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NewCity Orlando Sermons
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NewCity Orlando Sermons
Leviticus Is For Lovers | Leviticus 20
Senior Pastor Damein Schitter continues our series, Leviticus Is For Lovers, preaching from Leviticus 20. Pastor Damein takes us us through the depths of cultural and spiritual misunderstandings surrounding sex. He explains how society has diluted sex into mere recreational activities, often overlooking the spiritual implications. Using Leviticus 20, Pastor Damein addresses sexual sin, not just as an act but as evidence of deeper spiritual adultery, where misplaced worship and idolatry overshadow true devotion. In doing this, he also advocates for a counter-community that embraces selfless love and covenant intimacy with God, offering hope and redemption.
Pastor Damein then explores the transformative power of grace, brought to life through Jesus’s encounter with the woman caught in adultery. This episode underscores the church's mission as a beacon of sexual wholeness, urging us to shed hidden idols and embrace the gospel's empowering grace. Relying on insights from Tim Keller, Pastor Damein reflects on the sanctity of marriage as a covenant of enduring love, contrasting it with fleeting consumer relationships. He closes by inviting listeners to experience the gospel's good news and commit to a life of holiness guided by the Holy Spirit.
Through the reading and preaching of your word. Through Jesus Christ, we pray Amen. Today's scripture reading comes from Leviticus 20. Please stand, if you are able. The Lord spoke to Moses saying say to the people of Israel any one of the people of Israel or of the strangers who sojourn in Israel who give any of his children to Molech shall surely be put to death. The people of the land shall stone him with stones. I myself will set my face against that man and will cut him off from among his people because he has given one of his children to Molech to make my sanctuary unclean and to profane my holy name.
Speaker 2:If a man commits adultery with the wife of his neighbor, both the adulterer and the adulteress shall surely be put to death. If a man lies with his father's wife, he has uncovered his father's nakedness. Wife, he has uncovered his father's nakedness. Both of them shall surely be put to death. Their blood is upon them. If a man lies with his daughter-in-law, both of them shall surely be put to death. They have committed perversion. Their blood is upon them.
Speaker 2:If a man lies with a male as with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination. They shall surely be put to death. Their blood is upon them. If a man takes a woman, and her mother also, it is depravity. He and they shall be burned with fire. That there may be no depravity among you.
Speaker 2:If a man lies with an animal, he shall surely be put to death and you shall kill the animal. If a woman approaches any animal and lies with it, you shall kill the woman and the animal. They shall surely be put to death. Their blood is upon them. You shall therefore keep all my statutes and all my rules and do them that the land where I am bringing you to live may not vomit you out and you shall not walk in the customs of the nations that I am driving out before you, for they did all these things and therefore I detested them. But I have said to you you shall inherit their land and I will give it to you to possess A land flowing with milk and honey. I am the Lord, your God, who has separated you from the peoples. This is God's word. You may be seated.
Speaker 1:Thank you, rocky, took one for the team today. You know I wasn't even supposed to be preaching today. So for the longest time Ben was supposed to preach both of these weeks and he did a great job. Last week he did a lot of the heavy lifting and then, you know, he talked about the fact that. You know I spent years thinking about this. This is a focus of my private practice as a counselor on and on and on. And then last week he's like oh hey, actually I'm on my baby moon this weekend you have to preach, and so that's not me throwing Ben under the bus, nor is it me making excuses. It's just me inviting you into my inner panic at this moment. But I'm sure we probably will be fine.
Speaker 1:So when we think about sex and sexuality, we probably don't often think about the Bible's positive vision of it, and I think part of it is because the Bible's positive vision of sexuality is so counter-cultural to our current culture's vision of sexuality. It makes the Bible's vision seem restrictive as opposed to beautiful and flourishing, and in large part it's because we live in the midst of a sexual revolution. I know that, you know this, but what makes this time different as opposed to other sexual revolutions in the past is the power of technology. Think about the technology we have. We have technology that, in this sexual revolution, can multiply the reach and at the same time mitigate the risk for each individual. In other words, for an individual to participate, they can do so in their own homes, behind closed doors, and no one will ever know, at least at first right. This is a dynamic that technology makes possible and it's in this way that this version, this iteration of a sexual revolution is unprecedented. Now, historians don't like that word unprecedented, and sexual revolution in general is not unprecedented. But the technology we have to multiply it is what makes it so unprecedented in our time. So quickly can things be normalized, seen or experienced.
Speaker 1:Now, we're all aware, of course, of how sex and sexuality for a long time has been used to sell things. Everything from hairbrushes to hamburgers. Sex and sexuality is used to sell these things. But, as it's been said, it's not that the culture thinks too much of sex and sexuality, it's that actually it thinks too little of sex and sexuality. It's that actually it thinks too little of sex and sexuality. You see, the problem is not I'll say it again that our culture thinks too much of sex. It's that it thinks too little.
Speaker 1:It's flippant about sex. It reduces it to merely an act of recreation between consenting individuals, and I didn't even say adults, but consenting individuals, married or not, in a real relationship or not. And this has become the definition of what sex is. It's been so reduced, so impoverished. But this view of making sex only or merely recreation between two consenting people, it cheapens sex because it says I'll take your body without losing any of my freedom, I won't give anything sacrificially, and we don't even need to talk tomorrow.
Speaker 1:But when the Bible speaks of marriage, love and sex, which all belong together, it measures it primarily not by how much you want to receive but by how much you're willing to give of yourself to someone. Is it about self-sacrificial giving, not consumeristic taking? You see, if the culture's misdirection of erotic desire is flippant, I'm going to propose to you that oftentimes Christians have responded to this revolution not with flippancy but with fear. If the culture around us is flippant about erotic desires and says they're just like any other desires when you're hungry, you eat, you eat. When you're thirsty, you get a drink. When you have these erotic desires, you go satisfy them the Christian's response has been not that, but sometimes, oftentimes, has been fear of these desires because they're so powerful.
Speaker 1:You see, what we have a tendency to do in the church is to repress our desires. Instead of letting Christ redeem our desires, we try to contain them until they explode boxes that they were never meant to put in. We try to control them and manage them, as opposed to being forthright with them, open with them and letting Jesus redeem and redirect these erotic desires. You see, we too have thought too little of sex. In our own way, we just thought we could say stop it, don't do it. No, these desires are given by God. He doesn't want to remove them, he wants to redeem them. He doesn't want you to just repress them, he wants you to offer them for redemption. So I'll say it this way Christ doesn't want us to repress our desires, he wants to redeem them, to heal them, to redirect them toward His design. And so what I want us to see in Leviticus 20 today, fundamentally, is that sexual brokenness or misdirection is not merely a set of actions, and that's often what we can misinterpret sermons like this as Like stop doing bad things and start doing the right things, or at least hide them better. No, sexual brokenness is not merely a set of actions. It is symptomatic of a deeper disease.
Speaker 1:The Bible calls this disease spiritual adultery, and I'll show you that in the passage and in the Bible in a moment. But here's the tension In our cultural moment, the biblical sexual ethic that Ben preached on this week last week and I'm preaching on this week, it feels not only constricting sometimes but confrontational to our culture. And so what I just want to put out there now is that, without the comfort of the gospel, that confrontation will seem like despair. But the Bible offers more than simply a diagnosis. It also offers the cure. And so we have three points today. The first one will be the disease, the second one will be the cure, and the third one will be the disease. The second one will be the cure and the third one will be the counter community. So first let's look at the disease Sexual sin as a symptom of spiritual adultery.
Speaker 1:So look with me at chapter 20. If you have your Bibles, leviticus, chapter 20, verses 1 through 3. The people of the land shall stone him with stones. I myself will set my face against that man and will cut him off from among his people because he has given one of his children to Molech. Okay. So the reason that it starts here. I mean, if you read this you might think why does it start here and then get all the way to sexual morality and spend most of its time on sexual morality and other things? This is why sexual sin is not the root problem, which is why Moses can so seamlessly go from child sacrifice into spiritual adultery of sexuality. You see, sexual sin and any other idolatry is the symptom of a deeper issue and that is spiritual adultery. Where we exchange the worship of the triune God Yahweh, we exchange that worship for the worship of any created thing, any created being. In fact, a fundamental metaphor in the Bible of God's people sinning against Him is that of spiritual adultery.
Speaker 1:Ray Ortlund Jr has a book. It's the best book I've read on this subject. It's called this is the title God's Unfaithful Wife A Biblical Theology of Spiritual Adultery. It's so helpful, so profound. It's not even dense academically. With a title like that it sounds boring, but I promise you it's not. And what he does is he unfolds all throughout the biblical storyline that this is a key metaphor of idolatry, of the root problem.
Speaker 1:The disease that we have is sexual, is not sexual, that is the symptom in this case, but it is spiritual adultery. So look at with me with verse 5. This is how the connection goes from molek to this idea of spiritual adultery. Look at verse five, then I will set my face against that man and against his clan and will cut them off from among their people. Him and all who follow him follow him how In whoring after Molech. So you see, there's a giving of themselves. There's nothing about the giving to Molech that we would think is the same sexual immorality that happens later. But they're just two different symptoms of the same root disease, which is spiritual adultery.
Speaker 1:The whoring after another God, that is simply to say giving fully of yourself. There's nothing I haven't given. I've given it fully away to another, not to my covenant partner, but to another. This is the idea of spiritual adultery. This is whoring in verse 5. Now this is actually very closely connected to Paul in Romans 1. When Paul is unpacking this same idea, he uses different language. He says it this way they, that is the pagans, exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the creator.
Speaker 1:So you see, there's a way to talk about idolatry and creation, worship when you're in covenant relationship with God. The way that the Bible talks about that is whoring after others or spiritual adultery, and the thing about both erotic desire and also tapping into the imagery of adultery. It brings those things together and what it's trying to do, the Bible's trying to communicate. There's an insatiable appetite for worship and it can be misdirected, and all false gods demand more from you and give less to you. It's only the true God who gives fully of himself and gives fully to you.
Speaker 1:You see, the way that idolatry works is that it does work at first. You see, the way that idolatry works is that it does work at first. It says that it requires nothing from you but it's going to give you everything. But then what happens is that it ends up requiring more and more of you and then giving you less and less until eventually you've given your whole self to this false God and it gives you nothing except disruption, despair, shame and guilt. This is the way that idolatry works. And when you put in the context of spiritual adultery, do you feel the shame, do you feel the scandal of idolatry?
Speaker 1:Now we may think, man, I'm glad no one sacrifices their kids to molek anymore. I mean, you could say you've been in pastoral ministry for 17 years. How many times you've brought up church discipline on that one? None, none on that one. But think about the way that that's like.
Speaker 1:Think about this. If we're on the highway of spiritual adultery to where we'll give everything of ourselves and that belongs to us, to our gods, whatever they are, we're all on the same highway. We just might not be on the same exit, some people are farther down the road, but we're all on the same highway. So think about this. We may not be sacrificing our children to death, but what about sacrificing them on the altar of careerism or workism? Yeah, mom's gone again, dad's gone again. Now, of course there's responsibility. Of course, there I was in San Diego, people who serve in the military praise God for them. They're gone for months at a time. So let's, let's make a differentiation here. I think you can go with me. There's a difference between being busy and traveling for work and doing all the things and sacrificing your family on the altar of success.
Speaker 1:Okay, what about abortion? The heart of most abortions, right, is really the willingness to sacrifice a child for convenience or for autonomy, or for freedom of self. For convenience or for autonomy or for freedom of self? What about generational sin, the passing down of idolatry? Listen, there's something unique about I'm not saying it's the only thing unique. I'm saying there's something unique about sexual sin and generational sin. And I could go a number of different ways. I'm just gonna to go to the most non-controversial version of this the first pornographic image that I ever saw in my life.
Speaker 1:I was eight or nine, I'm not sure, and I was at my friend's house playing basketball and his older brother said hey, everyone, come in here. And took us through the garage, into the back room of the garage, and had found a magazine from his dad's room. And I remember the cocktail of experience. There was guilt, there was shame, there was fear, there was adrenaline, there was everything. There was adrenaline, there was everything. I remember I was the only one who kept going to the door making sure no one else was coming in for my friends, because I was so afraid that we would get caught. But I didn't know what to do or what to say. I promise you, man or woman, you probably have a similar story to that. You probably have a similar story to that. So, yes, we don't sacrifice our children on an altar with fire.
Speaker 1:But our sin and our spiritual adultery still affects generations, and in this area particularly. You see, the root of idolatry is disordered desires. Sexual desires are good, they just get disordered, which is true of all idolatry. So in our passage today, sexual sins like adultery, incest, homosexuality, all of the things are results of exchanging the creator for creation. These things are not the cause of idolatry, but they're the fruit of idolatry. There's a fundamental spiritual adultery that happens. The exchange then happens.
Speaker 1:And then it goes like this, as one person wrote when you get rid of the creator, you get rid of the design. And when you get rid of the design, you get rid of accountability. And when you get rid of accountability, then you get rid of the need to answer for your choices. And when you get rid of the need to answer for your choices, you get rid of the need to answer for your choices. And when you get rid of the need to answer for your choices, you get rid of the need of the fear of God or anyone else. And because fear of God is the beginning of wisdom, you also lose that too. You see, sin is not creative, it just corrupts. There's nothing creative about sin, it just corrupts. There's nothing creative about sin, it just corrupts what is good. Another way to say it is that sin twists God's good design of sexuality. Sin in all areas, and in this one particularly, is both an act of rebellion against God, as is clear in our passage, but it's also an act of vandalism against God's good creation. Spiritual adultery is an act, a rebellion against God and a vandalism against the good. Now, what does this look like today? Yeah, this is wild to me.
Speaker 1:In 2001, there was a bold advertising campaign, and this was the slogan Life is short, have an affair. Now, if you've never heard of that, you think well, that's on the nose. I don't know if I've ever heard that before. No, these six words became the tagline of Ashley Madison, an online dating site specifically designed for married individuals seeking extramarital affairs. You see, the founder, one of the co-founders, learned that dating apps the users were nearly a third were married people, and so he said well, there's a whole market here, let's create a dating app just for married people. And the tagline became life is short, have an affair. And they committed that your data was secure, no one would ever find out. And so not only was the tagline provocative, as you can imagine. The ceo was provocative and there were some advertising agencies that wouldn't even use the language. So he went on these television networks and talked about the product in very provocative ways and that gained them notoriety quickly and all the way to 37 million members worldwide by 2015.
Speaker 1:Now the site's success, as I said, was built on secrecy and the promise of fulfilling erotic desires, but it all came crashing down with a massive data breach. Now there's a story behind that. In 2015, hackers exposed the identity of Ashley Madison's users, but they warned them. They warned them they would, and the group was called Impact and Ashley Madison and the executives. They said we're going to call your bluff, you're not actually going to do this. They warned them. Users actually went up during this time, not down. So they decided to go ahead and do it. They leaked it. It was massive Names, addresses, phone numbers, email addresses. It led to public humiliation, broken families, ministers in our denomination defrocked because of this data leak. So it was serious, it was significant, ruined reputations, ruined lives, but despite this, traffic to the site soared during the scandal, astonishingly.
Speaker 1:I thought this is what I Googled this week. Does Ashley Madison still exist? It does. Now, it is true it does. Now it is true, it no longer has 37 million users, or 47 million, or 57 million or 67 million, but 70 million users. Now, I haven't seen it. I'm not recommending it. I just saw, when I was Googling that question, that Netflix just released a documentary in May on this whole scandal. Okay, I haven't seen it, I'm not recommending it.
Speaker 1:I read the article 70 million users this is a testament to the unrelenting appetite of disordered desire, and none of us, none of us are immune to that. You see, this story, I think, serves as a vivid example of the allure and destructiveness of sin. That tagline life is short, have an affair. It captures the essence of sin's deceit the promise of excitement, of satisfaction and freedom, but at a devastating cost. You see, the data breach exposed not only the user's identities but also, of course, to them the hollow emptiness of sin. Do you think they were glad anymore whenever their mom and dad found out, or their children, their adult children, or their employers, or the people that reported to them at work? I don't think it seemed exciting or satisfying or freeing in that moment.
Speaker 1:This is how sin works, you see, when people seek fulfillment outside the boundaries of God's design for love, sex and intimacy. They instead, rather than freedom, find shame, betrayal, ruin and regret. So in Leviticus 20, to connect it, just as Ashley Madison's tagline disguised destruction as freedom, the sins outlined in Leviticus 20, again adultery, idolatry, child sacrifice, all the things. They reflect humanity's tendency to seek satisfaction in what ultimately destroys us. Behind every act of disobedience lies the same lie God's way is not enough. You need more. You know better than God. God is holding back on you. But sin isn't creative. It always twists the good things that God created and leaves behind brokenness.
Speaker 1:You see, the goodness of Leviticus 20 and biblical sexual ethics is that God is calling us. He's diagnosing that our desires are good, our strategies are bad. God isn't saying repress those desires. He's saying I have a design for them. I have a place where they can thrive. Those desires are like fire. They're beautiful and warm and inviting in a fireplace and they're destructive as soon as that fire gets out of the fireplace. And our sexual desires are the same. They're beautiful in the right context, they're warm and they're inviting. It's glorious. But as soon as that fire gets out, it becomes destructive. No one blames a fire for that. And so I just want to.
Speaker 1:Before we move on, I want to name. What we're talking about here is identifying idolatry where it's taken root in your life. Where are you hiding? What, if it leaked, would take you out or take you down? What false gods are you serving at the expense of your soul, your family, your community? And I just want to mention, in this area particularly, there are at least three people in this room and I just want to mention, in this area particularly. There are at least three people in this room and I just want to speak to you before we move on once.
Speaker 1:Some of you are wayward in this area. You are hiding, you are living in such a way where if I or anyone else saw your internet history, you would be in trouble or it's gone. More than that. There are ways and habits of texting and of relating with people at work to where you're thinking. If the wrong people found out about this, at minimum they might misunderstand, but they probably say this is unwise or out of bounds. Some of you are there.
Speaker 1:Some of you have been wounded by the church because you have brought this struggle to the church and you've been shamed. You've been told to stop it and get over it, rather than being invited into community, a loving community that speaks dignity into your desire but calls you to repentance in your strategy. But doesn't just say shame on you. But they didn't walk with you like they should have. They didn't invite you into rich community. And so some of you, I know, are wounded. And I just want to speak to you and say that's not what I want in this sermon for you, that's not what I want for you at this church.
Speaker 1:And finally, some of you are weary. You're weary of fighting in this area. You think I don't know how much longer I can go on. I don't know how much longer this can be a struggle in my life before I feel that I'm actually a Christian or that I'm worthy of love, or that I ever can see light at the end of the tunnel. And I just want to say there's power in the good news of Jesus and I hope that you experience that in the remainder of the sermon.
Speaker 1:But for all of us, the Bible doesn't only offer the disease. Imagine this, I'll say this again what if the Bible only gave you the disease and didn't offer a cure? How cruel would that be? It wouldn't be nothing, but it wouldn't be what we have. So let's go to the second point, which is the cure, the grace of embrace and empowerment.
Speaker 1:Now, when I think about this, I actually think about our Lord Jesus in John 8. Do you guys remember I'm going to turn to John 8 and I'm going to read it. You don't have to turn there, but you can. This is the woman caught in adultery, and the reason my mind goes here is because you remember. I'll read the passage. It's not long, but you remember what they're going to do is they're going to stone the woman. Do you remember this? Why? Because she was caught in adultery.
Speaker 1:Where do you think they're getting that? Probably Leviticus 20. That's probably where they're getting it. There's Leviticus 20, all right, and passages like it. So let me read this. This is in John 8, starting in verse 1.
Speaker 1:But Jesus went to the Mount of Olives, verse 2,. Early in the morning he came again to the temple. So just think Jesus is to the Mount of Olives, verse 2,. Early in the morning he came again to the temple. So just think Jesus is at the temple and all the people came to him. That's a large amount. All the people came to him and he sat down and taught them, which is what he would do. Right, he did this. In the Sermon on the Mount, he sits down to teach.
Speaker 1:So the scribes and the Pharisees brought a woman who had been caught in adultery and placing her in the midst of what All the people said to him teacher, this woman has been caught in the act of adultery. Now, in the law, moses commanded us to stone such women. So what do you say Now? They said this to test him that they might have some charge to bring against him. Right? What are they thinking, jesus, in that cheap grace?
Speaker 1:Again, jesus bent down and wrote with his finger on the ground. And as they continued to ask him, he stood up and said to them let him who is without sin among you, be the first to throw a stone at her. And once more, he bent down and wrote on the ground. But when they heard it, they went away, one by one, beginning with the older ones, and Jesus was left alone with the woman standing before him. Jesus stood up and said to her Woman where are they? No one has condemned you. She said no one, lord. And Jesus said Neither do I condemn you. Go and from now on, sin no more. What's happening here.
Speaker 1:This is the grace of embrace and empowerment. You see, jesus confronts sin with grace and truth and in this case, this woman is found in adultery. So he alone actually provides the remedy for our spiritual adultery, not by saying get better or try harder, but by taking our condemnation and empowering us for holiness. This is where I'm getting. That Neither do I condemn you is the grace of embrace. He embraces her, he accepts her. Jesus says neither do I condemn you. This is not permissiveness. He did not say no big deal, it's okay, as long as he didn't hurt anybody else, as long as it was two consenting adults. No, this is not affirmation, this is not permissiveness, but this is the gospel of grace.
Speaker 1:He absorbs the condemnation of the woman. How? You know how the story ends? Right, this woman was to be cut off and stoned, killed. What happened to Jesus? Jesus was cut off and crucified and killed. Why? For her, and for you, and for me, and for all of us who sin. You see, he removes all hope of self-righteousness here. So, if you're still hoping in self-righteousness, jesus removes it all. Because who came? All the people who came, all the people who left, all the people. You see, jesus assumes sexual and moral brokenness. Yeah, whoever's clean here, go ahead, kill her, I'll watch. People just left and kept leaving and kept leaving and kept leaving. Because he assumed sexual and moral brokenness. But he accepted this woman, not in a permissive, because he assumed sexual, immoral brokenness. But he accepted this woman not in a permissive way, but in a sacrificial way.
Speaker 1:This is what grace does, but it doesn't just embrace, it also empowers. Where do we see that? Go and sin no more. Some of you this morning need to hear this first part. You need to hear. Neither do I condemn you. You need to hear Romans 8 in your mind. In Jesus Christ, there is therefore now no condemnation. That's what you need to be set free. Some of you need to hear not only is there a grace of embrace, but grace empowers. Go and sin no more. Some of you need to hear that. You see, go and sin no more is a call to sanctification. It's a call to be empowered by grace. Jesus just doesn't forgive in the Christian life, he frees in the Christian life. You see, the woman's accusers are citing the law of Moses, likely Leviticus 20, and Jesus upholds the law's justice by being cut off in her place. This is grace. This is grace for all of us.
Speaker 1:Imagine with me if this wasn't true, if we didn't have the grace of embrace and of empowerment, the grace of acceptance and transformation. Jesus, in this case, would be like a physician who identifies a terminal illness and treats it, but none of your symptoms go away ever. And you come in and this physician says you're healed. Look at the blood work and you're like but nothing has changed. He's like I did my job. Okay, imagine how frustrating that would be. But Jesus doesn't do that. Not only does he diagnose, not only does he say I have cured you, he also says I'm setting you free from the trap and the pain of the symptoms, whatever sin you have in your life, sexually or otherwise. Jesus didn't just forgive you, which he did, but he also has freed you. He said go and sin no more. This doesn't define who you are anymore. You see, grace, as Dallas Willard said, is never opposed to effort, but it is opposed to earning. When Jesus said neither do I condemn you and he took your place, that's all by grace. But when he said go and do no more, this is the grace of empowerment.
Speaker 1:You see, we see this dynamic in our text, in leviticus 20, verse 26, which we didn't read, but it's not just john 8. I'll read it for you. In verse 26, 26, god says you shall be holy to me, for I, the lord, am holy and have separated you from the peoples. That you should be mine. This is marriage language. I've separated you from the peoples. I'm not condemning you. I'm the Lord, your God, but you should be mine. You should walk in covenant faithfulness with me, follow me, receive life from me, and so really, the application for me here is receive the full grace of Jesus, the grace of embrace and the grace of transformation, right, the embrace that forgives and the empowerment that transforms. So I'm just gonna ask you this and then move on. Where do you need to hear neither do I condemn you, and where do you need to hear go and sin no more. Jesus has both for you this morning.
Speaker 1:And so we see that the actual disease is spiritual adultery and that a primary symptom in this text is sexual immorality, and that it's Jesus himself that is cut off for our spiritual adultery, the grace that says I do not condemn and go and sin no more. This is the cure. Jesus gives us the disease and he gives us the cure. But there's one more thing I want to point out, and that's our final point today. Not only does he give us disease or the cure, he places us in a counter-community where we experience sexual wholeness in a world of sexual brokenness.
Speaker 1:This is what the church is meant to be. In verses 7 through 9, it's very clear that he's talking to the people of Israel and that, as later the New Testament writers say, if a little leaven leavens the lump, then the whole thing ends up getting bad right, and so this is the same idea. We are to be a counter community, we are to embody this dynamic. I mean, we don't even have to go farther than Leviticus 20, verse one. The Lord spoke to Moses, saying to the people of Israel so he's speaking to the community. This isn't just the individual person, this is all of us. All of us are implicated. If one of you is hiding, it affects all of us. This is the point. The whole Bible speaks about this as it relates to the people of God. Why? It's because we are to be a counter community. We're to be set apart among the nations for God's glory, to show the rest of the world God's goodness in his designs and hope of redemption. The church is meant to be God's body in the world, a signpost to the kingdom.
Speaker 1:You guys remember those little pink spoons at Baskin-Robbins. You guys remember those At Kelly's? I think they're wooden spoons but they're not pink. But you know what these little spoons are. You go into an ice cream shop and you say, hey, can I taste that? It's a little foretaste of what could be yours. This is what the church is. The church is the little pink spoon in the world to give foretaste of what it's like to flourish in the kingdom. That's how it's supposed to be. Or maybe think about this a movie trailer right Coming attractions, enough to know what things are supposed to be like, what things are going to be like, and in this case, sexual wholeness is one of the most powerful previews of the kingdom to the watching world.
Speaker 1:One author says it this way how can we know that Jesus is among us? We'd be a counter community, but how do we know that? Really powerfully, this is what he says. You can know Jesus lives among you when you are sexually pure and financially generous, because the world around us is all about getting all that you can. I just love that. The thing that this author says is the most contrasting as the church community than the world is.
Speaker 1:Two things, two things that Jesus spoke about a lot is that when you know a group of people is both sexually pure and financially generous, you know Jesus has showed up. And so why, the rest of the time, I am ripping off Tim Keller. You just need to know that the rest of the time. Now it is true that because I've invited Tim Keller into my heart, I am ripping Tim Keller off, even when I don't know I'm ripping Tim Keller off. That is very true too. It's like when Abraham Lincoln quoted the Bible, he just did it, he just it just happened, right and so. But I needed to let you know anything that sounds off. It was my paraphrase anything that sounds awesome. It was a direct quote. Okay, I'll just say that this is all going to be in the context of his book on marriage.
Speaker 1:Okay, the meaning of marriage. So when we think about this idea of a counter-community and sexual wholeness, we need to talk about sex differently than the way our culture does. You see, sex is about other-centered, sacrificial love. This is what God designed sex for. Sex is not meant to be an end in itself. It's meant to point to something beyond itself. It's meant to point to Christ and the church, and, because of this, sex is meant to be for one man and one woman in the context of the covenant, of a lifelong commitment called marriage Sex. When that fire, it belongs in one fireplace in a covenant. Marriage between one man and one woman for a lifetime All right.
Speaker 1:So what is a wedding promise, then? Because what we often hear today, even among young Christians in the church, is yeah, but there's so much divorce anyway, I love this person. Why do we need to get married? What does a piece of paper do in order to make this legitimate and relevant? Well, a wedding promise is proof that your love is actually at marriage level, as well as a radical act of self-giving love.
Speaker 1:You see, when you're dating or living together, you have to prove your value daily, by impressing or enticing. You have to show that the chemistry is still there, that the relationship can still be fun and fulfilling, or it might be over when the lease is up. You see, we're all still, basically in this case, in a consumer relationship, and that means that constant self-promotion, constant marketing. But in a marriage covenant, where two people make a commitment together, this creates a space of security where we can be open and reveal our true selves, where we can be vulnerable, which means to be woundable, no longer having to keep up facades or to perform. We don't have to keep selling ourselves like a commodity. You see, we can lay that last layer of our defenses down and be completely naked, both physically and in every other way. And, honestly, that's where true intimacy begins is when you're completely naked in every way.
Speaker 1:You see someone who says to you I love you, but we don't need to be married to have sex. What they're actually saying is I don't love you enough to curtail my freedom for you. I don't want to give everything to you. And there's this commodification it becomes economic, like everything else in our life. As soon as I feel like I'm getting less than I'm giving, I'm out, I'm moving on, I'm dipping.
Speaker 1:You see, sociologists argue that in contemporary western society, the marketplace has become so dominant. That's what dating apps are. Not all of them, but the ashley madison one. That's what I'm thinking of. Right, it is a commodification of erotic desires to come together. Those people have no desire to be married. How do I know that? Because they are are married. They don't want that they want something else. And so this is where that founder said huh, there's a niche here, we can build a product here. Why? Because sociologists have pointed out that the marketplace has become so dominant that the consumer model increasingly characterizes most relationships that historically were covenantal, including marriage. And today we stay connected to people only as long as they are meeting our particular needs at an acceptable cost to us.
Speaker 1:But love and marriage, and the right confines of erotic love, which is a gift from God, is in covenant marriage, not where you give 50% and the spouse gives 50%, but where you give 100%, both of you, regardless of what your spouse gives. That is the vow in sickness and in health, in plenty and in want. And those marriage vows, those aren't for the present, those are for the future. This is marriage. It's the only context where you can be completely known and accepted and you don't have to think what happens when my body changes. No, when you're in covenant marriage. This is full commitment to one another.
Speaker 1:And the church is to be a counterculture of sexual wholeness in a world of sexual brokenness, when we don't commodify others' bodies or use them for mere bodily pleasure, but we are a counter-community displaying sexual wholeness in a world of sexual brokenness. You see, the church is chosen, redeemed, bound in covenant, instructed in a way of life indwelt by God, the Holy Spirit, to live in exemplary existence before the watching eyes of the world. We are the pink spoon eyes of the world. We are the pink spoon, we are the movie trailer. But here's the thing is we cannot give what we don't have. We cannot give hope when we don't have hope. I'm not saying perfection, that's not what I'm saying. I'm saying we need to experience. We need to begin to experience this counter community together so that we can live it out together in front of a watching world.
Speaker 1:And so, in conclusion, leviticus 20 diagnoses the disease of spiritual adultery. John 8 reveals the cure in Jesus. It's in him we find both the grace of embrace and the grace of empowerment. And so here are my calls to action Confess and confront the idols in your life, especially those you're hiding. In a moment I'm going to give you time you're going to be able to confess that. Second, receive the grace of Jesus that both forgives your sin and empowers your transformation. Receive that afresh this morning.
Speaker 1:And the third thing is pursue holiness as covenant intimacy with the God who loves you. He said I am your God. I've brought you to myself. Why? So that you would be mine. God loves you. He wants you to be his. He sees everything and he still wants you. He didn't choose you because you were lovable. He chose you to make you lovable. He chose you because he wanted to, and so our gospel hope is that Jesus fulfills the demand of the law. He bears our condemnation, he offers us his righteousness and in him we are not just forgiven, we are made free. Let's pray, father, I do pray for all in this room that we would experience your gospel as good news today. Would you speak to us, holy Spirit, specifically, with precision, not only? Which grace do we need to hear? Neither do I condemn you or go and sin no more. Would you go deeper and say where, exactly what specifically are you saying that to in our lives?