Father, your word is truth, and so we ask now in the preaching of your word that you would guide us into your truth. Lord, we want our minds, our our thoughts, our public and private lives to mirror and reflect the truth of your word and the truth of your gospel. And so we ask that you would shape us now through the preaching of your word and the power of your Spirit's ministry in our midst for the glory of your Son Jesus. Amen.
Well, When I was 12 or 13, my dad and I took that fishing trip at my mom's prompting/urging/telling him, 'You have to do this.' We scheduled a trip and we went to South Dakota to slay walleyes together for a few days. And I sort of had an inkling there was an ulterior motive behind the trip. And about the second day of the trip, I started to get a real clear strong sense that there was an ulterior motive because my dad's anxiety level just seemed to be climbing. Like normally when my dad is in a fishing boat, it is just relaxation central. He is in the spot. He loves it. He's the guy that's got multiple poles and he's got the trolling motor and it's like he looks like the busiest you'll ever see him and yet he's the most relaxed you'll ever see him. So all of a sudden we're here on day 2 and he's just not quite the usual way, he's nervous, he's kind of stumbling through things, and it was because he was having the conversation, the birds and the bees conversation. And it was like probably some of your birds and bees conversations. It was awkward, it was strange. I knew what he was trying to talk about. I probably knew more than he thought I knew about the topic. For the life of me, I still don't know what the birds and the bees even refers to, so that probably tells you how well the conversation went. It's a tricky thing to talk about sexuality.
If the usually awkward, sometimes downright creepy, often embarrassing way dads have tried to tackle the subject isn't what we're looking for when we think about what sexuality is all about, then where do we look? Where do we go? Because here's the thing, we need to look somewhere, and that's why we're having this series on Kingdom Sexuality. While moms and dads are stumbling through the topic, doing their best but still struggling to, to explain it. Sometimes parents are ignoring it, or if they are addressing it, it's still rarely done. The world around us is obsessed with the topic, obsessed with ideas of sex and sexuality. And so to say our culture is filling in the void is a massive understatement, isn't it? Our culture isn't just speaking into the silence, our culture is screaming into it. Sex and sexuality aren't just being casually discussed. Our world has made an idol out of these ideas. You can't turn on TV or listen to the radio, you can't even go to check out your groceries at the grocery store, can you, without being bombarded with sensory overload in the media onslaught of the world's answers to what sex and sexuality are all about. It's everywhere, it's in the air that we breathe. That begs the question, where do we begin? Where do we start our search for a Christian vision of what sex is meant to be about? For a kingdom sexuality, if you will. Well, the answer to that question becomes really obvious when we ask a similar one. Where did Jesus and where did Paul begin? That's always a helpful place to start, right? Where do Jesus and Paul go to when they're trying to lay out their argument for what sexual ethics is meant to be? When Jesus and Paul describe kingdom sexuality, kingdom sexual ethics in the New Testament, how do they do it? Well, they don't go to King David or his son Solomon and their harems. That's not the location they start. They don't go to the patriarchs Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob and point to their polygamy. That's not the place that they start. Central as all these characters and their lives might be, their marriages and sexual decisions to the entire biblical storyline, and those characters are central and they are important, Jesus and Paul never look there. They never point us there. Time and again, exclusively and without fail, Jesus and Paul build their kingdom sexuality from the ground up. They look back to the pre-fall world, a world free of sin. They look back to the example of the garden. The kingdom's vision for sexuality starts by looking at the monogamous marriage of Adam and Eve in Genesis 1 and especially Genesis 2. So that's exactly where we're gonna go this morning.
We're going to have a two-part opening to the series called Sexuality by Design, part one. Will be this morning. We're going to look back specifically at how God designed it in the beginning. So we're going to turn our attention, but first I want to acknowledge something else.
The reason for this whole series, it is not reactive. We're not having this series because of all the stuff that's happening out there in the culture and the world around us. That's not the motivation for it. We're not going to talk about this because when you go outside, it's being shoved down your throats by other voices, even though those things are true. We're talking about sex and sexuality because it is God's good creation. Not just that, it's something God directly addresses countless times in Scripture. There's an entire book just about the beauty of marital intimacy, Song of Songs. We're going to go there a little bit next week. Uncomfortable dads might try to avoid this topic, but God does not. He addresses it head-on. God is not embarrassed about sex. And He is sovereign, think of this, over the very sex-obsessed culture that we live in. He's not powerless and impotent to proclaim kingdom sexuality, a biblical worldview of sexuality, into the world around us. So we're going to address the topic head on because God designed these things. He's proud of his handiwork, just like he is all of creation. And if God isn't ashamed of sex and sexuality, then we aren't going to be either. We're going to be appropriate. We're not going to be crass or vulgar, but we are going to address the topics head on in a forthright way. Now, this— even if our sin-infested world after the serpent's mischief, we need to recognize that the gospel has the power to redeem and reclaim sex for God's glory. So even as the culture around us has this cacophony of voices telling us their version of what these topics are about, we can't be sitting on the defensive thinking they have the high ground. There are many voices and they have big powerful speakers, but our God and the gospel is more powerful still, and the truth of His word is on our side. This isn't a subject lost to Satan's domain where the faithful now fear to tread. Not at all. The gospel is able to cut to the heart of the world's idolatry on this subject, to diagnose the disease and to provide a cure. Cure with the gracious power to change how we think about sexuality and how we practice sex.
That being the case, turn with me to Genesis chapter 2. We're going to start in verse 18. We're going to read all the way to the end of the chapter. Later on in today's message, we'll jump back to chapter 1, a sister passage. But for now, we're going to start in Genesis chapter 2 Beginning in verse 18, hear God's holy and authoritative word. Then the Lord God said, it is not good that man should be alone. I will make him a helper fit for him. Now out of the ground the Lord had formed every beast of the field and every bird of the heaven and brought them to the man to see what he would call them. And whenever the man called— whatever the man called every living creature, that was its name. The man gave names to all the livestock, to the birds of the heavens, and every beast of the field. But for Adam the man there was not found a helper fit for him. 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. And the rib that the Lord had taken from the man he made into a woman and brought her to the man. Then the man said, this at last is bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh. She shall be called woman because she was taken out of man. Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife. They shall become one flesh. And the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed. The word of the Lord. May he write its truth upon our hearts.
6 · The pastor establishes the foundational theological claim of the sermon: sex is God's good creation, intended for human joy and ultimately for God's glory
We see in Genesis 2 that sex and sexuality is God's design. Sex and sexuality is God's creation. The word sex never appears in the opening chapters, but it's there. The description of husband and wife becoming one flesh, of Adam and Eve being naked and unashamed, shows us unequivocally that sex, like everything else in God's creation, is originally good. It's intended for our joy, and ultimately it's meant to bring God glory. Sex is good. It's meant for our joy and pleasure, and it's ultimately designed, like everything else, to bring glory to its Creator. When we say sex is good, we mean that when it's approached and practiced in the way God intended, it is exceedingly beautiful. Sex and human sexuality are awe-inspiring. In their original form. We'll see through this series the grace of the gospel has the power to return them to that sacred state. When we say that sex is intended for our joy, it means sex is intended for pleasure. Like a beautiful mountain vista or the wonderful smell of the ocean surf as the waves come in, the entire physical world is created with an eye to serving and enhancing the joy of creation's masterpiece, mankind, male and female. Creation is created for God's glory, but Genesis 1 and 2 makes clear creation, the garden, it's created for man to enjoy it, for him to flourish in the midst of it. Sex is included in that. When we say sex is designed for God's glory, we say that sex is never, ever an empty act. It's never just a physical thing. And sexuality is not simply a modern notion, something discovered and propagated by sociologists and psychologists and scientists only in the 20th century. Now it goes further, much further back. It was conceived by God and created for His glory and for our joy.
7 · The pastor unpacks Genesis 2:18-24 to show that God intentionally designed sexual intimacy for marriage
So let's take a look at how God designed it to function. First, God designed sex for marriage. Genesis 2:24 is the most quoted passage Jesus and Paul return to when describing sex and its rightful place, that place being within a marriage. There's good reason for it. You see, from the beginning, Adam and Eve aren't just experimenting their way towards sexual intimacy. That's not what's described for us. It's not like they're in the garden and they're put together and gradually they discover some random incidental ways to feel good and close to each other through physical intimacy. They aren't like a couple of irresponsible teenagers in the backseat of dad's car. That's not what's going on in the garden. This is not fumbling and bumbling our way to discovery. This is God creating them male and female, placing them together and saying, you're for each other. I designed you this way. What they enjoy in sexual intimacy is from the mind of God. Their complementarity, the way male and female complement each other in all areas, is God's intention. From the man's physical strength and protective impulses to the woman's gentleness and nurturing instincts, but also and especially the ways their bodies in their physical, just the way they are designed, their physical bodies are meant, created, intentionally formed to picture the way male and female complement one another. The man initiates, the woman receives. Their bodies model this. They literally fit together in physical intimacy in a way that's meant to bring them face to face, a picture of their emotional and spiritual intimacy. Adam, we read, is lonely. He's isolated before the creation of Eve. He has this remarkable relational familiarity with God. He walks with God in the garden. What a sweet phrase. All creation is longing for that to be restored. And yet he senses on the level of creature and creation, there is no one like him. There's no one fit for him. He surveys all the beasts and the birds and he sees their coupling instincts. And Adam, the first man, feels incomplete. Genesis 2:20, but for Adam there was not found a helper fit for him. So the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and while he slept, took one of his ribs, closed up its place with flesh, and the rib that the Lord had taken from man He made into woman and brought her to you. See, God's present. There's no fumbling and bumbling. Adam wakes up and God brings the gift to him. Look, Adam, look, Eve, woman. And the man said, this at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh. She'll be called woman because she was taken out of man. Adam looks at the gift and euphorically exclaims, We fit! He knows immediately that God has given him a great gift. It's flesh of his flesh. It's not just someone to talk to, although finally he has another rational creature. It's not just another person to shoulder the responsibilities of tending the garden. Oh, finally, someone to work that section. It's been getting kind of unruly over there. I can hardly handle a backyard. I can't imagine what Adam's thinking with this whole garden. It's a complementary version of himself to experience full-blown emotional, spiritual, and physical intimacy with. We're going to look more at that next week. But it's not to experience intimacy in any old way they choose. Immediately after describing Adam's reaction, what does God say? We fit. And then verse 24, therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife. Shall become one flesh. Male and female, they are designed for each other. Therefore, they will pursue marriage together to experience the joy and God-glorifying design of intimacy. You see what God is showing us? Men and women are designed by It is God's divine intention, male and female, to experience the deepest levels of familiarity with each other, but not in any way or with anyone they choose. The closeness of sex is designed only for marriage between one man and one woman.
8 · The pastor illustrates the cultural opposition to the biblical view by citing a Huffington Post article and a Christian camp counselor's experience
Now, Our culture thinks that's an insane idea. At the very least, the idea that you'd wait to experience sex, sex until you're married seems very strange and very foreign. Even if you think you want to marry a person, our culture would tell you at least have to test drive the car before you buy it. Huffington Post article recently had this title: Sex Before Marriage: 5 Reasons Every Couple Should Do It. And the article's tone was basically just like, this is, this is settled ground. You are a crazy person. Go back to Puritan times and put on your, your black hats and your black dresses if you believe anything but this. And here's the obvious logic of why this is the way that it is. To wait to experience sex until marriage is Just silly. But this article even goes so far as to say it's dangerous. One of the points is that premarital sex is important. Premarital sex is important because you have to ensure people, don't you understand, that there needs to be chemistry, there has to be compatibility before you commit to this one person for the rest of your life, if that's kind of how you want to define marriage anyway. It's not just publications like the Huffington Post. A Christian camp counselor recently revealed his surprise over the summer when a camper essentially asked the same question: 'If I wait, what happens if I get married and I'm not compatible with her?' It's much less in-your-face, it's much less combative, it's genuine seeking of an answer. But in this teenager at the Christian camp, there's a real expression of the culture's perspective. Don't I have to figure out if we work together first?
9 · The pastor rebuts the cultural objection by establishing that compatibility is not a pre-marital test to be passed but a post-marital reality to be built
This gets several things wrong. First, God has designed men and women to inherently be compatible. Remember Adam's realization? We fit! It wasn't that Adam got lucky. There's only one option. Whew, thank goodness we've got chemistry. It'd be really awkward if I had to hang out with her in the garden for like the rest of our lives and we just didn't work. In sexual health and marriage, This is so helpful. God designed it so that we would complement each other, that we would fit. More than that though, sex isn't— this is helpful, this is important— sex isn't exclusively, exclusively about pleasure and performance. Longing for a healthy and exciting sex life in marriage is not wrong. It's a good thing. God wants you to experience that. He created the gift for you. There are goals that God would want every husband and wife to have, but those are not the ultimate goals of a marriage. Sexual health in marriage comes from relational and spiritual health, not vice versa. Sexual health happens when there's relational and spiritual health. Those are the foundation. Sexual health is the wellspring that comes from them, not the other way around. Genesis shows us sex was created for man, but man was not created for sex. Sex is created for man, but the only purpose of man is not just to have sex. It's God's gift, but it's one to be experienced only and exclusively between a husband and a wife. Compatibility isn't even the main issue. It's intimacy that can only be fostered in the confines of marriage. Authentic compatibility happens when a husband and wife unconditionally love each other and unconditionally commit to each other. Now, does sexual dysfunction happen in marriage? Yes, sometimes, and for a variety of reasons. Fallen bodies, fallen bodies that get older, sinful tendencies that create relational disharmony that affect the sexual health of a relationship. But one of the gospel's fundamental reminders in marriage is that two sinners are entering into a union. And here's the good news. These two sinners entering into this union aren't left to their own devices. God commits His grace to marriage. He commits His common grace. In other words, it's not just the Christians that get special helpings of grace in marriage. Marriage is a common grace institution. Should unbelieving people get married? Unbelieving men and women who love each other and are willing to commit to each other? Should Christian pastors do those ceremonies? Absolutely, unequivocally, yes. Marriage is God's design for sexuality. There is common grace given for marriage. And the gospel also promises there is special grace given for his children. He promises that he redeems broken, incompatible, self-absorbed sinners, people whose chemistry fizzles out after 3 years, empowering them to become and model the one-flesh union of marriage, empowering them to image forth the mystery of Christ as the bridegroom and the church as the bride to give living analogy to the gospel itself.
10 · Signals the shift from the first design principle (marriage) to the second (procreation), acknowledging that this may be a less intuitive or less culturally acceptable claim
It's designed for marriage. It's also designed for procreation. Might not have been one that you saw coming.
11 · The pastor expounds Genesis 1:26-28 to show that God's first command to humanity is to be fruitful, multiply, and fill the earth
Strange as it might sound to our modern ears, sex is designed for procreation, for making children. In a real sense, the idea of sexuality is grounded in the ideas of creation. And along that sense, procreation of mankind, male and female, carrying out their duty to fill and subdue the earth, to bring order and structure, to guide and defend, to fill the earth with image bearers who are stewards and creators and governors of all that God has made. We know that human sexuality inherently includes ideas of procreation and parenting when we look at the very first command God gives to the man and the woman. Go back to Genesis 1. Then God said, let us make man in our image, after our likeness. Let them have dominion. Let us make man in our image. Let them have dominion. So God created man in his own image. Drop in that verse 27. In the image of God he created them, male and female he created them. And God blessed them. And God said to them, first command, be fruitful and multiply, fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion. God's opening instructions. Make sure you always have a date night. You should probably pick out Thursdays. It's kind of a day I kind of like to have nice cool weather come through the garden. Makes it enjoyable. Your hands won't get sweaty on the walks. Have date nights because you want to be happy, and your happiness and your pleasure is the primary concern. Those aren't things God doesn't care about, but His first command isn't, 'Mark off Thursdays as date night.' No, the first command is, 'Fill the earth, be fruitful, multiply, subdue this creation. Procreate, bear children.' and exercise dominion, govern everything I've made. It was God's design for sex to happen within marriage, in part because it was God's design for sex to spawn children. You get why that's important? God designed sex to spawn children, and so God designed that sex would happen within marriage because he wants to make sure that kids happen in a healthy context. Because God wanted an orderly world, because he's wise and he's good and he knows what's best, he wants us to grasp who we are as image bearers. He wants children to grasp who they are as image bearers. And so God intended for a stable context of committed mother and father to raise those children, giving them an example of male and female together, man imaging forth the Creator.
12 · The pastor establishes that God's moral norms are never arbitrary but always rooted in creational design and redemptive purpose
To get our heads around kingdom sexuality, we have to recognize moral norms in scripture are never arbitrary. They're never just sort of willy-nilly. God— moral norms, the rules, the things that God says— these are things that cover humanity as right and wrong. Okay? These aren't just things he kind of pulls randomly out of a hat. And maybe we'll add a few more. It looks like it's a little short. Well, maybe a little bit more. That's not what's happening. He's not like your kids at the frozen yogurt bar. You know, you go to those frozen yogurt bars and it's like there's all these different flavors. And first of all, your kids are going and they're like getting like the strawberry cheesecake and then like the hot fudge. And it's like these— what on earth are you putting together? That is an unholy creation, son. Not to mention, you take the strawberry cheesecake and now you're putting Butterfinger chunks on top of it and marshmallows and those weird, strange, they cannot be okay for you bubble fish egg looking things that they love to put on. I have no idea what's inside those things, but I know all the stuff my kids put together with their strawberry cheesecake, which they just randomly picked because it kind of looked good and it was pink and and color should not all be put together in their yogurt. It's just a total ad hoc creation. As much as I can pile on here is going in there. That's not how God sets down what is moral, what is right and wrong. Moral norms, moral absolutes, they point back to creational norms. They point back to the way God designed the world. They point back to covenantal norms, to redemptive purposes. Why did God create sex for the purpose of procreation? Because He knows the fall is going to happen. He knows He needs to bring a Redeemer. He needs to bring a seed. Why does he create male and female? Because he knows this seed, this Redeemer, is going to save. It's going to be a glorious, glorious outworking of the gospel. God taking on flesh and dying in our place, rising from the dead, being seated at the right hand, and then coming back as the bridegroom to claim his bride. And so from the very beginning, Paul designed male and female marriage in preparation for the mystery of the gospel that would be revealed later. It's hugely significant. The fact that sex has to do with procreating children isn't incidental or arbitrary. It's because God designed it that way. It's part of God's redemptive story arc. Salvation will come through Eve's seed, Adam's descendants, and David's heir.
13 · The pastor traces the cultural shift brought by the pill (1957) and argues that while contraception itself is not inherently sinful, the cultural divorce of sex from procreation has distorted God's design
If someone were to ask, why did God create sex? Part of the answer must include So that we would produce children. After the flood with Noah, God repeats the command. Hey, we're gonna do a little bit of a restart here. And Noah, be fruitful and multiply, fill the earth, subdue it. No one would have questioned this. No one would have questioned this until 1957, the advent of the pill and contraception. Suddenly people could control procreation. Before this, it was impossible to have sex often and for a long time without ever having to worry about the inevitability of pregnancy. Before '57, I don't know if there were higher stress levels for teenagers, but there might have been, because there is an inability to manipulate how they were designed to work when they stepped outside the bounds of how God created sexuality to function. The pill planted the seed that has taken root and grown to maturity, that sex really doesn't have to have anything to do with pregnancy and children if I don't want it to. Now, I'm not saying the pill and all contraception is wrong and never to be touched and totally off limits. That's not what I'm saying. But we have to recognize the way that it was a game changer. The way it affected our notions of what the purpose of sex was. Even if someone forgets the pill, now they can visit the abortionist and remove the 'unwanted pregnancy.' Unwanted implies accidental. But there's nothing accidental about sex resulting in children. It was designed to do that. Now, that is not all that sex is for. We can overemphasize this and lose sight of the other aspects. We'll touch on this next week a little bit. The Reformers and the Puritans are brilliant on this point, pushing back to the medieval sense of theology that people who abstain from sex are more holy. Sex is really this base thing that people do. It's really never not in some way sinful. They push back and say, no, But there's also the reality that each time a husband and wife have sex, procreation doesn't have to be their goal. But through the grand arc of things, God's design is that healthy sexuality in marriage is meant to include the potential for children. There's something wrong with your mentality if going into the wedding night You have the man go in and visit the doctor and have that procedure that all men so fear and dread. Why are you doing that? Well, we've decided we just don't want anything to do with it. There's a little impulse in us that pauses, doesn't it, and says, 'What? Wait, what?' When the pill came on the scene, it ushers in the whole idea of sexual liberation. Finally, sex is free from the consequences of children. Women especially are liberated. But we have to ask, liberated from what? From the repressive confines of God's design for sex? When sex is permanently divorced from procreation, it risks becoming an inherently selfish act, either for the individual or the couple. But in God's design, the role of procreation ensures that sex has an inherent degree of selflessness. Even when the couple isn't trying to get pregnant, there's a sense of of faith in God. We might be actually trying not to get pregnant right now, and yet we're going to have sex trusting that God is sovereign. And if we do, that's one of the intentions of sex. And as a married couple, we know that as we get together for intimacy, to enjoy each other, to pursue each other, to come face to face, if the Lord wills that we get pregnant, so be it. Glory to God, grace will be provided.
14 · The pastor establishes the third design principle: faithfulness
It's for the good of the created realm that God connects sex with procreation. So the world will be filled. It's for the good of society. Bad things happen when the birth rate falls below replacement rates. You look at Europe and, and the direction North America is even heading, but in Europe they don't have replacement rates. People have completely divorced procreation from sex. And so the population is getting older and older and older, and it's just this, this inverted pyramid, and there's fewer and fewer young people working to sustain older people who are getting older and sicker and needing care. And it's just waiting to implode because they're not replacing— the next generation isn't helping to fill. The goodness of multiplying and being fruitful isn't happening. It was designed for procreation. Finally, it's designed for faithfulness. Now, that should be an obvious part of just the whole design for marriage piece. But in our culture, it's not. And so we need to address it. It's designed for faithfulness. More and more people, married couples included, think of monogamy not as total sexual exclusivity between a husband and a wife. Instead, there's a growing concept of monogamish. I didn't make that term up, but there's articles written on this idea of being monogamish. It can mean that you believe in serial monogamy. So in other words, I think it's important to be faithful to one person at a time, but when my relationship with that one person breaks down, the chemistry and compatibility fizzles out, then I move on to the next monogamous relationship. And when that one breaks down, to the next one. I just make sure that in each relationship there's monogamy and faithfulness. It's serial monogamy. It's monogamish. Or it can mean what I call pigeon monogamy. You know, pigeons, homing pigeons, those pigeons you design, you throw them up and they go fly for long distances, but they always come back home. It's the view of monogamy in our culture that it's okay, we are in a monogamous relationship, but we both play the field as much as we want with the understanding we always come back home to each other. It's pigeon monogamy. It's not real monogamy. Lifelong commitment is something our culture seems increasingly unable to uphold or even comprehend. You've probably heard people say, 'We weren't designed to be monogamous,' right? 'Men especially weren't designed to be monogamous.' put them off the hook. They can't help it. They weren't designed this way. Genesis 2, Genesis 1, they beg to differ. A Hollywood marriage of 5 years gets celebrated like previous generations of 50 years of fidelity. They made it 5 years in Hollywood. They really love each other. What a successful marriage. Ideas of compatibility and falling in and out of love and, and searching for a soulmate distort sexuality into an emotionally driven pursuit. My emotions drive who I will be with and how long I will be with them, how exclusively I will be with them. And it also becomes grounded in selfish objectification. Because when you think about it in these ways, The person you're partnering with is no longer being considered an image bearer. They're now a toy to bring sexual satisfaction. I'm using them for my own ends. This is a tragically distorted understanding of what marriage was designed for. Genesis 2:24, what does it say? The husband holds fast to his wife. They become one flesh. The entire image is of pure, unmodified monogamy. There's nothing monogamish about it. Only in a fantasy world of deeply deceived participants can we delude ourselves into thinking sex can be casual, it can be informal, it can be uncommitted, and also be safe. No, in those kinds of definitions, it's tragically destructive to the people who buy into the lie. Why? Listen to what Dallas Willard says about this. I think it's very helpful. He says, we are sexual beings, male and female. He created them. This crucial passage ties sexuality in our creation in the image of God. It's part of our power with which to serve him. In sexuality, the intermingling of person, the knowing and being known that is characteristic of God's basic nature, is provided in a special form for embodied personhood. What you do with your body matters emotionally and spiritually. In the full sexual union, the person is known in his or her whole body and knows the other by means of his or her whole body. The depth of involvement is so deep that there can be no such thing as, quote, casual sex, unquote. It's a contradiction of terms, something very well understood by the Apostle Paul, who accordingly taught that fornication, sex outside the confines of monogamous committed marriage, is a sin against your own body. 1 Corinthians 6:18.
15 · The pastor unpacks the covenantal nature of marriage
So the author of Hebrews agrees and says, 'Let marriage be held in honor among all.' Not just the Hebrews, but all people. Let the marriage bed be undefiled. What is marriage? Marriage is a covenant. It's a covenant between one man and one woman. That's what those vows are all about. It's not just a tradition. If you look at the traditional vows, there's meaning steeped in them. It's a popular thing today for couples engaged couples to write their own vows, and that can be a beautiful thing. But when a couple says they want to write their own vows, I actually encourage couples to write their own vows, I also tell them, I want to read them to make sure that your vows also include the sense that we're covenanting together. That these aren't just flippant, I really like you, your dimples make me smile, I can't wait to see you in the morning and have muffins with you at the breakfast table. No, vows are more than that. Marriage is designed to produce holiness, to bring joy, and to image forth the gospel of God's glory. And so faithfulness in marriage as the context for healthy sexuality is incredibly irreducibly important. There's no healthy sexuality outside of it. Faithfulness matters because covenants matter, and covenants are a huge deal to God. Covenants are these binding agreements between two parties, but they're way more than just a contract. They're vows and promises that bring two parties into relationship, that binds them together. In the Old Testament, when there's covenants made, there are blessings and curses. The blessings are tied to being faithful to the covenant. These blessings will come to you. The curses are tied to the one who breaks the covenant, who treats it flippantly, who just cares about dimples. When God enters into covenant with Abraham, He tells Abraham His name. God's very character is on the line if he fails to keep it. He puts a bunch of animal guts on the ground and He walks through them. In other words, if I break this covenant with you, Abraham, let me be as destroyed as the animal guts. I'm on the line in this. So we hear so many passages in the Old Testament talking about God's faithfulness. They celebrate His faithfulness. They claim His faithfulness. They remind God of His faithfulness. You are the faithful God. You are steadfast. You are patient. Your loving kindness knows no ends. You are a forgiving God. You are faithful. Faithful to your promises. God's reputation is bound up in his covenant keeping. The same level of significance is behind the covenant of marriage. We see marriage in the covenant language God uses. Leaving and cleaving, that's covenant language. Those Hebrew words are used in covenant ceremonies in other parts of the Old Testament. Marriage isn't just ad hoc, approach it kind of when the emotion hits you, keep your vows when it's convenient. That's not the institution of marriage.
16 · The pastor asserts that God is the third party to every marriage covenant, witnessing and ratifying it regardless of who performs the ceremony
When a man and woman enter the covenant of marriage, they enter into a union that God himself not only designed, but a covenant he witnesses and the covenant he ratifies. Regardless of whether that wedding is performed by a pastor, whether it's done by a magistrate, whether it's done by Uncle Bernie who went down to the courthouse and got registered to do a wedding, God witnesses those covenants and he ratifies those covenants.
17 · Brief introduction to a quotation from Christopher Ash
Christopher asks, is it helpful Christopher Ash says in his book Marriage, Sex, and the Service of God,
18 · The pastor synthesizes the covenantal argument with the Christopher Ash quotation: God's presence at all marriages means He holds each party accountable, placing His divine presence in support of the vows and in judgment on covenant-breakers
God's presence at all marriages means that he will hold each party accountable to him for the keeping of these vows. He places the whole weight of divine presence in support of the vows and in judgment on any who threaten or break them. In the presence of God and man. I declare you husband and wife in the presence of God. I declare you covenantally bound to one another. Sexuality is designed to function properly only in the context of covenant marriage and faithfulness. Because God designed it, he gets to lay down the rules. And according to his infinite wisdom, sexuality only flourishes, it only brings blessing when it's practiced between one man and one woman who've covenanted together, who've pledged one another their undying love and faithfulness. For better or for worse, till death do us part. It's wisdom because sexuality makes two people one flesh. It brings them to remarkable levels of vulnerability. Vulnerability. They're exposed to one another emotionally and physically. And when we're vulnerable and exposed in this way, it's a recipe for relational disaster and for heartbreak, unless it occurs in a context of absolute trust. Sex is broken. Sex is dangerous. Sex is painful when it happens outside the context of covenant marriage between one man and one woman.
19 · The pastor circles back to the hermeneutical point from the introduction: Jesus and Paul don't build kingdom sexuality on David, Solomon, or the patriarchs because their rejection of Genesis 1-2 monogamy wreaked havoc on their families and has had generational consequences (e
It's why Jesus and Paul don't build their kingdom sexuality around the marriages of David and Solomon or Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. David might be a man after God's own heart, but we do not want to emulate the practice of marriage that he models for us. These characters are central to the story of redemption, but it doesn't mean that everything we read about them is something we should imitate. Their lack of faithfulness, their rejection of monogamy wreak havoc on their families. Every one of those characters, when you read the stories, there's all sorts of craziness that's happening in their families because of the way they're not living out the way the ideals of Genesis 1 and 2. People are still killing each other in the Middle East because of Abraham's inability to trust God's design for sexuality and marriage. Going outside the confines of a monogamous marriage, he goes and he finds his own way. And suddenly the generational tension between Isaac and Ishmael We're still feeling the ripples. It's like tossing a little— Abraham just thinks it's a pebble. I'm just gonna toss the pebble out. Nobody's gonna notice. Just kind of a backup plan. Little backup plan pebble. Tosses it out. In his mind, it's gonna be a backup plan pebble. And it was a boulder that hit the water. And the ripples continue to go out.
20 · The pastor closes by synthesizing the sermon's argument into a doxological and pastoral climax
But by God's design, sex within the context of marriage, that covenantal union, it's beautiful. It's sanctifying. It's joy-filled. And it's relationally beneficial. Sex protected by the guardrails of marital faithfulness and trust glorifies God. God created it for our pleasure so that we'd enjoy His wonderfully good gifts, so that we'd praise His glorious grace. God gave sex as a gift. This might seem so totally strange, and it probably indicates why we're just so broken in how we think about sex. You know what an appropriate thing to do after sex would be? To worship with your spouse. Lord, 'You are so good. We praise you for this gift. Thank you for this woman you gave me. Thank you for this man you gave to me. God, we praise you for your glorious grace.' You ever think about that afterwards? And more importantly, Sex is given as a gift, but God gave His Son as the greatest gift. And His Son is given to redeem us and to reclaim us, to bring us back when we've screwed everything up. We're going to touch on that throughout this series, the place of grace, the central place of grace in understanding Kingdom sexuality. Genesis 1 and 2 lays out this amazing vision, but Genesis 3, it hits the speed bump of all speed bumps. The good news of the gospel is that from Genesis 3 to Revelation 22, it is the telling of the story of God's rescue mission, His unthwartable plan to overcome sin, to overcome brokenness, and in this context, to offer sexually confused and broken people the power of grace and the power of a fresh start. No matter what your history is in relationship to this topic, no matter where you are right now— confused, dysfunctional, outside the guardrails in your practice, inside of a marriage and not practicing it at all— God promises— His name is on the line. This is His institution. He promises to put forward the powerful grace of His gospel because He gave His Son for you so that He can reclaim you and He can refashion you so He can prepare you for the marriage supper of the Lamb.
21 · Closing prayer asking God to help the congregation see the beauty of His gift of sex, to send the Spirit as comforter and healer, to bathe them in grace, and to protect them from the lie that they are beyond redemption
Would you bow your heads with me? Lord, we ask for your help today and in the upcoming weeks. Let us see the beauty of your gift given in sex. Let us understand it as you would have us understand it. Let us grasp the truth of your word And Lord, I pray that you would send your Spirit to be the comforter, to be the empowerer, to be the encourager, to heal wounded hearts. Bathe us in your grace as we consider this topic. Protect us from Satan's darts that would have us think we are too far gone in our understanding or our practice of sex to ever know the beauty of what your word describes. Fill us with hope and confidence that your word is true and that in your gospel, in the person of Jesus, there is power There is power and there is life. In His name we pray. Amen.