
14 Myths about Sex, the church, and the world
- Sex is gross and should not be discussed at church
- The church should talk about sex graphically because families won’t talk about it
- Sex is okay as long as you’re in a committed relationship.
- Sex is accurately portrayed in movies.
- Children don’t need married parents. They just need parents who love each other. Sex, marriage, and babies don’t have to go together.
- Pornography doesn’t hurt anyone.
- Infertility is some kind of curse or punishment from God.
- Sexting is a good idea.
- What you do with your body sexually doesn’t matter.
- Abortion is an unforgivable sin.
- Christian marriages are romantically dull
- As long as you don’t have sex before marriage, God doesn’t care what you do
- Waiting until you’re married to have sex is unrealistic. Only have sex with one person is unrealistic.
- Song of Solomon is an allegory about Christ and the church (because why would there be a book celebrating sex in the Bible?)
• The answer is because
8 The Wisdom books (Job, Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Song of Solomon) reveal and celebrate how people discover God’s blessing in everyday life.
// Proverbs is simple to understand because it is written to help people go from foolish to wise. God has woven suffering into every sin to warn us that sinning is not the way you find God’s blessing.
// The world is filled with suffering because of sin, so while Proverbs explains that those who walk in wisdom will find God’s blessing, the world isn’t mechanical and predictable. Sometimes wise people who are trying to honor God suffer – which is why we have the book of Job. Sometimes wicked people look like they aren’t suffering and are successful – which is one of the questions Solomon wrestles with in Ecclesiastes.
// God has designed for us to live in relationship, in community, with others. Yet, these human relationships are oftentimes the place where we experience the roller coaster of joy and suffering. Therefore, the final two Wisdom books speak to these relationships: the book of Psalms is about our relationship with God, which is the most important relationship that anyone can have (and the relationship that defines and grounds all human relationships) and Song of Solomon celebrates God’s gift of sexual union in the context of marriage.
About the Song of Solomon
• The themes of the Song of Solomon are
• A basic rule of trying to figure out what a passage means? A
• According to 1 Kings 4:32, Solomon “spoke 3,000 proverbs, and his songs were 1,005.” Yet, according to him, this was his
• The Song of Songs is a
The Intensity of
• Throughout the
• Men & women were created in a
• This manifests itself as a
• Song of Songs 1-3 >> There is this back & forth between the man, the woman, & the crowd.
The Reality of
Attraction
• The Song of Songs is FILLED with descriptive language — interesting descriptive language at that. FYI: This pickup lines are not culturally transferable.
• While this physical attraction is rooted in
• However, as the book of Ecclesiastes & Proverbs would remind us, physical attraction fades over time & beauty is not
Young People
- Focus on becoming the kind of person that God wants you to be. Take care of yourself, but don’t become vain. What do I put more weight on: the way a person looks or getting to know them personally? It is vanity and foolishness to care MORE about external beauty than internal character.
- Don’t be fascinated with the idea of attraction. God designed you for this. But beware — it’s easy to confuse attraction with “love.” Wisdom demands that this attraction be grounded in reality. Lean on the people around you (like the “others”) who are godly & who love you to affirm your fitness for relationships & the character of who you are attracted to.
Single People
- Longing is part of the journey. But don’t let your longings lead you down paths that put emphasis on the wrong things.
- Learn the basic principle: Just because you can doesn’t mean you should
- Can you use dating apps to find love? Sure. Doesn’t mean you should.
- Can you use your freedom and independence you have to focus on worldly things (the hook up and party culture, the “try before you buy” mentality of cohabitation, etc.). Doesn’t mean you should.
- Longing is part of the journey, but don’t let the world define your singleness. Get involved in the Kingdom of God, missions, ministry, and let God guide you to your future spouse. Don’t settle.
- But if God’s design for you is singleness, celebrate it. Don’t view it as a curse.
Married People
- The covenant of marriage is a license to enjoy one another.
- Physical attraction is enhanced by the unseen connections of emotion & spirituality.
- Love is an action, not an accident, so choose to serve & love.
- Men, no one should speak your wife’s love language better than you. If you don’t, someone else will try—or she’ll be tempted to believe no one ever will. Your wife doesn’t exist just to meet your needs. In fact, Ephesians 5 would tell you to use all your strength to meet hers—to lay down your life as Christ did for the Church. That means showing up, staying curious, and sacrificing comfort for connection. Glory in all of who she is—her mind, her emotions, her body, her story. You will never fully figure her out, but don’t let that frustrate you; let it fuel a lifelong pursuit. Keep studying her. Keep surprising her. Keep cherishing her. Her heart is a sacred place—treat it like holy ground. Never stop pursuing her.
- Ladies, most men are very simple. We will never have you figured out, but most of the time you can see what makes us tick easily. But if you can believe it, most husbands need more than just sex. We need to be respected (which means, men, we need to be respectable). Ladies, your husband longs respect and he longs to be truly seen, supported, and admired by the one who knows him best. You are uniquely positioned to build him up or tear him down. The world will constantly challenge his strength, leadership, and identity—he needs to know home is his place of refuge, not more resistance. Ephesians 5 calls you to honor him as unto the Lord—not because he’s perfect, but because you trust God’s design. Speak life into him. Celebrate his efforts, not just his outcomes. You may not always understand the weight he carries, but don’t stop asking, listening, and standing beside him. Your words are powerful. Use them to remind him who he is in Christ. Never stop respecting him. Never stop believing in him.