Sermons

MARRIED SEXUALITY - PART 1

Dearest family,

As we have seen in recent weeks in our series “Biblical Sexuality: some considerations”, scripture covers so many things: the nature of male-female union, boundaries for behavior and thought, pleasure, passion, mystery, real and potential threats, and the constituent elements of intimacy (like commitment, trust, assurance, faithfulness, sex) This Sunday, we put some “post-its” out there on marital sexuality. Whether we talk about the sexuality of males and females who are married or unmarried, it is important that we all hear the same thing together, because all truth is God’s truth and is not exclusive to anyone. Whether married or unmarried, it is important for us to understand those things that are particular to each other’s needs, so that we can better love and serve each other, encourage and strengthen each other, and above all, be examples of the indwelling Christ, imaging his life to each other through our maleness and femaleness, through our “becoming holy” and “being healed” sexuality.

The OT has a lot to say about marital sex: it is clear in its commands and prohibitions (Pentateuch), it gives examples of great intimacy (Ruth and Boaz) and ravaging desolation (David and Bathsheba), it is instructional (Proverbs) both in the way it warns against dangers as well as recommends delights. It gives details that are sensuous but pure. The Songs of Solomon are exquisitely erotic. Intimate details of the body are given, and how to love it. No wonder the early church fathers wanted to allegorize it all! Chapter 1 is about the anticipation of the bridal chamber. Chapter two tells you what to do with your hands. Chapter 3 is about counting the cost of marriage. But it also talks about the tender sensitivities, about how lovers missed each other. In chapter 5 she stayed in bed, and did not get up to open the door to let him in! But you could argue that he was too preoccupied at work and was coming to bed too late. She did not seem inclined to make the effort that was required to welcome him and to make love. But as sad as all that is, what is helpful is the way we see how they commit to solve their sexual problem as they take personal responsibility for their behavior, bless the other though hurt and offended and communicate their feelings clearly, expressing and not repressing. Before you know it, they are planning a sexual retreat and talking about making love outdoors. There is an amazing interplay between them. They are certainly not painting by the same old numbers as you watch the sexual impressionism in their relationship.

The NT actually has little direct counsel on sex in marriage, but we did look in detail at Ephesians 5 and 1 Corinthians 7 and saw how much was there. The Bible is not a sex manual, but it is full of instruction about how to relate, how to love, how to bless, how to heal, how to know what is good and how to experience that goodness. If you remember, I suggested again on Sunday that the real issue is not the “greatness” of a marriage (there are hundreds of thousands of internet sites that want to tell you how to have a GREAT marriage) but the GOODNESS of a marriage. How do you have a good marriage? Admittedly, that sounds weaker than a “great marriage” doesn’t it? But there is so much subjectivity in “great” – it is essentially feeling-based. Goodness, on the other hand, is truth based – it is essentially faith-based, where goodness is defined by what God calls good. We know that what is “great” by our standards and perceptions may not always be “good” by God’s. Marriage, and marital sexuality, is about being good by being true to our sexual vows regardless of bad circumstance, so it’s not just about what we want to be great, or feel great on our terms of need or desire. It is “good” that is the supreme word in Genesis to describe the satisfaction of God with his creation. The text says: “it is not good that man should be alone” so presumably we can say that God ordained the relationship between man and woman to be good – to manifest and exhibit his goodness, to draw on the supply of his goodness. Scripture, both OT and NT, always directs us to this goodness. Your understanding of the biblical explications of “goodness” will be foundational for your understanding and therefore for your practice and conduct of marital love and sex. I often say to couples that there aren’t special marital behaviors, just Christian ones: like all the “one anothers” of scripture; like all the fruits of the Spirit. Study the good texts: what it is to do good, prove what is good, be overcome by good, abound in every good work, have a good conscience, be full of good fruit, enjoy good days, have good conversation…and on and on. You will find that you will agree with Proverbs 18:22 that whoever finds a wife (or a husband for that matter) “finds a good thing.” If these “good” things are the non-negotiable DNA and experience of a marriage then it will probably be really good. Can God say that our marriage is good? Is that not what we desire, that as at creation, it could be inscribed over us: “And God saw...and said it was very good.” So what does he see? We need to be talking about what makes for a good marriage in the same way that I talked a couple of weeks ago about what makes for a good body, in Christian terms. A good body, in God’s terms makes for good sex. A good marriage in God’s terms makes for good sex. If you’re getting the point, then you prepare that message!

But maybe all that sounds too good to be true? It often does to any who are struggling or suffering pain in their relationship. What we are about is recovering the original plan for marital sexuality. In Matthew 19, Jesus was dealing with the sexual brokenness that resulted from the fall-out of divorced marriages. The reason Jesus said that there was a need to go back to the beginning was because of what he described as a “hardness of heart”. So heart problems are at the root of sexual problems. Perfecting sexual performance and technique will not solve the root problems of broken personhood. We now live this side of the fig leaves, but what was it meant to be like, that union, that communion, that nakedness, that freedom, that absence of shame and self-consciousness, between man and woman? It is clear that their personhoods experienced each other physically, and that it was different to animal copulation. There wasn’t only a biological reality but a spiritual reality in their union. God was being imaged in their shared sexuality. Sex was not about mating but meeting, as Lewis Smedes put it. It was declared “good” by God. Sexual desire was natural and needful, and there was a freedom to give and receive. There was no lust, no selfish using, no defensiveness, just a revelation of God’s holiness through their wholeness. You’ve heard of “back to the future”. But how do we “forward to the past”? And when we do, don’t we find the sadness of how this unity was broken, and how this image of God was distorted. We find we live outside Eden. And we find there are all sorts of other realities that give plenty of opportunity for grace and redemption to transform, beginning of course, with the Fall itself and the new dynamics of rule and rebellion, self-protection, self-consciousness, self-assertion that distort and divide male-female intimacy. There are enemies that threaten our sexual vows and I gave you several on Sunday (falls, fig leaves, foxes, flaws, fears, failures, fantasies, fights, faults, falsities, familiarities) but we affirmed that there is one more point beginning with “f” that can cover them all: forgiveness!

Earlier, I made mention of sexual vows. If you’re married, maybe you should do a simple exercise and go through your vows and apply them to your marital sexuality. Fundamental to marital sexuality’s assurance is fidelity to our vows, as well as fidelity to marriage as our calling, our vocation. Remember what we discussed about the relationship between marriage’s holy boundaries and our holy freedoms of sexuality. In that fidelity is our fidelity to the personhood of our spouse and to their sexual welfare. Our vows bind us to our relationship, not just institutionally but intimately. To “cleave” couldn’t be more sexual. It implies a pressing in of breast to breast. Our vows are not just sustained by passion but by will, by faithfulness to God as well as the other. So how are you keeping your vows sexually? Are you keeping faith? Is there any part of you that you have taken back once having given it? It is not only adultery that breaks a marital covenant. The mortar of the bricks of the covenant can be loosened and crumble a number of ways, especially through with-holding, or absenting, as we discussed on Sunday. Actually, there is a sense in which in every act of marital intercourse, there is a renewing, a restating of those vows that said “all that I am I give to you.”
So are you sexually faithful to your vows?

• I take you: Are you surrendered to be taken? Are you withdrawn? Have you taken back anything you once gave? Is your relationship still sexually exclusive? Or is there something else on the side, whether fueled by neglect, preoccupation, fantasy, lust or whatever. Are there any thoughts of any other person in your head and heart? Are you emotionally exclusive to the other? Do those descriptives of Christian marriage that we briefly looked at in Paul’s letter to the Corinthians, characterize how you are living out your vows: exclusivity, mutuality, particularity, unity, equality, perpetuity, spirituality and the indispensability of sexual relations?

• To be my wife / husband: Are you being everything that you can be sexually for your spouse? This is not about “doing” primarily but simply “being”. It is not about performance but about possession of heart.

• To have and to hold: This is evidently sexual. Is sex about communion as well as union? Are you cultivating intimacy and sharing the inner life, and expressing it physically and verbally?

• For better for worse: Are you dealing honestly and openly with any threats or challenges to your intimacy, whether they are external or internal? Are you committed to faithfully loving and pursuing each other despite the adversities and hindrances that you are engaging?

• According to God’s holy law: Is sex and intimacy on God’s terms still important to you. Do you need to both go back to God’s intentions for you and recover them in order to rediscover yourselves.

I made a connection in my message between our sexuality and the cross. It is unbelievable that Jesus was stripped naked and crucified. That he endured the shame of nakedness of my sin, that I might once again be naked and unashamed; that I might come out of hiding. There is healing for our marital sexuality. I have seen God do amazing things over 30 years of pastoring, I have seen it in relationships over the last few months – not always in an instant, but I have seen what he can do within the holy boundaries of a faithful marriage, that though those boundaries seemed like prison walls, were transformed into bedroom walls again.

Marital sexuality is an extraordinary idea, an extraordinary gift and grace of God – an erotic means of grace as someone has described it. Let us rejoice and be glad in it. And if you can’t find your way back to your beginning in order to recover your way, then just go to the end of the story, to the marriage feast of the lamb and work backwards, and rediscover how your marital sexuality is designed to be an intimation of that.

Marrieds – are we really committed to be those images of that creational reality, and in the wholeness of our sexuality together, be convinced that we have not yet imagined what is in store for those who love God. If you want to love God and you are married sir, love your wife with all your heart and every fibre of your being, as Christ loved the church. If Christ loved the church as you loved your wife, would there be joy in our fellowship? If you want to love God, ma’am, and you are married, love your husband with every fibre of your being, as the church loves her Christ. If Christ was loved by the church as you love your husband, would we worship, would we witness, would we work for his fame and glory?

May the sanctity and healing, the joy and the fulfillment of the private marital sexuality of every marriage in this church, the private sexuality of every unmarried person as we have also been discussing in this series, be to the public health and holiness of this church community, and to the peace and blessing of the next generation. May the holy sexuality of believers be the great apologetic for the veracity of God’s word, and the power of his winsome love in this place that we know as Christ Our Shepherd Church.

Pastorally yours,

Stuart

https://www.christourshepherd.org/pastlet.htm (and follow links to download MP3 audio of sermon)

CREATIONAL PRINCIPLES FOR SEXUALITY

A PASTORAL LETTER

Dearest family,

When we looked briefly at Romans 1 a couple of messages ago, in our series on Biblical Sexuality, we noticed that Paul’s emphasis was on the relationship between Creator and creature. Here are some clues: “since the creation of the world… his eternal power and divine nature have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made… they worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator who is forever praised.” (1:20, 25) And there is a greater than Paul! Listen to Jesus, when he is talking about the sin and resultant brokenness in sexuality that accounted for unlawful divorces. “Haven’t you read that at the beginning the Creator made them male and female.” (Mt. 19:1-9) If both Jesus and Paul direct us back to the beginning, to the Genesis text, then we should probably follow their directions and example. If Jesus asked us the same question it would be helpful if we could answer, “Yes, we have read that!” And so we did, last Sunday. With reference to the two creation accounts in Genesis 1 and 2, I drew your attention to three foundational issues about our creation that have huge significance for our understanding of our sexuality.

o our creation in the image of God

o our creation as male and female

o our creation as body-spirits

When we view God's directives for our sexuality this way, by trying to determine what scripture presents as intrinsic to God’s creational intent and design, then in the words of theologian George Weigel, "The first moral question shifts from 'What am I forbidden to do?' to 'How do I live a life of sexual love that conforms to my dignity as a human person?’” To put it another way, the question ceases to be initially “How far can I go in sexual acts?” but becomes “What and who is my sexuality for?” For the purposes of this letter let me just repeat some things about the last of these. This is all about what we commonly now call “body-theology.” The imago dei in Genesis is about the totality of who we are. We are not disembodied but embodied spirits. There is a relationship between our bodies and our spirits. In a real sense, our bodies too bear the image of God. What we do with our bodies matters. How we view our bodies matters. Disorder in our spirits will often be expressed physically, and possibly sexually. In 1 Cors. 6 Paul is dealing with a challenging sexual situation. There is behavior that is not consistent with the kingdom of God, and he warns them of the many sexual behaviors that they were once participating in but have now been delivered from: washed, sanctified and justified. There is much in this chapter, both on explaining the nature of Christian freedom, that in Galatians terms, is not about indulging the flesh, abusing one’s neighbor or disobeying the law. The Corinthians had rationalized their sexual sin: stomach for food and the body for sex. Sex was just a bodily hunger that it was appropriate to satisfy as one would hunger. So Paul moves from his treatment of true freedom to a word about fornication and he states bluntly: “The body is not for sexual immorality…” (6:13) He makes three points about sexual sin: it is a danger (not beneficial); it is a dictator (it can master you); it is a distortion as the Corinthian argument illustrates. But what is interesting here that I want to draw your attention to, in the light of the Genesis presentation of our bodies and spirits that bear God’s image, is that Paul’s response to pervasive sexual sin is again not to give a list of rules, but to quote Genesis 2:24 about the union of a male and female body in one flesh. His answer to the sexual questions is to teach about our attitude to our body.

A biblical understanding of the body, a theological not a biological one, is fundamental to our view of self, to an understanding of how we relate to others and to ourselves. We have seen from Genesis that we are body-persons.

Our sexuality is good only in so far as we respond in our maleness and femaleness to the ordering and empowering word of God. It is only the image of God that includes our body that gives us an understanding of the relationship between sexual acts and spiritual consequences, for good or for bad. What we do with our body, and how we view it, is of vital importance. If it can be offered to God it can also be offered wrongly to others and to forces of darkness. In one sense, sexual sin always involves offering your body to that which is not God. It is understandable why false gods had fertility rites, and required sexual intercourse with cult prostitutes. In the giving of seed, the pact was made with the gods. It was symbolic of giving your life. Paul is clear in 1 Cos 6 that there is an aspect of sexual sin that is “against your own body.” (v18) Your body is affected and suffers consequences: your biology, your psychology and even your neurology.

There are those who hate their bodies, maybe because of how it is in their eyes, or because of previous sin committed by it, or because of what has been done to it. We find ways to camouflage and hide who we really are, who God has wonderfully made us to be. There are those who fear the body. They fear its capabilities, they fear it being tempted, they fear arousal, they may fear the physical touch of love for any number of reasons. There are those who abuse the body: physically through addiction, or even workaholism, through appearance and gender disguise, or sexually through self-gratification. There are others who disrespect the body. They disregard its health, they demean its creational design. The disrespect may be expressed in sexual voraciousness or excessiveness, or in shamelessness and unholy sexual behaviors. There are some who idolize the body: its appearance, its health, its capabilities and capacities, its strength and power, its contribution to their identity, its sexual performance. I’m sure you may be able to add to that list but this is sufficient to alert us to the way that the enemy of our souls will happily run interference with our sexuality by twisting our view and understanding of our bodies as they are meant to be offered to the worship of God, and for the purposes of God.

If I could put it simply, and hopefully memorably, Paul essentially says that to have good sex you have to know what makes for a good body. He’s not talking about membership at the local to get that body looking irresistible and confident for any sexual engagement. You will have good sex, good in the way that Genesis uses the word good, if you realize what makes for a good body, spiritually. He is not talking about some ethereal mystical body here, but about our real bodies that belch and bleed and sweat and sag and puke and pale. The fact is that our bodies are potentially instruments of good or evil. Creational obedience is a body activity. The way he makes his point is to describe three major relationships that our body, your body as a Christian, has.

1. Your body’s relation to God (v14): "God raised the Lord from the dead and He will raise us also." You are His creature, you are his creation. You are not a soul parcel-wrapped in a body but a body that became a living soul. There is an indivisibility of body and soul. What your body does, you do. All genital sex is personal sex and involves your inner life. That’s why fornication corrupts the spirit at a deep level. It was Lewes Smedes who said that you can’t go to bed with someone and leave your soul at the parking meter. This does not negate the fact that sexual desire is God-given and that pleasure, as C.S. Lewis reminds us, is God’s idea not the devil’s. God made the nervous system but the pleasure experienced is better seen as a by-product, not the main goal, if we understand intercourse as an act that in Genesis terms, unites lives, unites body and spirit. Paul is telling us here the incredible value and significance of our bodies that should cause us to think twice before sexual sin. The body was awesome in past creation and it is going to be awesome in future resurrection. The value of the body has been finally endorsed by the incarnation, and therefore, in its relationship to God, we should not abuse or devalue what God loves, what God desires holiness for and what God intends to raise. Your body has an awesome relationship to God.

2. Your body’s relation to Jesus (v13, 15): “The body is for the Lord and the Lord for the body…your bodies are members of Christ himself” The same word is used here to describe our uniting with Christ (glued together) and the uniting with a prostitute, or any other extramarital sexual relationship. Here is the Genesis truth about the spirituality of sexual intercourse, represented by the meaning of one flesh, and the nature of that union and communion that is not merely physical. This is why in healing prayer we do a lot of healing and deliverance ministry with those who have become bound in their spiritual lives through the soul ties that have resulted in fornication or adultery. Despite consensual sex you can be spiritually violated. Paul’s logic is simple for those who belong to Christ and whose worship (there we are again) is to present their bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God. “This is your spiritual act of worship.” “You are not your own. You were bought at a price.” (v20) Any questions on sexual rights? With his sacrificed body, he gave up his spirit, and bought you, body-spirit with that enormous cost. If He’s got your body he’s got everything if you think about it. You cannot take your body, that is no longer your own, away from Christ and give it wrongly to another. You are betrothed to him as a bride to the groom. Your body has an awesome relationship with Jesus!

3. Your body’s relation to the Holy Spirit (v19): “Your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit.” Would you fornicate in the sanctuary? What would stop you? Why would we quench the Spirit through sexual sin? We fool ourselves if we think we can be suddenly independent, and unattached to Jesus and His Spirit, and do what we want sexually. Are we sensitive to the indwelling Spirit of Christ? Do we violate and drive through the Spirit’s convictions, and quickening of conscience and pleadings. Paul is a realist: he is always telling folk not to be too proud to just flee temptation, to ensure the body avoids wrong contacts, does not get into wrong contexts, and that we do not, as I’ve suggested earlier, allow ourselves to harbor wrong convictions about our body or come to wrong conclusions about it. Instead, Paul wants our bodies to participate in prayer, to live according to God’s precepts, and especially, as he suggests to the Corinthians in this passage, to ask and allow the paraclete, the Holy Spirit, to succor and strengthen, resist and reject that which would bring your body into uncleanness.

So there you have it. What is good sex? To help answer that, we need to ask what makes for a good body. That will help determine where you take it, what you do with it, what you do to it, who you give it to. What makes for a good body? The knowledge that:

o God has a relationship with it: he raises it

o Jesus has a relationship with it: he redeems it

o Holy Spirit has a relationship with it: he resides in it

So in the end, let’s remember the beginning: our creation as the image of God; our creation as male and female; our creation as body-spirits. All those in favor? Any questions about sex?

Pastorally yours,

Stuart

https://www.christourshepherd.org/pastlet.htm (and follow links to download MP3 audio of sermon)

SPIRITUAL BELIEFS & SEXUAL PRACTICE

Dear family,

So far in our series “Biblical sexuality: some considerations” we have covered a number of things. We have noted the particular challenges that secular sexual culture brings to the “t-world”, Dan Kuehne’s term for the traditional view of sexual ethics, particularly as regards the matter of same sex relations. We have agreed that a view of sexual ethics is what most obviously separates a Christian from prevailing secular belief and practice. Although a large number of Americans still loosely claim to be “Christian” our culture is not, and Christians are clearly in the minority in the sub-cultures like academia, the media, the arts – all of which have a profound influence and effect on popular culture. What is philosophized behind academic closed doors is popularized and publicly “gutterized” by Hollywood. It is important to understand how we got to where we are (what belief premises result in what behavioral practices) and we have pressed the point that it is no good just starting with behavioral issues: that would just have us focusing on sex acts (this week self-gratification, next week fornication, next week adultery, next week pornography, next week homosexuality, etc.) and trying to decide what is kosher and what is not, and maybe organizing a league table of sexual sins. That is not to say that we do not have to deal with sexual acts, or that there may be arguably differing consequences of certain sexual sins and motives as compared to others, which may make some seem comparatively worse than others. But you cannot make those decisions without a prior understanding of biblical sexuality, about what the meaning and nature of sexuality and sexual experience is all about in God’s creational terms. When we are seeking to affirm a Christian sexual ethic, it is important to discern why there has been a loss of a sexual ethic. We have to understand the massive shifts in philosophy and belief that, aided by science, have opened the doors to such a revision of sexuality: like secularism, the privatization of sex, scientific frankness, media exposure, therapeutic values, theological liberalism, etc. So given the situational context in both the church and the world, the question arises for all of us: how can we then be sexually saved? Is there a hedge in crisis? Is there a hope in Christ?

Yes, we do have to ask questions about sexual behavior, and we will, but not before certain biblical foundations have been acknowledged. As has been often observed, by observers like John White in “Eros Defiled”, there are usually three main questions that we do pose about a sexual behavior: is it legal, is it normal, is it right, or to put it another way, is it a sin? Not all that’s legal is right. You won’t be jailed for fornication or adultery or pornography but they are not right. A behavioral scientist would consider adultery as normal, but in most societies, it can still be made a legal issue and legal grounds for divorce. So what is normal may not always be legal. In the t-world, same sex relations used to be regarded as neither normal nor right, and they were also illegal. It’s important to see how the interplay of these categories works. It is why legalization of any number of sexual preferences is used to pave the way, not only for that sexuality’s normalcy but also for its un-sinfulness. The legalization of same sex relations is but the thin edge of the wedge because the same arguments used to defend and accommodate that alternative life-style are the same arguments that are now being used to defend polygamy, and all polyamorous behavior, including pedophilia.

On Sunday we focused more on scriptural text than sexual context, having already noted in an earlier message the range of views of sexuality, of sexual experience, of sexual behavior that new Christians, from Jewish, Greek and Roman cultural backgrounds, were bringing into a Sunday morning house gathering in the Early Church? How were they responding when they listened to Paul’s letters being publicly read to the church gathering? Anyone blushing in Corinth? Anyone fidgeting in Thessalonica? Anyone wanting to give up in Ephesus? Anyone offended in Rome? It is not just the similarity of NT and current sexual cultures that should strike us, but the similarity of what we may well find in most of our churches, where people are coming in who are not socialized or acculturated to a biblical sexual ethic, many if not most coming from places of sexual brokenness and disfigurement. Even among those who come from a church background, there may not be consistency in their views of sexual behavior and sexual sin for a Christian. There is arguably a wider range of variance in sexual ethics in our church community, based on behaviors and beliefs, than we might think. We know something of who Paul taught in the pews based on 1 Cor. 6: “Neither the sexually immoral…nor adulterers, nor male prostitutes, nor homosexual offenders…will inherit the kingdom of God. And that is what some of you were.”

When we looked at First Thessalonians (3:11-4:9) we noted that Paul’s comments about sex are prefaced by a prayer that is a fantastic summary of what we can pray for and why, when it comes to the maintaining and maturing of our sexual salvation. Equally, we have to pray our way through both scripture’s instruction, and our sexual discipleship, when surrounding culture is no friend or ally of biblical holiness, or when we are just struggling regardless with our own sense of sexual need or desire, especially when unfulfilled, or when unholy. Given that this is the first epistle that Paul ever wrote, we are getting a peep here at Paul catechizing new converts for the first time, in Christian behavior, in sexual ethics, in a way that is giving us a clue about some important principles and truths that we need to include in our treatment of sexuality. Note two important things about these instructions which apply equally to what Bo and I desire out of this series. It is given:

“in order to please God…more and more.” (v1) Here is a most obvious and necessary revelation. The basis for our sexual ethics is not fear but love: to please the Lord. It is about pleasurable relationship with the Lord, it is about spiritual intimacy, before it is ever about intimate and pleasurable relationship with anyone else. The pleasure principle is spiritual first, not physical, though physical pleasure is not denied by scripture. To do so would be to deny creational biology and psychology.
“by the authority of the Lord Jesus…” (v2) For God’s pleasure, in Christ’s name. Again, our behavior is rooted in our belief about who God is, and how we should then live. We can adjust our behavior all we like but without belief it is nothing but a relativist situational ethic. Paul is not presenting a cultural ethic or a psychological ethic but a theological ethic that is transcultural. His starting point is not human biology or psychology but theology – who God is. Ethical teaching is not a cute pastoral suggestion for those who can hack it but a divine command. His teaching on sexuality is not a divine suggestion.

What you cannot miss in this first pastoral communication of Paul’s about sex is that it is all about a powerful argument and encouragement to holiness and wholeness. It would seem that he sees the sexual challenges they are facing as new Christians as the greatest challenge to personal holiness. It is about who we are and were made to be in our sexuality by God, and to know that we need to know who God is, since we are called to be like Him. God’s main calling card in the OT was his holiness: Hi, I’m holy! Hi, you can call me holy! Hi, my name is holy! Paul interweaves this through the passage:

• God’s will is that we should be holy (v3)
• God’s judgment is opposed to unholiness (v6)
• God’s call is to a holy life (v7)
• God’s Spirit, given to us, is holy, reproducing himself in us (v8)

Any questions about sex and sexual acts? Well actually, yes. Clearly the church of new Christians there had lots of questions, as we do. They lived in a culture where pre- and extra- marital sex was not only allowed but actively encouraged. As I said, Paul was in Corinth writing this, and we know from his letters to the Corinthians about sex that he was more than familiar with the challenges and pressures presented by sexual desire, and the desire for sex, but also, by the sense of sexual siege from contemporary sexual laxity.

He gives some very practical immediate counsel, one negative and one positive.

1. AVOID: “avoid sexual immorality” (1:3) Don’t flirt with it but flee it. Paul uses the word “porneia” that covers the whole range of sexual sin. Avoid it or evade it. Don’t battle it out if you can bale out. Avoid the places, avoid the people, avoid the publications or programs that seduce and oppose and subvert holiness.

2. CONTROL: the self-control he talks about is qualified as being “holy and honorable” and this applies to all, both married and unmarried.

Failure will lead to two dangerous consequences that have to be on our radar.

1. Disregarding God: “He who rejects this instruction does not reject man but God.” (4:8) There are huge spiritual as well as social consequences of sexual sin, which as we will see as the series progresses, are rooted in the nature of sexuality and the meaning of sexual acts. Romans 1 is Paul’s most stark presentation of the outcome of such disregard, but he shows that what ends up being expressed in a sinful sexual act that disregards the image of God in another and disregards the Creator’s intentions and instructions is premised on some other prior choices and decisions. Revisit Romans 1 and those two sets of triads we looked at, where the process of the abandonment of God, theologically, spiritually and sexually, is matched by the process of God’s abandoning of them.

2. Dishonoring another: Paul talks about us expressing our sexuality “in a way that is holy and honorable… in this matter no one should wrong his brother or take advantage of him.” (4:5-6) A Christian sexual ethic cannot be understood as only a solo, individual issue. Scripture deals with it in a social, relational and community context. Our sexual decisions affect others. The good of another becomes a crucial filter for sexual behavior that could not be more opposed to the cult of personal sexual rights and fulfillment, so often at the expense of another. Sexual salvation is not singularly found in the body of another but in the body of Christ, thus emphasizing the crucial role of our fellowship and worship and sacraments in the encouragement of sexual holiness, where Christian community becomes a place where counsel can be received, and where our issues can be revealed, and healed, and where there can be repentance and restoration, and comfort and encouragement and prayer and friendship. Paul’s ethical instructions are always addressed to a community of faith, responsible for both discipleship and discipline, forbidding as well as forgiving. Paul says here “not in covetous passion” (v5) which tells us this is not about taking something for ourselves which is not our own. That’s what covetousness is. Godly sexuality is all about honoring another, which is not necessarily the same as satisfying another. You can sexually satisfy yourself and another and in the process still dishonor both of you. The dishonoring of another is the inevitable result of disregarding and therefore dishonoring God and his creational purposes for sexuality.

As I’ve often said before, we are a community of sinners, and our focus is as a community of justified sinners who are wanting to walk, not alone, but together in sexual purity. We bring to the community table a wide range of different disorders and sins that have the potential to lead us into many further sinful ways. But we want to be a place where we will submit these disorders to the ordering, healing and saving hand of the Lord. We want to be sexually saved. We are all broken and another’s brokenness is our brokenness as we choose to bear each other’s burdens, but we also share the joyful spoils of each other’s righteous exchanges with God, undoing the unrighteous ones that we have made, or that sexual secular culture tempts us to make.

Pastorally yours,

Stuart

SEXUALITY & CULTURE

Dearest family,

Thanks for your attention on Sunday as we do our best to set the scene for a discussion about biblical sexuality that hopefully extends beyond the confines of pulpit communication. The reason it is important to consider the broader issues of the sexual culture that we live in and that the New Testament readers lived in, as well as some of the foundational issues like the relationship between belief and behavior, and sexuality and spirituality, is because the considerations are about the Bible’s teaching on human sexuality which is a much bigger context for examination than merely sexual acts. If we do not do the initial foundation and framework, we will not have the means to effectively understand and decide what is and is not biblical, and why.

What I covered, but still failed to complete, was the following:

1. I added some paint splashes to the canvas-characterization of present sexual culture that Bo referred to last week, to affirm that our understanding and practice of our sexuality is awry across the board, and that the same premises that promote a homosexual agenda are no different to those that argue for any other number of sexual choices and practices, whether it be serial casual sex, the abandonment of marital fidelity, the plague of pornography or whatever.

2. I threw out some brief and general observations about three important cultural constituents of the New Testament world: Jewish, Greek and Roman, indicating not only some of the key assumptions about sexuality that New Testament faith was addressing, but also showing how familiar we are with the same issues in our own day. So no, the NT was not written for those who were sexually inexperienced, or in denial of their own sexuality. They were living, as we are, in a culture in which sex had been individualized, idolized and demonized. We are so blessed that people like the Corinthians asked Paul lots of questions and that his answers help us in our cultural setting to get our spiritual bearings, and to have a moral compass.

3. I also wanted to do a very quick helicopter ride over some key NT passages that explicitly speak to sexual issues, or behaviors, so you can get a feel for the range of their content, and the gospel-premises and belief-premises of their arguments and appeals, that frankly have not changed – unless of course you choose to change the propositional meaning of the text to suit personal preference; unless you change doctrine, not only to fit your particular personal predilections, but also to actually approve and applaud your sexual desires and their expression. This is why the matter of our view of the authority of scripture is crucial, for the reasons Bo gave last week.

We will pick up that third point next Sunday and look just at biblical text. I’ve asked you to take an initial look at Romans 1 and 1 Thessalonians 4 in Homegroup this week, before we pick them up briefly on Sunday, and then go on to look at the Genesis text that Jesus referred his hearers back to when talking about defining issues of sexuality, particularly as pertains to gender. In Thessalonians, I like what Paul does as part of his introduction to instruction about sex, three things that I also want to do:
1. He affirms previous teaching – and so do I. Amidst the 1000 plus messages I have preached here over 27 years, there are so many that deal with this subject matter, whether OT series out of Genesis or NT series out of 1 Corinthians. In these coming weeks, Bo and I are less telling you anything you do not know, or that has not been taught, than we are calling you to remembrance to continue to uphold what we are committed to as Christians, and committed as a church to teach as best we can, which is imperfect at best. We are not interested in being popular but true, and it is important in the context of our community of faith to have clear communication about what is normative for us for our relationships and behaviors with and toward one another in our community. So we want this to be a place where we can all find out what God wants for us, for our sexuality and spirituality, and that we won’t have to sit too long without hearing truth about God the Father and His Son Jesus Christ and God the Holy Spirit, whether in worship or through the Word, whether through fellowship and conversation, and that we would find a safe place to renounce what undoes us, and repent of personal sexual sin, and heal from the fall-out of its after-effects, as we let God’s works do its perfect work. It cannot be that we have all arrived because Paul urged the Thessalonians to please God “more and more” didn’t he? That’s process and progress in maturing discipleship, for those who are pressing on but who have not yet arrived.

2. He approves their present behavior and living – and so do I. I am amazed and moved, encouraged and tutored by who you are and how you walk with Jesus. I know many of your stories, and in some cases, details that maybe few others may know of your past pain and present pilgrimage. Yes, we are all aware of how far we have to go, but we also need to be aware of how far we’ve come. I love Paul the pastor when he says “once you were… but now you are…”!! We have no basis for any personal pride but we can share holy satisfaction with each other and deep gratitude for the work of the Holy Spirit that has graced our lives. As we engage issues of biblical sexuality, I want you to know how much I affirm and approve the godly choices you are making, against the grain, against the cultural drift and drag, to live for God and please Him.

3. He appeals for “more and more” – and so do I. We have to hear this encouragement that appeals for an ongoing commitment to holiness, and the work of the Holy Spirit, conforming us to Christ. There’s no defeatism here amidst an anarchic sexual culture. Paul is in fact writing this letter to the Thessalonians from Corinth, from the sexual sin-bin of the then-known world, where the word “to corinthianize” was a synonym for seduction and debauchery and sex “gone wild.” Paul gives this wonderful invitation in the middle of all the challenges to purity, to keep on the right track, to press on, to know that there is opportunity and empowerment to please the Lord “more and more”.

So like Paul, prefacing his teaching, before referring to sexuality, I affirm the past teaching given in this community, I approve your present pursuit of Christ, and I appeal for a growing, strengthening future maturity and walk in wholeness and holiness in these matters of biblical sexual integrity. Yes, when we address these issues, like matters of sex and gender and identity, there is uncertainty and confusion. The combination of the impact of contemporary culture, the deficient and unclear communication from the pulpit in our generation, and the lack of clarity of conviction among professing Christians, all combine to subvert our assurances. In this context, it will not do, to do what is usually done: reduce the gospel to a rubber stamp for right-wing political credos, water the gospel down to humanistic values, change the meanings of the text or present Judeo-Christian values as an ethics program without Jesus or the Holy Spirit.

Paul is showing the Thessalonians, as we wish to do to you, how God’s requirements reach into every area of life, in particular our sexuality, and how the good news of the gospel produces good life in us.

Pastorally yours,

Stuart

https://www.christourshepherd.org/pastlet.htm (and follow links to download MP3 audio of sermon)

NEW YEAR

Dearest family,

Blessings for the new year! Though we had a small crowd on Sunday with so many of you away, we had a good time together of worship and Word. Given the circumstances, I delayed finishing the introduction to the Psalm Pseries until next message, and instead focused on an immediately relevant issue at the end of another year. The fact is we are consumed by time passing and often threatened by time that’s yet to be. Our experience in the present is hemmed in by the events of the past and also by the expectations of the future. At the end of a year and the beginning of a new one, most people’s thoughts turn to think about such matters. In the last few days, I have already been in conversations in which people have been talking about what they did or did not achieve on their life “to do” lists for 2012. The past has been assessed. I have listened to others speak about their feelings about what is ahead of them and their families in the new year. The future has been anticipated. In both scenarios, it is not all roses – it is also about thorns. The backward look revives memories that are both endearing and endangering, both good and bad. The forward look provokes both hope and fear, both high and low expectation, both positive resolutions and negative disclaimers.

There is something about the end of a year that serves as a salutary marker. It forces us to stop and look at ourselves and consider not just who we are but where we are, and where we are going and what we are taking there with us. It’s a good time to check the baggage we are carrying on this journey into the future. I have received emails and telephone calls from many folk in the last few days, whose responses to these very considerations have led them to contact me for a chat, for a safe conversation, to get a sense of position, a sense of perspective, a sense of the prospective. This is a godly impulse, to want to visit these places.

We know this time of year as advent. But as Christians, our understanding of the full meaning of advent embraces all the dimensions of our experience of time: past, present and future. At Christmas, we celebrate the fact that Jesus came in the historic past. In our present, we celebrate the experience of a Spirit-filled life by which Jesus comes to us, and we anticipate a future advent, Jesus is coming again. So I would simply suggest that we ensure that our lives are undergirded by the truths of these three advents. It is impossible to look at the past without knowing that Jesus came to deliver us from the finality of the consequences of past sin and failure, bondage and brokenness. It is impossible to live in the present without acknowledging all that has been made available to us for present life and godliness, for present protection and preservation through the ministrations of the Spirit of Jesus. It is impossible to consider the future, as a Christian, without reckoning on the fact that the future includes the second coming and a judgment. These realities are seldom on the table when most people make their future plans. If they were, there might be some very different approaches to decision-making and planning. There’s nothing wrong with long-term planning as long as it is managed with short-term attitudes. How did James put it (4:15)? “If it is the Lord’s will we will live and do this or that.”

Our lives disintegrate when there is no spiritual integration of our past, present and future. A wrong or unresolved view of either our past or our future will impact and influence our experience of the present for the worse. Uncertainty about what has passed or anxiety about what is to come will condemn any-one to fear and fruitlessness in the present. The way the enemy of our lives seeks to control our future is by simply binding us to anything unholy in our present, and thus guaranteeing perpetuity of his rule again tomorrow, and the next day, and the next. Praise the Lord that today is the day of salvation when those demonic determinations can be broken and the enemy’s grip on our future can be broken.

On Sunday, I began by referencing the Thessalonians. They had some concerns. Was the future a hopeless end or an endless hope? What could they be assured about as far as their future was concerned? Their sense of purpose in evangelism, in reaching others, and their sense of edification, taking spiritual care of themselves, were being eroded. Given the threats of temptation and sin, the ever-present fears and anxieties, the loss of boldness and conviction, why does Paul assert the future advent, the return of Christ? Because he knows first of all, that any work of the Holy Spirit that effects our present experience will always both warn and prepare us for our future experience. Secondly, such an awareness will help us to continue to live faithfully in our future, because it motivates us to live lives that are:
• Cleansed: as John put it, everyone who has this hope purifies himself (1 Jn. 3:2-3)
• Consecrated: it is a great incentive for being totally set apart for Christ’s purposes
• Comforted: faith and hope are encouraged because it is God and not governments or
gods who have the last word
• Committed: it completely settles the nature of our commitment to spiritual things and
to spiritual work. It is mainline not a sideline. It is 100% not a 10% tithe mentality. No
one put it more clearly than Jesus himself: “Be dressed ready for service and keep your
lamps burning like men waiting for their master to return…so that when he comes and
knocks they can immediately pen the door for him… It will be good for that servant
whom the master finds so doing when he returns…” (Lk. 12:35-48)

Between 1 Thess.3:13 and 4:13, both verses that speak specifically about the final advent, what do you read about? It’s all about how to live in the present. The facts of the future inform our present. For too many people, the past informs their present more than the future. It is when you are delivered from the accusations and bondages of the past that you can at last experience a sense of future hope. The bondages of the past are exchanged for the blessings of the future. Because the future advent brings accountability, warning, incentive to holy living, it is not surprising that this passage is an urgent exhortation to Christian living in three specific areas of everyday, ordinary life, that are all about a healthy and holy relationship with oneself and with others: Sexual purity (4:3), Brotherly love (4:9), Personal work and faithfulness and diligence (4:11). It’s interesting to note that all these areas of your life will become affected if you lose a sense of where you have come from, of your past, or where you are going, your future. When there is a loss of direction or assurance you begin to drift.

Our main discussion was based on Philippians 3:12 – 4:1. This is Paul taking inventory and I’m going to briefly suggest three components of the way he does it that might be instructive and helpful to us as we weigh and consider time passed and time to come. Paul brings three things to the table in this process. Sadly, I do not have the space to elaborate on these three main points. I really encourage you to download the message as the explanation of each point will help to give you a framework for doing your own personal inventory. The three things Paul brought to the process were:
1. A correct estimate of himself (neither operating out of pride nor presumption and
taking measure of himself in accord with faith and giftings)
2. A concentrated focus (by dealing rightly with the past through godly remembering and
forgetting he was able to have an unobstructed view of the future)
3. A consuming desire (the whole process is infused with a passion for Jesus

Paul is not telling us how to hang-glide when we go off the fiscal cliff or any other cliff or fall for that matter. Are there reasons for being concerned about what the next year holds for us personally and nationally and globally. You bet! What is our posture going to be in the face of whatever transpires? How do we prepare for it? Just as I’ve suggested that Paul exampled. Listen to his summary of the outcome of this kind of spiritual inventory process: “Therefore that is how you should stand firm in the Lord, dear friends.” (4:1) Fiscal cliff? No, firm ground. We know who we are; we know where we’re going.
• Have you reckoned the final advent and the judgment seat of Christ into your future
plans?
• Have you taken care of the baggage that should not be traveling any further with you
into a new year?
• Have you asked the Lord not just to search your heart by His Spirit but help you examine
yourself under his tutelage? Are you open to a correct self-estimate?
• Do you have a right relationship with your past, both in remembering as well as
forgetting? Any things you need to remember to provoke worship and thanksgiving?
Anything to forget? Anything that remains undone? Needs to be completed? Any
obedience? A promise or vow? A commitment? A forgiveness? Are you ready for a
concentrated focus on what is ahead that is freed from any distraction from the past
whether good or bad?
• Are you resolved in your pursuit of Jesus Christ, in your passion and desire for him and
his will for your life, more than anything else?
If you can answer affirmatively to all these questions then the Word promises that you will not be blown off your feet this year, or fall off a cliff, but will indeed stand firm.

I want to wish you all a very blessed new year. Yes, we will be facing many challenges and issues, but how we face them will be determined by the direction we are facing: forgetting what’s behind and forging ahead. What are you taking into 2013? What are you leaving behind? What are you remembering at the end of this year? What are you choosing to forget?

Remember the way that the Lord has led you….forgetting those things that are behind…press on… heavenward…as we eagerly await a savior from there.

Pastorally yours,

Stuart

https://www.christourshepherd.org/pastlet.htm (and follow links to download MP3 audio of sermon)

THANKSGIVING IN THE PSALMS

Psalms

A PASTORAL LETTER

Dear family,

I trust that you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving weekend and that there really was some thanksgiving, stuffing your heart! The sad fact is that we do not seem to be grateful or thankful by our nature. Every parent in the world loses count of the number of times that they have to ask the child to render thanks. It seems to be a trained attitude of mind! It would seem that there are many contrary manifestations of attitudes and inclinations that come very naturally and that oppose the nurture of gratitude. We seem easily discontented and dissatisfied, hard to please, unsubmissive, distrusting, picky, spoiled, opinionated, mean-spirited and hard-hearted, critical and judgmental, independent and self-made; proud with a sense of injured merit, a sense of rights; we seem more easily aware of what we do not have than what we do have. As Dostoyoevsky put it: “If he is not stupid he is monstrously ungrateful. In fact, I believe the best definition of man is ‘the ungrateful biped.’” In our home, every day as we leave and enter, we have to walk by a framed quotation that has hung on our wall for well over two decades, words from one of my very favorite poets, George Herbert. “Thou hast given so much to us. Give one thing more – a grateful heart.” That might be a good daily prayer for you, too!

You could argue that the opening volley of sin in the Garden of Eden, the root of the dynamics of the Fall, was simply ingratitude. God’s goodness is questioned amidst a feast of provision because there is nothing better to think about than what was not allowed. Paul seems to grasp this in Roms. 1 when he describes the root of evil and wickedness as the failure to “give thanks to Him.” (Roms. 1:21) It would seem then that thanksgiving is a significant spiritual power.

On Sunday we agreed that thanksgiving for so many things is big in the psalms, only because the praise of God the giver, happens to be huge. We noticed that thanksgiving is expressed in good times and bad, and the personal commitment of the psalmist to be thankful, becomes his exhortation to all to be thankful, which morphs yet again into the commanding language of Psalm 118 and Psalm 136: “Give thanks to the Lord!” Thanksgiving is not an elective, not an option, not a suggestion.

For the purposes of this letter let me give you the gist of what the Psalms present about thanksgiving and relay it in NT terms, in 5 short, no-nonsense points.

1. “Always giving thanks to God the Father for everything…God created everything to be
received with thanksgiving” (Ephs. 1:20; 1 Tim. 4:2)
2. “Giving thanks in all circumstances…” (1 Thess. 5:18)
3. “thanksgivings be made for everyone…” (1 Tim. 2:1)
4. “whatever…in word or deed….giving thanks to God” (Cols. 3:17)
5. “continually offer to God the fruit of lips giving thanks…” (Hebr. 13:15)

Let me summarize the message on thanksgiving. Thanksgiving is:
• for everything
• for everyone
• in every circumstance
• in every word and deed
• at every moment

That sounds comprehensive and compelling! Any questions? So why are we so thankless? How are you doing? So what things, what people, what circumstances, what words and deeds, what opportunities are outside this call to this obedience? These may just add up to a lot of thanklessness, a lot of ingratitude, a lot of discontent, a lot of complaint, a lot of gossip, a lot of covetousness.

We did look at some other important relationships between thanksgiving and creation, calling, remembrance, prayer, and also healthy community. Did you realize that the health of a church community like ours is impacted, affected, by the thanksgiving quotient of its members? If everyone in the church was exactly like you in the thanksgiving stakes, would we be an encouraged and encouraging church? Let’s get thankfulness-for-one-another etched deep I our hearts and our prayers and our affirming and blessing conversations!

Thankfully yours,

Stuart

http://www.christourshepherd.org/pastlet.htm (and follow links to download MP3 audio of sermon)

PSALMS & CONFESSION

Psalms

Dear Church,

Stuart continued his Psalms Pseries on Sunday, this week focusing on the penitentiary Psalms (6, 32, 38, 51, 102, 130, 143). Because sin abounds, it is not unusual that these have been among the most recited Psalms in the Church through history. Stuart highlighted the vital role of confession in the Christian life, but broadened the category to include more than we would generally think of when we hear the word “confession.” Maybe some of our minds (depending on our background) think of a booth with a priest in it, but Stuart highlighted how confession happens in a community of believers as we confess to one another. We are not called to air our dirty laundry in public, or to confess our deepest sins to the person we just met, but there remains a vital place for confessing our sins, one to another. James 5:16 indicates that by this process we will “be healed.”

But the category of “confession” includes more than the confession of sins. The word “confess” literally means “to say the same thing”, in this case, “to say the same thing as God”. So when we confess our sins, we are agreeing with what God says about the nature of our sin, its offense against him and its detrimental effects on us. But there is another way we can “say the same thing” as God, namely, in worship. The Psalmists, though they are clear about the necessity of confessing our sin to God, are equally clear about the necessity of confessing our faith, which means quite the opposite of apologizing for it! In confessing our faith, we “say the same thing” about God that He says about himself, that He is holy, worthy, lovely, almighty, compassionate, just, and on and on (I pray you can add to this list yourself!).

Our confession of faith serves as the foundation for our confession of sin. It is by our confession of faith that we gain a proper perspective. It is only on account of God’s holiness that we realize our sin to be truly sin. Furthermore, with our confession of faith in view we realize that our sin is first against God, against his character and commands, before it is a sin against anyone else. But also fundamental to our confession of faith is our belief in God’s faithfulness, so that when we confess our sin we can be assured of his forgiveness. Without our confession of faith, we might end up feeling bad about something, but that doesn’t itself lead to repentance.

Jesus himself made a “good confession” (of faith, not sin!) before Pilate (1 Tim 6:12-13), and Paul used this as the model for Timothy, reminding him of the good confession he had made before a body of believers, encouraging Timothy to take hold of this confession more and more and to draw strength from it in his continuing ministry. Note from the example of Christ that we cannot expect our “good confession” to go unopposed.

Finally, confession of faith has two parts, on the one hand rooted in doctrine, and on the other hand expressed in doxology. To put is simply, we worship in truth. Have you made a good confession? Have you confessed the Lordship of Christ and the truth of his saving death and resurrection, of his offer of eternal life by faith in him? Is this something that leads you to a deeper and richer worship of God? And does all of this cause you to mourn your sin against this God, leading you to repentance?

May our confessions be true this week, whether they are about God or ourselves, and may our worship abound more and more to the God who is forever praised.


Rich blessings,

Ben

https://www.christourshepherd.org/pastlet.htm (and follow links to download MP3 audio of sermon)