Addressing the Heart of Same-Sex Attraction #2

Thanks for joining us on the Truth Pulpit with Don Green, founding pastor of Truth Community Church in Cincinnati, Ohio.

Hello again, I'm Bill Wright. Today Don continues with our current series, the Bible and Pride Month, with part two of a message called Addressing the Heart of Same Sex Attraction. Have your Bible open and ready as Don teaches God's people God's word in the Truth Pulpit. Look, the fact that sinful desires come naturally is not unique to homosexuals. Anyone who has raised children understands this. You understand this from your own personal experience, that you found yourself in anger, in lust, in sinful behavior, and no one had to teach you how to do that. You just naturally knew children naturally get angry when they don't get their way, and it's not because someone taught them to be naughty. They just are naughty.

It's not genetic in a physical sense. They're born with sinful hearts. Now, beloved, watch this really carefully. Pay close attention to this because there is a lot of important direction that hinges on what we're about to say right here, and this applies not only to homosexuals, this applies to all of us. This convicts all of us. The fact that sin comes naturally to you does not excuse your guilt. Rather, to the contrary, it proves your guilt. It manifests your guilty nature, the fact that sinful desires and sinful behavior come so readily and so easily to you. It proves your guilt. It doesn't excuse it. Jeremiah 17 verse 9 says, the heart is more deceitful than all else and is desperately sick.

Who can understand it? It's a statement about human nature. And so, taking this general truth that applies to all men and then making specific application in the realm of homosexuality, beloved, without being taught to do so, some people rebel against God's will for sexuality, even at an early age, even though no one taught them to do so. And, beloved, as those who are committed to upholding the authority of Scripture and vindicating the holiness of God, we must stand on this principle that I'm about to say right here. Sin does not become righteous simply because it comes naturally. And so to say, I didn't choose this proves nothing. It says nothing about what is righteous and about what God accepts or what God condemns.

It says nothing about that. If it was just a matter that natural behavior was automatically righteous, parents would have no grounds to discipline their children for tantrums and lying and all other manner of childish foolishness and sinfulness that manifests itself. Because the child's response, if he had the mind to say it was, this just came out of me.

It's just natural. This is who I am. I'm an angry child that throws tantrums when I don't get my way. Therefore, you can't correct me.

Please. None of you would parent that way. None of you would accept that as a premise. You understand intuitively, instinctively, apart from biblical revelation. I've got to stop that or that's going to become a problem. I can't have my kid lying to me all the time.

I can't have him hitting his little brother with bricks, even though it comes naturally. And so what makes homosexuality different? How is that any different than what we're talking about here? There is no distinction.

There is no difference. And so, beloved, I understand that there's just a head-on collision with the spirit of our age with what we're about to say here. What do we say in response to the homosexual who justifies himself by saying, I didn't choose to be this way? This just comes naturally.

It's just who I am. What do we say to that? Homosexuals have completely misunderstood and misinterpreted the spiritual significance of their experience. They think that the fact that they didn't choose this means that therefore it must be okay. That is wrong.

The Bible says, no, that is the incorrect way to understand your existence. Rather, their desires manifest and show forth a corrupt nature. Those who desire homosexuality as the favored orientation of their life, to use their terminology, they are guilty even if they did not consciously choose it.

God will hold them accountable for their sinful nature because God is an omniscient God who looks on the heart, who says, I have commanded and set up one way for sexual expression to be taken, and it's in a monogamous marriage. And if you are oriented toward wanting something different than that, then your whole heart is out of order. Your whole nature is corrupt. And you can't excuse it any more than my kids could excuse it.

Yeah, I lied, but I'm pretty good at it because that's what I do. None of my kids are like that, but some of them have been like that in the past. But understand that what we're saying here is that homosexuals are no different than the rest of us. We're all like this. We all naturally knew how to sin. It's just a question of the symptom that expressed that, the manifestation of it, whether it's a proud spirit or an angry spirit or a lying spirit or a homosexual spirit. We're all condemned by the same thing that we have a sinful nature that manifests itself in sinful desires.

This is the testimony of Scripture, which we must uphold because it is the authoritative Word of God and we can do no other. But we're not targeting homosexuals by saying this. They're just like the rest of us. It's just a different manifestation of the same fundamental spiritual problem. What can we say about homosexuals?

Say the same thing about every one of us. Humanity is born into a condition of slavery. We were born as slaves to sin. In the Gospel of John, chapter 8, verse 34, Jesus said that, Truly, truly, I say to you, everyone who commits sin is the slave of sin.

That, standing alone, might sound rather depressing. But you know what? Sin is like that. Sin is enslaving.

It is a task master. It owns sinners. We are a slave of sin. And here's the thing that Scripture leads us to.

It is shocking if you're not familiar with biblical teaching. You react against it, I understand, but the testimony of God's Word stands is that you can be a slave of something without even knowing it. Men are slaves of sin without even being aware of it.

It is a silent owner of men. And we're born into that condition, and then as we grow, we choose sin of our own volition, and the problem just multiplies, and the chains get wrapped tighter and tighter around the soul and around the man until he realizes that this alcohol owns me. This sexual sin owns me. This anger, this bitterness owns me. I can't get free from it. I can't choose anything differently, and that's precisely the point. That doesn't justify your condition. It shows how guilty and corrupt and helpless you are.

It's a pretty bleak picture, isn't it? In Ephesians chapter 2, verse 3, Paul says, we all formerly lived in the lust of our flesh, indulging the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath even as the rest. You see, part of the problem over the past 50 years is we've all been conditioned through our exposure to public education, if that's been your experience, to cultivate, to think good thoughts about yourself as if the worst sin that somebody could commit would be to have a bad self-esteem. And so you're the greatest. You can be whatever you want to be. You can be president if you want to be, never minding that there's 320 million people in the United States, and we're currently on what?

Our 44th president? Count the odds on that. And then just this whole idea of human capacity and be what you want to be.

Just set your mind to it. Well, look, that all sounds good and appeals to the flesh, but it's just a horrible, depressing lie. We're slaves to sin, Scripture says. We're blinded by the devil.

We are mastered by our own corruption. And rather than justifying our existence by that, we simply realize that we are helpless and condemned before a holy God who does not accept our self-esteem movement, who does not accept our excuses. Romans 1 says they are without excuse, and on and on it goes. Is there an answer to that enslaved condition? What are we to say to this?

I'll frame the fourth point like this. What this tells us is is that homosexuals need the gospel. Homosexuals need the gospel. If sin has a hold on you, don't try to justify it.

Don't try to excuse it. Don't multiply your sin by twisting the word of God around to try to make it fit your human experience. That's the wrong response and only drives you deeper into sin and guilt.

If you find sin coming naturally to you, if it is the defining nature of your existence, rather than justifying yourself, what this should do is cause you to flee to the Lord Jesus Christ for mercy. For He alone is the one who has conquered sin with His death and resurrection at Calvary. You see, Christ didn't come simply to relieve us from the penalty of sin with His life, death, and resurrection. Christ came to liberate us from sin's enslaving power. And when you deny the guiltiness of sin's enslaving power, you separate people from the saving power of Jesus Christ. You condition them to think that they don't need it because their inner man is immune from judgment.

That's not true. And no one should be standing on a platform professing to represent Christ and say what your inner man is like doesn't matter, just don't get into the external stuff. Because that inoculates people from the penetrating power of the gospel which alone can save them. And so rather than justifying ourselves in our sin, we should acknowledge it and say, I am mastered by desires that I have no control over.

I need someone to save me. Oh, Jesus, would you exercise your saving power toward me because I want to be free from this monster that is inside me. That's the only way to respond to sin.

People to deny, to contradict what we're talking about here is to eviscerate the power of the gospel. It is to seal people off from that which alone can save their souls. It is to condemn them to being in the chains and dungeons of their own experience and their own wicked desires. It's to tell them that that's okay and that is a manifestation of God's saving grace that you're still in that condition and that you have that corrupt nature unchanged and that that's okay.

You know what, it's not okay. I don't hate you by telling you this. I did not become your enemy by telling you the truth. I do not become anyone's enemy by pointing out their sin and then pointing them to Christ as the one who can liberate them and save them and deliver them from their sin. The gospel is good news. The gospel says we recognize you in your enslaved condition and there is one greater than sin. There is one with power over sin who can deliver you and set you free. You see, beloved, what's at stake in this homosexual discussion is the very throbbing heartbeat of gospel truth and to twist things and to pervert the gospel and to pervert the scripture in order to avoid offending homosexuals is to commit treason against God and to sign their souls to hell because we tell them you don't need the gospel so much after all.

And those Christian leaders all refrain from naming names. I don't know why, but those Christian leaders who are leading the church down the path toward affirming these things, their judgment before God is going to be especially severe. And so to you who are homosexual by nature, to those of you who are bitter by nature, angry by nature, we say the same thing to one and all. All of us are in this sinful soup together and you must confess your sin and repent or you will perish even if you have never acted on your sinful desires. Matthew chapter five, verses three and four. But Jesus said in verses three and four, blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

Blessed are those who mourn for they shall be comforted. In other words, acknowledging a spiritual bankruptcy that in my soul I'm bankrupt. There is no good thing that is within me and I have no control over sin.

Rather, I am owned by, say, principle of evil that is greater than I am. That's what Jesus is describing here, a humble spirit that says there is this wickedness in me and I mourn over it, I want to be free from it rather than saying I proudly acknowledge that my heart is oriented toward rebellion against God. Look, beloved, you want to know how to recognize a Christian?

I'll give you another way. A Christian is somebody who desires righteousness that he lacks rather than someone who desires sin that is forbidden. A Christian desires righteousness that he lacks rather than sin that is forbidden.

Look at Matthew chapter five, verse six. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness for they shall be satisfied. What are they saying except that I want this sin but I'll not act upon it? That is the exact opposite of what Jesus describes the repentant heart looks like. The repentant heart says I want to be righteous, I want my desires to be righteous.

I hunger and thirst and long after that which God affirms and commands rather than saying I long and hunger after that which God forbids. This turns the whole nature of Christian righteousness on its head if we yield on this point. But to affirm someone who is advocating their so-called gayness and saying I'm a gay Christian, to affirm them in that is to lock the key of their damnation and to throw away the key rather than offering them the key of the gospel that would open the door and free them from their deception and their sinful desires. We cannot do that and be faithful to Christ. We have to love people enough to let them hate us for telling them the truth if that's what it takes. So what do we say then if we don't affirm them in it? What do we say? When a seal is ambushed by an enemy, here's how they're trained to respond.

They walk into the attack firing their weapon rather than running from it. Well, this is a picture of what the Christian church needs to do in response to this issue that is impressed upon us. The exact wrong thing to do is to affirm the so-called gay Christians in their assertions that they make about themselves. Rather, what we should do is point them to what Christ himself said. What did Christ say? Rather than justifying sinful desires, Christ calls us to deny them, to reject them.

You say, but this is who I am. And Jesus says, I understand that and I offer you salvation. And in Mark 8, 34, he says, Jesus says, I'll forgive all your sins. I've paid for the debt of sinners at the cross with my own blood. My own righteousness will satisfy God if you put your faith in me, he says.

He's a perfect savior who will save any sinner who comes to him. But he says, don't trivialize who I am and don't magnify who you are. In Mark 8, verse 34, he says, if anyone wishes to come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake in the gospels will save it. And so with this philosophy of gay Christianity being foisted upon us and us being called to affirm that and to not question anyone's salvation claim in light of saying, I am a gay Christian, what we don't do is turn from that and yield the ground to those who would assassinate the gospel by what they say and teach. Rather, we go straight toward the issue and we say, you say that that's who you are, well and good. No matter who you are, Jesus says if you want to come after me, you deny yourself and take up your cross and come after me. We don't affirm them in it. We say, if that's who you are, then here's what you need to do.

You need to deny that. You need to reject it. You need to repent of it and come after Christ because that's the only way that he'll receive sinners. You can't hold on to sin with one hand and receive Christ with the other. You must receive him with both hands, empty, rejecting yourself and receiving him, saying there are no preconditions. I receive you, I deny who I used to be for the sake of receiving you as my Lord and King. We say to all men everywhere, not simply homosexuals, turn from your love of sin. Turn from your desires for sin.

Come to the Lord Jesus Christ and make this the day of your salvation. You've been listening to Don Green with part two of a message called Addressing the Heart of Same Sex Attraction from our series titled The Bible and Pride Month here on The Truth Pulpit. And we hope to see you again next time.

But before we go, here again is Don with a closing word. Well, my friend, thank you for being with us today on The Truth Pulpit. You know, our biblical voice on these ethical matters is an increasingly minority opinion in culture today. But I'm encouraged nonetheless. It may surprise you to know that our ministry reaches nearly all 50 states and over 40 countries on a consistent monthly basis.

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That's thetruthpulpit.com. Thank you so much and God bless you. Thanks, Don. And friend, thank you for joining us today. I'm Bill Wright. See you next time as Don teaches God's people God's word once again from The Truth Pulpit.