A little girl was talking to her grandmother. She asked, “Grandma, how old are you?”
The grandmother replied, “Now dear, you shouldn’t ask people that question. Most grown-ups don’t like to tell their age.”
The following day, the girl had another question. “Grandma, how much do you weigh?”
Once again the grandmother replied, “Oh, honey, you shouldn’t ask grown-ups how much they weigh. It isn’t polite.”
The next day the little girl was back with a big smile on her face. She said, “Grandma, I know how old you are. You’re 62 and you weigh 140 pounds.”
The grandmother was a bit surprised and said, “My goodness, how do you know?”
The little girl smiled and said, “You left your driver’s license on the table and I read it.”
Grandmother said, “Oh, so that’s how you found out.”
The girl replied, “That’s right, and I also saw on your driver’s license that you flunked sex” (James S. Hewett, Illustrations Unlimited, p.101).
Now obviously, that grandmother did not flunk sex, but our culture has. The vast majority of Americans—about 90 percent—have sex before marriage (Finer, 2007), many of whom have sex with multiple partners before they say “I do” (Galena K. Rohades and Scott M. Stanley, "Before I 'I Do,'" The National Marriage Project at the University of Virginia, 2014; www.PrechingToday.com).
In fact, in one recent survey, men reported having an average of 26 sexual partners in a lifetime while women an average of 19 (Sarah Fielding, “Here's how many people the average person under 30 says they've slept with — and why they could be lying,” Insider, April 17, 2018). Behind the numbers are a lot of hurting people, broken families, and children raised without the benefit of two parents.
Peggy Noonan describes the moment for her when this new America began:
She was at a graduation ceremony… It was 1971 or 1972 when one by one a stream of black-robed students walked across the stage and received their diplomas. A pretty girl with red hair, big under her graduation gown, also walked up to receive hers. The auditorium stood and applauded. Peggy looked at her sister, who sat beside her. “She's going to have a baby,” she explained.
The girl was eight months pregnant and had had the courage to go through with her pregnancy and take her finals and finish school despite society's disapproval.
But society wasn't disapproving. It was applauding. Applause is a right and generous response for a young girl with grit and heart. And yet, in the sound of that applause I heard a wall falling, a thousand-year wall, a wall of sanctions that said: We as a society do not approve of teenaged unwed motherhood because it is not good for the child, not good for the mother, and not good for us.
The old America had a more delicate sense of the difference between the general (“We disapprove”) and the particular (“Let's go help her”). We had the moral self-confidence to sustain the paradox, to sustain the distance between “official” disapproval and “unofficial” succor. The old America would not have applauded the girl... but some of us individuals would have helped her not only materially but with some measure of emotional support. We don't so much anymore. For all our tolerance and talk, we don't show much love to what used to be called girls in trouble. As we've gotten more open-minded we've gotten more closed-hearted (Peggy Noonan, “Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness,” Christianity Today, Vol. 40, no. 3, March 4, 1996; www.PreachingToday.com).
That’s the sad part. More sex has led to a lot less real love, but this is nothing new.
In his book, A Fellowship of Differents, Dr. Scot McKnight describes an eye-opening walk he once took down the Roman roads of ancient Pompeii. The volcano that erupted there in 79 A.D. preserved a vivid snapshot of Roman culture in the century when the church was born. “It is not an exaggeration to say the city was swamped with erotic images,” writes McKnight. Explicit pornography was everywhere. “The sexual reality across the Empire, of which Pompeii was a typical example, was a total lack of sexual inhibition.”
The normal order of things in the first century was for most men (and some women) to have procreational sex with their spouses and recreational sex with others. Those others often included young boys and slave girls. Pederasty (or the practice of sex with children) was widespread and accepted. Lesbianism was well known, but nowhere near as common as recreational same-sex liaisons between men, many of whom were still married to women. And relations with paid sex-workers formed such a major and enduring industry that Rome's most famous orator, Cicero, asked: “When was such a thing not done?” (Scot McKnight, A Fellowship of Differents; www.PreachingToday.com).
This was the world in which the church was born, much like our world today. So how do God’s people glorify God in such a world? How do followers of Christ honor God in a context which so dishonors Him? How do believers exalt the Lord with their bodies when the world wants to exploit sex for its own pleasure. Well, if you have your Bibles, I invite you to turn with me to 1 Corinthians 6, 1 Corinthians 6, where the Bible addresses how to live in a 1st or 21st Century, sex-saturated culture.
1 Corinthians 6:12 “All things are lawful for me,” but not all things are helpful. “All things are lawful for me,” but I will not be dominated by anything (ESV).
Some people say, “I can do whatever I want. Everything is lawful. That is, there is no law against sex.” That may be true, but freedom does not mean the absence of constraints.
Suppose a skydiver at 10,000 feet announces to the rest of the group, “I'm not using a parachute this time. I’m free to do whatever I want!” They’d think he was nuts! He may be free to jump without a parachute, but it certainly wouldn’t be beneficial for him. The fact is, when a skydiver chooses the constraint of the parachute, he is free to enjoy the exhilaration (Colin Campbell, Fresh Illustrations for Preaching & Teaching).
So it is in the area of sex. When we choose the constraints provided by our Creator, we are free to enjoy the exhilaration. Sex within the constraints of marriage can be an exhilarating experience. But sex outside of marriage is an enslaving experience. It dominates you (verse 12 says). It puts you in bondage. It creates emotional and spiritual chains to a person that God never intended.
Sex outside of marriage becomes a cruel tyrant that demands more of you, while it leaves only guilt and shame in return. God did not intend for sexual immorality to entrap you. Rather, He wants to embrace you Himself. You don’t belong to sex; you belong to God.
1 Corinthians 6:13 “Food is meant for the stomach and the stomach for food”—and God will destroy both one and the other. The body is not meant for sexual immorality, but for the Lord, and the Lord for the body (ESV).
Some people say, “Sex is just like eating. When I get the urge to eat, I eat. When I get the urge for sex, I have sex. It is just a physical thing.” Well, nothing could be further from the truth. The stomach and food are only temporary, and one day God will destroy them both. But sex is forever! It is more than physical. It is spiritual. Your body belongs to the Lord, your Heavenly Father, who made you for Himself. Your body is important to God, so important that He will raise it from the dead someday, even after you die.
1 Corinthians 6:14 And God raised the Lord and will also raise us up by his power (ESV).
A gem dealer was strolling the aisles at the Tucson Gem and Mineral Show when he noticed a blue-violet stone the size and shape of a potato. He looked it over, then, as calmly as possible, asked the vendor, “You want $15 for this?” The seller, realizing the rock wasn't as pretty as others in the bin, lowered the price to $10.
The stone has since been certified as a 1,905-carat natural star sapphire, about 800 carats larger than the largest stone of its kind. It was appraised at $2.28 million.
You see, it took a lover of stones to recognize the sapphire's worth. In the same way, the Lover of our Souls recognizes the true value of each and every one of us (Wanda Vassallo, Dallas, Texas, Leadership, Vol. 17, no. 1; www.PreachingToday.com).
You are valuable to God! So don’t let anybody treat your body like a cheap thrill just for sexual pleasure. To put it bluntly, stay away from any kind of sex outside of marriage. Or as vs.18 puts it, “Flee from sexual immorality.” God did not create you for that. He created you for Himself with immeasurable worth. So…
GIVE YOURSELF TO GOD, THE FATHER.
Present your body totally and completely to Him. Let your Heavenly Father have full control of your life, even your sex life. Then…
GIVE YOURSELF TO GOD, THE SON.
Let Jesus Christ have your body as well.
1 Corinthians 6:15 Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ? Shall I then take the members of Christ and make them members of a prostitute? Never! (ESV)
If you are a believer in Jesus Christ, your body is part of a larger Body, called the Body of Christ in 1 Corinthians 12. All of us are part of that Body, also called the church. We are members of one another, and together, members of Christ’s body. That means, when one of us sins, that sin infects the entire Body. Like a cancer, even though it starts small, it ends up sickening the entire church!
It reminds me of the story of a man who had a cabin below the water line on the outside edge of a big cruise ship. One day, he got bored and started drilling a hole through the wall under his bunk into the sea. Thankfully, a crewmember caught him before he finished the job, but when confronted, the man said, “What’s the problem? It’s MY wall under MY bunk in MY cabin. Why should anybody else care what I do in the privacy of my own room?”
Oh my friends, there is no such thing as private sin. Nobody ever sins all by themselves. Our sins always affect those around us, especially sexual sin.That’s because we are taking a part of the body of Christ and joining it with a sexually immoral person.
1 Corinthians 6:16 Or do you not know that he who is joined to a prostitute becomes one body with her? For, as it is written, “The two will become one flesh” (ESV).
Sex is much more than physical contact. It is a union, literally a gluing together of two people, which unalterably affects both of them for life. When you glue two pieces of wood together, you cannot break those pieces apart without doing irreparable damage to both pieces of wood. In the same way, you cannot join yourself sexually to another person without it changing you forever. That’s why you have to be so careful in this area. That’s why you have to keep sex within the confines of marriage, and give yourself wholly and completely to Christ.
1 Corinthians 6:17 But he who is joined to the Lord becomes one spirit with him (ESV).
This is the alternative to sexual immorality. Unite yourself to the Lord. Give yourself to Jesus Christ, not to somebody looking for a cheap thrill.
In September 2012, a 25-year-old New Yorker named David Villalobos suddenly jumped 17 feet from the Bronx Zoo tour monorail into the tiger pen. He broke some bones in the fall but was fortunate that the tiger on duty that day wasn't very fierce. The 400-pound Siberian tiger named Bachuta just bit into his foot and dragged him around awhile until the keepers could rescue him. Zoo employees used fire extinguishers to distract the tiger so they could rescue David.
It turns out that David wasn't upset because he's completely obsessed with tigers. When the police asked him what he was thinking he replied that “everyone in life makes choices” and that he wanted “to be one with the tiger.” According to a law enforcement official, Villalobos suffered broken ribs, a broken right ankle, which was also mauled by the tiger, a collapsed lung, and a broken pelvis. But he didn't seem to mind. As a matter of fact, he told the police sergeant that he actually got to pet a real tiger (Shimon Prokupecz, Andrew Siff and Chris Glorioso, "Bronx Zoo mauling: man wanted to be 'one with tiger,'" NBCNewYork.com, 9-22-12; www.PreachingToday.com).
David reminds me of those who want to join themselves sexually to someone with whom they are not married. They open themselves to a world of hurt even as they pretend to enjoy the experience. Better to join yourself to Christ, the lover of your soul.
As a believer, you are a part of His body, the church. Please, stay away from any sexual immorality, which can tear that body apart. Instead, give yourself to God, the Father, because He made you for Himself. Give yourself to God, the Son, because you are a part of His body. And finally…
GIVE YOURSELF TO GOD, THE HOLY SPIRIT, BECAUSE YOU ARE HIS TEMPLE.
Let the Holy Spirit fill you with himself, and let Him use your beautiful body to bring him glory.
1 Corinthians 6:18 Flee from sexual immorality. Every other sin a person commits is outside the body, but the sexually immoral person sins against his own body (ESV).
You are hurting yourself when you sin sexually.
Some time ago, Leadership Journal carried the story of a man who received a notice from his 13-year-old daughter's school, announcing a meeting to preview their new course in sexuality. Parents could examine the curriculum and take part in a lesson presented exactly as it would be given to the students.
When the man arrived at the school, he was surprised to discover only about a dozen parents present. As he waited for the presentation, he thumbed through page after page of instructions on the prevention of pregnancy or disease. He found abstinence mentioned only in passing.
When the teacher arrived with the school nurse, she asked if there were any questions. He asked why abstinence did not play a noticeable part in the material, and everybody else laughed. Someone suggested that if he thought abstinence had any merit, he should go back to burying his head in the sand. The teacher explained that the job of the school was to “teach facts,” and the home was responsible for moral training.
The man sat in silence for the next 20 minutes as the course was explained. The other parents seemed to give their unqualified support to the materials.
“Donuts at the back,” announced the teacher during the break. “I'd like you to put on the name tags we have prepared and mingle with the other parents.” Everyone moved to the back of the room, except for the man who sat deep in thought. He was sorry and a little embarrassed that his suggestion of abstinence was met with such ridicule. He prayed for guidance.
The school nurse put her hand on his shoulder, “Won't you join the others?” she said sweetly. “The donuts are good.”
“Thank you, no,” the man replied.
“Well, then, how about a name tag? I'm sure the others would like to meet you.”
“Somehow I doubt that,” he replied.
“Won't you please join them?” she coaxed, but he didn’t feel right about it, so he said, “I'll just wait here.”
When the class was called back to order, the teacher looked around the long table and thanked everyone for putting on nametags. Then she said, “Now we're going to give you the same lesson we'll be giving your children. Everyone please peel off your name tags.” The man watched in silence as the tags came off. “Now, then,” the teacher said, “on the back of one of the tags, I drew a tiny flower. Who has it?”
A gentleman across the aisle held it up. “All right,” she said. “The flower represents disease.” Then she asked the gentleman, “Do you recall with whom you shook hands?” He pointed to a couple of people. “Very good,” she replied. “The handshake in this case represents intimacy. The two people you had contact with now have the disease.”
There was laughter and joking among the parents. The teacher continued, “And whom did the two of you shake hands with?” The point was well taken, and she explained how this lesson would show students how quickly disease spreads. “Since we all shook hands, we all have the disease.”
It was then that that the man knew what to do. He rose from his chair, apologized for any upset he might have caused earlier, and congratulated the teacher on an excellent lesson that would impress the youth. He concluded by saying he had only one small point he wished to make. “Not all of us were infected,” he said. “One of us… abstained” (Source unknown, submitted by Eric Reed, associate editor, Leadership Journal; www.PreachingToday.com).
Dear friends, the only way to protect yourself from sexually transmitted diseases is to abstain. Sex outside of marriage hurts you physically.
More than that, it hurts you psychologically as well. Some time ago, the Heritage Foundation conducted a study, which discovered that premarital sex is one of the leading causes of depression among teens. Sexually active girls are 4X more likely to struggle with depression, boys are 3X more likely. The study also observed a correlation in teen suicide rates and sexual activity showing those who are sexually active are 2-3 times more likely to attempt suicide (http://360family.org/wp-content/uploads/Depression-and-Teen-Sexuality.pdf).
Sex outside of marriage is physically damaging. It is psychologically damaging. And on top of it all, it also damages your relationships.
Data from the University of Wisconsin makes this pain-fully clear: couples that cohabit before marriage increase their odds of divorce by 50 percent. Researchers found that only 15 out of every 100 cohabitating couples were married after a decade. (Terry Mattingly, Washington Bureau religion column, 8-21-02)
On the Focus on the Family radio broadcast several years ago (2-7-06), a researcher put it this way. Of couples who live together, 4 out of 8 will not get married, 3 out of 4 who do marry will divorce, and every single one of them carries physical, psychological and spiritual baggage into their relationships.
You are hurting yourself when you sin sexually. Please, don’t do that to God’s temple.
1 Corinthians 6:19-20 Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God? You are not your own, for you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body (ESV).
Your body was designed to bring honor to God. It is beautiful in His sight, even with its imperfections. God purchased your body at a high price, so it could be a magnificent cathedral to His glory.
1 Peter 1 says, “It was not with perishable things such as silver or gold that you were redeemed from the empty way of life handed down to you from your forefathers, but with the precious blood of Christ” (vs.18-19).
Christ shed his blood to deliver you from an empty way of life. He died to set you free from the emptiness sin. It was the price paid for your redemption! Please, Don’t put yourself back in slavery again. Don’t give yourself to sexual immorality. Instead…
Give yourself to God, the Father, because He made you for Himself. Give yourself to God, the Son, because you are part of His body. And give yourself to God, the Holy Spirit, because you are His temple, His cathedral, purchased at a very high price.
In 1970, while Bob Russell was a graduate student at Temple University in Philadelphia, his 1967 Austin Healey sports car was stolen. Over the years, Russell kept the original title to the car and the keys, and he memorized the vehicle identification number (the VIN).
Then, during a sleepless night on May 11, 2012, Russell got out of bed and began surfing the internet. While browsing eBay, he saw his old car for sale. After contacting the seller, getting a copy of the old police report through the National Crime Information Center, securing the assistance of the Philadelphia Police Department, and haggling with the seller over the buy-back price, Bob Russell and his wife Cynthia flew to California and took back ownership of the car on June 18, 2012. They had gone on their first dates together in that car over 40 years earlier.
Though someone had removed the VIN, broke the glove box, and lost the lock to the trunk, he was delighted to get his car back. Russell commented, “When it was stolen it was pristine; now it's going to need a lot of work. On the other hand, it's been more than 40 years. It's very gratifying to get it back.” (Susan McFarland, "Texas man finds car stolen in 1970," Boston Herald, 6-25-12; www.PreachingToday.com).
God feels the same way about you, and even more so! Sin stole you away from Him, so He went looking for you. And when He found you, He paid a high price to get you back. Now, even though you might need a lot of work, He is gratified to have you back. So give yourself totally and completely to Him, and let Him restore you to pristine condition again for His glory!
