Sexual sin and Israel
Notes
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Shame
Shame
[being told off, someone else being told off, ]
[Context: a lot of sexual sin in Genesis |- we’ve left most of it unexplored - this is the wide angle look at it
[in theory we’re up to the account of an attmpted abduction marriage of Jacob’s daughter, and followed quickly by an account of Judah and sexual sin in his household
Why are we doing this? Can’t we just skip over - we can get the impression God doesn’t care, isn’t just, anything goes.
3 It is God’s will that you should be sanctified: that you should avoid sexual immorality;
But we need to hear another word at the outset.
1 Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus,
God’s grace - as we talk about sins you may be a victim of, have been entangled in, are near to,
There is none of us in this room untouched by this.
Sex is God’s good gift
Sex is God’s good gift
Gen 1 and 2
27 So God created mankind in his own image,
in the image of God he created them;
male and female he created them.
28 God blessed them and said to them, “Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky and over every living creature that moves on the ground.”
male and female in God’s image - equal dignity
This is what God is pleased with - (whole book in OT celebrating it)
IT is what he blesses and calls very good.
22 Then the Lord God made a woman from the rib he had taken out of the man, and he brought her to the man.
23 The man said,
“This is now bone of my bones
and flesh of my flesh;
she shall be called ‘woman,’
for she was taken out of man.”
24 That is why a man leaves his father and mother and is united to his wife, and they become one flesh.
25 Adam and his wife were both naked, and they felt no shame.
(made in image, bone and flesh, for this reason)
one flesh - sex is for marriage - people don’t need sex, marriages do
sex is for marriage and marriage is for many things
Jesus - he made them male and female
3 Some Pharisees came to him to test him. They asked, “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for any and every reason?”
4 “Haven’t you read,” he replied, “that at the beginning the Creator ‘made them male and female,’ 5 and said, ‘For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh’? 6 So they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate.”
7 “Why then,” they asked, “did Moses command that a man give his wife a certificate of divorce and send her away?”
8 Jesus replied, “Moses permitted you to divorce your wives because your hearts were hard. But it was not this way from the beginning. 9 I tell you that anyone who divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality, and marries another woman commits adultery.”
10 The disciples said to him, “If this is the situation between a husband and wife, it is better not to marry.”
11 Jesus replied, “Not everyone can accept this word, but only those to whom it has been given. 12 For there are eunuchs who were born that way, and there are eunuchs who have been made eunuchs by others—and there are those who choose to live like eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven. The one who can accept this should accept it.”
Marriage not for everyone. Marriage setup by God.
(The ‘except for sexual immorality’ - because sex is for marriage || immorality dishonours God’s design)
Giving then committing (consent and vows)
This is what God is pleased with - (whole book in OT celebrating it)
IT is what he blesses and calls very good.
Sin distorts God’s gifts
Sin distorts God’s gifts
The naive approach is to say there are many pictures of marriage and sex in the Bible.
It’s true there are many pictures - but they’re not presented as pleasing to God.
All the other activities are described as sexual immorality
Gen 34 and 38 have some pictures of it.
The sin of sodom and gomorrah is often singled out as sexual
and whilst the sexual sin of sodom and gomorrah is sin, it is amongst their many others
and the account of them is amongst many other sexual sins in Genesis
But so did Genesis 4 with Adah and Zillah
23 Lamech said to his wives,
“Adah and Zillah, listen to me;
wives of Lamech, hear my words.
I have killed a man for wounding me,
a young man for injuring me.
Power rather than service and delight. A long way from bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh - there is no place for threatening, abusive behaviour. Husbands love your wives. Lay down your lives for them.
Sons of god seeing and taking daughters of man (Abimelek, Pharaoh)
2 the sons of God saw that the daughters of humans were beautiful, and they married any of them they chose.
Seeing and taking.
14 When Abram came to Egypt, the Egyptians saw that Sarai was a very beautiful woman. 15 And when Pharaoh’s officials saw her, they praised her to Pharaoh, and she was taken into his palace.
Sexual attraction for material benefit and safety.
Abraham and Hagar, Sodom, Lot’s daughters
2 so she said to Abram, “The Lord has kept me from having children. Go, sleep with my slave; perhaps I can build a family through her.”
Abram agreed to what Sarai said.
Manipulative use of sex and surrogacy for children at any cost.
(Sodom not the place to go regarding same sex attraction - not the point of the narrative here,
Jacobs wives and maidservants
Dinah (seeing, taking) - no consent, no marriage
1 Now Dinah, the daughter Leah had borne to Jacob, went out to visit the women of the land. 2 When Shechem son of Hamor the Hivite, the ruler of that area, saw her, he took her and raped her.
Judah and Tamar (seeing, taking - Tamar originally, Onan, Judah himself)
9 But Onan knew that the child would not be his; so whenever he slept with his brother’s wife, he spilled his semen on the ground to keep from providing offspring for his brother. 10 What he did was wicked in the Lord’s sight; so the Lord put him to death also.
3 The husband should fulfill his marital duty to his wife, and likewise the wife to her husband. 4 The wife does not have authority over her own body but yields it to her husband. In the same way, the husband does not have authority over his own body but yields it to his wife.
Look at the giving.
Also notice the counter-cultural ordering of instructions.
This is in contrast to Lording it over one another.
We read these accounts in Genesis and are rightly troubled.
I doubt we’re troubled enough in the main though - we’re fed so much by the world around us that we lose sight of how God sees things.
God is not silent - we’re already seen his good design in the opening chapters of Genesis.
Also, can you see the very many ways sin has distorted God’s good gift. Same sex sin is only one of many ways. Yes, right now it’s where our culture is having a head on clash.
But there’s actually many distortions on display in Genesis, and in our lives.
God calls us to two options:
faithful marriage of a voluntary sexual union between one man and one woman entered into for life to the exclusion of all others
holy singleness
Grace at the end
Grace at the end
11 And that is what some of you were. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God.
Our whole time spent in the lives of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob has shown again and again that God chooses messy grabbers because of his mercy.
The good news is not then to say none of the grabbing matters. It does. It has no place amongst God’s people.
15 Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ himself? Shall I then take the members of Christ and unite them with a prostitute? Never!
If you are a Christian, Christ has joined himself to you. He is with you. Don’t drag Jesus Christ into sin with your body.
More than the grabbing matters, God’s grace gives us power:
11 For the grace of God has appeared that offers salvation to all people. 12 It teaches us to say “No” to ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright and godly lives in this present age,
God chooses grabbers, washes grabbers, rebukes grabbers, and give grabbers the power to give up grabbing.