One Flesh: People of the Word - Night One
Preached by Jason Abbott
May 3, 2015
A time of confession: We’ve not been (with sexuality) what we’re called to be.
Multiplying broken marriages and infidelities
Worshiping pornography and sexual gratification
Valuing sex according to the word on the street rather than the word of God
Dreaming of sexual encounters with others rather than our spouse
Dating the television set and computer rather than our husband or wife
Teaching our children that sex is dirty and bad rather than divine and good
Undervaluing singleness and overvaluing marriage
Priding ourselves on our figures rather than on our faithfulness
Serving ourselves with our sexuality rather than God
A time of prayer: Lead a corporate prayer of confession.
Three Questions:
How do Christians know right from wrong with sex?
How do Christians interpret what they know about right and wrong with sex?
How does sex in the Garden stretch Christians in two directions?
Prayer
1. How do Christians know right from wrong with sex?
In determining right from wrong with anything (sex is really no exception), we need to know what the thing was designed for; in short, we must determine what its ultimate purpose is.Let me illustrate. When I was younger I would raid our cabinets after school. I would come home like most middle schoolers just starving for something to eat, and I would rummage through my parents’ cabinets looking for a prize.One day I thought I had hit the mother-load when I came across a giant bar of chocolate. I mean this bar was colossal—thick and robust and even unopened. Without hesitation, I ripped into it intending to devour the whole bar of chocolate. I wasn't going to leave a flake for the rest of my family.Then, after the first bite, my appetite and my aspiration for the chocolate were both crushed; it was bitter and unsweetened and chalky and horrible really! See, little did I know, there are types of chocolate—even giant bars of chocolate—that were never intended to be consumed by themselves. Rather, they were created for baking things. They were created for the ultimate purpose of baking brownies and cakes and other deserts.I learned the bitter lesson that purpose determines good use from bad use. Something’s purpose determines right use from wrong use. And, so it is with sex. As Christians, we must first determine God’s ultimate purpose for creating sex before we can determine what’s right and wrong in sex.This brings us to Scripture. Believers are to be people of the Book, the Bible. Friends, Christianity does not exist apart from the Bible since, without it, we have no specific revelation from God. See, God without the Bible cannot be known because he has not spoken. He is merely the unknowable god of agnosticism.But, Christians maintain that God has spoken and has preserved his speech in the Bible—from Genesis to Revelation, from the first book to the last book of it. Moreover, because God has spoken, we believe that we can know our real purpose and know, therefore, the real purpose of our sexuality.So, here then is the foundation for these two nights on God’s design for sex: In order to know what is right and wrong—in the realm of our sexual practice— Christians must first establish what the Bible claims the ultimate purpose of sex is.In short, the Christian life must be conformed to the ultimate purpose of God for sex (and everything else) as revealed in the Bible—and not the opposite of this (i.e. the Bible being conformed to our human purposes).Thus, how do Christians know right from wrong with sex?The answer: We seek to find God’s ultimate purpose for sex as it’s revealed in his word, the Bible.This brings us to a more complicated question. Namely:
2. How do Christians interpret what they know about right and wrong with sex?
So, if the Bible is to be our final source of knowledge about our purpose, how do we read or interpret what we find? How do we rightly interpret and know our purpose and our sexuality’s purpose?
a. There’s no quarrel between Jesus and Paul.
Inside the Church, when disagreements arise about God’s purposes for sex, typically those who want to blaze a new trail in sexual practice set Jesus and Paul in opposition to one another. One writer likens this method of Bible interpretation to a cage match. He explains:
[Jesus and Paul] are put into a hermeneutical cage in which they are made to fight until one or the other says “uncle.”…Will Paul and his war-loving, death penalty-supporting, patriarchal vision win out? Or will Jesus and his peace-loving, enemy-forgiving, egalitarian vision win out? It’s the red letters versus the black letters.1
If you’re at all like me then your initial feeling is that clearly Jesus must win. After all, he’s God in human flesh.However, there is a problem with this feeling that Jesus’ words are superior in some way to Paul’s words (or any other biblical writer’s words for that matter). The problem is called inspiration. This is the teaching “that the Holy Spirit divinely guided the writing of Scripture.” And, it’s why we call the Bible the word of God, not the word of Paul or of Moses or of Isaiah or of Peter.So what God wanted to record through the personality of Paul, he recorded. What God wanted to record through the distinct personality of Moses, he recorded. In fact, this is what Christians have believed and have maintained for millennia about the entire text of the Bible. Consequently, if we suppose that Jesus and Paul are in some kind of interpretive cage match, we’re really putting God against God in such a match. And, God will not be divided!Perhaps at this point, you’re thinking: I’m not sure I believe in inspiration. Well, if you’re a non-Christian, that’s fine; I wouldn't expect you to believe in it. However, if you’re a believer and you think this, you have two greater problems that now confront you.
You have to now determine which passages of the Bible are God’s word, and which passages of the Bible are not God’s word. Good luck with that.
You have to recognize that you don’t have an unmediated Jesus either. You see, we have Jesus’ words as recorded by the inspired human writers. For the most part—Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Therefore, if you toss the doctrine of inspiration, you have to ask yourself whether you can actually know Jesus.
So, inspiration is a really big deal. And, with this doctrine of inspiration, we must accept that Jesus and Paul and all the writers of the Bible sing in harmony. And this includes the topic of human sexuality
b. Context is king.
When I was in seminary, the pastor of my church taught me this little saying: A text with no context is a pretext to say what you want to say. What did he mean? Well, he meant that context is king if we want to know and teach what the Bible really says. And, he wanted to warn me against using the Bible to say the things which I personally wanted to say.Suppose you and I were picking two teams for a summer basketball league. We've got a roster of players before us with stats from their last season of play. You’re picking one team and I’m picking another.Imagine we both need a point guard but it’s your pick and there are two left. I draw your attention to the two players’ stats—one averaged 30 points a game while the other averaged 12 points a game. I point out that they’re each 6 feet tall, and I urge you to hurry up and make your pick. So which player do you choose? Obviously, you choose the one who averaged 30 points.What if I then started fist-pumping and quickly added the other point guard to my team? You’d want to know what about that pick had made me so happy. You’d want to know more about the players. You’d want a fuller context, right?!Averaging 30 a game as opposed to 12 a game seems to make things clear unless those 30 were scored in a local YMCA rec-league and those 12 in the NBA. Do you see how much context matters to the meaning?This is especially true as we read our Bibles for meaning. Context counts! We must be willing to establish as much context of a passage as we possibly can. Who was the author? Who was the audience? What challenges were they facing? What genre is the literature—poetry, history, prophecy?Before you’re too overwhelmed by the prospect of answering such questions in order to establish context, let me simply suggest most of these context questions will be quickly cleared up by just reading a good study Bible. So, please get one and make context king in your study of the Scriptures.
3. How does sex in the Garden stretch Christians in two directions?
Let me, for just a few moments, offer up a passage for our consideration. Genesis 2:18-25:18 Then the LORD God said, “It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him.” 19 Now out of the ground the LORD God had formed every beast of the field and every bird of the heavens and brought them to the man to see what he would call them. And whatever the man called every living creature, that was its name. 20 The man gave names to all livestock and to the birds of the heavens and to every beast of the field. But for Adam there was not found a helper fit for him. 21 So the LORD God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and while he slept took one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh. 22 And the rib that the LORD God had taken from the man he made into a woman and brought her to the man. 23 Then the man said,“This at last is bone of my bonesand flesh of my flesh;she shall be called Woman,because she was taken out of Man.”24 Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh. 25 And the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed.Let me make a few brief observations from this passage as we close.
a. Inspiration counts: The gospel according to Moses.
What do I mean? I mean the same Spirit who worked to give us God’s word in the gospels worked through Moses to give us God’s word here.I mean everything about the message in this passage (including sexuality) is in harmony with the message of Jesus in Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Why? Because of the doctrine of inspiration! The same Spirit speaks.
b. Context is king here.
This book is given to the nation of Israel following their rescue from slavery. They are in the dessert headed for the Promised Land. And the big deal there is that God will dwell in that land with his people (as long as they are faithful to him).Into this context, God through Moses gives them the history of humankind. And, surprise!, there was another perfect land with the first man and woman in it. In that land, they walked and spoke with God, and it was good and very good there until, of course, they were unfaithful to God and were expelled.So, when these Israelites received this beautiful picture of God in the Garden with his people, what do you think they thought about? I imagine they thought: That’s how it’s supposed to be for us. We’re to have this kind of faithful, intimate relationship with God in the Promised Land. We must live as Adam and Eve lived in Genesis 1 and 2—obeying the commands of God—if we want it to last.Consequently, this little picture from Genesis 2 is the relationship standard for those who would have originally received it. It is the ideal; it is the narrative depicting how things were meant to be and should be.
c. This is an important picture of things.
Why is it important? It’s important because it gives us a tiny, little glimpse into life in an un-fallen world—into life as God intends for it to be.Thus, when we consider the practice of sexuality in it, we get a rare view. We get the view of sexuality as God originally created it to be—perfect sexuality. And it should both restrain our notions of sex and stretch them.
Restrains our notion of sex: Adam has one partner; Eve has one partner; God created them specifically for one another. (Consider the implications.)
Stretches our notion of sex: The sexual union that joins Adam to Eve creates such intimacy that it transcends all other human relationships. (Consider the implications.)
1Denny Burk, What Is The Meaning Of Sex?, 62
