Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] You. Hey, thanks so much for listening to this message. My name is Jason, and I'm one of the ministers here at the Madison Church of Christ. It's our hope and prayer that the teaching you hear today will bless your life and draw you closer to God. If you're ever in the Madison area, we'd love for you to stop by and study the Bible with us on Sundays at 05:00 p.m. Or Wednesdays at 07:00 p.m.. If you have questions about the Bible or want to know more about the Madison Church, you can find us online at Madison Church.
[00:00:26] Be sure to subscribe to this podcast as well as our sermons podcast, madison Church of Christ Sermons. Thanks again for stopping by. I hope this study is a blessing to you.
[00:00:38] We're going to play a couple of rounds of Cahoot this evening to kind of get an idea of the makeup of our class. And that's going to be, I think, insightful into our topic this evening. Go ahead and go to Cahoot it or download the Kahoot app. You can join a game, and our game Pin is 90 79. This is for folks here in class as well as those that are online. Thank you for joining us. We're glad that you're here. While you're doing that, I do want to give just a brief disclaimer ahead of our content this evening. If you are watching with us online and you have young children, I would advise that your young children not be a part of this discussion. This is an adult Bible study, and tonight in particular, we're going to talk about some adult topics with regards to sexuality and technology. And so if you don't want to, then have to explain some terminology to those young children earlier than you expected. I'll give you a few minutes. They can go somewhere else. Just a heads up on that, just a quick disclaimer.
[00:01:35] We can all go ahead and start blushing together. It'll be fun. All right, up to 102 participants. I give you just a few more seconds. Chuck Norris is with us tonight on Cahoot, so that's exciting.
[00:01:48] As well as Acunya MVP. Glad to have him.
[00:01:53] I'm going to stop Andrew. It's on. That's funny. It's good for him to know. Is that not you?
[00:02:02] No one believes you.
[00:02:06] All right, anybody else wants to join Cahoot? Give you just a couple more seconds. Tonight we're going to ask a few questions. The first three questions are 30 seconds to respond. So once we click to the question, you have 30 seconds to respond. So please keep that in mind. Go ahead and give you a heads up. The first one has to do with what generation you are a part of. Silent Gen X. Boomers. Millennials and youngens Gen Z.
[00:02:34] All right, just about everybody is in, so I'll give you ten more seconds to join the Cahoot, and then we'll get started.
[00:02:44] Hey, my BFF is on there tonight, and they're wearing glasses just like me.
[00:02:51] All right, here we go. We got 116. We're calling it. So we will start 17. Well done. Snuck in 119.
[00:03:02] All right, so our first question tonight will be what generation are you? We're going to get the first two questions, deal with the demographics of our class. It's a poll question. So who is in class?
[00:03:14] You'll look and see what generation you are and then click that shape and color on your phone, and that'll let you know. That's how you log in your answers. That's pretty quick. Good job.
[00:03:27] Okay, well, we're going from a book, so it is.
[00:03:31] If you disagree, you should have published earlier.
[00:03:37] There are some in betweens in there as well. All right, we got just a couple of seconds, so let's see what our class looks like tonight.
[00:03:44] Interesting. 33% millennials. My people welcome in close second place, Gen Z at 27 and Gen X, 23. And Boomers coming in at 17. So a little bit more of an even class. In the past, when we've done these, we had a little bit higher percentage of millennials in Gen Z, gen X and Boomers decided to show up. I like it. All right, question number two. Who is in the class? Male or female?
[00:04:14] There we go.
[00:04:19] Yeah, no other jokes there. Just male and female. That's all. No, it's a different class.
[00:04:30] All right, you got 8 seconds left.
[00:04:34] It's good you guys are willing to laugh tonight. That will come in handy. All right. Oh, wow. 58 and 68. So 46% female, 54% male. Interesting. Just about half and half.
[00:04:48] All right, question number three. How often do you think about the Roman Empire?
[00:04:54] Daily, weekly, monthly? And why is this even a question?
[00:04:59] This is a question because 54% of us think about this at least weekly. I would say, for some reason, this is one of the current trends on TikTok and other places.
[00:05:13] It says men think about the Roman Empire on a much more frequent basis than women think rational.
[00:05:20] Here we go. Moment of truth.
[00:05:24] Why is this even a question? 57%. All right.
[00:05:27] I think I just explained that weekly. I think that's about right. My name is Maximus Decimus Meridius, commander of the armies of the north, husband to a slain wife, father to slain children. I will have my vengeance in this life or the next. Gladiator it shaped all the millennials in this room. All right, and then the last one.
[00:05:47] And there's the silence. Good.
[00:05:50] How old were you when you first encountered adult content? An image, a video, some kind of adult content? Please just type the numbers. Don't write out the numbers. These will populate in a word, cloud. It'll be interesting to see what span of time. And if you've never witnessed adult content, then you can just leave this one blank, I guess. But it is 2023, so I think that's highly unlikely.
[00:06:14] If you don't remember exactly. Give a rough estimate.
[00:06:21] We'll go back to the Roman Empire questions later. There's a lot more laughter with those.
[00:06:26] All right, you got about 20 seconds left.
[00:06:39] This is why Jeopardy had music playing with all of theirs.
[00:06:43] There you go.
[00:06:48] All right, here we go.
[00:06:53] Looks like the biggest square there is going to be between ten and 16. Okay, interesting.
[00:07:05] The youngest was six and nine.
[00:07:09] Five. There's a five in there. That's right.
[00:07:13] All right, 50. So anywhere from five to 50.
[00:07:18] Take that in for just a minute.
[00:07:22] The larger the number, the more common the answer. Tonight, our conversation is not really going to be a fun one. Our conversation is one that I think is very necessary.
[00:07:36] It's a topic of conversation that doesn't happen often in the church. Don't peek, because in church, sometimes we have a list of taboo topics. Right? There's a list of things that you don't talk about.
[00:07:51] We don't talk about Bruno. Yeah, we do. We sing about him all the time in our family, but for some reason, we feel like there are certain things that we can't discuss among the family of God.
[00:08:04] But you know what? Those topics still get talked about in other places.
[00:08:09] And so when we take a topic like sexuality, particularly sex, and we don't talk about it in the context of God's people and the family of God, then those that struggle with those topics find an audience elsewhere, and they engage in those conversations elsewhere and elsewhere doesn't always point back to God. And so what can happen oftentimes is that people struggle mightily in this place.
[00:08:37] And they go years struggling and hurting and feeling more and more isolated and alone, feeling like they can't talk about the most important thing in their life to the people that they're supposed to spend eternity with until they leave this place. And they find an audience of people that embrace whatever they want to talk about and then help them to embrace whatever they feel about that topic.
[00:08:57] And we lose our brothers and sisters in Christ, and I've watched it happen multiple times.
[00:09:04] I hate it. I am heartbroken over it. I lose sleep over it.
[00:09:11] The bigger we get as a congregation, the easier it is for people to slide in and slide out, the easier it is to have proximity with people without actually having depth of relationship with people.
[00:09:21] It takes every single person sitting in this room and in this building and people that are not even in this room to commit to being in each other's lives. And that moves us to action that does not allow us to be content with. Hey, how you doing? I'm fine. Okay. You don't look fine. Yeah, I'm fine. All right, well, good luck. I'll pray for you from afar.
[00:09:40] I'm not saying prayer doesn't work from afar. It does.
[00:09:44] But you know what else works?
[00:09:47] Actually being the answer to the prayer in person.
[00:09:52] And so tonight, as we continue our discussion of technology and faith, we're going to talk about the two types of sexuality in Scripture. What are those?
[00:10:05] What do you think?
[00:10:07] What are the two types of sexuality found in Scripture? Biblical and not biblical. Okay.
[00:10:17] What else?
[00:10:22] What's that?
[00:10:25] Marital.
[00:10:30] Marital and nonmarital unmarital.
[00:10:34] Anyway. Yeah. All the knot.
[00:10:37] I see two. I see holy sexuality and I see unholy sexuality. I see sexuality come about. In Genesis, the very beginning of the creation of man and woman, adam goes through the process of naming all the animals, and there is found what?
[00:10:53] Helper not suitable or not found a helper suitable for him. Right. He doesn't have a companion surrounded by all the creation in its perfect glory, and he doesn't have a companion suitable. So God causes him to fall asleep, takes from Adam a rib, breathes life into Eve.
[00:11:12] And here we have the first marriage. We have the first relationship of companions of humanity, which means we also have the first sexual relationship.
[00:11:25] When God describes his relationship, the church's relationship to his son, to Jesus, what analogy does he use for that relationship?
[00:11:36] A marriage relationship. Right. The church is the what of Christ, the bride of Christ.
[00:11:44] Whenever I'm a part of a wedding, specifically like in premarital counseling, I kind of go through this logic with the couple and I ask them the question, why do you think God would use the analogy of marriage to describe the relationship of Christ to his church? Why do you think?
[00:12:03] The two shall be one? Two shall be one, to quote from Genesis, right?
[00:12:11] What's that? It's intimate. There's no other relationship on the planet that communicates intimacy, vulnerability, trust, devotion, love. Quite like marriage.
[00:12:26] You can have a lot of friends, but there will always be a level of intimacy that's different in a marriage relationship than in a friendship.
[00:12:35] There are soldiers that go off to war and they're in foxholes with other soldiers, and there is a bond there that is unique. It's still different from the intimacy of a marriage. Why? Well, because a big part of marriage, there's the physical, there's the emotional intimacy, there's also the sexual intimacy.
[00:12:51] In order to have sex with a person, there is a level of taking off clothes that we really don't try to do in public. Right. Like there's a sign at a restaurant in Gatlinburg. I can't remember what it was. It's a quote from Mark Twain. Something to the effect of wear clothes, otherwise people aren't going to trust you in public. That's a really good thought. Like, yeah, if you see a dude walking around with no pants, don't trust him. Run away. Hide your kids, hide your wives. Right.
[00:13:17] But when it comes to being vulnerable, what's the number one thing people hate, just in general? Public speaking. Right. That's the greatest fear generally of imagine public speaking naked. They used to always say, like, imagine everybody in their underwear? No, that's a weird thing to do, first of all. And secondly, that makes me more uncomfortable. But there's a vulnerability that comes with that relationship, and it's specifically because there is a physical element there.
[00:13:44] God has a very particular plan for sex and a very particular place for it. Growing up in 90s purity culture, there were a lot of things that were said and done that I don't think panned out the way we intended.
[00:14:02] There were a lot of comments made towards girls in particular that kind of put the weight of everyone's sexual purity on their shoulders.
[00:14:10] That's not true. It's on all of us. Also during the 90s, we had this emerging culture online that was becoming more and more prevalent. Access to the Internet became commonplace.
[00:14:22] I grew up with multiple TVs in my home when I was in middle school and high school and college. Everyone now had internet in their home. When I got to college, we had cell phones. When I got out of college, we had smartphones.
[00:14:34] Every generation has had access to faster and more powerful technology every single time.
[00:14:42] When we take sex out of the framework that God designed, that God blesses, that God calls holy, and we put it in any other context, it's going to return a brokenness it's going to return painful, emotional, sometimes even physical. It's going to return not what he has determined to be holy.
[00:15:05] When we're okay with that, we participate in that brokenness.
[00:15:11] Look at a few verses with me in Matthew, chapter five, verses 27 through 23 through 30. Excuse me. We have here the Sermon on the Mount. All right?
[00:15:20] This is one of the first recorded sermons of Christ. This is sort of the Kingdom manifesto some people call, and he's still towards the beginning of this sermon, he says, you have heard that it was said, you shall not commit adultery. But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lustful intent has already committed adultery with her in his heart. If your right eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away. For it is better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body be thrown into hell. And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away. For it is better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body go away into hell.
[00:15:53] The act of adultery begins where?
[00:16:00] In the heart.
[00:16:03] With every single sin. The act of sin begins in the heart in one Corinthians, chapter six and verse 18. I don't have that one listed, but I do here. So we'll read it. Flee from sexual immorality. Every other sin a person commits is outside the body, but the sexual immoral person sins against his own body. We're going to come back to this. We're going to spend some time in chapters five, six, and seven of one corinthians. And many of you have probably already studied through those recently in our Sunday morning classes. One john, two, verses 15 through 18. Do not love the world or the things in the world. Lust the carnal fleshly, lust of the flesh, lust of the eyes, the pride of life. These are the things that are passing away. This is what John identifies as the things of the world.
[00:16:46] Hebrews, chapter 13 and verse four. Let marriage be held in honor among all, and let the marriage bed be undefiled, for God will judge the sexually immoral and the adulterous.
[00:16:57] I think a lot of times when we talk about sex with younger generations, there's this expectation that parents are supposed to have the talk, right? And it was always called the birds and the bees.
[00:17:13] I never got the birds and the bees part of that personally. But the idea of a talk to explain how all things work is grossly inadequate from the very beginning.
[00:17:25] You see what happens from a biological standpoint, from a physiological standpoint, I don't think most of us know what happens to our bodies. When you encounter a romantic interaction with someone, there is a chemical reaction that kicks off in your brain. We've talked a lot so far in this class about dopamine and how dopamine is this chase agent, so to speak. It sparks this desire for the chase in our brains, and it creates a neuropathway.
[00:17:52] Same thing happens when it comes to sexual arousal.
[00:17:57] I know. Me, too. We're going to get through it, though.
[00:18:02] Teach them young. All right.
[00:18:04] When a person, man or woman, begins to have sexual affection for someone else, there are two main hormones that are released in the brain oxytocin and vasopressin. And these are present in both male and female. But in the female, oxytocin is significantly greater. There are a few times in a woman's life where oxytocin is at its highest peak. One is sexual orgasm. One is birth of a baby at the actual labor. One is a certain amount is released when there's a latching on of the baby to feed the baby. These are all bonding moments in a woman's life. These are all times of connection with another human being.
[00:18:47] For the man, vasopressin is released, and what it does is it creates a connection. And so all your olfactory senses are heightened. You've probably heard the phrase, you always remember your first and when it's in the context of a sexual encounter, scientifically speaking, yeah, that's true, because all of the things going on in your brain, dopamine is rushing through as well. So there's an adrenaline rush. There's about a 200% increase of dopamine in your brain during any type of a sexual arousal.
[00:19:15] What else gives that same level of arousal is video game addiction. We see that in the same brain scans of those that are addicted to video games. So playing video games also cocaine. I think is around 200% heroin. And I think the highest that has been calculated is typically connected to meth. Methamphetamine. And that's over 300% of a dopamine increase.
[00:19:42] So when we talk about specifically addiction, we talk about connection.
[00:19:49] We understand that there's a spiritual context to everything we do as Christians and we see the world through a biblical worldview through a scripture lens. But there are also physical things happening in our bodies that make things more difficult for us based off the decisions that we make.
[00:20:06] What our teenagers don't understand is that when they enter into a relationship with someone and they start to get that emotional bond and that emotional connection, there's this desire then for the physical to come alongside of it as well.
[00:20:20] And when that desire for the physical continues to increase, there is a point where the brain now is programmed and that's by design, vasopressin and oxytocin are considered the bonding hormones. And what science has told us now is that it's kind of like a piece of Scotch tape.
[00:20:44] When these hormones are flooding the brain, there is a connection to this other person. Whether it's the mother nursing the baby. There's the mama bear instincts. Those are real. That's a scientific thing, right?
[00:20:56] Well, when you put it in the context of sex, it's like putting a piece of Scotch tape on a piece of paper. The first time you put that Scotch tape on a piece of paper that bond is pretty strong, isn't it? What happens when you take the piece of tape off?
[00:21:09] Well, there's usually damage to the paper. And what happens to that piece of tape? You usually throw it away, right? Why?
[00:21:17] Because every time you put on something else, it loses that bond neurologically, chemically, physically.
[00:21:25] When we engage in a sexual activity with a person that is not our spouse, that we have committed our lives to, and we move on to another person and we have the same kind of relationship there, we move on to another person, have the same kind of relationship. That piece of scotch tape loses its ability to develop a strong, deep bond every time there's an actual neurological pathway consequence to those decisions and to those behaviors. Now, our brain is wildly amazing, right? There's a thing called neuroplasticity, which is the ability to learn things and for it to stick into our brains to learn new behaviors, which also helps in breaking old habits and old behaviors.
[00:22:10] But what's interesting and we're seeing in the data right now as we get more science I mentioned last week the Surgeon General back in May came out with some data that suggested social media use is not appropriate for kids younger than 16 because of the way it impacts the brain and addictions and things like that. When we put that in a sexual context, I think it's even more destructive.
[00:22:31] Our brains can relearn.
[00:22:33] And the beautiful thing about being a Christian and being in the household of God is that there is with repentance comes forgiveness. With confession of sin comes forgiveness. And spiritually speaking, we can be made whole again because Christ died for our sins. Absolutely true. Please someone say amen?
[00:22:49] A little bit louder now.
[00:22:51] Yes. And that is a wonderful thing. The challenge is that we have at least a generation or two of folks that have grown up with complete, unadulterated access to sexual images and videos, that they are now learning about sex and sexuality strictly from watching things like pornography and that has mapped their brains in such a way that they feel trapped and isolated and alone and hopeless.
[00:23:20] Pornography addiction has been linked to depression, anxiety.
[00:23:25] It's been linked to sexual dysphoria.
[00:23:28] It is a big deal.
[00:23:31] And if this is the first time you've heard some of these words used in a Bible class, that's also a big deal. A big deal in the sense that this can't be the case, that we talk about this once every 15 or 20 years. If we're willing to lose a generation or so of our children, to lose their souls, absolutely. By all means, let's do that. If we're unwilling to be uncomfortable, then let's do that.
[00:23:56] But we've said over and over in this class that we are not called to comfort. We are called to holiness.
[00:24:02] We are called to be the image of Christ.
[00:24:06] And because of that, we have to have difficult conversations. We have to learn about how our bodies work. We have to read a lot and to learn what's going on in the culture around us so that we can protect, so that we can protect ourselves, so that we can protect our children, so that we can teach and show that what God has created and God has intended is beautiful and the right way. That is the life that Jesus talked about when he said, I came. They may have life abundantly, not an abundance of stuff.
[00:24:38] I think it's very important for us to understand that there is a lot going on when it comes to this topic of sex and sexuality. Turn with me to First Corinthians, chapter five. In one. Corinthians, chapter five, verse one we have actually the inspiration for the very first episode of Jerry Springer. I don't know if you're aware of that, but this is where it came from. It is actually reported that there is sexual immorality among you and of a kind that is not tolerated even among Jerry's audience or pagans. For a man has his father's wife. Think about that for just a second.
[00:25:12] A man is having a sexual relationship with his father's wife.
[00:25:17] Don't say amen, say you.
[00:25:20] This is corinth. When we think corinth think New Orleans. My apologies to our Louisiana folks. But Port City, it's got a culture, it's got a reputation for being a lascivious town, right? Lots of sexual things going on. Mardi Gras, spring break, all of that kind of stuff that's associated with some of these big towns that we think of today. That's corinth, major city, major sin, but also major church presence.
[00:25:51] In verse two and you are arrogant. Ought you not rather to mourn? Let him who has done this be removed from among you. For though absent in body, I am present in spirit and as if present, I have already pronounced judgment on the one who did such a thing. When you are assembled in the name of the Lord Jesus and my spirit is present with the power of our Lord Jesus, you are to deliver this man to Satan for the destruction of the flesh so that his spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord. Look, in verse nine I wrote to you in my letter not to associate with sexually immoral people. Not at all meaning the sexually immoral of this world or the greedy or swindlers or idolaters. Since then you would need to go out of the world. But now I am writing to you not to associate with anyone who bears the name of brother if he is guilty of sexual immorality or greed or is an idolater, reviler, drunkard, swindler, not even to eat with such a one. For what have I to do with judging outsiders? Is it not those inside the church whom you are to judge? God judges those outside, purge the evil person from among you. Paul's saying you're taking this lightly.
[00:26:44] It's essentially a joke.
[00:26:47] It's anything but a joke.
[00:26:51] We're going to come right back to that verse in just a second.
[00:26:55] In the mid ninety s to the early 2000s there were two TV shows that were two of the most popular shows on TV. This one is TV show friends.
[00:27:04] One of the most popular episodes of Friends was the porno channel. Joey and Chandler got access to a free channel on their television that showed pornography. Twenty four seven. And the entire episode was based around the two of them making sure that they did not turn off the TV because they would lose access to the show by the end of the episode. They get to the born like, we got to turn it off. This is too much.
[00:27:29] To this date the highest rated show or episode of Seinfeld on IMDb is the episode called The Bet.
[00:27:38] There's a lot of people trying not to giggle right now. In the episode of The Bet, our main characters here make a bet to see who can go the longest without masturbating.
[00:27:48] Definitely a word you probably have not heard in bible class.
[00:27:51] Both of these two shows normalized.
[00:27:56] Something that I would say is as dysfunctional as what we just read in one corinthians chapter five.
[00:28:02] But when it's in a sitcom that admittedly I quote too often, when it's in a show that's entertainment, we let our guard down and we don't seem to have the same set of critical eyes when we view entertainment that we do, when we view things that we think are truly sinful.
[00:28:25] These two shows, among virtually every other one out there, have found a way to normalize what God would say is supposed to be holy. They've normalized it in a way that uses it unholy.
[00:28:41] The reason this is a part of this class is because technology is an integral part of our lives right now.
[00:28:48] Television is a big part of that.
[00:28:52] There's no more be kind rewind, right? We don't have to do that anymore because no one owns VCRs anymore. What do we do? We stream Netflix's. CEO has been quoted as saying there's a number one enemy or opponent to Netflix. Do you know what the number one opponent to Netflix is?
[00:29:12] A little bit louder for people in the back? Sleep. Not Amazon, not Apple TV. Sleep. Why sleep? Because you can't watch Netflix when you're asleep. Turns out you can. It just keeps going until it asks you, are you still watching? If you are awake, then you're insulted. Yes, I'm watching. Right? Don't judge me.
[00:29:30] You used to have to have just a little break in between your sitcoms. You had to go to the restroom, go get your snack. It's back on. You'll never hear that, right?
[00:29:39] There were these stopgaps, pre digital age that in some really small ways, helped build a little bit of character or at least some discipline, at least some patience that are completely removed. Now in the was just listening to a podcast about Apple in particular, and specifically how Steve Jobs tried to corner the music market. And so they're talking about the mid to late 90s when things like Napster LimeWire, all the downloading software came out, right? And you could go and buy an $18 CD if you wanted to, or you could sit on your computer and wait about four and a half hours, and you can download the entire CD for free.
[00:30:14] You know what else? You could download anything, including and at its height of this era, things like Girls Gone Wild, that also shaped a generation, because access now went from a store down the road where you have to face another human or somebody at school whose uncle left a magazine under a mattress to now anybody with dial up Internet access.
[00:30:43] What's happened to that dial up Internet access?
[00:30:46] It's getting faster.
[00:30:48] We now have Internet access in our cars. It's everywhere.
[00:30:52] You have access to the Internet. At Starbucks, at a hospital, at a library, at school, in your homes.
[00:31:01] What's that? Smartphones.
[00:31:06] We've talked a lot about how emerging generations are aging differently, right? They're growing up differently. They're maturing later in life.
[00:31:16] But the access to adult content, the access to sin, the access to things that are opposed to God is something we've really not quite seen before.
[00:31:27] We just now have the data, good, accurate data on social media.
[00:31:33] Pornography has been around. A lot longer.
[00:31:36] Sexual sin is what pornography tends to cultivate in our hearts. Pornography is not actually the issue. Lust is the issue. Selfishness is the issue. There's a host of other issues. Pornography is a cultivator of that. It is a vehicle for all of that.
[00:31:55] And our entertainment has helped bring it into our lives. Before we get to this question, I want to go back to one corinthians, chapter six.
[00:32:03] In verse twelve, Paul writes well, let's go back before that, to verse nine. Do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived. Neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor men who practice homosexuality, nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers will inherit the Kingdom of God. And such were some of you. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God. All things are lawful for me, but not all things are helpful. All things are lawful for me, but I will not be enslaved by anything. Food is meant for the stomach, stomach for the food. God will destroy both one and the other. What's this point? The body is not meant for sexual immorality, but for the Lord and the Lord for the body.
[00:32:48] Verse 18 flee from sexual immorality. For every other sin a person commits is outside the body. But the sexually immoral person sins against his own body. Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit? Within whom? Within you, whom you have from God. You are not your own, for you were bought with the price. So glorify God with your body. Now let's look at the husband wife relationship.
[00:33:09] Paul agrees. Now, concerning the matters about which you wrote it is good for a man not to have sexual relations with a woman, but because of the temptation to sexual immorality which has been around since Paul's day. Has been around before Paul's day. We just had a sermon about Song of Solomon 702 anniversaries a day. For the rest of his life sexual immorality has been around.
[00:33:31] There is nothing new under the sun. But because of the temptation to his sexual immorality each man should have his own wife, each woman to her own husband. The husband should give to his wife her conjugal rights and likewise the wife to her husband. For the wife does not have authority over her own body, but the husband does. Likewise, the husband does not have authority over his own body, but the wife does. Do not deprive one another, except perhaps by agreement for a limited time that you may devote yourselves to prayer, but then come together again so that Satan may not tempt you because of your lack of self control. What are you saying, Paul? Sex is powerful also, husbands. Your body is not your own.
[00:34:10] John Mayer was kind of close. Your body is a wonderland, right? The wife, your body is for the husband. Husband, your body is for your wife.
[00:34:18] You see, a sexual relationship is not about getting some, and it's not about what you might call your body count. A sexual godly biblical sexual relationship is between a husband and a wife. I heard someone once say that growing up, he was always told you, marry your best friend. He said, I've had a lot of best friends. I ain't looking to marry him. Most of them are dudes, right? He's like he said, you have one lover, you marry your lover. Go back and read the Song of Psalms, song of Solomon.
[00:34:49] It is poetic. I don't necessarily think poetically, but he talks about his lover. That is a unique relationship. We can have multiple best friends. We have one lover in this life as a husband, as a wife.
[00:35:04] And that unique relationship is set apart. It is sanctified. It is meant to be different. The thing about sex is that it can be weaponized immediately, right?
[00:35:15] Let's do an experiment.
[00:35:17] Headaches.
[00:35:19] Okay, there we go. Some husbands get it, right?
[00:35:22] I get headaches are real, right? But that causes attention. I have a headache. Okay. All right. I'm not interested. I'm going to withhold this from you. Maybe the husband withholds from the wife. Paul says, don't withhold except for a specific amount of time with the intention of coming back together. Why? Lest Satan tempt you.
[00:35:40] The sexual relationship has been weaponized by really, really effectively.
[00:35:51] I think that if we could fix this part of marriage relationships, marriages would probably look a lot more happy for a lot of people.
[00:35:59] But again, we don't talk about Bruno.
[00:36:03] We don't share these things.
[00:36:06] If we look back at our data from a couple of classes ago, gen X started trying to talk about it.
[00:36:12] And it does get talked about in the public forum. We talked specifically how Oprah built an empire about sharing things that we don't really talk about. Why is it that the things that are the most intimate and sometimes the most painful and the most difficult are the things that we talk about the least among the people that we're supposed to spend eternity with? Christ died for us, and we know that we need to talk about it.
[00:36:38] We need to talk about it so the next generation hears how it's supposed to be talked about and how it's supposed to be lived. Have you ever thought about the holiness of sex when it's a part of a marriage relationship that glorifies God?
[00:36:58] When that chemical reaction takes place, it's actually designed to grow a deeper bond. You know what happens when you put a piece of Scotch tape on something and you leave it there for a really long time? If you ever try to pull it off, it is impossible. Right?
[00:37:12] When that relationship happens and that neurological pathway begins to take shape between a husband and a wife. Even if it starts off kind of awkward and clumsy and we don't really know what we're doing, you're experiencing that together and each time you come back to that relationship, it grows that neurological pathway.
[00:37:31] What did the Bible say? Two become one and now science is like, well, yeah, I guess so, yeah, we've been listening to God for a lot longer. It's a real thing. It shouldn't take science for us to have an AHA moment, but sometimes it is kind of nice to like, oh, okay, well that really happens. So when we tell our kids don't have sex, we're not just saying don't have sex before marriage. When you tell them not to do something, what do they want to do? They want to do that, right. Don't get cookies out of the cookie jar. All right, I'll eat them all then. No, that's not how often do we talk about the purpose of sex in a marriage relationship?
[00:38:11] How often do we talk about the holiness that God has put in that relationship?
[00:38:19] I think there may be a generation or two of folks that heard sex is bad and then maybe they did get married. And this morning at 08:00 a.m., when I got up, sex was bad. But now tonight, after a ceremony and some food and cake and some friends, now it's good. That's a hard transition for people too, right? That's difficult. How do I reconcile that? Well, because we don't always teach it in the right context.
[00:38:42] What you teach oftentimes, maybe every time, is just as important as how we teach.
[00:38:49] And that has never been more prevalent than with sex and sexuality.
[00:38:56] I'm on slide nine of 22. How is pornography different today than it used to be? Porn poses a unique risk beyond supernormal stimulation. First, it's easy to access available private. Second, most users start watching porn by puberty. Their brains are at their peak of dopamine sensitivity, plasticity and vulnerability to addiction and inadvertent rewiring of sexual tastes. Finally, there are limits on food consumption. This particular context was putting the context of sexual stimulation as well as food stimulation in a similar category as far as dopamine goes. But there's limits on food consumption. In contrast, there are no physical limits on Internet porn consumption other than the need to take a bathroom break and food breaks. Binging on porn feels like a promise of pleasure. But recall the message of dopamine isn't satisfaction, it's keep going. Satisfaction is just around the corner. Satisfaction comes in the form of what's called delta phosphamine says, hey, this is a fun chase, let's go. Delta phosph says, we have arrived at our destination. We want to remember that because this was super good and we're going to come back to this.
[00:39:59] There's also another hormone that's a regulator of delta phosph, I believe is what it's called. C-R-E-B Kreb is the natural safety break for us doing really dumb things or just repetitive things that overload the brain with dopamine and delta phosphine. But what happens with pornography and it's referred to here, is this what is the word?
[00:40:28] I forget. This went blank.
[00:40:30] Neurologically speaking, it's a super tempter, right? It is what allows to have super stimulator because it's just overload. It is constant, it's always available, it's always there. And as long as sexuality is accessible to watch or to be a part of outside of the context that God has intended, it's always going to be destructive.
[00:40:52] Not just for the people that are in the video, not just the pixels on the screen. But what does Romans one tell us? Not just those who do such things, but those who approve.
[00:41:04] There's no wonder we are where we are today.
[00:41:06] There's a reason in this class we started looking at different age demographics and we've slowly worked ourself through the rise of the modern self because we live in a day and age when what my desire is, is who I am and it's also what I deserve to have access to. But I think the Bible would speak contrary to that. In the Book of James, verse six one, chapter one, verse 16, he says, do not be excuse me. In chapter one, verse verse twelve blessed is the man who remains steadfast under trial, for when he stood the test he will receive the crown of life which God has promised to those who love him. Let no one say when he is tempted. I'm being tempted by God, for God cannot be tempted with evil as he himself tempts no one.
[00:41:54] But each person is tempted when he is lured and enticed by his own desire. Then desire, when it has conceived, gives birth to sin, and sin, when it fully is fully grown, brings forth death.
[00:42:07] Our desires don't always cultivate holiness. And so when we have a desire for something, we don't check it against God's word.
[00:42:17] There's a good chance it's leading us down the path of death. When we follow exclusively our desires, like the world would tell us to do, then we're playing right into exactly what Jesus said. He said, there's a big broad way. It's a broad gate. Easy is the way because everybody's going that way. Narrow is the gate and difficult is the way that leads to righteousness.
[00:42:38] It's not easy.
[00:42:40] It's not easy because sexual, sensual things are all around us. I've got a whole list of different stats and things that I think are very important. And particularly this is a major struggle for adolescents and emerging generations because adolescents wire together experiences and arousal much faster and more easily than young adults will just a few years later. Teens are especially vulnerable because their reward circuitry is an overdrive in response to internet novelty. Their brains produce higher spikes of dopamine but become bored more easily. Their brains are also more sensitive to dopamine and produce more delta phosphate, the remember and repeat repeat hormone. The adolescent brain's oversensitivity to reward also means its owner is more vulnerable to addiction. There's a study done in Italy that says 14 year old boys are struggling with arousal.
[00:43:27] If you know any 14 year old boys, that's a problem. If the hormones are not raging, it's because there's an oversaturation of this sinful sexual perversion that is accessible to anybody with an internet connection.
[00:43:46] It's different if you're sitting in this room and you grew up with centerfolds as your temptation at best. A new magazine came out once a month. So let's say you memorized from beginning to end and read it for the articles, right? So you had in your mind these images. Well, you got 31 days before there's a chance of new images to come about. You know how many images you can take in sitting at a computer for 5 minutes?
[00:44:11] Tens of thousands.
[00:44:14] Pornography has ushered in the tube era, right? So YouTube, you go to YouTube, you type in something you want to watch, and then what happens right there on the right side column?
[00:44:23] An infinite number of new possibilities.
[00:44:27] The brain thrives on novelty and so does the internet.
[00:44:33] We need to have this conversation a lot more.
[00:44:36] We need to be very, very wise about the technology that we put into our lives. We need to be wise about how we relate to each other. We need to be willing to have uncomfortable conversations so we can actually be in each other's lives. So when someone's drowning, we know it. You know what sound someone makes when they're drowning.
[00:44:56] You see someone drowning, you rarely hear them drowning.
[00:45:00] We have to be in each other's worlds. We have to we have to be willing, just like in one corinthians, to confront someone who's living in sin to pull them out of that. And we have to be very wise to guard ourselves in that pursuit.
[00:45:16] Bow with me as we close.
[00:45:18] Father, we are grateful for the opportunity to gather in your name tonight, specifically to study and to consider what you have deemed holy sexuality, the things that you have identified as beneficial for us, the things that draw us closer to each other, but the world pulls apart, things that the world makes fun of and makes commonplace. You have called holy.
[00:45:43] Strengthen our conviction.
[00:45:45] Help us to be wise. Help us to be brave, to step out and to put guardrails in our life. Help us to reach out to someone if we're struggling. If there's someone in this room tonight that's struggling, I pray that they would have the courage to speak up to someone and that the person that they reach up to would have the wisdom to receive that plea for help and to respond in a godly way, to pray with them, to walk with them and to help them.
[00:46:12] Father, you have called us to a higher way of life. Help us to pursue that at all cost and to remove any weight that hinders us from that pursuit. We love you, and we thank you for hearing and answering our prayer. In Christ's name. Amen.
