A. As you know, children often do “say the darndest things.”
1. A precocious 7 year-old once asked her mother for a baby brother.
a. Her mother was taken aback by the request, but explained in a soothing tone, “I’m afraid that just isn’t possible, darling. Babies cost a great deal of money, and Daddy and I just can’t afford one right now.”
b. “Mommy,” said the 7 year-old in a most exasperated tone, “women don’t BUY babies. I think you and I should have a little talk!”
2. Then there was the time when a minister and his wife were talking with their young children about the facts of life.
a. As the children listened intently to the discussion of “the birds and the bees,” one of the children interrupted and with wide eyes asked, “Does God know about this?”
B. Yes, indeed, God knows all about this.
1. And as anxious as all of us might be about today’s sermon and subject, I want to encourage all of us to relax, and know that I will do my best to be appropriate, positive and helpful as we explore how the god of sex can lead us astray in the temple of pleasure.
2. Let’s start on the positive note that God would want us to start on and that is that sex is good.
a. We need to be clear about that from the outset – sex is good.
3. In fact, sex is a gift from God Himself – God is the originator and designer of sex.
a. Isn’t it amazing and sad how some of the richest and most beautiful gifts from God are often the gifts that are twisted into hideous and destructive idols?
b. God designed sex to intimately connect us to our spouse.
c. When sex is done God’s way, it can create a supernatural bond and blessing between a husband and a wife.
d. At the very creation of humanity, when God formed Adam and Eve, the Bible explains: “Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.” (Gen. 2:24)
4. When done God’s way, sex brings pleasure and intimacy, and it can result in producing children, in accordance with God’s plan.
5. But it didn’t have to be this way, God could have made reproduction a mechanical, joyless act, like filling the car with gas.
a. But that’s not how God chose to make it, God chose to make sex and reproduction pleasurable and meaningful.
C. And just as we saw with food in last week’s sermon, God designed sex in such a way that it doesn’t just accomplish a single purpose, but has several purposes, and is pleasurable.
1. Our God is a Father who likes to give His children good things.
2. All of God’s gifts are given to point us back to Him.
3. The gifts that God gives us should cause us to love and worship the Giver more deeply.
4. But sadly, and tragically, God’s gifts to us often end up becoming God’s greatest competition.
D. Kyle Idleman offered an excellent illustration of what it looks like when this happens.
1. Imagine for a moment that you’re a parent who wants to give their child a special gift.
2. You have heard your child talking about how much they want the latest gaming console.
3. And so, you make the purchase, even though it is not an inexpensive one, because you want to express your love to your child by giving them something they will enjoy.
4. When you present the gift to your child, your child offers a joyful shout, a big hug, and lots of “thank yous.” – it was worth every penny to experience that moment.
5. Your child takes the game console and immediately begins to enjoy it.
6. A little later, when you stop by your child’s room and ask him a question about the game, he says, “Can’t talk right now, I’m busy.”
7. Later you ask him to go to dinner with the family, but he begs off, wanting only to stay and play with his new game.
8. A few days later, your child starts to ask for the add-ons and other games his friends have, and how their game units are better than the one you got for him.
9. So not only has your gift taken his attention away from you and your relationship, it has made him less content and happy than before you gave him the gift.
10. How could this nice gift go so wrong?
E. This is what happens when the gift becomes more important to us than the giver.
1. This is what happens when God has to compete with His own blessings.
2. Sex is beautiful until it loses its spiritual context.
3. Food and other forms of pleasure are wonderful until they become ends in themselves.
4. When God’s gifts become our gods, then the gods become tyrants and we become enslaved.
5. When God’s gifts become our gods, then they become a destructive force rather than the blessing they were designed to be.
F. The god of sex has drawn so many people of our time into the temple of pleasure and has warped and twisted God’s good gift of sex.
1. Today, very few people follow God’s plan for one man and one woman to be married and enjoy the gift of sex in their marriage for a lifetime.
2. Today, 67% of people believe that it is okay for unmarried people to be involved sexually.
3. Today, 63% of people believe that it is okay to be involved in same sex relationships.
4. Today, 70% of people think it is a good idea to co-habitate before marriage.
5. Today, millions of people pursue their sexual satisfaction virtually through all kinds of internet and phone possibilities.
6. But when we deviate from God’s designs, the outcome is not blessing, but pain and destruction.
G. Let’s look at a few biblical examples of how the god of sex enslaved people and how the promise of pleasure only led to pain and destruction.
1. The first biblical example is found in Genesis 19 when God sent two angelic messengers to investigate the decadence of Sodom and Gomorrah.
2. You will recall that God had first sent those angelic messengers to Abraham’s tent where Abraham learned that God was going to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah because of the sinfulness of those who lived there.
3. Abraham was especially concerned about that because his nephew, Lot lived there, and so Abraham encouraged God not to destroy the good people along with the wicked, and was able to get God to agree not to destroy the cities if 10 righteous people could be found living there.
4. When the angels arrived in Sodom, it was Lot, Abraham’s nephew, who insisted that the angels come stay at his home and not spend the night in the town square.
5. That night, before bedtime, all the men of the city of Sodom, both young and old, arrived at Lot’s door and demanded that he turn over to them the visitors who were staying at his house.
6. That mob of men wanted to sexually assault those angelic visitors.
7. It is hard to imagine how a society can become that corrupted in their worship of the god of sex that they would have such an intent in their hearts.
8. It is even harder for me to imagine that Lot would offer his own daughters in order to protect the guests under his roof.
9. Thankfully, the angels struck all the men with blindness which ended the threat.
10. Then next day, the angels escorted Lot and his family out of the city before God rained down sulfur on Sodom and Gomorrah destroying all the inhabitants of those cities.
11. That gives us a glimpse into the kind of deviancy that can develop when God the Father is no longer in His rightful place in our lives and the god of sex has taken over.
a. The natural loving relationship of husbands and wives gives way to unnatural relations, and intimacy is lost in the pursuit of wanton pleasure.
b. The apostle Paul described that transition from godliness to ungodliness in Romans 1: 22 Claiming to be wise, they became fools, 23 and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things. 24 Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves, 25 because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever! Amen. 26 For this reason God gave them up to dishonorable passions. For their women exchanged natural relations for those that are contrary to nature; 27 and the men likewise gave up natural relations with women and were consumed with passion for one another, men committing shameless acts with men and receiving in themselves the due penalty for their error. (Romans 1:22-27)
c. When the god of sex leads us away from God the Father, the blessing of God is replaced by deviancy and destruction.
H. A second biblical example of how the god of sex enslaved someone and the promise of pleasure only led to pain and destruction is found in the story of David and Bathsheba (2 Samuel 11).
1. David had been the successful king of Israel for many years.
2. One day when he should have been out on the battle field with his armies, he was at home and walking around his roof top.
3. David looked below into another person’s property and saw a woman bathing – the woman was very beautiful.
a. David already had several wives at that point, so why did he need another woman?
b. Answer: Selfishness, lust and the promise of pleasure.
4. So David sent someone to discover who she was, but when he discovered that she was the granddaughter of an advisor and the wife of one of his soldiers, he was not deterred.
5. David sent for Bathsheba, and he slept with her and she became pregnant.
6. Rather than admitting to his sin, David tried to cover it up by immediately bringing home Bathsheba’s husband – hoping people would conclude Bathsheba was pregnant by her husband.
7. Bathsheba’s husband, Uriah, would not allow himself the pleasure of sleeping with his wife, even after David got him drunk, so David sent him back and arranged for him to die in battle.
8. Once Bathsheba was a widow, David thought he was in the clear to be her husband and no one would know about his sinful conduct.
9. God, of course, knew all about it and was very displeased with David.
10. You know the rest of the story: Nathan the prophet was sent to confront David, and although David repented and was forgiven by God, the child they were expecting would die.
11. How could a man described as a man after God’s own heart end up in this kind of sexual sin?
a. Easily, all a person has to do is let lust captivate their heart and mind.
b. This is what we will see happened in our third example as well.
I. The third biblical example of how the god of sex enslaved someone and the promise of pleasure only led to pain and destruction is found in the story of Amnon and Tamar (2 Samuel 13).
1. David, the second king of Israel, in keeping with the custom of his time, had many wives and many children by them.
a. It’s worth noting that, far from approving or even condoning polygamy, the Old Testament provides one example after another of why it doesn’t work.
2. The story of Amnon and Tamar begins with these words: Now Absalom, David's son, had a beautiful sister, whose name was Tamar. And after a time Amnon, David's son, loved her. And Amnon was so tormented that he made himself ill because of his sister Tamar, for she was a virgin, and it seemed impossible to Amnon to do anything to her. (2 Sam. 13:1-2)
3. So, Amnon is one of David’s sons and Tamar is one of David’s daughters by different wife – they are half-siblings.
4. The ESV says that Amnon was “so tormented” by his love for Tamar.
a. The old NIV says Amnon was “frustrated,” but the The new NIV says he was “obsessed.”
5. Obsession is probably the right way to say it because obsession is an idolatry word.
a. Amnon was constantly thinking about and focusing on one image in his mind and one possibility – his beautiful sister.
b. Amnon allowed this fantasy to fill his heart until he made himself sick with lust.
6. Unfortunately, Amnon had a friend and advisor who gave him terrible advice about pretending to be sick and asking his father to send Tamar to cook for him and feed him on his sick bed, and when he had her alone in his bedroom, he would know what to do from there.
7. Amnon followed his friend’s suggestion and what happened was heartbreaking!
a. He pushed the food aside and declared what was on his mind.
b. She resisted and pled for him to think about what he was doing and the disgrace it would inflict upon her, not to mention his own reputation.
c. The Bible says: But he would not listen to her, and being stronger than she, he violated her and lay with her. (2 Sam. 13:14)
d. But Amnon’s violation didn’t end there, the very next verse says: 15 Then Amnon hated her with very great hatred, so that the hatred with which he hated her was greater than the love with which he had loved her. And Amnon said to her, “Get up! Go!” 16 But she said to him, “No, my brother, for this wrong in sending me away is greater than the other that you did to me.” But he would not listen to her. 17 He called the young man who served him and said, “Put this woman out of my presence and bolt the door after her.” (2 Sam. 13:15-17)
8. Amnon’s sexual sin brought incredible destruction and devastation, not just upon his sister and family, but upon the entire nation.
a. I don’t have time to go into it all, but in the end his own brother, Absalom murdered Amnon because of what he did to his sister.
9. But where did it all begin? It began with idolatry.
a. Amnon chose to worship the god of sexual pleasure.
b. Amnon spent countless hours lusting after Tamar until it became his obsession.
c. I’m sure that Amnon never thought that his obsession would cause him to do such a terrible thing to his sister, but the god of sex specializes in taking a person further than they ever intended to go.
J. One of the truths that is made perfectly clear in the story of Amnon is that when something good becomes our god, the pleasure it brings dies in the process.
1. Pleasure has this unique trait: the more intensely you chase it, the less likely you are to catch it.
2. Philosophers call this the “hedonistic paradox” – which is the idea that pleasure, pursued for its own sake, evaporates before our eyes.
3. When Amnon finally gave in to his lust, it didn’t satisfy him the way he thought it would.
a. The incident lasted just a matter of moments, and when it was over, Amnon looked upon Tamar with contempt, with intense hatred – how could that be?
4. The god of pleasure promises us incredible satisfaction as we fantasize about that person at the office, or as we read books, magazines, surf websites, or chat on the internet, as we keep going a little bit farther with a boyfriend or girlfriend, as we obsess over what it would be like to push the envelope, and go ahead and give in to our desires, to grab a moment of ecstasy and pleasure.
a. But what happens when we do? The god of pleasure doesn’t deliver what was promised.
b. Instead of satisfaction, we experience emptiness and an almost immediate hunger for something more.
c. Instead of experiencing, satisfaction and joy, we are left with loneliness, guilt, shame and self-loathing.
K. I want to remind us again about the fact that the battle begins and takes place in the mind.
1. What took place in Sodom and Gomorrah began in the minds of those men.
2. What took place on David’s rooftop started with an innocent glance and a thought.
3. And I’m sure that on the first day that Amnon noticed Tamar’s beauty and had a lustful thought, it seemed harmless enough.
a. After all, it wasn’t like he was going to act on those feelings, he was just going to think about them.
4. The battlefield of the gods is in our hearts, our minds.
a. Our heart is shaped by our thoughts, then our thoughts determine our words and actions.
b. Proverbs 4:23, Above all else, guard your heart, for everything you do flows from it. (NIV)
c. Paul directs us to “take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ.” (2 Cor. 10:5)
d. That metaphor of taking prisoners is so good, because it’s exactly what happens to our minds, we either take it captive for truth or we allow it to be seized and imprisoned by lies.
L. Let’s ask ourselves some important questions about the battle of our hearts with regard to sexuality.
1. Question 1: How well am I controlling my thought life?
a. We live in a highly sexualized society, and so we are bombarded with all kinds of sensual suggestions, but what are we doing with them?
b. When a thought comes, we must make a choice about what to do with it.
c. And the best way to keep bad things out is to fill our minds with good things (Phil. 4:8).
2. Question 2: In what ways am I playing with fire?
a. Proverbs 6:27 says: Can a man scoop fire into his lap without his clothes being burned?
b. The obvious answer is, “NO! If you play with fire you will get burned!”
c. So we must ask ourselves if we are allowing any person other than our spouse, to become an object of our emotional obsession or sexual fantasy?
d. Are we playing with fire via the internet or through our cellphones or at work?
3. Question 3: What might be lacking in my intimacy with God?
a. In the end, the real issue is always a spiritual one.
b. The real, one true God the Father is the only god who can meet our needs and fill us.
c. Any of the other gods, including the god of sex, only deliver spiritual bondage and death.
d. When temptations come, we must run to God the Father and pray as Jesus taught us, “Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one.” (Mt. 6:13)
e. We must visualize and actualize God’s presence during our most tempting moments.
f. If we draw near to God, God will draw near to us. (James 4:8)
M. As we near the end of this sermon, I want to point our attention to one more biblical example – this time the example is a good one to follow – it is the example of Joseph, my hero of sexual purity.
1. As you will recall, because of the jealousy of his brothers, they sold Joseph into slavery.
2. Joseph landed in Potiphar’s house and quickly rose to the highest position in Potiphar’s house.
4. But the Bible says: Now Joseph was handsome in form and appearance. And after a time his master's wife cast her eyes on Joseph and said, “Lie with me.” (Gen. 39:6-7)
5. Joseph refused, explaining he could not do this to his master, nor could he sin against his God.
6. But this solicitation of Joseph occurred again and again, the Bible says: And as she spoke to Joseph day after day, he would not listen to her, to lie beside her or to be with her. (Gen. 39:10)
7. Unfortunately, Mrs. Potiphar would not take “no” for an answer and so one day she gave all the other servants the day off and cornered Joseph, the Bible says: she caught him by his garment, saying, “Lie with me.” But he left his garment in her hand and fled and got out of the house. (Gen. 39:12)
8. How easy would it have been for Joseph to justify giving into the temptation that knocked at his door day after day, but he refused.
9. And in the end, when temptation had him in her grasp, he ran away as fast as he could.
10. All of us can learn so much from Joseph about avoiding the traps of the god of sex.
N. Let me remind you about an acronym that I have shared before that helps us to deal with temptation – it is called A.N.T.H.E.M. Here’s what each letter stands for:
A – Avoid.
N – Say “No!” immediately.
T – Turn to something magnificent.
H – Hold the pure thing in your mind until the temptation is gone.
E – Enjoy the greater pleasure of spiritual things.
M – Move on to meaningful Christ-exalting activity.
2. So this approach starts with doing all we can to avoid temptation from the start.
3. But then, knowing that all temptation can’t be avoided, when it comes we must move forward with the rest of the steps.
O. I want to end this week’s sermon the way I did last week’s – with Kyle Idleman’s devotional from the end of his chapter on this subject.
The god of sex promised us satisfaction, yet he left us lonely and ashamed.
He lured and enticed us by distorting what was designed to be a gift and a blessing. He made it seem as if nothing could be more satisfying than the quick release of physical urges. Yet nothing could have left us feeling smaller and weaker – as if those urges defined who we were, as if we were beasts of the field and no more.
Then we came to Jesus, who offers the greatest joy imaginable – so much greater and fuller than any physical impulse. We could see for the first time that the pursuit of the god of sex was never about love at all. It reduced others to mere objects to be used for our personal pleasure. But the love of Jesus finds its greatest satisfaction in service rather than use of others. It exalts them. It affirms them as children of God. It connects with them in body, soul, mind and spirit, rather than simple base instinct.
Jesus is our satisfaction. All along, it was intimacy we really wanted, and he gives us that. When we have a love relationship with him, an unending honeymoon commences. Christ grows more wonderful to us every day.
Not that sex is put aside. On the contrary, it takes on a beauty and resonance we never could have imagined – the opposite of shame. We have been designed so that the level of intimacy we can have with our spouse is directly related to the depth of intimacy we have with Christ. Sexual intimacy as God designed it takes a human relationship to a whole new level, because we’re not using one another; we’re delighting in one another. The god of sex dehumanized us; Christ restores our wholeness and makes the two of us one flesh – so much the greater than the sum of our parts – as we seek him together.
The god of sex offers a counterfeit joy that becomes more elusive through time, ever harder to please, ever closer to emptiness. But the love of Christ only opens up to deeper joys, becoming ever greater.
Sexual pleasure, rightly viewed, is a rich gift that shows how much God loves us. But its ecstasy is only a foretaste of divine glory, a hint of the eternal pleasure of knowing, loving, and serving Christ. He is our true satisfaction.
P. My prayer for each of us today is that we will put God the Father first in our lives, and if we discover that we have put the god of sex before God the Father, then we will confess and repent, and begin relying on the power of God through the indwelling Spirit to bring transformation.
Resources: gods at war, Kyle Idleman, Zondervan, 2013
