Before and After the Vows: A Biblical Approach to Sexuality - 1 Corinthians 7:1-9

Several years ago, I guess nearly 30 years ago, I was a student at Midwestern Seminary, sitting in a class, a New Testament class, and we came to the book of 1 Corinthians. The professor was an older man who'd pastored a church for many years, pastored churches before coming to teach. And as we began the book of 1st Corinthians, He talked about some of the controversial topics that come up in the book of 1st Corinthians, and he said, when he went to his very 1st church, right out of seminary, very young man. He decided that the 1st book of the Bible he would preach through, and that church would be the book of 1st Corinthians. And he said that was a huge mistake. He said, right on the seminar, young man, 1st time pastoring, and we hit one tough topic after another, one controversial topic. one confusing topic or another. He said it nearly got him fired, preaching through the book of 1st Corinthians as 1st time pastor. I made a mental note to myself, don't do 1st Corinthians for a long time when you get out of seminary. And so I've been out of seminary for 25 years now, and we've decided to tackle 1st Corinthians. We are, we've got 6 chapters of this book behind us, and you've seen some of the topics that we've hit here. some tough stuff in here. There's still a lot of tough things to go. I think if you get all the way through 1st Corinthians, without finding something that you're uncomfortable with, confused about, in some way, you're probably not paying super close attention. I would say if you've made it this far without finding something you're uncomfortable about, good news, it's time. Chapter 7, chapter 7, sex, celibacy, singleness, marriage, divorce. We got some tough topics the next 3 weeks. And so we're going to dive in here and see what God has for us as we jump into this. I guess if it ends this week, I've had a good run, is what I would say. I hear Amazon is hiring seasonal employees. I think I'll land on my feet. I've heard of this thing called indeed. I'm not sure what it is, but one of you can show me this week if it comes to that. I was having a conversation, though, with a couple of fathers in our church this week that have young kids. And I said, these topics are kind of tough, and I want to hit them because we want to hit all that scripture has there, but what do you deal with and what do you kind of maybe pull back on a little bit? He said, listen, topics like this don't come up very often in the church. And so this is the advice of a man in our church who said, when they do, don't hold back. When they do, don't hold back. When these topics come up, don't hold back. This is a podcast this week. And this guy on the podcast, I just was listed a podcast on this chapter of the Bible. And this guy said, silence breeds confusion. And culture is willing to fill the void. Let me say that again. Silence breeds confusion. And culture is willing to fill the void. If the church is silent on tough issues, the people around us are children, the next generation will be confused, and the culture that we live in is more than happy to jump in and feel the void where we were silent. And so we're going to jump in here and see what God has for us. We go through books of the Bible at Northland, generally, we take breaks here and there for topical things, but typically we go through books of the Bible, and we want to hit every chapter, every verse, and not shy away from anything that God puts in front of us as we walk through these. So we're going to walk through chapter 7 in the next 3 weeks. I'll talk this week. Russ's up next week on marriage. I'll come back the 3rd week on singleness, something for everyone. This next 3 weeks and something for everyone today. Three less 4 lessons today. We are going to say 4 lessons from the 1st 9 verses. And I think you'll find one of these four, at least one of these 4 will apply to you in some way. And then we're going to wrap this up with 4 action steps we can take, depending on what season of life you're in, 4 action steps that you can take to apply this to your life. You ready? Let's jump in. 1 Corinthians chapter one. Now, concerning the matters about which you wrote. Quote, it is not good for a man to have sexual relations with a woman. That's in quotation marks. Notice that. We gonna come back and explain why that's in quotation marks in a minute, but he says, he opens by saying, now, concerning the matters about what you wrote. You've been with us for a while, you know that this is written by a man named Paul. Paul was a missionary of the early church, and he planted a church in this city, and then he's left to go to another city, but he's heard about issues they're facing, and he writes this letter to address those. He learned about them from 2 places. One, he heard reports from a group of people. We don't know who they are, but he just refers to them as Chloe's people. So Chloe's people have spilled the tea, that there's trouble in the church. And he said, I gotta address those problems. He also received a letter from the church asking him specific questions about some of the problems they're facing. So it's not exactly break down this way, but it's kind of like the 1st half of the book is about stuff he heard about the church. The 2nd half is going to address a bunch of things that they actually wrote to him to ask him to weigh in on. And so one of those issues is right here, verse one, these quote, this quote, it is not good for a man, or excuse me, it is good for a man to not have sexual relations with a woman. Now, those quotes indicate one of two things. It could possibly be a very popular saying in the community and in the church that was just people were always saying this. Now, Russ talked about that last week. If you're here last week, you remember. Several places in chapter 6, there were quotes. And he pointed out those were likely commonly held views of the day that they were, quote, he was quoting and then addressing those. That very well may be the case here, or it could be a quote from the letter that they wrote to him. So they might have written to him, Paul, is it true that it's not good for a man to have sexual relation with a woman? And then, uh, he said, let me let me address your question that you brought to me. And so what's going on here? Now, I think that what follows here is going to be a guidelines on when physical intimacy is to be restricted and when physical intimacy is to be expected. And to understand those guidelines. to understand the culture, to which this letter was written. So let's talk a little bit about what's going on in the 1st century Roman Empire among these Greco Roman thinkers. They had a dualistic view of the physical and spiritual dimensions of life. So they said there's a spiritual dimension to life, and then there's a physical dimension to life. And what they believed is that the the spiritual was superior to the physical. So how do we deal with this? We've got a spiritual plane, we've got a physical plane that's problematic. Everything about this is good. Everything about this is bad. How do we address it? So this isn't the church view, although it crept its way into it. You'll see it a lot in New Testament writings. It was an overall cultural issue that they were wrestling with. There were 2 ways that they confronted this dualism. One was through asceticism, asceticism, the other was hedonism. Now what were those? Asceticism said, Spiritual is good, physical is bad, so let's deprive ourselves of any physical pleasure. Just anything that brings you pleasure in life, anything that you enjoy, cut it out of your life. Because you can't enjoy physical pleasure and have spiritual pursuits. And so let's deprive ourselves. Hedonism said, if the spiritual is good and the physical is bad, they're really not related. And so just do whatever you want. You can indulge in anything that you want, do whatever you want, do whatever feels good. Because you can live that life on a physical level, and you can still have this life on a spiritual level, and the 2 aren't going to cross. Just the pleasure is the highest pursuit in life because that's what this world is. And then there's a spiritual plane where you won't have this physical dimension. And so, what do we do? Do we cut off all physical pleasure or do we just indulge ourselves in any physical pleasure we want? And Paul is answering their question, these verses that follow, we'll see him unpack this. Let look at verse two. But because of the temptation, just sexual immorality. Each man should have his own wife and each woman, her own husband. So since sexual immorality is occurring. It's a natural desire that people have, it's a natural thing happening in the culture around them, he said, this is a natural thing. You're writing to me in St. Paul, is it true that we should never engage in sexual conduct? He said, it's going to happen. And so here's the parameters for it. He says in verse two. It's to happen in the context of marriage between a wife and her husband. So here's the 1st lesson we see in this text, that sexual desire is natural and common, but must be exercised in the proper God ordained context. designed by God, to be experienced in this life. It's not a bad thing, but it's to be experienced within the boundaries that God has established for that to take place. Let's go to a few scriptures. Genesis chapter 2, verse 18. Then the Lord God said it's not good that a man should be alone. I'll make him a helper fit for him. And then in verse 24. He says, therefore a man shall leave his father and mother, hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh. And then the New Testament writers address this quite often. Hebrews 134. Let the marriage bed, let the marriage be held in honor among all, and let the marriage bed be undefiled, kept pure. For God will judge the sexually immoral, and the adulterous. This is the marriage is where this is to take place, anything outside of that is immorality or adultery. First Thessalians 43, for this is the will of God, your sanctification. What is sanctification? We talked about this a lot. It means to be set apart. God has set you apart from your previous life, your previous desires. the culture around you. Now that you've been set apart, you abstain from sexual immorality. That each one would know how to control his own body and holiness and honor. Ephesians 53, sexual immorality, and all impurity and covetous, must not even be named among you as is proper among the saints. And then one more Galatians 519. Now the works of the flesh are evident. Sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality. So we say to this group, You think that I'm either supposed to, like, never engage in this or just do whatever I want. He said, you're both kind of right and you're both kind of wrong. This is something you should engage in, but you should engage in it in the proper God ordained context for it. And so we continue on verse three. The husband should give to his wife her conjugal rights and likewise the wife to her husband. For the wife does not have authority over her own body, but the husband does. Likewise, the husband does not have authority over his own body, but the wife does. What's going on here? Give to your wife her conjugal rights. There's a word we don't use much. When I hear conjugal, I think, oh, I'm in prison. This is to prisoners that have conjugal visits. It's just the word prison conjugal, you know, the reference, what they're talking about on a conjugal visit. He's saying, you could translate this also marital right or marital responsibility. So the word conjugal, just translate more common word, marital. In other words, we have rights that we are to grant one another in the context of our marriage. This phrase, fulfill his marital duty, literally could translate, give back that which is owed. You owe something to your wife, men, and women. You owe something to your husband. He's compelling them to grant to their spouse what is owed. The wife does not have authority over her body. The husband does not have authority over his body. They grant that to one another. There's a paraphrase of the Bible called the message. Maybe you've read it. I think it's a fun translation to read. Don't do your in-depth Bible study from the message. We're not going to preach from the message. It a paraphrase. Someone's translated the original language into English, and then someone has taken the English, and creatively reworded it. And sometimes just a fun, if you have a Bible app. you can find the message in there. Just kind of a fun thing to read. It's don't rely on it kind of authoritatively, but read it as if it's a commentary on the scripture. I love the way, I read it every week when I'm studying because sometimes it's so, uh, it words it so well. listen to the message paraphrase of this verse. The marriage bed must be a place of mutuality. The husband seeking to satisfy his wife and the wife seeking to satisfy her husband. Marriage is not a place to stand up for your rights. Marriage is not a place where we stand up for our rights. Now, notice that both the wife and the husband are to yield themselves to one another. Now, that would have been radical in that day. I think a lot of times we read the Bible and we say, oh, we seek a conflict between scripture and culture. Some of the stuff in the Bible was extremely countercultural. And it elevated the role of many in the culture that would have not been elevated apart from the teachings of Jesus and the writings of the New Testament. This is one of those areas. The idea that Paul would suggest that monogamy and mutual submission would be expected of the husband and the wife would have been a radical idea. It was countercultural in the Greco-Roman world, that women, at a place where women were expected to be faithful to the men, that the men were not expected to be faithful to their wives. Most non-Christian husbands would have rejected this idea when they read this letter from Paul that they owe something to one another in this. So this is a call to selflessness, to focus on the needs of our spouse, and yield ourselves to our spouse, which brings us to our 2nd lesson. And what you see from these verses, and the next one we're going to tag onto it here in just a second. Two things, the Bible discourages and Satan desires. You say, what's the Satan part? You'll see it in verse 5 when we get there. Two things that God discourages, the Bible discourages, and Satan desires. Sex without marriage and marriage without sex. This is what the enemy wants for your life. If you are not married, the enemy wants you to engage in physical intimacy outside of marriage, and then when you are married, the enemy wants you to stop engaging in physical intimacy. See, the correlation here when you put all of this together. He's addressing both problems they were facing. They were wrestling with. Do I deprive myself of this, or do I indulge in this? And Paul writes, it depends on your context. God has designed this inside certain parameters. So we continues, verse five. Do not deprive one another. Except perhaps by agreement, for a limited time, that you may devote yourselves to prayer, but then come together again so that Satan may not tempt you because of your lack of self-control. So here he instructs husbands, wives, don't deprive each other of this. Don't this word deprive means cheating someone out of something that is properly or rightfully theirs. Again, we see this mutual responsibility to one another. There can be a season of abstinence, he writes, under 2 conditions. It's agreement or mutual consent. You've agreed together that this is the rhythm. And two, that you're back together again after that season is over. And then he adds the warning that if we deprive one another, we put each other in a precarious situation. Now, this doesn't excuse anything, this doesn't let anybody off the hook for any act of adultery, he's just saying, when we do not have a healthy relationships with one another, we put ourselves in dangerous territory. 2 things that Satan wants for your life, sex before marriage and no sex after marriage. That's what the enemy wants, which brings us to our 3rd lesson. The keys to victory are a good defense and a good offense. explain what I mean by that. You go home today, flip on the TV, and there's going to be analysis of the upcoming football games, and they'll bring in these experts on football, and they say, what are the keys to victory? What are the keys to the Kings and Chiefs beating the Denver Broncos? And some high paid analyst will say this. It's gonna take a good defense and a good offense. And you go, wow, thanks for that. That was in-depth analysis. So what you're telling me is, if we can stop them from scoring points and then we can score points, we will win the game. Yes, that's what I mean. well that's brilliant. That's just brilliant analysis. Sometimes they'll really get technical and throw in and special teams. So they'll throw that one in for us. But I'll tell you what, in your marriage, a fight for purity in your marriage is a defensive and an offensive strategy. When I was in seminary, I was sitting in a class, what is, a preaching class, and there was a man who spoke in chapel right before that class, the professor invited him in to speak to the students in that class. And he was a well-known guy at the time. He'd written a textbook that we used in the preaching class. He was on the radio. His name was Haddon Spurgeon. I don't know if anybody would know this guy. But he spoke to our class that day, older man. One of the young men in the room said, what advice would you give to young men preparing for ministry? He said this, I'll never forget this. He said, one in 4 of you. One in 4 of you will leave the ministry because of sexual immorality or financial mismanagement. One and 4. Now I don't know if that's true. I don't know where he got that. I will tell you, I researched this week the stats on extramarital affairs, and it's 25% about any study you read. We'll say, one in 4 people in this room, will fall into this. And that shook me because I was in a row of 8 people. I remember looking, I was in the middle, and I kind of looked up, and I looked back, and I said, that means 2 of us. Which 2 of us are going to cheat on our wife and leave the ministry because of it. And that set me on a mission to say, how do I protect the purity of my marriage so I can go the distance without falling victim to the statistic that he just shared? And what I discovered, in my marriage, as Carrie and I have talked about this and prayed about this and lived this out and study God's word, and God advised from others, it takes a good offense and a good defense. Let me tell you what I mean by it. What is a good defense? A good defense is putting boundaries in your life that will prevent you from having relationships with people that some line you should not have crossed. People in ministry refer to it like the Billy Graham rule. Billy Graham was known for like not being alone with a woman, not getting a cab. with a woman, not a woman got in the elevator, he'd get off the elevator. And so a lot of pastors said, let's live our lives that way. And I think all of us should live our lives that way. My wife and I had that agreement that she was in this large company she worked for, a salesman would say, hey, thanks for fixing this for that client. Can I take you to lunch? She'd say, no, thanks. not going to let a guy take me to lunch. I'm not going to take a woman to lunch, not my wife. And I'm gonna tell you, though, defensive measures are not enough to win the game. Defense is not enough to win the game. What is offense? Offense is investing in the health of your marriage, including the physical intimacy of your marriage. It's not enough to just say, I won't cross this line. You have to go home and make investments also in the strength of your marriage. Just setting rules and boundaries is not, you know, I know a lot of men who had affairs who had all kinds of rules. They had rules and accountability partners and filters on their phones or whatever you want to do. There are all kinds of rules. If your marriage isn't healthy, you'll find a way to break rules. You'll find a way to tear down or to cross over boundaries you've set. And so I want to challenge you, play defense and play offense in your marriage, invest in the health of your marriage, including the intimacy of your marriage. If verse 5 is right, Paul says, this is going to be helpful in this very real battle that the enemy is waging against your marriage. verse six. Now, as a concession, not a command, I say this. Now, in verse six, Paul mentions giving some instructions as a concession and not a command. What does that mean? He said here, what I'm telling you is not a direct command that you have to do, it's an allowance or a suggestion that I'm giving you. Now, what does it apply to? What does this verse apply to? It either applies. Some say it applies to the verses before it, and some say the verses after it. If it applies to the verse before it, It's a reference to his allowance to abstain for a season. He's saying, If you agree upon this, the 2 of you agree for a time to abstain in your marriage, then that's allowable. That's allowable. But you said, I'm not commanding it. If you don't think you need a season to abstain, then, you know, then don't. He said, that's just an allowance. Or it might apply after. He's gonna talk about singleness. And he's going to say, I'm going to give you the concession that you can either marry or not marry. And what he's going to say is both are legitimate places to be. I'm not telling you, you have to stay single or you have to get married. I'm making the concession that whichever situation you're in, then you're in the right place. Let's jump in and see that. Verse seven. I wish that all were as I myself am. But each is his own gift from God, one of one kind, one of another. What's he saying here? What we believe from this is that Paul was single. Now, there's a lot of speculation, was he never married? Was he maybe divorced? Was he a widower? You could read all kinds of theories out there. What we do know for sure is that this time when he wrote these words, he was not married. And he saw the fact that he was not married as a gift from God. He says, I wish that everyone had the gift that I have, but I know not everyone has the gift that I have. He saw remain celibate as a gift from God, recognizing that some will have that, and some won't. Some will say, how do I know if I have the gift of celibacy? You won't know if you have the gift of celibacy, but you'll know if you don't have it. You know that you don't have it, okay? And you say, hey, listen, God has not wired me to not be married, and I'm going to get married. And some say, you know what? God has wired me to stay single. And neither has one, neither is commanded or superior to the other. Paul said, I'm single. I believe God has that for me. I like it that way. I wish everyone could enjoy the freedom I have as a single person. But I realize not everyone has that gift. But here's the 4th lesson. I think we need to learn church is that singleness should be celebrated as a gift from God. Singleness should be celebrated as a gift from God. Here's why I say that. We at Northland have a multi-generational church. We have people probably in every walk of life. We have a thriving young adult ministry. Many of them are single. I think you can come to Northland as a single person, and you can find community here among other young singles in our church. But that's not always the case everywhere. And I was having a lunch with a young man this week who's single out of college, a couple years, hasn't been married, not dating anyone. And he said, honestly, said, sometimes I feel like I don't fit in, not Northland specifically, but the church in general. He said the church seems to be wired for married people. And if you come into church as a single person, sometimes you don't know where you fit, you don't know where your place is. And I think we need to do a better job as a church, celebrating singleness as a gift from God. Some people say, I just don't want to get married. And I start wondering if there's something wrong with me because I don't want to get married. I'm gonna tell you, if you're here today, you're single, and you feel like you want to stay single, you are not cursed, you're gifted, according to verse seven. God's giving you the gift to be single. You're not broken, you're blessed. God has made this possible for you to be single. Now, next week, excuse me, 2 weeks. We're gonna talk more about singleness. Come back in 2 weeks. We're going to dive inward. The back half of this chapter, he goes into greater detail about what he's talking about here. Now, don't stay away if you're married, because you have single people in your life, and you need to understand what the word of God says for your single friends, your single brothers and sisters in Christ, your single kids, your single grandkids. And so sometimes when you're in a sermon, you go that and apply to me, it applies to you because you need to know this for the sake of the people around you who need to know this, all right? So come back. But I don't, listen, I'm the 1st one. I am a fan of marriage. And I want people to be, and people are laughing because I try to set up any single person in this church. I had a text group. Some of them went and got engaged and I tried to kill the texture. I had a text group with some of the single ladies in our young adult mystery that would let them know when a guy walked in and said, hey, on the left. Four rows up, go meet him, welcome him to the church is what a Christian would do. I'm single. I met my wife in church. You should work the room singles. This ought to be the place. There's a young adult leadership meeting. After this, I'm going to go and suggest, again, that we do speed dating sometime. I'm a fan of marriage. But we can send a message that that's the superior place to be. It's not. If God has wired you to be married, I'm a fan, and I will help you, and I'll do my best. You could be a greeter. best things, be a greeter. Amber Poole will sign you up for the greeter ministry, and you can meet every single guy that walks in this door or single girl. But if that's not what God's called you to do. Singleness should be celerated. God has gifted you. For the rest of your life or for a season. See this season of your life as a gift from God, to be celebrated and leveraged for the work of the kingdom. He wraps it up verses 89 to the unmarried and the widows. I say that it is good for them to remain single as I am, but if they cannot exercise self-control, they should marry, for it is better to marry than to burn with passion. What is he saying? If you can remain celibate, stay single. If you can't get married. This is the parameters God has for the exercise of these desires in your life. So what do we do with this? Four action steps. Number one, we need to stop compartmentalizing our lives. This idea, the 1st century where they had the spiritual side and the physical side, we do much the same thing. I can have my spiritual life, and I can have my physical life, and the 2 don't meet, they do, they intersect. You will not experience, should not expect deep spiritual growth while indulging in physical sin. You just won't, you won't grow spiritually. If you're indulging in sin that God has restricted from your life, On the same level, if you don't have a healthy, fulfilling marriage, that also begins to impact the emotional and spiritual side of your life. you can't separate these things. See, we want to think that I have a relationship with God and a relationship with people, and they kind of run parallel with each other. They don't run parallel with each other. They intersect. My vertical relationship with God, and my horizontal regiment of other people intersect with one another. It's all over the Bible, that if I'm, I can't be right with God and not right with people, I can't have problem with people and be right with God. It affects, one affects the other, as I live out my Christian faith. Don't compartmentalize your life. I have a friend who was a telemarketer. And I said, how did you do that? I cannot imagine being cussed at and yelled at and hung up on all day long. And he said, I created a persona with a different fake name that went into work every day. And he said, that's how he emotionally dealt with it. They weren't yelling at me. They weren't cussing at me. They were cussing at, yelling at, being mean to this fake person I had created. And he said, I walked in there, I put on the headset, and I was just a different person. And I let them treat me however they want to treat me. I took the headset off and I went back to another person. You know, we do that spiritually. We have our church persona and our everyday life persona, if we're not careful. Let me show up to church. We're pulling up to the parking lot. Let me throw on the church mask. and walk into church and play the church role, and then I get back in the car, I'm gonna peel the church mask off, throw it in the back of the car, and be this other persona the rest of the week. You can't compartmentalize your life. There's a connection here. Any fans of the office, the TV show, the office. If you've seen the office, you remember the date, the date, Mike episode. I think in our single life, we can be date Mike. If you're not careful. Date Mike went out to the car, got his hat, put it on backwards, took on a new persona. There was office manager Mike, and there was Michael, and there was Date Mike, okay? And I think some of you guys and girls, you're gonna be, you're gonna be, you don't want to be, Jose, pick on Jose. He can handle it. You don't want to be date Jose and Christian Jose. You know, I'm gonna say, all right, I'm on a date. I'm this guy. Time to go to church. I'm going to be this guy. Scripture says, there's no place for compartmentalization of our lives. We're the same. We live with integrity wherever we are. There's no masks, there's no hats, we wear in one place or another. Stop compartmentalizing. How is your relationship with Jesus impacting other areas of your life and your relationships and vice versa. Second, if you're single, commit to purity instead appropriate boundaries. Make a decision that I want to live a life of purity until God frees me up in the context of marriage to exercise this gift that he's given people. How do I do that? Well, I think, number one, I would encourage you to date people who are on the same page. You hear me say this from time to time often, you, you, as a follower of Jesus, you should commit to spending your life with another follower of Jesus. How do I do that? There's a simple thing I've observed about dating. I'm no expert, but I figured this out. You end up dating someone, excuse me, you end up marrying someone you date. Yeah. Yeah, that's, yeah, that's great analysis. Here's what that means. I'll make even more detailed for you. Typically, it'd be very rare for this not to be the case. The last person you date is the person you'll marry. The last person, so that don't mean you'll date people, and you'll date people, and one day you'll marry one of them. You know how to guarantee that you'll spend the rest of your life married to someone who loves Jesus, commit right now to only date people who love Jesus. And if you'll do that, that's going to pay off. And so you make the, and I'm not saying person says he's Christian, because they'll fool you on the dating apps. My daughter got engaged Friday night, by the way. So she's engaged. I think she's working, but I think he's here in the 3rd service, so I'm saving some stuff. But, uh, um, She said, Dad, they'll check that Christian box and you show up on the date and they didn't mean the Christian box, all right? So I don't mean that. The guy, the girl who clicked the Christian box on the day damn. I mean someone who loves Jesus. and wants to pursue a relationship with Jesus. You have to be on the same page in this battle. You can't be in a relationship with someone who has a competing desire than you have. And then in that relationship, establish clear boundaries. And don't cross those boundaries. Seek out accountability with other believers, married and single. People who've been in your shoes and people who are in your shoes, who can encourage you and pray for you and hold you accountable, and then abide in Christ. Through prayer and time in his word, authentic community with others. This play offense and defense. Don't just set rules, lines I won't cross. Get in the word, get in community, get on your knees in prayer, and have a growing relationship with Jesus where in that, you desire purity in your life. Commit to purity. Pursue purity. If you're married, Address the issues that are keeping you from experience the fullness of God's design for your marriage. Address these issues. My wife has said, we've talked about this a lot. We lead this marriage group in our home. We've done about, I know, probably about a 100 people at Northland go through this marriage thing that we've done. Um, Well, we'll do another one in the spring if you want to jump in, let me know. And she said, a lot of times, and we talk about this, you'll say, a lot of times in different contexts with women, There'll be a symmetry in physical desire, and they'll say, she said, sometimes women give each other really bad advice, like, yeah, you're not where he is, but just sort of like take one for the team. It's bad advice. Invest in your much, discern the issues, deal with the issues so that intimacy in your marriage becomes a tool and not a weapon. Not something that is a reward, a bribe, a threat, a punishment, a motivating action, but something that you both desire to honor God in this way, address this. Now, let me tell you, some of you, for some of you, it's very simple. It's just a conversation you need to have. It's just communication. I had a marriage conference one time, and the speaker said, guys, you want to know what the number one turn on for your wife is, according to studies they've done. He said it's doing chores around the house. And the ladies kind of cheered, and then some guy in the back said, what's number two? I don't know what that is. Here's your line, guys. or gals, who gets this stronger. your line today. It's all you need to say. I wanna talk about the sermon. Sometime today, look at your spouse and say, I'd like to talk about this sermon and see where that conversation goes for you. Now, I recognize, all joking aside, I recognize that there are deeper issues for many people in this room. I'm not a doctor, I'm not a counselor, I'm not a therapist, a pastor. And my task today is to preach this text. There are deeper things that you need help with that I can't help you. So here's what I did. I reached out to a couple, some friends of mine. He is a pastor, and they're believers, they're very conservative, very gospel focused ministry, and they've started a counseling group. And I wrote to them and I messed them and I said, can you help me with resources? podcast books, counselors. What could I share with my church, if they're struggling, that might reason. I would take your phone out. No one's gonna, no one's gonna judge. We're doing this for a friend, okay? You're doing this for your friend who wants this list. Scan that QR code. Come on, now, don't be shy. Scan that QR code. Your friend wants it. And if you go there, we put together a list, podcasts. It'll take you straight to the podcast. The links are built in. Books, it's gonna take you straight to Amazon, where you can buy the book. And counseling resource will take you straight to the website of the counselor. And these are resources that you might find helpful. Men, this is not a Christmas list for your wife, by the way. Or wives for your husband, whatever the case may be. But there's resources for you. We're going to also link this in the on our website, and we will link it on the podcast. So if you go back and listen to the sermon in the notes, you'll find the link to this list. Some of this, there's a lot of QR codes in our bulletin every week. This one might really, really change your marriage. And so don't shy away from this issue. Finally, repent of past failures and receive God's gracious forgiveness. Topics like this might conjure up a lot of feelings of conviction, of guilt, of shame for past failure. You engaged in activity outside of the parameters God has drawn up. Maybe you've even been unfaithful in your marriage. And this has been a difficult sermon because it's been a reminder of ways you have failed. I want to close with this good news. We serve a God who forgives when we sin. Here's a promise. There are many of them in the scriptures. I want to give you just one. Maybe it's a memory verse for you this week. First John one.9. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. This has brought up reminders of your failure. Confess it to the Lord, receive his forgiveness, his cleansing from your failure. Jesus died on the cross so that your sins can be forgiven. We sang about that. He's triumphed over death and sin, and he stands ready to forgive those who turn to him and confess their sins to him. Let me pray for you. Father, I pray for the one. who is struggling with a dual life right now. They know that they come here and have one persona and live another way outside of here. And I think all of us have been guilty of that. I pray that they'll be convicted of that and they'll want to strive to live a life that pleases you spiritually and physically. I pray for the singles who desire to remain single. Will you just affirm that calling in their life. Let them feel gifted and not cursed, blessed and not broken, that you've given them this opportunity to serve you in this way. For those singles who desire marriage, help them to commit to seeking out a man or a woman who loves you with all his heart or her heart. For those in relationships, strengthen them in the fight for purity. For the married couples who are struggling, let this be a catalytic moment to deepen their connection with one another. For those who have failed, Father, remind them of your grace and mercy. Let them not walk from this place, ashamed, but walk from this place. With the relief of forgiveness because they've brought that to you, Jesus. We pray this in your name. Amen.