 
This work is dedicated to the members of Christ Church of Acadiana who have graciously supported my family and me. Their sacrifices made all the research, reflection, and labor possible. My prayer is that this work might be a blessing to every one of them. Here's to more to come.

Mortify the Flesh: Be killing sin before it kills you

Brandon Nealy

Edited by Lori Briggs

Published by Lori Briggs at Smashwords

Copyright © 2018 Brandon Nealy

Unless otherwise indicated, all scripture quotations are from The ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
Contents

Chapter 1: Besetting Sins

Chapter 2: Fight Like a Son

Chapter 3: Hungry Eyes

Chapter 4: Flee, Don't Feed

Chapter 5: Mortify by Marriage

Chapter 6: Epilogue

# Chapter 1: Besetting Sins

Welcome to a touchy, controversial, difficult series. I hope that you would expect nothing less from me. I know a little bit about what the Bible says about the human condition, though I'm not an expert. God is clear in the scriptures and we know from personal experience that we all deal with besetting sins—those sins that daily haunt us.

If you're anything like me, you're still dealing with the sins that you were dealing with in high school or the sins that you wrestled with as a kid—the envy, perhaps, or the inordinate love of money, or a lust for control and power, or the desire for other people's approval. You've always dealt with them, and you're going to continue to deal with them.

In fact, as you look back over your life, there have been moments when you settled down for a little rest and relaxation. You thought things were secure. You felt quite assured of your relationship with Jesus. You felt you had some level of victory over a particular sin. It hadn't emerged in quite some time. But you pulled your troops out, and it came back. It slithered out from underneath the rocks. It came out from behind the women and children, where it's been evading your detection.

They're the incessant sins in the soul that never seem to go away. As soon as you think things are safe, there they are to take away any sense of security or assurance you might have previously had, to steal your dignity and humanity, to shame you and embarrass you on live television.

You've dealt with these before. You're dealing with them now—the besetting sins in the soul. What if I were to tell you that God has revealed to us in the scriptures a strategy for dealing with these incessant sins in the soul? Would that be something you'd want to hear about? I would hope so. God's strategy for dealing with the incessant sins in the soul—those sins that haunt us, humiliate us, and never seem to go away—can be found in Romans 8:13.

If you have spent any time in the scriptures, you might agree that our society is rather debauched. If you want to know what a society or culture is like, listen to its music. Look at its television programs. You'll get a bird's eye view of what a culture is like. And it's hard to turn on the radio these days without hearing some form of sexual perversion.

When I was a child, they used innuendo and euphemisms on the radio. Mom and Dad knew what they were talking about, but of course the kids didn't know, and we just sang along to it blindly. It was fun and catchy. But today on the radio and television, they're not using innuendo or euphemisms anymore. They're just flat-out saying perversities. They're flat-out showing it on television. There's no suggestiveness; it's happening right there before your eyes.

And it's in the Church, too; it's in Christians' heads. Did you know you have a hard drive of pornography in your head? Growing up in this culture, most of us deal with the besetting sexual sin of the eyes, of the ears, and, as Jesus says, of the hands. I would say that most of us are dealing with that on a daily basis, and if you're not dealing with it, you should be.

So that's what I want to talk about specifically in this series. Generally you will be able to apply everything you learn to your personal besetting sin—envy, love of money, lust for power, the need for everyone's approval, jealousy, contention, anger—whatever your proclivity is. But I would imagine most us are dealing with sexual temptations.

## Promise for a Lifetime

The strategy for dealing with sexual temptations is found in Romans 8:13: "For if you live according to the flesh, you will die. But if by the Spirit"—that is, by the power of the Spirit of God inside of you and all the privileges that come to you as a child of God—by the new birth, being a new creature, and the Spirit of the omnipotent, gracious God inside of you—if by that Spirit "you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live."

This is a promise! This is not the promise that you can be forgiven for your sin. That's a great promise; that's not this promise. This is not the promise that Jesus Christ died on the cross to pay the penalty of your sin. That's a great promise; that's not this promise.

This promise is that you can be saved from not just the penalty of sin, but the power of sin in your life currently and presently; that Jesus Christ came to this world and lived and died and sent his Spirit to you that you might not just be delivered from the punishment of sin, but that you might be delivered from sin itself as it acts out in your life; that you might be saved from the incessant sins of the soul; that you might be changed.

Now that's good news. That's the gospel good news, that you can be changed. And the strategy, Paul says, is "putting to death." The old King James uses the word "mortify." I like that because to mortify sin is to embarrass it, to humiliate it. It has embarrassed and humiliated you enough. It's time for us to turn the tables, to embarrass, humiliate, subdue, discipline, and suppress sin. To kill it. To execute it. To put it to death. To keep it in the caves where it belongs. To keep it underneath those rocks, keep it in hiding, keep it on the run, that we might live.

Paul says there's a hope for this, and he wants to give us that hope. He doesn't say exactly how to mortify here other than "by the Spirit," which we'll talk about in the next chapter. But God does tell us in the rest of the scriptures other strategies for mortifying sin. If you deal with sin—and I hope you're dealing with it—then you can live. And the Bible tells you how to deal with it. Now who would like to hear that? I would. I need it. If you don't need it, I need it. But I think you need it, too.

In this chapter, we ask the question, "Why kill sin?" This is definitely the hardest topic of all—perhaps the most prone to misunderstanding or the most in which I'm putting myself out there. This is the most politically insensitive or offensive, perhaps, but I think we can get through it.

## Crouching at the Door

Why mortify sin? The answer that Paul gives is, "If you don't mortify it, it's going to kill you." I'd like to dwell on this for a moment. The reason you must be every day and day to day killing sin is because sin is currently plotting to kill you. It's got you on a 20-year plan. It's plotting to take you out. It's playing the long game.

Consider what a plot is. A plot has multiple characteristics, but one is that a plot always involves a cover-up. That's because a plot always starts small. If you let your future victim know that you're plotting against them, they'll kill you before you're strong enough to fight. So a plot always begins with a cover-up, camouflaging itself, hiding underground, and making plans and conspiring in smoke-filled rooms.

You're underestimating it. You don't see it as a threat because it's covering itself up. The Bible talks about sin in this way often. It says to Cain, "Sin is crouching at the door and its desire is for you" (Genesis 4:7). That is, sin is like a tiger that crouches to make itself seem small and hides in the grass so that you continue to underestimate it, until at an opportune time, it destroys you.

Sin is plotting; that means it's covering itself up, appearing to look small so that you continue to make concessions for it and justify it, and so that you don't see it as the threat it really is. In this book, the attempt is to say, "Hey, guys, it may look small, but it's eyeballing you. It's plotting against you."

Maybe you've sensed that. You've been toying with some little sins in your life, and you've thought, maybe, deep down, "This is kind of fun, but I think that this could really blow up." It will! "This is fun, but I could see how if I continue down this path, it could destroy me."

The reason masterminds cover up plots is so that they can grow. You need time to grow a formidable force. You need time to add numbers to your agenda. If you're just one guy plotting against the government, you're a crazy person. But if there are two guys or three or four, some people with influence, it can grow and grow and grow, and eventually it's a fully grown plot. Sin is doing that to you as well. It's covering itself up. You're not considering it a threat. Perhaps you're even feeding it a little bit, because it's enjoyable.

## Sin's Agenda

It's growing and growing, and now, for it to be a plot, there has to be an agenda. And the agenda of sin is your life, your soul. The agenda of sin is to kill you. Paul's exposing sin for what it is. He's saying you'd better start killing it now. You'd better be killing sin day to day and every day, because if you don't, one day you are going to die at its hands.

It's like the neighbor who is a normal nice guy with a great smile and plays with his kids out in the yard—he's got a chocolate lab, of all things. He's a good ol' American guy. He waters his flowers in the afternoon. He goes to work at eight and comes back from work at five. And he checks his mail in his slippers. All the standard stuff. You see him from across the fence, thinking, "What a nice guy! Maybe I should go get to know him one day."

But behind the scenes, he's working on his pilot license. Behind the scenes he's conspiring. Behind the scenes he's hiding a deep hatred for you and everything that you stand for. And when you least expect it, when you lay your head down for a little rest and relaxation, when you think you're safe, he—bam—takes out your towers, and that's it.

It's sin plotting to kill you. Now, my analogy breaks down. It's partially true, but it's not totally true. It breaks down because the Bible is not mostly concerned with foreign threats. The Bible is mostly concerned with homegrown threats. The Bible is not so concerned about the snakes out in the woods; it's concerned about the snake you have for a pet. That's the one it's concerned about, and you should be too. (No offense to those with pet snakes.)

The Puritans used to speak of the heart of man as a nest of baby vipers. They come wriggling out daily, and they seem so cute, so non-threatening, but they're just as deadly. And if you don't stomp them daily, eventually they grow into a dragon. Eventually they grow so big that one day they bite the hand that feeds them.

One day the pet becomes the predator and you're the prey. Sin is plotting to kill you. It starts in your heart, it grows over a period of time, and then one day, when you're sleeping and not being watchful, it sneaks up on you. It wraps its coils around you and takes away what little breath you have left and then swallows you. You look back and say, "How did that happen? Where did that come from?"

Paul wants you to wake up right now, look around the living room of your heart—see that guy in the corner with his slithering little forked tongue eyeballing you and plotting against you, and take him out while he's small. Don't keep feeding him every day.

## Don't Learn the Hard Way

What does it mean when the Bible says sin will kill you? We have a lot of examples in the Bible. Old Testament stories are full of characters who have been destroyed by sin and are basically saying to you, "Christian, why don't you learn from my lesson? Learn the easy way. Why make your own mistakes when you can learn from mine?"

### David

David is a Bible character in the Old Testament who dealt with sexual sin and it destroyed him in a sense. 2 Samuel 11 describes how David was toying with idleness. He should have been off at battle with his men. He should have been fighting on the frontlines with Uriah, but instead, he was at the palace living in the lap of luxury, taking long naps, spending lots of time in indulgences, and eating dates and pomegranates and indulging in various Middle Eastern luxuries.

David was idle, and he developed a habit. I don't think he just went up on the rooftop and saw Bathsheba for the first time and instantly choked, like the first time you smoke a cigarette. No, this was something that he must have had in his daily schedule, something that he knew was about to take place, and he went up there and fed it, day in and day out.

He didn't guard the inlets of his soul, he didn't guard his eyes; he let it go into his eyes and eventually it got down to his heart. Every day he fed his sexual temptation and it grew and grew, until David, a man after God's own heart, finally killed for it. David, like Smeagol from Lord of the Rings, saw that ring to rule all other rings and over a period of time got uglier and uglier and uglier.

David didn't fight sin day to day and every day; he got lazy. He began to make concessions and justify it until finally it took his family from him. His own baby boy died because of his sin (2 Samuel 12:15-18). Because David had lost moral authority and credibility, his kingdom faltered, and his own son, Absalom, tried to usurp him and was killed and executed (2 Samuel 15-17).

And David spent the rest of his life shedding many tears. Sin killed him in a sense; it killed his family literally. It took away his joy. Now, David was saved, because God had sent Nathan to him to warn him, just as God is sending you a prophet in Romans 8:13 to warn you. David himself is a warning to us. It is often said in childrearing to let them make their own mistakes. But David says to us, "Why learn from your own mistakes when you can learn from mine?"

### Solomon

What about Solomon? One of the wisest men that ever lived was also one of the most foolish. The Bible says in the book of Genesis that one man, the husband, shall leave his mother and father and cleave to his wife (Genesis 2:24). That's a covenantal bond. God says it's two. God says it's male and female. And God says within the cleaving, within the covenantal bonds of marriage, there is to be sex. These are the parameters that God has placed on his created and designed gift to us.

But Solomon completely disregarded God's commandment of two: one man, one woman, leaving and cleaving. He had a whole harem of women, a thousand wives. Are you just doing what you hear on the radio? Are you just acting out what you see on television? Solomon was just living like everyone lives. He was just doing what all the other kings were doing.

His authority in that doing and living was not the word of God; his authority in that moment was culture, or society. Perhaps he justified it and said, "Well, I'm not harming anyone else." Perhaps he justified it and said, "This is just who I am." He made concessions and he justified and eventually his heart was pulled away from the Lord.

He also disregarded what God said about marrying unbelievers. He took to himself pagan, unbelieving wives. The problem wasn't that they were foreign, but that they worshipped false gods. And it got so bad that he built pagan shrines for them. At a time in his life, he worshipped at the pagan shrines. This is Solomon, the king, the son of peace. His life says to us, "Why make your own mistakes when you can learn from mine?"

Not only did he lose his family later, he lost his kingdom. The whole kingdom was rent in two because of his sin. All that he had worked for as a young man was ruined, because he would not keep himself within the bounds of scripture. All because he wouldn't kill and mortify sin in his everyday life. He lost it all. He went down like a politician, like one of those phony pastors on television. He went down in shame. Now, we do know Solomon learned his lesson in the end. You can read it the books of Ecclesiastes and Proverbs and see that he learned things the hard way. But it's given to us that we might learn things the easy way.

### Samson

What about Samson? What a story! Samson looked out at the Philistines and he saw something that he liked. Not a person's character, not their faith, not their true beauty that comes from the Lord, but he saw and he wanted her body. Her name was Delilah. That's trouble. And he toyed with trouble (Judges 16).

He told his mom and dad, "I want that. Go and get it for me." And he toyed with it day in and day out; he didn't take it seriously. And then one day when he was napping, he was shorn of his power. He wouldn't guard the inlets of his soul; he didn't take proper steps to kill sin. And sin gouged out his eyes. It'll do that to you. And in Samson's case, literally. It chained him up like a wild beast, and he grinded at the mill for the rest of his adult life. No dignity, all shame. What a picture for us! Kill sin before it kills you, before it takes away your family, before it takes away your legacy, before it takes away your dignity.

## A Bigger Warning

Now, I imagine there's someone reading that's considering Christianity—you're not sure about it. You don't believe that God created sex; perhaps you believe something else. You don't believe that God has the prerogative to mandate certain things regarding sex. You don't believe the Bible is authoritative for your life and practice. That's okay. I want you to keep reading because I want to move you in that direction. That's my agenda.

But even if you don't hold to the authority of scripture for your life and practice, would you be able to admit that other people's sexual deviancy has cost you and has hurt you? Hasn't it? And your deviancy has hurt others. Your sins and others' sins have brought heartbreak into your life; it's brought chaos into families. Look at what it's doing in our society, as it rends the families apart, as it perpetuates our plague of fatherlessness.

You can look out and with mere common sense see that because people are not putting themselves under God's authority, because people are saying, "This is my body to do with as I please, and no one's going to tell me otherwise. I'm going to do it with it how I want and when I want," they have unleashed chaos on our society. You don't have to be a Christian to see that. You don't even have to believe the Bible to see that.

God is showing you a little red flag and saying, "If it's unleashed this much chaos on society, just imagine what it will do to your soul for all eternity. If it's unleashed this much heartbreak on you, just imagine what it's doing to me, the author and creator. Imagine the heartbreak that it's causing me."

It's just a little sign, a little warning, that your seemingly innocent pet is plotting against you and will one day take you out. Paul says it clearly: "Take care, brethren, that there not be in any one of you an evil, unbelieving heart. Encourage one another day after day, as long as it's still called today, so that none of you will be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin. It's lying to you. It's tricking you. Make sure you watch out for it. Don't be deceived. Don't be tricked. Don't be killed!"

But Paul has something bigger in his mind when he says, "If you don't kill sin, it'll kill you." He's not talking about death to your legacy or death to your dignity or death to your family or even death to your body. He's talking about the death that comes to your soul. Eternal death. And we know this because he's explicitly clear in many other passages.

In Galatians 5:19, he says, "Now, the works of the flesh are evident. Sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality...." He lists all the various types of sexual sins. Hand, eyes, ears, heart, body. But he doesn't only list sexual sins—and please don't accuse me of saying that these sins are deserving of more wrath, that for people who are trapped in sexual sins, there is no hope—because he adds, "Idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, envy, drunkenness, orgies, and things like these."

Listen to me, Church, this is your Nathan moment. Do you know who he's writing to? Is he writing to the world or the Church? He's talking to the Church, and he says, Don't be deceived. Those who practice those things, that continue to willfully and impenitently pursue unrepentant sin—idolatry, sorcery, envy, jealousy, dissension, and all sorts of sexual sin—shall not inherit the kingdom of God. Even if you are sitting in a church. Even if you do warm the pew every Sunday. Don't be deceived.

In Colossians 3:5 he says, "Put to death what is earthly in you. Sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desires, and covetousness, which is idolatry. Put it to death, on account of this: The wrath of God is coming." Once again, he talks to Christians. He's talking to the Church. And it doesn't matter where you sit on Sunday morning. If you continue to willfully indulge in sexual sin, if you do not turn and forsake it and pursue Christ, the one who can deliver you, then you are storing up for yourself wrath on the day of judgment.

## Warning in Love

This is not death to dignity. It's so much more. This is not death to the body. It's so much more. It's not death to your family. It's so much more. It's death to your soul eternally. I told you this is a hard one. More gentle words cannot suffice. As a pastor, I dare not be ambiguous with this one. I dare not to one day stand before Jesus Christ and hear him say, "You were not clear enough, Brandon. You were too ambiguous; you rounded the edges."

We must draw sharp lines, sharp corners, on this one. It's too important. It involves your eternal destiny. If you willfully and impenitently pursue fornication, adultery, lust, homosexuality, and sexual immorality of all types and do not turn to Christ—if you do not go to him with your chains clanking all around you—you will be barred from heaven.

I can't be more gentle, or else I would be dangerously ambiguous. But don't hear me being hateful. Let me tell you what hate would be. Hate would be to let you fly off the cliff. Hate would just be indifferent. That's what hate is. "You're supposed to be tolerant." No father is tolerant of their child as they run into the street! They cry out, "Stop!" They do all that is necessary so that they don't bring about their own destruction.

Love warns. Love begs. Love pleads. Hate is indifferent. This is not hate speech. I get nothing out of this. I only put crosshairs on my own back when I say this. I know some of you are not fighting hard enough and you're in trouble. And I know some of you are fighting, but you're desperate. That's the reason for this book.

This is not hate; this is love. I believe that the Bible is authoritative. We do not determine what is right and wrong based on what society says, based on what popular opinion is, based on the majority vote, or based on what can harm others or not. We determine what is right and wrong based on scripture. What that means is that I believe fully and totally in the authority and inerrancy of scripture. And so believing that, I must then warn you of what it says. Hate would be indifferent; it would just let you go. That would be the easy thing, but love warns.

## Responding to the Warning

I hope when you read these things in the Bible, the response isn't "Father, this is about those people. This isn't about me." And when you read these passages, you'd better not say, "Father, thank you that I'm not like these people." You had better say, "Father, have mercy on me, a sinner" (Luke 18:13). You read it through that filter.

So what if you have committed these sins, not only in thought and in heart, but in actual deed, and what if you are currently committing them and don't know what else to do? This is how you cope. This is how you've always coped. This is how you deal with life. Is there any hope for you?

Look at the verse, Romans 8:13: "But if by the Spirit, you mortify the deeds of the flesh, you shall live." That's hope. We've got a lot of room to talk about it in the next chapters, but what this means is that if you have a hard drive of pornography in your brain, you can be delivered. By the Holy Spirit of God and his almighty power and grace in your life, you can have some victory. You can keep those incessant sins of the soul down in the caves where they belong. There's hope for that.

The gospel of Jesus Christ doesn't just promise that you will be saved from the penalty of sin; it makes the promise that you can be transformed; that you can be changed; that you can have a day-to-day victory over the struggle; that you do not have to be dominated by this sin. This means that if as a young child you were exploited and have a hard time seeing sexuality as a good gift from God, you can be delivered. You can be free. You can be transformed. You can fight. And by the Spirit of God, you can win. You can put your sins on the run instead of vise versa.

What this also means is that there is time. Why else would Paul tell us this? Why else would the Holy Spirit of God ordain that you be reading this in this moment to be told, to be warned, and to be shown the hope in Jesus Christ if he wasn't giving you time? Revelations 2 speaks of Jezebel, a woman in the church. God says, "I gave her time to repent of her fornications, but she would not." There's no hope for her anymore. She's dead and gone. Her time is up. But he gave her time.

But she said, "I'll do what I want with my body." She stomped her foot, she shook her fist at God, and her time ran out. But today, you and I have time. We're given time to turn. Take it. Cease the moment while it's here. God from heaven is speaking to us from his word, through the teaching of his word, that you can have victory and that you need to seize the moment today.

# Chapter 2: Fight Like a Son

## Getting Particular

In this chapter, we continue in Romans 8. In the last chapter we talked about fighting sin in general. But I think it is incredibly important this day and age to talk about fighting sexual sin in particular. I believe that Paul, when he talks about sex in the Bible, is using euphemisms, because he wrote letters to a church that did not have a nursery program, thus the kids were with the adults, and they read those letters in public. We don't want to be perverted, but we also don't want to be prudish. Both of those are wrong, sinful, and unbiblical. So don't worry, I will be using euphemisms.

Everything I say in this book can be applied to your particular fight with sin, whether it's with sexual temptation, the lust for power, the need for control, the need for other people's approval, or your own pride that demands to be recognized and to be given an outlet to show everyone how talented you really are. Whatever your besetting sin is, everything I say in this chapter can be applied to that.

But if you're wrestling with sexual temptation in particular, read carefully. In the last chapter, we looked at Solomon and learned from him that you must be killing sin or it will kill your legacy and everything that you ever worked for, as it did in Solomon's life. We also looked at Samson, and we saw that because he didn't guard his eyes, sin gouged them out. Sin will kill your body. Sin will take your life. Sin is currently plotting your destruction, and therefore you must fight sin diligently.

Now, in this chapter, we will talk not so much about strategies—we're going to get to that—but we will talk about the proper attitude of one who would kill sin successfully. If you don't have the right attitude, you have no choice but to lose. If you have the right attitude, you have no choice but to win.

Think about Joseph from the Old Testament. He was a handsome devil, as they say, and that's really an understatement. Joseph had it going on, and Joseph's boss's wife noticed him (Genesis 39:6-7). She was the quintessential desperate housewife: too much time on her hands, too much busybodying—too much Facebook time, if you will. Her job description wasn't fleshed out enough. She was idle, lazy, indulgent, etc. Sound familiar?

And in an environment of laziness, idleness, indulgence, leisure, and wealth, there's always a problem with sexual temptation. This is the environment in which most people live in our society, and this is why sexual sin is so prevalent here.

## Avoid and retreat

Potiphar's wife had that problem, and she "cast her eyes on Joseph" (Genesis 39:7). She set her appetite and ego on Joseph. And Joseph, as a godly young man, began to employ successful strategies of avoiding sexual temptation. One of the most important ones is avoiding those individuals who are after you.

So he changed his routine. He stopped walking down particular hallways; he certainly didn't walk there at certain times of day or night. He followed all the rules you might think of. He had done everything he possibly could not to be in a place where Potiphar's wife could get him, but in the course of his job, she grabbed a hold of him. It was then that he employed the number-one tactic in resisting sexual temptation—the retreat.

There is no shame in retreating; the Bible says to flee sexual immorality (1 Corinthians 6:18). And he did flee. He ran away, and she ran after him so fast, she was able to get his robe off of him. So now she had "evidence." It's always about ego, and because he insulted hers, she lied about him; she made a false accusation (Genesis 39:11-18).

That's the kind of people I want us to be, where sin has nothing on us but to lie about us. And sin is going to lie about us; the accuser of the brethren still lurks about (Revelations 12:10). We need to be the kind of people fighting sin so successfully that we are above reproach; that we are not being killed and dominated by sin; that sin has nothing on us but to lie about us. But where does Joseph get that fortitude?

## All in the Attitude

That's what this chapter is about: finding Joseph's key to success. And I believe it's in Joseph's attitude. It's in his mental framework, you might say. It's in his perspective of himself, others, and God. In Romans 8:13, Paul talks about attitude.

Consider this scene: What kind of music is playing as a boxer enters the room? Something like Eye of the Tiger, right? It's never something sweet and gentle. It's always something that pumps him up. His coach is pep-talking him, the radio announcer is pumping up the crowd, and the crowd's cheering.

It's all about using external stimuli to come into his heart and change his attitude. It's about making him feel like a champ and not a chump. Because you know, if you play sports, that if you go into the ring or onto the field or court with a defeated attitude, you will be defeated. It's all about psyching yourself up and psyching your opponent out.

I believe that's analogous to our fight against sin. We're not just ginning up our emotional state, but we do need our perspectives changed by external stimuli. Paul talks about it starting in Romans 8:13-14: "For if you live according to the flesh, you will die. But if by the Spirit"—that is, by the power of God residing inside of you and by all the privileges that come to you by the gospel of Jesus Christ, especially the indwelling presence of the Holy Spirit—"you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live. For all who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God."

"For" is the reason you can fight sin and win. "For you did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear." You didn't receive that when you got saved. Instead, "you have received the Spirit of adoption as sons, by whom we call 'Abba, Father!'" (v.15). To get a little technical, you will see that the translators sometimes use capital S and sometimes use little s for the same word: "spirit." It's the same word in Greek—pneuma, from which we get the word "pneumatic."

The word pneuma in scripture, which is translated as "spirit," can also be translated "breath," "wind," "Holy Spirit," "your own spirit," or "attitude." In other words, when we say that someone has a "gentle spirit," we don't mean that they have a demon or a "ghost of gentleness" inside of them; we mean that they have a gentle attitude.

If we have the right understanding of the Holy Spirit, we know that the Holy Spirit is a gift from God who comes into believers' hearts and begins to produce fruits of the Spirit. One of those fruits is gentleness. So when we say that a believer has a gentle spirit, what we mean is that they have the Holy Spirit, who has gone into their heart and has produced a spirit of gentleness—a gentle attitude, a gentle demeanor, a gentle approach to other people.

In Romans 8:15, Paul's talking about two different demeanors. One is called "a spirit of slavery." That means it's an attitude like that of one who is a slave. It's an attitude that is prone to falling back into fear. However, the attitude that comes from the Holy Spirit is "the spirit of adoption." It's like the attitude that a son has with a father. He doesn't cower in fear but is rather bold and cries out "Daddy! Abba!"

## The Mindset of a Son

So we have two different perspectives, or two different mindsets. If you have the wrong mindset, you have no choice but to lose in your battle against sin. If you have the right mindset, you have no choice but to win. Two people can be doing exactly the same thing externally, but the one with the spirit of slavery loses, and the one with the spirit of adoption wins. It's all about the right attitude. In other words, don't "fight like a man." Fight like a son.

We talked about why we should be killing sin in the last chapter. In the next chapter, we'll talk about strategies for killing sin. But it's so very important that you kill it from the right perspective. This is the crux of Christianity's method of killing sin, as opposed to all other religions. You have to kill it with the right attitude or you won't ever get any headway; you won't ever win. If you miss this, you could be practicing what you think is Christianity but is really false religion.

Let's talk about baseball for a bit. What's the point of it? Ego, right? I'm not talking about high school baseball or major league baseball. I just mean baseball. What's the spirit of it? Think of the nostalgic pictures of kids playing in the streets. You play baseball for fun! It's just a game. Why is your ego all wrapped up in it? Why is your identity all wrapped up in it? Why are you crushed? Why are you practicing so much that you sacrifice your life to it?

Imagine a boy named Johnny who's playing baseball. He's approaching the home plate to bat, and he's doing everything right externally He's got the stance; he's got his elbows the way they're supposed to be. He's knocking the mud off his cleats; he spits in the dirt. And he looks back over his shoulder before he steps up to the bat to make sure his dad is watching in the stands. He gets up to bat and his first pitch comes. Bang! Home run!

His head is held high. He's running slow. He's making sure everyone notices him. His eyes are lifted up. He's comparing himself with everyone else. He's running around all the bases. High fives. Then he goes up to the fence and grabs it, screaming at his dad: "Did you see that, Dad?! I hope you were watching this time. You know that birthday present you got me last week? Consider us even!"

The dad looks at him and he's confused. Most kids wouldn't say that out loud, but there is a perspective to that. That child is missing the point of what it means to be a son. The dad is bewildered, insulted, and embarrassed in front of the other parents, because, apparently, their relationship is quite messed up.

Now consider the next boy, Billy. He comes up to the plate, and he doesn't have all the swagger. He does not expect a good outcome. The pitch comes, and guess what: strike one, strike two, strike three. He holds his head down in despair and he walks up to his dad and says, "Okay, you can drop me off at the orphanage."

Once again, the kid doesn't know what it means to be a son. His relationship with his father, his belonging in the family, his sense of "home" and acceptance and everything that has to do with being father and son has nothing to do with how well he bats. He's missing the point of baseball. He's kind of ruining it. And he doesn't understand what it means to be a son. He has the wrong frame of mind. He has the wrong attitude.

And you can imagine that as each boy goes up to bat, one is filled with pride and arrogance and the other is filled with anxiety and fear. The way Paul describes these real feelings that we all have is with an analogy of slavery. He's not talking about the kind of slavery we had. He's talking about debt slavery. When you owed a debt you couldn't pay, you became someone's slave until you paid the debt. For us, the correlation might be employment. You have a spirit of employment. And it always fall into fear.

What's an employee afraid of? He's afraid of being terminated. Fired. In a sense, he's afraid of being disowned. So there is a feeling that we all have of being in a state of indebtedness to God, in a state of being estranged to him, of being illegitimate, and when we do well, it makes us put God in a corner as though he owes us. And when we do poorly, we are filled with anxiety and self-pity, and we turn from God in shame, all from a spirit of employment, a spirit of slavery.

This is the heart of all religions in this world except biblical Christianity. Every other religion feeds off of that fear and estrangement and feeling of illegitimacy. And it gives you a list of things to do to "get right with God" or it gives you the "path to take," "the example to follow," "the ladder to climb," "the eightfold path," or "the seven steps." If you do it, things will go well, and God will owe you. If you don't, you're in trouble. And of course you can't! Who can keep up with Gandhi, the Dalai Lama, or Buddha? No one, not morally or ethically.

Who can follow these saintly examples without feeling a little condemned? And so you try and you try harder. Those who do well are filled with arrogance and pride—Phariseeism—and look down on those who don't do so well. And those who do poorly are filled with more and more fear. It feeds off that fear, that spirit of illegitimacy, and builds upon it a whole power structure.

But Paul says when you received Jesus Christ and were born again through the Holy Spirit, you didn't get that. You were removed from that spirit of slavery. You were given a spirit or an attitude that is characterized by the type of attitude a son has toward a father. Into that spirit of fear comes the message of the gospel of Jesus Christ.

In the Garden of Eden, Adam and Eve were told not to do one thing. They weren't told to abstain from that tree so that God would approve of them. They were told because God already approved of them. He loved them; he gave them the whole world. Then the devil came to them and fed them lies that God didn't really have their best interests at heart and they couldn't trust him, and they sinned. And immediately they felt in their heart shame, defilement, and estrangement, and they began to run from God.

God followed them down that trail of shame, and when he caught them, Adam said he hid himself because he was afraid. He was filled with the spirit of indebtedness, which falls back into fear. There is a broad highway in this world filled with souls all running away from God, filled with anxiety and fear. All like little employees afraid to be terminated. And God's chasing them, saying, "You don't have to be afraid."

What did he tell Adam and Eve? He brought them back into his presence and killed an animal and covered their shame with the skin of that animal. What does an animal have to do with it? How can an animal pay the penalty for sin? God can't just forget about it; he is a just and holy judge. Well, when he was killing the animal and shedding its blood and covering them with its body, he was also saying, "A man is going to be born of a woman and he's going to put things right again."

## The Trail of a Son

And as you flip through the pages of the Old Testament, you learn that this man is going to be born in the lineage of Seth, of Noah, of Shem, of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. You learn that he's going to be a firstborn son and an only begotten son. You learn later as you flip through that he's going to be born in Bethlehem and he's going to be God with us, Emmanuel.

And finally you flip over to the New Testament, and here he is, the lamb who has come to take away the sins of the world. And he bats a thousand. Home runs every time. Perfect performance. A-plus. Fulfills the law of God in every way. And then what does God do? Does he pat him on the back or give him a high-five or a "well done"? No. He executes him on the cross.

Are you understanding what is happening here? Everything that you are afraid of receiving from God was already received by Jesus. He was terminated so that you might be kept. He was executed so that you might live. He was disowned so that you might be adopted. He became our substitute. What does that mean for us? It means that God can says to you, "Come back home."

All that is necessary to bring you back into his family has been paid for on the cross of Christ. It means that when you sin or make a mistake, he doesn't disown you. You're a son! He's given you his most precious possession. Why would he not give you anything else that is necessary and good, and why would he ever disown you (Matthew 7:11, James 1:17, Romans 8:32)?

When that message of the gospel of Jesus Christ gets into your heart—and it takes time—when you don't just see it but you receive it, when you don't just hear it but you believe it, when you don't just eat it but you begin to taste it, it puts inside of you the spirit of adoption. You can begin to say, "Oh, he loves me not because of my performance but because I'm his son!"

It begins to change your whole perspective. It changes your mindset. It changes your attitude. As you read the Bible in your daily devotions, and as you come to church on Sunday and hear someone telling you that you've sinned but can be affirmed and loved in God according to what Jesus Christ has done, you're reminded of the gospel of Jesus Christ. And as you see a representation of the body and the blood of Christ in the Lord's supper every week, you're reminded of the gospel of Jesus Christ.

It goes into your heart and by the spirit of God it begins to produce an attitude of sonship, an attitude of affirmation and approval. And it is only in that framework that you can actually have any victory over sin. As long as the spirit of condemnation and fear is in your heart, you can't win. You have no choice but to lose.

But if the gospel comes in and convinces you that he's on your side, you have no choice but to win. As it comes into your heart, when you're sitting alone in the dark and you are going down those same paths and are in the same habits and afraid of God watching you, you can begin to be filled with the joy of God being with you. Sin can't stand up to that.

You used to have legal motives for fighting sin. You didn't want to go to hell or for God to punish you; you wanted God to owe you your "best life." But now you have familial motives. You don't want to grieve your dad. You don't want to just not break his rules; you don't want to break his heart. It begins to change your perspective.

The struggle that used to look like ginning up willpower and trying to stare down sin turns into asking God, your father, for help. Your concern for external compliance begins to evolve into a concern for internal compliance as well. An anxiety begins to lift, because you're not afraid of being fired or sent to hell or swatted or cursed. He's on your side.

And when you feel so affirmed, when another person accuses you of doing something wrong, you can admit to it and not be upset or offended because God affirms you. When dad gives you instruction, you don't respond with defensiveness but with teachableness. You're open to criticism.

And when you do well, you're not so puffed up and condescending to others. And when you see others not doing so well, you don't look down on them; you see yourself in them. And your attitude goes from, "Thank you, God, that I'm not one of them," to "Have mercy on me, Lord, a sinner."

As the love of God is communicated to you through the gospel of Jesus Christ, that love compels you. The love of Christ compels you, not fear, indebtedness, or anxiety. You learn that the goodness of God leads men to repentance. And the goodness of God warms your heart.

You learn that the gospel is the power of God unto salvation, transformation, and sanctification. When Potiphar's wife tempted Joseph, he said, "Behold, because of me, my master has no concern about anything in his house, and he has put everything that he has in my charge. He is not greater in this house that I am nor has he kept back anything from me except you."

Does that sound familiar to you? That's how Adam and Eve should have responded. "Serpent, what do you mean, not to trust God? He's given me everything but this one thing. How then, according to all that God had done for me, can I do this great wickedness and sin against God?"

Our concern is God's heart. Because we like God. This is the difference between Christianity and every other religion. We have a relationship that is characterized by a relationship between a father and a child. A relationship that is characterized by really liking the almighty, divine one—the all-holy one, our creator and sustainer. We have an affection for him, a love for him, because he's brought us in and adopted us when we didn't deserve to be.

## The Secret of a Son

When you fight like a son, sin stands no chance. That's Joseph's secret. Even David, who went off the ledge in sin, when he repented, said, "Against you and you only have I sinned" (Psalm 51:4). Once again, it was the motives of a relationship with God that drove him to repentance.

The key for all of us is that we constantly have and cultivate an attitude of adoption, which is like a son. The only way it comes is with the gospel, so how do we cultivate that attitude? How do we turn on the music? How do we get that external stimuli of the gospel of Jesus Christ into our hearts so we can fight like a champ and not like a chump?

One way is you go to a church that preaches the gospel—one that preaches not out of an attitude of slavery that comes from fear—so that every week you're reminded of the love and affirmation of God found in the gospel of Jesus Christ. You weekly need to be reminded of that.

The idea that we move past the gospel into some "higher territory" is foolishness. It's a shallow view of the gospel and a misunderstanding of how people grow in sanctification. We must be in a church family that is gospel-centric, Christ-centric. As you communicate in community groups, as you communicate in your own family, as you take the Lord's supper and are reminded of his sacrifice, you position yourself under the means of grace through which God sends the gospel into your heart.

Reading the BIble is also key. The Bible is God's memoir of a father to a son. There's history and truth in there, but it also communicates God's feelings toward us. The more we read our Bible, the more the gospel gets inside of us—if we're reading it rightly. It gets inside of us and produces in us the spirit of adoption and gives us the tools necessary for fighting sin. You read the memoir of your father and no matter how old you are, you can feel like a kid again (or perhaps for the first time), loved and affirmed.

Attending to the teaching of the Bible—dwelling on it, reflecting on it, praying it—is very important. But here, in our text, we have something incredibly powerful in the fight against sin. It's called the "witness of the Spirit." Read carefully: This is not an objective thing; this is a subjective thing, where the objective gospel, which happened in time and space, is taken by the Holy Spirit of God and is subjectively put inside of you. The Holy Spirit witnesses with our spirit; he testifies over and over again that we are affirmed, approved, adopted, loved, etc.

Now how does it happen? How can you get it? How can you go after it? The Spirit uses a sword, and the sword is the word of God. As it is preached and read and meditated on and reflected on, every so often the Holy Spirit will stab you with it. Has that ever happened to you?

He'll plunge it deep into your heart, not to kill you, but to kill sin. Not to kill you but to kill the "self," the counterfeit Christ in your life—that ever-hungry, all-consuming, greedy little brat in your heart. As you read, "For God so loved the world," know that he loves you, too.

He gave his son to you! How could he withhold anything? When he plunges that into your heart, you feel like a child again. He's been with you all along as your daddy, but in those moments, he picks you up and he looks into your eyes and says, "I love you." And you are filled with warmth and affection and your desire for him is so much greater in those moments than your desire for sin.

And the desire for sin becomes like a candle in the light of the desire for God. Those moments don't last forever (yet); but when they do, they are very powerful for killing sin. If you've never experienced that, I encourage you to pursue it through reading, meditating, and praying on scripture and through attending faithfully to the teaching of scripture. You want to stand in the place where the Holy Spirit can do his work. You want to make sure that he has the sword so that he might plunge it into the self.

# Chapter 3: Hungry Eyes

## Violent Strategy

In this chapter, we are continuing in a series on fighting sexual sin and temptation. If you are that rare individual who still believes that you have no concern with sexual temptation—you have risen above the need to even think of these things—then apply everything you read in this chapter to whatever your particular besetting sin is, and it will be beneficial to you.

Matthew 5:27 is where we will begin. We are looking specifically for a strategy for killing lust and killing sin before it kills us. Jesus says, "You have heard that it was said, 'You shall not commit adultery.' [That is, you shall not have sex outside of marriage.] But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lustful intent [that is, intent in the mind] has already committed adultery with her in his heart" (Matthew 5:27-28). That is, in his affections and desires.

And then Jesus gives us the strategy. "If your right eye causes you to sin, tear it out. Gouge it out and throw it away. For it is better that you lose one of your members" [that is, one of your body parts] "than that your whole body be thrown into hell. And if your right hand [as precious as your right hand is to you] provokes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away. For it is better that you lose one of your body parts than that your whole body go to hell" (Matthew 5:29).

Wow. Pretty gruesome, right? The strategy that we are given here is to gouge out the eyeball and to dismember your hand. Jesus also says to cut off your right foot if it leads you to sin (Matthew 18:8). He is explaining to the traditionalists and the conservatives of his day that sin is deeper than they think. He is saying, "Sin is not just external or physical. Sin is deep. Don't be so shallow; don't be so superficial."

And the law of God is deeper than you think as well. The law of God is not just concerned with whether or not you have performed the actual deed of adultery, but whether or not you want to, whether or not you are looking to—whether or not it has captured your imagination and entered your heart. In the words of Conway Twitty, is the "want-to in your eyes"?

Whether or not you follow through with the deed, whether or not you have the opportunity to, whether or not you have the opportunity but you don't do it because there are secondary motives that are restraining you—all of that is besides the point if you intend it in your mind and if you desire it in your heart. If you're wanting and desiring and using your eyeballs to scan the terrain for these purposes, then God attributes to you the sin of adultery and all of the consequences that come with it.

Jesus is teaching this to a traditionalist, conservative society and what this means—and this is the main point of the text—is that everyone, without God doing some special work, is on their way to hell; that under the law of God, no one can stand. Under the law of God and all of its depth—all of its gravity—no one is innocent.

The law of God comes and it condemns. Whether you have sinned in the body, the head, or the heart, the law of God condemns you, and what this means mostly is that you desperately need someone to save you from yourself as well as from the law of sin and death. And that person's name is Jesus Christ. That's the main point of this book.

But we are in a series on fighting sexual temptation and we are looking for a particular strategy, and the strategy is: Gouge out your eyeball; cut off your hand. It's kind of crazy! It's very gruesome, bloody, and gruelling. Why does Jesus use this illustration? I think it's fitting. This illustration is gruesome because he is conveying the violence with which you must fight sin.

The Bible teaches us that the kingdom of God suffers violence and the violent take it by force (Matthew 11:12). It took me a long time, a lot of Bible study, and a lot of personal experience in the struggle against sin to finally understand what that verse means, that "the kingdom of God suffers violence, and the violent take it by force." That means that only the violent go to heaven. Not violent against others, but violent against the self and violent against the sin of the heart.

Ironically, those who are the most violent with their own sin are the most gentle with others. "The kingdom of God suffers violence and the violent take it by force." The Bible teaches clearly that only those who overcome and conquer shall inherit the kingdom of heaven and that all those who fall back in cowardice and refuse to fight sin and self shall not inherit the kingdom of heaven. The Christian life is to be characterized by fighting, by violence, by making war—illustrated by gouging out eyes and cutting off hands. That's how serious it is and that's how hard you should fight.

I would like to leave that illustration for a little bit and lay out for you in a mission statement what Jesus is calling us to do—what the strategy is: In the fight against sexual temptation and sin, we are to jealously guard the access points to the head, the heart, and the soul from anything and everything that would provoke us to sin physically, emotionally, or mentally.

### The senses as access points

Let's break that down. We are to jealously guard the access points. What are the access points? Jesus gives us two illustrations. He says one access point to your head, heart, and soul is the eyes, by illustration of the man or woman who is looking with intent in the mind to lust in the heart. He also talks about the hands, but I think by extrapolation, we can also say the ears. He's talking about the senses. We are to carefully guard against what we see and what we hear.

Imagine a castle. It has massive walls and is strongly guarded everywhere except for at the gate—the access point. The gate is necessary because inhabitants on the inside need to interact with those on the outside. They need to have import and export; they need to be able to bring in supplies and to send out troops.

You need to have access points. You have to have senses; that's how we interact with the outside world and how the outside world interacts with us. But Jesus is saying that the access points are a particular vulnerability in your life. It's the eyes, hands, and ears that you must be careful to jealously guard.

At times, when the enemy approaches, you must raise up the drawbridge, slam the gates shut, bar the doors, set a watch on the towers, and defend your position. From what? From anything that would provoke you to mental, emotional, or physical sin.

### Be Careful Little Eyes

Now what would provoke us to mental, emotional, or physical sin? Obviously, sensual images. Jealously, violently, vehemently, vigorously guard the access points to your soul from anything and everything that would get inside of you and find a fertile feeding ground and a willing host to grow. That means guard yourself from sensual and forbidden images.

This is often directed more toward men, but guarding our access points also means that women are not to give themselves over to the heavy breathing scenes that they read in romantic novels. You are not to live vicariously through the woman as she is embraced by Mr. Right—he who is all things your husband is not. We must jealously guard the access points of our souls from that which would come inside of us and give us an intent to crave and to need and to want and to lust.

I am not saying that the "bad stuff" is all outside of us and the "good stuff" is all inside and we need to make sure to keep the "bad stuff" out. Jesus says clearly that it is not what goes into a man that defiles him but that which comes out of his heart that defiles him (Matthew 15:11). I am saying clearly that we are to guard, not from getting cooties inside of us, but from anything that would get inside of us and stir up what's already there. We are to guard against anything that would grab a hold of our hearts that are already inclined to wickedness (Jeremiah 17:9) and capture our imaginations that are already prone to wander (2 Corinthians 10:5).

This is not just sensual imagery and "forbidden things"; this is also sometimes good things. Good things outside of us can sometimes be seen to us as fulfilling and satisfying in and of themselves, and we can look at them with intent to have them and with a need and hunger—idolatry. Even good things! We must be careful that they not capture our imagination, that they not substitute for Jesus Christ in our lives.

I think of the young lady who sees other marriages in her church, and they're not what her marriage is. She sees other husbands who are "so much more"; she wants a husband like that. She's not looking at a bad thing; she's looking at a good thing, but looking with intent to covet. "If only I had that husband. If only I had that tidy, lovely relationship. If only I had that family situation. Look at the house with the white picket fence! Look at those squeaky clean, beautiful, behaved children! If only I had that, my life would then be complete and I would be satisfied."

That's a lie. But you say that is how you've coped with life as long as you can remember. That is how you feel affirmed. In that fantasy relationship online in which this person is just everything your husband is not, he's so wonderful and loving! Of course he is! He's not living with you! You're not doing his laundry and making him food. That's not a real relationship; of course he seems perfect. He's minding his manners because he's using you. (And you're using him.)

This is how you've gone through your life feeling powerful and respected. This is how you've always coped with the monotony and boredom of life. This is how you've always coped with your jerk for a boss; you've always gone to be with yourself and this is how you've coped. I'm saying to you that you have to guard the access points of your soul from that which is provoking you to sin, but you don't think you can do it.

Jesus says to you right now that even if it's as precious to you as your right hand or foot, cut if off. The analogy is this: your feet take you places. They are your access to life, how you get what you need, what you stand on and depend on every day. Jesus is saying that even if you depend on that online relationship—or whatever your besetting sin may be—as much as you depend on your right foot, it's not worth your soul.

Let's say you're the typical kind of men who refuses to ask for directions and refuses to go to the doctor when you get an infection in your foot. You think, "My body can kill that infection because it's so manly and I just don't have time." You don't want it to mess with your routine or disrupt your life. But when you finally do go to the doctor because it's affecting your life so much, he tells you that you waited too long and now you have a gangrenous infection. He tells you to have a seat and then says, "The only way to deal with this is amputation."

This is naturally going to be traumatic and emotional for you. That's your right foot that you've depended on all your life. It would hurt for a long time. It would take a long time for you to develop new ways of life that no longer depended on that foot, and that would be painful. Yo would have to learn life all over again; you would have to learn to walk all over again. That would be hard and painful because you've depended on your right foot for so long. But hopefully you value your life enough over your foot to say eventually, "It's not worth my life; cut it off." Only a delusional, insane soccer player would say otherwise.

A right foot is not life. If I said, "Oh, I can't live without that! Life's not worth living without my foot!" you'd think I was insane. I would be tied down; they'd cut my foot off without my consent. And Jesus says likewise. Those moments of a palpitating heart and those fleeting feelings of affirmation—and that dopamine rush that you live for and that is a habit to you—is not worth your soul. It's not worth an eternity in hell.

A recent survey reported that 97% of citizens in Acadiana believe in the existence of hell. I'm going to assume that there's probably only a small number of you reading this that don't believe in hell, if any, so I'm not going to make a case for the existence of hell. But I know that the percentage would not be the same should we do a survey asking, "Do you go to hell for persisting in sexual sin?"

Very few would say, "Well, of course; Jesus says so." Even Christians sitting in the pews, who have been deluded by the sexual revolution and false teachings concerning the scriptures and how we even read them, would say, "So you're saying that if I don't turn from sexual sin and I don't fight it that I'm going to go to hell?" Yes.

I'm not saying it. Jesus says it, and Pauls says it in 1 Corinthians 6:9-10. John also says it in 1 John 3:9. Why? This is the easy explanation: God is both a judge and a lawmaker, and when you violate his laws, there are legal penalties. Also, marriage was created by God as an illustration of Christ's relationship with the church (Ephesians 5:25-32). Now, what's Christ's relationship with the church like? It is characterized by giving, serving, and laying down his life for his bride. It is characterized by a promise and a faithfulness to go to the very death for his bride, to see his bride in all her nakedness and shame, to accept her as she is and love her until his dying day—to, in fact, die for her.

## Selfless Strategy

Marriage is about giving, serving, accepting, loving, and dying for the other. That is a covenantal relationship. Sex, as the Bible says, is to be inside of that covenantal relationship of giving and serving and accepting and openness and love and dying daily for one another. Sex is to be inside of that, as a ritual—a physical demonstration of its invisible realities.

In a covenantal marriage, when you promise to never "quit" another person, to be there for another person "until death do you part," you are virtually saying, "Regardless of whether or not the costs outweigh the benefits, of whether or not you walk on me and offend me, I will give myself to you till my dying day. I promise to be there for you completely. We are to be two as one relationally, spiritually, psychologically, and economically." And the outward, physical display of that is sex. It is, in a sense, the ritual, the sacrament, of marriage.

Baptism, for example, is very physical and very real. It involves water, grabbing someone and shoving them under the water and pulling them out. It's strange, admittedly. It is a physical, real thing. It is a ritual that everyone can see and that the person experiences. And the Bible teaches us that it is a physical manifestation of a spiritual reality that has happened inside of the person's heart.

They have been spiritually baptized, immersed in the Holy Spirit, and joined with Jesus in death, burial, and resurrection. And what do you call a person who wants to get baptized who doesn't love Jesus, who has not been spiritually baptized, has no real relationship with Christ, and has not ever really been buried to sin and raised with Christ, but wants to show everyone how righteous they are? A fake, a phony—a hypocrite.

Yet in marriage, a covenant with spiritual realities, where you are in union spiritually, relationally, economically, psychologically, emotionally, and in every way, sex is the physical manifestation of that spiritual bond. Everybody wants to do it physically, but not spiritually, emotionally, mentally, psychologically, or economically. They want to have their cake and eat it too. They want to have sex with no strings attached.

Inside of marriage, sex is about giving and accepting and being vulnerable—seeing the other for who they are and loving them. Outside of marriage, it's all about marketing. It's all about sizing each other up. It's all about having needs and cravings and "loving" the other person for meeting them. And the other person has needs, so you have a sort of retail agreement that as long as you meet each other's needs, you're going to be okay.

But as soon as the other person stops meeting your needs, you're going to be looking for an upgrade. Sex outside of marriage is a retail exchange—a consumer good. Inside of marriage, it is a beautiful, grace-giving, affirming display of what is actually true. Outside of marriage, you're a hypocrite. You're a user, a taker, and an exploiter in a relationship of mutual usery.

The heart of sex outside of marriage is selfishness. Inside of marriage, it's selfless (or we're working on it, at least). Outside of marriage, it's all self-centered, about "my" needs: "I really love you loving me." And hell, in essence, is selfish. In other words, sex outside of marriage is selfish, and when you are engaged in that, you are on the highway that leads to the realm in which you get to be all by yourself.

Where do unjust exploiters and users and self-centered spiritual black-holes go? Not where God is. Only those who live for the glory of God and have the love of Christ inside of them that flows out to others will be in heaven. That's the essence of heaven: love and giving and selflessness. The essence of hell is taking and exploitation and selfishness.

The point I'm trying to make to you is that there are legal punishments that God bestows on those who refuse to repent. But he killed his son, Jesus Christ, so that you can be forgiven for that. But there's also the natural, inevitable result of living a self-centered life. You get to go be with your god, the self, for all eternity. You chose it; you lived that way.

So that's why Jesus says, "That selfish behavior, that frictionless, self-centered, self-indulging, exploitative using that you're doing alone in the dark—those eyes that look to women to meet your hungry needs—I don't care how precious it is to you; cut if off before it kills you!"

## Bottomless Strategy

Jesus doesn't say to watch out for "looking." You have to have eyes; they're a good thing. He says, "Gouge out the eyes that look with intent to lust." Now, you know "lust" is not necessarily a sexual thing. And that word he uses right there is rarely used in the Bible for sexual sin but is always used for idolatry. That means you're looking to good things to take the place of Christ for you.

The word "lust" is very often used for the sin of greed. Jesus says, "Gouge out greedy eyes." It can be used to talk about hunger, or being hungry. Cut off greedy, grabbing hands that feel so empty that they're always having to grab and hoard. And watch out for hungry eyes that are so starving inside that they see everything as a potential meal.

For example, pornography turns sex into a consumer good. A consumer good is for the purpose of being consumed. Pornography, in its essence, is a man or woman's hungry eyes reaching out and feeding on something. They have an insatiable appetite, an emptiness that reaches out and latches hold of something and feeds on it.

And like with any appetite, especially when you're trying to fill it with things in this world, it is never satisfied. The more you eat, the more your appetite expands until it eventually expands beyond the images on your computer screen into your very own relationships. It then sets out to consume all of those around you as you force expectations on them to fill your insatiable appetite. But no human can fill that. No one can drive over that bridge without it breaking.

You're like a cow; you chew your cud and swallow it, but you're not done there. You regurgitate in mental imagery and you chew it some more, swallow it, and regurgitate it all over again. Same thing with sex outside of marriage. It's all about meeting a need. It's all about hunger. It's all about needing more and more and more.

And it will never fill you up. It's the same thing with the young woman who looks to marriage, sex, and romance and says, "If only I had that, then my life would be complete." She is looking at that from a place of incompleteness. She's starving. She thinks that's the buffet that will finally fill her, but it's not.

## Gospel Strategy

How do we stop that? This is easier said than done, gouging out hungry eyes. You can stop looking at certain things, but does that take care of the hunger? You can turn off the TV and stop watching certain shows—and you should—but does that necessarily fill you? No. You have to turn off the TV and turn something else on. You have to stop dining at this table and dine at another table. You have to stop drinking from this empty well and drink from a new well that can actually satisfy you. The reason hungry eyes are so difficult to gouge out is that hungry eyes come from a hungry soul.

And into that void of the hungry soul comes the messengers and the prophets of the sexual revolution. And they come with their own gospel of satisfaction and identity: "You know what you've been lacking all along? You weren't in touch with your actual identity! What you need to do to be saved from this emptiness and hunger is to throw off the shackles of Judeo-Christian sexual ethic and embrace the new ethic that says, 'All is good and right as long as you consent,' and then you will be satisfied."

But while they preach the gospel of satisfaction through sexual promiscuity, they sing songs with words like "I can't get no satisfaction." Because they can't, and you can't either. Every idol has its prophets. Every idol has its wordsmiths and its poets to sing of its "good news." The sexual revolution says to you, "This is what you've been missing all along; this is the good news; this is where your soul can be fed!"

But at the same time as the gospel of the sexual revolution enters into your eyes and ears through your radio, TV, curriculum, friends, and society at large, the word of God comes to you by means of the Spirit by his prophets and his messengers and says that Christ is the bread that fell down from heaven. Christ is the water that flows from the rock, and if you would drink from him you would finally be satisfied. You'd finally have your soul's thirst quenched. This chapter is all about reminding you of that. It may even be about telling you for the first time.

The greatest story to illustrate this is from the gospel of John (John 4:11-29), and it's a story called "The Woman at the Well." The woman at the well was a Samaritan woman who daily walked to Jacob's well because she lived in a desert and water was not easily found. She lived with a physical thirst and so every day she had to go to this well and get water from it.

And it was there that Jesus met her. He said to her, "Give me a drink" (v.7). And that surprised her, because he was a Jew and she was a Gentile (v.9). So that got her attention. She gave him a drink of water, and he said, "If you would ask me for a drink of water, I can give you some water and you never thirst again. I have water than can truly quench your thirst" (v.10, 14).

And she, of course, like all of us would, is thinking physically. And so she says, "Sir, please give me that water!" (v.15). She didn't want to continue every single day in this desert region going all the way to this well. She had been working so hard and striving and engaging just to get a tiny little sip every day from this well.

And you know what Jesus did? He said, "Go, call your husband, and come here." She said, "I have no husband." And he said, "You are right in saying, 'I have no husband'; for you have had five husbands, and the one you now have is not your husband." And she said, rightly so, "Sir, I perceive you are a prophet" (v.16-19). He has showed to her that the well she was really going to was men—romance.

And she had been to that well five times. And she was still going. Jesus is saying to her, "I have a water that will satisfy your soul. You don't have to keep going to that. You can gouge out those hungry eyes if and when you would feed on me." And we know from the story that she did turn from her sin. She followed after Christ and became a preacher of the gospel of Jesus Christ (v. 28-29).

She admitted all that she had done. She was given forgiveness and pardon for her sins. And she began then to no longer drink from the well of sex and romance and "Mr. Right." She quit drinking from that well of fantasies and daydreams and began to daily go to the well that is Christ Jesus. He said, "If you are thirsty, come to me, and I will give you a drink" (John 7:37). This, Church, is the solution. You have to feed on Christ daily if you're going to have any hope of gouging out those hungry eyes of yours.

# Chapter 4: Flee, Don't Feed

## Keeping Sin Down

We will be discussing two different passages that are basically two sides of one coin in this chapter: 1 Corinthians 6:18 and Romans 13:14. Do you sense inside of your life, inside of your heart, a powerful, indwelling sin that repeatedly re-emerges in your life to take away your joy, rob you of your intimacy with Jesus Christ, defile your conscience, and eliminate all spiritual vitality that you might have previously had? If your answer to that is yes, then you are a typical human—in fact, a typical Christian. We call these "besetting sins": the sins that haunt us week in and week out, the sins that we were dealing with in high school and are still dealing with today. This sermon series is all about dealing with these besetting sins.

And if you're a thinking person, you may have observed that in this society and in this day and age, it would be a rarity if your besetting sins weren't to some degree sexual. This sermon series has been about fighting sin in general but fighting sexual temptation in particular. This series is called "Mortify the Flesh: Be killing sin before it kills you." Some inspiration for this comes from the book named The Mortification of Sin by an old Puritan named John Owen. I strongly encourage you to read a modernized version (because the original language may be hard to get through). I have been greatly helped by it, and the next few things that I say are pulled right out of it.

To mortify sin does not mean to disguise sin. We are not talking about giving some sort of external show to prove that we have conquered sin, while inwardly still burning. That's not the mortification of sin. We're not talking about diverting sin either. There are plenty of people who live sensual lifestyles who come into the church, take on the dynamics of the church community, and become self-righteous, arrogant, and moralistic.

We're not talking about going from one style of sin to another style of sin. And we're also not talking about developing inside of your heart a "sweet, gentle, and nice" demeanor. Plenty of people are born with gentle, timid, quiet temperaments. And God bless them for it. But there are people who are born with abrasive, rough, type-A, bulldozer, grumpy temperaments, and they're always going to deal with that. And what I do not mean, and what the Bible does not mean, by "the mortification of sin" is for all the "grumpy" people to cultivate inside of them a "demeanor of niceness." It's much deeper than that.

We're not talking about temperament. It's great if you have a leg up on everybody else when it comes to being nice to others because of your personality. But there are individuals who have grumpy, abrasive temperaments and are fighting and mortifying sin and they are closer to Jesus than those who were born with "nice" temperaments but are not fighting. We're not talking about cultivating a "nice church lady" demeanor.

We're also not talking about destroying sin utterly. That is prophesied in the scriptures to occur when Jesus Christ makes his presence directly known on earth. It is at that moment, when Jesus slams down on this earth, splitting the sky, that sin will flee and all wrongs will be righted. Sin will be utterly annihilated at that point, and no sooner than that.

What we are talking about is weakening sin, weakening and subduing the flesh, keeping it in bondage. They say to never kick a man when he is down. But because of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the flesh—that old man—is down. But he's not yet utterly dead; he has not yet breathed his last. And our job is to kick him while he's down, every day. You don't owe him anything else. You don't owe him food, shelter, a shoulder to cry on, or an opportunity to express himself. You owe him a kick in the ribs.

When we talk about the mortification of sin, we're talking about keeping sin in a weak state so that you can enjoy fellowship with Jesus Christ in this life—keeping it so subdued that you can enjoy a clean conscience, a pure heart and an assurance and confidence in your salvation, even in this dark world, which the light has dawned on.

You can enjoy those things in this dark world, even before sin is utterly destroyed, if you will daily mortify sin. And we're talking in this chapter about finding a particular, practical strategy for doing that. The Bible gives us strategies for kicking, fighting, subduing, enslaving, and weakening the flesh. And we've looked at quite a few. We've even looked at how we're to go about fighting. We're supposed to fight not like a man, but like a son. We're to fight based off of the light of the gospel of Jesus Christ. In this chapter we're going to get a two-sided coin of a strategy that we'll pursue as a church.

## One side of the coin

One side is in 1 Corinthians 6:18 where Paul says to "flee sexual immorality." You flip that coin over and you find in Romans 13:14, "Make no provision for the flesh." If we put these two things together, what we have is a strategy of "Flee sexual immorality; don't feed sexual immorality."

So first we start with fleeing. In 1 Corinthians 6:18, Paul is encouraging us to make use of the age-old military tactic of retreat. A retreat is not hands in the air, willy nilly, helter skelter, screaming, every man for himself. That's a bloodbath; that's a slaughter. Instead, a retreat is something that an army practices. It's a predetermined fallback position that has previously been fortified. When they call the retreat, the army retreats in an organized, strategic manner to preserve as much life as possible, so that they can live to fight another day. And when we are engaging battle in this world, sexual temptation in particular, the spirit may be willing, but the flesh is weak (Matthew 26:41).

And the power of sexual temptation is immense. It is more immense than other temptations, because it is not only spiritual or psychological; it involves your body chemistry, your very biology. And Paul knows it is so strong that the only tactic that can conquer it is the retreat.

You win by fleeing; you win victory and conquer by disengaging and withdrawing when it comes to sexual temptation. But that disengagement is a strategic one. It's not an immature, "Sex is gross, TMI." It is a strategic, planned, communally predetermined (at times), and individually practiced and rehearsed strategy of retreat.

I'm going to try to walk you through that. The things that I'm going to say cannot be applied in every situation exactly the same. While I'm giving the strategy, you're going to think of exceptions. But you cannot make the logical fallacy of rejecting the general truth because you have thought of some specific situation where that general truth does not apply.

Right now I'm giving you the general strategy. We have to start with going back into our pasts. The first thing we are going to do is gather intel on the enemy: how it attacks, where it has proven to be exceedingly strong in your life, and where it has proven to be exceedingly weak. In other words, in the past, where have you fallen? Where have you been defeated?

Now, this can be dangerous, because to remember your past can be a source of condemnation and accusation. But remember that we are fighting like sons. "There is no condemnation for those in Christ Jesus" (Romans 8:1). If he has begun a work in you, he will finish it (Philippians 1:6). He will never leave you or forsake you (Deuteronomy 31:6). There's nothing that can stand between him and his love for you (Romans 8:31-39).

So I want you to remember just for a moment when, where, how, and in what circumstances, and under the influence of what substances, maybe, you have fallen prey to sexual temptation. Where in your personal past has sin and sexual temptation proven to be exceedingly strong and you proven to be exceedingly weak?

Do you have those moments in your mind? It probably wasn't 10am on a Monday morning while you were faithfully engaged in your vocation. It was probably more like on the weekend when you were in a circle of friends, smoking pot or something like that. Where have you fallen prey to sin in the past?

We're going to put that on our map. Any time an army invades an enemy's territory, they find out through reconnaissance where the enemy is the strongest. And they put that on the map and develop a strategy with that information. So have you put it on your map—where you've fallen, where you've been strong?

Now what you're going to do is predetermine, while it's safe and you're in friendly territory, that you're going to avoid those strongholds. It's that simple. You're going to look into the future and see a particular set of circumstances colliding. In the past when that particular set of circumstances materialized, you have sinned. So you're going to do something revolutionary; you're going to not do that. You're not going to go there. You're not going to allow that set of circumstances to materialize in your life again.

It's not complicated. You might even say that it's not very spiritual. If so, you have the wrong definition of "spiritual." This is a plan that takes into consideration the weakness of the flesh and the immense power of sexual temptation. You're going to be accused of being a legalist; I guarantee it. You may be accusing me of that right now.

You're going to be accused of being a religious fanatic, but you're going to say for your own self, "I've gathered some research; I've gathered some intel, and when I allow that particular set of circumstances, 9 times out of 10 I sin against Jesus. So I'm going to avoid that." That is so practical. But I think sometimes we don't do this because we love our sin, so we allow the opportunity for it.

And if it's a particular person that happens to be that "set of circumstances" to avoid, who maybe brings out the worst in you, you might say, "But don't they need Jesus, too?" First of all, please don't use Jesus as an excuse for you to entertain sin. Secondly, just give their phone number or address to someone else, and let them take it from there. There are other ways to reach out to someone than to put yourself in their presence at 1am on a Friday morning with two glasses of wine. There are other ways to engage them with Jesus. There are some revolutionary wisdom principles that we'll be discussing regarding that.

### Predetermined Reflexive Response

After having said that, even if you do the very best you can in your life to avoid all the known dangers of sexual temptation, it's going to get you. It's not going to kill you, necessarily, but you will be tempted. The Bible says clearly that temptations must come (Matthew 18:7, Luke 17:1). Jesus himself was tempted. God uses temptation in our lives to make us stronger.

For example, a fire is going to happen no matter how many building codes you follow, no matter how many fire marshal evaluations you get, no matter how much study you have done, no matter how great your builder is, etc.; no matter what, if you operate a school, you still have to participate in what is called a fire drill. Even if you've been approved by the fire marshal, have the world's greatest electrician, and have avoided all known fire hazards, you still have to perform fire drills because lightning can strike, literally and figuratively.

No matter how much you avoid particular circumstances in your life, no matter how much you avoid sexual temptation, you will be surprised by it. And therefore you must have predetermined (that means before it happens) a reflexive response so that when it does occur you know exactly what to do right in that moment.

Athletes practice to gain muscle memory so that in the heat of contest they know exactly what to do. They don't even have to think about it; it just happens. The same thing can be said of soldiers; they have to know how to respond in high pressure situations. It becomes second nature to them; it's a reflexive response.

Schools have escape routes that are posted on the doors. Every quarter they drill; when the alarm is pulled, in case of an emergency fire, everyone stands, files out, goes out the predetermined doors and into the predetermined fallback positions, which are safe from fire, and do other predetermined things like take roll and make sure everyone is alive.

And they practice this every quarter so that when a fire happens and everyone's under panic and they're surprised by it, just by reflex, by muscle memory, they immediately know what to do and where to go so that they don't fall—so that they don't die.

You might be thinking this doesn't sound spiritual at all, that I'm supposed to be talking about the heart. But the Christian life is about the heart and about neck muscles. And we are to take these neck muscles, which belong to Jesus Christ and have been purchased by his blood, and make them a living sacrifice by disciplining them and subduing them with a predetermined reflexive response, so that if and when we look once, we don't look twice. Just by muscle memory.

We have this predetermined reflexive response so that when the temptation comes, we probably won't even know about it. It will be second nature to not look twice. We must discipline our eyeballs. So many men are lackadaisical and sloppy about this. "Let the goods time roll" is not a good philosophy when it comes to disciplining your eyeballs and your neck.

If you tell your eyeballs and neck, "Let the good times roll," you're going to be in for defeat. You must bring to that laissez faire philosophy a touch of sobriety, a touch of wartime mentality, that says to the neck, "You will not look a second time"; that says to the eyeballs, "No, eyeballs, we have a drill. When the alarm is sounded, we look this way, not that way."

And we practice that. We train in that. We discipline our bodies. We mortify them. How do you apply this to your own life? I'm not sure, exactly. I'll tell you one predetermined reflexive response that I've cultivated in my own life, and perhaps that can give you an idea about what you can do in yours.

I get a lot of friend requests from strangers. As a pastor, people like to go to my Facebook page to "scope out" the church. And that's fine. Though I will click accept and let them come see what the church is all about through my wall, sometimes I'll get a friend request from someone who, lo and behold, doesn't have any female friends. And their account was just opened last week and their name is "Sugar Spice" or something like that.

Muscle memory. Click. Ignore. Defriend. Don't scroll. Defriend. It has to be reflexive. It has to be a predetermined reflexive response so that in the heat of the moment you'll automatically know what to do. You might cut out some good people, but it's worth it.

Have a predetermined reflexive response so that when the surprise temptation comes, you can flee. This is what it means to flee sexual immorality. We flee by identifying strongholds in our lives, where the enemy has proven to be strong and we've proven to be weak, and we avoid those and live to fight another day.

Joseph was a great example of having a predetermined reflexive response, wasn't he? Remember Potiphar's wife? He avoided a particular person. He didn't feel the need to "evangelistically date" Potiphar's wife. He didn't feel the need to "talk to her about Jesus." He gave her phone number to his pastor. (Not really, but you get it.) He changed his routine. He avoided the temptress. He avoided any unnecessary temptation.

But in the course of his vocation, being a righteous young man, he was surprised by temptation. But he had a predetermined reflexive response so that he immediately knew what to do, and he fled. He ran away so fast that all Potiphar's wife could do was grab a hold of his cloak (Genesis 39:6-18).

All sin had on Joseph was false accusation; that's where we need to be. Imagine the church that is pure and chaste. I'm not talking about the church that has been pure and chaste since birth. I'm talking about the ones whose grievous sins have been redeemed by the blood of Jesus Christ who have actually come out of that darkness and had victory over those sins.

And now they are disciplining their eyeballs, their necks, their fingers, their legs, and their feet so that they don't fall back into that temptation. Imagine the church that is generous with their money and greedy with their beds. That is a church that can be a "community within a community"—a city on a hill in this world that is dominated by the sexual revolution.

### Pity the Fool

In Proverbs 7:6-9, Solomons says almost the exact same thing (have a predetermined reflexive response) to his sons. Solomon had fallen prey to sexual temptation and he learned from it and lived to be a wise man regarding his good advice. He says, "For at the window of my house, I have looked out through my lattice..." (v.6).

And you know what Solomon saw, looking out of his window? "And I have seen among the simple..." (v.7). That means among the "stupid." The naive. Those who think that their flesh is invincible. This is the young man who drives about 120 mph on his motorcycle without a helmet.

He's "invincible." But really, he's simple. He's naive. He thinks he's immortal, but he's a dumb ox. Solomon is looking outside of his window and he sees this "dumb ox," this young man among the simple, and says, "I have perceived among the youths a young man lacking sense" (v.7). And you know what it means to be a young man who lacks sense, to be stupid, a dumb ox, naive? This is what it looks like. He is "passing along the street near her corner" (v.8).

He's not saying, "I have perceived a simple man who keeps sleeping with prostitutes." Of course that would be obviously wrong. He's saying, "I perceive a simple man who keeps walking by her door. Down her street. What a fool!" He does not yet know the power of sexual immorality. He does not yet know the weakness of his own flesh. He hasn't yet experienced it; he's a fool.

He apparently will not learn from others' bad examples; he apparently has to learn the hard way for himself. He is passing on the street near her corner, taking the road to her house at night, in darkness (v.9). Wrong place, wrong time, at night, down a particular street. This may not seem very spiritual to some.

And then Solomon says, "Oh, son, listen to me and be attentive to the words of my mouth. Let not your heart turn aside to her ways" (Proverbs 7:24-25). "Now you're talking, Pastor. We've got to get into the heart of the matter!" True, we want to make sure of that. But look at the very next line of verse 25: "Do not stray into her paths." That is very material and practical. He's saying one of the means to not letting your heart stray is to not walk down that particular road, to not go by that particular door, to not go by that corner, and to not do it at that time of night. Think about where sin might be proven exceedingly strong and you exceedingly weak and avoid those places.

In Proverbs 5:8 he says, "Keep your way far from her." Give her phone number to someone else. Don't feel the need to evangelistically date her; don't use Jesus as an excuse to give opportunity to the flesh. "Keep your way far from her." She doesn't need you; she needs Jesus.

Quit being her counterfeit savior, and quit letting her be your counterfeit savior. "Keep your way far from her, and do not go near the door of her house" (Proverbs 5:8). He doesn't say what many in the church say, in trying not to be "legalistic": "Just don't sleep with each other." No, he says, "Don't go near the door of her house. There's a cliff there, simpleton, and you need to have a few railings before you go living on the edge or you're destined to fall."

## The other side of the coin

Now the other side of this coin is found in Romans 13:14, and it is to "make no provision for the flesh, to gratify its desires." So on one hand, Paul is saying, "Flee sexual immorality" (1 Corinthians 6:18), but on the other hand, he's saying, "Don't provide for it, either. Don't feed it."

So the strategy is, "Flee it, don't feed it." Don't provide it room and board; don't give it a shoulder to cry on. Don't give it an opportunity to express itself or to actualize itself. You don't owe it anything; don't provide for it. Don't give it an opportunity. When you establish certain protocols, strategies, or disciplines in your life, you're going to be called a legalist or even a fanatic.

And I'd love to talk to you more about that. But you know for you, it's not legalism. You're not trying to earn anything from God in this; you know your penalty has been paid on the cross. These certain protocols and strategies are how you express loving devotion to God, knowing full well your flesh's weakness and sin's power.

There is a stage between single and married, and it is crucial to have a strategy for getting from point A to point B, especially because the universal Church does not have a united front on this. What do we even call that stage of in between single and married?

Not engagement. That's the season between saying that you want to be married and getting married. No, I mean that stage where two people say, "I think that one day in the future we could get married—share a home, share a bed, have children together." You know what the problem is? The church doesn't have a unified name for it.

There's no system or universal strategy for moving people from single to married. We used to have one, a long time ago, but the church inside a world that is enslaved to the sexual revolution doesn't have a system. We don't know what a boy and a girl should do to get from point A to point B without indulging the flesh.

We don't know what strategies they should take. We don't know what predetermined reflexive responses they should engage in. We don't know how to practice or train. We don't know what to call it. We don't have a system. Because evangelicalism as a whole does not have a united system for moving singles to marriage in a faithful, pure way, you had better come up with one with the help of your parents, pastors, and community group.

You had better set some protocols, engage in some strategies, train yourself in predetermined reflexive responses and mark on the map the strongholds that you must avoid if you're going to flee sexual immorality and not feed it. Call it "dating," call it "courting," call it "dourting." Whatever. But you better have something. If you just respond with an immature, willy-nilly, run-for-the-hills attitude, you're toast.

What if you're so against being labeled a legalist that you would rather walk on the edge? Well, you're a simpleton and a fool. As the father of a teenage girl who does not own a shotgun—I don't want to have to own a shotgun—what I want is for her to be able to catch when suitors are trying to lead her astray.

I want her to be able to see that her suitor has planned a date in a private, comfortable location that is perfect for horizontal activity and has set up a playlist of soft love songs—when normally he listens to heavy metal or something—and has flowers and perfume in the air and has planned it perfectly around the full moon, etc.

I want her to be able to see through that and say, "You know we're not married, right?" I want her to be able to see that he's planning foolishly and providing an opportunity for the flesh, even at the risk of sounding like a legalist or religious zealot. I wouldn't need a shotgun. She would have just shotgunned that right there.

I want her to be able to see that not only is he not fleeing from sexual immorality but he's providing an opportunity for the flesh. I want her to be able to see that he's giving it an opportunity to actualize and express itself in their lives and see how foolish that is and say, "Let's not go there."

Christians, get wise. I wish evangelicalism had a set system we could all agree on and we knew what it was called and exactly what to do and it worked, but unfortunately, we live in a world that is dominated by the sexual revolution. Half the church is embroiled in the sexual revolution themselves and the other half is afraid to say anything because they don't want to offend anyone. Maybe the local church will come up with something one day that can be applied gracefully and not legalistically. It is tough, but maybe one day.

## Run for Dear Life

Finally, you say, "Pastor, I hear what you're saying. We're going to flee sexual temptation and we're not going to feed it. But don't we have to, at some point in time, face it? Go toe to toe and kill it? How is retreat a winning strategy? In any other military situation, if all we ever do is run, eventually we are going to be caught. We can run, but we can't hide, Pastor!"

Well, you're wrong about that. You can run away indefinitely and not get caught. And let me tell you why. Romans 6:6(a) says this: "We know that our old self [that likes to embrace immorality] was crucified with Jesus" (emphasis added). Notice the past tense. If you are a believer in Jesus Christ and hold onto the hope that is found in the gospel of Jesus Christ, then your old self, with all of its proclivities and tendencies, was (past tense) in some way nailed to the cross.

I do believe Paul is speaking here by analogy, that he's saying that when you became a Christian, when you were converted, when the Holy Spirit came into your life, something happened inside of you spiritually, mysteriously. Something happened with your heart and your desires and your mind that took "self" and put it on a cross. It was crucified there.

Why? "In order that the body of sin might be brought to nothing" (Romans 6:6b, emphasis added). Future tense. In order that the body of sin might one day be brought to nothing, as in annihilated, utterly destroyed. Why do you put someone on a cross? So that in about three to seven days, they die. So that ultimately, they will be killed. But it takes time for them to bleed out and breathe their last. In fact, in a crucifixion, people die of thirst or starvation before they die of anything else. When you put something on the cross, it doesn't immediately die.

"So that we would no longer be enslaved to sin" (Romans 6:6c). If it's on a cross, it can't bully you. It can't enslave you. It can't dominate you. And if you run, it can't catch you. You can run and you can hide and that is a winning strategy because the old self is nailed up on a cross, as by analogy.

He is bleeding out; he is down. The ref is counting. All you have to do is not let him back up. All you have to do is run; don't feed. Don't get him down from that cross. Don't nurse his wounds; don't bring him back to health. Don't give him room and board and a shoulder to cry on. Leave him on that cross, and every day you crucify the flesh.

If and when you do that, in light of the fact that Jesus Christ initiated your salvation by crucifying your flesh, and you daily live in that, continuing to participate in that crucifixion of the self, one day it will breathe its last, and it will presently be so weak that it won't ruin your joy, defile your conscience, or diminish your intimacy with Jesus Christ.

There's a promise in the gospel of Jesus Christ that if you will participate in what Jesus Christ has begun, he will finish it in the end. Don't feed it; flee it. And it will one day breathe its last. And it will presently be too weak to subdue and ruin you. And you won't have to be afraid.

What this also means is that if you're not in Jesus Christ, you can run, but you can't hide, because the chains haven't been broken. Your old self hasn't been nailed to the cross; it's still strong and filled with spiritual vigor and can still dominate you. Don't believe the lie that you have to clean yourself up before you go to Jesus; no, we go to Jesus in order that we might be cleaned up.

Don't believe the lie that you have to somehow dominate the self and all its sinful tendencies and proclivities before you go to Christ; we go to Christ so that he might take it by the power of the Spirit and all the privileges of the gospel and nail it to the cross, and then you stand a fighting chance. So the thing for all of us to do is to turn to Christ, to be initially delivered or to be continually delivered from the power of the self.

# Chapter 5: Mortify by Marriage

In this chapter, we'll focus on 1 Corinthians 7:1-3. We've been talking about biblical strategies for killing sin generally as well as sexual temptation particularly. I want to let you peer behind the curtain for a bit so that you can continue to mortify on your own and so we will continue to mortify corporately.

In John 8 Jesus says, "If you abide in my word, you are truly my disciples" (v. 31, ESV). The one who abides in his word is the one who dwells in the Bible and makes the Bible their home, lives in it, and so it lives in them. So, if you abide in his word, you are truly his disciples. Then he says, "And you will know the truth and the truth will set you free" (v. 32, ESV).

How do you know the truth? How do you attain true freedom? Abide in the word. That's the strategy and responsibly that we have. And by means of the word, you are set free. When Jesus was teaching this to the religious folk of his day, they said, "Well, why do you say this? We've never been a slave to anyone. We are the children of Abraham! We don't need to be set free; we are free. We are already liberated."

Of course, they had a very short memory, because they had been, in fact, enslaved by the Egyptians, then the Babylonians, then the Persians, then the Assyrians, and then the Greeks. At the time they had said this, they were in fact enslaved by the Romans. The Israelites had been slaves for thousands of years. In fact, their whole story is about being freed.

Jesus said, "If you want to be free, abide in my word. Then you'll know the truth and the truth will set you free." Then he went on to say, "So if the son sets you free, you will be free indeed" (John 8:37). Free from what? They, like religious people today, whether they believe the religion of Buddhism, Hinduism, false Christianity, or even the religion of the sexual revolution, argued, "We are free! We don't need to be liberated. In fact, we have found the path of freedom!" Then Jesus defined slavery for them. Anyone who practices sin—that is, anyone who wilfully, continually, impenitently practices sin and embraces it—is a slave to sin (John 8:34). If this is you, then you're dominated by it. It controls you. It owns you. You have a ring in your nose and it's pulling you to slaughter.

Jesus was not talking about enslavement to the Romans. He was talking about enslavement to spiritual darkness and evil, the enslavement to sin. And you know you are a slave when you are continually, willfully, impenitently practicing it. Jesus says that if he sets you free, you will be free indeed. Free from what? Free from the domination of sin in your life. And therefore free from the perpetual practice of sin. And the means through which he sets people free from the power of sin—the means through which he sets you free from your addiction to sex, from your addiction to pornography, from finding your identity in your sexual proclivities—is the word.

And our responsibility is to abide in the word. If you abide in it and follow him as a disciple, over time he will set you free from your former slave master, sin. So the aim of this entire series is that we would abide, so that corporately we might be set free from the power of sin in our lives. When we close the chapter and with it, the series, you will have to continue to abide in the word if you are to continue to mortify and to walk in freedom instead of slavery. So you must continue to read, reflect, and respond in prayer to the word, both individually and corporately, in community group and in church.

Last chapter, we abided in three words: "Flee sexual immorality." Today we're going to abide in three verses. These verses are a persuasive argument and it is necessary for me to go through the verses in the order they are in the Bible, following Paul's argument.

## Paul's Response to Sexual Immorality

The Corinthian church had written Paul a letter, so he starts with, "Now concerning the matters about which you wrote..." (1 Corinthians 7:1a). They had some problems, and Paul responds with, "It is good for a man not to have sexual relations with a woman" (1 Cor. 7:1b). King James translates this more literally: "It is good for a man not to touch a woman" (emphasis added).

It's a euphemism for marriage. In other words, "It is good for a man to pursue celibacy/singleness and to not get married." Notice he does not say that it is "better" or "best." He deliberately chooses not to use those words because they are words of comparison. He would have used them if he was comparing celibacy and singleness to marriage, but that's not what he's doing here. He is simply stating that, because of reasons that he has not yet explained, it's okay to stay single.

Singleness or celibacy is not more "holy"; that is a horrendous error. It is not evil either. It's good. It's okay if by God's providence you never get married. "But because of the temptation to sexual immorality, each man should have his own wife and each woman her own husband" (v.2). So it's good to stay single, but because of the temptation to sexual immorality, pursue marriage.

When Paul refers to the "temptation to sexual immorality," he doesn't say exactly which sexual temptations he means. There are several possible translations here for "sexual immorality." However, if we read the beginning of the book, we know that there was immense debauchery taking place inside the church itself. Inside the church of Corinth, there was sexual immorality going on that would make the Pagan Corinthians themselves blush. Paul says there is sexual immorality going on inside the church that is not even named among the Pagans (1 Cor. 5:1).

Sexual immorality was inside the church, but the city of Corinth was an immensely debauched, sexually immoral city itself. In fact, to "Corinthianize" was a derogatory, vulgar term. Can you imagine if "Lafayette" were turned into a verb that was equal in obscenity to the "F" word? This is what Corinth was known for. What is your city known for? Ours is known for the food and festival. Corinth was known for sexual immorality. The Corinthian's television and radio would have been full of smut, debauchery, violence, adultery, homosexuality, etc. This debauchery was among the religious and the irreligious, the educated and the uneducated alike.

This is true of us as well; we are daily assaulted by sexual temptation outside the church as well as inside. Let each man take a wife and each woman take a husband and get married. Once again I'll say that singleness is good. But in our current debauched culture and society, which is just like the culture and society the Corinthians were in when Paul wrote to them, it is wise to pursue marriage.

That's wisdom; that's the word. And in fact, when Paul says, "Let each man and each woman," that is not a suggestion; it's an imperative. It's a command. "To the Corinthians, pursue marriage. You are not in a situation where you should be pursuing celibacy. If providence means that you have to stay single, that's good, but because of the temptation to sexual immorality, pursue marriage."

So there you have it. This chapter's strategy for resisting temptation is marriage. What is the antidote to the sexual sin inside the church? Marriage. What provides our inoculation from sexual temptations outside the church? Marriage. What can make us a community inside of a community that has a wholly different and godly sexual ethic? Marriage. What can allow each one of us to have a pure heart and clean conscience and sweet fellowship with Jesus Christ amidst a world of sexual immorality? Marriage.

It is a strategy for getting our lives together. It is a strategy for fighting sin. It is a means of grace through which Jesus Christ grants us self-control. It is a conduit of grace through which God protects us from being swept away by the tide of sexual immorality in our nation. A community pursuing marriage is going to be a community that has a different sexual ethic so that it will look different and stand out as a city on a hill. Marriage is offered to us by the apostle Paul, by Jesus, as a means of grace for fighting sexual temptation.

I think everything I said so far is fairly obvious; now I'm going to say some things that aren't as obvious. I'm going to put myself out there, and some of you are going to think that's just my opinion and others will be fully persuaded. I guess it just depends on what you believe before you get here. But I'll open myself up to some objections.

I believe as a Church we should pursue marriage young—not "weird" young, but legally. People these days are getting married in their 30s. I read a horrific thing recently about companies like Google and Facebook that are offering, as a perk of employment, for women to freeze their eggs so that they can "work, work, work" and still maybe one day be able to have kids when they finally settle down and get married and start doing "the family thing."

Our society is pushing marriage farther and farther away, so that even now a 22- or 23-year-old pursuing marriage is considered culturally weird. I do believe that we as a countercultural revolution under the rule of King Jesus—instead of under the rule of the sexual revolution—ought to listen to Paul and notice that there's a lot of sexual temptation both outside and inside and decide to pursue marriage young because we're not naive and we don't underestimate the power of temptation.

## The Undue Delay of Marriage

Granted, there are providences that occur and individuals aren't allowed to get married or can't get married or don't meet anyone, etc., and I know it's good. But as a general rule we should pursue marriage and pursue it young. And it's not just me saying this. There are some folks called "The Westminster Divine." They're the big shots of church history. They are known for having written the Westminster Confession of Faith, which has been around for a few hundred years. This is a statement of faith globally recognized as legitimate. There are a few things that Christ Church would disagree with, but as a whole, it is a beautiful piece of work.

These learned scholars and saintly men came together to write a confession, or a summary, of what the Christian church holds. And this "catechism" of sorts was used to educate children. Question 139 asks, "What are the many ways in which a young man or young woman might violate the commandment, 'Thou shalt not commit adultery'?" And then they list all the ways by application that young men and women might violate that commandment.

And one of them, interestingly enough, says "by unduly delaying marriage." Of course there are providences. Of course things happen. But the Westminster Divines, whose authority I would like to appeal to, believe that when you unduly, unnecessarily, arbitrarily, naively, etc., delay getting married, you are making a place for adultery in your life. I believe that we should heed this today.

You may object, "But I need to get a college degree; I need to have a PhD in molecular physics, etc." But according to my personal experience, it's way easier to go to college married than not. There are so many baby boomers who think that if you get married you can't go to college, but it's because they haven't been to college in years. They don't know what it's like out there. You're not graduating with a diploma empowered for "soul success." You might get a job; you might not. It's not as a big a deal, in my opinion, as it used to be. I finished a degree married, my wife finished a degree married, and I'm currently working on a degree married with six kids. It's a myth that marriage makes it suddenly impossible to go to college. It's a myth that you have to get your life together before getting married.

In fact, marriage is a means of grace through which God helps you get your life together. That doesn't mean you get to be a slob and say, "God says that we gotta get married because I gotta get my act together." No, that's not what I'm saying. There are a lot of other things we need to consider as well, but don't let these myths keep you from being faithful to scripture and properly applying these verses.

## Biblically Defined Marriage

Yes, Paul teaches that the strategy for fighting sexual temptation is marriage, but we must notice how Paul defines marriage. We are at a time in our country in which marriage is defined by some other definition. There are individuals, prophets of the sexual revolution and priests of the new sexual identity, who have propagated a new definition of marriage—a rather ambiguous one, in fact.

They have opened our dictionaries, turned to the page that has "Marriage" and revised that definition that has been there for thousands of years, across all nations, tribes, and religions and all cultures to something considerably more ambiguous. But Paul is very clear that you are to pursue marriage as it is biblically defined.

And notice how it is biblically defined. "Each man find a wife, and each woman find a husband." When we put those two together—each man and each woman—we see that he defines marriage as monogamous, heterosexual, and covenantal. To pursue marriage by any other definition is not an antidote to sexual sin; it is in fact an accelerant to sexual sin and will be sexual sin itself.

Moreover, not only are we to pursue biblically defined marriage, but notice we are to practice within that biblically defined marriage the pleasures, privileges, and rights of marriage. In verse 3 Paul says, "The husband should give to his wife her conjugal rights, and likewise the wife to her husband."

There is a hierarchy in marriage; husbands are the head. The Bible is clear. But in this, there is no hierarchy. There is total equality in this area. And under total equality, mutual responsiveness, and mutual authority, the husband is to render what is due and the wife is to render what is due. And to unilaterally decide by yourself to withhold that which is due, that which is a right, is to steal and to defraud. The word "right" is a legal word; it is a contractual word. When you enter into marital union, there are pleasures, privileges, and rights that go along with it, and the husband is to render what is due and the wife is to render what is due (1 Cor. 7:3-4).

If marriage is to be a strategy for fighting sin for us, we must pursue a biblically defined covenant. Do you love your spouse? Do you want to enable them and empower them? Do you want to be a means of grace through which God helps them fight sin? Then you must pursue a biblically defined marriage together. You must enter into that monogamous and heterosexual covenant and practice the privileges, rights, and pleasures of that marriage.

To do anything else is to provide a stronghold for the devil and temptation (1 Cor. 7:5). Paul says it explicitly. He writes that if two spouses should by consent—notice no unilateral decision to withhold—take a "fast" of sorts to devote some time to prayer, that's fine. "But then come together again" so that you don't give place to the devil (v.5). To withhold is not only to defraud your spouse of their rights but to put a stumbling block in front of them. Temptations must come, but woe to those through whom they come.

Marriage is a potentially successful strategy for fighting sin but only if it is pursued biblically. Only if a biblically defined marriage is pursued and only if you practice the privileges, pleasures, and rights of that marriage will it be a strategy for fighting sin. Fighting sin doesn't have to be drudgery and misery.

We must go one step further, because we do live in a debauched land. We do live in a sexually immoral society. When you hear the word "rights," I can guess what comes to mind. We can stomp our feet and say "I have rights!" Meaning, "I have privileges. You have obligation." Remember, there is no hierarchy in this. This is total equality. One has no more right to demand anything than the other does. But for one to stomp their feet and demand their "rights" be met, they had better make sure that those rights are biblically determined and not determined by their porn-filled mind.

If your interpretation of conjugal rights is defined by the world or by your insatiable lust or by your porn-filled mind, then you will not be using marriage as a strategy to fight sin; you will be using sex inside of marriage as an accelerant to all sorts of sexual depravity. It is clear from Romans 1 that there is sex that is natural and that there is sex that is unnatural. We must fight perversion. And we must also fight prudishness. Romans 1 speaks of both unnatural and natural sex. We don't need to go into what that is, but the one thing we need to clarify is that what you demand as a right had better be natural. 1 Thessalonians 4 says that Christian men are to treat their wives not as the pagans do, but with honor.

That means when you stomp your foot and demand your rights, you had better take into consideration that there is a way to treat your wife like a pagan would, and that you are not to treat her that way. Your conjugal rights must be biblically defined, not defined by your lust-filled imagination. They must be holy, honorable, and natural, or else you're producing a churning cauldron of lust, even inside of your very own marriage.

As a church, we need to pursue biblically defined marriage, practicing the rights and privileges of that marriage and ensuring that the rights of that marriage are biblically defined and not defined by the world. If and when we do this, marriage becomes a strategy for fighting sexual temptation, both individually and in families; then we become a community with a radical sexual ethic—a community that is faithful to Christ and is completely and utterly counter-cultural.

## Resurrection Hope

Where do we get the power to do these things? You may say that sex is just not your natural inclination. I do believe these scriptures condemn all sorts of "hit the lights and get it over with" mindsets. These passages call for us to cheerly give and pursue. But what if that's not your natural inclination? What if it's not your "chemistry"? We're not talking about what you are or what you were. We're talking about what you can become by the grace of Jesus Christ. "Pastor, you don't understand what happened to me as a child. You don't understand what I've done." We're not talking about the past. We're talking about a future that is inspired by the gospel of Jesus Christ.

We're talking about what you can become. The gospel of Jesus Christ can change you. As Paul gives the Corinthian church his motivation for pursuing sexual morality and for pursuing monogamous, heterosexual marriage in 1 Corinthians 6, he says, "The body is not meant for sexual immorality" (v.13).

Christianity has a lot to say about the body. It's not just about the spiritual realm but about the physical realm as well. King Jesus is Lord over all dimensions. The body is not designed for sexual immorality, but for the Lord (v.13). This is the theology of the body; it belongs to the Lord. It's meant for the Lord. "And the Lord for the body" (v.13). Your body is for him and he is for it. How much is he for it? "And God raised the Lord and will also raise us up by his power" (v.14). He's so much for your body that he died and was raised again in order that your body might be raised up again as well. We're not talking about what your body was or is but what it can be through the gospel of Jesus Christ.

But moreover, "Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ?" (v.15). Your bodies themselves have been stamped by the cross of Christ. That means "forgiven." That means no condemnation. That means removal and sanctification from the power of sin. That means new definitions and new desires and new life and new possibilities and new hopes. Resurrection hopes.

"Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God? You are not your own, for you were bought with a price" (v.19-20a). What was bought with a price? Your body. What was the price? Christ's body. "So glorify God in your body" (v.20b). Why glorify God in your body? Why not pursue sexual immorality? Why pursue marriage as it is biblically defined, practicing the pleasures of marriage as they are biblically defined? Because your body belongs to the Lord. Not because he's bigger than you or stronger than you. But because he gave his body for your body.

Love compels love; sacrifice compels sacrifice. You can lay down your body for your husband or wife because Christ laid down his body for his bride. Let that compel you. That's the only power I know of. That's the only thing I know that will actually sanctify you, grow you, and help you to do this regardless of your own sin and what sins have been done to you. That's the power. To the degree in which that gets inside of your heart, you can pursue biblically defined marriage and its pleasures.

# Epilogue

As we talk about biblically defined marriage and sexual immorality and a Christian sexual ethic, you can't help but see an elephant in the room. All over our nation, marriage is under assault. There is an attempt to redefine marriage. I don't know exactly what to say or do, but I think I know how to start. So I'm going to say a few things to hopefully put Christ Church on the right path, to begin the conversation, and to perhaps pose both a warning and an encouragement for you. Because this issue is so controversial, I don't think I need much rhetorical flourish; I'll just list them.

There are many evangelicals, folks like us, who are sidestepping the issue of homosexual marriage because they want to pursue evangelism "better." They are avoiding the issue because they don't want to create a stumbling block. Some of them just want to be "cool," though they wouldn't say it out loud. They worship at the altar of the god "Cool."

I know this is going to be offensive to some, but I hope it's not necessarily. Below are a few of the reasons why I think we as Christ Church cannot sidestep this issue of homosexual marriage:

## We cannot sidestep the issue because it's not practical.

It's not practical because you're not going to be allowed to sidestep the issue. You can try to ride the fence as long as you want, but there's going to come a time when you're going to be pushed to one side or the other. Ultimately, you're not going to be allowed to avoid the issue or plead the fifth. In fact, to plead the fifth, or to not say something about something this important, is to say something. Here is a case for why it is not practical.

The sexual revolution is an arm of a counter religion. The sexual revolution has a gospel; it promises identity, liberation, self-worth, and self-actualization. It promises all that a gospel promises; it promises salvation, by throwing off the yoke of biblically defined marriage and activities inside of marriage. It promises a hope, a future. It promises to build a new community. It promises a new future for mankind.

It promises you that you can be all that you were meant to be if you would just throw off the yoke of God's definition of marriage and pursue this and that. The sexual revolution is an arm of a religion, and it has a gospel along with its own prophets and priests. It has people who propagate the message and they will use as much political power as they can to silence and marginalize anyone who would oppose their message. Just as we, Christ Church, would remove and excommunicate anyone who was propagating a false gospel, they too will pursue the excommunication of anyone who propagates a false gospel in their understanding of "gospel."

Religions spread; they seek converts. They preach; they proselytize. And they marginalize those who would preach a "false gospel." You're not going to be allowed to stay quiet. You're going to have to either affirm or deny the statement of faith of the sexual revolution and face "excommunication," whatever that might look like. So it's not practical to say quiet.

## We cannot sidestep the issue because it's not wise.

Here's why: A recent poll determined that 85% of Roman Catholic millennials (people between the ages of 21 and 37) do not hold to the Church's doctrinal statement regarding homosexuality, revealing that the Church as a whole has unsuccessfully transmitted its doctrinal statements, beliefs, and worldview to the next generation. I think we need to learn from this statistic, because I don't know how far behind we are. As evangelicals, we must actively teach our children our worldview. Specifically, we must actively teach our children where our definition of marriage comes from (the Bible) and where our understanding of sexual sin and immorality comes from (the Bible).

But it's more than just saying, "The Bible says it, so that settles it." Our children are getting persuasive arguments from the other side. They're not being told: "Society says it, so that settles it." That would be too obvious and simple. They're getting persuasive arguments as to why they should throw out the foundations of the Bible as the sole source of authority and follow some other source of authority.

We must not simply assert that the Bible is the true source of authority; we must present an argument. We must make a case for why we should stand on the Bible and not on what society thinks, on what majority thinks, on what we think is best, or on what makes sense or feels good, etc. We must stand on the Bible, children. We must be people of the book. We must be people of revelation, not relying on faulty human reasoning. Society would argue that our Bible is made by men, but so is theirs. Now which one is best? Which one should we land on?

What's best for a family, community, society, and nation? We have to make an argument or we're going to lose our kids. We can't just say, "The Bible says it so it must be true." We can't just assert it. We have to make a persuasive case. We must convince them of our worldview. We must persuade them passionately and lovingly. If you're sidestepping the issue, you will never come up with any persuasive arguments, and your children will be bombarded daily with persuasive arguments from the other "religion." You will lose them in your passivity.

You must be active in conveying to your children a Christian worldview. I'm honestly scared and concerned for some of our children. We'd better be faithful. If our children are not given a biblical worldview as they grow up, the shame is on our heads, and rightly so. So it's not wise to sit back passively and let our kids be eaten up. Sexual immorality kills the soul.

## We cannot sidestep the issue because it's bad theology.

The argument that "we just want to be about the gospel of Jesus Christ and not be embroiled in these battles" is foolish and bad theology. Marriage was created not primarily to be a strategy against fighting sin. That is a secondary benefit. It was first and foremost created before sin came into the world to be a manifestation and a picture of the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Marriage is the picture, the demonstration, the community manifestation of the gospel of Jesus Christ. We can't simply tell people the gospel; we can't simply preach the gospel. We must practice the gospel in our families and marriages. We can't simply look at Lafayette and say, "This is the gospel; Jesus died for you."

We also have to be families that are demonstrating the gospel. To redefine marriage is to redefine the gospel. Marriage is the gospel. You can't say theologically, "I'm all about the gospel, not about these sorts of things." That's not loving, it's just foolish. In the gospel of Jesus Christ, love and truth come together.

## We cannot sidestep the issue because it's not loving.

So, it's not practical, it's unwise, and it's theologically foolish. It's also not loving. You know that video online in which the wife has a nail in her head? The husband and wife are sitting down arguing with each other. She has the nail in her head, and she vents to him, "It's always there! This feeling—it's here, in this region...." And he says, "It's because you have a nail in your head." And she says, "There you go again! Alway trying to fix everything!" She just wants him to "listen." But he says, "Okay, honey, but I don't think that's what you need. I really think what you need is for that nail to be removed from your forehead." Finally he gives in, and he's just affirming her and loving her, and she goes to hug him and the nail hits him in the face.

I think a lot of times we're trying to reach people by affirming, listening, and loving, and that's fine, but at some point, you've got to say, "You've got a nail in your head." They may be offended. And you will say, "I'm not trying to be offensive. I'm seeing the offense. And I used to have one in my head, too. So I know that if you would take it out it will bring a lot of relief. And I'm not being arrogant or condescending to you at all because I used to have the nail in my head. But I can't lovingly or legitimately help you unless you will acknowledge the nail and let me show you how to remove it."

Jesus said to the Pharisees, "The truth will set you free." And they said, "We're not enslaved!" But he said, "Yes, you are enslaved. Anyone who practices sin is enslaved....And if the son sets you free, you will be free indeed" (John 8:32-36). He talked about sin to show them their need for a savior. He talked about spiritual enslavement so that they would know their need to be spiritually free.

The apostle Paul preached the law and preached against immorality before, during, and after gospel presentations because if you don't know the bad news, the good news will mean nothing to you! We cannot preach, "Come to Christ for freedom" without pointing out that they're currently not free. You can't preach the gospel of Jesus Christ without mentioning the law. You can't preach the good news without the bad news. The idea that a church can be "all about the gospel" and sidestep this issue is not practical, wise, theologically accurate, or loving. So let's take the opportunity to develop some persuasive, loving arguments for the world and for our children.

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