Nothing to say, yet
Transcription
The speaker begins by praying and discussing the issue of labels and self-worth. They talk about how labels can create a false sense of identity and how Christians can find self-worth in Jesus. They then discuss how to help non-Christians stop buying into labels and the importance of focusing on Jesus. They move on to discuss the Bible's teachings on marriage and celibacy, emphasizing the idea that we should be content with the life God has assigned to us. They address the dissatisfaction with our lives and how it reflects a dissatisfaction with God. The speaker talks about the importance of believing that God is good and that His ways are good. They mention the struggle of living with same-sex attraction and the calling to celibacy. They acknowledge the emotional appeal of arguments against celibacy but emphasize the need for sensitivity and clear reasoning in discussing this topic. They highlight the importance of addressing this issue in the church. Alright, well, let's pray and get started this morning. We thank you for today. We thank you for time. And we thank you that you've brought us here to learn and to worship you. We pray that you would give us minds to understand and eyes to see. In Jesus' name, Amen. Last week, we were talking about the issue of labels when it comes to people. Who gives labels to others? Everyone. That's right. Do we only give labels to other people? No. What else do we do? Huh? We label ourselves. That's right. Is all labeling inherently bad? No, not necessarily. But what is the damage that labels often do? Okay, create a false sense of identity. Good. Yup. Any other ideas? Yeah. Okay, so it messes with our self-worth provided by salvation. That's right. As we saw, the labels that we give ourselves and others do become negated by what God says about us, primarily in Christ. So, how is it that you and I, as Christians, have a sense of self-worth? We have a sense of self-worth. We have a sense of self-worth. We have a sense of self-worth. We have a sense of self-worth. We have a sense of self-worth. We have a sense of self-worth. We have a sense of self-worth. We have a sense of self-worth. We have a sense of self-worth. We have a sense of self-worth. We have a sense of self-worth. We have a sense of self-worth. We have a sense of self-worth. I can work at avoiding the tendency to buy into the labels others desire to put on us. Well, we remind ourselves of who we are in Jesus. I wonder this. How would you help somebody who is not a Christian stop buying into the labels that either they give themselves or others give them? How do you get people to stop buying into the labels that... People either give to them or they're giving to themselves. People who aren't Christians. Maybe it's harder if they're not a Christian. Yes. How do you get people to stop buying into the labels that either they give themselves or others give them? Okay. Yeah. Okay. So there's that. We can just kind of show how those labels can be, often are, false. These are the ones we give ourselves or give to others. And then there's also the reality that what does the person who is giving themselves or buying into the labels that others give them, what is the thing they most need? To think better about themselves? To see the truth, what does that mean? Just about themselves? Okay. About what? Huh? Okay. Yes. Your advice to people about not buying into the labels that others give them or they give themselves has to be replaced by something. You can tell me all day long, don't believe the lies people tell about you. You can say, I don't want to. How do I stop doing that? And you go, think better about yourself. And I go, I've been trying that. That doesn't work. And what do I do? Until you give them something else to focus on, they will always have a tendency, just like you do as a Christian, to buy into the labels that you give them or others or they give themselves. Okay? So what the, we keep returning to this idea, what the person with same-sex attraction, what the person who is buying into the labels that others give them, needs most of all in this world is Jesus. Bar none. And you'd say, that's really, like, simple, Jeremy. It is. We just tend to forget it all the time, which is why we have to keep saying it over and over. What eventually happens if you and I, whether we struggle with same-sex attraction or not, what happens if you and I continue to buy into the labels that we give ourselves or others give to us? Okay? And what happens as a result of living in those ways of thinking? Right. That's right. Yeah, it actually ends up screwing with your idea of who God is, because you buy into those, by buying into those, you're rejecting what God says about you, and then you end up turning into Adam at the fall, saying, the woman you gave me, right? Blaming God for whatever problems, whatever things we're believing about ourselves. It's a very big problem. Good. Just in case this section of our discussion on bioethics had not gotten awkward enough, it's time to talk about marriage and celibacy. The Bible is pretty unambiguous about God's sovereignty over all of life. Just in case you were curious about how much, or to what extent, that takes place, let's go to 1 Corinthians 7. I'd just like to read something. I'd just like to, you know, welcome us all here this morning by just making us feel awkward right out of the gate. I know some of us are tired, so we might as well wake you up with something like this. 1 Corinthians 7, beginning in verse 17, says, Only let each person lead the life that the Lord has assigned to him. Just read that part again. Only let each person lead the life that the Lord has assigned to him, and to which God has called him. This is my rule in all the churches. Was anyone at the time of his call already circumcised? Let him not seek to remove the marks of circumcision. Was anyone at the time of his call uncircumcised? Let him not seek circumcision. For neither circumcision counts for anything nor uncircumcision, but keeping the commandments of God. Each one should remain in the condition in which he was called. Were you a bondservant when called? Do not be concerned about it. But if you can gain your freedom, avail yourself of the opportunity. For he who is called in the Lord as a bondservant is a freedman of the Lord. Likewise, he who is free when called is a bondservant of Christ. You were bought with a price. Do not become bondservants of men. So, brothers, in whatever condition each was called, let him remain with God. Three times in eight verses, in verse 17, 20, and 25, Paul says that we should be what we are. The beginning and the end of this section tell us that it is God who put our lives together in the way that it's currently constructed. I won't ask for a show of hands, but I'm willing to bet that the vast majority of us struggle at times, some more than others, with the life that God has assigned to us. The life that we currently live. What is, at the end of the day, dissatisfaction with our lives? Yes. Right? Name the silence. Name that 5,000 pound dragon in the room. Your dissatisfaction with your life is a dissatisfaction with God. Now, Paul has some interesting things to say here. He says, what does he say about people who are slaves? Don't worry about it. He adds something to that. If you have the opportunity to be free, go for it. But begin with a position of contentment. We talked about this all the way back when we talked about the virtue of contentment. It doesn't mean that we don't change anything, either change society or change the way we act and things like that. No, but the beginning position is a contentment with the life the Lord has assigned to us. A major question we have to ask and answer most every day is this. Is God good? That seems like a no-brainer, right? At least, like, maybe for you right now. Maybe you're here, though, thinking, yeah, that's a good question, because I'm not really sure. I'm kind of, I thought God was good yesterday, or maybe last week, or maybe ten years ago. But today, not so sure. Either because of things happening in your own life or in the world around you. If he is good, we ought to believe that the ways he tells us to live are also good. Right? Now, if God is evil, and then we could assume that the ways he tells us to live are evil or somehow self-serving or bad for us, the question is, why would you ever serve a God like that? But, if God is good, then we have reason to believe that the ways he tells us to live is good. The idea that our assignment in life might be something we don't necessarily want for us is something quite terrifying. It would be interesting. I don't know if it would be very beneficial. It might be beneficial. We won't do it. But it might be beneficial for us to just name the things in our own lives that we feel uncomfortable about, that God gave us to live with. I would encourage you to do this, to be honest about those things for times when somebody approaches you and says, I don't understand God, it's not fair because I'm this way. You can say, I totally get that because I'm this way. I'm sure there's something that you hate about yourself. It might be trivial to other people, but it is big to you. But we all have things that we wrestle with. In the context of somebody with same-sex attraction, the calling to live in the way God has called us to live is a calling to live a life of lifelong celibacy and repression of sexual desire. You think, Jeremy, that's a big deal, that's a big deal, you think, Jeremy, that sounds downright monstrous. Indeed, people like Matthew Vines, who would consider themselves to be Christian homosexuals, say stuff like this, so while you're watching friends fall in love, get married and start families, you, the person with same-sex attraction, will always be left out. You will never share those joys yourself, of a spouse and of children of your own, you will always be alone. You might be here this morning and say, I think I agree with Matthew Vines, I hope Jeremy agrees with Matthew Vines, just so you know I'm not going to. Like, that sounds right. What I want to say is, we have to understand that that's where these, that's kind of like the initial, like, first response to this. I understand where he's coming from. It sounds like that's what we would be saying. I grant that what his argument has is massive emotional appeal. Regardless of whether you agree with him or not, it is important to recognize how clear and sensitive we have to be when talking about this with people who struggle with this. You cannot be nebulous. And you've got to know why you believe these kinds of things. But this kind of thinking and reasoning stems from a real problem we have in the church, what happens when, what's the way, we kind of touched on this earlier, but it's very important that we talk about this early and often. How is the church ordinarily, big C, just kind of, you know, church in America today, how do we treat people who are single? We need to set them up. Less than, incomplete, right. And what would figure as completion? Marriage, that's right. Which should be laughable to any of you who are married, right. Yeah, I thought that. Screw that idea. It's a total lie that we tell ourselves and others. So, I love being married, by the way. I'm just going to say this, right. Thankfully, y'all know me and I'm a very happily married individual because I'm about to say some things about marriage in the next couple days that I hope shock and offend most of you. So, I just want to say I'm happily married. I was here today, hopefully she'll be here next week. We do... Like, just think about that. Even just with single people, right. We are very uncomfortable around them. Ordinarily. Now imagine, we don't have any here. I hope that over time we do. I hope that the generation that comes after me, after us, actually embraces the hypothetical probability and then actually people take it up of celibacy. Imagine what would happen if we had people who were decidedly celibate here. Like, how do you think that would go over? Well? Right? You know, just stunned silence. We wouldn't even know what to do with such people. Like, wait, you have freely chosen to give up that whole part of your life. Yeah. Right? And then how do we view marriage? We've already talked about it completing us. What other ways do we view marriage in the church? It's what you're supposed to do. Let me be very clear. If marriage completes you, if you cannot live a full life without marriage and if marriage is just what you're supposed to do, then you darn well better be for every form of marriage in existence no matter what that person wants to marry. Or you need to change the language of what marriage is. Some of you know that I loathe weddings as they are ordinarily practiced. Let me read that sentence again. I loathe weddings as they are ordinarily practiced. I long for the day when we have legitimate weddings. This is not merely because I am a straight up curmudgeon, which I am hopefully for the glory of God. Rather, curmudgeon, you're looking at it just me, just an angry old man in a young man's body. Rather, the reason why I loathe weddings as they are currently practiced ordinarily in our society is because they tend to promote the lies that we tell each other about what marriage is. And really this is what it comes down to at the end of the day. I hate picking up the broken pieces of other people's failed attempts at explaining what marriage is. See, you probably don't have to do marriage counseling. I do. I have to deal with just kind of the hurt that just kind of comes, not with terrible marriages, just with the reality of marriage because everybody thought it was going to be so great and grand when they got married. Right? Yeah, exactly. And so it's just this thing where if we tell ourselves it's just going to be wonderful and this fairy tale and you're just going to just love every minute of doing this, then it comes to me going, I don't like being married. Why? Because he's not perfect. Well, you know, buckle up because it ain't getting any better. That's why the issue in front of us is so important to me and should be important to all of us. So, over the next couple weeks I want to lay out three things following roughly Hubbard's helpful categories from love into light, which this whole study is kind of generally structured on. Three things. Number one, the call to celibacy and a call to marriage is a call to suffer. The call to celibacy and the call to marriage is a call to suffer. Number two, the call to celibacy is much more than the call to abstinence. And number three, the call to marriage is much more than living with a soulmate. So, the call to celibacy and the call to marriage is a call to suffer. I'd ask if I could get a witness, but this is a church full of white people and you don't say anything. And number two, I think that when we hear those things, we think I think I want to say amen to that, but A, I'm terrified, and B, is that Christian? Two theologians who have influenced me in my thinking quite a bit though whom I remain incredibly critical of at certain points are Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Stanley Hauerwas, both focus a lot on the importance of the need for the church to speak truthfully on whatever it speaks about. We cannot lie. What is lying? There's multiple answers to this question. What is lying? What? Not telling the truth. And what is lying? Withholding the truth. What else is lying? Falls in this big category that begins with an S. Sin. That's right. So, you're either saying something that's not true, you're withholding something that is true, and both of those things end up at the end of the day being sin. Truthfulness is not an option for Christians or something that people who don't like lying do. Truthfulness defines the very character of being Christian. Celibacy will be incoherent if we do not emphasize that the call to marriage and the call to celibacy are both callings to suffer. The idea that celibacy is wrong denies the lifestyle of some of the most prominent Christians through time. If you think kind of old school, you've got Paul, a little while later than that, one of my personal heroes, Augustine, very recent, kind of modern times, just died a few years ago, John Stott, and then the most prominent one of all, who was that? Jesus. That's right. Remember, your hero, the one you are right with God with, was never married. Despite the Da Vinci Code and all that stuff. So, why is the emotional appeal against celibacy so strong? Marva Dawn gives us four helpful reasons why. Number one, in our culture, we worship sex. Number two, we misinterpret and minimize genuine There we go. Number three, we avoid suffering. And number four, we deify physical conditions. So, the emotional appeal against celibacy is so strong because we worship sex, we misinterpret and minimize genuine friendship, we avoid suffering, and we deify physical conditions. Because of this, we see that any lack of any individual the lack of availability to have sex is unfair, unnatural, and cruel. How are you going to deny anybody that? It's part of what we worship. Dawn, interestingly enough, is crippled, partly deaf, and nearly blind. And interestingly, she admits that she would gladly give up sex in order to get back her otherwise non-functioning body. But she realizes something about that desire. Maybe you can figure it out. What is her desire? Her willingness to give up sex in order to get back what she has with her vision and her sight and her physical capabilities. Okay, it's to connect with people, yeah. But at the end of the day, it's just worshiping those physical conditions over sex. Some of you would be like, look, man, I'd be blind, I'd be deaf, I'd be whatever, if I could just keep having sex, it doesn't matter. That just means you worship that thing. Just pick the one thing you couldn't do without, and that's the thing you worship. The problem isn't sex, it's the fact that we are always prone to be dissatisfied with the life that we've been given. We are always idolaters at heart. It doesn't matter what the thing is. Wesley Hill, who's a same-sex attracted Christian, who is pursuing celibacy, was at one point at the pit of his struggling with everything, and he wrote a friend letting him know what was going on, wondering how he could go on living without having sex. And I want to read this. This is what his friend wrote. It's very good. It's not too long. It says this. This is the letter he got back. Your email speaks in some detail about the desire for marriage and intimacy. This is the email from his friend. He says, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, To not experience this relationship means living with unfulfilled desire. But I assure you, even if you have to live your whole life without the blessings of marriage and family, you're not alone. Many people are and have been in the same boat. I am 41 years old, a virgin, and one who has never experienced physical intimacy with another woman or man. Do I long for it? Sure. But God's grace is fully sufficient to accomplish His purposes in me. Furthermore, I'd suggest that living with unfulfilled desires is not the exception of the human experience, but the rule. Even most of those who are married are, as Thoreau once said, living lives of quiet regret. Maybe they married the wrong person, or have the pain of suffering within marriage, or feel trapped in their situations and are unable to fulfill a higher sense of calling. The list of unfulfilled desires goes on and on and on. Heh heh. Whether single or married, we feel trapped. There is a longing deep inside of us to just be something else. And you could be sitting there going, Jeremy, no, no, no, you don't understand, I am perfectly content. That might be true today. But I can guarantee you that in some kinds of ways, maybe very small, maybe gigantic, almost burning you up inside, you feel trapped. Whether you're married, or you're single. In the book of 1 Peter, it talks about suffering, and suffering well. And right in the middle of the book, it's rather interesting, Peter is discussing what it looks like to act honorably amongst Gentiles as we sojourn in this world, being in it, but not of it. So, there is first and foremost the encouragement to be subject as citizens to the state, regardless of the conditions of the state. Then he moves to being good slaves, regardless of the treatment from their masters, following the pattern of Jesus. Then to be good wives, regardless of the goodness of their husbands, and then to be good husbands, regardless of the strength of their wives. All of these things require suffering. If you take two sinful people, and make them promise to be faithful to each other, what do you expect to have but suffering at times? Stanley Harlow says this great little bit, where he says, the reason why we make people promise to stay faithful to each other in church, is because we know, inherently, that they have no idea what they're getting themselves into. So, you have to promise in front of people who are going to hold them accountable for those promises. Because there's just no way, right? I don't care if your marriage is somewhat like you thought it was, or nothing like you thought it was going to be. It is not exactly what you thought it was going to be. You are either just less well prepared, or more well prepared. Or not prepared at all. Those are the options. But, there's no way to plan for this. There's no way to, like, figure it out. You might be like, I'm not ready for kids. The answer is, you're right, nor will you ever be until you have those little gremlins and then have to figure out what life is like when you have them. There's a real point of reality, which is a great sentence. In a real sense, both marriage and celibacy are insane. Who in their right minds would promise to remain faithful to another sinful human being for the rest of their lives? That's crazy. Okay, well, what's the other option? The other option is remaining without a partner for the rest of your life. That's also crazy. Regardless of our state, we remain sinful. And thus, the main problem in the world that we live in is me. Not you. It's not some societal structure. It's not the President of the United States. The President of Afghanistan or whatever. The main problem in the world is me. So, when we embrace the insanity, when we see that there's no perfect way to live in the world, no way that's free from pain and trouble, then we are free to pursue the life that God has given us to live. Right? When you just give in to the reality that your life is going to be, to some degree, bearable, then all of a sudden it becomes a life that is bearable. Doesn't mean it's easy. But what's your only other option? To lie to yourself and to others that life is going to be great? How's that going for you? Probably not very good. Each of us is given his or her own baggage of troubles to bear in this life. Again, Marva Dahn says this, It is not too great a suffering for homosexuals that they remain celibate for the kingdom of God. All of us have to bear certain sufferings in this broken and sinful world. And the grace of God makes them all bearable, whether they are physical, sexual, or other. See, I don't know all the things that either you are currently having to bear for the kingdom of God or are going to have to bear for the kingdom of God. Please give me something that, at least in general, it doesn't have to be specific to you, but just something in general that you are not allowed to do as a result of being part of the kingdom of God. It could be as general as humanly possible. Murder. There you go. Anything else? Greed. You're just not allowed to be greedy. Practice polygamy. You're not allowed to do that. You're not allowed to do that. You're not allowed to do that. You're not allowed to do that. You're not allowed to do that. You're not allowed to do that. You're not allowed to do that. You're not allowed to do that. You're not allowed to do that. You're not allowed to do that. You're not allowed to do that. You're not allowed to do that. You're not allowed to do that. You're not allowed to do that. You're not allowed to do that. What could be the option for people who are same-sex attracted? Yeah, exactly. You're going to meet one, just in case you didn't know that these people existed. My friend Casey Lawrence from RBC is coming here to share with you about his own personal life and experience in like four weeks. Maybe less than that, like three weeks. Happily married man. Two kids. Just in case you thought that marriage is a remedy for same-sex attraction, his story will make it clear that that is not true. Celibacy will not be the route that all who struggle with same-sex attraction take. But in a real way, I want to be very, very clear that celibacy is not only for people who are same-sex attracted. This is the same thing where there are certain things you shouldn't do. You shouldn't ask a woman if she's pregnant Okay? Good general rule in life. You should not, as we talked about before, talk to a married couple and say, when are you going to have kids? You should not ask that question. It's kind of a normal question that we ask so you have to be really mindful about it. You should not ask that question. You also should not ask somebody who's single are you gay or something? Do you just like people of your own gender? Are you just following Jesus in that? Because it is very possible that somebody who decides to remain celibate who's not same-sex attracted in any way, shape or form they've just decided to be celibate for the kingdom of God. As we are going to see it's a great calling, a great assignment, as it were that comes from the Lord. And that's where I want to begin, at least we're not going to finish this but we're going to begin on this second point Any questions on that first point before we move on? Okay. So the next one is the call to celibacy is much more than a call to abstinence. In our hyper-sexualized culture there are really just two routes for people, especially young people to take. What are those two routes? What do we say? On the one hand, we're like, get married and when you get married, what can you do? You can have sex. That's right. And that's all that marriage is really about for us, right? That's the way we kind of promote it. And then, what's the other option? Yeah, that's right. Don't have sex. So it's either this positive thing that only takes one form which is marriage and then sex thing, or don't have it. You might be here this morning and think, well, what other options are there, Jeremy? There is real debate about whether this works when one is a teenager, right? Making people promise things. I'm firmly convinced that it doesn't work. It did not work in my case at all. It just led me to be rather inventive. Maybe it worked in your case but it doesn't really matter. What is clear is that come college age and in post-college years, this dichotomy is simply not working. It's not working at all. Because there is no positive option that does not include underage sex, family, potentially children. It's either do that or don't do anything. People are like, what? What do I do? The problem is that there's nothing positive to pursue in the world. Purity becomes an end in and of itself. Is purity wrong? No, not at all. Let me just be clear, right? I'm not like promoting underage sex or something like that or sex outside of marriage. But when purity becomes an end of itself it becomes empty. And it just becomes this pharisaical tool that you get to define all kinds of sexual acts as non-sex by, right? Is that really sex? That's not sex, right? This isn't, I mean, I'm not supposed to have sex. Sex is bad, but this doesn't constitute sex, right? This over here does, but that's the only thing. Everything else, fair game. And in case you thought I was joking, talk to some of our college students. Not really about their own lives, but about the lives, you know, I'm not throwing you all under the bus or nothing. You can be honest if you want to. About what it's like to be on a Christian campus, right? And to have everybody around them going like, I mean, like, you know, how far can we go? Just so we know that's always the wrong question. We've been talking about this a lot in the Calvin study and with the college guys. College guys, give me an answer to this question. When you are, I'm not trying to put you on the spot, but I'm going to, when you're dealing with thinking about what you should do with girls or guys, you know, you girls can talk about that too, what is the question you should not be asking? How far can I go? What is the question you should be asking? Does this glorify God? That's right. That will radically shape, not only the way college students act, that's a question all you should ask too, right? Every moment, not can I do this, because the answer to that is going to be probably not, but I'll do it anyways and justify it. Is does this glorify God? And when purity just becomes this thing that you're aiming at, then it becomes a legalistic thing, but it's rather, how do I glorify God? And the Christian calling of celibacy, whether temporary or lifelong, is a wonderful and holy calling that directs people's attention to God, at least ideally. How? There's five ways. We're only going to go through two of them this morning in our remaining time. Number one is mercy. This one should be pretty clear. This area of mercy, because in the Old Testament, everything was about physical descendants. What was one of the big curses in the Old Testament? Have personally, upon you. Barrenness. Let me name some major people in the Old Testament for whom barrenness was a huge curse. Hannah. Sarah. Rachel. Barrenness plays this huge role, and the removal of barrenness is this kind of amazing thing that happens. There are hints of the reality that such will not always be the case, however. For example, in Isaiah 56, the prophet looks forward and says this. Wrong way. Isaiah 56, verse 5, says this. I will give in my house and within my walls a monument and a name better than of sons and daughters. I will give them an everlasting name and they shall not be cut off. And to whom are they speaking? Or is he speaking? Well, notice in verse 4, for thus says the Lord to the eunuchs who keep my Sabbath. What's a eunuch? Can we just be clear on what a eunuch is? Anybody want to define for me what is a eunuch? Man minus man parts. Yeah, gold star, right? That is definitely the fourth grader appropriate. Yeah, man without man parts. And these people are going to be given without children, without sons or daughters, an everlasting name in the kingdom of God. Now, how all this is going to play out is not really clear in Isaiah's time, but it's just his hope for the future. And it would have been a rather fantastic hope. This hope comes to fruition in the New Testament because how does the church grow according to the New Testament? The preaching of the Word, that's right, which leads to what? Huh? Okay, God adding, right, to our numbers, and it's both men and women, so the church grows through conversion. It doesn't happen through childbirth. We are not going to outbreed whatever other religion is your big deal, right? You can't do that because breeding has nothing to do with it. And the moment that you say it has something to do with it, then about 4,682 problems arise. This idea that the church grows by conversion or creation means that celibates are full and equal members in the body of Christ. In fact, I have every reason to believe I am fundamentally convinced that they are probably better at producing offspring for the kingdom of heaven than married people are. And if you are wondering, like, why? Well, come back next week and we'll talk about that. People who pursue celibacy are examples of the mercy of God shown to us in giving us faith and making us part of His family as a result of nothing that we do. And these people who are celibate will die in probably obscurity. They will produce no physical descendants of their own. However, they will hopefully leave behind many spiritual descendants as a result of their work for the kingdom of God. So, they glorify God in mercy and also in loyalty. Go to Matthew chapter 19. This is where we'll end. Matthew 19. Verses 11 and 12. But Jesus said to them, Not everyone can receive this saying, but only to those to whom it is given. For there are eunuchs who have been born from birth. There are eunuchs who have been made eunuchs by men. And there are eunuchs who have been made themselves eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven. Let the one who is able to receive this receive it. There's three kind of eunuchs here, right? In your own words, what are these? Give me one kind of eunuch. You're born that way. Number two? You're made that way. What would that look like? Yeah, castration, right? By whom? Is it the hands of other men? When would that happen? That's right. Yeah, so either voluntarily, right? You work in the king's palace. You get eunuched. Or whatever. I don't know how that works. There's got to be a word for that, right? Castrated, I guess. Or you can voluntarily submit yourself to do that at the hands of other men in order to serve in the king's palace. Why would you have to be castrated, by the way, to work inside the palace? Working around the harem. That's right. Nobody getting with the women. Good. And then the third one is? Made themselves eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven. That's right. This is a question of whether this is literal or not. Does anybody know the very famous church father who took this birth literally? Origen read this and thought yeah, some people need to make themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven and castrated himself. Yeah. Like a boss. The interesting thing is, it did not take away his desires for sex. So, that was interesting. Eunuchs give up the right of marriage procreation and of any kind of sexual relationship all for the kingdom of heaven. Again, I probably won't get a shout-out on this one, but it's beyond easy to live with divided loyalties when one is married. One begins to find their identity in their spouse or their children rather quickly. It is as destructive as it is common. I see it all the time. Yet one who gives up all of that for the sake of the kingdom of God is proclaiming an undivided loyalty to God. We're not talking about people who are single just because they hate people of the other gender or hate themselves or are terrified of commitment or something like that. That's not who we're talking about. Those people have got significant issues and we need to help those people out. What we're talking about is people who are like I have the freedom to be married and decide to not choose that. Or I am attracted to people of the opposite gender or the same gender. I've never been attracted to people of the opposite gender. Therefore, my only option is to remain celibate and I will do so for the kingdom of heaven because I could legitimately pursue same-sex relationships but not as part of the kingdom of God so I'm not going to do that. This idea of undivided loyalty to God should move two groups of people. Number one, non-Christians who cannot imagine not living for themselves. Who just think like you're insane. Why would you give that up? That's the first group of moves. There's also a second group of moves. You know who that is? Married people in the church who are oftentimes profoundly sinful and selfish and yet justify their lack of loyalty towards God on the basis of, well, this is what is good for my family. Is it wrong to love your family? No, of course not. They are your closest neighbor and thus demand your greatest sacrifice. But family obligation often slips into the realm of clouding the commitment to Jesus. It becomes this very sketchy thing where you're like, well, I would love other people but the problem is I've got these wife and kids who can't really do that. Celibacy for the kingdom is a testimony of loyalty to Jesus and also a confrontation to a church culture that oftentimes has trouble being loyal to Jesus. Next week we're going to look at how celibacy promotes community, simplicity, and sufficiency to the glory of God. But I hope that we're beginning to see that celibacy is something we should accept. It's kind of like, well, that's what those people do. We have to love everybody, so I guess we'll love them too. In the same way that we've talked about how the church would be much better off if it was filled with handicapped people, if it was filled with people who tell the truth, it would also be great if it was filled with all those who were called and fully accepted this call to celibacy for the kingdom of God. Let's pray. God, we have confronted either once again or maybe for the first time the reality that both the call to celibacy and the call to marriage is a call to suffer. We admit that being married is hard primarily because we're jerks. We admit that being single is very difficult because we are so innately sinful. So we pray that as we seek to be the kind of people you desire us to be whether married or celibate, that we would not be asking those very foolish questions of, what can I do? And we would not be asking those very foolish questions of, God, why did you make me this way? But that we would embrace the life that you have assigned to us and live in that faithfully, being very thankful for those who are celibate amongst us for the kingdom of God. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen.
