Okay, it’s finally time for me to begin tackling this question. The problem is that I don’t really know the answers so this is going to be a general musing with some of my own hunches. Therefore, I’m really interested to know your opinions on it too. Perhaps together, we can figure some of this out.

That is how I started writing this post, but that was two weeks ago, and I still don’t have any really good answer for this question, so I’m posting this now just to let you know I’m still working on it.

I’m going to be reading a book called Surprising Insights from the Unchurched to figure out the major factors leading people outside the world of church to explore the church world in the first place.

As a result, I have a few ideas on why Christians go to church when they go. Please weigh in with your perspective as well.

main reason: obligation

“Church is the right thing to do.”

I think the most prevalent reason Christians attend church services is that they believe church attendance is the right thing to do. Perhaps they were raised to go to church. Perhaps they read my previous post or another article somewhere telling them they should go to church. Perhaps they read the Bible and were convinced themselves of the moral rightness of going to church.

However, that kind of motivation plays out in different frequencies for different people. Paying my taxes is the right thing to do, but I only have to fill out paperwork once a year. Going to church may be the right thing to do, but that doesn’t tell me how often I need to do it. Some people go every week. Some go whenever it’s convenient. Some go on Easter only.

The bottom line is that Christians who go to church do so in large part because they think it’s the right thing to do. From that point of view, the only question for a churchgoing Christian is which church they should attend.

secondary reasons

Christians who are convinced they should go to church are only limited by their schedules and their felt needs regarding which church to attend. If they can find a church that meets their criteria, they’ll attend it (again, frequency is a completely different issue), if they can’t find one church that meets their criteria, they’ll bounce around, and if they can’t find a church that works for them, they’ll still go to church, just even more sporadically than they normally would.

George Barna released some statistics back in 1999 on why people chose the church they chose. I got this chart from churchrelevance.com.

Top 9 Reasons that Church-Attenders Choose a Church (research conducted by the Barna Group in 1999)

• 58% – Doctrine/Theology
• 53% – People Caring for Each Other
• 52% – Preaching
• 45% – Friendliness
• 45% – Children’s Programs
• 43% – Helping the Poor
• 36% – Denomination
• 35% – Like the Pastor
• 26% – Sunday School

Of course, that was over ten years ago. I’d like to see some statistics from the past few years. Nevertheless, this list reinforces the kinds of things Christians have been telling me about their church attendance for years.

If I could summarize what I hear from Christians who regularly go to church:

• Christians want to be “fed” or enlightened. They want the teaching of the church to give them moments of serendipity over the content of the Bible or the practice of their lives. The longer a person is a Christian, though, the more moments like that are in their past, the more “knowledge” they have about the Bible, and the harder it is to provide those serendipity moments for them.
• Christians want to be sure their kids are taken care of. Many Christians fear that their children will grow up without the sense of obligation to the church or even without a personal faith commitment, so they want to make sure they have a positive experience with solid Biblical education.
• Christians want to avoid “hypocrisy” and are generally sick of church infighting. If the church has strong leadership, and the feeling of healthy relationships, they will stay. Otherwise, they are likely to leave.
• Christians want to serve. This is last on the list for most that I talk to, but it is a strong motivator for many. They will seek out churches where they can actively use their gifts. However, I have met many Christians who use this as a mental excuse for their true pursuit of influence and recognition. We still have Pharisees in our churches who say they want to use their gifts when they really want people to honor them for their activity.

final thoughts

Even though the first reason is often the most conscious reason (people tell me all the time, “I know I should go to church more”), the secondary reasons are often the real ones. Christians who go to church believe that the church should be beneficial to them, and they will keep looking for churches until they find the one that fits the bill best.

In our church, people seem to come primarily for my teaching. As a result, it seems clear to me that the people who come to our church are consciously looking for the kind of teaching I provide, and the people who don’t return to our church after visiting are either not looking for my kind of teaching specifically or they have placed a higher priority on something else that our church doesn’t do well enough.

What about you?

So these are my musings, but ultimately, I’m more interested to hear what other people have to say. Why do you go to church? What is your real motive for attending church in general, and what are your specific reasons for attending the church you do attend?

I’ll read every one of your comments!

Today, I continue that discussion.

Let us not give up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but let us encourage one another—and all the more as you see the Day approaching.

Hebrews 10:25

Why Christians SHOULD Go to Church

The writer of Hebrews gives us two reasons people should go to church and two obstacles that must be overcome.

• We go to church for encouragement
• We go to church because time is running out.
• We must overcome habit.
• We must overcome peer-pressure.

We go to church for encouragement

Instead of “giving up” on the gatherings, the passage calls us to come together to encourage one another. There is something powerful when believers get together. Currently, at my church, I am teaching a series of messages on the fact that the Holy Spirit of God consistently works most powerfully in the context of community. There is great power when Christians gather together, and that power is for the encouragement of us all.

Consider what Paul says about the working of the Spirit:

Now to each one the manifestation of the Spirit is given for the common good. — 1 Corinthians 12:7

A major reason we gather is for our mutual encouragement.

We go to church because the time is short.

Of course, this passage was written two thousand years ago, and now we are two thousand years closer to the time when Christ returns. The time is even shorter now!

I see in this line something about the purpose of church gatherings that we don’t hear much about. These gatherings are supposed to be motivational. If the time is short, then we need to get moving! Sitting around wasting time isn’t doing any of us any good. The purpose of church is to be a shot in the arm or a kick in the pants for us to get real and get going with what we say we believe.

I also see here that our gatherings should have some component of strategic thinking as well. If the time is short, then we need to more effectively use the time we have, and quite frankly, we can’t use our time wisely unless we are meeting together to strategize and plan and coordinate our efforts.

Why it’s Hard to Go to Church

The writer of Hebrews also mentions two reasons people don’t go to church. Some people develop a habit of not joining with other Christians while other people get sucked into that habit by observing the behavior of the first group.

These things happen naturally when the first two things are missing. In the absence of strategic thinking and cooperative motivation, people tend to fade away from the meetings and develop a habit of not going. Then, their absence is a reverse encouragement, a kind of peer pressure for other people to also stop going. The habit forms a feedback loop leading people away from church.

Some people have had bad experiences with church, but I would venture to say that the vast majority of Christians who don’t go to church are out of the habit because the church they had attended wasn’t behaving with passion, urgency, and strategic thinking in an encouraging environment.

Test your church

As I think about my own church, I’m convicted to keep us moving forward, to develop an encouraging spirit among our people and to get some strategic thinking going all the time so that we have a greater sense of urgency and momentum. That’s the way to live out Hebrews 10:25 in our day.

What about you? How is your church doing? What can you do to be an encouragement to others and to raise the urgency temperature in your church?

to be continued

Today, I dealt with the question of why people should go to church. Tomorrow, I’ll deal with the psychology of why Christians go to church when they do, and then, I’ll address why non-Christians go to church when they do.

However, just last weekend, I heard a statistic that currently 17% of Americans go to church. I think that means specifically that on any given week, only 17% of Americans attend a religious service. The number of people who attend at least one service a month is surely much higher than that, but still, the number is astounding to me.

If two-thirds of the population feels they have a life-altering relationship with Jesus, why is church attendance so low and apparently going down?

Let us not give up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but let us encourage one another—and all the more as you see the Day approaching.

— Hebrews 10:25

On first glance, it might seem like this verse is irrelevant to people today. The legalist in me wants to blame people for not being obedient to the Word of God, but of course, I can only blame people for disobedience when those people are mature enough to know better. The new Christians, immature Christians, and non-Christians can never be “blamed” when they disobey.

But how do we teach people who don’t come to our “classes” (i.e. Worship Services)?

Well, I have begun thinking a lot about how the worship-service-as-outreach model might be dying, and so let’s take another look at the verse just quoted.

You can see in the verse that there are two reasons we should emphasize the gathering of believers and one obstacle we must overcome.

• We gather for encouragement.
• We gather because time is running out.
• We struggle against habits.

Over the next couple of days, I’ll be posting my thoughts on why we should go to church, why Christians actually do go to church, and why non-Christians go to church when they do.

The question of Biblical “inerrancy” has been raised a number of times particularly in the past 50 years or so. Before answering this question, I think it’s important to simply highlight what the real issue is.

The Foundation of our Faith

The Bible forms the foundation of the Christian faith, and in fact, in one way or another it forms the foundation for the Jewish faith as well as various Christian sects, so the question of the authority of the Bible is one of the most fundamental questions we can answer. It is essential that we establish whether the Bible is an authoritative document or merely a helpful document or something less.

Real authority requires complete reliability

Another reason this question is so important is that in order for the Bible to be considered authoritative in a person’s life it must be a reliable document. If a friend isn’t trustworthy in what he or she tells you, it’s unlikely you will be willing to take advice from that person.

There are many people who might want to believe that the Bible can have spiritual authority in our lives even if it isn’t completely reliable. I can’t accept that kind of reasoning. If the Bible is unreliable in even the smallest part, then for me, it would bring into question other parts. Ultimately, it would boil down to me making a judgment call on each issue to determine if that particular claim were reliable or not. In other words, the authority would not be the Bible. I, as the final evaluator of the claims, would retain the authority for myself, and the Bible could be at best a motivational document but nothing more.

The question we must answer:

Therefore, since the Bible must be completely reliable in order to have any real authority, the question we must answer for ourselves boils down to this, “How accurate (reliable) is the Bible?”

The possible answers can be summarized in these statements:

• The Bible is completely free of any errors of any kind.
• The Bible as it was originally written was completely free of any errors of any kind.
• The Bible as it was originally written was completely free of any factual errors concerning the intended claims of the authors.
• The Bible as correctly interpreted is free of any errors.
• The Bible, correctly interpreted, is authoritative though not entirely without fault.

These are important distinctions because these statements make all the difference in understanding both what the Bible means to say and what it means for my life today. For example, apparent conflicts between the Bible and science only exist if you adopt the first two statements.

However, if you adopt the final statement, there really is no reason to trust the Bible very much because it depends on the work of the interpreter and also on the presupposition that it could be wrong in some areas.

In brief, the first option is naive and ignores the fact that minor spelling and grammatical errors exist in nearly every copy and/or translation of the Bible.

The final option is of no help because if humans have authority of interpretation and determining what is “right” and what is “wrong” in the Bible, then it loses nearly all of its authority over us.

Which option is mine? Which option is that upheld by our church?

From my personal Doctrinal Statement:

I believe that God, through the Holy Spirit, divinely inspired human agents to record special revelation in the 66 books of the Old and New Testaments. This inspiration is such that the written words of Scripture are fully the words of God and fully the words of the human who penned them. Thus, they reflect the personalities and proclivities of the individual authors but are the completely inerrant communication of God to people. That is, the Scriptures as the authors originally intended them are entirely free from error in all matters to which they pertain. They are the final authority of faith and life (Ro 3:2, 16:25ff.; 2Ti 3:16f.; 2Pe 1:20f.).

From my church’s Doctrinal Statement:

The Bible is the Word of God, fully inspired and without error in the original manuscripts, written under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, and it has supreme authority in all matters of faith and conduct. (Romans 15:4, 2 Timothy 3:16-17, 2 Peter 1:19-21).

Exile

The kingdom of Judah ended with the destruction of Jerusalem and the deportation of the brightest young people to Babylon. However, Jeremiah had predicted that the exile would last only 70 years, and Isaiah even predicted a king named Cyrus would be the one to return the Jews to their homeland. It turned out that both were exactly right.

The Jewish people spent 70 years in exile, and during that time much of the biblical account revolves around the life of a man named Daniel. Daniel was among the most gifted young kids who were deported. He so impressed the kings that he quickly joined the ranks of the most highly influential individuals in the kingdom.

The Babylonians were conquered by the Medes and they by the Persians, but Daniel remained a key leader regardless of kingdom changes–quite a testimony to the character of Daniel and the power of God.

Return to Jerusalem

After the 70 years were up, Cyrus, king of Persia decreed that the Jewish people should be given the right to return to Jerusalem to rebuild the city. He sent them out with his own support and financial resources. The two key leaders during this time were Ezra and Nehemiah. Their stories are recounted in the books named after them. The majority of Ezra’s leadership went toward the rebuilding of the temple while Nehemiah focused his leadership on the rebuilding of the walls around Jerusalem. Both of them, however, were instrumental in sparking the people to return to Jerusalem and to renew their spiritual commitment to God and the law of Moses in the process.

The years of their leadership were marked by spiritual revival and renewal.

Meanwhile in Persia

Not all the Jews returned to the land of Israel, however. Some stayed back in Persia for many reasons, and the book of Esther tells the story of how God used the bravery of a young woman (Esther) to rescue the Jews from potential genocide at the hands of the persian king. Nevertheless, after Esther, we lose track of the Jews who remained in Persia, and in fact, the story of Esther is chronologically the last event to be recorded in the Hebrew Scriptures.

To be sure, there are some Jewish writings that claim to be a record of the events bridging the gap between Esther and Jesus, and those writings seem to be historically accurate, but they never claimed to be Scripture and the Jews never treated them with the same kind of reverence and respect as they did the rest of the Hebrew Scriptures.

The Prophets

Placing the prophets chronologically in the midst of the historical narrative is at times difficult, and so I’ve reserved discussion of them until now. Additionally, discussing the purpose and message of the prophets is not an easy topic to address because the poetic and metaphorical contents of their message engender debate. Nevertheless, I’m going to deal with what I see are the biggest themes in the prophetic message.

Major themes

There are three categories of prophets in the canon of Hebrew Scripture. Those who operated during the time of the kings are called pre-exilic and those who operated after are called post exilic referring to the exile of the southern kingdom to Babylon.

Regardless of when they wrote, all the prophets spoke of God’s total supremacy over all things and our human need to be fully surrendered to him, but there were major differences in the other topics of prophecy depending on whether the prophet was writing before the exile or after.

Before the exile the prophets mainly focused on proclaiming the coming judgment on any nation that neglected God. Sometimes they would beg for repentance from the people. Sometimes they would speak of a future Day of the Lord when all things would be judged and justice would finally and fully come, but the majority of their prophecies were focused on the fact that God judges individuals and nations, and no one is exempt.

After the exile the prophets spoke mostly of the coming Day of the Lord, speaking of cataclysmic cosmic events and a wonderful time of peace and prosperity for God’s people. However, not all their words focused on the future. They continued to emphasize the need for God’s people to honor him and exercise justice.

Finally, a few of the prophets began to recognize in their prophecies a figure who would embody the fulfillment of all the other prophecies. They were looking for a king like David, a prophet like Moses, and a priest like Aaron. For these prophets, the prophet, priest, and king sometimes coalesced into one individual known as the Messiah which means “Anointed One” in Hebrew, and is translated “Christ” in Greek.

See, my servant will act wisely; he will be raised and lifted up and highly exalted. — Isaiah 52:13

Consider it pure joy, my brothers, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith develops perseverance…

Of course, knowing the Sunday school answer and being okay with it are two different things entirely, but this week, I have gained a new perspective on the question that I thought I would share with you. Here are some significant verses from my devotional reading this week:

Judges 2:20-3:4 (New International Version)

20 Therefore the LORD was very angry with Israel and said, “Because this nation has violated the covenant that I laid down for their forefathers and has not listened to me, 21 I will no longer drive out before them any of the nations Joshua left when he died. 22 I will use them to test Israel and see whether they will keep the way of the LORD and walk in it as their forefathers did.” 23 The LORD had allowed those nations to remain; he did not drive them out at once by giving them into the hands of Joshua.

Judges 3:1 These are the nations the LORD left to test all those Israelites who had not experienced any of the wars in Canaan 2 (he did this only to teach warfare to the descendants of the Israelites who had not had previous battle experience): 3 the five rulers of the Philistines, all the Canaanites, the Sidonians, and the Hivites living in the Lebanon mountains from Mount Baal Hermon to Lebo [a] Hamath. 4 They were left to test the Israelites to see whether they would obey the LORD’s commands, which he had given their forefathers through Moses. — Judges 2:20-3:4

Three phrases in this passage stood out to me when I read them:

“Because this nation has violated the covenant…”

God had clearly commanded the people of Israel to enter the promised land and to oust all the people who were living there. He had given them three really good reasons. First of all, the land was what God had promised to Abraham, and it was rightfully theirs. Secondly, God was using them to judge the Canaanites for their idolatry and wickedness. Thirdly, God knew that if they Canaanites weren’t totally driven out, they would be a stumbling block to the Israelites forever.

However, the Israelites didn’t do the job all the way. They left certain societies untouched, and they began to adopt the religious practices of those societies. God’s response was much the same as it was in the days of Kadesh Barnea. Back then, God told them, “If you won’t enter the land I give you, then I will prevent you from entering the land for 40 years.” Now, it’s as if God is saying, “If you won’t drive out all the people who live there on my time schedule, I won’t let you drive them out ever. I will let them remain.” As a result, those other nations were a consistent source of frustration, irritation, and distraction for the people of Israel throughout their history.

This clearly indicates that sometimes God allows us to struggle with difficult circumstances because we have failed to act according to his will. Sometimes we waited too long to get our act together with God and now we face the consequences. Sometimes the irritating circumstance you find yourself in is the direct result of God allowing you to taste your own medicine.

“I will use them to test Israel.”

This second phrase actually shows up twice in the passage I quoted above, and it gives us the second reason God will allow us to face trying circumstances. Specifically, God is “testing” us. That is, God will allow us to face difficulties so that he can gauge the temperature of our heart toward him. If we have rosy lives, we could give great lip service to God while practically living like he doesn’t exist.

However, if we face difficulty, that experience of crisis will force us to make a decision. Will I press on with my own way or will I continue to give my life to God? Will I live by faith in him, or will I take matters into my own hands? Will I obey his will even when it doesn’t make sense or will I follow my own path?

Difficulty is always a better testing ground than is success, pleasure, or ease. External peace can mask the rotting soul within, but trials expose the heart to the light and let us see what we are really made of.

Sometimes God lets you go through a difficult time simply because he wants to test you. Like a coach with a stopwatch timing your 40 yard dash, God will sometimes ask you to run an uncomfortable distance at an uncomfortable pace to see where you stand with him.

“…he did this only to teach warfare…”

This phrase is the one that took me off guard. See, the other two phrases fit perfectly well in my worldview of a God who isn’t really wrathful anymore because of Jesus, but who allows us to go through difficult times for different reasons. However, this phrase here indicates that God is a God who values warfare.

Now, of course, we could sanitize this statement and say that it was really only for the ancient Israelites. See, the young people who survived the desert wandering and were part of the initial conquest of Canaan were now old and dying and the next generation was coming up. It seems quite reasonable that they would need to learn warfare, but check this out: If God had driven out all the other peoples, there would be no need to learn warfare, right? Instead, God intentionally allowed the other peoples to remain because he valued the lessons of warfare for his people!

What’s up with that? What could warfare possibly teach us? How could it possibly be good for us?

After reflecting on this for a couple days, I think I have a few answers.

Warfare Teaches Bold Faith

Throughout the book of Judges, you see story after story of someone who was called by God to act on bold faith. Gideon was called to attack the Midianites with only 300 men carrying trumpets and flashlights. There is no life experience that so dramatically teaches people the lesson of trusting God in the face of fearful circumstances as warfare does.

Are you going through a time of struggle now? Perhaps it is God’s will to teach you bold faith as you stand up for him and his word, as you live according to his principles regardless of how it feels.

Warfare Reveals Leadership

Another lesson that seems to only be learned in warfare is the lesson of leadership. As humans, we tend to be overcome with the desire for independently following our own way. However, the most common biblical word describing God and his relationship to humanity is LORD which means that He is in charge of us and not the other way around. Neither are we in charge of ourselves.

Thus, at the core of humanity’s sin problem is a leadership problem. We want to lead ourselves, but God is the only true leader. As a result, then, one step in our spiritual growth is the ability to relinquish leadership to others when appropriate and take it up when that’s appropriate. Warfare puts us in the place where we recognize the need for good, strong leadership and where we either learn to exercise it ourselves for the sake of others or to follow someone else who is appointed to lead us. Whether as leader or follower, you learn leadership in the crucible of warfare.

Are you going through a time of struggle? Perhaps it is God’s will to get you to grasp leadership. Is there a leader to whom you need to learn to submit? Is there a leadership role you have been reluctant to take? Is there a leadership role you have been abusing?

Warfare Is How God Moves the World

God had given the ancient Israelites the task of “cleaning up” Canaan. He was tired of the wickedness of the people who lived there, and just as he brought the flood in the days of Noah, so now he was bringing the Israelites into the land to wipe out the Baal worship and Asherah worship and child sacrifice and other detestable practices. God wanted to eliminate the Canaanite wickedness and chose to use the mechanism of earthly warfare to accomplish his purposes.

God has known for a long time that the process of changing people always involves death. Either they need to die to themselves and begin to live for God or they need to die to the earth and be sent to the grave, but without one of those deaths taking place, each person will remain in a state of selfish pursuit, and the society made of such people will follow the same path. Therefore, in ancient days, God moved the world through earthly warfare, and he moved against the people of Israel as much as he moved on their behalf.

Are you going through a time of struggle? Perhaps God is preparing you to be an earth-shaker. Or perhaps he has a plan to do something big in the world, and part of his greater activity intersects your life. It doesn’t mean he’s mad at you. It doesn’t mean he doesn’t care about you. But it might mean that you are a simple foot soldier in a bigger battle he’s orchestrating.

Oh, and this “warfare moves the world” concept doesn’t end with the cross. No, in fact, God is still using warfare to move the world, but a lot of the warfare he employs these days is of a spiritual nature. Today, he is moving the world by getting people to die to themselves and give themselves to Jesus, and doing that requires a great deal of warfare in the soul of those people. I’m sure you know stories of the warfare in the heart of a loved one or two. Perhaps you have a story of the struggle in your own heart. But if God is going to move the world by changing hearts, he must have foot soldiers who are equipped to handle that kind of warfare too.

Perhaps your struggle is simply God’s way of giving you the preparation you need to speak into the heart struggle of someone you know.

God’s People Always Face Opposition

Finally, on this warfare concept, I recognize that God’s people have always faced opposition. Sometimes the opposition comes in the form of earthly warfare, physical persecution, economic hardships and more, but we would be missing a great deal if we forget the “spiritual warfare” that is going on around us all the time.

I don’t talk about spiritual warfare that much simply because I’m convinced that in the cross, Jesus has already defeated the powers of hell, making a spectacle of them (Colossians 2:15), making us more than conquerors (Romans 8:37). I believe that Christians need fear nothing because we have overcome the world and it’s power by the power of Jesus himself (1 John 4:4). Nevertheless, I also believe that Christians face a struggle not against flesh and blood but against all kinds of dark powers (Ephesians 6:12).

I also don’t talk about spiritual warfare because those who practice “spiritual warfare” these days often do so with a specific set of techniques and prayer styles that aren’t found in the Bible.

Nevertheless, the Word of God is clear that we have a spiritual struggle on our hands, and we must be prepared to oppose whatever schemes Satan throws our way (Ephesians 6:10-18; 1 Peter 5:8; 2 Corinthians 2:9-11).

Are you going through a trial? Sure it could be the result of a satanic “scheme” against you, but it could also be that God is training you for the kind of warfare that knows how to hold ground against future more stringent attacks.

Conclusion

I was surprised to see these three lines right there in this passage so clearly display the reasons God sometimes chooses to “not drive out” our opposition. We want a God who will pave the way before us, but of course, we want him to pave it on our time schedule. He, however, wants a people who are obedient and who are capable to fight the battles he has planned.

Sometimes he leads us through places of trial and struggle because he wants to test us. Sometimes it’s because we have failed to follow him and are simply facing our due consequences. Sometimes it’s because he is preparing us for “warfare.” But I have a sneaking suspicion that most of the time, it’s a mixture of all three.

For a couple weeks now, I have been dissatisfied with the modern worship songs we’ve been singing in our church. The music is great, the beats are fun, the lyrics are powerful, but honestly, they aren’t very deep.

In particular, the majority of modern rock-style worship music puts God in the second person. Everything is about how great “You” are or about our relationship as humans to “You.” The problem with that kind of music is that it only works for people who have a relationship with God close enough to call him “You.” There are many people for whom God is only “God” or “He” and there are many times in our lives when we need to remember that God is “God” and not just another “You.”

In that light, I put some thoughts together this past week to write a song that would begin to reexamine for myself what a song about God might be like if it just told us about him.

It’s not a great song (please don’t flatter me by telling me it is great). It may have some potential to be rewritten, though. And on that note, I’ll post it here for you to hear if you make me a promise: Only listen if you are willing and ready to offer constructive criticism.

If the melody doesn’t work for you, tell me that. If the lyrics don’t work well, tell me that. If the instrumentation doesn’t work for you, tell me that. If my singing doesn’t work for you… well, you can keep that to yourself. I’m under no delusion that I’m anything special vocally.

Anyway, without further ado, here is “Our God”.

Our God (Second Rough Draft)

The first few chapters are all about counting the people of Israel. This tribe has 60,000 people. That tribe has 40,000 people. With twelve tribes to go through, the lists of numbers and names of people can get tedious.

But once again, God proved himself faithful by showing me something I hadn’t thought of before. In chapter 2, God tells Moses to arrange all the people into their tribal camps around the Tabernacle. We are told which tribes should be on the east, west, north and south, but we are also told who the leaders should be and how many people there are.

Here’s an example:

On the east, toward the sunrise, the divisions of the camp of Judah are to encamp under their standard. The leader of the people of Judah is Nahshon son of Amminadab. His division numbers 74,600. — Numbers 2:3-4

The people are given position leadership and identity. That is, they are told where they should be, who will be their leader, and whom they should consider to be among them (the 74,600 people).

For some time, I have been laboring under the somewhat misguided notion that to be a “simple” church, we had to deemphasize organizational structure. The postmodern (and somewhat ADD) side of me doesn’t like rigid structures anyway, but in many respects, I have thrown the baby out with the bathwater. I have allowed “simplicity” to be an excuse for failing to actually organize people with specific position, leadership, and identity.

The truth of the matter is that without those three things, there is no group at all.

This has been made more clear to me in the last few weeks. Up until this summer, we have basically been surviving as a church by the fact that one person was doing all the hospitality stuff, one person was doing all the sound stuff, we had a few teams loosely led, and we have a pretty well-organized children’s ministry, but as more people started coming and wanting to get involved, the hospitality team seemed like the most natural early fit, and the influx of new people has revealed a few gaps in our organizational structure.

So, I have been inspired recently to get more focused on organizational issues, and my reading today dovetails perfectly with that. If I can gain from what God showed me this morning, I will be developing greater clarity on the identity, position, and leadership of the different teams in the church.

Hold my feet to the fire; we gotta get this done!

Tonight, our life group skipped our normal routine to watch a documentary purportedly on the relationship between homosexuality and religion called For the Bible Tells Me So However, the documentary was actually on the relationship between homosexuality and the conservative/fundamentalist “Christian right.”

Basically, the title calls to mind the song Jesus Loves Me (which should communicate that God loves us) in contrast to the words of those who would claim homosexuality is an “abomination” simply because “the Bible tells me so.”

Since I have already written a few articles on the topic, I won’t take the time to rehash my position. However, I need to make a couple comments.

The major claims of the film were these:

1. The Bible doesn’t actually oppose homosexuality.
2. Sexual orientation is an inborn condition and cannot be changed.
3. Love and sex go together.
4. Opponents of homosexuality are dangerous to society and should be stopped.

Let me briefly address these claims:

1. “The Bible doesn’t actually oppose homosexuality.”

Basically, the full claim from the movie is that the passages in the Bible addressing homosexuality are not relevant for today because they have been mistranslated, misunderstood, or misapplied. However, I could make the same claim about the way the documentary dealt with the Bible. It’s always possible to reshape the text of the Bible to support a person’s convictions, but there’s one biblical truth that overshadows them all: People are helpless sinners, ignorant of God and his will, and we need the forgiveness and restoration made possible by Jesus’ death on the cross. Our propensity to sin will always lead us to reinterpret what we read in the direction of our greatest comfort. Therefore, the best course of action is the one which involves the least amount of “interpretation” possible.

2. “Sexual orientation is inborn and can’t be changed.”

I partially agree with this statement. I agree that humans have many different temptations. I agree that some people are tempted by drink, some by drugs, some by power, some by heterosexual relations, and some by homosexual relations. I also believe that a person’s predominant temptations are unlikely to change throughout life.

However, regardless of the style or intensity of temptation, we can resist. We are not animals.

3. “Love and sex go together.”

Our society has blended love and sex so closely as to make them indistinguishable (sometimes). Our culture will allow for sex without love (among consenting adults) but can’t imagine love without sex.

Of course, it does not need to be this way, and in fact, it should not be. I find it dangerous to connect the two closely. Many women have fallen for the guy’s request “if you love me, you’ll sleep with me.”

4. “Opponents to homosexuality are dangerous and should be stopped.”

Of course, this is the sentence that scares me the most because it’s easy to replace words:

• Opponents of the President are dangerous and should be stopped.
• Opponents of Free Speech are dangerous and should be stopped.
• Opponents of secular humanism are dangerous and should be stopped.

It scares me because it characterizes me as a member of a class that is dangerous as a whole. It scares me because it labels me as someone worth discriminating against.

Conclusion

I wish this post were more articulate and more carefully written, but I want to get my response out now so the conversation can flow more quickly.

Have any of you seen the film? What did you think?

1. Follow the Rules

Bad communication habits come from everywhere—TV, dysfunctional homes, coping strategies—but that’s no excuse for failing to follow the simple rules of communication.

Rule 1: “I” to speak, “You” to listen.

During the heat of the moment in an argument, we want to say this sentence in slightly different fashion. We want to say:

“I’m talking here! You need to listen!”

However, that’s not what this rule is all about. I simply phrased it that way so it would be easy to remember. This rule actually means that when conversations are difficult and communication skills are weak, it’s even more important to identify who is the “speaker” and who is the “listener.” Then, once we know who is doing what, the speaker has the responsibility to use “I” language and the listener has the responsibility to focus on “you” rather than himself or herself.

• The speaker: “I felt unloved when you said Nichole Kidman was hot.”
• The listener: “You felt unloved when I said that?”

Rule 2: Shift speakers only after understanding.

Similar to Stephen Covey’s “Seek first to understand, then to be understood” this rule declares that the role of speaker and listener is not to be changed until the current speaker feels completely understood.

• The listener: “Did I understand you? Is there anything more?”
• The speaker: “Yeah, I think you got it all. What do you think?”
• The new speaker: “Well, I only meant…”

Rule 3: Specific Timeouts are Unlimited

The basic point of this rule is that either person in the conversation is allowed to declare a timeout at any point in the conversation for any reason so long as the timeout is defined specifically.

• “I’m starting to get mad, and I need to take a timeout for 5 minutes to collect myself.”

Rule 4: Violators lose. Winners dance!

This final rule is focused mostly on the elimination of all hurtful, derogatory, or attacking comments. If one person in the conversation resorts to an accusing word, “You’re such a ——!” or if one of the earlier rules is broken, the guilty person loses immediately.

This doesn’t automatically declare the other person to be right or that the other person’s will should be followed. It just means the other person has the right to declare victory. Additionally, the victory declaration should be loud, ostentatious, and filled with dancing!

The point of this rule is twofold. First, it is our natural human emotion that when we are attacked or when someone breaks a rule, we want to retaliate. Our sense of justice makes us feel as if we need to fight back and win for the cause of righteousness. However, this rule eliminates the need to retaliate, because victory can simply be declared. “I win!”

Secondly, this rule works to defuse the heat of the battle by encouraging silly victory dances. In the ostentatious declaration of victory, the tone of the moment can quickly turn to humor.

2. Build skills with “objective” topics.

The rules above are good for correcting negative communication patterns, but they cannot be learned or applied when the topic of conversation is emotionally heated. Therefore, I encourage couples to begin building these communication skills with “objective” topics.

money

Frankly, one of the most objective topics to discuss is money. I’m constantly amazed at how poor communication skills often dovetail with differing opinions on money when conversations of money should be the most objective conversations a couple can have.

The problem of course, is that too many people talk about money in terms of opinions and feelings rather than facts. The simple truth is that money comes in as hard numbers (even if the income fluctuates month to month, it’s still a single specific number), and it goes out as hard numbers.

Therefore, the simple objective topic is this: Given that we make [a certain amount], how should we split up our money this month, and how will we keep ourselves accountable? Working on a cash only system is a great way to keep money completely objective!

children

Another difficult topic is the topic of raising children, but there are a number of objective facts about child-rearing that even the most strained relationship can handle. Here are a few examples:

1. When is bedtime?
2. What is our bedtime routine?
3. What are the family rules?
4. What are the consequences for breaking the rules?

There are shades of subjectivity in these questions too, but by keeping the conversation objective as much as possible, skills will be developed to handle the more subjective stuff when appropriate. This is a segue to the next tip.

3. Objectivize the Subjective

Early on in communication skills development, it’s easy for conversations to slip into the realm of feelings and accusations when the skills aren’t there to rescue the conversation or take it where it needs to go. Therefore, it’s important to find ways to bring objectivity to what is ordinarily a subjective topic.

rate your day

For example, take the age old question “How was your day?” I have found great success in encouraging couples to objectivize that question this way:

• On a scale of 1-10, how would you rate your day? Why?
• On a scale of 1-10, how would you rate yourself today? Why?

The scale means nothing by itself, but it gives a sense of objectivity to a question that is inherently subjective and opens the doors to communication more easily.

rate your opinions

During moments of subjective conversations and the airing of opinions, it’s quite easy for couples to find themselves on opposite sides of the fence, so to speak. One person says, “Our kids need to have greater discipline.” The other person says, “I think kids need to be given more freedom to be themselves.” Conversations like this easily devolve into accusations of being harsh or being lazy, because with the opinions stated, it seems to be an impasse. However, one simple question can bring some objectivity.

• From 1-10, how strongly do you feel about your position?

appeal to a shared authority

If there remains an impasse after talking through the ratings, the next step is actually not about communication as much as it is understanding the limits of your communication. Sometimes impasses will arise and the only way to deal with it is to appeal to a higher authority. That might mean reading the Bible, but it doesn’t have to. It could also mean appealing to a textbook, a wise counselor, or even for one person in the relationship to defer to the other simply because the other has more experience.

The communication skill regarding this is simply the ability to talk about that shared authority and objectively discuss what that shared authority says about the topic.

Which brings me to my final tip…

4. Talk about God

This last tip follows from the previous one in that God is the ultimate objective reality. Of course, many people subjectivize God and talk about him as if he is something they have created for themselves, but the truth is that God is God is God is God, and only God is God, so he is the only one with any right to tell us about himself. Therefore, our awareness of God is fully objective and written down for us right there in the Bible.

I especially encourage struggling couples to find something in the Bible each day to read and talk about before praying together to end their day.

Conclusion

Communication is a difficult skill to develop mostly because we speak from our hearts far more often than from our heads.

The good man brings good things out of the good stored up in his heart, and the evil man brings evil things out of the evil stored up in his heart. For out of the overflow of his heart his mouth speaks. — Luke 6:45

However, by following these four tips (including the four rules above) we can stay level-headed as we develop the skills needed to discuss even the more difficult topics of conversation.

Just remember that even the simplest topic of conversation is always personal to the person who is sharing.

Resources

• Communication: Key to Your Marriage
• Building Your Mate’s Self Esteem
• Love Life for Every Married Couple

No temptation has seized you except what is common to man. And God is faithful; he will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear. But when you are tempted, he will also provide a way out so that you can stand up under it.

— 1 Corinthians 10:13

In this passage, we are given three promises:

• You are not unique or alone in your temptation. Every temptation or trial (in the Bible, the two words are interchangeable) that you face has been faced by someone else.
• God will only allow you to face a temptation if he knows you can handle it.
• God will always provide you a “way out.”
• The “Way Out” is not an “escape” but a light at the end of a tunnel so “you can stand up under” the temptation.

Are you going through a struggle, a trial, or are you facing temptation. Know this. Whatever you are facing is only in your life because from God’s point of view, you are strong enough for it. If the trial is 100 pounds heavy, God must know that you are capable to lift at least 101 pounds. If the trial is 2 tons, that’s God’s way of telling you that you can handle 2.1 tons!

How big is your trial? That’s God telling you how strong you really are.

I can do everything through him who gives me strength.

— Philippians 4:13

God knows that you and I are able to endure far more than we are generally willing to put up with.

How big is your trial? How strong are you? How strong is your God?

Since I wrote an article on this very topic (see Is There Recovery for the Homosexual?.), I thought it would be good to have a link to this new article here and to add a few comments of my own.

It just seems that the secular world is trying to ignore the truth that SOME people who self-identify as homosexual are able to ADJUST desires or at least find fulfillment outside the homosexual lifestyle.

What if we lived in a society with a VERY vocal and VERY strong lobby promoting the use of smoking? What if in the context of that society, a report was done testing the effectiveness of anti-smoking programs? What kind of news articles would we be reading? “Programs to change smokers to non-smokers don’t work, report says”

It’s the combination of a VERY vocal lobby, a VERY supportive society and the inherent attractiveness of sexual sin that wage war against any “change” programs.

It’s exactly the same as when you read about how “Abstinence Programs Fail Among American Teens.” If the society fully supports something that’s pleasurable, all programs opposing that position will fail more often than not.

What is the Rapture?

Before I talk about anything else, I should probably define what I mean by the rapture and why I want to talk about it now.

The Rapture refers to the event described in the Bible of Christ returning to earth and his followers being “caught up” to meet him in the air.

The major biblical controversy is twofold:

1. Do the biblical statements on the rapture event indicate a literal and physical departure from the surface of the earth?
2. When does the rapture event happen in relation to the rest of prophesied end-time events?

In the past hundred years or so, the most vocal portion of end-times theorists have proposed what is known as the doctrine of Pre-Tribulational Rapture. This position holds that the biblical depictions of the rapture condense two disparate events: the “catching up” of believers is one event, and the establishment of Christ’s kingdom is a second. The Pre-Trib perspective holds that in between these two events will be a time of “Tribulation” which will involve great spiritual persecution.

There are many other positions as well, but rather than examine all the possibilities, we will simply consider a few relevant biblical texts that cover the rapture event and see what the Bible says for itself. However, I’ll say one more word of introduction. Because the “rapture” has been identified differently from different scholars, I will limit the selection of verses here to those which directly address the moment when Jesus “catches up” his believers from the earth.

The Clear Teaching

John 14:3

• Jesus promises to come back to get us and take us to be with him.

1 Thessalonians 4:13-17

• [When Jesus returns] God will bring with Jesus those who have fallen asleep in him.
• Jesus comes down from heaven with a loud command, the voice of the archangel, and the trumpet call of God.
• The dead in Christ are raised to life.
• They and the living believers will be caught up into the air to meet Jesus in the air.
• Believers will be with the Lord from that moment on, forever.

1 Corinthians 15:20-28

• Resurrection comes through Jesus to all men.
• Jesus is the “firstfruits” of the resurrection; when he comes back, his followers will then be resurrected as well.
• Then, the end will come, but not until Jesus has destroyed all competing authority, including the final destruction of death.

1 Corinthians 15:50-55

• Some believers will be alive when Jesus returns.
• Our physical bodies cannot enter heaven without being transformed.
• Believers will be transformed and given imperishable bodies.
• This transformation all happens “at the last trumpet.”

Matthew 24

• Jesus is answering questions about “the sign of his coming” and of the “end of the age.”
• He predicts false Christs, wars, famines, and earthquakes. They are the beginning of birth pains.
• He predicts his followers will be “handed over” to be persecuted.
• Those who stand firm to the end will be saved.
• He predicts great distress, “unequaled from the beginning of the world until now–and never to be equaled again.”
• He predicts those days will be shortened for the sake of the elect.
• He predicts that the elect will also be protected from deception.
• He predicts that his coming will be loud and obvious everywhere.
• He predicts the darkening of the sun and moon.
• He predicts his visible return in glory, a trumpet call, and the gathering of his elect.
• He predicts that the gathering will be preceded by signs, but that the timing is unknown even to him.
• His coming will be a surprise, and some will “be taken” while others will be left.
• Additionally, Jesus uses temporal language to indicate a sequence of events: general distress, persecution, great distress, and cosmic events, ending with his arrival, the trumpet call and the gathering of his elect.

Revelation 19:11-20:6

• Jesus comes from heaven with army in tow.
• The beast and kings of the earth assemble and prepare for battle, but their loss is immediate.
• The beast, his prophet, and Satan himself are imprisoned in the Abyss.
• The “first resurrection” takes place raising up faithful followers of Christ to reign with him for 1000 years.
• The rest of the dead will be resurrected (for judgment) after the 1000 years are ended.

Less Clear Passages

Revelation 4:1

Some have postulated that this verse is a metaphorical indication of a “secret” rapture of the church preceding the Tribulation. John hears a voice “like a trumpet” and then hears “Come up here.” He is caught up into a vision of the heavenly throne room, and from that moment until the chapter 22, the church is “conspicuously” absent from the events on the earth. The conclusion is that when John is caught up to heaven, it is symbolic of the church being caught up in the rapture. Support for this view comes mainly from the end of Matthew 24 when Jesus talked about the surprising nature of his return. However, there is no way to reconcile that with the fact that in Matthew 24, the surprising return comes after a great deal of distress and in Revelation 4:1, the distress has not happened yet. Further complicating this position is John’s own statement that when the “Come up” call is heard, he immediately is “in the spirit.” John has an ecstatic visionary experience that in no way indicates he was physically transported anywhere.

Revelation 11:12

The two witnesses hear a loud voice and are caught up physically into heaven. They could be a symbolic representation of the rapture of the church. However, no one takes the two witnesses to be symbolic of the church in general, so it seems unlikely to treat their ascension as symbolic of the rapture.

Revelation 12:5

When the woman gives birth to a male child, we are told that the child is “snatched up to God” for his protection. Perhaps this is a symbolic rapture of the church away from the distress of the Tribulation. Supporting this is the fact that three and a half years of distress are predicted after this child is snatched away. The association of the church with the male child in this case is quite attractive, except for two problems. First, it would be quite unlikely for God to use the metaphor of a “male child” to refer to the church. Though “son” is used in the Old Testament to refer to the nation of Israel, the New Testament reserves the concept of a single male offspring for Jesus himself. In fact, just a few chapters after this, the church will be referred to as a bride. Secondly, Revelation 12:17 indicates that the there are “those who obey God’s commands and hold to the testimony of Jesus” still living on the earth as a target for Satanic persecution. Therefore, the snatching away of the male child cannot refer to the rapture of the church.

Conclusion

Pulling together a few things:

• The account in Matthew 24 seems to line up pretty clearly with the account in Revelation 6-7 of seals 1-4 and 6 that earthly, cosmic, and spiritual distress come while believers are on earth and before the victorious return of Christ.
• The account of 1 Thessalonians 4 seems to line up clearly with both Matthew 24 and Revelation 19-20 that the return of Christ will be boisterous, undeniable, victorious, and final. (Note also that 1 Thessalonians 4:13-17 is possibly a reference to the same ancient practice that manifested itself at Jesus’ Triumphal Entry into Jerusalem. When the victorious king comes to the city, the faithful rush out of the city to meet him on the way, and then remain with him to escort him back into the city. That understanding of 1 Thessalonians would put it in perfect harmony with both Matthew 24 and Revelation 19-20.)
• Revelation 20:5 claims that the first resurrection occurs after Jesus defeats the kings of the earth and immediately before he establishes his millennial reign. However, 1 Thessalonians 4:13-17, the core rapture passage, is clearly a resurrection event. Therefore, the only way for Revelation 20:5 to be the “first resurrection” is if the two passages are speaking of the same event.
• The text of 1 Corinthians 15 seems to coincide well with Revelation 19-20 that Jesus will return, claim his followers, and then take some time (1000 years?) to finally eradicate all evil before handing the kingdom finally over to his Father.

Therefore, drawing from the different passages that most directly describe the gathering of believers from the earth, one picture has become abundantly clear to me.

• First, there will be distress on the earth greater than any before or after including political unrest, natural disasters, demonic activity, and the outpouring of God’s wrath.
• Secondly, Christ begins to return, and the powers of the earth, motivated by Satan himself, will assemble in opposition to him, but his victory will be swift, accomplished by his angelic army in advance of his arrival.
• When he arrives, his victory will be announced with trumpets, those dead in Christ will rise, those alive in Christ will be caught up to meet him in the air and escort him back to Earth as the rightful King where he will reign for 1000 years before one final battle.

Of course, there is room in this understanding for a secret rapture of the living saints to happen at any point in time God wishes. God raptured Enoch, Elijah, and Jesus himself, and he can do it again if he so chooses. Matthew 24:40 could be speaking of this kind of event. However, such an event would cause certain living Christians to precede those who have fallen asleep in Christ apparently contradicting Paul’s statement in 1 Thessalonians 4:15. As such, a secret rapture without a resurrection seems unlikely. Additionally, any resurrection happening before the imprisonment of Satan in Revelation 20:1-3 would also seem to contradict its identification as “the first resurrection.”

Based on all this, I am confident in saying that the Bible clearly teaches a rapture of the church which coincides with the victorious return of Christ and the establishment of his millennial kingdom, though a secret rapture of living saints at any point in time is still within God’s prerogative should he choose.

The image used on this post was obtained from a blog post at lavrai.com. I am in no way endorsing that blog or its contents, although it seems to take the same perspective as that taken here.

• you believe that God has “elected” or “chosen” those who would be saved from before the foundation of the world.
• you believe that those whom God has chosen have been predestined to respond to the gospel when God woos them.
• you believe that salvation comes entirely without regard to human works or merit.
• you believe that “elect” and “true followers of Jesus” are two ways of describing only one group.

If you are Pre-Trib:

• you believe that the rapture event will remove from earth all who are followers of Jesus.
• you believe that after the rapture event, the Tribulation will involve the salvation of some and their subsequent persecution.

The Contradiction

These two positions are in contradiction to each other because the Calvinist must believe that those saved before the rapture and those saved after the rapture are part of the same group God elected before the foundation of the world. The only difference between the two would be the timing of God’s effort at wooing them or the timing of their willing response to his call.

The former case would indicate that God had specifically not wooed some of his elect in time for them to join in the rapture of the rest of the saints (as if God were showing favoritism to one group of his followers)

The latter case indicates that participation in the rapture event, unlike salvation, depends upon the timing of a person’s response to the gospel which seems close to a works-based system.

To be both Calvinistic and Pre-Trib a person must believe that the rapture is an event for only some of the elect either by their own merit or by God’s favoritism among them. Both options are distasteful for the majority of Calvinists.

However, I’d like to hear what other people have to say on this. Your comments are welcome and encouraged!

Update (Aug 1, 2009)

I apologize for sending this post out before without the support of any specific biblical text. The contradiction as I see it from the Bible comes from the juxtaposition of these three biblical concepts:

1. John 6:44, Romans 8:29-30, 2 Thessalonians 2:13, and 2 Timothy 1:9 teach that salvation only occurs in response to God’s activity of election, that this election happens by his choice, before the beginning of time, and “predestines” people for salvation. Therefore, by these verses, the Calvinist would conclude that God presently knows every human who will be saved because he has claimed them as his own, and they are rightfully called “the elect.”

2. Matthew 24:31 and Mark 13:27 both indicate that when Christ returns, he will “gather his elect” from the whole earth. This seems to indicate that the gathering will include all who are “his elect.”

3. Revelation 20:4 clearly teaches there were people who had the opportunity to worship the beast and receive his mark but refused both and remained faithful to Christ. Matthew 24:24 refers to those who resist false prophets and remain faithful to Christ and calls them “the elect.”

Therefore, here is the exact logical argument:

• Whenever Christ’s “gathering” takes place, it appears to include all who are elect.
• If election is determined before the foundation of the world, the gathering event must leave behind only the non-elect.
• If election is necessary for salvation, the gathering event Jesus mentions would indicate that the door for salvation was now closed.
• However, there are clearly believers alive (and martyred!) during the Tribulation period.
• Therefore, the Matthew 24 event cannot happen before the Tribulation period—unless we are missing something.
• Therefore, we are left with only three possible options:
  1. God’s election is not eternally determined. Those who are already “elect” at the time of the rapture will be taken, but others will become “elect” afterwards.
  2. Matthew 24 is not speaking of the rapture of the church, and it is God’s prerogative to take in a secret rapture some of his elect leaving others behind.
  3. The rapture of God’s elect happens after the Tribulation.

The recommendation is that we amend our statement of faith to describe our core convictions in this matter. Therefore, I’m putting here what I’m preparing to present to our church leadership on the matter. Your comments will be helpful.

Human Sexuality

God created humans to be sexual beings. God created marriage to provide for and protect that sexuality. Human sexuality is to be expressed only within the context of heterosexual marriage.

Marriage. Christian marriage is a sacred institution ordained of God for the happiness of mankind and the propagation of the race. It is a spiritual and physical union into which one man and one woman may enter for the glory of God and, according to the scriptural ideal, is to be broken only by death. This notion, that marriage is a man and a woman united for life, is the only definition of marriage recognized in the Bible. It is not open to societal or legal reinterpretation.

Sexual Orientation. Scripture teaches that all people are tempted by their own desires and therefore sexual orientation refers to a person’s predominant form of sexual desire and temptation. These desires, though real, are not irresistible. God offers strength to overcome temptation and power to reshape desires. Finally, all sexual behavior, regardless of orientation, is sinful if not found within the context of biblical marriage.

(Genesis 1:26-28; Genesis 2:18-25; Genesis 3:1ff; Matthew 19:4-6; Mark 10:4-9; Ephesians 5:25-33; Romans 7:2; 1 Corinthians 7:2-3, 10-16; 1 Timothy 3:2, 12; Leviticus 18:21-23; 20:13; Romans 1:18-32; 1 Corinthians 6:8-11; 1 Timothy 1: 9-10; Matthew 15:19; Mark 7:21; Acts 15:20, 29; Galatians 5:19-21; 1 Thessalonians 4:3; Hebrews 13:4).

It’s interesting to me to think that the people of old had no idea what germs and viruses were. They had no idea what parasites were, yet the commands God gave them were exactly what they needed to protect them from these medical dangers.

I was struck with two thoughts in relation to that. First of all, I am grateful that God in heaven cares enough about people to give us such explicit instructions on what things are good for us and what things aren’t good for us. It truly does make me feel thankful to God for loving me enough to tell me not to eat a vulture or not to touch a dead weasel. It may seem a little silly to us in our day of antibacterial everything, but I can tell how important these commands would have been to people back then.

The second thing I thought about, though, was that the people of Israel would have had absolutely no idea why eating pork is a potentially dangerous thing to do. They had no awareness of trichinosis or anything else. What’s more, is that they had no ability to learn about the parasites present in pigs. It would be thousands of years before the theory of parasites would be understood. In other words, God gave them a command that they could not possibly understand, that they would never be able to figure out but one that they would benefit from if they kept it.

I take great comfort in the knowledge that God’s commands are given for my benefit even if I never understand his rationale behind them.

One of the questions I get a lot is the question about sexual morality as it relates to the Bible, and it’s one I have thought a lot about as well considering that I do quite a bit of marital counseling and also considering that I’m a guy and I think about these issues myself!

Of course, the biggest question about sexual morality is whether the Bible actually prohibits premarital sex, and if it does prohibit it, why?

I’m going to try to answer that question simply from three angles: What does the Bible teach about sex? What effect does sex have on people? Where should the limits be drawn (i.e. what is the Biblical definition of “sex”)?

What does the Bible teach about sex?

There are many passages in the Bible regarding sexuality and sexual behavior. Jesus talks about lust, the ten commandments prohibit adultery, Leviticus and Romans both explicitly address sexual behavior, and the prophets rail against “sexual immorality” repeatedly. However, in the midst of all the condemnation people throw around regarding “what the Bible says about sex” very few people seem to have an overall grasp of the topic. Let’s look at a few key passages.

Sexuality is God’s design.

So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. God blessed them and said to them, “Be fruitful and increase in number…” — Genesis 1:27-28

It’s important to remember, and we’ll come back to this later on, that sexuality inherently contains the power of procreation, but an even more powerful truth is that sexuality is wired into humanity so that humans can more accurately represent God in this world. There is something about “male and female” that can better represent God as his “image” than male or female could do on their own. The existence of two sexes is somehow an aspect of what it means to be made in God’s image. As God is neither male nor female, the fullness of the image of God can only be expressed in the harmony of male and female. Therefore, the sexual union of a man and a woman touches an aspect of the image of God in a way that no other human behavior can.

Sexual intimacy always assumes, requires, or violates marriage.

As a teenager, thinking through these issues, I realized for myself that the Bible carries very little instructions on the process of getting married. In fact, though there are a number of lessons on how husbands and wives ought to treat each other, there are no instructions on how a marriage union should be initiated or made official. It confused me for a while until I recognized that in the Bible, marriage was simultaneous with a couple’s first sexual encounter.

For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and they will become one flesh. — Genesis 2:24

Eve is called Adam’s wife, but there is no description of the marriage—only that they have left their families to be united and to become one flesh. The imagery of sexual union is clear and sexual union then becomes a metaphor for the unity of the rest of their lives.

Isaac brought her into the tent of his mother Sarah, and he married Rebekah. So she became his wife, and he loved her; and Isaac was comforted after his mother’s death. — Genesis 24:67

Isaac “brought her into the tent” and “she became his wife.” Even more explicit is this account of Jacob.

So Laban brought together all the people of the place and gave a feast. But when evening came, he took his daughter Leah and gave her to Jacob, and Jacob lay with her. And Laban gave his servant girl Zilpah to his daughter as her maidservant. When morning came, there was Leah! So Jacob said to Laban, “What is this you have done to me? I served you for Rachel, didn’t I? Why have you deceived me?” Laban replied, “It is not our custom here to give the younger daughter in marriage before the older one. Finish this daughter’s bridal week; then we will give you the younger one also, in return for another seven years of work.” — Genesis 29:22-27

“Giving in marriage” is what happened when Laban gave Leah to Jacob and he slept with her. The bridal week began with the first sexual encounter.

Finally, the link between sex and marriage was institutionalized in the Mosaic Law:

“If a man seduces a virgin who is not pledged to be married and sleeps with her, he must pay the bride-price, and she shall be his wife. If her father absolutely refuses to give her to him, he must still pay the bride-price for virgins.” — Exodus 22:16-17

If a man slept with a woman who was a virgin and not engaged to another, he was required to marry her or at least pay whatever “bride-price” the father of the girl demanded of him. This same regulation was repeated in Deuteronomy 22:29, and in that context the additional command is given that “He can never divorce her as long as he lives.”

To put it bluntly, the command found in the Ten Commandments “You shall not commit adultery” is serious business. Deuteronomy 22 describes in detail other scenarios of extramarital sexual relations and the consequences:

• If a woman marries a man, and the man can find no proof of her virginity, the woman is to be stoned for promiscuity.
• If a man sleeps with another man’s wife, both of them are to be killed.
• If a man sleeps with a woman pledged to another man, both of them are to be killed.

Sexual passions have a place only in the context of marriage.

The Bible outlines a world of prohibited sexual behaviors, but they can nearly all be subsumed under this heading: marriage is the only place where sexual passions can find expression. The two places in the Bible where this principle is made most clear come from Jesus and Paul respectively.

But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart. — Matthew 5:28

Jesus clearly outlines that a lustful gaze is equivalent to adultery. By implication, lust must be equivalent to sexual behavior and if the object of your lust is not your spouse, then it is adultery.

Now to the unmarried and the widows I say: It is good for them to stay unmarried, as I am. But if they cannot control themselves, they should marry, for it is better to marry than to burn with passion. — 1 Corinthians 7:8-9

Paul writes that there are only two options for those with “uncontrollable desires.” They can get married or they can “burn with passion.” In other words, there is no middle ground where sexual passions can be satisfied without getting married.

Therefore, the only place for sexual passions to be expressed is in the context of marriage. However, no one should get the idea that sexual passions are in and of themselves wrong. Quite to the contrary, Paul himself says in the same chapter:

But since there is so much immorality, each man should have his own wife, and each woman her own husband. The husband should fulfill his marital duty to his wife, and likewise the wife to her husband. The wife’s body does not belong to her alone but also to her husband. In the same way, the husband’s body does not belong to him alone but also to his wife. Do not deprive each other except by mutual consent and for a time, so that you may devote yourselves to prayer. Then come together again so that Satan will not tempt you because of your lack of self-control. — 1 Corinthians 7:2-5

This is a clear teaching that sexual expression in the context of marriage should be free and encumbered only by one’s consideration of the needs and desires of the spouse. The husband and wife give their entire bodies to each other, and deprivation of any sort is to be intentionally avoided except in cases of mutually determined times of spiritual focus. In other words, it appears that there are to be no limits for marital sexual expression except for concern for the needs and desires of each other.

What are the social implications of premarital / extramarital sex?

I don’t want to spend all my time here, or even a great deal of time here, but I will address what I believe to be the three fundamental truths of sexuality and the implications these hold when taken outside of the context of marriage.

1. Sex has life-creating power.

Undeniably, human sexuality has the power of creation wired in. Every sexual act IS a reproductive act, and though I am not opposed as others are to the use of contraception, though I might oppose certain forms of contraception, it cannot be denied that sexual behavior is a reproductive behavior with the power to create life. It’s life-creating power is so great that we must engineer methods to bypass it.

This is a sobering reality, and I cannot stress enough that the context in which sexual behavior is found must also be a context where the creation of life is held to be something sacred and welcome. Furthermore, that kind of context is rarely found without a lifelong commitment between two people. In our language, we call that lifelong commitment “marriage.”

2. Sex has life-unifying power.

Way back in Genesis, the sexual / marital union was described as a “one-flesh” relationship because it carries the power to unify not just two bodies, but two lives as well. Men generally feel that a commitment to a woman without accompanying sexual freedom makes the commitment hollow, and women generally feel that sexual freedom without an accompanying commitment is artificial. Despite what TV tells us about sexual promiscuity, most men and women are inherently aware of the unifying power of sexual union.

3. Sex has life-destroying power.

The sad reality is that many of us have seen first hand the life-destroying power sex has. Nearly all of us know someone who has been through sexual abuse of some kind or another, and we can see the results it has. Just one inappropriate sexual encounter can require a person to go through years of psychological counseling to find healing and future sexual health.

However, divorce or promiscuity before marriage can be just as destructive.

Therefore…

It would be naive of me to claim that because sex has this kind of power, we should therefore conclude that all sex outside of marriage will destroy people. That is the claim made by many advocates of teen abstinence; however, there are many people who seem to think that sexual promiscuity has not destroyed them but has instead made them stronger and better able to determine with whom they are “compatible.”

I won’t get into all that here. I’ll simply say that because sex has such life-changing power, we should treat it with a sense of sacredness. Keeping sex exclusively within the context of marriage preserves its sacredness. Freeing it from marriage, on the other hand, allows it to become something as casual as going out to dinner or enjoying a cup of coffee.

What boundaries should we draw?

Before I address any of these boundary questions, I need to be very clear about one thing. If you choose to reject or deny the Biblical teaching on sex as I’ve outlined above, then my only advice to you is to keep sex “sacred.” But since “sacred” can mean anything to anyone, that’s not saying much. Honestly, you’re on your own, and you don’t have any reason to follow my suggestions.

However, if you accept the Bible’s teaching on human sexuality, there are some nearly obvious boundaries that you should draw for yourself.

I will not view, listen to, or read explicit material.

Lust for men is often found in the domain of the eyes, but lust for women is often in the domain of the imagination, but since the admonition is against lust, those things which enflame sexual passions are to be thoroughly avoided.

The only exception to this, as we shall see below, is in the context of marriage where the husband and wife together agree on what they watch, listen to, or read. However, I still maintain that explicit material of any sort has crossed the line if it brings to mind lustful thoughts about anyone other than one’s spouse. Specifically, I’m convinced that strip clubs, adult films, and explicit romance novels are never acceptable, nudity on film or in print (even if “tastefully done”) is rarely acceptable, and even “love scenes” and TV commercials have the power to take the mind away from one’s spouse.

Integrity in this matter in our culture requires vigilance.

I made a covenant with my eyes not to look lustfully at a girl. — Job 31:1

I will not give or receive sexual pleasure.

Of course, this eliminates all behavior involving the major reproductive organs, but careful consideration should also be given to kissing and “making out.”

I will express sexuality fully, freely, and exclusively with my spouse.

For the unmarried, this is a promise made to a future spouse, but for the married, this is a covenant of freedom and joyful expression with each other.

One More Thing: What about love?

To conclude this whole article, I want to address briefly the single most prevalent argument in our society for premarital and even extramarital sex: “We love each other!”

My response is this: Do you love Jesus? (Profound, I think.)

You see, loving Jesus doesn’t imply sexual behavior with him. Of course not! Love does not imply sex. Love implies commitment and sacrifice.

If you love Jesus, you will remain committed to what he taught and the values he held.

If you love Jesus, you will sacrifice your own passions and desires for his will.

And, if you really loved each other, you’d get married.

So far, we have considered these keys to biblical prosperity:

• Cultivate a Trust and Obey Perspective on the Bible
• Steward with Generosity
• Eliminate Greed
• Watch your Entourage
• Invest in People
• Keep Your Eyes Open for Spiritual Prosperity

We have finally come to the seventh key to biblical prosperity, and it is the hardest one for us to grab in our world today because our world is far more about getting rich quick than it is about slow patience, and the seventh key requires the greatest patience ever.

7. Keep an Eternal Perspective

Let’s just go straight to the Bible on this:

All these people were still living by faith when they died. They did not receive the things promised; they only saw them and welcomed them from a distance. And they admitted that they were aliens and strangers on earth. People who say such things show that they are looking for a country of their own. If they had been thinking of the country they had left, they would have had opportunity to return. Instead, they were longing for a better country—a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared a city for them. — Hebrews 11:13-16

Every verse in this chapter leading up to these tells us about the incredible faith of someone. They were people who completely loved God and trusted him. They were people who had received promises from God, and some of those promises included the promises of prosperity. However, regardless of the promises, regardless of the faith, regardless of what was actually received in this lifetime, the verse tells us clearly that the people didn’t receive what was promised!

This is the final key to biblical prosperity! God’s biggest promises are never fully realized in this lifetime. Even the greatest heroes of the faith didn’t receive the full reality of God’s promises to them!

The rest of the chapter gives us more heroes of the faith who accomplished great things and some heroes of the faith who suffered great tragedies and personal persecution. In light of those heroes of the faith, our own desire for worldly prosperity falls flat. Consider what it says about them:

Some faced jeers and flogging, while still others were chained and put in prison. They were stoned; they were sawed in two; they were put to death by the sword. They went about in sheepskins and goatskins, destitute, persecuted and mistreated— the world was not worthy of them. They wandered in deserts and mountains, and in caves and holes in the ground. — Hebrews 11:36-38

This hardly sounds like worldly prosperity! In light of what God’s people have endured through the centuries, our own discussion of the biblical promise of prosperity takes on a completely different meaning. Obviously, the promise is sometimes about earthly possessions, but it’s always about something more. God’s promises of prosperity remain true even if the earthly possessions are never given. The prosperity itself is deep and eternal.

These were all commended for their faith, yet none of them received what had been promised. God had planned something better for us so that only together with us would they be made perfect. — Hebrews 11:39-40

These closing words of Hebrews 11 bring our discussion of biblical prosperity to a conclusion by reminding us of what real prosperity is all about.

Real prosperity is knowing Jesus and being part of the family of his followers.

See, God made all these promises of blessing and prosperity to the people of old, but God had planned “something better for us.” The writer of Hebrews is clearly making a reference to Jesus and his followers. The “us” there is literally “we who live today” and the “something better” is in context “the knowledge of Jesus and his work.”

More than that, we are told the people of old will not be perfected in their own prosperity unless they are united with us. This reminds us that prosperity in God’s eyes is about the whole family prospering together instead of one individual or one portion of the family receiving greater blessing.

Jesus is the greatest blessing.

The blessings are only fully received in the unified fellowship of God’s family.

The blessings will not be fully received until the whole family is united again in the end of days.

A Final Word

Yes, I firmly believe that God has promised prosperity to his people, but I firmly believe that our expectation of prosperity is darkened by both a misunderstanding of the prosperity promised and motivations that are often selfish in nature.

We should always take more pleasure in the giver than in the gift because nothing in all creation is as great a blessing as the Creator himself.

This post is password protected. To view it please enter your password below:

Password: