Atonement

Transcript

Good morning. My name is Chet. I'm one of the pastors here. This morning we're going to be talking about sin. Happy Father's Day. We are, though.

We're in our second week of our Glory Series, and we're talking about how big and glorious and magnificent and beautiful and holy Jesus is. And last week we specifically spent some time looking at that He is the image of the invisible God, that He's the radiance of God's glory, and that He exists over and above all of creation, from the smallest thing to the greatest thing, and that He is most glorious and most worthy of worship. And today we're going to spend some time talking about the atonement. We're going to spend a little time talking about this concept of atonement whereby God takes sinful humans and develops a system, makes a plan to make them okay with Himself, to bridge the gap between His holiness and our sins.

So in a minute we're going to turn to Leviticus. I want us to start here, though, and we'll have this on the screen. It's Hebrews 1, verse 3, and in a second that's going to get brighter. We're having some issues with the projector today. So it says, He is the radiance of the glory of God.

It's talking about Jesus. That Jesus is the glory of the glory. He's the beauty of God's glory. He's the light and the heat from it. He's the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of His nature. That if we want to know what God is like, we look to Jesus.

And He upholds the universe by the word of His power. So if you only think of Jesus as a Galilean peasant who holds sheep and cries and is just having conversations with the weak and the poor, He does these things. I don't know if He holds sheep. I'm just assuming maybe at some point He did. He does in all the pictures you see in Sunday school. But He does weep.

He does bend to those who are weak and poor and hungry and needy. And He does spend time. But if that's your only picture of Him, your picture of Jesus is underwhelming. It is petite. It's cute compared to the true magnificent Christ that we meet in Scripture who upholds the universe by the word of His power. Now I know that the Bible says that and I understand what the words mean, but I actually have no clue how that works.

But it means that Jesus rules and reigns over everything. And then it says this, After making purification for sins, He sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high. So what it's saying is that after Jesus Christ died for sin, that's what He did on the cross, that's what people know about Jesus. If you don't know much about Jesus, people will say, well, He died for our sins. People who don't even believe that will say that. What did Jesus do?

He died for our sins. So what we're going to talk about today is what does that mean? That Jesus Christ had to make purification for sin. First, we see from that three words, purification for sins, we see that sin exists and it needs to be cleaned up. It needs to be taken care of and that Jesus does that. That's what atonement is, is that there is sin.

Objectively, it exists. It has marred. It has destroyed. It has sullied. It has dirtied. And Jesus purifies.

So first, very simply, what is sin? In a simple definition, sin is the rejection of God's good reign in the world. It is our action, attitude, and nature that intentionally and unintentionally rebels against God and His moral law in the world. That God is the creator, that He oversees the universe, and that we rebel against His law, His rule, His reign, His system. That we break His laws. Paul says this in Romans.

He says that the Jewish people who were given the law of God will be judged based off of the law they were given. And then he says in the non-Jewish people, that their conscience actually bears witness and that they show through their actions that what the law requires is written on their hearts. That they actually have a conscience imprinted in them. And this is why many of the cultures that have grown up in society, they have very similar systems for what right is and what wrong is. That stealing is wrong. That murder is wrong.

There's this kind of internal policing of... This is why when you do some sort of an action, you feel it. You feel bad. You feel wrong. That's what he's saying, is that those who were given the law will be judged by the law. And those who weren't given the law, the non-Jewish peoples, show that it's written into them.

But it's not just a failure. Sin is not just a failure to live up to God's moral code. It's also primarily, it begins with a failure to relate to God properly, to appreciate who he is, to worship him, to love him, to bend to his reign, to submit to his rule. It's this... Paul says in the beginning of Romans that all of our sins starts with us loving something, worshiping something more than God. That once God leaves his rightful place, as the most...

That's what we spent time talking about last week, that Jesus is the most worthy of our devotion and our love. But once God gets moved and you put something else there, romance, finances, power, prestige, anything you get stuck up there suddenly begins to bend us. We begin to love it too much and it leads us into sin so that at first, sin is not just a breaking of rules, but it's at first worshiping and loving something other than God that leads to us rejecting his rules and running from him. Augustine says that sin is disordered love. Augustine's an African church leader in the early church. He says it's a disordered love that we love something too much.

We love ourselves too much. We love our families too much. We love something other than God. It's moved from its rightful place. And you can see this in simple things. So if you imagine a home where it's Father's Day, so we'll use this for an example.

You imagine a home where there's a father, a mother, some children and there's supposed to be an amount of love that goes towards this. The husband's supposed to love his wife and his children in a way that makes the rest of everything else fall into place. But if he begins to love work more, suddenly his love is greater for his job or greater for his title or if his love is greater for money or even just his own personal satisfaction and rest, suddenly everything gets out of order. And that's the system that we have in the world where we've begun to love things more than God and the whole system has begun to break down.

Paul says in Romans 3, he says, None is righteous. No, not one. No one understands. No one seeks for God. All have turned aside. Together they have become worthless.

No one does good, not even one. The biblical stance on sin is that it is bad and you are a sinner. That's where we're starting this morning. I'm going to pray and we're going to jump into in just a second, and we're going to be going to talk about what sin actually does and how it's bad. But before we do that, we have to realize that naturally we don't want to think of ourselves as sinful.

You give yourself the benefit of the doubt. You judge other people by their actions, but you judge yourself by your intentions. It's one of the things like my wife will say, you know, you really hurt my feelings. And my response is, well, I didn't mean to. And I feel like that's a perfectly good response. That was not my intention.

And maybe that's helpful. I wasn't malicious, but I still caused harm. I still broke our relationship down. It's like, well, that wasn't what I was going for. And that's why people, you know, when someone, you tell somebody they did something wrong and they, well, I'm sorry that it offended you. And you immediately want to be like, time out.

That's not an apology. What you just like, like it's really looking at someone and going, well, I'm sorry that you're too sensitive to handle being around me. We don't want to think of ourselves as sinful, but we are. And we need God's help for us to see ourselves as he sees us and for us to see him as we ought. And so let's take just a second and pray for ourselves. Wherever you are, just ask God to help you see that this morning as we look into this.

God, I pray that you would give us a glimpse into our sin, into what it does to us and to others, as you'd help us to see your holiness and that we would leave here today with a true appreciation for what you've accomplished through the cross on our behalf. In Jesus' name, amen. I have three pictures, three reasons, three truths I want to talk about sin to help us see what it does and how the Bible talks about it. One of the ways the Bible talks about sin is that it pollutes or it defiles, that a whole land can be polluted, can be defiled by sin. So first thing is that our sin destroys God's good world.

Before we can get into talking about the system that God has for taking care of sin, we've got to understand a little bit more about sin. So our sin destroys God's good world. I had a friend of mine that was a, she was a student youth group leader and she was a good cook and one of her students is actually here today and I just ran into her and now I'm going to have to really make sure this story is told true and accurately because it's based off of how I remember her telling it to me. But she made brownies for her entire like student group and so she was a good cook. She made brownies. Everybody was just chowing down on these brownies while they were hanging out before they were going to kind of do their study time and then she kind of called everybody up and she starts teaching from the Bible and she says, okay, sin pollutes, it defiles, it creeps in and it works its way into everything and she says, and that's what sin does in us and some of us like to minimize and act like just a little bit of sin is okay and she goes, in order to help us see this, I have a confession.

As I was making those brownies, using my same recipe as normal, I just added one ingredient. I went out of my backyard where my dog lives and I got a small helping sample really, just a little bit of dog poop and I mixed it in with the brownies. Now immediately, they did not take it well. close to anarchy very quickly with people like hyperventilating and very frustrated and some of you are thinking, there's no way that anybody would ever do this. I will tell you that this certain lady has lived a life in such a way that this is plausible and she said, it was just a little bit, it was just a little bit, it was hardly any at all, really, it was just a tiny little bit and people are like, you made us eat poop brownies and she's like, no, they're not poop brownies, they're brownies with a little bit of poop.

It's completely different and so the question, when it comes to sin, when it comes to brownies, the vouchers will ask about brownies, what's the minimum acceptable amount of poop? What's the maximum acceptable amount maybe? What's the range here when it comes to your brownies and poop? And the answer is zero poop. None. None whatsoever.

I don't care if it was really a sprinkle. It's like, why would you add that to brownies? Absolutely not. And this is what God says that sin does, that it immediately defiles, that it works its way into everything because if you told me I have brownies that are 98% brownies and 2% poop, I would say those are poop brownies. Those are not, they are no longer edible. This is not a good brownie batter system recipe.

Throw it away. This is terrible. That's what God says sin does. That it works its way into the world that a little bit of it begins to destroy everything. I have another picture of this. One of our pastors became a pastor.

We ordained him in January of this year. He has a gluten allergy, celiac disease. It's kind of aggressive in the way he has. I know some of y'all have gluten issues. He's got significant gluten issues. And I don't know much about gluten.

I don't know the science behind it. From what I understand, it's the thing that makes all food taste good. And so like when I eat a biscuit, all the biscuits I've eaten over my lifetime are slowly working together to try to kill me. If he eats a biscuit, it goes immediately and tries to kill him. That one biscuit just right then tries to kill him. And so we were eating a meal.

He had some soup. I was there. Our other pastor, Matt Freeman, was there. And Matt Freeman, because no one ever really taught him basic social norms, does what he will do from time to time, which is while you're eating with him, he will just eat some of your food. And so Matt's sitting there talking to Raz. Raz is eating his soup and Matt takes a saltine cracker and just dips it in Raz's soup, scrapes some up, and just starts eating.

And Raz looks appalled as any normal human should. But then over and above was just staring at Matt like, what on earth? And I was like, what? I'm just like, I didn't even pick up on the gluten thing. I was just like, you ate his food, dude, stop. Like, but Raz goes, I can't eat my soup now because you defiled it with gluten.

It was like, it wasn't just breaking social norms. It was attempted murder. And sin does that. It enters in. This is what God tells us about sin and creation. It enters in and it begins to erode.

It begins to corrode. It begins to destroy everything. Let me give you an example. In real life, you'll have someone talking to you and they'll tell you something. They'll tell you a story about their life or something they did or they'll tell you some sort of an event and there's this moment in you where you go, mmm, nah. You just have this, I don't think that's true.

Or someone maybe comes and they start complimenting you and they start saying nice things and there's this moment in your soul where you go, mmm, this is starting to feel a little bit like you're trying to trick me. You have nothing really to base this off of in this conversation other than the fact that you know lies exist. You've been told lies before and you've told lies before. You've been manipulated before and you've manipulated before and so what happens is this relationship is already being torn apart by things that have happened in other situations. It's quite possible that that is the exact truth.

When people tell me things, my natural reaction is, no, okay, probably not. And maybe I'm way too pessimistic. People complain to me that I am. But it's because sin has worked its way into relationships before I even meet somebody. my child has never been abducted. But when we go to a playground, we are less free because other children that we do not know and have no relationship to whatsoever have been.

And that instance that had nothing to do with us where nothing was taken from me has worked its way into my life so that it is now breaking down how life should look for us. that's why we have to take our shoes off when we go to an airport. It's because sin in other areas has begun to work its way in and this is what sin does. You've been manipulated so you treat everyone like they may do that. It begins to work its way into the world. Our sin destroys God's good world. And the issue in the Bible is that how is God going to get rid of sin without getting rid of us?

Because it's in us. For lack of a better example we're all poop brownies. It's infected us and God has to get sin out without destroying us if he's going to keep us. Secondly in our sin we have joined God's enemy. The story of the Bible is that God has an enemy in Satan who is an angelic being who led a rebellion and that in the Garden of Eden he continued that rebellion as he recruited humanity to join his side and to actively reject God's good rule and reign. And when we sin it is not a benign action but it is the willful rebellion of God's creation against him.

And in our sin we have joined the enemy in the same way that someone who grows up in our nation can join ISIS carry out and carry out an attack claim allegiance to ISIS and ISIS will step in and say yes they were on our team. That is us in our sin when we reject God we join the cause of the enemy to sow dissension and pain in the world. And this happens through our selfishness this happens through our racism this happens through our lies that we tell this happens in every way possible that we choose to sin we actively join God's enemy. Thirdly God is eternal in size glory worth and majesty he is eternal in size glory worth and majesty so that read earlier that he rules the world holds it together by his word of his power and that he sat down at the right hand of majesty that God is infinitely glorious and that all of our sin is first and foremost against him.

This is what David says after he commits adultery and murder he begins praying to God by saying I've sinned only against you because that's who our sin is first and foremost against. So we know that our actions carry consequences of greater weight depending on the object that we carry out our actions against. It sounds complicated it's not. If I take a sheet of white paper ball it up and throw it away I should not have done that. I just wasted paper. But if you had just drawn a picture on it or my son had just brought it to me from Kid City with a little picture on it and I'd balled it up in front of him and threw it away that's worse because something went into it.

That's worse because something went into it. If I waited until you got done taking your SAT and then snuck over and grabbed your Scantron and tore that up and threw it away you should choke me you just wasted three hours of a Saturday working your hardest to guess what words meant if I tore up the Mona Lisa and threw it away now it's the object that our sin

Is against that makes the greater weight and so when we look at an eternal and glorious and holy and majestic God and actively sin against him and then say it's not that big a deal what we're really saying is you aren't that big you are not that glorious you are not that beautiful you need to calm down

See one of the major issues we have as humans is that we do not think our sin is that big of a deal and is because we do not think our God is that big of a deal we exist at his will we're here because he allows us to be and the truth is often as humans we dislike that God

Expects anything from us we find God to be an imposition that he would hold us accountable that he would care about our sin that he would eventually judge us seems unfair frustrating and as if he should really just leave us alone there's a quote from Jonathan Edwards who's a pastor in the 1700s in America I'm going to read this it says in this world

God puts forth his authority to command them them being humans the rest of the time he's talking about humanity and to require subjection to him meaning that God says he's in charge and humans should subject themselves to him in his commands he's very positive strictly requiring of them the performance of such and such duties and positively forbidding

Such and such things that are contrary to their duty all he's saying is that God says do this don't do this this is how you ought to relate to me but they have no regard for these commands God continues commanding and they continue rebelling they make nothing of God's authority God threatens but they despise his threatening

They make nothing of dishonoring God they care not how much their behavior is to the dishonor of God he offers them mercy if they will repent and return they despise his mercy as well as his wrath he calls but they refuse thus they are continually plunging themselves deeper and deeper in debt

And at the same time imagine they shall escape the payment of the debt and design entirely to rob God of his due but God has undertaken to right himself he will reckon with them he has undertaken to see that the debts due to him are paid all their sins are written

In his book not one of them is forgotten and everyone must be paid see God is the glorious eternal king and him requiring anything of me is an imposition it's an annoyance it's an annoyance maybe at best and at times it's ludicrous and it seems as if he's out of line so we as humans sin

And make a little of our sin and in so doing trample on the honor of God and make a little of him and act as if he should not care or hold us accountable one of the beautiful things about the state of South Carolina is that we live in an at will state meaning you work at the will of your employer I say this is

Beautiful because my dad runs companies he is an employer and this means this if he has an employee who shows up late talking on his cell phone listening to his headphones doing one in one a year and my dad tries to tell him hey you need to get to work you're late and he looks at my dad and goes

And goes right back to talking on his phone and then when he gets off my dad's like hey you can't show up late you start explaining to him the duties of his job and that person who's a 15 year old boy looks at him and says I don't understand why you're getting all up in my face you need to calm down my dad can look at him and say

There's the door and it brings joy to my soul when it happens and here's why if if a my dad as a boss keeps him there and does not try to corral that does not try to change that he makes the rest of our work environment terrible you ever worked in a place where the boss did not oversee his employees so that anyone

Who showed up late and did whatever they wanted to like who does that it tears everything apart and I would be watching and going who on earth are you to be a 15 year old and talking to someone who's older than you and your boss and of course he started this company he can do whatever he wants to with it but we will stand and look in the face of God and say it's a little bit ridiculous for you to care

About my sin and I think you've stepped out of line and if there is a God this is the type of God I will accept well there is a God and you have to accept the one you got who is glorious and holy and is just and will not let sin be unaccounted for because it destroys his good world

That he created out of his own goodness and his own love and his own joy that he invited us into and we exist at his will the reason you are still inhaling and exhaling oxygen is because he is allowing it C.S. Lewis in his essay God in the dock dock being where a guilty person would stand or the accused would stand

So we might would say God on the witness stand the ancient man approached God or even the gods as the accused person approaches his judge for the modern man the roles are quite reversed he is the judge God is in the dock God is on the witness stand he is quite a kindly judge if God should have a reasonable defense for being the God who permits war poverty

Disease he is ready to listen to it the trial may even end in God's acquittal but the important thing is that man is on that the man is on the bench and God is in the dock that we approach this glorious holy God as if he has some explaining to do he owes us nothing why are you allowed to swat a mosquito

That bites you why am I allowed to rid my backyard of fire ants who destroy my son's ability to play back there freely and how on earth do I think that the God that created me owes me something we have a problem God is just and sin must be punished and God doesn't owe us anything but I have really good news

The Bible also clearly and repeatedly says that God is loving and merciful and faithful and gracious in Exodus chapter 34 God shows up and he begins to declare who he is and what he's like and this is what he says he says the Lord descended in the cloud and stood with him

There him as Moses and he proclaimed the name of the Lord the Lord passed before him and proclaimed the Lord the Lord a God merciful and gracious slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness keeping steadfast love for thousands forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin but who will

By no means clear the guilty visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children and the children's children to the third and fourth generation God says he will by no means clear the guilty let me explain to you something about a good judge a good judge does not let the guilty walk someone in your family had been harmed and you went to trial and the person

Stood up and said yes I'm guilty yes you have proof that I'm guilty but I just want to let you know I'm really sorry and it'll never happen again and the judge went good enough for me said they're sorry if someone stole your car they found it and they said you know what now that you found me with it I'm willing

To return it the judge said sounds good we have a system where it's like no you have to make restitution you stole something but it didn't just it wasn't just the car that went missing it's the action that you took and there has to be restitution a good judge does not let the guilty walk free and God declares himself a good judge God is just

When he defends his good creation against what is polluting and destroying it he is just when he executes vengeance on his sworn enemies and he is just when he defends his holiness and his majesty against those who trample on it with utter contempt for the God that created them but keeping steadfast love for thousands forgiving iniquity and transgression

And sin God doesn't have to do that but he chooses to and he comes go to Leviticus chapter 1 Leviticus is in the law it's going to be on page 40 something 46 47 47 if you have a white bible it's going to be early on if your bible some other brand different Numbers God comes

God comes to Israel and he says I'm going to make a way for this to happen I'm going to make a way for me to forgive sin because when you've sinned you've incurred debt that in God's economy there's actually debt that is incurred through sin he says I'm going to

Make a way for this to be paid for it says the Lord called Moses and spoke to him from the tent of meeting saying speak to the people of Israel and say to them when any one of you brings an offering to the Lord you shall bring your offering of livestock from the herd or from the flock if his offering is a burnt offering

From the herd he shall offer a male without blemish a burnt offering was the one that atoned for sin a male without blemish he shall bring it to the entrance of the tent of meeting that he may be accepted before the Lord he shall lay his hand on the head of the burnt offering and it shall be accepted for him to make atonement

For him this means that this animal is going to pay for his sin it's going to make him right with God and if you're unfamiliar with this I hope you have not gotten attached to this animal verse 5 then he shall kill the bull before the Lord and Aaron's sons the priests shall bring the blood and throw the blood against the sides of the altar that is at the entrance of the tent

Of meeting they would take the blood of the animals that they had sacrificed and they would splash it against objects and this was making purification that they would take the life out of another animal and they would use that life to atone for sin and to make purification and this was the sacrificial system that God set up now we don't really have a category for this

But God says you have a debt that has been incurred by your sin and in his justice and his mercy he makes a system where your debt can be paid now we don't understand that someone else could pay the penalty for something you did so that if I commit a crime my wife can't go to jail for me but we do have a system where if I owe a debt anyone can pay it that that makes restitution and God somewhere in the blending of this says that I'm going to

Set up a system because I am merciful he does not have to do this but because I am merciful and good I'm going to set up a system that allows you to pay for your sin to atone for your sin a few observations your sin deserves death the penalty for your sin was death and they had to redo this over and over and over again you'd have to walk out to your herd you'd have to find a male that was without blemish means it was worth something it was good it should keep breeding

It does not deserve to die you would have to then bring it with you walking with what was going to have to pay for your sin you'd bring it to the priest you would lay your hands on its head transferring your sin your action your decision your willful rebellion against God to this animal and then in front of you it would be killed and it would be a bloody mess and they would take some of the blood and they would sprinkle it to purify

For the sin that had caused the stains something had to die for you to go free but this is God in Exodus chapter 34 this is him accomplishing this because this this little phrase in Exodus doesn't make a whole lot of sense forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin but who will by no means clear the guilty so you're saying a whole second iniquity transgression and sin make you guilty

So how does he forgive that and not clear the guilty and this is where he does both he forgives it by giving you a way to not be guilty anymore by allowing you to transfer your guilt to something else allowing you to take your guilt place it on something that's why they would lay their hands on this animal place it on something and have it die for you every year this can be found in Leviticus 16 we're not going to spend any time there this morning but you can read through it

Every year they would have the day of atonement where they would do this for the entire nation they would get two goats they would bring them the high priest would lay his hands on one to lay all the sin of the nation on it and it would die for the sins of the nation and the high priest would lay his hands on another one to lay all the sins of the nation on it and it would be carried off to take the sin away

Because God's wrath had to be paid for and sin had to be taken away and then the high priest with the blood would purify everything in the temple that this was a ritual that they had to do day after day year after year because they kept piling up sin before God and they kept needing their debt to be paid now this is an actual debt I find that that when we're talking with people

About this sometimes they'll say well yeah well why couldn't God just forgive us why couldn't he just wipe it away this is his process that he made for it because let me explain to you if I come to your house this is how sin works with God if I come to your house and I break your television it's more likely that my two year old would do it but if I break your television we have a couple of options now

You can make me buy you a new television that I pay for the decision I made or you can say don't worry about it but if you tell me not to worry about it who's handling the television you are who's incurring the cost you are you're paying for the television you're either going to buy yourself a new one or you're going to pay for it day after day

After day after day of having to talk to the people who live in your house so you're going to buy yourself a new television but you're going to have to incur the cost and what God says is there's an actual debt that has been mounting against us that he's holding back the debt and it continues day after day to rise and to rise and to rise that there's a flood of sin

That we are piling up that he's counting that he's watching and he's either we have to pay for it but ultimately to forgive something someone has to pay for it and what we find in scripture is that God says I'll incur the cost of your debt God looks at us and says you don't have to worry about it

I'm going to pay for it and Jesus Christ comes as the atonement see he gave us this picture of animals having to die for our sin but they had to keep doing it year after year and day after day and every time you sinned you'd have to walk another animal and I would have to be very rich to handle all the sin

That I would have to kill goats for and they continually had to do this but eventually God says I'm going to fix this problem turn to Hebrews chapter 9 the book of Hebrews walks through and clearly connects a lot of the Old Testament to the fulfillment that's found in Christ will be on page 583 starting in verse 11

Hebrews chapter 9 verse 11 but when Christ appeared as a high priest of the good things that have come so this is when he says the high priest he's talking about the person who would have overseen the day of atonement who would have overseen the sacrificial system it says that Jesus steps in as the new high priest the one that's going to make atonement for the people

He appeared as a great high priest as a high priest of the good things that have come then through the greater and more perfect tent this is where the high priest would have gone to make atonement not made with hands that is not of this creation he's talking about his body he says he entered once and for all into the holy places this is the day of atonement this is the picture he's painting

That they would have gone into the holy places and made atonement for the people he's saying this is what Jesus did he entered once for all into the holy places not by means of the blood of goats and calves but by the means of his own blood thus securing an eternal redemption redemption for if the blood of goats and bulls and the sprinkling

Of defiled persons with the ashes of a heifer sanctify for the purification of the flesh how much more will the blood of Christ who through the eternal spirit offered himself without blemish to God purify our conscience from dead works to serve the living God what he's saying is that Jesus Christ was our perfect sacrifice he was the one without blemish

Without sin who willfully chose unlike a goat who has no choice Jesus Christ willfully was led to the slaughter to make atonement for the sins of others therefore he is the mediator of a new covenant meaning there's a new system now between God and humans so that those who are called may receive the promised eternal

Inheritance since a death has occurred that redeems them from the transgressions committed under the first covenant Jesus Christ came humbled himself the creator of the world who holds the world together by the word of his power and who owes us nothing but yet we owe him everything not only our existence but also for our rebellion in that existence he comes to

Swap places with us to walk with us and to as a great high priest pay the penalty for our sin to be both the high priest and the sacrifice so that we may forever be at one with God forever be made right with him and forever have our sin taken away I have a few points of application that I think

Come out of this concept for us to consider this morning as we finish first I want us to see that in this God saves humanity he remains just because sin is dealt with the guilty do not go free either the sacrifice is accepted and your guilt has been taken away because

It was placed on Jesus or we are still in our sin that God remains just and he vindicates the glory of his name in this picture of atonement that we're given in scriptures we learn that we are guilty of sin and unable to make restitution we have a debt that we are unable to pay that every

Human will stand before God with a debt of a life lived in rebellion and be unable to pay secondly we learn that God in his love and mercy and grace through Christ provided an acceptable sacrifice this is why Jesus is called the Lamb of God that God in his mercy provided someone

To pay our debt thirdly you should hate your sin and you should hate the fact that you don't really hate your sin that if we look into this and see the weight of the burden of the guilt that we had before a holy and just God knowing that one day we would have to pay for it

And we should hate all the sin that had to be laid on Christ that he had to die for and we should hate the fact that we so often minimalize and do not hate our sin feel okay with it think God winks at it act as if his holiness does not matter if you have not trusted in Jesus

Christ as your atoning sacrifice you should do so now you should repent of your sin and look only to him as the acceptable satisfactory payment of your debt to God Jesus Christ has been put forward as your way to not

Pay for your sin and what I would encourage you to do is to walk to the cross just as you would have to walk and pick out a goat and walk to the high priest and lay your hands

On it knowing that this animal that is currently breathing and looking at you and has walked with you this whole time because it is a tame animal is about to breathe its last breath because of the actions

That you have taken and the choices you have made and lay your hands on it and know that your guilt has transferred from you to this animal and it will die for you I would encourage you to walk to Christ

And lay your hands on him and transfer your guilt to him and know that he'll breathe his last breath to pay for the guilt that you owe God so that you can be eternally redeemed if you have not placed your faith in

Christ you should do so now because God forgives transgression and iniquity and sin but he will not clear the guilty for those of you who have placed faith in Christ we should rest confident in the eternal redemption provided by

Him questions of have I done enough am I good enough betray the fact that we have begun to believe that somehow the guilt has shifted back to us or somehow believe that we have to atone for our sin something that we were

Never going to be able to do and we should rest fully confident and free in the fact that a death has set you free that you did deserve punishment but in Christ you will not receive it this is why Christians no longer practice

Animal sacrifices we have a sacrifice once for all that has eternally redeemed us the blood of the lamb has been shed we have been purified we will stand before God guiltless because he

Stood before God guilty we should tell everyone about our terrible state before God and the good news of hope offered through Christ if we believe this and see this and know this to be true the most loving thing you can do is for those who feel guilty help them know that there is a

God who pays for guilt and for those who do not feel guilty help them see how guilty they are and then let them know that there is a God who pays their guilt for those of us who stand here or sit here this morning and say we believe this

There is no other loving option for those around us other than to tell everyone we possibly can that there is a debt of sin and a savior that offers redemption lastly for those of us in Christ we should spend the

Rest of our days marveling and rejoicing at the sacrifice of Jesus that God would humble himself to redeem creatures like us that he owed nothing to but that he loved enough to rescue and to make his own to reclaim his willful enemies

Who have actively destroyed his good order and with an utter contempt for his rule he came for the purpose to bleed and to die and to sacrifice himself so that we could have life the band

Is going to come back up and as we begin today to leave here as Christians marveling at the grace of God that we do not have to pay for our sin that we incurred debt that he paid for that we

Can walk with Christ and walk away free and blameless the way we are going to immediately respond as Christians in the room is to take communion where we remember the sacrifice of Christ where we take take the cup

We take the bread and we remember that Jesus Christ was broken and bled for us so that we can go free that we get to walk pick up a goat we get to walk with guilt hanging over us to a high priest

And walk away free that we get to walk to the cross with guilt bearing down on us but because blood is shed and death reigns we get to walk away free but you see Jesus Christ

Is both goats from the day of atonement sin is laid on one and it is killed and sin is laid on one and it carries it away and Jesus Christ died on a cross and rose from the

Grave and we have an eternal redemption and an eternal inheritance and we get to celebrate today as we wonder and marvel at the graciousness of a loving God who would die in our

Place we get to take communion remembering that we owe a debt to God that we could never pay but that Jesus Christ has and if you are not a Christian you should place your faith in Christ you should

Become a Christian and you should go take communion for the first time as a Christian who knows the weight of what you're doing that Jesus has redeemed you from your sin and that you can be forever free let's

Pray God we thank you that you made atonement for us that you purified us that we no longer stand under our guilt because we are in Christ thank you that you figured out a way to rid us of sin

To atone for our guilt without destroying us but that you were willing to be destroyed for us as an eternal sacrifice who reigns supreme seated in the right hand of majesty forever giving your life to those

Who place their faith you thank you in Jesus name amen

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.

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.

The Gospel

Transcript

What we're doing today specifically is we're just looking at the gospel. So as we get into the next several weeks, we'll be unpacking very practically what it means for that to affect us, for the gospel to change us and to affect how we live our lives. But today we're just looking at the gospel. And to do that, we're going to look in Romans chapter 1 through 6. Chapters 1 through 6. So everybody, put your big boy britches on.

We've got a lot of work to do. The reason we're doing that and the reason we're going to try to cover so much text is this. The gospel is the primary story of the Bible. It is the story of the Bible. And what happens sometimes when we talk about the gospel is we'll say, hey, everybody flip to 2 Corinthians. Everybody now jump over to 1 Timothy.

Everybody go to this passage in Luke. And it seems as if sometimes, if we haven't spent much time reading scripture, that the gospel is somehow hidden obscurely all around like it's like a little treasure hunt to find it. And it is not. And so what we're trying to do today is actually just go through Romans 1 is going to say this. Romans 2 is going to say this. Romans 3 is going to say this.

And move so that we all have a good handle on a linear walkthrough of a big understanding of the gospel. Now, when we say the word gospel, it sometimes gets confusing. We use the word gospel a lot, sometimes wrongly. Sometimes we're talking about the Holy Spirit. And we'll say, you know, the gospel changes you. And really it's the Holy Spirit changing you through the gospel.

So sometimes we'll use the gospel too much and use it in the wrong sentence. A lot of times we just say it's become buzzwordy for us, especially us as a church, where we'll say things like we'll press into the gospel, point each other to the gospel, walk in the gospel. Your community needs to be about the gospel. And after a while it's like I don't even know what you're talking about anymore. You just keep using that word. And it's not helpful.

And for some of us that maybe don't have a church background, when you hear gospel, you might even just think of a type of music. And depending on where you grew up, that may be southern gospel, which is like four overweight white guys telling a story in harmony with one another. And it may be the other type of gospel, which is going to be any number of 1 to 30 African Americans not telling a story, but saying the same thing over and over and over again. And we can argue all day as to which one's better. There is one that's better, and it's not the four white guys. But I'm just throwing that out there.

So we may even just be confused about what that word means. And so what we're going to do first is we're just going to really clearly try to explain where the word gospel comes from and what the Bible means when it says it, because it is a very loaded word. It means way more. It's a huge concept, and it is the story of the Bible. So the word gospel comes from the Greek word euangelion, or sometimes they'll English eyes at some and call it evangelion.

That's where we get the word evangelist from. And what it means is angelia just meant message. And so you would have news. That's what it means. So the gospel basically, ooh means good, and angelia means news.

And so the gospel very fundamentally just means good news. But it's not good news the way we use the term good news. So like I might see you and be like, I've got good news. Little Caesar's having a buy one, get one free sale. Wow. And you're like, that's great news.

But the way they would have used it is everything was news and only life-shattering, epic, this will change you news was good news. Was euangelion. And so everything was news. So you would have heralds and people that would proclaim news. And then there are certain things that were called gospel, good news. Like this is actual life-changing news.

And so there were certain things like there's the gospel of Caesar, which is saying this is the guy who got like our nation started, set it up the way it is. This is life-changing news for everybody who exists in the Roman Empire. It's the gospel of Caesar, much the way we have like the gospel of Jesus. Mark will start off with this is the gospel of Jesus Christ. There was the gospel of like Marathon. So there are certain battles that your army won.

So when the Greeks held off the Persians and defeated them at Marathon and people ran to the cities to proclaim that, what they were proclaiming was the gospel of the battle of Marathon, which is this is epic, life-changing news. We're not going to be slaves. This isn't advice. This isn't, hey, get ready. This isn't everybody run for your life. This is gospel.

It's epic, life-changing news. Everybody throw a party, pop the keg, start celebrating. We won the battle. That's what it was. That's what gospel was. And so when the Bible says gospel, what it means is the epic, life-changing news.

And that's why the Bible is going to call it the gospel. So they took that word that meant good news and epic news, and they just put this is the life-shattering, world-changing news. And what that news is this. And I'm going to try to just walk through this very simply, and then we're going to walk through it in a more complex way as Paul unpacks it, who's a guy writing the book of Romans. As Paul unpacks it in Romans. So God created the world.

So there is a creator God, and he made everything, and he designed it to exist in a relationship with himself. Much the way that a father wants to have a relationship with his children and fights for that and wants that because the father loves his children and because it's good for the children. Like if we see a four-year-old just living on the street, we're like, no, this kid needs a family. And that's the way God created creation to exist in that relationship with himself because he loves creation, and it's good for creation. Humans, your first parents, Adam and Eve, you may know of them. You've probably seen a picture of them somewhat naked, which I hope isn't true for all your ancestors but is true for Adam and Eve.

They existed in relationship with God in a garden, and they rebelled against him. So because they existed, they chose to love themselves more, to honor themselves more, to go after their own way and not to exist in that relationship with God. And when they did that, it was a train wreck of cosmic proportions. It absolutely shattered the very fabric of our world because now creation no longer exists in the relationship with the creator as it's supposed to. Then what happens is God begins to pursue humans again and begins to try to teach them what it looks like to live in a relationship with him.

He didn't have to teach them at first. They just did. Now he's having to try to rebuild this. So he chases after the nation of Israel. He gives them the law, which is just here's how you honor me. Here's how you live in a relationship with me, and continues on, and it goes from bad to worse, and it becomes to where no human is ever going to live up to and fix the relationship with God.

So God becomes a man, and that's the person Jesus Christ. And he lives a perfect life, does not rebel, exists in the relationship with the creator as he's supposed to. The Bible tells us that when we rebel, when we fall short, when we sin and dishonor God, we deserve death. So Jesus lives perfectly and does not deserve death. If he had sinned, if he had fallen short, if he had rebelled, if he had chosen to dishonor God, he would have deserved death, but he didn't. So then he trades places with us.

And Jesus, on a cross, dies the death that we all deserve. And then he rises from the grave three days later. Not spiritually, not an apparition, rises back to life, still has scars, eats food, touches people, scares people, rises from the dead. And when he did that, he gave us his life. And so that for anyone who places faith in Jesus, his life applies to your account. So that your terrible life, your failure of a life, that where you fall short, where you mess up, where you have sin, where you have problems, he applies his life to your account.

And where you have fallen short and messed up and had problems and disobeyed God and run from him, he takes that onto himself and dies for it. So he dies for our sin and rises to give us life. And that is the gospel. And that's what the Bible means when it says the gospel. It's that Jesus saves us through his work and effort, not ours. And that's what Paul is going to mean.

And that's what we're going to walk through today. And that's what everything is about. For us as a church, that's all we talk about. If you've been hanging around for a while, you're like, man, they only talk about Jesus. Yes. That's all we have to say.

We're a band with one song. We're like Brian Adams. We start with summer of 69. We close with summer of 69. We got nothing else in the middle. That's it.

That's all we do is we're going to talk about Jesus. We're going to talk about the gospel. And so we're going to walk through Romans 1 through 6 so that we can all have a very clear picture. And that's what we're walking through, this epic, life-changing good news as Paul unpacks it. So I'm going to pray.

And we're going to walk through Romans 1 through 6 at a hefty clip because we don't want to be here until 3 o'clock in the afternoon, I'm assuming. I'm cool with it if y'all are. All right, let's pray. God, we thank you that the gospel is not obscure, but that you've made it evident and clear. And we ask that you would reveal it to us as we study your word today. Give us wisdom and clarity as we walk through.

May your Holy Spirit speak to us in a very real way. In Jesus' name, amen. Amen. So I just want to give a disclaimer. If this is your first time hanging out with us, maybe you're not a Christian. Maybe you got invited by your Christian friend to come hang out with their church.

They've been bugging you. You ran out of excuses. First of all, well done, Christian friend. Second of all, if you're here hanging out, I just want to tell you this is it. This is what we're about. This is what the church is about.

This is what Christianity is about. This is what the Bible is about. So they can't tell you, oh, he didn't really talk about it. You're going to have to come back. No, this is it. You came on the right Sunday to hang out with us.

This is what we're talking about. And as clearly as we can, we're going to walk through it. So we're in Romans 1. Now, Romans 1 starts off, it's a letter. So he starts off with like, hey, I'm Paul.

How y'all doing? How's your mom and them? And then immediately in 16, he jumps right into what he's talking about. He jumps right into the main point. So Romans 1, 16.

This is kind of Paul's lead. So if you write for a newspaper, the lead is the main part of the story. So it's going to be at the first sentence you have. Actually, the headline is going to be just the news piece. And then the first sentence will be the main point. And then everything else from that is just explaining the main point if someone writes a news story well.

So you should be able to stop reading a newspaper article at any point and all you would have done. You're not waiting for like, like news headlines aren't like, someone won the Super Bowl. Read page 4b to find out. Like it doesn't tell you the story and then you find out at the end. The headline will be Colts Win. I'm not making a prediction.

I'm just saying that's how headlines work. So like if you're angry about that, we'll see. It may just be Packers, whatever. Seahawks. Not making a prediction. But that's how it works.

And so that's what Paul's doing here in 116 is he's saying this is what the rest of this entire letter is about. The rest of it will be explaining it, but this is the point. 116. For I am not ashamed of the gospel, the epic life-changing news of Jesus, that he lived in our place, died in our place, and that we can be saved through him. That's the gospel. For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes.

Salvation from sin, salvation from death, salvation from the wrath of God that we deserve as we've rebelled. It's the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes. To the Jew first and also to the Greek. The reason he breaks that out, and we'll see more later, is the Jews were the people that God gave the law to, gave his rules to, gave his this is how you honor me to. And so he's going to talk about them in two separate groups. So those who don't know how to relate to God and those who did or do.

For in it, the righteousness, which means goodness, rightness, right standing, of God is revealed from faith for faith as it is written, the righteous shall live by faith. So what Paul starts off with is, I'm not ashamed of the gospel, which is that Jesus saves us, he rescues us, and it's the power. The gospel is the power of salvation. That's where rescue comes from, for everyone who believes. Everyone who believes. Now he's going to walk us through this story that we just talked about.

He's going to walk us through the gospel. And so he jumps right in. 18. For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth. Look, if God is good and holy, he has wrath. He has anger towards unrighteousness and brokenness.

My wife loves this show called Forensic Files, which is where they do like real crime stories, and then they say how they caught people based off of forensic evidence. And a lot of times it's like, 12 years later, we figured out how to use DNA. Because it used to just be like, this person bled everywhere. Gross. Clean it up. Now they keep it, and they can use DNA testing.

And so they'll find out way later. And I watch that show with her sometimes, and it creeps me out. So I have to like load a gun and sleep with one eye open after I watch a good bit of those shows. But I get so angry watching that show sometimes. So angry at the way humans treat each other and at the sick things that happen.

The terrible way that people interact with one another. The evil in the world. And I'm not that good. And I'm not that nice. And I'm not that holy. And to act like we have a good, holy, loving God who sits in heaven and doesn't care.

Doesn't have wrath for people. We very much misunderstand how much he loves. If we don't think he has wrath. And so it says that, For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth. Verse 19. For what can be known about God is plain to them.

Because God has shown it to them. For 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.

But 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. Okay, here's the first bit of our problem. We were created to worship God and we replace him with other things. Now as we walk through this, we're going to have some sentences come up on the screen.

If you take notes, I try to just make clear statements about the sections we're walking through. If that's helpful, cool, write them down. If it's not helpful, pay no attention to the screen behind me. I'm not a note taker person. It takes me a lot of effort to come up with sentences that are helpful. So there you go.

We were created to worship God. We replace him with other things. What it just said was that we know God exists through creation. And that's true. You make all the arguments you want to, but that's true. Because creation is way too complex for it to just have come out of nothing.

I'm sorry, it just is. It's like the human eye, the leaf. You know, all the work all our scientists are doing to come up with solar panels. They're trying to recreate the leaf. Because that thing is like this big and very, very efficient at turning sunlight into energy. That's why that car is called the leaf.

They're trying to make the leaf. And they can't because that is crazy efficient. And we're trying to figure out how to do it. But the way God designed the world is complex. Very complex. And it's got order in the midst of what seems like chaos.

And what it's saying is that we stumble upon creation and we should automatically know something intelligent was here and had something to do with this. Your brain is a chunk of meat that knows that it exists. Your brain named itself. It's the only organ to name itself. It named itself brain. And I've made this joke before, but I like it.

So I'm going to make it again. The brain really should have done better. It named itself like superpower lightning thought muscle or something like that. Like once you think about it, you're like, if I'm going to name myself, it needs to be something really sweet because the brain can do whatever it wants. That's complex. Like if you're walking through the woods, I don't know why you're in the woods, but you're walking through the woods and you come up on a little cottage.

And it's got a little thatched roof and it's made out of wood, you know, logs. And there's a little fireplace, like smoke coming out of it. You don't think, huh, I bet wind did this. I bet there's a whole lot of nature going on, made this little house. No, you immediately are like, oh, there's a human here and he's home because there's a fireplace. And I don't know why he lives in the woods, but he's probably weird.

Like that's immediately what happens. Like you're walking through the woods and you find a bird's nest. Immediately something intelligent had something to do with this. And this isn't even really complex. It's like sticks in a circle with a little hole in the middle. But you see it and you know this didn't just happen.

And so what Paul just said was with creation, God has made himself evident. He's made himself clear. You can't look at creation and be like, I bet wind did this. Like it's not how it works. Like a tornado never rips through a part of the country and builds a better city. This is not how chaos works.

So what he's saying is that it's clear that God exists and that we replace him. So it says that they replaced him with creatures, with creeping things. What we did was we took God as creator and we moved him out of that spot and we put other things there. We worship and care about and love other things. Something is going to be primary for us. Something is going to be what you spend your time on.

Something is going to be what you spend your energy, your sweat, your money towards. Something is going to be where you put your effort. Whatever that is, it's supposed to be God. It's supposed to be what you orient your life around. But you'll shift it.

It'll become something created. So it'll be money. It'll be sex. It'll be enjoyment. It'll be pleasure. It'll be your family.

Most of the time it's something good. It'll be your children. That's what you're going to spend your time on. That's what you're going to put your effort towards. But we've taken something creeping, something small, and we've replaced God with other things.

Now here's how this works. When the Bible talks about law, what it's really saying is that God exists so he actually has things that he likes and doesn't like. Things that honor him and don't honor him. So when he's primary, we'll orient our life around the things that he likes and doesn't like. Let me give you a very small example. It's kind of, sorry.

I made my, anyway, sorry. My wife, Anna. The reason I thought it was funny is because she's very small. So it's a very small example. My wife, Anna. She used to be smaller.

She's been putting on weight lately because she's really pregnant. She's going to have a baby here soon. But, man, I apologize, guys. My wife, Anna. So I care about her.

I love her. And so my life gets bent around her some. Like I begin to know what she likes and doesn't like. And I honor her through that. So like one of the ways that I would honor her well is like she comes home.

And I got home a little early. I started preparing. You know, I'm going to kind of, I'm going to show her some love. You know, so I wrote her a little note. And it's like, ooh, girl. Because that's a good way to start a note.

And it's like, I made you a cheeseburger with some blue cheese and a whole lot of ketchup for you. Because I've just been sitting at the house thinking about your curly brown hair, your olive skin, and your bright blue eyes. And I went to Redbox. And I rented you a DVD, the scariest one I could find, the best horror picture I could find that stars Vin Diesel. Now here's the problem.

That sounds nice. She doesn't have olive skin. She doesn't have blue eyes. She doesn't have curly brown hair. So I'm in trouble.

She doesn't like ketchup. And she's allergic to blue cheese. She doesn't like horror movies. And especially not anything with Vin Diesel in it. So when we talk about following and honoring and loving God, when the Bible talks about his law, what it's basically saying is a concept that we all understand very simply.

Is that because he actually exists, he has things that he likes and doesn't like. He has things that honor him and don't honor him. Because he's real. So when you're having a conversation with someone and they say, Well, my God would never. Time out. You don't get to choose.

Like I don't get to say, well, my wife would never be allergic to blue cheese. It's like she is, dude. Like she's real. So when somebody starts defining God in a way that he doesn't define himself, because he's real, he actually has things that honor him. So we have to ask questions like, how does he feel about children?

What's it mean to be a good father in relationship to my creator? Can I beat them? Can I get rid of them if they get on my nerves? Am I supposed to take care of them? What's he feel about the elderly? How does he feel about the way men treat women?

Are they property as they are in other parts of the world? Or are they have value in life and worth and are designed, made to be, designed, made to be cultivated and flourish and have giftings that they're supposed to use? Like how does he feel? Because he's real, he actually has ways that we follow him. So when the Bible talks about honoring God and loving him and following his law, that's what it's referring to in a very simple way.

Is that if he's primary, we'll exist as if he's primary. Now here's the problem. God is creator. We've replaced him with other things. If I have a wife, if you have a spouse, husband or wife, and you don't treat them as your spouse, that makes you a bad spouse. Very simply.

You don't treat your spouse like they're your spouse. You don't acknowledge them. Don't care for them. Act like you don't have a spouse. You're a bad spouse. You're a dad.

You've got kids and you don't treat your kids like they're your kids. You just, you ignore them like you don't have kids. That makes you a bad dad. If we are creation and we don't treat creator like he's the creator, that makes us bad creation. It's just a very simple concept. And so that's what Paul's saying.

Is that the wrath of God is shown against us because we've all replaced God with something else. All of us. Okay, jump to chapter 2, verse 11. We're going to read two things here, two verses, just to kind of clarify some of this. For God shows no partiality. That sounds nice.

12. For all who have sinned without the law. Okay, time out. We're about to find something out. If you did not know what honored God. So Paul just said that God made himself evident through creation.

But let's say you've never grown up in the church. You never spent any time reading the Bible. You never knew what honored God. You never got to know him to know what it was like. What he liked and didn't like. What would make him happy.

What would please him. It's about to tell us what happens to you. So if that's you. I never really read the Bible. I never really spent any time in church. I don't really know what God likes or doesn't like.

We're about to find out what it says. He doesn't show partiality. For all who have sinned. So that means disobeyed God. Run from God. Dishonored God.

Without the law. Will also perish without the law. Okay, that didn't go well for y'all. What it says is if you didn't know how to honor God. And you dishonored God. No excuse.

You'll perish without the law. You had no rules. You had no way to relate to him. You perish without it. And all who have sinned under the law. Okay.

Other half of people. Grew up in church. Read the scriptures. Understand a little bit about what it means to honor God. You know a little bit about the ten commandments. Like you can remember six out of the ten of them.

Know a little bit about what we're supposed to do to honor God. Let's find out what happens to us. I'm in that camp. I grew up in church. For all who have sinned under the law. Will be judged by the law.

Well that's not good. What it says is. Oh you knew it? You generous? You gracious? You loving?

Do you lie? You steal? Do you put other things over above me? It's just gonna. They just line up against us. And you're judged by it.

So. He shows no partiality. God's very fair. If you don't know the law. You perish without it. And if you do know the law.

You'll be judged by it. And God's wrath is coming forth for everyone. And all the unrighteousness in the world. Okay. Jump over to 3 verse 9. So what we've seen so far is that we have a problem.

We were created to worship God. And we replace him with other things. Chapter 3 verse 9. What then? Are we Jews any better off? And when he says Jews.

He means those who know how to honor God. Are we Jews any better off? No. Not at all. Sorry church people. People who knew the rules.

He says you're not any better off. He's specifically talking about the Jewish people. Who were given the law. But. Understanding how to honor God. Not any better off.

For we have already charged. That all. Both Jews and Greeks. Are under sin. As it is written. None is righteous.

No not one. No one understands. No one seeks for God. All have turned aside. Together they have become worthless. No one does good.

Not even one. Their throat is an open grave. They use their tongues to deceive. The venom of asps is under their lips. Their mouth is full of curses and bitterness. Their feet are swift to shed blood.

In their paths are ruin and misery. How many of you that sounds like your path? In their paths are ruin and misery. And the way of peace they have not known. There is no fear of God before their eyes. So that just means that they haven't placed God.

In his rightful position as creator. They haven't honored him. Loved him. Served him. There is no fear of God before their eyes. 19.

Now we have known that whatever the law says. It speaks to those who are under the law. So that every mouth may be stopped. And the whole world may be held accountable. To God. He will judge everybody.

Is what that's saying. For by works of the law. No human being. Will be justified. That means made right. It's actually a word that.

It's a. It's a. Judiciary term. It means that you won't stand before God in his courtroom. And be declared innocent. So justified means.

For by the works of the law. No human being will be justified in his sight. Since through the law comes knowledge of sin. All right. Real quick. What that means.

Is that through the law comes knowledge of sin. Just means that if you didn't know what God liked. You could. You could dishonor him without knowing about it. But once you know about it.

It doesn't fix your ability to. To follow. It just means you dishonor him. And know about it. No one. Will be made right with God.

No human being. Raise your hand if that applies to you. Okay. Hands down. No human being. Will be made right.

With God. By works of the law. What that means is. If we all came in here. And studied what made God happy. What he liked and didn't like.

And we worked to live under that. None of us. Would do it. None of us could live up to it. None of us could be good enough. None of us would be able to stand before God.

And be declared innocent. If you thought. That the Bible. Was about a bunch of do's and don'ts. Do this. Don't do that.

And God will love you. Do this. Don't do that. And you'll be a good person. It is not. What it just said was.

No one. Will be justified. By the law. So if you're talking to a friend. You don't know much about the Bible. And they're like.

Oh the Bible is just about a bunch of rules. You don't know much about the Bible. But you can now say. No it ain't. What's it about. I don't really know yet.

But it's not about being a good person. Because the Bible very clearly says. No one's going to do it. No one's going to be good enough. We all fall short. No amount of work will fix this.

In chapter 2. Paul says that we will all be judged by our works. And then he goes into. And all of us will fall short. So our problem is that we were meant to worship God.

But we were replacing with other things. And the second half of that problem. Is that we all fall short. And no amount of work will fix it. Been pretty uplifting so far. Paul really starts this letter off.

With a nice little hug. Chapter 1. Get in here. Verse 21. But now the righteousness.

Okay look. That sentence starts with but. Which sounds really nice. Because the first two chapters have been. Like a beating. And so it starts with but.

Which means something different is about to happen. But now the righteousness. It means the rightness. The goodness. The holiness of God. God.

Has been manifested. Just means it showed up. Apart from the law. Although the law and the prophets bear witness to it. That's just saying the Old Testament. It's called the law and the prophets.

It's saying it points to this. The righteousness of God. Through faith. In Jesus Christ. For all who believe. For there is no distinction.

For all have sinned. And fall short of the glory of God. And are justified. And are justified. Made right. Declared innocent.

By his grace. As a gift. Through the redemption. That is in Christ Jesus. Whom God put forward. As a propitiation.

That is a big word. And you need to fall in love with it. The word propitiation. Means that he diverted wrath. That wrath that we read about in chapter one. Where God's wrath is coming forth from heaven.

It was poured out on Jesus on the cross. In his excruciating. Painful. Bloody. Humiliating death. God's wrath was poured out on him.

And it diverted its course. From us. To him. That's what propitiation means. God put forward as a propitiation. By his blood.

To be received. By faith. By trust. This was to show God's righteousness. His goodness. His holiness.

Because in his divine forbearance. He had passed over former sins. It was to show his righteousness. At the present time. So that he might be just.

And the justifier. Of the one who has faith in Jesus. It means he's still a good judge. Because the guilty aren't acquitted. But he paid the penalty for us.

That's good news. That's the gospel. That's the epic. Life shattering. Time changing news. That changes everything for us.

We were created to live in an existence. With God. We removed him. And worship other things. No amount of work can fix this. And Jesus stepped in on our behalf.

And fixed it for us. That's good news. There's some movies I watch sometimes. I get pretty into movies. So I'll get amped up.

So like. It depends on what kind of movie I'll watch. But if I watch some movies. Like they make me want to work out. Some movies will make me like. Want to go fight someone.

Or whatever. Just depending on how good the movie is. But there's some movies that just get me really pumped. Really excited about stuff. Rudy's one of those. Like every time I watch Rudy.

I just want to go achieve something. Like I just want to spend four years. Chasing after one thing. And then just accomplish it at the end. And then like. Everybody picks me up.

And like I just. It makes me want to go try harder. That movie Unbroken. I hadn't even seen it. The previews get me amped. That guy's in that prisoner of war camp.

And he's like holding that stick. And that Japanese guy looks at him. And says don't look at me. And then punches him in the face. And then he looks down. And he looks right back at him.

I'm like. I best not see a Japanese person. I'll straight up look right at him. I don't even care. Like. There are certain movies.

And certain stories. And certain things. That just get you excited. They motivate you. All other religions. Are fundamentally doing that.

They're working to motivate. They're going to give you a good example. They're going to show you a way to live. They're going to say. This is what it looks like. To be a good this.

This is what it looks like. To reach nirvana. This is what it looks like. To be in a right relationship with God. And anytime you watch that. Anytime I watch Rudy.

Anytime I get motivated by something. It is certainly motivating. But it does not take weight off of me. It actually puts weight on me. Anytime someone gives you a rousing example. Of what it looks like to be a good.

Wife. Good mother. Anytime you read that. That mommy blog. It motivates. But it doesn't take weight off.

Anytime you. You find out. You look. And look at one of those. Before and after pictures. Of somebody who lost a bunch of weight.

It might motivate. But it doesn't take the pressure off. It doesn't lift that off of you. This. Good news of Jesus. Doesn't motivate.

It takes the pressure off. He came and took the weight for us. The pressure we feel. To be good. To be holy. To live rightly.

To prove ourselves. To earn it. None of us will. No. And Jesus showed up. To take the weight off.

To carry it for us. To die in our place. For our sins. And to give us. Righteousness. And holiness.

And to make us right with God. Jesus died. To pay our debt. And to make us right with God. We are saved by his work. Not ours.

Fundamentally. That's. That's. What we believe. When we say we believe the gospel. Is that we're saved by Jesus's work.

Not ours. That the church is not a group of people. Who got together. And try to be good together. It's a group of people. Who got together.

Because they knew they weren't. And they needed Jesus. To be good on our behalf. Romans 5. Paul's going to kind of unpack this. A little bit more for us.

Clarify a little bit more for us. As we dig further away. From. From kind of his lead. Romans 5 verse 6. For while we were still weak.

At the right time. Christ died for the ungodly. For one will scarcely die. For a righteous person. Though for. Perhaps for a good person.

One would dare to die. So what Paul's saying is. None of us want to take a bullet. For somebody on. On death row. None of us are going over there.

And saying. Hey you know what. That guy. Who. Who's in that triple homicide. Killed those little kids.

Let me take his lethal injection. Nobody wants to do that. But. For a good person. You might take a bullet. There's certain people.

That in your life. That you might would care enough for. To take a bullet for. That you might would. Lay your life down for. But God shows his love.

This is verse 8. But God shows his love. For us. In that while we were still. Sinners. Christ died for us.

Since therefore. We have now been justified. By his blood. Much more. Shall we be saved. By him.

From the wrath of God. For while we were enemies. We were reconciled to God. By the death of his son. Much more now. That we are reconciled.

Shall we be saved. By his life. More than that. We also rejoice in God. Through our Lord Jesus Christ. Through whom we have now.

Received reconciliation. Which means he fixed that relationship. What it just said was. We were all on death row. We were weak. We were sinful.

We were enemies. And Jesus showed up. And died for us. Do you know what's beautiful. About that. You can't out sin God.

Because he never saved you. Because you were good. And after you've been rescued. And saved. How much more. Will he continue to save you.

How much more. Will his life be your life. How much more joy. Will he give. How much more. Will he fulfill.

His promises. How much more. Will he fill us up. He's not mad at you. You were weak. And sinful.

And his enemy. When he died for you. Some of you Christians. In the room. Need to hear that. He's not disappointed in you.

Does he want good things for you. Yes. And we're going to get into that. In chapter 6. That's where Paul goes next. Does he want us to change.

Yes. Is he mad at you. No. Is he disappointed in you. No. Is he ashamed of you.

No. Does your standing with him change. No. Does he change from. Declaring you innocent. Because of Jesus.

To guilty. No. That's some of the most. Encouraging passage of scripture. For me. Because I know that I was weak.

And sinful. And an enemy. When I was saved. That means I don't mess it up. I can't take it back from him. Chapter 6.

Verse 1. Write down the page. If you're on. If you're in one of these. What shall we say then? Okay.

So if that's true. What shall we say then? Are we to continue to sin. That grace may abound. If we can't out sin God. So that anytime I sin.

It just means more grace. Has been applied to my account. Should I just keep sinning. To get more grace? Like as a Christian. When you sin.

He's already paid for that sin. So should we just keep sinning. And get more grace? Paul says. By no means. How can we.

Who have died to sin. Still live in it? Do you not know. That all of us. Who have been baptized. Into Christ Jesus.

Were baptized into his death. We were buried. Therefore with him. By baptism into death. In order that. Just as Christ.

Was raised from the dead. By the glory of the father. We too might walk. In newness. Of life. Because of Jesus.

We're given a new life. Which means we change. Which means we grow. Absolutely all of our sin. Is covered by grace. He saves like a God.

And you sin like a human. All of our sins. Covered by grace. But we do grow. We do change. We do get a new life.

To walk in. So the sentences. Kind of. That will help. Clarify. Maybe some of that.

Is we can't be too bad. For God. But we will begin to change. Can't be too bad. But you will begin to change.

Okay. If that's. True. If that's the gospel. If the story. The epic.

Life changing story. Is that we were created. To worship God. But we replaced him. With other things. That we all fall short.

And no amount of work. Will fix it. If it's that. Jesus died. To pay for our debt. And to make us right.

With God. And that we're saved. By his work. Not ours. And if we can't be too bad. For God.

But we will begin to change. If that's the gospel. If that's the epic. Story of the Bible. Then it has very clear.

Impact on the church. It has a very clear. Impact on who we are. As a people. If that's the foundation. For us.

Because we can only build. Off of the foundation. That's been laid. So let me just clearly. Show a few places. For the church.

That that shows up. And we'll spend the rest. Of the. Of the series. Kind of unpacking. Some of these.

And drawing some of the lines. So we'll basically be saying. If this is the gospel. Then this is where it goes. And if this is true. This is where it goes.

So a few things. That are true. We worry more about our hearts. Than our behavior. Because the problem is. That we don't have God.

In his right place. And that's a heart level issue. We love. And worship. Something else. And that.

Affects our behavior. What that means. Is if you change your heart. Your behavior. Behavior will change. Just like.

We've all had a friend. That maybe started dating somebody. And as they. Started loving that person more. You saw them less and less. Their heart changed.

Their behavior changed. This is how it works. So we worry more about our hearts. Than our behavior. Because we can change our behavior. But no amount of work.

Will fix our problem. It won't change our hearts. It means that as the church. We aren't surprised. By sin. If everybody.

Falls short. If that's the entrance exam. For the church. Then the church. Isn't surprised by sin. Let me tell you something.

This is the best place. To be broken. The safest place. To fall short. The most wonderful. And dearest place.

To have baggage. And problems. And pain. And brokenness. And hurt. And to be messy.

The church is. Absolutely. The church is. And if we don't live like that. We don't believe our own message. Let me tell you something.

That is true. About every other group. Every other group. Every other people. In the world. Every other place.

That you will hang out. And be a part of. Every other social circle. You'll run with. They have a limited amount. Of things.

That can be wrong with you. There's a limited amount. Of deficiencies. That you can have. They'll put up with these. But not these.

You can be really immoral. But you better not be intolerant. You better not be self-righteous. Other groups. It'll be. No.

You can be really. Really intolerant. And self-righteous. But you better not be immoral. You better not say anything. About the.

The nuclear family. You better not. Begin to. To. Be. Socially.

Progressive. They'll have. A limited amount. Of things. That you can be. Absolutely deficient here.

You can be a terrible dad here. Absolutely. But you better not be a coward. You can be a terrible husband. But you better not be soft.

All other groups in the world. Are going to have a limited amount of things. That you can be best. Messed up with. And broken by. Except for the church.

We accept every type of messed up person here. Because we all need Jesus. You can be deficient in anything. All that does is qualify us for Jesus. Which means that we can't be judgmental. And self-righteous as Christians.

You can't look down on somebody. Because their deficiency is different than yours. That makes us the best place. To be broken. And to be open. And to be honest.

And to own your sin. And to confess. And to be real. Because that's what makes Jesus. Jesus. That's how he saves us.

That's how he rescues us. That's how we get his grace. Is by being messed up. And we know that we all are. If you're in a community group. And y'all consistently confess.

And someone never has anything to confess. Let me tell you something that's very true. It's not that they don't have anything to confess. It's just that they're not confessing. Because we're all messed up. We all have problems.

We all need Jesus. We all need to grow. We all need to change. That means fundamentally for the church. We're not surprised by sin. It also means on the other hand.

We're not okay with sin. And we have to hold those together. Which means that we do grow. We do change. We don't like sin. We're not okay with it.

It killed Jesus. It's what he died for. That's like loving the knife. That killed our brother. That's weird. So we all hate sin.

And aren't surprised by it. Aren't judgmental about it. Realize that everybody's going to have it. But work to change and grow. Which means that it's absolutely. The safest place to have baggage.

And brokenness. And pain. And hurt. And messiness. It's just not safe for your baggage. Your brokenness.

Your pain. Your hurt. And your messiness. Absolutely safe for you. But we're going to go to town.

And your baggage. Your hurt. Your pain. Your brokenness. And your messiness. Because we work to grow and change.

It means that we want. It means that everything is a gospel problem. If that's the foundation for us. Then it means laziness. It means that anger. It means that weakness.

It means that sin. It means that immorality. All of it's a gospel problem. We're going to point to the gospel and everything. It means that we have been made into a new family. We've been all saved and brought together.

And Romans 8 is going to say that we've been adopted. So we're a new family together. And it means that we want everybody to know this. Because it's actually good news. It's the only thing that is freeing. It is the only thing that is life-giving.

And it's the only thing that fixes our problem. So we will absolutely do everything we can to go out of our way to help everybody know this. For every person in here today, you're somewhere on that spectrum. You fit somewhere neatly in that line. You were created by God. You're not worshiping him as creator.

Some of us are there. And that was news to you today. Some of you have moved to step two, which is you realize that and you're working to fix it, but you'll never fix it. You figured out, oh, I messed up. And you're working really hard to somehow make up for that, somehow make your life count, somehow make everything mean something, and you're not going to fix it. Some of us, though, and for everybody in the room, we want you to move to step three, which is Jesus' work saves you, not your all.

That it is the power of salvation for all who believe. All who place trust in Jesus. It's not about earning it. It's not about working it. It's not even about the strength of your faith. It's just about Jesus.

That we trust him and know that he can take care of it. That he's good. If you're in here and that's you, just talk to Jesus about it. Tell him you want to have faith. Tell him you want to quit trying to fix the problem. Tell him you understand that you've removed him and that you know that he died for that.

Talk to him about it. And then don't leave this room without talking to somebody else about it. Grab the person you came with. Grab a stranger that seems nice. Say, I just met Jesus. I just want to talk to somebody about it.

I just placed faith and trust in him to rescue me from this pain and hurt and brokenness. And we'll say, good. So have we. The band's going to come back up. We're going to sing and make much of Jesus. We're going to praise Jesus because the gospel is true.

That we have life and hope and joy and peace based off of Jesus, not us. That the weight has actually been lifted. That our debt has actually been paid. That God actually loves us and adopts us and makes us right with him through Jesus' work, not our own. That's the gospel. That's it for all of us.

That's the story. And we're going to spend the next six weeks talking about how that looks for the rest of our church family and the rest of church life for us. And what that looks like as we walk that out as in a relationship with Jesus. And we'll pray. God, we thank you that the gospel is true. We thank you that every person in this room, whether they believe it or not, trust it or not, has had the chance to hear the good news.

And God, we pray that every person in this room would believe it and trust it and follow you. Quit carrying the weight themselves and let you take it off their shoulders. We ask that in Jesus' name. Amen.