John K. Jenkins Sr - Sex and The City

All right, grab your Bibles, iPhone, iPad, notepad, whatever . First Thessalonians chapter four, and I'm going to read these first eight verses. First Thessalonians chapter 4, verses 1-3: Finally then, brethren, we urge and exhort you in the Lord Jesus that you should abound more and more, just as you received from us how you ought to walk and please God. For you know what commandments we gave you through the Lord Jesus. For this is the will of God, your sanctification: that you should abstain from sexual immorality; that each of you should know how to possess his own vessel in sanctification and honor, not in passion of lust like the Gentiles who do not know God; that no one should take advantage of and defraud his brother in this matter, because the Lord is the Avenger of all such, as we also forewarned you and testified. For God did not call us to uncleanness, but in holiness; therefore, he who rejects this does not reject man but God, who has also given us His Holy Spirit.

Look at your neighbor and say, "The pastor is going to talk about sex today-Sex and the City." Look at your neighbor and say, "He's about to talk about you!" All right, you can be seated. I don't know if I'm going to do all this talking, but I get my message title. Same thing happened at 8 o'clock; there was some murmuring going on . Yeah, I want to talk about sex and the city. Some years ago, between 1998 and 2004 , there was an HBO series called Sex and the City. How many of you all saw it? Oh, raise your hands higher; let me see who the heathens are up in here ! I've never seen the program-not once , not even a snippet-I don't even know anything about it other than there was a lot of discussion and dialogue about it . Sex and the City. And I thought I would talk about this this morning because the reality is that sex is an issue in our community .

Let me just preface this by saying , if you all say amen together throughout the course of the whole message, nobody will know that I'm talking about you, all right? Amen. Somebody just texted me and said it's called Sex in the City. I want you to go to the website; look it up and you'll find that it is Sex and the City . Yes, that's for that person who texted me-I won't call her by name. It is Sex and the City. We need to talk about sex because it is the one thing that is tearing Christians apart, pulling us down, defeating us, frustrating us, and causing us not to reach the essence of what God has for our future . And I thought I ought to spend some time talking about it because I spend a lot of my time counseling people about sex. Inevitably, in every issue, somewhere along the line, most of my conversations have someone with sex in the picture .

So I spend a lot of time trying to keep single people from having sex. Sex among singles is alive and well; it's thriving, it's flaming, it's active. If y'all say amen together, nobody will know! Sex is alive and well in the married community , just not with the spouse they married. Did y'all hear that ? Not with their spouses-outside of their marriage. Paul the Apostle writes to the church in Thessalonica; it's a church he founded. He started the church and he's writing them after he has departed. It 's a young church, and he recognizes the need to talk to them about sexual purity. So he's writing this letter-his first epistle to them-and one of the things he needs to address is this thing called sex .

And I want to press and challenge and talk to us about it. I know it's challenging; I know the hormones are raging, and I know that the passions are alive and well . But here's the thing that all of us have to be absolutely clear аbout: God has something to say about sex. As a matter of fact, He gives very clear instructions about it. Oh, oh! Hold on , let me read this right here-verse 8-before I go any further: Therefore, he who rejects this does not reject Pastor Jenkins but God. And I just throw that out there because some of y'all are calling me an old fogey and pushing me to the side. You say, "That 's his generation!" That 's why I wanted to share verse 8 with you -to recognize this is not my message ; it's not my instruction. This is instruction from God.

So let's set the record straight; let's do a little Bible study today. I'll bring Bible study to you since you don't come to Bible study. Let 's look at a few verses very quickly. Let 's go to Ephesians chapter 5. Listen, let me give you the verse-you jot them down. I'm not going to wait for you to catch up and all that . Ephesians chapter 5, verse 3-listen to what it says: "But fornication and all uncleanness or covetousness , let it not even be named among you, as is fitting for saints." Y'all see that? I like the way the King James says it: "Don 't let it be named once among you; don't let it be mentioned one time ."