Sexual intimacy is made by God and is designed to be limited to marriage. It does not make a good marriage, but is the fruit of a good marriage. It is strongest where a husband and wife remain romantically attracted to each other and have an understanding of each other’s needs. This message will address four key areas:

First, what are the major male-female differences—physically; mentally and psychologically, and spiritually? How do these differences impact sexual intimacy?

Second, what are a wife’s primary needs from her husband that will promote healthy sexual intimacy? Here we will consider 

● spiritual leadership, 

● affectionate love, 

● conversational communication, 

● kind appreciation, 

● global trustworthiness, 

● committed fatherhood, and 

● financial support. 

Third, what are a husband’s primary needs from his wife that will promote healthy sexual intimacy? Here we will consider 

● spiritual companionship, 

● consistent kindness, 

● “global” attractiveness, 

● earned admiration, 

● domestic support, 

● committed motherhood, and 

● sexual fulfillment.

Fourth, how can sexual intimacy between a husband and wife be improved? How can a husband and a wife be good “gospel lovers” to God’s glory? Here several practical suggestions will be offered and the question of what is permitted will be addressed. Several problems will also be addressed, such as selfishness, female frigidity, male impotence, and false expectations.  

The conclusion will set forth several practical principles, such as (1) sexual intimacy is most thoroughly and passionately enjoyed when two marital partners focus primarily on satisfying each other; (2) sexual intimacy outside of marriage is offensive to God; and (3) sexual sin can be repented of and forgiven through Christ. 

MUSIC The National Center for Family Integrated Churches welcomes Joel Beekie with the message, Sexual Intimacy in Marriage. MUSIC Let me say what a joy it's been to be here. And I have to leave actually tomorrow morning early for Texas and give a paper for the 16th Century Studies Society there, so this will be my last talk here and I'm grateful for the opportunity. If you'll turn with me to Proverbs, Proverbs chapter 5, I'd like to read verses 1 and 2, and then 15 through 19. Proverbs 5, 1 through 2, and 15 through 19.

My son, attending to my wisdom and bowing on ear to my understanding, that thou mayst regard discretion and that thy lips may keep knowledge. Drink waters out of thine own cistern and running waters out of thine own well. Let thy fountains be dispersed abroad and rivers and waters in the streets, that them be only thine own, and not strangers with thee, that thy fountains be blessed, and rejoice with thy wife and thy youth, that her be as the loving hand and pleasant woe, that her breast satisfy thee at all times, and be thou ravished always with her love. Let's pray together. Almighty and gracious God, we ask our blessing upon this tender and yet beautiful topic.

Give us wisdom to balance it rightly with scripture, but also to be specific so that we might understand what sexual intimacy in marriage is all about, what it's meant to be, and how to cultivate more of it. Please use it Lord for the well-being of each one who is present. We ask all this in Jesus' name, Amen. Let me start by saying that the Gospel of Christ, the Gospel of Christ energizes us to enjoy sex as a sacred passion. For married people the Gospel motivates to make sacred love.

And that may surprise you because we have this mentality in our mind that somehow, If something is too good, it's got to be sinful. You say of a double chocolate cake, or at least some people do, it tastes so good it must be sinful. But that's a perverse statement when it comes to sex within the bonds of marriage. If we believe it's wrong to truly enjoy God's creation such as good food or marital sex, we're believing a lie of the devil, Paul tells us in 1 Timothy 4. He says, All things are to be received with thanksgiving as the good gifts of a loving Father in heaven.

However much those gifts of God may have been abused and perverted and corrupted in the world, for the Christian, they are cleansed and made holy by the truth of the Word and the power of believing prayer. That's why Paul says in 1 Timothy 6 verse 17 that the opposite of materialism is not asceticism, but putting our hope, quote, in the living God who giveth us richly all things to enjoy. Sexual love in marriage is like fire in a fireplace. If the fire breaks through the boundaries of the fireplace and ignites other parts of the house, it can destroy your property, kill your family, and end your life. Likewise, sex outside of its God-ordained boundaries destroys and kills.

So what the world considers sexual freedom is really death. Proverbs 6 32 says who so committed adultery with a woman lacketh understanding he that doeth it destroyeth his own soul. But we would not want to harbor such a fear of fire that we would never again enjoy the dancing flames in a fireplace. A blazing hearth is warm and beautiful and so sex within marriage is a warm and beautiful way to be close to the one you love. Now true Christianity does not frown upon or forbid sex.

Vibrant sexuality is actually an important part of our reformed heritage. It's true in the ancient church and in the medieval church, I mentioned a bit about that last night, the church generally frowned upon sex, glorifying even celibacy within marriage. Marriage was viewed merely as a concession to human weakness. And the church forbade, particularly the medieval church, sex on holy days and sacred seasons, which when based on the crowded medieval church calendar, actually made sex with one's spouse a sin for more than three-quarters of the year. Now ironically this led to glorifying sex and romance in the context of adultery.

It wasn't uncommon in medieval days that men would, before they come in and receive the sacraments being waved in the air for the absolution of their sins, they'd be making appointments with prostitutes out in the vestibule of the church. The Protestant Reformation of the 16th century is really what brought people back to the Bible in terms of a biblical view of sex as God's creation within marriage. As we heard last night, the Puritans accentuated this and really promoted sex within marriage as something positive and wonderful, something that should be delighted in. But how does the river of human sexuality, poisoned by our fall, polluted and disgusting, become a clear stream of refreshing water through the Gospel of Christ? The gospel is not just the gateway into the Christian life or a ticket to heaven.

It must be central to the entirety of the Christian life. And as we've been seeing, Ephesians 5 is a wonderful illustration of that. So, sex too somehow must fit in to this important paradigm that it's an important part of marriage and it is to be pure and clean and enjoyed and to be permeated with the gospel. So we are to receive sex in marriage as God's gift to us to be used for our good and for his glory. But the question is, how does that work itself out in practice?

How do you really live that out? And what I want to do in this hour is I want to give you nine truths, nine aspects or ways in which making love to our spouses can glorify God and bring the promise of great blessing for conscientious, God-fearing Christians. So you're ready to go. Here's number one. Sex is the act of cherishing each other as God's image bearers.

Number one, sex is the act of cherishing each other as God's image bearers. Sex starts in the kitchen and what I mean by that is that What happens in your bedroom is in many ways the final product of how you relate to each other throughout the day. Sex does not make a good marriage. Sex is the fruit of a good marriage. So husband, the way you treat your wife at the breakfast table may well affect your wife's emotional response to you at night in the bedroom, even if you can't remember what you said about the pancakes being burnt in the morning.

So if we were just highly evolved animals, we could treat sex as a mere physical act in isolation from the rest of life. But you see, scripture tells us God created man in his own image, Genesis 1.27, male and female created he them. Our gender and sexuality are dimensions of our entire person created in God's image. So sex is not just about genitals and hormones. Human sexuality is the coming together of two people, male and female, who were made for each other and both were made to serve God and to glorify him also in the sexual act.

So the best sex springs from a relationship in which we honor each other under God through Jesus Christ throughout marital life. Now that implies that sex should never degrade or demean a spouse. The Bible doesn't go into all kinds of detail about exactly what kinds of sexual activity are permissible within marriage, but it does make very clear that we should not engage in sex in any way that treats our partner like a slave, an animal, or an object. Sex should always communicate honor to a person in a way that is appropriate to God's image bearer. The Heilberg Catechism puts its finger on the seventh commandment very well on the essential values of the Christian life which are purity and holiness when it says that the seventh commandment teaches us to detest all uncleanness and to live chastely and temperately whether in holy wedlock or in single life.

So scripture implies therefore that sex thrives in an environment of personal communication. Men and women were made in the image of God as a result of the communication among the three persons of the Godhead. And that means that this God who agreed to the proposal, let us make man in our image, then promotes a good relationship between husband and wife in communicating with one another as God's image bearers verbally and emotionally, which then comes to expression sexually and intimately. As someone has said, if we don't have time to talk with each other, we will not have time for good sex with each other. Now the Bible often uses the idiom to know your spouse.

The Bible is not trying to avoid the word intercourse. That was actually a way of speaking in both the Greek and Hebrew languages. Sadly in English today we say no for everything. I know this is a pulpit. I know this is a chair.

I know you. I know my wife. I know God. It's very vague. What we mean by no, but to know one's wife was an intimate term.

But that flows out of the intimacy of the gospel. You see, we read in John 17 verse 3, this is life eternal to know God and Jesus Christ whom he has sent. That's an intimate knowing, a personal experiential knowing. And so in the sex act in marriage, we come to know our wives, our husbands better. Now, while this word for sex does not always imply a relationship, In this context it does imply mutual knowledge and mutual commitment.

So if you believe your spouse is God's image-bearer, you will want to know her, to cherish her, to care for her as that image-bearer, Much as you want to know God and express your love for God. So marital sex is a way of getting to know your spouse all the more intimately. Now Peter says we must treat our wives with honor and respect as fellow human beings and as believers, fellow believers, as children, fellow children of God. Now that means we are to understand male and female differences in love making. We are to take that into account and women are different from men.

That's true physically. Men generally have a higher metabolism, more muscle, stronger bones for example than women. Women have stronger immune systems than men. Bodies are generally more sensitive and responsive to touch, to taste, to smells, to sounds. But there's also social differences.

A study of 250 different cultures showed that males are almost always the rule makers, hunters, builders, weapon makers, forgers of metal, wood and stone. Women in all these cultures are almost always involved in raising children, caring for the home, preparing food and clothing. And they are more skilled at reading people's emotions and relationships. Now, These differences show up most profoundly in marriage itself. A husband-wife approach to a marriage may be very different from each other.

Different desires, different goals. And when people don't understand that, they can lose a lot in the functioning of the daily marriage, and also lose a lot, therefore, in lovemaking. The more we seek to satisfy our spouse's desires, learn their language of love and lovemaking, generally the more deeply our sexual intimacy will grow and honor God. Let me illustrate. A wife's primary desires from her husband usually include leadership, affection, conversation, appreciation, trustworthiness, financial support, and fatherly commitment to the children.

If men fail in most of these areas, it's in the nature of a woman not to be altogether responsive in the man's husband's sexual advances. She needs to see emotional involvement in her husband. She needs to feel help and support, be it in one way or another. I gave a talk once on something fairly related to this subject in a family living class in my church and a woman came up to me afterward and she said, you know, sometimes I tell my husband, honey, I love your hugs and I love your kisses, but what I need right now is help with the dishes. Now that seems trite, but actually in a female makeup, you see, if the wife feels support from the husband across the demands of her life and feels that he's fulfilling the roles designed for him by God, she will be much more responsive in love making.

C.J. Mahaney said, touch the heart and mind of your wife before you touch her body. That's the point. If you touch her heart often enough through kind words, through trustworthy deeds, through male leadership, you'll most likely be delighted to discover what happens to you when you touch your body. Men also need to understand that the very act of sexual experience is different in their wives than from themselves.

Both men and women want sex in marriage, but men tend to have a more physical drive towards sexual intimacy and women more of an emotional drive towards it. A man is visually aroused more by the sight of his wife than the other way around, whereas a woman is aroused by such things as tenderness, thoughtfulness, talking, touching, time spent together. Men often want to move quickly towards a sexual climax and women more slowly. Now these are generalizations of course. Husbands emotional needs can be very much as intense as his wife's and a wife's physical desires for sex can be every bit as great or even greater than her husband's but the point is we should all learn what makes our spouses tick, how they operate, and work together for their mutual satisfaction.

Now in terms of a husband, a husband has a strong desire for a wife who gives him companionship, sexual fulfillment, submissiveness, respect for his work, attractiveness in body and soul, admiration, domestic support, and motherly commitment to their children. So wives, you might be surprised how much more attractive you would appear to your man if you frequently praised him for his accomplishments in his work. You might say, what does that have to do with sex? Well, it has everything to do with sex because sex is not just a physical act but one dimension of a relationship between two people created in God's image. With that kind of respect for each other, you should be able to talk together and explain to each other, even in the act of lovemaking or shortly after it perhaps is better, what pleased you?

What pleases you the most? What doesn't please you? Do that very gently. But remember throughout, sex is a relationship between two people in God's image. It's not just something that happens between two people, period.

Number two, godly lovers delight in multiplication. Godly lovers delight in multiplication. Sexual intimacy ordinarily goes hand in hand in marriage with bearing children. Having created male and female in his own image, God says, be fruitful and multiply. So if we truly see each other in marriage as the image bearers of God, will want to see his image bearers multiplied on earth.

So if you try to enjoy sexual intimacy with your spouse while you're despising the thought of bearing children, You're actually tearing apart what God has joined together. And you'll end up perverting your own sexuality and sexual identity. Now whether or not God gives you children, of course, depends on his sovereign will, not on your decision you made with your wife to have just two. Perhaps he will use you to bless children that are not of your union that you administered to other people's children. God is sovereign, but the most sexual husband has the character, the emotional pathos of a father, and the most sexual wife has the heart, the pathos of a mother.

Now that leads me, of course, to the question of birth control, which I was first going to avoid. Birth control is an important issue in many, many marriages. And there's no way I can do this subject justice in this address, but let me just state four basic, quick guidelines. Number one, we today must push back against our culture's obsession with family planning. To agree upon marriage for our own selfish ends that my spouse and I are only going to have X number of children, whatever number that X is, to tell God how often to open our womb and for all the rest of my wife's childbearing years we'll simply use means of birth control is a far cry from fulfilling the biblical mandate to be fruitful and multiply.

In fact, such an attitude smacks of arrogance, lack of faith, and unwillingness to submit to the will of God. After all, he does open and shut the womb. We must never forget that we're not having children for our own sake, as we heard from the Puritans last night. We're having children for the sake also of the Church and of the nation and of the Covenant of God and the kingdom of Jesus Christ. God is greatly glorified through large, God-fearing covenant families who serve him and fear him.

Second, Using natural methods of birth control for some months directly after a wife has delivered a child, or when your wife is plagued with medical or psychological conditions that warrant it, is nowhere condemned in Scripture. Husbands must be thoughtful and tender and must show leadership in this regard. I know of a husband actually who lost his first wife to an early grave because he wouldn't consider using birth control but insisted on having sex with his wife even though the doctor had warned her that another pregnancy would be fatal for her and it happened. Now that's human irresponsibility and folly, not courageous faith. Husbands must also recognize how much their wife is able to cope with.

Many women can handle having eight or nine children. Some women just cannot cope with it at all and they won't be able to minister to the children because they'll be overwhelmed. Third, any means of birth control that would involve the possibility of destroying life must of course be rejected outright as sin and murder in God's sight. So make a clear distinction here between the methods that prevent conception and those that abort a conception that's already taken place. Number four, let me say openly that my wife and I have never personally felt free in our consciousness to use any kind of artificial birth control, but at the same time I have no authority to tell you that you may not do that.

Rather, Christian couples should prayerfully and carefully study the scriptures, consider the evidence, also the medical evidence of the safety of these things, and then determine the will of God for them in this situation. But when you determine the will of God, it's critical that you don't make decisions based just on selfish purposes like, well I don't think we can afford it or I just don't feel like having another child. True faith seeks to know and to do the will of God from God's perspective and not our own. Now, we also need to remember that sexual intimacy should continue after your bodies can no longer produce children. Sex continues to function as God's gift for our companionship and pleasure into our older years.

We have a good loving relationship that should continue right into the 70s and 80s. When I was 20 years old I didn't believe that but That's the truth. The point I'm making you see is that to engage in willful rebellion against God's call to be fruitful and multiply is wrong and harmful to your own sexuality. Number three, sex and marriage is obedience to God's commandments. God commands you to make love regularly with your spouse unless it's physically impossible.

That could be true for a short period of time due to medical problems or in rare cases, permanently. But when health permits, regular physical sexual intimacy is the will of God for married couples. That's why you read in 1 Corinthians 7 that the husband rendered to the wife due benevolence. That is, it's a due death that the husband gives his body to his wife and likewise also the wife to the husband. The wife has not power of her own body but the husband.

Likewise also the husband has that power of his own body but the wife. Defrauding not one the other except to be with consent for a time that you may give yourselves to fasting and prayer and come together again as Satan tempts you not for your incontinency." In other words, my wife's body really belongs to me in a very real way in marriage. I must treat it with tenderness and sacredness. And my body belongs to her and she must treat me the same way. Now the Greek words here, due benevolence, actually communicate the idea of obligation, a debt to be paid.

It's a mutual debt. I owe to my wife sexual intercourse. She owes it to me. Now that must be done of course not just with my body but also from my soul. And that is, I therefore have power over my wife's body and she over mine from the internal depths of our being.

Sex is not a privilege we may choose to grant for good behavior. Sex is not a privilege with which one spouse may manipulate another. If we use sex as an act of power, we defraud, says Paul. That is, we rob one another. Now Paul does mention an exception.

Brief periods of time devoted to intense spiritual exercises such as fasting and prayer. But even that exception is offered as permission and not as a command. Verse 6. Now Sometimes the Christian view of sex as caricatured is negative. Sometimes you've heard the familiar refrain, honey, not now.

I've got a headache. Or I'm very tired. But that's the way some Christians just view sex and they often seek to postpone it, you see. But wisdom teaches us that to avoid fornication and adultery, a man and a woman who love each other and the Lord, seem fit for each other's marital partners, should marry, should make love, the best way to prevent adultery is to have a good marriage or to have regular sexual relations with your spouse. Matthew Henry said, mutual delight is the bond of mutual fidelity.

Now that doesn't mean that I have the right to demand sex from my wife, or vice versa, every single night, regardless of how tired my spouse might be. Nor must a spouse demand a certain kind of sexual activity if the other partner is uncomfortable with that activity. Though the Bible says that the marital bed is undefiled, We must not fall prey to today's Christian hedonists who hold that a woman must do whatever her husband wants her to do in bed. Moreover, even where there is mutual consent, We should not engage in every form of bizarre sexual practice promoted today in our sex intoxicated culture. We should reject our cultures obsessions with increasingly weird forms of sex that seem to make sex an end in itself.

Yet these objections notwithstanding, Regular lovemaking is God's command to marry couples. You might object, but making love so frequently will turn sex into a mere duty and not an act of love. It will drain sexual intimacy of all romance and make it mechanical. But the Bible says that duty does not exclude delight any more than obedience to the law excludes love. Love is the essence of the law.

A true obedience to God means serving him with gladness. And therefore we obey this command of God with delight of regular love making. Proverbs 5 says it remarkably, let thy fountain be blessed, rejoice with the wife of thy youth, let her be as the loving hind and pleasant roe, let her breasts satisfy thee at all times and be thou ravished always with her love. You see, God calls us to enjoy each other's bodies passionately. That's not mechanical obedience, that's wholehearted love.

The Puritan William Goode said, as the man must be satisfied at all times in his wife and even ravished with her love, so must the woman be satisfied at all times in her husband and be ravished with his love. So we don't make love just for the propagation of the human race as many of the old fathers said. But we do it for also sheer enjoyment by the partners as the gift of God. This is one of the great blessings God bestows upon married couples. The text Proverbs 5 actually refers to enjoying the breasts of your wife, not just for culminating in sexual intercourse, but enjoying the very foreplay that often comes into the sexual act and enjoying her breasts just for the beauty of her breasts, the kissing, the caressing, and the pleasure from the very act of affection being shared.

So we have a sacred duty to give our sexual affection in our bodies to our spouses. Number four, Sexual freedom comes through forgiveness of sins. Colossians 2, 13 and 14 says, You being dead in your sins and the uncircumcision of your flesh, as he quickened together with him, having forgiven you all trespasses, blotting out the handwriting of ordinances that was against us which was contrary to us and took it out of the way, nailing it to his cross. The all trespasses that are nailed to the cross includes those of past sexual sins. If you trust in Jesus Christ alone for your total salvation, you are totally forgiven also of your past sexual sins.

There are many sexual sins. Perhaps you even need forgiveness for sexual sins committed against your spouse. You may be guilty of withholding sex when you should have given it freely. You may be guilty of using sex as an instrument to control or punish your spouse. You may have given your body but refuse to give your heart, turning sex into a hollow and empty shell, and your spouse has felt that.

Or perhaps you gave your sexuality to someone other than your spouse or to the false intimacy of pornography and sexual fantasizing. But all of this guilt is nailed to the cross the moment the Holy Spirit unites you to Jesus Christ with the bond of true faith. Confess your sins therefore, repent of them, and rest in the promise of forgiveness. Now Perhaps you feel guilty because you engaged in sexual sin before marriage. Maybe with the person you're married to, maybe another person.

That guilt has weighed you down. Perhaps it's been a secret burden to you for years. It's quite possible. You feel unclean. Sex seems dirty somehow because it was dirty before.

Well sometimes the guilt of previous sexual sins is the cause of present sexual problems. A woman can be cold to sex with a man she loves because she's paralyzed with guilt and shame over her past relationships or a man might struggle with impotency for the same reason. Their sexual intimacy is poisoned in marriage by the memory of past sins. But the Bible says, if we confess our sins, he's faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. The blood of Christ can wipe away all the past dirt in your life.

And yet you still might object and you might say, well I know God forgives me, but I just can't forgive myself. Well, praise God for a tender conscience, but there are times we need to over-speak our conscience, as the great Scottish Divine, Rabbi John Duncan, once said. And what did he mean by that? Well, he meant something like this, and I say it to you as gently as I can. Are you not being just a tad bit arrogant when you say I refuse to forgive myself?

You're acting like you're the judge of all the earth. Whose word, after all, determines whether a person is guilty or forgiven, your word or Christ's word? You see, your problem is not so much that you need to learn to forgive yourself. Your problem may well be a little bit of spiritual pride. And if so, you should humble yourself before God.

Submit to his word. Believe in his forgiveness. You see, if you cast guilt upon your conscience for acts that God declares are forgiven, you need to examine why you are not submitting to His word, why you insist on burdening your conscience when God has already forgiven you. Number five, faith in Christ empowers sexual love. The Christian life from beginning to end is driven by faith in Christ.

Paul says, Galatians 2, I live by the faith, the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me." Do you really believe that apart from Christ you can do nothing, but if you abide in Him you'll bear much fruit? Have you ever applied that to your sexual life with your wife or your husband. If a passionate sexual relationship with your spouse is God's will, then Jesus Christ can give you sufficient grace to increasingly do God's will toward your spouse. You see, sex should be one expression, an important expression, of your love for your husband or your wife. Love is the fruit of the Holy Spirit.

We receive the Spirit's work by the continual act of trusting in Christ as he's revealed in the gospel. So practically you're here in the kitchen now with your spouse and you know that later on you're heading for the bedroom. You know you're commanded by God to have sex with your marriage partner. You see how empty you are of true love. Maybe at that moment you don't feel like making love at all and you cry out to God, Father, strengthen me with the power that I need by thy spirit so that Christ will dwell in me.

Give me divine love that I may love my dear husband, my dear wife as I love myself." As you walk in obedience, you'll experience that power and that help. You'll actually have your desire come to you by the grace of Christ. Have you ever prayed for God to enable you to glorify him in the way you make love to your spouse? You can and you should. Some of us carry baggage into the bedroom.

We've already talked about the burden of guilt and how Christ can lift it. But you can also carry the burden of corruption. You can approach sex with a mind clouded by lurid memories and images. Perhaps some from your past, or perhaps some of you even here today are still looking at various aspects of pornography to one degree or another. I plead with you, if that's the case, to throw away the pictures in magazines or in digital files on the computer or on cable TV or whatever.

Get rid of the very technology that channels this garbage into your life if needs be. We need to be radical in fighting against sin as a man who cuts off his own right hand to avoid temptation, Jesus says. But even if you were to do all that, you can't erase the memory files, can you? You still feel polluted, you say. You're corrupted.

But again I say, look to Christ. You once fixed your eyes on all kinds of worthless things, but Christ has purged many of them from your memory bank. He can do this as well. Feed your mind with Christ and his beauty and you'll put off the lust of this earth in due time. So even when you are horrified by an evil image or an idea springing into your mind in the midst of lovemaking.

Let your heart cry out for mercy. Seek Christ on the marriage bed, that you may do the will of God on that bed. At bed. Number six, sex is more loving with self-denial. Selfishness kills lovemaking.

No matter how good looking a man will be, he'll provoke weariness and disgust from his wife if all he wants to do is take and never give. One key to good sex is going to bed as one called to serve. You don't exist for yourself, you exist to serve your spouse. So husbands, before reaching for your wife, remember you're called to give yourself up for her. As Christ said, he came not to be served but to be a servant and humbled himself.

Well that means of course as I said before touching her heart before you touch her body, But it also means that you keep touching her heart while you touch her body. In really good lovemaking, the husband, for example, will keep speaking words of love to his wife as he makes love. He'll keep praising her. He'll touch her body in ways that will touch her heart. He will learn what she likes.

He will give what she likes to her. That might involve a lot of kissing or it might involve a back rub before lovemaking or it might involve things more explicitly sexual but it will give your wife a much more profound sexual satisfaction if you build her up in those things she really thoroughly enjoys. And you might say, as a man, but it takes her so long. I was born ready. I'm a man.

Well, that may well be, but don't be selfish. You learn to grow in enjoying the building up process. A man can learn to enjoy giving, touching, talking, waiting until his wife ascends the mountain peak with him and is ready to leap off with you and come floating down as it were. At the same time, that's really when lovemaking is the very best. And then too, we men need to remember that there may come a time in our old years when the patience, the talk, and the tender touching, and the gradual buildup of our wife may be needed to prepare us for sex as well.

So by taking time now to satisfy her, we're really enlarging a retirement fund, as it were, that we can withdraw from later. Well, it's precisely here, you see, that we're called to serve the Lord by faith. Jesus says, discipleship in Luke 9, if any man will come after me, let him deny himself, take up his cross daily, and follow me. You see, making love is, of course, hardly bearing a cross, but making love that is truly an act of love does involve various degrees of self-denial here and there. Self-denial after all, as Calvin said, is a sign of a sincere Christian.

Christ promises us that we will find life by dying to ourselves. That doesn't mean you will necessarily get a better sexual experience the very night you first begin to deny yourself in lovemaking. Frankly there are some nights when denying yourself for your wife will mean no sex at all that night. Perhaps she's exhausted, perhaps she desperately needs to cry on your shoulder about some problem that night. And maybe you need to make amends for the way you mistreated her that day.

But a self-denying sex life will feed on a thriving spiritual life with God, and in the gradual long run, that will mean a developing spiritual sexual life, a deepening relationship with your wife. It's God's ordinary way to improve your sex life through the exercise of your patience and your understanding. As you become a patient husband, meeting your wife's needs as much as you can, you will experience and not only enjoy your own pleasure, but you'll increasingly enjoy her pleasure as well. But even regardless how your wife responds, You are to play the role of Christ. You are to love her as Christ loves the church.

And that means being thoughtful, it means being kind, it means being patient. Now wives, your Self-denial may be different from your husband's, but it's no less real. In some cases, you may have a stronger sex drive than your husband, but often it's not so. Sometimes you have to deny yourselves by making yourselves cheerfully available to your husband more often than you might choose. Or maybe you would just satisfy him some evening.

Or maybe you are so tired you feel you can't function, but as you think about him and you focus on him, the desire comes and you become involved. Or maybe you just have a lot of emotions swirling around in your heart. Perhaps your husband of your youth is no longer your knight in shining armor. Or at least his armor is getting rusty and dented. But one of the best ways you can strengthen your husband and affirm his masculinity is by making love to him.

So don't make love to your husband as if condescending to his weakness. Be thrilled that God has given you the power to please your man and serve him and revel in his love for you. Enjoy him and enjoy his enjoyment of you. And use your feminine gifts of creativity and your keen observation to make your husband feel like he's a blessed and a happy man. Number seven, our Father in Heaven can heal fear and shame.

The Bible, when Adam and Eve are brought together, speaks of them being naked, because that very word evokes feelings of embarrassment and shame. Adam and Eve, post-fall, reaching for the fig leaves, wanting to cover up their nakedness, we must understand that we make ourselves vulnerable in the bedroom to each other. There's something exhilarating about that on the one side, but there's also something vulnerable about it on the other side. And when there is good lovemaking, you see, both spouses feel a remarkable sense of total acceptance and trust in the love of our spouse, even if we've had shattering experiences of rejection in the past. But those shattering experiences of rejection is why sex can sometimes still prompt fear in people who are married.

But here too the Gospel empowers us. For the Gospel assures us of the love of God toward us and It tells us that we are to love one another out of that love, that love of total acceptance. Ephesians 4 says, be kind one to another, tender hearted, forgiving one another, even as God for Christ's sake has forgiven you. Be ye therefore followers of God as dear children and walk in love as Christ also loved us." You see, Paul keeps grounding our love for each other on God's love for us. The more you know his love for you, the more his love will cast out your fears and empower you to love one another.

Now I know I'm treading on very soft ground here, but tender ground, but because of this, there is even healing for victims of rape and incest. Some maybe in this room have been struggling with these things for years, maybe even decades, but it's possible I say, when you understand the love of your Father in heaven for you that it's so pure and so powerful that he can heal you in the most devastating of past memories. He may not wipe away all your tears until you see his glory face to face, but even now the Holy Spirit can lead you into ever deepening experience of the fullness of God's love. I once spoke to a woman in South Africa who was being serially raped, it's an awful story, and in the middle of it, when she was helpless and cried to God, the love of the father so overwhelmed her that she could forgive the men who were doing this to her in the very act while they were doing it, and could rejoice in the glory of God. Now that's an extreme case, and sometimes it does take years and so on.

Yes, I understand that, but all I'm saying to you is our Father in Heaven can heal fear and shame through his truth and through his son. Study the doctrines of God, of election, of spiritual adoption, and bathe your mind in the truth about your Father in Heaven. And you may be surprised at how completely He may heal you. 8. Sexual idolatry requires repentance.

Our worship of idols is often portrayed in scripture as being closely linked to sexual sins. Romans one, history of Israel, Numbers 25 and so on. Idolatry is not just a matter of bowing before a statute. It's rooted in being captivated by some created thing or person and putting that thing or person above the Creator. So we need to remind ourselves that though sex within marriage is pure and good, sex is not God.

As David Pauluson said, sex is a real but secondary good. So it is acceptable to pursue sex but only as a means of honoring God the creator of sex. If our marriage bed is to be a holy temple in which we offer ourselves as a living sacrifice to God, we must cleanse it of idols. Now there are lots of idols. I'm just gonna mention three of them and then one more point and I close.

Point one, there is the idol of perfect beauty. Long before the Barbie doll appeared in 1959, women were concerned about the beauty of face and form. To some extent, men were as well. But in the last years, last decades, this has been exacerbated greatly. Today body image is a big problem not only for women but also for many men as indicated by the growing prevalence of eating disorders cropping up among both sexes.

Today we no longer compare ourselves to the best looking people in our town or in our school but the supermodels who have the benefit of airbrushing, fake surgeries, professional makeup artists and personal trainers. And our cultural obsession for youthfulness, as well as comparing ourselves to impossible standards of beauty, can wreak havoc in the bedroom if it becomes an idol, either for our lust or for our envy. Actually, physical beauty is of relatively little value in marriage for God is given beautiful people no more ability to please their spouses in bed than ordinary looking people. Happiness and sexual relations has very little to do with the size and shape of your body for as Proverbs 11 warns us, as a jewel of gold in a swine's snout, so is a fair woman which is without discretion. So press on for godliness.

Of course, take care of your body as best you can without fretting over it. And then give yourself to your spouse as you are without shame. Don't make an idol of your body or of his body or her body. Number two, the idol of pleasure. Our pornographic society has severed sex from marital love and turned it into a superficial adventure in pleasure seeking.

Sexual pleasure, especially the orgasm, has become another idol in our time. The world suggests that sex is an athletic event in which two people with perfectly conditioned bodies take the gold medal for achieving the most orgasms in the greatest possible number positions with the greatest possible number of partners but in reality such people with so-called perfect bodies will be the worst lovers in all the world if all they care about is themselves and their own pleasure. By contrast, a husband and wife with very ordinary bodies can have very beautiful sex because of the love, the tenderness, the intimate knowledge they have for each other. So instead of coming together as soulless beasts or beasts without souls, they come together in romantic friendship and loving service to each other. That's why R.C.

Sproul said, you are called to satisfy your husband or your wife and no one else. You have only one standard to meet. Keep your eye on that and forget about all the superstars of sex. And Idol number three, and I tread tenderly here too, the idol of pregnancy or lack of pregnancy. A more subtle idol is allowing sexuality to be ruled by the desire for conception.

You remember Rachel saying to Jacob, give me children or I die. A natural desire for children is a blessed motivation in sexual intimacy. But when having children becomes everything to us, And I've counseled people who've been childless. And the young woman wanted a child so badly that every time she had sex with her husband, she was filled with fear that she wouldn't get pregnant this time, so she couldn't enjoy the sex. And childbearing actually became an idol.

But it's also possible to not enjoy sex out of this idolizing fear that I might become pregnant and that having a child might threaten all my plans for the future. Or perhaps pregnancy might raise the specter of miscarriage if you lost children before. Certainly some fear is understandable here, but if this fear prevents us from drawing near to our spouse in sexual delight. I say it can become an idol. What we need to remember in all these situations is that God rules over the womb.

We need to remember his sovereignty here. In reality, neither having children, losing children, or going childless can secure or destroy our happiness. Only God can give us happiness. Sex is not heaven. Men are not gods.

No woman is a goddess. The greatest pleasures in life are hollow without God. And so we need to repent of every form of sexual idolatry. Fear and anger and pride can all hinder our sexual ability. We may even be proud, so proud of our performance in bed that we fear failure and that can actually ruin our sexual relations.

Here again, you see, in all these cases, we've got to return to the gospel of our God's unmerited love and acceptance, which is mirrored for us in a loving spouse who accepts us no matter what. We should just humble ourselves and realize that marriage is about love, not about performing. A strong dosage of this kind of humility actually can make our sex more enjoyable. Instead of bearing the heavy weight of superhuman expectations, We can just be ourselves. In fact, we can even laugh at our weaknesses when we are embraced in the arms of someone who accepts us unconditionally.

And how beautiful that is. In a climate of gospel nurtured grace, We are free to enjoy God's gifts with our spouses without trying to make sex into something that was never designed to be. Finally, number nine. Gratitude and contentment sweeten sex. Paul tells us in 1 Timothy 4 that nothing is to be refused but is to be received with thanksgiving.

We are to receive God's gift of sexual intimacy with thanksgiving and contentment. Grumbling is a sin, a grave sin against God and against our spouse. I wish my wife looked like this. I wish my husband acted more like that. This entrenched selfishness that cries out, give, give, and the partner's never good enough, destroys sexual intimacy altogether.

If we actually realized what we deserve, we'd be much better lovers in bed, because we deserve to be married to a devilish spouse and to lie down in a bed of flames. We deserve hell and death because we're sinners. We ought to be sane at all times no matter who our spouse is. I'm receiving far better than I deserve. So instead of filling out mental complaint forms against our spouses, let us fill our minds with lists of appreciation and gratitude.

Let us really let her breast satisfy us at all times, let us really be ravished with her love. Let us turn our desires to respond to our spouse as a whole person. No matter how old we may be, Our bodies may decay, but the souls of Christians go from glory to glories, they become more like Christ. And so will our lovemaking. Our lovemaking ought to be far better in our 50s and 60s and 70s than it is in our 20s and 30s.

And that's quite possible when you look at it from a gospel perspective. So let me conclude by saying this. Sex and marriage is a great blessing from God, But do remember, sex is not your life. Christ is your life. Pursue a healthy sexual relationship with your spouse in obedience to Christ.

But if Providence denies you sexual fulfillment still pour out your heart before the Lord and rejoice in him. Remembering that like marriage itself sex is only a temporary gift pertaining only to this life But Christ and our marriage with him and his graces last forever Well sex is not only not your life sex is not even the life of your marriage a Tree may be alive and fruitful and yet have one withered branch. It's possible to have a pretty good marriage and not have such a good sexual relation. It's possible, not common. So if your attempts to have sex with your wife are replete with a variety of difficulties, don't despair, relax, love each other, give what you have, and then entrust the rest to God.

Let's pray together. Great God of heaven, we ask thy blessing upon this talk, this hour. We pray that thoughts here may convict us, others encourage us, others direct us, and that the end fruit may be that we might see our sexual relationship with our wives as something more in the context of the gospel than we've ever realized before. And that we might use that to actually grow in our sexuality as we grow in delight, in basking in the Gospel love of our God as it comes to us through Jesus Christ our Lord. All this we ask in Jesus' name.

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