Two Introductory Principles

The Pervasiveness of Sexual Impurity in Greco-Roman Society and the Early Church

0:04 Many of us are familiar with those words found in Acts chapter 1, in verse 8, where the Lord Jesus says to his disciples, You shall receive power, the Holy Spirit coming upon you, and you shall be witnesses unto me both in Jerusalem and Judea and Samaria and unto the uttermost part of the earth. Ten days later, that promise was fulfilled. On the day of Pentecost, in the language of Scripture, when that day had fully come, the Lord Jesus Christ sent from heaven the Holy Spirit in power upon the gathered disciples, attesting his own role as the messianic king, for Pentecost was nothing less than that to Jesus, and equipping the disciples to become his witnesses. And that's it. And that's it. And as the gospel went out from Jerusalem and then in the surrounding area of Judea and then up to Samaria, eventually in that first century it did reach what was then understood as the uttermost part of the earth.

1:20 And as that gospel penetrated what is commonly called Greco-Roman society in the first century, that is, a society that had been shaped previously, by Greek thought and culture and presently by Roman thought and culture in the light of the Roman conquest of the then-known world, it came into a society steeped in the horrible moral degeneration which is always the handmaiden of idolatry. Some of you, when reading the Old Testament, may wonder, why in the world did God have to put such...

2:03 shocking prohibitions in the book of Leviticus and in other segments of Old Testament law, warning his people against sins that are so base and so ugly, chapters that we have blushed almost to read in public. Well, it's for the simple reason that those Canaanitess nations in the land into which Israel was to go with the blessing of God, having been steeped for centuries, centuries in idolatry, had sunk into the most base and ugly forms of sin and rebellion against God. When we turn to the New Testament, we find in Romans 1, verses 18 to 32, a condensed, R-rated litany of the kinds of sins that were prevalent in the social fabric of most of the Greco-Roman world. We got a little glimpse of it when we were studying 1 Peter, when Peter reminds his readers in chapter 4, verses 3 and 4, of the kind of lifestyle that marked many of them prior to their conversion to Christ. Prominent among those sins that were the handmaiden of the idolatry in Canaan,

3:27 against which God warned his people. Prominent among the sins listed in Romans, Romans 1, 18 to 32, prominent among the sins in that distilled description of the degeneracy of pagan society in 1 Peter 4, are the sins of sexual impurity. And it is for this reason that the New Testament records specific and repeated instructions on the subject of how the people of God are to maintain sexual purity in the midst of societies that have become a veritable cesspool of sexual impurity and uncleanness. In fact, the social conscience of most of these places where the churches had been established was so battered and distorted and desensitized that when a circular letter was sent out from the apostles at Jerusalem, they had to explicitly forbid the practice of fornication among the churches. Now, if you doubt that, I've quoted or given a summary or praises of the other passages, but turn to Acts 15 with me, if you will, for a moment.

4:51 You remember the disciples, not the disciples, the apostles, have gathered together to hear the concern that is voiced by Paul and Barnabas, who while they were ministering in Antioch became aware that some were teaching that you needed to be circumcised and become a kosher Jew to be a full pledged Christian. And we read in verse 22 of Acts 15 that it seemed good to the apostles and elders with the whole church to choose men out of their company, send them to Antioch with Paul and Barnabas, namely Judas called Barsabbas and Silas, chief men among the brethren. And these men are going to take back to those churches and to other churches the mind of the apostles there at Jerusalem, and this circular letter is going to be delivered to the churches. Read on with me. And they wrote thus by them, The apostles and elders, brethren, unto the brethren who are of the Gentiles in Antioch, in Syria and Cilicia, greeting, that's what we might call north of Palestine, moving upward and then over into that section we come to know as Asia Minor, Turkey now, the gospel had been spreading out to the uttermost parts of the earth.

6:18 And now in these churches comprised primarily of Gentiles, this statement is authorized to be normative among the churches. It seemed good unto us, having come to one accord to choose out men and send them unto you with our beloved Barnabas and Paul, men that have hazarded their lives for the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. We have sent therefore Judas and Silas, who themselves by word of mouth, for it seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us to lay upon you no greater burden than these necessary things. One, that you abstain from things sacrificed to idols and from blood, and from things strangled, and from fornication. In the list of things that pertain to what we would call matters indifferent, they have to articulate a prohibition against fornication, from which if you keep yourselves it shall be well with you, fare ye well. Now as I was mentioning to two of my fellow elders prior to the service, as a young Christian, I used to read this and be greatly troubled and say to myself, Lord, it doesn't make sense. Everybody knows that Christians aren't supposed to fornicate.

7:42 I could not relate to this passage. I believed it. I believed it was the word of God. I believed the apostles were guided by the Holy Spirit as they thrashed out this whole issue of whether or not Gentiles needed to be circumcised and become kosher Jews in order to be saved.

8:02 But I simply could not relate to the fact that they felt constrained to add, you must abstain from fornication. It no longer seems strange to me when I read it. No longer seems strange. Because in a tragic way, the climate of our so-called Western civilization has sunk to depths only parallel by some of those societies against which God was warning His ancient covenant people in many of those prohibitions with respect to some of the bases formed of sexual impurity and uncleanness, the things that Paul listed in Romans chapter 1, and the things which apostles had to address explicitly in 1 Corinthians chapter 5, 1 Corinthians chapter 6, 1 Thessalonians chapter 4, Hebrews 13, Romans 13, 1 Peter 2, passage after passage in which explicit directives are given that the people of God are to seek by the grace of God and by the power and dynamics of gospel grace to maintain sexual purity.

The Divine Antidote to Sexual Impurity: A Foundational Study

9:27 But since we have as part of this society that is steeped in neo-paganism and religious apostasy come to days in which the atmosphere around us drifts with impurity and uncleanness, and since God says we are not to be conformed to this age, we are not to let the world squeeze us into its mold, but we are to be transformed by the renewing of our minds that we may prove what is the good, acceptable and perfect will of God. And believe it or not, since it has been fourteen and a half years since I addressed the subject of sexual purity in a two or three message series, I've been constrained for several Lord's Day evenings to take up this subject with you, the divine antidote to sexual impurity. And my purpose, I trust, has been made clear. And I trust none of you has any reservation that it is right and proper to do this. For when we open our Bibles and read the letters which would have been read in the mixed assembly of God's people with children at present 1 Corinthians 5, 6, 1 Thessalonians 4,

10:52 and when we realize that God mandated under the old covenant that the statute laws be read every so often to the entire congregation of God's people, I trust none of us has a kind of carnal fastidiousness that makes us feel uncomfortable when these matters are addressed in a biblical, chaste and God-honoring manner. Now, in the course of our study we will be looking at, 1 Corinthians 6 and 1 Thessalonians 4 as two of the major passages. But before coming to those passages and the rich instruction they contain in what I'm calling the divine antidote to sexual impurity, I want us to back up and look at the larger context into which those specific words of instruction come to us. Those of you who are with us, when I began preaching through 1 Peter chapter 3 will remember, I trust, that before expounding the specific roles of male and female, husbands and wives, we backed off and we looked at the whole matter of marital roles in the light of the biblical doctrines of creation, fall, and redemption. And in a very real sense

12:20 that's what I want to do with this subject of the divine antidote to sexual impurity. For when the Apostle writes, for example, in 1 Corinthians chapter 6, and he addresses the subject of fornication head on and marshals for the people of God a whole spectrum of motives and perspectives to help them stay pure in an impure society, behind and beneath and around all that Paul says in the way of specific directives is this larger biblical context of male and female relationships our sexuality in the light of creation fall and redemption. And so in pursuit of that goal tonight I want to sit down with you on two basic foundational propositions. Propositions that I am personally convinced are essential to right thinking, regarding sexual purity and remember it is right thinking that gives birth to right actions. Proposition number one.

Proposition 1: Sexuality Originates with God, Not the Devil

13:33 Our sexuality, including our desire and capacity for sexual pleasure originates with God and not with the devil. Our sexuality, including our desire and capacity for sexual pleasure originates with God and not with the devil. This is the absolute baseline starting point without which no thinking will end up where it ought to end. Some of you have had the experience of having your mind somewhere else when you went to button up your shirt or button up a dress with 10 or 15 buttons. And so you started and you got all the way to the end and you made a very disrupting discovery. You got the first button in the wrong button hole. And though all the other buttons went into holes when you got to the end you found you were one button short or one button too many.

14:40 You started at the wrong place and everything you built on that wrong start was out of line. It was skewed. Well in the same way when we come to think about the world the whole question of how can I as a Christian stand in the midst of this moral cesspool and be a pure man, a pure woman, a pure boy, a pure girl in this area of my sexuality, my sexual desires and capacities and appetites. Well I submit to you you'll not be able to do it unless you start here.

15:17 Your sexuality and mine including our desire and capacity for sexual pleasure originates with God and not with the devil. This of course takes us right back to Genesis chapters 1 and 2. So I ask you to turn there with me if you will please. Genesis chapter 1 gives us the broad overview of God's creative activity in six days.

15:46 On that sixth day we read verse 27 God created man in his own image. In the image of God created he him. Male and female created he them. Sexual distinctions are an outworking of the mind and will and wisdom of Almighty God.

16:14 He is making man in his own image and he makes that image bearer male and female. And included within the male nests and female nests were these realities of the capacity for and the desire for sexual pleasure. This is how God made them. Verse 28 And God blessed them and said unto them be fruitful and multiply and replenish the earth and as the fruition of their commitment to each other and their engagement in sexual intimacy they would bear children they would be fruitful and multiply and replenish the earth and fulfill their God given mandate and when God looks down upon all that he has made look what it says in verse 31 and God saw everything that he had made and behold it was very good. As we shall see as we look at the zoom lens of the creation of man and woman we back off for a minute now with just Genesis 1 in front of us and we see God as it were sitting back looking upon the work of his hands including the creation of man male and female with the capacity to be fruitful and to multiply

17:43 and with the desire for that relationship that will result in fruitfulness and multiplication not as some kind of a horrible burden imposed upon them against their nature and against their desire but with all of the latent sexual capacity and desire and the ability for sexual pleasure and God looks upon it and said it is all very good and he didn't say accept this sex business God didn't say that and you must not say that and you must not think that come now into Genesis 2 not a contradictory account but the broad stroke account of Genesis 1 is supplemented with God's account of that crowning work of his creative wisdom and power the creation of man and after he creates the man and we have more details of how God did that here in chapter 2 we read in verse 15 and the Lord God took the man and put him into the garden of Eden to dress it and to keep it God took the man he had made and he put him in the circumstance in which he was to accomplish the task assigned to him work was not something that came in after the fall

19:11 work was a noble enterprise flowing out of God's creative design and his express will for man his image bearer God was a worker he makes man in his image to be a worker he puts him into the garden to dress and to keep it but now we read in verse 18 and the Lord said it is not good that the man should be alone I will make a help meet that is a help answering to him out of the ground the Lord formed every beast of the field and every bird of the heaven and brought them unto the man to see what he would call them and whatsoever the man called every living creature that was the name thereof and the man gave names to all the cattle and to the birds of the heaven and to every beast of the field but for man for Adam there was not found a help meet suitable answering to him no doubt is the various animals were paraded before Adam and with a mind untainted and uncrippled by sin Adam is able to make an analysis of the size and shape and function of that animal giving the name was not just giving some kind of a convenient verbal tag it was identifying the significance of that animal its significance in contrast

20:39 to other animals and Adam names them but in all of the naming in all of the analysis of their unique characteristics and functions and their place in God's world there was nothing in all that Adam surveyed and named that answered peculiarly to his need as creature made in image of God he had eyes to see the animals the animals could look back maybe with the dumb blank stare of the cow maybe the intimidating look of a lion but in the eyes of neither cow nor lion nor any other creature was there that which spoke of a soul and a mind with which Adam could communicate no helper answering to his need and whatever the animal was in its muscularity or in its furriness or softness there was not among all the animals that which Adam would instinctively hold to his bosom as one of his own kind he's conscious that the animals have sight and they have hearing and they have mobility many characteristics that he as image bearer of God has but in all of that there is no creature that answers to his need one wonders what kind of language Adam spoke I don't know I don't know what kind of language God used when he spoke to Adam Adam where are you?

22:07 but we can imagine that Adam may have sought to communicate and he talks to a dumb beast and the beast may look at him with a blank stare but there's no language coming back there's no communication of mind and of soul and Adam is brought to feel very keenly in the midst of all of the profuseness of God's creative genius there's nothing answering to my need so what does God say? God takes the initiative and says it is not good that the man should be alone alone amidst all the beauty that I've made alone amidst all the animals I've made I will make a helper meet or answering to him so how does God do it? verse 21 and the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man the first incident of anesthesiology in human history God put him to sleep and the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man and he slept and he took one of his ribs and closed the flesh thereof and the rib which the Lord God had taken from the man made he a woman and brought her unto the man and the man said now think what this must have meant for Adam I don't know how many hours he has spent with the animals parading by

23:36 and he comes to that conviction there's none of these that answer to my deepest needs not knowing that God has pronounced it is not good for him to be alone he knows as he awakens from a deep sleep and there in front of him the moment his eyes are cast upon her he says aha there's the one answering to my need and so he exclaims this is now bone of my bones flesh of my flesh and he doesn't hesitate giving her a name she should be called Isha for she was taken out of man out of Ish she is a counterpart like me but separate from me in many ways she is a mirror image of me but she has her own image that is mirrored back to me she is bone of my bone flesh of my flesh she should be called woman Isha because she was taken out of man therefore now whether Adam said this or this is God's pronouncement later on it's irrelevant to our understanding here if you believe what James says first of all we believe in every magic it's using the word spirit it's also part of our understanding itself

25:02 and so we all legendary when Ezra was a young man when they turned Sendai and went to Judah were there look at him on his cooked Harlan by the leaves, bowed in prayer. God has told us He left them with this awareness of their answering one to another in nakedness, in shameless nakedness. And the devil doesn't enter the scene until chapter 3 and verse 1. Now the serpent was more subtle. The devil has nothing to do with anything up to the end of chapter 2. So my proposition, our sexuality including our desire and capacity for sexual pleasure originates with God and not with the devil. So when we read in chapter 1 and verse 31 that God saw everything He had made

26:14 and behold, it was very good. Read back into that, this section of chapter 2. God looks down on the man and the woman conscious that they have been made for each other with a mandate to be fruitful and to multiply and with every sacred yearning and capacity for the deepest intimacy of marital relations and the devil doesn't have a whisper in the whole business. Not a bit. Now I ask you, do you feel comfortable with God's account of how He did it? Or do you feel a little squeamish? I find it a good test. Ask yourself the question, do I feel comfortable with this? That Almighty God has established this, not the devil. Well you

It is Demonic to Demean God's Creation

27:15 say, Pastor, why is that so critical? Well, for a number of reasons, but in my understanding this is most basic. It is demonic to demean the devil. It is demonic to demean the devil.

27:25 It is demonic to demean and to deprecate what God has created and to consider unclean or suspicious what Almighty God has made noble and glorious. I want you to turn to 1 Timothy chapter 4. So again you realize this is not Pastor Martin taking off on a flourish of rhetorical excess. When I say it is demonic to demean and deprecate what God has created, it is demonic to demean and to deprecate what God has created and to consider it unclean.

27:59 Paul is warning Timothy about certain influences that will crop out and he ought to be aware of them in his ministry. The Spirit says expressly, 1 Timothy 4.1, that in the later times some shall fall away from the faith, giving heed to seducing spirits. Now notice, doctrines of demons. Behind the doctrines that emerge and will seek to infiltrate the church are unseen but very real demonic powers. That is what Paul says to Timothy. Through the hypocrisy of men that speak lies, demons are behind the doctrines. The instruments to which the demons work are hypocrites who speak lies, who have their consciences seared, branded in their own consciences with a hot iron. So you have

28:53 got demonic powers. You have got hypocritical powers. You have got hypocritical powers. You have got the power to stifle thecules of the devil in the face of your own people, to stifle the hearts of the types of omniscience. There are other things. There are other things.

29:04 There are other things. And so we have got the one who has the power to judge and to deliver and to destroy, to do and to afraid of. That is the way of the Holy Spirit. That is a way of God. But Jesus said it in the first verse of the New Testament, God will judge my family, and I will judge the rest because it is the law of the world. It is the law of the world. 1 Timothy 4.1.

29:26 Sanctified through the Word of God in prayer. Isn't that interesting? That the thing that Paul focuses upon is the demons who are working through these hypocritical men branded in their own conscience and their major doctrine that he focuses upon is a form of asceticism. They forbid to marry.

29:49 You want to attain a higher degree of spirituality. Don't dabble in this sex business to dabble is to be dirty. And he said that doctrine comes from demons. And when they say you want to be holy then you will eat this restricted diet.

30:07 He said no, that's to denigrate what God has given in creation. All that He made was good. And so I am bold to say that our sexuality including our desire and capacity for sexual pleasure originates with God and not with the devil. And in any way to attract and attribute it to the devil is to find ourselves aligned with doctrines spawned by demons.

Pastoral Applications of Proposition 1

30:36 Now, this has great implications for all of us here. I want to speak a word to you dear young people.

30:46 Many of you know and we have said it I hope not in a way that in any way genders, pride, or smugness. Many of us who have been around a lot longer are very thankful for what we see God doing in many of your lives. Your apparent hunger for the word. Your seriousness about spiritual realities.

31:04 Many of you have come to that place. My wife and I have used our own little euphemism. We say they sprouted. When the young girls develop and the guys begin to get a little fuzz on their cheek and on their chin we say well they've sprouted.

31:20 And with that sprouting you become conscious of desires and interests and temptations that you've never faced before. You've gone, as we have humorously said from the stage where the opposite sex is yuck or mm you've come to the yummy stage. You go from yuck to mm to mm. And many of you have come into the mm stage.

31:43 And you're conscious of these desires and inclinations and interests and a whole spectrum of things rooted in what you are as a male or as a female. You are merging into your mature masculinity and femininity. Adam and Eve were made already pre-made mature male and female with fully developed sexual capacity appetite and readiness for the sexual union within the sacred sanctuary of marriage.

32:17 Man shall leave father and mother clean to his wife as a whole person and they too and only such two shall be one flesh. But you're not there. But neither are you back in the yucks. You're not there anymore.

32:32 Some of you are still there. But you're not going to stay there forever. Right now it seems utterly impossible that girls will ever be anything other than yuck. But I hope I live long enough to say didn't I tell you?

32:44 You're going to move from the yuck to the mm and from the mm to the yum stage. Sooner or later unless something is short-circuited in the development into your mature manhood and womanhood will be the emerging awareness of your sexuality with its desires and capacity for sexual pleasure. Don't think you're somehow degenerating into a demon when you're conscious of that. You're simply becoming the man or the woman God intended you to be.

33:16 That's what I want to say to you kids. Nobody talked to me that way when I was where many of you are. And struggling through to think of myself biblically was no easy thing. Yes, there will be people with peculiar temptations.

33:33 We're not coming to that. We want to start with this fundamental principle that that capacity, the desire itself is not of the devil but is an indication of God's creative wisdom and God's creative power and love. I want to speak to some of you with a sordid sexual past. In pastoral counseling I found more than once how difficult it is when a man or a woman who has had a sordid, sinful, sexual past how difficult to believe that that which was so much connected with the cesspool can be a spring and a pool of clear God-reflecting beauty. It's hard for you to come to that. But you must. You must not allow the devil's triumphs in your past to cripple you in the present and to think about your identity as a sexual being, as something inherently and hopelessly stained and unclean and you can't wait till you die and go to heaven and become a floating spirit.

34:45 Well, you're not going to be a floating spirit forever. You're going to have a resurrected body. And I don't understand all the implications but there's no indication that we become some kind of neutered, amorphous, non-sexual being though there is no marriage or giving in marriage. It will be males and females for all eternity.

35:04 For as male and female in heaven with glorified bodies will reflect the image of our great and glorious God. You see how basic this is. And then I want to immunize you against the horrible brainwashing job. You hear about, we've got to get rid of this Puritanic morality.

35:25 Nobody's read the Puritans who says that. Now Leslie, you're not going to be able to follow me on this. I'm going to quote a few lines from the poet laureate of the Puritans, John Milton. Want to hear how prudish Puritans were?

35:42 Listen to Milton. In Paradise Lost he's describing God bringing Eve to Adam and the two of them walking off into the sunset hand in hand. Handed they went and eased the putting off these troublesome disguises which we wear. See what they were saying?

36:01 They were both naked and not ashamed. They didn't have to put off what he calls troublesome disguises which we wear. Straight side by side were laid nor turned I wean Adam from his fair spouse nor Eve the rites mysterious of connubial love refused. There was delightful willing commitment to the covenant of marriage and to the expression of that covenant in sexual intimacy.

36:29 Whatever hypocrites austerely talk of purity and place and innocence defaming as impure what God declares pure and commands to some leaves free to all our maker bids increase. Who bids abstain but our destroyer capital D he's referring to the devil. Whoever would have caused marriage to be dirty it's our destroyer foe to God and man. Hail wedded love mysterious law true source of human offspring soul propriety and paradise of all things common else.

37:08 By thee adulterous lust was driven from men among the bestial herds to range. By thee founded in reason loyal just and pure relations dear and all the charities of father son and brother first were known. Far be it that I should write thee sin or blame or think thee undefitting holiest place perpetual love perpetual fountain of domestic sweets whose bed is undefiled and chaste pronounced present or past as saints and patriarchs used here love within marriage with sexual intimacy his golden shafts and ploys here lights his constant lamp and waves his purple wings reigns here in revels not in the bought smile of harlots loveless joyless unendeared casual fruition nor in court amours mixed dance and wanton mask or midnight ball or serenade which the starved lover sings to his proud fair best quitted with disdain love them and leave them no new thing under the sun these Adam and Eve lulled by nightingales embracing slept and on their naked limbs the flowery roof showered roses which the morn repaired. Now isn't that horrible restrictive puritanic views of our sexuality

Proposition 2: God Determines Sexuality's Legitimate Functions

38:36 nonsense it's a beautiful maybe you can't appreciate that I get the goosebumps reading it there's nothing in there that is sinfully erotic it simply paints in beautiful verse what the word of God says God beheld all that he made and it was good that's the first principle second principle and I hope to establish it now I hope to establish it more quickly or I should say proposition second proposition is this the God who designed and created us with our sexuality is the only one who has the right to determine and impose its legitimate functions the God who designed and created us with our sexuality is the only one who has the right to determine and impose its legitimate functions now most of you probably out in the glove compartment of your cars have what is called an owner's manual it's really not the owner's manual it's the manufacturer's manual isn't it they made the car they put the various components together they know how best every one of those components can operate be serviced be maintained

40:05 so that you get optimum use of that thing which the manufacturer made with a specific end in view that it would be a functional safe means of transportation who knows better how to write the manual than the manufacturer that's why the owner's manual comes from the manufacturer comes with the car you say okay pastor obvious so do you think I'm stupid sure I am I understand that well suppose now just suppose we have to use our imagination just suppose you should go out in the parking lot tonight and there you see a vehicle over on its side and suddenly this vehicle has a mind and it can talk and the wheels are spinning away let's get it fully on its back so we can really carry out the illustration and the wheels are spinning and the horn is blowing and you say car what in the world are you doing he said I just found out I can make noise I just love making noise listen to me honk honk honk and you said crazy old car you're not well listen I can do something else watch me spin my wheels it goes up to 100 miles an hour kids you say no car would be stupid enough to do that if it could think and speak you see where I'm going with the illustration the thing was never turned off the production line to function that way does it have the capacity to be on its back making noise yes I've seen cars that have run into a telephone pole and the horn goes off

41:34 and got jammed and all it was was a bent up noise maker but it wasn't made for that and how do we know it well among other ways we know it because the manufacturer who made it with a specific end in view has given us an owner's manual tells us how to have the thing function to the optimum end for which it was created now it's a silly illustration but I find that people are most helped by the silly illustrations when all the more profound things get washed away with time do you see the application who's the manufacturer of you and me in the beginning God created and God said let us make man in our image and after our likeness he's the manufacturer and the product he made has sexual capacities and sexual functions and sexual desires but it was never made to have a mind of its own to toot its horn and spin its wheels the God who made us is the God who has the exclusive right to determine and to impose upon us the legitimate functions of that which he has made notice how he did that with the appetite for food

43:02 and then we'll move on there in Genesis we're back in creation again in Genesis chapter 2 God has made the man not only with sexual appetite and capacity for enjoyment and sexual function but he's made him with a stomach with a digestive system with salivary glands with those nerves that go to that part in the brain that say you're hungry and you satisfy hunger with food and God has declared that he's given him all that is there in the garden but he has put a restriction look at it in Genesis 2 and verse 16 and the Lord God commanded the man saying of every tree of the garden you may freely eat but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat of it for in the day that you eat thereof you shall surely die now here God makes a creature with an appetite he makes him with eyes that can see food and appreciate what the food will taste like and what it will do to assuage hunger but the creature made with hunger was not left free to gratify his hunger any old way he chose he had to gratify his appetite for food according to the directions of the God

44:28 who made him with an appetite you see that from the text it wasn't enough for Adam to say well God why in the world you make me with an appetite? God said that's out of bounds he has the right to do it and without going into the whole matter of the significance of this the basic issue is clear from the text God said of all the trees you may freely eat do you have an urge to pick that piece of fruit? because somehow you think it will taste this way experiment with it Adam that's your privilege of all the trees you may freely eat but of that one under no circumstances are you to eat of it and he said and you remember in the temptation when the devil in the form of a serpent speaks to Eve one of the snares was she saw she saw there was something verse 6 of chapter 3 when the woman saw that the tree was good for food and it was a delight to the eyes you see those things which can cause us to salivate and cause us to think we desire a certain food they all kicked in and they were directed to the tree but over that tree stood the exodus stood the ex of God don't touch it don't eat of it lest you die well in the same way without the same explicitness in this passage when God makes the man and the woman with the capacity

45:53 and the desire for sexual enjoyment and fulfillment he mandates to them verse 27 God of chapter 1 God created man in his own image and the image of God created him created he him male and female created he them and God blessed them and God said to them be fruitful and multiply when you engage in sexual intimacy and there is conception and birth you are pleasing me you have my mandate to be fruitful and to multiply and to replenish the earth the God who has designed and created us with our sexuality is the only one who has the right to determine and impose its legitimate functions so that when our Lord centuries later in Matthew 19 is questioned about the issue of the permanence of marriage this whole thorny question of divorce what does he do Matthew 19 3 there came unto him Pharisees trying him saying is it lawful for a man to put away his wife for every cause and he answered and said have you not read that he who made them from the beginning made them male and female

47:19 and said for this cause shall a man leave his father and mother shall cleave to his wife very clearly that sexual fulfillment is to be heterosexual by the design of God man, woman man shall leave father and mother cleave to his wife and only within that cleaving that total covenantal commitment of one man to one woman is there to be sexual intimacy and the two shall become one flesh what two who decide they like each other and want to spend a night together or agree to live together for a period no the two who have married this leaving and cleaving and this irreparable covenant of commitment this unrevocable that's the word I want irrevocable unrevocable the Lord is saying right from the beginning that was the divine intention who is God to tell us what to do he's our creator the whole idea was his and he had noble ends to secure glory to himself and he says within this framework my glory will be seen and revealed in those creatures that I have made with sexual capacities and functions and desires

God's Right to Impose Sexual Boundaries

48:47 they are to be filled fulfilled according to the mandate of my own word and nothing else so when God is about to articulate from Sinai that summary of all moral duty the seventh commandment you shall not commit adultery adultery on into Matthew 5 when Jesus takes to task those religious externalists who thought that if they were never caught in bed with a woman other than their wife they had kept the seventh commandment he says you have heard that it was said you shall not commit adultery but I say unto you who so looks to lust who so looks with a view to desiring and in his mind conceives of having sexual things that are of no fulfillment with anyone other than his wife he has committed adultery already in his heart now dear men the Lord is not saying who so turns his head inadvertently and sees a woman who is attractive and who may not be dressed modestly and is tempted to look where he shouldn't look and to allow the look to give birth to thoughts who at that moment turns away he's not violating the words of our Lord he said who so looks with an intent to lust and I've seen poor overly sensitive men feeling I'm breaking the seventh commandment

50:14 because I'm turning my head away all day no you're turning your head away because you're determined not to break it bless God for that and if there's ever a marginal thing then say Lord I'm not sure if that second look involved lusting but if it did cleanse me in the blood of your son and help me next time not to look the second time the Lord has a right to tell us that and it works the other way around it used to be years ago in the ministry I thought it unthinkable to talk about women lusting after men but not in this day one of the wretched birthing realities of the feminist movement is to make women say you've got as much right to lust after men as men have to lust after you and I could demonstrate that by just describing some of the stuff that is seen in popular magazines I'm not talking about pornography you women you look with an intent to lust oh he's got a firm body he's got this he's got that you're breaking the seventh commandment and God has a right to tell you that and God has a right to say in Hebrews 13 for marriage is honorable in all and the bed undefiled but whoremongers and adulterers God will judge why? because whoremongers and adulterers say I've got sexual capacity and sexual desire and those are my desires and my capacities and nobody including God is going to tell me what to do with them my friend that's the mark of an unregenerate man

51:43 whose carnal mind is enmity against God is not subject to the law of God neither indeed can it be and that's why God says whoremongers and adulterers God will judge be not deceived know you not that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God and at the head of the list Paul lists these forms of sexual deviation similarly in Revelation 21 8 and there again in Romans 1 18 and following so we come then to this second principle that the God who designed and created us with our sexuality is the only one who has a right to determine and impose its legitimate functions now I believe with all of my heart there are many of you who welcome God's impositions of His will over your sexual capacity functions and capacity to enjoy the sexual relationship I believe with all my heart there are many of you who say of every precept and principle in scripture that touches that area of your life oh how love I thy commandments oh that my ways were directed to keep thy statutes and I trust that as this study unfolds you will welcome into your heart those directives that in a sinful world with your own remaining capacity and corruption and with a thousand provocations

The Prevailing Climate and God's Grace for Sexual Purity

53:08 to jump the boundaries of God's own directives by the grace of God we shall be a people marked by unblemished sexual purity and uprightness it is possible in this cesspool of our present society by the grace of God to be like a Joseph there in Potiphar's court he resists every overture to violate the law of his God and he comes through his gold tried in the crucible of testing maligned and slandered but eventually wonderfully vindicated now as I try to ask and answer the question why is that first principle critical why is this second principle so critical well again for a number of reasons but let me state this because of the prevailing climate of our western culture that now assumes that right or wrong in fulfilling sexual desires can be determined by consensus everyone refers to the sixties as the period of the sexual revolution revolution against what most people assume it's a revolution against puritanic prudishness puritanic infantile mentality about sex we've now through the sexual revolution come of age

54:34 and what did God give our nation as his thank you for that revolution plague of AIDS illegitimacy at levels it has not been in the history of our nation but that pressure is upon us add to that the aggressive frighteningly militant so called gay rights movements who are determined that every one of you sitting here and this man standing here will not merely say that I will give to an outspoken committed homosexual male or female not only the right to conduct himself with the freedoms secured by our constitution but I must give to him the approbation that his lifestyle is as pleasing to God as mine that is their agenda don't be deceived nothing less than that will satisfy them it is not mere toleration it is approbation at every level that's why one of our dear members here had the heart breaking experience of getting a letter from a young man who shamelessly says now that I've declared what I am as a homosexual I love Jesus more than I've ever loved him he is more precious than he's ever been

56:01 and if you want to be my friend I welcome your friendship on one condition you don't use your friendship to try to do anything to dissuade me that what I now believe and experience is well pleasing to God I've seen the letter with my own eyeballs he has simply absorbed the agenda of the so-called gay rights movement that pressure's on us more and more when you say in the sweetest terms possible as I can say tonight if there is sitting among us someone committed to a lesbian lifestyle in the fulfillment of sexual appetite or a man committed to homosexual lifestyle in the name of Christ and for the sake of Christ I believe I'd be prepared to give my life to win you to Christ but in telling you I want to win you to Christ I want to win you to a Christ who'll break the chains that bind you to your perversion and set you free to be Christ man Christ woman with a body that will honor him so that in any of its sexual expressions they will be an expression of submission to the law and will of the God who made you as a sexual being we live in a country that thinks if enough states will approve same sex marriages they will be legitimized who in the world are you you un-American proud bigoted prude

57:30 get with it Isaiah 8 20 to the law and to the testimony if they speak not according to the law and to the testimony if they speak not according to this word it is because there is no light in them the scripture says do not be conformed to this age but be transformed by the renewing of your mind that you may prove what is the good the acceptable and the perfect will of God if you sit here as one whose heart has been ripped open that in this area you have been a rebel against God nothing in the Bible says so there is no such thing as wickedness or sexual sin or unpardonable sin as we shall see when we come to 1 Corinthians chapter 6 Paul describes every major category of sexual deviation and says those who continue in it shall not enter the kingdom of God but he says such were some of you but you have been washed you have been sanctified you have been justified in the name of the Lord Jesus and by the spirit of our God no matter how deeply engrained you may be in the name Deeply ingrained have been your patterns of sexual sin. The blood of Jesus Christ, God's Son, cleanses from all sin. Jesus said all manner of sin and blasphemy shall be forgiven the sons of men except blasphemy against the Holy Spirit.

59:00 Sexual sins are not blasphemy against the Holy Spirit. Nor are regressions into any specific acts of sexual sin. Nor are they to be the thing that cripples the child of God. 1 John 1.9 applies to the child of God who falls in the area of sexual sin.

59:21 If we confess our sins, He is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. From all unrighteousness. So may God help us as by His grace we seek to wrestle together with this subject. The divine antidote to sexual impurity.

59:44 To start with the right foundation. Proposition number one. Our sexuality including our desire and capacity for sexual pleasure originates with God and not with the devil. And principle proposition number two.

60:02 The God who designed and created us with our sexuality is the only one who has the right to determine and impose its legitimate functions. And thank God that God has revealed Himself in grace and mercy in the person and work of Jesus Christ and in the gift of the Holy Spirit so that Paul can say those such were some of you in the name of the Lord Jesus. That is the revelation of the way of having a just pardon. Having a righteousness imputed and by the transforming power of the Holy Spirit.

60:40 We can be accepted before God and in the community of His people. And by the grace of God be those who show in this area of our lives the wonderful power of redeeming grace. What a wonderful thing it will be if the Lord tarries to see you young people who now profess to some degree attachment to Christ. To be able to sit with one of your pastors in premarital counseling and to hear you say, with a glow upon your face in the presence of a servant of God John, Harry, Pete, whatever his name is by the grace of God I've kept myself for you.

61:24 You'll not get damaged goods on our wedding night. Have a young man look a young woman in the eye and say by the grace of God God has kept me from being sucked into the vortex of this cesspool that's become a whirlpool. And I tell you, the whirlpool gets more and more powerful when you hear as I've heard recently of a well-known preacher in another country shamelessly declaring he's gone to live with his homosexual lover. I tell you folks, this is not whistling Dixie or a crying fire fire when there is no fire.

62:02 And if we aren't straight here, it's doubtful we'll be able to make much progress in any other area of our Christian lives. Let us pray and ask God to help us. Let's pray.

Prayer for Purity and Transformation

62:16 Our Father, we're so thankful that we have your word as a lamp to our feet and a light to our pathway. And while we grieve and our hearts mourn as we think of the moral cesspool that our society has become, we do not stand here in your presence like the Pharisees saying, I thank you we're not like other men. But we say from our hearts, but for your grace, we would be in the thick of the mess. Thank you for your transforming and keeping power and how we pray that you will lay up these principles in the hearts of the young men and women, the boys and girls, the adults in this assembly.

62:58 For those, our Father, whose rebellion against you is heightened as they consider this aspect of their lives, we pray that you would use that conviction to bring them broken and penitent to the feet of our Lord Jesus. We would be bold to ask you, our Father, that we may by your grace be kept from every form of sexual uncleanness and impurity by the power of your grace and the strength that is in our Lord Jesus. Seal then your word to our hearts and help us, we plead, in Jesus' name. Amen.