The Church's Obsession with Sex

The Church's Obsession with Sex

Heb.13:4 Marriage is honourable in all, and the bed undefiled: but whoremongers and adulterers God will judge.

And with that statement, we have the complete divine guideline for sexual relations between a married couple. God gives no directions, and He does not even proceed into the bedroom. All God does is pronounce sexual relations honorable when it is between a married couple. There are no explanations of how to achieve more pleasure or how many times a month is proper, no, God’s ultimate concern is for the sanctified use of sexual relations.

Now the culture in which we live is consumed with sex. It is a billion dollar business, and most of us every week drive by an adult book store or a strip club. When I was a boy I did not even know they existed, much less where they were. But in the Tampa Bay area a family can drive to a mall and pass open and public places of sexual immorality.

This culture even sells cars and breakfast cereals and all sorts of things through the overt or subliminal use of visual sexual suggestions. The scantily dressed women shows you a car, but a man’s brain registers the woman. Pornography is rampant and easily accessed through the internet. Even cable companies offer adults only programming. To say it has gotten out of hand is to minimize its scope and its impact on the culture.

Television shows offer all kinds of dramatic and comedic sit-coms where sex is discussed, both inside and outside of marriage, and presents promiscuity as normal and even beneficial. As we stand in line at the grocery store the magazine rack has inappropriate pictures as well as gossip about the adulterous adventures of some movie star or sports icon. And many women dress with a design to allure men to their bodies. The culture is saturated with sex.

Now in this culture lives an entity, an organism, that is called the Bride of Christ. That metaphor is designed to reveal her character and her desire, which is to please her bridegroom, Christ. These word pictures like the Body of Christ or the Bride of Christ are not just some catch phrases of convenience. These are metaphors of eternal truth and they identify a collection of sinners whose lives have been transformed by the power of God through the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Now since only God can see the human heart, the citizens of the Kingdom of God can only be identified outwardly by the lives they lead and the words they speak. The Bride of the Lord Jesus Christ seeks to remain pure and completely dedicated to her betrothed. She must carry a Scriptural picture of Her Lord living within her bosom. It is He who she seeks to please; it is He who rules her soul; it is He who captivates her affections. And although this Bride is not oblivious to the culture that surrounds her, she rejects its practices and resists its allurements.

This Bride knows that this world is not her eternal destiny, and she shows compassion even while remaining separate. The citizens of God’s Kingdom gather and form local places of spiritual community. They share a common love for Christ and His Word, and they also share a burden to see sinners respond to the gospel. But living within a fallen world and a fallen culture, this church must endure the bombardment of the culture with all its moral anarchy and earthly focus.

In these last days our children are assaulted through a variety of mediums and have been influenced by the ways of the heathen. And these children are now church leaders, and instead of rejecting the ways of the heathen they now embrace them and even teach them to the sheep. And one of the more prominent manifestations of this compromise is that the church has become obsessed with sex. Even among those who give lips service to the inerrancy and authenticity of God’s Word, sex has become a reoccurring topic in sermons and conferences and books.

In 1976 Tim and Beverly LaHaye wrote a book called “The Act of Marriage” which went into detail about how a woman can achieve sexual satisfaction through different sexual techniques. Tim LaHaye was a minister, and that book was groundbreaking since it was the most sexually explicit book that was embraced by the church. The church has made many more advanced forays into the sexual realm since then. It is not uncommon for the pastor to deal openly with all kinds of sexual topics from frequency to positions to sexual toys and even sometimes pornographic aids.

It is an open disgrace to the cause of Christ and it reveals a hunger and thirst within the church to be like the heathen. A sexual relationship between a husband and wife is between them and God. And when the church delves into this topic with thoughts and teachings outside the scope of the Scriptures, she unwittingly elicits dissatisfaction within certain marriages and it also encourages dangerous comparisons. A man has enough of a battle to keep his mental imagery sanctified without the church stirring up mental pictures that may stray outside the parameters of his own wife.

I was saved in March of 1975. I had lived a wicked life that included rampant immorality. I was 23 years old. If you had told me that one day a pastor and his wife would not only discuss their private sex lives, and not only that the pastor would publicly suggest couples engage in sex every day for a month, but that the pastor and his wife would sleep in a bed placed on top of the church building to promote more sex in marriage, I would have thought you were joking.

But such is the state of things within the church. And in today’s inventory, let us make a clear distinction between the visible church and the Bride of Christ. Many people who attend an evangelical church are not part of the Bride of Christ, and one day they will realize that they have listened to falsehoods and have followed false shepherds who have led them to eternal damnation. What a spectacle! What a tragedy! I bounce back and forth between a broken heart and righteous indignation.

The culture has presented a moral outline and the church has danced to the fallen pipers. Adultery is rampant within the church, and the divorce rate rivals that of the heathen. And yet we still think that more and more sexual information is the answer? The answer is not more sex; the answer is more Jesus! In many ways, with all their explicit teachings on how to have and enjoy sex, Jesus is treated like a cosmic pimp. Does that shake your insides? Well what do you think the Holy Spirit thinks when He enters a place where Christ is supposed to be worshipped and He hears all kinds of earthly and private matters of a sexual nature being taught and applauded?

And in these meetings where pastors speak of sex, people blush and giggle and laugh at the pastor’s innuendos and double entendres which he believes makes him relevant and enhances his communicational effectiveness. But in fact, it is an abomination to the sacredness of worship and it is an open rejection of the Word of God. While the church remains worldly and cold toward the things of Christ, she is alive and eager to hear the carnal musings of a so called pastor and the salacious details of his own sexual prowess. Who could have imagined such a thing? It is paganism at the very core and reveals a disinterested spirit about Christ. The church has learned the way of the heathen and now orchestrates her gatherings to accommodate and manifest those ways. The Spirit of God must be deeply grieved over such pagan rituals.

And some men, like Mark Driscoll of Mars Hill Church in Seattle, Washington, have taken the Song of Solomon and found all sorts of deviant sexual practices. So instead of seeing the richness of Christ’s love for His followers, he sees an open door to oral, anal, and other kinds of sex. And men like him openly teach these things as if they had a Scriptural foundation. Wesley and Edwards and Whitefield and Moody would certainly think men like him to be unregenerate. I cannot speak to that, but this I do know: These false teachers have desecrated that which was holy and sacred, and they have led millions into that which is not the Christian faith in practice at all.

If Jesus should tarry another fifty years, the false church will become more and more popular and those who wish to sincerely follow Christ and remain separated from the dictates of this fallen world will find themselves more and more alienated from most professing believers and probably part of a house church movement. Perhaps that will be a great thing. Perhaps all of us will present ourselves as children in need of correction and through much prayer and repentance God will purify us. All of us need such a spiritual bath.

The visible church which names the name of Christ has in many ways become His enemy.