10-11-2015 Bioethics Part 28

The speaker begins by praying and expressing gratitude for the opportunity to discuss the controversial topic of homosexuality and the church. They emphasize the importance of repentance and how it applies to all sins, including homosexuality. They explore the factors that may influence a person's embrace of a homosexual lifestyle, such as loneliness and negative experiences with the opposite gender. The speaker acknowledges that not everyone understands their reasons for being homosexual and that humans are complicated beings. They emphasize the need for personal repentance before trying to change others. The speaker addresses the idea that the Bible may be irrelevant or misunderstood when it comes to homosexuality and asserts their belief that the Bible is relevant for everything. They acknowledge that the study of the Bible may be uncomfortable and requires submission to its teachings. The speaker concludes by raising the question of whether change is necessary and promises to exami All right, let's pray as we start this morning, God we thank you for this lovely day and another opportunity to come together as your people and we pray that as we do so and as we take a look at your word, that you would open our eyes once again to the truth of it, in Jesus name, amen. Over the past few weeks, Braley and then Morgan have been helpfully setting the stage for our thinking about the difficult and controversial topic of homosexuality and the church. We first learned about repentance and how key that is as an aspect of the gospel, something that each and every one of us needs to do for whatever sins you and I happen to be committing at the time, including but not even especially homosexuality. As we have kind of talked about before and is kind of coming up again now, it is very easy to use public and open sins like homosexuality as an excuse for your own sin, as a justification for whatever you do because well, you don't do what they do, your sin is less than theirs. Repentance is not easy, repentance also isn't a one-time thing. I say this quite a bit, the reformers said it a lot, all of the Christian life is to be one of repentance. The whole thing is made up of repenting and so we continue to go on repenting each and every day because we continue to sin every day. Even last week we got into the topic of motives, the factors that go into being homosexual that are rather complex. What are some of the things, might have been things we talked about, maybe not, what are some of the factors that are involved that influence people into being, embracing a homosexual lifestyle? These are just possible things, these aren't like true of everybody, but what could some of these things be? Loneliness. Loneliness. Okay. Good. Why loneliness? Why loneliness? Okay. Right. Okay. So, alright, so loneliness being maybe a particular kind of body type or whatever that would exclude you from maybe feeling that women could love you or people of the opposite gender would be into you, you could find people maybe of the same gender that are just like you that would embrace you much more rapidly. Okay. Good. What else? Yeah. Oh. Yeah. Yep. Good. Yeah. Yep. Good. So, very simply, if you have bad experiences with people of a particular gender, especially sexual experiences with them, then it could just turn you off altogether, so those could either be ordinarily the way that it works, but not exclusively, would be women experiencing violence or some other kind of aggression from men that just goes, you know what? I don't want to be with men, or men, again, this is ordinarily, are rejected and shamed by women to the extent that they're like, I want to be with women because that just leads to hurt, so maybe I should just embrace people of my own gender. We could go on for days. Is it true that everybody who is a homosexual understands their reasons for being one? No. It's not even remotely close. In fact, if somebody did think that they understood everything, it's probably an indication that they don't understand everything. Just in the same way, it's not unique, it's the same way where you and I don't understand all the reasons we have our own proclivities, right? Some of you are much more patient than others. I don't understand that quality in human beings. I wish I did, but you are not able to tell me why you're more patient. You could have the jerk Christian answer, which is like, I'm more spiritual than you, which is probably not true. You probably just have a normal disposition to be a more bright and cheerful person. I'm glad you exist in the world. I think my kind of humans are also necessary, but maybe that's just self-justification. Most of us, whether it be a very admirable quality societally or a very negative quality, can't give reasons, all the reasons, for why we have those things. These are deep and embedded feelings, just kind of the way I am, right? It's the way that we would explain those things, which is incredibly humorous, because we justify, always, the ways that we act when it comes to other things, but when it comes to human sexuality, we pretend that humans are not complicated. If we make humans less complicated than they actually are, then you and I begin to deny our own humanity. I would like to say that again, because Christians are some of the worst at this. If we make humans less complicated than they actually are, then we make humans less human. Humans are complicated like crazy, which means that there's no easy fixes, there's no easy solutions, it's going to take a lot of time, and the answers are not going to be uniform for everybody. Humans are complicated, and it's what makes us so stinking interesting sometimes. When it comes to homosexuality, just like it comes to anger, like Morgan was talking about last week, or patience or something like that, because these influences and factors that drive us to be particular ways aren't understood all the time, it makes it seem, in the case of homosexuality, that this is not a chosen thing, it's just the same way that you don't choose to be angry, choose to be patient, or choose to do whatever it is that you do. If you can never think or say out loud about your own way of life, that's just the way God made me, then you must understand that that is a legitimate application for any kind of feeling. The ways that we act that are contrary to the Bible must be changed, which gets us back to week one, that if you are not the first one to change in the world, then who the hell are you to tell anybody else that they ought to change? You and I ought to be the chief of repenters because we understand ourselves to be the chief of sinners. It's a very simple concept, logically, it's living it out that is not so easy. Also if you and I are not repenting of our own sin, we will never be able to tell the homosexual that they ought to change. Now how exactly you and I go about speaking with homosexuals about the need for change is what we're going to cover in the next few weeks. However, before we begin that difficult task, this week, and possibly next depending on how fast this goes, we are going to take a look at what the Bible actually says about the topic of homosexuality, trying to determine if change is really necessary. Why? Well, there's a lot of talk in our culture, coming from Christians, a growing number of them, that believes that the Bible is irrelevant to the discussion or that the texts about homosexuality have simply been misunderstood. And therefore, we need to embrace homosexuals. I just came back from Boston, and there are more beautiful churches in Boston than any other U.S. city that I know of, and each and every single one of them was, I don't know if this is gay pride month or church gay pride month or something, but every single one of them was just focused. If I didn't know about Christianity, if I was an alien or something, and came to earth and happened to land in Boston, I wouldn't be super pissed because the food is amazing. However, if I were to look at the churches, I would understand the church to be an organization that has large buildings, that is primarily dedicated to the idea of architectural wonder and the embracing of gay people. That's all anybody was talking about or promoting. These people aren't dumb. So the question is, how are they getting to these conclusions, a conclusion that would be the contrary one that I'm about to lay out this morning? Well, if it's that the Bible is irrelevant, I'm not really going to deal with that position this morning. It would take up a Sunday school lesson all by itself, which we've done in the past, but I believe that the church, being the body of Christ, lives by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God as written in his word under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. That's just the way it is. That is a presupposition. That's something I assume when I come to the Bible. I believe that belief is derived from the Bible. But if that's true, then that means that the Bible is relevant for everything. Maybe the Bible doesn't speak about everything. You and I have seen that the Bible... what are some of the issues that we've covered in this bioethics thing? The Bible doesn't have chapter and verse on cloning. That's right. Something else? Is it just cloning? Can I get a witness? Anybody else remember anything we've talked about? The Bible's like, yeah, it doesn't really say a whole lot about that. In vitro fertilization. There you go. It doesn't have jack to say about that topic. Directly. However, even on something as obscure as cloning, there is stuff that it says that is relevant to the discussion. Our task is to understand God's word and then live in light of it. But what about the people who say that we have misunderstood the Bible? I am in full agreement with Peter Hubbard, the author of the book that's kind of just shaping the topics that we talk about or the pattern in which we talk about them. A lot of other stuff is being worked into here. The guy who wrote the book Love Into Light, which I would commend, as Morgan did last week. He says this, real Bible study is an act of corporate execution as we die to our own preferences and together stand in the counsel of the only person who embodies and defines life. You and I must be willing to go wherever the Bible takes us. Don't care where that is. Our position is always in submission to the word of God. Now, I would like you to answer this question. Does that position or is that position comfortable? Yes or no? No. Why no? Okay, so by nature we're against the things that God speaks about. Everything? No, but there's definitely things in there, right? So it's like you're full on willing to embrace some stuff, but not other stuff and the interesting thing is like there's somebody over here that's fully willing to embrace something that you have a problem with and vice versa on another thing. Okay, good. Why would you say no? Yeah, Chris, I'm pointing to you. Yeah, Chris, I'm pointing to you. Okay, uh-huh. Yeah, so working it out even in the context of a local church is difficult because you've got to figure out what this means and if you have preferences and they have preferences then it's like, well, how do we all get together on this and how do we actually all work on this? It is uncomfortable because the Bible is also not as clear as we would like it to be. There's not a list of 4,362 appendices in the back of the Bible that explains things like what color the church pews ought to be and how big your church can be. Is there a sense in which living under submission to the Word of God is freeing and comfortable? Okay, why? Because God knows what's best for us and what's not for us. Okay. Even in the moment we don't feel like giving up, we can go back and just continue to help our lives and somebody else's lives and how it benefits them. Good. Yeah. So, God knows best. That's not just a mantra we tell ourselves, it's actually something we've seen in history, either in our own history or in the history of others. Good. Any other thoughts on why that would be freeing? Same reason why we only worship God in the ways that he told us to. It's why I don't sacrifice hamsters before communion, as interesting and as possibly entertaining and even powerful as that might be. There's an easy reason that we don't do those things, it's because God didn't ask for it. And we have a long history in the Bible of God going, what the heck are you doing? I didn't ask for that. Could you please, just for the love of all that is holy, literally, just do what I asked you to do? Dude, that's it. That's all I'm asking for. So, when there's freedom in it, because we go, well, this book is incredibly difficult to understand, and it's going to take the rest of our lives and a lot of pain and suffering, mentally, emotionally, to figure out what this thing means together. At the same time, what we do know is that if God exists and he's given this to us, and he just wants us to follow this, then we don't have to make it up. We've just got to follow what he says. That's it. Every problem that the church has is due to either ignorance of what Scripture teaches or often disobedience to what we know to be true. Every single time. You've got a conflict with somebody in this church, I guarantee you it's because either you are in sin or they are in sin. Or, most likely, both of you are in sin. If the Bible allows homosexuality, then you and I ought to be the most open and affirming people on the face of the planet. I don't care if you think homosexuality is the most disgusting thing on the face of the planet. I also don't care if you so happen to be embracing homosexual lifestyle. So, just to be clear, if you're on one side of the fence or the exact opposite side of the fence, does not matter to me and should not matter to you. What should matter is, what does God say? Let's go there, and if God says, yeah, homosexuality is legit, then we ought to put the flag on the front, have the brochures in the back, publicize the snot out of it, and say, yeah, homosexuals ought to be accepted. Let's lead that charge. Which is why, while I do not respect, and I'll say this again before we're done, or I do not agree with the ordinarily mainline liberal denominations of the United States, I at least give them credit for following through with their beliefs. So should you. In the same way that you should be impressed at the work of Jehovah Witnesses at going around and sharing the gospel, even though that's totally legalistic, and they're a cult, and they think they're the only ones going to heaven, at least they're practicing what they believe. Consistency in humanity is something that you can at least go, well, I mean, that's something. But what does the Bible say? I want to be clear that there is a part of me that wishes the Bible said something different than it did on a whole range of things, including the topic of homosexuality. Why would it be easy for us, let's just assume for a minute that what I'm about to explain is actually true, why would it be easy for us, easier for us, to embrace homosexuality as a legitimate Christian position? There you go. That's the big one. It's very popular. It would be real great to just be like, yeah, this is just the way it goes. In the same way that it would be very easy to be in this very building, which was standing. I don't know what was happening here and don't really care. It would have been very easy in this building in 1948 to say, black people are not allowed in this building. Thanks be to God. Right? That would have been an attractive and acceptable position with our society. And it would have been equally difficult to maintain that all people are created in the image of God in red, yellow, black or white. They're all precious in His sight. Jesus loves all the little children of the world. Right? Just the way it is. That would have been a very unattractive position in 1948. Now, if I were, this morning, to get up in the pulpit and say black people come as a result of the curse of Ham in Genesis chapter whatever as a result of the curse in Genesis chapter 9 and therefore, you know, y'all can't be here. Right? You can go somewhere else, like, that's cool, but just it, uh-uh. What? Would that be an attractive position in our society today? No. And we would all go, yeah, thank God. It's interesting, right? Because in this situation, we would be like, because that's where the Bible goes. And it's interesting because us, for example, let's say that across the street was a mainline PCUSA church that marries homosexuals, accepts homosexuals into membership and into the pastorate. We would both say at the same time that we're all created in the image of God. The Bible's really clear on that one. We'll hold hands and go, yay for the equality of all human beings irregardless of race. The question is, would they do that on the basis of what Scripture says? Or would they do that on the basis of that's where the culture is going? And would we do that on the basis of what Scripture says? Or on the basis of where the culture is going? Because if we were to say, well, we accept everybody regardless of their ethnic identity because it was just a popular position culturally, it would be as wrong as saying homosexuality is wrong just because we feel like it. There's no difference there. So the question is, at the end of the day, what the heck does the Bible say? Once we know what the Bible says, we've got to be careful. Because just like any difficult doctrine like hell, for example, it's very easy to say what the Bible says with a gleam in our eye and hatred in our hearts. Right? It's impossible. Such a stance is necessary, a stance of kindness and compassion. It's necessary, a stance of kindness and love and patience because we are seen as hateful by default. There's a very prominent guy in this whole area of Christians affirming homosexuals whose name is Matthew Vines. You might have run into him before. He says this in a video. It is still commonplace for straight Christians to say, yes, I believe that homosexuality is a sin, but don't blame me. I'm just reading the Bible. That's just what it says. Well, first of all, no, you are not just reading the Bible. You are taking a few verses out of context and extracting from them an absolute condemnation that was never intended. But you are also striking to the very core of another human being and gutting them of their sense of dignity and of self-worth. You are reinforcing the message that gay people have heard for centuries. You will always be alone. You come from a family, but you'll never form one of your own. You are uniquely unworthy of loving and being loved by another person because you're different. Because you're gay. That's the way. That's the default position. Oh, you're a Christian? This is the way that you think about me. So, that being the case, we have to be all the more sensitive to that, not in changing what we say, but in how we say it. The reality is that the problem isn't just out there in the world somewhere. I would in no way be surprised if we had people in our church that struggle with same-sex attraction. I know a whole number of Christians who do. The issue is kind of like talking to your kids about sex. If you have kids, or if you have had the sex talk with your kids, you know exactly what I'm talking about. If you haven't and your kids are present, well, buckle up because, you know, here's the open door. You're welcome. It's not really easy to do. However, if you don't do it, their friends will. That kind of thing. Just go ahead and have the talk and make it something that isn't taboo or else they won't talk to you about it ever at all. So, with that being said, let's take a look at what the Bible says. The first argument is that the prohibitions against homosexuality are temporary. They did exist for a time, but they are no longer applicable. The two big ones are Leviticus chapter 18, which, if somebody would read that for me, Leviticus 18, and if somebody else would read Leviticus 20, 13. 18, 22, and 20, 13. Go for it. Okay. That's it. Okay. So, in the first case, to participate in a homosexual relationship is a sin. In the second one, same thing, but it's a sin that's punishable by death. Old Testament was not screwing around. Seems pretty cut and dry. Homosexuality is wrong. We might make the argument, as we typically do, that while we would enforce the morality code of the Old Testament, we do not enforce the civil penalties because we do not live in Israel. We live in a very different civil society, so we would not promote or expect the execution of homosexuals for homosexual acts. However, it seems pretty plainly wrong. What's the problem here? Well, the problem here is something like this. Somebody read Leviticus 19, 19. Okay. Don't mix seeds, don't mix fabrics, don't mix cattle breeds. Somebody else read, by far, what would have been for me one of the worst, roughest verses in the Old Testament, Leviticus 11, 7. Jews can't eat pork. Jews can't eat pork. Jews can't eat pork. Jews can't eat pork. Jews can't eat pork. Jews can't eat pork. Jews can't eat pork. Jews can't eat pork. Jews can't eat pork. Jews can't eat pork. Jews can't eat pork. Jews can't eat pork. Jews can't eat pork. Jews can't eat pork. I wear polyester, cotton blends all the time. They are wonderful. They wick, but are also comfortable. And pork is the greatest thing that was ever created. So if you don't follow those laws anymore, then if you don't hold to the whole law, but only some parts, you are doing violence towards homosexuals. You're picking and choosing. Right? Doesn't that make sense? Let's just, let's just put it this way. Does it make sense on the face of it? Yes. Right? So, I just want to be very clear that what you ought to, the very first thing that you ought to say to the person who is struggling with this is that makes sense. I understand how you would arrive at that position. Before you go into any kind of defense mode, just that makes sense. I understand. The argument is something like this. Why did these laws exist? Well, because they were given to a pre-modern, a bit backward kind of people who did all kinds of things that we find repulsive and illegal today. So, we just chuck out all the laws of the Old Testament. That's kind of the ordinary, typical argument. There's a problem with the argument we just do with all the laws of the Old Testament though, that it comes from the mouth of Jesus himself in Matthew chapter 5. Very well known section near the beginning of the Sermon on the Mount, takes up Matthew chapter 5 through 7. In verse 17, Jesus says this, ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ...