Redeeming Desire

Desires– Romans 8:5-8

Please stand for the reading of God's word.

“Those who live according to the flesh have their minds set on what the flesh desires, but those who live in accordance with the Spirit have their minds set on what the Spirit desires. The mind governed by the flesh is death, but the mind governed by the Spirit is life and peace. The mind governed by the flesh is hostile to God; it does not submit to God’s law, nor can it do so. Those who are in the realm of the flesh cannot please God.”

This is the word of the Lord.

Audience: Thanks be to God.

You may be seated.

So maybe talking about sex for you has been awkward. The context in which it has happened has been weird to say the least. Maybe you are in public school and have had a public school experience, as I did. The split you up in middle school, and some random football coach, or random older lady that you have never met before walks into the room. You can tell this person doesn’t really want to be here talking to you about sex, but somehow they were the ones roped into it. The next hour consisted of honestly terrifying images and really awkward questions, which really just showed you a bunch of horrible diseases and freaked you out, and made you feel like sex was just dirty and gross, and you were scared of getting a girl pregnant or being a teen mom. Maybe some conversation about puberty and what to expect, but all around just a bad experience that you wish you could remove from your memory, but you can’t.

            Or maybe you had the conversation with your parents, and it was awkward, lasting about 2 minutes before your one of your parents left the room out of pure embarrassment. Or if you are like me, the conversation never happened. And in recent church history, sex has not been a topic that was talked about, if at all.

So with these three experiences, or lack thereof, you have been taught a few things. Sex is scary and should be avoided at all costs, and if you are going to do it, at least use contraception, so you don’t have a baby at 16. Or you will be left in isolation to figure it out for yourself because your parents or the church didn’t talk about it. This has led to a fear of sex and turning to other sources like friends and the internet to “figure it out”.

            You guys ready? Here we go. If you haven’t been here in a while or this is your first time, you might have known, or maybe you didn’t and you are like “What am I walking in to? Did he just say sex?”, but we are currently in our second week of this series, which we are simply calling “What does the Bible say about sex?” And the prayer of this sermon series is to help you understand what God’s design and purpose for sex really looks like. Because the stories we believe shape who we become.

            Or as said on the wall over here, “What we believe makes us who we are, and who we are determines how we live.” Which is exactly why we are doing a sex series. Not because it’s a hot topic. Not because it’s edgy. Not because it’s fun to see you guys cringe every time I say the word sex. But because the stories we believe shape the way we live. And the story we believe about sex, in our time and place, has the potential to be the catalyst for a life following Jesus, or not.

Last week, we talked about how sex is a good gift from God that points to something greater- our relationship with him. And sex, like the rest of God’s creation, operates out of a pattern of similar but different corresponding parts, coming together to form something beautiful. Night and Day. Sky and Land. A man and a woman. God and man. Ultimately pointing towards the Gospel, how Jesus is both God and man, and has come to bring heaven back to earth. Sex is a picture that points us to the ultimate fulfillment of “intimacy with God.”

            Our identity then comes from being children of God, not our sexual desires, as Satan has led us to believe.

YET! Let’s be real. And please, dear lord, don’t raise your hand in agreement, but sexual desires are very real. Sex is not just a picture that points towards our relationship with God, but an embodied experience. Meaning we have sex with our bodies! Sexual desires are a part of the human experience because we desire connection, and sex is one of the deepest and profound connections we have to another human being that God has given us.

So what are we to do with our sexual desires? Are they bad? Are they sinful? Are they gross?

Let me be clear, sex is a gift.

And it is okay to desire that gift. In fact, it’s normal, it’s good, and it’s a part of how God created you.

Look at me when I say this, you are not weird. You are not gross. Desire is good. Don’t be ashamed.

And hear me ever so clearly when I say this. I am not just saying this to the boys in the room, but the girls as well.

In fact, the first blessing, the first commandment God gave humanity, was Genesis 1:28: “Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it.” He is saying, have sex in a convenent relationship and have lots of Babies!

We were created with this gift in mind. God wants us to have sex; it’s a part of the design. Repeatedly throughout scripture, both the picture of the covenantal act of sex as pointing to God, and the physical act as well, are talked about and called good. Proverbs 5 says to be “intoxicated in love.” Paul states in 1 Corinthians 7:3-5 that spouses should yield their bodies over to one another in love. And just in case you didn’t know, there is an entire book of the Bible, the Song of Songs (or Song of Solomon), a book in the Hebrew Bible and Old Testament known for its erotic poetry celebrating romantic love. The title stems from Hebrew, where it literally means "the best song”. Is it an erotic allegory depicting God’s passionate pursuit of his people, his bride? Or a volume of erotic imagery depicting the love between a man and a woman? The answer is yes. The answer is both. As we have heard. The two will become one flesh.

Sex is a good gift from God that points to something greater- our relationship with him. So sexual desire, therefore, can be good.

But, and this is a big butt, awkward thing to say in a sex series, ha!

Sexual desire, therefore, can be good.  But in the right context.

Desire can be good when it’s oriented toward love in a covenant relationship between a man and a woman.

Desire can be good when it’s oriented toward love.

God didn’t say, "Have sex with everyone! Have as many sexual partners as you’d like! Have sex with the same sex! Its all about feeling good and pleasure! No, he said, be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth.

The context in which sex is designed to happen, for it to be the picture God designed it to be, is between a man and a woman in a covenantal relationship. This is where our desire should lead us. Why? Because it aligns with God’s design.The. context is a relationship, reflecting the relationship between God and us. In a marriage relationship. In a relationship, in the same way as God’s and ours, says that we will be together forever, no matter what.

Hear me when I say this. Following God’s will leads to life. He isn’t trying to confine you or put you under a strict regimen or rules. No God is offering us life to the full. He is saying, I am the creator, I am life itself. And if you want to live, operating under my will will lead you to life. It’s not a rule. It’s a blessing.

But it doesn’t always happen that way, does it?

The context in which this desire is played out doesn’t always involve a covenantal relationship, does it?

            That picture, of a man and a woman coming together, united as one flesh, is not always the story.

Because there is another storyteller, and his story is based on lies. Paul in Romans 7:15 says, “I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do, I do not do, but what I hate, I do.” For as he states in Ephesians 6:12, “For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.”

There is another who wants us to gratify the desires that are not in line with God’s desires, and his name is Satan. I have told you that the Bible uses a sexual relationship as a picture between God and us, which means that adultery, cheating on your spouse, has to be the biggest no-no, right? Because if our relationship with God is like a marriage, then cheating on God is a pretty bad thing to do. Why? Because cheating on God means being in a relationship with death.

Repeatedly, sexual immorality is brought up throughout the Bible as an image of operating out of God’s will and operating out of his design for what sex is supposed to look like. But what is sexual immorality? Well, in Greek, the primary term is porneia. The root word from which we get pornography in English. It can mean selling oneself off to another. Surrendering to our desire outside of God’s design. It means not aligning with God’s desires, and aligning with Satan’s distortion of those desires. Aligning with death itself

.1 John 2:16-17 “ For everything in the world—the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life—comes not from the Father but from the world. The world and its desires pass away, but whoever does the will of God lives forever.”

Aligning with the desires of this world, the desires of Satan, the life that he offers will only and always lead to death.

But how does this happen? What does sexual immorality look like? What does this desire for sex, outside of God’s will, look like?

Jesus says in his sermon on the mount, his campaign speech for what the kingdom of God is supposed to look like, and states, “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall not commit adultery.’ But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart.” From the mouth of Jesus, he said, looking, in order to operate within God’s will, you shouldn’t just cheat on your spouse (or in the grander picture God), but if you look at a woman (or man) lustfully, you have committed adultery in your heart.

This word lust in Greek means to covet. Does that work sound familiar? It should, because it’s the final commandment in the 10 commandments God gives to the Israelites in Exodus 20:17. “You shall not covet your neighbor’s house. You shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, or his male or female servant, his ox or donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbor.”

To covet, to look at someone lustfully, means to desire them for selfish reasons. For your own pleasure. Not for the purpose of coming together as one, in the image of God’s design, for the blessing of life, but for your own personal benefit and gratification. You hear me?

God’s design is for a covenant relationship between a man and a woman, uniting in a covenant loving relationship. To look at, or operate out of lust, is about no one but you.You see the problem with that?

The problem with lust is that you no longer see the person you are lusting after as an image of God, but as an object for your gratification. No longer are they children of the almighty God and creator, but objects with which to find sexual release.

Think about it this way. God commanded that Adam and Eve eat from every tree in the Garden of Eden except one. All of them looked good to eat. But the one in which they were commanded not to eat from, Satan made look desirable, by distorting God’s word and design. “Did he really say?”

“When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it.” Genesis 3:6

As Pastor and author Tyler Staton once said, “Lust isn't first about sex, it's about sight. And destructive action is born from distorted vision. Eve saw the tree, but this time she didn't see the image of the creator through that tree.”

And by operating out of God’s will, by desiring outside of God’s will, adam and eve brought sin and death into the world.

The root, the truth, the design for your sexual desire is meant to be with one person, forever. Just as God wants to be with us forever. That desire from God will never pass away. He will always want that from you. When you operate out of lust, you are no longer seeing the image of the creator through that person, but rather just the creation itself. An object.

But as we said, and as we know, God’s will in our life doesn’t always happen, because sin and darkness are a part of this world.

The image of a covenant relationship, between a man and a woman uniting together, doesn’t always happen.

You can have sex before marriage. You can watch or see sexual images through Instagram reels, TikTok feeds, movies, TV shows, and most explicitly through pornography. And sometimes, you don’t even have a choice in the matter. It’s possible that the image of sex in a covenant relationship was stolen from you by way of sexual abuse. And for that, I am so sorry.

Now, does this mean any of us, who have lusted after someone, had sex before marriage, watched porn, or were sexually abused, are going to hell? Absolutely not. Of course not. Don’t let Satan make you think that you are chewed up good, not worthy of love in this kind of way, or too far gone. Paul says in Romans 8:38-39 For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, 39 neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Nothing can separate you from the covenant love of God. Even if we operate out of his design. And if you believe that, if you believe that Jesus died for you, so that you could be in a relationship with God again, then you are free from this sin, but that doesn’t mean you should continue to walk in it.

And let me remind you that your desire for sex is not bad. It’s good. But the desire must arise from the deeper longing for a covenant relationship. Pointing to ultimate satisfaction and love found in intimacy with God. Your desire is good when it aligns with God’s desire, because God leads to life.

Your desires are meant to lead you toward love, not consumption. Toward covenant, not convenience. Toward life, not emptiness.

Anything less than that is a cheap distortion of what God made for good.

If you walk away with anything today I let it be this:

Desires aren’t the issue; it’s where they can take you that is.

Desires aren’t the issue; it’s where they can take you that is.

Look, I am not just trying to get up here and say as a rule, or as an old man thinking in old ways, that the context for which sex is made is in a covenant relationship in marriage. In fact, because we are all sexually broken, even sex in marriage is never perfect, or always good. It’s vulnerable to remove the fig leaves. But it’s within the guardrails of a marriage.

Im sorry to tell you, but a high school relationship with the guy you just met two weeks ago is not a covenant relationship. Even the guy or girl you have been dating for two years. In a covenant relationship, you don’t break up when the other doesn’t text back. You haven’t committed, in the eyes of God, your community, and even your government, that you are bonded to this person indefinitely. The desire comes from a good place, but the context in which you are operating isnt there. And the reason you feel empty and lost after watching porn or sexual images on your phone through various media? It’s because you are definitely not in a covenant relationship with a naked body on a screen. You hear me?  

Let me be clear. We are all sexually broken. To the middle schooler who barely knows what the word sex means, to the high schooler in an active sex life outside of the boundaries of marriage, to the boy or girl addicted to pornography. You are no less sexually broken than the friend you have at school who is dealing with homosexual desires, or those of you in the room dealing with those. Every one of us is broken, and we are all in need of a savior who wants to restore every part of us. Including your sexuality. Thomas Keating, a catholic monk, once said: “Our issues are in our tissues.”Our issues are within the confines of our bodies, and God wants to heal them.

The question is, will you go so far as letting Jesus heal your sexuality? Desires aren’t the issue; it’s where they can take you that is.

If that is true, how do we discern where our desires are taking us?

Romans 8:5-8 “Those who live according to the flesh have their minds set on what the flesh desires, but those who live in accordance with the Spirit have their minds set on what the Spirit desires. The mind governed by the flesh is death, but the mind governed by the Spirit is life and peace. The mind governed by the flesh is hostile to God; it does not submit to God’s law, nor can it do so. Those who are in the realm of the flesh cannot please God.”

There is a word that we don’t often use, and it is Chastity. Chastity is learning to direct your desires toward love instead of lust. Chastity is the common denominator for every single one of us in the Christian life. Chastity is asking ourselves and discerning with God, where this desire is coming from. Will it lead to life or death? Does this align with your will, God, or with satan’s? Is this for the purpose of love? Or Lust?

In the words of Tyler again, “Redemption, then, is chastity. Freedom from lust and freedom to love based on what dignifies another. Scripture's ethical teachings are not aimed at rightly aligned behavior, but rightly aligned love, the internal ordering of love that brings forth life.”

Did you hear that? What is offered to us as a way to redemption? To become more sanctified? Holy? Walking in the will and the desire of God? Chastity.

Chastity is freedom from lust and the freedom to love based on what dignifies another. That means it’s choosing to discern with the help of the Holy Spirit whether my desires are out of love or lust. Freedom from using people, to loving them.

This means chastity is not just for single people. The high schooler. But the married, those of us dealing with same sex attractions. A man lusting after a woman is no more chaste, no more redeemed than a man lusting after a man.

When you have a desire, you must ask yourself in real life, in real time      

1. Am I loving a person… or using them?

2. Is this moving me toward commitment… or just consumption?

3. Will this bring life and peace… or leave me empty?

Because Desires aren’t the issue; it’s where they can take you that is.

Romans 12:1 Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God—this is your true and proper worship.

Our whole bodies are meant to be acts of worship. Including our sexual desires. So how can you discern and avoid lustful temptations?

Well, the first step is always prayer and reading your Bible. Everything we are pointing to is intimacy with God. Relationship with God. You can’t know what God’s will and desires are if you don’t talk to him.

The second is not to set yourself up for failure. King David was supposed to be at war when he saw Bathsheba bathing on her rooftop. So avoid your rooftops. Don’t put yourself in a situation where you can fall into a disordered desire. Real practical? Don’t bring your phone into your room at night. Don’t be home alone with unfiltered internet access. Set boundieres with your BF or GF to not be alone, or out past a certain time. Because when the time comes, your disordered desires are hard to fight. Because our desire for love, to be connected, to be seen, are powerful.

Lastly, don’t walk this path alone. If you are dealing with disordered desires, walk in community. Ask someone you can trust to hold you accountable. Ask them to check up on you. Ask them to pray with you. Ask them to walk alongside you and remind you of the truth of who you are and what God desires for you.

So when you feel desire this week, and will, don’t just blindly follow it. Practice chastity, discern where it is coming from and where it will take you.

Because your desires aren’t the problem, where they can take you is.

God isnt asking you to shut down your desires. I am not asking you to think that desires for sex are gross, wrong, or even sinful. What’s happening is that God wants to transform your desires.

To become the kind of person who doesn’t use people, who doesn’t settle for cheap imitations, but actually knows how to love.

The good news is that when your mind starts to wander, or you take that extended second look, when temptation hits, that’s not you failing, but the exact moment God is inviting you to walk with him. To discern what’s better. Lust or love? Death or life? Using or honoring?

Don’t settle. You were made for more. You were made for love.