Sexual Integrity
Notes
Transcript
Sexual Integrity
Sexual Integrity
Intro:
Sex is all around us.
It’s on the shows and movies we watch to the ads we see, and of course the little black boxes in our pockets.
It would seem only fitting that we have to talk about sex in our churches.
We have to talk about it in youth groups.
Yet we treat it like this taboo word that we shouldn’t say or talk about.
But before we jump into our conversation tonight, I want to tell you why we are even talking about this.
First off as you may be able to tell from our title, Taboo, we believe that the word sex, porn, purity, sexual integrity, are buzz words.
Taboo means forbidden- excessively repulsed.
Social unacceptable language and behavior.
It’s like saying Voldemorts name- it is unacceptable to say it.
Don’t talk about Religion, Politics and lastly Sex.
It is not the idea that these three things don’t exist.
It is about our culture not wanting to talk about them.
And here is what has happened.
Our culture is now overly sexualized— can we all agree on that at least?
Can we find some common ground there.
Perfect.
But when it comes to the church, it is not sexualized, which is a great things.
Again we can agree on that.
However, instead of talking about sex and all the topics that falls under that umbrella, the Church says nah, let talk about something else.
Let’s talk about creation, or David and Goliath, let’s chat about calvinism and end times stuff.
All great topics of conversation, but we are missing out on giving light to a topic that is held in the darkness.
Folks, sex is not bad.
Sex is actually great, it is amazing, I love having sex with my wife.
Sex is a beautiful gift from God.
But before we jump into that.
Do you all remember Snowglobe!
Man I Loved Snowglobe.
It was amazing.
I love looking back on that event, because it was super fun, but there was a different energy then events we had done in the past, it was not bad at all, it was actually great.
But do you all remember our prayer night?
We had these different stations set up all through-out the chruch.
At each station was a different way to pray/ or think/ or read.
I appreciate everyone honestly and willingness to be an active participant.
So at the end of the night, when you had all left, us leaders went around and cleaned everything up, well, everything got thrown into my office, it was amazing.
But I remember that night, just looking at these white flags, these surrender flags.
And reading your notes on how we as leaders could pray for you.
and taking the red fabric off of the cross.
And reading what is going on in your lives.
I saw depression/anxiety
Not feeling loved
Loneliness
Dwelling on the past
Lust
Addictions to porn
Masturbation
Unwanted
Not feeling good enough to be loved
Wanting others attention
So our last series of the year was suppose to be Revelation.
Which is a fun and interesting topic.
But friends, that is not going to help you right now.
You want Revelation— Jesus is coming back, be ready.
Done— because this is what we do as a church culture.
We choose to talk about topics that are not as personal.
To address issues that do not help you.
Revelation would have been a ton of information that would have been great info, but talking about sex, dating, marriage, porn— the feeling of loneliness, not loved.
That is what I believe everyone in this room is craving to hear about.
I could be 100% wrong, but going off of our flags, our ribbons, and our notes— I think that we all need to talk about this.
So before we begin this conversation.
I want to challenge you right now, to stop thinking that you do not need to hear this.
Before you build those walls to hide behind, be open, be honest, be real.
I promise to be real with you.
To share with you stories of my life, my marriage.
Our leaders promise to do the same.
Do not hide, do not run, keep coming back for the next 4 weeks.
Don’t miss youth group, because this matters.
Relationships matter, sex matters, your porn addiction matters, you striving to get attention from the other gender matters.
As you know we have a survey out that will continue to run from now until we are finished with this topic.
Let’s Pray and we can get started.
In our world currently there are so different thoughts on the sex culture.
The world or the secular mindset is this:
Hook-Up Culture (Promiscuity Culture)
- Be Hot
- Be easy
- Show all your sexuality
- Tell Everyone
- Don’t have sex, we’ll judge you
- Idolize your body, Suppress your emotions
- Takes booty calls and filtered pictures and friends with benefits
The hook up culture is not healthy- If you do not conform you will be judged, mocked, and laughed at.
Have sex, be free to explore your body and other people’s bodies.
This was in response to the Purity Culture.
That is our second mindset:
While church may not want to talk about sex, it has in the past, and it built up what we call:
Purity Culture
- Be Modest
- Be hard to get
- Don’t show your sexuality
- Tell no one
- If you have sex, we’ll judge you
- Suppress your body, idolize your emotions
- Chastity belts and purity rings
This movement begin in the late 90s and early 2000.
This movement was in response to the sexual revolution.
Instead of have sex with whoever.
Save yourself for marriage.
Keep your virginity and don’t lose it.
There was a book that came out by Joshua Harris, called I Kissed Dating Good-bye.
Yet, it was not just church folks reading this book.
It was a massive success about courtship, not dating.
And telling you that you should not date until you are ready to be married.
That marriage was this finish line that magically healed all of your problems.
True Love Waits Contract- “Believing that true love waits, I make a commitment to God, myself, my family, those I date and my future mate to be sexually pure until the day I enter marriage.”
The Day I enter marriage— Marriage has become the finish line.
If you struggle with Porn no worries, once you get married that will all go away. (WRONG)
If you lust don’t worry, marriage will bring the lust out of you and only make you crave your spouse. (WRONG)
Making pledges, wearing purity rings, striving to be pure for marriage.
Don’t kiss anybody, save all of yourself for your spouse, and in doing so you will be rewarded.
The Purity culture and really this book I Kissed Dating Good-Bye promised successful healthy relationships as the reward for ones ability to remain pure/ a virgin till marriage.
You would not have baggage as you entered other relationships.
You will not have emotional hurt
Everything will be perfect and healthy
If you are pure everything is perfect
The thought was if I do my part then God will do His part
Girls worth was found in their purity
If it was lost- then they will be viewed as damaged goods
Purity movement is guy focused
It put the pressure on the girls to be modest so they would not cause the boys to sin— with their thoughts.
Yet, there has been this revolt against this culture.
Why?
Because the purity movement used purity as a means to get what we want.
We want a successful, happy, go-lucky, perfect marriage where we never fight, we never argue, or disagree, we are just happy happy happy all the time.
And if you want that— they you have to stay pure.
You can’t have any blemishes on you.
If you do then you are damaged.
It was built on shame, guilt, and fear.
They would use illustrations
Where they would take this perfect rose and pass it around to all the people, during the whole message— and at the end the big take away— was that the rose would come back damaged, broken and the pastor would shout, “WHO WOULD WANT THIS.”
You see what the purity culture was about the rules.
Do what is right and good things will happen to you
Do what is bad or wrong, and bad things will happen to you.
Friends— This is rules vs hearts (This is pharisaical)
This is treating God like our own personal vending machine.
This is worked based Salvation
If I do blank then God will do blank.
Have you ever sat in your room, or in a classroom, or on the field or court and wager with God?
God if you let us win this game then tomorrow I will begin to be totally focused on you.
Or God, if you just allow me to recall everything from the last year of school, so I can pass this class, I promise to be your best friend.
We say those things and it is silly.
Yet, a whole movement was built on this idea of rules over hearts.
Weston talking about it is easy to correct bad teaching when it comes to the secular world
AS we can see there is some unhealthy approaches to sex, dating and marriage here.
There are some good things here.
It is not so easy to correct when something sounds good, or it sounds biblical— yet it is still a variation.
In a recent tweet from Tim Keller he says;
“Some say that ‘sexual abstinence outside of marriage' is identical to ‘purity culture’. This is simply not the case."
Sex before marriage is wrong.
It is a sin.
One only needs to look at 1 tThessalonians 4:3-5
For this is the will of God, your sanctification: that you abstain from sexual immorality; that each one of you know how to control his own body in holiness and honor, not in the passion of lust like the Gentiles who do not know God;
Paul is writing here and he is telling the people to abstain from sexual immorality or fornication, meaning sex before marriage.
God does want us to take our sexuality purity seriously.
Paul also wrote in 1 Cor 6:19-20
Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God? You are not your own, for you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body.
This movement was right to bring abstinence to the front of the conversation.
I agree with this, I hope that you do as well.
That sex can wait, Sex needs to wait.
If you are in that camp right now, good.
If right now you have had sex, and right now this is getting really uncomfortable right now, there is hope.
You are not damaged or broken.
Let me tell you about the Hope.
His name is Jesus and the thing that the whole Purity Movement was missing was it was not Gospel centered.
What the movement did was it broke everyone up into two groups.
The Pure and the Non Pure.
Hmmm— that sounds familiar— I remember— How about the Sinners and the righteous.
In Luke 7 we read a story of a women who was a sinner, who was washing Jesus’s feet and the response of the people around the table and then Jesus gives the shortest parable ever.
Then one of the Pharisees invited him to eat with him. He entered the Pharisee’s house and reclined at the table. And a woman in the town who was a sinner found out that Jesus was reclining at the table in the Pharisee’s house. She brought an alabaster jar of perfume and stood behind him at his feet, weeping, and began to wash his feet with her tears. She wiped his feet with her hair, kissing them and anointing them with the perfume.
When the Pharisee who had invited him saw this, he said to himself, “This man, if he were a prophet, would know who and what kind of woman this is who is touching him—she’s a sinner!”
Jesus replied to him, “Simon, I have something to say to you.”
He said, “Say it, teacher.”
“A creditor had two debtors. One owed five hundred denarii, and the other fifty. Since they could not pay it back, he graciously forgave them both. So, which of them will love him more?”
Simon answered, “I suppose the one he forgave more.”
“You have judged correctly,” he told him. Turning to the woman, he said to Simon, “Do you see this woman? I entered your house; you gave me no water for my feet, but she, with her tears, has washed my feet and wiped them with her hair. You gave me no kiss, but she hasn’t stopped kissing my feet since I came in. You didn’t anoint my head with olive oil, but she has anointed my feet with perfume. Therefore I tell you, her many sins have been forgiven; that’s why she loved much. But the one who is forgiven little, loves little.” Then he said to her, “Your sins are forgiven.”
Those who were at the table with him began to say among themselves, “Who is this man who even forgives sins?”
And he said to the woman, “Your faith has saved you. Go in peace.”
Just because those who have sinned a lot does not mean that we should keep on sinning.
What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound? By no means! How can we who died to sin still live in it?
What we need is a different view of purity.
One that is motivated not by receiving an award, but one that is motivated by love.
Purity comes from a love for God.
I believe that we need to move from purity culture to this idea of sexual integrity.
It is no secret that we are all sexual beings. (Rethinking Youth Ministry Podcast)
We can admit that.
Stop saying that you are not, we are all geared and wired this way.
This does not mean that we start having sex with everyone.
If that is what you get out of this message you are not listening.
We still want to strive for virginity.
We still need to guard our hearts and minds after we say “I Do.”
20% of marriages are impacted by an affair.
The divorce rate doubles when either spouse has a porn addiction.
70% of married men say that they still watch porn
40% of married women say still watch porn.
So if our only focus is to have students, or couples, get to the finish line of marriage— and now you can do whatever you want as you saved yourself for marriage great job!
Go have fun.
There has to be a better way, there has to be more for us, as believers, there has to be more.
We believe that God created sex and it is good and wonderful and amazing— then why are so many men and women looking for sexual fulfillment somewhere else.
I think this is when sexual integrity comes into play:
What is integrity:
The quality of being honest and having strong moral principles; moral uprightness.
The state of being whole and undivided.
So when we add sex to our integrity we get something like this.
Sexual integrity means guarding my potential for intimacy through appropriate boundaries and mutual respect. (Rethinking Youth Ministry Podcast)
Guys it is your responsibility to have sexual integrity.
Ladies it is your responsibility to have sexual integrity.
Be responsibility for your own actions
Ladies you are not responsible for the guys sexual integrity
Guys women are not responsible for your sexual integrity
Ladies guys are not responsible for your sexual integrity
Be responsibility for your own actions
It says let’s be wise.
Jesus sets a high bar.
He say that not only is adultery wrong but even looking at another man or women with lustful intent is just as bad.
That is the bar that is set for us.
Paul again goes on to say that we should flee from sexual immorality.
And we are going to be getting into sex/marriage, pornography, and dating in the coming weeks
But tonight, this is what I wanted to address.
The need to change the narrative on the purity culture to sexual integrity.
Sexual integrity does not say, that I am better than you because I waited, it says that I choose to wait because I am guarding myself.
It says I choose boundaries because I am protecting myself.
It says, yeah I may mess up, but I’m trying.
Yeah I may have already messed up but I am forgiven by Jesus.
In the book Talking back to the Purity Culture Rachel Watson writes:
“Every human being on the planet is sexually broken . . . all of us are on a journey toward wholeness; not one of us is excluded.”Whether someone is a virgin, has been raped, or has “slept around,” we are all broken from the fall. We all need Jesus. And thankfully our value as image bearers is not dependent on our sexual past. (Watson, Rachel Joy. Talking Back to Purity Culture (p. 20). InterVarsity Press. Kindle Edition.)
Because we are all broken.
Yet, we need to get shame out of the equation especially if you are a believer.
Many married couples who comes out of the purity culture say that they have shame after having sex, that they feel dirty, slutty, shameful for having sex with their husband.
This is not the beauty of sex that God designed for us.
As we wrap up tonight;
I want to leave you with this.
Our main goal in this life is not that we remain virgins— we do not put that as our main goal.
As stated it should a goal— but it is not the driving force.
Our driving force for life is clearly defined by my man J-Pipe
“God is most glorified in you, when you are most satisfied in Him.” (John Piper)
Value virginity less, and value God more.
Because by valuing God more, your identity is not placed in your virginity, it is placed in God.
We strive to glorify God.
We can’t save ourselves.
Because we are all broken.
We are all damaged.
We all are this broken, an unwanted Rose.
Who would want this?!
JESUS DOES!
JESUS WANTS YOU!
In your brokenness and in your pain!
He wants you.
Let’s Pray
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