From Generation to Generation – Dr. Lucas Woodford

Transcript (edited for readability).

Good morning, and welcome again. It is a joy and a delight to be with you all here this morning. As the theme of this conference, the Insight Conference, is "Finding Our Voice," I consider it an absolute privilege that you're willing to listen to my voice for a little while as we talk about what it is to find our voice in the midst of our trying times. And really, if I'm doing my job right this morning, it will simply be an echoing of what the Heavenly Father's voice says and how He calls us all to pass on the Christian faith, including sexual virtue, from generation to generation.

Yet, with all the voices that we have clamoring for our attention in our society—all the talking, the poking, the pasting, the blogging, the YouTubing—it's easy for our own voice to get drowned out. Easy to get lost in a sea of madness and chaos. I know a little bit about living in chaos, because I live with five children under the age of eleven. Our household is full of chaos. Five children—actually six and a half, if you count me and our miniature schnauzer. In our house, we have voices who are talking, dogs who are barking, babies crying, siblings fighting, food flying, crayons dropping, glue sticking, toys beeping, mama laughing, and quite quickly daddy crying at all the chaos in our house.

Now, that's my life, and that's my family. You see them up there? We have five beautiful chaos creators and madness makers. Four girls, one boy. That's a lot of estrogen. I am considering arranged marriages. I have applications up here—please, apply. Isabella is eleven. She's mama number two in our house. Thaddeus is eight. Aletheia is six. Ekklesia—Clay C—is three, and Soteria is ten and a half months. Yes, the last three names are Greek names. The prophet Isaiah named his children some interesting names, so we decided to try two, but in Greek. Isabella, of course, means "beautiful," if you know the meanings of names. Thaddeus, from one of the disciples, means "of a courageous heart." Aletheia is simply the Greek word for "truth." Ekklesia is the Greek word for "church," and Soteria is the Greek word for "salvation." You put them all together, as my oldest observed, and it's a nice little sentence: beautiful, courageous, truthful church of salvation. And that is what we're going to be talking about this morning, and the joy that we have of knowing that beautiful truth and that salvation that we courageously proclaim and rejoice in during these difficult times.

So to find our voice and speak clearly to people during these chaotic times, we'll listen to the truth of God's Word and hear His incredible story—a love story of how God has adorned His church to be the bride of Christ. Now, as ever, faithful Christians must be intentional about teaching our children what marriage is, what family is, what it means to be a godly woman, a godly mother, as well as what it means to be a godly man, a godly husband, and a godly father. So as the fellow redeemed, we are passionate about what we are for. Not simply stating what we are against, but we are passionate about what we are for. And what we are for is the good news—the good news being shared in the midst of families, that we want to tell the world about this good news. And we're going to start, of course, in the family. Tell them what it means to live as a family, in His grace, with His love, in this time and in eternity.

Now, the best place to start, of course, is in your family with sharing this, in the midst of your vocations, sharing the good news—but also in your parochial schools, in your congregations. Because as we'll see, the family is the center of humanity and also the center of God's story of salvation. Therefore, let's start our story by looking at the beginning of God's story, and doing so in the beginning.

Now, in your packet you have an outline. I got a little ambitious; the total packet of mine goes from page 17 to page 31. Originally I teach these—develop these classes—in the congregation for twelve weeks, and I thought, well, I can try and cram it all into one hour and ten minutes. So, unfortunately, I'm not going to go exactly in order of everything on the outline. But like J.R.R. Tolkien did with his appendices to The Lord of the Rings, I created some appendices for you that you can take a look at, as well as the outline. I'll be going back and forth, drawing your attention to various points of the outline, so that you can have it as a tool—not only for following my chaotic structure of speaking, perhaps, but also to take home with you and utilize in your families, or in your congregations, or in your schools. So even after all the appendices, there are other things. In the Tolkien book, after I read it with my daughter Bella, we went out and bought another appendix volume with all the maps and the definitions and all kinds of things that made it even more exciting to dig deeper. So these handouts and things in there are for you to go deeper. Or, if you like, for you to go "further up and further in," as Aslan the eagle—as, in fact, Lewis's Chronicles of Narnia say in the culminating chapters. They point you to where you can dig deeper and read further.

So let's begin. Genesis one. "In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. And the earth was without form and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters. And God said, 'Let there be light.' And there was light." In the beginning, we see and hear the triune God busy at work creating the heavens and the earth. God the Father is there. God the Holy Spirit is there. And God the Son is there in His pre-incarnate form, coming forth from the Father's mouth and speaking creation into existence. And the first thing that He creates, of course, when God says, "Let there be light," out of the void there comes light.

There's no small detail for us to observe. Gripping stories are often framed by darkness and light. Here the Word of God creates light, and it's a foreshadowing of how the incarnate Word will reveal Himself to be the light which no darkness can overcome. And such light is always welcome when we feel the darkness of this world pressing in upon us. But no matter the age, no matter the time, no matter the challenge, Jesus Christ is the light of the world, and that means these gray and latter days have met their match. He gives us courage. He gives us hope. He leads us forward. We're going to hear a lot about that, but that's getting ahead of ourselves. For the time being, we need to hear the rest of the story about creation.

In the beginning, God creates night and day. He creates land, water, fish, and the sea, the birds, the air. He creates all the land animals and every creeping thing on the earth. And then, in Scripture, it says, "God created man in His own image; in the image of God He created him. Male and female He created them." In the beginning, at the start, there was specificity, there was structure, and there was order. Everything that suppertime at my house is lacking. God creates human beings, a man and a woman, Adam and Eve, like you and me. And as we confess in the catechism, we believe that God has made me and all creatures; He has given me my body and my soul, eyes, ears, and all my members, my reason and all my senses. And so it was for Adam and Eve. But then God unites them in marriage, commands them to be fruitful and multiply, and places them in every gardener's dream to tend the land in paradise, to rule over the creatures.

That's a pretty sweet story so far. But what would the story be—what story would be complete—without a villain? Satan, the fallen angel, enters the scene. He's sinister, he's sly; we know that story. His lies wreak havoc on their faith. He tells Eve that God's Word isn't true. Eve believes him. She eats the fruit, gives it to Adam, their eyes are opened. Now they're naked and afraid. So they hide from God. He confronts their sin. They pass the buck. The curse is pronounced. Paradise is lost. But a promise is made: restoration and salvation would come through the woman and her offspring. It would be by way of the family that God's plan of redemption would take place.

And we need to slow down a bit and take a look and listen to this beginning story, to see what actually all took place in it. Now, to help us do that, Lucas Cranach, well-known artist and close friend of Martin Luther, painted a wonderful portrait called Creation and the Fall, painted in 1530. It's a little washed out here from our lights. You can Google it if you've got a signal, take a look at it in more detail, but it's wonderful in what it points out regarding creation. Back here, God is taking and forming Adam from the ground. Then Eve is coming out from his rib. Front and center is their marriage. Then, of course, Satan's temptation. They're naked and afraid. They are expelled from the garden. The picture, the painting, allows us to pause for a moment and observe and see what's actually happening. But in so doing, we can also look at and assess what has also been established along the way of this story.

Now, here I'm jumping to page 20, letter D. There are a number of things listed out. I'll be going back and forth—again, my apologies. But here, in this familiar creation account, marriage is defined, sex and gender are created, procreation is blessed, vocations are established, family is ordered, and modesty, as we'll see, is affirmed. So as we go along taking a look at this story this morning, we'll be unpacking these truths and how they became a part of the Christian story—and of every Christian's story here. Your story, when you were baptized in the name of that same triune God who was there in the beginning.

However, we are now living in a time when people have lost their story. Many don't have a sense of the world's story. What's it all about? What's its purpose? Who am I? Where am I going? Where did I come from? In other words, they're without a story. They're without an identity. And this is especially distressing when it comes to understanding your place in life, in marriage, in family, and certainly in eternity—not to mention how it shapes your view of sexuality, manhood, and womanhood. When someone doesn't know their story, who they are, where they are going, where they came from, the world becomes a confusing place. Satan's lies become hard to resist.

An example: Bruce Jenner is one such tortured soul who doesn't know his story. Confused about his identity, uncertain about his purpose. And sadly, rather than helping such burdened souls amid their misbeliefs and dysfunction, our society puts them on the cover of a magazine and gives them an ESPY award. However, God created us with distinct and unique human bodies, which includes our unalterable and surgery-proof DNA. We just heard it in the creation account: God made them male and female. Our chromosomes reflect the beautiful complexity and the permanent traits of our physical bodies. That means males are males, and females are females. They're not interchangeable. They're not social constructs. They're specific creations with transcendent differences.

Now, yes, anomalies do occur. The curse of sin certainly corrupts and disrupts the normal order of our bodies, as well as disordering our sexual desires. But that's not the norm. However, when such instances occur—as is very likely in the congregations that are represented here; there are four different circumstances in my own congregation—when these things happen, the holy Christian church, the body of Christ, is called to wrap these souls in the compassion of our caring presence and the consolation of our prayers. That's part of God's story too. Just like how He created male and female, God's story is all-inclusive. It's rich, it's vibrant. It's wonderful to read. It's great to hear; that's its nature.

My kids love stories. Most kids do. Adults love stories. I love to read stories to them. I love to tell stories to them. And doing so opens a tremendous avenue for carrying conversations about life, about family, about sex, about faith, about biblical manhood and womanhood, as well as opportunities for them to express their curiosities, their fears, along with their hopes and dreams. Reading stories to our children, to our grandchildren, to our students—it's a wonderful tool of teaching character and virtue, as well as passing on the faith from generation to generation. Something that I encourage you to be intentional about with your own children, with your grandchildren, your congregations. Volunteer, come into your schools. We have adults come into our classrooms to volunteer to read to the kids—not simply because experts tell us it's great for their own brain development, but also because it's a great way of building character and passing on the faith.

Now, in our house, we have a wide range of classic books of literature mixed in with books on virtues and character, and of course all the classic stories and parables of the wisdom literature of the Bible. Kids love stories, and I love the teaching moments that they provide. Consider, if you will—we've heard a little bit about it—Alice in Wonderland. In chapter six, there's a great exchange going on between Alice and the Caterpillar. About a year and a half, two years ago, when I was first reading it to our oldest, I read through it, and after reading this exchange I asked a question. But here's this exchange for you up there. "'Who are you?' said the Caterpillar." This was not an encouraging opening for a conversation. Alice replied rather shyly, "I hardly know, sir, just at present—at least I know who I was when I got up this morning, but I think I must have been changed several times since then." And after reading this to her and coming to an appropriate place to pause, I teased my daughter and I said, "Who are you? And have you changed at all from this morning?"

But from there a great conversation developed. Questions were asked. We were able to talk about the changes in life, as well as our unchanging baptismal identity, along with what it means to be a young Christian woman in our changing world. Caring conversations about sensitive and difficult topics have a way of blossoming and blooming when parents read to their children. In any case, I think the conversation between Alice and the Caterpillar here also wonderfully describes the condition of our times. As a result—with Bruce Jenner—people are emerging without an understanding of who they are, where they're from, and where they're going.

Consider, if you will, that there are now children coming of age who discover, to their great angst and unrest, that they came from a donor egg and a donor sperm. They were housed in a surrogate mother, only to be brought up in a home where the couple who purchased the egg, and the sperm, and the surrogate's services—and therefore also the child—have now divorced and are splitting custody of their store-bought child. And we wonder why the next generation is growing up confused and angry. Now, a great magazine called Salvo has been tracking for some time these test-tube and petri-dish babies. But such an occurrence gives us distinct reason to pause and assess exactly what are the ethical, moral, and spiritual implications that reproductive technologies have upon our society and in our church.

Pastors, you know what happens. It happens at my congregation. Couples ask. They want to have a child. They can't. Should they use these procedures? Aren't these procedures a blessing from God? Why shouldn't they use them? Just because we can do something doesn't mean we automatically should. Now, look, I know this is an extremely sensitive topic. But I think it's one that we must, as the holy Christian church, be about, leading the way—not simply reacting to what happened yesterday. I believe our church has to have an ongoing conversation, an ongoing education, about the very real difficulties and dangers of reproductive technologies and their impact on the family.

Mainstream entertainment is also picking up on this. Anybody seen this movie, Delivery Man, 2013? Vince Vaughn stars in it. He plays David Wozniak, an average guy who drives a delivery truck for his father's butcher shop. He's not married, but he lives with his pregnant girlfriend. Now, the plot of the movie is set up when one day David returns home from work to find a lawyer at his house. The lawyer represents a sperm bank to which, during his student years, David gave 693 donations and earned a sum of $24,255. Now, the lawyer tells him that he has fathered 533 children. Of those, 142 have joined a class-action lawsuit to force the fertility clinic to reveal the father's identity. Now, yes, this is a comedy. It is Hollywood. But it is absolutely based on truth. It is happening in society. Salvo tracks it. These children don't want to someday find out they married their half-brother or half-sister. People want to know who they are, where they come from, and where they're going. They want to know what their story is.

These are the times that we live in. By some assessments, it's called the late modern or the postmodern era, where the only certainty is uncertainty, the only permanence is change. Here the goal is nothing while the movement is everything. It's a change, then, from modernity to postmodernity—from what is solid to what is liquid, from construction to deconstruction, from a narratable world, meaning one with meaning, truth, structure, order, a grand story with a narrator, namely God, to now a denarrated world, one without meaning, where truth is relative, emotion is everything, and a grand story is awash in a sea of madness, and the narrator, God, has been drowned and died in it.

These cultural forces are having an unequivocally destructive effect upon the family. We see it right before our eyes. Marriage has been redefined. The family is being redefined. Capitalism has fallen to political correctness. Now, if you're still into watching commercials, TV commercial advertisements from Chevy cars to Honey Maid graham crackers are intentionally appealing to the newly deconstructed and remade family unit. Like the sun melting an ice cube, the heat of political correctness, combined with philosophical buffoonery, is melting the family structure. What's more, the Supreme Court's recent ruling has continued an ever-expanding intrusion by the state into the family. However, the creation of the family does not rest with the state. To be sure, the state is to protect the family, and that too was by divine design; but now there's so much confusion about marriage and family, precisely because words have lost their meaning.

We heard this yesterday—or Alice got a taste of this when she had an encounter going through the looking-glass. In this sequel to her first adventures she encounters plenty of nonsense, thanks to Tweedledee and Tweedledum, along with a bunch of Jabberwocky, and that noted exchange. Humpty said, in a rather scornful tone, "When I use a word, it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less." "The question is," said Alice, "whether you can make words mean so many different things." "The question is," said Humpty Dumpty, "which is to be master—that's all." Written long before our time, in 1871, author Lewis Carroll brilliantly lets us explore the creations of his vivid imagination. Yet at the same time, he frightfully and perhaps prophetically shows us what we're up against. We no longer have to read Alice in Wonderland to get a taste of nonsense. We can read our own Supreme Court's writing and get plenty of Jabberwocky for us today.

Even the word "truth" itself has come under fire. The devil is attacking that word, just the plain word "truth." In practice, it's been replaced by the recently coined word "truthiness." Now, the word is utterly telling: truthiness. It is the quality of sounding true without actually being true. Who brought it into our dictionary? Anyone know? Stephen Colbert, Comedy Central, started it in 2005 to make fun of our spin-zoned, half-truth, lie-based political culture. The word has caught on and taken hold all across the culture. It may be new to our dictionary, but the devil's been using it since the Garden of Eden.

And we need to remember, as we heard yesterday, that the sinister forces at work in these gray and latter days are more than simply cultural in nature. It is the devil's desire to destroy truth. But you see, this is why the Holy Spirit comes with laser focus on Jesus Christ, who is the way, the truth, and the life. As Jesus says in John 16:13, "When the Spirit of truth comes, He will guide you into all truth." So therefore, in the midst of this time when truth is being challenged, here is our prayer:

"Holy Spirit, light divine, dawn upon this soul of mine. Let Your Word dispel the night, wake my spirit, clear my sight. Holy Spirit, truth divine, shine upon these eyes of mine. Send Your radiance from above, let me know my Savior's love. Holy Spirit, peace divine, still this restless heart of mine. Speak to calm the tossing sea, stayed in Your tranquility."

Brothers and sisters, lest you be discouraged, the Holy Spirit gives you Jesus. We have the Word made flesh on our side. When He spoke, light was created. When He uttered commands, waves obeyed. When He preached, demons cried in fear. Jesus Christ is the way, the truth, and the life. He is the light that no darkness can overcome, and that means the darkness of our times cannot thwart Him. His truth is eternal, and His church will endure. We've been promised it. The gates of hell will not prevail. That's God's story; you can hold Him to it.

And you see, the good news is that His story is our story. The very nature of the church is based upon God's story, the greatest story that's ever been told. It's a love story of how Christ has fought for His bride, bled for her, suffered for her, died for her—and is now back from the dead, the triumphant bridegroom, who adorns her with His unconditional love and His irreversible grace. And you see, the church tells this story week after week, year after year. The church year, the historic liturgy of the church, have long been at the center of the church's identity. They deliver the bridegroom's wedding gifts to His bride: Word and Sacrament. Much more than a mundane order of a formal worship service, they are the narrative that tells the story of Christ. And in so doing, it weaves you and me into the story in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

And so when a test-tube baby or petri-dish child has grown up and is now wandering—Where is, where do I go? What's my meaning? What's my purpose? Does anybody love me?—the church has an unchanging word of good news and a compassionate word of welcome. In fact, what's become so provocative in our time is the recognition that the narrative nature of the liturgy and the church is now indispensable for our contemporary times. Because, as she has done in the past, so she does now: the holy Christian church saves her converts by offering herself as the narratable world in which life can be lived with dramatic coherence, confidence, and courage. In other words, from generation to generation, it tells the story of Christ. It brings it to you and brings you into it, along with every last broken and bruised, used and abused, repentant sinner. They are brought into His story.

Now, of course, that story was set into motion and played out in the family. First, Adam is formed from the dust of the ground, we saw. However, when we zoom in and pull the picture closer, we find out that mankind was not yet truly complete. Mankind wasn't truly complete until Eve was made. Even though God declared each day of creation to be good, He does say it is not good that man should be alone. Now, to be sure, God wasn't saying here that what He made was corrupt or bad. Rather, He's simply showing how the woman completes humankind. In fact, when Adam first sees Eve, he looks upon her with wonder and intense desire. Remember what he says? "This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh." He saw his wife and became overwhelmed with eager anticipation of the one-flesh union. And so from the start, we can see that God has created a healthy, good, natural, sexual desire in humankind.

Now, sin, of course, corrupts this. We see it all around in our sexually explicit, omnipresent form of entertainment that's in our culture right now: pornography. It has decimated healthy sexual desires and destructively eroticized them. Now, in the outline here, page 22, letter E, I have far more on pornography than we have time to deal with, but because it's such a significant issue, I'll spend a little time on it. Formerly a back-alley, mafia-funded industry, pornography has exploded into a socially omnipresent form of entertainment. We are now living in a country that has accepted and even embraced pornography's cultural infiltration.

Now, for perspective, the annual revenues of the porn industry exceed $13 billion in the United States alone, $97 billion worldwide. Now, that means the porn industry is bigger than Microsoft, Google, Amazon, eBay, Yahoo, Apple, Netflix, and Earthlink combined. Now, the sad fact is that studies have conclusively revealed that early exposure and experiences with pornography do have a permanent and often negative impact on children. It can lead to promiscuity. It can lead to same-sex attraction, particularly if their first image or video was same-sex in nature. It can lead to being subject to porn addiction, all kinds of relational problems, self-esteem issues. I shudder to say this right now, but the average age of when children are first exposed to pornography—any guesses? Eight. And it's continually going lower. Eight. It is the vile and sinister ploy of Satan to attack the whole family.

Now, look, I was exposed to pornography far too young, on two separate occasions in my life: third grade once, sixth grade another time. Didn't have the internet necessarily back then—magazines—still exposed to it. Studies show us, and you could probably remember yourself, the first image, the first time ever you saw something pornographic, has a way of being imprinted on your brain. Now, though I did not experience an extreme negative impact, I will acknowledge pornography was an issue for me in my early adult life. But now, through God's love and grace, He has brought remedy to that. And no doubt there are here today many for whom pornography is an issue. No doubt a good amount of guilt afflicts you because of it. No doubt you have a bad conscience because of it. If this is you, as it was for me, remember that you are a new creation in Christ. Be sure to see a pastor, even if you are a pastor. He has some good news for you. Confession and absolution are powerful healers. You have been baptized into Christ, and that means the old sinful self has been crucified, and the new self has been raised up with Christ.

Nonetheless, we do have to be mindful that porn addiction is on the rise. Studies are showing conclusively that there is a chemical high received in the brain that it produces when viewing pornography, and it's similar to cocaine. Studies have been presented before Congress, but because of the big lobby that pornography is, it has been set aside. And when pornography addiction sets in, it leads to more graphic and hardcore porn, which ultimately and tragically leads to child porn and pedophilia. Similarly, there's research on how casual sex and our hookup culture has been negatively impacting teenagers, particularly in how it affects their brain development, and the depression that it can cause, and the relational problems and issues that come with it. Now, there's lots more in there; commend it to your reading, take a look at it. It's a heavy issue. We need to be aware of it. Lots there for you to digest.

But I do want to be clear about something. God created sexual desire, and, in the healthy sense, erotic desire, to be a good thing, as we clearly saw in Adam's delight over the creation of Eve. Thus, since we are for the family, we are also for the means by which family is created. That means we are also certainly for sex. And let's be honest, as we heard yesterday, we like it. We enjoy it. We approve of it—when it's in the relationship that God intended. It's clearly and unequivocally a part of creation that God called good. Even nakedness originally was not a problem for human beings until sin disordered and dishonored it. So likewise, now sin has disordered, dishonored, and defiled the healthy erotic love that was created exclusively for husband and wife in a lifelong, permanent relationship.

Sadly, our culture has now pulled sex so far apart from marriage and parenthood, pulling it apart and basically bastardizing sex. And though all sins are equally condemning, they are not all equally defiling. We heard it yesterday again: sexual sins are more defiling because they sin against the body, which is to be a temple of the Holy Spirit. We'll say more in just a bit, but for the moment, the point here has been to note that in the beginning, God reveals how the crown jewel of His creation was intricately and intentionally made as complementary sexual beings. They experienced erotic desire, not only to express their love and affection, but also to create the family. And from there, then, family creates culture. It orders society. And that means government does not create the family; rather, it flows from the family, as does every other human authority present in society. Therefore, the family brings about the proliferation of all humanity.

However, this is also precisely why Satan attacks the family. He has a sinister plan. Satan attacks Adam and Eve not only to get them to disobey God's command; he attacks them in their vocations as husband and wife in an effort to destroy the family. Why? Because he hates what the family represents and how it points to the triune God: male and female, created, made in His image and likeness. Satan hates anything in the image and likeness of God. Now, a wonderful painting that helps portray this so well is a painting by William Blake. It was created in 1808 for Milton's Paradise Lost. It's titled Satan Watching the Caresses of Adam and Eve. You see, Satan can see in their love and in their intimacy the powerful representation of God, the image of God. This enrages Satan. So he launches his attack. He tells his lies and strikes a victory for evil.

Now, this is the part of the story where it seems the villain has seemingly won the day. It's Gandalf and the Balrog falling deep into the chasm. It's the White Witch covering Narnia in eternal cold, where it's forever winter and never Christmas. It's the trolls capturing Bilbo and the dwarves and arguing about how to cook them up for supper. However, this story is nowhere near finished. This story doesn't stop here. There is still much to be read. There's still much to be heard. Hope is on the way. Healing is coming. Redemption, restoration, are still to come. So we stay tuned. We keep listening. Because good authors, of course, know how to captivate their readers to deliver the goods. Good authors know how to make their words come alive.

God is the author and perfecter of our faith, and He literally makes His Word come alive—living, active, sharper than any two-edged sword. It's the very Word that was there in the beginning, calling forth the light, and then comes into the flesh, conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary, put into a family—the Word made flesh, who made His dwelling among us. Now, this is no small wonder. Where Satan seeks to destroy the family, God uses the family to redeem the world.

And so I'll say it again: you and I can stand for the family. You and I can stand for godly men and women, stand for faithful husbands and wives. We can stand for faithful fathers and mothers, and a quiver full of children. You and I can lift up our young men and women. We can teach our children, to raise them up in the way of the Lord, to bring up the next generation of faith-filled, truth-speaking, devil-stomping, baptized believers who will never back down, never give up, who will fight for what's right and stand firm on the foundation of Christ crucified and risen again. We stand on the truth of that story. And that's exactly what Jesus calls us to do. That's what Jesus invites us to do.

Crucified, dead, and risen again, Jesus Christ has defeated Satan and all of his lies. He has paid for our transgressions and paved the way for our faithful expressions of word and deed. He is the light that no darkness can overcome, and that means the darkness of our times cannot thwart Him. We stand in His light, and we boldly lift high the cross. That means we'll boldly stand in His light for the family. Because taking a stand for the family will teach our children to embrace what is good rather than simply to fear what is bad. It also will do much to neutralize the claims that Christians are anti-love bigots. Being for the family offers a much broader platform to stand upon, and gives us much to celebrate during these challenging times. So if reporters, if writers, or if relatives ask you, you can tell them you stand for something, and not simply be accused of standing against something.

So to that end, then, if we want boys and girls to grow up to be men and women who understand and long for biblical manhood and biblical womanhood, who see family as a virtue, sexuality as a blessing of God, and who are not afraid to talk about it in healthy ways, then we must demonstrate to them the fullness of what that looks like. We need to love them enough to bring them up from little on in ways that will fortify their biblical identity and equip them to combat the onslaught of this oppressive world, as well as to find hope, healing, and forgiveness where sin afflicts them.

Again, attached, you have a general framework of some examples of how to do this. Pages 24 and 25, if you want to take a look at those things here, of how you can have a voice—particularly a voice with your children or your grandchildren, with catechumens, with your students—how to have a voice, a caring conversation, to uphold family and sexual virtue in your congregations, your schools, and your homes. Now, these that are attached for you were forged out of what I do in my congregation, with my associate pastor and our teachers. We have a school as well. We created these Bible classes, and we call them Parent Partnership Workshops, where we talk about sex, marriage, and the Christian vision of it. It's something that I encourage you to do as pastors, if you haven't thought about it, or as teachers in your congregation. Feel free to use those resources. There's a sample agenda of what we do in our congregation and school.

Now, we do four a year. You can do as many as you might like, but we do four a year, and we incentivize it for the parents of the school. We'll give them up to a $50 reduction per two, so a total of $100 reduction in registration fees, to incentivize their attendance there, because we want to talk about the partnership that we have with them—not only in educating their child, but also in raising their child in the faith—so that we can be very intentional about it. So you can see in the handouts there are concrete things, basic things that you can do: How do I talk to my children about sexuality? When do I talk to them about sex? Where do I start if I haven't been doing that? It gives you starting points, reference points.

You see, it's simply imperative that we have intentional, caring conversations about sexuality with our children—in our homes, in our congregations, in our schools. The reason: the Supreme Court ruling, combined with the sexual revolution, has so defiled, disordered, and distorted the one-flesh union that nearly all of society is of the belief that sex is now primarily for recreation and gratification. We have arrived at a time, thanks in part to chemical contraceptives and barrier birth-control methods, where sex is not only free of any obligations, but has now become all about technique, performance, and the best mind-blowing orgasm of your life. But the Genesis creation account teaches us that sex is far more than having a mind-blowing orgasm.

In fact, if we're going to honor sexual virtue and find our voice, we need to be comfortable talking about sex with each other—particularly as husbands and wives, but also as the holy Christian church, and in our parochial schools—using appropriate vocabulary, realistic expectations, and biblical confidence. Because, you see, the reality is, sex creates unions, imposes obligations, and establishes responsibilities in ways far beyond our comprehension, and far greater than our physical gratification. Sex is the means through which God performs one of the most astonishing miracles: the creation of life. And therefore, sex belongs in the family, because sex creates the family.

As such, sex is meant to be a normal, regular part of a household where the desire for it is neither repressed nor disordered, but satisfied. It includes intimacy, certainly, but also at times it's to include things like mundane conversation, laughter—perhaps even worry and expressions that go far beyond just having an orgasm. I appreciate how Lauren Winner puts it in her book Real Sex. She says, "In a Christian landscape, what's important about sex is nurtured when we allow sex to be ordinary. This does not mean that sex will not be meaningful; its meaning instead will partake in the variety of meanings that ordinary life offers. Sex needs to be clumsy. It should at times feel awkward. It should be an act we engage in for comfort. It should also be allowed to hold any number of anxieties—the sorts of anxieties, for instance, we might feel about our child's progress in school, or our ability to provide sustenance for our family."

In other words, sex is more than an orgasm. If we allow sex to be ordinary, we might just understand then that human love is forged more out of the ordinary things of life—like cooking, picking up the living room, or doing the laundry, folding it together, or comforting our frightened children—rather than only out of the act of sex itself. Having sex does not make love, contrary to the expression; it simply expresses it and shares it.

Much of our recent sexual dysfunction began with the sexual revolution. We acknowledge this; we know this. And at the core of that movement—and here I'm jumping around again, page 19, number five, I think there it is, if you want to follow along in my chaos—at the core of that movement, of course, is the birth-control pill. When this little pill was approved in 1960, it would go on to change the relations between the sexes, and subsequently the family, as never before. Mary Eberstadt tracks this quite compellingly in her book How the West Really Lost God, as well as in another wonderful book, Adam and Eve After the Pill. She notes, "Once the genie of the pill was literally out of the bottle, extramarital sex became easier, freer of the immediate consequences of pregnancy than ever before." The result of this seismic impact on the family is that divorce rates started soaring. And the sexual marketplace, if you will, grew and grew with every woman who took the pill, which in turn made it ever less likely that a man would actually marry simply for the sake of a sexual partner. Now he can go around without any consequence and have all the sex he wants.

Now, consequently and interestingly, she notes that out-of-wedlock births did indeed start to soar. And according to Eberstadt, the pill contributed to the weakening of family bonds as no other technological force in history. Her work offers us a word of caution—important, especially if you have children who are considering getting married. If they're in that process, the pre-marital process, they're going to be thinking about: Are we going to have children? What's that about? Pastors, if you take them through premarital counseling, please do so. There are great tools out there to use. Zoe Score is one of them. I think that's on the handout as well. But be sure to talk to them about these things. Have a conversation with them. You plan to be parents? Great. What do you think? How many children? Do you want to have children? Why do you want to have children? By the way, let's see what the Scripture has to say about it. We need to be intentional about it. Because my hunch is, it's so accepted in terms of a practice that they haven't even given it any thought.

But we do have to rest here: What does the pill, or any barrier method—indeed, as we talked about yesterday—what does that do to family and to the union that God created? Nonetheless, the reality that Eberstadt recognizes—in short, she has a compelling hypothesis here—is that family decline helps power religious decline. And if, as you heard, the fertility rates are so incredibly low among the Western world, it's no wonder the family is in decline. Two-point-one is what's needed. Again, there's a lot of great information. Demographic Winter is a great documentary you can watch on that. I think it's even free on YouTube; you can take a look at it, at how countries are well below the fertility replacement rate. The one culture that's not, and is far above it—on average in America we're barely squeaking by at two-point-one—the Hispanic increase, it's perhaps 2.3. Jonathan Last's book What to Expect When No One's Expecting is a great book on this. But we're barely squeaking by, and many in Europe are well below at 1.1, which is about the lowest in Europe. But among Muslim countries, 8.1. Eight-point-one. It's telling. Demographers, some of them, are frightened by the reality of our declining population. We need to take note of it. And we need to have caring conversations about it.

So we continue on, then, looking at what it means to stand for the family. We need to reclaim sexual virtue and bring parenthood back into the bedroom. The creation account, of course, helps us do this. Genesis 1:25. Let's just pull in closer again and consider the fullness of biblical sexuality, and notably, how it entails the dignity and honor of our human bodies. Genesis 2:25 says, "And the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed." In perfection, Adam and Eve stood naked before their Creator and they felt no shame, as it should be. God had called them and their bodies good. But when the fall into sin came, and their eyes were opened, shame at their nakedness followed. God Himself gave them coverings. Genesis 3:21. And ever since God gave them coverings, human beings have been trying to take those coverings off.

In our culture, there is no shame over explicit nudity. Regard for what God deemed necessary to cover has been cast aside as readily as a stripper at work. There's no shame in our society over explicit sexuality on TV, in the magazines, and of course, as we talked, especially on the internet. Sex sells, and so sex is everywhere. In public, there is no shame, only indulgence, only decadence. And yet in the home, it seems that no one talks about it. Body parts are renamed and spoken of in code—perhaps you remember your code language that you had with your friends when you were a kid. Husbands and wives are often too embarrassed to talk about sex. Yet many let their children dress as if they're going out to have sex, and then simultaneously tell them, "Well, sex is bad. Don't you dare do it." And so kids then either fall victim to the sexual norms of society and give in to temptation, or they feel dirty when they finally get married and do have sex.

Now, as an aside, though I grew up with very open and loving parents, sexuality wasn't always a discussion item in our household. I remember looking up in the dictionary, after watching one TV show, the word "masturbation." I'd heard it on a TV show. I didn't know what it meant. So I looked it up. And I had then other words that I had to look up from that definition. I had to look up "erection." I had to look up "orgasm." I had to look up "ejaculation" to even begin to understand the definition. My point, in short: we've become ashamed of a good gift of creation in the home, within a marriage, among a family, where it's designed to be expressed, while we display it openly and demandingly in public, in epidemic proportions, devoid of the once-public virtue it was, and irreverently flaunting it as the be-all and end-all of personal gratification.

All right, plain and simple, then: our culture lacks any sense of modesty. It's happened before, though. Simply open the Scriptures. I love how the Lord puts it in Jeremiah 8:12. He says, "Are My people ashamed of their loathsome conduct? No. They have no shame at all. They do not even know how to blush." We've become desensitized. Women are objectified. With four daughters, I am acutely aware of this reality. I don't want them to be, or to feel, objectified. And I don't want them to believe that's why—and what they have to do—to get attention or to be liked. Yet magazine stands, grocery stores, they're covered with women who are barely covered. Modesty has been lost. Self-control has been unlearned.

Now, my daughters have long been asking me, "Hey, Dad, why are they dressed like that?" I consider it a great opportunity for a caring conversation, where we can talk about those things—where we don't have to demean and talk poorly about others who may choose to dress that way, but understand why we might choose to dress a particular way. Great opportunities to talk to them. Like the apostle Paul does to the Corinthians, when he says, "On those parts of the body that we think less honorable, we bestow the greater honor, and our unpresentable parts are treated with greater modesty, which our more presentable parts do not require." It's a reminder that what God covered up still calls for covering up today. Now, to put it another way, covering up one's skin doesn't mean you're hiding your body. It means you're revealing your dignity. Covering one's skin doesn't mean you're hiding your body, but rather revealing your dignity.

Now, of course, that's a hard sell in society today. Sadly, men don't see women as a whole person anymore. They see them as assemblages of body parts, viewing them on the basis of their breasts and their butts. They have uncontrolled eyes, men do, taught by society from an early age on that a woman is simply eye candy. However, I want my son to be free from the battles of untrained and lustful eyes. That means I needed to begin teaching him from little on, with appropriate language and appropriate behavior, the importance of showing respect to women and their bodies by controlling his eyes—knowing when to look away, knowing how to be a gentleman, exercising self-control. It's a virtue. It's a fruit of the Spirit.

Just this past week at our home, we had our annual trip to our Carver County fair. Now, without fail, as soon as we walked into the fairgrounds and hit the midway, our eyes were bombarded by low-cut shirts, high-cut shorts, and super-tight spandex pants. Busts, bosoms, and butts were shaking, jiggling, and wiggling all over the place, sometimes directly in front of my son—some of them even members from my congregation. So what's a brother to do? Can the ladies help out a brother here? Many women simply do not recognize just how distinct the differences between men and women are. But remember, we looked at it in creation: God made men to be visually stimulated. But the problem, of course, is that because of the fall, this desire gets disordered and defiled, lustfully so, in much higher degrees than women really realize.

So what can we do, then, for young boys? Well, first, we can start by teaching them self-control from an early age, about how to train one's eyes. I love how Job says it: "I made a covenant with my eyes never to look lustfully at another woman." So I talked with Thaddeus, my boy, as I've done many times before. "Son, here's what's going to happen. Here's what's going to be coming. Just be mindful of it. If you see something that you know and don't think your eyes should see, look away. You don't have to make a big deal about it." We have an opportunity to have a conversation—not simply to talk about what he shouldn't do, but how we can help honor and respect women and treat their bodies with dignity, and help him then certainly not open himself up for defiling temptation as he gets older. But my four girls also need to know the difference between guys and girls—not so that they think all men are pigs, but to learn that from a young age they can protect the dignity of their bodies, as well as encourage other Christian men in the training of their eyes.

So what can you do? Again, this is in your handout—opportunities, lots of things you can do, handouts and resources for you. You can teach male and female, toddlers and teenagers alike, that their identity is not found in their skimpy clothing, but in their baptismal righteousness that covers them. You can teach male and female, toddlers and teenagers, the importance of how young men can train their eyes, how to treat a lady, how to look at bodies with dignity and respect. And probably most importantly, of course, you can humbly model these things to your children, to your congregation, to your community. And there are a lot of opportunities for that in the handout—specific direction for you.

So the reality is, then, we live in a world that's sexually explicit. But we have good news—the good news and the good story from our Lord, of the hope that we have. Because if Jesus can heal the lame, give sight to the blind, still storms, raise the dead, love the unlovable, forgive the unforgivable, and oust the darkness by His glorious light, then you and I can stand confident that come what may, He has our back. And He gets the last word. After all, He's the Word made flesh. He was there in the beginning, yet also born of the Virgin, born into a family. He grew up in a family. In fact, when did Jesus' ministry begin? What's His first miracle? It was at a family event: a wedding feast at Cana. Who was there? His mom, family—His ministry began with family around.

Jesus Himself, of course, affirmed marriage. He was at that wedding. In many parables He talked about the kingdom of God, comparing it to a wedding, a wedding banquet, a feast, the virgins who were waiting for the bridegroom. But of course, we recognize how Jesus is the bridegroom Himself, and the church is the bride, and the price that He paid, how He bled for His bride and died for her. And by the way, who was also there at that crucifixion? Again, His mother. Jesus was so concerned for her in His dying hours that He makes sure His mother is still taken care of. Jesus affirms family. We recognize then, He also talked about how marriage was in the beginning—how it was supposed to be in the beginning—when they were questioning Him on divorce. Which, by the way, we talked about yesterday: What will our bodies be like at the resurrection of all flesh? I have it on the outline. Our bodies will be sexier in heaven, in the true sense, because if your bodies are going to be recreated, why would your sex organs be excluded from that? Certainly that will be included. Our bodies are not going to be neutered when we get to heaven. They'll be made new.

Even the apostle Paul, as we're wrapping up here, talks about how the one-flesh union of marriage is the icon of Jesus and His bride, the church. He says, "Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh. This mystery is profound, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church. However, let each one of you love his wife as himself, and let the wife see that she respects her husband." The profound mystery here of holy matrimony is that marriage is the icon of Christ and His bride, the holy Christian church. It images and reflects the triune God, and also stands as the image of the intimacy between Christ and His bride, the church.

So I want to make a plea to you, pastors, with so much going on. I've heard a lot of talk and chatter about, "I'm getting out of the marriage business." I want to urge caution. Yes, a lot of challenges might come our way. But please stay in the marriage ministry. Given all the madness and confusion—yes, I know it's difficult—pastors are still called to solemnize and bless the union of a man and woman in holy matrimony, in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. And since the state did not create marriage, why would we want to turn it over to them entirely? We need not withdraw from this realm. We call marriage holy matrimony for a reason—actually, three of them.

First, marriage was created in the holiness of perfection. It's a first-article gift of God, part of the created order. So we can still fight for and uphold marriage as God ordained it, just as we would fight for biblical manhood and womanhood and teach our children that. Yes, it gets complicated. But when has marriage ever been easy? Second, marriage is made holy by prayer and the Word of God. Do we really want to step back from the tremendous privilege of blessing marriages in the name of the triune God, of putting His holy name upon that union? It's a great privilege for us to do so and to declare them husband and wife, to pronounce it in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. It's a third-article gift. Finally, again, not only is marriage part of the image of God as seen here on earth, but marriage is also the icon of Christ and His bride, the church. It's the very image by which Christ calls His holy Christian church to stand in faith, and the image by which He cares for her and will, when the last day comes, usher her down the aisle of eternity.

Revelation encourages us with this very imagery, and it gives us our voice: "Let us rejoice and exult and give Him the glory, for the marriage of the Lamb has come, and His bride has made herself ready." And then again, "I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband." And finally, the holy Christian church and the communion of saints will unite together in one voice, where the Spirit and the bride will say, "Amen. Come, Lord Jesus. Come."

Thank you so much for helping us to find our voice, and your perfect timing here. We do have time for one quick question. There were a number of them, but this one is kind of very practical. You mentioned reading to your children, not just the biblical literature, but classic children's literature. What would you consider the top five books for children in that department?

Well, this is, again, entirely preference. So what comes to mind, of course, for me—I think the whole Chronicles of Narnia series. I think I've read it probably close to fifteen to twenty times. My middle child, Aletheia, she's heard it numerous times, but now at six she can really start to pay attention. And so we just started, about midway through The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, again. So certainly that one. It depends, too, on what your child might be frightened of in terms of dramatic imagery that you might hear. My son, he gets a little frightened sometimes, so we waited a little bit longer to read The Hobbit to him. But my daughter, she loves it. Then The Lord of the Rings—that took a long time, but we read through that. Jules Verne, some of Jules Verne's stuff—it's tougher in some of the old editions of it. But at the same time, when we went through some of Jules Verne's Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, my oldest daughter learned what a dictionary was and how to write down words and learn new words. So that's a wonderful way of teaching them in that way as well—still a wonderful, adventurous mind. Also A Little Princess, The Secret Garden, in terms of young ladies. I don't know if I put a list in there or not of the fiction books; I don't think I did, but there's a host of them. And there are actually different lists on the website that you can take a look at in terms of those as well. A lot of the books that I read, I didn't have a clue about when I was a kid, nor would I have ever even thought of reading. So I'm getting a kick out of reading all this classic literature as well. We're learning something as well. Right, absolutely. Always a student.