Straight talk about Sex – What does the Bible Teach about Sex
Gladstone Baptist Church – 28/8/05 pm
Little Billy took his girlfriend downtown to get married.
The marriage license clerk smiled and explained that they were both much too young.
Little Billy asked, "Could you give us a learners’ permit then?"
Tonight I want to talk about marriage and I am aware that some of you are way too young to be married, but that is okay. I still want you to listen, because marriage in God’s eyes goes hand in hand with sex. God says, if you are too young for marriage, you are too young for sex. This sounds pretty stodgy and old fashioned doesn’t it. But there are some very good reasons for laying down those guidelines and that is what I want to delve into a bit tonight.
Last week we began our 4 week series on Straight Talk About Sex. Last Week we talked about 5 common myths about sex. Tonight we are going to look at what the Bible teaches about Sex. Next week, we’ll be tackling the differences between girls and guys and the week after we are going to consider the question – How far is too far? After that service we are going to have a coffee shop and a forum to answer some of your questions. So if you have thought of any questions. Write them down on a piece of paper and post them in the letter box opposite the church office.
If you were here last week, you know that we tackled 5 myths about Sex … Can anyone remember any of the myths we covered?
1) God is down on sex – We are going to talk a bit more about this one today. But last week, we learnt that God invented sex – Wow – you say. Yes – God created it, but not just that, he commanded Adam and Eve to have sex and have it often. Really he didn’t have to command them too hard, because God made Sex wonderfully enjoyable.
2) Sex is purely Physical - Sex is not just physical. It is not just an instinct for us humans, but is deeply emotional and spiritual because God designed sex that way. He said in Gen 2 that when 2 people have sex, they become one flesh. Remember our paper cutouts that became one flesh - You try to break that bond and you cause pain and damage. Sexual intimacy creates memories that we carry for the rest of our lives. There is no such thing as a quickie.
3) Sex is No big Deal – society and our friends often want us to believe this one, but it is a big deal. The problem is that we have become so inundated with sexual images, that we don’t even think about it anymore. Sex brings with it risks with life – long consequences. We spoke about Pregnancies and STDs last week and blew the myth apart that this won’t happen to me. But another consequence that we didn’t cover is the devastation that comes from being used. Young people … can you tell the difference between a person who really cares about you and one who is pretending to care, so they can use you. It is not just guys using girls. Girls also use guys – typically not for sex, but for security, status, emotional wellbeing, etc. The feelings of being used and abused are very common. If sex was no big deal, these wouldn’t exist – but they do – all too often. Sex is a big deal
4) Everyone is Doing it - No that is not right – statistics showed that in highschool, 50% of students were virgins when they graduated. Have you ever heard the argument “Everybody’s doing it. What’s the big deal?” I head a great answer from a young girl once. “If everybody’s doing it, why don’t you go out with everybody. It shouldn’t be hard for you to get it somewhere else. I’m not doing it” - a great response isn’t it.
5) It is impossible to remain pure – No it is not impossible, but it is not easy either, but that is what I want to talk about a bit more over the next couple of weeks.
Tonight I want to look at what the bible says about Sex. Let’s pray before we do so …
God’s perfect plan for Sex
We need to just recap very quickly some of what we talked about last week from Genesis – because this is the foundation for all of the Bible’s teaching on Sex and Marriage. If Sex was God’s invention, then we need to look at his instruction book because he knows how it was designed for operating
In Gen we read that God all the animals and brings them to man for naming, but there is none suitable to be Adam’s mate. So God takes one of his ribs and creates from him a Female – a perfect partner. Then we have these amazing words ….
Gen 2: 23 The man said, “This is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called ‘woman,’ for she was taken out of man.”
24 For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and they will become one flesh.
25 The man and his wife were both naked, and they felt no shame.
In the very beginning, God lays out his perfect plan. God sets before us the institution of marriage which is a pre-requisite for enjoying sex. I want to make it clear that the only sex that God approves of is found in the context of marriage. We said last week that the limits that God places on sex is like the fence at the top of a cliff. The fence is not to ruin the experience of life or the view, but to protect you from dangers. The limits that God puts on sex are similar – it is not to give you a horrible life, but to protect you from dangers that come when you go too far. God’s fence for sex is the marriage relationship.
And what is marriage. In these few verses, we find 4 things that make a successful marriage.
ONE MAN AND ONE WOMAN - First it was not Adam and Steve, but Adam and Eve. Marriage involves one male and one female. Two people who were of the same material – the same, bone and same flesh, but different – it was a she not a he that God gave to Adam.
SEPARATE God says, that 2 people must make sacrifices before being married. They need to be willing to separate from their parents. That means to physically and emotionally separate. When Deanna & I got married, my parents were about to go to Sydney for 6 months so we agreed to house sit for them. The plan was that when we got back from our honeymoon, they would have left for Sydney and we would have free reign of the house as a new married couple. The problem was, My mum had some medical problems and had to go through a whole battery of tests which meant when we got home from our honeymoon, they were still there. For the first 2 weeks back at home, we lived with my parents. I survived, but it was incredibly difficult for Deanna. My parents just kept treating me like a son and although they tried to be sensitive, Deanna just didn’t know where she fitted. That is exactly the problem that many married people face. They live in the back pockets of their parents. God knows best when he says, the first step to having a great marriage, is to Leave your parents.
ADHERE Many people believe that the hard work in a relationship is before the marriage. It is finding the right person and getting to know them. It is negotiating the pitfalls of a courtship and enduring the wedding preparations and the future mother-in-law. If you can survive that you enter into a wedded bliss. But the hardest work in marriage is after you walk down the aisle. First you have to separate as we’ve already said. Next you have to Adhere. The Hebrew word used here actually means to cling to or join to or to glue together. Job uses this word when he says bones cling to skin – there is a real physical connection that is hard to break. You let go of your parents and you take hold of your spouse and adhere to her. And this taking hold of brings permanence to the marriage. God’s idea of marriage is a life-long embrace – why? Because that forms stable loving families which benefits everyone – spouses and children.
About a year after we were married, Deanna and I left Brisbane for Tasmania. We have lived physically separated from both sets of parents for over 10 years now and it is the best thing that could have happened for our marriage. Not only did it force us to separate from our parents, it also gave us a perfect opportunity to adhere to each other. When tough times came, there was no one else to rely on but each other. When we had arguments – we had to work them through. We had to work to blend 2 individuals into one couple. We had to adhere to each other warts and all.
Can you imagine a marriage trying to work when the partners did not embrace each other and accept each other as they are? It just doesn’t work.
AMALGAMATE When a couple has completed the first two steps of marriage, the last is to Amalgamate to become one flesh. God’s design in marriage is not just that we embrace the other person and become a nice happy couple, but that we become one flesh with them and this happens through the act of sex. The image of becoming one flesh speaks directly about sex. The sexual union of a man having intercourse with a woman, creates an emotional, spiritual and physical bond between two people. Two become one and in a real way this is seen when a child is born – the child has characteristics of both parents in one single person.
This is a mystery in some ways how this happens. The 2 becoming one is something that God miraculously does as we Separate, Adhere and Amalgamate. Jesus says in
Mark 10:6 But at the beginning of creation God ‘made them male and female.’ 7 ‘For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, 8 and the two will become one flesh.’ So they are no longer two, but one. 9 Therefore what God has joined together, let man not separate.”
This is why 2 people can’t just walk away from a sexual relationship without being damaged. God has joined them and to separate them is painful and leaves scars, just like separating our paper cutouts.
God says, that there are 4 equally important ingredients to a successful happy marriage – One Man and One Woman, Separation, Adherence and Amalgamation. The result of this relationship was that
25 The man and his wife were both naked, and they felt no shame.
There was a true acceptance of each other and a intimate connection between the two where there was no shame or fear.
Too often, when you look around at marriages that are falling apart today, you see that they are lacking one of these key ingredients. We try to make it work with multiple partners, the couples haven’t separated from their parents, they haven’t embraced each other with a grip that won’t let go or they are missing that intimacy of an active sex life.
Why is it that I have spent so much time on this. Because Sex is introduced by God in the context of marriage. It is wonderful, fulfilling and beneficial thing which is needed in a healthy marriage.
But outside of marriage it is condemned. Outside marriage, it is destructive, because there is no permanence in the relationship and when the relationship breaks down and the people separate, they leave bits of them with the other person. God doesn’t want you to suffer the pain of loss and so he puts up fences. Marriage is his fence.
The bible speaks about 4 forms of sex outside of the marriage union and it condemns each of them again and again and again. There is no room for debating the issue with God – he says in the plainest of language again and again and again that sex outside of marriage is damaging and wrong.
1) Sex with an UNMARRIED person of the opposite sex – FORNICATION, PROSTITUTION, INCEST. We don’t like using these words now do we. In most of your bibles this will be translated as the sexually immoral. We prefer the terms playing around or having a one night stand. And God says that it is wrong.
Lev 18:6; 1 Cor. 5:9-11; 6:9; Eph. 5:5; 1 Tim. 1:10; Heb. 12:16; 13:4; Rev. 21:8 and 22:15,
Heb 13:4 Marriage should be honored by all, and the marriage bed kept pure, for God will judge the adulterer and all the sexually immoral.
2) Sex with a MARRIED person who is not your spouse – ADULTERY.
Ex 20:14; Lev 20:12; Deut 5:18; Luke 18:11; 1 Cor. 5:1-13; 6:9; Heb. 13:4. As to Jas. 4:4
3) Sex with the SAME SEX – HOMOSEXUALITY.
Lev. 18:22; 20:13 ; 1 Kin. 14:24; Rom. 1:24-27; 1 Cor 6:9
1 Cor 6:9 Do you not know that the wicked will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: Neither the sexually immoral nor idolaters nor adulterers nor male prostitutes nor homosexual offenders
4) Sex with ANIMALS – BESTIALITY.
Lev 18:23; 20:15-16; Deut 27:21;
But why are they wrong??? Each of these are perversions of what God intended and all have harmful consequences. We’ve talked about the consequence of life-long MEMORIES that sex out of marriage brings – feelings of rejection, hurt, guilt, being used. Sexual intercourse with anyone outside a marriage partner doesn’t have a life long commitment built into it, but so often the there are life-long CONSEQUENCES of that intercourse. Sex outside of the marriage fence establishes relationships which aren’t designed to be broken. If they are, they broken, they result in hurt and pain. Did you know that Affairs are directly responsible for 20% of all divorces . Affairs are destroying families and anything that destroys strong, stable, healthy families is not good for people. And while I greatly admire single parents – they often do a great job under very trying circumstances – the single parent family is not the best family for a child to grow up in. It doesn’t take an Einstein to work out that a child is missing out on something if he or she doesn’t have a loving mother and father present. I strongly believe that if we didn’t have divorce or children born out of loving stable marriages many of the social problems we are seeing develop today would not be there – controversial – but true. God is against anything that undermines stable healthy FAMILIES. Sex outside of marriage does just that.
The other problem with sex outside the marriage fence is that it uses our sexuality in ways that God never intended. Some people argue that homosexuality is normal for them, but is it normal to use a screw driver as a hammer? No, because it wasn’t designed to be a hammer. Similarly God created us in a specific way for a specific purpose.
Could I use a screw driver as a hammer? Sure I could.
Would it be effective? No – not very effective at all. I could make it sort of work
Would I end up damaging it? Yes definitely – my screwdriver would end up chipped and broken. Would I
Would I end up damaging myself? Quite likely.
It doesn’t take a great mind to recognise that things work best when you use them as they were DESIGNED. Man and Woman were designed to enjoy sex within the context of marriage.
Before we wrap up tonight, I want to touch on one other passage of scripture quickly … 1 Cor 6:12 - The Corinthians were living in a sex saturated society – even more so than ours. Corinth was the centre of the worship of APHRODITE, goddess of love, beauty and fertility. Her temple dominated their city and it was served by 1000 sacred prostitutes. Corinth was a place where there were no morals what-so-ever to speak of. It was corrupt and evil and known throughout the world for its immorality. If I could pick a city today which had a similar reputation it would be Bangkok with its prostitution. It is into this context that Paul writes this letter to address sexual immorality.
12 “Everything is permissible for me”—but not everything is beneficial. [This was a saying of the Corinthians – “Everything is permissible for me as a Christian.” It was being used as a catch phrase to justify their behaviour. Paul refutes it by saying – yes you can choose to do anything, but that doesn’t mean it is BENEFICIAL. You can step beyond the fence, but it is not beneficial] .“Everything is permissible for me”—but I will not be mastered by anything. [sex has a habit of becoming an addiction – the more you feed it the more you want it] 13 “Food for the stomach and the stomach for food”[ here is another saying – the stomach was made for food and the food for our stomachs. Similary they argued, the body is made of sex and sex is made for our bodies. But Paul responds] —but God will destroy them both. [food and our hunger are transient things. But in comparison the body will be transformed into a new body after death] The body is not meant for sexual immorality, but for the Lord, and the Lord for the body. 14 By his power God raised the Lord from the dead, and he will raise us also. [God didn’t make our bodies for sex, he made them for HIMSELF and that is why he will give us a resurrection body some day. Not so we can keep having sex, but so we can live with him.]
15 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! [As Christians we say that Jesus lives in us. If that is the case, when we have sex with another person and become one with them, we are actually making Jesus become one with them too. Our sex UNITES GOD with our sexual partner. Before having sex, ask youself if Jesus would like to be united with that person.] 16 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.” 17 But he who unites himself with the Lord is one with him in spirit.
18 Flee from sexual immorality [fornication – sex with the prostitutes]. All other sins a man commits are outside his body, but he who sins sexually sins against his own body. [sexual intimacy with people you are not married to damages your body] 19 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; 20 you were bought at a price. Therefore honor God with your body. [This passage is not asking us to deny our sexuality, but to affirm them and live positively with them. The goal in our lives is to honor God. Our sex life is actually an expression of our WORSHIP of God. We can either choose to honor God with our sex life or we can offend and degrade him.]
7:1 Now for the matters you wrote about: It is good for a man not to marry. 2 But since there is so much immorality, each man should have his own wife, and each woman her own husband. 3 The husband should fulfill his marital duty to his wife [part of that marital duty involves providing her sex needs], and likewise the wife to her husband. 4 The wife’s body does not belong to her alone but also to her husband. In the same way, the husband’s body does not belong to him alone but also to his wife. 5 Do not deprive each other [of sex] except by mutual consent and for a time, so that you may devote yourselves to prayer. Then come together again so that Satan will not tempt you because of your lack of self-control. [Interesting – God said that sex is NEEDED for a healthy, happy marriage. Without it, the marriage crumbles] 6 I say this as a concession, not as a command. 7 I wish that all men were as I am [single] . But each man has his own gift from God; one has this gift, another has that. [one has a gift of SINGLENESS, another it is best if they get MARRIED. Both states are normal and are Good. Paul says through the rest of this chapter that he thinks it is great if people stay single because they are more flexible in God’s service. But staying single is not good for everyone …]
8 Now to the unmarried and the widows I say: It is good for them to stay unmarried, as I am. 9 But if they cannot control themselves, they should marry, for it is better to marry than to burn with passion. [ If you struggle with temptations about sex it is best that you GET MARRIED. In our society today, people are waiting till they are older to get married. That creates a lot of problems because they have to try to deal with their sex drives for years and years before they can legitimately have sex. If you are struggling – Paul’s answer is – get married. Paul goes onto talk about marriage and divorce, but we haven’t got time to cover it all in detail. But skip down to vs 39]
39 A woman is bound to her husband as long as he lives. But if her husband dies, she is free to marry anyone she wishes, but he must belong to the Lord. 40 In my judgment, she is happier if she stays as she is—and I think that I too have the Spirit of God.
You know, the bible doesn’t talk much about selecting a spouse. Too many people think that there is a Mr Right out there who is waiting to be found. Some spiritualise it and say God has just the right one for me. But Marriage is more about commitment to make it work than about getting it right initially. Paul says here that a widow is free to marry anyone she wishes as long as they are a Christian. Why would it be any different for her first marriage. God doesn’t have the perfect partner for you – he gives you the ability to choose someone who is compatible and you have a good shot at. But don’t get hung up about finding the right one or the one who will complement you in every aspect of your life. Remember the work of Adhering and becoming one is meant to come after the marriage, not before.
So lets summarise some of what we’ve learnt …
- God thought of sex first – sex is good and infact our sexuality is good
- God designed sex to be enjoyed in a marriage relationship. Which involves
- One male and one female
- separation from your parents
- adhersion to your partner
- Amalgamation of two peoples into one flesh through sexual intercourse.
- Marriage is intended to be for life and in this context God is for regular and fulfilling sex.
- Any Sex outside of the limits of marriage is condemned by God as unnatural, damaging and offensive – adultery, fornication, homosexuality and beastiality.
- For Christians
– sexual immorality is especially offensive because Christ lives in us and you are taking him with you.
– you are free to marry or stay single
– you can marry anyone provided they are a Christian – but remember, marriage is for life, so choose carefully and be committed.
