Christianity And Sex Series

The problem with any of God’s gifts is if we take it out of proper context, misuse and abuse it, it becomes something which is detrimental. A fire in a fireplace is wonderful. It is romantic. You can warm your hands, enjoy its beauty and roast marshmallows. But take the fire out of the fireplace and put it in the middle of the room and you’re going to burn your house down. Everything has its proper context and place. When it is, it’s a wonderful blessing. The problem is that our society says there’s nothing wrong with taking sex out of its proper context. And yet we know it can be devastating. Paul teaches us how to handle our sexuality and sexual intimacy. The world Paul faced in the first century does not hold a candle to what is happening today. Worship of many of the pagan gods included sex. There were cultic prostitutes and orgies were commonplace. People were encouraged to pursue pleasure at any cost. This is the world Paul is addressing. And so Paul writes to Christians who had just given their life to Christ and sworn off the ways of world and says, God has a better way. God has a plan for how you exercise this gift. This was hard for them to hear and still harder to practice. And yet they knew their first order of business in following Christ was to discover and do God’s will for their lives.

God forbids fornication. Fornication comes from the Greek word porneia which didn’t just mean two unmarried people having sex together, though it included that. It meant sexual immorality as a whole. Pornography is a good example of that today but in Paul’s day, is included: temple prostitution, sexual harassment, forced sex and many others. Paul is saying, “Keep your minds pure. Instead, be pure in heart and pure in your activities. Your body is a temple to the Holy Spirit so be careful in everything you do. Why does God forbid fornication? First, it robs your future spouse of the joy of bonding with you. You have something to give away only once and you can give that gift only to 1 person. Now many young people have sex because they believe they’re in love and this is the one they are going to marry. This is especially true of girls. A nationwide survey found that 50% of girls who had sex believed this. The boys answered differently. They had sex because they wanted to see what it is like. They didn’t have any illusions that this was the one. Two very different ideas on what is happening when you have sex as a teenager. And what they found was that this destroyed the relationship rather than made it stronger.

Second, it makes bonding later more difficult. If you take duck tape and take it off something and then try to stick it to other things, you can still use it but it’s not near as effective. In fact you can use it up to four times but by the fourth time, it doesn’t really stick anymore. In other words, it doesn’t have the capacity to bond. Every time we bond with someone, even if we think it isn’t leading anywhere, we are taking on a little bit of them onto us and us onto them. When you peel away, you don’t stick quite as well as you did before. And after awhile, it’s really hard to allow sexual intimacy to be a means of bonding at all. Third, it spreads disease. We know that. One in four sexually active teens this year will contract a sexually transmitted disease. That’s 500,000 new cases of SDT’s and more than 40 million people in our country. A sad part of violating God’s intention for sex is that it has consequences. Fourth, it creates life where life was not meant to be nurtured and supported. One in five teenage girls will become pregnant this year and that comes with consequences. Children born out of wedlock are more likely to have discipline problems, lower grades, problems with the law and engage in premarital sex themselves.