Description
Dan Irvin turns to Genesis 39, where Joseph flees Potiphar's wife, to show that sexual desire is God's good design and that His grace reaches even those who feel too far gone. In a culture saturated with sex, discover why an identity rooted in God's love, not anyone's approval, offers real freedom.
Summary and Application
Dan opened the second week of Navigating Life's Challenges by joking that his topic was "super easy and light." It wasn't, of course. Genesis 39 brings us face to face with sexual desire, and none of us gets through a single day without encountering it. It's in the ads during the football game, in the shows we stream, in the video that started out being about cooking. Dan pointed to one study from the early 2000s that found sexual content in 85% of movies and 82% of TV shows, and those numbers have likely only climbed.
Some of us hear this topic and think, "That's private. Why talk about it in church?" Others think, "Not my struggle." And some think, "If God knew what I've done, I wouldn't be welcome here." Wherever you land, Dan said, there's hope, because God speaks about this freely and openly.
That hope won't come from reading Joseph only as a hero to copy. As Kurt said when the series began, these stories are meant to point us to God's faithfulness and, ultimately, to Jesus.
Admit That We're All the "Bad Kids"
Growing up, it was easy to spot "the bad kids." Dan considered himself one of the good ones. But the gospel tells a different story: "for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God" (Romans 3:23). Every one of us is the bad kid.
Strangely, that's freeing. If we all share the same problem, then no one is uniquely disqualified. And God didn't keep His distance from our mess; He sent Jesus headfirst into it, because He loves us. If your story includes regret, hurt, or even abuse, none of it has surprised God. Grace, by definition, is for people who don't deserve it.
Remember That Desire Was God's Idea
Genesis 39:6–7 tells us Joseph was "well-built and handsome," and Potiphar's wife noticed. Noticing wasn't the problem. The problem came when desire was fed day after day until it became a demand.
Desire itself was God's idea. In the beginning, the man and woman were "naked, and they felt no shame" (Genesis 2:25). Shame entered only with sin. Dan distinguished desire from lust: lust is desire taken to the point of pervasive thought or action. And if anyone doubts that Scripture celebrates sexuality, he suggested a read through the Song of Songs.
God designed sex for the covenant of marriage between a husband and a wife, a way of saying, "We belong to each other, and to no one else." Paul calls the "one flesh" union of marriage "a profound mystery," pointing beyond itself to Christ and the church (Ephesians 5:31–32). It's meant to be a foretaste of the joy of belonging to God forever.
Our culture tends to treat sex as a commodity: all the pleasure, none of the unity it was designed to create. And often underneath it is something deeper, a longing to be seen fully and told, "There's no one I'd rather love." When we ask sex or any relationship to quiet that insecurity, we ask it to do something it was never built to do, and we end up crushed.
Recognize Reality, and Run
When Potiphar's wife finally grabbed Joseph's cloak, "he left his cloak in her hand and ran out of the house" (Genesis 39:12). He didn't negotiate. He didn't overestimate his willpower. He left.
Dan compared unchecked temptation to dirty dishes. One night in the sink is no big deal. A week later, the kitchen is unusable. Small habits repeated over time can cause real ruin.
But Joseph's faithfulness didn't produce a reward. It landed him in prison. Obedience doesn't guarantee an easier life, and if ease is our only reason for following God, we'll eventually walk away. Yet even in prison, "the Lord was with him" (Genesis 39:21). Steps of obedience, like dirty dishes, build over time, but in the opposite direction.
Recognize What God Is Able to Do
Joseph's first refusal reveals what anchored him: "How then could I do such a wicked thing and sin against God?" (Genesis 39:9). He had seen God's goodness in his own life, and that memory shaped his choice.
Dan's daughter has a gifted third-grade teacher with 30 students. Double that, or multiply it by ten, and even the best teacher would hit a breaking point. Sometimes we picture God that way: kind and capable, but maybe not capable of handling our stuff. God is not an overwhelmed teacher looking for a way out. His power, forgiveness, and grace have no limits.
Hear What God Says About You
In John 8, a woman caught in adultery is dragged before Jesus. He answers her accusers, "Let any one of you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her" (John 8:7). One by one, they leave. Then Jesus says, "Neither do I condemn you… Go now and leave your life of sin" (John 8:11).
Notice the order. Jesus didn't say, "Clean up, then we'll talk." Grace came first; the invitation to a new life followed. At the cross, Jesus suffered as an innocent man, like Joseph, but for the guilty, so that our identity would rest not on what we've done but on what God says about us: forgiven, loved, and not too far gone.
Questions for Reflection
Where have you been asking a relationship, someone's approval, or desire itself to tell you who you are, and what might shift if you believed Jesus' words, "Neither do I condemn you," were spoken to you?
Joseph didn't try to manage temptation; he ran. What "dishes" in your life have been sitting a little too long, and who is one trusted person you could invite into that honestly this week?
This post was developed with the assistance of artificial intelligence based on the sermon "Navigating Desire" by Dan Irvin (Genesis 39, October 25, 2026). While every effort has been made to faithfully represent the content and intent of the original message, readers are encouraged to engage the full sermon audio or transcript for the complete teaching.
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Good morning, everyone. It is good to be here, good to be at Wexford campus today. Typically, I'm in the Strip District every weekend, and it's always good to get a chance to be in Wexford, especially when the subject matter is just super easy and light. So I'm really looking forward to it. No, seriously, I am.
I love having the privilege of being able to open God's Word together and unpack it a little bit. So let's take a moment to pray before we jump in today.
God, as we gather today in this moment, we ask that through Your Word You would reveal to us more of Your goodness and Your grace and who You are. Help us to understand how we can navigate life's challenges, how we can understand what You say about us, and what that means for us as we move forward in our days. God, thank you for the opportunity to share Your Word and to unpack it together. It's in Your name that we pray. Amen.
Well, I don't know where you land on this topic. If you walked in today blind, the cat's out of the bag: we just read the text, and what we're talking about today is how we navigate the challenge of sexual desire. I don't know where you fall in the categories of thinking about this, caring about this, or whether this has been or is an issue in your life.
But my guess is that none of us can go a single day without being confronted with the idea of it. Here's what I mean. Most of us will go home at some point today, and maybe not all of us, because some of you are here. We'll go home and turn on a football game, and what will happen? You watch the football game, and boom, the commercials come on, and there are advertisements, a lot of them sexual in nature. You'll watch TV shows, you'll watch movies, you'll be scrolling social media and watching a video. I thought this was a video about cooking, and then all of a sudden, bam, something else pops up on your screen, and you're like, "Where did that come from?" It is everywhere.
I read a journal article on this from the early 2000s, and the statistic was this: 85% of movies and 82% of TV shows had some sort of sexual content. That was a long time ago, so I imagine those numbers are even higher today. This is something that is in the world we live in simply by living where we live and in the time that we live. It's a big industry. You've undoubtedly heard the term "sex sells." It's marketing, it's advertising, it's pushing products. It's everywhere.
So my guess is that there are probably three places you land when you think about this topic, whether you're a person of faith or still exploring the claims of Christianity. It really doesn't matter; the playing field is kind of level.
The first place: maybe you're thinking, "What's the big deal about any of this? My sexuality, my sex life, that is a private matter. That is something for me to worry about. I'm not hurting anybody. I'm a responsible adult. Why are we talking about this in church?"
The second place you might land: you might be thinking, "Okay, I get it. It could be a struggle for some people, but it's not for me. It hasn't been, or I don't foresee it ever being." Or maybe you're thinking, "I'm past that stage in my life. This is not an issue for me." But I know somebody. I hope that somebody is here and listening to this, because I know it can be an issue for people.
And maybe here's the last category you fall into. Maybe you're thinking, "If God only knew what I've struggled with, what I've done, my past, my relationship history, the things that I think about, I don't think God would be very pleased. I don't think God would even want me to be sitting in a church today."
Let me just say that for any of us in any of those three places, what we will uncover today is that there is hope. There is a reality: there is a God who talks about this freely and openly, who created this whole idea of our sexual desire. As we navigate this today, we can all agree that this is out there, in the world we live in. If it's not a struggle right now, maybe it will be someday. And if it's not right now, maybe there's somebody in your life who could desperately use the words of hope that come from the Bible on this topic.
Here's the other thing: you might be surprised to know what the Bible has to say about sex, and how the Bible talks about sex.
Last week, as Kurt kicked off the series we are in now, Navigating Life's Challenges, he talked about how it's easy to look at the life of Joseph in some of these stories and say, "Joseph was the hero." Certainly we could paint Joseph as a hero. He seemingly did the right thing. We could walk out of here and say, "That was a bad situation for Joseph, but he did the right thing. I just need to do the right thing, just like Joseph did." But if that's the only way we look at this text, if that's the only way we look at these Old Testament accounts, then we miss it. We miss the intended purpose of them, which was to point us and draw us toward the faithfulness of who God is, how God can work through people, and ultimately how God points us to a person, Jesus Christ, who did something so remarkable and so wonderful and so self-sacrificing, being an innocent person Himself, that He allowed us to have a relationship with God the Father because of His sacrifice. So we'll get there, but I think it's important to understand that that's the hope that we have today.
Before we can get into that, I think we have to understand why this can be such a challenge for some of us. The first thing we think, when it comes to why I have these temptations and this desire that comes up sometimes, is: "What's wrong with me? What's wrong with me that this is happening, that I'm thinking this?"
Let's go back for a minute to elementary school. I have an elementary school kiddo in my house right now, so it's kind of in that world. When I was in elementary school, it was easy to see who the bad kids were. Do you remember this? The bad kids were going to the principal's office. They were maybe acting out in class and being disruptive, maybe getting into fights at recess, or whatever it was. It was easy to spot the bad kids. In middle school and high school, the bad kids look a different way, but you can still see, "Oh, these kids are getting in trouble. These are the bad kids."
What drove me nuts was that I was in student ministry for years and years, working with all sorts of kids, and people would say, "Oh, those are bad kids over there. I don't know if they should come to the thing, because they're the bad kids." It drove me crazy, because I remember growing up in school and thinking, "I'm one of the good kids. I'm trying to stay out of trouble. I'm trying to stay on a straight path. I'm not getting in trouble in class." I thought of myself as a good kid. I don't know where you identify yourself growing up, good kid or bad kid.
But the reality, and what I came to understand as I understood the good news of Jesus Christ, is that the unfortunate news is that every single one of us is the bad kid, myself included. The Bible is very clear. Romans 3:23: "For all have fallen short of the glory of God."
At first you might be thinking, "Why did I come to church today just to hear this? Is this the hope? Is this the reality?" But when we realize that all of us, when we ask the question, "What's wrong with me?", can answer in the same way, that we all have the same wrong about us, that we've all fallen short, that we're all the bad kids, there's simply something freeing about that.
Here's why. We can realize, too, that while we're all the bad kids, there was a God who decided to enter into that badness. He sent His Son Jesus to planet Earth to walk around with all these different people who were messing it up, and He didn't walk away. He didn't turn His back. He went head first right into the mess. Why in the world would the God of all creation, if we're all the bad kids, care? I'll tell you exactly why. He cares because He loves us. So while there's something wrong with all of us, which is the unfortunate news, the good news is that God in His mercy has entered into the picture, and He wants to help and do something about it.
Maybe you've walked in this morning and thought, "Man, I've gone too far. You don't know my past. You don't know my history. I'm damaged goods. There's been real hurt, there's been real abuse in my life. I've tried, but I haven't been able to move past it." Let me just encourage you for a moment. Do you think any part of your story, any part of your life, has ever been a surprise to God? Has ever been something so shocking, so horrible, that God was saying, "Oh, I didn't see that coming"?
If by God's grace you're in this room today or listening today, do you think that the love of God, the grace of God, is only available for people who have earned it, who have deserved it? That would defeat the entire purpose of grace. That goes against the definition of grace. Grace is for people who do not deserve it. It's a gift. It's a gift that God has given us.
So while we can understand that there's something wrong with us, and that this is why it's a challenge, that's also freeing. Here's another challenge I think we walk into. When we're in the middle of a certain temptation or moment, we think, "How could this be wrong if it feels so right?" Is that a song lyric? It probably is.
Look at the text, Genesis 39:6–7. "So Potiphar left everything he had in Joseph's care. With Joseph in charge, he did not concern himself with anything except the food he ate. Now Joseph was well built and handsome, and after a while his master's wife took notice of Joseph and said, 'Come to bed with me.'"
Joseph was in a really good spot, in charge of the king's house. You know that phrase, "Come to bed with me"? That's the PG version. What most commentators agree on, and what I read leading up to this, is that the phrase is probably better translated "sex." If you want to talk about direct, Potiphar's wife wasn't playing around. That's the situation we find Joseph in.
It wasn't the fact that Joseph was well built and handsome, and that Potiphar's wife noticed. That wasn't the issue. It turned into an issue when she took it to that next level. Maybe it was day after day of thoughts and thinking about it, and then finally she got to the point where she said, "Joseph, come to bed with me." This desire that was aroused in Potiphar's wife is not necessarily a bad thing.
You see, all of us were created this way. This idea of sexuality was from God. Listen to this. All the way back at the very beginning, with Adam and Eve, maybe you've heard this account in the book of Genesis: when God created Adam, He realized shortly after that it was not good for man to be alone. So what did He do? He created woman. Adam and Eve were together in the garden, and life was good. Sin had not entered the equation. They were naked together and unashamed, living together. It was only after sin entered the equation that Adam and Eve realized their nakedness and there was shame, and they looked for a way to cover their bodies from each other. This perfect idea of man and woman living together, and sexuality, was God's design for people.
Sexual desire is often confused with the word lust. Maybe you've heard that word; it's kind of a churchy word, but it's out there. I think they're totally different things. This desire that Potiphar's wife had, that I think all of us have probably had at certain points, is different. Lust is when it's taken to a point where there's action, where there's pervasive thought or some kind of action toward it.
If you still don't believe me that sex was God's idea to begin with, take a look in your free time this week at the book of Song of Songs in the Bible. It's kind of right in the middle of the Bible, a smaller book that's not talked about that much, a collection of love poetry. If I were to read some parts of it up front for you today, you would say, "I don't think you should read that in a church." You would read it and be shocked at some of the ways in which this love is described. This is God's idea: man and woman, husband and wife, together.
That's the next question, right? If the Bible is clear that God created man and woman to be together, and sexuality to be a good thing, why would He create it like this, and look at how it is now? The first thing we have to understand about sex, and I alluded to this, is that God created it to be within the confines of a marriage relationship between a man and a woman, a way for a husband and a wife to say to each other, essentially, "We belong to each other. We have been united in a way that we are not uniting ourselves with any other person on planet Earth."
I recognize that there has most likely been some hurt in this room today around this. Maybe you've been in a marriage relationship that ended, and there was unfaithfulness. Maybe you're in a marriage relationship right now, and there's been hurt around this idea. God created sex to be different, to be unifying. But what has happened is that human beings have taken it and distorted it, and we've gone the other way.
The interesting thing is that if you stack all the major world religions up, they don't often come into alignment, but one of the points that most of them align on is that sex should be confined to a marriage relationship between a man and a woman, husband and wife, a place where husband and wife can be fully vulnerable. Sex was meant to be a uniting force in holy matrimony.
But as we know, in the world that we live in, if you pulled 100 random people in the Strip District right now, just walking around the street, and said, "Hey, do you think sex should only happen in the marriage relationship?", I'm not sure how many would agree with that. Most people would say, "If you're in a consensual relationship, if you're being safe," and all these things. The world's view of sex is often that it's a commodity, something to get when I need it. Again, "If it feels so right, how could it be wrong?"
When we treat sex as something to be consumed, it's kind of like this. Imagine you go to a five-star restaurant. I love food, I love eating, and I love the experience, when the dish comes out and you see it and think, "That looks amazing." Imagine you go to a five-star restaurant and the meal is incredible. With every bite you think, "I can't wait for the next course. What's coming next?" You have the most incredible meal you've ever had. And then what you do next is run off to the restroom and immediately regurgitate all your food. And time after time, this is what you do. You eat an incredible meal, but you don't want any of the nutritious value of the food, what the food truly offers you. We know what this is called. This is bulimia. This is a disease. This is a sickness.
But this is what's happening when people treat sex like a commodity. We want all the pleasure, all the excitement; it's so good, it tastes so good. But we don't want anything else that comes along with it, what it can do for us, what it was intended to do for us.
God's design for sex is complete, total unity between husband and wife: emotional, physical, and spiritual unity. Look at Paul's words in Ephesians 5. Maybe you've heard this read at weddings. "For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh. This is a profound mystery, but I am talking about Christ and the church." Paul is saying here that another intended purpose of marriage is that it's an appetizer, a foretaste of the unbelievable joy and union that will come one day with God, when we're with God forever.
When we're in a romantic relationship, and maybe you've been in one, it doesn't even have to be a marriage, the hope is that the other person will look at you longingly and say, "There is no one else that I love more than you. You have no faults. You are perfect. How could I love anyone more than I love you right now?" And if we've been in any kind of relationship, we know that this doesn't always happen. Even if you're in the most wonderful, committed marriage relationship, the other person will eventually fall short of this for you. They will not always speak these kinds of words.
Maybe underneath the goal of sexual satisfaction and desire in relationships is more a desire to be affirmed, for someone to see you in all your "out there" and say, "This is the person I love. There is no one else I would rather love." We tie our value to things like sex. We're trying to quiet an insecurity that lurks in us. When we make anything, and especially sex, the ultimate source of satisfaction, we're asking it to do something that it was never intended to do. Even though God designed it to be a good thing, when we elevate it to a pedestal and say, "If only," and it doesn't live up to it, we're crushed.
Our identity can't be in anything other than what God the Father says about us. When you truly believe that you are loved by God, our desperation to be loved by other people fades away, because only God the Father can truly say, "You're perfect." Again, this is what Paul was talking about, this profound mystery. It's only the love of God that can truly say, "You're perfect because of what Jesus Christ has done for you." You now can be viewed with righteousness. His righteousness can now be ours, and God can say, "I love you forever like nobody else ever can or ever will." That is the hope that we have in the midst of this.
As we get ready to wrap things up in just a moment, I think we can look at the life of Joseph, look at this story, and say, "Shouldn't we just be like Joseph, try to do what he did and move on?" We could say that, but I think there's something better we can say. I have a few ideas around navigating this particular challenge that might help us.
The first thing we can do is recognize reality. We can recognize the reality of the situation we're in. We've been talking about it, but look at verse 11 one more time. "One day he went into the house to attend to his duties, and none of the household servants was inside. She caught him by his cloak and said, 'Come to bed with me!' But he left his cloak in her hand and ran out of the house."
I love that. Here's Joseph, again, the example. He ran out of the house. He did the right thing; he got out of there as quickly as possible. He didn't try to negotiate. He didn't say, "Oh, I can resist this temptation." No, when there was trouble, he got out of there.
I do the dishes sometimes in my house. Sometimes I like doing the dishes, but sometimes I really don't. So I'll leave them to sit, and I'll wake up the next morning and think, "Ah, the dishes are still there. Okay, now I've got to do double the dishes later today." What would happen if I left the dishes? One night, not a big deal. Two nights, kind of a big deal. It's starting to pile up. It's starting to smell. What about three nights, four nights, five nights in a row? If I left the dishes for an entire week, just imagine my kitchen. At a certain point it would be unusable, uninhabitable. There would be flies. It would be gross. I'd run out of dishes to actually have meals with in my family. There would be a tipping point where at first it's not a big deal, but after a while it just builds and builds.
In a similar way, a small temptation, a small habit, can go unchecked for a minute, and it doesn't seem like a big deal. But a pattern repeated over time builds and builds, and it can cause ruin. The kitchen will become unusable.
What's interesting here is that as Joseph does the right thing, he ends up getting thrown in prison. He does the right thing, and then he's falsely accused and thrown in prison. Sometimes we read this and think, "That's not fair for Joseph. He did the right thing. God, how could you do that in Joseph's life?" We think that as we trust God, as we take a step of obedience, we should immediately receive the right thing from God in return, and that doesn't always happen. If you've been a follower of Christ for any length of time, you probably know that to be true. Sometimes taking a step of faithfulness means walking into conflict, or into a season of loneliness, maybe because of choices that you've made or choices that somebody else has made. Sometimes doing what's right means losing something that you really wanted, or something that felt really right in the moment.
If our only reason for trusting God and obeying God is that it will make our lives easier, then eventually we'll let go of God altogether. We'll abandon Him because we'll say, "It's not working. I've tried. I took the step of obedience, and you know what? It didn't pan out." Let me encourage you that the reality we walk into with God is that steps of obedience build over time, just like poor choices build over time with the dishes piling up. When we take faithful steps of obedience toward God in His goodness, it builds over time. That's the reality we have to remember. It's not easy.
Once we understand this reality, I think the next and maybe more important thing to remember is that we have to recognize God's own ability. Look backward a little bit, at verses 8 and 9. This was after the first attempt by Potiphar's wife to get Joseph to come to bed. "But he refused. 'With me in charge,' he told her, 'my master does not concern himself with anything in the house; everything he owns he has entrusted to my care. No one is greater in this house than I am. My master has withheld nothing from me except you, because you are his wife. How then could I do such a wicked thing and sin against God?'"
"How could I do such a wicked thing and sin against God?" I think I know what Joseph is thinking. We read it as Joseph remembering, recalling. He's saying, "Do you know who God is? Do you understand the goodness and the grace that God has shown me in my life, what God is capable of? I've seen it with my own eyes. How could I live any other way than the way God has called me to live?" Joseph realized something in his relationship with God that is so important: that God is so big, so capable, and so loving that he could do nothing else but fall on his knees and say, "This is who's in charge of my life."
That raises a question for us, because the point is not just that we should be like Joseph in this situation. The question is, what happens in our own lives when we're not like Joseph, when we don't remember this, when we think, "God, I don't know if You can handle my life. I don't know if You can handle what I've been through, what I struggle with"? Maybe you've asked yourself that question. Maybe you've wrestled with it.
My kids have had really good schoolteachers over the years, and this year is no different. I have a third grader in my house right now; she's my youngest. She is in a classroom with 30 other kids this year, and one teacher. She is an incredible teacher, but 30 kids is a lot of kids. I have one third grader who lives in my house, and she is wonderful, but if I had 30 third graders living in my house, I would not be in my house very much longer.
So imagine 30 third graders in one classroom. Now imagine that number doubled to 60 third graders. And again, she's a good teacher. Imagine 100 third graders, 200 third graders. I don't know what the number is, but there would be a tipping point where even the best teacher could not handle the size of the classroom they were given. They would say, "This is not fair. This is beyond my capability. I have no more strength. I can't reach all the ends of the classroom."
Sometimes I feel like we almost view God in this way. We say, "I understand that God is an incredible teacher. He's gifted, He's wonderful, He's loving, He's kind. But I don't know if He's truly capable of handling everything." Just look at this room. This is a small blip in the percentage of the world, of human history. God is not only capable of handling our own stuff, but the stuff of everyone who would bring their things to Him. That is the difference between the relationship we have with God and the relationships we have with people: God's capabilities, His power, are unending. God is not the overwhelmed third-grade teacher looking for a way out. His power, His forgiveness, His grace have no limits.
When we begin to see God in this way, when we understand the power that He has, then here's the last thing we can do: truly recognize what God says about us, who He says we are.
There's an account in John's Gospel that I love, recorded in the eighth chapter. Jesus encounters a woman who has been caught red-handed in the act of adultery, sleeping with somebody who is not her husband. You may say, "Okay, that happens. What's the big deal?" Well, in Jesus's day, that was a crime punishable by death. They rightly could have stoned this woman to death. Some people found her, caught her in the middle of the act, and dragged her out into the middle of the people. Who knows what kind of state she was in at this point. Here she is in the middle of everybody, and there's Jesus. They ask Jesus this question: "Jesus, what would you do?" They're trying to trap Him. "Listen, the law says that we can stone her to death. What should we do here?"
I love the way Jesus responds. He says, "Let any one of you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her." He's saying, "If any of you think you're not the bad kids, go ahead and throw a stone." Because guess what? You're the bad kids.
Here's how the story goes on, verse 9: "At this, those who heard began to go away one at a time, the older ones first, until only Jesus was left, with the woman still standing there. Jesus straightened up and asked her, 'Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?' 'No one, sir,' she said. 'Then neither do I condemn you,' Jesus declared. 'Go now and leave your life of sin.'"
Notice the order in which Jesus said those words. He didn't say, "Clean up your life, and then we can talk." No, no, no. He extended the mercy. He extended the grace. He said, "This is for you." And then He invited her to a different way of life, a way of life that was rich and full and had meaning, not chasing after endless relationships that wouldn't leave her fulfilled or satisfied.
"Neither do I condemn you." This was Jesus's way of saying, "The penalty for sin, the condemnation for sin, I am going to take it away." He was pointing to the cross that He would die on. He would say, "Because of this act, because of my faithfulness, because of my relationship with God the Father, I will, in obedience, go to the cross. In obedience, I will trust Him and love Him. And now, because of that, there is no penalty for sin. You can have a relationship with God the Father." Certainly there are consequences to the things we do. That's why Jesus said, "Now go and live a different way. Leave your life of sin." But He wanted her to know that she had a chance. He wanted her to know what God really thought about her, what her true identity was: not damaged goods, not someone who was too far gone, but someone where hope could enter in.
You see, at the cross, Jesus suffered as an innocent, just like Joseph suffered as an innocent person thrown in prison. Jesus's innocence and His suffering were for people who were guilty: you and me, the bad kids. He died a brutal death on a cross so that we could be bought back at a price.
So maybe you're here today and you say, "I know that I've crossed the line. I've done things in my life, not just in this arena of sexual temptation, but in other places in my life." Maybe you've never had a moment to truly confess the truth about that, to truly admit your own unfaithfulness, to truly be open and honest with yourself and with God. Let me encourage you in this moment, in this place, that God is willing, and He is capable. He is the most capable third-grade teacher of all time. He is willing not only to say, "You can be back with Me in relationship," but to let you live a different kind of life that is full of meaning, full of hope, and has a purpose. That is where our identity comes from: not from anything we've done or will do, but from what God says about us and what we can be.
Let's take a moment to pray together.
God, as we close this morning, thank You for Your desire to create something like sexuality, like sex, love, intimacy, desire; that You designed it to be a good thing. God, forgive us for the ways that we have distorted this gift, that we have hidden things perhaps, or used people, or been in relationships that don't honor You. God, forgive us for looking to temporary things to give us a security that only You can provide. We ask that You would give us the courage to be honest about these things, and the courage to ask for help if we need help. God, for those here today who are trapped, or who feel like they're trapped, in patterns of sinfulness and can't get out, we pray that You would remind all of us that Your grace for those carrying any of this is big. We pray that Your grace can help us hear the words of Jesus Christ: "Neither do I condemn you." Thank You that Jesus Christ took our penalty at the cross, and that He rose again so that we can receive forgiveness and new life. God, teach us to love You in response to this. It's in the name of Jesus we pray. Amen.
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