Jnnnganga meditations week 8-14th august 2011.. when is sex ok biblically ?
Day 1
They must not marry women defiled by prostitution or divorced from their husbands, because priests are holy to their God
The Oxford dictionary defines Fornication as 'voluntary sexual intercourse between an unmarried couple.' Adultery is 'the act of being unfaithful to one's wife or husband by voluntarily having sexual intercourse with someone else,' whereas Fornication is 'sexual intercourse between an unmarried couple.' The entertainment media specialises in films, radio shows, books, magazines and reports about fornicating couples. Some TV programmes even encourage young people to fornicate in order to 'gain experience' before making their marriage vows.
The bible says that God will judge the adulterer and all the sexually immoral. Why differentiate between adulterers and the sexually immoral? It is because an adulterer is simply somebody married sleeping with somebody else who they are not married to. But sexually immorality involves a much wider issue .
Sex is such a controversial issue that we need to pray that the Lord will open up our minds and our hearts so that we don’t just hear with our minds but it drops down to our hearts so that we may be committed to honor God by obeying his instructions whatever our feelings about them.
Sexual immorality is referring to more than just having sex with anyone else other than your wedded wife. It includes having sex with anyone else other than somebody we are wedded to but it also involves others . We are talking about a ‘marriage bed to being honoured’. Means you must be married if you want to have sex. So if you enter into sex and you are not married, then there is going to be a problem.
So whether you have sex outside marriage before you are married or after you are married it is still sexual sin.
Day 2
Leviticus21:14
He must not marry a widow, a divorced woman, or a woman defiled by prostitution, but only a virgin from his own people
If you have a boyfriend and that boyfriend has already promised to marry you. Two days to the wedding he says, you know we are just going to be married soon so we can have sex. Do you know even if it happens two days to the wedding, it is still sexual immorality ,for immorality is to sleep with anyone you are not yet wedded to.
That’s why the church emphasizes that all of us must be openly married, must be wedded, so that we are sure of our marital status..
And let me differentiate between a wedding and a marriage. Wedding is an event, marriage is a lifetime process. We are saying wedding is the thing that comes before marriage. But for some people marriage comes before the wedding. In fact these days it is becoming like a common thing. You know very few people are getting wedded before they are ‘married’.
Day 3
1Corinthians6:16
Do you not know that he who unites himself with a prostitute is one with her in body? For it is said, “The two will become one flesh.”
The Bible actually says that if you sleep with a woman you have become one with her. And what that means is that you are married. That’s complicated because that implies that every girl you have ever slept with you married her. It is saying anybody you sleep with you become one with her or him. So what that means is that if before the wedding day you actually slept with your current husband, it means the wedding day was just a joke. You were married earlier and you are playing games with us on the wedding day . Basically your wedding was drama.
According to God, marriage is consummated by having sex. And by the way not just God, the law in Kenya says the same , you check it up. If you wed this Saturday, three months later, if you are able to prove in a court that you have not slept with the man, the lawyers tell us that marriage is ‘void ab initio’, that means it never existed from the beginning hence the court will give you a kind of automatic divorce.
Thus it seems that marriage does not begin because the pastor says so. One of the things that remain is to sleep with the woman to make her a wife. It is the one that consummates marriage . The law in Kenya recognizes it and the Bible recognizes it…. you are not yet fully married if you have not yet had sex.
Day 4
Deuteronomy22:29
he shall pay her father fifty shekels of silver. He must marry the young woman, for he has violated her. He can never divorce her as long as he lives
Understand then that if you have sex before the wedding , please note that on the wedding day we are playing drama. You know these days they are even putting weddings on TV, isn’t it. So basically you are just acting. What we are discussing is not something people are taking seriously this days.
Even in church people feel like just because two of you have agreed then you can sleep together. You should not ,because if you do, then you don’t need to call us for the wedding. Of course you can have a party to bless the marriage since basically sexual act consummated the marriage.
The wedding is not as important as the marriage but just like no athletic finisher gets a prize if he start was not recorded , then the wedding is important.
By the way wedding cannot be held in secret since it is a way fo obeying Genesis 2:…when a man leaves his parents to be united to his wife . How will parents know you have left them if they are not invited to the occasion? How ill society take you as new home if you do not follow acceptable way of stopping being part of your father’s home to form a new one You need witnesses and the government and the church have given how it is to be done.
Day 5
1 Thessalonians 4:3-7 For this is the will of God, even your sanctification, that ye should
abstain from fornication: that every one of you should know how to
possess his vessel in sanctification and honour; Not in the lust of
concupiscence, even as the Gentiles which know not God ... For
God hath not called us unto uncleanness, but unto holiness."
Note then that sexual immorality is not just what happens after the wedding , even before the wedding . On the wedding day the pastor asks, is there anybody who knows a reason why these people cannot be joined in holy matrimony. If you know you slept together, then you are already joined, then you should confess, tell people, ‘yes I know’. If you know you slept together, the truth is you know you are already consummated the marriage.
So when you talk about sexual immorality, it includes that. Before you touch a woman, the thing that you need is long term commitment. Because I have told you ,wedding is the start of a marriage and what it means is before you can sleep with a woman you must first make a long term commitment. What is a wedding? A wedding is the making of a long term commitment to one another. Isn’t that what a wedding is?
What that means is that if a boy comes to you sister and asks to be in bed with you , ask him , ‘sign on the dotted line first , after that I am yours’. If he doesn’t agree to sign that marriage certificate first , if you will go ahead with sex, you are getting yourself a curse. So that’s how important a wedding is because it makes something righteous that was a sin one minute before. That in the morning if you did it you are a sinner. In the afternoon if you did the same thing and you are righteous on your way to heaven. All because of that signature.
Day 6
GEN 34
1 Now Dinah, the daughter Leah had borne to Jacob, went out to visit the women of the land. 2 When Shechem son of Hamor the Hivite, the ruler of that area, saw her, he took her and raped her…….7 Meanwhile, Jacob’s sons had come in from the fields as soon as they heard what had happened. They were shocked and furious, because Shechem had done an outrageous thing in[a] Israel by sleeping with Jacob’s daughter—a thing that should not be done.
God seems to have put sex as so important that he wants it enjoyed within certain conditions. He is not refusing you, He wants you to enjoy it only if you are willing to last in the relationship with your sexual partner for long. It is not touch and go. In other words I am willingly taking this woman for good and for worse, only after that can we have acceptable sex. As soon as you are agreed that you are taking her or him with all her/his goodness and her/his badness, then sex is ok. You accept her now when she has afro hairstyle and when she gets grey, once you agree to take her like that, then God says it is okay now you can sleep with her.
To God sex is okay but you must first of all, say that you are willing to take the consequences of the sex act. And of course there are many consequences in marriage. One of them is she could become pregnant. And sometimes those things are very complicated because the person gets pregnant, it is only after she is pregnant that he says, ‘you, why were you not looking after yourself? You are an educated woman. You should have ensured you don’t get pregnant. I do not want a foolish woman in my house. That’s the end of our relationship’.
Are there not many people like that?
Day 7
2 SAMUEL 13
12 “No, my brother!” she said to him. “Don’t force me! Such a thing should not be done in Israel! Don’t do this wicked thing. 13 What about me? Where could I get rid of my disgrace? And what about you? You would be like one of the wicked fools in Israel. Please speak to the king; he will not keep me from being married to you.” 14 But he refused to listen to her, and since he was stronger than she, he raped her.
15 Then Amnon hated her with intense hatred. In fact, he hated her more than he had loved her. Amnon said to her, “Get up and get out!”
The fact that someone who looks in love can change after granting him sex is documented .Go to the son and daughter of King David. This boy who is a half brother to the sister decides that he is so much in love he tricks even the father the king in order for the girl to come to his house. And he was so much in ‘love’ he ended up raping her. You know the story, isn’t it? The Bible tells us that after the act, he looked at the girl and he hated her more than he had loved her. Have you read that in the Bible?
That is what happens when you decide to have sex before the wedding day, you are ruining your own prospects for a future marriage. Somehow that thing seems to ‘chicken’ the person. May be he wonders: If she was really a good woman how come she said yes. If she said yes to me, how many other people does she yes to? And yet you know very well you only said yes because he said he would die and you didn’t want your boyfriend to die. I am now talking to single people , if you are married this message is not yours. I am telling you that your future marriage will be the better if you say no to him. Because somehow he will have respect for you.
Let me tell you that there are several things that are affected by sex before the wedding. If you have sex before the wedding day, even after thirty years in marriage, in your mind whenever you go for a trip for three months, you wonder, if she/he could not wait when we were not used to having sex … can she/he wait when I am away… Are you getting the point?
So although you know she is saved you start wondering,’ aaai, I know I persuaded her, but if she could give in to me, who else can she give in to?’.