The Best Sermon for the Younger Generations of Digital Era

“Heavenly Father, we come before you today to ask your forgiveness and to seek your direction and guidance. We know Your Word says, ‘Woe to those who call evil good,’ but that is exactly what we have done. We have lost our spiritual equilibrium and reversed our values. We have exploited the poor and called it the lottery. We have rewarded laziness and called it welfare. We have killed our unborn and called it choice. We have shot abortionists and called it justifiable. We have neglected to discipline our children and called it building self esteem. We have abused power and called it politics. We have coveted our neighbor’s possessions and called it ambition. We have polluted the air with profanity and pornography and called it freedom of expression. We have ridiculed the time-honored values of our forefathers and called it enlightenment. Search us, Oh God, and know our hearts today; cleanse us from every sin and set us free. Amen!”
― Billy Graham

Now tonight, I want to talk as frankly as I’ve ever talked on the subject of sex and the Bible, there was a time when I first started preaching 20 years ago, 25 years ago that you wouldn’t mention that subject in public.
Certainly from the pulpit, I think we made a mistake. I think the clergy made a mistake.
Now, I think the pendulum has swung too far and it’s too much a subject of discussion, but the Bible has a great deal to say about it.
And it’s certainly the great problem that young people are facing today.
You’re discussing it in the home, you’re discussing it in the school. It’s discussed on television.
It’s discussed in the magazines. Why shouldn’t we in the pulpit? Tell you what the Bible has to say.
And that’s precisely what I hope to do tonight.
Now, in this passage, we find John the Baptist, that great prophet that was the forerunner of Jesus Christ, losing his head, he was killed because he would not compromise the moral law.
You see the Children of Israel of Ancient Israel also had somewhat of a love in they were at the foot of mount dancing and making Mary some of them taking their clothes off around the golden cap.
And Moses came down from the mountain with the 10 commandments written on those tables of stone and he funded the 10 commandments to them.
And one of those commandments said, thou shalt not commit adultery.
I believe today we need another Moses to descend with the law and say once again, thou shalt not commit immorality.
John, the Baptist wouldn’t compromise that law.
He said to the king, you’re living in immorality and you’re sinning.
It’s wrong for you to have your brother’s wife or he could have compromised.
He could have said like some modern even clergy is saying today, if it’s a meaningful relationship, it’s all right.
There is nothing wrong with it, of itself.
The Bible says, and the Lord said it is not good, that man should be alone.
I will make a help mate for him.
And the Bible says that Adam knew his wife Eve and that new carries with it, the deepest intimacy.
And God gave sex for three reasons. First, it was given to propagate the human race.
Secondly, it was given for climax of true love within marriage.
And thirdly, it was given so that a man and a woman could express the unity between them and God likens it to Christ and the church, we are members of the body of Christ as believers in Christ, just as a married couple are one flesh, it expresses unity.
The Bible teaches that marriage is honorable to all and the be undefiled but hormones and adulterers.
God will judge now after that early marriage, which God performed in the Garden of Eden and God sanctified sex within marriage.
Something happened, a tragedy took place. Man rebelled against God.
You see, man has a will of his own and God never meant that we would have suffering and hate and lust in the world.
He never meant that we would have war and death. Look at the world tonight.
War, trouble difficulty, hate prejudice, death. God never meant it to be that way.
It was a wonderful world, a paradise. But something happened, man rebelled against God.
And that rebellion caused a wall to be built between God and man.
Sin came rebellion against God is called sin. It’s a disease. And the Bible says all have sin.
Every one of us are infected with the disease of sin. It affected man’s intellectual life.
You see your mind is affected by sin.
That’s the reason when you come to the Bible, it’s a closed book to you until you know Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit illuminates this book.
The Bible says we have a veil over our minds.
We are blinded by the God of this world. It affects our intellectual life.
Sin affects our religious life. It affects our relationship to God. It separates between us and God.
So that now we are spiritually dead physically alive. But your soul is dead toward God.
That’s the reason many of you don’t find happiness. You don’t find peace and joy.
You go to the bottle, you go to narcotics, you go to sex experience.
You try to forget, you try to escape, but you cannot escape.
You’re dead, taught God separated from God.
You were made for fellowship with God and without God, you’ll never find true happiness.
That’s the reason so many film stars, so many wealthy people, it would seem that they would be the happiest people in the world, but some of them are the most miserable.
They are separated from God. Sin affects the intellectual life. It affects our relationship to God.
It also affects the sexual life. Now, why does God say thou shalt not commit immorality?
Does God not want you to have a good time?
Is God just against you having a good time? Why does he say that first?
He says it to protect your future marriage?
Did you know that one half of all teenage marriages in America are shotgun weddings.
They have to get married and they are incompatible.
And over one half of all those type of weddings, they break up within two years.
You see, it’s to protect your future marriage.
If you commit immorality before marriage, it affects your marriage later.
As any psychiatrist will tell you that has to deal with it or clergyman that has to deal with it will tell you.
Secondly, God said, thou shalt not commit immorality to protect your body.
Doctor Arthur Curtis Dermatologist at the University of Michigan and a member of the American Social Health Association’s Venereal Disease Committee said recently the venereal disease epidemic has now reached a momentous size in America.
Ill legitimacy has doubled in the last 10 years.
Promiscuous sex relations contribute to cancer for women and 64% of all those that get cancer in that way die.
So says the Canadian Cancer Society, you see, God has built in your buddy certain restrictions and if you break the law, you hurt yourself.
And then God said, thou shalt not commit immorality to protect you psychologically guilt.
A redcliffe student was quoted in a magazine recently saying every time I have sex relations, I feel guilty, emotional disturbances, insecurity, you often feel unloved in the reader’s digest.
Recently. It says this and I quote, among the unmarried teenagers, I talked to nearly all who have lost their virginity, regret it afterwards.
Often these girls come to realize that their rebellion against parental authority are a desperate search rather than who is using sex to work out problems that have little to do with sex.
And her solution only creates deeper problems. As for security, hardly anything is less secure than a teenage affair.
I talked to a head psychiatrist at one of our greatest Eastern universities some time ago and he told me that one half of all the students had come to see Him are suffering from guilt in the realm of sex.
You see, you have a built in moral law.
God has not only put it in the 10 commandments.
He’s made an eternal thing out of it that’s written into our very nature.
And then third, fourthly, God gave this commandment to protect society.
The moral problem can destroy the security of a nation.
This is one of the reasons that Rome fell in other nations of the past.
They became so immoral that it affected every area of their lives.
And it certainly brought the judgment of God upon sodom.
And those are just some of the reasons why God said, thou shalt not commit immorality.
God was doing it to protect your future marriage, to protect your body, to protect you psychologically and to build a nation.
But we say we can break God’s law, we can get away with it, but we’re not getting away with it.
We have more troubles, more unhappiness, more boredom than ever before.
It doesn’t solve problems, it creates problems. Well, you say, how do you commit immorality?
Well, the Bible says, you can commit it by evil imaginations.
How many young people just sit and daydream in the wrong way.
Daydreams are wonderful. If they’re clean and pure, you can commit immorality.
The Bible says by a look, the Apostle Peter talked about eyes full of adultery.
Jesus said, if you look up on a person of the opposite sex and lust. You’ve already committed immorality.
Job said I’ve made a covenant with my eyes. Why should I look up on a maid?
You can commit immorality by the way you dress.
Yes, we have depraved men, but we also have careless women that entice men and then wonder why men attack and assault.
Fourthly going to sex shows and looking at pornographic literature, you can commit immorality in many ways besides just the act and God will hold you responsible.
Are you guilty? Are you guilty? Are you guilty?
Well, how can a young person today in this sex filled atmosphere in which we live have victory over this sin?
The Bible says, flee immorality. The Bible says, thou shalt not commit immorality.
You know, I believe that this should be an invisible flaming banner across the door of every factory, every office, every school where both sexes work and over every place that young people gather, there should be a banner.
Thou shalt not commit immorality. The mark of a Christian is self control and self-discipline.