In talking about moral sanity we come to a passage that almost makes you a little uncomfortable while reading it, yet it is the very essence of moral and sexual sanity itself! In commenting on this verse I want to take a moment to speak against the moral and sexual insanity that reigns in our society today.
It is a sad thing that we read verse 19 and get a little uncomfortable. The joys of married love and sexual union are one of the wonderful gifts that God gave us when He made our bodies as He did - and introduced us to marriage at the very foundation of this world. There is a purity in what is said here - not impurity. There is a very real joy that we should have in experiencing sexual union with the wife of our youth. Unfortunately sin has so skewed things in our minds that we squirm a little when God paints a somewhat vivid picture of the truth.
God desires for a man to enjoy his wife. He tells us here that her breasts should be the ones that satisfy us at all times. The world though has so twisted our minds and hearts that we struggle with reading this - even though all the world around us is doing all they can to capture our attention with the breasts of women other than our wives. There is the perversion - focusing on the beauty of a woman who is NOT your wife. Television, movies, magazines, and the internet are being used to draw our attention to other women. I see pretty much every day when I go to check my email that the most popular searches on the internet tend toward women whose beauty is being exploited to draw men into the trap of desiring a woman other than their wife. This is the deception of the world - and it is used daily to draw us away from the Lord. That is why I get so frustrated when believers don't want us to read or comment on passages of Scripture that promote healthy biblical sexuality. It is not that we want to start a sexual round-table by doing this - but it does put the real and the true before us. We want to be wise in discussing and commenting on such passages - not turning to gutter language and sexually explicit comments. But the Bible is very clear in what it is saying here.
The second part of this admonition from father to son is that the son be intoxicated by the love of his wife. Usually the New American Standard does a wonderful job of directly translating such things, but my how weak they are on this verse. Exhilarated is NOT what the dad is saying to his son. He is telling him to be utterly intoxicated with the sexual love of his wife. There are not many things God says we should be drunk on - but when it comes to the love of our wife - God says to drink up all the love we can.
That is the essence of sexual sanity dear friends. God wants us to enjoy our sexuality in marriage. He has written an entire book, The Song of Solomon, to exult in the sexual love enjoyed in marriage. He instructs us in that book - as well as in this passage - that it is a good thing to enjoy sexual union and lovemaking with our wife. It is one of the reasons why he gave us a wife and set up marriage the way He did. That is why it is so important that as fathers we have such a talk with our sons. We can guide them away from the raging rapids of sexual immorality - and toward the safe waters of sex within marriage. If we do not tell them - I can promise you the world will warp their minds with tales of sexual exploits that are nothing more than the deception of whoremongers and fools.