Consumeristic Sexual Individualism
What is the purpose of sex? Should it be casual and convenient? Apocalyptic and ultimate? Or something different altogether? Is sex an appetite we satisfy, or a gift we enjoy?
Transcript
Well, good morning. We are in our sixth week of our Theology of Sex series, and today we are talking about sex. So if you are just now hanging out with us, that might not seem surprising. If you've been here for the other five weeks, you may be thinking, I thought that's what we were going to talk about the whole time. It's about time. Why have we waited so long?
It wasn't bait and switch. Really what it was is there's so many other things we had to say before we could ever talk about sex by itself, for us to even understand how God designed it and what his goal was for it and what his aim was for it. And so we had to kind of build a framework for God's good design for sex before we could ever even talk about sex. It's kind of like jumping right in and talking about trigonometry. If you don't know how to add and subtract, it's like we got to cover the basics first. We got to understand the framework here before we can we can talk about sex.
And so for five weeks, we've spent some time walking through different passages of Scripture, trying to understand gender, trying to understand God's design. And so I'm going to try to recap that a little bit, maybe using some different words to help us understand what we've been looking at for the past five weeks. So we talked about God created humanity in his image, that we were designed by God for his purposes. And what we're seeing there is that God, who is very different from us, makes us similar but different from him. So humanity made in the image and likeness of God is similar to God, but very different from God.
And hopefully we're all tracking with that. You're like God. You are not God. So just if you're confused about that, we can talk about it later. But you are not God.
You're like him, made in his image and likeness. And so there's this idea of similar but different. And then when God made gender, he did the same thing. He kind of followed the same pattern where he made both male and female similar but different. He designed us distinct from one another. And so it follows that same setup, that same paradigm of similar but different.
And then we saw that Christ's love for the church, Jesus' pursuit of the church in the cross, was his covenant love for the church. And that is where this very different being from humanity joins with humanity, makes himself one with humanity to join together in a covenant relationship and to make himself one. So the church is called the bride of Christ and Christ's body. So we're both his pursuit and what he loves and cherishes and also we're made one with him. And then we saw that marriage is actually a small picture of that. Marriage is these two similar but different beings coming together and becoming one and covenanting together with one another for a life of devotion and submission to one another.
And so we see that God designed humanity similar but different from him. He designed gender similar but different from one another. And then God through Christ makes a covenant with humanity and makes us one with him and that marriage is designed to be the same thing, to be similar but different brought together in a covenant relationship. And only in that relationship sex is designed to exist. So sex exists inside of this covenant relationship.
And so we've kind of walked through all of that. And now we're going to spend some time today talking about sex. So we're going to go to Genesis 2 real quick. You don't have to flip there. We're going to have it on the screen. We've gone there every week.
You should about have this memorized by now. This is vastly important for our understanding of who we are, how we were designed, and how we view and understand God and understand our place with one another and understand sexuality. So it says, Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh. And so we spent time last week talking about this. This is the covenant relationship in marriage, that two become inseparably one. So Paul's going to go to this verse in Ephesians 5 and say, this actually gives us a small picture of the love that Christ has for the church, how he dies on her behalf, how he sacrifices to pour out his love and to just give and just to lavish love on his people.
And that's the design for marriage. And then Jesus is going to go there in Matthew 19 to say that whatever God's brought together, we're not supposed to tear apart. And so then it says, And the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed. This is the very beginning of Scripture. In the very first few pages, what we are given is that God creates humanity distinct from himself. He creates gender distinct from one another, and he designs them to be brought together.
And he sets them in a garden naked without shame. And then he tells these shameless nudists to be fruitful and multiply. It's one of the first commands that God gives in Scripture. And so from the very beginning of humanity, God designs covenant marriage and sex and sexuality to play a part in his good design for humanity. Now, in our culture, jump ahead thousands of years, we, you would not have to do much cultural research at all to see that we have begun to place a lot of value on sex. You can't stand in line at the grocery store without looking over at the magazine racks and seeing that we have concepts like sex sells, but you can't look at a magazine rack without seeing little on the sides.
It's not always the main thing, but they'll be on the side, this little article tells you what's going to be inside it, and you'll get five tips on how to wow your man. Seventeen tips to a sexier summer. Thirteen tips for making your bed the best place ever for sex or whatever. Like, there's just all of these kind of, and it's like, really, farm and garden? Come on, man. Like, take it easy.
But it really, we've overemphasized this. You can't watch a TV show, watch a movie, without some sort of message about sex and sexuality being pumped into our brains. And now we have the pornographic revolution that has come with the internet, and we are overly inundated with sex and sexuality, and we have some competing views in our culture where we both, we say things like, when two people love one another very much, and we act like sex comes out of this emotional, deep connection, and it's designed to be love, and we call it lovemaking, and it's supposed to be this meaningful thing. And then we also, at the same time, will say, it's also kind of like a game of checkers, like just a recreational activity for enjoyment.
And it doesn't really mean anything at all, and it just kind of depends on how you approach it. And so what we need to do is to grow in our understanding of what the Bible says about it, how God originally designed it, because He's the one who invented it. I heard someone put it this way. God created Adam and Eve, put them in a garden, naked. He did not come back later and go, Oh my goodness, what are you doing? Like, He came up with the idea.
He invented it. He made it for a purpose, for a reason. And God's design for sex was to exist inside of this covenant relationship and to be a covenant renewal ceremony. So throughout the Bible, God makes covenants with His people, and then He has physical Acts, physical, tangible reminders that they go through to remind themselves of their covenant. So an example of that for us is my wife and I got married six, seven years ago, and we stood up in front of people and we held hands and we like said things to each other and we repeated after this guy and then we had to keep holding hands while he talked and I would kind of forget what we were doing and let go of my wife's hands and she still fusses at me about that so that when I do premarital stuff with people, I say, Hey, hold hands the entire time or your wife will never forget it.
Because it was like it was just going on forever and I just kind of let go and be like doing like this. But during that, what we said was we were making an invisible commitment to one another. But then we said we're actually going to take something visible, a tangible reminder, and we're going to use this to remind ourselves and to show other people what our relationship is designed to be. We have an invisible, physical, emotional, personal attachment to one another, spiritual connection to one another, but we're going to take a symbol. And it wasn't this one because this is like I'm on my third one because I keep losing them.
But it was something very similar to this. And we put it on my hand. We put one on her hand. She still has the same one. And we celebrated that this is a physical reminder of this spiritual, emotional, invisible reality. And sex is designed to be that in marriage.
Now, it's not as public as this one. It shouldn't be. You're doing it wrong. But it is a tangible, physical reminder of your vows, of your covenant. It is a covenant renewal that is designed to be. It is a covenant renewal that is designed to say all of me belongs to all of you.
Everything I have, everything I am, everything I will be, I sacrifice and submit to you. That's celebration of the covenant that you have. And that is God's good design for sex. He made it as an intentional covenant renewal ceremony inside the context of marriage. So as we walk through the day, we're going to continue to talk about that definition.
We're going to continue to pull that up. And we're going to hold that up as our, this is what sex was designed to be. Therefore, this can't be correct. So as we walk through and look at these other things that we believe about sex, we're going to hold that up and keep saying, because this is true. So from the very beginning of the Bible, it lays that out as this is what sex is.
And so for the rest of scripture, anything that falls outside of a covenant marriage, anything that falls outside of any sexual activity that falls outside of that is considered sexual immorality. It's outside of God's good design. So that's why the Bible is going to treat so many other things as, no, you're not supposed to do that because God's good design for it was very specific. So we're going to actually find a lot of help as we study this in first Corinthians. So if your Bible looks like this, go to page 620.
I'll give you a second to get there. Then we're going to pray. And then we'll talk a little bit about what's going on here in this passage before we kind of dive in and begin to look at what Paul's saying here. Okay. Let's pray really quick.
God, we thank you for sex. We thank you for the good that it is. We pray, Lord, that we would rightly view it, rightly understand it, that we would see the beauty in your design for it in a way that might cause us to worship you. We pray, Lord, that married or single, we would rightly appreciate, view sex so that we might rightly love and worship you. We pray that as we study this today, Lord, you would give us clarity and wisdom and lead us to repentance where we've begun to believe lies about this good gift. In Jesus' name, amen.
So Corinth, think Las Vegas. So the city of Corinth was what happens here stays here kind of a place. It was a port city. They had a very lucrative sex slavery trade, sex trade, and a lot of prostitution. They had temples with prostitutes. They had other regular just prostitutes.
And then they had a very, people would come in. They would reload their ships. They would re-get supplies. And people would go visit prostitutes. And so that was a big thing in Corinth. And in the midst of that, Jesus saved some people.
A church was formed under Paul planting churches. And Paul's, in this letter, writing back and forth with the Corinthians and coaching them up. And so it honestly, it's a young church. It reminds us some of us, reminds me some of us, where we've got a lot of people who've just met Jesus. If we asked you a couple years ago, would you be following Jesus, you would have laughed. But now there's people who are repenting, following Jesus, and just trying to figure out what that means.
And so they're writing a letter to Paul, and they have all these questions about sex and sexuality because their culture has just bombarded them with how to think about it. It's kind of like this. If it's raining really hard, even if you get an umbrella, even if you put on a rain jacket, if it's just pouring, I mean sheets of rain, sideways rain, when you get inside, you are still wet. You did everything you could to cover up, but you're still wet. And Corinth's culture and our culture is similar when it comes to the concept of sex. We can do everything we want to to try to protect ourselves or guard ourselves, but some of it still soaks in.
Some of it still gets into our thought processes, into how we approach it. And so they're writing to Paul saying, isn't this true about sex? Isn't this true about sex? And Paul is going to be responding. And so everything we see in quotations, that's Paul saying, y'all said this. Here's your answer.
So it's a Q&A session with the church in Corinth. And surprisingly, they have a lot of the same thoughts and questions that we have. So we're going to go through and see what they ask and how Paul responds to help us better understand God's good design for sex. So chapter 6, verse 12. In quotations, he's quoting them. All things are lawful for me.
And then he says, but not all things are helpful. All things are lawful for me, but I will not be dominated by anything. So he's saying, okay, y'all said this, and it's in the context of sex. He said, y'all said this, and let me help answer that. So what they said was, all things are lawful for me.
And here's basically what their question was, what they were saying about sex. Question one is, isn't sex an individual and private matter? So when they say, all things are lawful for me, it's kind of like our phrase, well, it's a free country. What they're saying is, if it doesn't hurt anybody, if it's just my private business, why does it matter? Live and let live. If whatever I do in my own personal sphere doesn't matter.
And so sometimes this has been taught as what they were saying was, all things are lawful for me in Christ because Jesus has fulfilled the law for me. That's less likely because the Corinthian Christians weren't well-versed in the Old Testament and were significantly dealing with cultural issues. So really what they're saying is they're kind of repeating a cultural thing, which is, it's a free country. If I'm not hurting anybody, why does it matter? If it's my personal business, why does it matter? And so Paul gives a quick response to that and he's going to keep responding to it as he goes through the rest of the section.
But the first things he says are very helpful. So really, when we ask questions like this, there's an underlying belief system that makes us ask that. And so it's really the first lie that they believe and that we believe, because we say this same thing, is that sex is individualistic. That's the first lie that we believe when it comes to sex. That's what they were putting forth. Like, why does it matter?
It's just a private thing. Why does it matter what I do? Sex is individualistic. Now here's Paul's quick response to that. First of all, sex is an individualistic approach. Paul says it's not helpful.
And given the way he uses that phrase throughout the rest of his book, what he means is, nuh-uh. He's saying sex is not individualistic at all. It's not helpful. There are other people involved. So a quick recap of what sex is.
It's two people coming together. So when I say sex is just about me, then I'm doing it wrong because there's supposed to be two people coming together. It automatically means that there's someone else involved. So it can't just be an individualistic approach. It automatically affects other people. So Paul's response is no.
It's not individualistic. That's not a helpful way to approach it. Other people are involved. Other people, if you just approach it as what do I get out of it? If it's just a, it's about me and my enjoyment and my pleasure, then you've undercut and you don't even view it correctly. You're not approaching it correctly.
That's not helpful and that actually harms other people. And then he gives a response. So our immediate kind of pushback on that is, yeah, okay, sure, you can't say that sex with another person is just individualistic because other people are involved. But we've done a lot of work in our culture to make sex as individualistic as possible, primarily through pornography, that that can be enjoyed by yourself and does not harm anybody else. First of all, Paul's first response helps you because he says, no, it's not actually helpful in the context of community. Your life and decisions don't exist in a vacuum.
What you do does affect other people. And so when he says it's not helpful, he means it doesn't work well in the context of community, in the context of society. Looking at pornography creates a demand for pornography and pornography is videoed prostitution. It is videoed sex slavery. That's what the porn industry is. And studies are beginning to show that it seems that there's a link between pornography and an increase in sex slavery and sex trafficking because people are moving from what they're viewing to enacting that.
There's also a link now between males that view pornography and then how they treat a real female when they are with them in a very aggressive, domineering, physical, unromantic, unemotional way that is portrayed for them in pornography. And where young boys as early as 10 now is the average age of the boy seeks out pornography. At 12, most young men in advanced cultures that have the Internet have a significant exposure to pornography. A Canadian researcher went to do a study on porn use in college students, college males. When you do a study, here's how it works. You need the people you're studying and you need a control group so that you can compare them.
So if you were studying smokers of a certain age, you would need to find same gender, same age, non-smokers. The problem with his study was he couldn't find non-pornography users when he went to college age males. He could not find a control group large enough to use. So it would be like if everybody smoked and then you asked, does smoking affect you? And you said no. But then we also put out reports that said all humans get lung cancer by the age of 40.
It's just a thing that happens to humans. It's like, no, if we had a control group that showed non-smokers, we'd realize that wasn't a human problem. And so the problem with his study was he couldn't find people who had not been significantly exposed to pornography, and some of them for over 10 years. And here's what happens. That affects how they view females, how they approach females. It affects all the females who are looking at pornography, how they view males, how they approach males.
It becomes an unhelpful problem. But here's Paul's second response to that. But I will not be dominated by anything. When we approach sex in an individualistic way, specifically for our culture through pornography, it becomes very addictive. Sex was designed to be addictive anyway. It sets off the same pleasure sensors in your brain that other addictive drugs do.
So you were designed by God to become more addicted to your spouse. That was the way sex was designed. And inside the covenant of marriage, that's beautiful. Outside of it, that's kind of scary. Because it creates an addiction that is crushing people in our culture, that is crushing through pornography. There's a lady named Naomi Wolf.
She's just been doing some research on this. She was an analyst or an advisor to several different presidents, President Clinton being one of them. She wrote an article called The Porn Myth. And so here's what she says in that. But does all this sexual imagery in the air...
She's not a Christian, by the way. She's just been studying this. Does all this sexual imagery in the air mean that sex has been liberated? So we act like we're free, we're open about it. Sex is free. It's liberated.
Or is it the case that the relationship between the multi-billion dollar porn industry, compulsiveness, so addiction being dominated by it, and sexual appetite has become like the relationship between agribusiness, processed food, supersized portions, and obesity? If your appetite is stimulated and fed by poor quality material, it takes more junk to fill you up. But people are not closer because of porn, but further apart. People are not more turned on in their daily lives, but less so. Mostly when I ask about loneliness... She goes around to colleges and speaks to young adults a lot.
Mostly when I ask about loneliness, a deep, sad silence descends on the audience of young men and young women alike. They know they are lonely together, even when conjoined, and that this imagery, porn, is a big part of that loneliness. What they don't know is how to get out. Because of an individualistic approach to sex, which is not how sex was designed, it crushes our ability to have meaningful relationships because we only begin to respond well to pornography, and we begin to hold everybody up, every significant other, every person as a sex object, or we compare them to past relationships, or past videos that we have watched, and it begins to erode our ability to appropriately approach sex in the way that God designed.
I saw a guy doing a TED Talk, and he said that one of the problems with this, one of the problems with constant pornography viewership and then having real relationships, is that pornography viewership cuts out all of the beautiful stuff about sex, like conversation, laughter, touching with your hands, kissing, emotional connection. It turns it into this really male-dominated, aggressive, twisted, constantly changing to other things, and he said it erodes a lot of the beautiful... He said when he used to fantasize, this is not a Christian guy, he's just talking through this, that he used to think about having a conversation, and where that would lead, and how he... And he said once he began to view porn all the time, that wasn't there anymore.
There was no more intimate, emotional connection, because an individualistic approach to sex dominates us, becomes addictive, begins to control how we view it, and takes it out of what God designed it to be, which was not individualistic at all. So the major problem with this is this is a massive misunderstanding of what sex is. Sex was designed to be not just for personal pleasure and fulfillment, although that's a part of it, but it was to be complete surrender. It was to be you making yourself vulnerable and giving yourself to someone else for their pleasure and their enjoyment in the context of a covenant marriage.
Because it was a covenant renewal ceremony, because it was a pouring yourself out on behalf of another, the way you are in life in a covenant, in marriage in a covenant, sex becomes a gracious response and a gracious, humble giving yourself to someone else. And when it's approached in an individualistic manner, it's robbed of that. So this can be seen in dating, where someone just uses another person for sex. A person, a lot of times we see this as in males, but it can be anybody, just uses someone for sex, and once they have sex, they just move on, because that was the only goal. So they've treated a person with a soul, made in the image of God, like nothing more than an object.
This same individualistic approach can be seen in marriage, where somebody is just, I want to have sex right now. That's it. That's my approach. And you need to have sex with me, regardless of context, regardless of how you feel. And on the other side of that, someone who in marriage is never in the mood. So that as long as that's the hurdle, I don't feel like it.
And all that is on both sides of that fence is just sex exists for my individual pleasure. So if I want it, let's go. Or sex exists for my individual pleasure. So if I don't want to, no. And that's still the same approach. These aren't just problems for single people.
This is a problem with how we view sex in general. C.S. Lewis says that this approach to sex, that this idea of sex without covenant is like chewing food and then spitting it out without swallowing it and digesting it, which does not leave us more satisfied, but more hungry, which ultimately guts eating food of what it was designed for in the first place. Question two, they ask. So Paul's response to the first question, the question two, they ask.
He spends a little more time here because he's also still addressing the first question. 13. Food is meant for the stomach and the stomach for food. So they say, okay, Paul, food's meant for the stomach, the stomach for food, which what they're really asking is, isn't sex just an appetite? Isn't it just an appetite? Isn't it just like, okay, Paul, let me break this down for you.
I have a stomach. My stomach sends signals to my brain. It says I'm hungry. My brain sends signals to my hands. I grab food. I stick it in my mouth.
It goes to my stomach. My stomach exists because food exists and food exists because my stomach exists. And that's the same way that sex works. I have sexual parts and sexual urges and they exist in relation to one another. It's just an appetite. I love that this question is in here because we think we have progressed so far.
We are so far beyond all of those morons that used to live in history because I have Google. I'm so much smarter than everybody else who knew how to actually do things. I can just read about things and that makes me smart because I can buy shoes from Reebok. I don't know how to make shoes, but I can buy them. I'm smarter than all of these people. We just, history has just moved forward and progressed.
And here's the thing. We say stuff like this. We say stuff like, it's just a private matter. We say stuff like, sex is just an appetite as if we've moved on and outgrown. That argument's 2,000 years old. They have the same thoughts, same questions.
I got a stomach. I eat. I have sexual organs. I sex, right? Thank you, Paul. You are dismissed.
I have defeated you with logic. And so Paul responds. And this is really the second lie that we believe about sex comes from this, this idea that sex is just an appetite, is that sex is consumeristic. It's just a consumer good. It is designed for us to partake in however we feel because it's just an appetite. Now here, sex is, does have a desire that goes along with it, does have appetite that goes along with it, but it's not just that.
And it's not the same as eating food because if you don't eat food, you will die. And although some people in our culture might would argue that not having sex will kill you, it will not. Sex is not just physical. That's the argument being made here. It's just physical. It's just an exchange of goods, just a physical enjoyment.
And so Paul responds. One of the best examples of this in our culture right now, I believe, is the app Tinder. Tinder is an app, for those of you who are not familiar. It's on a smartphone. You take a picture of yourself and I think there's a little bit of information, but it's not like bogged down by information about the human. It's mostly just the picture.
And then you just swipe one way or the other to like the human or unlike the human. I don't know what it's called. It's just called swiping and it's become like a manic. People do this all day long, looking at people and swiping one way or the other they're based off of. And really what it is, this is a very advanced form of human shopping. It is a handheld brothel in so many ways.
Now, some people would say, no, no, no. You can make real, meaningful connections through Tinder. And that's what I'm using it for. Okay, maybe. The majority of people aren't. The person on the other side swiping your picture probably isn't.
And if you've been on Tinder for a while, via the text and pictures they have sent you, you might have picked up on that. It is a lineup of humans with souls that we have reduced to a quick ability to say, nope, don't like that one. Nope, don't like that one. Yes, yes, yes. Nope. Nope.
Yes. It's a brothel app. It's used that way. There's an article in Vanity Fair that is a very difficult read because of how painful it is to see how devastating this is. Now, you may say, okay, but hold on a second. Isn't that what people do when they go to bars?
Isn't that the same thing people have been doing forever when they showed up and looked around for a person to talk to? Yes. In a lot of ways. We've just become more efficient. In that article in Vanity Fair, they're talking to three guys and they say, why do you like Tinder so much? A couple of different things.
They said it was easy to meet Tinderellas. They said, it used to be you'd have to go to a place like a bar, put forth energy. You can only talk to one, two, maybe three girls a night. But on Tinder, you can be in 15 conversations at once and one of the other guys piped in and you don't have to spend any money. And they were like, yes, that's good too. Now, that's people shopping, but it grows out of how we've begun to approach sex.
It ought to be free. It ought to be easy. It ought to be simple. Humans exist for my pleasure. Sex is a consumer good. We ought to be able to line this up easily.
We ought to be able to get supply and demand connected. And so, Paul is going to respond to this, I have a stomach, it's designed for food argument. This sex is just an appetite. This lie that sex is consumeristic. And so, Paul responds with a couple of things that I find very helpful. Food is meant for the stomach and the stomach for food and God will destroy both one and the other.
The body is not meant for sexual immorality, but for the Lord and the Lord for the body. Okay, his first response is very helpful. First of all, sexual immorality, when you see that in the Bible, mostly coming from the Greek word pornea, which is just sexual junk drawer. It really means all sex outside of God's covenant designed for marriage, all sexuality outside of God's covenant designed for marriage. So, everything, if you're thinking, well, does it include this? Yes.
Yes, it does. All of the sexual activity outside of marriage because making a list would have taken too long and then we would have invented something new and said, that's not in there. So, it's just everything outside of God's covenant design. He says, your body is not meant for sexual immorality, but for the Lord. Here's what he's saying. Sex is not ultimate.
That does not sound profound. It's very helpful for our culture. You can live your entire human life and never have sex and be fine. I'm going to go over here and say that. You can live your entire human life and never have sex and be fully complete and fully satisfied and fully human be fine. Jesus came and was single.
He is the God as a human perfection held up for us and he lived his entire life, never got married, never had sex. This is so bizarre to our culture that we make up. Obviously, he had to have secret lovers. Obviously, he's got some lineage somewhere. Obviously, this effeminate drawing here is not a boy, but it's some kind of a girl who's not very pretty. But what are you going to do?
Like, sorry, that was a very Da Vinci Code stuff there. If you haven't, you don't know what I'm talking about, that's fine. I was like, that got weird. Yeah, it did. It did. Read it.
It gets weird. It's so bizarre to us, but the truth is your body does not exist for sex. You will not die. You are okay. You can live your entire life and never have sex. Sex is not ultimate.
You were given a body designed for God and His glory and His worship. You were made in the image of God to reveal what He is like to the rest of creation. And that doesn't have to be sex. That's very helpful and sadly profound for us. Next thing He says, so first of all, you don't have to have sex. You're okay.
You were designed for something else, something bigger, something better. And God raised the Lord and will also raise us up by His power. Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ? He's talking to Christians. He's saying, don't you know Jesus' covenant love that He's already poured over you that when you place faith in Him, He made you His and He loves you. You are His bride and He's made you one with Him.
You're part of His body. You're members of Christ. Like, you know, like your arm is a member of your body. That's what He means there. Shall I then take the members of Christ and make them members of a prostitute? Okay, so this is getting deeper than we understand.
So let's keep moving here. Members of a prostitute never, or do you not know that he who is joined to a prostitute becomes one body with her? Okay, two things we need to know. One is, prostitution was the big socially acceptable way to have sex outside of your marriage. That's why He refers to prostitution. That was the big Corinthian way, perfectly fine, socially acceptable way to have sex outside of a covenant marriage.
So people were married young and you weren't specifically interested in having a good sexual relationship with your spouse. Wives were not allowed to have sexual relationships outside of their marriage relationship or they were in big trouble, but men could do whatever they wanted to and going and visiting a prostitute was perfectly normal, sexually acceptable way to have a sexual outlet. So, when He talks about prostitution in our culture, that honestly includes most everything. There are really three things that our culture is going to say aren't okay when it comes to sex and sexuality, just culturally.
Anything forced? Not okay. Anything with children of a certain age? Like, we kind of have an age limit on it. Not okay. And the third one is cheating and that one's more of a gray area for people, but mostly frowned upon.
Cheating's not good. So, those are kind of the only three. So, when He says prostitution, He's talking about the way they would have approached sex outside of a covenant relationship. And so, for us, He really just means all the sexual things that we're kind of okay with when He's talking about prostitution. Does that make sense? Tracking there?
Some of you are. Cool. Okay. Okay. Do you not know this is 16? Or do you not know that he who is joined to a prostitute becomes one body with her?
Okay. That's not very profound if you just take it for what He's saying. He has to mean something deeper because what He just said is do you not know that he who's joined with a prostitute is joined with a prostitute? Yep. Like, if He just means physical, that sentence isn't helpful and doesn't make a lot of sense. But what He's doing is He's approaching sex the way the Bible always does, which it is much deeper than physical.
Much more going on than just the physical act. So when they say, isn't sex just an appetite? Isn't it just physical? Isn't it just a consumer good? Paul says, no. It's not.
There's so much more going on. The same reason that we in our culture know that there's a difference between physical abuse and sexual abuse. because there's more going on there than just a physical interaction. Paul's acknowledging that there's much more to sex than physical, that it's actually emotional, psychological, spiritual. There's a pastor in New York. He wrote a book called The Meaning of Marriage. In one of his chapters on sex, he says this.
I think it's helpful. The Bible says, do not unite with someone unless you are also willing to unite with the person emotionally, personally, socially, economically, and legally. Don't become physically naked and vulnerable to the other person without becoming vulnerable in every other way. Because you have given up your freedom and bound yourself in marriage. So Paul's point here is that sex is wrong and out of place in all other circumstances than inside of this covenant.
Because it means more. So the Bible's argument is not that you have too high a view of sex. The Bible argues that you have too low a view of sex. The Bible's going to push us that we don't believe enough about sex. That we don't have high enough view about sex. That's the Bible's point.
The reason we're willing to flippantly have sex, the reason we treat it the way we do is not because we value sex too much but we value it too little. We don't understand all that's happening there. This is, sex creates a deep connection. It's a symbol of an invisible reality. That's what it was designed to be. That's how it functions all the time.
So here's what happens. Let me help you out here. During sex, when you have an orgasm, your body fires off a bunch of chemicals like explosions in your head. They are designed to create addiction. Same pleasure centers we talked about that earlier. They're designed to bond you to whatever is causing that.
In your head. They are designed to create addiction. Same pleasure centers we talked about that earlier. They're designed to bond you to whatever is causing that. There's multiple brain chemicals that take place during this that are designed to connect you far beyond a physical interaction. Some of the same chemicals that are given off when a mother breastfeeds, the skin-to-skin contact stuff, it's become real big recently so they've been pushing for men to have skin-to-skin contact
With their babies because mothers get to and it helps you bond to the baby and so that was one of the things they talked about like in the hospital I should have some skin-to-skin contact with Archer and so when they first went to hand me him they were like here you want to hold him and I was like yeah let me take my shirt off first and they were like okay and I was like I'm kidding and they were like well a lot of dads do that and I was like I didn't mean to mock them
I just I was a joke I'm sorry just give me the baby not doing it I'm not stripping down to hug a baby it's not happening sorry if that's you you go for it bro that's great proud of you it was just one of my things but there's something to the chemicals there that take place with a mother bonding to a baby with the skin and it happens during sex and it is designed by God
Who invented sex to make you addicted to your spouse to make you more aroused by your spouse whatever is causing this interchange whatever is causing this explosions in your head it almost slows everything down for you to suck it all in so it becomes a smell it becomes the context of what's going on it becomes the person this is why this becomes so devastating
Outside of a covenant marriage so beautiful here so beautiful that God designed you to become more and more addicted to each other that is beautiful and it becomes almost horrifying when you take it out of that context because your body is designed to latch on to people and you have to begin to if you're having casual sex
With people you have to begin to harden your heart on that you have to begin to shut that off you have to begin to over time grow callous to that so that you're not hurt over and over and over again this is why relationships become much harder to break off once sex enters the picture it's why people stay in relationships with morons because they've begun to do something that happens
On an emotional psychological spiritual basis where God's bringing them together designed and they feel like they owe the person something the person owes them something they become beholden to one another and they shouldn't be this is why pornography addiction becomes such a problem because you're rewiring your brain
To be all the things that were designed for you to soak in and be aroused by it's now being alone looking at a screen clicking changing from image to image novelty whereas in marriage it's designed to be so many other things so Paul says don't you know when you have sex when there's sexual interaction with another person so much more
Is happening here Bible clearly teaches that sex is designed for the context of marriage and the reason that we approach it the way we do is because we have too low a view of it not that we think too high of sex but too little of it so or do you not know that he who is joined to a prostitute becomes one body with her
For it is written the two will become one flesh so he's talking back Genesis he brings it up again and says this is this is why this is a problem because it was designed for something else but he who is joined to the Lord becomes one spirit
With him so he's saying you already have this relationship this fulfillment in Christ you don't need to pursue it other places and then he says this flee from sexual immorality every other sin a person commits is outside the body but the
Sexually immoral person sins against his own body or do you not know that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit within you whom you have from God so he says flee flee from
Sexual immorality we're pretty terrible at this flee means be afraid and run as fast as your little feet can carry you that we should have such a high view of sex that we should run from anything
That would lead us outside of what it was designed to be we should flee from it for some of us practically that means putting some blocker things on your computer that means having a dumb phone that only receives phone calls and is
Almost useless that means having some very serious conversations with the person that you're dating about where you're going to go ahead and pre-build in some lines build some fences in your brains to protect yourselves that means that maybe
Netflix and chill isn't an option for you because chill becomes way less chill after a while that you just have to build some ways that we're going to run from this and that's difficult but the reason we don't run is that we
Believe lies about sex we don't understand what it was designed to be so we're willing to toy with it a lot more when it actually has a lot more power and a lot more value than we understand man then Paul says this which means a lot to them and I'm going to try to
Help us understand it do you not know this is verse 19 do you not know that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit within you whom you have from God you are not your own for you were bought with a price so glorify God in your body they were not far removed from the slave trade the way to gain freedom from slavery
Was to be bought out of it that was it you were enslaved or you were bought out of slavery so when he says you are bought with a price what he's referring to is that when Jesus Christ went to the cross and gave up his life on our behalf he paid our debt to set us free
From slavery that we do not have to be enslaved to anything but that we were bought with a price and owned by Jesus who purchased us by his blood and who loved us so much to pursue us so far as to go to the cross and die for us to make us his you're not
Your own if you're a Christian you've already been bought you've already been purchased by a much better slave owner by a much better king who set you free from everything else so that you might enjoy a real true depth of relationship with him when it comes to our approach to sex
Paul says hey you don't have to be a slave to it it doesn't have to own you don't have to be a slave to your appetites you don't have to be a slave to your own personal desires you've been purchased by Jesus to be free and only through Christ can we actually find freedom so then they
Move on to the next question which is kind of a reaction against the first two questions I can almost see the Corinthian church wrestling over this and people being like okay we'll put this in the letter put this in the letter and someone's like no put this in the letter and so he gets to this
Next thing he says now concerning the matters about which you wrote so he's saying okay now you've said this verse chapter seven it is good for a man not to have sexual relations with a woman okay so sex isn't just individualistic it's not just consumeristic there's a group in Corinth saying no no no no
Just no sex whatsoever right like shouldn't we just avoid sex whatsoever so the third question is isn't sex dirty like isn't it just kind of wrong like there's you see so much abuse of it you see this handled so poorly shouldn't we just avoid it that's the third question and it kind of lines up with the third lie we believe which is that sex is dirty or it's at best a necessary evil like sex is good because it makes other
Humans and we should have other humans but that's really it and this this I think has been taught in the church some some people could kind of sum up with what the church has taught at times not not it's we've been fixing this I think but there are some churches who basically taught sex is gross and dirty and wrong save it for your spouse and give them that gift when you get married that's so beautiful thank you so basically they're saying shouldn't we just react against this and avoid this and it best to just
Not have sex at all I remember when Anna and I were going through marriage counseling we just the the church has just kind of avoided this in some ways I remember going through marriage counseling it was like a one session thing and the pastor flipping through a book and talking to us about like do you have a budget just different things and he flips over in his book and like the heading said sex and he goes now when you get married you you'd be able to have sex do y'all have any questions about that
And I couldn't do it I couldn't bring myself to do it I really wanted to be like I have a lot of questions I hope you got a lot of time on your hands no I just we're just like no and he goes well good here's some books you can read and he just moved right along and the truth is this our culture has a lot to say about sex and the church has just kind of avoided it I know parents a lot of times Christian parents don't want to talk to their children about sex if you're not talking to your kids about sex television is their friends are the internet
Is at some point we got to step in and start redeeming this picture and so this response was isn't it dirty shouldn't we just avoid it and Paul begins to answer this question so here's what he says now concerning the matters about which he wrote verse one it is good for a man not to have sexual relations with a woman he says okay but because of the temptation to sexual immorality each man should have his own wife and each woman her own husband what he's not saying is everyone has to get married because you may be tempted what he is saying is pursue marriage if you are overly tempted
Towards sexual things you need to reign that in but you can pursue marriage it's perfectly fine to desire marriage that is not wrong you should not feel bad it's perfectly fine to have a desire for sex that's that is it is a desire it is an appetite it's not just that it's not just a consumer good but he's saying yeah you can pursue marriage to keep you from sin each man should have his own wife and each woman her own husband the husband should give to his wife her conjugal rights and likewise the wife to her husband for the wife does not have authority over her own body but the husband does likewise the husband does not have authority over
His own body but the wife does okay first of all don't get caught up on the word conjugal I know it sounds prison-y it's not he's just saying when you're married you should have sex and then he says something that is mind shattering in their culture he starts off by saying the husband owns the wife's body and there were people just not in the law correct that is true you are right Paul when I married her I own her now I can do what I want she does whatever I want and then he says the wife owns the husband's body and people got whiplash they were like read that part again in that letter where he said that crazy stuff because they didn't believe that they
Believe that the wife belonged to the husband that was it and what Paul says is no let me tell you a few things that you've misunderstood about sex first of all it's good you should have sex with each other and your marriage was designed to be a place where there was enjoyable sex so they would have approached it as you got married to have kids and then if you want to have enjoyable sex you would just pursue that outside of marriage what he's saying is no marriage is designed to be a place filled with enjoyable sex and for the enjoyment and pleasure of one another both the wife to her husband and husband to her wife and so then he follows that up with this for the husband should give his wife this is verse 3 husband should give to his wife
Her conjugal rights and likewise the wife to her husband for the wife does not have authority over her own body but the husband does likewise the husband does not have authority over his own body but the wife does do not deprive one another except okay so he's gonna give us the reasons why you can deprive one another perhaps okay except perhaps is like he's limiting this down by agreement okay this has got this is a lot of caveats here Paul for a limited time joke for real except perhaps by agreement for a limited time so Paul's not married he doesn't have anything to gain from this he's just explaining how this works so he says you you own her she owns you you should have sex with each other except perhaps if you both agree for a little bit of
Time so he like even if you agree we're gonna take a year off Paul's gonna say nope I don't care if you agree on that limited time that you may devote yourselves to prayer okay y'all you've been having so much sex you ain't praying y'all might need to take to agree to fast from it for the purposes of prayer what else but then come together again okay that was it that's the only one he gives but then come together again and he says this so that Satan may not tempt you because of your lack of self-control okay that's massively helpful and sounds a little bit crazy to us and here's why that sounds a little bit crazy to me okay I it is odd I mean maybe odds not the right word doesn't happen often I guess that's another way of saying odd but for people to get married and have the same sexual desire on the sexual desire scale it doesn't always happen
So sometimes you have a wife who has more desire for sex a husband who has more desire for sex culturally we act like it's always the husband that would but that's not true like it it just kind of ranges and so here's what Paul says here's what I would have thought he would have said but because I have kind of a wrong view about sex but here's what I thought what he would have said y'all need to agree what works for both of y'all if one of you likes to have sex more than the other person should have more sex but one of you likes to have sex less than this person who likes it more should have less sex y'all should kind of come to an agreement and figure out what works for y'all and and mutually agree on that it's not what he says what he says is your body doesn't belong to you you give conjugal rights to your spouse and you do not deprive one another which sounds to me like that's not really fair to the person who doesn't
Like to have sex as much here's why he says it if sex is individualistic and consumeristic what Paul just said is wrong and harmful and kind of rude to the person who doesn't like sex as much but if sex is a covenant renewal ceremony that always means more and was designed for you to sacrifice be vulnerable and give yourself to another then what Paul says makes a lot of sense that you in marriage are designed sex isn't for your own pleasure so if one of you desire sex more the person who desires it less should give graciously servingly because sex always means more always accomplishes more it's not just a personal desire it's not just a if I want to if I don't want to or for my own personal pleasure it's for the other it's for the other person for a mutual service and sacrifice to one another and it always accomplishes more so in marriage when we act like if I don't feel like it we shouldn't have sex and you should calm down
To not want to have sex all the time and maybe you're more gracious than the way I just put that but when we treat it that way what we are saying is I still believe sex is individualistic and consumeristic now for the person who desires sex more in marriage you can still be approaching sex in an individualistic consumeristic way I want to have sex I enjoy sex I don't care what you say don't pull this out Paul Bible naked don't do that not helpful and you're wrong you should repent your approach is not sacrificially serving and pursuing your spouse so if you if you're in a marriage and one person desires to have sex more often than the other person both of them need to consider each other the person who desires it more needs to figure out how to pursue their spouse and the perfect person who desires it less needs to figure out how to serve their spouse and once sex becomes a way to give to one another a way to pleasure
One another that your focus is less on yourself and more on your spouse then it becomes very beautiful and exactly what it was designed to be that I'm giving myself to you the same way I've given myself to you in marriage I sacrifice everything I have belongs to you for your good and your enjoyment and when both of spouses are saying that and approaching it that way it can become very beautiful and very enjoyable and it takes a lot of work and it's very difficult but Paul gives something else he doesn't just say sex is given sex is poured out for the other he does say that give realize that in sex in a marriage you are giving yourself to another you're not taking from them it's not for your own personal enjoyment you are figuring out how to give them enjoyment Tim Keller in his book where he talked about sex he said once sex becomes what's the most enjoyable thing about sex becomes giving enjoyment to
Your spouse then it becomes what it was designed to be then it becomes very beautiful but here he says this too he gives another reason for this this is helpful for single and married people I'm in first Timothy for some reason so give me a second here we go I was like this doesn't look right do not deprive one another except perhaps by agreement for a limited time oh you don't have sex you wanted to pray let's pray sorry okay anyway for a limited time to devote yourselves to prayer then come back together again so that Satan may not tempt you because of your lack of self-control sex because of the covenant power that it has is actually a guard for your marriage against the enemy against a lack of self-control how the enemy works towards bitterness and anger and towards leading us away from our spouse let me tell you something about Satan's real we've talked about that
Before I could probably point you to a message that we've already said if you're confused by that or questioning that but Satan's real he's actively at work against us when Bible talks about Satan it's not just the main Satan guy it's always his forces in the world but here's how they work prior to marriage Satan wants you in bed because that goes against God's good beautiful covenant design and after marriage Satan wants you out of bed at least with your spouse because that goes against God's good covenant design so when I do premarital with couples and they're like yeah okay well we're struggling with sex right now but when we get married it'll be fine no that's a misunderstanding of how sin works what you're currently saying having sex prior to marriage is this is an area where we won't submit to Jesus this is an area where I'm going to hold what I believe above what he says and prior to marriage that
Means a lot of sex but after marriage that means a lot of withholding a lot of bitterness a lot of selfishness and a lot of not sex because the enemy works to bring us together prior to marriage and apart after marriage and one of the best defenses for your marriage is to covenantally continually give yourself to each other okay six finish here now as a concession not a command I say this what he's talking about is you don't have to get married because he says I wish all were as I myself am he's not married so he's saying I wish all of you could be not married and be okay so I'm not saying you have to get married I'm saying that if you do get married this is how it ought to work I wish all were as myself am but each has his own gift from God one of one kind and one of another the Bible is going to say that singleness is a
Gift and marriage is a gift and God graciously give some people with singleness don't use that against single people like what's a gift when they're like struggling with their singleness don't don't pull that out to like harm them like well just enjoy your gift why don't you shut up it's but it is a gift is God gifts singleness to some people the ability to be single and he gives marriage to some people and the only way either one of them works is for us to realize that Jesus bought us out of slavery with his covenant love to make us his when you are single it is so easy to believe if I just had a spouse I wouldn't be lonely I'd be full I'd be complete I could just get married I'd be okay and the only way to live single is to know the love that Jesus has for you and the fulfillment that is found only in him that he pursued you to the point of death on a cross to make you his and it's so easy when you're
Married to think you're supposed to fulfill me you're supposed to complete me you're not doing that right now and I'd be much happier if I could just be single or if I could find the right person you're obviously not it and the only way to exist in the covenant relationship that we're designed to exist in where we give ourselves continually regardless of what we're getting back is for us to be so filled up by Jesus and his love for us that we're free that we've been set free from slavery to our appetite set free from slavery to our individual desires to just love the person we're married to and just sacrifice and give John Donne is a poet he wrote he's lived in England during the Renaissance and he wrote a poem and he ends it this way he's talking to God take me to you imprison me for I accept you enthrall me never shall be free so he's saying God take me lock me up with you and unless I'm enthralled by you I'm going to be a slave to everything else unless you
Enthrall me never I never shall be free and then he says nor ever chased except you ravish me chased means sexually pure and so he says I'll never be sexually pure unless I'm so overwhelmed and filled up by you this is impossible and that's what Paul's saying here we've been bought with a price that God in his grace has gifted us and equipped us and the only way single people that you can remain single and have joy is to lean into Jesus and married people the only way you can remain married and have joy is to lean into Jesus then sex gets to be what it was designed to be not ultimate but a good gift from God for the covenant of marriage and we get to be free free from sex free from individualistic desires free from consumeristic desires and free to just love our spouses serve them be gracious towards them bands gonna come back up we're gonna sing and make much of Jesus who through the gospel went to a cross on our behalf to set us free who the God of the universe who designed
Things for our good for our joy for his glory some some single people in here you need to begin to you need to begin to flee need to begin to rightly view sex so that you're not putting yourself in compromising situations you need to be running from it for the sake of what it was designed to be as you glorify God realizing it's not ultimate need to begin to lean into Jesus and know know that it's his love that that sets you free and gives you hope and joy and fulfillment married couples needs to be some repentance over believing one of those three lies or some version of all three that sex is individualistic it exists for my pleasure until you treat your spouse like an object sex is consumeristic so if I want to or don't want to that's final I don't eat when I'm not hungry I eat when I'm hungry if I want to have sex we should have sex if I don't want to have sex we shouldn't have sex you need to pray about that and repent because sex was meant to be given and for those of you who have treated sex as a necessary evil in your marriage I
Pray that God would help you see the the beauty that he designed for it and how it protects your marriage and guards your marriage makes you addicted to one another need to have some gracious conversations so you might begin to have a sexual relationship as God lays it out he's not against sex if you believe he is read the Song of Solomon it's not against it he invented it was designed to be good and it's for us to graciously give and serve one another in a way that strengthens our marriages so I pray that we would see Jesus setting us free from selfishness and sin so that for single people there can be no sex whatsoever and you'd be fine for married people there can be a lot of sex that continues to draw you closer to one another and all of us realize it's not ultimate it's not where happiness comes from it's not what fills us up that we're free because Jesus sets us free let's pray God we thank you
That you're good thank you for your love for us that you give us hope that we don't need anything but you and that you give us other good gifts to enjoy that get to point back to you and glorify you in distinct and beautiful ways I pray God that you would work on our hearts that there might be repentance for the single people in here who've been wrongly viewing sex that you'd set them free that you'd let them run to you who've died for them to set them free that you're not going to crush them but love them and welcome them for the married couples in here who've been viewing sex wrongly
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