The Role Of Sexual Intimacy In Marriage Series

The Role of Sexual Intimacy in Marriage

Series: Making Relationships Work: Love, Sex & Marriage

October 29, 2017 – Brad Bailey

INTRO

Today…we are continuing our Fall focus on relationships…enititled “Making Relationships Work: Love, Sex, and Marriage.” Making relationships work involves how we relate as male and female… that involves as sexual beings. So we are going to consider God’s design and desire for sexual intimacy.

I know that sex is a topic that can often awaken plenty of interest. (I just saw three guys sit up.)

But I also know this can tend to be a sensitive subject. It’s about something very personal and intimate. In a culture that wants to turn sexuality into a source of public commodity and consumption… something still feels very personal and intimate. I certainly want to respect and protect that personal nature and sensitivity. (Next week… deep hurts and hang-ups.)

We live in a time that prides itself on being sexually free. Yet the reality is that we are sexually conflicted. It’s been said that what a culture tries to laugh at is what is most unresolved within it. Our comedy is obsessed with sex because there is so much tension unresolved within us. our feelings about being sexual can elicit a mix of goodness and guilt…beauty and shame. Sexuality is such a deep part of our identity and a deep part of our insecurity.

We live in a tension marked by both repression and obsession… inhibition and indulgence.

The only one NOT hung up in sexual confusion… is God.

God surrounds us … to speak of a gift that needs to be restored…. to speak of a gift often negated or neglected. He says “I made the stars… the seas… but lastly I made you as male and female… as sexual beings.”

It’s God who created us as bodily beings. So I’d like to stop and ask you to join me in a moment of prayer…and opening our hearts to God’s heart for us.

PRAYER

Lets hear again the words from the first book of the Bible… as God gives poetic summary of who we are…

I. Our Sexuality Is Rooted In the Divine Nature of God

Genesis 1:26-28 (GW)

Then God said, “Let us make humans in our image, in our likeness. Let them rule the fish in the sea, the birds in the sky, the domestic animals all over the earth, and all the animals that crawl on the earth.” 27 So God created humans in his image. In the image of God he created them. He created them male and female. 28 God blessed them and said, “Be fertile, increase in number, fill the earth, and be its master.”

Genesis 2:24-25 (GW)

That is why a man will leave his father and mother and will be united with his wife, and they will become one flesh. 25 The man and his wife were both naked, but they weren't ashamed of it.

Here we are reminded of that God created sexuality.... and the potential for sexual intimacy. It’s not like God created the first humans, went on lunch break and then came back and was like, “what are they doing? Who taught them that?!” The original state was His idea. And how different it is from what we often feel.

Last verse (25) – “ The man and his wife were both naked, but they weren't ashamed of it.”

Can you imagine that? A nakedness of body that was in had nothing to hide from God or anyone…no shame. No shame from their past. No shame that comes from falling short of some expectations for performance. The truth is that…

Our sexuality is rooted in God…. and reflected in…

• Complimentary Nature (‘male and female’)

We are uniquely created as male and female… to reflect the complimentary aspects of God’s character.[1]

It’s helpful to ask what God says about when they become sexual beings. When did they become male and female? Was it when they left and joined partners? No

Was it when they united and created life? NO

At the very monet they were created…they were either male or female. And that speaks to a valuable truth: You will never become more fundamentally a man or woman than you already are.

(Now I understand how deeply some find conflict with being male or female… some physical … some psychological… I believe that it is a conflict that is deep because it is with something real… our biological nature as male and female is not something we escape…but we must navigate.)

• Creative Potential… (‘be fruitful and multiply’)

They were told to ‘be fruitful and multiply’ as their physical union could create new life. God who is creating endows us with creative power…including the ability to create life.

Sexual intimacy is not reduced to the power and purpose of creating life… but neither can it be understood outside of that sacred power. (The command to go and multiply is not simply a matter of following an order… but reflecting the very divine order or nature itself.)