Transcript
It doesn't take very long to look around and see that our culture has gone sexually insane. There's just no more sanity out there from the way sex has overtaken advertising and all forms of media and fashion, the degree to which internet pornography is the economic engine of the internet. We're in trouble.
Where Do We Go for Sanity?
Where do we go for sanity? Well, sanity is only found in the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ. And there's one particular passage that just captures that beautifully and practically, and that's 1 Corinthians 6:12-20. And I want to spend some time just unpacking that principle. The principles there are really rooted in worship.
We think of worship as being something we do on Sunday and worship is really your identity. You worship your way through every moment of every day. You're always attaching your heart to something. And so, in a real way, sex is an act of worship. Either I'm there worshiping God and wanting Him to be pleased by my sexual life or I'm worshiping something else. That's just the way it works.
So there are in this passage four very fundamental worship principles. Sex should never be disconnected from these principles. It should never be individualized as if it just belongs to me. Sex is connected to some of the hugest perspectives in all of the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ and Paul does that beautifully. And then, based on those four principles are two very formative commands.
The Principle of Mastery
So let's think about the first principle. It's the principle of mastery. Paul says, "I will not be mastered by anything." And when he says that, he's recognizing the addictive quality of sex. Why is sex addictive? Well, sex is addictive because it cannot satisfy my heart. It can't give me peace. It can't give me hope. It can't motivate me to face the next day. It can't bring satisfaction to my heart.
And when you put sex in that place, if you ask sex to deliver horizontally to you what you'll only ever get vertically, you're going to be addicted. You go back again and again and again because the buzz of sex is very exciting, but the buzz of sex is very short and so I want it again and I want it again and I want it again. Before long, I find myself hopelessly addicted.
Well, the gospel of Jesus Christ provides the only place where power can be found to break the addictive quality of sin. The power of sin is broken in the cross of the Lord Jesus Christ. The indwelling presence of the Holy Spirit gives me the ability to say no to things that I couldn't have said no to before. Sex is always about what is mastering my heart. Will my heart be mastered by King Christ or will it be mastered by the false king, sex?
