Relationship Reset | Week 3 | Daniel Goulding | Echoes Church

The big idea

God designed sex for two people, of two distinct genders, in one marriage, that produces life and abundant pleasure — and living outside that design leads to death, but Jesus can heal every kind of sexual brokenness.

Sex is God's good gift, not a shameful topic the church should avoid or a free-for-all the culture defines. Pastor Daniel shows that Scripture is clear on God's design for sexuality, that sin has broken and distorted that design, and that Jesus can heal and restore anyone regardless of what they've done or struggled with.

Point 1 of 7

Pastor Daniel opens with Proverbs 14:12 to frame the whole message: things that make sense to us can still lead to death. He cites statistics on pornography use, child sexual abuse, and infidelity as divorce's leading cause to show the sexual revolution produced bondage instead of the liberation it promised.

Point 2 of 7

Walking through Genesis 1:27-31, he shows God commanded Adam and Eve to be fruitful and multiply and called it very good, both physically pleasurable and morally good. He reads Proverbs 5:18-19 to make the point that Christians shouldn't be weird or ashamed about a gift God calls good, and stresses that pleasure isn't the goal — holiness is.

Point 3 of 7

Using the analogy of PEMDAS order of operations, he argues good doesn't mean unrestricted, it means rightly ordered. He walks through each of the five elements — two people, two genders, one marriage, frequent intimacy, and openness to producing life — addressing gender ideology, cohabitation, and married couples who choose childlessness along the way.

Point 4 of 7

He points to Mark 10:5-9, where Jesus, answering a question about divorce, quotes Genesis and doubles down on one man, one woman, for life, even though He was speaking into a first-century culture where homosexuality was rampant. He also cites a Wall Street Journal piece showing couples who avoid cohabitation before marriage have lower divorce rates, arguing data is catching up to what Scripture already said.

Point 5 of 7

From Genesis 2:24-25, he unpacks the phrase 'united into one' as meaning glued together and made inseparable, arguing that's why sexual sin wounds differently than other sin: a piece of you goes with the person you were one with. Used inside marriage it produces connection and joy; used outside it produces guilt, shame, and fracturing.

Point 6 of 7

He reads Paul's description of the split within himself — loving God's law yet feeling enslaved to sin — as an accurate picture of the sexual struggle many face today. He rejects both the purity-culture shame message and the world's answer of pure tolerance, insisting brokenness needs healing, not affirmation, whether the struggle is same-sex attraction, pornography, or infidelity.

Point 7 of 7

He walks through 1 Corinthians 6:9-11, noting that Paul lists sins that would condemn everyone in the room, but verse 11 pivots to being cleansed and made holy through Jesus. He closes by urging that the most true thing about anyone is that Christ died for them, not their temptation, and points to Luke 9:23 as the ongoing invitation to deny yourself and follow Him.

Take it into your week

Pastor Daniel frames it as making the greatest exchange of all time: trading your brokenness, mess, and shame for the freedom and healing only Jesus offers.