Episode Transcript
[00:00:16] Speaker A: Few areas of our culture are more confused or frankly, more emotionally charged than the area of gender and sexuality.
And if we're honest, a lot of Christians, it's easier to just avoid the topic or to just react in a really, like, thoughtless, kind of one sided, harsh way that shuts conversation down or just to kind of quietly feel unsure about what I think and kind of fade into the background.
So the culture says to us, follow your identity, follow your desires.
The church sometimes has struggled with how to answer that and often has simply responded, just follow the rules.
Rules are not always a bad thing.
But the Bible actually says something deeper. The Bible says, come to Christ and be transformed by his grace. So in this episode, we're not just asking, what does the Bible say about gender and sexuality? We are asking that question and we're going to talk about that. But we're also asking, what would it look like to grow in grace in the area of gender and sexuality? Welcome to this episode of Word and Flesh podcast by Riverview Baptist Church. For Riverview Baptist Church. That is a tongue twister. More than you would think that it is, actually. But so far I'm surviving. I'm glad that you have joined us. We're glad that you've joined us. We're still just the two of us here, me and Nathan Bechtold and our elder, Michael Bean.
[00:01:44] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:01:44] Speaker A: Good to have you, brother.
[00:01:45] Speaker B: Yeah, man.
[00:01:46] Speaker A: Glad to be here and not joined by Ryan Anderson. He's on baby duty.
[00:01:51] Speaker B: Paternity leave.
[00:01:52] Speaker A: Paternity leave. That's right, baby. Not, I mean, duty, but the good kind of duty. Good, maybe opportunity.
[00:01:57] Speaker B: That's right.
[00:01:57] Speaker A: Yeah. So congrats to the Anderson family on a sweet little baby girl.
So we're going to ask this question. What does it look like to grow in grace in the area of gender and sexuality? So this is a sexual ethics kind of conversation. And really this is part one of many, probably many. We do not know how many episodes are going to be in this series, but this is meant to at least. I don't know if it's going to line up exactly with the sermon series that we're doing also, but it's at least going to sort of like try to fill in.
[00:02:30] Speaker B: Yeah, it's meant to supplement some of it. Yeah.
[00:02:32] Speaker A: So, but this is a sexual ethics conversation, but it's not primarily a sexual ethics. We do want to get into praxis, how we work these things out, because that's a large point of this podcast. Absolutely. But it's also very much rooted in the ideas of grace and identity. Yes, because.
Well, I was gonna say because that's the conversation the culture is having about identity, but that's actually. We're not following their cue there. It's. We want to be able to respond to that in a biblical way. Like the culture's having this identity conversation. We go, yeah, yeah, let's talk about identity a little bit.
[00:03:05] Speaker B: Right. And I would just go so far as to say, I mean, right away, you know, the culture tends to equate. And I mean, you hear this all the time. My sexual identity. So who I am is my sexuality. My sexuality defines me. The Bible is going to say something much deeper, which is, yes, your sexuality is a part of who you are, and it is a significant part of who you are, but that is not the sum of your being. In fact, you are not just a body, you are a soul.
And so your soul, your body will eventually die.
Your soul will endure forever. And so there's something more to you than your sexuality, and that is the. The core of your life. Let's get that right. And some other things are going to flow from that as well.
[00:03:48] Speaker A: Good, good. Yeah, that's. That's a good clarification. And then just so we have it on the record, how many genders are there, Pastor Michael?
[00:03:56] Speaker B: 2.
[00:03:56] Speaker A: Brian actually hates the word gender, which I understand why, because it's been so twisted into nonsense.
[00:04:02] Speaker B: Sure, yeah.
[00:04:02] Speaker A: Yeah. There's just the two, though.
[00:04:03] Speaker B: Yes. And they correspond with the sexes, male and female.
[00:04:07] Speaker A: The anatomy.
[00:04:07] Speaker B: Yes, exactly.
[00:04:08] Speaker A: And the. And the genetics there. That's a very, very spicy opinion you just threw out there, though.
[00:04:13] Speaker B: It is a very spicy one. It's also the biblical one. And that's where we're gonna stay.
[00:04:19] Speaker A: That's right. That's right. We let the Bible inform us.
Even when we read something that we go, wow, I don't know what to do with that or, wow, that conflicts with the culture, or, wow, that conflicts with how I've been living my life. The Bible ain't wrong, brother.
[00:04:32] Speaker B: That's exactly right.
[00:04:33] Speaker A: It's you. And you can make the change to conform yourself to what God's word actually says.
[00:04:38] Speaker B: Right. And that's actually good news.
[00:04:40] Speaker A: Great news.
[00:04:41] Speaker B: Yeah, that' the irony, I think our culture hears it as bad news.
It's actually really, really good news for your soul, for your life, and for the here and now.
[00:04:50] Speaker A: Yeah. And our culture, I think, especially our culture, because there's starting. Well, I can never decide when I think anything starts in our culture, but I'll just say starting with the sexual revolution of the 60s. Ish. Right?
[00:05:04] Speaker B: Yeah. There's so much.
[00:05:04] Speaker A: Our culture has this posture of throwing off the shackles of whatever. It actually goes further back than that. It goes back into feminism of the 18 and 19th centuries. Because that's this attempt to throw off the quote unquote shackles. Right. Which by the way, what they mean there is literally like, you know, God designated roles for men and women. God saying what sexuality is, what good sexuality is, what sin is. Those are the quote unquote shackles they're trying to throw off. And we go, yeah, no, we're just going to go like back to God's word and let that define those things for us. And so that's what we're doing. But it feels especially radical in this moment because I think our culture is still just trying to totally end game what we started. Again, I can't decide when it started, but in the sexual revolution or with feminism or perhaps at the Garden of Eden, we could even say it started. If we want to go back to that.
[00:06:02] Speaker B: In a very real sense, it does go back there.
[00:06:04] Speaker A: So the point is that you don't just make this. It's not purely a behavior modification conversation. No, there is a modification of behavior. Yes, that has to happen.
[00:06:17] Speaker B: That happens.
[00:06:17] Speaker A: But it's not that you address that thing and then all is well. Now, again, that thing should be addressed.
[00:06:24] Speaker B: Right.
[00:06:24] Speaker A: Whatever that behavior is, homosexuality or adultery or lust or pornography or inverted relationships in the marriage or I mean, like, we could go on and on and on and on and on with these different ways that sexuality gets twisted.
[00:06:40] Speaker B: Correct.
[00:06:42] Speaker A: Because of sin in the life of every person, but even in the life of the believer, or at least the temptation is there in the life of the believer. But purely behavior modification is not sufficient.
[00:06:54] Speaker B: Right. And that's a segue that I want to go. And we can go there right now.
But I think it's important as we have this conversation to admit just on a very basic level, the American evangelical church, especially in the time that you and I grew up, really struggled with this. I mean, I grew up in the deep, deep south in South Mississippi. And generally the message to me as a teenage boy was, sex is shameful.
Don't talk about it.
And in fact, if you're thinking about it, that's a sign that you're sinful.
[00:07:34] Speaker A: Right?
[00:07:34] Speaker B: And so you need to repress and just move past these things. And then there was this really interesting purity movement that also came alive at the exact same time that was really just driven around again.
God's design basically is purity.
And so just do that.
No real why, no real explanation as to what is the end game of this, what is the goal of this?
What is the fruit of this? Is there a benefit? What is that? Why did God design it? There's none of that. It's just be pure.
And so growing up in that kind of an environment, even to have this podcast, even just around human sexuality in a positive way, a biblical way, and say, actually, sexuality is good. It's a gift from God, that would have been radical for me growing up.
[00:08:35] Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah. So I think what was lacking, because I was all up in that culture too, I had a purity ring. I think I might still have it somewhere.
[00:08:42] Speaker B: Purity ring. That's True Love Waits, by the way, if you grew up in the United
[00:08:45] Speaker A: States, True Love Waits. I mean, I was in youth choir at our Southern Baptist church and we did the True Love Waits youth choir. Choir, like production. There was like a play.
[00:08:54] Speaker B: Wow.
[00:08:55] Speaker A: I still remember the song. I will not sing it for you, but I remember the song. The lyrics of which included True love Waits. Okay.
[00:09:02] Speaker B: So.
[00:09:03] Speaker A: And then we had a ceremony at the end of it where, like, the parents came up and prayed over their children and they like, gave you your purity ring.
Right.
Not everything was wrong with that. In other words, the call to purity is a good call.
[00:09:17] Speaker B: That's a biblical call.
[00:09:18] Speaker A: It's a biblical call to sexual purity. What was missing? And I think what you're saying here is a positive vision of sexuality. And again, maybe that was sprinkled in there. Maybe that was in the backdrop and they just didn't really want to say it. Yeah, I don't really know. All I know is that, yes, what was largely the message there was don't you dare. Yes, that was generally the message. And again, don't you dare. But here's the why. Because God made sex and God was the inventor of it. I've told my children this or some of them, I mean, not, you know, four year old yet, but like my older children, I'm very proactively, I want to get out in front of them thinking, oh, the culture invented sex and the church is embarrassed about it. Right, right. And the church is just trying to find like a, I don't know, Jesus way of having sex. But, like, actually, no, no, God invented that. Right.
[00:10:10] Speaker B: This was his idea to begin with.
[00:10:11] Speaker A: I've really tried to sort of drive that point home for my kids. And I think that's what was missing a lot in that 90s purity culture.
[00:10:20] Speaker B: That's A great way to say it, I think, too, essentially, just the posture of the church in America in many places was shame or silence or some combination.
And what we want to do at Riverview is give our people a way to talk about human sexuality. That is, yes, truth, but also grace. It's grace and truth. And so let's look at what the Bible says. Let's look at the facts and where we can't compromise and negotiate. We're not going to give in. But at the same time, recognize this, the fuel, again, for the Christian life is not just be pure.
It is the grace of God will enable you to be pure.
And so that's where I want us to go, and that's where I'm trying to link for us as a pastor growing in grace.
It affects every area of your life, even gender and sexuality.
[00:11:13] Speaker A: Yeah. And I think it's worth saying, too, that this conversation, particularly this one, is about sexed virtue or, like virtuous sexuality.
Future conversations in this series are going to deal with biblical manhood like sins that men struggle with, virtues that men are called to, sins that women struggle with, virtues that women are called to, how that ought to play itself out in a marriage, in a home, all those things. And I think that all of these conversations, I just want to say to folks, these are all relevant for everyone at every stage of life.
[00:11:49] Speaker B: Absolutely.
[00:11:49] Speaker A: So for a single person and a person that's been married for decades, a conversation about sexual virtue is critical.
[00:12:00] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:12:00] Speaker A: For a single person and a person that's been married for decades, a conversation about roles in marriage and in the home is critical.
Again, they're at different seasons in their lives. But this applies to everyone.
[00:12:13] Speaker B: Absolutely everyone across the spectrum, because God
[00:12:16] Speaker A: made them male and female.
[00:12:16] Speaker B: That's exactly right. And so I think that's a good, in some ways, segue to just the two foundations that we can kind of get into in terms of word, and then we can go back to flesh.
But if you look at the Bible, again, the driving root of this, the way that we're going to change as a people when it comes to sexuality, is not mere behavior modification. It is the heart level. Right. The heart of the problem is always a problem of the heart. And so we've got to make sure that we're driven by a love for God, not by, well, I have to live this way because it's just the right thing to do. No, my love for God is going to inform that. And so grace is going to change me.
But to your point, the deeper issue of just Genesis 1 and 2.
It is literally.
And this is where the virtue comes in. It is a part of the created order that God made us male and female.
And to deny that is to deny reality itself.
And so that doesn't lead to joy or peace. When we deny that, it doesn't lead to life. It leads actually to the opposite of those things. It leads to decay, it leads to death. It leads to sorrow and to shame. And that's where what we want to just hold up today is to say, you know, the Bible actually has a better way.
It has a better story to tell than what the culture is currently telling.
[00:13:39] Speaker A: Yeah. Because I think it has been, in different phases, tempting to apologize kind of as Christians for what the Bible says about sexuality simply because it's not culturally relevant at the moment. Right. So with the sexual revolution and the way. Even all the way into the 90s and stuff, the prevailing push culturally was just for, like, adult, I mean, adultery or just sexual immorality. They'd call it, like, sexual freedom or whatever, which is the opposite of that. Spoiler.
[00:14:10] Speaker B: Correct.
[00:14:10] Speaker A: But, you know, I remember when I was in public school, middle school, high school, whatever it was, the debate was about whether they would be teaching abstinence. Right. That was the debate.
[00:14:21] Speaker B: Oh, yeah. I remember those debates.
[00:14:23] Speaker A: I don't know that that debate is happening anymore. The culture has moved on. But the point is, at that time, it was like there was this temptation, I think, among Christians to be like, a little like, you know, the Bible says you should wait till marriage. I mean, I know it kind of stinks, but, you know, the Bible does say it. Right.
[00:14:42] Speaker B: Just hang in there.
[00:14:43] Speaker A: I think that was the temptation to sort of apologize for what the Bible says there, or sort of want to make like a. Yeah, it would be more fun to just kind of just do what the culture wants to do. But, you know, just trust us. You know, in heaven, everything will be better anyways. So just do that.
[00:14:59] Speaker B: Right. Do it God's way.
[00:15:00] Speaker A: Yeah. And then now it's. The culture is having the conversations about, I mean, homosexuality. But that was a decade and a half ago, two decades ago. Now it's, you know, gender and all the like again. We're, like, trying to play this out to its. To whatever, like, until we just go off the cliff completely.
[00:15:19] Speaker B: Right.
[00:15:20] Speaker A: But in those moments. So I'm thinking about even with when, like, legalizing gay marriage and some of these things were being pushed forward culturally, and I know that a lot of Christians were feeling the temptation to kind of apologize for Scripture, you still See this, actually I still see this with some like pastor influencer types online and stuff where it's this mealy mouthed approach to talking about sexuality that almost is like, listen, if I had written the Bible, I would have just said that like gay is okay and you know, like God made you that way and you know, like love is love and all this stuff. But unfortunately I didn't write the Bible. And so, you know, we do need to do what God says here. But you know, I mean, again, like, go find me a church on a corner. And a decent amount of them are actually basically saying that. Right.
[00:16:16] Speaker B: And so here's the assumption that's just crazy. That's behind that is essentially my understanding of love is more loving than God's.
[00:16:24] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:16:25] Speaker B: And so that's the message is, you know, God, he's a God of love. But really we need to adopt a human understanding of love to really know love.
That's crazy talk. Right. And so what we're going to say, it's idolatry. That's idolatry. It is self worship and it's the original sin. I want to be like God. I'm going to define my own terms. Right.
And so at Riverview again, we want to gently and lovingly say again.
The gift of God to make us male and female and the gift of God to give us rules and boundaries for sex and gender is actually the best case scenario. That's what you want, whether you realize it or not. That's where flourishing, that's where joy, that's where peace, that's where actually really good sex, all of those things are going to be found. God's way, not your way. Yeah, because how do you know that? Well, he's God and you're not. That's how he made everything you didn't.
[00:17:20] Speaker A: Yeah. And momentarily sin again, I mean, stolen honey is sweet. Right? So sin for the moment. Sure, sure. I mean people, there's a reason people do it.
[00:17:31] Speaker B: Right, right, right.
[00:17:33] Speaker A: But continue going down that road.
[00:17:35] Speaker B: That's right.
[00:17:36] Speaker A: Right. And then, and then find out how that goes. Because what you will find out is in its end is death. Right. The way that seems right to a man.
[00:17:45] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:17:46] Speaker A: Its end is death. And so what we're saying is the word of God is life and what God lays forward is life. And so insofar that our actions or our feelings or our sense of what I kind of think I want to do doesn't align with God's word, two things need to be happening. Thing one is the growing in grace thing. Right. Where we're. Where we're pressing into the kingdom, where we're seeking God's transformation of our hearts and our sense of whose I am.
My sense of. We talked about in the previous episode, my sense of who is my life actually about? Is it about me and, like, lifting me up? Is my life a reflection on me or is it a reflection on God? So that needs to be happening, this growing in grace at the same time. This is, again, I wouldn't call it behavior modification, but literally simply submitting your actions to the commands in God's word, whether you want to or not, in that particular moment. That extends to, literally to sexuality, to every sin and all the other things.
[00:18:44] Speaker B: Yeah. To any sin on the planet. Yeah. So, you know, and this is where I think the conversation can begin to go in a really helpful direction in terms of just day to day. So it doesn't matter whether you struggle with homosexual desire or you struggle with regular heterosexual desire, looking at pornography, whatever the case may be, whatever your sexual temptation is the call on the Christian life. And I'll just stress this real quickly.
Again, we're speaking at this podcast to the people of Riverview. This is a podcast for Riverview by Riverview.
And so the call to sexual purity first and foremost is to who?
It's to God's people.
[00:19:28] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:19:29] Speaker B: Paul makes a really good distinction that sometimes I think we forget.
In Corinthians, he says, he gives this long vice list of all these things, and he says some of you were effeminate and sexually immoral. And he goes on and on and on. And then he gets to the very end and he says this. He says, such were some of you.
And the idea is you did have an identity at one time, and interestingly, it was your sin. Your sin defines you before Christ, but once you come to Christ, he's who defines you. And so when we're having this conversation about battling sexual desire or changing sexual behaviors, we don't expect the lost world to do this or to understand this or to be excited about this. We expect Christians, people that belong to God, to be the ones that are saying, yeah, I'm going to lean in, I'm going to work. I'm going to expend effort to grow in grace in this area.
[00:20:28] Speaker A: I will just add that insofar as lost people do those things, they'll actually be shooting. There's flourishing. Yeah, there's flourishing. Right. Insofar as lost people are faithful to their spouse, that's better than not being faithful to your spouse.
[00:20:41] Speaker B: Absolutely.
[00:20:41] Speaker A: As Lost people don't look at pornography. That's better than looking at it and so forth. And interestingly, you see the culture sort of stumble in and out of these things over time. There are these waves currently that are not Christian specific of men that are not looking at pornography anymore. Right. It's like, well, that's good, that's good, that's good. Now you need to repent of all your sin and follow Christ.
[00:21:05] Speaker B: Right? And so, yeah, if you want the true virtuous life, if you want to live your actual designed purpose, then, yeah, you got to know Christ.
And so I think that's just an important distinction I wanted to make. Now that we've got that out of the way to move into, how does grace really begin to shape our behaviors and change that? Because you said this kind of before, this episode as we were talking, just that it seems like the big disconnect for a lot of people is, I know what the Bible says, but my desire is here, and it's not in line with that.
How do I change?
[00:21:43] Speaker A: Yeah. And this is true with not, again, just sexual virtue, but it feels especially true with sexual virtue. It's true of all commandments, right?
[00:21:51] Speaker B: It is.
[00:21:52] Speaker A: And some of us, again, I think some of us are geared in certain ways where certain areas flow a little more naturally because of our disposition or whatever. Right. But in this area, I think universally, and men and women struggle differently, I would say, on this for sure, but universally, there's this disconnect, right, between what God says sex should be and how, even as a Christian, where temptation wants me to go.
[00:22:16] Speaker B: That's exactly right. And I think, you know, we all wrestle with it in various ways. The way that it hits, each one of us may look and feel a little bit different, but the.
This sense of weight around it, as kind of, as you said, is almost amplified.
And so how do we begin to change that?
There seems to be two camps in my mind again, almost two ways that Christians fall off into a ditch in terms of transformation. One is it's just a hard issue.
[00:22:46] Speaker A: Pray heart, heart, not hard heart issue. Yeah, yeah.
[00:22:50] Speaker B: So just pray. Just read your Bible, Just go to church and hope for the best.
And then there's the other camp that says, as Jesus said in the Sermon on the Mount, hey, gouge out your eye. If it offends you, cut off your hand. And so throw your cell phone away.
Just go hardcore. Do whatever you got to do to get this right. And I would say as a pastor, because we are body and soul, because we are.
We do live embodied lives. It's not either or, it's both. And the heart is the center of the human being.
The heart is the center of life in terms of, as the Word tells us, where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.
That's the core of who you are. That is the fundamental thing that has to change. But in the meantime, there are things you can do to begin to discipline your body, to begin to practice, as it says kind of in the chain of, you know, items that help you grow in grace that Peter gives us in 1st Peter 1:5:8. One of those is self control.
He says, add self control, add endurance. Don't just control your body. Do it for a long time, and then continue to grow in the grace and knowledge of Jesus. And so it's not either or, it's a both. And that you and I are called in terms of fighting sin. And that's true. Again, not just of sexual sin, but really any sin.
[00:24:15] Speaker A: Yeah. So be transformed in your heart. Desire the right things.
[00:24:20] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:24:22] Speaker A: And then see what God calls you to do.
And insofar as your desire, like godly desire, takes you there. Good. And insofar as you have a temptation to not do that thing, mortify the flesh and do the thing right, do the thing that God calls you to do.
[00:24:38] Speaker B: Right. And so I think that's where if you. You go back to our idea of growing in grace, you say, well, that sounds like just all effort.
But I would say what we're doing is recognizing inside a fallen human heart there are competing desires.
I have a desire to honor God. I may have a sexual temptation of some sort, and to recognize, okay, in that moment, there's two desires here.
And one desire may give me a fleeting, although it might be intense, sense of joy or peace or satisfaction or whatever the case, but there is actually a greater joy that I can have in honoring God and obeying his way. And so that's where, when we talk about how grace changes and transforms our desires, some people do experience miraculous intervention by God and the Holy Spirit, where I used to have these sexual desires, and boom, like, they're just gone. He's just zapped him out of my life, and I'm just free of that.
I've seen God do that with addictions and other things. God can do that. But for the vast majority of people, the way this works is I have a sinful desire, but I have a greater desire to know Christ and follow him. And so I'm going to lean into the greater desire rather than just this Performance mentality of I got to do the right thing.
And that's just because I know God's going to be disappointed or I know it's really going to be embarrassing if people find out or whatever. You know, that is not joy. That's not actually growing in grace. That is legalism in a very real sense.
[00:26:25] Speaker A: Yeah. And then even in the doing of that thing, you know, what are we, how are we assessing how we've done there? Right. Like, am I glorying in my own sort of idea that I sort of self manufactured some problem. Yes. Holiness. Or am I recognizing that like again, we're gonna end up quoting the same verses like every episode. But it's God who works in you. Yes. To will. To will and to do according to his good purposes. Right. So God's doing the work in you. To will and to do. And again, then it goes back to what we just talked about in the previous episode, which is, so then what do I do? Do the thing God's called you to do. Right. And just recognize that it wasn't you who produced it.
However, like all obedience actually was sourced through God working that out in your heart. And then in those moments when you go, man, that's a thing that I know God calls me to do and that I don't want to do that, or I'm struggling with temptation to not do that. Well, again, that's where the battle is. Right. That's where you shed a little blood.
[00:27:31] Speaker B: Yes. And so back to kind of the John Piper quote I used last episode about grace is not just pardon, it's power. In other words, some of us, I think sometimes we think of Christianity and grace as a leash. I'm just on this leash and I can't go outside of the boundaries because that's not where joy is.
Grace is not a leash. Christ following him is not a leash. It's actually power to live a new life.
It's a power to go through life and actually fulfill the design and the call that a holy God placed on you from eternity past, man. There's joy and freedom and peace in that. And so the image I would give again, we live at Lake of the Ozarks. You can imagine a fish that lives in the lake says, I'm tired of all these boundaries that the water puts on me. And so I'm going to go out of the lake and I'm going to find real freedom. There's a whole world out there.
[00:28:26] Speaker A: Yeah, that looks like a lot of freedom, man.
[00:28:28] Speaker B: That's a big world. Yeah. There's a lot of freedom. I'm getting out of this lake and I'm going to go live it. And we know that that's death for the fish.
I think that's what so many Christians have bought in terms of looking around at the world and they've said, oh, man, it looks like life is over there.
[00:28:43] Speaker A: Isn't that what the Little Mermaid did?
I guess you're right.
[00:28:48] Speaker B: I've never thought of it that way.
[00:28:49] Speaker A: Disney commentary incoming.
[00:28:51] Speaker B: Watch out. Yeah, don't let your kids watch Little Mermaid.
No.
[00:28:55] Speaker A: And we're ending the episode right now.
[00:28:57] Speaker B: I think essentially where I was going with that is just that analogy.
The things of God and the boundaries he sets are actually for. They're not just to kill our joy. They're not just to keep us from having fun. They are where the good life is. That's where the virtue is.
And so you're going to actually find the deepest things that your heart craves in God and in his ways, not outside of them. And so that's where. When we think about God giving us male and female, that sounds really limiting.
No, it's actually freedom.
That's where you're going to be most at peace is not with you trying to define who you are, but letting God define who you are.
[00:29:40] Speaker A: Operating within God's design brings abundant life, right?
[00:29:43] Speaker B: Absolutely.
[00:29:44] Speaker A: For the believer, submitting yourself to God's will, obeying God, whatever the gap is in that particular moment between your.
Again, you have a desire to please God. If you're a Christian, you have a desire, right, to please God from the Holy Spirit. Yes. And so. But again, this is what we're kind of talking about, the gap, where the temptation goes. Yeah, but you could.
So that desire to please God is there.
So as a Christian, pressing into the way that God designed us to be.
[00:30:17] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:30:18] Speaker A: And again, we're talking about this specifically as it pertains to sexuality. Of course, it applies to everything. But pressing into the way God designed us to be is where abundant life is. We're going to run out of time. We want to kind of wrap up, but we wanted to talk a little bit about. We want to just put a little bit of practical handles to this, I think. So I think I want to talk to a couple of different camps and again, we'll get into some more of this, I think, as we. In the future episodes. But I wanna talk to unmarried folks first. So. Sexual ethic. Sexual ethic. As an unmarried person. I think, again, this is where we started is not simply to make sure you Adhere to this list of prohibitions. There is a list of prohibitions.
[00:31:02] Speaker B: Heed that it's good and right.
[00:31:04] Speaker A: Yes. But it's also a recognition. I remember actually, as I was 19 or 20, the thought first occurred to me that it would be good and right for me to think about sex, about sexuality, not in a lustful way, but like, to have to, like, consider it. Because like we were saying up until then, it was almost like, don't think about it. Don't let. Don't even the idea that God made sex come into your mind. Right.
[00:31:29] Speaker B: Be careful.
[00:31:30] Speaker A: Yeah. And so actually recognizing that what God has called you to right now.
Yeah. Abstain from sexual immorality. But press into the good that God has called you to here and recognize that in abstaining, God is growing you into the kind of person he means for you to be.
Likely to be somebody who's married. Right. And actually experiences the blessings of seeking purity in your singleness. But even if marriage is not what God has for you, then again there's abundance, abundant life in that pressing into purity. Again, purity is something that you press into and seek versus like a drawing back or like, oh, I don't get to have any of that fun over there.
[00:32:15] Speaker B: Well, and the way that I would encourage you to think about it. Again, going back to kind of our root verses, the chain of Christian qualities that Peter wants to encourage. Again, he talks about self control, which is interestingly a fruit of the spirit, and then endurance or perseverance. And he puts those. Right. Those two together.
And so for many of our, especially our younger listeners, I would just say, like this season of life in this particular area, God's will for you is self control and perseverance. And you're going to need that the rest of your life. Yeah, right.
[00:32:52] Speaker A: This is what I'm telling my son. That's exactly your son right now is like in the area of sexual virtue, what God is calling you to is self control. And you better learn that.
[00:33:02] Speaker B: You better learn the lesson.
[00:33:03] Speaker A: It applies to sexuality when you're married and like all the other areas, all kinds of ways.
[00:33:08] Speaker B: And then. That's exactly right. And you're going to need it in your business later. You're going to need it as a young man or woman to know how to raise your children. You're going to need some self control. You're going to need some perseverance. Yeah.
Same thing. As you age and life begins to look very different and your body doesn't do some of the things you wanted it to do at One point, you're going to need to know how to persevere. And so to practice this in the area of sexuality when you're young is a training ground for you.
And so don't despise that.
Don't be embittered or think you're missing out. No, this is God's will for you in Christ Jesus.
And so the same is true whether you're even an adult that's single and you're in some season of life again, God has given you, in his own way, a gift.
[00:33:57] Speaker A: And that, I think, is the hardest perspective, because I think it's hard when you're 16. And I think it's hard no matter what age you are. If you are called to abstain from sex because you're single, then it's hard to see it that way. It's hard to see it as a gift. And the temptation is always just to see it as a. I wish the Bible would not have said that. Right. Like as a prohibition, you know, again, been there, done that. Right. We've walked that. And so I think it's good, that encouragement, like, see that as a gift. It is a gift. Don't just pretend like it's a gift. That's right. It actually is.
[00:34:31] Speaker B: It really is. If. And so to just. Again, that's where faith comes in, to trust this thing over to God and say, lord, not my will, but yours be done. And I'm gonna believe that's actually. Again, joy's gonna be on the other side.
[00:34:45] Speaker A: Right. And of course, that applies to married couples when it comes to sexual immorality, anything from pornography to adultery. But I repeat myself, but adultery in all its various forms. Right.
And so we've said that thing, but I'm gonna say another thing about. To married couples.
[00:35:02] Speaker B: Yeah, let's do that.
[00:35:03] Speaker A: So because we wanna cast a positive vision and then we'll wrap up with this thought is God created sex and he made it for enjoyment between a couple. Like a married man and woman can articulate that. But this is obviously how God made it so reality.
He made it for enjoyment between them. He made it for oneness. Right. It's literally a picture. It's a physical picture of a physical and beyond physical oneness that God made in marriage. The two became one flesh. And by the way, God says. And I'm saying that this refers to Christ and the church, by the way, when he talks about marriage and two becoming all these things. So that's another episode.
[00:35:45] Speaker B: The whole one flesh union itself is sacred and mysterious and physical. Intimacy is a picture of a much deeper emotional and maybe even spiritual reality.
[00:35:55] Speaker A: Right. And so that's why we say the church is actually the entity that gets this. Yes, Right. The world doesn't get this. The church does. And so the prescriptive, positive vision for. For sex is that as a married couple, make sure that you're following God's design for sex. Not just not committing adultery or not lusting, but that you should be having sex.
[00:36:19] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:36:20] Speaker A: Like a married couple should be having sex because God made that. And if you're not, that's actually unhealthy.
[00:36:28] Speaker B: Yeah, no, that's a good word. That's a great word.
[00:36:30] Speaker A: See what I'm saying?
[00:36:30] Speaker B: And I think probably a convicting word for many married couples, especially as they age and desires change and things shift around.
To recognize, again, one of the things that sexual union is meant to do is foster union and connectedness with your partner. And so to go vast amounts of time without that is to neglect one of the ways God has given you to connect with your spouse in a deep and meaningful way that you're not supposed to connect with any other person on planet Earth with in that way.
And so. Yeah, I mean, that's a critical and a great word. Yeah.
[00:37:07] Speaker A: If. If somebody's asking, well, like, how often all these things a good advice from another podcast or listen to is just said regularly. Yeah, right. Regularly.
[00:37:17] Speaker B: That's good.
[00:37:17] Speaker A: And if you can look at it and go, that fits the definition of regularly, then at least, you know, that's a good. A good starting point. Right. Like. And again, that definition is going to vary at ages and seasons of life. But it should be regularly and it shouldn't. There should not be. In fact, again, this is literally the Bible that we're prescribing. Paul says this to couples. He's like, stop depriving one another.
[00:37:38] Speaker B: Yeah, it's a great word.
[00:37:39] Speaker A: He says come together frequently so that you're not tempted. Right. Only time that you should be practicing, you know, abstinence inside marriage.
[00:37:47] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:37:47] Speaker A: Is he. Paul says for specific. Like if there's a specific fast or a specific, you know, very set period for some particular spiritual reason. Yeah.
[00:37:56] Speaker B: Where there's seasons.
[00:37:57] Speaker A: Yeah, but. But. So I want to make sure that we just articulate that this is actually a prescription for married couples, that sex needs to be a part of your married life, and you might just need to fix that.
[00:38:10] Speaker B: That's a really good reminder.
[00:38:11] Speaker A: And that might be, well, the husband's going to have to lead in that, but the wife is also Going to have to step forward into that. And both of them actually, because it can be either one honestly need to submit to God's command. Now this is funny because it sounds crazy to like a single person. I think generally to be like saying married people, you need to be having sex and probably more of it. Right, right. But it should be, that should illustrate something to the single person about, about, like what temptation does. Right?
[00:38:46] Speaker B: Yeah. About how life is so good, life
[00:38:48] Speaker A: is difficult and messy and even in marriage, the thing that is the. One of the greatest temptations for many single people becomes a thing that gets discarded or viewed as an inconvenience or viewed as an obligation or gets like the very last maybe if there's any energy left at the end of the day kind of thing when it's like, man, this is, this is something that God actually designed and blesses and calls you to. So there you go.
[00:39:17] Speaker B: That's an excellent word. And you know, I'll just add this and then we can wrap up. I just think that what that shows and what it even reminds me of is just how much as fallen, sinful people, our hearts are prone to wander. And so like you said, when we're young and we're single or whatever the case may be, we're sitting there and we're thinking, if only I can get that, then I'll be satisfied. And then you get married and you get that and you begin to take that whole thing for granted. And you see, sex is like you said, almost this.
Well, I guess if we can somehow make time at the end of the day, then maybe there'll be room for that and we start to look for something else to satisfy. And so again, where can you grow in grace, Christian? It's Jesus is the satisfier of your soul. He is the fuel to live the life that God has called you to live as an embodied, engendered person.
And so that means in marriage, pursuing sex, that means outside of marriage, restraining yourself, abstinence for the sake of glorifying God, knowing him and helping other people know him again, because that's where joy is found. That's where life is found. And so, you know, if there's anything, I'll just wrap up, you know, gender is given by God, it's not chosen. And that's good.
[00:40:38] Speaker A: Yep.
[00:40:39] Speaker B: Sexuality is purposeful, not self defined. And again, that's going to lead to freedom. And then third, the fall distorts our sexual ideas, but it cannot, it doesn't have the power to actually redefine them. It doesn't have the power to go. Yeah. Okay. Here's where freedom is going to be.
Only God has that power.
[00:41:02] Speaker A: Great. And then. Yeah. In these next episodes, we're going to talk about other areas, other ways the Fall tries to distort that for male and for female. And then the abundant life that God calls us. To step into. Yes. To press into.
[00:41:15] Speaker B: Yep.
[00:41:15] Speaker A: And so we'll end on that note. Thank you all for tuning in. Thanks again for all the feedback. And share this with other folks, maybe in your life group or elsewhere that haven't watched or listened yet. And you've been an encouragement to us. We hope we've been an encouragement to you further up and further in. And we will see you soon.
[00:41:33] Speaker B: SA.
[00:42:01] Speaker A: Jesus.
Jesus.
Ra.
