Sex and the Church

Mission and Vision

Before we start our sermon series… if you didn’t see our graphic on facebook. Just know we are going to be talking about mature themes

We are going to be clear and direct without being vulgar. Amen?

We don’t want to leave room for ambiguities but we also don’t want to cross the line into shock factor

So what we are talking about for the next 3 weeks is the topic of Sex as God has designed it.

Why Pastor? That is inappropriate. We don’t need to discuss what goes on behind closed doors. That is not something that we should talk about in church.

So if this is your mindset… First I want to say I understand. These conversations can be awkward and if you are from a certain generation, this was just something that was never discussed. SO I want you to know that I appreciate the grace that you are extending and the humility that you are choosing to operate in by allowing the scripture and the leading of the holy spirit to shape something in you and possibly challange something in you.

Secondly I want to say, that if Jesus was concerned about it then we need to be concerned about it.

I mean Sex is what runs the world. Almost all advertisement uses it to sell thier product. There are microwaveable dinners that use sex as a selling point

But the world doesn’t own sex… God does

If God designed it, we need to discuss it

If there is one challenge to the christian that is devastating homes, lives, personal walks with Jesus, devastating our youth, devastating the safety of women and children around the country and the world… it’s sex

I mean Sex is what runs the world. Almost all advertisement uses it to sell thier product. There are microwaveable dinners that use sex as a selling point

But the world doesn’t own sex… God does

Thirdly I want to speak to the concept of the information gap

Christianity in America has deep connections with puritanical views on Sex.

That is that physical attraction is wrong and that sex is only for procreation.

The church has toed that line that has divorced sex from pleasure and desire… both of which are things that God has crafted in our humanity

So the church preaches practical Celibacy. Even for those who are married

What do I mean by practical celibacy ?

Sex is taboo. Don’t talk about it. Don’t think about it. Don’t Do it… Unless you’re married then only do it if necessary.

For years and years the church, for the most part, has been silent about sex. Now there has been the consistent argument about sexuality… right?

The argument about same sex attraction vs biblical sexuality. This isn’t new… but there is a mountain of conversation that needs to happen in the local congregation before you can even get to this convo

And when there is a gap, a void… a vacuum. People will start to seek other avenues to be informed. If we are not shaping people and guiding people in every area of their lives, including their sexuality, then they will look for other guides

Because the truth of the matter is that human beings have been designed with physical beauty and attraction, we have been designed with physical desires, emotional desires.

Our bodies have responses to thoughts.

This is all a natural part of how the human body was created. But if the church doesn’t address the issues of human sexuality from a truly holistically biblical standpoint… then people are going to look for answers wherever they can get it.

If we don’t seek the Lord’s heart on the gift of sex that HE created… then the world will tell us what they want us to know about how they have corrupted and twisted his Good gift.

Scripture talks about sex. We have a whole book about relationships, dating, marriage, and sex called the song of Solomon.

Since God created sex, the church should be the place where God’s plan for sex is explained and where these conversations can happen under the leading of God’s Holy Spirit so that we can fully understand who God has created us to be.

There is

This leads me back to the text and to my one point for today.

God created sex. And since God created it… it was created to be good.

Actually if we jump back to

We see that Man and woman were created in his own image. It’s in the unity and the diversity of the two beings who are to come together that the beauty of God is revealed

See we were created as image bearers of God. This has a lot of different components to it.

We are moral agents. We affect change. We are social. We have capacity to appreciate beauty and to create beauty

WE are also in the unity of man and woman reflecting the image of God

It is in the joining to gether, in the act of Sex within the bounds of marriage that we get a glimpse of 2 distinct people who are yet one.

Our verse from today tells us that the two will become one

There is a divine mystery that goes beyond the physical connection and into the spiritual that when a man and woman are united in the marriage bed that they are one physically, and spiritually.

God created the act of sex not to be simply the unification of 2 bodies but the unification of 2 souls.

And that unification is for the glory of God and for the pleasure of mankind.

That’s part of the gift of sex

Sex isn’t just for procreation.

For so many people they look at the family and think its beautiful but then they look at the vehicle that God has ordained to be the means to create life… sex… and think that the devil sneaked in there and that was his contribution to throw the Christian off his game

Satan didn’t create pleasure. God created every portion of sex, including pleasure as a good and beautiful gift. Sex was created good.

The gifts that God blesses us with are not bad in and of themselves… it is how we utilize those gifts for our own selfish gain and not for the glory of our creator that we fall into sin

2:24 tells us that the two shall become one and then 25 goes on to say that the man and his wife were naked and unashamed

God created mankind, before the fall, to be in communion with him and with each other.

There was yada. Adam and eve knew each other

This word yod is used to describe physical intimacy but also spiritual intimacy

It is a true knowing of someone inside and out

Now the fall affected sex.

T

We see that the first thing that Adam and Eve noticed was that they were naked and they hid themselves

When sin entered the world there became a need to place boundaries between husband and wife

The two didn’t live in this state of knowing. From this point on the act of sex was reserved for the marriage bed.

The level of intimacy of emotional and physical intimacy is reserved for the sacred rite of marriage between man and woman

Now even though the fall affected Sex it didn’t condemn it

Again we have the book of Song of Solomon, we have passages like

Proverbs 5:18–19 ESV

Let your fountain be blessed, and rejoice in the wife of your youth, a lovely deer, a graceful doe. Let her breasts fill you at all times with delight; be intoxicated always in her love.

We will talk more about that here in the next couple weeks and what it says in the new testament about sexuality and dating and marriage.

We as a church have to come to understand that God is not afraid of our questions about Sex, he’s not afraid of our hang-ups.

The church is the place where these conversations need to be happening.

They are already happening outside these walls and those converstaions are deforming our people on the concept of Sex.

We need to be forming our people to understand biblical sex and that Sex as God designed it is good.

Close in prayer

Under the covenant of marriage

fire outside the fireplace verse

Damage that is caused - porno, infidelity, child abuse, feelings of inadequacy and shame… its not the body parts its how the enemy and our fallen nature has corrupted

We have divorced the act from the person of God who is made in the image of God

The fractured intimacy not only got between man and woman but mankind and God