WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:06.120 Okay, well good to see you this evening. As Corrie says, I'm Neil. I'm one of the ministers 00:00:06.120 --> 00:00:12.800 associated with St. Columbus. I lead a church plant from St. Columbus called Cornerstone 00:00:12.800 --> 00:00:19.120 in the Morningside area of Edinburgh. We're looking through the book of Proverbs now and 00:00:19.120 --> 00:00:25.839 try to work out how do we live life with wisdom. The Bible doesn't give us rules for everything 00:00:25.839 --> 00:00:31.359 in life. There's so many things where we just need to be wise about choices we make, decisions, 00:00:31.359 --> 00:00:37.519 behaviour, so forth. And surely one of the places in life that we feel the need for wisdom most is 00:00:37.519 --> 00:00:44.960 when it comes to issues relating to sex. Because we live in a culture that's saturated with sexual 00:00:44.960 --> 00:00:52.039 imagery and sexual ideas and sexual messages and so navigating that does require an awful lot of 00:00:52.039 --> 00:00:58.479 wisdom for us as Christians. And if you're not a Christian then you too probably think, well, 00:00:58.479 --> 00:01:06.519 you've got questions about sex and sexuality and the Bible can help you also, I think. Think out 00:01:06.519 --> 00:01:13.239 wisdom in that area of your life and show you the goodness of the gospel. And this is nothing new, 00:01:13.239 --> 00:01:19.319 of course, is it? We read some ancient Proverbs from Proverbs chapter 7 where the idea of the 00:01:19.319 --> 00:01:28.039 adulterous is put out there as a picture of sexual temptation. And here's this idea of sexual 00:01:28.039 --> 00:01:34.399 temptation. It's in the street, it's in the marketplace. Sexual temptation is at every corner 00:01:34.399 --> 00:01:41.399 lying in wait. Sexual temptation takes hold of us, kisses us with bold face, says to us, come. 00:01:41.400 --> 00:01:50.960 We face sexual temptation in lots of different arenas of life and we feel the pain of sexual 00:01:50.960 --> 00:02:00.719 brokenness in life as well. When we turn aside to sexual temptation or to sexual sin, then we 00:02:00.719 --> 00:02:12.719 become victims laid low by the power and the sorrow and even the shame of our own sin. And into 00:02:12.719 --> 00:02:22.120 that situation we're glad to say that the gospel of Jesus Christ speaks with hope and with healing. 00:02:22.120 --> 00:02:29.599 I'm going to start by reading you an extract from this little booklet here. So this book is called 00:02:29.599 --> 00:02:35.960 sexual addiction, freedom from compulsive behavior. So I'm going to point you to a few resources 00:02:35.960 --> 00:02:43.560 tonight. And this is from the Christian Counseling and Education Foundation, CCEF. If you go on to 00:02:43.560 --> 00:02:49.919 their website and just Google, you'll find a lot of really helpful resources. So this is a booklet 00:02:49.919 --> 00:02:58.879 by a guy called David Paulson. He says, have you ever thought or said anything like this? I've tried 00:02:58.879 --> 00:03:07.799 to stop so many times, but I still end up in front of the computer surfing websites. Or I want to be 00:03:07.799 --> 00:03:14.799 faithful to my spouse, but other sexual partners are so available. I know it's wrong, but I just 00:03:14.799 --> 00:03:24.000 can't seem to stop myself. Accountability, prayer, avoiding situations, cold showers. I've tried 00:03:24.000 --> 00:03:32.719 everything, but I still fail. Is there any hope for me? I know I need to get help, but I'm too 00:03:32.719 --> 00:03:39.639 ashamed. I thought only men struggled with pornography, but I spend my way too much of my 00:03:39.639 --> 00:03:48.560 time in erotic romantic fantasies. So this is the world that we inhabit, a world of sexual sin, 00:03:48.560 --> 00:03:56.240 sexual fantasies, pornography, sexual temptation and sexual brokenness. I'm going to speak about 00:03:56.240 --> 00:04:03.439 sex from three aspects for a while this evening. One is about sex and intimacy. That's where we're 00:04:03.439 --> 00:04:09.159 going to start, intimacy and sex. And then we're going to talk about sex and sin. And then we're 00:04:09.159 --> 00:04:14.360 going to talk about sex and the gospel. So that's kind of the direction of travel that we're going 00:04:14.360 --> 00:04:24.960 to take. So let's start with the whole idea of sex and intimacy. Intimacy is the most profound 00:04:24.960 --> 00:04:34.160 expression of relationship that we can have. Intimacy is about close familiarity with another 00:04:34.160 --> 00:04:44.080 person and a deep friendship. And it's within that kind of intimate relationship that God frames 00:04:44.079 --> 00:04:53.680 sex for us. Intimacy speaks first of all of the relationship that we can have with God. God created 00:04:53.680 --> 00:05:03.839 us so that we would enjoy close familiarity and deep friendship or intimacy with him. God wants to 00:05:03.839 --> 00:05:13.839 draw us into a near loving, familiar, familial relationship with him. God knows you and knows who 00:05:13.839 --> 00:05:22.199 you are and God wants you to know him also. And that whole idea of knowing and being known is 00:05:22.199 --> 00:05:29.839 central to the whole concept of intimacy. So think about why God might ask you to pray. Now we 00:05:29.839 --> 00:05:36.079 believe God knows everything. So what does He need you to tell him? Well, not much. There's nothing 00:05:36.079 --> 00:05:44.919 he doesn't know. So why does God want you to speak to him? To tell him the stories of your life? Why 00:05:44.919 --> 00:05:50.319 does God want you to talk to him about your day, your struggles, your challenges, your temptations, 00:05:50.319 --> 00:05:57.199 and your failures? Well think about it this way. You've got a five-year-old child and they've just 00:05:57.199 --> 00:06:03.000 started at primary school and they come home every day and at the end of the day you sit down with 00:06:03.000 --> 00:06:07.519 them, you make them a little cup of juice and give them some chocolate biscuits and crisps because 00:06:07.519 --> 00:06:14.180 you're a good parent and you tell them what happened at school and they tell you how they've 00:06:14.180 --> 00:06:20.279 learned some letters from the alphabet and you listen and you hear them and you give them time to 00:06:20.279 --> 00:06:26.879 speak to you about the alphabet and which letters they've learned. Now you listen not because you 00:06:26.879 --> 00:06:34.000 don't know the alphabet but you listen because you prize intimacy with the child. You want to hear 00:06:34.000 --> 00:06:40.519 their stories. You want them to talk about their day. You want to know them and you want to know 00:06:40.519 --> 00:06:48.959 that they know you as well. So you're trying to create a relationship with your child of close 00:06:48.959 --> 00:06:55.360 familiarity, friendship, where they feel safe to tell you everything about who they are and what's 00:06:55.360 --> 00:07:03.879 going on in their life and that's what God is asking for from us. Real openness and honesty of 00:07:03.879 --> 00:07:11.759 communication. So intimacy requires two things. It requires openness, good communication that we 00:07:11.759 --> 00:07:17.360 tell God what's going on in our lives even if it's a broken thing or a hurting thing or a failure 00:07:17.360 --> 00:07:27.199 or a struggle and God is also looking for us in that relationship exclusiveness. Relationships, 00:07:27.199 --> 00:07:33.439 intimate relationships require exclusivity. God tells us in the Bible he doesn't want us to have 00:07:33.439 --> 00:07:41.160 any other gods. I've got four children. I don't want them to one day come home and tell me that 00:07:41.160 --> 00:07:48.680 they've ditched me because they found a better dad. I want to be their dad and I value the intimacy 00:07:48.680 --> 00:07:58.440 of that relationship and the exclusivity of it and it is the same in married relationships that 00:07:58.440 --> 00:08:08.680 spouses need to feel exclusivity because that creates a secure intimate relationship and environment 00:08:08.680 --> 00:08:16.319 to feel safe, secured, valued and loved. So the idea then is that God creates intimate 00:08:16.319 --> 00:08:25.800 relationships of trust and familiarity and that marriage is one particular subset of those kind 00:08:25.800 --> 00:08:31.960 of intimate relationships. So there's the most important intimate relationship of all, the 00:08:31.960 --> 00:08:36.840 relationship we have with God and then there are many other kinds of important intimate 00:08:36.840 --> 00:08:43.399 relationships, familial relationships and friendships and marriage is a subset of those 00:08:43.399 --> 00:08:53.040 kind of relationships. So this sermon, the outset of it, I want to say this, that we began singing 00:08:53.040 --> 00:09:01.040 a song, How Great Thou Art and to have Jesus is the one thing that really matters above everything 00:09:01.039 --> 00:09:08.959 else. So St. Augustine said, He who is Christ in all the world has no more than He who is Christ 00:09:08.959 --> 00:09:16.120 alone. He who is Christ in all the world has no more than He who is Christ alone. So if you have 00:09:16.120 --> 00:09:22.599 Christ, you have everything you need to be a complete human being. So you may be single tonight 00:09:22.599 --> 00:09:27.240 and I want to tell you if you're single that married people are no more complete than you are. 00:09:27.240 --> 00:09:32.560 Being married doesn't make me a more complete human being than you because you're single. What 00:09:32.560 --> 00:09:39.159 makes me complete is having Christ. And I also want to say this, that celibate people, people who 00:09:39.159 --> 00:09:45.600 are not sexually active in any way, are no less complete than people who are sexually active. 00:09:45.600 --> 00:09:53.519 That's not where we find our completeness, our wholeness, our identity as human beings. He who 00:09:53.519 --> 00:10:02.840 is Christ has everything. She who is Christ has everything. So that's the relationship that needs 00:10:02.840 --> 00:10:07.840 to be built and nurtured above everything else. And we'll come back to that, we'll kind of circle 00:10:07.840 --> 00:10:13.799 back to that at the end as we come to think about sex and the gospel. So we've got sex and intimacy, 00:10:13.799 --> 00:10:19.759 the intimacy of our relationship with God and then marriage is a subset of that kind of friendship 00:10:19.759 --> 00:10:26.720 as one particular expression of intimacy. Married people are people who are deeply familiar with 00:10:26.720 --> 00:10:33.840 one another. They know one another's story as well. They've learned to listen and hear from one 00:10:33.840 --> 00:10:41.039 another. We don't just hear new things from our spouse every day, in fact, spouses repeat themselves 00:10:41.039 --> 00:10:49.200 a lot. But that's okay because we're building familiarity. We're building trust. We're hearing 00:10:49.200 --> 00:10:54.960 one another's stories again and again because we need to tell each other those stories to create 00:10:54.960 --> 00:11:02.680 an environment of security, togetherness, unconditional love, total acceptance and unbreakable 00:11:02.680 --> 00:11:12.640 commitment. And that unbreakable commitment, that lifelong commitment, is the moral context for 00:11:12.639 --> 00:11:20.840 sex according to the Bible. So we all believe that sex is a moral act, that some sex is good 00:11:20.840 --> 00:11:27.279 and some sex is bad, that there are some sexual acts that ought not to happen. So we all believe 00:11:27.279 --> 00:11:35.919 sex is moral. In our culture, generally speaking, moral sex is the idea of consent. That's the key 00:11:35.919 --> 00:11:42.599 idea. If there's consent, it's moral. For us, though, it's not consent, it's the lifelong commitment. 00:11:42.599 --> 00:11:49.599 That's the context that God gives for moral and ethical sexual relationships. So we've got the 00:11:49.599 --> 00:11:54.759 intimacy of the human relationship with God, a subset of that, the intimacy of the marriage 00:11:54.759 --> 00:12:00.879 relationship, and then as a subset of that, we've got the intimacy of the sexual relationship. So 00:12:00.879 --> 00:12:09.639 it's within the marriage context, one particular aspect of marriage is physical intimacy or sexual 00:12:09.639 --> 00:12:17.879 intimacy. And that God always expects that the intimacy of sex is built on the prior intimacy 00:12:17.879 --> 00:12:26.320 of marriage. And that's really important because for sex to work well, it requires familiarity, 00:12:26.320 --> 00:12:36.520 trust, acceptance, companionship, affection, kindness, security. Sex is an outward connection that 00:12:36.520 --> 00:12:44.480 reflects a deeper inward connection. And in that context, sex is a good, wonderful and great gift 00:12:44.480 --> 00:12:52.960 from God to be treasured, a celebration of the most profound human intimacies. So sex and intimacy 00:12:52.960 --> 00:13:04.000 belong together under God and within the marriage context. Let's think about sex and sin next. So 00:13:04.000 --> 00:13:08.960 here in Proverbs 7, as we've seen already, there's this very clear idea of the power of sexual 00:13:08.960 --> 00:13:17.120 temptation and the devastating effects on us of sexual sin. Here we have in front of us in the 00:13:17.120 --> 00:13:21.879 book of Proverbs, in many different places throughout the book of Proverbs, chapter after 00:13:21.879 --> 00:13:29.799 chapter in reality. There's this picture of sex that's been corrupted by sinful and selfish 00:13:29.799 --> 00:13:38.080 desires. So sex within the context of marriage is beautiful and good. But taken out of that context, 00:13:38.080 --> 00:13:47.480 it becomes hurtful and destructive. Sex out with the context of marriage is a violation of love. 00:13:47.480 --> 00:13:55.360 Our responsibilities as human beings are calling, our commandments from God are to love God and 00:13:55.360 --> 00:14:03.080 love others. And the command, the responsibility to love God and love others well is violated by 00:14:03.080 --> 00:14:11.240 sex outside of marriage. It's putting a selfishness and a greed before the need and the well-being 00:14:11.240 --> 00:14:17.600 of others. Now I understand this is a difficult thing for many of us because we live in a culture 00:14:17.600 --> 00:14:24.720 that glorifies and idolizes sex. And we do this with lots of things, don't we? We take something 00:14:24.720 --> 00:14:32.360 that's good and we turn it into a God. We fashion it into an idol. And so there are lots of people 00:14:32.360 --> 00:14:41.639 who now see sex as the thing that makes their life worth living. They worship sex, they root 00:14:41.639 --> 00:14:49.399 their identity in sex. They find their worth in their sexual attractiveness or their sexual 00:14:49.399 --> 00:14:57.360 conquests or their sexual prowess. Sex saturates the media, the internet, some of the most popular 00:14:57.360 --> 00:15:05.200 websites in the world are porn. Gratuitous sex and soft porn is commonplace on TV shows 00:15:05.200 --> 00:15:15.159 and in the tabloid media. Is this a sign of a sophisticated and enlightened culture? No. 00:15:15.159 --> 00:15:24.000 It's a sign of a decaying culture, unreflective ruled by its appetites. Now if we live in 00:15:24.000 --> 00:15:32.240 a sex-saturated culture, it's a little surprise then that many of us have sex-saturated imaginations 00:15:32.240 --> 00:15:44.159 and sex-saturated desires. And the issues of sexual temptation and pornography and illicit 00:15:44.159 --> 00:15:53.399 sexual thoughts are just as likely to affect Christians as non-Christians. Becoming a Christian 00:15:53.399 --> 00:16:01.319 doesn't give you a get out of jail free card or an immunity card against sexual struggles. 00:16:01.319 --> 00:16:08.159 And every human being is broken sexually with unfulfilled sexual desires or with sexual guilt 00:16:08.159 --> 00:16:17.799 or other sexual problems. So it's real for all of us. We're not immune as Christians. 00:16:17.799 --> 00:16:22.120 We don't need to be shocked by that, we don't need to be pretty shabby about it because 00:16:22.120 --> 00:16:29.440 it's a real issue for lots of people. Porn, masturbation, sexting, affairs, sleeping with 00:16:29.440 --> 00:16:36.799 people, going to prostitutes, these are real problems even for Christians. Sexual sin is 00:16:36.799 --> 00:16:44.240 a big problem for both sexes. But men in particular in our culture seem to have succumbed to the 00:16:44.240 --> 00:16:52.080 allure of solitary erotic experiences and pornography. So there's a really big issue 00:16:52.080 --> 00:17:00.960 that's pervasive in our culture and destructive of healthy sexual use. So I want to say to 00:17:00.960 --> 00:17:07.759 you this, God is serious when he forbids adultery. God is serious when he forbids promiscuity 00:17:07.759 --> 00:17:15.559 and extramarital and premarital sex. God is serious when he warns against sexual fantasies. 00:17:15.559 --> 00:17:23.980 God is anti-porn. Whether it's the hardcore porn found in dodgy websites or the soft 00:17:23.980 --> 00:17:32.359 core porn of the Game of Thrones, God is against it. Because they go against the moral fabric 00:17:32.359 --> 00:17:38.240 of the world that God has created. They're an expression of rebellion against God, his 00:17:38.240 --> 00:17:45.399 love and his goodness. It's taking what God has given and using it as an expression of 00:17:45.399 --> 00:17:53.519 our love of self rather than our love of him. And when we take God's good gifts and use 00:17:53.519 --> 00:17:58.839 them to love ourselves rather than to love him and love others, then we become broken 00:17:58.839 --> 00:18:08.839 and guilty as people. So sexual sin, pornography and all the problems that go with that are 00:18:08.839 --> 00:18:15.559 real. But sexual sin is not just a problem for single people, is it? Many married men 00:18:15.559 --> 00:18:22.759 view pornography. Married people have affairs. Married people are unfaithful. Pornography 00:18:22.759 --> 00:18:32.559 is destructive of trust and communication in marriage. Many people destroy their marriages 00:18:32.559 --> 00:18:40.680 by sexual transgression. And in the end, it tears the family apart. So a good biblical 00:18:40.680 --> 00:18:49.000 understanding of sexual sin is important. A normal and good desire becomes an outsized 00:18:49.000 --> 00:18:53.039 abnormal desire. The Bible's got a special word for those kind of desires. It calls them 00:18:53.039 --> 00:19:03.920 epithemia. Desires that have become too big, too obsessive, too overwhelming, too controlling. 00:19:03.920 --> 00:19:08.599 And so the normal desire for sex in our culture has very often been channeled in such a way 00:19:08.599 --> 00:19:16.119 that it takes control of the imagination, the thoughts and the longings that most people 00:19:16.119 --> 00:19:26.399 have. They have a disproportionate impact on us, on our imagination, on our viewing habits, 00:19:26.399 --> 00:19:32.879 on our behavior. And the more space we give to these thoughts, the more we indulge these 00:19:32.879 --> 00:19:40.159 desires, the more they take over and dominate our thought patterns. And then they begin 00:19:40.160 --> 00:19:51.360 to express themselves into our actions. So desire gives birth to sin, we're told, and 00:19:51.360 --> 00:19:58.080 sin gives birth to death. So we may think there's nothing wrong with the way we think 00:19:58.080 --> 00:20:05.840 about certain things or certain images that we look at. But God wants to say to you, really, 00:20:05.839 --> 00:20:13.759 you are sowing a lot of harm into your life. Patterns of thinking, patterns of looking, 00:20:13.759 --> 00:20:20.359 patterns of seeing, patterns of understanding, patterns of behavior that will begin to take 00:20:20.359 --> 00:20:25.959 more and more control over your thought world and your life and change who you are, alienate 00:20:25.959 --> 00:20:32.240 you from God, make you ashamed and guilty, ruin your life spiritually and begin to demean 00:20:32.240 --> 00:20:40.039 all your other relationships. So where does this take us? Well, we begin to look at people 00:20:40.039 --> 00:20:46.039 in a much more sexualized way. If you live in a porn saturated world or a porn saturated 00:20:46.039 --> 00:20:51.000 culture or if you've got a porn saturated mind, then you will begin to look at everybody 00:20:51.000 --> 00:20:56.759 in a pornographic way. Jesus defined adultery in the Sermon the Mount as saying this, I 00:20:56.759 --> 00:21:00.799 tell you that anyone who looks at a woman to lust after her has already committed adultery 00:21:00.799 --> 00:21:10.039 with her in his heart. The way we look is moral, Jesus says it counts. Job, the book 00:21:10.039 --> 00:21:15.519 of Job says, I've made a covenant with my eyes not to look lustfully at a young woman. 00:21:15.519 --> 00:21:21.079 So porn leads us in sexual fantasies and sexual sin leads us to look at people in a sexualized 00:21:21.079 --> 00:21:29.200 way. Porn, sexual sin allows us to ignore the abuse and suffering of others because, 00:21:29.200 --> 00:21:36.840 believe me, porn is exploitation. If we pay for porn, if we access porn, we contribute 00:21:36.840 --> 00:21:44.519 to the profits of human trafficking and slavery. Clickbait is used in the media, on the websites, 00:21:44.519 --> 00:21:50.559 on your phone and in lots of other places, clickbait is used to manipulate your behavior 00:21:50.559 --> 00:21:57.039 and create revenue for porn companies. In the long term, you're going to damage your 00:21:57.039 --> 00:22:07.159 potential for loving and fulfilling relationship. Men especially who use porn a lot, in the 00:22:07.159 --> 00:22:14.159 end no longer even want to pursue intimacy with other real people in face-to-face relationships 00:22:14.159 --> 00:22:22.079 because life becomes simpler if it's just you, your computer and your porn. And so you 00:22:22.079 --> 00:22:28.839 are going to become more and more inadequate for real, sustained human relationship. And 00:22:28.839 --> 00:22:35.559 ironically, if you use a lot of porn, you will enter marriage with a comically tragic 00:22:35.559 --> 00:22:42.919 misunderstanding of sex. And that, ironically, will prove to damage your ability to enjoy 00:22:42.919 --> 00:22:48.919 a real and fulfilling sexual relationship with a spouse because, believe it or not, porn 00:22:48.920 --> 00:22:59.360 sex is not real sex. It's a fiction. It's a dream, a fantasy sold to you to exploit 00:22:59.360 --> 00:23:07.800 you and manipulate you. And if you let yourself think that pornography reflects the reality 00:23:07.800 --> 00:23:14.360 of loving sexual relationship, you're always going to struggle to form loving sexual relationship 00:23:14.359 --> 00:23:21.479 in your marriage. So that's sex and sin. Just want us to move on a little bit more positive, 00:23:21.479 --> 00:23:27.479 hopeful ground perhaps for a few moments to talk about sex and the gospel. There is a 00:23:27.479 --> 00:23:37.199 lot of suffering around sex and a lot of guilt around sex in our culture. It's not the unforgivable 00:23:37.200 --> 00:23:44.600 sin. You mustn't make it that to yourself and you mustn't make it that to others. Thief, 00:23:44.600 --> 00:23:54.279 greed, lies, a lack of Sabbath rest and idolatry are given as much weight in the Ten Commandments. 00:23:54.279 --> 00:24:01.039 So don't feel despairing about yourself if you struggle with sexual sin or temptation. 00:24:01.039 --> 00:24:08.039 That equally don't just accept that it's inevitable, that it's just the way you are or that sexual 00:24:08.039 --> 00:24:17.599 sin is normal. But none of us in this area are without hope. The gospel offers hope and 00:24:17.599 --> 00:24:27.480 the gospel offers healing. So what can we say to offer hope? What can I say to you tonight 00:24:27.480 --> 00:24:32.920 if this is a real issue for you and even in your life, where you're hurt or where you're 00:24:32.920 --> 00:24:37.559 struggling? Well, I want to say this. First of all, there is a relationship that can transform 00:24:37.559 --> 00:24:46.799 your problems with sex. A long term relationship with Jesus will really help you with your 00:24:46.799 --> 00:24:54.720 sexual struggles. Because when you ask Jesus for help, He comes with mercy, but He comes 00:24:54.720 --> 00:25:05.480 with firmness to change you. So ask Jesus for help. Pursue your relationship with Jesus. 00:25:05.480 --> 00:25:11.240 That long term relationship is the foundation of all human intimacy and happiness. Secondly, 00:25:11.240 --> 00:25:16.920 I want to say this, that direction of travel matters as much as the distance traveled. 00:25:16.920 --> 00:25:21.759 In other words, looking at this way, sanctification is a process over time. None of us becomes 00:25:21.759 --> 00:25:29.839 holy and perfect overnight. But we want to be growing in godliness, changing in character, 00:25:29.839 --> 00:25:35.799 traveling in the right direction. So in all our struggles with sin, there are times when 00:25:35.799 --> 00:25:43.319 we will fail and we will fall. That's true of all kinds of sin, including sexual sins. 00:25:43.319 --> 00:25:48.039 So you may never want to sin in a certain way again. You may promise yourself. You may 00:25:48.039 --> 00:25:52.559 promise others. You may promise your spouse. You will never sin in a certain way again. 00:25:52.559 --> 00:25:58.759 And then you do. You're crushed. You're dismayed. You feel worthless. You feel hopeless that 00:25:58.759 --> 00:26:04.119 you've given into this sin again. Well, in those situations, you don't lose sight of 00:26:04.119 --> 00:26:09.079 the cross and you don't give up hope, because it's the direction that you're going in that 00:26:09.079 --> 00:26:15.639 decides your destination. So you may not win this battle all at once if it's an area of 00:26:15.640 --> 00:26:24.160 real struggle for you. But you can take small steps in the right direction. It's the direction 00:26:24.160 --> 00:26:28.960 of travel as much as the distance traveled that really matters. What are some small steps 00:26:28.960 --> 00:26:35.400 in the right direction? Repent more quickly when you've fallen to sexual sin of any kind. 00:26:35.400 --> 00:26:40.520 Want more of God and His grace and ask for that. Be more honest and accountable about 00:26:40.519 --> 00:26:48.200 your behavior and less secretive and stealthy. Try and battle more strongly against thoughts, 00:26:48.200 --> 00:26:54.319 desires and behavior that is wrong. Change the way that you deal with certain stressful 00:26:54.319 --> 00:26:59.680 situations because there are often stresses in our life that lead us back to repeat patterns 00:26:59.680 --> 00:27:06.759 of sin. So try and change the way you relate to those stresses. Is there a desire in the 00:27:06.759 --> 00:27:14.879 frequency of this sin? A decrease in the desire or the frequency of this sin? Are you more 00:27:14.879 --> 00:27:20.240 aware of the negative impact of your sinful behavior on others? Do you desire to love 00:27:20.240 --> 00:27:26.720 others in a more godly way? These are small steps in the right direction. So you may not 00:27:26.720 --> 00:27:31.680 win the battle all at once, but are you going in the right direction? Thirdly, I want to 00:27:31.680 --> 00:27:37.600 say look for reasons why you fall in places or times when you are vulnerable. Understand 00:27:37.600 --> 00:27:43.480 your behavior. So I'm going to read you a little bit from this booklet again by David 00:27:43.480 --> 00:27:49.799 Pauluson, Sexual Addiction, Freedom from Compulsive Behavior. So he talks about Tom. 00:27:49.799 --> 00:27:53.840 Tom is a single Christian man in his late 30s who's struggling with pornography and 00:27:53.840 --> 00:28:00.600 masturbation since he was a teenager. He tried all the right things, accountability, memorizing 00:28:00.599 --> 00:28:06.959 scripture passages, exercise, cold showers, prayer, involvement in ministry, but he still 00:28:06.959 --> 00:28:12.359 struggled so he came asking for help. I asked him to keep a record of when he was tempted. 00:28:12.359 --> 00:28:18.240 He said to me, I always know when. It's usually on Friday night. It's my temper tantrum with 00:28:18.240 --> 00:28:24.159 God. At first glance it seemed that his big struggle was with a sexual addiction, but 00:28:24.159 --> 00:28:29.559 here he was talking about anger at God. Where was that coming from? He said, I'm tired and 00:28:29.559 --> 00:28:34.720 lonely on Friday nights. I think about my single friends and dates and my married friends 00:28:34.720 --> 00:28:39.599 with their wives and I feel sorry for myself. I get angry at God because I think he owes 00:28:39.599 --> 00:28:46.440 me a wife and I don't have one. So by 9 o'clock the temptation to sexual sin is overwhelming 00:28:46.440 --> 00:28:53.839 and I give in. Tom's fight with sin had focused on just one thing, his struggle with pornography, 00:28:53.839 --> 00:28:58.759 but underlying that struggle was Tom's anger at God, self-pity, envy, his desire to be 00:28:58.759 --> 00:29:06.879 married and a hugely significant issue, his operative belief that God owed him a wife. 00:29:06.879 --> 00:29:11.200 Tom's desire for a wife had become what the Bible calls a lust of the flesh, a desire 00:29:11.200 --> 00:29:18.359 that dominated his life. Tom's lust for a wife fueled his self-pity, his anger at God 00:29:18.359 --> 00:29:24.720 and finally his escape into pornography. So you see here's one man, he's got a problem 00:29:24.720 --> 00:29:34.240 with one kind of sexual sin, underneath it loneliness, self-pity, bitterness. So understanding 00:29:34.240 --> 00:29:40.360 those problems helped him to deal with that problem. So if you've got a problem, try and 00:29:40.360 --> 00:29:44.360 speak to someone or look at it in a way that helps you understand why is this a problem 00:29:44.360 --> 00:29:51.200 for me. And if you can deal with the sin beneath the sin, often that's a great way of making 00:29:51.200 --> 00:30:01.559 progress. What else would I say? Fourthly, go to God. When you stumble, when you fall, 00:30:01.559 --> 00:30:05.759 what's your natural tendency? What did Adam and Eve do in the garden they hid from God? 00:30:05.759 --> 00:30:10.160 When we stumble and fall often, we want to hide from God. We turn in on ourselves, we 00:30:10.160 --> 00:30:16.319 feel ashamed. Don't turn away from God, don't turn in on yourself, turn to God. He's your 00:30:16.319 --> 00:30:22.679 hope, he's your help. If you tell yourself anything else, that's a lie. God is always 00:30:22.679 --> 00:30:29.960 your hope, always your help, always your refuge. So put on Christ, fill your life with Christ, 00:30:29.960 --> 00:30:35.279 close yourself with Him. Don't just avoid the darkness, fill yourself with light. Talk 00:30:35.279 --> 00:30:41.639 to God, tell Him how you feel, what your struggles are, what's going wrong. Listen to God, let 00:30:41.640 --> 00:30:47.280 the Bible speak into your life and your situation. Live in community, you're not alone, you're 00:30:47.280 --> 00:30:54.040 part of a family. You can have great intimate relationships, profound intimate relationships 00:30:54.040 --> 00:30:59.520 with other beings within the body of Jesus Christ. You need their care, their prayers, 00:30:59.520 --> 00:31:05.240 their company, their time. You all have a duty to each other to build loving, solid, real 00:31:05.240 --> 00:31:12.039 relationships, rather than just relationships where you're using others for your own gratification. 00:31:12.039 --> 00:31:16.599 You need real, solid, loving relationships where you serve each other, where you're 00:31:16.599 --> 00:31:26.599 accountable to each other and you need pastors, friends, spouses that you can speak to. And 00:31:26.599 --> 00:31:34.440 then I want to set you, get a new and a better vision. Sexual sin starts in imagination. 00:31:34.440 --> 00:31:41.000 That means we need to reimagine. We need to disconnect certain thought patterns in our 00:31:41.000 --> 00:31:46.720 head and start putting things together in a new way. You need to reshape your thought 00:31:46.720 --> 00:31:55.320 life. You need to work to replace wicked thoughts with good and holy and pure ones. 00:31:55.320 --> 00:32:01.080 So there's a quote that David Paulson's got in that book about this idea of a better vision. 00:32:01.079 --> 00:32:06.279 He quotes a French person called Antoine de Saint-Éspulé who says, if you want to build 00:32:06.279 --> 00:32:11.799 a ship, don't drum up the men to gather wood, divide the work and give orders. If you want 00:32:11.799 --> 00:32:17.240 to build a ship, don't drum up the men to gather wood, divide the work and give orders. 00:32:17.240 --> 00:32:24.799 Instead teach them to yearn for the vast and endless sea. This is what God does for us. 00:32:24.799 --> 00:32:30.119 He gives us a vision of something better than our dark self-centered imagination. He gives 00:32:30.119 --> 00:32:37.519 you a vision of a life that's lived as it's meant to be in true intimate relationship 00:32:37.519 --> 00:32:44.319 with Him and authentic loving relationship with other. A God who promises help for those 00:32:44.319 --> 00:32:50.239 who are imprisoned by their desires, dark thoughts and passions. Thomas Chalmers called 00:32:50.239 --> 00:32:58.000 this the expulsive power of a new affection. If your heart is owned and governed by a disordered 00:32:58.000 --> 00:33:04.240 love, how do you conquer that disordered love? You allow a greater love to take hold of your 00:33:04.240 --> 00:33:12.000 heart and drive out that disordered love. The great love, the expulsive love, is our 00:33:12.000 --> 00:33:18.720 love for God. That means we need to hear the Gospel again and again and again, preach 00:33:18.720 --> 00:33:23.200 the Gospel to ourselves and to one another, to hear that there is good news, that we are 00:33:23.200 --> 00:33:29.319 loved eternally and forever through Jesus Christ, that we are loved at the cross in 00:33:29.319 --> 00:33:36.920 the most costly and wonderful and extravagantly, and that the most fulfilling thing any of 00:33:36.920 --> 00:33:48.240 us will ever experience is to be loved fully and freely and wonderfully by Jesus Christ. 00:33:48.240 --> 00:33:58.759 So let's leave it there. I think I'd ask the guys to pop a slide up maybe. Right. If you've 00:33:58.759 --> 00:34:03.960 got your phone or you take notes, take a photo of that slide for somebody else because obviously 00:34:03.960 --> 00:34:10.199 you don't need it for yourself. But I do want to encourage you to take hold of good resources, 00:34:10.199 --> 00:34:15.840 okay? So it's worth doing this, either for yourself or others. So there's lots of good 00:34:15.840 --> 00:34:21.920 stuff in the Gospel and Life website, good article by Keller, Gospel and Sex. This little 00:34:21.920 --> 00:34:27.840 booklet, sexual addiction, David Powleson, CCEF, and then Manage Matters by Winston Smith, 00:34:27.840 --> 00:34:34.240 who also worked for CCEF, super helpful book on managing relationships. So I think we're 00:34:34.240 --> 00:34:39.440 going to put something on the website or out in the church mail this week as well, with 00:34:39.440 --> 00:34:47.159 a little email about this and linking you to some resources and so on. And I would really 00:34:47.159 --> 00:34:52.119 urge you, if you have a problem, speak to somebody because there's no point in struggling 00:34:52.119 --> 00:34:58.360 alone. Nobody's going to be shocked or surprised or amazed, but there's no point in facing 00:34:58.360 --> 00:35:02.800 these dark things on your own and just living with a sense of shame. So you have very good 00:35:02.800 --> 00:35:08.720 pastors in this congregation, very caring people that will respect your confidentiality 00:35:08.719 --> 00:35:16.039 but will minister to you well in your brokenness. So don't feel that you have to struggle alone 00:35:16.039 --> 00:35:21.480 in this regard. You get Corey, you get Derek, you get Katrina, you've got Louise, even me, 00:35:21.480 --> 00:35:26.480 lots of people who are willing to love you and help you in this regard. So I'm going 00:35:26.480 --> 00:35:32.719 to pray, sing our last song. So thanks for your patience on this topic. Lord, thanks so 00:35:32.719 --> 00:35:39.480 much that you give us hope and brokenness, healing in the hurting places of life. Lord, 00:35:39.480 --> 00:35:45.599 we've all got our unfulfilled longings or disappointments, our sense of shame and the 00:35:45.599 --> 00:35:52.079 guilt that we might carry, things we've done wrong, thoughts that we've entertained, people 00:35:52.079 --> 00:36:00.959 we've wounded and hurt, betrayals, all kinds of sadnesses, all of them connected in some 00:36:00.960 --> 00:36:10.760 way to our sex and sexuality. Lord, please do bring hope and healing into those hurts, 00:36:10.760 --> 00:36:16.880 into those dark places and give us a much better vision of who we can be as people and 00:36:16.880 --> 00:36:34.160 how we can live and may that vision for all of us centre on Jesus Christ. Amen.