Faith Over Culture: Sex and Gender
Faith Over Culture
Sex and Gender
Pastor Charlie Weir
For a dissenting voice to be more than additional noise it needs to be Biblically and theologically anchored, spoken and lived with a Jesus accent and limp.
Having been forgiven of our sin, and our broken nature replaced by the wholeness of the love and redemption of God, Christ Followers are equipped to offer clarity for confusion, humility for hostility and compassion for condemnation.
Before entering any discussion on culturally dissenting issues ask yourself this question “Can I humbly and compassionately bring spiritual clarity to this conversation as Christ would?”
2 Chronicles 7:11-16 11 When Solomon had finished the temple of the Lord and the royal palace, and had succeeded in carrying out all he had in mind to do in the temple of the Lord and in his own palace, 12 the Lord appeared to him at night and said: “I have heard your prayer and have chosen this place for myself as a temple for sacrifices. 13 “When I shut up the heavens so that there is no rain, or command locusts to devour the land or send a plague among my people, 14 if my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and I will forgive their sin and will heal their land. 15 Now my eyes will be open and my ears attentive to the prayers offered in this place. 16 I have chosen and consecrated this temple so that my Name may be there forever. My eyes and my heart will always be there.
Question
Are we willing to be stirred out of comfortable “agreeing” nests to be dispersed into relationships or groups with whom we wouldn’t have naturally engaged?
Sex is good.
God created sex for pleasure, for procreation and as an expression of intimacy and a means to intimacy between a husband and wife.
Sex outside of God’s design is a dumpster fire.
The only safe sex is married sex.
Sex outside of God’s design doesn’t fill holes, it creates them and digs them deeper. Sexual sins are self-harming not self-fulfilling!
All other sexual expressions over promise, under deliver and undermine (demoralize) God’s best for us and His image inside of us. The foundation of a great marriage isn’t great sex. Great sex comes from great intimacy and great intimacy comes from mutual submission to Christ and one another! If you want to fix your sex life, fix your submission life.
Headship isn’t a value judgement, nor is it a proficiency exam on leadership or a social hierarchy – it’s God’s order of family leadership and it is an upside-down order.
Leadership is servant-ship. God isn’t giving husbands carte blanche on decisions or a hall pass on behavior and choices, God is giving him a weighty responsibility.
Ephesians 5:31-33 31 “For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh.” 32 This is a profound mystery—but I am talking about Christ and the church. 33 However, each one of you also must love his wife as he loves himself, and the wife must respect her husband.
Our sex crazed culture would have you believe that sex is the pinnacle of life. A life submitted to God and lived on purpose is the pinnacle life – single or married.
This is what the LGBTQ+ initials represent:
L = Lesbian (female to female sexual attraction)
G = Gay (male to male sexual attraction)
B = Bi-sexual (sexual attraction to both genders)
T = Transgendered (biological identity incongruent with emotional identity, with emotionally identity being the prime determiner of “male or female”)
Q = Queer or Questioning (open to nontraditional sexual understandings and practices)
+ = Open ended for other “identities” to coalesce within the group.
In order to gain relevance in the LGBTQ space and conversations within our own families, the church and Christians have to do at least 4 things…
1) Stop glossing over heterosexual sexual sins.
2) See people not letters.
3) Be Courageous.
3 reasons why can’t we just call out sin when we see it.
1. Is that really the way you want to live?
2. Jesus isn’t offended by the sinner, that’s who He came for.
3. This is personal.
Luke 9:51-56 51 As the time approached for him to be taken up to heaven, Jesus resolutely set out for Jerusalem. 52 And he sent messengers on ahead, who went into a Samaritan village to get things ready for him; 53 but the people there did not welcome him, because he was heading for Jerusalem. 54 When the disciples James and John saw this, they asked, “Lord, do you want us to call fire down from heaven to destroy them?” 55 But Jesus turned and rebuked them. 56 Then he and his disciples went to another village.
John 1:11-13 11 He (Jesus) came to that which was his own, but his own did not receive him. 12 Yet to all who did receive him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God— 13 children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision or a husband’s will, but born of God.
“Post Christian Culture attempts to retain the solace of faith, whilst gutting it of the costs, commitments, and the restraints that the Gospel places upon the individual will.”
Mark Sayers, Disappearing Church pg. 16
The Jesus Way
Matthew 9:35-38 35 Jesus went through all the towns and villages, teaching in their synagogues, proclaiming the good news of the kingdom and healing every disease and sickness. 36 When he saw the crowds, he had compassion on them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd. 37 Then he said to his disciples, “The harvest is plentiful but the workers are few. 38 Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into his harvest field.”
The 8 action verbs of Matthew 9
Went = Jesus was proactive. He went places on purpose.
Teaching = Jesus offered tools for change, not cute sayings for comfort.
Proclaiming = Jesus clearly offered the path and power for change.
Healing = Jesus got personally involved in the pain of the people.
Saw = Jesus didn’t see crowds, agendas, sides or letters, He saw people.
Compassion = Real seeing draws out real empathy. Empathy is active and participatory. Sympathy is passive and dismissive.
Said & Ask = Jesus identified the harvest and gave explicit instructions.
Jesus didn’t see these people as an enemy to His way of life.
“When you meet one transgendered person you’ve met…one transgendered person.”
Preston Sprinkle Embodied: Transgender Identities, The Church & What the Bible Has to Say
As Followers of Christ our best approach to culture is to have an anchored Biblical/theological position on sin and redemption and to live out our own redemption by grace in the incarnational model of Jesus. Our call is to bring clarity into the chaos, humility into the hostility and compassion into the condemnation.
We respond to the last 2 verbs of Matthew 9 by activating the first 6.
Go – Be proactive.
Teach – Equip yourself with tools to share for change.
Proclaim – Offer Jesus and the power of the Gospel.
Heal – Get personally involved.
See – See people not letters or sides.
Have Compassion – Empathy, not apathy or sympathy.