Sunday 01 • 05 • 20

We pray, Lord, for your justice and your peace. Lord, our city, our country, our nation, and even our lives are filled with lots of unrest and conflict. Father, we pray and ask for righteousness. Lord, we know that righteousness means things being done the way that you would do them. Father, we pray that there is—we know that there is no righteousness where there is no justice. So we pray, Father, for justice for those who are in power, for those in positions of leadership in our city, in our state, in our nation. Father, to use that power in ways that benefit people and not themselves. Lord, we pray, Father, that this year would be marked by an unprecedented, extraordinary evidence of your Spirit's work among us, through your church and in the city. Pray for a revival in this city. We pray, Father, for your kingdom come.

Now, Lord, we pray and join our voices together in the prayer that Jesus taught us to pray.

Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors, and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. For yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever and ever. Amen.

We're going to turn our attention to God's word. If you'd find the scripture passage printed out there in your bulletin or you can follow along on the wall behind me. It's our custom to read this aloud together. So if you would turn your attention to this. You ready?

And Pharisees came up to him and tested him by asking. "Is it lawful to divorce one's wife for any cause?" He answered, "Have you not read that he who created them from the beginning made them male and female, and said, 'Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife and the two shall become one flesh'? So they are no longer two but one flesh. What therefore, God has joined together, let not man separate." They said to him, "Why then did Moses command to give a certificate of divorce and to send her away?" He said to them, "Because of your hardness of heart, Moses allowed you to divorce your wives, but from the beginning, it was not so. And I say to you, whoever divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality and marries another commits adultery." The disciples said to him, "If such is the case of a man with his wife, it is better not to marry." But he said to them, "Not everyone can receive this saying, only those to whom it is given. For there are eunuchs who have been so from birth, and there are eunuchs who have been made eunuchs by men, and there are eunuchs who have made themselves eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven. Let the one who is able to receive this, receive it." The same day, Sadducees came to him, who say there is no resurrection, and they asked him a question, saying, "Teacher, Moses said, 'If a man dies having no children, his brother must marry the widow and raise up offspring for his brother.' Now there were seven brothers among us. The first married and died and having no offspring left his wife to his brother. So too the second and the third down to the seventh. After them all, the woman died. In the resurrection, therefore, of the seven, whose wife will she be? For they all had her." But Jesus answered them, "You are wrong, because you know neither the scriptures nor the power of God. For in the resurrection, they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like angels in heaven. And as for the resurrection of the dead, have you not read what was said to you by God: 'I am the God of Abraham and the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob'? He is not God of the dead, but of the living." And when the crowd heard it, they were astonished at his teaching. — Matthew 19:3-12

This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God.

Single Like Jesus

Today we are starting a new series called "Single Like Jesus." It's on singleness, being single in the church. It's going to last six weeks, and I know from the get-go there are inherent challenges in preaching a sermon series like this.

First and most obviously, I am not single. That is a challenge. And I am hesitant—I am always hesitant to preach on topics of which I have no personal experience. I'm aware that's a liability. And yet, as a pastor, we're called to preach the whole of God's word and not skip over parts. So if you've been around our church for a while, you know I have dipped my toe in on a number of these things. We've talked about race and the gospel, even though I'm a white man and haven't experienced racism myself. We've talked about gender and transgenderism, even though I'm male and have no experience with gender identity issues. And we've talked about homosexuality, even though I'm a straight male. So we've done a lot of these, and I think it's right for us to talk about things, even hard things. And like all those other series, especially when I don't know what I'm talking about, I do a lot of homework.

I've met with a lot of people who are single in our church in preparation for this series. Second thing I want to say is we don't single people out at CTK. We're not singling out a group. We're not singling out singles. See what I did there? Right. We're not doing that in this series. Rather, this is a series for the whole church. We're going to talk about things that touch on every person in this room. How you understand God's will and what happens in the course of your life. How you view your sexuality. How we as a church relate as a community. How we interact with people who have different lifestyle or status or background than we do.

So if you're married, please don't tune out or shut down or just disappear for six weeks. This is for you as well.

Third, there's no hidden agenda or secret plan behind this series. We're not going to create a surprise singles ministry at the end of this. And there's no problem at our church right now. This isn't putting single people in the crosshairs because there's such a problem in our church. None of that.

And then finally, married people don't worry, you will get yours. I'm going to do six weeks on marriage in May and June. The title of this series is Single Like Jesus because Jesus came as a single man. The title of that series is going to be Married Like Jesus because Jesus is married to the bride of the church. Get it? Okay, if you don't get that, you'll get it later.

Six Myths of Singleness

Over the next six weeks we're going to look at six myths regarding being single. Six myths of singleness. The idea for this came from a book by Sam Albury, and I would highly commend him. He's a pastor. He's single. He's biblical. He's a lot better than anything you're going to get from me, but since most of you won't read the book, that's where I've got the inspiration for this.

Here's where we're going. Today we're going to tackle myth number one: being single is weird. And then here's where we're going after that. Second week is being single requires a special calling. Third, being single means no family. Fourth, being single means no intimacy. Fifth, being single is wasted sexuality. And sixth, the sixth week is being single hinders ministry.

Myth #1: Being Single Is Weird

Today we're talking about being single is weird. Now nobody says that out loud, but that comes across in a thousand ways in a thousand different voices. So let me just give you a couple of examples of this.

Sometimes it's by well-meaning family members to someone single: "Where are all the good guys out there?" Heard that question? Do you hear the assumption behind that? Marriage is normal. Being single is weird.

Sometimes it's by well-meaning parents as their kids are growing up, saying things like, "You know when you're married one day..." which is of course never guaranteed. But the assumption is being married is normal, being single is weird.

Sometimes it's by well-meaning church leaders who address the congregation and say things like this: "Husbands take care of your wives, your kids, so your wife can go in the women's retreat." As if every woman in the congregation was married and had children. Again the assumption: marriage is normal, being single is weird.

Sometimes it's in private conversations where well-meaning friends ask unhelpful questions behind a person's back: "Do you think he's gay?" I can just say that is a really painful question for somebody to be asking about you or even asking you directly. And yeah, I've heard of that in our context. Or someone who is going to fix you up with the perfect person even though you've never asked them to do that. See the assumption: marriage is normal, single is weird.

Sometimes it's by well-meaning books and seminars. Books on marriage tend to be almost uniformly positive. And yet, as I've read a stack of books on singleness, being single, the books are almost entirely starting from the perspective that being single is awful or just barely tolerable. The message? Marriage normal, being single weird.

Even the way that we describe singleness or being single, it communicates the same thing. See, it's always defined by the negative, by the absence of something—the state of being not married, the absence of a significant other. And this definition by negation, it reinforces the idea that there can be nothing intrinsically good about being a single person. See: marriage is normal, single is weird.

Where does that leave those who don't fit that standard? Where does it leave you? It leaves you in a place where you're a problem to fix, or maybe a project, or even a pariah.

I think even the word "singleness" is a bad, unhelpful word. It sounds like more of a condition than a circumstance. It sounds to me like a disease that you might get. I'm going to stick with "being single" over "singleness" in this series because being single is a circumstance like being hungry. It is not a condition like being an amputee.

So this morning we're going to test out the myth: Is it true that married is normal and single is weird? And here's where we're going—if you take notes, I'll give you a big page to take notes on. Being single is normal, being single is good, being single is the future. Let's look at this together.

Being Single is Normal

Being single is statistically normal and becoming even more so in our country. We know this anecdotally that our culture is tending toward less marriage, but this is true statistically. I read that 49 percent of United States citizens aged 15 or above are single. That's up from 2008 when it was 46 percent. Now you can find statistics to tell you everything, so I'm really not interested in you sending me different statistics after the sermon today. But it does tell us something though. What seems normal in the American Bible Belt South is not statistically normal for our country. Being single is normal and it's becoming more so all the time. In fact, we are in the age of the single. In the next twenty years, the pendulum will go all the way. That will become the statistical norm.

Second, being single is also personally normal for every person in this room. Let's just be really obvious about this: everyone here has been single in the past. Maybe is single now, maybe single in the future. But every person here has been single, is single, or will be single.

Singles come in all kinds of different varieties. A lot of times we think of two categories. We think of those who have never been married and desperately want to be married, or those who have never been married and don't want to be married. But singles come in all kinds of other forms. I mean, most noticeably in our church are children. There are those who are widows. There are those who are widowers. There are those who have been divorced. There are other kinds of singles. Those who for the sake of honoring Christ are living with and struggling with same sex attraction and are seeking to be faithful to him. There are lots and lots of people who are single, and so we've got to be really careful not to paint with too broad a brush when we say all singles are this way.

This is what we do all the time for ethnic minorities in a majority culture setting. It's like, "Hey, you're an Asian American. Would you be the spokesperson for how all Asian Americans feel?" That's really unhelpful to that person. That's a whole group of people with a lot of different circumstances. Same thing is true with regard to those who are single. We got to be really careful that even in this context, as we talk about this, you don't turn the single person in your community group into the spokesperson. We're gonna be careful about that because singles have all kinds of different circumstances.

But here's what I really want to get us to: in the arc of scripture, being single is biblically normal. It's biblically normal.

Now this has not always been the case. In the Old Testament, particularly from Genesis 1 and the calling for humans to fill the earth and subdue it and make lots of other baby humans, being married was the norm. And yet even in the Old Testament you see lots and lots of people who don't fit that. You have widows like Ruth and Naomi, who we read about over Christmas. Eunuchs—those castrated to serve in a court setting like Daniel, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. Those who have a divine call not to marry, like the prophet Jeremiah. The divorced—that's a very small group in the Old Testament, but as we see in this passage it was there. Then finally, what's called the virgins, young men and women.

But the New Testament changed all of that. Jesus came as a single man. He never married. As we're going to look at in just a second, He makes being single a viable normal category for His followers. Paul—the same thing. We are going to read about him in the coming weeks in 1 Corinthians 7 and 1 Timothy 4. Paul who refrained from marriage for the sake of being effective in ministry. What Paul and what Jesus both teach and also what they model is that being single is biblically normal.

And this actually continued throughout church history. Let me give you a little history lesson. In third century AD, Origen, archbishop in Egypt, was famously single. He taught on the goodness of marriage and the goodness of being single and it started something that lasted for twelve centuries after him: the normalization of the single life for those who are serving God, and then the idealization of the single life. This led to convents for nuns. This led to monasteries for monks.

This led to the Catholic church saying, actually our spiritual leaders all must be single moving forward because that person is married to God, married to the church, and is free for a life of undistracted devotion to God. Now this is why I want you to see this. This lasted until the Reformation, the fifteen hundreds. But this is what's wild about this. In other words, there has been a pendulum swing in the church. There's been a pendulum swing, and while in the South, in the Bible Belt, what seems to be the case is married normal singleness weird, that has not always been. That has not always been by any stretch. The pendulum has swung and is swinging again. We're about to enter a new age of the single. And we have to be very careful then with our language as a church. We need to be very careful about the things we insinuate and the things that we think and our comments and assumptions about other people, even the paradigm we pass on to our children about what is normal because Jesus gave us a biblical theology of being single. That's what we're going to spell out this morning and develop over the next several weeks.

Being Single Is Good

So point number two, being single is good. Now we're going look at this from Matthew chapter 19 and it uses some weird language for us. I'm not sure many of you have used the word eunuch in the past week. Anybody? I didn't think so. No. Right. But Jesus uses that word, we'll define that in a moment. So Jesus is talking in the context of what we read out there on marriage. He's teaching on marriage. He repeats again and underscores the word from Genesis about marriage and repeats God's standard.

Here is the standard. One man, one woman in a covenant of marriage for life. No cohabitation, no gay marriage. This is God's design. Jesus spells that out. But as Jesus teaches on marriage, His disciples, they are listening to all this, about how He talks about this and they come to this conclusion. Wow, that sounds hard. Like that sounds really hard.

If such is the case with a man with his wife, maybe it's better not to marry. — Matthew 19:10

I mean when Jesus talks about marriage, He actually puts them off of getting married. They're like, take a miss on this one. I think I'll pass. Right? And you know, it's funny because I think this almost every time I do a wedding. I get this great seat doing a wedding. Right? You know, I'm standing up, bride and groom right in front of me, and all the wedding is fine for me until they turn and take the vows. And turning and take the vows, I just if I had hair, I'd be like, are you sure? Like, the vows that we take, the promises, the lifelong, death to self. I mean, this stuff, such a high bar. This is why the disciples are like, I think I'll pass. Marriage sounds really hard.

And look, Jesus doesn't correct them. In fact, Jesus tacitly agrees with what I say about marriage. It is difficult. He doesn't soften his stance and go like, okay. Alright. Let me plan B with this. You know, let's do friends with benefits. You know, no. Jesus didn't do any of that. No. What is his answer? His answer sounds like something off Downton Abbey. Okay? This is what he says. He says, single, celibate. Now I know you don't use that word either. Eunuch or celibate. You're like, haven't used either of those in a long time. Celibate means a life as long as you're unmarried with no sex. But let's try to understand what he's saying.

There are eunuchs who have been so from birth. There are eunuchs who have been made so by men. And there are eunuchs who have made themselves eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven. — Matthew 19:12

Now eunuchs were celibate men in Jesus' day. This is very common practice, particularly in high courts, to have a castrated male serving in the court setting because you knew the castrated male would not mess with the queen or the princesses. That was what that was for. And He says though, Jesus expands this. He says actually there are three types of eunuchs. There are those who have been sterile from birth, there are those who have been made so by the hands of men. And there are this third category, those who are willing to do so for the kingdom of heaven. Those who are willing to make themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven. That doesn't mean physically make themselves eunuchs. That means consider yourself to be a person who says, a way of being faithful to God in my life is to choose a life of single celibacy.

And let me summarize. See, Jesus puts it this way. He says marriage, it's good. It's really hard. It's not the best path for everyone. That's why some choose to call themselves as a type of eunuch. Now I know that sounds bizarre to us. This is 2020. We are coming from the opposite perspective. What Jesus says here sounds like petting a cat backwards. Right? It just sounds it goes against us.

Celibacy sounds too hard, so we should make there to be some kind of on ramp, some kind of easy way up into marriage. We should make it more accessible. We should even redefine it. But Jesus' thinking goes the opposite direction. Marriage is too hard for some, so He commends celibacy. If no marriage, then no sex.

Now I want you to before you balk at this, I want you to remember who's talking. This is Jesus. This is Jesus who made himself a eunuch for the kingdom of heaven. Jesus became fully human. He was a male. He was a sexual being as all of us are here and yet He lived a celibate lifestyle. Never had a romantic relationship, never had sex. And Jesus was not calling anybody to something that he himself was not willing to undergo. He's no hypocrite saying, do this for the kingdom of heaven.

And some of you are like, wait, that's Jesus. How am I, how are we supposed to do that? That's Jesus. Yeah. That's Jesus. Think about what you're saying if you say, wait, that's Jesus. Jesus is the perfect human being. Not in the sense like He's some superhero, in the sense that He's made every bit like you. The Bible says he was tempted in every way like us. Let me be real blunt. Jesus knew what it was like to be horny. And yet Jesus gives himself to the work of God. He's the most complete human being, the most fully actualized, realized person that ever lived.

So when we say things like, to have a lifestyle where I go without sex, that's dehumanizing. We're saying Jesus was subhuman in some way. That's a central idea of our time and it sounds almost unthinkable for me to stand up in front of you and say these things. But many will hear this and say, well, time out guy, bald guy. How am I supposed to go through this life like that? How am I supposed to go through this life without hope of ever being loved?

Some who struggle with same sex attraction or unhappily single will not like this, but we have to be really careful here. It can feel very kind to soften our theology in order to accommodate people who are struggling, and I am so sympathetic. I don't want to stand up here like some kind of pound the pulpit—this is the way it is, my way or the highway. Not at all. I'm very sympathetic for those who are struggling, and I will come back to that and address that in just a minute. But for now, can we think about this?

When we talk about Jesus, when we say, yeah, but that was Jesus, what we mean is you can't ask that of me because he was a special category. He was God for crying out loud. While that sounds good, that's just bad theology. He's just like you. He knows everything just like you. So listen to Jesus. Marriage, good but hard. Single, good but hard. There is no easy pathway in this life. You want an easy pathway? There is not an easy pathway to be a disciple. Jesus told us that.

The way is broad which leads to destruction, the way is narrow which leads to salvation.

It is hard. Both have distinct challenges, both have distinct advantages, both are viable ways to live as a Christian with integrity.

Comparison and the Grass Is Always Greener

Here's what I find. What I find is it's the temptation for us, the marrieds among us and the single among us, is to compare. The married among us tend to look at the single life and be like, compare the ups of being single with the downs of being married. One British journalist said, singleness represents solvency, great sex, a guilt free life. That is simply not true. It's easy to look at the lives of those who seem to be doing all these fun things, and you're like, I'm stuck. And it's also easy for those who are single to look at the downsides of single with the upsides of being married—to come into a room like this with all the babies we got, or to walk around our city and see people holding hands and just be like, this is not fair. This is not fair.

But the grass always seems greener, doesn't it? On the other side of the fence.

Here's really the only comparison we can make biblically. The only comparison we can make is between complexity and simplicity. There is a complexity of marriage compared with the simplicity of being single. Married life is usually more complicated. We'll talk about this next week as we look at 1 Corinthians 7. Being single can be more straightforward.

But here's what we want to say today: both are good. Both are good. Both are good conditions given by God, and particularly for our purposes being single is a good circumstance. It is not a mark that God is against you. It's not part of your failure. It's not a blemish on a person's character. There is nothing wrong. In fact, that person may be really mature and worthy of admiration. So that's the first thing we need to say.

Being Single is the Future

Second thing we need to say is not just being single is good, but being single is the future. Being single is the future. Now look with me in Matthew 22. I said that those who are married may be single again. You may outlive your spouse, but Jesus tells us that in the new heavens and earth, all of us will be single again, and in another sense, we will be married. Look at this. Jesus is talking here in Matthew 22 about the final resurrection, and the Sadducees and the Pharisees are having a debate. They have a debate about the resurrection, and they come to him and they sort of put a case study slash trap to Jesus. And here's the case study. It's a crazy story. Like, this doesn't happen. But let's say a man has seven sons. It's one more than I have, right? And the first son marries a woman, and then he dies. And the second son marries the same woman and he dies and goes to the third son. This poor woman, she marries and finally she's married to all the brothers in the family and then they ask, well, she dies, whose husband will she have in the afterlife? And Jesus is like, you don't know what you're talking about. You have no idea what you're talking about.

Then look at verse 30:

For in the resurrection they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like angels in heaven. — Matthew 22:30

In other words, your relationship status on earth, if you're married, is not eternal. It is not forever. Those who are married, when we do the wedding ceremony, we say till death do us part, right? Every person goes into eternity single. That doesn't mean you wouldn't know your spouse in eternity. I can't speak to that. But it does mean that while we as Christians certainly care a lot, we talk a lot about family values and marriage, that is not the main point of the Bible, and that is not what Christianity is truly about. It's less about marriage and family values—I don't care what church you grew up in—and it's a lot more about Jesus. It's about him.

And if that sounds weird to you, if this whole idea of going into the age to come single sounds weird, well it's supposed to sound weird to you. It's supposed to sound weird to you. Because if the idea of being single for eternity doesn't appeal to you, and I'm guessing it probably doesn't, it's not because there's something wrong with heaven or the new heavens and new earth. It's because the future experience of heaven so far exceeds our understanding of what it could be now that it just is gray. We can't fathom it. We can't understand how heaven is supposed to be better without marriage or without sex. We can't imagine that, and that's actually the point. That's actually the point.

See, the fact that Christianity's vision of heaven doesn't play into our earthly appetites is actually a case for it and not a case against it. Compare this with other religions. Let me give one example. Let's take Islam. The Islamic view of heaven does involve marriage. In fact, the Quran teaches that every man will have at least two wives. Muhammad in one of his sayings said, "The smallest reward for the people of paradise is an abode where there are 80,000 servants and 72 wives." So men will have 80,000 servants and 72 wives. Muhammad also said that each man will be given the strength of a hundred men so they can have sex with all their wives. That's an Islamic view of heaven. It's very person-based. So Jesus flips that on its head. Jesus turns everything upside down. There are no marriages in heaven. We'll all be single.

Human reality is trending towards singleness right now. I said that statistically. Which means that as people of God, people who love His word, who are trying to know Him and live for Him, we can say this: being single is actually the new creation normal. And what is to come is better than anything that we can possibly imagine. Anything we possibly imagine—better even than sex, which is just a pale shadow of the pleasure which is to come.

This is again why we're going to take time. We're going to take six weeks and talk about being single. Now some of you when I said that are like, really? Six weeks, Bradford, on being single? Really? You need to understand. We have a lot to learn from the singles in our context. We have a lot to learn from what it means to be a faithful follower of Jesus, and we have a lot to learn about what it means to be a disciple if this is new creation normal. This is our future if you are a Christian. All of us in one sense are single, all of us in another sense married.

And so this finally actually is the answer to the question: Will I ever be loved? It echoes in every human heart. And I just want to say this now, if you're single and unhappily so, I know that many of us, many people in our church context struggle with this question: Will I ever be fully and finally loved? And this may bring a lot of tears. This may be something you only are able to say in the quiet of your bedroom.

Will I ever fully and finally be loved? And yet I just want to remind you, you're not the only person who says that. There are unhappily married people in our church community who also say in the quietness of their own heart, will I ever really be loved? Will I ever really be known?

See, don't we all want that? It is part of the design code, the DNA of your soul that you want to be cherished and known—known to the depths of your very being. God designed you that way. He made you that way. And it points us actually beyond other people to God Himself who made you and designed you and has ultimately designed you for Himself.

Your deepest desire to be known, that is a valid thing. That is not something you should pretend away or just ignore, but follow that. Follow that back to the source. We're going to climb up the mountain and follow the creek up to where it comes like a spring out of the ground because it takes us back to the Lord Himself.

And I don't want to belittle anybody's desire in this room for a companion, for a person in this life. That's a good thing to want. We're going to talk about that next week. But we all—all of us need to sit in this. The happily married, the unhappily married, the single, the divorced, the children, the widow, all of us, the eunuchs—you are made for God. You will finally and fully be loved.

What It Means to Be Christian

Look, this is one of the things that we want you to know in our church. If you're not a Christian, being a Christian isn't about dressing up and coming to sing songs together. It's not even about all the acts that we do. It's not about presenting God a record of perfect Bible reading or any of those things. It is a living relationship with the God of the universe who loves you beyond your wildest imagination. That's what it's about.

The Lord Jesus died on the cross to bring you home, to bring you into full relationship with him, to bring you into his family, so that if you are a believer in the Lord Jesus Christ, you have the embrace of the Father. You are known and loved and cherished. What is distant and hard for us to make out right now will one day come true.

Let me leave you with these words. You know, there's a chapter in 1 Corinthians that we read a lot at weddings and it's a chapter about love. And the chapter—it's like a ramp and it's going to this launching point and it ends with these words:

Now we see in a mirror dimly, but then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part, but then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known. — 1 Corinthians 13:12

Even as I am fully known.

The name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.