The Sexually Healthy Church - Genesis 18:16-33 Series

Today we’re going to look at the story of Sodom and Gomorrah. So for those of you who are online, I just want to remind you as I’ve tried to share with you in advance already that this is probably not appropriate for children nine years and younger. Now I do think it’s important to talk to children about sexuality. Even as preschoolers we need to talk to them because when children are growing they need to learn, especially in preschool they need to learn privacy and they need to learn about appropriate touching. They need to learn about a boy and a girl. We start those conversations early in a child’s life as they’re growing. But today we’re going to talk about some advanced things that are important for us to talk about. The words that we’re going to use and the concepts will not be appropriate because we don’t want young children to be exposed to things that are above their developmental stage. So I would encourage you to either turn off the sermon and listen to it later or allow them to do something different during this talk.

However, if your children is ten years old and older I would go get them. And if they’re not listening, they should be. This is a great opportunity for them to be interacting with you about sexuality. Very important topic for all of us to be able to address. I want to try to deal with this with compassion and justice today in a way that is sensitive, discreet, but pointed so that we can have these conversations in families. The family is the place where we talk about sex. It's a place where we need to understand sexuality and all the things surrounded by them. Not just the biology of having sex, but all the things surrounding that. And then the church family is a place where we also want to be having these kinds of discussions. We want to be talking together as a church family. So children, I would say, young people, if you have any questions that you talk to your parents and if you still want to dialogue more, call me, talk to me. I’d be more than happy to have conversations about this subject with you or others here in the fellowship.

For those of you who are middle school students and high school students, I’m glad you are listening today. I trust that this will be helpful because I know that some of you are likely struggling personally with some of these very issues and have friends that are dealing with these kinds of issues as well. So we’re going to address those. As we do, we’re going to open God’s word. We’re going to read it and then I’m going to make some comments that will guide us through this process to try to give us some understanding of where we’re going here and what we’re doing.

I’m going to read to you from God’s word. I don’t have slides for these, so you don’t have to advance the slides. We’ll just stay right with this because there's so much of the context I want to read I didn’t want to throw it up. I do have some other slides we’ll use in just a little bit.

I’m reading from Genesis 18. If you remember in the story, Abraham had an experience with these three visitors. One was God and two angels came to him. The conversation now continues. It says – Then the men (that is these three guys – God and the two angels) set out from there, and they looked down toward Sodom. And Abraham went with them to set them on their way. The LORD said, “Shall I hide from Abraham what I am about to do, seeing that Abraham shall surely become a great and mighty nation, and all the nations of the earth shall be blessed in him? For I have chosen him, that he may command his children and his household after him to keep the way of the Lord by doing righteousness and justice, so that the LORD may bring to Abraham what he has promised him.”

In other words God is saying, “It’s important for Abraham to understand what I’m going to do.” And I’m saying to you, it is important for you to understand this material we’re going to talk about. God says, “Shouldn’t I reveal this to him? He needs to understand this whole concept of what’s going on here.” In the same way, we all need to understand this together.

Then the Lord said, “Because the outcry against Sodom and Gomorrah is great and their sin is very grave, I will go down to see whether they have done altogether according to the outcry that has come to me. And if not, I will know.”