Description
MODERN SEXUALITY SERMON SERIES
TEACHING YOUR CHILDREN ABOUT SEX
ED YOUNG
JANUARY 23, 1994
It happened in church. I was standing beside my mother. We were singing a hymn and my eyes moved off the pages of the hymn book and began to scan the crowd. My little seven-year old brain and eyes caught something that shocked me. It rattled my cage. In fact, it shocked me to such a degree that I pulled on my mother’s dress and I said, “Mom”, in a very quiet voice, “Mom. Mom. What happened to that lady’s belly? It’s huge!” She said, “Ed, talk in your church voice”. “Mom, why is her stomach so big?” She said, “Ed, there’s a baby in her tummy”. “A baby? You mean there’s a baby in her stomach?” “Yes”, and then that led me to the next very important question…”Mom, how did the baby get there?” She begins to teeter back and forth, a cold sweat. She swallowed hard and then she said, “Ed, I’ll tell you when we get home”.
The service seemed like it lasted an eternity. Finally, it was over. We rushed home and my mother sat me down and ex plained to me in a very articulate and penetrating way how the birds and the bees and the flowers and the trees and the facts of life really happen. She concluded this speech by saying, “You know, son, when a man loves a woman, they get together in the act I just described to you in the marriage bed and that’s where babies come from”. I said, “Mom, wait a minute. You mean you and Dad do this?” She said, “Yes. Everyone who is married does this”. “That’s where babies come from, Mom?” “Yes, Ed”. Then I said, “No way! I don’t believe you”, and I spun on my heels, turned around and left the room. True story. Subsequently though, I discovered my mother was absolutely right and I was absolutely wrong.
Parents, future parents, single parents, what do you do when those interesting and difficult moments arise just like I described to you between my mother and myself? What do you say? Where do you turn? Whom do you count on to teach your children about sexuality? How do you teach your children about sex? I’m in a series entitled, “Sexuality In The 90s”. A couple of weeks ago we began by talking about the reality of our sexuality. Last week we discussed the bedroom as a battleground or a playground. Today we address teaching your children about sex. Parents, we are the primary teachers, we are the people that our children look to and get their cues from for life, and especially this gift called sexuality. Parents, if we’re really going to instruct our little ones, we need to understand four profound lessons regarding sexuality. Before we can connect and communicate with our children about sex the way God wants us to. Write these down if you can. Impress them on your children. Hide them in your heart because the Bible says in Deuteronomy 6:6-7, “These commandments that I give to you today are to be upon your hearts. Impress them on your children…” You can’t delegate it. You can’t option it off like Troy will option the ball off today to Emmitt Smith. You can’t do that dads, moms. You can’t do what the father did in our drama. “Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the way, when you lie down and when you get up”.
Lesson number one. Parents, we have to beat others to the punch. We have to beat others to the punch. I love boxing and when I watch boxing on television, the announcers always say, “This man is winning because he is beating the other one to the punch” and usually the one who beats the other one to the punch wins the boxing match. Think about a press conference. I love to watch Bill Clinton in press conferences. First you hear “Hail to the Chief”. “Thank you. Any questions?” “Mr. President, Mr. President, Mr. President.” “Yes”. “Mr. President, about the Whitewater issue?” “Next question, please”, and he goes on to someone else. What the press is doing is something that parents need to be doing. They are vying for time. They want to be the first one to speak to the President of the United States. Think about how many different people and media are vying for our child’s brain…television shows, music, peers, public sex education. All these voices. Our children are inundated with sexual messages that intellectually, emotionally and spiritually they are not ready to receive. So parents, we need to be the first ones to initiate these conversations and talk to our children about this beautiful, beautiful subject.
In the 1950s when Lucille Ball was pregnant on the “I Love Lucy Show”, they couldn’t even utter the word pregnant. In the ’60s, Rob and Laura of Dick Van Dyke fame, they had to sleep in twin beds. The outfit of Barbara Eden on “I Dream Of Jeannie” had to cover her navel. In sex education courses in school, abstinence was the only way. I remember watching a film in junior high school entitled, “From Boy to Man”. “This is Tim. He is going through puberty… ” and it went on and on and on. Today though, our television applauds homosexuality, bisexuality, sado-masochism, and the public schools are handing out condoms to children saying how important it is to have safe sex. And those who believe in abstinence think, “Well, I don’t want to be passive about sex so I guess I’ll be active”, and you have a clash of differing worldviews as Chuck Colson mentions in his book “The Body”. On one hand, we have the humanistic, naturalistic worldview that’s predominant in the public schools and in the media. On the other hand, you have the Christian worldview. The humanistic worldview says, “There are no absolutes.” Relativism. The Christian worldview says “Yes, there are absolutes. They are from the revealed Word of God”. The humanists say “Everything is natural”. The Christian says, “Everything is supernatural”. The humanist says “Everything is temporal”. The Christian says, “Everything is eternal”. The humanists say “Do what works”. Pragmatism”. The Christians say, “Do what is right”. Idealism. The battle is for the heart, mind and soul of our children.
St. Xavier made a profound statement hundreds and hundreds of years ago. He said, let me have the children the first seven years of their lives. After that, I don’t care who has them because I can teach them, mold them, shape them when they are young. They might go off the path, here and there, but they’ll always return to those foundational truths. Many parents are silent in an age when we cannot afford to be silent. The net result of this humanistic world view are the following statistics. In 1994, there will be 1 million teenage pregnancies, most ending in abortions. Three million teenagers will contract sexually-transmitted diseases. One out of four sexually-active high school students will contract an STD. A local survey at a local junior high school showed that 55 % of junior high students have had sexual intercourse. Young Miss magazine conducted a survey with over 4,000 young teenage women and 66% of the 4,000 said, “I never have talked to my parents about sex”. Why are we quiet? Why do we cower? Why?
There are two hurdles that we all have to cross if we’re going to beat the world to the punch. I love to watch people on the high hurdles. They’re running, whoosh! Smooth as silk. The first hurdle we have to clear is the hurdle of embarrassment. That’s right, the big embarrassment hurdle. We’re running this race and we’re trying to teach our children about sexuality and “Oh-oh! Look at that hurdle – embarrassment. There’s no way I can clear that. My vertical jump is not high enough. Oh no! What will I do?” Embarrassment. One parent says, “It’s called the birds and the bees and my shaking knees. I get a big lump in my throat and I’m a candidate for CPR if I even think about talking about sex with my children.” Whoa, man! Some erroneously view lovemaking in marriage as something dirty or something unholy. As we’ve said time and time again from this stage, God gave us the gift of sex primarily for pleasure; secondarily for procreation. The author of sex was not afraid to talk about it in a very straightforward way and neither should we. Song of Solomon found in the Bible is an instruction manual on how to romance and make love to your spouse. Other Bible references include the first three or four chapters of Genesis and I Corinthians 7. The book of Proverbs is a dialogue between a father and a son and the father takes the initiative to talk to his son about sex. So it’s time to jump the embarrassment hurdle.
There’s another hurdle though. This hurdle scares more people and frightens more parents from talking about sexuality than any other thing I know. It’s called “pain from the past”. “Ed, you mean I can take God’s Word and tell my son or daughter about sex when I have failed so miserably? No. You don’t realize where I’ve come from. In high school and college, I was involved in all of these illicit relationships. How could someone who failed so badly teach someone who is as pure as a child about sex?” You know what the great news is? The great news is that we serve a God who can cleanse, who can change, who can reveal, who can reconstruct, who can refinish and replenish so many sins, so many mistakes. In fact the Bible says all sins, all mistakes, if we come clean and say, “Lord, I’m going to turn from my past and face the new, face the new and I’m going to forget what lies behind”. You can have that happen to you today. If that’s keeping you from sharing, you can learn from your mistakes. You can learn from your past. Don’t be self-disclosing to your children. Tell them you have messed up too or you’ve struggled with things too, but here is God’s way, here is the right way. If you’re struggling with this pain hurdle, three quick suggestions.
First, ask God to forgive you of your sins. The Bible says in I John 1:9, “lf we confess our sins, He is faithful and just and he might forgive us of our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness “. Is that what it says? No. Not might. It says, “…He is faithful and just and He will forgive us”. First, ask forgiveness. Second, commit your life to purity and that’s the word “repentance”. Turn from your sin and say, “I’m willing to commit my life to purity”, and the Bible says that every time we deal with sin radically, and especially sexual sin, God will replace that in our lives with a mighty blessing. John 8: 11, Jesus told the lady caught in the act of adultery, “Go and sin no more”. The third step I have to take to clear this past hurdle is that I’ve got to forget what lies behind and look forward to what lies ahead. One of my favorite Scripture verses, Philippians 3:13-14, “Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead… ” And the evil one loves to say, “Hey, you are not worthy to talk about that. Do you realize what you’ve done?”
This point nailed me between the eyes this past week because our staff went to Cedar Creek Lake for a planning retreat. No, we didn’t fish nor ski. It was a little bit frigid outside. We’d been meeting Tuesday for about seven straight hours. The attention span was starting to wane and someone had the idea, I think me, “Let’s go bowling”. So we went to Seven Point, Texas to the beautiful skating bowl. I walked into this skating bowl. I love bowling alleys. The smell of french fries and fried catfish. Wonderful place. We walk in and see some people. These people were into bowling big time, I mean Dick Webber type with the bowling glove and the ball would hit in the pocket rolling strikes left and right. A bowling league. They had their uniforms on and everything. I noticed their scores were projected for everyone in the alley to see. Wow! We walk up to the counter and we rent our shoes. Our staff has big feet. Most all of us wear size 12. We get the shoes and we rent the bowling balls and we walk over to our lane. We sit down, take our shoes off and put our bowling shoes on. I say, “Boy, won’t this be cool? We’ll be able to project our scores on the screen too”. There’s a projection button and I push the button…it won’t work. It really kind of hacked me off that it wouldn’t work, but it didn’t work. I’m thankful it didn’t work because Michael Johnson, our new Children’s Pastor, dominated the bowling game.
In the context of sexual sin, so many Christians think, “Oh no! Jesus is the score keeper and my scores from the past are projected for the world to see. I cannot really do what I need to do because Jesus is keeping score and I have all these black marks against me. It’s kind of like my moral score card. Oh no! I really cannot cross this pain from the past hurdle”. But if we’ve asked forgiveness, committed our lives to personal purity, if we have forgotten the past and moved to the future, once we receive Jesus Christ, accept His forgiveness, don’t listen to the lies of the evil one. It’s like the button no longer works. The score cannot be projected anymore because Christ is inside of our lives and when God sees us, He sees Jesus. He sees a man or a woman whose sins are pardoned. Beat others to the punch.
Here’s the second guideline. Capture teachable moments with your children. Capture teachable moments. I love those Kodak commercials. They say carry the Kodak camera with you everywhere you go because you never know when those Kodak moments will appear. Our drama exemplified a Kodak moment that dad was not ready for. I opened up this message with a Kodak moment, a teachable moment. What do you do, parents, when those moments happen? Because they happen at all stages. I firmly believe that sex education begins the moment the doctor slaps us on the rear and says, “It’s a boy” or “It’s a girl”. That’s when sex education really starts.
Here are three ways to maximize, to capture these teachable moments. Number one, be prepared. That’s right. Be prepared. Don’t talk off the top of your head. Don’t talk off the cuff. You’ve got to be prepared. I’ve brought a couple of books that I recommend concerning preparation. Parents, we’ve got to be ready to give these impromptu but rehearsed answers. Dr. James Dobson’s PREPARING FOR ADOLESCENCE, a great book. John Needer’s GOD, SEX AND YOUR CHILD. There’s a lot of great information from John. Also, I like this title, HOW TO TALK CONFIDENTLY WITH YOUR CHILD ABOUT SEX by Lenore Boothe. A great friend of Winston Churchill said that Churchill spent a large portion of his life rehearsing impromptu speeches. One day, his head butler heard Churchill, while taking a bath, talking in a very booming voice. He rushes in the bathroom, “Is everything okay?” and Churchill responded, “Norman, I’m not talking to you. I’m addressing the House of Commons”.
Parents, think about the question, anticipate the question so you’re ready. Immerse yourself in biblical information. Many, many books, scores, scores, are out there. Hide them in your heart, understand them, and you’ll be ready. And if you are a little bit nervous, tell your child, “The reason I’m so nervous is because this is so beautiful, it’s so special, it’s so holy. I’ve never talked to a child about it before”.
Here’s another thing I would suggest to you concerning maximizing teachable moments. Answer questions directly. Don’t try the creative approach and say, “Well, son, you know why there are so many giraffes in the zoo?” Don’t try to paint this Mutual Of Omaha, National Geographic type picture, and never get down to the facts. Steve Farrar in his book “The Point Man”, says “Answer small questions with small answers and big questions with big answers”. I heard about a father who kind of messed up in this regard. After dinner, his son, who was five years of age, cornered him and said, “Dad, where do I come from?” The father swallowed hard, “Oh no”, and he went into this long speech about the facts of life. He’d been talking for five minutes and he looks down at his son and his son has an expression like this…he said, “Son, do you understand what I’m saying?” His son said, “Yes, dad. I guess so. Tommy comes from Cleveland. Where do I come from?” Make sure you discern the question.
That brings us to another guideline if we’re going to maximize teachable moments. Discern the age and development of the child. Don’t give them too much too early, but begin to teach, begin to explore, begin to initiate conversation. However what you say to a seven year-old will be a little bit different from what you would communicate to a ten year-old and on up the ladder. Sex education never stops. It never stops.
Something else I would encourage parents to do is to take your child off for a night or two and talk to them about the facts of life. I know Owen Goff took his son, Timothy, off for the weekend and they went through this book, “Preparing For Adolescence”. Again it communicates to your children, “Whoa! This is important. Dad or mom, they’ve taken enough time to take me off for the weekend, to sit me down and share with me this gift called sex”. Are you capturing those moments or are you fleeing from those moments?
Here is the third lesson, the major lesson we need to learn. We need to model the message. Model the message. A couple of months ago, my wife was in a fashion show with a number of mothers and some fathers. It was so funny to watch the children view their parents modeling. They would freak out! “Mom! There’s Dad. Looking good. Yes, Dad!” I was dying laughing. But our children are watching a fashion show twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week and one of the garments we’re modeling is our sexuality. Children do what we do more than what we say. Parents, when you’re modeling this garment called sexuality, what kind of cues are you giving those little ones? Do those little ones see mom and dad embracing or do they see mom and dad bracing for another battle? That’s why Jesus cut to the quick when He said in John 13:34, “As I have loved you, so you must love one another”. Paul told the Corinthians, “Follow my example as I follow the example of Christ”. Sexuality must be taught within the context of a relationship. It has to be.
The fourth and final lesson. Make sure parents that you monitor your children’s friends. Monitor their friends at a very early age because if your children have alliances with other children who don’t have the same spiritual convictions, the same reverence for the Bible and God’s principles and precepts, it’s just a matter of time before they will drag your child away. It’s easy to be pulled down but it’s pretty difficult to pull someone off. In other words, it’s the difference between association and alliance. Association and alliance. You need to teach them to be associated with immoral people, ungodly people. We can’t skirt that issue. But as far as alliance, the alliance is where it must stop. It’s like a doctor. A doctor must get close enough to a patient to heal but not close enough to contract the disease.
How many of you have insulation in your apartments or dorms or homes? Insulation. Look at the insulation hands going up everywhere. Here’s the question. When it’s cold outside, like over the last couple of days, could you tell it was cold even though you had insulation? Yes. We all could. That is the context, parents, and that’s the way, using a word picture, we should teach sexuality to our children. We should not isolate them. Some parents think, “Well, let’s move way out in the country, only go to Christian schools, only see Christian people and never do anything that even exposes them to the world”. But sometime they will turn 21. “Hey, you’re ready now. Go for it!” It’s not isolation. The Bible talks about the Christian life as insulation. When you’re insulated, your closest friends are Christian friends. You still feel the pull and the different moral climate as it moves in and out of your life. However, you are insulated by the Word of God and by Christian relationships. The Bible is not saying we should never associate with non-Christians. It says be careful about the alliances with non-believers. Some parents are thinking, “Okay, Ed. How do I monitor my child’s relationships?” If you’re wondering about a relationship, invite the child over for a sleepover. Watch them talk. Listen to conversations when you’re in the car. Look at their family and that will give you cues and clues. You may need to encourage relationships elsewhere. That’s why you need to make your social life and your best friends Christians. So parents, four guidelines, four lessons you need to know. My advice to you is what I think the Bible is saying to us in the 90s, in the sex-crazed 90s. Teach, teach, teach, teach, teach your children about the gift of sex.