From Sampler to Sower

In our fourth sermon of our True Love Waits series, we mix things up a bit with a surprise pop quiz. Given the format, we don’t have outlines to pass out, so no PDF files to download, but there are plenty of memorable visual aids involved, so your students won’t need notes to remember what you talked about.

As you prepare for this lesson, make sure you have a roll of duct tape, a short sleeve shirt, a sex bomb and a good healthy length of waterproof cannon fuse…

After the jump we’ll let you know what to do with it all.  And as usual, there is sermon audio of this lesson from our 2010 True Love Waits series at the end as well.

We normally start off by letting students know that they’re going to have a pop quiz.  Hopefully they studied up, because if they don’t get at least four out of five correct, they won’t pass the series and will have to do it all over again.  Actually, I made that part up.  There are no grades, and that’s a good thing, as we haven’t reviewed the material that’s on the quiz yet anyway.

The good news is that the quiz is a true false quiz; that makes everything a little easier.  And there are no pens and paper for this quiz.  I just ask students to stand if they thing a statement is true, and remain seated if they don’t.  That makes it more of a group project anyway.  See, it gets easier as we go along.  Here’s the quiz, and the answers which we explain as we go along:

1) God doesn’t want you to have sex.

Obviously, this one’s true.  Or not. Had you going there for a second, didn’t I?  It’s false. In our Problem of Profanity lesson we discussed the fact that true love is our birthright.  We were created that way.  In Genesis, God creates man for woman and woman for man so they might find the perfect partner in each other.  And from the beginning sex was a part of that relationship.

But there is a grain of truth in that statement as well.  It’s not that God doesn’t want students to have sex. It’s that he doesn’t want them having sex right now.  God knows that for sex to be what he created it to be, it must be experienced in the context of a marriage relationship.

2) The primary reason God created sex is for reproduction.

This one is a little tougher.  The good news is no one gets it wrong, because the fact is the Bible isn’t really clear.  Obviously reproduction is one of the reasons God created sex. In Genesis 1:27-28, when God creates humanity, man and woman together, he commands them to be fruitful and multiply. Or as Eugene Peterson puts it in the Message, he commands “Prosper! Reproduce!“

But the question didn’t say that reproduction was a reason, or even the only reason.  It said the primary reason. And reproduction isn’t the only reason God created sex. In Genesis 2:23-24 the Bible explains that when a man and woman come together to become husband and wife something special, something miraculous happens.  The two become one flesh.  Sex is part of the way that God creates that unity.

Finally, in the passage from Proverbs 5:18-19 that we examined last time, we learned that God wants us to find satisfaction and pleasure in the love that we share with our spouse. It’s not just about reproduction and union, God wants us to find captivation in sex with our spouse as well. 

Reproduction, union, captivation three biblical reasons God created sex. Which one is primary? Your guess is as good as mine.

3) God designed sex for people in mature, loving relationships, not just for casual encounters.

This is an important one, and one students often get wrong, in part because there is a grain of truth to it, and in part because it’s a distortion of the truth that gets repeated so often we come to believe it.  But when you really look at it, this statement is false.

It is true that God did not create sex for casual encounters.  Pretty much everyone agrees with that part of the statement.  It’s the notion that the measurement for readiness is a combination of mature and loving.  Scripture doesn’t say anything about mature and loving.  Scripture says married.  Regardless of the fact the world tells teenagers they are too young for sex, the truth is they aren’t too young for sex; they are too single for sex.

And this is one area where True Love Waits tends to fail.  As reported in some research I blogged about two years ago, it appears that there is very little difference, statistically speaking, between those who make a True Love Waits type purity pledge and those who don’t when it comes to waiting until marriage to have sex.  TLW participants tend to wait longer to start having sex than those who don’t participate, but it doesn’t appear to help them wait until marriage.  Somehow when we tell students to wait until they are married to have sex, they hear us say to wait until they are older.  We must correct this! They need to hear us say they are not too young for sex, they are too single.

4) If you have sex, you have to worry about pregnancy and sexually transmitted infections.

Here you get a chance to see which of your students are good at recognizing patterns.  Not all of them will, but some may.  Question one was false. Question two was probably false.  Question three was false. If students have picked up on the pattern, they may be anticipating a trick question and recognize that this one is false too.

Of course if they do, they’re wrong.  This one is definitely true.  Pregnancy is a real risk.  According to the Alan Guttmacher institute a teenage girl who is sexually active has a 90% chance of getting pregnant in the first year.  And according to Walt Muller’s Handbook for Counseling Youth the majority of teen pregnancies occur within the first three months of sexual activity.

And sexually transmitted infections are also real risks. According to the CDC, every 20 seconds an American teen gets an STD. That’s right, this year alone, about 2.5 million of your peers will get an STI. (Also reported in McDowell’s Handbook for Counseling Youth.) And according to an Alan Guttmacher Institute report no longer available online, after 1 act of unprotected sex a teenage woman has a 1% chance of getting HIV, a 30% chance of getting genital herpes and a 50% chance of getting gonorrhea.

Obviously, if a teenager has sex, they need to worry about pregnancy and sexually transmitted infections.  But that’s not all they need to be concerned about, because even if a teen avoids the dangers of pregnancy and STI’s, sex changes things.

First, sex changes our relationships. We already noted the Bible that sex was created by God to create unity between a husband and his wife.  Every act of sex creates a bond between the participants.  It always happens. It’s part of God’s design.  Kind of like a piece of duct tape on the arm, it creates a bond.  (And here you can feel free to demonstrate.  Don’t worry, it doesn’t actually hurt too badly to rip of a piece of duct tape, and it definitely gets the students attention. And you’ll be leaving it for a little while anyway, so no worries.)  Because of this physical bond, our relationship is now different.

But the physical bond of sex isn’t the only kind of intimacy that bonds people together.  There are also the bonds of emotional intimacy and relational compatibility.  Part of dating is discovering if there is that kind of compatibility with our boyfriend and girlfriend and building a foundation of friendship and eventually emotional intimacy.  If a relationship proceeds to marriage, there is a foundation of relational intimacy, to which the bond of physical intimacy is added.

However, when we take a shortcut to physical intimacy in our relationship, time that should have been spend exploring our compatibility and building the deeper, stronger relational intimacy is no spent pursuing physical intimacy.  In so doing we undermine our relationships foundation and leave it weaker in the long run.

Secondly, sex changes the end of our relationships. Remember the duct tape?  Trust me, the students do.  Ask them if they know what happens when a bond is broken as you rip the tape from your arm, because the truth is, when a bond is broken, it hurts.  Now almost every break up is painful because we are breaking the bonds of emotional and relational intimacy, but when we add the bond of physical intimacy, the pain is only multiplied.  As a result, relationships that include sex (or any level of physical intimacy) is involved tend to last longer than those that don’t.

Now that might sound good, because people don’t like to break up.  But what about those relationships that are supposed to break up? That’s why the wise don’t add the bond of sex until the foundation of emotional intimacy has been laid and the commitment of marriage is in place. When you add sex to a relationship that’s built on a faulty foundation, the destructive relationship is only drawn out.  Trust me.  In 15 years of youth ministry I’ve seen plenty of relationships that were unstable, dysfunctional, and sometimes even abusive persist simply because the participants can’t bring themselves to go through the pain of breaking the bond of physical intimacy.

Third, sex changes our future relationships. Here’s where the sex-bomb and cannon fuse come into play.  Of course, make sure you conduct this illustration safely, not only aware of but actively minimizing the risk of fire while prepared for its unlikely possibility.  And I should probably be clear, it’s not really a sex bomb.  It’s just a wooden barrel with the word sex spray painted on the side. And make sure you have a pair of scissors on hand, as well as a fireproof container in which the cut off pieces of fuse can fall.  Test it outside first, and notice how cannon fuse, when lit, can fly around on it’s own because of the burning gunpowder.  Need waterproof fuse, just search for it on Amazon. I like Visco fuse, and make sure you get waterproof fuse, it burns more slowly.

In fact, I’m not sure bomb is a helpful illustration. Bombs are destructive.  There is almost no good time for a bomb to go off, and even when it is planned, demolition is the outcome.  Maybe we should call it a sex-barrel-of-fireworks. Because fireworks are good, beautiful and exciting when lit in the right context.  But if a barrel of fireworks goes off too early, things can get messy.

In our illustration, the goal is to save the sexplosion for marriage.  And fortunately for us, there is plenty of fuse to delay the fireworks for the marriage night, if we use it wisely.  And what’s more, the fuse is pretty exciting on it’s own while we’re waiting.  There’s sparks and flame and everything.

When we begin pursuing intimacy in our relationships, it’s like we light the fuse and enjoy the excitement.  And it is exciting.  We ask someone if they will be our boyfriend or girlfriend, and the fuse is lit.  (Go ahead and light it.  You know you want to.)  There are sparks, things are exciting, and we are happy.  They say yes.  They write us notes.  Maybe we even exchange gifts.  We post about them on our Facebook status.  Things are good, until we discover that this relationship isn’t meant to be.  Who knows, maybe we find out they are Patriot fans.  Whatever it is, it has to end and we cut it off.  (Cut off the fuse ahead of the flame and let it burn out in your fireproof container.)

Now, as mom always said, there are more fish in the sea.  And eventually we land another one.  We ask them to be our girlfriend or boyfriend.  We write them notes.  We post about them on facebook.  Only those things aren’t quite as exciting as they used to be.  We already burnt that fuse.  Then one day we ask them out on a double date with some friends.  This is new, and suddenly there is fire.  (Light the fuse).  The relationship continues on, exciting and new, until they insult your mom’s cooking and the relationship has to end. (Cut the fuse.)

In the next relationship, your fuse is a bit shorter.  Eventually though you get to something new.  You hold their hand for the first time.  That is exciting! New flame, new sparks, and as long as we continue in that relationship, there is excitement.  You give them a hug.  You put your arm around them at the restaurant.  Maybe even you get your first kiss.  Nothing wrong.  You’re still a long way from the sexplosion.  Everything’s good.

But when you cut off that relationship and start your next, you have to go a little farther before you get back to that old spark.  What’s more, you’re in a bigger hurry to get back to the level of intimacy you enjoyed before.  It doesn’t take you as long to progress through those preliminary stages.  You go farther, faster in each successive relationship.  And suddenly you have to begin to wonder will you run out of fuse before you get to your wedding day.  And if you do, what will you do to get those old sparks again?

That’s why not having sex isn’t the only important thing about physical intimacy in your relationships with others. Every step of the way shortens your fuse. And the longer you keep your fuse the more excitement there will be when you finally find the right person and move toward marriage with him or her. And the longer you keep your fuse, the less of a hurry to get on to the step of actually having sex you’ll find yourself in.  Want to wait till marriage? Take it slow early on.

Fourth, sex changes our eventual marriage. Remember the duct tape? Stick it to your arm and pull it off a few more times, until the tape really begins to lose it’s sticky.  That’s a great example of how making and breaking the physical bond of sexual intimacy weakens it’s ability to bond two people together.  You get used to the pain and it becomes easier to break that bond, weakening that bond that was meant for marriage.

Finally, sex changes our relationship with God. No matter how we try to rationalize it, the Bible is clear, sex outside of marriage is wrong.  And deep down we know it.  Suddenly there is a gulf of guilt separating us from the God who loves us.

So it’s not just pregnancy and STI’s we have to worry about.  Even if we avoid them, sex changes things.

5) Condoms have a failure rate of 15% when used to prevent pregnancy. But the HIV virus is 500 times smaller than a sperm, so condoms are even less effective in preventing AIDS.

Bet you forgot about the quiz didn’t you. But we have one more question.  And break it down for them.  It is true, condoms when used as contraceptives, have about a 15% failure rate. And it is also true that the HIV virus is up to 500 times smaller than a human sperm cell. (The human sperm cell is about 5000 nanometers in diameter. The HIV virus is 120 nanometers.)  So, knowing that a condom fails 15% of the time in keeping in something as large as a sperm cell, would it be more effective or less effective in keeping in the much smaller virus?

Surprisingly the answer is false.  According the the Guttmacher institute, when used consistently and correctly, condoms prevent the transmission of HIV in heterosexual couples around 87% of the time.  The fact is condoms do a very good job of preventing the transmission of HIV.

Of course, if there is any group of people unlikely to use condoms consistently and correctly, it’s teenagers.  And if there is any demographic group of teenagers most unlikely to use condoms consistently and correctly when they have sex it is evangelical teens.  They are less likely to have sex than other groups of teens.  But if they do, they rarely use condoms.  And there are some STI’s like the incurable HPV (genital warts) that condoms do not prevent at all, because they are transmitted by skin contact, not fluid exchange.  So it’s hard to take any comfort in condom’s ability to prevent pregnancy and STI’s.

But even more important, perhaps, are the other ways that sex changes things.  A condom may protect your body against pregnancy or HIV.  But there is no condom on earth that can protect your heart, your mind and your soul from the way that sex changes things.

Additional Resource:

• Listen to a recording of this lesson being taught as part of our 2010 TLW series here.
• And while you’re at it, if you’d like, you can also subscribe to our podcast either on iTunes or via RSS.

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