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. Thanks for joining us today for Summit Life with Pastor J.D.

Greer. I'm your host, Molly Vidovitch. You know, the 1960s are often described as the sexual revolution when traditional morality around sex was tossed aside and pieces of clothing were burned. And while that era definitely reframed the way that the topic was discussed on the public forum, the truth is that sexual sin is as old as time.

And I mean, just read the Bible and see it wreak its havoc. Today on Summit Life, Pastor J.D. takes us to the New Testament and talks about two women who we can all probably relate to in some way. We're just beginning a teaching series called Can't Believe, looking at different factors that hold people back from saving faith.

So if you've missed anything so far, you can catch up on our website, jdgreer.com. And today's message is titled The Sexual Captive. John 4, verse 4, let's begin there. And Jesus had to pass through Samaria. So he came to a town in Samaria called Sychar near the field that Jacob had given to his son, Joseph. Jacob's well was there.

So Jesus, wearied as he was from his journey, was sitting beside the well. It was about the sixth hour a woman from Samaria came there to draw water. Now, you see, the Samaritans were a small hated community that lived kind of in the northeast part of Israel.

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 walk 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. 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 with and this well is deep.

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'll 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. 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. 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.

Our fathers worshiped on this mountain, but you say that in Jerusalem is a place where people ought to worship. You see what she's doing? She doesn't want to go five marriages down deep into what's really wrong inside of her. She'd rather fly around up here in the intellectual with hard theological doctrinal questions. So Jesus C. 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's 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, go to John chapter eight.

Let's look at the second of these really, really quickly. We're going to look at verse, begin in verse three. 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 any rocks in my hand?

Where are your accusers? 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 pain is.

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're 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're not an animal. You're the glory of God. You're not a pervert. You are the glory of God.

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

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

Now live that way. That's 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 canceled sin and sets the prisoner free. That's 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. Thanks for listening to Summit Life with J.D. Greer. If you want to know more about this ministry, visit us online at jdgreer.com.

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But wait just a few minutes. We've got some teaching to finish up, so let's get back to it. Once again, here's Pastor J.D. 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 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, 1st 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.

Right? 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 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. It's just, you know, 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, right, 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 the 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 First 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. Like we need to go ahead and finish it, marriage needs to be you know kind of 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 weeks ago if you're 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 yourselves 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 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. okay you didn't say 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 he you and you and he both know he could walk away at any minute. That union is 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 what 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 oh the tape thing I don't buy that blah blah blah you know whatever you just making stuff up it 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 in 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 it's beyond description there is nothing nothing that will destroy the work of God in you faster than sexual sin nothing you say you can't believe because of sin in your life but remember in Christ you have in Christ you have the absolute approval of the only one whose opinion matters Jesus lived and died and most importantly defeated deaths that we can be forgiven thank you for joining us today for summit life with JD Greer so our featured resource this month is a study in the minor prophets of the old testament a little while ago I sat down with pastor JD and asked him to tell us a little bit about it and here's what he had to say it was something where you get a glimpse of God's heart in ways that help you understand and appreciate Christ even more than before you go through them when Jesus went through the old testament with those disciples on the road to Emmaus he showed him how every single thing in the old testament was about him and that means their stuff in Zechariah and Zephaniah and Haggai and Malachi the only Italian prophet and I'm just kidding Malachi Habakkuk that there's all these things in there about Jesus and so one of the things we do here at summit life is we try to give you resources that will take you from just being a hearer of the word to also being a studier you know second Timothy 2 15 studying to show yourself approved and then also a doer of the word and so that's what this resource is going to do is going to help you understand it more and apply it more we would love to give you a copy of this you can reserve your copy with a donation or you can become a gospel partner at jdgrier.com through any time in the month of March we would love to get you a copy of this study that includes nine devotionals and 21 daily scripture readings as well as a journaling exercise to help us personalize what we're learning as you work through the content we pray that it'll encourage you to align your life around the power of the gospel and share it with others get a hold of come back to me when you donate 35 or more to support this ministry today call 866-335-5220 that's 866-335-5220 or you can give online at jdgrier.com I'm Molly Vidovitch inviting you to join us again Thursday as we continue our series called can't believe here on summit life with J.D. Greer today's program was produced and sponsored by J.D. Greer Ministries