"On the day you were born your cord was not cut, nor were you washed with water to cleanse you, nor rubbed with salt, nor wrapped in swaddling cloths. 5No eye pitied you, to do any of these things to you out of compassion for you, but you were cast out on the open field, for you were abhorred, on the day that you were born. 6 And when I passed by you and saw you wallowing in your blood, I said to you in your blood, “Live!” I said to you in your blood, “Live!” 7 I made you flourish like a plant of the field. And you grew up and became tall and arrived at full adornment. Your breasts were formed, and your hair had grown; yet you were naked and bare. 8When I passed by you again and saw you, behold, you were at the age for love, and I spread the corner of my garment over you and covered your nakedness; I made my vow to you and entered into a covenant with you, declares the Lord God, and you became mine. 9 Then I bathed you with water and washed off your blood from you and anointed you with oil. 10 I clothed you also with embroidered cloth and shod you with fine leather..."
Sexuality is the most powerful language that the bible uses to describe our relationship with God. The above scripture is a picture of undeserved grace; of mercy lavished extravagantly upon those who have utterly failed at any attempt to earn such love. This is our story.
"I said to you, 'LIVE!' and made you flourish. I married you. You are mine." That is how God chose Israel. And, that is how the Christian life begins - with Him calling us into a sacred love relationship.
He goes on:
"Thus you were adorned with gold and silver, and your clothing was of fine linen and silk and embroidered cloth. You ate fine flour and honey and oil. You grew exceedingly beautiful and advanced to royalty. 14 And your renown went forth among the nations because of your beauty, for it was perfect through the splendor that I had bestowed on you, declares the Lord God. 15 But you trusted in your beauty and played the whore because of your renown and lavished your whorings on any passerby; your beauty became his. 16 You took some of your garments and made for yourself colorful shrines, and on them played the whore. The like has never been, nor ever shall be. . . . 32Adulterous wife, who receives strangers instead of her husband! 33 Men give gifts to all prostitutes, but you gave your gifts to all your lovers, bribing them to come to you from every side with your whorings..."
What happened in verse 15? Everything was perfect. [Notice, this distortion, although it is a spiritual metaphor, actually describes the act of pornography.]
It seems that God created sexual passion so that there would be a language to describe what it means to cling to Him, and what it means to look to other things for that love, security, and satisfaction that is really only found in Him.
In Ezekiel 16:35, God pronounces judgment. However, that is not the end of the story. After God hands Israel over to her brutal lovers, He not only takes her back, but established a new covenant with her in Ezekiel 16:59:
"I will establish my covenant with you, and you shall know that I am the Lord, 63 that you may remember and be confounded, and never open your mouth again because of your shame, when I atone for you for all that you have done, declares the Lord God."
Look at Eph 5:25-27. After Christ has reclaimed all of humanity back into such a wonderful love relationship, Paul admonishes all husbands to live with their wives in a way that models said perfected, redeeming love:
"Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, 26 that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, 27 so that he might present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish."
So, marriage, then, is a picture of the fulfillment of Ezekiel's prophecy:
“I will remember my covenant with you . . . and I will establish for you an everlasting covenant. . . . and you shall know that I am the Lord . . . when I atone . . . for all that you have done.”
In Revelation 19:9, the bible actually describes our celebration of union with God as the "marriage supper of the Lamb".
Sexual passion, therefore, is a tool in the hand of God for knowing Him more deeply. John Piper puts it this way:
"...all misuses of our sexuality (adultery, fornication, illicit fantasies, masturbation, pornography, homosexual behavior, rape, sexual child abuse, bestiality, exhibitionism, and so on) distort the true knowledge of God. God means for human sexual life to be a pointer and foretaste of our relationship with him."
Listen closely to how God describes such a beautiful union in Hosea 2:14-20:
"Behold, I will allure her, and bring her into the wilderness, and speak tenderly to her. 15 And there I will give her her vineyards and make the Valley of Achora door of hope. And there she shall answer as in the days of her youth, as at the time when she came out of the land of Egypt. 16 “And in that day, declares the Lord, you will call me ‘My Husband,’ and no longer will you call me ‘My Baal.’” 17 For I will remove the names of the Baals from her mouth, and they shall be remembered by name no more. . . . 19 And I will betroth you to me forever. I will betroth you to me in righteousness and in justice, in steadfast love and in mercy. 20 I will betroth you to me in faithfulness. And you shall know the Lord."
I think that after reading this, it is impossible to believe that knowing God merely means having a mental awareness of Him.
Based on this amazing truth of God's love for us, we should be angered by the injustices of pornography, and other demonic counterfeits for sex. How can we really love this world if we are faking ignorance on these issues.
Our silence is lawlessness. It's time to speak up. It's time to care about what God cares about, as demonstrated by His life as a man on the earth.
In Luke 4:17-22, Jesus reads from Isaiah 61, declaring that His mission on the earth was to bring forth justice. Isaiah 61:8, which Jesus stopped short of, actually says that God "loves justice, and hates robbery". The heart of God is restoring dignity to us - image-bearers of God.
As Christ-followers, our mission is the same as His was: to fight for the cause of justice. Dear God, may we not be consumers of the injustices that we should be fighting against.
