The Biblical Sexual Ethic Part 1

So I have been here, I did the math.

Um about 750 Sundays I have spent here.

And funny, funny enough, I have never actually been as like physically ill on a Sunday as I am today.

And so it's like the temptation I have had all week long to be like, yeah, we're just not gonna do it.

We're just not gonna talk about it.

We're gonna push this down.

Well, we'll let's give it another week.

It's been like I've had every temptation, and all I've had for breakfast is cough drops and hot tea.

Um but it's very clear, like, no, no, no, like let's let's have this conversation.

And so, all jokes aside, uh, Madison, our youth pastor, gave me some great advice.

He said, Hey, maybe don't tell a lot of jokes this morning.

And I was like, Good call.

Um I'm gonna I'm gonna tell a few.

It's how I deal with uh with any sense of awkwardness at all.

It's just how I cope.

But we are having a conversation today and next week called the Biblical Sexual Ethic.

The Biblical Sexual Ethic.

I and I did not think there would be any woos when I said that.

This is not one of those topics that everyone's like, yeah, let's talk about this.

In fact, you might be someone asking a question I have asked many times this week.

Why, God, why are we talking about this?

And if you haven't, I have.

I have.

Um couple reasons.

One is is really personal.

I believe that I have a responsibility as a as a pastor to occasionally address major sort of cultural ideas or cultural movements that make it difficult for us as Jesus followers, and and not everyone here has decided to be that.

And so if you haven't decided to follow Jesus, you don't have to follow Jesus in these areas.

If you have decided to follow Jesus, at some point in time, you should start following Jesus.

That's just like basic advice.

But as a Jesus follower, we live in a culture where to hold a biblical view of sex and sexuality puts us ever increasingly at odds with the values of the culture we live in.

Perhaps more so than at any point in in modern history.

And look, it's it's hard to go against the grain.

It's hard to be counterculture.

There's a lot of pressure, there's a lot of push.

Sometimes there's even like a play on compassion where it's like out of compassion, I don't want to hold views that that maybe hurt or offend other people.

So it's tough.

This is tough stuff.

And I have a responsibility, I think, as a pastor to do that.

I'm not a pastor if you're new.

I'm not like a hot takes guy.

I don't comment on every every current event, every cultural situation, but I do think that there's an importance in doing that from time to time.

And this is something we've we've been getting a lot of questions about.

Like a lot of questions about.

And very often, because of the nature of the questions, they end up getting fielded by our youth team.

And I don't think it's right just to let the youth team take all the hard stuff.

So that's part of why I'm doing this.

And also, if you've been here for the last few weeks, the last few months, we've been in this series where we were talking about the understanding of conviction and understanding the difference between a command from God and a conviction.

We had this little chart that we looked at where it was like there's absolutes, the things God says absolutely, there's interpretations, the things that are in Scripture, which we try to live by and interpret it responsibly, apply it lovingly, but live by it as best we can.

There's interpretations, those things that are in scripture, but a little bit more open to interpretation.

And then you have convictions, these are our personal beliefs that might be informed by our faith, but they're not things that God has said.

And then below that you have preferences.

And people have asked, hey, where does all of the sort of human sexuality and sexual behavior fall in that framework?

Are these absolutes, interpretations, convictions, preferences, where does that hit?

And the biggest reason, I will say, the biggest reason, is actually this word right here.

It's God.

The biggest reason we're talking about this is because God cares about this stuff very, very much.

And so, for example, in 1 Corinthians chapter 6, verses 13 and 14.

1 Corinthians 6:13

Paul, who wrote this, says, You say I'm allowed to do anything, but not everything is good for you.

And he's addressing the fact that because Jesus has freed us and forgiveness of everything, like we have freedom.

We have freedom.

We don't have to live our lives on some type of tightrope.

Sometimes in church culture, that's what gets communicated.

Maybe you grew up in a church culture where it's like, hey, uh, you you better walk this line, and it's a very, very tight line.

It's very hard to walk.

And if you step to the left or step to the right, you're out of God's will, God's angry with you.

And that is not a that's not a biblical concept.

I really don't believe it is.

We have tremendous freedom, but not everything is beneficial.

Like you might have the freedom to eat whatever you want, but it's not necessarily good for you to eat whatever you want.

In fact, I don't know if this is true for you.

Why is it that we never want the things that are good for us when it comes to food?

Why do I never crave something that's healthy?

It's just weird.

So Paul says, even though I am allowed to do anything, I must not become a slave to anything.

You say food was made for the stomach and the stomach for food.

This is true, though someday God will do away with both of them.

But you can't say that our bodies were made for sexual immorality.

They were made for the Lord, and the Lord cares about our bodies.

God cares deeply about every aspect of our lives, every single aspect of our lives.

He cares so deeply about you, and these issues are really important to God because these issues affect us tremendously.

It goes on in verses 18 and 20 to say that we should run from sexual sin.

No other sin so clearly affects the body as this one does.

For sexual morality is a sin against your own body.

Don't you realize that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit who lives in you and was given to you by God?

You don't belong to yourself, for God bought you with a price, so you must honor God with your body.

So, this is an issue that is close to the heart of God.

It's in Scripture a lot.

It matters very much and it affects us greatly.

And a lot of us have experienced it the hard way.

Like regret in this area of life, it often cuts deeper than in other areas of life.

Pain and really negative experiences in this arena of life often hurt more and take longer to heal from than in others.

And so it's just really important.

Now, let me take a second and just talk about what this is and is not going to be a discussion about.

This is not like a culture war kind of thing.

This is not an attempt to sort of dunk on people who hold different views than this.

You know, I'm actually in kind of an interesting situation because I'm a I'm a pastor, I'm a teacher, and my primary uh source material is scripture, which hasn't been updated in a couple thousand years.

And so very often what what I'm doing is I'm looking at something ancient, but also something time-tested.

Some would say something that's out of date, out of touch.

I would say something that's timeless, that truth has held up over centuries and centuries and all kinds of different cultures and worlds, but you know, people have different opinions.

But but I'm trying to take this ancient understanding of humanity and God and how we ought to live out life and then apply it to a world that is changing very fast and often moving in very different directions.

And so I recognize that there are going to be people, people watching from home, people in this room right now, that will not agree with everything that is said today, and that is absolutely fine.

In fact, because of that, we're gonna put this number on screen, and it's gonna stay on screen the entire time.

And here's what this is.

We've actually never done this before, so I may regret this tremendously.

Um you can text any question to this number.

At any point today, send a text message.

You can be a specific, these will be anonymous, by the way.

We don't have, like, it's it's not like we're gonna capture your number and have some type of list.

Um we don't really do that.

We don't have lists.

But but this is going to be an opportun an opportunity for us to address specific questions next week.

I understand that talking about a topic like this, it's so broad, it has so many different directions it could go.

We're not gonna cover every possible idea.

And if you're like, man, I wish you would have said that, I wish you would have talked more about that, great, text me and I will next week.

I don't often give much control over what I say to uh a large group of people.

So this is your chance.

That's all I'm saying.

This is your shot.

Take it, use it, enjoy it, or you know, it may never happen again.

Okay.

Um so I understand that there's gonna be different opinions and ideas and questions that are unanswered.

This is kind of a messy topic, so I am very likely to do it in a messy way.

And I have to give myself permission for that because I wish there was like a perfect, neat and tidy way to have this conversation.

Um, but this is not like culture war, if you disagree with this, you're wrong.

It's not that at all.

There's a lot of room for questions, for conversation in this in this area.

This is not a shame fest.

Anytime this gets talked about, there's like this natural human response to feel shame and guilt.

And I've been experiencing in many ways that for a lot of my life.

And we'll get into more details about this.

Like, look, some of the things we're gonna talk about, you've you've stepped outside the lines, so to speak, into that.

And you know what?

Welcome to the club.

Welcome to this giant club called People Who Have Failed to Live Up to Perfection and Need Jesus' help.

It's a really big club, okay?

It's a really big club.

And honestly, especially in this area, open up scripture, read the Bible, read like the heroes of scripture, and and start counting how many of them messed up in this area of life.

And it's like a who's who, it's like a hall of fame.

This is tough.

This is a tough, it's tough to live this stuff out.

So this is not going to be a shame fest.

And I really want this to be heard at any moment in time.

If you hear a voice that tells you that you are being judged, that you're being looked down upon, that you have failed, that you're not enough, that is not the voice of God.

It's not my voice.

It's definitely not the voice of God.

Now, if you hear a voice at some point that says, hey, there's something better for you, rethink this.

Make a change.

That very well might be the voice of God.

This is one of those topics that's kind of twofold.

It's deeply personal, but also it's important that we as Jesus followers understand what Scripture says about this and how we sort of live this out in the framework of our culture.

Okay, so this is not a shame fest.

This is not us trying to advance something that some of you may be familiar with called purity culture.

Anyone just show of hands?

Uh, anyone familiar with that phrase, purity culture?

Okay, not a ton.

So here's what that is.

Um of us who grew up in sort of a post-sexual revolution church culture, this would be like a lot of kids if you were like a, I'm just gonna be honest, if you were like an 80s, 90s kid, and you grew up in church, and you went to like a conservative church, which most are, um, there was almost like this culture where, I'm just gonna be honest, it was like, look, God loves you, but do not have sex.

Like he loves you a lot, and he'll forgive you for anything, but do not, whatever you do, have sex.

And sex actually became like this incredibly focused on topic.

This is not something we talk about all the time, super often at all, but it was something that as a kid growing up in sort of a purity culture environment, it was talked about all the time.

Like it was the issue in God's eyes.

And I came to believe just sort of naturally that this was the one determining factor in how God saw me.

My ability to do things God's way in terms of sexual behavior was the determining factor in how God saw me.

And here's what that actually did for a lot of people.

It messed a lot of people up.

It may have been well-intended.

In fact, I grew up in a in a I went to a Christian school.

My parents, when I was a sophomore, decided that the friends I was hanging out with at my public school were not good and something needed to change, and they were 100% correct to make that decision.

Like looking back, mom and dad, if you're watching, smart.

Um, I was.

I was hanging out with a bad group, and bad things were happening, and really bad things were gonna happen.

So good job.

And uh, and so they moved me to this school, and it was great, and God used it to change my life and my mentor in high school is the reason I'm a pastor, and and he's a pastor now, and like amazing things happened.

But we used to have these these experiences where once every quarter, every semester, there would be this sort of, they called it spiritual emphasis week.

And we called it a breakup with your boyfriend or girlfriend week.

Because that's you knew in advance that's what it was all gonna be about.

So, like Spiritual Emphasis Week started, they started talking, and we we all broke up.

It's like cockroaches like scattering apart.

And then as soon as Spiritual Emphasis Week was over, we all got back together.

Right?

Because this was the issue, and so it messed people up because what it didn't, and I'm just kind of generalizing, um, for a lot of people, a lot of shame that actually made it difficult for them to have healthy relationships, even in marriage, developed.

And for a lot of guys like myself, sex became idolized.

Because if if it's the one thing that that everything, like whatever you do, don't mess this up, because it's this one thing, then you get to this point where you're like, well, then it must be the greatest thing in the history of the world.

And I'm not gonna lie, I enjoy it, I like it, I have four children, but okay, but it is not the end-all be-all of human existence.

And I'm just gonna be honest, I've had to shake that, and I still struggle with that sometimes because in trying so hard to do it right, in a weird way, I kind of idolized it.

And the truth of the matter is anything you idolize will eventually disappoint you.

Okay, so this is not a purity culture, this is not hot takes, this is not culture war, this is not a shamefest.

Here's all this is this is an opportunity, an attempt.

We'll see how it goes.

This is an attempt to simply give Jesus followers, which is what most of us are, many of us are, to give Jesus followers a helpful, I hope, thoughtful framework to understand how following Jesus informs our views on sex, sexuality, sexual behavior, so that we can do our best to experience life the way that God has designed it to be.

Does that make sense?

The hope is that this is kind of like an anchor point, that this is something that in a culture that's kind of going crazy in these areas, we can say, okay, this is the this is the truth according to God.

And then you kind of take it or leave it.

That's up to you.

So let me sort of describe what I would call the biblical sexual ethic.

I got a lot of uh words on this page.

Right?

We've got monogamy, promiscuity, orgies.

That's actually in the Bible.

It's crazy.

In the early church, Paul had to say, like, stop having orgies.

And I have to like, man, Paul, that's a I'm I'm glad I've never had to give that message.

So um that's the way the Greek world was.

Uh, affairs, marriage, lust, divorce with an asterisk, there are, there are in scripture exceptions.

There are, like Jesus said, in cases of adultery, for example, and um at that time, some people like to use the whole fact that it it only says adultery, and and there are people who have said, well, that means like if a husband was abusive with his wife that she couldn't divorce him because that's not adultery, which is dumb.

Um, because only men were allowed to initiate divorce in Jesus' culture.

Women didn't have that right, and so Jesus, when he was speaking about divorce, was speaking to men.

And there really wasn't a major issue in the ancient world of like women beating their husbands up.

So um there there are exceptions to this.

That's why there's an asterisk.

I'm trying to be specific.

Uh, homosexuality, heterosexuality, abstinence, being sexually available to your spouse.

Whew.

Transgenderism, premarital specs, pornography, singleness, and celibacy.

So these are a lot of different things.

It is by no means a complete list.

There are things that are not on it.

Um, things like rape, incest that I think all of us would understand, like, yeah, clearly, no.

Or something like pedophilia, which I think we all agree is like off the table.

However, again, because of the culture we're living in, there's actually been a movement.

And it's it's growing, it's small right now, and I'm not being an alarmist, but it's growing to say, actually, those are just people who have a natural attraction to minors.

That's the world we live in, okay?

So it's not a complete list, but it's as much as I can fit on a piece of paper.

So here's what I want to do.

I'm gonna draw a little dotted line here.

And this is what the Bible, I would say, prescribes.

It's not what it describes.

There's a difference between what the Bible describes and what it what it prescribes.

The Bible describes all kinds of human sexual behavior.

But every time the Bible describes something, it's not advocating for it.

This would be the biblical prescription for healthy human sexuality.

Almost think about it like a two-lane highway.

Okay, on one lane you have singleness and celibacy, which is actually a really uncelebrated thing in our culture today.

But so many amazing men and women in history, in our faith, who have done incredible things, lived lives that were single and celibate.

It's an amazing calling for people to live by.

But on the other lane is uh monogamous heterosexual relationships that end up in marriage, there's abstinence prior to it, uh, you're sexually available to your spouse, and that's sort of the biblical sexual ethic.

Now, let's talk for a second on this.

Again, I said this is not a shame fest.

Because if I started saying, hey, how many of us, I'm not going to, do not worry, uh, how many of us have found ourselves outside of these dotted lines at some point in time?

Every one of us would have to be honest.

And it's like funny because in Jesus' culture, some of the religious leaders would say, No, not me, I've done it perfectly.

And that's why Jesus actually said, Well, if you've ever lusted after a woman, it's like you've committed adultery with her in your heart.

And all the guys are like, Well, you know, I mean, well, never mind.

You know, it's like one of those things.

Because Jesus is trying to say, hey, look, can we can we all understand that while this is not intended for shame, it's also not intended for pride.

It's not intended to be like, well, I'm inside of these lines, so I am better than those outside.

Look, almost all human beings find themselves on the outside of this at some point in time.

I have.

And I I've talked about an addiction that I had to pornography that started when I was really young.

I was exposed to pornography when I was in the third grade, and it really ramped up because I'm part of a generation like that.

We got computers and our parents didn't know how to use them.

Like I was the IT department in my home for a good 15 years.

Okay?

And so, you know, it's pornography, and I was addicted to that, and that was something that carried through into my into my 20s.

Like it was a real problem.

And so I don't have any leg of like purity to stand on and be like, no, divorce, I am the product of a marriage that my father was married before he married my mom, got divorced, married my mom.

I wouldn't even exist if divorce wasn't a thing.

And so what I'm trying to say is like all of this stuff, if again, if there's a voice in your head that's like, you're on the outside, that's not the intention of this.

That's not the point.

A couple things I want to I want to talk about.

Um, all of this is covered by grace.

Everything on this list is covered by the grace of God.

Okay?

So it's not like God's love and mercy is for the people who are here.

That's not true at all.

God's love and mercy and grace.

Mercy is not getting what you deserve, grace is getting what you don't deserve.

God gives us both because he loves us that much.

Every single one of these is covered by the grace of God.

What this really is, is God saying, hey, it will go well for you, it will go better for you if you go in this direction.

I remember the first time that my oldest son brought up the topic of sex, and I was like, oh no, I am not prepared for this.

But it was kind of cool because we just so happened to be driving, and I was like, oh, okay, think about it like this road.

Someone built this road.

And they they built it for people to drive on.

And and yet they built it and they they gave a lot of suggestions like go this fast, go this direction, stop here.

And if if I drive and I I follow those guidelines, it will go better for me.

And I I could decide, you know what, I'm going backwards.

I'm gonna go off-road in my 2006 Toyota Scion.

Let's see how that goes, right?

And so I use that to sort of help this young son of mine like start to understand that God invented sex.

It was his idea, he created it.

And he didn't have to, he could have come up with a different way for us to have intimacy and for us to reproduce, but he came up with sex.

And he loves us so much, and he knew what a what a special gift that was.

And he also knew how potentially volatile it would be.

But he says, Hey, do everything you can to do it this way.

It's for our it's for our benefit.

Now, if you were asking, like, okay, well, isn't is this just your opinion?

Um is this like preference, conviction, I would say that I feel confident that what's inside of these lines is either an absolute In terms of it's something that God has specifically spoken to in Scripture, or there are things outside of this line that God has specifically spoken against in Scripture?

Or it's at the very least an interpretation.

A great example of this would be like abstinence, like not having sex before marriage.

So, 1 Corinthians chapter 7, verses 8 and 9, Paul says, So I say to those who aren't married and to widows, it's better to stay unmarried just as I am.

1 Corinthians 7:8

Paul was a single dude and he liked it.

He's like, it's so much better to be single.

You don't have to like ask the other person what they want to eat and then go, well, I don't want to eat that.

And then, like, you know, you don't have to do any of those things.

And honestly, for Paul, he was so focused on Jesus that for him, it's like, man, I'm glad that I have nothing other than Jesus to focus on because he got to go places, he got to do things that he just couldn't have done if he had to think about a spouse or a family.

And so he was great with it.

And so Paul says, like, try it out, stay unmarried, just like me.

But if you can't control yourselves, then you go ahead and get married because it's better to marry than to burn with lust.

And I actually love this scripture because, on one hand, I think it's so cool that Paul recognizes, hey, this is a really hard one.

This is difficult.

As human beings, we have this thing called desire.

And desire is not sin.

Like, for example, the Bible talks about homosexuality as a sin.

It doesn't talk about it a lot, but every time it's talked about, Old Testament, New Testament, it's a sin.

It's not the sin.

It's not the sin of sins.

It's a sin in a list of many, and it's usually not even the first or the last in the list.

It's just in there.

But like same-sex attraction is just desire.

Desire is not a sin.

But Paul recognizes that we have these strong desires, and it's going to be really difficult for most people to be like, I'll just ignore those completely.

And so he says, better to be married than to burn with lust.

Which is, I think, really, it's an amazing recognition.

This is challenging, but that, hey, if that's where you find yourself, go in the direction that God has provided.

Okay, so this is in a nutshell the biblical sexual ethic.

Is everybody with me?

Okay, again, such an awkward message to give.

Let's keep going.

I want us to understand the cultural moment that we're living in for a moment.

Because, like I said, there's a reason why I'm talking about this, so a couple of reasons.

A big one is the fact that our culture is changing faster than maybe any culture in human history regarding views of human sexuality and what is healthy and good.

Because for almost the entirety of Western civilization, which is a long time, by the way, the thing that I just described, whether you were a Christian or not, most people would nod their heads in agreement and being like, yeah, that's the best way to do it.

That's the best way to do it.

Now, people struggled and stepped outside of that all the time.

There have been lots of hypocrites who pretended like they were doing it that way, but weren't.

But but culturally, it's been pretty much accepted in every major Western society for sure, and even many that aren't, that this is the best path.

Until about the last 50, 60 years.

And there's been this rapidly increasing idea that basically says, let's throw off all of these repressive ideas, and let's get to a place where we see all human sexual behavior as equally valid or moral or good.

And so I want to talk for a second about how we got here.

Because I think, look, to have this opinion, to live life understanding the biblical sexual ethic, and to do it in a way where you're like not a jerk, like you're not just shaking your fist at the world, being like, you're doing it wrong, you know, like no one needs that.

But to do this in a way that you can sort of stick to your guns and understand why, you have to have sort of a nuanced understanding of why we're living in the world we're living in and why it's hard.

So I want to ask, how do we get here?

How do we get to this point in human culture?

Because it's very interesting.

And look, I'm gonna explain a few things, and again, text questions if you have them, or if I say something that makes you angry, I'm not I'm not taking a stab at a certain group of people at all.

I'm just using this as an idea to understand things are changing.

And they're changing very fast.

Did you know that the percentage of people who identify as in in a non-heterosexual way has doubled percentage-wise with every generation since the sexual revolution of the 1960s?

And so, like Gen Z right now, the kind of youngest generation with a name.

I don't know what the generation under them will be, because you know, Z is the last letter.

So we're gonna have to figure this out.

Um we didn't think that through.

But 20%, 20% of Gen Z identify as non-heterosexual.

Millennials, it's 10%.

Gen X, and I'm in between Gen X and Millennial, I'm like the youngest Gen X or the oldest millennial in the room, it's 5%.

Generation before that, it's like 2.5%.

And the generation that was born uh right around you know, the prior to 1946 is like less than 1%.

So clearly, there's this rapid change happening.

Or that's that's doubling, okay?

Again, regardless of your opinions on that specific issue, I think we can all admit that that's pretty interesting.

There's this rapid change.

And to be honest, it's kind of hard to keep up with.

It really is.

Sort of the sexual categories are changing.

It seems like by the hour, and there's there's all kinds of new categories and ideas, and it feels like every year you have to sort of like, oh, there's a whole new framework to understand.

And we want to be compassionate and loving and and make room for people who see things differently than us, and at the same time, you you sometimes find your head spinning and go, this is not what God has said.

What's happening?

How do we get here?

And there's really two main factors.

One would be the sexual revolution of the 1960s.

I'm not gonna go into great detail about this, just suffice it to say that uh the pill came out.

There was a technological revolution that made it possible for the first time to have sex and relatively expect not to get pregnant.

And that was a big deal.

And it was well intended, and it's had in many ways really good effects.

It's allowed um marriages to sort of plan, and depending on what your opinions are about that, like if you're Catholic, you're like, that's bad, the pill's bad.

If you're not Catholic, you're probably like, yeah, we're on the pill.

Um, but you know, different opinions for that, different convictions.

But what you've seen is this explosion ever since the 1960s in sort of destroying any framework that has existed before in terms of what regulates and defines healthy human sexuality.

And so that that's this constant idea that no, no, no, um, sexual behavior, sex isn't actually that big of a deal.

There was there was sort of a discarding of the sacredness of sex, and sex now just becomes a thing in and of itself.

And so sex becomes much more casual, and and promiscuity becomes much more common, and that's just what happens because of the sexual revolution.

But the truth of the matter is there have been other sexual revolutions in the history of the world.

Like the world that Paul wrote to is very similar to the world that we live in now in terms of what people were doing.

That's why Paul had to write things like don't have orgies.

I don't think he just woke up one day and was like, you know, this would be kind of a fun thing to talk about.

Like he's addressing behaviors that are happening in the culture.

But here's what's really different is we have the sexual revolution, but we also have this thing called secular humanism.

And I talk about this from time to time.

It's actually one of my favorite topics, so I apologize if you've been here for several hundred Sundays and you've heard me mention this like kind of on a quarterly basis.

But I think it's really important that we understand, and young people, it's really important that you understand what the world actually bases its ideas on.

And the predominant worldview of the last 60, 70 years in America has been secular humanism, which says that we do not need, it's secular, right?

Not sacred, we do not need to follow a God or even believe in a God to become the highest version that we can be as human beings.

It was this idea that, no, no, shove God to the side.

We in and of ourselves have all that we need to be the best version of ourselves, and we can find happiness and we can find fulfillment in and of ourselves.

And so there becomes this elevation of self-expression.

I grew up in a time where the a lot of the posters on the walls in the school that I grew up in were things like be yourself, believe in yourself.

And then, you know, later it's like find yourself.

And someone tells you to find yourself, you're like, I don't know, I lost myself.

And how am I supposed to believe in myself if I can't even find myself?

How can I be myself if I don't know where myself is?

Right?

It's very confusing.

And ultimately becomes this thing of worship yourself.

Because at the core of secular humanism is that you are the center of the world.

And so your desires, your urges, must be satisfied.

Because what you want.

And you've got to be true to yourself.

Now, because of the combination of a sexual revolution and secular humanism, for the first time in human history, this has never happened before, but for the first time in human history, you have this unique thing that's taken place where the deepest core understanding of a human being's identity becomes linked to their sexuality.

That has never happened in the history of our world.

And this world's been spinning for a long time.

We are living in a unique time where for the first time in history people view the deepest part of who they are as their completely interconnected to their sexual desires.

And so a lot of the things that we had on the board earlier, it's not just issues of behavior, it's issues of identity.

That's really hard for a lot of people when it comes to this concept, because to tell someone, oh, that that is something that God does not condone, what they hear is God does not condone you.

Because they've believed, because of all these sort of cultural things happening, that you are your sexuality.

That is who you are.

And you can't deny it because it's the core of who you are.

When you push God out of the equation, something has to be the deepest part of us.

And if it's not our spirit, if it's not that part of us that is eternal, that God has created and put inside of us and breathed in us, as scripture teaches, well, then what is the deepest part of us?

And what has become the deepest part of us in terms of what culture accepts is our sexuality, such to the point where to say to someone, oh yeah, you gotta just sort of ignore your sexual desires right now is like tantamount to saying you don't exist.

And it's a fallacy and it's a devastating lie.

So that's sort of how we got here, but but let's keep talking.

How's it going?

Right?

How's this how's it going?

Because look, there's a couple of different viewpoints on where we're at right now.

One viewpoint is to say, finally, the shackles have been removed.

Finally, all these repressive, stupid rules that have kept us from really just kind of being who we want to be are gone, and we can now finally go and express ourselves in whichever way we choose and find happiness in all these different paths.

And then there's another view that would say, wow, we're kind of like throwing away thousands of years of human social structure that's actually worked pretty well.

And we're basically taking this young generation and we're just going, let's experiment with you guys.

Let's raise you in a world where all the categories that have defined human relationships for thousands of years, we're gonna pretend like those don't exist.

And we're gonna let you grow up in a world where it's sort of like just, you know, figure it out.

And everything's equally valid, and and all and and you can probably tell which one I fall into as far as my beliefs.

But what I will say is if the first view is true that oh, the shackles are gone, well then we should be seeing more happiness, more satisfaction, more joy, more fulfillment, more peace than we've ever seen in human history, because finally all the things that were keeping us from that are gone.

And that is not true.

Look, there's there's some like kind of crazy statistics that are a little bit like low-lying fruit.

For example, prior to the 1960s, there were two sexually active, uh sexually transmitted diseases active in America.

Two.

That's it.

Today there's over 20.

So that that probably shouldn't keep going in that direction.

Right?

And that affects people.

It just does.

It affects people, it affects people I know.

That's that's not good, but again, that's kind of like a low-lying fruit thing.

Um what about just human happiness?

Are we happier?

Are we happier as human beings having elevated sex to a place that it shouldn't be, having everything in our world be sexualized to a crazy degree, where like I have to be careful with like the cartoons that my kids watch, not because I'm worried about, you know, like a cuss word or something like that, but because you know, I just don't think four-year-olds should be, who like, by the way, don't think about sex at all, because there's no such thing as a sexual child.

Like they're they're they're tiny little human beings, their brains haven't developed in that way, they don't think in those terms at all, but so much of this sort of sexuality culture even gets infused into that stuff, and it's just it's it's devastating.

And so it's no wonder that you have the highest rates of depression, the highest rates of just extreme, debilitating confusion that we've ever seen.

And you know what's really interesting is that actually there was this big study that came out, The Atlantic, which is not a Christian publication at all, published this a few years ago and said that happiness is kind of at an all-time low in America.

Fewer people identify as being happy.

And what they found is the two highest contributing factors to people identifying as happy was being married.

If they're unless, again, you're called to be single and celibate, which is a thing.

And go for it.

If that's your it's it's really valuable.

But for people who aren't, which is more, it was marriage and religious involvement.

Those were the two highest indicators of whether or not you were fulfilled and happy.

And you have more and more people ignoring that because that's what culture says.

Those things are just repressive, they're repressive, right?

That's a social construct that's meant to keep us down, and so people have gone, yeah, well then let's not have that, and they're miserable and unhappy.

And actually, really strange, people are actually having less sex than ever before in recorded human history in America.

And it's not because they're like, it's not a moral thing.

It's because so much of this stuff has created deeply debilitating social anxiety and issues that people have a really hard time just engaging with other people right now.

It's really sad.

So I don't think it's going well.

But again, if you're like, I think we're at the precipice of human history and it's never been as good as it is now in this arena of life, then again, I want to engage with that idea.

I want to take it seriously.

And so please send questions.

Otherwise, I have nothing to talk about next week.

Okay, so how's it going?

Let's keep going.

I know this is a little bit of an odd topic, by the way, and I realize that if you've been here for only three weeks, you think that I always do this thing with this little white thing, and I actually don't.

It's very rare.

It's not like my style, it's just it's helpful.

Let's talk about how the church has responded as these trends have developed over the last several years.

And the answer is pretty poorly.

To be honest, like pretty poorly.

It's hard, right?

Like, how has the church in the last 60, 70 years responded?

And what you find is you've got kind of two, well, actually, probably three major camps now.

One is like double down on the biblical view of sexuality, which is great to do, because it works and it has worked for a long, long time.

Double down on that, but do it in such a way that there's just a lot of shame and a lot of judgment on those who don't.

And I will say that sometimes this gets, I think, overblown, the degree to which this happens.

I think there was an era of American history where it happened a lot, but it's not something that really happens in great.

It's like you see in a movie, if you if you watch movies, sometimes there'll be this like cliched character who's a Christian.

And have you ever noticed that they're always southern?

But like super southern.

And they always like are really angry about you know the world, and they you they say fornication, which is a word no one says anymore.

So you'll have like in a modern day culture, there's this person who's like, fornicators, and you're like, that is not a real thing.

Like, no one, no one is doing that.

So, but there there has been this double down on biblical traditional sexuality, sexual behavior, but do it in such a way that really judges those who don't.

And here's here's where that has has become really unhealthy.

A few major reasons.

Number one, and I think specifically with homosexuality, this became a thing where some really stupid arguments that just made for for good, like, I don't know, t-shirt logos or slogans started to happen.

Um and it like one was okay, like Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve.

That was one.

And that's just not, I don't know anyone who's gonna be like, oh, good point.

Now I've changed my mind.

You know, and so what that sort of does is it devalues how central of a feeling this is to many people.

But another one that was really huge was there was this idea that began to develop.

This really became big in like the 90s, and people who had you know non-heterosexual desires would say, Oh, I was born this way.

And a lot of Christians couldn't handle that idea, so they're saying, No, you weren't born this way.

The idea being God would never create someone like this, and so um, because if God created you like this, then that means he wanted you to be this way, and so you weren't born this way, it's just a choice.

And that's also silly because the Bible absolutely talks about the fact that we're all born with sinful desires.

We are all born, every single one of us, we are born with sinful tendencies.

And those tendencies play out in different ways.

I have known people who who, for whatever reason, cannot tell the truth.

They have like a pathological need to lie.

And I doubt anyone raised them and just said, hey, just lie a lot.

You know?

Like, don't tell the truth.

The truth is stupid.

No, tell lies, tell unnecessary lies.

Like, there's one thing to tell a lie when you're just sort of in trouble, trying to get out of it.

There's another thing just to lie for no apparent reason.

And that's just a person's natural sin tendency that we're all born in because we're not born perfect.

I mean, that's kind of a cultural idea that babies and are just wonderful, they're cute.

They're not perfect.

Are you kidding me?

Like, let a let a toddler make decisions for a day and see what happens.

Right?

We're born in sin.

And so that manifests in all kinds of different ways.

And so I actually think that that approach did a lot of damage and it didn't do any healing.

So you have one camp that's like double down, but do it in a way that's really judgmental.

And that camp is going to tend to value truth much more.

Truth often at the expense of love.

And then you have another camp, and this is really growing right now.

This has been a huge movement in the last 10, 15 years, of this sort of like, well, out of love and compassion, we have to sort of go along to get along.

And there's been a widespread movement in Western Christianity to abandon traditional views of human sexuality and healthy sexual behavior in order to sort of be relevant with the world and not to be viewed as a bigot, because no one likes to be called a bigot.

And there's been this growing idea that if you hold a biblical traditional view of human sexuality, you're a bigot.

No one wants to be that.

And so what do we do?

And so that camp tends to value compassion and love, maybe at the expense of truth.

And then I think what has really become normal, and this is something I have to like, maybe I've been this, and I can own that, is a group that's just sort of silent.

A group that's just on the outside, like, well, I do not want to jump into that.

Those are shark-infested waters, and I don't want to get bit.

And so you've had a lot of churches while while this group has been saying things, and this group has been saying things, most churches have just been kind of like, hmm-mm-like, nope, not going there.

And the challenge is: can we be people who value love and truth equally?

Can we be people who hold tight to truth but do it in a way that's incredibly loving?

It's hard.

And it will not be understood by everyone, but I do believe it's possible because Jesus did this.

Jesus affirmed truth at every turn, and yet at the same time, he was so incredibly loving with anyone who found themselves on the outside of whatever his culture viewed as righteous or good.

It's hard to do, but we can do it.

Okay, so the church hasn't responded great, but even more important than that, we are almost done.

Like, how did Jesus respond?

This should be the thing we look at most, because you know, he's Jesus.

We're his followers.

Let's follow his example.

John chapter 8.

John 8 · chapter mention

Jesus returned from the Mount of Olives, but early the next morning, he was back again at the temple.

A crowd soon gathered, and he sat down and taught them.

As he was speaking, the teachers of religious law and the Pharisees brought a woman who had been caught in the act of adultery.

Why didn't they bring the man?

Good question.

They put her in front of the crowd.

Teacher, they said to Jesus, this woman was caught in the act of adultery.

The law of Moses says to stone her.

What do you say?

They were trying to trap him, but Saying something they could use against him.

But Jesus stooped down and he wrote in the dust with his finger.

We don't know what he wrote.

I don't know.

Such a cool thing to wonder.

Some people have speculated, maybe he was writing some of the issues that the men around him struggled with, and they're like reading, like, oh no, that's me.

We don't know.

Maybe he was writing scripture, maybe he was just doodling.

It says they kept demanding an answer.

So he stood up again and said, All right, but let the one who has never sinned throw the first stone.

Then he stooped down again and he wrote in the dust.

And when the accusers heard this, they slipped away one by one, beginning with the oldest, until only Jesus was left in the middle of the crowd with the woman.

And then Jesus stood up again and said to the woman, Where are your accusers?

Didn't even one condemn you?

No, Lord, she said.

And Jesus said, Neither do I.

Now go and sin no more.

Now, this is very, very important.

Because this story provides this amazing framework for us.

Jesus meets this woman.

And this is not a one-time thing.

In fact, many times in Scripture, Jesus encounters someone who is described in Scripture as someone who is living outside of the prescribed sexual ethic.

And not one time does he go like, does he freak out?

Not one time does he say, like, you should be ashamed of yourself.

What are you doing?

What's wrong with you?

In fact, it doesn't ever seem to really phase Jesus at all.

One of my favorite stories is of Jesus is when he's at the Last Supper.

And by the way, when we're done with this, we're actually going to jump into a series on the conversation that Jesus has with his disciples.

We're going to call it the last meal.

So many of the classic things you've heard Jesus say came from that last meal he had with his friends before he went to the cross.

So we're going to jump into some just some Jesus for a while.

I'm really excited.

And so in that conversation, though, Jesus hears one of his disciples, Peter, say, I will never betray you.

Peter is just bragging, he's flexing a little bit.

He's like, I'll never mess up.

These guys might, but you know Jesus, I won't.

And Jesus says, Actually, Peter, you will.

In fact, you're going to do it tonight.

In fact, before tomorrow, you're going to deny that you even know me three times.

And I love that because what it shows us is that Jesus isn't surprised by our failure.

He's like, I know you're going to fail.

It doesn't surprise me.

And I'm not even that angry about it.

And every time Jesus encounters someone who has failure in life, he just loves them.

And this story shows us here's this woman, Jesus catches her in the act of adultery, or they caught her in the act of adultery.

Bring her to Jesus.

So he's with this woman in probably her darkest moment in life.

And she's so ashamed and she's so afraid.

And everyone else is ready to kill her, and Jesus saves her life.

And imagine what it must have been like for that woman, for Jesus to look at her and say, I do not condemn you.

And then he says, Now go and sin no more.

And both of those in conjunction are so powerful.

He leads with love, and then he brings truth.

Because that's what love is supposed to do.

Love is like a bridge that you build to deliver truth across.

I heard a pastor say that once.

I love that.

Which is why, as a father, if I want to deliver truth to my kids, I better love them.

Because otherwise they're not going to listen to it, they won't receive it.

But Jesus does both.

He loves her, he forgives her, and then he calls her back to the path.

He says, look, it will go better for you.

If you leave this path that you're on, go back, do it the way God asks you to.

It's for your benefit.

Because that's the truth.

At the end of the day, this biblical sexual ethic, it's for our benefit.

It goes better this way.

And God cares about us and he loves us.

So what do we do now?

We try to be like Jesus.

And we understand that in the meantime, a few things as we close, He He cares, He loves, He forgives, and He helps.

Okay.

Maybe, maybe I'm wrong.

Maybe there's part of me that just imagined all week long standing here and knowing that there were going to be a lot of people who have found themselves on the wrong side of the biblical sexual ethic at some point in time, and they're going to feel a lot of guilt and shame.

And maybe I'm wrong.

Maybe you guys have all done it right.

I didn't.

You know, this part of my life was the one part of life I refused to submit to God for a very long time.

And so I loved Jesus.

I just didn't love Jesus enough to say no to things I also loved.

So when I was in middle school, high school, it was like, girls and girlfriends, like I just was like, yes to all that.

And it took some pretty major moments in my life that God had to really get a hold of me and speak to me, and a big part of that was falling in love with my wife, who was someone who had committed herself to doing it right in a way that I respected more than anyone I'd ever known.

But I'm I'm standing in front of you as someone who, if I was sitting where you are, and if I could rewind the clock, I would have been someone sitting there going, like, oh no, here it comes, you know, the guilt trip.

And I would have felt ashamed, I would have felt dirty, and all kinds of things.

And I'm just telling you that that's the way I used to see God, and that is not the way God is.

Because Jesus is never like that.

He's never like that when he encounters people who have messed up.

This this sexuality thing, it's hard.

Human sexual behavior is it's a messy subject.

It's super messy.

And so what do we do?

How do we like go about it?

Well, we know number one, God cares.

He cares about you, he cares about every aspect of your life, he cares who you sleep with.

It's funny, we live in a world where very often when people are angry with God, they're angry because they think God should have cared more to get involved and make something not happen that was really bad.

Like, God should have cared enough to stop that from happening.

But then we also get mad at God because we're like, God, you shouldn't care about this.

This is my life.

Leave me alone.

Well, it's like, what, does he care or does he not?

And he does.

And he tells us that.

He cares.

He loves us.

He loves you.

He loves you.

Period.

End of story.

There is nothing you ever have done or ever can do that's going to somehow disqualify you from the love of God.

I'm sorry.

Your sin is not stronger than God's love.

It's just not.

You're not that good at sinning, is what I'm trying to say.

God is better at loving than you are at sinning.

And you can try to have a competition with him.

That's a destructive way to live, but at the end of the day, you're going to come to this point where you realize, oh, God still loves me because he loves better than we sin.

He forgives.

And he helps.

And this is where it's so cool.

And this is what I love about this church because this is the last thing I want to say.

Well, kind of.

Never mind.

All right.

Almost last.

I drove myself crazy and felt like a constant failure for years and years and years by trying to do this out of my own strength.

Trying to live here in my own strength.

I went to church and church was like, do it.

And I was like, I'm trying.

And I would mess up and I would feel like a failure.

And now I'm a dad and I'm trying to like raise my kids to do this, but also I'm like, I didn't do it this way a lot.

I messed up a ton.

So I feel like a huge hypocrite.

A lot of us are raising children right now.

We're trying to raise our children to be better versions of ourselves.

And that's good, by the way.

It's good.

You should want your kids to do it better than you did.

Okay?

But it's hard, right?

And so I grew up in this culture where I tried to do this, but I tried to do it in my own strength.

It was all about effort.

It was all about performance.

Many of us grew up in, not all of us did grow up in church.

We've always been a church that reaches a lot of people who didn't, but lately, I will say this.

Lately, we've got a lot of people coming that are new that have definitely grown up in church, because I've just seen, I'm being honest, way more khaki pants and tucked in shirts than I'm used to seeing.

And I love it.

It's great.

I'm not saying change the way you dress.

Don't you dare do that.

I'm just saying, and I'm getting lots of questions that I'm, these are questions only church people ask.

And I think I actually think the reason that a lot of people are coming right now in this sort of season we're in is because this has always been a place, and this connects to this.

This has always been a place that taught me to shake off everything but Jesus.

To shake off religion, to shake off performance, to shake off striving, to shake off the feelings of shame and guilt that had accompanied me trying to do it so, so hard, trying so hard to do it the right way, and failing and failing, and feeling like a failure, and feeling like God must be this close to being done with me.

And this church taught me how to shake that off and recognize that God has never asked me to do this in my own strength.

Jeremiah chapter 17 says that cursed is the man who tries to do everything by human strength, but it goes on to say that blessed is the one.

Jeremiah 17 · chapter mention

Blessed is the one who relies on God.

One of the biggest tragedies of kind of the modern American church is that pastors have told people to do this, and they haven't told people that there's no way to do it without the work of the Holy Spirit in your life.

And so it's like putting a yeah, it's like putting a burden on people.

Jesus said of the Pharisees, you put a burden on people and you don't lift a finger to help.

It's like telling people to do better, do more.

That's religion.

Do better, do more.

And by the way, you're on your own.

We have the Holy Spirit inside of us.

If you've given your life to Jesus, you have the Holy Spirit.

You may not always feel the Holy Spirit.

Look, you don't feel a lot of the things that are inside of you.

How does your pancreas feel right now?

You don't know.

You can't feel it, okay?

But you have the Holy Spirit inside of you.

And he's real and he's alive, and he does things that Jesus promised that he would do.

He he guides you, he reminds you of things.

Sometimes the Holy Spirit convicts us a little bit in a loving, gentle way, a little nudge.

It's not shame ever.

And so it's funny, I keep thinking about this like a road.

And I don't know if you're as bad of a driver as I am, but I'm a bad enough driver that I can have my GPS on and still make wrong turns fairly frequently.

Anyone else like to do that?

Yeah.

I don't know.

It's like I go into autopilot and I hear like turn left and at the next light, and I just turn left at the next road.

And then what do you hear when you do that?

Like what is said when you go off the path?

Make a U-turn.

I love it, right?

Like I and sometimes I just keep on the road because I like, no, actually, I think this will connect later on.

You know, maybe I found a shortcut that Google didn't even know about.

Um and so here's what happens: you get off the path, and and that voice in your car says, make a U-turn.

Make a U-turn.

Make a U-turn.

It'll say it like 10 times, and eventually it'll just go, reroute it.

And it just says, we're just gonna get there in a different way.

Some of us, maybe God tells you at some point, maybe it's today, maybe it's another point in life, you find yourself veering off of this, and and you might be convinced, and this is not God, this is Satan.

These are dotted lines for a reason.

It's not like walls and barriers.

If you get on the outside of it, it's not like you can't get back in.

The Holy Spirit will just say, hey, make a U-turn.

Hey, make a U-turn.

Let's get back on the path.

That's gonna get you to your destination.

Come on, let's get back.

And eventually, if you're really stubborn, and let's be honest, we are.

It's not like my my GPS has never given up on me.

You notice that?

It's never been like, you know what, you're not, you're clearly not listening to me, and so we're done.

Shutting off.

That's never happened.

And I didn't ever plan to say this in this message, so it's kind of goofy, but you know, Siri doesn't love you as much as God does.

I'm just gonna be honest.

Like, God never gives up on us.

And so, you know, we find ourselves sometimes and we just we don't make the U-turn, we don't make the U-turn, and does that mean God's done with this?

No, it just means the Holy Spirit at some point goes, okay, rerouted.

I'm still going to get you where I want you to be.

It just might be a tougher road.

And I'd rather you not do that because I love you, but I'm not going to abandon you if you do.

And so, where does this leave us?

Well, we're in a culture that does not share our view of healthy human sexuality.

And in a lot of ways, we kind of find ourselves very much like Eve found herself in Genesis 3, and this is the last thing I'm going to say.

Eve is being tempted by Satan.

It's an external voice telling her to do things in a different way than God has said to do them.

God gave a very specific guideline.

He said, Don't eat the fruit from this one tree.

And the enemy shows up and he's like, No, no, no, no, it'll be good.

It'll be good.

And it says the woman was convinced.

She saw that the tree was beautiful and its fruit looked delicious.

In other words, it was attractive.

She liked the way it looked.

She wanted it.

And she wanted the wisdom it would give her.

So she took some of the fruit and ate it.

She gave some to her husband who was with her, and he ate it too.

And it goes pretty poorly from that point.

Well, we live in a cultural moment.

And students, I very much feel for you because I did not have to deal with half of the things you guys have to deal with in terms of what you're faced with and what throws across screens to you and what you're tempted by.

But we live in this cultural moment, very much like Eve in the garden.

We have a lot of external voices telling us, ignore what God has said.

That's silly, that's outdated, that's old, that's repressive.

And it's a lie.

Real happiness lies in going outside of what God has said to do.

And a lot of us end up learning the same lesson Eve did.

No, it doesn't.

And so we we want to be people who, as best as we can, do what God has said because it just, it's for our benefit.

But if we fail, if we struggle, if we don't, we have the Holy Spirit to strengthen us, to guide us, to help us, to get us back on track.

So sometimes we just need to do that simple thing and just, you know, make a U-turn.

Does that make sense?

All right.

So next week, we're gonna answer questions.

And so if you haven't asked one yet, like just some of you that know me really well, like Thomas, you know me really well.

Just send a question, so I at least have, and send me like a doozy, if you don't mind.

Like, think of the heart.

What's the one question, Thomas, you would never want to answer on this stage?

Send me that one.

Um but but honestly, like, send questions.

This is a really, really good opportunity for us to talk about these topics, and then the week after that, we're gonna jump into an amazing series on Jesus.

All right?

Let's pray.

Thank you, Father, for being here today.

Thank you, Lord, that this message is done.

Honestly, God, I'm just between, you know this, because you know me, but this has been kind of a struggle this week, and I haven't felt well and I didn't really want to talk about this, because who would?

What weird person would want to talk about this?

But I'm actually really grateful that you do, that you do talk about this.

That you care so deeply about us that you purposefully and intentionally step into our lives, guide us in every aspect of life.

This is a part of life that we all struggle with and deal with and have had regrets in and failures in, and or if we've done it the right way, maybe, Lord, we deal with pride because we think we're somehow better when we don't even know how much other people may have been tempted.

So, Lord, I just pray that you would humble all of us, that you'd bring us all to the same place.

We're just people doing our best, but deeply, deeply, deeply in need of your help.

We cannot do this on our own.

Lord, we do pray for our culture.

I pray for our world.

Lord, I look around and I see the way that the world is telling people to go, and I can't help but have my heart break because I know it's not going to end well.

So I pray, Lord, that there's an awakening in our culture, that there's an awakening to an understanding that you know what you're talking about and you know what you're doing.

And if we go along with you, things go better for us.

That's how much you love us.

You want things to work out for us.

So I pray, Lord, that you you help us with that.

I also pray, Lord, that for everyone here that you melt away any shame or any guilt.

Melt it all away.

Help us be people who just receive the help you give.

That we trust the guidance of your spirit to put us on the path you want us to be.

And I pray this in your name, Jesus.

Amen.