I preached this sermon years ago. It reflects what was happening then but the fundamental message remains relevant. The file was old and may have some format issues--I have tried to edit those out.
Ephesians 5:1-14
We are living in
days of sexual insanity.
It was one of
those times when I didn’t have the remote at hand so I couldn’t hit mute or
change the channel; I had to listen to the commercials.
The one that
caught my attention depicted an attractive young woman waking down the sidewalk
in a busy city. For some reason we
overhear her thoughts, "My mother always told me to wear clean underwear because
you never know when you might be hit by a bus."
At this moment
she makes eye-contact with an attractive man, a stranger, sitting at an outdoor
cafe. He smiles at her, she smiles at
him, and we again overhear her thoughts as she adds, "But I can think of a
better reason."
I guess the
message of the commercial is, if you enjoy casual sexual liaisons with total
strangers, better use our product.
Then, of course,
there is what seems to be the motto of Las Vegas: "What happens in Vegas stays in
Vegas." Shouldn’t that make the
citizens of Las Vegas proud as they celebrate the city’s centennial? Come to our town and you can cheat on your
spouse or engage in casual sex and we won’t tell. (Unless, of course, your story is good enough
for CSI).
And, then, maybe
you’ve heard the new cell phone commercial on the radio. It involves a hillbilly type character whose
friend calls to let him know his wife is on her way home. This thoughtful act allows the hero to get
his girlfriend out the back door before his wife arrives.
The message
seems to be: even if you’re an ignorant redneck our product will help you cheat
on your wife.
For several
years "Sex and the City" suggested young, single career-minded women
were obsessed with sex. Now,
"Desperate Housewives" lets us know the same obsession thrives in the
suburbs. What’s next, "The Amorous
Amish" or "Agrarian Affairs?"
We are living in
a day that seems obsessed with only one aspect of our human nature, our
sexuality. Gratifying that part of our
nature seems to be the most important quest in our lives. It is what the old philosophers would call
the highest good.
Christians are
not immune to this obsession. In fact,
it blinds them to the contradiction between biblical morality and our culture’s
standards. Listen to this story Calvin
Miller tells:
"Christal was a business woman in our
congregation. She and Elliott had been
married for seven years and had two beautiful children. She came to me for counseling and said, 'I am
going to leave Elliott. Three years ago
on a corporate trip to Milwaukee, I met a man who loves me and tells me so in
ways that Elliott has never done. I
can’t live without him. He is awesome in
bed. Pastor, you’ve seen Elliott, you
know how overweight he is. Furthermore,
he hasn’t met my sexual needs for years.
But Pete is different; look at this.' She took a picture out of her
wallet. Pete was incredibly
handsome. [Chrystal continued,]
'We’ve been sleeping together regularly.
I can’t stay away from Milwaukee.
On my last business trip, we agreed to divorce our mates and marry each
other as soon as we can. I can’t live
without him, nor he without me.'
Then she added, 'Besides being a hunk, he is a devoted believer in
Christ!'" (Disarming the Darkness,
p. 122.)
Did you hear that? No wonder the divorce rate among Christians
is about the same as it is among non-believers. [Recent studies have shown this needs to be qualified. Christians who faithfully attend church have a much lower divorce rate than those Christians who do not attend church but tell statisticians they are "Christians."] It seems Christians are caught up in the
very sexual insanity that has gripped the rest of the culture. That insanity seems to be rooted in the
notion that the sex is primarily a physical act. Oddly enough, this obsession has served, not
to elevate the value of sex, but to trivialize it. Having sexual relations with another person
is on the order of grabbing a burger at McDonald’s or a salad at Panera’s; it’s
just something you have to do now and then.
And our culture
maintains this attitude despite the catastrophic impact on our society. It’s estimated that over a quarter of
children born today are born out of wedlock.
More than thirty sexually transmitted diseases are spreading through our
population including HIV/AIDS. There
seems to be a connection between depression serious enough to inspire suicide
and sexual activity among teenage girls.
We see this and
still the obsession survives.
How do we stay
sexually sane in such a sensual society?
Paul left some
clues when he wrote to the Ephesians.
While Paul’s
letter may have been intended as a kind of open letter to the churches in Asia
Minor, he was certainly including the believers at Ephesus, the most prominent
city in the region among his intended readers.
He probably understood that the city’s culture had an impact beyond its
boundaries, just as our American culture has an impact in a much larger world.
High on a
mountain above Ephesus stood the temple dedicated to Artemis, the goddess known
in the west as Diana. In fact,
Artemis, under a variety of names, was worshipped throughout
the Near East. She was seen as the giver
of life and eventually was associated with fertility and sensuality. The temple, which was one of the seven
wonders of the ancient world, was the economic heart of the city and included
hundreds of prostitutes who descended into the city each night to earn money
for the temple. Into this culture, where
sex was so engrained in the day-to-day thinking of the people, came Paul and
the message of the Gospel.
It was
inevitable that those who came out of that culture into the community of Christ
would need counsel and guidance as they struggled toward a more sane
understanding of their sexuality. What
did Paul say to them? What does he say
to us?
By the way, what
he says he says to all of us. He speaks
to young and old, men and women. In my
library I have a book on sexual temptation; its title is "Temptations Men
Face." Please. It must have been written back in the day
when we honestly believed that half the population was immune to the temptations
that plagued our half of the population.
We know better now; of course, Paul knew better centuries ago. He speaks to all of us and has some good news
for all of us.
He gives us all
the good news that you can stay sexually sane in a sensual society.
I
Sexual Sanity Recognizes the Noble Character of God's
Special Gift of Our Sexuality.
Do keep in mind
that Paul is writing to saints to show them how to be saintly. The Ephesian culture had put out so much
misinformation about sex that the apostle had to help these Christians toward a
proper regard for their sexuality.
Sadly, the
church has sometimes put out misinformation about sex. Even as great a thinker as Augustine believed
that sexual activity between husband and wife should only be grudgingly
allowed, that celibacy was so much better.
Some Corinthian
Christians, who lived in a culture as sex-obsessed as that of the Ephesians,
thought the solution was to deny their sexual needs. To that Paul said, "NO, NO, NO."
Instead, reminds
us that we dishonor the Creator who gave us the gift of sexuality, both when we
deny that we are sexual beings and when we sully the gift through misuse.
Several years
ago, when we still lived in Texas, Pat gave me a nice jacket. Winter was approaching and I was going to
need it. Our dog also needed a new
doghouse. I built one for her but, not
being the greatest carpenter, it had some gaps where the wind could get
through. I dashed into town to get some
caulk and some paint. When I got back I
quickly went to work caulking and painting the new doghouse. I’m not the greatest painter in the world
either and I had not taken off my new jacket.
Needless to say, I got paint on the jacket.
I had treated
Pat's gift thoughtlessly. Our sensual
society teaches us to treat God's gift thoughtlessly.
I think this shapes Paul’s reminder that
there should be no place for "coarse jesting" in the Christian's
vocabulary. Another translation says
we’re to avoid "obscene stories, foolish talk, and coarse
jokes." The New Jerusalem Bible
uses "salacious talk' to describe what Paul is condemning. He’s warning us against the attitudes that
lead to treating sexuality flippantly and makes light of sexual sin.
Paul is talking
about the kind of thing which could get you called onto the carpet for sexual harassment
these days. Isn’t it interesting that
it’s taken almost 2000 years to realize that this type of "dirty
talk" is a kind of verbal sexual assault?
The principal
behind what Paul is saying would also apply to pornography. In our nation alone pornography is a billion
dollar business. Big cities and many
small cities have outlets for pornographic magazines, books, and videos. I heard someone say the other day that the
pornography business is always on the cutting-edge of technology. Of course, while we know millions of people
buy pornographic materials, we may never know how many men and women who would
never enter a pornographer’s shop will sneak a peek on the internet.
But isn’t
pornography harmless? Why are we making
such a fuss over a few pictures?
I could go into
detail about the violent character of those pictures but, instead, let me point
out something I discovered when I was asked to speak on pornography to a BSU in
Texas. When asked if there was a
connection between pornography and violence against women, a group of
university sociologists and psychologists couldn’t agree. When a national gathering of police chiefs
was asked if there was a link between pornography and sex-crimes, they were
almost unanimous in their agreement that there was.
Consider this,
Alaska and Nevada have the highest readership of pornography in the
nation. Those same states also have the
highest percentages of sexual assaults in the nation.
Is pornography
dangerous? Is second-hand smoking
dangerous? We’ve banned smoking from
public places on less evidence than we have for the danger of pornography, yet
our culture’s sexual insanity persists in defending its benign, even beneficial
nature.
Christians ought
to see pornography for what it is, a tragic corruption of the gift God has
given us.
Ultimately,
Christian sexual sanity avoids the distortions of either immorality or
repression.
[In the minds of many, this is not
the Christian view of sexuality. I
recently read one person’s characterization of what he had learned about sex
when he was a youngster in church: “Sex
is evil, filthy, and degrading. You
should save it for someone you love.”
Some Christian writers—Augustine and Tertullian—may have come close to saying
that but it’s not really the Biblical view.
Were I preaching this sermon today I might stress this a little more.]
II
Sexual Sanity Guards and Enriches Our Sexuality.
Claiming to
liberate sex, our culture has trivialized it.
Claiming to have
a healthy view of sex, our culture has exposed us to diseases and
neuroses.
Claiming to be
interested in the total person, our culture has become obsessed with only one
aspect or our nature.
The Christian
understanding of our sexuality both guards and enriches the experience.
The pattern of
one man married to one woman for life opens the way to developing a
relationship which so far exceeds the definition of friendship that the Bible
describes the two as becoming "one."
Out of this Biblical view of marriage comes the understanding of the sex
act as so intimate, so profound, that it is only proper within the context of
marital commitment.
[Obviously this definition of
marriage (“one man married to one woman”) has been rejected by the culture at
large. When I first preached this
sermon, few would have imagined that same-sex marriage would be sanction by the
Supreme Court. From time to time,
Christians have had to remind themselves that wha tis legal is not necessarily
right and what is right is not necessarily legal.]
Paul Bubna
comments, "Modern man speaks of intercourse as 'having sex'. However, the Scriptures never speak in this
way. In Biblical language a man
"knows" his wife. It is not an
act, it is a relationship."
This echoes
Paul’s thought in I Corinthians 6:16.
Here it is paraphrased by Eugene Peterson:
There is more to sex than mere skin
on skin. Sex is as much a spiritual
mystery as physical act. As written in
Scripture, ‘the two become one.’ Since
we want to become spiritually one with the Master, we must not pursue the kind
of sex that avoids commitment and intimacy or the kind of sex that can never
‘become one.’
Again, this
runs contrary to our culture’s perception.
Our culture says a couple should sleep together to see if they’re right
to get married. The Christian view tells
us that a good marriage is not based on good sex, but good sex is based on a
good marriage.
The fact is, a
number of recent studies suggest that conservative Protestant women have the
most satisfying sex-lives in our society.
You can almost hear the surprise in the comment of a researcher from the
University of Chicago: “Our results
could be read to mean that an orthodox view of romance, courtship, and
sexuality, your mom’s view, perhaps is the only route to happiness and sexual
satisfaction.”
By the way,
there’s an unexpected bonus for the man and woman who follow the Biblical
pattern in their marriage.
When a man and
woman come to marriage as virgins and remain mutually faithful throughout that
marriage, they create a “closed system” into which it is virtually impossible
for a sexually transmitted disease to intrude.
It’s one of the
safeguards built into the Biblical vision of marriage.
But what does
the Biblical understanding of our sexuality say to those believers who aren’t
married?
III
Sexual Sanity for Married and Unmarried, Alike, Grows Out of
the Transformation Wrought in Us by Jesus Christ. (8-14)
What Jesus has
done for us is dramatic; we were darkness, now we are light. A change like that ought to express itself in
our attitudes and behavior. In a sensual
society like ours, I believe itís almost impossible for a man or woman to
develop attitudes and behaviors different than that of the prevailing culture
unless they have allowed Christ to do his work in their lives.
Paul understands
that our companions can influence our sexual attitudes and behavior (7). We’re all susceptible to peer-pressure. The culture around us can be a powerful
force to mold us. We need something more
powerful to counter its influence.
Everything
changes when Christ goes to work in us.
Enlightened by
Christ, we can live within a culture, yet live above and beyond the norms of
that culture.
Enlightened by
Christ, we free seek to discover and do what pleases God (10). As Christians, our attitudes and behaviors
should be shaped by Godís will not our cultures norms; Christ at work in us allows that to be a
reality.
Enlightened by
Christ, we should strive to avoid every taint of sin (11-12).
Enlightened by
Christ, we should live in such a way as to witness for Christ. That single man or woman who claims to have
been transformed by Christ is under observation. If they fail to live any differently than
non-believers, what kind of impact will they make?
[Looking at this
after so many years, I realize I did not demonstrate the compassion I should
have shown. Doubtless, it is difficult
to remain sexually pure in this society.
Temptations are rife. Loneliness
may cause an ache that cries out for closeness, makes us vulnerable to those
temptations. In later messages I showed
more of that compassion; maybe that comes from living more of life.
At the same time, many young
Christians seem to have the same cavalier attitude toward sex as their
non-Christian friends. I’ve lost track
of the couples that have asked me to perform their weddings and then, during
our interviews, revealed they have been sexually intimate or have even been
living together for months, if not years.
I haven’t decided it that reflects the failure of our churches to teach
chastity or the raw power of our culture.]
Conclusion
I bought a new
watch last week. I wore it last
Wednesday when the faithful, patient regulars attended our Bible study and
prayer meeting.
We had what I
hope was some good discussion and as we were leaving I looked at my new watch
and noticed we had finished just a little before 8:00. Still, everyone seemed in a hurry to get
home.
A few minutes
later, as I pulled up to the curb at home, the voice on the radio said it was
seventeen past the hour. My new watch
said it was 8:03.
Over the next
couple days that new watch developed a pattern of slowing down and even
stopping. I took it back.
I’d been relying
on an unreliable source to tell me the time.
Lots of folks we
know are relying on an unreliable source to determine what’s right concerning
their sexuality: The voices of our
culture.
The only really
reliable source is the word of the God who gave us that great gift.
It will help us
stay sexually sane in a day of sexual insanity.
