Sacred Sex310CT10
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Series: Loving God through the Ten Commandments
Ten Commandments M6: Sermon Notes (10 10 31)
Speaker: Ken Shigematsu
Title: Sacred Sex
Text: Deuteronomy 5:18; Matthew 5: 27-30
BIG IDEA: When we experience sexual purity, we honour God, ourselves and our neighbour.
I was getting to know someone who didn’t have a Christian background, but was open to finding out more of the Christian faith. One afternoon, we were at Stanley Park together.
He said, "There something that I would like to talk to you about, but let's get on our bikes first and start riding around the seawall."
When we got on our bikes and began riding around the seawall this person pulled up parallel to me and said, "I wanted to talk to you about your sermon on sex, but I’d feel more comfortable talking as we are riding bikes together side-by-side."
Many of us don't feel comfortable talking frankly about sex. Like my friend we prefer to talk about it while side-by-side as opposed to face-to-face. But, God is not shy about sex. In fact, there is an entire book of the Bible, the Song of Solomon, that is devoted to God's gift of sex and sexuality.
We have been in a series in the Ten Commandments. We come to another famous commandment which at first glance may seem restrictive, but like all of these 10 Commandments it is intended to protect a priceless gift, to enable us to flourish in our relationship with others, ourselves and God.
If you have your Bibles, please turn to Deuteronomy 5:18: “You shall not commit adultery.”
(THIS SERMON WILL CONTAIN SOME MATURE CONTENT MATERIAL. KIDS ARE WELCOME TO STAY BUT I WANT THE PARENTS TO KNOW.)
On the surface, this commandment sounds so restrictive, but as we have been seeing in this series on the Ten Commandments, God gives us these commandments, not to steal our fun, but so that we might flourish in our relationships with God and each other.
This commandment like each of the Ten is an expression of God’s love for us and our neighbor. And as we live this out, the commandment becomes an expression of our love for God.
But first let’s look at how this commandment is an expression of God’s love for us and our neighbor.
The commandment against adultery protects not just the Hebrews, but people everywhere.
According to a Kinsey study, in over 150 different cultures around the world adultery was cited as the # 1 cause for divorce. Divorce, as we know, is always destructive, particularly when there are children who are involved. And so, this commandment that we are going to look at today is an expression of God’s love for us.
What does the word “adultery” literally mean? It means “to break marriage,” to be married and have sex with someone else is breaking your marriage—it’s a sin against your marriage and your partner. To have sex with a person who is married to someone else, to break that person’s marriage covenant. Adultery is primarily a sin against the “innocent partner.”
When Bill Clinton had his affair with Monica Lewinski, many people said it was wrong, but many people also said, “There is nothing wrong with two consenting adults being sexually involved with each other.” But as Bill Clinton describes in his autobiography, My Life, when he woke early one morning and told his wife Hillary the truth about what happened between him and Lewinski, Bill Clinton said, “It looked I had punched her in the stomach.” Mrs. Clinton is a very liberal, progressive woman. She didn’t look at her husband and say, “Well, as long as it was mutually consensual, no problem.” She felt as if she had been punched in the gut.
The commandment against adultery is an expression of God’s love for us and others, for our marriages, the marriages of other people.
Now I am aware that some of us feel that adultery is not a possibility for us. But if we looked at Jesus’ meditation on this Seventh Commandment, we might rethink that.
Let’s move from Deuteronomy to Matthew 5: 27-30:
27 "You have heard that it was said, 'You shall not commit adultery.' 28 But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart. 29 If your right eye causes you to stumble, gouge it out and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to be thrown into hell. 30 And if your right hand causes you to stumble, cut it off and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to go into hell.
Jesus begins this text with the words, “You have heard that it was said, 'You shall not commit adultery’.” He is quoting here Commandment Seven, the commandment against adultery that we just read.
It is possible, even if we do not technically commit the act of adultery, to break the spirit of the law against adultery.
This is why Jesus says:
“27 "You have heard that it was said, 'You shall not commit adultery.' 28 But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart.
On the surface this seems like an impossible commandment, doesn’t it? Is Jesus saying that if we look at a human being and experience some kind of sexual attraction, we have sinned? No. The Bible shows us in the Song of Solomon that sexuality and sexual attraction show us are gifts from God.
Last Sunday I referred to Jesus’ teaching when we looked at his meditation on the commandment “Thou shall not murder.” I explained that Jesus condemns anger that might lead to murder or maiming someone. Based on the Greek word he used “orgizomenos,” we know he’s not referring to a good, righteous anger against injustice and we also know he’s also not referring to a flash of anger we experience if some cuts us off in traffic… I said Jesus is condemning the kind of anger that we choose to hold onto.
When Jesus speaks against lust he’s not talking about the initial attraction we may have when we see a person, but rather a choice we make to stare at someone—in order to desire them more or have them if we could.
If you look at the Greek text, you will see that when Jesus says that anyone who looks lustfully at a woman, he is saying anyone who looks and continues to look, anyone who stares in order to lust after her or him has already committed adultery with him or her in his heart. It is possible to have a healthy attraction or a healthy sense of awe with the beauty of another human being without lusting. But it is also possible to go beyond appreciation and admiration, and to stare at someone in order to sexual desire that person and have them if we could.
So what is the difference between lust and a healthy, sexual, God-honouring attraction?
As a mentor of mine says, “Lust makes you to want an experience, but a healthy sexual attraction makes you to want a person.” (not just sexually but love makes you want to know them in their entirety). Lust makes you to want pleasure. Love makes you to want a particular woman or man.”
C. S. Lewis, the Oxford scholar, said, “It’s poor use of language to talk about a man on the prowl, and say, ‘He wants a woman’.” Lewis said, “It is not the best way to put it. He wants a pleasure; he wants a sexual thrill and a woman is simply a piece of apparatus to help him get that thrill.”
(Transition)
As we’ve said in this series every commandment stated in the negative has a positive corollary. The positive corollary of thou shalt not commit adultery and thou shalt not look in order to lust is to pursue sexual purity.
The Apostle Paul 1 Corinthians 6 calls us to sexual purity. In vs. 13 he writes:
The body, however, is not meant for sexual immorality but for the Lord, and the Lord for the body.
The word that Paul uses for sexual immorality is the Greek “pornia” which refers to sex outside of marriage. It can refer to adultery. It can refer to sex with a prostitute. It can also refer to sex outside of marriage, including premarital sex.
So how is the call to pursue sexual purity an expression of God’s love for us?
The Scriptures teach that God created sex as a unitive act that connects not only a man and a woman’s body, but also their souls, making two people one. In Genesis 2:24, we read that when man and a woman unite in sex: two will become one flesh. God designed sex so that when a man and a woman come together physically in sexual union, there is also a powerful force that makes them want to unite on every other level, as well: emotionally, spiritually, and even economically. It is an act of union so sublime that it is used in Scripture as a metaphor of our union with God.
Now, if this definition of sex through Scripture sounds ethereal or other worldly, consider the opinion of Dr. Gordon Neufeld, a respected, secular psychologist who has taught at UBC. In his book, Hold Onto Your Kids, he writes:
“Sex is a potent bonding agent: It creates couples, attaches to each other those who engage in it. Studies have confirmed what most of us will have found out on our own, that making love has a natural bonding effect, evoking powerful emotions of attachment in the human brain… Simply put, sex creates a potent connection and then harnesses the rest of the brain through chemicals the brain releases to preserve the bond that has been created…. Sex creates couples, ready or not, willing or not… Sex is like human contact cement, invoking a sense of union and fusion, creating one flesh…”
But, if sex makes two one, then if two people become one and then tear apart as they go their separate ways, it explains why people’s hearts can feel torn by sex. Many people associate sex with pain and with loss. Sex outside of God’s design can cause heartache. It can also lead to heart hardening and inability to bond with others.
Psychologist Gordon Neufeld writes:
“One of the ultimate costs of emotional hardening (which comes from repeatedly uniting with another sexual partner and then tearing apart) is that sex loses its potency as a bonding agent. The long-term effect is soul numbing impairing young people’s capacity to enter into relationships in which true contact and intimacy are possible.”
God’s call to pursue sexual purity is an expression of God’s love for us because if we use sex outside of its design it will hurt us, it loses its potency for us as a bonding agent, and our capacity to experience true sexual intimacy and lasting fulfillment are compromised.
Sex outside of God’s design hurts us, hardens our hearts and is ultimately not satisfying.
Fewer men and women in our culture actually date or have boyfriends and girlfriends compared to generations gone by. Young people, especially, talk more and more about “hooking up” with others—shorthand for describing sex as something that is casual, and certainly free of any kind of romance or relational commitment or going to a party “hitting that” to describe a sexual encounter. Laura Stepp in her book Unhooked describes how hookups leave most young women unsatisfied, though by their own admission they are unwilling to admit this to their peers. I hear of more and more young men who want to avoid the complexities of a committed relationship. They just want hookups, or prefer looking at the airbrushed images of naked women online--instead of actually having a real relationship or even sex with a real human being, they prefer to masturbate to an image on a screen. Part of the reason porn=aided self-sex is so addictive is because it ultimately doesn’t satisfy and we need more and more of what doesn’t satisfy.
Again, as I have been emphasizing throughout this series, God doesn’t say no adultery or sex outside a marriage covenant as a way to wreck our lives.
God’s call to pursue sexual purity is an expression of God’s love for us because we use sex outside of its design it hurts us, it hardens our hearts so our capacity to experience true sexual intimacy is compromised, and when we use sex outside of God’s plan we find it ultimately unfulfilling.
So God gives us the Seventh Commandment against—against adultery—or more positively put , to pursue sexual purity for our sake, and the sake of others.
So what does it look like for us to honour the Seventh Commandment against adultery and to pursue sexual purity which expresses God’s love for us?
Part of what it means, and I am sure you are not going to be surprised my saying this, is to create healthy boundaries. I know that for some of us “boundary” is a negative word, but as I have said before, a boundary can provide a protective service to us.
(PROP: Bowl and some water.)
Like water for a bowl, the bowl provides a necessary boundary to contain water. If the boundary of the bowl is broken, then something precious is lost. And so it is with appropriate sexual boundaries. Though it may sound negative, it protects something immensely precious. When the boundary is destroyed, we lose something of great value.
So let’s talk for a moment about pornography.
I know that in the culture pornography is largely accepted. And I know that some of you here view it as no big deal, but Jesus clearly in Matthew 5:28 says, “I tell you, anyone who looks in order to lust a woman sexually, has already committed adultery with her in his heart.”
As I will share in just a few minutes, I have had sexual temptations that I have wrestled with, but, with God’s help, I have steered clear of pornography. It is not that I am especially virtuous, but, as a pastor, I have had a front row seat in the lives of people who have been so damaged by pornography. I have seen how a person when in a relationship uses pornography, their partner experiences the same feelings of rejection and betrayal that a person has when they have been the victim of an affair. I have seen over and over again how pornography has sown the seeds of distrust and paved the way to divorce people. I’ve seen how people who want to honour God can be so ashamed because of their habitual, furtive viewing of pornography.
For example, 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 and confess our struggle with them. If porn is a secret, it will have much more power over us.
I know someone who speed-dials a trusted friend or two when tempted by pornography. I know others who find they are more drawn to internet porn when their roommates or spouses are out of town. A few days before they ask a friend to call them during that time to see how they are doing with their temptation. Knowing they are going to be asked about how they dealt with their temptation can make a significant difference in helping them overcome.
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. He said, “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 using hyperbole but his point: take decisive, drastic measures to deal with lust.
Having friends that help us live our values really helps.
I’ve shared this story before, but it’s a seminal one for me (and I don’t have many quite like this) so I share it again.
When I was a younger single person before entering the pastoral ministry, I was traveling and ended up meeting a woman. We were from very different worlds—but we had a dynamic connection and chemistry between us… one day we were walking down the street and she showed me a photo of her posing for a fragrance advertisement. I said, “Hey, I’d love to see your modeling portfolio some time.”
She showed up at my hotel lobby at about midnight. Over the phone, she told me she wanted to come to up my room to show me some of her modeling photographs. But I also felt excited, not knowing how the night would unfold, sensing I might lose my way… She really wanted not come up to my room, and I really wanted her to come up, I but had an ominous feeling about it too, I didn’t trust me. So I asked her to leave at them concierge desk.
Afterwards, when I got home, I shared what had happened with a close a friend of mine. He said, “If you are ever in such a situation again, call me.” I had heard about friends who hold you accountability, but really underlined my need for that. Ever since them, even if it’s embarrassing to share a sexual temptation, if I feel like I might be on slope of temptation, I will call a friend who shares my values.
Most of us would not hesitate to call the police if our loved ones were in physical danger or if we were. But, many of us would be hesitant if we or a loved one--or a future loved one--was put at risk, because of some sexual danger we were about to face. But, in order to protect our marriages and our future marriages we should make the call to a friend who shares our values and who wants the best for us.
How do we live the commandment to pursue sexual purity—this expression of God’s love for us—if we are single and in a dating relationship with someone?
Frankly, when I was a single person in dating relationships, I knew from the Scriptures that having sex was clearly outside of God’s will. But it wasn’t always clear as to how far it would be appropriate to go physically in a particular relationship I was in. I recall how sometimes a warning bell would go off in my mind, like when the girlfriend would say, “Look, my roommate isn’t home right tonight. Let’s go to my bedroom.” I am remembering thinking I’ve love, but not a good idea if I am wanting to honour God here…
Actually, after getting married I read Lauren Winner’s fabulous book called Real Sex. The book was published in 2005, so I was very much married then. She just gives the most helpful counsel that I have ever heard when it comes to setting boundaries with a person that you are in a dating relationship with, but not married to. I shared this before, because I wish had had this book when I was single.
When she began writing her book on sex, she was single, but during the time she was writing she started dating Griff and they ended up getting married. She describes how she and Griff established their sexual boundaries Their friend Greg, the campus pastor at the University of Virginia, which was near where they were living, gave a piece of guidance:
‘Don’t do anything sexual that you wouldn’t feel comfortable doing on the steps of the rotunda.’
(The rotunda was public monument at UVA)
Lauren describes how she and Griff climbed up on to the rotunda steps one night and kissed to their hearts content, and Griff said, “That’s our line. We won’t really feel very comfortable stripping our clothes off up here in front of the rotunda.”
Great counsel: don’t do anything you would not feel comfortable doing at the steps of the rotunda.
For married couples… protect your marriage, not only from physical affairs, but emotional ones too.
A healthy rule for a married person is not become more open and intimate with someone than we are with our own spouse. If a friend knows more about our marriage than our spouse knows about your friendship, then we already crossed that line.
There have been times in my past when though I didn’t have a physical relationship with someone, there was a blurring of some of the emotional boundaries. So I find this very helpful. Just as we would want in a kind of physical boundary when we sense that we might be tempted to compromise by not going up to someone’s bedroom, so it can be appropriate to set an emotional boundary, too. It may seem cold. You may come off as a stick in the mud, but you are protecting something very valuable, much like a bowl protects water.
More positively, if you are married…(I know that there are many single people here, so I don’t want to get into too much detail…) but foster the romance, friendship and the sexual connection in your marriage. Let me say to those of you who are single, you may think “once I am married” you may think that married life will be an endless experience of sexual bliss.
Although studies show that married people tend to have more fulfilling sex than single people, it is not uncommon for a married couple to go through times of sexual disappointment, difficulty and frustration. In the movie, Annie Hall, Woody Allen and his partner Annie Hall are talking to a therapist, and the therapist asks, “Do you have sex often?” And the man and the woman respond in unison—the man says, “Hardly ever,” and she says, “Constantly,” and they both say, “A couple of times a week.” So thinking about how often you will make love may be helpful.
Hollywood doesn’t really help married couples with their sex lives. Hollywood tends to depict good sex as being between non-married people—a man and a wife who are not married. How often do we see a love scene between a married couple in the movies? The way that Hollywood and pop culture tend to portray sex leads men to think that the way to turn a woman on is through quick, rough sex. There are some women who prefer that kind of sex, but most don’t--for most women for it starts in the kitchen (not literally if you have kids at home), but it begins with listening, washing the hands of the kids, doing the dishes, …a relational connection that makes the sexual connection meaningful for most women; but that wouldn’t be very interesting to film, and so it is not portrayed in the movies. For married people just to cultivate the romance and friendship is such an important part of developing a healthy sexual connection.
The fostering of connection is not just applicable for married people, but for single people, as well. One of the most healthy, whether married or single, ways to foster healthy, boundaries sexually is by cultivating positive friendships with others… (More about that in another sermon).
The commandment against adultery, Commandment Seven, the command to pursue sexual purity is an expression of God’s love for us.
It is as we honour God’s design for our sexuality as single people…as married people…that we flourish.
Robert Murray McCheyne, a Scottish minister in the 19th century, was preaching on holiness. He said, “God does not so much want your holiness, as he wants your happiness, but he knows that you will only be happy when your are holy; that is, set apart for him.”
As we live a life of holiness and purity, we flourish in our relationship with God and with each other and with ourselves.
What we are saying in the series on the Ten Commandments, is that the Ten Commandments are not only an expression of God’s love for us and our neighbour, but also of our love for God.
The key to keep all the commandments is to keep the First… if we put God first… have no god, but God, we can keep this commandment against adultery; this commandment to pursue sexual purity.
If God is really first, really the center of our existence, then we will be more aware of God’s presence.
When the apostle Paul exhorts the church at Corinth to not be involved in sexual impurity and to honour God with their bodies, he writes:
19 Do you not know that your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God?
Part of the way that we honour Christ in our sexual lives is by being conscious of Christ’s presence wherever we go, because he is with us, and we can ask ourselves, “Would I be doing this if Christ were with me”…and he is.
When I have been travelling and the first night at the hotel I always feel the most lonely and at times tempted to channel surf onto a sexual scene would compromise me. From time to time I have travelled with my mentor, Leighton Ford, who is an esteemed older Presbyterian minister, the brother-in-law of Billy Graham. I am telling you, when Leighton Ford is in my hotel room, I am not tempted to watch anything that would be compromising. If Billy Graham were in my hotel room (even if he had his glasses off) I am telling you, I would not be tempted to watch any thing I knew I should not be watching.
If we are conscious that Jesus Christ is with us, wherever we are … he is…and acknowledge our honour the covenant relationship we have with him, it can help to keep us pure.
If are not pure his presence can make us purify.
God says to us using the words of Isaiah: "Though your sins are like scarlet,
they shall be as white as snow… he can say that because Christ absorbed our sin and shame on the cross.”
A Christian woman I’ve met had sinned and Even though she had confessed it, she didn't feel as though she really deserved his forgiveness. Then, during her lunch hour, as she went out to enjoy the fresh air and the thick falling snow, she said, “I felt God say to me, Just as the snow comes down and makes everything clean, so will I cleanse you. Though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be white as snow. I realized what a great gift he had given me!”
That gift for her is the gift God wants to give you, too.
Let’s pray:
Prayer (Ezekiel 36:24-27):
24 " 'For I will take you out of the nations; I will gather you from all the countries and bring you back into your own land. 25 I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you will be clean; I will cleanse you from all your impurities and from all your idols. 26 I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. 27 And I will put my Spirit in you and move you to follow my decrees and be careful to keep my laws.
Series: Loving God through the Ten Commandments
Ten Commandments M6: Sermon Notes (10 10 31)
Speaker: Ken Shigematsu
Title: Sacred Sex
Text: Deuteronomy 5:18; Matthew 5: 27-30
BIG IDEA: When we experience sexual purity, we honour God, ourselves and our neighbour.
I was getting to know someone who didn’t have a Christian background, but was open to finding out more of the Christian faith. One afternoon, we were at Stanley Park together.
He said, "There something that I would like to talk to you about, but let's get on our bikes first and start riding around the seawall."
When we got on our bikes and began riding around the seawall this person pulled up parallel to me and said, "I wanted to talk to you about your sermon on sex, but I’d feel more comfortable talking as we are riding bikes together side-by-side."
Many of us don't feel comfortable talking frankly about sex. Like my friend we prefer to talk about it while side-by-side as opposed to face-to-face. But, God is not shy about sex. In fact, there is an entire book of the Bible, the Song of Solomon, that is devoted to God's gift of sex and sexuality.
We have been in a series in the Ten Commandments. We come to another famous commandment which at first glance may seem restrictive, but like all of these 10 Commandments it is intended to protect a priceless gift, to enable us to flourish in our relationship with others, ourselves and God.
If you have your Bibles, please turn to Deuteronomy 5:18: “You shall not commit adultery.”
(THIS SERMON WILL CONTAIN SOME MATURE CONTENT MATERIAL. KIDS ARE WELCOME TO STAY BUT I WANT THE PARENTS TO KNOW.)
On the surface, this commandment sounds so restrictive, but as we have been seeing in this series on the Ten Commandments, God gives us these commandments, not to steal our fun, but so that we might flourish in our relationships with God and each other.
This commandment like each of the Ten is an expression of God’s love for us and our neighbor. And as we live this out, the commandment becomes an expression of our love for God.
But first let’s look at how this commandment is an expression of God’s love for us and our neighbor.
The commandment against adultery protects not just the Hebrews, but people everywhere.
According to a Kinsey study, in over 150 different cultures around the world adultery was cited as the # 1 cause for divorce. Divorce, as we know, is always destructive, particularly when there are children who are involved. And so, this commandment that we are going to look at today is an expression of God’s love for us.
What does the word “adultery” literally mean? It means “to break marriage,” to be married and have sex with someone else is breaking your marriage—it’s a sin against your marriage and your partner. To have sex with a person who is married to someone else, to break that person’s marriage covenant. Adultery is primarily a sin against the “innocent partner.”
When Bill Clinton had his affair with Monica Lewinski, many people said it was wrong, but many people also said, “There is nothing wrong with two consenting adults being sexually involved with each other.” But as Bill Clinton describes in his autobiography, My Life, when he woke early one morning and told his wife Hillary the truth about what happened between him and Lewinski, Bill Clinton said, “It looked I had punched her in the stomach.” Mrs. Clinton is a very liberal, progressive woman. She didn’t look at her husband and say, “Well, as long as it was mutually consensual, no problem.” She felt as if she had been punched in the gut.
The commandment against adultery is an expression of God’s love for us and others, for our marriages, the marriages of other people.
Now I am aware that some of us feel that adultery is not a possibility for us. But if we looked at Jesus’ meditation on this Seventh Commandment, we might rethink that.
Let’s move from Deuteronomy to Matthew 5: 27-30:
27 "You have heard that it was said, 'You shall not commit adultery.' 28 But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart. 29 If your right eye causes you to stumble, gouge it out and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to be thrown into hell. 30 And if your right hand causes you to stumble, cut it off and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to go into hell.
Jesus begins this text with the words, “You have heard that it was said, 'You shall not commit adultery’.” He is quoting here Commandment Seven, the commandment against adultery that we just read.
It is possible, even if we do not technically commit the act of adultery, to break the spirit of the law against adultery.
This is why Jesus says:
“27 "You have heard that it was said, 'You shall not commit adultery.' 28 But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart.
On the surface this seems like an impossible commandment, doesn’t it? Is Jesus saying that if we look at a human being and experience some kind of sexual attraction, we have sinned? No. The Bible shows us in the Song of Solomon that sexuality and sexual attraction show us are gifts from God.
Last Sunday I referred to Jesus’ teaching when we looked at his meditation on the commandment “Thou shall not murder.” I explained that Jesus condemns anger that might lead to murder or maiming someone. Based on the Greek word he used “orgizomenos,” we know he’s not referring to a good, righteous anger against injustice and we also know he’s also not referring to a flash of anger we experience if some cuts us off in traffic… I said Jesus is condemning the kind of anger that we choose to hold onto.
When Jesus speaks against lust he’s not talking about the initial attraction we may have when we see a person, but rather a choice we make to stare at someone—in order to desire them more or have them if we could.
If you look at the Greek text, you will see that when Jesus says that anyone who looks lustfully at a woman, he is saying anyone who looks and continues to look, anyone who stares in order to lust after her or him has already committed adultery with him or her in his heart. It is possible to have a healthy attraction or a healthy sense of awe with the beauty of another human being without lusting. But it is also possible to go beyond appreciation and admiration, and to stare at someone in order to sexual desire that person and have them if we could.
So what is the difference between lust and a healthy, sexual, God-honouring attraction?
As a mentor of mine says, “Lust makes you to want an experience, but a healthy sexual attraction makes you to want a person.” (not just sexually but love makes you want to know them in their entirety). Lust makes you to want pleasure. Love makes you to want a particular woman or man.”
C. S. Lewis, the Oxford scholar, said, “It’s poor use of language to talk about a man on the prowl, and say, ‘He wants a woman’.” Lewis said, “It is not the best way to put it. He wants a pleasure; he wants a sexual thrill and a woman is simply a piece of apparatus to help him get that thrill.”
(Transition)
As we’ve said in this series every commandment stated in the negative has a positive corollary. The positive corollary of thou shalt not commit adultery and thou shalt not look in order to lust is to pursue sexual purity.
The Apostle Paul 1 Corinthians 6 calls us to sexual purity. In vs. 13 he writes:
The body, however, is not meant for sexual immorality but for the Lord, and the Lord for the body.
The word that Paul uses for sexual immorality is the Greek “pornia” which refers to sex outside of marriage. It can refer to adultery. It can refer to sex with a prostitute. It can also refer to sex outside of marriage, including premarital sex.
So how is the call to pursue sexual purity an expression of God’s love for us?
The Scriptures teach that God created sex as a unitive act that connects not only a man and a woman’s body, but also their souls, making two people one. In Genesis 2:24, we read that when man and a woman unite in sex: two will become one flesh. God designed sex so that when a man and a woman come together physically in sexual union, there is also a powerful force that makes them want to unite on every other level, as well: emotionally, spiritually, and even economically. It is an act of union so sublime that it is used in Scripture as a metaphor of our union with God.
Now, if this definition of sex through Scripture sounds ethereal or other worldly, consider the opinion of Dr. Gordon Neufeld, a respected, secular psychologist who has taught at UBC. In his book, Hold Onto Your Kids, he writes:
“Sex is a potent bonding agent: It creates couples, attaches to each other those who engage in it. Studies have confirmed what most of us will have found out on our own, that making love has a natural bonding effect, evoking powerful emotions of attachment in the human brain… Simply put, sex creates a potent connection and then harnesses the rest of the brain through chemicals the brain releases to preserve the bond that has been created…. Sex creates couples, ready or not, willing or not… Sex is like human contact cement, invoking a sense of union and fusion, creating one flesh…”
But, if sex makes two one, then if two people become one and then tear apart as they go their separate ways, it explains why people’s hearts can feel torn by sex. Many people associate sex with pain and with loss. Sex outside of God’s design can cause heartache. It can also lead to heart hardening and inability to bond with others.
Psychologist Gordon Neufeld writes:
“One of the ultimate costs of emotional hardening (which comes from repeatedly uniting with another sexual partner and then tearing apart) is that sex loses its potency as a bonding agent. The long-term effect is soul numbing impairing young people’s capacity to enter into relationships in which true contact and intimacy are possible.”
God’s call to pursue sexual purity is an expression of God’s love for us because if we use sex outside of its design it will hurt us, it loses its potency for us as a bonding agent, and our capacity to experience true sexual intimacy and lasting fulfillment are compromised.
Sex outside of God’s design hurts us, hardens our hearts and is ultimately not satisfying.
Fewer men and women in our culture actually date or have boyfriends and girlfriends compared to generations gone by. Young people, especially, talk more and more about “hooking up” with others—shorthand for describing sex as something that is casual, and certainly free of any kind of romance or relational commitment or going to a party “hitting that” to describe a sexual encounter. Laura Stepp in her book Unhooked describes how hookups leave most young women unsatisfied, though by their own admission they are unwilling to admit this to their peers. I hear of more and more young men who want to avoid the complexities of a committed relationship. They just want hookups, or prefer looking at the airbrushed images of naked women online--instead of actually having a real relationship or even sex with a real human being, they prefer to masturbate to an image on a screen. Part of the reason porn=aided self-sex is so addictive is because it ultimately doesn’t satisfy and we need more and more of what doesn’t satisfy.
Again, as I have been emphasizing throughout this series, God doesn’t say no adultery or sex outside a marriage covenant as a way to wreck our lives.
God’s call to pursue sexual purity is an expression of God’s love for us because we use sex outside of its design it hurts us, it hardens our hearts so our capacity to experience true sexual intimacy is compromised, and when we use sex outside of God’s plan we find it ultimately unfulfilling.
So God gives us the Seventh Commandment against—against adultery—or more positively put , to pursue sexual purity for our sake, and the sake of others.
So what does it look like for us to honour the Seventh Commandment against adultery and to pursue sexual purity which expresses God’s love for us?
Part of what it means, and I am sure you are not going to be surprised my saying this, is to create healthy boundaries. I know that for some of us “boundary” is a negative word, but as I have said before, a boundary can provide a protective service to us.
(PROP: Bowl and some water.)
Like water for a bowl, the bowl provides a necessary boundary to contain water. If the boundary of the bowl is broken, then something precious is lost. And so it is with appropriate sexual boundaries. Though it may sound negative, it protects something immensely precious. When the boundary is destroyed, we lose something of great value.
So let’s talk for a moment about pornography.
I know that in the culture pornography is largely accepted. And I know that some of you here view it as no big deal, but Jesus clearly in Matthew 5:28 says, “I tell you, anyone who looks in order to lust a woman sexually, has already committed adultery with her in his heart.”
As I will share in just a few minutes, I have had sexual temptations that I have wrestled with, but, with God’s help, I have steered clear of pornography. It is not that I am especially virtuous, but, as a pastor, I have had a front row seat in the lives of people who have been so damaged by pornography. I have seen how a person when in a relationship uses pornography, their partner experiences the same feelings of rejection and betrayal that a person has when they have been the victim of an affair. I have seen over and over again how pornography has sown the seeds of distrust and paved the way to divorce people. I’ve seen how people who want to honour God can be so ashamed because of their habitual, furtive viewing of pornography.
For example, 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 and confess our struggle with them. If porn is a secret, it will have much more power over us.
I know someone who speed-dials a trusted friend or two when tempted by pornography. I know others who find they are more drawn to internet porn when their roommates or spouses are out of town. A few days before they ask a friend to call them during that time to see how they are doing with their temptation. Knowing they are going to be asked about how they dealt with their temptation can make a significant difference in helping them overcome.
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. He said, “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 using hyperbole but his point: take decisive, drastic measures to deal with lust.
Having friends that help us live our values really helps.
I’ve shared this story before, but it’s a seminal one for me (and I don’t have many quite like this) so I share it again.
When I was a younger single person before entering the pastoral ministry, I was traveling and ended up meeting a woman. We were from very different worlds—but we had a dynamic connection and chemistry between us… one day we were walking down the street and she showed me a photo of her posing for a fragrance advertisement. I said, “Hey, I’d love to see your modeling portfolio some time.”
She showed up at my hotel lobby at about midnight. Over the phone, she told me she wanted to come to up my room to show me some of her modeling photographs. But I also felt excited, not knowing how the night would unfold, sensing I might lose my way… She really wanted not come up to my room, and I really wanted her to come up, I but had an ominous feeling about it too, I didn’t trust me. So I asked her to leave at them concierge desk.
Afterwards, when I got home, I shared what had happened with a close a friend of mine. He said, “If you are ever in such a situation again, call me.” I had heard about friends who hold you accountability, but really underlined my need for that. Ever since them, even if it’s embarrassing to share a sexual temptation, if I feel like I might be on slope of temptation, I will call a friend who shares my values.
Most of us would not hesitate to call the police if our loved ones were in physical danger or if we were. But, many of us would be hesitant if we or a loved one--or a future loved one--was put at risk, because of some sexual danger we were about to face. But, in order to protect our marriages and our future marriages we should make the call to a friend who shares our values and who wants the best for us.
How do we live the commandment to pursue sexual purity—this expression of God’s love for us—if we are single and in a dating relationship with someone?
Frankly, when I was a single person in dating relationships, I knew from the Scriptures that having sex was clearly outside of God’s will. But it wasn’t always clear as to how far it would be appropriate to go physically in a particular relationship I was in. I recall how sometimes a warning bell would go off in my mind, like when the girlfriend would say, “Look, my roommate isn’t home right tonight. Let’s go to my bedroom.” I am remembering thinking I’ve love, but not a good idea if I am wanting to honour God here…
Actually, after getting married I read Lauren Winner’s fabulous book called Real Sex. The book was published in 2005, so I was very much married then. She just gives the most helpful counsel that I have ever heard when it comes to setting boundaries with a person that you are in a dating relationship with, but not married to. I shared this before, because I wish had had this book when I was single.
When she began writing her book on sex, she was single, but during the time she was writing she started dating Griff and they ended up getting married. She describes how she and Griff established their sexual boundaries Their friend Greg, the campus pastor at the University of Virginia, which was near where they were living, gave a piece of guidance:
‘Don’t do anything sexual that you wouldn’t feel comfortable doing on the steps of the rotunda.’
(The rotunda was public monument at UVA)
Lauren describes how she and Griff climbed up on to the rotunda steps one night and kissed to their hearts content, and Griff said, “That’s our line. We won’t really feel very comfortable stripping our clothes off up here in front of the rotunda.”
Great counsel: don’t do anything you would not feel comfortable doing at the steps of the rotunda.
For married couples… protect your marriage, not only from physical affairs, but emotional ones too.
A healthy rule for a married person is not become more open and intimate with someone than we are with our own spouse. If a friend knows more about our marriage than our spouse knows about your friendship, then we already crossed that line.
There have been times in my past when though I didn’t have a physical relationship with someone, there was a blurring of some of the emotional boundaries. So I find this very helpful. Just as we would want in a kind of physical boundary when we sense that we might be tempted to compromise by not going up to someone’s bedroom, so it can be appropriate to set an emotional boundary, too. It may seem cold. You may come off as a stick in the mud, but you are protecting something very valuable, much like a bowl protects water.
More positively, if you are married…(I know that there are many single people here, so I don’t want to get into too much detail…) but foster the romance, friendship and the sexual connection in your marriage. Let me say to those of you who are single, you may think “once I am married” you may think that married life will be an endless experience of sexual bliss.
Although studies show that married people tend to have more fulfilling sex than single people, it is not uncommon for a married couple to go through times of sexual disappointment, difficulty and frustration. In the movie, Annie Hall, Woody Allen and his partner Annie Hall are talking to a therapist, and the therapist asks, “Do you have sex often?” And the man and the woman respond in unison—the man says, “Hardly ever,” and she says, “Constantly,” and they both say, “A couple of times a week.” So thinking about how often you will make love may be helpful.
Hollywood doesn’t really help married couples with their sex lives. Hollywood tends to depict good sex as being between non-married people—a man and a wife who are not married. How often do we see a love scene between a married couple in the movies? The way that Hollywood and pop culture tend to portray sex leads men to think that the way to turn a woman on is through quick, rough sex. There are some women who prefer that kind of sex, but most don’t--for most women for it starts in the kitchen (not literally if you have kids at home), but it begins with listening, washing the hands of the kids, doing the dishes, …a relational connection that makes the sexual connection meaningful for most women; but that wouldn’t be very interesting to film, and so it is not portrayed in the movies. For married people just to cultivate the romance and friendship is such an important part of developing a healthy sexual connection.
The fostering of connection is not just applicable for married people, but for single people, as well. One of the most healthy, whether married or single, ways to foster healthy, boundaries sexually is by cultivating positive friendships with others… (More about that in another sermon).
The commandment against adultery, Commandment Seven, the command to pursue sexual purity is an expression of God’s love for us.
It is as we honour God’s design for our sexuality as single people…as married people…that we flourish.
Robert Murray McCheyne, a Scottish minister in the 19th century, was preaching on holiness. He said, “God does not so much want your holiness, as he wants your happiness, but he knows that you will only be happy when your are holy; that is, set apart for him.”
As we live a life of holiness and purity, we flourish in our relationship with God and with each other and with ourselves.
What we are saying in the series on the Ten Commandments, is that the Ten Commandments are not only an expression of God’s love for us and our neighbour, but also of our love for God.
The key to keep all the commandments is to keep the First… if we put God first… have no god, but God, we can keep this commandment against adultery; this commandment to pursue sexual purity.
If God is really first, really the center of our existence, then we will be more aware of God’s presence.
When the apostle Paul exhorts the church at Corinth to not be involved in sexual impurity and to honour God with their bodies, he writes:
19 Do you not know that your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God?
Part of the way that we honour Christ in our sexual lives is by being conscious of Christ’s presence wherever we go, because he is with us, and we can ask ourselves, “Would I be doing this if Christ were with me”…and he is.
When I have been travelling and the first night at the hotel I always feel the most lonely and at times tempted to channel surf onto a sexual scene would compromise me. From time to time I have travelled with my mentor, Leighton Ford, who is an esteemed older Presbyterian minister, the brother-in-law of Billy Graham. I am telling you, when Leighton Ford is in my hotel room, I am not tempted to watch anything that would be compromising. If Billy Graham were in my hotel room (even if he had his glasses off) I am telling you, I would not be tempted to watch any thing I knew I should not be watching.
If we are conscious that Jesus Christ is with us, wherever we are … he is…and acknowledge our honour the covenant relationship we have with him, it can help to keep us pure.
If are not pure his presence can make us purify.
God says to us using the words of Isaiah: "Though your sins are like scarlet,
they shall be as white as snow… he can say that because Christ absorbed our sin and shame on the cross.”
A Christian woman I’ve met had sinned and Even though she had confessed it, she didn't feel as though she really deserved his forgiveness. Then, during her lunch hour, as she went out to enjoy the fresh air and the thick falling snow, she said, “I felt God say to me, Just as the snow comes down and makes everything clean, so will I cleanse you. Though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be white as snow. I realized what a great gift he had given me!”
That gift for her is the gift God wants to give you, too.
Let’s pray:
Prayer (Ezekiel 36:24-27):
24 " 'For I will take you out of the nations; I will gather you from all the countries and bring you back into your own land. 25 I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you will be clean; I will cleanse you from all your impurities and from all your idols. 26 I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. 27 And I will put my Spirit in you and move you to follow my decrees and be careful to keep my laws.
posted by Shigematsu at 5:36 PM
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