Controlled Burn - Message Notes | Week 1

John 8:31-32 (ESV)

“If you abide in My word, you are truly My disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.”

So much of what the world calls freedom, God calls slavery.

Matthew 16:24-26 (ESV)

Then Jesus told His disciples, “If anyone would come after Me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow Me. For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake will find it. For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and forfeits his soul? Or what shall a man give in return for his soul?”

“deny” (aparneomai)
To affirm that one has no acquaintance or connection with someone.

To forget one’s self, lose sight of one’s self and one’s own interests.

Freedom requires rules.

We aren’t anti-rule.

Are your rules for sexuality led by preference or God?

Revere the Rule

Relax the Rule

Rewrite the Rule

Historical Pattern of Rules
1st Generation:
2nd Generation:
3rd Generation:

(I love my own life, I live my own way)
(I love God, but I follow Him my own way)
(I love God, and I live by God’s rules for life)

My Rules
My Rules
God’s Rules

My Life
God’s Life
God’s Life

Galatians 5:13 (ESV)

For you were called to freedom, brothers. Only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh, but through love serve one another.

“Freedom is satisfying your flesh”

Galatians 5:16-18 (ESV)

But I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh. For the desires of the flesh are against the Spirit, and the desires of the Spirit are against the flesh, for these are opposed to each other, to keep you from doing the things you want to do. But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the law.

Only when it’s convenient?

Only if I agree with Him?

Am I obeying Him or using Him?

-Dr. Timothy Keller

“Freedom of choice without limits has become almost sacred. (Philosophers call this “negative freedom”—freedom from constraints—which they contrast with “positive freedom,” the freedom to pursue some good aim.) Absolute negative freedom becomes the chief moral good, so that “the [only] sin which is not tolerated is intolerance.”

-Dr. Timothy Keller

“…freedom is not what the culture tells us. Real freedom comes from a strategic loss of some freedoms in order to gain others. It is not the absence of constraints but it is choosing the right constraints and the right freedoms to lose.”

Galatians 5:19-21 (ESV)

Now the works of the flesh are evident: sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, envy, drunkenness, orgies, and things like these.

Sexual immorality
• Porneia
• Lust of the flesh - of the eyes
• Someone as a material, not a human being
• Someone to be consumed, instead of honored

Impurity
• Lustful motives
• Reasons leading to your actions
• Hook-up apps

Sensuality
• “debauchery”
• “unbridled lust, outrageousness”
• Licentiousness: Throwing off of sexual restraint (lewd)
• Men dressed as women doing dances in front of kids

Galatians 5:21 (ESV)

…I warn you, as I warned you before, that those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God.

Galatians 5:22-25 (ESV)

But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law. And those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. If we live by the Spirit, let us also keep in step with the Spirit.

This moment is an invitation.

Romans 5:6-8 (NLT)

When we were utterly helpless, Christ came at just the right time and died for us sinners. Now, most people would not be willing to die for an upright person, though someone might perhaps be willing to die for a person who is especially good. But God showed His great love for us by sending Christ to die for us while we were still sinners.

My Rules
My Rules
God’s Rules

My Life
God’s Life
God’s Life