God Invented Sex

I’m preaching a six-week sermon series on the real-life issues we all have to deal with. Things like life and death, and politics, and when God doesn’t answer prayer. Yesterday’s sermon was, “God Invented Sex.” (You can listen to a podcast on our church website, www.trinityannapolis.org.)

At the 9:00 service it was my turn to give the children’s sermon. Most of the kids are between two and six years old. I asked them if any of them were married, and they laughed and one said no, they were too short. Then I asked them what married people do. I was thinking about things like taking care of each other, so I was a little surprised at the chorus of snickers from various parts of the congregation.
Why is that the usual reaction to this topic?

Forty years ago, 8% of children were born out of wedlock. Twenty years ago that had climbed to 18%. Today, depending on what you read, the percentage of children born to single mothers is between 40 and 51%. Adding in the wide availability of birth control, and the number of children conceived by single mothers who are never allowed to be born, that points to a huge amount of sexual activity outside of marriage. And more and more couples I talk to in pre-wedding counseling have no idea that God even has an opinion about that.

That’s not something to be snickered at.

Then there’s the increasing visibility of the GLBT population: those who consider themselves gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgendered.

This is not just something we read about in the newspaper. Most of us know unmarried couples of all sexual orientations living together. Often they are in our families.
Somebody asked me recently, “How do I treat these people? What do I say to them?”

The simple answer is this: you love them. How can they ever know that God loves them if we don’t show them God’s love by loving them ourselves? That doesn’t mean we condone what is obviously unbiblical behavior. Encouraging people to continue in anything less than God’s perfect plan is not loving them.

But these folks know the church doesn’t approve. They don’t need us to tell them that. They may not know God doesn’t approve – in the eyes of many people there is a big disconnect between God and the church – but they’re not likely to take our word for it.

Our job is not to condemn non-Christians for acting like non-Christians. The Holy Spirit is the one who convinces people. Our job is just to love them, and tell them what Jesus has done for us.

Most of us grew up in a time when the Christian view of sex was accepted as the common morality. That is no longer true. If the church doesn’t tell people what the Bible says, nobody else will.

But if we don’t love them first, why should they listen to us?