<p>Talks about love, family, marriage</p>

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Campion Seventh Day Adventist Church

Family Drift

Micheal Goetz

Family Drift, Part 1

Let it be, O Lord, as you've paid it all, that we would accept, we accept the gift of salvation today.

Because of Calvary, we want to be surrendered to you.

So speak, we pray in the name of Jesus, amen.

All right, I'm not gonna tell you, I'm not gonna tell you what the story is, all right?

Journalist Chas Danner and journalist Margaret Hardiman said, hey, this is how they described it.

Based on their description, see if you can know what event they're describing.

Once it became clear that the incident was not staged, seemingly everyone felt compelled to form an opinion on it and to share their views with friends, family members, coworkers, social media followers, their hairstylist, their dog walker, strangers in line at the grocery store, et cetera.

They're talking about the slap scene around the world.

Put a picture on the screen for you because you haven't seen this picture before.

You have not seen that picture anywhere, have you?

Those of us that didn't know the Oscars were happening last week, rested well until the world exploded Monday morning with the news of 1 man's hand hitting another man's face.

Monday morning, the questions were being posed.

What in the world are the roles of a man to protect his wife?

What in the world are the roles of a man making fun of a woman?

Was this abusive by a man to say about a woman?

Was it chivalry for a man to stand up and strike another man?

Ironic that an industry that has done its absolute best to dissuade the world of gender roles, all of a sudden started asking gender roles.

I didn't make it up, I didn't make it up, But a whole industry that has been unabashedly intent all of a sudden started asking the questions, wait a minute, Were some lines crossed there?

There's the macro issues and questions that surface around genders.

Macro questions like, really, are there really boundaries of just 2 genders?

Macro questions like, are there moral boundaries of gender identity and sexual expression?

Then there's micro questions, like what about gender roles in the home and in relationships?

Who is he supposed to be as a father, as a husband, as a friend?

Who is she supposed to be as a wife, as a mother, as a a friend.

But I don't want us to get lost and miss the micro questions, because often, often, they're very present but ignored.

Last fall, our hospital administration from Avista handed me a book, Mission Drift, written by Peter Greer and Chris Horse.

Looking at faith-based organizations and how they can drift from their mission.

Organizations that we know, like Yale and Harvard University, birthed to be Bible-based educational centers, but have since wandered from their mission.

Andy Crouch, who wrote the foreword for the book, Mission Drift.

He says, leadership and the concerns of leaders is this, to ensure that an organization stays true to its mission, especially when that mission becomes counter-cultural.

For a faith-based organization like a school, a church, a health center, that's relevant.

It's the second law of thermodynamics that any organization, entity, in a closed system, meaning without outside input, will eventually reach maximum entropy.

Could the family, could relationships, and could marriage be 1 of those organizations, faith-based organizations?

Oh, you say, absolutely, let's talk about that.

But I'm afraid, I'm not afraid that you're gonna just look at the macro.

I'm afraid you're gonna only look at the macro questions that we just visited a minute ago.

Intimacy, overused and underused, depending on the context you're in.

It's at least a bit ironic, you have to admit, that in the context that love and intimacy are supposed to have their epicenter, they're supposed to be best seen, they're often at their worst in the home and in marriage and in families.

Love and intimacy are often there the least used, it seems.

Love in these and toward those ought not to be foreign in the Christian context.

God has a lot to say about the subject, in fact.

I have on my desk, my study desk at home, a stack of books that I have been working through over the course of these last months or year, and not all of them land there, but many of them do.

2 of the biggest books, 2 of the biggest books on the stack.

In fact, there's only 1 other that even comes close to their size.

2 of the biggest books are dealing with what the Bible has to say about the subject of intimacy, sexuality, and marriage, and gender roles.

So It's not that the Bible is ignorant to this at all, or ignoring it.

For example, Richard Davidson, Old Testament scholar, Andrews University, wrote his magnum opus published in 2007 called The Flame of Yahweh, a literal translation of an expression used in the Song of Solomons, the flame of Yahweh.

He takes that as the title of his book, subtitle, Study of Sexuality in the Old Testament.

The bibliography alone is 140 pages of the references and the resources that he looks at in order to say this is an Old Testament conclusion of sexuality, gender, and relationships.

He calls it a favorite word of mine, Brobdingnagian.

Well, it's a Brobdingnagian subject with Brobdingnagian impact.

So let's grab our Bibles and talk about it.

We've got 2 weeks to tackle the Brobdingnagian subject.

Once from the Old Testament, next week we'll talk about the New Testament.

Where else would we go if we're gonna start in the Old Testament?

If you don't, there's a pew Bible in the pew in front of you.

Family Drift, Part 2

First let me ask you a question just for your consideration How often should?

Someone be allowed to tell Their second favorite love story.

You just they they got to be told and retold and told and retold.

But how often should someone be allowed to tell their second favorite love story?

My first favorite, of course, involves Melanie.

But my second favorite, How often can I get away with telling you that story?

It's been 7 years since I've told it to you.

You can't go 7 years without telling your favorite love story.

It occurred to me that on a campus like this, we've gotta at least tell it every year or 2, every other year.

We gotta, maybe we can get away with more.

But the love story I am going to tell you to start with is a love story gone strategy story.

A young man, just what was his wedding date was April 6, 2020.

So just 2 years ago this week he had his wedding date, young beautiful bride there on the island.

They'd set the date, he worked for a bank and Taiwan is 1 of the few places in the world that mandates companies to give you paid wedding time.

Meaning you, after you get married, they call it marriage time, after you get married, you have 8 paid days.

Well, this young man worked for a bank and April 6 was rolling around and they began to plan their honeymoon and 8 days just didn't seem like enough.

On April 6, 2020, this young bank employee married his bride on April 16.

And the catch is this, the catch is this.

He consulted with his employer, and they said, you don't have to take him the day after you get married.

You can accommodate the time, you let us know when you wanna take the time.

On April 17, he gets married again to the same bride.

On April 29 married again to the same bride.

May 12, married for the fourth time to the same person.

And then he shows up to his boss and says, sir I will need 32 days of paid leave.

Boss man didn't like that, went to the labor department, Taiwanese government, they said, oops, let's review the books, uh-oh, uh-oh, there is not, he is allowed 8 days for every 1 of those but the Taiwanese government said by the way we will be changing that little loophole so don't try it anymore however our young friend and his bride got all 32 days paid leave.

I wish I was smart enough to have figured that kind of stuff out.

But really, really, Is marriage, is relationships, is this really something just to play with, just to strategize and see what you can get out of it?

We're going back to the first book of the Bible, Genesis, where we started last week.

It's just all spring, we're just two-part, two-part family drift, this week, last week, this week.

Next week is the cantata, and then after that, we've got 2 week of serpentine series, a prophecy tale of us, a serpentine prophecy tale, and then we finish that up.

May, we go on to another three-part series.

So it's just, we're flying through this spring.

Before you know it, our seniors are gonna be in robes and marching down the aisle, and we won't miss them a bit.

This is where the conversation starts in the very first chapter of the Bible.

It's that important that it's not relegated to a chapter down the road a bit.

It is included in the very first chapter.

Then God said, let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, repetition, so that they may rule.

And we talked about this was a regal invitation.

God is saying we want mankind in our own image, physically, emotionally, mentally, spiritually, He is going to take on our image and He's going to be given part of our responsibility.

This was an incredible, incredible exchange or endowment of authority from God to mankind.

So God did create man in his own, mankind in his own image.

Every word is valuable here, but in the image of God, in the image of God, male and female, He created them.

The image of God is brought together in the diversity and the union, the covenant union of 2 genders, man and woman.

In a world like we are today, this isn't even popular.

But there it is, Genesis chapter 1, verse 26 and 27.

Now, I want to just, I want to draw your attention to this.

There is, there is, you have no argument with me, the very possibility that the devil has through fallenness gotten his impact on the epigenetics of mankind.

We aren't physically or spiritually or emotionally or mentally.

Could it be that he's also impacted that point of gender?

God created it in a perfect world, and since then Satan has done his best to strangle those epigenetics, to twist them.

Could there be someone that says, wait a minute, this isn't it for me.

But I believe the Bible wouldn't lay this out, wouldn't lay this out as an invitation to mock us.

It's an actual invitation to say, God says I can still make this possible.

Sure, the devil can mess with epigenetics, who we are, who our offspring become.

But could it be also that we are, as it were, Plato, we reflect the image that we are exposed to.

Could it be that that was less illustrative of what we are?

We are image bearers, but we're image bearers of whatever we are pressed up against, whatever we are exposed to, that we bear the image of.

And so I protest back to you to say, wait a minute, the confusion may not be as confusing as it seems if we would clear the air of all that is confusing us.

That is the entertainment industry that is bent on confusing this question.

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Series

Family Drift

Family Drift, Part 2

Transcript

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Parent Series

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Parts

Family Drift, Part 1

43m

Family Drift, Part 2

51m

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