Biblical Sexuality Sunday 2023
A call to faithfully preach God’s good design for marriage and sexuality 

 A Brave, New, 1984 World
On December 8th, 2021, the Canadian Government gave Royal Assent to Bill C-4, “And Act to amend the Criminal Code (conversion therapy).” One months later, on January 8th, 2022, the Bill became law in Canada. The Bill defines “conversion therapy” as: a practice, treatment or service designed to

(a) change a person’s sexual orientation to heterosexual;
(b) change a person’s gender identity to cisgender;
(c) change a person’s gender expression so that it conforms to the sex assigned to the person at birth;
(d) repress or reduce non-heterosexual attraction or sexual behaviour;
(e) repress a person’s non-cisgender gender identity; or
(f) repress or reduce a person’s gender expression that does not conform to the sex assigned to the person at birth.

The Preamble of the bill states that the belief that, “heterosexuality, cisgender gender identity, and gender expression that conforms to the sex assigned to a person at birth are to be preferred over other sexual orientations, gender identities and gender expressions” is based on “myths and stereotypes.” This means that the historic, Biblical belief that God has created humans as male and female, existing in a sexual binary, and that the only good and right sexual expression is to be heterosexual and monogamous marriage, is now categorized as myth and stereotype in Canadian law.
What are the legal consequences of breaking this law? “Everyone who knowingly causes another person to undergo conversion therapy — including by providing conversion therapy to that other person — is guilty of an indictable offence and liable to imprisonment for a term of not more than five years… Everyone who knowingly promotes or advertises conversion therapy is guilty of an indictable offence and liable to imprisonment for a term of not more than two years.”
The Church’s Response
Several pastors in Canada, working together with Liberty Coalition Canada, determined that the best way to respond to this godless and harmful legislation was through the ministry of preaching and teaching. On the following Sunday after Bill C-4 became law, January 16th, pastors across Canada preached on God’s good design for marriage and sexuality, and were in essence breaking the law. These faithful men had settled in their hearts that after over one year of COVID tyranny, it was time to break Canadian law publicly and intentionally, and tell Caesar that Christ alone is Lord over the church, and that He alone defines marriage, sexuality, and creational norms.
We were joined by many pastors in the United States as well, in unity and solidarity with their Canadian brothers in Christ. This included Pastor Tom Ascol, Pastor Josh Boice, Pastor Tom Buck, Pastor John MacArthur, Pastor James White, Pastor Doug Wilson, and many others. The reality is that the “beastly” State in Canada more-than-rearing its ugly head in the United States and other parts of the world.
Part of our commitment included preaching on Biblical sexuality every year on the anniversary of Bill C-4 becoming law, partly in open protest of an evil law, and partly in the hopes that God mercifully leads men to repeal this harmful legislation. Our desire is to see pastors commit to joining this initiative each year on the anniversary of the passing of Bill C-4, making it a part of their annual preaching schedule.
A Call to Action
That brings us to January 15th, 2023, which is the date for our next Biblical Sexuality Sunday. The theme of this year is centered around Matthew 19:4, that God has created humans as male and female from the very beginning. Pastors in Canada are already committed to joining this and every year, and we are ready to proclaim the authority of Christ and His Word, and the power of God to transform lives. By God’s grace, there are men in Germany, England, and France who will be joining the campaign this year.
One might ask, “Why should I join in this initiative? What is the point?” I want to share a brief story with you. A pastor in British Columbia (West-coast Canada) preached on Biblical sexuality on January 16th 2022. In his church, unbeknownst to him, was a young girl who had been undergoing hormone treatments and various surgeries in an effort to live as a man, which she believed herself to be. Upon hearing the sermon, she was convicted and broken, wept with her parents, repented of her lifestyle, and turned to obedience in Christ. The Lord restored her and her family, and we marvel at the grace of God. You can see an interview we did with the pastor and the family here. We believe God can and will do similar works this year.
If you are a pastor/elder in your church, please consider joining us this year on January 15th, 2023 for Biblical Sexuality Sunday. If you attend a church and would like to encourage your pastor to join, I would encourage you to do so. In any event, please consider sharing this initiative with as may people as you can, including sharing the interview with the BC pastor and the family from his church. You can find more about the initiative at libertycoalitioncanada.com/biblical-sexuality-sunday. If you have any questions, please email me at adebartolo@libertycoalitioncanada.com. By God’s grace, we hope to see more lives transformed by the Word of God, we hope to see more faithful brothers preach the truth of God’s design for marriage and sexuality, and we hope to see our nation repent of this great evil and repeal this godless law.

The Bible speaks a lot about the weather. And in every instance, the message is the same: God is the one who is in control of the weather.
Rain, snow, hail, sun, wind, thunder, lightning—they are all His instruments, used for blessing, for judgment, and for declaring to the world that His power knows no limits.
God used a flood that covered the entire earth to reveal that the wickedness of men will not always be tolerated.
God used a seven-year famine to show the family of Jacob that He is the great Provider and that He can even use evil plans to bring good to His people.
God used a crop-crushing hailstorm to make Pharaoh understand that He is King greater than any other king and a God greater than any other god.
God used a three-and-a-half year drought to show King Ahab that praying and sacrificing to idols is worse than worthless.
God used a “great wind” and “mighty tempest” to show Jonah that he could not escape his divine calling.
Jesus used a storm on the sea to demonstrate to trembling disciples that wind and waves submit to His authority—and His alone.
Rain, snow, hail, sun, wind, thunder, lightning—they are all God’s instruments, used for blessing, for judgment, and for declaring to the world that His power knows no limits.
And God is still using weather today to teach of His power and to distribute His grace. That reality is very fresh in my mind because a month ago, I spent hours huddled together with my family in the hallway of our home, while the walls outside were battered relentlessly by 150-mile-per-hour winds. We listened to shingles being pulled off the roof, one by one, wondering whether the plywood underneath would hold together. We watched a metal shutter get yanked away from the window it was protecting and wondered if a stray piece of debris would come crashing through. Outside, trees literally bowed to the power of the storm’s force. Our kids’ wooden swing set was relocated somewhere (we still haven’t found most of it). While we sang together of “Christ the sure and steady Anchor,” the lights went out and would not turn back on for more than a week. And even as the roar of the winds finally diminished, it was replaced by a choir that filled the house all night with the sound of drips and dribbles pouring in through the ceiling.
As many people in Southwest Florida can now attest, it is quite a helpless feeling to be caught in the middle of a vortex of wind and rain, not able to do anything except wait and hope and pray.
But the message of Hurricane Ian is the same as the message from the floods, famines, and storms of Scripture: God is the one who was in control of Hurricane Ian. As massive and unstoppable as this storm seemed to us, it was but a speck of dust upon the face of the earth, which is itself but a speck of dust in the midst of the universe, which was created by the very word of Almighty God.
For with all of the advancements of man, for all our technology and knowledge, weather reminds us that we are small, frail, and weak. We cannot summon the sun to shine. We cannot tame the wind. We cannot command the rain to fall—or command it to stop falling. God can and does.
It should be a source of immense comfort that God is sovereign over everything that happens on the earth, including the fiercest storms. Nothing is arbitrary or random with the Lord, and nothing escapes His grasp.
As God told Job:
Who has cleft a channel for the torrents of rain and a way for the thunderbolt, to bring rain on a land where no man is, on the desert in which there is no man, to satisfy the waste and desolate land, and to make the ground sprout with grass? Has the rain a father, or who has begotten the drops of dew? From whose womb did the ice come forth, and who has given birth to the frost of heaven?… Can you lift up your voice to the clouds, that a flood of waters may cover you? Can you send forth lightnings, that they may go and say to you, “Here we are”?  (Job 38:25-29, 34-35)
Such words should produce the “fear of the Lord” in us, a humble reverence and realization that God’s power cannot be contained or measured. And it should be a source of immense comfort that God is sovereign over everything that happens on the earth, including the fiercest storms. Nothing is arbitrary or random with the Lord, and nothing escapes His grasp. That is not to say that we can understand or explain the ways that God wields His power. Job admitted as much in his response to God’s interrogation:
I know that you can do all things, and that no purpose of yours can be thwarted. “Who is this that hides counsel without knowledge?” Therefore I have uttered what I did not understand, things too wonderful for me, which I did not know. (Job 42:2-3)
The last few chapters of the book of Job have long been a source of strength and encouragement to me, through times of grief and certainly through these recent weeks. I don’t know why God saw fit to send a hurricane toward my city, and have it damage my house and so many others. But I know that it was not a mistake, not an accident. And the outpouring of grace we have witnessed this past month is even more overwhelming than the storm itself—friends and family offering encouragement and support, God’s church demonstrating sacrificial love and service, people coming to faith in Christ.
As people created by God and made in His image, our call is to worship Him and trust Him while enjoying the spring sunshine and while enduring the brutal storm, on the days where everything seems to be going right and on the days where everything is difficult and uncertain. What is true of the weather is true of all of creation, and all of life—God is in control, and He uses every lightning bolt, every ray of sunshine to further His good purposes. He has used storms to bring about judgment and repentance; He has taken what man meant for evil and used it for good, most amazingly using the agony of a cross as a means to offer salvation to all who would believe.

This article was originally posted at Manifold Witness and is posted here with the author’s permission. 

This article is part 8 in a series by Tom Nettles on Remembering Jesus Christ. (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7).

To remember Jesus Christ, we must affirm his deity. To reject the true eternal deity of the singular person, Jesus of Nazareth, is to deny him and bring on us the consequence that he will deny us. This mysterious reality that the man, Jesus of Nazareth, was at the same time and in the same person the Son of God constitutes our redemption and the source of our eternal worship.

Twice Luke tells us that Mary kept certain things “in her heart.” (Luke 2:19, 51). On the first occasion, Luke adds the words, “pondered them.” Both the events and the words that accompanied the event were too large for immediate comprehension. But that she kept them in her heart means that she remembered them intensely, she sought more expanded understanding of what had happened and what she had been told. Not only deeper cognition was needed, but a spirit of adoration and worship fitting for the eternal wonder of the event. 

As a virgin, she was told that the Holy Spirit would come upon her to impregnate her in order to bear a child that she would call Jesus (Luke 1:31). He would be called “the Son of the Most High” (1:32). She learned, therefore, that not only does the Holy Spirit make her pregnant with a child according to her seed to be established and nurtured in her womb, but the “Most High” Himself, God the Father, will overshadow her simultaneously with the Spirit’s coming upon her. The result of that is that not only will her child conceived by the Holy Spirit in her womb be a man called Jesus, but as the result of the overshadowing of the “power of the Most High,” the Holy One conceived in her would be called “the Son of God” (Luke 1:35).  

To reject the true eternal deity of the singular person, Jesus of Nazareth, is to deny him and bring on us the consequence that he will deny us.

Within the time span of a few minutes, the leading mysteries of classical orthodoxy were present in the very body of Mary. The Trinity and the duality of natures in the single person of Christ were concentrated in a moment in the angel’s announcement and in her own body. The fulfilling powers of redemptive history operated in perfect harmony to assure that “her seed” would bruise the head of the serpent (Genesis 3:15) and destroy “him who had the power of death” (Hebrews 2:14). Paul said it succinctly, “When the fullness of time was come, God sent forth his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, that we might receive the adoption as sons” (Galatians 4:4). Her womb was the location of the “fullness of the time,” and Holy Spirit, Holy Father, and Holy Son all converged, as it were, “in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye,” to bring into the world the Redeemer. This Redeemer could, and did, effect forgiveness, procure righteousness, rob Satan’s fold, reconcile God and sinners, overthrow death as sin’s boon companion, and fit his people for heaven. The glory of the Father would be most fully and beautifully expressed when “at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of those in heaven, and of those on earth, and of those under the earth, and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord” (Philippians 2:10, 11). Just as was announced the name “Jesus” would designate the Savior and Lord. His humanity in the womb of Mary was due to the Holy Spirit’s impregnation of her seed; his deity as Son of God comes from the Most High’s extension of his eternal generation of the Son onto this fertile egg; his singularity of person with a complex combination of natures came from the Son of God’s condescension to take the form of a servant and be made in the likeness of men in Mary’s womb, though eternally he was “equal with God” (Philippians 2:6-8).

When she went to visit her relative, Elizabeth, Elizabeth exclaimed, “Blessed are you among women, and blessed in the fruit of your womb! But why is this granted to me that the mother of my Lord should come to me?” (Luke 1:43). This child was indeed the fruit of her womb, a seed of David but also was the Lord.

Mary’s immediate response to the words of Elizabeth were, “My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit has rejoiced in God my Savior. … He has helped His servant Israel, in remembrance of His mercy” (Luke 1:46, 47, 54). When John the Baptist was born, Zacharias saw this child as “the prophet of the Highest,” as the one who would “go before the face of the Lord to prepare His ways” This birth of John was in concert with the coming birth of “the horn of salvation in the house of His servant David” (Luke 1:76,69). These events were the action of God, “to remember His holy covenant, the oath which He swore to our father Abraham” (Luke 172, 73). We remember Jesus Christ, because God remembers his covenant. In remembering, we confess with the mouth and believe in the heart the Person and the pre-ordained events by which we are “delivered from the hands of our enemies,” and that we “might serve him without fear, in holiness and righteousness before Him all the days of our life” (Luke 1:74, 75). 

We remember Jesus Christ, because God remembers his covenant.

When the Shepherds heard the speech of the angel, they learned that a child was born in Bethlehem who was “a Savior, who is Christ the Lord” (Luke 2:11). Without doubt, this was told to Mary by the shepherds. The accumulation of titles of deity for this child surely startled and puzzled her, but she believed them. “Mary kept these things and pondered them in her heart” (Luke 2:19). Upon his presentation in the temple after the days of Mary’s purification, Simeon, under the immediate direction of the Holy Spirit and anticipation that he would see “the Lord’s Christ,” took the child and called him the Lord’s Salvation, with the affirmation that the child would be a “light of revelation to the Gentiles, and the glory of Your people Israel” (Luke 30, 32). Upon that, Joseph and Mary “marveled at those things which were spoken of Him” (Luke 2:33). Marveling, pondering, and keeping are necessary and helpful responses to these events that are the fulcrum of time and eternity.

When he went to the temple during the week of Passover at twelve years of age, He took the position of a teacher, staying there several days beyond the week. He had gathered a fascinated and amazed group of scholars and teachers around him, answering their questions. As Joseph and his mother approached him, oppressed by worry at his whereabouts, He responded, “Why did you seek me? Did you not know that I must be about My Father’s business?” They were puzzled at the calmness and confidence of his demeanor and “did not understand the statement which he spoke to them” (Luke 2:49, 50). In spite of not understanding the fullness of Jesus’ meaning and how his business in the temple was his “Father’s business,” Mary “kept all these things in her heart” (Luke 2:51).

The “mystery of godliness” that “he appeared in flesh” (1 Timothy 3:15) will never be exhausted of its wonder and mystery. It is infinite as an expression of wisdom; it is inexhaustible as matter for worship now and in heaven; it is full as the substance of the covenant of redemption. The interpenetration of all the persons of the Trinity both in their fitting personal operations and their singularity of purpose, power, essence, mind, and will is startling to the soul. These actions of God with their ontological implications press the intellect with its insufficiency in investigating the ways of God. But the “hope of eternal life” is filled to overflowing with the prospects of living in the presence of this God and of observing and participating in the praise and worship of the man Jesus Christ in the eternal glory of his deity and his work of redemption. “Remember Jesus Christ.”

This article is part 8 in a series by Tom Nettles on Remembering Jesus Christ.

Join us at the 2024 National Founders Conference on January 18-20 as we consider what it means to “Remember Jesus Christ” under the teaching of Tom Ascol, Joel Beeke, Paul Washer, Phil Johnson, Conrad Mbewe and Travis Allen.