17. Mate Like Men

Hello everyone and welcome to the broadcast where we prod the sheep and beat the wolf. This is episode 17, sex like a man.

If masculinity were an island and men were its citizens, then attacks would be coming in all directions.

Multiple invading armies would be closing in, countless bombs and bullets would be expended, cities would be leveled, leading to the choice of whether or not men would surrender.

This is exactly what happened to Japan in 1945 and will serve as a fitting metaphor to introduce this topic.

In 1945, the U .S. and her allies had all but won the most devastating war ever conducted on land.

Millions of bullets, grenades, tanks, bombers, and blood had been spent trying to defeat the three -pronged axis of evil, which was comprised of the

Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, and Imperial Japanese armies. By 1945, the

Allied troops had defeated both Italy and Germany. The autocrat Benito Mussolini had been captured and was hung in the

Italian streets on April 28, 1945. Two days later, Adolf Hitler committed suicide in an underground bunker in Berlin.

This signaled the end of the war in Europe. But while the writing on the wall was certainly clear in Europe, it was also clear in the

Pacific theater as well, but the island of Japan persisted and refused to surrender.

They kept fighting with valor for a sense of glory and honor, even if all of them were going to perish.

By May, B -52 bombers were torching Japanese cities like Tokyo and others with devastating firebombs.

Marines were capturing various Japanese strongholds like Iwo Jima and Okinawa in the Pacific theater with massive

Japanese casualties. And the United States, who had been secretly developing the weapon to end the war, was moments away from dropping it should the

Japanese persist in their opposition because it was becoming costly for America to invade and attack all of these various islands.

They had control. They had the victory. Everything was basically over, but they were losing a massive amount of American lives by doing this.

So they were ready at a moment's notice to drop the atomic bomb. And that's exactly what happened.

On August the 6th of 1945, a new era of warfare was unleashed upon the world when the little boy atomic bomb liquefied

Hiroshima in seconds. Between the initial blast and the nuclear fallout, it is estimated that as many as 135 ,000 people were killed in that single blast.

Three days later, with similar devastation, another atomic bomb vaporized Nagasaki, effectively ending

World War II, the bloodiest conflict in human history. Now, with the

Russians closing in on the Western Front and the U .S. able to level entire cities and mass populations with a single bomb, the

Japanese had no recourse but to surrender and if they were going to survive. While all metaphors certainly break down, and while there's no direct comparison between World War II and the attack on masculinity, my point in bringing all of this up is to show how some weapons can end a war instantly.

They can vaporize your ability to fight, they can poison the population, and they can render a nation morally paralyzed to continue.

That's what happened to Japan, and that is what happens to marriages when pornography and aberrant sexuality is added to the marriage.

You see, if we have any hope of rebuilding and creating a healthy culture of men, then we need to know that these things are aberrant, but we also need to know what the

Bible says about healthy, biblical sexuality. You see, for far too long, pulpits and pastors have avoided this because it's a sensitive topic, it's a private topic, and because we've privatized sexuality, we've allowed our brothers and sisters in Christ, the congregants who go to our church, to have their sexuality defined by the world, and by media, and by entertainment.

It's time that the church talks about sex, and they talk about sex in a faithful way, and we're going to talk about it from the perspective of how do men have a healthy approach to sex.

To do this, we're going to lean on what we've already seen in previous weeks, how we're called to act like men, to love like men, and to worship like men.

Those things are true. We're going to build upon that today with a biblical sexual ethic.

We're going to look at the God -ordained goal of male sexuality and the God -ordained results of male sexuality, and in the end, we are going to see what the

Bible says so that we can effectively, as men, wage war in a perverted generation and beyond.

So let's begin. And disclaimer, I am going to be speaking frankly from this point forward.

So if your sensibilities are offended, I would skip this episode, or if you have children in the room and you do not want them to hear the frankness from which

I'm talking, maybe you would listen to this at another time. That's the disclaimer. The God -ordained goal of male sexuality.

The goal of masculine sexuality is not an asexual midnight masturbation session in front of a 4K

OLED display. The goal is not playing hopscotch on the calendar so that you don't impregnate the girlfriend that you have no intention to marry.

The goal is not an endless reel of lustful fantasies about the women that you know and work with that you will either indulge in private seedy delight or you'll carry with you with pulverizing shame.

That's not the goal. The goal of male sexuality is biblically defined, joy -filled, fully satisfying, covenantally faithful kingdom -building enjoyment of one woman for a lifetime to the glory of God.

That is what sex is. And before you exclaim, oh wow, the puritanical fun police are back in town and they're going to limit all of our freedom, you have to remember something.

That all freedom is essentially limited. You're either going to live according to the limits that God has placed on you in his word, or you're going to live within the debased limits and definitions of a debauched human society.

You're either going to align yourself with how your creator made you to flourish and function, or you're going to give yourself over to carnal human imagination.

One of these limits is going to bring life to your life and to your marriage. One of them, the other of them, is only going to bring vulgarity, vexation, and venereal diseases.

You see, true freedom is experienced in limitation, not in unbridled hedonism. You think about it this way, the freest and most joy -filled people who will ever exist are the future redeemed people who cannot sin in New Jerusalem.

That's heaven. They're the people who are finally free to worship God without the constant drive and pull towards sin.

And while they're substantially more limited than we are, we have options to choose whether we're going to obey

God or not. They worship God because God has given them that gift of erasing the curse from their life so that they no longer want to do those things.

They are more limited in the assortment of behaviors that they can do than us, but yet they are infinitely more joyful and free than we are because they are acting according to their

God -designed purpose. The mere fact that we're limited does not stifle our ability to experience joy and freedom.

What stifles these things is being bound to the wrong standard of behavior. Just like a fish cannot survive in canola oil, so the masculine sexual drive was not designed to live and thrive in sexual immorality and perversion.

So what does the Bible say that we were designed for? First, we were made to endure a profitable period of sexual abstinence.

A profitable abstinence. Before marriage, we were not designed to gratify any sexual desire in any way with any person, any time, anything, unless we invite

God's judgment upon our lives. We see this standard all over the Scriptures.

Sexual immorality is one of the things that the Scriptures are constantly telling us to repent of, turn from, flee from.

For instance, Job 31 .1 says this, I have made a covenant with my eyes.

Why then should I look upon a young woman? Why should I lust upon a woman? Job is admitting that visual stimulation is a particular struggle for men, who were designed to be aroused by the naked body of a woman.

And yet, while this is a God -given design feature that's going to cause your marriage to flourish, we're not allowed to enjoy that kind of stimulation before we're married.

Job argues that we must protect the covenant marriage, our future covenant marriage, and our current covenant with God by making a covenant with our own eyes, so that we do not lust after women.

He's saying that the old adage, I can look but not touch, is entirely wrong.

It's an egregious sin, and if you indulge in it, you will ruin your relationship with women, your future wife, and your relationship with God.

Job is telling us that before marriage, every woman's body on earth is off limits to you.

Her figure, her curves, her femininity must not even dilate your eyes.

After marriage, that desire is given to you as a gift by God that can be poured out on a single woman who will delight your eyes forever.

But before marriage, that's not for you. That means, practically speaking, we are not allowed to turn our eyes upon the uncovered woman on television and make excuses by saying that we're only watching it for the story.

It also means that we don't turn our eyes to the covered woman at our workplace and think, it's innocent because I'm only looking.

We do not gawk at the women who dress provocatively in public and say, well, they're inviting that attention.

And we don't visualize what's under the clothing of those who adorn themselves with modesty and pretend like they were somehow innocent.

We don't linger over lingerie ads, we don't stare at the women on the beach or navigate three clicks past holiness on that website.

If we are unmarried, we fight lust, we subdue lust, we kill lust, we go to war against lust so that it would not be awakened until its proper time,

Proverbs 8 .4. That proper time is covenant marriage. And if you will fight that fight in faith by the power of the

Spirit for the glory of God to your own benefit, then you will reap bountiful blessings in your future marriage that will contribute to a lifetime of unfettered pleasure.

It's for your benefit, brother, that you guard your eyes before you're married. But if you heed your sin, if you drowned your eyes with an ocean full of lustful images, you willingly invite dysfunction upon your own head, sinful decay onto your bed.

It's just not worth it. Paul says in Colossians 3 .5, put to death, therefore, whatever is earthly in you, sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, covetousness, which is idolatry.

He's saying put those things to death, but we have to understand what he means. And before we move on,

I think it's important for us to point out something in this passage. Paul is not commanding mortal combat upon our sexual desire, our sexual nature in general.

God made our sexual nature. And he's not telling us to wage war on our sexual nature in order to prove ourselves worthy to God.

We don't grind out beleaguered holiness or begrudgingly guard our eyes and minds and our hearts just to lay at Jesus' feet our very best, which is filthy, soiled, and polluted rags.

He's not looking for that. If that were the goal, then we may as well eat, drink, be merry, and give ourselves over to whatever lust that we want because our best would never be pure enough to satisfy a thrice holy

God. We don't wage war to prove to God who we are. We wage war against our aberrant sexual sin because we're enamored by who he is.

We're awestruck with his beauty. We want nothing more than to please this God who loved us so much that he sent his own

Son to die for us. We are captivated by the amount of grace that would cause him to die for his enemies.

And in coming to grips with the height and depth and breadth of that kind of love, we learn to love what he loves, and we learn to hate what he hates.

Knowing that God hates sexual sin and knowing that our sin put Jesus on the cross causes us to have new affections by the

Spirit of God, to have new holy incentives to flee from sexual lust and immorality before our marriages and beyond, it changes our heart.

One last point on this. Satan will lie to you, brother. I know that's a truism, but follow me here.

He will attempt to convince you that your sexual appetite is so thoroughly macho that it must be indulged because to suppress that part of you, he quips, would be to suppress your own masculinity, and who in the world would ever want to do that?

We live in a world where there's already enough suppression of masculinity, so Satan will push you to say, you know, you're so manly that you can handle this.

You can watch that television show where this woman's breasts are all over the television screen, and you can do that as a

Christian with Christian liberty because you're strong enough to handle it. Or you can watch that pornography because, you know, you have to find an outlet somewhere.

That's a lie from the pit of hell, brother. Nothing could be further than the truth. When you apply a sledgehammer to a border wall, you weaken the nation's defenses.

Well, in the same way, when you apply sex, lust, porn, fornication, and all other kinds of sexual immorality to your heart before your marriage, then you erode your future marriage's defenses against satanic attack.

You also, this is scientifically proven, you weaken your own masculinity, you reduce your own testosterone, and you cripple your manhood.

By indulging inappropriately in God's good gift of sex, it is far better for you and certainly more obedient for you if you simply wait.

You will have more pleasure, you will have better sex, and you will honor and glorify

God in your life if you just have a period of profitable abstinence from the time you were born until the time you were married.

Those things are not for you. But at some point, the wait's going to be over, and you are going to date a girl, you're going to be engaged to a girl, and you're going to marry a girl, and then you're going to consummate your love to that girl on your wedding night.

When that happens, there are four ways that we must approach our wives sexually.

There's four ways that you are going to approach her sexually, and the first is with a provider's love, the love of a provider.

According to Scripture, men must leave their season of boyhood and profitable abstinence behind in order to step into this new life -changing era that's called marriage.

Genesis 2 .24 says, For this reason a man shall leave his father and his mother and be joined to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.

Genesis 2 .24 Now there's a lot to this, but at the very least, it means that we must be mature enough to leave our parents home if we want to be married.

We must be the kind of man who can perform all of the basic life functions needed to run a home and have the ability to love and care for another person before we're ready to experience holy matrimony.

Let me say this as simply as I possibly can. Sex is for the biblically mature man, not just for the biological male.

You may have all the right working parts for sex, and they may be mature on a cellular level, but if you are not ready to cling to and care for a woman, then you are not ready to have sex with her, period.

That's not to say that you're going to be fully mature at the time that you're married or perfectly able to provide for her on your wedding day.

If that were the case and no one would be able to do it, you're certainly going to grow in your maturity and you're going to grow in your ability to provide for her over a lifetime, eventually even learning how to care for multiple children, and then even more eventually learning how to care for a clan of grandchildren before the

Lord calls you home. You are over the course of your lifetime going to learn how to care for people at an increasing degree so that by the time that you're ready to die, there are 20, 30, 40 people looking to you for love, care, support, and leadership.

You don't need to be perfect when you first get married, but you need to have a loving and godly maturity that is at least present in seed form when you get married.

For instance, you do not get to trade in your elderly mother for a young woman you can have sex with who still babies you.

That's not being ready for marriage. If you're not ready to act like a man in your entire house, then why do you think you're ready to act like a man in your bedroom?

We don't need more adult boys with erections and sexual demands for their wives and marriages.

We need Christ -like, godly, mature lovers of women who will care for and cling to their brides for a lifetime.

For all of the men listening who are engaged right now, you have to evaluate yourself and ask yourself, am

I ready? And if I'm not, what do I need to do to get ready? If you don't have a job or have no aspiration of finding a job, or if you're unreliable and can't keep a job, then stop daydreaming about marriage right now.

Before you're ready to undress your wife, take off your Pokemon pajamas, put down your Xbox controller, work on your resume, find some nice clothes, comb your hair, get ready for an interview.

Those are things that will prepare for your marriage. If you're already married, you have to evaluate yourself as well.

If the most masculine thing you contribute to your marriage is a few seconds of pleasure in your bedroom, then you need to repent before God and apologize to your wife.

You have to put away the childish ways that you have been living in and be the kind of man that God is calling you to be and the kind of man that she's been waiting for you to become.

Care for her, brother. Cling to her. Love her. Give to her. Pour into her.

Build her up. Don't treat her like a bank that you go to a couple of times a week to make a deposit.

She's God's daughter. Treat her like it. And provide a happy home for her to raise godly children in joy and security.

That's the first aspect of biblical masculine sexuality, that we would have a providing kind of love.

The second is that we would be vigilant to safeguard our marriage beds so that we only engage in pure and holy sex.

A pure and holy sex. Sex is a beautiful gift from God for the man and the woman in the covenant marriage.

It is a great joy. It's a godly pursuit. It's an expression of sacrificial love.

And it's the mark of tender intimacy, holy affection, sacrificial love, and holistic health.

It is God -honoring. But that doesn't mean that we can defile it. You see, the author of Hebrews actually warns men that God is going to judge the sexually immoral person.

He says marriage is to be held in honor among all, and the marriage bed is to be undefiled for fornicators and adulterers

God will judge. God's reminding men that marriage and sexuality are institutions of great honor that can be defiled by our sin.

For this reason, we fight to protect the honor of our marriage. We fight to protect the purity of our bed.

And we refuse to introduce unrighteous elements of defilement into the bedroom with our wife because God brings judgment against those things.

What does that look like? Well, the examples are endless, but a few are this. It looks like being sexually faithful to your wife at all times and in all places.

It means refusing to put any kind of smut or lust on your mind or to participate in any kind of sexual sin during your day because you will unintentionally bring that into the bedroom and defile her at night.

It certainly means not cheating on her, but it also means not fantasizing about someone else or imagining this or that thing were different about your wife.

Our role in her life is to treasure her, to love her like Jesus loves the church, to celebrate her, to honor her, to enjoy her, and to be devoted to her.

Anything else that creeps into your bedroom must be forcefully removed. That's the second.

The third posture of biblical masculine sexuality is that it affords a man the opportunity for unending pleasure.

It's a pleasure that is unending. Now, let's just be honest. The world, the flesh, and the devil have co -opted the biblical vision of satisfied sexuality.

Today, when you talk about lifelong monogamy, it sounds boring, it sounds quaint, it sounds puritanical, and it sounds like a punishment for the sexually repressed.

The world is constantly inundating us and reminding us that excitement, passion, and adventure exist everywhere except the married bedroom.

That's the place where deep snores, bad breath, cold hearts, and not -tonight -dear exist. But a biblical marriage is not like that.

It's anything actually but that. It's anything but boring, at least if you look at it and you live it out biblically.

Solomon advises men in Proverbs 5, 18 -19, he says this, Let your fountain be blessed and rejoice in the wife of your youth.

As a loving hind and a graceful doe, let her breast satisfy you all of your days.

Be exhilarated always with her love. Does that sound prudish to you? Does that sound bland?

It isn't. Exhilarated all the days of your life by her love, satisfied in her body and her breast.

That's not boring at all. The wife that you have today, brother,

I mean the wife that you have today. If you have your earpods in and you're staring at her right now, that woman, she can bring you all the passion and bodily satisfaction that your heart desires.

Her breast, her body, her mind, her heart, her love, all of those things is enough for you so that you will be exhilarated by her love for a lifetime.

The problem is not with her. The problem is with you. If you're not satisfied with your wife, the problem is not with her, it's with you.

I want you to think about it in the terms that Solomon gives to us. If her breast, that's what he mentions, if her breast ceased to satisfy you, what's the problem?

Could it be that you have some other breast in mind? Perhaps a different kind of breast, a different shape of breast that you would find more satisfying?

If that's the case, brother, ask yourself how that better breast got into your mind in the first place.

If your wife had the only two breasts on planet earth that you had ever seen, then wouldn't you view them as perfect?

Wouldn't you rejoice in her and find her sexy all of the days of her life? Even if there were a better pair of breasts out there, you wouldn't know nothing of it because she is the woman that you've delighted in from your youth.

The reason that her breast, her face, her legs, her butt, her arms, her personality, her sexuality, whatever, the reason that those things are no longer a delight to you is because you've muddied the waters with a host of other bodies and you wonder why you're dissatisfied.

You and I and men in this society have collected a lifetime of naked images that we've seen on websites and that we've either interacted with in person that now are collected into our brains, that we bring into our marriages, that have unwittingly constructed this sort of ideal woman made out of an assortment of all of your favorite parts.

This person's breast, this person's legs, this person's feet, this person's head, this person's personality, and you've made this sort of ideal woman that no woman on earth can measure up to.

And then when excitement in the marriage wanes, you judge the wife that God has given you against the

Rolodex of images that you have stolen, and then you wonder why you're unhappy and unsatisfied.

Brothers, we need repentance. We need repentance. The gospel can forgive you of all these sins, the

Holy Spirit can free you from these sins, and I believe that you can have a new mind, as Romans 12 says, that your mind can be renewed by the gospel, but you have to put in work.

You can't sit in your perversion, you can't constantly go back to the putrid trough of pornography and think that somehow you're going to be satisfied with your wife.

You are killing your satisfaction, sir, by going back and back and back again to the troughs of hell.

The wife God has given you can satisfy you and will delight you for a lifetime. Will you trust the plan of God for your life?

Will you submit your desires under his authority and lordship? Will you love and care for your wife instead of treating her like a second -rate object that doesn't measure up?

And will you repent and be delighted for a lifetime in that woman's love?

Listen, I'm no rocket scientist, and I'm certainly not a therapist. I just read the

Bible, and I'm looking and trying to tell you what the Bible says here, but I believe that the vast majority of sexual unhappiness in marriages would end today, would end today, if husbands would dutifully care for his wife during the day and just trust that because she's so overjoyed in his love and provision and care for her that she would take care of him at night.

If the man will help her downstairs, she will love him upstairs. Now I'm not saying that this absolves women of their responsibility, but that's what the next section is all about.

We are called as men and women to mutually sacrifice and submit to one another and to have frequent, persistent sex.

We are. That's biblical. But all I'm pointing out, brothers, is that if you come home and your wife's already tired and you just expect her to throw it on you and you have no care and no consideration of what she's went through in her day, you're probably going to strike out.

You're probably going to become frustrated. You're probably going to give in to your temptation, and you're probably going to go to that website.

Can we repent of even the way that we treat our wives downstairs as a way of preparing her to be relaxed and ready to share her love with us upstairs?

Can we repent of that? I certainly want to repent of that. I want to love my wife better downstairs and the other 99 .9

% of life. That leads to our final section, a persistent sacrifice.

The final aspect of biblical masculine sexuality is a persistent, devoted, and sacrificial approach to sex.

There will be days when neither you or your spouse are going to want to connect sexually.

There are going to be days when you just don't want to. Those days probably are going to be more on her side than on your side.

But I need you to consider something. For the wife, a few days of the kids not listening, schoolwork not getting done,

Kool -Aid spilt on the couch, toys not being picked up, no one's listening, one kid swinging from the chandelier and another kid's trying to cut their own hair at three years old.

That's going to make sex look as distant as the furthest galaxy. You have to understand that, brother, and you have to give her grace.

It's important on those days for the husband to come home, for you to come home and serve your wife.

It's important for you to remember that she's tired and that she's exhausted and that she's beleaguered trying to hold your house together.

She's your helpmate. She's not your slave. She's depleted. She needs you to love her and serve her.

On those days, give her the freedom to just be served. On those days, do something out of the ordinary to care for her.

Show her that you understand where she's at and that you're not going to pressure her to perform when she can barely keep her eyes open.

That's a way that you can love her. That's a way that you can sacrifice to her.

As Paul says in the passage that we're going to read in just a moment, your body is not your own. Use your body to serve your wife.

But it's also important to remember that for both members of the marriage, that a sex -deprived marriage is not a biblical and it's not a healthy marriage at all.

Both the man and the woman need ongoing sexual encounters with each other to have a healthy and God -glorifying marriage.

And one of the best ways that Satan can sow discord between a husband and a wife is by getting them to arrive at a sexless, sex -starved marriage.

We ought to be very careful as we heed the words of Paul in 1

Corinthians 7, 3 -5. He says this, the husband must fulfill his duty to the wife and likewise also the wife to her husband.

The wife does not have authority over her own body. But the husband does. And likewise also the husband does not have authority over his own body but the wife does.

Stop depriving one another except by agreement or a time so that you may devote yourself to prayer and come together again so that Satan will not tempt you because of your lack of self -control.

Listen, no member of the marriage is allowed to consider their own needs above the other.

Wives, if you are consistently telling your husband no with no good reason and no agreement, you're in sin.

But husbands, listen closely. If you use your body to take from her instead of serve her, you're also in sin.

Your commitment to your own sex might be washing the dishes. It might be giving her a break with the kids.

It might be doing something to serve her downstairs so that she will respond to you more frequently upstairs.

I'm just saying, remember that love is mutual submission and sacrificial care one to another.

Both the husband and the wife are to minister to one another with their bodies so that intimacy, affection, and spiritually protected marriages that are immune to the flaming arrows of Satan is going to blossom and thrive.

A sex -starved marriage is a vulnerable marriage. So men, do what you have to do to love and care and serve your bride.

Your body is not your own. Wives, do whatever you have to do to love and care and serve your husband. Your body is not your own.

Both of you serve one another, and I'm holding the men accountable to lead in that because you are playing the role of Christ in your marriage.

It says that your wife, like Christ, loves the Church. Well, Christ is always the one who pursues the bride.

Don't wait for your wife to pursue you. Don't wait for your wife to make the first move. You serve her.

You care for her. And wives, like the Church responds to Christ, respond to the advances of your husband, and the two of you cultivate a godly, healthy, sexual life together.

Listen, there's so much more that we could talk about on this topic. We've already gone too long, but I believe what we have said is sufficient to cover the topic.

Men, in order to love a woman properly—that's the aim of this talk—is that you would approach your marriage with a holy abstinence, that you would be committed to purity for your future wife, which will bless your future marriage.

And when you're ready to marry, take on responsibilities. Take on the bills. Pay for the house.

Do things that are going to love and serve your wife. When you're ready to be married, take on whatever responsibilities that God has given you and whatever your wife is expecting of you, and do that so that you can provide a happy and thriving home for her.

Don't wait for her to lead you. You need her. Get a job. Love her and bless her with a godly affection and provision.

And when you do that, you will see her also providing for you in a way that you will be satisfied for a lifetime.

Your marriage will be strong. Your marriage will glorify God in the way that you love and care for one another.

And your marriage will be happy. If this message was helpful for you, share it with anyone that you would like.

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