Sexual desire and masturbation.
What does the Bible have to say?
Hi, welcome to today's little lesson.
Thank you so much for joining me and today we're going to continue the very sensitive
subject of sexual desire and masturbation.
This is a continuation of two previous little lessons and if you didn't see those, you might
wanna stop this one and go back and look at those because we're building on some principles
and I can't review everything, you know, because we only have so many minutes.
But I finished out our previous little lesson reminding all of us that sex was God's idea
and so you know, sex is not in any way inherently evil.
Sex is inherently good and it's one way that God shows us his love.
I mean, it was his idea to bundle all those very sensitive nerves in the human body, both
male and female, and God was thinking about pleasure, enjoyment, fun and I hope most viewers
would agree with me on that.
I know there will be some theologians who will say, "Well now, sex is only for procreation
and if you're not going to have children you shouldn't be having sex because that's why
God designed it because it results in children."
Okay, great, great.
What do you say to that?
Well you say that's stupid, right?
Because after people physically are not able to, you know, they get old enough where they
can't have children any longer, they get to menopause, they can still have sex and it
can still be pleasurable and enjoyable and fun, right?
So anyone who says that God created sex just for procreation, just so you have kids, I
mean, you know, that's wrong.
I just proved it's wrong and you just think for two seconds, you know?
I mean, you have a wrong idea of God if that's the kind of things you think.
I mean, come on.
God loves us and sex is just one of many ways that God has expressed his love for us.
He wants us thinking about him and how good he is, alright?
So we'll be drawn to him and then serve him and love him because look how good he's been
to me.
Through all these different ways, one of which is sex.
Now of course we know that God set the boundaries: sex is for people that are married, in a covenant
marriage 'til death do they part because it's so special.
It's reserved just for that and God also knows that it's only good in that context for a
couple of reasons.
You can probably figure them out.
I'm sure that you probably have already figured that out.
Alright so I just think it's good for us to acknowledge that, you know, sex is good and
that that sexual desire that you feel is from God and so it can't be bad, okay?
Now he does say, "I'm setting parameters" but the question is, has he set the parameters
and said, "No masturbation?"
Well he said no adultery, he said no fornication, he said no incest and no prostitution, no
lust, no bestiality, have sex with animals.
We talked about that.
But he never said no masturbation, alright?
Nobody can deny this.
Nobody who's honest can deny this.
So let's just look at sexual desire in this little lesson and let's go to a famous part
of scripture that I think is just beautifully frank and honest on this subject.
Paul writing to the Corinthians answering questions that they had about sex, okay?
He openly talks about it.
I love Paul's honesty in this regard.
First Corinthians, Chapter 7, Verse 1.
He starts off by saying, "Now concerning the things about which you wrote, it is good for
a man not to touch a woman."
So I think there's an emphasis on the word there, "it is."
Like he's answering what things they wrote about so "Paul, we're writing to you a question.
Is it good for a man not to touch a woman?
You know?
Just don't be touching women?"
Paul said, "That's good.
That's right.
That's good, it's good for a man not to touch them because you don't want to do anything
that would lead to immorality, okay?
And immorality always starts in the mind and then it leads to a progression of sexual activity
and it can ultimately wind up in adultery or fornication."
Just like Jesus taught, you know?
You look at a woman to lust for her, you've already committed adultery in your heart so
Jesus' trying to get those impure, immoral thoughts out of our minds so that it won't
lead to the net step.
That's what he's trying to prevent and that's kind of what Paul's saying here.
Look at the next verse, he says "But because of immoralities," that is, you know, because
of the sins that people commit, you know, sexual sins that people commit, "Each man
is to have his own wife and each woman is to have her own husband."
Paul's not saying like, squelch the desire or exercise self control or get your act together
or take a cold shower, you know, all these things that we have heard over the years of
what we should do.
Paul says, "Get married," to avoid ... the solution to immorality is marriage because
God came up with the idea of sex but he said, "It's for married people" and so you have
a sexual desire then you gotta get married.
You gotta get married.
The trouble is, you know, that in our day people aren't getting married until years
after they reach puberty and so they're going for years with the same sexual desires that
married folks have but no marriage, no way to express or whatever you wanna call it,
release those desires, act on those desires.
Whatever you wanna call it.
Where back I think in more ancient times, more primitive societies everyone might have
figured this out about people who have sexual desire, it's about time for them to get married.
Not happening in modern times and modern nations.
In fact, the age of puberty has been going down, you know, to where, particularly with
girls I believe to where at one time they didn't reach puberty until their late teens
now it's early teens and so forth.
I don't think anyone has that figured out yet.
Some people speculate that it's the hormones that are in our food supplies and so forth.
But again, I don't know.
Just exacerbates the problem.
We've got all these people with sexual desire, God given, good sexual desire and you know,
it's akin to having any other desire that's okay, that's good, that God gave us.
The desire to eat and taste foods.
You know, can you imagine telling people, "Well you can't eat between the ages of 13
and 26.
You know?
Or the desire to relieve oneself, you know, and go to the bathroom?
This is all a bodily function that, and they call it, "I have to go relieve myself," because
it doesn't feel good right not but it'll feel good after I relieve myself.
Okay?
In the sense, you know, this is in that same category, okay?
So all I've been trying to do in these first three little lessons is to just maybe take
somewhat of a weight off of all these unmarried folks who are struggling and feeling terrible
and yielding to masturbation and just heaping condemnation on themselves.
I'm just trying to say it might help a little bit, first of all.
I haven't given everything that I wanted to say, but it might help first of all just to
realize you're okay.
You're okay, you're normal and God is the one who gave you that desire and so now what's
the solution?
Paul just said the solution is marriage.
That's what Paul said.
He didn't say take a cold shower.
He said, "Get married."
Okay well we've only gotten through two versus of First Corinthians 7 so I guess we'll pick
up here in our next little lesson.
Thank you so much for joining me.
See you next time.