Homosexuality in Light of Scripture, Part 2

So, if homosexuality is not permitted biblically, then why are some people attracted to the same sex? I mean, if this isn’t how God designed it, why do people have that? And as we wrestle with that, Christians and secular experts continue to grapple with the issues of causality. We go, “What is the core of that?”

And over the years, this is one of the issues we have not done real well. There was a time in the Church where the quickest thing people would say is, “Well, it’s a choice. It’s a choice. Just don’t do it.”

If you have ever sat down with a brother or sister in Christ who loves the Lord and they have struggled with same sex, almost every one of them, I have heard the same thing, “I didn’t choose this. I didn’t want this. It’s not like I got up and decided, Oh man…” And so, to just equate it simply to choice, for people who would go, “Man, from my youngest time, I have struggled with this.”

On the flip side, the secular experts try to find a genetic cause. It’s got to be in the genes, got to be in the genes, Simon LeVay, neuroscientist, was one of the leading forefront on this, determined to find it. They didn’t find it. They have not found it in the genetic code.

Here's what I would say. There’s not this one-size-fits-all story for every person who struggles with this. We kind of like that because it makes it easy for us and we’re going to go, “Okay, it’s over there and I can explain that.” There’s not one-size-fits-all story. There is a one-size-fits-all source, though. We have to realize the impact of the fall cannot be underestimated in the ways it has shaped our humanity.

All of our humanity. Guys, this is why God hates sin so much. This is why Adam and Eve’s choice was so devastating. This is when Romans says, “Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned.”

Man, the moment sin came in the world, death came with it. And it’s not just talking about physical death, by the way. Adam and Eve didn’t drop dead, but there was relational death - a death of sin and sickness that came in the world. There’s sexual death that we were all impacted. And when you look at that, when sin came into the world, the areas that you look at and you look at our planet, you look at these struggles, and the screaming thing whenever you see sin is, “This is not the way it was supposed to be. This is not goodness of God in His design.” And the impact. And, guys, it impacted our desires.

And so, things that would have been normal desires get thwarted through sin. Not just around sex. We take something like food. Is there anything more normal than food, eating food? But, you know, there are people that struggle, their very existence around food and the choices with it and the control of it. And the same way sexually. All of us, our desires have been impacted by sin.

And so, if you have these desires, well, here’s what Scripture tells us out of it. God never tempts us, it always comes from the world of flesh and the devil. And I say that because if you struggle with an ongoing temptation, you reach a point and you’re mad at God over it. And that’s actually a trick of the devil.

The devil wants to make you mad at God over a temptation that he is constantly fueling. And he separates you from the One who actually can make a difference in your life about it.

The second thing you see is Jesus was tempted as we are, so temptation is not sin. The fact that you have the same-sex attraction in that and you feel a temptation in that, the temptation itself is not a sin. It says, “For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weakness, but one who in every way, in every respect, has been tempted as we are, yet without sin.”

And when I read that verse, I think about, you know, Jesus faced sexual temptation and He never sinned. I mean, you realize His strength? Do you realize the model that He is for us? You realize His ability to relate to and to walk with and to sympathize with single adults and to draw close to them? Because He knows their struggle in way that, frankly, those of us who are married and got married early, we don’t understand that struggle in a way. And they get to relate to their Savior in a way that we don’t. And He relates to them.

Here’s what it comes down to. When we allow our desire to cross the line to thoughts or action, contrary to God’s design, then we have sinned.

Any time you cross over from temptation and James puts it so well. He says, “Let no one say when he is tempted, ‘I’m being tempted by God,’ for God cannot be tempted with evil and He Himself tempts no one. But each person,” every single one of us, “is tempted when he is lured and enticed by his own desire.”

When you allow that desire, so that desire is there and the temptation is there, and I love the “lure and entice,” you give it some time. You think about it a little bit. You allow yourself to go there a little bit. You feel it like it’s drawing you out. “And then desire, when it has conceived gives birth to sin.” So it didn’t happen immediately, there’s a conception of it and then it leads to sin. “And sin, when it is fully grown, brings forth,” what does it bring? Remember when we talked about…? Death.

So, as we look at this, let me walk through a couple of categories. We’ll get more direct with it. But how have Christians with same-sex desires chosen to live out their faith?

Bruce Miller who is a pastor in Dallas, he wrote, and [I’m] indebted to him. I think it’s good categories. And one is celibacy. A choice of devotion to Christ. Those adults that have said, “Hey, I have these same-sex desires. I cannot live this out in a way, so I am giving that to Christ and I have chosen a life of celibacy.” And I don’t say that lightly, by the way. That’s the part where I think as we talk about it in the Church, we need to recognize the sacrifice that maybe in a way some of us haven’t had to.

I’ve got a friend named Tim and he, for a part of his life, grew up in a conservative church, but a lot of wounds from it. Walked away from Christ, really embraced the whole gay lifestyle, he was an actor, he was in some movies. And finally, he just reached the end of himself that he just said, “I,” as he described it, “I missed Jesus.” And so, he came back to Christ. He came back to the Church.

Now, I always like talking to him because he is always really honest and really funny. And we would just talk together and I remember one night we were at dinner and he was eating at our house and so, I just start drilling in a little bit and said, “Tim, you think God is changing your desires any?” And he said, “Yeah, I don’t think so.” He’s just honest.

He said, “I tried dating some women. That is not my thing.” And so, I mean, in honesty, I said, “So, if you’re not going to date and you don’t think that’ll change…you just have embraced celibacy?” And he said, “Yeah.” He said, “I’m not saying it’s not hard.” And I love this. He goes, “But Jesus is good. And so, when I was living out in that, there’s nothing in that that compares with walking with Christ and what I experience with Him.”

And then he laughed and he goes, “Don’t feel sorry for me. I’ve got a lot of friends in the same boat. Some are divorced, some have never married, all of us are in the same boat together.” And then I go, “Yeah, there’s an honesty in that.”

And this is the part we don’t like talking about it, because there’s a level of sacrifice in this. And maybe you’re there and you go, “Gosh, that would be a hard step.” I would encourage you, wrestle with Jesus on it.

Now, another category is those who have chosen marriage, heterosexual marriage, a choice of self-denial for Christ. Now, I’m not talking about they got married so that they could make it go away. That usually doesn’t work. Or they didn’t tell their prospective spouse. And so, they have chosen, in a very honest way, to talk to their spouse and as they have looked at this, they chose to get married.

Rebecca McLaughlin is a writer I really like. Christian writer, I have read a number of her things, she is married, has kids. I was surprised when I got to this chapter on one of her books where she is talking about this and she starts telling her own story. She said, “When I was growing up, I would find myself attracted to girls. In fact, when I turned eighteen, I thought, Oh, this is gone. I found myself falling in love with another girl.” But as she wrestled with that, she said, “This doesn’t match the biblical ethic,” and she wasn’t exclusively attracted to girls. She dated a man and they married.

Listen to her words. She said, “If I am ever attracted to someone outside my marriage, it’s always to a woman. But I am not in that one percent of women who can only be attracted to other women. So, I am able to be happily married to a man and just like any other married Christian, when I find myself attracted to someone other than my husband, I need to ask Jesus for help to not follow that pull.” It's just an openness and honesty.

Another category is kinship partnerships, it’s non-sexual intimacy with others. Those who form deep relationships. They are not sexual, but they are deep. And it meets some of those intimate, deep friendship needs. The last category is transformation - those that would say nothing is impossible for God.

Those that have had their desires transformed. And as much as the culture wants to deny it, you can’t deny their stories either. I think of someone like Rosaria Butterfield, who was a women’s study professor at the University of Syracuse who was in a lifelong partnership with her lesbian partner, went to the Universalist church that gave permission over that.

And was fully entrenched and said, “This is me; this is who I am,” until she developed a friendship with a pastor and his wife who would have her and her partner over for dinner. And by the way, when they came over to dinner, they didn’t hammer them. They just loved them, they got to know them, they talked about everything in life.

Until finally Rosaria was intellectually curious enough, she said, “I know you don’t think the Bible speaks the same way I do. Can you tell me what the Bible says about homosexuality?” And in a straightforward manner, he laid it out much like I have this morning.

She told herself, “I don’t like this, but I can’t deny what it’s saying.” And as she came to Christ, she knew she had to leave lesbianism. She is married today. She would say God has changed her today. She is one of the best writers on this today. There can be transformation. It doesn’t mean everyone.

Some people have prayed their whole life, they have not experienced that change. And some people, they have seen God totally change them. Again, I don’t understand the mysteries of God in this all. But I think we have got to be honest about, when people are in this, what God can do and then what He chooses to do.

As we finish out, how do we respond as a church? Let me just give you a few walkaway things. One, we can love all people knowing it’s not our responsibility to judge them. We think if I’m going to define this biblically, now I’ve got to go change everybody in the world on this.

Look what Paul said to the church in Corinth. He said, “I wrote you in my letter not to associate with sexually immoral people.” They were dealing with big sexual issues in the church and people had just kind of condoned it. And so, he says, I was not at all meaning the sexually immoral of the world, or the greedy or the swindlers, idolators. Since you would have to go out of the world, for what have I to do with judging outsiders?”

Here’s what he’s saying. He’s saying, “Hey, I’m addressing you as a church.” This is what you’ve got to focus on. You don’t have to worry about them out there. You don’t have to go out there and judge everyone. We don’t need to go out of this place and tell everybody, “Oh man, we are against that.” Man, I leave them to Jesus. In fact, as I go interact with people, my number one message is not trying to change somebody sexually out there.

Here’s the number one message when we go out of this place, “Man, can I introduce you to Jesus?”

Because here’s the deal, guys, no one changes apart from Jesus. And so, our number one goal is: how do I introduce people to Jesus and then through the power of the Holy Spirit, then through the power of the Bible. Man, as they start that journey, I would love to see their life match God’s design, but I’ll never get them to live the design until they have experienced the Savior of the design. And so, that’s our message to the world.

And so, much like today, we don’t try to camp out on issues, but we do call people to what the Bible says, because that’s what we are aligning our lives to. We must continue to speak the truth in love to those in the Church, calling all of us to the sexual standards of Scripture.

The reality is, in the American Church, in the evangelical Church, and Bible churches today, homosexuality is probably not our greatest issue. It’s actually calling heterosexuals to live according to standards of Scripture. And we have got to speak that truth in love as well. We must support and celebrate our brothers and sisters in Christ who struggle with same-sex attraction, but are choosing to pattern their lives according to Scripture. Support and celebrate them because they are sacrificing in a way that many of us are not.

We must develop a more robust understanding and celebration of single adults in the Church. Final thing I would just ask all of you to do, we must open our homes and families to those who are longing for community and we are promised it in the Church.

You want to make a difference on this issue? Maybe there’s part of it, you go, “Man, I see our culture is changing, I see what is going on out there,” you want to make a difference on this issue, you know where you could start? You could start by looking at your dinner table and asking yourself, Who have I invited in our family? Who am I doing life with together?

When you come to church on a Sunday morning, who sits alone in your section every week and you let them sit alone? And you have yet to go over and introduce yourself and you have yet to grab them on a Sunday and say, “Hey, let’s go get lunch together. Let’s do community together.”

There’s a reason the LGBT community has their arms open wide, especially to young people who have left the Church. They say, “Come here, we will love you.”

We need to be the community that actually deliver on what we promise. We need to be the people that we cross in fellowship and in love and open our homes and lives in a way. You know, somebody may leave our church one day, maybe after today, because they go, “If that’s what you believe the Bible says, I can’t believe that.” I understand that. But you know what I would want? I would want, if they left over that reason, they were so sad to go, because they were so loved in this place. And the people of this place offered real community in it.