Why Sex Matters | J.D. Greear | October 10, 2021

0:02 Welcome to all of our campuses in the Triangle. We are one church that meets in 12 different locations in the Triangle from North Durham to Garner to our Summit in Espanol campus to, of course, our brothers and sisters each week who join us in our prison campuses. In fact, at all of our campuses, would you welcome that very special group of brothers and sisters that meet at a weight correctional facility with the men's and women's. And of course, everywhere in between, in between all of those different places, today is exciting for two reasons. First, it is because today at the end of our service, as most of you heard from our very loquacious campus pastors, who I'm sure explained this in great detail, but I'm going to invite all kinds of people at all of our campuses to proclaim their faith by baptism. I believe that all of you saw some sort of baptism just a moment ago, and that's just a glimpse of what we are praying that the Lord does over the next couple of weeks here beginning this very day. Some of you who need to get baptized were not expecting that when you came to church today. Maybe the thought had not even crossed your mind, but I know from firsthand experience that some of the most important stuff that God did in my life was not stuff that I was really looking for or planning for, and so today is going to be that day for you. I will tell you more about that at the end of my message. But bottom line, if you have never gone public with your faith through baptism, today is the day for you to take your first step forward. And we'll take care of everything necessary after that. We got everything you need to make that reality happen today. The second reason today is exciting is because after a few, let's just say challenging weeks in First Corinthians talking about division and sin and confrontation in the church this weekend, we get to have a nice and easy chat about why sex matters. That is the subject of our next chapter in our study through 1 Corinthians. 1 Corinthians 6, if you have your Bibles and you want to open them there. 1 Corinthians 6, if you've got your Bible. We've called our study through 1 Corinthians,

2:09 we've called it Cutting Through the Noise, because Paul takes a number of issues the Corinthians are dealing with, and he shows them how the gospel is the voice that cuts through the noise of their culture and their own disordered hearts and guides them through the chaos, that the gospel is the lighthouse that guides them to safety in the darkness. In part one of this letter, that's chapters one through four, Paul is going to deal with the problem of divisions in the church. We saw that over the first few weeks. In part two, the questions relate to sex and marriage and singleness. A couple of weeks ago, we stuck our toe in these waters. So now is probably a good time for me to say to some of you parents who don't pay any attention to the emails that we send you, you let them go straight to your spam box.

3:06 This is the judgment of God on you for doing that. You may want to take your child gently by the hand right now and just meander out to the lobby where you will find a friendly summit representative that will be able to guide you into one of our awesome kids ministry opportunities that we have during this hour, because the subject matter today may bring up some questions that you're not ready to ask or we're not ready to answer yet. By the way, if your kid is 13 years old or above, they should be fine. In fact, there might be a few things in here they'll have to explain to you today, okay? But 1 Corinthians chapter 6, Corinth was a highly sexualized society. Sexual promiscuity was so common in Corinth that Corinthianized was a verb. If someone was Corinthianized, it meant they had become sexually deviant. Corinth had over a thousand prostitutes, and that was for a city about 120 at the size of Raleigh. It worked out to about one out of every third of 30 people that you saw walking around in Corinth was a prostitute. One in 30, right? So it's not surprising that the church in Corinth dealt with these things. And by the way, let that be an encouragement to some of you, maybe you feel a little off being in church because of a sexual past. Like if people found out about your history, they wouldn't want you here. First of all, let me tell you, that is not true.

4:27 I want you to be encouraged. Jesus's original band of disciples included a number of people with sexually dysfunctional past. In fact, that'd be a polite way of saying it. His earliest churches were filled with people with sexual issues. So I want you to understand that this church is for you. And this gospel, most of all, is for you. Specifically, with the church in Corinth, there were some that were even saying that the occasional visit to a prostitute was not that big of a deal. After all, they said, I mean, it's just biology, right? I mean, when you're hungry, you eat. Then you feel better. It's natural. It works the same way when you want to have sex. You have it, and then you feel better. It's just natural. So in 1 Corinthians 6, Paul wants to show them that there is an extremely spiritual dimension to sex because God made us, here is your nerdy word for the weekend, God made us a psychosomatic unity. And all that means is that our soul, psycho, and our body, soma, is unified and you cannot neatly separate one from the other. Yes, it is true that when our body dies, our soul goes on to be with Jesus and it is disembodied for a while. But see, that's not the way our soul was created to be. And so when we're in that state, Scripture says that we are uncomfortable.

5:47 We are longing to be clothed with our resurrected bodies. And that's because our soul is created to be united to a body. And thus, Paul is going to argue that because our bodies and souls are one, sex is far from a meaningless physical activity or far from even something simply given to us to procreate and to keep the species going, propagate the species. Sex has an extremely spiritual dimension to it. Check it out, verse 9. Don't you know, don't you know that the unrighteous will not inherit God's kingdom? Don't be deceived. No sexually immoral people, no sexually immoral people, idolaters, adulterers, or males who have sex with males, no thieves, greedy people, drunkards, verbally abusive people, or swindlers will inherit God's kingdom. Sexual sin is not, of course, the only sin that he mentions in that list, but notice how many times he brings up some variation of sexual sin. Verse 12, verse 12, everything is permissible for me, but not everything is beneficial. Now, I want you to notice the quotes that are around that phrase, everything is permissible. You see, to make sense of this passage, you have to understand what Paul is doing. He is quoting some of the popular slogans of the day. I don't know if they were in poetry, literature, or if they were song lyrics. I don't know. But he's quoting popular slogans of the day in Corinth, and then he is rebutting them. It's kind of like if I were to say to you, what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas, that doesn't mean that I approve of that statement.

7:22 I'm just highlighting a horrible phrase in our culture, and then I'll offer an alternative. And it's like me saying, what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas, but the regrets and venereal diseases stay with you forever, right? People sometimes see these phrases in quotes, and they think that Paul is affirming what's in the quote. It's actually the opposite. He's contradicting what's in the quote. Everything is permissible for me, the statement goes, but Paul responds, not everything is beneficial. Some of the Christians in Corinth were saying, hey, we've been freed from the law, and now we can do whatever we want. And Paul's like, first of all, even if that were true, your freedom from the law was freedom to love God and to love others. Are casual, open, sexual relationships, are those loving, are they beneficial for either you or your neighbor? Paul continues. He says, everything is permissible for me, but, Paul counters, I will not be mastered by anything. I will not be mastered by anything. Being freed from the law, he says, does not mean just giving myself over to my sinful desires, whatever my body desires of the moment. You're trying to tell me that just because my body desires something that makes it right? That's crazy talk. If my body says, eat a dozen donuts, which it often does, that does not always mean it's the right decision. If my body feels like violently raging at the person who just cut me off in traffic, as it sometimes does, I should not obey that. Scripture tells me what is right.

8:54 My mind and my reason tell me what is right, not my bodily urges. That's the least reliable of all the different things informing me about what is right. Verse 13, Paul addresses another Corinthian slogan. Verse 13, food is for the stomach, and the stomach's for food, and God will do away with both of them. Now, unfortunately, the CSB that I'm reading from ends the quotation mark after the word food. But I actually think that's wrong. And by the way, the quotes aren't in the original Greek because they didn't use quotes. So, you know, we added the quotes to help interpret it, all right? But I actually think it's the wrong place to put the quote. And that's because the whole statement is what Corinthians would say. And what it meant was this. Food is for the stomach and the stomach for food. Basically, it's that idea that when you're hungry, you eat. That's really all that's happening with sex. Food, stomach, stomach, food. It's just this, you know, relationship. That's just how it works. Your body has a desire. You satisfy it. And God will do away with both of them. That was the idea that God is mostly unconcerned with the physical body.

9:52 It's just a temporary house for the soul. What God really cares about is the spirit. One day, in fact, he's just going to do away with the physical body. And all that will remain with God is just your spirit. So the place that you know and love God is your heart. And what happens with your body, that's less important. That is something called, ready for more nerdiness here, that is something called platonic dualism. That is the belief that the physical body is basically worthless and only the spirit matters. Plato, of course, was a huge figure in ancient Greece, and the place that Plato philosophized was actually not that far from Corinth, right? Just, you know, just probably an hour away by if you were riding in a car, and his ideas, Plato's ideas, was a major influence in this part of the world. Food is for the stomach, stomach for food, God will do away with both of them, and all that matters is your spirit. That's where you want to know and love God. But see, here's the thing. The Bible never teaches that God will just do away with your body one day. Scripture always talks about our bodies in terms of resurrection and redemption, never just discarding. So the Corinthian lie about sex, to summarize it, has basically two parts. Part A, sex is just physical. It's like any other biological need, right? And part B, what you do with your body really has no bearing on your soul.

11:11 Now, before we get to Paul's answer, could we just ask here for a minute, do people still believe versions of this lie today? Yeah. Sounds like this. Casual sex between consenting adults doesn't really hurt anybody. We just had some fun for a while. We were both lonely. It's no big deal. There were no strings attached. Or it was just a little harmless affair to break up the monotony. We both agreed it was nothing serious. Or like Katy Perry said in one of her songs, I don't even know your name. It doesn't matter. You're my experimental game. It's just human nature. Some of you are like, how is he up on the latest Katy Perry songs? While others of you are like, that song is literally 13 years old. My kids consider Katy Perry in the genre of classic rock, which hurts me a lot, okay? When I think of secular lyrics to illustrate whatever points, the first thing I always think about are either Run DMC or REO Speedwagon lyrics or Reba McIntyre. So at least appreciate my attempts to get within this millennium, okay? All right, but that's basically what she's saying, the same thing. It's a Corinthian lie.

12:17 In other words, it's just physical, right? It's just physical. It's just biology. Satan is a liar par excellence, but he is not original. He just recycles these things over and over and over again. Here's another version of the Corinthian lie. I should be able to love whoever I want. God doesn't care about who you have sex with. Love is love. Just figure out what works for you. What God really cares about, what God really cares about is that you're a good, honest person, that you love people, that you're compassionate, and that you're happy. That's just another way of saying the physical design doesn't really matter that much. Only the Spirit matters. So yes, I would say to you, the Corinthian lie about sex is alive and well in the world today.

13:14 So verse 13, Paul counters, however, however, the body is not for sexual immorality, it's for the Lord, and the Lord is for the body. God raised up the Lord, there he's talking about Jesus, and will also raise us up by his power. That is a direct refutation of Platonic dualism. Verse 15, don't you know that your bodies are part of Christ's body now? So should I take part of Christ's body, my body, and make it part of a prostitute? Absolutely not. Don't you know that anyone joined to a prostitute has become one body with her? For Scripture says, a quote from Genesis 2, the two are going to become one flesh when they come together in sex. But anyone, verse 17, joined to the Lord is already one spirit with Him. Y'all, if nothing more. Notice that there is an extremely spiritual dimension to how Paul is talking about sex.

14:11 He's saying you can't have sex with somebody and not become one flesh with them. And if you have Christ in your heart, you're actually making Christ one with that person you're having sex with also, because you can't separate body and soul. Paul's answer to the Corinthian lie, sex is not just biology. No, there is something deeply spiritual about it. Now, before we unpack the rest of Paul's reasoning, could we just take a moment and acknowledge that we all know this is true? I know what the song's lyrics say, and you know what they say, but you know they're not true. If sex is just physical, why is rape so much more psychologically damaging than other forms of physical abuse? The National Domestic Violence Center says that both men and women are much less likely to report rape than other forms of physical abuse because there is a shame and a trauma attached to rape that makes it difficult to talk about even when you know that you're only the victim.

15:08 Or how about this? If sex is just physical, why is it that when a child experiences sexual abuse, it can be so difficult to shake off even after they become an adult? Even when they know it's not their fault, it's not just that an authority figure let me down. No, it's deeper than that? Or if sex is just physical, why is adultery so hard to get over? If sex is just physical, why is that one sin so hard to forgive and to forget? Or one more, sex is just physical. Why is it that many people's deepest regrets are sexual? When somebody comes to me and they says, pastor, I need to talk to somebody, and I've never told anybody this before, I know exactly what it's going to be about. It is not, in fact, I can't remember a time that somebody's followed up that by saying, I cheated on this test when I was in high school or I haven't paid my taxes in five years.

16:05 It's almost always about some sexual regret that hangs over them like a dark cloud that they just cannot shake off. You see what I'm getting at? If sex is just physical, if it's just biology, none of those things would be true. There's something about sex that touches our deepest and most intimate selves. Here's why. Here's why, Paul says, and here's your theology lesson for the weekend. Number one, Paul says, God created the soul and body to function as one. God created the soul and the body to function as one. You cannot do something with your body and not also be doing it with your soul. Again, notice verses 16 and 17, how Paul goes back and forth between the spiritual and the physical oneness in these verses. You join with them in sex. You become one with them. Notice that Paul uses for his illustration the cheapest kind of sex imaginable, sex with a prostitute.

17:01 If there were ever sex that was just physical, it would be that. I mean, think about it. It's with a stranger. It involves no commitment. You will likely never see each other again. Yet Paul says, even in that 30-minute encounter, there is a soul joining. That's peg number one. Peg number two, he says Christ died to redeem our bodies also. Verse 13 and 14. Notice verse 14, God raised up the Lord Jesus, and he will also raise us up by his power. Christ didn't just die on a cross to pay for the guilt of our sins. Christ also resurrected in a physical body to redeem our bodies. Many people don't think about that with salvation. They just think about Jesus, you know, paying a debt he didn't owe because we owed a debt we couldn't pay. And that's really important. But he also resurrected. Had the body not been important, God would have just taken Jesus' death on the cross and accepted it as the payment for our sins and then been done with it.

17:56 But he resurrected Christ in a physical body, showing that God cares about our physical bodies also. Thus, verse 13, Paul says, the body is not for sexual immorality. No, the body, not just the spirit, not just when you pray, but the body is for the Lord. It is not the stomach for the food and the food for stomach. All of it is for Jesus now. Whatever Jesus bought with his blood, he should have lordship over. And that includes your body. Body is used eight times in this passage. All of it is for Jesus. Which leads to peg number three. God designed sex to reenact the most intimate parts of our relationship with him. That's verses 15 and 16. In Ephesians 5, Paul says that that phrase you see there in verse 16, the two shall become one flesh, Paul says in Ephesians 5, that actually refers to a spiritual mystery. Here's how it reads in Ephesians 5.

18:52 Ephesians 5, verse 31. Paul says, the two will become one flesh. Again, you see the phrase there from Genesis 2. This mystery is profound. But I'm actually talking, and so was Moses when he wrote Genesis, I'm actually talking about Christ and the church. In other words, get this. It is pretty mind-blowing. The whole marriage covenant and the whole sexual relationship reenacts Christ's relationship with the church. I mean, think about all the ways, right? When you make a covenant in marriage, it's just like the salvation covenant. You stand at an altar and you unite in a covenant by saying, all I do, you unite all of yourself to all of them forever. And that means that everything that is yours becomes theirs, both the good and the bad, your liabilities and your assets. Everything that was theirs becomes yours, the good and the bad. The wife then takes on a new family name. Then you exchange rings as a symbol of that. Then you celebrate with a meal. Then you have sex as the physical seal of that commitment, out of which God often brings forth new life. Every one of those steps illustrates the gospel.

20:03 Now, let me walk back through it. In salvation, you come to an altar, so to speak, not literally, but, you know, the altar of Jesus. And there you say, I do to Jesus Christ. By the way, Jesus has been standing at the altar waiting on you for 2,000 years. He said, I do to you 2,000 years ago on a cross, and he's been standing there waiting ever since. In that moment when you say, I do, all that was yours becomes his. What was yours? Shame, sin, condemnation, guilt. Jesus took all that on the cross. He died for all those things on your behalf. and what was his that became yours? Righteousness, eternal life, an eternal inheritance with God. All that became yours when you said, I do. Then you took on a new family name. Your exchange of rings we call baptism. Then we celebrate that union with a meal that we call communion, the bread and the cup, the Lord's table. At your salvation, Jesus put his Holy Spirit into you out of which God brings forth new life in us and through us.

20:57 Do you see it? Every single step of the marriage preaches the gospel. The act of sex itself is a physical illustration of the love of God. Psychologists often tell us that the deepest desire of the human heart is to be, get this, known and loved. You got to have both components because to be known but not loved, well, that is rejection. But to be loved and not really known, to be admired from a distance, well, that's just sentimentality. But when you're known and loved, that's what you crave, for somebody to see all of you and to receive all of you, the good and the bad, and just know you in everything that you are and receive you in sex. That's what's happening. Somebody sees you literally uncovered and they embrace and receive all of you. It's why sex feels beautiful, not just erotic, but beautiful, because it is an echo of God's love for you. Even the complementary nature of sex, meaning two different genders, male and female, is a picture of our relationship to Christ.

21:58 Our union with Christ is not a union of identicals. We're alike. Christ became man, but we're also different, right? He's God and I'm just man. God wrote this all through creation, this complementarity. He used opposite pairs again and again to produce the good. Day and night, sun and moon, land and sea, earth and heaven. On his ultimate day of creation, male, female. All that was a setup for salvation. We, humanity, are united to Christ. Christ plays the role of the male, the life giver. We all play the role of female, the life receiver. That's why C.S. Lewis said that in relation to God, all souls are feminine. So sex is a picture of our role as the bride of Christ. Same-sex marriage destroys that picture, by the way. Marriage is supposed to be the union of two things which are alike but different, complementary. The point is every part of marriage and sex illustrates the love and the nature of God.

22:55 So far from being merely the satisfaction of a bodily urge, sexuality is central to our humanity, and it's also central to your knowledge of God. So what then is Paul's conclusion? Verse 18, flee sexual immorality. Run away from it. Why? Why? Because, verse 18, every other sin a person commits is actually outside their body. But a person who is sexually immoral sins against his own body. Most sins, when you commit them, you're sinning against somebody else. You punch somebody in the face, right? That's a sin against them. They are hurting. But he says, sexually, you actually sin, that's against them. You sin against you. You see, when you sin sexually, you actually sin against three things. You sin against God. You reject the design and turn what he intended to be an act of worship and self-giving commitment to somebody else. You turn that into the selfish satisfaction of your lust. You sin against the person you're having sex with because you are reducing them to an object to satisfy your physical desires when you will not give them the lifelong commitment that they deserve for you to experience that with them. These Corinthian men specifically, they're treating prostitute women like disposable objects. They don't see these women as divine image bearers. They're something you can drive through, something you can purchase, consume and leave. In fact, to quote Andrew Wilson, the British theologian, that's a rather, I mean, graphic way of saying it, but he says, the prostitute is no more than food for a hungry man or a toilet in which to relieve himself. I know that's gross, but that is basically what you're doing. She's just an object to satisfy your desires. Reducing her to an object is a sin against her.

24:41 Sin against God, sin against her or him. Then it's a sin against whomever you're having. Then it's a sin against yourself. Sex is so integrated into our souls that what we do with our body deeply affects our souls. Other sins, like I told you, primarily hurt others. Paul says, but sexual sin destroys you. It's doing damage to your soul when you join yourself to somebody and they just walk away casually. That damage and deadens your soul. And the more you do that, the more damaged your soul becomes. The easiest analogy that I've heard of this, and I've explained it to you before, it's like putting duct tape around your arm. I got a hair in my arm, and if you put duct tape around there and ripped it off, part of my arm is going to come off with that piece of duct tape. It's still going to be sticky, but it's going to be a little less sticky because some of that stickiness is now attached to my arm, and part of my arm is attached to that. Take that piece of duct tape, wrap it around somebody else's arm and do it, and it's still going to probably hurt when you take it off, but it's going to hurt a little less because a little bit of its stickiness, A little bit of its connectivity has been reduced and on it goes over and over.

25:43 And by the time you get to, I don't know how many different times you do this, but then it's lost all ability to connect or stick at all. That's basically what's happening when there's casual sexual relationship is it is deadening and damaging the soul. Even if you tell yourself that it's just casual and you tell yourself you're just messing around and there's no connection taking place, I can assure you that it's happening because you cannot escape what God has designed. In fact, I thought this passage from Tim Keller's Meaning of Marriage captured it well. Listen, even if you're not legally married, when you're having sex with somebody, you may find yourself very quickly feeling marriage-like ties, feeling that the other person has obligations to you, but the other person in reality has no legal, social, or moral responsibility even to call you back in the morning. This incongruity leads to jealousy and hurt feelings and obsessiveness if two people are having sex but are not married. It makes breaking up vastly harder than it should be. And it leads many people to stay trapped in relationships that are not good because of a feeling of having somehow connected themselves. Now first, is that not like the plot line of every Friends episode that you've ever seen. The second, the point is that it is impossible to have sex and not engage in the spiritual dimensions. God just didn't design you that way.

27:14 Most people, our culture feels like Christians are anti-sex, like we don't appreciate sex's goodness enough. I would say, based on what Paul says, on the contrary. We understand that the limitations God gives are because of sex's goodness and its power. It's like Tim Keller says, sex outside of marriage is not a sin because it is so bad, but because it is so good. Our culture says, well, sex is no big deal. I see your body, I want it. I see your body, I want it, so I'll just take it. What's your name again? Or in the words of Ariana Grande, I see it, I like it, I want it, I got it. That's a song from 2019, okay? our culture's attitude is basically hey we've been dating for four months now I've earned the right to use you now like an object of course I'll probably leave you in another two or three months because by then I'll be bored with your body and of course by then after six or seven months I'll start actually having to deal with you as a human and I'm not really interested in that right we were just having a little fun for a while and then I got bored now I want somebody else church we got to step into that culture and we got to say, no, that person is more than an object. Stop.

28:25 Covenant with them. Cherish them. How dare you use their body without covenanting with their soul? You dare not. You are sinning against God. You are sinning against them and you're sinning against yourself. So Paul says, flee sexual sin. You ever notice other temptations he tells you to endure or withstand. But when it comes to sexual immorality, he tells us to flee. Flee. Flee. Don't put yourself in a tempting position. Don't be over at his apartment late at night by yourself. What did you think was going to happen? As Martin Luther used to always say, if your head is made of butter, stay away from the fire. Sexually, we're all made of butter. So flee, he says. Flee. pornography. Y'all, our city may not have 30,000 prostitutes, but we have tens of thousands of pornographic websites that are accessible at our fingertips. Did you know, listen, porn traffic on the web every day is more than the traffic of Amazon, Netflix, and Twitter combined.

29:33 The porn industry in our country takes in more money than Major League Baseball, the NBA, and the NFL combined. Recent studies show that 40 million Americans are regular visitors to porn sites. And get this, by the way, a third of them are women. It is totally a myth that this is only a male problem. Now, it is true that men and boys seem to have a particularly difficult time with it. 70% of men ages 18 to 24 visit a porn site every month. 70%. That means a solid majority of our young men have a habit of objectifying the human body. Most people think of looking at porn as, it's not that big of a problem, right? Let me just joke about it. It's a victimless crime. And what are you really hurting?

30:24 Just looking at a picture. First of all, men, you realize that perfectly airbrushed woman that you are gazing at is the result of eating disorders, heavy editing, and based on the statistics, likely a horrible life of abuse. Likely even sex trafficking. So I hardly think it's victimless. But beyond that, other victims in that sin, Paul would say, are you and your future spouse. Because like other forms of sexual immorality, porn is rewiring your brain in fundamental ways. When you gaze at a pornographic image, you are looking at an image of a woman whose body you just want to use. You don't know her name. You don't want to know her name. You're never going to meet this girl. And that trains your mind to see all women in a certain way. And see, that starts to affect how you see other women in your life. When you look at a picture that reduces a woman to an object, you start to see the real women in your life as objects.

31:18 And then when you get married, sexually, it's hard for you not to see your own wife as an object. For a while, she'll be like your own personal live porn. But if your mind has been rewired to think of sex as just the satisfaction of a bodily urge, soon you'll get bored with her and you'll need new porn. So you'll have to turn somewhere else, a new lover, a prostitute, maybe just back to porn images. No person has ever gorged himself on porn and then put it behind him after marriage because their spouse met all their porn fantasies. Instead, the opposite happens. porn retrained your appetite to appetites so that you crave even more of it. And man, I'll just say, especially if you're not married yet, you're dating somebody, if you've got a problem with that, you owe it to her to tell her that, especially if you're not trying to deal with it. She has a right to know before she gets into a marriage with you that that is how you are thinking about her and how you are training your mind to think of other women.

32:15 Every other sin a person commits is outside the body. But the person who is sexually immoral sins against his own body. Listen, this is nothing to play around with. One psychiatrist said, he said, porn is more enslaving to people statistically than heroin. And what's scary is that the porn industry markets itself to 12 to 13-year-olds. They know it only takes three days to become an addict. Three days. And can I just say this? I'm not trying to judge you as a parent. I'm not trying to tell you what to do. Okay, I got plenty of other questions, and I deal with being a parent. So if you, but I will say this, if you let your kids have phones in their rooms and you got no filter on your internet, I have to think you are not being wise. You might as well give them a loaded gun they can just put under their pillow. Again, I'm not trying to judge you. I'm not trying to tell you how to parent your kids. I'm just telling you to wake up to what is happening.

33:11 Now, again, I directed a lot of this toward men, but in our society, it's become an issue for women too. So let me just go ahead and connect the dots here also. I'll just go ahead and say it. Romance novels function like pornography for women. They're not romantic or harmless fantasies. They ruin marriages and they're destroying you. The Fifty Shades of Gross erotica series sold more than 100 million copies worldwide. Flee that stuff. Romance novels are just porn for the soul. He cannot be a poetry writing vampire who loves you. That guy is not real. Flee it. Every other person, every other sin a person commits is outside the body, but the sexually immoral person sins against his or her own body. Flee sexual immorality. That means taking radical measures to separate yourself from it. In fact, I love what John Mark Comer, who actually is going to be here with us next week, I love what he says.

34:09 Flee, which means get filters on your internet. My family uses a service called Covenant Eyes. It's on every single family member's computers and devices, including my own. Or maybe for you, you need to get rid of your computer for a while. I know that sounds radical and crazy, but I know a college student at Duke University in our church who gave his computer to a friend for a month and just said, I'm going to the library. It was a dramatic step, he said, but I knew I had to do it to break the habit. I said, you got any regrets? She said, nope, Jesus is totally worth it. Flee it. Flee. Don't go to her apartment. Don't put yourself in a situation where you know you're going to make stupid decisions. And if you're afraid, by the way, of being somewhere where you are going to be tempted or you're likely to be, ask somebody to hold you accountable if it's inescapable. That happened to me recently where I was going to be somewhere where I knew temptation would be around me, and so I told a friend, here's where I'm going.

35:04 I need you to ask me at this hour, and then I need you to ask me right after that if I was lying about the first answer that I just gave. And I know you're going to ask me, flee, flee sexual immorality. Again, notice how Paul ends. Is this flee by like trying harder, be a better person? No. Not by willpower. He says flee immorality by fleeing to Christ. Verse 19, don't you know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit who is now in you? You got him from God. You are not your own. You're bought at a price. So glorify God. So glorify God with your body. Basically, Paul says there's two things that will give you the power to do this. The first is the blood of Jesus. He purchased you from your sin. He died for all the ways you messed up. And that means he deserves your sexual purity.

35:59 It also means that if he died for you, he'll give you the ability to do what he commands. if Jesus went to a cross for you, he's going to provide you with the power you need to obey him. Right? So do it because of the blood of Jesus. And that kind of leads to the second thing he points to, the Holy Spirit. You may feel like you don't have the strength to overcome this, and you're probably right, but Christ in you does. Because Christ, who never sinned, who never stumbled sexually, faced all the temptations we face, was tempted in all the ways like we are, yet without sin. He now lives in you. I'm crucified with Christ, nevertheless I live, Paul says, yet not I, but Christ lives in me. That's not my might, it's not my power anymore, it's by my Spirit, says the Lord. Greater is He that is in me now than he that is in the world. Greater is He than sexual desires, right? I can do all things now through Christ who strengthens me. So flee to Jesus. Flee to, and I know some of you are sitting there thinking, well, Wish I'd have heard this 15 years ago.

36:59 It's too late now. I already got a sexual rap sheet a mile long. I skipped the best part of the passage. Go back to verse 9 where we started. Look at this, verse 9. Don't you know that wrongdoers will not inherit the kingdom of God? Don't be deceived. Neither the sexually immoral nor adulterers or men who have sex with men. See verse 11, part I skipped. and that is what some of you were that you were washed you were sanctified you were justified in the name of the lord jesus christ and by the spirit of our god you see when you accept christ you see at least three things that happens in the moment you accept him first of all he washes you that means he takes away your shame and your guilt there is a fountain filled with blood drawn from emmanuel's veins and sinners plunged beneath that flood lose all their guilty state Come now, let us reason together, says the Lord.

37:55 Though your sins are as dark as scarlet, I can make them white as snow. He washes you, then he sanctifies you, which just means he sets you apart. He makes you holy. He makes you, in other words, pure. Maybe you're somebody, maybe a teenager, a young adult, an older adult, who's given themselves away sexually and now you feel permanently defiled. I'm telling you that is a lie from Satan. Your sin is dark, but God's grace is brighter. He can sanctify you by his blood and by his spirit. If any man is in Christ, he is a new creation. Old things are passed away. Behold, all things are become new. Maybe you feel like porn has already damaged your soul beyond repair. That might be true naturally, but you are crucified with Christ. Nevertheless, you can live. Yet it's not you anymore. It's Christ who lives through you. And that means he can restore you and sanctify you and make you new. And he justifies you, which means that he removes your guilt before God.

38:50 Jesus died for your sexual sin. He paid the full price for your disobedience so that you could say there is therefore no condemnation. Even for sexual sin, no condemnation. maybe you're somebody who struggles with same-sex attraction. And you say, you know, I really want to glorify God with my body, but I feel like I can't control things, urges in me that the Bible says is sinful. Hear me. Listen, okay, that's okay. All of us have desires that go opposite from God's will, all of us. What God wants is for you to submit yourself to him, to realize that he loves and accepts you just as you are. He'll not only wash away the guilt of your sin, he'll give you the strength to obey his commands.

39:44 And I mean, it'll be easy, but he'll give you the strength to say, I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me, even though it's difficult. We want you to come talk with us, seriously. You don't have to be afraid or ashamed. We know that there is more forgiveness and acceptance and help in Jesus than there is sin in us. And that includes you. For all of us, for those of us with sexual sin, for those with messed up desires, twisted desires, we can all alike be washed and sanctified and justified in the name of Jesus and by the spirit of our God. That's good news, amen? Which brings me, which brings me to baptism. Let me be very clear, just so there's no confusion. This is not just an invitation for people with sexual sin. that just happened to happen on the same Sunday. Arguably not the greatest Sunday for them to be on. But we are baptizing today.

40:37 And so this message, it just coincided. All sin makes us defiled. All sin makes us guilty before God. All sin is alike to him in a very fundamental way. Jesus died for all of it. So my big question to all of you is this. Have you accepted Christ? Whether your biggest sins are sexual or not, have you had him come into your life and remove the stain of your sin? wash you, make you a new creation, sanctify you, justify you by canceling the debt of your sin. That's my first invitation in just a minute to actually come forward and talk to somebody and receive Christ. We're going to give you an opportunity to do that today. And then if you want to be baptized today as a testimony to that, we'll give you that invitation also. We'll give you that opportunity if you're ready. Baptism is an outward picture of an inward transformation. When you go into the water, you're being put into the grave symbolically with Jesus.

41:32 Then you come up out of the water showing you're raised with him and he now is taking possession of you and living inside of you. It's like I said, the ring and the wedding ceremony. That's why we always ask you two questions. Are you, you believe that Jesus has done everything necessary to save you? You receiving his death as yours? Are you gonna go wherever he tells you to go and do whatever he tells you to do? That's lordship. All right, so that leads me to my second invitation. First is for those of you that need to receive Christ. Second invitation is for those of you who have already received Christ, but you've never shown that through baptism. Probably about 40% of you sitting here are in that category. 40%, almost half. Today, you need to do what Jesus calls the first act of obedience. And that is you need to be baptized as a public profession of faith. It might've been 15 years ago, it might've been 50 years ago when you received Christ. You may not even know when it happened. But today is that day.

42:24 You say, well, I didn't bring clothes. We have clothes. Really modest black shorts of all sizes and shirts. And some of that stuff will be yours to keep. We got it for you. People say, well, I don't know. It doesn't seem like that important. How is it necessary? Look, I don't make the rules, okay? Jesus. In fact, I would suggest to you, you don't want to start following Jesus by telling him which of his commands are important and which ones aren't. That's not a good relationship terms. A lot of people say, well, I got baptized when I was a baby. And listen, we respect that. I really do. I'm not trying to be disrespectful or make a big thing out of a small thing. But did you know, listen to this, there are 27 baptisms in the book of Acts.

43:06 All 27 times the person believed first and then was baptized. So we want to give you a chance to say, I believe that now I'm ready to be baptized. You're like, well, I don't want to shame my parents. My parents baptized me when I was a baby, and I don't want to reject them. I don't want to reject what they, you know, what were they baptized? you're not rejecting the baptism. In fact, I would say you're fulfilling the baptism, right? I mean, what was their hope when they baptized you? They wanted you to grow and follow Jesus one day. Today, you get a chance to call them and say, I did it. Remember what you expressed over me 18, 19 years ago? You wanted me to grow and follow Jesus? I'm doing it. And so I didn't reject the baptism as an infant. I fulfilled it. I ratified it. That's basically how you would look at this. you say well I don't I don't want to become a Baptist that's fair that's fair I'll just go ahead and say it right now that's fair but I want to do and emphasize this you are not being baptized in the name of a denomination we're not going to baptize you Southern Baptist Northern Baptist Eastern Baptist Space Baptist it's just going to be Jesus that's all we're going to baptize you in the name of every follower of Jesus should be baptized as a profession of their faith in Jesus And if you have not done that, you should do that today.

44:21 So what's going to happen is I'm going to lead you in a prayer. So those of you who want to receive Christ can do that. And then I'm going to invite you to come forward and be baptized, whether you're newly saved or you've been saved for a long time. Okay? Why don't you bow your heads at all of our campuses. If you've never received Christ, listen, friend, listen very closely. If you've never received Christ and you want to, you can do it right now. Right now. It just sounds like this. Lord Jesus, say it from your heart. Lord Jesus, I know that I need to be saved, and only you can do it.

44:58 I surrender to you. my father i pray for every person who prayed that prayer but you give them the courage to do what i'm going to ask them to do next i pray also father that you would give the courage to those who have been saved for a while but have never taken a step give them courage to be obedient as well with your heads bowed just for a moment just a minute i'm going to ask you to stand up there are going to be people at every campus in the aisle. If you're at home, you can just enter this into the chat. They'll tell you what to do. But at every campus, they're in the aisle. And the moment we stand up, if you need to be baptized or you have questions about being baptized, if you prayed that prayer with me a moment ago, any of those categories, I want you in one motion as we stand up to just step out toward the closest aisle. And there will be somebody who will meet you there.

45:53 And they'll go start a conversation. Maybe you got questions. Maybe you're like, I got some questions. And it's fine. That's all we want is to start a conversation. In fact, I'll even tell you, don't come alone. You're like, it's going to be weird getting up and walking out by myself. Fine. Don't come alone, all right? Just grab the person next to you. You probably know them. If not, I'm sure they'll come. Okay? So when I stand, I want you to come. If you feel like, Summit member, the person next to you is really struggling right now, you just kind of get that vibe, you just sort of look at them, you know? When we give the invitation, they'll kind of know what you mean. And maybe you guys can come alone. Nobody should come alone. So I'm going to, in a moment, I'm going to count to three. We're all going to stand up and, again, one motion, you step out in the aisle. We're going to do what we always do. We're going to cheer. We're going to cheer like people are coming from darkness to light, okay? Now, last thing, this is not a great time to go to the bathroom. I'm going to go ahead and tell you right now, okay?

46:44 So just hold on for that in a minute. This right now is a moment for people who want to make that decision or at least want to start a conversation about it. I'm going to count to three. You stand up and move. All of us are going to stand up. You move to the aisle. And we're going to cheer life. People are coming from death to life. Okay? Here we go. One, two, three. Everybody at all campus, stand up. Let's put our hands together. And you go right now. Right now. Right now. Don't wait a second. Just go. Just go. Just go. They're coming. Okay. Amen. Our worship teams are coming.