I opened the message at Frontline last month with these words. “Tonight, we’re going to talk about sex.” Suddenly the room got very quiet! It was a memorable moment. However, I wasn’t going for shock value. The statement was true. Scripture has a lot to say about God’s plan for our physical bodies, including sex. We went on to explore a couple truths from Prov. 5:18-23. First, we learned how sex is good thing because it’s God’s idea. There’s nothing inherently sinful about our sexuality. Now has our sexuality been corrupted by sin? Definitely. But at heart, sexual desire is not a product of the fall. Second, because sex is God’s idea, he has a specific plan to maximize our enjoyment of the gift of sex, namely marriage. Our sexual desire is designed by God to drive us toward marriage.
Thus the pursuit of purity is not so much a process of saying “no” to sex, but saying “yes” to sex as designed by a loving God! The pursuit of purity paves the way to intimacy. We need to guard against viewing sex as the enemy. It’s not. Lust is the enemy. Josh Harris defined lust this way, “Lust is craving sexually what God has forbidden.” If you’re a single adult, God will not give you grace to simply try and ignore or repress your sexuality. It’s a gift from him! But he promises abundant grace to rescue our sexuality from the corrupting activity of lust. So the next time you’re tempted to give into lust, don’t think of the decision to pursue purity as a matter of rejecting pleasure for the sake of honoring God. God’s not a killjoy. Think of the decision to pursue purity as a choice to maximize your joy by running hard after God’s plan for your sexuality!
If you’d like to hear more, you can download the audio from Frontline here.
- Matthew
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