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Aug 24, 2014

A Proverb on Purity | Part 6

Passage: Proverbs 5:1-23

Preacher: Tim Badal

Series:Proverbs

Detail:

Sexual immorality is something that is pervasive in our culture today, and as followers of Christ, we ought to address this issue.  Many of you will agree with me saying, “Yes, the world needs this message now more than ever before because sexual immorality is an issue that has grown to epic proportions and has led to the destruction of the family unit.   No other period in history has experienced such rampant, destructive sexual immorality.” 

Remember that the Book of Proverbs was written almost 3,000 years ago.  That’s a long time.  That’s before the roaring twenties, before the sexual revolution of the sixties.   The author of this ancient book dedicates over an eighth of the entire book to the issue of sexual purity.  You don’t think ancient Israelites had a problem with sexual immorality?  Brothers and sisters, this predisposition to all things sexual in our culture is not new.  It is as old as the sun.

Therefore you have a choice to make.  Will you surrender your emotions and passions to God on the Cross of Jesus Christ, living according to His ways?  Or, will you choose to pursue your own wants, desires and definitions of morality?  In Proverbs 5 and 7, Solomon is going to speak openly, honestly, candidly and even in a way that’s risqué.  Remember that these aren’t just the words of Solomon; they are words from your heavenly Father.  Every word that you read in the Bible comes from the lips of God Himself.

Before we get into the words of Solomon on purity, you need to understand the issue of lust.  I want you to understand what “lust” means on a deeper level.  It’s a word that is often used, but one that needs further definition and development.  The definition I am giving you is not a new one.  It’s a definition drawn from our time in the Sermon on the Mount.

Sociologists will tell you that sexual lust is very simply defined as, “the illicit buzz within the human being.”  There is this passion, this energy within, that is sexual in nature.  However, you ought to understand lust as “a willfully-allowed, pleasurable gratification of wrongfully-directed sexual desire that takes place deep within you.”  That’s a mouthful.  What is that thing that peaks your imagination?  Your fantasy?   Your focus and attention?

It is “willfully allowed.”  If you have ever struggled with physical lust, you can’t blame someone else.  You can’t say, “Well, it’s the devil’s fault that I’m lusting.  The devil made me do it.”  While the devil tempts, the devil cannot force you to do anything that you don’t want to do.  James 4:7 says that when you resist the devil, he must flee from you.  Recognize that when you lust, you choose to do so.  You can’t blame God.  Some will say, “Well, God created me this way.  The Lord made me a sexual being with desires, wants and a pursuit for pleasure.  Because God made me this way, I need to live out every fantasy, every desire that I have.”  God has enabled you to do a lot of things, but He has not enabled you to sin.  He’s given you His Word to structure your life and He’s given you the ability to be self-controlled.

In your sinful human nature, you have the capacity to get so angry that you want to take someone’s life.  For example, the feelings that you get when you sit on I-88 during construction season — you can get pretty angry.  The sinful things that you think come from the depths of hell, like the feelings you have when someone cuts you off or when someone gets that promotion at work that you were expecting.  The Bible says, “Though you have the potential to commit heinous and evil things, God has given you an essential fruit of His Holy Spirit: self-control.  Self-control enables you to say ‘No’ to unruly and sinful passions.”

You can’t blame God for your lust.  You can’t blame the pretty woman.  You can’t blame the handsome man.  You can’t blame the media for your struggle with lust.  Lust doesn’t begin with someone else; it begins deep inside each and every person.   “There is nothing outside a person that by going into him can defile him, but the things that come out of a person are what defile him (Mark 7:15).”  You are the problem.  The media didn’t create pornography.  The media didn’t create sensual entertainment.  The human heart did.  Humanity had an immorality issue long before cable TV.  Humanity had a morality issue long before magazines were published.  Humanity was immoral long before the Internet because, “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it?” (Jeremiah 17:9).  You need to take ownership of your sin.

The second part of this definition is “pleasurable gratification.”  Lust and sexual activity result from God’s gift to you.   People have taken God’s gift of sexual pleasure — what was supposed to be between a husband and wife within the marriage relationship for a lifetime — and have thrown it onto the garbage pile of sin.  Sex is the gift that God uses to cement a marital relationship, to separate that relationship from others.

A husband and a wife can have a close friendship, but each person within the marriage can also have close, platonic friendships with men and women who are not their spouse.  What distinguishes the relationship between a husband and a wife from every other human relationship is the ability to stand before one another naked and unashamed.  They don’t do that with friends.  

God in His common grace allowed for sexual relationships to be pleasurable.  I wish that at the moment the pastor says, “I now pronounce you husband and wife” the sexual light switch would turn on.  All of a sudden, you’re standing before your spouse and thinking, “Oh, hey!  How are you?  You come here often?”  But that’s not what happens.  At some point in your young teenage life that light switch comes on and you become a fully functioning sexual being.  Sex is something very pleasurable, something intended to bring joy and satisfaction.  God has enabled our bodies to experience incredible pleasure from sex.  God has created you to be a sexual creature.   He’s done so for the marital relationship, but humanity has corrupted it.

Lust isn’t all sexual desire; it’s “wrongfully directed sexual desire.”  You can’t lust for your husband or wife.  Those feelings are love, sexual love, toward one another.  However, when you direct any sexual thought — whether in mind, heart or body —toward anyone you are not in a marriage relationship with, you lust after him or her.  Any thought that is acted upon in your mind, or body, is a lust that leads to fornication, immorality and adultery.

C.S. Lewis, the great theologian, used the metaphor of a fireplace, where the family was enjoying a wonderful fire on a cold evening, to describe lust.  God has created within every human being a fireplace where fire can be enjoyed, where warmth and the coziness of a roaring fire can be felt.  When fire is in the fireplace, it’s protected.  When it’s in the fireplace it is where it needs to be, where we can enjoy the benefits of it without the disaster that could result.  Lust takes that fire out of the fireplace and puts it in the middle of the family room.  What was beautiful and picturesque has become chaotic, hurting all those who are in its vicinity. 

Continuing with our definition, lust “takes place deep within us…." You cannot fully understand your sexuality. You don’t know where it begins.  You don’t know where sexual thoughts come from.  Don’t deceive yourself by thinking that they’re only skin deep.  Your sexuality is more than nerve endings in your body.  Sexuality goes to the very depths of who you are.  Your sexual response is incredibly personal, incredibly complicated and incredibly hard to pin down.  Because your sexuality goes down to the very depths of who you are, many of you struggle with this issue, whether it’s with wrong thoughts, pornography, self-stimulation, sensual entertainment, or homosexual feelings and attractions.  For singles, it’s fornication — sexual sin outside of marriage.  For married couples, it’s adultery — sexual sin within the marriage with someone other than your spouse.  Sin within this arena affects everyone.  Your struggles with sexual immorality serve as a reminder that you are a sinner in need of God’s grace. 

Now some of you will say right away, “Come on, Tim.  This is the church and we don’t need to talk about such things.”  Let me remind you that an eighth of this entire book is dedicated to sexual purity.  The entire book of Song of Solomon speaks candidly on sexual relations.  Society is obsessed with sex.  I believe sexual purity is one of the greatest issues facing the church today.  The church needs to address this topic, bringing clarity and instruction to the sexual experience.

Technology allows more and more avenues for sexual sin, and the devil bombards us with images and scenarios that make you turn to sexual sin.  Sex sells everything these days.  It sells cars, cheeseburgers, clothing, potato chips, deodorant and even web hosting companies.  Brothers and sisters, it is so easy for you to fall into lust.  It’s all around us. 

A generation ago, parents had it easier than today because technology wasn’t an issue.  I remember on family car trips, when my mom saw a billboard that she didn’t want us to see, she would point in the other direction and say, “Oh, look at the deer!”  It was so much easier for my mom to keep her young boys from seeing things that would make them stumble than it is for parents today.  Back then, a person needed to go into the seedy part of town to find a racy magazine.  Now, every sin in Sodom and Gomorrah is at your fingertips.

Just to bring this into perspective, pornography is a 97 billion dollar industry globally.  Of that amount $13 billion comes from the United States alone.  Twelve percent of all Internet sites are dedicated to pornography.  That’s more than 27 million.  Two-and-a-half billion emails a day are pornographic.  Twenty-five percent of all search engine requests each day are pornographic in nature.  One in four people are using the Internet to pursue sexual immorality.  Seventy percent of 18-24-year-old men confess to visiting pornographic sites every month.  Sixty-six percent of men in their twenties and thirties also confessed to being regular users of pornographic material. 

Hearing these statistics you might say, “Wait a minute, that’s the world.  That’s not indicative of the church.”  Barna surveyed evangelical churches and reached the following conclusion:

  • 70% of Christian men and 47% of Christian women admit to struggling with pornography on a daily basis.
  • 48% of Christian men and 20% of Christian women admit to having an addiction to pornography.

You might be tempted to think, “That wouldn’t be true of the people here at Village Bible Church.”  So take those numbers and cut them in half.  That would mean that 35% of men and 23% of women at our church struggle with pornography.  That’s still one in three men and one in four women who admit to dealing with this.

Now you say, “These statistics might be true for the average evangelical church, but we’re Village Bible Church.  We’re far better than that.”  Well, we are an average evangelical church: our giving is average, our weekly rate of attendance is average, involvement in our church ministries is average.  We are an average church.  Right now in our pews, in our youth group, in our men’s groups and women’s groups, there are people who are losing the battle against sexual immorality.  We have a problem.  It’s a man problem; it’s a woman problem; it’s a young person problem.  It is something that affects all ages, all sexes and every socio-economic status in life.  We are losing the battle. 

But God gives grace.  We need God’s Word working in our lives and hearts.  In His great love, God has provided a way to rid ourselves of all our struggles, all of our failings and all of the emotions behind them.  God has given us a safe haven that is under the Lordship of Jesus Christ.  When we place ourselves under His Lordship, we find fulfillment in Christ alone and not in our sexual desires and passions.

 

1. The Deceptive Promises that Immorality Advertises

In order to lay our sin at the feet of our Savior, you’ve got to get into God’s Word.  Solomon begins in Proverbs 5:1-2, “My son…”  Think of this passage in light of all that you’ve just heard, “My son — in light of the pornography that’s running rampant, in light of adultery, in light of all the sexual innuendos and compromising things you see on television, in light of the sex-saturated world you live in — be attentive to my wisdom; incline your ear.”  Remember what that means: “Thrust yourself, throw yourself.”  “Incline your ear to my understanding, that you may keepdiscretion, and your lips mayguard knowledge.”   Ifyou’re struggling with sexual immorality in your thought life or your physical life, the answer comes in verses one and two.  Incline your ear to the Word of God.  Stop listening to that “illicit buzz” within you and start listening to the Creator.  Live your life according to what He says, not according to your passions and emotions. 

In verse three Solomon warns against “the forbidden woman…."  The text says that she is beautiful.  She’s gorgeous.  She’s attractive.  She is desirable.  Sexual immorality is personified in a woman who is always available and willing to do whatever pleases you.  She is ready for action.  Though this personification of sexual sin takes a feminine form, it doesn’t mean that this is only a male issue. 

Sweet and smooth

Immorality, personified as this beautiful and attractive woman (or handsome and gorgeous man), starts out smooth and sweet.  Verse three, “For the lips ofa forbiddenwoman drip honey, and her speechissmoother than oil.”   In the day of Proverbs you couldn’t get anything sweeter than honey or smoother than oil.  Indulging in sexual immorality happens because it feels so good.  It feels right.

In Proverbs 7:10, Solomon gives a running commentary on a young, simple man who looks for a night of passion.  The young man knows where to find it; he knows where the adulteress is.  In the same way, you — when you’re looking for that illicit sexual buzz — know exactly where to go to find it.  The woman meets him…

dressed as a prostitute, wily of heart.
11She is loud and wayward;
 her feet do not stay at home;
12 now in the street, now in the market,
and at every corner she lies in wait
13 She seizes him and kisses him,
and with bold face she says to him,
14 “I had to offer sacrifices,
and today I have paid my vows;
15 so now I have come out to meet you,
to seek you eagerly, and I have found you.
16 I have spread my couch with coverings,
colored linens from Egyptian linen;
17 I have perfumed my bed with myrrh,
 aloes, and cinnamon.
18 Come, let us take our fill of love till morning;
let us delight ourselves with love.
19 For my husband is not at home;
He has gone on a long journey;
20 he took a bag of money with him;
at full moon he will come home.”
21 With much seductive speech she persuades him;
With her smooth talk she compels him.

 Now go back to Proverbs 5.  Why does sexual immorality feel so right and taste so sweet?  The Apostle Paul tells us that the devil masquerades as an angel of light (2 Corinthians 11:14).  Last week one of my sons forgot to take out one of the garbage cans.  We had garbage in the garage that was eight days old.  I opened the lid and what came out?  Maggots.  Sexual immorality is a garbage can full of maggots.  When you see maggots, you recoil.  It’s just sick.  It’s like, “Why in the world, God, did You create those things?”  The devil knows, “I can’t put a bucket of maggots before these Christians.  I’ll put a prime rib dinner before them, or a plentiful plate of fruits and vegetables.”  He uses beautiful things, a centerpiece from which you can’t look away.  So it is with immorality.

Sour and sharp

What started out sweet and smooth ends up sour and sharp.  It’s so attractive and so delightful, yet when we consume it, Proverbs 5:4 says, “But in the end she isbitter aswormwood, sharp asa two-edged sword.”  “Bitter as wormwood” is a phrase that only occurs eight times in Scripture and it describes an herb that was incredibly bitter.  In small amounts the herb was only bitter, but if you consumed any more of it, it was deadly.  So it is with immorality.  It tastes good as it touches your lips but as it starts going down the gullet of your life it becomes sour. 

Immorality is something that starts out smooth, but becomes as sharp as a double-edged sword.  This expression in Scripture also describes the holy Word of God in Hebrews 4:12.  It’s sharper than any double-edged sword.  It cuts down into joints and marrow.  It breaks down all things.  So what is this passage in Proverbs saying about sexual immorality?  It does the opposite of what the Word of God does.  The Word of God cuts through everything like a knife in a surgeon’s hand, breaking down sin and unbelief.  Sexual immorality cuts like a double-edged sword, cutting the flesh and the soul as well. 

Some of you are bearing the consequences of sexual immorality — the psychological, social and the soul-driven consequences of immorality in your life.  What started out so good ended up being sharp and sour.

In chapter 7 Solomon continues to describe the sharp consequences of sexual sin:

21 With much seductive speech she persuades him;
With her smooth talk she compels him.
22 All at once he follows her,
as an ox goes to the slaughter,
or as a stag is caught fast
23till an arrow pierces its liver;
As a bird rushes into a snare;
he does not know that it will cost him his life…
26 for many a victim has she laid low,
and all her slain are a mighty throng.
27 Her house is the way to Sheol,
going down to the chambers of death.

 

2. The Path of Immorality Leads to Disaster

If you find yourself playing with sexual immorality — on a computer screen, a book, a television or in real life — though it feels good right now, it will not end up that way.  The path of immorality leads to disaster.  Solomon understood that.  In Proverbs 6:27 he says,

27 Can a man carry fire next to his chest
and his clothes not be burned?
28 Or can one walk on hot coals
and his feet not be scorched?
29 So is he who goes in to his neighbor's wife;
none who touches her will go unpunished.

Solomon is not talking about a geographical neighbor.  In the New Testament, Jesus was asked, “Who is my neighbor?”  To answer, Jesus told the story of the Good Samaritan that irradiates ethnic division, making all humanity your neighbor.  The person you are lusting after — even if you don’t know his or her name — is your neighbor.  Your sin will not go unpunished.  “Do not be deceived: God is not mocked, for whatever one sows, that will he also reap” (Galatians 6:7). 

In our text in Proverbs 5:7-14, Solomon says:

7 And now, O sons, listen to me,
and do not depart from the words of my mouth.
8 Keep your way far from her,
and do not go near the door of her house,
9 lest you give your honor to others
and your years to the merciless,
10 lest strangers take their fill of your strength,
and your labors go to the house of a foreigner,
11 and at the end of your life you groan,
when your flesh and body are consumed,
12 and you say,“How I hated discipline,
and my heart despised reproof!
13 I did not listen to the voice of my teachers
or incline my ear to my instructors.
14 I am at the brink of utter ruin
in the assembled congregation.”

 There are three consequences to sexual immorality:  disgrace, disease and disappointment. 

Disgrace

First of all, we will inevitably find disgrace.  Your honor is given to others.  Think of the countless men and women who have lost all respect because they allowed their sexual appetites to get the best of them.  How many Christians have lost the ability to minister and preach the gospel of Jesus Christ because they have fallen morally?  Think of the lost opportunities that have taken place due to sexual sin. 

Your disgrace affects all those who are close to you.  Have you ever noticed that when a major politician or celebrity falls morally, they almost always have their spouse standing right next to them?  Brothers and sisters, when you live this way you will get caught and disgrace will affect those closest to you.  It can destroy the very fabric of the people you love most.  

Disease

Look at Proverbs 5:11, “And at the end of your life you groan, when your flesh and body are consumed.”  Scholars believe that this is a disease that comes from rampant sexual immorality.  There are two types of diseases.  Sexual immorality consumes the body and causes you to groan.  Sexual immorality in society is affecting you in epic proportions.  The CDC (Center for Disease Control) says that 50% of 18 to 25-year-olds carry a sexually transmitted disease, many of them not knowing it.  This raises your chances for certain disease and cancer.  Because of sexual immorality, your immune system is damaged, making you susceptible to all types of illness and ailments.  While sexual sin is of no greater grievance to God than any other sin, Paul says that sexual sin is different because when you sin sexually, you sin against your own bodies (1 Corinthians 6:18).

But some of you are thinking right now, “I’m safe because what I’m doing is not physical.  I don’t have to worry about disease or unwanted pregnancy because I choose pornography.  It allows for that illicit buzz, yet it is safe.”  But you are dead wrong.  Pornography is a drug that affects your brain.  When it is consumed, it releases dopamine into the brain.  The more you view pornography the more you will have to consume in order to get the same high.  You are a drug user and abuser.  To steal the phrase from a famous song, “I used to do a little, but a little was too little, so a little got more and more.”   Your addiction may have started with something on cable TV, then it turned to the Internet and now you say, “I can’t live without it.”  You may have trained your body to think that way, but Jesus has overcome the world and our bodies as well. 

Pornography is a real danger.  It’s a real threat because it is warping the minds of young people.  The average starting age of a person who views pornography is around nine years of age.  Their view of what it means to look for a spouse is totally warped.  They have trained themselves to think, “That’s what sexual intimacy looks like.”  When they marry and their spouse doesn’t do those things — doesn’t drop everything for their whims and desires — they say, “Well, my spouse ain’t doing it for me.”  In a recent blockbuster movie called Don Jon, a man is so addicted to porn that he’d rather have his porn than a real woman.  This is a movie by secular writers!  This is a problem, and when you play with fire, you will be burned. 

Disappointment

This disease doesn’t just affect your body and mind, but in verses 12-14 it causes disappointment:

12 and you say,“How I hated discipline,
and my heart despised reproof!
13 I did not listen to the voice of my teachers
or incline my ear to my instructors.
14 I am at the brink of utter ruin
in the assembled congregation.”

I can’t tell you how many people I’ve counseled who have regretted giving in to sexual immorality.  The heartbreak of it all!  They wished that they could go back to that moment, back to that day, back to that scenario where it all began, and do it differently.  The young person who went too far has to explain to a future spouse that what was supposed to be kept for them has been given away to someone else.  I have seen the sorrow of a spouse who has to explain why they’ve been caught with pornography.  I’ve see the devastation of a marriage as the result of an affair.  Why didn’t you incline your ears to the teachers, to the truth of Scripture? 

Verse nine describes the consequences that follow.  “You will give your years to the merciless.”  The devil loves to trick you into thinking that you can commit sexual immorality and not be burned.  He is merciless in showing you how he deceived you in that moment.

 

3. Protection against Immorality Involves Discipline

How can you change?  Like the person in verse twelve, you might be full of remorse.  “How I hated discipline.”  Remember that there is great truth.  There’s great hope.  There’s great grace.  Solomon leaves you with truth that can transform your life.  Whether your past is filled with junk and you’re looking for redemption, or you’re struggling right now and you’re looking for forgiveness, Solomon says that there is grace.  There is truth that can lead us out of sexual sin.  It’s as simple as ABC. 

Avoid immorality at all costs

A — avoid it.  If you don’t want to live this way, if you want to be wise in your sexual passion, avoid immorality at all cost.  Verse eight, “Keep your way far from her.”  Don’t play games with your sexual desires. 

I bought a van about a year and a half ago that had a fuel pump issue.  The gas gauge stopped working.  I would play a game with my gas gauge:  “How far can I go before I run out of gas?”  I ran out of gas a lot!  If you’re playing the, “How far can I go?” game with sexual temptation right now, you’ve already gone too far.  My dad used to tell me, “Tim, don’t ask me how far is too far when you’re dating.  If you’re asking that question, you’ve probably gone too far.”  Asking that question is your conscious setting off alarms.

This concept of keeping far from temptation is the same as the word “flee” in the New Testament.  In the Greek, it is the word pheugo.  It is easy to remember.  Flee means “you go.” The Bible says to resist all types of sins, but when it comes to sexual sin it says, “Run for dear life.”  It literally means, “to vanish, get lost, seek safety by flight.”  Stop playing with this!  Don’t stand around and try to resist it, don’t try to test the waters, do exactly what Joseph did with Potiphar’s wife and run away.

Build a good marriage

B — build a good marriage.  The Bible says that marriage is given so that sexual immorality can be thwarted.  Look at verses 15 through 20:

15 Drink water from your own cistern,
flowing water from your own well.
16 Should your springs be scattered abroad,
streams of water in the streets?
17 Let them be for yourself alone,
and not for strangers with you.
18 Let your fountain be blessed,
And rejoice in the wife of your youth,
19 a lovely deer, a graceful doe.
Let her breasts fill you at all times with delight;
 be intoxicated always in her love.
20 Why should you be intoxicated, my son, with a forbidden woman
and embrace the bosom of an adulteress?

The Bible makes it clear that the antidote to sexual immorality is a good, Biblical marriage.  God is talking about a monogamous, lifelong, heterosexual marriage with one person. 

Solomon reminds us of two truths.  Marriage in the Scriptures is always seen as exclusive.  Your sexuality is not your own, it is your spouse’s.  Paul tells us that a husband’s body does not belong to him, but to his wife; the wife’s body doesn’t belong to her, but to her husband (1 Corinthians 7:4).  The marriage bed is something that should not be defiled.  When a husband and wife are living out God’s principles on sexual relationships, what happens in the bedroom is a beautiful thing in God’s eyes.  There’s nothing dirty about it.  It is God’s gift to that husband and wife.

Marriage is also exhilarating.  Notice the words that are used.  “Fill you at all times with delight…be intoxicated always in her love…rejoice in the wife of your youth.”  Read Song of Solomon and you will blush at the joyful, sexual intimacy between a husband and wife. 

As you grow older, you are to delight in that same person whom you fell in love with in your youth and covenanted to love all the days of your life.  If you are experiencing a cold and sexless marriage, you are disobeying God’s calling for you as husbands and wives.  Christian marriages should be the trophy of what redemptive sexuality looks like.

Now I know that marriages are full of ups and downs.  What was easier to do as a young person has become more difficult as the days have grown longer.  You and your spouse need to talk those things over.  Intimacy begins long before the clothes come off; it begins in conversation.  One of you take the lead and say, “We haven’t talked about this very much.  How is our sex life?”  And you don’t need to tell anyone else, but you and your spouse need to talk about that and ask the question, “Is our sex life glorifying God?”  I know it’s difficult to make a strong marriage, but by the grace of God you can do it.

Commit to obedient living

The final point of our A-B-Cs is to Commit to obedient living, verses 21-23.  You have a decision to make.

21 For a man's ways are before the eyes of the Lord,
and he ponders all his paths.
22 The iniquities of the wicked ensnare him,
and he is held fast in the cords of his sin.
23 He dies for lack of discipline,
and because of his great folly he is led astray.

 You can either make your sexual passions your god and king, putting them first and foremost in your life, or you can give God His rightful place and obey Him.  God wants you to live.  In order for you to live the blessed life — either as a single or as a married individual — you need to obey.  For some that will mean chastity and celibacy for a lifetime, and God’s grace is able to help you in that.  For some it will mean getting married instead of burning with passion.  For some it will mean relighting the fire in your marriage.  God examines your ways.  My prayer is that He will see that you are committing each day, not to live for your passions, but for Him. 

When you fall, have a humble and contrite heart that is eager to seek restoration and forgiveness, remembering that it is Jesus alone Who can cast a stone your way because He’s the only One Who has been tempted and did not sin.  But instead of condemning you for your sexual sin, Jesus Christ came into this world to forgive you and cleanse you.  He nailed every one of your sexual sins to the Cross of Calvary.  They are not held against you anymore.  They can do you no harm because God is faithful to redeem you from every illicit, sexual buzz within you.  Thanks be to God for His love!  Thanks be to God for His grace!  Thanks be to God for His forgiveness and the Spirit that enables you to have victory over lust and sexual immorality.  Amen? 

Let’s pray.

Father God, we thank You for Your Word that speaks such truth to us.  Lord, I ask that Your Spirit would fall upon each and every person here so that they may choose to follow their Savior, not their sin.  Empower them to say “No” to sin and ungodly lust.  Let them look to Christ, the sinless Savior, Who was tempted in all ways yet without sin.  Remind them that it is possible to conquer sin by the Spirit’s power.  So fill us with Your Spirit.

Lord, if there are people here who are struggling with this, may they find a faithful friend to confess their sins to and seek reconciliation.   Lord, let them be quick to repent from their sins so that they may experience forgiveness.  I know that some of my brothers and sisters are dying inside, and I pray You would give them hope.  I pray that You would give them victory.  I pray, Lord, that they will be able to see this day as a day that sexual sin wasn’t going to control them any longer. 

Lord, I pray we’d be a church who is transparent about our struggle with sexual sin.  I pray that we would help and counsel people about this issue.  May this church be a place that doesn’t put on a badge that says, “We’ve got it all figured it out,” but let it be a place where broken people can come and find redemption and hope for even the most difficult sins.  Now Lord, lead us into this world of debauchery around us, so that we may shine like bright stars for You.  We need Your Spirit, Lord.  Empower us so that we will not gratify our sinful flesh.  It is in Christ’s Name we close out this service.  In His Name we pray.  Amen. 

 

Village Bible Church  |  847 North State Route 47, Sugar Grove, IL 60554  |  (630) 466-7198  |  http://www.villagebible.org/sugar-grove/resources/sermons

All Scriptures quoted directly from the English Standard Version unless otherwise noted. 

Note: This transcription has been provided by Sermon Transcribers (www.sermontranscribers.net).