Sexually Explicit Bible Quotes

Rejection is an opportunity for your selection.

Have you been in a compromising situation this week? Have any of your financial dealings lacked integrity? Have you viewed any sexually explicit material? Have you spent quality time in Bible study and prayer? Have you given priority time to your family? Have you fulfilled the mandates of your calling? Have you just lied to me?

Robert Askins Brings ‘Hand to God’ to Broadway Chad Batka for The New York Times Robert Askins at the Booth Theater, where his play “Hand to God” opens on Tuesday. By MICHAEL PAULSON The conceit is zany: In a church basement, a group of adolescents gathers (mostly at the insistence of their parents) to make puppets that will spread the Christian message, but one of the puppets turns out to be more demonic than divine. The result — a dark comedy with the can-puppets-really-do-that raunchiness of “Avenue Q” and can-people-really-say-that outrageousness of “The Book of Mormon” — is “Hand to God,” a new play that is among the more improbable entrants in the packed competition for Broadway audiences over the next few weeks. Given the irreverence of some of the material — at one point stuffed animals are mutilated in ways that replicate the torments of Catholic martyrs — it is perhaps not a surprise to discover that the play’s author, Robert Askins, was nicknamed “Dirty Rob” as an undergraduate at Baylor, a Baptist-affiliated university where the sexual explicitness and violence of his early scripts raised eyebrows. But Mr. Askins had also been a lone male soloist in the children’s choir at St. John Lutheran of Cypress, Tex. — a child who discovered early that singing was a way to make the stern church ladies smile. His earliest performances were in a deeply religious world, and his writings since then have been a complex reaction to that upbringing. “It’s kind of frustrating in life to be like, ‘I’m a playwright,’ and watch people’s face fall, because they associate plays with phenomenally dull, didactic, poetic grad-schoolery, where everything takes too long and tediously explores the beauty in ourselves,” he said in a recent interview. “It’s not church, even though it feels like church a lot when we go these days.” The journey to Broadway, where “Hand to God” opens on Tuesday at the Booth Theater, still seems unlikely to Mr. Askins, 34, who works as a bartender in Brooklyn and says he can’t afford to see Broadway shows, despite his newfound prominence. He seems simultaneously enthralled by and contemptuous of contemporary theater, the world in which he has chosen to make his life; during a walk from the Cobble Hill coffee shop where he sometimes writes to the Park Slope restaurant where he tends bar, he quoted Nietzsche and Derrida, described himself as “deeply weird,” and swore like, well, a satanic sock-puppet. “If there were no laughs in the show, I’d think there was something wrong with him,” said the actor Steven Boyer, who won raves in earlier “Hand to God” productions as Jason, a grief-stricken adolescent with a meek demeanor and an angry-puppet pal. “But anybody who is able to write about such serious stuff and be as hilarious as it is, I’m not worried about their mental health.” Mr. Askins’s interest in the performing arts began when he was a boy attending rural Texas churches affiliated with the conservative Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod denomination; he recalls the worshipers as “deeply conservative, old farm folks, stone-faced, pride and suffering, and the only time anybody ever really livened up was when the children’s choir would perform.” “My grandmother had a cross-stitch that said, ‘God respects me when I work, but he loves me when I sing,’ and so I got into that,” he said. “For somebody who enjoys performance, that was the way in.” The church also had a puppet ministry — an effort to teach children about the Bible by use of puppets — and when Mr. Askins’s mother, a nurse, began running the program, he enlisted to help. He would perform shows for other children at preschools and vacation Bible camps. “The shows are wacky, but it was fun,” he said. “They’re badly written attempts to bring children to Jesus.” Not all of his formative encounters with puppets were positive. Particularly scarring: D

Translated literally, Jesus replies, "I am, the (one) speaking to you" [John 4:26]. This word-for-word translation comes out awkwardly in English, so it's often broken up in our Bibles. But as New Testament scholar Craig Evans observes, Jesus's statement is "emphatic and unusual" in the original Greek as well. Smoothing it out in translation masks the fact that this is the first of Jesus's "I am" statements. ...This is the first time in John that Jesus explicitly declares he's the Messiah. And as he does so, Jesus makes an even more extraordinary claim. Each of Jesus's "I am" statements gives us fresh insight into who he is. At first, his words to the Samaritan woman seem like an exception. But if we look more closely, Jesus is giving us more insight about his identity when he says to the Samaritan woman, "I am, the (one) speaking to you." Jesus claims he's the Messiah and the one true covenant God. But he is also the one who is speaking to this sexually suspect, foreign woman. He could have just said "I am he!" But as we look at Jesus through this woman's eyes, we see him as the long-promised King and everlasting God, who chooses to converse with her.

Close to half my students in one class in northern Nigeria, where head coverings are part of the culture, held this view, so after they had finished debating with the other half, I asked why none of them had greeted me with a holy kiss—and they laughed! The holy kiss is an explicit command repeated in Scripture five times as often as head coverings (Rom. 16:16; 1 Cor. 16:20; 2 Cor. 13:12; 1 Thess. 5:26; 1 Pet. 5:14), but the usual response is, “That was merely a cultural form of greeting.” Indeed it was, but covering the head (technically, all the hair) was also merely a cultural expression of sexual modesty, as can be demonstrated from a massive number of ancient sources.26Yet a few of my students bordered on calling other students “liberal” because they did not insist on head coverings as a transcultural requirement! Who determines where to draw the line? Is everyone liberal who holds as cultural something we hold as transcultural?

When he was with his fellow pastors, they challenged each other with these seven questions: 1. Have you been with a woman anywhere this past week that might be seen as compromising? 2. Have any of your financial dealings lacked integrity? 3. Have you exposed yourself to any sexually explicit material? 4. Have you spent adequate time in Bible study and prayer? 5. Have you given priority time to your family? 6. Have you fulfilled the mandates of your calling? 7. Have you just lied to me? To these questions I would add at least one statement. “Now that I have asked you these questions, let me tell you how you have been a blessing to me. Let me tell you how you have pointed me to Christ.

Our bodies have been created not only by God but also for God..We are driven today by whatever can bring our bodies the most pleasure. What can we eat, touch, watch, do listen to, or engage in to satisfy the cravings of our bodies?..in his love, gives us boundaries for our bodies: he loves us and knows what is best for us..[there are] clear and critical distinctions between different types of laws in Leviticus. Some of the laws are civil in nature, and they specifically pertain to the government of ancient Israel..Other laws are ceremonial..However, various moral laws..are explicitly reiterated in the New Testament..Jesus himself teaches that the only God-honoring alternative to marriage between a man and a woman is singleness..the Bible also prohibits all sexual looking and thinking outside of marriage between a husband and a wife..it is sinful even to look at someone who is not your husband or wife and entertain sexual thoughts about that person..it is also wrong to provoke sexual desires in others outside of marriage..God prohibits any kind of crude speech, humor, or entertainment that remotely revolves around sexual immorality..often watch movies and shows, read books and articles, and visit Internet sites that highlight, display, promote, or make light of sexual immorality..God prohibits sexual worship-- the idolization of sex and infatuation with sexual activity as a fundamental means to personal fulfillment..Don't rationalize it, and don't reason with it-- run from it. Flee it as fast as you can..We all have a sinful tendency to turn aside from God's ways to our wants. This tendency has an inevitable effect on our sexuality..every one of us is born with a bent toward sexual sin. But just because we have that bent doesn't mean we must act upon it. We live in a culture that assumes a natural explanation implies a moral obligation. If you were born with a desire, then it's essential to your nature to carry it out. This is one reason why our contemporary discussion of sexuality is wrongly framed as an issue of civil rights..Ethnic identity is a morally neutral attribute..Sexual activity is a morally chosen behavior..our sexual behavior is a moral decision, and just because we are inclined to certain behaviors does not make such behaviors right. His disposition toward a behavior does not mean justification for that behavior. "That's the way he is" doesn't mean "that's how he should act." Adultery isn't inevitable; it's immoral. This applies to all sexual behavior that deviates from God's design..We do not always choose our temptations. But we do choose our reactions to those temptations..the assumption that God's Word is subject to human judgement..Instead of obeying what God has said, we question whether God has said it..as soon as we advocate homosexual activity, we undercut biblical authority..we are undermining the integrity of the entire gospel..We take this created gift called sex and use it to question the Creator God, who gave us the gift in the first place..[Jesus] was the most fully human, fully complete person who ever lived, and he was never married. He never indulged in any sort of sexual immorality..This was not a resurrection merely of Jesus' spirit or soul but of his body..Repentance like this doesn't mean total perfection, but it does mean a new direction..in a culture that virtually equates identity with sexuality..Naturally this becomes our perception of ourselves, and we subsequently view everything in our lives through this grid..When you turn to Christ, your entire identity is changed. You are in Christ, and Christ is in you. Your identity is no longer as a heterosexual or a homosexual, an addict or an adulterer.