102. Freedom from Sexual Sins Part 2

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 Holyfield and James Safer. All right, and so we are jumping back into our sexual sins and looking at part two here of how we can see forgiveness and freedom through those sexual sins. We discussed what sexual sins last week was, and this week we're going to continue that thought on how we can have change. And so we're going to take two different perspectives here. I'm going to be looking at 1 Thessalonians 4, verses 3 through 5, and Brett's going to look at Proverbs 5 and how we can see that in our life and how we can ultimately see redemption, restoration, and freedom from sexual sins in our life. And Proverbs, Solomon gives some great wisdom to his sons, and Paul here is giving wisdom to the church here at Thessalonians, Thessalonica, of how they can be free from the sexual sins that they're in. And so as we look through this, I'm just going to read to get started with, and then I'll briefly talk through a couple of things here. 1 Thessalonians 4, verses 3 through 5 says this, For this is the will of God. How often do we ask or we ask, what is the will of God for my life? For this is the will of God, that you are sanctified, that you have sanctification, that you're more and more becoming more and more like Christ every day of our life, that you abstain from sexual immorality, that each of you know how to control your own body in holiness and in honor, not in the passions of lust like the Gentiles who do not know God. And so as we see this, we see there is this fascinating reality that every one of us begins to have this pursuit of purity in our life. We begin to have this pursuit of knowing who God is that makes us wonder and begin to ask the questions, what is this purity? And when we get to the heart of it, we begin to realize that God is pure. God is holy and God is righteous, and that he is saying that there is this thought of how we can become pure like him. And Paul was simply saying here, there's a difference between those who are controlled by sexual sins and those who have control over their own bodies and holiness and honor. And the difference between that is simply this, that they know God. And so the first thing we've got to look at when we look at this is when we know God, we see his purity. We see in his truest form that he is pure and he is holy and that his laws will always reflect the character of the one who makes them. God's law is perfect because God is perfect. Man's law is imperfect. How many of you were in Bible college like me? Okay. And you have this rule in the rule book that was obscure and weird because this professor thought that it was a great rule because he liked it and it was great for him. And that rule was skewed towards his bent. Okay. This is the same way. God says these rules, these laws that I have in place are not because I'm here to hate or because I'm here to condemn you. It's because I'm perfect and I want my law to reflect perfection and purity. And so God is saying here simply that is his heart of purity is flowing to us who decide that we want to be pure as well. You ready? First John 1 5, God is light and in him there is no darkness. And so if we're going to be holy and pure like God, we have to follow his law. And God knows purity like no one else who knows purity. All right. So once we see that the purity of God is there and once we know him, then we begin to see that when we know him, we see that he is the pardon for our sins. We've all sinned. We've all fallen short of God's glory. We've all been in those times where we messed up and we really screwed up. And God said, I'm going to send my son Jesus to die on the cross. And when we know him, he provides the forgiveness of our sins. And this is the part when we begin to talk to people that deal with sexual sins, that deal with things. We've got to ask them, do they really know Jesus? Do they have Jesus in their heart? Are they living a life that Jesus would be acceptable of if they know him? And this is where in our heart, it begins to deal with our heart issue. Proverbs 4, which is the passage before chapter 5, where we're going to look at in just a minute. Paul simply addresses the heart issue at the very end of that 27, 28, 29, where he begins to talk through where is our heart at? Where are we at in our heart? Because if we know Christ, we're going to begin to live a life that is acceptable and holy to Christ. We're still going to have sexual sins. We're still going to have problems. We're still going to struggle. But Christ comes in and he gives that pardon in our life. When we there are not many categories of sin that carry the shame that sexual sins have. Right. I was talking to a lady just the other day, and it may have been Liz Beck. It may have been someone else where she was talking about how she had the identity of it was. I'm sorry. It was a Bible study we were doing in our young adults class. And she said her identity was shame. And all she saw was the shame that she had caused her family. And the moment she began to arrest her identity in Christ, the shame was no longer there. And sexual sins is the same way. Sexual sins cause us to have shame and guilt like no other sin in our life. And so when we begin to see that God pardons this, God gives us freedom through the guilt and the shame, we begin to have this freeing mindset, the kind of freedom that is needed to live a life that struggles with sexual sins. We're going to have those thoughts. We're going to continue to have those thoughts. But through knowing Christ, Christ can renew our mind, as Romans chapter 12 says. Christ can renew the evil thoughts of our mind if we just simply turn to him and trust him. The third thing of knowing God is simply this, knowing that God will allow us to see the power to change us. God is the only one that will change our hearts. God is the only one that can change our minds. And we have to trust God to forgive us in order to trust him to empower us to be a holy life. Titus 2.12 simply puts it like this. Train us to renounce ungodliness and worldly passions and to live self-controlled, upright, and godly lives in this present age. Right? He says present age because as we talked about last week, the times change. The times are going to continue to change. The world is going to begin to get more and more depraved and further and further away from God. And so what does he say here to Titus? He says, ask God to live a self-controlled, upright, and godly life in the present age that you're in. Not in the age that was there 50 years ago. Not in the age of 100 years from now. But the present life that you're living. And ask God to have this ability in you that you're going to be able to renounce the worldly passions. Live self-consciously and self-controlled, upright, and godly lives. So how do we know God? How do we know him? It's simply repenting and asking him to restore our broken lives and relationships a million times over. And saying, God, I need your help. I need your help again today. I'm struggling today. I need your help. And we simply, simply go to God and say, God, I need to take my eyes off of myself. And take my eyes off of the idolatry things that are in my life. And turn them over to you. The only one that's going to be able to change my heart and change my mind. So Paul, as he goes through these things, he gives us some steps. He gives us some practical ways that are not ABC, one, two, three, repeat after me and you're fine. No, it's a continual battle where you're asking God, help me to live a life that's self-controlled. Help me to be upright. Help me to be godly today. And when we begin to ask God and seek his word and seek his scripture, we begin to have the help that only God can give. And so that's what Paul says. But in Proverbs chapter 4, Brett's going to walk through a couple of practical ways. A little bit more of a practical steps of how we can have these freedoms from sexual sins. And so, Brett, Proverbs chapter 4, what's it say? And give us some biblical insight from Pastor Brett. Well, you know, there's a great article on DesiringGod.com that gives some good insight on this topic. And, you know, we're talking about how do we get victory over sexual sin, whether that be fornication, adultery, pornography. And Proverbs chapter 5 has some great wisdom for us concerning this. And we look at verses 3 through 5. It says, So Solomon's warning his son to stay away from the adulteress. And if anybody knows the allure and the trouble of sexual sin, it's Solomon. Because, you know, having 300 wives and 700 concupines. But Solomon has, in fact, allowed... What? That's a whole lot of women there, Brett. Solomon has, in fact, allowed the sin of adultery to open the door for idolatry to creep into Israel. So once again, we see these two sins linked together, idolatry and immorality. So, you know, what's kind of Solomon's first piece of advice in this chapter? We go to verse 7 and 8. So the first thing we need to do is, you know, fleeing sexual sins means doing all we can do to avoid it. You know, and for some of us, that's going to mean restriction. It's going to mean restricting what we look at online or not watching certain TV shows or being more careful about what social situations we place ourselves in. It could even mean, you know, breaking up with someone. Even if that person means the world to us. It could mean changing jobs because we've got a bad influence at a job. You know, we would, if somebody was an alcoholic, you would advise them not to go in a bar. I mean, a bar is the last place that you want an alcoholic to go in. Well, with someone with this kind of struggle, you would suggest for them to stay away from anything that could lead them down that path or anything related to that sin. You know, if you see provocative pictures on Instagram or you're watching, you know, come across provocative, lustful videos on TikTok. Well, then you need to delete Instagram. You need to delete TikTok. And look, this isn't an overreaction because what may seem like an overreaction really isn't when we see how it all ends. As we go down to the bottom of the chapter in Proverbs 5.23, it says, He dies for lack of discipline. And because of his great folly, he is led astray. So the end is destruction. So it's worth the self-sacrifice to stay away from these things to, you know, avoid destruction. Because look, sexual sin is attractive. It's addictive. And any sacrifice you make in your life to avoid it is going to be worth it. Yeah. One of the things I'll add on that is, is look at the words of Jesus. What did Jesus say? If your right hand offends you, what are you supposed to do? Tell it to stop? No. No. Cut it off. Cut it off. Get rid of it. He preached this radical change that had to happen. And oftentimes we're not willing to say, well, I can't delete that app. When Christ said, if your left eye is leading you to go astray, pluck it out of your body. They don't even allow it to be there. And so this is the same radical thought of, if there is something in your life that is a stronghold on you, you got to get rid of it. You got to get, you got to completely amputate it from your life. Jesus taught the same thing that Solomon was teaching. Absolutely. So the second thing we see in Proverbs chapter five is, you know, Solomon kind of says, consider the future. So chapter five, verse 11, at the end of your life, you groan when your flesh and body are consumed. So there are consequences to sexual sin and they're severe. I mean, and a lot of times we write these consequences off like it's no big deal. I'm not hurting anybody, but they are a big deal. Now, Solomon lists some of these consequences in Proverbs chapter five. Now I'm going to read a few verses and just listen to these verses as I read them, starting in verse eight. Keep your way far from her and do not go near the door of her house. Lest you give your honor to others and your years to the merciless. Lest strangers take their fill of your strength and your labors go to the house of a foreigner. At the end of your life, you groan when your flesh and body are consumed. You say how I hated discipline and my heart despised reproof. I did not listen to the voice of my teachers or incline my ear to my instructors. I am at the brink of utter ruin and the assembled congregation. So this guy who committed these acts, he gives away his honor. He gives away years of his life. He gives away his strength. All his life's work is gone. His health is gone. All because he didn't have the discipline to say no to just a few moments of pleasure. He didn't listen to his teachers who warned him. He didn't listen to that voice in his head that told him that this was wrong because he didn't have the discipline to listen to that voice. His life, he ruins his life. And worst of all, it's gone public. It says everybody in the congregation knows about it. This private sin, it doesn't stay private. So, you know, a few moments of pleasure is not worth what it will do to your life. It's not worth wrecking your marriage. It's not worth ruining your kids. It's not worth the bridges that you're going to burn. So, you know, Solomon basically says, you know, think about the future. It's not worth it. Right. Now, the third thing that the third point here is uphold your marriage. So I'll begin reading in verse 15. Drink water from your own cistern, flowing water from your own well. Should your springs be scattered abroad, streams of water in the streets, let them be for yourself alone and not for strangers with you. Let your fountain be blessed and rejoice in the wife of your youth. A lovely deer, a graceful doe. Let her breasts fill you at all times with delight. Be intoxicated always in her love. Now, listen, the Bible doesn't shy away with embarrassment when it comes to talking about a man and a woman enjoying the gift of sex inside of a marriage. The Bible doesn't, you know, is not sheepish about it. All right. Yeah. We had a fence in our backyard. That fence kept our dogs alive. Our dogs could do anything inside of that fence. And it was there to keep them out of the street because when the dog gets out of the fence, he gets in the road and he gets run over. God gave us a physical relationship to enjoy. It's our wedding gift from God. He gave it to us to enjoy, but he also sets up boundaries. Now, these boundaries aren't to oppress us, but they're to keep us safe from harm. And the boundary of a physical relationship is to be enjoyed in the confines of a marriage between a man and a woman. And that will never change no matter what culture says, no matter what the government says. Okay. That's never going to change. So, number four, we have to remember that God is watching. Proverbs 5.21. For a man's ways are before the eyes of the Lord, and he ponders all his paths. So, we need to remember that everything we do, everything we think, everything we say is ever before God. Now, we can deceive ourselves. We can convince ourselves that it's not that bad. We can convince the one that we're sinning with that it's not that bad. No one will ever catch us. You know, it's all good. You know, we can convince that person that it's not that bad. But one thing we can never do is we can never deceive God. You know, he knows what we look at on our phones. He knows what we watch on TV. He knows who we text late at night by ourselves. God sees our sin. But the flip side of this is, yes, God sees our sin, but he also sees us trying to be pure. And he sees us trying to be godly. And I want to say today, you may be struggling in this area. And you may have tried to get victory over this, and you failed over and over and over and over. And every day in this area in your life, it's just a struggle. Well, let me let you know that you're in good company. Even Paul, the apostle Paul, who wrote most of our New Testament, even he struggled with sin. Paul says in Romans 7, 19, for I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing. So even Paul struggled with sin. Paul said of himself, I am the chiefest of sinners. And I think that's the thing we need to remember, is that only Christians struggle with sin. The lost don't struggle with sin, because it's not sin to them. To them, it's just another decision. It's just another day. It's like, am I going to walk the dog today or not? You know, it's just an everyday decision. It's not sin to them. They don't struggle with sin. And the reason why they don't struggle with sin is because they're slaves to sin. And when we get saved, we're no longer slaves to sin. We actually become slaves to Christ. And being a slave to Christ is being free. Okay? Now, that doesn't mean, like you said, that doesn't mean that we'll never sin again. A slave to sin may play Christian for a little while. You know, they may be like the, you know, the seed and the soil that, you know, come, you know, sprouts up a little bit. But then, you know, hard times come along and then, you know, they go away from the church. So a slave to sin may play the Christian for a little while. But then, you know, they're going to leave. But whereas a slave to Christ might struggle with sin, but in the end, they're always going to come back to Christ. And the thing about Christ is Jesus knows our struggle. He knows our battle. He knows what we're going through. Those desires that you struggle with. We have a Savior who is tempted at all points like us. You know, it may well be that no one really seems to understand the kind of struggle you face. Or maybe it seems like no one really knows the pain that you go through as you fight temptation. But Jesus does. And bless God as we draw near to him. He draws near to us. And when we have a wrong desire, we need to remember to fight that desire. We need to fight it with Christ. We need to fight that wrong desire with the Bible. We need to fight that wrong desire with prayer. We need to fight that wrong desire with giving. Fight it with singing. Fight it with praise. Fight it with thanksgiving. Call an accountability partner. Fight it with fellowship. See, we have plenty of weapons in our arsenal that we can use against wrong desires. We just have to use them. Okay? And as we fight for purity, Jesus fights for and with us. And let me say that, you know, in the book of James, it says that the temptation itself is not sin. It's giving in to temptation. Now, sometimes we get depressed and we get down because, man, this desire keeps coming after me. Well, the thing is, is that we all have wrong desires that we shouldn't act on. But the sin comes in when we give in to those desires. And, you know, as we fight for purity, Jesus fights for us and with us. That's great. And, you know, one thing I want to jump back on that you said was where Paul said, I, the things I don't want to do, I do. And the things that I do, do, I don't do. He's basically telling you there's a war within him constantly. He's not saying I'm giving you permission to do the things you don't want to do. He's saying there's going to always be the fight inside of us. That old man and new man that we talked about last week, it's going to always be there inside of us. And so we've got this battle. We've got this fight. I like how Brett said that. There's a fight inside of us constantly. And Christ is fighting for us. He's not fighting against us. He's saying, listen, these are the weapons that you have that you're going to be able to fight against the wiles of the devil, against the temptations that are going to be around us. So to recap for today, we've got to know God. We've got to know who he is. We've got to know his purity. We've got to know his love for us, his compassion for us. We've got to flee sin. We can't just live. We can't go where sin is at and expect not to sin, right? If you struggle with alcohol and getting drunk, you can't go to the bar all the time, okay? You've got to flee those things. You've got to get rid of them. You can't be putting yourself in situations where you're going to fall into those sins. And so flee them. Get rid of them. Take care of your body. Discipline. Discipline yourself to say no. Discipline yourself to be able to avoid those things. Uphold your marriage. Love your wife. Love your husbands if you're married. And then ultimately God is watching because he cares for you, right? And I love so often. So go ahead, Brett. I want to say that we need to remember to take this because, you know, some people have been fighting these sins for a really, really long time. It's had a grip on their life for sometimes years, maybe even decades. We need to take this battle one day at a time. Just say one day. Just today. I'm going to commit today. I am not going to commit this sin. I'm going to go one day. Okay? And if you fail, try your best. If you fail the next day, say, look, I'm just going to take it one day at a time. And then you're going to get that day in. And you're going to go through a whole day. And you're going to stay away from that sin. Maybe it's pornography. And you're going to stay away from that for a whole day. And you're going to wake up the next morning. And you're going to know that you had victory. And it's going to be all that easier to go day two. And you just take it one day at a time. And then one day, you're going to turn around. And you're going to have victory over this. Yeah. That's good. I love that. And I've heard that before as well. And it's great. Lastly, I want to say before we finish up and we wind up is simply this. When we make the statement, God is watching. Sometimes we get this cringy, weird feeling in the back of our mind. Like, oh, God's always watching me. We've heard that before. I want to use this as an analogy to understand it like this. I love my kids. I've talked about them many times on this episode, on this podcast, and on different episodes. When my kids are out, especially when they were younger, I would just sit inside. And you may have done this. Your parents may have done this. And maybe they're outside. They're playing ball. They're riding their bikes. And I would just sit inside. And I would watch them in the sense of this joy that was inside of me, knowing that those are my kids. And that I love them. But then when they would make a mistake or they would hurt themselves, maybe they would fall off their bike. I would be there to go and be able to help them in that situation because I was watching. If I wasn't watching, all of a sudden, they get hurt. They come running inside and they come screaming, which has happened before as well. And I wasn't the good father that I would have been if I was watching them. And that's why God says he's watching us. Not because he wants to be this overseer that is overbearing. He's watching us because he loves us. And when we do mess up, he wants us to turn and run to him. He's like, hey, I'm right here. I'm watching. I know what happened. I know you screwed up, but I'm right here. I didn't leave you. I didn't forsake you. I didn't abandon you. And oftentimes we look at God and we say, he's just going to abandon me. And he doesn't. He's there because he loves us and he cares for us. And he wants our lives to mean something for the cause of Christ. And ultimately for the gospel sake, man, to be able to have a testimony to where you've sinned and you've messed up, like Paul said, and he was able to use the gospel to change his life, to turn his life around. What an amazing testimony. So, Brett, any final thoughts before we close down? You know, I think that, you know, we go just, you know, you mentioned, you know, God's watching. I think that that's a great observation that he's watching, not just as an overbearer, but, you know, he's watching as a concerned father. And Proverbs 5.21 says, and he ponders, you know, he says, for a man's ways are before the eyes of the Lord. And he ponders all his paths. God is considering every, every way that you can have victory over this. He has a way that you can have victory over this. He's thinking about it. And he wants to show us that we can have victory in him. And I think that a lot of times we struggle with these types of things because we don't do what we're supposed to do. You know, we don't go to the Bible. We don't call out and sing and praise. And we don't pray. A lot of times we're ashamed to go to God and pray over this. And that's one thing that, you know, we've got to get out of the habit of is never be ashamed to go to God with something. We can always, you know, go to God, even if we went back on something we told God that we would do and we fail God again. He never wants us to be ashamed to go to God. And when we're struggling with this, with these things, with this immorality and these sexual sins, the best place that we can be is on our knees in front of the throne of grace, getting that all the grace we need to get through the situation. And I just think that God wants us to share this burden with him. And it's a lot of times it's shame and guilt. It's the reason why we don't. But I mean, we need to go to God and share this burden with him. He'll help us carry that burden. And, you know, we just need to go to God to get the victory. That's good. Well, thank you guys for listening to these last two episodes and tune in next week for our interview with Liz Beck with Hope for Addiction. Great organization that helps individuals who are struggling with different biblical or different addictions from a biblical worldview. And I had a great time with her. And until next time, to God be the glory. 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. Thank you. Thank you.

Auto-generated transcript · 5,134 words. May contain errors.