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I spent 15 years or so talking to high school students. That’s how I got my start in ministry. So, I talked about sex a lot. I talked about it as much as I possibly could. One of my favorite things to do is I created a lecture that was for premarital sex. I would come in as a different character and I’d wear a lab coat and my name was Dr. Les [L-e-s] Doit [D-o-i-t], Dr. Les Doit. And I would come in and lecture to high school kids about why they should go out and have as much premarital sex as possible. And I was very convincing. It was scary. I could just see the adults going, "Oh my gosh, I never thought of that." And kids are going, "Well, yeah!"
I had one kid raise his hand [we did a question and answer] and he said, "You’re the first person I ever heard explain this the way I’ve been thinking about it." And then I would come back, hopefully, and correct all the errors I had created. It was fun.
And one of my favorite things would be to do this at a camp where I had multiple nights where I was gonna speak. So, I’d come in one night and just do the Dr. Les Doit thing and give these great arguments and statistics and illustrations about why you should have sex outside of marriage. I mean, you wouldn’t buy a pair of shoes without trying them on first. You know, stuff like that. Real meaty stuff. And then I would wait and come back the next night and say, "Y’all seem a little bit nervous in here today. And then I would come back the next night. So, I’d leave them hanging a whole day, and it used to drive the adults crazy. They’d go, "Look, you just, you can’t just let it lay there for a whole day! They’re gonna think that premarital sex is okay."
I’m like, "They already think that. That’s why we’re having the camp."
So I got comfortable, maybe too comfortable, talking about this and here’s the deal. After many years of that, and now I’m an adult pastor with adults and I’ve heard all kinds of stories and dealt with, I mean, just every imaginable situation. Here I am, you know, all these years later. I’m 48, and I’m absolutely convinced that what the Bible has to say about sex is not only true and it’s not only relevant, but beyond that, it’s kind of common sense. It’s just good advice.
But even if you don’t believe the Bible is inspired, as we’re gonna see today, there is something the Scripture says, in fact, there’s an insight we’re gonna look at today that modern psychiatrists and psychologists have their terminology for, but it was back here, 2,000 years ago. It’s so incredibly relevant that, as old-fashioned as it sounds sometimes, I just think it’s still worth talking about.
But, here’s the pushback. Every time I talk about this, whether it’s with high school students or adults or singles or whatever, I feel a little bit like an Old Testament prophet who’s sort of crying in the wilderness, "Don’t do it!" And everybody’s going, "Ah, get him out of here. Put him back in the well," or, "Where are you from, Rip? Have you been asleep for 200 years?" I mean, nobody thinks that way anymore. And I feel like it’s almost a total waste of time. I don’t think for a minute that after this message, and I’ll be as compassionate--I mean, passionate--as I can be. Actually, I won’t be very compassionate, just passionate, and I’ll give you my Scriptures and I’ll argue and be loud. And, most of us are just gonna walk out the door back into our culture and go, "That was interesting. What would you expect from the preacher?"
They just go back into this world that just totally thinks that what the Scripture says about this subject is impractical and irrelevant. But, I’m gonna tell you, I think in your heart and in the heart of most people, except for the most calloused of individuals, there’s something that rings true about this for all of us, as impractical as it is. And, so every once in a while, I feel like I’ve got to get up like the prophet and go, "Okay, let’s say it one more time. Here’s what the Bible says about sex."
Maybe the defining moment for me as I transitioned from working with high school students into working with adults was a conversation I had with a lady, and I’ve shared this before, I believe, but I’ll say it again. I had done a presentation for several hundred high school kids on this subject, and there was a lady who had just become a Christian and just started coming to our church. It wasn’t this church. Another church. And so, sometimes adults would come and stand in the back of our high school ministry ’cause it was fun and loud. And she had been married. She was in her early 30s, very much into the whole singles thing, and very attractive and just sort of in that world. But she had just become a Christian, just started coming to church. And, so, not the night I did the presentation, but after that, she tracked me down and she said, "Andy, Andy, I’ve got to ask you a quick question."
I said, "Yeah?"
And she said, "It’s about this sex thing." And, of course, that’s just a weird way to start a conversation. "About this sex thing," she said, "now," this is what she said, and she was as sincere as she could be, she said, "now what you said the other night, that’s for teenagers, right?" Now, she was just asking.
I said, "Excuse me?"
She said, "You know, that whole ’no sex till you’re married,’ that’s for teenagers, right?" And she went on to say she’d been married, she’s dating, she’s kind of out in the world, and surely what I said about no sex, that didn’t apply to people in her stage of life, did it? She’s asking sincerely.
And this is one of those moments I have as a pastor [so many times, ’cause people will stop me and ask complicated questions like, "Andy, how did they build the space shuttle?"]
In 15 seconds, it’s like, "Okay. That’s an important question, and they actually built one and it actually flies, but I can’t answer that. That’s not a sound-bite question."
So, as I do so often, I’m going, "God, I need a sound-bite. I can’t give her 20 minutes, I need a sound-bite." And so this question came out of my mouth that I’ve repeated many times since then. I said, "Let me ask you a question." I said, "Has sex outside of marriage made your life better or just more complicated?"
And she almost immediately teared up. She said, "More complicated."
I said, "That’s why it’s not just for teenagers. It’s for everybody."
Now, you know what’s weird about this subject? [And you’re going, "Yeah, there’s a lot weird about it."] This is what’s so weird about this subject. It’s almost stupid to have to talk about it, because if we would just kind of pause for a minute, and let’s don’t even bring the Bible into it. Let’s just be American citizens for a moment and look at our culture. And if we would all just get together and ask the question, "Is it working? Are we better off? Are we happier? Are the children healthy and wholesome? Are more people staying together? Are marriages lasting longer? Has it helped the economy?"
You don’t need the preacher to tell you that it just makes your life and your family and your soul and your brain and your relationships more complicated when you take this incredible gift of sex and you rip it out of the context God designed it for [and I’ll get to that in just a second] . . . when you just put it out there and it becomes random and is kind of ’go with your feelings,’ and ’kids will be kids,’ and ’boys will be boys,’ and ’who cares what I look at because I’m not hurting anybody else.’ What we know [you don’t need me to tell you this] is it’s not making your life better.
It’s not, is it? And I don’t even know you and I know it’s not. You just wish like crazy you could just kind of turn off part of your psyche and part of your soul when you walk down the concourse in the airport or when you travel. You just wish there’s a part of you that you could leave at home so it would stay right within the context of your marriage, ’cause when you take that part with you and you travel, it’s just hard. It’s just difficult. It’s distracting. You hate it. You hate, in some ways, what you’ve become. You hate what you filled your mind with. You hate it. You don’t like it. You know it’s not working.
Some of you don’t get to put your kids to bed at night because of sex. Some of you, you’ve been so sexually active before you got married [and this is so common, so this will help you cause you think you’re the only one]. And you remember your wife was so . . . before you got married . . . she was so sensual and you just, oh, sex was great, great, great. Then you got married and about three or four months into it, six months into it, it’s like she just turned something off. And you’re like, "Wait a minute! You’re, you’re, what happened?" We’re gonna talk about that. "It’s not working." I’m just telling you, you know this.
I just wish all of us could get in a big arena [all the Americans] and go, "Okay, let’s just face up to this. Okay, it’s like the king has on no clothes kind of a thing. Let’s just not pretend anymore. Let’s just face up to something. The way we’re approaching sex, the way we market it, the way we use it to advertise, the way it’s on every music video and the way it’s portrayed, come on. This isn’t helping us."
You’re not better off. I’m not better off. We have bought a lie, and we are paying the price. It doesn’t make your life better. It makes your life more complicated. And the thing that’s really the rip-off is that the decisions some of you have made and some of us have made as a 18-, 19-, 20-year-old, and those freshmen college years and all that stuff, where it made our lives worse, wasn’t in that stage of life. It made our lives worse in the next stage of life.
And if you’re single and you’re into the whole dating thing and all the stuff that goes with that in our culture and you’ve kind of bought into that, I’ve just got to let you know, if it feels like it’s working now, heads up. A couple of relationships, another stage of life away, you’ll discover that it didn’t and wasn’t and never did work. Your life will not be better. Your life will be more complicated.
Now, if you were God and you saw what we see, I mean, all the way from child abuse to what’s happening in Africa in terms of AIDS ripping into that continent and millions of children growing up without parents because of sex . . . misapplication of sex. And listen to this. If you were to go back and pick the top news stories over the past two years, the ones that you went to work and talked about, "Hey, did you hear about, did you hear about," even the ones that broke this weekend, 90 percent of them have a sexual component. Ninety percent of the big breaking, I can’t believe that happened, I can’t believe she did that, can’t believe that happened to them, there’s a sexual component. It’s like every single day on cable news and on news on the radio, it’s like, "It’s not working. It’s not working. It’s not working. Broken. Broken. Broken. Broken. Broken." So, if you were God and saw all that, what would you say about sex?
"Be careful. Be safe. Be responsible."
No! If you were God and you saw all that, and he were to be able to see into all of your souls and all of your hearts and all the struggles with intimacy and the struggles in marriage and ’I wish I hadn’t,’ and the ghosts that follow you . . . some of you around your marriage from the past and the addictions . . . and you were abused as a child . . . and now you’re trying to do the intimacy thing as an adult . . . and there’s such a disconnect . . . and your psychologist has sorted it all out for you. If you were God and you saw all that times to the hundredth or the thousandth power, all the people just in the United States, and then, suddenly, you could have everybody’s attention and make one statement about sex, what do you think he would say if he loved you?
He would say the opposite of what culture has told you and told me, ’cause culture-- here’s a newsflash--culture’s just trying to make a buck. God loves you. Culture’s just trying to make a dollar. God loves you. And so he says something radically different, and it’s an old-fashioned message. But I don’t even need to read anything out of the Bible to tell you that what we’re doing now isn’t working, cause we all pay a price every single day.
When I grew up--now this is really weird . . . this is so odd . . . I was taught . . . don’t laugh in front of me . . . you can laugh in the car going home. I was taught that sex is for married people only. How absurd is that? And I believed it. And I had all the same temptations and went through the ’70s, and back then there wasn’t all the sexually transmitted diseases. It was just sex, drugs, and rock and roll. It was just, you know, nobody cared. I went through all that. You know, halter-tops, woo, you know, the whole deal, right? Right? I mean . . . we saw everybody’s belly buttons way back then. This isn’t anything new, right? Hip-huggers. You remember all that stuff, right? Drugs, you know, the whole thing. And, I just bought it. I just said, "You know what? Sex is for married people."
And then years later, I met a girl named Sandra Walker, and we started dating, and you can’t, you wouldn’t believe this . . . she grew up being taught the same thing. How absurd! We poor people, we were so out of sync with culture. Believe that sex is just for married people? And, we dated and I was just over-the-top attracted to her, and I can’t speak for her, but, you know, I had a cool car, and a condominium in Vinings. I had the package. I don’t know what was going on there. And we decided that sex was just for married people. Now, I gotta tell ya, this is just one man’s story, so discount it as that . . . if I could go back and live my life over again, I wouldn’t change any of that. I mean . . . there were a whole bunch of spring breaks I didn’t get to go on. There were a whole bunch of parties I didn’t get to go to. There’s a whole bunch of girls that just went the other way. And I gotta tell ya, I look back and I don’t go, "God, I missed out."
But I talk to people, as a profession, who wish they could go back and miss out on some things. You know why? Forget the Bible for a second. It doesn’t work. It doesn’t lead anywhere good. Nobody looks back and says, "Gosh, if I just slept with more people! If I had just had more sex . . . if I’d had different kinds of sex . . . if I had experimented more. The reason I’m struggling today is a lack of . . ." No one’s ever heard that story. You know why? Because that is a lie.
Now, why do I even have to say this? You know that. We all know that. Just everybody, if you get them honest and rip back all the layers and get them sober enough to talk straight and get them out of their environment where they’re trying to be something they’re not, we know that. So, what’s wrong? Why can something be that’s so obvious be so severely missed? And why is it if I were to stand out in the middle of whatever town you live in with a big sign that says, "Sex is for married people," and preach it, people would drive by and go, "Good grief! What’s that about?"
It’s because it’s so twisted, and we all are paying a price. And boy, our kids, they are really going to pay a price. So, every once in a while I’ve got to put on my prophet hat and come out here and say what’s obvious. Sex is for married people, not adults, not ready-for-it people, not consenting adults. Sex is for married people. It’s like a fire. I mean . . . this is so elementary, but maybe we’ve got to do this for a second. It’s like a fire. A fire’s good when it’s in the fire pit. Fire’s not good just raging through the forest, right? The problem’s not fire. The problem’s the location. I love to camp. I take my kids camping. The very first thing we do is we build a fire. I have them collect the wood. I bring the matches. We build a fire. It’s wonderful. They immediately want to put sticks in the fire, get the sticks on fire, and run through the woods because they have torches. "I have a torch!"
And I’m going, "Okay, bring all the fire back to the fire pit."
They’re going, "Dad, but you built the fire! You brought the matches."
I’m going, "Yeah, cause fire is good right here. It’s awesome right here. It wouldn’t be the same camping without it right here. But you can’t run through the woods, Tarzan, with a flaming stick dropping sparks everywhere in the woods, because then," LISTEN, "this very wonderful thing becomes," please don’t miss this, "this wonderful thing becomes extraordinarily destructive." Not just a little destructive. Extraordinarily destructive.
Now, before you get all bent out of shape at me ’cause I’m the preacher, and what would you expect the preacher to say . . . if you don’t hear anything else, listen to this, okay? This is a starting point for you as you start rethinking about sex. God created it. He brought the matches. He stacked the first pile of wood. He poured on a gallon of kerosene. And he said to all of the angels in creation, "Hey, you like the sun, moon, and the stars? That’s cool, but watch this." Whoosh.
And they were like, "Whoa! We’ve seen lions and tigers and bears, oh my, but between two human beings, that’s like a totally different thing."
God’s going, "I made that up from nothing. Started with nothing and made sex. Look at that. Is that just like unbelievable?"
And the angels looked on going, "God, wish I was human." I don’t know if they said that. Probably.
So, I just want to read you three verses, ’cause why do we need to preach on this? Isn’t this obvious? Isn’t this one like, "Don’t forget to eat, and don’t forget to breathe." Isn’t it just that obvious?
First Corinthians, Chapter 6, here’s what Paul says. He planted a church . . . 1 Corinthians 6 . . . I’m gonna skip around a little bit . . . verse 18. He planted a church in a culture where they just thought sex was an activity. That’s the twist. See, that’s what we bought into. Sex is an activity. Go there and have a little sex, go back home, go there, have a little sex, go back home, get in front of the computer, have a little sex, come back home. It’s just an activity. It’s just something to do. It’s just a hobby. It’s just something you do. And Paul drops into a culture that believed that lie. In fact, in that culture, you could go to the temple and worship a pagan deity and have sex with a temple prostitute and pay for the prostitute and that’s part of the worship thing. Then you come home and see the kids, have lunch, and go to a soccer game. It’s just ’sex is just something you do,’ isn’t it?
And Paul drops into that culture and says, "Okay, okay. Where do I start? Let me just start with this." Here’s what he says. He says, "Here’s God’s take on the whole thing."
First Corinthians 6:18, "Flee," [pretty strong word] "from sexuality immorality." Now, unfortunately, I have to define immorality for you, I know. Flee sexuality immorality. That is ’run away from it.’ That is ’don’t flirt with it,’ ’don’t get as close as you can,’ ’don’t entertain yourself’ with it. Flee sexual immorality. And here’s why I have to define it. See, if you’re here today or you’re listening to this and you’re living with a guy or living with a girl and you’re not married, you’re living together, you look at that verse and I know what you think. You think, "That’s right. We should flee sexual immorality. But, this isn’t immoral."
You’re married and you have a girlfriend on the side, or you’re married and you have a boyfriend on the side, and you really love both. You love your family. You don’t want to wreck your family. But you love this guy. He makes you feel the way you used to feel, and you’ve got a cool song and it reminds you, in fact, he was your boyfriend in high school and it’s kind of working out . . . and a secret life. You have some guilt. But, you see ’flee sexual immorality’ and you say, "I understand." You go, "I agree we should flee sexual immorality, but I don’t think this is immoral."
You’ve got an Internet habit and you’re going, "Yeah, I think we should all flee sexual immorality. I don’t think this is immoral." I understand that, because we live in a culture where we get to redefine the word.
So, real quickly, let me tell you what the Bible says is immoral, and you don’t have to agree with this. You may totally disagree. But please, as I talk about immorality, I have to define it the way the Bible defines it because we’re reading from the Bible, okay? In the Bible, Old Testament and New, immorality is sexuality or sensuality outside the context of marriage. That sexual activity, or intentional sensuality outside the context of marriage, that’s what the Bible considers immorality.
You’re going, "Well, then I am really messed up, because I have a lot of that."
Okay. Granted. I’m just trying to define it as the Bible does, and so here’s what Paul said. He said, "Look. When it comes to sexual activity or sensuality outside the context of marriage, you’ve got to run away from that."
And then listen to this next phrase . . . because this is the part . . . it’s been in the Bible for 2,000 years. I don’t know why it’s not on a billboard somewhere, because every one of has been impacted by this next insight, okay? Every single one of us has been impacted by this next insight. And it’s been sitting here for a couple thousand years. "All," [this is the next phrase in the verse] "All other sins, all other sins," [hold it right there. Listen. Listen.] "All other sins," Paul’s about to say, "Now, look, look, look. I know there’s all kind of sins, but when it comes to sexual sin, they are in a category all of their own." Think about how exclusive this is. "All other sins."
"Paul, all other?"
"Yep, I’m about to make a comment about sexual sin because, when it comes to sexual sin, it is in a category all of its own, not because God gets so bent out of shape over it, more than others, but because of the way it impacts you."
It’s not that God goes ballistic over sexual sin versus other sin. That’s not the point he’s about to make. The reason sexual sin is in a category all its own is not God’s response. It’s your response. It’s not God’s reaction. It’s the way you react. Because sexual sin takes a toll on a human being in a category that no other sin takes a toll. And anybody who’s a psychologist or a counselor or who studied would say, "You know what? I never thought of it that way, but you’re exactly right." Because a 7-year-old, an 8 year old can be sexually molested. And when she’s 47, somehow she’s still carrying it. And in her case, it wasn’t even a sin. It was somebody else’s sin. And she’s still being impacted. Because sexual sin is different than any other sin. The consequences are different than any other sin. It is a fire that, when it’s taken out of its original context, is extraordinarily destructive. But we already know that.
Here’s what he says, his explanation. I’m jumping back now to verse 15. "Do you not know," because they didn’t and we don’t [1 Corinthians 6:15], "Do you not know that your bodies," [your physical bodies] "are members of Christ himself?" And he’s referring to this thing we’ve talked about before, that when we come together with our physical bodies, we represent Christ on the earth. We’re his hands, his feet, his eyes, his ears. We do his work. We represent him. We’re compassionate. We give. We’re generous. We do the work of Christ on earth. He says, "Now, your physical bodies, as Christians, are all part of that." "Shall I then take the members of Christ," and then this was the word that just caused them to go, "What?" "And," [What’s that next word? I want to hear you say it] "unite," [unite, fasten, glue, permanently attach, that’s what that word means] "Shall I take the members of Christ and unite them with a prostitute?"
And his audience is going, "Whoa, that’s a little bit strong there. We’re not uniting. We’re just having sex. Who said anything about unite, glue, join together, fasten? That’s like a permanent thing, Paul. You misunderstood. Look, I gotta be honest, Paul. Last two weekends ago when I was down there at the temple thing, I don’t even remember her name. I didn’t unite."
Paul is going, "Oh yeah, you did, because you don’t understand sex. You think it’s physical. You think it’s an activity. You think you can draw a circle around it and that’s over and I just go on with my life." Paul’s going, "Oh, you Christians in Corinth, you got a lot to learn. You don’t understand sex. See, God made it and he understands it. And I’m telling you, when you have sex with somebody, you’ve united with them."
"Paul, that sounds kind of permanent."
Paul’s going, "Yeah, let me go on and explain." Verse 16, "Do you not know," [’cause they didn’t] "that he who unites himself with a prostitute is one with her in body?"
"No, we’re not one! We just had like a deal, you know? I mean, she doesn’t know my name, either. I mean . . . it was like a spring break. I was 18, you know. Okay, I was 24 and everybody and the thing, and we spent the night, and I felt terrible about it and I asked God to forgive me, and, you know, I’ve . . ."
"Oh," Paul goes, "Oh, you didn’t know, did you? You thought it was an activity. You thought it was an event. You thought it was a pastime. No, it’s a pathway. You see, when you have sex with someone, you unite with them, you fasten, you glue, you become one with them, and then when you separate, you take part of them and they take part of you, ’cause there’s something permanent about it."
And the reason you can laugh about some of your past, but you can’t laugh about your sexual sin . . . the reason you can kind of put a lot of your sin (even you were in jail once and you had this deal happen) . . . even though you can kind of put a lot of your sin behind you and you sort of put a circle around it and it just goes on, you don’t do that with sexual sin, do you?
See, when you’re with your husband or your wife, there are these ghosts. What is that? I thought I dealt with that. Then you’re trying to be honest with your kids, and there’s all this, you’re not sure how to talk about it. And you’re getting married, and you weren’t sure you were gonna tell the whole thing, but who cares because it’s just the past, it was just a circle, but now that I’ve met the person I want to spend the rest of my life with, why does what seemed like just an event, a weekend, a person, a thing . . . why is it so big now? Why does it follow me?
Paul’s going, "Oh, nobody told you? Sex isn’t physical. Sex is a soul thing. It’s a heart thing." Sex was God’s way to physically illustrate and to create a sense of intimacy, and you know what you’ve done? [And this is so condemning for many of us, and it’s bad news for many of us, but, again, once a year, here it is. You do what you want to with it.] Sex is about intimacy, and when you take sex out of the context God designed it for, you foul up your intimacy factor. You foul up your ability to be intimate. You tweak and deal and redial and undial what God designed to allow you to be intimate and, not just intimate physically, but this amazing thing he created called intimacy, you mess with it. That’s why, again, even if you were raped, even if you were abused as a child, it had nothing to do with you. It was somebody else’s sin. You still struggle in the realm of intimacy, because sexuality’s about intimacy. It is not an isolated event.
And Paul, then, goes all the way back to the book of Genesis to illustrate it because [this is amazing] . . . [Genesis is the first book of the Bible]. By Chapter 2, God has already told us what sex is. He knew we were gonna cover this really quick, okay? Cause this is a big deal forever and ever and ever. And so Paul refers back to Genesis 2 to help these Corinthian Christians realize, okay, you think you’re just kind of running down there and having a deal, but this is gonna impact you till you get this straight. He said, "Don’t you know that he who unites himself with a prostitute is one with her in body? For it is said," and he quotes the book of Genesis, "the two," talking about when God created Adam and Eve, "the two will become one flesh." The two will become one flesh. That when two people unite in sexuality, there is a oneness.
Now, here’s the truth, and this explains some of your struggles. There is a oneness and you can never, ever completely un-one what happened in the oneness of sex. You rip it apart, but you leave a little of you and you take a little of them. And it impacts your ability to express and experience intimacy.
Have you ever in culture heard anyone talk about that? Never. Has it ever even been implied in a movie you’ve seen? Never. Is it ever implied as far as the outcome? I mean . . there’s some huge movie and she has an affair and her husband catches her. Oh, that’s nothing. That happens all the time. Let’s fast forward . . . go forward 20 years. All of a sudden, she’s . . . we don’t . . . nobody even talks about it. God’s going, "Oh, this is fundamental."
And do you know what you know? You know this is true. You didn’t have these terms. You wouldn’t have thought of it these ways. But you know, we know. We know. And because God designed it and God loves you, what else is he going to say except, "Look, flee immorality." Why?
"Cause it’s dangerous. I might get sick."
No!
"Cause I might get pregnant."
No!
I mean, we deal with all that, but it’s because it’s going to dent your soul. It’s going to mess with your ability to experience what I want you to experience. This is a big deal. And the reason it’s throughout the Old and New Testaments is because God’s not against sex. Remember, he brought the matches. He built the fire. He threw the first one on and ’Whoosh.’ He’s for it. But he’s for you.
And, then, listen to how it concludes. Going back to the verse we ended with, verse 18, "Flee from sexual immorality. All other sins a man commits are outside his body, but he who," [here’s this phrase, maybe this is new for you] "sins sexually, he who sins sexually, he who sins sexually, sins against his own body." God’s saying, "Listen, listen, listen, listen. You’re gonna hurt yourself. You’re hurting yourself. You’re choosing to do something and you hurt yourself."
"I didn’t hurt myself. I got out of there scot-free, changing my number; she’s never able to get in touch with me. Nobody’s sick. Nobody’s died. Nobody’s pregnant. I’m fine! I’m free! I’m clear!"
God’s going, "You don’t understand sex. You’ve just hurt yourself."
So, what do you do with that? You know, there’s one group, I understand, there’s one group that hears me and goes, "What would you expect from the preacher? I’m outta here. That is so stupid. Rip Van Winkle, wake up! Okay, you know, this is the 21st . . ." I understand that.
Here’s what I would say to you. Just one word, just one word for you if you were kind of, you know, kind of dissing the whole thing and, here’s what I’d say. My word for you is just "Remember." Just remember this. ’Cause here’s what’s gonna happen. One day you’re gonna wake up at the bottom of the heap, or one day you might wake up at the top of the heap, or somewhere in the middle, obviously, the bottom or top. At the bottom of the heap, your life is a mess and you’re trying to figure out why and why have things not worked out and why are you so empty and why do things not work out? Maybe you’ll remember this message.
Maybe you’ll wake up at the top. You have more money and more women or more men or more whatever than you ever wanted. You’ve got everything a person could want, and you look in the mirror and your gut is empty. You are numb. You cannot seem to connect and stay connected and squeeze out of the people around you the intimacy that you were designed to experience. And maybe you’ll remember this. Maybe you’ll find a friend. Maybe you’ll find a church. Maybe you’ll find a Bible and you’ll go, "Oh, that’s right. It’s not working." And you had enough money, and you had enough influence to chase it a little bit longer than the average person. But, at the end, it’s not working. It doesn’t work.
That’s why in the Old and New Testaments God, who loves you, said, "Okay, big timeout. It’s about intimacy. It’s about a permanent relationship. It’s about oneness. And you’ll either figure it out the easy way or the hard way. You’ll trust me and obey, or you’ll disobey and then learn to trust me."
For the majority of us, though, it’s, "Okay. You don’t have to convince me. I kind of knew that. I knew it intuitively, put some words on some things I thought about before. What do I do?" And your word, it starts with R, as well, it’s not "Remember." It’s a big Old Testament word. It’s "repent." Repent.
You know what repent means? Repent means to run away, flee, turn around, and go the opposite direction. And do you know where I think you should begin repenting if you were to just ask me, "Andy, what do I do first?" You need to repent of your sexual sin. You need to repent of your sexual sin. You know it’s followed you. You know that. I don’t have to tell you that. You need to repent of it.
It means you need to go and get alone and you need to go all the way back to those magazines in elementary school, whatever it was, to that thing out behind the house in the garage when, you know, whatever, however that worked in your neighborhood, you know, to that college freshman dorm thing, that spring break, to the relationships when you first moved to Atlanta and it seemed like it made sense and nobody seemed to care, so you decide, now, whatever it is, you need to repent.
Repentance says, "I’m gonna get on my knees and I’m gonna get alone. I’m gonna repent of my sexual sin. It means you get it all out on the table and you say, "God, it wasn’t just a pastime; it was a pathway. I don’t like where it led. I’m gonna repent. I’m gonna think up; I’m gonna dream up; I’m gonna ask God to bring to my memory . . . I want to just say, ’God, I just repent. I want to ask you to forgive me for all of it.’ I’m just gonna throw it all back up and say, ’God, please, please, please, I confess. I sinned. I didn’t just make a mistake. I didn’t just, you know, kids will be kids. I sinned. And I don’t want to carry any more of this into my future than I have to.’"
You repent. Repentance means you make some big lifestyle changes. You get rid of your Internet at home. "How could I live?" Well, you’d get by. You know, it’s amazing. You’ll get more done, probably. You just gotta decide how much you want to repent. It means you quit traveling with certain people. You quit going certain places. You stay home on the weekends.
Every time I give this message to singles, I say this, I’ll say it for those of you who are single, and for many of you it means going onto your calendar and putting an ’X’ one year from today and deciding not to date. "I do not date for a year. I’m gonna give myself a year out of that scene so God can do something on the inside of me and prepare me for whatever he has in the future. I’m not going to date for a year." Whenever I say that to singles groups, it’s like, GASP! And then I think, half of you aren’t dating anyway. No big loss. It’s like, "Well, yeah, but just in case."
I’m going, "Come on. I’m not being critical. Take a year off. Coincidentally, this week I got a letter [’cause every time I challenge that, I get letters a year later, every time]. A girl wrote me a letter . . . just a wonderful letter.
"Andy, a year ago at 7|22, you did this and challenged us and I said,
’Okay, I’ll do it.’ Took a year off. Greatest year. I’m so different.
What God’s done . . ."
It went on. She described what God’s done in her heart.
Repent means you take some drastic measures. Do you know why they need to be drastic? Because this is dangerous! You ever been to a zoo where all the animals are just out roaming around? No. Why? It’s dangerous! You put animals behind bars. I don’t want to go in that zoo. Lions and tigers, they’re eating other. Why don’t we let them roam around? No, I’m not gonna go there.
Hey, this is way more dangerous than that. That’ll kill you. This will kill several generations of you. This will reach into your family. This will reach into your marriage and reach into your kids and how you parent and how you relate to your husband or wife. This is way more dangerous than that. So, you have to take drastic measures and you’ll look kind of goofy and, yeah, it’s kind of silly. People think you’re stupid. So what?
One day, when you have a marriage and a relationship that are permanent and that honors God, they’ll just want to know what your secret is. And you can say, "Well, you gotta be goofy." You gotta do stupid things. You gotta be extreme. Gotta be anti-cultural in some ways. That’s how you get here. Cause I’m telling you, and you know this. Come on, come on, come on. If you just go with the flow of culture, it doesn’t work. No one has a happy landing. No one lives happily ever after. You’re just frustrated and you’re just guilty and you keep searching, searching, searching, looking, looking, looking. It’s her fault, and then it’s his fault, then it’s her fault, then it’s his fault.
Some of you are married. Can I tell you what you need to do? You need to repent together because before you were married you slept together. And sex was great! And then three or four months, six months after you got married, it just stinks. And you think it’s his fault and she thinks it’s yours. No, you broke your intimacy. You tweaked it. You dialed it off the chart. You did something wrong. You’re paying for it. It’s not his fault. It’s not her fault. It’s your fault. You need to get on your knees and say, "God, we sinned. We sinned. We just thought we were gonna get married anyway and everybody, but God, I realize today we sinned. We repent of our sexual immorality. Save our marriage. Save our marriage. Give us the ability to be intimate with each other. Not just have sex. Intimacy. Give us the ability to be intimate with you."
And you know what’s interesting? While I’m saying this, isn’t it true? In your heart you’re going, "It’s true. I don’t like the implications. But it’s true."
Hey, if God loves you, what else would he say to you?
Final verse, then we’re done. Here’s how verse 20 goes. Listen to this and then we’re done. This is how he ends the passage. "You were bought at a price," [bottom line] "therefore, honor God with your body." Honor God with your body. It means getting up every morning; this is part of my prayer routine. "God, surrender my hands, surrender my eyes, surrender my ears, surrender my mouth, and surrender my feet. I want you to use this dying, decaying body to honor you somehow. I want to go where you want me to go. I want to say what you want me to say. I don’t want to hear what you don’t want me to hear. I don’t want to look at what you don’t want me to look at. I want to honor you with my body. And whatever price I pay and whatever I miss out on by honoring you with my body, I believe, is worth it in the long run because I won’t fall for the lie of our culture."
Would you just do that? Would you be willing to do that? Would you just repent from your sexual immorality and flee? You know you won’t regret it. And, in time, because God is this way, he’ll begin to heal you. I’ve seen it so many times. And God will enable you to experience intimacy, which is way better than just sex. And God will prepare you for a better future. But it begins with repentance and a commitment to flee sexual immorality, to honor God with your body. Sex isn’t just physical. It’s way, way deeper than that, because God designed it to be deeper than that.
Let’s pray together. Heavenly Father, it’s a lot easier for me to talk about than for many of us to go out and do. Father, I’m so grateful, I’m so grateful for the men and women who spoke to me as a high school student and just hammered and hammered and hammered away at this. God, I want to spend the rest of my life doing that for others. Father, for those of us who have some homework today, some repenting to do, some confession to do, I pray that 24 hours won’t go by without us doing it. Please heal some marriages. Please give some husbands and wives an Aha! moment to realize, "Oh my gosh, no wonder. No wonder." Father, I pray that you give some teenagers some resolve, some singles who live in this culture where it’s so difficult to be single and to be pure, some resolve. Father, I pray that you make us little itty-bitty lights, the right kind of lights in this dark world. And we know we’re not going to change culture, and we know we’re not going to reverse this trend. But I pray that you would use us to give others hope to know there’s another way, because there’s a God who loves us, who’s loved us enough to tell us how to approach and how to handle this incredible gift called sex. Thank you for an environment where we can talk about this. In Jesus’ name, Amen.
