Ponderings of a Philalethist

I just finished listening to this amazing sermon on this podcast.  I have never heard of this guy… i don’t remember his name - he was a guest speaker at opendoorcommunity a few months ago.  I only found it reading another fantastic blog of a friend of mine.  The basic concept of this was taken from the two of them.  But the expanding of it is my own.

Check this out -

The jist of his teaching was how our righteousness can potentially kill Christ.

Got your attention?  It gets better.

Using Matthew 1 as a guide, it was discussed how the “righteous” thing for Joseph to do when he found out that Mary was with child (not his), was to stone her. 

To stone her would have been to eliminate Jesus - in utero.  (Even then Joseph was thinking he would quietly divorce her to avoid her the shame.)

Is it possible that God cares more about our obeying Him than being “righteous”?

Could it be that obedience means that we get a little “dirty” in the process?

He closed by reading Matthew 1:25: “But he had no union with her until she gave birth to a son. And he gave him the name Jesus.”

The author here seems to make a point of the fact that Joseph literally didn’t not have sex with Mary until after Jesus was born.

Meaning that Joseph’s “seed”–or sperm–never entered Mary until after Jesus was born.

Then he stated that God basically closed with these orders: “Don’t spread your seed on what I AM doing!”

wow.

It seems that too many times we don’t error on the side of waiting, but that we error on the side of “spreading our own seed.”

Think about this - Joseph, as Mary’s husband, had every right to have sex with her the night of their wedding. 

If Joseph had slept with Mary after marrying her, not only could he have then claimed the pregnancy for his own, but I am not sure he really would have known in his own heart that the child (jesus) wasn’t his.  The very fact that he waited until Jesus was born showed his submission and his trust in God’s plan.

Perhaps the author is saying, essentially, that we need to quit masturbating on what God is doing.  Looking out for our own pleasures in His plan.

Masturbation takes that which is holy and sacred and intended for worship and makes it contrived, tainted, and religious.

If sex within marriage is holy; masturbation is religion.

Masturbation is all about instant gratification–self-gratification.   So is religiosity.

Religion is just a man-made yardstick for holiness.  A way to medicate the need for a Savior.

Masturbation is just man-made sex act.  A way to medicate the need for intimacy.

Go back and read those last two lines again.

So it would seem that when we “spread our seed” this way, we are focusing on getting “ours” and not caring about “His” true and perfect will.

Which, ironically, is about us getting our true “OURS” in the first place.

That’s why Jesus came.

That’s how this whole thing got started.

So we could get something we never deserved.

“OURS”