Turned On

Let's Talk about Sex, Baby

2007-02-25T20:00:00.000-06:00

Because of a technical difficulty, we only got 40 minutes of this service taped - sorry about that.

Sermon Excerpt: Let's Talk about Sex, Baby

2007-02-25T19:45:00.000-06:00

This is an excerpt from Robb’s fourth sermon in the Turned On series. It actually was a question and answer time led by Robb and Vanessa. If you would like the text of the entire sermon, email vintagefellowship@gmail.com to request it.

Today is a time for questions and answers. So let me start off by asking you a question – Why do you think about sex the way you think about sex? Or, where and how were your ideas about sex formed? Our culture inundates us with ideas about sex, and many of us take our cues about how to think about sex from our culture. Some of us grew up in homes and churches that gave us certain ideas about sex. Different experiences and influences in our lives can form our presuppositions and beliefs about sex – sometimes without us even knowing it.

This month, my goal has been to give you a new way to think about sex, to give you new categories to understand things, new file folders in which you can put your experiences. We’ve had some big ideas:

- God designed us as sexual beings with a deep longing for connection.

- Our spirituality and sexuality are intimately intertwined.

- God designed sex as a means for a husband and a wife within the covenant of marriage to connect spiritually, emotionally, and physically.

- We are not animals or angels – we are human beings.

- We can discipline our desires to live within the parameters of God’s design.

- Just because something looks good doesn’t mean it is good.

- God and the culture are offering us the same thing – beauty and good sex. The choice we all have to make is whom we believe about how to get it.

My Angel Is a Centerfold

2007-02-18T20:00:00.000-06:00

Sermon Excerpt: My Angel Is a Centerfold

2007-02-18T19:45:00.000-06:00

This is an excerpt from Robb’s third sermon in the Turned On series. If you would like the text of the entire sermon, email vintagefellowship@gmail.com to request it.

Lady Folly is a porn star. Let’s not deny it. Men, by God's design, are wired to be attracted by what they see. A man’s sexual energy is connected to his eyes. The Bible calls it the “lust of the eyes.” Pornography appeals to that wiring in men by putting before their eyes beautiful, attractive, seductive, and alluring women. They give men the impression that they are open to them. A man can look at a woman in a magazine or on his monitor and imagine that she is involving him in her activities. He can have, with her, a drama-free, duty-free sexual experience that will satisfy him. That’s what she tells him.

But she’s Lady Folly, and she’s lying. She tells us that it’s no big deal. That it is just harmless fun. That it can be a few minutes of pleasure with no-strings-attached, no affect on us. But porn does affect us. Here’s how:

Porn reshapes the way men view the world. Do you remember that Friends episode, The One with the Free Porn? Joey and Chandler are flipping through channels one day when they come across a porn channel that has become inexplicably unscrambled. The janitor tells them that if they turn it off, they will probably lose it, so they leave the TV on for days. Life goes on with porn constantly present. But it begins to affect them. Chandler comes home from work one day and shares with the group how surprised he was that the bank teller didn’t want to have sex with him. What he had seen on the porn channel began to shape how he looked at the world.

That’s what porn does. Porn tells us that every situation is a possible sexual encounter. Porn tells us that sex should go on and on for hours. Porn tells us that the more exotic, acrobatic, dangerous, provocative the sex, the better. Pornography sets unrealistic expectations for sex.

Consider, for instance, a married man who is addicted porn and the affect this way of thinking will have on him. He may become distracted at work by his female coworkers, fantasizing about them. He may become dissatisfied with his wife, with the frequency and routineness in their sex life, causing him to pull away from her, blaming her for not being more like the girls on his favorite websites. As he pulls away, other issues become intensified until it is possible that his marriage dissolves, all because of the harmless, no-strings-attached folly of porn.

Porn reshapes the way men view women. Porn tells men that women are sexual objects, that sex is constantly on their minds and that they are ready to drop everything to get it on. Porn dehumanizes women, calling them “playmates,” “pets,” and “bunnies.” And it dehumanizes the men who consume it. Women are not animals, bunnies or pets. They are human beings, created in the image of God, and designed by him to be treated with respect, dignity, and love.

Porn makes sex a selfish and self-centered activity. But that is not what God designed sex to be like. God designed us as sexual beings with a deep longing for connection. Sexuality is supposed to build relationship, not to isolate people. Sex helps a husband and wife in their marriage covenant to connect, the two becoming one – physically, emotionally, and spiritually.

But porn makes sex about me. Me, alone in front of my computer. Me, alone watching a DVD. Me, alone in a sex shop. Me, alone with my fantasies. Porn causes us to step outside of the parameters of God’s design for our sexuality. And that can have profound negative consequences on who we are as people and on the course our lives take.

This is as good a time as any to make a statement about masturbation. Some think masturbation too is harmless fun, a no-big-deal release of sexual energy. But let me ask you this – knowing that God has designed sexuality as an expression of our longing for community and connection, how does masturbation fit into that design? Does it isolate or connect? Does it foster purity or lust? Is it self-centered in its orientation or self-sacrificing?

Lady Folly is a porn star. She tells us that she can deliver satisfaction and happiness, but in reality, she distorts and destroys the sexuality God has designed. Just because it looks good doesn’t mean it is good.

I Want Your Sex

2007-02-11T20:00:00.000-06:00

Sermon Excerpt: I Want Your Sex

2007-02-11T19:45:00.000-06:00

This is an excerpt from Robb’s second sermon in the Turned On series. If you would like the text of the entire sermon, email vintagefellowship@gmail.com to request it.

God designed me as a human being. Say that with me – God designed me as a human being. Whenever we dehumanize ourselves or someone else by trying to be angel or an animal, we step outside of God’s design. Think of ways we dehumanize ourselves:

- Like when we give too much credibility to our first impression of someone – needy, fat, boring, or plain – as if, if those things are true about someone, they are somehow less human.

- Like when we tell cruel and thoughtless PMS jokes that reduce women to ball of hormones.

- Like when we refer to someone who is supposed to be special as a "ball and chain" or "my old man."

- Like when we rank people based solely on their looks without any regard for what kind of person they are.

- Like in Junior High, when we put up pictures of hot or cute famous people because we were too insecure to relate to another regular person that way. But maybe you are still "putting people up on your wall" in some way or another, still objectifying someone to cover your own junior high insecurities.

- Like when we make The List, you know the five celebrities your significant other would let you sleep with if you had the chance, as if celebrities are commodities to be consumed not people.

Whenever we dehumanize one another, we dehumanize ourselves. And we step outside of the parameters of God’s design for us.

Song of Songs

There are few places in the Bible where God’s design for human sexuality is written about with more beauty and insight than the Song of Songs, the Song of Solomon. Turn there with me in your Bibles, if you have one today.

The Song is a part of the wisdom literature of the Bible, joining books like Psalms, Proverbs, and Ecclesiastes in giving us great insight into the human psyche and experience. It was either written by Solomon – who with his 300 wives and 700 mistresses knew something about sex – or, more likely, it was written by a poet with Solomon’s sponsorship. This book is a love poem, biblical erotica, written in celebration of the sexual relationship between a husband and wife.

That has kind-of scared people throughout church history – we’ve got to be angels, you know – leading some to read this book of the Bible as a metaphor or as a spiritual picture of some other reality. But in reality, it is what it is – a love poem that makes us blush when we read it and yet at the same time makes us more fully connected with our humanity.

The poem is full of sexual imagery. Some of it sounds downright unsexy to our modern ears. Listen to 4.1-7. But I’ve come to read it as the ancient equivalent of John Mayer’s song Your Body is Wonderland.

The poem itself is like a chic flick, telling the story of a man and woman falling in love, leaving their separate lives, and intertwining their lives together. It is a dialog, a conversation, between the Lover – the man – and his Beloved – the woman. Occasionally, their friends chime in too. We don’t have time to read it all, or even a lot of snippets, so here is the big picture:

The Meeting and Proposal – 1.1 – 3.5
They see each other, and he’s captivated by her beauty, even though the odds are against them since she has dark skin and he does not. Eventually, he invites her to leave her family home and to join him in a new life together, saying, “Arise, my darling, my beautiful one, and come with me.” And she agrees. But then, as was Jewish custom, he leaves to prepare a house for them. She is left to wait and look for him with agony and impatience of young love. When the house is finally prepared, he returns for …

The Wedding – 3.6 – 5.1
He arrives with his entourage, and she joins him in their wedding ceremony, covered by a veil. They commit their lives and love to one another, and he refers to her several times as “my bride.” Their commitment to one anther is consummated through blissful, honeymoon sex, 4.16-5.1. One of the things I love about the Song is how honest it is. It doesn’t just talk about wedding night sex, it tells what can happen …

After the Honeymoon – 5.3 – 6.3
Now we fast forward to real life. They have been married. The honeymoon is over. He is back to work, out late, and away. He arrives home and wants to be with his wife, but notice what she says in 5.2-3. Does that sound familiar? He leaves, disappointed, but she rethinks it, shaves her legs, and searches him out, 5.4-6. Eventually, they find one another, 6.2-3. But for the Lover and the Beloved, sexuality has become their marital lifestyle, the way they connect with one another and convey what they share …

The Lifelong Commitment – 6-4 – 8.14
Listen to how she expresses their commitment, 8.5-7.

With beauty and honesty and humor, the Song tells us what the sexual relationship between a husband and wife has been designed by God to be – captivating, enchanting, mysterious, frustrating, refreshing, complicated, faithful, and wonderful.

Throughout the Song, a phrase is repeated that we ought to take notice of because of the way it expresses in poetry the theological truth of how God has designed us. It is found in 2.7, 3.5, and 8.4. “Do not arouse or awaken love until it so desires.”

This is the advice that the Beloved gives to her friends. She shares with them an amazing truth about love and sex and desire and discipline and design. She recognizes that sexual desire has a strong power and sway over us. But she also recognizes that it can get out of control, and so we need to handle it with care.

Sexual love is strong. It can be overpowering. When sexual energy begins to crash on a guy or girl, junior high years can be ruined. Sexual passion can lead to stalkers and obsession. It can fuel a wildfire that wipes out marriages and families, friendships and relationships.

It is not something to be trifled with. It has a proper time and place for its expression and release. Wisdom is doing the right thing at the right time in the right way with the right one. The Beloved is passing on words of wisdom to those who hear her – sexual desire is strong, and it needs to be disciplined.

I'm Bringing Sexy Back

2007-02-04T20:00:00.000-06:00

Sermon Excerpt: I'm Bringing Sexy Back

2007-02-04T19:45:00.000-06:00

This is an excerpt from Robb's first sermon in the Turned On series. If you would like the text of the entire sermon, email vintagefellowship@gmail.com to request it.

Sex talks can happen in unexpected place.

Like my kitchen.

I was fourteen years old. I was making myself a bowl of cereal. My dad walks in and says, “Robb, God made Adam and Eve. If you have any questions, you can ask me.” And then he turned and walked out of the kitchen. I distinctly remember thinking, “I just got my sex talk.” Sex talks can happen in unexpected places.

Like a theater in a mall.

So let’s pick up where my dad left off. He was certainly on the right track, but he didn’t give me the whole story. Let’s see if we can find some truth from the whole story to counteract the locker room lies we hear from our culture as well as the half-truths the church has told us too.

Genesis 1-2 tells the story of story of God creating the heavens and the earth and filling them with birds and bees and roses and shooting stars and dolphins and man and woman. Over and over again in a chapter one, God looks at what he has made and he pronounces it “good.”

- 1.4 – God saw that the light was good.
- 1.10 – God saw that the land and the seas were good.
- 1.12 – God saw that the vegetation was good.
- 1.18 – God saw that the sun, moon, and stars were good.
- 1.21 – God saw that the fish and the birds were good.
- 1.25 – God saw that the animals were good.

Let’s pick up reading in 1.26. Notice the end. It was very good. Man and woman. Male and female. Together. In the image of God. Blessed by God. Fruitful. Multiplying. Filling the earth. Having sex. Very good.

Let’s just pause for a moment and make two simple observations. First, whenever we – guys in a locker room or viewers watching a sitcom or our culture as a whole – communicates that sex is no big deal, we are out of step with God. His design for us as people is that sex is a special aspect of what it means to be human in the image of God. And, second, whenever we – the church, parents, or anyone else for that matter – communicate through our words or attitudes that sex is a gross and ungodly but necessary evil, we are out of step with God. It is good, very good, in his estimation.

Chapter two of Genesis focuses in on some of the details of how God did all of this in chapter one. God plants a garden. We call it the Garden of Eden. And he makes a man from the dust of the ground. We call him Adam. And God places him in the garden, saying that he should take care of it but not eat fruit from that one tree. I want you to notice what God also says in 2.18, “It is not good.” Wait a minute. Chapter one is good, good, good, good, very good. And now in chapter two, not good. It’s not good that Adam is alone. And God want to prove it to Adam. So he parades all of the animals before Adam for him to name them, which he does. But this just leaves Adam lonely for he realizes that he hasn’t found something that is “suitable” for or compatible with him. I mean, where is eharmony.com when a guy needs it? Let’s read 2.21-25.

So God makes Adam a wife. He makes someone who is a suitable helper, one who corresponds to him, one who is compatible with him, one to whom he can say, “You complete me.” Her flesh and bone match up with his. Eve is strong where he is weak and weak where he is strong. They fit – spiritually, emotionally, physically.

We can’t miss the editorial footnote at the end of this paragraph. It is for this reason – this compatibility, this connection – that a man leaves his own family and begins a whole new one with his wife. Their union as husband and wife – their marriage – provides the context for how they relate spiritually, emotionally, and physically.

And herein is a great truth for us – We were created as sexual beings with a deep longing for connection.

The etymology of the word sex brings this to mind. The word comes from the Latin, with an idea of separating. It’s related to words like section and sect. But in the act of sex, what was separated now is reunited. In a physical act, Eve was separated from Adam when God took his rib. She exited him in a sense. And in the physical act of sex, they are reconnected as he enters her. In the words of Genesis, the two become one.

Sexual energy, sexual desire, sexual passion is an expression of this deep longing within us. We want to be, need to be loved and accepted and understood. We were created to know and be known. There is that joke, “I know her in the biblical sense.” The word biblical Hebrew word “to know” is the word yada, as in Elaine’s expression for sex on Seinfeld, “yada, yada, yada.” We were created to know and be known. We were created for relationships.

Let me say this to you single people that are here today. I know that you may feel like your sexual energy and desire and passion is high. And I know that you are tempted to seek a way to release it. Remember that God’s design here is for sex to take place in the context of a marriage. But your sexual energy is still a good and God-given part of who you are. Let me encourage you to channel that energy into deep and meaningful friendships, into community, into the kind of relationships that foster love and peace and goodness in our world. For so many singles, their sex drives isolate them – alone in front of a computer screen, alone in a club, alone after a one night stand. Sexuality is not designed to isolate us but to connect us to our world. Both Jesus and Paul talked about how good it was to be single because of the unique opportunity it gives you to focus your energies on making the world more like God intends it to be. And that happens through the connection of relationships.

This truth that we are created as sexual beings leads us to another truth. And it is this – Sexuality and spirituality are intimately intertwined.

Notice 2.25, “The man and his wife were both naked, and they felt no shame.” Later in chapter 3, God will arrive in the Garden to walk and talk with them, as is apparently their custom. Do you know what that means? It means they were naked with God.

Another way we could say that sexuality and spirituality are intimately intertwined is this, “My sex life is about my life with God.” God is present in your bedroom. I don’t know about you, but that kind of weirds me out a little bit. But that doesn’t make it any less true. What I do with another person, I do before God. My spiritual life and sex life are connected in a way that cannot be divorced.

Adam and Eve are naked and unashamed. They were sexually and spiritually clean and pure. But it did not stay that way. They believed some lies that were told to them, like we are prone to do. And they ate from the tree God told them not to. But the lie doesn’t deliver. It rarely does. And all of sudden, they look at themselves and each other in a much different light. Let’s pick up in 3.7-12.

Immediately, when something goes bad spiritually for them, something goes bad sexually. The two are intimately intertwined. They can’t be naked with each other any more. They can’t be naked with God anymore. They are now ashamed, scared, defensive, and self-conscious.

This interconnectedness of sexuality and spirituality can reflect both the good and the bad.

Let’s talk about the bad first. Think about some words we associate with sex: perverted or perversion, deviant, immoral, indecent, lewd. All of these terms indicate that we have some sense that sexuality can be expressed in a negative way, in a way that is improper, in a way that is simply not the way it’s supposed to be. Another word we could use is “sin.”

Adam and Eve sinned by stepping outside of God’s design for them. And it wasn’t pretty. Whenever we step outside of God’s design for us – sexually or otherwise – it can have some pretty steep consequences.

If you’re in that boat today, I don’t have to convince you, and I am not here to condemn you. Rather, I am here to give you hope. Look at what God does for Adam and Eve. They are naked and full of shame. They try to cover up and hide, but they do it in a way that is inadequate and makes them look silly. So, in 3.21, God makes them clothes out of skins. Clothes that will last. Clothes that fit. He meets their need with grace and forgiveness. And in doing so, he foreshadows his grace in it’s greatest expression – Jesus. Jesus lived a perfect life and died a death he didn’t deserve so that we could be forgiven of our shame and clothed in his grace. If you look at your sex life and can sense from its condition that there is something wrong with your spiritual life, I want to urge you to look to Jesus. If you will trust him with your life and turn it over to him, he’ll forgive you and make you new and help you start fresh. If you’ve got questions about that or need someone to talk to, Aaron and I and our wives, would love to chat with you more about it.

Sexuality and spirituality are intimately intertwined. So let’s talk about the good. Sexuality at its best can be a means through which we can reflect what God is like. God made us in his image, which means we were created to be a mirror or a picture of him. And since, sexuality and spirituality are so related to each other that means that how I live as a sexual being says something about how God lives. So maybe I ought to take my cues about what sex ought to be like, not from what sitcom relationships are like or from what porn is like or from what old wives’ tales say sex is like, but from what God is like.