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God’s Gold Standard for Human Sexuality

INTRODUCTION1. God’s Gold Standard for

Sexuality2. A Biblical Look at Sexual

Brokenness3. God’s Heart and Mind for the

Sexually Broken4. The Gospel Response for Sexual

Brokenness

Three Worldviews on Sexuality1. A Secular Worldview of Sex2. A Religious Worldview of Sex3. God’s Worldview of Sex

Three Worldviews on Sexuality1 Corinthians 6:16–18 (The Message) There’s more to sex than mere skin on skin. Sex is as much spiritual mystery as physical fact. As written in Scripture, “The two become one.” 17 Since we want to become spiritually one with the Master, we must not pursue the kind of sex that avoids commitment and intimacy, leaving us more lonely than ever—the kind of sex that can never “become one.” 18 There is a sense in which sexual sins are different from all others. In sexual sin we violate the sacredness of our own bodies, these bodies that were made for God-given and God-modeled love, for “becoming one” with another.

In the Beginning and God’s ImageHuman Sexuality is founded upon the pronouncement that humans were created in the image and likeness of God.

Genesis 1:27 (ESV) So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.

Genesis 2:7 (ESV) then the LORD God formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature.

Adam’s NeedGenesis 2:18–20 (ESV) Then the LORD God said, “It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him.” 19 Now out of the ground the LORD God had formed every beast of the field and every bird of the heavens and brought them to the man to see what he would call them. And whatever the man called every living creature, that was its name. 20 The man gave names to all livestock and to the birds of the heavens and to every beast of the field. But for Adam there was not found a helper fit for him.

Adam’s Need• It is not good 2:18• Helper• Fit for him

Woman CreatedGenesis 2:21–23 (ESV) So the LORD God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and while he slept took one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh. 22 And the rib that the LORD God had taken from the man he made into a woman and brought her to the man. 23 Then the man said, “This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man.”

Woman Created• God Made Eve• God Brings her to Adam• Adam’s Response

God’s First Ordinance and InstitutionGenesis 2:24–25 (ESV) Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh. 25 And the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed.

God’s First Ordinance and Institution• Leave and hold fast to…• One flesh…

“Again, to say that a man and woman become one flesh in the sexual embrace (Gen 2:24) is to say more than that they are united bodily.”

ed. R. Laird Harris, Gleason L. Archer Jr., and Bruce K. Waltke, Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament (Chicago: Moody Press, 1999), 136.

God’s First Ordinance and InstitutionThis is the basis for understanding marriage. This is the prescription for the foundation of the nuclear family.

A monogamous, heterosexual relationship is God’s original and only design for marriage.

Human Sexuality• The first recorded command of God to

humans was be fruitful, multiply, and fill the earth…

• The first recorded command is sexual in nature…

• For Adam and Eve gender, love, marriage, and sexuality were defined for them at creation.

The Primacy of Human Sexuality• Genesis 1:27-28 tells us in a very short

space that God created man and woman as reflections of His image, and then commands them to be sexually fruitful.• A man and a woman coming together in marital, sexual intimacy somehow…mystically…reflects the unity, love, faithfulness, fidelity, servanthood, beauty, and creative power of God like no other aspect of His creation.

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