5 Things to Remember (and Proclaim) in the Face of the Sexual Revolution

[Below you'll find the prepared message and video of the two Sunday morning worship service of Living Water Lutheran Church for Sunday, February 12. I want to thank Pastor Bryan Wolfmueller, who I've never met, for a sermon that inspired me to use the approach to the Gospel lesson I used. He provided a good context for the message I preached. But, of course, it's God's Word--Law and Gospel--that most inspired me. I pray people will find it helpful.]





Matthew 5:21-37

The Sexual Revolution began in this country and in western Europe about sixty years ago.

It started with the idea that because sexual intimacy is a natural human desire, it needn’t be confined to those married to each other and ought to be expressed in any way a person wishes.

Open Marriage, a best-selling book published in 1972, declared that, “Sexual fidelity is the false god of closed marriage…” And, the authors wrote, “We are not recommending outside sex, but we are not saying that it should be avoided, either. The choice is entirely up to you."

Starting in the Seventies, the revolution fostered more widespread acceptance of homosexuality.

And in its current iteration, this revolution is about “gender fluidity,” in which people can choose gender or no gender. 

Now, a sermon is no place for a preacher to talk about how public policy regarding sexual mores has changed or maybe should be changed. Those are political and legal questions. Churches and pastors should address such matters only in rare and specific circumstances.

But the sexual revolution isn’t primarily a political movement.

Effectively, it’s a religion subscribed to by millions of people, many of them our neighbors and family members, many in churches.

This religion tells us that whatever one’s sexual preferences, “Love is love.”

It tells us that a kind of redemption and freedom happens when we follow whatever our sexual impulses may be.

It tells us, as a prospective groom, explaining why he was living with his fiance, told a pastor, “You wouldn’t buy a car without taking it for a test drive,” as though the people we marry are commodities that need to measure up to our standards.

This false religion also tells Christians that if we don’t agree with the ethic of the sexual revolution, we are repressed bigots and haters. (I get that one on Twitter from time to time.)

So, what can Christians do or say in the face of the sexual revolution?

The first thing we can do is remember (and proclaim) that there is nothing intrinsically bad about sexuality or sex. Sex is God’s idea. God invented it. Genesis tells us that “God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.” (Genesis 1:26) Christian faith isn’t anti-sex any more than people who build dams to prevent floods are anti-river.

The second thing we can do is remember (and proclaim) that sexual intimacy is a gift from God for husbands and wives committed to each other for life. Faithless, abusive marriage partners may destroy their marriage covenant with partners seeking to be faithful to Christ and to their partners. But God’s intention is that sexual intimacy will exist in lifelong heterosexual marriages. “A man leaves his father and mother and is united to his wife, and they become one flesh,” Genesis 2:24 tells us. Marriages including sexual intimacy were part of the creation God called “very good.” Or, as it’s put in the Hebrew in which most of the Old Testament was written, “Tov. Tov.”: “Good! Good!” (Genesis 1:31)

Thirdly, we can remember and proclaim the Sixth Commandment that Jesus cites in today’s Gospel lesson. “You shall not commit adultery.” This is God’s Law and whenever law, holy or secular, is brought up, we human beings look for loopholes. “Two consenting adults,” someone will say, “can’t be committing adultery if neither one is married.”

The English word adultery is related to the verb adulterate. It means “to corrupt, debase, or make impure by the addition of a foreign or inferior substance or element.” In God’s eyes, we adulterate the pure gift of marriage when sexual intimacy happens outside of marriage. Adulterating marriage is not what God wills for us and the condemnation for this sin is no different from God’s condemnation for any other sin.

Now, if all of this weren’t convicting enough, Jesus tells us in today’s Gospel lesson: “I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart.” (Matthew 5:28)

We violate the Sixth Commandment then, whenever we entertain lustful thoughts about others or give these thoughts a place in our imaginations, any time we see sexual intimacy as a commodity–a thing in itself–to be used outside of the marriage covenant.

Jesus then goes on to speak metaphorically about our need to get rid of any element of our lives or thinking that turns us away from God’s will in this matter. “It is better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to go into hell.” (Matthew 5:30)

Critical though we Christians must be regarding the sexual revolution however, we need to remember two additional truths from God.

The first is that none of us is guiltless when it comes to the Sixth Commandment. (And all the other commandments!).

If we say otherwise, we fall for a self-righteous delusion. The Bible teaches us that “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” (Romans 3:23)

The Sixth Commandment, along with the other nine commandments, convict us of sin.

We sin when we put other things ahead of God; resist spending time hearing God’s Word; dishonor parents and others charged with leading us; lie, covet, or steal. When we hold grudges, let bitterness invade our relationships, or commit adultery. We can violate God’s commands in thought, word, OR deed.

So, we dare not let our critique of the sexual revolution turn into an excuse for bragging about how wonderful we are.

As Christians, we should be proclaiming God’s truth on these matters not from self-righteousness, but to remind ourselves and others of God’s love for all people.

The Bible tells us that “the wages of sin [any sin] is death.” (Romans 6:23)

But God asks in Ezekiel 18:23: “Do I take any pleasure in the death of the wicked? Rather, [He goes on to say] am I not pleased when they turn from their ways and live?”

This leads us to the final thing we need to remember and proclaim on this subject: The God we know in Jesus Christ has entered our world to give us a new, a better, and an eternal way of life.

Jesus says of all of us born “lost in our sin”: “The Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost.” (Luke 19:10)

This includes violations of the Sixth Commandment.

To the woman caught in adultery who didn’t run from acknowledging her sin, Jesus said after He chased her self-righteous accusers away, “Neither do I condemn you. Go now and leave your life of sin.” (John 8:11)

To the woman at the Samaritan well, Jesus offered “living water”--Him and His grace and forgiveness–”welling up to eternal life.” (John 4:1-14)

The wonderful thing about the God we meet in Jesus Christ is that He doesn’t wait for us to get our acts together before He takes action to save us from our sin.

He dies on a cross to take our punishment for sin before we even knew that sin brings eternal damnation to hell.

Before we knew we were sinners in need of a Savior, Jesus said, “It is finished!”

Every one of us can and is called to repent for all our sins and to trust that when Jesus died for us, then rose again to open up eternity and new life to all who repent and believe in Him, He did it for us!

Jesus is bigger than your sin, friend.

Jesus has borne your sin.

Jesus has conquered your sin.

God justifies and makes saints of sinners who, by the power of God’s Spirit-borne Word receive Jesus’ call with gratitude: “Repent and believe the good news!” (Mark 1:15)

At the beginning of the Sermon on the Mount, of which today’s Gospel lesson is a part, Jesus said, “Blessed is the poor in spirit.” (Matthew 5:3)

The “poor in spirit” are all those who, on hearing God’s Law, such as, “You shall not commit adultery,” recognize that they are far from guiltless.

It’s the poor in spirit, convicted for their sin, who are then ready to hear the Gospel–the good news–that Jesus gives forgiveness and everlasting life with God to all who turn to Him in trust and are empowered by God to believe.

Sisters and brothers in Christ, let us not be proud in either self-righteousness or in resisting God’s good will for our lives.

But let us speak God’s truth in love, including both the truth that the sexual revolution that pervades our culture is the way of sin, selfishness, condemnation, and death, AND the truth that forgiveness, joy, and new and everlasting life belong to all who daily turn from sin and follow Jesus.

No sinner will be morally perfect on this side of the resurrection of the dead Jesus gives to all who believe. But any sinner who daily entrusts their sins and their lives to Jesus will live in the joy of forgiven sin, will be given the power of God to live more in God’s grace, even in the midst of a world gone mad with sin, and will one day stand in the presence of God, our sin eternally covered in the righteousness of our sinless Savior Jesus.

That’s the message that God has called this sinner justified only by God’s grace through faith in Christ to proclaim to you today.

And this is the message it is our joy to remember (and proclaim) to all we meet. Amen

Is the Biblical view of homosexuality unloving?

Genesis 1:27
Matthew 19:4-6
1 John 4:8
In thirty-two years of ministry, I have counseled with one person who confessed to being gay to me. It happened many years ago. For this person to do so took great courage; they knew my Christian convictions about the practice of homosexuality. But the reason for their telling me was clear enough: They wanted some Christian they trusted to listen to them speak of their struggles with their sexual orientation.

And so the person told me simply, “I’m gay, pastor.” I responded in the only way I knew how to as a Christian and a pastor. I put my hand on that person’s hand and told them, “I understand and I want you to know that I love you and that God loves you too.”

In telling that person that God loved them, I wasn’t encouraging them to give into their own personal impulse to engage in homosexual relationships. But just as I would use God’s love as the starting point in conversations with any person struggling with temptation, I began with God’s love.

Love is always the place God starts in helping us to deal with temptation or sin in our lives.

As Luther points out in The Small Catechism, even God’s moral law, as summarized in the Ten Commandments, begins with the words, “I am the Lord your God, Who brought you out of Egypt…”

God and His Word always begin in love. We see this in Jesus: God sent His Son Jesus into this world to save sinners; and if we are willing to turn from sin (and to keep turning from sin) and to believe in Him (and to keep believing in Him), God will save us for life with Him that lasts for all eternity.

But, as we deal with tonight’s question, “Is the Biblical view of homosexuality unloving?” we need to briefly mention a few facts we know about God through His Word and through Jesus, God’s Word made flesh.

Fact one: To suffer temptation is no sin. Every human being who has ever walked this planet, even Jesus, Who was both true God and true man, gets tempted to sin.

The orientation to homosexual behavior is no worse than the orientation to sin which is universal to human experience and no different from the particular sins that might have special appeal to us. (I often joke that we all have our own favored personal sins of specialization, along with all the other sins to which everyone else is drawn.)

Had I told the counselee who confessed to being gay that they were damned for their sexual orientation, I not only would have been unloving, I would have been lying.

Fact two: No sin is worse than any other sin. James 2:10 says: “For whoever keeps the whole law and yet stumbles at just one point is guilty of breaking all of it.”

All sin is a violation of God’s holiness and will. To judge the gay person involved with one or more people sexually to be worse than the heterosexual person involved with others sexually or than the person who routinely takes God’s name in vain, is wrong.

Sin is sin. And the wages of sin is death. But all who own their sin at the cross, trusting in what Christ accomplished there, has forgiveness and life with God.

Fact three: Love is not approval. When Jesus prevented a judgmental mob from stoning a woman caught in adultery, He didn’t tell her, “Go back and keep doing what you were doing.” He told her, "Go now and leave your life of sin." (John 8:11)

Fact four: We in the Church hold what Jesus calls “the keys to the kingdom.” That means that we have the delegated responsibility to proclaim God’s forgiveness to the repentant and His condemnation to the unrepentant.

We are to speak God’s truth, even God’s uncomfortable truth, in love (Ephesians 4:15).

Imagine, for a moment, that you’re standing in front of the church building and you see two young people go out to play in the middle of Miamsiburg-Centerville Road.

Would you say to yourself, “That must be what they like to do”?

Or would you, instead, say something to warn them of the dangers in doing what they’re doing?

Love would compel you to warn them, I think.

Just so, the loving exercise of “the keys of the kingdom” should call us to tell anyone who asks what God has to say about the unrepentant practice of homosexuality: it places those who engage in it in a state of separation from God, no matter how much we love them.

So, what exactly does God’s Word say about homosexuality?

Exodus 20:14 tells us, “You shall not commit adultery.” This is the sixth commandment, which The Small Catechism explains: “We should fear and love God so that in matters of sex we are chaste and disciplined in our words and actions, and that husband and wife love and honor each other.”

The covenant of marriage between a man and a woman is meant by God to be the exclusive place in which sexual intimacy happens.

Now, let’s be honest: Jesus says that even when a husband looks lustfully on another woman, he violates this command. So, the chances are that no human being is guiltless when it comes to the sixth commandment. Not one. (If you think you are guiltless of violating this command, see me after worship. We'll talk. But you'll have a lot of convincing to do!)

But, whatever our sexual orientation, our call remains the same, to repent and believe in the gospel, the good news of new life through Jesus (Mark 1:15).

A section of Leviticus is known as the holiness code. Unlike other parts of Leviticus, which contains ritual/sacrificial law no longer valid because Jesus has become the once-and-for-all definitive sacrifice for our sins and civil laws meant to govern a theocratic nation that no longer exists (ancient Israel), the holiness code is an elaboration by God of the ten commandments. It's part of what the theologians call God’s moral law. One elaboration of the sixth commandment is in Leviticus 18:22. God says: “Do not have sexual relations with a man as one does with a woman; that is detestable.”

Of course, some people who think that there’s a divide between the God of the Old Testament and the God revealed in Jesus will object to our even mentioning passages from the Old Testament.

Such people haven’t paid attention to either Old or New Testament.

Jesus says of the Old Testament’s moral law: “Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them” (Matthew 5:17).

Yes, some may say, but Jesus never condemned homosexual intimacy as a sin.

That’s not entirely true.

Every time Jesus spoke of sexuality, He spoke of it as something that happens exclusively within a marriage between a woman and a man. He quoted Genesis: “For this reason a man will leave his father and his mother and will live with his wife. The two will become one” (Matthew 19:5).

Homosexual practice was far more prevalent in first century Rome than it is today; yet Jesus always puts sexual intimacy within the bounds of a heterosexual marriage with three partners: God, a woman, and a man.

So, is God’s will about sexuality and homosexuality as expressed by Jesus and in various places in Scripture unloving?

For me, this boils down to one simple question: What is God’s reason for making us sexual beings? I think that the Bible identifies three reasons.

First, God intends to acclimate us to what a relationship with God is like.

God is eternal; we are mortal.

God is spirit; we are physical.

And yet, in Jesus, God reaches out to us and calls us to be in relationship with One Who is totally different from us, totally other.

Ephesians 5 and other passages of Scripture imply that marriage is a metaphor for our relationship with God in Christ. We marry the opposite and in that relationship, God intends for us to be made as complete as it's possible to be in an earthly relationship (despite all of the ways married people have created to get in the way of that happening), just as we are made eternally complete through our relationship with Christ.

Man and woman complement each other. They are the same but different.

In Genesis 2:23 [ESV], we’re told that Adam looked on the woman God made to be his wife and declared that she was the same, but different: “This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man.”

People may experience a kind of love and sexual excitement in homosexual relationships, but they won’t be all that God intends for us.

We are most challenged to be our best selves, our fullest selves, in relationships with the other, not in those with the same.

Ephesians 5 says that husbands and wives are both to submit to each other in the same way that we are to submit to Christ. It's in the surrender to “the other” that God liberates us to be who God made us to be.

There are two other reasons that God made sexuality for married couples, I think: to provide pleasurable intimacy to one another and, when it is God’s will, to share their love with children.

In the Old Testament, Sarah gave expression to both of these purposes when she asked God about His improbable promise that she, in her nineties, would, for the first time, become the mother of a child: "After I am worn out and my lord [my husband] is old, will I now have this pleasure?" (Genesis 18:12) God’s answer was, “Yes!”

The gift of sexuality comes from God. God thought it up. He created it.

And it is a gift of love that He intends to protect from any adulteration of these three purposes.

God doesn’t say no to sexual intimacy outside of marriage because He hates us, but because He loves us and wants us to use His gift as it was (and) is intended.

In this, as in so many other aspects of our lives, even when we don't think it's true, God is love.

[You might also be interested in my take on the Supreme Court ruling on gay marriage. In a nutshell, as a civil matter of law for our pluralistic society, it didn't really bother me that much. Read the whole thing.]

[Blogger Mark Daniels is pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio. This was the final installment of our midweek Lenten series, Tough Questions.]

Lord, give me more faith in Christ than in my sins

Today, for my quiet time with God, I prayerfully reflected on Luke, chapter 13. Two verses particularly caught my attention. Jesus is the speak in both:

"...unless you repent, you too all will perish." (v. 3) 

"...unless you repent, you too will all perish." (v. 5)

Jesus has evidently sensed the desire of the crowd surrounding Him for His take on two recent tragic events that people were talking about.

One the murder ordered by the Roman governor, Pilate, of Galileans (natives of the region in which Jesus was raised), who were at the moments of their deaths, offering sacrifices at the temple in Jerusalem. (As I read this today, I found myself thinking of the Christians engaging in Bible study at the South Carolina church where a racist white man gunned the believers down last year.)

The other incident to which Jesus refers is one in which eighteen people were killed when a tower at a place called Siloam collapsed on them.

I infer from how Jesus couches His words in these verses in Luke's gospel, that He hears a note of judgment in the crowd's discussion of at least one of these events.

When horrible tragedies happen, people are desperate in their search for explanations, in their craving for orderliness, and in their hope that their own virtues will exempt them from the bad things that happen to people in this marred and imperfect world.

But Jesus tells them not to get any ideas about easy explanations or about their possessing a moral superiority that will make them bulletproof in the face of life's harshest possibilities.

Then, He tells the crowd, twice, that without repentance, they will perish. Of course, when Jesus speaks of perishing, He has in mind eternal separation from God, the only Source of life.

I feel chastened by this passage, not because I judge life's victims guilty for the tragedies that befall them. God forbid!

I know that bad things happen to faithful people. Job, in the Old Testament, was a righteous man. Yet he was hit by multiple tragedies. And personally, I've known many people--faithful, loving, believing people--whose lives have been dogged by tragedy and loss or who themselves, died too young.

Furthermore, Jesus makes it clear that repentant believers aren't exempt from pain in this life. "In this world," Jesus said once, "you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world!" (John 16:33)

And He says that God "...causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous" (Matthew 5:45).

Sure that God isn't a monster who picks out life's "winners and losers," I would never think of blaming the victims of tragedy for their tragic circumstances.

But Jesus' words still caught my breath today. He chastened me by His serious, implacable, non-negotiable call and command that I repent.

I realized that sometimes, more often than even I know, I'm sure, I take God's grace so much for granted that I fudge on repentance.

I often offer perfunctory mouthings of confession with little intention of changing the way I do business from day to day.

Truth be told, at a functional, life-level, I can be more interested in God justifying my sins--"O, that's OK, Mark. Nothing damaged," I imagine the chump version of God I seem to sometimes erect in my mind--than in justifying, rendering righteous and new and horrified by sin, this clump of God-stuff, Mark.

The good news is that Mark can be justified. (You can be too.)

But to receive the justification by grace through faith in Jesus Christ, which is the central promise of Christian faith, bringing new and eternal life to all who trust in Christ, there must be a genuine brokenheartedness--not necessarily emotional, but real--for my sin.

There must be a genuine desire--not measured in goosebumps, but in the surrender of my will--for God to flush from my life, to rip violently from my existence, the sins of which God's Word and the Holy Spirit have made me aware.  I must cling to God and not to my sins!

No one is without sin, of course. No one can be aware of all of their sins when they lay themselves with honesty and transparency before God. And no one repents perfectly even when we do repent with a broken heart and a surrendered will. That's OK. God judges our lives on the grace curve as we trust in Christ.

But, here's the point: Freedom from sin isn't permission to sin.

Grace isn't a blank check to spit on the revealed will of God.

Jesus told the woman caught in adultery who He had protected from a judging crowd that had been about to stone her to death, "Go and sin no more" (John 8:11). I've preached and taught many times that, while that woman lived on this imperfect earth, she could never lead a sinless life. (Any more than you and I can.) But, I've also taught that, after Christ protected her from the eternal consequences of her sin--which is what God's forgiveness does for us--the intention of her heart, in light of such grace, should have been not to sin again.

That should be my intention too, every time I repent and know that I am forgiven.

Often though, after repenting, I turn around and commit the same sin for which I just repented, whether in word, dead, or thought.

I confess egotism and self-absorption, then think egotistically or with self-worship.

I confess coveting something, say "Amen," and covet again.

And so it goes.

Though I know better, I act as though I think some sins are more serious than others. It is true that some sins can have graver earthly consequences. In this world, murder brings worse consequences on the murderer than taking God's name in vain does on the speaker. In the civil realm, this is perfectly understandable and appropriate. But, in the eyes of eternity, all sin is equally horrible as violations of God's holiness and of God's will for me as a human being. I know that. But I don't always live like I know it.

Repentance isn't an onerous duty, of course. Repentance brings joy as the repentant, entrusting her or his sins to Christ, is set free from sin's power and enabled by the Holy Spirit to live in that freedom.

All too often though, I treat God's forgiveness as though it untethers me from the life-giving bond of love for God and love for neighbor that all sins violates. I misunderstand my freedom and I go from bondage to bondage, exchanging chains for chains, if I don't prayerfully and actively live in the freedom of forgiven sin.

Father, when I repent, help me to leave my sin with You. Holy Spirit, through the Word, through Christian friends, shout Your directions to me and give me more faith in Christ than in the momentary pleasures of my favorite sins. In Jesus' name. Amen

[Blogger Mark Daniels is the pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church, Centerville, Ohio.]