Message 02-19-06
Series: Sexuality
Scripture: 1 Corinthians 6:12-20
Title: PG-13
Intro:
Last week I shared with you that God and the Bible say that sexuality and sex are great… not buts about it. That may be the only thing you remember from that message, the last few words. It that’s true then you missed a lot. So, let me back up a bit and bring you along to where we are right now. We need to be able to understand God’s point of view so we can use it and celebrate it.
The first week we looked at "why should we talk about sex and why should we do that in worship?" The reason I brought forward was that this is how we were created at the beginning, that our sexuality – being created male and female – is an expression of God’s image and that God’s image is first displayed in our being in community with each other – living and working with each other, caring about each other and caring for each other. This is where we begin. Our sexuality is lived out in community. The second thing that God lifts up in Genesis is sexual activity.
We tend to go there first. That’s what our culture lifts up first – sexual activity is the most important thing – but that’s not what sexuality is all about. If we think that the only thing sex is about is sexual activity which is the more personal and private expression of sex then we have lost most of how we are created and we’re left to let the world tell us how they think it should work. In our high schools and middle schools that’s the message that is being brought forward. Our schools are not interested in how the Bible portrays sex. Some people don’t think that it has anything to do with real life. In this place we know that’s not true. The Bible has everything to do with real life. So we need to lift that truth up here to celebrate how God made us and to put sexuality from God’s perspective – as our creator into the right place.
Last week we looked at Genesis and the creation of humanity and the poetry of Song of Songs where God and the Bible tell us that sexuality and sex are great.
So let me introduce you to this again – the fullness of sexuality is found in community, females and males living and working with each other and caring for and about each other. Sexual activity is a more personal and private expression of sexuality. All of it is great as created by God and it was all created by God before any type of sin entered the picture.
I said there are no buts about it and there aren’t. But there are some problems with how we handle this great gift. We mess it up. So, that’s where we begin today. We’ll get into our Scripture in a moment, but I need to start with the problem of the "buts".
Study:
How do we want to use the word "but" when we’re talking about sexuality? It should be like saying, I’m cooking dinner. I know it smells great, but I don’t want you to touch the stove because I don’t want you to get hurt. I’m not saying this because there’s something wrong with sex or sexuality as God created it. I’m not saying this because I’m better or stronger than other people. I’m saying "but" because I don’t want you to get hurt.
We should say "but" when we’re going to say something like, "We have this great gift, but I need to talk with you about it because I messed it up and I don’t want you to mess it up."
Stop and hear that and receive it. As human beings we are created with a wondrous beautiful and healthy gift, but as human beings we can be terribly hurt by it and we mess up in trying to handle it. All of us are messed up. None of us has done it right. We can point to various rules we may have kept and say, well, I did it pretty well. In fact I did it better than most of the people I’m around. But when we get down to it, we messed it up too. So, the first thing I want you to understand is that the "but" that comes from the best place is the one that says I don’t want you to get hurt or to mess up when you explore it.
When we talk about sex and sexuality we want to be able to celebrate the truth that it is a great gift, created by God but it is fierce.
Our community needs the truth. Several weeks ago the results of a survey of Hillsborough County’s middle school and high school students were published in the newspaper. What those results demonstrated was that people are not talking with their children, people are not guiding our children well or that people are telling children the wrong information.
We gather in God’s presence each week and wrap God’s word around our imaginations and feelings in order for God’s truth to permeate us deeply. This is where the Truth is and there is no fear here.
But there are things to be afraid of and that’s where we move into our Scripture. The Apostle Paul wrote to the people of Corinth – a city in Greece – who lived in a sexually charged community. These people were like us. They made serious mistakes with sexuality and they lived in a community that was filled with expressions of sexuality.
The people of the Christian church in that city heard about freedom in Jesus and some of them took that to mean that it didn’t make any difference how we live then – If God forgives all sins then we can live anyway we want. So they started to say things like "everything is permissible for me." There is a good chance that this phrase "Everything is permissible for me," actually came from Paul himself. Wherever it came from Paul quotes it..
12"Everything is permissible for me"
So Paul responds to this idea.
—but not everything is beneficial.
"Everything is permissible for me"—but I will not be mastered by anything.
13"Food for the stomach and the stomach for food"
Isn’t this the way God created us? To be sexual beings?
—but God will destroy them both. The body is not meant for sexual immorality, but for the Lord, and the Lord for the body.
Paul lifts up the deeper truth of God’s love and his design of human beings.
15Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ himself? Shall I then take the members of Christ and unite them with a prostitute? Never! 16Do you not know that he who unites himself with a prostitute is one with her in body? For it is said, "The two will become one flesh." 17But he who unites himself with the Lord is one with him in spirit.
Paul is talking about prostitutes here – people who use sexuality to make money – but he’s touching on a deeper truth as well. The nature of sexuality is that you will become one with the person with whom you have sexual relations. A deep emotional and unbreakable tie, a tie that will not go away for the rest of your life, is created in every sexual experience you have.
ILLUSTRATION - Styrofoam heart – marks never go away
So Paul warns them.
18Flee from sexual immorality. All other sins a man commits are outside his body, but he who sins sexually sins against his own body. 19Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own; 20you were bought at a price. Therefore honor God with your body.
Paul is using the word "body", but we need to remember that the Bible teaches us that your body is your whole self. Paul was a Jewish man who understood what the Bible taught – you aren’t a spirit or a soul that is untouched with what you do with your body. You are a whole. Your whole self is one thing. Your whole self is affected by what you do to it sexually. And let me say again that every person with whom you have a sexual experience will be tied to you.
I had a young woman come to visit me from college one day. She was deeply troubled. She had been dating a young man and had realized that he wasn’t the person for her. He was kind of dull and uninteresting in a lot of ways. So, she broke it off with him and she felt good about that. Her problem was that he had started to date and had become serious with someone else within a month of breaking up with her. She said, I have no interest in being with him. I don’t want him back. So why do I feel so hurt and bothered that he’s with someone else?
I used other words, but I said to her, what you’ve just told me is that you became sexually and physically intimate with him. She was surprised, but admitted that was true. And I told her that’s why. You made a deep bond with him that will never go away.
Sexuality is so powerful it marks our souls forever. That’s how we are made.
So how do we handle it?
Jesus died to get us back in touch with God, to clear the way for our communication with God to flow freely, so we need to listen to God’s guidance on how we should live.
In 1 Thessalonians Paul is again writing to a group of people in a church with the subject of sexuality. He writes:
It is God’s will that you should be sanctified: that you should avoid sexual immorality; that each of you should learn to control his own body in a way that is holy and honorable, not in passionate lust like the heathen, who do not know God; and that in this matter no one should wrong his brother or take advantage of him.
We don’t want to wrong someone or to take advantage of them. We need to become people who do that well, people who love our neighbors without hurting them or taking advantage of them. God wants us sanctified – made healthy and whole physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually. He wants us to be well through and through in the way we live. That comes into being as we live as true human beings back in touch with our creator. In other words, we listen to God’s guidance on how to treat other people so that we change. In other words we listen to God’s guidance before our friends or our teachers and even sometimes our parents. We listen to God’s guidance first and we listen to our friends and teachers and parents as they point us toward God’s guidance.
God tells us that we need to put other people into safety. Jesus tells us that after loving God we are to love our neighbors. The simplest way to do that is first to put people into safety. This is especially important since we are sexual beings. We put other people into safety. We live in faithfulness.
This is why we say sex is for marriage. When you’re physically intimate with someone it marks your soul, but it also marks theirs. We need to make sure that the marks we leave on other people’s soul are right, are healthy and they are life giving. Using someone even when we’re exploring our sexuality, especially someone we say we’re in love with, will mark their souls forever. This is why marriage is held up as the place for physical intimacy of the deepest kind. It is because my commitment to you in marriage says that you can be as vulnerable as possible. You will be completely safe here. The marks I leave on your soul will be safe. You will be safe.
This is love. We’re thinking about the other person. Today our children are being taught that there are lines, rules, certain boundaries of activity. If you do this much you’re still a virgin. Instead of being taught don’t hurt other people by taking advantage of them, they are being told to think about themselves.
We are called to love our neighbors – to think about the marks we are making on their souls. And we are told to love our neighbors as we love ourselves. We should recognize that when other people use us they are marking our souls as well. God wants us to enjoy this great gift and each other.
This is what we celebrate. We celebrate that God has created us as sexual beings and that is wondrous and a gift, and we also celebrate that although we mess up that God’s plan is to restore us to wholeness – to sanctify us. We celebrate that God calls us into ways to live that bring wholeness to others. And through the work of Jesus and through the power of the Spirit, we can be fully human in the kingdom of God.
