We need to come back to God’s design, and embrace how God intended sexual intimacy to work. However, understand that man, opposed to God, will have his own ideas. Remember, the definition of sin means: to fall short of what God intended for our good. So, sexual sin – people fall short of what God intended. Do they enjoy it? Of course they do - God made it to be enjoyable; but there is a hidden destruction, because the wages of sin is always death.
We’ll find that the Bible warns about sexual sin; and we want to understand the damage caused by sexual sin. You understand, if God’s purpose is intimacy; and if we’re intimate we become vulnerable; it’s not surprising that damage takes place if we have sexual relationships outside marriage.
Let’s have a look at some warnings on this area. You have to remember this: that God is not against sex. God thought it up. We recognise God as the creator; He’s given us the ability to create a life; and He thought up exactly how it would work. He designed us for this; and He built in that this is going to be good. You’ll feel good, and you’ll like it. He built this into us - and then just in case we just don’t want to go that way, He puts a desire for this in us. Don’t go praying that God would take it all away - He gave it to you for a purpose.
We’ll just have a read in 1 Corinthians 6:13-20 – “Now the body is not for sexual sit, but for the Lord, and the Lord for the body.” What it’s basically saying, is that God does not want you to be involved in sexual sin; He wants you to honour Him. So, clearly, right at the beginning - keeping ourselves pure, honours God.
Just think again about His design. He’s designed us to reveal what He’s like; and He doesn’t go around having sex with people with no commitment. His relationships are covenantal - they are permanent.
Remember we saw how blood was shed for covenant between a husband and a wife? God forms covenant with us in the blood of Jesus Christ. We have communion - we celebrate we’re in covenant with God. When you have communion, this is what you’re celebrating.
You’re celebrating many things of course, but here’s the key of it – that I’m in a committed relationship with God. God has made covenant with me. I am His wife, and as evidence of that covenant, I will take this bread and take this cup, to remind me that in this covenant, it was Jesus’ own blood that purchased me. I am valuable to God. I am loved by Him. I belong to Him. I don’t belong to anyone else. I belong primarily to Him. That’s the core of communion. I am forgiven, because a Husband forgives me. I am loved, because my Husband loves me. See, it’s a marriage covenant.
We don’t tend to think about our relationship with God like that, but everything about His relationship is covenant; because He says: I am a covenant-keeping God. So breaking covenant, being unfaithful - is a terrible crime. From God’s eyes, if relationship means life, then breaking relationship is death. If covenant means: this is how God relates to us, then betraying covenant is a wicked sin – it violates the core of who God is. Let’s go on a little further...
It says in 1 Corinthians 6 verse 15: “Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ? Shall I then take the members of Christ, and make them members of a prostitute? Certainly not! Or do you not know, that he who is joined to a prostitute, is one body with her? For the two shall become one flesh.”
Notice what He’s saying here. He’s saying that, as a believer, the Spirit of God lives in me. I’m a part of Jesus’ representation in the Earth. I’m a part of the body of Christ – meaning I represent Him - He lives within me. So He said: why would I get involved with a prostitute, and be joined to a prostitute? Notice that when you’re involved sexually, it affirms again, that you become joined. He says: I’m joined to the Spirit of God; I don’t want to get involved in sexual sin - it’ll grieve the Spirit of God. Think about it, if you get involved in sexual sin, you’re taking the Holy Spirit where He doesn’t want to go.
Notice what it says in verse 18: “Flee sexual immorality. Every sin that a man does is outside the body; but he who commits sexual immorality, sins against his own body.” The word they use there for sexual sin is the word ‘Porneia’, which means: unlawful sexual relationships, or idolatry.
Now, look at this. It says: “...every sin you do, is just outside you”. If you lie, it’s outside you; you steal, it’s outside you; you break the laws, it’s outside you. Every sin is outside you; but there’s something about sexual sin that makes it different. This is why God warns about it. He says: he that commits sexual sin, sins against, or into, his own body.
When you sin sexually, there is something that enters into your body; because the two become joined, there is an entrance into you, of another person. There is a part of them that enters your life. This is why it’s saying that sin is so difficult - why it’s such a problem; because in every other sin, it’s just outside you; but in sexual sin, something happens inside you - you change on the inside.