Plain Talk on Sex & Sexual Abuse

By Rev. Clinton Chisholm 

(Sermon preached from 1 Thessalonians 4. 1-8 at Sligoville Baptist Church on February 19, 2017)

The banner headlines in both major newspapers a few Thursdays ago shouted that clergymen and policemen are the leading perpetrators of sexual abuse of minors. If you listened to Morning Watch that morning, you would have heard me say I don’t want to be called a clergyman (Rev. Chisholm), but Bro. Chisholm, a musician.

The Church has been far too shy in dealing with sexual issues up front, now we are being forced, by a sex scandal involving pastors, to deal with them.

As I said in the opening of my CD Plain Talk on Sex, if you have never felt a strong pull to sexual intercourse you are either abnormal/too old/too young or too lie. Allow me to go stronger. If you have never struggled with a temptation to sexual immorality you are extremely rare or need to be reminded of Rev. 21.8 “…all liars have their part in the lake of fire.”

The general or pervasive reality of a feeling for sexual intercourse means that the Church cannot avoid teaching on sex because sexual desires affect everybody. Whenever you see in the Bible “so and so begat so and so” sex was involved so we are being silly when we pretend as if we are holier than God so church should not deal with sex and most definitely not on a Sabbath or Sunday morning.

We must be clear in our minds that God made human beings as psycho-sexual creatures. So in the perfection of Eden Adam and Eve came from the hand of God with sex organs and with erogenous zones and with the capacity to desire or feel for sexual intercourse.

So sexual intercourse was not created after humankind sinned but was a God-given and delightful reality before the fall. (By the way the forbidden fruit was not a metaphor for sex and the fruit in scripture was not said to be an apple).

The Devil had nothing to do with the origin of sexual intercourse. Only God could have created something so sweet! Okay wash out my mouth with industrial strength Jeyes after service!

Adam in his maleness felt a desire to mate with Eve in her femaleness and vice versa. I like how the scriptures lead up to the scene where Adam saw Eve. Listen to Genesis 2. 20 (“So Adam gave names to all cattle, to the birds of the air, and to every beast of the field. But for Adam there was not found a helper comparable to him.”).

So seemingly Adam, while naming the animals and while sharing a certain level of fellowship with them was looking for somebody of his kind with whom to share at a deeper level.

So when he sees Eve he exclaims (in v. 23) with ecstasy (and I think with at least a mild erection, ok Jeyes again), “At last, finally, flesh of my flesh and bone of my bone, someone like me but in the feminine gender. She will be called woman [Hebrew, ishah] because she was taken from man [Hebrew, ish].”

Understand then that if you are single you will feel the desire for sexual intercourse occasionally and that feel is not evidence that you are either ‘old man’ or ‘new man’ but simply that you are normal human.

The rub of course is what you do with the feel or desire!

The sin of Adam and Eve, called the Fall of humanity, did not give rise to sex organs, erogenous zones or the desire for sexual intercourse because those were God-given realities before the Fall.

What the Fall has done is to mess up our mind, desires and even our physical structures.

So in a fallen world we have not only males and females but people who have abnormalities re sex organs, and these persons are called intersex (once upon a time called hermaphrodites).

Sin has also messed up God’s perfect plan for sexual intimacy which biblically ought to be in the context of marriage and with another of the opposite sex.

I sustain the view that ideally God intended sexual intimacy to be, at its best, mutual self-expression and mutual self-emptying, psychic oneness in physical intimacy minus fear/suspicion of being used/just another or of catching a disease, involving a male and a female who are committed to each other in love and marriage.

Now we have all kinds of things happening in terms of sexual desires and practice. So sexual liberals tell us that the whole gamut of specific sexual acts are okay, be that act paedophilia (molesting children [minors] sexually), necrophilia (having sex with a dead body), incest (having sex with a close relative), or rape, carnal abuse, fornication or adultery.

Christians who regard the Bible as the yardstick for faith and practice cannot agree with the sexual liberals because the Word of God pronounces against sexual immorality of all kinds.

Our text 1 Thess. 4. 3 is quite clear. Christians should abstain from ‘fornication’ says the KJV but do remember that the word translated as fornication is a broad word that covers all sexual sins not just that happening between two unmarried persons.

This is the general witness of the New Testament; Romans 1:26-27 pronounces against male and female homosexuality.  Galatians 5:22 taboos unbridled sexual sins, covering the whole spectrum again.

So it would be difficult to advance a case from the New Testament justifying any sexual practice other than marital, consensual, heterosexual intercourse.

The Bible is so concerned about sexual purity that our Lord in Matthew 5:27-28 indicates that it is not only the physical act of unlawful sex that is sinful but lusting as well. Desire, for Jesus precedes deed.

So you cannot boast that you have never committed adultery without asking yourself if you have also never ever lusted at anyone. That’s rough for a vast number of men and some women who do not know theoretically or practically the difference between admiration and lust.

I explore that difference on my CD Plain Talk on Sex and would just say in passing that when you are admiring, God gets the glory for creating that woman/man fearfully and wonderfully and as an end in herself/himself.  In lusting you are tampering with God’s creation in your mind and that sister/lady/brother/man becomes a means to your sexual ends.

Before moving on let me sum up so far.  God created sex and the sex organs and he is behind the capacity that we have to desire sexual intercourse. 

So the issue that the Church will face deeper into the 21st century I believe, is the challenge from the world concerning the Christian belief that sexual intercourse is proper only in marriage and with mature heterosexuals.

But more than that, because some of the critics of the Church’s stance on things sexual are from the Church itself, I believe the Church will have to counsel, teach and train its members to practice what the Church preaches concerning sexual purity.  Our belief must constrain our behaviour because God has called us unto holiness including sexual holiness.

So let me share some issues now with those in the Church who struggle with the challenge of sexual purity.  Understand this, if we profess Christ and lose the battle repeatedly with sexual temptations then onlookers and even we ourselves will think we believe what is not possible.

Now then if we are concerned about sexual purity I think we have to be careful with certain acts of intimacy.

Be aware of the nature of your sexual desires, by that I mean who you feel like having sex with when you feel ‘horny’. If you find your desires for sex involving minors or ‘likkle pickney’ seek immediate help from a Christian Psychiatrist or Psychologist backed up by support from prayer partners. Such desires are not only immoral they are also potentially criminal!

Though it is not my focus today might I warn those men especially who claim to be Christians but physically abuse their spouses that this too is both unbiblical and criminal. Seh wah a weh mi fi find dat inna Bible?

Well two suggestive and convicting texts, 1 Peter 3: 7 and Ephesians 5:28-29. First the text from Peter.

⁷ Likewise, ye husbands, dwell with them according to knowledge, giving honour unto the wife, as unto the weaker vessel, and as being heirs together of the grace of life; that your prayers be not hindered.

So if you are a woman beater your prayers will be hindered, blocked, so you end up talking to yourself!

Now to the Ephesians text from the Living Bible:

²⁸ That is how husbands should treat their wives, loving them as parts of themselves. For since a man and his wife are now one, a man is really doing himself a favor and loving himself when he loves his wife! ^29-30 No one hates his own body but lovingly cares for it, just as Christ cares for his body the Church, of which we are parts.

From that brief necessary tangent I wind off with a word re sexual self-control/restraint from 1 Thess. 4.4

⁴ that each one of you know how to control your own body in holiness and honor, (NRSV)

⁴ that each of you should learn to control your own body in a way that is holy and honorable, (NIV)

Self-control brethren, if you claim to be a child of God you cannot do any and everything that comes to your mind when you feel horny. Check your desires and control your urges by thinking of the double-edge of the immoral and the illegal and the possible consequences that can follow.

For the minors, the children here I leave a few pointers for purity. You are a child if you are under 18 and if you are under 16 you cannot in law consent to sexual intercourse so even if it is your underage boyfriend/girlfriend that is pressuring you to have sex or some big man or woman, SAY NO, BECAUSE YOU CAN’T SAY YES AND IF ANY ADULT TEMPTS YOU WITH WHATEVER TO DO ANYTHING THAT IS SEXUALLY INAPPROPRIATE, REPORT THAT ONE TO THE POLICE OR A RESPONSIBLE ADULT.

 Pointers now finally.

1. Avoid petting, which is never ever safe because it is not taming the body but teasing the body and many here today could tell you, privately, they played with fire and got burned.
2. Watch kissing and prolonged hugging....Many a person has experienced orgasm by prolonged kissing, hugging and rubbing.

Hear me well, based on what Jesus said about lusting in Mt. 5 you should realize that if you kiss, hug, rub or pet to an orgasm you have committed an immoral sex act.

We need to realize that apart from in law sex does not require a penis entering a vagina or any other orifice! Jeyes again anybody?

Purity demands avoiding that which will or could lead you to sin.  So I say to you if you must kiss keep it short and shallow. When you hug keep it light and not long.

Young people you need to know that no matter how mature your body looks/feels your brain matures from the back and the last area to mature is at the front and it is that area called the pre-frontal cortex (just behind the forehead) which controls rational behaviour, sober 2^nd thought, and it matures round about the early 20s.

It is wise then for all youngsters to forget sex, romance, pregnancy until your mid to late 20s. In fact young people and even some of us older ones confuse infatuation for love but they are radically different.

Dismiss me as prudish, ultra conservative or Victorian if you like but bear with me as I suggest to you an acid test for all romantic exchanges which is on my CD Love, Dating & Whatever.

It is this.  Can you pray and ask God to bless it before you do it and pray and give him thanks after you have done it? Really?  If you can’t apply the prayer test what you are considering/desiring/planning to do is either suspect or downright sinful.

Hear the text again from v.3, this time from the NKJV,

“For this is the will of God, your sanctification: that you should abstain from sexual immorality; ⁴ that each of you should know how to possess his own vessel in sanctification and honor, ⁵ not in passion of lust, like the Gentiles who do not know God; ⁶ that no one should take advantage of and defraud his brother in this matter, because the Lord is the avenger of all such, as we also forewarned you and testified. ⁷ For God did not call us to uncleanness, but in holiness. ⁸ Therefore he who rejects this does not reject man, but God, who has also given us His Holy Spirit.”

Sex is for mature adults and having sex with a minor, a 'likkle pickney', is not only a red light indication that you need clinical help, but it is at once immoral and criminal! By the way so too is abuse of your spouse!