Charlie Loften: Hello, and welcome to the Grove Church podcast. I'm Charlie Loften, the lead pastor there, and we are so glad that you're joining us. Whether you are a member and you're just catching up on a sermon that you missed or you're someone who's brand new, we are really glad that you were joining us. And if you are new in some way, and I know that a lot of people will do that, we'll listen to sermons first before they visit. I want you to know that we would love to meet you at any point.
You can join us live in our services on Sunday, nine and 10:30 or our streaming service at 10:30. Either way, we would love to be able to get to know you. And regardless of why you are here listening to this sermon today, thank you so much for joining us. If you're new, I'm Charlie, lead pastor here. Really glad you're here worshiping with us today, and really got all of you here, and if we haven't got a chance to meet, I'd love to meet you in the back after the service.
We have a gift that we can give you. We could love to just connect with you, to know who you are, any ways that we can help you. Really glad that you're here. And for those of you who've been around for a while, know that I wear hog gear on Sunday if something really cool happens. And while I am primarily a basketball guy, I am diversified enough to really think it's awesome.
We watched the whole softball game yesterday. First time the ladies have made it to the softball world series. That starts next week. Really excited about that. I watched the whole game.
I taught my mother-in-law that both in the baseball and the softball games, when the bases are loaded, you're supposed to put your drink on your head like this. She loved it. We had a great time. It filled up. We had a great time yesterday.
They load up the bases a lot. We were just having a great time, and so it was really, really fun. Go Hogs. So we are near the end. We got one more week next week.
Mark is going to wrap up the series next week. They were talking, talking about off ramps, where he's kind of just giving some words to some of the things I feel like I've observed over the years of people who really want to walk with God and really have an idea this is what they want their life to look like. But something happens where they suddenly take this off ramp and start becoming somebody that they don't mean to become, or something happens to them they never thought would happen to them, like what some of these things are. And we started talking about what I think is maybe one of the newer ones as far as kind of the way our society is, the way that we just hang out and get overwhelmed by busyness. And it's not that we're doing anything wrong per se, as much it is we are spending so much time doing other things that our relationship with God and our pursuit of Jesus just begins to kind of, you know, it takes a backseat.
And so we slowly drift. And then we spent counting today. We spent five weeks talking about what I would consider to be the three most significant ones. We spent two weeks talking about money. We spent two weeks talking about money just because we see it all the time.
And so it's the biggest one of the things that the Bible warns us about more than any others, cover to cover, Old Testament, New Testament, Jesus, Paul, everybody, about how our relationship and attitude and perspective about money really can fight more than just about anything for supremacy and what is in control of our lives. And if we don't have a right attitude about money, we can go wrong really, really quickly. We talked about how fear and anxiety around money or just an over enthusiasm kind of agreed about money? Can either one of them can derail us in very similar ways? And then we spent a week talking about, but just one week, what I always think is the most important one.
But even though we said we only spent one week, we're gonna fact the announcement that Abigail made about summer seminar. We're gonna spend the entire summer talking about it, which is our relationship with the good things that God has called me to do and how that relates to the work that Jesus Christ has already done to give us life. And understanding how those two things interact, I think, is really the long term key about us just kind of being at peace and staying connected with God. So we talked about that, and we were gonna end with that, but we had a little Mother's Day mishap. We had to switch some things around.
So starting last week and then this week, we're talking about sex, which I think that for most of us, we recognize as a very hot button, important issue. We've seen a lot of people, for one reason or another, really get derailed in their relationship with God because they made a mistake. They may they started to pursue an intentional path and or or just it just seems like again, I've talked about this many, many times. It seems like that's when pastors are making the headlines. It seems to be like like, I never thought they would do that.
I never thought they would leave their spouse. I never thought they would cheat that way. I never thought it would never happen to them, but it happens. Right? And it's not just you suddenly do something.
There's this off ramp. And last week, we talked about really just not respecting and understanding the the boundaries that God has put on our behavior in order to keep us safe. We misunderstand them in some way, and we act as if there are no boundaries. What we're going to talk about today, it's a little bit like a horseshoe. It's like the complete opposite problem, but you kind of end up at the same spot.
And it's not that I don't understand that there are boundaries, but I have so much fear and shame about those boundaries and the way that they were taught to me that fear and shame really kind of predominate my attitude around sex. And this can happen a lot of different ways. So I'll just kind of share with you a little bit of my journey about how I got to where I was in my understanding about sex. And I remember this forever. It was the very first conversation I feel like I had about sex, and it was with my dad in our kitchen.
He was standing on the on the of the bar, and I was on the other side. And then and honestly, I just wanna say this on the front end. I love my dad. My dad is awesome. He did not grow up with a dad.
And with the tools that he had, he did the best that he could. But it was an incredibly awkward conversation. He starts to I could tell that he was crazy nervous. And so I was uncomfortable. I didn't know what we're talking about.
And then he starts talking, I like, okay, I think we'll start to talk about sex. And so he's scared. I'm scared. He's uncomfortable. I'm uncomfortable.
And then he starts to explain, and he starts talking about how guys have an organ and girls have an organ, and he start talking about these organs. And he's going into it, and I am as lost as I can be. I grew up in a conservative Southern Baptist church. We had an organ, and that is the only definition for that word that I knew. And so he's talking, and I don't know what he's talking about.
I don't know what my organ is. I don't know where it is. I don't know what it has to do with sex. And so I'm get he's getting more uncomfortable, and and and he gets through all of this. And then when he's done, he says, do you have any questions?
And really, there's only really there's only two choices at this point. Yes, can you start over? I don't under I don't understand. Or you go, nope, I'm good. And that's what I went with.
Nope, I'm I'm good. And so then, I mean, it started me somewhere. And then a lot of what I learned from there was essentially on the playground. And just from the school that I went to was kind of in the inner city. And we I mean, there was a lot of things that got talked about.
And I learned a lot. But it was also again, sex became something that was just kind of, it was it was silly, and you use these words as insults. And so it was it was uncomfortable. And then you get to fifth grade, and there was this thing. It was everybody knew it was coming, fifth grade.
Separate the guys and the girls, and the principal would come, and then the female teachers would talk to the girls. And he's got pictures, and like, Okay. And they start talking about it. He's using the real words. He's like, does anybody know what the more common word is for this?
And there'd be one brave guy who'd go, meh. And then he would say the more common word for that. And so it was silly. It was silly. It was humorous, also just kind of uncomfortable.
And then you move your way towards youth group. And all I really remember from youth group is being scared to death. Sex is bad. Don't do it. It's bad.
Don't do it. And even if you think about it too much, even if you think that you want to do it, it's bad. It's bad. It's bad. And you just kind of get a series of messages over time.
It's something to be ashamed of. It's humorous, and it's bad. And then if as you just kind of have mixed messages that you've been given, it's very likely then you're gonna make bad decisions. And now you're gonna have bad experiences, and now you're doing things. You're experiencing things that are not giving you a healthier view of this.
And I wonder I wonder where is it that the people come in and tell us about the beauty of sex, its intentional design, how good it is, the life that it can bring, how it was created by God in a very special and powerful way. Where is that? Too often, at least in my past, and for a lot of us, that's absent. And so it leaves us just kind of with just an overly negative, overly fearful idea of what sex is. And so then while the journey, the the off ramp is different, it can end up in a lot of the same places.
So much fear and restriction around sex can lead to making really bad decisions where it is my who I am and what I what I what I do, what I believe about sex, it's very private. It's secret. It's shameful. It's hidden, which is why I believe is one of the main contributors to why porn addiction is such a widespread issue in our world. Men and women both.
The numbers are alarming of the number of people who are battling this because it is something because sex is something that you do shamefully in the dark. And it is leading people to all sorts of bad decisions and fear and dysfunction in the context of what is what could otherwise be a very healthy marriage, a very healthy family because of the fear and the shame, and we don't know what to do with it. We battle a lot of dysfunction. And here's the thing that I think that makes it worse is that since then, we have collectively decided that the topic is awkward. It's awkward it's awkward to talk about.
And so if we can't talk about it where we are looking at what God's word has to say amongst people that we trust, amongst people that we're safe with, we can talk about God's great design for sex. If we can't talk about it here, then again, it is like sending out fourth and fifth grade Charlie out to the playground. And so I think we need to collectively decide, not just here for the next twenty ish minutes, but in the future with our spouses, with our friends, and with one another, that this most important issue is something that we are willing to push past the awkwardness and to have really good conversations so that this very important part of us can be a healthy part of us. And so let us go back to the original. How do we what what should our attitude about sex of beaks?
Go back all the way to the origin story of Genesis chapter two. God has created Adam, just one person. He's by himself, and God has him on this exercise where he's bringing all the animals before him and he's naming them. And it's a really interesting kind of idea, and God has already declared that it's not good that he's alone. He takes him through this exercise, not that the animals necessarily needed names, but really to expose the need that Adam had that maybe he didn't know that he had.
God knew that it was not good that he was alone, and he wanted Adam to also know it. And so he brings these animals. Every one of these animals has a pair that has a pair. You he doesn't. So he exposes this need, and then he meets the need.
Genesis chapter two verse 22. Then the Lord God made a woman from the rib he had taken out of the man, and he brought her to the man. The man said, this is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh. She be she shall be called woman for she was taken out of man. That is why a man leaves his father and mother and is united to his wife, and they become one flesh.
Adam and his wife were both naked, and they felt no shame. That's the origin. And it's a really interesting metaphor that the symbolism that God uses in the way that he creates Eve. He takes something that is a part of Adam and creates Eve with it. He could have created Eve the same way that he created Adam.
He could have created her out of dirt. He could have just blinked his metaphorical eyes. Not that God has eyes. He could have just anything. He could have just said, woman, right?
And then it was created. He could have done any number of things. But what he chose to do was he chose to take a part of Adam and create his spouse out of a part of him. And this is why verse one, this is why. So that he will leave his father and mother and cleave.
You be united to his wife, and they become one flesh. So the big question that we need to answer here, and that's kind of work. Again, we're gonna continue to do the we've been doing the series this way, asking questions rather than kind of making statements. What were God's purposes in creating sex? It says it right here so that he could be united to his wife and become one flesh.
Now when we talk about marriage, if you've ever been to to Christian weddings and these things, they talk about oneness and being united, and they use this verse a lot. And we skip over what actually it means and jump straight to the symbolism. You become one. You become united. You kind of have one heart.
You are becoming one family. But what does he say? One flesh. I mean, it a beautiful, powerful symbol. When you have sex, you become just one thing.
Your organ and their organ, they come together, make great music together, and you are physically one thing. You are so deeply connected, and it is a beautiful picture of what marriage is supposed to be. It is a uniting and a closeness and an intimacy that is beautiful and wonderful. And that is what God made. It is a physical on ramp to full emotional body, spiritual, mental connection between a spouse, between spouses.
And it is beautiful and wonderful, and it is designed that way by God. Which is why, back to last week, why the boundary matters so much. There really is never meant to be such a thing as casual sex. Sex was not intended to be casual. Sex was intended to be a beautiful moment of full and total intimacy and connection to to unite and join them in this incredibly powerful way.
And then in verse 25, it says this, and they were both naked, and they felt no shame. It was it was beautiful and wonderful, and there was zero shame attached to it. There's an entire book of the scriptures, Song of Solomon, that is essentially dedicated to this idea that sex is a beautiful and wonderful thing. It is a picture of great, wonderful connection. And the fact that it feels good and is physically pleasurable is a feature put in there by God, and there should be no fear about it.
There should be no shame of it. It is just a beautiful and wonderful thing. This is what God designed. It was designed for us to enjoy and to be emotionally and physically connected to our spouse. We joked about this a little bit last week that we can have such a fearful attitude about it that it is just something that you do.
It really is only designed to make babies. And that's it. And you hear that, you know that it's not. It's something about the you know it's not that's not it. But if we don't talk about what it is, then we so very often, we can just be left with that.
And then we start using phrases and things like, well, you know, it's really important that you fulfill your obligation to your spouse. It's the wife's duty to fulfill to meet her husband's sexual needs. And we start to use words like obligation and duty as if this is not something to be enjoyed, but is something that one must do for some reasons. And then suddenly, we start building as if this is an adversarial game. This is something that I have to do because of what you are.
And then we overstate or poorly state the differences between men and women, and then it compounds. But young men, they want it all the time. Oh, you've been one all the time. And you can either say that in a way like, that's the normal way, but women are cold and frigid. Or you can say it the other way, men want it all the time, and they're actually quite perverted, and women have a very healthy, normal relational idea about sex.
And so again, now we're pitting everyone against each other. And then at the same time, by making these sort of generalized stereotypes, if you're a guy
Charlie Loften: and you're, oh man, guys, they just want it all the time.
Charlie Loften: And you're like, well, I don't know that I'm like that. Well, now there's something wrong with you. You're broken and weird. Actually, you see it I see it more we've heard more people talk about the other way, where a wife who really wants sex and is really, really into it, why is something wrong with me? I don't want to be perverted like the guys are.
I want it a lot, and I begin to think that there's something wrong with me. And so if you don't fit the norms, there's something wrong. And it's an adversarial relationship, and we're figuring out who's gonna win rather than it being about this particular man and this particular woman and how God has uniquely designed each of them and how can they work out their unique differences, different approaches, different cycles, different sort of the way that their hormones work, the way that their emotions work, but figuring out, I'm gonna figure out what my spouse is like, and she's gonna figure out what I am like. And we are gonna connect with each other, and sex becomes a celebration of us loving and connecting and wanting to be intimate with each other rather than attaching layers and layers of guilt and obligation and shame, competitiveness into it, which leads to the next question. Have I let shame creep into my view of sex?
They were naked, and they were not ashamed. Then as we looked at last week, Adam and Eve, they eat the apple, and one of the first things that happens is that they noticed that they were naked. And they and they covered themselves, and they began to hide, which is really interesting. It's like, well, that's actually that's, like, kinda kinda normal. Like, you don't wanna you don't wanna just be out there naked.
It's kinda weird that they were naked before, but, like but there wasn't anybody else to see them. It was just them. It was just them. So who were they ashamed of seeing them? Now suddenly their relationship is tainted, because now they are starting to feel shame, which is different than whether or not it is appropriate in this context to be naked.
Shame is different than that, and it's certainly in their context, it was just them. And now shame has entered into their relationship. And I think there are a lot of different ways that shame can do this. Again, it could just be from your upbringing. Not all of us were this way.
I was. Several of us were. Kinda grew up in a very restrictive place where there's a lot of teaching around sex and fear and these sorts of things. And I just remember another one where just like they would make us as guys feel a lot of shame if you just happened to notice someone that was attractive. Like, if you look at a woman and you think that she's attractive, there's something wrong with you.
You shouldn't do that. And I'm like, I mean, my eye sees what my eye sees, and it is, at least in my mind, she's objectively attractive. But now just even noticing things, noticing attractiveness, feeling anything that comes close to arousal, the idea of arousal becomes shameful. As opposed to it being something natural and good and beautiful, and it needs to be channeled in an appropriate direction. I remember this one.
This may be too far. I remember this one. Don't know what kind of youth group you went to. Like, you should get to the point where you are so dedicated and focused on Jesus that if you are by yourself alone and a naked woman walked in, you would feel nothing. I mean, I don't know about that.
I don't know about that. But then also, just too much information. 15, 16 year old Charlie's thinking, I mean, we can give it a go. Man, we've run some tests, I guess. I mean, what is I don't know.
I mean, it's like but just being sexual is shameful, like having natural desires. And so then if if the desires themselves become shameful rather than beautiful and wonderful, then I'm I'm I'm not learning. Okay. Well, you need to manage them in order to use them appropriately over here. Now I've got all of this in me, and it is shameful and hurtful, and I don't know what to do with it.
And so then you begin to act out just like Adam and Eve, they hid. I can hide. I can hide from God. I can hide from my parents. I can hide from everyone and do things privately that are inappropriate, which, again, is what is causing this massive problem that we have with porn.
And as it gets more and more accessible, we're just gonna continue to be that way Because we are not teaching and what important, I think we're not teaching people the beauty and the power of it so that we can feel appropriately about it and then act appropriately with it. But shame and these kinds of things, they can come into your heart and your mind not just because of something that people said. I mean, it happens, right? The way that we talk about it or we've been taught to about it can create that. But sometimes it's just maybe it's something I did.
I acted out in a way that I now, at this point in my life, realize was inappropriate, and I just can't seem to get over it. But again, because I've believed, I've been told to believe that a sexual sin is the kind of thing that you can't recover from. And once you have done that, you're you're you're out, and you're out for good. And so because of the things that I've done, I know I can't be forgiven. I'm forever tainted, and now my my relationship with sex is completely tainted and full of shame.
But it may not be because of something that you were taught or maybe even what you did. For some of us, a few of us, it is it is something that someone did to you. And because of some traumatic experiences that we have had, we we have a lot of hurt and pain around it. And so sex has God gives this beautiful design for sex. And because of the way that I think, because of what I've done or what has been done to me, my view, my heart, my perspective on sex is tainted, and it's holding me back.
Whether I am I'm not married. I'm currently married. I was married. My past and my perspective are really doing damage to me and my heart. And so we'll end with this question.
How? How can I release my hurts and trust in trust fully in God's design? How can I release my hearts and trust fully in God's design? Again, everybody here in some way, most likely, has just a little bit.
Charlie Loften: Let me get a little bit of baggage all the way from a little bit
Charlie Loften: of baggage to a lot of baggage on this issue. And because of our perspective, because of where how we grew up, because of what we were what we were taught, we just can't seem to get right about it. And because we are not willing to kind of talk about it, we can't seem to get anywhere because we've decided that it's awkward and we can't talk about it. This is something that we do when we're talking to couples. When we're doing pre marriage counseling, we'll talk to them about sex.
And I'll intentionally, all throughout, I'll say a few things just intentionally awkward. And then at the end, I'll say, and really, the best thing for you in your relationship is you guys need to talk to each other. And and we you need to make it not awkward. And then one of the reasons I want to make this awkward is so that it the most awkward conversation you've ever had about sex is this one. You'll be able to, when you talk about it a year from now, you remember that time he said, blah, blah, blah, Oh, yeah.
That's awkward. You talking is normal. Right? It can't just be it can't just be normal. But we all have some work to do in here, but I think a lot of the work that we need that probably needs to happen is is is between marriages that exist right now.
Can we have the conversations? Can we have the conversations where I don't feel like my needs and desires are being seen? I don't feel like mine are being seen Or being willing to confess, hey, I know it sometimes it may feel like I am holding you back, but it's I've I've I've got I've got some things that I'm working on to be able to have honest conversations about our past, about our present, about our hang ups, and to be able to heal together. And your sex life may not look like someone else's sex life, but it can be your sex life where we are having good, honest conversations with each other and healing and growing in intimacy together so that we can be one flesh. But even those of us who aren't married, we need to heal.
Even if you are in a place in your life where you probably think, well, mean, I kinda had a place in my life where I this is probably probably not gonna happen for me again. If you if you're if you're young, you're old, and everywhere in between, I think that there's some healing that needs to happen inside of all of us. And what I want you to hear and I want you to understand is that the lies that you have been told can be replaced with the truth of God. But only if we're willing to talk about it with one another, with a trusted friend. Let's talk about it here just together, to talk about it with your spouse.
We've got to replace the lies with God's truth. And after Adam and Eve ate the apple, they're hiding themselves. What does God do? He immediately goes and looks for them. They have done this terrible thing, and his first instinct God's first instinct is to find them.
And they've covered themselves with leaves, and the second thing that he does is he sacrifices a couple of animals and creates skins for them. God's instinct when they have done something bad is to seek them out and to provide covering for them. That is God's instinct with you. We wanna replace the falsehoods that we've come to believe with truth, And we need to recognize that God's grace, it covers you. It covers you.
God is seeking you out for forgiveness. He wants, he wants you to overcome the hurts that you have based on what you've done. But in addition to that, the same god that has the power to raise Jesus Christ from the dead has the power to heal what has happened to you. And so wherever this yuck in us is coming from, God has the answers. His truth can replace your lies.
His grace will cover you, and his power can heal you. Let me pray. God, I thank you. God, I thank you for your words on this. I thank you for that beautiful picture of Adam and Eve.
And God, I pray that you would restore that into our marriages. And that god that you would heal us and the god that we would not just know about your forgiveness. We would feel it. And so God, whatever shame, whatever hang ups we have, whatever it is we bring in here with us today, pray that your word, your grace, and your power, God, would bring us life. We would no longer be bound up, and we would not allow our fear and our shame to become an off ramp and our love and pursuit of you.
And God, we are so thankful for your son, Jesus, whose life and death and resurrection makes this healing and forgiveness possible, and it's in his name we pray, amen. Thanks again for joining us on our sermon podcast and you can learn more about us at thegrovechurch.org. If you go to thegrovechurch.org/connect, there's a form you could fill out. Just let us know that you've been listening. And if you wanna dig deeper on some of these topics that we cover in our sermon podcast or just another issues of dealing with culture or theology, those kinds of things, you can check out our podcast.
It's on the same feed however you found this particular podcast. So again, this is Charlie, the lead pastor at The Grove, and thank you so much for joining us.