HOLY SEXUALITY: Who Do You Think You Are?

Chris McCurley: Good morning. We are in a series on sexuality. This will all culminate in Guy Hammond being with us on September the twelfth and the thirteenth, if you would like to make plans for that. The twelfth will be a a Saturday morning kind of thing into the noon hours. We'll start at about eight thirty with refreshments and he'll start about nine and then he'll have several sessions, still about twelve, twelve thirty, and we'll get you out of here. And then on Sunday morning he'll be preaching during the sermon time. A guy is a terrific human being. If you hadn't had a chance to watch him on the Dear Church podcast and get to know him a little bit there. ⁓ he does his strength and weakness workshop. ⁓ Guy's ⁓ man who lived fourteen years as a gay man and surrendered his sexuality to Christ. And he's going to come and talk about that among other things concerning biblical sexual ethics and how we can reach our LGBTQ neighbors. And so I think you'll want to be here for that. So we're leading up to that with this series on sexuality. And I want to start with a question this morning. What do the JFK assassination, the moon landing, 9-11, the Egyptian pyramids, and Paul McCartney? All have in common. Any ideas? These are the most famous believed conspiracy theories that are out there today. You've probably heard this, but many believe that Lee Harvey Oswald did not act alone in the assassination of John F. Kennedy Jr. Some believe the mafia was involved, others believe that it was a government inside job. There are those who believe we've never landed on the moon. All those recordings and footage that you see were done in a Hollywood movie studio. There are some who believe that nine eleven was an inside job, that the government actually orchestrated that. There are those who believe that aliens built the pyramids because man did not have the ingenuity and the know-how to do that back then. And then there are those who believe that Paul McCartney died in a car wreck in 1966 and that he was replaced by a lookalike. Who has been in the band ever since. Now, I don't know what to think of any of that. I've never really considered these conspiracy theories. Maybe you have, maybe you have strong opinions on them. I don't care to hear them. I I don't care. ⁓ maybe you have other conspiracy theories that you believe, and that's okay too. I don't care to hear those either. But I think it does highlight the fact that sometimes it's good to question things, isn't it? That maybe we shouldn't always take things at face value. And I'm not asking you to put on the tenfold hat or anything this morning, but I would ask you to consider what you believe and why you believe it. Because I always think it's good to ask questions. What voices are you listening to? And are you willing to do some research to determine that maybe what you've always believed isn't exactly true? I would frame it like this: Is the way I conceptualize something Right and true. What do I believe and why? And along with that, who am I listening to? Who is helping shape what I believe? I've told you before I am a big believer in questioning. I think asking questions is paramount. I I would not be standing before you today as the preaching minister at the Walnut Street Church of Christ had I not asked questions long ago. The church should value questioning. Unfortunately, she doesn't always. I've seen young people come to ⁓ folks in the church that they admired and respected to ask questions, and sometimes they're labeled. Why are you asking that? You're a progressive. Sometimes they're just pushed away and say, Well, that's just what the Bible says. I mean, if we have the truth, we shouldn't have any problem giving answers to questions, and we should invite. Questioning and don't default to just what the preacher says. Don't just default to, well, grandpa always said that's great, but grandpa could be wrong too. Don't just take my word for it. Be willing to be an excavator. Start start digging. And dig deep to find the answers that you're looking for. Just don't don't just listen to whoever is the loudest. I know of one person that anytime they read a book, that's what they believed. They switched their view on Christianity and on religion several times because whatever book they were reading, that's what they became. There's got to be some filtering and being able to say, okay, this may be right, it may be wrong, but I've got to look into it for myself. Who are the voices that you're listening to? What are they telling you? And are they right? And this is vitally important when it comes to the subject of identity. Here's the big question, who am I? That's the big question when it comes to identity. Who am I who am I? And there is no question that that question has been answered very differently throughout history. Many years ago, many moons ago, if you were to ask the question, Who are you? the person would respond with their genealogy. You go back to biblical times, get in your time machine and go all the way back to the first century and you find, you know, Peter walking around, you go up to him and say, Who are you? And Peter would would start with, Well, you know, I came from so and so, who came from so and so, who came from so and so, and they would give you their ancestry and they would talk about their nation and their clan and their ethnicity and their tribe. That's how they would define themselves. That's how they would answer the question of who are you? And Well, that sure has changed, hasn't it? Now, when someone asks you, who are you? We say, I'm a teacher. I'm a preacher. I'm a coach. I'm a lawyer, whatever it may be. Somebody asks, who are you? I'm Chris McCurley. I'm from Charlotte, Tennessee, and I'm a preacher. Understand, that is a very different way of answering the question of who am I? ⁓ Then what has been answered for much of our history. And I'm not saying we need to go back to that. I mean, that would be weird if somebody came up and said, You know, Walter, who are you? And you pull out a big old long sheet and say, Well, here's my ancestry, and you start going through it. That'd be weird. And I'm not saying we need to do that again, but it just highlights the fact that how we answer this question has changed dramatically. And we have radically rebelled against this definition of self. And our society's answer is. Has been to swing the pendulum all the way over to the extreme. Here's the order of the day. Be your own person. Blaze your own trail. Live your own truth. Follow your heart. This has been the standard for defining self, and it's not all bad, but it's certainly not all good either. And the reason why is because it makes you the star of the show. Life is a movie about you. You are the star, and everyone else are just actors in a play or a movie about you. What we have done is we've turned everything inside out. Whatever you feel on the inside is what you should express on the outside. Whatever it is, whatever you feel on the inside, you should express on the outside. What makes you happy? Then do it. That's the standard of the day. Whatever makes you happy, then do it. Who are you? Well, whatever makes you happy. That's who you are. And some of you are of the age that you remember the movie Alice in Wonderland. Do you remember the scene in the movie where Alice comes upon a caterpillar? And the caterpillar asks, Who are you? And Alice's response is very interesting. She replies very shyly. I hardly know, sir, just at present. At least I know who I was when I got up this morning. But I think that I must have been changed several times since then. What do you mean by that? says the Caterpillar. Explain yourself. I can't explain myself. I'm afraid, sir, says Alice. Because I'm not myself, you see. I don't see, says the caterpillar. Alice says, I'm afraid I can't put it more clearly, for I can't understand it myself to begin with, and being so many different sizes in one day is very confusing. And society's definition of self will probably leave you much like Alice in a state of confusion. Trying to figure out who it is that I am exactly, because so many people are confused because they're struggling to find their true identity. They're one person at work, they're another person maybe at school, they're another person at home, they're a different person at church. We have identities that are rooted in careers and in accomplishments. We have identities that are rooted in trauma and in sexuality. And so When pressed like Alice with the question, Who are you? It's no wonder that we struggle to come up with an answer. Former Associate Justice to the U.S. Supreme Court, Anthony Kennedy, had this to say about the self. At the heart of liberty is the right to define one's own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life. Really? It's up to every individual person to determine their purpose and their meaning for existing. I I mean I I think Justice Kennedy is wrong here. I think he's dead wrong. It's up to me to define my whole meaning of existence. Every person has the right to explore and shape and live out their true identity. That sounds so freeing, doesn't it? But it's not freedom. It's slavery. It's burdensome and exhausting. You think about it, our young people are being pressured into coming up with an identity from scratch. The meaning and purpose for their life rests completely on their shoulders. That's exhausting. It's stressful. What a burden to have to create a definition of who you are and what your purpose is. No wonder so many people feel like Alice in Wonderland. No wonder so many young people are confused. But this is what our society is marketing. If you want to be happy, then express on the outside what you feel on the inside. That is the only way you're ever going to be happy. And along with this is the moving of the goalpost. When it comes to morality. Because when the standard of the day is to do whatever makes you happy, express on the outside what you feel on the inside, well then morality becomes subjective, doesn't it? Because how can anybody really be wrong if they're just expressing on the outside what they feel on the inside? If it makes me happy, how can it be wrong? You ever heard of MTD, moralistic, therapeutic deism? This is a A form, if you can call it, of spirituality, that places the individual at the center. Basically, moralistic therapeutic deism is you are the star and God is like some sort of cosmic genie. I describe it like triple A. You're broken down on the side of the road, and God is there to help get you going again. Other than that, he stays pretty uninvolved in your life. He is there to affirm your choices, to pat you on the head and say, go about doing your business. If it makes you happy, do it. And I think we all can see the faultiness in this standard. MTD emphasizes the horizontal relationships at the expense of the vertical relationship. It's a belief system that puts humanity and each individual at the core of his or her own belief system. It's the deification of self. Now add sexuality to this mix, and we see the question of who am I being answered according to who I'm attracted to. Even people who have never had sex, even children are encouraged to identify themselves by who they're attracted to. We live in a hypersexualized age. And it has become normal to think of ourselves as just who we're attracted to, which is a new concept that is so foreign to what we have believed for the majority of our history. People in the ancient world, for instance, knew all about sex and sexuality, but they didn't they didn't think of sex in terms of identity or or who you're attracted to. They thought in terms of behavior. Even saying I'm heterosexual would have been confusing to people living long ago. To the apostles, for instance. Because they thought of sex as behavior as what you do, it's not who you are. And certainly Rome was one place that knew all about sex and sexuality and all its corrupt forms. And yet they would not have identified themselves through sexuality. They would have seen it as something. That you do. I asked you at the beginning of this lesson to consider some of the things that you believe. Examine them. What are the voices? Who are the voices that you're listening to? What do you believe and why? And be able to intensely scrutinize what you think you know. And here's my question for society and its take on identity. How's that working for you? Because it's not. Our society's definition of self and and the way it identifies people is not working. Happiness quotients are rapidly on decline. The data backs this up. It's not working. And so the solution would be to live by a different standard, right? That would seem that that would be the order of the day, but that is the biggest sin in a society that promotes just be yourself. Don't tell me how to live, is the slogan. And you do realize that for much of our history, parents have told their children how to live. Mom and dad would pass along principles and and rules and traditions. They would hand down their faith and now that's deemed as oppressive. But here's where it goes from toxic to comical, because society's standard is completely hypocritical. The same ones who say, Don't tell me what to do, I'm my own person, I don't have to conform to anyone's standard, end up looking like everyone around them, don't they? It's a person that says, I'm my own boss, I can do my own thing, and and yet they end up always looking like a certain group, right? Because that's just what we do. We end up conforming to someone around us, some group around us. So we we need a concept of self that leads to human flourishing. And instead of defining who we are by looking inward, we need to look towards the gospel. Look with me at Ephesians chapter 4, starting in verse 17. Paul writes this. Now this I say and testify in the Lord that you must no longer walk as the Gentiles do in the futility of their minds. They are darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of God, because of the ignorance that is in them, due to their hardness of heart, they have become callous and have given themselves up to sensuality, greedy to practice every kind of impurity. Now these are some pretty harsh words from the Apostle Paul. Directed at those who are outside of Christ. That's who Gentiles are here. It's a general term for those who are not in Christ. But understand that Paul is exhorting the Ephesian Christians not to walk as they walk because they are no longer a part of the world. Paul is not saying you should hate the world. I think that's what we do sometimes. We assume that the world is a bad place and God hates the world and so therefore we've got to stay removed from the world. God loves the world. For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son. He wants them in heaven every bit as much as you do. And so Paul is not saying, hey, reject them, be caustic towards them, but he is saying, Pay attention to them. They're not your enemy, but they're not your guide either. Don't be mad because they don't act like you, but don't take your cues from them either. Is there any better advice for Christians living in this day and age? We need to be asking what are the Gentiles doing? What are the Gentiles doing? What are they thinking? Not so that we can spit venom in their direction, call them out on social media, bludgeon them over the head with a Bible? But so we can evaluate how they are thinking and how maybe that thinking is influencing us because this isn't just them versus us, this is us. This is in-house. Many kingdom citizens think like the world. Keep reading. But that is not the way you learned Christ. Assuming that you have heard about him and were taught in him, as the truth is in Jesus, to put off your old self, which belongs to your former manner of life, and is corrupt through deceitful desires, and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and to put on the new self created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness. Our culture will tell you you have two selves. You have the self that is inside of you that you suppress. That you keep locked away, and then you have the self that you show to the world around you. And culture would say, Let out that self that you're keeping locked away, the one that you're suppressing, let it out, let it run free. And Paul would say, No, that's the worst thing you could do. Don't do that. The worst thing you can do is let out your true self because your true self is corrupt, your desires are deceitful. They don't have your best interest at heart. Don't let your true self out. You know what you do with your true self? You put it away. You bury it. You put on the new self, the one created after the likeness of God in righteousness and holiness. That's who you are at your core. You see, this isn't about your desires and your sexuality. It's about Jesus and the gospel. And what you are at your core is a child of God created in his image and washed in the blood of Christ. Keep reading. Therefore, be imitators of God. As beloved children, and walk in love as Christ loved us and gave Himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God. But sexual immorality and all impurity or covetousness must not even be named among you as is proper among saints. Let there be no filthiness, nor foolish talk, nor crude joking, which are out of place, but instead let there be thanksgiving. Do not walk as the Gentiles do. You walk as if you're walking with Christ. He has given you a new identity. That is who you are at your core. You are made in the image of God. That's where you find your meaning and purpose. That's how you define yourself. That's how you answer the question: Who am I? I'm a child of God. And please hear me on this. This doesn't mean that you have to suppress your desires. We all have desires that are unrighteous and unholy. Don't suppress them, surrender them. Whatever your desires are, you're holy. Remember that. You have desires. Okay. So does every one of us here. You don't know what to do with those desires. Okay. Okay. That doesn't mean you're weird. It doesn't mean you're abnormal. It means you're human. You're confused about who you are. Okay? We can help you with that. You don't feel comfortable in your own skin. You don't know why God made you this way. You're attracted to the same sex. Okay, attraction's not sin. And please hear me on this. If you're someone who is asking those questions Before you do anything that may bring harm to yourself, come and talk to me. And let's walk through it. Let's sit down and let's talk about it together. Because there are other options here. Don't allow the questions to ruminate in your mind and cause you to do something that would bring harm to yourself. This is not a church that shuns. This is a church that shows. We showed the love and compassion of Jesus Christ. I'm not wrong on that, am I? This is not a church that shuns. This is a church that shows the love and compassion of Jesus Christ. God's children. Must embody the message that Jesus can be trusted with every facet of your life, including your sexuality. We surrender it all to Him, including our sexuality, because we trust that He can handle it. And please, please hear me on this. Do not undermine this message. As disciples, do not undermine this message. As members of the Walnut Street Church of Christ, do not undermine this message. Here's how you undermine the message through hostility, through hypocrisy, through being a heretic. You're hypocritical when you say you love God and you love people. But you shun those who sin differently than you do. Let me repeat that. You are hypocritical when you say that you love people and you love God, but you shun those who sin differently than you. You are hostile. When people need to desperately obey the gospel and you slam a door on them, you're hostile towards them because you don't agree with their lifestyle and you are heretical. It's heresy to proclaim that a person is sinful because they have same sex attraction or same sex desires. That's not the sin. Acting on those desires. It's when it becomes a problem. Don't undermine the message. Look at verse 5. You can be sure of this. No one will have a place in the kingdom of Christ and of God who sins sexually or does evil things or is greedy. Anyone who is greedy is serving a false God. I said it last week. There can be some things that are hard to say and things that are hard to hear, hard to apply. But remember, in the first century, sexual immorality, sexual sin wasn't about desire. It was about behavior. Your desires don't define you. You know who defines you? Jesus. Paul said in Galatians 2:20, I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh, I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave himself up for me. You know what we need more than anything else? We need to be saved. And you say, Well, of course, Chris, saved from our sins. Yeah, I hear you, but more than anything else, we need to be saved from ourselves. We need to be saved from us. You see, Jesus came to rescue me from me. Because before Chris McCurley became a child of God, Chris McCurley was hurting himself. Chris McCurley was following a broad path into misery. Chris McCurley was traveling down a path of destruction, a path away from God, and God had a solution. You know what that solution was? How about we kill Chris McCurley? Discipleship begins with a funeral. It is being crucified and buried with Jesus and rising a new creation. It's saying, I don't want Chris McCurley in charge anymore. Please kill Chris McCurley. Chris McCurley gossips about other people. Chris McCurley lies. Chris McCurley does things that are harmful to himself. Chris McCurley acts in ways that are unrighteous. Chris McCurley only thinks about himself. God, please kill Chris McCurley so that the Spirit can fill me and lead me. Let's have a funeral, let's give a proper burial to Chris McCurley so that God can live in him. And I believe this with all my heart. Life and living only finds meaning in a relationship with Jesus Christ. No one or no thing can give you the life you expect other than him. Look. You are not the star of the show. Let's just get that out there. You are not the star of the show. But society wants to tell you you are. And it's easy to buy into, and it seems great. I mean, who wouldn't want to be the star of the show? Society tells you, hey, you're the star of the show, do what makes you happy. Whatever is on the inside, let it out to the outside. And in the moment, it doesn't seem all that bad. Seems pretty great. But the ultimate reality is that if you live a story in which you are the star and the plot is all about you, you will never truly be happy. Because your desires can never truly be fulfilled. But Jesus offers you a supporting role in a story about Him. I don't want to be the star of the show. I don't want to be, I don't want to be in a story about you. I don't want to be in a movie about me. I don't want to be in a movie about you. But I I can I can buy into being a supporting in a supporting role in a story about Jesus. Because no matter how many twists and turns that story takes, I know how it ends. Colossians 3, 1 through 4. If then you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth, for you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ, who is your life, appears, then you also will appear with him in glory. Did you catch it? Christ, who is your life. That is your identity. That is your life. That is your meaning. That is your purpose. Christ, who is your life. Culture will tell you that your desires are your life. Go look at pornography if that's what you desire. Go have sex with whoever you want to, if that's what you desire, if that's what makes you happy. If you're a husband with three kids, but you found another woman that makes you happier, go be with her. That's what society will tell you. Just whatever you feel on the inside, let it out to the outside, just whatever makes you happy, you do you. But scripture says no, don't do you. That's the worst thing you could ever do. Because the true you, your true self, is corrupt. Do Christ. Be Jesus. Surrender your wants, your desires, your sexuality to him because he can be trusted. Lose yourself in him. Let him define you. Who are you? You're his. So live like it. Let's pray. Most kind and gracious Heavenly Father, thank you for this day and for this opportunity to be here this morning. And I pray vehemently, God, that if there's anyone here who is struggling with sexuality or any or anything else, that you would prick their heart and they would come and talk to me or talk to one of us that they can confide in, and that you would give us the The means by which we can help them. And we pray that all of us, God, who are struggling with whatever it may be, that you will help us to surrender it to you and let you work in our lives. We're so blessed to be disciples. May we go and portray that to the world around us and show them who Jesus is. We love you, and it's in your Son's precious name we pray. The invitation is offered if we can help you this morning. Again, if you're struggling, come and see me. Visit with one of our shepherds, one of our other staff members. We'd be more than happy to sit down with you, talk with you, and do what we can to help you. Whatever it is you're struggling with. We've been talking about sexuality, but whatever it is, we this is a loving family that wants what's best for you. So if we can help you, why don't you come as we stand and as we sing?

Ephesians 4 · chapter mention Galatians 2:20