1 Corinthians 7:1-5 Song Of Songs Part II

You're listening to the podcast of Recast Church in Matawan, Michigan. This week, Pastor Don Filsick preaches from his sermon series titled, 1 Corinthians, Sinful Church, Powerful Gospel. Let's listen in.

All right, good morning.

Welcome to Recast Church. I'm Don Filsick. I'm the lead pastor here. I'm glad you're here, and I hope that you end up by the end of this message glad that you were here too, maybe. We are all gathered together to be built up by the Word of God and encouraged in our faith as a result of being together.

The Direct Teaching of 1 Corinthians 7:1-5

We're going to sing some songs here in a minute. We're going to hear from God's Word, and God's Word speaks into all kinds of areas of our lives, and this is one of them. I've entitled this sermon, Song of Songs, Part 2, because this message will be the most direct message on sexuality and marriage since that book that I preached a couple years ago.

This passage makes explicit, if not even a bit technical, the things that are referred to more poetically elsewhere in Scripture. This is Paul in 1 Corinthians addressing issues and things that are going on there, and speaking quite directly into expectations within marriage.

This would be a fabulous time. I see some little ones in here. If you have kids, and maybe this is your first time here, and you've got some kids, this might be a good time for them to go back to the kids area, just primarily because of the content.

So, it depends on how comfortable you are answering a lot of questions on your drive home from your little ones. So, that's up to you. That's your discretion, but you have been warned. I am going to let loose here in a minute.

So, and the text itself is not going to pull any punches. So, even in the introduction, I have the feeling that I may say some things that will make my own kids blush, and they're adults, so almost adults.

So, yeah, here we go. Our passage this morning is likely one of the most abused and missed applied passages in Scripture. Scholars have used this passage to attempt to perpetuate what I would call the battle of the sexes.

And when I say battle of the sexes, I'm going to say that a couple of times here in my sermon this morning. When I mention battle of the sexes, what I mean is just simply an appeal back to the Garden of Eden.

When man and woman fell in the garden and they sinned, God actually said to the woman, there's going to be some enmity that develops between you and your husband. This is not going to be okay. All relationships are broken by sin.

And now that you know sin and you have the knowledge of good and evil, there's going to be a brokenness there. And he says to the woman, your desire is going to be to have authority over your husband, but your husband is going to domineer you.

And how many of you know that that defines? Go ahead and raise your hand if you think that kind of defines human history since the fall. Are you guys aware that in our culture there's a significant tension and battle going on?

And I think even recently it's been accentuated by decisions and things where between man and woman in general and often between husband and wife, there is conflict. You guys are aware of that, right?

You see it around you.

And so we're going to see that this has been misapplied by many in our culture who want to read into this what they already have as their bias. So some have actually suggested that Paul the Apostle himself is misogynistic.

And they would use this passage as an example of it. Spouses have used this passage and abused this passage to make demands for physical gratification from their spouses. And this couldn't be further from the purpose of this passage.

Further, some have twisted and warped this passage to such an extent that it's made out to say nothing at all that is binding on married couples. And I would just suggest to you when the passage is about sex and marriage, and then that passage is twisted and twisted and twisted to the point where it's like, but this context this and this nuance that and let's reinterpret this word here to mean something that it doesn't mean in Greek and let's get all of this stuff together until the author of some books about this very passage will tell us that it really doesn't have anything specific to say to your marriage.

This passage doesn't apply to your marriage. How many of you know we have a problem if a passage about sex in marriage is told to you to not apply to your marriage?

Is that a problem?

I would say we have a problem if this passage doesn't apply to your marriage. Now, is there bias in our world? Both ways. Absolutely. Is this passage clear in what it's saying? I think so. I think I'm going to read it here in a moment, and I think everybody in the room is going to understand what it means,.

What it's saying.

But let me ask you another question. Is it uncomfortable in both topic and implication? Probably. Probably for most of us. Let me ask a final question. Is it valuable, Church? Is what God has to say to us here in 1 Corinthians chapter 7 valuable and meaningful to us?

To the ones in the room who have been married the longest? To the ones who have been married the shortest? To the singles? To those who are engaged in the room? Is this a valuable text for us to take on?

It is.

It is, because this is the holy word of the Almighty God to us, speaking into the most intimate moments of human existence with capital T, Truth. I love that our God deals with our fallen human condition in real time.

He deals with us and meets us where we're at as a culture that is broken and falling, and with hearts that are broken and faltering. He knows the temptations that we face, and He takes those temptations into account with His instructions to us here in the text.

And further, as I read this, we have to remember that this is an important teaching on God honoring sexuality within marriage. It's an important teaching, but it is not by any means an exhaustive teaching on marriage.

Amen? Marriage is more than sex, but Paul has a lot to say about marriage that is not sex, but this text, buckle up, because this is the most direct teaching about sexual intimacy within marriage. And before we read it, let me make a fundamental observation that I encourage you to look for in the text as we're reading it.

Note that there's a substantial expectation that sex and marriage go together. Now, it doesn't seem like this needs to be said, but I'm increasingly finding that we live in a Christian subculture, Christian subculture, Christian subculture of evangelicalism that does not any longer take for granted that sex and marriage go together.

I've heard this from many couples. Sex and marriage don't go together. Certainly, our culture at large thinks of that differently. It doesn't put them together in any way, shape, or form. I mean, when you go to a marriage of two people who are not Christians, a lot of times they got nowhere to get to that night.

They've already been there. They've been there many times. They closed the party down now. When I was getting married, man, we had someplace to go. Golly, that wasn't in my notes.

I don't know.

How is this one going to go? The movies, our culture at large, now I'm talking about no longer talking about the Christian subculture, but our culture at large does not put them together. The movies imply that the best sex is illicit, immoral sex.

Adultery and affairs and premarital sex are made to be glorious and an expectation in our culture. Nobody's waiting anymore. Come on. Get with the program. It's 2023. But I'm finding an increase in Christian counseling that is seeking to explain away this passage, and I think somewhat intentionally.

And the council says, you don't owe anything to each other in marriage. You don't belong to each other. That's antiquated. That's outdated. This is some Christian counselors that are saying this. Some counselors are literally counseling deprivation, where this passage quite literally says, emphatically, very directly, very in our face, do not deprive each other.

Now, I feel more embarrassed that our culture has fallen so low that it needs to be said. I ought to be embarrassed more by the content of the message, but instead I'm more embarrassed by the need for the message.

So it's strange to me that I need to say this before we read this morning. Sexual intimacy is given and is a given in marriage. This passage highlights the very clear expectation. And I don't know, some of you are probably wondering, what in the world did I get myself into this morning?

Some of you, this is your first time here. We don't talk about this every time. We're just going through 1 Corinthians. But I'll tell you what you got yourself into. You got yourself into 1 Corinthians 7, verses 1 -5.

That's where we're at in the text. God's holy and precious word to us. So open your devices, open your scripture journals, your Bibles to 1 Corinthians 7, verses 1 -5. We're going to read it together.

We're going to spend some time singing some songs, and then we're going to take it apart and really see what God desires to communicate to our hearts through this text. 1 Corinthians 7, verses 1 -5. Now concerning the matters about which you wrote, it is good for a man to not have sexual relations with a woman.

But because of the temptations to sexual immorality, each man should have his own wife and each woman her own husband. The husband should give to his wife her conjugal rights and likewise the wife to her husband.

For the wife does not have authority over her own body, but the husband does. Likewise, the husband does not have authority over his own body, but the wife does. Do not deprive one another, except perhaps by agreement for a limited time, that you may devote yourselves to prayer, but then come together again so that Satan may not tempt you because of your lack of self-control.

Let's pray.

Father, I know that you have a plan for healthy marriages. You have a plan and a design and a desire for covenant faithfulness. You have a plan for those who said, I do to continue in the service and love of the other.

You've given us this beautiful picture here in the text of a fortress of covenant intimacy that protects against the world and the evil one. Just as much as you have a plan for marriages, Satan does too.

He desires battle. He desires war. He desires immorality. He desires for corruption and he loves to take your beautiful gifts and break them. He would love to rub our face in it. He would love to corrupt us to the very pit of hell,.

But grace, hope, faithfulness in you.

You sent forth your son, the only truly faithful one, to die for our corruption, to die for our sin, to die for the dirt, for our immoralities. And so Father, I pray that even now as we have an opportunity to sing the praises of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, that our hearts would rejoice and be glad this morning.

The topic is heavy. The topic is tough. The topic can be even embarrassing to some of us, but the content of your love for us is amazing. May we not lose sight of that as we sing these songs together this morning.

In Jesus' name, amen.

Marriage, Mutuality, and the Battle of the Sexes

There are three observations that I think are kind of valuable for us to take on before we even dive directly into the text. And they just kind of set some ground rules, some understanding for us before I even get into my outline.

The first thing that I think all of us need to understand is this text does not exist to establish the patriarchy. By no means is that what this text is about. Our passage speaks of a radical mutuality.

As a matter of fact, it speaks a radical mutuality into a Roman patriarchal society so that when this hit their ears, it hit them as a busting up of some of the patriarchal notions of a man in charge and domineering his family.

That was the Roman way. That was the way of it. There was not much give or take. There was only taking often on the part of Roman men. He owns her body. She, in our text rather, he owns her body and she owns his.

That's a, speaking into that culture, a pretty distinct thing. They both have marital rights to intimacy according to the text. It's admitted that deprivation could go either way, but the married couple is called into agreement and communication together and settling on these things together.

So it does not establish the patriarchy. Second, the culture Paul is speaking into was systematically immoral. I would say to you that our culture equally is systematically immoral, but it was actually in a different notion that that took different form in that day and age.

There was no birth control then. Wives were frequently pregnant and many, many, many, many writings from poets to historians to just people who were like making legal documents and philosophers during this day and age wrote to explain that sex within marriage, sex with one's wife was for reproducing, but fortunately they thought in their culture there were prostitutes and mistresses there that were for fun.

That was entertaining,.

But within marriage it was all about having babies. So that reminds us of the fundamental intention of Paul in this passage. He is seeking to bring all sexual intimacy back into the protective covenant relationship of biblical marriage.

And that reminds me of one of the minor features that's highlighted all throughout the scriptures and that's namely that when the Bible is talking about or teaching about marriage and talking about what it is designed to be, it is between a man and a woman.

Look at verse two where this is clearly the expectation and that's not just found here, but it's found consistently wherever marriage is taught in scripture that it is meant to be between one man and one woman.

Now we certainly have accounts of it being between one man and multiple women, polygamy in scripture and just go ahead and study those historical accounts. That's not the teaching of what marriage is supposed to be and tell me how that goes.

It never goes well. The third observation is about something dramatically missing from the discussion on sexuality here in this text. Speaking to the Roman world, there is not a single mention of procreation, of having children in a paragraph about pregnancy, in a paragraph about Christian sexual intimacy here.

Why?

Well, I think Paul is actually intentional about this because Paul is running far away from that very pagan notion of sex in this Roman context. Wives, he, remember that the basic thought on the street was wives are for procreation.

So he's not going to talk about that here. All other sexual partners they thought were for pleasure, but here he's bringing all of it back home. Procreation and pleasure belong in a covenant of marriage, end of story.

That is what scripture teaches. And so our outline this morning is this, sexual immorality is real. That's our first point. The second is, and these are kind of thematic, but sexual immorality is real.

Second, the fortress of covenant intimacy or building a covenant, a fortress of covenant intimacy versus two through five, and then mutual cooperation also versus two through five. Like I mentioned, these points are going to be thematic and not sequential from the text.

We're going to kind of go all over in the text to see the different nuggets that he is drawing from because Paul is building a fortress and each verse contains different stones for the building up of that fortress of intimacy within the covenant of marriage.

So this passage requires us to reckon with a fundamental reality that is absolutely true and might even just seem like a duh thing. But the thing is we're kind of tempted to deny the personal aspect of this and that's just simply that sexual immorality is real.

Now I don't mean that to be like duh, of course there's fornication. People have sex before they're married. Of course there's adultery. People get with other people that are not their spouse. We know there's homosexuality.

We know that there's all kinds of things that are not sex between a husband and a wife within the covenant protective confines of a covenant marriage. But what I mean is that sexual immorality is real real, like as in it connects with human lives, like as in personally real to each and every one of us.

I like the way that Albert Muller said it when he was on stage at a conference where he was speaking, he was in a panel discussion a few years ago.

I was live, I was there.

There were about 8 ,000 to 10 ,000 pastors gathered in Louisville at the arena there where the Cardinals play and he said every single one of us is sexually broken. It's just a matter of in what way. Every single one of us is sexually broken.

It's just a matter of in what way that sets us all on common ground when we're together with other people. Paul isn't saying in verse 5, some of you lack self-control, the rest of you can check out. He's not just talking to some of us.

He is talking to all of us and he feels comfortable and confident in the spirit identifying this as a human problem, a human problem. You see what he's getting at here is by the end of verse 5, he's going to suggest Satan can tempt any one of us at any time if we let our guard down because he says in the text definitively, we lack self-control.

We do not have sufficient self-control to stand on our own against this temptation.

He is responding, by the way,.

There's a big shift in the entire letter of 1 Corinthians.

That it's easy to miss,.

Particularly because some of the ways that the ESV like translates it, puts some things in quotes and you might think that the opening phrase there now concerning the matters about which you wrote and then as if it's quoting what they wrote, but that's not the case.

This is a sentence that gives a major shift in the letter. He is now going to be going on to things that they've written to him about. They've asked him questions. We don't know what, we don't have that letter.

We don't know what the questions were that they asked,.

But it matters very little.

Because what we do have is the proactive teaching of Paul about marriage here in response to whatever question they were asking. And it's obvious that sex within marriage was one of those high topics.

Now, he's actually kind of talked about sexual immorality with them multiple times. And so it's quite likely that they had a question mark over sex in general. Like, is any of it okay? Is any of it appropriate?

What about in marriage might well have been the nature of their question? And in response to whatever they have written with an often misunderstood phrase here in the text, he says this, it is good for a man to not have sexual relations with a woman.

Is that just a blanket generic statement? Is that a way of just saying like all sex is bad? Like, did Paul think it was like embarrassing and dirty even within marriage? Like, how can he say that? It is good for a man to not have sexual relations.

With a woman.

And this has led some people to say Paul was anti-marriage. Paul was anti-sex. But then what he's going to say here throughout the rest of this letter doesn't jive with that kind of understanding. So they've even tried to explain that this must be somebody else's sentence here.

No, I think Paul said it. And here's where I go on this. The difficulty interpreting this phrase, it is good for a man to not have sexual relations with a woman is because Paul uses a very, very, very, very uncommon word for sexual relations.

This is used nowhere else in the Bible. This only occurs here in this one verse, this phrase, this word, sexual relations. It actually kind of in Greek has a little bit more of a crass notion of just touching.

Like, you know, and in one way, inappropriate touching. It's only used here, but two scholars, and I'll say why I think it's inappropriate touching, Roy Chiampa and a guy named Brian Rosner. By the way, I'm only going this deep because I'm disagreeing with the ESV study notes.

So if you have an ESV study Bible, I'm going to disagree with it.

I don't very often,.

But I don't believe that they've quite got here. This is all recent study. Roy Chiampa and Brian Rosner's deep dive into this Greek word is recent. It takes into account most recent manuscripts that we've uncovered and documents that we've uncovered from the Roman world and from the Greek speaking world.

And he took a deep dive into everywhere.

That he could find in ancient documents that this word occurs. And he came to a pretty significant conclusion at the end of that study that we have found and that they have discovered a really, really bad word in Greek.

This is a bad word in Greek. As a matter of fact, by the end of their study, they concluded that they found the near equivalent to one of our most bad words in the English language. And so I'll soften it for you rather than say it up front, which I never really would up here, but you don't need to worry about that.

But to soften it, it says, it is not good for a man to fool around with a woman. In their very convincing study, they said that this sentence in verse one is explicitly stating this.

This is the gist of it.

It is good for a man to not use or abuse a woman.

For sexual gratification.

That's what Paul says. Well, what was going on in their culture at the time? Just about every man was going to the prostitutes. Just about every man had a mistress. Every man going and doing what he thought was right in his own eyes, pleasing himself, and using women in terrible ways to do that.

So that word in Greek is a very casual, very self-centered view, very self-centered way of identifying sexual activity. It was a dirty word in Greek. Paul says, guys, don't view sex in that way. Don't act on your impulses in that way.

Maybe here is our first application, guys, and no way, shape, or form are we to use women for your own sexual gratification, be that images or real ladies. Obviously, all sexual immorality is wrong in God's eyes, but in their broader culture, guys were routinely going out to the prostitutes for entertainment, and Paul says, absolutely not.

That is not the way the church rolls. He's giving a different ethic. He's giving a different place for sexual expression. This implies that there is a temptation, by the way, on the part of men, particularly, to use and abuse women.

And yet in the first part of verse 2, we also see an acknowledgement of the temptation to sexual immorality in general among all people, even women. Temptation to sexual immorality assumes, by the way, a hunger for sexual expression, an appetite.

And this entire concept in verse 2 assumes that sexual expression is only glorifying to God within a husband and wife relationship, within the confines of a covenant marriage. Marriage between a husband and wife is meant to mitigate sexual immorality.

It's not a guarantee, but it's a gift to mitigate sexual immorality. This is within God's good design and plan for marriage. It is not a warping. It's not as though we're twisting something beautiful to see it as a help against temptation.

No, that's baked into the plan that comes to us in marriage, that fulfilling sexual intimacy in marriage protects a husband and a wife. It's meant to do that. Now, the temptation is real. That's the point.

And by the end of verse 5, we will see that Satan himself has a plan and a desire for intimacy in a marriage. He wants to get in your bedroom. Satan desires to be there. He wants the well of intimacy within marriage to dry up while he wants to fan the flames of the singles, right?

But in marriage, he wants none of that. He wants none of that protective intimacy in your marriage. He loathes it. He despises it. When husband and wife are serving one another, are helping each other, are loving one another, are giving to one another, he can't stand that.

Well, that's the only place that God delights in sexual intimacy. No, Satan has a plan. He wants it to dry up so that married couples seek out other places to quench their appetites and thirst. Sexual immorality will all stem from some wayward worship.

All sexual immorality will stem from a wayward worship within us. Most often, it just amounts to worship of the self. My body, my way, my pleasure, my gratification, what I like, what I want, what I deserve.

I, I, I, me, me, me. Is that not the way that sexual immorality grasps a life? Focus on self. And yet, verses 2 through 5 will then serve as a corrective to this self-centered view of sex. I want us all to see this passage for the beauty that it contains.

Like I said, there's a warping of this text that gets misunderstood and misapplied and abused like a, like a bludgeon. But the Holy Spirit through the Apostle Paul is building up what I would call, I, I kind of came up with this phrase, but I'm, I'm, I, I, I'm, I think it's a good phrase, a fortress of covenant intimacy.

A, a, a, a protective place for sexual expression. A protective place against the world. That's what a marriage is meant to be. And we see that through verses 2 through 5. What we see here in this fortress of covenant intimacy, a committed sexual relationship with one other, is that it's patently mutual, it forces cooperation, and it forces communication.

This passage is, like I said, often been used as a bludgeon to demand sex from a spouse. And to clarify here for just a moment, our minds may be tempted to run only one way on that. When I say that, when I say somebody is demanding sex from their spouse, who do you picture?

Oh, that's a dude.

That's always a dude, isn't it? We may think that only men would use this passage to say, wife, you owe me sex. But I'm telling you in all honesty, I've counseled couples, a few couples, where the wife was the one wielding this passage like a battle axe against her husband.

Yeah, you're just like, what?

No, real. The fortress of covenant intimacy is built by a commitment to love each other. And that was declared at the vows of your marriage. When did you say you were going to build this? When did you say that your marriage was going to be a fortress of intimacy?

How did you get into that relationship? That this became a standard for you? Where did you get to the place that Romans, I mean Romans, yeah, 1 Corinthians, whatever book we're in. When 1 Corinthians 7 verses 1 through 5 applies to you now, how did you get there?

And I would say it was when you declared at your vows in marriage to have and to hold, to love and to cherish till death do you part. If at any point in your life you become blinded or lose your way in the way that you made a commitment to be a blessing and a giver to your spouse, then go ask someone who attended your wedding.

That's the best way to confirm your vows. How many of you had witnesses at your wedding? Go ahead and raise your hand if you had somebody stand with you. Did you have them stand with you because they were the prettiest friends?

Or the ugliest dude?

I don't know.

Like, how did you decide?

What were they there for?

What were they standing there for?

They are there as witnesses.

They are there as witnesses.

Go ask them.

Did I get married?

I'm struggling to remember if I owe my spouse anything. I'm struggling to remember because how many of you would just be careful because your spouse is probably sitting next to you, but how many of you say it's been a little bit hard at times?

It's been a little difficult at times. I have three people brave, and my wife will.

There we go.

Okay, it has.

You have to go back to your vows.

Why?

Why did you even take vows? Why were there witnesses there? Why did you have to say an oath to God? I pledge until I die that this is going to happen. The reason we need vows is because we knew that it was going to be hard and difficult, and there would be times where we're going to be tempted to say, no more, I'm done with you.

But before God, we said, we will.

We will.

But you committed to somebody who wasn't perfect.

Did you know that?

I mean, I didn't, but you did. Right, Linda? You see, the thing is, she knows, too.

So, I mean, I'm just kidding.

I made her blush. That's not going to be the last time. No, we know we didn't marry somebody perfect. And so, our spouse will fail us, and we will fail them. And so, the very purpose of those vows is to enter a covenant that you knew was going to be hard to keep.

And the fortress is made up of three things in verses two through four. Establish it, your vows. Establish it, that you committed to build this. Now, here's how you build it. Here's what you're trying to build.

The first thing, the first stone in the fortress is having each other. Strange phrase in verse two. This is not about getting married. There's a Greek phrase for getting married. It's take a spouse. Having your spouse is a little different.

This is a euphemism for sexual activity used throughout the Greek language. And Paul is saying you should have physical intimacy with your spouse. Each man have his own wife. Each wife have her own husband.

That's not meant to be crass, but it is meant to be direct. You should have a routine sex life within marriage. And it doesn't seem like I should need to say that. And some of you singles or engaged couples here, you're in the room, and you're like, what in the world is Don talking about right now?

Because this is not making a whole lot of sense. How in the world is he needing to tell married couples that they should be having sex with one another? So let's all just go ahead and be embarrassed for us as a Christian subculture that needs this instruction.

Married couples, here's a very direct instruction to you.

Get busy. Get busy.

Not here.

Not now.

No makey outy in the church, okay? But maybe later this afternoon. I don't know. Just whatever works for you.

But get busy.

That's actually part of this. Some of you with the instructions of verse 2 will immediately, and with good reason, jump to medical, emotional, or even age-related issues. And I hear you. I think God hears you.

He understands. And I want to be clear that what he's saying here is without doubt that sexual intimacy is a reasonable given in marriage. It's expectation within marriage. There may be seasons of abstaining, but Paul will place some very radical stipulations on abstaining here in a moment.

And I think those go all the way to, if you're abstaining for medical reasons, if you're abstaining for emotional reasons, if you're abstaining for any reasons, these still apply. The stipulations that he's going to put on this in a moment still applies, including that that needs to be a radical season of prayer for you if you choose to.

But when it comes to many of our most common excuses for moving out of the bedroom, I see this as a real trend in the culture where husbands and wives somewhere around the age of 45 to 50 decide, you know, well, one of the kids left and so I've got a spare bedroom and he snores anyways.

I just move out.

Stay in the same house.

Move out.

When it comes to some of our most common excuses, there are often workarounds that go beyond the scope of anything that I want to stand up here and say.

So you figure that out.

You go see a doctor. You go get stuff worked through. But the second stone in the fortress of covenant intimacy, the first is having each other.

That's very physical.

The second is responsibility or duty. Oh my goodness.

What a terrible word, right?

Duty, responsibility. Nothing more romantic than obligation. I don't think that's it, but we'll talk more about this. This is a beautiful thing when we really get down to what it means. But first, we got to get over the hurdle of the English Standard Version throwing this word at us, conjugal.

What?

How many of you would just say that sounds dirty? Like it just sounds dirty, right? Conjugal. What in the world is that? In verse 3, when it says conjugal, that's an English word that is a lot more tame than it sounds to our ears because it only gets used in like really bizarre context.