Addressing the Heart of Same-Sex Attraction #1

Welcome to the Truth Pulpit with Don Green. founding pastor of Truth Community Church in Cincinnati, Ohio. Hello, I'm Bill Wright. Thanks for joining us as we continue teaching God's people God's word. Don begins a new message today, so without further delay, let's join him right now in the Truth Pulpit.

We come tonight to another, just really crucial aspect of this whole matter of dealing with the Bible and homosexuality. And it's very practical, and it's one that you are going to face, no doubt, as you interact with family or friends in the future. And it is certainly a prominent issue in the way that. Homosexuals argue and try to vindicate their position, even as so-called Christians. And the idea is that I was born this way, I didn't choose to be this way, I can't help it, and therefore it must be okay.

A worship leader in Chicago. Associated with Willow Creek. Church recently issued this statement. He said, and I quote, I'm a follower of Jesus. I'm also gay.

As a Christian, I've been on a long journey to reconcile the reality of my orientation. With the various views that the church world has on the topic of people who are attracted to the same sex. I have begun a journey of celibacy and prayerfully discerning what that means for my life. End quote. It's easily and readily available.

If you just Google Willow Creek Gay Pastor, you'll come up with this statement right at the top of the results.

Well Look, here's the question. Is it okay? to have is your settled Approach to life to be attracted sexually to the same gender just so long as you do not engage in physical activity. Can you have that as the cornerstone desire of your heart in human relationships and still be a Christian? That's an important question because this thought is greatly influencing the Christian church today that yes, you can be that way.

It's simply if you control that and you're celibate, then there's nothing to be concerned about.

Now look. We're talking tonight about more than a passing perverse thought that you quickly reject in your mind. And, oh, where did that come from? That's not me. No, we're addressing whether someone can identify themselves as a homosexual by desire, by heart attraction, and still be a Christian.

What do we say to this? Can you affirm the desire as long as you separate it from the act? The answer to that question is No. You can't. The sin of homosexuality is more than external behavior.

The disposition toward it is also sinful and must be repented of if a person is going to be a Christian.

Now That may be surprising to you, it may be surprising to many. If you have approached Christianity as a series of external rules to be obeyed, and that Christianity is not much more than simply going to church on Sunday, those who have an external approach to Christianity do not have the capacity or the experience or the knowledge that is necessary to respond to this biblically. But Scripture is abundantly clear on this matter, that biblical righteousness is far more than simply avoiding external sin. And we're going to walk through this here today. And this is a crucial issue that.

That is far more important than simply dealing with the matter of. Homosexuality and homosexual attraction. There's something much greater at stake here. What's at stake in this discussion is the very nature of what it means to be a Christian. What's at stake in this discussion is the very nature of the righteousness that God requires from man.

And to try to define sin down by limiting it simply to external behavior without regard to what the heart attraction is, is to utterly redefine and overturn everything that Scripture says about what God requires from man. And so we need to deal with this. Decisively, we need to deal with it clearly. We need to deal with it without apology and without being intimidated by influential voices that try to argue this to the contrary. Even John Piper's Ministry for Crying Out Loud has published an article on its blog going back a year or two ago affirming the very thing that we are contradicting here tonight.

And so we need to be clear and decisive on this because the people that some look to for their spiritual direction are unreliable on this matter. And so we go back to the Word of God. And see what the Word of God has to say about it. And what does Scripture say?

Well, I think I'm going to give you a total of four points here this evening. And I'll be mindful as we go through this that you've heard me talk a lot already this weekend, and so I'll try to be sympathetic and merciful in my treatment of you here this evening, not only you, but those of you on the live stream. And building off that, obviously I'm saying that in a bit of a light-hearted sense, but let me also just say. Let me say this. As I said as we open the service here this evening, we're dealing with weighty issues.

And you can't help but feel the weight when we're talking about sin and condemnation and repentance and addressing things at a serious level. And you know, I'm mindful of that as we talk. as we preach here this evening. In light of everything that we've said this weekend. But beloved, I want you also to see that the reason that these matters are weighty is because weighty issues have come against the church in our day.

And we can't respond to weighty issues with a superficial response. Five-minute, ten-minute devotional messages or motivational messages with a loud band and colorful lights don't respond to the spirit of the age. And we have to step up to weighty issues with a weighty response. And we're not going to treat this superficially because we know, we understand as a church that that is not going to equip you to live in life and to respond to matters that come to bear against you from those who have been influenced by this thinking. Uh and so you While it's weighty and while I'm mindful of that, while I'm grateful for you sitting through these things, we also realize that weight must meet weight in response.

We must have a serious response to serious issues. And Scripture teaches us to teach to think seriously and to think profoundly. and to think internally as well as externally. And so, for our four points this evening, there's really, we want to start here, and point number one is this: is that the Bible judges sinful desires. Which is another way of saying that God himself judges sinful desires.

The biblical approach to sin, as we've seen in past times together, is far more than external behavior. And this is not unique to homosexuality. This is not something where we're targeting homosexuals and bringing something to bear only upon them. This applies to all of us. Sinful desires provoke God's judgment, not simply sinful deeds, because God by His nature God in His attributes is an omniscient, all-seeing God, and He looks upon the heart, not merely the outward man.

In 1 Samuel 16, verse 7, The Bible says that God sees not as man sees, for man looks on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart. And this idea that I can be oriented toward being a homosexual and that I can embrace that and I can affirm that and still be a Christian runs absolutely counter to what Scripture says about that. How does God see it? What does God see? He looks on a heart that says, I want homosexual behavior, but I'm just going to restrain my outer man from it.

Well, that's not righteous. This is all rooted ultimately in the tenth commandment that we looked at earlier, where it said, You shall not covet your neighbor's house. You shall not covet your neighbor's wife, or his male servant, or his female servant, or his ox, or his donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbor. Going back to the law of God, going back to the Ten Commandments, we see God outlawing illicit desires. As being Subject to judgment.

He prohibits a sinful heart. He prohibits a heart that is captivated by sinful desires. Jesus condemned heart sins like anger and lust. Look at Matthew 5. We looked at it last time.

We'll go back to it again today because of how important this is. Matthew 5 verses 21 and 22. Where Jesus is responding to a perversion of the law that the Pharisees had made, and they had made the application of God's law purely external. And he says in verse 21: You have heard that the ancients were told, you shall not commit murder. and whoever commits murder shall be liable to the court.

So he says, you've heard that the outward action is unlawful. Jesus says, But I say to you, That everyone who is angry with his brother shall be guilty before the court. Whoever says to his brother, you good for nothing, shall be guilty before the Supreme Court. And whoever says, you fool, shall be guilty enough to go into the fiery hell. Without any kind of physical assault.

Just the the mere anger. The vitriolic word, Jesus says, incurs a judgment that consigns men to hell. Jesus says, Don't be fooled by those who would restrict the concept of sin to merely the external act. Why? Because the anger itself is judgment worthy, because God prohibits coveting, because God looks on the heart and judges the man by what is inside him.

He goes on and says the same thing in another area of illicit desire. In verse 27, he says, You've heard that it was said, You shall not commit adultery. But I say to you, that everyone who looks at a woman with lust for her has already committed adultery with her in his heart. Even the look, the illicit desire from across the room, Jesus says, in God's eye is. an adulterous moment in the life of that person.

And so Without touching her, without doing anything, the very motion of the heart in that direction, Jesus says, is an adulterous motion of the heart that is condemnable before God.

Now this gets This gets pretty personal pretty fast, doesn't it? All of a sudden, God has taken a big spotlight and is just shining it in the dark corners of our heart and exposing the sin that is there. The anger, the lust, the desires. that maybe no one knows about. But that you harbor in your bitterness, in your resentment, in your settled longings for someone that doesn't belong to you.

Jesus Says all of that incurs guilt before God. Scripture says that God sees that, and God, listen. God who created the outer man Also created the inner man. And we are responsible with our outer man as well as our inner man before God. We don't get to harbor sin in our heart that would be wrong if we acted upon the desires.

They're both equally. Full of guilt. The desires themselves are sinful. Yeah. That's pretty sobering.

Forget homosexuals, that's sobering for us, isn't it, to realize that? And to realize how searching the omniscience of God is, to realize how utterly responsible and accountable we are before Him. What man meets that standard? What man has not incurred guilt just in anger or lust or coveting? None of us.

Not a one of us. Not a one of you is innocent of these heart sins. And so while we're addressing them in the context of homosexuality, because the homosexual community and so-called Christians are pressing this upon us and vindicating themselves with their wicked hearts, we realize that We ourselves are humbled by What God requires. From us.

Now That leads us to our second point here this evening. We said that the Bible condemns sinful desires. Let's go someplace where we don't often go. where you don't often Let your thinking probe this deeply. Have you ever wondered?

Where your sinful desires come from? Where do they come from? Do they just spontaneously happen in a matter that is unconnected with anything to do with who you really are? Yeah. That's not true.

Point number two here this evening. Scripture teaches us that sinful desires come from sinful hearts. A sinful heart Is that which produces sinful desires that produce sinful deeds? And so when you see external sin, when you see somebody that's fallen into sin, or when you yourself have sinned, You can trace things back. That sinful deed is simply the byproduct of things that were going on inside your heart long before.

And you can draw a linear line From the sinful deed back, and you go, Well, there was the sinful deed. Where did that sinful deed come from? The sinful deed came from a sinful desire. Where did that sinful desire come from? We can't say, oh, the devil made me do it, like Flip Wilson used to say many, many years ago.

For those of you who remember that name, if not, that's okay. I'm dating myself here. That's all right. But the sinful desires come from a sinful disposition, from a sinful nature. The inner man itself is corrupted, and Scripture teaches this clearly and repeatedly.

And if you remember that God looks on the heart, God judges the inner man as well as the external man, you can realize how serious this issue becomes. Look at Mark chapter 7. Mark chapter 7. As we consider this point, that sinful desires come from sinful hearts. And notice that really, up to this point, I've really said very little about.

Homosexuality. And that's really important to understand because we're talking about something that applies to all men generally. Homosexuality and the idea of an orientation while being celibate is just a very small subsection of the greater teaching of what it means to be a human that has fallen into sin. And Mark chapter 7, verse 21, Jesus helps us see this with great clarity. We'll actually start in verse 20.

We alluded to this passage earlier today as well. Jesus was saying in verse 20 that that which proceeds out of the man, that is what defiles the man. Verse 21, for from within. Out of the heart of men proceed the evil thoughts. Fornications, thefts, murders, adulteries, deeds of coveting and wickedness, as well as deceit, sensuality, envy, slander, pride, and foolishness.

All these evil things proceed from within and defile the man. And notice That with pot with one or two possible exceptions Especially in verses 22 and and following. That Jesus, let's put it this way. There in verse 21, Jesus kind of emphasizes some of the external actions: fornication, theft, murder, adulteries, things that you could take a picture of. You could take a movie of somebody doing these things and you see the external sin being played out.

But he goes on and equates as equally guilty those things that you could not use a camera to take a picture of, of those things which men cannot see. Things coveting and wickedness and a deceitful spirit and a sensuality, envy, slander, pride, and foolishness, those things that are not external. And Jesus says all of that, the external and the internal, it all proceeds from a deeper source. It proceeds from the heart of man, from his inner nature, from his spiritual control center. And so, sinful desires come from sinful hearts.

And this means something. You see, your heart. your unconverted heart before you were a Christian, Your heart was not neutral. And the heart of unconverted men, it's not neutral and then as if sinful desires and sinful orientations just kind of pop out of nowhere. And the way that people think and their sinfulness doesn't just spring out of neutral soil.

It comes from the fact that the very nature of man itself is fallen and perverted and sinful and unacceptable to God. In James chapter 4, you can turn over to James chapter 4 if you would. Just after the book of Hebrews. In James chapter 4, I'll give you a moment to turn there. He says, What is the source of quarrels and conflicts among you?

Where does this division between men Where is its source? And he says, Is not the source your pleasures that wage war in your members? You lust and do not have, so you commit murder. You are envious and cannot obtain, so you fight and quarrel. James says, The reason that you are seeing this sin in your life is traced to your perverted, sinful heart.

And people murder because they want something that they can't have. That's why so many of the crimes that are committed are called, that's why we have the phrase a crime of passion. People murder. People superficially would mock this passage as being an overstatement, but you lust and do not have, so you commit murder. This is so common in our news that it shouldn't even be debated anymore.

Of course, that's the case. Men want to control their girlfriends, and when they can't, they go out and they slaughter them.

Well, it's rooted. In their lusts, and their lusts are rooted in their sinful, wicked hearts. And what did Jesus say about these things?

Well, he said, we can't whitewash this. We can't pretend that this isn't a serious problem. In fact, He condemns those who were outwardly religious and outwardly conforming, and yet their hearts were impure. Look at Luke chapter 11, verse 39. Luke 11, verse 39.

And forty.

Now, let's start in verse 37. We're having a good time tonight. Jesus said Or Scripture says, I should say, Now when Jesus had spoken, a Pharisee asked him to have lunch with him, and Jesus went in and reclined at the table. When the Pharisee saw it, he was surprised that Jesus had not first ceremonially washed before the meal. Look at what Jesus says in response, verse 39.

He said to him, Now you Pharisees, clean the outside of the cup and of the platter, but inside of you you are full of robbery and wickedness. You foolish ones, did not he who made the outside make the inside also? Jesus says, outwardly you comply. You worry about washing cups and platters before you eat. What about the wickedness that is in your heart?

And so, what we see here. Is clear evidence from the mouth of Jesus Himself saying, God is going to hold us accountable, and He does hold us accountable to the motions of our hearts, to the affections and the desires of our heart, and illicit, sinful desires incur the judgment of God. Nothing could be plainer in Scripture. And so Beloved, watch this. this because this is so very important.

God not only forbids us to do wicked things, He also forbids us from wanting wicked things. He forbids us not only from doing things that violate his will, he forbids us from wanting to do things that violate his will. He is Lord over the outer man and he is Lord over the inner man. And he sees them both with equal clarity. And so, taking that and applying it to the topic of the weekend.

Here. Beloved, Settled, Homosexual desires violate the order of God and therefore are sinful and are inconsistent with the profession of Christ.

Someone who, and to be very clear, what we're talking about here, someone who has those desires and does not fight against them, but rather embraces them and says, This defines who I am. I am gay, I am homosexual, but I'm not going to act upon it. Understand that that is a distinction that Scripture does not recognize or affirm. You cannot separate the inner man from the outer man. You cannot separate the inner man from the entire person that God sees.

And so A man who desires men for sex as the order of who he is. Sins against God's design. And if he does not see that as a matter to repent of, he should not consider himself a Christian, and we should not consider him a Christian either. Regardless of whatever else he says with his lips about himself. and work.

Scripture illustrates this for us in another way. With the testimony of the Apostle Paul. Look over at Romans chapter 7. This man who was outwardly the perfection of what a Jew should be. Who was found blameless as to the application of the law?

What was his testimony about where he realized that he was undone and that he was guilty before God?

Well, look at Romans chapter 7, verse 7. He says. Romans 7 verse 7, he says, I would not have come to know sin except through the law, for I would not have known about coveting if the law had not said, You shall not covet. But sin, taking opportunity through the commandment, produced in me coveting of every kind, for apart from the law, sin is dead. In verse 11, sin, taking an opportunity through the commandment, deceived me and through it killed me.

Paul says, What awakened me to my need for the Lord Jesus Christ was that I was convicted of sin in the inner man. I was a covetous man. And I realized how guilty I was because the law of God convicted me of my sin. And so And so we realize that it's absurd. In light of biblical teaching, it is no different to say, oh, I'm a gay Christian, as it is to say, you know, I'm a covetous Christian.

You know, as a settled part of my personality, I want you to know that I covet after everything that this world has to offer. It's no different than to say, I'm a Christian given over to heterosexual lust. And I lust after women all the time, but you know what? I never act upon it. And so you can just call me the lustful Christian.

You know what? I'm bitter at everyone in the world. Everything has gone against me, and people have wronged me, and I'm angry, and I'm bitter about it. But you know what? I never assaulted anyone.

I've never raised my hand, I've never struck anyone, I've never murdered anyone, and so you can just call me the angry Christian. This just turns scripture on its head. Why would homosexuality be any different than all of these other perversions of Christianity to say I have this inner man, this inner disposition that is given over to sin? I just don't act on it externally, is a violation of everything the scripture says. About Spiritual life and about how God sees.

Men. And so we reject the idea that there is such a thing as a gay Christian who is nevertheless celibate. They've misunderstood the whole nature of what Scripture says about the heart of men. and about what God requires.

Now, before we go, I just want to send an invitation to you in this brief moment here at the end of the broadcast. It is a real joy and privilege for me to Week by week, meet new people who come through the Cincinnati area and stop by for a Sunday service or even a Tuesday evening Bible study at our location on the east side of Cincinnati. And I would invite you to do that. There are a lot of attractions that bring people to our region, and people often plan their trips around the opportunity to be with us on a Sunday morning service or on a Tuesday. And so, if you would come and visit us, I would love that.

But even more, make the opportunity, I'm very accessible at our church. If you do visit us, come and introduce yourself to me. I would love to meet you, have a brief word of fellowship with you, and for us to be able to cement our relationship even more, going from the mere audio here to that which is face-to-face in person as we share in the joy of serving. And knowing our Lord Jesus Christ. You can find the address and service times at our website, thetruthpulpit.com, and we would love to see you.

Again, that website information is thetruthpulpit.com. Dot com. That's Don Green, founding pastor of Truth Community Church in Cincinnati, Ohio. Thank you so much for listening to the Truth Pulpit. Join us next time for more as we continue teaching God's people God's Word.

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