Straight Talk About Sex – Common Myths About Sex Series

Straight talk about Sex – Common Myths about Sex

Gladstone Baptist Church – 21/8/05 pm

An 8-year-old girl went to her dad, who was working in the yard. She asked him, "Daddy, what is sex?"

The father was surprised that she would ask such a question, but decided that if she was old enough to ask the question, then she was old enough to get a straight answer. He proceeded to tell her all about the ’birds and the bees’. When he finished explaining, the little girl was looking at him with her mouth hanging open. The father asked her, "Why did you ask this question?"

The little girl replied, "Mom told me to tell you that dinner would be ready in just a couple of secs."

Tonight we are starting a 4 week series that I have entitled Straight Talk about Sex. I can’t remember the last time that I heard a message on sex preached – I’ve never preached on this topic before, but I think that this is perhaps the biggest challenge facing our young people today. Am I willing to have sex with someone I love? Am I abnormal if I haven’t had sex? How far is too far? These are questions that over the next couple of weeks, we want to try to answer because we care for you guys so much and want you to know the full story about sex.

In our society, we are absolutely bombarded with sex. Far, far, far more than were our Mums and Dads when they were our age. We encounter sex, or implied sexual relationships in most movies today – even PG movies. TV shows are full of people hopping in and out of relationships and the beds. Advertising every where is full of sexually suggestive images. There are calendars out of sexy firemen. You don’t have to be looking very hard to find pornography in the newsagents, in the bookshops, in the video stores, on the internet, on the TV.

Why does nearly everything around us exploit our sexuality? Because Sex sells. Guys, why do you think that when they are showing a 30 second trailer for a movie or TV show, they show girls with tight clothes and breasts hanging out and things like that? Why? Because they know that in 30 seconds if they can appeal to the male and show sexual images that a guy is going to say I’ve got to see that. What have they done? They don’t have your best interests in mind, they have your wallet in mind. They want you to go to the movie.

What we are constantly being bombarded with is the idea that sex is something that everyone is doing and that there are no limits on it. But I want to tell you over the next 4 weeks that you are not getting the full story. What your class mates, the media and the magazines are telling you is not the full truth.

Where do most people get their information about sex from?

One survey carried out in 2003 showed that the most useful source of sex information was

Magazines – 25%

Friends – 19%

Books – 13%

The Internet – 11%

Teachers – 8%

Parents – 7%

TV – 4%

Most of these sources don’t care about your health and wellbeing as a person. Do friends really care about you? Some might, but more often than not, peer pressure dominates any real care. Parents care, but depending on your parents, you might find that your Dad may thrust a book at you and say “read that and if you have any questions – ask your Mother!” Often parents find it difficult to talk about sex don’t they.

Even teachers – the mindset of the education department is that well – they are going to have sex anyway, so we might as well teach you how to have safe sex!! Here’s a condom and here’s a banana – here is how you put it on. Safe sex becomes defined as having sex without falling pregnant or not catching a STD. But there is so much more to having safe sex than that and this is why we are going to talk very frankly about this stuff over the next 4 weeks.

Next week we are going to look at what the Bible teaches about Sex. Because With respect to sex, either God knows what is best, or you know what is best. It is one or the other. And I encourage you to come and understand the boundaries that God has placed on sex and why he has placed them there. God has placed some boundaries on sex – not to be a party pooper, but to protect us. They are for our benefit and I really want you to understand why. You may be thinking – I think I am ready for sex now and I being in love is the only criteria. Okay – I still want you to come along. In fact, I’ll respect you tremendously if you think that way, yet still come along to listen and learn. Get all the facts and then make up your mind.