Relationship Reset | Week 3 | Daniel Goulding | Echoes Church

I'm not talking about the topic that I'm talking about today.

Today, we're talking about sex because we're in the middle of a relationship series, but I promise it's not every week that we talk about intimacy at church. And so I think it's a it's a good conversation to be a part of, but just wanted to give you a fair warning. Most of the time, we talk about Jesus around here. Okay? So,

hey, again, fair warning. We tried to email out. We tried to put signs out there upfront, but we are talking about God's plan for healthy intimacy. We're gonna talk about all things sex. Again, my my kids are actually in this service, so I'm not gonna say anything that I think is inappropriate, but I do think it's conversation we need to have. However, if you showed up with kids and you're like, hey, they're just too young or whatever, no issue. I'm gonna pray in just a second. We've got kids ministry. You can drop them off at us. They're junior highers. We got a junior high ministry. Like, you're you're more than welcome to bail once I start praying. But when I say amen,

you're locked in for the ride for the entire journey. Okay? And we're gonna go through this together.

And again, I I think this is a conversation that we have to have as much as I'm I'm tongue in cheek. I think the conversation is happening. It's out there, and we as a church can't be afraid of it. We've gotta step into it and bring the truth of God's word to the conversation. Amen? So grab a Bible. I'll pray for us, and we will jump in. Father, God, we thank you, Lord, so much for who you are. God, I'm thankful that you didn't just

create the earth, put people on it, spin it into motion, and then walk away from it. But God, you care about us. You care about our design and our flourishing, and so you gave us a manual of how to thrive as humans called the holy scripture. So father, today as we open it, would you speak? Holy spirit, would you go before us? Would you speak to us? We also remember today that there is therefore, the scripture say, no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.

I pray against what the enemy would try to do with a topic like this, to heap condemnation on the people, but that is not from you. So Holy Spirit, but not do not allow condemnation to land on us. In Jesus' name, all God's people said, amen and amen.

I don't know if you guys can remember where you were or when it was when your parents had, the dreaded sex talk with you, but, I mean, I can I can vividly remember like the couch I was sitting on with my dad and it was just like an awkward conversation and the the thing that predicated it was we were we were up watching what we thought was going to be the Spice Girls concert and so we're like, oh, yeah, 10:00 which is embarrassing enough that we actually wanted to watch a band called Spice Girls? If you don't know who they are, don't look it up but they were nothing important. But back in the nineties, man, it was a it was a big deal. Right? So we turned the show on 10:00. My dad has this like illegal black box that We think it's gonna be a concert,

very different version of Spice Girls and so all of a sudden we see something. My dad walks in and like, okay, we gotta have a conversation. So we have this like three minute kind of awkward conversation about how body parts fit together and I'm like, okay, get the gist of it but like that was the totality

of conversations around sex in my family. But again, I also was raised like Catholic light where we were you know, kind of going to Catholic church every now and then and most of the time when I would get caught doing something I wasn't supposed to be doing, my mom would drag me to these like purity conferences and some guy would get up and put pictures up on the screen about what's gonna happen if you have sex before marriage and there was a singular message kind of preached from the church which was that sex is bad. It's it's it's a bad thing but once you get married then you can have a lot of it and we started to realize that the message that the church has led with which we would call purity culture,

it has produced some things in us that are they're not God's intention for us and we started to realize that the idea of telling people, hey, sex is really bad taboo thing but then get married one day, flip a switch and all of sudden everything's just gonna be good and healthy isn't happening and and sometimes I think we've allowed the world

to shape the language in the conversation around sexuality and we've forgotten that God actually is the one that created this and he has a beautiful design for sex and sexuality that we need to hear, we have to lead with and we have to be able to have conversations around it and cast a better vision

for what sex and sexuality is supposed to be than what the world is selling because I'm telling you the void that we leave in this conversation, the culture,

the world is more than willing to step in and give answers and we've got to be the ones who go, no no no. This is God's creation so we're gonna run after what he says about it. What I want to talk to you about this morning is what I believe the Bible is clear.

What what God's perfect plan for human sexuality is because again,

this was God's design. He didn't look down at Adam and Eve in the Garden Of Eden like, yo, what are you guys doing? What what's happening over here? Right? Like, it was his design. It was his plan. It was his gift. So we have to allow him to begin to tell us what do we do with it. Okay. Proverbs chapter 14 verse 12, I think perfectly picked paints a picture of where we sit today culturally when it comes to sexual ethics. It says, there's a way that appears to be right, but in the end, it leads to death. Why is it important for us to have this conversation? Because the scriptures tell us that there's a way that makes sense to a man, but in the end, that's what leads to death. In so many of the the culturally accepted conversations

around sex and sexuality, they make sense to you and I. But the bible says that there's things that are gonna make sense to us that actually are gonna lead to death, and so many of the culturally accepted things around the conversation of sex and sexuality today in 2026

are not producing life in people, they're producing death. It makes sense to me to not have sex or to have sex with somebody before you get married to them. Right? You you try it before you buy it. Just like you're gonna buy a car, you're gonna test drive it first. Like that that makes sense to me. But the bible says that that God has a different plan and the data is now showing us that our plan's not working and if you just look again, can spend this entire, you know, this entire thirty minutes just walking through data that shows where we sit currently

when it comes to the conversation of sex and sexuality to paint a picture that says things are not going well for us. We are not thriving. Freedom is not abounding,

but I don't have time to, so I just want to share a few of them with you to kind of paint a picture of where we currently sit today in our world. K. The data says that 36% of the Internet is pornography related.

36% of all of the Internet is porn related. See, the 25%, one in every four Internet searches is connected to pornography. What is it doing to a generation of people who are saturated with sexuality all the time? They say that one out of every ten children will be sexually abused by the time they reach the age of 18.

Mind blowing to think of. This is the number one reason written down for divorce in marriages today is infidelity. What it tells me is that if if the sexual revolution was supposed to bring liberation, then something is falling apart because we're not experiencing liberation as a people sexually, we are experiencing

bondage. So we've got to begin to ask what was God's plan for human sexuality. The first thing you gotta realize that I've kind of belabored this morning is that sex was designed

by God and if he designed it, then he gets to define it. If it's his creation, then he gets to give us the rule book of here's how to do it to where things will thrive and you don't end up walking down a path that leads to death. Okay. Genesis chapter one, the creation story shows us God's original design for sexuality.

It says that God created in verse 27, God created human beings in his own image. In the image of God, he created them male and female, he created them. Then God blessed them and he said, be fruitful and multiply.

Okay? Gentlemen, this is a good verse. Okay? If you look at the Hebrew, what it means is that you're supposed to have a lot of sex. Okay? That's what God that's what God said to Adam and Eve is to be fruitful

and multiply. He says that this is a good thing. This is a gift that I've given you. Terrible thing to use as the foundation for a relationship, but beautiful gift that can be used inside of the context of a marriage union. And then in verse 31, he continues and says that God looked over all that he had made and he saw

that it was very good. K? Follow-up point to have a lot of sex. This sex is supposed to be very good. That was God's original design that it's it's good and I know we immediately think about it being physically good, which again is a blessing.

God could have made procreation where you just walk up and you you shake hands with somebody and then all of a sudden you transfer an egg through like your thumbnail and then the the wife has to sit on the egg for six months and that's how a baby is born. So, how God did it? He made the act incredibly

pleasurable. Why? Because it was a gift that was supposed to be enjoyed that would eventually lead to life. It's a good thing. God created it, looked back and said that it was it was very good both physically but also it was good morally

and this is the thing we've got to begin to realize. Why do we need to reclaim? Why should we care about reclaiming sexuality in the human experience today?

Because so much of the narrative and conversation around sex because we were we've removed it from the context with which God has created it. It has produced a lot of things other than goodness and there's shame connected to it. There's pain connected to it. You got to realize God's original design is that it's supposed to be yes physically good,

but also

morally good and I just have to say this again Christians, we've got to stop being so weird about this. This is a gift that God created for us that should be enjoyed and we shouldn't be the weirdos that are afraid to talk about it. I want to read Proverbs chapter five verse 18 mostly to upset the religious people in the room.

It says this, it says, let your wife be a fountain of blessing to you. Rejoice in the wife of your youth. Verse 19 says, she is a loving deer and a graceful doe. Gentlemen, if you're looking for a good pickup line by girl, you are a graceful doe. You should be bouncing like a deer out there. Alright?

And then it goes on, it goes on further says, to let her breasts satisfy you always, may you always be captivated by her love. And some of you are cringing right now that I just used the word breasts in church.

That was my point. Okay? This is not my idea. These are not my words. These are these are God's and there's a beautiful holy sanctified design that God has created human sexuality with if you begin to understand that God has built it to exist in a certain a certain atmosphere.

And this is what we've got to remember because so many of us because we know that sex is pleasurably good, we run after it and we try to think that okay, the goal is to get as much of it as we can because pleasure is the goal. Pleasure is not the goal. Holiness is the goal. Purification

is the goal. And we gotta remember that it's not supposed to just be physically good, but also morally good. So what does goodness mean biblically? Well, you've got to realize that God is a God of order and blessing always follows order in every area of our life, relationally,

financially, and sexually. You've got to realize that good does not mean unrestricted. Good means rightly ordered. For sex to be what God designed it to be, which is good and a blessing and something that will add to your life, it has to be done in the correct context, in the correct order. I don't know if you remember

junior high math and high school math, we were taught this thing called PEMDAS. Okay? Anybody remember PEMDAS? It's order of operations, parenthesis, something else I can never remember is why I talk for a living. Right?

Order of operations matter. Here's the principle that if you want to solve the problem correctly, you've got to do it in the right order because if you get the order wrong, you will get the answer wrong and I'm telling you biblically, it's the same thing. Order matters. So what is God's order for human sexuality? God's perfect plan involves

two people. Okay? Now again, this is something that you would think would be a no brainer but we live in the East Valley. There's some weird sex, you know, communities out there with swingers and if you show up to a dinner party and there's a pineapple on the porch, it's time to find new friends. Okay?

God's God's design for sexuality is not a group project to the glory of God. Okay? It is just two people. Okay? Two people that have two separate genders. I know this seems crazy but we're in 2026. We've got to spell things out explicitly.

Okay? We believe that there are only two genders. Society will say as of two weeks ago, the research that I was doing shows that today there are 72 accepted different types of genders And I'm here to tell you that that is a lie from the pit of hell. Okay? The bible is clear there are only two genders.

And here's what has happened, you got to realize again, sin has distorted, Sin has disguised

and deformed the thing that God has created. So, are there things that we feel that we don't know what to do with? Yes and amen and I'll talk here in a second about what do we do with those things, but we've got to realize in God's perfect order, sex only exists between two people that have two separate genders and we've got to realize that clarity

as followers of Jesus, our responsibility is clarity because clarity produces confidence and confusion produces chaos and what we're living in today is a generation that has been sold a confusing message. The message to children has been you tell us what you are. Why?

We don't trust them to make any other decision yet we're gonna let them decide the most important thing about them. The gender that God birth them with and the bible is clear there are only there are only two genders. Our job is to go, hey, we've got to just talk clarity. We've got to bring clarity to the conversation,

but it's not just two people that have two distinct genders coming together. It also has to exist in one marriage.

Okay? This is so many this is probably the number one conversation I I have with people. They're like, yeah, but we're, you know, we're basically married in our hearts. She's like, you know, she's like my wife. No. She's either your wife or she's not. Okay? It's not wifey,

it's either she's your wife or she's not. And and hear me, you gotta understand. Okay? The the bible is clear. No ringy means no dinging. Okay? Like that's you can take that to the bank, you know? It's as clear as it gets

and as much as I joke about it, you have to have levity if we're going to talk about sex in church. Hear me.

As much as it's easy, as much as it's easy to keep judgment on people that struggle with same sex attraction, the transgenderism stuff as much as I think it's crazy, I know that the number one sin that is affecting the people that come to church here on Sunday mornings that those are the outliers.

The bulk of the sin in this room are people who are stepping outside of their their heterosexual marriages. The ones who are living together before they are married and hear me. What you are doing if you are living together and sleeping with your boyfriend or girlfriend today is you are effectively taking a jackhammer to the foundation that you're trying to build your life upon. You are eroding the very thing that is supposed to be got become the foundation upon which you can build. You've got to realize that it's it's only in the context of of marriage that God can bless your union and then the bible is clear that we also should be people point four that have lots of sex. You should see my team when I sent in those notes, like you want us to put that on the slide, I said you better believe it. I won't go photos but we're definitely gonna say,

we need to be people and I'm not trying to just be tongue in cheek but you got to understand our natural trajectory in marriage is to move towards sexlessness and most marriages that's where the gravitational pull will naturally move towards and we've got to be people who fight for healthy intimacy both before

our marriage, we're fighting for purity then the moment we get married, we're fighting for healthy intimacy. If nobody's ever told you the enemy has a singular plan when it comes to destroying relationships.

While you're dating, he's gonna do everything he can to get you to sleep with that person. The moment you get married, the tactics change and now he's gonna do everything he can to stop you from sleeping with your spouse and to sleep with anybody else.

You will not just stumble your way into healthy intimacy. My wife and I learned years ago that the bedroom is like a microcosm of your relationship at large. It should be a warning light in your life saying something is wrong if it's been six months, if it's been a year since you guys have had intimacy together. It's not that it's it's supreme and that it's ultimate,

but it is a really really important thing. Obviously, there's going to be seasons where health health things are a reality, life is going to happen. Yes and amen, but universally

speaking, there should not be extended periods time where we're not pursuing healthy intimacy inside of our marriage because it's incredibly important. Last thing that we see in God's perfect plan for sexuality is that it also produces life. The byproduct of healthy intimacy is to produce life.

And this is something that I've I've struggled with over the years. I have a handful of couples that I know that are followers of Jesus and and love God and wanna serve him with their life but have made the decision not because you know infertility has been a struggle and those things are are very real. They've just made a decision that we just don't want kids

and that's a tough one for me. Like that's genuinely, I I don't understand it. I don't understand the mandate that we've been given to be fruitful and to multiply that children are a blessing and not a burden to just go, yeah, we just don't want them. I think that God's design is for us to to be able to produce life. It's part of the the calling and the mandate that we've been given. We just got to realize that it's it's a big deal and obviously, there's going to be seasons where things are hard and things are difficult, but it is what it is and infertility rates are plummeting across the world, but I think there's a variety of things that are causing that and one of them is the lie from culture

is that children aren't a blessing, they're a burden and I'm here to tell you that that's also a lie from the pit of hell. That God has incredible things planned and children are a blessing and should be celebrated and they should be protected to the glory of God.

And I know here's what's hard. As you look at this, you look at these five things. Okay? These are these are the boundaries. This is the only type of sex that God says this is good and this will lead to flourishing and blessing. It's two people that have two different genders in one marriage having lots of sex and producing life

and sometimes we go, well that seems very archaic.

That seems mean and hateful that there's a lot of people that are left out of that and I'm here to tell you what it's not it's not my idea, it's God's and our job isn't to go, well, this is what I think because the scriptures are clear that what we think often leads to death and we got to go, this is what God has designed And I've also heard people say, well, those are all Old Testament verses. The book of Genesis obviously is the first book in the Old Testament. They're talking about things that were written thousands of years ago. There's no way that they could apply today.

And it also feels like the Old Testament is talking about a different God and Jesus would probably talk about these things differently.

And I've watched people do it though obviously, I I fundamentally disagree with it. I've watched people intellectually go through a bunch of gymnastics to throw out all Old Testament conversation when it comes to sexual ethics. That they weren't talking about one says it is an abomination for a man to sleep with the man. They weren't talking about committed monogamous men in a marriage. They're talking about an adult with a child and what the old testament was condemning was pedophilia.

I'm like that that's not what it's saying. You're wrong but even if you do. Okay. Just for a second for the sake of argument. Let's say we throw out the entire old testament. If Jesus said that this was the design for marriage, would you then agree?

People go, okay, well well maybe. You gotta realize Jesus was asked, the pharisees were, the religious leaders were asking Jesus,

when can we divorce our wives because we're not really like in love with them anymore, we don't really like them, and Jesus gives an answer about divorce and he talks about God's design for human sexuality

in Mark chapter 10 and I wanna show you what he does. Mark chapter 10 verse five, Jesus responded to the question about divorce. He being Moses wrote this commandment only as a concession to your hard hearts. What he's saying is that there was never a reason that you should have ever been divorced. God did not design people to be divorced at any point. When you become one, you can't become un one but Moses gave an exception because we're rebellious sinful people. He says, verse six, but god God made them male and female from the beginning of creation.

This explains why a man leaves his father and mother and is joined to his wife and the two are united into one. Since they're no longer two but one, let no one split apart what God has joined together. What does Jesus do when given the opportunity to clear the air?

To tell people guys, we've gotten this wrong for thousands of years. No, God is a God of love, he would never give you feelings that you can't act upon. God would never tell you to choose something that is that is different than what you naturally feel. He had an opportunity to say, we've misunderstood this forever.

What we know for sure is that in first century Roman culture, homosexuality was rampant and what does Jesus do when given an opportunity? He doubles down on God's original design. He quotes Genesis chapter two and he says, God's design is between two people in one marriage, two separate genders for life.

That's it. It's the only boundaries upon which God will bless you, but if you see it, you begin to realize that these restrictions,

they're not because God's trying to keep something from you, that's because he's trying to put something in you. He's trying to give you freedom, he's trying to set you free, and the world is trying to enslave you, but they're doing it, they're doing it pretty subtly.

But what's amazing is that data and science are continually catching up improving

the biblical narrative to be true. There's a Wall Street Journal article I want to share with you that that I read a few years ago talking about this idea of should we still get married young. It was like, is it too risky to wed in your twenties? Not if you are making the decision to avoid cohabitating

first. Here's what they were pointing out, research is showing that marrying young without ever having lived together with a partner makes for some of the lowest divorce rates. The Wall Street Journal is a liberal newspaper and here is the conclusion. Data is telling us, research is proving

that if you live together before you're married, you have higher divorce rates. There's a way that makes sense to a man, but in the end it leads to death. But there's a God in heaven who designed human sexuality

and if you trust him and if you follow him, you can you can flourish and it will produce life and not death, but it requires us to realize that God's boundaries are not to punish you. They're to protect you. God loves you. He wants you to thrive. He wants you to flourish. He wants you to truly

live and what the world offers you, it is a fabricated version of it. You got to realize the enemy can't create, so what does he do? He distorts. He manipulates,

he takes what God has created in love, he twists it, he hands it back to you as lust and says, just have at it. What it does is it ends up, it ends up enslaving you. We've got to realize that sex was God's design. We've also got to realize the second thing that is baked into the original creation story,

is that sex is not just physical, and yes, we're thankful that it's pleasurable and God made it fun, but it's not just physical,

and if you believe the lie, which is what would basically what created and started the sexual revolution in the sixties was this idea that sex is just physical. Just go and have as much of it as you want and ask anybody to live during that sexual revolution.

Ask him, okay, decades later, what was produced in you? It wasn't just men. It was so much fun and it was free and it was no, it came with consequence. It came with it came with baggage, it came with it came with shame because sex was always more than just physical. It's it's emotional, it's spiritual,

it's incredibly entangling with the person that you enter into it with. Genesis chapter two, this is what Jesus just quoted in Mark chapter five. He says this, it says in verse 24,

this explains why a man leaves his father and mother and is joined to his wife and the two are united into one. If you've got a bible highlight underline circle that phrase united into one. He says verse 25, now the man and his wife were were both naked

and they felt no shame. Again, I talked about this last week. This was God's design for marriage, but there's one person that you will get to live your life completely

unfiltered in front of. The one person that will see you in every single part of you flaws included and will accept you and love you exactly as you are. There was no shame connected

to how God designed sex to be. But you gotta realize that sex is much more than just physical and what that phrase in verse 24, when the two become one, they're united

into one, that that phrase in the old testament, the language, the original language is using a powerful word that means to glue together and make inseparable. What God was saying is that baked into the creation story

was something that we've got to realize that when you become one with somebody physically, it's much more than just your bodies. Your your souls are intertwined and you are you are becoming part of them. They're becoming part of you and it's how God designed it. It will bring you together in beautiful ways. It will connect your lives and your souls in ways that you never dreamt possible. It's incredibly powerful and done in the right context. It will benefit your life, but you take the fire that was meant for the fireplace and you put in the middle of your living room, all of a sudden the thing that was supposed to produce life, the thing was supposed to produce warmth, that was supposed to create life, it becomes incredibly

destructive. Why? Because baked into the original equation was this reality that sex always brings with it consequences. Always consequences are connected to sex, but in God's design, those those those consequences are connection. They're they're bonding, they're joy, they're life, they're intimacy,

they're they're literally producing a new life. You take those same things outside of God's context and what does it produce? The consequences are are guilt and shame and regret and pain and fracturing and disease. And there's a reason why there's nothing that affects us more than sexual sin. Why?

Because it's much more than just physical. It's emotional. You become one with somebody. The problem was is they never committed their life to you and all of a sudden when they leave you, they're taking with them a part of you that you can never get back.

You've given a part of your soul, your heart, your emotions. It's why sexual sin is so devastating. Yes, Sin is all the same and that before holy God it condemns all of us, but sexual sin affects us completely different than everything else out there. Friends, we've got to realize that sex is much more than just physical. We've also got to realize that sex is broken

because of sin, And what we're living in today in 2026 is the direct result of sin coming in and ruining God's original perfect plan for human sexuality.

And the further and further we get from the Garden of Eden, which was the moment where God's perfect design was put on display,

the further and further we get away from God's original picture for human sexuality. It's why the distortions become more and more and more and it feels like this just becomes an ongoing conversation. It's more in front of our faces. It seems like it's everywhere and it's getting crazier and crazier. That's because that's the natural progression of sin. You gotta realize that all of us were born into this world with two competing spirits inside of us. The spirit of God that is trying to win us to holiness and to win us to to God's plan. Then we have the spirit of just our flesh that is pulling us into just going after earthly and worldly pleasures and I can prove it to you that it's true because none of us woke up this morning going, man, I just I can't wait to eat a bowl of broccoli and brussels sprouts. Right? Like, you just wake up, you go, man, 2026 is the year I'm trying to get my body back, but if there's a donut in front of me, I'm gonna crush that donut. Right? Like, because there's something about us that desires the things that we know aren't always the best for us. What do we do with those things? Paul says this in Romans chapter seven about this internal war that is raging within all of us. He says, don't really understand myself

for I want to do what is right but I don't do it and instead I end up doing the very thing that I hate. I think there was a verse that accurately painted the picture of where I think a lot of us sit today when it comes to sexuality and the things that we've walked through, the things that we're walking through,

is that there is a huge part of us that wants to do what is right. But it feels like there's something else that's in us that keeps pulling us to do the thing that we we hate.

Scriptures talk about that that there's a war that's happening within us. He continues in verse 22 and says that, I love God's law with all of my heart, but there's another power within me that is at war with my mind. He says the power makes me a slave to the sin that is still within me. Oh, what a miserable person I am. He says, who will free me from this this mind, this life dominated by sin and death?

He says, thank God. The answer what is the answer to the problem that we sit in in 2026 when it comes to the craziness of the sexual epidemic that is around us? The answer is found in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Part of what we're experiencing in 2026 is just the byproduct of thousands of years of the sin cycle playing itself out and the war within the human soul being played out and manifesting itself over decades and decades and decades and decades. But here's the lie. The lie is the distortion that we're experiencing,

that the brokenness that we're experiencing that would manifest itself to say, well I'm just a I'm just a hypersexual being that's why I've got to have a bunch of sexual partners.

Or I just I feel like I'm attracted to the same sex, so I've just got to go and live that out and there's no way that God would God would put those things in there. I'm just here to say it doesn't matter whether you were born that way, whether you chose that, none of the conversation matters. The truth is we just gotta realize that the brokenness that we're walking in is the byproduct of sin that's in us. The question is what do we do about it? The world will tell you that the answer is you've gotta accept people and tolerance is what we need to run after and I'm here to tell you that one of the most unloving things that we can do to the world is put our arm around people that we know are walking with brokenness and we just will slowly and gently and gracefully walk them into the gates of hell.

It's not loving. It's condemning people to hell. I wish I could just get up here and tell you, hey, it's fine that you're living with your boyfriend or girlfriend and I'm here to tell you that it's not, it's incredibly,

it's an incredibly big deal. I wrote it down this way that our our human sexuality is broken and the result, the answer, the solution is not to accept it but to heal it and to realize that there's still healing available in Jesus. What was Paul's conclusion? What was his solution

to the war that is raging within the human soul? He says, there's still a God in heaven that can heal you. Whether you're attracted to people that are of the same sex of yours, whether you've been struggling with a secret pornography addiction for years, whether you walk through infidelity or sexual trauma as a child, it doesn't matter. There's still a God in heaven that can that can heal you, but you've got to seek healing. You've to seek restoration.

You've got to bring your brokenness to the father and let him to let him deal with it. Paul says in first Corinthians chapter six, friends, we've got to run from sexual sin.

Don't entertain it, don't lean into it, don't just embrace it as part of your life going, there's no way that God would give me these desires I couldn't act on it. No, run from sexual sin. No other sin so clearly affects the body as this one. For sexual immorality is a sin against your own body.

And let me just tell you again, I don't know what it is you're struggling with today and sometimes the church doesn't know how to respond. Like what do we do? I I have people that I I love in my life that would say that they were born gay. What do we do with that?

What do we do with a person that goes, man I didn't choose this. This is just this is just the way that I'm naturally wired. I think first and foremost, we need to love people.

I think Jesus always chose to live life in proximity to people that were often really really quote unquote bad people. That were doing things other than God's best because you can't you can't speak into people whose lives you are disconnected from,

but it also doesn't mean that we come alongside and we just accept everything and say, hey, this is great and I'm gonna support you in every way. No. We we love them and we we gently encourage them to remember that man, this life is temporary,

and the most important thing about you is not your sexual orientation or your temptations. No, the most important thing about you is that there was a guy two thousand years ago that died to buy you and he's redeemed you and yes, maybe he can change your sexual preference but even if he doesn't,

you will spend eternity with God and one day, one day we will be made whole and the brokenness that we struggle with on this side of eternity will be no more but don't make decisions today based on feelings Instead, run after run after your savior. Here's the good news. Last point that I have is that what sin broke,

the cross can still repair and this is the good news of why the gospel still matters is because yes, we're living in the reality of the brokenness of sin but we still believe that the cross can repair all that has been broken.

Last couple verses I have, Paul says in first Corinthians chapter six, don't you realize that those who do wrong, they're not gonna inherit the kingdom of God. Don't fool yourselves. This is every one of us in this room. He says, those who indulge in sexual sin,

those who worship idols, those who commit adultery, those who are male prostitutes or practice homosexuality, who are thieves, greedy people, drunk ards, they're abusive, they cheat people. None of these people will inherit the kingdom of God. And if the bible stopped there,

every one of us in this room would be host because that's all of us. And Paul is painting a picture that all of us stand before a holy God condemned. Our sin will manifest itself differently, but the brokenness is universal.

The condemnation before a holy God is universal. But here's the good news. The Bible doesn't stop at verse 10. Verse 11 says, some of you, you were you were once like that, but you were cleansed. You were made holy.

You were made right with God. How are you cleansed? How are you made right like that? How are you how are you able to say that's who I used to be? By calling on the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the spirit of our God. The invitation, the solution, the answer is still the same. It's Jesus. Jesus crucified.

The spirit of God that is alive and active that wants to move into your heart, take residency in your life, that will begin to transform you from the inside out. That's what's most important about you. It's not your temptation. It's not your struggle. It's not your trauma. That is not your identity.

You are who God says that you are. You are wholly loved. You are dearly made. You are perfect in the eyes of your father. But we've gotta stop letting the enemy do what he's been doing because one of the enemy's greatest tactics is trying to confuse your identity with your sexual craving.

I think if I have one one thing against the LGBTQ community more than anything else, is if that is the primary identifier of who they are. And I'm here to say that's not who you are. It could be something that is a true thing about you. Sure. But it's not the most true thing about you.

The most true thing about you is that there's a God in heaven that loves you, that died a brutal death on a cross so that you wouldn't have to live in the ramifications of the brokenness of this world. And you could actually be made new, and you could start over, and you could be born again, and pornography no longer has to be your master, and addiction no longer has to rule your life, and you can actually become a new creation in Christ. So what do we do?

What do we do when sexual temptation is on the rise? What do we do when we find ourselves in moments of weakness? Luke chapter nine verse 23, last verse. It says, if any of you if you if any of you wanna be my follower, you must give up your own way. Take up your cross daily and follow me.

The invitation to us all is the same. You've got to at some point begin to realize that you don't know what's best for you. Whether your struggle is infidelity, whether your struggle sexually is is pornography or it's same sex attraction,

the invitation from Jesus is the same. At some point, you've got to give up your way and trust that I'm God and I know what I'm doing. And if you and I will pick up our cross and follow him, there's a life available to us beyond our wildest dreams. The thief has come to kill, steal, and destroy, but Jesus has come so that we can have life and life abundantly. Here's what I wanna do this morning.

I believe there's two groups of people sitting here today. I I can't even begin to put into context just the heaviness and the weight that I felt praying and preparing for this message because I know if there's one sin that is more rampant in our in our world today than anything else, it's sexual sin.

And I know that in this room, some of the greatest

shackles, some of the greatest chains that we are bound by are connected to sexual sin. And so I just wanna give you an opportunity today to to walk out of this place in freedom. And so I'm gonna ask everybody if you would. If you would just close your eyes and bow your heads right where you are. I wanna create an atmosphere of faith believing that this is the thin place where the realities of heaven will collide with the realities of earth and things that you've struggled with for years, potentially decades can be broken off in this place, and you can walk out of here completely

different. You can walk out of here whole, set free, redeemed.

If you're here today and you know, as I'm talking about sexual sin and the bondage that comes with it, you go, man, that's that's me. If you're here today, I wanna give you an opportunity. Again, all eyes closed, heads bowed, it's a private moment between you and God. Not because I wanna know who you are, because I I just wanna know who I'm praying with. And I think sometimes when we respond physically,

it seems silly, but what happens is I think our faith begins to put a miracle in motion. If you're here today and you wanna walk in freedom from sexual sin, I don't know if it's same sex attraction, if it's a pornography thing, if it's infidelity, if it's something happened to you as a kid. If you're today here and you wanna say, I'm done carrying the bondage and the the the weight of this sexual sin. If that's due, on the count of three, want you to just throw your hand up right where you are so I can pray with you. One, there's already hands going up in this place. Two, don't be ashamed. Three, put your hand up right where you are. Yeah. I see hands going up all over this room. I've had hands going up all morning.

I thank you for your faith. I thank you for your trust. You can put your hands down. I just wanna pray with you. Father, I thank you. God, for every person that would have the boldness today, the courage to raise their hand.

And God, I know that I don't know all the the ins and outs of what they're struggling with, but you do. And Father, I'm not just throwing simple answers at what are really complicated questions and complicated problems, but Lord, I know that you are more than able to deal with whatever it is that we're walking through.

So Father, I'm praying for the power of the spirit of God to move in the lives and the hearts of every single person here. God, I'm asking for the power to overcome addiction, God, for the bondages of sexual sin to be broken in the name of Jesus, for generational cycles to be broken in the name of Jesus.

There's a second group of you here today

that I feel almost just as strongly with because the truth is is you can you can win the battle of sexual sin, and we can still spend eternity separated from God. Because it's not people that have their sexual lives in order that will inherit the kingdom of God. It's just those who have trusted Jesus with their life. And there's some of you who are here that need to make the greatest exchange of all time, which is where we take our brokenness,

our mess, our shame, our ugliness, our depravity, and what we do is we give it to God, and in return, we get freedom. We get salvation.

The scripture scripture say say that that if we confess with our mouth and believe in our heart that Jesus is Lord, we can be saved. And I'm telling you the healing that some of you need more than anything is you need a a soul level healing, a heart transplant

where the heart of stone can be replaced with the heart of flesh. If you're here today and you wanna make the decision to make Jesus the lord of your life, to invite the spirit of God to take residency inside of your soul. If you're here today and you wanna say yes to Jesus for the first time, I'm gonna ask you to do the exact same thing. In the second, I'm gonna ask you to raise your hand right where you are. Again, putting putting miracles and motions in this place. One, if that's you, put your hand up. Two, let's say yes to Jesus together. Three, right where you are, throw your hand up in your seat. Don't be ashamed. His hands going up. Throw them up proudly.

Throw them up proudly like we're reaching out to heaven going, God, I'm reaching for you. I'm asking for you to begin to move powerfully in my heart and in my life. God, I'm giving you my mess. I see every hand that's going up in this room. I thank you for your faith. You can put your hands down.

If that's you, again, I want you to pray a prayer like this with me in the quietness of your heart. It's it's not about the words you say. It's about the posture of your heart, but just say, Jesus, with all the faith that I have, I give you all of my life. I'm asking for you to now take residency inside of my heart.

To become my Lord, to become my savior, to become my king. I give you my my past. I give you my present. I give you my future sins. I thank you for living for me, for dying for me. I'm asking for you to come into my heart right now and set me free. It is in the mighty name of Jesus. All God's people said,

amen and amen. Come on. Can we just give it up for all the people that said yes to walking in the freedom here today?