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. Today, Don continues teaching God's people God's Word in our current series titled, The Bible and Pride Month.

Right now, here's Don with a word about this month's series. You know, in my opinion, Bill, the Pride Month is the most ridiculous and destructive propaganda campaign that has ever been perpetrated on the American people and beyond them to the entire world. It started with the acceptance of homosexuality, moved to the mandated acceptance of homosexual marriage, from there to the promotion of transgenderism, to the infliction of transgenderism on children, to the current grooming of children through the appalling existence of drag queen hours. You know, it seemed to me that there needed to be someone saying something each day in opposition to Pride Month in response to all of those things. So my friend, as you listen today, all that is being promoted here on the Truth Pulpit this month is designed to bring a biblical perspective to help you process what you are seeing in the world around you. Our goal is to be a voice in the wilderness of opposition to it all one day at a time. And so I trust it will help you see things clearly from God's perspective and that you will be encouraged to speak boldly for Christ in your circle of influence. Thanks for being with us today on the Truth Pulpit.

Thanks Don. And friend, let's join our teacher now with part one of a message titled, Addressing the Heart of Same Sex Attraction, here on the Truth Pulpit. We come to another 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. And what does Scripture say?

Well, I think I'm going to give you a total of four points 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. 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. And 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 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 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. Now, 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 and 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. 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?

No. That's not true. Point number two here. 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? 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. 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 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 with one or two possible exceptions, especially in verses 22 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. Somebody, 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, that 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 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. Well, it's rooted in their lust, 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 37. 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, 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 here, beloved, settled homosexual desires violate the order of God, and therefore are sinful and are inconsistent with the profession of Christ. 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.

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. 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, 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. And 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 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. And 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 that 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. That brings us to point number three. We can title it this way, and this really gets to the heart of it, and this is where we do the hard work on this topic. Point number three with an exclamation point says, but I didn't try to be this way. I did not choose to be this way, is what you hear homosexuals say. They say, I was always this way.

I was different from the youngest age. I didn't choose it. This is just who I am. Now what shall we say to that? The implication, the unspoken assertion in that, is that therefore I am not responsible for my immoral heart because I didn't choose to be this way.

Therefore God can't judge me because this wasn't an act of my volition. What shall we say to that? This is a very important point. Again, it's not too much to say that the very essence of what Christianity is is at stake in this very point. The truth is just the opposite, as is so often the case. Prevailing conventional wisdom is usually an expression that the truth can be found biblically in just the opposite direction, and it's just as true here. Listen to me very carefully as we do some heavy theological lifting here. The fact that those desires come so naturally and so easily simply shows how badly sin has infected the human race. In Romans chapter 5 verse 12, Paul says that just as through one man sin entered into the world and death through sin and so death spread to all men because all sinned. When Adam fell, sin entered into the human race and had a contaminating effect on every aspect of human nature. And as men have propagated since Adam that sinful nature has passed along from generation to generation. We're sinners not simply by what we choose to do. We are sinners by nature. We inherit a sinful nature from our parents who received it from their parents and on back it goes. And when Adam fell into sin, beloved, he brought a whole host of evil upon the human race.

We inherited a guilty nature from him that is corrupt and perverse and cannot be reconciled to God unless a man be born again. Why is it that some people feel same-sex attraction so early in life? Why did you feel sinful motions in your heart early in your life? Why were you a liar from the earliest age?

Why were you angry and why did you strike out at your siblings and hit them? Your parents certainly didn't teach you to do that. You don't teach your children that. They just naturally know how to do it.

Why? Because they have a sinful heart from birth that teaches them to sin, that teaches them to lie, that teaches them to be angry, that teaches them to be selfish. And when they act on those sinful desires, they develop sinful habits that gradually take control of them. No one has to teach them. They received a sinful nature at birth and it expressed itself in their sinful behavior. That's Don Green, founding pastor of Truth Community Church in Cincinnati, Ohio, with part one of a message titled Addressing the Heart of Same-Sex Attraction, part of our current series, The Bible and Pride Month, here on The Truth Pulpit. I'm Bill Wright, and we'll see you again next time as Don teaches God's people God's word from the Truth Pulpit.