Should Christians Go To A Gay Wedding?

Here is my argument of why I would not recommend any Christian attend a "wedding" among those identifying as LGBTQ+.

1. Any formal or informal relationship involving sexual intimacy outside of a marriage of one man, one female, for a lifetime marriage is sin. Any gay or trans intimate relationship therefore involves sin and they cannot have a true marriage. 2. A wedding by definition is a public affirmation and support of a marriage.

3. Therefore, again by definition anyone voluntarily attending a wedding is giving affirmation and support to the "marriage" either implicitly or sometimes explicitly (I specifically charge the congregation with affirming and supporting the couple). 4. If a wedding is affirming sinful behaviors and relationships, then giving support and affirmation is also sinful and thus Christians should not attend. As an addendum, if going to a wedding ceremony is simply about showing love to an individual and not about supporting their sinful behaviors, why would they be upset if you lovingly declined based on your conscience? What are they upset about? Is not the intent of having a public wedding to get support for the relationship from those you love and who you want to love you? Of course that is exactly what the wedding is about and that is exactly what anyone having any kind of "wedding" is seeking. So expressing your disagreement verbally but actually attend the ceremony is communicating opposite things, and actions speak louder than words.

With this argument in mind, perhaps then someone can challenge one of my premises or perhaps bring to bear other biblical principles that might make a greater good or lesser two evils argument. But until you acknowledge the substance of the argument you should not simply make a call out to maintaining a relationship or loving the person. It is not loving to affirm sin.

What Plans Does God Have for You?

This morning in my daily Bible reading, I came across a very that most Christians have seen hanging on someone's wall at some point. It is Jeremiah 29:11, "I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans for your welfare and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope."

My question for you is what does this verse mean for us? Can we /  should we take this verse as a promise for us? If so, what kind of promise is it. 

I raise this question as a way of challenging you to think about how you interpret and apply scripture to your life, because if you have in mind when you read that verse or see it on someone's wall that God is promising you a long life, good family, and lots of good things, then you are misapplying and misusing the verse.

So let me take you through the verse and the passage to see what if any promises we can glean from the passage. 

First, we need to understand that Jeremiah 29 is written to a specific group of people at a specific time. Jeremiah is a prophet of God writing at the end of the independent kingdom of Judah about 600 years before Christ. They have already been captured by the large kingdom of Babylon and some of the people have been exiled over to Babylon, while some of the people remain in Jerusalem and Judea. Jeremiah is given this prophecy to both sets of people. In the first part of chapter 29, he is writing to the people in captivity and telling them that God has not abandoned them, and that they have a future and hope. This is a specific prophecy of future blessing in this world when they will be brought back to the land. In the second part of the chapter God warns the people who remain in Judah that if they resist and rebel against Babylon that they will be destroyed, so they should obey him and not rebel. They did rebel and they were destroyed. Likewise, the Jews in Babylon were returned to the land after a 70 year exile. So we see in this passage a prophecy of blessing and destruction, and we find out from later historical writings that these prophecies were fulfilled.
So one of the clear lessons that we can take from this passage is that God keeps His promises, both for blessing for those to whom He promised blessing, but also for cursing to those He promised cursing.

But are there any specific promises in this passaged for anyone besides the Jews that we should count on? Well, not exactly in this passage, but if we continue to read the context in the next couple of chapters, we see some promises for Israel that were not fulfilled in the immediate context of the people returning from Babylon 70 years later.

For instance, Jeremiah 31:33-39 says,
“This is the covenant I will make with the people of Israel
after that time,” declares the LORD.
“I will put my law in their minds 
and write it on their hearts. 
I will be their God,
and they will be my people. 
No longer will they teach their neighbor,
or say to one another, ‘Know the LORD,’
because they will all know me,
from the least of them to the greatest,”
declares the LORD.
“For I will forgive their wickedness
and will remember their sins no more.”
This is what the LORD says,
he who appoints the sun
to shine by day,
who decrees the moon and stars
to shine by night, 
who stirs up the sea 
so that its waves roar —
the LORD Almighty is his name: 
“Only if these decrees vanish from my sight,”
declares the LORD,
“will Israel ever cease
being a nation before me.” 
This is what the LORD says:
“Only if the heavens above can be measured 
and the foundations of the earth below be searched out
will I reject all the descendants of Israel
because of all they have done,”
declares the LORD.

“The days are coming,” declares the LORD, “when this city will be rebuilt for me from the Tower of Hananel to the Corner Gate. The measuring line will stretch from there straight to the hill of Gareb and then turn to Goah.

In context, this passage seems to be a continuation of the blessing talked about being promised in chapter 29. Since the eternal types of blessing did not seem to be fulfilled, we can and should look further out for what God has done and will do. 

Did God give a new covenant where His people wrote His law on the hearts of His people? Yes, we can say that in fact, that has happened through the work of Christ. His people are no longer just the physical descendants of Abraham, but all those who Christ has saved. Can we then claim some of the goodness of the promise in chapter 29 has already been fulfilled by what God does for those who trust Jesus? Yes if you are a Jesus follower.

Furthermore, we can also say that the promises of an everlasting kingdom of peace are promises that we can look forward to. We have repeated promises like this in the New Testament where the saints are to look forward to the eternal kingdom.

But I want to warn you about a couple of bad uses of this passage. One use would be to think that God is promising any current believers earthly blessing right now. The promised earthly blessings from Jeremiah 29:11 are not even fulfilled for the current generation of Jews living at that time. Yes, God does promise to bless them in Babylon if they submit to the leaders there and try to bless the kingdom, but they current generation not only did not have hope to be brought back to Judah, but were told to expect a delay of 70 years for fulfillment, so none of the original readers of the passage should have expected the kingdom to get fulfilled right then. And those physical fulfillments were for a specific group of faithful Jews who would get to come back to their homeland. That's not us.

In fact, what are we promised as far as physical blessing in this life? Well, if we look at various proverbs and consequences of living according to God's laws, then in general, we should be have better outcomes. Faithful, trustworthy, loving people generally have more stable families, better jobs, and make better neighbors. As we let the Holy Spirit write God's laws on our hearts, we should becoming more and more like Christ, so in some respects our lives and the lives of those around us should improve. 

But, what happened to Jesus in this world? He got killed. What does He promise will happen to us if we follow Him? Matthew 5:10-12 says, "Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me. Rejoice and be glad, because great is your reward in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you."

Many times in the New Testament, followers of Jesus are warned that they will face trouble and persecution simpy for following Him. Not only will our lives not necessarily be blessed, but in this life, we should expect trouble. Our hope, our blessing is not to be found in the things of this world. We were made and are being remade for the next world. 

So if you see Jeremiah 29:11 hanging on someone's wall. I want you to remember that the true fulfillment of those promises even for the Jews was not in some partially restored kingdom 70 years later or some blessing that you are hoping for next week, next year, or next decade. Rather the true plans God has for His children are much bigger and much longer than that.

A couple nights ago, Traci, Abigail and I watched a movie called, 
"I still believe," which is a story about Christian singer Jeremy Camp and his first wife Melissa. It tells the story of how Jeremy and Melissa met in college dated and even got engaged rather young. Very soon after they got engaged Melissa found out she had cancer, and they began to pray earnestly that she would be healed. Miraculously she was healed of all of her cancer right before going in for major surgery. They got married 6 months later, but on their honeymoon, Melissa found out the cancer had returned. Again they prayed for healing but the cancer was spread too far that they did not even go in for treatment. Right before she passed away, she declared the pain was gone and that God had healed her. Then she died.

She was right. God did heal her. In the most complete way. In a way that matched God's plan for her life. A plan that He has for all of those who love Him and are called according to His purpose. A plan for good and not evil. A plan for hope and an eternal future.

That's what I think of when I read Jeremiah 29:11, and I hope you will too.

The Condescending God

Most of the time when we use the word "condescending" about someone, we think of it as a bad thing, especially here in America where we think of everyone as equal. Someone who is condescending is looking down on others as if they are better and the others need their help or want their attention. But there is a good sense of the word where someone in a position of authority like a King or the President stops and pays attention to someone in a lower station of life like their kitchen staff. In fact, most of us like to hear how a President condescends to spend a few minutes asking a staff member about their family. It shows us that they care enough about the little guy to spend some of their time and energy getting to know them. 

The incarnation is the ultimate condescension. God the Son steps down from eternal glory and enters the world so that we could commune with God. We could not on our own get to God, so God comes into the world to lift us us up to Him. We marvel at what Jesus did in coming as a baby. He condescends all the way to our level not because He needs it, but because we did and we still need it. In fact, we see throughout His earthly ministry that He recognized that His followers needed help in understanding who He was and what He was doing.

As I have been reading through the Gospel of John recently,  I've noticed a number of passages like this,

John 11:41-42 So they took away the stone. And Jesus lifted up his eyes and said, “Father, I thank you that you have heard me. I knew that you always hear me, but I said this on account of the people standing around, that they may believe that you sent me.”

Here Jesus prays a truth out loud not because He had any doubt about His relationship with the Father, but because His disciples needed to hear it. Further, it wad not just those disciples at the time that needed to here it, but all of the disciples throughout time that Jesus was trying to help.

Jesus entered our world and lived a perfect human life for the purpose of saving us through His death and resurrection, and his condescension goes all the way to the level of how He speaks to us. Like a good grade school teacher who gets on the level of her students, Jesus gets on our level, literally and figuratively, so that we can understand what He has done for us. Jesus in His perfection and glory is so far above us that in our limited state we could never get to Him, but His love is so great that He comes down to our level. He lives and speaks in such a way that we can see and understand the very nature of God. 

This Christmas season as you think of the baby in the manger, praise God for His condescension toward us because without His coming down we could never be raised up.

Take Up Your Cross Daily

The Ancient Greek philosopher Socrates said that the unexamined life is not worth living, and that quote came to me the other day as I was considering the day-to-day actions in my own life. How often do I consider why I am doing this or that thing? The majority of our lives are filled with routine actions that we do automatically because that's the way I've always done it, that's the way others do it, or that's the way it's always been done. Now in one sense, this is good for us because it would be impossible to consider deeply every choice we have to make. We would end up being paralyzed by trying to figure out which cereal to choose for breakfast. But in another sense, if we never stop to consider what our lives are about and why we do things, we might very well end up doing things that are meaningless or even outright harmful, just because we want to or just because others are doing it.

In Jeremiah 7, God admonishes the Jewish people for engaging in very sinful behavior such as oppressing the poor and even sacrificing their own children in pagan religious practices. They were doing it while still worshipping at the temple in Jerusalem which was supposed to be Yahweh their God who had explicitly commanded them not to do these things. So how did they, over and over again, end up doing the opposite of what God had told them to do? They almost certainly did not intend to end up evil. Rather it started with ignoring God's Word and not spending time examining their lives in comparison to it. Day by day they would have just gone along with whatever happened and slowly but surely started to take on the practices of other nations around them. Furthermore, humans are naturally inclined to be selfish and not to care for others, so the less they examined their own lives, the more their lives would trend toward loving themselves and not loving others.

This is not just a problem for the ancient Jews, this is the problem of being human in a fallen world. This problem of moral decay is widely seen in our society today. Why do marriages and families fall apart? Why do kids not respect authority? Why are drug use and other crime rampant in many areas of our country? No one intends to end up as an addict, criminal, abuser, neglectful parent, or simply a depressed person who has trouble managing their own life. We take little steps day by day giving in to our desires and going along with the flow of society. If we never consider what our life or society is really about, we will simply start to waste away morally. 

Our character is formed or misformed in the little choices we make day by day, and if we intend to have good character we are going to have to stop and consider what actions are the right actions. Then we need to regularly remind ourselves of our commitment to do these right things. Jesus commanded His followers to "deny themselves, take up their cross daily, and follow me" (Luke 9:23) As a follower of Jesus, I need to daily make a commitment to Him and choose to sacrifice my own desires so that I can love Him and love others well. I need to regularly look to Jesus for His example, guidance, and strength to become the man I am supposed to be. Unfortunately, I also regularly fail to live up to that standard, but because He took up His cross, I can keep coming back day after day, and He keeps helping me. Therefore, we do not have to just accept the decay of the world around us. Rather, with Jesus' help every day, you and I can be renewed and be part of the renewing of the world.

To Whom are You Thankful?

Hopefully this week you will be able to gather with family and consume way too many calories! I know at three family meals that we have scheduled, I will definitely be eating too much! As I do, I will almost certainly be able to look around the room and find much to be thankful for, from the food, to the family, to the homes, and cars. Even coming and going from the different relative's homes, I will be able to see the harvested field, herds of cattle, barns of animals, various industries and shops that have helped to make all this bounty possible. In the process, I will be thankful for the many people who have added greatly to my life such as my wife, my kids, my extended family, my friends, my church family, and the various communities that have added so greatly to my life. When people live sacrificially and give to others they deserve our thanks, not just at one time a year, but regularly.

But many blessings in life cannot be tied to a specific person, such as life itself, health, natural beauty, and our own gifts and talents. As a Christian, I know who to thank for these blessing. Many places in the Bible let us know that we should be thankful saying, "Give thanks in all circumstances" (1 Thessalonians 5:18). Other passages let us know to whom we should be thankful saying, "Give thanks to the Lord for He is good, His love endures forever" (Psalm 107:1). When we reflect upon the world, we see that blessings are all around us every day and that many of the best parts of creation, from the intricacies of a leaf to the smile of a baby, if they are to have any meaning at all must come from somewhere or more specifically someone else. Upon reflection, we can see that, "Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows" (James 1:17). 

What if I do not believe in God or at least do not make God a regular part of my life? Where then do all these blessings come from and to whom should I give thanks? Around this time of year, I often hear people declare that we should be thankful for the good things or that we should live thankful lives. But if they do not know where the blessing comes from, who are they thanking? The universe? The world in general? Nothing? Thankfulness untethered to a deeper reality feels hollow because giving thanks should be tied to a relationship with the person who gave us the blessing. Our conscience tells us that being thankful is the right thing, but if God is not acknowledged as the origin of the blessing then our internal desire to thank someone is left empty. We end up thanking a void, which makes us feel like the emotion itself is meaningless. Conversely, our very desire to give thanks is one of the evidences that there is someone to thank!

Therefore, I encourage you this Thanksgiving time, to yes, pay attention to and even list the many blessings in your life, but also to make sure you spend time reflecting on who gave you those blessings. Pray a prayer of thanksgiving to our good God who gives us all good things.

What's the Desire of Your Heart?

What do you want in life? Are your goals realistic? What if you never got that thing? Would your life have been a waste? For instance, when I was young I wanted to be rich, and I've heard the same thing from my kids at times, namely a desire to be a millionaire. Now, for me, it wasn't necessarily that I wanted money, but there were things that I wanted that I couldn't get because I didn't have enough money. So, therefore, I wanted to be able to buy whatever my heart desired.

For others, their heart desire might be that someone would love them or that they would have a relationship with their dream man or woman. Another person's heart desire might be to be famous, to have thousands or even millions of likes on their Instagram post or Tiktok video. Heck, I can understand that, because even in writing articles or blog posts, I wonder how many people I can reach.

What I've realized as I've lived a little bit of life now is that, money, things, people, fame, pleasure, etc., are only temporarily satisfying. They break, get lost, go away, get forgotten in history, and/or die. They don't, they cannot, really fill my heart and keep me satisfied.

So this morning as I was reading in the book of Psalms 37:4, "Delight yourself in the Lord and He will give you the desires of your heart," I was contemplating how the first part of the verse connects to the second part of the verse. God can give us the desires of our heart, but he doesn't promise to give us just anything that we might want. Rather, He will give us himself if we delight in Him. When He becomes the desire of our heart, He gives us Himself. 

But is God worth it? Can He really satisfy our hearts and keep us satisfied? In the Psalm right before this, it says, "How priceless is your unfailing love. Both high and lower among men find refuge in the shadow of your wings. They feast on the abundance of your house. You give them drink from your river of delights, for with you is the fountain of life. In your light we see light" (Psalm 36:7-9). 

But how can we know that this is true? I mean, sure, God is saying this about Himself, but is he really telling us the truth? In this case, there really is only one way to find out. As Psalm 34;8 says, "Taste and see that the Lord is good. Blessed is the man who takes refuge in him."  Honestly, you can go through the process of trying everything out, like the teacher in the book of Ecclesiastes did, to see if those other things will satisfy you, but I would recommend starting with the one true God, who is eternal and wants relationship with us. 

We know this because he reaches out to us in the person of Jesus Christ who came to repair a broken relationship so that we could delight in the Lord. We could experience His love. He actually gives us a new heart and helps us understand how to delight in the Lord so that the desire of our heart, the eternal desire, the hole in our heart can be filled. 

The Bible Works

 

Last week, I got upset with someone, or more accurately, someone became upset with me, which "caused" me to become upset with them. I was feeling quite emotional at the time (I had knee surgery last week, so I was tired and sore), so I didn't handle my emotions very well, and I had to exit the conversation. After leaving, I began to reflect on some of the biblical principles of conflict resolution that I have often taught to others. Using these principles, I began to assess the situation and my emotions.

I realized that my identity needed to be grounded in what God says about me, and that my life and actions needed to begin with a willingness to glorify God (1 Corinthians 10:31), which is the first biblical principle of reconciliation I have learned. Then I needed to examine myself to see if I had a log in my eye, even though in my spirit, I wanted to remain resentful and blame the other person. In this reflection, I was able to recognize that I had sinned in my attitude and response. Before blaming the other person, I needed to repent to the Lord (1 John 1:9) and then ask the other person for forgiveness (Matt. 5:23). Therefore, it became clear to me that I had to seek reconciliation with my Christian friend (Romans 12:18). After a few minutes of more rational conversation and some apologies exchanged, we were reconciled. Our friendship was renewed, and we both learned more about reconciliation and how to love each other better.

Because I had specifically studied what the Bible had to say about repentance, forgiveness, and reconciliation, I knew what God wanted me to do in this type of situation. At that point, it was not a lack of knowledge but a decision of the will, whether I would obey or not, and whether I would truly trust that God knows best about how I should live my life.

God has laid out many truths in His Word about salvation, about what is right and wrong, about how we are created to live and love Him and others. When we know these truths, believe these truths, and act on these truths, our lives are better because, as our Creator, God knows best. Following His Word helps us have confidence in our eternal relationship with Jesus, have better marriages, be better parents, learn to honor our parents, be better citizens, be better friends, find and use our spiritual gifts, be more honest, be more humble, be better church members, be better employees, or students. In these and many other ways, if we spend time learning God's Word, then believe its truth and act upon it, we will be better humans.

If you don't believe me, I challenge you to read some of the Bible daily and find one truth to meditate upon, and then try to apply it in your life. Test God's Word and see if it contains both the big truths of life and eternity, but also truths that help you live from day to day.