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Love Sex & Marriage Talk 1: Laying the Foundations |
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| Speaker: Phillip Jensen, @ the Bible Talks, www.MatthiasMedia.com.au | ||
Talk 1 – Laying the
Foundations
-
the order should in fact be
‘love, marriage and sex’ -
quite a few non-Christians have
become converted through listening to the love, sex & marriage talks
because they found that the Christian worldview of love, sex and marriage
makes more sense. (1)
THE CULTURE WAR We
are living in a society which is at war with itself. We are living in a culture war. We are living in a culture
war because the Christian ideals embraced by society over the previous
centuries are now under attack, having been steadily eroded over the 19th
and 20th centuries. They
are now under virulent attack, and the consequence of the erosion of these
Christian values is that our society
is now very unstable as it moves forward.
As society seeks to destroy Christianity, it is in effect, going
off the rails into self-destruction.
The New York Jewish historian Getrude Himmelfarm? noted in ‘The Demoralisation of Society’ that between 1800 and 1960, the percentage of children born outside of marriage was around 5-7%. Since 1960-1995, this has risen to be 35%. This is a dramatic social change that we need to understand. It is a HUGE social change. Since the 1960’s we’ve seen the popularisation of gays, the lowering of the age of consent, defacto relationships becoming widespread and accepted, less stringent censorship…and the list goes on. These things would’ve been unimaginable back in the 1960s. Society
has gone through
massive social upheaval, and we are now living in new uncharted waters.
What we see as ‘normal’ today is in fact, in the history of
mankind, very abnormal. Because
we have never seen this in the history of mankind before. This
change is directed mostly directed at Christianity. [Divorce costs alot of money for the government.
It is a growing disease; divorce and failed relationships is pain
and heartache; it is not only a statistic.]
Society is now made of ‘users’ – people use each other
for self-gratification; and we can be callous and shameless by not
admitting that society is wrong. On
the subject of divorce, divorce is never a private affair – it is
the tearing of the fabric of society, because society is made of
relationships itself. Thus
the devastation and damage of divorce is horrific.
We have a major problem which is personal, and we see it in our
fear of commitment. Nowadays
we have people marrying later and postponing children.
This is an example of people fearful of making commitments.
And the more fearful we are of making commitments, the less likely
we are to have a satisfying and satisfactory relationship.
All of this is caught up in the failure of the sexual revolution.
It’s a culture war which Christians have much to contribute to. You
see, atheism has been tried and failed over the past few decades.
The utilitarian atheist says ‘lets do experiments and we’ll
live by scientific methodology; we’ll live by the method which is the
best way to live as our experiments will show.’
The sexual revolution has tried that for the past 30 years and has
failed – it has not delivered better families, less abused
mothers, better children etc. At
almost every point, the sexual revolution has failed.
But we cannot turn the clock back societal, so we don’t know what
to do about this sexual revolution. In
the meantime it continues to run rampant and destroy lives.
However,
we need to remember though that people are sinful, and sin occurs in
generation, and from it merely changes the way that it appears in each
generation. Phillip is not
suggesting that we go back to the white picket fences of the 1960s.
We
need instead to reject the ways of this world by embracing the creator and
the gospel of forgiveness. (2)
GUIDANCE AND THE VOICE OF GOD a)
The Sufficiency of Scripture We
have choices to make; lots of little choices to make in life.
How do we make them as people of God?
The key is the sufficiency of scripture (it is found in the
bible). Whatever is in the
bible is what God wants us to be doing.
God
can guide in any way he wants to, but there is a difference between what
God can do and what God has promised to do.
He doesn’t promise to guide you through using a talking donkey,
though he can do it. But he has
promised that he will guide you by his Word. But
there is a difference between unconscious guidance and conscious
participation guidance. In
‘unconscious guidance’, (Rom 8:28), God is at work in all
things; he uses all things for our good – our parents, school, ability
to play sports etc. Absolutely
everything that is happening is under the sovereign control of God for our
good; he is in control of the whole world to bring about his good purposes
for his people. With
‘conscious participation guidance’ – God calls upon you to
respond appropriately to particular situations in life. He expects us to be wise and make wise choices (Ps 111, Ps
25, 2 Tim 3). He addresses us
through the bible so we have the information necessary to help us make the
decisions that we need to make wisely.
Eg. Sexuality – is
one of our most biggest decisions/choice in life.
And this leads on to the big picture of the scriptures, which is… b)
The place of reason in God’s created order and the plans and purpose of
God We
are made in the image of God to rule a world which makes sense to us.
Therefore, we are not animals, we make choices.
We learn from the world as to how to live in the world.
The
key to understanding the big picture of what the world is doing is
understanding what God is doing to the world.
The answer is this: God is working for our good, and is taking us
into the image of his son, Jesus Christ.
In
contrast, the atheist’s life is pointless – there is no meaning to
life because there is no purpose to life.
BUT, our purpose in life is to be conformed to the image of God’s
son – Jesus. Most
people want a purpose in life, but on top of that, they want to make up or
invent their own purpose. If
you want to be an atheist and invent your own purpose to life, there is
essentially no purpose to life. You
need to accept the maker’s purpose.
A thing only has a purpose if it is made and owned by somebody
else. If you’ve been made by somebody for a purpose, then your
purpose cannot be determined by you; it needs to be determined by your
maker. For this reason,
atheists don’t work. Let’s
look at a few bible passages: Ephesians
1:4,10 – God’s aim is to unite all things under Christ.
This is the Christian worldview. 2
Thessalonians 2:13 – we are chosen so we can be living for the glory of
the Lord Jesus Christ in the end. We
aren’t an accident. We are
to be like God, like Christ. Ephesians
5:22,25,28 – talks about the creation of the wife for the husband and
the two becoming one. When
God was creating Eve for Adam, he was actually talking about creating the
church for Christ – to provide a people for his Son who could be united
with him. See Rev 19:6
onwards. When God creates the
world in the beginning, he was creating a bride for Christ. Therefore
our marriage, sexuality and the like is all caught up in the gigantic plan
of God – that being God is making us in the image of his Son, to so that
we will be united with him in the end days as a bride to Christ.
We need to understand this bigger picture first in order to make
godly decisions. (3)
CONFUSING FACTORS a)
‘Pure Sex’ To
get out of our culture we need to read the bible. As a backdrop to what happened during the 1960s, during the
100 years before the 1960s, all the philosophers (eg. Sigmund Freud)
rejected the bible, argued outside of their area of expertise, were all
rejected in their own discipline, were all themselves sexually decadent,
immoral etc, and were all trying to justify their own decadence through
phoney scholarship which they forced upon the community, and in the long
run, others have shown that they fudged their results.
We
need to understand the intellectual failed corrupt forces in the 1960s. In
the 1960s, baby boomers became sexually mature all at the same time.
The teaching that had occurred in the previous century expounded by
those philosophers exploded in the people of the baby boomer generation in
the 1960s. We
are all caught up in these philosophies and moods of society.
For
example, utilitarianism’s ‘just do it’ attitude is now sweeping
today’s society. It teaches
that if society thinks its okay to do it, then you should also do it. And having crossed a certain point/line, it’s practically
impossible to go back on this attitude.
Yet television keeps teaching this ‘just do it’ attitude, show
after show is teaching it. Eg.
Nowadays people are more and more often assuming being engaged as being
pregnant, eg in the movie ‘While you were sleeping’.
A generation ago this assumption would’ve been unthinkable!
We
live in a feeling generation, not a thinking generation.
Therefore, romance and romantic movies have a profound effect on
us. But we don’t understand
that these romantic ideals come from an ideal of the 13th
century, but it’s not what the bible teaches. But
pure sex is a personal matter. We’ve
connected sex with status, success, and a social pecking order.
Decisions about who to go out with are now based on crummy ideas
– eg that make up the ‘perfect man’ – he has to be this tall, dark
and handsome, with this kind of education. All of which have nothing to do with what makes a good
marriage, yet it has now become fundamental to the way in which we choose
our partners. There
is also a need for acceptance – longing to be loved. But it is now used by sinful people, to manipulate people.
Especially the terrible pressure placed on teenage girls to prove
to the guy that she loves him. Our need for acceptance is so easily exploited.
b)
Living in 2 worlds We in
two worlds – the spiritual world and the physical world.
The Christian lives in both worlds – this world and the world to
come. We must decide which
world we are to inhabit. We
can liken this to a person with one foot on the wharf and one foot on the
boat, with the boat moving slowly away from the wharf.
It is terrifying, and finally wet.
If you want to live like the pagan, you will be miserable to the
extreme. Better to be a happy
pagan than to be a miserable Christian. Understand the Christian worldview and live that way and you
will be better than the happy pagan.
Mind you, happy pagans aren’t happy – the government can
measure how unhappy you are. Therefore,
there is a fundamental choice. Joshua
said this to the people upon entering the land of Canaan.
“Choose you whom you will serve, as for me, I will serve the
Lord.” That is the basic
choice. Are you going to put
your sexuality into the service of God or not?
Because God’s will for you is that you be holy.
Q&A
(1) Predestination:
Do we live life as a fatalist because God’s Will will always prevail? Firstly,
predestination is not the same as fatalism.
The world thinks that things are either free or are puppets.
However we can also have dual wills/authorship.
We still have a responsibility in what we do in life.
We have our will and we have God’s will. They can be a dual authorship.
Eg. PJ can express his
ideas, and TP can write PJ’s ideas into a book.
Secondly,
God is at work in all things and calls us to act responsibly.
But even in our disobedience, God’s plan is being carried out
(Acts 2:22) – even the sinfulness of man is under the control of God’s
plan (Acts 4:27-28). Eg. The
dog owner rattles a leash, and by doing so can make the dog willingly go
outside. If a dog owner can
do that, how much more can God do that to us? Do
other religions provide answers to the problems of love sex and marriage? Every
religion has LSM stuff, and every religion is different in their attitude
to LSM. Eg. The Harry
Krishners believe that sexuality drags you back into the physical world
and therefore any sexuality is not good. How
should sex education be taught in public schools? Sex
education is now taught by secular people/materialistic atheists –
teachers who want to teach everything.
Religious education is being pushed out of schools.
The problem is that with today’s sex education, there is no value
system being taught alongside it, because religious education has been
pushed out of schools. Children
are not being taught what is right and what is wrong.
Therefore, sex education has increased sexual immorality in the
community because children are no longer being told what is right or wrong
anymore. Thus,
we have moved from a Christian, secular society to a secularist society,
where secular education is no longer allowed, and as a result, value
systems are no longer being taught. Are
people born homosexual? Andrew Lansdown’s book traced the history of gays from the 70’s to the 80’s. Before the 70’s, gays argued that homosexuality was a free choice, but after the onslaught of AIDS, they began to argue that it was biological. BUT it does not matter whether homosexuality is nature or nurture, because the bottom line is that homosexuality is an ACTIVITY. It’s not what your inclination is, but rather, what you do with your inclination. We are all born sinful, and what really matters is what you do with your inclinations. |