Question 10: Human Sexuality

Greetings and welcome to the Faith Chapel Podcast. My name is Jason and I am

the pastor of Faith Chapel.

In the podcast right now, we are going through a sermon series from 2021 entitled, Questions.

The congregation of Faith Chapel was asked to submit any questions they had

about Christianity or the Bible, and the answer to those questions was given in the form of sermons.

Today, the question deals with the issue of human sexuality and its consequences.

Thanks for joining us today.

Today, we are going to be talking about a question regarding human sexuality

and what that means from our perspective as followers of.

But before we get there, I really want to revisit where we were at last week

because I praise God for where he took that sermon because that is absolutely where we need to start.

And where we stopped last week was the story of two men, a guy by the name of

Mephibosheth and a guy by the name of Stephen.

And how their goal, even though they were going through hard times,

Mephibosheth was suffering because he couldn't use his legs.

And then Stephen was suffering because he was taken prematurely.

He was taken before his time because he was praising the name of Jesus.

But what both of these men did, which I find very refreshing,

is that they put Jesus on the throne. They put the king on the throne.

Mephibosheth, when we started with him, his whole goal and objective was to

put David, a human being just like me and you, back on the throne.

But when we get to the end of Stephen's life, he sees Jesus at the right hand

in the place of honor at the right hand of God.

Basically, Stephen sees him on his throne. And when the religious leaders rush

at him, when they take him outside of the city limits and they begin hurling rocks at him,

he asks God to not hold this sin against them.

And it's because he had the rightful, Jesus was in the right place on his throne.

And when we come to talk about human sexuality, this is what we really need to comprehend.

And we really need to understand that this isn't what necessarily we want to hear.

This isn't necessarily what we want to believe, but if we are standing with

Jesus as our king, if we are letting him rule and reign from our hearts.

Then we have to let his revelation to us, his word to us, transform us and change us.

Like I was talking with the children, we need to not be kernels of popcorn anymore.

We need to be the popped, edible kind.

And that's what the Holy Spirit does to us. And that's where the word of God,

what it is meant to do in and through us.

And so expect to be challenged today because we're not going over one sin and

we're not calling one sin worse than another.

Paul takes us through a cascade of brokenness in this world.

And when we finally get to the question at the end, which we will,

but I'm putting it at the end because I want this to be the basis,

the word of God to be our foundation.

And I want Jesus to be on our throne, when we get to the question,

we'll have everything we need, I think, to really answer the question.

There's a couple of things that I want to share beforehand. One is that if you

have put Jesus on the throne of your heart, this message is for you.

Because this message is for all those who are coming to faith in Jesus.

Paul is writing Romans to a

group of believers, people who have already surrendered so much to Jesus.

And if you are not a, have yet put Jesus on the throne of your heart,

I want you to know and you to understand that this sermon will help you count

the cost of following Jesus so that

you can make a decision for yourself whether or not Jesus is worth it.

And ultimately, that's what all of us have to do.

Is Jesus worth it?

And so for you, Jesus says, he gives two examples of counting the cost.

He says, suppose a king would go out into, would have another king coming with

an invading army coming against him. He sends out his scouts.

He sees, all right, this group of people, this army has 20,000 people.

And real quickly, I know that I can muster 10,000. Can I, with my 10,000,

go to war and defeat this group?

20,000. And he has to process through this.

And when he does it, and he says, yes, I can take him, he marches out against them and he goes to war.

If he doesn't, he will send a delegation of peace to them and say,

what are the terms and conditions of not having war with you?

What are you expecting from us? What are you wanting from us?

And so the king, being a wise king, is going to really count the cost.

Can I come to victory or will I be defeated?

The second thing is a guy building a silo. And the person is not going to build

a silo if you do not have enough money to finish it.

And this silo is literally worthless if you don't have a roof over it or if it's not tall enough.

And so you have to count the cost. What's the labor? What is the material?

Is there a design fee? And do I have enough to pay for all of that because I'm

not erecting a three foot tall silo that doesn't have a roof on it because it's

not going to be worth the money and people are going to mock me and people are going to laugh at me.

And so we come to this seeing the cost of Jesus.

And if you have not put Jesus on the throne of your heart.

I applaud you for being here and I praise you for being here.

And there's no other place to be, in my opinion, than right here.

But just know that this sermon is for those of us who are saved,

who have put Jesus on the throne of our hearts.

Second thing I really want you to process through is that some of the things

you may not want to hear, some of the things might offend you. They might shock you.

And just know that that's okay because we are in a community of people who are for one another.

And if you have questions, if you have concerns, if you want to talk to me afterwards,

I encourage you to do that. But the last thing is that there are some things

in the Bible that I wish weren't in the Bible.

For instance, I just read through Acts where Paul is in front of the religious leaders.

And he, the chief priest, he says to slap Paul.

And Paul says, stop that. Who gave you the authority to break the rule of God

by ordering me to be slapped? And someone said to him, did you know you're talking to the high priest?

And Paul says, I'm sorry, I did not know he was the high priest because in Exodus,

it says, you shall not speak evil of your ruling authorities.

Now, it doesn't matter what side of the political aisle you fall on,

whether it is the current administration or the one that was about five,

six years ago, and you're opposing them, or it was the one that the previous president.

You have had plenty of opportunities to speak evil of the ruling people in front

of you. And it's so easy to do.

And yet the Bible says, don't speak evil of those in power.

Also, one that's really personal to me.

Jesus is asked, he is approached by the religious leaders and say,

all right, so John the Baptist and his disciples, they fast.

We and our disciples, we fast, but you guys don't fast.

And what I wish wasn't in the Bible was Jesus's reply, where he says,

they're not fasting now because the bridegroom is with them.

When I go, that's their time to fast.

Telling you and me, we really need to fast.

And that's hard and I don't want it, but it's what Jesus says and I need to

submit to it and I need to run after it.

And so there are things in the Bible that I wish weren't in there.

And to be honest with you, I kind of wish this passage wasn't in there.

But I think you can all be happy that I'm not the rule keeper and I'm not the rule maker.

Because there'd be a lot of chaos in this world if I was.

And so I just want you to come into this realization that sometimes the word

of God is going to pierce your heart and it's going to break you.

And this is not to throw anyone under the bus. And this is not to cast stones

that don't need to be cast.

This is really and authentically, let's open up God's word and see what it says.

And so that's what we're going to do.

Romans chapter 1, we're going to start in verse 16. But let me pray.

Romans 1 · chapter mention

God, you are infallible. You are unbroken.

You are perfect And your word is the lamp into our feet And the light into our

path And God would just ask that You will teach us today Give us the word we need to hear.

Jesus, we pray for this in your name. Amen. Paul spends the first 15 verses

of, actually the first 17 verses of Romans as an introduction.

And he's telling people who he is, that he's really eager to come and visit him.

And then he goes into these next two verses are a transitionary piece between

his introduction and then really what he wants to get to.

And so he says in verse 16, For I am not ashamed of this good news about Christ.

It is the power of God at work, saving everyone who believes.

The Jew first and also the Gentile. The good news tells us how God makes us right in his sight.

This is accomplished from start to finish by faith.

As the scriptures say, it is through faith that a righteous person has life.

And so he begins, this is the crux of his whole letter to the Romans.

If you want to know what Romans is about, it's about these two verses,

about how we are saved by grace through faith and how it is all because of God

and his mercy and his love.

This is true and right.

And he says something here at the very beginning that I wrestled with this week.

He said, for I am not ashamed.

Yes, I can stand up here today and say, I wish these following verses were not

in scripture, but I am not ashamed of them.

It would have been really easy for me to take the post-it note off the poster

board out there and to hide it before anyone came and could see it.

It would have been really easy for me to sweep this under the rug,

but this is a very important issue in our time.

And I left it up there and I'm processing through it.

And even though it's really, really hard, and even though there are people that

I know and that I care about deeply who are impacted by this in a negative way.

I cannot be ashamed of God because his power is at work in this good news.

And this good news is that you and I are able to have eternal life with God

forever when we have faith in him, when we surrender to him.

And then he goes on, verse 18, But God shows his anger, his wrath from heaven

against all sinful, wicked people who suppress the truth by their wickedness.

They know the truth about God because he has made it obvious to them.

For ever since the world was created, people have seen the earth and sky.

Through everything God made, they can clearly see his invisible qualities,

his eternal power, and divine nature. So they have no excuse for not knowing God.

And this takes out of the equation the argument about the innocent person in

Uzbekistan who has never even heard the name of Jesus.

Everybody knows because of God's invisible qualities that he is alive.

You can look at the seasons. You can look at the trees and the changing color of leaves.

You can look at how precipitation changes.

You can look at the sky, the night sky, and see all of the constellations.

And you are in awe and wonder of God's gloriousness.

Some people though, Paul says, reject this inner knowing.

They reject it, they repress it, they suppress it.

And they say, no, no, no, no, it's not, it's not God. It's not God.

This has just happened by circumstance.

But when you get to judgment day, that is not an excuse because God wrote in

every single one of us his existence.

And he shows us that he is God all throughout his creation.

This is a tough message because I, like you, know people who have rejected the

truth, who have spurned God and who walk away.

And we want them to have eternity with God.

But they don't unless they have faith in him.

He goes on, yes, they knew God, but they wouldn't worship him as God or even

give him thanks, and they began to think up foolish ideas of what God was like.

As a result, their minds became dark and confused.

Claiming to be wise, they instead became utter fools.

And instead of worshiping the glorious ever-living God, they worshiped idols

made to look like mere people and birds and animals and reptiles.

And Paul says this is the underlying sin. This is what all of us are guilty of.

And it's breaking the first two commandments.

You shall have no other God before me, and you shall not make any idol.

You should not carve it. You should not engrave anything. It shouldn't be a

poster on your wall that you bow down to and you worship, you burn incense to.

It's God and God alone.

Kyle Eidelman in his book, The Gods at War talks about the most,

the hardest God to defeat is the God of me.

And I know in my life, this is the hardest one, the hardest obstacle that I have to get over.

If I am placing Jesus on the throne in my heart, then I need to die to myself

and my desires and my passions.

I need to submit everything to him. I must surrender.

These next eight verses are riddled with brokenness and sin.

And I think it's important to realize that we're not just singling out one.

The question we'll get to does, but I'm going to read all of these verses together

because all sins are grievous in God's sight, and it's not one above another.

And so, again, this is probably going to impact someone.

It's going to impact you because there's a lot of brokenness here that we all deal with.

And so Paul goes on in verse 24 to say, So God abandoned them to do whatever

shameful things their hearts desired.

As a result, they did vile and degrading things with each other's bodies.

They traded the truth about God for a lie, so they worshiped and served the

things God created instead of the Creator Himself, who is worthy of eternal praise. Amen.

That is why God abandoned them to their shameful desires.

Even the women turned against the natural way to have sex And instead indulged

in sex with each other And the men,

instead of having normal sexual relations with women

Burned with lust for each other Men did shameful things with other men And as

a result of this sin They suffered within themselves the penalty they deserved

Since they thought it foolish to acknowledge God He abandoned them to their

foolish thinking and let them do things that should never be done.

Their lives became full of every kind of wickedness, sin, greed,

hate, envy, murder, quarreling, deception, malicious behavior, and gossip.

They are backstabbers, haters of God, insolent, proud, and boastful.

They invent new ways of sinning and they disobey their parents.

They refuse to understand, break their promises, are heartless, and have no mercy.

They know God's justice requires that those who do these things deserve to die

Yet they do them anyway Worse yet, they encourage others to do them too.

It's a long list. There are attributes on this list that apply to me even to this day.

And we got to take a breath and we got to breathe this in.

It's not easy to be confronted with our brokenness. It's not easy to be confronted with our own sin.

But it's a whole heck of a lot easier to point out, I see that in you.

Or you have two of these characteristics you need to work on.

But the person who has surrendered to God first must look at themselves and not at other people.

We have to look in our hearts.

We are broken people.

And we serve a God who saves us and redeems us from that brokenness when we believe in him.

We're going to come back to the question specifically later,

but we're going to go on because this list that Paul has just gone through is

a list for Gentile believers.

The Roman church was made up of Jewish and Gentile believers,

and there was division among the church about what they were supposed to do.

We have this tradition here.

No, we have an opposite tradition here. And so they were really quarreling with

each other, trying to figure out how to do life as Christians.

And so at the end of chapter one, the Jewish people are like,

yeah, Paul, you go get them.

You tell them that they must change. You tell them that they do all of these

things and it's disgusting and perverse.

And Paul's like, hold on a second, guys. You're not innocent either.

And so we turn to verse 21 of chapter 2, where Paul is in the midst of telling

the Jewish followers how they fall short.

Well then, if you teach others, Paul's saying, why don't you teach yourself, Jewish people?

You tell others not to steal, but do you steal?

You say it is wrong to commit adultery, But do you commit adultery?

You condemn idolatry, but do you use items stolen from pagan temples?

You are so proud of knowing the law, but you dishonor God by breaking it.

No wonder the scriptures say the Gentiles blaspheme the name of God because of you.

That is a stinging rebuke.

Is talking to the church and he's saying, no wonder the Gentiles blaspheme God.

They walk away from God because of you.

We then turn to one of the most famous passages in Romans, chapter 3, verse 23.

Romans 3:23

And Paul says this, for everyone has sinned.

We all fall short of God's glorious standard.

Yet God with undeserved kindness declares that we are righteous.

He did this through Christ Jesus when he freed us from the penalty for our sins.

For God presented Jesus as the sacrifice for sin.

People are made right with God when they believe that Jesus sacrificed his life, shedding his blood.

The sacrifice shows that God was being fair when he held back and did not punish

those who sinned in times past, for he was looking ahead and including them

in what he would do in this present time.

God did this to demonstrate his righteousness, for he himself is fair and just,

and he declares sinners to be right in his sight when they believe in Jesus.

And Paul says, guys, we are all broken individuals.

We all miss God's glorious standards.

And so, yes, people sin. And yes, people need to repent of their sins.

They need to turn from their sins. But this is the gift of God.

This should unify you. This shouldn't divide you.

We are all broken people. and we need the grace of God in our lives.

And so I want you to see where we've been at thus far in this sermon.

We start with Jesus at the throne of our hearts. We start with Jesus right here

and him dictating and us submitting to him and really running after him.

And then we went into this concept that everyone has idols in their life and

whether you want to acknowledge it or not, you do.

Whether it is the forecast, whether it is a bank account number,

whether it is a sporting team, whether it is some other person that you're trying

to court or some person that you are trying to get to date you,

we all have something in our lives that is competing with God for the throne of our hearts.

And we must surrender to Jesus and we must turn away from any other idol.

And then it goes into the specific sins. These idols lead to all sorts of different

sins, whether you're a Gentile or a Jewish person.

And then we come to faith in Jesus and we are set right.

We are no longer a popcorn kernel, but we have popped.

We have changed. We are different.

And it's all because we surrender everything about us. We surrender everything about us to Jesus.

So we get to the question. And the question today is really has some presumptions in it.

It is a question that has, in my opinion, very unfactual, scripturally based reasons behind it.

And so it might shock you if you haven't read it,

and it might offend you, but I'm putting it up here for one very important reason,

and that is because this question came from somebody that goes to Huntington

North High School who believes in these presumptions and who believes that you

and I believe these presumptions as well.

So the question is this.

Why did God create gay people just to send them to hell.

A very sobering question. And if this is the message that our youth are getting,

there is no reason that they would want to come into this building.

There's no reason that you would even want a relationship with God.

Because if this is your presumption that God just creates people and says,

all right, sorry, you drew the short straw, you're going to hell today.

That would be a very malice God, a God full of so much wickedness that I can't even comprehend it.

Remember what Paul said. You have a choice in the matter, and that choice is

faith, that choice is repentance,

that choice is turning from your decisions, from your wants, from your desires.

And putting Jesus at the center of your heart.

It is not about God saying, all right, I'm really gonna mess up that family today.

It's about us being on a broken world and us surrendering our lives to God or not.

There are no innocent people because we all know that God exists somewhere deep

down. We all know it and can perceive it.

And we all are broken and we all fall short of God's standard and everyone needs to surrender to him.

That's the first presumption of this question, and it's completely wrong.

Scripture says that God wants everyone to be saved and to come to the knowledge of his truth.

God does not create junk, and he does not create human beings to send them down to hell.

This leads to the second presumption of this question and one that i might not

share your opinion on and that is god did god create gay people is it intrinsically in their dna,

or is it something that was nurtured into them or is it a free will choice of theirs.

Where I fall on the spectrum is that it does not matter.

It does not matter if they were created gay, if there's a gene inside of them

that makes them choose that lifestyle or sends them down that lifestyle.

It doesn't matter because if Jesus is the king of your heart,

then you will submit to his teachings, then you will run after him.

Even the hard stuff, even when we want to blaspheme the ruler,

even when we don't want to fast, even when we don't want to love our enemies

and pray for those who persecute us, we are going to surrender to him and his will.

There's a string of stories in the Bible that showcase, and you can argue nature

or nurture for this story.

And to me, it doesn't matter if it was in their nature, if they were nurtured

into it, then it was woven into them.

It was part of who they were, but it was still something that was wrong that they did.

And the story starts with Abraham and Abraham on two separate occasions lied

about his wife, Sarah, being his wife. He said, no, no, no. She's just my sister.

It was a half truth and not a whole truth.

Well, guess what happened to Isaac, his son?

He lied about Rebekah being his spouse because he was afraid that the king was

going to kill him and take Rebekah to be his own wife.

Well, guess what happened to Jacob, Isaac's son?

He deceived his dad. He lied to his dad and he said, Dad, I'm Esau,

your firstborn son. Bless me.

And guess what happened to 10 of Jacob's 12 sons?

They came to their father and said, your son was eaten by a wild animal.

Every single one of them from generation to generation to generation.

And whether it was written in them, whether they were naturally doing that,

or whether it was in their nurturing that they saw their dad did that and,

oh, well, then that's what I'm going to do.

It was inside of them that drove them to do it.

And so to me, it doesn't matter because ultimately we have a choice.

We have a choice whether or not to put Jesus on the throne of our hearts.

And it's not just about one issue.

There are plenty of people who gossip still. There are plenty of people who

talk about other people behind their back.

There are people who slander other people.

There are people who disobey their parents.

There are plenty of people on this list who are still falling short of God's glorious standard.

And all of it grieves God. and we should walk away from all of it.

Immune to the brokenness. And I just want to end this way because I think it's

really important to show my own humility in a sermon such as this.

For years, I have been an idolater.

I care about me more than even Jesus some days.

And I do what I want to do. And for most of my life now, this is the way I lived.

I don't care about other people. I care about myself.

And one of the ways I showed this was my fanaticism for sports.

And I threw myself at sports. I wasn't really an athlete.

I don't have the body for that. But I was really, really heavily invested into certain sports teams.

I knew their starting players. I knew how good they were.

I was a little naive to think that they could win any game that they went into.

And it caused me a lot of grief. It caused me a lot of stress to the point that

when my team lost, I wouldn't be able to sleep at night.

Literally, I would go up into my room, especially if my team was getting blown

out, and I would wreak havoc on my room.

I would destroy parts of my room because of my anger, because I was completely this team's worshiper.

And this happened even after college. It happened even after college.

I've walked away mostly from it. I can't watch live sporting events because of it.

And so I just get my sports news from highlights.

But it is something that I need to be cognizant of.

This is something that I have not let Jesus have the throne of my life for.

And then one more that is currently still a struggle for me.

I am somebody who likes to feel good. And one of the things that makes me feel good is food.

As I said, this is not an athlete's body. And it didn't happen by just mere coincidence.

I would, and I still do on occasion, seek comfort from food.

Instead of running to God, instead of running to Him.

Finding my joy and my peace and my comfort in him.

It's not something I'm proud of. And honestly, it's something I've tried to hide, but it is an issue.

And so I want you to hear those stories to know that no one is perfect.

And I want you to hear those stories because if you are struggling with one

of the things that we talked about and you felt like you have surrendered your whole heart to Jesus,

then know that you're gonna struggle with some sort of brokenness,

with some sort of failure the rest of your life.

But the key is to get yourself back up, to confess before God and to run to him.

Because it doesn't matter to me if I was ingrained in that,

and especially in having food as an idol in my life, in my house,

it doesn't matter to me if it's just like a genetic thing where I am prone to

become addicted to things.

It doesn't matter to me.

What matters to me is whether or not I put Jesus on the throne of my heart.

And so the question is simply answered by this statement.

God does not create people to go to hell, to spend eternity away from him.

And it doesn't matter what sin you have, what sin you're dealing with.

What matters is what Jesus says about it and how you surrender it to him.

And I think that is a much more life-giving message than the message that some

people perceive that the church believes.

Is worth surrendering it to, that God is worth the cost.

Yes, he asks a lot of us. He asks so much of us, but he is worth it. Let me pray.

Lord, we come before you today and we just acknowledge that we are all broken,

that we are all sinful, and that we all fall short of your standard.

And we pray, Father, for your Spirit to be inside of us, remaking us.

We no longer want to be a kernel of popcorn. We want to be the popped kind.

We want you to change us. We want you to remake us into the image of your Son.

And Father, it's going to be hard. Popcorn goes through a heating process,

whether it's in the microwave or on the stove, to become its new self.

And so it's going to be hard for us and surround us with people who will encourage

us, surround us with people who will build us up in giving away the idols of our lives.

So that ultimately, Father, you become the king of us.

Jesus, we ask this in your name. Amen.

Thank you again for joining us in our discussion of the issues and consequences of human sexuality.

This series was designed to promote questions in and amongst followers of Jesus.

Remember, it is good to ask questions. Questions show you want to learn.

Be curious and always ask questions. In our next episode, we will look at the

validity and reason of why we lay hands on people when we pray for them. Have a great week.