In the first sermon of the Real Romance: Sex in the Song of Songs series, Pastor Mark preaches on people who see sex as god, gross, or gift and that, ultimately, in a heterosexual, monogamous marriage, God gave sex as a gift.
What the Bible really says about sex
Jan – Feb (VD season; 8 weeks /+1 bonus week a)
Kids? – church – kids – students
Single? 93% marry Married? Parents/Grandparents
2/3 SOS & Real Romance Book
- Book – releases VD XO, free Tc
- Podcast – 12 Grace & I
- Daily Devos (text or email)
Pray for us, we are praying for you. PRAY
- The Bible saved our marriage – met @ 17
- 1. Dating – 2. College/Saved – 3. 1st Bible study – 4. Married
- My 1st Bible study on “fornication”
= Real Marriage & Real Romance – NOT perfect. Holy Spirit – 30 yrs
PHOTOS – #1. Dating #2. Marriage #3. Today
Sex as God, Gross, or Gift?
Sex as God
1 Corinthians 10:7-8 (GW) So don’t worship false gods as some of them did, as Scripture says, “The people sat down to a feast which turned into an orgy.” We shouldn’t sin sexually as some of them did. Twenty-three thousand of them died on one day.
- OT Times – fertility cults, Canaanite gods naked & poetry, Ashterah poles, sex temples & prostitutes (e.g. Hinduism had prostitutes & Kama Sutra til recently)
- NT Times – Greek perversion, Corinth & Temple Aphrodite 1000 prost. M&F
Today – 1960’s/1970’s – cultural experiment
4 Horsemen: 1. Free Love 2. Birth Control 3. Abortion 4. Porn
- Rom. 1 – Creator & Created (worship) =w/ Body 12:1 “body living sacrifice”
= Religion =Denoms. -Evan. -Kids min Drag Queens running Sunday School
= Passions outside hearth of marriage burn everything down
?YOU?
Sex as Gross
Titus 1:15 To the pure, all things are pure, but to the defiled and unbelieving, nothing is pure; but both their minds and their consciences are defiled.
NT Greek Dualism – Socrates, Plato, Aristotle
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- Tertullian & Ambrose – preferred extinction humanity to sex.
- Origen – allegorized SOS & castrated self
- Chrysostom – Adam & Eve no intimacy before fall
- Jerome – threw self into sticker bushes when tempted
- Gregory of Nyssa – Adam & Eve w/o desire & pregnant Eden vegetation
? Fruit of the Tree of Marvin Gaye & Smoky Robinson ??
Middle Ages
Catholic Church 1. Single Priests 2. Manual – over ½ yr forbidden
= Protestant Reformation (priest = anti bucket list)
Victorian Age – extreme modesty & utter silence, woman w/o ankle, ?? table legs ??
Today
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- Sinners & victims (abuse/trauma) ¼ women; 1/6 men
- Bad Bible teaching (1. Only negative, 2. Kids – scare or prepare?)
= Sexless marriages – stats vary up to 20% zero in last year
=Valentine’s Day conference couples
?YOU?
Sex as Gift
Genesis 2:18, 24-25 “the Lord God said, “It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him.”…Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh. And the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed.
- Sex (male/female) 2. Gender (masc/fem) 3. Sexuality (1 man/woman Cons. Cov.)
-“one” “not ashamed” = standard beauty
US = – Grace (Gross) Mark (God) = both got to (Gift)
God’s Divine Marriage Design
- Pleasure (Song of Songs)
- Children (Genesis 1:28)
- Oneness (Genesis 2:24)
- Knowledge (Genesis 4:1)
- Protection (1 Corinthians 7:2-5)
- Comfort (2 Samuel 12:24)
Real Romance in the Song of Songs
- Only book Bible only about marriage
- 3000 yrs ago
- 1st philosophy
- Poetic – not clinical or crass
- Love songs between couple
- Read @ Passover, sung in pubs, not til married or 30
- No God (8:6?), not quoted NT,
- Characters – (COMMUNICATION)
- Husband – 6 X Solomon 4X King
- Wife – Abishag? Abbi (cared David, killed bro asking marry, working class, region)
- Friends – “wise counsel”
-Fun Fact #1. – never made into a Veggie Tale
-Fun Fact #2. – badly taught (allegory: Bernard Clairvaux , St. John Cross, Aquinas)
-80 concubines are not the 80 heresies
-2 breasts are not the OT & NT give us pure milk of Word
– Sachet myrrh resting between the 2 breasts not Christ between Old & New Covenant
GRACE UP FOR Q&A