My name is Jimmy Seibert, and I am the Head Pastor who has the absolute joy and privilege of getting to be a part of the incredible team that is here in Waco. This morning I want to share a message that has been on my heart for years. I have glanced at it over the years at different times. If there is ever a message that this generation needs, I believe it’s this one today.
I’m going to be vulnerable, open, and honest in hopes that we might be set free into the destiny that God has given us to set others free. In the mid-1990’s, I had the privilege and the opportunity of traveling over 26 times into Russia and into Central Asia. We were planting churches. We were preaching the gospel to those who had never heard. We were seeing people saved, established and the Church of Jesus coming alive. It was a beautiful, powerful, wonderful time.
One of my accountabilities along the way was always to travel with somebody, not only for companionship but many times for discipleship. It’s just always wise to cover yourselves in the spiritual warfare we live in. One trip in particular, I was traveling back from Russia, it had been a long trip. I had been up most of the night before my traveling morning. The friend I was traveling with had to leave earlier, and I was traveling by myself. I was flown from Siberia to Moscow and then Moscow to Frankfurt where I would catch a flight the next morning. As was always the custom, my assistant had set up a hotel that had a meal with it. I went to the appointed place where we were to sit and wait. I was waiting for the bus to come and take us.
There were just two of us in the room. One of them was a very attractive lady from Brazil. I was tired and I was weak and I began to find myself liking the attention. In the midst of it I thought, “This is not good. This is not what I’m about.” So I thought, “I’ll share Jesus with her, that’ll take care of it.” I shared Jesus, talked about my wife and kids and how much I love Jesus and asked her if she knew Jesus. She had come from a Catholic background and went on and shared a little about her life story, about a divorce and a broken relationship, what it was like to be unloved.
I began to feel very uncomfortable with the journey, about that time the bus came. I did not sit next to her on purpose, but they had a meal for us at the hotel and she sat right across from me and continued to engage in conversation. I was caught between two things: is it rude not to talk? But this feels vulnerable and not right. What do I do in this situation? As all these feelings and emotions are going on, in the midst of the weariness, they call us one at a time and give us the keys to our rooms. They call one person, and another, and then they call my name and her name together.
They call our names together, we walk up to the counter and the hotel clerk smiles and he says, “I have you keys with adjoining rooms.” He smiles and winks, and said “I thought that would be best.” She looks; she smiles and winks as well.
In that moment, I had a decision to make. TO be quite honest, as a vulnerable human being, I liked the attention, I had the thought come to my mind, “No one will ever know.” Just about the same time I had that thought, “Jesus knows. He sees. He knows. I love Him.” Then I had the picture of my wife came to mind. I thought, “I love her. I have given my life to her.” Then, my two little girls at that time, their faces came to my mind and I thought, “There’s no option.”
It was somewhat rude, but I took my key and my suitcase and I almost ran to my room. I walked in and locked the door, I locked all the locks and put on the chain in the back of the door and vowed before the Living God. I got on my knees and made a vow before the Lord, I said, “Lord, I don’t care who calls, I don’t care who knocks on the door, I will not leave this room until 7 AM. I will not sacrifice my family at the altar of my lust.”
I called home and accountability partner, I told them the situation and asked them to pray, and also called Laura. My no in that situation was a turning point in life. You see, if I would’ve said yes, in the grace of God, He would’ve forgiven me if I would’ve repented and come back to Him. Maybe it wouldn’t have destroyed my marriage, maybe it would have. Maybe my kids would’ve understood, you know, these things happen. Maybe, at the same time a statistic showed that if I would’ve said yes, it would’ve destroyed my marriage and set up my kids for the same weaknesses the rest of their lives.
My no was their hope.
My no was not only my hope, my no was my ability to continue to do what God’s called me to do, to be a rescuer, not one who consistently needed to be rescued. God wanted to give me power to be a rescuer, and those no’s made that possible. But it wasn’t just that one no, it had been a thousand no’s before. It had been a part of a journey God had me on from college to say no to impurity, and yes to Him. It was the consistent no that gave me the grace in the midst of the most vulnerable place.
This morning, I want to share from the book of Revelations. Odd place to start, but in chapters 2 and 3 Jesus speaks to seven different churches. They are letters, exhortations, and those seven different churches represent actually where we are today. It would be just like Jesus speaking in modern day terms, “Here’s what the problem is. Here is what I appreciate about you. Here’s ways to change. Let me help you along the way.”
The letter I specifically want to talk about today is the one to the city of Thyatira. It is a real city in Western Turkey now. It was a commercial city that was full of tradesmen and tradeswomen. There were people who made cloth, and carpenters, and bronze workers. There were good run of the mill people, but because of their expertise, it was on the main road that went through the Roman Empire. Out of that main road, they found themselves going out and having access to every aspect of the Roman Empire.
We see the Church at Thyatira first mentioned in Acts 16. A lady named Lydia, a worker of cloth was in Macedonia and she was a God-fearing person, but did not understand all about Jesus. She heard Paul preach about Jesus, and she and her household were saved and baptized. Many believe she went back to Thyatira and took a revival that would allow that church to flourish for years to come.
In the midst of this context of Thyatira, God is doing some things, the church is growing, it is active, and it’s well known throughout the Roman Empire. Jesus wants to speak to this church. It’s my belief that this church is directly where we are today as Americans and most of the Western society. The issues that Jesus wants to speak to, even the encouragements He wants to give are exactly where we are.
Let’s go into the Scriptures, Revelations 2:18-26, “And to the angel of the church in Thyatira write: The Son of God, who has eyes like a flame of fire, and His feet are like burnished bronze, says this: ‘I know your deeds, and your love and faith and service and perseverance, and that your deeds of late are greater than at first. But I have this against you, that you tolerate the woman Jezebel, who calls herself a prophetess, and she teaches and leads My bond-servants astray so that they commit acts of immorality and eat things sacrificed to idols. I gave her time to repent, and she does not want to repent of her immorality. Behold, I will throw her on a bed of sickness, and those who commit adultery with her into great tribulation, unless they repent of her deeds. And I will kill her children with pestilence, and all the churches will know that I am He who searches the minds and hearts; and I will give to each one of you according to your deeds. But I say to you, the rest who are in Thyatira, who do not hold this teaching, who have not known the deep things of Satan, as they call them—I place no other burden on you. Nevertheless what you have, hold fast until I come. He who overcomes, and he who keeps My deeds until the end, to him I will give authority over the nations.”
Paul Borthwick, a well-known missiologist, describes the three main reasons people aren’t willing to go to the nations, to the least of these, the unreached of the world. It goes something like this, “people don’t go to the mission field because they don’t want to leave family and friends, number 1. Number 2, they don’t want to live in financial insecurity or in want. Number 3, they are concerned about their personal health and safety.” Those have been the top three reasons probably for the last two hundred years of modern day missions in the Western world. But a new generation has emerged, the 30 and under crowd, often called the millenials. As I was praying, I realized those are not the top three reasons. I mean, friends and family – most of you grew up in broken homes and that’s not the reason you would stay. Most of you are pretty willing to leave family, especially if a few friends are going with you. The second one, finances, you always find a way to get by! Money’s not a big deal to you, there is always somebody providing. The last one, health and safety, there is the biggest risk takers of our generation are in this room. Millennials are willing to do anything, to push the edge, you are adventurers! You are perfect for this.
But there is one thing that is keeping you from having authority in the nations and the ability to have longevity and power in your life, and it is your givenness to sexual immorality. You see, when we give ourselves to sexual immorality and idolatry, it robs our strength and we have no strength for the least of these.
We have a heart, we have a mind, but we have no strength in us. Proverbs 4:23 says this, “Watch over your heart with all diligence. For from it flow the very springs of life.” There is a river of life in you that God has given you, and when you give that river away to sensuality and immorality, when you allow pornography to saturate your mind and your heart, you have no strength. You have compassion in your mind, but nothing in your life that can actually impart life. Until we deal with this issue of immorality, we will not have the strength to be who God has called us to be, rescuers for the least of these.
Laura and I and a team of folks from our church had the privilege of going to Northern Thailand to be with a lady named Rose. Rose’s story went something like this: she was a hippie in the sixties and early seventies. She was into everything: free sex, free drugs. She had a broken life, she thought at first it was a blast, it was cool, it was awesome, I’m free. Then she found the bondage and brokenness associated with it.
In the midst of her desperation and wanting to take her own life, she hears the Good News of Jesus. Somebody talked to her about a way out. She comes to Jesus; it’s a glorious deliverance from drugs and her sexual bondage. She’s free! She asked that question, “Lord, what do I do with this freedom?”
She hears the story about little boys and little girls being sold into slavery in Northern Thailand, and Laos and Cambodia. Poor farmers that are wanting something better for their kids. Most of these people actually that I’m telling you about, are unreached people groups – those who have never heard about Jesus or been exposed to the gospel. But these traffickers make it up there before the gospel does. They exploit these marginalized people and say, “Look, we’ll give your kid an education. We’ll house and take care of them and they will be able to send money back to you. We’ll just agree with a purchase price, of maybe $50 and we’ll take them and make a life for them.”
Well, what do they have to believe? They don’t want their kids to grow up in poverty. They don’t want their kids to barely make it, or to be a marginalized minority and have no hope of a future. So, they sell their children. These are the kids that end up down in Patpong. I’ve been in these red light districts of Thailand. They are the ones who fill those spaces and places in the back room, the little boys and little girls that the ones that are broken and addicted seek after. Rose heard this story and it broke her heart. She said, “Alright, I’m gone.” She went up to Northern Thailand with a few dollars and said, “I will buy them back from the traffickers.” I’m going to get in front of them. She began to buy children and start an orphanage and began to care for them like they should have been.
But here was her vision: They are not just to be rescued, but they are to be rescuers. Her heart was to raise them up and by the time they are 18 years old, she would empower them to go back to the villages, back to the very villages that sold them and preach the gospel to those who have never heard. We had the extreme privileges of going on one of those very first trips with a young man, an 18 year old, and Rose and a couple of the other leaders from the orphanage.
That young man had not been back to his village ever. They had never heard the gospel. Two days of trekking into Northern Thailand through the mountains, we eventually arrive at this village. It was like a step back in time, 2000 years. We waited all day while the men came in from the fields. When they heard the story of this young man, and realized that he had come back with a story of forgiveness and grace and our friend was able to share the gospel, every man, woman and child in that village got down on their knees cried out and gave their life to Jesus.
The rescued became the rescuers. Rose had connected the dots. Let’s unpack this passage in Revelations, and let’s pray that God would connect the dots for us that we might enter into our calling. I love the breakdown, how Jesus does these letters. He describes what they need to know about Himself, then He encourages them, then He tells them what is wrong, and then He gives them a promise and a hope.
Here we go: How is Jesus revealing Himself to the Church in America, the Church at Thyatira? What is it we need to hear from Him? Revelations 2:18 “He is the Son of God, with eyes like a flaming fire and feet of burnished bronze.” How does Jesus want us to know Him? We know Him as the Lover of Our Soul, we know Him as our Savior, as the One who heals and forgives. In this context, He is saying “I am the Son of God. I am who I say I am. I’m the Final Authority on all of earth. I am the One who holds the keys to death and hell. I am the Resurrection and the Power and the Life. There is no other in the universe apart from Me. I am who I say I am.” Jesus wants us to know that He is the Son of the Living God, the Promised One, the Savior, the Deliverer and our Refuge.
It goes on to say He has eyes flaming like fire. Those eyes are the eyes that pierce through our hearts, and see and know all things. In Hebrews, it talks about Jesus in this way, “Everything is open and laid bare to Him to whom we must give account.” There are no secrets. There is no hidden place with Jesus. He sees all. He knows all.
It says He has feet of burnished bronze that speaks for justice or judgment. He is a God of justice. There is an accounting for evil and sin, because you see, if evil and sin is left unchecked, it destroys people. God must be a God of justice if He is loving. If there is no judgment for sin, it goes unchecked, and people destroy themselves and others in every direction. He wants us to know, friends from America, He wants us to know there is accountability for sin. IF we don’t stop it, it is going to destroy us – it already is destroying us. He wants us to see Him absolutely as the loving Savior who is compassionate. But He also wants us to know He is a God of justice that will finally say “Enough!” with the sin that is destroying us.
We must know Jesus in the fullness of how He describes Himself. As a parent, we live in that paradox when you are raising your kids right. You have two things going on, you want to be their friend, to love and affirm and encourage them. At the same time, they need a lot of correction. Little kids just start sinning as soon as they come out of the womb. They need to be curbed, called out. Someone needs to call them out and say, “This is right, this is wrong,” in an appropriate way. We discipline them. We are the judge and the one who brings justice where there is a wrongdoing done to a brother or sister, we tell them hitting one another is wrong. We bring justice and we bring love.
What is the goal of a parent? It is through the love and justice of a parent that you raise a kid that is whole, that is at rest with themselves and a contributor back to society. Without both, you do not have someone who has enough strength to help another.
When Caleb, my son, was little, he was a little hyper and all over the place – maybe not much has changed. When he was little, he was always climbing things and getting into stuff he shouldn’t get into. It wasn’t that he was rebellious, he was just looking for a good time at the wrong time, and it seemed like all the time. One of the things was we had a fence in our back yard. It was a chain-link fence. He was so enamored with climbing that fence, and there were two reasons we did not want him to climb that fence. One was we didn’t want him to get over the fence and run into the woods and we lose him. The second thing is that fence had little barbed wires on the top, and we didn’t want him to be harmed by them.
Somewhere in his five-year old mind, he could not figure out that this was not a good idea. Several times, I caught him at the front end of climbing. I disciplined him, and thought that was enough. But one day I am inside and hear a screaming outside. I run out there and see that Caleb had fallen off the fence and is lying down on the ground. When I get to him, I see blood just running down his face. I said, “What happened buddy? What happened?”
Immediately, and rightfully so, “I’m sorry Daddy. I’m sorry Daddy. I didn’t mean to. I forgot. I’m so sorry.” My usual response to “I forgot,” is, “I’m going to remind you… lovingly.”
You see, what happened was he had gotten on top of the fence, and what we had feared did happen. He had slipped and had ripped his face on the barbed wires. We got a bunch of little butterflies to hold it together. It wasn’t deep enough to need stitches, but we could have had them. It would eventually heal, but even today at 19 years old, he still has that scar.
Hopefully the illustration is clear. When we go our own way, we receive the consequences of going our own way. Not because that is the delight of God, but because He wants those consequences to wake us up, so that we’ll just be scarred and not dead. Many times what happens in our lives does bring scarring. Our choices do have consequence, but Lord willing, it is just a scar and not absolute death because we went all the way out. This morning God is trying to awaken and help us. In the midst of our scarring so that it doesn’t lead to death.
So, we have Jesus revealing Himself. Then He encourages them, Revelations 2:19, He says this to the Church at Thyatira, or the Church in America today, “I know your deeds and your love and your faith and your service and perseverance. That your deeds of late are greater than at first.” I love that. He is telling this church, “Way to go team! You guys are known as an action-oriented people.” And they were, they were involved in culture, in righting wrongs, they were being the hands and feet of Jesus. I am so encouraged by what is happening in the Body of Christ. More than ever, we are being the hands and feet of Jesus. By us serving in our community, whether it is through education or health care or different issues, we are being the Salt and Light God created us to be.
More than ever, we don’t need you to change your vocation, we need you to let you vocation come alive for the glory of God. When it does, it begins to make a place in society for people to see Jesus, not just hear about Jesus.
Again, the affirmation of God, you couple with that the social justice movement. It’s cool, in Vogue, to be socially active and to right wrongs and call out causes of things that need help along the way. In our own context, we are involved in so many different arenas of that, but I want to take a moment just to encourage and honor our folks with what we call Unbound. That is an arm of our church that is dealing with the anti-trafficking initiative, that says, “No more human trafficking. God, what would you have us do?” A group of friends got together, and we launched Unbound. Out of Unbound there are three basic things we are doing: prevention/education, advocacy and after care. In every way we have friends going into schools in our city and educating teachers about the victims that are among them. It is amazing how the lights go on in these teachers’ minds and say, “Oh my gosh, I think this teenager is vulnerable or this one might have something going on…” Just the education is turning the lights on. We are training health care workers, health professionals. We are training law enforcement, and lawyers. We are partnering together, so when the moment happens that we are needed to rescue, then all these entities are able to come together for a greater glory.
Just as you saw initially in the story that Susan shared, the girl’s friend mentions a friend in Texas that worked with anti-trafficking and thought, “I think my friend might be being trafficked.” Well, she was being trafficked. Our lawyers came together, we had friends in the FBI, law enforcement, our Unbound people, and everyone came together and were able to rescue that lady. They were able to put her into a safe house, a place for restoration and give her a future and a hope.
That is what Unbound is all about and that is what we are all about as the people of God. We are action-oriented, not those who simply watch, but those who act.
We got a call last year from our state attorney general’s office, a friend who works in that office. They said, “Hey I want to tell you, you won’t believe this story one of my co-workers told me this week.” There had been a runaway from Dallas that had been trafficked down to Waco. Yes, Waco, Texas. The truck stops along the highway, they are full of prostitution. A trafficked young girl, she was in Waco being trafficked. She came to her senses, and said, “I can’t live like this,” and she ran. She made it somewhere away in our city and was walking down the road. Here’s how she described it.
“Somebody from Antioch saw her and walked up to her and said, “How are you doing? It seems like something is going on, can I help you?” She said she didn’t know why. But she poured out her story. She had come from a Muslim background. She was an American, but had a Muslim family. She shared her heart. Well this gal shared Jesus with her. She gave her life to Jesus, they prayed together. This gal didn’t even know that she was trafficked; she only knew she was a runaway in trouble. She said, “Well, let’s go to the library and look up what authorities can help runaways? How can I help you?” They went to the library and looked it up and got in touch with the attorney general’s office through a number or different scenarios. They sent a case worker down to meet with her and pick her up, and returning her home.
In the midst of that journey, the case worker was asking, “Do you feel safe in your home? We’ve talked this through, I have talked with your family, and all the pieces are in place. Do you feel safe?” She said, “I feel assured that it is going to be okay because that person from Antioch told me about Jesus and now I know that He is with me, and I will never be alone. Whatever the problems are, we can face them together.” Isn’t that beautiful?
Unbound obviously was never intended just for Waco and our area, but has gone out into England and into Mongolia and now into South Africa. We are reaching out to different nations because we are called not only to this nation, but to the nations of the earth. In our work in England, there is a lady named Lara Bundock. We planted a church in Sheffield, England. Lara came as a freshman; she had a heart for people, a heart for God. She got involved and began to disciple people, became a lifegroup leader, she is a wonderful lady. She had a heart for social work and signed up to do her masters in social work and signed up to volunteer with several opportunities. She came to World Mandate two years ago, and she heard Christine Cain speak about trafficking and what was going on. She was aware of it, but out of that, she went back and said, “Okay, what is really going on in England?” England is partnering with a UN initiative that provides safe houses, up to 45 days. If someone is trafficked from one country to another and they want out, then this initiative provides resources to put them in a safe house for 45 days.
She began to volunteer in that safe house. Quickly, she became a leader and was hired by the non-profit that runs the safe house. Through her own resource and the grace and gift on her life, she became an expert in the field. She asked, “What happens after 45 days? Do they get released? Can they stay in England?” All the trauma, all the emotion, all the brokenness, many of them are pregnant and left out there, so they end up back in trafficking or even more difficult situations. The response of the authorities was, “Well, we don’t have money for that, so it can’t happen. We are doing the best we can.” Her response was, “Well God does. I don’t know where it is, but God has the money.”
She began to rally people together, to talk to our church and gather volunteers for after the 45 day mark. She found out opportunities for dilapidated apartments you could go in and fix up that she could have for up to a year. She got a volunteer army together and got some resources together and began to get people working together to furnish these apartments and care for these ladies. They cared for them not only with their practical needs of job skills and post-traumatic stress counseling but they also became labor coaches, and walked side by side with them as they birthed these babies that came out of sin, but had an opportunity for glory.
Lara took action. She’s currently serving sixteen women who have come out of the safe houses and they are doing more in every direction. She said, “These ladies come from Vietnam, China, Albania, Nigeria, Sierra Leon, Slovakia, Romania, Moldova, Pakistan, Hungary, Lithuania, Latvia, Benin and Cameroon.” The nations of the earth are literally in her midst, and she’s having authority in the nations by overcoming sexual brokenness.
So much so has her own work of compassion been honored, that she has been asked to speak at Parliament. Parliament is looking to her to help guide and direct the next leg of the journey of justice in the land. Compassion, the church at Thyatira, the Church in America, there is this rise of compassion that is right and it is good. God is going to continue to bless and honor it. But there is a problem. Because God wants to do so much more.
Here is what Jesus had to say in Revelations 2:20-21, “But I have this against you, that you tolerate the woman Jezebel who calls herself a prophetess. She teaches and leads my bondservants away so they commit acts of immorality, and eat things sacrificed to idols. I gave her time to repent and she does not want to repent of her immorality.” Immorality. It is rampant and is in every direction. I want to pause for a minute and give you just a little window into the last 50 years into the church in America, the culture of America and actually most of the Western world.
Before 1960 in America, there were laws based around the Word of God. Cultures have been changed and transformed by God. There was a basic understanding that the Ten Commandments ruled who we were. There were laws on the books in America that you could be arrested if you committed adultery. For sure if you committed any sexual act related to homosexuality, every state in the Union had what they called “Sodomy laws” just before 1960. Before 1960, they had what they called obscenity laws; therefore there were no magazines that were legally sold that had any nudity in them. It was illegal in the United States of America for you to either buy or produce a magazine. Books that had explicit issues related to sexuality were absolutely banned. This was our world.
But in 1960, different social scientists and people began to question, “Do traditional values actually work? There’s more out there.” Just like in the Garden of Eden where the enemy said, “Has God really said this is the way to live? Surely there is another way, these things are delightful. There is something out there.” There is power in pleasure. Well, because of those pressures from culture, we began to bend at every turn. They began to have court cases that said it’s okay to have a magazine that is your right. The pornography industry began to be launched. Right on its heels became what is known as the Sexual Revolution in America, “if it feels good, do it.” With the invention of the pill, which was the birth control pill, it was specifically for married people. You had to be married and show proof of a marriage license to get a prescription. But of course, you know how that goes… Okay, there’s no consequence for sex because of the pill. You can go do whatever you want because there is no consequence. And all of a sudden, the unleashing of the free love, free sex movement went in a hundred directions. That birthed the hippie movement that would have live ins, and love ins, and begin to exalt sexuality as the centerpiece of freedom and real joy outside of the context of marriage. Adult bookstores began to pop up all over America. They are always on the other side of town, they were always somewhere else.
Sex education in schools was started by a lady who had this as her mission, “In order to properly allow kids to experience sexuality, to not be oppressed by traditional values of the past, we must remove religion and parental control in order to allow kids to be rightly educated in the things of sexuality and not be oppressed anymore.” The first funder for sex education in public schools was Hugh Hefner, the guy who started Playboy magazine and unleashed pornography in our country.
What happens when this goes on? It only increases more and more and more. Most of you thirty and under, have grown up not simply with an understanding that it is out there, but you have grown up with it right here. Boom. Right in your face all the time. You’ve grown up with the internet and pornography in a click, at a moment, at every turn. You have been victimized at one level, and become a victimizer at another level. We have gone into the fullness of it, it is full blown and we are fifty years down the road.
Let me just tell you a little bit of the fruit from that lifestyle and everything that goes with it. Whenever you start going that way and saying, “free sex, free love,” you have to remove anybody that is in the way. They began to take prayer out of schools, the Bible out of schools. They began to take the Ten Commandments out of the schools because it is in the way of this sexual revolution. There is no greater god in America than sex.
In Roe V. Wade in 1973, they legalized abortion, the killing of the unborn. It was not for the health of the mother that is less than one percent of the people who have an abortion. It was so that we could have free sex with no consequences anywhere at any time. You have to remove God to sexually do whatever you want, because it is not God’s best for people.
What’s the fruit of it today? In 1960 there was 10% divorce rate, now it’s at 50%. In 1960, there were only 4 STD’s known. In America, there are now 24 different strains, including HIV and AIDS that kill people on a daily basis and cut life short. We live in a land of unwanted children and unwanted pregnancies. We have created a new normal for what marriage and life should be, as if that is going to make us happier. The idea that free sex and free love will make us happier couldn’t be further from the truth. It is destroying us and imploding us from the inside out.
Broken homes, majority of them come from adultery and infidelity. It breaks up life, it breaks relationships and God’s heart is broken. What’s the power behind it? What is the turnkey? What is the thing we have to address in the midst of it in our day? It’s the issue of pornography. It’s the power of addiction that is related to pornography. If we deal with this one, I really think we will see the move of God we have been longing for. Dr. Stephen Arterburn, one of the foremost authorities of helping people get out of sexual addiction, relays a common known fact that when a man or a woman experience sexual excitement during sexual activity or even viewing something sexual, there is a drug released in the brain called opioid, where they get the word opium. It is a heroin like effect; it is euphoria like none other. Again, the thing that would be most like it is a heroin inducement. It brings great pleasures, a great high, and then it is gone.
So, why did God create this excitement, this rightness of pleasure in the midst of sexuality? Because what happens is when that opioid is released with another person, bonds that person together with another. It is the bonding factor. It is the thing that helps make two people one in the context of marriage, of one man and one woman, it bonds them together. It is part of the package God created for oneness and wholeness so that couple could stand together, loving and caring for family, rightly expressing their sexuality and setting up hope for the next generation to do the same. But when those things are experienced outside of marriage, and you are bonded with another person, then you are ripped apart because you go do it with another person, and another person. Do you know why so many prostitutes have multiple-personality disorders? It is because their soul has been ripped apart so many times. The interesting thing about sexual sin is it is different from other sins.
I didn’t say it was greater or less than other sins, I said it was different and let me be clear, in 1 Corinthians 6:15-18 it says, “Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ? Shall I then take away the members of Christ to make them members of a prostitute? May it never be! Or do you not know that the one who joins himself to a prostitute is one body with her? For He says, ‘the two shall become one flesh.’ But the one who joins himself to Lord is one spirit with him. Flee immorality. Every other sin that a man commits is outside the body, but the immoral man sins against his own body.” You get it? Sexuality is meant to bond people together rightly, righteously and in purity. Until that day, you take all those desires and you plant them in Jesus and you say, “Jesus, I trust You to meet my needs, to satisfy me.” That is the rightness, the glory of God in the context of marriage.
What happens when we view pornography? The exact same thing except it is with an inanimate object, it is not with a live person, it is the person in our minds. The same chemical is released. When you view pornography, and there is a sexual excitement attached to it, it releases the same chemical as when you come together with a person. “Oh, I’m not doing it with anybody. I’m just doing it on the side, in the back room, it does not affect anybody.” It deeply, deeply affects you, and in just a moment I am going to tell you how it affects others.
Let’s talk about a few statistics related to pornography. Hang with me here, I promise I will connect the dots in just a few moments. Why is it such a god or how is it a god in our culture? More money is spent on pornography every year in our country than on country music, rock music, jazz music, classical musical, Broadway plays and ballets combined. You don’t think this is a god? More money is spent on pornography every year in this country than professional baseball, basketball and football combined. The adult movie industry pours out 11,000 adult movies every year. That is 20 times the number of films put forth by mainstream Hollywood. The pornography industry is one of the most successful, financial industries in the world. It nets over 100 billion dollars a year worldwide. Child pornography is anywhere from 5-10% of that money. The average student graduates from high school having views 15,000 hours of TV, and in that journey, 14,000 sexual images or innuendos related to inappropriate sexual activity outside the context of how God created them.
American children begin viewing pornography at the average age of 11 years old. Most of them saying they stumbled onto it while doing homework unsupervised. Between 6 and 8 percent, and that is growing by the day, this stat is 3 years old, are what they call sexually addicted. That means between 16 and 21 million Americans are sexually addicted. What is sexually addicted? Well it starts with “soft porn” or “I like movies where there is sexual activity going on” but they are accepted by some rating. It starts with soft porn and goes to hard porn. The stuff that is on the internet, 60 to 80 percent of it is violent or aggressive in nature. There is a violent aspect to it, a brokenness to it. It is called hard porn. From there, the unsatisfied sexual appetite never stops. It goes to the unthinkable, what many people said they would never be a part of. It goes to children and to youth. The number one googled thing after sex is youth.
Let me repeat that. The number one googled message after sex is youth. Addiction has no end until it gets to the most vulnerable. If you haven’t already acted out, it demands you acting out in some way. It’s killing us. It’s not just killing us, it’s killing them.
Let me connect the dots. Porn has become the foundation to the human trafficking business. Many of the porn features trafficked women and children. The porn industry justifies the buying and selling of women and girls. Porn is the main business that keeps human trafficking going. Human trafficking victims are forced to watch porn and imitate it as a form of training. Once the victim is deemed ready, victims are forced to perform sexual acts on camera to be viewed by millions of people without their permission. Connect the dots. It’s connected to people. It’s not just a thing or an it, or an “everybody does it” or “it’s just normal.” It’s people. Until that connection is made with people, I don’t know if we will ever get free.
When I was 9 years old, I had a chore to take out the trash at my house. I remember walking in my dad’s bathroom and seeing something covered up a little bit, it was a magazine. When I dumped the trash, it flopped open. It was a penthouse magazine. I had never seen pornography before, and actually in my day there wasn’t that much availability or exposure to it. Obviously, I was drawn to it and so I took it and told a friend what I had found, and we went and ran down to the bayou. Under some pipes, we looked at it for hours. I would wait every month for him to throw that magazine away to get the next issue, and the next issue and the next.
It began to be something that I longed for and waited for, nine years old, ten years old, my innocence robbed. Now, my view of sexuality was scarred. By the time I got to seventh and eighth grade, we were initiating with girlfriends and boyfriends. A friend invited me over one time and said, “Look what I found in my dad’s closet.” It was a whole rack full of 8mm films, adult movies. We watched them for hours. I remember us thinking, “Oh, it would be really funny to invite a bunch of girls over, our friends, and say we are going to watch a movie and then have this movie go on.” I remember the shame I felt that night, as many of them left and it wasn’t that funny.
I didn’t even know Jesus, but there was still guilt, something in me that said, “This isn’t right.” I still didn’t feel good about it, even though I didn’t have a moral reason not to. It’s because I wasn’t made for it. Well, I came to know Jesus, and I began to start weeding some of these things out, it just didn’t seem right. I didn’t have any discipleship, but it didn’t seem right to want to follow Jesus and keep doing this stuff. I came to Baylor and wanted a new lease on life and to move forward.
It was really not until I spent a summer reading the Scriptures and falling in love with Jesus, that it became real. Now, to do my thing, I would have to overstep Jesus. I remember a friend talking to me one time about when you have a boyfriend or a girlfriend, what you should or shouldn’t do. I remember him saying this, “Listen; when you kiss her, think about this, if you aren’t committed to her you are kissing somebody else’s wife.” Somewhere it connected. Somewhere I said, “I don’t want to do that. I don’t want to get engaged with somebody else’s wife, I didn’t want to do anything inappropriate that would hurt another person.”
Somewhere in that, the grace of God, the relationship piece, connected with me. By the time Laura and I began to date, I said, “I am done with that,” because now I began to realize as we got serious, not only would we be committed to purity in our relationship but I realized it would affect our marriage and our children’s children. I said, “No, the pornography bondage stops here.” Let me tell you something, I do this with fear and trembling, there is no age limit to people being addicted.
My dad that took out the trash is eighty-something years old, and I’m not sure he is out of it yet. It’s not a passing thing. For me, and my house, I said, “We are done! No more!” We are done. I’m tempted like anybody else has been, it’s been a hard journey, but I began to relate it to Jesus, the Person, and to the people that I love. I realized it’s not okay. I was talking to a guy, a college student; he came to me a few years ago and was talking to me about a movie he wanted to watch. He told his friends he was coming out of all this stuff, and there were just too many sexual innuendos and they were like, “C’mon man, it’s popular. What’s your deal? Are you being legalistic?” He came to me with that question, “Am I being legalistic not to watch this movie? Should I just be able to get past the sexuality?” I asked him this question, I said, “Hey, I know you have a sister who is seventeen years old. She is a beautiful young lady, what if I told you I was lusting after her?” He looked at me stunned. I said, “You outta jack my jaw. You outta just take me out. What if I told you Laura and I are going to be intimate tonight, why don’t you just come sit and watch? What if I said hey, I know some people that have something going down sexually, why don’t we go look in the window? All those things are atrocious. You would tell me I should be arrested and that I am sick in inviting somebody over. You would say, ‘I can’t believe you would say that about my sister.’ Pause for a minute, when you watch those images on TV that is somebody else’s sister. That is somebody else’s wife. That is somebody else’s mother.” It is not just an inanimate object just because it is on a screen. That is a human being.
Let me connect the dots here. A quarter of those human beings on the adult movies that come across our screens and phones in every direction that have become no big deal, are trafficked women. They are trained to act like they like it. They have been raped and abused. It’s not just trafficked women, it is little boys and little girls. Every time we say yes to pornography, somebody else is being raped. It is a supply and demand. If the demand were not there, the trafficking would stop. It is not just prostitution that drives trafficking. Now worldwide, what drives it is pornography and our putting up with it instead of standing against it. Many times we have evangelical minds and pagan bodies. It is compassionate, social justice, “I’ll run a 5K, I’ll give money, yeah Unbound, I’ll wear a t-shirt, I’ll do this and then I’ll go in the back room and click in on pornography.” The very thing you are trying to do is cutting your legs out from underneath you, and destroying people’s lives.
When we say no to sexual immorality and specifically pornography, we have begun the process of ending human trafficking. But when we say yes, we do layer upon layer upon layer and the unthinkable happens. Women and children and little boys are being pillaged by our own lust that had been unchecked. But what if this morning, something changed? What if a revolution started? What if we began to say no? Would one person’s no really matter? To the men in the room, let me say your no is her hope. Your no is her hope, and when you say no, when one person says no, it begins a chain reaction of freedom.
(Video may be found at https://vimeo.com/75037920)
Here we are, 2013. There is an epidemic going on. Sexual immorality is out of control and somebody has to say, “Enough!” Human trafficking is out of control and somebody has to say, “Enough!” I don’t know how you got here. Some of you guys were victimized. In a room like this I would say 50% of you had some kind of sexual abuse or exposure that you wanted nothing to do with, but it came upon you. Others have pursued it, pursued your own lust… it’s a normal part of being a human, right? But you never correlated that it might be destroying a human. Today is the day, today is the day to begin a revolution of freedom. A revolution of sexual purity that gets our life back that sets us free in such a way that we can set others free. Remember we said from the beginning you are called to be a rescuer. You are called to be free so that you can rescue others. The Spirit of the Lord is on you for that and you will never be satisfied until you live free from sexual immorality so that you have power in your life to set others free from every brokenness under the sun, let alone sexual immorality. The nations of the world are calling out for rescuers. The promise of Jesus, “If you overcome, if you repent, if you lay it all out and let My power overtake you and lead you and direct you, I will give you authority over the nations. I will give you authority in places you never thought possible. I will give you authority to walk into nations and because of the purity of your heart and the excellence of your spirit, you will be able to walk up to government leaders and officials and say this wrong and this right. Social justice will not just be a bit of words, but will be a life that has power on it.
Just like Lara Bundock, a freshman who had a heart for God, is going before Parliament to proclaim liberty and freedom because she is living and not just talking about it, so God has a space and place for you on this earth.
Don’t miss this moment. I would not allow anybody or no sense of shame or no sense of guilt or anyone else to keep me from repenting. Repenting just means turn the other way. God, here it is. It’s garbage, I come to you. I lay it out before you. God, bring Your power, cleanse me. I will do whatever it takes. Real repentance is not just a confession but it is, “Whatever it takes God, I am in, for them. Not just for me.”
