God, Sex and Me

inadequate, and options are depleted.

If we feed our minds with wrong ideas, they will influence how we live. “Be careful how you think; your life is shaped by your thoughts” says Proverbs 4:23 GNB. Wrong information, wrong thoughts about sex produce wrong expectations and these facilitate the destruction of potentially good relationships. The mind is an incredibly powerful component of our human sexuality. We must program our minds with correct information and especially sound doctrine (the truth of God’s Word) if we are to live right in God’s sight; we must understand God’s Word, his love and his power.

Sexual intimacy as pointer to real intimacy with God

 An Awesome Picture

In Revelations chapter four, the apostle John tells us of a vision of worship in heaven that he witnessed. Imagine it as you read; the scene is spectacularly majestic. On a throne in heaven sat someone with his face gleaming like such precious stones as jasper and carnelian, and all around the throne was an emerald-coloured rainbow. Twenty-four other thrones were in a circle around the throne and on them were seated twenty-four elders dressed in white and wearing crowns of gold. Flashes of lightning, rumblings, and peals of thunder were coming from the throne. What a sight! In front of the throne was what looked like a sea of glass, clear as crystal. Surrounding the throne on each of its sides, were four living creatures covered with eyes in front and behind. One looked like a lion, another like a bull, another had a human face and the fourth looked like an eagle in flight. Day and night they never stopped singing, “Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord God Almighty, who was, who is, and who is to come.” They sang songs of glory and honour and thanks to the one who sat on the throne, who lived forever and ever. Even more beautiful is that, when they did this, the twenty-four elders would fall down before the one who sat on the throne and worshiped him. They threw their crowns down in front of the throne and said, “Our Lord and God! You are worthy to receive glory, honour, and power. For you created all things and by your will they were given existence and life.” God is the one John saw sitting on the throne and who was being worshiped. This is how he is constantly adored, revered and worshiped among the powerful heavenly beings. Why do I bring in this picture?

You see, it is this same majestic King of the universe, God (from whose thrown come flashes of lightning, rumblings, and peals of thunder), who once chose Israel to be his people and has used his relationship with them through the ages to speak loudly to the rest of mankind about his deep love for us to the point of offering forgiveness to us through the death and resurrection of his Son Jesus Christ.

When Moses was leading the people of Israel from slavery in Egypt to the Promised Land, God at a point called Moses to Mount Sinai to give him instructions (See Exodus 25 to 31). He wanted the people to make a sacred tent for him, because he wanted to come and live among them. He gave Moses excruciatingly specific instructions concerning which materials were to be used – the quality, the measurements, and colours – how it should be built, the furnishings and equipment to be made for use inside the tent. God even gave the exact names of people he wanted on the various jobs. Finally, he said to Moses, “In making all these things, they [the workers] are to do exactly as I have commanded you.” Exodus 31:11 GNB.  Note the level of concern God had that things would be made as he had commanded. According to Moses they did exactly this. In this tent (or Tabernacle) the ark of God’s covenant with Israel was kept. But you turn to the beginnings of the early church and we see new understanding about where God lives.

The Apostle Paul (in Acts 17:24) and also Stephen (in Acts 7:48) explain that God does not live in buildings made by human hands. In the new covenant God’s temple is your body and mine. And Jesus’ reaction in temple against those who were abusing the place (John 2:15-17) is an indication of the passion that God has for purity in his temple which in the new covenant is you body and mine. The body of a believer in Jesus Christ is God’s temple and it must not be profaned (see 1 Corinthians 1:6; 1 Corinthians 6:18-20).  In sex you give yourself to the other party and vice versa. Sexual intimacy is the only physically possible way of being one with the one you love; the desire to be joined deeply is a strong longing for a love relationship and sex is the highest limit as far as the physical body is concerned. We profane God’s temple when we engage in immorality – sexual encounters that God forbids. When we engage in such acts, not only do we defy God, but we hurt ourselves. Just like how a contradiction breaks down reasoning, sin also breaks down life. It blocks the nourishing life God gives. God made us to be happy in him and we cannot satisfy our deepest thirst without him.

The necessary condition for anyone to be immoral is to first be irreverent at heart. This is what will cause us to treat as a cheap thing the temple or the would-be temple of God. We are not irreverent because of our immorality but rather we are immoral because we have become irreverent at heart. The immorality we see today is an indication of the irreverence for God that has taken place in our hearts. So sexual immorality, just like every sin in reality is a spiritual problem, not physical. But it becomes a cycle, one reinforcing the other. Irreverence leads to immorality and immorality encouraging us to be all the more irreverent. We must get right with God. Jesus Christ is our only hope, to give us strength to live as we ought to.

God is the bridegroom and the church, of which you and I are members, is his bride.  God wants his bride to experience the deepest intimacy that can be had; he wants to as it were penetrate every part of us with his very self.  There are times when, as a Christian, you wonder why God sends you through times of prolonged waiting when you ask him for things. In his book, Waiting on God, Author Andrew Murray makes some insightful observations:

 At our first entrance into the school of waiting upon God, the heart is mainly set on the blessings which we wait for. God graciously uses our needs and desires for help to educate us for something higher than we were thinking of. We were seeking gifts; He, the Giver, longs to give Himself and to satisfy the soul with His goodness. It is just for this reason that He often withholds the gifts, and that the time of waiting is made so long. He is constantly seeking to win the heart of His child for Himself. He wishes that we would not only say, when He bestows the gift, ‘How good is God!’ but that long before it come, and even if it never comes, we should all the time be experiencing: it is good that a man should quietly wait. ‘The lord is good unto them that wait for Him.’”

God also wants us to give him our all. Have you given deep thought to the greatest commandment – to love God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength? It requires your whole being. Before Jesus answered the question on taxes put to him by the Pharisees and some members of Herod’s party, he asked them to bring a silver coin (Mark 12:15). He asked them whose image was on it and they answered that it was Caesar’s. Building on this answer Jesus told them to give to Caesar what was Caesars and to God what was God’s. Genesis 1:26 says man was made by God and in his image. We bear his image, just as the silver coin bore Caesar’s image. God owns us. He is the one who gives us all our rights, which we call Human Rights. The right way to live is …