Free files for youth pastors:

30 – Numbers 25 – Sex (ppt)

30 – Numbers 25 – Sex (fillout sheet)

30 – Numbers 25 – Sex (mp3)

30 – Numbers 25 – Sex (Sermon Notes)

My friend just told her, “SHUT UP! You’re all lies. You’ve been cheating on me. You’ve been cheating on our daughter. I’m so sick of your lies!” This was really hard to hear from one of my best friends who married a very poor girl who grew up in a trailer park and didn’t grow up in a loving or very Christian family. He married her, he gave her all he had, he loved her, and he showed her the love of Christ. In return, as a nurse she allowed herself to be wooed by the compliments of a doctor, engaged herself in conversation with him, and eventually found herself meeting him in the private doctor’s lounge for several sexual episodes together. How sick, gross, and nasty is that?

Here’s the truth. Whenever we engage ourselves in continuous sin, we are cheating on God with Satan. Why does that seem to lose its sickness, its grossness, and its nasty effect? In Numbers 25, the Israelites began to “whore” themselves with the Moabites. Already, this is a very explicit blog article. But we need to hear this at times. Normally when we hear the word “whore” it is meant for an unmarried girl who has sex a lot. God meant this word as His bride cheating on Him with other pagan gods through sex with their people – idolatry. It looks like the Moabite women enticed the Israelite men with romance and sexual attraction, and a sexual relationship with them eventually led Israel to worship their god (25:1-5). Sexual sin usually doesn’t sneak up on you, but you slowly slip into it…sin by sin. All sexual sin is cheating on God with Satan.

The next scene is even more explicit. After God told Moses to hang all of the chiefs of the Israelite tribes in the sun for what their people had done and then to kill all of those involved in the idolatry of Baal, the whole nation of Israel were weeping at the entrance of the Tabernacle. Right then, one of the people of Israel brought a Midianite woman to his family (wife and children?!) and into the tabernacle and began having sex with her…right there! Phinehas, an enraged priest of God, grabbed a spear and pierced through both of them while still in the act. God was pleased that the sin was put to death, and the judgment-plague on Israel stopped, but 24,000 had already died from it (25:6-9).

Can you believe that? Who in their right mind would be so bold as to have sex in the house of God – the tabernacle? Well, wouldn’t you know it? Paul shoots it straight with us. He says that our bodies are the temple of God, so we should run from sexual temptation (1 Cor 6:12-20). Who would do that? Every time we give in to sexual temptation…we do. So many “Christian” teenagers today struggle with sexual sin. I think that youth pastors partly share the blame. Pregnancy statistics, STD scares, and “True Love Waits” commitments won’t keep teens from sexually activity. What will? Their understanding of the glorious purity of Christ will. He is our motivation for purity!

Sex isn’t just a law to not do it outside of marriage, but it’s a picture of Jesus Christ’s mysterious and intimate unity with His bride: the church. Sexual sin outside of marriage pictures a Jesus who unites Himself to a Satanist. The reason God created Adam and Eve, marriage, and sex is because it is an earthly foreshadowing of the eternal glory of God – Christ and His church as one flesh. So the way we live in purity is to love Christ and to live His gospel. Purity is a lifestyle; it’s not just abstaining from sex. You can not have sex and be grossly impure. Someone can have had sex in the past, repent, and now live more purely than a “technical virgin.” Teenage guys must be the spiritual leader when it comes to relationships. They need to be the sex-brakes and not the gas. Teenage girls need to understand that how they attract a guy is how they’re going to have to keep the guy. Purity isn’t about finding the line of sin, going up to it, and camping out there. It’s about living as holy as possible. Teens, live in purity for the glory of Jesus!