Overcoming Lies About Sex!
We Can Honor God Good Design for Intimacy, and Overcome the Lies Used to Seduce and Distract Us Every Day.
The world around us has plenty to say about sex, but many of the messages out there are damaging and untrue.
This message points us to God’s Word to help us understand His beautiful design for sex.
Armed with God’s truth, we can honor His good design for intimacy, and overcome the lies used to seduce and distract us every day.
By: Josh McDowell Ministry
Overcoming Lies About Sex!
Sex Is Not Meaningless
If you browse through your streaming service of choice to find a good action movie,
it won’t take you long to scroll past a heart-thumping hijacking flick.
The subgenre of hijacking films is quite popular, and their basic premise gives us a modern parallel to an age-old scheme used by the devil.
Hijackings happen when a means of transport is seized and used for an alternate—and usually nefarious—scheme.
Satan, unable to create or make anything original himself, has used a ‘hijacking’ method to pervert and destroy much of God’s good creation.
One obvious way we have seen him do this is with sex.
Overcoming Lies About Sex!
When you compare how loud the world is about sex to how silent the church tends to be, you might think sex was the world’s idea.
But you’d be wrong. Sex was God’s idea—a good gift He gave to humanity in the beginning.
By hijacking sex, Satan has perverted the oversexualized world we live in.
As the father of lies, he is behind the deceitful messages about sex that we see in movies, ads, and pornography.
His deception even extends to inaccurate biblical teachings on sex (more on that later).
Below, we will explore three common lies many believe about sex:
that sex is meaningless, that it is dirty, and that it is one of our greatest needs.
Looking more closely at the first lie (sex is meaningless),
we see that this lie portrays sex as something purely physical, no more significant than a handshake or a hug.
This can lead people to sleep around, thinking there will be no lasting consequences.
But the truth is that sex is one of the most intimate things two people can experience.
Overcoming Lies About Sex!
During sex, the brain releases oxytocin, a kind of ‘relational superglue’ that causes two people to become deeply bonded.
Even the biggest proponents of the lie that sex is meaningless have to concede this belief has its limits.
If sex were truly meaningless, we’d have no laws against sexual assault.
The entire #metoo movement would be without basis.
We know within us that sex is deeply meaningful.
Jesus taught that sex was deeply spiritual and sacred.
He also taught that sex was to be shared within marriage,
where one man and one woman are joined in covenant relationship before God (Matthew 19:4-6).
God’s purpose for sex also lends to its meaningfulness.
Four of the purposes that we find in Scripture are:
procreation (Genesis 1:28), bonding (Genesis 2:24), pleasure (Proverbs 5:18-20), and illustrating the intimate closeness of Christ and the church (Ephesians 5:31-32).
Sex in this context is biblical, meaningful, and beautiful.
I will lean into the counsel of God’s Word to shape my thoughts and conduct around sex.
1 Corinthians 6:18-20 KJV
[18] Flee fornication. Every sin that a man doeth is without the body; but he that committeth fornication sinneth against his own body.
[19] What? know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you, which ye have of God, and ye are not your own?
[20] For ye are bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body, and in your spirit, which are God’s.
https://bible.com/bible/1/1co.6.18-20.KJV
Song of Solomon 8:4 KJV
[4] I charge you, O daughters of Jerusalem, That ye stir not up, nor awake my love, Until he please.
Overcoming Lies About Sex!
Sex Is Not Dirty
Driving on icy roads can be treacherous.
Safety experts say that if you ever find yourself spinning on one of these roads, it’s best not to turn your wheel against the spin.
Instead, they suggest, gently turn into the spin until your car stabilizes.
In a spin, our impulse is to overcorrect, but it’s best to ignore that impulse and lean into the discomfort.
On the less than comfortable topic of sex, it’s often been the church’s impulse to overcorrect—
either by not talking about sex at all, or by talking about sex as something bad or wrong.
The church’s intentions may have been good:
to push against the wider culture’s obsession with sex and to keep people from spinning into sexual sin.
But such strategies have not helped Christians navigate the treacherous roads of temptation well at all.
They have only led to wide acceptance of the lie that sex is dirty.
Overcoming Lies About Sex!
For the record, sex is not dirty.
To reiterate the point made earlier: sex is a good gift from God.
In a misguided attempt to encourage abstinence or in response to their own negative sexual experiences or sexual shame,
some spiritual teachers have taught that enjoying sex is bad, wrong, or dirty.
In the biblical context, it is neither of those things.
We can look back as far as Eden,
a place that represents God’s ideal for all of creation and see that God Himself invited man and woman to enjoy the special intimacy of sex.
He even made sex pleasurable by design.
It didn’t have to be that way, but God gave sex as a good thing for us to enjoy (in the loving context we described earlier).
Genesis isn’t the only place that we see human sexuality as something blessed and endorsed by God.
All throughout the book of Song of Solomon, we read about a couple’s vibrant love for each other.
Their love is fully expressed on their wedding night when they engage in sex, enjoying each other and the pleasure of their sexual union.
If you’ve heard messages from the church or from Christian teachers that make sex sound dirty or bad,
please look again at what the Bible has to say.
You might be surprised at what you find.
God has blessed us with a capacity to love deeply,
and has given us sex as a way to express that love through intimate connection in the context of marriage.
Overcoming Lies About Sex!
We serve a good God who gives good gifts. Whether married or single, we entrust ourselves to God, who created us. He knows our innate sexual desires and calls us to wholeness and holiness.
James 1:17 KJV
[17] Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and cometh down from the Father of lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning.
Song of Solomon 7:6-13 KJV
[6] How fair and how pleasant art thou, O love, for delights!
[7] This thy stature is like to a palm tree, And thy breasts to clusters of grapes.
[8] I said, I will go up to the palm tree, I will take hold of the boughs thereof:
Now also thy breasts shall be as clusters of the vine, And the smell of thy nose like apples;
[9] And the roof of thy mouth like the best wine For my beloved, that goeth down sweetly, Causing the lips of those that are asleep to speak.
[10] I am my beloved’s, And his desire is toward me.
[11] Come, my beloved, Let us go forth into the field; Let us lodge in the villages.
[12] Let us get up early to the vineyards; Let us see if the vine flourish,
Whether the tender grape appear, And the pomegranates bud forth: There will I give thee my loves.
[13] The mandrakes give a smell, And at our gates are all manner of pleasant fruits, New and old, Which I have laid up for thee, O my beloved.
https://bible.com/bible/1/sng.7.6-13.KJV
Overcoming Lies About Sex!
Sex Is Not Ultimate
There are certain male bees whose main function in life is to mate.
They are literally designed to do it, and after they perform their mating duties, they die. That’s it.
Their whole life is tied up in the procreative sex act.
Humans differ wildly from bees in many ways, but especially in this.
None of us were made for sex.
Sex is a good and beautiful gift from God, but it is not an ultimate thing. It’s not even a necessary thing.
The actual necessities for survival of any specific human individual are food, water, sleep, and shelter—not sex.
Understanding this matters, especially when we think about marriage and singleness.
When we treat sex as the ultimate experience, sex and marriage can become conflated into one grand achievement.
This, intentionally or not, tends to prop married people up, and leave single people feeling cast down.
When marriage becomes the end-all-be-all of human fulfillment, single Christians can feel that their worth is somehow diminished.
But the Bible describes both marriage and singleness as equal ways of honoring God. One is not better than the other.
Some of us find it hard to recognize the value of singleness.
For the reasons described above, and more, singleness can get a bad rap,
but it’s important that we remember a few things.
First, every person experiences singleness at some point in life.
Some may be single their whole lives.
Everyone experiences singleness prior to marriage, and some experience singleness after a spouse dies.
Singleness is a common experience, and we should not feel ashamed, or make anyone else feel ashamed for being single.
Secondly, many figures in the Bible were single.
Jesus was single. Lazarus, Mary, and Martha were single. Paul was single.
Paul makes it clear in 1 Corinthians 7 that both marriage and singleness are gifts from God.
You are not less spiritual if you are single, and you are not more spiritual or obedient to Christ if you are married.
Your primary purpose in life, whether single or married, is to love God and love others.
Whatever season you’re in, know that God is using your circumstances to draw you to Him and make you more like His Son.
I will thank God for the season of life I am in. I will also seek to love God and others through the blessings and limitations of my life, whether I am single, married, divorced, or widowed.
Also Read: #1 Most Difficult Commandment of All – Can You Keep It? – Diademng (thediademng.org)
Overcoming Lies About Sex!
Woo !
This is deeply True.
Unfortunately, The church rarely teach this subject.
I am glad we all can openly read and learn more about this Truth.