I Just Want My Pants Back
1: God’s Original Design
2/12/12 (MS)
It’s the month of love… in fact, Valentine’s Day is right around the corner and so we are going to use the next few weeks to talk about love… and relationships, dating and sex. There is no doubt that there is quite a bit of confusion when it comes to these topics. And the problem is not a lack of information… it’s just trying to figure out what is the correct information. And so my big goal for you in this series is not just to present information, but I really hope that you will engage and even dialogue with me each week. Now, I have plenty to say and could spend and hour each week just talking and still not have enough time to share all God says. But I want this series to be a conversation where we can learn together.
You guys live in a world that says, “I just want my pants back” – in fact, that’s what I’m calling this series. A world that just says – hey, you’re a teenager, so you should just be able to do whatever you want to do, especially if it makes you feel good. Think I’m kidding about that? I took the title of this series from a new MTV show by the same name. Here’s what MTV says on their website about the show: “Jason and his friends grapple with dating, sex, and surviving as adults. They care more about hanging with each other, going to bars and hooking up than their entry level jobs, but when a one night stand steals Jason’s heart and his pants, he begins a quest to get his beloved jeans back – and hopefully the girl - while growing up along the way.”
There’s a clear message about what the world thinks about love, dating and sex. How about “16 and Pregnant” or “Teen Mom (1 or 2)” or even “Skins.” And while I obviously wouldn’t recommend any of these shows, I’m not out on a crusade to protest them. In fact, I’ve got a higher goal tonight: to help you understand God’s original design. We all have to start somewhere. We all have to have a foundation for what we believe. So it makes sense to me to go to the God who created and wired us. Where else could we start if we want to understand love, dating and sex? I’m going to try my best to simply present God’s truth to you found in His Word. At times I’ll share with you what the world or culture is saying, and at times I’ll share with you my own thoughts or ideas. But my ultimate goal is that you would find truth. Because Jesus even said, “Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” (John 8:32)
The big idea tonight is that God’s perspective when it comes to relationships is not just crucial to understand, but if it is His original design, then it is foundational for our lives. So I’ll come back to something that I consistently say around here, which is, you have to view yourself from the Bible’s perspective and not through culture’s perspective. You see, in your life you cannot allow culture to dictate or what’s happening in the circumstances of your life to dictate how you think and how you view the world. You have to be able view the world from the God’s perspective.
Here’s where I’m going to open it up to you. I want to ask you a question. Whether you’re a Christian or not. But as a Christian I believe that God is creator of everything. So we’re going to go from that perspective right now. Why do you think God created relationships? To get to God’s original design, we’ve got to go back to the beginning. All the way back to the creation of the world, which we read about in Genesis. Let’s look specifically at what happened after He finished His last creative expression, which was man. God had created the earth, the heavens, light and darkness, trees, flowers and the animals and He declared that everything was good. And then, Genesis 2:18
It was determined by God that man needed woman and that they were to exist within the context of a relationship, but more than just a relationship, as we’ll see God institutes the marriage relationship. The word “helper,” the idea is this guy is not capable of doing life by himself. Otherwise why would you need a helper, right? God creates this thing called marriage. Why? The whole reason was it wasn’t good for the guy to be by himself. So when you look at your life and realize the desire you have for a companion from the opposite sex, you are recognizing God’s relational design on your life. And here is where God institutes marriage and the blueprint for that relational design. Genesis 2:24-25
Now God says one flesh – we most often think of it as sex. And rightfully so. That’s exactly what the original word means. It is a husband and wife becoming one through sexual intercourse. But it does have a bigger concept attached to it because sex is more than just physical. It’s emotional, mental and even spiritual. So the idea behind God’s relational design is two become one and heading towards the same life goals and direction together. We’re one. There’s a whole point to marriage and together we’re trying to accomplish it. We’re living it out. We’re being authentic to who we are. We understand that God designed marriage to be this way. He designed my needs to function this way and my wife Brooke to function in this way together so that we can actually accomplish what He wants us to accomplish. We don’t have time, but you could jot down Ephesians 5 to read later about what God wants a marriage relationship to accomplish.
But here’s the idea, they were absolutely naked and they felt no shame. They were that intimate, that close. But when sin entered the picture in chapter 3, it forever broke God’s standard and His design would no longer work according to its original plan. All of a sudden shame came in. That is why you are wearing clothes right now. If you think about it, if we were in a sinless world and we’d be sitting here naked and not feeling any shame about it. The whole idea is because we have sin, because we’ve broken God’s standards it’s a break in intimacy. Our sin nature has fractured relationships on the earth. One, we don’t understand God’s design of it. Two, we don’t know how to live it the way God designed it.
But we have to come back to the fact that God design’s is for a purpose – to operate in one way. If I take a guitar and start beating the drum with it, it’s going to be a problem. God’s created love, relationships and sex to be in a certain way and to function in a certain way. But because of sin, we have all these skewed views of what sex and relationships are like. And that is why we need a series to talk about love, dating and sex.
See socially, relationally, you are bombarded by your friends on what they think sex and relationships are all about. And I know that culturally, you’re bombarded – it’s all around you in the culture. We live in a sexually saturated culture. And what you are usually hearing in all of these contexts are a distorted picture of what God has created. God created sex not to be distorted or perverted, but to be intimate, to be lifelong, to be the oneness factor. What we’ve done is we’ve walked away from God’s design of sex. Isaiah 53:6 My question to you is, when it comes to your sexuality and your sexual decisions, are you following your path or are you following God’s original design?
So I want you to realize the power of God’s love. God loves you so much. The Bible says in Ephesians 1:4 No matter what type of relationships you have with earthly people, I hope you go to bed tonight just thinking God is focusing His love on you. He doesn’t want to you have to reach for it. He doesn’t want you to have to settle for a masquerade of it. He doesn’t want you to settle for second best. You are the focus of His love.
3. My commitment is crucial.
We talked about God loving you and God creating you to be an original masterpiece and celebrating your design. Here’s what I want to ask. As I talk about this topic over the next few weeks, would you make a commitment to say, “I want to care enough about who I am that I want to think about what God’s says.” I want to care enough to commit to understanding God’s original design and plan. Because remember, God says, “I love you I created you. This is how it is meant to work according to my design.”
to think about:
