Steven Furtick - Marry or Burn (04/24/2017)
This sermon from 1 Corinthians 7:8-9 focuses on Paul's advice to the unmarried and widows, addressing the struggle with sexual passion. The preacher warns against oversimplifying the struggle and mismanaging God-given passions, using the metaphor of fire. He emphasizes that passion is pure but must be contained within the covenant of marriage to avoid destruction, and encourages fighting misplaced desires with a consuming passion for God's purpose.
Remixing Last Week's Message
Turn in your Bible to 1 Corinthians chapter seven. We're studying this great chapter of scripture over the course of five weeks, and we're just trying to see what God has to say about our sexuality, about our relationships. I think it'd be a good idea to get God's viewpoint on these issues. And I like to do a series like this every so often in the church. And before I get into the new stuff, we're only gonna cover two verses this week, which does not mean you'll get out any earlier. But we wanna bring out some leftovers. How many know sometimes the leftovers taste better than when you ate them the first time? And at least if you're married to a genius in the kitchen like I am, Holly is creative with leftovers.
And I wanna take what we talked about last week, just read the verses, not review it, but remix it. Because I know as much as you would love to meditate on the sermon from last week all week, you have a real life. And so I know that you didn't check into a monastery after I preached last Sunday and spend time fasting over the notes that you took. So I just wanna kind of bring us back into the flow now, whatever has been going on in your life this week, and just point out a few things from that. And then I'll read two new verses. But here's what Paul says in 1 Corinthians 7, verse 1. He's addressing some issues in the church at Corinth.
And he says, "Now for the matters you wrote аbout: It is good for a man not to have sexual relations with a woman." That is the least popular verse in all of the Bible for men. And he's actually addressing a situation. If you take that out of context, you'd get the wrong idea. But we talked about that and we'll review it in a moment. He says, "But since sexual immorality is occurring, each man should have sexual relations with his own wife, and each woman with her own husband. The husband should fulfill his marital duty to his wife, and likewise the wife to her husband. The wife does not have authority over her own body but yields it to her husband. I love the word of God. In the same way, the husband does not have authority over his own body but yields it to his wife."
"Do not deprive each other, except perhaps by mutual consent and for a time, so that you may devote yourselves to prayer. But then you could get right back after it, so that Satan will not tempt you because of your lack of self-control. I say this as a concession, not a command. I wish that all of you were as I am, but each of you has your own gift from God; one has this gift, another has that." Say amen, somebody. So here, real briefly, is a little bit of what we said last week. I'll say it a little bit differently. If you want to write these down, it'll make a good review just to engage your brain.
Four Key Takeaways from Last Week
Number one, we talked about how God has answers. God has answers. He will not always answer the questions we ask. Sometimes he will bypass the questions that we ask to give us the answers that we need. And sometimes when it comes to relationship, what we're looking for is more control over other people, and what God wants is for us to yield more control to him over our own lives. And so God has answers. The Corinthian church has given Paul a list of questions about sex and marriage and relationships. And I'll give them credit. They didn't necessarily ask the right questions, but at least they went to the right source for their answers.
And at least they wanted to know what God had to say about their situation, which I would say about you. No matter what situation you're facing in church today, at least you came to get answers from God. That's a good start. Touch somebody and say, "It's a good start." God has answers. Secondly, we kind of talked about how boundaries are blessings. This is not the way that people paint religion. They want to present God as an autocrat who only exists to spoil your good time. But we learned that when God places a boundary in place, it's for our good. And that he does not put boundaries and he does not tell you what not to do to punish you, but to protect you like any good parent would.
Like any good parent would teach the child not to play in the road. There are some certain things sexually and relationally that God says, if you do this, it will hurt you. And those boundaries are a blessing. Amen. And so we need to understand that foundationally. Third, we learned that duty is sexy. The scripture doesn't say it exactly like that, but that's what he means. He says, "Hey," he uses this term, he says, "fulfill your duty." He says, you know, relationships can be started by desire, but can only be sustained through a sense of duty. So if you find a man with a six-pack, that's fine. But what's sexier than a six-pack is that he can hold down a job consistently. That's going to be a whole lot sexier in the long run.
And duty is sexy. It's sexy when somebody's steady. That's attractive in the long term. But we could also flip it and say that sex is duty, because that's what Paul says. He says that you owe it to one another. If you're married, you are the single source of legitimate satisfaction sexually for your spouse. And so when we get into playing games with one another, emotionally, physically, that becomes very destructive. And so he says that duty is sexy. Sex is duty. In fact, one of our staff wives apparently tweeted this week, "Hashtag meant to be hashtag duty call." And I don't want to know all the implications of what was happening in that household, but I thought it was pretty creative. Tell somebody it's a call of duty.
Grace for Every Season
And what we find as men is when we're fulfilling our emotional duties as husbands, then our wives are more likely to fulfill duties, prayer and speaking in tongues and things that are spiritual duties like that. And so we find out that it's a whole lot better when you come to a relationship, knowing I'm called to give something here, not just to get something. And it works a lot better that way. And there's a whole lot less disappointment that way. So do not deprive, do not deprive one another. Paul says it's a command: stop withholding out of manipulation. And finally, and probably most importantly, we reassured ourselves that God gives grace for whatever season you're in.
There's a grace for every season. There is a grace for every mountain. There is a grace for every lonely heart. There is a grace for every marital challenge. God gives grace. And whether you have the gift of marriage in this season of your life or whether you have the gift of singleness, which may not always seem like a gift or maybe it feels like a gag gift—"But come on, God, give me the real one"—but they're both gifts, yet it takes grace for either gift to operate. Amen. That's what we talked about last week.
Marry or Burn: The Fire of Passion
This week, I want to talk on the subject for just a few moments. I want to talk about Marry or Burn. I'll lift these two verses, verse 8 and 9, where Paul gives some specific advice to single people in the church at Corinth. He says, "Now to the unmarried and the widows I say: It is good for them to stay unmarried, as I do." Paul is addressing two different types of people, but with the same life situation. He says whether you are unmarried and you've never been married or whether you were married and through some incident you're no longer married, the widows—are widowers.
We know that Paul was one of these two types of people. He was not married. He's speaking not from theory but from personal experience. I think it's better sometimes to hear from somebody from their personal experience than it is from their theory. Because if you theorize about my problem, you'll tell me what you think it's like. But if you can speak from a place of experience, it tends to be a little bit more compassionate. And so he says, "It is good for them." I'm saying to both groups of people, those who are either longing for love or who have lost love, and I want to say, "It is good for them to stay unmarried as I do."
In other words, he's reaffirming the fact that singleness is not as strange as culture makes it out to be. He's referring to the fact that you don't need another person necessarily to fulfill your purpose on this earth. By way of proof, he says, "Look at me. I'm Paul. Paul, I wrote most of the New Testament, and I don't have a wife." So don't let anybody ever tell you that until you have another person you can't fulfill your purpose or that your life or purpose doesn't begin until another person enters your life. It's just not true. Paul put on his resume, you know, wrote the Bible, and he did it single. So you can be successfully single. Amen. You can be successfully single.
And he talks about that. He said, "Hey, it's good. If you can stay unmarried, there will be advantages to that. It's fine. It's good. It's fine. It's good." But then verse nine, he says, "But"—big "but." How many of you like big "buts" in the Bible? Because they serve as transition points. He said, "But let's be real about it. If they cannot control themselves"—big "if"—"big 'but,' if they cannot control themselves, they should marry"—key statement—"for it is better to marry than to burn"—burn with passion. Marry or burn. What we're talking about here is what do I do with the fire inside of me? Whether I'm single or married, what do I do with my passions that are hard to control?
The Burning Ring and the Burning Desire
When I proposed to Holly, I kind of had to call an audible because I went to go see her dad and I asked his permission to marry Holly. And he is a very straightforward person. So he said, "Yes, sure. Whatever, you can marry her. I knew this was coming." He said a couple of things. Number one, you only have $3,000 to get married on. That's the budget, which is a great budget in 1927. And then he said, you know, and here's a few other things and about our family that I just want you to know and be aware of. And then, um, he said, "And finally, when are you doing it?" I said, "In a couple of weeks, I'm going to propose in a couple of weeks." Cause I had this big plan.
I was going to take her to Charleston, uh, because there was a certain place where they had filmed a scene of The Patriot, which is a movie she really liked. And we were going to go to Charleston and I had it all planned out. But then he said, he goes, "Um, you're going to wait a couple of weeks? What, do you not have the ring yet?" I said, "No, man, I got the ring. I bought the ring, uh, a while back. I've I've been saving it. And I actually brought it to show it to you," and I showed him the ring. He said, "Man, if I was carrying that thing around, it'd be burning a hole in my pocket. I wouldn't be able to wait a couple of weeks." And when he said that, something got in me and the ring started burning a hole in my pocket.
So I'm going to tell you what I did and I'm not real proud of it, but I took her to Pizza Hut that night. This is the God's heaven truth, man. And I took her to Pizza Hut that night and then I took her and I had written a little song for her. I sang her the song and I gave her the ring. The song is pretty cool though. Would you like to hear a little bit of it? I don't think, I don't think. But I... the chorus went... "It's not hard to love you with my heart, 'cause you're amazing. You're amazing. I smile wide each time you're by my side, 'cause you're amazing." A little run in there. "Your smile turns my world around. Your tears turn me inside out." And I sang her that song, and then I proposed to her. It was great. And it was preceded by Pizza Hut. It was preceded by Pizza Hut.
And I've been taking her all over the world since then in an effort to make it up to her. I thought about that phrase. He said, "That ring would be burning a hole in my pocket if I were you." And you know, I think that's the way that certain unfulfilled passions and unmet desires feel inside of us, especially in this issue of singleness. It's burning a hole in my heart, burning a hole in my soul. It's like burning. That's an illustration that Paul uses. He wants to talk about it. And he says, it's like a fire. It's like the passion. It's like a fire that burns in you. It can be a sexual fire. It can be an emotional fire. And he sets out to say, what do we do about this? Let's talk about it from a couple of angles in the remainder of our time.
Oversimplified Struggles
First, let's talk about it from the angle of oversimplified struggles. Oversimplified struggles. Reading Paul, it sounds so straightforward. He says, if you have passions that are hard to control, go ahead and get married. For it is better to marry than to burn with passion. It's as if he's saying, hey, if you're just burning with sexual passion and it feels like a fire that you can't control, get married. That'll put it out. He makes a case. He says, it's better to marry than to burn with passion. But if I were single, I'd read that and I'd go, yeah, Paul, it may be better, but... Everybody say, "But." But. That seems to, to me, oversimplify the struggle.
Often, in an attempt to be encouraging to single people, married people will say some really stupid things. Meaning well. Preachers like me will say some really stupid things, and we will oversimplify the struggle. On the surface, it appears that's what Paul is doing. You know, hey, if you're just burning inside and you've got to have somebody, it's better to be married than to be tormented, than to be frustrated, so go ahead and get married. Oh, yeah, Paul, I'll just go out to the husband tree and I'll just... give me a husband. Like he's telling you to go buy some milk, you know? "Hey, if you're out of milk, go to the grocery store and get some milk. If you're burning with passion, go ahead and get married." Yeah, Paul, I wish it were that easy. It's not quite that easy.
Not like a single person trying to give somebody advice on how to get married. "Hey, Paul, if it's so easy…" Paul says, "No, no, no. I'm called to be single, but if you're not, it's okay to be married. It's better to marry, in fact, than to burn with passion." But it's a struggle, isn't it? I mean, I would want to speak to this if I were speaking on behalf of somebody I cared about who was single. I'd want somebody to say, wait a minute, it's not quite that simple. Because, see, we tell you in church, we tell you, if you're single, don't settle. So wait for the right one. Hold out, you know? Don't just compromise and just marry anybody. You've got to wait for the right one. Don't settle.
Don't Settle, Don't Sin, But What About the Struggle?
And so, you know, we use all this biblical… We have all these things we say, like, "Wait for your Boaz." Now, Boaz is a character in a book of the Bible called Ruth. And Ruth was in a crazy life situation. But God gave her a man. God gave her a man named Boaz. And Boaz was very blessed. So I've heard a lot of messages to single people about, wait for your Boaz. And women who want a Boaz. And I came across this. I have shared it before in the church, but it's worth sharing again, this piece of advice on that same subject for single people. I want to read it to you now. It says, "Biblical advice: Ruth patiently waited for her mate Boaz. While you are waiting on your Boaz, don't settle for any of his relatives: Broke-ass. Po-ass. Lying-ass. Cheating-ass. Dumb-ass. Drunk-ass. Cheap-ass. Locked-up-ass. Good-for-nothing-ass. Lazy-ass. And especially his third cousin, beaten-yo-ass. Wait on your Boaz and make sure he respects yo-ass."
If you find this offensive, please send us an email to WeNeedYourSeat at ElevationChurch.org. Everybody say, "Don't settle." We teach that, but then we also teach, "Don't sin." Everybody say, "Don't sin." Don't sin. All right, so you be "don't settle." Say it. "Don't settle." "Don't sin." Say, "Don't sin." And the people in the middle are like, but what about the struggle? Don't settle. Don't sin. But what about the struggle? And Paul actually addresses that head on. He says, it's like a burning. In fact, I didn't share this in any of the other worship experiences because they weren't as spiritually advanced as you, and they couldn't have been able to receive it. But Paul says something else in 2 Corinthians.
He wrote them another letter, and he's listing in 2 Corinthians chapter 11 all the different difficulties that he's been through in a way of saying, I relate to any of you who are going through hard times. And he says in verse… I think this is actually 2 Corinthians 11:29. He says, "Who is weak, and I do not feel weak? Who is led into sin, and I do not inwardly burn?" Hmm. The same image that he uses in 1 Corinthians to talk about, some of you are burning, he will acknowledge in a later letter saying, "I burn too." So, he's not simply speaking to the struggle with a cold heart and a theoretical, theological mindset. He says, "I know it's a struggle."
Part of the struggle, I think, is cultural. Because we have this teaching out there that there's "the one" for you. You'll not find this in the Bible, but you'll find it in every chick flick that you ever watch on Netflix. "I'm waiting for the one. I'm waiting for the one." Just by a show of hands, so I can see how many of you have never thought this fully through. How many of you think there is only one person for everybody that they can marry, and if you don't marry that person, you married the wrong person? Just if you want to go ahead and acknowledge that you're wrong, raise your hand. Because it wouldn't make sense. We don't have to prove it from the Bible. We can just prove it with logic, just the power of thinking it through.
Focus on Being the Right One
Because if there's only one person you're supposed to marry, and then you get with the wrong person, and the two of you procreate, you're going to have the wrong baby. Now, if you have the wrong baby, then there's no chance that that baby is going to marry the right one, because they're not even the right person to begin with, because they weren't supposed to be in existence. Because you weren't supposed to have that baby with Sally, you were supposed to have that baby with Tina. But now you and Sally had a baby named Michael, and the baby was supposed to be Michelle, but you guys got the X's and the Y's mixed up, and all of the chromosomes are all floating all over the place now looking for a place to call home, because you didn't find the one. It just kind of crumbles.
Most of the emphasis when you talk about dating and marriage and singleness in culture seems to be on finding the right one. Most of the emphasis when you come to the Scripture tends to be on being the right one. I think this is so important to point out. Now, I'm not trying to oversimplify the struggle, but I just want to let you know that if you focus on being the right one, then God has this ability to put you in the right place and develop within you the right passions. That's so much more important than this elusive chase for the one. Yes, it's better to marry than to burn with passion, but it's also better to learn to control your passion than it is to marry an idiot.
It's better to marry than to burn with passion, but it's also more important that you develop a real passion for God than that you find the right person who you think is going to stir up a passion inside of you. Let's don't oversimplify the struggle, Paul would say. Skipping right past Boaz, we'll move along to mismanaged passions. That's the next thing I want to talk about. Mismanaged passions. He says this desire for relationship, this sexual desire is like a fire inside. The interesting thing about fire as a metaphor is fire is actually a substance that is purifying in its nature.
Moses and the Mismanaged Passion
When Paul wants to talk about sexual passion, I find it interesting that he uses the metaphor of a fire. What he's saying is the desire inside of you is not dirty in and of itself. It's a pure desire. It was put there by God. There's nothing wrong with the passion, but when the passion gets misplaced, it can cause great destruction in your life. It becomes very dangerous, misplaced, or mismanaged passions. As an illustration of this from the Bible, I thought about Moses. Moses was certainly very passionate, and God used him to fulfill a great purpose. In fact, God showed up and appeared to Moses in a burning bush in Exodus chapter 3. But 40 years before that burning bush, which is where many people think the story of Moses' life began, when God called him to be a deliverer of the Israelites out of Egyptian slavery, 40 years before this, Moses had an incident that was the result of mismanaged passion.
Watch this. Exodus chapter 2, verse 11. It says, "One day, after Moses had grown up, he went out to where his own people were and watched them at their hard labor." Now, Moses was conflicted because he grew up as a Hebrew, but he grew up being raised as Egyptians. He was from the Hebrew people, but he was raised in an Egyptian society. So, he was torn. He was conflicted by this. One day he goes out, and he's grown up a little bit now, and he sees something. He sees an Egyptian beating a Hebrew, one of his own people, and it stirs up a passion in him. It says that he looked this way and that way, and it looked like the coast was clear. So, he didn't see anybody, and he killed the Egyptian and hid him in the sand.
Well, the next day he went out and saw two Hebrews fighting, and he asked the one in the wrong, "Hey, man, why are you hitting your fellow Hebrew?" And the man said, "Who made you ruler and judge over us? Are you thinking of killing me as you killed the Egyptian?" Uh-oh. Just because you hide something in the sand doesn't mean it went away. It bears repeating. Just because you covered something up in the sand doesn't mean it won't come back up, because the thing that Moses did, nobody else saw it, so he thought. But then his past catches up with him rather quickly, and it says that when he heard this, Moses was afraid, and he thought, "What I did must have become known."
Now he's exposed. Pharaoh hears of this, and he tries to kill Moses, but Moses fled from Pharaoh and went to live in Midian, where he sat down by a well. He ends up on the run for 40 years because of a mismanaged passion. What Moses felt, follow me, was a good passion. He saw one of his people being taken advantage of, and God had put a passion in Moses. Moses was called to deliver the Hebrew people out of Egyptian slavery. So he sees this going down, and he thinks this isn't right, and it lights a fire inside of him. So Moses just goes off. But it's one thing to have the right passion. It's another thing to act on it in the right way.
The Right Passion, Wrong Expression
Did you know you can have the right passion but have the wrong expression of the right passion, and it'll create a terrible result in your life? I can't get any help in this sermon, man. Let me ask it another way. Did you know that the thing that God put inside of you that can make you really great and can lead you into your purpose can also bring you great pain if it's not managed correctly? I'm teaching this to our oldest son right now. He has a gift for being argumentative, and it's a gift. I've never seen anything quite like it. I'm told that he got it from somewhere, and he will verbally assassinate you. He will take you apart about anything.
I'm teaching him this could be your greatest asset. Boy, I could see you one day on stage preaching to people, and God's going to take this gift that you have to kind of go through stuff and just take it apart, and you can take it apart, and I see how God could really use that. You might be three times, ten times, a hundred times the preacher that I ever am, but if you don't learn how to manage this and you think that that gift is given to you so that you can argue with your mom about the cleanliness of your room, you are not going to live long enough to see whether or not God can really use this. This is a good thing. I see it in you, boy. I think it's awesome. I think it's amazing, but you better learn when to use it and how to use it because you can win the argument and still lose your video game time for the next month if you don't shut your mouth right now.
It's a good thing that you can do this, but you better learn to do it. You can do a good thing in the wrong way, and it becomes a bad thing. Sex is a good thing. You'd think if I could ever get an amen, I'd get an amen. Sex is a good thing. We don't teach that in the church. We teach, you know, sex is dirty. Sex is gross. Sex is disgusting, so save it for your husband. But the passion is pure. However, the passion needs parameters if it is to serve the correct purpose. What's gotten a lot of us in trouble in our lives is we had a good passion but no parameters, so rather than building purpose, it destroyed purpose. That's what happened to Moses. He had the right passion, but he put it in the wrong place and acted on it in the wrong way. Right passion, wrong expression.
Building a Fire Without a Fireplace
Look, bring me my sermon illustration. So, like, I was just thinking of a way that I could show you this, a simple way to show you this. It's like, imagine right now that at this point in my sermon, I know this is simple. Just go with me. Like, hey, I got an idea. Let's build a fire on the stage. I just think it'd be cool to build a fire on the stage. I'm stacking wood to build a fire on the stage. I actually thought about how far should I take this sermon illustration, and I thought about gasoline, and I thought I would see how far I could go before people started leaving, exiting the building. But I think suffice it just to say that everybody in the room understands the problem with this proposition.
And the problem isn't building a fire. The problem is building a fire in a place where there's nothing to contain the fire. It's fine if you want to build a fire. But building a fire without any parameters would be to unleash... See, the same substance that warms your home when it's in a fireplace is the same substance that burns a forest in Colorado in the summer. The difference is whether it's contained. And when you release passions that were intended for marriage outside of marriage, you're building a fire with nothing to contain it. God says the fire is a good thing. Fire purifies. Fire brings warmth. Fire is a source of life. There's nothing wrong with fire. But if you build the fire in the wrong place, if you put the passion in the wrong place, it will burn your home to the ground.
It's a misplaced passion. It's a good thing in a bad place. I wonder how many of you would have avoided some serious pain in your life if somebody would have showed you, before you build a fire, you need somewhere to put it. And the only human relationship that can sustain this force of passion is a covenant relationship called marriage. If you go building fires in other relationships that aren't built to contain the power of passion, it's going to spread to places you don't intend for it to spread, and it's going to destroy things that God gave you as a gift. Paul is not saying, put the fire out. He's saying, find the right place to build the fire. Make sure you have the right place for the passion, or you'll get burned.
Intimacy vs. Infatuation
I'm seeing so many people and so many families get burned because they were trying to get warm. Because it's cold out there, and because I need relationship, and because I need somebody, so I think I'll stand up next to this fire. I did a word study this week. I studied the word intimacy, which is what we're all truly longing for. That's really what we all want. That's what all our sexual expression, emotional expression is about. We want intimacy. That's what we want. That's what we desire from God and from others. We want to be known. We want to be accepted. We want intimacy. Then I studied the word infatuation, and I was fascinated to find out that in Latin… This will make you sound so smart at lunch this week. In Latin, infatuation literally means "false fire."
Looks like fire, but really can't warm you. Looks like fire, but really can't empower you. Looks like fire, and that's what the world offers. This is an infatuation with images of sexuality, but it won't really warm you. In fact, it can actually run away from you and burn your house down. Some preacher needs to get up in front of you and just have the guts to care two cents' worth of nothing what you think about it and say, "If you're building these fires in the wrong place, it's going to burn you." It's mismanaged passions. Passion is pure. The enemy wants to pervert it and use what God wanted to use to develop intimacy in your life to destroy your capacity for intimacy, so he gets a boy looking at pornography at age 10 so he can begin to rewire his brain and his standard of beauty so that when he's having sex with his wife one day, he won't be able to do it without conjuring up images that he saw before he even knew what was developing in his life and in his heart, because a fire got built, but there was nothing to contain it.
I say this not to condemn you. I say this not to bring all your mistakes up before you, but there are some of you that are building fires in bad places right now, sending text messages to the wrong person right now, visiting some of the wrong sites right now, filling your minds with the wrong kinds of images, indulging in the wrong conversations. It's nothing wrong with the fire. It's just where you put it. Let's close talking about something positive. Let's talk about shameless solutions.
Shameless Solutions: Fighting Fire with Fire
When me and Holly were building our home last year… By the way, Holly and I built a house last year. I'm going to share that with you. There were all these selections that you have to make. And for the most part, I never got involved. But she would bring certain things to me that she thought I might want to weigh in on. And one of them was what kind of fireplace we would have in the house. I love sitting by a fireplace. I don't know why. But I like the gas log fireplace, because this is about as much work as I want to do to start the fire. To me, that's my version of roughing it. That's my outdoorsmanship right there. Just flip that little switch. And the fire comes on.
She said, "No, no, for this house, we need to have a real fireplace with real logs and stuff." And I'm like, "Oh, God, no. I mean, we're going to have to go chop wood, and I'm going to go buy a flannel shirt from Old Navy, and I'm going to have one in the closet." And she's like, "No, no, it'll be great. It'll be a gas-start fireplace, but it'll have real wood." And so I'm thinking, like, you know, I trust you, whatever. And she said, "Trust me, you'll love it." I said, "Go ahead, we can do it." But nobody showed me how to use it. So the first time I went to go build a fire in the gas-start fireplace, which, let me see, I'm going to give you the technical explanation for this. There's a little thingy that you put in the hole on… There's a thing on the side of the fireplace, and you turn that on, and then it opens the gas valves. And so then you can light the fire.
At least that's what I thought you were supposed to do, is turn on the gas and then light the fire in the fireplace. So I was so excited to have our first fire of the year last year, and so I turned on the gas to give it plenty of time. Like, you know, if you're turning on your car in the cold, so you give it some time to warm up, right? And so I went to go get my kids because I wanted them to see the first fire, and I bring them in because it's like getting close to Christmas time and their stockings up, and I thought this was going to be a picture-perfect scene. And so I go and get a drink and get the kids, and I gather them around, and I went and got the wood. Not the wood that I chopped, but the wood that the man who sold the wood to me on the side of the road chopped at some point.
Context is Everything: Marriage Then Fire
And I took that wood and I stacked it up high because I wanted it to be a good fire. I wanted to make sure our first fire. Now I figure we're warmed up. Now when I give an invitation for people to receive Christ, I give it with so much more passion because I feel like I have seen what hell is going to be like. Because when the flames came out, it was traumatic. It was traumatic for Graham. Graham was crying. I was calling on Jesus Christ. I was calling on Smokey the Bear. I was stopping and dropping and rolling. It was everything. I was checking for eyebrows in the mirror. Lesson learned. Start the fire in the fireplace and then turn on the gas, not the other way around. The difference between a fire that will warm your house and a fire that will burn off your face has to do with the order in which you turn on the gas and light the flame.
And that's what Paul is saying, church. And that's what God is saying. He's saying, some of you are running the gas valve wide open in your thought life. And you're running the gas valve wide open in your conversations. And you're running the gas valve wide open, and so you're getting hit by all these flames that are consuming you and burning you alive. What do you expect? When you turn the gas on and leave it on and let it build up and just think what you want and say what you want and you don't control any of this, like, how did you think this was going to end? When you let the gas build up and you never got any help with those issues and you never found any place to discuss them, where did you think this was going to end? He said, first marriage, then fire. Context is everything.
And some of you, I'm not trying to be hateful. I'm just trying to be helpful. You're sitting here feeding the fire of lust and discontentment and wondering why the flames are burning so high. You say, well, I just can't control myself. You know, that's kind of what Paul says in the passage. He says, for those who can't control themselves, you should get married. You know, that's actually a poor interpretation of the original language in Greek. He didn't actually say, for those who can't control themselves. He said, for those who are not controlling themselves. See, because he said that the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. So you have self-control, but when you feed the wrong fires all the time… Like, some of you are just throwing logs on the fire all the time, and you're miserable because you're watching The Bachelor.
The Burning Bush That Didn't Burn Up
No man will ever be able to live up to your standard because you're watching a guy take girls on dates on a network budget. Your man might drive a Hyundai. It may be a good car, but you're feeding the fire of all of these ideals. Some of you men have gotten your standard of beauty from people who are airbrushed. No wonder your wife can't satisfy you. You're feeding the wrong fire. It's flaming up and blazing up, and you're running the gas, and you talk how you want to talk and do what you want to do and say what you want to say, and now you're wondering, why can't I control this? Because you didn't control it. So what do we need? We need a big old ice bucket. I thought about calling a single person up here and having our own little ice bucket challenge.
You know what the church does, and what I used to do a lot of times when I would preach about these topics, I would think that the solution for sexual sin is a big old bucket of shame. You know, so we just, you know, something like that. And all the sermons are based around shame. It's like... And that's effective for like three days. But then it flares right back up. Most of the time in our sexuality, shame is the source of our problem, so it can't be our solution. Paul doesn't shame the Corinthian church. He doesn't shame. God doesn't shame you for your struggles, for your passions. He simply wants you to get them in the right place.
And see, we talked about Moses, how he misplaced his passion in Exodus chapter 2, but check this out. Forty years later, Exodus chapter 3, verse 1, it says that one day Moses was tending the flock of Jethro, his father-in-law, the priest of Midian. So he was just doing his basic responsibility. He had gone on about his life. And he led the flock to the far side of the wilderness and came to Horeb, the mountain of God. So he was out in a lonely place. And God shows up and appears to Moses, but he did it in a lonely place while Moses was simply doing his job. Would that not be a good word for a single person in this church today? You tend the flock that God has given you. Be faithful in the place where he's positioned you.
And watch what God did. He said, "Then the angel of the Lord appeared to him in flames of fire from within a bush." So Moses saw... Remember when he looked the first time after he'd killed the Egyptian, and he looked and he saw and nobody was there, and so he thought he got away with it, but he really didn't because he tried to fulfill the right passion in the wrong way. But watch this this time. "And he saw that though the bush was on fire, it did not burn up. And so he thought, 'I will go over and see this strange sight—why the bush does not burn up.' And when the Lord saw he had gone over to look, God called to him from within the bush, 'Moses! Moses!' And Moses said, 'Here I am.'"
Consumed by the Right Fire
And here's what the Lord spoke to me. He said, "When I am the center of your passion, your life will burn, but it won't burn up. When I am the center of a relationship, it'll burn, but it won't burn up." See, lust can set you on fire, but only God can set you on fire and keep you on fire. Anybody can light a bush on fire, but only God can get in the middle of a bush and light it on fire, but although it's on fire. And what we want in this church and what God wants for your life is a passion that stays on fire, not this little cheap imitation, infatuation, false flame garbage that burns you out and creates new patterns of processing information in your brain that will cause you trouble for the rest of your life.
The enemy wants to burn you out, but God wants to set passion on fire in your life and put it in a place where it will burn, but not burn out. How many of you want a holy passion that doesn't burn out, relationships that don't burn out, fires and pursuits that don't burn out, that burn up, that are alive and lighting, but grow brighter and brighter as the seasons go by? God's desire for you isn't just that you would have the passing pleasure of sin for a season, but that you would know the pleasure of passion that comes from his purpose, that it would burn from within and not burn out. Some of you have been feeding the wrong fires, see? And yet it's not enough just to starve the wrong fires.
But God told me, I said, "God, well, if shame isn't the solution to this, then what is?" And he said, "I want you to tell everybody who's struggling with their desires that are burning a hole inside of them today, I want you to tell them that they need to fight fire with fire." Fight fire with fire. Not with shame. Shame isn't going to help this. You've tried that. Shame doesn't make you any better. It just drives you deeper into your own dysfunction and isolates you from people who could help you. But the Scripture says, watch this, "Our God is a consuming fire." So what do you do if you're consumed with the wrong passions? Here's an idea. Get more consumed with the right ones. That's how you do this.
I'm single and I'm lonely. I understand. I don't want to oversimplify your struggle. But why don't you ask God to set you on fire in this season of your life with a purpose that will consume you with him, so you're not so consumed with your desire for somebody else. See, when you become consumed with a passion for God's purpose, it consumes all of this other stuff, all this false desire, all this fake fire. And God wants to set somebody on fire today with his purpose and his plan for your life. Come on, shout it out. Say, "Set me on fire, Lord." Shout it out. "Set me on fire, Lord, with your purpose, with your power, with your plan." Hallelujah!