Message 02-26-06

Series: Sexuality

Scripture: Romans 1:26-2:4

Title: "R"

Intro:

As we’ve gone through this series on Sexuality a few people have expressed concern that I didn’t come in with a hard hitting message that premarital sex is wrong and marriage is the only place where sex should take place. I think it is important for me to tell you why I didn’t do that.

The first reason I didn’t focus there is because of the variety of people we have here. We don’t have just parents and teenagers in this room and I need to speak to everyone. Along with that our culture focuses on sexual activity as the most important thing, but we don’t get our standards from our culture. They don’t tell us what is important – the Bible does and so we go to God’s Word first. In talking about sexuality we need to hear what the Bible says and we need to know the fullness of God’s Word on sexuality. I need to speak this truth to everyone in this room because all of us – regardless of our age or marital status are sexual beings and our sexuality expresses God’s image.

The second reason I didn’t come in with just that one message is because we need to be clear on what the Bible says and the first thing it tells us is what’s right with sexuality. We need to know that before we can easily see why what’s wrong is wrong. As your pastor I am called to lead you to be people of certainty. Certainty isn’t about following rules or regulations or finding and repeating a list of boundaries and limits. Certainty comes from knowing how life actually works. God’s point of view shows us what is healthy and life giving and what is destructive and damaging. We call these last things wrong, clearly wrong. We need to know this with certainty.

And we can be certain. Premarital sex is wrong. Adultery – sex between people of whom at least one is married to someone else – is wrong. Having multiple sexual relationships – or even serious ones at the same time – is wrong. These all cause destruction and pain even if you can point to things that you suggest are beneficial in the moment. We’ll get into why these are wrong in a few minutes.

The third reason I didn’t come in with just the message that premarital sex is wrong is because I don’t want us to be caught in the trap of judging. It is so easy to figure out what’s "right and wrong" and then to point at other people and say, "They’re bad." Jesus tells us not to judge. Jesus tells us not to judge. I take that very seriously. It is too easy for us to judge. Instead Jesus tells us to love and that is much harder. Loving our neighbor as we love ourselves is much, much harder.

Sex is easier than love. Judging is easier than love. Apathy is much easier than love. And I have been called to this place so we can study together what the Bible says about being people of love, the people of God.

So, that’s where we come to today. What’s actually wrong with what we call wrong is that it starts in our hard-heartedness. This is what creates the terrible consequences that we live with daily. So how do we become more truly human, the way God created us?

Study:

Last week I spoke about how whatever happens to us sexually remains with us forever. It imprints our souls. When we have multiple sexual relationships they mark our souls deeply. That is something we need to worry about, but we also need to realize and to worry about what we are doing to other people. Whatever we do to other people imprints itself on their souls as well. We are called to love our neighbor not to use them. When we make use of someone physically is marks us internally. This is what Paul is talking about when we read last week that we join ourselves, become one with another. Paul, even lifted it up higher by saying that because we’re part of the body of Christ we are united the body of Christ with someone else as well.

Let’s make this even physiological. Over the past 20 years there has been an ever growing study of what are called mirror neurons. Most neurons in our brain connect on one side or the other. That’s we talk about right brain and left brain activities. But mirror neurons pass all the way through the brain and connect both sides. When these neurons fire a major connection is made.

They discovered mirror neurons when they were studying monkeys. They learned that these mirror neurons fired when the monkey reached out and picked up a peanut and again when it ate it. But then they discovered something totally unexpected. A researcher, who happened to like peanuts, reached into the tray and picked up a peanut. As the monkey watched this happen their mirror neuron fired. It fired just by looking at it. The monkey had the same experience just by watching it. It is like they are doing it themselves.

We have the same thing going on in our brains. When people who hate football, don’t ever watch football, stop to watch when some football player in a game makes an interception and runs back 70 yards for a touchdown they get into that moment because it is like they are doing it themselves.

Now stop and think about how many times a day, a week, a month, a year you see sexually involved images. Stop and think about the kinds of images that you see in TV ads, in magazines, in movies – even in previews. Do you realize that there’s a bill board around town here that tells you to "Be Prepared to Be Seduced" – that’s talking about condominiums? How many images grab your brain and the brains of every human – regardless of age – in this room?

Do you understand why pornography is so gripping? Do you understand why a love scene in a movie is so gripping? Do you understand that you are watching from the point of view of someone in the room with the people in the scene? Now suppose you are 10, 11, 12, or 13. When we let children watch the OC or Laguna Beach or Friends or commercials… can you see there might be a problem and can you see how big this problem is?

Suppose your 6^th grader wants to get the movie all the other girls have at their birthday parties. Suppose you just get it because it’s only PG-13 and "they’ve already seen this stuff." Apathy is so much easier than love. Love means watching out for our children. We need to realize that children don’t need to have these feelings, the feelings that they will experience from simply seeing the scene that also impacts us. Think of the amount of information that can be found and experienced by our children. Now, when you find out that 25% of all search engine use is for pornography every day and that there are over 370 million websites for pornography… and when you realize that children know how to use computers better than their parents… do you see how apathy is easier than love. Love is work. We can feel like we don’t have a chance. Or we can just be so overwhelmed ourselves that we’ve become numb. We’re not making healthy choices because we’re just numb.

And we are numb. We haven’t touched on chat rooms or Instant Messaging or kids just trying to pull off something behind their parent’s back. In fact we haven’t even talked about real life. What are kids facing in school? When a student at Plant High School can walk down the hall and watch and hear a boy trying to get a girl to do something to him sexually… they no long have to just find it on a computer. When they go to Panther Prowl and see their teachers and fellow students using sexual innuendo they don’t have to seek it out. When teachers share their life choices with their students…

I was flying home to Tampa a month or so ago and got seated by a cute couple. I had the window seat and was trying to read while the couple started talking. The first thing I realized was that they didn’t know each other. They had just met, so they were doing a little flirting. But then they began to share their lives. We don’t have the kinds of communities we used to, so it isn’t unusual for young adults to get open with each other quickly. There is a need for community that we all share and young people are finding they need to work faster because they can’t connect in the way people used to.

So these two 26 year olds began to share their lives. Neither was married but they both had significant others. He was just coming back from being with his girl friend and she was coming back to her boyfriend with whom she lived. They talked about their sex lives and shared how they each cheated on this person they loved. They told each other the circumstances and explained to each other why this was "okay" because of where they were or what was going on. They told each other about the drugs they used – only recreational, nothing hard and then they told each other about their work. He’s a salesman and she’s a sixth grade teacher in a district near here. And then they talked about kids and how they couldn’t understand why kids today were so into sex and drugs. When they finally came around to talking about marriage again and why they were waiting I leaned forward and asked if I could get in on the conversation. "Sure!" So, I asked, what do you see as the purpose of marriage?

Without a blink the guy said, "it gives me a tax break." Can you hear "numb"? We have regular folks, working around us, teaching our children and they have no idea what they’re communicating by the choices they live.

It can make you feel like you want to tie your kids up, put them in the closet and not let them out until their 18. It can make you feel like you need to set down hard and rigid rules – If you get pregnant or get someone pregnant I’m going to kill you. Or – You can’t handle this, see this, or touch this. Don’t do anything you can’t do on a bicycle. It sounds like wisdom, but rules like this "with their self-imposed worship, their false humility and their harsh treatment of the body" don’t really do anything in "restraining sensual indulgence".

My friends we are called to help, to heal and to love our neighbors. We are called to love our children. They need to know what is good and right about sexuality and the way they are created and how easy it is to mess it up. But they need to know that the way they are is okay. There is nothing wrong with sexual feelings and they will be with us forever. One of the most charming experiences I’ve ever been around was watching a 76 year-old professor work through a crush she had on a friend of mine in college. It was evident to anyone. You could tell her heart beat quicker, that she blushed easily and that her mind was a little distracted when he carried his paper to her or stopped to ask a question or when she didn’t see him as the class was gathering. Feelings are feelings and there’s nothing wrong with them. We are sexual beings and our sexuality is part of the image of God within us.

The image of God however has gotten infected. This is the description of the Bible and the guidance of God. The image has gotten infected and is covered over by this illness. And, according to the Bible, this is true for all of us. Our Scripture today tells us that homosexuality shows that we are separated from God. But then it goes on to say that it gets even worse.

"I fell in love. Couldn’t help myself. I had to cheat on my wife. I fell in love." "I was just with the guys and one of them had this magazine. It wasn’t my fault." "I just got this email and opened it." "I think that if people really care for each other, I mean if they love each other, then it’s okay for them to do it." "Well, you know, we don’t want her to be left out of the group. If all the other parents are letting their kids watch it, it must be okay."

It is so hard to love. It is so hard to love.

It is so much easier to judge. And boy picking on homosexuals is about as easy as it gets. We can surely point to them and say – Ha! Bad! Now, before I get a new set of emails. Did you hear our Scripture? Did you hear that it said that homosexuality is a sign of how far we have been separated from God? But then did you hear it say, "Therefore you have no excuse, you who pass judgment on someone else, for at whatever point you judge the other, you are condemning yourself.

We need to recognize that anyone who wants Jesus has heard his call and gets to come to meet Jesus. We need to walk alongside each other in this community helping each other to hear the word of God.

So, what does that look like? The wisdom that I have found in my study is this: We have three ways we can go. The first is to see absolute healing – to come back to the image of God in wholeness – being healed of gossiping, pornography, disobeying our parents, all sexual sinfulness that separates us from God. Or we can come under disciplined obedience, turning ourselves over to God because we can’t seem to change. Disciplined obedience is where we simply change our way of living although the feelings may never go away. We may be alcoholics forever, but we will not drink alcohol. Disciplined obedience is where we bow our heads one day at a time. Or we live in moral accountability – recognizing that we are as we are, stuck in the situation we are in – but we will live it with as much moral responsibility as possible, seeking and clinging to the mercy and grace of God in Jesus Christ.

It seems to me that most of us live in that last place. We live there because we have hard hearts that are tough to heal and aren’t able to come to disciplined obedience completely. Most of us live aching for God’s grace – living in the circumstance in which we have found ourselves and not really know how to get out of it.

What we need is each other. We need to be a community of care that helps and supports each other without judging. We need that because we need other people to tell us how to get better, where to grow stronger, how to make healthier choices. We need to bring hope and help to our children. We need to coach each other. Today is the day to start doing that. Today is the day to face the true battle that is being waged around us. Today is the day to love… the way we were created to be.