Lesson 12 – Jesus and Broken People, Part 2

Lesson 12 – Jesus and Broken People, Part 2

Introduction

Welcome back, and I’m glad you came back. We had a good discussion last week about thinking Biblically about a news item of interest that became of even more interest as the President weighed in Friday night on the mosque construction.
Two quick announcements before we get started – mark your calendar for August 28, it’s the last Saturday in August, for our youth ministry activity day at Tolleson Park here in Smyrna. It’s going to be starting at 1:30 pm and run for most of the afternoon, and hopefully by then we’ll be into a little bit cooler weather.
Second thing is that due to a lot of work by Brian Deckard, we now have all of the lessons for this class posted on the church website – Calvarysmyrna.org

What you have there are my full notes of all the lessons we’ve taught here, and we’ll continue post those on the website as we work on them.

Ok, well, I know last week was a thinking exercise for a lot of us. For those of you who felt like you learned something, that’s hopefully what we’ll be doing a lot more of in the Fall semester. We’re looking forward to taking our gospel focus and digging more into what the application into our fallen world looks like.

As a side note, and this is the only thing I’ll say about this topic, but Ramadan began on August 11, last Wednesday. It’s a 30-day period where Muslims pray, fast, and intently do good works, hoping that somehow they can earn favor with God.
I’d challenge you to be in prayer for this period, which ends on September 9, for the hundreds millions of Islamic adherents around the world. There’s even a website called 30-days.net that has some helpful guidance for how to pray for people in this terrible religion that is based on their works and their performance to please God.

We could talk for weeks about the topic we covered last week, and I hope you’ll continue thinking about it. But this week, we want to pick back up from two weeks ago, talking about broken people.

Remember how sin has destroyed everything about this world? It broke not only individual people, but also all of the creative order.
The sacrificial system of the Old Testament shows how seriously God takes sin, just like the seriousness of the sacrifice of the Lord Jesus for us.

Our culture downplays sin a variety of contexts, but it is a very serious thing.

But Jesus’ response to all this brokenness is love and grace. We saw how Jesus is working to solve the brokenness with the promise that he’s going to take care of all the brokenness in the world one day.
Jesus is hanging out with the most broken people, because he’s there not to treat people who think they have no problems, but rather people who do.

What we want to do this week is dig a little deeper into the problem of brokenness both in ourselves and the world around us by talking about another topic that’s been in the news a lot recently – gay and lesbian people and how God loves them, and also those who are sexually broken in other ways.

Dealing with Sexually Broken People

Your generation faces a unique challenge when it comes to dealing with people who are broken as it relates to their sexual identity.

Not only do you have the increase of and public acceptance of same-sex marriage and gay and lesbian lifestyles generally, you also have incredibly high numbers of people who have had physical relationships outside of the marriage relationship.
So the average person you talk to is going to be a lot like the people in my office who were really surprised Shelley and I weren’t going to live together before we were married.

You’re going to be the weird one if you haven’t had a physical relationship outside of marriage.
Sometimes from our conservatives circles, there can be what I’ll call the “ick factor.”

You meet someone who is sexually broken, whether a in the gay or lesbian community or someone who is promiscuous, and your immediate urge is to recoil or think of how gross what they’re doing is.
Now, that’s not a wrong reaction to sin. We should be repulsed by it. But sometimes it can get in the way of our loving someone as a person.

I still remember the first time I shook hands with someone who was HIV positive. I was in DC and they were with an advocacy group, and were coming to lobby for more AIDS research. And I remember having to force myself to not react – because I was concerned about them as people, though.
Or the times my lesbian co-worker gives me a hug – I share Jesus’ love with her by how I live.

And we just have to be careful that our natural reaction doesn’t get in the way of the proper spiritual response.

What we want to do is talk briefly about some news items related to people who are sexually broken, look at how Jesus handled sexually broken people, and then talk about how we can handle things wisely and appropriately.

Proposition 8 Ruling

So, as a starting point, the biggest news story recently about gay and lesbian people particularly has been the ruling by Judge Walker in California on Proposition 8.

Prop 8, as its called, was the ballot initiative passed in California that outlaws marriage by anyone except a man and woman.
Federal District Judge Vaughn Walker ruled that the language of Prop 8 violated the U.S. Constitution, because it took away a fundamental right to marriage without due process of law and because it treated people who were in the same position differently without a rational basis for doing so, in violation of the Equal Protection Clause of the Constitution (that’s as much as you’ll hear my say about the legal analysis of things – I won’t bore you!).

The reaction by Christians was swift and severe. As an example, the extremist American Family Association said that the judge “nullified the votes of 7 million people” and was part of a “judicial tyranny” on the United States that can only be solved by impeachment.

Of course, everyone promised appeals. But many proclaimed that things were now getting even worse in our culture, that the collapse of our world was imminent, that the judge was an activist judge, etc.

You can almost write the talking points about how this goes down each time something like this happens.

This is just a side note, but one thing I will say about the argument that public opinion matters and the judge ignored the voices of the people or nullified their votes . . . beware of using that argument.

Why? Because according to the Gallup survey in 1968, 73% of the American people opposed interracial marriage. But courts ruled that it was a violation of the Equal Protection clause to prevent people of different races from getting married.
It was wrong by Christians and others to give in to the sin of racism, and the courts were right to overturn the will of the people and allow interracial marriage.
So be careful of that argument regarding gay marriage – it is a very different situation, because one involved sinful action preventing marriage while the other involves sinful activity in allowing “marriage.”

But in response to Prop 8, others took a different tack, personally attacking Judge Walker as biased because there are rumors that he is gay.

Let’s take a minute to talk about this specific issue before we go further.
While many people quickly jumped on this as an “explanation” for the judge’s ruling, there are a few things one should consider before using this line of argument as well.

First, criticizing a judge – any judge – for bias is one of the most offensive things you can say about that judge. Of course there are judges who have an agenda. But most every judge I have ever met or heard about works very, very hard not to be biased. To be criticized as biased, especially by people who are criticizing just the outcome and have not considered his legal analysis (which is extensive) is something judges take very personally.

It’s comparable to someone calling you a liar if you’re working hard to be truthful, but disagree with them on something. It’s just very, very offensive.

Second, trying to address an issue like this with such a personal attack really accomplishes nothing but alienate the judge from the influence of Christianity.

What are you accomplishing by attacking him as a person instead of attacking the legal reasoning behind his decision, you’re doing nothing to move the ball down the field.

Third, saying a judge can’t rule on an issue involving marriage because he’s gay (or rather rumored to be) involves a critical logical fallacy.

If a gay judge can’t rule on the issue, why is a married judge capable of ruling on it? Or a judge who’s living with his girlfriend?
If you’re going to say that your marriage status or sexual orientation prevents you from ruling on this case, apparently only a eunuch can rule on the case.

What I’m trying to say is, don’t undercut your valid position with a ridiculous argument that is easily refuted and does personal damage to someone.

Now is it possible that Judge Walker was motivated by some personal agenda? Sure. But don’t make that criticism unless you’ve got some concrete evidence.
Instead, focus the discussion on the real issue, and work on dealing with his legal analysis, not attacking him.

Christianity Today sought responses from a number of leaders to the Prop 8 ruling, though, and I want to share some of those with you.

Alan Chambers is president of Exodus International, a group that helps gay and lesbian men and women find freedom in Jesus Christ.

He said this: “I believe that God is calling his church to a place far above the arguments surrounding what is sin and what isn't. We cannot avoid the glaring scriptural truth that there is, and will always be, a right way and a wrong way concerning just about everything we can imagine. And, yet, I believe that our attitudes towards people (internal and external) are just as important as our positions on the issues at hand. So, when I first saw the news that Prop. 8 had been overturned, my very first thought was, ‘Dear Lord, please let the Christians who speak in response to this share your heart and not their judgment.’
“We should respond with 100 percent grace and 100 percent truth. As Christians, we must constantly be sharing God's best for people. He created us for a lot more than we, as humans, tend to settle for—in every area of our lives. Because gay marriage is less than God's best for relationship, we need to equip to minister to those who will choose it and later realize it might not have been the best decision. I firmly believe that if we had spent as much money, time, and energy battling for people's hearts as we did fighting against their agendas, the gay rights battle would look very different today.”

Talk about a different approach.
Similarly, a professor of religious studies said this: “I wish Christians would cease using so much money and time to establish our Christian ethic through legal processes. Instead we need to witness by word and deed to an alternative reality in our churches. We need to tell a better story through our families. Whether our laws change or not, we are to love our neighbor as ourselves.”

So what is a right and Christian response? And more importantly, what is going to happen when you start working in that job and get introduced to your gay co-worker? Or your co-worker who is living with his girlfriend? What are you as a Christian going to do?

You know, in past generations, people could generally coast and avoid a lot of these issues because they didn’t ever come face to face with it. But your generation in particular needs to have a Scriptural approach and response.

How to Approach People

Now, in thinking about our response, there’s a movement in the church today that says that we should de-emphasize traditional Biblical doctrine because they exclude people.

“Didn’t Jesus tell us to love our neighbors?” the argument goes. If all we’re ever doing is excluding people from our church and telling them how bad they are, how are we loving them?
Looking at this approach is critical because I think it hits your generation in particular—there is a natural reaction when you meet someone who doesn’t fit all the stereotypes you were taught to react against what you were taught about the sinfulness of an activity.
We’ve talked a lot in this class about grace.

But we only understand grace as we understand our own sinfulness and brokenness. That’s why we spent the first week on this topic talking about the seriousness of sin—we’ve got to understand the seriousness of sin to understand the depth of grace in the Lord Jesus.
There’s a second part to that, though – we have to recognize that our sin continues in our inward attitudes along with our outward actions.

So when we give an anonymous gift to someone, secretly hoping that that person finds out that we gave it to them, we’ve got a wrong motive.

But recognizing that prideful motivation and confessing it can result in even more pride—hey, I’m such a spiritual person for recognizing that deeper issue of pride. Someone less spiritual than me wouldn’t have picked up on that.
And then I’m proud of my confession.

Yes, that’s funny, but it’s also serious – sin has broken our world, and broken us. Just because we’re Christians and know what’s right doesn’t mean that we’re without sin – it still is a big part of us!
That’s why it’s so ridiculous for us to look down on other people in sin – because we’re still riddled with it through and through!

Well, you ask, does that mean that the new movement is right and we should accept gay and lesbian people and their lifestyles without asking questions?
I want to do three things to answer that question. First, I want us to look at a situation where Jesus came face to face with someone who was facing this issue of sexual brokenness. Then I want us to look briefly at what Scripture says about these issues specifically, and finally we’ll talk about our response to people. Because we’re never responding to an agenda – we’re responding to people.

Jesus and Sexually Broken People

You know, Jesus dealt with people who were sexually broken on several occasions.

Remember the woman at the well? She was like a lot of people we encounter today – she had married five times, and was living with her boyfriend when Jesus was talking to her in John 4.
And Jesus didn’t refuse to talk to her – in fact, he engaged her in conversation by crossing a societally-accepted boundary – talking to someone of a different race and class of people—and brought her to a spiritual conversation.
Jesus didn’t shy away from sharing the truth with her, but he was willing to engage with her where she was – right by that well, so share the truth.

Another major place where Jesus dealt with someone who was broken in this way is found in John 8. Let’s look at this story starting in verse 1.

Jesus went unto the mount of Olives. And early in the morning he came again into the temple, and all the people came unto him; and he sat down, and taught them. And the scribes and Pharisees brought unto him a woman taken in adultery; and when they had set her in the midst, They say unto him, Master, this woman was taken in adultery, in the very act. Now Moses in the law commanded us, that such should be stoned: but what sayest thou?

So imagine this scene. Jesus is teaching, and the Pharisees rush up with this woman probably with the sheets still around her, and they throw her down in front of Jesus. They tell him the accusation and says the law says we’re supposed to do this, but what do you say?
Obviously this is yet another trap, trying to see if Jesus will call for the violation of the Mosaic law, as the next verse tells us.

This they said, tempting him, that they might have to accuse him.

But what did Jesus do?

But Jesus stooped down, and with his finger wrote on the ground, as though he heard them not. So when they continued asking him, he lifted up himself, and said unto them, He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her. And again he stooped down, and wrote on the ground.

So Jesus writes something, and everyone has their ideas about what it was he was writing, but we’re not told. Then Jesus says if you don’t have sin, cast a stone at her.
Don’t I’m not going where you think I’m going with this, so hang with me.

And they which heard it, being convicted by their own conscience, went out one by one, beginning at the eldest, even unto the last: and Jesus was left alone, and the woman standing in the midst. When Jesus had lifted up himself, and saw none but the woman, he said unto her, Woman, where are those thine accusers? hath no man condemned thee? She said, No man, Lord. And Jesus said unto her, Neither do I condemn thee: go, and sin no more.

So after they all left (the trap was no longer sprung, because they recognized they all had sin in their lives), Jesus asks if anyone has condemned her according to the law.

The answer was no, but then look at what Jesus does.

He tells her – “go and sin no more.”

He tells her what she has done is sin – he’s completely honest with her about that, and interestingly, almost no one will contest that adultery is sin.

Try asking just about any politician from Bill Clinton to Mark Sanford to Newt Gingrich – they will freely admit what they did was sin.

And then Jesus is also telling her to go get herself back in line with the way God created the world – he’s telling her that God has a design for a sexual relationship and that’s what she should be doing.
But Jesus does all of this in the context of not condemning her as a person for what she had done – not condemning for sin, but instructing her on what she needed to do.

So that’s what Jesus did. What does Scripture say about sexual relationships?

You know, in conservative circles, we’ve got this hierarchy of sexual sin.

We view sexual thoughts as a normal battleground, one that’s safe to confess to just about anyone.
A sexual relationship between two people outside of marriage is bad, but we’re still often ready to forgive if the people are repentant.
But then we place a sexual relationship between two men or two women as something of a different kind – it’s not “normal” sexual sin and we hide it or just ignore it or preach against the “gay agenda” without realizing we’re dealing with people who are broken just like us.

That’s the big difference, I think – seeing an agenda versus seeing needy people.

So what does the Bible actually say?

Clearly, God has a design for a sexual relationship. He designed it from the beginning to a shared experience reserved for marriage. There are all kinds of reasons for that, in particular because sexual intimacy is a glue that holds a couple together. It’s designed for a number of reasons, but it does help connect people in the closest possible way to keep married people together.
All through creative history and the Old Testament, God prohibits sexual activities outside of marriage. There’s all kinds of lists dealing with that, but the main issue comes down to this – we are to live in line with the way he designed things to be, not our broken view which tells God we’ve got life figured out.

So when Paul picks up the thread in I Corinthians 6, he talks about how people in that church used to be in types of gay lifestyles before they came to Jesus. He talks in Romans 1 about how God dealt with people’s sin through the concept of passive wrath, letting them suffer the consequences of all kinds of sin, including sexual sin that was outside of God’s design.

We can spend a long time dealing with these passages and may next semester, but I just want all of you to understand that God has a purpose for a physical relationship, and his design – his best – is between one man and one woman in marriage. Anything outside of that is sin.

But then something happened in light of that Biblical view. Conservative, well-meaning people picked up these passages and began to preach that God somehow delights in judging gay people.

Some people actually seemed to delight in people getting a terrible disease in AIDS, claiming that it proved God was giving people what they “deserved.”

And they did that without recognizing that the only reason ANYONE doesn’t get what they “deserve” is because of Jesus’ sacrifice for us, not because we’re somehow better by not committing sins as “bad” as others.

And the result was this huge divide. While claiming “love the sinner, hate the sin,” many Christians came across as hating both the sin AND the sinner.
Somehow compassion got lost in the mix.

And in condemning people and refusing to reach out to them with the love of Jesus, we were committing a greater sin of denying the second-greatest command Jesus gave: to love our neighbors.
And we were violating the picture of how Jesus was reaching out to the world.
And we were driving them away from Jesus – what a terrible, terrible thing to be guilty of.

And so in the emphasis on personal sin, these preachers lost touch with helping alleviate suffering and concern in the world around us.

So we preached against drinking beer and watching R-rated movies and the gay lifestyle, while at the same time never talking about the Satanic nature of the sin of racism. Or the sin of not caring for widows and orphans – those in poverty.
It’s like the conservative church was so freaked out about not going the route of the social gospel that we just totally disengaged from the social sphere at all.

So when Ed Dobson, who worked for years with Jerry Falwell (remembered as one of those people most outspoken against the gay and lesbian community) started a ministry in his church to minister in the 1980s to those with AIDS, his church members reacted violently, claiming that the church would overrun with homosexuals.

Dobson’s response was exactly right: “That will be terrific. They can take their place in the pews right next to the liars, gossips, materialists, and all the rest of us who entertain sin in our lives.”

Remember, like we talked about a few weeks ago, we are all broken people. We’re people who can’t even confess the sin of pride without getting prideful about it.

So what is a truly Scriptural response? What do we do with people who are broken that we deal with, whether they’re gay or not?

First, we need to understand that our motivation as Christians at the very root should be concern for the soul of a person.

We’re not told to love our neighbors for no reason. We love our neighbors because the Lord Jesus loved us – he reached out to us when we were in sin and rebellion against him and brought us to himself.
We live out that love for us when we care for people who are different than us.
So we don’t segregate ourselves from people in need just because they’re different than us – in fact, those different than us need our love more than others, just like Jesus gave that love and grace to us.

Second, we extend the love and grace of Jesus to them.

Loving someone who is different than you means reaching out with the same kind of love and grace. When we recognize these people are souls who have desperate needs, our response should be love and grace to them.

Third, we don’t compromise the truth.

The modern church has this idea that right living matters more than right doctrine. Somehow the idea is that if you just live right (good ethics), then everything else falls into place.
But we have to have both right living of reaching out to those in need and right doctrine of recognizing that God has a standard for sexual relationships and people who violate that need his forgiveness.

Jesus didn’t back down when he spoke to the woman at the well or the woman taken in adultery – he told them what they were doing was sin.
But he did so in a loving way that clearly demonstrated his care for them as people.

Fourth, we seek to help everyone (including ourselves) get back into line with the way God created the world to function.

So Jesus told the woman in adultery to go and sin no more. He said go get back into line with God’s design for creation.
Sexual sin does carry a very high cost for a lot of people.

But people who are broken by it can be restored back to fellowship with God, just like people who are broken by pride, broken by judgmentalism, broken by lying.
God is in the business of restoring all things back to himself. And he can restore anyone you meet.
And he loves everyone you meet no matter which way they have been impacted by sin.

Deep topic, huh? But it’s so relevant for all of us. We’re dealing with a challenging world and need to be thinking about these things.

I’ve gone a little longer than usual this morning, but we want to have a few minutes to talk about this.
Have people you’ve met been different than what you expected?
How have you responded with grace AND truth?
What do you find hardest about loving people different than you?

Next week, we want to think more about these things and try to work through some more issues together on brokenness. So come with your thinking caps on!