Full Transcript

Open your Bible to Hebrews chapter 13; also Romans chapter 1. We’ll be in Hebrews first, then Romans.

We’re in this series, Be Bold, and we’re addressing some of these controversial topics. They’re not controversial if you just believe God’s Word, but they are a little controversial. The darker the days get, the bolder the Christians must be, so we’re challenging you about some specific things. . .to be bold about the origin of man, to be bold about the sanctity of life. . .

Today I want to challenge you to be bold about the significance of marriage. In saying that, I want to acknowledge—I realize not everybody in this room is married! And some of you checked out when I said that, thinking, “I’m not married. This message is not for me!” Oh, yes it is!

How many of you in the room are married? Hold up those wedding rings. So, not everybody here is married, and there are people who have never been married—and I acknowledge there are people in this room who desperately want to be married.

I know there are people here that have at the top of your prayer request list, “Lord, please send me a marriage partner.” I often remind those people that there are people in church today who are married, whose request at the top of their prayer list, “Lord, would you please allow me to be single again, because this is not going well—this is not what I thought it would be.”

So, when we talk about the significance of marriage, please understand, as significant as marriage is, marriage is not ultimate. You cannot look to marriage for something God never intended marriage to provide. God did not create marriage to fulfill your every longing, as a human being.

Your heart was created to know Him, to meet those needs. So as we talk about this, I acknowledge there are people who have never been married; yet, if statistics hold true, ninety-one percent of us—at some point in our lives—will be married.

There are people here who are single again. You were married, but through the loss of a loved one through death—you’re a widow/widower—or maybe there was a divorce, you’re single again.

Some of you’ve been single, you were married, you were single again and now you’re married again. Maybe you’re in your second marriage, or maybe even your fifth marriage. Let me just go on record as saying at the beginning of this thing, it doesn’t matter if it’s your first marriage or your fifth marriage, our goal is to make sure that this is your last marriage, whatever’s in your past. It’s all about what happening right now and in the future for you.

And there are people here—I just want to acknowledge from the very beginning—who are dealing with a same-sex attraction (gasp!). “In church?” Yes, in church—in this church. We’re going to look at what God’s Word has to say to people who deal with this particular issue.

Have I got your curiosity up now? Some of you really leaned in when Pastor Nathan said, “Seventh grade and above. . .” It’s like that’s the first time you paid attention in church in your life. . .like, “This is going to be hot. . .and steamy!” It’s going to be appropriate, but we’re going to look unapologetically at what God’s Word says to us about the issue of marriage.

Hebrews 13:4, I want us to start with this one verse: “Let marriage be held in honor among all. . .” So marriage is something that is honorable to God. You have a responsibility, whether you are married or single—you have a part to play in honoring the institution of marriage—not only the institution of marriage but your particular marriage.

Some of you say, “I can’t honor marriage because I’m not married.” Please listen! What you’re doing with your life right now will determine (for some of you) whether or not you will have an honorable marriage later on. There are things that some of you are doing to dishonor marriage before you actually have one. Marriage is to be held in honor among all; all single people need to honor marriage, all married people need to honor marriage.

Then Scripture goes on to say, “Let the marriage bed be undefiled . . .” (Hebrews 13:4b) Now, I preach from the English Standard Version of the Bible. It’s a good version, it’s not the only version but it’s the version we use here. The translators of the English Standard Version have done us a favor.

They’ve actually camouflaged and sanitized the Greek words that were used where it says, “marriage bed.” Can I just tell you what it’s talking about there? in case you haven’t figured that out, it’s talking about the act of sex.

And in this verse, it says that we are to hold marriage in such high esteem. . .. and one of the ways that we do that is by making sure that the act of sex is undefiled. That means undiluted, unpolluted—not blurred or marred in any way. The act of sex is such an honorable thing when it is in the context of a marriage bed, that we have an obligation to God. . .It’s an act of worship to God to keep that from being defiled. We’re going to look at how it gets defiled a little later on.

Then the passage says this, “. . .for God will judge the sexually immoral and adulterous.” (Hebrews 13:4b) If you needed a little motivation to keep the marriage bed undefiled, here’s a little motivation: God takes very seriously when the act of sex is defiled—so much so that the Bible says He actively gets involved in judging those who defile it.

How do you defile marriage? It mentions two things: sexual immorality (we’ll talk more about that in a minute) and the act of adultery. So—premarital sex, extramarital sex—any sexual activity outside of a marriage is something that God takes very seriously!

So, today, we want to answer three questions: First of all: What makes marriage so significant?  Secondly, What’s causing marriage to become so insignificant? Forty-one percent of people surveyed said, “You know what? Marriage is obsolete. That’s not really a good cultural thing for us to do.” And the third question is this, How do I honor the significance of marriage?. . .you personally, your marriage, you as a single person. . .What must you do to obey Hebrews 13:4?

So, let’s deal with the first question this way, answering it three ways.

• Marriage is designed and defined by God. (Gen. 1:27-28)

If you’ve been here over the past two weeks, you realize that Genesis 1:27 is a recurring verse. From the very first page of the Bible, we’re seeing things that God wants us to be bold about. “God created man in His own image. . .”

We dealt with the origin of man a couple of weeks ago. You’re not an amoeba formed in a primordial soup who grew into the person you are today. You are a special being, created by God with intentionality. The Bible says that we are stamped in His image. “In the image of God He created them.” The fingerprints of God are all over you!

Because you are created by God, you have intrinsic dignity, value and worth! That means that every human life is precious and is to be protected, so we looked at the sanctity of life last week.

Look at the next part. . .God tells us very specifically that “Male and female He created them. And God blessed them and said, And God said to them, ‘Be fruitful and multiply. . .’” Genesis 1:27-28. Listen! Gender is assigned by God; gender is not an accident. Gender is something that has a very special created purpose.

God has created men and women equal, but He has not made them the same. We are different in every cell of our bodies and those differences have a created purpose—that when they come together, they complement one another in a way that brings glory to God and (in case you haven’t noticed)—it is the combination of the two genders that makes babies!

God says that is a blessed thing. So, He created them male and female, He blessed them, and He said, “Get after it. We need some kids!” That’s what He said, and He’s excited when kids show up through the sexual union of a man and a woman in a covenant marriage relationship.

God gave us the institution of marriage. There’s a lot of debate in our culture today over what marriage is. Can I clear it up for you? If you were to take everything the Bible has to say about marriage and smash it into one sentence, it would sound like this: Marriage is a holy covenant initiated by God and conditioned on an irrevocable promise: to pursue oneness with an imperfect person of the opposite sex for a lifetime for the glory of God. Did you get that?

Don’t try to write that down; it’s an overview. In case you were wondering, all those different pieces are very important to the definition of marriage. Now, what we need to understand is, because the State did not design marriage, it cannot re-create marriage. Because the State did not define marriage to begin with (God did that), you can’t re-define something that God has defined.

So we understand that this nation, if it wants the blessing of God, needs to recognize and regulate marriage according to God’s design and definition. However, if you want to invite the judgment of God—as we’ve read about this morning—start playing around with God’s definitions. That’s a problem!

So, we want to honor marriage by understanding marriage is designed by God and defined by God.

Here’s the second thing:

• Marriage is a picture of Christ and His Church. (Ephesians 5:31-33)

Look here in Ephesians 5: Paul, in writing to the Church, wants to remind them of something he read on the first page of the Bible. He quotes from Genesis 2:24 and says this, “Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.”

Now, first of all, I want you to notice there are four references to gender in that one verse! God is very specific about the role of a man in a marriage, the role of the wife and the role of a father and the role of a mother. God wants all those differences working in harmony to create a marriage.

In the context of that marriage, do you know what happens? You actually reflect the relationship that Jesus Christ has with His church! Do you know the plot line of the Bible? The story? There’s only one story in the Bible. Here it is:

A father sent a son to win a bride so that from their union there would be spiritual children. That’s the plot line of the Bible. The Bible opens with a wedding, and on the last page of the Bible, do you know what we find? A wedding! Everything in the Bible is illustrating for us how God wants to have union with you! He wants to take two very distinct things (I don’t know if you can call God a “thing”—an entity, a Holy God)—a Holy God and a sinful man—and put them together in harmony.

And everything it takes for a husband to be in harmony with a wife is what it shows about the relationship that Jesus has with His Bride. Jesus has a very resistant, ugly Bride. She’s got wrinkles and flaws. She can’t stand up half the time, she’s disoriented, she’s pursuing other lovers, and Jesus as the Groom wins that Bride over through grace and forgiveness and love.

We, as the Church (if you are in the Church, connected to the Church through union with Christ), you are someone who has been won by the love of a perfect Groom. That’s the story of the Bible!

Are you married? Are you gonna be married? Your marriage is a picture of Christ and His Church. The question is, is it a true picture or a false picture? Your marriage preaches a gospel. It either preaches a gospel that is full of love, grace, forgiveness, mercy, permanence, commitment, sacrifice, service. . . or it preaches a gospel that is absent of those things and is filled with bitterness and strife and tension and adultery and unfaithfulness. . .and your marriage is preaching a false gospel that looks nothing like the gospel of Jesus Christ and His Church!

That’s how significant your marriage is! It’s a picture of the relationship Jesus has with His Church. Your marriage is either displaying or distorting the gospel of Jesus Christ. That’s how significant marriage is!

And then, understand this:

3) Marriage is the only place where you can experience the pleasure of sex and the pleasure of God at the same time. (Romans 1:18-32)

Yes, you are now writing the word “sex” in the blank, in church (gasp!). “I didn’t think I would ever do that!” Yes, there it is. Now, I want you to think about the ramifications of this statement, “Marriage is the only place where you can experience the pleasure of sex and the pleasure of God in the exact same moment.”

Do you want to live your life for the pleasure of God? Do you want God to smile on your life? Do you want God to be pleased with your life? Well, here it is—when it comes to sex, the only place that you can experience the pleasure of sex (at the same time, God being pleased with what you are doing) is in the context of marriage!

We don’t play around with this precious gift. So, we need to ask the question, “What is this gift of sex that God has given?” Can we give it a definition in church?

Here it is:

Sex is a wedding gift that God gives to men and women who enter into an exclusive life-long covenant with each other for the purpose of pursuing companionship and resulting in a legacy of godly children.

Is that a surprising definition of sex for you? All we did was couple sex with everything we see in Scripture that God designed sex to be attached to. Sex was attached to a wedding, to a covenant, to a man and a woman who are pursuing companionship (oneness), understanding that it is their sexual relationship that is intended to produce the next generation of godly children. So, we need to get a better definition of sex than the one we have been playing with.

We need to understand that God has designed us as sexual beings. It’s not something to be afraid of; sex is not a four-letter word! It’s a good gift that God gives to people who enter into this life-long relationship. Our ultimate joy is found when we do things God’s way.

Don’t you think that God, who invented the body, who invented the biological plumbing of a male and the biological plumbing of a female, knew what He was doing when He put those two things on the planet? God wants your body to experience maximum joy.

In order for you to experience maximum joy, He puts boundaries around things that will ultimately destroy your joy. That’s why He gives us this wedding gift in the context of marriage.

Now, if that’s the definition of marriage, please understand—anything outside of that definition, God considers sin. Have you heard of sin—this concept of sin? It’s not a popular concept, but it’s still a concept we need to be aware of.

What is sexual sin? First of all, let me just say that I would think that every person in this room right now is a sexual sinner. I know that you’re all sinners, but probably you have stepped outside of the boundaries that God intended sex to be in.

What that means—as we read the Scripture, God identifies a lot of things that are outside of those boundaries and are off-limits for those of us who claim Jesus as our Savior and our Lord.

That means that lust is sin; inappropriate touching is sin; friends with benefits is sin; using pornography is sin; self-gratification is sin; extramarital sex is sin; premarital sex is sin; polygamy is sin; rape is sin; incest is sin; prostitution is sin; human trafficking is sin; same-sex activity is sin, and same-sex “marriage” is not even a real thing.

So, what do you do with a bunch of sexual sinners? “You are loved. Let’s dismiss the service and go home”—is that what we should do? No! Hey, we’re all in the bucket of—at some point—driving in a lane outside of God’s parameters for sex. The question is, “Does the gospel speak to sin?” Absolutely!

Whatever “bucket”—whatever particular sexual sin you’ve committed—you need to understand there’s power, there’s hope, there’s forgiveness in the gospel. But there is judgment for those who will not repent and believe and put themselves under God’s definition. We’re all sexual sinners.

So the next question is this:

What’s causing marriage to become so insignificant?

Well, I believe the reason we see the insignificance of marriage in our culture, the reason people aren’t getting married anymore (and those that are, are throwing away marriage as soon as it gets hard). . .the reason it’s becoming so insignificant is because we are trying to experience sex without everything else in that definition.

The world and the culture will try to hold out to you a definition of sex that does not involve children.

• Sex without children.

Because of the invention and the availability of contraception and abortion, we tend to view children as an inconvenience that shows up when contraception fails or we choose not to get an abortion. As a result, there are less and less children, and our view of children is something less than the precious gift that God intended them to be.

Hey! Are you aware that Islam is the fastest-growing world religion? Did you know that? Is that because those in the Muslim religion are converting people to Islam? Not so much. Do you know why it’s the fastest growing religion? There’s still having babies, while—what are Christians doing? The average couple in America has 1.7 children. That’s not even enough to sustain the population.

We look at children as something that gets in the way of our career goals, and. . .”Oh we want to stay married, so we just kind of want to focus on each other for a few years,” and then pretty soon it’s like, “Oh, I don’t think this is the right time. . .” and we keep just putting it off and putting it off and putting it off. . .and we aren’t being fruitful and multiplying as God says.

Now, that doesn’t mean if you have nine children you get extra brownie points in Heaven, okay? [laughter] And it doesn’t mean if you don’t have children, somehow you’re not blessed by God. Infertility is a real thing. One in six married couples experiences fertility issues. And we grieve and mourn and our hearts ache for those that want children, but for some reason God’s not allowed that.

At some point, after we’ve prayed all of our prayers, we have to throw our hands up and say, “God, we trust You! We trust Your Providence, we trust Your sovereignty,” and then we can start pursuing other options like adoption. There are so many kids available that need a godly home.

Yet, we’ve tried to find our sexual pleasure de-coupled, detached from the thought that this sexual union will bring children into the world.

Then, we’ve detached sex from marriage.

• Sex without marriage.

A few weeks ago, I was up in Barrie, Ontario, Canada. I was preaching in one of our Harvest Bible Chapels up there. Pastor Todd Dugard is our pastor up there—great friend, great pastor. It was church number 3 in the movement. He invited me to come in a do a marriage conference—and Andrea and I were there—and then I got to preach in their three services.

At nine o’clock, actually two minutes before nine o’clock, right before I was to stand up and preach, there was a lady who came up to Pastor Todd (we were sitting together on the front row) and she had no idea that I was there, that I was going to preach. . .

. . .she just came up and said, “Hey, Pastor Todd, you know I’m in a relationship with this guy, and have been. We don’t believe in that whole marriage-and-getting-a-piece-of-paper type thing. . .We’re going to go down to Florida. We’d like you to come down there and just kind of recognize our relationship.”

Pastor Todd leaned over to her and said, “You know, I think you might want to listen to today’s message. I think God might have something to say to you.” (Because I was teaching on marriage.) In that message, I actually told the story of couples in our church who were pretending to be married—who had had a relationship for a long time and were kind of acting like they were married—but had never exchanged vows, never made promises, never entered into covenant, never filed down at the courthouse for a marriage license.

People say to me all the time, “We don’t need a piece of paper to show that we love each other!” and I say, “Yes, you do!” “Why’s that?” Because one of these days, Mr. Boyfriend or Miss Girlfriend is going to wake up and they’re not going to fe-e-e-el the lo-o-o-ve, and he’s not going to remember all the nice little things he/she said to you on the dinner date, and he/she is going to find somebody cuter and want to pursue them.

Do you know what that piece of paper does? That piece of paper reminds them of the promise that they made to remain faithful—for better or for worse, for richer or poorer, in sickness and in health, forsaking all others as long as we both shall live—sign on the dotted line, please. “We want to remind you of that promise. And we’re even going to go so far as to put it on record at the courthouse, file it. The State’s even going to recognize this thing.”

Yeah, the piece of paper is important because it is a record of the promise that you made in covenant relationship. “But we’re married in God’s eyes.” No, you’re not! You’re sinning in God’s eyes! “But we’re married in our hearts.” No, you’re married in your pants—that’s your problem! You think that you can have sex without marriage. You’re driving in a lane that’s going to end in disaster.

So, get the piece of paper. If you’re living with us, come and talk to us. We’ll just have your wedding right in front of the whole church if we need to, but we want to make sure that we honor marriage and keep the marriage bed undefiled. . .for God will judge the sexually immoral and the adulterers.

We think we can have sex without marriage, we think we can have:

• Sex without companionship.

and so we’ve created a “hook-up” culture. We’ve created a culture where we don’t think of sex in terms of loving someone. If sex is just a means to fulfill your selfish pleasure, you don’t have someone, you just have to use someone.

And so we begin to give ourselves physically to someone who will not give us their heart, will not give us the rest of their lives. We want to feel loved, but we don’t even know the person that we’re in a relationship with, because there’s no companionship.

The culture has now made it possible for you to have:

• Sex without a partner.

Who needs a person when you have a smartphone that will create digital images that will create thoughts and chemical explosions in your mind that will give you the false sense of sexual pleasure, outside of the context of covenant marriage, that God created for you in which to experience that?

The culture holds out to you the promise of:

• Sex without gender.

And today, this is the hot-button issue. It’s the final departure from God’s design for sex. When our gender is detached from God’s divine design. . .to think of gender and sexual orientation as something that I choose, rather than something God assigns. . .then I think of sex without gender. . .despite the self-evident biological compatibility that God has built into the human anatomy. . .

We’ve created a whole infinite array of genders outside of “Male” and “Female.” That’s why we have a culture in which Glamour magazine announced on Friday their “Woman of the Year” was. . .wait for it. . .Bruce Jenner. You say, “Don’t you mean Caitlyn Jenner?” No, I mean Bruce. . .because, I don’t know about you, but when I was in eighth grade I took this science class and learned about these chromosomes.

In every cell of the body, there’s either an xx chromosome, which assigns your body female, of there’s an xy chromosome that assigns your gender male. It’s a wonderful creative thing that God’s done in every cell of your body. And you can cut parts off and attach parts and shoot chemicals of the opposite sex into your brain. Until you’re able to solve that chromosome “problem,” you are assigned a gender: male and female.

I want to be sensitive to those of you who have a same-sex attraction, or have a loved one who has a same-sex attraction. By the way, let’s just get it on the table here? Does anyone here have a friend or a loved one who has a same-sex attraction? Hold up your hand.

I have a friend that I pray for and I love, and he identifies himself as a “gay Christian.” There’s material being written—there are people who are going back and do a different kind of understanding of the Bible that seeks to give an alternate definition to the six passages in the Bible that very clearly tell us that God assigns gender and that anything outside of that is sexual sin.

Matthew Vines has written a book called God and the Gay Christian, and through a crazy, unconventional heretical hermeneutic tells us that, “Well, they didn’t really understand this monogamous relationship that gay couples have today. The Bible just really doesn’t speak of that.” C’mon!

I’m grateful for other theologians who have actually come out and said, “You know what? I have a same-sex attraction, but I am committed to being sexually pure and celibate, and I pray that God changes that [attraction], but He may never change that. But I’m not going to act on the attraction, because it’s outside the boundaries of what God would have for me.”

By the way, Todd Dugard, our pastor there in Barrie, Ontario—he’s done a four-part sermon series with tons of research, tons of videos. . .the most comprehensive thing I know about on this issue. If you go to WhenCulturesClash.ca (for Canada), you’ll find all those different resources. . .far more than anything I could get to in this message.

But I just want to say to you, if you try to experience anything outside of God’s definition for marriage or for sex, it’s going to leave you confused and it’s going to leave you frustrated, because that is not what God designed you to experience.

So what do you say to a person that says, “I believe I was born that way”? Do you believe people were born that way? Listen, I don’t pretend to know all the different factors that go into why a person would have a same-sex attraction. I do know that there’s never been any chemical or genetic or biological evidence that somehow there’s a “gay gene.” There’s no evidence to that.

But I do know this, biblically, historically, sociologically and personally there is a mountain of evidence that tells us everyone is born with a disorientation away from God. Did you know that? Every one of us is a born sexual sinner—everybody! Do you know what that means? We are a magnet to sin and we are allergic to God, and we want to go our own way.

When it comes to the issue of sex, everybody is bent toward an orientation that is outside the boundaries God has for us. Are you familiar with the movie Woodlawn? Have you seen this? You should go see it. If you’re not doing anything this afternoon, go see it (if you’re not coming to Making Harvest My Home, which you’re all coming to at five o’clock).

A couple of weeks ago we actually hosted the premiere for Woodlawn down at the Morris Performing Arts Center. How many of you were there? For those of you who were there, did you see what was happening about fifteen minutes before the event, as the actors arrived?

This happened. [He must have put a photo on the screen.] [laughter] Now, if you look close, that is your pastor sitting in a 2015 Corvette. How did that happen? Don’t get nervous, I drive a ten-year-old Mazda, okay? What that is, a friend actually tossed the keys to me (the actors arrived in that; Sean Astin drove up in that, we wanted to make a big deal for him). . .the owner of the vehicle tossed me the keys. . . “Now that he’s done with it, I need you [Trent] to drive it three blocks away and park it until we can find somebody that’s actually a good driver to take it back to the lot where it will be sold.”

So, I got the keys and I got in and I got to drive this thing. Now let me tell you something, the way I was born, I was born to go fast! Alright? I got in that thing, and every desire in mah body was to burn out, right there in front of the Morris and all mah church members and mah kids and God and everybody. . .and just lay down some rubber!!

And I’m telling you, I seriously—SERIOUSLY—thought about that. I was wondering how many video cameras were rolling at that point, how long the jail sentence would be [laughter], and what the cost and the payoff would be. . .seriously, those things were going through my mind.

But for the sake of my children [laughter] I restrained myself and I never got above nineteen miles an hour as I drove that car through South Bend, to the parking lot, and handed the keys back to the owner. . .sadly disappointed that all of my passions and desires had not been fulfilled.

I drove carefully in the lane to which I was assigned, I stopped at the stoplight, I used my little blinker. . .and I obeyed all the traffic laws back there. Now, I could have rationalized, “This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.” I could have rationalized, “The people who make traffic laws are stupid and do not understand my desires to go fast, completely underestimating my skills as a driver!” I could have done all that.

So why are the laws there? The laws are there for the common good. What if I had taken the car through a school zone at a-hundred-and-fifty miles an hour, and the officer pulls me over and says, “What were you thinking?”

And I said, “I was born to go fa-a-a-st!” And he would say, “Well, we have some laws around here for the protection of children. You have to limit your speed. You have to drive in the proper lane, you have to limit your freedom for the flourishing of all. . .a few have to limit what they do with their desires.” Do you get my picture? Do you understand what I’m saying?

Listen, we are all sexual sinners. If you struggle with a same-sex attraction, I can identify with you. I struggle with an opposite-sex attraction. My wife is sitting on the front row. Dare I say I’m attracted to other women (“Gasp! Pastor Trent’s attracted to other women! Let’s all pray!”) You hypocrite! So are you!

But do you know what my wife expects me to do? My wife expects me to limit my freedom and to focus intentionally upon her. My children expect that. My church expects that. So, if your excuse for involving yourself in same-sex activity is that you were born that way, I’m sorry, we were all born to sin. And yet, what the gospel does is it gives us the power to resist temptation!

Sexual sin begins with sexual temptation. Sexual temptation is not sin until you act upon it, until you press the accelerator. So what you do, you get in the lane—despite the desire—that God has assigned you to run in.

I believe that certain people are born with a predisposition to anger. We don’t allow them to go beat people up. We say, “Don’t!. . .don’t do that.” Some people are born with a predisposition toward alcohol. You know what we say to them? “It’s probably good for you not to drink. We expect you to drink less, not to drink more.”

Some people are born, possibly, with a same-sex attraction or an opposite-sex attraction and we say to you, “You know what? How are you going to deal with that temptation, knowing what God has said there are lanes He has designed you to run in?”

Sex without God reveals sex has become god.

What we’re saying is that sexual sin is actually a worship issue. We’re giving the best of ourselves to something less than God, and we’re giving ourselves to something He created, rather than giving ourselves to the Creator Himself.

If sex has become your god, you’re willing to sacrifice your relationship with God in order to maintain your relationship with whatever object of sex you’re focused on.

Here’s the third question: How do I honor the significance of marriage? So, what can you personally do to honor marriage, whether you’re single, married, same-sex attracted,  opposite-sex attracted. . .what do you do?

Here’s the first thing, for all of us—a commitment:

• I will protect my marriage from sexual sin. (Rom 1:24)

You’ve got your Bible opened now to Romans chapter 1; look at verse 18: “For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness. . .” . . .the wrath of God. Do you remember how He takes very personally and seriously what you do sexually? Yeah, so much so that He does not ignore sin.

Every sin will be settled in the courtroom of God, either on the cross in Jesus Christ, or by experiencing wrath upon yourself. Wrath is not an option; the question is, is God going to divert His wrath for your sin to Jesus on the cross, or are you going to absorb it yourself? It all depends on what you do with His offer of grace.

If you accept His offer of grace, if you put your life and your sexual life under the Lordship of Jesus Christ, He will divert His wrath to Jesus Christ. If you refuse, if you resist, if you rationalize, if you justify, if you blame others for your sexual sin, you will become the object of God’s wrath—sadly! It doesn’t have to be that way!

Verse 18 says, ““For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness. . .” All unrighteousness. . .” Homosexual unrighteousness, all heterosexual unrighteousness. . .It’s all in the same bucket. It’s all unrighteousness.

“. . .and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth.” The word “suppress” means to “choke out” or “hide under,” or “bury” the truth. What you’re hearing today is truth, and if you’re not careful it’s going to be hard for you to think of living this way. . .

. . .so instead of receiving it, you want to suppress it and find an excuse for why the way you are and why that can’t be true. That’s what sinful men do, who won’t repent. But men and women who put their lives under the Lord Jesus Christ, they protect their marriage from sexual sin. Look down at verse 24. . .

“Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves. . .” God, that created this body to be honored in the context of marriage—the honor of marriage—He says, “Now, they’re dishonoring their bodies because they’re using their using their bodies outside of My [God’s] intended purposes. They’re driving outside of the lanes they were designed to drive in, and it’s bringing dishonor to the body.”

Then, notice, it says, because of their repeated unrepentance—because of their repeated insistence to go their own way and drive in forbidden lanes—God gave them up. Romans 1:26: “God gave them up to dishonorable passions.”

Do you understand that guilt is a gift? If I lay my hand on a hot stove, there will be a sensation of pain that will run up my arm, through my nerve endings, and into my brain—which will signal neutrons and protons or something to go back down my arm and motivate my arm to get off the hot stove!

Is pain a good thing? Pain is a gift! Otherwise, I would fry my arm off. God wants me to keep my arm so he gave me pain; it’s a wonderful thing He put in the body.

God has put within the human soul guilt, to warn you when you are doing things that are going to destroy you personally, sexually and in your family—so that it would motivate you to change directions. Listen! Guilt is a gift! You shouldn’t be concerned if you’re experiencing tremendous guilt right now. You should be concerned if you’re not! Because there comes a point where God will actually give you up and say, “If you want it, have at it. We’ll see how that works for you,” and God backs away.

So, if you’re not experiencing guilt, because you’ve done it so often and you’ve seared your conscience so much, that ought to scare you to death. That is the ultimate judgment, that God leaves you to pursue your own passion apart from Him.

We need to protect our marriages from sexual sin.

Here’s the second thing:

• I will exchange sexual lies for truth. (Rom 1:25)

Look here in verse 25, “. . .because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever!” What’s the root of all sexual sin? You’re believing a lie! You are allowing a definition of sex that God didn’t write.

Who lied to you? I’ve heard some of your stories. I’ve heard stories of men in this room that found themselves addicted to pornography, abusing women—even believing that they were gay, and it all traced back to an encounter when they were four years old, where a trusted relative seduced them, touched them, showed them images—and from that point there’s been a struggle to believe the truth about “the way God has made me, because of the lie that was inserted into my soul from another person.” Who lied to you?

Maybe it was a mom and a dad—a dad who was passive, or abusive, or a mom who was controlling and overbearing. . .in the context of the marriage that you watched as a child, they stamped on your brain a lie about what marriage was.

Or maybe it was something you saw in a movie or something you read in a romance novel. . .lies that were put into your brain by the enemy.. .and maybe even voices that you’ve heard saying, “You’re gay.” And you’ve believed the lie and suppressed the truth. What do you do with that? You suppress the lie and you believe the truth! And you begin to replace the lies—exchange the lies—with sexual truth, that God wants to give you a wonderful wedding gift in the context of a covenant relationship for the purpose of companionship resulting in children that would leave a legacy of godliness. That’s the truth and we have to replace the lies.

How do we do that? Well, you need to separate yourself from sexual temptation; cut off the source of the lie. If it’s coming through media, if it’s coming through the internet, if it’s coming through your smartphone, you cut off your exposure to the lie. . .

. . .and then you replace it with the truth of God’s Word. You saturate your soul with what God has said about you and about Him and about marriage and about sex by reading and memorizing and washing your soul with the water of His Word.

And then you create a community of people who are there to encourage you and love you and hold you accountable and to pray for you—that know you and know your struggles. That’s why our Uncommon Community small groups are so essential to sexual and marital faithfulness. You’ve got to exchange the lies for the truth.

And then this:

• I will allow God to define my identity. (Rom 1:26-28)

Refuse to accept what the culture says about you. Don’t let anyone or anything assign your identity except the gospel. I would encourage you not to believe that you are a “gay Christian.” Why is that? “Well, I’m not acting on it but. . .” Listen—I don’t walk around in church saying, “Hi, I’m a male Christian.” Or “I’m a female Christian.” We don’t let people go up and say, “I’m an angry Christian,” or “I’m a kleptomaniac Christian—because I have temptation to steal things that don’t belong to me.”

No. We don’t identify with our sin, we identify with the gospel that sets us free and reassigns our identity in Jesus Christ. Look at verses 26-28, “For this reason God gave them up to dishonorable passions. For their women exchanged natural relationships for those that are contrary to nature; and the men likewise gave up natural relations with women and were consumed with passion for one another, men committing shameless acts with men and receiving in themselves the due penalty for their error. And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a debased mind to do what ought not to be done.”

They gave up on God and God gave them up to their sin. So, instead of pursuing their identity in God, they pursued their identity in their sexuality. Who does that?

Here’s the last thing:

• I will worship the Creator rather than His (Rom 1:25)

Look at verse 25 again “. . .because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever!” This is the ultimate problem, that we want to worship created things like the human body—or created things like passions or the chemicals that fire in your brain: the oxytocin and the dopamine. . .they’re created things, and we end up worshipping those things rather than going to God our Creator, Who created all those things and created us to have a relationship with Him.

Listen, as we close today, if you’re experiencing some guilt, that’s good. . .that’s a gift. . .but you’ve got to go somewhere with that. . .and we need to go to the Lord right now with whatever He said to you.

I don’t know where you are, I don’t know what you struggle with. We all struggle in some way, we’re all tempted. Why don’t we just bow our heads for a minute.

Will you just acknowledge to the Lord what He already knows: “Lord, I am a sexual sinner. I’ve stepped out of bounds. The temptations, the secret things. . .” Maybe you’ve even been so hardened in marriage that you’re trying to find another outlet for desires and passions that God intended for you to experience only in the context of marriage. Why don’t you just confess that to Him?

Why don’t you just say, “Lord, I’m bringing you my passions, I’m bringing you my marriage, I’m bringing you my singleness. Lord, I recognize that You designed and defined marriage. It’s a picture of your relationship with the church. Lord, I need help. I’m so used to covering, I’m so used to rationalizing. Lord, as your creation, I want Your pleasure on my life. . .so, God, would You set me free from the chains that have bound me to sin?” Just tell Him that. “And, God, would You give me a picture of what it would be like to leave a godly legacy to children who are pure?”

Father, I want to pray for my friends here today. God, would You empower us by Your Spirit to do what’s right in every situation? We’re all tempted, we live in a culture where there’s more temptation, there’s more draw, there’s more darkness than there’s ever been. I pray this would be a place where people would take seriously what You’ve said about marriage, what You’ve said about our gender, what you’ve said about our sexuality. I pray that this would be a light for people who are struggling and are burned, and the wasteland of people who have tried to find satisfaction in anything other than You. God, would this be a place where Your gospel meets the deepest needs of our hearts? We pray in Jesus’ Name. Amen, and amen.

As you are on your way out, don’t be afraid to look at somebody and say, “Would you pray for me?” We’re always here at the front; we’d love to minister to you in any way we can. If you need help, we’re here to help you, but ultimately we’re just going to point you to Jesus Christ.

We’ll see you back here next week. You are loved!