Transcript
For our first passage of Scripture, turn to the book of Hebrews, chapter 13, and verse 4. Hebrews, chapter 13, and verse 4. One verse only here. Hebrews 13:4:
Marriage is honorable among all, and the bed undefiled; but fornicators and adulterers God will judge.
Now turn to First Timothy, chapter 4. First Timothy, chapter 4. And we’re going to read the first three verses of First Timothy, chapter 4. First Timothy 4:1-3:
Now the Spirit expressly says that in latter times some will depart from the faith, giving heed to deceiving spirits and doctrines of demons, speaking lies in hypocrisy, having their own conscience seared with a hot iron, forbidding to marry, and commanding to abstain from foods which God created to be received with thanksgiving by those who believe and know the truth.
The next passage is in First Corinthians, chapter 7. First Corinthians, chapter 7. And in First Corinthians, chapter 7, I want to read the first five verses. First Corinthians 7:1-5:
Now concerning the things of which you wrote to me: It is good for a man not to touch a woman. Nevertheless, because of sexual immorality, let each man have his own wife, and let each woman have her own husband. Let the husband render to his wife the affection due her, and likewise also the wife to her husband. The wife does not have authority over her own body, but the husband does. And likewise the husband does not have authority over his own body, but the wife does. Do not deprive one another
— and by the way, the word “deprive” there is a word which can also be translated “rob” or “defraud” —
do not defraud one another except with consent for a time, that you may give yourselves to fasting and prayer; and come together again so that Satan does not tempt you because of your lack of self-control.
Now you can turn to the book of Genesis, the last two verses of chapter 2 in Genesis. Genesis, chapter 2. We want to read at verse 21. Genesis 2:21-25:
And the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall on Adam, and he slept; and He took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh in its place. Then the rib which the Lord God had taken from man He made into a woman, and He brought her to the man. And Adam said, ‘This is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man.’ Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and they shall become one flesh. And they were both naked, the man and his wife, and were not ashamed.
Now skip over to verse 6 of chapter 3. Verse 6 of chapter 3:
So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree desirable to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate. She also gave to her husband with her, and he ate. Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves coverings.
And they heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and Adam and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden. And the Lord God called to Adam and said to him, “Where are you?” So he said, “I heard Your voice in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; and I hid myself.” And He said, “Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree of which I commanded you that you should not eat?”
And for our final verses, verses 20 and 21 of the same chapter. Genesis 3:20-21:
And Adam called his wife’s name Eve, because she was the mother of all living. Also for Adam and his wife the Lord God made tunics of skin, and clothed them.
A very good case could be made that the subject I want to discuss with you this afternoon is one from which a bachelor ought to run away as fast as his two feet will carry him. Unfortunately, I’m notoriously slow-footed, and therefore I won’t try the running-away process this afternoon.
But an almost equally good case can be made that if a bachelor does not give you this discussion, you’ll never get it. It’s no exaggeration to say that I have listened to literally hundreds and hundreds of sermons during my six plus decades of life on earth.
And not only on Sundays, you understand. For the more than thirty years that I was at the seminary they had chapel, of course, on Tuesday through Friday. So I’ve heard hundreds of sermons on weekdays. I’ve lost track of the number of sermons I’ve heard, and I’m not interested in the number.
Just to tell you this: To the very best of my recollection, in all of these hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of sermons, I have never heard a sermon that directly addresses the subject that I’m about to talk to you about today.
So, with perhaps more courage than wisdom, let’s get into the subject today.
Let’s suppose that you had never heard the story of the temptation and fall of man before. You’re all very familiar with it. In fact, we’ve read it several times during the course of this series. But you’ve never heard it before. And you get up to the place in the story where we are told that the devil succeeded in getting the woman to eat the fruit, and then she takes the fruit and gives it to her husband.
And then you were asked, “What was the first effect of sin on the man and on the woman?” You don’t know the story, understand, in this question. There are a lot of things you might say. You might say, “Well, they fell over dead,” because after all, they were threatened that eating of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil would lead to death.
Or you might say, “Maybe they got real, real sick, because what they ate was an apple.” Obviously, of course, we don’t know it was an apple. But they ate a piece of fruit that was probably poisoned, and they got real sick.
Or you might have said, “Well, they probably went out of their heads a little bit, and started running around the garden wildly, and they were kind of temporarily insane,” and a lot of other things that you might have guessed.
But I’m betting that you would not have guessed the correct answer. I’m betting that you would not have guessed it unless you already knew the story.
What was the first effect that sin had on Adam and Eve as recorded in the Scriptures? Here it is: They became ashamed of their own bodies. May I repeat that? They became ashamed of their own bodies.
Did you notice that in chapter 3, verse 7, right after the man eats, it says, “Then the eyes of them both were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together and made coverings.” They’re embarrassed by the fact that they are naked.
And a little bit later on, when they hear the voice of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, they hide themselves. And God says to Adam, “Where are you?” And Adam says, “I heard Your voice in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; and I hid myself.”
And God’s answer is very revealing: “Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten of the tree of which I commanded you not to eat? If you are suddenly conscious of your nakedness,” says God, “it’s probably — it is certainly — because you committed sin.”
The first effect of sin on the man and the woman was embarrassment about their own bodies. And that wasn’t the way it was before sin, was it?
As we just read, when God made a deep sleep fall on Adam and took out the rib and created the woman and brought the woman to Adam to be his helpmeet, Adam was glad to see her, and he calls her name “Woman.”
And then we are told that, “… they were both naked, the man and his wife, and they were not ashamed.” They were not ashamed.
So the first part of my message this afternoon, the first point that I want to make, is a very simple one. Shame about our bodies is the effect of sin, not the effect of creation.
And it is a very natural extension from that to say that shame about the physical intimacy between husband and wife that takes place with the body generally unclothed is a natural outgrowth, or the natural result of the initial effect of sin on the man and on the woman.
Now, in my words to follow, I will occasionally use the word “sex,” though I prefer to use the word “physical intimacy.” And just to make it clear, when I say “physical intimacy,” that’s what I mean.
I want to suggest to you that the children of Adam and Eve have never been able to completely escape their embarrassment about their bodies and about the physical intimacy that takes place in marriage.
Now you may want to say to me, “Looking at our society and culture today, I don’t think that’s right. It appears to me that people have lost their shame.” So now we get dirty jokes on all of these talk shows and sitcoms. Now we have pornographic materials sold at any number of stores. Now we get nudity on the television screen and on the movie screen.
And our initial impression is that the society has lost its embarrassment. Now, let’s not jump to conclusions. Sometimes the way human beings hide their basic shame is to get out front and pretend that they’re not ashamed.
If you look a second time at our culture you will notice, of course, that there are still laws about public nudity which the police enforce. There are still laws about pornographic material, about how old you have to be before it’s legal to sell you that material. There are rating systems for our movies which warn us about the possibility of nudity, and so on, on the movie picture screen.
I don’t think that the culture has outgrown its embarrassment. Tomorrow our president will probably have one of the most embarrassing experiences of his life. He is scheduled to testify, as you know, on a videotape for the grand jury.
This morning’s paper said that according to sources close to the president, he will admit to an inappropriate relationship with Monica Lewinsky. Now whether he will actually do that or not remains to be seen. And the implication was that he won’t use the word “sexual,” but he’ll use the word “inappropriate relationship.”
And a lot of Americans don’t want to hear about it. They won’t talk about it or think about it. They think it is terrible to invade the privacy of the president, and they’re probably thinking, many of them, “I wouldn’t like my privacy invaded the way the media and everybody, including Ken Starr, are invading the president’s privacy.”
I think that our culture still retains a very powerful undercurrent of embarrassment about physical intimacy and about the unclothed human body. But I’m not concerned with the culture, particularly.
I’m concerned right now with Christian couples, because this embarrassment that is part of our inheritance from Adam and Eve can invade the bedroom, and it can impair the physical intimacy that should exist between the husband and his wife.
Many years ago I was sitting out on the front lawn with a young Hispanic friend of mine. He was getting ready to get married, and I was scheduled to perform the marriage. If I mentioned his name there would be quite a few of you sitting at the table here who would recognize his name. And I did, in fact, perform his marriage.
And I’ll never forget what he said to me that night. We were talking about the physical intimacy that takes place in marriage. We were not talking about immorality. We were not talking about the improper use of that kind of physical intimacy.
And he said this to me. He said, “I know it’s a sin, but…” I don’t remember the rest of what he said because I was struck by the fact that he was talking about the physical intimacy inside of marriage, and he said to me, “I know” — not “I think” — “I know that this is sin.”
And I was sitting there thinking to myself, “This young man doesn’t understand the Bible, and his opinion about physical intimacy in marriage is the exact opposite of the Bible.”
You say, “How do you know that?” Answer: The Bible tells me so, okay? We read the verse in Hebrews 13, verse 4, “Marriage is honorable among all, and the bed” — obviously a reference to physical intimacy — “and the bed is undefiled.”
Now, fornicators and adulterers, God will judge them. That is unclean. That is legitimately embarrassing. That is something that God will deal with. But marriage is honorable, and physical intimacy is not defiled.
When I used to teach kids, one of my favorite questions to the kids was, “Who is stricter, God or the devil?” And I loved to ask that question because they always got it wrong — always.
And they never answered it right. They always told me God was stricter, because their image of the devil was that the devil is the person who taps you on the shoulder and says, “Go out and do anything you want to. Break all the commandments. Do what you want to.”
And so that’s the answer I always got: God is stricter than the devil. I said, “No, the devil can actually be stricter than God,” and then I referred them to the passage we read a little bit ago in First Timothy, chapter 4.
“The Spirit says expressly that in the latter times some shall depart from the faith, giving heed to seducing spirits and doctrines of demons, speaking lies in hypocrisy.” And then it says, “…forbidding to marry, and commanding to abstain from foods which God has created to be received with thankfulness.”
What do the demons teach? Well, if the devil can’t get you through letting you just break — kick all the traces — well, he’s got another method, and he tells you, “Physical satisfaction is wrong.”
Have you ever heard the expression, “It was so wonderful, it was sinful”? That testifies to the innate feeling that human beings have that if it’s really, really wonderful, it’s really, really enjoyable, especially as it concerns the body, well then something must be wrong with it.
God couldn’t intend us to be so happy. And that’s not what the Bible teaches at all.
And before man fell into sin, there was absolutely no sense of guilt or shame as the man and the woman lived together totally unclothed. And I can imagine that physical intimacy between them was the most beautiful thing that one could possibly imagine: two people in total harmony, two people in total love with God and with each other, and enjoying this wonderful, wonderful gift that God had given to them.
And that leads me to my second point: In a Christian marriage, if either party in the marriage approaches physical intimacy with a sense of guilt, that can seriously impair the marriage.
You talk to any marriage counselor, and I’m quite sure that they will tell you what I’m about to tell you — because I’ve heard it from people who have studied the problems that exist in marriage — that one of the major problems in many marriages is that the husband and wife are poorly adjusted at the level of their physical intimacy with each other.
Something is wrong in this, the most intimate experience that a man and a woman can have together. And when there is something wrong, there will be something wrong with the marriage. And because of this poor adjustment, marriages have been known to dissolve and to end in divorce.
Now, one of the first things that all Christian couples — man and woman alike — should get ahold of is that marriage is honorable, and the bed is undefiled. It is clean in the sight of God.
Now, you think I’ve already gotten myself into trouble by what I’ve said. Just watch as I leap right out of the frying pan into the fire.
If we really understand that the physical intimacy between a husband and his wife is a gift from God — it is holy in God’s sight — it’s only logical to conclude from that, that we are to give it liberally to our partner in marriage. We ought to give it liberally to our partner in marriage, unless it be by consent — unless it be by agreement — that you may give yourselves to fasting and prayer.
Then, after the time is over, He says, “…come together again, lest Satan find an opportunity to tempt you.” So guys, the husband doesn’t have this authority in his marriage. He cannot go to his wife and say, “Look, I’m the head of the family. We’re not going to be intimate for 30 days so I can fast and pray.” He can’t do that.
That’s not his area of authority. He’ll have to get agreement from his wife. And his wife will also have to get agreement from him. If you do it without the agreement of the other party, you are robbing your spouse. Are you with me in this?
Now, what really happens in marriages? Well, even us bachelors know some of this. The husband says, “Ever since I got home from work, my wife has been nagging the life out of me, complaining about this and complaining about that, and now she wants to be intimate, and there’s no way. I’m sorry, honey. I had a tough day at work and I’m too tired.”
The husband just robbed his wife, folks. The wife says, “Ever since he got home he’s hardly said a word to me. First, he buried himself in the newspaper and then he spent two hours watching the Rangers on television, and now he wants to be intimate. No way. I’m sorry, honey. Not tonight. I have a headache.”
What has the wife done? She has just robbed her husband.
Now, please don’t misunderstand me. I know that there are times when sensitive husbands and wives will realize, “Yeah, my spouse is tired out. He or she really does have a headache.” Or, “The kids are sick, and we have to be jumping up every five minutes to take care of them.”
Now, let me make this emphatic: If you say “no” without having a really, really good reason for saying “no,” you have not only sinned against your husband, you’ve sinned against God. Is that clear? I didn’t make this up, folks. I didn’t make this up. This is what the Bible teaches.
So, surprise! When you have physical intimacy with your husband or with your wife, you are not sinning. It’s when you don’t that you may be sinning.
Now, that leads me to one last observation. Quite obviously, this covering of fig leaves which the man and the woman rapidly sewed together for themselves was not quite successful, right? So when God came into the garden they were embarrassed, and they went behind the trees and shrubs and tried to hide out.
So at the end of our story, what do we find? We find that, “…for Adam and his wife the Lord God made tunics of skin and clothed them.” He was not going to leave them embarrassed.
Now, of course, it’s possible, folks, that God could have made, you know, tunics of skin just appear — just appear out of thin air — but I don’t think He did that, nor does anybody else think He did that. In all probability, in order to get these tunics of skin, God had to kill one or more animals.
He had to kill one or more animals. And even though the man and the woman didn’t die when they ate the fruit, somebody else died. Innocent creatures died that day because of the sinfulness of man. And God took their skins and clothed the man and the woman.
Now, it has often been pointed out, and I think correctly so, that right here we have the first example of animals being killed because of the sin of man, and we have it running all the way through the Old Testament in the sacrificial system. And we know that they all look forward to the ultimate sacrifice for sin, the Lord Jesus Christ, of whom John the Baptist said, “Behold, the Lamb of God that takes away the sin of the world.”
And I want to conclude my discussion with you by making this very simple suggestion: If you do suffer from a sense of shame or guilt or anything like that in the process of physical intimacy, you need to remember the cross of the Lord Jesus Christ.
If you are a Christian, and everyone here today is, when you believed in the Lord Jesus Christ, God washed you of all your sins. He dressed you. He dressed you in the robe of His own righteousness. He covered up everything that you need to be ashamed of, and you are free to enter into physical intimacy with your partner because the sacrifice of Christ has covered everything.
Now wait — let’s face the facts, shall we, folks? A lot of people, when they get married today, are not having physical intimacy for the first time. They’ve had it before in situations that God does not approve of, in situations that are wrong.
And it is very easy to bring into the marriage the feeling, “I’m dirty. I’m already dirty.” And if the person thinks this was always dirty, they’ll feel even dirtier when they are engaged in physical intimacy.
So, what is the solution to our embarrassment? May I suggest, it’s faith? Just as we are saved by faith in Christ, so we should enter the physical intimacy of marriage with faith: faith, first of all, that our sins are all forgiven by the blood of the Savior; secondly, faith that God’s Word is true when He says, “Marriage is honorable among all, and the bed is undefiled”; and faith that in acting as we do with our spouse, we are obeying the Lord, we are doing what is pleasing in His sight.
How many parents, how many husbands and wives, enter into physical intimacy that way? I don’t know the answer, but you answer it for yourself.
If you do not have this kind of guilt-free experience before God, then the chances are good there is something you’re not believing that God has told you in the Scriptures.
You know, if I were a parent and I had kids reaching adolescence, I’d want to have a talk with them. If I had a boy, I’d do the talking myself, but if it was a girl, I’d let my wife do the talking.
And I think the talk should go something like this: “Son, in the years from now on, you’re going to find that you have new physical feelings and new physical desires that are new to you and strange, and they sometimes seem hard to control. The first thing I want to tell you is that there’s nothing wrong with these feelings. There’s nothing wrong with these desires. That’s the way God has made us. He has created us to have these desires.
Now, God wants us to use these desires and satisfy these desires in an appropriate way, and God’s way of satisfying these desires is within the framework of marriage. And if you try to fulfill these desires outside of marriage, you will find that the results are very bad. You will find that you will feel guilty about it. You will find that when you finally do get married, your experience of this with your spouse may be diminished and may be tarnished; it may be damaged.
And the very best thing that you can do is to reserve yourself for the life partner that God will give to you. And then within that life partnership, be happy to give this satisfaction to your partner and to enjoy the process of giving.”
Now, if you’re a parent and that’s not your philosophy of this, how can you talk to your kids like that? You can’t. Right? You can’t.
So let’s get with it. If there’s any problem here, let’s get with it, and let’s make sure that if we do talk to our kids, we’re not being hypocrites — that what we tell them is the proper experience of physical intimacy is the experience that we accept and believe in and enjoy with our partner.
So my bottom line: The next time that you are physically intimate with your partner in marriage, say to yourself, “I’m so thankful for this wonderful privilege of giving pleasure to my partner.” Don’t enter it selfishly. Think in terms of it being a gift that you give to your partner.
“I’m so glad that God has privileged me to give this to my partner in marriage,” and then remember what the Scripture said, what Jesus said, “It is more blessed to give than to receive.”
If we would stop being so selfish, we would stop being so guilty, and we would treat this intimacy as a privilege that God has put in my hands to give happiness to my partner, it would not only reshape our experience of physical intimacy, it would immeasurably improve our marriage.