A Christian View of Sex (Part
1)
You will notice the title of this sermon
is “A Christian View of Sex”. I have preached
this sermon in the five previous churches I pastored, the
first edition of the sermon dating way back to May of 1970.
For the most part, people have responded in a positive way
and have appreciated my addressing this subject from the
pulpit. But there’s always that risk that some may
see it as inappropriate or find it offensive.
So why do I preach on this subject? Well,
unless we live most of our life in an underground cave isolated
from the world, we are being preached to every day about
sex, day after day! But most of what we see and hear does
not represent healthy sexuality nor a Biblical perspective
on sex. I think the church needs to speak out on this matter.
I was pastor of a country church during
the 1970’s. One Sunday I preached a sermon about the
family. Near the beginning of the sermon I listed some of
the predictions that experts were making about what “family”
might look like in the future. I mentioned that some were
predicting that there would be homosexual marriages. (If
you’ve been paying attention to the news you know
that Vermont recently passed a law giving marital status
to homosexual couples – so this has come true). When
I mentioned this in the sermon, a middle-aged couple who
were sitting near the front – regular attendees at
church – stood up and walked down the middle aisle
right out of the church!
Now when somebody leaves during a sermon,
I assume that it is for one of two reasons: either they
are sick, or they are sick of me! In this case, I had the
sinking feeling that it was the latter reason! But you can’t
assume anything, so I waited a day or so and finally got
up the nerve to call their home. The husband answered, and
when I asked if anything was wrong he said something like
this: “Yes, there is something wrong. You’re
always talking about sex. When I hear it on the radio or
TV I can shut it off, but I can’t turn you off, so
we decided to leave.” I responded by saying that I
felt the church needed to talk about these things. He answered
that it should be done in counseling. I said that I don’t
see most people in counseling. The short of it is that he
didn’t change my thinking at all and I’m quite
sure I didn’t alter his point of view.
One interesting twist to this story is
that sometime after that my wife Nancy was talking to his
wife, and they were discussing shopping. This man’s
wife said that he didn’t like to shop. When they go
to the mall, she said, she does the shopping, while he sits
in the middle of the mall, eats ice cream, and girl watches!
Some of us may feel uncomfortable with
a sermon on sexuality, but I trust you will give me a chance
today and in the next sermon to talk about this.
I hope you realize that we have undergone
a sexual revolution in the United States.
Since the 1960’s there has been a
monumental shift in sexual attitudes and practices. The
change began around the time Playboy magazine came on the
scene. At the same time the Playboy philosophy of life was
becoming popularized there was talk about the “new
morality” or “situation ethics”. This
so-called “new morality” teaches that there
are no moral absolutes and that each person must decide
what’s right and what’s wrong for each particular
situation. As a result, over the last forty years or so
there has been a tremendous shift in sexual values and practices.
We live in a different world today. If
you’re a teenager, you never lived in the Old World.
If you’re in you’re 20’s or even 30’s,
you never really lived in the Old World.
What are some of the signposts that indicate
we have moved into a New World of sexuality in our society?
One of these is Cable-TV and the Internet. With cable TV
– HBO, Showtime, Pay-per-view, and adult channels
like The Playboy Channel – there are almost no boundaries
as to the explicit sex that we can watch sitting in our
living room or family room. Through the Internet we can
access almost any kind of sexual material. In the Old World,
films were limited in the amount of sexual content allowed.
I remember reading somewhere about the
“one foot on the floor rule”. In bedroom scenes,
actors and actresses had to keep at least one foot on the
floor. I need not tell you that this no longer applies to
films today! In the New World, there are few boundaries.
Another signpost pointing to the New World
of sex today is what I call up-front, in- your-face sex.
In the Old World, advertisements might have featured a pretty
lady in a dress. In the New World not very subtle sex is
used to sell anything from cars to clothing, beer to breath
mints. Perhaps “shock-jock” Howard Stern epitomizes
the new blatant, in your face, unabashed sex of today. Our
culture is preoccupied with sex. We are constantly being
bombarded with sexual stimuli. Someone has called our time
“the era of collective sexual obsession.”
Another signpost is the widespread acceptance
of pre-marital sex as the norm. This is portrayed in films,
novels and TV programs. It’s natural for two people
to move from hugs and kisses to going to bed together. But
that also reflects real life. Accurate data on sexual behavior
is hard to gather and verify, but the most recent statistics
I have read (a few years old now) suggest that the average
age of first sexual intercourse has been getting lower.
The information I received said that the average age of
first sexual intercourse was 16.2 years of age for girls
and 15.7 years of age for boys. One study found that among
inner-city black males, the average age of the first sexual
encounter was 11.8 years of age! However, some recent information
seems to indicate that this downward trend may be reversing
and that abstinence is being taught to more youth.
My last church was in Easton, Pa. I’ll
never forget my first visit to Easton High School. I was
shocked to see students walking in the halls with their
children. I learned that the school provides a nursery for
the children of students. Some people told me that students
were known to brag about having a child.
Now this does not mean that in the Old
World people didn’t have sex outside of marriage nor
that there were no children born out of wedlock. This happened.
However, there was a sense that these things were wrong.
Still another signpost that we are living
in a New World is the popularity of co-habitation, or living
together. Many couples today who get married are already
living together. Someone pointed out to me that recently
in the Lancaster newspaper where it listed couples applying
for marriage licenses, out of the 40 couples listed, only
3 of those couples had different addresses!
And then there is AIDS. In the Old World
you didn’t have to worry about getting AIDS through
sex. In the New World you do. Since it can take up to 10
years for symptoms of AIDS to surface, we could be sitting
on an epidemic ready to explode. We don’t hear much
about it, but already there is an epidemic of other sexually
transmitted diseases.
These are just a few of the signposts that
point to the New World of present day sexual attitudes and
practices. This tremendous change has left a lot of people,
including Christians, confused. Over 30 years ago, the late
Dr. Wallace Fisher, Senior Pastor at Trinity Lutheran Church
in Lancaster, in one of his books, characterized the American
scene as a sexual wilderness. His words seem just as pertinent
today as then: “A sexual wilderness exists. The guideposts
of yesteryear are gone. The church itself mirrors the confusion,
the uncertainty, and ‘lostness’ which characterize
society in general. It has failed to offer meaningful guidance
to millions of hard-pressed moderns…”.
Let’s shift gears now. I want to
make several statements about sex from a Christian or Biblical
perspective. But before I do, I just want to add one aside
here.
Sex is more than just a physical act. Our
sexuality is everything we are in our maleness and femaleness.
Lewis Smedes wrote: “(Sexuality) throbs within us
as movement toward relationship, intimacy, companionship.”
Sexuality includes our noticing a handsome man or shapely
woman…being aroused by the odor of cologne or perfume…longing
to be held in someone’s arms…sharing our deepest
feelings with someone we love…savoring our masculinity
or femininity.
One of the problems today is that so much
sex is treated merely as a physical or genital act. It’s
like two people can have sex, then finish and act as if
nothing more happened or that there are no consequences.
It’s just like eating a steak dinner or spending a
few hours at Hersheypark! But that view of sex is short-sighted,
because people do get involved emotionally. People do get
hurt when sex is treated merely as a physical or biological
function.
Now, let me make two broad, positive statements
about sexuality from a Biblical perspective: First, sex
is a good gift of God! Who do you think made us sexual beings?
God did! And it wasn’t like God said, “Oops,
I made a mistake here!” Our sexuality is to be enjoyed
and affirmed. Now I realize that during its history the
Church has often created a negative view of sex, or conveyed
the notion that it’s wrong to enjoy our bodies and
our sensuality. But that is not the Biblical view!
One of the books of the Old Testament is
the Song of Solomon. This book is an example of Hebrew love
poetry. It is erotic literature! There are the words of
the bride and her lover. Throughout the book both the man
and the woman revel in the beauty of each other’s
body. Listen to what the man says:
“How beautiful you are, my love,
how very beautiful! Your eyes are doves behind your veil.
Your hair is like a flock of goats, moving down the slopes
of Gilead. Your teeth are like a flock of shorn ewes that
have come up from the washing…your lips are like crimson
thread, and your mouth is lovely…your two breasts
are like two fawns, twins of a gazelle, that feed among
the lilies”
Song of Solomon 4:1-3,5.
The woman says,
“I am my beloved’s and his
desire is for me. Come, my beloved, let us go forth into
the fields, and lodge in the villages; let us go out early
to the vineyards…there I will give you my love”
Song of Solomon 7:10-12.
Our sexuality is a good gift of our loving
Creator! Now, of course, with every good gift God has placed
boundaries on how these gifts are to be used. It is only
when this good gift of sexuality is misused that it becomes
evil and hurtful.
The second positive statement I want to
make about sexuality from a Biblical perspective is this:
God designed sexual intercourse to take place within the
security of a long term, unselfish, total commitment to
another person. Notice that I said “long term, unselfish,
total commitment to another person”. The New Testament
has a word for this. It is the word “agape”,
one of the Greek words for love.
This is the crucial element. Where sex
includes unselfish concern for the partner’s well
being, an unreserved and total commitment to him or her,
there is much more of a chance that sex will be healthy
and fulfilling. Where we have sex without this unselfish
and long term commitment to the other person’s welfare,
sex easily becomes cheapened and destructive.
This is why so much of the sex today is
empty and hurtful. A lot of sex today is simply selfish
and manipulative. For example, using sex in advertising
to get us to buy products is wrong, not because the Bible
is against sex, but because it is manipulating human beings
for selfish ends. The problem with Playboy type magazines
and X-rated videos is not that sensuality is evil per se,
but that these magazines and videos are dehumanizing –
instead of having a caring relationship with a woman as
a person of worth, the woman is seen as a thing to be used
for our one’s own pleasure, then discarded.
A lot of sex that takes place outside of
marriage is selfish and dehumanizing, where we use another
person as a thing to satisfy our own desires, and have no
interest in a long term commitment to the other person’s
welfare. Some of us, perhaps, have found that out the hard
way. We gave in to someone who said “I love you”,
but actually what the person meant was, “I love me,
and want to use you.” It should also be pointed out
that even within marriage sex can be degrading and empty
when we are inconsiderate of our partner’s feelings
and needs.
God designed the act of sexual intercourse
to take place within the security of a long term, unselfish,
total commitment to the other person.
We may not realize it, but Christians in
the first century lived in a time of sexual permissiveness
and confusion very much like today! The Apostle Paul addressed
this issue in his first letter to believers in Thessalonica.
In the midst of a sexually impure culture he called Christians
to a life of purity. Hear these wise words for believers
today:
“Finally, brothers and sisters, we
ask and urge you in the Lord Jesus that, as you learned
from us how you ought to live and to please God…you
should do so more and more…for this is the will of
God, your sanctification, that you abstain from fornication
(sexual immorality), that each one of you know how to control
your own body in holiness and honor, not with lustful passion,
like the Gentiles who do not know God…for God did
not call us to impurity but in holiness. Therefore whoever
rejects this rejects not human authority but God, who also
gives his Holy Spirit to you.”
1 Thessalonians 4:1,3-5,7-8
In the next sermon I want to comment on
how God designed sex to mirror the covenant between God
and His people. I want to say some things about dealing
with our sexuality as a single person and about sexual intimacy
in marriage. We’ll also look at some of the interesting
things we’re discovering about couples who live together
before marriage.
I realize that when one talks to a large
group of people about sexuality that those who hear represent
a broad spectrum of sexual interests and needs. Some of
us may be very content with our sexuality and find joy in
this area of our life. Others of us may be struggling. Wherever
we are in our experience, God cares about us. None of us
is without sin in this area of sex. We may have made some
mistakes and unwise choices. If we are willing to admit
our mistakes, ask God’s forgiveness, and live differently,
God will forgive us and give us strength to do better.
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