Butterfly in the Sky

If then you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth. For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ who is your life appears, then you also will appear with him in glory.

Colossians 3:1-4

Does the butterfly that flutters gracefully through the sky set its mind on and seek after the life it once had as a caterpillar, inching along as it dragged itself through the dirt? Of course not. It has died to that old way of life and found a far superior existence. In the same way, it makes no sense for a Christian to be intently focused on worldly things, to seek after them. We died to that old way of living and have been raised with Christ. Colossians 3 puts it so clearly. It hit me strongly this morning as I read it. Believers have made a choice. We have chosen the things of God over the things of man. Believers have forsaken the world, repented of their ways, and committed to seeking after the things of heaven (Which are far superior anyway). Why would we ever look back? 

And yet so many do. We claim to serve a God who is sovereign over every detail of life, and yet live in fear. We say that God's very Spirit dwells within us, that we are the temple of God; and then we debase our bodies through sexual immorality, pornography, and masturbation. We acknowledge that we are new creations in Christ, but our speech betrays us. It is laced with anger, malice, slander and abusive speech (v.8). We affirm that there is one true God, yet we continue to bow down at the altar of money/wealth and worship what it can offer us in this life. 

Why would he return to such things? It simply makes no sense for any Christ follower, having tasted God's goodness, to turn back and begin to long for the things of the world once more. 

We must continue to put off the old man everyday (v. 9) by setting our minds on things above. We must learn to seek the advance of God's kingdom in this world and of God's righteousness in our own lives. Instead of worldly things, let us seek after: increased knowledge of God; hearts characterized by kindness, compassion, and humility; lives defined by gentleness, patience, forgiveness; and above all... love (v. 13-14).

Father, help Your children (help me) to grasp the deeper truths of this passage and help us to live them out. Remind us that our lives are in heaven. Forgive us for focusing on things that have no bearing there things like: sex, money, romantic love, entertainment, and athletic glory. Help us to set our hope on Jesus' return instead (v. 4). In Jesus' name...Amen.   

What happens in Vegas...

Marriage should be honored by all, and the marriage bed kept pure, for God will judge the adulterer and all the sexually immoral.

Hebrews 13:4

Do not be deceived: God cannot be mocked. A man reaps what he sows. Whoever sows to please their flesh, from the flesh will reap destruction; whoever sows to please the Spirit, from the Spirit will reap eternal life.

Galatians 6:7-8

“What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas.” Maybe you’ve seen the commercials. This slogan gives you this idea that Vegas is a magical place where you can go and do whatever you want without suffering any consequences. The idea is that when you leave Vegas, all you the bad stuff you have done stays there. I think we have a tendency to think the same way about sex. We think “Oh well… everyone has sex in high school or in college, but one day when I am an adult I will leave all of that behind and it’ll be okay.” This is certainly how it works on TV and in music videos. The problem is that the real world just doesn’t work that way. Sex outside of marriage produces a lot of pain that nobody talks about. And that pain doesn’t stay in high school and college any more than your gambling debts stay in Vegas.

In Galatians 6:7-8 God makes it very clear to us what the consequences are for those who choose to disobey Him. He says that you will reap what you sow. This is a farming metaphor. If you plant corn you will harvest corn. No one has ever planted corn and harvested watermelons. God says it is the same with our actions. If we plant sin in our life, we will reap destruction, but if we do what God commands and we plant obedience then we will enjoy life. This is true of all of God’s commands including His command to keep the marriage bed pure. So what you do about sex now will have consequences for you later. If you choose God’s way for sex (waiting until after marriage) then you will have good consequences. But if you choose to do what you want to do and ignore God, then sooner or later, one way or another, you will reap what you have sown. 

It is my deep desire that you reap a harvest of life and happiness in your marriage. I look around and see many people I care about reaping the consequences for bad sexual decisions they made years ago. I know that it is difficult to follow God’s plan for sex in our culture, but God Himself can uphold and strengthen you. Like the passage says it is not simply about avoiding pain. It is also about reaping a harvest of life. There are many rewards for those who wait. You don’t have to worry about STDs or how you compare to your spouse’s previous sexual partners. Some studies have actually shown that, contrary to what the world would have you believe, married people have the best sex. So I encourage you in name of Christ to choose God’s way for sex. Choose to wait until you are married. 

No doubt some of you may have already gone too far. If that is the case then you need to ask yourself a question. Was this done to me or was it something I chose? Some of you were sexually abused and it was not your fault. It was done to you and you are not guilty for that. God can bring healing and wholeness in the midst of your pain. But some of you chose your sin. You wanted it and you went after it. I want to remind you that the book of Romans says that “Where sin increased, grace increased all the more” (Romans 5:20). There is forgiveness to be had. I John 1:9 says, "If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.” God is a god of forgiveness. He wants to give you a clean slate and set you on a new path. There will still be consequences for your sin but you have a chance to start over. Make a choice now to commit to God and to stay pure from this point on. God has the right to command sexual purity from you and He has. It is your choice whether or not you will obey.

For further reading...

• Colossians 3:5- Put it to death. 
• I Thessalonians 4:3- Sanctification requires it.
• 1 Corinthians 6:20- God bought you when He redeemed you from sin. Show Him honor.

Sex is a Mind Game:Part 2

You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall not commit adultery.’ But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart. 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. 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.

Matthew 5:27-30

There is a problem in the church that we aren’t talking enough about. A number of men and women in our churches are addicted to a particular sin. Notice that I said they are not just involved with this sin. They are addicted to it. We don’t talk about it much because it’s uncomfortable but I believe that we can no longer afford to sit silently by while our brothers and sisters in Christ stay enslaved to a sin that Christ bought their freedom from. It’s time to talk about pornography, lust and masturbation.

First let’s look at some of the reasons to stay away from pornography, and there are many. 1) A lot of porn depicts crimes against women. Some porn captures actual rapes on camera for perverts to get off on. Other types stage things to make it look like rape when it is not. It is nearly impossible to tell the difference. Many of the women who make porn are beaten and abused and enticed into it with drugs and money. It is a terrible and shameful experience for them that often leaves them with deep emotional scars. When you view porn you become a part of that. 2) It affects your view of sex. It is like a warped sex education class. A study I found noted that a lot of porn had “sexually violent or degrading themes.”* You don’t want that stuff creeping into your sex life. 3) It is highly addictive. This guy named William Struthers is a psychologist who studies behavioral neuro science which means he studies how what we do affects our brains and how addiction he works. He says that “repeated exposure to any stimulus results in neurological circuit making. That is how we learn.”  In other words viewing pornography actually rewires the way you think. More than that, viewing porn causes the release of “pleasure hormones” in the male brain. Struther’s explains. “If I take the same dose of a drug over and over and my body begins to tolerate it, I will need to take a higher dose of the drug in order for it to have the same effect that it did with a lower dose the first time.”** Thus, viewing pornography not only becomes addictive for men but like all addictions it tends toward escalation. Men find themselves needing to view not only larger quantities of porn but increasingly depraved forms of pornography in order to maintain the same level of pleasure. It can draw you into watching hard core porn or even cause you to act out your fantasies on women. 4) Here’s the last reason you should stay away from porn: It will destroy your marriage. Many young men think that once they get married their wife will satisfy all their sexual desires and they will no longer need pornography. However, due to the addictive nature of porn, this is seldom the case. A husband’s continued use of pornography can create major self-esteem issues in his wife and continue to harm their marriage even as he is powerless to stop.

I have known many people who have struggled against pornography. Much of our culture has accepted it as natural and mainstream, but Jesus clearly identifies it as lust in the passage above. Jesus’ standard is a challenge to us all. Though not every man I have known struggled against pornography per say, I have only known one man my entire life who claimed to not struggle with lust. The statistics show, however, that this is not just a guy issue. Increasingly women are struggling with both pornography and lust as well. And where you find pornography and lust you almost always find masturbation as well.

Whatever you call it, I want to make clear that masturbation involves lust. It involves thinking sexually about a woman or a man (real or imagined) to whom you are not married. Jesus discusses this in the passage above and declares it to be sin. He makes clear that this is just as sinful as committing the act with that person. Like all sin it separates you from God and hurts your relationship with Him. Certainly God created us to be sexual creatures and we cannot turn that off, but He has given us marriage as an outlet for these sexual desires. Satisfying them outside of those parameters is less than God’s best for us.

What I want to say very clearly is even though some of you are enslaved to pornography and lust and masturbation Jesus can set you free. The Bible teaches that all of us are enslaved to sin prior to Jesus but that in His death and resurrection Jesus has set us free from the power that sin has over us. This includes lust. Are you still going to struggle against it? Yes. But by God’s grace it doesn’t have to have power over you. You don’t have to be enslaved or addicted to it. You can say no and you can be free of its power over you.

I Corinthians 10:13 says, "No temptation has overtaken you except what is common to mankind. And God is faithful; he will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear. But when you are tempted, he will also provide a way out so that you can endure it." This verse tells us that we are not alone in our sin, whatever it may be. The temptation you feel is common to everyone. It also tells you that God is faithful. He hasn’t abandoned you. He will not let you be tempted beyond what you can say no to. So never tell yourself the lie that you can’t say no. This verse says you can say no. It says that you can withstand the temptation to entertain dirty thoughts or masturbate. It also says that God always prepares an escape route for us. It takes time and you have to learn to walk in the freedom that God has given you, but you can be free.  The Bible literally says to FLEE from sexual temptation. (I Corinthians 6:18) And a lot of times, that’s your escape route: Leave! Go far away.

If this is something that you are struggling against today, then I encourage you to claim the freedom that Christ has already won for you at the cross and seek Gods help for walking in it. It will take time and you will fail from time to time. But if you continue to cling to the promises of God and you choose to avoid filling your mind with sexual images and putting yourself in tempting situations, then you can be set free from even these sins.

* Monk-Turner, Elizabeth "Sexual Violence in Pornography: How Prevalent is it?" Gender Issues 17, no. 2 (Spring 1999): 58-67.

**William M. Struthers, Wired for Intimacy. How Pornography Hijacks the Male Brain (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2009); quoted in Albert Mohler, Hijacking the Brain-How Pornography Works, February 1, 2010, www.albertmohler.com/2010/02/01/hijacking-the-brain-how-pornography-works/

Sex is a Mind Game: Part 1

You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall not commit adultery.’ But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart. 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. 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.

Matthew 5:27-30

But each person is tempted when they are dragged away by their own evil desire and enticed. Then, after desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and sin, when it is full-grown, gives birth to death.

James 1:14-15 

Following God’s plan for sex is about much more than just not going too far with your boyfriend or girlfriend. It is about purity. And the purity that God has called us to starts in the mind. Unless you can win the battle for mental purity, you won’t succeed at staying physically pure. Doug Fields talks about the fact that temptation begins in the mind. “A lot of people think that their strongest sexual organ is below their waist but it’s not. Let me tell you where your strongest sexual organ is, it’s your mind. A lot of us just think that sex is a physical thing. Sex is a mental thing as well.”*

Jesus makes this clear in the above passage of Scripture from His Sermon on the Mount. (It is important to note that in this passage Jesus is exaggerating to emphasize his point. He is using a literary device called hyperbole. Please do not go poke your eyes out, okay?) It is clear from His statement that what goes on in our minds is very important to Him. He says that lusting after a woman is just as sinful as having sex with her. But what is lust? Technically lust is simply a strong desire for something, but in this context we understand Jesus to mean it as longing for someone sexually, to think sexual thoughts about someone you do not have the right to think about that way. So if you are thinking sexually about someone to whom you are not married then you are lusting and it is a sin.

Looking at James 1:14-15, I think it is clear that the purer our minds are the easier it will be for us to control our bodies. So here are some helpful hints on how to keep your mind pure. First, you can make things easier on yourself by avoiding sexual content. If the TV shows and the movies and the music you listen to are constantly talking about sex, then guess what? You are going to think about it constantly and it is going to be hard for you not to lust. So make it easier on yourself and avoid putting this stuff into your head.

One thing I have tried to do to maintain my mental purity is that I don’t watch movies that have nudity in them. I know that I can’t look at naked women without lusting (I don't really think any straight man can) so I made the decision to not watch movies that have nudity in them. Fairly often a new and awesome action movie comes out that I want to see but I go to imdb.com or pluggedinonline.com and see if it has nudity. If it does, then my wife and I don’t watch it. Have I missed watching some movies I wanted to see? Yes, but it was worth it because I prevented myself from falling into sin. I think this is exactly the type of thing Jesus is talking about when He says "if your right hand causes you to stumble, cut it off." So don’t watch movies with nudity, don’t listen to music about sex, and don’t watch TV shows about it. Make your own life easier.

Second, when you aren't sure if you are lusting use the 'three looks and you're lusting' rule. I know it is cheesy but I learned it when I was in seventh grade and it has proven to be helpful for me. Let’s say that you see a beautiful (but scantily) clad woman or man walking down your street. The first look was unintentional. You couldn't help it. You were just out watering your lawn or whatever and they walked by. But sometimes, almost involuntarily, you look a second time to make sure you saw what you thought you saw the first time. You might say to yourself, was that person as hot as I think they were? You turn around and glance back only to realize that they were. But now you have a choice. You can turn around and stare at the person and try to take every part of their body in with your eyes or you can choose by God’s strength not to. If you choose to look that third time, or if you choose to entertain thoughts about that person then you are lusting.  Usually you are okay with that first or maybe even second look. It’s the third look that gets you. (Just to clarify these "looks" are glances. You can’t stare at someone for 2 minutes and say, “Oh, it’s okay I am still on my first look.”)

I want to close with a brainteaser. If I put a container in front of you and told you that your task was to get all of the air out of that container, how would you do it? Now it is very possible that you are smarter than I am and know of some sciency (oh it's a word) way to do this but the only way I know of is to fill the container all the way full with something else, e.g. water. The water would completely fill up all the empty space and push the air out. It can be the same with our minds. The best way to maintain purity is not merely to avoid putting bad things in our minds but to also fill our minds with pure thoughts. Philippians 4:8 says, "Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things."

For further reading...

• Psalm 51- Pay special attention to verse 10 of this Psalm that David wrote as a confession of his sexual sin with Bathsheba.
• Psalm 73- Check out this Psalm when you feel like keeping your mind pure is pointless (especially verse 13).
• Romans 12:1-2- Be transformed by the renewing of your mind.   

* Doug Fields from "Best Sex Ever" series

A Gameplan for Dating

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

A lot of times when we talk about a biblical view of sex people ask the question, “How far is too far?” That is a fair question and it is one that I will answer in the next few weeks, but it approaches the problem from the wrong angle. When you ask “How far is too far?” what you're really saying is that you want to go right up to the line and do as much as you possibly can without crossing it. A better question to ask would be, “How can I set boundaries around sex to honor God with my purity?”

Think about a bonfire. Bonfires are awesome. They keep you warm on a cold night. You can make s'mores with a bonfire. But if you get too close, if you stick your face right down next to the fire, then you get burned. Nobody asks “How close can I get to this bonfire without getting third degree burns?” Why do we ask that about sex? Instead of trying to do as much as you possibly can without losing your virginity, you should try to keep a safe distance. Try setting boundaries in your relationship. When you start dating someone, before you start kissing and stuff like that, sit down with them and talk about what each of you are comfortable with doing and what you are not willing to do. Talk about where your sexual line in the sand is. Don’t wait until you are alone and in the dark to have this conversation. Talk about it with the lights on before stuff starts happening. Ideally the man in the relationship should initiate this conversation as the biblical leader, but if he doesn't you cannot afford to wait for him to start grabbing stuff in the dark. Ladies, you may have to initiate this conversation yourselves. If he really cares about you then he shouldn’t push you to do things that you aren’t comfortable with. Likewise you shouldn't force him to do more than he is comfortable doing.

Now, what do you do if you are currently in a relationship that has already gone too far? It’s never too late to start over. You can’t undo what you have already done, but just because you did it once doesn’t mean you have to or should keep doing it. It is difficult to stop engaging in sexual activity after you have started it, but it isn’t impossible. Sit down with your boyfriend or girlfriend and have a conversation about what you are and are not willing to do from this point on. Just because you love the person doesn’t mean that anything goes sexually. The average girl falls in love 5-7 times before they get married and the average guys falls in love 3-5 times, so if you have sex with everyone you “fall in love” with, that’s how many sexual partners you will have.*

Today as we close I want you to think about giving priority to two relationships. First, I want you to give your relationship with your future husband or wife priority. This is a relationship that will last your whole life and you can’t know who this person will be until you stand before that preacher and get married, so choose to wait. Choose to honor that relationship. Give it priority; put it first. No matter how important the girlfriend or boyfriend you have right now is, your husband or wife will be more important. Second, I want you to give priority to the one relationship you can guarantee will last for all eternity…your relationship with God. God has told you what to do. Trust Him. Place Him ahead of your relationship with your boyfriend or girlfriend. Choose God’s way for sex over the world’s way or your boyfriend’s way…even over your own way. Trust me, God’s way is better.

For further reading...

• Ruth- Check out a biblical romance.

* Doug Fields from "Best Sex Ever" series

Sex isn't Difficult

Be alert and of sober mind. Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour.

1 Peter 5:8

Doug Fields tells an interesting anecdote about his dog. He claims that this dog is incredibly stupid. In fact, it may be the dumbest dog in the history of the world, he says. But even with how dumb his dog is Doug didn’t have to teach it how to have sex. He didn’t have to go get a little flip chart and draw pictures on it and go out into the backyard and teach his dog how to have sex. The dog figured it out on his own. This is because having sex isn’t difficult. You can have a brain the size of a finger nail, he says, and figure it out. And he is right. Having sex isn’t difficult, making wise decisions about sex is difficult.

This is even more true when you are dating. The Bible doesn’t talk a lot about dating specifically, but it teaches quite a bit about sex and other subjects that can be applied to dating. Take the above passage of Scripture for example. It presents a general truth about the nature of our enemy. It has nothing to do with sex specifically, and yet because it is true we know that it applies to sex as well. So the first thing you need to know if you are going to make wise sexual decisions is that you have an enemy. Over the past two weeks I have talked about how powerful sex is and that this power is what makes it awesome and fun; but this power is also what gives sex the potential to destroy people’s lives. Last week I gave a lot of statistics about the bad consequences sex before marriage can have on a person’s life. You need to know that the devil wants to trick you into experiencing that pain. He wants to convince that anything goes between two consenting adults, and that if you really love the person it's okay. He wants to see you struck down with an STD or to bring a child into this world out of wedlock. He wants to derail your life.

Scripture tells us that this world is under the control of Satan, so it shouldn’t surprise us at all that our world is so sex saturated. Now I want to say again that sex is not bad. Sex is awesome! God is not down on sex. It is His gift to us. But it has the potential to do damage precisely because it is so powerful. Satan has set our world up to try to tempt us into having sex in ways that maximize its potential for damage in our lives. God created sex to be had within marriage, so Satan uses movies, music, TV, magazines, pornography and much more to make sex between unmarried people (casual sex that is just for the fun of it) sound like the best kind of sex.

God sees things differently. He says…

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. (I Corinthians 6:18-20)

So now that you know that there is an enemy that is trying hard to get you to destroy your life with sex, you have some decisions to make. Who are you going to listen to? Are you going to follow the world? Are you going to fall into the trap that your enemy has set for you? Or are you going to believe that God’s way is better? Are you going to choose to trust that God can give you the strength to wait? I wish I could choose for you, but I can't. I hope you will choose God’s way. Next week we are going to talk about how you can make a game plan for making it to your wedding day with your virginity intact. It’s possible, and I believe everyone is capable of it with God’s help. For now, pray and ask God to give you the strength to use the gift of sex wisely.


For further reading...

• I John 5:19- Mass conspiracy?
• Deuteronomy 6:1-3- God's commands are designed to bring life not death.
• John 10:10- Satan's ploys on the other hand are intended to bring death.

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.     

Like a Seven Year Old with a Chainsaw

But for Adam no suitable helper was found. So the LORD God caused the man to fall into a deep sleep; and while he was sleeping, he took one of the man’s ribs and then closed up the place with flesh. Then the LORD God made a woman from the rib he had taken out of the man, and he brought her to the man.

The man said, “This is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called ‘woman,’ for she was taken out of man.” That is why a man leaves his father and mother and is united to his wife, and they become one flesh.

Adam and his wife were both naked, and they felt no shame.

Genesis 2:20b-25

I think that flying an airplane would be awesome! I mean can you imagine getting behind the wheel of this little single engine plane and flying it. Being thousands of feet up in the air and being able to make that plane do loops and flips and all kinds of things. I can only imagine how awesome that must be. Flying an airplane is awesome because airplanes are so powerful. The power is what makes it awesome. Think about using a chainsaw. If you have ever used a chainsaw you know how awesome it can be to cut right through a tree. It is the power that makes it awesome. Using a handsaw to bring a tree down isn't nearly as fun. The same power that makes these things great also makes them dangerous when they aren't used the way they were intended to be used. You wouldn’t put a ten year old in an airplane, show her how to work the pedals and the steering wheel, then start the plane and walk away so she could have fun. Nor would you take a seven year old out and show him how to pull run a chainsaw then start it up and tell him to play with it. You wouldn't do that because you know that these things are awesome and powerful and amazingly fun when used the way they were created to be used. But, because they are so powerful, when they are used in ways that they were not created to be used, they can destroy lives. Sex is the same way. Sex is such an awesome and powerful gift that it needs boundaries for our safety.

The above passage of Scripture is the fountainhead of our understanding of what boundaries God has placed on sex. It doesn't seem like much at first glance, but there is quite a lot in there. First, we have to note the obvious. God made men and women and he made our bodies to work in a certain way. In other words, God created sex! And by looking at Adam and Eve we see a great picture of how God intended sex to be used. You have a husband and a wife having sex with only one another. The passage also indicates that sex works in a powerful way. It takes two people and joins them together so that they are one. This is not just a physical union. Sex bonds two people together in deeply emotional and spiritual ways. This bond is meant to last forever. Jesus says, “So they are no longer two, but one. Therefore what God has joined together, let man not separate.” (Matt 19:6). Some of you may be thinking, yeah but Adam and Eve weren’t married. Well, they didn’t go to a church and get a preacher to marry them, but they were married. You see our wedding ceremonies signify a man and woman being joined to one another by God. God was there. He gave Eve to Adam. He married them personally. So they did have a wedding, it was just different from ours.

Nowhere does the Bible teach any other model for sex outside of one man, and one woman having sex after marriage and only with each other. The Bible reports that med did different things. It reports that men married more than one woman. It tells the people of Israel what they are supposed to do when a man and woman are caught having sex when they aren’t married, but it never promotes these things. These are the boundaries that God created for sex. Within them, sex is powerful and fulfilling and enjoyable. Outside of these boundaries, sex can be devastating. (More on that next week.)

So right off the bat we can see that God is for sex. He created it. He even commands Adam and Eve to procreate (Genesis 1:28). He told them to have kids…God commanded them to have sex. Not only did He create it and command them to do it, but God created sex so that it would be pleasurable. He didn’t have to do that. God made sex fun for us! God is not against us having sex. Sex is His gift to us, but He has put boundaries on sex in order to ensure that it is used the way He created it to be used so that we do not hurt ourselves.

All of this means that you have a choice. Only you can make the choice of whether or not you are going to follow God’s plan for sex and teach your kids to do the same or if you will follow the world and have sex without boundaries. Because so many of us have sinned in this area it is important to remember that we serve a God who is in the business of putting lives back together. I John 1:9 says, “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.” God is a God of forgiveness. You can get a fresh start, but even then there are consequences for our actions.  

For further reading...

• Leviticus 18- Check out the Old Testament laws regarding sex. There are some good boundaries here. It's kind of sad that God had to tell us some of this stuff.
• Leviticus 20:10-21- God places some pretty strict punishments on transgressing His boundaries for sex. We must remember that these punishments are given within the context of the old covenant. They do teach us how serious our sin is, but the specific punishments no longer apply under the new covenant. Christ has taken our punishment upon Himself.
• Matthew 19:3-9- Check out the boundaries Jesus puts on divorce. Sex really is meant to bond two people together for life.