Holy Sex in an X-rated Culture # 1 (Primary Resource Holy Sex, Terry Wier, Whitaker House, 1999)
Terry Wier, Pastor and author, writes–
“The most widespread and troublesome issues facing the Church today are sexual in nature:
adultery, divorce, premarital sex, homosexuality — just to name a few. ... yet these are the topics
least discussed from the pulpit and least understood (in a Biblical light) by most Christians.”
There is a wide gap between the attitudes towards sexuality that are being expressed all around us and what we learn in the Scriptures. Jesus said that the truth sets us free! After prayer and careful consideration, I want to bring a series of messages about human sexuality which are based in the truth of Scripture with the hope that with the help of the Holy Spirit, we can find freedom to live pure lives that honor the Lord.
One of the things about dealing with this subject is the embarrassment, the guilt, and the shame that have come to be associated with the very mention of sex. I am quite sure that many of you in this room right now are wishing that I would preach on something else.
Let me issue a couple of disclaimers which I hope will help you to receive the messages...
∙ First of all, this is not aimed at specific people or problems. If I talk about some issue that sounds like I know you, it isn’t because someone has told me about your sin. It is that the human experience is fairly common.
∙ Second, your kids may ask you some questions about some of the topics I raise. Talk with them openly and honestly, giving them answers appropriate to their age level. Would you rather they got their info on the street?
∙ Third, if the Spirit convicts you about your behavior, don’t get angry with me! I’m not preaching my preferences. I will be sharing what the Bible, the final authority and God’s revealed wisdom, has to say about our sexuality.
∙ Four, please do not tune out or walk out if you find something I say difficult or even offensive. For some of you I know that this series will be very hard to hear because of your memories: of sexual abuse, or because of your own past immorality, or even because you are embarrassed. The truth of Scripture is healing so hear the entire message.
PRAYER
Understanding the meaning of our sexuality and how to please God in this area of our lives is a real challenge for Believers. There is little common agreement between Bible-believing Christians and the culture in which we live about issues of human sexuality.
Beginning about 50 years ago, a revolution swept America that was nicknamed the “sexual revolution.”
∙ Birth control pills severed the tie between promiscuity and pregnancy.
∙ Abortion became not only legal, but an acceptable remedy to the inconvenience of an untimely pregnancy.
∙ Sex education was widely introduced to the education system and we were encouraged to experiment, to throw away restraint, and to indulge our sexual appetites.
The response of many pastors to this so-called revolution was deafening silence! Pastors were either too embarrassed to discuss human sexuality or they were convinced along with millions of Americans that the Scriptural moral code was quaintly out-dated. Then, too, there was a reaction to the shame-based messages that offered nothing except ‘Don’t you dare...’ as a guideline for dealing with sexual issues!
Now two generations later we are reaping the harvest of the revolution. Sex is like a tsunami wave, washing over us and drowning many of us in waters full of the debris of promiscuity and perversion
∙ Images of women, barely clad, are plastered on billboards along our highways taking our attention from the road. Tonight, during the SuperBowl, many of us will find ourselves turning away as ads using blatant sex appeal are used to promote everything from beer to Viagra!
∙ Cosmo, there on the checkout stand in the grocery store, offers the scoop on latest sexual technique to any woman willing to hand over $4.
∙ Television programs, especially the sit-coms, seem to have few themes than lewd, crude jokes about sex.
∙ Cable TV is flooded with sexually oriented material. Many of the music videos played on MTV, the entertainment source for a majority of today’s teens, would have been considered obscene in 1960. Premium channels, such as HBO™ and Cinemax™, regularly air sexually explicit movies and, for a fee, you can bring pornographic material right to your living room.
∙ Pornography reaches anyone with an Internet connection right in the privacy of their home or office. For small fee a person can access the most explicit and perverted sexual material, some beyond the imagination of most here in this room.
∙ Our children are being sexually assaulted at growing rates. Our marriages crumbling at the world’s highest rate, too often because of sexual problems and/or infidelity.
Dealing with sex isn’t just a challenge for the larger culture. Many Christians are struggling at some level with some sexual issue.
Perhaps you have a sexual addiction that overwhelms you from time to time.
Perhaps it is a fight with overwhelming lust that leaves you feeling dirty or ashamed.
Maybe you’re wrapped up in an immoral relationship that is threatening your family.
Many Believers, even if there is no big problem plaguing them, is at least a little confused about sexuality, not knowing how they should act and think in order to please God in this part of their life.
So what is our message? Let’s start with a basic truth!
Sexuality is a gift of God and needs to be reclaimed by Christians.
That is why I am calling this series,
“Holy Sex in an X-rated culture.” It is not wrong to say HOLY and SEX in the same sentence!
In fact, if your conscience has been cleaned up by the Spirit of God and your mind informed by the truth of the Word of God, you should be able to celebrate your maleness, your femaleness — and if you’re married — your active sexuality, with prayer and praise.
I doubt any of you have ever prayed anything like this, but it would not be wrong to do so:
“Lord, thank you for the intimacy that I enjoyed with my spouse. It makes me feel so close to her and makes me realize even more how much you love your people since we are YOUR Bride, beloved by you and one with YOU. Thank you for the joy that I know as a man who is fully completed by the woman to whom I am fully devoted. Thank you for the gift of my sexuality.”
The kind of prayer I hear in some form with much more frequency is:
“God set me free from my flesh! I hate my sexuality, Lord. It is a curse.”
That reflects a damaged understanding of sex. There is healing and wholeness for the Believer who allows the Spirit of God to go even to the hidden places of shame and/or abuse. Let me say it again: Sexuality is a gift of God and sex needs to be reclaimed by Christians from those who twist it, pervert it, and make it ugly.
As he has with all of God’s gifts, the Evil One has done his best to destroy that which God intended as a blessing for His people. He has particularly succeeded in the area of human sexuality.
Let’s lay some foundations for our understanding and as we do so, let’s believe God to bring about freedom from guilt, and a new sense of joy as we begin to accept the concept of Holy Sex.
I. Sex is God’s idea!
A. God created sex according to the Creation account.
Genesis 1:27 So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. The essence of maleness and femaleness originated in the creative mind of God and prior to the entrance of sin into the world, man and woman were perfectly complementary for one another.
Genesis 2:18-21 gives us a glimpse into the mind of the Creative God and we read,
“The LORD God said, “It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper (a partner) suitable for him.” . . . for Adam no suitable helper was found. So the LORD God caused the man to fall into a deep sleep; and while he was sleeping, he took one of the man’s ribs and closed up the place with flesh. The record goes on:
Genesis 2:23-24 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.” (We are of the same essence, she is my completion.) For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and they will become one flesh.
Right here in the opening words of the Scripture, the basic understanding of sex and the boundaries of the expression of sex are set.
Sex is to create a oneness, a bond between man and woman who are committed in covenant to one another.
B. Jesus reaffirms that sex is God’s idea.
He taught about the sanctity of the marriage covenant. In Matthew 19:4-6
4 “Haven’t you read,” he replied, “that at the beginning the Creator ‘made them male and female,’ 5 and said, ‘For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh’? 6 So they are no longer two, but one. Therefore what God has joined together, let man not separate.”
C. The Church is instructed about her relationship with the Savior and Lord by the sexual idea
that originated in God.
In Ephesians 5, Christians are taught about their relationship with Christ Jesus, by direct reference to their marriage relationship. There we read, Ephesians 5:21-32
Wives, submit to your husbands as to the Lord. 23 For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, of which he is the Savior. 24 Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything.
25 Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her . . . 28 In this same way, husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. 29 After all, no one ever hated his own body, but he feeds and cares for it, just as Christ does the church— 30 for we are members of his body. 31 “For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh.” 32 This is a profound mystery—
Doesn’t that amaze you?
Of all the ways to explain the Believer’s relationship with the Savior, the Holy Spirit chose the sexual union of marriage. That ‘one flesh’ relationship illustrates the closeness of the Believer with God. No wonder Satan wants to connect shame and guilt with sex! If you cannot rejoice in your sexuality, you will find it hard to grasp the profound mystery of becoming one with Jesus Christ.
Just so you do not think I’m off on a tangent here, let me remind you of a few of the many references to sexual imagery that the Bible uses to describe the Christian life:
1. We are married to Christ so that we may produce holy offspring for Him. Romans 7.4
2. Our spiritual birth is caused by the Word of God being planted in us in a way similar to a man
impregnating a woman with his sperm and starting new life.
1 Peter 1:23 For you have been born again, not of perishable seed, but of imperishable,
through the living and enduring word of God.
3. Our covenant relationship with God is to be protected with fidelity just as our marriages are to be strengthened by sexual fidelity.
1 Corinthians 6:15-1715 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! 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.
III. The SINLESSNESS of Sexual desire
Dr. John White, a medical doctor and committed Believer, writes this:
“We must thank God that we experience sexual desire. Not only is physical sex itself ordained by God. The physical pleasures of sex are God-given. Your body has the capacity to be deliciously stimulated because God made it so. Pleasure is, as C. S. Lewis points out, God’s invention, not the devil’s. Unfortunately, the modern world, just as did the ancient world, has made a goddess of sensuality, worshiping sexual pleasure instead of receiving it with thanksgiving. Men and women have become slaves of lust rather than joy-filled servants of God.
. . . A Christian must avoid both extremes. Becoming a slave to his desires or because of fear of lust, denying himself the enjoyment that God planned in sex for him.”
We must understand sexual desire as an appetite similar to our hunger for food.
There are physiological causes for sexual desire. There are reasons, completely unrelated to our spiritual depth or maturity, that bring about great swings in our level of sexual desire. Age, general health, fatigue, emotional well-being are all factors in the way that we feel about sex.
Pastor Wier illustrates this for us.
“If you go without food for a day or two, you begin to have food fantasies. I’m not talking about a little pang in
your stomach that you can satisfy with a cracker. I am talking about all out, technicolor food banquets of your
favorite foods – freshly grilled steaks, mashed potatoes drowning in gravy, triple fudge sundaes with pecan pie
on the side. At night you will dream endlessly of food. ... Your body is signaling you that you need fuel. The
chemicals being sent to your brain are triggering ‘lustful’ fantasies about food.”
Nobody wakes up from a food dream with guilty feelings and begs God for forgiveness, do they?
Why? Because we understand the natural need for food.
We also know that the desire for food can become an obsession and the result is the sin of gluttony.
Sexual desire is much the same. Sexual urges begin in the body as purely chemical responses to the surges of hormones. Sexual fantasies come uninvited carried along on waves of testosterone. No guilt is necessary.
“But Pastor,” you object, “you don’t know the content of my sexual dreams. They make me blush to even think of them.”
Your brain is processing sexual images and ideas that you have collected throughout your life both consciously and unconsciously. These stored images and information spring up in your mind in dreams and fantasies without the filters imposed by your conscious mind. That is, by the way, a powerful argument for not feeding pornographic images or stories into your brain. Those stored images will surface in your dreams and fantasies when you cannot repress them.
So called abnormal desires and disturbing sexual images may have been forced into your brain during formative years by material you were shown by a friend, or found in your Dad’s toolbox, or that was given you by someone. Negative images, even those left over from a time of abuse, are stored in memory, and may make their way into your mind during times of sleep or unguarded moments when you relax. There is no sin in this!
In addition to the physiological sources of sexual imagery, we also must recognize the spiritual realm.
Satan’s messengers are vicious and they will exploit our humanity to any degree we allow them to create temptation. At certain times, demons will harass us with sexual thoughts.
Remember, temptation is not sin! It is an opportunity to do what is right, to let the Spirit of God rise in you and grant you mastery over your body for the glory of God.
Sin begins when you make a CHOICE!
Our body signals its desire for sex with a flash of desire quite independently of our will, but we then have the CHOICE to focus our attention on those thoughts or even to take steps to make our urges into actions.
For example, let’s consider that much misquoted passage from Jesus’ teaching. He said,
He said, [Matthew 5:28] I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart.
It is not the idea of woman’s desirability that Jesus places off limits. It is the LOOK, the choice to focus on a woman who is not our spouse with active thoughts of sexual connection.
A complicating factor that we need to understand is that our brains are wired to respond to pleasure. When we indulge a desire with sexual acts, we pave a highway over which that desire will travel in the future! That is great blessing when we derive pleasure from our spouse. Desire functions as God intends in that situation by strengthening our bonds to that person. Desire fulfilled is desire made stronger the next time it surfaces.
If we have a desire/fantasy that we recognize as tempting us to do that which is wrong and immoral, but choose to feed it anyway, we will find that desire coming back to us stronger and stronger. Thus it is important that we recognize the importance of making a choice that reflects God’s plan for our sexuality so that the best desires will be reinforced in us.
Dr. White observes that Christians need to have three basic attitudes towards sexual pleasure.
A. God made all the parts of your body, including your nervous system and your sexual parts.
B. Pleasure is a by-product in life, not a goal. To seek pleasure is to find disappointment. To seek od is to find piercing pleasure.
C. Scripture is absolutely clear that sexual pleasure is to restricted to the confines of the marriage covenant. The first purpose of sex is to create relationship thus ending the pain of isolation and loneliness. We do not marry to ‘have sex.’ We marry to build a deep abiding relationship that includes sexual intimacy that meets the needs of both the husband and wife.
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In summary let’s review the basic ideas that I’d like you to process this week:
I. Sexuality is a gift of God and needs to be reclaimed by Christians.
II. Sex is God’s idea!
A. That is underlined in the story of Creation.
B. Jesus affirmed it in his teaching.
C. The Holy Spirit used sexual language to describe our spiritual experience.
III. Sexual desire, in itself, is SINLESS.
Right thinking precedes right living. That is why I am preaching this series. There is freedom for the those in sexual sin as the truth of the Scripture is set into their minds by the revelation of the Spirit. There is defense for those who are being tempted in the truth of the Word. Make the journey with me.
Think through these issues. Pray asking God to make us the kind of people who show His glorious plan even in our sexuality. We, who have God’s own wisdom, can become models of sexual health in a world of lewdness, promiscuity, and brokeness.
Next week, we will, God-willing, explore the boundaries for sexual expression that God establishes in the Scripture to keep us from being destroyed by one of the most powerful desires we know. I hope I’ll have the opportunity to continue this series with you in attendance. Amen
Jerry D. Scott