Passion and Purity

Introduction

Tonight I am going to be preaching on the topic of purity that is why I have dismissed the children. Our text is going to be from the book of Song of Solomon and while our topic tonight is not appropriate for children, I promise I will not be getting graphic. My goal is to preach on principles in the book of Song of Solomon and not interpret all the imagery at this time.

This topic is important for teens who are not married, singles; but to be honest it is important for those who are married to. Marriage does not automatically mean that purity ceases to be an issue for you. Married people can struggle with lust over other people that are not their spouse. They can struggle with pornography just as much as single people can struggle with it.

The Meaning of Sex

In the 90’s when I grew up there was a strong push in Christian churches to promote purity culture. The end goal of this movement was great because it taught teens not to have sex before marriage. Just for clarity: this is a biblical expectation. Eph 5:3 “But fornication, and all uncleanness, or covetousness, let it not be once named among you, as becometh saints;” God desires purity among His children.

Sex and intimacy are good things, but they are designed only to be enjoyed in a covenant relationship, a commitment one to another in marriage. Heb 13:4 “Marriage is honourable in all, and the bed undefiled: but whoremongers and adulterers God will judge.” Marriage is good and honorable and the bed (sex) is pure within marriage. Notice it is pure in marriage. It is not dirty. It is not a necessary evil. It is good. This is because marriage and sex are sacred pictures of a spiritual relationship with God. Think about Eph 5 where the husband is told to love his wife as Christ loved the church. The marriage relationship speaks of that relationship. It is because of this that sex outside of marriage is so wrong. It sends the wrong message about sex:

sex is a just biological function- this demeans sex and makes it merely an appetite. It has no significance. If this is the case, I would sleep with who ever I wanted to whenever I wanted to.

sex is romance- this sends the message that sex is merely about my own happiness and pleasure. While there is both involved, Christianity teaches that this is not the primary purpose for sex. We can find happiness and fulfillment in a life of singleness. In 1 Cor 7, sex is a service I render to the other person to meet their needs. Sex is not merely about my pleasure, but relationship.

sex as an expression of who I am, creativity- sex again become all about me.

Marriage is a covenant relationship. Covenants are relationships established by a promise. When we say, “I do”; in most marriages we make a promise to be faithful, and to love for better or worse. Thats what weddings are all about. It is in that kind of relationship that sex should flourish in and anything else demeans what God created sex to be and demeans who God is.

Sex pictures an inward reality. When I make myself naked and vulnerable and give it to another person in marriage, it is a sign of what I have done with my whole life. When this happens outside of marriage, I making a statement that I am doing this with my body but I will not do this with my whole life. I am not going to make that covenant commitment to this relationship. It is a lack of integrity. Within marriage sex becomes a anniversary of the commitment you made to one another and carries meaning. Purity before and after marriage is essential to the true meaning of intimacy.

Purity culture was right to place an emphasis on purity, but purity culture often used gimmicks to get teens to commit to abstinence before marriage. They promoted purity pledges where you would sign a contract saying you would abstain from sex until you got married. Girls would wear purity rings as a sign that they had made such a promise.

In the years that followed there was a decrease in teen pregnancies overall but it is not verifiable that the purity culture had anything to do with it.

Later in the 2000’s people began to react against the purity culture because they claimed it was:

motivated by fear

too restrictive

puts the blame on girls

Not inclusive of LGBTQ rights

The purity cultures biggest downfall was that teens came away thinking that abstinence is the same thing as purity. They thought as long as you don’t go all the way, you are alright. This wasn’t taught but it was a very prevalent attitude among teens involved in this culture.

We need to establish that there is a difference between purity and abstinence. You cannot be pure without abstinence but you can be abstinent without purity. Abstinence merely means not having sex until you are married. Purity is a matter of the heart. Purity is a heart that is clean of sinful sexual desires. It is not wrong to feel physical desire for someone in the right context, but if that desire wants to be fulfilled before marriage, in ways that do not glorify God; it is impure. People who say things that are suggestive to someone that isn’t their wife are impure. People who send suggestive photos. Giving in to other forms of sexual intimacy other than sex is still impurity. Purity is a matter of the heart.

Are you devoted to pleasing God in how you live sexually?

Some of these arguments against purity culture were right to be brought up though certainly not all. The best motivation for purity is not a fear that you will be permanently damaged some how. As we will see from our text there are greater motives.

So if we are going to ground Purity culture in a biblical framework, we need to give biblical motivations for Purity.

The Charge

The book of Song of Solomon is a poetic narrative intended to show us the joys of biblical love between a man and a woman. Commentators of the past refused to even consider that the bible might actually deal with such a topic so they have traditionally allegorized the book to speak of God and his relationship with His people. While every marriage relationship is a picture of God and His relationship with His people, that is not the primary purpose of this book. Song of Solomon is actually written in exactly the same format as Near Eastern Love poetry. The language is too explicit in places to have any connection to our relationship with God, so it must have a more basic literal interpretation.

The narrative traces a man and a woman who meet in chapter one, get engaged in chapter two and are married in chapter three. The remaining 5 chapter deal with the physical love relationship between them, dealing with conflict and coming together again. Three times throughout the text, the bride charges her unmarried friends:

Song of Solomon 2:7 “I charge you, O ye daughters of Jerusalem, By the roes, and by the hinds of the field, That ye stir not up, nor awake my love, till he please.”

The Gender of the verb pleases is actually feminine. A literal translation would be until she pleases. Seeing as this is spoken by the bride throughout the book we must ask who the she is? The word love is the nearest feminine antecedent. Literally, she is telling them Do not awaken sexual love until it pleases. This verse repeated three times throughout the book is a central refrain of the book: Do not arouse passionate love until the time is right. The time is right when we can give ourselves completely to its expected end.

Repeated in Song of Solomon 3:5 “I charge you, O ye daughters of Jerusalem, By the roes, and by the hinds of the field, That ye stir not up, nor awake my love, till he please.”

Song of Solomon 8:4 “I charge you, O daughters of Jerusalem, That ye stir not up, nor awake my love, until he please.”

Physical passion is like a fire that cannot be easily quenched. Giving in to the physical relationship prior to the time that God says we should, only makes it even harder to live a pure life before God. God desires something that is good for His people. He is not trying to be cruel and deny us. In fact in Song of Solomon, there is only one place where most scholars think God actually speaks. In Song of Solomon 5:1 “I am come into my garden, my sister, my spouse: I have gathered my myrrh with my spice; I have eaten my honeycomb with my honey; I have drunk my wine with my milk: Eat, O friends; drink, yea, drink abundantly, O beloved.” There is a refrain that comes out of nowhere. It is addressed to the lovers whom the speaker calls friends. When God looks at the physical relationship in marriage He says, Eat, drink abundantly, O beloved. God wants us to enjoy it abundantly and the only place that can purely happen is in marriage. Notice He calls them friends and beloved. God desires good for our lives, but He knows sex outside of marriage will never be able to bring full joy because it is not fulfilling its true purpose within a covenant, committed relationship.

Protecting the Garden

Often times when we talk about purity there is an emphasis on the rules and rules can be helpful in maintaining purity. But rules are like walls intended to keep us from going where we should not. The problem with walls is that they can be tunneled under, climbed over or broken down. Song of Solomon gives us reasons for why we should not awaken love before its time.

The first reason we should remain pure is to preserve our garden for the time in which we can purely enjoy it with our spouse.

Song of Solomon compares the sexual relationship to a vineyard. Song of Solomon 2:15 warns against little foxes that spoil the vines of our vineyard: they do damage and have consequences in our sexual relationship in the future.

Song of Solomon 2:15 “Take us the foxes, The little foxes, that spoil the vines: For our vines have tender grapes.” The context here is before the relationship, the garden is beginning to bloom. There relationship is growing and ready to come to fruition as they anticipate marriage. Song of Solomon 2:12 “The flowers appear on the earth; The time of the singing of birds is come, And the voice of the turtle is heard in our land;” The romance is alive. There is anticipation as they look forward to getting married, but there is also a danger. Foxes symbolize the things that would come in and destroy the relationship. This could be jealousy, pride but also impurity.

Taking care of or tending your vineyard means protecting it from the little foxes that can damage your future sexual relationship with your wife:

habitual lusting after other women- trains the mind and heart and eyes to wander later on. You can overcome this, but the battle will be harder because of the years of practice.

romantic fantasies- letting your mind give in to visions of someone else can damage what you think about at those times in marriage.

pornography - tied to the previous point is pornography. Pornography trains you to compare your spouse to something that doesn’t even really exist. It isn’t reality and creates unfair expectations. C. S. Lewis asks us to imagine a planet where people pay money to watch someone eat a mutton chop, where people ogle magazine pictures of food. If we landed on such a planet, we would think that the appetite of these people was seriously deranged. (1) Yet that is just how modern people approach sex. It has taken something beautiful and corrupted it.

masturbation- along with porn often comes masturbation. I’m not going to go into detail, but this trains you to focus on self in the physical relationship. topics like this need to be addressed biblically. The world is not silent on these issues, so who are we going to let teach our kids about this stuff. God and us or the world.

The goal in tending your vineyard and protecting it is to be able to present it to your lover in full bloom. Purity can be restored, but sin has consequences. Giving in to sin in these areas often creates a struggle later on with:

1. comparison

2. unfaithfulness

3. continual struggles with lust toward other women

4. selfishness in the bedroom

5. unrealistic expectations.

The second reason we should remain pure is because of our future relationship with Jesus.

You might be thinking why wait? God doesn’t seem to be bringing anyone into my life; so why protect my vineyard?

There is a greater future lying ahead for us and the Christian should live his life in view of that future. Consider these two reasons, but I really want to camp on the second reason:

God sometimes surprises us with a relationship when we had given up hope: Tanya, Nancy Demoss Wolgemouth. You do not know what the future holds. Things can turn around when you never expect them to.

Because we have a greater love to look forward to with Jesus Christ. Our lives are God’s vineyard. I may not be able to present my body to another person is marriage, but I will one day present my whole life to Jesus Christ. God is at work in our lives and we should desire to give Him a vineyard that produces good fruit. In Isaiah 5, God says he planted Israel as his vineyard and when they should have brought forth grapes, they brought forth sour grapes.

What kind of life are you going to give to Jesus someday? My relationship with Him should be the number one reason to pursue purity in my walk with God.

Isa 5:1-7 “Now will I sing to my wellbeloved a song of my beloved touching his vineyard. My wellbeloved hath a vineyard in a very fruitful hill: And he fenced it, and gathered out the stones thereof, And planted it with the choicest vine, And built a tower in the midst of it, And also made a winepress therein: And he looked that it should bring forth grapes, And it brought forth wild grapes. And now, O inhabitants of Jerusalem, and men of Judah, Judge, I pray you, betwixt me and my vineyard. What could have been done more to my vineyard, That I have not done in it? Wherefore, when I looked that it should bring forth grapes, Brought it forth wild grapes? And now go to; I will tell you what I will do to my vineyard: I will take away the hedge thereof, and it shall be eaten up; And break down the wall thereof, and it shall be trodden down: And I will lay it waste: It shall not be pruned, nor digged; But there shall come up briers and thorns: I will also command the clouds that they rain no rain upon…”

Conclusion

In our culture, they say that nearly 90% of young people are impure before they ever get married. It would be easy to assume, “Well, I blew it so much for that” but like a garden, purity can be regrown. Purity is a matter of the heart and as such can be restored. There is still hope. Regrow that garden, build those walls and protect your garden now.

So many people struggle in this area and think God doesn’t want you to find love. Or He is a kill joy. We need to recognize that God knows our desires. Psalm 38:9-10 “Lord, all my desire is before thee; And my groaning is not hid from thee. My heart panteth, my strength faileth me: As for the light of mine eyes, it also is gone from me.” As we saw in Song of Solomon 5, God delights in the true fulfillment of those desires for us.

But the question I want to ask you tonight is can you trust God with those desires? Psalm 38:15 “For in thee, O Lord, do I hope: Thou wilt hear, O Lord my God.” Trust God with your desires

Out on the book cart, I have two books that I believe can be a help in this area: Passion and Purity by Elizabeth Elliott and Lies Young Women Believe by Nancy Demoss Wolgemouth. If this is a struggle and you want to meditate on what I have said tonight, I challenge you to pick up those books. Men another couple books to consider are Living Purely in an Impure World by Jim Binney and The Samson Syndrome which are both on the cart.