All right. We're going to go ahead and get started. I'm going to actually set myself a time limit this morning. I'm going to do 40 minutes. And I may not get through this material, and that would be OK. I do have a question handout at the end. So we we have gone through several chapters since we started this book and talking about. I think one was I wish she came with a manual back to school for the rest of my life. What's there to talk about? Crash course in biblical communication, how to love your wife, how to fight back without getting even pleasing possibilities, and then. The last one we covered a couple months ago was, Honey, You Need a Bath, was sort of talking about how to exercise the biblical role of if you have to correct your wife. I mean, let's think about this. It's not necessarily like the man needs to correct his wife. No, you're two Christians. your two believers living in the same vicinity, probably she's going to have to correct you because you're a sinner, and you may have to correct her being a sinner. But the dynamic of a married couple, sometimes that can be a little bit more tricky. And so it was just good biblical wisdom in that. All of these relational things lead us to this subject that we cannot ignore. In fact, I am more along the lines of, no, we must talk about this more often. And that is the area of sexual relations in marriage. The world wants you to believe that the best sex or sexual experiences to be had are whatever you or another consenting adult would desire to have. I don't know if you are with me there and would agree with that. As I keep my nose to the ground and ear out in the culture, I tend to think that the only thing that I might tweak on that statement is whether it's another consenting adult. Because I feel like the more and more the culture continues to be depraved and go anti and rebellious towards God, I think you're getting more and more to exceptions or accepting of pedophilia. I think that what we've seen is the fight and the full-on cultural acceptance of homosexuality. As soon as that sort of fell, that domino fell in 2015 with the Obergefell decision, I think the next one we automatically immediately saw pushed forward in the public eye was transgenderism. That's the next domino. And I tend to think, this is John Holifield's opinion here, that that next domino after that is fully accepted. And maybe we can debate on whether their culture has really fully accepted it or not. I tend to think that if we're already there in the culture, I think that next domino is pedophilia. There's Ted Talks that were coming out about four years ago about changing the terminology and culture of pedophilia to MAP. a minor attracted person. In fact, if you listen to the same voices that have, that the elites go to for their understanding of the gender construct and transgender ideology, they also teach, I've read this about two weeks ago in a world view book that I'm reading, they also, well taught, these guys were like putting this out there in the 50s and 60s. They taught that there is essentially no harm done to sexual relations to a child. They said in all of their research and study of this, children are not affected by it negatively. Well, two of the guys that are actually credited with coming up with the idea of a gender construct were actually pedophiles themselves, so I wonder why they would say something like that. So we see that in the world, we understand that statement, that the world wants you to believe that the best sex or sexual experiences to be had are whatever you or another consenting adult would desire to have. We stand out and say that God has declared that the most amazing, mind-blowing, beautiful, and God-glorifying sex that can ever be had is between a man and a woman within the covenant of marriage. And I hope that you would all agree with me there. Here's my question this morning. Is that happening? Is that happening? Is that taking place? One of my favorite counselors to listen to and sort of teachers by distance is a guy named Brad Bigney, who's a pastor in Kentucky, and he says it drives him nuts as he's counseled people over the years who have had all these sexual sin issues and this kind of thing, because they believe this lie that I mentioned before. But he said the truth is that Christian couples within the church are supposed to be having the best sex ever, and it's not happening. And so it should be. And that's sort of what I wrote down in all caps. It should be. All right. But here's another thing we face in the church culture and Christian culture, maybe some of you haven't experienced this, some of you have in your church backgrounds, and that is this, more than a few Christians believe that sexual relations and marriage are dirty or taboo. They seem to have forgotten that God not only created sex, but did so in such a way as to make it one of the most pleasurable experiences in life. It's something that we don't talk about. He refused to talk about it. And even at that, we don't talk about it often. It's like, okay, let's deal with this. Is there any wonder why generations of young people have got caught up in these types of sexual sins because the church has just stayed silent, but the culture is throwing out there as well. Now listen, I'm not advocating for the church to be vulgar and inappropriate at all. But I think that we have dropped the ball greatly in addressing this topic with a biblical worldview and addressing it rightly and addressing it timely. I think a lot of the things, I'll tell you this, in my short experience of counseling, one thing that I have quickly observed and talked with others that have more experience with me have said this is true as well. When I talk with somebody who's had experience with or struggles with either sexual sin or pornography, It'll blow your mind whenever that is introduced. It's at a very young age, consistently. So, the longer that you sit there, and you say, let's not discuss this, let's not talk to this, the more you're opening the door for the world to educate them on this matter. We definitely do not want that. Without me getting distracted, we are here to talk about it in the realm of marriage, and specifically to you as husbands, and that's sort of the point of direction. So with that, let me turn, let's turn, first of all, look at Genesis 1.1. In fact, I could probably go around the room and ask you to either quote it or tell me the first four words of Genesis 1.1, and you could all make 100%. All right, Genesis 1.1. In the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth. Those four words, in the beginning, God. What does that have to do with the subject of the talk of sex? Yeah, yeah. And we cannot divorce those four words when we approach the subject. God, okay, when it says, in the beginning, God created, that created, we understand He created everything, and in that everything, that includes sex, as Daniel had just pointed out, but also, that creation implies something also that God has, and that is ownership. He created it, He owns it, so that means also He does what? He owns your sexuality. Paul Tripp said a gospel-centered approach to sex that avoids the insanity surrounding culture must begin with looking at life through the window of the doctrine of creation. I think how true, but how we don't think of it that way. When scripture declares God created everything, that means he owns everything, and that includes you and your sexuality. So let's, still in Genesis, move over to chapter number two. Chapter number two. He creates the, we see in chapter one, he creates the earth, he creates the universe. We have the seven days of creation up through chapter two, verse three. And then we have the creation of man and woman. And it begins to explain sort of what the Garden of Eden look like, what the garden was like, what the setting was, how it was viewed, and then it goes through that God makes a statement in verse 18. He says, Then the Lord God said, It is not good that the man should be alone. I will make him a helper fit for him. All of God's children in here said, Amen. Amen. Right? When God says it's not good for you to be alone, all of us very men are like, praise the Lord. He said that, okay? Verse 19, it's interesting though. Watch this. Watch what, I love the way that the Bible is set up. Because it almost seems, if you just do a cursory reading of this passage. It looks as if they're like, this is like, okay, narratively, why do you make a statement and then you explain this part? It's like sort of disconnected and you need to have them together. Cause read what happens. He said, it's not good for man to be alone. Verse 19. Now out of the ground, the Lord God had formed every beast of the field and every bird of the heavens and brought them to the man to see what he would call them. And whatever the man called every living creature, that was its name. And the man gave names to all livestock and to the birds of the heavens and to the every beast of the field. But for Adam, There was not found a helper fit for him." Okay, it's like, okay, it's not good for man to be alone. Adam named the animals. Why? But watch what happens there. What does Adam do? God brings Adam to a realization of his need for God's provision in a woman. Think about that. Because what does he do? He says, all right, bring all the animals. And what does that do? All right, there's that animal. He names that as a dog. And that's the dog's wife. And this is this. And then he names. He's like naming all of the animals. And he's like seeing that each one of them have a match, a pair. And by the end of it, maybe he's smart. He said it doesn't take him all the way to the end of it. But somewhere along the line, he's Wait a second, I'm missing something here. You know, and almost like, oh. And it says there in verse 20, there was not found a helper fit for him. So God brought Adam to the end of himself for this need. And that is important in our first point that we're gonna make in just a little bit about recognizing your wife in that area and not taking her for granted. But I'll mention that, I'm getting ahead of myself. Verse 21, so the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man. And while he slept, took one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh. And the rib that was the Lord God had taken from the man, he made into a woman and brought her to the man. Then the man said, I love this part, when I studied, I preached through Genesis 1 through 11 several years ago when I studied this and got into the Hebrew. This is such a cool passage. Some of your Bibles will actually separate this and sort of like show it as almost like a poetic type of thing. I think it's more like a song. It says, this is at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh and she shall be called woman because she was taken out of man. The English doesn't do it justice because the Hebrew was almost like, ah, Look, bones, my bones, flesh, my flesh. I mean, he's just ecstatic here. It's like he's singing a praise to God like, I have one for me. You know, he is so pumped. He is so like, you know, just that first look, whenever you saw the woman that would be your wife, like, you know, you think about the cartoon, jaw hits floor, the tongue rolls out, that kind of thing. All right. He is excited. And then you have a little narrative comment from Moses about what we have just read. And this is huge. Verse 24, therefore, a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife and they shall become one flesh. We went to the marriage retreat in February this year, and it was phenomenal. But I think, I can't remember which speaker it was, but one of them talked about this verse and spent quite a bit of time talking about this matter of holding fast. And I think that was, it was so good. And if you are interested, I'll try to get you in link with that message, because it's so good what he was talking about there, about the idea of holding fast. But it says they'll become one flesh. And then verse 25, and this, if you grew up in church, this was one of those verses where when the preacher read it, you were like, you know, they were naked, all right? But look at it, let's not miss this. And the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed. Now, what do our eyes normally gravitate to? It's like, oh, the word naked. But I think the important, the key hinge on that verse is the last word, ashamed. They were not. ashamed. That was their state, and they weren't. Think about that. What does that imply? That the intention and the divine purpose of the creation of marriage was that that one-flesh union, that intimacy, one-on-one, knowing each other, fully being known physically and emotionally and personally, did not have shame attached to it. They were out of shame. But what happens next? It's the very next verse. Now the serpent. And what do we have unfold in chapter 3? Shame. Yeah. We have the fall, and what is the first action they do? Adam and Eve. What is the first action they do after they eat? They go to try to find a way to cover their shame. And so what we have happen is that right there we have shame enter the marriage relationship. And it's fascinating that the way that it's entered. It is entered through the realm of their physical knowing each other. They're like, they're together. They're the only two people on the face of the planet. And what did they feel like they needed to do? Cover up from each other. Oh, how? frustrating and sad and just damaging the shame of sin is, especially in a marriage relationship. I say this, I've been, this is something, this is a subject, guys, that I've actually been studying, and I don't know, it's been toying around in my mind of really doing a comprehensive study. several lesson series about about this whole subject the ins and outs of all of it and And some of the things I've meditated on and one of the things as we get into this talk a little bit is I've thought about this if we go back to the first statement, right the first statement was Christians married couples in the church should be having the most amazing sex on the planet, right and I'm thinking what are the barriers to that happening? Now, we could list probably several, but I sort of come down to two main ones, two main ones, two main barriers that keep that from happening. Now, you could say, OK, maybe ignorance, maybe there can be some physical aspects, but I tend to think those are sort of, for somebody who desires to please one spouse, those can be overcome quickly, all right, as marriage goes on. But I tend to find that these are the two barriers that really hinder, especially Christian married couples in this area. The first one is sexual sin. Sexual sin. And we can probably go around the room and make lists like, what types of sexual sin is there that hinders marriage? I mean, what's the most common? Pornography, right? I mean, that's the most common. We live in a time where it's so accessible, it's so in your face. I was listening to a little bit of a, it was like one of those little clips the other day, it sort of caught my attention, about somebody was even talking about, I don't think it was, it was, it might have been like a Joe Rogan clip or something like that, but they were talking about the difference of how pornography has changed, like, in that kind of thing, and it's not, beneficial for us to even go down that road and talk about it. But it's like, it is insane the way that it is put out there, the money that is made, and the effort that is put out there to get to young people. And I'll tell you this, another thing that's a growing statistic in that world, too, is traditionally, especially in the church, it's always been seen as a male problem. That's not the case anymore. More and more statistics and more and more, listen, Counselors that I'm hearing are dealing with issues of just women and, or let me say this, young girls and young boys that are growing up, teenagers, preteen, that are getting addicted to it. It is not a, what's the word, discriminator of persons. I mean they are coming after everything and corrupting people. Alright, sexual sin. What about other sexual sins? So pornography, there's – here's another one, unfaithfulness. That's probably the second sort of popular one that comes to mind. I want you to think about probably not the two popular ones though. I want you to think about what are some other areas of sexual sin that can happen in a marriage? I would say emotional attachments, like emotionally being more connected with. Another person. Another person. That can happen. Just blow your mind. I've seen that happen, not in a homosexual way, but with a spouse and a person of the same sex in a friendship relationship. I've seen that happen. And it damaged the intimacy of the marriage relationship. There was not any type of homosexuality thing going on, dynamic, in that friendship relationship. But it was coming between the marriage relationship. Yeah, and that does what? That brings itself to a sexual sin. What about this? What about, and I'm gonna, this is probably one of the principles that I'm gonna give, but I'm not sure I'll get to it tonight, today. Bargaining. What do you mean by bargaining? Well, I'll only have sex with you if, or, If I do this and this and this, then I can get her to have sex with me. That's sexual sin. Because what is it? It's manipulation. It is not one flesh. It's not being on the same page. It is not being together. So this is things that can damage and bring shame. It is something. Now, here's another aspect. What about this that is brought into the marriage? Think about it this way. I've seen this happen, too, where there may be no pornography use after you're married. There may be no unfaithfulness after you're married. There may be none of this. But this happened with one spouse or maybe both spouses before they met each other, and they bring the shame and damage of that. into the marriage. Talked to a guy one time that just like, I mean, before he was saved, was slept around a lot and really struggled. He didn't have a porn issue, but really struggled with thinking of sex rightly with his wife, with all of those images that he had from his past. Women, the same way. And that brings me to a point. I'm going to take a little parenthetical excursus here. It's not in my notes. But that brings me to an issue that is very popular today. And I hate the name of it, because I think purity is a good thing. But it has been labeled what's called purity culture in the church. And this is a, I'm going to talk about a failure in the church that I wish we can correct with our young people. And that is this. That a lot of people, and some of these are more extreme than others. Some of these situations are more extreme than others. that have grown up in the church and church cultures have only heard of sex as wrong, condemned, sin, sin, sin, sin, sin, stay away from sin, and all in a negative light, and then they get married, and it's like, this is great, and it's hard for them to unpackage all of that in their brain that they've said this is, and so they're like, It causes friction between a husband and wife because they've always been taught, this is wrong, how can I be good? And they have this wrong sense of guilt in the marriage of doing something that's completely right. And I think, where's the failure of the church in that? The failure of the church on that is not teaching appropriately what sex is. If you only condemn it and never explain to your young people, and really, where should this really be happening? In the home, with parents. and explain to him that this is good and something to look forward to, but that God has said this is where the barrier is, I think that we've created a little bit of an issue there. Now, I don't like the term purity culture, because purity is something that is good, and it's a word that we should reclaim. I don't like the fact that it's being used in our culture now with such a negative context, but I get the problem that they're talking about, and it is a problem. Yeah, it's not sent after you're married. Yeah, and I think that you brought up another thing that is just like pandemic in our culture, and that is the idea of people thinking it's okay to just move in and live with each other before marriage, and it's so accepted in our culture. I remember, and this is just an anecdotal type of thing, it's not necessarily like this is the thing that proves the point, but it is sort of interesting to me that this sort of happened when I was engaged To marry in our last year of college, I was working at a grocery store and I worked with a bunch of guys but there was a lady that worked over in the bakery and she was sort of like a mama in the grocery store to all of us employees and she had a daughter that worked in the pharmacy. I never really interacted with the daughter that much, but my manager, you know, was friends with her and that kind of thing. She had just gotten married. But she found out that I had gotten engaged, so I was over there stalking, and she walked by and she was like, hey, I heard that you got engaged. And I was like, yeah. And she was like, that's so exciting. She just wanted to hear about it, hear the story. And I told her, she's like, that's so sweet. And she's like, so are you guys planning on living together before you're married? Uh, no, no, we don't believe in that. And so, no, we won't move in with each other until after we're married. She's like, can I make a recommendation? And I was like, sure. And she said, I really, really highly recommend that you do that. Me and my husband lived together for a year to really find out like, you know, how we're going to react to each other and those types of things in that situation before we get married. And it has been very helpful. And I was like, well, I appreciate your advice, but probably not going to do that. She's like, OK, well, just think about it. I was like, all right. Yeah, yeah, I was trying to be kind. Before I graduated college and quit that job, she was divorced. It is not the proof that it actually works. It doesn't work. So I got through one. Where's my marker? All right. Where did I put my marker? John, this is something else I've thought about a long, long time. I mean, if you listen to how scripture talks about marriage, it talks about bearing the load in your youth and rejoicing the wife of your youth. And a lot of scholars think that marriage was probably pregnant with Jesus around 14. Yeah, I agree. So I'm not saying, hey, we need to get our kids married at 14. But what I will say is this. Kids are, they're not kids, they're young adults. These young adults are sexually mature for a child marrying at 16. If we go back to our grandparents or our great-grandparents, they're marrying at 15, 16, 17 years of age. So the church, The church in today's culture has done the negative message of don't have sex before you're married, don't do sex before you're married. In the Bible's aspect of that, like, guys, I'm just going to be honest with you. When I was 16, an unbeliever, I mean, any girl that moved was kind of like, you know. Well, I just want to be honest. The Bible says it's not about repressing, repressing, repressing. The Bible says if you're burning, get married. And we don't tell what the Bible says on that. Well, and if you're interested in boring cultural studies, I recommend a book to you called The Juvenalization of Christianity. I was a youth pastor for several years, and it wasn't until after I got out of being a full-time youth pastor that I realized I was catering to the problem, actually. There is no framework for the adolescent teenager, not even in the Bible, but even in culture, until the last 120 years ago. 1940 was the first time the word teenager was ever used. Yeah, but adolescent was being used a little bit before then. But it was it's really and it's really American cultural thing that has sort of like branched down to the rest of the world. And that kind of thing. But when you when you go to scripture, I mean, When they went through the Jewish custom of bar mitzvah or something, they were considered adult. My grandparents, my grandma was married at 14, and my grandpa was 16 when they got married. Now, again, I'm not advocating that we take our teenagers and just hitch them up. But my philosophy with young people, especially when I teach them, is not to try to get on their level. My philosophy is, no, you need to be called to maturity. I'll give you something that I heard that I plan on doing with our kids at 13. And I heard a pastor do this with his kids, and I was like, that is awesome. That's what I'm going to do. And he did it at each one of his kids' 13th birthday. And what he did is he made their 13th, not 16, not sweet 16, he made their 13th birthday the big deal. And this is what they did. This is totally off topic. But what this guy did with his kids at 13, I plan on doing it with mine, is that he made their 13th birthday a big deal. One of the things that he did was he took for his son, it was his son that he did first, he took some of the handpicks, some of the men in his church, some of the, even the preachers in his church, and he had them prepare. something to say, like just manly wisdom to give to his son. And they had a dinner at the church, just a small intimate dinner with friends. And his son got to pick what he wanted. They made it about him, but then one by one, these men would come and they would point directly, they would look directly at him and they'd give him advice about being a man. And then he had a celebration somewhere in that week, which led him to do something fun with his friends, and then he took him out one-on-one. And he basically just like talked to him, took him to a nice dinner, and just talked to him about like manhood, and being like, this is what I expect of you now. This is what I don't expect of you now. You know, I'm calling you to manhood. I'm calling you to maturity. And I've talked to Mary about doing that. We plan on doing that with our girls, you know, and Mason as they get to 13, that's, you know, hey, this is where we're calling you to. And again, it's like there's certain things, you know, they can't do, but there's certain things that, you know, they should be being called to think maturely. And if you've noticed, if you've noticed, in fact, there was a session at the last Biblical Counseling Conference about Denny Burke, where he talked about this specifically and had research on this, but if you've noticed, The adolescence or teenage stage was what? Between like 11 or 12 and 18. That's where it started. You know where they're at now? Almost 28, 30 years old. And it keeps getting pushed further from allowing young people to grow up. And it's going to continue. And if you let the, again, this is counterculture. Now, circle back. Sexual sin is one barrier to wonderful, great, God-glorifying sex and marriage. What is the number two that I thought through? That is sexual abuse. Now, I don't know if your minds are like, OK, the wife has been, but the more and more I venture into this category and have done research in this category, it could be either spouse, sometimes both. There is no respect of persons with this as well. And this being carried into a marriage because, and we talk about using the word and the subject of shame here, this brings a lot of, sadly, it brings a lot of shame to a person, an individual. And what ends up happening many times, unless they have had wise, caring people in their life, the person who's been through this, their attitude and their heart, they don't want anybody to know. especially the person they're going to marry. And so what I have found a lot of times, I've talked to even some people, is that they hide this and try to hide this from them. They can go in their marriage and this is going to fix things and they'll be okay. And what they end up finding out is that it actually brings more frustration and more struggles in their marriage. And this is where primarily it ends up being at in the sexual relationship with their spouse. until they realize that they need to talk to them about it and be open. And here's another thing. The spouse who hasn't been abused, alright, the spouse that has been abused, can do much damage towards the abusive spouse if they don't respond right. I don't know, that's like an unfair thing to put on that spouse, but it is sort of the way that it is, and that's one of the reasons why the person who's been abused doesn't want to Tell anybody, because they're afraid of the reaction. They don't want to be looked at from somebody else, especially the one that they love and share a bed with, as damaged. And they're afraid that if they talk to them, and they disclose that to them... But what... Let me ask you this, just a simple question, of understanding this whole dynamic, and why it has met a massive barrier to wonderful sex and essential relationship. What is keeping this from someone? What is it doing? What is it? Is that keeping from someone? If you're keeping this, if this is... Hiding abuse. Yeah, if you're hiding abuse from your spouse, or that spouse is hiding it from you, if that's happening, what is it keeping from happening in the marriage? Interfering with the oneness of the union, what goes back to shame, Genesis. What is the language that is used in Genesis? You go, okay, fall happens, I think it's the end of Genesis 3, It says that Adam and his wife had children. What does it say? New. Now, again, if you grew up in church, you're like, oh, that means new. It says so much. And when your theological understanding grows and you get into that, you realize it's actually so much better word than it says. He knew her. That's what intimacy really is. Most men equate intimacy as this. Intimacy is a knowing them. It is a deep knowledge of their person. Not just physically, but relational. It's knowing them. This becomes a major barrier if one doesn't know about it because they don't know. They don't know. And it breaks down, like Daniel was saying, that one flesh. You're not together. And listen, this is a couple lesson category in itself and understanding that. And I would say if that is something that is in the marriage or that kind of thing, I highly suggest you may need to look at some counseling with working through some of those dynamics, OK? I didn't even make it through all the introduction. That's fine. Yeah. Like I told you, I've been thinking about these things and recording thoughts about these things and reading a lot about this for a little bit now. So all of this is in my head and I'm like, oh, I want to teach somebody about it because I really think that this is a, I guess maybe in a way I know not everybody's like me, right? Not everybody's like me, but I can look back at the last 14 years of our marriage and think, and if I knew some of these things, it would have saved us some headache along the way. And it's really like where we're at right now. I'm not trying to like boast or anything, but God has been so gracious in this area for us. And so it's like, you know, somebody who's got the bread and wants to share it with somebody else, you know, and that's, that's sort of my burden. And, uh, I know that there's other men, it's like they're having the most dynamic sex life, whatever, you know, hold on. But I'm taking a bet that maybe there might be one, It's not there. And so I want to try to encourage you and point you to God's word as much as I can. I did want to cover three components of a sexual life of a Christian married person next time, and then we'd get into the biblical principles of sex and look at 1 Corinthians 7, 1 through 6 was the passage. But we will do that next month. And so you can tell the other guys that weren't there, you know, he didn't cover it all. So you can come next time. I'll say this. I did get past those two points that I put on there. I did recommend, if that is an issue, then reach out with counseling. I'll tell you this. One resource that I have read that I thought was absolutely fantastic that actually is the only thing that I've ever come across that deals with both of those at the same time. And the author does a masterful job of going back and forth. I highly recommend it. It's not a long book. It's about 120 pages. It's called Making All Things New by David Pallison. And he goes – in each chapter, he goes back and forth with speaking to the sexual sinner and the sexually abused. And the gist of the book is about getting them or getting you to the point of how seeing Christ's redemption, not just in our salvation. how it can redeem that aspect whether you've been hurt or abused or whether you've been you've sinned and that kind of thing and so it is a beautiful book it's a fantastic book I highly recommend it it's called making all things new by David Pallison and I'll just be honest with you if you come and see me I'm gonna tell you to get the book and we're gonna go through the book together so but it's that good but That's a resource that I highly recommend. He has given a couple lectures on it. I think John Piper did a conference years ago called Sanctified Sex or something like that. And while a lot of the addresses by some of the speakers have to do with even cultural things and Biblical understanding of homosexuality and that kind of thing, a couple of the addresses deal head-on with the sexual relationship, and Powlison actually gave an address in that conference on the subject of that book, and you can go listen to it. I think you can find all of that entire conference resource on DesiringGod.com.