Tuesday, September 3, 2002
It's amazing how creative parents can become when it's time to explain the facts of life to a child, especially in the vocabulary they choose. A parent says to their child, "This is your chin. This is your neck. That's your stomach. That's your - oogieboogiewagaboogie!" I've really heard some pretty funny names for human anatomy - words invented by red-faced parents, but not recognized by any doctor on earth. Of course, they're better than a lot of the words our children come home from school asking about. But when it comes to sex, it's important to use the right words - especially one.
I'm Ron Hutchcraft, and I want to have A Word With You today about "The Right Word For Sex."
Our word for today from the Word of God comes from the Inventor of sex, who is, of course, God Himself. Our world seems to have forgotten who invented sex - and that the Inventor knows best. In the first experience of sexual love in human history, Genesis 4:1 (our word for today from the Word of God) says, "And Adam knew Eve his wife; and she conceived." Now this is sex as it was meant to be, still unspoiled, still the best. And the word God uses to describe it is "know."
When two people come together physically, it's designed to be the ultimate knowing. When two people have sex that isn't an expression of a deep, intimate friendship and commitment, they aren't going all the way - they're only going a small part of the way. That's not ultimate knowing!
The Hebrew word for "know" here is "yadah." It conveys the intimacy of two people who know each other as they really are - a deep, personal, intimate, experiential knowledge of another person. That's why God designed this kind of bonding to be for a lifetime commitment, confined within the protective fence He calls marriage.
Ironically, when you take sex out of marriage, it actually slows down the knowing process. The physical tends to take over the relationship. The relationship becomes more self-centered. A couple stops talking and focuses on the physical. And, as a result, too many people end up married to a stranger - someone whose body they know, but not their heart. Because so many relationships between men and women have been so physical, a lot of those relationships are strangely lonely. With sex dominating so many relationships, a lot of men and women have never developed a friendship - and maybe never will.
When the physical starts to take over, it often masks serious weaknesses and dangers in the relationship - hormones make you blind. Consequently, many people have married the wrong person because their passion blinded them. It actually kept them from really knowing their partner. And they made a lifelong mistake.
Remember how the Inventor designed sex: two people bonded in a lifetime knowing experience, expressing it through the unparalleled intimacy of sex. Anything less is a cheap, twisted, ultimately disillusioning counterfeit. If you've made that mistake, there's a Savior who died for every sin, including our sexual sin, who will forgive it if you'll repent of it - and He'll begin to restore your emotional and spiritual virginity. Don't settle for anything less than Designer love where the right word for sex is K-N-O-W. Know - as in knowing your best friend forever.