God’s Perspective on Sexual Morality and Sexual Sin (Part 2)

Welcome to No Compromise Radio, a ministry coming to you from Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston. No Compromise Radio is a program dedicated to the ongoing proclamation of Jesus Christ based on the theme in Galatians 2, verse 5, where the Apostle Paul said, ìBut we did not yield in subjection to them for even an hour ,î so that the truth of the gospel would remain with you.

In short, if you like smooth, watered-down words to make you simply feel good, this show isnít for you. By purpose, we are first biblical, but we can also be controversial. Stay tuned for the next 25 minutes as weíre called by the Divine Trumpet to summon the troops for the honor and glory of her King.

Hereís our host, Pastor Mike Abendroth. Welcome to No Compromise Radio, a ministry.

Charles Finney and the Religion of Benevolence

Mike Abendroth here. It is Friday, March 18th, beware the Ides, plus three of March, correct? And I have in front of me a book, and Iím going to do something fun. Iím going to open this book to a random page, begin to read it, and you tell me what you think about the guy.

In preaching in one of our cities, I was endeavoring to develop the true idea of the Christian religion and demonstrate that it consisted alone in love or in disinterested, perfect and universal benevolence.

The idea that religion consisted in benevolence seemed to be entirely new to great multitudes of professors of religion. And on one occasion when this subject had been presented and turned over and over until the congregation understood it, a deacon of one of the churches remarked to me as I came out of the pulpit that he did not believe that there were ten real Christians in the city.

And the lady said she did not know of but one person in the church to which she belonged who had the religion of benevolence. All the rest, so far as she knew them, appeared to be under the dominion of selfishness.

If I am not mistaken, there certainly is a great want of just and thorough discrimination on this subject in most congregations in this land. And especially is this manifest in seasons of revival. This is the very time to bring out and press these discriminations until the true idea of religion stands out in full development.

Unless this is done, almost endless mistakes will be fallen into by professed converts. I'm just going to stop there. That's enough for me. That's all I need to know. This was reproduced by the Metropolitan Church Association, Waukesha, Wisconsin.

Wisconsin. Have you ever had a, what are those, hashbrown casserole, what are they called, tater tot casserole? I could go for a good tater tot casserole right now, but lactose free, please. You know.

Publish this note. We believe the following letters from the pen of the long since departed Mr. Charles Finney have a vital bearing on the affairs of our time. We send them forth with the omission of a few brief sentences exactly as we find them reprinted.

So this is a little book called Revival Fire by Charles G. Finney. Bethany Fellowship, Minneapolis, Minnesota, Dimension Books. What do you know? That will go in my little pile here. I have the Beza book in front of me.

I have How to Pray the Rosary, The Message, Common Book of Prayer, Sifted Silver, Machen, and what's this one here? Catholic Missal. It's going to go right over there. Nice. And then inside of it, this is interesting.

I don't know where I got this. It's a laminated card. That's the lamination. Alphabetical List of Some of God's Attributes. Look at that. A. Almighty, B. Benevolent, C. Covenant Keeper, D. Divine. Is that an attribute of God?

Is Covenant Keeper an attribute? Is Benevolent an attribute? I think we all at least agree that Almighty is an attribute. Okay. Eternal. Is that an attribute? Faithful. Good. Holy. Immortal. I'd give three on that, the I's.

Immortal, Invisible, Immutable. Just. Kind. Loving. Mighty. Noble. Omnipotent, or any of the omnis. Powerful. Quiet. That's the Q. I mean, what do you do with Q? I think when I did my list, and I'm glad I didn't write the book, I started to, uh, Attributes of God, 26 total, one for every letter, because my mother, when she had cancer, she would just rehearse things about God.

Let's just not call them attributes because I don't think, you know, W, wrath, wrath is not technically an attribute, okay? I just read the Gerald Bray book, the little tiny one, New from Crossway, I think it's red or gold or something like that, about attributes, relational, essential, you know, what do we say, communicable, incommunicable, et cetera.

But let's just say, for argument's sake, that when you think about God, let's not just say, let's say, when you think about God, it's good to just rehearse who he is, and if you want to use the alphabet to help you, fine, we don't have to say it's, oh, this is technically an attribute, but you can think about God and his wrath and God and his righteousness and then you can correct yourself and say, God is righteous and God has wrath.

See how this works? See, this is just like Trinitarian fun, but Q, I think I had quieter in mind. You can look up what quieter is, not quieter, but quieter, righteous, sanctifier, oh, monergistic, triumphant, what's T?

Maybe think, maybe truth. Let's just say they're not attributes, let's just say God is truth, unfailing, victorious, wise, what do you do for X? New England primer, the New England primer, X, Xerxes must die and so must you and I.

X, what do you do with X? They do excellent and exalted, Y, yearning, and Z, zealous. I get the zealous one, no problem with that at all. The quiet one, isn't that a movie? The one that says quiet and the one that says yearning, he's yearning.

Some of God's attributes are quiet and yearning. That's like if my attributes are broken and wounded, I'm so wounded. Hello, but the point is still the same. A, avoid Finney. B, when you have good times, times of prosperity, as Heidelberg says, or an adversity, if you think about God, that would be really good.

The just shall live by faith. When you think about God, you automatically think he's triune, he's one. Every time you think about the Son, you think about the Father and the Spirit. Every time you think about the Father, you think about the Son and the Spirit and you begin to rehearse and you think either this is what God is, this is what God does, this is what God has, however you want to phrase it so you don't have to be going bonkers on His wrath, an attribute or not, almighty, benevolent, covenant keeper, divine.

You could at least think if He's divine and you're not, here's this great infinite God of Himself, ase. Maybe we could do, you know what? This is what we do. We do this in Latin, A, ase, B, what's a Latin word that speaks about God or something that He's done?

It starts with a B. Any Latin students out there? I don't even know how many letters there are in Latin. That's pretty stupid. Twenty-two? That's Hebrew. Anyway, my name's Mike Capenroth. This is No Compromise Radio Ministry.

Love Gives, Lust Takes, and Ephesians 5

Last time we were looking at Ephesians 5 and we were talking about the difference between love and lust is one gives, the other takes. Paul is writing to the church at Ephesus and other churches. We think it's a circular letter.

I think it's a circular letter. And Paul is explaining in chapter 5 after he's rehearsed all the truths about who God is and who we are in Christ in the previous four chapters. He begins to talk a lot about life in Ephesus and how do you live?

I've been to Ephesus before, but it's just all ruins now, but it used to be crazy. Like today, sex saturated, suffocatingly sick when it comes to sexual sin. How about that? Is that a bunch of alliteration there?

Always alliterate. And Paul says, you imitate God. That's a solution to a lot of problems. Except you say, what are you talking about? As beloved children. Oh, okay. That makes more sense now because, you know, the apple doesn't fall too far from the tree and there are certain slogans we have like that so we can understand, oh, like father, like son.

Okay. I get that. All right. We're children of God now. Second Peter chapter one, divine nature and stuff like that. We're not deified. I know that. Every time you talk, you have to like say things that you don't believe just to make sure you're right.

Christ, verse two of chapter five in Ephesians, he is the one we're supposed to walk like. We're to imitate him and he loved us and he gave himself up for us. It was a very wonderful thing. Please the father, sweet smelling sacrifice and God's love gives, right?

It wants what's best for the other. And even here in this love, this physical love, sexual love, right? A husband and a wife, they give each to the other and everything works out fine because that's just the way it is supposed to be.

Well, I'm sure you can be selfish in marriage when it comes to sexual activity, but what Paul is after here is not that. He's after illicit sex. That is all sex outside of before, during marriage, if it's not your spouse.

What I meant to say by that was before you're married and if you're married, it's to be with your spouse and not anyone else, right? Fornication, adultery. Of course, this includes pornography. This includes homosexuality.

This includes every sexual sin that's not between a man and a woman in the marital bed, Hebrews 13. The marital bed is where we get the word coitus, is undefiled. You might think people in a sexually drenched society with sexual sin that now you become a Christian and you realize, you know what?

What defined me before? I lived for sex and then gratuitous sex and just swipe right sex and then now I'm married or I'm now a Christian, although I'm still married, I think to myself, hmm, maybe sex is dirty, right?

This Victorian prudish kind of thing where you only do it so your wife gets pregnant or she only lets you because she wants to be pregnant after that, too bad. You might think that, right? It's similar in one sense to Timothy.

Timothy gets saved and I think he's a teetotaler and Paul has to command him to drink a little wine for his stomach's sake. I know you want to run from wine, maybe Timothy had a wine problem and then now he needs to be told medicinally, you've got to kill those bugs in there and you need to do that.

This is important and it's a similar thing where you have people, I don't know, I haven't talked to that many prostitutes in my life as people who have been saved out of prostitution but I imagine if I would, they would say something like, it's hard for them to be in a relationship now as a Christian woman with their husband because of all the slutty stuff in their background.

I would imagine that and Paul wants to make sure that we see that sexual sin just takes and sexual sin is unlike God, it doesn't imitate God. God's love gives, God's love lays down, God's love gives up, God's love wants what's best for the object, the one he loves and that's why he says, Paul says in Ephesians 5, sexual immorality, impurity, covetousness, don't even let it be named among you, as is proper among saints and it runs the gamut there, all kinds of things including pornography.

If you, there may be ladies listening that watches pornography but it's more that men watch and what should men do? Men should say, hmm, that girl there that I want to watch doing pornography things, they're someone's daughter, they're an image bearer, they're a lady and what should men want to do when it comes to ladies who are basically doing things they would never do except they need cocaine and heroin and methadone, I mean, and meth?

Well I would like to rescue them, right? There are ministries where they rescue prostitutes, there are ministries where they rescue people from sexual slavery and that's essentially what it is, even if they're not held against their will, when you think of what heroin and other things do, they'll do anything to get their next fix and so wouldn't you want to rescue them and yet you're going to watch it and you're going to contribute to their domination of this drug and these men that run the system?

No, we don't want to do that, that just takes, you turn on pornography, it takes. And so Paul is really in a very gospel-centered sanctification way saying this is how we respond to the triune God working in us and it's not just sexual sin with our bodies, it's even the way we talk about it.

Verse 4 of chapter 5, let no filthiness or foolish talk nor crude joking which are out of place, just let there be none of those, let there be no filthiness and if you're listening, this applies to you and of course applies to me too, we just, you know, the sex jokes, they're out of place, they're people that can turn anything into a sexual innuendo, I mean anything.

Sadly my mind sometimes does things like that and I have to repent and I have to suppress and I have to stop, that's just the way the world works, you watch comedians and often comedians do that, that's why we always loved Brian Regan when we had little kids because short of one word that he might say, I'm not saying that you should say it but the most benign maybe swear word you could think of, he was clean and so I don't need anybody turning everything into a double entendre, that's not what we want and instead it says in verse 4, let there be thanksgiving.

Remember listeners that in chapter 4 there's a lot of put on put off, remember when God saved you, God put off your old Adam and put on the new Christ, that's essentially the language there and you're in union with Christ, you have a new identity with Christ, that's 22 to 24 of chapter 4 and then he says some real put on put offs, right, don't lie, tell the truth, don't steal, work, no corrupting word but for edification, don't let the son be angry, don't sin, don't be bitter, be kind, be forgiving.

There's this put on put off and now he does the same thing, talk about sex, I don't mean a husband and wife in the bed talking about what they might like or something, I always have to give like a thousand caveats but instead let there be thanksgiving, that's interesting, no silly dirty sex talk, indecent talk, obscene talk, shameful talk, silly talk, gutter mouth talk, trash talk, jesting about these things.

Instead of these dirty joke kind of humor, what do you do? You give thanks, isn't that interesting? It's not fitting for saints to talk about this, it's not fitting to let your kids be at school and let them sit through human sexuality week.

We never let our kids, we did public private homeschool and when they were in public school and it was time for any kind of sex talk, no, no, we're not doing that. Ignorance is bliss when it comes to sexual sin and we have a zero, as some people say, zero tolerance policy when it comes with sexual sin and talking about it, joking about it because it demeans them.

If you have a mother-in-law joke, you're demeaning your mother-in-law and if you have a sex joke, you demean, it's not fitting, that's not what saints do. It's not fitting at work, it's not fitting to watch online, it's not fitting at church, it's not fitting in counseling, sometimes people want to say all their sexual things in counseling.

I don't need to know all that. All I need to know is if you said, I've done some sexual sins, okay, that's all. That's all I need. I don't need anything else and I could be more blunt if this wasn't radio, I don't want to know anything else.

I don't want to sit there preaching and think about all the things you've done. I don't need to know that. No, no that. Oh, I might want to know that in the flesh and it's titillating and all that stuff.

No, no, no, you can't. What's the opposite of all this selfish talk? It's Thanksgiving talk. All those nasty things are replaced with the positive Thanksgiving. Eutropalia is one of the words in that bad list and now he's got kind of a wordplay, Eucharistia.

Eucharist, that's what Eucharist means, it's thanks. What do you do? You're like, hmm, I'm not supposed to talk sex sins, vulgar, obscene. I'm supposed to be thanking. Hmm. Okay, think about this. It's Thanksgiving.

Who do people who aren't Christians thank? Well, they're just generally thankful. You can be generally thankful, I'm sure it happens, or just thankful for things or maybe they're thankful for their wife or their husband or their kids and their health, right?

You can be thankful. But the ultimate thanks is unto God, right? At Thanksgiving, we are thanking God. There's an object. Just like faith has an object, thanks has an object. We might be thanking ourselves, what a good boy am I, patting ourselves on the back, or we're thanking the triune God.

Thanksgiving here has an object. To whom do you give thanks? Answer, God. So, instead of demeaning sex to talk about, we're to be thankful when it comes to this very subject. And, of course, Song of Solomon, Proverbs 5, and other places, that God would give us such a gift for marriage of pleasure.

You think about pleasures in this life and you think about taste buds. Are you thankful for your taste buds? To whom do you thank? Well, of course, God. Thank you for the taste buds. And to think about some of the foods we get to eat and what they smell like and what they taste like and just dining pleasures.

I mean, can you imagine just what you can smell and taste? How good food is? We thank God for that. We thank God for our taste buds. We thank God for the food that He provides. That's the way this works.

And you think about pleasures of sight and you think of the Grand Canyon and Niagara Falls and Victoria Falls and Cape Town, South Africa, along the shoreline there. And you just think, it's beautiful.

It causes me to thank. Thank you, God, that I could see such a great sight. There's an object to your thanks. And here, what Paul is after, you're not supposed to demean sex by making it a joke. That's what you do when you joke about it and talk about it.

What do we call it? Locker room talk. What you're to do is you're saying, I'm thankful. And you say, well, I'm single or I'm a widow or I'm a widower or I'm older and never will get married. And I even have the gift of singleness and celibacy.

Okay, then you're just going to have to take my word for it and take God's word for it that you say, I'm thankful for that. And I'm thankful that before my spouse died, I enjoyed that. I'm thankful that other people can enjoy that.

I'm thankful that I don't even have a desire for it, but I know it must be pleasurable because it's what the Lord says. And so it's all about thanks. I'm thankful for my wife and the marriage bed. I'm thankful for the husband of the lady and the marriage bed.

I'm thankful. The list goes on and on because we're thanking God. I thank God. I thank God, right? And maybe it's harder to do when people have been married longer, but I can imagine two Christian people get married and they're both virgins and they get married and they go off on their honeymoon and spend time together.

I'm assuming if they have any kind of degree of spirituality in them, that they're saying, thank you, God, for all the things you've given us, including each other and bodies that we can enjoy. You're such a good God.

You're such a giving God. That's the way we're supposed to talk. It's a gift of God. We're not prudish about sexual talk and we're not repressed about sexual talk. We're not against sex. It's God's great gift.

Not the greatest gift, of course not, but it's his great gift. It's his design. He designed bodies. He designed pleasure with male and female body parts. I mean, that's just the way things are. Stott said, the contrast is striking and beautiful.

In itself, thanksgiving is not an obvious substitute for vulgarity, since the latter is essentially self-centered and the former God-centered. The antidote required, it is the recognition of God's generosity.

Deffenbaugh said, sex is a gracious gift from God. We dare not make light of God's gifts. We mock them in doing so. We dare not suggest or imply that lust or impurity or temptation come from God. Only good things come from God.

So instead of sexually inappropriate talk, we're to think of it as God's good gift and we're to keep it that way. That's why it's important for parents to have the talk with their children before the children see something online or have the talk from their friends or their teachers.

Because everything I did with Kim at my side for each of my four kids, privately, the three of us couched it and framed it that this is God's good gift. It's God's design. That's why our bodies are different.

It's God's good pleasure and it's to be received from God and done in marriage only. And we would want you to enjoy yourself, to have a lot of sex, but only in marriage. That's what we do because God's good, because God's gracious.

This is the old life Satan, see, God's holding out on you by waiting until you're married. See how that works? No, no, no. This is what's best for you. All the sexual sin and sexual trauma, sexual past, sexual hurt, can't break up with your boyfriend, all these other things because you think about them all the time and vice versa, male, female, female, male.

No, this is God's good gift. That's where to think of it. Not what the world does, but God's perspective. Well, my name is Mike Ebendroth. This is No Compromise Radio and we hope you've been encouraged today and we hope you think about sex as God's good gift and if there's sexual sin that you would repent.

No Compromise Radio with Pastor Mike Ebendroth is a production of Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston. Bethlehem Bible Church is a Bible teaching church firmly committed to unleashing the life transforming power of God's word through verse by verse exposition of the sacred text.

Please come and join us. Our service times are Sunday morning at 1015 and in the evening at six. We're right on route 110 in West Boylston. You can check us out online at bbcchurch .org or by phone at 508 -835 -3400.