Dr. Ed Young - Is Sex Sacred?

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TOPICS: Sex

I'm not going to spend a lot of time proving to you that we live in a culture that virtually worships sex and sexuality. We live in a world that is all about pleasure, and for most people, the ultimate pleasure is expressed in the sexual realm. I think we need to back up and listen to that Canadian theologian who said that sex must first be between the ears before it can ever be between the legs. We know a lot about sex we think, between the legs, but we do not understand sex in this mental process, in the spiritual process, in that other dimension... we think we know, but we don't know, and that's one of the reasons that we're in the mess that we're in in this whole area. Read the newspaper. Listen to the news, and, and you hear it displayed many times far too graphically as to how it affects every area in the life of every person on the face of this earth.

Now, I'm going to say something once again that everybody here knows! But to know something is one thing, and to understand it and the ramifications of that which we know is something else. Some people think the fact that we know something, that we've done something about it. And the fact that we have information, therefore we're changing. Not necessarily so. But let me state clearly something we need to always be reminded of in this maze of confusion about human sexuality, and that is this: God gave to mankind sex. So let's begin with a common denominator. God created man and created woman. He created male and female. All right? Everybody's with me so far?

Dr. Mark Gungor... somebody introduced me to Him on the Internet years ago, and, and he, he talked about how the male brain is different from the female brain. I was first introduced to the brain by a former roommate in college, S. L. Smith. Dr. Smith practiced internal infirmary medicine for long years down in New Orleans. And uh, I roomed with him my junior year. His senior year, he finished college, went to med school, and they'd given him that cadaver, and he picked me up. He was in med school; I was in college. We were going somewhere together, and he said, "Look in that paper sack that's between us on the seat". And I opened the sack, and I said, "What is that"? He said, "It's a brain". I said, "A brain"? He said, "It's a human brain! Look at it..." He said, "I'm not supposed to do it, but I cut it out of the cadaver. We're studying the brain; I thought I'd take it home and study it". A brain!

Now, it may amaze some of you that the male brain is different from the female brain. It really is! See, I think Jo Beth's like me, and she thinks I'm like her. Not so! Our brains are different. A male brain consists primarily of little compartments. Remember? We, we have little compartments, and every little compartment handles one part of our life. We have a compartment for our house; a compartment for our car; a compartment for our sex life. We have a compartment for our children; we have a compartment for our hobbies. We have-men, we have little boxes in our brain, little-we are compartmentalized. Therefore, we want to deal with one area of our brain; we take out that little box very carefully, and we take that little box out of the male brain and we open it-ptt!

And we deal with that which is in the box and nothing else... We deal with that which is in that little box, and then we close the box, and we put it right back where we got it carefully, not touching anything else. This male brain is, is, is, I don't know if the word is inspired, or infused with something called "testosterone".

Now if every female understood the magnitude of that, you wouldn't even speak to us. But that little compartmentalized brain is filled with testosterone, and it starts when we're children, and it moves up until puberty, and, and at puberty, we're 16, 17, or 18, that is our peak of sexual prowess; and then from that peak, our sexual prowess moves down at a rather slow rate through our 20's, through our 30's, through our 40's, through our 50's, through our 60's, through our 70's, through our 80's, through our 90's, and we die! The male brain. Okay? The female brain, it's just a ball of wire, all connected together. If one thing happens in one area with the children, it affects the whole area of that woman's life. The female brain is just wired together. Everything is connected to something else. Shshsh! And nothing is separate from anything else!

And the power that motivates the female brain is emotion, and caring. Females really care, because when they have experiences, when there is emotion connected with an event, it's nailed down in the mind of that female. Not so with the male, unless it's in some kind of sensual area, generally speaking, because most of the time, we don't really care-enough. Females care about everything. Now, going back to the male brain, we have within us not a photographic memory, but tragically, a pornographic memory. I'll give you a case in point.

When I was in the third grade, George S. Gardner Elementary School in Laurel, Mississippi, the third grade, I can remember the day when a guy named Albrooks brought to recess a little bitty cartoon that had eight pages in it, and it had cartoon characters doing all sorts of pornographic things, drawn out, and he would show us that, and third graders, we were astounded! I remember that, and I can take you to the very place where I was first exposed to that kind of raw pornography. It was not totally understood, but-I was drawn to it. Later on, I can remember being in a little newsstand in my hometown looking for some funny books. We had comic strip books. They cost 10 cents apiece back then. If I'd kept some of those Superman, Batman books, I'd be rich today; but I didn't. But I was looking for comic books, and a friend went over to the magazine rack, and he said, "Wow! Look at this"!

And I went over, and I opened, and he had there a "Playboy Magazine". The guy who ran the store said, "You boys put those magazines down! Get over there with the funny books..." I remember that. I must have been 9 or 10. Now you guys are just sitting there so piously! I could stand up any one of you and you could give a similar testimony. Men-that's how many of us are wired. Women, it's emotion, and, and therefore, they make decisions on the basis of emotion, and if, if the problem here is with a child, it will affect their intimacy with their husband. We don't understand that, because we can just take out that little box. They can't do that. Everything is connected to everything else.

Now, something else about us men-and I mentioned this some years ago and got amazing response to it, and I bring it up again: In our brains, we have a box called "the nothing box". Yeah. Men have that, ladies... We take out that nothing box, and we love to go in that nothing box because there's nothing in there. The University of Pennsylvania has just done a study and said that men have the capacity to think about nothing and still breathe! So we love to go to our nothing box, and, and we go in our nothing box in many ways. One way we're in a nothing box is through fishing. Nothing... Another way is channel surfing. Jo Beth: "What are you watching"? Nothing.

Now, gentlemen, here, we have to make, I want to make a confession to you, and I think all of you'll understand this: Women cannot stand for a man to do nothing! It drives them crazy! And when I go home and I've been looking at papers and reading things all day, and I'll sit down and Jo Beth will have for me more papers, more things to read, and I want to go in my nothing box. She can't understand I want to do nothing, so therefore, I want to make full disclosure: Sometimes when I go home, I pretend to do something when I'm really doing nothing! Now, now with the understanding of a woman's brain and a man's brain being different-woman's brain all tied together, ball of wire-shshshsh! Everything belong... by the way, the woman's brain is amazing in details. My boys call Jo Beth "Detalia". And she'll tell a story like, "You know, we went to high school with this girl, and, and her son is married and lives in New Orleans, and he was traveling in London and ran into someone that he knew when he was in the 3rd grade, who had married a girl, and they had had twins, and..."

It's all tied together! That's the way the female brain is wired. Now, how, how do men and women handle stress, for example? Well, men handle stress by going in their nothing box, and we're just-are in that box. By the way, I, I mentioned this some years back about a nothing box, and some well-intended wife came up to me and said, "I, I didn't know that you men had a nothing box..." I said, "Oh yeah, we do..." She said, "Oh, that's so wonderful-could I get in that box with my husband"? I said, "No! If you got in, there'd be something, and you want to put up a picture! If, if you're here today, I apologize"! But how do they handle stress?

Men handle stress by going in their nothing box, and if they want some answers, they'll go to another man, and the man will give them council and try to help them fix that which is bothering them, right gentlemen? Females who are under stress, they want to talk about it, and they want to talk, and they pull us to one side, they begin to tell us what's wrong: This is the problem-da, da, da, da, da.... Now gentlemen, let me tell you something you must remember, and I keep forgetting it, but you have to remember: When your wife is under stress, she's telling about the problem, for all sake, for your good safety, don't try to fix it! She doesn't want you to fix it! Even if she says she wants you to fix it, don't do it! She needs to talk. She needs to get it out. That's the way she handles stress. You got it?

Now take this whole different wiring of a female brain, and different wiring of a male brain; put it in the area of sexual intimacy, you see, and how the female-it's tied to everything else, all the emotions, all the events, and to the male, we just take it out of that compartment. It doesn't have to be in any context for us. It does for the wife, see? And we have to constantly keep that in mind.

Now, let's go back and be even more basic. Let me tell you first of all what sex is not, okay? Sex is not a, a normal appetite like food. We have an appetite for food; we have an appetite, a necessity for, for sleep, or for water. It, sex is not a normal appetite, okay? The secular world says it is. Said it's like Baskin Robbins. You want a lot of varieties, and you have this appetite for sexual satisfaction, and therefore, you need a wide-ranging cuisine to know which style you like, what fits in; and for the male, sensual, sexual mind, this feeds into it that we try to say, and the secular world advocates, "Well, it's just an appetite that you have, like for food".

That is a blatant lie! You see, the sexual drive is totally different from the need for food, because God has given sex and put it in a context that is exclusive for marriage in the intimate sense, in the conjugal sense, and therefore, He has put protections around it because it is different. It is a mystery. It is wonderful. It is fabulous, in the context of marriage, exclusively. It grows; it becomes inexhaustible. It reproduces itself, and those who give themselves totally in that context, you understand it. Those who still wander around all over the planet-you do not understand it, whether it's in actual life, or in your mind. So it's not like food. God has protected it. He has put it in the realm of marriage and intimacy.

So we have to understand, that argument is totally invalid. Others would say that sex is dirty. Those outside the church think, "Boy, you Christians, you think sex is a terrible thing..." Not at all! Not at all. God Almighty came in this world in human flesh and sanctified it. We're made in the image of God, and something about our sexuality also is expressed in God, as we'll talk about in a little bit. So it is not something that is dirty; it is something that is exceedingly beautiful. It's not something that belongs to the area of duty. If a wife communicates so mind to her husband, "Well, it's my duty..." No, no, no, no. That's a total wrong attitude that needs to be radically changed in marriage.

So, we could talk negatively about what sex is not. What is sex? I'll tell you what sex is: It is sacred. It is a sanctuary for married couples to go into in the presence of God, and to have a really, out-of-this world experience. It is holy; it is magnificent; and it is an honor to the Name of God in that He created it, and He gave us this entity. Take out of that context of marriage, sexual intimacy is deadly to all participants, deadly to all participants. Most of you have not, not probably never read Numbers, Chapter 25. It's about a man named Phinehas. Most of us never heard of him. Somebody said that that's the name of some cartoon character-Phinehas, I don't know... But Numbers 25 tells about this guy, who was a nephew of Aaron. He was a godly man.

This was a time when the children of Israel, though they worshipped the true and living God, they strayed and began to worship the god of Baal, and the gods they particular worshipped were the fertility gods, the sexual gods. And so they were having sex, the Israelite men, with Midianite women, breaking the clear instructions of God. They were adulterers; they were fornicators. And then they would feel guilty about their sin. They would confess their sin. God would forgive them, and then they would go back a little while later, back once again to sleeping with the Midianite women. This went on, back and forth, back and forth.

And so finally, God said to Moses, "I'm fed up! Bring those Israelites who've been immoral, sleeping with Midianite women, and I want them killed"! Well, all the men came to the House of Meeting. Now you have some repentance, folks! Now there's crying; now there's revival; now I guess there's sacrifice; now there's calling on the mercy of God. Now they got honest with God, and in that moment of great spiritual turning to God, one Israelite man-he's named in the Bible, he says, "Pweeew! All that church, all that worship! Oh, the cloud, the fire, the manna! Pweeew"! He says, "I'm running away! I'm not playing this game..." and he leaves the place of worship.

Phinehas, God's man, sees him leave, and he goes into a little tent close by and gets a Midianite woman and begins to have sex with her while the revival is still going on in the House of Meeting, and Phinehas, touched by God, leaves the place, gets a spear, and he goes and he throws it through the back of the man on top of the woman. It goes through his back, goes through his stomach, goes through her stomach. They're both pinned to the ground, and they both are killed! You think God doesn't deal seriously with sexual sin? And in light of this, the plague which had infected Israel because of their immorality, 24, 000 plus had already died. The plague was lifted and there was a turning to God by all the people.

Now you say, "Well, that's Old Testament stuff..." but it is a picture in the progressive revelation of God from Genesis to the New Testament of how serious God takes sexual purity, and how God sees sexual immorality. You say, "Well, I've never heard of that happening to anybody I, I know of in this world..." Let me tell you something: When we persist in rebelling immorally against God, we may not be pierced through the back with a spear, but you know what God says? Romans Chapter 1, God just gives up on them. "Okay, go! Pshew! Hey, I'm through"! "Oh, I'm coming back..." "Oh, no, no. I'm through. I'm through..." So we're just like anybody else in a lost, dying world, a broken world. He just said, "I'm through with you. You know, whatever happens-nature, take its course. You ceased being a man or a woman of God. You're an animal. I'm through with you".

Now thank goodness, there's healing in the New Testament, and all of us need forgiveness and healing in this area of sexual sin. I dare say, that would cover everyone here. How does it happen? It happens all the way through the New Testament. Mary Magdalene there, seven demons. All probability, she was a prostitute. God, Christ forgave her and healed her. She became a, a, a radiant picture of beauty. And, and what about the woman at the well? You know, how many husbands had she had? She was living with someone who was not her husband. What did that-Jesus gave to her living water. There was cleansing. And of course in the Old Testament, you have David.

David, guilty of murder, guilty of adultery, and he confessed the sin. He said, "Lord, create in me a new heart. Renew a right spirit in me..." and God's forgiveness and grace operated in His life. The woman caught in the act of adultery-what did Jesus do? he said, "Go and sin no more". You know, there's forgiveness and grace, and so we have to understand that. But, but at the same token, as we look at the Scripture, we see what sin is not, and we see what sin is, and we see the role of sex-the wonderful gift of sex and how it is to operate in your life and into my life. And, and we look at this passage, and we see what it is. It is sacred! It is holy. It is a gift of God.

I remember years ago in South Carolina, we had a freeze, and all the power went out for about a week. In our house, we had a fireplace, and not everybody had a fireplace, but a lot of people came and spent the night with us. We had neighbors, friends, staff come to spend the night, and we got a big fire in the fireplace, and we cooked in the fireplace. We'd sleep close to it to stay warm, 'cause it was cold, cold, cold... That same fireplace that, where we cooked our food-the fireplace that kept us warm; if a spark had gotten out of that fireplace-wheww-and got something that would be combustible-paper or something; could have started a fire and burned the house down, couldn't it?

We know that'd happen. It happens all the time. That's the way it is with, with sexual intimacy. In, in, in the fireplace, God's design, in marriage, in that context-boy, it, it is life giving, it is warm, it is magnificent, it is healing, it is joy. But that same fire in the fireplace can be totally destructive outside the context in which God designed it. That we have to understand. Two became one. Crazy math, but that's how God designed the mystery and the beauty of marriage.