March 1, 2025 • 26 mins
Welcome to Moody Presents with Mark Jobe. Mark is the president of Moody Bible Institute. Our topic today is not one that’s very popular in our culture, but it’s one we have to address! We started this message last week, so if you missed the first part, be sure to catch up online at … Moody Presents DOT o-r-g. Our study is titled, The Call to Purity, and today, Mark is going to show us that God set us apart for His purposes … and that includes managing our sexuality. The apostle Paul reminds us we were bought with a high price … and when something is highly valued, you don’t give it away to the cheapest bidder! Now let’s get started.
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Episode Transcript
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S1 (00:01):
Today on Moody Presents, Mark Jobe shows us how we
can view sexuality as God designed it.
S2 (00:07):
And what Paul is saying is, if you're a follower
of Jesus Christ, you cannot take the value system of
this world. Your sexuality is something that needs to be sanctified,
set apart unto God, and viewed as something of high value.
S1 (00:25):
Welcome to Moody Presents with Mark Jobe. Mark is the
president of Moody Bible Institute and the senior pastor of
New Life Community Church in Chicago. I'm John Gager if
we've never met, and our topic today is just not
very popular in our culture, boy, but it is one
we must address. We started this message last week, so
if you missed the first part, be sure to catch
(00:47):
up online at Moody Presente.org. Our study is titled The
Call to Purity, and today Mark is going to show
us that God has set us apart for his purposes,
and that includes managing our sexuality. The Apostle Paul reminds
us that we were bought with a high price. And
when something is highly valued, you don't give it away
(01:09):
to the cheapest bidder. What do you say we get
started here on Moody Presents with doctor Mark Jobe?
S2 (01:15):
Verse four, it says that each of you know how
to possess his own vessel in sanctification. We set our
body and our sexual energy aside to God. We set
it apart unto God. We say, I'm going to manage
it the way you want me to manage it. God.
And in honor. That word honor means high value. If
(01:40):
you've ever gone before a judge, you say, Your Honor. Why?
Because you're saying you're a person of high value, high esteem.
That's going to make judgments about my life. And so
I'm going to really treat you nice when when the
word honor means something that's of high value. And what,
what Paul is telling us as believers, We need to
(02:02):
understand that our body belongs to God, and that our
body needs to be set apart to the purposes of God.
And our body and our sexuality needs to be set apart,
to be managed God's way, and that we need to
look at it as something that's of high value. And
when something is of high value, you don't give it
(02:23):
away cheaply. When something is of high value, you take
care of it. When I got married, I was 21
years old and I was really poor. And I saved
up and I got my ring, my wife, a ring.
I didn't get her an engagement ring because I didn't
have money for that. But I got her wedding ring.
And in my mind, hey, man, in my mind, I splurged,
(02:47):
you know? But when you're poor splurging, it's not a lot.
So basically, I got her a cheap little ring. She
cherished it. She never complained. She never said. Why did
you give me the cheap little thing? You know, she. Hey,
it was what it was. And it had sentimental value. Right?
So I got it. She cherished it. But, you know,
when we were hitting our 25th year anniversary, she started
(03:10):
dropping hints like a wife does. Subtle hints, subtle hints. Like,
how about buying me a ring? So I'm smart enough
to take a hint when I hear it. So I said,
all right, honey, I'm going to buy you a ring.
This time. I'm going to buy you a better ring
(03:32):
than you had. So she went out and started looking
for rings, and I learned more about rings than I
want to know more about little diamonds. I didn't know
there's yellow diamonds and clear diamonds and specks and how
it's cut and this and that, all that. I endured
that for the sake of my beloved wife. And so
when we bought that ring, she suddenly, I don't know,
(03:55):
she hadn't taken care of her old ring very well.
But once she got that ring, it was like, whoa,
this is special, Honey, we were in the elevator and
she'd say, look at that. So what? What? No. Look
at the sparkle there. Look at that little shine. Okay,
she got a little case to put it in. The
lady told her, oh, no, you can't wash the dishes,
(04:17):
you know, because there's a little film. So she got
a little place to put it beside the the sink.
So you know why? Because it's special. You got a
little case to put it in beside the nightstand where
she can put it in a special case set apart. Set?
You know, not with the rest of the jewelry, because
this was a nice ring set apart. High value. You know,
(04:39):
she's she's not a materialistic, possessive person, but, you know,
she hasn't. I haven't heard her, like, loan it out
to anybody and say, oh, you're going to something. You
want to wear my ring here. Here you go. No problem.
Take it. No, she hasn't done that. Why? High value,
taken care of. Set apart. That's exactly what the apostle
Paul is talking about. Our sexuality. He's saying, listen, your
(05:04):
body and your sexuality have been set apart to God
and they have high value. When you understand that it's
high value, you don't give it away cheaply. Give it
away easy. You didn't. It's not just something casual. You
guard it, you keep it, you protect it. You watch
over it because it has high value in the eyes
(05:24):
of God. Yeah. That you possess your vessel in sanctification
and honor, not in lustful passions like the Gentile who
do not know God. He says, you know what? Hey,
you used to live a certain way because you didn't
know God. And so your sexuality. You had some passions.
(05:47):
You had an urge, you went out there. Why? Because
you didn't know any better. You didn't know God, but
now you know God. That's the old you, not the
new you. Listen, I'm going to tell you something. One
of the tactics of the enemy has been to take
our bodies and our sexuality and make it seem cheap
(06:11):
and devalue it. In this, in the society in which
we live in. We live in a society in which
junior highers are in the back of the bus having
oral sex. Why? Just not because they like each other
or dating just to give each other favours. College kids.
It's just standard to have a weekend hookups in which
I'm not dating you. You're not dating me. There's not
(06:31):
really nothing special. We get together to give each other
fringe benefits. That means we give each other sexual favours
the next day. Hi. Great time. Good. I'm not. There's
no nothing in our relationship. It makes me feel good. You.
It makes you feel good. So it's just friends with benefits.
We live in a day in which this thing that's sacred.
(06:53):
This thing that God has given us and say, treasure it,
honor it. It is given away on weekends as though
it were some cheap thing that could be easily given away,
it is devalued in it. It has the sense of
that this is something important, something to keep has been lost.
And what Paul is saying is, if you're a follower
(07:14):
of Jesus Christ, you cannot take the value system of
this world. Your sexuality is something that needs to be sanctified, sanctified,
set apart unto God, and viewed as something of high value. Now,
I know that when I'm preaching right now, for some
(07:34):
of you, if you're 21 years old here and you
haven't fully given your life to Christ, and you're saying, well, pastor,
I'm not, I'm not getting married till I'm 28, finish college,
get my first job, get my apartment. So hold on, pastor,
hold on a second. Am I hearing you right? Are
you telling me, as a 21 year old guy, that
I am to be celibate and abstain from all, any
(07:57):
and all sexual interaction Action until I'm 28 years old,
put a ring on my wife's finger and get married.
Is that what you're telling me? And unless you've given
your life to Christ and dealt with the whole ownership
lordship issue, this is going to seem crazy. But once
Jesus is Lord of your life and you say, it's
(08:18):
not my life, my body, my sexuality, but I belong
to you, God, it'll only make sense when you understand
that your body and your sexuality is under new management.
It's under the management of the Holy Spirit. It won't
make sense. It's under your management. And that's what he says.
(08:45):
He says not in lustful passions. Lustful passions is I
get an urge. I get a desire, hey, I'm going
to satisfy my need. The first victim I run into
that I can seduce. Hey, it's a done deal for
the weekend. If I get the victim a little intoxicated,
it's an easier deal in the weekend. And he says,
(09:07):
you know, that's the way you were. And listen, I
know that's the way a lot of us were. And
I know some of you when you came to Christ, man,
that was your lifestyle. That's what you lived. That's what
you grew up doing. That's how you were. That's who
you were. So when you come to Christ, it's a
(09:27):
shock to your system. To to live a whole different way.
But but I want you to know that what the
Apostle Paul is saying is that you're a new person
in Christ. The old has gone, the new has come.
Your sexuality, your your body is under a different kind
of management, and the new management requires it to be
(09:49):
set apart and it to be considered as something of
high value that is not tampered with or given away easily.
Number three leads Leading me to verse six that you
not cheat one another by crossing sexual lines. So treat
your sisters as sisters and your brothers as brothers. Listen
to what it says in verse six, and that no
(10:11):
man transgress and defraud his brother in the matter. In
this matter, because the Lord is the avenger of all
these things. Just as we told you before and solemnly
warned you. Listen to what he says, is this, that
no man transgress? That word transgress means to cross lines,
(10:31):
that no man crossed lines or defraud. The word defraud
means to rob, that no one crossed lines. Or rob who?
His brother. He's talking about the church. He's not talking
about outside the church. He's talking about dating and relationships
inside of the church. And he says, hey, I don't
(10:55):
want you to cross sexual lines and I don't want
you to To fraud. Hey, if I were to tell you.
Watch your purse. Hang on to your wallets. Don't leave
the purses on the back of your chair. Because we've
had a bunch of. We've had people's wallets being stolen.
We put it up on the PowerPoint. You would. You
would be careful. You'd say, I can't believe there's a
(11:16):
thief loose in the church trying to pickpocket in the church,
trying to steal my money. But yet the Apostle Paul
says it happens all the time. How does it happen?
There's robbery happening. It happens when people get sexually involved.
When people get sexually involved outside of marriage, any kind
(11:38):
of sexual focus and energy that you give outside of marriage,
ultimately someone ends up being defrauded or robbed because of it.
Let me tell you how it works. Well, it works
like this. If it's adultery, if you're a married person
and one of your spouses gives your spouse, gives attention
to someone outside of your marriage and begins to focus
(12:01):
their sexual energy, whether it's platonic or whether it's physical.
Then you are robbing your spouse of intimacy energy, of
covenant relationship. I mean, we all understand that, that it's
just wrong. You're robbing something from your marriage. But you say, well, pastor,
what if it's just consensual? Do people dating? They like
each other? They're serious about it. Show a little affection.
(12:27):
What's wrong with that? Are you seriously? Anybody hurt in it?
You love each other. You're thinking about talking about one day,
five years down the road, four years down the road,
getting married. What's wrong with having a little sex when
you're dating? Well, let's put a pause button on that
for a second. You're assuming that you know better than
(12:51):
the designer knows. You're kind of assuming that I know.
The designer says don't use it this way because it
can break it, mess it up. But I'm going to
use it anyway that way. Hey, listen, if the instruction
says it's 120 voltage, not 220 voltage, I would listen
(13:13):
to the instructions because you say, well, what's it going
to hurt? I don't understand, I don't see anything wrong.
Let me plug 220 in. I'm going to guarantee you
plug 220 and it's meant for 120. It's eventually going
to spark and it may work for a little bit.
But let me tell you it's not going to work
very long. There is damage that will be done, even
though you don't understand that there's damage because the designer
(13:35):
of it ultimately that knows how it works best. That
designed it from the beginning says, here's the instruction manual.
Do not use it this way or it'll have repercussions.
S1 (13:49):
This is Moody Presents, and you're listening to Mark Jobe.
We'll be back with the second half of today's message
in just a moment. So do stay with us. But first,
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(14:09):
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how to do that at Moody presents.org. It's quick and easy,
I promise. At Moody presents.org. And now let's get back
to this very important, very timely message on purity from
Mark Jobe on Moody Presents.
S2 (15:12):
Let me tell you how serious God is about it.
He says this and that. No one transgress or defraud
his brother in this manner because the Lord. Whoa whoa whoa.
Hold on. Hey, young guy, you got your eye on
a sister. Little sister in the church. Uh. She's cute.
(15:33):
I know she's cute. You're trying to act all spiritual.
Bring in a big Bible. You make sure you're situated
right in front of her when the music's going on.
You're raising your hands extra high. You think that if
you move a little bit, she's going to be distracted
a little bit? You're showing how spiritual you are, taking notes,
(15:55):
you know, because you know, she wants a godly man,
a spiritual man. So you're playing the part a little bit. Uh,
hold on a second. You're thinking that you can smooth talk,
that little sister. You're thinking that you can kind of
lure her into wanting a spiritual man, a man of God,
and then you'll go back to the ways of the
world and taste some of the fruit of that little sister.
(16:16):
Here's what God says. Listen, that no man transgressed into fraud,
his brother in the matter, because the Lord is the
avenger in all these things, just as also you were
told before and solemnly warn. Hold on. What are you saying?
That God is an avenger? Well, that's strong words. Listen,
(16:37):
you can have enemies, but one enemy that I do
not want to have on my list. One guy that
I don't want to be my avenger. And that's the
Lord of hosts. God almighty. I don't want him to
put me on the Avenger list. The Lord is the avenger.
That means the one that says, hey, you thought that
you're dealing with an angry father. Listen, you ain't dealt
(16:58):
with anything until you've dealt with the Avenger, the almighty
Avenger who looks at you and says, do not touch
my little girl, my sister. So he says, hey brothers,
you need to look at the women in the church
as sisters. Sisters in the Lord and sisters, you need
(17:20):
to look at brothers as brothers in the Lord. And
let me tell you what happens if. If you have
trained yourself. Listen, let's let's be real here. Let's talk
about how this works. All you have to do is
go downtown sometime and go by a construction site sometime,
and just have a girl that's walking out of the office,
(17:41):
walk by a group A, a crew of construction guys,
and you'll get a little idea of what happens at
checking it out. Up and down, checking the wall. Hey,
look at this. That, you know, if if that's your mentality,
if you're out there and you are falling into porneia
by getting on internet pornography. If you're having a steady
(18:01):
dosage of of pumping up your mind with sexual images,
then when you come to church or when you go
to work or when you go to school, you can't
look at any woman with purity in your mind because
you have filled your mind with garbage. And what you
see is a body, not a person. You don't see
an individual. You don't see a heart. You don't see
(18:22):
a soul. You see a body. And and when you
see just the body, then you treat someone as a
piece of meat and not as an individual. And what
God is saying is, listen, guys, listen guys, that may
have been the way it was in the world. You
may have checked them out in the world, your game
(18:43):
may have been, how do I seduce and get this person?
But you are no longer in the world. You are
a man of God. Now rise up and live and
walk like a man of God. Begin to put on
the eyes of a man of God. Begin to train
yourself to be, to to look at the face of
a woman and not scan her body, begin to understand
(19:04):
that she is a woman of dignity, with a soul
and with a life and with the spirit, and begin
to understand that the more you expose yourself to the
garbage that's in the world, the harder you have to
work at saturating and cleansing your mind so that you
can walk in purity. I know it's a battle. Listen,
(19:28):
there are some of you young men that that are
here today, that all your interaction with women has been
so sexually charged that just to have a girl that
you see as a sister in Christ is a huge
challenge for you, because your mind has been so steeped
in the world, so brainwashed by the world system. To
(19:51):
have a woman that you see as a sister, you
you look at her pure as you would look at
your own sister. Is this a huge challenge. And I'm
going to tell you something. That's the culture of the
kingdom of God. It's not the exception, it's what God
is saying. I want that to be the norm in
the body of Christ. Verse seven, For God has not
(20:14):
called us for the purpose of impurity, but in sanctification.
You have a call on your life, and your call
is not to use your body and to mess your
life up with sexual immorality. That's not God's purpose for you,
because every time you defy. Every time you fall into porneia,
(20:35):
every time you fall into sexual immorality, every time you
sleep with your girlfriend, in essence, you are defying the
living God. Listen what it says. So he who rejects
this is not rejecting man, but God who gives His
Holy Spirit to you. Hold on. What Paul is saying is,
(20:57):
this isn't man made rules. This isn't Pastor Mark's law.
This is not because it's church. This is because it's God.
And if you reject the standard of purity, you are
rejecting God. Why? Because God has deposited in you His
Holy Spirit. And your body now is a temple of
(21:18):
the Holy Spirit. And what you do with your body
you are doing with the temple of God. So when
you say, hey, I want to be a Christian, I
want to follow God, but don't expect me to be
celibate until marriage. That's crazy right there. Right now you
are saying, God, I reject you. You cannot be an
(21:39):
authentic follower of Jesus Christ. Listen to me well. Look
up at me. You cannot be an authentic follower of
Jesus Christ and serious about your walk with God. If
you continue to have casual sex on the side with
your girlfriend, boyfriend, mistress, whatever it may be, you are
rejecting God. Every time you go out there and you
(22:02):
play your sexual games, or you because this is not
a small issue. Listen, this is a huge issue. I
want our singles to walk in purity because they choose
to walk in purity because they say God is the
owner of my sexuality. I am set apart unto God.
And I want to challenge you. If you're dating, if
you're single, if you're married, I challenge you. If you're married, yeah.
(22:24):
Enjoy the sexuality in your marriage. Listen, if you're a
married couple and you aren't having sex, then you need
to get on your knees, repent and say, God forgive
us because we should be having sex. And a lot
of it. Seriously, it's a it's a sin to deny
your partner. And obviously, hey, some of you, you know,
you're in the doghouse because you, you, you put yourself
(22:46):
in the doghouse, you act like a jerk, and then
you want some of the goodies that are there, and
that's not the way it works. So learn to be
a good husband. Bring it out in your wife so
that she wants to love on you and bless you,
and give herself to you as well. You say, pastor,
should we be talking about this in church? Absolutely. We
should be talking about this in church. Absolutely. Not only
(23:08):
should we be talking about it in church, but we
should be determining that we are going to live counterculture, revolutionary.
And if we're going to do it, we need to
be strong about it.
S1 (23:19):
You've been listening to the Bible teaching of Mark Jobe,
and this is Moody Presents. You can find us online
at Moody presents.org. Well, pastor Mark has joined us at
the mic here for a moment. And pastor Mark, you know,
purity is a tough topic to teach about in our
culture today. With everything we see coming at us from
Hollywood and our social media feeds and everything else online,
(23:43):
it's just not easy to live in a way that's
countercultural from the mainstream, right?
S2 (23:47):
I'm sure that every generation looks at the new generation
and says, wow, they're really going down. This is a
tough topic, and maybe you have not heard on the
radio or in a church message. Us being so up
front about this, my approach is the Bible talks a
lot about this. And if you're not hearing a godly
(24:07):
biblical perspective coming from preachers and teachers, then where are
you learning about this?
S1 (24:14):
Well, thank you for that reminder, pastor Mark. And here's
a reminder for you as you listen to Moody Presents.
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(24:34):
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(24:58):
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(25:22):
Presents 820 North LaSalle Boulevard, Chicago, Illinois 606 ten. Well,
that's all the time we have for today. I'm John
Geiger inviting you to join us again next week, when
we'll wrestle with the hard work of waiting for Jesus.
What you can do to prepare for the second coming
of Christ. Be listening, then, won't you? For Moody Presents
(25:45):
with Mark Jobe, Moody Presents is a production of Moody Radio,
a ministry of Moody Bible Institute.
Today on Moody Presents, Mark Jobe shows us how we
can view sexuality as God designed it.
S2 (00:07):
And what Paul is saying is, if you're a follower
of Jesus Christ, you cannot take the value system of
this world. Your sexuality is something that needs to be sanctified,
set apart unto God, and viewed as something of high value.
S1 (00:25):
Welcome to Moody Presents with Mark Jobe. Mark is the
president of Moody Bible Institute and the senior pastor of
New Life Community Church in Chicago. I'm John Gager if
we've never met, and our topic today is just not
very popular in our culture, boy, but it is one
we must address. We started this message last week, so
if you missed the first part, be sure to catch
(00:47):
up online at Moody Presente.org. Our study is titled The
Call to Purity, and today Mark is going to show
us that God has set us apart for his purposes,
and that includes managing our sexuality. The Apostle Paul reminds
us that we were bought with a high price. And
when something is highly valued, you don't give it away
(01:09):
to the cheapest bidder. What do you say we get
started here on Moody Presents with doctor Mark Jobe?
S2 (01:15):
Verse four, it says that each of you know how
to possess his own vessel in sanctification. We set our
body and our sexual energy aside to God. We set
it apart unto God. We say, I'm going to manage
it the way you want me to manage it. God.
And in honor. That word honor means high value. If
(01:40):
you've ever gone before a judge, you say, Your Honor. Why?
Because you're saying you're a person of high value, high esteem.
That's going to make judgments about my life. And so
I'm going to really treat you nice when when the
word honor means something that's of high value. And what,
what Paul is telling us as believers, We need to
(02:02):
understand that our body belongs to God, and that our
body needs to be set apart to the purposes of God.
And our body and our sexuality needs to be set apart,
to be managed God's way, and that we need to
look at it as something that's of high value. And
when something is of high value, you don't give it
(02:23):
away cheaply. When something is of high value, you take
care of it. When I got married, I was 21
years old and I was really poor. And I saved
up and I got my ring, my wife, a ring.
I didn't get her an engagement ring because I didn't
have money for that. But I got her wedding ring.
And in my mind, hey, man, in my mind, I splurged,
(02:47):
you know? But when you're poor splurging, it's not a lot.
So basically, I got her a cheap little ring. She
cherished it. She never complained. She never said. Why did
you give me the cheap little thing? You know, she. Hey,
it was what it was. And it had sentimental value. Right?
So I got it. She cherished it. But, you know,
when we were hitting our 25th year anniversary, she started
(03:10):
dropping hints like a wife does. Subtle hints, subtle hints. Like,
how about buying me a ring? So I'm smart enough
to take a hint when I hear it. So I said,
all right, honey, I'm going to buy you a ring.
This time. I'm going to buy you a better ring
(03:32):
than you had. So she went out and started looking
for rings, and I learned more about rings than I
want to know more about little diamonds. I didn't know
there's yellow diamonds and clear diamonds and specks and how
it's cut and this and that, all that. I endured
that for the sake of my beloved wife. And so
when we bought that ring, she suddenly, I don't know,
(03:55):
she hadn't taken care of her old ring very well.
But once she got that ring, it was like, whoa,
this is special, Honey, we were in the elevator and
she'd say, look at that. So what? What? No. Look
at the sparkle there. Look at that little shine. Okay,
she got a little case to put it in. The
lady told her, oh, no, you can't wash the dishes,
(04:17):
you know, because there's a little film. So she got
a little place to put it beside the the sink.
So you know why? Because it's special. You got a
little case to put it in beside the nightstand where
she can put it in a special case set apart. Set?
You know, not with the rest of the jewelry, because
this was a nice ring set apart. High value. You know,
(04:39):
she's she's not a materialistic, possessive person, but, you know,
she hasn't. I haven't heard her, like, loan it out
to anybody and say, oh, you're going to something. You
want to wear my ring here. Here you go. No problem.
Take it. No, she hasn't done that. Why? High value,
taken care of. Set apart. That's exactly what the apostle
Paul is talking about. Our sexuality. He's saying, listen, your
(05:04):
body and your sexuality have been set apart to God
and they have high value. When you understand that it's
high value, you don't give it away cheaply. Give it
away easy. You didn't. It's not just something casual. You
guard it, you keep it, you protect it. You watch
over it because it has high value in the eyes
(05:24):
of God. Yeah. That you possess your vessel in sanctification
and honor, not in lustful passions like the Gentile who
do not know God. He says, you know what? Hey,
you used to live a certain way because you didn't
know God. And so your sexuality. You had some passions.
(05:47):
You had an urge, you went out there. Why? Because
you didn't know any better. You didn't know God, but
now you know God. That's the old you, not the
new you. Listen, I'm going to tell you something. One
of the tactics of the enemy has been to take
our bodies and our sexuality and make it seem cheap
(06:11):
and devalue it. In this, in the society in which
we live in. We live in a society in which
junior highers are in the back of the bus having
oral sex. Why? Just not because they like each other
or dating just to give each other favours. College kids.
It's just standard to have a weekend hookups in which
I'm not dating you. You're not dating me. There's not
(06:31):
really nothing special. We get together to give each other
fringe benefits. That means we give each other sexual favours
the next day. Hi. Great time. Good. I'm not. There's
no nothing in our relationship. It makes me feel good. You.
It makes you feel good. So it's just friends with benefits.
We live in a day in which this thing that's sacred.
(06:53):
This thing that God has given us and say, treasure it,
honor it. It is given away on weekends as though
it were some cheap thing that could be easily given away,
it is devalued in it. It has the sense of
that this is something important, something to keep has been lost.
And what Paul is saying is, if you're a follower
(07:14):
of Jesus Christ, you cannot take the value system of
this world. Your sexuality is something that needs to be sanctified, sanctified,
set apart unto God, and viewed as something of high value. Now,
I know that when I'm preaching right now, for some
(07:34):
of you, if you're 21 years old here and you
haven't fully given your life to Christ, and you're saying, well, pastor,
I'm not, I'm not getting married till I'm 28, finish college,
get my first job, get my apartment. So hold on, pastor,
hold on a second. Am I hearing you right? Are
you telling me, as a 21 year old guy, that
I am to be celibate and abstain from all, any
(07:57):
and all sexual interaction Action until I'm 28 years old,
put a ring on my wife's finger and get married.
Is that what you're telling me? And unless you've given
your life to Christ and dealt with the whole ownership
lordship issue, this is going to seem crazy. But once
Jesus is Lord of your life and you say, it's
(08:18):
not my life, my body, my sexuality, but I belong
to you, God, it'll only make sense when you understand
that your body and your sexuality is under new management.
It's under the management of the Holy Spirit. It won't
make sense. It's under your management. And that's what he says.
(08:45):
He says not in lustful passions. Lustful passions is I
get an urge. I get a desire, hey, I'm going
to satisfy my need. The first victim I run into
that I can seduce. Hey, it's a done deal for
the weekend. If I get the victim a little intoxicated,
it's an easier deal in the weekend. And he says,
(09:07):
you know, that's the way you were. And listen, I
know that's the way a lot of us were. And
I know some of you when you came to Christ, man,
that was your lifestyle. That's what you lived. That's what
you grew up doing. That's how you were. That's who
you were. So when you come to Christ, it's a
(09:27):
shock to your system. To to live a whole different way.
But but I want you to know that what the
Apostle Paul is saying is that you're a new person
in Christ. The old has gone, the new has come.
Your sexuality, your your body is under a different kind
of management, and the new management requires it to be
(09:49):
set apart and it to be considered as something of
high value that is not tampered with or given away easily.
Number three leads Leading me to verse six that you
not cheat one another by crossing sexual lines. So treat
your sisters as sisters and your brothers as brothers. Listen
to what it says in verse six, and that no
(10:11):
man transgress and defraud his brother in the matter. In
this matter, because the Lord is the avenger of all
these things. Just as we told you before and solemnly
warned you. Listen to what he says, is this, that
no man transgress? That word transgress means to cross lines,
(10:31):
that no man crossed lines or defraud. The word defraud
means to rob, that no one crossed lines. Or rob who?
His brother. He's talking about the church. He's not talking
about outside the church. He's talking about dating and relationships
inside of the church. And he says, hey, I don't
(10:55):
want you to cross sexual lines and I don't want
you to To fraud. Hey, if I were to tell you.
Watch your purse. Hang on to your wallets. Don't leave
the purses on the back of your chair. Because we've
had a bunch of. We've had people's wallets being stolen.
We put it up on the PowerPoint. You would. You
would be careful. You'd say, I can't believe there's a
(11:16):
thief loose in the church trying to pickpocket in the church,
trying to steal my money. But yet the Apostle Paul
says it happens all the time. How does it happen?
There's robbery happening. It happens when people get sexually involved.
When people get sexually involved outside of marriage, any kind
(11:38):
of sexual focus and energy that you give outside of marriage,
ultimately someone ends up being defrauded or robbed because of it.
Let me tell you how it works. Well, it works
like this. If it's adultery, if you're a married person
and one of your spouses gives your spouse, gives attention
to someone outside of your marriage and begins to focus
(12:01):
their sexual energy, whether it's platonic or whether it's physical.
Then you are robbing your spouse of intimacy energy, of
covenant relationship. I mean, we all understand that, that it's
just wrong. You're robbing something from your marriage. But you say, well, pastor,
what if it's just consensual? Do people dating? They like
each other? They're serious about it. Show a little affection.
(12:27):
What's wrong with that? Are you seriously? Anybody hurt in it?
You love each other. You're thinking about talking about one day,
five years down the road, four years down the road,
getting married. What's wrong with having a little sex when
you're dating? Well, let's put a pause button on that
for a second. You're assuming that you know better than
(12:51):
the designer knows. You're kind of assuming that I know.
The designer says don't use it this way because it
can break it, mess it up. But I'm going to
use it anyway that way. Hey, listen, if the instruction
says it's 120 voltage, not 220 voltage, I would listen
(13:13):
to the instructions because you say, well, what's it going
to hurt? I don't understand, I don't see anything wrong.
Let me plug 220 in. I'm going to guarantee you
plug 220 and it's meant for 120. It's eventually going
to spark and it may work for a little bit.
But let me tell you it's not going to work
very long. There is damage that will be done, even
though you don't understand that there's damage because the designer
(13:35):
of it ultimately that knows how it works best. That
designed it from the beginning says, here's the instruction manual.
Do not use it this way or it'll have repercussions.
S1 (13:49):
This is Moody Presents, and you're listening to Mark Jobe.
We'll be back with the second half of today's message
in just a moment. So do stay with us. But first,
the team here at Moody Presents would like to encourage
you to go online and become part of the advance
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(14:09):
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(14:32):
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(14:55):
how to do that at Moody presents.org. It's quick and easy,
I promise. At Moody presents.org. And now let's get back
to this very important, very timely message on purity from
Mark Jobe on Moody Presents.
S2 (15:12):
Let me tell you how serious God is about it.
He says this and that. No one transgress or defraud
his brother in this manner because the Lord. Whoa whoa whoa.
Hold on. Hey, young guy, you got your eye on
a sister. Little sister in the church. Uh. She's cute.
(15:33):
I know she's cute. You're trying to act all spiritual.
Bring in a big Bible. You make sure you're situated
right in front of her when the music's going on.
You're raising your hands extra high. You think that if
you move a little bit, she's going to be distracted
a little bit? You're showing how spiritual you are, taking notes,
(15:55):
you know, because you know, she wants a godly man,
a spiritual man. So you're playing the part a little bit. Uh,
hold on a second. You're thinking that you can smooth talk,
that little sister. You're thinking that you can kind of
lure her into wanting a spiritual man, a man of God,
and then you'll go back to the ways of the
world and taste some of the fruit of that little sister.
(16:16):
Here's what God says. Listen, that no man transgressed into fraud,
his brother in the matter, because the Lord is the
avenger in all these things, just as also you were
told before and solemnly warn. Hold on. What are you saying?
That God is an avenger? Well, that's strong words. Listen,
(16:37):
you can have enemies, but one enemy that I do
not want to have on my list. One guy that
I don't want to be my avenger. And that's the
Lord of hosts. God almighty. I don't want him to
put me on the Avenger list. The Lord is the avenger.
That means the one that says, hey, you thought that
you're dealing with an angry father. Listen, you ain't dealt
(16:58):
with anything until you've dealt with the Avenger, the almighty
Avenger who looks at you and says, do not touch
my little girl, my sister. So he says, hey brothers,
you need to look at the women in the church
as sisters. Sisters in the Lord and sisters, you need
(17:20):
to look at brothers as brothers in the Lord. And
let me tell you what happens if. If you have
trained yourself. Listen, let's let's be real here. Let's talk
about how this works. All you have to do is
go downtown sometime and go by a construction site sometime,
and just have a girl that's walking out of the office,
(17:41):
walk by a group A, a crew of construction guys,
and you'll get a little idea of what happens at
checking it out. Up and down, checking the wall. Hey,
look at this. That, you know, if if that's your mentality,
if you're out there and you are falling into porneia
by getting on internet pornography. If you're having a steady
(18:01):
dosage of of pumping up your mind with sexual images,
then when you come to church or when you go
to work or when you go to school, you can't
look at any woman with purity in your mind because
you have filled your mind with garbage. And what you
see is a body, not a person. You don't see
an individual. You don't see a heart. You don't see
(18:22):
a soul. You see a body. And and when you
see just the body, then you treat someone as a
piece of meat and not as an individual. And what
God is saying is, listen, guys, listen guys, that may
have been the way it was in the world. You
may have checked them out in the world, your game
(18:43):
may have been, how do I seduce and get this person?
But you are no longer in the world. You are
a man of God. Now rise up and live and
walk like a man of God. Begin to put on
the eyes of a man of God. Begin to train
yourself to be, to to look at the face of
a woman and not scan her body, begin to understand
(19:04):
that she is a woman of dignity, with a soul
and with a life and with the spirit, and begin
to understand that the more you expose yourself to the
garbage that's in the world, the harder you have to
work at saturating and cleansing your mind so that you
can walk in purity. I know it's a battle. Listen,
(19:28):
there are some of you young men that that are
here today, that all your interaction with women has been
so sexually charged that just to have a girl that
you see as a sister in Christ is a huge
challenge for you, because your mind has been so steeped
in the world, so brainwashed by the world system. To
(19:51):
have a woman that you see as a sister, you
you look at her pure as you would look at
your own sister. Is this a huge challenge. And I'm
going to tell you something. That's the culture of the
kingdom of God. It's not the exception, it's what God
is saying. I want that to be the norm in
the body of Christ. Verse seven, For God has not
(20:14):
called us for the purpose of impurity, but in sanctification.
You have a call on your life, and your call
is not to use your body and to mess your
life up with sexual immorality. That's not God's purpose for you,
because every time you defy. Every time you fall into porneia,
(20:35):
every time you fall into sexual immorality, every time you
sleep with your girlfriend, in essence, you are defying the
living God. Listen what it says. So he who rejects
this is not rejecting man, but God who gives His
Holy Spirit to you. Hold on. What Paul is saying is,
(20:57):
this isn't man made rules. This isn't Pastor Mark's law.
This is not because it's church. This is because it's God.
And if you reject the standard of purity, you are
rejecting God. Why? Because God has deposited in you His
Holy Spirit. And your body now is a temple of
(21:18):
the Holy Spirit. And what you do with your body
you are doing with the temple of God. So when
you say, hey, I want to be a Christian, I
want to follow God, but don't expect me to be
celibate until marriage. That's crazy right there. Right now you
are saying, God, I reject you. You cannot be an
(21:39):
authentic follower of Jesus Christ. Listen to me well. Look
up at me. You cannot be an authentic follower of
Jesus Christ and serious about your walk with God. If
you continue to have casual sex on the side with
your girlfriend, boyfriend, mistress, whatever it may be, you are
rejecting God. Every time you go out there and you
(22:02):
play your sexual games, or you because this is not
a small issue. Listen, this is a huge issue. I
want our singles to walk in purity because they choose
to walk in purity because they say God is the
owner of my sexuality. I am set apart unto God.
And I want to challenge you. If you're dating, if
you're single, if you're married, I challenge you. If you're married, yeah.
(22:24):
Enjoy the sexuality in your marriage. Listen, if you're a
married couple and you aren't having sex, then you need
to get on your knees, repent and say, God forgive
us because we should be having sex. And a lot
of it. Seriously, it's a it's a sin to deny
your partner. And obviously, hey, some of you, you know,
you're in the doghouse because you, you, you put yourself
(22:46):
in the doghouse, you act like a jerk, and then
you want some of the goodies that are there, and
that's not the way it works. So learn to be
a good husband. Bring it out in your wife so
that she wants to love on you and bless you,
and give herself to you as well. You say, pastor,
should we be talking about this in church? Absolutely. We
should be talking about this in church. Absolutely. Not only
(23:08):
should we be talking about it in church, but we
should be determining that we are going to live counterculture, revolutionary.
And if we're going to do it, we need to
be strong about it.
S1 (23:19):
You've been listening to the Bible teaching of Mark Jobe,
and this is Moody Presents. You can find us online
at Moody presents.org. Well, pastor Mark has joined us at
the mic here for a moment. And pastor Mark, you know,
purity is a tough topic to teach about in our
culture today. With everything we see coming at us from
Hollywood and our social media feeds and everything else online,
(23:43):
it's just not easy to live in a way that's
countercultural from the mainstream, right?
S2 (23:47):
I'm sure that every generation looks at the new generation
and says, wow, they're really going down. This is a
tough topic, and maybe you have not heard on the
radio or in a church message. Us being so up
front about this, my approach is the Bible talks a
lot about this. And if you're not hearing a godly
(24:07):
biblical perspective coming from preachers and teachers, then where are
you learning about this?
S1 (24:14):
Well, thank you for that reminder, pastor Mark. And here's
a reminder for you as you listen to Moody Presents.
We want to hear from you. Yeah, we love when
you share your stories. Doing so deepens our resolve to
make sure that this daily program is heard all over
the country, as well as all over the world. You know,
right now, God is using people like you to help
(24:34):
us reach people at more than 600 radio stations nationwide
and throughout the world. But none of this would be
possible without the support of those who give generously to
make this weekly radio program possible. As God moves you
to invest in this non-profit ministry, we encourage you to
give a donation online at Moody presents.org. That's Moody presents.org
(24:58):
or give your gift when you give us a call
at 800 407 022. That's 800 407 022. Now, if
it's easier, you can send your card or letter in
the mail by addressing your envelope to Moody Presents. 820
North LaSalle Boulevard, Chicago, Illinois 606 ten. Again, that's Moody
(25:22):
Presents 820 North LaSalle Boulevard, Chicago, Illinois 606 ten. Well,
that's all the time we have for today. I'm John
Geiger inviting you to join us again next week, when
we'll wrestle with the hard work of waiting for Jesus.
What you can do to prepare for the second coming
of Christ. Be listening, then, won't you? For Moody Presents
(25:45):
with Mark Jobe, Moody Presents is a production of Moody Radio,
a ministry of Moody Bible Institute.
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