-
This comes from Alvarina.
-
And she asks this question:
-
"If I broke up with my boyfriend
-
because he stopped being a Christian,
-
is it ok to wait for him
-
till he comes back to Christ,
-
or do I have to move on?"
-
It sounds kind of high school, right?
-
"If I broke up with my boyfriend
-
because he stopped being a Christian
-
is it ok to wait for him
-
till he comes back to Christ,
-
or do I have to move on?"
-
When I hear a question like that,
-
my first thing is not yes or no.
-
My first thought is,
-
where is this girl going to church?
-
What kind of pastor is she sitting under?
-
Is she going to church?
-
If she is, what is she getting taught?
-
Who are her parents?
-
What are her parents allowing her to do?
-
What are they teaching her?
-
Those are the first questions
that come into my mind.
-
"If I broke up with my boyfriend
-
because he stopped being a Christian,
-
is it ok to wait for him
-
till he comes back to Christ,
-
or do I have to move on?"
-
I mean, in that question,
-
she kind of sees Christianity as something
-
you pop in and pop out of.
-
Well, he's a Christian, and then...
-
he stopped being a Christian.
-
And maybe he'll just pop back in
-
and he'll become a Christian again.
-
And so, should I wait for him?
-
You get the picture of what's going on.
-
But what is it to be a Christian?
-
I think if this was a young lady
-
in the church,
-
and she sat down with me,
-
she'd just come
-
or her family had moved here
-
or however - she came with a friend.
-
And she asked this question.
-
You know, the first thing
-
I would want to ask Alvarina is
-
do you have a good idea
-
about what it is to be a Christian?
-
Because the thing that came to my mind
-
is being a Christian is miraculous.
-
It's supernatural.
-
It's a mighty work of God.
-
And it's permanent.
-
I mean, truly being a Christian
is permanent.
-
This "you're in, you're out"
-
and we know people can make
-
false professions,
-
and we know people can
come face to face with truth.
-
And we know people can claim
to be a Christian today
-
and make shipwreck tomorrow.
-
But one of the things that you see
-
in Scripture is to once have been
-
in that light and depart from it
-
is extremely dangerous.
-
It's like the seed that comes up
-
and the persecution comes
-
and away it goes.
-
Making shipwreck of the faith.
-
They were there and they're not there.
-
Demas never comes back again.
-
Judas never comes back again.
-
There's a point of no return
-
as we see in Hebrews 6.
-
All these things about this flippant view
-
of Christian - you're in, you're out,
you're exposed to the truth,
-
you're back and forth,
-
you claim to be a Christian,
-
you're not a Christian.
-
It's kind of missing the supernatural
-
flavor of what Christianity's all about.
-
I mean as I'm thinking about it,
-
a series of texts start coming
-
through my mind
-
just about Christianity.
-
The first thing I think of is that text
-
right out of Jonah;
-
salvation is of the Lord,
-
it's not something men do,
-
it's not just this decision.
-
Yes, men make decisions,
-
but it's not basically, ultimately
-
at the level of decisions of mankind.
-
It's at the decision of God.
-
Salvation is of the Lord.
-
And you've got, of course, John 1:12-13,
-
that says that we were born of God,
-
not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh,
-
nor of the will of man, but of God.
-
This is something that God does.
-
A text very much like it in Romans 9.
-
He says to Moses,
-
I will have mercy upon whom
I will have mercy;
-
I will have compassion upon whom
I will have compassion.
-
So that it depends not on human will
-
or exertion, but on God who has mercy.
-
I thought of Hebrews 7.
-
Christ saving to the uttermost.
-
This picture of Christianity:
-
Well, we're kind of in, we're kind of out,
-
we're in, we're out, we're in...
-
back and forth.
-
Being saved to the uttermost,
-
that's complete; that's permanent.
-
He says eternal life.
-
I give them eternal life.
-
He says all that the Father gives Me,
-
where is that, John 6:39?
-
All that the Father gives Me,
-
He says He's not going
to lose any of them.
-
And He says He's going
to raise them up
-
in the last day.
-
He says He gives them eternal life.
-
Where is that? John 3:36.
-
If you believe in the Son,
-
you have eternal life.
-
Eternal life is eternal.
-
It doesn't go away.
-
Now we know men make shipwreck
-
of the faith.
-
We know people take Christianity
-
in a flippant way,
-
we know they do that.
-
But that's what's going on here.
-
True Christianity is permanent.
-
True Christianity doesn't go away.
-
I thought of the text in 2 Corinthians
-
about being a new creation.
-
When you're a new creation,
you're a new creation,
-
and you don't get uncreated.
-
When God creates something,
-
it's created.
-
It doesn't stop being created.
-
It doesn't go into oblivion.
-
It's not like He created today,
-
and then you're not created tomorrow,
-
and then you can come back
-
and be created again,
-
and you're just going back and forth
-
in and out of being this new creation.
-
None of that.
-
And so, I was thinking,
-
if I actually sat down
with this young lady,
-
I'd be saying,
-
have you even been taught
-
what true Christianity is?
-
The radical nature;
-
the miraculous, the mighty nature,
-
the permanent nature of what it is
-
to be a true Christian,
-
and have you experienced this yourself?
-
Are you viewing Christianity
-
the way you are
-
because perhaps you're not even aware
-
yourself of what this looks like.
-
But then I thought, too,
-
she uses this term,
-
"broke up with my boyfriend."
-
"Broke up with my boyfriend."
-
What do you guys think
about that terminology?
-
What do you think about a girl
breaking up with her boyfriend?
-
You got any thoughts, Abraham?
-
You start thinking,
-
think about the relationships
-
between a man and a woman
-
in Scripture.
-
I find three God-condoned,
-
appropriate relationships
-
between men and women.
-
Can you tell me what they are?
-
Marriage.
-
You won't find courtship in there.
-
What do you find?
-
Betrothal.
-
Betrothal's in the Bible.
-
And then what else?
-
What's the third relationship?
-
(from the room) Father and daughter?
-
Tim: I'm just talking about
a man and a woman.
-
Obviously, there's brother/sister,
-
father/daughter,
-
there's all those relationships,
-
but I mean, father/daughter
-
would fall into this category,
-
but young men and young women here,
-
it's appropriate for you to be married,
-
it's appropriate, perhaps, for
you to be in a betrothal
-
where you're headed to marriage,
-
and what would be
the third that's appropriate?
-
Yeah, you live together in the same world,
-
or in the same church
or in the same society
-
and you're pure.
-
Those are the three
God-condoned relationships
-
between a man and a woman.
-
And you think about marriage.
-
Marriage.
-
When we're talking about intimacy,
-
there is no other place
-
where intimacy is condoned in Scripture,
-
other than marriage.
-
Proverbs 5:18
-
Let your fountain be blessed;
-
rejoice in the wife of your youth;
-
a lovely deer, a graceful doe,
-
let her breasts fill you at all times
-
with delight,
-
be intoxicated always in her love.
-
You've got 1 Corinthians 7:2,
-
because of temptation
to sexual immorality,
-
each man should have his own wife
-
and each woman her own husband.
-
You've got Hebrews 13:4,
-
let marriage be held in honor among all
-
and let the marriage bed be undefiled,
-
for God will judge the sexually
immoral and adulterous.
-
Clearly, the author of Hebrews
is saying this:
-
The marriage bed is the only place
-
of intimacy condoned by God.
-
Everything else falls into that category
-
of being that which is sexually immoral
-
and adulterous and those that
God is going to judge.
-
Now, we see betrothal in Scripture
-
which might be akin to engagement
-
in our time.
-
Why?
-
Both of them involve a commitment
-
and both of them are headed to marriage.
-
And both of them are to be
-
radically pure,
-
because only the marriage bed
-
is the place where God
allows that intimacy.
-
And God is very serious about that.
-
We can look at Joseph in the New Testament
-
acting as a righteous man
-
and he's ready to put Mary away
-
because of some perceived infidelity
-
on his part when they were in
-
this betrothal period.
-
But under Moses,
-
it was very pronounced.
-
Deuteronomy 22:23
-
If there is a betrothed virgin
-
and a man meets her in the city
-
and lies with her,
then you shall bring
-
them both out to the gate of that city,
-
and you shall stone them to death
-
with stones.
-
The young woman because she did not
-
cry for help,
though she was in the city;
-
and the man, because he violated
-
his neighbor's wife.
-
So you shall purge
the evil from your midst.
-
If in the open country, a man meets
-
a young woman who is betrothed
-
and the man seizes her
and lies with her
-
then only the man who lay with her
-
shall die.
-
This betrothal period - it even inter-uses
-
betrothal and marriage,
-
because it was something that you
-
actually had to have a divorce to break.
-
It was that permanent.
-
Our engagments, although they involve
-
a token of that pledge
-
in a ring typically,
-
and there's a commitment,
-
and usually when there's an engagement
-
there's a marriage date set.
-
But we don't count it as binding
-
in our society.
-
But nevertheless, it's a
period of commitment.
-
Marriage is the goal.
-
And absolute purity is to be maintained.
-
The other one is where you're just
-
existing side-by-side.
-
You're friends.
-
Or maybe you're not friends.
-
Maybe it's a father/daughter;
-
maybe it's a brother/sister; whatever.
-
Every other relationship is single
-
and pursuing purity.
-
I guess one of the parties
-
or both of the parties could be married,
-
but we're talking about the specific
-
relationship between any man
-
and any woman.
-
What we're doing is we're answering
-
the question that
this young lady has posed.
-
And look, she's talking about
-
"if I broke up with my boyfriend..."
-
what does breaking up with a boyfriend
-
even look like?
-
Well, it's a very worldly terminology.
-
It's the idea of dating, boyfriends,
-
going out, casual dating, going steady,
-
whatever.
-
There's lots of different
ways that it's said today.
-
But it's this idea that I specifically
-
have a relationship with
this person over here
-
with no commitment.
-
It's not headed towards marriage.
-
We're not married.
-
We're not getting married.
-
Why do they do that?
-
What do they want?
-
Well, they want something from the other
-
person without commitment.
-
That's basically what is wanted.
-
Typically, in our society today,
-
it runs into enjoying the fullness
-
of all the intimacy that
is had in marriage
-
and it's just done without any commitment.
-
It's done in high school,
-
it's done in middle school.
-
And what Scripture says
-
is you have this spoken to Timothy,
-
"do not rebuke an older man,"
-
in 1 Timothy 5:1-2.
-
"Do not rebuke an older man,
-
but encourage him as you would a father;
-
younger men as brothers;
-
older women as mothers."
-
And Timothy, this is how you're
-
supposed to deal -
-
Timothy is a young man;
-
this is how you deal with young women.
-
How?
-
In all purity.
-
You want a blanket statement
-
from the apostle as to how
-
young men and young women
-
who are not engaged
-
and headed towards marriage;
-
who are not in marriage.
-
Well, even if you are engaged,
-
but this is the kind of summary statement.
-
Purity, purity, purity.
-
All purity.
-
1 Timothy 2:22
-
"So flee youthful passions;
-
pursue righteousness, faith, love, peace
-
along with those who call on the Lord
-
from a pure heart."
-
Of course, you have 1 Corinthians 6:18
-
that says, "Flee from sexual immorality."
-
And so, my point to Alvarina,
-
listen, it's like she's saying this:
-
"Well, I thought this guy was a Christian,
-
and I had to break up with him
-
because he stopped being a Christian.
-
Is it ok for me to wait for him
-
to come back to Christ?"
-
To do what?
-
Well, so that she can
go out with him again.
-
Or do I have to move on?
-
Move on to what?
-
Some other guy
-
that professes to be a Christian.
-
She really needs a pastor,
-
she needs a father or mother
-
in her life that's telling her,
-
look, this isn't even an acceptable
-
kind of relationship before the Lord.
-
The Lord wants purity.
-
What in the world kind of
relationship are you getting into
-
and why are you getting into it?
What does it mean?
-
You go out on dates?
-
It's totally inappropriate.
-
It's not specified in Scripture.
-
There's no such recognized
-
relationships like this
that God gives to us.
-
The only one where any kind of intimacy
-
is accepted in Scripture
is the marriage bed
-
and everything else is to be kept
-
absolutely pure.
-
Everything else.
-
And so, there needs to be a fleeing
-
from youthful passions,
-
a fleeing from sexual immorality,
-
and certainly, we know it,
-
you can be blind and you understand,
-
that all this casual dating
that's going on
-
in our world,
-
all this going out and going steady,
-
and having this girlfriend/boyfriend stuff.
-
Even down into probably
elementary schools now
-
it's leading to all manner
of sexual immorality,
-
and all sorts of wickedness.
-
It's done for a reason.
-
And most of us here were lost
-
and are first generation Christians.
-
We were lost when we
were in elementary school
-
and middle school and high school,
-
and we know exactly what it's all about.
-
We know.
-
And I hope we don't have any parents
-
in this church that would ever condone
-
that kind of relationship between
-
young people.
-
So anyway, that's basically how I would
-
answer Alvarina if I
was able to sit with her
-
face to face.
-
God wants a commitment in relationships.
-
Why?
-
Because ultimately what
this leads to is marriage,
-
which is what?
-
It's a foreshadowing of
-
the relationship between Jesus Christ
and the church.
-
And our Lord has relationship with people
-
by way of covenant.
-
He's committed.
-
He's all out committed to that relationship.
-
And that's the only kind that is
-
honoring to God.
-
Everything else is dishonoring.