Sexuality
Notes
Transcript
Keeping the Main Thing the Main Thing.
Keeping the Main Thing the Main Thing.
I am not your sex educator. I am your Spiritual guide.
Here is what I mean: Not too long ago I saw a pastor who was talking about sex. Not a surprise as the Bible has a lot to say about. What really got to me was his message. He was very clear on what his sermon was about and began to tell his congregation about things husbands and wives can do to turn on their spouse and ways to have fun as a couple. His whole point in the man doing the dishes, and all the other things he mentioned for the wife to do, was to get their spouse in the bed and have pleasure.
It was wrought with trickery and deceit with pleasure as its end game and not love.
It is not my position to help you get your best sex now.
Give you ten things to help you have more sexual pleasure and sexual feelings as couple. That is not the role of any pastor! I am appalled and shocked each time I hear a pastor doing this kind of thing. Your sexual pleasure is not the end game here!
Sex is good. In Genesis 1:22. and later after the flood he said it again in 9:1
“be fruitful and multiply” and, for our pleasure, he made it fun. Things go very wrong though when we step out of what God intended it to be and go our own way.
This usually involves making ultimate what isn’t ultimate, and seeking the gift rather than the giver.
When the Psalmist says in Psalm 127:5, “Blessed is the man who’s quiver is full” of children, it results in worship to God.
When we cannot have children because of the effects of sin in the world and we seek to adopt, we rejoice with the Psalmist in Psalm 23:4, and say, God is good even in the valley of the shadow of death, I “fear no evil, for you are with me; your rod and your staff, they comfort me.”
We can say with Paul in Romans 8:26-28, in all of our weakness and hard times that come from living in a fallen world, that, “The Spirit helps us in our weakness. For we do not know what to pray for as we ought, be what the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words. 27 A he who searches hearts knows what is the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God.
Sex is good and God even says in 1 Corinthians 7:1-5
1 Now concerning the matters about which you wrote: “It is good for a man not to have sexual relations with a woman.”
2 But because of the temptation to sexual immorality, each man should have his own wife and each woman her own husband.
3 The husband should give to his wife her conjugal rights, and likewise the wife to her husband.
4 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.
5 Do not deprive one another, except perhaps by agreement for a limited time, that you may devote yourselves to prayer; but then come together again, so that Satan may not tempt you because of your lack of self-control.
SEX IS GOOD! There is a whole book of the Bible, Song of Solomon, that talks about Sex and the attraction of the husband and wife and the pleasures that are given as a gift in the opposite sex.
Where do we go wrong?
18 For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth.
19 For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them.
When we knew we were having a child we went to the doctor and looked up at a screen. You are having a girl!
20 For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse.
21 For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened.
22 Claiming to be wise, they became fools,
23 and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things.
24 Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves,
25 because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever! Amen.
We go wrong when we place our spouse and what our spouse can give us above God.
28 And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a debased mind to do what ought not to be done.
Jesus says in
6 But from the beginning of creation, ‘God made them male and female.’
7 ‘Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife,
8 and the two shall become one flesh.’ So they are no longer two but one flesh.
9 What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate.”
Why are Jesus’ words so important in verse 8- 9? Marriage is a picture of the covenant of God with us. We studied in Ephesians how God calls His church His bride.
16 Or do you not know that he who is joined to a prostitute becomes one body with her? For, as it is written, “The two will become one flesh.”
17 But he who is joined to the Lord becomes one spirit with him.
18 Flee from sexual immorality. Every other sin a person commits is outside the body, but the sexually immoral person sins against his own body.
19 Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God? You are not your own,
20 for you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body.
We go wrong when we approve of what dishonors God
32 Though they know God’s righteous decree that those who practice such things deserve to die, they not only do them but give approval to those who practice them.
19 Now the works of the flesh are evident: sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality,
20 idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions,
21 envy, drunkenness, orgies, and things like these. I warn you, as I warned you before, that those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God.
Notice what God did here. He listed sexual impurity along with other sins. How quickly would we disqualify a person for sexual impurity yet ignore the man who causes division in the body? How quickly we would judge a man or woman who falls into the trap of the prostitute who lies in wait on that every corner as described in Proverbs 7 yet not address one who gives themselves to fits of anger strife or jealousy.
9 Or do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor men who practice homosexuality,
10 nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God.
This is all inclusive! Now listen to me, we are going to pick back up here in verse 11 in just a minute.
3 As I urged you when I was going to Macedonia, remain at Ephesus so that you may charge certain persons not to teach any different doctrine,
8 Now we know that the law is good, if one uses it lawfully,
9 understanding this, that the law is not laid down for the just but for the lawless and disobedient, for the ungodly and sinners, for the unholy and profane, for those who strike their fathers and mothers, for murderers,
10 the sexually immoral, men who practice homosexuality, enslavers, liars, perjurers, and whatever else is contrary to sound doctrine,
11 in accordance with the gospel of the glory of the blessed God with which I have been entrusted.
8 but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.
Picking back up in
11 And such were some of you. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God.
5 For those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit set their minds on the things of the Spirit.
6 For to set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace.
Marks of the True Christian
9 Let love be genuine. Abhor what is evil; hold fast to what is good.
14 But put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh, to gratify its desires.
22 But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness,
23 gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law.
24 And those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires.
25 If we live by the Spirit, let us also keep in step with the Spirit.
26 Let us not become conceited, provoking one another, envying one another.