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Mar 31, 2019

The Hope of Intimacy

Passage: Matthew 5:27-32

Speaker: Brian Land

Series: Sermon on the Mount

Category: Grace Brevard

Keywords: divorce, intimacy, love, lust, marriage

Part of our broken human condition is the propensity to objectify and use other people for our own pleasure and benefit, which leaves behind a trail of brokenness. The beautiful monogamous intimacy God has designed for us parallels how God has designed for us to be in relationship with Him; He as the Bridegroom and all believers as the Bride of Christ, united perfectly forever in intimacy and faithful monogamy.

Order of Worship

CALL TO WORSHIP: Isaiah 61:10a,11

LEADER: I delight greatly in the Lord; my soul rejoices in my God. For he has clothed me with garments of salvation and arrayed me in a robe of his righteousness,

ALL: 11 For as the soil makes the young plant come up and a garden causes seeds to grow, so the Sovereign Lord will make righteousness and praise spring up before all nations.

READING: 1 Thessalonians 4:3-4,7-8

LEADER: 3 For this is the will of God, your sanctification: that you abstain from sexual immorality; 4 that each one of you know how to control his own body in holiness and honor,

ALL: 7 For God has not called us for impurity, but in holiness. 8 Therefore whoever disregards this, disregards not man but God, who gives his Holy Spirit to you.

MUSIC : 

PRAYER: The Consecrated Life

LEADER: O, Gracious God, it is your great will to make known the glory of Your Son.

ALL:  Let us stand in this great gospel.

LEADER:  Center our hearts.  Renew our minds. Here is our duty.

ALL:  To know the love of Christ.  To consecrate our lives in gratitude and good works.

LEADER:  Holy Spirit work in us the grace and beauty of Christ.  

MESSAGE: The Hope of Intimacy

CENTRAL TEXT: Matthew 5:27-32

27 ‘You have heard that it was said, “You shall not commit adultery.” 28 But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart.29 If your right eye causes you to stumble, gouge it out and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to be thrown into hell. 30 And if your right hand causes you to stumble, cut it off and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to go into hell. 31 ‘It has been said, “Anyone who divorces his wife must give her a certificate of divorce.” 32 But I tell you that anyone who divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality, makes her the victim of adultery, and anyone who marries a divorced woman commits adultery.

BENEDICTION: 1 Thessalonians 5:23-24 ESV

LEADER: 23 Now may the God of peace himself sanctify you completely, and may your whole spirit and soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. 24 He who calls you is faithful; he will surely do it.

ADDITIONAL SCRIPTURES:

1 Corinthians 6:12-18

12 “All things are lawful for me,” but not all things are helpful. “All things are lawful for me,” but I will not be dominated by anything. 13 “Food is meant for the stomach and the stomach for food”—and God will destroy both one and the other. The body is not meant for sexual immorality, but for the Lord, and the Lord for the body. 14 And God raised the Lord and will also raise us up by his power. 15 Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ? Shall I then take the members of Christ and make them members of a prostitute? Never! 16 Or do you not know that he who is joined to a prostitute becomes one body with her? For, as it is written, “The two will become one flesh.” 17 But he who is joined to the Lord becomes one spirit with him. 18 Flee from sexual immorality. Every other sin a person commits is outside the body, but the sexually immoral person sins against his own body.

Matthew 19:3-12

3 And Pharisees came up to him and tested him by asking, “Is it lawful to divorce one’s wife for any cause?” 4 He answered, “Have you not read that he who created them from the beginning made them male and female, 5 and said, ‘Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’? 6 So they are no longer two but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate.” 7 They said to him, “Why then did Moses command one to give a certificate of divorce and to send her away?” 8 He said to them, “Because of your hardness of heart Moses allowed you to divorce your wives, but from the beginning it was not so. 9 And I say to you: whoever divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality, and marries another, commits adultery.” 10 The disciples said to him, “If such is the case of a man with his wife, it is better not to marry.” 11 But he said to them, “Not everyone can receive this saying, but only those to whom it is given. 12 For there are eunuchs who have been so from birth, and there are eunuchs who have been made eunuchs by men, and there are eunuchs who have made themselves eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven. Let the one who is able to receive this receive it.”

Isaiah 62:5

For as a young man marries a young woman, so shall your sons marry you, and as the bridegroom rejoices over the bride, so shall your God rejoice over you.

Song of Songs/Solomon 2

3 As an apple tree among the trees of the forest, so is my beloved among the young men. With great delight I sat in his shadow, and his fruit was sweet to my taste. 4 He brought me to the banqueting house, and his banner over me was love. 5 Sustain me with raisins; refresh me with apples, for I am sick with love. 6 His left hand is under my head, and his right hand embraces me! 7 I adjure you, O daughters of Jerusalem, by the gazelles or the does of the field, that you not stir up or awaken love until it pleases. 8 The voice of my beloved! Behold, he comes, leaping over the mountains, bounding over the hills. 9 My beloved is like a gazelle or a young stag. Behold, there he stands behind our wall, gazing through the windows, looking through the lattice. 10 My beloved speaks and says to me: “Arise, my love, my beautiful one, and come away,

Proverbs 28:13

Whoever conceals his transgressions will not prosper, but he who confesses and forsakes them will obtain mercy.

Genesis 2:24-25

24 Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh. 25 And the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed.

MEDIA:

3.31.19 Album

DISCUSSIONS QUESTIONS:

Intimacy

  1. Why is God so concerned about our sexuality?
  2. Why is it so awkward to talk about?
  3. How has our culture treated physical intimacy?
  4. How have Christians improperly treated physical intimacy?
  5. What is the “point” of physical intimacy?
    1. Why did God make it?
    2. How have we distorted the point of it?
  6. Jesus comes at this issue with hope, not shame. It isn’t because intimacy is “bad” but because it is so good, so powerful, so miraculous.
    1. How is this motivation so much better than “because it’s naughty”?

Marriage

  1. What is marriage? What’s the point of it?
  2. Why has marriage become so much less “permanent”?
  3. Scripture gives a few specific allowable reasons for divorce (1 Cor. 7:15 & here in our passage, Matt 5:32). What are these reasons?
    1. Why only these? (Abuse should be included within the infidelity category?
    2. Why does God “hate divorce”?
  4. Marriage is probably the most powerful and, along with adoption, most prolific illustration of our relationship with God. Others like Tim Keller have said regarding the Bible: “If a book begins with marriage and ends with marriage, it’s a book about marriage.” How is the bible really a book “about marriage”?
  5. What does being a “Bride of Christ” stir up in you?
  6. Actually ALL BELIEVERS together are the Bride of Christ, not just me individually. How could this impact how we “church” together?

QUOTES:

  • “Our bond to Jesus Christ permits no desire without love.” - Dietrich Bonhoëffer
  • “I still prefer to believe that sex is a substitute for religion and that the young man who rings the bell at the brothel is unconsciously looking for God.” - Fr. Smith in Bruce Marshall’s The World, the Flesh, and the Devil  
  • “For me the real evil of [self-gratification] would be that it takes an appetite which, in lawful use, leads the individual out of himself to complete (and correct) his own personality in that of another. . .and turns it back: sends the man back into the prison of himself. . . ..it is not only the faculty of love which is thus sterilized, forced back on itself, but also the faculty of imagination. . . .After all, almost the main work of life is to come out of ourselves, out of the little, dark prison we are all born in.” - C.S. Lewis in a 1956 letter to Keith Masson
  • “Trying to get sexual pleasure to fill our fundamental yearning for human happiness is a recipe for disappointment.” - Rebecca DeYoung

BOOKS / DOCS

SERMONS / TALKS: