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We're going to be talking about an uncomfortable topic which uh gee I can't remember the last time we ever preached on this never in the last six years. So today is the day and uh I had to bite the bullet because I am a urologist. So this is an area where theology and science uh intermingle. So um let's uh fasten our seat belts and look at this. Now when we mention let's have a word of prayer. Lord, we ask that you help us understand this most important topic uh and and which actually pervades every part of our lives and yet we find it difficult to actually uh grapple with it, understand it, come to terms with it. We either shun it or we embrace it too much. Um so help us understand with your word for we ask for Jesus sake. Amen. So the topic is u uh we're going to be talking about sex. And if you come to church traditionally, we don't talk about sex, right? The the the paragon of Christian purity is uh the pastor or the priest and then the nun who basically married to Christ. If you're married to Christ means you can't have sex. And that's supposed to be a better way, isn't it? I remember there was a Catholic uh calendar that's, you know, specifically put dates which you don't have sex. You don't have sex on a Thursday because you're commemorating the Lord's supper. On Friday, you commemorate or honor the crucifixion. On Saturday, you commemorate the Holy Mother Mary. On Sunday, you commemorate no sex because it's s resurrection day. On Monday, it's all souls day. Thank God for Tuesday. We have sex on Tuesday, not on Wednesday, we have gamma.
So remember to come. This is a uh lady in Victorian era and she writes about sex. I'm happy now that Charles calls on my bed chamber less frequently than of old. As it is, I endure but two calls a week when I hear his footsteps outside my door. I lie down my bed, close my eyes, open my legs, and think of England. This is the attitude towards sex. And and wow, Hugh Hefner, king of porn, just died last week. What a loss. 91, huh? And did you know that how do we have created a phenomenon like Hugh Hefner? He came from a Christian family. This is an interview with the Evening Post 1962. There was no drinking, no smoking, no swearing, no going to the movies on Sunday. Worst of all, the attitude was sex, which they considered a horrid thing never to be mentioned. This is his parents. He grew up in a white Protestant religious Christian family. And sex in the Christian family is basically regarded a horrible thing. And that's been the attitude of the church uh for a long time. On the other hand, if you look at the world, it's full of sex. I remember working in an Australian factory uh when I was young. That was about 20 years old and and every second line has an expletitive with a beginning of f which is in reference to the sexual act. Every second line you just go home with a big oh you know but but in in real life sex actually pervades me very many areas of our lives. For the average male, if you're thinking you think about sex several times a day, if you don't, I think either you're dead or you're lying because it is part of who we are and we need to accept that. But in the world, they basically deify sex. Look at uh this is the editor of Cosmopolitan for some of you. I know you ladies do read it, but it I don't think there's anything to read. Usually to see, you need, right? Uh and she is uh Helen Girly Brown. And this is what she says about sex. My own philosophy is that you're not having sex, you're finished. One of the paramount reasons for staying attractive is so that you can have someone to go to bed with. This is the idea of the editor of Cosmopolitan. In the old days, we used to go for dates. Now they have hookups, which is which is basically defined as a casual sexual encounter with no expectation of future emotional commitment. So let's talk about sex in its proper context in scripture. My first point I'm going to make is sexuality is actually designed to make us holy. I mean you very hard to combine holiness and sex together in the same sentence isn't it? But let's look at what scripture says. This is uh what brother Arnold preached on last week. Finally, brethren, we ask and urge you in the Lord Jesus that you as you receive from us how you ought to walk and please God just as you're doing that you do more and more for you know what instructions we gave you through the Lord Jesus Christ. So basically we are to walk in a manner that will please God. And the most important areas at that time uh if you're talking about howing how to please God in your life are basically sex, work and death. And this is exactly what Paul writes to the Thessalonians about. He writes to them about sex, work and death. When people see the difference in this area in your life, they will know that you actually have a genuine faith. This is a letter to Garrett Nitus chapter 5 on how Christians were different in the first and second century and he write they have a common table but not a common bed. They're in the flesh but they do not live after the flesh. You see for the pagans they have a common bed but not a common table. They share their wives with everybody else but they never share their money. They never share their meals. And the Christians were completely different. uh for the average Roman man or Greek man he actually has four women in his life. He's got the wife which is called the gune which is the one the mother of his children who look after the household look after the slave she's respectable and then you got the palake who is basically a sex slave to provide him pleasure then you got a hira who's basically an intellectual equal best friend soulmate also provides sex and then if that's not enough he has the porna which is basically the prostitute four women for one man sounds familiar isn't De Moines says we have mistresses for our enjoyment, concubines to serve our needs, and wives to bear legitimate children. This is the thinking of the day. In today's society, the other woman, do you know that only 17% of human cultures are strictly monogamous. The rest of human cultures are with multiple wives or multiple husbands. This is KL Jung, Swiss psychiatrist, psychoanalysis. He says, "The prerequisite for a good marriage, it seems to me, is a license to be unfaithful." And this is uh New York bestseller, Miss The Mistress by Victoria Green. A busy late 20th century wife just does not have the time, even if she has the inclination to listen to the tales of a husband's day, to pro provide him the glass of wine, the soothing music, the sympathetic ear for less does for far less does she have the time to offer him practical help. So who steps in to fill the bridge? The mistress of course. Uh but within 3 to 600 years the influence of Christians was so great especially this area of sex that the entire Roman Empire had turned to Christ. They made a difference in the way they approach sex, the approach the way they approach work, the way they approach death. We'll talk about that in about two weeks time. And hopefully we in our society can do the same. Let's look at the passage. For this is the will of God for your sanctification. He talks about sex in terms of the will of God for your sanctification that you abstain from sexual immorality that each one of you know how to control his own body in holiness and in honor. And it goes down there for God has not called us to impurity but in holiness. So therefore, whoever disregards this disregards not man but God who gives his holy spirit to you. Holiness is mixed with sex comes together. Sex is the path to holiness is how you control your body in the area of sexuality. Okay, that best reflects who you are. This is John Chrisostum who is one of the early church fathers. His view of sex is uh well let's read. Sex is not evil. It's a gift from our God, but it can become a hindrance to someone who desires to devote all his strength to a life of prayer. Concerning sex, we must strive for self-control. St. Paul tells us to seek peace and sanctification without which is impossible to see the Lord. Let us pursue holiness and then in order to gain attain the kingdom of heaven. He seems to put sex and holiness apart. Sex can be a hindrance to holiness. And I think we actually hold ambivalent ideas about sex. But Paul's very clear the path to your sanctification is actually sex. This is the will of God for your sanctification that you learn how to control your body in holiness and honor. All right? So there's holiness. What is holiness? Holiness is basically being set apart for God, growing to be like God in his nature. That's what holiness is. It's not necessarily a group of nos. All right? It's learning to be like God. And and being like God is the best way of human flourishing because if we are made in the image of God, we will most flourish which we're most like God. So we are neither on one side obsessed with sex which controls our lives. Neither on the other side we abstain from sex. And the problem is that the early church fathers some of them many of them have actually misunderstood it. Okay. Uh the there are two kinds of sex. All right. The one that's honorable in subox sexuality and the one dishonorable. The dishonorable one is that not in the passion of lust like the Gentiles who do not know God. So there apparently there's a holy sex and a lustful sex. Now how do you have sex without lust, without desire? Well, if you ask St. Augustine, this is what he wrote. In Eden, it would have been possible to beget offspring without foul lust. The sexual organs would have been stimulated into necessary activity by willpower alone. Just as the will controls the other organs, then without being goed by the allurement of passion, the husband could have relaxed on his wife's breasts with complete peace of mind and bodily tranquility. That part of his body not activated by tumultuous passion brought him into service by deliberate use of power when the need arose. The seed dispatched into the womb with no loss of the wife's virginity so the two sexes could come together with for impregnation and conception by the act of the will rather than lustful cravings. Wow. You need to go home and think about that. How many of you could lie down on the bed with your wife and with willpower with no desire with no passion at all? Rise.
Do you know it is possible? Okay, we have finally discovered. I do this routinely. You come to my office, I'll put this inside and all you have to do, you press this button here, which is their third testicle, right? And you pump all this fluid from here and it goes inside here and by willpower you can have sex without desire. Right? But I think uh Christom misunderstands sex a lot. Even Martin Luther, look at Martin Luther. The reproduction of mankind is a great marvel and mystery. Had God consulted me in the matter, I should have advised him to continue the generation of the species by fashioning them off clay. It's much less messy. Clay is also messy, you know. uh for this is the will of God that you abstain from sexual immorality. Each of you know how to control his own body in holiness. The word body could either refer to a wife. Okay? So therefore you would translate this each of you know how to take a wife for your holiness and honor or a body or a tool referring to your body or your penis. Each of you would know how to keep your own body in holiness and in honor. So your Bibles will translate to either one but it really doesn't make very much different but in the context I think this is more appropriate uh because otherwise you'll be thinking I must get a wife in order to be holy. All right so it's how to control your body as it were. So sex is about control. uh if you are are talking about having you're expressing your sexuality, holiness and honor, it's something that god controls and not like the passion of lust which is basically our body controls uh completely uh uh beyond our own control. Here is uh Romans. Therefore, God gave them up to the lust of their flesh, to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves because they exchange the truth about God for a lie and worship and serve the creature rather than creator who is blessed forever. So, immorality actually comes when you're actually given yourself to your own lust. Okay? You're you're under control of something else. It's related to idolatry. When you let go of the truth that is known on God, when you stop worshiping the only true God and you start worshiping something else in your life, idolatry is the cause of immorality and and much of it is if you look at Paul who wrote the letter to to to uh the Thessalonians in the city of Corinth, the Corinthians were saying the ingredients of sex are basically food is meant for the stomach, stomach is for the food. Uh basically sex is a physical thing. Just like you're hungry, you eat, you're tired, you rest, you feel sexy, you have sex. It doesn't matter who it is with as long as you satiate that particular desire. Okay? It's just satisfying a desire. And in a sense, it makes sense. You know why? Physiologically, it makes sense. Uh if you look at this experiment involving sheep okay this is the same female sheep right every time you have sex with the same female sheep by the ram the time to ejaculation becomes longer and longer and longer maybe it doesn't come next time but with different females very fast which means for animals physiologically actually you should have many females right so that's why Hugh Hefner has this idea my goodness you should have many bunnies in your life isn't it all right so The interesting thing is how one guy through though living out his fantasies is living out the fantasy of so many other people. If you think that sex is only about desire, the playboy philosophy is sexual freedom was part of a larger spirit of liberty including free speech, relaxed drug laws and civil rights including gay marriage. is releasing from biblical norms, okay, into a freedom, apparent freedom as it were. All right. The low view of sex means it's a commodity. It's a desire. I feel hungry. I go to my chakel shop. I feel like sex. I go to the sex cinema, the sex shop and see Miranda. That's a low view of sex, isn't it? All right. And then the lowest and then it translates to modern generation. Modern generation is porn. I don't think there's a single person who has not looked at porn. Uh because you it's a desire. I don't have a wife. So therefore, the next best is the woman on the screen. And so therefore, Playboy is so retro. Nobody reads that anymore because they've got porn. So they look at porn and it affects so many people, especially the younger generation, because that's available on the spot. And the more porn you look at, you actually get a hit. uh in this part of your brain called nucleus akimbins. Okay, you've got dopamine that's released in your brain. Every time you look at a porn and you have sexual satisfaction, the dopamine comes up again and again and again. And you know what we scientists have found that it actually causes the accumulation of this substance called uh delta forceb. Delta force B accumulates in the nucleus accumance and it causes you to crave it more and more and more and by doing this delta force B causes structural changes in the brain. Structural changes such a way that you got numb pleasure response which means you need bigger and bigger hits right because that amount of dopamine is not enough. So you need to see more and more explicit acts in order to have the same response. You're hyperreactive to spawn and you also got loss of willpower. And you know what happens in the end? Young people, erectile dysfunction. That's my specialty. I help I help you rise. We resurrect the dead. And the bad news for young people now is really big problem. We've just discovered erectile dysfunction from going to porn. I have a young Malay couple who who saw me some time ago and and and he just gotten married for one month and the wife drags him to my clinic and she's besides himself. She's crying. He says, "Look, he can't get it up." You know, I'm doing all sorts of things, but he can't get it up. He already goes to the computer, he boots up, and then he can get up. But with me, the real thing, he can't do it. All right? because of the years and years of heavy porn does cause the accumulation of delta forceb and causes structural changes. That's why there's a movement from a lot of young people to move away from porn. You know why? They discover that porn is sexual suicide and so therefore they move away. If you tell them to move away because it's not good for you, because it doesn't please Christ, they won't move away. But you tell them it causes erectile dysfunction. Yes, tomorrow. My God is a come to Jesus moment, right? It's true. Look at Samson. The problem with sex uh uh uh is is uncontrolled lust. And Samson was an example of a a judge who was basically controlled by the woman Delilah who is actually was his downfall. It's a cautionary tale which the Bible tells. The other ingredient of sex is just not physical. It's also social, psychological, emotional. The Lord said it is not good that man should be alone. I will make him a helper for for him and they shall become one flesh. That's the only episode in the entire book of you know Genesis the entire creation saga when God said is not good. So it's not good to be alone. And there is a a social dimension of how we're created. If you look at this phys physiology of prostitution, you see if genital stimulation or orgasm is the goal, right? It's a lot cheaper to do it at home, right? Why would you go out and men go out and look for a prostitute? You got to pay a lot of money. Might get HIV, AIDS, you might get herpes and all sorts of things. Why would you go and look for it? You know why? They look for another human being. So that when they interact with that human being and they want that prostitute to create sort of noise and pleasure. Why do they get bothered whether the prostitute having good time or a bad time? Because it's social interaction. Sex is not just genital stimulation. It's social interaction. All right. Uh Pretty Woman. Um so many of you have watched this show before. This is my generation. It's not the younger people's generation. is about Richard Giri who is basically a rich person and he picks up the uh uh Julia Roberts early in her career um as a prostitute um and and he pays for her for a whole week and she allows him to have sex and do whatever he wants but there's one place that he cannot do. He cannot kiss her. You know why? Because that's that's the real her. She's reserved some part of her life. her lips that will represent who she is. The rest of her is a commodity that can be sold but you can't get to the real me. That's why she has allowed sex but you cannot kiss me. And that tells you human beings sex is just not just physical. It's psychological, emotional as well social. This is the professor of uh of psychology. Um, sex is truly pleasurable because through it we may transcend our aloneeness and form a meaningful bond with another human being. So it's not just physical, it's social. This is Randall Collins who writes, "You and your lover could not bring do not bring sexual pleasure to the relationship. You get sexual pleasure from the relationship. Your body parts do not charge the relationship with sexual pleasure. The interaction charges your body with sexual pleasure. Pleasures not derived from physical stimulation of the genitals or from the possibility of giving birth to the new Nicks Bill Gates. In its most fundamental sense, sexual pleasures derived from the synchronized cooperation between people. The whole of human contact is larger than sum of its participating individual parts. Which means when you come to sex, it's not like potluck. You know, I bring curry chicken, you bring uh drumstick, right? You bring pepper, I bring chili, you bring flour, I bring rice and then it all combines together, you got fried rice, right? So basically what you get the sum is greater than the sum of all the whole parts. You see what I mean? So basically you bring it has to require social interaction and so therefore sex is about either determining how your body controls you or how your mind controls you in terms of your social interaction. Now, let me just translate this to this. In Australia, they're going to have a big referendum. And before they have the referendum, they send out postal surveys to everyone. And uh the former prime minister of Australia's daughter is actually a lesbian and she writes uh and she's going against her father, okay? who is basically conservative and she's like you can't help who you fall in love with love just happens sometimes and is unexpected and that's kind of awesome about it you see that's what I mean if you talk about sex in terms of if you are talking about sex okay our body our minds make up our own mind is not in control sex outside God's control is wrong simply because it's controlled by something else other than God. All right. It's not it's about control. And for her, your feelings are the most important thing. And we living in a generation especially young people who feel that you know I I have in conversation of a with with a young person this yesterday and she comes from a Christian background brought up in church and lo and behold I mean you know she's going out with a non-Christian boy to the constonnation of our parents and why do you do this you know you know the Bible you know yeah I know the Bible tells me no but he treats me so well It feels so right. See, we we're in a we're in a generation where it's the same. It's the lust of passion because that's all that controls you because you feel so good. You get all this dopamine rush when he loves you and he likes you so much. That is all that matters. Okay. Um the definition of morality you look at Miriam Webster uh dictionary codes of conduct put forward by society or other groups such as a religion or any code accepted by individual for her own behavior or code of conduct put forward by rational people problematic definitions. You know why? Because society is changing. The whole group of people are changing. This is a Gallup poll 2015. In 2001 40% thought gays and lesbians are okay. Now it is 15 years 30 63%. Having a baby uh outside marriage no good in 40 2001 now it's 61%. Relationship between unmarried men and women 53% in 2001. Now 2015 is 68%. And it goes on and on. This is another one in the University of Chicago and you're looking at uh always wrong percentage that you think is always wrong. Here we actually look at same gender sex from 70% who used to think it was always wrong in 1972. This is 2012 is now dropped down to like almost 43%. Isn't it? So society's attitudes are changing. Here's not wrong at all. Before uh sex before marriage, 30% in 1972 thought it was not wrong. Now today it's like 60%. Gay marriage 10% thought it was not wrong. Now 2012 is almost 40%. So if society if we actually depend on society's definition there all we're moving in a very wrong way and so therefore we actually have this uh lesbian gay movement all over the world and uh the medical fraternity actually let us down. Okay the doctors were chickens. You know why? We've got a set of definitions of psychiatry DSM 1 2 3 4 and five. So we keep on updating our definitions of disease. And when I was in medical school, that was way back in 1970s in the early 80s. I worked under a a very brilliant professor who thought uh who actually his idea was in those days homosexuality is a disease. And he used to have this funny gadget where you put a you know a monitor over the penis connected to electrodes and you flash a picture of a beautiful woman. If you get erection out of that, hello, happy, everyone claps. You show a beautiful man, you get erection, you and he gets a rise, he gets electrocuted.
He tried that for years, right? Didn't work, right? But you see the change in definition from doctors. Look, it used to be a sociopathic personality disorder. Then it changed in 1968 to sexual deviation. Then they changed u uh uh in 1980 to sexual orientation disturbance. Then they went on to ego distonic uh homosexuality. After that it's removed almost completely. I will tell you when it was removed in 1973 they pressured the huge demonstrations pressuring the American Psychiatric Association. There are about 30 to 40,000 doctors in that association at that time. So they all actually had to they sent out questionnaires. Okay. And you know what? How many of those psychiatrists came back with the questionnaire, returned the questionnaire? Out of 30,000 doctors, only 10,000 returned the questionnaire. Of the 10,000 returned the questionnaire, 53% or 56% said homosexuality is not a disease. And rest of them were chicken because the gays were quite violent and and difficult at the time. So you actually have the thing decided by a minority of people because the other 20,000 never refer to the questionnaire. And so from then onwards the DSM4 and five now do not have homosexuality as a disease or disorder in any form. But we know we've got a lot of problems. They'll have suicide which is on the increase, depression, promiscuity, disease. There is a lot of medical problems with homosexual couples. So u how can we redefine? Why should we redefine what marriage is? Uh this is Peter Creef which is philosopher. He he gives a good argument. He says is marriage an artificial human invention. If marriage is an artificial human invention then we can define it by human will. Correct. So therefore if I have an iPad I'll call this an iPhone and iPad. Why? Because I can. Guy I'm Steve Jobs. Right? because it's defined by human will. But when you look at marriage, it is uh something that's defined by natural essence. You don't create marriage. You don't invent marriage. You discover it like you discover the law of gravity, isn't it? You you walk out a 10ft story 10 story building and you wave goodbye and you walk out a little bit more and you crash and you break all your bones and you die. It's true whether it's in the the Puerto Rico or New York or Quoala Lumpo. You walk off a 10-ft building, boom, fall down and you die and oh that's the law of gravity, right? It applies, right? It must be true. That's what I mean. You discover it by natural essence, you discover it by essence. And marriage is like that. So you can't just define it just because you go and demonstrate, right? And so therefore, it's what you want. So you look at what scripture says in 1 Corinthians chapter 6. Do you not know that unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived. Neither will the sexually immoral nor idolattors nor adulterist nor men who practice homosexuality. Okay? They won't inherit the kingdom of God. Leviticus, you shall not lie with a male as with a woman is an abomination. If a man lies with a male as with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination. They shall surely be put together. The death, the blood is upon them. Uh but sometimes the church starts to move. This is Germany. Uh uh we actually have a bishop. The church's teaching on moral sexuality was repressive and remote from life is also no longer cannibal to declare that every kind of cohabitation before marriage was a grievous sin. The church is starting to move. Very sad Moren where you come from Germany. Don't go back there. Don't go back there. Uh the church has let you down. the the the other aspect of sex is not only is physical, it's social, uh uh it's also spiritual because there is a way in which you can have sex on uh uh with holiness and honor. Okay. Corinthians tells us very clearly. You see, do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ? And then uh shall I then take the members of Christ and make them members of a prostitute? Never. Or do you not know that he who is joined to prostitute becomes one with body with her? For it is written, the two shall become one flesh, but he who is joined to the Lord becomes one spirit. So therefore, there is a unity when you become a Christian. Can you take because you are bound with Christ as one spiritually? How can you bind yourself with a prostitute? And he says flee from sexual immorality. Every other sin a person commits outside the body. But the sexually immoral person sins against his own body. So do you not know that your body is a temple holy spirit within you and you have the you have whom you have from God? You are not your own. You were bought with a price to glorify God in your body. Our bodies are special. Our persons are special. We are created not only for physical uh uh satisfaction of sex, social interaction, but also there's a spiritual dimension. It's different. Every other sin a person commits outside the body, but it's actually moral person sins against his own person. And imagine this is the temple in those days in Jerusalem. What he is saying? You only offer certain sacrifices, certain animals. You come the the high priest will basically cleanse himself for one week and and he goes into the holy of holies and what and and some time ago this guy called Antiochus Epiphanous, he came in. You know what he did? He offered a pig. It's a desecration of the temple. Sexual immorality is about the same thing because if your bodies are a temple of our Lord Jesus Christ, having sex with someone else outside marriage is like offering a pig. It desecrates it. That's what Paul means. But every other sin you you you commit is outside the body. But when you commit a sin of immorality, you're actually desecrating the very body which is supposed the sexual act supposed to be an offering in recognition of Jesus Christ of God or who how he created us. Uh this Jim Baker television evangelist was caught uh with sexual immorality. Look into his mind when he actually wrote this book about his apology about having sexual immorality. I've never cheated on my wife in all our years of marriage. Jessica Han, however, the secretary seemed quite comfortable with the situation. I simply abandoned myself to the moment. We did not make love, we had sex. Now, tell me, is there a difference? We did not make love, we had sex. So, here is a man who is a pastor who's trying to differentiate between making love physical, okay, spiritual part, love, and then there's the sex. It's just sex on it, you know. Uh, and but yet that's in his mind. When he had sex with the woman, he said, "This is just physical. It's a sex. It's not love. I feel horny. I've got this desire. I feel like chaet. I'm going to have chuetto." Right? I feel horny. I got to have this done. Right? And then yet when he does it, he writes, "I disroed immediately. Step into the shower turning the water as hot as I could stand it. I never felt so dirty in my life. Maybe if I make the water hotter, it will wash it all away. I thought on one hand, his mind says it's not love, it's just sex. On the other hand, he's trying to burn himself to death because it's dirty. Because in his mind, sex is spiritual. It affects you to the deepest core of your personhood. Okay. Sex is about self-control in holiness and honor or in a passion of lust. This is uh Nobel the first nonwestern Nobel prize winner uh who's also for for novelist Rabindraat Tagore. We gave this example what sex is. Sex is like a violin string. Okay, I I mentioned it because our famous violinist is here. If you take the violin string and you just put it on the table and you just roll it back and forth, it just flops here and flops there. Doesn't do anything. It doesn't sing. You take the violin string and you stretch it right across as tight as possible and you run that, you know, horse tail on top of it and the sound comes out and the string sings. It's about control. True sexuality is a reflection of our love and our proximity to God. And it's about control is tightly wound and controlled under tight circumstances. It will make you flourish. They shall become one flesh. If you want to total intimacy means total commitment. You can take off your clothes and expose yourself entirely to another person. Then I think you need to respect the other person to give your entire life to that person. Total com intimacy means total commitment. It honors God and honors each other. If you have sexual immorality, it dishonors that person. You know why? Because that person would just feel like a bowl of chao. I am hungry. I go out have my choa and bye-bye. Thank you ma'am. It dishonors the other person. And so having total intimacy means total commit. How would you commit your body entirely to someone and yet not your life? Okay, that is how uh human beings will flourish. This is Song of Songs. wrong to say the Bible is against sex because you look at Song of Songs, it is really X-rated. You got to be at least 18 years old before you read it. So go back and read it, the young people. Uh this is a sample. How beautiful you are, how pleasing, oh love, of your delights. Your stature is like the palm, your breast like clusters of fruit. I said I will climb the palm tree. I will take hold of its fruit. But your breasts be like clusters of vine and a fragrance of breath like apples. and your mouth like best wine. And the wine goes straight to my lover, gently flowing over his lips and teeth. I belong to my lover. His desire for me, the rest is censored. Okay. Cannot read. The Bible celebrates sex, but like a violin string strung right across, tightly controlled, it sings. It's it is beautiful. It's the most beautiful experience you would ever have. This is Peter Crift uh philosopher Boston College says sex gives us subjectively a foretaste of heaven of the selfforgetting self transcending selfgiving that is what our deepest hearts are designed for long for and will not be satisfied until they have because we are made in God's own image and this kind of self-giving constitutes the inner life of the trinity. So in in the trinity where is God, son, holy spirit there is no looking at self there is looking at the other giving pleasuring upholding loving always the trinity and what he's saying is that sex gives us a fort of because in the sexual uh act itself the focus is on the husband and the wife and they focus on each other. They don't go in sex and thinking oh what about me and my orgasm. If you come into sex, that's called dysfunctional. All right? It won't work out. You come into sex looking to pleasure that person and that other person's whole focus is pleasure you. So this is done in great dignity and honor and beauty, right? And it's a reflection of what happens within the trinity. He says this is very interesting idea. Uh it's like the snow cone. I remember watching a movie once. Santa Claus went and and and and visited this young boy at Christmas and and took him to the North Pole and then he took him back and he's wondering Santa, you know, you know, how how can I remember you? You know what you do? You take the snow cone and you shake it. Oh, it looks just like the North Pole, right? And every time you sn you shake the snow cone, it reminds you of the North Pole where Santa is. Every time you shake and have your sex, it reminds you of what heaven is going to be like. All right? So, it is an expression of that. Uh, however, if you look at sex can also be a glimpse of hell because it is a spiritual act. This is Louise Brown who wrote a very important book on sex slave tracking of women in Asia. This is a child prostitute who writes, "I am angry at my fate. If my mother was well, she would have arranged a good marriage for me. I would not have to suffer this shame. My life is ruined. I want to learn a new skill so I can earn money and look after my mother. No one will want to marry me because of what happened to me. I won't live long and before I die, I will pray five times a day to God to apologize for what has happened." This is heart-wrenching. a child sold into prostitution where the very act tears at her soul and she grapples not only with suffering but also with guilt which is not her own but it's guilt because sex is a spiritual uh act as well and lastly let me conclude by saying God will call us to account because of our sexual sexuality is the most potent tool in our bodies everywhere in our lives we encounter counter issues in sex. All right? People kill each other for sex. People conquer whole countries for sex. It's part of who we are. It's it's physical. It's social, psychological, it's spiritual. And we need to come to terms with it. And not only need comes to terms, we need to take our bodies and handle our bodies. It's not just for married people here. It's also also for unmarried people. How you handle your sexuality. If you are a single person, how you handle your sexuality if you are a gay person, let's say you have got desire for someone who is of the same sex and you know that's not allowed in scripture. How you handle that, how you take that and you bring that before God and how that honors God by not expressing it in actual physical relationship also is a way in which you show people that you are like God. You know what to do. It's that that the violin string tightly pulled. It's how you handle our sexuality. It's a way of sanctification. You can have that's that's why one of the biggest problems in leaders in church. What is the biggest problem bringing leaders down? Sexual infidelity. That because it's a core of every person's being. So we need to admit it. We need to work at it. We need to be accountable to each other for it. Right? Because you can't do this alone. Men should get together. They should talk about their struggles. We walk around as if it doesn't affect us at all, it affects every single person. And the moment you don't think it affects you, one day it'll happen and it'll be you. All right? And and the it is really and the slip down is really sleep uh steep. Look at the passage here. The last bit it says no one wrong and brother transgress and wrong a brother in this manner. So therefore sexual infidelity will wrong because you're actually robbing the wife or a partner of someone else and defrauding him because the Lord is an avenger all these things as we told you beforehand and solemnly warn you for God has called us to impurity not to impurity but in holiness. Whoever disregards disres not man but God who gives his Holy Spirit to you. This is the area I want us to read. We live in an era where the world is telling us that the Bible doesn't matter. Sexual morality does not matter. Everybody else is doing it. But no matter what, God has given us his Holy Spirit. We are the temple of the Holy Spirit. and we will be given an account of this one day to him. Okay. So, uh let's conclude with a word of prayer. Lord, we just uh thank you for your word and we know we hold within our persons, within our loins this massive gift that you have given us, our sexuality. it. It's basically who we are, male or female. Some of us struggle with this because we're alone. We have haven't got a spouse yet. Some of us struggle perhaps because we have feelings for people of the same gender and we know it's not right, but we can't express it and we are suffering inside. And some of us have difficulties with our sex lives within our own marriage itself where there's conflict, there's misunderstanding. But right now, Lord, we acknowledge your word. Your word says that this is God's will for you, your sanctification, our being made like you. So we ask, oh Lord, in this area that we will take heart your word, that we will treat each other with dignity and honor, express our sexuality with dignity and honor, that this will bring us closer to you and not further away. We ask this for Jesus' sake. Amen.
