Theology of Sex+ Week 7: Christian Societal Ethics

Use this guide to help your group discussion as you meet this week.

Theology of Sex+ Week 6: Transgenderism

Use this guide to help your group discussion as you meet this week.

Transgenderism

Chet Phillips

Transcript

Good morning my name is Chad I'm one of the pastors here uh grab a Bible if you will and go to Genesis chapter 1 we're going to be there we've been there for several weeks um as we have tried to wrap our head around uh the way God has designed us and uh what that means for us as we seek to follow him today we're going to talk about transgenderism um and this is something I believe that it's worth us taking some time to consider um the concept of transgenderism and the way that we've approached it culturally has changed rapidly uh in 2014 was one of the.

First times there was a Time Magazine cover 2014 so that's that's 10 years ago nine years ago that said that that was the new area that we needed to grow as a culture was in accepting transgenderism so there was a transgender uh person on the the cover of the Time magazine that said this is the new the new area where we're going to grow culturally this is the next thing that we need to grow in acceptance and and it was that that magazine cover was saying hey this is the future not not this is where we are.

Now but this is the next thing that's coming for us and that was in 2014 so we've rapidly changed how we've thought about this and approached this and so as our culture has shifted on it and as you've heard more about it seen more about it participated more in understanding what's going on around it we think it's helpful for us to take some time to just say what does the Bible tell us uh about this so transgenderism uh if you were to.

Look in a dictionary um English dictionary for most of English History and you were to look up the words gender and sex uh there would be a definition that was the same which is gender or sex dealing with Biology whether whether or not you are male or female but the the new way of thinking about this if you look it up now if you go to dictionary.com and you look it up is that sex deals with your biology your hormones your physical body whether you are male or female and that gender is separate from them that gender has to deal with your internal impression and your external expression of masculinity or femininity.

So that your gender can be different from your biological sex this is what's being taught this is the way that gender is to be understood now and so that someone can be uh their gender can be feminine or masculine and that can be connected or not connected to whether or not they were born male or female on transe equality.org it says it this way transgender is a broad term that can be used to describe people whose gender identity so that's internal impression or external Al expression is different from the gender they were thought to be.

When they were born meaning that they looked at their biology they looked at their physical traits and said this is a boy or this is a girl um painted the room blue and then were wrong that's what this is they grew up and it was that's not what they were their gender is something different than what they were thought to be and that's the way this is being taught and understood culturally now now there's a lot of different definitions this is changing all the time different people have different opinions on how this is.

But this is a a fair General representation that sex and gender are separate and that your gender can be different than your biology and that's what we're talking about this morning is how ought we to think about that is that okay what does the Bible have to say about that how should we inter in in in engage in that and then next week we're going to spend a good bit of time basically asking how do we as Christians live in a culture that disagrees with us on some things what does it.

Look like for you to be a Christian and follow Jesus and be faithful where a lot of people around you disagree with what you think so that's what we're going to do today we'll be in Genesis 1:26 I'm going to pray for us I would invite you to pray with me Lord we ask for wisdom we ask for Grace um none of us I don't think come into this neutrally I believe that we have opinions I don't think anybody just learned the concept of transgenderism just.

Now as I tried to explain it I think we have opinions I think we have interactions with this I think we have uh what our news stations or favorite YouTube people have told us to think and so Lord I just pray that you would help us to see what your word says on this to be kind and gracious and humble towards one another but to hold firmly to what you tell us is true we ask for your help and the empowerment of your spirit this morning in.

Jesus name amen I want to begin by telling us a story that is beautiful and sad Genesis CH 1 we're going to look in Genesis 1 and 2 it says this then God said so this is in the process of him creating everything he says let us make man that's Humanity in our image after our likeness and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the Earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.

So God created man in his own image in the image of God he created him male and female he created them so we spent some time here God made man and woman in His image we are created in the image of God that you were specifically gendered you were given of biological sex on purpose you were male or female and designed that way intentionally by God that's God's original and design and it says this and God blessed them so this gendered Humanity male and female is blessed.

God said to them be fruitful and multiply and fill the Earth and subdue it have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth and God said behold I have given you every plant yielding seed that is on the face of the Earth and every tree with seed in its fruit you shall have them for food and to every beast of the earth and every bird of the heavens and to everything that creeps on the earth everything that has the breath of life I have given every green plant.

For food and it was so and God saw everything that he had made and behold it was very good so God designed Humanity he designed our bodies he encased us embodies we are meant to be embodied we have a gender and that is built into how we image God uh one of the terms for this is tellos or tellos that we have a purpose that there's an end in mind in our design that there's purpose built into it we are not just set free to be whatever.

But we actually have God had purpose built into how he built us as CS Lewis puts it uh who is a um a writer and theologian philosopher uh in the 1900s he says this Christianity is almost the only one of the great religions which thoroughly approves of the body which believes that matter is good that God himself once took on a human body and that some kind of body is going to be given to us even in heaven and is going to be an essential part of our happiness we believe that your body is good that you were given it on purpose and that we are not going to one day die and Float off.

Into ethereal wispiness where we're free from our horrible Earth carcass we believe that we will be given new bodies and live on a new Heaven and a new Earth that we will en engage in this same sort of thing it'll be a renew Eternal Body it'll be a glorious one but we are embodied and that that is good and blessed so Christopher Yuan who is now a um Bible Professor but he was once a um practicing homosexual who was selling drugs got kicked out of dentist school.

For selling drugs which I didn't know much about dentist school but apparently they frown on you selling drugs I you can tell I don't know much about it cuz I'm calling it dentist school um but he says this in his book holy sexuality and the Gospel so he became a Christian and changed his lifestyle and he says this we know that we are created in God's image thus rejecting our inherent Essence and replacing it simply with what we feel or do is in reality an attempted coup d'a against our creator we don't need to find our identity our identity is given us by.

God so we believe that we're embodied and there's a purpose there there's intentionality there but it um gets sad I said the story was beautiful and sad well let's move to the to the last part of the beautiful part and then into the sad part so Genesis chapter 2: 24 God brings the man and woman together and it says therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife and they shall become one flesh and the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed.

So one of the things that we said when we looked at this earlier was that they were perfectly comfortable in their bodies and perfectly comfortable in their gender and perfectly comfortable with the other person's body and their gender that they were naked and not ashamed that everything was fine they weren't concerned about their bodies they felt at home chapter 3 now the serpent was more crafty than any other beast of the field that the Lord God had made and we find out later in the Scriptures that this isn't just any serpent this is actually Satan the Ultimate Enemy of.

God and man so the serpent he said to the woman did God actually say you shall not eat of any tree in the garden so God had planted a garden and he had planted the tree of knowledge of Good and Evil and the Tree of Life In The Garden but in the tree of knowledge of Good and Evil he said y'all can't eat from this one and so so the serpent comes along and he says God says y'all can't eat from any of these trees and the woman said to the serpent we may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden.

But God said You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the midst of the garden neither shall you touch it lest you die which the text doesn't tell us that God said that you can't touch it or you'll die just not to eat of it but the enemy has come along and he's begun to ask is God really trustworthy isn't he withholding good from you can we really believe what he says but the serpent said to the woman this is verse four you will not surely die.

For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened and you will be like God knowing good and evil you won't die you'll be like him you'll get to decide what's right and what's wrong you'll be the one who can be the Arbiter of truth and reality so when the woman saw that the tree was good for food and that it was a delight to the eyes and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise she took of its fruit and ate she also gave some to her husband who was with her and he ate.

Then the eyes of both of were opened and they knew they were naked and they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loin cloths and they heard the sound of the Lord God Walking In The Garden in the cool of the day and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God Among the Trees of the garden but the Lord God Called To The Man and said to him where are you and he said I heard the sound of you in the garden and I was afraid.

Because I was naked and I hid myself and he said who told you that you were naked have you eaten of the tree which I commanded you not to eat they were perfectly at home in their bodies they were perfectly free God had designed it to where they would just be free and enjoy and delight and rest and work but all in Freedom and all in comfort in who they were and how they were designed and When sin enters the world that's gone they suddenly know they're naked and feel great shame and even after they had covered themselves they still hide and say we were naked did you catch that that they sew fig leaves.

To cover themselves up but when God shows up they still hide and say we're naked cuz that it's it didn't work it doesn't fix the problem there's a couple of things in this passage that have traveled through time and exist in your heart that have that are just innately born into us now one is the lie that the serpent tells is God really trustworthy and shouldn't I be the one to decide what's right and wrong oh if that's not in your heart this idea that ah I mean is he really right about that you ever just reading your Bible and you go nah that can't be right I think I know know what ought to.

Be right here you ever do that like that's in us this idea that shouldn't I be the one who picks what who is he to say the other thing is this this feeling very not at home in our bodies very uncomfortable and exposed there's a reason why there's like a human wide nightmare that you're going about your day and then suddenly you're naked that's what happened to them you know that feeling they ate of the of the fruit and suddenly realized oh I'm I'm exposed I'm out in the I'm not.

Okay you ever you have that moment where you just feel exposed have you ever had that nightmare where Suddenly It's just like this is I was given a presentation and then I was naked and it was not okay cuz that's in US y'all we wear clothes and still feel wildly uncomfortable you know how much you fidget with how your clothes fit you like I have some collared shirts where one of the collars curls in and one of them curls up and I have no clue whether anybody else ever notices that.

But I think about it all day long you ever had like a cold SAR and you're like I just want to cancel my life for a week you see other people with a cold sord and you think I'm glad other people get cold sores you don't care that they have a cold sore really you're just like that's fine I'm not going to kiss you but that's fine but when we have stuff like that we feel it because we don't feel at home y'all this the theological concept here is called estrangement we we don't feel at home in ourselves.

And so one of the things that I think we need to wrap our heads around as Christians is that Christians ought to understand gender dysphoria and transgenderism better than anybody else the idea that you would not feel at home in your body ought to break our hearts and bring out our sympathy more than anything else that should be the first thing that it does to us we should understand oh yeah know I feel that there's things about me that I don't like there things about me that I don't feel at home in there are things about me that I wish were different there things about me that I hate there are things about me that.

I uh long for and crave that I wish I didn't there are things about me that that just never felt right I never liked I never appreciated never could enjoy it always felt like am I sure this was right I was reading someone who was talking about transgenderism and they said there their argument was why should we be beholden to our bodies it's it's like a taxi cab that we were shoved into at Birth and had no choice over and as a Christian part of me understands that feels that you didn't choose how tall you were going to be what you were going to.

Look like what your skin was going to be like how your hair Works y'all know that it seems like and this is I'm not a lady but it seems like ladies really really appreciate apprciate whatever type of hair they don't have I think that's part of the curse I think that's part of the Fall if you've ever said I wish my hair did blank it it's just built into us that we would not feel fully at home and so when someone says I was reading on Pew research and they just did they just got a bunch of people who would identify as transgender and they asked them a bunch of questions and they would all.

Say things like ever since I was little I just never really felt like I was in the right body y'all do you know how hard that would be it it's whatever you felt in all these little ways but it's so acute and so painful and so lifelong and in such a big area of life to feel like you're the wrong gender has got to be extremely difficult and if that's you then you're here this morning I'm sorry that you've felt like that your whole life and I I understand a little bit.

But I don't understand fully but you're welcome here and you're welcome to be here and and and struggle and not feel at home in yourself and you're welcome to be here and to to express that and voice that and to say I'm in the middle of trying to figure this out' we understand and we ought to one of the things that comes along with this this our human bodies designed for good built in intentionally but then Fallen is that we now have birth defects we.

Now have people who are born interx which is a small portion of the population people who are born with both sets of of reproductive organs then there's a wider portion that that will get labeled as intersex where they're born with um physically externally male or female but then there's some internal biological things that go into what would the people would now consider interex and there are some realities to that the the vast majority of are born physically externally male or female and there may be some hormonal or some biological things going on that they can have to take some medicine.

For or adjust and try to figure out how they're going to approach life very rarely is anybody born with with both sets of genitalia but even that those situations they end up usually having to figure out and have some sort of surgery and figure that out as they go forward in life and we understand that that's part of the Fall as well it doesn't mean that there is no male and there is no female it doesn't mean that we don't understand male or female there are some people who are born with the wrong number of Limbs and that's horrible.

But it doesn't mean that most humans aren't born with two arms and two legs and five fingers and five toes it's it's something that happens and can happen and even the Bible understands it happens when Jesus talks about in U marriage in Matthew 19 he refers to people who were born um he says Unix from birth and then there are unic that have been made Unix by by men so he understands that there is some sort of birth process birth defect that can go into this.

But that's part of the Fall as well and it doesn't negate either the the reality of God's intended design for male or female but it also doesn't negate how gracious and kind and welcoming the Church ought to be in understanding that as well and walking alongside people and not not stigmatizing that or making it something you can't talk about or deal with because we all understand that we're all living with some form of the effects of the fall but here's where we are culturally.

For someone who has felt like I've been born into the wrong body has felt this this gender dysphoria this particular type of estrangement culturally right now we come around them and we give them a Playbook we say well here's what you do if you feel that way they they're getting a script that says go this direction and as Christians we have to disagree with the script and it is culturally impacted I want to show you the things that go along in this cultural approach that have gotten us here it's like a all the building blocks that that made it to where this is how we respond.

Now so I want to show you this list we're going to talk through these fairly quickly the fall of Christendom relativism radical individualism Triumph of the therapeutic the sexual Revolution and new gnosticism and I know you're are like I'm so excited for this list and just so you know when we were walking through and making sure the slides were working Josh babone who was up here earlier already called all those as band names he's claimed them so you can't start a band named any of those he's already he already called dips all right the fall of Christendom we've existed in the West in in a judeo Christian ethic.

For hundreds of years and we have rejected that now as the ruling thought process for the West that we are no longer all under a general judeo-Christian ethic which meant that we had a baseline philosophy and a baseline Theos ology for how we were going to live life and we would say we've removed that but the thing is when you remove it you don't just remove it you replace it and the problem with replacing it from our standpoint as Christians who believe our Bibles is that we think we enter into what Paul's talking about in Colossians 2.

So I want to read this to you he says this see to it that no one takes you captive by philosophy and empty deceit according to human TR tradtion according to the elemental spirits of the world and not according to Christ okay we want to know what Jesus tells us we want to follow what Jesus tells us we want to be uh led by Christ and then everything else fits into one of these other categories philosophy it's just them thinking through this is how the world ought to work empty deceit meaning they're intentionally trying to deceive twist things around human tradition ACC according to the elemental spirits of the world meaning that the enemy at.

Work in some of these kind of things and so we we aren't fans of the fall of Christendom in general we want to be genuinely Christian in the way we approach things and follow Christ that's where he says this for in him the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily and you have been filled in him who is the head of all Rule and Authority so we think Jesus is over everything and we're to follow him but that's gone culturally so we get The Replacements relativism relativism is the concept that there is no objective right or wrong you get to decide nobody can really tell you what's right or wrong nobody can really come in.

Tell you how you ought to live it's up to you you do you boo that General thought process whatever you want to do you do as long as you're not hurting anybody as long as you're not bothering anybody as long as you're not oppressing anybody nobody can really come in and tell you you're right or wrong whatever you want to do is fine that's relativism and y'all we we all kind of yeah okay like you just you've been trained in this it's like yeah that that's kind of true like the uh one of the Justice Anthony Kennedy.

And when he was writing one of the majority opinions this is one of our Supreme Court Justice he says this at the heart of Liberty is the right to Define one owns concept of existence of meaning of the universe and of the mystery of human life that's at the heart of Liberty you get to decide meaning purpose existence the mystery of human life all up to you which just if you think about that first of all the in the garden version of us that wants to eat from the tree goes yeah I get to pick the purpose and meaning of existence.

But if we'll just pause for a second you're going to have a hard time picking what to eat for lunch existence and the meaning of purpose in life is way above your pay grade but that's at the heart of relativism and he says it's at the heart of Liberty that that's true Freedom that you get to decide the next thing is radical individualism that we've just been sold on this we bought into this this is the idea that you are the only one you can really trust you are the only one who really knows.

For you you're the only one who really decides every Disney movie every Disney song just watch a preview for a Disney movie and they'll be like and then I suddenly thought have I even considered what I want and we're like yeah I think about you but that radical individualism is that you're the only one who can really decide for you and no one else can really so it's relativism but it's boiled down to ultimately you are the last Arbiter of all things.

Then we have what Carl Truman calls the Triumph of the therapeutic so it used to be 100 years ago 60 years ago you would um you would have to if you went to see somebody and they were trying to help you work through life they were trying to help you change you to exist in the world they were trying to to make you capable of existing out there you you were being bent and molded to reality but when Carl Truman's looking at this and he's tracing this out through history he says we've actually flipped this and what we've started doing is trying to change your circumstances to fit to you.

So we're going to get rid of toxic people we're going to get rid of toxic environments we're going to get rid of any Professor that says things you don't want to hear we're going to get rid of anybody who would come around you and say things that you don't want to hear you get to perfectly mold your environment and this is up to and includ including our physical bodies are now going to be brought in in line with you which goes along with the next two the sexual Revolution which is just our overemphasis on sexual enjoyment and cutting out all of the GU guard rails and guidelines that used to be around sex and Christians.

Aren't anti-sex we believe it's actually more important and more powerful than our culture does that's why we think it needs guard rails it's why we think it needs to be handled appropriately it's not because we think it's bad it's because we actually think it's better than our culture thinks it is more powerful not essential to life essential to the existence of humans for sure um but not essential essential to everybody's individual life you can live a perfect meaningful human life without ever participating in any sort of sexual activity.

But the sexual Revolution the general idea that your body is is a playground the only question is how would you like to play and then the new gnosticism which is connected a lot to the Triumph of the therapeutic and the radical individualism but gnosticism is the idea that your body is in general lower than the spiritual reality and we wouldn't culturally refer to it as spiritual reality as much as we would refer to it as reason our thinking self is more important and better than our physical self uh one author put it this way he said a person's self-awareness is different than and more important than their physical bodies that's this new idea of narcism.

So you can change your physical body to be in line with the way you think because your physical body is less than it doesn't actually give you any indication of anything you can change what you think so there's a Melinda selmies who was a practicing former lesbian who's repented and Fallen the Lord and she wrote this Bute all the pageantry of free sex and self-love there is a fundamental belief that the body doesn't mean anything that it is insignificant in a literal sense signifying nothing you can do anything that you like with it you can give it away to anyone.

For any reason it's just a sort of wet machine a tool that you can use in exchange for whatever purpose suits your fancy that's some vivid imagery but that's the general idea you have a body use it enjoy it change it the real you is on the inside the real you is your reasoning thinking self and that's new gnosticism and gnosticism is an ancient heresy so just so y'all know this is the problem Christians ought to understand understand the tension and the pain and the hurt and the Brokenness in transgenderism we ought to understand gender dysphoria in a very real sense that makes us very empathetic and caring and and gentle.

But the ideology is completely contrary to Christianity yall we disagree with this whole list of the things that come together that give you the script for how you ought to respond if you feel gender dysphoria they're going to come along and say well if you feel that that's internal to you so whatever you feel is right and you're the only one who can really decide and no one should come from outside and tell you that you are wrong that would be oppressive that would be harmful that would be bad.

For your psychology we ought to think well and Care well for your approach to the world and we ought to change your environment and if you if you want to pursue any sexual desires those are good and to be pursued never to be curtailed unless you want to but y'all we're Christians so we want to follow Christ we believe that he's the authority so it's not relative there's a actual reality that we can run up against radical individualism is bad for us we are individuals that need to be to repent and follow.

Jesus there's some amount of understanding that a unique person who who can follow Jesus that God designed on purpose is good but not you're in charge and you're the only one who knows what's right the Triumph of the therapeutic y'all we're Christians we think we should change that's repentance that's discipleship when you say things like well this is just what I'm like the Bible sometimes goes well stop it what you're like is bad quit talking to people like that quit acting like that it's bad.

For you repent so when people just you can't just go I was born this way I'm Italian so I yell or whatever it's like what stop we believe in Repentance and we believe that's good for us that we can change we believe the sexual revolution has been a negative thing for our culture that it has taught us poorly and gnosticism we've hated it ever since it showed up we don't like the new version or the old version We believe that you the physical body is important and good and that God's going to redeem both soul and body.

So here's the problem all of that leads to destruction and so the script that you're given if you feel gender hish Foria is bad 1 Peter 2 he says beloved I urge you as soers and Exiles he's talking to the Church saying we don't fully belong here we'll talk more about this next week but I urge you to abstain from the passions of the flesh which wage war against your soul in considering gnosticism and this idea that you're really separate from your body that the real you is on the inside and has nothing to do with the outer you the physical body Christopher West wrote this and I thought it was a helpful quote he.

Says Satan's fundamental goal is always to split Body and Soul why well there's a fancy theological word for the separation of body and soul perhaps you've heard of it death and we believe that that is where this thought process leads to to death to destruction it's what James 1:14-15 says but each person is tempted when he is lured and enticed by his own desire then desire when it is conceived gives birth to sin and sin when it is fully grown brings forth death this is the Baseline Christian position that all of us have desires that will produce death in us and all of us need to repent all of us need.

Jesus to redeem us to work in us to forgive us so here's the problem whenever we isolate one and say you don't have to repent of that one pursue that one engage in that one we can't go along with it the message to someone in gendered dysphoria is actually the same message to all Christians There's Hope in Jesus there's repentance in Jesus and y'all this is a terrible place to be so as Christians we've got to be kind and gracious and understanding and welcoming and friendly and hospitable.

But we also can't say go for it because we don't think it'll lead to Joy they've they've done studies in 2008 they did another big one in 2015 they did another big one in 2022 the results of the 20221 aren't out but all of your statistics of negative statistics are increased by by being transgender I found that transgender people are four more four times more likely to live in extreme poverty have doubled the rate of unemployment double the rate of homelessness um 41% and this was both in 2008 and 2015.

So the the jump on acceptance changed from 2008 to 2015 it's continued to change I'm interested to see what happens in 2022 study study 41% of survey respondents both in 20 2008 and 2015 reported at least one suicide attempt 41% that's the people who weren't successful the amount of Despair and death wrapped up in this is horrific and we ought to be kind and gracious and welcoming and hospitable and we ought to plead don't follow the path that's laid out for you culturally the argument made is that the reason it's.

So high is that they're stigmatized they're hated they're treated poorly their whole life is awful and look we ought to understand some of that you ever had a bad haircut I'm not trying to be trivial but if you had a bad haircut and you felt it the whole day you walked around you ever been in the place where you were the only person of your race you never really think that much about your race and suddenly that's all you can think about.

For that day y'all if you are in the middle of transitioning I think they feel it I think they feel it when they're not trying to differently portray how they physically appear I think they feel it when they are I think that it's on them all the time and so yeah there's certainly some social stigma and some things that go along with it that make it extremely difficult but they did a long longterm study in Sweden Sweden way ahead of us in acceptance and celebration of this from 1973 to 2003 what they did was they followed people who had gender affirming surgeries.

So people who had actually made the transition which I just have to say somewhere we don't think you can actually do we think you can physically change your body but you have not actually changed your gender you've been given a gender you've been designed by God and we think you can physically alter your body but it doesn't actually change you from a man to a woman but they had gender affirming surgeries and then they followed them for for 30 years and they compared them to the regular population and they controlled.

For things like poverty level gender at Birth what age group that sort of thing they needed psychiatric care at five times the rate of the normal population the suicide rate was three times the normal population no I'm sorry death from suicide was 20 times the rate of the normal population impatient psychiatric care was three times the rate the suicide attempts was five times the rate and the conclusion they have is this this is straight from the conclusion of the study persons with transsexualism after sex reassignment have considerably higher risks.

For Mort mortality suicidal behavior and psychiatric morbidity than the general population our findings suggest that sex reassignment although alleviating gender dysphoria may not suffice as treatment for transsexualism and should imp Inspire improved psychiatric and somatic care after sex reassignment for this patient group meaning that for those who are actually in a place where they change their they have gender affirming surgery and then live in a place that celebrates it it still doesn't fix the problem and as Christians we go yeah.

Because pursuing it can't fix it because that's what we're told is it pursuing any of our desires in that direction won't fix it it might alleviate some of the symptoms it might alleviate some things but it's not going to actually fix the root level problem Paul McHugh who is the the head over the this department in John's Hopkins and they used to do they were one of the leading ones to do these surgeries and then they stopped it under him and they've recently restarted it.

But he says that it's it should be treated more the way we treat someone with anorexia we should say that the way you're thinking is not in line with the way your body actually is and we would do best to help bring you in line with reality because you do have a physical reality and so as Christians 1 Corinthians 13 says this love does not rejoice at wrongdoing but rejoices with the truth so we can't celebrate we can't Rejoice we can't go along with saying this is a fine way to go.

Because it would be unloving so we have to be loving we have to be gracious we have to be gentle we have to be kind we have to be hospitable we also can't just say that's fine pursue what you want because we believe it would lead to death so I have a better option when Matthew 12 is talking about Jesus it says this a bruised Reed he will not break and a smoldering Wick he will not quench that's a prophecy about him from Isaiah and it's quoted in in Matthew a bruised Reed he will not break and a smoldering Wick he will not quench a candle that's just barely hanging on barely blowing smoke.

Jesus doesn't come and snuff that out he's gentle he's gracious Andrew T Walker in his book on transgenderism quotes this from Matthew 12 and then he says this the visual imagery Jesus uses is important to remember and beautiful to see Jesus will not let fragile people crumble and collapse under the weight of their struggles Jesus wants to take those who feel they are close to flickering out and return them to brightness and joy Jesus is tend tender and gentle towards those who think they cannot go any further Church family some of us need to repent.

Because when it comes to transgenderism or homosexuality or anything in the lgbtq plus Zone we've looked like anything but Jesus because we haven't been gentle you can't say we haven't snuffed out smoldering Wicks we've made it seem as if this is one of the most hostile places for someone who needs it the most that we're welcome here in our sin but you aren't we're welcome here in our frustration and our confusion and our our estrangement but you aren't Lord help us help us.

When we stand before the king and he's been so kind and so gracious to us in our sin and we've acted as if there's somehow line between us and them may God have mercy on us for that and I'm so grateful that he's not going to Snuff us out if we come to him in Repentance and ask for Mercy but may we be gracious and kind and hospitable and welcoming people to someone who so badly needs to hear the Gospel and what our culture is telling them to do leads to death y'all it doesn't help it it doesn't fix it we can't celebrate it we've got to love our hope is not in the rejection.

Of our bodies but the Redemption of our bodies Romans 8 this where we'll finish we'll look at this together for just a moment Paul says I consider that the sufferings of this present time and that's all of us are not worth comparing with the glory Glory that is to be revealed to us so that we're to look at everybody and say you're going to suffer but there's glory and there's hope this direction for creation Waits with eager longing for the revealing of the sons of.

God for the creation was subjected to futility not willingly but because of him who subjected it in hope that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to corruption and obtain the freedom of the glory of children of God yeah we're all creation is subjected to futility and a bondage to corruption it's falling apart it's decaying and we're all longing whether we know it or not for this Redemption for we know that the whole creation has been groaning together in Pains of child birth until.

Now and not only the creation but we ourselves who have the first fruit of the spirit grown inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption as Sons the Redemption of our bodies our hope is not in the rejection of our bodies Our Hope is not here our hope is found in the Redemption of our bodies that is going to be worked in Christ on that day where we receive forgiveness and renewal and so we wait patiently but we ought to wait as people who understand the groaning we ought to wait as people who understand the pain and the discomfort and the estrangement and the Brokenness we ought to be the kindest most welcome most hospitable.

People and listen in our culture in disagreeing we're going to be told that we're hateful and so we've got to hold the line on loving enough and holding on to what is true but in a way that silences critique because of how much grace and kindness and gentleness there is for in this hope we were saved now hope that is seen is not hope for who hopes for what he seen disas but if we hope for what we do not see we wait.

For it with patience we believe that our God put on a body that he intended us for have to have a body that he's going to give us new bodies and that he's going to renew all of that in Grace and we wait with patience some of us need to change our position because we've been echoing what our culture says and we're wrong and we shouldn't do it because it leads to death but some of us need to change our posture.

Because we've been saying true things with not a hint of Grace and not a hint of kindness and we don't look at all like Jesus let's pray Lord we ask for we ask for Mercy where we've been wrong where we've supported what will ultimately lead to destruction where we've agreed with our culture on some things that are damaging and lead to death Lord we ask for Mercy where we've not modeled well the way you treated people who needed Grace where we've acted as.

If somehow we've merited or earned something or we're some of the good ones because we think this way or vote this way or act this way or we don't have that desire how dare us Lord forgive us have mercy on us and may we be a people who love like you love so that we hate sin but our arms are wide open to anyone who's coming to you and Lord our culture is confused on this and they're leading a lot to destruction more more and more children and teenagers are headed in this direction.

God have mercy on us have mercy on our nation give us wisdom help us to love help us to plead on behalf of our country so that you might keep people far from destruction and may they see clearly the grace that's found in you in Jesus name amen Church family we're going to sing we're going to praise the Lord if you need to take a moment to repent if you need to take a moment to ask the Lord for help.

For grace and for Mercy do that if this is something you struggle with and you want to talk about it and understand that we're just trying to understand and we're trying to walk in it the same way we walk in all these other things which is that we believe Jesus is better that our passions are at war with us to destroy our souls we'd love to talk with you let's sing.

Theology of Sex+ Week 5: Homosexuality Part 2

Use this guide to help your group discussion as you meet this week.

Homosexuality Part 2

Spencer Cary

Theology of Sex+ Week 4: Homosexuality Part 1

Use this guide to help your group discussion as you meet this week.

Homosexuality Part 1

Spencer Cary

Transcript

My name is Spencer I'm one of the pastors here we are in week four of our Theology of sex plus series and this uh week and next week we're taking a look at the topic of homosexuality so and approaching this and trying to teach on this it feels like a little bit of a game of operation if you remember the kids game you've got the tweezers and you got the guy that's got all the body parts you got to get in there and get his rib out without touching the sides.

If you touch the Sid it buzzes and as a kid I was terrible at that game I would make a terrible surgeon and you just at any given point you move left right front center if you move around too far you're going to actually hit something and it's going to buzz and that's kind of what this feels like because there's a few different things that play into this that make this difficult to teach on the the first is is what Chad was walking us through last week that uh sexuality has become identity and that this is uh been uh has risen to the place of idolatry.

So much so that we worship this in the place of God and if anyone uh speaks about something that's at the core of your being at the core of your identity that's considered harmful or destructive and that makes that difficult to talk about what's also difficult here is that many of us have family members friends co-workers neighbors people we love that identifies as lgbtq plus and many of them are wonderful kind loving hardworking people so it's not a neutral subject that we talk about another thing makes this difficult is that there's whole denominations in the west that have shifted on truth in this area that have failed to speak the truth I came out of.

The United Methodist Church that's where I became a Christian and that denomination has shifted so has the ELCA Luther Church so has the Episcopalian Church so has the pcusa Church and that also makes this difficult what also makes this difficult is that there are a lot of people who claim to be Christians but there all are actual genuine Jesus-loving Christians who have spoken harshly about this so we don't approach this subject neutrally and it feels like wherever you move in this you're going to hit the edges and you're going to hit the buzzer.

So because all of that is true we want to take two weeks to be able to walk through this together in this first sermon we're just going to ask the question what does the Bible say about this what does the Bible have to say about the subject matter of homosexuality and we're going to dive deep into the text a lot of this is going to be super laborious it's going to be in deep into the text to see what does the Bible have to say about this especially.

Because in the west there's been a shift amongst some denominations that have tried to reinterpret the Bible to say something that I would argue it doesn't say and I want to take those arguments seriously and look at what the Bible has to say about this next week will be far more practical be far more applicational but I want us to look deeply into the text this week and I want to end with showing why I believe that our Church can be a a wonderful and safe place to be able to figure this out be able to discuss this to be able to work through any type of sexual identity and Brokenness.

So let me pray and then we'll walk through this together Heavenly Father we thank you for the good word that we have for the Scriptures for your kindness and for the work of the Holy Spirit no doubt there's lots of things swirling in our souls this morning as we approach your word may you help us be present may you help us listen may we respond as you desire in Jesus name amen all right so we've been in Genesis 1 and 2 pretty much every week and this week is no different we won't be in it very long.

But Genesis 1 and 2 kind of establish what is the biblical idea for gender and for sex and then on Genesis 2 24-25 it says therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife and they shall become one flesh and the man and his wife are both naked and were not ashamed so we've looked at this multip weeks but it's important to read that out the gate because that is the establishment of biblical romantic love and romantic sex one man one woman and the confines of marriage and the rest of the Bible upholds this picture from Genesis to Revelation throughout the Old Testament.

Jesus in multiple places in Mark 10 and Matthew 19 highlights this as the biblical reality for marriage romantic love and sexual Union so that's the first picture we get out of the gate in the Scriptures and then when you flip a few pages you'll inevitably get to Genesis 19 and that is going to be the first mentioning of homosexuality in the Bible so in Genesis 19 God has determined to bring judgment upon two cities Sodom and Gomorrah he sends two angels to really inspect the City to.

See if it's worth redeeming and not worth judgment he gets there Abraham's nephew lot is there lot takes him into his house really quickly because he knows what this city is like and these two foreigners he doesn't want them to be harmed so he takes them to his house and at nightfall the men of the city surround the house and you pick up in verse four it says but before they laid down the men of the city the men of Sodom both young and old all the people to the last man surrounded the house and they called to lot where are the men who came to you tonight bring them out to us that we.

May know them now that know them is a Biblical euphemism throughout the Bible for sex that we may know them sexually this happens the angels strike the men with blindness tell lot and his family get out of the city now we're going to destroy it they leave and the city is destroyed and these Infamous cities Sodom and Gomorrah become really the prime examples of both wickedness and judgment throughout the Bible you can't read the rest of the Bible and not see that it happens in Isaiah Jeremiah Ezekiel Lamentations Amos Zephaniah.

Jesus in multiple places mentions Sodom and Gomorrah bringing that type of judgment to mind that these cities are synonimous with sin and judgment so the question is why are these cities known for sin and judgment and we get a few biblical reasons I'll point the first one Ezekiel 16 49 it says behold this was the guilt of your sister Sodom she and her daughters had Pride excess of food and prosperous ease but did not Aid the poor and needy and what we.

See there is that like most depraved cities and most depraved cultures there was excess the pride of life enjoying the riches getting fat and not caring for the poor and maybe even building your wealth off of the poor which is wickedness I mean you cannot read the prophets you cannot read the gospels without seeing that the God despises that type of disregard for the poor and the needy now in an attempt to legitimize same-sex relationships some have attempted to say that that's all was wrong with Sodom and Gomorrah that Genesis 19 and the picture of judgment there is only.

For this that social justice is the only reason that Sodom and Gomorrah were destroyed now it's certainly clear from the text that Injustice was a major part of their depravity and that is true but what's been understood for thousands thousand of years from Jews into Christianity what has been understood for thousands of years is that these cities were not only destroyed for the prideful greedy life that they lived but also for the promiscuity and specifically the homosexuality that was prevalent that these cities were known.

For that's clear when you read the text that's clear outside of the text there are extra biblical resources extra biblical historical documents in second temple Judaism so the period of time between when the last Scriptures were written around 500 BC to the time when Jesus came you can look at second temple Judaism and see some of the writings that describe this as as a universally understood truth that Jews understood one of those is The Testament of naftali it says do not become like Sodom which departed from the order of Nature and the Order of nature there is the design.

For sex with men and women they departed from that referencing the Judgment that fell upon them in the Testament of Benjamin another extra biblical historical document it says from the words of Enoch the righteous I tell you that you will be sexually promiscuous like the promiscuity of the sodomites and will perish again in the book of jubile it says and in this month the Lord carried out the judgments of Sodom and Gomorrah and go say they were terrible and very sinful and have defiled themselves and committed fornication and uncleanness over the earth.

Now we don't look at those sources as authoritative like the Scriptures they don't have an authority but what they helped describe was it was universally understood that these cities were known for that type of sexual promiscuity I mean you get to the some of the Contemporary writers of the Bible so some of contemporaries alongside the Bible Josephus a Jewish historian and Pho a philosopher you can even go into their writings and see that at the time of Jesus it was universally understood that this was a part of sodom's downfall.

Now that's important because what also happens with Genesis 19 is people seek to reinterpret this and say that what was really happening with what we read is not the type of consensual loving same-sex relationships we have now that what was actually being articulated was rape and that's the real problem and while that that seems to be the logical conclusion of what was going to happen if those angels did not step in those cities were known for this it was universally understood at the time and that's important to articulate and that's helpful to understand especially.

When the book of Jude at the end of the Bible comes along and references Sodom and gomorah in the same way that a lot of other writings do in the book of Jude near the end of the Bible in verse 7 it says just as Sodom and Gomorrah in the surrounding cities which likewise indulged in sexual immorality and pursued unnatural desire serve as an example by undergoing a punishment of Eternal fire so Jude is doing what some of those other resources outside the Bible are doing judee's made argument in the book of JW we were in this book about a year ago his main argument is against false teachers and the Judgment of heretical false.

Teachers that had come into the Church but in his writing against false teachers he uses something that was obvious to Jews for centuries and was also OB obious to the Christians who were receiving this letter and he mentions just like Sodom and Gomorrah which likewise indulged in sexual immorality and pursued unnatural desire and what he's getting at there is that there is a natural design for sex that we see very clearly in Genesis 1 and 2 and the people of Sodom and Gomorrah rejected that.

For an unnatural desire and it ended up in their judgment and he categorizes that with sexual immorality and that's also very important because sexual immorality is really a broad term in the Scriptures it's kind of a a bucket for all types of sexual sin and sexual Brokenness and it's important to understand that because a lot of times what you'll hear and rebuttal to some of this is that Skeptics will say but Jesus never spoke about homosexuality he never talked about this once why do you talk about it and what's important to understand is that.

Jesus Jesus did speak about sexual immorality in multiple places which absolutely biblically and theologically includes homosexuality and the reason why Jesus doesn't explicitly name homosexuality has to do with his ministry context Jesus ministered the majority of his time in Galilee and Galilee was not a region that was known for homosexuality at all historically now the reason why it shows up more as impos letters is because Paul is writing to GRE Roman cities all over Asia Minor and Rome and those cities were known.

For homosexuality but it wouldn't make sense for Jesus to address something that wasn't in his immediate Ministry context but he does address sexual immorality and that absolutely includes homosexuality so Jude is making a bigger point about judgment but he references something that was obvious obvious to the Christians at the time and that is the pursuing same-sex attraction is sin and next week we'll get more into this there's a difference between same-sex attractions samesex desires and pursuing those one is in the Temptation Arena the other one is pursuing rebellious sin.

But we'll get into more of that next week the Church needed to understand this but also the people of Israel needed to understand the morality of this which is what is clear when you get to the Book of Leviticus in chapter 18 and chapter 20 and there are two verses in 1822 and 2013 that show this to be prohibited in verse 22 of 18 it says you shall not lie with a male as with a woman it is an Abomination an Abomination is just a it's a it's a aggressive word.

For God despises this sin he finds it attestable to him it's often applied to idolatry it's often applied to corrupt money practices and greed but it's also applied to homosexuality in the Book of Leviticus and then in verse 13 chap 20 it says if a man Man Lies with a male as with a woman both of them have committed an Abomination now the language here is intentional if you read all Leviticus 18 and all of Leviticus 20 and you read those chapters you're going to.

See man the word man show up over and over and over again but in these two verses another word shows up male and that's the Hebrew word zakar and when that word shows up it draws the reader's mind back to Genesis 1 because that's creation distinction language male and female showing this goes against the very design for sex now a common objection to even using the Book of Leviticus Leviticus 18 Leviticus 20 to show that this prohibits pursuing same-sex relations Is that the New Testament clearly teaches we don't follow the law.

So a popular rebuttal that I've heard over and over again is okay well if you think that's true then why are you wearing a shirt with two types of fabric in it and why do you eat pork you're a hypocrite read your Bible now I've always actually found that rort pretty clever if I was not a Christian I would probably use it because it ends an argument pretty quickly because I'll be honest a lot of Christians don't know their Bibles like they should.

But you got to do something with that that's that's a fair critique they are correct we don't look to the Book of Leviticus for our understanding we don't follow the law that's we didn't do this like we don't do this like the Jews do so why even mention it when clearly as you walk through ex we walk through Exodus of the last year we said over and over again we live in the New Covenant of Christ we're not under the law it's helpful to mention these two verses.

For three reasons first it clearly shows the Jewish people believe this was sin it's unmistakable even even Scholars that that seek to legitimize samesex relationship ship will say no it's very clear that in Judaism they understood this to be sinful second the text is talking about consensual homosexual sex this is not rape this is not power and balance this is talking about consensual homosexual relations third the Hebrew word used in these passages in Leviticus 1820 becomes Central to interpreting two passages in the New Testament and we're we're going to go there.

Now 1 Corinthians 6 1 Timothy 1 now these like other writings of Paul other parts of the Scripture it's a it's got a big list of sins and the middle of this is homosexuality so First Corinthians 6 or do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God do not be deceived neither the sexually immoral nor idolators nor adulterers nor men who practice homosexuality nor thieves nor the greedy nor drunkards nor reelers nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of.

God then in 1 Timothy again now we know that the law is good if one uses it lawfully understand this the law is not laid down for the just but for the Lawless and disobedient for the ungodly and sinners for the Unholy and profane for those who strike their fathers and mothers for murderers the sexually immoral men who practice homosexuality enslavers liars perjurers and whatever else is contrary to sound Doctrine so in 1 Corinthians 6 homosexuality is translated from two Greek words Maloy and our syoy time.

So two Greek words in 1 Timothy 1 it just uses our syoy time now this is why this is really important I know we're in the weeds you guys but this is it's really important to understand this when you're trying to understand Greek and Hebrew and how it's used you have to look at the immediate context of the bi the Bible book that it's written in the context of its use in other books of the Bible and then you look outside the Bible at other Greek and Hebrew historical documents.

See how that word is being used and when you do a Greek word study on our Senai what you will see is there's not one single use outside the Bible you cannot find one Greek historical document that uses this word nowhere which begs the question okay then what does it mean when you break it apart you have arson and qu it literally means betters of men but more importantly when you look at Leviticus 18 and Leviticus 20 and you look at what's called the septu which is the Greek translation of the original Hebrew.

If you look at that you're going to see that in Leviticus and the Greek translation when it talks about homosexuality the word for it is arenos and cotin which means Paul made up a word that's what he did he took the language of Leviticus brought it into 1 Corinthians and Timothy put it together our syy time and anyone who is familiar with the Old Testament who was receiving those letters would have immediately understood what he was doing that he was bringing in the morality of the Holy that part of the Holiness code in The Book of Leviticus to show this is something that should not be practiced.

Listen even even the scholars that believe that homosexuality is is legitimate form of love and sex they're going to agree on that point and say yeah you can't get around it it's very clear that's what Paul is doing and some of them will go on to say but we know better now and they appeal to an authority of our own authority not the authority of the Scriptures but it's almost universally understood that's exactly what Paul's doing now that brings us to what I think is the most definitive text in the Bible on homosexuality and that is the Book of Romans chapter 1 we were here last week and we're going to be here again starting.

In verse 24 it says therefore God gave them up in the lust of their heart to impurity to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves because they exchange the truth about God for a lie and worship and serve the creature rather than the Creator who is blessed forever amen so we looked at this last week that we as Humanity exchange the truth about God for a lie that we worship created things we worship idols and the place of God and when we reject.

God for created things God says continue in your rebellion and it gives us in and we pursue that all the way to an exchange of the natural design of sex for the unnatural use of sex and homosexuality and that's clear starting at verse 26 for this reason God gave them up to dishonorable passions for their women exchanged natural relations for those that are contrary to Nature see that that when you follow idolatry and are given into to your sexual Pursuits it will ultimate result in this women exchanging the natural design of sex.

For unnatural contrary to Nature sex verse 27 and the men likewise gave up natural relations with women and were consumed with passion for one another men committing Shameless acts with men and receiving themselves the due penalty for their error now the the reason why this text is so important especially in this current context is because one of the most popular arguments that tries to legitimize homosexuality from the Bible is an argument that says that what's really happening in the New Testament what's really happening in the New Testament is not a condemnation of the committed and loving same-sex relationships that we.

See nowadays what's being condemned is pasty and pasty which is very prevalent and the Roman Empire men sleeping with teenage boys it's all over the GRE or Roman Empire it was a common practice and what's argued is is that what's really being condemned is that type of abuse but not the loving committed same sex relationships we have now and that argument is indefensible in light of Romans 1 first off it's indefensible for other reasons that I won't get into but Romans 1 is clear.

Because there is not one history historical example of pasty being practiced by women you cannot find it in the Roman Empire older women did not sleep with teenage girls that did not happen so that's not what's being condemned here at all it's a broad condemnation of homosexuality not a specific condemnation of a type of homosexuality so it's clear from the Old Testament to the New Testament the teaching is consistent that homosexuality is against the very design for sex which is man woman in the confines of marriage biblically there are no same-sex relationships that honor.

God and there's not one example of a samesex relationship in the Bible That's seen as honorable now if you want to argue that there is no God if you if you want to be an atheist and argue that that there is no God and that there's no purpose there's no such thing as meaning that this is all the result of cosmic chance and we're all creating what we want in front of us and nothing really matters so yeah homosexuality should be fair game it happens in nature right like what.

If you if you want to make that argument that because there's no purpose and no meaning and there's no God I think you can be intellectually consistent and do that I would want to argue with you about some other things this will be one of the last things I want to talk about I want to walk you through theological argument to help you see that it's mathematically impossible to believe that this is all the result of cosmic chance but you can be intellectually consistent and be an atheist and argue.

For this but you cannot argue that there is a Christian God that condones homosexuality it is impossible you cannot do it it is intellectually inconsistent to do so and that's very important to establish I know it took a lot to get here but I that's very important to establish out the gate so that we can understand and engage with some of the different arguments that are made in our culture the Bible does not condone this so that's a lot and I I hear the critique of those who don't follow Christ.

For those don't I I I hear the critique when they say that what you're saying is too much to tell someone that they would have to abstain from their desires to pursue chasti to not give in to what feels normal and right to them that's wrong like I've heard the arguments sexual desire is too strong and to tell someone that they can't engage in this is harmful I had a psychology professor in college who called out all the Christians in the room and he called all the Christians in the room and he just he said y'all don't get it sexual drive is too strong of a psychological drive to tell someone that they can't pursue.

This is wrong I've heard that argument that if you understood if you understood what they were going through if you understood the experience if you understood this and how hard it is you wouldn't tell someone not to pursue this said you certainly wouldn't speak so harshly about them that critique has weighed heavily upon me for years and that critique has weighed heavily upon me the last couple of months and that's when God started to lead me to tell you a bit of my own story I became a Christian.

When I was 17 years old and about a year after following Christ I came to grips with the reality that I didn't just struggle with sinful heterosexual lust but that I also struggle with sinful same-sex attraction and at 18 years old as a new Christian I didn't know what to do with that I I didn't know what to to do with this reality that I could no longer deny now when I say that I struggle with same seex attraction that a lot of people have theories on about how all this comes about some will say.

Well they must have been the result of abuse growing up or this must have been uh you must have had an overbearing mother which is not true or that maybe you you were born this way I'll get into more of the Nuance of that next week but I can speak very practically from my own experience where I think this began cuz it's not something I knew when I was seven it began and it kind of formed through years of Internet pornography.

So I came of age probably at the worst time to come of age so when I was uh in the fourth grade we got our first computer in the house when I was in the fifth grade we got dialup internet when I was in the sixth grade we got broadband internet it happened so quickly and if you're around my age I'm 35 if you're around my age 30 to 40 years old and you're a guy you probably have the exact same story story I've hardly met any guy that doesn't have this story.

But at 10 years old I started to look at pornography until I was 18 years old when God freed me from it and in that time period something just shifted in my sinful nature and in high school I started to notice this this creeping desire and I was confused this was in the mid early 2000s and I didn't know to I mean back then South in South Carolina no one was talking about LGBT stuff that wasn't even a phrase that was thrown around in this area and I was confused I didn't know what to do with this that I had this heterosexual Temptations and I like girls.

But also had the same sex attraction attraction that was lingering and I didn't know what to do with that then I became a Christian and I started to understand what the Bible says on this and I started to understand sin and I was like okay by the time I was about a freshman in college I was like I can't deny this anymore this is a reality but I'm never going to talk about it at that point I felt called to Ministry felt called to be a pastor and I I was had some maybe had some unbiblical ideas of what that would mean.

If people found out about this but I'll say very clearly there's a difference between samesex attraction and pursuing it one is Temptation one is disqualifying but I didn't know what to do with it and I was scared and to be honest I've been around Christians long enough to hear some very harsh language I heard the word so many times that I was like I'm not talking to anyone about this ever and that was my goal and for the next few years I continued to just stay quiet to never say anything.

And then going into my senior year the summer before my senior year I was a part of a college Ministry and in this college Ministry I was leading discipling a room full of guys and we were I was teaching them the Bible and I taught them 1 John 1: 7 but if we walk in the light as he is in the light we have fellowship with one another and the blood of his son Jesus cleanses us of all sin same thing I've taught here and I taught them that and I watched each one of them confess sin and it was beautiful and I felt like a hypocrite and I could not live under the weight.

Of that hypocrisy any longer I could not preach and not practice I couldn't do it and I said if I'm going to believe the Gospel and I'm going to believe this I'm I'm actually going to believe what I'm saying and that is when I began to finally walk in the light and I found a dear brother and I I told him it's the first person I talked to I told him and he just he said thank you so much for telling me and he gave me the Gospel and he gave me Grace he pointed me to.

Jesus and then later that summer I talked to two other guys two brothers in Christ and I listened to one of them after I done telling me this telling him this listen to one of them articulate almost the exact same story that I have and I realized I'm not alone and I continue to walk in the light I contined to walk with other Christians I saw God use this I got the disciple guys where this is exclusively was their struggle and as I started to walk with other brothers in Christ I was talking with my mentor back home Andy told him this he acted like a Christian in fact I just go on to say.

This everyone I've ever talked about this has acted like a Christian the Church is a wonderful place to figure this out I talked to Andy and Andy said hey man I I'm proud of you but you're getting serious with Anna and you're going to have to tell her before you get engaged and I was like what I don't like that but I I listen to his counsel and obeyed it and I it's the hardest thing I've ever had to do in.

First semester towards the end of senior year I sat Anna down and I looked at her and for 20 minutes through tears stumbling all over my words I just said I I've begged God to take this and he hasn't and that might be the case for the rest of my life I may struggle with samex attaction for the rest of my life and if you marry me you need to know that and they had been preparing me for this and and talking like.

Listen she might need some time she might need a couple of weeks that's fine it's a lot to absorb and she was patient she let me finish and when I got done she looked at me and she said I love you and I want to marry you this does not keep me from wanting to marry you and we'll have to talk about it but I love you and I'm man and I put a ring on it two weeks later find you someone whom you can bear your soul to who doesn't Flinch who acts like a Christian that's and that's that's.

For romantic love that's also for Christian friendship that where you can bear your soul and they don't Flinch for a moment that's what Christian supposed to do and over the years I've continued to walk in the light never publicly moved to Louisville went to Seminary was part of a Church up there walked with other Christians there had accountability had pastors who knew about this came back down here same thing here with our pastors people I've been in community group with people I've been recovery groups with have continued to walk in the light and the Church is a wonderful place to do that.

But when people say if you only knew what it was like I do I do know what it's like I know what it's like to beg God to take it away to plead with God to take it away Theus that is the that that was the Genesis that was the beginning of why I wrote I Trust You Lord that came right out that first verse comes directly out of this when I wrote I feel the stain of darkness and my sin a headd in voice recounting all my shame I know what it's like to feel that shame I know what it's like to have the enemy come in and Whisper things recounting it I've confessed.

His work and Glory the power of His name but the path of life seems like it has no end I've confessed the Gospel I pray in the name of Jesus take it and he said no and the path to Eternity just feels so long I know what that's like you know who else knew what you know who else knew what that was like if Apostle Paul Paul for different reasons understood this he knew what it was like to beg God to beg.

Jesus to take something away when you get to 2 Corinthians CH 12 there's a thorn and the flesh we don't know what that thorn is for Paul we don't know if it's something physical or it's something spiritual if it's sin we don't know what it is but it's afflicting him and in 2 Corinthians 12 he says so to keep me from being conceited because of the surpassing greatness of the revelations a thorn was given me in the flesh a messenger of Satan to harass me to keep me from being from becoming conceited three times I pleaded with the.

Lord about this that it should leave me he pleads I know what that's like I know it's like to plead and ask God Jesus this is sin will you take it will you take it will you take it and Paul is pleading with the Lord he's pleading with Christ and this is what Jesus says that in verse 9 but he said to me my grace is sufficient for you for my power is made perfect in weakness I've pleaded with Jesus you know what he said my grace is enough my grace is sufficient and my power is made perfect in your weakness and Paul responds.

Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses so that the power of Christ May rest upon me and that's why I'm doing this today this isn't walking in the light I've done that for over a decade but a couple of months ago I was in a doctoral class and I just started to God started to just press into this and what he was saying was it's time it's time for my power to make perfect in your weakness and I was like I I went home and told Anna she's like.

But we prayed for weeks and realized this is exactly what God wants to do that it is time we had fears wrapped in all of this some of them completely irrational some of them more based in reality some of our biggest fears was our kids this is not something they need to know about and we certainly didn't want anyone saying anything harsh or ugly or we didn't want any other kids in the Church to might go up and say something to them we'll have the conversations one day.

When they're ready but we were obedient to the Lord we just said it's time and I think it's time for a few reasons the first is that some of you struggle with same sex sex attraction and you aren't walking in the light some of you struggle with same-sex desires and and you're living in darkness and you're not alone you're not alone some of you are struggling with this maybe you're looking at pornography maybe you're even thinking about engaging in same-sex relationships and I want to tell you that my door is open my door is open to talk you're not alone and there are other Christians in our Church that struggle with this and a few.

Of them have given me their names and taken a brave step so that you can go and talk to them too but Katie Freeman my sister Jordan Sarat my brother also know what it's like to struggle with same seex attraction and choose Jesus is better you're not alone and we're ready for you we're ready to talk to cry but you got to take a leap of faith and you got to step into the light the second reason is that there are people in this city that are pursuing same-sex desires and it is never going to satisfy them it's never going to satisfy them I don't know what's going to happen with the sermon it's going.

To go online I have no idea about a month ago brother of mine said just you need to stop worrying about this and I made a decision right then and there that I was going to stop worrying about it I don't know what's going to happen let me tell you something we're in Casey I don't know if you noticed that Casey is becoming a more gay friendly part of town you can go up and down the Avenues you can see pride flags.

And if this Church gets to be a hospital for the broken which is what Jesus wants his Church to be if it gets to be a hospital for those who are working through sexual Brokenness and they want to come in here and figure this out together Praise Jesus that's what our Church should be and that's what our Church is doesn't matter what you struggle with this Church is a safe place to be able to figure this out together to be able to expose sin and experience the goodness of his grace and his mercy and his kindness and forgiveness this Church is a wonderful place to be to figure that out together no matter what you.

Are struggling with but if you are struggling with same seex attraction I want you to hear something very clearly the most important truth I can say to you today is that if you belong to Jesus your same seex attraction does not define you if you belong to Jesus your same seex attraction does not define you your sin does not define you your savior does I left out a very important part of 1 Corinthians 6 for a reason so let me finish it.

So you can hear this in verse 9 it says or do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God do not be deceived neither the sexually immoral nor idolators nor adulterers nor men who practice homosexuality nor thieves nor the greedy nor drunkards nor revelers nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God verse 11 and such were some of you such were some of you such were some of us that if you belong to Christ you are defined by him that is not who you are that is who you were and he goes on to say.

But you were washed you were Sanctified you are justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the spirit of our God that when you come to Christ you bring your sin and your Brokenness and even your disordered desires and you lay them before the cross and he washes Us by the renewal of his blood that he puts the Holy Spirit in our lives and sanctifies US putting the old person to death and renewing us every day he justifies us which means that.

When God the Father looks upon me he doesn't see my disordered desires he sees the perfect righteousness spotlessness perfect record of Christ that's the truth of the Gospel and if you are a Christian you're not defined by your sin you defined by your savior and if you don't know Christ you can be you can be defined by the goodness of the Gospel and you don't have to be defined by your sin but that means you've got to come to him in faith and you got to submit all of your desires before him I'll close with this Rosaria Butterfield who I think is one of the biggest gifts to the Church in this Arena she was.

A professor at Syracuse she taught feminist queer Theory and she was a lesbian and she met Jesus and left that lifestyle behind you'll hear more about her next week but she says Temptation patterns linger but they do not rule your life anymore and they do not define you Temptation patterns are Outsiders to your true nature in Christ they don't co- with Christ even as they remain I've asked God and I'll continue to ask God to take it and for the rest of my life his answer may be no that my grace is sufficient and my power is made perfect in your weakness.

But that's not my true nature Christ is and though they linger Christ remains and that truth will continue into eternity so brothers and sisters some of you need to take a leap of faith maybe that's talking to me maybe that's talking to someone else in your group some of you need to take a leap and experience the goodness of fellowship and freedom that's found in the Gospel and some of you need to believe in Jesus and need to see that our savior is better than anything this world has to offer and that includes disordered desires we pray Heavenly.

Father we thank you for the good news of the Gospel that saves us that saved me that sets us apart to worship and Delight in you I'm thankful that your grace is sufficient your power is made perfect in our weaknesses we will boast all the more in our weaknesses because that is where your wonderful Gospel is made beautiful so Heavenly Father there are undoubtedly people in this room that are scared there are undoubtedly people in this room that are afraid to talk may you lift that fear and give them Faith to step forward in Freedom and in faith and in trusting you and I pray.

If there's anyone here that is not convinced I pray there's anyone here that does not believe what the Scriptures has to say on this God I pray that you would soften their heart towards truth even when it is difficult Lord help us we love you in Jesus name amen.

Examples of Judgment (Jude 5-7)

Use this guide to help your group discussion as you meet this week.

Examples of Judgment (Jude 5-7)

Chet Phillips

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Transcript

Grab your Bibles, go to the book of Jude. It is second to last book in the Bible. So if you go to the back of your Bible, run past Revelation, you'll find Jude. It's a very short book. It's on page 594. If you have one of the blue Bibles that's tucked down in front of you.

If you don't own a Bible, take that Bible home with you. It's our gift to you. My name is Chet. I'm one of the pastors here. I have been on a seven-week sabbatical. I'm very grateful for the opportunity to have been able to go on a sabbatical.

We started this church about 10 years ago, and it was nice to get to take a break this summer and rest and read and hang out with my family and travel a little bit. And I am thankful to be back. And so we are in the book of Jude. Excited to be back this morning. So it's that person over there.

And we're looking at Jude. Jude is one of the brothers of Jesus, and he is Jewish. And that's not surprising because all the authors of the Bible are Jewish except for maybe Luke. And we still think he probably was Jewish. But Jude is very Jewish in the way he writes.

And he seems to be writing to a Jewish audience, but it's a very Jewish book. Kind of like eating matzo ball soup at a bar mitzvah. It's just very Jewish. Which is fine. It just throws us a little bit. We have to do a little more work to understand what he's doing because he makes some references.

We're actually going to look at three stories he references today in verses 5 through 7 that, for his Jewish audience, auto-populated a lot of information. Brought, carried with it a lot of stories that they had told over and over again. They're in our Old Testament, but they're also, these stories are referenced often in other Jewish literature, in other Jewish historical books. So the three he brings together are often paired together either in two or three in the Midrash of the Sanhedrin. It's in Jubilees. It's in Maccabees.

It's in the Sirach. Like, it's all over their other historical books, and he brings them together. And so for his hearers, these examples he gives would have just been boom, boom, boom, and brought in all this information. But for us, it kind of makes us pause a little bit to make sure we understand what the illustration is doing, what the example is doing, so that we can move forward. I was talking to Raz Bradley, one of our other pastors, about a week ago, and I made the comment that we'd leave his John Hancock on something. And then I paused, because he's Australian.

I said, do you know what that is? Do you know what John Hancock is? He said, it's a financial institution. And I was like, maybe. I don't know that, but that's not what I was talking about. John Hancock is one of our founding fathers.

He signed his name as big as he possibly could on the Declaration of Independence so that the king could see it from far off. So we refer to your signature as your John Hancock. Australians have a queen. We have a Declaration of Independence, so they don't know about John Hancock. And so what meant to add information and move the conversation along completely stalled the conversation out. So I was even asking him, is there like an Australian equivalent?

Did they say, like, put your Billy Beru on this or something? He was like, no. And I was like, oh, it's sad. So there's an opening, though, for him to make some Australian slang if he wants to. They have slang words for everything. But it was meant to help.

It slowed us down, and that's kind of what's going to happen this morning. These three examples, let's read them real quick, verses 5 through 7. Jude says, Now I want to remind you, although you once fully knew it, that Jesus, who saved a people out of the land of Egypt, afterward destroyed those who did not believe. That's his first quick example. And the angels, who did not stay within their own position of authority but left their proper dwelling, he has kept in eternal chains under gloomy darkness until the judgment of the great day. Second example.

Third one. Just as Sodom and Gomorrah and the surrounding cities, which likewise indulged in sexual immorality and pursued a natural desire, serve as an example by undergoing a punishment of eternal fire. Third one. Now, for his Jewish hearers, that brings so much information, they understand exactly what he's talking about. And for some of us, maybe we do, but maybe not. So we're going to walk through this a little bit slower than I think Jude intended.

We're going to study each one of these to make sure we understand what this information should have brought to mind. But then we're going to have to zoom out so that we don't miss what he meant. Because each one of these was supposed to carry information and be helpful. Like if, I remember one time describing to somebody they asked what Moe's was, and I said it's like Subway for burritos. Which is true. Most people have been to a Subway that maybe hadn't been to a Moe's.

So if I asked you what Blaze was, you might say it's a Moe's for pizza. Or like Chipotle, it's like a Moe's for people who hate chips. Or Chipotle's a Moe's for people who have too much money. Chipotle's a Moe's for people who think they're better than me. Stuff like that. Just something that, you know, helps them quickly wrap their head around what you're talking about.

But that doesn't work for us. So we're going to pause. We're going to walk through it. And then we're going to have to zoom out. So let's pray for our time.

And let's get in. Lord, we ask that you would help us to understand the point that Jude is making. And Lord, we pray that you would help us to, as we study this, to see you more clearly. To see your greatness. Your exaltation. Your sovereign kingship over all creation.

Help us to see our sin in light of your holiness. So that we might respond accordingly. We ask for the help of your spirit. As we study your word. In Jesus' name. Amen.

We're going to start in verse 3 so that we have some context. This is what we looked at last week. Beloved, although I was very eager to write to you about our common salvation. So that means he's writing to those who he sees as believers. These are other Christians. They have salvation as well as he does.

I found it necessary to write appealing to you to contend for the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints. So he says, I'm writing to Christians, but there's some contention over the faith. Meaning that there's some people pulling in a wrong direction. So I need y'all to hold fast. I need you to hold to what is true. That's the point of this letter.

And he's going to tell us why. For certain people have crept in unnoticed. Okay. So what he's saying now is, I'm writing this to all of you. Like I'm writing into a group of people. I specifically want the genuine Christians to hear what I'm talking about.

And I want you to be aware that there are those among you who are not genuine Christians. So this just got way more suspicious group of people. For all those who truly love our nation, let it be known there are spies in this room. That's kind of what he's doing. So immediately you go, start cutting your eyes at people.

And if you're a spy, you do it enough to look like their face. Anyway, that's what he's doing. So he says they've crept in unnoticed. And now I want you to see three things that he's going to say about them. Because they pertain to the illustrations, the examples he's about to give us. Who long ago, this is the first one, were designated for this condemnation.

So he says they were designated for this condemnation. Then he tells what they've been doing. Ungodly people who pervert the grace of our God into sensuality. It's the first thing they're doing. And deny our only master and Lord Jesus Christ. So, pervert the grace of our God into sensuality.

Grace is that Jesus Christ has paid the debt of all those who believe in him. And he offers forgiveness for sin. Meaning that the sin is real, heinous, has to be paid for. But he willingly, graciously pays our debt so that if we trust in him, we can be saved. That's the grace. That's the gospel.

What he's saying is they're taking that grace and they're twisting it. They're perverting it to somehow say, well, that means sin must not be that big a deal. If he's so forgiving, if he's so kind, they're either saying that sin's not that big a deal. Like if someone gave you a Rolls Royce and I said they gave it to you for free and you said yes. I said, well, that must mean Rolls Royce are cheap. That's what they're doing.

They're twisting this. Say it must not be that big a deal. Or they're saying, don't we just highlight how good he is by getting to, if we pursue these things, if we go this direction. It just shows how wonderful and how gracious he is. They're somehow perverting his grace into sensuality. Sensuality is a devotion to their senses.

It's an indulgence in fleshly desires. Take what you want and get it. Which I think you need to see that's applicable to us. Because if there's one thing we're told as Americans is figure out what you want and go get it. Don't hold back. Indulge.

We celebrate words like decadence. We put it on our chocolate. We pursue these things that it's going to be an experience. It's going to be something to delight in, something to enjoy. And sensuality specifically often, because of how humanity works and how sin works, works its way towards sexual sin or shows up a lot in sexual sin. And we're going to see that as we go through these examples.

So that's the first thing is that they receive condemnation. The first thing that they're doing is they're perverting grace into sensuality. And second thing they're doing is denying our only master and Lord Jesus Christ. So they're rejecting the authority of Christ. Being their own authority. Making their own decisions.

Choosing what's right and wrong on their own. It goes right back to the garden. That's what Adam and Eve did. They're going to be the ones who are the arbiters over right and wrong. They're going to be their own authority. They're going to choose.

She says that's what they're doing. The reason that's applicable to the verses we're looking at today is that each one of these examples is going to touch on those three things. It's going to highlight those three things. It's an example of those three things. It's an example of a rejection of the authority of God. Pursuit of sensuality, specifically sexual sin.

And condemnation or clear examples of judgment. Each one of the examples he gives that he says, I want to remind you those three things. Rejection of the authority of God. Pursuit of sexual sin. Condemnation. So what he's saying is, we've done this before.

This isn't our first time that this has been what we were supposed to pursue. What people have come in and said is okay. It's not the first time we've headed this track. So, we're going to walk through the examples. We're going to highlight those things to make sure we understand them. And then we're going to try to catch his main point here.

So, wilderness generation. He says, now I want to remind you, although you once fully knew it, that Jesus, who saved the people out of the land of Egypt, afterward destroyed those who did not believe. Now, for us, we might stumble over the fact that he says, Jesus did that. Because if you were in Sunday school, as a little kid, or in Kid City, and they said, who led the Israelites out of Egypt? And you raised your sticky little hand. Because you're a child and they're always sticky for some reason.

The two answers that would be most acceptable would be Moses, God. You can get away with Jesus. Maybe. Your teacher would go, well, I mean, kind of. And you would say, have you not read Jude? You see, the New Testament understanding, as it looks at the Old Testament, is not that the God in the Old Testament is somehow different.

That somehow the God of the Old Testament is different from the New Testament God. That's not how this works. So we're told that Jesus is the image of the invisible God. And so we often can say things like, this shows us, in the person of Christ, what God the Father is like. How kind He is. How merciful He is.

How He would respond to you in your sin. But the New Testament authors go, yes. And it also shows us what Jesus was like as He dealt with the people in Exodus. That they are not somehow different. That this is the same God who's ruled since eternity past. So, He says, I want to remind you that Jesus, after the Exodus, destroyed a generation.

And for the Jewish people, they know exactly what He's talking about. So we're going to show another place in the New Testament, where Paul refers to this generation, but he gives a little more detail. So it's in 1 Corinthians 10. You can turn there, or it'll be on the screens. Paul's doing the same thing. He says, now, these things took place as examples for us, that we might not desire evil as they did.

So one of the things that both Paul and Jude agree on, is you should look at this example, and see how it worked out for them. I'm the middle of three brothers. My oldest brother was a senior in high school when I was a freshman in high school. So through middle school and high school, I watched him as an example of how to interact with my parents. More accurately, as an example of how not to interact with my parents. So there were often times where I watched him, and I thought, oh, don't say that in a conversation.

That's not the way to argue. You actually learned there was no arguing with my father. It just wasted everybody's time. So this is my role in arguments with my father going through high school. Yes, sir. Yes, sir.

Yes, sir. To the point that at one point he said, are you just saying, yes, sir, sir, I'll quit talking and you can leave? No, sir. He stared me down after that. It's hard to fuss at somebody who's being respectful. That's what Paul is saying.

That's what Jude is saying. It's, hey, look at this generation. They've lived this out in front of us. See how it worked out for them. That's what he's saying. So he says, verse 7, do not be idolaters as some of them were.

As it is written, the people sat down to eat and drink and rose up to play. Now that's a quote from Exodus 32. We're going to study through the book of Exodus later this year. But the Israelite people were captives. They were slaves in the land of Egypt. Moses goes.

He sings a really catchy song. God, that's not true, but anyway. God, through plagues, drives the Israelites out. He puts condemnation on the Egyptians. He brings the Israelites out. And he's going to take them to the promised land.

They hit the wilderness. And they're supposed to go from Egypt. And they cross the Red Sea. They're going to go to the wilderness. And they're going to go to the promised land. The problem is, they march over there.

It doesn't take that long. And they get to the edge of the promised land. And they say, nope, not going to work. God brought us here to die. So then they just do circles in the wilderness until an entire generation is gone.

And then just a handful that saw Egypt get to go into the promised land. An entire generation rejects God. But there's little story after little story of how they do that as they wander the wilderness. This first one is Moses has just gone to go get the Ten Commandments. While he's gone, the elders go to his brother and say, we don't know what happened to Moses. So let's make an idol.

They make a golden calf. Make it with their hands. And then Aaron says, this is the God who brought you out of the land of Egypt. And nobody goes, didn't we just make this one? Moses comes down. They're having, I mean, it's become a debaucherous party at this point.

And he says, whoever's with me, let's go. The Levites get swords, kill 3,000 people. They regain order. Moses grinds the golden calf up, pours it in the water and makes him drink it. 3,000 died that day because of idolatry. Verse 8, we must not indulge in sexual immorality as some of them did.

And 23,000 fell in a single day. This is the most that die at one time. Because they got close to the land of Midian. They start worshiping Baal. They start bringing Midianite women into now a big debaucherous party again, sleeping with them. The way that this plague is staved off is Phineas, who's the son of one of the high priests, goes into a tent, throws a spear through a man and a woman.

One throw gets both of them because they were indulging in sexual sin. And that stops the plague. But 23,000 already fell as they're rebelling against God. He keeps going. He says, we must not put Christ to the test again. Paul knows the same thing Jude knows, which is that's Jesus partaking in all of this, overseeing all of this, even in the Old Testament.

We must put Christ to the test as some of them did and were destroyed by serpents. They began to grumble and argue against God and venomous snakes come into the camp. Nor grumble as some of them did and were destroyed by the destroyer. I think that is referring to Korah's rebellion, where actually the ground opens up. He lines them up. Moses says, if y'all are right, we'll go with you.

But if I'm right, let something different happen that nobody's ever seen before. May the ground swallow you. And it splits open and swallows them. Verse 11. Now these things happened to them as an example, but they were written down for our instruction on whom the end of the ages has come.

That's what Jude's saying. Jude's talking to a Jewish group of believers. He says, you know the wilderness generation, right? They thought they could reject the authority of Jesus. They thought they could pursue sexual sin. And they were wrong.

That's his first example. Second example. If you were like, well, that was a lot to take in. Welcome to the second example. And the angels who did not stay within their own position of authority, but left their proper dwelling. He has kept in eternal chains under gloomy darkness until the judgment of the great day.

Now, it's understood in Christian theology, as we understand our Bibles, that there were angels that rejected the authority of God. And that is where we have demonic spiritual forces. It does not seem that here he would be talking about all of the angels that rejected the authority of God, but a specific group. And the reason why it would be a specific group, the evidence is really threefold in the text before I explain the story. One is he specifically is talking about sexual sin, even to the point that his next thing he says, they likewise indulged in sexual sin. So it seems like this is involving sexual sin as well.

Well, not all demonic forces are under chains of gloomy darkness awaiting the punishment of the great day. Jesus interacts with demonic forces in the New Testament, so they can't all be bound waiting for punishment. So it seems like it's a specific thing that it's referring to. He also, in this letter, refers to First Enoch. First Enoch is a historical Jewish book. He refers to some prophecy out of it.

It was not held as being divinely authored the way the Old Testament was. They had separate books that they understood to be divinely authored. Then they had ones that were like history books that they respected, but they did not treat at the same authority level. Enoch's over there. But Enoch specifically focuses on this story that's in Genesis chapter 6 in our Bibles.

So let's read it. Genesis 6, verses 1 through 4. Now, when man began to multiply on the face of the land and daughters were born to them, the sons of God saw that the daughters of man were attractive. Okay. Sons of God here would be referring to angelic beings, spiritual beings. It's used this way in the book of Job several times, and it's specifically compared to daughters of men, sons of God.

So it's a separate thing. Also, you'll see that they have children, and it's not normal children. So it says, They saw they were attractive, and they took as their wives any they chose. Then the Lord said, My spirit shall not abide in man forever, for he is flesh. His days shall be 120 years. Meaning that the sons of God would be living forever, but their children can't because they're paired with flesh.

Then it says, The Nephilim, which is a word that was written in Hebrew, translated to Latin, and then just brought over to English, but it just means the giants. The Nephilim were on the earth in those days, and also afterward, when the sons of God came in to the daughters of man, and they bore children to them. These were the mighty men who were of old, the men of renown. It immediately goes into the story of Noah and the judgment of the earth and the wickedness. Enoch, first Enoch, takes that section of Genesis, expounds on it. Again, it's not scriptural, so if you want to go read it, read it as not scripture.

It's not authoritative the same way the scriptures are, and the Jewish people understand that, but it's a historical book. And it highlights more the spiritual aspect of the judgment that the angels received. So, angels reject their position of authority. If you go back to verse 6 on the slides, the angels who do not stay in their own position of authority, they had a position, they had a place, they had a right spot, they were supposed to relate to the Lord. They reject it. They jump out of it, and then they pursue sexual sin, and they're judged.

It says they're bound in chains, kept in eternal chains under gloomy darkness until the judgment of the great day. 2 Peter refers to this as well, the same thing that took place. So, he's highlighting the same things. Angelic beings. First, it was the people of Israel, the people who were supposed to be the ones God saved, then it's angelic beings that are smarter, more powerful, more capable than us. They tried the same thing.

It also did not work out for them. Now, quick pause. For some of us, you're like, oh yeah, I kind of remember that story. For others, you're saying, do what now? We do believe this is true. We believe this is reality.

I'll give you a couple of things to help you if you're trying to think through this, and I'm also willing to have more conversations, follow-up conversations. I also know, without even talking to him, that Spencer would love to talk to you about this also. We have a spiritual faith. So sometimes, we wrap our head around things like, Jesus is the Son of God. He was born of a virgin. He died in the place for our sins.

He died at substituciary sacrificial atonement for us. He swapped places with us. That he rose from the dead. That he ascended into heaven. That he'll return. We wrap our head around that, and then we go, wait, angels made children with women?

Nah. And it's like, well, actually, we have a whole spiritual faith. We believe in things that we can't see. Also, it's not a major point of doctrine. It's not like everything's built off of this one thing. That's the amount of, everything I read is everything that Genesis really says about it.

There's some mention of the Nephilim later, in some of the, 1 Samuel, 2 Samuel, we're in there, but there's not, it's not a main thing. Also, those stories are all over the place. The idea that some sort of gods slept with women, and had super children. And so, some people will look at that and say, see, the Bible's just saying the same thing, as if that means the Bible's made up. But I would argue, that it actually means, the reason why there's rumors of that kind of a story all over the place, is because that actually happened.

That's why it shows up in history, and other mythologies, and those sort of things, is because that idea actually did take place. The vast majority of humans on earth, and throughout history, believe in a spiritual world. It's really just a brand new, Western idea, that only the things we can see and touch are real. So if that helps, it's just an argument from the majority. But if that helps you know, that if you think, the only things that are real, is what you can see and touch and feel, you're the vast majority, minority of all humans.

So, I don't know if that helps or not, but those are a few things, to help you wrap your head around it. But the reason Jude brought it up, was because his hearers knew the story, and they understood what he was talking about. They had rejected authority, they had pursued sexual sin, and they had met condemnation. Third story. Third example. Just as Sodom and Gomorrah, this is verse 7, and the surrounding cities, it was five cities in total, it was in kind of a lower area, and it would have been cities.

So there would have been a whole city, and then some space, and some farmland, and then another city, and then some space, and some farmland. It was a lot of people. Just as Sodom, Gomorrah, and the surrounding cities, which likewise, meaning that's one of the points he's making in all of these, is indulged in sexual immorality, and pursued unnatural desire, serve as an example, by undergoing a punishment of eternal fire. So the story of Sodom and Gomorrah, is that God comes to Abraham, this is in Genesis 19, comes to Abraham with two angels, he says, we're going to go check out the city, of Sodom and Gomorrah, we're going to go walk around, because the cry of their wickedness, has risen up to us.

Their harm that they're doing to people, has come to heaven. So we're going to go investigate. These angels go down to the city, Lot sees them, Lot is Abraham's nephew, and Lot says, come stay with me, don't spend the night in the square. Lot thinks, that these angels are in danger. He doesn't know that they're angels, otherwise he would know, that everyone else is in danger, not them. But he says, don't stay out here, come in with me.

He talks them into it, they come into his home. It says, the men of the city surround his house, and say, we want the two men that showed up, we want you to give them to us, so that we may lie with them. And what is the, one of the craziest parts of the story to me, is Lot says, do not do this wickedness, I have two daughters, take them. These men have come under the protection of my household, take my daughters. And they say, no. The angels, strike these men with blindness, and they don't go home.

They stay, still trying to get into the house. And so God says, Sodom and Gomorrah are going to be destroyed. And Sodom and Gomorrah is held up as an example, throughout Jewish history, and the Old Testament, as an example, Ezekiel mentions, they have pride, they have a lack of concern for the poor. Sirach and Maccabees mention arrogance, Maccabees mentions injustice, but the primary example is of sexual sin, specifically homosexuality. So where we saw heterosexual sexual sin, in the wilderness generation, we see in Sodom and Gomorrah, pursuit of homosexuality.

That's actually why he highlights it here. He says, verse 7, indulged in sexual immorality, and pursued unnatural desire. Not just rejecting God's authority, and pursuing sexual sin, but they actually, contrary to nature, that unnatural desire means like strange flesh, that they pursue same-sex pursuits. Now, we believe, that the Bible says, that homosexuality is a sin. And that's good news, because Jesus died for sin. He died to save sinners.

There's actually a reference, in the New Testament, to New Testament believers, who had been practicing homosexuality, but had repented, and are now Christians. It's in 1 Corinthians 6. That this was a thing, that we repent of, just like you would repent of anything else. So, don't hear, this is somehow, the only sin you can't be saved from. We're going to spend some time, talking about this later next year, talking about this idea, but do hear, that it is sin, that we need to be saved from. And so he holds up another example.

God rains down fire, on this entire area. It says that Abraham, walked up and saw, the smoke rising like a furnace, over that whole area of the world. Sodom and Gomorrah, and the surrounding cities, were destroyed. Lot and his two daughters escaped. They rejected God's authority, pursued sexual sin, and were met with condemnation. Now, let's not, because we had to slow down a bit, and our brains didn't automatically give us that information, miss what he's saying.

This is what he says. They serve as an example, by undergoing a punishment, of eternal fire. Jude wants you to see, that they serve as an example, by undergoing a punishment, of eternal fire. That Sodom and Gomorrah, are a picture, of eternally, being destroyed. And that actually, is the reality, for unrepentant sin. Eternal fire. what Jude is saying, he's writing, and he's saying, church family, some people have showed up, who are starting, to deny Jesus, indulge their flesh, and we've, done this, before.

We've, seen this, before. We saw it, in the people of Israel, the ones that God, had just rescued. They rebelled against Jesus, and he destroyed them. We saw this in angels, who, rejected the position, that they had, and God has bound them, in chains of gloomy darkness, until their destruction. We saw this, in pagan cities. It's not like, you can be a part, of a certain group, and this works out for you.

It's not for unbelievers, or it's for believers, or even for angelic beings. This, does not, work. And church family. We live at a time, where these same things, are being promoted, and celebrated. The Bible, where it's not a joke, where it's not derided, is still not held, in esteem, or authority. Not held up, as we should honor God, or submit to him.

The idea, that there's a, a creator, that you are beholden to, is at, minimum backwards, or at most abhorrent. There are people, who are standing, in a similar spot, to where I'm standing, with this open, in front of them, this very morning, who are teaching, that we can only, kind of believe this. I watched, eight minutes, of a 16 minute sermon, and sermon, I'm being fast and loose, with that word, from Greenville, First Baptist Church, that used to be, Southern Baptist, they're not, anymore. And his, his sermon was, the dark side of doctrine. And he said, that people had, religious experiences, spiritual experiences, and that was great.

But then unfortunately, people started writing things down. And as soon as people, wrote stuff down, we had problems, because then some people, thought they were right, and other people were wrong. So there are people, people, who are saying, we don't really have, the authority of God, in any sort of, authoritative way, that we have to, submit to, or beholden to. Right now, culturally, you are told, find your desire, pursue it. To the point, that we are told, find your desire, and if it's your sexual desire, it actually gives you, your identity. humanity. That's who you are.

And for anyone to tell you, not to pursue that, is harmful for you. And there are people, who have snuck in unnoticed, who hold a Bible, and say the same thing. And Jude says, it's not the first time, that's happened. We've played this song before. We've walked this road before. And it leads to condemnation.

Now, part of us, hears the echo of the world around us, and says, it's so unkind, to say this. It's so hurtful to say this. It's so mean to say this, that this is somehow, akin to assault on somebody. How dare we, say this. And I'll agree, this is unkind, and harmful, if, and only if, Jude is wrong. But if there is condemnation, if there is judgment for sin, if Jesus really isn't, to be trifled with, like the wilderness generation, thought he might be, then how dare we not, talk about this.

It is a great kindness, to tell someone, that they are headed, towards destruction. Some of you in this room, because of the onslaught, of the cultural pressure, because of the onslaught, of the clapping chorus, around us. Tim Keller says, that sometimes like, if, if it's raining hard enough, even if you put on a rain jacket, and you have an umbrella, even when you take all that off, you're somehow still wet. And right now, our culture is pouring down, rain in these two categories. Some of you, have started to question, whether or not, you really have to, submit to God everywhere. Some of you have even, started to, twist, and pervert, his grace, to somehow say, well it's good that he's, I'm so thankful he's forgiving, he's gracious, it's okay.

Rather than to hate sin, some of you are, sleeping with your boyfriend, or your girlfriend, you are confessing to your group, that you struggle with pornography, but struggle is not the right word, indulge us. Because there is no fight. You're saying, yeah, my girlfriend and I, we keep, you know, we fall into sin, and it's like, yeah, but you haven't done any of the things, to actually take it seriously, like it might lead you to destruction. Some of you are, pursuing, same sex attraction, or, supporting those that do. Some of us are, acting as if, the authority of God, isn't to be worried about.

And Jude says, I want to remind you, although you once fully knew it, we've tried this before. Romans 2, Paul says this, do you suppose, oh man, that you will escape, the judgment of God? He looks at those, he's writing to, and he says, do you think, that you are exempt, from the judgment of God? That you will escape it? And he says, or, do you presume, on the riches, of his kindness, and forbearance, and patience, not knowing, that God's kindness, is meant to lead you, to repentance. Don't miss that.

He's kind. He's patient. He's loving. So much so, that Jesus went to the cross, to pay for our sin, to absorb wrath, not, to tell us, that there was no wrath. Not to declare, that there was no judgment. We needed shed blood, on our behalf, so that we could withstand, in the great day, hiding behind Christ.

That in the great day, we might proclaim, his glory, and his name, and his grace, not our own. But do not presume, upon that kindness, as if you will somehow, escape judgment. And do not think, for a moment, that because he was willing, to pay for sin, that there was nothing, to be paid for. We do not empty the cross, by indulging in sin. As if it cost nothing, of the son of God, to die on our behalf. But we worship, and we praise.

His kindness, has meant that we would run to him, not away from him. He says, but, because of your hard, and impenitent heart, meaning you don't see your sin, you do not repent, you do not run towards him, in his kindness, you are storing up, wrath for yourself, on the day, of wrath, when God's, righteous judgment, will be revealed. You are storing up, wrath for yourself, on the day of wrath, when God's righteous judgment, will be revealed. There is a day of wrath, there is a day of righteous judgment, and that is why, the gospel is good news. Because you do not have to, stand in your sin, and be condemned, but you can stand, in the cross, of Christ, covered by his blood, paid for, blameless.

And what Jude says, at the end of this, that he's able to keep you, from stumbling, and to present you, blameless, before the presence of his glory, with great joy. That that's able to happen, because of the work, of the cross. That is our hope. But some of us, need to see what Jude just said, you need to see this. People have tried, to belittle, and trifle with Jesus, before. There was a whole generation, that were destroyed.

You need to see, venomous snakes, entering a camp. You need to see, the ground opening up. You need to wrap your head, around that. You need to see, plague pouring through, and killing 23,000 people, in one day, as God's righteous judgment. Some of us need to see, that angels, who are, have longer lives, more power, more intelligence. They tried this, and they are at, this moment, bound in chains, of gloomy darkness, awaiting that day.

They have not been released, their sentence, has not changed, and they will, face wrath. And we stand, in between that moment, and the great day, with a hope, that's held out for us, in Christ. Some of us need to see, the smoke rising like a furnace, from Sodom and Gomorrah. Because it stands, as an example, of eternal punishment. And some of us, need to see that, so we never see, eternal punishment. Do not, undo the cross, or pervert the grace of God, to act as if God, does not have wrath, and judgment.

He does. But he is kind, and merciful, and patient, so that, we might have life, in him, to his praise, and to his glory. Let's pray. God, we ask, that right now, through the power of your spirit, that you would bring conviction, that you would help us, to see, sin, and all of its heinousness, that for those of us, who are, rejecting your authority, or pursuing sexual sin, or have not, repent, we have a hard, and unrepentant heart, that Lord, you'd help us, to see your riches, of kindness, and you'd help us, to see your wrath, and judgment. Lord, we ask for your Holy Spirit, to work, and to have people, to call out, to you for salvation, and to celebrate, the goodness of the gospel.

We ask this, in Jesus name. Amen. The band's, going to come back up, and in a moment, as a church family, we're going to celebrate, that Jesus Christ, died to save sinners. That there is hope, for us in our sin. We're going to, partake in communion, which Jesus, on his, night before he died, he took bread, and he broke it, and he said, this is my body, broken for you. He says, this is my blood, of a new covenant, poured out for you, for the forgiveness, of sins, and so we, when we gather, we remind ourselves, that we need a savior, we need someone, to stand in our place, we need someone, to rescue us, from a coming wrath, and judgment, and we have, someone who has done so, who has gone before us.

We have those, who have gone before us, to destruction, and we have Jesus, who leads the way, he's gone before us, to life. And so as a church, take a moment, to see judgment, to see the cross, to confess your sin, and then, partake, reminding yourself, that you need the gospel, you need Jesus' work, on your behalf, but you have Jesus' work, on your behalf. If you are not a Christian, this is not for you, but Jesus is. But we don't ask you, to partake in communion, until you are really celebrating, that he has rescued you, out of sin, but you can right now, tell him, Jesus I need you, to save me from my sin, and all that call on his name, will be saved.

There will not be one, who is put to shame, there will not be one, who stands before the king, on that great day, and says, I have trusted in Jesus, and he says, it didn't work. There will not be one, that will, that will, bring disgrace, to the name of Christ, by somehow escaping his salvation, if we call on him. And I would tell you, to call on him this morning.

Hate-Filled Bigots and Hospitality

The Church has gained a reputation over the years as being intolerant, closed-minded, and bigoted. And to be honest, some of it is probably deserved. But what if there was a way to believe faithfully while still loving extravagantly? What if Christians were better known for the openness of their homes than the slogans of their picket signs?

This week's sermon comes with an added Q&A session with one of our Community Group Leaders, Jordan Surratt.

Hate-Filled Bigots and Hospitality

Chet Phillips

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Transcript

Well, good morning. My name is Chet. I'm one of the pastors here. We are in our sixth week, sixth and final week of our Theology of Sex series. I know many of you are thinking, man, I'm about sick and tired of talking about sex. So this is the last week.

We'll be spending any significant amount of time on that. But what we're going to say today really is a culmination of all the things we've said throughout this whole series. So this is more, maybe more than any other series. This series has kind of built off of what we said the previous week. Even the series where we walk just straight through books. This series has been basically we've got to get this concept so we can.

I'm going the wrong way. We've got to get this concept so we can discuss this concept. So we can discuss this concept. And we've kind of just built off of everything we've been saying. And so we're going to tag back to a lot of those ideas today as we talk through this issue. We're going to be discussing homosexuality and how we ought to respond and interact with that from a biblical understanding.

And so before we hop in, we're going to pray and then we're going to get started this morning. God, I pray that you would give us grace as we study your word. That you would help us to be gracious and loving to one another. And that you'd help us to really approach this difficult topic that is highly polarized in our culture. In a manner honoring to you and loving to others. And so God, I just pray that you'd bless us this morning as we as we seek to understand your will for us and your will for for your creation.

So God, we praise you and we thank you in Jesus name. Amen. So just just go with me for a second. Imagine remember back to middle school. For some of you that that's going to take a little more work for others of you. That was a couple of years ago, so it should be pretty easy.

Remember back to middle school and kind of just imagine for a minute that just kind of as as puberty began to hit you, which it hit people in different stages. And some people it was like it attacked them overnight and other people it like dragged it out for years. But just kind of begin to imagine with me for a second where you begin to just your body starts going through changes. So if you're a guy, maybe like your voice starts cracking. So like you're trying to talk and it just does that for no apparent reason whatsoever.

Which makes it really hard to like talk to humans without being made fun of and maybe maybe for girls like there's just maybe your parents began to let you I don't know like shave your legs or wear makeup. I don't know what happens with girls going through through all that. It was hard enough for me on my own. I wasn't trying to learn what was happening with y'all. But like you just you just begin to like the world just starts kind of changing around you.

And so for guys, maybe you spent way too much time looking at your armpits in the mirror to try to see if you were growing any hair like I don't I don't know. But just this stuff begins to change in you and you start realizing it's like in the movie Bambi where everybody gets Twitter painted in the spring. It was like suddenly in middle school all the guys started like you just started noticing the opposite gender. Like there was just this moment where it was just like there are girls here. And like I never really thought about how much that's going to impact the rest of my world. Like there was just kind of these moments.

But just imagine for a minute that when when that began to happen, when you began to have desires, sexual thoughts, when you began to have attraction to people in a whole new way, that it that it was the same gender. But just as that began to happen, you just began to find that I'm not attracted to what it seems like everybody else. Like I'm not I'm not experiencing the world the same way that everyone else is. So when I'm in the locker room changing and they're talking about the opposite gender, like I just I don't connect with that. And and I'm beginning to realize that my whole experience is just a little bit different.

And the amount of questions and confusion that would come along with that to begin to ask him, am I gay? What does that mean? Will I always be like this? Is there a way to to change this? Do I tell people what will they say if I tell them? How will they respond?

What happens to me if I tell people this? What happens to me if this is true? If this continues this way and just the amount of inner turmoil and pain? And confusion that just applies to all of life as you begin to try to just understand your place in the world, because because middle school and high school begin to be that anyway. Like you're trying to figure out who am I? Who am I going to be?

And you're basing that so much off of how people respond to you. So it's really interesting if you're around middle schoolers or high schoolers. They're a different person every time you meet them, because sometimes they're trying to be like, I'm going to be quiet and brooding. See how this works. Or I'm going to try to be a clown. I'm going to try to make everybody laugh and see if that works.

Like there's just this constant, I'll try to be really smart. I'm going to act like I don't understand anything. And you're waiting on your body to try to tell you, like, am I going to get really tall? Am I going to be athletic? Is this, like, what's going to happen here? And then add on top of that, I don't even understand my own sexuality.

And I'm beginning to realize that this puts me in a very small minority among everybody else around me. And then looking into our culture and realizing that it's so absolutely polarized. That on the progressive side, people who would refer to themselves as progressive, they're going to say, you need to just embrace your desire. You just, that's who you are. You found out your identity. You need to pursue that.

That's going to define you. And then on the other side of that, it's like this, maybe people made fun of you. Maybe people talked about you behind your back just based off of your mannerisms or the way you act in certain situations. And you begin to realize that there's not really a middle ground for you when it comes to culture. There's no way to just approach this in a non-polarized way. No way to process it in a non-polarized way.

And so when we begin today to discuss homosexuality, which has become absolutely polarized in our culture, we're talking about real people made in the image of God and loved by God. So absolutely loved by God that he would go to the cross and absolutely in a situation where struggling through. What does it mean to be safe? What does it mean to be me? What does it mean to be loved? What does it mean to exist with this?

And so as we talk about it today, I just want us to realize that we are going to discuss the logical end of it. We are going to discuss what the Bible says about it. But we also have to realize that we're talking about real humans, valuable based off of the fact that they were created in the image of God and that they're loved by him. And so we just want to be able to enter into it, understanding that. Now, the church has existed for over 2,000 years. Some would argue it was when Jesus kind of in Matthew 16 begins to say, I'm going to build my church on this, this proclamation of the gospel and those that proclaim it.

Some would say it specifically happened at Pentecost when the Holy Spirit filled 3,000 people and made them into the church. But it's existed for over 2,000 years and there has been agreement across the board with what the Bible says about homosexuality. Even as the church went Catholic and Protestant and there was Eastern Orthodox and like the church split at different times there, up until the last 30 years, 50 and maybe some really progressive circles, has there ever been any question of what the Bible has said about homosexuality? Now, there have been people who have outright rejected what the Bible has said throughout history and that's one thing.

But we've only recently begun to approach the text and say it doesn't actually say what we've always said it says. And so as we get into this this morning, I want us to realize that what we're going to do, I just want to walk us through what our plan is for today. We're going to lay some groundwork to try to even be able to enter into the conversation. We're going to spend a little bit of time talking about what the New Testament actually says about this and how we ought to understand that and some of the common kind of pushbacks on what the Bible says. And then we're going to spend a good bit of our time just talking to the church and how we ought to respond, how we ought to think and treat people.

But this issue has become massively polarized to the point that there's no way for me to say things in a way that everybody leaves happy. So welcome. It's not going to happen today. Do try to be a couple of caveats. I'm not trying to make any political statements. So if you hear some, that's just because it's become a very political conversation.

But I'm not making any political statements. I won't be endorsing any candidates or anything like that. Lord, help us with all of them. I'm not making any political statements. Anything I say will sound like I've said 12 other things. So just try to base it off of what I'm actually saying, not what it sounds like I could be saying.

And I've had to work really hard to just say what I've got here and not just things that pop into my head so that I can be as helpful as possible. Here's the other thing that we all have to realize. In our culture, on especially very polarized issues, what we're taught is if we disagree, you're against me. If we disagree, you hate me. Especially on this issue, this is dividing us. We're going to join teams.

And if we're not on the same team, then we're against one another. And can I just tell you, that's not helpful and it's not true. So we are absolutely able to disagree and still be friends. Absolutely able to disagree and still love one another. Still spend time with one another. Still hang out with one another.

And can absolutely disagree on very important issues. And still be gracious and loving to one another. And we even see in our culture where it's gotten to where if we disagree, I've got to call you a name. That we've just broken down what adult conversations should look like and how we ought to interact with one another. So, real quick, as we get started this morning, the Bible does teach that homosexuality is a sin. Now, we're going to go through and explain what the Bible teaches sin means so that we can better understand that.

But the Bible does teach that homosexuality is a sin. That homosexual Acts are a sin, more specifically. But before we hop in and start looking at some of this, I want us to see Romans 3. Because this is what we believe as a church. This is absolutely primary to us. So we're going to have it on the screen.

But you can jump to Romans 3, verse 23. It will be on page 611 if your Bible looks like this. Romans 3, verse 23. For all have sinned. Welcome. You're included.

For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. No one measures up. And are justified, made to measure up, made to be okay. By his grace as a gift through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus. Whom, that's Jesus, God put forward as a propitiation. Which means a blood sacrifice to turn away God's wrath by his blood.

To be received by faith. That is what we believe. That is the primary message of the church. Which is that all of us fall short. All of us sin. None of us bring anything to the table.

And all of us are only made okay and only made right by Jesus. Period. That's what we believe. That's what we're here confessing. That's why we started the church a couple years ago. That's why I'm here.

If this weren't true. If it weren't true that sinners could be saved by Jesus. I would be doing something else. Probably more lucrative. Just guessing. I went to business school and tried to make some money.

That's what I'd be going for. Just letting you know. I might not make money, but I'd try. That wasn't helpful. Anyway. That's what we believe.

That Jesus saves sinners and that's all of us. That what we bring to the table is essentially nothing. Just our sin that made us qualified for Jesus to save us and die for us. That's all of us. There's not one thing that the Bible doesn't say. These are good people and these are bad people.

Or these are the people that God likes more. And these are the people that God likes less. What the Bible says is all have sinned. All have fallen short. And all are made okay only through Jesus. And his work on the cross.

That's the primary belief that we have. And in order for us to even have a conversation about this. We have to understand that that's what we believe. That's ultimate for us. Okay. The Bible in that way is very progressive and inclusive.

Everyone is welcome. Because everyone has fallen short. And everyone is a sinner. And it's only Jesus that makes us okay. I now have seven quick points I'm going to try to make. And I mean quick.

Because I've got way more other points coming later. Our culture has a track record of being unloving. To those who struggle with same gender attraction. To the gay community. We have a track record of being unloving. Hateful.

Our culture just in general has not treated them well. And that is not okay. Especially for the church. Those who claim to know and follow Jesus. Those who claim to believe what we just read. Which is that all of us are only made okay by Jesus.

All of us have. The only thing that we've brought to the table. Is what should exclude us. There's nothing that brings us. Makes us included other than Jesus. The church should be the absolute safest place on earth.

Because there are no disqualifiers. Absolute safest place on earth. To struggle with anything. And so where the church has responded poorly here. We ought to repent. We ought to look different.

Because it's Jesus that makes us okay. Two. Our culture sees sexuality as identity. Just to be helpful. This is a bunch of stuff we need to say. It's not in any kind of particular order.

And it won't necessarily be like. How does one connect to two? It probably doesn't. Our culture sees sexuality as identity. Meaning that whatever kind of sexual desires you have. That's who you are.

So when someone says I'm gay. They mean that as a. This is who I am. This is my identity. The Bible doesn't treat your identity that way. Your identity actually transcends sexuality.

It's much bigger than your sexual desires. Three. The Bible does not really speak to sexual orientation. Does not really speak to having a desire for someone else. We'll see where it kind of. It talks about it.

But it's not addressing that as sinful. To have a desire for someone else. To have a desire for the same gender. The Bible is going to specifically say. That homosexual activity. Is sinful.

So the Bible is going to say that. Having a thought or a desire for the same gender. It doesn't ever really get into that. It does say that lust is sinful. Which is where we have a thought or a desire. Heterosexual or homosexual.

And then we actually take active work in our minds. With that. So Martin Luther put it this way. When he's talking about sexual temptation. That you can't stop birds from flying over your head. But you can keep them from making a nest in your hair.

And that's the difference between having a sexual thought or a sexual desire. And lusting. Where lusting is where we actually take kind of an active part in choosing to let those thoughts grow. And take action in them. But the Bible isn't going to address desire as much as it's going to address action.

So the Bible isn't specifically after someone who has same gender attraction. As much as someone who Acts on it. Four. Sin is not just the bad things that we do. So we are tempted to think that sin is just my bad actions.

Sin is actually searching for satisfaction in anything other than Jesus. That's why we read Romans when we first started. Where we said that ultimately our biggest problem is that we've put something above Jesus. And that's what leads us into sin. Most of the time it's something good. Something applaudable.

Something that we would see value and worth in. And then we've begun to pursue that over and against Jesus. Here's the other thing. Sin is actually born in biblically. Like we're born sinful. I have an 11 month old.

I'm not going to have to teach him how to sin. I didn't explain to him how to throw a fit when I take my iPhone from it. I didn't explain to him to love my iPhone like a psycho. Like he just sees it anywhere and he's like, he'll drop whatever he's doing. He picks it up. And if I take it from him, he's like, why do you hate me?

And he falls in a little pile on the floor. And I just step over him and walk away. Nobody had to teach him that. We're all born with certain sinful proclivities. We're all born that way. So when someone says, I was born this way, I've always only ever had sexual desire for the other gender.

Christians shouldn't respond with, no, that's actually perfectly a biblical idea where it's like, yeah, it just doesn't mean what our culture means by that, which is if this is my identity, if I'm born this way, then ultimately it's okay. So I'll give you another example. My family filled with loud, aggressive people. Willing to be violent. Anna's family filled with quiet, nice people. That won't, like Anna, if you call her the wrong name, if you're like, hey, Susan, come here.

She'll, she'll, she just comes. Like she doesn't, she's not going to go, my name's not Susan. Like I've been around her before where someone called the wrong name and I've had to be like, her name's Anna. And they're like, well, I've been calling her this for a long time. It's like, well, that's really on her, but I'm sorry. You're going to have to change.

So I've had to do a lot of work to make Anna want to like assault me. Like I've gotten her there. It just takes a lot of work. I've had to be really active in my pursuit of making her that angry. But other people don't have to do that with me.

Like just my natural proclivity, like you can get me to where I don't want to talk and I just want to punch you pretty quickly. And that's in, that's born into me. But what I don't say is, sorry, this is how I am. Like, I don't, I don't get to do that as much as I would like to. They're all, all of us have some natural proclivities, natural desires that are born into us that are not God's good design. And all of us have to fight against that.

So when someone says I was born this way, honestly, we ought to say, yeah, okay. That makes sense. But that doesn't change what the Bible says. Sin is a big deal because it is always harmful. And when God addresses sin in us, it is not because he does not love us. It is because he does love us.

The primary place where we see Jesus, we see God actively addressing sin is on the cross. That's the primary place where God proclaims actively sin is horrendous. Sin is destructive. And I love you enough to work on it. So we don't believe as Christians when we say something is sinful, that we're against someone or attacking someone.

We're being helpful. When my wife points out sin in me, as much as I sinfully want to argue with her, she's actually doing that because she loves me. She doesn't point out sin in people she doesn't care about. She points out sin in me because she cares about me. And that's the way the Bible treats sin. So when the Bible says something sinful, it's not mad at you.

It's helping. Secondly, Jesus' primary place that he addresses sin is on the cross, which is where he dies to save us. So we can't act like him addressing sin is somehow hateful. It's actually the most loving thing he does. There are people in our church family who have varying levels of same-gender attraction. They have helped lead groups, served on teams, led teams, been a part of groups, and have been actively following Jesus and repenting of sin.

Absolutely believe that you can struggle with same-gender attraction. And be a spirit-filled Jesus follower on his mission for his glory, 100%. I have no doubt in my mind. Culturally, you're going to kind of be forced to decide where you land on this issue. There's not really a middle ground. So if your response is, well, I just don't care, culturally, they're going to say, sweet, you've joined this team.

There's not really a place where you can just say, doesn't matter to me. Culturally, you're going to kind of be forced to be on a team. And so it's helpful for us as Christians to study the Bible and decide where we land and be, to be as helpful as possible. Okay. Now I want to kind of move to the current discussion we've got going on when it comes to this.

We're going to look at three specific passages in the New Testament. So people bring up Old Testament. When it comes to homosexuality, a lot of people use what they call clobber passages, which is they just kind of go to this one passage and they act like, see, there it is. And they call it a clobber passage because they use it to like assault someone. That's not helpful. It is helpful to know where passages are that point to things, but not to use them aggressively to like Bible bullets to shoot someone.

Old Testament does address homosexuality. It does address, it'll say not to lie with a man as you would lie with a woman. Give specific instructions. And so people a lot of times will say, well, yeah, but there's a lot of stuff in the Old Testament we don't believe anymore. A lot of stuff in the Old Testament we don't follow anymore. We cut the, we cut our hair, we can get tattoos, we can eat lobster.

So obviously the Old Testament is just kind of discredited. There's a very long, helpful answer to that, that we're not going to get into because the New Testament talks about it. So where the New Testament does release us of some things like the dietary laws, it specifically continues to address other things like homosexuality. So we're going to spend the majority of our time focusing on the New Testament passages. If you'd like to have a discussion about the Old Testament passages, I'm sure Raz would love to talk to you about it, but I'll also talk to you about it if you want to. One of the other arguments, before we even get into, this is the kind of a prohibiting argument before we even get into looking at the Bible.

People say things like, it's 2016, aren't we over this by now? Or haven't we just progressed? Like there's this idea that progression of time just makes us better. And that idea came from Christianity and then got kind of co-opted and changed. So one of the things that you'll hear is just like, come on, like that's last century.

We're moving on. And the reason that that idea came around, historically people thought that that history went in a cycle. Christianity showed up and was like, no, there's a God who created everything. He has a beginning point. He has an end point. And he's working it towards something.

There's a redemptive history playing out. And so it's a Christian idea. Then the Enlightenment took it and basically just moved God out of it and said, as long as we move forward in time, everything gets better. Which once World War II happened, we should have gotten over, but we kind of haven't. We should have, be able to look at World War II and just go, no, time doesn't just fix things. All we've successfully done is figure out how to kill each other more efficiently.

But people still make that argument, which is really just a disconnect from what a Christian idea that God is actually working to redeem history. Also, people say things like, well, of course, Paul would say, that's who wrote some of these New Testament letters. Of course, Paul would say homosexuality is a sin because he wrote that such a long time ago. Meaning that the further you move back in time, the more prudish people get. Like, it's like you just go back and at some point you just, everyone turns into like a Puritan or a nun. Now, anybody who studied history doesn't really make that argument because the Romans and the Greeks, the Greco-Roman world was way sexualized.

Like massively. The reason Paul addresses it is because it was actively a normal part of life for them. And so he's going to address it. He's not addressing it because of course everybody agreed this was sinful because they were all old. He's addressing it because it was an act of practice going on. Okay.

The Bible clearly, directly, and repeatedly states that homosexual activity is a sin. None of these address same gender attraction as sinful. But there's been throughout history no real question about these verses. Go to Romans 1. We're going to spend a little bit of time there and then we're going to look at the other two where the Bible specifically addresses this. And I just want us to study them for a second and try to learn a little bit.

So Romans 1. We read this when we started this series. We read this a lot because this actually encapsulates sin for all of us pretty clearly. So we'll be in Romans 1. It's on page 610. If your Bible looks like this.

We're going to start in verse 18. For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth. For what can be known about God is plain to them because God has shown it to them from his invisible attributes, namely his eternal power and his divine nature have been clearly perceived ever since the creation of the world in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse for although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him. But they became futile in their thinking and their foolish hearts were darkened, claiming to be wise.

They became fools and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things. So we're going to pause there for just a second to catch us all up. God made the world. We notice that there's a creator. He has designed the world to reflect him, to point back to him from the Grand Canyon to massive waves. It's to bring glory and honor to him.

And we reject him and worship other things. That's our primary issue for humanity is that we put other things above God. We'd rather have money. We'd rather have power. We'd rather have a relationship. We just raise up all these other things, pursue those as primary, pursue those as that is what fulfill me.

And that's the major issue. 24. Therefore, God gave them up in the lust of their hearts to impurity, to dishonoring of their bodies among themselves, because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the creator, who is blessed forever. Amen. For this reason, God gave them two dishonorable passions. So it's now talking about passions, desire for one another.

Their women exchanged natural relations for those that are contrary to nature. And the men likewise gave up natural relations with women and were consumed with passion for one another, men committing shameless Acts with men, receiving in themselves the due penalty of their error. One of the results of this, and we talked about this in week one, is that we become overly sexualized, overly led by our lusts when we've begun to place something else above God, because it's easiest for us to believe that another human will fill this void. Money's great, but relationships hold more promise because we were made in the image of God.

So that's one of the things we talked about in week one. Specifically out of that, Paul's going to address that they exchanged natural relations with one another with the opposite gender for relations with the same gender. One of the arguments made against this passage currently is, first of all, it was saying that they weren't being true to themselves, that they were, it was heterosexual people who denied their natural desires for one another and pursued against their own natural desires, relationships with one another. Meaning that the biggest problem is not being true to yourself. The problem with that argument is that Paul says they were inflamed with passion for one another.

They burned with passion for one another. So it wasn't just their activity changed, but their desires changed. The second thing that is argued here is that Paul doesn't understand the concept of soulmates. Not the concept of soulmates, concept of orientation. That really the biggest problem is he didn't understand that people could actually be oriented in such a way to only be a desire of the same gender. The problem with that is in Plato's symposium, he talks about the idea of soulmates.

And when he discusses the idea of soulmates, we talked about this the other day for those of you who are looking for your soulmate, that originally the gods made people with two heads and four arms and four legs and then cut them in half and then you spend the rest of your time looking for your soulmate. So the problem with you looking for your soulmate is that this is a myth and it doesn't exist and you'll never find them. You're as likely to find a unicorn or Nessie. But in that myth, some of the people were male-male, some of them were female-female, and some of them were male-female. They had the idea and understood that some men were going to spend their life looking for a man and some ladies were going to spend their life looking for a lady.

They already had the idea and understood the concept of some people are just going to be oriented this way, directed this way, whether or not they use the language. So it was a familiar concept to them, but Paul's still going to say that this was a problem. Here's the biggest issue with us because we elevate your desires. One of our only hero stories left is the, everybody told you you couldn't be what you wanted to be and then you went and beat it anyway. Like that's one of our hero stories. Have you all seen previews for Eddie the Eagle?

Anybody seen previews for that movie coming out? If you haven't, this is going to be really hard for me to explain. Anybody seen it? Okay. It's about a really goofy, uncoordinated kid in England who wants to be an athlete, wants to go to the Olympics. The problem with Eddie going to the Olympics is that he's a really goofy, uncoordinated kid.

So there's no like real way he's going to do that because most Olympians are good at what they do and Eddie apparently is not good at anything. See how that works? Like, well, I'm not like going to go do the high hurdles or whatever. It's just not going to happen. So that's his problem too.

He's just, he can't. Then he finds out about the downhill super long ski jump. That's what it's called. Look it up. And decides he's going to do that because all he really has to do is like, bend, I don't know. It's probably way more complex than this, but bend and then not be afraid of dying.

I think that's basically the two qualifications. And the whole movie is that nobody wants him to do it because he's goofy and uncoordinated, but he does and does it anyway. And you can watch basically the preview and know what the movie is. And I still want to see it because that's our hero story. People told him he couldn't and they told him he couldn't and they told him he couldn't and they told him he was ugly and that was why he couldn't and he was uncoordinated. But then he can go do it anyway.

He's going to, he's going to thumb his nose at all of them and go accomplish it. And that's why when it comes to things like this, when it comes to your own personal desires, our culture just rallies around you and says, follow your heart, whatever you want to do. And if anybody tells you to stop and anybody tells you that you're wrong, you found your enemy and you found the person you've got to overcome so that we can make a really amazing movie about you. That's our cultural story. That's what we celebrate. And so when it comes to personal desires, we just come along and say, if you desire it, then it's real.

Pursue it. And if anybody tries to stop you, they're wrong, they're evil, they're against you. And you now know who your enemy is. The problem with that is that the Bible says that our passions and our desires and our heart are part of the problem. That our heart is actually deceitful above all else, that you've lied to you more than anyone else ever has. You've tricked yourself more than anyone else ever has.

And the other problem is it's just a small view of what passions are, how we associate our desires. Like we're really just saying, find something that you like, but we don't realize that's culturally connected. So let's take two men. One of them is an Anglo-Saxon way back in the day when they were super aggressive and right around just killing people. And the other person lives in Manhattan today. So another man lives in Manhattan today.

Both of them have the same desires. One of the desires is when anybody mouths off to them or stands in their way, they just want to harm them physically. Overly aggressive, want to harm people. The other one is they have same gender attraction. Now, in Manhattan today, the man who has both of those desires is going to say, my desires to harm people and crush my enemies is not me. And I need to suppress that and maybe get counseling because that's going to stand in the way of who I'm designed to be.

But they're going to look at their same gender attraction and say, this is who I am. This is what needs to be welcomed. And this is what needs to flourish because of our culture. But the Anglo-Saxon man is going to do the exact opposite. He's going to look at his desire to crush his enemies and go, that's who I am. Because his culture celebrates that.

And he's going to look at his desires for same gender attraction and say, I need to suppress this. This isn't going to help me. And so when we say, whatever desire you have, that's ultimate, we actually are taking a really small view of what desires, how they actually work as if we don't have competing desires. We're not understanding that our culture affects that. And the Bible says at the end of the day, your desires are messed up anyway. So you don't have to think about the logical stuff.

Just know your desires aren't helpful. You need to trust Jesus. Was that helpful? Okay. 1 Corinthians. It's going to be 10 pages over if you're in one of these Bibles.

This is another place that Paul addresses this. This is actually, we're in 1 Corinthians 6. We picked up right after this last week where Paul's addressing sexuality. Verse 9. Okay. We'll keep going, but we're going to have to come back to this.

A lot of times these passages get read wrongly as if the only thing that was written there was men who practice homosexuality. That's a long list. And that's just kind of stuck in the middle. What Paul's saying is all of those pursuing active sin are disqualifying themselves from the kingdom of God. They're not trusting in Jesus. They're pursuing their own desires.

They're idolaters and adulterers and sexually immoral, which sexual morality, we talked about it last week, is everything outside of monogamous heterosexual marriage as the way the Bible is going to hold up as the standard. The problem with us is that we want to point out one thing and say, see, see how that's a big issue? But we're not repenting of our own sexual sin. I'm acting as if my own heterosexual sin is okay or somehow blessed by God or somehow more acceptable than someone else who struggles with something else, and that's nonsense. But the Bible is going to list it as a sin with other sins that people struggle with and that Jesus redeems us from.

That's how he ends. Such were some of you, but you've been washed and sanctified by Jesus. It doesn't disqualify you from his love. It actually is what qualifies you. For Jesus to redeem you is your sin. And it lines up in these categories.

Now, people will try to argue in this one and in, even though there's some different words used, and in 1 Timothy, where we're going to go in a second, that we don't really understand what that word means, that it actually is referring to maybe pedophilia, or it's referring to unwanted sexual contact, or it's referring to promiscuous homosexual activity. The problem is there's not really, you're having to do work to make the text say that when the writing's pretty clear. And there's other issues with that that we'll see in just a second. So go to 1 Timothy. It'll be on screen, but if you want to flip over there, it's to your right, and it'll be on page 642.

Starting in verse 8. Now, we know that the law is good if one uses it lawfully, understanding this, that the law is not laid down, for the just, but for the lawless and disobedient, for the ungodly and sinners, for the unholy and profane. For those who, okay, so basically Paul's going to say the law is good because we're messed up. That's what he's, that's the point he's making. The law is good for all of us who are rebellious, because it helps us change. It helps us see our sins that will be pushed to Jesus.

For those who strike their fathers and mothers, for murderers, the sexually immoral, men who practice homosexuality, enslavers, liars, perjurers, and whatever else is contrary to sound doctrine. It accordance with the gospel of the glory of the blessed God with which I have been entrusted. Again here, it does specifically in 1 Timothy and 1 Corinthians, although Romans addresses it, it does say men. Romans does address female homosexuality. And the men who practice homosexuality was a much bigger cultural issue for them. That's why Paul's going to keep bringing it up.

Because women didn't get to do what they wanted to, but men could do whatever they want. So that's why Paul's going to keep bringing it up. But sexual immorality basically covers everything outside of monogamous heterosexual marriage, which is the goal. And here's the thing. I have a friend of mine. His name is Thor.

And he is a PhD in linguistics. Thor. Which means that, first of all, he's one of these guys who's like so smart. He's kind of, kind of can be awkward at times. Because he's so smart and he approaches everything like from a really like mental place, he can say things that other people can't say. Because it's like, there's no way I could say that without like laughing or thinking about the inappropriateness of what was just said.

But Thor can. Like he can just talk about whatever because he's just so academic. He was a PhD in linguistics and he knows language. And they were doing a discussion at Midtown Fellowship, which is where I was training there. He was a pastor in training there. And one of the things he said is he can go into all these verses and he can dazzle you, his words, not mine, with the Greek.

And make it say basically whatever he wanted to say. He struggles with same gender attraction. He struggles with this on a very personal level and says he's studied all the arguments against why the Bible doesn't say this. But none of them hold up. As much as he would like for them to be true, none of them hold up. All of them are weak understandings of the text.

And he said it seems as if people look at these passages and say these are the pillars holding up this argument. And if we can just knock down those pillars, then we would have the ability to basically pursue long-term, loving, homosexual relationships. And the Bible could be on our team. So they basically attack these verses. And so here's what he had to say. And this is a transcript.

So it's a terrible run-on sentence. Don't get caught up in the grammar. It's a transcript. If it helps you to read it, read it. But if you're a grammar person, maybe just listen because this was said out loud.

And so I'm going to read what he says, though. Even if you were to somehow take out those verses by reinterpreting them. He's talking about these verses. Or even if the Bible had never contained any verses that mentioned it. The biblical position on this issue is not resting on those verses. It's not resting on a few specific prohibitions.

It's resting on this gigantic tree trunk of the whole beautiful picture of why God put gender in the universe. And what gender and complementarity do. And how that runs through everything and all of creation. And his desires for intimacy. And his desires for life. It's this much, much bigger picture of what the Bible upholds.

And what the Bible says is the center. And what we should be running to is so unambiguous and so clear. So what he's saying is even if you took these verses out. The Bible's picture of what sexuality was meant to be. What we talked about last week is so clear. One of the things he says is because people think this is the pillars that I've got to knock down.

He said it's actually way more. It's held up by this massive tree trunk of God's good design for complementarity. God's good design for gender. God's good design for marriage. And for life together. And for creation.

And for the multiplication of the human race. And so he says it's this tree trunk of what God's woven into creation. He said it's actually more like you're climbing out on a few limbs and trying to saw those off. But in order to actually have the Bible agree with homosexuality as a perfectly fine way to live. You'd actually pretty much have to cut down the whole tree. And then you'd be left with no gospel and no Jesus.

And no real understandable picture of what it was designed to be in the first place. So the Bible is clear. And it holds up for us a good design that we ought to pursue and understand. Here's one of the major problems. We immediately say okay but what about love? What about long term relationships?

What if it's a committed long term relationship? What if they're good to one another? What if they love each other more than... Like there's so much messed up heterosexual relationships. And there's so many beautiful, loving, gracious, caring gay relationships. That why can't this be good?

Why can't we just look at this and say this is okay? Here's one of the reasons we make that argument. And here's one of the reasons that's so hard for us to respond to. Our culture says we've all bought into the idea that happiness is primary. That the purpose of life is personal happiness. That's the goal.

Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. We've enshrined it. And then we've all agreed that the best way towards happiness is a romantic relationship. So if we've agreed to that, that happiness is primary and the best way to get there is a romantic relationship. The most cruel, harmful, evil things we can commit in our culture is to stand in the way of that. To tell anybody what we just said.

You can't pursue this type of relationship. That's not okay. The problem with that is that the Bible doesn't agree with either of those first two statements. Doesn't agree that your happiness is the point. You're going to have a really hard time forcing that on the text. I know people do.

I know someone who's stood up before. I had a friend who was a part of a church where they used to stand up and chant, money come to me now. Because God wanted them to be rich. And that was one of the prayers they would say. Read the New Testament. The call to Christianity is take up your cross, deny yourself, come die.

You're going to lose your friends. You're going to lose your family. This is going to go terribly for you. And then at some point after you've been tortured enough, you'll probably die. And guess what? It'll all be absolutely worth it.

Come take everything that has ever been a part of who you are and how you define yourself and lay that down for the God who died for you so that you might have a better eternity. You might have a real hope in something that absolutely matters. Everything matters. Jesus is going to tell stories about a guy who finds a treasure in a field and sells everything just to get that treasure because of how much more immensely valuable it is than anything else. That's what the Bible is going to say, that your happiness here is not primary. God loves you.

He's for your joy and your ultimate happiness, but that doesn't happen here through finances or relationships or anything else. And the Bible is also not going to agree with us that romance is primary, that it's the primary way to get to happiness. The Bible is pro-relationships. It's for love. It's not against it. I don't think it's primary.

It never holds that up as this is the way to pursue life. So when Christianity says, no, you actually should deny yourself, you should not pursue these relationships, we're not disagreeing with anything else the Bible says because we don't believe that happiness and romance are primary. Okay. Church. Four things for us and then we're going to do some Q&A. Four things for us that we have to realize in order for us to love people well and to act in such a way that someone who's a part of our church family who struggles with this can actually be loved, actually be welcomed, and actually live long-term pursuing Jesus.

Here's some things that have to be true. Number one, we can't keep pretending that happiness and romance are primary. As a church, the church in general can't keep buying into that idea. We agree to that, that happiness and romance aren't primary when it comes to someone who's struggling with same-gender attraction, but then we act like that's primary in all the other things we say. So every time you come up to a single person and go, have you found anyone yet?

Just keep trying. They're out there. Maybe you should lower your standards. Oh, I saw you talking to that person. Every time we do that, what we're doing is coming alongside someone and going, just remember where happiness is found. Just remember what life is about.

And it's nonsense. The Bible doesn't back you up on that. Perfectly fine for someone to pursue a romantic relationship with someone of the opposite gender, but it's not held up as supreme. Every time we say stuff like, well, I just know God wants me to be happy. How do you know that? Where did you find that?

You mean here? I doubt it. You mean long-term? Sure, yeah. And we see that on Jesus dying on the cross and calling us into a mission that matters so much more than everything else. That's his pursuit of our joy.

But I just enjoy my relationship so I know that God wouldn't want me to break up because I'm like, every time we say this stuff, we're not helping anything. And honestly, one of the major issues that those who struggle with same-gender attraction in the church face is not the sexual desire. It's that they're staring loneliness in the face. It's the emotional side of, I just want to be connected to someone. I want to be known and loved and cared about. And the church says your options are be celibate or pursue a heterosexual relationship, which to a lot of people who struggle with same-gender attraction, that's not really an option.

And celibacy just sounds terrible, not because of the sexual nature of it, maybe for some, but for a lot of them it's just that I want to be lonely forever. And here's what we're saying. Look, we know that happiness is primary and that romance is the only way to get there. I'm sorry. God's got rules. And then we're like, well, people are just going to keep pursuing this stuff and they won't repent.

And it's like, well, we pointed them to something that wasn't true. We kept holding up something that wasn't real and then acted like we were exempt from this. This false belief, this romance idolatry. All of us need to repent of romance idolatry. Some of you have stayed in really bad relationships for a long time or relationships that are really good but are outside of God's good design. And you're not repenting.

You're not changing. And we're all called to. And we honestly need to regain the biblical understanding of friendship. So one of the things that the, if you go to GayChristianNetwork.com, I think it's GayChristian.net. So the first website I said wasn't true at all.

It's the Gay Christian Network. One of the things they point to is they say, see, in the Old Testament the friendship between Jonathan and David was actually a homosexual relationship. The reason they're saying that is because we fall really short of the biblical idea of what friendship is supposed to look like. We're also approaching that in a very Western way, which is non-emotional. So like when David and Jonathan like cry and kiss each other, we automatically make that really sexual.

Whereas for Middle Easterners, that's not weird. Not sexual. Like it can happen in a perfectly non-sexual context. Did y'all ever see the pictures of George Bush walking down the street holding that guy's hand in Iran or whatever? Because that's how they indicate friendship. So he was with another leader and he held his hand.

And I was like, I remember seeing that when I was in high school. I'm going, that's super weird. I think we just have to go to war. I'm not walking around holding your hand, buddy. Like this is weird because I'm approaching that from a very Western mentality. But the truth is that the scope of emotion found in the Bible and the ability to love someone in a completely non-sexual way we've lost.

And so what we say is, yeah, the only real way to have actual friends is to get married. Like that's the only way you can really know somebody and really have intimacy and really over the term of life. And it's like that's foreign from the Bible and we have to redeem our understanding of friendship. Number two, we are all called to deny ourselves, take up our cross and follow Jesus. So when you're living with your girlfriend but you're having a fit about someone who's struggling with homosexuality, it's nonsense.

When you won't repent of your sin but the gay's better, nonsense. It makes sense. The way that we get to grow together as Christians is all of us are called to take everything that we hold dear, everything that we hold in our heart that makes us us, all of our uniqueness and say, Jesus, you're king. All of us. And so then when we look at those, our same gender attracted brothers and sisters and we say, yeah, it makes sense because they see it. They see that all of us are repenting of sin.

All of us are fighting our own proclivities. All of us are fighting against our own sinful natures and all of us are seeking to pursue Jesus and submit everything to him. But when we act like, no, no, no, no, I'm okay. My porn struggle is not an issue. I am kind of fighting or whatever. But the fact that I'm really greedy, the fact that I'm really selfish, this doesn't really matter.

But you, big deal. I'm going to skip all the other things in that list. Big deal for you. Big deal for you. We have to all surrender and all deny ourselves. I have to all submit our sexual desires to Jesus.

The third thing is that the church has to actually be family. We have to actually care about one another and spend time with one another, relate to one another. Because honestly, it's the emotional side. It's the loneliness. It's the lack of friendship that makes it so untenable. When we say, you just got to be alone forever.

But if the church is actually what the New Testament holds up, where it's going to hold up consistently the church as family over and above nuclear family, then we begin to open our homes and invite people in to those who struggle with same-gender attraction or just our single brothers and sisters to come celebrate Thanksgiving with us. Come celebrate, quote-unquote, family time. Because ultimately, biblically, we're all going to die and we're going to be a part of a family. And I'm not going to be married to Anna anymore, but she will be my sister for eternity. And we get to celebrate that now, that we've been made into a new true family where God, through Jesus, has adopted us to be brothers and sisters.

And so one of the ways that we get to help those who struggle with this is by opening our homes and treating them like brothers and sisters, inviting them out to coffee, getting a conversation going, talking to them, being their friend, playing laser tag. We have an actual eternal family. Here's honestly, the LGBTQ community has been beating the pants off of the church when it comes to community, to friendship. In a lot of ways, it's really beautiful. It's what God designed it to look like, for them to care about one another, to love one another, to accept one another, not accept their sin as the church.

We would accept them and help them fight their sin the same way we accept everybody else in spite of their sin because it's our sin that actually qualifies us for Jesus to save us. But here's the other thing going on in the LGBTQ community. In the U.S., the most likely thing to kill someone who's a youth, get grades 7 through 12, anybody, is suicide. Lesbian, gay, and bisexual youth are more than twice as likely to have attempted suicide than their heterosexual peers. This is according to the CDC. They did a study on 55 transgender youth and found that about 25% of them reported suicide attempts.

25%! The Trevorproject.com says that LGB youth are four times as likely as their peers and three times likely if they're questioning to attempt suicide. And we're the church saved by Jesus in spite of our sin. And they're not welcome here? Not loved here? We bring nothing to the table.

You aren't special. And then we're going to look and say, but my sin's different than yours. No. This has to be the safest place. The most welcoming group of people you have ever met. That's so wildly welcoming that it makes people uncomfortable.

That they don't know how to handle it. I know you disagree with me, but you've loved me more than anybody I've ever met. I know we're not on the same page here, but you won't stop calling me. You won't stop inviting me over for dinner. Stop being my friend. No.

That's what we're designed to be. The most absolutely overwhelmingly welcoming people because we know that nothing makes us special outside of the blood and savior. The blood of Jesus who saved us from our sin. So number four is we have to actually believe the gospel. You have to actually believe that it is Jesus who has saved you and has made you okay in spite of your sin. Not because of your specialness.

Not because of your good behavior. That your sinful desires aren't somehow different or better than someone else's. You have to actually believe that it's Jesus that saves us. And if we do that, if we actually believe the gospel, then we're free to love one another, to care for one another, to accept one another in spite of our sin. And then continue to confront one another in our sin because we care for one another. Free.

Okay. Here's what we're going to do. We're going to do some Q&A now. And I'm going to invite my friend Jordan Surratt. He's one of our community group leaders. He's going to come up here.

Help do some Q&A. Jordan struggles with same-gender attraction. He's going to help us as we talk about this today. So if you don't mind giving Jordan a hand. So this is my good friend Jordan.

He helps lead one of our community groups, the Pine Ridge group. Yeah. Jordan, real quick before we get into doing some of the other Q&A, I want to ask you a few questions just to help. People out here and talk about this a little bit as a church family. Can you tell people who you are, catch them up a little bit on your story, maybe just like the two-minute version of from when you were born to the moment you just sat down on that stool? That'd be great.

All right. Got to move quickly. All right. So I grew up in southwestern Virginia. It's kind of very super traditional, heart of the Bible Belt kind of area. And so I noticed that I started having same-sex attractions around seventh grade, so puberty time.

And I found myself just like, this is going to sound weird, but like looking at my teacher. And it wasn't like in a sense of, ah, I'm super attracted to him. It was more of like an interest. I didn't quite understand what was going on inside of me. And I noticed that like my peers, they would all be like starting to date girls. And I'm just like, I don't get that.

That doesn't make sense. But you kind of do. And so it would just be a little weird or whatever just growing up. But all through my middle school years, high school years, and even partly into college, it was just because of fear and shame and things like that, I wouldn't talk about it. And so the very first person I ever told, I think I was 18 and a half. And so I went basically the majority of my life.

I guess it is the majority of my life. Still keeping up with the half years at that point? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And the first person I ever told was my cousin. That was after I started going to church. So I was already involved in a local church for about five to six months or so.

And I was just broken. And I could just feel God being like, you have to tell someone. You have to tell someone. I'm like, okay, the next person who comes up. And lo and behold, my cousin pops down in front of me. She's like, I got to tell you something.

I'm like, I do too. And so she was the very first person I told. Went off to college in Lynchburg studying religion, pastoral leadership. And I started opening up a little bit more as the years would go by. And then I moved down here. And I've been open with my community group, open with my friends, with Chet, with Matt, with Raz, and everybody else here that I love.

So you may have said this. Became a Christian in college? Yeah, yeah, yeah. So my second semester of community college, I started following Jesus. Okay. And that's, yeah, about that time.

And during all that, like, I never really pursued a relationship with someone. I struggled secretly, and so, like, I couldn't have imagined, like, someone else finding out by me flirting with them. But, you know, like, I just struggled with things like pornography and masturbation and whatnot. Okay. Well, help us out this morning. Or help.

If there's someone in the room struggles with same-gender attraction or identifies as homosexual, maybe is a part of our church family, what would you want to say to them? How would you want to address them? Cool. Cool. Well, part of this is going to depend on where you are at in your own walk and how open you have been already. I found one of the most encouraging and helpful things to me, even though it was super hard, was just beginning to talk about it.

And so it would take years for me to really build up that courage. And I've been lucky enough to have never really had any kind of, like, anybody lash out at me or whatever. I've had a lot of people just like, well, I don't understand, and I'm really confused, and I have a thousand questions. But through them asking those questions and through them talking about it, it actually even helped me. And so my encouragement to you would be, if you are struggling with that, to find someone here. I think there's a ton of people in this room who love you and care about you and genuinely welcome you as family, as brothers and sisters.

And I think you're safe and loved and cherished. Cool. Another thing on that that I just want to help everybody here, when it comes to hiding sin or hiding any kind of personal struggle, if we don't talk to people, any people whatsoever, we kind of disconnect our ability to actually receive love. Because we'll always, when someone tries to say they care about us or say good things about us, we'll always just kind of discount it as, yeah, well, if you only knew. If you only knew the real me. And so there is something, too, when we're in sin or when we have particular struggles or whatever, being able to be honest actually opens us up to have people really genuinely care about us and us to actually be able to receive that.

All right. Okay. So I'm in a community group or someone out here is in a community group and someone in my group talks about this now, confesses it, says this is going on or I struggle with this or whatever. Help me, heterosexual white guy, respond well. Like how do we love people well in church family if that happens, if they talk about it? Yeah.

Okay. I want to break that up into two parts. Okay. One is short term and one is long term. Okay. You have to do whatever you want to with the question asked.

Yep. We'll do. We'll do. So short term, don't skip over it because you're uncomfortable. Engage them. Ask them questions.

Talk with them. Be like, what was that like? Like engage emotion. That's one of the hardest things for me has been just the emotion behind it. And check kind of talked about that a little bit in his sermon was just like the thing that hurts me the most is not me not having some sexual outlet. It is me more than likely being alone.

It is me more than likely not having someone who genuinely knows me and cares for me and understands me for who I am, which sexual sin and homosexuality or whatever isn't my identity. I am much more than that. But there are still some amounts of me being unknown, even now at this moment, because I'm constantly changing. I'm a different person all the time. But so ask questions like genuinely engage them.

Talk with them. And if you do, this is kind of going back to the second question. If you if you do open up, be willing to give some grace to the people that you're telling. So whenever I told my dad, he was just quiet the entire time and it took him a day to process through that. And he called me back. He's like, OK, you know, I got a ton of questions and we had like an hour long conversation, you know, but we be willing to give them grace because they're having to process through this stuff as well.

So that's kind of the short term. Love them. Well, love them. Well, hug them. Don't be afraid of them because they're terrified. I'm terrified.

OK, so ask questions. Yeah. Bring it up later. Yeah, I think that would be very helpful. OK, which is kind of the long term. You know, it's just like how if someone is like, hey, I'm struggling with a drug addiction.

You're like, OK, you don't mention it. Don't mention it ever again. You know, see how that's going to go for you. You know, that doesn't make much sense. So long term.

Yeah. Don't make everything about that. You know, I'm much more than my same sex attraction, but I struggle with same sex. Sex attraction. OK. And so long term, that would be talking with them, talking with me, talking with us, I guess I should say.

Loving us well. Inviting them into a family. You know, that's that's we already you know, we are a family so long as our faith is in Jesus. And so you are my brothers and sisters. I think for the longest time, like I wrestle a lot with this just imagery, this this picture of I'm a sheep who's outside of the flock and I'm really struggling, feeling like I'm part of the flock. And so that just that just makes it so much more easier for wolves to come in and snack snatch me, you know.

But I think that is just very common in people who struggle with same sex attraction. I've seen it so many times in a lot of my friends who I've spoken with who struggle with the same thing. They're just like, I can't tell anyone. You know, they don't I don't know what to do. I'm afraid. You know, it's just a consistent, constant fear across the board.

Even people who are proud, you know, they call it pride for a reason because they're ashamed and they feel guilty. One of the things you talk about being family, one of the things Thor has talked about before is that Kent Bateman is one of the pastors. He actually spoke here recently about going to planting in Knoxville, went to Thor and basically was like, look, I know you're kind of kind of pursuing celibacy, but I know you also have some desires to to be a husband, to be a father. Like that's part of what goes along with this. It's not just the sexual nature of stuff. And he was like, man, if you ever just get lonely, just come live with us.

Like he was about to get married to his wife, Anna, at that point. He said, just come. You can come live with us. You can help me father my children. You can help be a part of this this family. And and so there is room for that as you begin to build genuine, real relationships to just invite people in, divide them to be around, to be a part of your family.

The other thing, I think one of the reasons we don't respond when someone confesses sin is we don't know what to say, which actually means that we probably when we do know what to say are saying unhelpful things. And here's what I mean. When someone confesses sin and I'm like, oh, I got this because I've experienced that before. Mostly what I'm blasting them with is good advice. And so when confesses something I don't understand and I'm quiet, it's because I don't have any good advice. Our goal as a church family is to point people towards Jesus, which means that you get to respond to any sin because Jesus is the answer to all sin.

So let me just help you out there. If you're like, I don't have anything. Jesus, just Sunday school it. It's Jesus. Jesus is the answer. Like, just write that on your hand.

And someone confesses something. Go, let me tell you about Jesus. Like that's realize that ultimately it's Jesus that saves us and Jesus makes us OK. And you get to do that. You get to point towards Jesus in all of it, even if you don't know how to to be the most helpful there. And then, yeah, you can always ask questions.

I think that's a very helpful thing to say. OK. Yeah, I think that's what we'll take some Q&A kind of here together. And then appreciate you. Thank you for sharing all that with us. And we'll look at what kind of what's been sent in.

When it comes to the theology of sex, are there topics that are simply off limits for Christians? No. Let me caveat that, though. The short answer is no. The long answer is what's the point of talking about it? If your goal is, so Paul at one point talks about people having itching ears.

And I just think that's a helpful. If your goal is it just feels good to talk about sex stuff, you probably should stop. Like you should confess that to your group. And we should work on that together. If your goal is like I genuinely have questions. I want to talk about this.

There are words that are used in dirty ways, but they're also used to describe things. So like Miss Libby came up to me last week and was like, it's just so refreshing to hear a pastor say orgasm. And I was like, that's so weird that we can talk about this. But we're just having a straight up normal conversation about an actual thing that exists. And we have to use words to describe it. And so there are things you can talk about.

What's the point of saying it? Are you going for a flashbang or this will be exciting or something like that? So it's really more of a what's the point? So they're okay topics. What's the point? What's the context?

Why are you talking about it? Is it okay to discuss your marriage bed with someone other than your spouse? Okay. Okay. Yes-ish. Again, big question.

What's the point? What are you talking about? Like, are you just wanting to tell stories? Are you wanting to gossip? Are they sharing? And so you feel like it's your turn?

Like, no. How does your spouse feel about that? Have you talked to them? Are you talking to your spouse about your marriage bed? You probably should be having some of those conversations. But it can be very helpful to have some conversations that are, I need to discuss this with you.

I need to, I wonder if my heart's right here. I need to have some of these conversations that aren't detail specific, aren't any kind of, let me tell you, like, it's just, I need to talk about this for my own sake, for my own sin, for me to grow. And I'm trying to get some clarity on this, and I think that's okay. Some of it is you need to talk to your spouse. You need to talk about what they're comfortable with. And you need to not, the goal can't be, let me share stories or let me do this because it's, I think it's entertaining or interesting or anything like that.

It's got to be way more of a, I'm wanting to grow and I'm wanting this to be healthy, and so this is worth us having a conversation. Kind of how I say that, so. Can someone be in a long-term, committed, same-gender relationship and still be a Christian? I'm going to take a shot in the dark and assume you've maybe thought about this more. So do you want to give an answer to that, and then I'll kind of fill in if there's any.

The hard thing is, is I want that to be so true because of what we were talking about earlier. I don't want to be alone. I don't want to not have someone, you know, that I can talk to, that I can trust, that I can lean into. You know, it's just like, God, there's just this deep desire to just be with someone. And obviously with my heart, like, I have no desire to be with a woman, which means that my desire is to be with a man. But I can't just for biblical reasons, you know.

But in regards to this question specifically, yeah, there's the emotional side of it, and there's the, well, they love each other, and they're committed to each other. But in regards to any sin, you know, homosexual, heterosexual, it doesn't really matter. If you are a heterosexual couple who is living in a relationship outside of marriage, you're in sin. And so I think the real question behind this is, can, let me read it, can someone be in a long-term committed, unrepentant sin and still be a Christian? And I think the biblical answer is no. So I'll read things like when Jesus says, why do you say you love me, but don't do the things that I've commanded?

Or John in 1 John when he says, you know, if you're continuously living in sin, then you actually never knew Jesus. You never knew God. The love of the Father is not inside of you. It's not what we want to hear. It's not what I want to hear. But it's true and actually better.

Yeah, thank you. It's a massively difficult question. I agree with that. I think it's where we try to gauge it, where we try to look into a situation and say, well, is this person a Christian? How long have they been sinning? Do they know about the sin?

Because there's, like, ignorance. And I've had friends who became Christians and continued doing very sinful things until they got to that place in the Bible. And then they were like, oh, this is no bueno. And I didn't know. Like, and that's one thing. It's a, is it an active, unrepentant?

I know what the Bible says. I just don't care. I had another friend who said, well, I'll become a Christian. But if I become one, I'm not going to do that no sex thing. He wasn't married. And it was like, you don't understand what becoming a Christian is because you get a king.

That's not how you show up with a, all right, king, here are my terms. That's not how it works. And so I think, yeah, long, long enough term, unrepentant, unwilling to repent, non-wrestling with it, just I'm just going to do what I want to do here. The Bible is going to say, well, you probably never were. But can you be a Christian in sin?

Yeah. Can you be a Christian in struggle? Yeah. Can you be a Christian in fall on your face all the time? Yeah, that's why we're Christians. We're the first people who raised our hand and said, I'm really messed up and I need someone to help me.

So, yeah, that's helpful. One more thing. I think it's very telling because if someone has an idol in their heart, which is what they worship to be God, and then God confronts them on that sin, and they're saying, no, capital God, I'm not surrendering this idol. I'm not surrendering this lowercase g God. Then that's idolatry.

And it shows that they're not even surrendered to God to begin with. At least that's the way that I process through that. I think the Bible processes through it the same way. Yeah. Can someone who struggles with same-gender attraction be in Christian leadership? You're a group leader.

You want to answer that? Well, I'm a group leader. So I'm a group leader. Yes, the more the merrier. Can someone who struggles with any sin be a group leader? I hope so.

Yeah. Yeah, for real. For real. We are really – That would be a real short list of groups. Yeah. Yeah, I think that's the question there.

So I think the key in that question would be the struggles with – so someone who's unrepentant, that becomes an issue. But someone who struggles with sin, that's every Christian in the room. Like that's everybody, every Christian should be fighting sin. And there would be no Christian leadership if you couldn't struggle with sin and lead. And so, yeah, I think the answer to that is are you fighting it, loving Jesus, hating sin, versus, no, just this is me. I've accepted it.

This is who I'm going to be, and I don't care what the Bible says. That becomes a problem. So, yeah. How should our beliefs on sexuality affect our politics? Okay, so just in general, whole theology of sex series and how should that affect politics? I said I wasn't going to say political statements.

I still don't intend to. I think you need to realize that your belief should affect your politics, should affect how you vote, should affect how you approach candidates, how you think about things. I think you need to also realize there is no political group that perfectly is backed up by Jesus. So when you read the Bible, you're going to see some things that are going to line up with our different political parties in different ways. And I think in America, especially during this time, we need to realize Jesus has an endless kingdom where he reigns supreme throughout all of eternity. And no political candidate is going to save us or fix us or make us whole or complete everything.

There was a Messiah. His name is Jesus. He will return and set up a kingdom that will last forever and you won't see a Messiah on any of the tickets. So, think about it. Have your beliefs affect your politics. If you're just like, no, I just don't even think about what I believe.

It's like that's a culturally given thing. That's foreign to the Bible. You should absolutely have what you believe affect how you vote. Christians are told, don't bring your Christianity into this room. And it's like, that's nonsense. Take it with you everywhere.

But realize that it's not ultimate regardless. But Christians should vote. And all the people you're going to vote for are going to have some things that are just completely messed up. Do you want to take this one? All right.

We're good. I'm going to pray. And Matt and Bianca are going to come back up and we're going to sing a little bit together. And so, I'll send it to you. Yeah, you can come on. No, we're good.

We'll move this and then I'll pray and we'll sing. Y'all thank Jordan again for hopping up here. Thank you. Father, we thank you that you're good. Lord, we thank you, Lord, that our sin qualifies us for you to be a very good and loving Savior. Pray, God, that you would help us to grow to be family.

To all of us repent of sin. For all of us to quit believing the lies about happiness and romance so that we actually, in our marriages, can just love our spouse well but without believing they're supposed to fill us up. That in our pursuit of relationships, we can love you more. And that in the midst of all of our life, we'll quit just believing the lie that you want us to be happy here in this moment right now. Rather than you want us to pursue you, which is an ultimate good. God, help us to believe the gospel.

And help us to love our city and our gay neighbors well. And all those in our church family who struggle with same-gender attraction. That they feel wildly loved and cared about and welcomed. Because you are our king. And we hold no other allegiances. In Jesus' name, amen.