This is the second of a series of three talks that I am giving on the subject of sexuality. Last week I spoke about sexuality and our identity: I made the case that we need each other – whether male or female, homosexual or heterosexual. Next week I am looking at sexuality and singleness. This week we are going to look at what the bible teaches about sex.

There is a story of a vicar who was invited to give a talk on sex at the local girl’s school. He thought, “I can’t put that in my diary; “Sex at girl’s school” – what would people think?” So he wrote in his diary: “Sailing at girl’s school”. However, being a vicar he was absent minded, and simply forgot to mention it to his wife. The day before the talk the school secretary, who was checking up, phoned her up: “Do you know if your husband is still coming to speak here?” She looked in his diary. “Yes, it’s there”, she said, “but it really surprises me that he agreed to speak on that subject. He has very little experience. If I remember correctly he has only done it three times. The first time he couldn’t do it; the second time he was sick; and the third time, his hat blew off”.

We move on quickly! Some of you will want me to say that what goes on in a persons bedroom between consenting adults is up to them, and that it is none of our business. In one sense that is true: I cannot tell you what to think or to do. And what goes on in your bedroom is, unless you tell us, none of our business – and we should not jump to assumptions. But it is part of God’s business, because God is a full time God. He is God on Sunday mornings and he is God on Sunday nights.

God desires the best for you – and through you he desires to bring blessing to all. So God, contrary to what many people think, is not out to spoil our fun: his laws are given for reasons – not to crush us, but to grow us.

For instance, God does not say, “Do not commit adultery” .. and if you do I am going to wipe the floor with you. He says, “Do not commit adultery” .. because if you do, you are going to hurt yourself, you are going to hurt other people, and you are going to hurt society. And while, for instance, the bible has very little to say on homosexual orientation, so we have to draw out other principles, it does have a great deal to say on the use and abuse of sex. Actions have consequences, and nowhere is that seen clearer than when sex is misused.

Four things:

 

1. Sex is a gift from God and is good.

That needs to be said because the church has a bad record on this. The early Christians emphasised the virgin birth of Jesus, pointing to the fact that he was the Son of God; people put 2 and 2 together and made 5, and began to think that what made Mary special was not that she was chosen by God to be the mother of Jesus, but that she was a virgin.

One of the pictures that the NT uses for the second coming of Christ is that of a wedding: a marriage between him and his people, the church. Because the people of God have been made pure they are described as pure virgins.

And the apostle Paul, in 1 Corinthians 7 (vv29-31), urges people – if at all possible – to remain single and to remain virgins because, he says, the time is short: he expected Jesus to return literally any day – so there was no point in getting married.

So it was not surprising that people started to get a pretty low view of sex: particularly as many of the early church writers were monks. For instance, Augustine (c300 AD), was held back from coming to Christ because he had a mistress. He prayed a very famous prayer, “God, make me chaste, but not just yet”. He knew that he could not have her and have Christ. So when he was converted, when he did take Christ, he didn’t simply argue that having a mistress was sinful. He knows the power of lust to keep people away from Jesus, and so he argues that the act of sex is sinful. He goes further and argues that sin is transmitted from one generation to the next because we were conceived as a result of a sinful act, the act of sex of our parents.

Augustine’s view was based on an incorrect translation of Psalm 51.5: “In sin my mother conceived me”. It is better translated as, “Surely I was sinful at birth, sinful from the time my mother conceived me”. And actually the bible nowhere says that sex, in itself is sinful.

No. When God made Adam and Eve, the first command that he gave them was “Be fruitful and increase in number”: It is very hard to imagine how they were going to do this without having sex. God’s first command is to tell them to have sex! Genesis 2.24 (before the fall) states: “For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and they will become one flesh. The man and his wife were both naked, and they felt no shame”.

Judaism had no problem with sex: in fact married couples were encouraged to make love on the night after the Sabbath. It was right: they’d had time for each other; they’d been at the synagogue together: praying and hearing the word of God together; they had spent the day with family or friends together; they were relaxed. It was as it was meant to be.

The Song of Songs is an erotic love poem and the New Testament is no different. The first miracle Jesus does is at a wedding

Paul in 1 Corinthians 7 tells husbands and wives not to refrain from sex (apart from for brief occasions, “for your prayers”), but to see their bodies as belonging to each other (7.4)

And in Ephesians 5, Paul writes that the act of making love between a husband and wife, by which two – who are different – become one, is the model of the relationship between Christ and his church (5.31-32).

The key to how we are to understand the gift of sex is in 1 Timothy 4.4: It states: “For everything God created is good, and nothing is to be rejected if it is received with thanksgiving, because it is consecrated by the word of God and prayer.”

The bible sees sex as a gift of God: it is about two becoming one, complementarity – at a physical and emotional level. And what makes it even more special is that that out of this act of love, there is the potential that new life can spring into existence. Sex needs to be received with thanksgiving and it needs to be consecrated by prayer and the word. That is, we need to recognise it as gift from God (and not as our right), we give thanks for it, and we use it in accordance with God’s word.

Sex is good. The problems begin when sex is taken away from God: when it is not recognised as a gift, when it is not received with thanksgiving, and when it is taken outside the boundaries of the Word of God.

 

2. Sex is good when it is in the context of marriage

By marriage I mean the life-long relationship between a man and a woman who are sufficiently committed to each other to have made a public acknowledgement of that commitment.

Now, I am very aware that marriage as an institution has been abused. It was at the time of Jesus: it was incredibly one-sided, and often was simply a way for turning women into slaves. And when the women ceased to satisfy, they could be divorced, ditched – and a divorced woman was in a terrifying position: no income, no home, no social security, untouchable

But the answer to abuse is not non-use but right use. In fact the teaching of the bible on marriage is incredibly liberating. For a start, Jesus doesn’t diminish marriage but heightens it. He does so by challenging the right of men to divorce their wives on any and for any occasion (Matthew 5.31-32).

Marriage is meant to be a relationship of equality and complementarity: “Wives, your body does not belong to yourself but to your husband. Husbands, your body does not belong to yourself but to your wife” (1 Corinthians 7.4). And to husbands who, in the culture of the day, had authority in the marriage relationship, Ephesians 5 states, “In this same way, (as Christ loves the church and gave himself up for her) husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife, loves himself”. And 1 Peter warns husbands not to use their physical strength to get what they want: but to treat their wives with consideration and respect, recognising – and this is the important bit – that in heaven there will be no differences (1 Peter 3.7). And so Ephesians 5.21 states, “Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ”.

Marriage is the God given context for his gift of sex, and the God given context for bringing up children.

That is right because of the power of sex:

We live in a society that, in the words of Cardinal Murphy O’Connor, has trivialised sex. We have taken the gift of sex out of that loving committed relationship between man and woman, as something that should crown that relationship, into something that is our right, and that can be used simply for our own physical satisfaction.

Richard Curtis, in his many films, and particularly in Four Weddings and a Funeral assumes that you can play around with sex, sleep with as many people as you choose, until you are married. Then you need to stay faithful. I suspect that many people would go along with that view. BUT that is not using sex as God gave us sex to be used. It is asking for trouble.

a] When you have sex with a person you become one with them. You are part of them; they are part of you. 1 Corinthians 6.16 quotes from Genesis 2: “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”. When you tear two people who have become one apart, you will become less and they will become less. (tearing two cards apart that are stuck together). That means that when you do decide to publicly commit yourself to someone, to marry them, there will always be the spectre of the past. You will, whether you want to or not, be bringing the others into your relationship.

I remember hearing of one young woman who was being teased by her friends for still being a virgin: “Listen”, she said, “I can become like you any day I want. You can never become like me”.

b] Because sex is so powerful the desire for sex can control us. The film “40 Days” which according to the advert is about a young single man who makes a vow not to have sex for 40 days, but then meets someone who he fancies. Not having watched the film I do wonder what it is all about: one wonders where the words “wait”, or “self-control” are in all of this.

We become slaves: controlled by lust. The gift that God gave us, the gift of being able to give ourselves totally to the other, becomes instead the supremely selfish act. Sex is meant to be about the other. But it becomes about me.

Look at the words or gestures we use for casual sex: scoring, knocking someone off, getting laid – the stronger language is even more obvious. The other person becomes an object to satisfy me. I openly and blatantly use them – and the fact that they may openly and blatantly be using me, makes no difference.

The modern western view of sex is so opposed to Christianity: it treats another person as an object who exists to satisfy my desire. And so people talk of trial marriages: we want to see if we are good together in bed. Hang on a minute: listen to yourself. What you are saying is that you love the other person on the condition that she/he can sexually satisfy you, and that you can sexually satisfy him/her. That is not loving the other person; that is loving sexual satisfaction.

This is also true of the situation in which a couple might say, “We love each other: we want to sleep together”. But if you really do love the other person then you will desire the best for that other person: and the best for the other person is that they wait until they meet the person who they are prepared to commit themselves to, and who is prepared to commit themselves to them. Usually when people say, “We love each other: we want to sleep together”, what they are in fact saying is, “We love our desire more than we love the other person”. If you really do love the other person then you will be ready to wait for them.

c] Sex is so powerful because it is so creative: I’m talking about children! In the ideal world, children need a consistent and loving father and mother. All the statistics demonstrate it: if a child is brought up in a loving home and has positive male and female role models, they will do better. It is obvious really. The child will grow up in a world of men and women. They need a man and a woman.

However, we do not live in an ideal world. And whatever the reason: splitting up with a boyfriend, divorce, death - many of you here are doing a fantastic job of bringing up children on your own. But it is a burden – and it is something you were never meant to bear on your own. And it can also go very wrong: and we do see that in this neighbourhood.

I have a fear: we are going to pass the same burden onto the next generation. The girls are going to look at their mums and think: “When I grow up, I won’t need a man. I’m going to keep my independence”; and the boys are going to look at their dads and say, “When I grow up, no one is going to tie me down. I’m going to be free like Dad.”

It is said, and as a general rule it is usually the case, men want sex and women want the intimacy that comes from sex – and men use the women to get sex and women use sex because they think that they will get intimacy.

We need to challenge men: “There is more to life than sex. Don’t simply go round having sex, occasionally having kids and then walking away because it gets tough: you are messing with lives, and you need to take responsibility”. And to women: “You don’t have to say yes. If he is not prepared to wait, then he is not worth having. And I am aware that the body clock is desperately powerful, but don’t go and choose to get yourself pregnant, until you’ve got a good man – who is not already married – who is willing to commit himself to you, and who you will allow to take some responsibility”. Again someone said, and it seems to me to be very wise, “The best thing that a dad can do for his children, is to love their mum”.

The gift of sex has been badly abused; so has the gift of marriage: but that doesn’t make them any the less gifts. And they go together.

 

3. The gift of sex, like all other gifts, is given to build people up. It is a gift of love, to be used with love.

What goes on in the bedroom matters: Actions have consequences. Sex is not simply about satisfying both partners’ desires. Sex is about affirming the other person; it is about building them up. And so we have to ask ourselves, “Is what we are doing truly affirmative of both partners?” Does it affirm the other, me or does it crush the other, me?”

For instance, opposite this church is a shop that sells SM stuff – if you want to know what that is, look in the windows. Two partners may consent to play the bondage games, but in reality it cannot be affirmative of both partners: we are each unique, made in the image of God, made to be like Christ, made to be a ruler of this world for God, of equal value and of equal significance. So there is no place for forcing someone to have sex against her or his wishes, even in marriage. There is no place for certain kinds of sexual practice that I cannot mention in this context, which humiliate or degrade one or other of the partners. How we look at our partner in the act of sex will, more than anything else, affect how we look at them and at others the following day.

Basically we have a choice: we can say, “Other people exist to meet my needs and to satisfy my desires” (or vice versa: “I simpy exist to meet their needs and to satisfy their desires”), or we can say: “We are two unique and special individuals, working together, different people complementing each other and building each other up for the blessing of others”. That is the biblical understanding of what it means to be human

 

4. Sex: the unforgivable sin

There is a danger that as I have been speaking I have simply been making people feel guilty.

We look back at our lives: maybe you have been forced to have sex against your will (that is a completely different issue which I have not even touched on): all I will say is that, if that is the case, then you are the victim – and the first thing you probably will feel and the last thing you should feel is guilt.). You do not need forgiveness, but healing.

Or maybe you have chosen to be involved in sex that you wish you hadn’t been – and you feel very dirty; maybe you had sex before you were married; maybe you are not married now and living with someone – and thinking, he’s having a go at me: I am not; maybe you have had an affair, are having an affair, or are thinking of having an affair.

Well, sex is not the unforgivable sin. No. For a start it is not the biggest issue in the New Testament. I did a very crude word count. The bible, specifically the New Testament, does have a lot to say about sex, but it has far more to say about our use of money (money is mentioned 52 times; sex is mentioned 27 times); it has more to say about idolatry than adultery (idolatry 30 times, adultery 25 times); it has more to say about greed than lust (greed 15 times, lust 9 times); and it has more to say about hatred than immorality (hatred 39 times, immorality 31 times).

We all mess up: and we have been brought up in a culture that tells us it is OK to have sex with who we want when we want, so long as it’s OK by them. We are bombarded by images: in magazines, on TV and films, on the internet. Our society’s role models are certainly not models of chastity, sobriety and self-control. And we are told that having sex with different partners is normal, and it is right – because it feels good. More than that, we are told that someone who does not have sex when they could have sex is abnormal. I cannot see a clearer example of our society blaspheming against the Holy Spirit: calling what is wrong - good, and what is good – wrong.

When you and I were baptised or confirmed, you were asked a question: “Do you renounce the deceit and corruption of evil”. Evil is deceitful. It takes that which is given by God; that which is good and which is meant to build up – and it puts it in a wrong place – so that it becomes something that crushes. I suspect that many people here have been crushed by the lies that we have been told, and the lies that we have chosen to believe, about sex.

Jesus Christ came to set us free! He died for our forgiveness. He rose again, and is alive, so that we can go to him and receive the power to change the way that we are living. He does not wish for us to be controlled by our lust. And yes, we may fall and fall again, but we can go back to him – and repent and seek him.

Some of us may need to put things right: Maybe there are some of you here who have been together many years, you are committed to each other – but somehow the marriage bit has slipped: we’ll wait for that holiday, or till we’ve got a bit more money. No, make the public commitment: and at the same time set an example to a younger generation. If money is holding you back, talk to me. We can help.

Maybe you are having an affair or thinking of having an affair – could I urge you to stop it, now. God is speaking to you by the very fact that you happen to be here today, and I happen to be speaking about this.

If you are having casual sex, or maybe sleeping with a boy or girl friend, again, I urge you to stop. If they really love you – as a person, and not as an object - they will understand and wait for you. If they are not prepared to wait, then they are not right for you.

There are many good reasons why what the bible teaches about sex is right. It is for your good. And it is for the good of society. And usually we can see it if we are prepared to open our eyes. But I have to say that there may also be times when we cannot see the reason for what the bible teaches. And that is really difficult – especially with sex, because then the temptation is very strong, and obedience is very costly. But as baptised people, as people who have chosen to die to self and come alive to Christ, we say No to self, and Yes to God: and we seek him, and his strength

I was talking about this Sunday in the Wednesday evening bible study. And someone told me about a pastor who, in talking about sexual sin, had said: “God cannot restore your virginity. But he can restore your purity”. Think of David and Bathsheba. David had an affair with Bathsheba. It was an affair that led to murder. Many people’s lives were destroyed by that single sin. David lost his own son Absolom as a result of it. But when David repented, God was able to turn that sin into a real blessing. The son of David and Bathsheba was Solomon, and he was the great .. great .. great grandfather of Jesus. So God can turn what can seem to be our greatest disasters into things that can be used for Him and for the blessing of others.

I finish: Sex is a gift from God. Sex is for marriage. Sex is an act of love. We receive it with thanksgiving, and we consecrate it with prayer and the word of God.