Can We Talk? Sexuality

So over the last few weeks, we've been looking at how believers in Jesus Christ should approach the issues in culture.

Where culture is yelling at us that we need to conform, we must conform.

There's pressure everywhere for that to happen.

We learned that we have a strong foundation to stand on because Jesus Christ is absolute truth and he also inspired a Bible to be written which gives us instructions on truth.

Then we talked about the fact that, as much as truth is important, we must also have the motivation of love.

It should matter to us what happens to people right, and so the gift that we've been given of truth we want to give to others.

We want to do it in a loving way, in the way that represents Christ very well.

Last week, john and Derek did an amazing job talking about family and really how families can talk to each other about cultural issues that are so much a part of everyday conversation that happens almost everywhere that you look Television and internet school systems at work almost everywhere.

The conversations that need to be had in homes are happening outside of the home, and so we want to create an atmosphere where families again begin to talk about things and have open dialogue about the most important issues of life, amen.

So I'm going to pick up on that and start talking this morning.

Our subject is can we talk about sexuality?

Can we talk about sexuality?

And this is a two-part message.

We'll start this morning and then we'll finish up next week, so hope you can join us for that.

So what is culture saying about sexuality?

What does God say and what?

How can we talk about it?

Genesis 2, verses 18 through 25, says then the Lord God said it is not good that the man should be alone.

Genesis 2:18–25

I will make him a helper that is fit for him.

Now, out of the ground, the Lord God had formed every beast of the field and every bird of the heavens and brought them to the man to see what he would call them and whatever the man called every living creature, that was its name.

The man gave names to all livestock and to the birds of the heavens and to every beast of the field.

But for Adam there was not found a helper fit for him.

So the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man and while he slept he took out one of his ribs and closed up the place with flesh and the rib that the Lord God had taken from the man, he made into a woman and brought her to the man.

And then the man said this is at last.

This, at last, is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh.

She shall be called woman because she was taken out of man.

Therefore, a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife and they shall become one flesh.

And the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed.

Let's pray, father, god, we thank you that this subject is not something that is embarrassing to you and it's not something that we should be ashamed of to converse about.

But, Lord, we know that we are surrounded by many evils and many perversions of what you say is true and right and holy and pure.

So today, lord God, would you create an atmosphere in our hearts and minds where we would be ready to receive your truth, to recalibrate the idea that we have concerning sexuality, especially if it's in a negative connotation.

And, lord, we just pray that your kingdom would come.

Your will would be done here in this service.

Take the words that are spoken, holy Spirit, and do the work that only you can do.

In Jesus' name, we pray, amen.

My first introduction to sexuality happened when a neighborhood kid molested me, and I don't say that this morning in order to create some form of a shock or to engender sympathy, necessarily.

The reason that I bring this up is because of the fact that, for the thousands of years, many people have been introduced to the area of sexuality in the wrong way, from the wrong place, and, instead of hearing about it from church in a holy way, in a way that represents Christ, or hearing about it from their families, most people have either heard about or experienced sexuality, especially for the first time, from a stranger, from somebody doing something to them that they didn't want to be done to them, or even from hearing about it through watching a movie, a reading, a book or magazine, whatever the case is right, and so it's very important for us, and for me in particular, because of what I went through, to help people to understand that God does have a plan, and it's a great plan, it's a perfect plan, it's His original intent for humanity, and there are ways that we can come back from things like I experienced in my life, and I am not here today to determine how many of you have experienced things in your life that have been negative in this area, but I can guarantee you that many of you have, and I want to say right from the start I'm sorry that you experienced something negative concerning sexuality in your life before you experienced what God intended for it to be.

If you have even experienced that up to this point there is hope, there is healing, there is forgiveness and there is a day of new beginning, right, and that's the type of thing that I want to start with at the very beginning this morning.

It's interesting, though, how an experience like that early in your life can kind of mask or can kind of distort the way you look at something for the rest of your life if God doesn't intervene right.

So, growing up after that happened to me, I never told anybody about it.

I didn't tell my parents about it, I didn't tell my brother.

I was ashamed.

I felt like there was something that I had done wrong.

I should have known that what was happening was wrong and I should have stopped it.

I should have been able to somehow make this not happen in some way.

It had to be my fault.

I was the one to blame, and so, because of that, I lived in this shame in this area of my life in a distorted view of what God created and what he intended from a perfect standpoint.

And that included, as I grew up, being exposed to pornography and also, later in life, as a teenager, having a relationship with a young lady that was not holy in a sexual way, and all of those things were like hidden in the darkness in my life, in the shadows, in this shame-filled space that nobody I thought knew about.

But God knew about it all along, and God had a purpose and a plan.

Not that he caused that to happen to me when I was a young child, but he had a purpose and a plan for my life and part of that story of my life I even found out from the first service.

There's somebody that came up to me and shared that they had a similar experience and that God was working in them, even now and since they've been a part of this church, to bring about healing and restoration in that area.

And, to be honest with you, it's all worth it.

It's all worth it if we're able to see people's lives transformed by the gospel of Jesus Christ and also by the word of our testimony, and being able to express to others how great our God is in the midst of horrible, terrible things that you wouldn't wish upon anybody else on the planet.

There is hope for America, there is hope for the next generation and there's hope for you.

If you've experienced these things, maybe your first exposure to sexuality was dirty jokes that you heard, or sex outside of marriage, or pornography.

Whatever the case might be, I'm here to tell you there's a better way.

There's a better way.

That's such a distortion.

What the world has to offer in this area is such a distortion.

It's such a falsehood in comparison to what God created.

So it's a broken area in life.

All of this that we're talking about is manifest brokenness in the world that we live in.

And so how do you fix something that's broken?

You go to the manual, you go to the Creator and you ask how do we fix this broken thing?

And so the Bible is what we do.

We go to the Bible.

So God's original intent for human sexuality.

We're going to look at what God planned and what His plan is.

Even today, it's not outdated.

It's been 6,000 years or so and it still works.

It's still God's perfect plan, and he wants us to initiate it and to live out His perfect plan in our lives.

So the first, not good, of creation was for man to be alone.

Every other day of creation God did wonderful things.

He created the heavens and the earth and the animals and all of the things that we read about in Genesis, chapter 1.

Genesis 1 · chapter mention

And after each day he subsequently would say you know, this was the end of the first day and it was good.

But here is the first time that God looks at His creation and he says it's not good for man to be alone.

And the men say amen, that's the right answer.

Thank you very much.

It is not good for man to be alone.

And Adam was experienced that.

He was feeling that he was going about his daily work in the garden.

Isn't it interesting that he wasn't floating on a cloud, he wasn't strumming a harp.

God actually gave him a job in the kingdom.

He was naming the animals, he was involved in all of that kind of work with the plants and trees and stuff, and so all of that is happening and he's experiencing this and he literally is learning the lesson even of the birds and the bees, right as he's looking at all of this creation.

But for himself there wasn't any kind of partnership like that it was just him.

He was alone and God looked at that.

And God said it is not good for man to be alone.

So God created woman out of man and brought her to him.

This is an exciting thing.

It's interesting that God created man out of the dust of the ground, but he caused Adam to go to sleep and he took a rib out of Adam's side and that's what he created Eve with.

So, ladies, when you call your husband a dirt bag, you're being literally accurate.

I'm not saying you should do that, but I am saying we are Men, were made from dirt and men.

If you call your woman a pain in the side, in your side, you're accurate as well, because God took a rib out of Adam.

Don't encourage you to do that or to say that at all.

That's another whole sermon that we could get on to talk about how to respect one another.

But Adam was so excited when God brought Eve to him.

He was so excited that he actually he a poem came out of his heart.

It's like the first hallmark moment.

He said this at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh.

She shall be called woman because she was taken out of man, amazing what a great gift it was for God to breathe life into Adam and then into Eve and to bring Eve to Adam to be his wife.

When Amy and I first got married on our wedding day, I decided that would be the first time that I ever sang a song on a microphone.

I mean ever in my life.

No karaoke, no, you know anything.

And so I decided to do that and I was thinking beforehand how am I going to be able to do this?

I'm not a great singer, I'm an okay singer, but I'm not a great singer and I've never done this before.

And I'm singing.

You guys may remember Leon Patilov probably none of you over here will know who that name is, but he did.

He wrote this song called you Are Bone of my Bone and Flesh of my Flesh.

We Are One.

Do you remember that song?

And so that was the song that I sang to her, and the only way I could do it was to turn my back to the crowd and just to stare at her.

And when I did that I was able to just let it rip because I was singing to her and that, huh, oh, you want to hear it now.

Okay, come back tonight at 5 pm for the servant's heart banquet and you may or may not hear a rendition of you Are Bone of my Bone and Flesh of my Flesh.

I'll sing it if Scott will do the interpretive dance.

You guys ready for that?

All right, okay.

Now, since this morning I've actually changed something about the way that I refer to my wife, because in the past, before this morning, sometimes when I was joking, I would say that she was my prime rib because she was a rib that was taken out of man.

But I have decided since then that that's really not appropriate, not a great way to describe my wife.

So from now on I will not be referring to her as my prime rib and she can hold me to that right.

I will only tell the story of when I used to call her my prime rib.

I will not any longer call her that in the present tense.

Okay, but really I wish that I had thought of this.

But Matthew Henry, the great commentator, wrote this description of what it was like for God to choose a rib to form Eve out of.

She was not made out of his head to top him, she was not out of his feet to be trampled upon by him, but out of his side, to be equal, with him, under his arm, to be protected and near his heart to be beloved.

Isn't that a great description of what a Christian marriage, a godly marriage, should be like A partnership, one helping the other.

And so God instituted the covenant of marriage between one man and one woman, between one man and one woman.

Therefore, a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.

Now, if there was ever a time in all of human history that there could have been an argument made for there not to be a need for a marriage, it could have been Adam and Eve.

Why is that?

They were the only two human beings on the face of the planet as far as we know, as far as creation is concerned.

Also, they didn't have mom and dad.

God was their father, right?

There was no need for a white dress.

They were fine without any clothing.

There was no need for flowers.

They were surrounded by flowers.

They were in the garden.

No reason for any kind of a ceremony or celebration in that sense.

But God still wanted to institute something with this first family.

That would be something that would be carried on, should be carried on throughout all generations that were to follow them.

And so God instituted not a contract, not an agreement or a legal agreement.

He instituted a covenant between Adam and Eve, between husband and wife.

Heterosexual monogamy is the divine pattern for marriage that God established at creation.

Amen, and a woman being married for life.

That is God's intent.

That is God's intent.

God's pattern for marriage wasn't devised by Adam.

He didn't come up with it.

It wasn't Eve's idea.

None of that.

There's a traditional marriage ceremony that states it like this Marriage was born in the loving heart of God for the blessing and benefit of mankind.

His heart, what was in God's heart, was to bless His creation, to bless them in such a way that they would be fulfilled in every aspect of life, and so one of the ways that he did that was by implementing the covenant of marriage, and we hold in such high esteem in 2023, believe it or not the covenant of marriage that God set in place.

You see, no matter what the courts may decree or society may permit, when it comes to marriage, god has the first word and he will also have the last word.

Marriage is defined by God, not by me, and not by you and not by anybody else on the face of this planet.

God didn't need any help with that, he did it Himself.

So the act of sex within a heterosexual monogamous marriage is holy.

It's holy, it's set apart, it's designed by God with us in mind, and the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed.

Can you imagine a world with no shame?

Can you imagine a world where there's no need for conviction of any kind or condemnation that Satan would try to apply to people's lives, because there was perfectness, holiness.

Everything that was around them, around Adam and Eve, was pure and pristine and perfect and holy, and every aspect of their union together and their life together was perfect and holy and set apart by God, for God and with His blessing.

With his blessing.

How many of us have grown up with a negative connotation in our thought life concerning what sex is, not understanding or believing that somehow God could actually be behind this and that it's his idea?

In so many ways we feel like we're trying to hide this aspect of our lives from God.

We don't want him to see.

We close the curtains, we turn off the lights and then we do whatever we're going to do God in Christian marriage, in a godly marriage, he intends for us to enjoy this aspect of his creation.

This is not a boundary of oppression, but of love.

We're different than the animals.

God created us to be monogamous and to have a heterosexual marriage between a husband, a man and a wife, a man and a woman.

Because of our tendency to think about sex again from a perverse point of view and our own experiences, or even, to be honest, the way that it's been presented in church.

Most of the time when the word sex is talked about in church, it's talked about don't do it, and for young people we agree don't do it.

But that doesn't mean that it's something that's impure or unholy.

It's precious, it's a blessing from God.

It's something that he gave not only for procreation, which was for us to be able to be fruitful and multiply, to have children.

I know some that haven't been able to have children, and that doesn't make you any less of a person.

Many have adopted and other things that they've done in their lives spiritual fathers and mothers, right, but procreation was part of it.

But he also created sexuality and the act of sex for our enjoyment, for mutual enjoyment, something that God planned and instituted and wanted to be a part of our lives.

So if you think about sex only from a shameful, dirty, perverse way, stop it, just stop it, just stop.

That's not the way that God intended for us to think about it.

It is wholly impure when it is exercised and done within the confines of marriage.

Think about how precious it is that God made us different than the animals.

The fact that we even from a, from the standpoint of our anatomy, the way that we fit together in this aspect, the fact that we look at each other face to face, that our heart beats and the other person's heart beats and we feel that together.

What a romantic, intimate, beautiful thing.

This gift that God has given us of Christian marital sexuality Beautiful.

So the downward spiral of how we get here.

How did we get here?

It's hard to picture how far we've come from that beautiful image of creation, isn't it From the Garden of Eden, with everything just so pristine and pure.

Not only according to culture is this an ultra-limited idea of human sexuality, what we just talked about, but it's outdated.

It's also hated by many who want to decide for themselves how to define sexuality.

This culture is all about defining for themselves what sex is what it looks like, how it's done.

Now.

The Bible, believe it or not, addresses almost every single one of the issues that you can find in our culture today, and so we're going to look at some of the biblical words for sexual sin for just a minute, and we'll give definitions for these things.

So the first one is fornication.

What is fornication?

According to Scripture, it is sex outside of marriage.

This is the downward spiral that I'm talking about.

This is where we go when we don't follow God's way of doing things Right.

So fornication is sex outside of marriage, which adultery is sex with others while married Pretty easy, two sides of the same coin fornication and adultery.

There's also prostitution, which is sex for money.

Abuse and rape, which is sex that is unwanted and harmful.

Self gratification, which is self sex with oneself.

Sodomy is sex with one's own gender.

Pedophilia, sex with children All of these things, by the way, the culture is holding up as the standard.

None of these things are taboo within the extents of what culture is saying.

We're going to talk much more about this next week, as we get into the darker side of this.

Today, we're going to be focusing primarily on what God said and how we've gotten to the point where we're at now.

There's also bestiality, which is sex with animals.

I'm sure that I'm missing some.

Those are the major categories of sin when it comes to sexuality and there are so many times, in so many ways, that people are involved in these different activities.

And there's hope today because there's freedom.

We don't have to walk according to the flesh To gratify the flesh.

We can walk according to the Spirit of God, and that's what we believe and we want you to experience that in your life.

So if you take your Bible and just flip it over one page we just finished Genesis, chapter 2, and you just turn the page and at the beginning of Genesis 3,.

Genesis 2 · chapter mention

We don't know how much time went by between the end of Genesis 2 and the beginning of Genesis 3.

Maybe it was hundreds of years.

There was some extent of time that went by.

And remember, god had given the commandment to Adam that he could eat from every tree in the garden, except for the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for in the day that he would eat of it, he would die.

And so Adam explained that to Eve and they both understood we can eat every other fruit, every other tree, but this tree we're not supposed to mess with.

And then you go to Genesis, chapter 3, verse 1,.

Genesis 3:1

Now the serpent was more crafty than any other beast of the field that the Lord God had made.

He said to the woman did God actually say you shall not eat of any tree in the garden?

And the woman said to the serpent we may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden, but God said you shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the midst of the garden.

Neither shall you touch it, lest you die.

But the serpent said to the woman you will not surely die, for God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.

So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food and that it was a delight to the eyes and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of the fruit and ate, and she also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate.

And then the eyes of both were naked and they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loincloths.

Wow, what a departure.

What a rapid decline and departure with just one conversation with Satan, who personified and who personified himself as a serpent, one of God's creations, talking to them from this tree about the fruit that was in this tree.

So how did Satan do it?

How did he change their minds?

How did he convince them of something that was a lie?

First of all, satan sowed seeds of doubt about the word of God.

He said did God actually say?

Did God actually say?

You know, a lot of times, culture today is even separating out Jesus and Paul from the Bible.

Well, jesus didn't actually say anything in particular about that, paul did.

But we don't like Paul, so we're going to pay attention to Jesus.

We don't read the New, the Old Testament at all because it's got way too much stuff that that's against what I want to do and who I want to be, so I'm going to focus on the words of Jesus, not understanding the heart of Jesus behind the words that he spoke.

Right, we cannot do that.

That is not our place.

But Satan will always attempt to twist the word of God, truth, in any way that he possibly can to distract us.

Satan was kicked out of heaven by God because he said to himself I will make myself like the most high, and God said no, sir, probably didn't say sir, and he kicked him out of heaven.

And so Satan not able to get to God.

What's the next best thing for him?

To try to get to God's children, adam and Eve, his creation, his children, god's children.

Attacking them in this way was the only way that he could see to try to get back to God and unfortunately it worked, didn't it?

He's the father of all lies.

There is no truth found in him, and we must understand that.

He tries to make himself like God.

He tries to be clever.

He's not, by the way.

He has no creative power.

He has no unique thought.

All that he can do is pervert something that he sees.

He can try to cause confusion and chaos by speaking lies, and so that's what he attempts to do.

The Bible even says that in the end, when he's revealed to all of the nations, people will look at him and say is this the one that caused all of the chaos in the world?

And they'll laugh at him because he's a lie.

He's a lie.

He's the father of all lies.

He's real, he's very real, but all he does is speaks lies, and he loves to twist scripture more than anything else, to cause confusion and chaos.

And so you see that in Eve and her response, did God truly say she says what God said, but then she adds to it.

Not only did he say we shouldn't eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, he said we shouldn't touch it.

God never said we shouldn't touch it, but they were adding to it, it was being added to in her thought process.

Right, this chaos, this confusion was beginning to work and to take root in her, and Satan planted a denial of the word of God, next a denial.

So doubt first, now denial you will not surely die.

Wow, it's one thing to say, well, did you understand what God said.

It's another thing to say he's lying to you.

So the get this.

The father of all lies is calling God, our father, a liar.

So what's the truth?

Who's the actual liar here?

Satan is lying to them and saying you will not surely die.

All of this was being used to lure Adam and Eve into the next and final steps, which is Satan then planted a delusion, a delusion opposed to the word of God, for God knows that when you eat of it, your eyes will be opened and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.

So what card did he play?

He played the victim card.

He said you're victims of God.

God is attempting to oppress you and to keep you from everything that you could have.

Your fulfillment is not nearly what it could be if you would just follow my plan and my way instead of following God's plan in his order and his directives.

So again, he's not a creator.

There's no game that's different.

In his game it's the same thing over and over and over again, maybe new renditions and new words and new vocabulary, but it's the same thing.

And so here he is.

He wants them to believe that there's something good that God doesn't want them to have.

He's holding out.

All they need to do to break his spell, to break this bad God's spell, is to eat of the forbidden fruit, and then all that they could ever imagine they could have in an instant they could be just like him.

Now, if you remember from Derek's message last week, in Genesis, chapter one, he said what that mankind was, that mankind was made in the image and likeness of God.

So who is Satan to be the determining factor on us being like God?

God already created us in his image and likeness, and not only that, but we know that later on the story, through Jesus Christ, that God continues to make us like Jesus through sanctification, those who believe in Jesus Christ through the process of sanctification.

So it wasn't that what he was saying was an evil thing, necessarily.

It was the root that he was saying to take.

It's just like when, when Satan tempted Jesus.

Remember when he came to him and he said just bow down and worship me and I'll give you all the kingdoms that you can see of the world to be yours.

What a liar.

What a liar.

Do you think he would have done that?

First of all, were they even his to give?

He was like the manager at that point in time because of the sin that came in the world.

But God already had a plan.

I don't want to get ahead of myself.

We're going to get to the plan that God had to bring about redemption.

They could be like God and then guess what?

They wouldn't need God anymore because the final stage is they would be God.

Adam and Eve, just eat of the fruit.

You don't need God, you can be your own God.

To use modern day vernacular, satan was attempting to convince Adam and Eve that their patriarch, god, was oppressive and cruel and was marginalizing them and making them victims of his own evil plan to keep them from reaching their fullest potential.

That sound familiar.

Nothing new friends, maybe new applications or new ways of distribution, internet and instant everything, but there's nothing new under the sun.

It's the same plan to discount God that Satan attempts to do throughout all of history.

Unfortunately, as we know, adam and Eve gave in to the threefold temptation that all human beings face.

So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food and that it was a delight to the eyes and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate, and she also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate as well.

First John, chapter two, verse 16.

Many of you probably know this.

It talks about temptation that everybody faces, and there are threefold.

There's a threefold temptation the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eye and the pride of life.

And here, in this one story, we have all three of the temptations that are facing Adam and Eve as they choose whether or not to give in to this, to Satan's lies.

So, the lust of the flesh, which is.

They looked at the fruit and saw that it was good for food.

It looked like they wanted to eat it.

Right, the lust of the eyes.

It was pleasant to look at.

It must have had a special sparkle to it or something that made it appealing.

Just the no word, probably no, you can't eat from that was enough.

Right, it was appealing to them, to their eyes and the pride of life.

If they just ate of it, they would become even wiser than God himself.

They took the fruit and ate it, and that sentence, right there, explains the root cause of all sickness, all disease, all sorrow, all suffering, all fear, all guilt, all perverseness and death that we see and face in this world that we live in.

They took the fruit and ate it.

What God meant to be, the beautiful union of husband and wife, was instantly perverted by sin.

Listen to the phrase.

The sentence is here In the eyes of both were opened.

Adam and Eve's eyes were opened and they knew that they were naked.

And they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loincloths.

Wow, can you imagine what a moment?

Never experienced shame in whatever time that they had as created beings, never had experienced shame, never had felt the desire to hide or to pretend None of that perfect perfection.

And yet, in this moment, as soon as they disobeyed God, the veil was torn and they recognized now that they had been duped.

Satan, the father of all lies, lied to them.

They believed his lie to be true and they ate the fruit.

And since that time, every human being except one has been tainted, has been born dead to God and outside of right relationship with him, because we all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.

Right God shows up on the scene.

Can you imagine?

Is there trying to hide from him?

How are you going to hide from God?

How are we going to hide from God?

They try to hide from God and God calls out to them basically what happens.

And Adam being the brave man that he was the provider of his family, the covering says it's the woman you gave me.

He's playing the blame game.

It's interesting.

He's blaming his wife, but he's actually blaming God, the woman you gave me.

God, we were fine before she came into the scene, really, don't you remember?

He looks at Eve and Eve blames the serpent.

She says the devil made me do it, literally.

Yeah, how many times have we actually said that the devil made me do it.

Separation from God and death now inevitable.

Was there any hope to be found?

This is the end that Satan had in mind.

He would have loved for the story to end with the death of Adam and Eve, but I want you to know that, as God was passing out sentencing and judgment, it was she had to do, as a righteous God and a holy God, for himself to remain pure and holy and just.

He had to punish the sin that was committed.

And so, as he was giving those punishments out to Adam and to Eve, he also turned to the serpent and he said to the serpent something that gave hope to even to Adam and Eve, in the very moment that they had gotten busted for committing the greatest crime in all of history.

He said of himself I will put enmity between you and the woman and between your offspring and her offspring.

He shall crush your head once.

Translation says or he shall bruise your head and you shall bruise his heel.

I don't even know that God was not surprised by what happened in the Garden of Eden.

It's not like they had an emergency session of the Trinity to determine what in the world they're going to do now.

They had a plan, before the foundation of the world, of how this was going to play out and how redemption was going to be found.

And I'm telling you, jesus Christ himself is the hope of the world and for any of us to experience health and life in any area of our lives.

The only way that we can do that is to be in right relationship with him.

So I encourage you today if you don't yet know Jesus Christ, if you are not a follower of Jesus Christ, if you've not submitted your life to him, do it today.

Choose today to follow after him, call out to him, ask him for help and for the rest of us, jesus is the promised hope of redemption, who came to overturn Satan's plan to steal, kill and destroy by making a way for us, through faith in him, to be restored to right relationship with God.

That, my friends, is the good news about every area of life, but especially as we talk today about human sexuality.

Now I left you with the beginning of my story, but I wanted to give you the rest of the story.

So I met a young lady named Amy French, and as I met her my heart jumped on the inside because I had given up any thought of ever being married.

I was a part of the group called the Bachelor's to the Rapture.

I don't know if you ever knew about that.

I had put myself in that category because I could not trust myself to make wise decisions when it came to relationships.

So God brought this young lady a year later into my life, and the first time I met her, god was so gracious to tell me in my heart you're going to marry her.

But then I'm thinking what about all this stuff?

What about all the years of living a lie in different aspects of my life?

Because now, if I'm to be real with her and to be honest with her, I'm going to have to tell her how I've chosen to live my life in every area, and especially in the area of sexuality.

And so we sit down together and we pour out with each other the backstory of our lives and, to be honest with you, one of the greatest areas of healing that ever happened to me was when she heard me tell her about the things that I had done and been a part of and the things that had been done to me, and she looked at me and said I love you, in spite of the love of Jesus manifest in her and through her to me, was part of the healing that God gave me.

The other thing that happened is that a little bit later on, the Lord began to deal with my heart about what had happened to me when I was a child.

And it's interesting because that person that did that to me probably had no idea how much that cost me in my life, how difficult it was for me to just live in a Christian home with a pastor as a dad and around all of these Christian people who were talking about sin as being evil and not evil, but sinful and wrong.

And yet I had had these things experienced.

That I had experienced and that I must have allowed happen to me.

Somehow it was my fault, and for the Lord to preciously help me to understand that really I was the one who needed to forgive.

How in the world do you forgive somebody that has done something so wrong to you?

You know, what I recognized is that I was in a prison of unforgiveness and because of that I wasn't able to fully understand the love of the Father for me or to express that love fully toward other people, even to my wife the way that she deserved, and so I chose, through, by God's grace, to forgive this young man.

You know what the Lord said to me.

He said he was doing what was done to him.

Does that make it right?

Absolutely not, but it gave me just a little bit of compassion and understanding that maybe this young man, who didn't have Jesus, who didn't have a family that cared about him in the same way that my family cared about me, that he'd gone through something very traumatic himself and was just expressing that because he thought that this was what was normal.

I went back to Wyoming with my young family a few years later and I drove down that street.

For the first time since it happened to me, I was able to breathe as I drove by that house and I could say to my family this is where I lived, without even mentioning the trauma that had happened to me on that street.

This is where I lived, this was a part of my childhood, and that's when I knew that the work that God was doing in me was getting to the point to where I'd be able to help other people with my story, and that's why I'm sharing it with you today, not so that you can say, well, tyler has all the answers, or he's figured it all out Absolutely not.

But so that you understand that God turns everything around for good for those who love God and are called according to his purpose.

If you are a child of God, there's nothing in your life that he can't turn around and use it for his glory and for his purpose and for his kingdom.

And so I'm going to close today just by praying for all of us.

I'm going to ask the prayer team to come in just a minute, and you might find yourself in a few different categories, and next week we'll spend more time talking about what culture says, what God says and how could we talk about it.

But I really felt like it was important for us to lay this foundation out so that we really understand that we're not defending something we feel.

We're not defending something that's been passed down from generation to generation from our families.

We're standing for truth that was intended and directed and established by God himself, the maker of heaven and earth, and if it's his truth, it's worth standing for.

Amen, I'm going to pray for you.

Maybe you find yourself in a category, like I was, where you have some form of hurt that's come into your life in the area of sexuality.

I want you to know that just because I chose to forgive the young man that did that to me, it does not mean that what he did was right.

It was wrong.

It was very wrong Not saying, when you forgive somebody, that the sinful behavior was right.

You're saying that in spite of the behavior I choose to forgive and then let go, I'm going to ask for you to have the ability to forgive and to be healed.

I'm also going to tell you that there are a lot of people, including within our elder team, who would love to sit with you and talk about these things.

There are ladies within our church who are spiritually mature.

If you're a lady and you'd like to sit and talk with somebody about something that's happened in your life, there are also Christian counselors that are professionals that do this all of the time that we can either refer you to or you can find those on your own.

Maybe you know somebody already.

Talk to somebody.

The second thing is there may be some in this room that were actually the perpetrators, those who actually harmed other people in one way or another.

I want you to say that if you will repent, acknowledge the sin and ask Jesus to forgive you and cleanse you, that the same grace that was available to me as the victim is available to you as well.

The Bible says Jesus said to the woman caught in adultery go and sin no more.

Today can be a day of new beginnings and a fresh start where that kind of life and that kind of activity in your life, or even in your mind, no longer has power over you.

Third category maybe you find yourself in a marriage where sexuality, your sexual relationship, is not good, it's not healthy.

Maybe one person is using it as a weapon.

They're only allowing you to, they're only having sex with you occasionally.

If you perform a certain way during the week, or whatever the case is, maybe that's one thing that's happening.

Maybe you're actually something that your partner's doing is hurting you, and they don't even know that it's hurting you.

You've got to be able to be honest and open with each other.

God intended for this area to be something that you mutually could enjoy.

The only way for that to happen is if you're honest and real with each other.

So I'm gonna pray for you that you will be able to.

That God will mend and heal any area in your life and marriage that keeps you from enjoying this precious gift that God's given, okay.

And then also, if you are not married, you're either too young to be married or you are single, you're a widow or widower, or you just have never been married and don't have a desire to be married.

I have good news for you.

Jesus Christ himself, and having a right relationship with him, can be the most fulfillment that you can ever experience in this life or the life to come.

And so, even if you're not married, your relationship with God and with Christ can be so pure and so holy and so fulfilling that you don't even have a desire to be involved with sex.

You don't have a desire to have sex?

Okay, god can do that.

He can give you the grace for that.

All right, so we'll also be praying for that.

I'm sure there are other categories that I'm forgetting or missing, but those are the ones that I really wanted to address this morning.

So let's go to the Lord together today.

This is a very serious thing, especially for people who have experienced these types of things, and so I'm gonna ask if you're not in any of these categories and you're doing great, awesome.

Pray for somebody else, pray for somebody in your family that you know that might be confused about sexuality.

I guarantee you, 90% or more of people who find themselves in that choice, that life choice, have some form of abuse in their background.

That's a fact.

That's a fact.

So let's pray together.

Amen.

Lord, I thank you for this day.

I thank you for the privilege of standing before these people and declaring your word, telling the story of how you've worked in my life in this particular area.

And, lord, I just ask now for those who have been victimized, who have been taken advantage of by other people, maybe people that they really trusted, their family members, people around them.

I ask, lord God, that you would pour your healing balm, the healing balm of Gilead, in their lives, touching and healing them, lord God, from all wounds, from every trauma, lord God, and also that you would grant the grace to be able to forgive, to let go of the hurt and to begin to experience life in every area, and especially in this area, the way that you intend for it to be experienced.

And, lord, I also pray for those who may find themselves in the place of being the victimizers, the abusers.

Lord, would you grant repentance, would you give, lord God, a new start, a new beginning?

Would you convict and change and transform in such a way that the old has passed away and all things have become brand new?

I pray for marriages now that are dealing with difficulty in maybe different areas, but especially in the area of sex.

Lord, I pray that you would bring healing.

I pray that they'd be able to be open and honest with each other, that they would have selfless love and self-sacrificing love that expresses itself in every way.

And, lord, I also pray for those who are single, either those that are single because they're not yet ready to be married.

I ask that you give them self-control, Father, that you would protect them from the lies of the enemy and from the plans that he tries to exercise against them to confuse them, to create chaos, to give them definitions and explanations from the world around them instead of from the word of God or from their families.

I pray, lord God, that you would bring about that you would put a hedge of protection around our young people, and even the youngest among us.

Lord God, preserve them and protect them from any harm that the enemy could ever do to them, and just thank you and praise you, father.

I also ask, lord, that those who are not yet saved, that you would bring them to a point of salvation right now, in the name of Jesus, help them to put their hope and trust and confidence in the living God who loves and gives and who is faithful in every way.

In Jesus' name, amen, I just wanna say to you for the last 30 years of my life in our marriage, amy and I have enjoyed a special relationship with each other, based on the fact that God has healed us and restored us and brought us together to be husband and wife, and I am so grateful for a partner like her and for the love that we share.

And my hope for each of you is that you can either experience that for yourself again in your marriage if you're not experiencing it now or that God would bring you somebody in the right time that would be that person for you, because, man, it's an amazing thing to live life as God intended in every area, but especially in this aspect of life.