Greetings, all! Today we deal with one of the most awkward pieces in the entire Song of Solomon for a single guy to deal with: the biblical strip tease. This is the most potentially awkward passage in this whole book, so I'll do my best to deal with it delicately.
And yes, the biblical strip tease does exist, believe it or not. Song of Solomon 7:1-10 describes this controversy-generating event. Some people are skeptical that such a thing could ever be condoned by God, but the scandal is quickly avoided by the simple realization that this moment is shared only between husband and wife. This is how God designed it, and when the striptease is kept in the marriage bedroom, it is a beautiful thing, according to Scripture.
I'm going to make two points from this potentially awkward subject matter. The first is for married folks, and it's simply this: enjoy each other. I'm not married myself, so I can't speak from experience, but I can speak from observation of this passage. This book clearly describes a husband fully enjoying his wife. She knows what he likes, and she gives it, much to his delight. Married people, I suggest you do the same.
And now onto single people, to whom I feel much more capable of teaching.
My charge to all the single people is simply to avoid anything like this until you have wedding rings adorning your fingers.
I've said it before in various ways, but it bears repeating. This kind of stuff may seem like fun to engage in outside marriage, but any such behavior without the commitment of marriage is sin. And as James 1 points out, all sin leads to death, in some form.
Our culture loves to take events like SoS 7:1-10 and yank them out of the bedroom. People build entire buildings to house strip clubs for this very purpose. The pornography industry makes billions of dollars each year by selling this kind of thing for the viewership of millions. The perversion of this holy moment between husband and wife drives a huge part of the American economy, so much so that pornography makes more money than professional basketball, football, and baseball - combined.
It draws in such a large crowd because it can stimulate our senses quickly. God designed sex to be one of the most exciting things in all of human life, with the intention of using its power to bind a husband and wife together. SoS 7:1-10 is a celebration of the delight experienced by wielding this power rightly.
Single people, since we have no immediate way to enjoy this powerful thing rightly and safely, we're particularly vulnerable to the temptation of taste-testing this kind of thing.
It often starts small. A few almost-innocent pictures viewed online. A few lingering glances at an illicit magazine. A few stimulating touches with another person. But sex is addictive. The science of it is pretty startling; neuro-chemically, sexually addiction ranks right up with the most addictive illegal drugs.
It's becoming such a wide-spread problem in society that they even taught us a class in seminary about sexual addiction, teaching us how to avoid it and how to deal with people in our congregations who were addicted. One of the most shocking statistics from the entire class: nearly 50% of pastors admitted to viewing pornography recently. Think about that. Even those who know it's wrong from the start can still get addicted.
In other words: no matter how small it starts, sexual addiction will overtake you if you don't kill it immediately.
Or more directly: it is not possible to play with fire without being burnt.
Single people, our culture says sex is fun and should be enjoyed whenever you desire. They're right about one thing; God did design sex to be fun. But they often forget to mention that sex outside of marriage is one of the quickest routes to shame and regret.
Sex is fun, as married folk are quick to point out. God wants it to be. He wants you to enjoy it as much as possible, which is why He wants it kept to marriage alone.
What do we do with things that we view as the most valuable, the most precious, the most enjoyable? We protect them. We take priceless works of art and protect them behind glass, behind state-of-the-art security systems. We don't let everyone off the street handle them.
Similarly, events like SoS 7:1-10 are meant to be kept behind locked bedroom doors precisely because they are so priceless.
Sex is powerful. Mind-bogglingly, life-transformingly powerful. So keep it in your marriage, where its power will build up, unify, and delight.
I want to say one last thing. In this post, I've come very close to to legalism, saying that you should do this one thing and avoid doing this other thing. There's a lot of bad preaching out there that says God will only be happy with you if you do good things and avoid bad things.
Let me be clear: God will love you with His whole heart whether you keep sex in marriage or not. I won't try to scare you into good behavior by lying to you and distorting the Gospel. God's love is more powerful than sin; He will love you fully no matter what you do. (Although I need to say, as the Apostle Paul does, that if you ultimately have no desire to obey God in this area, it's a good sign that you aren't even saved, in the first place).
Despite this, there will be significant heartbreak if you engage in sex outside of marriage. The hearts that will be broken will be yours and your beloved's.
God gives these rules and guidelines to protect your happiness, not to destroy it. SoS 7:1-10 records the blissful joy of a married couple who saved sex for marriage and got to enjoy its tremendous power in perfectly holy, pure, beautiful, exciting, stimulating, satisfying ways. God wants to entice you into obedience by simply showing you that it is the route to greatest joy and satisfaction.
Sadly, it is common these days for Christian young people to engage in sex outside of marriage. Usually, they rationalize it by saying that they're in love, or they're going to get married anyway, so it's okay. Other times, they're simply foolish and get themselves into compromising situations and end up doing things they regret because their self-control wasn't nearly as strong as they thought.
Talk with any of these people, and they will nearly unanimously declare how much they regret messing around before their wedding night. Usually it's the one thing more than anything else that they wish they could go back in their lives and change.
This isn't to say that God can redeem mistakes; of course He can.
But it is to say that memories are hard to erase, especially when you're dealing with something as powerful as sex.
Single people, I know how tempting it can be to take just a tiny taste of sex, just to see what it's like. I'm single myself; I've felt the temptations.
But let me urge you: don't give in. Dipping into sex before marriage, no matter how little, will only end in regret, no matter how stimulating it is up front.
Save it for the marriage bed. Save it so that you can have nights like Solomon and his bride enjoy in 7:1-10.
Or to put it simply:
I've never heard of a happy married couple who wished they had messed around more before marriage.
I've heard countless stories of people who have messed around who dearly wish they hadn't.
No comments:
Post a Comment