Roommates, Bad Dates And Great Mates: Sex Series

ROOMMATES, BAD DATES AND GREAT MATES

Sex “. . .and it was good”

Hello everyone, and welcome once again to The Journey. It’s great to see you on the night of the blizzard and you are out here in 27 inches of snow on the ground, so we might as well talk about sex. Well, that’s what we are going to do. We are kicking off this brand new series called “Roommates, Bad Dates and Great Mates”. Tonight we are going to dive in and look straight on the topic of sex and what the Bible means when it says, “it was good”. And we live in a sex saturated society, as you have probably noticed. And that three-letter word “sex” is probably the most misunderstood word in our society. Yet, we talk about it all the time. I mean TV addresses the subject of sex on a regular basis. There are entire television shows and series that are based around this issue of sex. The movies are based on sex. Magazines feature sex on the front cover, whether they are trying to sell to the guys, or trying to sell to the ladies. The internet is absolutely covered with sex. As a matter of fact, the porn industry recently promoted that their revenue is bigger than the combined revenue of all professional football, baseball and basketball franchises. It’s a big industry. Economically speaking, this is a $20 billion a year industry and it drives much of our economy. And sex is discussed everywhere. Psychologically, we are always talking about the effects of sex. Young and old have had both negative and positive experiences from sex. And the psychology of sex is used to sell everything. Whether its selling light beer or selling pharmaceuticals, it’s everywhere in our society. Sociologically, sex is a driving force. It creates a lot of pressure. It pushes young teens to engage in oral sex. It causes adults to pursue prostitution and escort services. It drives singles toward pre-marital sex. And then in the political world, sex is always a factor and sex has the potential to make and break careers. Sex is discussed in our schools, our doctor’s offices, our public arenas and our private gatherings. It’s talked about everywhere, but right here. Sex is rarely discussed in church. We tend to sweep it over in the corner. Instead, we let society to decide what is right and wrong about sex. You see there is a lot of talk about sex, but there is very little truth about sex. There is an abundance of discussion about sex, but there is an absence of truth when it comes to sex. In the series that we are beginning tonight is about the truth. Discovering the truth about what God says regarding relationships. The truth of what God says about sex and marriage, and dating, and temptation, and purity. And like all things, if we are to find this truth, we have to go to the Scripture. We have to go to the Bible, God’s source of truth. And tonight, that’s what we are going to do as we talk about sex and “it was good”. And fortunately for us, the Bible is very frank about sex. There is not a prudish note in the entire Scripture from Genesis to Revelation. As a matter of fact, there is a whole book in the Bible called the Song of Solomon that celebrates the sensuality of erotic love. And the Bible reflects the attitude that you would expect by the person who created sex. And God, better than anyone else understands what sex means, and what His invention of it does in our lives. He understands how it works and He knows exactly what it is good for, and He tells us how to use it. So, tonight, let’s begin our exploration by looking at Romans 12, and I want to begin this discussion with a theological lesson. Romans 12 gives us a foundation, so if you want to turn there in your Bibles, and we want to look at the first verse in your notes, Romans 12:1-2, it’s a rather long passage, but follow along. “And so, dear brothers and sisters, I plead to you to give your bodies to God.” Would you underline that phrase, “give your bodies to God”. “Let them be a living and holy sacrifice, the kind He will accept. When you think of what He has done for you, is this too much to ask? Don’t copy the behavior and customs of this world, but let God transform you into a new person by changing the way you think.” Would you underline that phrase, “changing the way you think”. “Then you will know what God wants you to do. And you will know how good and pleasing and perfect His will really is.” Well, if you follow along in your notes, you have two phrases underlined. You have the phrase “to give your bodies to God” and then off to the right draw an arrow from that phrase down to the phrase “changing the way you think”. One of the great truths of life is that your body and your mind are connected. As a foundation of this series, I want to give you a little theological lesson that we are going to talk about. I want to talk about how God has created your mind and your body to be connected, because this view is pretty absent from our modern day discussions. As a matter of fact, in the modern day, we have given into a false view, a false dichotomy of the mind and the body. I tried to draw this in your notes, and I’m going to draw it up here on the screen as well. When God created you, God created you as one unit. And God created you so that your mind and your body are one. And in God’s plan, this is the plan for creation. Mind and body are one. But what we’ve done is we have fallen into this trap of this distorted philosophy where we have separated the mind and body. And what we have done is, we have said well, the mind is over here and the body is over here. And we keep the mind and body separate. Now, if you studied philosophy, this is often called the Cartesian Divide because of Descartes several hundred years ago. It actually goes back much, much farther than that. It goes all the way back to Plato, because Plato was the first philosopher to state this idea as to what happens in the mind, has no affect on the body. Or vice versa. What happens in the body has no affect on the mind. But that’s not God’s view. The created order, according to God, is that your mind and your body are one. And it’s only when we understand this and we operate according to this foundational truth that we can experience God’s best for our life. But we tend to do is we tend to fall into this dichotomy. This mind and body dualism. Now, let me try to illustrate this a little further philosophically. When the mind and body are at odds, generally speaking, one tends to win out over the other. For example, occasionally, the mind will win out and it’s mind over body. And from a sexual standpoint, this can lead to what is common called Puritanism. Another way to say Puritanism is legalism. Now the Puritans themselves weren’t bad folks. We have sort of taken that phrase and use it to talk about someone who is a prude, someone who says that the mind is more important, it’s all about reason. And throughout church history, occasionally, good Christians have elevated the mind to such a high level they have actually castrated themselves thinking that that is going to help fulfill God’s desire and God’s will for their lives. And so the mind over the body can actually get us in trouble. Most of us aren’t familiar with that sense, and instead, most of us tend to operate in this side where we elevate the body over the mind. And when we do that, that’s philosophically speaking, leads to a view called Hedonism. And Hedonism is not just an island in the Caribbean. Hedonism is a philosophical view. And it basically says—eat, drink and be merry for tomorrow you may die. In other words, live it up in the body. Do whatever gives the body pleasure because there is a divide and what happens in your body doesn’t affect your mind. Now if you really begin to think about it, you will realize the problem with this dualism. Because many of you have done things with your body and you are still replaying the tapes of that incident inside of your mind. So it’s a false dichotomy, that we fall into this trap over and over and the prevailing view of our philosophy is that these two issues are in battle. As a matter of fact, most of the popular thinking in our day falls into this mind/body dualism.