Sunday 04 • 07 • 19

Or do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? 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 such were some of you, 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. All things are lawful for me, but not all things are helpful. All things are lawful for me, but I will not be dominated 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. And 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. Or 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 from sexual immorality. Every other sin a person commits is outside the body. But the sexually immoral person sins against his own body. Or 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 are bought with a price. So glorify God in your body. — 1 Corinthians 6:9-20

The word of the Lord. Thanks be to God.

Would you pray with me? Father, we pray that the words of my mouth and the meditations of all of our hearts would be pleasing and acceptable in your sight. You are our rock and our fortress and our redeemer. We pray these things in the name of Jesus Christ. Amen.

So today we are at the last and the least popular of the seven deadly sins: lust. Yes, you're here on Lust Sunday. I find that there are two responses to this within the modern church. As we talk about sexual lust, the first response is that no one seems to want deliverance from this. Nobody seems to really want to be done with this sin. We like the prayer of Augustine, who said, "Lord, give me chastity, sexual purity, but not yet." There's a little bit of uncertainty—I'm not sure I really want to give up this one. The other response is an overwhelming sense of defeat. I find this in a lot of people. Defeated people say that the problem is we live in a sexualized culture. Sex is everywhere. How can I ever escape this? And there's this sense of despair about this one.

So yes, you're here on that Sunday, on Lust Sunday. I have a couple of requests of you, though. Would you stay? You don't need to go to the bathroom four times during the sermon. No one needs you in the lobby. Please don't make a grocery list on your phone. Please stay tuned in. And if you have kids, this is a sermon that is maybe PG. I'm not going to be really explicit with anything. In fact, I want kids to stay in for this sermon. This is something we need to talk about.

So here's my outline for us this morning. If you take notes: the point of sex, the problem of lust, principles for purity, and then the practice of freedom.

The Point of Sex

Let me start by clearing up one misconception from the beginning. This misconception is that the Bible never says sexual desire is bad. The Bible never says that. In fact, the words there for lust—neither of those words are Greek words that could be used in the New Testament for sexual desire. Lust is not the word for sexual desire. Sexual desire is good. It's something God created. Sexual desire is God's idea. He came up with this. This is His creation. Sexual desire is a gift. God made those desires.

Let me go really big picture with you this morning. I want you to think about this: the entire point of human existence, the entire point that this life is all about, is whole-souled, unblinking intimacy forever with God. That's the whole purpose of human life. Let me say that again: whole-souled, unblinking intimacy forever with God.

And this is why the Bible starts with a marriage and ends with a marriage. The Bible begins in Genesis 2 with a man and a woman naked and unashamed before God. Naked and unashamed. And the Bible ends with the marriage supper of the Lamb, where it says the bride of Christ is clothed in white linen, prepared for her groom, prepared for Jesus.

And why am I highlighting this? Because the entire purpose of human existence is not marriage. Marriage is not ultimate. God is. A relationship with God is the whole purpose of human existence. And so all of this points us to the big idea: whole-souled, unblinking intimacy forever with God.

Human sexuality in this life is maybe the closest thing that approximates that. It's the closest thing that approximates it.

So the purpose of sex in relationship, in a covenant relationship between husband and wife is whole-souled, unblinking intimacy for the forever of this life. The forever of this life. And I mean every one of those words. Whole-souled, to be known and loved by another person. Unblinking, naked and unashamed. Intimacy, being completely vulnerable, and the forever of this life, the forever of this life.

This is why sex is a pointer to God. And I just want to say this: don't miss the point for the pointer. Don't miss the point. Sex is a human whisperer of a much bigger reality and who God is.

This is why when God created sex, when God made this, He made it as a party for two—a man and a woman in the covenant of marriage before Him for life. And it's only in that context where sex can do all of those things, can be unblinking, whole-souled intimacy forever. It's only in that context that all those things can be achieved.

Sex in that context is for others-serving pleasure as well as making babies. And it is a celebration of the union between one man and one woman before God.

The Purpose and the Promise

Now, the implications of this need to be said really clearly. If you never have sex in this life, does this mean you're not invited to the party? If sex is a party for two before God, and you never have sex in this life, if you die a virgin, does that mean you've missed out? No.

If you are in Christ, if you are a Christian, God is taking you to a life beyond this one that is whole-soul, unblinking intimacy forever. So if you have no sex in this life, yes, that's very challenging. But that's not the ultimate. And if you have bad sex in this life, that's not the end of the story.

See, this is not Jesus. Let's think about the man Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ, the most complete human being ever lived, died a virgin. And when we say that Jesus somehow missed out on parts of life—did He miss out on being what a fully human, complete person? No, we wouldn't say that. See, that's challenging, but it's not ultimate.

Lust: Sex Gone Bad

Now, if that's the purpose for sex, then what is lust? Lust is sex gone bad. And if God intended sex as a party for two in a covenant relationship, husband and wife before Him for life, then lust is making sex into a party for one. It's about self. It's about pleasing self. It's about gratifying self. It's self-focused.

Lust is either an out-of-bounds desire or an out-of-order desire. What do I mean by that? Out of bounds is desire for someone who's not your covenant partner for life before the Lord. It's not a person who you're married to for life before the Lord. It's a desire for that person sexually. But an out-of-order desire is wanting sex without being whole-souled or unblinking or intimate or forever. It's about self. It's making it about self.

If God created sex for others-serving pleasure, lust is about self-serving pleasure. And let me hear me say this: Some of you grew up in youth group and you don't know this. It's not because sex is so bad that God calls lust a sin. It's because it's so good and it's so powerful that God calls lust a sin. It's not because it's so bad. It's because it's so good.

Frederick Beechner, one writer, compares sex to nitroglycerin. He says, "Like nitroglycerin, sex can either be used to blow up bridges or to heal hearts." Now he's referring there to how nitroglycerin is a substance that's used in cardiac surgery, but it's also used to build explosives. So yes, it has great power. And it's—I have to say this—it's kind of polar. It's either one or the other. It's either for healing or for destruction. For healing or for destruction.

The Real Problem

Now, you might be expecting me in this sermon to launch into a long diatribe about what a crazy culture we live in, how this is the hardest time to raise kids, give you all the stats on pornography, and tell you lots of things not to do. But I want you to remember the series that we're in. We're in a series on the seven deadly sins.

The seven deadly sins was originally a discipleship list that started in the third century AD for training up young disciples to follow Christ. And it's a list of things that entrap the hearts of young disciples. So think about Avagrius in the third century, the desert father who first coined this list. He had a very poor internet connection. Right. No internet porn in his life. Right. And what they found in opening monasteries—the monks found that every time they allowed human beings into monasteries, lust came with them.

So the problem is not the bad culture out there. The problem is in here, in us, in our hearts.

So I want to look this morning at what are the principles Paul gives us—four principles here for dealing with our lustful hearts. And if you don't take notes on the rest of this, I need you to write these four things down. So get out your phone, get out your bulletin. You didn't get why didn't you get them? We ran out.

I want you to write these four things down. Four principles Paul holds up to us: Control, Belonging, Forever, Oneness. Let's look at these in turn.

Control

This is verse 12 and following. Paul is addressing people who think of sex like an appetite, like any other appetite. And this is very common right now in our cultural moment, where people are like, sex is just like our need for sleep, our need for food, our need for drink. And that's not original to us. Paul writes to a group of people and he quotes them here in verse 12. They say things like, "Well, all things are lawful for me. The food is meant for the stomach and the stomach for food." Like, this is just natural. What's the big deal?

One author, William Gass, asked this question a lot of people ask: What's the big deal? He says, "Why is lust so bad? It seems so harmless." Let's compare lust to gluttony. That will get us off to a good start. "Satisfied lust isn't fattening. Satisfied lust may mean two people are happy. It improves the skin, all that blood circulating. It detenses the limbs so that one's aches feel far away." That's like, hey, this is just another appetite. What's the big deal?

And to that, Paul says a resounding no. This is not just another appetite. This isn't like drink or eating or sleep. It has the power to master you, to control you. We read here:

I will not be dominated by anything. — 1 Corinthians 6:12

It has the power to boss you around, to take over your life. Think about a diabetic. Someone gets a diagnosis that they're a diabetic. They're told you can't eat sugar in the same way. You have to change your diet. No one would rightly say, "No. I mean, sugar's my right to have. I've got to have it. I'm going to die without it. I will have it. I'm not going to change it. Not going change my life." That's foolishness. People are like, "No. Okay. I have to alter the way I eat. I have to really think about this." No appetite is worth dying over.

But you tell people God has guidelines for how sex is to be used, and they freak out. Like, "No, this is my right." So we want to say both things in our culture. We want to say, "Oh, it's just an appetite like anything else." But then when you really get down to it, "No, this is my right."

Even our pop songs, our love songs are about this. We don't sing about it like we do any other appetite. We're like, "This kind of love, sexual love, I've got to have it. This is what makes life worth meaning." Nobody sings like that about ice cream, right? It's just not the same.

And look, if you treat sexuality as just any other appetite in your life, it is going to dominate you. It will ambush you. It will master you. It will control you. It will take over.

One of the words for lust in the Bible gives us a hint about how lust controls us. There are two words in the Bible. One is porneia—you'll recognize that as the root for pornography. But the other word is epithumia. So it's a thumia that is epi—a desire that's epi, like epic. It's an over-desire.

Jesus uses this word in the Sermon on the Mount when he says:

I tell you, anyone who looks at a woman with epithumia has already committed adultery with her in his heart. — Matthew 5:28

Now, just to be clear, I can give you lots of proof texts that the Bible doesn't just say, "Hey, this is a male only problem." One of the lies that we've sort of grown up maybe hearing is that lust is just a guy problem. No, no, no. It's a huge problem among women.

You don't need to know that Greek word to know this: it's a desire that has run out of bounds. It's flooded the gates. Lust is a legitimate desire gone way overboard. Gone viral. This is how lust can enslave you, can dominate you, can control you.

See, lust promises pleasure and intimacy. It promises both of those things and man, those are good things, aren't they? And we're made for that. Whole sold, unblinking, intimacy forever—that's what you're made for. And lust promises that, but it takes it out of context. It takes it out of context. That's why lust is never just physical. It's always more than that. It's always more than just about sex.

You look to satisfy your desires for self by yourself. It's a desire to have for yourself what is not yours to satisfy—a deeper longing that only God can fill. Let me say that again: It's a desire to have for yourself what is not yours. It is not your right to satisfy a deeper longing that only God can fill.

That's why one novelist, Bruce Marshall, said this famously: "A young man who rings the bell at the brothel is unconsciously looking for God." Only God can fill.

See, lust affects male people and female people. It affects single people, and it affects married people. It affects old people. It affects young people.

I remember one of my seminary professors in his eighties telling us, "I can't wait to not have to struggle with this anymore." I'm like, you're in your eighties, really? Yeah. Old people, young people, male people, female people, married people, single people.

Lust takes all kinds of forms—from looking at a screen in a dark room where other people are performing intimate acts, to reading novels that portray a type of romance, a type of love, a type of pursuit that's undying and scandalous. It could be 50 Shades of Grey. It can be the movies that we watch.

Lust is a self-defeating way of meeting a God-given desire. It could be relational even. When people who are not married to one another before God—husband and wife in a covenant of marriage together—when they, even in consensual relationships, give themselves to each other, it's lust. It's over-desire, and it is a master. It enslaves because it's looking for lust to satisfy something in you, a profound longing for intimacy and connection that it can't have in that relationship. It wasn't made for it.

Frederick Buechner says, "It's like a person who's trying to eat lots of salty pretzels just to cure their thirst. It's not going to work." And lust is destructive. A huge percentage of the people on screen in online pornography are actually sex slaves worldwide. They are not people who are just doing this for pay. That's not "nobody gets hurt."

I have a friend who works in a counseling ministry in Philadelphia for those with sexual addictions. The largest group of people he sees with ongoing erectile dysfunction are men in their thirties. That's not "nobody gets hurt." I know marriages that have been destroyed by bringing pornography into the bedroom just to spice things up. This decimates a marriage—that is not "nobody gets hurt."

Frederick Buechner says, "Who is to say who gets hurt and who doesn't? And how? Maybe the injuries are all on the inside. Maybe it'll take years before the x-rays show anything. Maybe the only person who gets hurt is you."

Hope and Belonging

Here's the good news. I know I've just laid out bad news, bad news, bad news. Listen to the good news and the hope of this passage.

And such were some of you — 1 Corinthians 6:11

After a long litany of people who've been dominated by sexual sin, after a list of all those who've been mastered—the sexually immoral, idolaters, adulterers, those who practice homosexuality—Paul says, "And such were some of you." This means God is able to provide hope and new life even in a person's life who has repeatedly given themselves over, who's been mastered and dominated and controlled by this sin. God is able to do that if you will do this: help. Raise your hand. Please. I'm dying under this. This is all it takes. God is able. So much hope in that passage, in that one little verse.

The second principle is belonging.

The body is not meant for sexual immorality, but for the Lord, and the Lord for the body — 1 Corinthians 6:13

Now this is profoundly countercultural to the way that I think and the way that you think about yourself, about self. I think I belong to me. You think you belong to you. I think I am making decisions because I have the right to. My stuff is mine. My body is mine. My will is mine. I'm mine. You think that's true of you.

But listen to what Paul says. Paul says, don't you know? You've been bought with a price. That doesn't just mean Jesus pays a bill that got you out of jail. It means that he's bought you like you go to the store and buy a loaf of bread. It's like you're mine. I own you. I have ownership over you. And this is such good news. His sacrifice means I belong to him. There is nothing of me that belongs to me. Praise God. That is such good news. It all belongs to him. And I can never step away from that. He is my Redeemer. He owns me. He has authority over my life. I'm so grateful for that, because left to myself, I would just walk away. I would just fade away. I would ghost Jesus. But I can never step away from this. All of me belongs to my Redeemer. Isn't that good news?

I have no right to use my body, my senses, my physical person any way I want, because it belongs to him.

C. S. Lewis, who was no stranger to sexual lust and temptation, wrote this in a letter to a friend. He gives this parable of somebody out walking a dog. You guys have this experience. So you're out walking the dog and you come up to a sign or a lamppost and you've got the leash, right? The dog doesn't have the leash. You've got the leash and you go one way and the dog goes the other way. The dog walks the other way around the lamp or the signpost and pulls. And this is Lewis' illustration.

He says, you know, you're doing this and you're like, "Yeah, I know you want to go the right way, but you're going to have to submit yourself to me and back up. The way to go forward here is to go back and back around. Going forward and pulling hard on the collar is not getting you anywhere. You have to back up and go around the other side."

See, you get it right? Like, you're the dog in the story. God's the owner. God owns us, and He knows better than you what is good for you. And He wants more than anything else your freedom, your joy, your happiness. But it's not going to come the way that we think it is.

We think God is always out to kill our joy, to stifle us. There's some other secret joy on the other side of some door out there that we're going to if we could just get access to apart from Him. God says, "No." Look, this is Lewis' illustration:

God only understands but shares your desire, which is at the root of all my evil, the desire for complete and ecstatic happiness. He made me for no other reason than to enjoy it. But He knows, and I do not, how it can really and permanently be achieved. He knows that most of my personal attempts to reach it are actually putting me further and further out of reach of it. I need to back up and go around and follow him.

He says this about lust:

Take the sin of lust. The overwhelming thirst for rapture was good and even divine, but the thirst will never be quenched as I try to quench it. If I refrain, if I submit to the collar and come around the right side of the lamppost, God will be guiding me as quickly as He can to where I shall get what I really wanted all the time.

See, this parable illustrates the way we think life is going to work out for us. The things that we thought are going to give us life are not going to bring us there. Now, that may sound really restrictive to some of you. Some of you may be like, "No way. I don't want that kind of God's ownership and God's control in my life. Why would I ever want that?"

But listen to me: there is such huge grace in recognizing God's ownership of you. Think about what God does with His stuff. God takes care of what is His. God stewards what is His. He protects what is His. He loves and cherishes what is His. If He has bought you with such a great price, don't you think He will take care of you? That you can trust Him, that He will nurture you? This is a doorway. If we can embrace this ownership of God over us—which is hard, I know it's hard—but it's a doorway into incredible grace from the Lord Jesus Christ.

Third Principle: Eternity Is Now

Third principle to deal with our lust forever. Read verse 14 with me:

And God raised the Lord and will raise us up by His power. — 1 Corinthians 6:14

Now, if you go home this afternoon and read this passage—and I encourage you to do so—and you study it and read along, when you get to verse 14, it just seems like a random idea by Paul in the middle of a regular paragraph. Like, what does this have to do with anything else he's been talking about? What does this have to do with lust?

Exactly this: you are an eternal being. If you have been bought by the Lord Jesus Christ, if you are His, you are His forever. Now, we don't live this way. We think of eternity as something that happens after I die. No, no, no. Eternity is now. You are a forever person in Him. You will die. He will raise you up to life forever with Him. Eternity is now.

Now, I don't think that's the way we think. We don't live that way at all. James and I could have gone through this whole series and referenced this one point in every single one of these sins, because all of them are so focused on the now. They're like, "This present moment." Gluttony—satisfying my pleasure right now. Anger—my will right now. Lust—pleasure right now. Envy—my right now compared to your right now. It's all about right now.

But the reality is, if you are owned by the Lord Jesus Christ, you are meant for whole-souled, unblinking intimacy forever. You're not just about right here.

This is why Jesus spoke on hell when He spoke on lust in Matthew 5. Remember these words?

If your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off. If your eye causes you to sin, pluck it out. It's better for you to go maimed into heaven than a whole person into hell. — Matthew 5

And He's talking about this because eternity is real. Lust is a denial that you're an eternal being. Lust is like, "Right now. Right now is all there is."

See, this is such good news for us—remembering that there is a forever to your wife. There's an eternity to your wife. This isn't heaven. Right now isn't all there is. Lust tells you no. It's a denial of your eternal nature. It's a denial of your forever. "This isn't heaven. That website is not heaven. Grindr is not heaven. Tinder is not heaven."

That hookup is not heaven. That romance novel is not heaven. I am, you are a forever creature of the living God. We will last forever. Why would I act like heaven is one click away? Why would I act like heaven is just this one little momentary pleasure? That's momentary misery disguised as pleasure. That's not eternal bliss. Forever.

Principle Four: Oneness

And finally, principle number four, dealing with sexual lust is this: oneness. This is verses sixteen and seventeen. Paul describes two kinds of oneness in this passage. First is oneness with God, and then oneness with another person.

Should I take the members of Christ and make them members of a prostitute? Never. Do you not know that he who is joined with the prostitute becomes one body, oneness with her? For it's written, the two will become one flesh. But he who is joined to the Lord becomes one spirit with him. — 1 Corinthians 6:15-17

Oneness is such a key principle for us. Sex both confronts me in my lust and it comforts me, and I want you to hear both of these things.

It confronts me. Paul is showing us here that whenever a person has sex with another person, there is a oneness that is formed. There's a union. There's a two becoming one. That's why he describes here about being united with a prostitute. There's a physical oneness, but there's more than that. There's something spiritual going on. Sex is like gorilla glue. It really is. It bonds people together. This is why sex can never be casual no matter what the people think or say who are participating in it. It can never be casual. It's such a gift that it's only appropriate in covenant marriage because it's only there that it is permanent. Any other sex within this life is by nature breakable. And it will end up breaking off pieces of you when that falls apart. It's so painful.

Think about our language for sex. We've changed the way we talk about sex as a culture. Years ago, your grandparents' generation used to use these kind of words in marriage ceremonies. They would talk about conjugal rights. You ever heard that word before? Conjugal rights. Anybody use that recently in a sentence? No. No one uses that word. Conjugal has this idea of joining, right? We don't talk about that. We talk about making love. Like that's simple, right? Not a big deal. Or what about the language of sexual intercourse? Intercourse—I mean it's a weird word, but it's like there's intercourse. There are two people who are coming together. But now we just truncated that to sex because it's like simple, right? No. It never is. It never is. It's always complex.

There is in you a psychosomatic union between your psychic, your soul (the word in Greek is psuche), and your soma, your body. Psyche and soma. They're united together. What you do with your body always affects your soul, and vice versa. So adultery, masturbation, promiscuity—the popular idea is like, "Hey, anything goes as long as nobody gets hurt." But the trouble with human beings is that we are so psychosomatic. We're a whole person. We always bring all of us, every bit of us into anything sexual. All of us.

If you are a Christian, that means Christ. It's not just oneness with Him in some kind of metaphorical way. No, it's oneness with Him as in His spirit is poured into your very body. Your whole body, all your faculties, all your desires, every physical capability is joined to Christ. Every bit of it. So whenever I take my body into any act of sexuality, I take my Lord Jesus into it as well. I take Him into it. I can't separate from the Lord Jesus. Thank God. I'm inextricably bound to Him. Praise Jesus.

But I also take with Him whatever I do with my body sexually. Jesus is with me wherever I go. But that also is incredible comfort to us. If Jesus is in my body and in my sexuality, what else does that mean to us? His grace is available to you in that place. His mercy is there with you in that place. In the places of greatest sexual temptation, He's present to you. You can have fellowship with the Lord Jesus Christ. You can have fellowship with the Lord Jesus Christ even in the greatest places of your temptation. He is with you. He will never leave you or forsake you. That is amazing news. Jesus is that with you. You can draw near to Him because He's that near to you.

So let's take all this together. Those are the principles, right? Control, belonging, forever, oneness. And only now, this is when Paul turns and here's some things to do. And he gives two commands in this passage.

It says flee sexual immorality, and second, glorify God in your body. Now, some of you grew up in youth group culture and you've heard those two commands, but you've heard them without context, and they just seem arbitrary and weird. Like, I'm just going to do this. No. Without those principles holding those things up, those make no sense. It's like strapping a two ton car across your shoulders. You're going to do it? You'll be fine. No, you won't. These principles are the only thing that make sense of the last two commands: flee sexual immorality and glorify God in your body.

Flee: Understanding the Command

Therefore, flee. Think about this with me. If sex is potentially addictive, if sex makes me think that physical pleasure in this moment is all I have, that right now is what matters. If sex is a place where I think I own myself and I own my own body, if sex distracts me from the Lord Jesus Christ, then I run from that danger. If sex is like nitroglycerin, then I'm careful with it. Outside the proper context—one man, one woman for life before the Lord—this is destructive to me. And it's a grace that God says run away. It's not Him trying to be mean.

So what does fleeing mean? In the Greek, the original Greek, fleeing means to flee. That's the real meaning of that word. It means to run away. Fleeing means I don't cut corners. I don't expose myself to movies or shows that I can't handle. Fleeing means I put software on my devices and on my computer. And if my boss comes and says, "Why are you doing this?" you tell them, "I'm weak. I need this. Please help me out here." Fleeing means I trade a smartphone for a dumb phone. It would be great if we had a church full of dumb phones. Fleeing means I cancel Instagram. I don't just keep it on. Fleeing means I flee.

And here's one thing I know about CTK: we're not doing it. For the last several years, we've had a sexual accountability group in our church, and it is the hardest thing to get people to show up at. It is like nobody wants to come to this. Statistically, eighty percent of Americans have looked at pornography in the last year—adult Americans. So I have a feeling that maybe we should be able to pack that group out. And yet it's the least attended group in our church. That means we're not fleeing. We don't view this as dangerous.

Lots of people who struggle with sexual sin are perfectionists. They look at their lives and they're like, "If I've fallen down in any area, if I'm still struggling after I've tried to deal with this, then the Holy Spirit's not doing anything in my life. I guess I'm done." And they end up denying, covering up, pretending. The reality is, you're just getting started. Fleeing means to flee. It means you get back up. You're like, "Okay, I fell down yesterday. I'm going to get back up and try to flee tomorrow." You don't give up. God is not done with you yet.

I want to offer this to you: One of our elders, Scott Apicella, loves to meet with people and help people who are like, "Me, I need help." And he'll help you get into our group. We want to provide a pathway for people. We know that this is hard.

Glorify: The Second Command

The second command that Paul gives them is not just to flee, but to glorify God in your body.

Glorify God in your body — 1 Corinthians 6:20

Lust is ultimately a worship problem. It's about worshiping yourself in your body, about you in your body. So dealing with lust is never just like, "Stop it. Just stop doing that." It's worshiping God in your body. Learning to worship Him.

To glorify God in your body means to glorify God with your sex life. Every person who's a follower of Jesus has to come and say, "God, I'm submitting my whole sex life to you." Person who's married, person who's not married. This is what it means to follow Him. We can't like, "Hey, Jesus, I want to follow you except for all this stuff, but the stuff over here I don't want you to touch." We don't do the fine print thing in the car commercials to Jesus. We come and say, "Jesus, I submit myself to you. All of me to all of you. I submit myself because you made me, you love me, you own me, and you know what's best for me. And I give myself to you. I glorify you in my body."

Second thing related to glorifying God in your body is that you open your mouth about your sexual struggles with other people. Now, this is going to sound really crazy to y'all. Remember, this letter was not written to some dude in Corinth. It was not written to some one woman in Corinth. It wasn't written to a smattering of random individuals.

It was written to a church. People like us meeting together, trying to follow Jesus together. This was all the yous of this passage are y'alls. They're commands to us together to glorify God in our bodies.

So to glorify God in your body means being transparent with other people about your sexual struggles, about your struggles with sin. I've seen this before. Nothing changes like radically changes the life of a community group that's keeping it all above board and simple and nice. Nothing makes it real more than one person saying I'm struggling here and here, like for real, this is where I'm struggling with my sex life. Man, everybody else is struggling too.

But you want to see your community group, your accountability relationships, your friendships change to actually have some real life to them? Talk about this together. That is glorifying God in your body. Giving God a chance to use your struggles and your particular ways of like, I'm really dying here for other people to enter into. And God gets glory when we do. God is glorified when we fight sin on one another's behalf.

So I want you to look around this room, turn around. I'm not kidding. Look at each other, right? This is a gift of God for you. The provision of this group of people. Brothers and sisters, this is a major battlefield for us as a community. Like I've sweated out this sermon more than any other one in the series because we're getting killed on this one. We need this. The next generation in these rooms back here, they need us to wake up and deal with this in a very direct way.

You are a temple of the Holy Spirit. He lives in you. He loves you. He will never abandon or forsake you.

Would you join me in prayer? Father, we desperately need you in this area today. And we think we know, and that's part of our problem. We think we can handle it. We think we know better than you. We think, Lord, we're in control and we just we're not.

And so we pray, Father, I pray for the renewing work of the Holy Spirit in us. I pray, Father, that You would tear down, tear down the walls inside of us. Lord, free us from denial, or minimizing or pretending. Father, we pray that You would break down in us everything that opposes You and Your spirit, that we might actually experience full intimacy, unblinking, wholesaled with you forever. We pray in Christ's name. Amen.