back to indexBFM Retreat 2017 - Session 2
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Well, again, it's just been a pleasure being amongst family. 00:00:16.920 |
That's just what it is for me on this weekend. 00:00:19.960 |
I just hear already the way the Lord is just speaking 00:00:29.160 |
Again, I think I mentioned last time, one of the things 00:00:31.960 |
that James and Valerie sent me was a list of things 00:00:38.600 |
that I like, and I wrote down Korean barbecue. 00:00:50.800 |
Why did they find Korean barbecue flavored kettle 00:01:17.240 |
And I know some of you guys that may not know me 00:01:41.080 |
So I'm just glad to, again, be with you guys. 00:01:48.000 |
So let's go before the Lord in prayer before we begin. 00:01:53.320 |
God, the topic that you have us discussing today 00:01:58.680 |
is one that is vitally important to our understanding of just 00:02:13.760 |
God, you tell us that all things were made through you 00:02:18.440 |
And even the thing, God, that we are going to talk about today 00:02:32.120 |
will be forever different today, enabling us, Lord God, 00:02:37.800 |
to consume more of your glory and the joy of our souls. 00:02:45.680 |
communicate in a way that only you can to the soul 00:03:04.040 |
If you will, please turn with me in your Bibles 00:03:15.680 |
When I was probably a kid, there was this song, 00:03:24.960 |
and most of you guys probably don't even know what it is 00:03:28.880 |
It was this hip hop song by this rapper called Salt and Pepper. 00:03:33.080 |
Anybody ever heard of Salt and Pepper before? 00:03:36.200 |
So he had this song called, let's talk about sex, baby. 00:03:41.400 |
Let's talk about all the good things and the bad things 00:03:46.680 |
That's what we're going to talk about right now. 00:03:59.600 |
let your kids in here, please, if you could dismiss them. 00:04:05.560 |
And yeah, this is an area of our relationships and marriage 00:04:10.520 |
that a lot of times we don't want to talk about. 00:04:12.520 |
How many times have you guys talked about sex in marriage? 00:04:21.500 |
Well, it's a vital part of your relationship, 00:04:28.480 |
it means for you guys to live out your calling in marriage 00:04:43.960 |
It's impossible, if you will, to live without sex. 00:04:54.440 |
like cuisine continually having what Keller called 00:05:04.440 |
This vision of sex in our culture is not new. 00:05:08.440 |
Thousands of years ago, in a city called Corinth, 00:05:11.920 |
they had a very similar vision when it came to sex. 00:05:27.920 |
"All things are lawful for me, but not all things are helpful. 00:05:36.400 |
Food is meant for the stomach, and the stomach for food, 00:05:53.400 |
Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ? 00:06:00.400 |
Or do you not know that he who is joined into a prostitute 00:06:06.400 |
For as it is written, the two will become one flesh. 00:06:09.400 |
But he who is joined to the Lord becomes one spirit with him. 00:06:15.400 |
Every other sin a person commences outside the body. 00:06:19.400 |
But the sexual immoral person sins against his own body. 00:06:28.400 |
You are not your own, but you are born with a price. 00:06:34.400 |
Now concerning the matters about which you vote, 00:06:36.400 |
it is good for a man not to have sexual relations with a woman. 00:06:39.400 |
But because of the temptation to sexual immorality, 00:06:48.400 |
Thus ends the reading of the word of the living God. 00:07:18.400 |
another Corinthian slogan that we see in verse 13 of chapter 6. 00:07:24.400 |
"Food is meant for the stomach, and the stomach for food." 00:07:29.400 |
Now this slogan here basically communicated the idea 00:07:32.400 |
that the body should be permitted to have anything that it craves. 00:07:53.400 |
And they would actually have prostitutes that would line the streets. 00:07:56.400 |
And it was more than acceptable for a Corinthian man 00:08:01.400 |
while having a little something, if you will, on the side. 00:08:05.400 |
And the Corinthian church here was beginning to buy 00:08:11.400 |
Now this lack of sexual restraint that we see 00:08:19.400 |
that meaning basically you can't have sex of any kind, 00:08:30.400 |
So it was actually more glorious, if you will, 00:08:42.400 |
"Now concerning the matters about which you wrote, 00:08:45.400 |
it is good for a man to not have sexual relations with a woman." 00:09:02.400 |
then there must be something about sex and its creation 00:09:12.400 |
He intended ultimately to reveal His glories to us 00:09:19.400 |
All things were made through Him and for Him, 00:09:32.400 |
Second, how should we handle such a glorious gift? 00:09:40.400 |
And then thirdly, what does it reveal about God 00:09:48.400 |
What does sex reveal about God that should create 00:09:52.400 |
a desire and a passion, not necessarily for one another, 00:09:59.400 |
So now let's see two glorious visions of sex. 00:10:07.400 |
1 Corinthians 6, starting at verse 15 and 16. 00:10:15.400 |
Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ? 00:10:19.400 |
Shall I then take the members of Christ and make them 00:10:25.400 |
Or do you not know that he who is joined to a prostitute 00:10:35.400 |
For as it is written, and now he goes back to Genesis, 00:10:51.400 |
because he goes on to say that he who is joined to the Lord 00:10:53.400 |
becomes one spirit with him, is called a syllogism 00:11:00.400 |
And Paul here is giving a three-part argument 00:11:03.400 |
with two premises and a conclusion that ultimately follows. 00:11:07.400 |
So premise number one, the bodies of Christians 00:11:15.400 |
So the bodies of Christians are members of Christ Himself. 00:11:23.400 |
What you do with your body is exemplary of him. 00:11:30.400 |
Be holy as I am holy, because what we demonstrate 00:11:44.400 |
So sex in the act of it, it brings a unity or a oneness. 00:11:51.400 |
So the first glorious vision that we see here of sex 00:12:07.400 |
Paul here is quoting from Genesis chapter 2, verse 24, 00:12:16.400 |
when he took the rib in half and he built Adam into Eve, 00:12:23.400 |
Now we talked about this in my first message. 00:12:26.400 |
What did oneness ultimately look like in that context? 00:12:29.400 |
Well, one, they both shared the same image, God. 00:12:39.400 |
And they both shared the same resources, the garden. 00:12:43.400 |
They both shared the same purpose, be fruitful and multiply. 00:12:52.400 |
One flesh refers to the personal union of a woman and a man at all levels. 00:13:01.400 |
After creation, of all these oneness demonstrations that I just articulated, 00:13:11.400 |
and he gives them an explicit graphic illustration of the depth of their oneness. 00:13:18.400 |
After all these other onenesses, he ends by saying, 00:13:26.400 |
Now we can see it almost in Adam's response in verse 23, 00:13:32.400 |
as you hear the first--he becomes the first hip-hop artist ever to walk the planet. 00:13:39.400 |
I mean, for you ladies, we'll say he started doing poetry. 00:13:44.400 |
"This is flesh of my flesh, yeah, and bone of my bone." 00:13:47.400 |
When he comes and sees Eve, it's like, "What? Are you kidding me?" 00:13:52.400 |
We can paraphrase what Paul is saying here in this way, in Corinth. 00:13:58.400 |
Don't you know that the purpose of sex is always one flesh? 00:14:08.400 |
To become united to another person in every area of life 00:14:13.400 |
is that you are seeking that in a prostitute? 00:14:18.400 |
You're seeking that in a prostitute? Of course not. 00:14:22.400 |
because ultimately, sex is a blending and a bonding of two individuals into one, 00:14:32.400 |
That's why God ends in verse 24 of Genesis chapter 2 00:14:37.400 |
by saying, "And the two shall become one flesh." 00:14:44.400 |
We know that because here he uses that as the analogy for flesh--for sex. 00:14:54.400 |
So verse 24 of Genesis chapter 2 is talking about sex, among other things. 00:15:03.400 |
There's no more pronounced way to communicate that sex is one flesh 00:15:14.400 |
When a child is born, it's one individual that's been blended in by two. 00:15:20.400 |
There are people who look at my daughter and they'll say, 00:15:26.400 |
When they look at one of my other daughters and they'll look at Mom, 00:15:32.400 |
Or, "Does she look like me or does she look like her?" 00:15:37.400 |
Only when they act up, then I'm like, "That's your son." 00:15:41.400 |
You see him over there? That's your daughter. 00:15:48.400 |
If there's more to one flesh, there's more to this than the one flesh of sex. 00:15:53.400 |
There exists an intangible, mysterious, spiritual lacing that occurs in lovemaking. 00:16:00.400 |
We instinctively, even if the Bible didn't even tell us, 00:16:09.400 |
It's in the midst of sexual passion that you naturally want to say things like, 00:16:17.400 |
It's in the midst of that that you say, "I want to be with you forever." 00:16:21.400 |
If someone goes out and does it with someone else, what do you feel? 00:16:39.400 |
It is the actual culmination of what I talked about in my first message 00:16:46.400 |
Now let us see the second glorious vision of sex from God's perspective. 00:16:59.400 |
You see, sex from God's vantage point is very different. 00:17:04.400 |
Many of you are familiar with maybe, I don't know, you've heard of the common kind of colloquial phrase 00:17:08.400 |
that we use in conversations when we say, "Yada." 00:17:12.400 |
Like, "We played ball, we swam in the river, shelled oysters, yada, yada, yada, 00:17:21.400 |
Have you heard of that before? That colloquial phrase? 00:17:24.400 |
When your husband asks you what you did at the ball, 00:17:27.400 |
you say, "Well, you know, we kind of took the kids over to the train, 00:17:31.400 |
and then we had a little bit of food, and then we just yada, yada, yada, did all of that." 00:17:35.400 |
Then when the credit card bill comes, the rest of the yada kind of starts showing up. 00:17:43.400 |
Well, yada means much more, actually, than that. 00:17:49.400 |
And I think the great theologian Seinfeld will actually give us a better picture 00:17:56.400 |
or an idea of what yada means from God's perspective. 00:18:02.400 |
So let's go ahead and take a look at that clip. 00:18:09.400 |
So, I'm on third avenue. Mind you, I'm in business. Yada, yada, yada. 00:18:48.400 |
We bought the wedding invitations, and yada, yada, yada. 00:19:15.400 |
Margie comes over and she tells me that her ex-boyfriend was over late last night, 00:19:18.400 |
and yada, yada, yada, I'm really tired today. 00:19:28.400 |
Yeah. I met this lawyer. We went out to dinner. 00:19:32.400 |
I had the lobster bisque. We went back to my place. 00:19:34.400 |
Yada, yada, yada. I never heard from him again. 00:19:37.400 |
Gee, yada, yada. I don't know about the lawyer. 00:19:56.400 |
And you notice the way they used the word yada 00:20:10.400 |
Yada is actually a Hebrew word used for, guess what? 00:20:17.400 |
And the translation is actually a very stunning one. 00:20:25.400 |
we see the word in Hebrew, yada, being actually used. 00:20:41.400 |
saying, I've gotten a man with the help of the Lord. 00:20:48.400 |
Cain yada'd his wife, and she conceived and bore Enoch 00:21:19.400 |
Yada is a Hebrew word that reveals that sex is much deeper 00:21:41.400 |
is that that word also comes into context meaning mercy. 00:21:46.400 |
Another occurrence of yada can be found in the Hebrew wisdom books 00:21:55.400 |
the righteous knows, yada, the needs of their animals, 00:22:05.400 |
The righteous knows the needs, but the mercy. 00:22:10.400 |
So mercy is helping us to understand what the knowing is 00:22:16.400 |
In other words, yada expresses intimate understanding of a need 00:22:24.400 |
And it lets that person know that you are committed 00:22:45.400 |
I want to know you through face-to-face encounters with you. 00:22:52.400 |
I'm committed to living for your needs and not my own. 00:22:58.400 |
That's what sex was designed to communicate by God. 00:23:09.400 |
Actually, you guys, well, some of you guys know Charlie. 00:23:17.400 |
And if you know Charlie, he can sometimes get really close to you 00:23:21.400 |
when he's talking to you, and really uncomfortable close. 00:23:27.400 |
And I remember just one time him doing that to my wife, 00:23:37.400 |
So intimate knowledge of sex is it's knowing someone so well 00:23:47.400 |
It's knowing someone so well, you're so close to them 00:23:53.400 |
It's knowing someone so well that you know when they hurt 00:24:05.400 |
You see, the glory of sex is that it declares to all that you are known. 00:24:16.400 |
It's because it declares to everyone around you in the world 00:24:21.400 |
that you are known in ways that no one on earth will know you. 00:24:26.400 |
That you have been let into places that only you will know. 00:24:34.400 |
and I'm committed to knowing you more deeply for the rest of my life. 00:24:44.400 |
So the first glory of sex that we saw is that it laces us. 00:25:07.400 |
"For do you not know that he who is joined to a prostitute 00:25:14.400 |
For as it is written, the two will become one flesh." 00:25:24.400 |
Every other sin a person commits is outside the body, 00:25:29.400 |
but the sexually immoral person sins against his own body. 00:25:37.400 |
Now here we begin to see the eternal glory and perspective of sex. 00:25:47.400 |
"But because of temptation to sexual immorality, 00:26:01.400 |
Does God give you intimacy apart from total commitment? 00:26:07.400 |
Is he okay with showering you with eternal pleasures 00:26:13.400 |
You say to him, "I don't want to get up in front of the world 00:26:16.400 |
and declare that I'm completely yours and only yours." 00:26:19.400 |
You see, the parallel to the exclusivity of sex 00:26:24.400 |
is a demonstration of a call of exclusive devotion to God himself. 00:26:31.400 |
You see, we are not the center for why God made sex. 00:26:42.400 |
And we were ultimately made to reflect that design for sex 00:26:49.400 |
we begin to muddy up, if you will, that image. 00:26:59.400 |
We say to the person in our own relationship, 00:27:04.400 |
and I'm willing to go and tie myself to someone else." 00:27:11.400 |
that, you know what, this is what a relationship to God looks like. 00:27:19.400 |
Just as ridiculous as it would be to say to God, 00:27:25.400 |
is just as ridiculous for us to talk about sex 00:27:38.400 |
How then are we to wield such a powerful gift from God? 00:27:46.400 |
Looking back at 1 Corinthians 7, we're going to go to verse 3. 00:27:51.400 |
"The husband should give to his wife her conjugal rights, 00:28:00.400 |
For the wife does not have authority over her own body, 00:28:06.400 |
Likewise, the husband does not have authority over his own body, 00:28:13.400 |
Do not deprive one another, except perhaps by agreement for a limited time, 00:28:23.400 |
so that Satan may not tempt you because of your lack of self-control." 00:28:31.400 |
The first reason, the first way, is I live to please. 00:28:39.400 |
Look at your spouse and say, "I live to please." 00:28:46.400 |
Sex and marriage is to be used to please the other and not self. 00:28:58.400 |
When it says, "Fulfill marital duties," you know what it literally means in verse 3? 00:29:19.400 |
That you are to surrender authority over your body to your spouse. 00:29:39.400 |
That is, cheating someone else out of what is properly his or hers. 00:29:56.400 |
In other words, number two, other than that, you are to live to please. 00:30:08.400 |
Sex and marriage should never be used as a bribe or a reward for good behavior. 00:30:17.400 |
Some of you guys are smiling because I've had good behavior in sex. 00:30:22.400 |
My wife says, "Honey, if you do this, you're a good boy now." 00:30:32.400 |
And when we do sex that way, what it does is communicate. 00:30:40.400 |
You see, in marriage, the posture should be this.