Sex Talk: Week 1

One of the pastors at Sagebrush tells us a story about when a friend asked them if they could help put a playground together. They didn’t think helping their friend put together this playground set would be that big of a deal but have you ever put one of these things together? It’s awful. The instruction manual was 84 pages long. When they asked the pastor to help him out, he thought we would be done with the project in an hour or two but three days later we still weren’t finished. He wanted to burn that gym set to the ground. And to this day, when they see one of those playground sets they want to set it on fire.

This is the point of the story. What you would think would be easy is much more complicated than you first thought.

Now if that doesn’t sound like dating relationships, I don’t know what does. You go into it thinking this is going to be easy but you find out how hard this stuff really is.

Years ago, our pastor was dating this girl in college and they had been dating for about 3 months. He just thought they were having a good time but she was in it to win it. She heard wedding bells in the distance and was certain that he was the man for her.

He didn’t have a clue that she felt so strongly about him so one day he was joking around with her and he said, “We ought to get married one day.” Not a bright move on his part. And she immediately looked at him and said, “I’m ready when you are.”

Needless to say, that freaked him out and it wasn’t too long after that they broke up. He just thought they were having fun together but she was super serious.

Now you probably haven’t been in that kind of a situation but it’s coming. You will probably one day be in a situation where one of you is super serious while the other one of you is just having fun. You thought it was moving slowly, like you were friends who were considering becoming something more. But then you come to find out that the other person is in it to win it. I mean they are thinking you are well on your way to getting married! And you get this jolt and realize this is a bigger deal than you once thought.

You see there is a difference between being casual about something and being serious about something. A casual conversation with your friends, covers topics like NFL football or your favorite car. A serious conversation covers topics like your parents’ divorce.

Being casual about something might mean you play a little bit of basketball or volleyball after school with some friends but being serious is being on a team and competing to be first string.

There is a big difference between being casual and being serious. That is kind of the way people approach sex. Some people are super casual about sex and act like it’s not that big of a deal. It is in the songs we listen to, the movies we watch, and in the conversations we have. You meet someone in a movie and before you know they are getting it on. And everyone seems fine with what just happened.

But you know even though they try to show you on TV and in movies and in songs that sex is not a big deal, you know that it really is a big deal. Sex is something that we should all take very seriously because when people engage in sex in a way that God never intended it to be it leads to some serious consequences.

• You could get pregnant.
• You could get a sexually transmitted disease.
• If you are a Christian, because the Holy Spirit lives inside of you, you will feel guilt over what you have done and you will feel a distance between you and God.
• You will have a major area of your life that is full of lies and secrecy.
• You will feel like a hypocrite living one way with your boyfriend or girlfriend and being a totally different person at church or at home and that divided life could lead you into a deep depression because you won’t know who you are anymore.

So, is sex something that should be approached casually? Absolutely not. In fact, some of the most sobering words in all of the Bible talk about how serious sex should be taken.

Check out what Paul wrote to the church at Corinth. They lived in a town where just about everyone took sex casually.

The town of Corinth had a culture where having sex with temple prostitutes was how you worshiped some of the Corinthian gods. Look at what Paul says to this brand-new church of believers who wanted to honor God with all their life.

"Don’t you realize that your bodies are actually parts of Christ? Should a man take his body, which is part of Christ, and join it to a prostitute? Never! And don’t you realize that if a man joins himself to a prostitute, he becomes one body with her? For the Scriptures say, “The two are united into one.” But the person who is joined to the Lord is one spirit with him.
Run from sexual sin! No other sin so clearly affects the body as this one does. For sexual immorality is a sin against your own body. Don’t you realize that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit, who lives in you and was given to you by God? You do not belong to yourself, for God bought you with a high price. So you must honor God with your body" (1 Corinthians 6:15-20 NLT)

I imagine people in the church at Corinth hearing these words being read who probably just wanted to disappear or crawl under a table and die from embarrassment. But Paul was talking to the Corinthians here, people who had very little inhibition when it came to sexual matters. Which is why Paul doesn’t hesitate. He calls it like it is.

There may have been some people thinking “What does that have to do with this place, this church, God?” And Paul is saying it has a lot to do with it because there is one underlying theme and that’s this,sex, is not casual.

Sex is Serious

Paul is basically saying sex is serious because it affects you, your own body and the body of the other person. Sex before marriage can leave deep emotional, mental and spiritual scars and can wound another person and yourself for a lifetime.

This is serious stuff because Paul states that your body isn’t really yours to begin with. It is God’s first. Our bodies are a temple of the Holy Spirit. God’s Holy Spirit lives inside of us and when we treat sex like it’s no big deal, we grieve the spirit of God that lives inside of us.

I knew a girl who got pregnant as a junior in high school and once she got pregnant, the father was MIA. I asked her if there was one thing she wished she knew beforehand, and she said she wished she’d known she’d still be attached to that guy that even though they had broken up, she still had a connection with him that went beyond having his baby. You see sex ended up not being casual. Not only was there a kid involved, but every part of who she is, was affected.

This girl understood something about herself that we often forget. We are more than just physical beings.

There is a mental aspect to sex, there is an emotional aspect to sex and there is a spiritual aspect to sex and because sex is physical, emotional and spiritual it needs to be experienced in the safe confines of two people who have made a vow before God to be faithful to one another.

Some of us have made mistakes in the past when it comes to what we have talked about today. The good news is that God takes forgiveness seriously too. God isn’t casual about forgiveness.

Psalm 130:4 says: “But with you there is forgiveness; therefore you are feared”

God is always a God of forgiveness no matter what. Forgiveness is just a prayer away.Tell God you are sorry for what you did and ask for his forgiveness and repent of that sin. That word repentance means to go a new direction. Tell God you want to honor him with your body from this point on.

The bottom line is, nothing said here today is new to you. In fact, chances are, everything I have said is something you have felt, something you have wrestled with, but not something you may have truly acknowledged. You’ve seen it play out in your life, or your friends’ lives, or even in your family. You’ve just been content to live with the illusion that it’s casual even though the fallout around you says otherwise.

Culture might tell you differently. Media might tell you differently. Your friends might even tell you differently. But sex is serious. It doesn’t matter how causally you may approach it, the effects it has, the impact it has on your own body, on every part of you, matters.

I want you to leave here today feeling okay acknowledging that sex is a big deal. It is okay that you don’t treat it as lightly as your peers do. It is okay if you are having a hard time dealing with the fallout of sexual mistakes in the past. It is okay if at one time you approached sex casually, only to find out that it affected you far more than you would have ever realized. Sex is serious.

Paul thought so. And God thinks so. And even if you haven’t ever admitted it to yourself, you can today.