R-Rated

Sex is great. I like it. I suspect that when God created it he meant it for good.

However it also turns out that in this day, sex is a great way to market and draw attention to things.  Last week we heard about the facebook appeal against tribalism. It read something like this –

SEX!! …now that I have gotten your attention, Tribalism is not good – pray for Kenya.

If sex is good, and it sells then why should we be concerned about what we see in our world? Is there a problem with what we are seeing?

Today we begin a series – Sex Files, living in an R-rated world. This month we take an honest look at ourselves, and our world, against the mirror of God’s Word. We will also pick out some practical things to help us thrive in the area of our sexuality.

If sex is good, and it sells then why should we be concerned about what we see in our world?

Like I said – It is used to sell – commodities, jobs, movies. Breakfast shows.

This seems to have become normal. Our world is R Rated. You need it – sex will get it for you. Sex seems to have become a currency – poverty eradication method [Facebook group – campus divas for rich men]. It is a medium of exchange in our world.

Sex is the answer. What is your question?

What then is the problem? Our normal has changed! That seems to be the problem.

Picture with me this scenario

–       Say I am doing something normal, in my room watching a movie. The people start kissing and undressing. Then my mum walks in with my 7 year old Nephew. Why is it that there is an awkwardness? It was supposed to be normal – but it really isn’t. Something inside of us resists and is pricked by what we call normal.

Let me explain.

–       People watch porn – soft or hard. It is normal. Why don’t they put porn watching as a hobby in their resume?

–       Why do people tend to watch porn on their own not with visitors ?

–       Why don’t people tell my aunties and uncles they are having sex with their boyfriend?

–       How come people can discuss sex with my boys but not with my dad?

–       Why do people change the channel when some people enter your car?

–       Why do people feel the need to change their toilet reading material when the pastor or life group is in the house?

–       Why was 80’s TV show Tushauriane banned and we wonder what the issue is? If Tushauriane was today what time would it be shown?

–       Why do we keep affairs quiet? It is not called clandestine for nothing. Why doesn’t it make it into our facebook status.

–       Guys like to oogle at chicks with few clothes, but why do you have an issue if it is your sister or your daughter – dancing in nothings.

Either many of us have double standards or there is something wrong with our normal and somehow we know it. Deep inside us we know it.

We are fish in dirty water and we know it. Such is the world we live in. Why? How did we end up here. I would like us to take a look at scripture our reading wil be from Genesis 3.

Scripture: Gen 3

Adam and Eve, in response to their interaction with the serpent disobeyed God and ate the fruit. God found out, for obvious reasons it was hard to hide. He was very upset and came back to have a conversation with them.  This is a conversation that affected their lives and the entire world we life it.

Verse – 17-24

To Adam he said, “Because you listened to your wife and ate fruit from the tree about which I commanded you, ‘You must not eat from it,’ “Cursed is the ground because of you;     through painful toil you will eat food from it all the days of your life. It will produce horns and thistles for you, and you will eat the plants of the field. By the sweat of your brow you will eat your food until you return to the ground, since from it you were taken; for dust you are and to dust you will return.”

Adam named his wife Eve, because she would become the mother of all the living. The Lord God made garments of skin for Adam and his wife and clothed them. And the Lord God said, “The man has now become like one of us, knowing good and evil. He must not be allowed to reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat, and live forever.” So the Lord God banished him from the Garden of Eden to work the ground from which he had been taken.

A Broken World:

The result of our disobedience to God is that everything in our world was affected negatively. The brokenness we experience in all aspects of our world is a consequence of Adam and Eve’s rebellion against God. They were banished out of a perfect world into a world full of consequences of sin.

The consequence is

Pain – in our world we will always experience pain and opposition in what we do. V 17 Cursed is the ground, through painful toil you will eat from it.

Resistance – v.18 the world we live in will resist us and make it difficult for us in what we do. Our world v.18 will produce thorns and thistles. Thorns and thistles are a nag [according to the apostle Paul]. They resist, choke and stifle good things [Jesus used them as an example of the resistance to God’s Word].

Death – our physical lives were cut short, and continue to be cut short because of this sin. We see decay and atrophy in our world. Things generally don’t get better they get worse [2^nd law of thermodynamics]. If you leave things they disintegrate.

A Broken Sexuality

This brokenness which is a consequence of our sin can be seen in our sexuality as well. This is why our world is R-rated. This is why we see what I had said before –

–       People watch porn – soft or hard. It is normal. Why don’t they put porn watching as a hobby in their resume?

–       Why do people tend to watch porn on their own not with visitors ?

–       Why don’t people tell my aunties and uncles they are having sex with their boyfriend?

–       How come people can discuss sex with my boys but not with my dad?

–       Why do people change the channel when some people enter your car?

–       Why do people feel the need to change their toilet reading material when the pastor or life group is in the house?

There is a brokenness that we somehow sense but we seem to live in. There are some consequences to this brokenness. This brokenness seems to have been spoken about in Adam’s encounter with God.

Pain – sex and our sexuality has been the cause of much emotional and relational pain – when trust is broken and relationships are fractured. Sometimes physical pain when sex is forced on us through rape.

Resistance – we find that keeping to the straight and narrow often seems to be going against the grain. It is so hard not to go with the flow and do what everyone else is doing or say what everyone else is saying.

Death – things are not getting better, they seem to get worse. Our sexuality seems to be decaying. People who enter into illicit sexual encounters are more likely to do it again, and again. When you use a sexual swear word once it is much easier to do it again. When you get into a sexually driven conversation you are likely to do it again.

Illustration: An illustration was given about how to kill a frog. Put it in a pot and warm the water slowly. It begins to enjoy the heat. However by the time it realizes that it is cooking it is too late to be able to jump out.

The heat is on in our pot – we are in a state of decay and we seem to be enjoying it at the moment. There is something wrong with our normal and we are having too much fun to notice it. The end result will be death – emotional, relational, probably physical but most scary is – spiritual death.

A Hopeful Conversation

If this is the case, is there any hope for us to be able to thrive in our sexuality in an R-Rated world. The answer is yes. God does not intend for you to enter into spiritual death because of something that he created for good to glorify himself. Sex and sexuality is not meant to be a hindrance to life but an opportunity to glorify God through a thriving and not decaying life.

This is why God sent His Son Jesus into the world for us to overcome the decay and enjoy the fullness of life.

Jesus had many conversations – and in one of these he talked about this full life. In John 10:10 speaking to his disciples and to us he said

The thief comes only to steal, kill and destroy; I have come that they [you] may have life, and have it to the full.

The serpent, Satan brought – pain, resistance and death. He spoke with Eve and sin entered. He came to destroy and kill what God had created for us.

Jesus on the other hand came so that we can have full, abundant, thriving life – even in our sexuality.

How do we access this full abundant life?

As I look at scripture there are a number of things I see we can do. We can choose to do the right things, we can made deliberate decisions to cleanse our minds from those things which are wrong, we can build the right company around us to keep us accountable.

I would like to focus on one practical area we can apply this week to help us get back to the right normal. I want to take a cue from the passages I have referred to today

You see –

o      God entered into a conversation to create men and women

o      While in the Garden God conversed with Adam and his wife and built relationship

o      The serpent is the one who came into a conversation which resulted in disobedience

o      The consequences came out of the conversation between Adam, Even and a heartbroken God. But it didn’t end there –

o      Our hope has come from Jesus who, through a conversation with us, promised a full life of abundance in every area of our lives including our sexuality

o      I think that we too can use our conversations to redirect us into God’s standard and values for our sexuality

Take out:

Our world is R-Rated. Could it be that you can change your part of your world with the conversations you enter into? Could it be that your words can begin to affect your world and the world of those around you and return us back to God’s normal? Could we end the awkward moments and the double standards we live in with what we do with conversations around us

What if

–       you made a decision not to be part of lewd conversations when you are with your friends?

–       You chose not to flirt with ladies [or men] in the office?

–       You stopped retweeting those funny but dishonorable things, exit wrong conversations?

–       You resisted all temptations to put on and listen to radio shows that you couldn’t listen with your mother in the same car?

–       You stepped out of conversations with friends that you knew are going south?

–       You as a married person – opted to reserve all compliments that have to do with sexuality only for your spouse – and not your PA, officemate, friend? You chose to affirm your spouses sexuality even though it has been a few years, several babies and one pot belly later? You as a married person chose to use your words to build the sexual life inside your family and not that of others?

–       You as a single person – chose not to allow yourself to be drawn into conversations that arouse your sexual desires yet you know that they will not find fulfillment in a spouse? You chose not to subscribe to text messaging services that send sexual messages to you? You chose not to play around and flirt with friends and even online entities who make you feel good and sexual yet are not the right people for you to be with?

–       You chose to say things about our sexuality that are right and honorable before both the older and younger generation?

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