101. Freedom From Sexual Sins Part 1

Welcome to the For Freedom Podcast. This podcast exists to bring the freedom of the gospel for everyday Christians with everyday issues. Now here are your hosts, John Hollifield and James Saifert. Welcome back to the For Freedom Podcast. It is exciting to be with you. And here I'm your host, James Saifert. And as we released last week, you heard that there is some changing going on in the podcast realm where we're at. John has taken an indefinite break from the podcast because we may have him back. And we may be able to talk him into getting back on here with us. And so we have asked Brett Martin to come and be our new co-host. And we're looking forward to what we've got coming up in the future. We've got some interviews lined up and some great things that I know the Lord's going to bless in. And we are in the middle of ministry. Both of us are pastors. And we're jumping through different things in that role as well. So, Brett, welcome. And, man, how's life been doing for you over the last couple of weeks? Man. Great. For our Israel trip that we're about to take. This morning to get her passport. Get that expedited. And we're looking forward to going over to Holy Land. Yes. That is going to be March 1st through the 9th, 2024. And, man, we'd love to have you go. We've got a couple of spots still open. If you've wanted to go, this will be the best deal. I saw Nick Carnes put on his, he put a post out that had said something to the effect of it was more expensive to go on the trip that someone had, that he was a friend with, than what we were charging. And it didn't even include the ticket. Just the ticket alone with it was going to be, I mean, almost double what our trip cost is going to be. And so, you're not going to regret one for one moment. It's going to be a great time. And so, we hope you will join us and come on that. Let me or Brett or Austin Wiest. He's going with us as well. And we'll jump on and have you guys sign up to go with us. Also talking through, I know the RFP guys haven't mentioned it yet, but we're going to try to do a meetup here soon. And so, we're looking forward to that. We'll get details coming out soon with that. And looking forward to that. Anything else going on in your life, Brett, the last couple weeks? Oh, nothing. I've just been excited. Glad to be on the podcast. And you're right. It's basically on. We'll have him back. And I look forward to that. Like I said, he's host emeritus. And always welcome. But no, I'm just, man, just living life and pastoring and, you know, just. And I'm here ready to go. Awesome. All right. And so, we are in the month of September, Brett. And we are looking forward to the topics. We're going to finish out. We've got a couple of things that we're looking at for the next couple of months. September is going to be sexual sins. And we've got an interview lined up with Liz Beck later on in the month. And then October, we've got, we're going to be talking about depression and what that looks like. And we're going to have a returning guest, Christina Chappell. She's just put out a new book called New Morning Mercies. And I think that's what it's called. And so, she's going to be coming on as well. And we're going to talk to the depression in October. And so, we are full steam ahead. We've got November, looking at November. And we're back and forth on a couple of different things in November. And then, in the new year, when we come back, in between all that, Brett's going to give his story as well. Well, some of you don't know Brett, don't know him well. And so, we're going to have an interview as well. Just me interviewing him, letting him know, letting you know who he is and what his ministry is like. And he's got a very unique background in the Independent Fundamental Baptist Movement. Some of you know him, and you know that. And so, you're going to be able to hear that. But our mission is still the same. We want to set freedom through Galatians 5.1. We want to give freedom to those who are trapped in legalism and spiritual abuse in hard places. And so, we want to be that effective in our ministries through the podcast as well. And so, today, we're going to be jumping through sexual sins and what that looks like when it comes to sexual sins. And so, I'm going to open up with just a paragraph I'm going to read here. I'm getting some of my information from Heath Lambert. He wrote an article on the ACBC that talks through a little bit of sexual sins and how people struggle with it. And I'm going to turn the mic over to Brett and let him talk for a little bit. But he said this, Our world is awash with sexual immorality. Whether it's adultery, pornography, fornication, gay marriage, it seems that our culture is not only experiencing, but also embracing the full benefit of sexual sins. Perhaps the saddest part of the reality is the same problem, which plagues the culture. Are also strongly represented in the church. Unfortunately, it's in the church. Most of the counseling that we go through, we're taking Christians who have been devastated by one sexual sin or another. The most desperate people that have went through and experienced sexual sins as either on their own with a self-satisfaction for themselves or because of the sins of someone else. And so, that may be you today. Today, we are talking through a difficult topic, a topic that is going to be tough to walk through a little bit. But we know the Bible gives us hope. The Bible gives us help in how we can deal with this. And so, we're going to be looking through how to change and how to work through some of these things. And so, Brett, as we get started, what are your initial thoughts as we jump through what sexual sins are and how we can address them in our day-to-day life? Well, one of the things that I wanted to do was I wanted to go back to the Bible and talk about why God particularly doesn't like sexual sins in the first place, why he's opposed to immorality, what's his reasoning behind it. And so, if we go to 1 Corinthians 6, sexual sin is defined as any intimate act outside the confines of a marriage between a man and a woman. So, 1 Corinthians 6, 18 says, Flee immorality. Every other sin that a man commits is outside the body, but the immoral man sins against his own body. Of course, we know that Greek word for immorality is pornonia. Of course, that's where we get the word pornography from. But, of course, verse 18 leads into verse 19 of 1 Corinthians 6 about your body being the temple of the Holy Ghost. And, of course, that verse says, Or 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. Now, James, me and you know this verse. Because this is the verse that we grew up on where the independent fundamental soul-winning, sin-hating, King James-only Baptist will say, You don't need to drink. You don't need to smoke. You don't need to get piercings. You don't need to get tattoos. Because your body is the temple of God. And I had it explained to me like this. You wouldn't go into a church and spray paint the walls. Why would you mark up and tattoo your body? But, man, that is taking this verse extremely out of context. Because the context of this verse, and in fact, the context of most of this chapter is sexual sin. So earlier in 1 Corinthians 3, Paul tells us that the church is God's temple. Well, now, here he takes it a step further. He tells us that us as individuals are temples of the Holy Ghost. So a temple is a sacred place. It's consecrated to God from the impurity of immorality. And when we commit sexual sin, we pollute God's temple. Now, when we look at this verse in context of the chapter that it's in, most of the chapter before it talks about sexual sin. If we back up to verse 9, we see a list of people that won't inherit the kingdom of God. And what's interesting to me about verse 9 is the first five items on the list are very interesting. It says neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor homosexuals, nor sodomites. So what's interesting to me about this is right in the middle of these obviously sexual sins, number two on the list is idolaters. Now, when we think about the context of Paul writing to the Corinthians, the greatest building in Corinth was the temple of Aphrodite, who's the goddess of love. So this is where idolatry and immorality mix. They go hand in hand. I mean, this was a temple where to worship this God, you would visit a temple prostitute. They had orgies to worship this God. And in fact, most people back then, they would pick their gods according to what sin they wanted to commit. So God equates immorality and idolatry. You know, and he constantly does this in the Old Testament. We go to Exodus chapter 34, verse 15 and 16. Otherwise, you might make a covenant with the inhabitants of the land, and they would play the harlot with their gods and sacrifice to their gods. Judges 2, 17. Yet they did not listen to their judges, for they played the harlot after other gods and bowed themselves down to them. Even Hosea, God had Hosea marry a prostitute as a symbol that the children of Israel committed adultery with other false gods and idols. So 1 Corinthians 6 talks about immorality a few more times. But I think the reason why God hates this sin so much is actually located in verses 15 and 16 of 1 Corinthians 6. It says, And I believe personally that this is how we reflect the image of God. So God is not just one person. Our God is not. Our one God is three persons. Okay, so God has a plurality in himself. And that's why us reflecting God's image all by ourselves is kind of an incomplete picture. Now, when we marry, we become one flesh with another person. And I think in some way that's reflecting God's image. And that's why all these forms of sexual immorality, adultery, fornication, unfaithfulness, homosexuality, all these forms of sexual immorality, they're all condemned in Scripture because they violate that oneness. They violate that union. They shatter this beautiful union that God has made that produces children that passes righteousness from one generation to the next. Yeah, that's a great, great way to look at it. And I love that. That passes there in 1 Corinthians. One thing, as you're talking, I want to go back just a couple of verses in chapter 2 because what stood out to me as I was reading through that, Brett, was you talked about the temple that was erected there for Aphrodite, I believe you said. And when I believe Paul, he gets this from Jesus. He uses his analogies that are around him. We noticed this when we were in Israel and we got to see Jesus was talking about whitewashed tombs and right there were whitewashed tombs. We got to see practical illustrations. But in chapter 3, it talks about there is in number, chapter 3, verse 10, it says, According to the grace of God given to you, like a skilled master builder, I laid a foundation and someone else is building upon it. Let each take care of how he builds upon it. No one can lay a foundation other than that which was laid. So he uses this statue, this temple that's there, and he brings this into their mindset. Would the not skilled builder build his life right? And so he starts out this talk with, what is your foundation? Where are you building your life? If you're building your life, and then he gets into chapter 4, 5, 6, where he begins to talk through these things that you're building your life upon, these immoralities, all of a sudden that foundation is built on corruptible things. It's built on things that are going to destroy, and they're going to come in and kill, and they're going to be a vice in your life for the rest of your life. It's going to be something that you're never going to be able to get away from without the grace of God, without his grace in your life, and the presence that he has there for us. And so I thought that was fantastic there, looking at that. And so as we look through that, so it gives us a list there. And again, this isn't an exhaustive list. This isn't something that's like, this is everything that's sexual immorality. No, this is just a couple of things that we can begin to look at and examine our own life. Okay? For all these things are lawful, but not. He says, Do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived. Neither sexual immorality, neither idolatries, adultery, men who practice homosexuality, thieves, greedy, drunkenness, revilers, swindlers, will inherit the kingdom of God. God, such are some of you, but you were sanctified. Christ came in and redeemed us. How did he redeem us? Through his blood, through the grace that God has given us. And so we've got to ask ourselves, what is this sexual sin? What is this idolatry? What is this adultery that's in our life? And what does it look like? And so we've got to begin asking ourselves these questions as we go through this process. So Brett, we've talked through what the Bible defines as sexual sins, immorality, idolatry. But the problem is, is when we get into the world, the world gets tricky, man. They begin to twist things a little bit. Even in our own church life, in our own church world, we begin to hear, you know, I like how you said, we're the temple. And you wouldn't go into the church and you wouldn't spray paint over the walls. I always heard it like this when I was growing up. And you may have heard this before. Don't drink, smoke, and dip. And don't run with those. Or don't, how do they say it? Don't, it was, don't drink, smoke, or do snuff. And don't run with those who do. Or something like that. Some catchy statement. I can't even remember. I'm butchering it right now. But they take these things and they begin to throw it in and they begin to have their own little twist to it. And so we have these objections to sexual sins or what God has chosen to be sexual sins. And the world is really, really good about changing it and making it to say, well, you know, it's okay for me to do this because of these reasons. And so you've got a couple things written down. What are some of these common objections that we may see that people will begin to justify what they're doing and why they're doing it? Well, you know, you mentioned idolatry. And when it comes to sexual sin, you know, I believe it's a form of idolatry. Just like, you know, in Paul's day, these Corinthians are going to the temple of Aphrodite and worshiping their goddess in that way. Well, the idol that we worship when we commit these sexual sins is ourselves. Yeah. Adultery begins in selfishness. It continues in selfishness and it breeds more selfishness. And so, you know, it's the altar of self. It's all about fulfilling our lusts, you know, fulfilling our wants and desires. And so these are these what I'm about to give is some common objections to God's command concerning sexual immorality. So here's the first common objection. It's not wrong if we love each other. You know, so so this is a big deal today. It's all focused on love. You know, first people are under the impression that if you love somebody, it makes it right. OK, I can cheat on my wife because I fell out of love with her and I fell in love with someone else. It's not my fault. It just happened. I couldn't help it. The heart wants what the heart wants. I couldn't help that I just fell out of love with my wife. No, no. You could help it. You see, because love isn't a feeling. OK, love is a choice, especially that agape love, that agape love that we're commanded to have. This agape love is love that helps you love the unlovable. It's love that helps you love the unappealing. Agape love is, you know, can be unreciprocated love. It's a love that allows you to love even when that person, that person doesn't love you back. OK, it's a choice. We make a choice to love. You know, why? Why does, you know, we love Jesus because he first loved us because love is a choice. It's not a feeling. The second thing I want to say about this objection is that, you know, I've had this particular verse shoved in my face so much by people that want to justify their immoral sin or the immorality of others. And they say, oh, well, you know, God is love. Man, I have heard that so much. God is love. Well, you know what? That's true. God is love. But guess what? Love is not God. OK, God is a loving God. Yes, he is. But he's also a just God. He's a wrathful God. He's a jealous God. He's a pure God. So we can't just pick out one aspect of God's nature that we like and then forget about every other aspect of his nature. As much as God is loving, he's equally just. He's equally pure. Love is not an excuse to sin. So as I go through these, if you ever want to jump in, just let me know. Yeah, no. On that point right there, what you just said, I think it's so vital because it's one of the things I'm teaching on tonight in youth is when we love. We should love like a parent loves a child. That's what a leader should do. And God, in that same way, loves us like a parent loves a child. I love my child, but what my child does wrong, I love them so much I'm going to discipline them. And I'm going to show them that what they're doing is wrong so that they can correct their ways. And at times, God sees that we're doing wrong. God sees that what we're doing is inappropriate, that is immoral, that is against his perfect will and against his perfect life that he has planned for us. And so he begins to love us like a parent would love us and begins to discipline and show us that discipline in ways that we don't like, that's uncomfortable, that creates tension in our life. And we're driven to go back to God or we're driven to go to ourself and run from God. And so this is what happens when we get in this sexual immorality, when we begin to follow after idols, we begin to follow after these fleshly desires that were inside of us. Because as Paul talks so often, we have two natures. We have our fleshly nature and we have our spiritual nature. And they're warring together constantly. And we've got to put off those fleshly desires and put on those spiritual desires. I don't naturally have a desire to give and read my Bible and to pray. I have to put that on. OK, so we have the same thing. We have to fight those natural desires and put on those unnatural desires of what God desires for us. Right. It it's the opposite of selfishness. Yeah, it's it's self-sacrifice. It's, you know, it's self-discipline, you know, that any husband, how we are supposed to show our wives love. You know, you know, we are commanded as husbands throughout the New Testament over and over and over. We are commanded to love our wives and how we show our wives love is the husband does it through self-sacrifice. You know, the husband, if anybody's going to take the hit, the husband takes the hit. You know, the husband is is the servant. You know, just like the Jesus served and submitted himself to the church by coming and dying to the church. You know, Jesus washed the feet of the disciples. He didn't have to do that. But this type of love, it's a self-sacrificing love as opposed to the world's definition of love, which is all about me. It's all about my needs. It's all about what I want. If you don't fulfill me, I'm going to hit the road. I'm going to pack my bags and I'm going to go home. It's our marriages today. It's no longer about the relationship. It's about what can I get out of it? How do you fulfill me? And if you don't fulfill me the way I want to be fulfilled, then I'm going to bail. It's just so self-centered. And that's not the type of love that Jesus wants us to have. Absolutely. You know, when you begin talking, you begin to, the first thing you said was idolatry. I want to back up just a minute and talk through that. I listen to Michael Knowles probably almost every day when he puts out a podcast. It's a political podcast, so it has nothing to do with this. But on Fridays, he does a mailbag where you can mail it. You can send in requests or comments or whatever, and he'll address them on air. And almost every single week, someone writes in, typically it's a young man, there have been women as well, but typically young men who write in and say, you know, I'm dealing with the sin of pornography, and I'm struggling with it. How do I stop? And he makes this analogy, and I think it's so good because he doesn't necessarily say it in this way, but you are idolizing yourself when you are watching pornography, when you are watching these things that are immoral and wrong. He says this often. He says you would never do this in an open room in front of a lot of people. What do you do? You go into an abandoned room. You turn out all the lights. You close the windows. You lock the doors. And then you self-gratify yourself. He said because it is complete idolatry of identifying who the idol is in that situation, and it's you. And he said this is where you've got to get to the point where you stop focusing on yourself, and you start focusing on the greater good, which is, of course, for us, the Scripture and the Bible and our spiritual life and what we can do for the cause of Christ. And when we do those things, it's crucifying the cause of Christ in our world. And so he addresses it that way, and it's a great way to look at it. If you wouldn't do these things in public, and I know the public life has changed drastically, and things are completely different than where they used to be, and I understand that. Just a couple of years ago, we went to New York before COVID, and we're walking down the street, and I'm oblivious to everything. You know, I'm enjoying the New York Times and the streets and downtown Central, all the great things. And these two women come up to me, and I'm not even paying attention to them, and they said, can we have a hug and take a picture? Well, I'm going to give everybody a hug. Like, I don't care. It doesn't matter to me. And so I went in for a hug, and as I sort of turned my head to figure out who they were, they were completely naked. Like, they had no clothes on whatsoever in the middle of Times Square. And I'm like, whoop, nope. Turned around, and I did like a 360 spin move around them. And I had all these people behind me watching, but I'm thinking, holy, like, this is not society. Like, people don't just walk around like this. And all of a sudden, this is the opposite. Like, we should have that reaction. But society has changed the norm. And so when society changes, all of a sudden, we somehow think in our mind that Scripture changes as well. But the Bible says that Scripture doesn't change whatsoever. It's infallible and error. It never changes. It's the perfect Word of God. And if God says that sexual immorality is wrong and idolatry is wrong, then we have to address that, and we have to look at it from a biblical perspective. I thought of one thing that when you first started out that my pastor growing up used to say, and it really does hold true, and that is you are who you really are when you're by yourself. That's the real you. When there's nobody else around, and the doors are shut, and you're by yourself, you're alone, that's the real person you are. You're not putting on a facade. You're not putting on a show. That's who you really are. So what you do when you're behind closed doors, what you do when you're by yourself, that's the real you. And so that statement has stuck with me for years. That's great. Any other objections to these things that you had written down, Brett? The next objection to God, kind of a modern cultural objection to God condemning sexual immorality in the Bible is this. Times have changed, and what was wrong in biblical times is no longer considered sin. Okay? Just like this is more of this, oh, the Word of God, the Bible's archaic, it's outdated, it doesn't apply to us anymore. You know, the problem with that is most of the passages condemning sexual immorality also include other evils, such as greed or lust or stealing. Now, we have no problem understanding that these things are still sin, but, you know, God's character does not change with culture's opinion. God stays the same. The next objection we have is we're married in God's eyes. And, you know, that's this idea that, you know, we can commit fornication before marriage because in God's eyes we'll be married, so it'll be okay. Well, a couple things. Number one, what if you don't marry that person? And then number two, that whole idea is unscriptural because God created marriage. It was one of the things he created in Genesis. Okay? God created the idea of marriage. The first marriage in the Bible is when God presented Eve to Adam. He basically performed the first wedding ceremony. God was the one who joined them together. Okay? And he did it when God was the one who did the joining. Mark 10, 6 are the words of Christ. And we still read Mark 10, 6 in most wedding ceremonies. And that is, what therefore God hath joined together, let no man put asunder. And I even quoted that verse in the KJV, 1611, for your viewing pleasure. So this idea that God, who created marriage in the first place, would retract his own command to accommodate what he has called sin, is absolutely crazy. The Bible uses this imagery of a wedding ceremony and a covenant throughout the Bible over and over and over. The first miracle took place at a wedding. Jesus said the kingdom of heaven will be like a wedding feast a king gave for his son. We go to Revelation 19. We'll be invited to the marriage supper of the Lamb. Listen, marriage is more than just consummating. It's gathering at a ceremony. It's making a covenant with God and your spouse in front of witnesses. And God takes marriage seriously. Okay? And his eyes see immorality for what it is, regardless of how we try to redefine it. And that's why God takes this idea of sexual sin and immorality so seriously, because he takes marriage so seriously. I believe it goes back to marriage. The next objection is the last one I have here is, I can still have a good relationship with God because he understands. He gets me. And, you know, how foolish it is for us to think that we can choose sin and God just doesn't care. Proverbs 28.9 says, If one turns away his ear from hearing the law, even his prayer is an abomination. Something we've got to realize is that, you know, God is not your buddy. God is not your bro. He doesn't look the other way. He doesn't sweep things under the rug. 1 John 2.3 and 4 has something to say for those who think they can continue to sin. And they can continue to sin on the side and God won't care. It says, We know that we have come to know him if we keep his commands. Whoever says, I know him, but does not do what he commands is a liar. And the truth is not in that person. I found my new name. I found that good grace. I found that healing. And the tears fell down my face. When I found my beginning that has no ending. I found that second chance. I found my best friend. I found my forgiveness. I found my happiness. I've been singing ever since. I found my freedom in you. Thanks for listening to the For Freedom Podcast. If you enjoyed the content of the podcast, please do us a favor by liking, subscribing, or sharing the podcast on whatever podcast platform you listen to. 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