The Loving Christian Response to the Culture Dr. Steve Walker

Transcription

1 Series: Biblical Sexuality April 17, 2016 The Loving Christian Response to the Culture Dr. Steve Walker Let's go ahead and get our Bibles close by and get them open to Matthew, chapter 5. If you're newer with us or maybe you've just been out of town for a few weeks, traveling, we are at part three of a six-part series of messages entitled Biblical Sexuality. As I've said every Sunday leading up to today (and I'll say it the next several Sundays as well), these messages are not an attempt by me or this church to convince unbelievers to agree with God's Word. This is not intended to try and convince the culture that the Bible is trustworthy or that it's authoritative when it comes to sexual identity and gender aspects of our lives. The reason that's not the purpose of these messages is because we know for this to happen, there has to be a crisis of faith in the heart of the person. For a person to want to believe and trust in the Bible there has to be a conversion of belief that the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ is eternally good news for everyone who believes. It's only when someone bows the knee to Jesus Christ as their Savior and their Lord, giving up on the idea that they are sovereign over their own life, destiny, or identity, giving up on the idea that they are the ones who ultimately determine the worth, value, and purpose of their life When they give up on that and they determine that God gives their life value and purpose, then we can expect that there will be a desire to know what the Bible says and to believe what it means. Instead, what this series really is all about, church, is that every member of this congregation would represent God well. The reason this series is here is because my heart for you, our elders' heart for you, and our pastors' heart for you is that you will not only know what God's Word says but that you will know what it means, you will trust it, and you will be able to represent that well in your world, the world God has you in, especially when it comes to our sexuality and our gender identity. Ultimately, I hope we're growing toward becoming a church that is a safe environment for Christians and non-christians alike who are suffering or struggling with same-sex attraction, that we can be the kind of church where people who are sincerely trying to reconcile these desires Canyon Hills Community Church 1

2 with what God's Word says would be able to hear and embrace the gospel of Jesus Christ and how he offers real, true hope for this struggle as well as real forgiveness for the sin. That's what we want to be as a church, a church where people can come and hear about the gospel of Jesus Christ. Today, we're going to try and get a little more specific and we're going to try to see and show how we can love our friends and our family members who are gay, who are in the LGBT community. How we can love them and be friends without compromising or abandoning the standards and commands of God, which is just going on all over the Christian world today, sad to say. Before we get to that subject, I want to remind all of us that tonight at 6:00, we have a Q & A right here in this room. We've had you text in your questions over the last couple of weeks. Those questions have been kind of distilled down to a manageable time frame. We have our pastors forming a panel and they have given the answers to those questions much thought as we try to present those answers with a good balance of grace and truth tonight. So if that is of interest to you, we'll be right back here. Here's what I hope results from us coming to church together today. First of all, if a Christian teenager is struggling or beginning to experience same-sex attraction, I would hope this teenager could say, "I have Christian friends who understand what I'm facing and care enough to help me think through this confusing experience." I hope we can be those Christian friends. I also hope a result would be that parents, in our church, of a minor or adult child who is experimenting with homosexual behaviors, could say, "Our Life Group cared for us well and helped us think through how to love our son. It was surprising how safe we felt to wrestle with questions and fears we were facing and having." I hope we could be that Life Group, that your Life Group could be there for that family who experiences this. I think, thirdly, my hope for today is that if there's a person who's considering leaving the gay lifestyle, that they could say, "The Christians whom I knew while I was openly gay were a big part of the reason I may choose to pursue what I now believe to be God's design for sexuality." I pray that we can be those Christians. That's what I hope results from today. With your Bibles ready at Matthew 5, let's go ahead and stand for the reading of his Word. We're going to pick it up in verse 13. Jesus is preaching the Sermon on the Mount and he says, in verse 13, "You are the salt of the earth, but if salt has lost its taste, how shall its saltiness be restored? It is no longer good for anything except to be thrown out and trampled under people's feet. You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden. Nor do people light a lamp and put it under a basket, but on a stand, and it gives light to all in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven." Let's pray. Father, we just want to acknowledge and admit right now that your Word is upright and that all your work that you do is in faithfulness. God, we believe you love righteousness and you love Canyon Hills Community Church 2

3 justice, and we believe the whole earth is filled with examples of your steadfast love and grace, and so we ask you to bless the reading, preaching, and hearing of your Word. Help us, God, to know today how we can confidently, joyfully, and effectively be salt and light in our world. In Jesus' name, amen. Matthew 5 is familiar. It's a part of the sermon Jesus was preaching called the Sermon on the Mount. The section we just read needs very little explanation, but it does provide for us the motivation to love people the way Jesus loves people and the way he calls us to love people. I want to just unpack a few assumptions that are behind the calling Jesus is placing on our lives. First of all, the call to be the salt of the earth assumes that the world doesn't provide this salt, whatever it is, on its own. The assumption is that in our sin-broken world, the world will always naturally flow in the bland and aimless rivers of least resistance. That's an assumption here, that without the life-saving, life-changing, and life-altering grace of Jesus, life is always going to be reduced to the wide and crowded world of the world's empty promises and false hopes. That's just the bottom line. That is the world in which we live. Our commission, our calling to be the salt in the world, assumes (if I could borrow a very familiar phrase) there is a road less traveled, a road better traveled, a way of living that is full of true adventure, endless hope, and the deepest joy and contentment for which our hearts long. That's the assumption, that the world doesn't have this to offer itself, and so Jesus says, "I'm calling you to be that salt of the earth, to flavor this world with that which is true, good, and hopeful." That provides the true, deep joy and contentment our hearts need. Secondly, the call to be the light of the world assumes, obviously, that there is a lot of darkness in our world. The darkness of confusion, fear, emptiness, being hurt, shame, betrayal, disappointment, loneliness, and just flat-out evil... The assumption here is that the world will not naturally find the kind of light that illuminates, that shines on God's love and God's grace, which gives us reason for getting up every morning, which gives real purpose and meaning to our lives. The world is not going to discover that light on its own. That's the assumption, so Jesus says, "I need you. I'm calling you to be that light, to shine a light on the one who welcomes us to surrender all of our hopes and dreams to him." So there you have it. Salt and light How do we do it? What does it look like with our gay friends and family, with our coworkers? The first thing I want to do is cover some wrong ways to love, some ineffective ways to be salt and light in this part of our lives. I think once we can see these, kind of understand them, and admit them, I think we will have much more excitement over really being salt and light the way Jesus calls us to be. Let me give us some ways we do it wrong, have done it wrong, and maybe are still doing it wrong. 1. It's wrong to love by speaking grace without repentance. We see this all the time. We see churches and Christians flying the rainbow flag in hopes of appealing to the culture, in hopes of trying to get acceptance with grace and love to their gay friends and family. Unfortunately, this Canyon Hills Community Church 3

4 has become just as damaging to the powerful gospel of Jesus as the false heath and wealth gospel was in the '80s and '90s. This is damaging to the gospel, not helpful, because in order to speak grace without repentance, many Christians and a lot of churches and even whole denominations have adopted homosexuality and gay marriage as acceptable norms within Christianity and biblical sexuality. That's what they've done in order to fly the flag. "We're just going to change more than 2,000 years of Bible interpretation, going back to the Old Testament, has said and meant, and just make it all acceptable. Therefore, we can convince the world that we are people full of grace." These Christians have stopped calling it what God calls it and they refuse to say it's wrong. Church, once we start refusing to call sin sin and say it's wrong, we have no gospel left. We have no good news. The cross is reduced to just some church furniture or some religious jewelry. Without the cross, we can't call sinners to the hope of repentance, so realize and remember Jesus very loudly and very lovingly said, " unless you repent, you too will perish." Where's the grace when we make unrepentant sinners comfy on their way to perishing, on their way to hell? That's not love. God gives us grace to lead us to repentance and holiness, not to tolerance and acceptance of a sin, so it's not loving, it's not salt, and it's not light to be speaking all about grace without ever mentioning repentance. 2. It's wrong to speak Jesus without change. This is very similar to the first one. They kind of overlap a little as we go along, but this is the Christian who really wants their gay friend or family member to accept Jesus, but they don't think they'll even consider Jesus if they bring up anything to do with their gay lifestyle, so they avoid that subject altogether and just talk about Jesus, how Jesus loves them, how Jesus died for them, and how he wants to give them eternal life. Then their hope is that once they become a Christian, maybe they'll see what they're doing is wrong. Church, that is not an honest way to love or be salt and light. These are nervous Christians who don't think a person will consider Jesus if they bring up the elephant in the room, which is a homosexual life. We have to be loving enough to give all of the hope of Jesus, which includes change. We can't leave off the expectation that once in Christ, we are to pursue holiness. That's what we talked about the last two weeks. The person we love and befriend may never end up in a heterosexual marriage. That's not our goal. That's not the goal of the gospel. That's not the pinnacle of being a Christian. The pinnacle of our redemption and salvation is our sanctification in Christ's likeness, empowered by daily grace. I think we need to stop thinking that in order for us to talk about Jesus with change, somehow we have to convince gay people to get married in a heterosexual marriage before they can come to Christ. No, the goal is to surrender through repentance and his grace so the journey can begin. We'll get to that in just a minute. Canyon Hills Community Church 4

5 3. It's wrong to speak truth without the Bible. This is when we try to argue that a certain way of life works best. We don't want to talk all about the Bible because we don't want to come across as holier-than-thou Bible-thumpers, so we sometimes resort to starting to talk about all the biological, emotional, and natural reasons why heterosexual relationships and sexuality is good and better. Yet this isn't helpful to the person who doesn't care that things work better in a certain way. All they care about the feelings and attractions they have. So if our message is constantly and simply, "My way is better than your way," well, then we've lost our opportunity to be salt and light. We haven't gained one. We can't be afraid to include why and what God says is best for our lives because we have no definitions without the Bible. Do you understand that, Christian? If you think it's going to be fruitful and effective to love your gay family member or friend by just leaving the Bible out of the conversation, you have nothing. You have no authority. You have no divine truth on which to base your convictions. It's not loving to just scoot your Bible aside and leave it out of the equation. 4. It's wrong to speak conviction without care. This is the Christian who wants to fight "to protect our American heritage." This is the person who loves their country. They're patriotic and they love the values on which this country has been founded, and so they believe their role is to try to stand up for "American values." The problem with this is that it's not biblical. You guys, we are not cultural warriors. Some of you think you are. It's absolutely okay to believe, enjoy, and love the values on which our country was founded, but if this is our main driving conviction, we will always settle for a lesser kingdom. Our true salt and light points to a greater reward, an eternal kingdom greater than American values. We're pointing to divine values, to God's values first. That's where it needs to go. If we're trying to save America, we're going to be lousy at loving our gay friends and family. Some of you need to think about that, don't you? 5. It's wrong to speak ethics without ministry. This is the Christian who wants to focus on the biblical right and wrong. Yet ministry is about how you get from what is wrong to what is right, isn't it? Yes, it's absolutely right to teach that God calls it wrong. Don't think I'm flip-flopping here. Yet the Bible also teaches how Jesus changes people. You see, right and wrong without help leads people who are struggling with same-sex attraction to despair. I think this is where we can do and maybe have done the most damage, with our brothers and sisters in Christ, anyway, who are struggling with same-sex attraction. We give them five verses and tell them to stop. "Read these five verses and then just knock it off. Don't go there. Change your desires." What's embarrassing about that is we don't do that with any other sin. So why do we do it with this one? Canyon Hills Community Church 5

6 When we're struggling with sin, we come alongside each other and we walk that road together. Talking about right and wrong as a Christian without coming alongside and walking the road with the person is not loving at all. There are several other ways we can word those things, but I want to stop there and get on to what it looks like. How do we love? What is an effective way of being salt and light in our world? I think the motivation for the right way to love is fueled by Jesus' example. In Matthew, chapter 11, Jesus is preaching and teaching, going from city to city with his disciples tagging along, listening. Jesus comes to a place and he's preaching to some people who are just refusing to believe. Here's what he said in Matthew 11, verses 18 and 19. "For John came neither eating nor drinking, and they say, 'He has a demon.'" He's talking about John the Baptist. He says, "Hey, John the Baptist came simple. He wasn't worldly. He wasn't materialistic. He came simple. He just preached, and you didn't believe him. You said he had a demon." Then Jesus goes on to say, speaking of himself, the Son of God, "The Son of Man came eating and drinking, and they say, 'Look at him! A glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners!'" Jesus is pointing out the fact that they had a hard heart. They weren't going to believe no matter who brought them the message. Yet I am so blessed by the end of that verse, where Jesus was accused of being a friend to sinners. Aren't you blessed by that? That blesses me. If that weren't the case, we'd all still be lost, wouldn't we? Jesus is a friend to sinners. He was willing to risk his reputation for the sake of those whom he wanted to hear the gospel. This is where I want to start. I want to describe how we can love our gay friends and family members the right way. Let me just acknowledge that there are three contexts in which this probably takes place. The first context in which this could happen in our lives is that we have some Christian friends or Christian family members who are honestly and openly struggling with same-sex attraction. That's one context in which we need to be salt and light. Another context is a non-christian who is struggling with same-sex attraction. I haven't personally met too many non-christians who are struggling with their desires and attractions, but we do know many people in this lifestyle have a church background. They grew up going to church, or they have a Christian mom or dad, or they went to a Christian private school, and so there is a real struggle because, somewhere back in the deep crevices of their mind and heart, they know there's something wrong about this. They remember what God's Word says about real life and sexuality, and so there is a genuine struggle going on and there could be that context you have to be salt and light. They're not Christians yet, but they are really struggling with this. Canyon Hills Community Church 6

7 The third context in which we could be salt and light is with the non-christian or the anti- Christian. They don't want to have anything to do with the Bible, you, the church, God, Jesus, or any of that nonsense, and yet God brings them across our path. They're in our life. I think the principles I'm giving you can apply in all three contexts. They may have to be tweaked a little bit, but I think when we're done here, you're going to see, "Hey, I can do this. I have to do this." 1. Be a real, true friend. Don't make changing them the primary goal of your friendship. We can't make someone change. That's God's department, right? I think once we let go of this pressure that somehow, if we're going to be a friend, we have to convince them to stop or to believe, I think we could just calm down and be ourselves. I want to relieve you of the pressure of trying to change anybody who is gay who comes into your life, not because we don't believe there's the right way, a better way, God's way, which would be infinitely more hopeful and blessing but because it's hard to be a friend when we start out there. I love how Brad Hambrick puts it. He's the author of one of the books I'm going to recommend to you at the end. He says, "Whatever role God wants us to play in our friend's life will be had through influence not leverage." In other words, our role as a real friend is to demonstrate that they have a friend who will pursue God with them and be an oasis of encouragement and accountability in their struggle. I love 2 Corinthians 5:20. It says, "We are ambassadors for Christ, as though God were making his appeal through us." I think the best possible way we could be salt and light is through a friendship. Again, let me just relieve you of trying to be cultural crusaders and trying to force people to accept everything you believe and know to be true, passionately. Don't start there. Just start with being a friend. 2. Listen more. Conversations lead to change, not lectures. Proverbs 18 tells us it is foolish to give answers before we listen. I think we miss a lot of opportunities to truly love the person because we're so busy talking. We're drowning out the open doors to deeper friendship because we have this pressure on us that we have to convince them, preach them, and evangelize them first, and we're missing some really awesome ways to truly love people who are struggling. I think if I were to reword this one, I would just say, Shut your yapper once in a while and listen. I don't want to quell your passion. I don't want to quell your desire to see them come to Jesus, but I want you to listen enough to where you know the person you're trying to lead to Jesus. 3. Feel compassion. You may think, "How do I make myself feel compassion. Is that possible?" Yeah, it must be possible, because in Colossians 3:12, God commands us in his Word to put on compassionate hearts. You know, some of the people we're called to love are sincerely struggling with these attractions and desires. They don't understand them. Canyon Hills Community Church 7

8 In fact, some of them will actually say they don't even want these desires and these attractions. Like any sin with which we genuinely struggle, anger, lust, pride, or same-sex attraction, the power of certain temptations is very real. It may not be the same temptations we're all facing, but the temptation is real and the angst and the struggle over those fleshly desires that reside in all of us is a difficult war to fight. We talked all about the flesh and the spirit last week. If you weren't here last week, you need to go back and hear that message. I think one of the ways we can grow in compassion for these friends and family that come into our lives is to take a minute and remember and think about the sin that you potentially struggle with, and realize how hard that sin is for you to battle every day with God's grace, courage, and mercy through confession, repentance, and forgiveness every day. I have that sin or those sins. You have that sin or those sins. They may not be the same between us and our gay friend, but the truth is we all wake up every day completely dependent on God's grace. To remember that they are as well may help us be a little bit more compassionate. 4. Share the gospel. Some of you are thinking, "Wait a minute. Didn't you just tell me to shut my yapper?" Yes, I did, but not forever. The gospel is good news for sinners, the best news in the whole world. So when the door does open, don't be afraid. Don't be ashamed. In Romans 1:16, Paul says, " I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation " Jesus and his cross is the only way to have the power of sin in our lives broken forever. True friendship shares good news, so I want to say to you, when the opportunity to talk about Jesus and the cross comes up, it's going to come through the funnel of a true friendship where you've been listening. You know the person. Your antennae are up for those hurting points in their lives. You're compassionate, and now you can share what Jesus has done for you in your struggle, in your sins or your past, and you can share that so naturally and confidently and without apology and without acting like a crazy person. Are you with me? Aren't you getting excited right now? I am! 5. Be honest about our differences. Sometimes in our effort to be patient, tolerant, accepting, and loving, we give the false impression that we accept their wrong and harmful behaviors or their beliefs. I think that's not being truthful. We accept people who are different from us all the time. We tolerate people who are different from us every day. Everybody does. We work with and live around people of different religions: Mormons, Muslims, Hindus We accept them as people. We tolerate people who are different from us. Rednecks from Duvall, Yankee fans We tolerate people, right? Yet that doesn't mean we accept or support their unbiblical beliefs, principles, or wrong stuff. We could still be accepting, loving, and tolerant, but I think, because we're nervous, some of us don't want them to think that somehow we actually don't agree with them, so we kind of nod like, "Yeah, yeah, yeah," as they talk about their life, their choices, their decisions, and their beliefs. We're saying this on the outside, but on the inside, we're saying, "We know that's not right. Canyon Hills Community Church 8

9 That's not good. No." That's what Proverbs 27 says. "Faithful are the wounds of a friend; [many] are the kisses of an enemy." An enemy always wants us to think they like us, love us, and accept us, because they're ready to pounce, but true friends are willing to say, "I disagree with you. I love you, but I disagree with that. I know you're passionate about that. I know that's what you think. I've heard you say many times that you believe [whatever it is], but I just want you to know I think there could be a better way, a better explanation, or something you haven't considered yet." See where it goes. They may say, "Oh, no." Or they may say, "Oh yeah? Well, what is it?" Open door Step through and lovingly tell the truth. 6. Oppose bullying. Above all, we Christians should take our stand against bullying and namecalling. I know many people in the LGBT community do this to us far worse than any of us would ever dream of doing it to others, but the truth is there are many of us in the church who need to start changing our vocabulary a little bit when we're referring to people with this sin or this struggle. If we hear that happening in our presence, we need to step up and say, "Hey, knock that off." 7. Receive brothers and sisters who are struggling. The key here, the context here is Christians, who love Jesus, for whom this sin is a very real struggle. I'm not talking about people who claim to be followers of Jesus and they continue in a lifestyle of willful, unrepentant homosexual sin with no conviction and no repentance. I'm not talking about that group of people. The Bible is very clear on that. In fact, I want you to see it for yourself, because this is where I think we get all mixed up. This is where some churches, even in our own community, have just sowed the seed of mass confusion in their congregations, so let me show you in 1 Corinthians, chapter 5. Would you turn there? Paul wrote a letter to the Corinthians, of which a copy does not exist. We know that because Paul refers to a letter he wrote to the Corinthians before 1 Corinthians, which we're reading right now in our Bibles. In 1 Corinthians, chapter 5, verse 9, Paul says, "I wrote to you in my [previous] letter not to associate with sexually immoral people " That would include both heterosexually immoral people and homosexually immoral people. " not at all meaning the sexually immoral of this world, or the greedy and swindlers, or idolaters, since then you would need to go out of the world." In verse 9 and 10, Paul is writing to them and he says, "Hey, do you remember? I wrote you a letter that says, 'Hey, I don't want you hanging out with sexually immoral people, greedy people, drunkards,' but I wasn't talking about unbelievers. If I was meaning that, you'd have to leave the world. There'd be nowhere to go. You'd have to just build a commune, put a really high wall around it, and keep sinners out. If that were the case, how would we obey being salt and light in the world? Canyon Hills Community Church 9

10 I'm not calling you to just snub your nose at unbelievers who are sinners. That's what unbelievers do." Yet look at the next verse, verse 11. "But now I am writing to you not to associate with anyone who bears the name of brother if he is guilty of sexual immorality [heterosexual or homosexual sin] or greed, or is an idolater, reviler, drunkard, or swindler not even to eat with such a one. For what have I to do with judging outsiders [unbelievers]? Is it not those inside the church whom you are to judge? God judges those outside. 'Purge the evil person from among you.'" He comes up with a whole other category of evil, and it's Christians who are claiming to be followers of Jesus, the same Jesus who died on the cross for the forgiveness of their sin, and yet they are refusing to repent and turn from this particular sinful lifestyle. Paul is saying, "Don't hang out with them." We can't pretend their version of Christianity is the same version that the Bible is, but he's not talking about brothers and sisters who are sincerely struggling with those temptations and those sins. The opposite is true for Christians who are struggling in sin. If there were no Christians in our church who were actually struggling with sin, there would be no church. I want you to turn to Hebrews, chapter 3, with me, just to see kind of the balance to 1 Corinthians 5. Look at a couple of verses, starting in verse 12. Look at this instruction to Christians. He says, "Take care, brothers [sisters, fellow believers], lest there be in any of you an evil, unbelieving heart, leading you to fall away from the living God. But exhort one another every day, as long as it is called 'today,' that none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin. For we have come to share in Christ, if indeed we hold our original confidence firm to the end." What's the writer of Hebrews doing? He's saying, "Hey, don't forget, you guys. We need to keep encouraging each other so we don't go off the path. There are going to be temptations. There are going to be false teachers in the church. There's going to be false teaching in the church. Lest any of you succumb to that and give in to those fleshly desires we all have, I want you exhorting each other every single day, all the time." That's why we need each other. Christianity is a community project. It's not a fix-it-yourself thing. I wanted you to see that verse because we're doing this right now. We're all sinners desiring to say no the flesh and yes to the Spirit, to glorify God, and to pursue holiness. That includes the sin of same-sex attraction. Let me just say it again. I'm not talking about unrepentant, willful, saying, "It's not sin. God made me this way. I'm going to do this and I'm going to love Jesus " Paul is clear about that in 1 Corinthians 5. Yet to be salt and light, we need to receive brothers and sisters who are genuinely desiring to pursue holiness. Canyon Hills Community Church 10

11 8. Allow sincere seekers of Jesus in our lives and in our church. Now I'm talking about unbelievers who are looking for Jesus, who are looking for answers, who are looking for truth, who are looking for hope. There are two things that are really important when it comes to our credibility as salt and light. The first one is the clarity of our message. The second one is the quality of our life together. Those two things, our message and our life together, are really important to our credibility of trying to be salt and light. We certainly need to be clear on the gospel, that it's good news for everyone, that no one is too far gone to receive the mercy of God through faith in the death of Jesus. I think we need to remember no human being comes to us in any more need of Jesus than we are, and no one comes to Jesus any more broken than we were. We're all broken by sin, but with that gospel clarity also comes the need for us to have some relational integrity or credibility, because the Bible often connects our effectiveness as witnesses, as salt and light. Jesus talks about our effectiveness being directly connected to our relationship with each other, to our love for one another. It was Jesus who said, "They will know you are my disciples if you love one another." Isn't that interesting? Who's the they who will know we are his disciples? It's unbelievers. It's those who are curious and seeking Jesus. It's those who might even come to church, which leads me to one of the questions someone texted in for our Q & A tonight. I stole it off the list so I could use it this morning. The question came in this way. "How should we act if a gay person or couple comes to our church service on Sunday?" First of all, don't freak out and run out of the building like it's on fire. I'm not sure if you actually know this, but there are unbelievers who attend every one of our services every single weekend, and those unbelievers have all kinds of sin in their lives, including same-sex attraction. So the first thing I would say for you is to welcome them and greet them normally, just like you would any unbeliever who was coming to church. Secondly, I would say to pray for them, just like we do every single weekend. We pray every week that unbelievers would hear about Jesus, that they would learn about the incredible love God has for them, that he was willing to allow Jesus to die for their sins so they wouldn't have to die and go to hell for them. Let them hear the good news of God's love, hope, and grace in Christ. That's our prayer, that they would seek him, love him, and see the goodness of God and begin to discover that his way of life is the only way of life that offers us the joy and the contentment our hearts so desperately long for. We pray. Next, if there's an opportunity to get to know them better, talk with them afterwards, go out to lunch with them, or however God may open that door, do it, just like we would do with any unbeliever who would come to our church. Canyon Hills Community Church 11

12 Yet there was a little what-if to the text-in question. "What if they're here making a scene, to demonstrate, or to cause trouble? It's obvious that they're not here, necessarily, with any respect or any desire to actually be in the house of God with the people of God. What if they come and they make trouble?" I think the first thing I want you to do is to politely say, "Hey, I want you to stop. Out of respect, why don't you stop? We want you to be welcome. We want you to be with us, but we don't want you doing this. Be respectful while you're here. We can have mutual respect." If that doesn't work and they continue to make ugly and just make a scene and just try to distract, then we will ask them to leave. We will call the police. We have a team of people who know what to do, and we will ask them to leave. We will escort them out. I don't want you doing that, okay? Are you with me? Isn't it weird that we have to talk about this? I don't want you being the source of trouble. I want you to be the salt and light. In real life, it doesn't always turn out perfectly. No friendship or conversation wraps up neatly and nicely every single time we have it with an unbeliever, does it? Friendship involves a lot of dialogues that have no neat outcome. If you feel compelled that every time you have a conversation with a gay friend or family member you have to tie up every loose end to every conversation you have, you're going to end up presenting Christianity and the Christian life like some overly simplistic recipe. If you can't handle knowing that the journey of being a friend and being salt and light to your gay friend or family member isn't always going to end every meal or talk you have together with hugs and flowers, you're fooling yourself. I think that's what we tend to think, subconsciously. Our friendship is like instant oatmeal or an instant breakfast. "Just add a little faith, stir, and presto! You're going to be different forever." We don't say that, but I think that's what we hope happens every time. We put this pressure on ourselves. The Christian life does begin, we know, with faith and repentance, but for some people, the journey to that point of true faith and repentance is a painful one. It's a long one. It's even a scary one for some people. That's why it's so important that we know what a true friend is. Once they come to faith and repentance, then the journey of slow and progressive sanctification change begins. We become like Jesus over time instead of all at once. Here's my desire. My desire is that all of us would want to be true friends, as God would allow, with all believers and all seekers who are struggling with same-sex attraction. I would hope we would want to be a church, folks, that doesn't intimate or suggest that this struggle with same-sex attraction is somehow exempt from the same grace and mercy we all depend on every day to help us become more and more holy. We're not going to act like all other sins have available daily grace and mercy through confession and forgiveness (1 John 1:8-9) except this sin. We can't do that. We don't have to do that. God's grace is bigger than that. All humanity, body and soul, is broken by sin. For some people, this sin Canyon Hills Community Church 12

13 manifests itself in homosexual desires and sin. In other people, it manifests itself in heterosexual desires and sin. Both are sinful. All sin is traced back to the same source: the fall, in Genesis, chapters 2 and 3. We have all inherited the spiritual DNA of our first parents, Adam and Eve. We are all born with a sinbroken heart, and the journey toward salvation is a beautiful and miraculous one. For some reason, God wants you and me to be a part of that journey with people. I want to be a follower of Jesus who never caves in to the pressure of compromising God's standards in order to gain the applause or the approval of man. Let me say that again. I want to be a follower of Jesus who never compromises God's ways just so someone might approve of me. This would be truly homophobic. Listen to me for a minute. We get accused of being homophobic all the time, we Christians. The world thinks we are actually afraid of homosexuality, the sin, or afraid of homosexual people, when just the opposite is true. To hold strongly to the standards and commands of God's way of life is more of an expression of our fear of God, not our fear of homosexuality. To cave in and compromise and eliminate and not call it what God calls it That is homophobic, because that means we're afraid of man. It's just the opposite. When we hold true to God's Word, we're fearing God more than man, and that's what we're supposed to do. I want to give you two resources. The first one was very helpful to me in just thinking through this message. The book is called, Do Ask, Do Tell, Let's Talk: How and Why Christians Should Have Gay Friends, by Brad Hambrick. It's an excellent read. It's very balanced, very easy to read, and very practical. I would encourage any of you who have the context of gay friends and family to read this book. I quoted him a couple of times in this sermon. The second resource is Is God Anti-Gay? by Sam Allberry. I heard Sam speak at a conference last fall. He's a pastor in Great Britain who happens to have come out of a gay lifestyle and has had the call of God on his life and is pastoring a tremendous work in England. Both of these, I would highly recommend for you if you want to have these discussions go a little farther in your own home and in your own life. The Q & A is tonight at 6:00. I want to encourage any of you to come back if you want to talk about this some more, but before we do, would you just bow your heads just long enough for us to close in prayer? I'm wondering if any of you might be willing to just pray and say, "God, please help me to love people. Help me to be salt and light, especially to and for my gay friends and family." I'm wondering if you're willing to just say that prayer. If you are, I'm just going to give you a moment to do that, just you and God. "God, help me to be salt and light if you should call me to." Canyon Hills Community Church 13

14 God, I just thank you that your Word is clear. I pray, God, that without pressure or fear, we would joyfully be the kind of salt and light in this world for which it so desperately longs. I pray, God, that we can do it in a way that will never compromise, change, or ignore your good will and way for our sexuality one iota. God, I pray that we're the kind of church that would be safe for all people who are seeking and sincerely struggling with sin, including same-sex attraction. God, may your Spirit move amongst us. God, be pleased with our desire to please you and fear you above all. I pray this in Christ's name, amen. If you are curious about what it means to bow the knee to Jesus and accept him as your Savior and if you want to talk to somebody about doing that today, we have some people standing up here right now ready to talk to you. If there's anything else going on in your life we can pray with you for or about, we would love to do that as well. God bless you. We'll see you next time. Canyon Hills Community Church 14