God's Vision For Sex

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Message M5: God’s Vision For Sex November 23, 2008

Text: Eph. 5:31; 1Cor. 6:15-20, Eph. 5:3

Big Idea: God intends sex for marriage so married and single people are called to sexual purity.

When I was working in Japan, part of my work involved helping to prepare Japanese businessmen for business meetings they would have in North America.

Sometimes Japanese business men would assume that Caucasian, North American women were very sexually easy and that if they simply propositioned them, these women would agree to have sex with them.

The reason that some of these Japanese businessmen assumed that North American women would sleep with them, even if they had no prior relationship, was because they had been influenced by western-made movies where a guy meets a girl, things move seem to move pretty quickly and after several more minutes into the movie the guy and the girl may end up in bed.

I had to explain to these Japanese businessmen that reality of life in North America isn’t always like the movies. I tried to explain that sexual relationships don’t move quite as quickly in real life as the movies because in the movies you’ve only got two hours of time to work with to tell a story. According to the movie stars, they admit that their real lives, are not nearly as sexually dramatic as they are in the movies.

We may not think that we are quite as influenced by the movies and tv as some people in other countries, but, as a recent article in the Vancouver Sun demonstrated, the media has a powerful influence over us and over our sexual habits in particular.

Studies at the RAND Research Organization have demonstrated that teens who watch sexy television programs are more likely to engage in risky sexually behavior and experience early pregnancies.

According to Anita Chandra, a behavioral scientist who led the research at RAND, “The television content we see (tends to glamorize sex and) very rarely highlights the negative aspects of sex or the risks and responsibilities of sex.”

We are all more likely influenced by movies and television than we are aware of.

As entertaining as the movies and television can be, if we want to get wisdom on sex, which is a fire that can bring joy, life and healing, but if misused can also bring heartache and pain and can take something from us, we would do well to turn to the wisdom of the one who designed sex.

So, today we are going to look again in scriptures at God’s vision for sex.

If you have your Bibles, please turn to Ephesians 5: 31.

We’ve looking at Ephesians 5 as part of this series on marriage and singleness.

Last Sunday we looked at Ephesians 5:31 where Paul says:

31 "For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh."

This text is actually a quotation from Genesis 2 where God describes what happens when a man and woman come together in marriage and sexual union.

These scripture texts tell us that sex is a profoundly unitive act where a person not only joins his or her body to another, but also their souls as well.

And the two will become one flesh.

As I said last week, God designed sex such that when you give yourself to someone physically in sex, there is an accompanying impulse that makes you also want to give yourself to that person emotionally, spiritually and in every significant way…

Sex may not always feel like a profoundly bonding experience. There are times when sex just feels physical, and perhaps even impersonal. But God designed sex as this powerful, mysterious act that would bond body and soul like nothing else to another person, like a stream of water, becoming one.

If you have been sexually active, perhaps the first time you had sex, or the first time you had sex when you were in love with someone, you felt this powerful connection… you got a glimpse of how it was intended to work.

Because in sex the two become one God calls us to reserve sex for marriage only.

Sex outside of marriage, of course, can bring pleasure but can also lead to unintended attachments, a feeling that something has been taken from us (especially if the relationship doesn’t work out), and can compromise some of sex’s life healing powers.

If you are in a committed dating relationship, God’s call for you to have sex only in marriage is a gift that will protect you and your dating partner and will open a door of the most life-giving kind of sex in marriage.

(BTW, If you are in a committed dating relationship, you may have all kind of fears about marriage. But a good marriage, and I speak from experience here, is a great blessing. Though the statistics show that about one in two marriages fail, marriages where the couple prays every day together that number jumps to 2000. Marriages where God is truly the center tend to flourish.)

God’s view that sex is intended with just one person, our marriage partner, is very counter-cultural… counter hollywood, but even for a “player” like Wilt Chamberlin (and I used that term in both senses of the word) at the end of his life resonated with this truth of sex with just one person…

Wilt Chamberlain the famous basketball, never-married, but claimed in his autobiography to have slept with 20,000 women.

According to columnist Clarence Page, Chamberlain "went on to write that he would have traded all 20,000 women for the one woman he wanted to stay with for keeps."

There’s a certain appeal, at least to some, to playing the field, but there is a greater beauty and a more enduring joy of living in a way that is consistent with God’s design for us.



There is a kind of appeal to the kind of life that he led, but there is a greater beauty and deeper fulfillment as Wilt Chamberlain acknowledged, in retrospect, that there is a greater beauty to being united to one person in a permanent and exclusive way, in a good loving marriage if God calls us to that

It is very rare these days, but there is a beauty in seeing a couple grow older and grow more deeply in love with each other. That particular model of a marriage is one that my parents have passed along to me and my siblings and is a great gift.

So, to say no to sex outside of marriage, and to say no to sex with people (other than our spouse) once we are married, is not just a way of being passive, but is to protect a great good that God intends for us.

(boundary illustration with bowl)

It should be no surprise to us that those are most fulfilled in their sex lives are people who live within a good, committed, loving, respectful marriage.

Contrary to what Hollywood suggests, the best and most meaningful sex arises out of committed, loving marriages.

If you’re a married, celebrate and cultivate your love and your love life—the two are powerfully connected--as gift from God.

Today I would like to explore what it means to honor God and to protect the gift of sex and sexuality whether we are single or married.

Paul says in 1Corinthians 6: 15-20:

15 Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ himself? Shall I then take the members of Christ and unite them with a prostitute? Never! 16 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." [a] 17 But whoever is united with the Lord is one with him in spirit. [b]

18 Flee from sexual immorality. All other sins people commit are outside their bodies, but those who sin sexually sin against their own bodies. 19 Do you not know that your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own; 20 you were bought at a price. Therefore honor God with your bodies.

Paul says in Ephesians 5:3

But among you there must not be even a hint of sexual immorality, or of any kind of impurity.

Paul says that we have bought with the blood of Jesus Christ if you belong to the Lord; that we have been forgiven at great cost to God—the life of his own son. Therefore, we do not belong to ourselves. We belong to God and we are to honour God with our bodies.

One of the ways that we can honour God’s call in our sexual lives, whether we are single and seeking to be sexually pure in dating relationships or married and seeking to be sexually faithful to our spouses is by cultivating healthy, life-giving relationships with God and other people.

Psychiatrist Dr. Scott Haltzman reports that infidelity occurs in up to 40% of marriages.

According to Dr. Haltzman, in 80% of the cases the reason for a spouse having an affair is not primarily sexual. Most of these spouses are simply seeking validation: of some warmth, understanding or love.

The reason that single people will get involved in sexual behaviour that may violate their consciences or be outside of God’s will, is not always because they are over-sexed, but they are longing for intimacy and connection and love from another person.

Part of the reason why people go on to porn, cyber sex or engage in compulsive masturbation, is because they want to experience a sense of connection, a sense of intimacy-- God. Of course, pornography, compulsive masturbation, going from partner to partner to partner can never bring lasting satisfaction. It brings momentary pleasure and relief, but tends to make people feel more empty.

Part of the way we can safeguard against that and honour God with our bodies and our sexuality is to cultivate a healthy, lasting relationship with God and with other people and ourselves, as we experience connection with God and people, and also with ourselves through things that bring life--whether it’s sports, or through spending time outdoors, or though music, art.


A second way we can cultivate sexual wholeness and purity is by having certain healthy boundaries.

Sometimes we think of a boundary as a negative thing, but boundaries help us to protect something good. (Use bowl as prop) A bowl, for example, has boundaries that help to protect something good like water in the bowl, but if you tear the boundary (the bowl), the good is lost.

Lauren Winner has written a great book called Real Sex: The Naked Truth About Chastity. In Chapter 6, called On the Steps of the Rotunda, she gives some very practical counsel on how to draw healthy sexual boundaries. This is a terrific book on the Christian view of sex I would highly recommend you buy.

Lauren Winner, was single at the time she started writing the book.

She had been sexually active before coming to Christ. Then she came to a point where she was able to embrace God’s call to sexual purity. As she was writing this book, she met and started dating a single person—a guy named Griff and married.

She writes (on page 106), “We got into the habit of taking an evening walk on the lawn in the architectural heart of the University of Virginia. We usually began our walks by the dome-shaped rotunda and ended up at Cabell Hall. Griff’s friend Greg, the campus pastor at the University of Virginia, sized up the situation and gave this piece of guidance:

‘Don’t do anything sexual that you wouldn’t feel comfortable doing on the steps of the rotunda.’ Griff and I took Greg’s words to heart, and even climbed up on to the rotunda steps one night and kissed to our heart’s content. Griff said, ‘That’s it. That’s our line. We won’t really feel very comfortable stripping our clothes off up here in front of the rotunda.’ And that became our mantra on the steps of the rotunda.”

That’s very, very practical counsel. Until reading Lauren Winner’s book, I had never thought about the image of staying on the steps of the rotund or public place as a way to maintain sexual purity. It is a very powerful and practical one.

Part of what establishing boundaries means is that we literally won’t go places where we are tempted. I remember being with a girl (that I had a romantic connection with) on a street one night, and her saying, “Come to my bedroom.” I remember wanting to go, but also the alarm bells going off in my mind, saying “don’t go”. I remember when I was single, an attractive girl wanting to come into my hotel room at midnight (again part of me wanted to let her in, but the alarms bells we’re going off in my mind saying don’t invite her in). Even at the risk of seeming like a complete stick in the mud, I’ve said “no” to protect something important.

Part of what this healthy boundary-setting will mean for a disciple of Christ is a refusal to live with someone before marriage.

If you are living with someone--I don’t mean as a roommate—but living with some you’re romantically involved in, let me just speak to you.

Let me speak to you. You may think, I’m saving money, I have an opportunity to “test drive” marriage I commit—it’s a win-win situation.

But living together before marriage almost certainly means you’ll cross sexual boundaries that God does not intend for you to cross… or to put it biblically, you’ll sin.

And contrary to what we you think, living together before marriage, marriage, correlates with a higher rate of marriage failure. According to the Vanier Institute a typical couple who lives together before marriage have a 66% higher divorce rate when compared to those who don’t live together before marriage.

Sometimes we need to establish healthy boundaries with respect to where and how we are with someone, but sometimes we need to set boundaries with other things.

If we are tempted by internet porn, we can set boundaries in those areas. We can install software like ‘Covenant Eyes’ or download resources at xxxchurch.org that will help to hold us accountable in the way we use our computer. We can talk to people voluntarily and confess our struggle with this. If porn is a secret, it will have much more power over us.

I know of a person who decided to not have a computer or a television in his apartment so that he would not be tempted to view pornography. That’s healthy boundary setting. If that sounds drastic, remember that Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount said if you’re struggling with lust take drastic measures. If your right eye causes you to sin, gouge it out. It is better to lose one part of your body then for your whole body to be thrown into hell. Jesus was saying take decisive, drastic measures to deal with lust. Because lust will cloud your relationship with God and porn in particular compromise your relationship with a real woman.

Again, these boundaries are not just about doing not something wrong--but they help to create a positive good in our lives.

I hesitate a little to share this story, because I know it’s personal and it’s not everyone’s story.

Leaders--and I am no exception--face unique temptations.

My wife also grew up in Japan where men in power often are unfaithful.

We’ve talked about this and Sakiko is ok with my sharing this with you.

I’ve said to her, I think that while leaders will face unique temptations and I am no exception, I think you can be reassured by the fact we honored God and each other as a couple by not sleeping together before we were married. You know that with my girlfriends in the past, while we had there were some levels of physical affection depending on how close we were, I never had sex with any of them—even when some of them made it clear that it would ok to sleep with them with no strings attached.

Based on my past, I think you can conclude that sexual purity really matters to me.

I hope that that is reassuring.

If you are able to set your boundary, for example, before you are married with your girlfriend or boyfriend or fiancée--even if you have sinned sexually in the past--as a result of a new commitment to Christ, you commit to being faithful now in your sexuality before God, then you will give a gift to your future spouse should God call you to marriage—and that gift is that you will be more likely to be faithful once you are married, if God calls you to marriage.

A third way we can pursue sexual wholeness is through spiritual disciplines can help us stay pure….

Dallas Willard, a respected writer of the spiritual life describes a discipline as a practice that enables us to do what we cannot do by direct effort.

As we know, there is simply no area of human achievement—sports, music, learning a language where we do not need discipline.

Developing your spiritual muscles and your character muscles happens in much the same way that you would develop your physical muscles, your athletic abilities, or music abilities. They come through practice… and they also come, of course, by receiving the grace of God.

One of the disciplines that is especially helpful in moving toward sexual purity is fasting, i.e., voluntarily abstaining from food.

If you can’t eat because you don’t have money to buy food and you are starving, that is absolutely devastating. But if you don’t eat because you choose not to eat for some other purpose, then, as hard as that is, that can be life-giving.

When I have fasted, I have felt later a greater clarity of mind, sensitivity of spirit, and closer to God (and sometimes grumpier!)

A new world feels like it is opening up to me.

In my hunger I also feel a greater dependence on God. The choice to fast opens a door to a new world.

If we are single, we might consider sexual purity as a kind of fast where we say “no” to something in order to say “yes” to other gifts that God would have for us…the gift of being able to enjoy God with a clear conscience… Jesus said, “Blessed are the pure in heart for they will see God.” The gift of being able to channel our sexual creative energy and use it in the service of other people.

Perhaps most important of all, choosing to remain sexually pure provides us with an opportunity to be faithful to God.

Henry Nouwen, priest, the gift that singles can bring is that we can be a sign of faithfulness to God in the body of Christ.

There is great joy and reward in being faithful to God.

There is reward and everlasting joy in being faithful to God.

Elton John, the pop singer, said in Amica Magazine some years ago that a boundary less life is fantastic: no rules to follow, don’t have to work 9-5, no kids to take to schools.

It’s simply great to have no boundaries.

I haven’t lived a perfect life by any means, but as I look back across my life I’m grateful that with God’s grace, I’ve able to say no to certain temptations to say yes to God.

There are people who told have told me, “I should gone for it (in certain situations) like in the movies.”

But, I have no regrets for choosing God’s way.

There is a certain attractiveness to sin and short term pleasures… but there is enduring joy and peace in choosing God’s way.

There is blessed in being naked before God and without shame.

If we have not chosen God’s way, through the mercy of God, we can begin anew…

In Lamentations 3: 22-23:

22 Because of the LORD's great love we are not consumed,
for his compassions never fail.

23 They are new every morning;
great is your faithfulness.

Prayer…