The Village Church Institute Forum - Is God Anti-Gay?

well thank you for joining us tonight I know Plano Fort Worth Dallas here in slow mo where we're live and at it I want to explain a little bit about what we're doing tonight we we haven't we didn't say hey let's let's pick a fight here or let's find this real controversial subject and step into it but rather we have two deep desires and here are our two deep desires number one we want to be a people marked by the love of Jesus Christ who practiced the type of hospitality that Jesus actually mirrored to us when he stepped into our space put on flesh and blood and dwelt among us so that so that's the first core conviction we want to be a people marked by the gospel that open up our lives and homes in such a way that the love of Christ can be seen and so that's that's motivation one motivation to is that for those of us who are Christians in this place we wanted to have a dialogue about a subject that is everywhere right now and how we might rightly think about that biblically and how we might interact with those around us on this subject and so that's our heart and putting on an event like this to equip you and to remind all of us of what Christ has called us into in the gospel to be light of compassion and grace and empathy and love and at the church and I said this in beautiful design I'll say it again the church should be a place for the sexually broken because if she is not she is not home for anyone and so when we got to thinking who could we bring in how would we want this evening to work we we knew Sam Albury was going to be in town for the ABC conference the Association of biblical counselors conference and so we just ask him to tag on some days and spend those days with us and so Sam has been with us this morning at our staff restore just profound couple of hours in and around union with Christ and all that is true because of our union in Christ and he preached this past weekend on the role of the Trinity in prayer and so we've just been blessed by Sam Albert Sam is the associate pastor or associate minister at st. Mary's Anglican in Maidenhead England and has written several books the one that really I've read and loved is the the little book is God anti-gay and I just think an hour to zealous desires one to one to commend us to be people of love and compassion in the name of Christ and then secondly to be people of truth who have a firm grasp on God's good design for human flourishing that we might engage what I think Sam just has such a beautiful view of the Word of God in those two really passions of my own heart for us in the village church and really for all those who claim to know and love the person and work of Jesus Christ and so enough from me we're going to invite Sam out now Sam's going to teach and I'll be a backup and we'll do a Q&A here shortly if you're at another campus we hopefully your campus pastor is already see if you're online you can ask questions Lou using slide oh so it's sly I think doe backslash of the village and then from there you can vote on questions or ask your own questions from there we'll do QA on the back end but for now will you welcome my friend Sam Albert thanks thanks les friends thank you for your welcome it's a joy to be with youth my first proper visit to Texas as you can tell I'm not from these areas that it's been a blast to be here I sampled hard ate last night just about beginning to feel hungry again now it's um it's been a great time thank you for coming along this evening as matters already said about the kind of aim was we've got from this evening tonight can I say a particular welcome to any of us who are here tonight for whom the village church is not your usual Wednesday evening hangout or even a weekend hangout you are very welcome here this is new to you to come to a kind of Christian event like this we're particularly pleased to welcome you among us I hope you find tonight worthwhile and stimulating and can I also thank you I guess for caring about this issue this is a huge issue in the Western world it's a huge issue in this society it's a huge issue where I come from in the UK as well and but for many of us this is not a societal issue it's not a political issue it's a personal issue either for ourselves maybe we've had some kind of experience of homosexuality ourselves or else for someone who is a good friend or a close family member and so therefore this is an issue that is primarily about people people that we love people that we care about we're dealing with an issue that concerns feelings that run very deep I'm very very conscious of that let me apologize now if I've had anything insensitively at any point I don't intend to I'm conscious that some words mean slightly different things to slightly different people it's not my intention at any point to be insensitive or hurtful I have been experiencing same-sex attraction kind of my whole adult life as long as I've had any any kind of sexual feelings they've been towards other men rather than to it's women and I didn't choose to have these feelings doesn't sort of wake up one day and think that would that be an interesting thing to kind of get into I haven't been made to be this way by other people I've come from a loving stable family home I don't have a bad relationship with either of my my parents it just happens that as I was developing as a teenager I began to be attracted to guys rather than girls and it took me a long while to admit that I'm a pretty slow person at the best of times and I'll certainly slow on the update with this issue and it took me actually quite a few years to begin to recognize what was going on within me one of the first kind of indications in hindsight was about when I was I think 14 years old was at high school it was a Monday morning and me and a few of my friends were just kind of catching up on what each other had done over the weekend and one of my best friends shared with the group that he'd just started dating they just got together with a girl that weekend and they were now dating and I'm everyone kind of congratulating him and lots of sort of high-fives and back-slapping and that kind of stuff and I just remember smiling but feeling crushed inside a member it just felt devastating I couldn't put my finger on why but just this idea that my my really close friend was now being very intimate with someone I hadn't consciously thought of him in a sexual way up until that point but I had evidently developed a very strong emotional connection to him and that kind of feeling began to be repeated that kind of experience over the next few years and I began to notice I was developing in just slightly different ways to my friends I didn't seem to have the same feelings for girls that my friends have I was at an all-boys school and so pretty much anything we talked about was sports and girls and whoever one was into and that kind of stuff every now and then someone would come up to me and say who you after Sam's the only one he's got your eye on and I would kind of feel a bit awkward and sort of try and get my way out of it and say well yeah there is there's a girl I know but you won't know who she is and they tell who is she who is she an odd sort of had to quickly make up someone on the spot and sable she's she's pulled them she's called Helen yep Helen all do she's called Helen but you won't have met her no no no no you won't of meza where does she go to school well she actually she comes from Iceland so you won't you won't come across her at any point but yeah I'm asked to her actually we're kind of you know in touch with each other a little it was just a bit awkward as you can imagine I began to realise that I was having feelings for some of my friends that were strongly emotional and occasionally very strongly sexual as well and now today it would have been obvious from the moment of my so the first stirrings of those feelings to think well I must be gay but certainly when I was going through this it was 25 years ago homosexuality was not on the radar in the way that it is now I hadn't knowingly ever met a gay person I was aware of homosexuality but it was one of those kind of theoretical things you know I knew that there were homosexual people in the world but they kind of may as well have been unicorns or something I kind of had a vague sense of the category but never really met one in the flesh and so it took me a long time actually years before I began to think I'm attracted to men this is this is a thing it seems to be in my heart it seems to be going on so it took me a while to recognize that myself it took me a while to share that with others and over the course of this time I I was introduced to the Christian message I was introduced to the teaching of Jesus I became a follower of Christ and as a Christian struggling with these issues it was very hard for me to say anything about it I assumed that as a Christian I wasn't supposed to have these kinds of feelings that I was kind of letting the side down a bit that I would be disappointing people if I admitted that these things were going on so it took me a long time to kind of pluck up the courage to mention to some of my good friends that see I'm having these feelings I'm experiencing them as a Christian I'm trying to kind of walk faithfully with Jesus Christ at the same time I want us to think a little bit about the kind of relationship between Christianity and this issue of homosexuality I'll be looking at a few verses from the Bible some of them will be coming up on the screen and if you do want to follow along just to check I'm not making this stuff up there are Bibles in the seats you're welcome to to grab one I'd encourage you to do that so you can see the scriptures for yourself if you're not used to handling the Bible I'll read out the page numbers just so that you know we're on I'm kind of landing on as we go through let me just make a couple of quick observations about the Bible on this issue the first is there aren't that many places where the Bible directly speaks about homosexuality two or three places in the Old Testament two or three places in the New Testament where it does the Bible is very clear about what it says about homosexuality so we can't say as Christians well it only comes up a few times therefore it doesn't matter okay there are lots of things that aren't mentioned many times in the Bible but actually which are significant when they are mentioned and so we can't just assume well this issue doesn't matter because it's not all over the Bible but what it does show us is this is not what the Bible is about the Bible is not a book all about homosexuality it is related though to what the Bible is about okay the Bible begins with a marriage and it ends with a marriage it begins with the marriage of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden in Genesis 2 it ends with the marriage of the lamb and his bride and I'm conscious that sounds very odd if you're not used to kind of Bible words in other words it ends with a marriage between Jesus Christ and His people and the first marriage between Adam and Eve is the trailer for that final marriage it's there to point us to it and that final marriage is what the Bible is about that Jesus Christ is winning a people for himself and human marriage is a signpost God has given us about that relationship Jesus has with his people that is what marriage is about for us who are Christians that is why marriage matters to us and why we have a particular understanding of the sort of shape and purpose marriage is to have it is a visual aid for the big thing that God is doing winning of people to Jesus Christ next observation about the Bible is just that what the Bible says about homosexuality doesn't represent everything that God has to say to homosexual people I think the Bible is very clear and that it prohibits and forbids homosexual activity but I want to say particularly to those of us who are Christians that prohibition is not the whole message of Christianity as we come across gay and lesbian friends this prohibition is not the only thing we need to say I want to suggest it's not the first thing we need to say the biblical passages about homosexuality are one part of a much wider message and so I want to begin just by sharing some words from Mark chapter 1 and it's page 836 if you want to follow along these are the first public words of Jesus in Mark's Gospel this is Jesus going live this is Jesus kind of launch moment his kind of press conference if you like and this is what Jesus says the first words he says publicly in Mark's Gospel mark 1 verse 15 Jesus says the time is fulfilled and the kingdom of God is at hand repent and believe in the gospel ok now before I became a Christian I had a pretty muddled view of Jesus Christ I've come across bits of his teaching at school in my mind he kind of a cross between Gandhi and one of the Bee Gees kind of said you know good stuff about loving others and feeding others as you want to be treated apparently according to the illustrated Bible I had as a child he had very long blonde hair steely blue eyes and sandals and a pretty good beard to show for it as well but as I began to look at the words of Jesus Christ I began to realize he was far more compelling than I'd imagined so notice what Jesus said he says the time is fulfilled the kingdom of God is at hand in other words Jesus just assumes all of reality revolves around him the time is fulfilled in other words he's saying now is the moment that all of history has been waiting for he says because I'm here the kingdom of God is at hand in other words everything that God has been intending to to kind of kick into action in his world he's about to do because I'm here and if you're familiar with the teaching of Jesus you will not be surprised by that it is typical of Jesus to make that kind of claim about himself Jesus assumes all of reality revolves around him and notice what he tells us to do now that he's arrived he says repent and believe in the gospel that is the case for everyone he doesn't single out different demographics and give them different instructions Jesus says hey in humanity I'm here repent and believe in the gospel now what most of us will know if we're familiar with Christian things to repent means to turn around in your mind to realize you're going in the wrong direction and to do a 180 I was doing some shopping back home recently and suddenly realized I needed to repent I was walking down our Main Street at home I had a couple of errands to run whenever I go anywhere near shopping and errands my my mind kind of goes into screensaver mode and I suddenly realize I'd walk past a shop I meant to go into you and so I thought ah okay back into reality I need to turn around and go into that store but being English I thought I can't just turn round in the middle of the sidewalk that would just look odd and so I thought well I could I guess I could just duck into another shop pretend to look at something for a minute then exit the shop and come back this way instead and I commend this to you if you ever in this situation I thought I will cross the street come back the other way cross the street again and then go into the shop okay it is exhausting being English by the way that's the kind of trauma we have to navigate on a day-to-day basis but in other words I had to repent whether I did it that way or that way I had to turn around and when Jesus says hey humanity you need to repent his implication is clear and it's not very flattering Jesus is saying listen guys you're lined up the wrong way in your hearts in your minds in your souls you are in the wrong direction you kind of have a spiritual orientation that is wrong none of us Jesus says are naturally lined up with God's design for how he wants us to live all of us Jesus says need to turn around need to change direction fundamentally so Jesus says we have to repent he also says we have to believe in the gospel and if you don't know the word gospel literally means good news okay so Jesus is claiming that what he's come to do is fundamentally wonderful news by his death and resurrection he's going to make it possible for us to be forgiven to be made new to come into relationship with the God who made us and Jesus says listen if we if we all end up thinking Christianity is just a bit of a headache we've not understood it it is good news so Jesus says they will be repenting there will be some some big turnarounds needing to go on and there will be a wonderful sense of this is worth it this is good news this is going to be involved some changings and all the rest of it but this is going to be good news and Friends I wanted to start there because it shows that fet anyone at all following Jesus will involve both a cost and a blessing there will be cost their stuff we're going to have to turn away from and there is blessing because jesus says whoever we are there is good news there is good news for us and so I want to take both of those things the cost and the blessing and apply it to this particular issue as I began to kind of explore the teaching of Jesus one of the things I I loved about him and still do is that he is upfront about the cost of following him okay he doesn't hide it in the small print it's not like one of those adverts where he kind of makes some big promises and then kind of says really quickly but overall you know things may go down as well as up and all the rest if there's no kind of there's no small print there's no did he love it when you you kind of this is Christians we will lie okay let me just give you an example of how all of us lie I have read the terms and conditions click seriously they could put anything in there I would never know I could have I'm sure I have sold my soul to Apple several times in the last few months but Jesus doesn't bury anything in the small print he doesn't hide anything he tells us what following him is going to involve what it's going to cost and it wasn't long into my kind of Christian journey that I began to see some of the particular things that I knew that I was going to have to turn away from if I was going to follow Jesus so let me just sketch out a couple of things Jesus says about the whole issue of sex and marriage because it will show us why as Christians we think the way we do so I'm going to turn first to Matthew chapter 15 if you're following along it's page 8 to 1 in the Bible - it's going to come up on the screen as well Matthew chapter 15 verses 19 to 20 Jesus is having a bit of a discussion with some of the kind of key religious guys of his time and the theme is how you get spiritually dirty how you get unclean in God's sight and Jesus had something radical to say in his day it is just as radical today because Jesus says where does the uncleanness come from verse 19 Jesus says for out of the heart come evil thoughts murder adultery sexual immorality theft false witness slander these are what defile a person in other words it's not that there's there's uncleanness out there and you've got to kind of dodge it and avoid it Jesus is saying what makes us dirty in God's sight comes from within comes from our own hearts and Jesus lists just a few of the examples of some of the stuff that bubbles up and comes out of our heart he talks about evil thoughts murder adultery sexual immorality theft false witness longer just a kind of sample menu of what your heart is serving up day by day and notice we've got in our translations there the phrase sexual immorality Matthew's Gospel was written in Greek the Greek word that is translating is the word porneia and if that word sounds slightly familiar it's where we get the word pornography from and porn there was a word that kind of it was an umbrella term for any sexual activity outside of marriage kind of a catch-all term to cover all of those things so it would have included adultery it would have included premarital sex it would have included prostitution and it would have included homosexual sex Jesus says these kinds of sexual behavior outside of marriage are one of the things that make us unclean before God they're not the only things Jesus is very clear that there's these other things as well but they are some of the things that make us unclean mean it make it so that we can't just Breeze into God's presence and lo him one of the great heroes of British English sports is a man called Bobby Moore back in 1966 we we won the football World Cup we really ought to let someone else either go now you know 1966 and we call it football by the way because you use your foot to move a ball that's just tell me why you call your sport football another time anyway though the World Cup was being held in Wembley in London Bobby Moore was the captain of the England team and he led the team to victory they won at the final in 1966 and the next thing he had to do straight at the end of the match was he had to receive the trophy and you think this is this has got to be the greatest moment in your life as a professional sportsman you know you've just led your team to global victory and now you get the trophy present it and all he had to do was walk up the steps at the side of the stadium and received the cup from the Queen of England he was going to present it to him great moment and yet as Bobby Moore walked up those steps he wasn't feeling elation he wasn't feeling excitement he was feeling horror he's mentioned this in an interviews since and he can actually find it on YouTube the footage of him walking up those steps as he's going up those steps he's caked in mud and he looks up and he sees the Queen of England wearing pristine white gloves and he's going to have to shake her hand and so as he's walking up those steps you see him desperately trying to wipe the dirt off his hands before he meets the Queen and Jesus is saying if we knew our hearts we would know that we are dirty we can't just mosey up to God and relate to him there are all kinds of ways in which that manifests itself in our lives but one of the ways Jesus says here is through sexual immorality sex outside of marriage and appends I want us to see this because Jesus by using that phrase includes homosexuality that was just that that would just be a given in his culture and I mention that because you'll occasionally get people on things like Twitter saying what Jesus mentioned about homosexuality and then you get a blank and the implication is Jesus never mentioned homosexuality therefore he can't have had a problem with it therefore he's probably fine with it and therefore we should be fine with it today but the point of this verse is though Jesus doesn't name it he does include it so just imagine I was I was to say to you tonight that I was so grateful that you've come along this evening I am grateful you don't have to imagine that I'm really pleased to come but just imagine I was to say I am so pleased you've come I've decided to give every single one of you in this room on the way out $100 as a thank you for coming I'm not going to do that I'm English we don't do things like that but just imagine I was going to make that promise now every single person who's in this room tonight who could see me afterwards would be eligible for $100 you all would have would be eligible for $100 right but I've not mentioned your name and I didn't need to the promise includes you even if it doesn't name you and Jesus prohibitions in this verse include homosexuality even if he doesn't name it it is one of the things not the only thing one of many things that mean we are spiritually unclean before God next verse that I began to get to know as a Christian is Matthew 19 and verse 3 this is just a few pages on page 8 to 4 I'm starting now to realize you don't just say turn your page that's very 20th century you say if you want to swipe your way to Matthew 19 it's taken 2,000 years we are back to scrolling through Scripture [Applause] anyway Jesus is having another lively discussion with some religious people the Pharisees in verse 3 who were kind of upright religious conservatives the kind of guys you want your daughter to marry they were coming up to Jesus to test him they've got a trap for him and so they say to him in verse 3 Jesus is it lawful to divorce your wife for any cause and as far as they're concerned this is a brilliant trap a lot of Jewish rabbis were teaching just that at this particular time one of them said if you're if your wife burns your food you can divorce her people were saying that and teaching that so it's a live issue and it's a great trap because if Jesus says yeah of course you can they can hit him with saying Jesus you are soft on the law you are soft on sin you are soft on the Old Testament you're soft on the law of Moses come on then but if Jesus says no of course you can that's ridiculous they can hit him from the other angle and say Jesus you know you are really out of tune with how lot of people are thinking today and it's just a warning if you ever think you've got Jesus in a kind of intellectual headlock you are about to get hit very hard so they think they've got this amazing trap it's one of those questions is a bit like if I say to you have you stopped being stupid yet yes or no you're admitting you are stupid right it's one of those kind of things well anyway look at what Jesus does in response he he hits him pretty hard Matthew 19 verse 4 Jesus said have you not read that he who created them from the beginning made them male and female and said therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife and the two shall become one flesh Jesus is doing a number of things here the first thing I think he's doing is he's poking fun at the Pharisees okay these were people who who prided themselves on how well they knew the Scriptures okay they didn't just read the Bible they memorized it okay Christians among us parts of the Old Testament you struggle to read once they knew off by heart huge Suede's of it and what is the first thing Jesus says to them it is haven't you read it's brilliant you want to wind up a Pharisee this is the way to do it he says haven't you haven't you ready to come across this Bible thing at all and ever looked at it and notice what he does he says haven't you read and then he quotes Genesis 1 so he's saying did you get as far as in your Bible study did you get as far as I don't know Genesis chapter 1 in your studies so he's ribbing them and he says have you not read an acquaintance Genesis 1 he who created them from the beginning made them male and female and said quotes Genesis 2 therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife and the two shall become one flesh now notice what Jesus is doing there Genesis 1 Jesus says we learn God created them male and female and then notice what he does with that truth he says because God has made them male and female therefore in Genesis 2 we have this thing called marriage God makes the male and female therefore a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife so Jesus is saying that marriage is is predicated on gender it's based on gender because we have this thing called sexual difference because we have male and female we have this thing called marriage they're friends I know this is a massively countercultural thing for us to say today and I would not said if Jesus Christ didn't teach it but Jesus Christ is saying that marriage by definition is between male and female because we've got that difference we have marriage now friends we we need to notice therefore what we're saying and what we're not saying Jesus is showing us that the union between a man and a woman within the Covenant of marriage is a unique union this and only this kind of union can lead to one flesh to two people becoming one now we need to realize that because sometimes people miss hear us I think as Christians and think we must be saying that that gay people can't love each other friends I know a number of gay couples who are very committed who are very loving I know a number of heterosexual marriages that are really struggling the point we're making as Christians is not that gay people can't love each other no the issue is not the strength of the feelings the issue is the kind of union that results and Jesus has saved the union between a man and a woman in marriage is unique it is distinct there is no other kind of union like this one and he teaches that marriage therefore was between man and woman now as Jesus begins to kind of unpack a bit about what one flesh means he shows us that this is something God does it's not just something we decide to do to make two people one he says in verse six what therefore God has joined together let not man separate and as Jesus kind of unpack said and applies it to this whole discussion the disciples in verse 10 freaked out okay Jesus is just explain what marriage is of two people are united together God makes them into one and the disciples ten say well whoa easy Jesus easily easy this is you know this sounds a bit serious this whole marriage thing and so they say if such is the case of a man with his wife it's better not to marry I mean this sounds like this is a bit like commitment goodness me so maybe we'll just give marriage a maybe just give it a mix because that sounds a bit heavy and commitment II well look at what Jesus says to them Jesus doesn't say yeah you're right go have it for a while try before you buy see if you are compatible and then then maybe think about marriage no the moment they question getting married latest Jesus starts to talk to them about eunuchs so they say boy better not to marry jesus says not everyone can receive the same but only those to whom it is given for there are eunuchs who have been so from birth there are eunuchs who have been made eunuchs by men and there are eunuchs who have made themselves eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven eunuchs at the time of Jesus were people whether through vocation or circumstance were celibate and so the moment at the moment disciples question whether it's best to get married or not Jesus talks about celibacy as far as he's concerned the only godly alternative to a marriage between a man and a woman is celibacy so as a young Christian I began to kind of track my way through that the teaching of Jesus on these issues and it was very clear to me that it would not be right for me as a Christian to act on my same-sex attraction that homosexual practice a homosexual lifestyle would not be an option if I wanted to remain faithful to Jesus Christ now friends that one statement on its own sounds very harsh but I'm very grateful that as I was kind of encountering that truth I was also encountering the fact that the Bible says all of us are broken in our sexuality we're out of sync with God in every area of life and that includes our sexual desires all of us are attracted to things that we shouldn't be all of us have desires of one kind or another that we shouldn't so in that sense no one is straight all of us are skewed one way or another or as Matt put it so eloquently earlier you all were perverts that's kind of Texan for what I've just been trying to explain and I was beginning to see that in the teaching of Jesus same-sex attraction is is one expression of that brokenness it is not the only expression of it and therefore friends just in this one area of sexual desires and sexual behaviors it is costly for anyone to follow Jesus no one gets a free pass no one gets everything their way sexually it's not that Jesus is saying to one group of people you're good to go you're fine just just run with it enjoy yourselves and to another group of people hey you guys have really got to rein that in though Jesus is saying to all of us there is a constraint that we need to live under if we're going to be his no one gets everything their way sexually he's not singling anyone out and being mean to them he's saying there's constraint on all of us and friends it's even worse than that as Matt mentioned earlier Jesus said on another occasion in mark chapter 8 if anyone would come after me he must deny himself take up his cross and follow me now we've kind of domesticated that we've said well denying yourself on what going to have thirds of dessert I'm going to really draw the line there I'm going to exercise impeccable restraint I'm going to deny myself that's that's what that is take up my cross well it's Thanksgiving and great Aunt Edith wants to come and stay that is me burying my cross you know I will have a come and stay for a few days and so we've kind of made the Christian life full of kind of little mini sacrifices no no Jesus says if you want to come after me anyone he says if anyone wants to come after him you could have denied yourself he's not saying you needed just a little bit of fine-tuning around the edges he is saying you've got to learn to say no to yourself you've got to give up to Jesus your very sense of who you think you are that identity that version of yourself you've been finessing and kind of projecting to the world around you that has got to be given to Jesus to take up your cross in the time of Jesus that was when you were sentenced for execution by the Romans you would take up your cross and you would literally carry it to the place where they would crucify you and from the moment you were sentenced from the moment you picked up that wooden cross beam you have no rights anymore and so people could do to you on the way to where you'd be crucified anything they wanted and that there are some accounts of people actually being so mistreated by the crowds that they were relieved to finally arrive at the place where they would be crucified friends of all the images Jesus could have plucked out of the air that is one of the ones he goes for for what it means to follow him it doesn't mean we become these kind of self negating doormats cringing wimps with no kind of sense of who we are kind of non personalities it means we give up everything to Jesus he is Lord of everything every area of life belongs to him now over the years I've had a number of Christians come up to me and say well sand that the gospel is really hard for you though isn't it because it goes against who you really are and I always want to reply when people say that I always want to say well firstly my sexual feelings are not Who I am thank you very much but secondly if you think the Gospels just kind of slotted in neatly into your life without any kind of upheaval or disturbance I don't think it's the gospel of Jesus you've received so friends there is gospel cost and that begs the question why on earth would anyone follow Jesus the cost is not a little bit of this in a little bit of that the cost is you your whole life well as well as talking about costs Jesus talks about blessing somehow all of this ends up being good news and so I want to think about gospel blessing as we come into this part Jesus says it is going to be good news for us to follow him even with all that that will involve even with all that may cost us let me share with you one of my my favorite verses it's mark chapter 10 and at verse 29 and following its page something page 846 in the Bible's here it is a wonderful wonderful verse I was I was having lunch a while ago with a with a gay man who had come to church who'd come to one of our Christmas carol services he said can I meet with someone and and talk about Jesus so we said yes yes we were happy to do that we can we can we can do that and so I was having lunch with him he was telling me about his his story bit about his life but about his his partnership he's been in a faithful committed gay relationship for a good 20 years or so and he was asking me at one point he said so if I was to follow Jesus what would that mean for my relationship what is what is Jesus think about homosexuality and so I tried as kind of carefully as I could as gracious as young as I could to walk him through some of the passages we've just looked at and try and explain the kind of biblical vision for marriage and why it's between a man and a woman and why the Bible says any kind of sexual behavior outside of that framework is against God's design and he was quiet for a moment and any look me in the eye and he said so my relationship is just the best thing that has ever happened to me what could possibly be worth giving up that relationship for and I remember thinking it's a good question it's a very good question and I thinking I could sort of answer well theirs is heaven there's salvation those things are wonderfully true but they felt very kind of abstract and otherworldly and our thinking he's asking a ground-level question and he he deserves a ground-level answer that's a bit better than just belief to grit your teeth for a while now you'll get eternity eventually and this first came to mind Peter says to Jesus in verse 28 Jesus we've left everything to follow you and you never quite know with Peter whether he's bragging he may be saying Jesus were you guys we've given up everything you know we're your team Peter may have been despairing saying Jesus we've given up everything this had better be worth it but either way Jesus says in verse 29 this wonderful beautiful promised he says truly I say to you there is no one who has left house or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or lands from my sake and for the gospel who will not receive a hundredfold now in this time houses brothers sisters mothers children lands with persecutions and in the age to come eternal life in other words Jesus assumes there will be things that we leave behind to follow him Jesus assumes that the most costly things that we leave behind will be relational that some people in order to follow Jesus may well have to turn their backs on their families or rather their families may well turn their backs on them there may well be certain relationships that we can't take with us into the Christian life and Jesus response to that is not to say well just hang in there and then you'll get eternal life he says no even in this age you will receive a hundredfold this is not Jesus doing kind of a shallow televangelist you give me a dollar and I'll give you a hundred now this is Jesus saying whatever you give up for me you will receive far more from me than you ever have to leave behind for me and just as Jesus assumes that the greatest cost will be relational so he promises a relational jackpot Jesus says those who come to him receive in him family brothers sisters mothers fathers homes rooms the whole lot and so friends one of the great blessings for me as a Christian wrestling with this issue has been the community that Jesus Christ has placed me in the Bible describes the church as God's household his family if God is your father then your fellow believers become your brothers and sisters that's not an honorary thing whereto treats our church family as close family and therefore that the Christian Church should be a place of true community Jesus is saying if our if we do our job right as local churches anyone who comes to him should feel a net increase in family even if they end up losing relationships because of their faith in Christ and that gives us a responsibility and a privilege as Christian believers of being family so those who join our midst and if we believe the Gospel message then actually the church will be the place of true inclusivity because the words of Jesus the message of Jesus is for everyone and anyone and therefore the church should be the place where we feel safe sharing the things that are hardest that are most shameful that are most messed up in our lives Tim Keller once said the church should feel like the waiting room for a doctor and not like the waiting room for a job interview I love that the waiting room for a job interview you look impeccable you're projecting this image of utter flawlessness and Omni competence you don't share any weakness whatsoever you don't have any in the waiting room for a doctor you don't really mind if you don't look your best the assumption is you're there because there's something wrong with you and if you were so minded you could turn to the person next to you and say mm what's wrong with you what you here for and that is what church should be that is what we are called to be so that's one of the blessings even in in this age we receive new community in Jesus Christ next blessing I want to mention I'm going to mention three is a new identity in Jesus and friends this is so so important given the the cultural moment in which we find ourselves because our culture says you are your sexuality your sexuality is your feelings and those feelings are who you are those feelings define you okay that is that is you when you are most you that is the key to understanding and being yourself and friends I think that is is a woefully inadequate way of accounting for what a human being is in the Bible if I've understood it rightly my sexual identity is found in my body and not in my feelings again Genesis 1 God created them male and female doesn't say God created them opposite sex attracted and same sex attracted our fundamental sexual identity is in being made male or female and friends in the Bible that sexual identity is part of your eternal identity you were created male or female I know that when I am raised again in the resurrection I will be raised male I know that because when Jesus Christ burst out of the grave on Easter Sunday he was male that is part of our eternal identity but my sexual feelings are not eternal I wasn't born experiencing sexual feelings I know that when I'm raised from the dead I will not experience the same sexual feelings I experienced in this life and therefore my sexual feelings are not eternal they're temporary and even in this life they shift around a bit and so our sexual feelings are not the thing to place are our central identity in I think we've got that exactly the wrong way around our culture says well your body is is entirely malleable feel free to fiddle around with that and change your gender any way you want but your sexual feelings are unchangeable and eternal and the Bible would have us think exactly the opposite way to that their friends I want to say as well this is actually good news it is good news to know that your sexual feelings are not the key to who you are because if they are if your sexuality is your identity then your sexuality is everything and fulfilling your sexual desires is key to being whole and complete as a human a culture it says you are your sexuality is a culture that says if you're not sexually fulfilled your life is not worth living and into such a space we have wonderful news because Jesus does two things in his teaching about sex he doesn't just restrict where sexual activities designed to happen within marriage he does that but the second thing he does is he shows us that sex is not the key to fulfillment he demonstrates that in his own life Jesus was single he was celibate the most fully human the most complete man who ever walked this earth never sex so even in his example he shows us that sex is not the key to human fulfillment but actually he shows us the thing that is and things it is liberating to know this because it means my whole sense of of the worth of my life the whole sense of fulfillment is not contingent on me satisfying my sexual desires doesn't mean I'm indifferent to them doesn't mean I pretend they're not there it does mean I'm not bound to them it does mean that however deep they run they are not the core of who I am now they are the signpost to the desires that are the key to life which leads to the third thing I want to say under under this gospel blessing and that is a relationship with Jesus so let me share one more verse with us John chapter 6 verse 35 a very well-known saying of Jesus Jesus said to his followers he said I am the bread of life whoever comes to me shall not hunger whoever believes in Me shall never thirst Jesus says I'm the bread of life now the time of Jesus and in many places today bread was the staple without bread you died no bread ments no life and so you would work all days to have bread for yourself and bread for your family that is not the case for us today if you out at a restaurant a waiter may come up to you and say would you like a bit of a bit of bread before you start and if you like me you think I'm fine I'll wait for the you know the main the main business to arrive a bit later and I can I can live without a bit of bread and Jesus is not saying I'm the bread of life in that sense he's not saying you know if you'd like a little bit of spirituality on the side of your life I can provide that no Jesus is saying that he is the one and the only one who can satisfy us at the deepest level Jesus says I am the bread of life I am to your soul what food is to your stomach and friends no earthly relationship no earthly friend however good can satisfy you at that level no earthly relationship can make your life whole and complete and if you think it does you are not going to be an easy person to be married to or to have a relationship with because you're going to be putting a burden on someone they were never designed to bear know Jesus is saying I am the bread of life Jesus is saying that life is far far better when he is at the center and far far worse when anything else is and friends that's a precious truth for me there's there's part of me that would love to be opposite sex attracted as part of me that would love to be a husband to a wife part of me that would love to be a father to children but that is not the win for me wonderful blessing though that would be there's an even better prize and that is to know Jesus better because that is the relationship that will never ever disappoint us that is the bread that will always satisfy us so far far more precious than feeling sexually fulfilled is knowing Jesus Christ well friends I'm going to pause there for a couple of moments as Matt said we're going to transition into a time of of Q&A as we do that we're going to just look at a very short clip from a website that has been put together by me and some friends of mine back in the UK we're just in the early stages still of this website but really what we're trying to do is build it around different stories stories of people who have different experiences of same-sex attraction and yet who've come to know Jesus Christ and found that real life is in him I'd love you to take a look at it and then we'll have some questions the world thinks the church famous a bit things the church doesn't understand any sexuality the church isn't an aphasic the church does understand homosexuality living out it's happening now because of the unprecedented challenge and change in our culture and in the church living out is for you if you are somebody that experiences the same-sex attraction we want you to hear different stories from the ones you're perhaps hearing we need to hear that it's possible to stay loyal to what the Bible says and flourish in life those who first experience some kind of the same-sex attraction can feel completely isolated no one else feels like that you are not alone we particularly want it to be an encouragement and a help to those Christians who like us experienced same-sex attraction a place where they can hear stories of other Christians who are dealing with some of these issues if you if you are a judge leader we want to equip you to Pastor the people in your church family who experience same-sex attraction it's for the church as a whole to help Christians think through this issue biblically to provide stories testimonies I guess it's for everyone well thank you Sam appreciated do you have a preference [Applause] the illustration about the job interview and the doctor's office was brilliant I will be taking that I thought was doing how does that work do you get like five cents every time you bidder I think always very clear that I stole that from Tim Keller okay thank you for all the body relation we're all we're all secondary teachers I guess well we've got quite a few questions here and so I'm just gonna dive right in Sam the the first one is how should I respond to friends or family members who identify as gay and think that lifestyle is compatible with their claims to be Christian yeah thank you this is happening a lot a lot of people now who are trying to push us in a direction of saying actually Christianity can can be accepting of gay relationships of gay partnerships they're trying to sort of find ways of making the Bible say that I think you've got to go against the grain of so many big things in the Bible to try and make it say that you end up kind of really twisting passages so if we if we encounter people who would say they're Christians and they want to press in to that particular lifestyle I think what I want to say to them is this and if you are claiming to be a Christian you are claiming that Jesus is Lord of your life and so the question then becomes does Jesus have the right to tell you that that would be a wrong thing to do okay is he your ultimate authority if I could prove to you that Jesus says you mustn't live that lifestyle would you change and if you answer well yeah of course Hubbard then I will try and show them that as exactly what Jesus says if they say well no no no I can't possibly countenance ever not doing this lifestyle then it shows that they're real God is not Jesus but their own sexual fulfillment yeah and I think I want to challenge them and if they keep persisting in this to say well actually you can you compress into this lifestyle you can claim your Christian that you know what you can't be both and actually the more you you know that just simple integrity shows that if you're going to name Christ as Lord you he says yeah I think that yes and amen I think the thing I've experienced personally is the homosexuality in particular it's like a kind of a bully that keeps pushing into otherwise normal conversations and what I mean by that is if if someone were to reframe and take homosexuality out of this and put another setting sin into it then I think all of a sudden people start to see more clearly and into what you described is exactly you know if you've got a brother who is not married but continues to sleep around and you know with with a man who's sleeping around with other women or when woman who's sleeping around with other men you would engage just like you said so it's the it's the the bullying of homosexuality kind of pushing on oh gosh I don't know what to do with that but I think it's confusing so you would handle it just like you would handle someone who's walking into settings then hopefully you have a strong relationship with them hopefully you're walking in community and hospitality with them and you're able to engage on a basis of you know I love you I'm support I'm with you but this brother in your life this sister in your life it's evidence that you don't believe what you say you believe and then be able to engage in love and that and that's the thing to be able to point that out really we talked about this here at the bility that that the most loving thing we can do when we see heir and a brother or sisters life is to say hey I'm nervous for you this this has the appearance of an unregenerate heart and and I don't want to make you freak out but I also don't want you to operate under a false conviction that you have been born again if if the fruits not on the tree and this is even in our James series we've had to say really kind of hard things about habeas listen it faced without works is dead it's dead if you're saying I don't care I'm not going to submit to Christ but I don't know how you can call yourself a Christian know how you can't okay the second question is and I knew we would get this one how is the prohibition of homosexuality in the Old Testament different from things like not eating shellfish the ethical question and I had bacon for breakfast this morning and rejoice that I could do the head so was like being inconsistent in my my approach to Old Testament law to say well I don't think it's right to be in a gay relationship at eating bacon is fine I've not checked my shirt label that I'm pretty sure this would be made of mixed fibers and yeah that kind of thing too and the short answer is that that Jesus has come to fulfill all of the Old Testament law he is the thing it was pointing to but as Jesus shows us how he's fulfilled the Old Testament law he's he shows us that he's fulfilled different kinds of Old Testament law in different ways he doesn't treat every Old Testament commandment in exactly the same way he's fulfilled them all we're not required to live under them as Christians but his relationship to different types of Old Testament law is slightly different and therefore that we mustn't think the Old Testament law is just a flat list of commands it has a particular shape to it and that particular shape informs how we view the different parts within it and those different parts relate to Jesus they find their fulfillment in him in slightly different directions and so we're told in mark 7 for example that Jesus declared all foods clean those particular Commandments had fulfilled their purpose you can imagine that the sizzling that was going on in households just a few minutes after Jesus and I've said that stuff is now back on the menu new restaurants popping up all over Jerusalem yes but at the same time we know that certain Old Testaments prohibitions were were reflections not just of the temporary state Israel was living in then as a as a theocracy as a nation but actually particularly when we come to the sexual ethics of the Old Testament they were a reflection of the deeper design we see for us in Genesis 1 and 2 an application of that eternal design that we see in the Bible yeah it's good I've heard it said and this is this is again probably one of the most common arguments I've heard it said that the kind of homosexuality mentioned in the Bible is different from a committed loving homosexual relationship that exists today is that correct the Bible speaks about homosexuality in a variety of ways and in a variety of ways it shows us it's not just talking about one or two types of homosexual behavior and only those so Leviticus talks about a man lying with a manners with a woman and that the penalty in Leviticus 20 is for both both parties involved so it's not just talking about in that instance exploitation or or gay rape in 1 Corinthians again there's the language implies it's both the active and passive partners are both culpable for their sin Romans 1 speaks about same sex lust between women as well as between men so it's not just talking about the older man younger boy thing you sometimes got in the Roman world that there's enough to show us that actually the Bible is speaking in generalized terms and so the question is not is is it a faithful and committed relationship the question is is it a relationship the Bible private's so in 1 Corinthians 5 when Paul hears about a different kind of relationship that was prohibited in the Old Testament and he starts to weigh in on it he doesn't say now before I kind of past comment can he just tell me is this a faithful illicit relationship or a promiscuous illicit relationship the fact is it was illicit and therefore that settled the matter for Paul yeah that's good how do you respond to those who equate homosexuality with racial issues a racial equality civil rights movement yeah so there's a there's a kind of growing and pressure within our culture to sort of think of gay is the new black yeah and just as we've tried to kind of you know as a society they would be fairer on the issue of race and the way that there are still sensitivities around that that whole issue as well so this is the next thing we've done women voting we've done equal rights but this is the next one a couple of things are wrong without what that kind of way of thinking the first is that it assumes a kind of a trajectory of progress as a race that we are we're just getting better step-by-step and this is the next step to being more fulfilled more more sophisticated a culture there's a lot of evidence to show we're no better were no more moral than we were in other in other times in history we've not made humanity better so I think the Bible would just caution us against thinking we are somehow evolving into superior beings and superior cultures and human nature is the same we may have ways of expressing ourselves socially that are better or worse so that that's one thing I just unnerve asur that implication that we're getting better and better but the other thing goes back to what I was saying earlier that actually our just as our gender is part of our eternal identity so too is our is our race yeah in the book of Revelation John is given a vision of heaven and he sees there a crowd which no one can count people from every tribe tongue nation and culture in other words that racial diversity is part of God's eternal plan for Humanity and we actually see that throughout the whole Bible so just as your gender is part of who you will be in the age to come so too is your race to say that your sexual desires are is a complete category error because we see in the Bible that our sexual desires are temporary and often change yeah the really the whole idea of civil rights finds its root in really the the Christian doctrine of the imago Dei are being made in the image of God and so the real question is is this a civil issue or is this a moral issue and and so those two things are wildly different and so one of the the first and easiest kind of ways to kind of take this argument and kind of pull it out and look at it a bit is whether or not you you don't choose to be black or Hispanic or Asian or white or you don't you don't choose that and so some people would say well yeah I don't choose and even say me I didn't choose these affections that I have but he has chosen how he acts upon those and and that is a choice a moral choice to say God has made me in His image this is his design I will not act upon these this will be an area of my life that for my own joy and the glory of God I I repressed that longing and I live a fuller richer life where African American black Asian Hispanic that there's no choice there's no moral choice in there for their race and so this is apples and oranges it's not the same thing but just so you know there was a book written about 20 years ago that if they if if the homosexual agenda and I just I even hate that I just said that because I just had this it was a group of gay guys that got in a room says here's how here's our agenda I don't know but it was a book written that that this is how they were going to change the argument that the argument was going to be about sex at all in fact let's stop talking about sex but rather let's talk about let's make this a civil rights issue and that book was written in the early 80s as a way to overcome kind of how gay men and women were viewed in broader culture and the campaign was try to knock it out in the 90s and and it took them a bit longer than that right but but but ultimately now this is always this is a rights issue this is gay rights as gay rights as gay rights this isn't that this isn't kind of a moral issue anymore but a civil rights issue and and I think I think knowing what I know about civil rights it's offensive it's offensive so this is a moral issue it's not a civil rights issue as believers in Christ and those who love the Word of God know should be more Pro civil rights than evangelical Christians because we believe every man woman every human being in the world has been created in the image of God in His equal in dignity value worth we preached that we practice that we walk in that we have failed miserably in that throughout our history we have sinned against some ethnic minorities we have sinned against in socio-economic areas we've horrific ly sinned against others and and we should where we see that we do that repent and and throw ourselves upon the mercy of Christ and begin to operate in the world view that God has given us in that all men and women have been made in the image of God but this issue is a moral issue it's not a civil issue and and so that that's my little two seconds there at probably goes longer than that but the Bob and knew I knew it's only the questions are kind of always it's always the same probably fifteen questions that the Bible says to divorce and remarry is adultery Luke 16:18 so why do we accept divorce but not gay Christians um I'm not sure it's true to say we all do except the animals is it so then I know there's there's some discussion about some of the the passages there and some of the kind of nuances that we see in Jesus teaching but certainly we're right where I come from and I know the same will be true we haven't just said as a church yeah divorces is fine in in any every situation and marriage is always fine too so I think we are trying to be consistent here we're trying to reflect that the Bible says marriages for life and sex is for marriage yeah and and that would be you know I can't see on the question it's anonymous it doesn't look like it's come from a campus but I can tell you at the village church in particular it's a part of our membership covenant that not only are you saying I'm going to stay in my marriage but that if something if we're to enter into difficult waters then we're going to get involved in what we have here which is basically a marriage reconciliation ministry where we begin an intensive kind of discipleship process with the husband and wife and and plan on holding you to the Covenant you made before God and to one another in front of all your family and friends and so we take marriage very serious here at the village church I do know that there are churches that don't and and that this is really an inconsistent hermeneutic or a way of applying the Word of God to day life but if you've ever wondered why here to build is why we're so serious about marriage and why so much church discipline goes into how many man-hours goes into really us working with men and women who are struggling in their marriages were just as zealous about that as anything else that the Word of God clearly communicates to us and so I would say that I I want to acknowledge that that that hypocrisy is out there but as Sam said it's not out there everywhere it's just out there in in certain places look here okay how do we faithfully respond to people who may or may not personally identify as gay but are antagonistic towards Christians over the issues of homosexuality yes and if this will be increasingly the case not least because the the Assumption these days in our culture is that Christians are against gay people and there have been let's face it some people who in the name of Christianity have been abusive have been deeply unkind and aggressive so they're there this is not an accusation without any merit to it sadly I think we need to acknowledge that and so where we see that going on by people who claim to be Christians or call them out on it and say actually that is you never advance the cause of Christ by being abusive to gay people as just you can't do that but I think we're we know people individually who are antagonistic with us on this issue we need to bear in mind that it is for them a hugely sensitive issue and so any comment can feel like a perceived attack on who they are we are and so that we need to we need to recognize that we need to be tender in the way that we minister truth to people in that respect but because that is so often the the assumption that we're going to be against people actually you don't have to show much kindness to show people that actually we're quite different to the image they may have had to be of us and just showing that we're interested in them we don't view them as a walking position on this issue and we don't want them to view us as a walking position on this issue we love them as as people were interested in the whole person and as we've talked about earlier we're offering hospitality we're opening our homes and our lives and that will hopefully show people that we are for them and we're not just wanting to kind of zero in on this issue and kind of pin them up against the wall and flash this one thing out we're interested in their whole life yeah again you want to live your life in such a way so compelled by the gospel that any accusation of bigotry would be really hard to stick to you and and so you're again this is the lost art of hospitality Hospitality is not how you decorate the dining room table in season right it is it's not pumpkins in the fall she has the gift of hospitality that's not and and really biblically speaking hospitality isn't isn't a female virtue it's it's a virtue of the people of God that were people because Christ entered into our really messy world and and and emptied himself of Philippians 2 and put on flesh and dwelt among us there were to be people who have open homes and and and to interacted in fact the most consistent accusation against Christ is what he's the friend of sinners in fact his great hey John came and and you you know he sang the dirge you didn't want to follow him and I came and you say you know it's a drunkard and eats with centers he has a demon and you know there's no way to please you but we want to live our lives in such a way or if someone were to ever go bigots that there would be people around us would be like please I'm in that guy's house all the time that dude loves me I think he's an idiot for believin that but I know he loves me I mean I think that's backwoods none tene 20 ridiculous moralism but I'll tell you this that brother is not afraid of me loves having me in his home is very courteous and kind to me is and if you live your life that we want to live the type of lives where that type of accusation simply won't stick unless it's from a stranger and even then if a stranger were to publicly make an accusation against me so I just took me and sort of like Matt Chandler many that dudes a bigot he he hates people who struggle with you know same-sex attraction or he hates gay people that there should be quite a few people who would say they are gay or celibate gay or whatever they'd be like that's ridiculous he has he's had me in his home he loves me has always made time he's never done anything to treat me with kindness and respect and we need to live our lives this way and this is not conducive to the modern world with all its busyness and and with you know eight-foot privacy fences and big back porches and not front porches and you know lived in that house for seven years so I had met your neighbor kind of world that we live in so hospitality forces us out of our comfort zone it forces us into awkward set settings and situations it infuses confusion into how we are to approach but to be driven by the love of Christ to open up our homes and open up our lives to other people is the call of the gospel on our lives and when we live that way then these kind of accusations can still be made but they're hard to stick they're hard to stick yeah okay this brothers opening up his home anybody wants to have dinner with him what oh now y'all are trying to clap now there as you felt guilty that shame based it's not acceptable to the Lord now that next question is what hope can be offered from people and the church for those struggling with same-sex attraction who yearn and desire a spouse yet or not sexually or romantically attracted to the opposite gender good question what we should be I hope doing is a number of things we want to be showing that actually there may be yearnings we have in this life that be fulfilled but we want to model as Christians of the deepest yearnings of our heart and soul are met in Christ yeah and so therefore whenever if we're following Jesus we're never missing out on the best that life has to offer we may be missing out on some of the good things life has to offer but we're not we're never missing out on the very best things life has to offer that's one thing I think the other thing we need to be doing is Christian communities is showing people that a life without either marriage or sexual companionship is not a life without intimacy yeah it's not a life of solitude and again this this is we've got to kind of work against our culture in this respect I know where I come from culture is very much designed that actually you you've got your romantic companion you may have a family as well and that is meant to be a self-sufficient unit and that's where you do all your life actually the Bible shows us that we're to be family to one another as God's people we're to open up our nuclear family life to include others we're to show and practice hospitality and friendship and as I was saying earlier there for anyone's experience who comes into church should be I now have far more family than I used to have and even if they've been kicked out by their family they should always feel like actually I've now got a ton of honorary mums and dads I've got a ton of families that that treat me as as one of their own yeah Julie Rogers who's at Wheaton College he's in the chaplaincy deal there she has a beautiful talk with an organization called Q Commons and one of the things she said about those type of friendships that she has in the church that she's a part of is that she gets she gets to be aunt to all these other kids and she gets to color and she gets she she has multiple families that are just like listen you you're you're ours you're in our family you have a bed here you in you have dinner here you and going back to that idea of hospitality she she literally is aunt Jew - five six seven families and and she's got that's where she is really rooted in intimacy and and one of the things she said in her talk that was profound to me is she said you can live without sex but you can't live without intimacy because you were designed for it and so Sam and I have talked some I wish we had more time but but the lost art of deep and abiding friendships that that's really hurt in this arena where we don't really have a category for anything other than Facebook prints friend requests sure got 4,000 friends right right that it's kind of shallow did you watch the game kind of friendships that that lack depth that lack intimacy that that's what it is a vulnerability a I'm really struggling or I'm really rejoicing or can you help me with is that that type of intimate friendships are so key I think and not just this area but in all sorts of areas because it's a gift from God for our maturation into all that Christ has for us and good friendships are to be fought for there you clear space in your calendar for them you make room for them there they're a must for the ongoing development of our soul and and my my best friend in the world is Lauren Chandler but she is not my only friend in the world and I combined almost everything in her but I also confide almost everything in Josh Patterson and Brad Payne and Brian Miller and I want to be a man who doesn't have a lot of Secrets with a lot of different people who have learned to trust now I've got secrets from people I don't trust right because I don't trust them but but as I've grown and thought this man is safe then I want to share those parts of my heart that that are fearful or hopeful or and and so I think that's such a huge key right big question all over the map on the ps2 that is one of the mistakes we often make I think in in church cultures we treat friendship is the thing that the singles lead yeah and it's almost like the kind of stabilizers on the trike before you kind of matured into marriage and then you've done all that so it's great to hear you say that as a married man that we need we all need friendship our marriages will be stronger when all of us are practicing the biblical artifact it's no doubt no doubt so let's see if we can get ourselves in trouble here Sam is it a celebration or endorsement of homosexuality to provide services for or attend a same-sex wedding we knew it was coming yep yeah so there's a couple of layers to that to that question it's deal first with the idea of providing services for a gay wedding so my own thinking on this would be that there are some services you provide for a wedding that are designed to be a way of glorifying and celebrating what is going on so the wedding cake the flowers are designed to celebrate and glorify the relationship that they're meant to adorn it and kind of exalt it so I would have trouble as a Christian doing that because I don't believe that's a relationship that can be glorified I'd want to express that in his careful way as I possibly could if I was a Christian business owner I don't think the same applies to providing the chairs I don't think the same provides the same applies to every aspects of providing a service to a gay wedding so I wouldn't have trouble providing the seating and I would have trouble providing the cake because I think the seating is neutral but I think the cake is designed to endorse and commend and celebrate the ceremony so I don't think all services are equal in that respect in terms of attending it will depend on a number of factors we want to kind of preserve two things at the same time we want to preserve integrity and our witness and we want to preserve genuine interest in the friendship so we want to preserve integrity in our witness and so if our attendance is going to be seen as and endorsement and celebration we will feel as though it wouldn't be right for us to attend and for many people that is what they mean by come along to our wedding it's we want you to be part of the group of people cheering us on this day so if that is the case then I as a Christian I I can't be part of that process but on the other hand you may well have a scenario where you think actually this person knows me so well there is no doubt in their mind where I land on the whole issue of homosexual marriage and I could be a fly on the wall in the ceremony without miscommunicating what I think is a Christian and I know cases where people thought well actually I might be the only Christian in a roomful of two or three hundred people I know that I'm not going to be misunderstood by being present so for that reason I'm going to go along and treat it as a is a great opportunity to commend Christ to others so it will slightly depend on where we're at but we must have the principle of we want to make sure our witness has integrity and that we're not implying something we don't want to imply but we also want to show that we genuinely care about the friendship and so my advice is always if you if you feel as a Christian that you can't go make sure you're declining includes an invitation so they just say I'm afraid as a Christian I'm not sure I can come brace very sorry about that but say I don't think I can come but your friendship means so much to me and I really want to be part of your your lives I want you both to be part of my life so tell me when is the first available evening you can both come round for me on and I think if we append that to our declining that will I hope show people that we're not they're not rejecting then yeah anything's about yeah I think my my encouragement to you who are believers in Christ and followers of Christ is that you would live your life in such a way that your deep conviction towards biblical truth would be so infused with love that you would ever even have the average to decline with an invitation like I just think if if you've let your convictions be known but you've loved so well that you even get invited to the wedding then you've done some good gospel work because who invites well this person hates my lifestyle you know what let's sit him on our side I mean how does that happen right it only happens if they feel so loved so valued so welcomed that I mean it's a risky if they're sending you an invitation knowing your convictions that's a big risk they're taking that that we might get rejected here risk and so I love Sam's I'm and I just don't feel like I can do that but I'll tell you what as soon as you guys get back when you come to my house and and and let's hang out and I want to hear all about it let's have that conversation but but to live in such a way that you've been true to your convictions and still got invited to the wedding but that's I mean that's gospel living right there that's the type of love infused depth of conviction but I think the Lord's called us to the Christ has called us to I always love it when a Christian says to me I've been invited to a gay wedding what do I do because I just want to say thank you for being the kind of Christian they wanted to invite yeah and for some of us if we never ever get an invite to a gay wedding same one else yeah because it may be a reflection we're not extending the right kind of love and friendship to the folks around us okay how should we as believers is coming from the Denton campus how should we as believers navigate through feel about and deal with the legalization of gay marriage and yes so as as Christians we we want to we want our country to have laws that will bless our neighbors and so one of the things you will think through as a Christian then is does there's my does my society redefining marriage help or harm my neighbors yeah and it may not look obvious to think well if they have gay marriage you know I can't see any immediate harm that's being done you know no one is you know nothing seems to change on one level but on the other hand we want to say well actually because of what God has set marriage up to be it really confuses the visual aid he wants it to be of Christ's relationship to his people if as a culture we we muck around with the definition yeah because we're then distorting the picture God has given us of that relationship and so if marriages to be a reflection of Christ in the church it has to be between like and unlike it has to be between male and female if you have marriage between male and male Europe you're picturing Christ and Christ or you're picturing the church in church you can't picture Christ in the church in a same-sex marriage so I think for that reason I either as a Christian I I don't want the definition of marriage to change and as a member of a democracy I have a channel to express that and part of the the process of how our country makes its loss I will try and engage in that process in the in the ways that we've been given to do that but if the law ends up changing well I think maloca that's that's now the world I live in but as a Christian for the sake of my own Christian integrity I can accept that culture says this kind of relationship is now a marriage but as a Christian I can't and so I'm not going to make that a big issue every time someone talks about gay marriage that kind of launched an airstrike on their terminology but it just means in my own mind as a Christian I'm thinking that is a in my culture a legal marriage but it it isn't what the Bible calls a real marriage and I won't always Express that distinction every single time the issue comes up but I do want to maintain it and live in the light of it yeah I I mean yes I know that we've got plenty of questions yes how would you begin sharing the gospel with gay co-workers how would you remove stumbling blocks um I think that a lot of these questions what one of the things we're seeing is if you substitute the word gay for any other kind of lifestyle of bible doesn't commend 98 percent of the questions that that helps answer so if it was a couple who were heterosexual but cohabiting you know any number of other kinds of lifestyle so the answer is I want to I want to be a good colleague I want to be someone that they enjoy being with I want to be someone who is a good friend in the ways that we've we've already talked about and when it comes to then kind of speaking about Christian things I don't want to start with their homosexuality there I never want to start with someone's most visible sin to me I was going to start with the center of what I believe which is is Jesus Christ who he is why he's come what he what is available to last through him and I might rather start there and at some point downstream touch on the issue of sexuality and their lifestyle then start with homosexuality and somehow try and get from that to Jesus now we don't always control what kind of topics of conversation come up in the moment if someone just comes up to us and says what do you think about homosexuality in which case I think we have an opportunity and a responsibility to think well what is it what is a really good positive way to commend the biblical position on all this what is the the positive truth behind the biblical prohibitions what's the positive behind the negative and so Nadine since I will I will talk about the Christian vision for marriage as being a picture of Christ in his church and that's why as Christians we have the view of marriage that we have and that's why in the Bible we've got the kind of those boundaries for where sex is designed tempted to be taking place yeah so don't just want to say the voucher lots I want to try and say what is the big positive truth behind the negative prohibitions yeah so again I think this is one of those here's something just quickly to be careful of if you ask how do you share the gospel with a black man I'm gonna go which one which black guy are we talking about mean what's he like what's his story where's he from what's he so like even you know like how do you share the gospel with a gay coworkers they're people so in every one of these situations they have stories they have herds they have hopes they have and and the whole point of contextualization is that Christ enters that narrative and he begins to rightly order things and and so the way you share the gospel with anyone is I mean you can do street evangelism if you want I got no beef with that I mean go get it if you want to do it but but the way that I've seen the gospel past most effectively is life on life when I'm talking to a person a person who I've learned to their background I've learned their hopes I've learned their hurts I've learned their pains and in that space we're having dialogue about Christ and and so let's be can you create the category gay person as though gay people all think the same or have the same story or struggle with the same issues or have the same longings I think that we're already behind the eight ball because they're unique human beings and the call then and this were once again hospitality comes in it's around a dining room table that those questions get answered it's in the hallway you asking very good questions about their lives showing that you care and that you love and starting at the center rather than around their sexual orientation which i think is way downstream i think let's start with a person and work of christ and let the Holy Spirit fill the heart and then this conversation it's it's easier I didn't say easy I said easier Christ is Lord of your life now let's talk about that lordship it is a lot easier then let's talk about the things that Christ is going to need to fix in you right so I don't let's not talk about this as though you know like gay men or gay women all have the same kind of background story struggles hope say that they're unique men and women just like we're unique men and women and we've celebrated in the village baptistry for 12 years now the diversity of stories and the diversity of men and women who have come to know Christ one of the most beautiful pictures of the gospel creating and new people is how uncommon our backgrounds are many of us but some of us grew up getting loved and cuddled with and encouraged and some of us grew up getting beat and neglected and yet Christ rescued us boats almost grew up in Sunday school some of us grew up you know doing heroin in a bar with our moms and yet Christ rescued us see these are real testimonies and this is what God does he saves out of the muck and the mire so let's get into that muck and mire and let Christ do his work in those spaces how would you gently critique a book like the one recently written by Matthew vines especially in terms of how he and others like him handles the biblical texts like I said sure slightly flippant answer would be revived review of it on the gospel coalition website because I hope that's what I've I've done it try to gently critique the term I think I've I tried to show what concerns me about his his method in other words he starts off with his conclusion and then tries to find a way of biblically justifying it yeah and in the process you then have to kind of turn passages on their heads to get them to fit that narrative then so I think that that kind of approach would be I don't think you're going with the grain of the texts you're lifting them out of their contexts and I need you missed that mean the whole mainline of the Bible is as we were saying earlier this this marriage between Jesus and his people and everything else flows out of that and to try and press for for gay relationships in the Bible just you end up with splinters because you're going right against the grain of of all of these things I love it if someone is a reader well I mean I just love it I first of all it shows okay they've got interest they are reading they are trying to understand years ago our some neighbors that lived next to us he the first thing he said when he learned I was a pastor is that he had read dan Browning's debenture code what I think what do you think about the da Vinci Code and and really that that silly little book that turned into even sillier movie what was kind of the impetus of ongoing conversations about Jesus about what the Bible says about what and and so many I would just gleefully love to read Matthew vines book with them and then let's get together and talk about I'm part of a I get made fun of by some of my guy friends but that I'm part of a book club even now that is it has unbelievers and believers like and we read all sorts of things and and have ongoing dialogue about those things and it's been one of the more fruitful gospel opportunities I've ever had so then I come in Matthew Vaughn's book to that book club let's read it and then let's just have a legitimate conversation about what he's saying what's good in that what's not good in that would what would the scripture strongly disagree with if the Bible interprets about see I just think that's that's just a playground right there so if you're talking about here's what I worry about Christians I think well more talk about gently rebuking are we talk about a blog are we talking about life on life with people where you're going oh you you like you're you like Matthew Vaughn's book well men listen I'm talk about let me read it let me look sit down and talk about what vines had to say and I think that gives you better than critique you have the awesome opportunity to enter into ideas here's the great thing about democracy in the United States and its founding the best idea wins right I mean that's just been how we've operated since we rebelled against you guys and took all this land no he won't have time we don't have time it's hanging 50 and it took you that long together family just out of honor brother out of Honor so let's let's end on this one one more question because I think this is a good one I don't think it's a good one well I don't know if it's a good one well it's too late now let's just for you actually I think there's a legitimate one for some people that need to ask this question so I have friends who struggle with homosexuality beyond ignorantly assuming should I worry of being a temptation or set up boundaries I wouldn't set for my heterosexual friends what if that offends yeah this a thoughtful question one of the kind of wrong assumptions we can make is we think there's some of the same sex attracted they must be attracted to every one of the same sexism and therefore you know I'm going to i must obviously there will be a stumbling block to them so we don't want to assume that we don't know assume that they're they're going to have an issue with ended every man that they come across so you're saying this person to unattractive we also want to be alive to the fact in May there can be the potential for that we mustn't have that oven it's not I don't think it's helpful to our friend to have that as the kind of the forefront of our mind and kind of may make us nervous of befriending them I think is good people benefit of the doubt it's good I'm not assume that everyone in the planet who could be attracted to you must be attracted to you I think securely a part of arrogance is enough yeah I think in dialogue ongoing dialogue with your friends that struggle with homosexuality I think surely you can pick up on certain key diagnose those cues and then have that that conversation if it presents itself and and as you listen to someone you you learn where their vulnerabilities are yeah you will learn by that their weaknesses and temptations on screen well let's do this I want to pray for us and then I want to set up kind of how we're going to end tonight and then we'll be dismissed to it so for now though would you think Sam one more time that still helps the drug offenses thank and then that make it go off it [Applause] they did that for an Englishman yeah I think they probably felt sorry for you because I talked about taking the country but I wasn't alive and I can't take credit here's what I would like to do I'm gonna pray here in a second but I've been doing pastoral ministry now for closing in on 20 years and and I know in in this room and in rooms that are represented living rooms that are watching us on the live feed those who are at our different campuses around the Metroplex I know that there are those who have this struggle some of you are married and have never told anyone here let me just do this as a pastor so pastor Matt to us we love you please don't walk in that by yourself I say at the end of our services and and the feed is usually cut by then listen we want to walk with you you will say nothing to us that makes us gasp I promise you you won't say anything that's shocking or that we think is oh my gosh what do we do it's just not going to happen we love you and and an evidence of God's grace is that you're here even to hear me say that you have no reason at the village church to be underground none you have no reason at the village church to be under ground we would gladly fight alongside of you open up our homes to you walk alongside of you serve you answer the questions that you have fight the good fight alongside of you and so if you've never told anyone can I encourage you don't carry that alone I don't know why you would do that what how miserable must you be to carry that alone David in the psalm said when I kept quiet about my sin my bones wasted away and and so don't let your bones waste away let us walk alongside of you to listen you're in a room full of strugglers but you really are you're in a room full of struggle errs and so maybe tonight for the first time will you let us know let us pray for you let us encourage you if you're a man and woman in here and someone you love deeply a son or a daughter or a brother or a sister has identified themselves I'm gay I'm going to give myself over to that lifestyle you just want to be you just want to be prayed over in how you witness to them how you walk alongside of them I want to move us towards an opportunity here at the end for you to be prayed for so at all of our campuses all of our sites we're going to have pastors and elders up front and in the back we're going to have them where they're just available to pray for you if you want to confess come and confess we'll be excited that you did that and glad to walk alongside of you maybe for the first time in your life you'll feel like you can just let go and breathe and rest in the identity found in Jesus Christ and Men if you're just estranged from a family member who has come out you handled it poorly then men come let us help you navigate that because listen brother sister you've got some sin to own there we're going to talk about that this weekend in James chapter 4 where you're going to you're going to need to own some things and apologise for how you responded or how you've reacted and repent and own your sin before the Lord and seek to make reconciliation alright we can be a deeply convinced and convicted people who operate out of a deep well of love and compassion and we see this in our Savior what we see this in our Savior has no one condemned you woman neither do I now go and sin no more and so we serve a Savior who has deep convictions and yet is the epitome of love and grace and might we be people marked by that and so just want to provide an opportunity for you to respond to what's been said to be prayed over by our pastors and elders and for us to as always fight the good fight of being a safe place for it to be okay to not be okay and to trust that the Lord will grow us into more mature versions of us when you walked in you were given this now in my back pocket wrinkly card that has some other some other places to get more information to find help if you need it I also know living hope is here Rikishi led us here and and hitting their ministry based out of Arlington that that walks intimately and for an extended period of time with those struggling with same-sex attraction so there's home for you our recovery man every Wednesday night is an open door for you to come in and be honest and struggle well with other strugglers your loved in this place and maybe listen maybe this isn't landing you rape maybe homosexuality same synchronous I mean maybe it's something else maybe it's another type of perversion maybe it's another type of struggle listen the invitation on the table from Christ is confess repent be made whole and so on you come nobody's the the ground at the foot is the the ground at the foot of the cross is level it's level and and it's not a there's room for you but there's room next to us up here come join us let me pray for us and as I pray there'll be pastors and elders that come up front there'll be some in the rear and then men you can just jet out get a cup of coffee and head out of here just jet out because you want to stay up all night and leave the coffee behind or you can just grab a hand and be prayed forward nobody's going to judge you being prayed for no one's gonna we're just going to rejoice and you may be for the first time in your life feeling the freedom that Christ has come to help you start to walk in let me pray for us father I thank you for these men and women the opportunity tonight to hear from Sam yes his testimony and your faithfulness in his life but how that testimony and your power in his life is rooted in your word that your word is honest about your call on our lives to come and die and maybe tonight same-sex attraction homosexual is not on our radar at all but there's other areas of our lives we're just refusing to submit to you as Lord of our lives we're trying to give you a little bit and not die to ourselves and so father I pray for the type of repression that brings joy and freedom I pray for the type of the laying down of my quote/unquote rights to rest in creator rights that are bent to bring me out of what will destroy me and bring me into the fullness of life that Christ has come to bring I pray now for the courage for many to be honest I pray for the courage for many to confess some for the very first time tonight I know there's probably turmoil and some of the hearts and minds that have listened tonight some things that have been irksome and bothersome and and I pray that in that Holy Spirit that you would reveal and that you would open up hearts and that the wrestle itself might produce good fruit we love you for your beautiful name we pray amen thank you guys for coming tonight

Channel: The Village Church Resources

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Keywords: Matt Chandler, The Village Church, Is God Anti-Gay?, Forums, SAM ALLBERRY

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Length: 115min 9sec (6909 seconds)

Published: Fri Jul 14 2017