18 – Flee from sexual immorality. All other sins a man commits are outside his body, but he who sins sexually sins against his own body.
19 – Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, Who is in you, Whom you have received from God? You are not your own;
20 – you were bought at a price. Therefore honor God with your body.
1 Thessalonians 4
3 – It is God’s will that you should be sanctified; that you should abstain from sexual immorality;
4 – that each of you should learn to control his own body in a way that is holy and honorable not in passionate lust like the heathen who do not know God.
A little over ten years ago, in April of 1993, Sue and I went to Nashville, Tennessee to attend the Youth Ministry National Conference-a conference that was sponsored by our denomination’s Sunday School Board. We went because one of my mentors and heros in youth ministry back then-Richard Ross-put this conference together and he did his typical outstanding job. I mean, the break-out sessions were excellent-Richard had enlisted top-notch teachers and had selected topics that were geared to meet the current needs of youth ministers.He also arranged it so that we were treated to private concerts from all the THEN-popular Contemporary Christian groups-groups like Petra (who I think are retired by now) and even brought in some up and coming groups like Say So-a group of three girls who later changed their name to Point of Grace. And we didn’t just get to HEAR these groups, we also got to talk with them about their walk with Jesus-and even give them our input as to how they could better minister to the teens who bought their records and tapes. This was way before the invention of the CD!
I remember particularly loving the worship services at that conference. The music was well-put together and was perfectly themed to the dynamic messages that were delivered by Randall O’Brien. God spoke powerfully to all of us in those services. And one worship service that stands out in my memory was the one in which fifty teens from the church Richard Ross served as part-time Minister of Youth-fifty teens came forward in the front of thousands of youth ministers like myself to make the following pledge:
“Believing that true love waits, I make a commitment to God, myself, my family, those I date, my future mate and my future children to be sexually pure until the day I enter a covenant marriage relationship.”
Well I was moved by their commitment and decided to bring the program home to Redland. We got together with our youth SS leadership and decided to devote an entire month of Sunday School Lessons to focus on what the Bible has to say about sexual purity. We picked the month of September and called the program “Sex-tember” and we had a great study-well-attended-great discussion and when “Sex-tember” ended 67 Redland teens made the True Love Waits pledge.
A couple of months later, we even joined with hundreds of thousands of other teens in placing our pledges on special stakes implanted in the ground on the mall down in D.C. It was so moving to see the area from the Capitol out toward the Washington Monument filled with all those pledge cards-each one representing a youth committing to stay sexually pure!
Well, since that first group of teens made their pledge in 1993 Richard Ross has been on just about every network talk show. There have been articles in all the major magazines and newspapers around the world. In fact in the past ten years, True Love Waits has become a NATIONAL movement. Last summer I saw a True Love Waits sign in Nairobi, Kenya. And this week I read that the African nation of Uganda-where HIV/AIDS was rampant three years ago with 30% of the population was infected-this week I read that the leaders of Uganda cite their True Love Waits program as the reason for their remarkable drop in HIV/AIDS infections. Today it is less than 10%!
I share all this to help you see that True Love Waits is a big deal! Stats show that since April of 1993 more than a million young people world wide have signed covenant cards containing this pledge. Among the boosters of this program is President Bush who forwarded a letter to youth at a TLW rally at Wedgwood Baptist in Fort Worth, Texas in which he said,
“Your decision to remain sexually abstinent until marriage is the right choice. Your commitment to abstinence from now until you’re married demonstrates great strength, great conviction, and great wisdom. I encourage you to actively live out the faith and principles that led you to sign the abstinence pledge.”
To back up his words the Bush administration plans to increase federal funding for abstinence programs by nearly a third-to as much as $135 million in 2003. And, in my opinion, this is a wise investment of our tax dollars because True Love Waits and programs like it work-not only in other nations like Uganda but here in the U.S. as well! In fact, all the polls show that since the inception of these programs in churches and even public schools-sexual activity among teens in our nation has declined! 65% of students recently surveyed said they had not yet been physically intimate. In 1991 that rate was only 54%-a difference of 11%! Statistics also show that teen pregnancy rates are down and so are abortions.
Well as you know, this weekend our own youth have been involved in an “in-house” True Love Waits retreat experience. They’ve been studying what the Bible has to say on this issue. And several of them are here today to make their True Love Waits pledge public. Steve will you come know and lead us in this part of the service?
COMMITMENT SERVICE
Congratulations RBC UTH! Now, Steve and I felt it would be good for me to cap off our youth’s study this weekend by dealing with this subject from the pulpit.And many of you as adults may wonder why. I mean why take precious sermon time to address this issue?
Well there are a number of reasons.
a. First of all, I think we need to deal with this sensitive issue simply because…you and I hear so much about sex these days.
From television to magazines and the entertainment industry, we are constantly bombarded with sexual messages and innuendoes. This week as I studied I wasn’t really surprised to read that “SEX” is the most frequently used word on search engines on the Internet. It is also the most popular “hook” used to attract viewers to mainline talk shows and films. Sex is used to sell everything from perfume to high performance vehicles. Ours IS a SEX-saturated culture.
And…unfortunately, society’s slant on sex tends to be totally contrary to that of Scripture.
In fact, I defy you to listen to a conversation at the office without an off-color joke eventually emerging or to read the newspaper without finding a sexually explicit advertisement or to make it through a night of television without finding somebody who’s climbing into bed with somebody he or she is not married to. By the way, do you realize that 90% of all sexual encounters on television and the movies are between unmarried people? In fact, before the average American turns eighteen he or she has witnessed more than seventy thousand images of sex or suggested sexual intercourse between people who aren’t wed to each other.
And our media’s overwhelming message in all this is very one-sided. It teaches that sex is fun, easy, expected, perfectly harmless, no big deal, and that it’s a natural part of the dating scene. As a result our nation’s moral code has slipped such that things we would never show on stage or screen in the past are now all over the place. One of the greatest examples of this is found in many of today’s voyeuristic reality TV shows.
In Karl Menninger’s book Whatever Became of Sin? He admits, “In a discussion of the sin of lust we have to allow for a considerable shift in the social code during the past century.
It has been called a [sexual] revolution, and perhaps it is. Many forms of sexual activity which for centuries were considered reprehensible, immoral, and sinful anywhere and their public exhibition simply anathema, are now talked and written about and exhibited on the stage and screen.”
Menninger has hit the mark here. I mean the truth is NO ONE BLUSHES ANYMORE! Pretty much anything goes-even those things that clearly exceed God’s written boundaries.
b. And then a second reason I think it is important to deal with this from the pulpit is because in the midst of all this sex-saturated media, the church is often silent on the topic.
Recently the chaplains at the University of Nebraska took a survey of incoming freshmen and asked them this question:
“How much influence did your church play on your views of sexuality?”
Of the freshmen surveyed, only 2 percent said that they church had ANYTHING to do with their views of sexuality-ONLY 2 PERCENT! I think these young adults replied in this way because down through the years pastors have said very little about this subject from their pulpits. And often, when Christian leaders HAVE dealt with this topic, they’ve misinterpreted the Scripture’s teachings. They’ve said things like, “Sex is dirty. Save it for the one you love.” Well, sex isn’t dirty! Nothing God has made is! When physical intimacy is practiced as God intended it is a pure thing-a wonderful thing! In any case, due to this fact that the world says so much about sex and the church so little, many people-some of them Christians-have come to believe that, while God may be omniscient and omnipotent and while He’s certainly holy and merciful, the truth of the matter is that when it comes to sex, people really know better than He does. More and more people have come to think that the Bible is outdated and outmoded when it comes to this issue.
And-nothing could be farther from the truth because God’s word contains everything that is true and lovely and right about sexuality. And, unlike today’s media and the silent church, God’s written Word tells it like it REALLY is: from the RAPTURE of married love, to the AGONY of adultery, from the struggle for sexual purity to the ever-present temptations of desire.
So, basically we are dealing with this topic today because as Christians need to decide. Will we listen to culture or to the Creator when it comes to this issue?
We must realize that if Jesus is truly Lord of our lives-then He is Lord of all of our lives which means we acknowledge and yield to His Lordship when it comes to our sexuality.
c. And then a final reason I think we should join our youth in this study today is because we are a church family.
We work together here at Redland to raise our kids-so all of us have the responsibility of praying for our teens as they seek to stay sexually pure. As members of this church it is our job to hold them accountable to the pledge they have made this weekend and I want us to help prepare ourselves for this task by answering three questions:
! What exactly is true love?
! Why does it wait?
! What if I didn’t? What if I have already sinned in this area?
1. So first of all, what exactly is true love?
Now this is not necessarily an easy question to answer-as illustrated by a classic Peanuts strip I came across this week. Peppermint Patty says to Charlie Brown, “Explain love to me Chuck.”
“You can’t explain love,” Charlie Brown replies. “I can recommend a book or a painting or a song or a poem, but I can’t explain love. I mean, let’s say I happen to see this cute little girl walk by and I…” At this point, Peppermint Patty breaks in and says, “Why does she have to be cute Chuck? Huh? Can’t someone fall in love with a girl who isn’t cute and who has freckles and a big nose? Explain THAT, Chuck!” Charlie says, “Well maybe you’re right Patty….Let’s just say then, that I happen to see this girl walk by who has a great big nose, and …” Patty interjects again, “I didn’t say GREAT big nose Chuck!” To which the now flattened Charlie Brown replies, “Not only can’t you EXPLAIN love. Actually, you can’t even TALK about it.”
Well love is hard for us to explain isn’t it? And since it is, let’s go to the “human being instruction manual for life” for help. Of course, I’m referring to the Bible. How does it define TRUE love? And I want you to realize that this is an important question for us to be able to answer if we’re going to help our teens keep this pledge because as Josh McDowell says, “TRUE love DOES make sex right.” And when he says that he of course is referring to TRUE, BIBLICAL love. You see the problem is most young people today are working from a counterfeit standard of love-one that says love permits sex without boundaries, which of course is contrary to God’s definition of TRUE love. Well, God’s Word has a lot to say about this subject but I think the best, most concise description of True love is found in 1 Corinthians 13 where it says,
“Love is patient and kind. Love is not jealous or boastful or proud or rude. Love does not demand its own way. Love is not irritable, and it keeps no record of when it has been wronged. It is never glad about injustice but rejoices whenever the truth wins out.” (NLT)
Now, this beloved text says a great about TRUE love, doesn’t it-but in the interest of time, let me pull from it a few important characteristics:
A. And first of all, it teaches that it is UNCONDITIONAL.
True love does not “demand its own way.” It does not say, “I love you but only if you do this with me….” or “I love you when…” or “I love you because…” No-TRUE love-REAL love-BIBLICAL love-is a love that says, “I will love you no matter what!” It is a love that is not contingent on being earned. And, it’s the kind of love God has for us. Paul talks about it in Romans 5:8 when he says, “God demonstrates His love-TRUE LOVE- toward us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” In other words, we don’t have to DO anything to get God to love us. He loves us in spite of the ugliness of our sin-and that is TRUE love. That’s the REAL thing!
A comedian once told the story of a young man who spotted a beautiful young lady walking down the road. He fell in right behind her and followed her for several blocks. Finally the young lady wheeled around and demanded, “Why are you following me?” With fervent emotion he replied, “Because you are the loveliest thing I have ever seen, and I have fallen madly in love with you at first sight. Please be mine.” The young lady responded, “You only have to look behind you and you will see my younger sister who is ten times more beautiful than I.” He turned around quickly and saw the ugliest girl he had ever seen and replied, “Hey! You lied to me!” So did you, the girl replied. “If you were so madly in love with me, why did you turn around?” This wise young lady knew that this man’s love was not true. It was conditional on physical beauty and attraction and as such it was not the real thing!
B. And then this text also teaches that REAL love is SELFLESS.
“It is not SELF-seeking.” It is not a love that constantly works to have it’s wants and needs met but rather focuses on the needs of the other person. It’s the kind of love described in 1 John 3:16 which says, “This is how we know what [TRUE] love is-Jesus Christ laid down His life for us-and we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers.” McDowell defines it this way, “True love is making the security, happiness, and welfare of the other person as important as your own.”
C. This leads to the third characteristic of TRUE love. It is PATIENT.
It is a love that does not demand instant gratification. It is a love that acknowledges God’s loving boundaries and is willing to wait for marriage. Now, waiting is hard for us because we live in an age of instants: microwaves give us instant cooking. Credit cards give us instant buying. Cell phones give us instant communication. Jets give us instant travel. We don’t have to wait for much of anything anymore. But the Bible teaches that waiting is important and one reason it does is because the best things in life take time. I mean slowly cooked fresh food is more attractive; it tastes better and it’s better for you. Things that we have to work and save for are more precious to us. Fast travel will get us to our destination in a hurry but we miss a lot of scenery along the way. Cell phone conversations are handy but they are not near as good a form of communication as taking the time to sit down and talk with someone face to face. I mean, life teaches us over and over again that PATIENT WAITING is a good thing! And God has designed us such that when it comes to physical intimacy PATIENCE is vital. Sex is one of His greatest gifts to us but it was designed for marriage.
D. And then one other thing I want to note-and hear me in this-TRUE LOVE is a love that can only be expressed by people who tap into the power of GOD.
As I pointed out to a young couple whose marriage I performed recently, the love described in 1 Corinthians 13 is a PERFECT love-the kind of love you only see coming from God. I mean, have you ever known a human being who is ALWAYS patient, ALWAYS kind, NEVER envies, and is NEVER rude or self-seeking? I haven’t and that’s because this text from 1 Corinthians sets a standard no human being could ever meet-ON THEIR OWN. In fact the only way I think this text makes sense is to put Jesus’ name in place of the word “love” and say, “Jesus is patient. Jesus is kind. Jesus does not envy. He does not boast. He is not proud. He is not rude. He is not self-seeking. He is not easily angered. He keeps no record of wrongs. Jesus does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. Jesus always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Jesus never fails.”
In short, Jesus always loves with this caliber of love! So you see it follows then that the only way we can TRULY love each other is to draw on our relationship with God, to let Jesus love others through us. I think this is what Paul is talking about In Ephesians 3:17 when he encourages us to let our, “…roots go down deep into the soil of God’s marvelous love.” You see, in the same way that a tree draws nutrients from the soil, we draw nourishment from God. And that nourishment is what enables us to love one another with a Godly-TRUE love-the kind of love that 1 Corinthians 13 describes. You see, the ability to GENUINELY love each other is not within us. We need an outside power source to do this and that source is God. And this is how TRUE LOVE is able to wait-by tapping into the power of God. So the truth is you can’t experience or practice true love without the Jesus living inside of you.
Okay-enough of this first question. Let’s move on to our second, which is this:
2. Why does TRUE LOVE WAIT?
And this is an important question for us to deal with because the truth is, as parents and pastors and leaders and teachers…we have NOT failed to lay down the law to WAIT until marriage. But many of us HAVE failed to tell our youth WHY and without solid reasons WHY they should wait, many teens will not! And one thing we must do to help them keep the pledge they have made is to remind them that behind every negative command in the Bible-even this one-there are two loving motivations. One is to PROTECT us and the other is to PROVIDE for us. In short, God has given us all of His laws because He has our best interests at heart! God is not some cosmic killjoy! To the contrary He has given us His laws to insure our maximum joy!
In fact, seeing God’s protective boundaries as limitations to our fun is like a goldfish thinking of the fish bowl as a limitation to his fun. You see, for our safety and provision God has lovingly given us boundaries when it comes to sex so He has designed it such that it is only to be expressed within the covenant of marriage. You see, our sexuality isn’t the result of an evolutionary accident but was intentionally and lovingly created by God Himself-and so He knows what is best for us. He knows that it is painful to sin sexually-He knows that it is costly to ignore His law. And the truth is, it is INCREDIBLY costly to do so. In fact the biggest lie proliferated by today’s media is that there are no consequences to sexual sin. Rarely does Hollywood show any consequences whatsoever from the choice to become sexually active outside of marriage. Think about it. Few get pregnant; few catch a disease, few suffer any emotional trauma. And when an unwed character DOES get pregnant, her life barely skips a beat.
Do you remember MURPHY BROWN? I know Dan Quale took a beating over his criticism of this show when the central character became pregnant out of wedlock. But he was right. I mean, her life was not negatively impacted in any way. Somehow Murphy Brown’s baby always got cared for by her live in house painter or friends. Somehow the infant rarely kept her up at night or complicated her life. Somehow the child grew from infancy to toddler-hood with blinding speed and a minimum of hassles. And our teens are buying into lies like this. I say this because a recent Lou Harris and Associates polled disclosed that nearly half of American teens believe that television portrays an accurate picture of the consequences of premarital sex. And because they do, they are taking their cues from TV which gives them nothing but a green light for GO when it comes to sex. And when they obey this faulty “traffic signal” people get hurt!
You know as a pastor I can tell you for a fact that no one has ever come to me to say, “Mark, I didn’t wait for marriage to have sex and I just want to tell you, it has been wonderful.” Or “Pastor, I’ve been cheating on my husband and it’s been great.” No-quite the contrary. They come to me and say in tears saying, “I have done this and am paying an enormous price. My family is hurting. My kids are hurting. My life is destroyed. This has cost me so much! If only I had obeyed God in this!”
Okay then-what ARE the costs?
A. Well, first of all there is a PERSONAL cost.
And, one of the most destructive and permanent PERSONAL COSTS when it comes to pre-marital sex involve one or more of the 56 different types of sexually transmitted disease-and over 15 million people pay this price every year. In fact, STD’s are at epidemic levels in the U.S.
Every day 35,616 Americans contract one and if this rate continues, one out of every four Americans between the ages of 15 and 55 will eventually do so. Some like herpes are incurable, others cause infertility. AIDS of course carries a death sentence. In fact, Dr. David Pence, an expert on AIDS declared, “We are indeed at war with a virus quite capable of destroying our civilization.”
Another personal cost of engaging in pre-marital sex is seen in the subsequent unstable relationships with lifetime partners. You see, statistics show that the more pre-marital sexual relationships a person has, the more likely they are to go through several divorces.
B. And then, the CHILDREN that are produced by pre-marital relationships pay a cost.
Not only do they usually miss out on a stable home life. They also suffer physically.
We’ve all read about the horrific polio epidemic of the 1950s. Well in 1996 alone more babies were born with birth defects caused by sexually transmitted diseases than all of the children afflicted with polio during that entire ten year epidemic. Each and every day about 1400 children are born with the AIDS virus, three million have already died from it. In addition, UNICEF estimates that nearly thirty million children worldwide will become orphans because of AIDS.
C. Third, there is a cost to SOCIETY.
I mean who do you think pays the bill when unmarried teens deliver their babies in a public health facility or when an adolescent mother goes on welfare or when abandoned and neglected children of teenaged moms have to be cared for? You and I do. Uncle Sam uses our tax dollars for that charitable purpose. Treatment of STDS alone costs the government over ten billion dollars every year. So it is not accurate for someone to say that whatever they do behind closed doors is their business. The truth is sex at public expense is not a private act.
D. But the most painful consequence in not waiting is seen in it’s SPIRITUAL cost.
The Bible says that our wrongdoing causes a separation between us and our Holy God. Part of the way this happens is that people are aware deep down inside that they’re rebelling against God so when they break His laws about sex they naturally tend to shy away from talking with Him in prayer. They shrink back from worshiping Him and stop coming to the Communion table. They quit reading their Bibles and stop interacting with Christian friends whose moral lifestyle only accentuates their own sin. They learn to plug their ears to the promptings of the Holy Spirit as He tries to dissuade them from their sinful actions. As a result their spiritual life shrivels and their heart turns numb and indifferent toward God.
There is no way to sugar-coat this. People cannot be rightly related to God and at the same time knowingly and defiantly violate His boundaries when it comes to sex. You can’t rebel against Him and expect to have an unhindered growth in your relationship with Him at the same time. So, the truth is there is an enormous cost to NOT waiting and God doesn’t want us to have to pay it so He has given us this book with it’s loving boundaries. He doesn’t oppose sexual sin because He doesn’t want us to have fun. NO-He opposes it in the same way parents oppose a car that’s careening toward their child! Now, as a church family, one third question we need be ready to answer is this.
3. What if I didn’t wait? What if I’ve already sinned in this area?
And to answer that question we need to remind ourselves that the Bible teaches that nothing we have ever done is so bad that it cannot be covered by Jesus’ death on the cross. NOTHING. We can trust that God’s forgiveness is readily available to all who ask for it. God delights-He absolutely revels-in answering the kind of prayer that King David uttered after his own sexual sin when he prayed: “Wash away all my iniquity and cleanse me from my sin.” When we come to God with a heartfelt request like that, He WILL forgive and cleanse….and make all things new.
All we have to do is (1) admit our sin, (2) accept God’s forgiveness, and (3) repent of our behavior. One teen who failed in this way and then followed these steps writes, “If you are already involved in sexual immorality it isn’t too late. God will forgive you and help you begin a relationship that is pleasing in His sight. No matter what you have done, no matter how many times you have done it, Jesus Christ has the capacity to heal, to cleanse, and to purify.”
This teen is right because as 1 John 1:9 says, “If we confess our sins, God is faithful and just to forgive us and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.”
LET US PRAY
Father God,
Thank You for our young people. You have blessed us with amazing teens with insights and gifts we need to further Your kingdom. Help us to be the kind of church family in which they feel loved and accepted and valued and treasured. Help us to be the kind of Christians who nurture them such that they grow in the likeness of Your Son. Help us to encourage them as they keep the pledge they have made today. Enable us to guide them so that they experience TRUE LOVE. And Father forgive us when we fail in this…cleanse us and help us to start over. We pray all these things in JESUS’ name. AMEN
I realize that our response to this morning’s message may need to be private. Many of us young and old alike may need to simply bow our heads and ask God to forgive us, praying that He would help us renew our minds so that we look at our sexuality from the unchanging perspective of the Bible as we commit to live according to the guidelines of our Creator instead of our culture. We all need to commit to praying for the young people who have made this pledge today. As we sing we certainly invite any of you who have public commitments to make…to do so, whether it be to accept Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord or to join this church…I’ll be standing here at the front and would be glad to talk with you and pray with you. Won’t you come, as we stand now and sing?