Stay Salty | Sex and Jesus

This might surprise you, but when Jesus talked about sex he said the conservative hardliners of his day actually didn’t go far enough. For many in his day, as long as you jusrt had sex with your spouse, you were good. Jesus said that true righteousness went a lot deeper than that. Just being good at following rules doesn’t produce the kind of goodness God’s kingdom is meant to bring. Goodness in sex isn’t tied to rules at all, even the golden rule of sex we have today: consent. Jesus would say the kinds of things we all know are wrong when it comes to sex (things like assault and rape) come from the heart, which means we have to go after lust itself. This is a problem for today’s world. Lust is normal and celebrated, and we treat sex like it’s ice cream: it’s all good, there’s no such thing as morally bad ice cream, and everyone just has their own specific tastes. We tell ourselves this view of sex is good and represents progress from the backwards ideas about sex people like Jesus had. But the question we never really ask is this: Is this making us better people? More loving people? Or even happier people? If we’re really honest, the answer is no. And this brings us back to what Jesus says. In this message, Pastor Joel helps explain how the sexual revolution overpromised and underdelivered, and how by targeting lust itself Jesus gives what our craving for lust is really all about at the end of the day: real, true intimacy.