Sexual Revolution Nuclear Fallout

All right, let's pray and we will get started. Lord Jesus, again, as we open up Your Word, we recognize that Your Word is a lamp unto our feet and a light to our path, and that it is through Your Word that we have

Your commandments and Your precepts, which teach us wisdom and teach us a proper way to conduct ourselves in this world that is so upside down in that war with You.

We ask that Your Spirit would help us to rightly understand Your Word, and that we would rightly understand and apply it to our lives, so that as Your Word says, that even our good works would be a witness and a testimony of the greatness of who

You are. We ask this in Jesus' name, Amen. Last time we had Sunday school together, we began to take a look at the

Sixth Commandment. Talking about the Sixth Commandment, thou shalt not commit adultery.

Mr. Holt has made it clear he has got a sermonic question, and that is perfectly legit and okay.

Let's begin with a question. Went to Egypt to escape

Herod. Yes. And came back when Herod died. Yes. So how long was that? How long was he in Egypt?

That's a good question. We're not exactly sure how long he was in Egypt, and the Egyptian account only appears in the

Methian Gospel, so it's only in Matthew, and that actually makes sense because the fact that Jesus went to Egypt and came out of Egypt in fulfillment of a prophecy, out of Egypt I've called my son, that is a big telegraph to people who are

Jewish that Jesus is none other than the promised Messiah. When the Magi show up, and you'll see this in next week's text, when the

Magi show up, the guesstimation is that Jesus could be as old as two years old, which is why the slaughter of the innocents by Herod, all the male children in Bethlehem who are two years old and younger are to be killed.

So it looks as if Mary and Joseph, after Jesus is born, people end up leaving the holiday in so they're able to get a place, so they end up staying in Bethlehem for a little bit of time, and it may have been upwards to a couple years, and then the remaining portion of the time that Herod was alive would have been anywhere from two to four more years, and so Jesus may not have actually returned back from Egypt until he was between four and six.

Right. Yeah, in fact, those details of Jesus' upbringing and His childhood have not been revealed to us.

And you're going to note that Luke is the one who interviews Mary.

And we know for a fact that the details that Luke gets for his Gospel, there's only one person in the living who could have had those details, and that's

Mary. And so even what he saw fit to tell the world in his

Gospel totally omits, doesn't even mention the trip to Egypt. Doesn't mention it at all. From the text that we had this morning in our

Gospel text, the presentation of Christ and the sacrifice for being the fact that He's the first male child to open up Mary's womb, all of that is kind of like the last bits we get until Jesus is 12.

So it totally hopscotches over His toddlerhood and everything else to right when He's 12. And then we get that one touch point when

He's in adolescence, and then nothing again until He's about 30. We don't have any of the Facebook posts that Jesus put up when

He was growing up. Listen, the Gnostic Gospels, and you have to put the word

Gospel in air quotes. These are really bad science fiction fanfics about Jesus.

There was a movie that I actually picked up recently. It may have been a year or two ago. They actually picked up some of the details of the childhood of Jesus from the

Gnostic Gospels. And it's one of the Gnostic Gospels that tells us that apparently

Jesus when He was young as a kid, there would be clay pigeons, and He could hold one and it would turn into a real one.

You know, it's like absolute nonsense. If anyone tells you they know what happened between those years, they don't know what they're talking about.

Avoid that stuff like the plague because the theology embedded in those stories is Gnostic. This circumcision to age 12.

He was just a normal human being like the rest of us. I like the fact that God has respected the privacy of this family.

Though, one thing I've learned, you know, because of my other job, my other vocation as a pirate,

I live in a fishbowl. The details of my life, they end up being used against me in weird ways.

And it's like I don't have the luxury of having privacy. And I really am thankful that we have no ability to pry into this history and find out what was going on.

We don't know. God has not given that to us to know. And thank God, because I can't imagine the pressure that Mary must have felt knowing that she is raising the

Messiah. There was no ambiguity. She knew exactly who she was raising.

And you get a sense of the stress of it all when she loses the Messiah and he's gone for three days.

Could you imagine? Seriously, it's bad enough when you lose a child at Wal -Mart because they've decided to wander off.

Or like what I used to do is when my mom would take us shopping, I'd hide in the clothes racks.

And at one point, my mom freaked out because she couldn't find me. Of course, I was making it as difficult as possible.

And I ended up hearing my name over the loudspeaker. And my mom was fit to be tied.

And I literally looked like she was ready to come unglued. And I was only gone, what? 15, 20, 30 minutes total.

Okay, Jesus is gone for three days and He's the Messiah and you're His mom. And she lost

Him. What do you do with that? So, I mean, the pressure that existed.

And what we also do know, we know this for a fact from the other Gospels, is that Jesus' own half -brothers did not believe

He was the Messiah. Yeah, they did not believe He was the Messiah. They did not believe it.

At one point in one of the Gospels, Jesus' mother, Mary, and half -brothers show up because they think

Jesus has lost His mind, He's cracked. And they wanted to kind of scoop Him up and put

Him in the ancient world's version of a mental institution. They thought that He had totally lost

His mind. They did not believe in Him. The fact that Jesus' brothers after the resurrection believe that He is the

Son of God is huge. Jude, the epistle of Jude, written by one of Jesus' half -brothers.

And it's a great testimony to the resurrection itself.

I mean, believe me when I tell you, nobody growing up in my family, my brother especially, would have never believed

I'm the Messiah. And my wife doesn't think I am either. Just for good reason.

But, you know, eventually Jesus' half -brothers come around. So, kind of a long answer to a short question, but I think you get the idea, yeah.

We are looking at the sixth commandment. We did a little groundwork on our last lesson, and I want to review that and build off of it.

And I noted last time that this commandment, thou shalt not commit adultery, it's quite expansive in what it means, and the consequences for how this is going to impact how you function in society and your impact around the people that you know is going to be ginormous.

Remember, we live in a post -sexual revolution in the United States. And it's important for us to remember that the sexual revolution, its impact continues to this day.

When we talk about revolutions, usually we think about who is revolting against whom. You think back to when the colonies, the 13 original colonies revolted against the king and against the crown, and we went to war.

Who were we revolting against? British Empire. Sexual revolution, who were we revolting against?

God. And this world in our culture and society is obsessed with the topic of sex.

Obsessed with it. It's so much so, Western society as a whole, that in Canada, if you say certain things of what the

Bible says publicly, you could be arrested. Same in Great Britain.

There was a fellow who was doing some street preaching to tell people to repent and to trust in Jesus and to be forgiven of their sins.

And some fellow who was a homosexual engaged him in conversation regarding the topic of homosexuality.

And the street preacher just read out what the Bible says about it.

Didn't even give his own opinion. And that guy reported him, and he was arrested. Now, he was later let go.

But how long is that gonna persist? We're already to the point now where this society is so corrupt sexually that when you speak

God's truth about it, or even worse, live it out, you are a threat to our society.

You are seen as a threat. And somebody I was listening to recently actually made this comment, and I looked it up, and it's true.

In the state of California, in the state of California, the consequences for misgendering somebody using the proper pronouns that they have chosen for themselves, whether that's he, she, zim, za, whatever, if you misgender somebody and refuse to address them according to the pronouns that they self -identify by, the legal consequences for that in the state of California are more severe than if you intentionally gave the

AIDS virus to somebody. I want you to think about that. Somebody who has the

AIDS virus knows that they has the AIDS virus, and they intentionally expose somebody to the

AIDS virus, which could be a death sentence. The consequences for that legally are less than if you refuse to call that guy a she because he says that she's a she.

My niece is one of the supervisors for the

TSA in the Minneapolis airport. Okay. They hired some employees, three or four employees.

My niece has to train them. This happened in October. She trained four or five people.

That's on pat -downs, that's on searching, that's on protocol, that's on everything. No problem whatsoever.

She trained four or five people, whatever. November, she realized that two of the people that she trained were males.

She trained them as females. So the females are patting down, female passengers, the males pat down the male passengers.

The females search the female passengers, the males search the male passengers.

Middle of November, whatever, she realized that these two women that she trained were men.

Okay, she put up a stake. Of course. You guys think I'm outneed? You have not met my niece.

Okay. She put up a stake because her supervisor did not explain to her about these two people.

And she got fired because she pulled the whistle, saying, you cannot do that job.

You are a male. You are gonna have to be over here with the males. Now she even helped these people pick out their uniforms and size their uniforms for them and everything.

Okay. Nobody told her anything. She got fired. The moral of the story is, then next time

TSA wants to pat you down, you need to ask the TSA agent, are you genetically male or female?

Okay. So she got back. She took this to court.

It went all the way to the Supreme Court in Washington, DC. Vert came back the last week before Christmas.

She won. Good for her. She has her job back. How did she over, so the court ruled in her favor, not the transgenders.

Interesting. Is that not something? Yeah. She gets compensated. Went all the way to Washington, DC.

She got compensation. Now she's gonna go after them for some money. Good for her. Good for her because I mean. She won.

Yeah. We all told her, you know, you're done. Yeah.

Yeah. For the moment. For the moment. But is that something she won over transgenders?

Yeah. Very good. Yeah. But then you have the cake makers. Yeah. Yeah. They know because of their religious beliefs.

Right. Do not, they do not transcend. Yeah. Gender beliefs.

Yeah. I'll say it before and I'll say it again that the idea that humans are comprised of men and women, boys and girls, is not a statement of faith.

Every single human society, every single human culture, every human religion has recognized this fact.

It is physically, tangibly demonstrable.

Human beings procreate when guys and girls get together. This is a repeatable experiment.

Scientifically proven over millennia, billions of times.

How many times has a male conceived a child through a homosexual relationship? Zero times.

Zero. Now, if you remember the story, there was a story late this year that the liberal media ran with that a fellow had become pregnant and had given birth.

Yeah. And he is actually a she, was born with the plumbing that women have.

So he is not a he and no man has ever actually given birth still to this day. And I can tell you as a man, we would never survive the ordeal anyway.

Yeah. I've seen it happen three times and I know for a fact if that were to happen to me, you'd be having my funeral.

So that's all I'm saying. I love Carol Burnett's explanation. She says, if you wanna know what childbirth is like, take your bottom lip and pull it over your head.

That's what birth is like. Anyway, now it's odd though, that in talking about thou shall not commit adultery, we have to actually go back to like basics 101, birds and the bees, boys and girls, this is how this works, right?

We even sing songs about it. When we're in grade school, two little lovers sitting in a tree,

K -I -S -S -I -N -G. This is all part of our experience as human beings because this is how we're created.

And yet that's the thing that's very confusing to so many people today.

And yet it seems so basic, which basically tells you this, the day that Bruce Jenner won the

Woman of the Year Award, that shows you the depth and the magnitude of man's rebellion against God.

Our rebellion against God is so total, so exhaustive to the very limits that it's not enough for us to say,

God, I refuse to obey you on this commandment or this commandment. It's so deep that a person, literally we have an entire society now that is inculcating more and more of these people that they refuse to be what

God made them. You made me a human male? Well, I hate you so much

God and what you made me to be that I'm going to be a female tiger, self -identify as a lioness.

It's just nonsense. And there's trans -speciesism, not just transgenders and there's actually trans -speciesism.

Have you seen some of these people? They go and they get themselves tattooed and cosmetically made over to look like animals.

That makes no sense. But that's literally somebody saying, God, I hate you so much.

I refuse to even be what you made me. That's what that is.

And in a lot of cases, it's also mental illness. Don't you think that it's just, they're just, say it again.

They're pushing it more and more. Oh yeah. Yeah, just to see what they can get away with, just to say, nobody cares anymore.

Nobody needs. There's an end goal in mind and you have to understand this. When you listen to gay activists, they will be the first to tell you, it was never about equality in marriage.

It was always and still is about destroying the institution of marriage itself.

They're trying to push the limits. They're trying to go as far as they can because nobody believes.

Nobody cares. No, it's not that we want to. It's we want to destroy what

God has made. We want life on our terms, not

God's. You made us this way. We don't like the way you made us. So we're going to reinvent ourselves and make ourselves into the image that we want.

And if I feel like I am a Pop -Tart, then I'm going to start sleeping in a very large toaster and there's nothing you can do to stop me from doing it,

God. I believe and I think that it's believes and it's not me generation.

It is, I'm going to do what I want to do because I want to challenge one phrase.

You said, I don't care. That's absolutely not the case.

No, no, no, no. They do. Because as soon as you tell them what you're doing is sinful, what you're doing is wrong and what you're doing is just stupid.

Do you think they'll care at that point? No, they're going to get in your face and say, how dare you judge me?

You're a hater. You're a country bumpkin woman who lives out in the middle of Minnesota.

What do you know about me? Who are you to judge me? If I'm a Pop -Tart, then I'm a Pop -Tart and you have no right to tell me

I'm not. I should get the Pop -Tart thing out of my brain, but. That's the scary thing.

Yeah, yeah, I know. Yeah, no, the way things are currently set up to say nothing is to tacitly agree with them.

We are well beyond that point at this point. We do not have the luxury of saying nothing.

And believe me, saying something will cost you. That's the reality. Yes. Yeah, and so you'll understand that the evangelism task, if the goal is to help them so that they repent and are forgiven, evangelism requires you to preach the law of God, which will judge them.

How many of you are able to get through a sermon without feeling judged by the law of God? I can't get through a single sermon of my own without feeling judged by God's law.

I don't know how any of you would because you're going to know. God's law continues to judge what we believe, what we confess, what we do, what we don't do, and says it doesn't measure up.

It's sinful, it's unclean, it's wrong. And you, the one who has done these things or haven't done these things are the one guilty of them.

You need to sit there and go, I feel condemned. Somebody in Aletheia actually said a few weeks back, he said, until I became a

Lutheran, I never felt like I was a sinner. And now that I'm a

Lutheran, I feel like I am a horrible sinner and I am more aware of my sin now than ever before.

Yes, yes. I'm glad you wanted to bring that in. Yes, right.

And see, if it wasn't for Christ and the cross and what He's done for us and the fact that we have a right standing before God because of what

Christ has done for us, we would despair. The condemnation of the law would cause us to despair or worse, the condemnation of the law, we might try to do what

Adam and Eve did and cover things up with the fig leaves of our own self -righteousness.

I'm just telling you, those fig leaves are breezy. So not very comfortable either in the itch.

So do you want to say something, Marilyn? Mm -hmm.

Yes. Yes. Yeah, that's silly.

That's actually silly, but you're right. Ultimately, we've got to come up, we have to understand, we talked about this before, but we'll reiterate it.

Scripture is clear in Romans 1 and 2 that the law of God is written on everybody's heart.

Let me show you the text and then I'll build off of what you said. Romans 2 .12 says, "'For all who have sinned without the law "'will also perish without the law.

"'All who have sinned under the law "'will be judged by the law. "'It's not the hearers of the law "'who are righteous before God, "'it's the doers of the law who will be justified.

"'For when the Gentiles who do not have the law "'by nature do what the law requires, "'they are a law to themselves.

"'Even though they do not have the law, "'they show that the work of the law "'is written on their hearts, "'while their consciences also bear witness "'and their conflicting thoughts also accuse "'or even excuse them on that day "'when according to my gospel, "'God judges the secrets of men by Christ Jesus.'"

So you note here, even the Gentiles show that they have the law of God written on their hearts.

And Romans 1 makes it clear that everybody knows that God exists. And in other words,

Scripture does not believe in atheists. God does not believe in atheists. Did you know that?

It's fascinating. So every human being has a law of God written on their heart. So what is the problem then?

Let me go back to Romans 1 and you can see how this kind of plays out. Romans 1, 18, the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who by their unrighteousness, they suppress the truth.

For what can be known about God is plain to them because God has shown it to them. His invisible attributes,

His eternal, namely His eternal power, divine nature have all been clearly perceived. And that means all humanity has perceived these things ever since the creation of the world and the things that have been made so that they are without excuse.

For although they knew God, they did not honor Him as God or give thanks to Him, but they became futile in their thinking, foolish in their hearts, and their foolish hearts were darkened.

Claiming to be wise, they became fools. They exchanged the glory of God for images resembling mortal man, birds, animals, and creeping things.

So kind of put the two chapters together and the concept here is that every human being knows that God exists.

And I'll even argue every human being knows that Jesus is that God. I'm gonna even,

I'll make that argument because I don't see atheists out there in an uproar trying to disprove that Shiva or Vishnu exist.

The God they're always picking on, the God they hate, the God they gotta silence, the sign that they've gotta oppose always ends up with Jesus.

Shiva and Vishnu are not cuss words. Jesus Christ is a cuss word. I mean, even

Bill Cosby said that until he was five years old, he thought his name was Jesus Christ because that's how his dad would address him when he was cussing at him.

Scary, isn't it? So here this text tells us the law of God's written on our heart. Everybody knows

God exists, everybody, which means you never have to feel the need to prove to somebody that God exists.

That's a fool's game. It's a fool's game created by fools because Scripture says the fool is the one who says in his heart there is no

God. We, for whatever reason, think that an atheist is somebody who is an amazing intellect.

Dawkins is a fool. The new atheists are fools. We don't have to play their game.

They know God exists and they have the law of God written on their heart. What's happening in society is that men in their unrighteousness are suppressing the truth.

They're suppressing the truth that God exists, yet they know God exists and they're gonna be judged for what they're doing, and they're suppressing the truth of God's law and the very creation itself, and they are opposing it and trying to overthrow it.

Because in order for a society like ours or any society to thrive, there is only one way for it to thrive, and that is that the society itself is not corrupt and that the people in it are just.

What is the definition of what it means to be just or to be a good citizen? It used to be, if you obey

God's law, the 10 commandments, you're an upstanding citizen. You're a fellow who rightfully respects authority.

You are a person who doesn't steal your neighbor's property, doesn't murder your neighbor and takes care of them in their body in need.

You're faithful to your spouse. You're not out stealing or lying or undermining somebody's reputation.

And you are satisfied with the things that God has given you and as our parents and grandparents used to say, they would count their blessings rather than covet the stuff that other people have.

That was the definition of a good citizen. And was our society better back then or worse?

Demonstrably better. But in our day, people are actively opposing what

God has established and opposing God and His law. The result is now you, a good citizen, according to how

Scripture defines what is good and what is evil, are now being opposed and being threatened to be treated as a criminal for speaking out against sin.

Welcome to the 21st century. 2016 was a dumpster fire. 2017,

I don't even know how to talk about it. Nuclear meltdown of some kind. God help us in this coming year.

I am not looking forward to the new year. I'm just not because the slide is getting faster and worse and more treacherous.

And sex seems to be like ground zero for it. So we've taken a look at natural law.

I'm ahead of myself. We've already talked about the fact that God has created us male and female. We even looked at the

Hebrew in Genesis 2. Which makes it clear that when God created a counterpart for Adam, that that was literally talking about a physical jigsaw puzzle piece physical counterpart.

The plumbing connects properly. That's the idea. Jesus himself, we also noted, was one who affirmed the account of Genesis.

That God is the one who in the beginning created the male and female. So Jesus is a young earth creationist.

And he also affirms the institution of marriage and makes it very clear that marriage was intended to be a lifelong institution between a man and a woman.

And that divorce itself was only permitted by God because of man's sinfulness. And that a man will leave his father and mother and cleave to his wife and the two become one flesh.

This is what scripture teaches. And as basic as that all sounds, it is absolutely counter -cultural to say it publicly now.

Dangerously so. We're going to take a look at some passages of Scripture that flesh this out a little bit more.

The question on the table at the moment is how do we fear and love God in keeping the sixth commandment?

The sixth commandment, again, is the one that says you shall not commit adultery. In the small catechism, ask the question, what does this mean?

It means that we should fear and love God so that we lead a sexually pure and decent life in what we say and do. And husband and wife love and honor each other.

So how do we fear and love God in this? It's important for us to know something here. And that is that in our day and age, society and unfortunately some churches would lead you to believe that sexual morality is not a big deal.

How's the old song go? Love the one you're with. That's kind of the more of our time.

But Scripture speaks differently. Here's what it says. 1 Thessalonians 4,

Paul, after explaining that we're saved by grace through faith, talks to the Christian brotherhood, which we're all a part of, and says, so finally then brothers, we ask and we urge you in the

Lord Jesus that as you receive from us how you ought to walk and to please

God, just as you are doing. Walk has to do with how you conduct your life and you're gonna note that our good works are pleasing to God.

I think that's an overlooked fact that we must always consider. That when we find ourselves at odds with the world by obeying what

God's word says, that we might be persecuted or caused to suffer as a result of doing right, but that in the eyes of God, our good works are pleasing to Him.

Just as you are doing that you do so more and more. For you know what instructions we gave you through the

Lord Jesus. For this is the will of God, your sanctification. God wills for us to be sanctified.

That you abstain from sexual immorality. That each one of you know how to control his own body in holiness and honor, not in the passion of lust like the

Gentiles who do not know God. That no one transgress and wrong his brother in this matter because the

Lord is an avenger in all of these things as we told you beforehand and solemnly warned you.

For God has not called us for impurity, but in holiness. Therefore, whoever disregards this, disregards not man, but God who gives

His Holy Spirit to you. How many churches today keep saying that same -sex marriage is no big deal?

Sexual morality, no big deal. The ELCA recognizes same -sex marriages and they're on the brink of recognizing polyamory as well.

And yet, Scripture is so clear on this. And you'll note that the Apostle Paul explicitly says here, the person who disregards this, and he's talking in the context of purity regarding how we conduct ourselves in our bodies.

The person who disregards what God's Word says is not disregarding man, he's disregarding

God. And the consequences are severe. And the person who would tell you otherwise and do so as a pastor or as a

Christian leader, they're deceiving you with empty words. Let me give you another example.

1 Corinthians 6, 9. Let me back up into the context so that you can see what's going on here.

Paul writing to the church in Corinth is constantly having in this letter to correct ways in which the church in Corinth had gone off the rails.

You can kind of think of it this way. The church council meetings at Corinth were colorful.

I'll start at 6, 1. When one of you has a grievance against another, does he dare to go to law before the unrighteous instead of the saints?

Or do you not know that the saints will judge the world? If the world is to be judged by you, are you incompetent to try trivial cases?

Yeah, that's right. We get to practice our end days work of judging the world by starting now by dealing with conflict within the church.

So how much more then matters pertaining to this life? So if you have such cases, why do you lay them before those who have no standing in the church?

I say this to your shame. Can it be that there is no one among you wise enough to settle a dispute between the brothers?

But brother goes to law against brother and that before unbelievers. To have lawsuits at all with one another is already a defeat for you.

Why not rather suffer wrong? Why not rather be defrauded? But you yourselves wrong and defraud even your own brothers, which he says to their shame.

And then he goes on in that same context. Or do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God?

Do not be deceived. Now notice how he starts this next sentence. Do not be deceived.

Then in other words, there's people out there who are gonna deceive you to try to say this is no big deal. Neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor men who practice homosexuality.

If you've listened to homosexual apologists on this verse, they'll sit there and say, well it doesn't say homosexual, men who practice homosexuality.

And they're technically right. That's a translation of a phrase that is actually quite graphic.

Let me explain. The phrase, nor men who practice homosexuality. The Greek there is who te malakoi, who te arsenikoite.

Neither the malakoi, and if you wanna know what a malakoi is, you think of it this way.

In a homosexual relationship, somebody has to be dominant and somebody has to be the receiver.

The malakoi are the effeminate. They're the ones who are the receivers. The arsenikoite, which literally means man betters, are the dominant ones in the relationship.

And so what Paul does here in very graphic detail, he pins both sides of the homosexual relationship.

And basically says the effeminate and the dominant in homosexual relationships, neither of them are gonna inherit the kingdom of God.

And so it just translates in our modern translations as nor men who practice homosexuality, which is just a descriptive way of glossing that so you get what's being referred to there.

But the Greek is a lot more graphic. Men who practice homosexuality, nor thieves, nor greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God.

So if somebody tells you, oh, don't worry. Jesus doesn't care.

Go ahead and love the one you're with. Are they telling you the truth? Paul says, do not be deceived.

Don't let anyone deceive you in this manner. And then he goes on and here's the gospel.

And such were, past tense, such were some of you, but you were washed.

You were sanctified. You were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the

Spirit of our God. Notice, because you're baptized, that makes all the difference in the world because in your baptism, you're connected to and joined with Jesus in His death and His resurrection.

Your sins are washed away and you have the name of the triune God put on you. You girls remember when you were baptized?

Baptized you in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. God has put His name on you and washed you. And so, although you may have sinned in these ways, you are washed, you are forgiven, you are redeemed, you are no longer this.

You are united with Christ. You see, remember, we're set free from sin, death, the devil.

We're not set free to sin and do the devil's work. Big difference altogether. So you'll note,

God is very explicit and clear on these things.

The sexually immoral, Greek word, pornos. Pornos. Our American English word, pornography, comes from this.

Sexual immorality is an expansive concept that rules out all kinds of other things.

When it comes to sexual purity, God wills for you to use your body, which is the temple of the

Holy Spirit, to have this only for marriage.

A marriage between a man and a woman. Lifelong committed relationship, period.

Any other thing is out of bounds.

It is sinful. And one of the things that scares me to death, it absolutely scares me, is that the kids growing up today, they have no concept of sex being for marriage.

None whatsoever. I mean, the way the story goes nowadays, guy meets girl, guy has hots for girl, guy, and this is weird how this happens, guy hooks up with girl, then takes her out on a date.

They decide to hook up a few more times and move in together after being together for a week or two, but then six weeks later, they have an argument and they move apart, and then the process repeats.

We live in a hookup culture. What is that? And then the girl who says, I'm a

Christian, I'm saving myself for marriage. Do you think that's an easy conversation to have with girls today?

No way. Do you think girls respect that for the most part today? No. Oftentimes, girls are ridiculed, called prudes, treated poorly because they have moral standards, and the expectation for guys today, a guy, if he's got the hots for a girl, the expectation is that they're gonna hook up on the first date.

That's the expectation, and the pressure put on girls. Unbelievable.

I don't have to tell you guys. You guys know. It's awful and it's worse.

Getting worse. Important to note here that in keeping the sixth commandment it's also going to apply to how we discuss sexual topics.

Let me explain. There's a whole spectrum of jokes, and the whole purpose of these jokes is to gross you out and to use sex or human body parts or whatever as the whole point of the thing that makes the joke funny.

Scripture actually rules this out. Let me show you the text. Ephesians 5 .3.

Sexual immorality and all impurity or covetousness must not even be named among you as is proper among the saints.

Let there be no filthiness, foolish talk, crude joking, which are out of place.

Instead, let there be thanksgiving. For you may be sure of this, everyone who is sexually immoral or impure or who is covetous, that is an idolater, has no inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and God.

Now, I have to point this out because we live in a society where sexual immorality is literally a mouse click away.

That this is not saying that these sins cannot be forgiven. That's not what this is saying.

But we as Christians, our lives are lived penitently. And when we fall short in these ways, we are to repent, be forgiven, and bear fruit in keeping with repentance, which means mortifying our sinful flesh and its passions and fighting against these desires, these lusts, because they are waging war against your soul.

So all of these are forgivable. I do not worry about the person who is fighting against these sins.

I worry about the fellow who stopped. Reserve sexual intercourse for marriage rather than before or outside of marriage.

One of the most rogatory statements I have ever heard said and repeated by so many dudes,

I don't even wanna call them men, dudes, is, well, you don't expect me to buy a car without kicking the tires and taking it out for a test drive, do you?

Really, that's what you think of a woman? She's a car. You gotta take her out for a test drive?

And if I'm feeling really ornery and I hear somebody talk like that, I might say something. I've been married for 30 years.

Didn't take my wife and I long to figure out how to do it. And if you need that kind of instruction, maybe you should go back to school.

I cannot, I mean, seriously. And then you think of the whole Harvey Weinstein and the

Al Franken and all of the scandals that have come out. And everyone's all in shock, all in shock.

Oh my goodness. Our whole society, just watch television, every commercial, all of the shows.

What do they do? They take women and turn them into objects, sexual objects.

This is what we catechize every red -blooded American into.

And when they grow up and then in real life treat women like sexual objects, we act all shocked and this is scandalous?

This doesn't make any sense. I mean, seriously, this will be like Roger in the spring planting corn.

And then come the fall when it's time to harvest and they're going, where'd all the corn come from? I thought

I was getting wheat this year. You catechize kids and teach them that sex doesn't mean anything, that women are objects.

And then they start acting out on that because that's what you've taught them. And you act all shocked.

This is insanity. Yeah, you get what I'm saying. More texts. Best to do these from texts because I'm getting myself exercised.

Hebrews 13, verse four. Let marriage be held in honor among all.

Let the marriage bed be undefiled for God will judge the sexually immoral and the adulterous. I think that's pretty straightforward.

And you'll notice that adding more context doesn't add any more light to it. As a statement itself, it is clear.

Holding marriage in honor is to recognize that it is a gift from God. That is exactly what it is.

It is a tremendous gift from God. And it is to be held in honor.

And so the idea is that when the temptation comes along to cheapen it, you sit there and go, no way,

I hold it in honor. I've been in this institution for 30 years. Love it.

Love it. And those of you who are not in this institution, it's a great institution. It's a difficult one.

But it is worth holding in honor. It really is. And you think about the people who have literally sacrificed their marriages for what?

A cheap thrill? A one night stand? A porn addiction? That's how foolish we are.

And yet, to teach restraint, to teach the honoring of marriage is forbidden.

The reality of the situation is this. In a society where marriages are solid, where husbands and wives stick it out, gut it out at times, because marriage is hard, gut it out.

They are faithful to each other. They are involved in raising their kids, active in their lives and in their instruction and in their catechism.

Is that a strong society or a weak society? Strong. You don't believe me?

Look at the opposite. What's happened in the African American community? It's terrible.

I mean, you have so many women who are rearing four or five kids, each by different fathers, and none of them are involved in their lives.

Crime is up, drug use is up. You show me a neighborhood, you show me a subculture of the

United States where marriage is not held in honor, and where marriages are weak, and I will show you a crime -ridden, poverty -stricken society.

The two go hand in hand. You want to get out of poverty? As a group, you say no to that fellow and tell him to go get a job, and don't come back until he's ready to put a ring on your finger and stay committed and raise the kids that he wants to have with you.

That'll tighten that thing up really quick. Poverty will go down. And this is the way God has set it up.

Now, it's important to note, sin begins in the heart, and as Christians, we recognize that.

I'll give you another text. Proverbs 11, six. Proverbs are wonderful, by the way, as far as teaching us wisdom in the precepts of God.

The righteousness of the upright delivers them, but the treacherous are taken captive by their lust.

Taken captive by their lust. In the book of Proverbs, it describes a fellow who goes down the street where her house is.

And it describes this adulterous woman who's looking for her next victim, if you would.

Now, granted, it goes both ways, but in the book of Proverbs, it kind of describes what goes on in this way.

And the fellow who goes down her street, her corner, and subjects himself to her enticements and eventually gives in to her temptations is described in the same type of terms as far as like a head of cattle being led to the slaughterhouse.

And it talks about the adulterous woman in such a way that little does he know that her bed leads down to Sheol and none escape.

We don't think of the dangers of sex in this way.

And yet, that's exactly what this is talking about. I mean, this is the thing that everybody wants to defend nowadays.

And they want us, and somebody mentioned this earlier, they want us to change

Christianity so that God will affirm them in their sin. Stop telling me

I'm a sinner. Start telling me that God is okay with who

I am. God is love, I love that person, so how could

God be opposed to me loving that person? That's their argument, right? But you're gonna know,

Scripture's very clear that although God is love, there's certain passions and desires that technically are not love.

And so that feeling inside of here is a sinful passion.

That's not love. Yeah, it's lust. And there's a big difference, huge difference between love and lust.

Lust is self -seeking. Love is serving. Lust wants to take everything and cheapen it for the experience for the person.

Love sacrificially lays down its own life for somebody else, which is what we're called to.

Marriage is, as an institution, only survives, is only capable of surviving where each are sacrificially loving the others.

We'll have more to say about this next week, but you can hear a pin drop and everyone's sick, so all right. We'll see you next week.