Sin in the Camp - Part 1 — Shane Idleman

You know, I don't know if this is the Lord or myself, so let me just preface it with that. But if you don't like extended worship and a lot of what we were just doing and waiting on the Lord, then your heart is not in a good spot spiritually.

And I just feel compelled to share that with you. If you don't wanna, you know, you don't have to raise your hands and things like that, but if you're in a hurry through worship and you're just, this is boring, and Jesus, yeah, blah, blah, blah, and your heart's in a very bad spot.

It's not in a good spot spiritually. I'm just shooting you straight because the heart that's crying out for God should wanna worship. They should want to just wait on God and not be in a hurry. And if we're not wanting that, then I just feel compelled to tell you, you know, take it to God because he's wanting to work something out in your heart and you're not allowing that to happen because worship is the first step in the right direction.

If you can't worship God, the word of God will not penetrate your heart to the degree it can. He won't make change in your life to the degree he wants to. Judgmentalism, arrogance, pride, none of those things will be dealt with unless worship comes first.

And I just feel that. I feel that here in this church that there's a lot of people worshiping, but there are people who could care less and they want the songs to hurry up and just get through this. And I'm just here to tell you, maybe that's a sermon, that there's something wrong with your heart and take it to God and just ask for clarity on that.

The Sin in the Camp: Church Discipline and Unconfessed Sin

With that said, here is going to be an interesting sermon series called Sin in the Camp. I don't know how many people are gonna come back next week now that we're talking about this, but we're gonna talk about sin in the camp in September.

And I thought it'd be one sermon, but it's gonna turn into three or four or five. And it's about church discipline or sin in the church. How do you handle that? Do you just look the other way? Or do you just beat people up with the truth?

What exactly do you do? And we found that, not just at this church, but all churches is sin is like cancer. And what I'm talking about here is unconfessed sin. If it was just sin in general, we'd all be in trouble.

We need His grace every single day. And if you come up and say, I don't have any sin in my life, well, pride, there you go. That's probably the number one. And John says, if he who says he doesn't have sin is lying.

But I'm talking about unconfessed, unrepentant sin that the church is allowing to continue. And it's like cancer to the body. And what we're gonna do is we're gonna answer the why, the what, the when, the where, and the how.

Why church discipline or why sin in the camp? Why the sermon series? What exactly is it? When does it take place? Where and how? And I wanna kind of go through that over the next few weeks because it happens.

It's happening now too in the media. Ashley Madison, have you heard of that website? Scandal kind of thing that some hackers got into it and they found out all these people who were cheating on their spouse and it was just brought to the light.

Now churches are scrambling on, oh no, what are we gonna do? And it's everywhere. It's those kinds of things. It's sin in the camp. It's sin in the church. And what I mean by sin in the camp is you can pull it from Joshua chapter six, seven, eight, nine, right in there.

And Israel was going into battle. And God said, listen, when you go into that city, do not take the accursed thing. Do not take the wicked things. Do not take the abominations. Don't take any of those things, the gold, the clothing, the different things.

Well, a man by the name of Achan, guess what he took? A whole bunch of that stuff. And he hid it and nobody knew about it. And then he took it back to the camp. And then when Israel went back into battle, they lost.

They lost very badly. It cost many, many lives. And Joshua and the men fell on their face before God. They said, Lord, what is going on? You said you would grant us a victory in these areas. And we just lost a lot of men.

And God said, there's sin in the camp. You have to remove the sin in the camp or I won't be with you. And that's kind of where that whole theme comes from. And obviously we don't live in the Old Testament, but the New Testament church, it still applies that if the church, if we know something is going on that's pretty significant and we just look the other way, hoping it disappears, that's not the heart of God.

Because it rarely disappears. I've never seen sin dealt with with good intentions only. Usually there has to be some hurt, some exposure. Something has to take place in order for change to take place.

So on one hand, this is going to be very encouraging for those who are open for this. And the church is a hospital for sinners, but it's not a nightclub. So we are a hospital for sinners. That's what we deal with.

We understand that grace and mercy and love, but it doesn't mean that we just allow whatever to take place, especially when we know of something. And A .W. Tozer reminds us, he said, and I love this quote, where does Christianity destroy itself in a given generation?

He's asking, where does Christianity destroy itself in every generation? It destroys itself by not living in the light, by professing a truth it does not obey. And that's why I want to talk about the sin in the camp.

How Unchecked Sin Spreads Through the Church

The first question, why? Why talk about it? Well, number one, it deeply affects the church. It deeply affects the church, and it will deeply affect your family. There are ripple effects of sin, and allowing it and turning the other way.

Paul said in 1 Corinthians 5, 6, do you not know that a little yeast works through the whole batch of dough? So a little yeast, a little sin, a little leaven, and let's not necessarily think corporately right now, the church, let's think in our own individual lives.

A little sin left unchecked doesn't just go away. You know what it does? It starts to affect everything. That's why God says, confess it and repent, and bring it to me, confess it and repent. We say, I don't want to do that.

This is my one little vice nobody really knows about. And it doesn't stay one little vice. It grows teeth and arms and legs, and it devours. So that's why it's very important. The church is referred to the body of Christ throughout the Bible, and sin is like cancer to the body.

That's how it acts. A cancer, I don't know if you know, but it starts like it's a single cell, and it grows and it grows and it grows and it grows and grows until it consumes the life of the person. And that's how sin can work in the church if it's not dealt with.

But I came across the article this week by David Wilkerson. He found a teen challenge, and he wrote something interesting on this topic about the church in Galatia that I just quoted about the little yeast that works through the whole batch of dough.

Here's what Galatians 5 .7 says in his commentary. You ran well. Who hindered you from obeying the truth? This persuasion does not come from him who calls you. A little leaven leavens the whole lump. And he says, Paul is asking, what in your life keeps you from going on in the full blessing of Christ?

You were doing so well at one time. I know you to be a praying people, and you labor diligently to do good works, but something is wrong. I don't see you growing anymore. Instead, you've gone back to relying on your flesh.

I don't sense the sweet aroma of Christ you once had. Something is hindering you. What could have persuaded you to settle in this condition? Whatever it is, I tell you, it's not of God. Something is clouding you.

Something is holding you back. I know many Christians today who once were mightily used of God. These people were devoted, praying, believing saints, but then something happened to them that somehow caused them to be hindered from experience the fullness of the blessing of Christ.

Often, that hindering leaven was a single besetting sin. To all such people, Paul asks, what happened? What hinders the flow of Christ's blessing in your life? What leaven has crept in? And I think that's important to ask because a lot of times we don't address this issue.

Think about this for a minute. Why is it so important to talk about this topic? Because chances are, you're not gonna hear it anywhere else. Many of us, our close friends, are too caught in their own sin to challenge us.

Or we all wanna be liked, don't we? We don't wanna challenge anybody, we wanna be liked. And if people post things on Facebook that we don't like, we just unfollow them. As soon as I'm convicted, unfollow.

As soon as I'm convicted, bye-bye, no more friends. We remove the conviction. The media fuels sin, the leadership of our country encourages it, and the churches avoid it. So where else are we ever gonna hear this?

We've become very good at avoiding conviction. Do you realize that? We've become very good at avoiding conviction. If a person dares to challenge us, we dilute the conviction by saying you're legalistic, you're judgmental, and you're arrogant.

Have you noticed that? We just dilute the conviction. So we don't hear these kind of things very often, so we live in this bubble of failing to turn from our sin and be convicted because we're rarely challenged on anything.

So that's why this is vitally important. And let me tell you something that's helped me a lot. I haven't quite mastered it yet, and I haven't submitted to it yet, but it's true. If someone who cares for you challenges you, there's probably something to it.

Did you catch that? It didn't fly under the radar. If somebody who cares for you challenges you about something, there's probably something to it. And we wanna be open to that, but so many people know you're just being judgmental.

You're just being arrogant. Remove the plank from your own eye. Who are you to judge me? Who are you to judge me? I'm not, but the Word of God is. We can look to the Word of God and say, what does God's Word say about this?

Because here's the truth. There is something, everything's the truth, right? But let's just, where the rubber meets the road. I gotta be careful saying that. Something is wrong. Something is wrong. I like what Duncan Campbell said.

How is it that while we make such great claims for the power of the gospel, we see so little of the supernatural in operation? How is it that we make such great claims for the gospel, but we see so little of the supernatural in operation?

We read about healing and deliverance and God's work and the Spirit of God moving and people getting saved, but we don't see any of it. It's almost like a cemetery. We read about it, but we never experience it.

Because a lot of times when I talk about the passion of God, the prayer, the worshiping God and praying for an hour or two or three, people are like, oh man, that guy's out of his mind. But really, is it?

We're not seeing miracles. You're not seeing people delivered. You should be able to walk into stores and around the mall, different places, and the Spirit of God be on you and you can be able to discern things and pray for people and make wise decisions and live in that Spirit-filled life.

But something is missing. Something is missing from the lives of most people. How do I know? Because we have a dead religion, a dead Orthodox. We know the Bible, but we've never experienced it. And that's what I think he's getting at here.

A little bit of leaven, a little bit of sin, and we allow it to grow and grow and grow, and it begins to consume our spiritual life. Sin diminishes the work of the Spirit. Praise and worship are stifled.

Is your praise and worship ever stifled? Is your praise and worship stifled tonight? This could be why. Well, I haven't done anything bad. Did you know that judgmentalism and bitterness is just as bad as any other sin in the Bible?

Bitterness and judgmental and complaining and bickering? That's why the children of Israel didn't get to go into the Promised Land initially. I think sometimes we forget about sins of the heart and how that prevents genuine worship.

Spiritual growth is halted. When sin takes over and sin is consuming you and you're trying to hide it and it's a besetting sin, it will halt your spiritual growth. One way a person grows spiritually is by repenting and getting back on track and applying the Word of God.

Applying the Word of God, growing and maturing. And they're growing and they're growing in this. But without doing that, it can halt spiritual growth. Joy and peace are nowhere to be found. Sin in the camp is a heavy weight of bondage that affects every area of life.

So that's why there needs to be a series on this. That's why we need to talk about this. Because this is destroying the nation. This is destroying the church. This is destroying families. This is it. If you get to the heart of all problems, guess what's underneath it?

Three word, three letter word. Sin. So the very thing we need to confront, the very thing we need to remove, the very thing we need to talk about and expose is the thing that people don't want to mention.

So I think that's why the church is in a lot of the state it's in. Not that we should come out and yell at people on this, but we should lovingly confront the cancer that is consuming and help to remove it.

Exposing Darkness and Confronting Sin

The Bible actually says that we're to expose the unfruitful works of darkness. Expose them. Paul goes on to say, don't join in with them, don't remain silent, but expose those unfruitful works of darkness.

So let me read real quick Joshua in the sin in the camp theme here that I'm on. Joshua seven, I believe verse 10. So the Lord said to Joshua, get up. Why do you lie thus on your face? Israel has sinned and they have also transgressed my covenant which I command them.

For they have even taken some of the accursed things and have stolen and deceived and they have also put it among their own stuff. Therefore the children of Israel could not stand before their enemies but turn their backs before their enemies because they have become doomed to destruction.

Neither will I be with you anymore unless you destroy the accursed thing from among you. That's a pretty serious warning. God's saying I'm not gonna be with you anymore children of Israel unless you destroy the accursed thing.

So it definitely begs the question why doesn't God just judge the person? Why does the whole camp need to be dealt with? Well he did judge the person. It was a very sad deal there with Achan and his family and they went out and stoned his whole family.

And there's a ripple effect to our sin. Fathers, you understand that? Mothers, there's a ripple effect. Our sin affects the whole family. We don't just live in a box. There's a ripple effect. And the same thing in the church.

This church can be so broken because we're not dealing with this issue that it can affect the body in a very powerful way. And God often uses exposure to turn the person back to him. So God exposed the sin of Achan to turn the children of Israel back to him.

And that's really the application we can get from this. The first step is exposure, confession, repentance, and then seek God. Exposure, because most people are not gonna change without being exposed.

Right? Have you ever met a crack addict that stopped because he had good intentions? Have you met anybody addicted to anything that said, I really need to stop? That's, you know, I know I need to. Rare, ever.

It's not until the spouse says, I'm leaving. Or the judge says, 60 days. Or the, you know, there's exposure. There's pain, because we don't change if there's no pain. So stops fighting the pain. And say, Lord, help me use this pain in a powerful way.

I need this pain to point me back to you. So God often uses exposure. So that's the point of church discipline or exposing this area, is you go to the person and you expose it. You bring it up and you say, listen, this is hurting you.

This is hurting your family. You expose it so that change can take place. And then the New Testament, we're not yet in Matthew 18. That's where I'm actually at, Matthew 18. And that's why I'm talking about sin in the camp, because Matthew 18 is about church discipline, how to confront a sinning brother.

What's the process in all that? But I'm building up to that. But it's interesting, 1 Corinthians, Paul wrote in chapter five, it is actually reported that there is sexual immorality among you. And such sexual immorality has not even named among the Gentiles.

In other words, there's more sexual immorality in the church than is among the Gentiles. And Paul's rebuking this church. And he says that a man has his father's wife and you are puffed up. He's rebuking the church.

You're puffed up, church. You see, that's interesting right there. By not saying anything and by saying, well, let's just allow the guy, we just wanna minister to him, there's grace and forgiveness. Paul's saying you're puffed up, you're arrogant.

So I think of all those churches out there who don't wanna say anything about sin. They don't wanna confront, no, let's just let them come. We just need to love them. We need to show them support, and that's all true.

But at some point, if you don't confront that destructive lifestyle, God says that's arrogant. That's arrogant, and silence can be arrogant. So the churches that think they're so humble because they don't say anything negative, they don't ever confront sin, God says you're actually prideful.

You're puffed up because you won't confront this area. Paul says you're puffed up, you should have mourned, and that he who has done this deed might be taken away from you. For I indeed, as absent in body, but present in spirit, have already judged as though I were present.

I've judged this man who's done this deed. In the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, when you are gathered together along with my spirit, with the power of the Lord Jesus Christ, deliver such a one to Satan for the destruction of the flesh, so that his spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus.

I'll be able to talk about that a little bit more next week, but what you're doing there is you're exposing it. In other words, if somebody, I don't know, I can't even think of, I don't wanna use an example that might apply here, so you gotta be careful.

So you say, you're talking about me. But if somebody, we know somebody, and they're going through, they're separated, and the spouse brings their boyfriend or girlfriend to church, that's not gonna continue very long before the church should say something, right?

They have the audacity to bring in their boyfriend or girlfriend to church while their spouse is at home wanting restoration, and that does happen. That's what he's talking about. Listen, you're puffed, and the church just says, hey, man, that's not my problem.

Let's just love them. Let's just hope God's changed your heart. He says, you're proud. You're arrogant. Actually, church, you're a coward. That's the truth. We're a coward when we don't confront these things.

Would I wanna confront that situation? My flesh would say, no, no, no, don't do that. But the Spirit says, how dare you? How dare you bring her or him to church when this is happening? We cannot allow it.

And then I go, because we have to understand something. Somebody, somebody caught in this is living a lie. They're living a lie. Their lifestyle is a lie. They've bought into a lie. They think they're God's gift to Christians and they can do whatever they want.

The rules don't apply to them. So the person's living a lie. Silence only reinforces the lie. So if we say nothing, if I just, hey, how's it going? Good, good, and they're just praising God, and there's his girlfriend sitting with him and week in and week out, and I don't say anything, I'm reinforcing that behavior.

But if I get the whistle out, right, referee, whistle, hold on, what's going on here? Oh, this is Kim from work, and we're, no, you're not, you're not doing that here. You're out of line. You're a coward.

You need to man up and go back to your, and that's the church's response is to confront that. That's the whole point of this, because the person's living a lie, and when you expose it, it's like a slap in the face.

That woke some of you up? Should do that again closer to the mic. That's what it does, like, whoa, wait a minute. Throwing ice into the face, you know, situation. It wakes them up. That's the point of this whole passage here.

Sexual Sin, Restoration, and the Purpose of Discipline

And here's just a few things I wanna take from 1 Corinthians 5. Sexual sin is destructive. If a person is not disciplined here, they are not disciplined in other areas. So the enemy targets sexual perversion.

This, I'm not telling you anything you don't already know, but I wanna highlight this. This is an area that most church disciplinaries result in. This is where most sin results from, is sexual sin. That's where the enemy works.

It's a sin against the body. Paul goes on to say in chapter six to flee it, and it's a sin against the body. All other sins are outside the body, but sexual sin is a sin against the body. What it does, it brings in compromise.

You're not disciplined in other areas of life, and the enemy uses that as a foothold. So Paul's saying here, you've got to deal with this, especially sexual sin. The truth in love is like a sledgehammer to the heart and a blow to the head.

Is that what the truth in love is? It's like a sledgehammer to the heart, to speak the truth in love. So that's, when God talks about confronting sin, it's not to come across as judgmental and arrogant.

It's to let the person know, hey, this just, you just, you just took this up another notch. This is not right, and you lovingly confront them, and you challenge them, and that's the whole point behind it.

Now, here's the good news. The person confesses, repents, and turns to God. What's the bad news? I would love to tell you that's always the case, but often that's rarely the case, because people come in with pride and arrogance, and how dare you, and who are you to judge, and all the, you don't know my story.

You don't know about me. You don't know what's going on. No, I don't, but I know what the scripture says. But see, if that doesn't happen, we at least conveyed the heart of God in the matter. See, it's not up for me for the person to change.

That's not my job, to make the person change. But if they don't change, then I at least conveyed the heart of God in the matter, and said, this is not right. You're hurting your family. You're hurting your relationship with the Lord.

You're hurting this church. You're hurting me by, you're allowing this, and you bring it to light, and that's the heart of God on this matter, and my job is done. Now, what about if they continue to keep coming?

They say, I don't care what you say, or they continue in this sin, and that's what we want to talk about through the Matthew 18 process next week, is how exactly does this work? How do you confront somebody that's caught in sin?

Because you know what, this happens, right, quite often, that a person will be confronted. You know, somebody will go to them, and nothing will happen. Then the Bible says to bring a witness, or two witnesses, or some people from the church, and then they still don't want to listen.

There's a process there. And the reason there's a process there, I believe, is we see this in the heart of God. He's gracious. He's loving. He's warning. Not that anybody should perish. There's a subtlety there.

Hey, go to the person. If they won't hear you, take witnesses. If they won't hear you, take the church. Take others. If they won't hear you, then they need to be treated as a heathen and a tax collector.

They need to feel the pain that they're causing. That's the point. The whole point of church discipline is restoration, not punishment. The end result is not punishment. The whole point of this type of process is restoration because people don't change until they're hurt.

If you tell an alcoholic, you're ruining your family. Yeah, I know. I'm sorry. And the next week, nothing changes. Nothing changes. But if they start to lose their job, they start to lose friendships, they start to lose their spouse, the kids say, Mommy, Daddy, I can't even look at you anymore.

You're a disgrace to me. I don't want to see you. Then that hurts. From those tears, from that pain, then change can take place. Without that exposure and change, we rarely change. What we'll say is, I'm sorry, I know.

A week goes by, I'm sorry, I know. I gotta work on that. I'm sorry, I know. I'm sorry. After 10 years of saying that, somebody finally says, no more. Because we also don't want to be an enabler. You know what an enabler is?

It's when you allow somebody to continue in a destructive lifestyle by either supporting them financially or with your home. We see this a lot. Spouses do this. Oh, it's no problem. They're forgiving.

Spouses are forgiving and thank God for that. But there comes a point when you need to say, you're moving out. There's a doghouse out back. You know, you heard that phrase before. You need to, we need to separate.

And people say, I can't believe you're promoting divorce. I'm not promoting divorce. Did I say the word divorce? I said the word separate. Because when somebody says, you need to move out, you're hurting the family.

That distance and that time away begins to sink in. They begin to feel the pain they've caused. They begin to see that, you know what, this is not what I want. And you have to feel that pain. If not, you would just kind of enable them.

And I know that's a little controversial. I know a lot of people don't agree with that. But I will tell people from time to time that you need to separate. You need to tell him or her, they need to find a place to live because they are destroying you and your family and your marriage and you're not gonna allow this to happen.

They need to feel that pain. I'm not talking about divorce. I'm not talking about finding somebody new. I'm talking about separation so that God, and often that's when God works. Because when you're sitting in an empty house, then you'll listen.

Then you'll listen. And there's nobody coming home to you. There's no dinners being cooked. There's no kids running around. You're feeling the pain of what you're causing. And that's often when change takes place because we have to feel that.

So that's the point of this. It's restoration. It's not punishment. It's not to belittle. It's not to hurt. It's restoration. That's the ultimate hope. And I've seen this a lot of times. You'll confront somebody.

I mean, we've confronted people that, I've been confronted. Did you know that? You, oh yeah. Over the last 20 years, I've been confronted. And it's, I was not happy the first time. Sometimes I was, and I was ready for it, but often I wasn't.

But then as the days go by and you begin to think about it, and the pride begins to be chiseled away, and God begins to humble you, then you go back to the person, you know what, you were right. But I needed that initial shock to get me going in that direction.

So when I confront people lovingly, sometimes I'm very surprised if it goes good initially. Very, I'm very surprised. Usually it results in a slam door and some curse words, and okay, well, there you go.

But you have to plant that seed. You have to plant the seed with the person. Because again, if somebody truly cares for you, they'll tell you what you need to hear. They'll tell you. They'll come to you and say, listen, usually we don't want to hear it.

Why? Because of pride. That's why I said so many times, pride is the last sin to leave and the first to return. Pride prevents so many different things. And Paul said, if you are puffed up, why are you puffed up?

Have you not rather mourned that he who has done this deed might be taken away from among you and delivered to Satan? Well, there's so much here, but let me just say this. By delivering to Satan, what he's saying here is when you remove somebody from fellowship, they go from fellowship to isolation.

It's pretty dramatic. And you're not to shun them and oh, act weird, but hey, you're no longer under the church covering. We're no longer can come alongside of you and you've done a lot of damage. We need to deliver you, turn you over to Satan.

What that basically means is turn the flesh over to the demonic activity that he's already invested in and let it run its course. Let Satan, because God will begin to strip away things from a person's life.

Ask an addict. How often do they remain a CEO of a Fortune 500 company? Not very long. They begin to lose things and lose things and other people, we begin to lose things. I often wonder how many of our problems are self-created.

That's not gonna win me a popularity contest. Have you ever thought about that? How many of our problems are self-created from this issue, from what we're talking about? We've got so many excuses. We wanna blame everybody except what God might be.

God might be stripping things away. He stripped things away from my life before. Money, this, that, time, possessions, this, that, and he'll strip things away because that often draws us back to him. So don't despise the Lord's belt.

The sooner you embrace it, the less spankings will come because he's wanting, because he knows, because a loving father knows, listen, you're not gonna turn back unless you begin to experience some of this pain.

It's amazing how quick I've seen people one day have a job, the next day not, and they become very good at praying. I mean, you spent two hours in prayer this morning? Oh, I couldn't. Had they not lost their job, they would've never, they're too busy for God.

I'll say a five-minute prayer while I'm driving, but you see how God takes that job from you, you become a very good prayer warrior. You'll have your own war room. So it's interesting, it's kind of sad that he has to take things from us sometimes or get us in a spot of humility and brokenness before we'll finally cry out.

So that's why, why'd I say all that? To say this, that's one of the points of church discipline or confronting sin in the camp is for that person to realize, to start the restoration process. Because I know, I've seen people, and you have too, if you don't say anything, they'll just keep doing it.

They'll just continue, and they'll just continue until, unless you finally say something. But I know we're running short on time. I've got quite a bit to cover, and I'll do that in the next few weeks.

Examining Personal Sin Before Confronting the Church

But instead of thinking of the church corporately right now, I wanna think just for a minute individually. Let's look at individually and help us remove the plank from our own eyes. Paul gives us a checklist that is very important.

1 Corinthians 6, he says, don't you know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? And let me say up front, Paul's saying the unrighteous. If a person is not in right relationship with God, they will not inherit the kingdom of God, the unrighteous.

And then he's gonna say, I don't want you to be deceived. Here's the fruit of that type of lifestyle. He says, not fornicators, nor idolaters, nor idolaters, nor homosexuals, nor sodomites, nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revelers, nor extortioners will inherit the kingdom of God.

But then here comes God's grace, but such were some of you. Such were some of you, but you were washed, you were sanctified, but you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by his spirit.

And these are really the things, when it comes to church discipline, these are the things we have to watch out for. Even this checklist is a very good thing. He says, neither fornicators. Do you know how abhorrent sex outside of marriage is when it comes to determining, when it comes to God and knowing his will?

God says, I abhor sexual immorality. These are strong words, but that's what he says. And I would tell anybody that's caught in that, that you are mocking God. If you are continuing to come to church and do this, and come to church and do this, you are mocking God.

You are cheap grace. You are playing with his mercy and his grace. And it will not set up your marriage for a successful marriage down the road. It will not. It cannot. Because the marriage is being built on deception from the beginning.

It's being built on not hearing God's voice from the beginning. And so many couples caught in this, they wonder, what's God's will for my marriage? And this, you won't know it. Sexual immorality clouds your vision.