Topic: Keep Them from Sex – Daily Devotional By Desiringgod Ministry – John Piper Ministry 19 August 2023
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Keep Them from Sex
A Demon’s Plea for Abstinence
I shall happily give you sex advice for your (thus far) happily married man.
As a most impure spirit, you admit a certain revulsion toward the “grotesque images of bodies enmeshed and limbs flailing.” While I may know some of their sexual enchantments — we can save talk of the Nephilim for another time, perhaps — I understand your natural aversion with the physical and primal urges of the humans. You wouldn’t give the act a moment’s thought if it did not mean so much to them and to the Enemy.
But oh, how much it means to them! What opportunity sex presents. The passions of their flesh, under our sway, “wage war” against their souls (1 Peter 2:11). The steps of lust — sensual and beckoning — go down to death, as the father once tried to warn.
It appears to me that you’ve chosen the proper time to begin your temptations. The honeymoon season is setting — now is the time for the paint to begin to chip. Little quarrels start to creep in; mice move in the walls. Gestures and quirks (so adorable while dating) start to shed their skin — real married life begins. Although he has heard of our designs already from other husbands, this doesn’t deter us. He sympathizes, sure — but such will never happen to him. Although he has done “fellowship” with a few graduates over the years, this is still a most excellent time to initiate our Marital Abstinence Program (MAP).
Untangle Bodies
Globdrop, I know how quickly you mean to steer your ox toward the muddy hillsides of pornography or the fresher pastures of his neighbor’s wife, but patience, young apprentice. First, we must place the hook firmly in his nose. Dry up his sex life with his wife. Dehydrate the marriage bed, and then, all in due course, lead him to other streams.
Is this not the strategy the apostle sought to expose? “Do not deprive one another . . . so that Satan may not tempt you because of your lack of self-control” (1 Corinthians 7:5). Wonderfully for us, they often miss the spiritual warfare surrounding their married sex life. And of course, they barely talk about it with each other (your man, somehow an exception). Which pastor is going to tell lazy husbands or selfish wives that their bodies actually belong to their spouse?
A few steps, then, for cultivating this blessed deprivation, this unholy untangling, this wintry and lifeless marriage bed so unthinkable to him at present.
1. Cool through familiarity.
The sex we offer is colorful, impassioned, daring, free. It is to swim with dolphins, soar with eagles, run with wild horses, soak bare under banned waterfalls.
But what of the married sort?
Sameness, dreary and inescapable. Slowly unveil monogamy’s monotony. “You mean fifty years of sex with the same person!” blurted one man he knew, mouth agape. That is the response we relish. A vineyard boasting of one cluster; a stock falling, diminishing returns.
Globdrop, they can hardly endure the well-known. The same picture on the wall vanishes. A symphony on repeat fades away. Hearing they do not hear; seeing they do not see — oh, blessed familiarity. They soon tire of heavenly bread and desire the meat pots of Egypt.
What happened to that raging fire that burned while dating? Stoking the dying flame now feels more like an inconvenience on cold and tired nights. As necessity arises, let them guzzle the wine (but forget to savor it). Most nights, let them sleep on either side of busyness, bitterness, or boredom. Several kids later, several fights later, the garden that teemed with wonder fills with weeds.
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2. Behoove the husband.
We love it when the thought eventually arrives (and slip it in quietly after some time), This is not quite what I expected — often meaning (even without realizing), The marital sex life is not like pornography at all. Your man may have some distance from that gutter, but is he really out of gunshot? We must ensure that monogamy with a real woman (whoever she might be) is set up to disappoint. The new-car smell must wear off eventually.
In our videos, the woman is always desirous, has no children, shares no emotional life with the male, doesn’t argue with him or know his faults. She bears no scars from her past or sadness in her present. She is untiring, enhanced, and accessible — enticing and already enticed. She doesn’t want to talk or cry or sleep or share burdens; she is never insecure.
Intimacy — at its finest, you must gently remind him — is not intimate in those other ways. That which is of the flesh is flesh. Our versions transact thin, quick pleasure. The marriage bed, in comparison, is sadly distracted from this sensual single-mindedness.
And in frustration to this, if she is ever too drained, too distracted, too detached, or too selfish herself to be so vulnerable, wound him and send him immediately to the bottoms. “The husband should give to his wife her conjugal rights” — he is trying (1 Corinthians 7:3). Self-pity is a man’s (and therefore a demon’s) best friend. Let him sleep with resentment (if not his wife), and so afford an “opportunity to the devil” (Ephesians 4:27).
Feed this loop. He grows bitter and lazy; she grows oblivious and content; we grow fat and satisfied.
3. Weary the wife.
Considering different seasons of hormonal changes (a design that makes our job the easier), an unequally yoked sex drive may appear. Be prepared. At other seasons, if the two do have that baby, sheer tiredness from children hanging from arms and berating nerves usually helps us. With all of this, we must wonder aloud something like, How can he be so inconsiderate to even ask after such a day as mine?
The days fill with good things; the nights with exhaustion. We wonder why the Old Preacher did not add to his poems about the seasons,
There is a time for sex, and a time for children.
It is just like the Enemy to bestow the gift, and then give them offspring that threaten the gift that bore them. Let the Enemy name kids “miracles” all he wants — the marriage bed begets its assassin. He warns them not to deprive each other and then produces the chief competitor to the time and energy required.
And beyond that, realize, Globdrop, that her body will eventually begin to change. She will know it; doesn’t he? Will he start noticing other women? She will not feel as desirous, and so ensure she lessen in desire. Even the heroine in their Song admits it: “Do not gaze at me because I am dark, because the sun has looked upon me” (Song of Solomon 1:6). The more naked, the more ashamed — we must turn this constantly to our advantage. Strangle to death any obedience to that enchantment love gives the eye, even into old age: “Rejoice in the wife of your youth, a lovely deer, a graceful doe” (Proverbs 5:18–19).
4. Lure to other trees.
At this point, Globdrop, you will be ready to reenchant him with the sheer exquisiteness of sex.
Its ecstasy and spell, its royal banquet, its private garden where fawns wander. Its hidden waterfall, its lands of hushed laughter, its secret vineyards. Its taste of Eden — naked and unashamed. Is it not the gift of the gods? Is it not embodied poetry, two bodies set to rhyme — copulate, or couplet? Uncover this beauty that breaks mathematics: 1 + 1 = 1. Ribs return to sides. The two become one flesh.
Oh, the intoxication of sex! “Sex,” of course, outside of marriage — not the knotty, shriveled thing his actual sex life will have actually become. To those unwed: sex, sex, and more sex. To the married: bickering, busyness, and a bed shared by a roommate. Turn his gaze away to the wild elsewhere. For what pleasure can really exist in the marital bed, stripped of the forbiddances, inebriating novelties, and the most greedy and devouring gratifications?
Deplorable Design
Busyness, lust, fantasy, fights, miscommunications, withdrawings, insecurities, changing bodies, knocking kids, manipulation, rejection, self-pity, and shame are only a few weapons at our disposal. Time fails. But let me finish with the worst of it.
Why did the Enemy make them sexual? Why not form all babies from the dust? The Enemy intended the marriage bed — I shriek to even write it — to foreshadow his own intentions of intimacy with the humans. Copulation was his cursive written into human relations that murmured something of his love to them — whom he even calls his bride. Did we need any other reason to storm down from heaven? He really meant to suggest a Marriage beyond all marriages, a vast intimacy beyond all marriage beds. The givenness, the belonging, the absorption, the two into one — telling something of man with deity — how could any free angel bear it?
Over our dead and damned spirits! To your post, Globdrop: dam the marriage bed, turn the river into a swamp full of swarming mosquitoes and frogs. Mar all the Enemy intended. Foment their neglect; muddy the fountain. Then drown them in the more sparkling streams of lawless sexual delights. Strip what he has now down to a transaction, a duty, a boredom — then offer them the delectable fruits of better trees.
Your marriage counselor and uncle,
Grimgod
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