God's Design for Sex and Marriage

Automatically transcribed — lightly cleaned for readability. Wording is the preacher’s own.

It's been a scene wall, really exciting, really exciting season, both Thanksgiving and I, and the Christmas Golden giveaway are two great opportunities for us to show, or to express, to have a tangible expression of God for our community. And we don't want to be a church that just lives so insulated here, and those around us are able to experience the joy, the peace, the love of the gospel, the message that we carry. So we love the opportunity during this time of year, and this time of year really, to express that sort of community here. Holiday this keeps us sort of video out which you can do to do that so are you ready this morning Yeah, who ready?

I know it's so good. Good job. Am I ready? Shari. Is Shari ready? I don't know. Shari. My son is on the soundboard this morning, so the friends of the like,

No, you know, I really love this about that. I have been more apprehensive this morning, and I am not apprehensive because I didn't come to talk about sex. I don't.

I think I'm feeling apprehensive because of how really deeply complicated and complex and nuanced the human experience is, especially when it comes to considering who we are, not just as men or women or husbands of life, but who we are sexually and how

That comes together to be in God honoring this pressure. And my heart ultimately is like, I have a humble pastor and I'm here for you and I love really aware

That many other stories contain experiences, abuse, trauma, baggage, shame, that's wrapped up in your sexuality or your sexual life, and that, that's not lost on me. And so I think the reason that I approach this through some apprehension is just wanting to ensure that you know how much you are loved and how

Nothing that we say here or nothing that the word communicates is communicated in a vacuum. Meaning that it doesn't discount or diminish the real life experiences and situations, circumstances that you have dealt with people, sexually speaking. But what I do believe is that we have a wider responsibility, not only as a pastor, to be as well aware of your experience, but also to faithfully communicate what I believe God to work in the case of what it means to be a sexual person.

So, can I, Brady? I think so. I think I was more nervous about everything that I wanted to say, but I didn't feel like everybody thought I had to say this morning, than I am on all the things that I can't believe you said. So we started off this whole series in marriage with this one basic premise, and that is that marriage is Bob's idea. Meaning that we didn't come up with the idea of marriage and then ask if God would be thought about it or ask God to give us some pointers or some winning markers.

God created the covenant of marriage, the ideal of marriage. And because God has created it, God makes the rules. God sets the standards God places the foundations on what marriage is and what marriage is now despite any impaction that we might make maybe marriage in 2027 is more like this than it is like this and if you have anything

As we increase our in-dependence and our connection from what God has said and how God has designed all creation to be, marriage and sexuality included, we have thought that will bring us to a place of freedom and what we have seen is that it has brought our culture kind of to its main disability in this, all right? So not only is marriage God's idea, sex is God's idea.

It is not something that we created. It is not something that we made up. It is not something that we have designed. Just like marriage is God's idea, sex is also God's idea. And so just like God gives you the following, the boundaries, the direction, the meaning, and ideas of marriage, God also basically define the boundaries, the meaning, and the direction of our sex bodies. The reality is that you and I, we were not born as bled-slates sexually.

We have been given so the lie that our sexuality, and we are kind of like bled-slates sexually, and we give the things whatever picture that they want or that we feel most like drawn to, what is most comfortable or that brings the most pleasures for us. But we were not born as these kind of like light slates. We were born with a sexual purpose. We were born

With a design for this specific expression of sexual agony. And the more that we fight that mentally, emotionally, spiritually, or physically, the more active we are to the advantage of our own souls and to those that we have sexual experiences with.

We have installed this line in our culture that our sexuality is relatively fluid, right? Meaning that there are no mental rules.

Sociality is fluid and it's open, no rules to it, it's all about, it's all self-expression. Because in that fluidity, that fluidity is subjective.

Meaning that when I express myself sexually is not the same way that you do, what I am attracted to is the same thing that you are. We can make up our own rules, and not only is that true of this objective sexual experience true, it's actually something to be celebrated, is what the Buddha says.

We should celebrate the idea that you can do anything that you want sexually and there are no rules, and don't worry, it's not going to be really damaged here.

It's not just anything about getting your life. It's not going to tie anything up into emotional or spiritual loss. All of your relationships are going to be really good and God-honoring and growing up the joy and the purpose of your life, as long as you just follow your heart.

Or your body or your desire. And what becomes more, I think, poignant about the way in which the culture lies to us about the relative fluidity or subjectivity of our sexuality, is that we have a worldly culture that is really antagonistic to anyone or any attempt, really, to describe the creator's design and desire for sexual life. And that gets labeled as aggressive or hateful or prudish.

And so not only is there this cultural environment that tries to express sexuality with no rules or your own rules, but at any time, any set of boundaries or admonition, actually sex really has to take the divine purpose, is seen as a negative thing.

See, most of our culture has bought into at least some of these types of lies about sexuality. You and I are notwithstanding.

It would be foolish to not consider how you and I have been affected by the ways in which culture promotes, talks about, and mannerizes sexual life. And that is really, that's, we, not only has most of the culture bought that line, it's hard to escape the ways in which the cultural life observes has magnified brokenness in our world.

And this is not intended to be like the laundry list of all the things that we should be more passionate about when others, but just about getting recognition of the cultural reality when it comes to sex and sexual disbursion that we live in or endow, that is a byproduct of the lie that we have been sold about sex. I'm talking about everything for confusion, around gender and sexuality,

To the glorification of God's duty in the name of freedom, to things like transgenderism and homosexuality, to acting with shows like I've

Truly never seen it, but seen an article on a show called Temptation Island, Where they put couples on and idled together and put them in situations where people of the success try and tempt that danger unfitfulness

And like companies are buying sponsorship and advertising slots and the little it just was like glorification of this sexual expression that just creates willingness

This as there's seemingly there's seemingly like smaller variations of this that we don't have just come to accept and expect like the soft horror pornography that we see absolutely that we almost can't escape as we stroll further. When did this become a part of what it meant to be connected to our community?

It would be a real disservice to not mention Pornite on your feet as one more of a twisted perversion of what it means to be a sexual human being.

If you're not aware, Pornite on your feet is one of the largest industries in the internet age.

The last time I used to study in Iceland, I think in 2024, so two years ago, where pornography was a dynasty, and it gets a 5 billion dollars in history. This is online pornography.

Protonometry dictumizes sexual desire and sexual expression. It destroys, over time, the actual physical pain and satisfaction that exists within a true sexual relationship. It makes sex transactional rather than commensal. It decriminalizes abusive forms of sex. Primacy is primarily consumptive, meaning we don't have to give any of our self to it. We just take it. We just take and take and take. So it feeds this consumptive, selfish appetite in our lives.

And it encourages emotional disassociation during the actual act of sadness with our husbands and our wives. Brain research has shown that compulsive pornography use lunges up the same LaGuard circuits in our brains as drug addiction.

And many people find they can't stop musing even when they want to. And so this is just one more sample of how we've been so alive about what it means to be a sexual person, freedom,

Fluidity, subjectivity, make your own rules, no one can tell what to do or how to feel or how it has seeped down into levels of brokenness in culture and our own selves, that we would be foolish not to recognize is at least in some ways part of our story.

And in the same way, in the same way, I believe you hear this. We can hear and believe and understand and see how the brokenness of sexual expression has touched each one of us.

It has twisted our own lives or our own relationships. And then, at the same time, simultaneously walking, holding the reality of unsexual worthiness we can grasp on the hope of the gospel. That's it, as Jesus has come to heal,

To restore, to step free. Those who experience happiness, not just in the like esoteric spiritual way, but in a very real way that God that Jesus has come and the hope of the gospel the healing hope of the gospel the redemptive hope of the gospel the future hope of the gospel has come to address the virginity of the church. Jesus wants to heal you. Jesus wants to set you free. Jesus wants to redefine what it means for you to be a sexual person, to live with sexual desire, to be in relationship with people that you may or may not be having sex with. Listen, ultimately, I want you to walk away this morning from this message, not weighed down with the reminder or the memory of sexual shame or brokenness that you carry, but I want you to walk away full of hope that there is another way to live,

That there is another way to believe. You don't have to live enslaved to desires, that are selfish and consumptive. You don't have to live burdened with shame over what you've done or how you've lived. You don't have to carry what damaging or abusive ways sex has been used against you. It doesn't have to be that way. Even even in our sexuality god wants to set us free to new life in him.

But part of that process is embracing an understanding of sex that sits outside of the fluid, subjective ways that I want to think about it and what I want to practice.

Part of experiencing healing in the long term is accepting that God does have something to say about what it means to be a sexual being,

And to trust that what he says is the best thing for you. So I have a, like a few, what I will call like, or what I'm just going to consider, is four foundational truths to sex, as it exists in the context of context of marriage. All right. So, number one, sex has been created by God to be expressed between one man, and one woman in lifelong covenant marriage with one another.

This is ultimately at its base and most foundational level that sex has been designed by God.

Sex has been designed by God to be the expressive act that happens between one man and one woman in the context of covenant marriage.

Number two, sex is the sign of the marriage covenant between husband and wife. Meaning like when we, we've talked a lot about covenant and talk about how covenant is for lack of a better term, an agreement, right? There are stipulations to that agreement. And often those covenants are given signs or symbols that represent the promises that have been made, right? As a, for instance, God promised Noah that he would never destroy the whole earth again through flood. He made a covenant with him. I make covenant with you and with all of creation to never do this again. And I am going to give you a sign that reminds you of the covenant that I have made. And the sign was what? The rainbow, right? And so every time we see a rainbow in the sky, what do we say? Oh, hey, look, kids, that's once again, God is showing us the sign. He's reminding us of the covenant promise that he has made to never destroy the earth by flood again. Sex is the covenant sign or is the sign of the covenant between husband and wife.

And so every time a husband and a wife have sex. They are celebrating and expressing and being reminded of the decision that they have made before God to say, I choose you and I choose only you.

It is the, the sign of the covenant, the sex is the sign of the covenant is the defining expressive factor in a marriage relationship. And what I mean by that is this, is like there, there is something, there are things that separate my relationship with my wife from my relationship with another woman.

Be it a friendship or like whatever right and the defining factor of what separates my relationship with my wife from other women is that we I have expressed, I have a covenant with my wife that has been expressed through sex.

And that is different from every other relationship that exists in my life. That is the defining feature or factor about it. That is the thing that sets it apart from all other relationships.

Number three, sex is meant to build and strengthen the bond of emotional and spiritual intimacy between husband and wife. That sex is not just a physical act, but sex is meant as a gift from God to be a, supernatural, miraculous uniting of two people all the way to the point where the scripture describes it as two people becoming one flesh.

Meaning that there is something like, what does that even mean? I don't know what it means. And no one really knows what it means, except that it had, that baked into that is this kind of like supernatural, miraculous unity that happens when husband and wife come together, where two flesh are being made one, a bond and an intimacy is created, that Jesus himself says, let no man separate.

Why? Because man didn't create it. It was created by supernatural divine intervention in the act of consummation that happens in sex.

So sex is meant to both build and strengthen the bond of emotional and spiritual intimacy between husband and wife.

This is why it becomes an intentional decision and a act of repentance and healing and freeing from the Lord that is necessary,

To free, I don't really love this term, but I think you'll know what I mean, but to free ourself from soul ties of people that we have had sexual experiences with that are not our husband and wife. Because in the act of sex, something is created spiritually. It is not just a physical transaction. Something happens deeper than we can see or even understand in the spiritual realm that creates a type of intimacy that if not submitted, surrendered, and repented to of the Lord, we'll follow you into even your healthy relationships.

Number four, sex was designed for the conception of children and sex was designed intentionally for physical satisfaction and pleasure.

I could have set my watch to that. And listen, yes, celebrate that. Celebrate, yeah, amen to that, right? Amen to that. Because listen, here's just the raw truth of it.

Pleasure and satisfaction did not necessarily have to be a part of sex. God chose to attach pleasure and satisfaction to it because he desires us to experience it as something pleasurable and satisfying.

Not because of just some like biological mystery does it happen? No, it is because of the design of sex that God has given to us.

That God desires it to be pleasurable. That God desires it to be satisfying physically for us.

And so the question then often comes to like, well, I mean, geez, this design for this, talking about God's design for sex, it seems pretty repressive.

Seems pretty prudish. If I wanted to live in a little house in the prairie land, I would go do that.

Like, I think I would just be so much more happy if I could just live in the fluidity and subjectivity of sexual experience whenever I wanted to.

That is generally what is thought. Now, I came across an interesting article, by a non-Christian, and not even was it like just non-Christian, but they are like a, kind of like a...

There's something, right? There's something. But, a publication known as The Atlantic, I'm sure you've all heard about it. It's a magazine that comes out or a periodical that comes out. And The Atlantic, it's a far kind of like left-wing.

Not Christian, not religious in really anyway organization. They did a research project basically saying like, who is experiencing the most, satisfaction and frequency of sexual relationships? So who is having the most sex and who is having the best sex? And the author started out by talking about his bias and his bias was that young people living in large urban areas who were, just coming to express themselves sexually were probably going to be the ones who were having the most sex and the most satisfying sex. And what they found was not only was that not true, but it was a completely unsuspected demographic of people that are having the most sex and the most satisfying sex. And that is, I'll just read it. According to our new report published today by the Institute for Family Studies, no group of Americans seems to be having more sex and more satisfying sex than married men and women who regularly attend a place of worship.

They go on to say, we hypothesized. They hypothesized, right? Because like, how could this be?

We hypothesized that when marriage and sex are endowed with a sense of sacredness, and the family-friendly values found in faith, they are both more likely to be satisfying.

What do you know? They could have just come here and had told them that straight from the get-go, right? They go on to talk a little bit more, and they said this at the end, which I think is even more interesting. It says, they help make the stresses of family life, like faith practice, helps make the stresses of family life more manageable, which may help explain why the believers in our study who pray daily, have 1.29 times higher odds of sexual satisfaction than those who do not regularly pray.

Measurable. You want to have better sex and more sex come to church twice a month and pray with your spouse.

Listen, I'm just the messenger. I'm just the messenger here. But amen. Right? But amen. Listen, they offer several hypotheses for why this is, but ultimately in the article itself, they missed the bullseye altogether. The one point that we all know they don't know is that married couples who pursue godly sexuality like it more and do it more often.

God's design is always the best, god's design is always the best no matter what lie the enemy the culture your friends social media hollywood wants to tell you god's design is always the best, even the liberal anti-god media is admitting it the sexual revolution has,

Failed us. Now it is, I believe, increasingly rare to bring no sexual baggage whatsoever into our marriage relationships. I understand that. I know that's a reality. And it can be difficult to navigate healthy, godly sexual practice in marriage when, like we said, it collides with sexual brokenness. I want to live, I want to have a godly sexuality in my marriage. I want to be pursuing God's design for this, but I'm also recognizing that I'm bringing in this stuff that either I did or that was done to me or that I just believe. And I'm bringing in like that brokenness and the truth of God's word are like crashing into one another. And it's kind of hard to navigate what it means then to, to have an expressive and godly sexuality in that reality. And I'm aware of those complexities. This message is not necessarily about navigating through all of them with a nuanced lens, but, but rather about proclaiming that there is a sexual design for marriage that looks much different than the world upholds.

And despite pleas from my wife and family, we're going to do a part two next week. We will, we will do a part two because just as I was preparing this, like I, I cut out more than is actually here. Right. Like, and I, I don't feel, I, I don't feel like that it's responsible, as a pastor to leave some questions hanging as we kind of work through some of this. So we'll have a part two. I'm going to talk about more of that in just a few minutes.

When we began to talk about the marriage series, we introduced or talked about a couple sets of scriptures that were consistent throughout the Old Testament, the gospels and Paul's, the apostle Paul's letters. And that's primarily what came out of Genesis chapter one and Genesis chapter two. So like in Genesis chapter one, as the, all of creation is being accounted for Genesis chapter one, verse 27. So God created man in his own image. In the image of God, he created him male and female. He created them. So like baked into creation is a diversity, of male and female. Like that is, that, that is the, that is the limit to which God has expressed gender and sexuality in creation. And he has called those things good and very good.

Later in Genesis chapter 2, when the writer begins to talk about how male and female come together, in a way to express that sexuality with one another, it says this in Genesis chapter 2, Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh. It says in verse 25, and the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed.

So this is really consistent throughout the old testament into the gospels jesus says this very same thing in matthew chapter 19 paul says this very same thing in first corinthians chapter six and seven all right so this is a consistent ethic or value of what it means to be male and female husband and wife sexual relationship is that the two have become one flesh, interestingly here in the Genesis passage, can we go, in this one right here, is this in, verse 25 of chapter two, and the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed. It is the first time that there is a descriptive passage of scripture,

Or a passage of scripture that describes the emotional connection or the emotional goal. For physical sexual expression with your husband or wife.

When the writer here of Genesis says the man and the wife were both naked, he's not just talking about they had no clothes.

Euphemistically speaking, right, he's speaking of how when man and woman, husband and wife, come together in their nakedness, whether they come together and it says in Genesis chapter 3 that Adam knew Eve and they bore a son, or Adam lay with Eve and they bore a son, or Adam, and they were both naked together and they knew no shame. The act of sexual expression or sex with one another as husband and wife is being described here. And not only is it being described, they're talking about how it is processed and experienced in that relationship. And the way that they talk about it is that they were, they were having sex and there was no shame.

There was no baggage that was there. There was nothing that was weighing heavily upon them. There was no sense of like, dirtiness. There was no sense of like, pain, either emotional pain or mental or spiritual or physical pain. There was no sense of like, oh my gosh, like sex is complicated and sex makes me feel a bunch of different ways. And I wish I hadn't done that. Or I wish I hadn't done this. Or I wish this hadn't happened to me. But in its most pure form and most pure example, when God has, gave sexual expression to Adam and Eve, he gave it with the goal of them being able to express it free of shame.

Fully bare, fully seen, fully known by one another. Their physical states matched their emotional connection with one another.

Listen, I believe that what this communicates to us at the very least is that God's design for sexual expression within marriage is openness and freedom from shame.

That at its base level, God's designed for sex in marriage, all things notwithstanding, that God wants you to be able to experience sex with your husband or with your wife in free and total openness and vulnerability, free of any shame or hindrance that comes with the brokenness of humanity.

God has given us bodies and sexual desire, to honor him. It is a way in which we honor the way that we have been created, the purpose by which we have been created for. Now, where do we get this from? Well, we get this from the sense that when we operate,

In line with how God has created us, we intrinsically bring glory and value to the one who has created us, right?

Later in the New Testament, the Apostle Paul, in writing to 1 Corinthians, says this, 1 Corinthians 6, verses 19 through 20, he says, you are, or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God? You are not your own, for you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body. Now, all on its own, when we were thinking like, well, that doesn't have anything to do with it. But if you open up your Bible and you look at 1 Corinthians 6 and 1 Corinthians 7, you will recognize that the entire context of that portion of scripture is talking about our sexual life, our sex life. Both the fleeing from sexual immorality and also some words of wisdom in how that can be expressed within the context of marriage. All right? So Paul says this in the context of sexual expression in marriage, that we were bought with a price. We are not our own. We were bought with a price. So glorify God, praise God, honor God with your body. How do we honor God with our bodies?

By using them in a way and a manner that God has designed them. The context here that Paul's words sit in is the context of sex. The way that you honor and glorify God the most in your marriage.

Is having sex with your spouse. It is hard to escape this reality from Scripture. It is virtually the only descriptor that the Scripture uses to describe, the worship of God in marriage and the intimacy that is created between husband and wife is a sexual relationship.

It doesn't talk about praying together. It doesn't talk about going to worship together. The scripture doesn't talk about doing devotions together the scripture doesn't talk about, serving together this would make a lot easier if it did right the scripture is very clear that when husband and wife come together in sexual relationship with one another they are expressing the gift that God has given specifically to them and it is an honor to God,

It brings glory to God. Paul goes on in these 1 Corinthians chapters, 1 Corinthians 6 and 7, to say this.

1 Corinthians 7, verses 3 through 5, The husband should give to his wife her conjugal rights, and likewise the wife to her husband. For the wife does not have authority over her own body, but the husband does. Likewise, the husband does not have authority over his own body, but the wife does.

Do not deprive one another except perhaps by agreement for a limited time that you may devote yourselves to prayer but then come together again so that satan may not tempt you because of your lack of self-control,

Do you think the god do you think the biblical standard for sexuality and marriage is the same as the standard in the world,

Like you get like listen, when christians try to uphold this standard they get crushed in the world let's just be honest right this is not, this is not like one of those things we're like oh yeah that makes sense yeah yeah your wife's body is actually yours.

Oh, no, no, no, no. Your husband's body actually belongs to you as well. And depriving one another of sex is actually something that spiritually is dangerous for your marriage. And that should only be done under some really limited conditions as described in the scripture. Like you begin to talk about sex in that way

People get really angry right we get really angry and I understand that listen,

God god has given us to one another as a gift, in a selfless approach to marriage right meaning that like if I approach marriage and my relationship with my wife, under the idea that like listen this marriage and this relationship is not just all about me.

Like, no, I'm pretty sure that the scriptures have said that a husband or a man will leave his family, a woman will leave her family, the two will come together and they will be united as one flesh. That there is a inseparability to their covenant bond of marriage that is supernatural and is difficult to express in really any human capacity or way. But we understand at least that there is a depth to it that is like anti-worldly.

And so when I approach marriage from a sense of like, hey, listen, this is not just about me. It's not about me at all. It's about bringing it like, my marriage is about bringing glory to God primarily, but then it's also about serving my wife. About as Christ loved the church, so I love my wife. I give myself up for her.

And so in a selfless approach to marriage, if we're looking at marriage in the context of selflessness, then my body is not just my own.

It's not. It doesn't just belong to me. I have committed it as an offering to the Lord to serve him and to serve my wife in the context of marriage.

My body doesn't belong just to me. My body also belongs to my wife. My wife's body is not hers alone. It also belongs to me. Now listen, people will read this as a possessive statement through the lens of abuse. And people have used it that way, certainly. But the context here is not the possessiveness of man and the abusive,

Motives that can come out of a broken world. The context here is the selflessness that comes from two people who are ready and willing to die to themselves so that they can live in service to one another, to live for one another. So it's not meant to be a possessive statement, but as a statement towards the depth of unity that exists in marriage intimacy between a husband and wife. Two flesh have become one flesh. The reason that I cannot withhold my body from my wife is because it's not just my body.

The two have become one. We share a body in spiritual union with one another as like baked into the covenant of marriage.

Now, Paul is not shy about how this practically plays out in the marriage covenant. He says, do not deprive each other, right? Except by mutual consent and for a time,

Or except perhaps by agreement for a limited time that you may devote yourselves to prayer, but then come together again so that Satan may not tempt you because of your lack of self-control. One commentator said about this passage that Paul's description of the only appropriate time to pause your sexual relationship is to pray.

Now, why don't we deprive our marriages of sex? And this is one of those nuanced questions that we could talk about for hours, right? We can talk about the changing of sexual desire as we age. We could talk about, legitimate physical medical issues that make it difficult to have sex. We could talk about whether or not sex is something that we use authoritatively or authoritarianly in a really unhealthy way. I understand all those dynamics, but like I said, I'm trying to talk about what we see in Scripture, and then we'll come back to those things. Why don't we deprive our marriages of sex? Well, number one is because God wants us to have it.

It is the way in which we express our covenant with one another. God wants us to have it. We don't deprive our marriages of sex because we do not make unilateral or one-sided decisions in a one flesh union. Meaning like I am not the only one that gets to make a decision about whether or not we have sex because this body is not just mine and that body is not just mine. We are one together. And so unless we come together in mutual agreement for a specific purpose, the deprivation of your marriage, of that sexual relationship is spiritually dangerous.

And we're like, what do you mean it's spiritually dangerous? Paul says it's spiritually dangerous. Yeah. Maybe stop having sex for a time so that you can pray, but listen, only for a time, come back together. Why? Because the enemy wants your marriage, because the enemy wants to break intimacy, because the enemy wants to drive a wedge of division between you and your spouse. And if they can begin to do that in the one place where your marriage is the most expressive of God's glory,

Then it'll affect everything else. And so depriving your spouse of sex. Is a way in which you invite spiritual harm upon your home, upon your heart.

Upon your marriage. Now, are there times where we have to talk about like, well, okay, what about then like frequency and sexual desire? Like, again, my biggest regret in this sermon is not having three hours to talk about everything that we could. But listen, we have to just like receive it as it comes to us. Satan is waiting to leverage temptation towards sin. And so according to Paul here when is it appropriate to pause sex well when we are giving ourselves to pray over something specific similar to the way that we would fast from food from a period of time in order to devote ourselves to prayer in that moment we fast from the act of sex with our husband or our wife in order to vote to devote ourselves to prayer for in that specific moment. It is mutual, listen, mutually agreed upon and for a limited time frame.

Do we force sex because the scripture says, do not deprive one another? Absolutely not. Why? Because it's harmful to my own body to force my wife to have sex with me if she does not want to, or she's not feeling well, or because levels of desire are differently. Yeah. I might be able to take, rip this verse out of its context and be like, you cannot deprive me. Your body is mine. And in the same way, show that I have zero understanding of what it means to be a man who gives of himself the way that Christ gave himself for the church.

We don't force sex because it's harmful to my own body, because sex still happens within the context of selfless marriage. And so for me to insist or demand when my spouse is either they're not feeling well or is sick or it's actually an unreasonable ask would be sinful and self-centered.

Two things. Four things. Six things. I'm so sorry I like I don't mean to make fun of it there is healing,

There is healing for brokenness and shame. There is forgiveness and there is a new life in repentance from sin.

The pain that you are experiencing, the shame that you carry, the ways in which sex has been used against you, the abuse you have endured, the baggage that you carry in, Like bring it to the feet of Jesus with open hands.

He is both ready, willing, and able to bring healing, to bring restoration, to bring freedom, so that you can live in a sexual relationship with your husband or your wife in a way that honors and glorifies him so that you can live as a single person,

With a sexuality as well at the same time that honors and glorifies God and that brings hope to the future, so that you can live as a young person hopeful to get married someday, as one who like I'm gonna I'm gonna walk in the faithfulness of God's design for sex so that when I do get married, I am bringing the best of who I am and the best of what God has for my spouse into this marriage. There is healing for brokenness and shame. There is forgiveness and new life in repentance.

In a few moments, or let me, I'll save that for the end. To bring that, do I have a, one more slide, Michael? Okay. Can I, can you bring that slide up for me? This is our text number here at the church, 716-477-5828. It's not a public number. It's a number that we use for texting here in the church. I recognize that you may have some, pastoral or like questions around the nature of sex, sexuality, gender, sex within marriage.

Like maybe a particular issue that you were really hoping we would cover this morning that I didn't get to. I want to really, I want to be sensitive to those things. And if we can want to bring some wisdom and some biblical truth to bear on those issues, I don't know what all the questions are. If you have a question that you would like to try for me to address next Sunday, text it to this number. I will get these. Okay. And I'm not going to be like, Sherry Leinhart asked this question. You know, right. It's not that, you know, obviously anonymous, but here's like some that I've been thinking about. Like here's, these are three questions that I would have loved to have been able to get into this morning. Okay. How do men and women approach sex and intimacy differently? Do you know it's different? Yeah. Do you know that we approach differently? How do we manage differing levels of sexual desire within a marriage? One partner has like a sexual drive that's up here. Another has a sexual drive that's down here. We both want to honor God.

How do we do this? Okay. Processing sexual brokenness, shame, betrayal, and abuse. How, how, how do we do this?

And so those are some of the things that I would have liked to talk about that I may try to talk about next week, but I want to hear from you as well.

And we'll, we'll listen to the Lord and bring the wisdom of his word to bear on these situations. Finally, as I, as I close out the message here today, I want to return to this, the truth that there is healing available in Jesus.

And you may be feeling this morning weighed down, heavy, carrying the burden of what has been done in your life, what has been done to you, what you have done, what you wish you never did. Shame in the area of sexuality, brokenness and hurt and pain. And,

What I know is that every single one of you have experienced it in some way, shape, or form, that none of us have,

Escaped sexual brokenness in some way. I want to offer the altar, the kneelers, as the worship team comes up. In fact, worship team, you can go ahead and come up now. I want to offer.