PLEASE NOTE: This e-teaching is not appropriate for children, preadolescents, and many adolescents.

Click…Click…Click…Click. One after another, tiny video images reflect off his eyeglasses in the darkness. It’s late at night.

PLEASE NOTE: This e-teaching is not appropriate for children, preadolescents, and many adolescents.

Leah, Rachel, Bilhah and Zilphah, Jacob’s four wives

I hope that, after reading the first two chapters, you are growing a little more comfortable mixing sex and spirituality. Scripture is full of sexual references, and it is interesting that many of us—who believe the Bible is God’s inspired Word—find certain parts embarrassing. When you think about it, it is a little bit of a chuckle that we believe certain things God said in His Word are inappropriate to mention in church, or just about anywhere for that matter. Modern Christian culture tends to be a tad Victorian. In many Christian circles, even the word sex is taboo, so it is softened with the euphemism intimacy.

It is also a little funny that some parts of the Bible that are read publicly in church services have become so familiar to us that we’ve become oblivious to the sexual connotations. May I point out a few of them before we consider four more strange, sexual, scriptural stories?