American Idols – Sex
Genesis 39:1-10
Sycamore Creek Church
Tom Arthur
March 21, 2010

Let’s talk about sex, baby.
Let’s talk about you and me.
Let’s talk about all the good things
and the bad things that may be.
Let’s talk about sex.

So goes Salt-n-Pepa’s 1991 hit, Let’s Talk about Sex.  So goes today’s sermon: sex.  We’re continuing in a series on American Idols, the things we tend to worship as a culture.  Certainly somewhere near the top of that list is sex.  Our culture is certainly teaching us what it thinks about sex.  You don’t have to look very hard to find that message.  Today I’d like to look at a biblical ideal of sex.  What does the Bible teach about sex?  Let’s begin with the story of Joseph and Potiphar’s wife and then reflect also about the story of Adam and Eve.

Genesis 39:1-10 (NLT)

¹ Now when Joseph arrived in Egypt with the Ishmaelite traders, he was purchased by Potiphar, a member of the personal staff of Pharaoh, the king of Egypt. Potiphar was the captain of the palace guard.

² The LORD was with Joseph and blessed him greatly as he served in the home of his Egyptian master. ³ Potiphar noticed this and realized that the LORD was with Joseph, giving him success in everything he did. ⁴ So Joseph naturally became quite a favorite with him. Potiphar soon put Joseph in charge of his entire household and entrusted him with all his business dealings. ⁵ From the day Joseph was put in charge, the LORD began to bless Potiphar for Joseph’s sake. All his household affairs began to run smoothly, and his crops and livestock flourished. ⁶ So Potiphar gave Joseph complete administrative responsibility over everything he owned. With Joseph there, he didn’t have a worry in the world, except to decide what he wanted to eat!

Now Joseph was a very handsome and well-built young man. ⁷ And about this time, Potiphar’s wife began to desire him and invited him to sleep with her. ⁸ But Joseph refused. “Look,” he told her, “my master trusts me with everything in his entire household. ⁹ No one here has more authority than I do! He has held back nothing from me except you, because you are his wife. How could I ever do such a wicked thing? It would be a great sin against God.”

¹⁰ She kept putting pressure on him day after day, but he refused to sleep with her, and he kept out of her way as much as possible.

This is God’s story for us today.  Thank you, God!

I’d like to look at four things that the Bible teaches sex was intended for: marriage, multiplying, companionship, and pleasure.  The order is significant.  The most important are toward the beginning.  The least important is at the end.  Let’s begin with marriage.

Marriage

Here we find that Joseph is unwilling to have sex with Potiphar’s wife because she is married to Potiphar.  While she is trying to seduce him, he says, “No one here has more authority than I do! [My master] has held back nothing from me except you, because you are his wife” (Genesis 39:9a, NLT).  If we go back to the very beginning of Genesis we see the reason for this.  We are told that after Eve is made for Adam, he shouts for joy at the sight of her and that “this explains why a man leaves his father and mother and is joined to his wife, and the two are united into one” (Genesis 2:24, NLT).  United into one.  That’s code language for sex.  This union is something that lasts a lifetime and so it should only be done with a lifetime commitment of marriage.

We generally see in most of the songs in our culture a disregard for this notion of sex being a life-long union.  Nelly Furtado and Timbaland sings a song called Promiscuous Girl.  This song is definitely an American idol.  One part goes like this:

T: How you doin’ young lady
The feeling that you’re givin
really drives me crazy
You don’t have to play about the joke
I was lost with the words first time that we spoke

N: If you looking for a girl
that’ll treat you right
If you lookin’ for her
in the day time with the light

T: You might be the type
if I play my cards right
I’ll find out by the end of the night

N: You expect me to just let you hit it
But will you still respect me
if you git it

T: All I can do is try, gimme one chance
What’s the problem
I don’t see no ring on your hand

T: I be the first to admit it,
I’m curious about you,
you seem so innocent

N: You wanna get in my world,
get lost in it
Boy I’m tired of running,
lets walk for a minute

Chorus-
T: Promiscuous girl
Wherever you are
I’m all alone
And it’s you that I want

N: Promiscuous boy
You already know
That I’m all yours
What you waiting for?

This song clearly glorifies a kind of sexuality that doesn’t require a life-long commitment of marriage.  If he plays his cards right, sex might come before the end of the night.

Perhaps a more “righteous” song that highlights sex in the context of a life-long commitment of marriage is Faith Hill and Tim McGraw’s Let’s Make Love.  The song goes like this:

Baby I’ve been drifting away
Dreaming all day
Of holding you
Touching you
The only thing I want to do
Is be with you
As close to you
As I can be

Let’s make love
All night long
Until all our strength is gone…

The key part of this song that I think tips it toward the “righteous” side of things is knowing that it is a duet between Faith and Tim who are married to one another.  So when Faith sings “let’s make love” she’s singing it to her husband.  Sex is intended for a life-long commitment of marriage.

Multiplying

Jumping back to the story of Adam and Eve we find that after God creates humans, “God blessed them and told them, ‘Multiply and fill the earth and subdue it’” (Genesis 1:28, NLT).  Marriage and sex are intended as an invitation to live into being made in the image of a creator God.  We are to create too!  Sex is one of the ways that we create life.  Sex is intended for multiplying.

An interesting song that idolizes sex that does not have an intent of creation is Mya’s Late.  She sings to her boyfriend:

Why you cryin’ it aint yours
I didn’t do it alone (I ain’t do it alone)
Give it two more days
For I hit the convenience store
I’m talking about (Talkin’ bout)
Rite Aid, CVS (Oh, yeah)
You can pick the place
I hope I’m just

Late
It shoulda came by now
So I’m tryn a figure out
Late
What the hell you did
To me when you took a dip
Late
I’m overdue
What are we gonna do
I know my body
And it’s drivin’ me crazy
I’m never late

American idol?  Absolutely.  In this song, the possibility of sex producing a child is seen as a serious inconvenience.  Our culture worships sex that does not create children.  This is considered “safe” sex while sex that has the possibility of creating children is considered “unsafe” sex.

Madonna’s Papa Don’t Preach gives a different perspective. It is ironic for me to lift this song up as teaching a kind of biblical value about sex because when it came out it was considered quite controversial from both sides of the spectrum.  Madonna sings to her father after finding out that she is pregnant:

He says that he’s going to marry me
We can raise a little family
Maybe we’ll be all right
It’s a sacrifice
But my friends keep telling me
to give it up
Saying I’m too young,
I ought to live it up
What I need right now
is some good advice, please

Papa don’t preach,
I’m in trouble deep
Papa don’t preach,
I’ve been losing sleep
But I made up my mind,
I’m keeping my baby, oh
I’m gonna keep my baby, mmm…

While the pregnancy isn’t ideal, Madonna’s resolve to keep the baby suggests that she understands that sex is about creation and that a baby is ultimately a blessing.

Certainly at this point one might be asking, if sex is intended for multiplying, how are we to understand those who suffer from infertility?  This is a good question and one that really deserves an entire sermon to explore fully, but for now let me say that once sin entered the world, it affected all things including creation itself and our bodies too.  The physical side of our nature is fallen and broken too.  It doesn’t always work the way it was intended to work.

Lawyers have a saying that might provide some guidance at this point: hard cases make bad law.  In other words, infertility is rooted in the falleness of the physical world and creates hard cases for those who suffer from it, but sex is still intended ultimately for creating.

Companionship

Sex was also created for companionship.  The union that sex creates between two people binds them as companions in a way that no other act does.  In the story of Adam and Eve we read that after God had created Adam but had not yet created Eve, God said, “It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a companion who will help him” (Genesis 2:18, NLT).  Marriage is intended for companionship and sex is part of what makes that happen.

A very conflicted song by Rilo Kiley that shows how sex fulfills a desire for companionship but speaks about it outside of the life-long commitment of marriage is Portions for Foxes.  Jenny Lewis sings to her bad news boyfriend:

I know I’m alone
if I’m with or without you
but just bein’ around you
offers me another form of relief
When the loneliness
leads to bad dreams
and the bad dreams lead me
to callin’ you
and I call you and say “C’MERE!”

And it’s bad news
Baby I’m bad news
I’m just bad news, bad news, bad news

She’s feeling lonely so she calls up her boyfriend and her best sexy voice yells, “C’MERE!”  But she recognizes that the whole thing is bad news because she knows that she’s alone with or without him.  The short-term gain is quickly lost because the companionship doesn’t have at its foundation a life-long commitment of marriage.  The song ends with Lewis singing:

That you’re bad news
Baby you’re bad news
and you’re bad news
Baby you’re bad news
and you’re bad news
I don’t care I like you
and you’re bad news
I don’t care I like you
I like you

All the way to the end she’s conflicted about the relationship, but she lands on “I don’t care I like, I like you.”  I do think the song is quite complex and intended to be somewhat sarcastic about the end result.  I think it’s intended to make the listener question whether the end decision is a good one.  So while this song is in my opinion an American Idol, it is also a “righteous” song.  I think you can see it at the very beginning when Lewis sings:

There’s blood in my mouth
’cause I’ve been biting my tongue all week
I keep on talkin’ trash
but I never say anything
And the talkin’ leads to touchin’
and the touchin’ leads to sex
and then there is no mystery left

And It’s bad news
Baby I’m bad news
I’m just bad news, bad news, bad news

She acknowledges that the sex ultimately takes the mystery out of the relationship.  Sex without marriage has this kind of effect.  Mystery drives sexuality until it has found it.  Then there is no mystery left and little motivation and depth for the companionship of sex.  So I call Portions for Foxes a song that is both an American Idol and a righteous song.  I think it’s one of those rare songs worth pondering over and over again and you hear something new every time you listen to it.  Sex is intended for companionship, but companionship within the life-long commitment of marriage.

Pleasure

We come to the last intention for sex: pleasure.  It is as I said at the beginning the least important of the four intentions, but it is probably what is considered most important in our culture’s idolization of sex.  It would seem that Christians in ages past have attempted to remove all the pleasure from sex.  This seems incredible to me given what the Bible teaches about sex and pleasure.  Going back to Adam and Eve, we see that Adam reacts quite excitedly when he first sees Eve.  He says, “At last! She is part of my own flesh and bone! She will be called ‘woman,’ because she was taken out of a man” (Genesis 2:23, NLT).  At last!  Adam finds pleasure in Eve.

Our culture idolizes sex as pleasure.  I’d like to go back to that Faith Hill song, Let’s Make Love, and take a second look.  She sings in the chorus:

Let’s make love
All night long
Until all our strength is gone…

All night long?  Does anybody really make love all night long?  The Flight of the Concords are probably more realistic when Jemaine Clement sings, “Two minutes in heaven are better than one minute in heaven.”  But we have images from movies of sensual sex lasting all night long.  This expectation of sex is totally unrealistic for almost anyone and especially for the long-haul that a life-long commitment of marriage is.  In this sense Faith Hill’s Let’s Make Love is an American idol.

A song that strikes a more realistic chord about pleasure in sex is John Mayer’s Your Body is a Wonderland.  Mayer sings:

One mile to every inch of
Your skin like porcelain
One pair of candy lips and
Your bubblegum tongue

And if you want love
We’ll make it
Swim in a deep sea
Of blankets
Take all your big plans
And break ’em
This is bound to be awhile

Your body is a wonderland
Your body is a wonder
(I’ll use my hands)
Your body is a wonderland

Maybe you’re thinking right now, “OK.  Maybe sex was intended for pleasure, but isn’t Mayer just a little too explicit for Christians?”  Have you ever read the Song of Solomon?  This book in the Bible makes Mayer look tame.  It is about a conversation between a young married couple.  The young man says:

6 “Oh, how delightful you are, my beloved; how pleasant for utter delight! 7 You are tall and slim like a palm tree, and your breasts are like its clusters of dates. 8 I said, ‘I will climb up into the palm tree and take hold of its branches.’ Now may your breasts be like grape clusters, and the scent of your breath like apples. 9 May your kisses be as exciting as the best wine, smooth and sweet, flowing gently over lips and teeth (Song of Solomon 7:6-9, NLT).

Then the woman replies:

10 I am my lover’s, the one he desires. 11 Come, my love, let us go out into the fields and spend the night among the wildflowers.   12 Let us get up early and go out to the vineyards. Let us see whether the vines have budded, whether the blossoms have opened, and whether the pomegranates are in flower. And there I will give you my love. 13 There the mandrakes give forth their fragrance, and the rarest fruits are at our doors, the new as well as old, for I have stored them up for you, my lover (Song of Solomon 7:6-9, NLT).

Certainly sex was intended for pleasure, but our culture puts pleasure as of first importance while the Bible tends to see marriage, multiplying, and companionship as more important.  Over the lifetime commitment of marriage, sex takes on a kind of pleasure that is more like prayer than it is like porn.  It is a kind of ritual pleasure that sometimes is ecstatic but other times is not rote but not “all night long” either.

Sex is intended for marriage, for multiplying, for companionship, and for pleasure.

Going back to the story of Joseph and Potiphar’s wife, we can see that sex also includes God.  Sound strange?  Listen to how Joseph responds to Potiphar’s wife: “How could I ever do such a wicked thing? It would be a great sin against God” (Genesis 39:9b, NLT).  Sex isn’t just about you and the person you’re having sex with.  God is involved too.  Like all sin, sexual sin isn’t just breaking relationship with another person, you’re breaking relationship with God.  Likewise, righteous sex builds righteous relationships with your spouse and with God.

One last note on sex.  There is another way we tend to idolize sex in our culture.  We make sexual sin out to be the worst of sins.  Sin is sin.  Notice the company sexual sin takes when Paul lists it in his letter to the Corinthians: “What I meant was that you are not to associate with anyone who claims to be a Christian yet indulges in sexual sin, or is greedy, or worships idols, or is abusive, or a drunkard, or a swindler. Don’t even eat with such people” (1 Corinthians 5:11, NLT).  Sex is mixed right in there with sins like greed which we rarely take the time to ponder in our culture.  So we idolize sex in our culture not just by going against these four intentions, but by turning sexual sin into sin that is worse than other sins.  Sin is sin.  God can forgive you of it all and transform you more into the person God has called you to become.  Thank God for that!

Next Steps
Share your next step story in the comments below:

1. If you’re married: Practice Sabbath Sex (The rabbis suggested that Sabbath was a good time to have sex).

2. If you’re single or dating: (Re)commit yourself to saving sex for marriage.

3. Invite someone to Easter (Use one of our cards, share on Facebook, etc.).

4. Other.