The Redemption of Sex

Tuesday, 23 February 2010 10:06

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 Proverbs 5:15-19; Song of Solomon 1:1-4; 5:10-16; 7:1-9

 One of the more talked about issues of our day is sex and sexuality. Tragically, it is the world doing all the talking and it is the world that sets the agenda and the parameters of the discussion and as would be expected, it's a twisted, perverted view of sex that is being set forth.

 No doubt the Church also talks about sex but it's most generally in response to the world and indeed is usually a surface attempt to "sanctify" the world's ideas. The world sees sex in terms of power and technique and writes volumes on these issues. The Church responds by accepting on the face of it that sex is indeed about power and technique, and we pat ourselves on the back by writing our own books about them, but from a so-called "Christian perspective."

 On the humorous side, the world has it's Dr. Ruth's and we have our Dr. La Hay's and Douglas Rosenau's.

 The world sets forth it's glitzy Hollywood stars exulting in an "adultery moment" and we respond with high profile "Christian" women who don't want to be seen as being anything less than "an evangelical whore," to quote a young editor at Christianity Today who bragged about sleeping with her boyfriend before the world.[1]

 The world talks about sex, power and manipulation and the Church responds by giving a superficial explanation of marital hierarchy, headship and submission.

 Actually, when it comes to sex this strange copy-cat stupidity has been with the Church for at least 1,800 years. Too often the Church and its teachers have followed the pagan thought rather than the Bible. In fact, even as I was preparing this sermon I received my newest volume of The Ancient Christian Commentary series and it is on Genesis. Let me read to you what Chrysostom said about Genesis 1:27:

 Consider when this happened. After their disobedience, after their loss of the garden, then it was that the practice of intercourse had its beginning. You see, before their disobedience they followed a life like that of the angels, and there was no mention of intercourse. How could there be when they were not subject to the needs of the body? So at the outset and from the beginning the practice of virginity was in force, but when through their indifference disobedience came on the scene and the ways of sin were opened, virginity took its leave for the reason that they had proved unworthy of such a degree of good things, and in its place the practice of intercourse took over for the future.

 This isn't the unanimous view of the early Church Fathers, but it does represent a large segment of thought from that time. Augustine taught that the sexual act was ok in marriage but the passion that always accompanies it was sinful. In other words, a stoic approach to sex. Do it, but don't like it! Gregory the Great taught that anytime a husband and wife engaged in sexual intercourse for pleasure it was sin. Even Thomas Aquinas was uneasy with marital sex because of his obsession with reason and when a man and women engaged in sex, reason was subordinated to passion.

 This is a direct result of thinking as the Greeks and to a lesser extent, the Romans thought about sexual relationships. The Greeks and the Romans thought sexual relationships with women were a sign of weakness or simply needed for procreation. The far greater state was homosexuality, which was exalted especially in Greece.

 While the Church Fathers were unanimous in condemning homosexuality, they were never quite comfortable with taking delight in sex, even within the context of marriage. This aversion to a hearty, passionate appreciation of sex even spilled over onto some of our great Protestant commentators.

 Matthew Henry, a great commentator on scripture, approaches the Song of Solomon with "kid's glove" so to speak. First, he states that some things in scripture are "dark and hard to be understood," and the context of his statement is that the passionate passages of this song, mixed as they are with the overtly and intentionally sexual imagery are just that, "dark and hard to be understood."

 Second, he is crystal clear in declaring and believing that not only did the Jews accept the Song of Solomon as "the oracles of God," but that the entire Christian Church has likewise never doubted that it is inspired, infallible Scripture.

 But Henry, like so many other Biblical commentators, seems almost embarrassed by this book. He's terrified that while it's poetic, artistic and beautiful as well as a word directly from God, that not too many people should read it because it will draw out the carnal man, loosing all the passions and lusts that we seek to suppress. Henry can't quite figure out where the book is going seeing that,

 . . .  here is not the name of God in it; it is never quoted in the New Testament; we find not in it any expressions of natural religion or pious devotion, no, nor is it introduced by vision, or any of the marks of immediate revelation.

 Can I say with all respect that Matthew Henry needed to lighten up! Some people think if you're not quoting Bible verses, doing Bible studies or singing explicitly Christian songs you're not engaged in anything meaningful or good. It blows their mind if you have an evening where you're not discussing end times or TBN or perhaps the contemplating the end times of TBN. Henry looks for "super-spiritual" meaning behind everything when that's not what God is trying to communicate to us. What God is trying to communicate is that love and sex is good, inspiring, invigorating and not a bad way to pass the day.

 But Henry doesn't lighten up, but rather warms up to his worries and anxieties when he continues,

 It seems as hard as any part of scripture to be made a savour of life unto life, nay and to those who come to the reading of it with carnal minds and corrupt affections, it is in danger of being made a savour of death unto death.; it is a flower out of which they extract poison; and therefore the Jewish doctors advised their young people not to read it till they were thirty years old, lest by the abuse of that which is most pure and sacred the flames of lust should be kindled with fire from heaven, which is intended for the altar only.

 However the Biblical view of sex within the bounds of marriage is that it should be talked about, celebrated and enjoyed. Just as Jesus engaged in feasting and drinking as a regular and normal aspect of living before the Lord, celebrating the good gifts of food, wine and strong drink and friendship, so too were the early reformers accused of a perverted Christianity because they spoke openly, zealously and often about the joys of married sex.

 In fact, "Thomas More,  with his Catholic views about penance and asceticism, regarded Tyndale's Puritan theology as indulgent to the point of license, charging Protestants with 'sensual and licentious living.' More spoke of the Protestants as people who "eat fast and drink fast and lust fast in their lechery."[2]

 The Catholic theologians hated the reformational teaching that marriage was far superior to celibacy and that sexual relations in that marriage were to be delighted in. As one researcher who studied the Reformation and it's effects on those who followed, there was constant "praise of marriage and sex as good. They elaborated that point specifically and often."[3] Married sex was not only legitimate in the Puritan view; it was meant to be exuberant. [One preacher] said that married couples should engage in sex 'with good will and delight, willingly, readily and cheerfully' [while another] claimed that when two are made one by marriage they, 'May joyfully give due benevolence one to the other; as two musical instruments rightly fitted do make a most pleasant and sweet harmony in a well tuned consort.' "[4]

 I like these Puritans! One followed up on the subject of married sex by preaching that in marriage "thou not only unitest unto thyself a friend and comfort for society, but also a companion for pleasure."[5]

 Earlier I pointed out the uneasiness, even awkwardness with which Matthew Henry approached the Song of Solomon. The Puritans had no such inhibitions! They understood the Apostle Paul's meaning when he declared that "Marriage is honorable among all, and the bed undefiled" (Heb. 13:4)

 Milton had this to say about this Love Song:

 Wisest Solomon among his gravest Proverbs countenances a kind of ravishment . . . in the entertainment of wedded leisure’s; and in the Song of Songs . . . sings of a thousand raptures between those two lovely ones far on the hither side of carnal enjoyment. By these instances, and more which might be brought, we may imagine how indulgently God provided against man's loneliness.

 Let me quote Leland Ryken from his book on the Puritans as They Really Were:

 In [the Puritan] view, it was God who had created people as sexual beings. . . Contrary to popular misconception, the Puritans were not squemish about physical or erotic contact between couples. Thomas Gataker said that "the Holy Ghost did allow some such private dalliance and behaviour to married persons between themselves as to others migh seem dotage." Many Puritan writers used Genesis 26:8, which describes Isaac's fondling of Rebekah, to argue that erotic love was legitimate. One of them commented that in marriage, "a play-fellow is come to make our age merry, as Isaac and Rebecca sported together," while [another] cited the same passage to charge husbands who reject such contact as taking no more delight in their own wives than in any other women. Perkins described one of the ways by which couples should show "due benevolence" to each other as "by an holy kind of rejoicing and solacing themselves with each other," in connection with which he mentioned kissing.

 So powerful was this thoroughly Biblical Christian view of the joys of marital sex that in Germany the marriage bond was formed by the groom publicly leading the bride home and entering the  bed. The advantages and joys of marriage were celebrated, not muted!

 Let's look back at the Song in verse 2 where the Shulamite says,

 Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth—for your love is better than wine.

 This reference to wine is telling because wine "makes the heart glad" and it revives the spirit and exhilarates the senses. But we're told here that the Shulamite anticipates the joy and benefits of her lover's kisses—they're of greater value than any wine! This is repeated in 4:10. This reference to wine includes it's intoxicating effect, which is what Solomon had referred to in Proverbs 5:19 when he said, "Let her breasts satisfy you at all times; and always be enrapture with her love." The literal translated translation is "always be intoxicated with her love." The King James say "be thou ravished always" while the Amplified says "always be transported with delight," the New American Standard, "Be exhilarated always."

 This joyful, celebration of married sex is one aspect of God's beautiful law that is used to burn so brightly that it penetrates the darkness of sin and despair that grips so much of the world. We're to be so happy, so joyful, so exuberant about our wife or our husband that it stuns the world which has contented itself with mindless lust and meaningless sex.

 This is vital today because the world without Christ is in deep and powerful darkness. Where ever the gospel of Christ has not been preached or accepted, sex is not a joyful and pleasurable celebration, but rather one of hatred, manipulation and dread.

 For instance, in Japan we're told that it's common for married couples to have a "divorce within marriage" in which there are strong taboos against older women having children and even sex. And by "older" I'm talking about 40 years old. People who study these things report that,

 The sexual relationship between men and women is conceived of as a duty—for the production of children. Since this duty was fulfilled when a certain number of children were safely born or a woman reached a certain age, at that point men may have stopped having sexual intercourse with their wives. 'For husbands, sexual intercourse was a duty to produce offspring summarized in [an expression I cannot use from the pulpit]. . . Husbands and wives stopped sleeping together when the men were in their mid-forties and women their mid-thirties.[6]

 Men prefer "prostitutes, concubines or geisha girls" over their wives and believe that "pleasurable sex is extramarital." So the typical Japanese non-Christian male prefers "prostitution, brothels and extra-marital sex" to sex with their wife. [The author of the book that covers this makes sure you don't think bad of Japanese sexual ideas, however. He writes: "The following account is therefore not meant to imply superiority or inferiority in Japanese moral values."[7] Of course not. We can't have that, can we! In fact, he states that Christian cultures are "often hypocritical puritan countries."]

 In fact, you'll find this amazing. We're told that "In Japan it not unfrequently happens that when a man is reduced to poverty his daughter or wife volunteers to sell herself for a term to a brothel, and such an act is looked upon as the highest evidence of filial or conjugal affection."[8]

It's a good thing Christianity hasn't taken strong root in Japan, note the author of this study, because,

 The acceptance of a high level of extra-marital sexuality by husbands, or of sexual encounters by those men who were unable to marry, is clearly related to the absence, in Japan, of the Christian belief that marriage and sex are inexorably linked. The idea that sex outside marriage was 'sinful,' an old tradition in the west, is hardly developed in Japan . . .[9]

 So this is what all the women libbers are looking for when they decry Christianity and all those "indigenous culture" people are promoting when they lament the rise of Christianity?

 I could go into the sexual depravity of the entire Islamic world and in all other countries of the world where Christ and Christianity is rejected, but that's not needed. What I do want to highlight is that Christ redeems all aspects of culture including the understanding and practice of sex.

 He makes all things beautiful in its time and the Christian should be thankful that Christ has lifted him or her out of shame and degradation and redeemed sexuality and provided an incredible institution for us to enjoy it to it's fullest capacity.

 Solomon most probably wrote his Song at the height of his prosperity when he loved the Lord (1 Kings 3:3) and he served Him with joyfulness and gladness of heart in the abundance of all things, which included an awesome sex life.