How Our Sex Life Manifests Our Soul Health
00:00:00.000 | Our greatest problems in life are not ignorance problems, they are preference problems.
00:00:10.600 | And that means our greatest need is not merely new information, our greatest need is being
00:00:14.380 | given new preferences, new desires, new loves.
00:00:18.380 | As John Pepper explained from Romans chapter 1 in a 2015 sermon, here's how he explained
00:00:23.760 | it.
00:00:24.760 | "Having set up why we are existing, namely we exist to know and experience and enjoy
00:00:34.880 | and reflect the value, the glory, the beauty of God back to Him, He now makes the connection
00:00:42.040 | with sex."
00:00:43.040 | Isn't that remarkable?
00:00:46.300 | Four times, this is unmistakable and amazing, four times he makes the connection between
00:00:59.660 | the distortion of the relationship vertically and the darkness there with the distortion
00:01:06.840 | of the sexual relationship horizontally and the darkness there.
00:01:11.540 | So let's see these four times where Paul does this.
00:01:14.780 | Number one, the connection between verse 23 and 24.
00:01:20.340 | "They exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images," verse 24, "therefore,"
00:01:29.260 | that's a very important word, "therefore God gave them up to the lusts of their hearts,
00:01:36.420 | to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves."
00:01:42.260 | So the exchange vertically, verse 23, "They exchanged the glory of God, results in God
00:01:50.860 | handing them over to horizontal dishonorable passions of the body in lust."
00:02:00.100 | So where does lust come from?
00:02:03.980 | Where does the brokenness of our God-given, beautiful, sexual reality come from?
00:02:12.180 | Where does that brokenness come from?
00:02:13.820 | It comes from the brokenness of exchange.
00:02:17.860 | Here it is again, the connection between verse 24 and 25.
00:02:22.300 | "God gave them up to the lusts of their hearts, to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies
00:02:29.780 | among themselves," and here comes the other important word besides "therefore," "because."
00:02:36.100 | Why did he do that?
00:02:37.140 | Why did God hand us over to this mess, this brokenness?
00:02:41.740 | "Because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie."
00:02:47.260 | Another exchange, same exchange.
00:02:49.980 | "The truth about God, the glory about God, for a lie, and worshipped and served the creature,"
00:02:57.060 | that's us, "rather than the creator who is blessed forever, amen."
00:03:04.420 | So he says the cause, don't miss the word "because" there, the cause of lust and impurity
00:03:11.060 | and the dishonoring of the body is the embrace of a lie about God.
00:03:17.860 | Darkness of creation is owing to the darkness as we look at the creator.
00:03:22.980 | We believe we are more valuable than God.
00:03:27.500 | Our friends are more valuable to us than God is to us, and sexual pleasure is more valuable
00:03:32.620 | to God than God to us.
00:03:35.420 | We have exchanged him for a lie, and God hands us over.
00:03:42.980 | Number three, the connection between verses 25 and 26.
00:03:49.020 | They exchanged the truth about God for a lie, verse 26, "for this reason," you see it?
00:03:58.420 | They exchanged the truth about God for a lie, "for this reason God gave them up to dishonorable
00:04:04.740 | passion."
00:04:05.740 | So three times so far he has said that the cause, the reason for God handing us over
00:04:12.960 | to the dishonoring of our own good God-given passions is because we traded God, and we
00:04:23.560 | traded his truth, and we traded his glory for other things, which they are not.
00:04:30.900 | They are not more preferable.
00:04:32.940 | Here's the fourth one.
00:04:35.220 | The relationship between the two halves of verse 28.
00:04:39.940 | "Since," very important word, "and since they did not," now the ESV says here, "see fit
00:04:50.140 | to acknowledge."
00:04:51.140 | I don't know what your version says.
00:04:54.420 | Here's my literal translation of documadso.
00:04:58.420 | Here's the way I would translate it.
00:05:02.540 | Since they did not approve, that's the usual translation of documadso, they did not approve
00:05:09.100 | of having God in their knowledge.
00:05:11.620 | That's a literal translation.
00:05:13.540 | See fit to acknowledge God, that's okay, but I think you feel the horror of it if you say
00:05:21.020 | they did not approve of having God in their knowledge.
00:05:25.860 | So the picture is, back in verse 18, they know God and they suppress truth.
00:05:31.700 | So God is approaching them in manifold ways, and we consider that enough to be accountable.
00:05:41.700 | We know, and we disapprove.
00:05:44.780 | I don't want you in here.
00:05:45.780 | I don't want you in my head.
00:05:48.220 | I don't want you in my heart.
00:05:50.260 | I disapprove of having you in my knowledge.
00:05:53.820 | This is where atheism comes from.
00:05:55.220 | This is where skepticism comes from.
00:05:57.580 | It's not at first an ignorance problem.
00:06:01.740 | Nobody's main problem is an ignorance problem.
00:06:05.180 | Everybody's main problem is a preference problem.
00:06:07.980 | I don't want you in my head.
00:06:10.260 | I don't want you in my heart.
00:06:11.620 | I don't want you to be supremely valuable.
00:06:14.380 | I will not have a God in my life who is supremely valuable.
00:06:18.540 | I just won't.
00:06:20.180 | That's the meaning of the first half of verse 28.
00:06:24.500 | Since they did not see fit to acknowledge or did not approve, I don't want it, I don't
00:06:30.540 | approve of having God in my knowledge, therefore God gave them up to a debased mind to do what
00:06:39.660 | ought not to be done.
00:06:40.980 | So four times it just could not be clearer, repetitively clearer, that the root issue
00:06:50.220 | of our horizontal distortions, homosexual and heterosexual, are rooted in, the root
00:06:57.380 | of it is, this exchange.
00:06:59.300 | I don't want you in here.
00:07:03.100 | And if he's not in here, everything is going wrong in the world.
00:07:10.700 | That is so good.
00:07:11.700 | And then of course, explained Piper, there's a positive side here too in covenant marriage.
00:07:15.780 | You can hear the whole message in a series titled, "Living in the Light with Money, Sex,
00:07:19.820 | and Power," a four-part series, three messages and one Q&A.
00:07:23.260 | And this clip was taken from the second message and they're all on the site, DesiringGod.org.
00:07:28.500 | Those messages became the new book, "Living in the Light, Money, Sex, and Power," a nice
00:07:31.740 | little hardcover available now on Amazon and downloadable free of charge at DesiringGod.org/books.
00:07:39.380 | I'm your host, Tony Ranke.
00:07:40.580 | Thanks for listening to the Ask Pastor John podcast with author and longtime pastor, John
00:07:44.820 | Piper.
00:07:45.820 | We'll see you tomorrow.
00:07:46.500 | [End of Audio]
00:07:47.000 | 1
00:07:48.000 | DesiringGod.org Page 1 of 2