Is it okay to masturbate before marriage?
Hi, welcome to today's Little Lesson and this is the, actually, the eighth lesson in the
series that we've been considering the subject of sexual desire, immorality, sexual immorality,
lust and masturbation and it was all precipitated by the fact that as I'm recording this 41
thousand people, mostly in the category of younger men, have viewed a video, a Little
Lesson video that I did some months back titled Will God Forgive Me If I Keep Repeating The
Same Sin?
And pretty easy to surmise why it's mostly young men who are so attracted to that message
because so many Christian, unmarried Christian men, you know, struggle with lust, pornography,
and masturbation.
Okay, so we know that, of course Jesus condemns lust.
We've talked about, you know, what lust actually is.
Again, I can't review everything that we've talked about so go back and look at those
other videos.
We're building Little Lesson by Little Lesson.
We've covered the fact, though, just want to say quickly, sex was designed by God and
for three reasons at least.
For procreation, for pleasure and as a motivation for people to want to get married because
God has to get people to get together, you know, so he has to make them attractive to
each other and sex is part of the marriage package, right?
Right.
It's not everything in marriage but it a part of marriage.
And we've seen from scripture that it's God given, it's nothing to be ashamed of, it's
something to actually embrace because it's from God, it's a sign of His love for us,
and it's a very, very strong desire.
That has come off loud and clear and Paul gave the solution in 1st Corinthians, chapter
seven.
"To sexual frustration the solution is marriage."
It's better to marry than it is to burn with passion.
We've talked over and over again about the Bible is silent on masturbation.
There's no, you can't find the word, you can't find a synonym, you can't find a phrase that's
equivalent to it.
You can't read stories about so-and-so who was pleasuring himself or any other slang
term you might think of for masturbation.
So now we're kind of winding this down and we're going to come to Matthew, chapter five
where Jesus clearly condemned lust and try to unpack those few verses there because the
strongest argument against masturbation, of course, is that it's so often accompanied
by lust or whatever you want to call it, imagining a sexual encounter with another person.
Solo sex is far, far, far inferior to mutual, consensual, covenant marriage sex, okay?
And, you know, at least mostly I would say, for men, I don't know much about women, but
masturbation usually is accompanied by, you know, fantasizing and lust.
So the strongest argument against masturbation, of course, is the fact that lust accompanies
it.
We know that Jesus strongly condemned lust in Matthew, chapter five.
However, one little caveat I'm going to add to all this, just to provoke everyone's thinking
and I'm not going to make the final decision of, for our viewers here, but, you know, I
have to ask the question, didn't God know that?
I mean, didn't God know that masturbation would generally be accompanied by imagery
that one imagines in his or her mind?
Didn't He know that?
So if He knew that, of course He knew that, why do we find the Bible so silent on the
subject of masturbation?
Why isn't it not there, you see?
And so I'm trying to provoke our thinking to be thinking about these things a little
bit more deeply than they're often thought about.
So we come to Matthew, chapter five, and verse number 27 where Jesus is elaborating on the
law of Moses and on six occasions he says, "You have heard it said, but I say to you,"
and sometimes he accurately quotes what was said in the law of Moses.
Other times it's not an accurate quote because it becomes very clear he's not really, certainly
not correcting the law of Moses with he himself gave.
He's correcting the pharoses twisting of the law, and so forth.
But in this case, he accurately quotes it, "You have heard it was said, you shall not
commit adultery."
What is adultery?
Adultery is sex with a person who's married.
It could be two married people who are not married to each other having sex.
One married person, one non-married person having sex.
Either case, it involves a married person and we saw how that was condemned in the law
of Moses.
It was capital punishment for adultery.
And capital punishment for adultery that involves a girl who's engaged, not even, actually,
officially married yet.
Yet, finding a case of what would be more in the fornication category where a man actually
rapes a woman that, against her will, and there's not capital punishment for that.
There is marriage, you know, that's the penalty.
You've got to marry this girl and you can't divorce her all your days and you've got to
pay her father 50 sheckles.
We've read that in our previous Little Lesson, okay?
So, Jesus is talking about you shall not commit adultery and Jesus knows that there is a little
bit of a difference here because he gave the law of Moses, right?
Right!
Some things are more grievous to God.
Sex, adultery is much more grievous to God than fornication.
Both are grievous to God, but the greater sin is the adultery and that's what one of
the ten commandments addresses and when it comes to fornication, the penalty was get
married.
Adultery the penalty was stoning to death.
So, we're talking about adultery here in Matthew five.
But I say to you, that everyone who looks at a woman with lust for her, has already
committed, not fornication, already committed adultery with her in his heart.
So this is actually still in the category of the more grievous sin of adultery and the
lust that preceives adultery and, yes, the lust that proceeds fornication is related.
Of course it's similar but it's not the same, okay?
You got that?
That's important.
I mean, God knows.
God knows the struggles that single people have.
He's the one that gave them their sexual desire.
The solution is marriage and that's one of the reasons he gave them that desire, to motivate
them to get married and so forth, you know?
And they're much more susceptible to many temptations and the solution, again, is always
listed in the scripture as marriage, okay?
So Jesus is obviously saying it's not, God's not just displeased when you commit adultery,
God's displeased when you start thinking and planning adultery and if you want to avoid
the terrible sin of adultery, which, the New Testament gives no adulterer one hair at eternal
life, than here's the helpful hint from Heaven, nip it at the bud, recognize that adultery
starts with lust, adulterous lust.
Recognize when you find yourself being tempted to think the wrong thoughts about that married
woman that you're looking at, saying, "Whoa!
She's off limits for me!"
No, no, don't go there with your mind.
Nip that in the bud because if I don't, if I begin to act on this and I start flirting
with this gal and then I start holding her hand and then I invite her ... one thing leads
to another and ultimately, it'll take me straight to hell, okay?
That's what Jesus goes on to say because he says if your right eye makes you stumble,
tear it out, throw it from you.
It's better for you to lose one parts of your body than for your whole body to be thrown
into hell.
He's trying to keep people out of hell by what he's saying here and the next one's the
same thing.
If the right hand makes you stumble, cut it off so any, the message is whatever would
be causing you to stumble into adultery, get rid of it.
And, of course, he would have similar advice to the guy who's, the single guy who sees
the single woman who's not engaged, back to Deuteronomy chapter 22 we read in a previous
Little Lesson, and he had the same advice, okay?
But it is slightly different because, you know, if you have sex with her, well now you're
supposed to marry her and you don't go to hell, okay?
Okay.
Well, we're way out of time so I'm going to do at least one Little Lesson, proceed on
this same thought and I hope to see you then.