The following is a production of Greenville Presbyterian Theological Seminary. For more information about the seminary, visit us online at gpts.edu. Let us turn now in the Word of God to Proverbs chapter 5. Please rise for this reading of God's Word. Proverbs chapter 5 verses 1 and 2 and then down to 15 through 19. My son, pay attention to my wisdom. Lend your ear to my understanding that you may preserve discretion and your lips may keep knowledge. Down to verse 15. Drink water from your own cistern and running water from your own well. Should your fountains be dispersed abroad, streams of water in the streets, let them be only your own and not for strangers with you. Let your fountain be blessed and rejoice with the wife of your youth as a loving dear and a graceful doe. Let her breasts satisfy you at all times and always be enraptured with her love. May the Lord add his blessing to this reading of his word. Let's pray. Gracious Heavenly Father, we do come before you this day through the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have access to the Father. We thank you, Lord, that we are your people, that you have made us to be your people. And we praise you, Lord, for your glory, for you are most glorious. You are holy. You are most wise, majestic. You are most righteous. Lord, you have told us in your word that you have made us to be your image bearers, to reflect your great glory throughout the world. And Father, we confess that in many ways we have fallen so far short of that glory, and we have failed to reflect you as we ought to reflect you. We thank you for your dear Son, our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, the express image of the Father, in whom we behold the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ, who is the image of God, and who has redeemed us from our many failures. And we pray, Lord, that by your grace, by your Spirit, Lord Jesus Christ, that you would be working in us and causing us to be molded and shaped into that image that we might reflect your glory in all ways. Lord, you tell us in your word that you have redeemed us. And you have redeemed us, not only soul, but also body. And we are to glorify you in our bodies and our souls, which are both yours. They have been bought at a great price through the blood of our Lord Jesus Christ. So grant us grace, day by day, increasing that measure, Lord, that we might reflect your glory as we've been created to do. This is our chief end. And so we pray for the blessing of your spirit to do this. We ask, Lord, that by your word now, as we are instructed, that you would teach us, that you would reprove us, that you would correct us and train us, that we might be trained in righteousness and thoroughly equipped for every good work, that others might see those good works and glorify our Father in heaven. We ask this through Jesus Christ, amen. It's both a privilege and a difficulty in some respects for me to introduce Joel Beeky concisely. Joel has been everywhere and done everything it seems, and he has written a large number of books, as you can see from his bio in the conference brochure. He's also the president of Puritan Reformed Theological Seminary up in Grand Rapids, Michigan. and a pastor in the Heritage Netherlands Reformed Congregation there. in Grand Rapids. Joel has been ministering to our family for many years now through his sermons as well as his books and the various resources he's provided the church for family worship and I trust that if you take advantage of some of these resources the Lord will bless you richly through this brother as he has us. It's also been a privilege to become friends with him and get to know him and his personal godliness and example has always deeply impressed our family. So it is a great privilege to introduce my brother Joel Beeky. Well it's great to be with you these days and unfortunately I do have to leave later this morning. It's our annual prayer day at our conference at our church back in Michigan and I have to preach tonight for our own flock but I just want to say that I'm deeply indebted to Greenville Presbyterian Theological Seminary, and Joey Piper in particular, a long, long friendship. And this seminary has helped our seminary as we got started, and we've given advice to one another, and I particularly call Joey often and ask him questions. It's just been a great relationship. And often when people ask me, what other seminary in the world is most like yours or closest to yours, I always say Greenville Presbyterian Theological Seminary. So we feel a real bond with you guys and with the seminary here, and we're just so grateful for that. John Calvin once proposed that we should respond to this world with what he called a complexio oppositorum, the complexity of opposites. Calvin said something like this, I'm just paraphrasing this, when you look at this world compared to eternity to come, this world is smoke and a dungeon and incomparable compared to the glory to come. At the same time, if you're a believer in Jesus Christ, this world is a place of joy because you're being trained and prepared to be with Christ forever. And if you receive what you receive as a believer, as indeed you do, through the right hand of God's favor rather than the left hand of his forbearance, everything you receive from God is to be sanctified and used to Jesus Christ's glory. So in plain terms, what Calvin is saying is something like this. When you look at your car, your home, your possessions, but also when you look at your wife or husband or children or parents, if you see them coming to you as gifts of God from the right hand of God's favor in Christ, These things can be sources of great joy to you. And so what Calvin said is the believer, only the Christian believer can truly enjoy in Christ all that he receives. You can enjoy your furniture the way that an unbeliever never can, no matter how materialistic that unbeliever may be. because you see them as the gifts of God and you want to use your very furniture for the glory of Christ. Now translate that into marriage and into the sexual dimension of marriage and you have some of that very rich theology that came at us last night through Dr. Hamilton's speech. It was just wonderful that he set the groundwork for me this morning in elevating all of marriage to a higher plane, a Christ-centered plane. And that means, and often Christians don't realize that, also conservative Christians, that the gospel of Christ ought to energize us to enjoy sex with our wives as a sacred passion, so that we may be motivated to make sacred love. Now that may surprise you. The root of much sexual dysfunction today, also in Christian marriages, is a lingering doubt whether marital sex is really pure and acceptable in God's sight. In some ways, I suppose, this dysfunction is much like what someone from the world says about a piece of double chocolate cake. They say, well, it tastes so good, it must be sinful. You've heard that statement. But how perverse that is. Really good things in life, when lived for the glory of God and centered in Christ, are not sinful. If they're done to the glory of God, done by faith, done according to the spirituality of the law, thou shalt love the Lord thy God above all thy neighbors thyself, they can be wonderful things. You see, if we believe that it's wrong to enjoy God's good gifts, such as food or marital sex, we're believing a lie of the devil, Paul tells us in 1 Timothy chapter 4, where he says all things are to be received with thanksgiving as the good gifts of a loving Father in heaven. So, however much the gifts of God may have been abused and perverted and corrupted in this world, for the Christian they are cleansed and made holy again by truth of the word and the power of believing prayer. And that's why Paul says in 1 Timothy 6.17 that the opposite of materialism is not asceticism. but it's putting your hope in the living God, he says, who giveth us richly all things to enjoy. So sexual love in marriage is like fire in a fireplace. If the fire breaks through the boundaries of the fireplace and ignites other parts of the house, it can destroy your property, kill your family, and end your life. Likewise, sex, outside of its God-ordained boundaries, will destroy you and kill you. What the world considers sexual freedom, the Bible says, is death. Whosoever, Proverbs 6, 32, committeth adultery with a woman, lacketh understanding, he that doeth it destroyeth his own soul. But at the same time, we don't want to harbor then, do we, such a fear of fire that we could never again enjoy the dancing flames in a fireplace. A blazing hearth is warm and beautiful. Likewise, sex within marriage is a warm and beautiful way to be close to the one you love. True Christianity does not frown upon or forbid sex within marriage. Vibrant sexuality is part of our Reformed heritage. Now it's true in the ancient church, also in the Middle Ages, the church generally frowned upon sex, glorifying celibacy at times even within marriage. Sex was something that, well, had to be done so you could procreate. But marriage was usually viewed as a mere concession to human weakness. And the medieval church forbade sex on holy days and sacred seasons, which, based on the increasingly crowded medieval church calendar, as one writer said, made sex with one's spouse a sin for more than three quarters of the year. Ironically, this led to glorifying sex and romance in the context of adultery, so that Popes didn't have wives, but they had mistresses. You could either be holy with the Virgin Mary, was the idea, or you could have fun with wicked Jezebel. But the Protestant Reformation turned that all around. It brought people back to the Bible and began to set forth a biblical view of sex as God's creation within marriage. But the people that really revived it, wrote books on it, expounded it, promoted it, were the Puritans. It's absolutely astonishing that the Puritans have the reputation of being prudes and killjoys when the Puritans are the one who bequeath to us the happy Christian home where husband and wife enjoy sex, enjoy family life, and serve the Lord with fear and gladness. Even C.S. Lewis said that the conversion of courtly love into romantic monogamous love is largely the work of the Puritans. But that raises the question, how does the river of human sexuality poisoned by the fall, polluted and disgusting, become a clear stream of refreshing water through the gospel of Christ. Well, I want to look with you at nine ways, nine principles that make loving our spouses sexually to glorify God and bring the promise of great blessing. for conscientious, God-fearing Christians. Number one, sex is the act of cherishing each other as God's image bearers. Sex is the act of cherishing each other as God's image bearers. Sex starts in the kitchen. And that means that what happens in your bedroom is in many ways determined by how you relate to each other throughout the day. You see, sex does not make a good marriage. Sex is the fruit of a good marriage. You see, husband, the way you treat your wife at the breakfast table may well affect your wife's response to you at night in the bedroom, even if you can't remember what you said to her in the morning. If we were just highly evolved animals, we could treat sex as a mere physical act in isolation from the rest of life. Of course, if we were evolved from animals, all of life would be devoid of meaning or moral direction in the first place. The worst atrocities would be on the same level as the most noble acts of love, for people would simply be acting on the basis of animal instinct, like wild beasts in the forest. But human sexuality within marriage is something very lofty, very sacred, very special. God says in Genesis 127, so God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him, male and female created he them. You see, our gender and sexuality are dimensions of an entire person created in God's image. So the evolutionists have it wrong when they say that sex is just about genitals and hormones. No, human sexuality is the coming together of two people, male and female, within marriage, made for each other, and both together made to serve the living God. The best sex springs not from an illicit relationship, but from a relationship in which we honor each other throughout life as the image bearers of God. So that implies that sex should never degrade or demean a spouse. Though the Bible is very specific about sexual things, it does not go into detail about what kinds of sexual activity are permissible. But it does make clear that we should not engage in sex in a way that treats anyone like a slave, an animal, or an object. Sex should always communicate honor to our spouse in a way that is appropriate to God's image bearer. Heidelberg Catechism puts it well. Question 108. Puts its finger on the essential values of the Christian life, purity and holiness, when it says that the seventh commandment teaches us to detest all uncleanness and live chastely and temperately, whether in holy wedlock or in single life. Scripture furthermore implies that sex thrives in an environment of personal communication. The fact that man and woman are made in the image of God are communicators as a result of the communication among the three persons of the Godhead who agreed to the proposal, let us make man in our image. reflects itself in the sexual relationship of a husband and wife who are to communicate with each other, not only physically, but also verbally. If we don't have time to talk with our wives, we really don't have time to have sex with our wives. A relationship is not just a physical thing, it's a verbal thing, it's a communicative thing, and that spills over into the sexual relationship. Hence the biblical idiom in the rich Hebrew word and rich Greek word to know, to know your spouse. Maybe you thought like I did when I was a boy and read that Adam knew his wife Eve and they conceived and had a child and called them Cain. Maybe you thought like I did that the reason the Bible used the word to know there was because the Bible didn't want to get specific about sexual things. Well, that's not true. Read Song of Solomon. Read Proverbs. What the Bible is saying with the word to know in Hebrew and Greek is it's an intimate term. It conceives of a whole communicative relationship. It implies that sexual intimacy grows in the context of mutual knowledge and mutual commitment and mutual relationship. So if you believe that your spouse is God's image bearer, you will want to know her and cherish her and care for her much as you long to know God and express your love for him. And sex then in marriage is just part of getting to know your spouse better and to love her more and to cherish her the way you should. Peter puts it this way in 1 Peter 3, 7, likewise ye husbands dwell with them according to knowledge, giving honor to the wife as unto the weaker vessel, and as being heirs together of the grace of life, that your prayers be not hindered. So in our entire marital life, also sexually, we must treat our wives with honor and respect, and if they are believers, as hopefully they are, as fellow children of God. And that means, says Peter, that we men must remember, and vice versa as well, that we are fit to complement each other, and yet we are different from each other. And the differences we have between maleness and femaleness, we ought to use to honor one another, rather than degrade one another. So forgive me for stating the obvious, but women really are, despite what our society is saying, quite different from men. Generally, men have a higher metabolism, more muscle, stronger bones than women. Their hearts and lung capacity, proportion to their weight, is larger than that of women. Women have stronger immune systems than men. Their bodies are generally more sensitive or responsive to touch, to taste, to smells, to sounds. But the difference between men and women is also social. Study taken of 250 different cultures around the world showed that males are almost always the rule makers, the hunters, the builders, the weapon makers, the forgers of metal, wood, and stone. Women are consistently most involved in raising children, caring for the home, preparing food and clothing. They're more skilled at reading people's emotions and relationships. And these differences, you see, show up most powerfully in marriage. A husband and wife approach their relationship differently. Different desires, different goals. I don't agree with everything that Willard Harley says in his book, His Needs, Her Needs. I don't want to give you the false impression that if you don't meet every one of your spouse's needs in marriage, you're doomed to end in adultery or divorce. But in reality, Godly people have faithfully endured mediocre, even bad marriages while finding deep joy and comfort in Jesus Christ, aiming in a self-sacrificial way to love their spouse, not ignoring the desires and longings of that spouse. And so we need to be careful here. We need to not expect too much of marriage on the one hand. We must not forget that our deepest desires and needs are for God and can only be met by God. Once I had a lady come to me and say, I want to divorce my husband. She said, I said, what was he unfaithful to you? She said, no, but he doesn't meet all my needs. So dear woman, I want to tell you, no man can meet all your needs. Only God can meet all your needs. Lady in my church once was, pretty worldly lady, she came to join the church mainly to be with her husband. Decent marriage, about as decent as you could get, I suppose, without being two Christians, and probably a C-marriage. She said to her husband, the day she got converted, she said, all my life, you've been number one and now you're number two, but I'm gonna be a far better wife to you when you're number two than when you're number one. Because when you were number one, I just poured all my needs onto you, expected you to meet them all. Now I see that my greatest needs are met in Jesus Christ. Now I can serve you with much more joy and gladness. You see, a wife's primary desires from her husband usually include leadership, affection, conversation, appreciation, trustworthiness, financial support, and fatherly commitment to the children. When you do even a decent job, men, of meeting those particular needs, even though you can't meet all the needs of your wife, normally, there are exceptions, normally your wife is going to respond to you very well sexually. But Don't expect your wife to respond to your sexual advances. If you give her a little time, little conversation, seldom tell her how much you love her, don't appreciate her work around the house, don't thank her for the meals, she'll probably turn to you and say, honey, I love your hugs and I love your kisses, but what I need right now is help with the dishes. She won't feel close to you. because you are not meeting the needs that you can meet. As someone has said, you need to touch the heart and mind of your wife before you touch her body. If you touch her heart often through kind words, through trustworthy deeds, through thoughtful kindness, you most likely will be delighted to discover what happens when you do touch her body. But you men, you also need to understand that the sexual experience of a woman is different from the sexual experience of a man to some degree. Almost without exception, both men and women, Christian and non-Christian, want good sex in marriage. However, men have to learn that they tend to have more of a physical drive towards sexual intimacy, where women tend to have more of an emotional drive towards sexual intimacy. So a man will naturally be more visually aroused by the sight of his wife, whereas a woman is more aroused by such things as tenderness and thoughtfulness, talking, touching, spending time together. So men can move toward this. a sexual climax very quickly, women want to move more slowly. They want to feel more along the way. These are generalizations, of course, and certain husbands and certain wives function differently, but these are things that you need to bear in mind as you seek to meet each other's needs and seek to learn the language of love in each other. A husband has a strong desire for a wife who gives him companionship, sexual fulfillment, submissiveness, attractiveness in both body and soul, admiration and respect for his work, domestic support, and motherly commitment to their children. So wives, you might be surprised how much more attractive you appear to your man if you frequently praise him, for example, for his accomplishments at work. For a man, contrary to what society says, A stunningly beautiful wife physically can become homely when she lives selfishly within the marriage and does not submit to her husband. And an average looking woman who really meets her husband's needs as far as she can becomes stunningly beautiful to a husband who loves and cherishes her and loves her personality and her kindness. And you might say, well, what does all this have to do with sex? It has everything to do with sex, because we're not animals. Sex is not just a physical act, but it's one important dimension of a relationship between two people created in God's image. So that's number one. Number two, godly lovers delight in multiplication. Sexual intimacy ordinarily goes hand in hand, as we heard yesterday from Dr. Piper, with bearing children. Having created man, male and female in his own image. God says, be fruitful and multiply. So if we truly see human beings as the image bearers of God, we will want to see his image bearers multiplied on earth. So if you try to enjoy sexual intimacy with your spouse, While in your mind you despise the thought of bearing children, you're actually tearing apart what God has joined together. And as so many have done, you'll pervert your own sexuality and your own sexual identity. Now whether or not God gives you children is dependent on his sovereign will. The Lord opens the womb. But the most sexual husband, the most sexual husband has the character of a father. And the most sexual wife has the heart of a mother. Now, birth control is an important issue in many marriages. There's no way I can do that subject justice in this address, but let me just give you three or four very quick guidelines. Number one, we must push back against our culture's obsession with family planning. I'm one of those old-fashioned guys who actually believe it's unbiblical and unwise to sit down with your wife and say, honey, how many kids do you want? Well, I want three. Well, I want four. Okay, we'll try to compromise. God opens the womb. Yeah, you only have three and a half. God opens the womb. It's not our business to determine how many children we're going to have. Puritans took a much different view. They said, if you have a child, You don't try to get your wife pregnant in the next month or two. She's recuperating from a child. This is a strenuous thing to have a child. But when she's strong enough, you sit down and say, honey, do you feel you're strong enough to have another child now? And she says yes, and she's got the strength and the constitution and the psychological, emotional, spiritual wherewithal to bear another child. You proceed to try to have another child. Average Puritan family had eight or nine children, and half of them died before they reached adulthood. So they knew sorrow as well. But they didn't have this idea, you never read in a Puritan book anywhere, I can't afford one more child. We're not going to have another child. All these secondary, selfish reasonings. God will supply. Part of lovemaking in marriage is an indication that you are willing to raise up a godly seed. That's part of the commitment. The two are connected. So, such an attitude smacks of arrogance, lack of faith, and unwillingness to submit to the will of God, who opens the womb? See, the Puritan view was this. Honey, we really should try to have children for the church's sake and for the sake of the commonwealth because we want to raise godly children in a covenantal faithfulness to God for the sake of the church and the nation. Now, when's the last time you sat down with your wife and you said, honey, let's try to have another child for the sake of the United States of America? That's actually the way the Puritans thought. Because you want to populate the earth with the fear of God. The most powerful way of doing that is through godly child rearing, being blessed by God. Number two, using natural methods of birth control for some months directly after a wife has delivered a child or when a wife is plagued with medical or psychological conditions that warrant it, that is of course nowhere condemned in scripture. So husbands in particular must exercise some measure of leadership and wisdom in this regard, thoughtfulness towards their wives. and not be irrational or irresponsible. I actually know of a husband, by the way, who lost his first wife to an early grave because he would not consider using birth control of any kind, even natural birth control, but insisted on having sex with his wife, even though her doctor had warned that another pregnancy could be fatal. Third, any means of birth control that would involve the possibility of destroying life must, of course, be rejected outright as sin and murder in God's sight. And finally, though my wife and I personally, we have never felt free in our consciences to use any kind of artificial birth control, we don't have the authority to say to every single Christian in the world, ever use this. There's got to be some freedom here, provided we lay down principles that we don't live selfishly. A lot depends on motivation here. But I have no authority to say to every single Christian couple, you've got to follow exactly the example that my wife and I follow. But Christian couples should prayerfully, carefully study the Scriptures, consider the evidence, determine the will of God for them in this situation. but please don't do it selfishly. Now, sexual intimacy also should continue, of course, after your bodies can no longer produce children. So godly lovers delight in multiplication, but sexual intimacy is for much bigger reasons than simply multiplication, as we also heard yesterday. Sex continues to function as God's gift for our companionship and pleasure into our older years. In fact, in a great marriage, sex within marriage becomes increasingly and profoundly enjoyable with the passing of years because the relationship is deepened. You know, we just had our first grandchild 10 days ago. I'm as excited as can be. It's wonderful. The covenant mercies of God are overwhelming. I'm walking with my wife the other night, taking our daily walk, and I just said to her, you know, there's something so beautiful about this, having grandchildren together. This just deepens our own relationship in a profound way. because now we have another huge life experience together. And the more intimacies you have in all areas of life, and in huge areas of life in particular, but also in small things, the deeper your sexual satisfaction will be when you engage in a self-denying way in sexual intimacy. It just ought to get better and better and better because the river runs deeper and the feelings are more profound. Number three, sex in marriage is obedience to God's commandments. You know the Bible actually says that you are commanded to make love regularly with your spouse if it's physically possible. Medical problems, of course, can make it impossible for a while. But when health permits, regular physical sexual intimacy is the will of God for married couples. You are to be one flesh. And 1 Corinthians 7, 3 through 5 says, let the husband render to the wife due benevolence, and likewise also the wife to the husband. For the wife hath not power of her own body, but the husband. Husband hath not power of his own body, but the wife. Defraud ye not one the other, except it be with consent for a time, that you may give yourselves to fasting and prayer, and come together again, that Satan tempt you not for your incontinency. Now the Greek words translated due benevolence communicate the idea here of obligation. It's a debt, actually, that you owe, in addition to being a great pleasure, to your wife or to your husband. Richard Steele, the Puritan, wrote, the sober use of the marriage bed is such a mutual debt that it may not be intermitted long without necessity and consent. William Gouge wrote, as it is called benevolence, because it must be performed with goodwill and delight, willingly, readily, cheerfully, so it is said to be due, because it is a debt which the wife owes to her husband and he to her. So ultimately the Bible's saying, actually men, husband, your body belongs to your wife. And wife, your body belongs to your husband. And you're to treat each other's bodies with great respect. So your Creator, your Redeemer, has placed you under an obligation to love your spouse physically with your body as well as with your soul. And as a result, you have power over each other's bodies. Sex is not a privilege that we choose to grant for good behavior. Sex is something we owe to one another lovingly, cheerfully, except in very short periods of fasting and prayer, says Paul. Now sometimes the Christian view of sex is caricatured as negative. You've all heard the line, oh honey, not now, I've got a headache. Well, that's the way some Christians actually view sex. But wisdom teaches us that to avoid fornication and adultery, a man and woman who love each other in the Lord and seem fit for each other as marriage partners should marry, should make love, for the best way to prevent adultery is to have sex with your spouse. The Puritan Matthew Henry said mutual delight in sexual marriage is the bond of mutual fidelity. Now, that doesn't mean that a husband and wife have the right to demand sex every night. You can't look at your wife and say, well, your body doesn't belong to you, so I'm going to compel you to have sex with me tonight. No, that's ridiculous. The marriage bed is undefiled, but we must not fall prey to today's Christian hedonists who hold that a woman must do whatever her husband wants her to do in bed, or however often he wants her to do it in bed. A man and a woman have got to be thoughtful to each other. There's got to be mutual consent in the sexual relationship. And we should not engage in every form of sexual practice promoted in our sex-intoxicated culture. We should reject our culture's obsessions with increasingly bizarre and extremely weird forms of sex that seem to make sex an end in itself. But notwithstanding all these objections, Regular lovemaking is God's command to married couples. Duty does not exclude delight any more than obedience to the law excludes love. And we are to rejoice in the physical aspects of that lovemaking as well. Proverbs 5, 18-19, we just read to you. Let thy fountain be blessed, rejoice with the wife of thy youth. Let her be as a loving hind in pleasant row. Let her breasts satisfy thee at all times, and be thou ravished always with her love. That's pretty specific. God calls us to enjoy each other's bodies passionately. This isn't mechanical obedience. This is wholehearted love. Gouge writes, as the man must be satisfied at all times in his wife, even ravished with her love, so must the woman be satisfied at all times in her husband, and ravished with his love. After lovemaking, have you ever just laid in bed with your wife and just said, you know, this is just so incredibly beautiful, I just love you so much, I can't put it into words. I love you like crazy. And the fact that God only allows us this incredible lovemaking as a capstone in our marriage, but that God encourages it and says it's pure in his sight and do it to my glory, it's overwhelming. What a privilege a good marriage is, capped with a good sexual relationship. As John Winthrop said, My closeness to my wife is my greatest blessing under God, under heaven, second to my relationship with Jesus Christ. This passage in Proverbs, and many other, indicates that lovemaking is not designed merely for the propagation of the race, but for sheer enjoyment of the partners as well. And the whole text that talks about enjoying your wife's breasts suggests that also what we call today foreplay, caressing, kissing each other's bodies with pleasure, it's not just a matter of the sexual act. It's a matter of showing love to each other in the totality of our bodies and our souls with sexual affection and verbal affirmation. Number four, sexual freedom comes through forgiveness of sins. You know, all kinds of people have all kinds of sexual baggage that they bring into marriage. But Colossians 2 says, and you being dead in your sins and the uncircumcision of your flesh, yet he quickened together with him having forgiven you all trespasses, blotting out the handwriting of ordinances that was against us, which was contrary to us, and took it out of the way, nailing it to his cross. Well, all trespasses, this is good news, includes sexual sins. All the accusations of God's holy law were nailed to the cross. And so my dear friend, if you trust in Christ alone for salvation and righteousness and your sins are forgiven, you are totally forgiven also for every sexual sin you have committed in the past. And you may need that forgiveness for sexual sins even committed against your spouse. You may be guilty of withholding sex when you should have given it freely. You may be guilty of using sex as an instrument to control or punish your spouse. You may have given your body but refused to give your heart, turning sex into a hollow and empty shell for your spouse. Perhaps you gave your sexuality to someone other than your spouse, or to the false intimacy of pornography and sexual fantasizing. But all of this guilt you see is nailed to the cross the moment the Holy Spirit unites you to Jesus Christ with a bond of true, saving faith. So confess your sins, repent of them, accept and rest in the promise of forgiveness. I know many Christians today who fell into sin sexually before they were married, who still live with that guilt. But my friend, if you're a true Christian, and God says if we confess our sins, He's faithful, He's just to forgive us our sins in Christ, to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. You are forgiven as you repent and believe in Him alone. How often in marital counseling I've had people say this to me, I know God forgives me, I know that, but I just can't forgive myself. I want to say this ever so gently, but is it possible that even though it sounds so humble to say that, that you're actually being a little bit arrogant? because you're acting as if you are the judge of all the earth and you are the judge of your own conscience and your own spiritual condition. Whose word determines whether you're forgiven or not? Yours or God's? You see, your problem is not that you need to learn to forgive yourself, your problem actually may be pride. And if so, you should humble yourself before the throne of grace. And you should submit to God's word, not your judgment. You should say, Lord, it's almost unbelievable. It's wonderful, but you have forgiven me. And so if I forgive my wife for something, it's a terrible thing when she says, I can't forgive myself. I can't really totally accept your forgiveness. That's a burden for me. How do you think God feels when he says, I've forgiven you. Rejoice in the wife of the youth and you keep on heaping on guilt when you've been forgiven. Burning your conscience when it's already been cleansed from God's side. You see, sexual freedom comes when you receive the forgiveness of sins and enter 100% into the sexual intercourse with your wife, with freedom. Number five, faith in Christ actually empowers sexual love. The Christian life from beginning to end is driven by faith in Christ. Paul says, Galatians 2.20, I live by the faith of the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me. Do you believe that apart from Christ, you can do nothing, but if you abide in Him, you will bear much fruit? John 15 verse five. And do you apply that to your sexual relationship with your wife? You see, if a passive, I'm sorry, a passionate sexual relationship with your spouse is God's will, then Jesus Christ can give you the full sufficient grace to increasingly do God's will towards your spouse. Now, don't get me wrong, sex is only one expression of your love for your husband or wife, but that love is also the fruit of the Holy Spirit, like all the other expressions of love. And so here you are in the kitchen with your spouse, knowing you'll later be heading for the bedroom, and maybe you've already talked about you look forward to being with her, and you know that you're commanded by God to have sex with your marriage partner, and you see how empty you are of true love, and so your heart cries out, Father, strengthen me with power by that spirit so that Christ will dwell in me. and I may love my wife as myself, I may walk not only in the path of obedience, but I would experience in the act of lovemaking the beauty and the intimacy of my spouse as a reflection of a healthy relationship with thee, with you, O Lord. Have you ever prayed for God to enable you to glorify Him in making love with your spouse? you can and you should. Now, again, some of us may carry baggage into the bedroom. Maybe you struggle with various things. Maybe you even approach sex with a mind clouded by lurid memories and images. Whatever is going on in your sexual life, apart from total 100% dedication to your spouse, I'm not talking about physical adultery with another person, but mental adultery. Whatever feeds that stream, turn off that stream as best you can. Maybe it means getting rid of cable TV. Maybe it means getting rid of other forms of technology that channel garbage into your mind. But you are called to be 100% dedicated to your spouse. And ask God to help you delete the memory files in your own mind. when you still feel polluted. Look to Christ for strength to do that. Seek Christ on the marriage bed because there you are to do the will of God. Number six, sex is more loving with self-denial. Selfishness kills lovemaking. No matter how good-looking a person is, he'll provoke weariness and disgust from his wife if all he wants to do is take and never give. One key to good sex is going to bed as one called to serve. We call it making love, a weak term. You're giving love, the love you feel in your heart. Isn't that what the gospel teaches us from the example of Christ? He made himself a servant, humbled himself. He came not to be served, but to serve. And when both people approach lovemaking that way, to serve each other's pleasure, the lovemaking is absolutely fantastic. Sexually, you see, this means, as I said before, touching her heart before you touch her body. It also means that you keep touching her heart while you touch her body. Speak words of love to her while you're making love to her. Praise her, touch her body in ways that will touch her heart. Learn what she likes. Patiently give it to her. And same thing vice versa. There are objections, but my wife, but my husband, focus on yourself. Give yourself to your spouse. Seek to have your priority be, I want to please my spouse. And talk about, after lovemaking, in quiet times, talk about what pleases each other, so you have clear communication. It may be husbands that you'll have to wait, touching and talking, until your wife ascends the mountain peak. And you'll learn to appreciate the foreplay more than you would naturally, because you learn to adjust to her lovemaking style, and vice versa. So you compensate to each other. You learn each other's language of love and you give that to each other. And it's precisely here that we're called to serve the Lord by faith. It's a parallel with our spiritual relationship. If any man come after me, let him deny himself, take up his cross daily and follow me. Whosoever will save his life will lose it. Whosoever will lose his life for my sake, the same shall save it. Now, making love is hardly bearing a cross, but making love, if it is truly an act of love, does involve self-denial. Thomas Watson says, self-denial is a sign of a sincere Christian in every area of life. Christ promises that we find life as we deny and die to ourselves. Now, that doesn't mean that every single love session you're going to feel that somewhat better because you denied yourself. Some people take lovemaking so seriously, and if it's not just the supreme, every single time they get discouraged, and they come into other problems sexually because they don't think they measure up. No, no, no. It's meant to be enjoyed. Frankly, there are some nights when you may deny yourself or your wife, and it will mean no sex at all, or perhaps you are exhausted, You're not ready. Understand each other that way. Be willing to give and take in this way. A self-denying sex life will feed on a thriving spiritual life with God in a deepening relationship with your wife. And ordinarily, In your sexual life, you will improve with your patience and understanding. You'll not only enjoy your own pleasure, but you'll increasingly enjoy your spouse's pleasure as well. But regardless of how your spouse responds, you can't control that completely. Your soul will expand beyond the narrow confines of selfish sensuality and will receive treasure in heaven. Number seven. Our Father in heaven can heal fear and shame. We heard the word yesterday, naked and unashamed. The very word naked can evoke feelings of embarrassment and shame. Ever since Adam and Eve grappled for fig leaves, we've wanted to cover up our nakedness. There's something exhilarating, however, about being naked with one's spouse, and yet it's a vulnerable position to be in. Well, if that's true of sheer nakedness, how much more that's true of sexual embrace. Here too, though, the gospel empowers us. For the gospel contains the assurance of being loved by God. Because of that love, we are called by God to love others. Out of that love, Ephesians 4 says, Be ye kind one to another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God, for Christ's sake, hath forgiven you. Be ye therefore followers of God, as dear children. Walk in love, as Christ had loved us, and hath given himself for an offering and a sacrifice to God for a sweet-smelling savor. You see, Paul keeps grounding our love for each other on God's love for us. The more you know, his love for you. The more his love will cast out your fears and empower you to love one another. I want to walk softly here, but surely this is part of healing for victims of rape or even incest. You know, when I was accosted in Latvia and beaten up and thrown on the ground and tied and they said they were the Mafia and they kept running a knife up and down my back and slapping my face with a knife and I thought I was a dead man. Afterward, God graciously spared me. I had flashbacks of that experience for six months. I'd wake up in the middle of the night in a sweat, sit up in bed, and all kinds of combinations that didn't really happen. Out of that one thing that did really happen just came at me, and for the first time in my life, this was just, I don't know, 14 years ago, first time in my life I understood how someone who'd been sexually abused in childhood could have flashbacks for a long, long period of time. You know, with a loving spouse and a patient, tender spouse, and by committing this to God and bringing it to Christ over and over and over and over again, you can work through this. You can work through this. And God can help you so that the love of your Father in Heaven, which is so pure and so powerful, can persuade you that sexual love in marriage is absolutely pure and powerful, and the positive can cancel out the negative. Yes, you may have traces of difficulty with it for many years, maybe lifelong, but Though God may not wipe away all your tears until you see his glory face to face, even now the Holy Spirit will lead you into an ever deepening experience of the fullness of God's love and so of the fullness of your spouse's love as well. He can help you overcome fear and shame. Number eight, sexual idolatry requires repentance. Sexual idolatry requires repentance. It's possible to make an idol of sex, even within marriage. Many idols and false gods of the ancient world were associated with sex or fertility. But you see, idolatry is not just a matter of bowing before a statue. It's rooted in being captivated by some created thing or person instead of the creator. So remember, remind yourself that sex, though it is very good in marriage, wonderful, but remind yourself, sex is not God. Sex is a real but secondary good. It's acceptable to pursue sex in marriage, but only as a means of honoring God. If our marriage bed is to be a holy temple in which we offer ourselves as a living sacrifice to God, we must cleanse it of idols. Let me give you three quick idols. One is the idol of perfect beauty. Long before the Barbie doll appeared in 1959, women were convinced about the beauty of face and form. To some extent, men were as well. But this concern has grossly intensified greatly over the years. Today, body image is a big problem, not only for women, but also for many men. Hence all the growing prevalence of eating disorders. We no longer compare ourselves to the best-looking people in our town or school, which is bad enough, but now we compare ourselves to supermodels who grace the covers of magazines and who have the benefits of airbrushing and professional makeup artists and personal trainers. Our cultural obsession for youthfulness, as well as comparing ourselves to impossible standards of beauty, can wreak havoc in the bedroom as it becomes an idol either for our lust or for our envy. But you know, Yes, of course, a spouse must try to be attractive, attractive as possible, within reason, without being obsessive to your spouse. But physical beauty is actually of relatively little value in marriage. For God has given beautiful people no more ability to please their spouses in bed than ordinary looking people. Happiness in sexual relations has little to do with the size and shape of your body. And that's proven in studies. It's proven also by pastors and pastoral counseling. Proverbs 11, 22 warns us, as a jewel of gold in a swine's snout, so is a fair woman which is without discretion. Give yourself, give your body to your spouse without shame. She loves you, you love her, that's all that matters. Don't fall for the idol of perfect beauty and perfect figure. Two, the idol of pleasure. Our pornographic society has severed sex from marital love, turned it into a superficial adventure and pleasure-seeking. Sexual pleasure, especially the orgasm for its own sake, has become another selfish idol in our day. And the world today is suggesting that sex is like an athletic event in which two people with perfectly conditioned bodies take the gold medal for achieving the most that they can in the greatest possible number of positions with the greatest possible number of partners. This is obnoxious in the sight of God. By contrast, a husband and a wife with very ordinary bodies can have very good sex because of the love, the tenderness, the intimate knowledge they have for each other. rather than treating each other like soulless beasts. They come together in romantic friendship and loving service in Christ to each other. R.C. Sproul says, you are called to satisfy your husband or wife. You have only one standard to meet. Keep your eye on that and forget the superstars of sex. Number three, the idol of pregnancy or lack of pregnancy. A more subtle idol is allowing sexuality to be ruled by the desire for conception. Remember Rachel? Give me children, Jacob, or I die. A natural desire for children is a blessed motivation in sexual intimacy. But when having children becomes everything to us, then it ruins sex because we use our spouse and fail to glorify the God who alone can open the womb. That's what Jacob said back to Rachel. I can't open the womb. Pray for grace, as painful as childlessness can be, pray for grace not to let childbearing become an idol. It's also possible for pregnancy to become an idol of fear. Having a child might threaten my career plans. Or perhaps pregnancy might raise the specter of miscarriage if you lost children before. And such a fear of becoming pregnant can also damage the marriage bed, and an idol can be made of that. But you see, in reality, neither having children, losing children, or going childish can destroy your happiness, nor can it secure it, because only God can give you genuine happiness. Beauty, pleasure, children are gifts from God. Receive them with thanksgiving, but don't pursue them as if your happiness depended on them. Sex is not heaven. Men are not gods. No woman is a goddess. The greatest pleasures in life are hollow without God. So repenting of sexual idolatry can help us deal with sexual impotence or frigidity. But it might also be the result of winding ourselves up so tightly about some idol that we cannot relax. Fear and anger and pride hinder sexual ability. So ask, what dominates my heart? And how may this displease the Lord? One failure may lead to another in the marital bed, but there's often deeper causes. So here again, ask yourself, is there any idolatry going on in my mind, in my life? And then too, remember, a strong dose of humility. can actually make sex much more enjoyable with your spouse. Instead of bearing the heavy weight of superhuman expectations, we can just be ourselves. In fact, we can even laugh at our weaknesses when we are embraced in the arms of someone who accepts us unconditionally, and how beautiful that is. In a climate of gospel-nurtured grace, we are free to enjoy God's gift with our spouses without trying to make sex into something that was never designed to be a cure-all for everything. And finally, number nine, gratitude and contentment sweeten sex. Paul says, for every creation of God is good, nothing to be refused if it be received with thanksgiving. Later he says, but godliness with contentment is great gain. So let us receive God's gift of sexual intimacy with thanksgiving and contentment. Gary Thomas writes, ironically, the idolatry of sex and obsessive guilt over sex accomplish the same thing. They keep the focus on self, whether it be out of enjoyment or despair. Gratitude, on the other hand, turns our hearts towards God. You know, grumbling is a grave sin against God. Paul says in Philippians 2, do all things without murmurings and without disputing. Grumbling is not only a sin against God, it's a sin against our spouse. I wish my wife looked like that. I wish my husband did this. Stop grumbling. Appreciate the gifts your spouse has and don't focus on the gifts they don't have. You're not meeting my needs has broken many a marriage and it's mainly out of pride. I like to look at it this way. What do you deserve in life? Death and hell, because you're a sinner. Enjoy what you have been given in your spouse. I deserve, you deserve to be married to a devilish spouse and to lie down in a bed of flames. Isn't it amazing that God has given us the spouse he's given us? Appreciate her. as a hell-deserving sinner, and always say, I'm receiving better than what I deserve, also in my spouse. Let her breasts indeed satisfy you at all times. Be thou ravished always with her love, and be grateful for it. And train yourself to focus exclusively on your spouse, to respond to her whole person. Well, in conclusion, Sex and marriage is a great blessing from God. Receive it, freely give it to each other. But remember, Christ is your life, not sex. Pursue a healthy sexual relationship as a capstone to your marriage with your spouse in obedience to Christ. But do remember, sex is a temporary gift pertaining only to this life. One day, you'll be married to Christ in a deeper, more profound way, in a perfect marriage, sin-free in soul, sin-free in body, where all love will be walled in and all evil will be walled out. So trust in this Savior. Enjoy your marriage, enjoy sex within marriage, but look forward to that greater intimacy, non-physical intimacy, spiritual intimacy with the Lamb of God. in whom there is absolute perfection, and he will make you absolutely perfect, so he will see no sin in his Jacob and no transgression in his Israel. And then you will have the utopian marriage forever in glory. Amen. Let's pray. Great God of Heaven, we thank Thee so much for marriage, for the gift of sexuality within marriage. We pray that we may live it out in a Christ-centered, God-glorifying way in which we bring great joy to our spouse and, as a byproduct, great joy to ourselves as well. and help us to be truly interested in our spouse, to enjoy one another, to speak the language of love, to learn to know the art of loving our spouse in terms of our spouse's desires and pleasures, and help us, Lord, to do all of this, aiming to please Thee and to live wholly and solely for our Lord and Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ. Bless our marriages. and be near and dear to us, we pray in Jesus' name, amen.