Coming up today on renewing your mind, sexual problems in marriage and the solutions we find in Scripture.

God understands the sanctity of that intimacy that takes place when people can be naked and unashamed

within the context of marriage. And so God is not saying that sex is wrong. He creates it, he ordains it, but he regulates it.

Over the last 50 years or so, the definitions of marriage and sex have changed drastically and it's caused confusion, even for those in the church.

How should we view a healthy sexual relationship within the confines of marriage? Today on renewing your mind, Dr. R. R. C. Sproul continues his series, The Intimate Marriage, by helping us see the lies many people believe that lead to sexual problems in marriage.

Welcome you once again to our study on the biblical view of marriage and in this session, we're going to discuss the problem that the research indicates is the number one reason that people give for the breakdown and break up of marriages.

And as I'm sure you can guess, the number one problem listed in America for struggles and the dissolving of marriages is this. Sex.

Lack of harmony, lack of communication, lack of intimacy and adjustment in the sexual dimensions of marriage. That may seem to be somewhat of a surprise to us in light of the fact that in recent decades, we've gone through an explosion, not only of interest, but in literature of sexual relationships and harmony.

You can go to any bookstore to the self-help section of the bookstore or even separate sections on sex in marriage and find dozens of marriage manuals, how to books and counseling books on how to have a great sex dimension to your marriage.

Somehow, we're still experiencing severe problems of sexual harmony within marriage. One of the biggest problems, of course, that we face in adjusting to the sexual dimension of marriage, particularly as Christians, is making the transition from living in a life situation all the way up till marriage where God says no.

And then all of a sudden, we're expected to enter into a relationship where that which was once forbidden is now not only allowed, but in biblical categories is commanded. That is very difficult for many people to understand that that which is forbidden in one context is absolutely commanded by God within the bond of marriage.

Now, the church has struggled for centuries with that dimension. Just last week, for example, I was reading an essay from the great theologian, St. Augustine, who was one of my all-time favorite writers and theologians.

And in this particular essay, he was making the case that the only moral justification for sex relationships within marriage is with a specific view towards conceiving and bearing children.

That is, Augustine saw no room within marriage and the marriage relationship for the enjoyment of sex as a physical bond involving physical pleasure between a husband and a wife.

In other words, it was kind of a necessary evil that one had to go through in order to propagate the species.

And I'm persuaded that that viewpoint that even the great St. Augustine advocated is one that is found not in Scripture, but has its roots in ancient Greek and oriental views that depreciated the value of anything physical.

We know what the sin of materialism is in this world where people seek all of life and all of meaning through physical things, through money, through food, through wine, women, and so on, through the gratification of the body.

And we call that materialism. And we know that that is a distortion of the reality that God has made.

And sometimes to counteract that, we go to the other extreme and fall into the error of what may be called spiritualism, where the only thing that is of value is the spiritual dimension, the soul.

But we believe in a God who made a physical world, who made man not just as a disembodied spirit, but as a person who has both a soul and a body.

And the New Testament, for example, in the teaching of Jesus, shows a profound concern for man's material well-being, that we are called to feed the hungry, to close the naked, to give shelter to the homeless.

Those are physical concerns.

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