“Good Sex”
(The Best It Can Be)
Genesis 1:26-32, Hebrews 13:4
Woodbury Presbyterian Church
February 4, 2007
Ian and Rose are sitting
quietly on the sofa one evening when all of a sudden Rose rolls up her magazine
and clobbers Ian on the arm. “That’s for 40 years of bad sex!” she barks. Ian
shakes it off, sits there bewildered for a moment then goes back to his
reading. After awhile he rolls up his newspaper and swats Rose on the arm.
“That’s for knowing the difference!”
I told that joke to my wife
when we were having lunch at Olive Garden. Just as I said, “That’s for 40 years
of bad sex,” the waiter walked up to take our order. He got a puzzled,
embarrassed look on his face and stammered, “Um, I’ll come back.”
You might be as shocked as
he was that we’re talking about sex in church. The church is supposed to be
spiritual and sex is physical. The church is supposed to be heavenly and sex is
so earthy. You might be even more surprised that we’re talking about “good
sex.” Isn’t that a Christian oxymoron? Doesn’t the church think sex is bad?
Dirty? Sinful? Doesn’t God frown on sex?
That terrible misconception
is exactly why I’m preaching this series of sermons. We live in a society that’s lost in a
labyrinth of sexual confusion. That confusion disorients us. It keeps us from
enjoying life the way God wants us to enjoy it – including our sex lives. So
we’re going to look at what God’s Word says about sex. God’s Word, of course,
is rich and layered, and we won’t cover everything in three short sermons. But
we will discover some refreshing truths. And we’ll remember some important
insights. And by the time we’re done many of us will not only have a better
understanding of sex, we’ll have a better experience of it, too. We’re going to
learn about good sex.
And the first thing we need
to remember is that sex is good. God says so. After all, He invented it. In
Genesis 1:28 God blesses the man and the woman, then He says to them, “Be fruitful and increase in number.” May I submit to you that when God said those words, He
understood the process involved? When He told them to be fruitful, He knew that
they would have to do the deed to plant the seed.
God said, “Be
fruitful and increase in number,”
and He didn’t add, “But try not to enjoy it!” In fact,
I suspect that when God said those words, He had a twinkle in His eye.
Think about how
God designed us. He gave us taste buds so we could savor scrumptious food. He
gave us eyes to behold the splendor of creation. You see where this is
going? Once I heard a stand up comedian
do a routine about God creating human beings. He said that when the Lord got to
making the reproductive organs, He must have said, “Angel, pass me another
handful of those nerve endings. I want my children to talk to me when they’re
making love!”
“Be
fruitful and increase in number.” That’s the first commandment God gave
us. And He designed us in such a way that obeying it would be fun!
Remember how the
first chapter of Genesis goes. God made plant life, and God said it was good.
Then God made the lights of the sky, and God said it was good. Then God made
fish and birds and animals, and God said it was good. Then God made man and
woman. And God told them, “Be fruitful and increase in number.” And
God said it was very good. Very good. God thinks sex is a great idea.
You may know
about the Christian couple who promised that when they got married they would
pray together every night before they went to bed. On their wedding night, when
they got to the honeymoon suite, and the young groom was eager to consummate
their marriage. But the bride said, “Wait! What about our promise?”
With that the
young man got up, knelt beside the bed and prayed, “Dear Lord, for that which
we are about to receive, we are truly grateful. Amen.” Now, that groom may have
had a lot to learn, but he had this much right: Sex is a good gift from God,
and God wants us to enjoy it.
That’s the good
news, but where’s the bad news? Here’s the thing: There is no bad news! There’s
no bad news, just more good news. God not only gave us sex as a gift to enjoy,
He told us how to enjoy it to
the max. He designed sex as a good thing, and He told us how to get the most
out of it.
Listen
to Proverbs 5:18-19 May your fountain be blessed, (yes, that
means what you think it means!) and may you rejoice in the wife of your
youth. 19 A loving doe, a graceful deer— may her breasts
satisfy you always, may you ever be captivated by her love.
God wants the
love-making between a husband and wife to be loving and graceful. He wants it
to be captivating, deeply satisfying, joyful, blessed.
But that isn’t
all. God wants love-making to be part of a special and unique intimacy. Genesis
2:24 says, For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be
united to his wife, and they will become one flesh. And that isn’t just
an Old Testament idea. The New Testament reiterates that passage four times.
God wants husband and wife to become so close that they are one flesh. That is
the pentacle of human intimacy, and sex is an important part of that closeness.
I Corinthians 7:4 puts it this way: The wife's body does not belong to her
alone but also to her husband. In the same way, the husband's body does not
belong to him alone but also to his wife.
Now please understand, that doesn’t mean
that a woman is a man’s property. Nor does it mean that a man is a woman’s
property. It means that husband and wife are one. Even their bodies belong to
each other – not to use selfishly but to cherish and nurture and comfort and
please. That’s part of intimacy.
Sex is the
ultimate expression of human intimacy. It is a way that we say to another
person, “I am yours and you are mine.” Sex allows us to become one flesh with
another person.
But wait, I said
that God told us how to enjoy sex to the max. So where are the instructions?
Well, if your looking for the Christian Kama Sutra, it doesn’t exist.
There’s no “how to” booklet in the Bible. There’s no Cosmo-like list of top ten
techniques for Christians in the bedroom. But the guidance God does give is
much richer and far more profound. Did you catch it? God says sex is to be
enjoyed by a husband and a wife – who are married to one another. Sex is too
intimate, too profound, too good to waste on anyone else
Speaking of
instructions, have you noticed how so many products now come with instructions
on how not to use that product? Here are some examples.
n
On a package of Silly Putty:
Do not use as ear plugs.
n
In the manual for a microwave oven: Do not use for drying pets.
n On the packaging for an iron: Do not iron clothes on body.
n
On a toilet bowl cleaning brush: Do not use orally.
n On a Superman costume: Wearing of this garment does not enable you to fly.
n On a portable stroller: Caution: Remove infant before folding for storage.
Now here’s a
scary thought. Why did the companies have to include those instructions? That’s
right. Somewhere somebody did each of those stupid things. The products are
fine when they’re used the ways the manufacturers intended. But when those
products are abused or used for other purposes they become dangerous. They can
hurt you. People have misused these products, so the manufacturers had to
include special instructions that said, “Don’t use this product like this.”
The same thing
is true with sex. God gave us sex as a graceful expression of captivating love,
a source of satisfaction, blessing and joy. God gave us sex as a way to enrich
the unique intimacy between a husband and wife. God gave us sex so that we
could be fruitful and multiply, and enjoy a good bit pleasure in the process.
But people abuse that gift. They use it for purposes God
never intended. And so God has added some special instructions. He has said,
“Don’t use this gift in these ways. You’ll ruin it. You’ll rob it of its value.
You’ll turn it into something that will hurt you.”
We find a whole
list of such special instructions in the 18th chapter of Leviticus.
It tells us to stay away from relatives and in-laws and neighbors of either
sex, and from animals. In other words, anyone other than your husband or wife.
(Read Leviticus 18 on your own. It sounds like a script for the Jerry Springer
Show.)
The New Testament gives us
the same caution in over 20 different passages. If you’d like to read them all,
go to www.Biblegateway.com and do a
search on the word “sex.” Let me give you a brief summary of what you’ll
find. I Corinthians 6:18 says, Flee from sexual immorality. All other sins a man commits
are outside his body, but he who sins sexually sins against his own body.
Flee from sexual immorality. But
what is sexual immorality? The Greek word is “porneia.” The King James
translates it “fornication,” but that’s too narrow. Fornication is sexual
relations between two single people. Sexual immorality includes that, but it
also includes adultery – sexual relations with the spouse of another person. It
can also include sexual relations within a marriage when those relations are
abusive or exploitive.
(By the way, it seems that after
childbirth many women are interested in sex 24/7. 24 times in seven years!
Listen, we should never force our spouses. Even in marriage, forced sex or
manipulated sex is sexual immorality. Guys, sometimes give her a foot massage
and stop there! That can be great love-making.)
God gave us sex
as a graceful expression of captivating love, a source of satisfaction,
blessing and joy. God gave us sex as a way to enrich the unique intimacy between
a husband and wife. And so, when sex is selfish and not loving, and when sex is
outside the unique intimacy between a husband and a wife, that is sexual
immorality. That is a distortion, an abuse of God’s precious gift.
That’s the big
idea. Sex is good. Sexual immorality is bad. God’s gift is creative and
propagates life. The abuse, the distortion or perversion of the gift is
destructive and often leads to disease and death. My friends, it really is that
simple.
Now understand
this is still good news. God wants us to enjoy sex. And so He tells us how to
get the most out of it. Sex is intended for a loving marriage. And He tells us
how not to abuse His gift. He doesn’t want us to cheapen the gift of sex by
squandering it outside the intimate bond between a wife and a husband. He says
that’s like drying your cat in the microwave or using the toilet brush to brush
your teeth.
You see? Even
when God says, “Don’t,” He says that because He loves us. He says that for our
good, for our greater pleasure. He’s saying, “Wait. Do it my way. I have
something better.” He isn’t trying to ruin our fun. He’s trying to multiply our
joy, our satisfaction, our pleasure, our love.
Listen, as a
pastor I have talked to a lot of people about their sex lives. Many have told
me how sorry they are that they abused God’s gift. They had sex before
marriage. They had an affair. They painfully regret it. It wasn’t worth it.
Others have told me how glad they are that they followed God’s plan – they
waited for marriage and have been faithful to their husbands or wives. But you
know what no one has ever told me? In twenty six years of ministry, no one has
ever said to me, “I did it God’s way and I’m sorry.” No one has ever said to
me, “Boy, I wish I had not saved myself for my husband or wife,” or “Gee, I
wish I had cheated on my marriage a time or two.” In other words, what people
say is this. “God’s way is better.”
Before I close I
have one more bit of good news. For some of us this may be the best news yet.
As I said before we live in a culture that is sexually confused. People don’t
know the difference between good sex and bad sex. People don’t understand the
beauty of God’s gift, and lots of people squander it.
Some of us have
squandered it. In one way or another we’ve engaged in sexual immorality. And
we’re sorry. It hurts our relationship with God. If we’re married, it hurts our
relationship with our husband or wife. If we’re not married, we’re afraid it
will harm our relationship with our future spouse. And if it’s an ongoing
situation, we know that on the deepest level it hurts our relationship with the
person we’re involved with. And when we face up to our shame, it even hurts our
relationship with ourselves.
I believe that
one of the reasons that marriages in our society are so fragile and so weak is
that so many of us have abused God’s gift of sex. Sex isn’t the source of joy
and comfort and intimacy that God intended for it to be because we’ve misused
it. And so our marriages suffer. And our families suffer. And our society
suffers. But that doesn’t have to be the end of the story.
This has been on
my heart for some time now, and I think it’s a word from the Lord. In fact I
shared it with the Session a couple years ago.
In the second
chapter of Joel we read about an infestation of locusts that has devastated
Dear friends,
that’s how gracious God is. He wants to forgive us. He also wants to restore
us. He wants to restore every aspect of our lives. Every aspect. That’s why
Jesus came. His life shows us what selfless love is. His death pays the penalty
for our sins. He takes the consequences upon Himself and we are forgiven. His
resurrection gives us new life.
We know that God
forgives us. But we often forget that God also wants to restore us. He wants to
restore every aspect of our lives. I believe God wants our marriages and our
sex lives to be beautiful, rich, captivating. So He calls us to return to Him.
Confess our immorality and turn away from it. Turn to Him. Ask Him to
strengthen us and restore us. I believe He will do it. I believe He is longing
to do it. I believe He’ll take away the devastation and make things as though
it never happened. Even in our sex lives, God will restore us.
Friends, the
Christian Gospel is about grace. When we turn to God and live according to His
promises, He gives us more than we deserve. Let’s turn to Him. Let’s receive
every precious gift He has to give us, and let’s enjoy it the way He intended.
Then we’ll enjoy it to the max.
There’s good sex
and there’s bad sex. And like Ian and Rose, God wants us to know the
difference.