Consenting Adults
Tom Shrader launches an eight-week series addressing biblical sexuality, beginning with God's clear command for sexual purity. Drawing from 1 Thessalonians 4:3 and other passages, he teaches that sexual immorality (porneia) violates God's will and that Christian conversion involves leaving inappropriate sexual relations. He emphasizes that God encourages marital sex while disallowing extramarital sex, calling believers to honor God with their bodies.
“It is the will of God that you should avoid sexual immorality - now you tell me how else you could possibly interpret that.”
— Tom Shrader
Series: Sexuality by Design (2007)
Recorded: February 01, 2007
Duration: 45 min
Themes: purity, sexuality, marriage, holiness, obedience, temptation, boundaries, faithfulness, dating couples, engaged couples, single adults, struggling with temptation, young adults, parents of teens, marriage preparation, new believers
Scripture: 1 Thessalonians 4:3, Hebrews 13:4, 1 Corinthians 7:3-5, Mark 7, 1 Corinthians 6, Galatians 5, Ephesians 5:1-2, Acts 4:12, Colossians 3:5, 1 Corinthians 5, Romans 12:1
Theological Themes: sanctification, becoming holy, sexual immorality, biblical sexuality, god's design, christian living, moral standards, scriptural authority
Full Transcript
Today we're going to begin a new series where we'll take eight weeks to look at a topic that we talk about a lot and touch on sometimes with different levels of concentration or intensity. We're going to focus the next eight weeks on the topic of sex.
Let me tell you what we're going to do, just to give an umbrella view. We'll talk about sex inside of marriage and sex outside of marriage. We'll talk about three really important topics culturally that have been significant for a while and are really big topics now. We'll spend a week talking about abortion. We'll spend a week talking about pornography, and we'll spend a week talking about homosexuality. So in the course of this series, we'll talk about those three things in particular, as well as sex outside of marriage and sex within the confines of marriage.
I hope this will be good and helpful to you. I do know this is kind of like when we talk about money—oftentimes we talk about money to people who have already figured it out or solved it or understand it. So it may be a situation where you're thinking this really isn't necessarily applicable to me at this point in time. But it really is important to have in your arsenal as you're dealing with other people, as you're dealing with coworkers, children, grandchildren, and the culture. There doesn't seem to be an age limitation or restriction on this. I have a friend who's spent a ton of time working up in Sun City, and he said that two things stunned him about Sun City were the level of alcoholism and the rampant sexual immorality. Those were the two things that caught him off guard—he did not expect that. So this may not be limited to just young teenagers. This hopefully is applicable to all of us.
The "Consenting Adults" Argument
Here's what we're going to talk about today. We're going to talk about the idea of consenting adults—just two people. Here we are. It's just us. Nobody else involved. We're over 18. There's all sorts of parameters around this. We've set a date. We have a date. I know he's not using me. We have a date. We're getting married November 3rd, 2014. We have a date out there. He said he loves me, or she said she loves me. We're going to get married and it is a done deal and it's three weeks from now. After all, this is just a piece of paper.
My generation popularized that notion that it was just a piece of paper. What's interesting is that the homosexual community doesn't see it as just a piece of paper. There really is an understanding that this is something bigger than just a piece of paper or just some biological function.
A survey was done by Princeton Religion Research Center. The question was, "What is your opinion about a man and a woman having sexual relations before marriage?" 33%—one in three—said it's always wrong. 12% said it's almost always wrong. That would be for everybody but them, I would guess. 26% said it's wrong sometimes. 23% said it's not wrong at all. If we were to get this down to its basics, a third of the people said it's wrong all the time and two-thirds said it isn't.
What Does God Say?
What we want to get at today is what does God say about this? We're followers of Christ. We're Christians. Every time we start a series, it's a natural time to go through this. Let's make sure we get on the same page.
In the world, there are two kinds of people. Those who know Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior—they have a personal relationship with the Creator God of the universe through His Son, Jesus. That's one type of person. In the Scripture, we would use terms like "born again." That's one type of person and then there's everybody else.
Everybody else falls into something—most of them into religion, which is essentially their way of trying to appease a holy God. God's angry. God wants to judge them. They've sinned. We instinctively know something's wrong, not sure exactly what. I want to fix it, and what religion is, is my attempt to fix it.
If I'm a follower of Christ—and this is the point that we've made and we'll emphasize it again today—if I'm a follower of Christ, then it has to affect the way that I live. It affects my devotional reading this morning. I did have a thing that I'm right now just reading through and it's almost like a thought for the day. But it was on your job. If you're a Christian, then it has to affect your job. That's absolutely right. It has to affect everything that we do because we bring our worldview, our biblical worldview, our relationship with Christ into everything.
A Collision Course with Culture
At this point, when we deal with this issue, we are on a collision course with the culture around us. We have two radically different views. Let's work our way through this.
In priority living—and I've been doing priority living and teaching with Larry and some other things now for almost 19 years, which is amazing to me—in that context, we have a curriculum. We're not developing new material. Periodically, we do something a little bit different. A curriculum that brings issues in and we'll do a study every three or four years. We have not done this study since 1998. It's been a while since we've been through this.
What's kind of fun is to go back through and look at some of the illustrations that you used 10 or 15 years ago. This one made me laugh. This was about—remember Steve Garvey? Steve Garvey, the first baseman for the Dodgers and then the Padres. This is an article from 1989, so this is a while ago. He had dated four or five different women who ended up becoming pregnant, which spawned the bumper sticker in San Diego, "Steve Garvey is not my padre." So that came out of that. There was a long conversation about it, but in the paper, in the Orange County paper, Garvey talks about this.
In a different era, someone might have felt compelled to at least keep their unconventional living arrangements private. Today, that's no longer the case. I watched House Hunters the other night on the Home and Garden channel, where couples search for houses to buy. There was this unmarried couple, just a guy and a gal, openly living together and house hunting on national television. They were planning to find a house first and figure out marriage afterwards.
There was a day when people would have said, "We're going to do this, but let's not tell anybody." Clearly, they wouldn't have gone on national television to find a house together while unmarried. But it's rampant now, whether it's celebrities having babies first and then getting married later - if at all. The whole sequence has been turned upside down.
The World's View vs. God's View
When we look at sex, the world view is simple: here's a man, here's a woman - that's the deal. We would say no, that's not just the deal. We have to take a hard look at this and understand that while it involves a man and a woman, for us it's in the context of God. What would He say? What's His view?
Now lest we think this is just "those people out there," the last survey I saw showed that 40% of high school seniors in Bible-believing evangelical churches were sexually active. Among singles ministries within Bible-believing evangelical churches - and I think this number is actually low - 60% were sexually active with at least one partner, most with more. If you hang around a singles Bible study for a while, you'll discover pretty quickly that there's a lot of sexual activity going on.
The Simple Rule
Here's the rule of thumb I'll give you upfront. This is really simple: Single means celibate, married means celebration. Here's the problem we have: we've got a lot of celibate marriages and a lot of celebrating singles. We have it exactly backwards, and we need to understand that.
I met a guy once who was sleeping with his girlfriend, which had his wife upset, and he had all sorts of problems. I asked where he met this girl. He said one of the best places in the city to pick up girls was the noon Bible study. Their guard is down, these girls are there studying, and before you know it, he had bedded them down.
I tell women: you've got to understand something here. You're fair game, and that's why they're hunting you down at grocery stores, Bible studies, and wherever you least expect it. You've got to be careful.
Understanding Pornea
Here's the word for the day: pornea. It's a Greek word from which we get the English word pornography. Pornea means fornication or illicit sex - intercourse and sex outside of marriage. The term encompasses more than just intercourse. It includes anything that the Bible would describe as sexually inappropriate. So it's a very broad topic, and we're going to see this word used over and over again.
God Encourages Marital Sex and Disallows Extramarital Sex
Sometimes I'm afraid that as evangelicals or conservatives, we're labeled with a view that's puritanical and Victorian without anyone understanding what that means. In one of my times of study, I came across a church discipline case from the early 1800s - a Puritan church in New England that was disciplining a man in the church for not fulfilling his sexual obligations to his wife.
We've got to get our arms around the fact that God says sex is good. God designed sex. God says sex is good. But God also said there are parameters around this for your own well-being.
Hebrews 13:4 states: "Marriage should be honored by all. The marriage bed should be kept pure, for God will judge the adulterer and all the sexually immoral."
God Encourages Sexual Activity in Marriage
God says that we are to be, as couples, sexually active. In fact, He encourages us, saying one of the reasons to marry is because we can't control ourselves sexually - that we don't have the gift of singleness, that we don't want to be in this world not only alone, but there's a physical outlet that comes through marriage.
Here's what Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 7:3: "Let the husband fulfill his duty to his wife, and likewise the wife to the husband. The wife does not have authority over her own body, the husband does."
Stop Depriving One Another
Likewise, the husband doesn't have authority over his body, the wife does. Here's the punchline: Stop depriving one another. In other words, that said negatively, said positively: Keep on having sex, a lot of it. And the only reason to stop is by agreement. So the two of you said, "All right, we agree to this."
Agreement for a time, there's something here that supersedes this for a time, that you may devote yourself to prayer. It's not, "I have a headache." It's not, "I don't feel like it." It's not, "I'm too tired." And men and women both, it's not that. No, no, no. The only reason to say we aren't going to be doing this is to say, "You know what, let's pray."
And then He says, "And then come together again, lest Satan tempt you because of your lack of self-control." It's a beautiful picture to me. Here's what He's saying: A major reason to marry is because you're acknowledging, "I have this sexual need that needs to be fulfilled in marriage."
When you suspend that, you are opening a door that you've already said you can't control. That's why you're married. And you're allowing Satan to come in and you're allowing Satan to rush in here. And all of a sudden, all sorts of temptations take place.
The Reality of Marital Struggles
I will consistently hear from guys who are, and this is no excuse—you get this? Not making an excuse—but he's out there and you talk to him and you'll say, "What's it like at home?" And he'll say, "It's awful." Now, that is no excuse for him to go find some chick. But it does help you get your arms around what He's saying here. God is saying within the confines of marriage, celebration.
I was raised in a denomination that teaches, I think unbiblically, that Mary was a perpetual virgin. Now, we would believe that Jesus was born of a virgin. This is not the time to delve into all this, but lots of information about it. We would believe that. We would then say, but the scripture also names brothers that Jesus had and sisters, plural. As I remember it, it was three brothers, three brothers and sisters. So at least two. So put in somewhat crass terms, Mary and Joseph did it at least five times. I hope many more, but at least five times.
I went to a school, grade school, called Holy Family Grade School. And in there we had all over, we had pictures of Jesus, Mary and Joseph. And I did not get it until later in life because they believed Mary was a perpetual virgin. I didn't understand until later in life why Joseph always had that frown. Now I get it. No wonder this guy is not happy.
God's Design for Marriage
And then if you take that and hold it up to the ideal and say this is the Holy Family, this is the ideal family—no. God says within the confines of marriage, celebration. But He says, "Listen, this marriage bed is to be kept sacred." It's within those confines of those limitations, which we by definition don't like that word: confines, limitations. Within there, that is celebration time. Outside of that, He will judge, again, the word of the day, the sexually immoral.
Fornication is Evidence of a Problem in the Heart
Here's the second thing: Fornication is evidence of a problem in the heart. Jesus, recorded by Mark, Mark 7: "What comes out of a man is what is unclean. From within, out of a man's heart comes evil thoughts"—get it—"and then the word of the day: sexual immorality." Now there's a whole long list here: theft, murder, adultery, greed, malice, slander, arrogance, folly—all those things. Those are all bad. But those aren't the topic of the day.
The point is, the term we might use in our culture is all I'm doing in this inappropriate sexual activity is acting out what's inside of me. I was in a bookstore the other day, I'm thumbing through this book, and it's written primarily to teenagers. And it's written from a Christian perspective. And it's dealing with different issues, a whole bunch of different issues. And one of them is a sexual issue that a lot of teenagers are dealing with.
And this guy makes a wonderful point. He said, "I don't want to tell you to stop doing that. You should stop, but I don't want to tell you that. Because if I tell you that, you can still stop doing it and not solve the problem. Because this is only evidence of a heart problem." We immediately want to focus on the behavior, and he's saying no, it's deeper than that. The issue is within your heart.
Two Reasons for Sexual Involvement Outside Marriage
So if I'm engaged, fornication is, biblically, it speaks of two people who aren't married, sexually involved. We're going to talk about what sexually involved means in a bit. Sexually involved. There's only two reasons that I could be involved sexually. One would be out of ignorance. In other words, I didn't know it was wrong. I have a hard time getting my arms around that, but I'll go ahead.
I'm a 34-year-old guy, 33-year-old guy, down in Tucson. He wants to have breakfast. We go to breakfast. We're sitting down. And he's driving a red sports car, and he's at the club, and he's hitting balls, and he's single. And all the girls, he's slept with half of Tucson, and most of them are happy about it. That's his deal.
We're talking along, and talking along, and talking along. We start talking about lifestyle. We start talking about sex, and it was, I'm not kidding, it's like a light bulb goes off, and he said, "Wait a minute. Are you telling me this is wrong?" And I said, "Yeah." He said, "I've never heard that." I said, "I got a really hard time. You're telling me you've never in 33 years heard?" He said, "The first girl I slept with, my dad set it up. I slept with her, then he slept with her. All we've ever done is smoke dope and do stuff together, make money together. When I was 16, he took me to Vegas, hooked me up with my first prostitute. I never heard from my dad I never heard this was wrong."
And I'm saying, "You know, even then, if I don't hear from my dad I must have heard it somewhere." But for the sake of the possibility that there may be life...
The Reality of God's Commands
If you're here today and you've never heard it, we just took away one of your reasons because ignorance is gone now—now you've heard it. The only other reason then is rebellion. The only other reason I'd be engaged in this is I'm in rebellion. Nobody's going to tell me what to do. Even when you use the terms confines or limitations, I don't want to hear that. What comes out of the heart tells me what's in there. One of the first things on this list He talks about is today's topic: porneia.
Christian Conversion and Sexual Purity
Here's the third part: Christian conversion involves us leaving those inappropriate sexual relations. First Corinthians chapter 6—Paul's writing to this church at Corinth. A little backdrop is important here. Corinth was just an evil place. In ancient Greek plays and literature, whenever a Corinthian was depicted, if it was a man he was depicted as a drunkard; a woman as a prostitute. This was an evil place.
So now the gospel comes to Corinth and boom—God moves and people get saved. But they're bringing all this baggage with them, and they still have to get rid of all this stuff and deal with all this and process all this.
Here's what Paul writes for that church: "Did you not know that the wicked will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: neither"—and it's the first thing on the list. It's not the only thing on the list. We're not singulating it out because it's worse than the other things. It's first in the list and it's the word of the day. "Do not be deceived: neither the sexually immoral or the idolaters, the adulterers, male prostitutes, homosexual offenders, drunkards, swindlers—they will not inherit the kingdom of God."
Here's the key: "And such"—past tense—"such were some of you. But you were washed, you were justified, you were sanctified." That's who you were. You aren't that anymore. That is behavior we understand—that is world behavior.
Different Expectations for Believers
I do not have an expectation—if you're a 25-year-old guy today and you're single, or gal either one, you're single, you're not a follower of Christ—I would not expect you to control yourself sexually. Why would I? Why would you? Sounds like fun. We're removing a little bit of the destructive nature of it.
I mean, I would argue the morality issue of it, but can I argue just a practical issue? Four out of ten babies born in this country this year—four out of ten will be born out of wedlock. What are the catastrophic, destructive implications to your culture? Most experts would agree you could wipe out poverty in our country if you did three things: if you graduated from high school, if you didn't take drugs, and if you didn't have babies till you were married. There are huge ramifications to this.
But the scripture says no—you're a follower of Christ, you ought to be different, you ought to be unique. So then when it's time that I'm dating somebody that's a follower of Christ, I have to understand up front that this can be a very different dating experience. It isn't going to be like everyone else. It isn't dinner and a movie and a roll in the hay when the night's over.
Intimacy Without Marriage Violates God's Command
Here's the fourth thing: intimacy without marriage violates a direct command of God. I was at Scottsdale Bible Church three or four months ago, whatever it was—maybe a little bit longer—and they invited me in for the men's group to speak to them. I said to the guy running it, whom I know, "Can we do something a little bit different? People are sick of hearing me talk. Let's just do an hour of Q&A." He said that'd be great. "Anything off-limits?" I said, "You can ask any question. I mean, I'd answer all of them, but you can ask any question you want—no questions off-limits."
So a guy puts up his hand and he said, "You know, you're talking about the sex stuff. I'm a single guy. I'm a single guy, and here's the deal: I want to know God's will for my life. I'm a single guy. You're talking about family and all this. I want to know God's will for my life."
I said, "You're kidding me. I don't know you. Let's stipulate here that there's never been any previous conversation. I'm almost like Kreskin at this point. I don't know you, we haven't met, right? I don't know you, but I can tell you at least part of God's will for your life."
I invited him to turn to First Thessalonians chapter 4, verse 3: "It is the will of God that you should be sanctified; that is, that you should avoid"—there's the word of the day—"sexual immorality. Therefore, whoever rejects this instruction does not reject man but God, who gives us the Holy Spirit."
Addressing Common Arguments
See, the minute I start to listen to this stuff, I know how you are because I'm that way. If I was sitting there and I'm engaged in some of this or wanting to be, I would start to come up with all sorts of arguments. I would start to say, "Who do you think you are, Tom?" And then I would say, "Okay, even in this case you go to the Bible—that's your interpretation of it. That's just the way you interpret it."
Okay, fine. You tell me how you interpret this. I'll just read it to you: "It is the will of God that you should avoid sexual immorality." Now you tell me how else you could possibly interpret that. God's very clear—that's His will. His will is—and again, we're not just dealing with singles here. We're dealing with people who are married who are involved sexually with somebody other than their spouse. Here's God's message to you: stop it. Stop it right now. That's His will.
A Personal Conversation
I'm having coffee with a guy, and it's one of those typical conversations. He's telling me, "I just, you know, I'm a young guy. I got admiration for you," which is sweet words to me to hear. "And I want you to help me. I want to figure out what God wants me to do with my life."
I said, "Okay, tell me a little bit about yourself. You're married?" "No." "Do you have a girlfriend?" "Yes." "Okay, so let's go back to the girlfriend, because that's a key thing here. Do you think someday you'll be married?" "Not to her."
The Girlfriend Question
But you're going to be married. We need to talk about the girlfriend because the girlfriend's going to have some effect on it. So tell me about your girlfriend. "She's a wonderful lady," and so on. I said, "Oh that's cool." We go back over here and I keep coming back. I said, "Well this girlfriend—you've been dating a while?" "Yes." "Okay, that's great."
He talks more about his work. I said, "The girlfriend, where does she live?" "Well, she lives with me." I said, "You must be really incredible because if she's pretty and beautiful, so you have a beautiful woman living with you and yet you're not involved with her sexually, you must be something extraordinary." The eyes go to the floor, which means he's sleeping with her. I said, "Oh, did I misspeak? Are you sexually involved?" "Yes."
"Okay, well you can shut all these other notebooks that you got out. You can shut them because God isn't going to tell you where He wants you to work or what He wants you to do when He's told you specifically He doesn't want you sleeping with your girlfriend and you're not doing that. Why are you looking for something more? You don't want God's will for your life. You don't want God's will because there it is right there and you said, 'Ah, not that will.' You got another will? What's plan B on the will? What's plan C on the will? What are these other things? What other wills have you got?" God says that you're engaged in a violation of His commandments.
Premarital Sex as Major Moral Failure
Premarital sex is ranked as a major moral failure in Galatians 5. Some of you have been around, some of you are Bible whiz people. I mean you study this. So if I say to you Galatians chapter 5, you really smart ones would immediately think of the fruit of the Spirit. The fruit of the Spirit is in Galatians 5:22: "the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, faithfulness and self-control."
Before that, Paul gives us the fruits of the flesh. He says they are—in the NIV "obvious," in the New American Standard "evident"—so somebody who's living following the flesh, not following the Spirit, somebody who's living according to impulse, not according to God's direction. The fruit of the flesh are natural, they're obvious. The acts of the sinful nature are obvious. Number one on the list: sexual immorality. He's not messing around with this.
Are there other things? Yes. Hatred, discord, jealousy, selfishness—all that stuff. Those are all as bad. Don't think we're some kind of sexual-phobic or homophobic. We're just saying you can't avoid these—they're on the list. They're as important. If you're a gossip, it's the same thing. If you're a drunkard, it's the same thing. If you're selfishly ambitious and greedy, it's the same thing. They're inappropriate major failures. What he's saying is it's not okay to say, "You know what, I'm doing pretty well except in this one area."
God Expects Us to Become Like Him
One last thing that God says to us in His word is that He expects His people to become like Him. Ephesians chapter 5, verse 1: He says, "Be imitators of God." Verse 2: He says Christ loved us and gave His life for us. Now He says, "But among you there must not even be a hint of"—and there's all sorts of things to list here, but He leads with the word of the day—"sexual immorality."
When the girls were younger—it's not true as much now because I have changed a lot and they have too—but when the girls were younger, if my girls came in and you stood ten girls there and I said, "Which ones are my girls?" you would pick them out. You would say, "Oh those two with the round faces and the freckles, those are yours," because they look like their daddy. You find people—I don't know exactly how this happens—but two people marry and they even start to kind of look like each other, and then they get a dog that looks like both of them. I don't know how that happens, but they do and they all look like them.
Here's what the Bible says: the Bible says that you ought to look like your heavenly Father. You ought to look like your Daddy—not in a physical thing, but in the way you conduct yourself, in the way you think. It should be evident.
Having Been with Jesus
There's a wonderful passage in Acts chapter 4. Here's Peter—he's denied Christ, he's repented of that, he is now a major force in the early church, he's delivered sermons, thousands are being converted, they're trying to tell him not to speak. He delivers this message. Here's what he says in Acts chapter 4, verse 12: "There is salvation in no one else, for there's no name under heaven that's been given among men by which we must be saved."
Now these are his enemies and people around him. As they observed the confidence of Peter and John, they understood that they were uneducated men and untrained men, and they were marveling. This is not an anti-education or anti-training passage—that's not it. They're saying, "Wait a minute, because conventionally we would see these kinds of attributes and this depth and this teaching and this eloquence and this thought—we would see them among trained people, educated people." They were marveling, and then they began to recognize them. Here's the line: "as having been with Jesus."
So if you could dust them for fingerprints, you'd find Jesus all over them. They reflected who He was. It was obvious that they were Christians, and that ought to be true of you and me. God expects you and me to begin to act and to begin to live and to begin to think and to begin to speak like He does.
Practical Point: Accept Sexual Purity as Requirement
A couple of practical points. Number one: accept sexual purity as a requirement for the Christian life. Let me say it to you one more time—this is mandatory behavior, this is not optional behavior. When they're dealing in the early church with the first crisis in the church, it becomes an issue of the Jews saying, "If you want to be a Christian, you need to become a Jew as well as..."
a Christian. So there's this whole issue of legalism, there's this whole issue of adding to the gospel and activities. As James is rendering the opinion of that body, he says there are some things you ought not do, some things you shouldn't do, but abstain from a bunch of things. Among the list is this idea of sexual immorality.
Here's the second thing, and they kind of all flow together: understand it's your responsibility to deal with this. I'm a smart, savvy guy, so some who are listening to this, whether you're in the room or you're going to get the tape, some of you who listen to this have already stepped over this line. What He says is, Colossians chapter 3 verse 5, put to death therefore whatever belongs to your earthly nature. Again, a long list, but the first word is the word of the day: sexual immorality.
I'm talking to a fellow, younger guy, and he's talking about how God saved him. He's talking about what his life was, and I, again, I'm smart enough to know that sex is a part of it anymore—it's an assumption. He was 25 or 26 or something, and he said, "My girlfriend and I were sexually active and we stopped." I said, "Man, that had to be incredible. How did you do that?" He said, "Well, last night is a great example. We were in bed naked, and we had oral sex for a while, and then we did some other stuff, but there was never penetration, so we didn't have intercourse, so we weren't sexually active."
Drawing Clear Lines
I don't know. You got 90% of guys in this room that would have thought that would have been a pretty good night right there. I mean, that's fairly active right there. That's a pretty big deal. That sounds—and I want to really be careful, I don't want to be crass here—but that sounds like sexual activity to me. That sounds like sexual immorality to me. I don't think He had in mind when He wrote this just penetration.
You have—and again, I want you to hear this because I'm going to guess a bunch of you aren't going to buy this next part—you have an epidemic proportion among your high school, let me go back, junior high, high school and college kids right now: two things, oral sex and anal sex. Those are the two hot things, and the reason is, at the end of the day, the girl especially can say, "What? I'm a virgin." We need to start to unpack all of this and say, listen.
So now I'm going to give you this—it's my least favorite, well, it's my second least favorite part of this lesson. I'm going to try to help you get that there's a line in there somewhere. And so this becomes, and you may not want to talk about it, but this line becomes really important because somewhere we move to sexual immorality. Now where is it?
I think the situation I just described is sexually active. So we need to move back from that. Now I know what year it is, but I think, and I think this is helpful: if you had a 13-year-old daughter, what would you tell her? Well, I think you'd say, "Listen, I don't think—I need to be very, very careful here—and I understand that periodically boys kiss girls and girls kiss boys. And sometimes they'll even exchange fluids in the process. Kind of anything after that is over the line."
A Practical Standard
So here's where I think the line is: assuming you have a normal relationship with your sister, it's anything that you would do with your sister. Whoa, I mean, how'd you like to be in my shoes today at noon when I dropped this bomb on them down there? But I want you to think with me.
God did not—I have not yet in all of this unpacking and reading of this, you may have found it and I didn't—I have not found anything when He says "age appropriate sexual activity." So what you're telling your 13-year-old, I think is what you tell your 23-year-old. Or your 33-year-old.
Do I understand how difficult that is? Absolutely. Can I imagine being single and what that tension must be like? I can imagine it, but I'm sure that I can't feel that to the level that especially a single might. I'm sure I can't. But here's what He's saying: that doesn't matter. I'm not sitting in heaven going, "Oh, you know what, here's the exemption, I forgot to put it in there. Here's a slip for you, Bobby. You get a pass, Betty. Good for you. You two are the exception to the rule." No.
So whether I'm 13 or 23 or 33 or 73 or God forbid, 103, wrestling with this issue, the answer is the same. Part of this is to understand the importance of pleasing God with your body.
Your Body as God's Temple
1 Corinthians 6, shortly after the passage we looked at earlier, He says this: "Flee sexual immorality." Here's the word of the day: sexual immorality. "All the other sins a man commits outside his body, but he who sins sexually sins against his own body. Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit? Honor God with your body."
There's something different He says about this. In Romans chapter 12 verse 1 He says present your bodies, present your bodies as a living sacrifice to God. Encompassed in that is that physical body which explains or represents all that I am, all that I have. I'm presenting everything to Him.
Now let me give you some really practical advice here. If you've blown it and you've screwed up, you confess this as sin. While you may never get back that virgin status again physically, I think you can get it in your heart and your mind and clearly in your status before God. But it is a serious issue. It's an important issue.
The Importance of Right Associations
So important that we would even close by saying you need to take hard looks at the people that you associate with. Paul writes to the church in Corinth again, pretty messed up church, 1 Corinthians chapter 5. I'll give you the background. There's a guy in the church who's sleeping with his mother—we assume it's his mother, his stepmother. Paul writes and says, "I've written in my letter to you not to associate with sexually immoral people." It's the word of the day: sexually immoral people. "Not at all meaning the people of the world who are immoral, in that
case you'd have to leave the world. See what He's saying? I'm not talking about all those guys out there because they're all immoral or most of them are immoral and to pull away from sexually immoral worldly pagan people is functionally impossible. Practically, how would you share the gospel with them if you weren't in contact with them? So you're engaged with those people.
But He's saying now there's this group, there's this body, the church, the body of Christ. And within there He's saying you've got this guy, everybody in the church knows this is inappropriate and you haven't dealt with it. He said, I'm writing to you that you must not associate with anyone who calls himself a brother—in other words somebody who says they're a Christian and is, here's the word of the day, sexually immoral.
A Different Standard for Believers
That's a huge challenge for you. If you've got somebody who says they're a Christian, we had somebody that came to one of our studies, they came as an unbeliever, they were brought by a friend. They got in the studies and it was the day I taught this. The believer said, that's outrageous, that's ridiculous, I'm never going back. The other person said, well that makes sense to me, this is a pagan now, that makes sense to me. I don't know, you said you believe the Bible, He kept reading out of the Bible, isn't that what the Bible says? Yes but... whenever you got the yes but, you got issues. The person who was the believer never came back, the pagan gets converted. It's an incredible story to me.
You have to be very careful, not only on a practical basis. You're hanging with guys and every time you're with the same guys you end up in trouble at the same place, don't do it. But God's saying there's a different standard here. When you say you're a Christian, I have to be really careful in how I deal with that person.
The Heart of the Matter
There's a bigger issue than the sex part, I don't want to miss this. You could be here and be sexually involved and say, I'm going to become celibate, that's a good thing. You benefit, the culture benefits, we all benefit. But if there's not a change of heart, then you'll just be celibate in hell. You're going to be miserable all your life and then miserable in hell.
This is about knowing Christ. That's why in that lesson I keep coming back to, this says we operate differently, we're motivated differently because Jesus Christ has transformed your life in every area. It's not sufficient to say, you know what, He's cleaned up nine out of ten but there's still this one. It's the one that He's after.
Are you going to sin? Yes, that's not a license, that's not permission, that understands that there will be times when you're going to screw this thing up. But if it's an ongoing pattern, He says, you've got to take a really hard look at yourself.
God's Standard vs. The World's
We started the beginning of the lesson by asking this question from the Princeton Religion Research Center: how often or what's the case or is it okay to have sex between a man and a woman outside of marriage? Basically a third of them said, it's wrong all the time. That's God's opinion, 100%, always wrong and the source on that is the scripture. It gives you a little sense of what we're going to tackle in these seven weeks we have ahead of us.
Let's pray. God, thank you for Your word and for the truth, thank you for the fact that You call us to live in a standard that is Your standard and it happens to be way above the standard in the world we live in.