Summary:
Pride fuels lust, and lust kills love. Therefore God extends His Love to us through the Cross of Jesus Christ, by the Power of the Holy Spirit. His Love kills our lust and unleashes us to be the absolute best versions of ourselves. We in turn make our neighbors' lives better. Together, we make Boston better, and by extension, the World.

Audio Transcript:
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Good morning. Welcome to Mosaic Church. My name I Jan. I'm one of the pastors here with Pastor Shane. I'm so glad you're here. If you're visiting or if you're new, we'd love to connect with you. We do that officially through the connection card in the worship card. If you fill that legibly, you can either toss it into the offering basket after. But my recommendation is that you take it to the Welcome Center and exchange it for a gift, a really nice gift that we've prepared for you.

Also, if you have any prayer requests, you can leave those in the card as well, or if you today you choose to follow Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior or recommit to him, or if you're interested in baptism, that's the place to do it as well. With that said, would you please pray with me over the preaching of God's holy word.

Heavenly Father, we love you and we thank you that you are God of love and of truth. And because you are a good father, you set boundaries for your children, in which we can thrive, in which we can enjoy your boundless love, where we can love our neighbor as ourself.

We thank you, Holy Spirit, that you are with us today. And, Lord, we are about to cover a sensitive topic, a topic that for many of us, it comes with shame and guilt and sadness. I pray that you comfort those who are afflicted. But then also, Lord, if there's anyone who is comfortable in that sin, I pray, send your Holy Spirit of conviction. I pray, Holy Spirit, that you continue to empower every single one of us.

I pray every single Christian at Mosaic, I pray that you solidify the team, solidify the army so that we fight the good fight of spiritual warfare together and realize the mission in front of us, that we live in one of the most disproportionately influential cities in the world, and day to day we're next to people who are so far from you, and they're on their way to spend eternity apart from you and I pray, break our hearts for those people, empower us with the spirit to love them and to speak truth with love.

Holy Spirit, we are nothing apart from you. We're nothing, you're everything. We pray that you do your thing today. We pray this all in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

I had the last week off. And whenever I have a week off or I have some time to reflect, and it just hit me last week, that last weekend marked 10 years that I finished seminary. And my wife and I, that same day, packed up the moving truck and moved up to Boston. My wife's still mad at me for that. So this Sunday marks exactly 10 years of our family being in the city. So praise God for that. SDG, Soli Deo Gloria.

Today also is the start of Pride Month in Boston. We're about to talk about lust and sexual immorality, and I just want to say that we did not plan this. I found out about Pride Month... we set our preaching schedule three months ago. I found out about Pride Month this past Wednesday. That's all to say this is a word from the Holy Spirit. I believe that this is a sacred moment and I pray that you receive a word from the Lord today.

The title of the sermon is Lust Kills Love, and Love Kills Lust. It is a PG13 rated. I forgot to mention that in the first service, but it is. So we have a kids' ministry downstairs.

Next Saturday is the Pride Parade, and thousands of our neighbors, our dear neighbors, people we love, people who have kids that go to school with our kids. Our neighbor, we see them at Trader Joe's. We run into them at Whole Foods and stop and shop. We see them. We love these people. And they will be marching shoulder to shoulder celebrating pride.

Should we go? How should we think about the conversations that we inevitably are going to have when people invite us? People we love. It's very real, and it's very personal. We have people whom we really love that consider us to be homophobic bigots, just because of the label of Christian. How do we deal with this question?

I'm looking at this through gospel glasses. The gospel always comes with truth and love. God's truth and God's love, they come together. Truth without love isn't truth and love without truth isn't love. So we look at this question through those glasses. As a Christian, I love my gay neighbor. I love that guy. I invite that guy over my house. I don't have a backyard. I've had a little plot of land that I share with the other people at my condominium. They weren't using it, so I stake the claim in it and I bought a grill and I put it out there. I said, "You guys can use it any time that you want." They haven't used it yet, so it's working out for me."

So invite my friend over and I hear his story. I invite him over to listen to his heart, what do you feel? I grill him a bomb steak because grilling bomb steaks is my love language. This is how I show you how I love you, now eat. And I've got the pattern going and the checkers, so yeah. I'm welcoming. I'm hospitable. But I'm not affirming of that lifestyle. Just like God is loving toward me and he doesn't affirm my sin, just like I myself, I love me, but I don't affirm the sin inside. To say welcome and affirming is to assume that we're pure, that there's no sin inside, that we're not a mixture of good and evil.

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn said that the line between good and evil, it doesn't run between countries or political parties. It runs through the heart of every single human being. It's a mixture. So how are we to discern what's good, what's right? How do we discern and filter our own desires? This is where we need God's truth, His loving truth.

He speaks to us with tender love, and it leads us to speak with same tender love as we speak tough truth. So I kindly declined my friend's invitation to go with him to march shoulder to shoulder in the Pride Parade. Why? Because celebrating sin, celebrating pride is against God's truth, against God's love. It breaks His heart, and therefore, it should our hearts. We love people, therefore, we speak truth graciously. Instead, I invite my friend over again for another barbecue. This time I don't go to Trader Joe's for the steak. I go to Whole Foods to show him I'm going to sacrifice. I love you, love sacrifices. I'm going to get the ribeye, the grass-fed ribeye. It's so much better than [inaudible 00:07:33], like five times better and half the price.

We believe that these are good citizens. We believe that they can be good people. What I try to communicate is scripture, holy scripture, it doesn't condemn same sex relationships. I can be friends with you. It actually commands same sex relationships, a little intimacy that we rarely achieve.

Like scripture talks about John the apostle up next to Jesus during the Last Supper. They were boys and they were close. There's nothing wrong with intimacy in a same sex relationship, men with men, women with women. But scripture does also command sexual restraint for every single human being, me included. Scripture said that there's not one human being alive or who has ever lived that is not guilty of some kind of sexual sin, except for one. That's Jesus Christ who's come to save us from guilt, from shame, from condemnation.

Every single one of us, we struggle with it. That's why it's such a sensitive topic. My beautiful wife, Tanya, she's from the Ukraine. She's also a Sage. This is what she says. She says, "Everybody has dirty mind." I totally agree. That's brilliant. My whole sermon is you're a mess, I'm a mess, we're all a mess, and we need Jesus. That's the whole sermon. That's the point. We're all broken, in particular in this area of life. We need grace.

Sam Allberry who is a same-sex attracted Christian, he's written a lot on this. He's done a lot of talks. You can YouTube. You can Google. He says, "In our fallen state, we are all broken and skewed in every area, and therefore including in our sexual desires. In that sense, none of us is straight." That means we all fall short of the glory of God.

I guess, we might not choose our sexual attraction, but we do choose our sexual actions. And though we are broken, we're still responsible for our decisions. So I communicated tough truths. It's tough truth. But he has no doubt of my tender love to him as the smell of the steak wafts in the air and we're having this conversation. That's the way that Jesus dealt with this.

The problem with how many churches deal with this issue is they offer grace to believers without holding them accountable, without calling them to repentance in areas of sin. But grace without truth isn't grace. And at the same time, they offer truth to non-believers expecting them to live like believers. They haven't met Jesus yet, and it's truth without grace. Truth without grace isn't truth.

We're not called to call non-Christians to live the Christian life. We're called to love them and we're called to introduce them to Jesus, not to heterosexuality. Don't think God will love me if I change. That's not how it works. It's God loves me so that I can change, so accept the love of Jesus Christ poured out on the cross for you.

So if my neighbor becomes a Christian, Lordwilling, now he's my little brother, spiritually speaking. And I'm his big brother spiritually. I do everything I possibly can to help him grow in the faith, and that's exactly where the text takes us today.

St. Paul is the big brother. He's led these people to the Lord, who struggle with sexual sin, and he's writing to them. He's saying, "I want to help you. I want to help you grow. I want to help you be the absolutely best version of yourself so the Holy Spirit is moving powerfully through you to change the City of Corinth," for us to change the City of Boston.

Would you look at the text with me. Today we're in 1st Corinthians 6:12-20. 1st Corinthians 6:12-20. "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 and the stomach for food, and God will destroy both one and the other. The body is not meant for sexual immorality but for the Lord, and the Lord for the body. And God raised the Lord and will raise us up by his power. Do you not know that your bodes are members of Christ? Shall I then take members of Christ and make them members of a prostitute? Never. Or do you not know that he who is joined to a prostitute becomes one body with her? For as it is written, 'The two will become one flesh.' But he who is joined to the Lord becomes one spirit with him. Flee from sexual immorality.

Every other sin a person commits is outside the body, but the sexually immoral person sins against his own body. Or do you now know that you body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God, for you are not your own, for you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body." This is the reading God's holy, inerrant, infallible word. May He write these eternal truths upon our hearts.

Two points but one big idea, lust kills love, and then we'll talk about how love, God's love, kills our lust. Lust kills love, and I don't have to give you the statistics. We live in probably the most oversexualized time and culture that's ever lived. It's like a machine gun of assault coming at us on a daily basis, from every which way.

1st Corinthians 6:9-11, St. Paul gives us a list of sins, including sexually immoral, idolaters, adulterers, men who practice homosexuality, etc, etc. Then he also connects it with greedy and drunkards and revilers and swindlers. He says, "As were some of you." The big idea is he says this is counter to the gospel, because the gospel is all about Jesus, and Jesus gives, whereas sin takes.

Jesus sacrifices whereas sin comes in and demands and feels entitled to. It's all fueled by pride. He says, "Sin is selfish." The gospel of Jesus Christ is selfless. Sin through pride and entitlement leads to lust. It fuels the lust. This is what I want, how I want it, with whom I want. The gospel says, "No, love sacrifices. Love gives. Love listens to the Lord." It all starts with the heart of the Christian.

Jesus says in Matthew 5:17-30. He's not just getting at the sin. He's getting at the thoughts behind the sins, the desires of the heart. That's where we're at war, our desires are conflicted. He says, "You've heard that it was said, you shall not commit adultery. But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman or a person with lustful intent has already committed adultery with her in his heart." Meaning the act of sin has happened before the eyes have done anything.

"... already has committed adultery with her in his heart. If your right eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away." Obviously, he's being hyperbolic here. But he's saying radical actions need to take place because this sin is so dangerous. "For it's 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 into hell."

Jesus is looking at the sin from the perspective of eternity, because this is how scripture talks about heaven and hell. It talks about these desires, these fire of desire within us. And if the fire of desire of lust is not extinguished, it continues to grow, it continues to grow. What happens if it continues to grow a decade, a second decade, a third...

We have a term called dirty old men for a reason. Jesus comes and he says, "I've come to extinguish that flame of lust. I've come to extinguish it with my love that I pour out into your heart, so that you continue to grow, continue to improve, continue to be sanctified. And that trajectory goes into eternity.

Hebrews 12:14, "Strive for peace with everyone, and for the holiness without which no one will see the Lord." You know what holiness is? It's being set apart for God. It's pursuing the presence of God, closeness to God. Flee from sin, pursue God. That's the idea. And true believers, do we sin? Yeah, we sin. We do sin. Samson sinned. David sinned. Solomon sinned. But the true believer repents. The true believer can't stay there. It can't turn into a pattern or it can't turn into habitual sin.

There's a fight that arises within the believer and he says, "I don't want to live like this. I don't want to dishonor God. I want to love God. I want to love people." The true believer repents and fights and makes war. And if there's no fight in you, then you need to question, am I really saved? If there's no spiritual heartbeat, if there's no pulse, are you a Christian? Saving faith always produces holiness, and if there's no desire for outward renewal, most likely there's no evidence for inward renewal.

That's why he says in verse 9, "Do not be deceived, because this sin, more than any other sin, it has deceiving... it lulls us into a spiritual stupor where we don't even see it. We don't think that this is a sin. It's no big deal. And also, there's God's grace, right? So I can just come to God, repent at any time. He forgives me, and then I go back to this pattern. And that's not how Christianity works.

Christianity works like this. You're saved by grace through faith. You believe in Jesus Christ. He puts his Holy Spirit in you. And if you take the Holy Spirit who's in you and you take it into sin, you're taking the Holy Spirit with you, and the Holy Spirit doesn't like that. The Holy Spirit will discipline. The Holy Spirit will convict, and if that isn't happening, if there's no desire, Lord, help me grow. Help me fight. If there's no desire, most likely you're not a Christian.

Then at that point, we welcome you to look to Christ. Place your faith, your hope in Jesus Christ, and be saved. Verse 12, he's having an argument with them. They say, "All things are lawful for me." That was the motto in the church. And then Paul repeats and says, "Not all things are helpful. All things are lawful for me, but I will not be dominated by anything." He says, "Yes, we're not under law, but we're under grace, and grace is given to us." It's a costly grace. It's given to us to transform us. It's given to us to make us the people that we're called to be.

He gives us here two safe cards. He says, "Is this helpful? And does this enslave? Does this dominate?" And this sin, more than any sin, dozens, it enslaves. It's starts at the heart level where you're worshiping creation over creator, and it starts spiritually. But doesn't stay there. It grows. It grows into our decisions, and all of a sudden, it's taking over our body. We're dominated by... and yes, there's a spiritual problem primarily, but has undeniable, physical consequences.

It dominates you, consumes you, and ultimately, it wants to destroy you. It's a master that's ruthless. This is the pattern, and this is the pattern for any addiction, but in particular here. There is the initial use, the initial experience, and there's that buzz. Then you chase that buzz again. You want more. But you're not getting it. You're not getting the buzz, so now you need to ramp up the use, the frequency, the intensity. Then what happens is there's a process called habituation. Your body builds up a tolerance to it, and then you need higher dosage, higher frequency.

The brain goes through physiological change. It decreases brain chemical production, and there's a loss of brain chemical receptors. What we're doing is we're playing with neurochemical fire. That then leads to the next stage, which is dependence. It's addiction. It's all you think about.

You wake up, there's a craving. You're spending extra time seeking it. There's an inability in daily responsibilities in doing the things that you need to do. All of a sudden, your relationships begin to suffer because of the shame and the guilt. You have a harder time looking yourself in the mirror, and you have a hard time making eye contact with people because of shame.

There's regular use in inappropriate settings. This is so real. I took my kids to Summit Park yesterday, and there was the hammocks and they're really nice. There was something hanging off the hammock and my daughter came up to it and she's like, "Daddy, what's that?" Then if you try to stop it, there's withdrawal. There's fatigue. There's anxiety. There's irritability. Now you've got to decide, okay, what do I do with that? I've got a new normal in my life and I need to self medicate with something. Then that leads to all kinds of other addictions, and you don't see how addicted you were until you're out. That's the deception part.

There's inherent restlessness when it comes to lust because your bodies, your heart is never satisfied. Augustine said, "Our hearts are never satisfied until they find their satisfaction, their rest, in you." Why? Because sex never gives us what it promises. What are we really looking for? It's not just a buzz. It's not the physical. Deep down inside we want the intimacy. We want to be fully known and fully loved. We want a deep, emotional connection. That's why hooking up and hooking up culture, it doesn't deliver. And for many young people today, hand to hand, holding hands, is more intimate than body to body. That's where there's all kinds of companies and services that provide snuggling and cuddling, just physical affection. People just want intimacy.

Paul says it's lawful. Okay. You're going to play that game? But is it helpful? Even if you're not a believer, this part, even if you're not a believer, is it helpful, if you are pursuing sexual... if you're down this route, is it giving you what you want? Is it helpful? Is it profitable? St. Paul says, "No, it's not." Is it helpful? It's not helpful in your relationship with God, dear Christian, because what happens is you lose your ability to love God, because your heart gets hardened with the sin. And what God does, He withdraws His fellowship from you because He can't be in close proximity to the sin. It repels Him because God is holy. You lose love for God and the feeling of God's love.

You also lose love for yourself. You lose respect for yourself. And vice versa. For yourself and from yourself. That's why he says in verse 18, "Flee from sexual morality. Every other sin a person commits is outside the body, but the sexually immoral person sins against his own body." What he's saying is you're hurting yourself. What he's saying is this isn't just another appetite. It's different. That's why in verse 13, that's where he started the train of thought. He quotes them, this is what they're saying to justify their decisions. Food is meant for the stomach and stomach for food. This is a lot of people in our culture think, that sex is just like eating. It's just another appetite. It's a biological need. I can't go without eating, and I can't go without sex, right? It's not healthy.

Paul is like, "No, no, no. This is so different. Sex is different than food. Babies aren't conceived by eating. It's completely different. Sex is different than food. You can't be born without sex. But you can live without it. You can live a glorious life without it. No voice in our culture is going to tell you... you can have the most glorious life ever lived with the life of Jesus Christ, and he never had sex.

Why does scripture talk with caution about sex? Because scripture recognizes its power. It's a force. In the right confines, like a fire. It's good. A fireplace, my dad has a fireplace. People in Brooklyn have fireplaces. I love fireplaces. They're beautiful. You sit back, they give you warmth. I love the smell of it. Sometimes I walk around the winter and I try to find a house with a fireplace. In the confines, beautiful. It's life-giving. It's awesome.

Outside the confines, it's absolutely deadly. It's destructive. In the right context, sex has the power to give. It has the power to love. In the wrong context, it's destructive. Proverbs talks about pursuing sexual morality, talks about an ox going to the slaughter, like you're on a path toward hurting yourself.

Then it's not helpful in your relationship to others. You do lose love for other people and vice versa because you're hurting them, they're hurting you. There's no such thing as NSA, no strings attached. That's not a thing. That's a lie. That's a lie. The morning after, there's always emotional attachment. Always. If you don't like the emotional attachment, what do you have to do? You have to mask it and it's not a real... it hurts people.

If you're married, it hurts your spouse. If you have kids, it's going to hurt them. It's going to hurt your future grandkids because there is such a thing as generational sin. So God gives us this truth. And what He's asking us, what kind of life do you want? What kind of legacy do you want?

Jesus Christ said, "I have come to give you life and to give you life to the full, so live that full life. Lust kills love. Lust levels even kings. King Solomon, the most brilliant man to have ever lived, dies as a creepy, perverted, pathetic old man, a hollow shell of himself.

Every single human being is created in the image of God. Every single human being has a sweet spot, a zone of genius. I meet so many people who are just brilliant. They've found that sweet spot. They've found that zone. And when in the zone, they are absolutely powerful. There are so many people who are pulled away from that, and mostly a lot of it because of sin, because of the sideways energy being channeled in every other direction.

They say that the human brain, we only use about 10% of the human brain. And in my research, I found out that that was a myth. But all of us absolutely know the cloud that happens when our time is being dominated, our money, our schedule is being dominated by this thing. What happens is that we lose capacity.

Lust does rewire the brain signs that prove that. But it does more than rewire the brain. It also rewires our hearts. It changes our ability to love and to receive love. We lose love for and from God, for and from self, for and from others. There's a reason why sex sells. You hear that. That's the number one marketing tool. Sex sells. Why? Because people are driven to give money. Here, take my money. I'm willing to sacrifice my money to get this product, and it's not the product that I want. Everything is about sex except for sex and what sex is about.

Sex is about the heart longing for intimacy. We long for it. 1st Corinthians 6:13 and 14, he talks about the body is not meant for sexual immorality, but for the Lord, and the Lord for the body. And God raised up the Lord and will also raise us up by... He's saying that the Lord is for the body. For the Christian, the Lord gives us the Holy Spirit, and the Holy Spirit is a power. It wants to use us as a conduit for his power, for his mission.

I believe, for many Christians today, this is the primary reason why we are not as spiritually powerful as God wants us to be. It diminishes our potential, diminishes our capacity. It diminishes our desire for God and for lost neighbor, and for Christian. Many of you are killing at your job. You are super talented. You are so smart it's stupid, and you can do that. You can kill it at your job. You can make the world a better place while partaking dabbling in sexual sin with a little porn out on the side, or fill in the blank.

But you cannot make a difference where it matters most, operating by the flesh. We need the Holy Spirit. We need to be led by the spirit, not driven by the flesh. And the Holy Spirit, the Holy Spirit stays always quenched, he's suppressed by our lust, by our sin. And God says, "Get free. Get unleashed. Think about your impact in eternity, not just in the physical realm."

We can't do what God has called us to do apart from the Holy Spirit. When we're struggling with sin, it's as if we're charging the gates of hell with water pistols and God is saying, "Stop, cut it out. I'm offering you true MO, true guns, spiritually speaking. John wakes guns, I'm offering it to you, all of it in that final scene. Just take it. Spiritually speaking, of course. Because that's where the fight is. The fight is with ideas. The fight is with desires. The fight is with words. And the Holy Spirit wants to empower us to actually spend the kingdom.

Just imagine, if Jesus turned a few loaves and a few fish into a feast for 10,000. The disciples said, "Use us." God said like, "Okay." How much more can he do through the talent pool, the talent stack of people like you at Mosaic Boston, if you are fully yielding, fully committed to him, and his spirit pouring through... You can change eternity.

We can't have people... we're on the same team. I'm nothing, you're nothing. But together, together we can win in the most important winning, spiritual winning. And it's a winning I will never get tired of, ever, ever, ever. God is saying, "Make sure you don't have team members who turn around and they're trying to score on the other goal. No. Turn around. There's people on their way to hell. Don't buy their gas. Do everything you can to help them turn around. Do everything you can to help them meet Jesus Christ.

Lust kills love. So what do we do? We need love to kill our lust. He says the body is not meant for sexual immorality, but for the Lord. And he's talking about design. That the Lord designed the body for the Lord, that the body runs best when it's close to the Lord. So you weren't designed for sin. It's like iPhones weren't designed to hammer nails, and violins weren't designed to heat a house. Violin in the hands of a musician, it sings. God wants your life to sing. Allow him to fine-tune that violin.

The greatest violin ever made, Stradivari. The greatest violinist that ever lived, Paganini. God wants you to be Stradivari in the hands of Paganini. And he wants to make beautiful music that makes everything better. God is saying, "I designed you. I know how you work. I designed you. I know the best version of you, and it's not pursing sexual immorality."

God's will is always for our best, that's why he gives us boundaries because human beings thrive in boundaries. We thrive in boundaries. Children thrive in boundaries. That's why God gives us these boundaries so that in those boundaries, the boundaries of love, we abound in his love. We deepen in his love and love with one another. This just works in every sphere of life, the spatial boundaries.

Fenway Park has boundaries. Pesky Pole, if it goes on the other side of Pesky Pole, that's it. A foul ball. I don't care how hard you hit it. You could enjoy the game in these boundaries, there's time boundaries, temporal work hours. You can't work 24 hours a day. You need boundaries, and sleep boundaries.

There's relational boundaries. It's not okay to touch a stranger any way you want or say whatever you want to a stranger. So God gives us boundaries when it comes to sexual intimacy. Opposite sex marriage, one man, one woman, one covenant, one lifetime. And what that provides is security, that provides and understanding that we... if there's no plan B, if there's no fire escape, we, by God's grace, will work through whatever.

June 10th will be 13 years I'm married with my wife. And all these 13 years, not one have I had a thought, what would I do if she divorces me? And in these 13 years, she has never had a thought, I hope... I don't know. It's like I don't have to go person to person to person to person to person to get the buzz, buzz, buzz, buzz, buzz, buzz, buzz, when that's not even what I'm looking for. What I'm looking for is one person. I love you fully. I know you fully. You know me fully. You love me fully. That's what you want. And the intimacy, it just gets better and deeper. That's what God wants for us. That's His will for us.

In 1st Corinthians 6:19, he tells us why, he says, "Because you're not your own. You were bought with a price." That we, as Christians, we belong to God not once, we were created by Him, but twice. He also redeemed us, and what a price He paid to redeem us. What did He redeem us from? A slave market of sin. How did He redeem us? Through the blood of His son, Jesus Christ. God is love. Jesus is God. Jesus is love. Love dies on the cross to kill our lust, to free us to love God and to love neighbor.

Jesus Christ died on the cross, paid the penalty for all of our sins, in particular this one, in order to forgive us, in order to purify us, in order to make us his. You are not your own.

Sex isn't evil. Sex is a gift. It's a gift from God, and gifts aren't rights. You can't demand a gift. You're not entitled to a gift. Sometimes when I go away on a trip and I come back, my daughters are always like, "Daddy, daddy, what'd you bring us? What'd you bring us?" And I don't like that, so I mix it up. Once in a while I'll bring a gift, and once in a while I'm like, "Here I am. My presence is your present," just so they know, you can't demand a gift. The giver chooses to give the gift and chooses how to give the gift. And God chooses to give this good gifts with restrictions.

It's a right not a privilege, just like your driver's license. You've got to follow the rules of the road because it's not just about you. Yeah, they want to protect you, but they also want to protect themselves and they want to protect the people in the communities.

The reason why many people also struggle with this teaching of scripture, sexual ethic, God's sexual ethic, is because of Satan's lie. And Satan is a liar. The lie goes like this, "God's way won't make you happy. Sin will make you happier." That right there is one of the most diabolical lies from the deepest pits of hell.

Did sin make you happy? Has it made you happy? Then why in the world do you think it will make you happy? Maybe just for a little bit. We begin to believe that if we give up sexual sin, we'll be depressed. And honestly, that initial stage, it's hard. I've counseled people. It's hard. Why? Because of the withdrawal symptoms, and the physical withdrawal symptoms. But you've got to keep going because God's freedom at the end is so much better. No sin tastes as good as God's love feels. Nothing comes even close. When God is close, there's nothing that comes remotely close.

Augustine in his early 30s, he knew Christianity. He was attracted to it. But he struggled with the sin. This is what he said. He said, "I loved the happy life, but I feared to find it in your abode, and I fled from it. Even as I sought it, I thought that I would be too wretched if I were kept from a woman's arms." Then he turned from his sin. God released him, and the whole trajectory of his life changed. And we're still talking about this guy because of his influence on the world.

We're not looking for that buzz. What we're really longing for is intimacy, the truest intimacy. And there's no true intimacy than that with Christ. And he says in verses 15 through 17, that we are members or members of Christ. "Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ? Shall I then take the members of Christ and make them members of a prostitute? Never. Or do you not know that he who is joined to a prostitute becomes one body with her? For, as it is written, the two will become one flesh. But he who is joined to the Lord becomes one spirit with him."

He's talking to people in church who are in Corinth and there's the Temple of Aphrodite. The priestesses are actually prostitutes and Christians of the church are frequenting it. And what he's saying here isn't that sex doesn't have a physical component. It does. It has neurological impact on us where neurologically you're bound to the object of the climax. But the biggest problem is the spiritual part. You are becoming one flesh, a one-flesh reality. A soul-to-soul reality with a person who's not your spouse, and there's deep consequences to that.

There's a reason why we always remember our first, our first kiss, our first everything. He says, "If you've been joined to the Lord, now you're one spirit with Him. Therefore, when you go there, you're taking Him with you." That when you look at that, when you partake in that, Jesus Christ is in the room and he is weeping. He's weeping over the pain that you're inflicting on that person, and the pain that they're inflicting you, and the pain that you're inflicting God. And that's why Paul says, "May it never be," and that you're one with God. He uses this language of absolutely unity, and this is why when God talks about sex in the confines of marriage, he talks as a signpost to marriage, to a relationship with God.

Marriage is a scale model. The greatest human marriage is nothing but a scale model of our relationship with God, and that's why there is no marriage in heaven. That's why homosexuality is a big deal, because it attempts to reconstruct the scale model. God creates. Marriage is His idea. He created that word. He created that idea. Marriage is husband and wife. That's God's idea. It's a beautiful idea. God creates, the enemy, Satan, counterfeits. He has no idea, so he counterfeits God's ideas.

Then he flips everything and he makes true love seem bigoted. That's the work of the evil one. Jesus didn't marry Jesus, the church doesn't marry the church. That's why it's such a big deal. It clashes with the very heart of God, the very mind of God.

1st Corinthians 6:18. "Every other sin a person commits is outside the body, but the sexually immoral person sins against his own body." What does it mean here? Alcohol, drug abuse, doesn't that have an impact on the body? He's talking about something deeper, because sexual intimacy unites on the deepest level. It begins to corrupt on the deepest level, and begins to impact absolutely everything in your life.

C.S. Lewis in the screwtape letters says, "Every time a man and a woman enter into a sexual relationship, a spiritual bond is established between them, which must be eternally enjoyed or eternally endured." God says, "You're one with me." Stay there. Flee sin. Pursue God. Glorify Him in your body because that's the greatest thing for you. You're not looking for sex. You're looking for love. You're looking for true love.

You know how you're in a nice restaurant and you have a great meal? You have an amazing meal. What do people usually say after an amazing meal? This is what people say, pretentious people. This is what they say to the waiter, "My compliments to the chef." You know why that's a thing? Because it's so enjoying this mean that they're like, "Man, whoever made this must be amazing."

You listen to great music, you hear a song for the very first time. 92.5 the river. You hear a phenomenal song, you Shazam that song. You're like, "Wow, whoever came up with this music must be amazing." And Shazam tells you, "Its the Fine Print." Shout out to Caleb Savari, and my brother Vladimir who's on the drums. If this creation is so good, how much better is the creator? This is exactly what God is saying. Sex is good in the confines of God's boundary. How much better is He who came up with that idea?
God wants to free us. By the power of the Holy Spirit, He wants... every single one of us needs to be purified. Every single one of us needs to be forgiven. Every single one of us needs to be released.

The Smashing Pumpkins had a song way back in the day called Bullet With Butterfly Wings. One of the lines is that despite all my rage, I'm still just a rat in a cage. That's the image. That's the image. You're a rat in a cage. We, we, me, whatever, however you... people. You're a rat in a cage. You're hitting that button for another drop of whatever the drug is. You're hitting it, you're hitting it. You think the one's satisfies, the next one's... it doesn't satisfy and you feel like there's no hope. And he says in the song... there's a line about Jesus. Jesus was an only son for you. The song ends with the line, and I still, I still believe I cannot be saved.

That's a lie. You can be saved. That rat is hitting it more, more, more. And Jesus is standing at the door. The door is open. Jesus has unlocked the door and he's saying, "Turn around." That's what repentance is. And he says, "Come here, little rat. I want to free you. There's a beautiful world out there. The world of Austin, and Brighton, just don't go too much into Brookline. You get the idea. That's what the gospel does. You receive God's love. You receive His sacrifice, and His love extinguishes the lust within. When you see what it took for Him to save you, that begins to undo the power of sin in our life.

Two commands. He says, verse 18, "Flee sexual morality." Don't stay in the situation physically or mentally. You've got to flee from it, take every thought captive, and this informs our consumption of entertainment, and what we do in our free time, and on our weekends. Does it extinguish or does it inflame?

Then verse 20, he says, "Glorify God in your body," meaning you can't compartmentalize where I love God in my heart but I do whatever I want with my body. Scripture says, "Present your bodies as a living sacrifice." God calls us to an embodied spirituality now, to being now, because heaven is an embodied reality. Why does God say, he says, "Glorify me. Glorify me," because that's the best thing for us.

Westminster Shorter Catechism, "The chief end of man is to glorify God and enjoy Him forever." Pleasure is overrated. Joy is where it's at. God's fighting for your joy. 1st Corinthians 6:19, he says, "Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God? And the Old Testament, in the temple, the most sacred part, was the Holy of Holies. One priest, only one priest, entered only one time a year, to present only one sacrifice. And he says, "Now you Christian are a holy of holies. You, you embody the Holy Spirit and dwelled with the Holy Spirit.

So how dare we think we can justify taking the Spirit of God, the temple of God, into the temple of Aphrodite. May it never be so. What do we do practically? Here's how I think about it. The holy scripture says, "Be killing sin, or it will be killing you." That's John Owen. He got that from Paul, who said, "Put to death therefore what is earthly in you, sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and covetousness which is idolatry." You've got to put it to death, but it's a continual verb. You don't just slay it once.

Lust is a monster with nine lives. The way I think about it is putting it to sleep. Scripture has this in Song of Solomon, says, "Do not awaken love." Do not awaken love, meaning we have the ability to put it to sleep, and awaken it, put it to sleep, and awaken. And you already have this skill. You know in what context that you can't just let your sexual energy go. You know. You have that skill. Now you've just got to apply it to every single part of your life so it's integrated and you can do it by the Holy Spirit walking in step with the Holy Spirit.

Then finally, 1st Corinthians 6:15. "Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ?" This is so important. He says, "We together are members of Christ," meaning the way that we fight lust is intimacy with God and intimacy with one another, where we lead with transparency, where we pray for one another openly, we share with what we're struggling with. It's one body unity. That's not just for husband and wife, brothers and sisters knit together in love. We've got a gospel partnership. We're comrade in arms. When soldiers shoulder to shoulder, that's where true unity, the intimacy happens, and that's where the Lord allows us to be freed from these sins.

Finally, just a quick word, because it's June... brothers and sisters are responsible for one another. We are each other's keeper. And that means we need to do everything possible to help one another extinguish sin and not inflame. So this has to do with our words to one another, our touch toward one another, and how we dress. Are we helping our brothers and sisters fight the good fight or are we hurting them?

I'm not saying that we all of a sudden were taking style tips form the Amish or Mormonites. But I'm also saying we're not taking wholesale style tips from the Kardashians. That's all I'm saying. Dress like you would at a family reunion with grandpa and grandpa there. Dress like that. And then it's not selfish, it's selfless.

I'll conclude at this and then we turn to Holy Communion. Satan invented sin. Sin leads to pride, pride leads to selfishness, selfishness leads to lust, and lust kills love. The gospel was created by God. God creates the gospel. It leads to humility. It leads to selflessness, which leads to love. And what does love do? It kills lust. Stay in that sweet spot. The gospel changes absolutely everything.

I'm going to transition to Holy Communion. Before we partake in Holy Communion, we have an opportunity as the ushers hand out the elements, to pray, to repent. We're all a mess. We need to confess that and we need to accept God's Holy Spirit to purify us. If you're not believer, we ask that you refrain from this part of the service. It does nothing to you. We're saved by grace through faith.

The way that we celebrate is ushers are going to hand out the elements. Take some bread, take a cup, and pass it down to someone in your aisle. And after everyone's received them, we'll partake together. Let's pray.

Heavenly Father, we thank you for the gospel. We thank you that the gospel reminds us just how bad we are, but it also reminds us just how good you are, and that you gave us your son to redeem us, to save us. I pray, Lord, pour out your Holy Spirit on every single one of us and unleash us as a force in this city for good, for transformation, for your glory. We pray this in Christ's name. Amen.