Episode Transcript
[00:00:03] Speaker A: Welcome to the Erickson Covenant Podcast. We're so glad that you've joined us today.
We confess that we don't have all the answers, but as a community, we seek to find and follow Jesus and to discover daily the life he has always wanted for us.
We hope this message will be encouraging and will inspire you to take the next steps on your spiritual journey.
If we can help you in any way, please connect with us. The easiest way is through our website at Erickson Covenant CA let's get Started
[00:00:38] Speaker B: welcome to the fourth and final installment of our series, Catchphrase Conundrums.
We've been decoding four common catchphrases so that we can discern what's true about them and what's false. I hope you've been having as much fun as I've been having.
From you. Be you to follow your heart and then speak your truth. We've been analyzing these cultural phrases in order to better understand the cultural messaging that we hear each and every day.
By pulling them apart and discerning their pitfalls, we're now able to better communicate the good news of Jesus to our friends, to our family, and to the world.
Well, today's Catchphrase conundrum spreads icing on the layer cake we've been baking.
Love is love. Have you heard this phrase used?
It's so warm and fuzzy. Isn't sounds so good and so true, so right. Love is love. And who in their right mind would argue with that?
Love is the highest expression of the authentic life.
All you need is love.
Love will keep us together.
Love is all around One more in the name of love Love, love, love yeah, love, love, love, right? When love is the reason given it's hard to raise any objection when love is the explanation that's offered Few have the wherewithal to argue against it because somehow we all just know that love is the eternal good, that love is central to life, that love is the greatest thing, and that if there were just more love in the world, the world would finally be a better place. In the end, all we need is love. And wasn't Jesus all about love? People say, you know, was not what he went on about. Wasn't that his main thing? Loving others?
And that's the moment we realize whenever the word love is being used, we need to call up that famous quote from the Princess Bride.
You keep using that word.
I do not think it means what you think it means.
Because while we do believe that love is central, we do believe that love is the greatest thing. We do believe that love is an eternal good. And while we do believe at the end of the day that love really does capture the purpose of creation and the essence of human flourishing, and that Jesus did command us to love, what we mean by the word love makes all the difference.
What we think love means. When we use the word love will determine whether or not we, as followers of Jesus, can go along with what's happening or totally reject it.
Like every catchphrase we've been decoding so far, love is. Love spawns from the current worldview that the inner happiness of humans is the highest goal of life, and therefore it determines the ways that we can arrange our lives and pursue our relationships. But that can be a real problem when we human beings are the sole authority of what is good and what is right. We will define for ourselves what love looks like across all relationships, based on who we think we are and what we feel inside.
But what if we're wrong about those things?
We've been exploring that in this series.
Well, the results can be devastating.
With no clear understanding of what it means to be a human being created in the image of God, what's good and right for humans is disconnected from the true purpose and design of humanity.
Once I used a nice new pocket knife as a screwdriver, and within 10 seconds I snapped the tip off of this beautiful blade, ruining the knife for good.
If you refuse to acknowledge the design and purpose for which something was made, misuse can destroy it very quickly.
It's the same for us humans. If we are unhitched and adrift from the very creator that we were created to reflect, we will stumble around in the dark defining right and wrong by feel alone based on what makes us feel the most happy at the time and spares us the most pain in the moment.
And because many now think that there's nothing outside of us that has the authority to challenge or restrain or determine or override what we need know to be true. In here, our inner selves determine all truth and goodness.
So to thine own self, be true and trust your feelings. And man is the measure of all things.
This is a bit of a recap. This is where we've been going for these last three weeks.
Due to the massive societal shifts in how we understand ourselves as humans, sexuality, sexual identity and sexual practices have become central to who we think we truly are and how we define our place in society and how we become our truest selves, as we explored a couple weeks ago.
Message two, if you missed it, the human self has now been psychologized and sexualized as well as politicized. And that's who defines now what is good and right. And when that's applied to sexual relationships, this means that we determine what love is and what love is not according to what we most desire or loathe inside.
If I feel happy and receive a positive emotional feeling from this relationship, then it is love and it is good.
If I feel good about this behavior and I feel it's helping me express my most authentic self, then it is love and it is good.
If a particular relational arrangement helps me experience more positive emotional feedback and feel better about myself as I feel I truly am in my authentic sexual identity, well, then I'm going to claim it as love and I'm going to pursue it for as long as I continue to feel this way and no one has the right to tell me any different. Love is love.
So what's the core cultural idea or what's being really said promoted with this catchphrase?
Well, love is love as it functions today affirms that any and every sexual relationship is good as long as it supports our most authentic sexual selves.
It makes us feel happy inside and no one gets too hurt.
That's it.
Love is love forms an all encompassing rationale for any and all consenting adult sexual practices, even if they sit outside the norm, even if they reject traditional mores, even if they contradict clear biblical teaching, even if they result in broken promises, even if they deny physical realities.
And while at certain times in history love is love might have been used to advocate for relationships that were never sinful and never should have been prohibited in the first place, think of interracial marriage, for example. Or think of marriage across classes. Those never should have been forbidden. Now love is love is used to promote a whole gamut of sinful behaviors such as adulterous affairs or casual hookup sex, or friends with benefits or same sex partnerships or spouse swapping or polyamory, polygamy, and many other sexual relational family arrangements that go beyond traditional heterosexual monogamy. And why is that?
Because what makes us happy is considered the highest form of truth.
And now that the inner happiness of our most authentic selves has been bound up with sexual identity and sexual expression to be our truest selves, we must express ourselves sexually in whatever way makes us feel happy and fulfilled. The most harmful thing you can do to yourself is repress or deny your truest sexual self.
And the most wicked thing you can do is disagree with someone else's pursuit of that their pursuit of their truest sexual self, whatever that might be.
Well, with that embedded into our contemporary culture, many believe there's no critique that can be offered. No objection, no limit, no barriers that should be put upon who should love who or how love should be expressed, or in what ways that relationship should be arranged or configured, and with whom and with how many.
Though most people will still thank God, at least up to this point, put boundaries up around consent and around age by claiming that love is love. It is thought all necessary evidence has been mustered, all needed rationale has been given, all possible objections have been silenced because all you need is love. And what's saying caring rational person could ever object to love?
And that's where our conundrum shows up today. Not so much in the catchphrase itself, but in the conviction that love is always good, love is always right. Love provides this blanket defense for everything and should never be denied. Well, in order to fully decode this cultural catchphrase, we need to first discern what's true. And here it is.
Love does sit at the very center of the universe.
Love does form the very foundation of reality. Love really is everything that is true, but not because we feel it, not because we experience it, not because we like gives us warm fuzzies or we prefer it, not because we define it or think it's best, not because the Beatles sang about it or romantic movies celebrate it. Love is the greatest thing because that's who God is.
Love is the greatest thing precisely because we didn't make it up.
Love is the greatest thing because self giving love exists at the very center of the eternal triune Godhead, Father, Son and Holy Spirit who created the reality in which we live and experience love.
Let me remind you of where love comes from with some basic Christian theology.
The Trinity as revealed throughout the Scriptures and confessed by the historic and universal Church is the belief that the one true God exists in an eternal relationship of three co equal persons, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. We just confessed it when we said together the Nicene Creed.
And this is essential doctrine. The Trinity is not some theological oddity or some weird math trick Christians like to play.
You know, add something weird to their thoughts about God. No, rather the Trinity, God as Father, Son and Holy Spirit expresses the very essence of who God is as a communion of loving persons. And that relationality is woven into the very fabric of the universe. That that this triune God made and the human persons that this triune God created in his own image. Without the Trinity you don't have creation, you don't have salvation, you don't have life, you don't have humans, and you do not have love.
It's common for many people to affirm that God is love, picking up on that most excellent line from 1 John 4:8. But the only reason God is love is because God is triune.
If God were not triune, he could not be love as a state of being. For there would have been a time when this God would have been terribly lonely and would have had no one to love.
Thankfully, that's not the case. The Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit have for eternity enjoyed a relationship of love. So that we can say with confidence that God really is love, not just that God is loving.
For there was never a time when love did not exist. There was never a moment when someone was not giving of themselves to another.
There was never a time when one person was not serving another person, was not delighting in another's uniqueness. For there has never been a moment when the Son was not loved by the Father and the Father was not loved by the Son. And the Spirit did not bind them all together in love, as the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit delighted in each other, with each other and for each other. Love is eternal because the eternal God is love.
And this God who is love, this is the God who made us.
It makes sense then, as humans, that we were made to love as people created in the image of the God who is love. Love is now how we reflect God to the world. As we sang today with the kids, dear friends. Or we could say beloved, but let's go with the NIV now, dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. And everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God because God is love.
Can you see how all this ties together? We love because we were created by a God who is love.
But are we the ones who define what love is? No. The Father, the Son and the Spirit.
The God who is love is the one who defines love. And how is that love defined? What does that love look like? Well, we read on in first John in the next verse to discover verse nine. This is how God showed His love among us. He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through Him. This is love. Not that we love God, but that he loved us and sent His Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. Love.
True love. Love as we are to understand love. Love as our working definition was shown to us through the loving sacrifice Jesus made for us on the cross in order to atone for our sins so that we could live through Him.
We talked a lot about this in the first message in this series that in order for you to be you, you need to be saved from.
Remember that the you that is you has a problem that only Jesus could solve, a sin problem that skews your identity and ruins your truest self. And Jesus came to save us from our sinful selves so that we can actually become our truest selves through Him.
Love is defined for us or demonstrated for us, shown to us through that dramatic action taken by the Father and the Son on our behalf, applied to our lives by the Holy Spirit for our greatest good. We could not save ourselves. God saved us. You can only be you in Christ. Well, now watch how John circles back to how the God who is love and has loved us now influences our loving behavior toward each other. Verse 11. Dear friends, since God so loved us, how sacrificially. Remember sacrificially. Ultimately for our good so that we can live through Jesus. Since God so loved us, we we also ought to love one another.
No one has ever seen God. But if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us. That last line, get that? No one's ever seen God. But, but get this. But if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us. In other words, the unseen God who is love is seen through our love for others. We humans are able to reflect the God who is love in how we love each other. So far, so good.
As human beings formed in the image of the Triune God of Love, we were made by love. We were made for love. And love forms the very goal and purpose of the world that was made and the very goal and purpose for which we were made. From our initial conception right through to our resurrection consummation, God created us for love. A loving life with Him, a loving life in Christ, a loving community with each other. It is not an exaggeration to say love is everything.
According to the Scriptures, love forms the very way that we treat one another. The very way we act. We think, we give, we serve, we forgive, we make peace, we correct, we speak, we witness the very way we make choices within community and for the sake of glorifying God. We're told in the Scriptures to put on love like a coat. To love always, to love each other deeply, to love each other sincerely. To love not just with words, but in action, to measure our actions and our words and attitudes according to the overriding principle of love. Even when we speak the truth that hurts, we speak the truth in love always.
We're told that the whole of the law and the prophets can be summarized in one command, that we love God and love others. Jesus taught that. It's confirmed in the New Testament. Jesus showed us what that looked like, even extending its range of meaning and application when he told us to love even our enemies, and then demonstrating that for us when he forgave his own executioners from the cross and forgave us in our sin.
Love is defined by the life and actions of Jesus, the God who is love.
So love really is the thing.
That's why love is. Love is. Is so powerful. That's why we have a hard time pushing back against it when it's used inappropriately.
Because love, when you really get down to what it is, can't be argued against.
Love, when defined by the God who made us, is always right.
Love forms the central reality of God's very essence and defines the way in which we are to understand ourselves and to live and to serve and glorify God.
But that is not how love is being defined in our culture today.
Love is being defined based on who we think we are and what we want to do, not by who God is and what he did for us.
Which brings us around to discerning what is false about this cultural insistence that love is love.
What is false about love being used to support any and all sexual relationships between consenting adults, because all we need is love.
So what's false? Well, we've obviously already been hitting on this, but let's get super clear.
As Christians, we confess that love is defined by God, not by us, and that love seeks the true good for another person, even if the other person doesn't know it to be true or feel it to be good.
True love, then, will never do anything that would knowingly cause harm or advocate for something that would lead to a person's destruction. True love will not affirm or reinforce delusions about oneself.
In fact, love will pursue the exact opposite.
True love, as defined by God himself, will always seek the ultimate good of the other, even when that love is rejected, even when those actions are misunderstood, even when that love is to the detriment of the person doing the loving.
We read in Romans 13 that we are to owe no one anything except to love each other, for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law.
Now, I want you to notice how Paul makes the point that love, by definition, won't do any wrong to another person. He goes on, for the commandments, you shall not commit adultery, shall not murder, shall not steal, you shall not covet, and any other commandment are summed up in this word. You shall love your neighbor as yourself.
Love does no wrong to a neighbor. Therefore, love is the fulfilling of the law.
Law does no wrong to a neighbor.
Now, no one's going to disagree with that, obviously. I mean, not really. It sounds good, even to our cultural ears. That sounds good.
That is, until we start talking about what it means to do wrong to a neighbor.
Because we live in a time when doing wrong to a neighbor isn't just about hurting them directly or stealing their stuff.
Doing wrong to a neighbor includes anything that rejects or denies or stands in the way of me living out my most authentic sexual self based on my own inner psychological happiness.
Anyone or anything that objects to that is doing wrong to their neighbor, namely me, and therefore is by definition not loving, but hateful.
But that's only true if doing wrong gets defined by us, by human desires, by contemporary culture. It's only true when it's been filtered through a skewed understanding of what it means to be a human being that has been cut off from a true understanding of what it means to be people created in the image of God.
The Holy Scriptures, however, do not define wrong the way that humans do.
None of the biblical commands would have been necessary if that were the case.
It's precisely because we humans are so wrecked and so sinful and so skewed that God needed to tell us who we are, what it means to be human, and then provide clear instructions for holy living instead of leaving us to our own bad definitions.
Our triune God revealed His will for his people by giving them commands, by issuing prohibitions in order to protect humans from destructive sin and promote true human flourishing. This is essential to grasp what's wrong and what is right is not defined by us, but by the God who made us in his image. This is fundamental. Through this entire conversation, God knows how he made us.
He knows what will lead us to life and what will lead us to death.
We don't.
And so we need to take God at His word.
And when it comes to sexual relationships, God does not leave humans guessing. Not even a little bit.
All throughout the Scriptures, we are told that God's plan for human flourishing requires that we reserve all sexual activity for the holy covenant of marriage between one man and one woman.
Outside of that God ordained marriage covenant, we are to abstain from sexual activity.
Jesus reached back to that first marriage between the man and the woman. And when he did so, he confessed, confirmed everything in the scriptures about that central covenant. 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 he will be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh.
So they're no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore, what God has joined together, let no one separate.
It has become popular in some circles to suggest that Jesus really had nothing to say about modern sexual relationships.
Nonsense.
That's crazy.
You know, they like to say, just, you know, be kind to each other and be faithful to each other, whatever that means.
That's not true at all. Jesus confirmed in the New Testament, repeated the sexual ethics that had already been revealed.
Testament and all the various commands that are given around sexual behavior and around sexual practices both in the Old and the New testaments are designed to protect this marriage covenant between one man and one woman, which is for the good of humans, it's for the good of families, it's for the good of singles, it's for the good of men, for the good of women, for the good of children, it's for the good of our bodies, and it's for the good of society.
As we read in the book of Hebrews, marriage should be honored by all and the marriage bed kept pure, for God will judge the adulterer and all the sexually immoral.
But here's the societal rub. You probably already see it. Here's where it gets ugly.
To truly love others as God loves us, we must seek their greatest good as defined by what God says is good, not what they say is good.
And as such, we cannot promote or celebrate any sexual arrangement that God has said is wrong and will lead to human degradation.
For we know that the God who designed us knows what is for our good and what is not.
We trust our triune God. We know that he is good, and we yield to his authority. We agree with God that any relationship arrangement that runs counter to God's design for human sexuality will not lead to freedom and life, but will lead to bondage and death.
Therefore, by God's definition, it is never loving to affirm sexual practices that God says is wrong and will result in human degradation and destruction.
Nestled within the most celebrated scripture passage on love of all time, you probably just heard it recent at a wedding. You know, the one Love is patient, love is kind.
We find this critical definition. Love does not delight in evil, but rejoices in the truth.
Yet we live in a world that wants us to affirm as good sexual practices that God has said are immoral.
This is hard for us, might make us cringe a bit.
But what is evil and what is true is not given to you to decide.
Not given to me to decide.
God has already told us what that is with respect to many things, but also including our sexual relationships.
What this means is that true godly love does not affirm destructive sexual sin. We cannot call good what God has forbidden. Therefore, it is not loving to affirm sexual activity that is outside God's design for human and flourishing. The marriage covenant between one man and one woman. The world will hate us for this stance.
You might hate me for saying this, but love we must and love we will just the same.
Jesus was nailed to the cross for loving those who hated him, and he told us to expect the same.
If you are angry with me today because of what I'm saying, I want you to hear really clearly from my heart that I love you very, very much.
Now, I'm not saying any of this to condemn you.
I'm not saying any of this because I think you're less than.
I'm not saying any of this to harm you.
I'm saying this because you are. If you could only grasp it, you are a most wonderfully created image of God who is loved infinitely and unconditionally by the God who made you and wants you to flourish. So hear me clearly. You are loved. I love you, and God loves you.
I think it would be helpful for us to walk through one more passage of Scripture because the sermon is not long enough quite yet.
Let's walk through 1 Thessalonians 4 together.
As for other matters, brothers and sisters, we instructed you how to live in order to please God as in fact you are living.
Now. We ask you and urge you in the Lord Jesus to do this more and more. For you know what instructions we gave you by the authority of the Lord Jesus. You know the instructions we gave you by the authority of the Lord Jesus. Now that sounds great so far. To be instructed in how to please God and to do so more and more based on instructions given by the authority of Jesus. Well, for any follower of Jesus, that makes us sit up and pay attention. We want to hear more because we want to please God more and more in our lives and we trust what Jesus has to say.
But look where Paul goes immediately, because it's very clear that the authority of Jesus extends over our sexual lives.
Verse 3. It is God's will that you should be sanctified. That just means made holy, that you should avoid sexual immorality.
Let's be clear what Paul is saying here.
Holiness in humans is God's will.
Holiness makes them whole.
Holiness is God's will. And it includes, has to include how we relate to one another sexually.
And sexual immorality in the Bible is defined as any sexual activity that falls outside the holy covenant of marriage between one man and one woman.
This is not, in my opinion, I am not making this up. This is what the Bible says. And there is zero wiggle room on that in terms of what the scripture says. You can disagree with what it says, that's fine, we can have a conversation. But this is the consistent, clear teaching from Genesis to Revelation and I might add, through the history of the church.
And so Paul is telling them to please God more and more as holy people, you should avoid sexual immorality.
That'll wreck you. And how are they to do that? Well, he says in verse four that each of you should learn to control your own body in a way that is holy and honorable, not in passionate lust like the pagans who do not know God.
And that in this matter, no one should wrong or take advantage of a brother or sister.
Notice that holiness in humans means that we express our sexual desires not oriented around what we feel to be right and true for us. In fact, in this passage that's called passionate lust, I mean really quite literally, we're reading the biblical way to describe what our contemporary world understands. You know, that the inner psychologized sexualized self just finds outward expression that business, the Bible just describes that as passionate lust, rather as holy people. Our sexual desires are to be oriented around what is holy and honorable, with respect both to God, to our bodies and toward each other.
And the call to control our bodies is something that needs to be learned. It doesn't come naturally, especially if we've been living in sin or we've had patterns in our life or we we've come from far away from Jesus, or we're all confused. It needs to be learned. And the Holy Spirit empowers us to learn that as now holy people in Christ, this control of our bodies now is actually expressing, get this, who we truly are as people in Christ, not what we feel is our most authentic sexual selves. And this holy control is rooted in the fact that we do know who God is. Unlike the pagans, we do know who God is, I might add. We know that God is love and a whole bunch of other things. We do know who God is. And we do not want to wrong or take advantage of our brothers and sisters in God's family, because that's what sexual sin always does.
Then this clear teaching on sexual holiness continues with a strong warning. The Lord will punish all those who commit such sins. Ouch.
As we told you and warned you before, for God did not call us to be impure, but to live a holy life.
Therefore, anyone who rejects this instruction does not reject a human being, but God, the very God who gives you His Holy Spirit. I remind you, you may not like what I'm saying and your friends may not like what you say, but as Christians, we're not just giving our opinion or expressing some thoughts on things we don't like or judging who should or should not be having sex. We're not squeamish prudes.
This biblical instruction to limit sexual activity to the covenant of marriage and maintain holy honorable control over your body is rooted in God's will for us to be a holy people filled with His Holy Spirit. People who truly love one another, who do no wrong to a neighbor. And it's backed up with dire warnings for misuse.
In our effort to discern what is true and what is false about love as it's understood and celebrated in our culture, we have to stand with God's design for humans and trust that his instructions are right and true, regardless of what we may feel, regardless of what the culture may say, regardless of the constant messaging we get, regardless of how many people may slander or hate us for doing so. The triune God of love, who made us in his image and designed each of us for an eternal relationship with Himself, does know what is truly best for humans, and he set up covenant parameters around sexual activity for our good and for the good of the world.
As God's holy people, we are to remain chaste, which means sexually faithful to our marriage spouse and sexually celibate if we are single, so that we can actually love one another fully as images of God. And that means that we, together, married or unmarried, we are to safeguard the covenant marriage relationships by not engaging in sexual intimacy with anyone who is not our opposite sex covenant partner. Simply put, sexual activity is a marriage in a marriage between one man and one woman and nothing outside of that. And this applies across the board.
I'm aware, very aware. I think, you know, I'm aware of how this is all clanging on our ears as we just emerged from yet another Pride month.
I understand how this subverts the worldview that places sexual identity as the highest form of personhood, rather than understanding humans as images of God. Above all, I know how this applies directly to the current climate of sexual expression with respect to polyamory or same sex partnerships, or confused gender identity, or living with a partner with whom you are not married.
For many of you, this series and this message today has been helping you. I've had a number of you tell me helping you think through the messaging that we hear every day and think it through in a Biblical way. It's helping you discern what's right, what's true, what's false, what's bad, as you figure out what you yourself believe, as you disciple your own kids, as you walk with other believers, as you witness to friends, as you decide what you will or will not support in our surrounding culture. And this also has ramifications, I know, for your relationships with family and friends and how you discern how it is that you are to sacrificially fully love someone who's living in a way that you don't affirm or support and wants you to affirm them anyway.
God will help you as you do. He will fill you with his spirit of love. He will help you fully and sacrificially love every one of them. Trust him for that.
For others among us though, this teaching hits closer to home because it forces you to make decisions.
If you're not so angry with me that you've stopped listening, and if you are wanting to lean into God's best for you, you are right now having to evaluate your own sexual relationships in light of what God has said. You're having to decide if you will trust the God who made you and what he says is good for you with respect to your sexual activity. And I'm praying for you right now that you will know how loved you are and know how good God is.
Will you trust that this God of love is truly good and good for you?
And will you bring your sexual identity and your sexual activity under his loving authority, letting him teach you his love and teach you his holiness?
This might lead some of you to an identity crisis. You may have to rethink the whole of who you think you are now in the light of being an image of God rather than based on the lies our culture has told you sold you.
This might mean that you need to go home today and end a relationship that is wrong.
A long standing affair, an occasional fling, an arrangement that is not God honoring and is not God's goodwill for you.
This might mean it's time for you Two, to stop living together and get married as God has ordained for your flourishing. And if that's you, just see me after church and we'll set up a wedding date.
I've done it before.
This might mean walking away from a group that actively promotes a sinful lifestyle or denouncing an activity that seems fun and fulfilling and gives you great street cred.
All of this is very hard. I don't deny it, and neither does Jesus. He is the one who said, if anyone would come after me, let them deny, deny themselves, take up their cross and follow me. Jesus knows it's hard. He knows this path to life is brutal. Jesus went through crucifixion to get to resurrection for us.
And perhaps there's no area in our world today in which denying yourself and following Christ represents such a painful countercultural move than right here in the area of our sexual identity and sexual relationships. But hear me true God is love and God is good. And if you will trust him, and if you will deny yourself and follow Jesus, and if you will lean into his ways and his will, this God who is love will show you that he is more than enough to make up for what you've lost. He's more than enough to cover over your sin. He is more than enough. And his will is better for you than you can imagine. His dream for you as a person is higher than you will ever dream and better than the world has to offer.
Our triune God will lead you to truly flourish in him, even if that means being single for the rest of your life.
Even if that means suffering a breakup that's painful. Even if that costs you financially, even if it means losing friends because of your decision to align yourself with Jesus. Even if that means denying what you feel inside. Even if that means the very death of yourself as you know yourself to be. So that you can honor God with your body, so that you can please him in your relationships, so that you can truly be everything he's created you to be. God is faithful, and in his love he is more than enough for you and friends. That's where the good news really shines.
As much as this world hears this biblical teaching on sexual ethics as something bad, God is giving us all this because it's for our good.
God loves us so much that he tells us the truth about Himself and He tells us that truth about us.
God is so filled with grace and love for you. That's why he gives the commands he gives. He wants you to flourish. He's designed you to live. And whatever simple practices you're caught in. Whatever identity confusion might reign, whatever false ideas you carry about being human or being authentic or being fulfilled, whatever has reigned in your life, God loves you passionately. He's provided a way for you to be saved from your sin, made whole in him and flourishing in his image. God wants to fully live in you and through you.
For God to tell us what is right and what is wrong is a profound act of grace and love.
God is so loving that he will not let us just wander off a cliff without warning. He will not simply condone or affirm sexual actions that will ultimately destroy us. Because God is love. And true love seeks what is truly good for others, even to the point of death on a cross.
And that brings us right back to the start.
God created us to find our truest, most authentic selves in him in relationship with the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. By knowing that we are his and his for eternity.
Sin obscures our vision.
It obscures our identity. It obscures our discernment.
It messes with our actions so that we can end up thinking that what we're doing is right when it is actually wrong. We can think that what we're doing is good when it's bad.
Well, thanks be to God for His loving grace that he would step into our mess, into our sin, into our place, loving us by sending His Son Jesus to be sin for us so that we could be the righteousness of God.
What's more, God gave us His Word so that we can know what he's done to save us, so that we can know who we truly are.
We can know how he wants us to live in our bodies, in our relationships, as we are empowered by the Holy Spirit.
God's love really is the greatest, because God is the greatest.
As we close today, let me paraphrase 1 Corinthians 13 like this.
Remember that as you make these decisions and as you struggle forward, the God who is love is patient. The God who is love is kind.
The God who is loved does not envy, does not boast, is not proud. The God who is loved does not dishonour others.
The God who is love is not self seeking.
The God who is love is not easily angered, keeps no record of wrongs. The God who is love does not delight in evil, but rejoices with the truth. The God who is love always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. The God who is love never fails.
And in a world awash with lies about who God is and lies about who are we hold on to the triune God who is love, who made us in his love and for his love, and invites us to become our fullest human selves in Christ, filled with the Holy Spirit of grace and truth, guiding us to live holy lives in his honor for our good and for others good as well.
And that brings us to the end of our catchphrase conundrums. My hope and prayer is that through this series that your trust in God's goodness has grown and that you have been given greater wisdom and discernment to navigate the cultural pressures we all face.
My hope and prayer is that for all of us, we will know the truth and the truth will set us free. And that's particularly true in those areas where this has really confronted us and we're having to lean into trust with Jesus.
My hope and prayer is that we, as followers of Jesus and seekers of the truth, would trust in the Lord with all our hearts and lean not on our own understandings, but in all our ways. We will acknowledge this God of love who has made us in his image, knowing that he will direct our paths leading us to life, to goodness and to freedom in Him. Let's pray.
Lord Jesus, I ask that your truth would set us free in those places today where we are resistant. May our hearts be open where our minds are dull, sharpen us above all, Lord Jesus, would we have a vision of you that transforms who we are and how we love.
We pray this in the name of the God of Love, Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
Amen.
[00:45:38] Speaker A: Thanks for listening in today.
We hope you feel encouraged and challenged.
If you know someone who would benefit from what you have heard today, please share this podcast.
For more information or if you have questions, you can connect with us through our website, Erickson Covenant ca.
You can also find us on Facebook by searching for Erickson Covenant Church.
