Person walking on forest trail with sunlight streaming through trees

Wisdom Protects Against Temptation and Chaos

“It will rescue you from a forbidden woman, from a wayward woman with her flattering talk, who abandons the companion of her youth and forgets the covenant of her God; for her house sinks down to death and her ways to the land of the departed spirits. None return who go to her; none reach the paths of life. So follow the way of the good, and keep to the paths of the righteous.” (Proverbs 2:16-20 CSB – Read the chapter)

The other day, I found myself in a conversation with one of my boys about Tiger Woods. He had brought up the fact that Woods had been arrested recently and was telling me all the details of the story. I noted that Woods’ story is a sad one. Not all that long ago he had it all: he was the best and most popular golfer in the world, he was fabulously wealthy, he had a literal supermodel for a wife, he had two beautiful kids. What more could anyone want? And now, while he may still have lots of money, the rest is gone for good. Why? Because he didn’t have wisdom and so he stumbled down this particular path that wisdom helps us avoid.

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Morning Musing: Romans 1:24-25

“Therefore God delivered them over in the desires of their hearts to sexual impurity, so that their bodies were degraded among themselves. They exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served what has been created instead of the Creator, who is praised forever. Amen.” (CSB – Read the chapter)

Thanks to a few hundred years’ worth of pop culture, when we think about the judgment of God, we imagine fire and brimstone. We picture great floods and earthquakes. We imagine something dramatic and terrible. We imagine God’s actively doing something to punish us for our sins (or, better yet, them for theirs…we usually give ourselves a pass). Yet so much of the judgment we encounter in the Scriptures doesn’t look like that at all. Instead, it takes the form of God simply stepping back and letting the consequences of our sin play themselves out naturally. Paul describes something like that here. Check this out with me.

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Morning Musing: 1 Corinthians 7:2 (one more time)

“But because sexual immorality is so common, each man should have sexual relations with his own wife, and each woman should have sexual relations with her own husband.”‬‬ (CSB – Read the chapter)

This past Friday we started talking about sex. So far we have concluded two things. The first is that this is something we should be talking about. As followers of Jesus and given the state of our culture, we’ve got to be having a positive and productive conversation about how we should approach this touchy subject. The second thing was this: Sex is good and we should be enjoying it…but only in its proper context. It is a gift from God and like any other gift from God, if we use it as He intended, we will enjoy its rich fruits to their absolute fullest. The last question we asked was what we should be doing about this. Let’s talk about that now.

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Digging in Deeper: 1 Corinthians 7:2

“But because sexual immorality is so common, each man should have sexual relations with his own wife, and each woman should have sexual relations with her own husband.”‬‬ (CSB – Read the chapter)

Where we left things this morning was with a question: What do the Scriptures say about sex? As we had said a little earlier, quite a bit. Let’s start broadly and then get a little more detailed from there.

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Morning Musing: 1 Corinthians 7:2

“But because sexual immorality is so common, each man should have sexual relations with his own wife, and each woman should have sexual relations with her own husband.”‬‬ (CSB – Read the chapter)

The word “sexual” appears three times in that verse, so I suspect that if you’ve read at least this far I have your attention and will continue to have it until either I offend you or else I toe what you assume to be my party line too hard. Our culture is talking about sex. A lot. We should be too. So, let’s do it. 

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