Episode 264: Freed to Enjoy Your Spouse

Welcome, welcome, great to worship with you today.

My name is Justin.

I'm one of the pastors here of our church

and we're gonna continue worshiping God

by opening his word, the Bible.

That's how he spoke to us.

And so if you have a Bible,

you can grab it now and open to Exodus chapter 20.

Exodus 20 · chapter mention

If you need a Bible, there should be some Bibles

under the chairs in front of you.

Exodus 20 is on page 64 in those Bibles.

And we're in the middle of a series

going through the 10 commandments.

We're actually starting to get close to the end.

We're gonna be on the seventh commandment today.

And so we'll get into that series

as you kind of turn and find that passage.

Exodus 20.

God wants you to have the best sex possible.

God wants you to have the best sex possible.

He wants you to have the highest amount of intimacy,

pleasure, satisfaction, and joy that can be had through sex.

Here's how we know our text today.

Exodus 20 verse 14.

Exodus 20:14

It says this, "Do not commit adultery."

Let's pray and ask for God's help as we dig into this.

So we're gonna pray the words of Psalm 119.

God, these words that we've prayed

over and over throughout this series,

would you please open our eyes

so that we can see wondrous things out of your law?

Open our eyes again today, God.

So that we can see what's true, what's beautiful,

what's lovely in your law.

We pray it in Jesus' name.

Amen.

Amen.

God wants you to have the best sex possible.

Now, listen, if you're a visitor here today

just checking out our church for the very first time,

and you might be like, I knew it.

Like the church is just all about sex.

They talk about sex all the time.

They're obsessed with sex, sex, sex.

We're really not.

Like we're in this series,

and please listen to the previous six messages.

It never came up once, I promise you.

All right, but this is where we're at in the text today.

And so we're gonna get into it.

We're gonna talk about it.

And so hang with us, all right?

Remember, these commandments were given

after God has already given his people freedom.

God brought his people into freedom,

and he says these commandments are so that you can remain

in this freedom, not run back to slavery.

God gave these commands to protect our freedom,

to protect the good and beautiful life

that he rescued us to live.

Freedom comes from following God's plan in our lives.

We tend to think that freedom comes

from getting rid of all the rules.

If I can just not have any rules in my life,

if I can just come to a spot where I do whatever I want,

where I follow my heart, then I'll have true freedom.

But listen, I can guarantee you

that just following your heart does not bring freedom.

Following your heart and your heart alone

brings you to puking and diabetes,

because if my kids just followed their heart,

they'd only eat sugar, all right?

I know that for sure.

Following our hearts actually lead us to disaster,

to ruin, to slavery.

Following God's design and plan for us leads us to freedom.

God wants us to thrive.

He wants the best for us.

That's why one of my favorite verses,

and a verse that's kind of been an anthem of our church,

is Psalm 16, verse 11.

Psalms 16:11

Look at what it says.

You reveal, God, you reveal the path of life to me.

In your presence is abundant joy.

At your right hand are eternal pleasures.

Now, look at that with me.

God wants us to experience, look at the words,

abundant joy,

pleasures forever and now.

And he's not hiding any of this.

Look at that first line there.

You reveal this path to me.

God is not hiding the good life from us.

He's revealed that path to us,

which causes us to read the seventh command this way.

God wants us to have the best sex possible.

God is not making the best sex off limits.

He's freed us to experience it to its fullest extent.

He wants what's best for us.

And the path to that, the abundant joy and pleasures

we can have through it, are here in this command.

But now, before we dive deeper into it,

let me stop and say this.

I know there's so many different experiences and stories,

and because of sin, this world can be really brutal.

If your past is one that involves sexual abuse,

I wanna say first, man, I'm so sorry for that.

I'm sorry that that's part of your story and experience.

This message could be a really tough one to process through.

We'd love to talk with you more, pray with you,

walk with you toward healing and beauty.

Our God is a God of healing and beauty and peace,

and I pray that he's moving you in that direction.

What this seventh command tells us, though,

is that the best sex happens within marriage.

The best sex happens within marriage,

because this command says, do not commit adultery.

So it's like this command is saying,

the way to freedom is sex within marriage.

The way to slavery is adultery.

What is adultery?

Adultery is treating someone other than your spouse

with the passion reserved only for your spouse.

Treating someone other than your spouse

with the passion reserved only for your spouse.

So adultery isn't just the physical act

of sex outside of marriage.

It's giving another person any of the passion

that's reserved for your spouse.

So in other words, you can enter into

an emotionally adulterous relationship

that never turns physical.

It's not just the physical act of sex.

Jesus teaches this much in Matthew 5.

Look at what he says.

You have heard that it was said, do not commit adultery,

but I tell you, everyone who looks at a woman lustfully

has already committed adultery with her in his heart.

There's no physical act there.

There was no act of sex.

Jesus says adultery is just a passionate look.

But listen, it's always this, and here's the point.

It's always treating someone other than your spouse this way.

Other than your spouse.

God's design, God's intent for the best possible sex

is always within the marriage relationship.

God has freed his people.

He's put us on the path of life to experience abundant joy,

to experience pleasures, and the way that we do that

sexually is exclusively with our spouse.

When we go searching for the kind of physical,

emotional, or spiritual intimacy

that's only meant to be experienced within marriage,

when we go searching for that outside of marriage,

then we're attempting to get something good

that God has for us the wrong way.

We cheapen sex when we look to experience it

outside of marriage.

Now, that's kind of where we're gonna end,

this cheapened form of sex.

More on that later, but this actually brings up

some amazing truths first.

And the first is this.

God designed sex to be enjoyed.

God designed sex to be enjoyed.

God created sex.

He created male and female to be able to unite as one,

and he created it to be physically pleasurable.

It's no accident that our reproductive organs

have crazy amounts of nerve fibers which create pleasure,

or that our bodies release surges of pleasure chemicals

during sex, dopamine, endorphins, and on and on.

God created the experience of sex to be enjoyable.

That's his doing.

Listen, it is not sinful to enjoy sex.

That's not sinful.

James 1:17 says this,

James 1:17

"Every good and perfect gift is from above,

"coming down from the Father of light."

Sex is one of those gifts.

God wants us to enjoy it.

Like look what he says in Proverbs 5.

He says, "Let your fountain be blessed

"and take pleasure in the wife of your youth,

"a loving dear, a graceful doe.

"Let her breasts always satisfy you.

"Be lost in her love forever."

The word for fountain here is the Hebrew word

for our sexual capacity and our joy.

The word in verse 18 for take pleasure,

that's the word that means to be intoxicated.

And the let's here, the let your, let her,

that's the language of a command.

Guys, here's what God's saying.

God's saying, "I command your sexual capacity

"and your joy in sex to be blessed.

"I command you to have great sex.

"I command her breasts to satisfy you."

Okay, we all good?

Anybody need a stretch break or anything?

Does Charlie come out of the bathroom?

Oh yeah, there he is.

Here's what this is saying.

Sex isn't something dirty that God just permits

once people get married.

Sex is not something dirty that God just eventually permits

once you enter into a marriage.

Sex is something that God created to be good,

satisfying, joyful, beautiful,

the act in and of itself.

And God commands us to enjoy this thing

that he designed to be enjoyable.

The tough part is many people were raised in churches

that take a more conservative stance on sex than God does.

It's like some Christians have tried to be more pure

and holy about sex than God himself is.

Sadly, it seems that some Christians believe

that sex is somehow in and of itself tainted

and wrong and dirty.

And so they don't even like talking about it.

And so if you're struggling with this sermon,

if you're feeling that squirminess or off-put

at talking about sex as being something

that you should enjoy or find pleasure in,

then the reality is you're probably more under the influence

of this world than of the Bible.

God wants us to supremely enjoy sex,

to have the fullest experience of it possible.

But it's not just about pleasure, number two,

it's also intimacy.

God created sex to be intimate,

for there to be a unique intimacy experienced during sex

that is unmatched in this world.

You see, in Genesis, God created man,

but there wasn't a partner fit for him.

And it seems like God wanted Adam to feel that.

He had all the other animal, everything else created,

paraded in front of Adam.

And Adam felt, man, there's nothing here for me.

Adam felt that intimacy void, and then God creates a woman.

And Adam sings, he bursts into song, the first song.

Here it is, this one at last is bone of my bone

and flesh of my flesh.

This one will be called woman, for she was taken from man.

Maybe not a great song, I don't know, he did his best.

That's the best you can hope for a man, right?

He tried, did all right.

But look at where it goes on.

This is why a man leaves his father and mother

and bonds with his wife, and they become one flesh.

Both the man and his wife were naked and yet felt no shame.

A husband and wife bond in a way

where they become one flesh.

The description the Bible gives of it is this,

in a marriage, you now need each other

for completion and wholeness.

I mean, biologically, God created sex

to be a literal coming together into one,

but he also created it to be an incredibly intimate act

that makes the statement that they belong together.

And listen, intimacy always thrives in exclusivity.

Intimacy thrives in exclusivity.

Like imagine the person you love coming up to you

and saying, baby, of all the people I have sex with,

you are my favorite.

Why doesn't that work?

Like, why doesn't that play?

Why aren't we okay with the person we love

having sex with whomever they want, whenever they want?

Because it destroys the intimacy.

Exclusivity means I reserve myself for you and you alone,

which is why the last verse of Genesis 2 says,

they were naked with each other and felt no shame.

That is just pure intimacy right there.

To be completely vulnerable, completely exposed,

not hiding anything with each other

because you're each committed exclusively to each other.

Intimacy thrives in exclusivity,

which leads us to really the most important reality

of this good gift of sex.

Not only did God design it to be enjoyable and intimate,

God also designed sex to point us to something better.

God designed sex to point us to something better.

As great as sex can be through the joy and the intimacy,

it's actually meant to point us to something

that's even more enjoyable, even more intimate.

Great sex is a picture of the gospel.

Great sex is a picture of the gospel.

In Ephesians 5, Paul talks about husbands and wives

and their roles and marriage

and all this teaching on marriage,

and then he ends it with this.

He takes us back to Genesis and he writes,

"For this reason, a man will leave his father and mother

"and be joined to his wife,

"and the two will become one flesh.

"This is profound, this mystery is profound,

"but I'm talking about Christ in the church."

Here's what Paul's saying.

A man and a woman will get married,

and as spouses, they will become one flesh.

They'll have intimate, enjoyable sex.

This is mysterious.

It's about Christ in the church.

Here's what that means.

God created sex to be enjoyable,

to give us the smallest glimpse of the total joy

of what it'll be to be united to Jesus forever.

God created sex to be intimate,

to give us just a glimpse of the unmatched intimacy

we'll have with Jesus forever.

God created sex to be exclusive

within the marriage relationship,

to show us how fiercely committed Jesus is to us.

God created sex to be enjoyable, intimate, and exclusive

in order to be a picture of the gospel.

You see, there's coming a day

when each one of us will meet Jesus face to face.

That day's coming for you and for me.

It's gonna happen when we die or when Jesus comes back,

but you will meet God face to face one day.

And on that day, when you see God face to face,

you will be totally naked and exposed.

There will be no more hiding.

All of your sins, your failures, your mistakes,

all those things that you're terrified

that if other people knew that about you,

they wouldn't like you anymore,

all of that will be laid bare totally before God.

[congregation murmurs]

But for those of you who've received Jesus,

to those of you who've given Jesus your lives

and you follow him, God will look at you in that moment,

completely naked, vulnerable, with all of your guilt,

with all of your ugliness on display,

God will look at you in that moment

with nothing but delight.

Nothing but delight.

You'll stand before God completely seen,

known to your core, and you will feel absolutely safe.

We can't even fathom a love that sees us totally

for who we are and still says, I love you to death.

That total acceptance, that complete delight and love,

sex is the smallest possible foretaste of that.

Because when a husband and wife have sex

in that vulnerable, exposed act,

they're saying, I love you and accept you

in spite of your flaws and failures.

I delight in you still.

And when we stand before God, vulnerable and exposed,

having been rescued by Jesus,

God will say, I love you and accept you

in spite of all your flaws and failures.

I delight in you and give myself to you.

And so to have sex within marriage

is a picture of the joy and intimacy and exclusivity

that exists between Jesus and the church,

which means this, track with me.

To have sex outside of marriage

is to break what it pictures.

To have sex outside of marriage is to say,

I'm looking for acceptance, joy, and intimacy

outside of you.

It'd be like the church coming to Jesus and saying,

I'm looking for acceptance, joy, and intimacy,

but I don't want it with you, Jesus.

It's a cheapening.

It's a lessening of what sex is meant to picture,

and it leads us right back to slavery.

Cheap sex enslaves us.

Now we've been talking about adultery,

but there's another word the Bible uses

for sex outside of marriage.

It's the word pornea.

It means fornication.

Fornication is simply sex outside of marriage.

So that can happen when you're dating,

when you're engaged through dating app hookups,

or alone through pornography.

All of that is engaging with sex in a way

that strips sex of everything God designed it for.

It strips sex of the picture of Jesus and the church.

It strips sex of the intimacy it was created for.

It makes it impossible to have the fullest experience,

the highest experience of enjoyment through sex.

Sex outside of marriage can never fulfill

God's intent for sex.

Instead of enjoyment, intimacy,

and the exclusive picture of the gospel,

it becomes something that we just use each other for

for our own pleasure.

We become slaves to it.

Slaves at great cost.

Going back again and again to a cheapened experience of sex,

especially pornography,

it's been shown to produce incredible anxiety,

shame, depression,

and even rewire us so that we become desensitized

to healthy human relationships.

Sex outside of marriage so easily becomes an idol

in our lives,

something we can't imagine living without,

something we keep going back to

for the pleasure and intimacy we crave,

but it can never deliver.

It can never deliver because God created it to deliver.

He created it to deliver the pleasure and intimacy

we're craving one way

within the exclusivity of a marriage relationship.

Now, maybe you're here today and you're like, man,

you know you've experienced a cheapened version of sex

over and over again.

Maybe you're currently engaged in a cheapened version of sex.

You may even feel trapped,

enslaved to that.

You've failed over and over again,

and at this point you can't really imagine having victory,

having freedom,

but man, let me take us back to where we started.

God has freed us for the best sex possible.

God has freed us for that.

The freedom is there.

It can be yours.

The work of Jesus on the cross is that powerful,

and God is so, so ready to give you freedom.

There's this amazing story we read in John chapter eight

where Jesus meets this woman at a well,

and it's a woman who had failed sexually over and over.

She'd settled for cheap sex for so long.

She'd failed many times,

and Jesus knew that,

and what's really amazing as you read this story

about how Jesus interacts with her

is that you see Jesus interacting with her

in such a loving way,

in such a tender way,

in such a patient, accepting, kind way,

and all of that was before she confessed or repented.

If you've failed,

if you've continually failed to keep this command

by pursuing sex outside of marriage,

Jesus meets you today with kindness and love.

He loves you right now,

no matter how intense the failure or how often.

He wants to restore you.

He wants to give you freedom.

He wants you to live in his freedom

and have the best sex possible,

but the first step is to trust and believe this.

Everything that you crave and are looking for

in cheapened sex is found totally,

beautifully, and satisfyingly in Jesus himself.

You see, until we experience the enjoyment of Jesus,

until you experience the intimacy of Jesus,

until your hearts find what they are craving in Jesus,

we will continue to look for it in cheap sex.

But once we experience being fully known by God

and still love to death, unmatched love,

it'll actually free us to pursue the best sex possible.

Jesus has freed us so that we start walking in freedom,

and as we start walking in this freedom

of pursuing the best sex possible,

it's gonna still, it's gonna look like,

look like a battle, all right?

Like look what Jesus says in Matthew 5.

He goes on talking about it.

He says, "If your right eye causes you to sin,

"gouge it out and throw it away.

"If your right hand causes you to sin,

"cut it off and throw it away."

You see, even after we experience freedom,

the journey toward healing and restoration

looks like a battle.

Our hearts do not drift toward holiness.

The autopilot of our hearts, the neutral,

the drift of our hearts is back towards slavery.

We have to arrest that.

We have to fight, we have to go to battle

to steer our hearts toward freedom.

And Jesus is saying this, guys, it's time to get serious.

If you wanna remain in freedom,

if you wanna experience this good gift

the best way possible,

then you've gotta be proactive

about protecting this freedom.

And here's what it looks like.

It looks like guarding our hearts,

guarding our hearts.

Proverbs 4 says this, "Guard your hearts above all else."

And it says that because our hearts steer our decisions.

Whatever's captivating your heart,

that's gonna be what you give yourself to.

And we shape our hearts' desires

by the things our minds dwell on.

What we give our minds to, what we think about

over and over and over again,

it starts to be what our hearts love.

I recently traveled to Portugal.

I took the whole family there.

We went to Portugal this summer.

We were there for 17 days.

And man, I was hoping to love it,

and it exceeded my expectations.

I loved it so much.

Portugal was so, so great.

And so I think about it all the time.

I look at pictures.

I just think back to the memories.

That's kinda like my, when I have free time now

and I just got nothing else to think about,

I think back to our experience in Portugal.

It was just such a great time.

I wanna go back so, so badly.

I actually spend time on Airbnb just looking at homes.

I mean, there's no way I can travel anytime soon,

but I'm just looking at them to just imagine myself there

in Portugal sometimes.

It was so, so great.

But now I've started seeing it all over.

I never saw a lot of things about Portugal in life,

but now I see it everywhere.

I walk in Costco, and I've been in Costco a million times,

and I've seen this same bottle of wine

that's always on the end of the aisle.

But now I saw it and I was like,

oh my goodness, Portugal.

It's from Portugal.

It says Portugal on it.

And I'm like, oh, that's amazing.

I never knew that was from Portugal.

I keep walking in Costco and I see that giant,

what's that thing called?

Oh, I gotta look.

That giant custard pie.

I don't know what it's called 'cause no one's ever bought it

I don't think.

That giant custard pie in Costco.

And I'm like, oh, that looks like a giant pastel de nata,

which is the dessert of Portugal.

And I'm like, oh, I wanna buy it

and just hope it tastes like a giant big old pastel de nata.

Open my refrigerator, cook breakfast,

Portuguese sausage, it's everywhere.

I just see it all the time, all over.

And it makes me wanna go back more and more.

If you think about cheap sex over and over and over,

if your mind is dwelling on it,

you'll begin to see opportunities everywhere.

And it'll make you wanna go back to it

more and more and more.

Which is why Colossians 3 tells us this.

If you've been raised with Christ,

seek the things that are above where Christ is,

seated at the right hand.

Look at this, set your mind on things above,

not on earthly things.

We guard our hearts by taking our thoughts captive,

by setting our minds on Jesus,

by dwelling on, meditating on,

thinking over and over again about what we have in him.

We do that when we come to church.

That's what we're doing today.

We're taking our thoughts captive.

We're thinking about Jesus together.

When we come to the table and experience Jesus together,

when we sing the songs, when you come to church,

it's an exercise in, let's think about Jesus together.

When you go to your community group,

it's people in our church coming together

to think and talk about Jesus.

When you read your Bible in your home,

you're thinking about Jesus.

When you listen to your worship songs on the way to church,

you're thinking about Jesus.

And maybe you do one or multiple of those things

and you're like, man, I come to church

or I go to community group

and I just feel like I got nothing out of it.

You did.

You always do.

We always get something about it

because we're guarding our hearts by thinking about Jesus.

We guard our hearts by guarding our eyes, what we look at.

Man, some of us need, we need to go to war.

We need to be serious.

We need to delete some apps, cancel some subscriptions

because the eyes are windows to the hearts

and many of us are feeding our hearts cheap sex.

We guard our hearts by guarding our steps.

Romans 13 says this,

"Make no provision for the flesh to gratify its desires."

You know what that's saying there?

Don't put yourself in a position where you'll probably fail.

Don't put yourself in a position where you'll probably fail.

If you know you struggle to be on your computer alone

late at night, don't get on your computer alone

late at night.

If you know that moving in with your boyfriend

or girlfriend is gonna cause you to sin,

don't move in with them.

Figure out another way.

If you know that the worker at that coffee shop

keeps subtly flirting with you,

get your coffee somewhere else.

Somebody came to me early in our church planting days

and said, "Man, there's this guy at the gym

"that I'm attracted to and he's kind of been flirting

"with me, he's not my husband,

"and I just know I'm gonna have sex with him.

"What can I do?"

And I was like, "Well, can you go to a different gym?

"Can you stop going to the gym?"

And she said to me, she's like,

"Well, how am I gonna stay in shape then?"

And I said, "Any other way, any other way.

"Like can our church buy you a treadmill?

"We will, like any other way.

"It's time to get serious.

"It's time to cut it off.

"God wants us to live in freedom.

"Jesus went to the cross for your freedom.

"Don't go back to slavery."

Trust that God's designed the most enjoyable,

most intimate experience of sex possible for you,

exclusively experiencing it with your spouse.

Listen, God is for you, He is on your side,

He's coming after you, and He is relentless.

Let's pray together.

(wind whooshing)