Dr. M. Taylor Bach

Romans 1:18-25 Mark 9:42-48

Last week we began a series discussing American Idols. We defined, at that time, idol worship as placing something else in our heart or in our mind above God. It is perhaps becoming obsessed with this other thing or concentrating on it or focusing on it rather than, as the Bible requests, constantly lifting up our hearts and minds in prayer and spending much of our day, as Paul says, reflecting on the higher things&worshiping the one true God.

So this morning continuing this series, I wanted to talk about sex. Since I announced it last week, I expected the congregation to be overwhelmingly full (laughter) but you are the same people as last week! One thing that I have alluded to in previous sermons is the sense that our country has changed and it has gotten a bad reputation. One of the most shocking things I have read this past year was an investigative report in Newsweek Magazine about the Muslims who flew those airplanes into the Twin Towers in New York on 9/11. I was wondering why anyone would hate America so much that they could do that; that they could attack the two symbols of our financial institutions and kill so many Americans on our own soil. The investigative article said in interviewing Muslims, that they discovered the Muslim world looks upon America as a decadent country. They see us as the purveyors of pornography and having a complete lack of sexual mores&that we are a country that is not focused on God in any way and that we are an idolatrous country. How do they get that? Where did that notion come from since 80% of Americans claim to be Christians? How are we failing? What is going on here? The answer is that one merely needs to watch television and they get American television. I don't know how they watch it but I suppose they watch it as much as we watch it. But that has become their greatest source of believing that we are a decadent nation. When you look at the recent titles of programs on television, “Sex in the City”, “Desperate Housewives”(the implication being that they are desperate for sexual attention), “The Bachelorette” and “The Bachelor”, “Dirty Sexy Money”, and then all the soap operas and sit-coms that focus on sexuality, infidelity, and unhealthy lifestyles, you get the answer. My teenage stepson said there is a practice in many high schools of sex parties. He said teens use a phrase called “hooking up” which is a phrase that says these young people are going out and having one-night stands that involve nothing but sex. There is no relationship, there is no commitment, there is really only harm done to one another. These things seem to be well-known, especially through the internet. Muslims have access to American internet web sites.

Sexual idolatry is not new. Even in the Old Testament there were problems with sexual sin. I am thinking of Samson and Delilah. Do you remember the Samson story? Samson today might be called a sex addict. Samson was a Nazarite which meant he was born into a special Jewish sect that made vows to God to be a certain way. Only Samson never kept his vows. They were never to touch the carcass of anything dead and as we know, Samson killed a lion with his bear hands and handled its carcass on more than one occasion. In fact, he came back one time to discover that the carcass had a bee hive in it so he took honey out of the carcass. This was only symptomatic of his promiscuity. He married a Philistine woman. He was apparently with prostitutes. Then when the Philistines took revenge on him, he went and got another Philistine woman named Delilah and made her his concubine without marriage. She was faithful to the Philistines, not to the Jews. When they offered her money (one Biblical source says that it amounted to about fifteen million American dollars in here and now money) to turn him in, to figure out where he got his strength so it could be neutralized and be defeated. You remember that his strength was in his hair. Nazarites were forbidden to cut their hair so his hair was very lengthy. God had put within Samson all his power and strength in his hair, so much so that when he was angry with the Philistines, he was able to pick up the jawbone of a donkey and kill over a 1,000 Philistines, slaying them with the jawbone. So they were after him. They wanted to get him. Succumbing to the feminine pressures of Delilah, he revealed to her his source of strength. She liquored him up and when he fell asleep, she brought in people who cut off all of his hair. When he woke up, he had no strength. So he was captured. The Philistines gouged out his eyes. That was symbolic, too, isn't it? It was his eyes that led him to sin. The Gospel reading that we read this morning said if any part of your body causes you to sin, cut it off. If your eye causes you to sin, pluck it out. Well, Samson's eyes were gouged out. If you recall how the rest of the story went, he was asked to entertain the Philistine royalty in the temple. In the meantime, his hair grew back and his strength came back but they apparently didn't realize it. So he found the two supporting pillars of the temple, pushed on them, and the whole temple collapsed killing him but taking the lives of the entire leadership of the Philistine government. This was at a time when there were no kings in Israel and anybody could determine to do whatever they wanted to do. It was the period of the judges and immorality was rampant. In fact, it is a time period that is vaguely reminiscent to how things are today. People could define what they wanted to do and believed anything goes.

Christianity has probably gotten a bad rap because we have emphasized the “Don'ts” around sexuality. We have read passages like this one from Colossians& “Put to death whatever belongs to your earthly nature&sexual immorality, lust, evil desires, which is all idolatry.” Interesting that Paul defined it as idolatry as I am doing this morning. There are numerous passages in the Bible that condemn sexual immorality. Perhaps the most famous is in the first chapter of Romans when it condemns all kinds of sexual deeds,&bestiality, homosexuality, fornication, and adultery are all condemned in that passage. But lest ye think that our religion is all about the Don'ts, I want to share with you that we also have some Do's. The Do's are quite wonderful. Within the context of marriage, sex is considered beautiful, a wonderful thing. Holman's Dictionary of the Bible sums up this quite well. There are so many passages about it but here is what Holman's Dictionary of the Bible says& “The Biblical writers affirm sexuality as part of our embodied existence. As human beings, we are sexual creatures and as sexual creatures, we are called to honor God with our bodies. (I Corinthians 6:15-20). Within the context of the marital covenant, husband and wife are free to express love for each other, experience pleasure and join in the procreative act of sexual union. This is pleasing to God and not to be a source of shame.” Paul says we have freedom but the freedom is not to commit sin. The freedom is to do that which is good. Ben Franklin said, “Sin is not hurtful because it is forbidden. Sin is forbidden because it is hurtful.” Ben Franklin was a pretty smart man. That makes a lot of sense. All of us are tempted sexually at times. We are so inundated and bathed in it through the media - not only through television but also through magazines and songs that are played on the radio. There are all sorts of stimuli. Even TV commercials are sexualized. It is amazing what they try to sell with sex. Laundry detergent. Cars. They have been doing that for years. These things are actually irrelevant to the product they are advertising but they will put a sexually dressed person standing next to it. The message is, “If you buy this product, you will get some kind of sexual favor.” It is nonsense. But we are inundated with it. It is all around us. In fact, our young people hardly have a chance to be pure. It is so prevalent in their world and they are not getting taught about correct ways of being moral any place to a great degree. Our churches have failed and I think one of the reasons is that after confirmation, the vast majority of teenagers drop out of church. They come back after they have children and they want their children to have a Christian education. But so many of them quit coming to church any more. Estimates are that over 8 million teens and “twenty-somethings” have left the church. So how do we reach them? They are playing soccer on Sunday mornings instead of sitting in the Sanctuary. These are the things that are disturbing. The Gospel said, “If at any time we do something that will endanger the salvation of a child, then we ourselves will not enter into the kingdom of heaven.” We put up with all kinds of things that will endanger children in regard to sexual immorality. Thank God He has given us the gift of sex to be a beautiful wonderful gift in the context of marriage. Its purposes are for pleasure in marriage, procreation in marriage, and communication in marriage. When used in that context, it is an incredibly wonderful gift of God and should be celebrated. Paul says, “We actually owe it to one another in marriage.” But it needs to stay there.

This morning as we continue this series on idolatry, let us be the ones who don't look on sex as a replacement of God. Let us be the ones who value its proper place in our lives and teach children Biblical values. Let's keep sex in marriages, giving praise to God through an expression of love to one another and as a wholesome example to children. Ameri