10-4-2015 Bioethics Part 27

This transcription is about a Sunday school session discussing homosexuality and how Christians should respond to it. The speaker emphasizes the importance of addressing the heart issue behind same-sex attraction and argues against the idea that it is a choice. They discuss the nature vs. nurture debate and highlight the need to guard and protect our hearts, as they are vulnerable and easily swayed. The speaker also references biblical passages that connect the heart to both good and evil actions. Overall, the main point is that addressing the heart issue is crucial in understanding and responding to same-sex attraction. morning how's everybody doing all right let's pray dear father thank you for who you are and I think for this this morning that we get to delve into topics about Christian living and how we respond to certain sins and how we are supposed to live our lives make us the kinds of people that you want us to be that give all the glory you and a pray that you could make us the church that you would want us to be and it's in your son's name that we pray amen so as we've started this Sunday school on homosexuality or same-sex attraction and how we address that so we'll be talking about today the heart issue of it last week Braley did Sunday school and he talked about a pretty general scope of homosexuality and the gospel and how the gospel God's Word God's Spirit and how God's character can apply to that topic he went over what the church should think about that in pretty general terms and he asked a pretty good question if a lot of people tend to ask this about all types of things not just same-sex attraction if this is my body and I can do whatever I want with it so what were some answers to that what is that that correct is that that not true okay then whose body is it yeah so Braley gave the analogy that C.S. Lewis gave of loaning a boat to somebody and you can do whatever you want with your boat just don't bump into other boats but if it's a loaned boat you can't exactly do whatever you want with it because it's a loaned boat and God has loaned us our bodies that we have for his glory so we have to do whatever gives him glory according to what he says so he got to the conclusion that homosexuality is not in a category in a group of its own in a certain sense and why would that be yep cuz all sin is rebellion against God no matter how big how obvious whatever it's all rebellion against God and he also talked about how the gospel is central to our lives it changes everything from the inside out it's not just something we can add to it and keep doing our thing so another question he got to is what what kinds of people need to repent of their sin and what what kind of sin needs to be repented of all sin correct so yeah all people all people who follow Christ because Christ says if anyone wants to come after me you must take this cross daily must deny themselves and follow me so sexuality is by a lot of people in culture even non-homosexuals is viewed as this sense of identification and but that's a bad base for identifying yourself for a lot of reasons it doesn't adequately address who we are it doesn't get to the heart issue it doesn't really tell us all about ourselves and sexuality unlike God is a temporal thing it doesn't last for eternity and it doesn't encompass all of our lives so people are more than their sexuality and today that's that's a lot of work we're going to talk about is the heart issue which is kind of nebulous and ambiguous but we'll dive into it and define that see what that means and all the implications for that so the first thing about the heart issue of same-sex attraction will be that this the cause of it is hard to locate it's extremely hard to find out what the one cause of this is because there's not just one cause and even if it is just one person they have might have one cause which probably is extremely rare another person has it might have a totally different story for why they feel these attractions and this is important to know for a lot of Christians because it seems to be that a lot of times Christians say well you chose to be like that you chose to choose you chose to be homosexual you chose to be same-sex attraction but even though that might be true on some basis it it comes off as extremely offensive and ignorant and a lot of things because attract attractions like that that are that deep that inborn and that if you use that for such a basis for identification it's not going to feel chosen it's not going to feel chosen when it's that deep of an issue so and when it's and when it comes down to that it's hard to define is it nature or nurture and a lot of people always just go between those two nature and nurture and a lot of research has been done and by the American Psychological Association says that sexual orientation refers to a person's sense of identity based on those attractions so even scientific research associations are saying that's an identity based on those attractions that sexuality can be an identity basis but I would disagree and the APA or the American Psychological Association also says that while the source of homosexuality is still unknown it could both be nature and nurture so a combination of the two but this misses one important thing it's the heart issue of it all and I'm getting all this from a book called love into light you'd like to know more about this this is one single chapter of the book called the heart and deals with what I'll be talking about so from now on out here's a lot of what this guy Peter Hubbard the author of this book love into light writes about and he mentions that the heart the word heart is mentioned 850 times in the Old Testament alone so it's obviously something we need to figure out what it what it has to do with what it means and let's define it and address it so what could the Old Testament and the New Testament mean about the word heart not just the physical heart but the heart yeah yes anything else heart means thinkings and feelings yeah center of reason thinking feelings it's the core of who we are the driving center it's like the driving seat of who we are our heart you know according to our thinking and our feelings everything does according to what our heart how it's functioning so the condition of our heart is extremely important because it's going to affect our decision-making process not just us as in Christians but all people it's a it's a human thing and so because this is so important and because it's the central thing that's going to navigate a lot of other things how our lives play out our beliefs what we believe about certain things how we live out certain things and that that connection since the heart is the root of all that we need to figure out what God's Word says about that big picture wise and how to address that particularly in ourselves and how to talk to people that are dealing with same-sex attraction because if we just go around pointing fingers screaming shaking fingers with red faces at people stop sinning that's not going to work and if we're the ones that back down and just let everybody do what they want to do and say hey it's okay God's grace you know Jesus loves that's not what the Bible says either so let's let God's Word and God's Spirit make us the kinds of people that he wants us to be. Proverbs 4 23 says keep your heart with all vigilance for from it flow the springs of life so vigilance keep your heart with all vigilance this in other words can mean that you need to guard or keep watch over your heart with extreme care because and this this can be this implies that our hearts are vulnerable what do you think this means what do you think vulnerable means in this context open a new reasoning yes that's possibility for sure anything else anything any other reason why our hearts could be vulnerable yeah yeah I think so too so open a new reason and deceitful yeah so our hearts are open to changing easily and easily harmed or swayed away from even the truth so that's one reason alone that we need to keep watch over our hearts and that's another reason why maybe people who struggle with same-sex attraction have been so easily swayed not not just them but particularly talking about this that's maybe a reason so above everything else our hearts need to be protected this is extremely counterintuitive and even more so countercultural because culture and our minds tell us that we need to protect our finances our reputation our health our jobs that we should protect these things first we should set up the things in place that will keep these things in place also because apparently if you lose your job life falls apart if you lose your reputation everything's done if your health goes down you're nothing but God's Word says above all that above all that social stratification type stuff our hearts are the issue so so what are some ways that our hearts are vulnerable looking back at what I just kind of talked about what are some ways that our hearts are easily swayed yeah swayed by anything that's not God really easily and that's pretty obvious in our own lives as well and also an implication from the first that says keep your heart with all vigilance for from it for the springs of life or from it first flow the springs of life it means that our hearts are responsible for kind of all the action that comes out of it since it's the control center it's sending out all these directions to how we think and live our lives so it's responsible for who we are and since it's responsible for who we are it the homosexuality issue is a sin issue and all sin would be a heart issue at that point because it comes from the control center and this is not just Peter Hubbard or myself or the church saying this this comes from the words of the Bible and particularly Jesus in Mark 7 verses 21 through 23 Jesus says for from within out of the heart of man come evil thoughts sexual immorality theft murder adultery coveting wickedness deceit sensuality envy slander pride foolishness all these evil things come from within and they defile a person interesting that he says all these things come from within and defile a person and furthermore in Luke 6 45 Jesus also says the good person out of the good treasure of his heart produces good and the evil person out of his evil treasures produces evil for out of the abundance of the heart his mouth speaks it doesn't get more obvious than that how Jesus put that that out of the heart comes good or evil so it's not just these actions that are good or evil alone they're not just intrinsic right there they're they're based in the heart so all sin and all good work our heart issues you can tell you can kind of tell where those things come from like if someone is continuously doing good work you could probably conclude that they have a good heart maybe not but most likely so what do we need to do as Christians and in light of what Jesus has said in light of what God's word says about our hearts we need to realize that homosexuality alone is not this unnatural twisted weird sin we need to realize that all sin that lying cheating stealing talking bad about people to mess up their reputation all those sins are unnatural twisted evil and weird not just same sex attraction as our culture a lot of it Christian culture especially uses so and another thing to to relate this back to homosexuality being not in its own category but a heart issue is that I talked about it felt earlier like hey you didn't you chose that I get so I feel these attractions like you might be well that's weird why don't they feel that kind of thing why would a like same sex attraction say that I feel that's weird that's that's not exclusive to same-sex attraction that's for all sins all sins you know are chosen and feel just deep so for instance I have a story about this and kind of illustrate to make you realize that this is not just a homosexuality feel kind of you chose this kind of thing so yesterday we went camping with Braley and another one of his friends it was Friday and if you've lived in Nashville for more than one Friday and ever been out at four o'clock it's not fun on the road so not only do I hate traffic I love traffic it's not my thing and I don't like being hungry either so put those together you know when I get really hungry I get angry I like to call it hangry so I have some hanger and I was in traffic worst thing ever and I like to be on time really knows that I think he's kind of cracking up just he knew I was like wanting to get camping so the two-hour drive there took three because it took one hour to get a natural horrific but really could tell I was kind of getting upset and that's kind of when I realized it too but if you would have told me in that minute or in that moment that hey dude you you need to quit choosing to get so angry you need to choose not to feel hungry I would not ever see that really well at all because in that moment the last thing I'm thinking is well hey I'm choosing to get hungry right now that's not it at all I'm just like I need food and I need a helicopter to get out of this traffic that's what I want I'm not I mean you know I'm just like perceiving that there's a lot of red lights and I'm choosing to get angry that's not it at all I'm not systematically break that down I'm just ticked because there's traffic so that's the thing that's probably I can't even imagine taking that a step further to such a deep issue like sexuality I can't even imagine that if someone coming up to me you chose your sexuality you're messed up whoa shoot I feel like whoa that's such a deep issue for me I feel like that like I didn't I didn't choose that I've always felt like that I never just felt any different so it's it's the process of just like naming out these things why is it's hard and it's difficult to get to so some conclusions from that is people dealing with homosexuality do not always feel that they chose to be that way and I would say that they rarely say they chose to be that way and another conclusion is most sin anger doesn't feel chosen and another third and I think really important conclusion from this is that sin has affected the heart of all human beings and if we don't if you don't get anything else out of this you totally forgot what I talked about let it be known that all sin has affected human hearts everybody no one is away from this and so we need to be the kind of people that are reminded of wow I'm a human too and we're all on this same level at least some senses we're on some basis so that brings about repentance and realization of our messed upness even if you don't get out of here be like oh yeah I learned a lot about how to really adjust homosexuality from Morgan just know that we we need to repent as well so back to the many factors influencing our hearts there's a diagram I have that really shows this pretty well because the heart is an extremely complex issue yeah I can get that up please this diagram shows just the vast majority of life experiences and and realms of those that can influence our hearts so there's physical relational cultural and these things really do have a lot of impact on who we are as a person and just imagine if your you know set of hands got dealt that where it made you feel attracted to the same sex so it's not it might be for you but it shouldn't be too hard to imagine how someone could be same-sex attraction because we are all inclined to certain sins and just look at look at backgrounds I mean I can look at mine the hunger and the anger and traffic I can see well that's yeah that's part of my life that really influenced that and that's built up over a long long period of time for instance let's take the not going to do the little connection with dad because a lot of people relate that like oh yeah you you didn't have a good relationship with your dad that's why why you're gay that's one that's probably not how would you know that about that person unless you really knew them that comes off as highly offensive I just ignorant so let's look at another one yeah cultural you could be gender confusion if someone if someone listens all these cultural things especially now with everybody wanting these transgender changes a lot people see that in the in the culture and but hey I kind of want that too maybe if it's for a totally different reason that celebrity wants it they can see that and see that that's a normal thing and want to emulate that so they grew up all their lives thinking that and that could be that could be adultery which is one in the heart like I worship this celebrity so much and I want to emulate them or fear dang I want to be this kind of way I don't think I can live without that certain thing or I want that's lust I want this right now or pride I am this like trying to define yourself so clearly without any external influence I am this so there there are a lot of things that can make someone feel attracted to the same sex not just choosing and not just not having a good relationship with your father so why is the heart center perspective important that's a really broad question but it has a lot of answers so why do you think this heart centered approach to sin and homosexuality is important yes very much so yeah hearts can be changed yeah yeah all of those answers are extremely accurate that God is the one who fully satisfies all those things not just a sexual attraction that God changes and molds our hearts into his image and what he wants them to be and that scripture deals extremely with our humanity and the heart issue will eventually play out in the actions so we can't just deal with the actions that won't ever reach the heart issue so a heart centered perspective is important because when we look at our hearts when we deal with the heart issue we see ourselves in the presence of our Creator so and this is again countercultural because many are taught that attraction equals orientation equals behavior which equals identity and that in turn equals who you associate with and what you associate yourself with so that's all based off attraction that's that is not a good way to way to identify yourself or way to base your life on merely attraction and orientation so as it's been answered before I think Tim kind of hit this is why the why is the heart issue not usually dealt with well for one it's extremely just stinking hard work to look at our hearts and be real with who we are and that's that's straight honesty right there but at the moment when we are honest finally with God God alone is the one who can expose our hearts fully and satisfy our hearts completely so God's presence through his word and spirit reveals and transforms the deep issues of our heart and when we look to him he knows everything about us and that's why he's able to expose and transform us so so yeah I mean it's important to base this in a heart issued kind of way when we're talking to people that are dealing with same-sex attraction like you need we as Christians need to move it from the actions to move it to who we are which is going to be hard and it's going to take deep relationships because if you just start talking about someone's deep roots they might feel really hurt and like you don't know me don't talk to me like that but that's that's where it's going to get solved it's not going to get solved you need to stop doing this you need to stop doing this this this all those come from one central place and if we fix the one we if God is able to address the one central place then all those things will eventually begin to transform so the question about transformation is a lot of a lot of people dealing with same-sex attraction that struggle with it and by struggle I mean have it but don't want it might ask well I'm trying to be a Christian but I have these attractions if God really wanted me to change why doesn't he just take this away and what do you think you could say to that? Say someone with same-sex attraction comes to this church and says well you want me to be a Christian you're saying all this stuff and you say God is the answer why doesn't you say religion the Bible and all this stuff is the good answer for my problem and why didn't he just take it away? Wouldn't that be easy? Wouldn't that be the easiest thing? If it was you, you would say he didn't take away the traffic. Yeah, that's a good answer. He didn't take away the traffic. Christianity is not magic either. God just doesn't come into your life and clear up everything and give you a perfect life. Yeah, Christianity is not magic. In general, living in a fallen body with flesh is always dissociating and tempting and difficult. And that's across the board with all of us. But all that being said, you can also, you know, just like you could get to the heart issue of why he was angry. You could still bring it back to that person. Like understanding everything that was said, not just like accusing them or something. Just knowing that we all struggle with different things and still like try to get back to why you feel that way. And not expect it to go away forever and still try to like basically fight it like you would fight any incident that anybody struggles with. Like how you, you know, like for those of you who exist in the region and like the traffic thing, you still got to go to work. You don't got to live in that thing. You don't even got to get back in that traffic but act in a different way. Yeah, so it all deals with transformation and how God is not a magician and just doesn't remove us completely from this earth and zip us up to heaven like some Star Trek type stuff. So, yeah, we do live in a fallen world and one part of being a Christian is that we have to be in this world and look to God's strength to sustain us. He doesn't totally remove us from our sin. He saved us from it. But we're not just bam, done, completely sanctified. We never really get there and neither will someone struggling with this particular sin. We will always struggle with sins and that's kind of a fruit in and of itself is struggling with sin and battling it. And that's what we have to do. We have to hit it on the nose. We have to attack it. As Jeremy and Zach and I were talking about just a minute ago, we're talking about mortification of sin. The book by John Owen where it talks a lot about not trading one sin for another. And this gets into that homosexuality, the cure for it is not heterosexuality because you can still be lusting even more as a heterosexual, more than you might have as a homosexual. So, the cure for that is not that. So, why does God not just totally remove us and take these desires away? Probably because He wants us to look after Him and seek Him at the end of this, through His Word, through His sacraments, through His community. So, that's, you know, not only God, not only has God been faithful to save us, but He's been faithful to put us in a community. And that right there can help battle this sin. We have accountability partners or mortification partners, whatever you want to call it, putting sin to death. People that can challenge us, help us, encourage us, listen to us. So, that is one thing in itself that answers that question, why doesn't God make me straight? Or why doesn't God make me normal? Well, that's not the best question. It's like, a better question would be, what can I do that God wants me to do? And that would be to seek Him. And in seeking Him, sin starts to fall away when we really address it. And another thing, how we address people that deal with this. How can this church apply this? If you went out to meet with somebody tomorrow that was dealing with same-sex attraction, how would you deal with it? And I think one important thing to do is we move the conversations about same-sex attraction and homosexuality, we move them into biblical categories. Because when we, again, focus on the heart issue, which the Bible does, they're in the presence of God, His transformation, His exposure, all these things. So, a really practical thing is to put this in biblical categories. And that just doesn't mean, well, I heard a verse, quoting that one verse. One, that could be extremely out of context, you'd be proof texting that. So, that could be difficult. And even if you weren't proof texting that, that could be just really confusing. And, okay, so cool, nice info, what do I do with that? And we need to relocate the conversations about the actions back to what God's Word really says about them. And God's Word deals with the heart issue, like Jesus talked about earlier. Evil comes from an evil heart. Good, likewise, comes from a good heart. And in order to have these conversations, what does that mean we have to do initially? Yeah, yeah. Like we talk a lot about in Sunday school, we have to love our neighbor. And if we're fearful or hating our neighbor, then we're not going to ever get that done. The heart issue we'll never even get to, because you won't even know their actions. If you're not around them, spending time with them, loving them, being hospitable to them, we'll never get to that point. That is our end, to preach the gospel to people and help them transform in the presence of God. And another thing with that, the hospitable, loving the neighbor kind of thing, is that when we get irritated, annoyed, or look at a same-sex attraction, a person dealing with a same-sex attraction, and we're just like, they are too far gone, that's it, it's too weird. We fundamentally forget what the gospel does and what the gospel is. In a sense, we are denying the power of the gospel, because God could have done the exact same thing to us. In our sin, God could have said, they are too far gone. That Morgan guy, too much for me to deal with, too annoying, it's going to be too big of a mess, forget it. And just not even do anything. So when we do that, and I knew I would do that all the time, not with just same-sex attraction, but people in general, I deal with freshmen a lot of times, I'm an RA, and trust me, they get annoying, and they just act like derelicts a lot of times. And when I see that, I'm just like, wow, dude, you're too far gone. Sorry man, college is going to suck for you dude, you're just going to be a jerk for the rest of your life. That's me being annoyed and irritated, and in a sense, denying what God has done for myself. So let's not do that. That's not what God's Word says, that's not how Jesus treats us. Jesus does not come to us and say, you're too sinful, I'm not going to deal with you. He hates sin, and He wants us to change, but He doesn't say, done, not going to even touch it. So from that, we need to get to know these people, but not in a sense like, oh, hey, do you deal with same-sex attraction? Do you deal with it? You do? Sweet, I'm going to be your buddy. Not like that. That again is extremely offensive and just kind of dumb, and don't do that. But when we get to know our neighbor, chances are that someone might deal with us. When we get to know the people around us, the places we live, work, play, do our stuff, chances are we might meet someone who deals with something along those lines, or knows somebody who deals with this. Yeah, we should be the types of people that people want to get around and know, and want to know truth and challenge them, because people do want to know truth. They might deny it all day long, but deep down, people want to know meaning and truth. So when we move this into biblical categories, talking about the heart, talking about, well, that's like pride or whatever, that's coveting. You're wanting what someone else wants or has. Like a conversation could go like this, well, like, Morgan, I just really struggle with this, and I really just want what they have. That's why I struggle with same-sex attraction, Morgan. I want what they have. Oh, okay, well, that's coveting, and this is what the Bible says about it. It could be a whole host of things as we went over this diagram, but the Bible addresses every one of these, and God's character does too. So it's not like a formula, like, oh, they deal with this, say this. But in a loose sense, it is. The Bible does address these things. So the point of all this is that heart-level honesty in the presence of God's Word and God's Spirit postures us for true change and true transformation. So another question that is kind of out of this realm, but not really, is what do we do about non-Christians? What do we do about people that don't care about God's Word or even think God exists? What do you think we do with non-Christians about this issue? Homosexuality. Why? You know, it's just in life. What's that about? I don't know. You know, some people who like other people like themselves. You know, what's the information? So what offends you so much? You know, that's kind of just trying to get into the conversation anyway. Is there anything up there about what that means? When you're bringing these people to Congress, it's non-Christian or something like that. You have to open the door to say, you know, so what does this thing mean? It's not that I agree with it. I agree that it's not good or anything like that. I'm just trying to understand why it's so upsetting or offensive to you. And then you're sorry. Yeah. Ask a question. Were you going to say something else? Well, I was more answering it. Like, if you're talking to someone who is a homosexual or a non-believer, I don't think there's anything to talk about in terms of their sexuality because why are we expecting them to follow the structure God's laid out for healthy relationships when they don't even believe in God? So I think starting with, why don't you believe in God? This is the future. The gospel is the only place to go with someone like that. It's just end to end. It doesn't have to be. Yeah. Yeah, that's what I had down is that we address this as we would address any of our friends that are unbelievers. We would reiterate the gospel and its power and its implications. And the gospel addresses a heart issue. The gospel just doesn't say, well, stop doing this because you chose this and you're a weirdo. It really speaks to the heart of who we are, why we're doing things, where we want to go in life, who we want to be, and it changes all that. So I would say reiterate the gospel. You can't say, well, hey, let's talk about this and try to mortify sin. They're going to have really no concept of mortifying sin or accountability or addressing it in biblical terms, but you can still address it in not biblical terms but with biblical reasoning. So don't use words like justification or whatever with a non-Christian because they will just think you're a weird alien talking about nothing. Well, we kind of are aliens, but we are humans, and that's the next point, is that we can address this. Our hearts are all the same in a sense. We all are sinful. That's the commonality between us all. So if we frame this in biblical ways, it deals with all the same boredness of our hearts. We're all sinful. Zach? In our gathering, that person quotes on some type of truth, so you kind of present a part of the gospel that they're holding on to, basically. It's not like they're completely absent of the truth at all. It's not like a lot of people have never come here to serve the Bible. It's a little bit about morality. Yeah, that's really good, yeah, because a lot of times we want to do evangelism as if, well, I've got something that you don't have, and I'm going to fix your life. That's not our job. That's not what God wants us to do. Our job is to faithfully preach the gospel truly, and in that, praying and seeking that God would transform their hearts. We're not passive, but we are extremely active in prayer and preaching the gospel. This is not just a sit back and pray for them issue or sit back and just hope issue, but in prayer and in hoping, that moves us to talking and addressing these issues and addressing them in an extremely biblical way. So like Zach said, everybody has a sense of truth, even if they might deny it in this postmodern world of no truth, no story applies to me kind of thing. Myself, everybody deep down has maybe one ounce of some truth. Everybody wants truth. So, yeah, it takes time. It's a process to even diagnose what's going on. Like you might have a friend that you just sense. Like, oh, he says some weird things sometimes. He does weird places sometimes. Like, I don't know if he's really same-sex attraction or homosexual, but I might think. So it takes time to even get to know those people. And after that, after we address that, call that out, it takes time to deal with that. And like I said, it's not our job to change them and transform them. That's God's work. Our job is to faithfully preach the gospel and be in prayer for them. So let's pray. Dear Father, thank you so much for your word. Thank you so much for your character. And I pray we can be the kinds of people that deliver truth with boldness, but yet deliver the truth with gentleness and love and compassion, just like Jesus had for us. Help us to not get annoyed. Transform our hearts to not get annoyed and irritated with not only people dealing with same-sex attraction, but all people dealing with sins and all nonbelievers. Help us love each other and deal with each other in this body and go out and be hospitable to the people that are not here and preach the gospel faithfully and be in prayer for them. Transform our hearts so we can be the kinds of people that give glory to you in every way. And it's in Christ's name I pray. Amen.