God's Plan for Sex

Flee from sexual immorality. All other sins a person commits are outside the body, but whoever sins sexually, sins against their own body. 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; you were bought at a price. Therefore honor God with your bodies.

1 Corinthians 6:18-20

Last week I tried to convince you that sex is a wonderful gift from God, that God is not down on sex, that in fact He commands us to have sex in the first few chapters of Genesis. God places boundaries on how we use this gift of sex not because it is dirty or bad but because it is so powerful. I compared sex to a chainsaw or an airplane. These things are powerful creations that when used correctly are awesome, but the same power that makes them awesome can also bring devastating effects when they are used in ways that they were not intended to be used. Some of you may have thought I had lost my mind comparing sex to a chainsaw, but it is hard to doubt the facts. Sex is awesome when used the way God intended for it to be used, that is within the confines of monogamous marriage between a man and woman.  Sex can be devastating when it is used outside of those confines.

Generally when we think about the negative consequences of sex before marriage we think about getting pregnant, and we are right to do this. Sex does often result in pregnancy, but there are worse things than getting pregnant. Did you know that you have a 4x greater chance of getting a disease than you do of getting pregnant.* Oftentimes we forget about the risk of disease. By the time a girl gets pregnant in the U.S. on average she is carrying 2.3 STDs.* These STDs can really mess you up. Some of them can be cured with some simple antibiotics, but some of them have no cure. Pretty much all of them painfully affect your privates in ways that none of us want. These STDS can make it harder for you to have a normal life in the future. Some of them can cause infertility, meaning they can make it hard for you to have children. Do you know that there was a 500% increase in infertility in U.S. between 1996 and 2006?* And I know that condoms are touted as the cure all, but they are not full proof when it comes to preventing STDs. Anytime you come into contact with someone else's  genitalia in any way you have a chance of contracting an STD.

Movies and TV shows present sex before marriage like it is a recreational activity between consenting adults that doesn't hurt anybody, but here are some fun stats on pregnancy. 80% of teen girls that parent children will live below the poverty line for at least 10 years, which means that their child will live below that poverty line as well.* 90% of teen moms will not graduate from college, which of course makes it very hard for them to have a successful career.* And guys if you get a girl pregnant, you have no say in what happens to that child. In our culture you have no right to say whether that child is aborted or is delivered. If she decides to have the baby then over the next 18 years it will cost you between $60,000 and $80,000 in child support.* And if you don’t pay, the government will garnish your wages.

Believe me I am not trying to get into political issues here. In America you have the freedom to do what you want. I just want you to carefully consider what you want to do. I am completely convinced that God's plan for sex is best. Think for a moment about what the world would be like if everyone followed God’s plan for sex. In other words if there was no premarital sex how would our world be different? There would be no rape, no adultery, no STDs, no Aids, no sexual abuse of children, and no teenage mothers having to raise their children alone. It sounds like heaven, right? God isn’t down on sex but He knows that sex is so awesome and powerful that when it is used in the wrong way it can really, really hurt people. So He gave us rules about when we could have sex and who with so that we wouldn’t hurt ourselves or each other. If you were God, what would you do? Knowing how destructive sex could be wouldn't you try to warn your children to use it carefully?

For further reading...

• Galatians 6:7-8: The law of sowing and reaping applies to our sexual decisions.
• Romans 1:18-32: The price for ignoring God's commands is steep.

* Stats taken from Pam Stenzel's Video "Sex Still Has a Price Tag: Public School Edition." I did run across some websites claiming that Stenzel's statistics were inaccurate, but I did not find any evidence that the statistics I used were inaccurate. It is common to malign the source of statistics so finding no concrete evidence that these statistics were wrong I chose to trust Ms. Stenzel. I am happy to consider any corrections from credible sources in the comments, however.