Just Sex? Part 2

Today on Summit Life with J.D.

Greer. If sex is never a part of your earthly life, that's okay because you realize that every time you pray, you pray to the most joy-filled, happy, fulfilled man ever to walk the face of the earth and he never had sex. And that means that your life can have satisfaction and meaning and fulfillment because that's only temporary and it's only partial, but what is eternal and what is blessed is the forever family. Remember having the talk with mom and dad about the birds and the bees? Some of you are shuddering as I remind you of that awkwardness, aren't you? Well, today on Summit Life, Pastor J.D. will be sharing biblical truth as it relates to our sexuality. Like yesterday, I'd like to begin by advising that today's program perhaps isn't suitable for young children, so if you need to change the channel, we understand.

But you can listen to the full message free of charge anytime at jdgreer.com. Let's rejoin Pastor J.D. now as he continues our forever family teaching series and shows us how to dispel the myths about sex with biblical truth, all so that we can see it as a beautiful echo of what God has planned for us as part of his eternal family.

Open your Bibles to 1 Corinthians chapter 6 and let's jump in. Porn rewires your brain to think of sex as just the selfish satisfaction of an urge. And when you train your mind that way, later when you get married, your ability to gauge in sex like God designed it as a fusion of souls where two people offer themselves to each other in self-giving love. That capacity is significantly diminished.

And by the way, if you are married and you're nurturing on the side, it is killing your capacity to have fulfilling sex between you and your partner in your marriage. Andy Stanley says that every time you look at pornography, you rewire your soul to believe three things. Number one, you're telling your soul a real body is not good enough. Number two, only one body is not good enough.

And number three, your wife's body is not good enough. Because no woman, no matter how beautiful she is, can live up to what you see in porn. Naomi Wolf, who is a pretty radical feminist.

She was advisor to both President Clinton and presidential candidate Gore. She said, for most men, real naked women are just bad porn anymore. No man, she says, has ever gorged himself on porn and then put it behind him after marriage because his wife met all his porn fantasies. Instead, the opposite happens. It retrains your appetite so that you can't be happy with sex in marriage. Pornography before marriage destroys sex in marriage.

Trying to tell you porn is not a pastime. It is a pathway. It is a pathway to change fundamentally who you are.

And it's not over here in one little corner of your life. It rewires you. It leads to higher rates of depression, lower rates of sexual satisfaction. It has destroyed, no telling how many marriages. Do not think that you can keep it over in one little corner and just put it away when you get married.

That's not how your brain, that's not how Paul would say your soul works. A relationship with all future women. You need to get rid of it today. And if you are not willing to address this in your life, then I challenge you. I challenge you to at least have the decency to tell your girlfriend or your fiancee that this is not something you're able to deal with or want to deal with so that she knows what you're bringing into their relationship because she has a right to know.

That way she can go ahead and get out now if she wants to rather than have you destroy her heart later. This is nothing to play around with. One psychiatrist said porn is more enslaving to people than heroin, statistically speaking. And what's scary is that the porn industry markets itself to 12 to 13 year olds.

And they know that it only takes three days to become an addict. So can I just say, by the way, right here, parents, if you let your kids have phones in their rooms by themselves at night in a home without a filter on the internet, I'm not trying to judge you. I'm not trying to tell you, you don't know how to parent your kid and I know so much better, but I just have to think you're being incredibly naive, incredibly naive as to what is actually happening.

You might as well give them a loaded gun that they can cock and sleep and they're put under their pillow at night. Again, I'm not trying to judge you or tell you you don't know what you're doing. I'm just trying to tell you to wake up to what's happening and wake up to what's going on out there and to the power of these things and the way that they are being marketed to your 12 and 13 year olds. Now, again, I directed a lot of this issue toward men, but in our society it's become just as much one for women in every way.

And let me just go ahead and say it, okay? Romance novels function like pornography for women. These romance novels are soft porn for women made mainstream. They are not romantic. They are not harmless fantasy. They're destroying you.

The 50 Shades of Grey erotica series, which is the best selling fiction book of the last decade sold more than 100 million copies worldwide. There's nothing but pornography that Paul would say is sinning against soul and destruction. They're destroying you and destroying your marriage and your future marriage.

Every other sin a person commits is outside the body, but the sexually immoral person says he gets his own body. Now I realize that at this point, some of you, you're probably feeling pretty overwhelmed because you're sitting here and you're like, this has been my life. You see, I'm a little bit of a tough spot here, I'll be honest, because there's a part of me that wants to tell you the dangers of sin. And I'm going to do that.

I've tried to do that as clearly as I can. I'll tell you the reason God has these restrictions is because it's not because he wants to keep you from something because he has something for you. But at the same time, the main message of this church is not that this is the way you're supposed to live and this is the life you're supposed to live.

And if not, well, you totally messed yourself up. The main message of this church is that we have a savior who came to live the life we were supposed to live and didn't. And then he died to death that we were condemned to die in our place. See, Jesus was called the man of sorrow.

Some of you, your sexual mistakes have brought all kinds of sorrow into your life. Man of sorrows means that Jesus took those sorrows into himself so that he could make you new in him so he could say, though your sins are like scarlet, I can make him as white as snow. And after he died on the cross, he rose from the dead. And what that resurrection was showing you is that there is no deadness that sin has put into your life that he cannot resurrect. There is nothing that sin is broken that he cannot repair. There's nothing that sin is stolen that he cannot restore.

And so he says, come to me because I can make all things new. One of my favorite verses related to this is what the prophet Joel says in the book of Joel. He says, I can restore, God says, I can restore what the locusts have eaten. The locusts were a sign of God's judgment.

They were a sign of God's judgment that came in because of Israel's sin and God said that when Israel repented, not only did he tell the locusts to stop, he actually said, I can restore all that stuff that they ate. What kind of God of grace are we talking about? God of grace says, not only will I stop the curse, I actually go back to all the places your sin brought the curse and I'll repair it. That means that those of you that sexual sin has destroyed your soul.

It has destroyed your marriage. Well see, there is a fountain filled with blood drawn from Emmanuel's veins and sinners plunged beneath that flood lose all their guilty stain. Man of sorrows, what a name for the son of God who came.

Why ruin sinners to reclaim? Hallelujah, what a savior. I was up here trying to show you that the real dangers of sin, I don't want you to lose the fact that what this message is about is it's about a savior.

I don't stand up here and preach the law as important as the law is. I want to tell you about redemption. I want to tell you about hope.

I want to tell you about a savior who took sin into his own body and overcame it so that he could restore you. My friend Matt Chandler, he and I are about the same age. He's a pastor out in Dallas. He says that when he and I were both, I didn't know him when we were young, but back then the thing was the true love waits rally. Remember that true love waits? Every youth group every year went to true love waits. It was a good thing, but it was kind of like getting teenagers to commit, take a vow to remain pure until they get married.

The motives were I'd say vastly good, but a lot of times in the effort to kind of teach this, the actual Christian message itself got either diluted or lost. Matt tells a story one time of being in an audience probably about the size of the one in front of me right now, a thousand or so people. Matt said that, he says, I was sitting there and the guy, when he got up to give the talk, he took out a rose, beautiful rose. He said, any girl in here would love this rose, right?

Yeah. He said, all right. He hands it to the person on the one side of the auditorium and says, I want, while I talk up here, I want everybody to smell this rose. I want you to touch the petals and feel how soft it is and make sure everybody in here and the whole audience gets a touch.

So about 30 minutes, a guy gives his talk. When those 30 minutes are done, he says, okay, where's that rose? And he gets it from the last person and now it's all wilted.

And petals have fallen off and it's drooping and it just looks terrible. And he holds this up and he says, who wants this rose? Nobody wants this rose. And he throws it kind of in a sort of a dramatic illustration.

He said, that's what some of you are doing to yourselves by giving yourself sexually away before you got married. And Matt said, I just sat there and I felt like, he said, I was a brand new Christian and I want to stand up and I wanted to say, Jesus wants the rose. Jesus came for the rose.

He came to die for the rose so that he could restore the rose. So yes, sin causes damage. Sin leaves consequences but you have a savior that died for those things and overcame those to the grave so that he could restore you. He breaks the power of canceled sin and he sets the prisoner free.

If you go through there, you'll notice that there's a couple of names he puts in there and if you're reading them, you're like, these don't really belong, it doesn't seem. Because in Jesus' bloodline, God arranged it so that there was a former prostitute, listen to this, and that Jesus himself came through the offspring of David and Bathsheba's adultery. What is that trying to tell you other than the fact that God can bring Christ out of even the worst kinds of sexual sin? And friend, if God can bring Jesus into the world through a former prostitute and an adulterous relationship, he can bring Christ into your life and he can bring beauty out of your ashes. That's what the whole thing is about. That's what the whole thing is about God's power to restore.

So again, in standing up here, I've got a dual purpose. I want to show you what's at stake in sexual sin but I also want to proclaim that Jesus heals and restores sinners. But I need you to put away the myth that sex is just casual. The limitations that God puts on sex he does so for your good. Many young singles don't want to wait to have sex because they're afraid they're going to miss out on something. All my friends are talking about it.

Oh man, I just want to be able to have a story to share back with them and I feel like I've just been deprived. All these rules are keeping me from things. Friend, God tells us to wait to have sex precisely so we won't miss out on something. Yeah, you can get forgiveness for sexual sin but forgiveness is painful and the consequences can leave deep scars. I'll just tell you, if you're sitting here right now thinking, well I don't know, I'll just have a little fun right now and I'm a serious teenager college student and then I'll get forgiveness later. If that's your attitude, I get a question whether you actually belong to Jesus. How could you love Jesus and still openly pursue the things that you know put him on the cross? How could you know that Jesus is a part of your life and subject him to that kind of willful sin in your life?

1 Corinthians 6, here's what Paul says. He says, do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you? God put that spirit in you.

You're not your own. You were on your way to destruction and Jesus bought you with a price so obviously, somebody who understands that would want to glorify God with their body, right? How could you know that God, after perching you with his blood, puts his spirit in you and now that his spirit is in you, it means that everything that you do now, he's got to be present for. And how could you say that you love him and then re-subject him to the things that put him on the cross? If you know and love Jesus, you won't do that. Why would a person overwhelmed by God's goodness want to spit on it?

Again, if that's your attitude, it makes me wonder if you actually know him. 1 Corinthians 6, 9, do you not know? The unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God. That's why Jesus had to die. Don't be deceived.

You're sitting here like, well, we're living together. It's not that big of a deal. It's a big deal. Well, it's just a little harmless fun.

It's a big deal. They will not inherit the kingdom of God. Don't be deceived. The sexually immoral, those who openly practice it, will not. Because you can't say I love and serve Jesus and then just pursue what put him on the cross and act like it's not anything. Nor idolaters, nor adulterers. These will not inherit the kingdom of God unless they repent. Marriage is honorable to all.

The bed is undefiled. It's beautiful. It's blessed. But the sexually immoral and adulterous, God will judge. Friend, God is very serious about sexual sin.

Do not play games. But he does so because of his love. He does so because he recognizes it has such great power for good and therefore it has great power for harm as well. That's why in 1 Corinthians 6, he tells you to flee sexual immorality. You understand that usually when the Bible talks about temptation, it talks about enduring or withstanding or a way of escape God will make. But he says when it comes to sexual immorality, run from it.

It's that destructive. 1 Peter 2, Apostle Peter agrees. Abstain from these fleshly lusts. They go to war against your soul.

They go to war against your soul and they destroy your capacity for loving relationships and they destroy your capacity to know and love God. Do you trust God enough to do it his way? Do you actually believe God? You see, this is an area where God tests you to see if you're actually willing to wait on him. This is one of those areas, especially when you're single, that God's like, I just want to see.

Are you going to do this my way or are you going to do it your way? I sometimes talk to college students and the college student will be like, yeah, I'll get saved later. I'll become a Christian later. Right now I'm enjoying my sexual freedom too much. And I'm like, do you realize what you're giving up?

You're talking about a little sexual pleasure that's not going to be the fulfilling anyway as we see from these different studies and it's actually going to mess you up. And what you're trading for that is a relationship with God. If you wait, not only will you get God, I'm telling you, God gives his best to those who wait and trust him and do it his way. You'll find that is true in every area, especially this one.

If you wait, you'll be glad. I feel like I have to quote here from our friend, Dr. Danny Aiken, who's the president of Southeastern Seminary over here in Wake Forest, not far from where I am right now. I wrote a book years ago called God on Sex.

I'm going to quote him because I could never get away with saying what he said here, so I'm just going to quote it. It's not surprising that a University of Chicago study reports that those doing it God's way report the most satisfaction with their sex lives. When University of Chicago researchers set out to discover which religious denominations have the best sex, they learned that the faithful don't do all their shouting in church.

Sorry, I told you I couldn't say it. Conservative Protestant women reported by far the highest satisfaction in sex. Mainline Protestants and Catholics lagged five points behind.

Those with no religious affiliation were more than 33 points behind and Unitarians may not wish to read any further. Sexually active singles have the most sexual problems and get the least pleasure out of sex. Men with the most quote liberal attitudes about sex are 75% more likely to fail to satisfy their partners. The most sexually satisfied demographic group of them is that of Protestant married couples between the ages of 50 and 59. Cosmopolitan touts, Cosmo's 20 favorite sex tips ever.

We have the wall shaking, earth quaking moves that will make your bed end up clear across the room. However, the statistics suggest that if you're really interested in the best sex possible, find you a born again babe and keep her around until she's 50 because that's when the best will come. Told you I couldn't say it.

I just got Danny to say it. The point is do it God's way. Do it God's way again. God doesn't tell you to avoid sexual immorality because he wants to keep you from something. He tells you to avoid it because he wants to bless you with something.

All the ways of God are good. As I close, I want to hit one more myth really quickly. We've touched on it each week, but this myth is at the heart of Jesus' teaching in Matthew 19. And Jesus' answer to this myth is an important component of his teaching on marriage and sex.

So really quickly, myth number three. Sex is the best part of life. Our culture says sex is an essential part of life.

You can't be happy without it. You see that's why I showed you Jesus includes the part about the eunuchs in his teaching on marriage in Matthew 19. Eunuchs again represent single people. And Jesus said these eunuchs, single, are still full participants in the blessing of God, full participants in the family of God, and all the blessings of the kingdom are theirs even though they're not married. And what Jesus is saying is marriage and sex are not really what life's ultimate blessings are and they're not the essential parts of life because soon enough in eternity none of us will be married. That which is partial and temporary, marriage and sex, will have given way to that which is permanent and eternal, Christ and the church. So that means if I've got a chapter in my life without sex, whether that's because I'm single or maybe it's because I'm not in a good marriage and sex is just really no longer a part of my our marriage and and my spouse just won't cooperate for whatever reason sex is not a part of my my life.

Yes that is difficult and I don't want to downplay that. If that's you and that's not a part of your life I understand that that could be something you have to endure but what you need to hear is that you can still find real joy in life and real meaning and real satisfaction. If sex is never a part of your earthly life that's okay because you realize that every time you pray you pray to the most joy-filled happy fulfilled man ever to walk the face of the earth and he never had sex and that means that your life can have satisfaction and meaning and fulfillment because that's only temporary and it's only partial but what is eternal and what is blessed is the forever family. So eunuchs who represent single people they can find full satisfaction in the family of God.

You see ironically our culture both undervalue sex by not recognizing its power and it overvalues sex by thinking that it is essential for a happy life but neither of those things are true. Neither of those things are true and that's what the bible's teaching on this liberates you to. My friend Christopher Yuwan tells a story of growing up same-sex attracted. He said when I was a teenager I asked God I begged God to give me different desires to give me heterosexual desires because I knew his word taught me that homosexuality was wrong. He said but God did not answer that prayer at least the way that I wanted him to because I never developed heterosexual desires and so for a while I pursued an openly gay lifestyle thinking that that's where I would find satisfaction.

He says but through a series of bad decisions not only did I not find satisfaction I hit rock bottom and even ended up in prison. He says it was there in that prison cell that I met God and God in that prison cell didn't give me a change of sexual orientation but what he met me with was the offer of a forever family with his son. This is how he puts it my identity now is not gay it's not ex-gay or even heterosexual for that matter my sole identity is as a child of the living God made in the image of Jesus Christ. In that prison cell I realized that a decision had to be made I could either abandon God and pursue sexual freedom as I had been or I could surrender sexual freedom and live as a follower of Jesus Christ.

My decision was obvious I chose to be a child of God. I used to think he said that to please this Christian God I had to make myself straight. I had to make myself feel heterosexual feelings but then I realized even those with heterosexual urges still struggle with sin and they still need to be redeemed so that couldn't be the ultimate goal. No our goal as Christians no matter what feelings we have must be holiness and holiness is only found in the righteousness of Christ our identity must be solely in his righteousness not in how sexually pure we feel. As I began to embrace this life of surrender and obedience God even called me in the full-time ministry and he did that while while I was in a prison of all places. In other words here's a guy who to this day will tell you that sexually his urges his attractions are same-sex attractions. He says because he realizes the Bible says that that is not in the will of God he says if I don't ever get heterosexual desires then I've had to surrender that and say that sexual this is not going to be a part of my life he said but that doesn't mean that I have a second-class life he says because I'm a child of God and that's actually what's really important and God's got a plan for me and I've got the ultimate thing which is God's forever family and that's okay sex is not ultimate it's just an echo it's a pointer of what God has for you in his forever family so if it's something that's not a part of your life you can still have a happy joy-filled meaningful life because the forever family your identity is a child of God and the family of God that's where real life and satisfaction comes from. God invites us to find hope in his forever family it's never too late for a new start filled with forgiveness and restoration you're listening to Summit Life with Pastor JD Greer as a reminder if you've missed any of the previous messages in this series you can listen again online free of charge or you can download the unedited message transcripts at jdgreer.com we love making these resources available to you free of charge so that everyone can dive deeper into the gospel but this mission is only possible because of friends like you who give generously to support this ministry as our way of saying thanks for your gift today we'll send you our new Summit Life memory verse cards that make it easy to memory scripture ask for the all things new memory verse cards when you donate at the suggested level of $25 or more by calling 866-335-5220 that's 866-335-5220 or give and request your copy online at jdgreer.com while you're on the website you can also sign up for our email list to get ministry updates information about new resources and Pastor JD's latest blog post delivered straight to your inbox it's a great way to stay connected with Summit Life and it's completely free to subscribe sign up when you go to jdgreer.com I'm Molly Bidevich I'm so glad you joined us today and be sure to tune in Friday when Pastor JD teaches an important concept about conflict oh yeah and invite your kids back to listen and learn with you join us again Friday on Summit Life with JD Greer. Today's program was produced and sponsored by JD Greer Ministries.