This morning we are going to begin a series entitled Restoring the Gift of Our Sexuality.
No aspect of life that runs deeper… and no gift that has been more tragically confused and corrupted.. Sexuality reflects our deepest longings and our most painful wounds.
Before unpacking that further, I want to say a couple things about this series.
This series… carries in mind that we gather as both single and married adults. Over the course of these weeks we will address the dynamics of marital intimacy… yet healthy for all to understand… and we will address the dynamics of sexuality for those unmarried… yet I believe healthy for all to understand. And of course… most of what we address relates to us all equally if we breathe and have bodies.
This series is not rooted in a desire to be provocative. We have enough of selling sex… which simply strips our humanity from. The Scriptures speak about our sexuality in a way that is neither prude nor crude… and I want to join that good sense.
This series is simply a reflection of feeling our Father’s heart… of seeing that which is good become co-opted and corrupted… intended for love being misguided into enslavement… God sees sex as a gift… not a burden. His heart is never to burden us with the neurotic ideas and ideals of our culture. He knows the predispositions and patterns we each face… and wants to help us and heal us.
God surrounds us this morning… to speak of a gift that needs to be restored.
> PRAY
Rob Bell writes… "You can’t talk about sexuality without talking about how we were made. And that will inevitably lead you to who made us. At some point you have to talk about God." (SexGod, p. 15)
This morning let’s start at the beginning….in Genesis… the book of beginnings…
Genesis 1:26-28 (GW)
Then God said, “Let us make humans in our image, in our likeness. Let them rule the fish in the sea, the birds in the sky, the domestic animals all over the earth, and all the animals that crawl on the earth.” So God created humans in his image. In the image of God he created them. He created them male and female. God blessed them and said, “Be fertile, increase in number, fill the earth, and be its master.”
The Creator … speaking of the plurality of mutual oneness (note the term, ‘let us’)… Father, Son, and Spirit… has been bringing order to chaos… speaks of creating something distinctly reflecting His nature. Now we know that all of creation reveals something of God… the designer is reflected in the design… so this is something beyond that… something truly of similar nature. In this we are uniquely human… as we are created as male and female. He goes on to explain the experience…
Genesis 2:24-25 (GW)
That is why a man will leave his father and mother and will be united with his wife, and they will become one flesh. The man and his wife were both naked, but they weren’t ashamed of it.
God created sexuality.... and the potential for sexual intimacy. It’s not like God created the first humans, went on lunch break and then came back and was like, “what are they doing? Who taught them that?!” God even created certain parts our bodies with the purpose of giving sexual pleasure.
The original state was His idea. And how different it is from what we often feel.
Last verse (25) – “ The man and his wife were both naked, but they weren’t ashamed of it.”
Can you imagine that? No shame in their sexual relationship. No shame from memories of past experiences. No shame that comes from falling short of some expectations for performance. That’s Pure Sex – the way sex was created to be.
The first thing we discover is that…
I. Our Sexuality Is Rooted In the Divine Nature of God
Sexuality is Sacred… Reflected in…
• Our Complimentary Nature… ‘male and female’…
Men and women equally reflect complimentary aspects of God’s character.
When did they become sexual beings? When they left and joined partners… when they multiplied life?
> NO… when they were created. That is why I use the term that we reflect the Divine Nature simply in the complimentary nature of being created as male and female… and THEN such a nature is further EXPRESSED in what follows… namely…
Expressed in…
• Our Covenant Partnerships (‘leave and become united’)
A unity of diversity (‘ultimately ‘become one flesh’)
1 Corinthians 6:16 (MSG)
There’s more to sex than mere skin on skin. Sex is as much spiritual mystery as physical fact. As written in Scripture, "The two become one."
This helps us begin to understand how sexual oneness is designed for marriage… where the bonds of oneness have been established.
Sexual passion is the stimulating of a God-given longing within us for oneness; through the pleasure of releasing both personal and physical boundaries… therefore it’s inherently a part of lifelong partnership. Experiencing oneness without being one violates our personhood.
I realize that within our current culture this may be dismissed… but I find it as clear a truth in our experience.
• Our Creative Potential… (‘multiply’)
God who is creating endows us with creative power…including the ability to create life.
As we’ll see next week… sexual intimacy is not reduced to the power and purpose of creating life… but neither can it be understood outside of that sacred power. (The command to go and multiply is not simply a matter of following an order… but reflecting the very divine order or nature itself.)
In essence we are "continuing God’s creation act" from chaos into order, where embodying the rule and reign of God is ushering the order of humanity… and acting apart from the rule and reign of God invites the return to chaos. (From JS based on Bell)
It’s notable… that when God calls a people of this earth through whom he would make himself known… what is the sign of the covenant… circumcision… a marking out of the life creating male anatomy. A sacred reminder that our sexuality is rooted in the Divine order.
II. The Tragic Separation of ‘Being’ and ‘Body’
Now what is so beautifully a part of God’s created goodness… is obviously effected by how the story of human beginnings proceeds. We try to be like God… and in trying to be more than human we become less than human. We are left living in separation from God… and are darkened and degraded. The beautiful compliment of love and serving one another as male and female… becomes corrupted by unhealthy needs.
But historically something talkes place that further confuses our understanding of sexuality. To appreciate what I believe is a crisis of sexuality… it’s helpful to understand the significance of how human history lost it’s sense… most notably when the Hebrew worldview replaced by a Hellenistic one which involved what is referred to as ‘dualism’
DUALISM = a complete separation of material and spiritual… with that which is of the earthly desires and bodily life being deemed either an enemy or the spiritual or at least irrelevant.
Some found in this dualistic thinking a more ascetic approach to life… detach themselves from their sexuality. This included those who were married thinking that such physical pleasure may be unfitting of spiritual life.
We could refer to this as…
Sexuality is Shameful
Out of this false separation, others conclude we can do anything with your body you’d like. It may not be spiritual to get tied down…. so prostitutes would be the way to deal with sexual desires.
We could refer to this as…
Sexuality is Salvation
We see this so powerfully in the contemporary crisis in which we live.
The sexual revolution cried out to overcome repression but ended up with regression; turning a gift into a god.
When the gift becomes a god…
• Half of the life long commitments to marriage that include life creating power… end in divorce. And for all who want to avoid the mess by simply living together… the rate of coming apart is even higher.
• 65% of all kids will spend at least part of their life without a dad in the home.
• Americans now spend more money at strip clubs than at Broadway, off-Broadway, regional and nonprofit theaters; at the opera, the ballet, and jazz and classical music performances combined. -U.S. News & World Report, 2/10/97
• 25% of total search requests on the internet… is for pornography… 68 million daily… Every second - 372 Internet users are typing adult search terms into search engines… and 1 in 3 are women.
• Highest producing country of pornography is our own (United States). (Every 39 minutes: a new pornographic video is being created in the US)
• Highest producing city of pornography is our own (Los Angeles).
• 83.5% of downloading on-line is from pornography
• Nearly half of children born are to teenagers
• There are 15 million new cases of STD’s every year in America and 68 million Americans are currently infected with an STD.
• And 2/3 of all cases of STD’s are in people 25 years of age or younger… the highest rate being 3 million TEENS a year
• Social psychologists remind us that a culture laughs at what is unresolved within it.
> The sexual revolution is crying out for true freedom
The simple truth is that no little girl dreams of the day they will find themselves in the arms of a stranger. No little boy dreams of the day they will be addicted and consumed by looking at a computer… or engaging in something rough and abusive.
The truth is that the dualistic tragedy is still at hand. … for our feelings about sex today, including sexual intimacy in marriage, are often still caught between repression… and obsession. There is a tension out of which come two extremes… denying our sexuality or being driven by it. Sometimes we find a bit of both at work within us.
Neither the indulgent nor the inhibited are seeing clearly.
Rob Bell - "When we deny the spiritual dimension to our existence, we end up living like animals. And when we deny the physical, sexual dimensions to our existence we end up living like angels. And both ways are destructive, because God made us human." (Sex God, p 58)
III. The Restoration of True Sexual Freedom
Rooting our sexuality back into the divine order and all that flows from it… is the path to true sexual freedom. Christ leads us beyond repression and regression… he leads us to the true connection between ‘being’ and ‘body’… to that which the our souls truly long for.
1. Freedom to be truly human, able by God’s Spirit to once again allow our physical nature to honor our personal nature, our bodies to honor our souls.
Our culture has invested more into the promotion of casual sex than any other idea I can think of. We simply have to decide … is it really a progressive idea… or a regressive idea? Do I really believe that becoming like my dog is the fulfillment of my personhood? I have never met a person who truly believes that in their inner being.
Restoration comes with realigning the longings of being and body… rediscovering what it means that we are human beings expressed in bodies.
It means another person is not merely a source of physical pleasure… but another sacred being.
Rob Bell - "When I respect the image of God in others, I protect the image of God in me.” (p 28)
2. Freedom to secure our sexuality in what we already are rather than what we are trying to be.
Our identity as male and female lies not in the affirmation of others nor the complex personas and false selves we develop to seek that affirmation. Our identity as male and female lies in our Creator.
The very terms we so naturally use…
• ‘She’s all girl’
• ‘He’s a man’s man.”
• ‘What a woman’
…all reflect that we deem certain traits as what affirms or confirms our sexuality. And naturally we can wonder…
Do I have the right body… the right appeal… the right desires?
> It’s all backwards.
Sexuality is not a social concept we simply keep changing. It is rooted in our very created existence !
Many of us have had some painful experiences in our struggle to live uniquely as males and females. We may resent it… or simply think it is a game we must play… to satisfy and win.
But imagine a existence with no male and female… no diversity of gender… no unique fondness that we feel. It is a gift already given.
3. Freedom to recognize that an unmarried individual’s sexuality need be no less fulfilled of its spiritual meaning.
Our sexual nature is only an earthly parallel to our spiritual nature, for we all represent the complimentary image of God, and all share as the bride “coming home” to join her groom.
The very life of Jesus liberates us to this truth.
Now married, I love being sexually intimate with my wife… the oneness… the potential to create life…but I’m not one bit more male… it may add expression, but not essence… not one bit more spiritually complete..
4. Freedom to find true love and acceptance in the right places.
‘Pure sex’… can often be heard as a ‘nothing but sex’ inference … quantity. Whereas truly pure sex is simply that which is fully human… fully reflects our design… including compliment… covenant… and creative power.
Our culture is still trying to declare such boundaries as ‘inhibitions.’… yet the obvious truth is that our broken desires are inhibiting us from becoming human. We need to become more uninhibited about being sexually human… about seeking real relationship.
Sexual intimacy is able to consummate oneness, it cannot create it. How much pain has been experienced in finding that out? How many of us in this room have known this. I actually find that generally… everyone knows it.
The great tragedy of ‘safe sex’ is that is refers only to the body and not to the soul.
5. Freedom to face our sexual desires with truth and grace.
God comes to us today in the challenges and confusion of our sexuality.
It is an extremely hard culture to live in wholeness.
Illustration” Like getting sand in carburetor… if I drive through a windy desert it’s going to be harder to avoid… but it doesn’t mean I can rename it as OK.. it will still cause the same problem.
We need grace to accompany the unchanging truth.
The sexual revolution is a cry for freedom… that has found a whole new type of enslavement. God has come with a shout of freedom… Christ came to set free. He is not interested in the guilt that just leaves us feeling bad. He is interested in restoring our truest humanity.
Example of Jesus engaging a woman at a well. (John 4). She comes at mid-day to the well… when no one else would go out in the heat… because she was not just a Samaritan whom Jews despised as half breeds… but she appears to have lived in the shame of her broken sexuality… even among her own Samaritan village. Jesus begins to speak about finding what really satisfies. She seems to have a hard time grasping what he could be referring to… and then he refers to speaks of her having had many husbands… and that she is with a man now who is not her husband. And so she begins to face her own need.. of having been looking for love in the wrong ways.
He does not judge her… because God sees that we are already judged simply in the condition we have chosen. Rather he holds out grace for a new freedom.
He holds that out to each of us.
Conclusion: I want to invite you today… as we pray… to join me in trading our shame for our sacred nature. To trade the smirks of awkwardness… both around us… and within us… for the smile of God… that calls us His sons… and daughters.
Some further resources we have gathered for you… available in the bookstore:
o Sex God: Exploring the Endless Connections between Sexuality and Spirituality by Rob Bell
o Sexual Character: Beyond Technique to Intimacy by Marva J. Dawn
o A Celebration of Sex: A Guide to Enjoying God’s Gift of Sexual Intimacy by Douglas Rosenau
o The Thrill of the Chaste: Finding Fulfillment While Keeping Your Clothes On by Dawn Eden
o Real Sex: The Naked Truth about Chastity by Lauren F. Winner
o Pursuing Sexual Wholeness by Andrew Comiskey
