This is Awkward: Jesus Doesn't Mention Homosexuality

Introduction

A weighty and important conversation.

There is more I could say on this topic...

Lyrics: Shaboozey (SLIDE #1)

I need some good news Sittin' here, sippin' on cold truth Nobody knows what I'm goin' through Bet the devil wouldn't walk in my shoes Wish someone told me Livin' this life would be lonely Tryna get away from the old me Still stuck singin' these blues All I really need is a little good news

Good News. Does our message, manner, and relationships offer good news?

RECOGNITION: If you identify or recognize that you are same-sex attracted I totally understand that this might not seem like this is good news. You may think this is actually very bad news.

My prayer is that as God meets you here in this place and in your life so that you will see ...

His way as freedom, His presence as comfort, and His word as good.

SEXUAL HOLISNESS AS CRUCIFORM LIVING: One reason when I look at Scripture that this is good news is because when God calls us to faith and saves us we are drawn “in Christ.” We are called into life with our triune God.

One of the most important ways that this “in-Christness” plays out is that we are joined into a pattern of life that is cruciform, or cross-shaped.

Sexual holiness is one dimension of what it means for all of us to pattern our lives after the cross of Jesus. We die to self in obedience to God awaiting to the hope of resurrection and eternal life with God.

Setting the Stage (SLIDE #2)

We have to do the hard thing...

At SCC we must avoid two errors:

One error: Compromising Scripture and God’s command and design for human sexuality.

The other error: To simply state or spew the facts in such a way that only alienates, degrades, oversimplifies, and harms those that we speak to on this issue.

The language, tone, temperment, and approach of many Churches and leaders on this topic and other related LGBTQ+ topics is sinful, damaging, harmful, and alienating. It has not been guided by biblical love.

The gospel should produce humility, compassion, and a broken and contrite spirit.

Blessed are the poor in Spirit.

TRANSITION: Before answering the objection and examining the Scriptures lets talk about the “how”.

I have learned so much in my time in education with students and families. Let’s talk about how.

This is Awkward — How We Engage (SLIDE #3)

This conversation can be very awkward. Why is that?

Do away with ignorance.

To be that one house we need to set aside preconceptions and actually take time understand the people and the difficulties that same-sex attracted individuals face — and more broadly those in the LGBTQ+.

Do away with the tendency to isolate or alienate.

To be that one house means that we commit to walk alongside and care for anyone that comes through that door or into our lives.

Do away with treating them as a sexual identity rather than person.

Their sexuality matters to God and to their Christian walk but the person in front of you is not simply a sexual identity to minister to. They are a PERSON. Befriend them like.

Do away with talking at or preaching to more than listening and caring.

To be that one house means that we are to create a space and be a people that listens to the complex struggles of those who would identify in the LGBTQ+ community.

But be the kind of person that wants to hear/listen/care.

Do away with double-standards and ensure that we are calling all God’s people to holy sexuality.

Why would anyone want to hear our message on this topic if we cannot confront and care about the sexuality in our marriages and among our people?

Why this Topic? (SLIDE #4)

Why this topic?

This topic is a relevant and important part of our cultural conversation.

This statement/argument has been made and continues to be made inside/outside the Church.

This topic helps us remember that we are all broken sexually and God cares about the sexuality of all His people and restoring us.

Our Commitments

To be a people joyfully submitted to God’s character, will, and His word.

To seek to live lives worthy of the gospel.

This includes our sexuality and living out God’s command and design for human sexuality.

Ephesians 4:1 “As a prisoner for the Lord, then, I urge you to live a life worthy of the calling you have received.”

Philippians 1:27 “Whatever happens, conduct yourselves in a manner worthy of the gospel of Christ. Then, whether I come and see you or only hear about you in my absence, I will know that you stand firm in the one Spirit, striving together as one for the faith of the gospel”

To be a people that embodies the self-giving love of God and pattern of Jesus who reaches out and invites in the broken sinners that desparately need God’s love and gospel.

Answering the Question (SLIDE #5)

So how we argument that can go like this...

Homosexuality was not mentioned by Jesus and thus means that either he didn’t care about it or approved of it.

(SLIDE #6)

Logical Failures in the Argument: This argument is flawed from a logical, ethical, and interpretive standpoint.

Jesus doesn’t mention a whole host of things explicitly, does that mean we cannot know what Jesus thought of those things? Or, that the things he doesn’t mention are tacitly approved. No.

No one makes moral judgment or evaluations based on an argument like this.

Contextually Jesus did not engage on questions around this topic because Jews (his primary ministry context) did not have confusion around this issues. The Old Testament Law was clear as we will see.

TRANSITION: We are going to show the biblical design for human sexuality and demonstrate that Jesus clearly, as the 2nd person of the trinity and as a faithful Jew, upheld and strongly endorsed God’s command and design for human sexuality which coheres with the rest of the Bible.

To understand the strong Biblical evidence for this understanding we are going to break it into parts.

Understanding the Bible as Whole Canon: The Bible is given as a whole word from God.

You cannot divide Jesus from the Old Testament, from the apostolic authors, and the rest of the Scripture. God has given us his WHOLE word. The canon is God’s gift to us. The Word reflects God’s word in Scripture.

2 Timothy 3:16 “All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness,”

We do not pit one part of the Bible against the other.

Understanding the Biblical Sexual Ethic: God demonstrates and states that the only proper place for human sexuality to be desired and expressed is in the covenant of marriage between one man and one woman in the manner of Christ-like love.

Gen. 1:26-28, Gen. 2:18-24 Creation Template

Genesis 1:26–28 “Then God said, “Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.” So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them. 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.””

Genesis 2:18–24 “The Lord God said, “It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper suitable for him.”...But for Adam no suitable helper was found. So the Lord God caused the man to fall into a deep sleep; and while he was sleeping, he took one of the man’s ribs and then closed up the place with flesh. Then the Lord God made a woman from the rib he had taken out of the man, and he brought her to the man. 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.” That is why a man leaves his father and mother and is united to his wife, and they become one flesh.” Jesus will quote this directly as we will see later in a dispute about marriage (and their sexual union).

As Christians we are elevating creation by recognizing God’s physical design as good and better for you.

TRANSITION: The Law of Moses continued to support this understood design and put clear and clear boundaries around it in response to the cultures that surrounded Israel.

Leviticus 18-21 - Law’s Specific Boundaries Related to Common Cultural Practice Around Them

His neighbour’s wife (Leviticus 18:21)

Another man (Leviticus 18:22)

An animal (Leviticus 18:23)

His mother in law (Leviticus 20:11)

His daughter in law (Leviticus 20:12)

His sister (Leviticus 20:17)

NT Witness Coheres with Jesus & OT Law

In a gentile context it is no surprise we see more explicit teaching on this.

Why? The practice of homosexuality was more common and many of the Churches were mixed between Jews and Gentiles but were living in primarily Roman contexts. So, the New Testament instructed more specifically on this topic.

Still, the message of the NT used broader categories that reinforced the moral norms bound up in the creation design of man and woman in marriage.

1 Corinthians 6:13 “You say, “Food for the stomach and the stomach for food, and God will destroy them both.” The body, however, is not meant for sexual immorality but for the Lord, and the Lord for the body.”

1 Corinthians 6:18 “Flee from sexual immorality. All other sins a person commits are outside the body, but whoever sins sexually, sins against their own body.”

Romans 1:26–27 “Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural sexual relations for unnatural ones. In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed shameful acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their error.”

1 Thessalonians 4:3 “It is God’s will that you should be sanctified: that you should avoid sexual immorality;”

1 Timothy 1:9–10 “We also know that the law is made not for the righteous but for lawbreakers and rebels, the ungodly and sinful, the unholy and irreligious, for those who kill their fathers or mothers, for murderers, for the sexually immoral, for those practicing homosexuality, for slave traders and liars and perjurers—and for whatever else is contrary to the sound doctrine”

The New Testament is specific and general in its view any sexual activity outside of the covenant of marriage between one man and one woman is prohibited and sinful.

That is the sexual holiness that we are called to abide by, live out, and proclaim as God’s good command and design.

TRANSITION: So, did the teachings of Jesus align with this?

General Answers:

We have already discussed...

It is easily understood why Jesus would not speak on this topic in His Jewish, law-aware, law-obeying culture. This was not up for debate among the Jews — to whom He came to witness and minister primarily.

Jesus implicitly upheld as the faithful Jewish Messiah the sexual ethic found across God’s Word and specifically in the Old Testament.

Jesus’ Specific Teaching on Sexuality: Jesus didn’t speak to homosexuality specifically but did teach on sexual immorality and marriage.

Jesus raised the standards for sexual purity in alignment with the given Law. He did not reduce or introduce new exceptions.

Matthew 5:27–28 ““You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall not commit adultery.’ But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart.”

Jesus teaches us that the physical act is not the only thing God cares about when writing His law. We break God’s law in our hearts if we look with lust toward that which is outside of God’s design. Jesus raised the level. For ALL OF US.

Not only did Jesus raise the level — he utilized the same familiar categories that his audience would have understood.

Matthew 15:19–20 “For out of the heart come evil thoughts—murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false testimony, slander. These are what defile a person; but eating with unwashed hands does not defile them.””

This is critical...

Sexual Immorality = All Unlawful Sex (lawful according the Law of Moses)

Interestingly he differentiates between adultery and sexual immorality. In Jesus’ mind this distinction is important. There is all kinds of other sin that is unlawful, that is immoral.

Matthew 19:4–6 “Haven’t you read,” he replied, “that at the beginning the Creator ‘made them male and female,’ 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’? So they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate.”

In response to the Pharisees having a low view of marriage — Jesus clearly emphasizes and upholds the creation-given template for sexuality and marriage.

The sexual act is the specific body language of marriage. It is the specific body-language of oneness/union.

Just as importantly —- Jesus uses an Old Testament passage as authoritative in this issue/debate. Meaning, we cannot divide God’s word against itself.

Jesus as the Word of God embodied God’s revelation and identity, upheld His given word, and raised the expectation of human sexuality and holiness to an even stricter call on us in our sexuality and marriages.

Jesus upheld the biblical view of sexuality.

He condemned homosexuality as sin as was understood as sexual immorality.

Understanding a Specific Argument or Objection:

The OT, Jesus, and the NT writers would not have had in mind nor thought of consensual, loving relationships in mind. They would have had in mind abusive ones, ones with age differences or power dynamics.

Response: Historical writers, Jew and Greek, wrote about and had an understanding of the kinds of homosexual relationships that are exclusive and consensual, between two committed partners. Therefore the claim that the Biblical authors would not have those categories is inaccurate and in my opinion naive.

Response: Even if we didn’t have historical documents writing of these kinds of relationships no NT author, Jesus, or Old Testament author describes it in these terms. It is without exception unlawful and described as sinful.

How Do We Engage This Well? (SLIDE #7)

To be a people who doesn’t compromise scripture but gladly submits to it as God’s good word.

To be a people who is not ashamed of God’s Word.

To be a people who do not compromise our message because of how we speak and minister to those with same-sex attraction or anyone else in the LGBTQ+ community.

To be a lovingly engaged people who seek to understand, care, and have compassion on sinners lost and broken as we ALL ARE.

To be a people who sees others as people to love not just issues to overcome.

To be a place that is warm and welcoming to anyone that walks through that door or into our lives. To show Christ-like love to hose with same-sex attraction or anyone who would identity as LGBTQ+.

To be powerful witnesses as a people who pursue sexual holiness together for glory of God and for our transformation.

To the believer, in this room, that may wrestle with this particular difficulty. I want to pray Psalm 23 over you.

New International Version (2011) Psalm 23

The LORD is my shepherd, I lack nothing.

2 He makes me lie down in green pastures,

he leads me beside quiet waters,

3 he refreshes my soul.

He guides me along the right paths

for his name’s sake.

4 Even though I walk

through the darkest valley,

I will fear no evil,

for you are with me;

your rod and your staff,

they comfort me.

5 You prepare a table before me

in the presence of my enemies.

You anoint my head with oil;

my cup overflows.

6 Surely your goodness and love will follow me

all the days of my life,

and I will dwell in the house of the LORD

forever.