Finding Good Sex

While I prepared this series of messages, I remembered an old story about a minister who felt obligated to preach at least once about the Bible’s view of sex. His wife didn’t want him to preach on that subject, but one week, she stayed home sick. So he thought "Now’s my chance!" As he went out the door, she asked him what he was going to talk about. "Sailing," he said."Sailing?" she asked. "Sailing!?" One of the elders stopped in at the house after church to give her a get well card, When she asked him how the service went, the elder said that it was a little awkward but the topic needed to be addressed. "Oh," she said, "I don’t know why he would want to talk about that! He’s only tried it twice, and his hat blew off both times!"

Were you worried when you saw the titles on the sign board out front? I appreciate that. Because, though it’s always very, very hard for me to preach, it’s even harder to preach about what the Bible says about sex. But it’s imperative for several reasons. What you hear from some churches, including some in our own denomination, is confusing, scandalous, and grossly misleading. Are the scandals between priests and young men the only message that the public is to hear from the church about sex? A married man who left his wife and children for a homosexual relationship was just ordained a bishop. Is that God’s truth about sex? Are we as Christians who are committed to the reliability of the Bible just to sit down and shut up?

Recently, the chaplains at a major university asked incoming freshmen, "How much influence did your church have on your views about sex?" Of the students who responded, 2 percent said that their church had anything to do with their views about sex - 2 percent! Given what we’re hearing from some churches recently, that might be good thing. The less influence, the better. But how is it possible to make it through a night of TV without seeing somebody groping or climbing into bed with somebody to whom he or she is not married? Or to read the paper without finding a scandal about a public figure, or an aggressive court trying to redefine what’s normal?

There are single people all around us who thought that sex would make them feel better. But it didn’t; it only made them feel worse. And there are young people who are making mistakes about sex that are big enough to kill them. An ad running right now in some major US papers shows a teen girl, obviously pregnant. The balloon out of her mouth says, "My mother’s going to kill me!" The balloon out of her swelling midriff says, "My mother’s going to kill me."

But this is not a subject for all of these other people, out there. It’s not just about the coarse and boorish life-styles of Pierre Trudeau, Bill Clinton, George Smitherman, Svend Robinson or Jacques Chirac. Let’s start with that. This is a topic about us. That’s one of the reasons why we need to hear what the Bible says about finding good sex. I’m indebted to Craig Barnes, a teacher at Pittsburg Presbyterian Seminary for his insights into Genesis 2, and for this sermon title.

I’m convinced that most of us are not as obsessed with sex as are the writers of our movie and sit-com and commercials scripts think we are. On the list of issues that most people struggle with in life, sex is not at the top. Don’t we worry much more about our health, about our families, about finding good work, about finding fulfilment in life? We have on our minds issues about the future, fears about our children, much more than we have sex on our minds.

But the truth of God is that while we may not be consumed by sex, we are at the same time, sexual beings. It was God’s idea to create us as sexual beings. Our maleness and our femaleness were part of what he had in mind when he said, "This is good!! It’s very good!!" Genesis 2 just reminded us that nothing on earth could satisfy Adam’s yearning for a partner. Nothing. The sexual desires that we have are not part of the Fall. They are part of the package that God created when he made people. The desire for a partner is in the design of our bodies. Nothing else on earth, nothing that we may look at, or work at, or possess will satisfy that yearning.

That’s because God did not create us as spirits, then wrap around us a disposable body. God created us as a body, then, he brought that body to life by breathing into it a living soul. Our body and our soul are inextricably related. What our body yearns for is a symptom of the yearning of our soul for fellowship with the God who made us. God’s truth is that you and I are the good creation of God, including our sexual nature. You and I are a sexual no matter what shape our body is, no matter how old our body gets. Our body has a soul. And our body and soul yearn for a partner.

Maybe you’ll be relieved to know that Genesis does not teach that the male is more important in creation than the female. God tells us that each comes from the creative act. Without each other, each was missing something crucial. Our sexual impulses whisper, or sometimes they scream that we are not yet complete on our own. If we could just find this thing that is missing, then we would be whole, then we would be reunited with our soul. We would be one flesh. So our sexual longing is finally a longing for God. It is fellowship with God that we really long for. A personal relationship with the living God is the only relationship that will finally satisfy this hungering of my soul. That’s why God’s good gift of sex can never be reduced to something that will take away loneliness for the night, or something that will just fulfil bodily urges. That’s why the act of sexual union is not just touching somebody else’s body. It’s the touching of two souls, brought together into one flesh, and meant to stay together. So casual sex with multiple partners is rather like sticking your tongue onto frozen metal in the winter time, and then trying to pull it away. It rips away our very soul. Do you see why we carry around so much hurt and guilt from our sexual experiences that violate God’s plan? Ask people who are divorced. There are few things as painful as pulling apart two souls who were once bonded together. Or, if you have sex with someone to whom you are not married, take a hard look in the mirror in the morning, and ask yourself, "How good do I feel now?" Why is it so empty? Isn’t it because your soul has just been robbed? If there is no commitment, no vow for life, then we have to keep people’s hands off our souls. God’s good sex is a love that endures past passion. It endures through conflict, through sadness, through success, through physical disability, and poverty and wealth. Good sex is a mirror of the very character of God, who said that this man and woman thing is an image of God himself.

So what about singles? With the help of pastor Craig Barnes, here are three observations from the Bible about sex for all of us, single or not.

1. Sexuality is essential to who we are as God’s created people. But sexual activity is not. You are always a woman in the presence of men. You are always a man in the presence of women. That doesn’t mean that you exist for the opposite sex. But it does mean that you can still enjoy your masculinity or your femininity without having to wrap your soul around another person. Who you are cannot be defined by your sexual activity.
What better example of that is there than the life of Jesus Christ, the man? Jesus was a man. But that refers to more than his gender. He was a man with the sexuality of a man, but he didn’t marry. He didn’t have children. He remained chaste his whole life. So, do you see it? While sexuality is essential to our nature, to who we are, sexual activity is not essential to living a good life.

2. We can find complete joy in knowing God as our partner without the help of sexual activity or marriage.
That’s why the apostle Paul said, "No" to sexual activity in his own life, and "No" to marriage for himself. Marriage is neither a right nor a necessity. It is a calling. Some are called to marriage. Some are called to singleness. But all of us, all of us are called to know God. We are all missing something in our lives, things that are hard to live without. But we can come to know God, even in our longing for whatever else it is that we are missing, whether it is a sexual relationship or something else.

3. But let’s get real. What about that host of people in our world who are sexually active without being married? Most of the people who enter into sexual relationships outside of marriage are not promiscuous people. They are lonely people. They are also the people who can tell us that sex by itself does nothing for loneliness, except, at times, to sharpen it.

Satisfaction in life is all about our longing for God. And the only time our longing for God is met through a sexual relationship is when we are one flesh with someone of the opposite sex; when we can say, "This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh." Behind that is an intense longing that will only be fulfilled when we personally come to know the God who made us, the God who came to us in Jesus Christ the Crucified one, the God who still comes to us today by his Holy Spirit.