My son was a shrewd and wise baseball card collector. There are certain ones he kept really really well in these plastic folders. He would let anybody get near them. Why? Well, he said, "Dad when they're in mint condition they're really the most valuable and then they're really rare. And rare means valuable."
You know, there's a word that's becoming increasingly rare in our societies and our culture today. It's the word "virgin." A cable news network once posed this question to their viewers: "Why are we so obsessed with virginity?"
I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Virgin Treasure."
There was a foray into virgin territory that was triggered by an HBO interview years ago with Olympian Lolo Jones. She had won gold medals at the World Indoor Championship twice and has been regarded as one of the best hurdlers in the world. But it was a Twitter mention of being a virgin that started the buzz and made this interview news. After all, she was attractive... a star athlete...she was fit - and hadn't had sex? What?
She said, "It's just something, a gift that I want to give to my husband." There's a young woman who understood making sacrifices and working hard to get to a prize. Oh, and she understood the hurdles between her and that finish line. "Please understand" she said, "this journey has been hard. It's the hardest thing I've ever done in my life, harder than training for the Olympics, harder than graduating from college. I've been tempted. I've had guys tell me 'if you have sex, it will help you run faster.'" Really?
One gutsy woman - with a seriously tested but uncompromised conviction - again, unintentionally, put virginity back in the national conversation. Years ago, NFL quarterback Tim Tebow did too when he revealed he was saving sex for one person - his wife.
The good news for Lolo and Tim and every man or woman who guards their virginity as a treasure not to be violated is this: you've got God on your side. That's God, as in the Inventor of sex; the Designer of human sexuality, of man, of woman. Cultures change. But you can't change the Creator's plan for His creation.
Jesus said this about sex: "At the beginning of creation God made them male and female. For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh. So they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate" (Mark 10:6-9). So here's God's plan: One man with one woman in a lifetime covenant before God. That's how sex was designed to be. Anything else is outside of God's plan.
God really cares what we do with His incredible love gift called sex. In Hebrews 13:4 - "Marriage should be honored by all, and the marriage bed kept pure. For God will judge...all the sexually immoral." That's our Word for today from the Word of God. See, God's put a fence around sex. It's called marriage and He says there's judgment for those who violate the fence. I didn't say that. God did.
My friend Mel has the most amazing vegetable garden and he's got a fence around it. "He doesn't want people to enjoy it, I know." That's not why. He wants to keep it a garden so that everyone can enjoy it. The fence is there to keep out the things that would ruin it. That's why God put a fence around sex called marriage. To protect us from ruining something beautiful. A garden is where beautiful things grow if it's kept safe.
So virginity is a treasure but it's one that you can look back and go, "You know what, I wish I'd made that choice." There are less virgins than ever but they're more valuable than ever.
But do you know one of the most powerful words in God's vocabulary is the word "forgive" because it carries with it the promise that we can be clean and have a whole new start. In the Bible's words you are a "new creation in Christ." You say, "Ron, I didn't get this right." Well right now Jesus stands there with open arms to say, "I died on a cross to forgive every sin, including that." And if you're thinking about what you wish you hadn't done, that can be erased from God's Book forever if you'll embrace the new beginning Jesus gives at His cross.
Our website will tell you how to begin that relationship - ANewStory.com. The good news for you is that today is a new beginning.