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Welcome to the Husband Material Podcast, where we help Christian men outgrow porn. Why? So you can change your brain, heal your heart, and save your relationship. My name is Drew Boa, and I'm here to show you how. Let's go.

Israel Trip And Biblical Geography

Egypt’s Control And Predictability

Promised Land’s Dependence On Rain

Why God Designs Rocky Ground

God’s Eyes Never Look Away

Porn As Egypt’s Easy River

The Sexual Prosperity Gospel Exposed

Wilderness Withdrawal And Temptation To Return

Revelation’s Better River And Future Hope

True North Trust And Final Charge

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You're about to hear a message on Deuteronomy 11. The sermon is about the difference between Egypt sexuality and promised land sexuality. Twelve years ago, I traveled to the land of Israel. In the Sea of Galilee, I skinny dipped in the water Jesus walked on. In the Hinnam Valley, where we get the word Gehenna, the New Testament word for hell, snarling wild dogs chased me through the street, snapping at my heels on my 6 a.m. run. I was trying to kick the dogs in the head to get them to go away, looking behind me, and I didn't see a car coming the opposite direction. It honked as loud as it could, and I thankfully did not get hit, but the dog scattered. It was the horn of my salvation. On the walls of Jerusalem, I did something quite embarrassing that would not be appropriate to share in a sermon on the Word of God. But I was not there as a tourist. I was there as a student on a summer academic program, taking biblical geography with Dr. Paul Wright. And that changed my life. Dr. Wright said the Old Testament can be summed up as a story of God, people, and land. Wait, land? Why land? I'd taken a lot of Bible classes and attended a lot of youth groups and heard a lot of sermons, and it was always about God and often about people, but land? The Bible keeps talking about the land. Why? Well, the more you learn about the land and the specific land that God chose for his people, the more you learn about the whole story. And to make this point, Dr. Wright unpacked Deuteronomy 11, 10 through 12, which is about the major differences in the geography of Egypt and the geography of the promised land, because the land itself is a picture of what it's like to trust God with your life rather than trying to control your life. Freedom versus slavery. And these insights apply to our sexuality directly. So, what does biblical geography have to do with God, porn, sex, and the rest of your life? These few obscure verses in the Old Testament can teach us a lot. So if you have a Bible, go to Deuteronomy 11. Let's start with verse 10. The land you are entering to take over is not like the land of Egypt from which you have come, where you planted your seed and irrigated it by foot as in a vegetable garden. This is an image of the farmland directly beside the Nile River. Soft ground. You can dig your foot into it and easily customize the course of water. This river is a convenient, constant water source in an otherwise arid land where crops are controlled. Life is predictable. This system is independent of the weather, and it's a place of power. Egypt was an empire. How luxurious. God says the land you are entering to take over is not like that at all. We live in a world of material abundance that would have been unimaginable for people in the Bible. Compared to ancient Egypt, this is a land of luxury. Most of us don't have to worry if there will be enough food or water for us or for our children. So we don't have a Nile River, we have something even bigger. A company that named itself after the longest, most powerful river in the world. It's called Amazon. Amazon offers a constant, convenient streams of goods and resources so that all we have to do is click a button to get what we want delivered to our homes. Similar services have made it possible for us to dip our foot into the internet and customize the course of our lives in many ways. Not in every way, but in many ways. So in some ways, we know what it's like to live the Egypt lifestyle. Instead of dipping our foot into the stream for automatic irrigation, we order something online, wait a couple days, open our front door, and pick up a package. The Bible says Egypt geography is the exact opposite of promised land geography. Verse 11. In other words, in the Promised Land, there is no Nile River. If you have been to Jerusalem, you know the spring of Gihon is a trickle. This is not a reliable water source. This land needs rain for anything and anyone to survive. Some areas of the Promised Land are lush and green. But for the most part, Judean hill country is rocky ground. It requires difficult work, and even when you do the difficult work, the results are unpredictable. There are no guarantees in this land. It's a land of mountains and valleys. This system is completely dependent on the weather. It's a place of powerlessness. Really? That's the promised land? That's the land God has for you for your life? Really? I used to think of the Promised Land as a place of health and wealth, guaranteed success, material prosperity. No. Doesn't the Bible call it a land flowing with milk and honey? Yes. So let's break that down. It's a land where you can have sheep and goats and where date palms give you a little bit of sweetness in the middle of the desert. And maybe some bees around the flowers to make honey. I mean a little bit, but come on. For the most part, God chose this land specifically because it's not like Egypt. And he's making that point in these verses. He is not leading you into the Egypt lifestyle. That sucks. Like God designed the landscape of life for his people to be difficult. I really wish that wasn't true. And the same is true for your life. God could have made it easy. But he didn't. And even for Egypt. Do you remember what God did to the Nile River? He turned it into blood. What they thought was completely dependable, something they could always count on, could change like that. He sent all these plays to show them that this land that they think is going to give them fulfillment and satisfaction and control and all the desires of their hearts and the good life, it is not as reliable or trustworthy as they think. In many ways, it's a mirage. God made life difficult. In this post-fall world where there's sin and brokenness, he loves us too much to allow us to be okay without him. He made the landscape of your life difficult. Why would he do that? Why would he give you rocky ground? Why would he require hard work with no guaranteed results? Why? So that you would thirst for him. So that you would feel your need for him. Because if you had all the power and freedom and health and wealth and sexual sobriety and relational fulfillment you could ever want, you might feel totally fine without God. And that would be lovely in so many ways, except for the one way that matters most. Your life is designed by God to drive you into his arms. Again and again and again. So that you would say, My heart needs a surgeon, my soul needs a friend. So that you would say, I've carried a burden for too long on my own, and I wasn't created to bear it alone. So that you would hear his invitation to let it all go, and you might be a little bit more open to accepting that. Verse 12 tells us, This is a land the Lord your God cares for. It drinks rain from heaven. That's the only way it works. The eyes of the Lord your God are continually on it from the beginning of the year to its end. My friend, God sees you and he never looks away. Even when you take your eyes off of him, he never takes his eyes off of you. Even when your eyes go to pornography, he never takes his eyes off of you. To be more accurate, it doesn't say his eyes are on his people, it says his eyes are on the land, which puts a different spin on it. What is the promised land for Christians? For modern-day Christians, the Promised Land is less about a specific piece of geography and more about the life God is inviting you into. This morning I challenge you to reconsider what is the life God is inviting me into, because it may not be the life you wanted. If you're single, maybe you've never been in a romantic relationship, maybe you doubt you ever will be. If you're dating, maybe you keep trying in vain. Breakup after breakup, rejection after rejection. If you're married, maybe you're in a sexless marriage, or your wife feels cold or distant, or she doesn't understand you or support you. If you're divorced, maybe you feel abandoned by God, overwhelmed, and hope feels small or non-existent or far away. Brother, his eyes are on you. When you experience unwanted sexual attraction to porn, to men, to children, towards an affair, towards other people online, those persistent thoughts and feelings that you desperately wish were not a part of your story, even then, his eyes are on you. From beginning to end, when you relapse, when you think, maybe this is it, and I'm finally free from porn for good, and then you go back, brother, his eyes are on you. His eyes full of love, compassion, care, gentleness, everything you've been looking for somewhere else is available to you now. In the God who sees you and cares for the landscape of your life. And it could be years before there's rain. It could be decades. People went through that in the Old Testament. His eyes are on you. When your wife is burdened with sexual betrayal trauma, and it feels like no matter how much you grow, how well you listen to her, how well you validate or empathize with her, and it feels like it's never going to be enough, in that desert, his eyes are on you. When you're helping others in ministry, in therapy, in the small group you're leading, walking with guys who are attached to porn, praying for them, pouring yourself out, trying to offer them grace and truth and connection. And sometimes you wonder if it's worth it or if it's making any difference. In this rocky ground, in the mountains and valleys, in the seasons of victory and the seasons of defeat, in the mountains of joy and the valleys of shame, you are in the promised land. This is the land your God has given you to take over, to take your rightful place as his beloved son, exactly where you are right now. He cares, he sees, and that might sound hollow, except for the fact that he knows what it's like. Because when God came to earth as a human being in the person of Jesus, he did not live the Egypt life. He did not live the Amazon, convenient, controlled life. It was mountains and valleys from beginning to end. It was decades of desert. Metaphorically speaking, he was single. He was childless. He died a humiliating death alone. Every single aspect of your life that feels like a desert, futility, abandonment, injustice, Jesus truly understands from experience how agonizing that is. Right now. He has not stopped being fully present to every shred of suffering. Even though he could. He could turn his eyes away with more important things or more important people. But your life is a land the Lord your God cares for. This is good news because we go through mountains and valleys, seasons, years, decades of dryness. And especially if you believe that God cares about what you do with your body and your sexuality, and your intention is to follow him and be faithful and true to your values, sexuality is going to be rocky ground. Often dry, even if you're married. That's part of why porn is so powerful. Like the Nile River in ancient Egypt, internet porn is streaming. All you have to do. Sorry. All you have to do is dip your foot in the sexual stream of the internet and get exactly what you want delivered immediately. Like Egypt, porn is an empire. It's highly profitable. And like Egypt, porn is the land of slavery. It is a land of exploitation to its performers. It is a land of addiction to its consumers. And in the world of porn, when you dip your toe in that stream, you feel a rush of godlike power. It is attractively convenient, controlled, giving you what you want when you want, no need to wait or hope or trust. When I was growing up in purity culture, that's what I thought sex and marriage would be like. Convenient. What I want. When I want it. Satisfying. Why not? I believed a sexual version of the prosperity gospel. You can call it the sexual prosperity gospel. Thank you, Jeremy. If I abstain from sex before marriage, I will have hot love making on my wedding night. If I finally achieve long-term sobriety from porn, my wife will trust me again and we'll have a close relationship, right? If I successfully rebuild trust with my wife, then we will have great sex again, maybe even better. These are false promises. The sexual prosperity gospel is a lie. Because the promised land is not like Egypt. God is taking you to a different place. He did not say it will be easy. He said, I will be with you. Never gonna give you up, never gonna let you down. The land the Lord your God is leading you into the land you are entering to take over is not like the land of Egypt from which you have come. It is a land the Lord your God cares for. In between the two, there's wilderness. Maybe you feel like you're in a wilderness right now. And you're right, you are. Because the journey out of Egypt is messy. We read about that in the book of Exodus. When you find yourself in the wilderness, you are disoriented, you are Dysregulated, maybe even in despair, because freedom doesn't feel like freedom yet. And that's when you feel the temptation to go back to Egypt. Like the Israelites, they said to Moses, Was it because there were no graves in Egypt that you brought us into the desert to die? What have you done to us by bringing us out of Egypt? Didn't we say to you in Egypt, leave us alone, let us serve the Egyptians? It would have been better for us to serve the Egyptians than to die in the desert. And then even after God delivers them, a month after crossing the Red Sea, the Israelites are in withdrawal. They are romanticizing the land of slavery. The Israelites said, if only we had died by the Lord's hand in Egypt, there we sat around pots of meat and ate all the food we wanted. But you have brought us out into this desert to starve this entire assembly to death. These thoughts might sound familiar. Wasn't porn great? Wasn't that attractive, convenient, controlled, predictable, familiar system great? No, it wasn't. Feels like it was when you're in the desert. When you're not having your needs met because you're in the wilderness on your way to the promised land, and even when you get to the promised land, it's still asking you to trust, to trust God, to trust the process that is unfolding. And to trust the people who are walking with you on this journey instead of going back. When the people thought they were going to die, Moses said, Do not be afraid. Stand firm, and you will see the deliverance the Lord will bring you today. The Egyptians you see today, you will never see again. The Lord will fight for you. You need only to be still. The Lord will fight for you. Even in the desert, even in the drought, even in the disappointment and the deprivation and the doubt, that's promised land sexuality. So let's get our bearings. Where have we come from? The land of slavery. The land of sexual addiction. Where are we now? Traveling through the wilderness and withdrawal to the promised land, which is about learning to trust God in the in-between. And where will we end up? In the land of eternal abundance. Way bigger and better than Egypt ever was. The last chapter of the entire Bible, Revelation 22, describes the life we will enjoy forever. Geographically. Biblical geography once again gives us great insights. Listen to Revelation 22, 1 through 5. Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life. Compare that to the rivers we've talked about. The angel showed me the river of the water of life as clear as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb down the middle of the street of the great city. On each side of the river stood the tree of life, bearing twelve crops of fruit, yielding its fruit every month. Every month? And the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations. No longer will there be any curse. The throne of God and of the Lamb will be in the city, and his servants will serve him. They will see his face, and his name will be on their foreheads. There will be no more night. They will not need the light of a lamp or the light of the sun, for the Lord God will give them light, and they will reign forever and ever. Brothers, there is a life-giving river and it's clean, not polluted. There's a city and it's not corrupted. There is fruit and it's abundant and delicious. There's healing with no more curse, no more shame, no more abuse, no more sin. It will be impossible to sin in that land. And at long last, you will see the face you've been looking for. Not the face provided to you by pornography, the face provided to you by God Himself. You will have the identity you've been longing for. His name is written on their foreheads, and they will see his face. Because instead of rain, the river flowing directly from the throne of God is flowing. There's a better river. No rain needed. Even the sun will no longer be necessary because the Lord will give them light. God is preparing us for this time when we experience Him as absolutely everything we could ever need. And that process is painful and it's difficult. And it involves a lot of trust with our sexual desires and longings and feelings that will often be unfulfilled. If you think they'll be fulfilled in marriage, I'm sorry. There will be lots of times when they won't be. If you think they will be fulfilled when you're not married, I'm sorry. They often won't be. And if you think that your sexual desires and longings will be fulfilled in eternity, I don't fully know how that's going to work. What will happen to our sexuality in the end? The only marriage that exists will be between Christ and his bride, that's us, at the marriage supplement at the marriage supper of the Lamb. So there will probably be no sex, not because it will be worse, but because sex was just a picture of something better than we could possibly imagine. Life with God beyond death will be more pleasurable than the best orgasm you've ever had, and the best cuddle you've ever had, and the best hug or kiss or closeness you've ever felt. In the meantime, your life is a landscape the Lord your God cares for. He is not looking away. His eyes are on you. Keep your eyes on him and on our destination. That is your true north. That is where we are going, and that can sustain us to respond to him in faith. Even when we feel like going back to Egypt, we are headed for something so holy and healing and beautiful. And right now, in this moment, we get to taste a little preview of that life, including at this retreat, surrounded by our brothers. He is reminding you who he is and whose you are and how far you have come. Do you know what God says immediately before the Ten Commandments? Before He tells His people what to do, before He gives you anything that you should do, He doesn't start with guilt or obligation or anything controlling. He says, I am the Lord your God who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery. In whatever version of faithfulness God is inviting you into right now, that's where he starts. He says, I am the Lord your God who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land your slavery, and we are now responding. We are now choosing what am I going to do with that? And even when we look away from him, he never looks away from us. My friend, he has brought you out of Egypt into the promised land. That promised land is your life-giving connection with Christ Himself that you will go deeper and deeper into for the rest of your life. It is not a one-time challenge, it is an ongoing invitation to run to the Father again and again and again. You've probably trusted him many times before. Maybe you're getting tired of trusting him. In this moment, he is coming to each one of us with complete acceptance and grace. Open arms, saying, My son, I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt because I love you so much. I want something so much better for you than the land of slavery. Even when freedom doesn't feel like freedom, it's never too late to trust him with your emotions, with your sexual thoughts and feelings, with your relationships, with your recovery, with your future. For the rest of our lives, he will never stop giving us new reasons to trust him. And oftentimes it will get more difficult so that we can become more intimate. This is a taste of eternity. When we will all experience God Himself as our true food, our pure water, our guiding light, our everything. Listen to these three words. Abundance is coming. I charge you with the words of Moses: do not be afraid. Stand firm, and you will see the deliverance the Lord will bring you today. The Lord will fight for you because you are God's beloved Son. In you He is well pleased. Amen.