So we’ve “endured” 16 Sundays… Our locations have been a posh (at least to my standards) hotel ballroom in Fort Lee, a beautifully renovated warehouse-to-worship center (thank you Grace Redeemer Church in Teaneck), and now finally our new home for the last four weeks, Fort Lee High School.
Projectors have malfunctioned; rain/windstorms have induced blackouts; computers have crashed; worship leaders have gotten sick (but they haven’t puked on ‘stage’ yet); a dog has visited; preachers (mostly me) have told the congregants that they’re not needed by the Church (and especially by God). And yet our small, growing community of faith that desires to celebrate the transforming work of the Gospel of Jesus in our lives, as it takes its licking, just keeps on ticking. All this only possible because of His steadfast love for us—therefore we will continue to hope in Him (Lamentations 3).
This past Sunday I preached a tough sermon on Ephesians 5:1-14 entitled, “Adoration in Actions & Associations.” I say tough for a couple of reasons: 1) my parents attend Maranatha and who the heck likes to talk about anything related to sex & sexuality when your parents are within earshot?! 2) ours is a hyper-sensual/sexual and hyper-consumeristic society. And when you put those two ‘hypers’ together, you get a commodification of absolutely everything imaginable via the vehicle of sex. Sex sells… it always has and always will. But in the past, sex sold itself by offering self-gratification and pleasure at whatever rate the prostitute or pimp charged. Nowadays, sex is utilized to sell everything from automobiles to Zippo lighters.
And I fully realize that propriety may vary slightly from one society & culture to another, but the overall hyper-sensuality/sexuality of society has created an environment that some refer to as ambient pornography—it’s just all around and in the ‘air’ we breathe. Sadly, our children are not being protected from the fallout and their lives are being emotionally, intellectually, spiritually, AND even physically affected. When the onset of puberty for young girls is beginning earlier and earlier as they suffer the influences of the insanely risqué fashion fads that have invaded their television programs and pressured them to live up to the sexual fantasies of ‘adultescent’ male, ‘kid-dults’ who can’t keep their eyes and hands off.
It is so sad to see the young affected in such harmful ways. When the children of our generation in our society lose their modesty, their ability to blush, and most importantly their purity, it is a sad & tragic testimony.
We have been duped by the selfish, self-gratifying, self-indulgent, hyper-sensual ideals of hyper-consumerism and entitlement. Our understanding of sexuality and application of it has been grossly distorted. How so? Well, turn on ESPN at 9pm and just watch commercial after commercial after commercial of Viagra and Cialis and hookup websites that promote the ideas that you are entitled to mind-blowing & mind-numbing, scintillating sex when and where and with whomever you want it. We’ve come to harbor such unreasonable and ungodly expectations that deceive us and steal away our joy in our wives and husbands and lives. Have you checked your spam folder lately? Have you noticed who might be following you on Twitter?
So while 21st century America isn’t much different at all from the pagan society of 1st century Ephesus in terms of the sexual immorality at the heart level, the dangers of our day & age arise in the immediate accessibility, availability, and anonymity of indulgence. I can rip out my HTC Hero—and in a manner of seconds, I can access any porn-site in the galaxy. That is frightening.
But it’s certainly not contained to our own, U.S. of A. The online pornography industry is a multi-billion dollar industry that reaches even into the darkest areas of the world. The other, ‘Christian’ Korea, one of the most wired societies in the world, has skyrocketing rates of porn addiction—it is epidemic in proportions. Sexual immorality has been the culprit for the disintegration of families in this tiny, peninsula nation that has become hyper-westernized at a rate much too hard to handle. The divorce rate has been surging for some time now and now ranks among the world’s highest. The birthrate, on the other hand, has plummeted to the ranks of the worst in the world. What’s the story? Well, there are a few factors to consider but to put it in a nutshell, whenever a nation experiences rapid global, economic growth there comes with it influences that seem to erode the moral foundations and fabric of said nation. Not to say that South Korea was getting it all right before its economic rise to power, but the proof is in the pudding. Korean women are pushing off marriage because Korean businessmen have been cheating on them for decades now—always known, just ignored. But how does this result in women marrying later in life? Well, Korean women are simply taking the measures to fend for themselves by establishing careers so that when their husbands cheat on them, they can seek divorces since they now can support themselves. Hence, women marrying later in life limits the child-bearing years. Moreover, in a society that has erected the idol of achievement & success in education into an artform, children are too expensive to be had. A sad commentary on such a ‘Christian’ nation…
But let’s get this straight, God is not anti-sex; the bible is not anti-sex. Sex is what it is because God created it. The Christian God is a God who loves more intimately then we can ever fathom. And since we are made in His image, He has given us this gift of sexual intimacy to of course, procreate (but that isn’t even such a given nowadays), but to also enjoy and treasure and guard. So yes, the bible is extremely pro-sex… but within the confines of a covenant marriage relationship. God desires for us to live in complete freedom from the temptation and deception of sexual immorality. Society may disparage the Christian understanding of sexuality as repressive and archaic—too prude and obsolete to accomplish any good. But many who have lived through the sexual revolution of the 60s & 70s will testify that a full-blown, no holds-barred approach to engaging in free, promiscuous sex will never satisfy. Here are some choice quotes from C.S. Lewis’ Mere Christianity:
“Chastity is the most unpopular of the Christian virtues. There is no getting away from it: the old Christian rule is, ‘Either marriage, with complete faithfulness to your partner, or else total abstinence.’ Now this is so difficult and so contrary to our instincts, that obviously either Christianity is wrong or our sexual instinct, as it now is, has gone wrong. One or the other. Of course, being a Christian, I think it is the instinct which has gone wrong” (p.90).
“Once critic said that if he found a country in which such strip-tease acts with food were popular, he would conclude that the people of that country were starving. He meant, of course, to imply that such things as the strip-tease act resulted not from sexual corruption but from sexual starvation… But the next step would be to test our hypothesis by finding out whether, in fact, much or little food was being consumed in that country. If the evidence showed that a good deal was being eaten, then of course we should have to abandon the hypothesis of starvation and try to think of another one. In the same way, before accepting sexual starvation as the cause of the strip-tease, we should have to look for evidence that there is in fact more sexual abstinence in our age than in those ages when things like the strip-tease were unknown. But surely there is no evidence. Contraceptives have made sexual indulgence far less costly within marriage and far safer outside it than ever before, and public opinion is less hostile to illicit unions and even to perversion than it has been since Pagan times. Nor is the hypothesis of ‘starvation’ the only one we can imagine. Everyone knows that the sexual appetite, like our other appetites, grows by indulgence. Starving men may think much about food, but so do gluttons; the gorged, as well as the famished, like titillations” (p.91).
“They tell you sex has become a mess because it was hushed up. But for the last twenty years it has not been hushed up. It has been chattered about all day long. Yet it is still in a mess. If hushing it up had been the cause of the trouble, ventilation would have set it right. But it has not. I think it is the other way round. I think the human race originally hushed it up because it had become such a mess” (p.92).
So right after I stepped away from the pulpit this past Sunday, as usual, my mind was immediately flooded with better ways I could’ve expounded the text and better points of application I didn’t proffer and better illustrations to illustrate—God’s way of keeping me humble! Too bad preachers don’t have DVR abilities…
So much more to be said… but in a nutshell, we are to put off sin & put on Christ, we are to put to death (mortification) & God brings to life (vivification) by the power of the Holy Spirit in the midst of a community united by the love & the power of the Gospel.
Back in March, my precious wife organized a surprise 39th for me and some folks from Maranatha blessed me with a collection of funds for a new MacBook. Well, I decided to go PC simply for economic reasons… but I might reconsider. Why? Whoever thought that choosing between a PC and a Mac might have implications on sexual morality?! This article by Dr. Mohler is a must read!
This is good and glorious and good for my jaunts into NYC.
We served the community the other week with bottled water and our hopes are to serve the greater Fort Lee area with Living Water…
