Everything About God Is About Everything
00:00:00.000 | (upbeat music)
00:00:02.580 | - Eli writes in to ask this,
00:00:06.740 | Dear Pastor John, in a message titled,
00:00:09.300 | For Men, Augustine's Sin and Sovereign Joy.
00:00:13.420 | You said this, quote,
00:00:14.900 | "The Pleasures of God," your book,
00:00:17.320 | "is not a book about sex at all,
00:00:19.620 | "except that everything about God is about sex."
00:00:23.060 | End quote.
00:00:23.980 | Can you provide more clarity on what you meant
00:00:26.100 | by everything about God is about sex?
00:00:28.540 | What do you mean, Pastor John?
00:00:30.340 | - Well, the first thing to clarify
00:00:32.300 | is when I say everything about God is about sex,
00:00:39.980 | that's not a unique statement about sex.
00:00:44.380 | I would say the same thing about everything.
00:00:47.660 | Everything about God is about everything,
00:00:52.060 | meaning everything about God relates to everything.
00:00:57.420 | Everything about God shapes the way we think
00:01:01.180 | about everything and the way we handle everything
00:01:03.640 | and the way we feel about everything
00:01:05.820 | and the way we do everything, or it should.
00:01:08.740 | In other words, nothing in the world,
00:01:11.200 | absolutely nothing has existence apart from God.
00:01:16.200 | And therefore, nothing in the world
00:01:19.140 | has meaning apart from God.
00:01:22.180 | God designed everything and created everything
00:01:26.660 | and holds everything in being,
00:01:28.460 | governs everything for His purposes,
00:01:31.940 | and His purposes always include supremely
00:01:36.380 | the display of the fullness of His glory,
00:01:39.640 | that is, everything about God.
00:01:42.000 | Therefore, sex exists because God designed it,
00:01:46.060 | God created it, God sustains it, God governs it,
00:01:49.860 | and it gets its meaning from God,
00:01:53.260 | and that meaning is the display of the fullness
00:01:57.060 | of the glory of God, and the fullness of the glory of God
00:02:01.380 | includes all that God is, or as I said,
00:02:04.260 | everything about God.
00:02:05.860 | Therefore, sex exists to display God in His fullness.
00:02:10.860 | So let me put a text under all those claims,
00:02:14.700 | 1 Timothy 4, 1 to 5.
00:02:17.220 | Now, the Spirit expressly says that in the latter times,
00:02:21.180 | some will depart from the faith by devoting themselves
00:02:23.540 | to deceitful spirits and teachings of demons.
00:02:27.860 | What do those demons teach?
00:02:29.440 | Through the insincerity of liars
00:02:33.100 | whose consciences are seared, who do this,
00:02:35.180 | forbid marriage and require abstinence from foods
00:02:40.180 | that God created to be received with thanksgiving
00:02:45.420 | by those who believe and know the truth
00:02:50.620 | for everything created by God is good
00:02:53.580 | and nothing is to be rejected
00:02:55.100 | if it is received with thanksgiving
00:02:57.100 | for it is made holy by the word of God in prayer.
00:03:00.220 | The point of that passage is to warn us against those
00:03:05.220 | who think that marriage and its sexual relationship
00:03:10.180 | are not a proper place for the expression of faith in God
00:03:15.180 | and thanks to God based on truth about God.
00:03:19.460 | That's all from that text.
00:03:20.940 | But Paul says that marriage and its sexual relation
00:03:25.700 | and food are designed precisely for those who believe
00:03:30.700 | and who know the truth and who give thanks to God
00:03:36.580 | whose glory is displayed precisely in those things.
00:03:42.420 | Or we could put it this way, whatever you do,
00:03:46.620 | whether you eat or drink or have sex,
00:03:49.860 | do all to the glory of God.
00:03:52.300 | That is, recognize the fullness of the glories of God
00:03:57.300 | manifest in the design and creation
00:04:01.740 | and sustaining and governing of sexual intimacy
00:04:05.900 | and turn all of it into a reflection
00:04:09.580 | of the fullness of God's glory.
00:04:11.380 | Now, if a person hears me say,
00:04:14.260 | everything about God is about sex,
00:04:17.140 | he might wonder, well, how is the wrath of God about sex?
00:04:20.820 | Or he might pick another one.
00:04:22.980 | So let's just take that one.
00:04:24.980 | The answer is that in a world where every human being
00:04:29.980 | deserves wrath, this world,
00:04:33.300 | and any human being gets the pleasure of sex,
00:04:38.000 | we should be astonished at the massive contrast
00:04:41.860 | between the mercies of God and the wrath of God
00:04:45.260 | in that very moment of exquisite pleasure.
00:04:50.180 | Every person who enjoys the pleasures of sex
00:04:53.860 | should be astonished precisely because of that pleasure
00:04:58.460 | that they are not at that moment in hell instead,
00:05:03.460 | because that's where we all deserve to be
00:05:07.120 | at any given moment, and only mercy keeps us out
00:05:11.500 | and some of those mercies are poured out
00:05:14.300 | precisely through food and sex
00:05:18.940 | on the very people who don't even think the giver exists.
00:05:23.100 | And so, yeah, sex is very much about wrath.
00:05:26.900 | So I would affirm, reaffirm what I said,
00:05:30.860 | namely that everything about God is about sex
00:05:35.860 | because everything about God is about everything.
00:05:39.740 | - It doesn't get more comprehensive than that.
00:05:41.340 | Thank you, Pastor John, and where else will you get
00:05:44.620 | this kind of cosmos-embracing, comprehensive worldview
00:05:47.420 | like you get on the Ask Pastor John podcast?
00:05:49.580 | Thank you for the question, Eli,
00:05:51.340 | and thank you for listening.
00:05:52.380 | For more information about this podcast,
00:05:54.180 | go to desiringgod.org/askpastorjohn.
00:05:59.020 | I'm your host, Tony Reinke.
00:06:00.100 | We'll see you tomorrow.
00:06:01.260 | (upbeat music)
00:06:03.840 | (upbeat music)
00:06:06.420 | [BLANK_AUDIO]