God's Design for Human Sexuality

“Sex is a Gift”
 Message @ Jericho Ridge Community Church –Sunday, April 8, 2018
Text: Song of Songs 1 // Series: Song of Songs: Advice from Solomon on Love

Well, back in the fall of last year, we started into a teaching series in the book of Revelation.  And I confessed to you that I was a little bit scarred as a pastor of wading into those waters and I had avoided doing so for 18 years.  Because no book of the Bible has been served so poorly by modern interpreters as the book of Revelation.  Well, guess what… I may have found another book of the Bible that fits that same category!  It’s a complex book. It’s challenging to figure out what it means for us.  There’s lots of allegorical language.  It says nothing about sin or worship or forgiveness.  It doesn’t even mention God by name!  The entire book is written as a conversational exchange, like nothing else in the Bible. And the topic is kind of racy and scandalous.  I’m talking about the Old Testament book the Song of Songs, sometimes known as the Song of Solomon. 

Today, we are going to jump in to a teaching series that will walk us through some of themes of this unique book tucked away in an under-visited portion of the Old Testament.  The book is part of the wisdom literature often associated with Solomon’s name, so that includes the books of Job, Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes and then we come to Song of Songs. And chapter 1:1 says “This is Solomon’s song of songs, more wonderful than any other” and then suddenly in verse two we begin to hear the voice of the main speaker in this book: a young woman.  She is extoling the virtues of a young man whom she is in love with.  And she waxes poetically eloquent saying,   

“Kiss me and kiss me again,
          for your love is sweeter than wine.
How pleasing is your fragrance;
          your name is like the spreading fragrance of scented oils.
No wonder all the young women love you!
          Take me with you; come, let’s run!
The king has brought me into his bedroom.”
Then the young man responds to her:
“You are as exciting, my darling,
          as a mare among Pharaoh’s stallions.
How lovely are your cheeks;
          your earrings set them afire!
How lovely is your neck,
          enhanced by a string of jewels.
We will make for you earrings of gold
          and beads of silver.”

And while some of the culturally specific references might be lost on us, we get the main point.  That these two love each other.  Like, the really love each other. 

So here we have 8 chapters of semi-erotic love poetry is emanating forth from the Word of God!!  We’re not quite used to that, are we? 

So it kinda makes sense that the contemporary church tends to avoid this book of the Bible because I think that the capital c Church has a difficult time figuring out how to talk about things like human sexuality and intimate relationships and a theology of the physical body in ways that are not weird and uncomfortable.  And when religious people do talk about sex, it tends to be in a very shrill voice and the content is usually what NOT to look at, who NOT to sleep with, what NOT do.  The finger waging begins about how bad it is “out there” and how sexualized the culture has become.  No, no, no… Don’t , don’t, don’t…  And the message that comes across – purposefully or inadvertently – is that the Church and God really hate sex.  But if that’s the case, what’s a book like this doing in the Bible? 

Eugene Peterson says that “It might surprise you to know that the Song of Songs was at one point, the most read, most popular, and most preached from book of the Bible…. Origen, an early church father who had the reputation of being by far the best biblical scholar ever wrote a twelve volume commentary on the Song… Bernard of Clairvaux, one the best preachers of the Middle Ages, preached eighty-six sermons from the Song and didn’t get much past the second chapter!”

Some of you got really, really worried right there that I’m going to preach an 86 part series on an 8 chapter book that can be read in one sitting in about 6 minutes (which I would highly encourage you to do this week – read the Song).  But we’re just going to spend 6 weeks together here and this isn’t really the kind of book you take verse by verse chapter by chapter… You can’t take it apart and flatten it out like that.  That’s the equivalent of taking an album of love songs and trying to turning it into a middle school biology textbook!  You have to explore the themes that come out of the text.  So next week, Pastor Wally will look at what we learn in this book about healthy marriage relationships.  Then we’ll look at the theme of singleness, because the Bible honours and esteems single adults in a way that the church sometimes doesn’t.  Then we’ll look at the picture that the Song paints of masculinity.  Because the book raises themes around attraction and intimate relationships, we’ll look at the theme of homosexuality and then we’ll finish with the picture that the Song gives us of biblical womanhood.  Some of the things we discover along the journey might surprise you so stick with us.

We’re going to begin today by painting some broad brush strokes that help give us a theology of human sexuality

1. God cares about our sexuality because God created it!

• We are emotional, spiritual and physical beings

“So God created human beings in his own image. In the image of God he created them; male and female he created them. Then God blessed them and said, ‘Be fruitful and multiply…’” Genesis 1:27-28   

• Implications: Sex isn’t something shameful

Photo: “Sex was not invented in some dark alley; sex was God’s idea! 

Neopaganism – said that spiritual stuff was good, physical stuff was bad. (Dualism). Spirt = Good, Body = Bad.  But that isn’t’ congruent with the Biblical witness.  When God wanted to reveal himself most fully to us, he did so in a body.  Last weekend we celebrated not that Jesus’ ghost floated out of the tomb but that his body physically experienced resurrection.  God cares about out bodies.

In his book When King Fishers Catch Fire: which is a collection of his sermons, Eugene Peterson says it this way: ““Deep in our Scriptures and traditions, there is an enormous dignity given to the body and its beauty and holiness.  God created us with bodies, after all and they are the means by which we love one another and God.”                             - Eugene Peterson

2. God is the Creator & Owner, so God gets to set the parameters for the proper enjoyment of things which God created for our benefit
   “For love is as strong as death, its passion as             enduring as the grave… Many waters cannot                quench love, nor can rivers drown it.”      

                                                                   (Song of Songs 8:6-7)

Photo: Song of Songs 8: “Love flashes like fire, the brightest kind of flame.”
Song of Songs 8:6

  Match – Can do amazing good, but can also do incredible damage.  I was watching the news and they were already saying about the possibility of a hot, dry summer again – think of the incredibly destructive power of a forest fire! 

3. The gift of sex is intensely beautiful but this also has the potential to make it dangerous

?) What was God’s purpose for creating pleasure?

          “You can’t say that our bodies were made for sexual   immorality. They were made for the Lord, and the Lord   cares about our bodies!” (I Corinthians 6:13b)      

What Sex Can (and Can’t) Give You

“The pleasures that God created and embedded in the world he made for us were never intended to be where you and I look for identity, inner rest, contentment, or the stability of well-being that every human seeks. Pleasure will never be your saviour… Pleasure care offer you momentary joy. It can remind you of the greater glory of God, but it must never become your functional God-replacement.”

- Paul David Tripp in his book “Sex in a Broken World:
          How Christ Redeems what Sin Distorts”

 Implications of our Theology:

1. Sex is not a problem, it is a gift!

          (it becomes problematic when we reject the       limitations God placed around it for our good)

1. The mystery & power of sex can make it challenging to in speak about in heathy ways

          (this includes areas of struggle & sexual sin)  

1. Our bodies & what we do with them matters to God

. 

“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 honour God with your body.”

                                              I Corinthians 6:19-20      

Questions

?) What does it look like for me to recognize the          Creator’s ownership over my sexuality?

?) In this area, how can I think, speak, & act in a way that honours God & others this week?

Church, your body is a gift.  Steward it well.

The Holy Spirit indwells you, and empowers to you to resist temptation