September 6, 2009

Genesis 2:18-25

God’s Plan for Sex:  Intended for Intimacy

“Now comes the joke.  The Enemy described a married couple as ‘one flesh.’ He did not say ‘a happily married couple’ or a couple who married because they were in love’; but you can make the humans forget that.  You can also make them forget that the man they call Paul did not confine it to married couples.  Mere copulation for him makes ‘one flesh.’ The truth is that wherever a man lies with a woman there, whether they like it or not a transcendental relation is set up between them which must be eternally enjoyed or eternally endured. “

So writes the Demon Screwtape to his nephew Wormwood in his letter on how to sexually destroy human beings so that they will not follow God.  C.S. Lewis wrote the book the Screwtape Letters as a way of imagining the intents and plans of the demonic forces arrayed against God and his Kingdom.

In this part of the book, C. S. Lewis tries to describe the desire of Satan and his armies to keep humans from ever experiencing the sexual life that God intended and instead to overwhelm them with sexual activity that is destructive and harms their eternal health.

Sex is the number one search on the internet.  More people go onto the internet searching on sexuality than jobs, cars, health, travel, music, games, and weather combined together.  Truly, sexuality is one of if not the most important issue of this century.

If we are at all typical of evangelical churches in the United States, then according to a poll done in 2006, 50% of the men and 20% of the women in our church are addicted to pornography, 42% of the married people in our church feel unattractive or less appealing to their spouse because of that spouse’s sexual addiction. 60% of the women and 90% of the men struggle with lust.

It is for these reasons that I have felt called by God to spend a month together during our Sunday School and Worship time thinking, praying, and searching God’s Word for his idea of sexuality.  God desires that we might all be free from sexual sin because it damages us and corrupts the image of God in which we are all created.  God desires that we might be freed from sexual sin so that we might know Him and His love and to free the prisoners of sexual sin all around us.

This is not going to be an easy study together.  We are going to have to confront in our own lives and in our own families the danger and the damage that sexual sin has caused.  But the promise of Almighty God is that if we will learn from him, we will have abundant life together.

So many times when the church chooses to speak out about sexuality, it’s abusive.  In order to keep the attention off of our own lives, we try to point out the sins of others in this same area.  Just like the Pharisees tried to stone the woman in adultery rather than look into their own hearts, so we can be tempted to point out the sexual sin of our culture rather than hear God’s desire for our own lives first and then, in brokenness and humility, share it with the world.

One flesh.  The description of the sexual relationship between a man and a woman given in Genesis 2.  A Man will leave his family and cleave to his wife and they shall become one flesh.

The mystery of sexuality begins at the beginning of humanity’s creation by God.  And as we read together Genesis 2, we are presented with a fascinating reality.  God has set things in motion so that the sexual relationship will reflect God’s very image in the life of a man and a woman.  God looked at Adam alone in the Garden and said it is not good for him to be alone.  And so Eve was crafted by God’s own power as a partner for Adam.  To share life together with him, with God as their guide and friend.  A beautiful picture of harmony stands up for us at the beginning of time.  Man and Woman made complete by one another and their relationship with God.

The two will become one, God says.  And the man and his wife were naked and unashamed.  Free from physical corruption, sin, or shame.

The first thing that we must start any study of sexuality with together is God’s beautiful intention for it.  According to what we find here in His Word, God intends for sexuality to be a uniting, blessing relationship.  To create a spiritual intimacy that stands firm through all eternity.  As the demon Screwtape rightly declares, “when a man lies with a woman, a transcendental relationship is set up between them to be eternally enjoyed or eternally endured.”  In other words, sex creates an eternal relationship with another person. 

Jesus says in Mark 10, At the beginning of creation God made them male and female…the two will become one flesh.  So they are no longer two, but one.  There what God has joined together, let man not separate.”

Jesus is telling us that God himself joins a man and a woman together in their very souls in sex.  It is the nature of sexuality set up by God to create eternal connection between a man and a woman.

Now we might ask why God has so set this in motion.  Well, the last verse of our initial scripture answers that I think.  The man and his wife were both naked and they felt no shame.  The Hebrew word for naked is arowm.  It means bare, without any covering and the idea of “felt no shame” is really they had no fear of anything, embarrassment, evil, danger, nothing.  They were content and unafraid, totally vulnerable without fear.

This is the key to God’s intent for sexuality I think.  The Hebrew phrase for “To have sex” is a word that literally means “to know.”  Genesis 4:1 says, Adam knew his wife and she became pregnant.

Taken together these two verse tell us, I believe, that God intended sexuality to be a relationship whereby one man and one woman knew one another through and through and this brought lasting peace, freedom from fear or shame, contentment in companionship.  Sex was intended for intimacy.  Intimacy of a kind that we have never known.  Being totally known by another and knowing another in the same way.  Together as One flesh, to reflect the love and beauty of God and to enjoy that same relationship with God, known and knowing, with his Spirit living within.

Truly, the relationship that sexuality causes to exist between a man and a woman is intentionally made to mirror the unity and intimacy of the Trinity.  God in himself is the Being of Love in Relationship.  He created us in His image, Genesis 1:27 says.  Sexuality is part of how we share his image.  We are made one so that we might be like the Trinity.

In this way we find that sex, far from being simple or base or physical alone, is actually a reflection of God’s own nature.  Have you ever thought about that?  Sexuality mirrors the relationship of the God the Son, God the Father and God the Holy Spirit.  Sex is a relationship set apart as holy by God. It is nothing more and nothing less than the union of two souls into one over a lifetime of servanthood.  It’s amazing how God joins a man and a woman together to become the reflection of his love.  It means total surrender to one another and a freedom from shame as Adam and Eve shared with one another.

This is why we as God’s children need to think deeply and seriously about how we are experiencing sex in our lives.  God’s intent is a good purpose to help us know love and truth and freedom from fear.  When we seek to live as Christians we want to live as God has intended us to live, not like the world around us which is damaging itself through distorted and dysfunctional ideas and practices of sexuality.

So, for those of us who are married, God calls us today to really seek together as husbands and wives, to follow God’s ways in our sexual relationship together.  If sex is about intimacy that brings freedom from fear, freedom from shame, freedom for knowing one another in love, then our practices of sex in marriage really need to be rooted in God’s love.  That means that sex is about mutual encouragement, not abusing one another or using one another to get our sinful and dysfunctional desires fulfilled.

The sexual relationship between a man and a woman can be the place where God’s love soothes the hurts, reaffirms the identity of a child of God, and heals the wounds.  Don’t let it become the place where greater wounds are caused, where deeper injuries results.

It has to be a mutual giving and receiving.  It is not about either the husband or the wife, it’s about both.  It’s about loving the other person enough to surrender your expectations and desires to the other person.  Have you asked God to be the center of your sexual life together?  Now I know on the outset that sounds a little weird, but the bible is clear that God intends sex to draw us close to Him as we are closer to one another.  And our sexual lives together as husband and wife reflect God’s image.  How good a job are we doing at reflecting God’s love and community through our sexual lives together?

Is it about intimacy?  Does it reflect God?  Does each person feel naked and unashamed?  Is it about mutual submission?

It means that in our married lives together we seek to honor one another in sex, to serve one another in sex, to know one another in that way that brings no shame or fear.  That is the kind of sex that God wants us to enjoy.  Because it’s the good gift of God to help us know Him and one another in a deeply powerful and eternal way.

For those of us who are single, this is why sex is to be kept for the married life alone.  The scary thing about sex is that it makes a relationship.  We are eternally joined with another person.  That’s why God wants us to hold sex in high regard.  We are joining another human’s existence forever.  It doesn’t matter if we break up or marry someone else or don’t like each other later in life.  We are eternally bound to every person with whom we share sexual experiences.  That’s why God wants us to only share ourselves with our spouse, so we are not a tattered soul with so many others having pieces of them.

For those of us who are single, who are not in marriage relationships, sexual intimacy is not the way in which God is going to reveal himself to you or through you at this point, and that’s the goodness of God’s plan for your life right now.  He has other ways that he wants to show you his love and use you to reflect his image.  In the way that you relate to others of your sex or the opposite sex, how are you focused on knowing God so that you might care for the others around you?  Are you consumed with lust or other sexual addictions that need to be confessed and healed in the presence of other brothers or sisters in Christ?

And as C.S. Lewis writes, it is a relationship to be eternally enjoyed or eternally endured.  So, let us seek to confess our sexual desires to Jesus, asking him for help in controlling them and asking him to help us put them under his authority.

As Paul writes in 2 Corinthians 10, “we take every thought captive under the authority of Christ.”  That means, that every time we are tempted to seek a sexuality that mars or corrupts the image of God in ourselves or our spouses, we confess it to Jesus and surrender it to His power.

As we begin our 4 week series on sex, God’s way, let that be our initial image, that sex is God’s gift to bring freedom through intimacy and an eternal relationship with our spouse.

In Hebrews 13 we find these words, “Honor marriage, and guard the sacredness of sexual intimacy between wife and husband. God draws a firm line against casual and illicit sex.”

God is against sex before or outside of marriage because it causes damage to his children.  It poisons the image of God that is at the heart of each human being.  Sex is created for intimacy that helps us know God and love one another.  Let us seek to support one another in that goal.  We cannot keep our sex lives secret.  We need to be in relationships where we have the freedom to disciple and be discipled. 

Again I have to encourage all of you to be a part of an intentional discipleship group.  I don’t mean a small group bible study of 10 or 12.  I mean 3 or 4 men or 3 or 4 women a same-sex group with whom you can seek intentionally to know God together through relationship building centered on God, which deals with every aspect of Christian life, and that includes sexuality.  I have a group like this, I have started one with Dan and Brett, and I hope to see many more of these begin over the life of my ministry here as your pastor.

Let me be clear on this subject.  You will fail as a follower of Jesus Christ in the area of sexuality without other brothers or sisters supporting you along the way.  I know.  I was trapped in sexual sin in high school and college.  The only way I found freedom was because I had brothers in Christ who helped guide me back to Jesus’ intention for sex.  That’s the only reason I can stand here today and tell you that I am free of the sexual sin that entangled me back then. 

The beginning is in knowing God’s intention for sex.  God made sex so that we might know one another in such a way as to know community like God in the Trinity.  Knowing that brings freedom from fear and shame.  I pray that as we continue in this study together, God will bring life to our understanding of sexuality.  That it will free us from the chains of sexual destruction that have so imprisoned our culture and our own lives.  God wants us free.  So that we can know him and love one another. 

Today as we share in communion, I want each of us to confess our sexual sin to God.  To ask for his forgiveness for not living according to his intention for sexuality.  And I want each of us to hear that God loves us, he made sex as a good thing, to help us know true love.  Let’s commit to one another and to God that we are going to try with all that we are to honor the sacredness of sexual intimacy for marriage alone for God’s beautiful intention.

Will you pray with me?