About ten days ago, Matt Chandler preached the following sermon at Jubilee Church in London.  In it he preaches the gospel, focusing in on the parable of the prodigal son from Luke’s gospel.  Many readers will remember seeing Matt’s “Jesus wants the battered rose” illustration. If you want to see that illustration in context this is a good video.  It is vital that Christian’s expose themselves to clear gospel teaching often. This talk will make fresh for you the wonderful good news of Jesus’ death and resurrection, and their glorious implications for us today. I encourage you strongly to watch this, and watch it often, and allow this man of God to minister good to your soul. Grace will conquer legalism every time, but only if we allow ourselves to be shaped by anointed preaching such as this. Are we like the older brother? Do we really want our churches to grow? Or would we rather they stayed a small cozy family caring for our needs? What would a missional church mean for you and me?

The Gospel from Jubilee Church on Vimeo.

I do love it when a scientific study shows us what we all thought likely to be the case.  When will society take note that this massive market is degrading to women and men alike?

# Pornography is addictive, and neuroscientists are beginning to map the biological substrate of this addiction.

# Users tend to become desensitized to the type of pornorgraphy they use, become bored with it, and then seek more perverse forms of pornography.

# Married men who are involved in pornography feel less satisfied with their conjugal relations and less emotionally attached to their wives. Wives notice and are upset by the difference.

# Pornography use is a pathway to infidelity and divorce, and is frequently a major factor in these family disasters.

via The Effects of Pornography – EdStetzer.com.

The Doctor makes a strong point below, but I wonder if he might think differently in this society where our kids will learn about sex at school, and unless we are eternally vigilant, on TV. I do want my children to learn about these things form me and Andree, but at the same time I want to talk about it in a way that they are neither encouraged to sin, nor given the idea that sex is dirty and sinful. For more about sex and marriage, see Tope’s recent sermon series which is ongoing. The Doctor’s point here is that legalism doesn’t contain sin:

As a Christian I have never believed in morality teaching. Nor have I ever agreed with those who argue, ‘Tell people of the evil effects of that sin, and it will keep them from it,’ because it will not. It will inflame their desire for that very thing that you are telling them not to do. And that is why people quite often delude and defile themselves by reading books about such things. They say that what they want to do is to see the evil of the thing. What is actually happening is that they are enjoying it. They are sinning in their minds and in their imaginations. That is what is meant by concupiscence; this passion, this flame, this fire, that can even misuse the law of God, and turn it into a kind of bellows that makes the flame worse. Tell a man not to and it may drive him to do it — indeed, you are introducing him to it. So it is a dangerous thing for fallen man to think like that and to imagine that moral instruction about sex and such things is going to control the moral problem. It is having exactly the opposite effect; and to believe in that kind of teaching is to misunderstand the essential biblical teaching about sin. No, our fathers were right. They did not tell their children about sex and morality, and there was less immorality than there is now. It is a dangerous thing to talk about these things; it is like pouring petrol on the fire. Concupiscence — that is the great argument of the seventh chapter of the epistle to the Romans.
David Martyn. Lloyd-Jones, The Assurance of Our Salvation : Exploring the Depth of Jesus’ Prayer for His Own : Studies in John 17 (Wheaton, Ill.: Crossway Books, 2000), 454.

In news that will be no surprise to more than half the population (ie every men, plus many women) a recent study has identified that having more sex leads to happier marriages. Here is an extract from an article on the subject

Q. Are couples in sexless marriages less happy than couples having sex?

A. Generally, yes. There is a feedback relationship in most couples between happiness and having sex. Happy couples have more sex, and the more sex a couple has, the happier they report being. But keep in mind that sex is only one form of intimacy, and that some couples are fairly happy (and intimate) even without sex. In my 1993 study, I did find that people in sexless marriages were more likely to have considered divorce than those in sexually active marriages. There is no ideal level of sexual activity — the ideal level is what both partners are happy with — and when one (or both) are unhappy, then you can have marital problems. READ MORE

Well, after sharing here my pastor Tope Koleoso’s talk on sex just recently, regular readers of my blog will think I am obsessed with this subject. Then again, I am a man!

Vaughan began by saying that the first command in the Bible to Adam and Eve, loosely translated, was “Go and have sex.”

He began by explaining Paul begins by quoting them and countering their opinion with his own. The Bible honors both singleness and marriage, and is not anti-sex.

V2-9 Paul seems to be implying that everyone single should marry. But later in the chapter he does say some people shouldn’t get married. The “having” is a continuous word. The word is never used about getting a wife, but is often used of having sex. So it seems that this is more likely to refer to the need for married people to keep having sex in marriage. This obviously fits the context of fulfilling our marriage duties to each other. Many factors threaten our sex lives. Tiredness, worries, business, relationship problems. Talk about it with your spouse. Married people should not live as though unmarried.

Single people the gift of singleness is a good thing, but if you are burning with passion then get married! Bible is very positive about marriage.

V10-16 One cynic said marriage is rather like a besieged city, half the people are trying to get in, and the other half are trying to get out! Right principle is stay as you are. If married stay married. If single be content to remain single, but its ok to marry. He quoted a statistic that in 1901 there were less than 300 divorces in the whole of UK. Now it is very common indeed. What God has joined together let no one separate.

Paul does acknowledge that divorce does happen. There are circumstances when it is the least bad option. For example, physical abuse by spouse. V11 “If she does” she must remain unmarried or be reconciled. Jesus opposed divorce and remarriage. There are some exceptions. Many Christians believe that when there is sexual unfaithfulness someone is free to remarry because of the exception in Matthew. If you are married stay married. Seek help if needed. If you or your ex-spouse are not remarried seek a reconciliation. If you are already remarried, then repentance means to be committed to making that marriage work not dissolving that marriage. Don’t abandon the marriage. In a mixed marriage when you are married to a non-Christian, which presumably arose when one spouse became a Christian since we are meant to marry other believers. The Apostle says we should not seek divorce if married to an unbeliever, since your children are not ritually unclean. Don’t leave, but pray they will be converted.

V17-24 Each man should remain in the situation God called him to. Accept your circumstances. Life is not an endless quest to better your circumstances. Christian’s energy is not to be poured into changing hteir situation but rather to be Godly in that situation. Make the most of what you have.

V25-40 The Christian and singleness. To the unmarried he says, 1. Keep eternity in mind, marriage is temporary. We live today in the light of that day. If we don’t ever marry that will not eternally matter. We will be with the Lord eternally. Marriage is trouble! Marriage takes time. Before you are married you have more time to serve God. What we do for God will last for eternity.

A couple of weeks back, my pastor Tope Koleoso preached from 1 Corinthians 5 on sex. It was a very interesting sermon and well received by our people. It has been referred to since at Jubilee as “that sermon”! I am delighted to be able to commend it to you here. You can download the video or audion mp3 or you can watch it online here:

A week ago we shared an unsettling quote from Dr. Piper about the vital need for us to fight lust or face an eternity without God. Since that fight is so critical to our well-being, I thought I would share another quote in which he goes on to explain how this fight can be won.

Suppose I am tempted to lust. Some sexual image comes into my mind and beckons me to pursue it. The way this temptation gets its power is by persuading me to believe that I will be happier if I follow it. The power of all temptation is the prospect that it will make me happier. No one sins out of a sense of duty, when what they really want is to do what’s right.

“Another reason I am eager to focus on the new birth is to help you know what reallySo what should I do? Some people would say, “Remember God’s command to be holy (1 Peter 1:16), and exercise your will to obey because he is God!” But something crucial is missing from this advice, namely, faith in future grace . . .

How then do you fight lust by faith in future grace? When the temptation to lust comes, Romans 8:13 says, in effect, “If you kill it by the Spirit, you will live.” By the Spirit! What does that mean? Out of all the armor God gives us to fight Satan, only one piece is used for killing—the sword. It is called the sword of the Spirit (Ephesians 6:17) . . . The Word of God cuts through the fog of Satan’s lies and shows me where true and lasting happiness is to be found. And so the Word helps me stop trusting in the potential of sin to make me happy. Instead the Word entices me to trust in God’s promises.

When faith has the upper hand in my heart I am satisfied with Christ and his promises. This is what Jesus meant when he said, “He who believes in Me shall never thirst” (John 6:35). When my thirst for joy and meaning and passion are satisfied by the presence and promises of Christ, the power of sin is broken. We do not yield to the offer of sandwich meat when we can smell the steak sizzling on the grill.

John Piper, Future Grace (Sisters OR: Multnomah Publishers, 1995), 334. Also available electronically from Logos Bible Software.

Once again the Doctor diagnoses the human condition with timeless pinpoint accuracy in this quote:

We are creatures of lust and desire and passion. Let me give you the best description ever given of humanity without Christ, humanity as it is by nature. In his epistle to Titus, Paul writes:

Put them in mind to be subject to principalities and powers, to obey magistrates, to be ready to every good work, to speak evil of no man, to be no brawlers, but gentle, showing all meekness unto all men. For we ourselves also were sometimes foolish, disobedient, deceived, serving divers lusts and pleasures, living in malice and envy, hateful, and hating one another.

— Titus 3:1–3

And is that not true of all of us by nature? Is that not true of our society? Behold those at a glittering party—how fond they all are of one another! But they have daggers in their hearts; they hate one another: “hateful, and hating one another.”

That is why the world is as it is—greed and avarice and envy and lust and passion and desire. It is in us all. Paul also describes this in the second half of Romans 1, and it is because of this that the world does not want Christ. “He spoils life,” people say. Christianity is seen as narrow, as contemptible, as something to be dealt with by sarcasm and ridicule and derision. It is a joke on your favorite television program. Christ is the spoiler of life, the one who introduces you to just a narrow, miserable, cramped little existence. Is that not the outlook?

There is only one explanation for such a view, and I say again that it has nothing to do with intellect; it is the state of the heart. It is the clever people who are leaders in vice at the present time. They have amazing ingenuity, but notice how they use it. They cater to the animal, and that which is even lower than the animal.”

David Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Glorious Christianity, 1st U.S. ed. (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 2004), 129. Also available electronically from Logos Bible Software.

For more information on Dr. Martyn Lloyd-Jones see this summary post or the MLJ Recording Trust.

John Piper rarely gets starker than he does in the following quote. His biblical remedy for lust? Well, it’s simple really. Understand that unless you are one of those who fights lust with all your heart, you were never truly saved. The quote begins with a question from someone who heard one of his sermons:

“Are you saying then that a person can lose his salvation?” In other words, if Jesus used the threat of hell to warn about the seriousness of lust, does that mean that a Christian can perish?

This is exactly the same response I got a few years ago when I confronted a man about the adultery he was living in. I tried to understand his situation and I pled with him to return to his wife. Then I said, “You know, Jesus says that if you don’t fight this sin with the kind of seriousness that is willing to gouge out your own eye, you will go to hell and suffer there forever.” As a professing Christian he looked at me in utter disbelief, as though he had never heard anything like this in his life, and said, “You mean you think a person can lose his salvation?”

So I have learned again and again from firsthand experience that there are many professing Christians who have a view of salvation that disconnects it from real life, and that nullifies the threats of the Bible, and puts the sinning person who claims to be a Christian beyond the reach of biblical warnings. I believe this view of the Christian life is comforting thousands who are on the broad way that leads to destruction (Matthew 7:13). Jesus said, if you don’t fight lust, you won’t go to heaven. Not that saints always succeed. The issue is that we resolve to fight, not that we succeed flawlessly . . . if we don’t fight lust we lose our soul. The apostle Peter said, “Abstain from fleshly lusts that wage war against the soul (1 Peter 2:11).” The stakes in this war are infinitely higher than in any threat of World War III. The apostle Paul listed “immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and greed,” then said, “it is on account of these things that the wrath of God will come” (Colossians 3:6). And the wrath of God is immeasurably more fearful than the wrath of all the nations put together. In Galatians 5:19 Paul mentions immorality, impurity and sensuality and says, “Those who practice such things shall not inherit the kingdom of God” (Galatians 5:21).

John Piper, Future Grace (Sisters, OR: Multnomah Publishers, 1995), 331. Available electronically from Logos Bible Software.

The 26th most read post on this blog is a set of results from a survey I conducted on sex.

The 25th most read post is a set of sermon notes from an old sermon of mine on finding the will of God for your life.

In an interview in London:

“I have met so many gay partnered clergy here and it is so troubling to hear them tell me that their bishop comes to their house for dinner, knows fully about their relationship, is wonderfully supportive, but has also said if this ever becomes public, then I’m your worst enemy . . .

It’s a terrible way to live your life and I think it’s a terrible way to be a church. I think integrity is so important. What does it mean for a clergy person to be in a pulpit calling the parishioners to a life of integrity when they can’t even live a life of integrity with their own bishop and their own church?”

Read more . . .