Trusting God’s Boundaries for Flourishing

Hello, and welcome to the Grove Church podcast. I'm Charlie Loften, the lead pastor there, and we are so glad that you're joining us. Whether you are a member and you're just catching up on a sermon that you missed or you're someone who's brand new, we are really glad that you were joining us. And if you are new in some way, and I know that a lot of people will do that, we'll listen to sermons first before they visit. I want you to know that we would love to meet you at any point.

You can join us live in our services on Sunday, nine and 10:30 or our streaming service at 10:30. Either way, we would love to be able to get to know you. And regardless of why you are here listening to this sermon today, thank you so much for joining us. Hey, good morning. If you're new, I'm Charlie.

I'm lead pastor here. Really glad you're here. Really got all of you here. And if you are new and we haven't got a chance to meet, I would love to meet you. I'll be in the back.

I have a gift that we'd love to give you. We'd just love to know how you found us and any way that we can help you, support you, we would love to know. And so just would love to meet you after the service. And we are in the middle of a series called Off Ramps, where we're just talking about different ways that we just kind of observed over the years, where people with really great intentions and a really big heart for God moving on on the path to become the men and women that God's called them to be. And at some point, they start to drift, and they drift away, and their life becomes something they never intended, never thought it would be.

We spent some time talking about busyness. We spent a couple of weeks talking about money. Last week, we just talked about just kind of the anxiety that can build up if we feel like we have to earn God's favor rather than trust the gospel. And we almost made a big mistake,

and by we, I mean me, in that we're going

to spend a couple of weeks talking about how just kind of really some unhealthy attitudes around sex and sexuality can be a problem. And we were going to launch that last week during Mother's Day and decided that was a terrible idea. And since I mentioned that and we switched it around, no fewer than a dozen people have come up to me and were like, man, that didn't seem like a great idea, but I didn't say anything. Please, feel free. If you see something that's like, well, that's dumb, but I'm sure he's got a plan.

Don't assume that. Sometimes I do have a plan. Sometimes I'm just dumb. And we're to spend a couple of weeks talking about it because really honestly, and I know that this can be an awkward subject. It can just feel very personal, especially depending on your past or maybe some things that are going on right now.

But the things that I've just so very closely observed over the years is that and it's just it. We know people. We know families. We know people who have just kind of been undone by this, by an affair that breaks up a family, by a porn addiction that just ends up kind of wrecking somebody in from the inside. There's lots of different ways that it can happen.

And when the story comes up and we and we meet somebody and and we know them, we know them for a long time, and then all of a sudden, boom, it turns out they're having an affair, and

and they and and their family falls apart and they move away or just whatever, it always feels like on on the other end, like, well, was out of nowhere. These off ramps are rarely out of nowhere. There are some kind of discernible patterns where it it it was a process that built up over time. And there was

this really kind of defining moment for me as I began to really kind of understand this. It happened to me, and it's crazy to me that this I've got a story that is almost 20 years old, and it's like I was a full fledged adult. I mean, it's just I'm old. Anyways, I was pastoring a church in Cabot, and there was a family that had been recommended to me from another church that wanted to do some marriage counseling. But because of what was going on with them, they didn't really necessarily feel comfortable talking to someone that they knew very well.

Glad to do it and was and was glad to help them, but, man, it was it was it was awkward, and it was an there were a

lot of uncomfortable moments. He had been cheating on her, was saying that he wasn't anymore, but

it became pretty apparent that he still was. And so you could just kind of see him just kind of riddled with the guilt of what he was doing and the lying about it. I mean, to the point to where, like, after every session, just in this fit of guilt, he would just pull out his wallet and just kind of throw $100 bills on my desk and say thank you, and then just kind of dart out, which was like, I guess thank you. And also like, what what what do

you like, this is weird. And it was really hard. It's really hard to help somebody who is really doing something wrong and and and and can't admit it. But then there was this one time that

I was supposed to meet with

the two of them, and it was just her. He either couldn't make it or see, he was just kind of he he had he had just kinda given up. And so she and I

are talking, just kind of processing kind of what's been happening up until this point, and just kind of talking broadly, just kind of about marriage and just kind of the things that maybe she can learn, or kind of like what a healthy marriage is supposed to look like, and we're talking about all these different things. There's a thing that my wife and I'll do when we're talking to people where we're just kind of talk about, like, this is what a wife really needs to hear from her husband. Here's what a husband really needs to hear from from the wife, and and we'll say it to the person in first person. Like I like like I'm actually talking to them. And and and I was talking to her, and I was like, and this is the kind of thing that you need from your spouse.

And I begin to say to her the things that that that that a that a wife needs to hear.

And as I'm doing that, I saw something in her eye change. This

was not just a pastor talking to her anymore. This was somebody saying something to her that she had never heard before and was filling her up, and you could I could see it in her eye. I really like that not just a guy is saying this to me, but that this guy

is saying it to me. And in my brain in

that moment, it's like, oh, that's how

it happens. That that that's how it happens. She's

not getting what she needs. And all of a sudden, this moment, this this moment where I'm talking to her and we're having this this moment, like, I'm I'm giving her something that she needs. And in a in

an alternate timeline, my let's

say my marriage isn't going well, and I don't see that look in the eye from my spouse. And I'm like, I'm I'm I'm giving her something that she needs, and all of sudden, I'm receiving something to her. I I haven't my wife hasn't looked at me like that in a long time.

And next thing you know, what's my idea? Well, we probably need to keep meeting. But it seems like

our meetings go better when he's not here.

Maybe you and I should just keep meeting. Innocently at first, then suddenly we're planning them at different times when

I know one else is gonna be around. Well, why don't we meet this time in in a a cafe or a restaurant? But we should probably do it somewhere outside of outside of Cabot because people don't want people to get the wrong idea. And then step by step by step by step by step, I have ruined my family and undone my reputation because I didn't recognize the off ramp. I didn't see it when it happened.

And because I was not living a life of health and peace and contentment and trust in what God has, I one moment leads to another leads to another leads to another, and then suddenly, you're someone you never thought you would be.

There's a passage pretty well known that just kind

of talks about sex and and sexual immorality and kind of the the significance of it, and it's in first Corinthians chapter six verses 18 to 20.

Says this,

flee from sexual immorality. All other sins a person commits are outside the body, but whoever sins sexually sins against their own body. Do you not know that your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit who is in you,

whom whom you have received from God? You are not your own. You are bought at a price. Therefore, honor God with your bodies. He starts straight out of

the gate there, flee from sexual immorality. Flee from it. He seems to be describing a unique kind of danger around this particular issue. And thankfully for me, I understood that. I did not set up another appointment with her.

I did not set up another appointment with them together. I told her, I think this is about really all that we can do. And I gave them some recommendations of what some other steps that they could do, and I

was out. I was out. Not that I was tempted in any way, but even long before temptation would catch up with me. This is not good. I'm going to I'm I'm I'm

going to I'm going to flee from this. Because I understand and I want you to understand that there's just something uniquely dangerous about this about this thing. And again, if anybody other than a pastor at a church were saying this, I think we would all 100% agree. Some of us based on our background are like, oh man, here comes another pastor telling us sex is bad and terrible or whatever, and sex is evil. No, sex is great.

Okay? I mean, it's great. It's fun. It's fun. It's great.

I like it. It's a good thing. But just like anything that has incredible power, like explosives, like fire, can do great things in the right context but can cause real danger otherwise. And again, we know this. And I don't want us to get triggered by what may be some judgment that we felt in the past, some way other people have said it at different times to keep us from really understanding.

This is something that we need to be

really careful with. And Paul says, hey, in

part because it's your own body. You don't want to be doing harm to your own body. In other places, he talked about, you know, you're you're taking someone that does not belong to you. There there there's a greed aspect to it. But then just the natural consequences that so many of us have seen, maybe in our parents, maybe in our own lives, maybe in friends' lives, where where families can get undone by just not having appropriate boundaries about what is appropriate sexual behavior.

And then also, again, not recognizing the off ramps that can get us there. So he says, again, flee from sexual morality. What does this mean? Well, this word comes from a Greek word that you'll recognize that we have an English word based on it, porneia, and we get the word pornography from it. But really, describing here is any deviation from what God has described as healthy sexual behavior.

Now this is

where things can get a little, you

know, the the bit awkward here for a minute. You think about, well, what do you

mean getting awkward? We've been

neck deep and awkward for ten minutes now. What the Bible describes both in the New Testament and the old is that healthy sexual behavior is between a man and a woman in the context of a marriage. Now if you've been coming here to The Grove for a long time, then you know that about once a year when we talk about sex, you've heard me say it, and I've said it that about that many times. And every year that this comes around, it feels, because of what's going on in our culture, It feels more and more controversial to say it, and it makes me want to say it less because now I know this is going to create more work. It's not that.

It's not that. I just know that people can get their feelings hurt.

It can feel like it can feel very personal. And I understand that. And the thing that I

want to say, and again, what kind of what we're talking about here are people who are comfortably living inside God's boundaries for now, how do

we avoid the off ramps of danger that can come? Now I know that there are people here who are living right now just outside of God's boundaries. And I want you to

know that you are loved, you're valued, and

we're really glad that you're here. And I'm not

saying that this sermon does not apply to you, but if I were going to give a sermon to people who I knew were currently living outside of God's boundaries, it would

just it would just be very different. There would be a

lot more grace. There'd be just a lot more great. It'd be lot more like last week. We really understand the gospel. We really understand forgiveness and God's love, especially if we were gonna talk about LGBT issues, which we did last summer at the summer seminar that Melanie was talking about.

We spent two hours talking about it. But it is a deeply layered complex issue that is more than just about what does the Bible say about sexual behavior. And I would want to to to love them and to show grace and kindness So that I I understand, again, just because of the nature of that statement, that probably there are some people living right outside of these boundaries

that probably would want to have more conversations with me, which I would love to do. I would love to talk to

you about it. I would love for you to understand more kind of where we're coming from and kind of the balance we have of kind of holding this truth and also loving everyone who comes in this

door unconditionally. And so if

you want to have those sorts of conversations because it's personal to you or by someone that you're close to, I

would I would love to be able to do that. But again, the

thing that I want us to spend today talking about, and again, unless you're gonna spend ten weeks talking about this issue, you can't cover everything.

What I want us to talk about is how can we avoid the

off ramp? How can people right now who are at this moment in time living comfortably and believing and trusting God, how do we keep ourselves from going off, getting off the ramp? Because I think and this is why it's important. Because I feel like we live in a world where there's a couple of different, maybe three different options. First, everything's okay as long as everybody consents.

There are no boundaries. The other one is a lot of guilt and shame around the issue, punishing people for thinking differently, behaving differently. And then the third one, which I think is becoming more and more common, is let's just not talk about it at all. But I genuinely believe as individuals, as families, we're going to have

to get our mind right about this. We're gonna have

to learn to live in a healthy way sexually if we want our own personal lives to thrive, if we want our families to thrive because you do not want to end up someplace a year from now, five years from now, ten years from now that you never anticipated because I did not trust and respect the boundaries that God has put up for me. So as I think again about this off ramp, not the behavior itself that is the end, but the off ramp that gets us there. I want us to go to Genesis chapter three. And in Genesis chapter three, it's a description of the fall. And we're going to look specifically at the conversation that the snake and Eve have around whether or not she's going to

eat this apple or not. Because in addition to just kind of

being something that happens between the two of them, I think it is a very powerful description of the way very often we can rationalize stepping outside of the boundaries that God has

for us. Genesis chapter three starting verse one.

Now the serpent was more crafty than any of

the wild animals the Lord God had made. He said to the woman, did God really say you must not eat from any tree in the garden? The woman said to the serpent,

we we may eat from the the trees in the garden, but God did say you must not eat fruit from the tree that is in the middle of the garden, and you must not touch it or you will die. You will certainly not die, the serpent said to the woman. For God knows that when you eat from it, your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God knowing good and evil.

When the woman saw the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it. She also gave some to her husband who was with her, and he ate it. Now this is

not what we're talking about today, but we just cannot let that last part get past us. Right? Dude was right there. Sometimes we give Eve way too hard of a time as if she's the one that undid everything. Dude was right he was right there.

So don't give him he gets he gets no pass. I mean, this is some clown just kinda going, hey, I wonder how this is gonna play out. Well, not well, dude. And then he anyway, so we just let's let's but that is currently not what we're talking about. So the interaction starts with Satan saying to Eve,

did God really say that? Did God really say that you can't eat from that tree? Are you really saying?

And I think that's where it starts. It really starts with, do I trust and believe in what God has to say? So we're gonna phrase again our kind of our points today in terms of just questions. Questions that I think that are important for us to ask if we want to kind of save ourselves, prevent ourselves from kind of taking an unintended off ramp at some point in the future. And the first question is this, is how much do I trust in God's boundaries?

Because he's not just really questioning it. Did he really say it's not really like, really? Like, really? Does it really matter? And then there's also kinda like, did he actually say, like, how ridiculous.

Right? There's just

an attempt

to discredit who God is and what he says. And if you've been here around for a while, you've heard me talk about this. It's it's a very popular metaphor for me. When I think about fences, there's two types of fences. And if you've been around, you've heard me say this a lot.

If you haven't, maybe this will be new to you. There's two types of fences really that we use. Fences we put around prisons and fences that we put in our backyard when our children are small. You put a prison around a fence to punish bad people and to keep them from being able to get out and experience the good. It is a punishment.

It is an intentional restriction on good and favor. That's why you have a fence around a prison. But you also have a prison in your backyard to protect your small children. When we moved to St. Louis, we had two preschool aged kids, one of whom was very, very wild, had all the confidence in the world, but she was only two.

She moved fast and maniacal, and there was a giant rock that would have been great to climb and fall off of. There was a pond to swim in, and she couldn't swim. And there was traffic on a main road right here that would have been really fun to chase. She would have had a great time doing all of those things all the way up until the point it became dangerous. But we wanted her to have a great outdoors experience, so we put all of her toys and the playground and everything inside the yard and built a fence to protect her, to protect her for something that looks appealing on the outside but actually will be dangerous to you and all the good things are inside the fence.

The question is, how do you view God's boundaries when he puts restrictions on your behavior? You should do this. You should not do that. How do we view it? I think some of us view it as a prison fence

rather than one that is for our own protection. There's a, I guess, a

weird theological version of this that I feel like a lot

of us have, which it's more

or less really not a prison fence. It's just some sort of pointless trap where it's like, I could let you do it, but I'm just going to try. I'm just going to see if you won't do it. Like, it's really good, and there's really not a problem with it, but I just wanna test you to see if you're serious enough and if you'll pass the test. And he's restricting your behavior not necessarily to punish you, but to test

you. When really that is not the heart of God. The heart of God is to protect you. The heart of God is to love you. The heart of God is to put all the good things inside the fence, and we need to trust that.

But what does Eve say back to him? Did God really say that? She said, yeah.

Yeah. He said we could eat from everywhere except this one tree, and he said we can't even touch it, which God did not say. So she's either exaggerating it and describing it to him, or when Adam told her what God told him, he exaggerated it. And we do this, and we talked about this

with money a couple of weeks ago. Some people will say, the

Bible says money's the root of all evil. That's ridiculous. And so you can dismiss it because that is ridiculous, but it's not what the Bible says.

It says the love of money is a root of all kind of evil, which is a 100% true and cannot be dismissed. There should be some boundaries around your sexual behavior. Yeah. I mean, that that makes sense. That makes sense.

But you can exaggerate it like Eve does, and then you can dismiss it. Oh, you

know what? Bible says. Bible says, you know, you can only have sex if you're married. It also says sex is bad. It also says it's dangerous.

Probably shouldn't do it. If you enjoy it, something wrong with you. Oh, you know what the Bible says? It's only for making babies.

Like, that's it's ridiculous on its face, and so it can be dismissed. But that there should be some restrictions, some boundaries on my behavior in order to protect me, in order for me to be healthy personally, emotionally, in order for me to have a strong, healthy family for years and years and ultimately for generations. You

should put some restrictions and some boundaries on that for your own

health. That's a lot harder to dismiss. And so we have to learn to trust. We have to

learn to trust and to not exaggerate what it is that God says,

but to trust it. And I'm worried. Right?

So I I said, oh, it's ridiculous on its face that somehow that is inappropriate to enjoy sex or that sex is only for procreation for making babies. Right? There are people that say that, and they say oh, the Bible says it, and they say it to dismiss it. There's a part of me that is worried, but there actually are some of us that think that. Because some things that we've been taught, some some some past history that we might have has led us to some the other sort of dangerous thinking around sex, that it is something to be avoided at all

cost even in the context of marriage. And we're gonna talk about that a little bit next week. Perhaps some overly, for lack of

a better word, prudish or negative attitudes around sex, not trusting the boundary but creating artificial smaller ones lead to some of the same issues, which is what we'll spend some time talking about next week.

But for right now, the question really is, do I trust him? Do I trust that he is good by putting some boundaries around what our behavior should be?

So then, you know, the Satan's like, oh, you're not really gonna die. You're not really gonna die. It's ridiculous. In fact, it's there's actually some good things that will come

from this. Verse six, when the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it. So she looked at it. She looked at it.

It's on the other side of

the metaphorical fence. Looked at it.

It's actually a piece of fruit.

I bet it will taste really, really good. And the idea of gaining wisdom, that sounds like that would be good too. And actually,

her her reasoning makes a lot

of sense. This fruit is good, looks good, looks healthy, but probably tastes really good. And and if this guy's telling the truth, this one consequence of I'll learn something that

I didn't know before, that that that's a good thing. The reasoning makes sense.

But it

it's a result of I don't really trust what it is that God has to say.

And so how much do I trust in God God's boundaries? And secondly, am I craving something that does not belong to me? God said that's not your tree. It's not your fruit. It's gonna be a problem for you.

And this is what we do. We look at something, in this instance, someone that is not yours, that

is not your spouse, that is that is someone else's spouse, or it

is currently no one's spouse. That is not your person. And I wanna

make sure we've gotten to misunderstand here. I mean, the Bible just kinda talks about it's not a gender specific. Guys don't own women in any real sense. Right? We're talking about that that we freely give ourselves to our spouse.

And so we belong to one another. And so that's what I mean when I say they're not yours.

There is someone that can be yours, and

you are theirs. But that person is not. And you think, but they're attractive, and sex is good and fun, and I know I will enjoy it when I do it. And all of those things on some level are true, but are representative of some really unhealthy thinking where I'm not taking into consideration that is something, someone, and it does not belong to me. And I'm allowing my loneliness to overwhelm me.

I am lonely. I I I didn't I never intended or wanted to

be single for this long. And and and he's attractive. She's she's beautiful, and sex is really enjoyable. And so I I take it. Some of us aren't battling loneliness, but

just kind of isolation in the context of marriage.

He's really kind to me

at work. She's really beautiful and really sweet to me. And my and my spouse, for whatever reason, is isolated, cold, and not willing to love me and and be intimate with me in the way that I want. And I just doesn't God want this for me? Doesn't God want me to be happy?

And then we begin to just look for solutions to our problems outside of the boundaries.

Loneliness is real. Loneliness is real. And and and the hurt that we can come when there's a when there's a when there's a break between us and our spouse, when intimacy isn't what we wish it were, Those are real issues that we need to battle. But are the answers to these issues inside or outside of God's boundaries? And we'll finish with this last question.

How can I grow in trust and commitment?

Just staying inside the boundaries, it's not easy. It's not easy to do. Again, it's gonna be difficult. There's gonna

be times when you're like, again,

I'm I'm I'm lonely. I'm scared. I'm I'm afraid I'm gonna be lonely I'm afraid I'm gonna be lonely forever. I'm I'm afraid that my spouse and my relationship with him, with her is always gonna be unhealthy, and that I'm and I'm never gonna be able to be satisfied in this area anymore.

And I have all this fear and this anxiety, and it just seems real easy that the fruit right over there it's good. It's

good and I can take it. And I and and and and it it will be it will be pleasing to me. And I don't trust and believe that the solutions to these issues are inside the fence. That God sees me. He sees that I'm lonely.

He sees that I'm hurting, and he he wants to love me, and he wants to help me work through it. And that's why God has given us each other to help us battle through that. And the issues that may be coming up in your marriage where intimacy is not what you wish it were because maybe some past trauma that one of you have or a current or past porn issue that one of you has had and we're having a hard time making this work. And very often again, because of that, we look outside the boundaries. We don't trust anymore.

And I'm looking for answers outside of God's favor and his protection. And it leads to all sorts of grief and problems. Now again, I want to make sure I say this very clear. I said a little bit before. I want to end it even more clearly.

If you are currently outside of god's boundaries, god's grace is real and he is always ready for you to come back. If you have taken excursions in and out over the years, god's grace and his forgiveness is real and he is always wanting you back. The thing that I want to say, again, there's never a time where it's too late with god. But we can do a lot of damage in the process and my heart for all of us is, we would skip a step. Let's just not have to rely on the grace and forgiveness of God.

Let's not risk our families. Let's not risk our reputations. Let's not risk our own physical, emotional, and spiritual health. And let us learn to grow in trust and contentment. That I know that the God of the universe sees me.

He sees me when I'm struggling, and he has given us each other. He's given us the gospel. He's given us his holy spirit to give us life in those moments. I'm lonely. I'm discontent, but I can I can I can trust him?

And I rather than putting my faith and trust in what is just outside of God's boundaries. I put my faith and trust in the good God who made them. And I trust him more than my perception of what I think I will enjoy. Let me pray. God, I just God, I just pray against misunderstandings, incomplete understandings of kind of

what we're talking about here today, God. And God,

I pray for people right now who got they're just they're they're just outside. And, God, I pray against this dangerous idea that it doesn't matter what you say. And God, I pray that you would grow us. Help us to learn, God, what does a healthy sexuality look like? And help us learn to to trust you and the boundaries that you said.

Let's be willing to have good conversations, to grow, to heal. And, God, I pray that you would keep us off the off ramp. That, God, that we would not look anywhere other than to you and ultimately our spouse for life in this area, That we would not surrender to lives, that we would not surrender to half truths, but God that we would put our faith and trust in you and the life and the protection that you've given us. And, God, no matter how we are, no matter how we got here, no matter what we're going through, God, I pray that we can also trust in the grace and the gospel and the forgiveness of your son, Jesus Christ. And we're so thankful for him and his death on the cross that makes that possible.

And it's in his name we pray. And we're that. We're we're to to with culture or theology, those kinds of things, you can check out our cultivate that. Podcast. It's on the same feed, however you found this particular podcast.

So again, this is Charlie, the lead pastor at The Grove, and thank you so much for joining us.