Morning Musing: Romans 1:24-25

“Therefore God delivered them over in the desires of their hearts to sexual impurity, so that their bodies were degraded among themselves. They exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served what has been created instead of the Creator, who is praised forever. Amen.” (CSB – Read the chapter)

Thanks to a few hundred years’ worth of pop culture, when we think about the judgment of God, we imagine fire and brimstone. We picture great floods and earthquakes. We imagine something dramatic and terrible. We imagine God’s actively doing something to punish us for our sins (or, better yet, them for theirs…we usually give ourselves a pass). Yet so much of the judgment we encounter in the Scriptures doesn’t look like that at all. Instead, it takes the form of God simply stepping back and letting the consequences of our sin play themselves out naturally. Paul describes something like that here. Check this out with me.

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Digging in Deeper: Exodus 20:14

“Do not commit adultery.” (CSB – Read the chapter)

Humans have a complicated relationship with sex. God created it and made it really good and powerful. It is unquestionably a gift from Him. And when we enjoy this gift, it feels really good. If it doesn’t, you’re probably not doing it right. But God also made it to be enjoyed in a single set of circumstances. It is a gift for marriage. But marriage is hard. And in any given moment, sex feels good whether it happens in a marriage or not. It feels good no matter who your partner is even if you happened to be married. Because of all this, and because of a sinful nature in each of us that is profoundly selfish at its core, adultery is a thing that we do. But it’s not a good thing. At all. So, God made clear that it isn’t a thing we should do. Let’s talk about why this was a significant enough thing for us not to do that God included it in the foundational list.

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Digging in Deeper: 1 Corinthians 6:18

“Flee sexual immorality! Every other sin a person commits is outside the body, but the person who is sexually immoral sins against his own body.” (CSB – Read the chapter)

Stop me if you’ve heard this one before. The Bible is just an antiquated set of restrictive rules that were put in place centuries ago and without any understanding of what the modern world is like. They were hardened by a bunch of prude men who were looking to tell people what they could and couldn’t do with their own bodies. They look to limit our freedom and take all the real fun and joy out of life. The Scriptures often get a bad rap today and the lyrics often run right along those lines. As a result, when people hear that “the Bible” says they shouldn’t do X, Y, or Z, they often roll their eyes and do it anyway because life is better when it’s fun. Besides, modern science has conclusively shown that the Bible can’t be trusted. But what happens when modern research starts to discover that the Bible wasn’t – and isn’t – perhaps so wrong as we’d like to believe? Let’s ponder that question for just a bit together today.

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Digging in Deeper: 1 Samuel 20:41-42

“When the servant had gone, David got up from the south side of the stone Ezel, fell facedown to the ground, and paid homage three times. Then he and Jonathan kissed each other and wept with each other, though David wept more. Jonathan then said to David, ‘Go in the assurance the two of us pledged in the name of the Lord when we said, “The Lord will be a witness between you and me and between my offspring and your offspring forever.”’ Then David left, and Jonathan went into the city.” (CSB – Read the chapter)

Friendship is a good thing. Nowadays, though, it is all too rare of a thing. Across the world, modern nations are suffering from loneliness epidemics. In spite of being digitally connected in ways previous generations could not possibly have imagined, we are more isolated than we have ever been. Never had there been a time in human history when having friends—real friends, not merely online connections—was both more important and also more difficult than it has ever been. Making things even more difficult is the hypersexualized nature of our culture. Let’s talk this morning about an example from the world, a supposed example from the culture, and why we need something the world simply can’t offer us.

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Morning Musing: 1 Corinthians 7:2 (one more time)

“But because sexual immorality is so common, each man should have sexual relations with his own wife, and each woman should have sexual relations with her own husband.”‬‬ (CSB – Read the chapter)

This past Friday we started talking about sex. So far we have concluded two things. The first is that this is something we should be talking about. As followers of Jesus and given the state of our culture, we’ve got to be having a positive and productive conversation about how we should approach this touchy subject. The second thing was this: Sex is good and we should be enjoying it…but only in its proper context. It is a gift from God and like any other gift from God, if we use it as He intended, we will enjoy its rich fruits to their absolute fullest. The last question we asked was what we should be doing about this. Let’s talk about that now.

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