Mark Clark [00:00:00]:
Hey, everyone. Mark here. Hopefully you're doing well. This is the Mark Clark podcast. Glad you are listening to this. Today we are diving into one of the most misunderstood topics in Christianity at all, sex. And so many think the Bible is anti sex, that God is anti sex. We're gonna bust up that whole myth and reveal that God is so pro sex, and he designed us to actually enjoy it.
Mark Clark [00:00:20]:
And what is the context for it. We're gonna explore how sex fits with the christian worldview, address cultural misconceptions, and discuss the joy and the beauty of sex as God intended. This one's gonna be a hot one, guys. This conversation is essential, whether you're in the church or just curious about faith. So glad you are listening to this. Make sure you share this one with a friend. There's another podcast in our network, the Thrive podcast Network, called change the odds. And it's with the host, Kevin Thompson.
Mark Clark [00:00:48]:
He's awesome. He's all about marriage and counseling and family, and he talks about sex a lot over there on the podcast. So go listen to change the odds over in our family of podcasts. All right, hopefully this one is helpful to you. Share it with a friend. If so, and make sure you always give a review. If you like this, jump on and give it a review. It helps more people see and listen to the podcast.
Mark Clark [00:01:08]:
All right, thanks, guys. Hopefully you enjoy this. What we're going to be talking about today is sex. Now, here's why it fits within a series like this, because I think at the end of the day, there's a lot of people, if we're honest with ourselves, that would say, hey, I don't believe in Christianity. I don't believe in God because philosophically, I don't like it. So last week we talked about hell, and I can't embrace Christianity because I don't like hell, or I can't embrace it because I'm a science person, or I can't embrace it because God's existence, these kind of evidential or historical reasons, and that's legitimate. But then I think there's a lot of people, if we're dead honest, that really kind of keep a distance from Christianity because of what they think it says about sex, that God is anti sex, that the Bible is anti sex. And so people kind of stay away from it.
Mark Clark [00:01:51]:
They don't want to go anywhere near because they know they like sex, and they think that God is kind of against sex. And that's really, in a sense, the church's fault at times. So what really, my point today is to show you that version of God or the version of the Bible where it doesn't like sex. It's not into sex that you need to repress your sexuality. You need to hide it. And we should be ashamed about it, and we can't talk about it openly. And it's just wrong that Christianity actually has this beautiful, robust, radical, amazing version of sex and that God is actually the most pro sex person in the universe. But I understand why, if you're a skeptic, you think that, and why you keep your distance from the church, because the church has not done itself any favors in the past.
Mark Clark [00:02:41]:
When I was a 17 year old exploring Christianity, sex was a big reason why I was nervous to become a Christian. Cause it was like, oh, man, you become a Christian, and sex life's done. I can't believe it. I'm gonna be repressed. I can't do anything I want. And I remember just thinking, oh, my goodness, the church venerates the virgin Mary as if that's the goal. And as a 17 year old full of hormones and a head full of music videos, that was the opposite to my goal. Life, right? Not to be a virgin for my whole life.
Mark Clark [00:03:07]:
Why does the church love that? We got to run from that? And so the church hasn't really done itself any favors. And I've told you this story before, and for those of you who are new, my first exposure to sex in the context of the church was exactly along this vein of the church just mishandling and having an epic fail around sexuality. I had borrowed my friend's backpack and had shown up to a youth group night, and we were doing worship, and I was at the front of the thing, and I had just started hanging out at the church. And so the guys were already a little skeptical about why I was there with my baggy pants and my chain smoking, this and my swearing, and they thought I was just there to basically have sex with girls. And I was like, no, don't you understand? I'm not here for that. And then we're at the front of the thing, and we're doing worship, and I unzipped it to grab a pen to write some notes, and all of a sudden, one of the youth leaders kind of tapped my shoulder and looked, pointed down, and I looked, and all my feet. My feet were literally covered. The whole ground was covered with a whole bunch of condoms that had fallen out of my backpack.
Mark Clark [00:04:04]:
All right? So that kind of doesn't go to the narrative that, hey, I'm just here for Jesus. All right. And so they're like, oh, I'm like, no, not mine. All right. So then they took me into the pastor's office, and they had a big talk and the whole talk, and here's my point, was all about, you know, you shouldn't do that. And sex is bad, and this is what the church has done, right? Sex is dirty, nasty, vile, and wrong. So save it for the one you love, as one writer has said. And so this is a problem because, of course, it's not like that.
Mark Clark [00:04:37]:
And so here's the reality. Bertrand Russell, who was a philosopher and an atheist back in the day, he put it this way. He said, the worst feature of the christian religion is its attitude towards sex. Meaning it's oppressive, it's old school, it's terrible. Margaret Sanger, the founder of Planned Parenthood, which does the most amount of abortions in the United States, said that Christians are moralists and that we repress sexuality and we should basically stop being listened to. Christopher Hitchens, the late skeptic and atheist, said, you know, Christianity shouldn't even have a place at the table in regard to the discourse we're having as a culture on sexuality because it's too old school and repressive. And there's a lot of things we could go, a lot of roads we can go down, and I don't think I'm going to go down a bunch of them. But one of the things I do want to point out is I think it would be very dangerous to isolate the church from the conte or religion in general, from the context of sex in our culture.
Mark Clark [00:05:33]:
And the topic, because I think one of the things the church does is it has a beautiful prophetic voice into some of these things. And we go through a lot of examples. But one of them would be what is called the priority of the autonomous self, or the idea that we basically, here's what we have to understand that when we approach right now, our modernistic approach to sex is I do what I feel is right, and you have no right to speak into my life. You can't put a burden on me about your view. You can't curb my sexual desires. Whatever I want to do, and if I feel it's right, then I can do it, and nobody can tell me any different. The problem is, is that we have to be very self aware of where we are in the spectrum of history, that post enlightenment, 17th, 18th century enlightenment, the modern. We are a product of that as modern westerners.
Mark Clark [00:06:24]:
And what that said is we need to prioritize the self, that the self is all that matters. The individual is all that matters, and that's what's good for society. The problem is, is people have only believed that for the last two or 300 years. And most cultures actually don't even function like that today. Because all through history, what mattered was not the individual. It was the tribe, it was the family, it was the collective. It was communal vision, not individual vision. And so the idea that you would sacrifice yourself for the sake and the good of culture and tribe and family was what really has been part of everything up until 17th, 18th century, when we started thinking purely as individuals.
Mark Clark [00:07:04]:
And so just be self aware that when you say, nobody can curb what I want to do sexually, you are a product in reading the prompter of the culture that you were born into. But be very careful, because you need to look and say, what does history always believe? What does a lot of cultures still believe about these kind of things? And of course, it falls apart very quickly when you begin to understand that if you say you can't curb anything that I think about sexuality, I'm a person. I can just do whatever I want. Be very careful with that, because, of course, if you said, you're not allowed to project anything on me, but I want to sleep with your wife, I'm going to punch you in the face. Right? Because there's a limit. You can't just do whatever you want. There's, of course, a curbing, of course, a communal aspect where you're not allowed to just sleep with whomever you want, act out however you want. There's an understanding that we've got to actually try to get to the best ideas for the flourishing of individuals, families, tribes, and societies in the context of our discussion about sex.
Mark Clark [00:08:01]:
It's not just about the priority of the autonomous self, but this is what's happened with sexuality. And we're naive to think that, you know, this is the way it should be, because, again, we're a product of the culture we live in. Terry Eagleton, who is a cultural critic, wrote in a book called culture and the death of God. He says, this religion and art passes out of public ownership into private hands as the modern age unfolds. The art which once praised God, flattered a patron, entertained a monarch, or celebrated military exploits, is now, for the most part, a question of individual self expression. That's where art went. That's where religion went. Right? Art used to be about, hey, let's celebrate this war.
Mark Clark [00:08:46]:
Let's talk about this monarch. Now, art is about, hey, don't judge me. This is my self expression. If I'm an art student who goes to one of the art schools around here, told me that the final project for one of her classmates was a guy walked up to the front of the classroom, took an apple, stuck a pencil in it and walked away. And that was his art project. And everyone went, this is gorgeous. This is beautiful. This is so deep, I can't even fathom.
Mark Clark [00:09:09]:
It's like, this is where we're at because it's just self expression. So who are you to tell me? And what Terry Eagleton says is sex has followed the same route as religion and art, where it is now just an individual self expression that can never be talked about or challenged or curbed or discussed. And he's saying, this is actually bad for us as a society, as a cultural critic, because here's what we have to understand. We are not individuals. We are all connected in deep and profound ways. Tim Keller uses the example, as he says, the minute you start to go down the route and think you're completely an autonomous individual, just be very careful. And he uses the example of suicide, and he says the ultimate expression, of course, of the priority of the autonomous self is I'm going to take my own life. And don't try to project anything on me, because you can't, you know, you shouldn't be able to impact me.
Mark Clark [00:10:00]:
But of course, Keller points out, it's not really like that, is it? Because all these people have poured into you your whole life. They've invested in you, they've cared about you, and now you're leaving them behind. So your death actually impacts them in a massive way. Everything that you do impacts each other, right? Every decision you make. You are not an individual who wakes up and lives in a vacuum. There's that scene I memorized years ago. I can't remember if I still remember it. Good will hunting, right? Where they offer him that job at the NSA.
Mark Clark [00:10:28]:
And they said, why wouldn't you take this job? And he's like, why wouldn't I take the job at the NSA? Well, that's a good question. Say somebody put a code on my desk, a code that nobody else could break, and I take a shot at it, and maybe I break it, and I'm happy with myself because I did my job well. But what if that code is a location of some rebel army in North Africa, the Middle east, and now we bomb a village and 1500 people I never had a problem with get killed. Now they're saying, sending the marines to secure the area, they don't care. It won't be their kid over there getting shot, just like it wasn't them when their number got called because it was pulling a tour in the National Guard. Be some kid from Southie going over there taking shrapnel in the butt, come back to find out his job got shipped to the country he just came from because they'll work for fifteen cents a day and no bathroom breaks. And of course they're probably actually taking their sweet time bringing the oil back. Maybe even took the liberty of hiring some alcoholic skipper who likes to drink martinis and play slalom with the icebergs.
Mark Clark [00:11:22]:
Ain't too long till he hits one, spills the oil and kills all the sea life in the North Atlantic. Of course they gotta up the price of the oil now, a little ancillary benefit for them, but it ain't helping my buddy at 250 a gallon. And so now my buddy's out of work. He can't even drive to the doctor's appointments because gas is too expensive and he's hungry because every time he goes to get a bite to eat, the only blue plate special they're serving is North Atlantic scrawd with quake estate. I figure, forget it. Why not just shoot my buddy, give his job to his sworn enemy, hike up gas prices, club a baby seal, hit the hash pipe and join the national guard? I could be elected president now. Now, what's his point? We're all connected. Every decision you make connects to stomach bigger.
Mark Clark [00:12:12]:
It's a butterfly effect. And so your sexuality and your money and the way you do family and the way you do church, it hits everybody. So all that I'm saying is, right off the bat, before we get into the details of sexuality, just know and be self aware that you are not an autonomous self who can just make decisions for yourself. We all as a culture, have to be asking the deeper questions. And thus, I think the church's voice, I think religious voice in general is really important as we talk about this issue as a culture. Now, what about the issue at hand, which is, is the Bible? Is God anti sex? Does he down on sex? Does he not like it? That's what keeps people away from the church. And that's where we're going to hit. Here's where the beautiful biblical vision dismantles and critiques two massive polls on this issue.
Mark Clark [00:13:02]:
And the first poll that it dismantles is sex is bad. And of course, that's what the church has taught for a lot of years. The early church fathers taught that Adam and Eve didn't even have sex until the fall. Some of the early church fathers origin castrated himself because he said that sex is that bad. The early church fathers kind of set us up for people saying, hey, the church is against sex because it taught that, of course, it taught that sex was only for procreation. It was only the kind of thing that you made sure that you had sex in the context of having children, all right? And so, of course, people were like, okay, this is what it is. But here's what you've got to understand. This is the furthest thing away from the biblical view of sex and sexuality.
Mark Clark [00:13:48]:
The Bible, God comes out as the most pro sex person in the universe right from the beginning of the Bible. Pick up a Bible and read it for yourself and ask the question whether God is anti sex. Genesis, chapter one, all about the idea that he makes creation, the stars, the blah, blah, makes the animals. Then he makes people. And he doesn't make them with clothes. He takes two people and he puts them in the garden naked. Like, just read that story for a second. And then he gives them a command.
Mark Clark [00:14:20]:
And the command is, I want you to be fruitful and multiply. So he makes them naked, puts them in a nice setting. You know what it's like? Get the fire going. Get the glass of coke out, all right? And you're chilling out and you're setting the mood, and you walk out and all, oh, we're both naked. What are we going to do? Can play checkers? No, he sets them up for that stuff. And he goes, hey, look, I made you naked. And then he commands them, be fruitful, multiply. Listen, I would put the biblical version of reality up against the secular, humanist, atheistic version of reality any day.
Mark Clark [00:15:00]:
We have a God who says, I made you naked. Go have a lot of sex, have a lot of babies. Enjoy yourself. This is going to be awesome. What does humanism say? We're animals. We don't know. We came from Goop. We're not really sure what happened.
Mark Clark [00:15:12]:
There's a lightning bolt. I'm not sure what happened. There's some energy around. Make sure you eat right. I don't know what that means, but the point is that the biblical version is beautiful because it says, man, look it, I want you to have sex. I want you to go at it. I want to make sure that you guys, it's not as if God made these two people, put them in the garden and they were sitting there, as one writer has said. And it was a product of Satan.
Mark Clark [00:15:37]:
And so, you know, God said, okay, I'm good. Kind of walked away. And then Satan slithered up and got some dust in a penis. And God turned around and said, oh, my gosh, what is that? That is not. But that's how the church has pitched it. Sex is a product of evil. It was an idea from Satan, not God. And then you read the biblical story and God created those organs.
Mark Clark [00:16:03]:
God is the one who said, here's what I made. And I made organs that have no reproductive value in women. It's just for the sake of pleasure. Don't you want to know the God who thought that up like this is an evangelistic tool? Go out with your friends and say, you ever heard of an orgasm? God thought that up. Don't you want to know him? Come to the Lord right now. All right, that's the reality that we're talking about. We are not talking about some thing that's under the sheets and make sure the lights are off and it's only this and it's only to have kids. But that's the way the church has pitched it.
Mark Clark [00:16:40]:
And so we've got to understand. God comes out of the gate. Now listen, Paul, in one Corinthians, chapter seven, which is one of the best chapters on sex, he writes to a church in a messed up city, kind of like Vancouver. Corinth was in Calgary. Corinth was a really messed up sexual city who had orgies. People were having huge sex lives in their past. And the apostle Paul, when he writes to them in one corinthians seven and says, now that you're christians, how are you going to do sex? He does not come at them and say, okay, I know you lived a crazy life, but now it's time for you to live the conservative life. That's not what he says.
Mark Clark [00:17:15]:
Listen to what he says. First Corinthians, chapter seven, verse three, the husband should give to his wife her conjugal rights and likewise the wife to her husband. Notice what he's saying, that there are conjugal. And he uses the word rights, that what he wants people to do is in the context of marriage, view their sex life to one another as a responsibility where they are serving one another. And he says, it's a right that you have. It's beautiful. He says, when you get married, wives, you don't own your own bodies. Your husband owns your body.
Mark Clark [00:17:46]:
Husbands, you don't own your own bodies, your wife owns your body. That's what the Bible lays out. That's what he's talking about in one corinthians seven. And so I remind Aaron often, honey, you own my body. I'm available anytime. Just so you know, I come home from work, boom, you own me. What's up? How are things? So here's the reality. But that the church has done.
Mark Clark [00:18:11]:
It's done so much shame and guilt and burden around this issue that in my marriage counseling, I've seen people not be able to recover from years of youth group and church and people saying, sex, bad. Sex bad, sex bad. And then they get married and they're supposed to flick a switch. So I know people who've gone through the trauma. They get married, the wedding night comes, and then they're literally two or three years before they can have sex again. And lots of counseling because of the trauma of it. This is not what God laid out. He says here you have conjugal rights.
Mark Clark [00:18:38]:
You have things I want you to do. I want you to enjoy this. This a God given thing to be enjoyed. Now skeptics say, yeah, yeah, yeah. But you don't understand. Here's why I don't want the christian version of sex. Because you guys teach that it's only in the context of marriage between a man and a woman that people are supposed to have sex, which is true, right? From Genesis two onward, right to the end of revelation, that that is the form and the paradigm for sexuality. Well, I don't like that, because here's what we say culturally, that when you get married, sex dies, right? Chris Rock said this.
Mark Clark [00:19:11]:
Either do you want to be happy or married? Right? That's kind of the dichotomy. And so we watch friends and Grey's Anatomy and Seinfeld, and everyone's out having sex with everybody. And the idea that you would get married and hunker down with one partner is bad. That's when sex is going to shrivel up and die and be awful, and you're not going to touch each other again. Here's the problem with that narrative. Be very. See, this is where you have to be self aware. The statistics do not bear that story out.
Mark Clark [00:19:41]:
There was a study that was done, actually, the University of New York and University of Chicago said it was the most authoritative study ever done, and it said married couples, statistically, actually have better sex. 40% of married people have sex twice a week, compared to 20% of single and cohabitating men and women. This is from Linda J. Waite and Maggie Gallagher. 40% of married people have sex twice a week, compared to 20% of single cohabitating men. And women. Over 40% of married women said their sex life was emotionally and physically satisfying, compared to about 30% of single women. 50% of married men are physically and emotionally content, versus 38% of cohabitating.
Mark Clark [00:20:26]:
Mendez. And so the report actually goes on to say that when they looked into people's sexual satisfaction, they were far more sexually satisfied in the context of marriage than they were outside when they were dating, walking around, doing their thing, going from one person to the next, the kind of friend scene. Because the reality is, good sex actually takes hard work. Like good sex. I'm not just talking about sex. Sex is easy. I'm talking about good sex, where you learn each other's moves and rhythms and body. That takes time.
Mark Clark [00:20:56]:
That takes work. So Waite and Gallagher conclude this promoting marriage will make for a lot more happy men and women. Sex in America reported that married sex beats all else. Married women had much higher rates of usually or always having orgasms, 75% as compared to women who were never married, 62%. But here's the reality, and here's what God tells us to do. It's not just about procreation. It's not just about protection, which we'll talk about. It's about pleasure.
Mark Clark [00:21:23]:
And I've sat down and had to counsel people, and the problem is, is they haven't. I remember one couple I was counseling, and they said, we're three or four years into marriage, and I. And the girl was talking. She's just like, I've never had an orgasm. I've never had this kind of pleasure. I thought that was like, ten or 20 years down the road. And so there was these assumptions, because she got raised in the church, that they'd never talked about her husband. Her had never had this conversation before they got to marriage.
Mark Clark [00:21:47]:
And so she didn't even know her own body. And so what I did was I talked to her about learning her own body so that she could teach it to her husband. And they were like, well, what do you mean? I don't even understand what you're saying. Are you telling me to masturbate or something? I'm like, I'm a pastor. I would never say that. Just get in the tub, get some candles, and then teach your husband. All right, I got promoted because here's the reality. People don't know their own body.
Mark Clark [00:22:18]:
And most studies say Luanne Brisdane, she writes this, women need to take some responsibility for their own pleasure and be an active participant in it. And that couple went away. And I got a text about two weeks later it said, pastor, since we left your office, we've been having sex three, four times a week. Praise Jesus. Amen. All right. They made this, like, they made this connection spiritually to the Fed. They're praising God for their sex life.
Mark Clark [00:22:45]:
This just isn't how we talk. But we should, I mean, not in community group or whatever. That'd be weird. But I'm just saying, like, among, like, one or two of you, you should, like, be man. My sex life is this. And I'm praising Jesus because of it, because this is actually a spiritual issue. This is how God made us. Now, one of the questions, as Aaron and I have done counseling over and over with couples, one of the questions is, people want to understand, how often should they be having sex in the context of marriage, what is healthy compared to other people? And so it's really hard to actually gauge that because there's so many issues, right? There's health issues and baby, you know, people having babies and work and travel and all these kind of things.
Mark Clark [00:23:24]:
But this is for a. And then, and then if a marriage is really, you know, not in a good place, I'm not talking about any of that stuff. I'm talking about if you're generally healthy in regard to your marriage. Here's some stats, because here's what Paul says. First Corinthians, chapter seven, verse five. He says this, do not deprive one another, except perhaps by agreement for a limited time, but then come together again so that Satan may not tempt you because of your lack of self control. And so literally, what he's saying is sex is actually not only about pleasure, not only about protection, not only about procreation, but about protection, about protecting yourself from the temptations of the world. You've got to understand that if you're not having a good, healthy sex life in the context of your marriage, that people are tempted, men and women are tempted to stray, and you don't want that.
Mark Clark [00:24:12]:
So you got to be able to have the conversations. And I'm not saying any of you is going to have the guts to look at the other one and say, you know, our sex life that's not very good has caused me to look at other women or look at other men, but I'm telling you, it will happen. It is happening. If your sex life is not robust and good and on point. So you need to be able to talk about these things. You actually need to say to yourself, hey, what does this actually look like for us? What is our plan? Because here's what you got to understand our culture pitches you an idea of sex, where. Okay, well, sex always has to be like this passion, kind of crazy emotional investment in the rah. And it's like, it's raining, and, like, everyone, like, you meet each other at the door and you're like, bam.
Mark Clark [00:24:53]:
And things are falling over and stuff's getting broken, and it's like. And it's 2 hours long. Right? That's a narrative. That's just not true. At some point. The whole point about marriage is that you need to do. I mean, Philippians two. Take Philippians two, which is probably the passage to most.
Mark Clark [00:25:13]:
Apply to your marriage out of any passage in the Bible in regard to an attitude, and then apply it to sex. Here's what Paul says in Philippians two. Three. Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility. Count others more significant than yourselves. Count your spouse more significant than yourselves. Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interest of others, to the interests of your spouse. And so you're not constantly saying, yeah, but I don't feel like it, or, I'm not in the mood.
Mark Clark [00:25:41]:
Listen, that is a narrative that you've bought into that you have to be in the mood. Listen, one of you probably is not going to be in the mood all the time. And so it's an issue of, how do I actually look at this person and consider more important than myself, whether it's the wife or the husband, and say, I'm actually going to serve them in this way? Because it's not going to be Kama Sutra every time. At some point, you got to go, okay, look, my wife and I have counseled people to put it on the calendar. What could be more unromantic than that? Put it on the calendar Wednesday night, 09:00, and they go, well, that's crazy. Why? If your sex life is not good, putting it on the calendar is not crazy. It actually helps you, because then the dude, like, okay, tonight, I know what's happening, all right? And then she can be, like, in the mirror going, get your head in the game. Get your head in the game.
Mark Clark [00:26:36]:
Here we go. Here we go. Here we go. Here we go. Here we go. I know it's coming. I know it's coming. Here we go.
Mark Clark [00:26:39]:
Boom. Right? Or it could be the other way around. All right, where the husband has to do that. I'm not saying that, you know, the classic gender thing is always the case, but the reality is you plan for it. So how does it compare? How does your life or the goals compare to other people. The stats bear out this way. Married couples under 30 have sex about 111 times per year, two to three times per week. Married couples in general have sex with their spouse 58 times per year or a little more than once a week.
Mark Clark [00:27:10]:
On average, about 15% of married couples have not had sex with their spouse in the last six months to one year. The reality is, these are conjugal rights that need to be. That last stat is scary, and I wouldn't want it to be true about village church, because the reality is, I talked to people, and I talked to one couple, and they were sitting in front of me, and I said, how often do you guys have sex? And she answered. She said, once a week. He answered and said, once a month. You realize there's a massive difference between 52 times a year and twelve times a year. Massive difference. But people have different narratives of what they think.
Mark Clark [00:27:44]:
So put it on the calendar if it needs to go on the calendar now, it's like, okay, but what does this actually look like? Conjugal rights. How does that work? The reality is, I've had couples. See, here's where the Bible just pushes against a really bad version of sexuality in our culture. I had a guy and his wife sitting with me and Aaron. We were doing marriage counseling with them, and he said, you know what? The reality is, I'm not. I've been sex with her too much. And the reason is because I'm better at having sex with myself than she is with me because I've been doing it for so long. What? And my wife physically started kind of giggling to herself, like, I'm like, honey, come words.
Mark Clark [00:28:27]:
Because this is how sick it is, right? We get these kind of addictions to ourselves, and then we get married, and we don't know what to do. And this is why Paul's vision of one corinthians is so beautiful. He says, you have conjugal right to one another. You have things that you're serving one another, actually, sometimes sacrificing for one another. And you got to understand that unfortunately, in the church, as one writer has said, we get punished for not going. For going too far, meaning adultery, pornography, these kind of things. That's too far. We get punished for that, but rarely do we get punished for not going far enough, which means you don't have a good sex life.
Mark Clark [00:29:11]:
You're having sex a handful of times a year. There's actually, if you go back to the Puritans, who were the most conservative Christians to have ever lived, like I'm talking Christmas is wrong. Looking at a picture, a cross, any kind of picture of Jesus is wrong. I mean, these people were, like, the most conservative group of people you could ever meet in your life. These guys, actually, a story is told that they excommuted, communicated, and did church discipline on a guy for not having sex with his wife for two years. Church discipline on that action. We're going to start doing that as a church. We're going to put that on our website.
Mark Clark [00:29:46]:
All right? You become a member here, we will track your sex life, and we two brothers will show up at your door. Hello. All right. Excommunicated. But that's literally. So the Bible lays out this great vision where it's like, no, this actually is something that we need to be doing in our life. It needs to be something we're actually serving one another. So Martin Luther said the goal is twice a week.
Mark Clark [00:30:09]:
He said twice a week keeps the tempter away. So that's the general principle I use when I'm doing marriage counseling with people. That's a massive goal. For some people. You're like, oh, my gosh. I couldn't even imagine that. The point is, start having the conversation, and if you're not married yet, start having the conversation. What that's going to look like now, of course, you get into marriage a totally different thing.
Mark Clark [00:30:27]:
See, this is the thing. Those couples who sat with me and said, oh, my goodness, we had sex, and then we haven't had sex in months because we were raised in the church. They thought they were gonna have sex and just start having it like rabbits. Like. Like, I sit with couples before they get married. So how many times a week do you think you're gonna have sex? They're like, well, probably five or six a day to start. And I'm just like, right. No, totally.
Mark Clark [00:30:46]:
You will. Totally will. Because there's a naivety, right, to real life and what work is like and finances and kids and sickness and things that come up in your life. And so the reality is, it's not odd to be able to work toward the conjugal rights thing under the premise of, man, we got to actually go. We got to put stuff on the calendar. We need to be able to have a good sex life. Now, why would you do that? Because the reality is this. You want to serve one another.
Mark Clark [00:31:13]:
Like Flippy and Sue said, sometimes you need to do something in the spirit of Jesus. I remember when we did our marriage series a few years ago, a guy walked up to me, and he's like, you know, I was done having kids, and my wife was like, we really need to have more kids. And you preached on sex and kids and all this stuff. And so as we're listening to the sermon, I was like, okay, I'll just give her what she wants. And so we went home and just started trying to have kids, and now we're pregnant. And I'm like, okay, cool. And then when they had the baby, they brought the baby to me, and they're like, look, this is the baby, you know? And it was kind of. I felt.
Mark Clark [00:31:50]:
Felt weird. I'm, like, meeting the baby. I felt, like, involved in some way. I was like, hey, baby, it's like, what's going to creep me out, man? But the point is, I'm still creeped out when it's around. But the point is that because it's like the direct time, but we serve our spouse and go, what are they actually wanting? And so here's the beautiful part. If you come in, you say, you know, the Bible's anti sex. It's, oh, it only talks negatively about sex. I'm gonna give you some examples of the fact that it doesn't.
Mark Clark [00:32:19]:
It talks about sex as pleasure constantly. This is why the apostle Paul says, make sure you have this in your life to keep satan away, because he knew the Old Testament. Here's some great passage from the Old Testament talking about the idea of pleasure. Proverbs 518, rejoice in the wife of your youth. Meaning. And that's not always straightforward. I know people who get married and they thought I was talking to. I was doing counseling with one guy, and he thought all these things were going to happen.
Mark Clark [00:32:48]:
They got married, and she said, no, I'm not going to do any of those things. And he was like, oh, I thought this was. It was assumed. And so if you're just dating, if you're just engaged, you got to be talking about expectations when you get married. Genesis chapter two, verse 24 says that the purpose, genesis two is great because it says you're leaving your mother and father, and then you be united to your wife, and the two will become one flesh, right? He says the whole point of leaving your mother and father is to have sex with your wife, right? Because you don't want them around when you're doing that. Leave your mother and father and be united to your wife, and you will become one flesh. That's the whole. This is the paradigmatic life verse of the whole Bible in regard to sexuality and humanity.
Mark Clark [00:33:34]:
Go and do this. Right. Proverbs chapter five. Oh. Deuteronomy 24 says that there's guys in war and they're going to take a year off. And the reason they take a year off war, when they first get married, is to stay home and pleasure their wife. Right? That's the Bible. Deuteronomy 24, proverbs five.
Mark Clark [00:33:54]:
Drink water from your own cistern, flowing water from your own well. Let your fountain be blessed and rejoice in the wife of your youth. A lovely deer and a graceful doe. Let her breasts fill you at all times with delight. Be intoxicated always in her love. This is God going, I want you to go after sexual pleasure. God is an antisex in the book of song of Solomon, which you weren't even allowed to read as a jewish boy until you were 13 years old because it's too hot and spicy. It's a whole poem about a wife and a husband having erotic sex.
Mark Clark [00:34:25]:
And the church again, the early church fathers just epically failed on their teaching on this book because they said it was about Christ and the church, which just creeps everybody out because it's very explicit. And so here's some of the song of Solomon. Your breasts are like clusters of fruit. That's just weird if it's Jesus in the church, by the way, your breasts are like clusters of fruit. Solomon says, I will climb the palm tree and will take hold of its fruit. He goes on to describe the woman's body. He says, your belly is a heap of wheat. Now, there's a bit of a translation issue there.
Mark Clark [00:35:00]:
I don't say go in straight and say that, but he's saying, man, there's like, wheat was a good thing, and your belly is like it. He says, your navel is a rounded goblet that never lacks blended wine. Your breasts are like two fawns, like twins of a gazelle. Your neck is like an ivory tower. Your eyes are like the pools of heshbon. Song of Solomon, chapter seven, verse eleven. And then this is her. This is how she responds to him.
Mark Clark [00:35:27]:
Come, my love, let's go to the countryside. Let us spend the night in the villages. This lady wants to have sex outside, all right? She don't even care. This ain't like denim. Dresses down to the floor, lights off, one position, like to do in Abbotsford. This is like Calgary. Abbotsford is a little town out here, and people churn their own butter and ride horses. So it ain't that.
Mark Clark [00:35:55]:
It ain't that, man. She's like, let's go outside. Let's get caught. Maybe we get arrested. Who knows? Let's go to the countryside. Do you guys talk about this stuff anymore? Hey, can we have it here and no one would know? Is it legal? It might be biblical if it's not. All right, enough with that. Song of Solomon, chapter five, verse one.
Mark Clark [00:36:23]:
I came to my garden, my bride I gathered my myrrh with my spice. I ate my honeycomb with my honey. I drank my wine with milk. Here's the thing. God then comes into the scene, and what he doesn't say is, hey, kids, knock off that dirty talk. That's disgusting. Vile, wrong. Here's what he says.
Mark Clark [00:36:43]:
Eat, friends, drink, and be drunk with love. Boom. That's the God I'm talking about. He doesn't say, this is disgusting outside. That's not what I made the outdoors for, all right? He's like, guys, eat, drink, be merry. This is amazing. This is the goddess that I worship. He comes and he says, this is what you're supposed to do.
Mark Clark [00:37:06]:
I want you. And notice it's not about procreation, right? As one writer said, when he says, your belly is a heap of wheat, he doesn't say, and I want to put a baby in there. All right? It's just. It's a heap of wheat, and I love your body, and I wish we could do this. And so tremper Longman III says this about the woman in the song of Solomon. She says this. His abdomen is like a polished ivory tusk decorated with sapphires. And then tremper Longman, Old Testament scholar, says this.
Mark Clark [00:37:39]:
Most english translations hesitate in this verse. The Hebrew is quite erotic, and most translators cannot bring themselves to bring out the obvious meaning. This is a prelude to their lovemaking. There is no shy, shamed mechanical movement under the sheets. Rather, the two stand before each other, aroused, feeling no shame, but only joy in each other's sexuality. Here's my point. The best way to redeem sex is to give you the actual version of it that God lays down, which is, it's beautiful. It's for pleasure, procreation, protection, all of these things.
Mark Clark [00:38:15]:
But he wants us to enjoy it in the context of a man or woman, in the context of marriage. And that is the most subversive, beautiful way to look out to a culture and say, listen, I know you've heard that the church thinks sex is bad, but it's not. Now, let me end making this point. The other poll that we don't have time to get into. The other side of this problem is that not sex is bad culture. This is where the Bible beautifully dismantles this version of it, too, which our culture buys into, which is the sex is God. Meaning sex is ultimate. Sex is the most important thing, and you should worship it.
Mark Clark [00:38:50]:
And the Bible comes in and it says, no, it's not bad, but it's also not God. It's not ultimate. And here's how we know that. In Matthew 23 22, someone comes up to Jesus, says, is there going to be marriage in heaven? And he says, no, at the resurrection, there will be no marriage. Meaning sex is actually something that gets retired. Now, listen to me. You've got to understand something. Sex is trying to point you to God.
Mark Clark [00:39:12]:
He put it in the universe to give us the kind of pleasures and delights that we get, little snippets of what heaven's going to be like, the kind of pleasure. Take. Listen. Sex is like a dulled down version of what the joy and pleasure and delight of heaven is going to be like. It's like a little weed that came up through the concrete. And our problem is, as we look at the weed and we say, I just want that. I just want to hold on to that. I love sex and I'm going to worship it.
Mark Clark [00:39:37]:
And then the gospel comes along and goes, no, no, no, listen. Jesus Christ came down from heaven, lived a perfect life in your place, died on the cross for your sin, because there's no way you could have got to God without him. Rose again from death to give you eternal life. So if you turn from sin and put your trust in him, he gives you eternal life and you join him in heaven forever. Which sex is like the tiniest little, like, pointer. But here's our problem. Here's why we're messed up. We do a dumb trade.
Mark Clark [00:40:08]:
We trade the pointer out for the thing that it's pointing to. God is here, heaven is here, pleasure's forevermore. And we go, no, I just want sex. I'm going to reject God and I'm going to take sex instead. And he goes, you don't even understand what you're doing here. This was supposed to draw you to me, not away from me. I gave you this to point to the kind of thing that you're going to experience a billion times that forever. And you stopped at that.
Mark Clark [00:40:35]:
And so Cs Lewis says, here's how silly we are when we make that trade. He says, like a little boy, I think our present outlook might be like that of a small boy who, on being told that the sexual act was the highest bodily pleasure, should immediately ask whether you ate chocolates at the same time, on receiving the answer no, for most people, he might regard absence of chocolates as the chief characteristic of sexuality. In vain would you tell him that the reason why lovers in their carnal raptures don't bother about chocolates is that they have something. Listen better. The boy knows chocolate. He does not know the positive thing that excludes it. We are in the same position. We know the sexual life.
Mark Clark [00:41:26]:
We do not know except in glimpses. The other thing, which in heaven will leave no room for it, that heaven is going to be such. Filled with such pleasure and delight that sex is going to look dull in comparison. So much so it actually gets retired. That's the joy and the beauty of a life eternal with Jesus. Sex itself gets retired and traded in for something better. But we make the dumb trade and we ask, why aren't there chocolates there? And in my life right now, I'm just going to stay over here and reject this. Let me pray that we have the courage not to do that, Father.
Mark Clark [00:42:03]:
I do pray that we actually follow the joys and beauties and pleasures of sex and sexuality to find you rather than run away from you and stay away from you, which is what our culture is mostly doing. Redeem sexuality in our lives and our minds and let people actually come to know you. The God who made this joy, for our joy and our pleasure, you gifted it to us. It's not bad and it's not God. It's not ultimate, it's not salvation. It's a gift from you. I pray that those who don't know you would consider this to give their life to you and see the kind of joys and pleasures you have laid out for them, to which sex is just a pointer. And for those of us in the church wrestling, how do we figure out a good version of this? Because I've been told all this negativity my whole life.
Mark Clark [00:42:52]:
Let us see your vision for it as pleasure, as protection. In Jesus good name we pray. Amen.