Sermon from June 9, 2002
In common parlance people today most often talk about human sexuality in the language of science or the language of the gutter. The language of science captures only one dimension of erotic human love. It is valuable, but by itself it is too narrow for the needs of human beings. My aims are larger and more suited to the complexity of human experience.

On the other hand, popular culture has by and large chosen to use the language (verbal or visual) of the gutter. Such usage is intended most often to insult or to titillate. I intend to do neither. Once again, my aims are larger and more suited to the complexity of human experience.

I will stay close to the language of the Bible, which can be frank without being fresh. The Song of Solomon illustratest this delicate balance in one of the most tastefully done pieces of erotic literature ever written, and it testifies to the place of romantic pleasure within marriage. Having children is not the only purpose of this divine gift.

The same delicate balance needs to find its way into this sermon. I would preach a different sermon, if I were speaking only to men, and I would preach yet a third sermon, if I were speaking only to women. There are some things I would not say in any setting. I have tried to craft this sermon in a way that its language will not be embarrassing or unnecessarily offensive. The scriptural model provides no end of help in doing this.

I need to say a second thing, which, I hope, will put you more at ease in a setting where this topic can make people ill at ease. Our erotic fantasies and failures remind most of us vividly that we are not nearly as pious as we would like to pretend. God only knows what skeletons we have dragged with us out of the past, or what struggles we live with in the present. I do not intend to dwell there today, and I'll tell you why.

The Apostle Paul expresses it in 1 Corinthians 6:9-11. Do you not know that the wicked will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: Neither the sexually immoral nor idolaters nor adulterers nor male prostitutes nor homosexual offenders nor thieves nor the greedy nor drunkards nor slanderers nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God.

Now, here comes the happiest use of the past tense in the Bible. And that is what some of you were. And that is what some of us were, but it is past. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God.

Does that mean that Christians can no longer be sexually tempted? No, but now we view it as temptation, not simply as the way things are, and we have help to resist the temptation. Do Christians never fail in this regard? We do, but we call it failure, and we confess it as such and repent of it and can be restored.

The psalmist prayed this way: Remember not the sins of my youth and my rebellious ways; according to your love remember me, for you are good, O LORD (Psalm 25:7). It is a humbling and holy experience to remember your past sexual sins and confess to God your disordered use of this powerful gift. He offers forgiveness. If your emotional health has been damaged in some way by your past sexual experiences, there is pastoral counsel and there are Christian therapists that can help you overcome it. But here today, I will not be delving into your past in what follows.

The apostle Paul says (2 Cor. 5:17), If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has gone; the new has come. If the Church represents the new creation taking shape within the old creation, how should the most intimate relations between a man and woman bear witness to the new creation? That is what I care about. I hope that is what you care about. To get at this will require another short Bible study and a reflection on the nature of freedom.

I want to start the Bible study with an attitude that has a bearing on a modern phenomenon. Deuteronomy 22:23 starts us off. If a man happens to meet in a town a virgin pledged to be married and he sleeps with her, you shall take both of them to the gate of that town and stone them to death - the girl because she was in a town and did not scream for help, and the man because he violated another man's wife. You must purge the evil from among you.

Because of its covenant relationship with God, ancient Israel did not look upon intimacy between an unmarried man and woman, wanted or unwanted, as a casual event. If the woman was engaged to another man, it became a capital crime. This may still be the case in some Muslim countries, particularly where shari'a law is in force. But ancient Israel could also make distinctions, as can modern Muslim law.

Exodus 22:16 gives an example. If a man seduces a virgin who is not pledged to be married and sleeps with her, he must pay the bride-price, and she shall be his wife. Once again, because of its covenant relationship with God, ancient Israel did not look upon intimacy between an unmarried man and woman, wanted or unwanted, as a casual event. However, in this case, because she was not engaged, their act did not constitute a capital crime; but because they are caught, their act would lead to marriage unless the girl's father objected. Both attitudes convey powerfully the conviction that intimate relationships belong within marriage.

Contemporary Western culture vigorously rejects this conviction. Between four and five million heterosexual couples are living together outside of marriage, often for great lengths of time. The pressure to conform to this contemporary culture can be great. Just so you know, this church takes its stand with the conviction that because of the Church's covenant relationship with God, intimate relationships belong within marriage. I do not say this to single out and disparage couples who live together before marriage. I do say it as clearly as I know how, so that we all understand that two competing views of life face each other on this issue, and so that we all know where this church stands on that issue.

Jesus and the new Testament writers carried the conviction of ancient Israel forward into Christianity. Here for example is Jesus' expression of that conviction in Mark 7:21. "For from within, out of men's hearts, come evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery."

Jesus' quotation matters to the Church, because we cherish anything that came from His lips. It has special importance, because in one breath He used two ideas, sexual immorality and adultery. I thought adultery was sexual immorality. Of course, it is. By using the other word Jesus reflected the conviction of the people of God down the ages that marriage between a man and a woman is the only context in which God meant for this ift to be used. Any use outside marriage is called sexual immorality or uncleanness or fornication or impurity.

The Apostle Paul uses the same word when he writes in 1 Corinthians 6:19, Flee sexual immorality. The same apostle addresses the motivation for such abstinence among Christians in several ways. It is worth looking at three of them.

In 1 Corinthians 6:13 he says, The body is not meant for sexual immorality, but for the Lord, and the Lord for the body. The body is the instrument by which the wold "out there" reaches our minds and spirits, and by which our thoughts and intentions influence the world "out there." So, isn't it important to dedicate this powerful instrument to God's purposes? That is what it means that the body is for the Lord.

In Ephesians 5:3 the apostle expresses motivation for sexual purity this way. But among you there must not be even a hint of sexual immorality, or of any kind of impurity, or of greed, because these are improper for God's holy people. When it comes to being holy, we think the wrong thing. When it comes to being a holy people, we don't think at all.

When we think of being holy, the first thing that comes to mind is upright behavior. But holiness means something more basic than that. It means being at God's disposal. Upright behavior is behavior consistent with being at God's disposal.

Being a holy people, that is, a community of people that is at God's disposal, is a new idea to us. Earlier, I talked about the competing views of life that face each other on this issue of sexual behavior. I said I wanted all of us to know where this church stands. We are a community of people that is at God's disposal. That means that we share this view of life that contradicts the cultural pressures that weigh on us. We support each other in the contradictions we experience from our culture.

A third motive comes from 1 Thessalonians 4:3. It is God's will that you should be sanctified: that you should avoid sexual immorality. Put simply, God wants it this way. Sex is His idea, and it is His right to say that marriage between a man and a woman is the only context in which this gift is to be used. Since we are people who pray, "Thy will be done on earth, as it is in heaven," we need to submit to His will in this regard.

Now, I want you to consider two powerful images of this gift of God in the Bible. Let's begin with the King James Translation of Genesis 4:1 and Matthew 1:25. The Genesis passage says, And Adam knew Eve his wife; and she conceived, and bare Cain, and said, I have gotten a man from the LORD. The Matthew passage says, And (Joseph) knew her (Mary) not till she had brought forth her firstborn son: and he called his name Jesus.

The Bible describes this extraordinary union of husband and wife as an act of knowing. Within the biblical view of reality this image gains its power from an act of God. The KJV of Amos 3:2 has God saying to Israel, You only have I known of all the families of the earth.

Amos uses the language of knowing to descripe the absolutely unique relationship into which God entered with Israel, when He chose Israel alone to carry His redemptive purpose to the rest of humanity. When Israel succumbed to the temptation of idolatry, the prophets of Israel described the involvement with other gods as prostitution (Eze. 16:15, 26, 29) and adultery (Jer. 3:8-9). God's mysterious and exclusive knowledge of Israel serves as a model of the mysterious and exclusive knowledge of marital intimacy.

There is another image of this unique gift of God that bears witness to its more playful side. Genesis 26 tells the story of a time when Isaac and his wife, Rebekah, found themselves in a potentially dangerous situation among the Philistines. I don't know that it was a good idea, but they agreed that they might reduce their danger, if Rebekah said she was Isaac's sister, not his wife. This is what they did.

Genesis 26:8 tells how they blew their cover. The KJV puts it memorably. And it came to pass, when he (Isaac) had been there a long time, that Abimelech king of the Philistines looked out at a window, and saw, and behold, Isaac was sporting with Rebekah his wife. Look up sporting in your OED or just read the NIV, which says he was caressing Rebekah. Isaac, you old devil, you! You'll never make it as a spy. You better stick to loving.

Our generation has reacted powerfully to previous attempts to keep quiet about this powerful human hunger or to treat it as evil or even to take it too seriously. So, we treat it as unambiguously good, and we drag it out into the open and talk about it in some quarters as the defining instrument of self-realization.

Like everything else human, this change is both good and bad, but there are two or three serious fallaciees in the current sexual fundamentalism. Here is one of them. We hear people say from time to time that what a couple does behind closed doors is no one else's business. It is true that no one has the right to interrupt them when they are behind closed doors, and without justification no one has the right to know what they did there. But what happens there is the business of a great many people.

Pregnancy that results from what happens behind closed doors is the business of other family members, doctors, nurses, insurance companies, lawyers, pastors, boards of education, and childbirth classes. If there is no father around afterward, it becomes the business of parents and extended family in a special way. Day care and welfare and Child Protective services think it is their business when a child is potentially at risk.

If what happens behind closed doors results in abortion or a Down Syndrome child or STDs, it becomes the business of the Supreme Court and the Congress and the President and support groups and therapy sessions and drug companies and funeral homes. If one of the people behind closed doors is married to someone else, all hell breaks loose.

We Christians need to speak the truth in this country abou this issue and say that what happens behind closed doors is not just a private affair. It is not victimless. It is not a guarantee of personal happiness. It is not a sport.

But it is not the task of the Church to pass judgment on the world around us. The Apostle Paul says in 1 Corinthians 5:12, What business is it of mine to judge those outside the church? The Church is charged to build itself up in this matter in accordance with the wisdom of God that has come down the ages through the scriptures and the people of God. So, I say to you the following.

For the honor of Jesus Christ, if you are not married, stay a virgin until you marry. If you are not married and are sexually active, stop being sexually active, and start living like a virgin until you do marry. If you are married, then for the honor of Jesus Christ, stay faithful to your spouse.

For the men and women to whom it may apply, I say first, stay faithful by staying away from pornography. Internet pornography raises with special force the question of whether we Christians can be a people of integrity in a world where we are free to do anything we can get away with. Accountability of one man to another man in strict confidence is one powerful way to live with integrity in face of this powerful challenge to our integrity. Christian therapy for sexual addiction is also available. We can put you in touch with people who can help.

Second, let's stay faithful to each other by being exclusive. Have fun. Bear children. Teach them to honor God with their bodies. This is the will of God for the community of believers who are at His disposal and whose bodies are meant for His redemptive purposes.