God & Sexuality: Redeemed and Restored
MESSAGE TRANSCRIPTION:
Good morning everyone. It is so good to see you. You came back for week number three of: “God and Sexuality.”
So, thank you. If you’ve missed the first two messages, let me encourage you to go back online and watch both of those. We have been wading into this whole topic where everybody seems to be at. We’ve not backed down from the conversation and many people, they have chosen to back down. But, historically, the church has always waded into places where people have lived and so does God. God does not shrink back or does not step back from our confusion. He always steps into the middle of our questions, the middle of our temptations, our habits, our addictions, and our generational brokenness. And he loves us with the unfilling love that we just sung about. And if you’re new around here, I’m Virgil Grant, I’m the senior pastor, and can you believe that it’s Thanksgiving week?
It’s hard to believe. Amen. It’s just hard to believe. But we’re in this sermon series and the title:
“God and Sexuality,”
is important. Because my contention is, is that we’ve separated the two and we’ve allowed culture to inform us what we believe about sex and sexuality rather than allowing God to define us. And because we’ve separated those out, that’s caused brokenness, pain, confusion and disappointment and heartache. And what we’ve tried to do is that we’ve tried to say that we’ve to understand the very first verse of the Bible, that: “In the beginning, God created the heaven and earth and that he had a divine design for everything.” And what we’ve said through this sermon series, and if this is your first time, we’ve said that we’re all broken, sexually speaking, is that we’ve all sinned. We’ve all fallen short in this area.
We’re not a bunch of good people trying to tell a bunch of bad people how to get right. It’s rather, it’s me too. It’s me too. And we’re all broken sexually because of the things that we thought, the things that we’ve done or the things that has been done to us. And most of us, some of us, we can even celebrate the grace and the redeeming work of God in our lives, but we’re still all broken. And this is not nothing new because in the book of Romans, chapter three, the Bible tells us that there’s no one perfect, there’s no one holy, and there is no one who’s righteous before God. And I just love the way the message put Romans 3:20. And I just want you to read it out loud with me in full voice, if you would:
“And it’s clear enough, isn’t it, that we’re sinners, every one of us, in the same sinking boat with everybody else?”
Romans 3:20 (MSG)
And so that we’re all broken regarding sexual sin. We’re all in the same boat. Now, I don’t know if you’ve ever seen one of these or not, but this is a practice that goes back all the way to the 1500’s, and it originated in Japan. And does anybody know what this is called? Kent Sugi is what it’s called. And it’s the art of where they would take a broken vase, a broken piece of vase, and they would take all the pieces and they’ll bring ’em all together. And what they would do is that this art is that they would take the brokenness and they would highlight it with gold. Rather than trying to hide over the imperfections, instead of trying to hide over the brokenness, they actually manifest the brokenness by highlighting it with gold paint. Now, I love this image for all of us who are broken, is that when we come humbly before God and we give God all of our broken pieces and we experience His grace, we discover that there’s something that is beautiful that emerges then we could ever imagine.
The unfilling love of Jesus is like the gold that is in the vase that makes us even more important and more valuable than ever before. We tend to want to hide the cracks, but in reality, they point to what God can do with our brokenness when we give him our brokenness. And when people see us, who’s been broken, but we’ve been put back together and that we’re valuable and we’re on display before a broken world, guess what happens? It gives the world hope like never before. And what I want to do today is I want to talk to you about a guy who was broken and his name was David. And I want to talk specifically about David and Bathsheba. And if you don’t know the story, you just need to understand, it’s a story right from the headlines of “Dateline,” right? I mean, that’s where he comes from.
And you can find the story in Second Samuel chapter 11. And I’m not going to read the entire chapter, but I’m just going to give you the cliff notes, if you will, of what takes place. Bathsheba, she’s on top of the roof, she’s bathing. David is on top of his roof. And this is at the time the Bible said the kings are out at war, but not David. He’s at home. He looks across the rooftops, he sees Bathsheba, and then he begins to lust. He begins to desire to have her. And so he uses his authority because he’s the king of the land and he takes advantage of Bathsheba and he knows that Bathsheba is married, but that doesn’t play a role in his raging hormones. And so he takes Bathsheba, they have sex, she becomes pregnant. And then what does David do?
David wants to cover everything up, and he has her husband, who’s an honorable husband, killed in the battle of war. And so David goes on to great length to do what? To cover up his sin, to cover up the broken pieces. He doesn’t want anyone to know what has taken place. He thinks that he’s managed to hide it all. He thinks that he’s getting away with it. And then all of a sudden, in second Samuel chapter 11, verse 27, we find these words:
“The thing David had done displeased what the Lord.”
2 Samuel 11:27 (NIV)
Now God saw, God knew, and you can’t fake him out. Now you can actually avoid a surveillance camera. You can actually outmaneuver a “ring doorbell.” But when it comes to God, who is all knowing and all seeing, you cannot fake him out. And David, in fact, in Psalm 139, one of his most famous songs that he ever recorded is in Psalm 139. And I want you to notice how David responds to God finding out. He says:
“O’ Lord, you have examined my heart. You know everything about me when I sat down or I stand up…” And can I say to you what was true for David is also true for you and I, he knows everything about us. “…You know my thoughts, even when I’m far away, you see me when I travel and when I’ve rested home, you know everything that I do. You know what I’m going to say even before I say it. Lord, you go before me and you follow me. You place your hand of blessing on my head. Such knowledge is too wonderful for me, too great for me to understand. I can never escape from your Spirit. I can never go away from your presence. If I go up to heaven, you are there; if I go down to the grave, you are there. If I ride the wings of the morning, if I dwell by the farthest oceans even there, your hand will guide me and your strength will support me. I could ask the darkness to hide me and the light around me to become night. But even in darkness, I can hide from you. To you, the night shines as bright as day. Darkness and light are the same to you.”
Psalm 139: 1-12
Now, what’s so cool about this is that he’s not plagiarizing the creepy “Sting” lyrics. “Every breath you take, every move you make, every bond you break, every step you take, I’ll be watching you.” That’s not what he was doing, nor was he saying he sees you when you’re sleeping. He knows when you are awake. He knows when you’re what? Bad or good. So be what? Be good for goodness sake. No. Did you catch what he said? Notice what David says: “Such knowledge, it’s too wonderful for me, too great for me to understand!” David is overwhelmed by God knowing everything, his loving eyes are everywhere. And he says: “Because of that, it saved my life.” And you remember what God did? David thought he was getting away with everything. And God sends a prophet, a friend to David. Does anybody remember his name? His name was Nathan. And Nathan tells the story in such a way that David is enthralled. He’s intrigued with the story, and as he’s intrigued with it, all of a sudden it pierced David’s heart and he puts all the pieces together and he says: “Oh man, you’re talking about me.” And David decides to come clean.
He drops the cover up, he confesses his sin, acknowledges his brokenness, and he moves towards his shame. And as he does this, he begins to experience the redemption and the restoration of God in his life. And here is my prayer this entire week for everyone who’s on campus and everyone who’s watching online: Somehow how or another, today you could experience God’s redemption; that you could experience the restoration of God in your life; that no matter what you’ve done, no matter how many broken pieces that you possess, that you’ll bring all of your brokenness to God. And when you bring it to God, you would experience a kind of healing and that you would somehow or another become like this Kintsugi vase and you’ll be highlighted in gold with the redeeming love of God in your life. And what I want to do today, I want us to look at a song, or a psalm, that David wrote. And he wrote a couple songs or psalms out of his experience with Bathsheba.
And I hope that the song that we’re going to look at, Psalm 32, that somehow or another, that you would download the lyrics of this song into your heart because I think that it can really help each and every one of us to deal with the brokenness that we have in our lives. So Psalm 32, I want to begin in verse one and two; and notice what David says:
“And oh, what joy…” Now why is he focused on joy? Notice this: “…for those whose disobedience or sin is forgiven…” Is that there’s joy for those who’ve experienced the forgiveness of God. But notice what else: “…whose sin is put out of out of sight.” Who is forgotten about, erased as far as the East is from the West. Exactly. “…Yes, what joy, for those who record the Lord has cleared of guilt.”
Psalm 32: 1-2
Notice he says there’s joy because this is who God is. When you confess your sins is that there’s forgiveness, the record is cleared, the record is wiped away, “…and whose lives are lived in complete honesty.” That’s just who God is. And this is not just an isolated case with David. I want you to notice what the Bible says multiple times. Isaiah 44:22, God says:
“I’ve swept away your sins like the morning mists, I have scattered your offenses like the clouds. Oh, return to me for I have paid the price to set you free.”
Isaiah 44:22
The next verse we see, Micah 7:19:
“Once again, you will have compassion on us. You’ll trample our sins under your feet and throw them into the depths of the ocean!”
Micah 7:19
Next verse:
“As far as the East is from the West, so far has he removed our transgressions from us.”
Psalm 103:12
Next verse:
“…I will forever wipe the slate clean of their sins.”
Hebrews 10:17
And then Romans chapter eight, verse one:
“So now there is no condemnation for those who belong to Christ Jesus.”
Romans 8:1
It’s clear that all through scripture, that when we come clean before God, there’s forgiveness; the slate is wiped clean. But notice how the process began. Look with me at Psalm 32:2:
“Yes. What joy For those whose record the Lord has cleared of guilt, who lives are lived in complete honesty.”
Psalm 32:2
You have to come clean. And when you come clean and you drop the cover up, you come out of the darkness acknowledging your sin, being honest with the broken pieces and putting the jagged pieces into the hands of the loving God, then guess what happens? Something supernatural begins to take place. But I want you to notice something.
David, in the next verse, he begins to talk about the damage that him hiding his sin took on him physically, intellectually, emotionally, and spiritually. Look what it says. It says:
“When I refuse to confess my sin, my body wasted away and I groaned all day long. Day and night your hand of discipline was heavy on me. My strength evaporated like water in the summer heat”
Psalm 32: 3-4
David explains what takes place when you hide your sin. Let me ask you a question: Have you ever experienced that? Have you ever experienced any of the weight, the heaviness of hiding? Afraid that you’re going to be caught? I mean folks, can you not agree with me that it’s exhausting, it’s tiring to try to keep the image up, to keep everybody out, keep people from knowing, have to pretend to live with unresolved guilt? And folks, can I just say something to you?
It is hard enough to live one life. It’s even harder to live two different lives. Amen.
We’ve also talked about before how guilt can be a beautiful thing or it can be an awful thing. And proper guilt is like an engine light coming on the dashboard of your car; because then when the engine light comes on, what is that warning light referencing? That something is potentially wrong under the hood. You need to stop. You need to pull into a mechanic, into a garage and let them look at it. Because if you don’t deal with it, then what’s going to happen? Something bad is going to happen. And guilt from God’s perspective can lead us to honesty, to confession, to forgiveness, to a better decision the next time around.
But unresolved guilt though, guilt that gets suppressed, that gets stuffed in, that gets ignored, that gets hidden is a destructive thing. I dunno if you remember this or not, but in high school we had to read this poem, this classic by Edgar Allen Poe, “The Telltale Heart.” Anybody else had to read that in high school? Yeah, you remember the storyline? He paints a main character who’s committed murder. Unable to escape the haunting guilt of his deed. He begins to hear the heartbeat of the victim that he has buried, where? In his basement. A cold sweat covers him as the “thump, thump, thump, thump,” goes on relentlessly until it drives him insane. Ultimately, it becomes clear that the pounding that drove the man crazy was not in the grave below, but it was in his own chest. And so it is with unresolved guilt; and that is why it was with David, his sexual past was pounding in his chest; and he had to deal with it, honestly, with the consequences and the truth about what he had done.
And part of him dealing with it, part of him confessing it, is found in Psalm chapter 51. Notice what it says. He says:
“I know how bad I’ve been. My sins are staring me down. You are the one that I violated. You’ve seen it all. You’ve seen the full extent of my evilness. You have all the facts before you, whatever you decide about me, David says it’s fair. I’ve been out of step with you for a long time, in the wrong since before I was born. What you are after is truth from the inside. Enter me then; conceive a new life, a true life.”
Psalm 51: 3-6
See folks, secret sin cannot coexist with inner peace. And we’re all after inner peace. There’s an author named by Dr. David Belgium. He wrote a book called: “Guilt: Where Religion and Psychology Meet.” And he estimates in this book that 75% of all the people in the hospital who’s dealing with the physical sickness, 75% of them are there because of unresolved guilt.
It’s their unwillingness to confess their guilt. And as you might imagine, our enemy, the devil, what does he want us to do with their guilt? What does he want us to do? He wants us to hold on to it. He wants us to keep it unresolved. He wants it to wreck our health and our relationships. And if we never deal with the guilt that we have, then it will morph into her sinister cousin. That is called shame. And what is shame? Here’s what shame is; guilt attacks what we do. There are actions, but notice this; that shame attacks, what? Who we are; the core of our identity. And can we all agree today that there’s a lot of shame and a lot of guilt around our sexual sin? There’s a lot of things that is killing our joy, that is killing our bodies, that’s defining us, that we’re hiding from, that we’re trying to escape from. And a lot of it revolves around our sexual brokenness.
And some of you, you’re so full of shame this morning, it has kept you from taking your next spiritual step. And let me just share something with you. If you want to disempower shame, can I tell you something? You’ve got to stop running from it. You’ve got to turn and run towards it. Now, lemme tell you what I’m talking about. I want you to listen to me very carefully, what I’ve just said. You cannot run from your shame because as you run from your shame, shame becomes a bigger and a bigger monster in your life. If you want to get rid of the shame, if you want to get rid of disempowered shame in your life, you cannot run from it. You have to run to it. Now, some of you’re saying: “What are you talking about pastor?” Well, lemme just give you the load down here. Let me tell you about a cool story that I heard a couple weeks ago.
The guy’s name is Andy Casagrande. That’s truly his name. He’s an Emmy Award-winning film director. And maybe you’ve seen him on Discovery Week or the History Channel or something like this. I don’t know, but maybe you’ve seen him at Shark Week, I don’t know. But he’s this guy that jumps into the ocean and all that he has when he goes into the ocean and he’s filming the great white sharks. He only has his camera, he has no protection, no protective gear, no gun, no spear, no nothing. And they’re interviewing him and they go: “Hey man, what’s going on? Because when you go into the ocean, it’s just you and the camera. You have no protection, you have no way to survive if the great white is going to attack you.”
And they go: “What’s up with that?” And here’s what he says. What he says; it’s really quite intuitive. He goes: ‘When the great white is swimming at me, I turn and swim towards it with my camera; and then all of a sudden, he will bump or bonk his nose up against my camera.” And when he does that, fear begins to swell up inside of him because everything in the ocean when it sees the great white coming after them is that they start running away as fast as possible. And so it’s counterintuitive when I take my camera and I put it against his nose, he goes: “What is this?” I have fear that swells up. And then guess what the great white does? The great white will take off and will run in the opposite direction. And then he makes this pivotal statement:
“If you do not act like pray, they will not treat you like prey.”
Now folks, listen to me. All of us have “great white” memories. All of us have “great white” behaviors that we’re trying to swim away from. And yet the more that we swim away from ’em, the bigger the shame becomes in our lives. And what I’m suggesting to you is to stop running, to turn and face the shame and embrace the shame, give it to God, better it. Here’s some of you. You’re dealing with this shame and you feel guilty, you feel dirty, you feel vulnerable. You feel like if anybody knows anything about you’ve done in your life that they would disown you, they would love you, they wouldn’t accept you. But folks, listen to me. That is the Satan, the devil who’s encouraging you to do that; because in God’s economy, what does God want us to do? God wants us to lean into community.
And when we lean into community, shame does not stand a chance whatsoever; because what we discover, when we lean in and share it with the right people in community, then what happens is it becomes safe and to talk about the struggles that we have. And the more you swim in the direction of shame, the more you’ll be disempower it. But if you don’t act like prey, you won’t become prey. And so David writes: “I will move toward my great white sharks.” And look how he does it. In Psalm 32 verse five and six, he says:
“Finally, I confessed all my sins to you. I stop trying to hide my guilt. I stopped trying to hide my guilt and my shame. I said to myself, ‘I will confess my rebellion to the Lord and you forgave me. All my guilt is gone.'”
Psalm 32: 5-6
Folks, can I tell you something? You see, shame is a dangerous enemy that we all deal with. But can I tell you something?
Shame has a more dangerous enemy; and it’s called grace.
Amen. Lemme say that again. Shame is a dangerous enemy to you and I, but shame has an enemy that’s even greater, and it’s called grace. Shame tells me that I’m defected. Grace tells me I’m valuable. Shame calls me perverted. Grace calls me priceless. Shame’s greatest weapon is the fear of judgment. Grace’s even greater weapon is the relief of unconditional love. Shame says that because I’m flawed, I’m unacceptable. Grace says that even though I am flawed, I am treasured, shame makes us hide. Grace sets us free. Shame poisons our heart. Grace lifts our head. Shame is the language of the thief. Grace is the language of Jesus; who says that you’re worthy now, not if not when. You are worthy of love and belonging now, right this moment, right in your brokenness as is cracks and all. And I’m really, really praying that many of you will experience God’s grace in your life. I’m really praying for you to be free from something that you’re struggling with and you’ve been struggling with it for a long time. I’m praying that you’ll be set free from guilt and shame and no longer live as prey.
I’m praying that the sin that you’re hiding, the sin, that you’re rationalizing away, that you’ll begin to own it and begin to experience new freedom and new life. I love how Romans 3:22-24, I love what it says:
“We’re made right with God by placing our faith in Jesus Christ. And this is true for everyone who believes, no matter who we are, for everyone is sin; we’ve all fallen short of God’s glorious standard. Yet God, in his grace, freely makes us right in his sight. He did this through Christ Jesus when he freed us from the penalty of our sins.”
Romans 3: 22-24
And it’s my prayer that you would experience the redemption, the restoration of God’s love. And here’s my contention this morning. My contention is that many of you, you have not taken your next spiritual step. Many of you over the last several years, we’ve had hundreds of people to raise their hand and say: “I received Jesus as my personal savior,” and you received his forgiveness. You received him into your life. But you’ve allowed guilt and shame to prevent you from taking your next spiritual step because you don’t know how to deal with it. You don’t know how to confess it. If people only knew all the things I’ve done, they would never accept me into this church. And friends, that is a lie straight from hell; because we’re all guilty, we’re all broken, we’re all sinners.
Whatever you’ve done, somebody else has done it in this church. And the reality is, probably multiple people. And this morning, I’m asking you not to allow your guilt; not to allow your shame to prevent you from taking your next spiritual step. And for many of you, that next spiritual step that you need to take is baptism, friends, baptism does not save you. If that water saved you, we would sell that stuff like crazy. We would all be filthy rich. We’d build a new second campus debt free. We’d pay this campus off, have endowment for all of her children to go to college for absolutely free. There’s nothing sacred about that water. There’s only one person who saves you and his name is Jesus Christ. He’s the only one.
But baptism is an outward expression of your inner commitment and you can still be saved and never be baptized. But baptism is that first step of surrender after receiving Christ. It’s the first step of saying: “God, I’m all in. And I don’t know what all in means, but I just know that the next step is for me to be baptized.” And here’s the thing, don’t expect God to reveal anything else to you until you do the next thing that you know to do and that is to be baptized. And today, the invitation is for you to be baptized. If you’ve never been baptized, today is the day for you to be baptized. As Grant was saying, you’ve already got all kinds of excuses running through your mind. That you don’t have the clothing; we’ve got clothing, enough clothing for 50 people today plus.
We have towels. We have people already down front ready to take your picture. We’re going to be recording all of this. We’ll send you the link. Some of you’re going: “Well, my children are in E-kids.” Folks, we’ve already prepared the E-kids. They know what’s going on. They have your kids taken care of. The only excuse that you have for not coming today is just believing the lie of Satan; that today is not your day. And God says, today is your day. And so here’s what’s going to happen. In a moment, I’m going to ask you to stand; everyone. We already have one baptism that’s already planned for the first service. The next service, we already have seven.
And here’s what’s going to happen. Would our baptism team come on up and just stand along the wall here, some of our staff as well. And here’s what’s going to happen. These people are standing right over here. And in a moment when we stand, I’m going to pray. And then after we pray, the worship team is going to start leading us. So they’re coming out, they’re going to start leading us in the song. And then what you’re going to do, if you need to be baptized, you’re just going to find your way over to one of them. They’re going to whisk you away to the changing room. They’re going to get you the clothing, the towels that you need. And then we’re just going to worship and we’re just going to wait for you to come out and then we’ll rejoice it, your baptism. And so this morning, the only excuse that you have for not taking this step is just believing in the life of Satan; that today’s not your day. We have prepared, we’ve been praying, we’ve been planning. These ladies and staff; I could receive a staff text at 5:15 this morning, excited about what God’s going to do today. And we’ve already had 135 baptisms since January, the first this year, not counting these eight.
So, God’s doing something and God’s here this morning and don’t allow your guilt and your shame to prevent you from saying yes to Jesus. So would you stand? I’m going to pray. And then as soon as I say Amen, if you’re in the middle of the road, just say: “Excuse me,” they’ll let you out. You just come and grab one of these baptism team members by the hand and you say: “I want to get baptized,” Boom. They’ll whiskey away. Get you the clothes, bring you back out. And we’re in no hurry this morning. So Father, right now, so many people are paralyzed by shame and by guilt. And Father, the reality is that there’s no one good that’s in this room today. We’re just all a bunch of bad people who’s been saved by the only perfect person: Jesus.
And we’re not saying that we’re better than anyone. We’re just saying that we’ve experienced redemption, we’ve experienced restoration, we’ve dealt with their guilt and shame. And it’s a prayer for everyone today that they will let go of their guilt and shame and embrace living the all in life. And so Father, right now, for that person who is saying to themselves: “It’s not my time, it’s not my time, it’s for that person who hands are sweating right now and don’t know what to do for that person who right now at this very moment is squeezing tight to their child or to their spouse’s hand.
“Father, right now, I just pray that you’d released them of their anxiety, release them of their attention. And when I say amen, that they will let go and they would just come out and they would just say, yes, to their next spiritual step. And Lord, before anything takes place today, we’re going to stop right now and give you the glory and the honor and the praise. And we say all of this in the name of Jesus. And when I say Amen, you’re just going to come out and you’re just going to take that step. The first step is the hardest step. But once you take that first step, you’ll, you’ll feel like that you are walking on clouds as you come to take a baptism team member hand and let them know that you want to be baptized. So Father, we pray all of this in Jesus’ name and everyone agreed and said, Amen.”
And amen.