Why is sex so dangerous, and how can sex be everything God wants it to be for us. We are going to take a comprehensive look at what the Bible has to say about sex. It is really interesting today, though, because sex is such an incredibly important part of our culture. It is the driving force in our economy. Sex sells. Those businesses that are going bankrupt on the Internet, you haven’t seen many of them going bankrupt that have to do with sex, have you? They’re the ones who are making it. An estimated 20 million Americans visit sex-related Web sites every month, and something like 200,000 Americans are compulsively addicted to Internet pornography. Not only that, but our attitudes about sexuality have changed drastically even in the last 30 or 40 years.
The question is, is sex before marriage morally acceptable? How many people do you think said, "no", it is not morally acceptable? What percentage of people in 1969? Who has a guess? What is it, 80? What else, 70? It was 68% of the people even during the sexual revolution of the 60’s, it was 68% of the people said that sex before marriage was morally unacceptable, morally wrong. Now what percentage do you think it was in May of this year, 29, 20, 19? It’s a little better than you guys are expecting, but still shows a slip; it’s 38%. 38% of people in the survey said that sex before marriage is morally unacceptable. Our whole attitude about sexuality has changed in our culture. We see this certainly in younger generations. If you look at the younger people in that poll, it’s down to 30%. Only 30% of the younger people in the poll say that sex before marriage is morally unacceptable. We see this because of 15 - 19 year old males, 75 % of them say that they have had sexual intercourse. 50% of the females say that they have sexual intercourse. This is a tremendous issue in our culture today.
Why have our views changed so much? What’s going on in our culture today? Well, I think what we have to do is go back to the source of this whole thing and that is that our culture has lost its moorings and particularly lost a sense of what the Bible teaches about these key issues and certainly about the whole area of sexuality. In other words, whatever the Bible has to say about sex, it’s not important for me today. We live in an enlightened world. We go by what we feel, we go by what science teaches and the stuff that’s in the Bible doesn’t really matter. That comes down to a really theological perspective. That is a philosophical, religious, theological choice that says, I know better how to understand reality than God does in the Bible. I don’t believe that that’s God word. I don’t believe that that’s Him speaking to man; therefore, I can trust myself, I can trust scientists, I can trust my teachers, but I don’t trust the Bible.
What’s happened is we’ve lost our moorings, and we’ve forgotten that really in a truer sense, theology, the study of God, the doctrine of God, the knowledge of God and how he’s made us is life. Theology is life. In other words, we can’t understand the world unless we understand God and how he’s made the world. We can’t just cut off our lives from the source and expect we can understand reality. That’s why we see the devastation that we see today in our world and, particularly, in whole area of sexuality.
This is going to be a very important series for us as men because there are few things in life that have the potential to bring as much joy as sex. Let’s face it, if sex wasn’t a lot of fun, it wouldn’t be such a big deal. Right? It wouldn’t be such a big deal. At the same time, few things in life have such potential to bring such pain and devastation as sex. You know men who, for a few moments of pleasure, have cratered their lives. What they had worked for, what they have cherished for five, ten, fifteen, twenty years, they have thrown it all away for a few moments of pleasure. That’s how powerful sexuality is.
This is going to be an important thing for us, not only from the standpoint from avoiding the pitfalls and the dangers, but also from being able to celebrate a gift that God has given to us in the context of marriage.
If you will turn in your Scriptures, if you brought your Bible today, to 1Corinthians: Chapter 6. You may be here and you’re not married today. Let me say that this series we are going to do still applies to you in a number of ways. First of all, you may be married one day. There may come a time when God brings someone into your life and you get married but, also hopefully, it’s going to reinforce your values and your views about sexuality and why it is so important to treat it as Holy and to save it for the context of marriage. You’re going to see it’s good to experience short-term frustration for long-term blessing. That’s a principle all through the Scriptures. It’s good to experience short-term frustration for long-term blessing.
1 Corinthians: Chapter 6, Verse 12. "Everything is permissible for me, but not everything is beneficial. Everything is permissible for me, but I will not be mastered by anything. Food for the stomach and the stomach for food, but God will destroy them both. The body is not meant for sexual immorality, but for the Lord, and the Lord for the body. By his power God raised the Lord from the dead, and he will raise us also. Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ himself? Shall I then take the members of Christ and unite them with a prostitute? Never! Do you not know that he who unites himself with a prostitute is one with her in body? For it is said, ’The two will become one flesh.’ But he who unites himself with the Lord is one with him in spirit. Flee from sexual immorality. All other sins a man commits are outside his body, but he who sins sexually sins against his own body. Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own; you were bought at a price. Therefore honor God with your body. " May God add understanding to the reading of his Holy Word.
As we look at these scriptures, we can see that there is an argument that Paul is presenting here, and that’s what I want to bring out this morning. As we begin this first series, we’re going to talk about what is sex? I want to start out by saying that sex is more than just a three-letter word. Sex is more than just a three-letter word. Sex has an incredibly important function, and it represents something incredibly important about who we are as men; who we are as people made in the image of God.
There are two tendencies in our culture today that we see. One is to treat sex as taboo, as evil, as dirty, as bad. Many times it comes from the more religious forces in our culture, sort of a puritanical, although probably a misunderstanding of that, but a puritanical approach to that. We don’t talk about it. It’s something you just have to endure, you know, that sort of a thing. The other side is that sex is basically just like any other activity. It’s just for pleasure. You do it as much as you can, and have as much as you can while you’re doing it. This is really an overflow of a philosophical perspective, and it really goes back to evolutionism, humanism and the whole idea that we’re just animals with animal instincts, and it’s survival of the fittest, so, therefore, just go and have as much fun as you can. That’s much of what we see in our culture today as a perspective.
But this passage teaches one overarching principle, and that is that sex is a Holy gift from God. Sex, is in reality, a Holy gift from God. Let me show you why this is so important. The first thing that we need to realize is that sex is a celebration of our union with our wife. Sex is a celebration of our union with our wife. God’s design of sex was that sex was to be celebrated within the context of marriage, and if you go back to Genesis, some of you have heard me say this before, in the creation story, what did God say at the end of every day? It was good. And after the sixth day, what did God say? It was very good. So you have it was good, it was good, it was good, it was good, it was good, it was very good. Then all of a sudden in Chapter 2, Verse 18, we hear these words, "The Lord God said, ’It is not Good.’" So if you’re hearing this being read or you’re hearing this being told, "It was good, it was good, it was good, it was good, it was good, it was very good,"
then all of a sudden it was not good, it would have been an incredible shock to your system. Here is God’s creation. It was good five times, it was very good one time, what could be not good about His creation? Well, what is it that is not good? Here in 2:18, "It is not good for the man to be alone." God has made us for relationships. That’s what this is saying. We are made to be in relationships with other people and the highest relationship or the closest human relationship we can possibly have is marriage.
We see that at the end of Chapter 2 here in Verses 22 - 25. "The Lord God made a woman from the rib he had taken out of the man and he brought her to the man. The man said, ’This is now bone of my bones, flesh of my flesh. She shall be called woman for she was taken out of man. For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to this wife and they will become one flesh. The man and his wife were both naked, and they felt no shame.’" So in Jesus quoting this passage, add to it, "What God has joined together, let no man split apart. " So he affirms this unity between a man and a woman. This union is a spiritual union, a spiritual oneness, as seen in Chapter 5, Paul talks about the fact that we really have become one. He means it so much that he says, "When you love your wife, you are loving yourself. Because you are one." But it’s also a physical union, because here you see they became one flesh, and in their nakedness there was no shame. There is a physical intimacy without any barriers whatsoever, without any shame.
That’s the goal, that’s the destiny, that’s what we were created for. Now sin comes into the world and mars that, but that is how God has created us as human beings that we would desire that kind of intimacy, that kind of union with another person. That’s what marriage is all about. So, sex is meant to be a celebration of this union that we have in marriage. But that really begs another question. That question is, what’s marriage all about? If sex is to celebrate marriage, well, what is marriage all about? Here we’re going to get a little theological. I know it’s early, but do like this or slap yourself in the face if you need to, but we’re going to get a little theological on you, because I can guarantee you, you cannot understand sex if you don’t understand theology. Maybe nobody’s ever told you that before. Right? That’s probably not part of Sex Ed 101 in the local schools. But you cannot understand sex unless you understand theology. Why? Because it comes from God, and it means something more than just what we experience on a human level.
The second thing we see in this passage is related to an idea called headship or representation. Now, those are two big words, but it’s easy to understand because do we have a democracy in our country, technically? No, we don’t have a democracy in our country, what do we have? We have a republic or a representative form of government. In other words, you and I don’t vote on every single thing that happens. We elect people to represent us, and then those people vote however they want to vote, and their vote counts as our vote. Whatever they do counts as our vote. That’s representation. Where did that idea come from? That idea came from the Bible because the Bible talks about two representatives of the human race. The first representative of the human race was Adam, and all of us are in Adam. All of us are represented by Adam. So when Adam sinned, we sinned. When Adam fell, we all fell, and we suffer the consequences of his sin. Have you ever wondered why did Adam’s sin have to apply to me? Why does it affect me? I wasn’t there. I didn’t do anything. Why do I have to suffer for what he did? He was a representative of the human race. We see this all through the Scriptures, in particular, Romans: Chapter 5.
There’s a second Adam. There’s a second representative and that is Jesus Christ, and he comes in all of those who put their faith and trust in Him are represented by Him so not only do they have his righteous, perfect life, "His obedience brings life," Romans: Chapter 5 says, but they also get the benefit of His death on their behalf, that he suffered the penalty. He suffered the wrath of God on behalf of us. Have you ever wondered? That doesn’t seem right. How can God let one guy get punished for somebody else? You know we wouldn’t do that? We would say, "That’s not fair. How can God do that?" The structure of the universe is such that it is a representative nature to the human race. Jesus can represent us as our head, as our representative. That’s how it works. Just like Adam did, Jesus does the same thing. So there is a union that we had with Adam if we don’t have a relationship with Jesus Christ, if we’ve never come to him by faith, we are united with Adam, the Scriptures say. "We are in Adam." You see that phrase. But, if we believe in Jesus Christ, "We are transferred out of the kingdom of darkness," you remember that language, you’ve heard that in the Scriptures, into the kingdom of light. We now have a new representative, we had a new head, and that’s Jesus Christ. And we are united to him. Okay?
That’s what this is referring to in 1 Corinthians: Chapter 6. When we look at this passage and we read this idea of the Lord for the body and the body for the Lord, we’re like, what in the world is He talking about? Right? But the whole idea here is that He referring to this headship, this union that we have with Christ. In Verse 13, "The body is not meant for sexual immorality, but for the Lord and the Lord for the body." In Verse 14, "By his power, God raised the Lord from the dead, and he will raise us also."
Paul goes on in Chapter 15 of 1 Corinthians to talk about our resurrection and the whole basis for our resurrection is that we are united with Christ, that he’s our head. But we not just united with him spiritually. There is a bodily involvement in this. There is a bodily involvement in this representation. Our bodies one day are going to be restored. They’re going to be remade and renewed. That’s the clear teaching of the Bible. Now, what proof is there that our body is involved in that? One idea is this. How do you know that your body was involved in Adam’s sin? How do we know that? Because it deteriorates. We have sin, we have death, we have illness, we have disease, we have deformity, all things wear out. All of those things, why do they happen? Because our bodies are affected by Adam’s sin. Our bodies were affected by that sin. It’s not just a spiritual involvement. It’s actually a physical involvement. We are a united being, spirit and body. It’s not like we are somehow separated and all that kind of stuff. We are united. God made us as a body and spirit together. One day, the Scriptures teach, our bodies will be raised. Why? Because we are united with Christ, not just spiritually, but our bodies are united with this as well. That’s the end of the theology lesson. Why was that important? Because you can’t understand sex unless you understand that.
Here’s what the Scriptures go on to say in Verse 15. "Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ himself?" We are united with Christ, even our body. The language that Paul uses about the body itself, Christ being the head and some people being the hands, and some people being the feet. Why does it use that language? Is it just a metaphor? Well, it’s a metaphor, but it’s also a reality. We are united Christ. "Shall I then take the members of Christ and unite them with a prostitute? Never. Do you not know that he who unites himself with a prostitute is one with her in body? For it is said that she will become one flesh. But he who unites himself with the Lord is one with him in spirit." So what it is saying is, not only are we united with Christ in body, but also in spirit, and so for us then to commit sexual immorality is to defile both the bodily union we have with Christ, to take Christ and involve him with a prostitute, but also to defile that spiritual union that we have with Christ. So sex is an earthly representation of the union that we have with Christ. When we experience sex in the covenant of marriage, the cause for celebration of that marriage union, that marriage union represents a union that we have with Jesus Christ. The great marriage, he is the bridegroom, and we are the bride. All of that language we see in the Scriptures. So when we experience sexuality on earth, we should remember that it is an expression of the same kind of unity, same kind of blessedness that we have in our relationship with God through Jesus Christ. We are also united with Him spiritually and, also, physically.
That leaves us to our last thing, that sex is an essential part of our being made in the image of God. Sex represents something very special about who we are as made in the image of God. You know, God himself is three persons. You have the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. There is an eternal relationship between the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit of love, of relationship, of communion, of communication, and of intimacy. That relationship is there. You and I are only one person. Okay? In and of ourselves there is something of the image of God that we can never experience because I am only one person. What God has done and the reason he says in Genesis: Chapter 2, Verse 18, "It is not good for the man to be alone," is that the man did not fully bear his image in isolation. That for us to fully bear the image of God, we have to exist in relationships, and marriage is the highest expression, the closest expression we’ll have on this earth of that image of God in us.
Now there are lots of other relationships. If you’re not married here today, all of our relationships are an opportunity to express the image of God in us. That’s why there is something that is just…. When you get with a buddy, okay, and you and that buddy and you just connect, you have a great time, you laugh, you deal with something significant, you cry. There is something there, isn’t there? That’s different than watching a sitcom on TV. Right? It’s not even just a quantitative difference; it’s a qualitative difference. It’s a totally different thing. Why, because it resonates with something deep inside us of the image of God. That relationship, that bonding, that experience of another person reflects the experience that God himself has between Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit. Our marriage is an expression of that. That’s why marriage is so important. That’s why it’s so inviolate. That’s why divorce is not an option. We have committed ourselves to together and that union represents something essential about who we are as made in the image of God. And sex, as the highest expression in a physical expression of our union together, represents something very special about who we are in the image of God.
That’s why sex is so wonderful. That’s why sex is not just an act. That’s why people who treat it that way, who treat it like it’s something to do to have fun, wake up in the morning and say, "What in the world have I done?" Evolution has no explanation for those feelings. The Scriptures do because we know when we get involved in sexual sin that we have violated something very, very special. Not only have we violated our marriage relationship, we’ve violated our union with Christ, we’ve also violated something special about the image of God in us. So sex can be incredibly wonderful, but it can also be incredibly dangerous. The next two sessions, we’re going to deal with that. We going to deal with both sides of that, how it’s dangerous and how we can make it more wonderful.
As I close today, I want to ask this question. Do any of you know how a internal combustion engine works? If we had time, I’d get you to explain to us, because I don’t really know, but I do know that somewhere in there gasoline is turned into a vapor. Right? There’s a little spark or little explosion that happens that drives a piston or some thim-a-jiggy and that’s what makes the engine go. Right? So you have in your car, in your vehicles out there, 16 to 20 gallons of gas and every millisecond or however fast it is there is a little tiny explosion of gas vapor inside your car. That controlled explosion gives you enough power to drive 0 - 60 in however many seconds to go on reliably year after year after year. What an incredible thing that an internal combustion engine is!
At the same time, how many of you have ever heard of a fuel air explosive? A fuel air explosive is a bomb that carries liquid fuel inside the bomb itself. What it does is as it falls to the ground, it disperses that fuel as a vapor cloud in the air. What they’ve discovered is that if they will disperse that vapor cloud in exactly the right pattern before they detonate the bomb itself, that vapor cloud will then explode and create an explosion many times more powerful than would be possible with just a bomb of that size. So, a fuel air explosive is one of the most powerful bombs you can make.
It’s exactly the same physical principle as the internal combustion engine. You see the explosion of gasoline can be a wonderful thing when it’s in its right environment, where it’s in the place it’s meant to be, when it’s controlled and at the proper time. But when it gets out of hand and it’s just used without any constraints whatsoever, it causes devastation. It’s the same way in our lives with sexuality. As a matter of fact, I could bring this home. Someone might run out of gas today. If you saw me coming up the road to your parked car with this in my hand, you’d think, that’s great, now I’m going to have enough gas, and I’ll be able to get to a gas station. But, you know what? If I took this cap off here this morning, and I started pouring this all over a table, and then I got my lighter out and I walked over and I flicked this lighter on, we’d be running for the door. Right? Why, because when gasoline is used the way it’s supposed to be used, it’s a blessing, but when it’s used in a way that it’s not meant to be used, it’s a curse.
The same thing is true with sex. Sex is such an incredible blessing from God. It represents something so wonderful about who we are as men, but it was meant for the context of a marriage relationship, a union between one man and one woman and that’s where the expression of the blessing of God. When sex escapes those boundaries and makes its way into other aspects of our lives and into other relationships, all of a sudden it becomes a raging inferno that will destroy us.
So my challenge to you is, think about the blessing that God has given you in your sexuality, and make sure that we treat it with the respect, and the honor and the care that it deserves.
Let us pray:
Father, we thank you for your word. We thank you that it deals with all the issues that we face even issues like sex. Where our culture would say that you have nothing to say, in reality you have the last word, that your word tells us who we are in relationship with you, that we have been united with you by faith, that no longer are we stuck in sin and in Adam, but not we’re in Christ, and we have all the blessings of that union with Him. We pray that you’d help us to understand sex and that we would see it as an expression of the union that you’ve given us with our wives, and that we would treat it with dignity and respect. We pray that you would help us resist the temptation and the desires that are so strong within us at times because of how central this is to who we are in your image. We pray that you would help us to stand against that, and we pray that you’d help us to teach others, Lord, in this culture where sex dominates and destroys. Help us to help others to see the beauty of sexuality when it’s used in the way that you intended it to be used. In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen
/cjb
