DAVID: SEXUAL DRIVES

Dr. W. A. Criswell

2 Samuel 12:1-7

10/19/80     7:30 p.m.

We welcome the uncounted thousand of you who are listening to this service on the two radio stations that carry us, KRLD the great radio station of the Southwest, and KCBI the Sonshine station of our Center of Biblical Studies.

In the morning I am delivering a long series of doctrinal messages on “The Great Doctrines of the Bible.”  In the evening it is a series of sermons through the fall time until Christmas time on the problems of human life.  And next Sunday night at seven o’clock the message will be entitled, Michael, the Loneliness of Singles.  It will be a sermon, of course, on those who are not married, maybe have been married but are single now.  Maybe have children alive of celibacy which is so greatly honored in the Christian faith and in Christian history.  But anyway, the sermon next Sunday night at seven o’clock will regard singles.

Tonight the message is entitled David: Sexual Drives.  And if you will turn in your Bible to 2 Samuel, we are going to read the first seven verses of chapter 12 [2 Samuel 12:1-7].  We are all going to read it out loud together.  So you can share your Bible.  If you are at home get your Book, holy, heavenly sacred Scripture, turn to 2 Samuel, 2 Samuel, chapter 12.

Now the eleventh chapter of the Book of [2 Samuel] tells the sad and sordid story of the murder of Uriah the Hittite, whose wife, named Bathsheba, David coveted.  And having slain Uriah he takes her to be his wife [2 Samuel 11:1-27].  Now, the twenty-seventh verse of the eleventh chapter: there is always a “but” [2 Samuel 11:27], at the end of anything that is done wrong, always.  Is that not a strange thing?  However the goal, or however the achievement, or however the pleasure, or however the reward, always there is that “but.”  And there it is in the twenty-seventh verse, the eleventh chapter of 2 Samuel, “But the thing that David had done displeased God” [2 Samuel 11:27].

All right, now let’s read, beginning at verse 1 in the twelfth chapter.  Now when you get down to verse 7, we are going to end it there.  “And Nathan said to David, Thou art the man” [2 Samuel 12:7].  Now we are going to close, going to quit reading there.  All right, let’s start at verse 1 to the middle of verse 7, out loud together,

And the Lord sent Nathan unto David.  And he came unto him, and said unto him, There were two men in one city; the one rich, and the other poor.

The rich man had exceeding many flocks and herds:

But the poor man had nothing, save one little ewe lamb, which he had bought up and nourished up: and it grew up together with him, and with his children; it did eat of his own meat, and drank of his own cup, and lay in his bosom, and was unto him as a daughter.

And there came a traveler unto the rich man, and he spared to take of his own flock and of his own herd, to dress for the wayfaring man that was come unto him; but took the poor man’s lamb, and dressed it for them that was come to him.

And David’s anger was greatly kindled against the man; and he said to Nathan, As the Lord liveth, the man that hath done this thing shall surely die:

And he shall restore the lamb fourfold, because he did this thing, and because he had no pity.

And Nathan said unto David, Thou art the man.

[2 Samuel 12:1-7]

Now the subject of sexual drive is one that, in the puritanical tradition in which I grew up, and in the training that I have had ever since I was born, it would never had occurred to me that I would be preaching about it tonight, sexual drive.  And I am frank to say to you that in my studying and preparation for the sermon, I have found an amazing array of factual material that I never realized existed.  Some of it tragic, as you will hear in a moment, but some of it is inexpressibly wonderful, and I never dreamed that it would be so.  And you will see that tonight.

All right, the first avowal: sex, the relationship between a man and a woman, a boy and a girl, is a creation of God.  God did that.  And the overtones that the world has given to it is because of our fallen natures; it’s because of sin; it’s not because of God.  God created that relationship in infinite pleasure and joy.   You can see that plainly as I expound now these verses in the first chapter and in the second chapter of Genesis.  Genesis 1:26, “God said, Let Us make man in Our image, after Our likeness . . . So God created man in His own image, in the image of God created He him; male and female created He them” [Genesis 1:26-27].

Do you suppose that a system of theology is correct that avows that the purpose of a sexual relationship is only for procreation?  If that is true, then God created the man and his woman to create other gods, for he was made, and she was made, in the image of God.  And if the purpose of their relationship was procreation, then they are to procreate gods.  Such an idea is alien and foreign and strange to our ears.  And were it not facetiously said, would be of all things blasphemous.

So let’s listen to what God’s Word says about that creation, “Let Us make man in Our image, after Our likeness . . . so God created man in His own image, in the image of God created He him; male and female created He them” [Genesis 1:26-27].  So if we were in the image of God, the relationship is one of loving communion, of spiritual encouragement, of fellowship, of joy, of conversation, of living, of just being together.

So far as I know, all of the theologies of the world will say that God, having created the stars, He couldn’t talk to them and they can’t talk back to Him.  Having created the mountains and the oceans, they can’t talk to God.  They can’t have fellowship with the Lord.  So, so far as I know, all the theologies I have ever heard of, and I have ever studied and read, say the same thing.  So God created the man that he might have fellowship with Him, that he might talk with the Lord, think God’s thoughts after Him, and be like God.  And that is the way the Lord presents the creation of the man and his wife, not for procreation, not to love each other, or to be sexually potent with each other, in order to, and just in order to, to have children, but to be together in joy and gladness and happiness in every way that God would love for us to be with Him.

All right, that’s one of these verses.  Now let’s turn to the second chapter of Genesis and look at verse 18.  Genesis 2:18, “And the Lord God said, It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make a help meet for him.”  Now that word, “meet for him,” “I will make him a help meet for him,” would be an Old English translation, the way they would say it in 1611.  The Hebrew of it is, “I will make a help just like him, just for him.  I will make somebody like him.”

Now it had just been said that God created all of these things, the whole world around the man [Genesis 1:1-25], placed him in the garden of Eden [Genesis 2:8] with all the animals that He had created [Genesis 1:24-25], but for Adam there wasn’t anybody like him.  These animals are not like him.  These trees and these rivers and these stars and the firmament, they’re not like him.  And the Lord God said, “It is not good that he live like that, alone.  I will make for him somebody like him, who will be a helper for him, an encourager, who will walk by his side and be one with him” [Genesis 2:18].

Here again, the theology that God made the woman just for procreation is folly wide of the mark.  It’s not suggested.  It’s not even in the text.  No, God made them to have dominion over the earth and to replenish it [Genesis 1:26-28].  But God made her that she might be a wonderful companion for him, and that he might be a glorious companion for her, that together they make a wonderful team in the grace and goodness and will of the Lord God [Genesis 2:18]. 

All right, now let’s go to the end of chapter 2 and see how God did that.  It is very, very, very interesting.  Now remember, in the verse we just read, God said that man, it isn’t good for him that he live alone.  “I am going to make somebody like him to help him, to be with him” [Genesis 2:18].  So this is the way God did it.  “And the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam, and he slept: and He took one of,” and it is translated here, “ribs” [Genesis 2:21].  That is the only place in the Bible that tsela is translated “rib.”  Everywhere else in the Bible it is translated “side.”  The side of the ark, there is a long passage about that, the side of the house, the side of a mountain, the side of a room.  On and on and on in the Bible that is a common word, tsela.  But it just plainly means “side.”   So, why don’t they translate it here “side”?

“And God took out of his side,” from near his heart, God took from Adam’s side a part of him, “and closed up the flesh thereof [Genesis 2:21].  And that,” and here is that word tsela  again, “and that side,” that part of Adam that the Lord God had taken from man, and here you have a magnificent word, banah.  It is the plain, simple Hebrew word for “build, build.”

“And He took from the side of Adam, which the Lord God had taken, and banah, built He a woman, and brought her unto the man.

And Adam said, This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh: she shall be called ishah because she was taken out of ish”  [Genesis 2:23].  She shall be called Woman because she was taken out of Man.  Therefore,” this is what God said, “shall a man leave his father and mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh” [Genesis 2:24].  Companions together, just like that, forever, that’s what God intended.

Now it closes, this second chapter, “They were both naked, the man and his wife, and were not ashamed” [Genesis 2:25].  Sin is what has destroyed that beautiful relationship.  Our fallen nature has brought a dirty iniquity with it and to it.  But the whole thing, the whole creation of sex, of intercourse, of the relationship between man and woman, all of it was created by God.  And sin, in the next chapter, enters and destroys that beautiful, beautiful picture [Genesis 3:1-6].

Whenever you look at wrong, at sin, it is nothing but good prostituted.  There is no exception to that.  Whatever is in this world, God intended it and made it for good, and evil is only the prostitution of good.  And that’s what fell into the life of Adam and Eve and into our lives, because of our sinful and fallen natures.

So we’re going to talk about the fallen life and what happened to God’s beautiful creation.  It is illustrated, and out of all those characters in the Bible in which we could follow the story, it is illustrated in the life of David.  David had nine wives.  And of course, being an Oriental monarch, he had any number of concubines.  That was according to the culture of that day, but it is one that was cursed of God from the beginning [Deuteronomy 17:17].

Anywhere in the Bible that you have a polygamous relationship, you have sorrow and tears beyond description.  Abraham, with Hagar and Sarah [Genesis 16:1-16], we are reaping that today, in the bitter hatred of Ishmael to the sons of Israel.  Beyond any way we can describe, the overtones of that have been tragic, and they will be to the end of time.  That came out of a polygamous relationship.  It is the same sadness of story in the life of Israel, with Leah and with Rachel [Genesis 29-30].  It’s the same sad story that begins this Book of Samuel with Elkanah and Peninnah and Hannah [1 Samuel 1-2].  It is the same tragic story in the life of Solomon, who was destroyed and ruined by his unbridled lust [1 Kings 11:1-4].

So it was in the life of David, this thing in the life of David is nothing short of sexual insanity.  He had nine wives.  And some of them, like Abigail, Abigail is described in the Bible as a beautiful woman and imminently intelligent.  But David, when he ought to have been out leading the men at war, is at home.  And there at eventide—and you have the story, all of it in the eleventh chapter of the Book of 2 Samuel—seeing Bathsheba washing herself, lusted after her, sends for her.  She becomes pregnant.  She tells him [2 Samuel 11:1-5].

And Uriah, her husband, is at the front of the battle.  Unable to get Uriah to go home, he makes him drunk and still fails to send him home.  He writes a note to Joab the commander in chief, “Take Uriah and go to the edge of the very wall of the city and withdraw from him, and let the Ammonites destroy him” [2 Samuel 11:14-25].  And having murdered the man he takes Bathsheba to be his wife [2 Samuel 11:26-27].  And then you read the story, and of course, that’s just the little parable that you read that Nathan said to him [2 Samuel 12:1-7].  And it concludes with the sword [2 Samuel 12:8-12].  Blood, sexual insanity will never leave your house.

“What you reap, you sow” [Galatians 6:7].  If that’s not true, there is not any God.  “But God” [2 Samuel 11:27], always that verse is there.  And as you read the story, Amnon, who is the oldest son of David, and the heir apparent to the throne, Amnon ravishes and rapes his own half-sister, Tamar.  And Absalom is the brother, the full brother of Tamar, and he kills Amnon, his own half-brother [2 Samuel 13:1-33].  And the story goes on and on and on, washed in blood.

Now that is the perversion of what God has created so beautiful and so pleasurable and so joyous and so full of everything that only God could pack into it, destroyed and turned into lustful sin.  There is no end to the hurt and the sadness and the tears and the sorrow that follow after.

Now we’re going to bring it to today.  Our time is so fleeting.  What about this today?  Today we live in a permissive society.  The apostles of promiscuity are on every hand.  They have come out of the gutter.  They come out of the shadows.  They’ve come out of the woodwork.  We hear their voices everywhere.  This is a new and an open day.  And my preaching about it is a good illustration of how things have changed since I was a boy.

If I could describe this age as any other age above any other, I’d call it, this is the age of promiscuity, of pill, of penicillin, and petroleum.  That’s what I would call it.  This is the age of promiscuity: anything goes, anything.  Permissiveness, this is the age of the pill.  Man alive, were it not for the side effects, I don’t know what would be taking place here in our country.  This is the age of this penicillin.  If you have gonorrhea or syphilis we have a specific for it.  The only tragic thing about that is there are strains now of syphilis and gonorrhea that are impervious to the attack of penicillin.  And what that means, the Lord only knows.   And this is the age, I say, of petroleum, mobility, anonymity.  Just in a little while, almost in seconds, you can be away where nobody knows and nobody sees; that is the modern day.

 And as though that were not enough, there are greedy, lustful, money-hungry men by the uncounted thousands and thousands that prey upon this modern generation.  They are sacrificing the future of our youth and of our tomorrow for the sake of gain.   They do it in four ways.  Number one: these slick magazines and all the pornography that goes with it, number one.  Number two: these discos and the music and the lyrics, so suggestive that go with it.  Number three: these salacial movies that are unspeakable in what they present to a watching and listening audience.  And number four, and above all: the TV.  In my studying, in my much reading, it is the consensus of the people, of the men, of the scholars who are studying the cultural life of America and the future life of our generation, that there is not anything as devastating to modern life as television.  What a tragic, what a sad indictment!  In the television programming, every suggestive thing is done and made.  Fidelity is boring.  Adultery is alluring and exciting.  Homosexuality is almost overlooked as being a peccadillo.  And the whole framework of it is built toward sexual excitement and inflamement.  As though it is acceptable, permissible.  It’s perfectly all right.  It’s just interesting and thrilling.

Now what is the repercussion of that in modern life?  How does it fare?  Well, first of all and above all, we are going to look at it in the light of young people, especially teenagers.  The repercussion of it in their lives is sad and tragic beyond any way to describe it.  Like one of those girls said, “I felt cheap.  I wasn’t brought up like this.  And when I engage in it, I don’t feel right.  But everybody is doing it, and I want to belong to the group.”

That’s the strangest turn of psychology that you could ever imagine, and it is universal.  Young people, teenagers especially, are fiercely independent, and especially from their parents.  But they are just as fiercely dependent and conformist with their peers.  Isn’t that a strange thing?  They may think and they may say, “I’m going my own way.  Think my own thoughts.  Do my own thing.  No matter what father and mother says.”  And yet, get them with their own circle and their own kind, they’re like little pygmies, they just shrink up into nothing, whatever they do, that goes.  “If you love me, you’ll do it.”

Now in much study and gleaning from universities, and research centers, and Senate hearings, and psychiatrical clinics, and mental hospitals, I want you to listen to these statistics.  In much reading and gleaning, these are the things that characterize modern American life.

Number one: one million teenage girls every year, unmarried, become pregnant, one out of ten.  Three hundred thousand of those girls each year are under fourteen years of age.  Two thousand of them become pregnant every Saturday night.  That means one out of ten each year.

Number two: one out of five teenage girls have experimented with sex before they are thirteen years of age.

Number three: ninety percent of today’s teenagers will engage in sex before marriage, ninety percent of them.

Number [four]: fifty percent of the teenage girls that walk up and down America today, and that attend our schools, are sexually active now.

Number five: toward eight hundred thousand unwed teenagers give birth to children each year; the sharpest increase is those under fourteen years of age.  What about that?  The enormous number of unwed teenagers who are giving birth to children.

All right, here is a man who is an expert in his research center, and this is what he said before the Senate Human Resources Committee hearing.  Quote from him, “The girl who has an illegitimate child at the age of sixteen suddenly has ninety percent of her life-script written for her.  Her life choices are few and most of them are bad.”  Then he continued.  “No matter why teenage girls get pregnant, the impact is always devastating.  Girls in their teens experience more difficult pregnancies and produce more frail and sick children.  Between one-half and three-quarters of girls who conceive in high school never graduate.  And the younger the girl is when her first baby is born, the more likely her family is to wind up in poverty.  Marriage seldom helps, since three out of five teenagers who marry after getting pregnant are divorced within six years.”

The pregnant teenage girl falls into infinite sadness and sorrow.  I read, in my much reading in preparing this, the girl says to the boy, “Billy, I’m pregnant.”  He says, “Are you sure?”  And she says, “I know that I am.  I am pregnant.”  And he says to her, “Do you think I did it?  Do you know it’s me?”  And the girl is crushed!  She’ll never get over that question!  Do you think it I?  He has lost confidence in her!  And she is crushed toward him!  And you never rise above that.  “Am I the father of this child, or is it half a dozen others?”  The tragedy of a teenage unwed pregnancy is written in sorrow, in tears, and in blood.

Number six: toward four hundred thousand babies are aborted each year.  That’s why these abortion clinics, you just go watch one of them, they are busy day and night.  Four hundred thousand are aborted each year.  For every three that are born, one child is aborted.

Number seven: forty-five percent of all teenage brides are already pregnant on their wedding day.

Number eight: of all brides, one out of six is pregnant at time of marriage.

Number nine: one third of the girls who marry in high school are pregnant on their wedding day.  And three fourths of all first pregnancies occur prior to marriage.

Number ten: there are over three million new cases of venereal disease each year.  There is not a doctor in the land but that calls it epidemic.  Over three million new cases of venereal disease are developing each year, about six every minute.  And the increase in America is ten to fifteen percent each year.  And there is a corresponding rise in mental hospital admissions.

And a last statistic in my much reading: in [1870], there was 1 in 32 marriages that ended in divorce.  In 1900, it was 1 in 12.  In 1920, it was 1 in 6.  In 1935, it was 1 in 5.  In 1970, it was 1 in 3.  In 1980, in America, and mostly in Dallas now, it is 1 out of 2.  Something is happening to the fabric of American life.

Now I’ve just now come to my sermon.  All of this is sad and tragic.  Now let’s come to what God says.  Contrary to what so many people have been persuaded of, or have thought because of certain doctrinal teachings; contrary to that, the New Testament and the whole Bible for that matter, but the New Testament especially, the New Testament presents the marriage bed, coitus, sexual relationships, the New Testament presents it in every instance as something beautiful and glorious, never repressed, or suppressed, or sublimated, never.

Now I don’t have time but to say what we can see in two passages.  Number one: well, the first passage will be in Hebrews 13:4.  The translation here is, “Marriage is honorable in all, and the bed undefiled.”  That’s what it says in my King James Bible.  Let’s look at that just a while.  Bed, koitē, that’s also the Greek word for intercourse.  And we took the word bodily out of Greek and spelled it out in English; koitē, koitē is intercourse.  All right, now, he’s talking about coitus, translated here “bed.”  It can be translated either one: “bed” or “intercourse,” koitē. 

All right, he says here that it is “undefiled, undefiled” [Hebrews 13:4].  That’s a fine, fine word, a beautiful word in Greek, in nowise is there any overtone attached to it, but something of beauty, and of glory, and of joy, and of excellence, and of pleasure, and everything dear and sweet.

All right, look at what is translated here as “honorable,” “honorable” [Hebrews 13:4].  There is a Greek word timē, which means “a great price,” and that’s the word here.  Timios, “precious” marriage, and you see that “is,” It is in italics [Hebrews 13:4].  It’s not there in Greek.  “Marriage is honorable in all,” that would be as though the aesthetic life was superior to the marriage life.  There is no thing like that in the Bible, no, no.  “Let marriage,” he says, “be precious,” timē, timios, “let it be precious,” en pasin, “in every way” [Hebrews 13:4].  Now that’s the Christian attitude toward marriage.  It’s a beautiful and lovely and marvelous and, as the Bible calls it, “precious” relationship [Hebrews 13:4].

Well, we must hasten.  Let’s take one other.  We’re going to turn to 1 Corinthians chapter 7.  First Corinthians  chapter 7, beginning at verse 3, 1 Corinthians 7:3. “Let the husband render unto the wife due,” and you have it here, “benevolence,” eunoia.   Nous is the Greek word for mind.  And eu is the Greek word for well or good or beautiful.  So, “Let the husband render to the wife, eunoia, a beautiful attitude, a precious, precious response; eunoia, and also the wife unto the husband” [1 Corinthians 7:3].

Now you look at what he says.  “The wife hath not power of her own body, but the husband: and likewise also the husband hath not power of his own body, but the wife” [1 Corinthians 7:4].  Exousiazō means to exercise authority.  What he is saying there is that when you marry, the body of the wife does not belong to her.  Her body belongs to the man.  And the man, when he marries, his body does not belong to him.  His body belongs to his wife.  The wife hath not exousiazō, power over her own body, authority over her own body, but the husband, he exercises it [1 Corinthians 7:4].

And I can tell you this, there are ten thousand things in the sexual marriage life that would never come to pass if they just follow that little simple verse.  When a wife withdraws herself from her husband to punish him, that’s a typical thing.  She’s a prostitute.  She’s just like any other prostitute; she’s giving herself for pay.  She wants something, and she uses sex.  She sells her sex to her husband to get it.  That’s no different than they do out there on the street.  That’s what ten thousand times, ten thousand times do you find in the life of married couples.  And it breeds bitterness and hatred and everything bad!  And all you’d have to do is to follow the New Testament and just be like that.  She belongs to him, God’s Book says.  And he belongs to her, God’s Book says [1 Corinthians 7:4].

And then, in order to emphasize that, you have it translated, “defraud not” [1 Corinthians 7:5].  Apostereō, apostereō, deprive not, deprive not.   Man alive, what a beautiful relationship you’d have in that home when that door is closed and those two are alone in the bedroom.  What a beautiful relationship you’d have, if they’d just be like that.  I belong to you.  And you belong to me.  And we belong to each other.  And God made this relationship for joy, and happiness, and gladness, and companionship.  Dear me, it would be like living in heaven.

Now sweet people, I have prepared other things just, the time’s after eight o’clock, gone off the air I suppose, unless they extend this thing, so let me finish.  I have it prepared here and just listen.

What about trial?  Good sexual adjustment takes time, love, and understanding.  I suppose the greatest authority on family life is Dr. Paul Popenoe.  He founded one of those tremendous family relation centers.  And he said premarital sex not only doesn’t help sexual adjustment, it can do infinite harm.

All right, then the question asked him.  You try on a pair of shoes before you buy them.  We need to experiment to see if we’re sexually compatible, especially since marriage is such a big step.  Doesn’t that sound reasonable?  You and I proposing to be married and live together forever, how do I know that we’re sexually compatible?  So let’s go to bed and let’s try it out for a while first, before we stand before that preacher and pledge that vow, till death do us part.

All right, the answer of the great man, “The try-before-you-buy idea breaks down because the human plumbing system is so flexible and always works.”  Then, he continued, “Sexual maladjustments are, in almost every instance, psychological in origin.  Those that are based on anatomical peculiarities or incompatibilities are practically unknown in human life.”

Now when they come to you and they say, “We got to try this out before we get married,” that is nothing but a compromised device out of the pit of the devil’s hell.  And it compromises you forever, forever.  And this great authority says, “You don’t have to try it out, brother, it works.  God made it that way.  It just does.  And if it doesn’t work, it’s because of psychological aberrations.  It’s not in the plumbing system, it’s not in the genitalia, it’s up there in your head.”

All right, now here are some things I never dreamed of and I never heard of.  In this last summer one of our big national political conventions [met] to nominate a president of the United States.  These reporters who go to the conventions, look for everything to write about, and after a while it’s just the same old story, the same old song, the same old tune, you’re thumping the same old.  After all, there is just so much you can say about Reagan.  There is just so much you can say about Carter.  And you got to think up something else to write about.

So this fellow came upon a brilliant idea.  Sitting in the lobby of one of the most luxurious hotels in the city, he talked to a professional, elegant, beautiful prostitute.  And she was there to take advantage of that great throng of convention goers, going to nominate a president of the United States.  And I presume that’s an interesting way to do it, isn’t it?  So she’s there.  Now, her name is Karen Haywood.  And he’s talking to this elegant, beautifully adorned, lavishly luscious prostitute.  Now quite simply, she is cashing in on herself.  And every ring of the register tolls both loss and gain.  The gain is money, cold cash, and always easy.  The loss is more difficult to explain.  And that’s why it caught my attention.  That loss, I never thought about it.  I thought the life of a prostitute, she was in it for pleasure as well as money.  She’s in it because it’s exciting, as well as money; that’s what I thought.  But it has, it has gain and loss, and the loss, he says is difficult to explain.  It is bound in the fact that Karen has never been able to convince herself, she has certainly tried, that prostitution is simply a job, a job like any other.  That line of reasoning has never worked for her.  The dread and the bouts of her self-loathing overwhelm her.

Now listen to what she says: “I’m a lot colder now, especially sexually, but it makes you just kind of cold in general, and bitter.  I used to see girls who had been working for a while, see how they acted cold and hard, and I vowed that would never happen to me, but it’s impossible to stop.  You say you’re using men, they’re not using you.  You try to put your mind someplace else, but you can’t.  You can never really separate yourself from the act.  You try to tell yourself that you’re not being used, you’re using them.  You’re getting money from them.  She says she hates men.  She derives a certain smug satisfaction from the knowledge that men think they’re getting something from her that they’re not, her sexual pleasure and her interest in them.  “They talk to you, and you listen very sympathetically.  There is one guy, a lawyer from Bloomfield Hills, and he talks to me.  But when he leaves, I realize he is just like all the rest, I hate him.”

She does not usually fake passion now; she used to.  She says even though a convincing performance brings more money, the disgust and the contempt are always there.  They always want you to act, say the men; they always want you to act as if you like it.  She is only being paid to have sex, not to enjoy it, she says.  Her customers may buy her body, but they can’t buy her affection.  She refuses to kiss them, a refusal they find bewildering.  What do they expect?  How could she enjoy this job of hers, she wonders aloud, when men care only about one thing, their immediate sexual satisfaction?

That’s from an elegant prostitute. Isn’t that strange how God made it?  For sexual intercourse to be meaningful, it has to be something of a deep and abiding and loving commitment.  If it isn’t there, it breeds bitterness, and hardness, and self-contempt, and loathing.

Now the marvel and the wonder: God doesn’t let us down.  The gospel of Jesus Christ is good news for the whole person.  This is from a psychiatrist, this isn’t from a preacher.  It’s good news for the whole person.  The gospel must be good news for us in our befuddled attempts to live with our sexuality.  If Christ promises hope, it must include hope for a better sexual life.

And now, you listen.  This is not a preacher.  I don’t even know whether this psychiatrist is a Christian or not, but he says there are some things that are true about women.  And you listen to them.  First avowal he makes is that in fundamentalist Protestant churches, and we’re one, the premarital sex rate is so low as to be almost nonexistent.  Isn’t that great?  Isn’t that great?  If the girl belongs to a fundamental church that believes God and the Bible, the great odds and chances are she’s as pure, as virgin, as sweet, as dear as when God made her.  Isn’t that marvelous?  Isn’t that wonderful?  That’s the first thing that he observes.

The second thing: he says, that he still believes, and he lives in a world that looks with contempt on the preacher and the church, he still believes that the sermon is a marvelous way to make a difference in people’s values and attitudes in life.  Man, that encourages me.  Today preaching is passé, usually referred to in contempt, “Don’t preach to me!”  This psychiatrist says that the sermon is still a great instrument to instill in people the values of human life.

All right, now, the third thing that he says: Redbook magazine made a study recently of the sexual behavior of its women readers, and received one hundred thousand replies to the sixty items.  And the study showed that—now, brother, listen to this, you won’t believe it—the study showed that strongly religious women are more sexually responsive than any other woman, and that strongly religious women were more likely to describe their sexual experience as “good” or “very good” than anyone else.  And it also reported that they take a more active part in lovemaking than nonreligious wives of the same age.

If you want a wife that loves you till you can’t walk, get her in the church!  That is what it says.  That is what it says.  If you want to go around in a wheelbarrow because you don’t have strength enough to walk down the street, marry a Christian girl!  That’s what it says.  That’s what it says.  I never dreamed of that.  Never did.  Ah, just makes me so glad I’m a Christian, and that I’m a pastor.

When I go over there to these chapels and, as last night here in this sanctuary, and I have a wedding, and there stands one of our fine, good-looking Christian young men, clean as a hound’s tooth, and by his side standing one of the prettiest girls you ever saw in your life, out of one of our finest Christian homes, and I marry them, you know what that did for me?  Thank God the Lord created them male and female, man and woman, brought them together!  They fell in love, and they’re going to have the sweetest, most precious relationship of anybody in God’s world.  That’s glorious!  That’s marvelous!  That’s the fabric out of which a beautiful home is made.

God said, “It is not good that a man live alone.”  And He made for him a help mate [Genesis 2:18], one like him, to pray with him, and to speak to him, and to encourage him, and to love him, and to bless him, to walk by his side, in every way to share his joys and his sorrows, his tears and his laughter, to be just like him.  And when she is that, and he with her, it’s a glory that only God could have thought of and could have created.

Well, sweet people, thank you for listening, bless your hearts.  The sum of it all is, isn’t it wonderful to be a Christian?  Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday, and all day Saturday, it’s great to be a Christian, God having prepared a beautiful precious thing for us [1 Corinthians 2:9].

Now may we stand together?  Our Lord in heaven, what a great God Thou art.  And how marvelously did the Lord make us.  And we praise Thee that we were not left alone.  We thank Thee that in Christ we have a beautiful way to walk, a marvelous way to live, a glorious life to share.  And when our children grow up, that seeing us, they also pray that God will bless them with a like, beautiful home and a precious family.  And so the church is strengthened, and the kingdom of God expands, and the name of Jesus is honored in the hearts of men.  And we could pray that every child could have a beautiful Christian home; that he sees in his parents love for one another.  And we could pray that every young couple that marries would marry in the Lord.  And we pray that our church could encourage these young people in every way possible, in every program conceivable, that they find joy and exuberance and happiness in Thee, not out there in the world, in the den, in the dive, in the joint, in the bar, but that they find it in Christ [Romans 15:13].  Dear Lord, give us tonight a sweet response, accepting Thee as Savior [Romans 10:8-13], bringing a precious family into the fellowship of the church, maybe for the first time in life confessing Thee as Savior [Ephesians 2:8].

In a moment, while we quietly pray and stand, asking God to give us you, and when we sing this song, on the first note, down one of those stairways, in one of these aisles.  “Here I am, pastor, I’ve decided for God.  Here’s my family, we’re all coming, a Christian home.”  Or, “This is my friend,” or “my wife, the two of us are coming,” or just one somebody you.  And our Lord, thank Thee for the sweet harvest; in Thy precious name, amen.

Now while we wait, and while we pray, and while we sing, somebody you, “Here I am, pastor, I have decided for God and I’m coming,” while we wait and while we sing.