My intention over the next 4 weeks is to think about the issues surrounding human relationships. We’ll think about sex, about marriage, about singleness and about temptation. I want to talk openly and candidly about these matters and I’d encourage you to do the same. It seems to me that despite the public prominence of sex there’s little quality conversation about it. We can’t escape sex whether we’re turning on our TV sets, reading a newspaper or walking down the street. But actual discussion of sexual matters free from the titillating preoccupation or lurid voyeurism with which we all struggle to one degree or another is relatively rare. I want to buck that trend in this series.

But we need to get the whole thing in perspective. Whilst our sexually supercharged society tells us that there’s nothing more important to us than our sexuality and how we express that, the Bible says that it’s at best it’s simply one arena amongst many in which we can display our commitment to Christ.

But it’s not the be all and end all. We need to stop believing the lie that our lives will be significantly better if we’re having sex. The most important thing that we can think about is not sex and neither is it marriage and singleness. It’s holiness and obeying Christ. The talks will outline some of the biblical principles involved and try to apply them to our own situation. But to make sure we’re scratching where you’re itching we’ll have questions. So if you can find a way to ask your question without implicating yourself or embarrassing others I’ll try not to duck any issues that come along. I’ve always found the preface, ’I have a friend’ to be very helpful! To encourage openness a question box will preserve anonymity. You can put any question you like in there and I’ll have a go at answering it the following week. We will all of course be keeping a close eye on the question box to work out who asked what!

1. sex is given as a good gift from God

This is perhaps the most surprising point since the popular view of sex is that God is against it. The common view is that God thinks its naughty, the church is against it and Christians don’t enjoy it. The religious authorities have not always done all that they could have done to undermine that view.

In the Middle Ages Yves of Castres advised people that they should abstain from sexual activity on certain days if they wished to be holy and pleasing to God. On Thursdays Christians shouldn’t have sex because Christ was raised to heaven. Fridays were out because Christ died on that day. Saturday should be kept free out of respect for the Blessed Virgin Mary. Sunday was the day Christ rose from the dead and Monday was the day to honour dead Christians. Never has the middle of the week been so exciting!

Sex of course is not the world’s idea but God’s. God invented sexual intercourse. He invented men and women and he created them with bits that fit. He also designed us in such a way that we enjoy and appreciate the anatomy of the opposite gender. Therefore the scriptures are undeniably enthusiastic about sex and they make plain to us that physical sexual pleasure is a good part of God’s creation for a man and a woman. If we’re in any doubt about that we ought to go on and read the Song of Songs.

The Song of Songs

  • In essence it’s sensuous love poetry portraying the developing intense physical relationship between a man and his lover. It traces their relationship from courtship to consummation and we’re invited to eavesdrop on the tensions and pleasures they experience.
  • It’s the ‘Song of Songs’ because it’s the greatest of songs. It’s the greatest of songs because it explores the theme of love. The love is that between a young woman and her lover.
  • It’s wisdom literature concerned not with salvation for the next life but with how to live in this. This is God’s advice about how to love wisely sexually in this life. It’s sex education from our loving heavenly Father.
  • It’s concerned with the pleasures of sex and the content of a sexual relationship. What we learn from the Song of Songs is that sex is a good gift from God to be enjoyed between two lovers.

a. The lovers enjoy each other’s bodies

Look at 4:1-7. He says, ‘4:1 Behold, you are beautiful, my love, behold, you are beautiful! Your eyes are doves behind your veil. Your hair is like a flock of goats leaping down the slopes of Gilead. 2 Your teeth are like a flock of shorn ewes that have come up from the washing, all of which bear twins, and not one among them has lost its young. 3 Your lips are like a scarlet thread, and your mouth is lovely. Your cheeks are like halves of a pomegranate behind your veil. 4 Your neck is like the tower of David, built in rows of stone; on it hang a thousand shields, all of them shields of warriors. 5 Your two breasts are like two fawns, twins of a gazelle, that graze among the lilies. 6 Until the day breathes and the shadows flee, I will go away to the mountain of myrrh and the hill of frankincense. 7 You are altogether beautiful, my love; there is no flaw in you’.

He admires her body and the elegant beauty of her physical form.

Look at 5:10-16. She says, ‘10 My beloved is radiant and ruddy, distinguished among ten thousand. 11 His head is the finest gold; his locks are wavy, black as a raven. 12 His eyes are like doves beside streams of water, bathed in milk, sitting beside a full pool. 13 His cheeks are like beds of spices, mounds of sweet-smelling herbs. His lips are lilies, dripping liquid myrrh. 14 His arms are rods of gold, set with jewels. His body is polished ivory, bedecked with sapphires. 15 His legs are alabaster columns, set on bases of gold. His appearance is like Lebanon, choice as the cedars. 16 His mouth is most sweet, and he is altogether desirable. This is my beloved and this is my friend, O daughters of Jerusalem’.

She admires his rugged strength.

God has made it normal for us to be excited by the naked body of our lover. In the privacy of their own company it’s quite appropriate to take pleasure in the way that they look. Most of us can’t even look at ourselves in the mirror without feeling some sense of disappointment and we can’t quite believe that anyone else could find us alluring. I take it that this Shulammite girl and her shepherd boyfriend were not the best looking specimens in all of Israel. This is idealised language. They would have been very ordinary looking but to one another they’re gorgeous. None of us is perfect but in the right circumstances with someone who loves us it’s possible for someone to find us sexually irresistible.

Those of us who’ve struggled with pornography may struggle to replicate this in their own experience. If we’ve been exposed to glossy, air brushed, dimly lit images of silicon enhanced Hollywood women there’s not a woman in the world who won’t struggle in a comparison. We’re robbing ourselves of the enjoyment of the female sexual form if we set the bar that unrealistically high and we’re robbing our future wife of their enjoyment of hearing and seeing us enjoy their female form.

b. The lovers enjoy sexual exploration

The poem spares our blushes by using ambiguous poetic imagery taken from nature but it describes an erotic relationship. Whilst other parts of the Bible are concerned with the boundaries to sexual activity this book is concerned with exploring how much fun there is to be had within them. The whole song is soaked in sexual desire and allusion to erotic caresses, oral sex and uninhibited sexual activity. It’s painting a view of Christian sex that is unashamed by the mechanics and messiness of sex. Look at chapter 7. It may well be that some Christian women grow up with a right concern to stay within the limitations of right sexual activity that they struggle with the idea that they can let go once they’re married. It is after all quite strange that after a day on which they where white, make some promises and go away on holiday everything changes and the brakes are off.

2. Sex is a good gift from God to be enjoyed

Sex is given as a means of producing children Look with me at Genesis 1:26, ‘Then God said, "Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth." So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. And God blessed them. And God said to them, "Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth"’.

God’s 1st commandment to humanity is to have sex. The reason for that is so that they can fill the earth and rule over it and therefore fulfil God’s desire to have his creatures ruling over his creation. Sex remains the way in which mankind is to be multiplied. It doesn’t always work out that way and we have a number of friends who’ve experienced difficulties in conceiving. Childlessness is always viewed in the scriptures as a matter for great sadness. Because of the invention of reproductive technology we can assert a greater deal of control over whether a child results from sex but it remains a risk accompanying sexual intercourse. But the Bible nowhere asserts that the birth of children is something to be avoided, quite the opposite in fact. And in Psalm 127:4 the writer says, ‘Like arrows in the hand of a warrior are the children of one’s youth. Blessed is the man who fills his quiver with them.’ The modern idea of delaying children or avoiding them altogether can be nothing more than selfishness. I don’t think that it necessarily has to be but the decision not to start a family can be a self-centred desire to avoid becoming a servant and having our life revolve around someone else. We can get married and still carry on pretty much as we used to when we were single. But children don’t understand the rules of engagement and nothing interferes with our life quite as much as children. Sex is given as a means of producing children.

3. sex is given as the way to unite a man and a woman

Look at Genesis 2, ‘Then the Lord God said, "It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him." 19 So out of the ground the Lord God formed every beast of the field and every bird of the heavens and brought them to the man to see what he would call them. And whatever the man called every living creature, that was its name. 20 The man gave names to all livestock and to the birds of the heavens and to every beast of the field. But for Adam there was not found a helper fit for him. 21 So the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and while he slept took one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh. 22 And the rib that the Lord God had taken from the man he made into a woman and brought her to the man. 23 Then the man said, "This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man." 24 Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh. 25 And the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed.’

This passage is understood by the NT to teach the purpose and the framework for sexual activity. In Matthew 19 Jesus uses it to teach about marriage and divorce. In Ephesians 5 Paul uses it to teach about marriage.

The purpose of sex is fellowship. The picture is that a man and a woman will be united in a new relationship and express and cement that exclusive relationship by becoming sexually one. Sex is therefore designed by God to produce an extraordinary and profound unity called ‘one flesh’. God intended that the unity should be produced between a man and a woman, in other words between people of the different gender. So homosexual sexual acts are always forbidden in the Bible. God regards them as unnatural since he has not designed us to function that way. But sex bonds us to the other person. I don’t know exactly how but I don’t need to know how. There are medical psychiatrists and psychologists who could do that. In the same way I don’t really know how electricity works but I know that it does and I know how to turn it on. It’s like ‘Super Glue’ and reinforces the unity that has been created by two people leaving their parents and forming a new relationship. Because sex bonds us to the other person but that means that we won’t be able to separate without causing damage and suffering great pain. So it’s those couples who’ve not gone down this line who find it far easier to break up. If we’re going out or thinking about it then we need to keep the relationship free from the bonding activity of sex. The Pharisee in us wants to ask how far we can go before this happens. We mustn’t be naïve about the strength of bonding that can come from even the small things we regard as a normal accompaniment to a romantic relationship. There’s ‘intercourse’ and we all know that’s sex but there’s also ‘outercourse’. There’s a whole range of sexual activity from hand holding to snogging to heavy petting and so on. We can be sexually stimulating someone and be nowhere near their genitals. We all know the difference between holding hands with someone in a non-sexual manner and with the intent to arouse.

Some people treat sex and their bodies he way I treat our Nissan Almeira. We’ve just bought a people carrier in anticipation of the arrival of our 3rd child. We still have the Nissan Almeira. The Nissan gets lent out to anyone who asks for it. I barely let my wife use the people carrier let alone anyone else! It’s so precious to me that I’m not letting any old person use it. But the Nissan is shot to bits so I don’t really care.

We need to develop an attitude to sex that cherishes it as though it was the most precious thing that we could own. The notion of recreational or fun sex is not an idea we’d find support for in the scriptures. Some people approach sex like smoking a cigarette and as soon as it’s over the packet can be thrown away. It’s no surprise that people end up feeling used. Sex is to unite a man and woman in relationship.

4. sex is given to be enjoyed in marriage

Given the extraordinary capacity of sex to bond two people together it comes as no surprise that God has placed a limitation on it’s activity. The constraints are pretty clear. Sex is for marriage. As the Bible unfolds God places various limits on the practice of sex. Adultery, incest, homosexual acts and bestiality are all off limits. But we mustn’t think that God is being stingy at this point. He knows what sex does. The framework for sex springs from what sex is and how sex works. It’s not an arbitrary set of rules as though God wanted to test us. It bonds people and that’s why it ought to happen with just one person – your spouse. Just as on the side of ‘Super Glue’ some pretty clear and strict guidelines are given so that we won’t use it carelessly so too God speaks explicitly and clearly on the guidelines for sexual activity. If we’re unmarried and sexually active then we need get married because there’s an intensity of bonding happening with someone. And if you’re married and sexually inactive then sort it out and start bonding with your partner. Someone has said that sex allows those in a locked room with no exits to survive because in the institution of marriage you either murder each other or you have sex that unites and bonds. Sex is usually a good indicator of how a marriage is going. Whilst there’s no longer any social stigma attached to pre-marital sex there’s nevertheless great damage that can be done through it. Those of us who’ve been sexually active in the past have bonded with other people and then broken that bond. It’s very likely that that has affected our ability to bond with future lovers. But don’t do it because it’ll harm your sexual relationship with your wife or husband. For example you’ll have something to compare it against. We may not escape the damage caused to our own excitement in marriage or the security offered to a spouse in sexual exploration. We cannot guarantee that the damage caused will not have repercussions for our own marriage. It’s as though part of us has been left behind. Three times in the Song of Songs the phrase ‘do not arouse or awaken love until it so desires’ is used. It’s terribly cruel and unkind to do something to someone that ought to be saved for marriage. In friendships go slow and don’t go down the exclusivity line of going out too soon.

The story is told of a millionaire Australian who developed an appetite for sailing. He bought a massive yacht worth millions of pounds. He wanted to hire a skipper to sail the boat in his absence and bring it to him wherever he was in the world. He interviewed 3 potential skippers. The first two were quite brilliant and sailed the yacht at the limits of its capability, they sailed it to within a hair’s breadth of the rocks. The 3rd skipper was a plodder who put the yacht in the middle of the channel and kept it miles away from the edge. It was this skipper that the millionaire hired.

We’ve got to stop trying to sail as close as we can to danger because if we do then sooner or later disaster will come. And it’s not the kind of disaster that can easily be dealt with.

Conclusion

There is of course forgiveness in the gospel and God can answer our prayers and transform the mess we’ve made of things. In one sense sexual sins are no worse than others because they’re symptoms that spring inevitably from the deeper disease of our rebellious independence from God. But although they can be forgiven and we can be cleansed from their defilement by the death of Christ their consequences persist. Sex is a good gift from God to be delighted in because sex bonds a man and a woman in an exclusive relationship of intimacy. Therefore sex must only happen with our marriage partner.