Why Sex Is Not the Root of Sexual Sins
00:00:00.000 | Psalm 51 is a psalm of repentance from David after his adultery with Bathsheba
00:00:10.080 | and the murder of Uriah. The adultery is not mentioned in the psalm at all, and
00:00:15.680 | of course the question is, "Well, why not?" And what follows is a clip from John
00:00:19.320 | Piper's sermon, "A Broken and Contrite Heart God Will Not Despise," from his June
00:00:24.240 | 8, 2008 sermon. Here's what he said. "There is not a word about sex in this psalm,
00:00:33.800 | nor is there a word about murder, nor is there a word about lying. And it all
00:00:43.160 | started with sex, or did it?" No. Freud may think everything start with sex. "All my
00:00:56.340 | problems are sex." The Bible doesn't see it that way. The misuse of the beautiful
00:01:03.140 | gift of sex is a symptom of a disease, not the disease. And that's why this
00:01:11.200 | psalm doesn't mention it. And it's the main issue. Or we thought it was the main
00:01:17.820 | issue. It's not the main issue. This is the main issue. "Restore to me the joy of
00:01:24.160 | your salvation, because when that joy fades, I click on pornography. When that
00:01:30.680 | joy fades, I start cruising the neighborhood. When that joy fades, I get
00:01:35.040 | an itch for another woman. When that joy fades, on and on and on. Every sin on the
00:01:41.600 | outside is symptomatic of the absence of this joy. This psalmist knows how to
00:01:48.400 | fight." I don't have any problem doing all kinds of things to surround men and
00:01:56.320 | women with protections against sexual sin. In fact, I think that's a very good
00:02:00.400 | idea, just not the main point. If that's where you fight the battle
00:02:05.200 | continually, you will never get to the root of the issue. The root of the issue
00:02:10.680 | here is this renewed heart, this joy and gladness, the bones that God has broken
00:02:18.640 | healed with the joy of our salvation. He asked God to bring his joy to the
00:02:26.000 | overflow of praise. Verse 15, "O Lord, open my lips and my mouth will declare your
00:02:32.360 | praise." Praise is what joy in God does unless there's an obstacle that needs to
00:02:41.480 | be removed. And all of you have obstacles. Me too. And what he's praying is that
00:02:47.520 | they be removed. "Open my lips! Come on, mouth! Get with the soul! Why do I know
00:02:58.800 | him? Why do I love him? And I can't say it to my wife, I can't say it to
00:03:04.880 | my kids, I can sing in the congregation, but I can't praise him." Why? What's wrong
00:03:11.280 | with us? All kinds of obstacles. So join him, just join him in praying. "Open my
00:03:18.360 | lips that I may praise you." He asks that the upshot of all this will be effective
00:03:28.360 | evangelism. Verse 13, "Then I will teach transgressors your ways and sinners will
00:03:38.960 | return to you." David is not content to be forgiven. He's not content to be clean.
00:03:47.800 | He's not content to be elect. He's not content to have a right spirit. He's not
00:03:55.640 | content to be happy by himself. He will not be content until his brokenness
00:04:05.120 | heals others. So many of us think, "I've got to be totally triumphant to have a
00:04:14.800 | witness!" This makes no sense, if that's true. He has passed through incredible
00:04:23.640 | darkness and horrors morally in his life, and now he's saying, "If you could
00:04:30.000 | just give me a taste again of some of the joy that I once knew, all of this
00:04:34.240 | would result in conversions!" And it will. You think you have so blown it in your life,
00:04:42.880 | you cannot be used. That's what many of you think in this room. You have so blown
00:04:48.480 | it that you cannot be used to make a difference for Jesus in the world. That's
00:04:55.080 | the devil talking. He doesn't want you to make a difference, that's for sure. And
00:05:00.600 | one of the reasons he helped drag you down was so that you'd think that way,
00:05:05.240 | and one of the reasons this is in the Bible is to nullify that lie. So just
00:05:11.440 | join David in pleading, "God, I know I've messed up. Oh, I've messed up! I've killed
00:05:19.080 | and I've raped and my baby's dead! Would you cause people to come to Christ
00:05:26.160 | through my life? Maybe that would be the way the Lord would make evangelism
00:05:30.760 | happen at Bethlehem." Amen. What a surprise to see missions appear in verse 13 of
00:05:37.240 | Psalm 51. For the full message, go to DesiringGod.org and search in John
00:05:42.240 | Piper's sermon archive for the title, "A Broken and Contrite Heart God Will Not
00:05:46.400 | Despise," the sermon preached on June 8, 2008. So what counsel would John Piper
00:05:51.920 | offer to a wife who's stressed and disappointed in her husband and who is
00:05:57.160 | considering divorce as a way of escape? We'll ask him that very question
00:06:01.360 | tomorrow. I'm your host Tony Reinke, thanks for listening to the Ask Pastor John
00:06:04.720 | podcast.
00:06:07.160 | [BLANK_AUDIO]