Loveology/Sex part I/John Mark Comer

[Music] [Music] Genesis chapter 1 verse 1 in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth the heavens and the earth is a well-known Jewish idiom that basically means think of the English phrase from top to bottom it's kind of like that it basically means everything in the beginning God created everything plain and simple and then if you skip down to the end of the chapter after 6 days of God hard at work we read this chapter 1 verse 31 God saw all that he had made how much of what he had made all of what he had made and it was very good the word good is tove in Hebrew can you say that well done toad and it has to do with the human senses taste touch sight smell and sound and the scriptures Tove is used of bread wine honey lotion perfume fruit a feast a home and the shade under a tree on a hot middle-eastern day it can be translated lovely or beautiful the taste of fresh well made food from a food cart on the east side is Tove are you with me the smell of crisp Alpine air we were out on a hike Mount Rainier or whatever is told the sight of a work of art is Tove and sex is Tove we read that God saw all that he had made and it was very good so everything in the created order at least in the beginning food and drink the beach at Oswald West all the way up to the snow and Mount Hood for all of you instagramers who live in between all of that the sound of music from Phil & Company tonight all of that everything that God created in the beginning he called good and that includes everything that we call sex beauty attraction mystery the desire of a man for a woman or vice versa touch kissing foreplay intercourse the orgasm I say that word in front of thousands of people all of that it's all tove it's all good in fact we read it's very good now this says a lot about sex but it says even more about God right you know a lot of people think of God as an old crotchety grumpy man up in the sky who's mad at the world and doesn't want anybody to have any fun that's fun let's call it sin stop it I remember a high school is like why is everything that sounds fun wrong come on come on right that's how a lot of people think about God but nothing could be further from the truth God is the creator of what everything at least everything that is very good God is a God of enjoyment he was in the beginning and over the millennia I would argue nothing has changed I love that line and Paul's letter to Timothy if you know the New Testament at all he writes this God richly provides us with everything for our enjoyment I love that word enjoyment we need a theology of enjoyment not just when we talk about sex but when we talk about food and drink and the beach and nature and creation when we talk about all of life we need a Genesis shaped worldview that basically says this world was created by God in the beginning he called it very good he enjoys it and so should we he thinks it's very good and so should we and we need to enjoy at least all the very good stuff in creation as an act of worship of hedonism that is turned into worship to the true and living God food and drink and nature and beauty and I would go on to say sex my wife who's coming up a little bit later this evening and myself we married really young and by the generous generosity of God we were both virgins when we married now don't write me off I know I just lost about in a view don't write me off and we'll get to more of my heart behind that lately later but our honeymoon and all honesty was a little bit clumsy and awkward but it was so much fun we were in London England and I will never forget lying in bed one night on my honeymoon thinking realizing that what I was enjoying was all God's idea he was the one who thought it up not a really clever e-marketing guru in Hollywood not Tom Hanks at meg Ryan right not Beyonce shocker but he he was the one who thought it all up everything that I was enjoying was from his mind's eye from his imagination it was all his creative genius that's what Toth does at least for those with eyes to see it makes you take a step back and breathe it all in after a good meal or when you make love to your wife on your honeymoon or after you watch the sunrise it makes you step back and breathe it all in and well up with gratitude to the Creator God who is just that good rewind a paragraph or two to chapter one verse 27 and we read this and it's really intriguing to me so God created mankind in his own image and the image of God he created them male and female he created them and then we read this God blessed them and said to them first words out of God's mouth to human in all of the scriptures quote be fruitful and increase in number fill the earth and subdue it did you know that the very first commandment and all of the Bible is be fruitful and increase in number you know a lot of people harp and gripe about how the Bible is full of rules sure there's truth in that and the first one is have sex with your spouse a lot they're not all bad rules some of them I know a married man but some of them are fantastic right like you have me from page one god I'm in the story's fantastic yes fantastic and you know this language to be fruitful and increase in number it's strange to you we don't talk about sex that way anymore because in the modern world with the advent of birth control and contraceptives we've disconnected for better or for worse we've disconnected sex from procreation so we would say make love or sleep together or have sex but it's the exact same idea and that is listen to me carefully that is the first commandment in all of the story of God first thing out of God's mouth for too long however sadly the church's message on sex has essentially been shrunk down to don't stop it it's basically the summation of what I grew up hearing stop it don't don't view porn don't masturbate don't make out at least not too much don't little bits okay we all call it good but not too much don't sleep together before you get married don't move in don't cohabitate or what nobody calls a cohabit they'll move in together it's cheaper rent come on give me a break don't do that stop it it's fun no don't and all of that in my opinion which is right all of that is true but the problem is that the Scriptures don't start with a negative command about sex don't they start with a positive command be fruitful and increase in number one of the first things that we read about Adam and Eve in just a chapter or two is that they were both naked and they felt no shame end quote can you imagine sex with no guilt and no shame nothing to hide at all just pure innocent pleasure with another human being in a covenant relationship until death do us part that my friends is tove fact that is very Tove and that is what God created in the beginning and notice that all of this is before the fall if you know the story of God Genesis 3 is where it gets really lousy alright Genesis 1 2 your loving life Genesis 3 dang it all of this is before Genesis 3 my buddy Mike areas unable to make it tonight he puts it this way and I love the language we were sexual before we were sinful you need to get that we were sexual before we were sinful sex is not an evil curse that we have to curb and deny it's a good gift that we need to enjoy as long as it's in the right context marriage more on that in a little while sadly or obviously we don't live in the garden anymore right we live post dang it and we are sinful now right maybe sex isn't but but we are sexual and we are sinful now but still turn over to the Song of Songs in the middle turn over and yes you heard me right we're going there right this is lavalla G a couple thousand single people why not let's do it if you're new to the scriptures the song of songs which is also known as the Song of Solomon depending on what version of the Bible that you read is at the tail end of the Hebrew wisdom literature so it's right after proverbs if you get to the prophet Isaiah turn around and actually it's not a book per se as much as it's an ancient collection of erotic Jewish love poetry and it's in the Bible come on or not Orthodox Jewish males aren't actually allowed to read the song until the age of 30 so if you're an Orthodox Jewish guy and you're 25 I just apologized in advanced for a long time in the church people have been trying to turn the song into basically into an allegory the idea of a racy love poem in the Bible makes a lot of people in particular a lot of conservative people cringe because it sounds more like Beyonce and jay-z at the Grammys than it does like something you would hear in a sermon and that makes a ton of people really really uncomfortable and so over the years people have been trying to make the song into something else something less explicit something maybe a little bit more spiritual sounding and as a result lots of smart intelligent people read it as a picture basically as an allegory but as a picture of Jesus and the church the lips don't really mean lips and kissing doesn't really mean casino I mean we don't do that in church and obviously breasts don't really mean breasts it's not about intimacy between a man and a woman it's about intimacy between you know people and Jesus I hope never forget years ago I true story I was at church it's a great guy up teaching and he was teaching from the song songs as an allegory and at one point he read that line in chapter 1 where it talks about how the king is lying between his lovers breasts all night long don't I'm not gonna exegete that for you you figured out and I mean don't figure it out but I'm saying anyway he gets to that spot and he goes true story the left breast symbolizes the Old Testament the right breast symbolizes the New Testament and in between is the cross I'm just I think of the time just stop it no stop it stop it I haven't gone to seminary yet but that's just weird no it's just weird it's just gross I think that the poet just means there's stuff at night with her breasts let's call it good so with all due respect I don't think the song is an allegory if you're hearing you do that's fine just put up with me and my sarcasm for the next 10 minutes but on a serious note I read it as a celebration not only by the author whoever he or she is but also by God himself of love and marriage and sex between two people and relationships for life and however you interpret it it's highly sexual so chapter 4 if you're there turn to chapter 4 is actually a sex scene we read about a man and a woman on the wedding night the wedding is at the end right before she's undressing and the man is writing about her body from the top down you ready for this chapter 4 verse 1 how beautiful you are my darling oh how beautiful right his mouth is filled with praise for his new bride and he starts from her face and works down your hair is like a flock of goats I would not encourage you to lead with that guys it's really really ancient poem descending from the hills of Gilead your teeth this is actually my favorite part or like a flock of sheep just short wait for it coming up from the watching each has its twin not one of them is alone she's not missing any teeth this is that this is the ancient Near East this is fantastic right you set the bar low you have all your teeth we are in for life your lips are like a scarlet ribbon your mouth is lovely your temples behind your veil like the halves of a pomegranate so now he moves to her neck and her breasts your neck is like the Tower of David built with courses of stone on it hang a thousand shields all of them shields of warriors your breasts are like two fawns like twin fawns of a gazelle that browse among the lilies this next part is a bit ambiguous but you get the idea until the day breaks and the shadows flee I will go to the mountain of myrrh to the hill of incense you are altogether beautiful my darling and there is no flaw in you now it's easy to read this and laugh because you know we don't live in an agrarian society and the ancient earthy organic language is lost on us but it's actually genius because the poet is able to invoke highly sexual imagery without ever sounding and if you skip down a stanza or two to verse 12 we read this use as the husband speaking to the wife are a garden locked up my sister my bride you are a spring enclosed a sealed fountain now that's a way of saying she was a virgin a fountain was a ancient euphemism for a woman's sexuality so she is a sealed fountain meaning she's not easy to get into she's a virgin on her wedding night and but she's anything but a prude she's an eager participant and this evocative scene saying to her lover if you skip down to 16 this is the woman now speaking awake north wind and come south wind blow on my garden that its fragrance may spread everywhere let my beloved come into his garden and taste its choice fruits she's inviting her husband in after a time of foreplay and then we read this I have come into my garden my sister my bride I have gathered my myrrh and my spice I've eaten my honeycomb and my honey I have drunk my wine in my milk so this is erotic and explicit but it's not crass at all it's poetic and it's beautiful this is a husband and a wife on the wedding night lying in bed after it's over reveling in the moment but the story isn't quite over it ends with a fascinating interpolation from above and this is my point for tonight listen to this next line eat friends and drink drink your fill of love now I'm not sure about you but in my Bible the NIV there's a heading that's not actually in the original language but is in the English we're at the top of that it says friends as if the friends are saying that but that's not in the original language and quite a few people think that's not right the question is who's the voice who's saying that eat friends and drink drink who's saying that the friends aren't in the room at least I hope not I know it was a long time ago but not that long ago who's saying that well honestly we think that it's God God is saying that God is saying eat friends and drink drink your fill of love how crazy is that the maker of the Sun and the moon the maker of the human body is singing over two lovers on their wedding night that's what God is like his view of sex I'm not sure what your view as sex is but his view of sex is incredible even in a post Genesis 3 outside of the Garden of Eden world where now we are sexual and we are sinful even in a world with so much pain and regret and baggage and damage from sexuality gone awry even after all that God is still singing over the gift that he created through the fall to the screwed up world that we now call home and over all the noise God is still singing it's very good drink your fill of love that my friends wherever you are at tonight that's powerful but sadly like everything tove in God's universe sex can be warped and turned into something ugly turn over to Romans 2 the New Testament to the writings of the New Testament if you're not familiar with the Bible are there four Gospels Matthew Mark Luke John then acts then there's an epistle which is a stuck-up way of saying a letter to the church in the city of Rome hence the name Romans it's written by this guy named Paul hundreds and hundreds of years after the Song of Songs it's really interesting what he starts off by saying you there Romans 1 are you guys doing all right you could one of you out of 2800 people it's fan-freaking-tastic moving on Romans 1 I am really happy whoever you are I'm really happy about you this evening alright so Romans chapter 1 let's start off skip down to 18 this is Paul and he's just warming up and he writes this the wrath of God is being revealed right now as we speak from heaven against all the godless and wickedness of people who suppress the truth by their wickedness since what may be known about God is plain to them because God has made it plain to them for since the creation of the world God's invisible qualities his eternal power divine nature have been clearly seen being understood from what has been made so that people are without excuse for although they knew God they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened now stay with me although they claim to be wise smart letters after the name whatever they became fools and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like mortal human beings and birds and animals and reptiles therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading or the dehumanizing of their bodies with one another they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped this line of stunning worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator who is forever praised amen ever since the garden we been mistaken the good creation for the even better creator Eve had a choice to make between the fruit and God between the creation and the creator and she chose to take a bite and now as a results all of her children all of her sons and daughters ie all of us are born with the exact same slant so Romans was written obviously a long time ago but if you know anything about Paul's letter to the church in Rome it was written over against the backdrop of a story you may or may not know about Israel and the exodus out of Egypt into the land of God and if you know that story there is a really interesting part at least I think it's really interesting where the Israelites and contexts are slaves they have nothing but right before they walk out of Egypt they ask the Egyptians for gold and we read this line God made the Egyptians favor leave disposed toward the people and they gave them what they asked for so they plundered the Egyptians so in this story dirt poor working-class slaves victim after victim of oppression and injustice overnight become wealthy become kings and queens so to speak and it's all because of God's generosity but just a few months later you skip forward a chapter or two and they are out in the desert Moses is up on Mount Sinai with Charleston Houston or whoever and the people get antsy and so they asked Moses brother Aaron to make them a God to worship they're tired of waiting for the God and thunder and fire and cloudy scary and far they want a God to worship and then Aaron says this quote take off the gold earrings that your wives your sons and your daughters are wearing and bring them to me he took what they had handed him and made it into an idol cast in the shape of a calf fashioned it with the tool and then they said these are your gods Israel who brought you up out of Egypt question where did they get the gold I mean days before weeks before they were slaves with nothing where did they get the gold anybody there from God because of God's generosity they quote plundered the Egyptians meaning they made an idol out of the very thing that was a gift from God are we any different good thing we have evolved over the millennia right we have this this this slant this bent this propensity and this proclivity to turn gifts into gods to turn the creation into a de-facto creator I mean after all we're hardwired for worship right next slide the novelist David Foster Wallace who's this a genius not a follower of Jesus and right before his suicide he said this quote and the day-to-day trenches of adult life there is actually no such thing as atheism there is no such thing as not worshipping everybody worships the only choice we get is what to worship and an understanding reasons for choosing some sort of God or spiritual type thing be it Yahweh or the Wiccan mother goddess or the Four Noble Truths or some in frangible set of ethical principles is that pretty much anything else you worship will eat you alive if you worship money and things if they are where you tap real meaning in life then you will never have enough worship your own body and beauty spelled wrong that's all this guy and sexual allure and you will always feel ugly and when time and age start showing you will die a million deaths before they finally plant you look the insidious thing about these forms of worship is not that they're evil or sinful it's that they are unconscious they are default settings that's genius we were made to worship God but because of sin now we have default settings to the language that's used by both Wallace and by Paul to idolatry we have this tendency to take God's gifts and turn them into wannabe gods and sex is no exception right Paul writes God gave them over and the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another Paul's first example of idolatry is not money but it's sex that's telling now in Paul's day the goddess of sexuality was called Aphrodite she had a few other names but that was by far the most popular one Paul spent a few days in her hometown Ephesus getting a church up and running right under her nose we have writings from the ancient Greeks about how people would come from all over Ephesus because it was stacked the temple was stacked with 1,000 temple prostitutes we read that at least 1,000 so people come from all over the Mediterranean to worship with one of the prostitutes ie have sex with somebody they barely know does that sound at all familiar Aphrodite is alive and well today she is the CEO of a multi-billion dollar global in street entertainment television marketing porn strip clubs fashion cosmetics health fitness plastic surgery Botox viagra her temple is ubiquitous and she is not easy to please she demands we make sacrifices we have to give up our innocence our holiness often our body's well-being or relationships well-being and of course our freedom of course our freedom because if and when we turn sex or anything else into a god it becomes a cruel tyrant what was supposed to function as a good gift for you to enjoy as an act of worship to God in the context of marriage instead becomes an addiction with the strange other-worldly power over you it's one of the crazy things about our generation I mean more our parents generation started the sexual revolution thanks mom and dad they were rolling around naked at Woodstock or what hopefully not my parents dad you're here I don't want to know that's true but now a few decades later half a century later we value sexual freedom and self-expression more than any other generation in human history in fact we think of it as a right I have the right to have sex with whoever I want whenever I want and anything that curbs our sexual freedom or a self expression is seen as repressive as bigotry as hateful and it's seen as a denial of our identity of who we are but we're just now starting to learn that what looks like freedom is actually slavery that looks what looks like self-expression is actually nothing more than dysfunction because when sex is your god you have to download porn you have to jack off you have to sleep with your boyfriend you have to let him or her touch you you have to give in to your body's cravings even if you know it's going to steal from your future there's no choice because you're a slave you could put it this way we think of freedom as the ability to do whatever we want whenever we want with whoever we want but to Jesus that's not freedom that's slavery freedom at least in Jesus mine is the ability to do what God made you to do to enjoy all the tove in the world as God intended that's why the message about Jesus is good news it's gospel because Jesus is Lord of the universe not Aphrodite brothers and sisters and he has the power to sweep the legs out of every single Pharaoh and oppressor and injustice on earth in Jesus and in Jesus alone we can and will and do live free if you're here and you're not a follower of Jesus maybe you're under the power not of Jesus the Lord but of Aphrodite or of money or a power or a fame or a beauty or educate every your Arden to the power of something else that does not go by the name of Jesus and it is a cruel tyrant maybe it is a personal being maybe there's an impersonal being but I want you to know a few things one there is a creator god and he made you and he made the world that you call home and everything very good all around you has his fingerprints all over it to this world is not as it should be you are not as it should be something went wrong in the story not only of God but of human history but God's love for you through all of that the love of the creator for the creation of the Father for the Sun is unbending last night my five-year-old asked me daddy would you still love me if I didn't love Jesus and I said absolutely I would be sad I would be devastated but I would still love you and then you ran off and started laughing but God's love for you is far more voracious and undying and faithful than my love for my son and I would love him to hell and back and last I want you to know that Jesus died and he rose again to break the power of sin and death and you can be free one day this entire universe only this entire city not only this entire nation not only this entire world but this entire universe one day at Jesus return we'll be free from sin and from death itself and you can be a part of that story of healing and salvation not only in the future but in the here and now if you invite Jesus if you invite the spirit of Jesus to come into your life and reshape you from the n-side out all you have to do is repent that's a way a churchy word saying turn away from sin from your bondage to you fill in the blank and turn to Jesus the Lord who made you from the inside out in repentance and in faith that's all you can walk out of this room tonight filled with the Spirit of Jesus and on track to healing and de Salvation so if you're not a follower of Jesus tonight he is inviting you to become one but for those of you who are my prayer for this generation from my generation is that we would find freedom in the healing saving power of Jesus so maybe you're here tonight and for whatever reason because of pain because of sin because of abuse because of your family because of your worldview because if your church upbringing for whatever reason sex for you when you think about it when you do it is baggage and regret and guilt and shame it's not fun and it's hurtful or it's painful or it's scary I want you to hear that sex is tove and I want Jesus to do a healing work and all of you particular and the sisters tonight but in men and women to do a healing work and how you think about this gift that God has put into your life or maybe you're here and it's the exact opposite problem or issue you think of sex as a god of sorts it's what you're chasing after thinking if you can just get close enough you'll find life you'll find whatever it is you fill in the blank but it's not going to happen if you make sex a god not only will it enslave you but it will also let you down because as incredible as sex is it can't live up to all the hype I think about how sex is put on in film at least all of the mystery and allure and buzz spontaneous wild orgasmic thrilling and sex is all of those things and more sometimes if your marriage is healthy maybe even most of the time but even then no matter how good it is it's not God the same can be said for love is it incredible yes is it all it's chalked up to be no welcome really happy you're here tonight same can be said of marriage is there fulfillment and satisfaction in marriage yes there's a lot of other stuff too no matter what it is food drink love marriage sex romance any of that stuff anything tove in the world all the stuff that we make into an idol we make into a de facto god it's good some of it is very good but it's not God and it's never supposed to be it never was supposed to be from the beginning everything tove everything good in the created order everything that you think about and you enjoy all of it was meant it was a means to an end it was a meant to push you to something even better or should I say to someone even better and we believe that that someone is not a vague ambiguous idea in the universe but he is the person of God in the person of Jesus

Channel: Brian Bull

Views: 3,500

Rating: 5 out of 5

Keywords: Solid Rock, Solid Rock A Jesus Church, The Bridge, A Jesus Church, westside a jesus church, Church, Gospel, John Mark Comer, Portland, Portland Oregon, Sermon, Pastor, Calling, identity, jesus, transformation, sermon, bible, kingdom of god, kingdom, dominic done, ephesians, phil comer, loveology book, author, Loveology, sex, song of songs

Id: ADPNHUiA-AE

Length: 34min 34sec (2074 seconds)

Published: Sat Aug 25 2018