DOES SATAN LIKE SEX?
By: Paul Anderson
He hates it. Sex is God’s idea. It pictures God’s passionate love for His people and Christ’s affection for His Bride. The Bible tells a love story from cover to cover. It begins with a walk and ends with a wedding. The supper celebration goes on for an eternity. Top that!
Satan is not into pleasure. Hell is a miserable, thankless place. No one ever has a good day. Satan perverts every good gift of God, including sex. God puts joy into sex—the devil extracts it. Why else would we feel fear and guilt when we follow his schemes? He doesn’t want us to enjoy sex or even food (I Tim. 4:3).
He keeps us from true pleasure. He turns sex into abuse, perversion, or domination. David knew that “at thy right hand are pleasure forevermore,” not with the enemy.
Sex shows up in the first two chapters of the Bible, for goodness sakes. God tells His creation to “be fruitful and multiply.” I know only one way that could be fulfilled. Then Eve shows up without clothes on, God’s gift for Adam. He says, “She is bone of my bone…”, which interpreted means, “Wow!” Physical union results. God has given those made in His image “the urge to merge.”
Satan shows up one chapter later to alienate Adam from Eve and both from God. Pleasure dissolves. Enter manipulation and blame.
Some remain unconvinced. They call desserts devilishly delicious or sinfully satisfying. “Nasty” means “delightful.” Decadent ice cream is supposed to be the best, as if Satan has an edge on ecstasy. He has not experienced pleasure since his fall. Some think that those not encumbered with the restraints experience more joy. Talk to them.
The psalmist struggled: “This is what the wicked are like—always carefree…Surely in vain have I kept my heart pure” (Psalm 73:12,13). He idealized their freedom: “They have no struggles; their bodies are healthy and strong. They are free from the burdens common to man” (4).
Think about it: fences define the game. Imagine baseball without a foul line. You just destroyed the sport. When everything goes, everything goes, including pleasure. Take away boundaries (we called it “free love” in the 70’s) and we just got lied to—neither freedom nor love.
The psalmist came to a true picture of life without walls: “When I tried to understand all this, it was oppressive to me till I entered the sanctuary of God; then I understood their final destiny” (16,17). They look happy, but you cannot cope if you have no hope. Try living in their troubled mind. Take away a person’s tomorrow, and you just robbed him of his today.
Say “Satan,” and you just named the most miserable person in the universe. He strategizes to remove the world from every pleasure. What a mission statement! If he convinces you to break God’s moral laws, his sinister delights keeps him pumped enough to do it again. Then he calls you a moron for being so stupid and heaps shame on you. What a destiny!
Young adult: say yes to God. Don’t let Satan turn pleasure into an irresponsible act that depersonalizes women desperate enough to sell their bodies for industry. Ask them about pleasure. Charge the devil with abuse and murder—and don’t play into his hand. Honor God with your body and live free from guilt and shame.