Sexual Ethics And The Gospel - [1 Corinthians 6:12-20]

I heard something once that I've never forgotten about a man who was in an iron lung.

It was years ago and we had to treat people in iron lungs, can't read by yourself, can't move your arms, can't move your feet, can't eat without someone feeding you.

And some people went up to this man who was in this hardship every single day and was asked this question.

The man was asked, what's your severest hardship in your day -to -day life and the man in the iron lung said, the temptations of the lust of the flesh.

We live in a sin -saturated world, a sexually sinful -saturated world, and the

Bible addresses sexual sin, how to stay pure, how to overcome sexual temptation, and if you take your

Bibles and open to 1 Corinthians this morning, we're working verse by verse through this magnificent book, a book that deals with all kinds of problems and then gives good biblical gospel advice on how to avoid these problems.

The corrections in the problems are found in the book as well and while I don't think we're Corinthian, I'm sure some of us act

Corinthian -like at times, some of you maybe are acting like Corinthians, but overall we're growing and learning and maturing as a church and so we're not going through Corinthians because it's needed to correct behavior but to keep us with preventative maintenance away from the same sins that happen to the church of Corinth.

And so today we come to this passage, by the way, if you're older you need this message, if you're younger you need this message.

This is not the kind of message where you say, okay, all the children are dismissed, this is actually sex education from the

Bible that everyone needs. Is this profitable? Is it God -breathed?

Is it good? Yes, it is and it's to be preached and so it'll be done in a right way, in a biblical way but it's the kind of message that we need because we all struggle with sin and most people struggle with sexual sin as well and so can

God help us? Can God instruct us? Can God tell us what to do? By the way, let me just start with this.

If you have been involved or you are involved now in sexual sin, can you be forgiven?

And of course we know, just like the Corinthians, they were dirty, they were filthy, they were defiled.

And just like the song we sang, when God looks at us now he sees us through Christ's what?

Perfection. Can you imagine? To be forgiven of all the sins that you've done in your body, with your mind, we can come and say,

God, thank you for forgiving me based on what Christ Jesus has done. So as I attack some of these sins today and help us think biblically,

I want you to remember from the get -go, sexual sin can be forgiven.

And so let's go to 1 Corinthians 6 and we're going to go through verses 12 through 20 today.

Let me read it first. We're only going to get to about verse 13 but that's alright because it's an important topic.

And as you know, Paul in Corinthians has been dealing with problems, the problem of disunity and he deals with that in chapters 1 through 4.

He deals with, really kind of starts the sex topic when it comes to incest in the church with no church discipline.

And he says, you know what, we're going to judge this situation apostolically and we need to excise that sin.

Then he talks in chapter 6, 1 to 11 about people suing each other.

Can you imagine Christians suing each other? And Paul basically says, why don't you suffer now if someone is suing you and inherit later because you used to be the kind of people, as unbelievers, who inherited now but will suffer eternally for what?

Forever. And you can see the hinge verse here that talks about this sexual sin found in verse 9 of chapter 6, or do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the

King of God? Do not be deceived. It's easy to be deceived, that's why he said do not be deceived.

Neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor men who practice homosexuality, nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers will inherit the

Kingdom of God. And then he says, wonderfully, graciously, and such were some of you.

That's what you used to be. 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. You get that? Lord Jesus, the Spirit and of our

God. This great triune washing, triune sanctifying, triune justifying.

You used to be this way, you're not that way any longer. And when I look at those lists of sins, I see kind of one common denominator and that is selfish, self -serving, self -indulgent.

You used to serve yourself with your heart, soul, mind, and strength. As we heard in the baptismal font today, but God.

So you can see his theme in his mind is thinking about sex sins in Corinth, chapter 5, sex sins in Corinth, chapter 6, and he moves into this issue in verses 12 to 20 where he wants them to be pure.

Now do you live in a sex -saturated culture? Choking with sex sins is our culture today. It was no different back in those days.

Corinthianize meant to what? Fornicate. They were people who just loved it.

Actually it was tied to worship. Just how sick is that? How sick can it be if you think having illicit sexual relations is part of your worship?

And I've stood there in Corinth before and you see 1 ,500 feet up to the Acropolis where they had all the temple prostitutes and every day the 1 ,000 temple prostitutes would come down and descend upon the city of Corinth for what?

Of all gross things, worship. How would you like to experience God? You'd experience

God back in those pagan days, small g of course, not the real God, but they thought they would experience

God by paying a temple prostitute. It's just sick. I don't think our society is much different.

We have a selfish, self -indulged sexual culture and Paul wants to address the issue.

Let me say from the very get -go, remember when you think about this, you've got to think properly. God invented sex.

We even heard that from Danny Akin. It's his idea. Furthermore, God gives people hormones.

That's not a bad thing. It's been tainted by the fall, hasn't it? It's been torqued and perverted and dislocated by the fall.

Remember I'd pick up my brother sometime when he was really little by the arm and his socket arm thing really wouldn't go together and I'd pick him up and he'd go out of the socket and he'd just walk around like this crying, don't tell dad, don't tell dad, don't tell dad.

Well, I have to tell dad to put it back in. We have this culture that has something good.

What God made was very good. Intimacy, sexual intimacy, it's a good thing but it's been twist and perverted and contorted by the fall.

And so Paul wants to make sure that people realize God looks favorably upon sex in marriage.

Always it's holy, always it's right, always it's good, we'll get to that in chapter 7. But outside of marriage, sex is always dirty, filthy, defiling, staining and Paul says when it comes to sex sin, run.

So let's read the passage in verses 12 through 20 and we'll look at some ways this morning on how to overcome sexual temptation.

1 Corinthians 6, 12 to 20. This is the fourth problem Paul deals with. All things are lawful for me, but not all things are helpful.

All things are lawful for me, but I will not be enslaved by anything. Food is meant for the stomach and the stomach for food and God will destroy both, one and the other.

The body is not meant for sexual immorality, but for the Lord and the Lord for the body. God raised the

Lord and will also raise us up by His power. Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ?

Shall I then take the members of Christ and make them members of a prostitute? Never. Do you not know that he who is joined to a prostitute becomes one body with her?

For as it is written, the two will become one flesh, but he who is joined to the

Lord becomes one spirit with him. Flee sexual immorality.

Every other sin a person commits is outside the body, but the sexually immoral person sins against his own body.

Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God?

You are not your own, for you were bought with a price. So glorify

God in your body. Here's what we'll do this morning and the next week or two.

Let me give you some ways to overcome sexual temptation. Some will come from the passage, some will go elsewhere, but it'll be a list so that you can be helped.

And if you are pure, I want you to stay pure. If you're pure, I want you to help people who are struggling. This will be good for sexual immorality.

It will be also good for those who struggle with pornography. It will be very, very good.

And one is just as defiling as the other, so this will be good medicine for the soul from Paul to the church of Corinth and now to us.

So let me give you some ways to overcome sexual temptation. Number one, you can overcome sexual temptation by rehearsing the gospel.

By rehearsing the gospel. Now, before I get into chapter six, remember it's been 14 years since we were in chapter one, so we have to remember, well, it seems like it may be 14 months.

Let's go back to chapter one and see that Paul teaches them who they are in Christ Jesus.

He rehearses the gospel, so this is just not moralism. Mormons will tell you, be pure. Cults will tell you, be pure.

The society, most mothers I know and fathers would want their children to be pure.

They may be thinking because of teenage pregnancies, because of venereal disease, because of this, that or the other, they might not be thinking about your glorifying the

God of the universe. But Paul doesn't just say sex is bad, flee from sexual immorality, he's saying remember who you are.

This has nothing to do with moralism, so let's go back to chapter one, verse one, and if you're struggling with sexual sin,

I kid you not, one of the main issues you need to be reminded of is who you are in Christ Jesus.

Your position, what God the Father has done for you, and then you'll say, in response to my loving

Father, my gracious God, I want to honor you with my body. That's the whole point.

We don't want to miss our context of chapter one when we dive in and parachute into chapter six.

Just look at the greeting again. This has nothing to do with morality and lists and virtue.

This has everything to do with who you are in Christ Jesus. Paul, chapter one, verse one, called by the will of God to be an apostle of Christ Jesus and our brother,

Sosthenes. To the church of God, that is, in Corinth. To those, listen to this language, sanctified in Christ Jesus, set apart for holy purposes.

Directly involved in the sexual arena, you have been set apart for holy purposes. You're not set apart for defiling, dirty, rotten, filthy purposes.

You've been set apart in Christ Jesus. Can you imagine? You are placed in Christ Jesus.

You're part of Christ Jesus. Just as I said before about that song we sang, you see us,

God the Father, in Christ Jesus and you see us as perfect. A God that would do this for us?

He says more about sanctification. Verse two, called to be saints together with all those in every place who call upon the name of the

Lord Jesus Christ, both their Lord and ours. We're sanctified. We're saints.

We call upon the Lord. We're no longer our own Lord. We've been bought with a price, 1

Corinthians 6 will talk about. Paul wants this.

Paul says, remember who you were. Remember the gospel. So you'll have total commitment with your body for the

Lord, fulfilling your commitment to be holy. I think

I hear singing. I think that's a sign. I have a real peace about that one.

God has given you, think about it, eternal life. This is just a short list. Based on Christ's perfect atonement,

Christ the great high priest has given you eternal life. No condemnation. You've passed from death to life.

You will be with Jesus in the Father's house in heaven. You will rise again. Your body will. You'll never die.

You've been forgiven. You've been redeemed. God has made propitiation for your sins on Christ Jesus, the

Son. You've been sealed by the Spirit of God. God will never leave you nor forsake you. He's adopted you in your family and he's done all the more.

And so you say, God, you've been so good to me. I want to serve you. I want to honor you.

I don't want to say no. If you've got a good Father, don't you want to live in light of that good

Father with obedience and faithfulness? And look at the rest of the things that are in chapter 1.

Look at verse 4. I give thanks to my God for you always because of the grace of God that was given you in Christ Jesus, that in every way you are enriched in him in all speech and in all knowledge, even as a testimony about Christ was confirmed among you, so that you are not lacking any spiritual gift as you wait for the revealing of our

Lord Jesus, who will sustain you to the end, guiltless in the day of our Lord Jesus Christ.

God is faithful by whom you were called into the fellowship of his Son, Jesus Christ our Lord. Now a

God that has done that for you, don't you want to say in response, you've given me a body, you've made me a sexual creature, but I want to honor you with my body.

Now if you had a hard taskmaster for a servant, for a master rather, you might say, I don't want to do anything to honor him, but God is so good and faithful,

I want to honor him. So number one, overcoming sexual sin, don't forget the gospel of Christ Jesus, the substitutionary lamb who was slain for our sins, what it cost the

Father. Number two, don't rationalize your sins. Don't rationalize your sins.

Sexual sins we're talking about here specifically. Let's go back to chapter six. The Corinthians were good rationalizers, and we know we are too.

It doesn't take you very long to go down to the hospital and find sexual addicts. It doesn't take you very long to say

I've got some disease and it's kind of sexual immorality, a syndrome. The Corinthians did the exact same thing.

They were slogan Christians, quote unquote. Let's look at three of these slogans and how they rationalize their sin so we see how ludicrous it is, and then we don't do it ourselves.

So number one, we have to start with the gospel. Number two, we're looking at how people rationalize sin.

They have three slogans found in verses 12 and 13. Now ESV does a great job by putting them in parentheses,

NAS doesn't, but you can see the slogans, and these slogans were something that Paul probably taught them, but they turned out of context, they only took a portion of it, and they used

Paul's words to then rationalize their sin. So all things are lawful for the Christian, true or false?

True, but what are the all things? And so here, you're going to see the slogan, and then

Paul said, but let me tell you what the truth is, three slogans found in verses 12 and 13 that the

Corinthians used to rationalize their sin, and then you begin to think to yourself, yeah, but do I rationalize my sin too?

Three slogans of rationalization. Let's look at the first one found in verse 12. All things are lawful for me.

All things are lawful. I have so much liberty in Christ Jesus, I have liberty to sexually sin.

That's what they're saying. I have liberty to sexually sin, and of course the Corinthians are walking around thinking, you know what, this is not kind of Gnosticism, the spirit's good, the body's bad, doesn't matter if I use my body to sexually sin, because my spirit's really what's important.

That's the culture the Corinthians lived in, and they heard Paul say, all things were lawful, and they latched onto it like a person with a locked jaw would have and say, you know, with pitbull tenacity, all things were lawful, and all things include sexual sin.

Fornication's lawful, homosexuality's lawful, everything else is just lawful. Now how can that be, when he just got done saying in chapter 6, verses 10 and 11, drunkenness is not lawful, homosexuality's not lawful.

And you know, if it didn't sound so, it looked so stupid to me, so sinful, but then I thought, yeah, but I like to rationalize things too.

All things are lawful for me, but what does Paul say? But not all things are helpful.

That's Paul's correction. So the slogan is all things are lawful, that they took out of context, they just took a portion of it, but Paul corrects him and says, but not all things are lawful.

By the way, this is probably the slogan that got the guy in chapter 5 in trouble who thinks it's okay to sleep with his mother -in -law.

All things are lawful, the incest is fine too, chapter 5. This is a cloaking thing.

You know, they told me in seminary, never use a Star Trek illustration, never use a Star Trek moment. So you know, don't touch wet paint, here we go.

This is some kind of cloaking device for sin. If I ever taught him the effectual call, it would be, you will be assimilated, but that's another sermon.

The Church of Corinth was called effectually. Not all things are helpful.

They don't help. He's going to try to correct this kind of rationalization.

Sin isn't lawful, sexual sin isn't lawful, holiness isn't lawful, adult, what did

I just say? I meant to say fornication, holiness is lawful. That's why we have people edit.

I've felt so sick lately. Adultery is not lawful, fornication is not lawful, and it's not helpful either.

Fornication doesn't profit, adultery doesn't profit, homosexuality doesn't profit. Verse Thessalonians 4 says, this is the will of God, your sexual sanctification is the context.

That is, you abstain from sexual immorality. Remember, God is not this

God who says, no. I tell this to my older kids all the time. He doesn't say no. Christianity is not the religion of no.

This great, gracious God we have says, I've made you a sexual creation, and the answer is not no to solve the problem, the answer is yes in the right context, and that is in the covenant commitment of holy matrimony.

It's not no, it's this will be hurtful to you. It's not helpful, it's not profitable, it's not edifying, but over here in marriage, the answer is to God, and we'll see in chapter 7, the answer is yes.

The answer is, if you're able and you're not, it's sinful. How about that? It's yes, and in joy, and you can read the

Song of Solomon, where God gives his blessing to couples. So it's not no, it's this is harmful, this is hurtful, this doesn't help you.

Look at the second slogan. It's the same slogan at the beginning, but Paul makes a different contrast.

All things are lawful for me, but he says, but I will not be enslaved by anything. I'm not going to be enslaved by sexual sin, the

Gordian knot of sexual sin. I don't know if there's any other enslaving sin like this enslaving power of sexual sin.

Paul says, I'm not going to be mastered by my body. I will not be enslaved by anything.

I find it fascinating that those that are unbelievers who so tout free will, and they're living with their girlfriend, or a boy living with their boyfriend, or all the list of all the other kinds of sins, sexual sins outside of marriage, and they want to triumph the power of free will, and I think, you know, the really, really sad, sad part is, you're a slave to sex, to your own self.

Paul puts first person in here, do you see that? But I will not be enslaved by anything. I'm applying it to myself, and I'm a good illustration,

Paul says, of what to do and what not to do. I wonder if you have a rationalized sin,

I wonder if you have a rationalized sexual sin. We have our own slogans, I came up, I discovered a few of them.

What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas. Everybody else is doing it.

If it feels good, the old poem that some of you might remember, free from the law, oh happy condition,

I can sin as I please and still have remission. Well, I have

Jesus as my savior, but he's not my Lord. In other words, I want to go to heaven when

I die, but if you think I'm going to let Jesus tell me who I can have sex with and who

I can't, that's another story. And now Paul gives another rationalization that they have, and if you don't think kind of like they did in the culture, you might miss it.

So look at verse 13. Again, this is all driving us to A, understand the passage, and B, we don't want to rationalize our sexual sin.

If you sexually sin, confess it and forsake it, and you get mercy. That's Proverbs 28, 13. Food is meant for stomach, and the stomach is meant for food.

When you get hungry, what do you do? Eat. The Corinthians thought, when you get hungry, you eat.

It's a God -given desire. I have hunger pains. Guys got a growling stomach. Have you ever stood by somebody and their stomach is growling, and you go, man, you should eat something.

And the Corinthians also thought, you know what, I get hungry, I eat. I get hungry for sex, then

I must have to what? Have sex. I'm craving something.

After all, God gave me the desire. It's just like food. That's right.

Sex is no different than eating. My stomach and my palate are made for food, and the rest of my body, my sexual capabilities, that's just made for it.

And you know what this word probably was? It was probably like their first rap that was ever invented.

It was a slogan. It was a slogan, and they probably could just have it come right off the tip of their mouth where they knew it, because the

Corinthians loved the slogan, and they used it for all kinds of things, including illicit sex. And again, all sex in marriage, pure, holy, wonderful, right, gift from God, all sex outside of marriage, defiling, dirty, enslaving, not helpful, not profiting, and what they would do is say, you know what, this is kind of hard to get around, and who wants to sleep at night, actually sleep with somebody at night, and then having this whole

Damocles judgment of God over your head that God's going to judge you, let's figure out a way to get around that. Hey, we just have urges, we've got to fulfill them, so they came up with this little slogan.

Food is meant for the stomach, and the stomach for food, and you could just hear them. Food is for the stomach, and the stomach for food.

Food is for the stomach, and the stomach for food. Now, I'm not going to go any farther, because you guys are just looking at me like, stick to the text.

It's like a guy wrote me on No Compromise Radio, I said something about something, and he said, stick to what you're good at, and quit talking about that other topic.

I've been given a body that is designed for something, then I might as well use it.

Paul says, you've got to be kidding me. He says in verse 13, and God shall destroy both one and the other.

I mean, I can hear it in our society today. If you take people, and this is Harvard, Yale, and the rest.

If you take people who are made sexual creatures, and then you don't let them have sex, they will need therapy, they will have repression.

Paul says, food, temporal. Stomach, transitory.

Sex, limited to this life. Body, goes on forever. And the rest of the chapter is about thinking properly about the body.

I don't want to look at that right now. I'd like you to turn your Bibles to Proverbs 5. How to overcome sexual sin.

One, rehearse the Gospel. Remember how good this God is to you. Two, don't rationalize any sin.

Confess it, forsake it, so you'll have mercy. And three, not going to tell you yet.

If somebody came to you and they said, I'm struggling with pornography. I have men come and tell me that, I'm struggling with pornography.

We live in a profane world. I now have to ask potential deacons and elders, do you struggle with pornography?

Because it's so rampant, and it's rampant in this church. And if somebody said to you, you know what,

I'm struggling with pornography, can you help me? What would you tell them? Well, something might be very helpful.

Let's get this kind of X -stop on your computer, so it sends me lists of websites you've been on.

Is that okay to do? It's fine, I'm sure. Paul may say, and he does say in chapter 7, that one of the things that you can do if you struggle with sexual sin is get married.

That would be a way to deal with sexual sin, is to no longer be unmarried, but it's better to marry than it is to burn.

You might say, I'll pray for you, I'll hold you accountable, we'll get kind of an accountability group.

But I'd like to know this. Would you dare to ever say that if you're struggling with sex, struggling with pornography, struggling with these issues, would you ever tell somebody, you know,

I think you need to read your Bible more? Kind of seems old -fashioned to you.

Here's a Bible verse, go ahead, just read your Bible more. It's kind of weird to me that if I were ever to say to somebody,

I think you need to have your mind infused with the Word of God, to think God's thoughts, to think

God's ways, to study your Bible, to not do the kind of daily bread, four seconds in the morning and off you go, kind of like the national anthem.

When they play the national anthem on Monday night's game, if they do play it, they'll never go back to the national anthem now, will they?

They play it, it gets kicked off, it starts off the football game, and never does go back to it again. And so you say, well,

I kind of just, I read the Bible a little bit in the morning and basically my life is falling apart. Would you ever tell that person,

I think you need to read your Bible more? How about this? If you're a dad and you've got a boy, a son, how do you tell him to overcome sexual temptation?

If your son ever walks up to you and says, how do I keep my eyes pure, dad? What do you tell him? I wonder what

Solomon said to his sons on how to keep your eyes pure and what to do.

Did you know Solomon talked about it? It's a fascinating thing. The side note is here, dads, you better be teaching your kids about sex.

I'm not saying moms can't teach their daughters, I'm not saying moms can't give influence to their sons, but we're going to see Proverbs 2, 5, 6, and 7 all written by Solomon, inspired words written to sons.

Dads, you better teach your kids about sex because if you don't teach them, somebody else will. And don't you want to teach them from God's perspective?

How this is such a good thing and God's such a good creator and God says, here's where I want you to enjoy yourself in the context of marriage and everything else is going to hurt you and it's going to be a sin against your own bodies.

Dads, you need to teach your kids. That's your responsibility. Those are some of the most precious times in my life when some of my older kids and I have sat down,

Kim and I, and just talked about these things from God's perspective. So somehow

I'm kind of the big elephant in the room that nobody wants to talk about because we can never say the word sex in church. We need to have our kids to think this is

God's view of this thing, this topic, rather. So the third way to overcome temptation is found in saturating your mind with the

Word of God. I kid you not. Show me somebody who's a sexual pervert and I'll show you somebody who's got low intake on the

Word of God. The Word of God is not dwelling within them richly. And so let's take a look at this passage.

I said Proverbs 5, but let's just go to Proverbs 2 for a moment. Proverbs chapter 2, and I want you to see that Solomon says this.

You've got two options, son. Listen to my words, the inspired words, or listen to the words of the adulteress.

Listen to my wisdom from God, God -centered wisdom, or listen to the foreign woman who drips honey from their mouth.

This is a war of words. That's not what she looks like. She may or may not look pretty, but Solomon says it's all about words.

It's either going to be words from me or words out of the mouth of the adulteress. And if you saturate your mind with the

Word of God, Solomon says that you're going to be having a guard against sexual temptation.

This is not, oh, memorize the verse, you know, memorize Jesus wept and I'll see you tomorrow, Godspeed. I'm talking about the kind of inundation and saturation, and I'll use the word just on purpose because I just kind of feel like this this morning anyway, to brainwash your mind.

You're brainwashed anyway by the culture and sex and what they're selling. I can hardly look at anything anymore.

You just go, everything is just pointing to this direction that it's sex, sex, sex and I'm getting all this garbage in, and so now

I want to think about it properly, and the proper response from the Christian is not, ooh, sex is bad.

No, you can't. The proper thought is, here's what God, my Creator, my Savior, my forgiving

God says, who wants my best. Sex and marriage, good and holy, all sex outside of marriage, it's wrong and sinful.

Forgivable, yes, but it's wrong and sinful. So what does Solomon do? He says it's a battle in your mind with the word of God.

It's fascinating. Proverbs 2, My son, if you receive my words and treasure up my commandments with you so it's the

Father's advice but now it's God breathed it's more than just good advice, this is words from God, making your ear attentive to wisdom and inclining your heart to understanding.

Yes, if you call out for insight and raise your voice for understanding, he keeps talking like that for a long time.

Now jump down to verse 16. Why do you have to take in this wisdom from God? Words from your

Father that are Scripture. Verse 16, so you will be delivered from the forbidden woman from the adulteress with her smooth, what?

Words. Words from the Father protect, God's words protect, small

F Father, large F Father, the Heavenly Father, but words from these sinful ladies, and of course it can be switched around.

Teach your daughters on how to watch out from the slippery, fornicating, inducing, kind of seducing words of some man.

Now let's go to chapter 5, it's the same thing. It's just fascinating to me because what we're doing in Christianity is we're underestimating the power of the

Word of God. How it changes people's lives, it changes their thoughts, it transforms, it edifies, it conforms you to the image of Christ.

You say to yourself, is this word really living? Is it really active? Is it sufficient? And if so, right now, if you struggle with sexual sins, you need to be a person of this book.

And if you don't think it'll change you, then we should probably talk about salvation to start because if God saves you through the preaching of the

Word you recognize, this is the power of God, not only for salvation to those who believe, but the power of God to change my life.

Proverbs 5, words from the Father and the Heavenly Father are words from the harlot.

My son, be attentive to my wisdom. Again, dads, you better buckle up. You go, well, it's kind of uncomfortable for me to talk about that subject around my kids.

Well, my flesh wants to say grow up, but since I'm a pastor and everything and I'm really compassionate and nice and all that, dads, sometimes

I've said in my life, I sure wish my dad was here. My dad could do this thing that I need to do.

And then sometimes I've also thought, I wish John McArthur was here. He's kind of my spiritual father and then

John could kind of take care of this mess that's been created. And then I look around and I go, well, my father's dead,

John McArthur's in California, and I've been given the Spirit of God, a godly elder board, the

Word of God, and it's time to be a man. And you can just hear the song,

Rise Up, O Man of God. You say, well, my sons are gone and I blew it. I didn't talk to them like I should have.

Well, Grandpa, we have kids in this very church.

We have single moms in this church that need a man to come alongside to their sons of these single moms and say, you know what?

I need to talk to you about this subject. I don't mean in any inappropriate way, but just good, wholesome ways to serve the body.

Proverbs 5 .1, My son, be attentive to my wisdom. Incline your ear to my understanding. Pay attention.

Solomon says to his son, your own education, your own IQ, your own prowess, your own background, your own works, your own money, your own power cannot help you withstand from the words of an adulteress because they're seductive, they're attractive, and your heart is desperately wicked.

And you put together these words and this heart and there's going to be a bonfire of sexual sin.

Verse 2, that you may keep discretion and your lips may guard knowledge. Why learn all the

Bible? Verse 3, for the lips of a forbidden woman drip honey and her speech is smoother than oil.

Words from God in Solomon are words from this whore. Look at Overt chapter 6.

It's the same thing. I'm not saying, here's a Bible verse, call me in the morning. I am saying that the word of God is powerful and you ought to hide

God's word in your heart so you might not, what? Sin against God. I want you to have so much

Bible in your mind that when you turn on that computer to go to whatever self -absorbed pornography site you go to,

Bible verses start flashing through your mind. Proverbs 6 23, for the commandment is a lamp and the teaching is light and the reproofs of discipline are the way of life.

Why? Why are these words given? Context, verse 24, how great is this? To preserve you from the evil woman from the smooth tongue of the adulteress.

Now hear me rightly, I'm not saying all the women are the temptresses and all the men are all, you know, pure and golden, but Solomon is talking to his sons.

So, Solomina, or Bathsheba, if she talked to her daughter, she'd say, watch out for those young men who try to seduce your children.

But don't you see the tie -in? Words from God help you stay away from words of other people trying to seduce you.

Chapter 7, let's look at that one as well. It's fascinating because this is not just throw away, read your

Bible. S .O .S. Johnson is right, Christians in America struggle because they don't read their

Bibles. The old Swedish slogan is probably right, show me a Bible that's falling apart and I'll show you somebody whose life is probably not falling apart.

This goes back to, if I asked you in the last week how much you read your Bible, how many minutes you read your

Bible, I think even in a church like ours, you'd be shocked to have some people rarely read their

Bible. And if you've got such a hard temptation, such a difficult temptation, such a compressed temptation as this, do you think a little

Bible verse a day and a little two minute throw away thing to God over here is going to help you under the crushing temptation of sexual sin when you have hormones?

When you have been given by God a desire to have sex? When you've been given by God parameters for where you can have it and you go, you know what,

I just have little tiny doctrines, little tiny Bible verses that come in my mind because I think I could go against the

Goliath of sexual world, the sexual society and everything else. I can hold up with just a few little toothpicks.

I made my house, you know, we're going to hopefully build a new church building one day. Let's build a foundation with toothpicks.

Have you seen those little toothpick sculptures? Yeah! This is different.

You know this topic? This is a topic that is not just, oh yeah, that whole sex thing and not, you know, okay, we've got to move on.

Chapter two, chapter five, chapter six, and now look at chapter seven. My son, verse one, keep my words and treasure up my commandments with you.

Keep my commandments and live. Keep my teaching as the apple of your eye. Bind them on your fingers.

Write them on the tablet of your heart. This isn't throw away daily bread stuff. Say to wisdom, you are my sister and call inside your intimate friend.

What is the reason? What is the purpose? What is the desired result of doing all this intake of God's word,

God's wisdom to keep you from the forbidden woman?

From the adulteress with her what? Smooth words. The words from the

Father, the words from the Heavenly Father counteract and help and support against and buttress against the words of the seducer.

It also works for the lure of Now when

I was going to preach this topic I thought, Lord help me. I don't want to say anything untowards.

Something unbiblical, something that would defame you. But I also want to be a person who teaches you the

Bible. You need to know about this topic. And it's interesting that first Corinthians chapter five, the sexual sin, chapter six, chapter six, twelve to twenty, chapter seven with the wife, singles, if you're going to burn, get married.

This is a real subject that really needs to be addressed. And if you've got kids, one day they're going to grow up and one day they're going to go through puberty and they're going to have hormones and you need to be able to teach them what the

Bible says. I long for that. If I could only go back, I know God's sovereign decree exists, but to go back and to have my father teach me these things and my mother teach me these things and I could understand these things.

Because what's at stake is not teenage pregnancy. What's at stake is not sixteen, you get a girl pregnant, it's going to cost you a lot of money throughout your life.

What is not at stake is you're going to get AIDS. Those things all are consequential and I'm not saying they're inconsequential, but the main issue is

God made you, redeemed you, gave you a body and He said that body you have isn't your own.

That's the lie, it's a double lie, when women say, I can kill the baby in my womb because it's my body.

First of all, it's not your body, it's got different blood type, it might actually be different sex than you, you could have a male body inside your body, but that's your body.

But more than that, you don't own you. If you're a Christian, you have been bought with a price and you say to yourself,

Lord, if I'm single, I have this desire to be with someone, that is a healthy desire.

It can go too far, but here's where it should go. God, by your strength and by your power, help me to stay pure and help me to become the man or help me to become the woman who becomes attractive to a godly person, that then one day we'll get married and then we'll just enjoy each other.

That desire for intimacy is a good desire. You know what it should do?

It should motivate you to work. It should motivate you to say, you know what,

Call of Duty, I've got through 14 levels of Call of Duty and I play Call of Duty 14 hours a day.

Okay, four hours a day. One day you're going to go through puberty and you're going to say to yourself,

I'm stupid. Because I have a motivation. That motivation is, it's a good motivation, it's been given by God.

To have sweet intimacy with a woman in marriage. So men, you'd like to marry somebody who's godly and who you'd like to drive away from work and say,

I'm leaving all my kids with that woman to marry. If it's that kind of great woman, then you better start by the grace of God and the means given in the eternal word of God to start becoming the kind of man that a woman would want to marry.

If I said it once, I've said it a thousand times. God created sex, God gave the urges for sex, God gave the confines for sex, and this isn't about premarital sex and hooking up and friends with benefits and all that.

That's all what the world says and you know it's all garbage. This is God saying glorify me with your body, you don't own you.

I've paid a high price to redeem you and we'll learn about that next week. I want to be helped from this because I struggle.

So we've learned today, first of all, rehearse the gospel, who you are in Christ Jesus. You have the power to obey, the ability to obey.

You don't have to sin. You only sin if you want to. Number two, you say, I'm just not going to make any more rationalizations.

I'm some sex addict. I'm this, that, or the other. I'm just going to say, you know, it's wrong. I looked upon a woman with a loss. It's wrong,

God. Please forgive me. And then thirdly, you need a good, healthy dose of IBS class, discipleship, women's

Bible study, your own Bible study, and you say, I've got to saturate my mind because my mind is left to myself, perverted, even as a

Christian. God, change me. Make me different. And there's more advice, but we're going to have to get to that next week.

Let's pray. Our Heavenly Father, I am thankful on behalf of Bethlehem Bible Church that you've told us in your word very clearly instructions about this topic.

We're just so thankful this morning, Father, that the gospel is not just God forgives, but God gives, forgives at the price of His Son and then enables

His people to say no to sin and yes to righteousness. We're thankful this morning that you did not count our trespasses, especially in this area, against us.

You didn't count any trespasses against us. And yet you counted all those trespasses, including sexual trespasses against Christ Jesus, who never, ever sexually sinned.

He was perfect. He was complete. Thank you for that great transaction.

Thank you that we have the resurrection power abiding in us to say no. And I pray for the people today who are caught up in sexual sin that they would run from it today.

I pray that you would give others strength, the desire to study the words so they may say no to the words of the flatterer and the adulteress, even if it's found in a computer screen.

And Father, we would like to be holy. We would like to be blameless practically. I pray for the singles here today that you would help them work on their sanctification so that one day you would give them a godly husband or a godly wife and they could just enjoy your wonderful bounty in the marriage bed that you've called undefiled and holy.