Description
MODERN SEXUALITY SERMON SERIES
THE SINGLE AND SAFE SEX
ED YOUNG
JANUARY 30, 1994
The Bible says, five times directly and twenty-five times indirectly, for singles to abstain from sex until marriage. When I make a statement like that from the Bible, what do you think is the typical response among those who are not married in our midst? Is it this? “Thank you, Ed. Thank you for showing me God’s principles and precepts and directives concerning my sexuality. I’m so excited I have to wait until marriage! Yeah”. No, that’s not the reaction that most single adults have. The most common response is filled with resentment and outrage, “God, why are you raining on my sexual parade? Here you made me as a sexual being and one lazy afternoon in glory, you arbitrarily decide to tell one half of the populace, no and the other half of the populace who are married, yes. You give them a blank check and my account is closed”. Single adults have a tough time seeing the why, behind God’s prohibitions. God has put His prohibitions in His Word for our own good. That’s right, for our own good.
Think about it. We’re created in the image of God. We’re the crown of His creation. He’s placed us on this beautiful earth for a purpose. He’s given us Jesus Christ as our Savior. He’s placed the person of the Holy Spirit inside of our lives for strength and guidance and assurance. He’s given us the church for encouragement and support, and He promises us a home in heaven forever, and tells us “Obey My Word”. In fact, He says, “If you don’t obey My Word, you’ll suffer some major league, Superbowl type consequences”. God tells us in the Scripture exactly what the words of the song we just heard proclaim, “Hold on to your hearts. Hold on to your sexuality”. Oftentimes, we need to ask God to throw us a lifeline. Here’s what the Bible tells us. Galatians 6:7-8. “Do not be deceived, God cannot be mocked. A man reaps what he sows. The one who sows to please his own sinful nature, from that nature will reap destruction and the one who sows to please the Spirit, from the Spirit will reap eternal life”.
Here’s what God is saying, in a nutshell, about our sexuality. He’s saying, “Wait. Obey My Word because I want to spare you from the pain, the suffering, the separation, the alienation that premarital sex causes”. God wants to save you from the spiritual consequences of sexual sin. There are spiritual consequences. That’s why God’s Word says in Isaiah 59:2, “Your sin has separated you from God”. In other words, when I sin, when I sin sexually, a wedge is driven between myself and God. We’re separated from Him. In fact, the psalmist writes in Psalm 66:18, “If I have cherished sin in my heart, the Lord will not listen to my prayers”.
Talk to a believer, talk to a Christian who’s involved in sexual sin and they all say the same thing – “There were thrills, chills, passion, but then my prayers didn’t have any power. I felt dirty. I felt embarrassed. I felt exposed. Something was wrong”. You see, if you don’t deal with sexual sin, sexual sin can cause what I call the domino effect to take place in your life spiritually. Remember Johnny Carson ? He used to have guys on there who would break the Guinness Book of World Records with the domino deal. They would line up millions of dominos and start it and people would go and finally the last domino would fall and everyone would stand to their feet, “Yes! The world record in dominos!”
Here’s the spiritual domino effect that occurs if we don’t deal with sexual sin. First, you have the sexual sin. That’s the first domino. If it’s not dealt with, then you have the guilt that the Holy Spirit brings to the forefront of your mind. At this stage, it’s time to confess and to repent and to say, “I’m going to live a life of purity”. If you don’t, from the guilt phase, you pass to the hardness of heart. Hardness of heart is where when you sin sexually you no longer feel those guilt feelings. You rationalize guilt away. After that domino, the hardness of heart, you have apathy. Who cares? Then from apathy, the final domino is, sad to say, desertion. People spin on their heels and leave the church and who knows what happens to them in eternity? Sexual sin is unique in the fact that it is multi-dimensional. It does across-the-board damage when it’s outside the marriage bed. However, inside the marriage bed, it has across-the-board positive effects.
If we believe the statistics, many here are involved in sexual sin. It’s something a lot of people don’t know about. It’s your own little world and right now the Holy Spirit of God is bringing the sin to your heart, to your mind, and I want to encourage you to deal with it. Deal with it. Come clean. Get rid of it. Give the Lord the reins. Fortunately, we serve a God who specializes in rebuilding sin-shattered lives even lives shattered due to sexual sin. It’s categorically impossible, ladies and gentlemen, categorically impossible, to have an authentic fellowship with God while involved in sexual sin. Impossible! Impossible! Isn’t it time you did things God’s way instead of snubbing at God and saying, “I’ll do it my way”. Do it your way and you’re going to suffer consequences. You’re going to reap destruction. There are spiritual consequences.
There are also emotional consequences with sexual sin. Emotional. God wants to spare you from the damage to self-esteem you saw in our drama. The broken heart. The loneliness. The feeling of being violated. He wants to spare you from that emotional trauma. David knew all about emotional trauma and especially the emotional trauma of sexual sin. In Psalm 38 he says, “My sins hang over my head”. Do you feel like that today? “They are heavy and they begin to weigh too much for me”. I read recently that most of the calls that come into college suicide hotlines are from people who have just broken up a relationship where sexual intimacy was established. One of the biggest lies is this notion of casual sex. That’s right, casual, no-fault, non-binding, adult-consenting sex. That is a deception. There’s no such thing. When you have sex outside the marriage bed, you’re giving part of yourself away, giving part of yourself away spiritually, giving a part of yourself away emotionally, giving a part of yourself away relationally, giving a part of yourself away physically, and some people are here today and you’re wondering “What’s wrong with my life? Why isn’t it clicking? Why can’t I really discover what God wants me to do with my life?” Emotionally, there’s not much left.
Continuing in Psalm 38, David says, “l am numb. I groan because of the agitation in my heart. If eel like I’m ready to fall and my sin is continually before me”. How do you feel emotionally after the sexual sin? It can rob you. It can also rob you not only spiritually and emotionally, but relationally. That’s right. In relationships. You see, when you’re prematurely bonded, and I’m talking about sexually bonded, you cannot accurately analyze the relationship. There is such a power, there is such an electricity of sex, it is hard to say, “Is this person really for me or not?” Oftentimes, we confuse the electricity of sex with true love. We date, not to mate. We should date to find a mate, and the courtship phase should be used to establish communication patterns, resolve conflict, share dreams and most importantly, grow spiritually.
Most people involved in premarital sex say, “Hey, forget that. That’s boring stuff. That’s entree stuff. I’m going to skip over that because I want the dessert”, and we get between the sheets and have sex outside the marriage bed and say, “Oh, I’m in love. I’m in love”. Then they get married and a couple of years down the road, they look at their spouse and wonder, “Who is this person? Who is this person?” The Bible says we need to become soul mates before we’re bed mates. Sexuality, has to flow from a lifelong commitment in marriage and it flows after we’ve done all the entree stuff in the dating aspect. Then when we get married, sexuality can be the dessert. When you go to a restaurant, do you say, “I would like cheesecake, hot apple pie a la mode”. Everyone would say, “Are you nuts? Let’s have the entree first. The dessert’s purpose is to really add to that. It’s a culmination of the entree”. Relationally, you’re going to be devastated. Many times I’ve talked to people and they’re blinded by sex. Blinded. The relational consequences. You know what Superglue is, don’t you? Have you ever got some on your hands? I have, and to get the Superglue off, I had to rip the flesh literally. Aah! That’s what happens when you’re prematurely bonded.
There’s another consequence that God wants to spare us from – it’s the physical consequence of premarital sex. There’s a physical consequence. In fact, I read recently that when God created man and when God created woman, He designed sex for the marriage bed and the act of sex, I’m talking about sexual intercourse, should reflect the image of God. Let me explain. When God made man, He stamped on man His masculine characteristics. When God made woman, He stamped on woman His feminine characteristics. Thus when they come together in the act of marriage, the image of God in its masculine and feminine aspects are blended and two become one. That’s why the math of marriage in the Bible is one plus one equals one. When you have sex outside the marriage bed, you’re making a mockery of the image of God and that’s nothing to play around with. Because we’re making a mockery of the image of God, there’s a physical price that we pay.
Think about sexually transmitted diseases. Forty-three million Americans have incurable, sexually-transmitted disease. Twelve million will contract a disease that’s incurable this year. We practice what our government and the public school education calls “safe” or “safer” sex. Folks, you’re playing genital Russian Roulette when you’re doing that. What if you signed up for a skydiving course and the skydiving instructor said, “Ron Jones, welcome to the skydiving school. Ron, you will have a one in six change of your parachute not opening”. Now, do you think Ron Jones will say, “Hey, I want to sign up for that! Yes, that will be fun!” No. He would turn and sprint away. He would run away. You can only get pregnant a couple of days of the month. You can catch the HIV virus, for example, any day of the year. The HIV virus is 150 times smaller than one man’s sperm. Physical consequences.
There is also the consequence of unwanted pregnancies. There will be one million unwanted pregnancies this year, most ending in abortion. I’ve often thought, “What if we took the same mentality of sex education in our schools and the government as we do with our drug education?” What if we say, “Well, you know what, the kids are going to have sex anyway, go ahead and give them all the birth control devices. The kids are going to take drugs anyway, so let me show you the proper way to smoke dope, the proper way to shoot heroin. They’re going to do it anyway”. You see the mentality behind this? And they say now “safer” sex. Safer than what? Swimming in a tank with great white sharks? It’s not worth it. Just from a biological, physical standpoint. Let’s take the Bible for a nano-second and put it right there. It’s not worth it just physically!
The Cowboys have a game today at 5:18 p.m. If you talk with some of the Cowboy players, if you ever get a chance, they will tell you the typical story of an NFL player. They are gifted athletes. In fact, when they began Pee Wee football, their coaches said, “Boy, you’re going to be a great one day. Stick with it and everything will be AOK. One day you’ll be playing in the NFL. I’ve never seen a kid like you in my life!” Those Cowboy players have disciplined themselves, they have sacrificed, they’re focused, they can train their bodies to be what I feel is one of the greatest professional football teams in the last ten years. Now, they are preparing to play the ultimate game, the Super Bowl. A guy like Michael Irvin or Emmitt Smith, they’re not going to waste their talents at the YMCA playing flag football, are they? Or in the backyard or in sand lots across the area? No. They are going to save themselves for the ultimate.
Singles, listen to me. Singles, you want to have Super Bowl sex? You want to have Super Bowl sex? You discipline yourself, you obey God’s Word, His prohibitions, the guidelines that He’s given especially tailor-made for you. You wait. You wait. You wait, and you will know what sex should be about and how it should be practiced across the board when you wait until marriage. I’ve talked to single audiences a bunch – junior high students, high school students. I know what you’re thinking right now. I really do. Some are thinking, “Hmm. No sexual intercourse until marriage but wait a minute, I’ve got the green light for everything else up to that point. That ain’t that bad! I’ll just wait and I can stop short of the act itself. Hey, this is great! Ed, close in prayer. I’m ready to go”. Wait just a minute there. It is still a couple of hours before the game.
The Bible gives three prohibitions sexually. I won’t go into all of these. The first is adultery, the seventh commandment. You know what adultery is. The second is fornication – five times directly; twenty three times indirectly, that means sex with unmarried persons is a no-no. The third prohibition is something referred to as sexual sin. One of the passages I will mention is Colossians 3:5-6. “Have nothing to do with sexual sin, impurity, lust, .. . ” and then finally it says, “God ‘s anger will be focused on these people”. Most scholars interpret sexual sin to mean everything stopping short of sexual intercourse, and let me explain. This is graphic but we should not be ashamed to talk about what God was not ashamed to create. If you don’t hear it here, where else are you going to hear it? The church is the best place to hear it, next to the family. There are three stages of sexual development in any dating relationship, and remember the dating relationship is to prepare you for marriage. It’s to see if the person is the one that God has for you.
The first stage of sexual development is the embracing stage. That’s the hugging stage. It’s very natural. The second stage though, is where we get into trouble. It’s called the caressing stage. That’s when you caress each other’s bodies in a sensual manner with the clothes on. In fact, I’ve never met a couple who can stop at this point, because your bodies then scream out for more and more and more physically. Then you move to the third stage which is the stimulation stage, genital stimulation, often leading to a climax. “But”, you say, “we’re not having sexual intercourse”. Pastors, counselors, theologians across the board will tell you to stop at stage one. Stop at stage one because once you enter into stage two and then three, you’re going to feel guilt, embarrassment. You’ll feel like you’ve crossed God’s boundaries. You are also going to feel some major league sexual frustration. Most of you know I played basketball a little bit at Florida State University. My freshman year, I played 19 minutes the whole year. You know what though, as I was thinking about sexual frustration and just frustration in general, my mind rushed back to Florida State because I would get everything the All-Americans on our team did, but I didn’t play. I would eat the pre-game meal. I would have my ankles taped. I had the uniform with my name on the back. I would run out and do the lay-ups. I would stretch. I would shoot all the shots in warm-ups. But for 19 straight games, I never saw any action. Zero. And if you can describe my character at that point, it was frustration. I wanted to play so badly. Frustration. You’re going to have big time frustration spiritually, big time frustration physically, emotionally, relationally, if you go into stage two and stage three. Pray for strength. Keep yourself out of situations that cause you to stumble. Date in groups. Concentrate on the entree level knowing you’re saving yourself until one day you will get the dessert in the Super Bowl, and that’s great. That’s great.
What if though, you’re into level two, three or you’re having sex outside of marriage right now? I know many of you are. It’s time to confess, and the word confess means to tell the truth about your condition, to turn from your sins and to say, “From this day forward, I am going to live a life of purity”. God can replenish and rebuild all the years the locusts have eaten. He can reconstruct shattered lives, but only if you’ll let Him. If you want the sexual aspect of your marriage to really be blessed, abstain until marriage. It’s for our best.
To sum up what I’m talking about, I want to relate to you a story that Josh McDowell told in his book “Why Wait?” McDowell says that a little two year old was toddling through the kitchen and he sees a butcher knife in the dishwasher. He pulls the butcher knife out by the blade. He’s grasping the blade tightly and he walks into the den. His father sees it, “Oh! Junior! ” and he attempts to pull the blade from the infant’s fingers. Then this father remembers, “I could maim him for life. I could damage him. I could cut an artery”, so he sits down and goes, “Come here, son. Let daddy hold the knife. Please let daddy hold the knife”, and the little toddler finally unclenches his fist and the father gently takes the knife from the toddler and the toddler gives the knife to the father he trusts. Over the years, the father will teach the toddler, McDowell says, how to use the knife properly. McDowell says that sexuality is like that razor-sharp knife. In the tool, there is power. It can be a beautiful thing. Sexuality can be used for God’s glory. But in the wrong hands, if it’s tightly grasped by ourselves, by our humanness, it can cut, maim and destroy. So McDowell encourages his readers, as I encourage you, to unclench your fists, allow the Lord to take the knife of sexuality and let Him teach you. Submit yourself to Him, to His counsel, and your sexuality, even if you’re single, your sexuality, can be a beautiful, beautiful thing.