In today’s climate, you cannot escape sex. It’s on billboards, in movies, on TV, on the news, and on both levels of the shopping Mall. The only place you can go to consistently escape sex is Church. Everyone else talks about sex incessantly, but churches still seem afraid to bring it up.
I preach about sex to give the church equal time. Well that is not true. To give the church equal time, I would have to start preaching seven days a week, and talking about sex every day. But you know what I mean.
I preach about sex because it is wonderful. God created sex to be the closest thing a human can experience to the spiritual unity of the Trinity. I hate to see that image sullied and smeared.
I preach about sex to heal. Tragically, when the church has talked about sex it has brought shame, guilt and fear by the truckload. Too many Christians have been made to feel dirty and have hidden because they did something that came naturally. Inevitably, when I preach on this topic I see many bitter tears. I pray a true understanding of God’s grace will heal those hearts, and enable the dirty to feel washed.
I preach on sex to protect. God created sex for us, and made us for sex. He made sex wonderful on purpose. He gave us naturally created desires for it on purpose. When you combine a natural desire with something that is wonderful, you get one of the most addictive experiences on the planet. Addictions lie to us. They worm their way into our hearts and make us believe wrong is right, and right is wrong. Throwing away everything that we love for a few fleeting moments makes perfect sense in the face of addiction. I don’t want to see any more marriages broken by adultery, or ruined by pornography. So I preach.
Finally, I preach on sex because it opens the door of our hearts. When we begin to honestly talk about our sexual struggles, we become vulnerable. Jesus does wonderful things in those times of vulnerability. He takes prostitutes and makes them into princesses. He makes rejected people feel precious. He wipes the tears from our eyes, and uses them to make us clean.
In Christ we are precious, we are loved, we are in the light, and we are clean. We will only feel that way when we open up about our most humiliating, darkest, dirtiest sins. I want you to feel clean. So let’s talk about sex.
Article shared with permission and originally posted by Ricky Jones on The RiverOaks Presbyterian Church Blog
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