- Wow, that was a great lunch. Welcome back. This is the session where everybody stops breathing. All right. I'll never forget doing this particular session at a conference up in Central Ohio, and we had about 200 or 300 people there. And I said, now on the last session, we're gonna talk about the biblical view of sexuality.

And then I'm gonna open it up for questions. So I talked about it, and during the whole time, people just kind of sat there looking straight ahead. All right. And at the end, I said, are there any questions? And everybody just sat there. Nobody moved. They were afraid to move.

All right. And pretty soon, there was one guy about halfway back on the left-hand side that just kind of slowly, little bald-head guy, slowly put his hand up like this. And I said, finally, we got a brave person to ask a question. So what's your question? I said, now stand up so everybody can hear you.

He didn't wanna do that. So he stood up, and he said, well, we have this friend, and the whole place lost it. Yeah, right. His wife turned all shades of red. They felt like crawling underneath the pew. But he went ahead and asked the question. I answered the question, and then the dam broke, and then we were there for the next two hours just answering questions about this.

So this is a very important topic. Now, before we get into it, pop quiz. Gentlemen, you're gonna impress the ladies again. Three things you need to remember in order to be a godly husband. I know you had caffeine for lunch, so you can do this. All right, here we go.

Number one, in order to be a godly husband, you've gotta be a, huh? Yeah? Yes, exactly, yay. Give the guys a hand. That's great, all right, wonderful, wonderful. All right, ladies, you're gonna put a smile on your husband's face by describing three things you need to remember in order to be a godly wife, and you've gotta say it right out loud, and they all start with S, remember?

Remember, a little bit more sophisticated than the guys, but you gals got it, I know you do. Ready, in order to be a godly husband, I have to practice, uh-huh? Yeah? There we go, and selflessly reverent. Submission suitable, helper, selfless. Gentlemen, give your wives a hand, okay? Good. All right, four rules of communication.

Four rules of communication. We're gonna go home and start practicing these right away. Even the kids, we're bringing the kids in on this, too. Four rules of communication that are really vital for us to understand. Number one, be? - Honest. - Number two, keep? - Current. - Number three, attack?

- Fight. - That's right, number four, act? - React. - That's right, number four, act, don't react. Be honest, keep current, attack the problem, not the person, act, don't react. Now, we wanna talk about the sexual relationship and the marital relation, in marriage, and so if you have your notes there, just grab it and pull 'em out, and we wanna talk about six main principles that will help you to understand what does the Bible say about this.

Most couples that I talk to, nobody's ever explained this to them, they've never heard this addressed in church, and nobody's ever sat down and discipled them, not even in premarital counseling was this really handled very much, even if they did have premarital counseling, and a lot of couples don't get premarital counseling.

So, what does the Bible really say about the sexual relationship in marriage? This is important, and I want you to, in a sense, grab a hold of this and hold onto this. Now, when we're dealing with this, there is a whole spectrum of views out there in Christianity, and they run from one side of the spectrum to the other side of the spectrum, let me see if I can illustrate that for you just a little bit.

There is a Victorian approach to union and marriage that basically says that sex is sin, it's a nasty topic, it's dirty, don't talk about it, you shouldn't talk about it, and there are a lot of people who are raised that way, raised in Christian homes, mom and dad didn't really say a whole lot about it, until the gals reach an age where they went through a time, menstrual changes that go on in their body, nobody has said anything about it, or very little, and there are some Christian homes that function like that.

On the other side of things, there are other homes that are sort of postmodern view, which is sex is the highest of all human relationship, and it's what makes a good marriage, if you're not having great sex, then there's something seriously wrong with your marriage. So you've got this one view on this one side that basically says it's a sinful thing, it's a dirty topic, you don't want to talk about it, and then you've got this other view in Christianity, clear over here, that says, oh no, it's just the opposite, it's a wonderful thing, and if you're not having great sex in marriage, that is an indicator that you have serious problems in your marriage.

Well, and then there are various views in between those particular views that you can highlight. So what does the Bible say? I mean, if the Bible genuinely is our guide, and the Bible's supposed to be our guide, right? What does the Bible really say? What does the Bible teach about this subject?

I mean, if it's such an important topic, and I don't think there's any Christian that would not say that it's an important topic, it is, so what does the Bible really, really genuinely say about it? So, let's take a look at this. Now, remember what we said at the very beginning of our conference, and that was Romans 12, verse nine, let love be genuine, abhor or hate that which is evil, and cling to that which is good, right?

So, at the end of this marriage conference, and people ask you, what did you do this weekend? I went to a marriage conference, and I learned how to hate more. What? I learned how to hate my own sin more. So if I am sinning in the sexual area of the marital relationship, I have to turn all of my negative emotions on that.

I've gotta learn to hate that sin, if that's what I'm doing. Otherwise, I'm not really changing, and I'm not really growing, just as Pastor just said, reminded us, that's part of the progressive sanctification of the believer, in terms of changing and growing, I want to be more like Christ.

Help me to be more like Christ, even in the sexual area in my marriage. Now, I know some of you are probably going, what does Jesus have to do with that? All right, everything. He has everything to do with this. So if you violate God's word in the sexual realm, then you've gotta learn to hate that violation.

I've gotta hate it, and I've gotta change. I want to be more like Christ in this area. So let's take a look at this. Now, let's go back, and let's go back to where we began our conference. This is a good way to start this last session. Back to Genesis chapter one, and we'll fall in here in verse 27.

So, God created man in his own image. In the image of God, he created him. Male and female, he created them. So Adam was created fully and completely male. Eve was created fully and completely female. All of that is true, and then later on, in verse 31, God calls everything he had created very good.

So, the sexual relationship and the way in which you were created in your body is a good thing. Now, I realize we have a lot of problems in our culture with the transgender type of people who struggle with their identity. They struggle with who they are, and it's only culture that has done that to them.

You understand that? That's what culture has done, and basically, they can become discontent if they have a woman's body, or if they have a male body, they become discontent with their body, and they wanna be a different body, which is very similar to what happened in the first century with the Gnostics.

The Gnostics believe everything material, everything physical was evil, and everything spiritual was good, and so the goal for the Gnostic, especially the Docetic type of Gnostics, was to escape the body, get out of the body, and this is one of the main reasons that 1 John was written, to refute that kind of Docetism.

We have it revisited today, and this whole transgender thing, this is not anything new to history, people being uncomfortable with who they are on the inside, rejecting who they are on the outside, and the way in which God has created them, and as a result of that, they just become unhappy people.

Well, let me tell you something, and I've counseled transgenders before, God does not create junk, he doesn't do that. Your body wasn't created like that, and God didn't make a mistake, you're not his first mistake in all of human history, no, no, no, in all of eternity, you're not his first mistake, he doesn't make mistakes like that, so that means you have to bring your thinking and your feelings in line with the way in which you were created, and learn to be happy with the way in which you were created as a male or as a female, this is really key.

You can self-identify yourself as a frog, I don't care, but you're unhappy with the way in which God has created you, all right? This self-identity thing is going to wreak havoc among young people today, because they believe this false notion, this horrible notion, and it's a self-destructive notion, that somehow I can determine who I want to be, all just on the basis of my willpower.

That's who I am, all right? No, no, no, you can't do that, you're going to wreak havoc. A thousand years from now, you can have sex reassignment surgery, and you can change all the soft tissue in your body, and take all the hormones of the opposite sex, but a thousand years from now, they dig up your skeleton, they'll know immediately whether or not you were a male or a female.

You're not going to change your skeletal structure. Not going to do that. God doesn't create junk. What God created, he said, was very good. That was very good. The way you were created as a male, as a female, was very good, that's not a bad thing, and it never was a bad thing.

And it's important that we agree with God in this particular area. So, God created a husband-wife relationship in order to complement one another, in order to be companions with one another, in order to experience one fleshness in the fullest extent. You're never ever going to be one flesh, not in the fullest spiritual sense that the Bible describes, with a robot that's anonymically the opposite sex.

You're never going to be one flesh. It's only with another human being that is in a heterosexual relationship. You'll never be one flesh, in the same sense, with someone of the same sex. You'll never be one flesh through masturbation, and most theologians, and I think that they're right, believe that masturbation is the first step towards homosexuality because it is the same sex satisfying the same sex.

That's the first steps in that direction. You're never going to be that way, and you're never going to understand what true companionship and complementarianism is until you're absolutely satisfied with who you are in your body, and the way in which God has created you. God called it, again, very good.

So, that's the first principle I think we've gotta nail down. The first principle is that sex and marriage is a pure and very holy thing. Sex and marriage is pure and holy. God called it not just good, but very good. This is important. And as Hebrews chapter 13 and verse four says, "Let the marriage bed be held in honor among all, "and let the marriage bed be undefiled," or let marriage be held in honor among all, let the marriage bed be undefiled.

This is a pure and holy thing. It's not a dirty thing, it's a good thing, it's a very pure thing. And in fact, how dare we call something dirty what God has called not just good, but God has called very good. So, that gets us away from that Victorian view of sexuality that somehow that says that sex is a dirty topic, it's a bad thing, you should never talk about it.

I realize that we live in a culture that is twisted in such a bad way that almost every reference to sex is a negative, God-dishonoring reference, and it tends to make us as Christians in our thinking think that sex is a negative thing, but God never created it like that.

It's a very beautiful thing. In fact, this is one of the things I spend a lot of time with when I'm working with or trying to counsel a person who is homosexual or lesbian, in this particular case, I want them to understand how beautiful the heterosexual relationship was originally designed to be.

And when they get done, when I'm done painting that mural for them on what it's going to be, all of a sudden they realize how their practices and what they do are so inconsistent with what God designed it to be, now they're changing. In fact, we have a guy in our fellowship group, there, Grace, he is formerly a part of the homosexual community there in L.A.

He was a leader among them. He was a significant leader among them. He came to Christ, was gloriously saved, and he just told me the other day, guess what, I'm dating a young lady here. I'm going, she-ass. This is so great. This is wonderful there at the church. And so it's really good to see those kind of things happen, transformations genuinely occur.

So the implication is the heterosexual relationship in a monogamous marriage of commitment is what God has intended from the very beginning, and that it is a pure thing, and that it is very much a holy thing. It's not a dirty thing. It's not a bad thing. And we've got to get those kind of thoughts out of our head.

It's a very good thing. Now there's a second thing I want you to understand. Not only that, but I want you to understand that sex is not the maces of marriage, and marriage is not a sexual relationship. This is important to see as well, which sort of gets us away from this postmodern view over here that says the highest of all human relationships is having great sex.

That's not true either. Sex is an expression of marriage. It can be an expression of one fleshness, and a couple's companionship, but it is not the form of the highest of all human relationships. It's not it at all. Sex is a very important part of marriage. There's no doubt about that.

Not to participate in it wholeheartedly, aggressively, and passionately is sin against God, spouse, as well as self. But sex does not equal marriage. Since the Middle Ages, the Roman Catholic Church made sex equal to marriage. That's the reason why when a young man, young woman in Roman Catholicism would have sex prior to marriage, they would try to get them married as quickly as possible.

That's one of the worst things that can happen. Sex does not equal marriage. Any two human beings can have sex. Any two animals can have sex. Any two gerbils can have sex. But that doesn't mean that that equals marriage. It doesn't mean that. And it never meant that in the Bible at all.

There's no place in the Bible for that. Sex does not equal marriage. Sex is an expression of marriage, but it's not the same thing as marriage. Unity in marriage that the Bible talks about goes way beyond just the sexual relationship. And I think you understand that. Let me give you an illustration about this.

Back several years ago, we had a couple in our church. Been married for about 12 years. Called me up, said they wanted to come in for counseling. I said, "Sure." So we set a time to meet. I couldn't imagine, they were a very active part of our church, very involved, wonderful couple.

They loved the Lord. Couldn't imagine what they wanted to come in and talk with me about. So they came in, I had prayer, I said, "Hey, what prompted you to come in for counseling? "Why do you think you need it?" They kind of both hung their head a little bit and sighed.

And I said, "Well, you might as well tell me. "I mean, you set up this appointment. "Why are you here?" And they said to me, "Well, you know, "we've been married for 12 years." I said, "Yes." "Well, in all those 12 years, "we have never yet consummated our relationship." Now, in counseling, you're never supposed to look shocked.

But I'm sure I look something like, you've been married for 12 years, you've never consummated your relationship, what in the world is going on here? What's happened? They kind of hung their head, and then he began to describe the fact that he didn't know this prior to marriage, but he had a serious physical issue.

And he had had several surgeries in order to correct that issue, it all failed, and now their desire to have children was quickly dying. And they were beginning to think that their relationship, their marriage, was on the rocks. Well, if I had a Roman Catholic view of marriage, I would have agreed.

Well, you can't have sex, so you're not married. You might as well forget it. But I didn't have a Roman Catholic view of marriage. I said, "Listen, there are certain ways "you can learn to fulfill one another "even without having sex. "Since he has this particular physiological problem, "and the doctors don't seem to have any answer for it "at this particular point, "so what are we going to do?" Later on, by the way, they ended up adopting two Chinese twin girls from China.

They're all teenagers grown up now. Raised 'em up in a godly Christian home. Those two girls are out serving the Lord. It's really great. But, and they're still married, and they're very happily married as well. And to my knowledge, now, what, it's probably been 25, 30 years now, they've been married, and my knowledge, they've never ever yet consummated their relationship.

I don't think they can. It's not possible for that to happen. Well, this is the reason why we say that unity in marriage goes way beyond just sexuality, which gets us away from that postmodern view that says sex is the highest of all human relationships, and you gotta have great sex in order to have a great marriage.

That's not true. Sex and what's going on in your marriage can be an indicator of certain problems in your marriage, but it doesn't mean that you've gotta be having, I mean, you look at these supermarket tabloids that you have to pass through, and they're all displayed on either side when you're checking things out.

12 ways to have great sex. You know, all that, I mean, this is just thrown at you constantly, everywhere, but that doesn't have to be true God never intended that to be the case because marriage success is much more than sexual success. It goes way beyond that. Marriage success is much more than sexual success.

You say, okay, all right, if that gets us away from the Victorian view, and it also gets us away from this postmodern, liberated view that sort of makes sex the highest of all human relationships, if that's the case, then what is it? What is it, biblically? All right, let's talk about that.

Grab your Bible. Let's go over to 1 Corinthians chapter seven. Now, I'm gonna need both husbands and wives to put their seat belts back on, the crash helmets, and flak vests. All right. 1 Corinthians chapter seven, in verse three, here we go. The husband should give to his wife her conjugal rights and likewise the wife to her husband.

Some translations say the husband should fulfill his marital duty to his wife, and likewise the wife should fulfill her marital duty to her husband. Now, when we read translations like that, we say duty, I've never viewed sex as a duty. This is something that I am supposed to view like going to work every day.

That's my duty to go to work every day, so it's my duty to have sex. That's my duty. Is that what sex is? Well, the problem is not in the terminology. The problem is in our thinking about it, because it's very obvious in our culture we have been trained to think about sexuality in non-biblical ways.

And what I'm gonna help you to do is face the fact that we need to think about it in a biblical way, because the Bible says that if you're a husband, then you have a marital duty to your wife. And if you're a wife, you have a marital duty to your husband, or to put it the way the English Standard Translation makes it, if you're a husband, then you should give to your wife her conjugal rights.

And if you're a wife, you need to give to your husband his conjugal rights. When you said, "I do," that was part of the deal. That was it. So that tells me this. That tells me that sex has as its primary goal that of satisfying your spouse. I want that to sink in.

Sex has as its primary goal that of satisfying your spouse. The goal is not getting pleasure. The goal is not having a climax or an orgasm. It's not necessarily to achieve children. It is to provide joy to your spouse. In other words, this goal is nothing about me. This goal is about my spouse.

I am focused on doing whatever I can in my ministry role as a spouse in order to fulfill my wife, or a wife in order to fulfill her husband. That is your duty. That is your spouse's conjugal rights. And to withhold that from them is sinful. To withhold that from them is sinful.

You say, "Oh, Dr. Street, you have just gone from preaching to meddling." All right? You are really meddling in my life. But it is. When you do that, when you withhold yourself from that, whatever the reason, then you're not thinking about them. You're thinking about you. You're thinking about you.

It's all about you. It's all about my fulfillment. It's all about whether I'm happy. It's all about whether or not I'm gratified. No, that kind of thinking is not a part of Christian bed. The Christian bed says, "No, it's not all about me. It's all about you." Now, God has created you in such a way that in fulfilling your spouse, you receive a considerable amount of fulfillment yourself.

But that fulfillment is not your goal. That's not your goal. Your goal is their fulfillment. This is kind of interesting because I love talking about this. We leave this to the very last in premarital counseling before couples get married. Last session, we talk about this thing. So they go off on their honeymoon.

And they have their honeymoon. And they come back and I see them there at church. I said, "Hey, how was your honeymoon? Things go well?" "Well, yeah, we had a great honeymoon. It was just, you know." "So what's the problem?" "Well, you know, we did what you told us to do.

I wanted to make sure my wife was absolutely fulfilled. I wanted to make sure my husband was absolutely fulfilled. So I did everything that I could. And it just kind of like didn't work." All right? So then I ask a few more questions. And all of a sudden, I start to discover that what's really going on in here is that she is trying to fulfill him the way a woman would be fulfilled.

And he is trying to fulfill her the way that a man would be fulfilled. And they are like ships passing in the night. All right? No, no, no. Part of marital oneness is him learning what fulfills a woman that's giving her her conjugal rights and her learning what fulfills a man that's giving him his conjugal rights.

Then all of a sudden, when they finally catch this, oh my goodness. All right? Then it happens. Then it happens. So the key here is that I am giving myself to my spouse for the purpose of their fulfillment, not for the purpose of my self-gratification. So I have to retrain my thinking from getting pleasure to that of giving pleasure because our whole culture is focused upon getting, getting, getting, getting.

It's not focused upon giving, giving, giving, giving. This brings the mind of Christ right into the bedroom where I am giving and I am giving. I am here to minister to you on this level. When I said I do, that's what I did. I gave myself to you. Look at verse four, all right?

For the wife does not have authority over her own body, but the husband does. Ooh, feminism, hates that. Likewise, the husband does not have authority over his own body, but the wife does. Most men don't like that. In other words, this thing, when you say I do, doesn't belong to you anymore.

It belongs to your spouse, and you're gonna use this in order to fulfill them as best as you can. That's what you're gonna do. You're gonna use that to fulfill them all you can. Oh, my word. I know this is hard. I know some of you are sitting there, you're not breathing at this particular point.

Let me see if I can illustrate this for you. I remember teaching this in counseling one day, and the wife sort of sat back, and she rolls her eyes. Some women have the capacity to do that. And I said, did I say something offensive? Did I say something wrong?

She says, no, no, no. She says, I know where you're going with this. I said, you do? She says, yeah. You want me to make sure that he is absolutely fulfilled. I said, well, it's not what I want. It's what the Bible is talking about. And she says, well, I knew it, I knew it, I knew it.

That's it. And I said, the problem is? Well, she says, you don't understand my husband. What? Well, he's got this unrelenting sex drive, and that doesn't stop. I mean, if I did this, I wouldn't get anything else done in my life, all right? And there's nothing, we've got three kids.

I gotta take care of those three kids. What would I do? Should I fix supper for them? This is all we would end up doing. I said, well, as impressed as you are with your husband's sex drive, I'm not sure that that is the issue here. I said, so I'm gonna give you an assignment.

This week, I want you to go home. When your husband comes home from work, I want you to make sure you put a movie on the TV, do whatever you want, keep the kids occupied. You be standing behind the door with the nicest negligee, the one that he really likes, and you grab his hand and take him to bed.

Oh. Are you serious? Yes, I'm absolutely serious. Oh. You can see the husband sitting in the other chair. He's sitting up really straight. This is gonna be an interesting week for him. (congregation laughing) So, they left, and she went shuffling out of the room. He went skipping out of the room.

(congregation laughing) Week went by. They came back in. I had prayer with them, and as soon as I said amen, she almost came across the desk, and she pointed right at my Bible, and she says, this Bible stuff works. It works. I said, what do you mean? She said, well, I did what you said.

I said, what'd you do? She said, well, when my husband came home, I was standing behind the door with a negligee on, and I grabbed his hand, and I took him to bed. First day it happened, second day it happened, third day it happened, fourth day it happened, fifth day he came in the door.

I'm fine, I'm just fine. (congregation laughing) That's exactly what she said. I'm fine, I'm okay. (congregation laughing) She says, this Bible stuff works. I said, well, God designed you. It's supposed to work. We have to be serious about what we're doing here. It is part of your marital duty to fulfill your spouse.

It's just as important for the husband to fulfill his wife in this way. This is really critical. I cannot tell you how often this has changed the thinking of so many couples. There are some people who will say, I had another woman in counseling who said to me, well, now, wait a minute.

It's just not my nature to be aggressive or assertive. I'm just kind of quiet, and she kind of sat there and flicked her eyes a little bit. It's just not my nature. I know what she was saying. She was basically saying to me, well, I'm just too quiet and passive for me to initiate anything like this in our marriage.

I just can't do that. And she kind of sat back, self-satisfied with that comment, and I said, let me ask you a question. It's just like anything else in life. Are you gonna let your nature rule you or what God's word says rule you? What are you gonna do here?

Are you gonna allow your nature to rule you or what God's word says? When you said, I do, you gave yourself to your husband, and now you're holding back from him? What are you doing? No wonder there's so many problems. No wonder there's so much unfaithfulness. We're not taking this seriously in the Christian realm, and it needs to be taken seriously.

Are we going to allow our natures to guide us or what God's word says guide us? 'Cause there's a lot of things in God's word that's not my nature. When God says, I need to forgive someone who has horribly offended me, that just is not my nature to do that.

But I know I need to do it. I know I need to do it. And the same thing's true here. You have gotta take the initiative to make sure your spouse is fulfilled. I'm speaking to men as well as the women here. This is such a key thing. This presumes, and this is one of the reasons why we had this communication thing before we had the sex talk thing, because this presumes there has to be good, honest communication going on between a husband and wife so that the husband communicates whether or not he's fulfilled or not, the wife communicates whether or not she's fulfilled or not, and neither person is being offended by what the other person says, but they're willing to throw themselves into being a problem solver in this area.

They're willing to do this. Are you breathing? Okay, take a good oxygen. Okay, there we go. All right, so sex has its primary goal, that is satisfying your mate. Now there's a fourth thing. The fourth thing is this. That God created both the husband and wife with an equal ability to satisfy one another.

God created both the husband and a wife with an equal ability to satisfy one another. Now this is really critical here. Sometimes just by nature of the educational setting that I'm in, I read a lot of stuff, and I read feminists talk about they teach women through television magazines, through some academic literature that sex is for number one, manipulation, number two, self-indulgence, number three, financial gain, all right?

That's what sex is for. It's for manipulation, for self-indulgence, and financial gain. That's what secular feminism says. You want something to destroy your relationship, whether a man adopts that philosophy or a woman adopts that philosophy, that will destroy your relationship. You buy into that feministic idea, and it will wreck a marriage because all of that is all about my personal self-gratification, what I consider is important to me, not what is important to my spouse.

That's such a key thing. And God created the husband and wife with an equal ability to satisfy each other. No one has soul, power, or authority. You do not have this independent of your spouse. You don't. Your body belongs to them. Their body belongs to you. That means both should be aggressive.

That means that as a man, I'm not gonna go to work and totally exhaust myself during the day and leave nothing for my wife in bed at night. I'm gonna leave some energy for her. That's part of my marital duty. I'm not gonna exhaust myself. As a woman, I'm not gonna exhaust myself with my job or my children during the day.

I'm gonna leave part of that energy for my husband. I'm gonna do that. Both should be aggressive. Sexual relationships are to be equal and reciprocal. And it carries the mind of Christ, which basically says, I am here to find out how I can minister to you in this area of our marriage.

Wow, that is the mind of Christ. How can I minister to you in this area of my marriage? Ecclesiastes 9.9 is a very important, which talks about, I remember several years ago, I did a marriage retreat just like this up in Sacramento area. It was actually up in Lake Tahoe.

And we were in this big auditorium and had an all glass side and they were looking out on Lake Tahoe and the mountains and everything. And I'm not sure they even looked at me, but, which is okay. They can look at that as long as they were listening. And during that marriage conference, the pastor says, how do you wanna theme this?

Was right around Valentine's Day. So I said, well, let's theme it like this. Ecclesiastes 9.9, will you be my Valentine? So the whole thing was about that. And we had a wonderful weekend. Everything went really well. And then when the weekend's over, everybody went back to their respective jobs and everything.

And about 10, 11 months later, I got a call from the pastor. And he said to me, you remember the seminar you did up at Lake Tahoe? And I said, yeah, I do. He says, well, you realize how much trouble you caused us in our church. I'm going, no, that's not my role.

I wanna be able to go in and compliment your ministry. I'm thinking to myself, what did I do? What did I say? I don't know what I did. And then he started laughing on the other end of the phone. I said, what's going on? He says, well, he says, I wanna let you know that we have had a baby explosion in our church.

We have gone into a building program to triple our nursery size, all right, in our church. And we all attribute it back to that Lake Tahoe event. All right? That's what happened. So I just sent them into an entire new building program. And I realize around here, you can't build anything.

So I don't know what you're gonna do. So after this, you're gonna be in deep trouble. So anyhow, there you go. Ecclesiastes 9.9, will you be my Valentine? Sexual relationships need to be equal. They need to be reciprocal. Proverbs, this is really interesting. Grab your Bible just for a moment.

I want you to go back, put a marker here in 1 Corinthians 7. And I want you to go back to Proverbs chapter five. Proverbs chapter five, this is kind of interesting. When Solomon's talking about this, he says, in verse 18, he says, he's talking about the sexual relationship between a husband and wife.

He says, "Let your fountain be blessed "and rejoice in the wife of your youth." Now, it's really interesting. In arid climate back in those days, sex was like taking a refreshing glass of water. When you live in an arid climate, that's what it's equated to. And so it's like a fountain.

It's described as a fountain. And earlier, it's talked about a cistern, a well, springs, streams, that's sexuality. Verse 19 says, "A loving doe, a graceful doe, "let her breast fill you all times with delight. "Be intoxicated always with her love." And this is one of the rare times in all the Bible where the Bible says it's okay to get drunk.

It's okay to get drunk, not on alcohol, but it's okay to get drunk on your husband or your wife. It's okay. Be intoxicated by them. Someday, I'm gonna preach a series of messages on all the places in the Bible it's okay to get drunk. All right, that should draw some people.

All right, well, this is one of 'em. The Hebrew word is very clear. It's the same word that's used to get drunk on alcohol. Sakaar, which is beer, or ayin, which is wine in the Hebrew language. It's the same kind of thing. It's okay to get drunk on your love of your wife.

Verse 20, "Why should you be intoxicated, my son, "with a forbidden woman, "and embrace the bosom of an adulteress? "For a man's ways are before the eyes of the Lord, "and he ponders all of his paths. "The iniquity of the wicked ensnare him, "and he is held fast in the cords of his sin.

"He dies for lack of discipline, "and because of his great folly, he is led astray." In other words, we have a lot more self-discipline than we're willing to give ourself credit for, and God watches everything that we do. So you should be so overwhelmed that you cannot get one bit more satisfaction from anyone else or anything else than the deep abiding soul satisfaction of ministering to your spouse.

That goes way beyond just the physical satisfaction of bathing your brain in some kind of release of chemicals from an orgasm or a climax. It goes way beyond that. This is a deep abiding soul satisfaction that God is very pleased with what you are doing. This is a good thing.

This is an important thing. So God created both the husband and wife with an equal ability to satisfy each other. Number five, I want you to understand this as well, that pleasure then in sex is not sinful and forbidden, but it is assured and even encouraged. We can see that in Proverbs 5, verses 18 and 19.

Satisfying your spouse is to be a deeply satisfying experience for you. It's just that your experience is not the goal, but your spouse's experience is. And when you get a husband and wife who has that kind of commitment to one another, they're interested in the other person having the best experience as possible, then you have a tremendous relationship, not just in the sexual experience, but in both knowing they are pleasing God by ministering to each other in such a way.

This is such a key. This is something the world will never understand. Because everything in the world, everything that talks about sex in the world is all about self-gratification. It's about self-gratifying self, which is greed-oriented sex, and all kinds of greed-oriented sex has no place in the Christian life.

We are to be ravished, or intoxicated, or exhilarated by our spouses. That's what should happen. Ephesians chapter 5, just for a moment, in verse 3, here Paul says, "For sexual immorality and all impurity or covetousness," there's the greed, "must not even be named among you "as is proper among the saints." The word sexual immorality is the Greek term poinaia.

It doesn't just refer to pornography. It means any kind of illicit sexual activity, or any kind of impurity or covetousness. That covetousness is greed-oriented sex. There's nothing more greedy than masturbation. Nothing more greedy than that. That's the ultimate expression of greed sex. That shouldn't even be named among God's people.

Shouldn't even be a part of it. Instead, exercising personal self-control, which means that pornography shouldn't be a part of any of this. Once you introduce pornography into a Christian marriage environment, then either watching those things in order to have better sex, those kind of things, you're not really having sex with each other anymore.

You're having sex with people on the screen, or what you're seeing in pictures. And men's pornography is different than women's pornography. There in some cases, women's pornography is a much bigger issue in our culture, in the Christian culture, than men's pornography is. Men have a terrible problem with it.

There's no doubt about that, but women do too. It's just that it's different. The women's is more acceptable in the Christian culture. The men's is not. Men's is about pictures of women. Women is more about words and storylines. Romance novels are women's pornography, because they do the same thing to a woman in her thinking and her body as the pictures does to a man.

But you'll go to many church libraries, you're never gonna find men's pornography in there, but you'll find a lot of women's pornography in church libraries. And it should never be. We had a graduate student who did a complete thorough study of numerous churches on women's pornography. She was a woman, graduate student woman, and she came to unbelievable conclusions in her final graduate thesis on this.

And in reading that thesis, I became convinced this is a much bigger problem than I ever thought. It is just huge. It's just a huge issue. No, no, no, this is not the way Christians act. That's not it at all. That's not the way Christians function. They don't drown themselves in romance novels or in television programs, soap operas.

They don't do that. Christians don't develop their thinking from that. They develop their thinking from the Word of God, and they minister to one another. Anytime you indulge in those kind of things, then you are training your mind to be conformed to the principles of this world. You're not training your mind to be biblical, and that will wreak havoc in your marriage.

It'll show itself up in your inability to be excited about your relationship with your spouse. It'll undermine everything. This is why I really think that this whole trend towards robotic partners in the future is gonna be devastating, because your robotic partner is never gonna get fat, they're never gonna get sick, they're never gonna have bad breath, they're always going to be willing, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

It's gonna wreak havoc, and we won't know in the future what genuine companionship is really about. We won't understand that. But we're already seeing part of that because of the role that both men and women's pornography is playing, and how it's undermining marriage. That's not what it should be.

There should be no greed, self-gratifying kind of sex even hinted at among Christians. Shouldn't be there, if we're gonna be pure. So the idea here is that pleasure in sex is not sinful and forbidden, it's assured and even encouraged, but it's within the right context, that is monogamous marriage, with the right kind of relationship, and that is heterosexuality.

That's the way God intended the expression of sex to be seen. Number six, last of all, then sexual relationships should be regular and continuous. Go back to 1 Corinthians 7, you can see this. Verse five, "Do not deprive one another except perhaps "by agreement for a limited time that you may devote "yourself to prayer, but then come together again "so that Satan will not tempt you because of your lack "of self-control." This is really key, because what Paul does here in the marital relationship, he outlines four very key things about not having sex.

Four things are listed here in verse five of when you are not to have sex. Number one, it has to be, notice this, not one person's, but mutual agreement. This is not a good time. It has to be by mutual agreement. It's not when one party decides we're not gonna do this.

If that's true, then you are cheating your spouse of conjugal rights, right? Number two, there's an agreed upon time. There's agreed upon time. What does he say? For a limited time, he says. For a limited time. In other words, for a short amount of time, we're not gonna have sex.

There may be various reasons behind that. Could be sickness, could be illness, could be other things are distracting, family crisis situation. There's an agreed upon time, we're not gonna be able to do this, but it's mutually agreed is the idea. And then some translations say for fasting and prayer, others say just prayer, but the implication, any time that prayer's introduced here, and especially that of fasting, is during genuine crisis situation, as by the way, was going on in the Corinthian church when Paul is writing this.

We know this later on because Paul refers here in 1 Corinthians 7, in verse 26, in view of this present distress, Christians were under quite a bit of strain at that particular time, it's better to devote yourself to prayer and fasting than devote yourself to sexuality at that particular point because of this crisis situation, but during those crisis situations are good times not to be involved in sexuality.

And then he says, last of all, then you terminate, that is, not having sex, and you start again, why? Notice, he says at the end of verse five, come together again so that Satan will not tempt you because of your lack of self-control. Once a couple is used to a mutually satisfying, self-giving relationship within the sexual realm, and all of a sudden that comes to an end, then Satan uses that as a temptation with other people, it starts in your thinking, for a woman, other men that you're around, for a man, other women that you're around, once you're used to a mutually satisfying relationship and all of a sudden it's cut off and it's not started back up again, then Satan uses that as a means to gain a foothold in your marriage, that becomes a problem.

So we have four guidelines, mutual agreement, agreed upon time, fasting and prayer, then you terminate not having sex, and you start again. Those are the four guidelines. Well, I know there's probably a lot more that you have, and there's actually a lot more that I have, but at least I've given you the basics on that.

So just remember Romans chapter 14, verse 23, whatever you can't do in faith is sin for you, so you're not gonna expect your wife or your husband to do things that are gonna be repugnant to them. You're not gonna expect that, and by the way, by you expecting that, then you're thinking about sex being for you and not for them.

So you're not gonna expect your husband or wife to do things that they can't do with a whole heart, whatever it may be, in the sexual bed, because that's not right for the Christian. So there you have these six principles. Let me review them one last time for you real quickly.

Number one, sex in marriage is pure and holy. Number two, sex is not the basis of marriage, and marriage is not a sexual relationship. Number three, sex has as its primary goal that is satisfying your mate. Number four, God created both the husband and wife with an equal ability to satisfy each other.

Number five, pleasure in sex is not sinful and forbidden, but assured and even encouraged. And then number six, six sexual relationships should be regular and continuous in marriage. It should be. It has been a delight doing this with you, even though you're not breathing. Let's bow for prayer. Gracious Father, we thank you for the goodness of your word.

It really clarifies a lot of things that possibly have been wrong in our marriage that we need to make right. We need to make sure that we are doing things your way, and that ends up solving a lot of problems. When we end up violating your word, Proverbs tells us the way of the transgressor is hard.

Proverbs later says, Proverbs 18.21 that, or 13.21, that adversity pursues sinners. And we don't want adversity and hardship to pursue our marriages. We want them to be the pleasant, sweet type of companionship that you have intended from the very beginning. So Father, I pray for each man or woman present here today, you'll watch over them, provide for them the desire and the will to make the necessary changes in their thinking and in their marriage that need to happen.

And then Father, we will be careful to give you all the praise and all the glory, and all God's people said, amen.