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Honest to God Series
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Welcome to what we're calling the "Honest to God" series—the last week in a series addressing all the issues that everybody experiences and struggles with but nobody talks about. This week, we're tackling Jesus and sexual brokenness.
Before we dive in, I want to celebrate something incredible. Two weeks ago, in one weekend at Lake Point, we baptized 670 people. If you're starting a journey with us, know that we're in this with you. Welcome to the team.
A heads up on content: This is a PG-11 message. If you have not paid attention to last week's service, the e-news, or your campus pastor, this is your final warning. If you don't want to have certain conversations on the way home, this is your last chance to step out.
You are probably living in the most sexually degraded, pornified culture that has ever existed in human history. You are part of a failed experiment that is locking the vast majority of people in this generation into slavery, degradation, and ruin. My job is to take the whole word and apply it to the issues of the whole world. Our culture is bringing this at you and your kids head-on, so I'm going to address it head-on. This will be real and practical: How do we live free from this thing?
We're going verse by verse through John chapter 8, the story of the woman caught in adultery. Before we begin, there's an elephant in the room: the earliest manuscripts do not include John 7:53 through 8:11.
When you read your Bible, understand your Bible. This passage is not in the earliest Greek manuscripts that have been recovered. The first manuscripts this passage appears in were Latin manuscripts from around the 3rd century. There are two schools of thought on why:
First, early church father Augustine believed this story was in the originals, but the early church pulled it out because they feared people would read about Jesus's grace to a sexual sinner and start having affairs en masse. I think he's wrong.
Second, church father Jerome believed this wasn't in John's original manuscript, but the story was true and famous. John himself said he only recorded a tiny fraction of what Jesus did and said. We lived in a massively literate culture; they lived in a predominantly illiterate, verbal culture. Jerome thought everyone knew this story, it was passed from disciple to disciple over generations, and eventually they wrote it down. Church history tells us that John discipled Polycarp, who discipled Irenaeus, who spoke Latin—and remember, the earliest manuscripts this is found in were in Latin. I think this story got passed down over a couple generations, it's definitely true, and then they got it in all the scripts.
Either way, it's a real story about what Jesus did, and we're going to preach it.
But Jesus went to the Mount of Olives. At dawn, he appeared again in the temple courts where all the people gathered around him, and he sat down to teach them. (John 8:1-2)
In this culture, all the people listening to the Bible teacher would stand out of respect while he sat down.
The teachers of the law and the Pharisees brought in a woman caught in adultery. They made her stand before the group and said to Jesus, "Teacher, this woman was caught in the act of adultery." (John 8:3-4)
Notice: she was caught in the act of adultery. Here's my question: Where's the guy? Adultery is a team sport. If she was caught in the act, they saw him. But they only bring the woman. Where's the dude? This is a big deal, and we're going to see why in a moment.
In the Law, Moses commanded us to stone such women. Now what do you say? (John 8:5-6)
This is true. In the Old Testament, people caught in adultery were commanded to receive a death sentence.
They were using this question as a trap in order to have a basis for accusing him. (John 8:6)
The Pharisees hated Jesus because Jesus was the embodiment of grace and truth, while they were all rules, all truth, no grace, no compassion. Jesus was drawing crowds away from them, and it bothered them. They tried to create a heads I win, tails you lose scenario to ruin Jesus's ministry no matter which way he answered.
Here's the dilemma:
The Old Testament completely condemned this woman to death. If Jesus said, "No, don't stone her. Show compassion," the Jewish people would have said, "He's not the Messiah because he doesn't obey the Old Testament scriptures." Jesus would lose his entire ministry.
But if Jesus said, "Let's stone her," there's a problem: Israel was under Roman occupation. The Roman Empire had passed laws that you could not pass a death sentence on someone without permission from Rome. If Jesus had commanded stoning, he would have broken Roman law, gotten arrested, and eventually been killed by Rome—losing his ministry before it truly began.
Either way: trap. But Jesus has a response.
Some of you might be shocked that according to the Old Testament, this woman deserved a death penalty. She did. Look at these passages:
If a man commits adultery with another man's wife, both the adulterer and the adulteress are to be put to death. (Leviticus 20:10)
If a man is found sleeping with another man's wife, both the man who slept with her and the woman must die. You must purge the evil from Israel. (Deuteronomy 22:22)
There were not a lot of repeat offenders on adultery in ancient Israel. It was generally one and done.
You may ask: Why was the Old Testament so severe about sexual immorality? Because sexual immorality kills everything that it touches, and you do not take it as seriously as you probably should.
When you see the term "sexual immorality" in your Bible, the Greek word being translated is porneia—the same word from which we get "pornography." This is a junk drawer term in Judaism that refers to any sexual expression outside of God's Genesis 2 ideal: all sexual expression happening within the confines of covenant marriage.
There are three views on what sex is that Christians bring to the table:
First, some people say sex is gross—a necessary evil to be avoided. They get into marriage and it's still gross and icky.
Second, our culture swings the other way. They don't view sex as gross; they view it as a god. Your entire identity is your sexual attraction. It's supposedly impossible for anybody to exercise restraint. It becomes an idol.
Third, the Bible teaches that God created sex as a gift—not just for procreation but for recreation. God could have made reproduction happen any way he wanted. Instead, he finishes creating everything, looks at a man and woman, and says, "I've got one more really good idea." He creates sexuality within marriage as a gift.
God's definition of marriage: One biological man with one biological woman in a covenant marriage for a lifetime. This is the only place where acceptable sexual expression can take place.
For Christ followers and disciples, here's what the Bible forbids:
God wants heart transformation, not just behavior transformation.
If you're over 16 and have done even one of these things—including just lust of the eyes or emotional fantasizing in your heart, even just one time in your life—raise your hand right now. The ground is level at the foot of the cross. This message is for all of us.
You'll hear Christians say, "All sin is the same. All sin is equal. It's just sin is sin." Actually, that's not what the Bible says.
Flee from sexual immorality. All other sins a person commits are outside the body. But whoever sins sexually sins against their own body. (1 Corinthians 6)
This sin is different. All sin is equally wrong, but not all sins are equally damaging. This particular sin has different consequences, different shame, different condemnation that the enemy heaps on it.
All sin is equally wrong, but not all sins are equally damaging. Sexual sin carries distinct consequences, shame, and condemnation that other sins do not.
Flee from sexual immorality. All other sins a person commits are outside the body. But whoever sins sexually sins against their own body. (1 Corinthians 6)
The pornography industry is now a $172 billion global enterprise, with $68 billion generated in America alone. The pornography industry generates more revenue than the NFL, NBA, and MLB combined. The largest consumers are minors ages 12-17, and porn producers increasingly target adolescents. The number one pornography search term globally is the word "teen."
One major website reported 4.3 billion hours of pornography watched in a single year—equivalent to 500,000 years of viewing on that site alone. This matters because sexual sin is uniquely damaging to your own body.
Pornography rewires your neural patterns. Sexuality produces dopamine—the chemical that creates a rush. Like all addictions, however, the same images stop producing the same dopamine levels over time. You must seek increasingly extreme forms to achieve the same effect.
This escalation has severe consequences. Regular pornography usage distorts your expectations:
Pornography will kill your marriage. It creates impossible expectations that no real spouse can meet.
The reward centers of the brain are closely connected to the part that processes violence. Neurologists say, "What fires together wires together." The brain begins to fuse sexuality and violence together.
God created sexuality as an expression of intimacy, affection, love, and oneness. But through pornography consumption, the parts of your brain processing violence and sexuality begin to fuse. Eighty-eight percent of pornography scenes include violence towards women.
This represents a form of reverse discipleship—satanic training in how to think about sex and women.
In a recent study of 16-to-18-year-olds, nearly every minor learned how to have sex by watching pornography—not through godly conversations with Christian parents or Scripture, but through demonic content. This fundamentally shapes how they think about sex.
Young women in these studies reported being pressured to perform acts learned from pornography: playing out scripts their partners had watched, being coerced into uncomfortable positions, faking responses, and consenting to unpleasant, violent, or painful acts. All research shows direct correlation between pornography consumption and sex trafficking, violence toward women, and rape culture.
Pornography is not victimless. When you engage in using pornography—and it is a drug—you are tacitly endorsing the brokenness and abuse that created the performers. Every actress in pornography has a story: an absent or abusive father, sexual assault as a child, a drug dealer who kept her high. Your consumption says you're grateful for her abuse and brokenness.
Joshua Broom, now a pastor who escaped the pornography industry, points out that approximately 30% of his friends from that industry are now dead. Pornography kills people.
The real problem with pornography is not that it shows too much of a woman—it's that it shows too little. You're looking at a woman with hopes, dreams, and a soul, and all you can see is her body. Pornography disciples you to devalue women in every area of your life.
Jesus went everywhere making women feel safe and dignified. He valued and lifted them up. His presence communicated to everyone: you are valuable, and you deserve to be treated as valuable. We are being discipled out of the image of Christ and shaped by what we consume.
Many Christians don't understand that God does not want cohabitation. Here's what the data shows:
The more sexual partners someone has before marriage, the less likely they are to remain faithful in marriage. This should be obvious: If they won't respect their marriage before they enter it, why would they respect it after?
Ancient Eskimos would kill wolves that attacked villages using a specific method. They would sharpen a large knife razor-sharp, then dip it in blood and freeze it repeatedly until the blade was encased in layers of frozen blood like a popsicle. They'd bury the knife hilt-first in the ground.
When wolves came, their sensitive smell attracted them to the blood. They would innocuously lick the frozen blood popsicle, licking back and forth over and over. Eventually, the ice numbed the wolf's tongue, causing it to lose all feeling.
As the wolf continued licking, it eventually licked through the blood popsicle to the razor-sharp blade beneath. It began running its tongue over and over the sharp blade—but because the nerves were desensitized, it felt nothing. As its tongue bled, the wolf smelled its own blood but didn't recognize it as its own. This sent it into a feeding frenzy, licking faster and faster, more aggressively, shredding its tongue into ribbons.
Eventually, the wolf bled to death and died.
This is a perfect picture of what giving yourself over to lust and sexual immorality does to you. It numbs you. In your excitement, you keep going back to the very thing that is shredding your soul.
You must make a decision ahead of time so your sinful flesh doesn't have the chance to gravitate toward sin. The Bible says:
Make no provision for the flesh.
When your appetite goes up, your judgment goes down. This is why you don't go to the grocery store hungry.
If you're single and dating, predecide with your partner what boundaries you will never cross. When Jan and I were dating, we made these decisions: we would never be alone together; our dates would be in public places. Decide ahead of time what physical boundaries you will maintain.
To parents: I am begging you for your children's sake—do not give unrestricted smartphone access to younger children. You may think you're giving your kids access to the world, but you're actually giving the world access to your kids. Some pornography websites spend $4.3 million per day on advertising. Guess who they're targeting? Your children.
Giving an unrestricted smartphone to a 14-year-old is equivalent to putting porn magazines in his bedroom closet and saying, "Hope you don't look at these tonight."
For married couples, the Bible says:
Do not deprive each other except perhaps by mutual consent and for a time so that you may devote yourselves to prayer. Then come together again so that Satan will not tempt you because of your lack of self-control. (1 Corinthians 7:5)
If you're praying that much, then perhaps. But the principle is clear.
The only legitimate source of sexual intimacy is your spouse. There is no other legitimate source.
To wives: You are the only clean drinking water your husband can access. Sometimes he gets thirsty. If your marriage is characterized by constant refusal—"Not tonight, it's not our anniversary or Valentine's Day"—this isn't going to work well.
To husbands: If you're using this verse as a club, you've already lost. Win her heart. Take her on a date. Do something meaningful. Put effort into the relationship.
What 1 Corinthians 6 and 7 are really saying is: We need Pentecostal marriages—lots of tongues and laying on of hands.
The Bible says to fight the devil, but it says to flee sexual immorality. I implement this in my life with these practices:
Some may call this obsessive. I call it happily married. And you know who likes these boundaries? My wife Jana likes them. So I'm all in.
You don't have to implement these exact practices, but you need to implement something. You need accountability, transparency, and barriers to temptation.
This is the core purpose of this entire series. Why the series is called "Honest to God" is because the moment you get honest, you get free.
If you will not be honest, you cannot be free. But if you get honest, you will be free.
Sin is like a fungus. It grows in the dark, but it dies in the light.
You are as sick as your secrets. If you're in captivity to any kind of slavery—including sexual slavery—understand this: the depth of your confession always equals your level of freedom.
You must get honest. Relentlessly honest. This means you need to curate groups of godly men and women around you who know your struggle and can support your freedom.
Number five is where we land: you've got to receive grace—not just receive it once, but learn to breathe it. Breathe grace in from God, and then breathe grace out towards people.
Consider what Jesus does with the woman caught in adultery. Jesus bent down and started to write on the ground with his finger. No one knows exactly what Jesus wrote, but here's what happened next.
When they kept questioning him, Jesus straightened up and said to them:
"Let any one of you who is without sin cast the first stone."
There's important context here. In the Old Testament, if you made an accusation against someone that resulted in a death sentence, you had to throw the first stone when that person was stoned. This meant you were on the hook for murder if your accusation ever proved false. So Jesus's words carried real weight.
When Jesus said this, they began to leave one at a time—the older ones first. The older you get, the more sin you've committed. It's just time. Until only Jesus was left with the woman still standing there.
Jesus straightened up and asked her:
"Woman, where are they? Has nobody condemned you?" "No one, sir." "Then neither do I condemn you. Now go and leave your life of sin."
What did Jesus write on the ground? There are theories. Some suggest he wrote the names of the men's past sins—sins requiring Old Testament capital punishment. But I believe something deeper happened.
In the Old Testament, there are only two times when the finger of God appears and begins to write:
I believe Jesus, using the finger of God just as in those sacred moments, wrote out the commandments those men had broken—commandments that, by their own law, required their death:
And I think every man there felt the Holy Spirit testify in their hearts: Guilty. Guilty.
Then Jesus said, "Let he who is without sin cast the first stone." Was there anybody there without sin? Yes, there was one: Jesus Christ.
God made him who knew no sin to be sin for us, so that we might become the righteousness of God. He was the spotless Lamb who came to take away the sins of the world. He was the only one who actually had the right to pick up a stone and condemn that woman.
But instead, Jesus looked at her and said, "Listen, if they don't condemn you, I refuse to condemn you." Why? Because the Son of Man did not come to condemn the world. He came to save the world.
And yes, the Old Testament required a death penalty. But Jesus was saying to that woman: Everyone who wants to condemn you can't. And the only one who could won't—because I came to save you. I'm setting my face toward the cross. I'm going to take your place. I'm going to be crucified and die in your stead so that you don't have to.
Some of you, this whole message about sexual brokenness has been crippling your soul. You're asking, "Who would ever want me? Who could take me?"
Jesus Christ, the Savior of the world, wants you. He wants to forgive you, redeem you, and set you free. And he can do it.
Here's what I want to pray for you right now. That you would take aggressive steps to live free from this. That we would be a church full to the brim with consecrated, pure, holy men and women of God.
