Proverbs: Sex is Never Just Sex (And That's a Good Thing)

Hello, I'm Pastor Creighton, and thank you for tuning in to New Sun Churches Podcast.

We're a gospel-centered church in Port Perry, Ontario, proclaiming the true and life-giving word of Jesus as we love and serve our neighbors.

May God bless you today through his life-giving word.

A reading from the Book of Proverbs.

Flowing water from your own well.

Should your springs be scattered abroad, streams of water in the streets?

Let them be for yourself alone and not for strangers with you.

Let your fountain be blessed and rejoice in the wife of your youth, a lovely deer, a graceful doe.

Let her breasts fill you at all times with delight.

Be intoxicated always in her love.

Why should you be intoxicated, my son, with a forbidden woman, and embrace the bosom of an adulteress?

My son, say to wisdom, you are my sister, and call insight, your intimate friend, to keep you from the forbidden woman, from the adulteress with her smooth words.

She says, Come, let us take our fellow love till morning.

Let us delight ourselves with love, for my husband is not at home.

He has gone on a long journey.

He took a bag of money with him.

At full moon he will come home.

With much seductive speech she persuades him, and with her smooth talk she compels him.

All at once he follows her as an ox goes to the slaughter, or as a stag is caught fast till an arrow pierces its liver, as a bird rushes into a snare, he does not know that it will cost him his life.

Three things are too wonderful for me, four I do not understand.

The way of an eagle in the sky, the way of a serpent on a rock, the way of a ship on the high seas, and the way of a man with a virgin.

This is the way of an adulteress.

She eats and wipes her mouth and says, I have done no wrong.

The word of the Lord.

Let's pray.

Well, Lord, let the words of my mouth and the meditation of all of our hearts be always pleasing in your sight, Lord, our rock and our redeemer.

Lord, would we glimpse a deeper, truer, fuller, lovelier glimpse of the gospel as you open up your word to us.

In Jesus' name we pray.

Amen.

Please be seated.

Right.

Well, everyone's favorite subject for church.

Where do we start?

This is what strikes me as really interesting.

I suspect you would agree with me when I say that we live in a moment that has the most access, the most liberty, the most permissiveness, however you want to frame it, towards sexuality than any other generation before us.

I mean, right now we have devices in our pockets that can access sexual content like that.

We live in a moment where sexual content is on the rise, and yet, based on a U.S.

study from 2000 to 2018 and other studies like it, sexual satisfaction is steadily on the decline.

Isn't it interesting that sexual content rises, sexual satisfaction declines?

What's up with that?

Is that what we'd expect to find?

I want to tell you about a fascinating book that I read earlier this year.

It's probably the most thought-provoking book that I've read this year, and it's called The Case Against the Sexual Revolution by Louise Perry.

Now, probably if Louise Perry was coming out of a conservative Christian circle, we wouldn't be surprised to hear a title like The Case Against the Sexual Revolution.

But what's fascinating to me about this particular book is Louise Perry is not coming at her argument from within a conservative Christian frame of ethics.

She's actually coming at the subject as an academic, liberal, feminist thinker, scholar, author, activist.

Here's what Louise Perry is arguing.

In her book, she's arguing that the sexual revolution in the West of the 1960s, etc., which promised that more permissive attitudes towards sex, greater sexual liberty would lead to greater sexual satisfaction, never quite delivered on the promises it made.

Well, more precisely it did deliver, but it delivered generally to men of privilege and power at the expense of women.

I mean, how many names can we think of off the top of our head in the news cycle of powerful, influential, prestigious men caught in scandal, exploiting women in vulnerable positions, in some cases under their own spiritual authority.

Louise Perry argues that the sexual revolution did not deliver on its promises to women, but it has been a detriment to both women and men in terms of overall sexual intimacy, satisfaction.

It just didn't deliver.

Here's what she writes: this is the radical idea of the sexual revolution, as Louise Perry understands it.

She writes: this is the idea that sex is nothing more than a leisure activity, invested with meaning only if the participants choose to give it meaning.

Proponents of this idea argue that sex has no intrinsic specialness, that it is not innately different from any other kind of social interaction, and it can therefore be commodified without any trouble.

Sex has been disenchanted, she writes, in the post-1960s West, leaving us with a society that ostensibly believes sex means nothing.

And here's what's really key.

It's just sex summarizes the sexual disenchantment idea perfectly.

She goes on to write, but sexual disenchantment isn't actually true, and we all know it.

But when an ideology of sexual disenchantment demands that we pretend otherwise, the result can be a distressing form of cognitive dissonance.

So what's she saying?

She's saying the sexual revolution didn't deliver on its promises.

It's left us with lesser and not more.

So the solution that Perry presents, I find particularly fascinating.

Louise Perry points us towards monogamous, committed, sexual relationships framed in lifelong, well and lifelong commitment, particularly marriage.

One of her chapters is called Marriage is a Good Thing.

It's amazing that that can be controversial, but it is.

So this is what she writes.

She writes, we should treat our sexual partners with dignity.

We should not regard other people merely as body parts to be enjoyed.

We should aspire to love and mutuality.

We should prioritize virtue over desire.

What an amazing thing to write.

Here's what I find so fascinating about Perry's book.

It's not that I agree with every argument she makes in the book.

And by the way, if you're logging onto Amazon right now to order a copy, let me give you a fair warning.

It is a hard read.

It is a hard read because Perry does not mince details about the realities of the pornography industry, about sexual violence, about human trafficking.

It is a hard read, and it will turn your stomach.

But what Perry is contending for is something so near to Christian sexual ethics, it's fascinating.

What is the solution to the sexual disenchantment, the it's just sex attitude that doesn't seem to deliver on its promises?

It's something so close to the Christian sexual ethic.

The very ethic that we ourselves as Christians so often neglect is the answer to the moment that Perry is contending for.

So here's what I want us to do.

Because we're journeying through the book of Proverbs, because we want to understand God's wisdom for our best living, I think this is a very timely subject.

And I think we want to understand God's design even for our sex lives, towards its flourishing, towards its best design.

Sex is never just sex, and that's a good thing.

Sex is celebrated, sex is consequential, and sex is consecrated.

Sex can never be just sex because it is celebrated, consequential, and consecrated.

So my intention with this sermon is not to finger wag.

My intention with this sermon is for us to meditate on a positive vision for a Christian sexual ethic towards our flourishing and the greater flourishing of the world in which we live.

Let's have a look at the Christian sexual ethic.

Would you open up your bulletin, your Bible, to the book of Proverbs, and we're gonna journey through this together?

I want us to see that sex is celebrated, consequential, and consecrated.

First off, sex is celebrated.

This might not be what we expect to find in the Bible.

Chapter 5, Book of Proverbs.

Drink water from your own cistern, flowing water from your own well.

Should your springs be scattered abroad, should streams of water in the streets?

Let them be for yourself alone, and not for strangers with you.

Let your fountain be blessed, and rejoice in the wife of your youth.

A lovely deer, a graceful doe.

Let her breasts fill you at all times with delight, be intoxicated always in her love.

So probably not the verse you learned in Sunday school, right?

Is this what we expect to find?

This is an amazing claim to me.

The Bible makes the claim that sex is not something uh not something icky, not something just to be tolerated, but something that is worth celebrating.

Celebrating in the right context, because what we see here in the book of Proverbs is really key.

Verses 15, 16, and 17 point to the reality of sex within a committed, faithful, trusting, exclusive relationship.

The image here is water from a cistern.

Should your waters just be scattered abroad, streams of water in the streets?

It's a rhetorical question.

The idea is no.

I mean, imagine how precious water is as a resource in such an arid climate as the author of the Book of Proverbs lives in.

The answer is no.

The right place is in this exclusive, committed, unconditional relationship between one spouse and another is the proper place for, uh, it's the proper hearth for this fire, so to speak.

It's fidelity, it's trust, but it's also passion.

Because you'll notice verses 18 and 19, let your fountain be blessed, rejoice in the wife of your youth.

This is a passionate affair.

It is delightful, it is worth rejoicing in.

I mean, this attitude is something you'll find throughout scriptures.

The thing scriptures are is they're brutally realistic about the good and the bad and the ugly.

But we need to remember that there is good, principally, to be found here.

I mean, we have a whole book of the Bible called Song of Songs, or often called Song Solomon.

It is no less than a book of ancient erotic Hebrew poetry celebrating the love of a man and a woman in its proper covenantal context.

I do think there's more going on in that book than just erotic Hebrew poetry, but there's no less than that going on.

This is to be celebrated.

This is something worthwhile.

Sex that is celebrated is sex in trusting and passionate relationships.

And by the way, just if I were to make a pastoral application, but I am no psychologist and I'm certainly not a sex therapist or something like that.

But I would say, in my own pastoral practice, I found that if there is a breakdown in a sex life, there has been a more fundamental breakdown, at least in one or both of these areas, trust and passion.

That if we want to address the breakdown in the sex life, these two things, at least one of those, if not both, need to be addressed.

A breakdown in trust, where boundaries have been violated, where offense has been taken, where a feeling of betrayal is where we feel that feeling of betrayal.

There needs to be a process of acknowledging wrongdoing, of making amends, of practicing forgiveness and reconciliation and restoration if we're going to restore the trust in a relationship.

That's a process.

And it can be complicated.

But passion as well.

Passion is uh, well, I remember one mentor of mine describing a conversation he had.

He was giving pastoral counsel to a fellow in his parish.

And uh this this young man had been married for a couple years, and very honestly he was sharing, you know, I just feel like the passion is gone in the relationship.

Like we used to be so in love and just so enjoy each other.

Now I just don't know what happened.

I don't know what to do.

And, you know, my pastor friend is just super pragmatic.

And what he suggested is, well, he well, the question he asked is this When was the last time you felt truly passionate?

When was the last time you felt truly in love with your wife?

And he said, Well, probably when we were dating, when we were first married.

And okay, well then what did you do with your wife then?

Well, we'd go out for dates and we'd hold hands and have long walks and crack jokes at the pub and you know, all the sorts of things.

And my pastor friend said, Why don't you start?

I forget how long he said, four weeks, six weeks, something like that.

Once a week, do the things that you did when you were dating, see what happens.

Now, after four or six weeks, this man came back to the pastor and said, Pastor, the passion's back.

Now, that is not an infallible solution here.

I'm not trying to be simplistic or reductionistic here, but I am trying to suggest there is a first step that can be taken to address the issues of trust and passion.

But you'll notice what both of those things have in common is we don't let our feelings lead us.

We take the right action and we let the feelings follow.

The right action might be to begin in a place of willing forgiveness.

And the right place might be to will that passion by being, expressing that sort of delight and rejoicing attitude towards one's spouse.

But sex is ultimately something to be celebrated.

It is a delightful, rejoicing affair.

But like I say, the Bible is realistic about sexuality.

Sex is to be celebrated, yes, but wisdom both celebrates sex and cautions us against its immoral consequences.

So we can see in verse 20, why should you be intoxicated, my son, with a forbidden woman and embrace the bosom of an adulteress?

And then in chapter 7, say to wisdom, You are my sister, and call insight your intimate friend, right?

Bind yourself to wisdom.

Wisdom will keep you from the forbidden woman, from the adulteress and her smooth words.

So, by the way, I do not think Proverbs is trying to suggest that in some way women are just inherently temptresses, or something like that, or more sexually tempting, or something.

We've got to remember that Proverbs is addressed to sons being raised up in the royal court.

So the assumption is if there's going to be sexual temptation, then it's probably going to come from a woman towards one of these sons.

The language here is not meant to reflect poorly on women.

In fact, wisdom itself is characterized as a woman.

And there are many verses in Proverbs that warn men against straying too far from the home.

But the image here is something we need to take seriously.

The image here is that folly leads us towards consequence.

Sex is consequential.

So we can read in verses 18 and 23 a scene where a foolish young man is being led astray by sexual temptation.

The adulteress says, Come, let us take our fill of love till morning.

My husband's not at home.

He'll be away for a while.

Verse 21, with much seductive speech, she persuades him.

And then it concludes: he does not know that following her will cost him his life.

A sexual ethic requires integrity, both morally and spiritually.

And when boundaries are transgressed, both morally and spiritually, we disintegrate.

There is a cost.

And this is, this leads us to sort of this cryptic verse, chapter 30, verse 20.

This is the way of an adulteress.

She eats and wipes her mouth and says, I have done no wrong.

Okay, so the author is not saying this.

He's not saying you can always spot an adulterer because they use a napkin.

That's not what the author is saying here.

What the author is saying, well, he's using an illustration, he's using an image to express an idea.

The adulteress consumes, wipes her mouth, does away with any evidence, and then says, well, because no one knows and there's no consequence, then there's been no harm, no foul, no wrong's been done.

After all, it's just sex, right?

And friends, I can't help but think that it's this attitude, this there's been no harm done that can lead us to some of the most ensnaring sorts of sexual immorality.

I'm thinking principally of pornography.

Did you know that pornography is a$100 billion industry?

I couldn't believe that.

One of the most popular porn sites on the internet has a daily revenue of$4.4 million.

70% of men report having viewed porn at least once this month.

11% of women report having viewed porn regularly.

30% of internet traffic is related to porn.

And the earliest exposure to porn is 11 years old.

Despite the fact that porn is inherently linked to human trafficking, to violence, and to child exploitation, and it corresponds to higher rates of relationship dissatisfaction, low self-esteem, and poor mental health, pornography is ubiquitous.

And what is the logic to pornography?

I open my browser, I do my search, I delete my history, and then I say, no one knows.

I've done no wrong.

So friends, if you are in a place of brokenness where you know the cycle of addiction or enslavement or the weight of that, I would want you to know a few things.

I'd want you to know that you're not alone.

You are not alone.

I know that.

You are not alone.

The second thing I'd want to say to you is something that I just couldn't say better myself.

I heard it on a podcast recently.

A pastor named Joshua is being interviewed.

And before this uh young man, Joshua, was a pastor, he had a previous career in the pornography industry.

In fact, he was one of the most prominent porn stars of any number of years ago.

Josh, in the height of his career, recognized that in some ways he is living the fantasy of so many.

He spends all day getting paid to have sex with the most beautiful people in the world.

And yet, Josh said he was spiraling mentally, spiritually, emotionally, in every way, feeling less and less human, feeling more and more used and abused.

Used and objectified.

And Josh says, I got to a point where I had a plan to take my life.

But through God's providential, through God's providence, he never followed through on that, but instead moved across the country back home to live with his mom, where he took a job at a gym.

And at this gym, as he's recovering from his previous career, he met a young woman that he got to know, and they went out for a walk and or a run or whatever it was.

And Josh says, somehow, I knew deep down, I heard this voice deep down somewhere that said, do not lie to this woman.

Do not hurt this woman.

So when the conversation took a turn, and well, Josh shared where he's been and what he's done.

I've done some porn, Josh says.

In fact, I've done a lot of it.

And as he shared his story, this young woman, of course, was didn't quite know how to respond.

I think it took some time to process that.

But what she said to him in reply is this a person is not defined by the worst thing they've ever done.

And a person is not defined by the greatest thing they'll ever do.

God defines who a person is.

She asks, Do you know God?

As the story goes, Josh took this young woman up on the invitation to join her at church.

He heard the gospel, he put his trust in Jesus, and eventually ended up marrying this young woman and going into ministry.

Now, not every story works out that beautifully.

And I don't think we need to ourselves be directly involved in the pornography industry to know the kind of brokenness that Josh experienced.

If that is you, then I want to say this: you are not the worst thing that you've ever done, and you are not the greatest thing you'll ever do.

You are who God defines you to be.

That is the gospel.

There is hope for freedom through Jesus.

There is hope to be found through the cross and through the resurrection.

But it requires some radical action.

Jesus does not mince words in our gospel reading today, does he?

If your right eye causes you to sin, gouge it out.

If your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off.

Now, Jesus is not speaking literally.

Blind folks and, you know, maimed folks, of course we can still lust.

But Jesus is saying, go to any length it takes to deal with the sin in your life, lest that sin get the hold of you and pull you away from the Lord.

Do whatever it takes to amputate that sin from your life.

And friends, if we're going to do that, we need to do that in friendship and in trust and in accountability with one another.

I think the single most effective way I've seen this lived out is with those who recover from a pornography addiction by entering into 12-step recovery.

That is an effective method of this sort of amputation.

But in amputating the sin, we begin to recover the importance of sex.

It is consequential.

And we cannot just pretend that sex is just sex.

And if no one knows, then there's been no harm, no foul.

We will know the disintegration, body and soul.

Yes, sex is to be celebrated.

We need to remember that God created this to be good, and sex is consequential.

We need to take it seriously.

We also need to remember the gospel.

Sex is consecrated.

Here's where I want us to expand our vision from the book of Proverbs and track with the whole story of Scripture.

Paul's letter to the Ephesians, Paul is concluding his letter with some very practical instructions for this church family.

He gives a broad instruction to submit to one another out of reverence for Christ.

That is meant to be the default attitude of one Christian to another.

And then Paul gets more specific with this application.

Here's what it looks like in the home.

Let's begin with husbands.

Verse 25.

Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her.

With what kind of love did Christ love the church?

A complete love.

A love that did not hold back.

A love that was absolutely committed and faithful and passionate.

That's the kind of love Christ had for the church.

He went to the cross out of love for the church.

Husbands, love your wives just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her.

Husbands, you and I have a high calling.

We are called to be living images of Christ's love for his bride, the church, as we love our wives.

Now, that being the case, maybe verse 22 begins to make a little bit more sense.

Wives, submit to your husbands as your husbands, pardon me, submit yourself to your own husbands as you do to the Lord.

We need to understand, submit here does not mean the husband always gets his way.

Make sure that happens.

That is not what submission means.

The kind of submission that Paul is calling us to, submitting to one another, wives submitting to husbands, is a willful, mutual, partnering.

Partnership?

Partnering partnership.

It's coming together.

It's that one flesh reality.

It is being in step with one another as if we're in a dance.

That's the idea here.

But Paul can't help but get mystical about it, get consecrated about it.

Verses 31 to 32, you'll notice how he concludes for this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife.

The two will become one flesh.

This is a profound mystery.

But I'm talking about Christ and the church.

Sex is a consecrated reality.

That one fleshness, which is both symbolic and quite literal for a husband and wife, is meant to point us to an even greater reality, which is Christ's own completely selfless, utterly self-giving love for his bride, the church, you and I.

And you might say, Great, and that sounds a little too earthy, you know.

God would really get that bodily, you know?

And I want to say yes.

I want to say the gospel knows no boundaries.

The gospel does not deny our bodily realities.

That's Eastern philosophy stuff.

Scripture affirms our bodily good.

There is nothing God cannot direct, use to direct us to the gospel.

And this sacred act at the heart of marriage, this most intimate of acts, is meant to point us to the most intimate and profound of loves that God has for us in Christ.

In the 16th century, the reformers had to contend with medieval attitudes towards sex, which was largely tolerable at best, generally icky.

And Martin Luther writes to a dear friend of his who had been recently married, this is what he writes When you sleep with your wife Catherine and embrace her, you should think, this wonderful creature of God has been given to me by my Christ.

May he be praised and glorified.

These two things are not exclusive of one another.

Now, I'll grant you the 16th century was a very different time than 2024.

If you got that letter from your pastor, you'd be a little bit like, what's he smoking?

But the theological truth that Martin Luther is pointing us to holds.

The love between husband and wife is a living image of Christ and his church.

Sex is consecrated, it is sacred.

It cannot just be sex, because it points to the greatest love that there can be.

So what does all this mean?

It means if you are married, we are, in the words of Hebrews, pardon me, marriage should be honored by all, writes the author of the book of Hebrews, and the marriage bed kept pure.

For God will judge the adulterer and the sexually immoral.

If we are married, we are called to lifelong fidelity to our spouse in the covenant of marriage.

That is the proper hearth for this fire to burn.

It's the unitive principles, what theologians would call it.

We become one flesh in this lifelong covenant together.

And we can add to that a lifelong covenant that is open to raising children.

Children, in the wisdom of the Bible, are an objective good.

They are a good that God desires for us.

They are a good that God desires from marriage.

And orienting ourselves in openness to children is orienting ourselves to the sacred purpose, biologically, spiritually, of sex.

Now that does not mean that those who are unable to conceive have less than a full, sacred marriage.

It is the attitude of openness to children that is characteristically Christian.

Because what greater image of this passionate but life-giving union we share with God in Christ could there be than to beget children in this most sacred and intimate act of love?

That's the idea here.

To be married is to be held in lifelong fidelity and covenant of marriage and open to children.

But maybe you're sitting here thinking, that sounds really nice, but I'm not married.

So what does all this mean for me?

Here's what I would want to say.

Yes, given the subject matter of our sermon, we can acknowledge sex is good, but is not the ultimate good.

And I think we get into trouble when we pedestalize it.

Sex is good, but it is not the ultimate good.

The call for singleness is a call to a consecrated life of celibacy that bears witness to the faithfulness of Christ.

Now, celibacy is not loneliness, it is not isolation.

And we as a church family are meant to come together as a family to uphold those who are both married and single.

No one should be left feeling lonely.

No one should be left feeling lesser than.

The call for both married and single is to real connection with one another and with our Savior, neither pedestalizing sex nor diminishing the life of fellowship and friendship that we share in Christ.

Both of us, married and single, find our completion in Jesus.

So, friends, I hope we can begin to start seeing here the good news that God offers us in this most intimate of Acts.

Sex is never just sex.

That's a good thing.

Because sex is to be celebrated.

It is consequential, but it is consecrated for our good.

Would we glorify our Lord Jesus in every area of our life?

Even this one.

Amen.

We hope that you've been blessed by God's Word today.

If you live in the Port Perry area, we hope that you'll come and worship with us in person on Sunday at 10 a.m.

If you'd like to learn more about Newsong Church, we'd love to connect with you.

Please find our contact information at newsongportperry.ca and reach out to us.

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If you feel called to support our ministry with a financial gift, please go to newsongportperry.ca slash giving to make your contribution.

Go in peace to love and serve the Lord.