or you've got family or friends in those cities who need a local church community, I want you to listen up and write these churches' names down, okay? In Miami, check out Reality Church. In Pittsburgh, Steel City Church. And Proclamation Church in Nashville who was started by one of our most beloved Summit staff members, Derek Delane.

If you go to jdgrier.com, there's a link in the bottom footer of every page that has a list of all the churches that we planted in the United States, and you can see whether there's one in a city where you are or in a city where you know somebody, you could encourage them to be a part of what God is doing through that church and that city there. While you're on the website, make sure that you take a second look at our latest resource. It's a study guide called Scent, The Book of Acts, Volume 1, and today is your last chance to get it. Ask for your copy today when you donate the suggested $25 or more. Just give us a call at 866-335-5220. That's 866-335-5220.

Or ask for the Acts study guide when you give online at jdgrier.com. Ten percent of every dollar given to Summit Life goes back out to support new churches, so don't forget to check out that link to all of our Summit collaborative churches around the country, and there's even one in the UK. I'm Molly Bidevich inviting you to join us again next week as we continue our series called Can't Believe, here on Summit Life with J.D. Greer. Have a wonderful Easter celebration this weekend, and we'll see you on Monday. Today's program was produced and sponsored by J.D. Greer Ministries.