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This next Sunday (April 15th), I will only be preaching in the 1st service, since the Teen Challenge Induction Center Choir comes to lead us in the 2nd service this week. In my message, I will be focusing on how any of us may be healed of the sexual sins that plague us. Not healed of sex! That's a wonderful gift of God that we each must learn to enjoy as He intended! But many need to learn how to accept, and appreciate this gift of procreation and intimacy. It is God's plan that we should!
Here's our text for this Sunday, April 15, 2007:
"It is actually reported that there is sexual immorality among you, and of a kind that does not occur even among pagans: A man has his father's wife. And you are proud! Shouldn't you rather have been filled with grief and have put out of your fellowship the man who did this? Even though I am not physically present, I am with you in spirit. And I have already passed judgment on the one who did this, just as if I were present. When you are assembled in the name of our Lord Jesus and I am with you in spirit, and the power of our Lord Jesus is present, hand this man over to Satan, so that the sinful nature may be destroyed and his spirit saved on the day of the Lord."
"Your boasting is not good. Don't you know that a little yeast works through the whole batch of dough? Get rid of the old yeast that you may be a new batch without yeast - as you really are. For Christ, our Passover lamb, has been sacrificed. Therefore let us keep the Festival, not with the old yeast, the yeast of malice and wickedness, but with bread without yeast, the bread of sincerity and truth."
Would Jesus, the Lover of our Souls, really want someone removed from the fellowship of the church??? After all, isn't God all about love??? Let's find out...
The very LAST thing that a Christian, Christ Follower, a disciple of the Living Lord, should consider in any human relationship is shunning. The act of choosing to not communicate with another human for any reason. Jesus calls us to even deal with our worst enemies in love (He doesn't tell us to like them, simply to love them). Sadly we often shun, or ignore, members of our own families more easily than we do people we hardly know, but then the old song is true...we do hurt most often the ones we most love.
What Jesus does not tell us to do is allow our lives, our families, our churches, to become trash bins or doormats for other's sin. In other words, there are things that people can do that will trash ourselves and our communities and fellowships if we do not act to separate ourselves from them.
"If your right eye causes you to sin, gouge it out and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to be thrown into hell. And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to go into hell."
Jesus isn't speaking of flesh and blood body parts here. He's talking about each of us as parts of the Body of Christ, the universal church.
But can we separate ourselves from another and still love them? Sometimes we must.
This week we discuss how we may be healed from the results of our own or another's sexual sins. Why do we discuss sins of "the flesh" separately from all other sins? Surely God does not separate them as being worse than any other sin. In fact, we know that God judges all sin equally as, "anything we do that separates us from God".
The priority of the problem with sexual sin is it's very human priority, not God's. However God knows this priority makes it for us, often, one of the worst ways we may offend ourselves, our families and our churches. You see, it's not the fact that it is in God's eyes greater sin. It is not. But in human eyes, it definitely is. So...
A Methodist Pastor chooses to seek young boys on the internet. A Roman Catholic Priest uses internet porn because he can't keep his vow of celibacy. A Nun, Sunday School Teacher, Trustee, etc... can't get satisfaction sexually from a monogamous marriage relationship, and can't abstain from sexual activity in singleness...what should the church leadership do?
Jesus tells us in Matthew 18:15. The leaders must speak to the offender, as in any apparent sin. If they will not change they must be counseled more strongly. If their behavior cannot be changed in this particularly hurtful area of life, they must be removed from leadership, and if they are a danger to the church, even removed, as a cancer must be removed from an ill body for healing to take place.
In the United Methodist Church the opportunities for healing even after a sexually sinning pastor is removed from a pulpit never end. Even if the pastor refuses counsel and treatment, and is de-credentialed by the Bishop, they will receive prayer and care from afar. But should lay persons who sin sexually be removed from a church? Only of they are unwilling to change and their behavior can hurt another. Some examples, not all of them in sexual sin:
A Counting Team member who is arrested for theft. An ex- husband or wife who stalks their former partner with obvious unwanted attention. A person convicted of a sexual crime against a minor who wants to serve in the children's ministry.
Solutions to these very real situations other UM Churches have faced: The counting team member is welcomed in no- financial areas of service. The convicted sex offender is allowed to serve in any area that does not place them in contact with children. The stalker is approached and asked if we can find another church for them to worship in, for their own and the former partners safety.
You see...shunning does NOT mean cutting off from THE church. It simply means that in some cases a person is safer, and so is this fellowship, if they worship elsewhere, or serve in another capacity! Love must always prevail!
Now come join us in on April 15th for the REST OF THE MESSAGE!
Pastor Ken
NOTE: Unless otherwise stated, all Bible verses quoted in this website are from the New International Version (NIV). Any words from those verses that are in "red" are words spoken by Jesus.
Pastor Ken sends a Weekly Newsletter that includes his devotional message for the week and an update of the current happenings at Hope Church. If you would like to receive his newsletter, just click below and he'll add your email address to his list of subscribers.