Cancelled Conversations: In Service Question and Answer with Pastor Clayton Tyner

Welcome to the MetaCurch podcast.

My name's Clayton.

I'm the pastor here at MetaCurch.

And my hope is that today's podcast finds you at the perfect time in your life that God uses it to inspire and enlighten you.

I hope that you enjoy today's message.

I want to welcome you to the last week of our Canceled Conversations series.

If you're new with us, my name is Clayton.

I'm the lead pastor here.

So glad you joined us, as well as everyone who has joined us online.

As mentioned, today is going to be a little bit different.

I have a shorter sermon than I've had in the rest of this series.

And then whatever time we have left, we're going to go into a QA where you ask the questions, and I'm going to do my best to bring some biblical answers.

We have that number up on the screen.

We'll bring that up again when it's time for question and answer to remind you kind of the subjects that we covered that you can ask your questions around.

Throughout this series, we have talked about saving our soul and what that means in 1 Peter.

We've talked about the issues of abortion, sex, sexuality, as well as transgenderism.

What we did in this script in this series is we looked at scripture to get clear answers to these very hot topics.

Then we ran them through a template that we built in week one.

In week one, we learned the reality that there is nothing keeping us from coming to Jesus and receiving eternal life.

That all of the barriers between us and God were broken down and destroyed by the work that Jesus did by coming to earth, dying on the cross, and rising again.

And yet, too many Christians are believing as if once they receive eternal life, that their job is just to sit back and wait to go to heaven someday.

When in fact we are called to believe in Jesus and then with this new life to follow Jesus.

Believing in Jesus is absolutely free.

You can't earn it, you can't lose it.

Jesus did all of the work he asks that we believe in who he is and what he has done.

Following Jesus might just cost you everything.

It's a high call, a call to suffer for the sake of the world around you and for the glory of God.

This is how we've said it all series long.

The invitation to believe in Jesus is to come to the cross and to gain eternal life.

The invitation to follow Jesus is to carry your cross and to die to yourself.

Jesus said it this way in Matthew 16.

If anyone wants to follow me, let him deny himself, take up his cross, and only then are you accurately prepared to follow Jesus?

And so what we've done every week is we've gotten clear on what scripture says about all of these hot topics, and then we've asked ourselves the same questions, knowing what scripture says about this topic, what does it mean to deny myself, and what cross or crosses do I need to carry?

In other words, what will it actually mean to follow Jesus in light of these cultural hot topics?

What we're gonna do today is I wanna briefly cover the biggest thing in our culture that I believe could keep you from following through on these two questions and therefore following through on actually following Jesus.

My topic today is relative versus absolute.

Relative versus absolute.

Would you pray with me?

Jesus, we love you and we're amazed by your great love for us.

We thank you for loving us enough to meet us exactly where we are.

That when we come to the cross, it doesn't matter where we've been or what we've done.

All that matters is the work that you've done because of your great love for us.

And at the same time, we recognize that you love us enough not just to meet us where we are, but you love us too much to leave us where we are.

And you call us into the highest quality of life we can experience following you and into a life that will be rewarded greatly on the other side of this life.

And so help us as we wrap up this series, give us clarity, give us grace in Jesus' name.

And everyone said, Amen.

When Jesus was on earth, he talked constantly about truth and the critical importance of truth.

For example, this is what he told his disciples in John chapter 8.

John 8 · chapter mention

Jesus said to the Jews who believed in him, if you continue in my word, then you really are my disciples.

You will know the truth, and here's the promise the truth will set you free.

Jesus went further than that and told his disciples six chapters later, I am the way, I am the truth, and I am the life.

No one comes to the Father except through me.

Now, not only is that a claim of the exclusivity of Jesus, there's no other way to God except through belief in Jesus.

It's also a claim that the truth is not just something to be known in the abstract, it is something that is embodied in the person of Jesus Himself.

Scripture also makes clear that the truth was captured and protected for us in the Word of God, the scriptures themselves.

For example, Paul wrote to the church in Ephesus and said, In Jesus, you also were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and when you believed.

Again and again, from Jesus to the apostles, it is clear that to know God and to follow Jesus, we must seek the truth and submit to the truth.

And I want to suggest in our culture today, to steady ourselves, we must put the emphasis on the article.

In other words, a focus on the truth.

And here's why I put the emphasis on the truth, because it makes it an absolute statement.

The scriptural revelation is that there is, in fact, absolute objective truth that exists, and that the truth is the standard all humanity will be held to at the end of our lives.

Now, this stands in stark contrast to our current culture.

And the current cultural worldview is that all truth is relative.

You can't hold me to any of your standards.

I get to discover my own truth and I get to live out my own truth.

There is no objective truth that all of us must be held to.

Let me quickly explain relative versus absolute truth.

Relative truth, which is what our culture clings to, is true only in comparison to other things, or relative truth is based on your internal thoughts, your internal perspectives, and your internal beliefs.

So whatever you decide inside of yourself is what determines whether something is true.

It's not based on the objective reality outside of you.

In comparison, absolute or objective truth is true in all times, in all places, and in all circumstances, regardless of your internal thoughts, perspectives, or beliefs.

So let's try this out.

Here's a pop quiz.

Wimby, the San Antonio Spurs newest tall, which thank God for Wimby, because we can't win a game, and this is the only way Spurs fans are sleeping at night.

So thank God for Wimby.

And if you don't know who Wimby is and you live in San Antonio, move, okay, move to Austin.

Just get out.

No, I'm just kidding.

We love you and everybody's welcome here or whatever.

But Wimby, okay, so here's the quiz.

Wimby, the newest star of the San Antonio Spurs, Wimby is tall.

Is that an absolute truth or is that a relative truth?

Who thinks it's relative?

And who thinks it's absolute?

Okay, the majority of people think absolute.

Um, well, Wimby is tall, but not compared to a mountain.

Not compared to the Tower of America.

The statement, Wimby is tall, is relative, because it can change depending on what he's compared to.

Now, if I slightly change it and I say Wimby is a tall human being, all of a sudden we can do a quick search, the average height of human beings across the planet, and we can know objectively that Wimby is a tall human being, is an absolutely true statement.

That compared doesn't matter.

He is just tall.

That is a fact among human beings.

So I do that little quiz just to show that the difference between relative and absolute can be nuanced, but ultimately, if you're willing to pay attention, it's not difficult to understand.

Our world simply ceases to function without absolute truth.

Even language requires on absolutes for us to be able to communicate with each other.

At the end of the music here on Sundays, um, when we tell you to sit down in the chairs, sit means something, and down means something, and chairs mean something.

If all truth is just relative, then sit can mean jump, and down can mean sideways, and chairs can mean people.

And all of a sudden, at the end of our music set, when we tell you to sit down in the chairs, instead you jump sideways on your neighbors, right?

There's mayhem all of a sudden in the building.

And it's a silly example, but it actually gets to the heart of what our culture is building its foundation on.

This is precisely what modern philosophers are suggesting.

Something called postmodern thought has now shaped much of the West.

And postmodernism even says we can't really know the true definition of words or phrases because nothing has an absolute standard.

Everything is relative.

You need to know first and foremost that relativism is an atheist worldview.

In fact, atheism forces relativism because there is nothing transcendent, which means outside of us, to set a standard for what we can call truth.

Even on issues of ethics or morality, if you take God out of the equation and all you're left with is the human mind, then at best we come to cultural consensus among ourselves about what is moral and ethical.

And for us to try and impose our morality on anybody else would simply be immoral in itself because there's no standard outside of us setting that.

On Christianity, there must be objective truth because Christianity believes in God.

A God who is timeless, spaceless, immaterial, immensely powerful, personal, and perfect.

Because there is something transcendent, and that just means outside of us, there is a standard that is set and we ground truth in God.

And because God is unchanging, truth is unchanging, which means we can claim that there is absolute truth.

Now, the reality is most atheists, even the ones who claim all truth is relative, live very much as if there is objective truth.

It really comes down to atheist philosophers to get intellectually honest enough to tell us what atheism really suggests.

For example, Rob Dreher, he forces this point home in his book, Live Not by Lies.

Live Not by Lies, and by lies he means the lies of religion and Christianity.

He says this the essence of modernity is to deny that there are any transcendent stories, structures, habits, or beliefs to which individuals must submit, and that should bind our conduct.

To be modern is to be free to choose.

What is chosen does not matter.

The meaning is in the choice itself.

There is no sacred order, no other world, no fixed virtues, no permanent truths.

It's all relative.

There is only here and now, and the eternal flame of human desire, volo ergo sum, I want, therefore I am.

This is an intellectually honest position of a world that does not have God to set an objective truth for humanity.

He says what is chosen does not matter.

In other words, whether you choose love or hate, to give life or to kill, to exercise charity or to steal, all that matters is the choice itself and that you are following your internal desires.

It's truly all relative.

Now, even these great minds, these atheist philosophers, although they claim and seek to live by the fact that there is no objective truth, even they hold to it when push comes to show.

If you were to steal the wallet or slash the tires or punch an atheist philosopher in the nose, they would objectively believe that what you did was absolutely wrong.

Atheists who claim to relativism still live their lives practically as if there are objective truths.

And Christians who believe that there are objective truths often live our lives as if we can approach the truths of God with relativism.

One of the most famous atheists of the last 100 years, Bertrand Russell, wrote this: that man is the product of causes which had no provision of the end they were achieving, that his origin, his growth, his hopes and fears, his loves and his beliefs are but the outcome of accidental collocations of atoms, that no fire, no heroism, no intensity of thought and feeling can preserve an individual's life beyond the grave.

That all the labors of the ages, all the devotion, all the inspiration, all the noonday brightness of human genius are destined to extinction in the vast death of the solar system, and that the whole temple of man's achievement must inevitably be buried beneath the debris of a universe in ruins.

All these things, if not quite beyond dispute, are yet so nearly certain that no philosophy which rejects them can hope to stand.

He's being honest.

On atheism, no purpose, no hope, no meaning, no truth.

Why does this matter for us?

Part of following Jesus is seeking the truth and submitting to the truth, an absolute standard for how our life will be judged that is established in our unchanging God and in his revealed word.

James, the half-brother of Jesus, says this in the New Testament: Don't be deceived, my dear brothers and sisters.

Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, who does not change like shifting shadows.

Our God is the same yesterday and today and forever.

He is the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end.

He does not change, and therefore his truth is absolute.

Here's the danger for Christians in a world that has fully embraced relativism.

I'm not too concerned that believers are going to fully cling to the elimination of truth from their life or fall into some form of atheistic nihilism.

My concern is that we will switch back and forth between what is absolute and what is relative whenever the cost of submitting to the truth becomes too high.

In Matthew's gospel, we see a confrontation between Jesus and the religious leaders.

These men were absolutists as long as it worked in their favor.

Watch what happens when they get trapped.

In Matthew 21, it says, When Jesus entered the temple, the chief priests and the elders of the people came to him as he was teaching and said, By what authority are you doing these things?

Who gave you this authority?

And Jesus answered them, I will also ask you one question.

And if you answer it for me, then I will tell you by what authority I do these things.

And here's the question: Did John's baptism come from heaven, or was it of human origin?

Let me give you a little bit of backstory so you can understand what's happening.

John the Baptist was Jesus' cousin who was sent by God to prepare the way for Christ.

And the majority of just the people of Israel believed that John was a prophet sent from God.

And yet, John was a threat to the power of the religious leaders, so they hated John.

They know what they believe about John, but they feel trapped.

And so in verse, the end of verse 25, it says they discussed it amongst themselves.

And pay attention to their discussion.

Here's what they said.

If we say John's from heaven, Jesus will say to us, then why didn't you believe him?

But if we say John was just of human origin, we're afraid of the crowd.

Because everyone considers John to be a prophet.

So they answered Jesus.

We don't know.

Now they knew exactly what they believed.

But the cost of letting people know what they believed, standing and submitting to the truth that they had decided upon would cost them.

If they held their convictions, the crowd might turn on them.

If they admitted the actual truth, that John was a prophet from God, they would expose themselves as hypocrites.

So all of a sudden the truth was inconvenient, and they took the coward's way out.

Trading in the truth for what was best for them in that moment.

That is going to be one of the primary lures and temptations for believers in Jesus in our world today.

A world that says there is no absolute truth.

It's all relative.

You can make your own truth.

And while you know in your mind and in your heart as a believer in Jesus, that that simply isn't true, that God's a standard for truth, and He's revealed that truth and how we should live in light of it in the Word of God, and we're bound to that.

And to follow Jesus, we must submit to that.

Why you know that?

When the cost of following Jesus becomes very high, in our culture it would be very simple to fall into temporary, convenient relativity.

This was in fact a part of the first line and the first sin that we see in scripture.

In Genesis 3, this is a part of the creation narrative.

It says, Now the serpent was the most cunning of all the wild animals that the Lord God had made, and he said to the woman, Did God really say that you can't eat from any tree in the garden?

Did God really say?

This is like the same temptation that comes to the forefront whenever we are stuck between what God has revealed and what we desire.

Will God really care?

Does this 2,000-year-old scripture really apply today?

Is this really that big of a deal?

In verse 6, the woman saw that the tree was good for food and delightful to look at and desirable for obtaining wisdom, and so she took some of its fruit and ate it.

And she gave some to her husband who was with her, and he ate it.

Adam was told the objective, absolute truth by God Himself.

Eve was given that direct revelation for Adam.

Both of them walked and talked with God in the garden.

But they decided to slip into temporary relativism because the fruit looked good, delightful, desirable.

Satan's role was to get their eyes off of the truth and to create a new truth wholly within themselves.

The temptation was something like, what do you think, Eve?

Would God really hold out on you like that?

I thought he loved you.

Would God not want you to have something that you desire?

Don't you already kind of know what's best for yourself?

Would God really ask you to suffer in order to follow him?

What kind of a loving God would have you deny yourself of these things that tempt you?

C.S.

Lewis famously said, if you look for truth, you might find comfort in the end.

But if you just look for comfort, you will not get comfort or truth.

Only soft soap and wishful thinking to begin.

And in the end, despair.

Another way of quoting Jesus, you will know the truth, and it is the truth that will set you free.

There is no such thing as Christian relativism.

Our morals, ethics, worldviews, and ideology are grounded in the absolute standard of our unchanging God and lived out by denying ourselves, picking up our crosses, submitting to the word of truth, and following Jesus.

In week one of this series, we went through the Apostle Peter's first letter in the New Testament.

Today we're gonna book in to close this series by looking at his second letter.

And this letter largely is warning against corruption that's being brought in by false teachers.

In 2 Peter 2, starting in verse 17, he describes these false teachers like this: These people are springs without water, mists driven by a storm.

The gloom of darkness has been reserved for them.

For by uttering boastful, empty words, they seduce with fleshly desires and debauchery people who have barely escaped from those who live in error.

These false teachers, Peter says, manipulate the truth and seduce immature believers with a promise that they can both follow Jesus and embrace their own fleshly sinful desires.

He tries to, these false teachers try to convince them that they can submit to the truth while simultaneously trying to live out my truth.

And here's how Peter responds to that.

He says they promise them freedom, but they themselves are slaves of corruption, since people are enslaved to whatever defeats them.

And in our relativistic culture, they will convince you that you don't have to submit over some ancient oppressive ideas, some random Jewish carpenter 2,000 years ago talked about.

You don't have to be held under the sway of Christianity.

You can live your own life.

You know what's best for you.

You can follow your own desires, you can follow your own heart, you can create your own truth.

They promised Freedom.

And if you live long enough and you go astray of God long enough, what you will find is the end of the paths that the world offers you, promising you all your greatest desires and dreams.

You will end up emptier and lonelier and less fulfilled even than where you started.

And that's exactly what Peter says next.

He says, For if having escaped the world's impurity through the knowledge of the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, they are again entangled in these things and defeated.

The last state is worse than the first.

In other words, if you come to the cross and believe and receive eternal life, something you cannot earn, and once you have it, you cannot lose.

But instead of taking this new life and following Jesus into the adventure of a lifetime, you go right back and become entangled in the things of this world where you started, that your experience during your time on earth will be worse for you than it was before you even came to Christ.

Now you're living apart from Christ with the conviction of the Holy Spirit still inside of you.

Here is where we live as Christians.

God is our standard of truth.

Jesus is the embodiment of that truth.

Scripture reveals how we should live in light of that truth, which means that we are responsible for following Jesus by seeking the truth and submitting to the truth.

The point of the series was to get clear on what scripture reveals about the most contentious topics of our day.

And now that we're clear, we have sought the truth, we must submit to the truth.

And when God calls you into a season that will cause suffering, will you cling to the truth and submit to it?

Or will you fall into relativism in order to find your way out?

We want to be as clear as we can possibly be, and so we decided to spend the time that we have left today in the last day of our series with question and answer.

And so we're gonna put the phone number back on the screen and we're gonna kind of set the stage up a little bit differently.

And I wanna give some disclaimers about this.

Number one, never done this before at Metachurch, okay?

So not sure exactly how it's gonna go.

We did it at the 9:45.

Your questions will come in.

I'll see them.

You will remain anonymous, so you don't have to worry about that.

Nobody's getting called out.

Um, there's gonna be like some awkward pauses because I have to just stop and read your questions, all right?

Um, and and there's gonna be some questions I might not know exactly how to answer, and I'm not gonna get to every question.

But my hope is that we can come out with as much clarity as possible.

Everyone okay with that?

This is where you say yes or no.

Everyone okay with that?

Yes, good.

Okay.

So it's gonna take a second for your questions to start coming in, but um, we've had some questions show up again and again and again, and there were emails that came in with consistent threads.

And so I want to start by just acknowledging a few of the things we didn't have time to talk about on stage that we've heard throughout the last few weeks.

Um, remember, we we've covered saving your soul, abortion, sex, sexuality, which also included questions about marriage and divorce, as well as transgenderism.

Um, one of the questions around abortion that we started getting right after that talk on week two is something that I did not address from stage on purpose, I just didn't have time, um, which to remind you, Scripture's view of abortion is that God always prioritizes life.

And what we see both in Scripture and what, regardless of what you've been told, is not controversial at all scientifically, is that life does begin at conception.

A unique human being with a unique set of DNA starts as soon as sperm fertilizes egg and conception begins.

The question then becomes which right is prioritized the life of the child or the liberty of the woman who is not interested in having that child.

And what we see is that these inherent rights that we believe in in the West are derived from scripture.

The rights that we all know, enumerated in the Declaration of Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness.

Those are not co-equal rights, they are concentric rights.

Meaning pursuing happiness, pursuing a fulfilling life requires liberty.

Liberty requires life, which makes life the most important of all of the rights.

And so, even in devastatingly difficult situations, and many times when abortion is on the table, these are very painful, heartbreaking situations that, as God's people, we should be standing in the gap for and our hearts should break for.

Still, the truth of scripture says the life of the child is prioritized over the liberty of the woman and of the father and the hardships that that may bring.

Now, the argument for pro-choice that we didn't have time to cover is the life of the mother.

What about when there is a situation medically where the life of the mother is at risk?

And so let me answer that.

But first, let me tell you the problem with the question.

The problem with the question, like every topic we've covered, is we are so politically polarized, we don't know how to talk about these things without just trying to win an argument instead of finding the truth, right?

And so, because we want to win the argument, both sides, pro-choice and pro-life, have taken the question of the life of the mother to the extremes.

The extreme on the pro-life side would say the life of the mother is never truly at risk to the point that you would even have to make that decision, which is obviously not true.

The problem on the pro-choice side is they have expanded the umbrella of what life of the mother means so drastically that it basically means everything.

So they'll say something like if there is any chance of the mother dying while giving birth, then that's the life of the mother.

Well, here's something you need to know.

Every time a woman gives birth, there is greater than a 0% chance of her dying.

That's just part of giving birth.

In other words, it's all-encompassing.

The most radical forms of this argument on the pro-choice side will extend it out all the way to a hypothetical scenario where a mother becomes depressed postpartum and says the life of the mother could be at risk.

So you expand it so broadly or so narrowly that we're no longer having a genuine conversation and trying to come to the truth.

If life of the mother actually means that the mortality of the mother is at risk, then what you have to do is number one, fight, if at all possible, to preserve both lives.

That should be the goal.

If that is not available, then we are free to make the most specifically helpful medical decision possible.

And that could mean losing the baby in the process, and that should break our hearts, but we're in a fallen world where bad things happen, and truly, if the life of the mother is at risk, you should try to save that baby at all possible, but you then have to make an informed medical decision.

And if you lose the baby in that process, truly the life of the mother's at risk, that is not a sin, and you do not have to live with the guilt of that for the rest of your life.

Does that make sense?

Nod your head if that makes at least somewhat sense.

Good.

Another question that has come up is under the conversation we had around transgenderism, and one of the big arguments for transgenderism today is the reality of intersex people.

Now, if you don't know, intersex people are people who are born with genetic anomalies where they have some form of both male and female sexual characteristics anatomically.

Now, this is very rare, and the conversation goes something like this.

I never believed in transgenderism, but then I learned about intersex people, and now that I know there are intersex people, I realize that there are more than two genders.

Now, there's several, this is a very, very common argument.

There's a few things that are wrong with that.

Number one, it implies, again, the separation of sex and gender.

If you didn't hear the full conversation about transgenderism, you can go back on YouTube and watch that.

Today we talk about biological sex as a dimorphic reality with two unique sexual categories of male and female.

But today we say gender is socially constructed.

Uh in 2023, they're saying there are as many as 107 genders to where you can be transgender or non-binary.

Here's the problem.

On the pro-transgender side of the argument, they will say up to 2% of people are intersex.

That's a lot, two out of every 100.

Um, on the side that argues against transgenderism, they'll say that's wrong.0017% of people are intersex.

And like most things, where we can't have just a freaking honest conversation in our society, both sides are actually right.

The 2% number are all cases of intersex.

There's 16 different conditions that are under the umbrella of intersex conditions.

Those 2%, 99.0083% of those show no ambiguity between whether the person is male or female.

As a matter of fact, in many cases of intersex conditions, people go their entire life not knowing they have it.

It's actually quite common for someone to be 30, 40, 60 years old and realize they have a slight genetic anomaly that they are actually intersex.

It is the number 0.0017 where there is some ambiguity.

For example, someone born with both male and female genitalia.

This still is not an argument for transgenderism.

Having both a male and female genitalia is an exception that proves the rule.

That doesn't magically make a third sex.

What it does is show you have both qualities of our dimorphic categories.

There are all kinds of anomalies in people's births.

Some people are born with six fingers on a hand, some people are born with four fingers on a hand.

But what we say is hands have five fingers because we don't make our decisions out of the exceptions, we make our decisions out of the rules.

Does that make sense?

You gotta like nod your head or something so that I can keep going.

Good.

Uh we'll keep going.

Um, someone asks, can you lose your salvation?

No, you cannot.

Watch week one, you absolutely cannot.

Your salvation is something you don't earn, and therefore you cannot lose it.

What you can lose is the opportunity to live the life that God created you to live, a life of purpose and fulfillment, and you can miss out on the fullness of reward as you move into your eternal life.

This question says, Does God approve of same-sex marriage within his eyes?

And then we have a couple other questions uh about divorce and the grounds for divorce and whether God recognizes divorce.

So let me kind of categorize those together and try to answer this question.

Um, marriage, biblically, as we got really clear on in week three, is defined biblical marriage as one man and one woman in a covenant for life.

That is how the Bible very carefully defines marriage.

And in God's eyes, anything other than that is not recognized by God as a marriage.

It might be recognized by the state, it might be recognized by the country, it is not recognized by God.

That is what the Bible shows us.

Also, you don't hear that taught a lot, and you don't hear a lot talked about divorce.

We talked about divorce in week three as well.

Now, Scripture gives three and only three carve-outs for divorce, again, between a biblical marriage of one man and one woman.

And the divorce is about the for life.

Like this is a union that is supposed to be forever and ever.

Marriage is a covenant.

God makes covenants with his people.

You can't lose your salvation because salvation is a covenant between you and God, and God never, ever, ever breaks his covenants and he expects the same as us.

And yet, in scripture, he gives us these three, I call them grace carve-outs.

It is affair, abuse, and abandonment.

Now, two of those are somewhat obvious.

If someone is having an affair, that is obvious what's going on there.

There's nuance there, but it's somewhat obvious.

Abandonment is pretty obvious.

They have abandoned you, they're no longer there.

The one that gets abused is abuse.

And abuse is a high threshold, but it's there for a reason.

You do not have to live being abused.

If you are being physically abused, God does not demand that you stay and just continue to get abused.

He's given you a grace carve out.

But let me say, the same way we take life of a mother and we expand it out to mean everything under the sun, you can't say, I always want to go to Chili's and he always wants to go to Applebee's, I'm being abused, you know, like that's not fair.

And what that actually is, is stepping out of the absolute truth of God and trying to wiggle in to some relativity in order to get out of a situation you don't want to be in.

And so here's the other truth that is very clearly stated by both Jesus and other writers of the New Testament.

If you divorce for any reasons outside of affair, abandonment, and abuse, the biblical expectation is for you to be single and celibate for the rest of your life.

That's uncomfortable to talk about, and it's like every week we've looked at these hot topic issues, and we've asked, what does it mean to deny myself and what does it mean to carry my cross?

And all different categories of people and experience of life have gone, that's a high cost.

And the same is true if you have divorced outside of the boundaries of what divorce is allowed in Scripture.

And what Jesus says very clearly is if you divorce outside of those reasons, then you are committing adultery because in God's eyes, you never had the right to break your covenant.

And so, look, the question that I got quite a few times I've seen it here as well is how do we approach these conversations with the world?

Or like, what right do we have to even talk to people about this?

Or, you know, kind of the whole idea of cultural relativism, which is like, who are we to put our morals and ethics on everybody else?

And furthermore, if the world really does embrace relativism, how do we even have these conversations with them in the first place?

And so I want to make a distinction that's really important.

There is a distinction between how we handle these things inside the church with other believers and how we handle these things outside of the faith with non-believers.

Inside of the faith, there's an expectation in scripture that each of us hold our brothers and sisters in Christ accountable.

If we really believe what scripture says, then not only if someone is purposefully going astray from Christ, not only are they missing out on the life they were created for here, but they are missing out on reward at the judgment seat someday.

If someone has decided to live a part of their life apart from Christ, it is unkind as a brother and sister in Christ to not hold them accountable.

It is unkind to not call them, to change their mind.

That's what scripture calls repentance.

As a matter of fact, James, the half-brother of Jesus, in the fifth chapter, I believe it's verse 19 and 20, he says, if a brother or sister has gone astray and you go bring them back to the faith, you have saved their life and maybe even kept them from death.

It's part of our call.

Jesus in Matthew's gospel outlines how to do this.

Now, this, let me be very clear again.

This is from believer to believer.

You go and you approach them lovingly, remembering you are a sinner as well.

You let them know you care about them, and because you care about them, you see a way they have gone astray from God and you're concerned about it.

If they reject you, if they're gonna do their own thing, if they're arrogant about their sin, Jesus says you come back with a couple other Christians who know them, who have equity with them.

And there's power in numbers.

And you all share how you're willing to intervene because you care about them and because eternity is real and it's coming.

And our lives were bought at the cost of Jesus' life, and we should submit to him.

And then it says, if they still will not, then you bring in a leader of the church.

Now, I want to make something very clear.

This is not because somebody is sinning.

This is someone who has wandered from the truth.

What that means is they are sinning habitually, and they know they're sinning, and they know it's against God, and they don't care.

They look, we're going to struggle to uphold God's law.

None of us will do it perfectly.

In 1 John, it says, if you say you are without sin, then you are a liar.

We all struggle with sin.

And there is a difference with struggling under sin, clinging to the absolute truth of God's word, falling short of it, repenting, bringing in accountability, trying to become more and more like Jesus every day.

There's a huge difference in that, and in saying, I know what it says, and I know what God has asked, and I'm not gonna do it.

I know what it means to deny myself, I know what it means to carry my cross, I'm not going to do it.

As long as we are seeking and submitting to God, God can use us in incredible, incredible ways, despite how far we fall short every day.

It is when we say, God, I know what you've asked, I'm just not going to do it, that we put ourselves in significant danger, and a loving brother or sister should come and lovingly bring us back to the root of our faith.

Okay, all of that is inside of the church, with fellow believers.

The conversation with how we deal with these, with people outside of the faith is a completely different conversation.

As a matter of fact, scripture says that those who are outside of the faith, that all that we believe is foolishness to them.

Not only that, but we have already said that we live in a relativistic culture.

We live in a culture that is post-Christian, pre-pagan.

They don't believe in a God.

And so, you know, it's like, what is the reason to not follow every desire I have?

What is the reason to not do drugs?

Drugs are fun, you know?

What is the reason to not have promiscuous sex with whoever I want?

Promiscuous sex is fun.

Like, if I don't believe in your God and there is no objective standard, you can't hold me to a standard I don't believe in.

So when it comes to people outside of the faith, our first and primary purpose is to introduce them to Jesus and how Jesus could change their life.

We are to be an example to them.

That doesn't mean we don't have these conversations.

As a matter of fact, people who reject absolute truth, one of the great ways to get them to consider God is to very calmly and lovingly engage them in a conversation about that.

And it's an argument that's actually pretty easy to have.

Because when someone says there is no objective truth, they're making an objective truth claim.

They're saying, absolutely, there is no absolute truth.

And when you engage people on these conversations and just ask kind questions about how they decide what is right and wrong and where they ground their morality, sometimes it can crack the door open to them wondering maybe if there is something transcendent.

Our goal is not to take these issues and to leverage them as a culture war to be won.

We are to approach the world with a gospel to be spread.

The accountability and discipline is inside of the church with believers.

The love and evangelism is to those outside.

Okay, nod your head so I can move on because I spent a lot of time on that.

Everybody, good?

Somewhat good?

Good.

All right.

Okay, I'm gonna have to read a few of these.

Um this is the part where we did uh Jeopardy music last time because okay, good.

I have a couple.

These are hard ones.

Um so this is another question uh about abortion, and it's it's very emotionally significant because it should be, and it's incredibly heartbreaking.

And I don't know if this is a hypothetical or if it's real, and if it's real at all, um, number one, I hope that you are connected to one of our pastors here and that we're walking through this with you.

And if it's a hypothetical, then that's fine too.

Um something like if a little girl was raped by a family member, would we expect a 10-year-old girl to have and it's incestual?

So it's like all it's all the things.

It's potentially dangerous, it's rape, and it's incest.

It's all of all of the fringe cases in one.

Um, for them to have an abortion, would it be considered a sin?

There is actually a biblical principle in the conversation of rape and abortion.

And that biblical principle, it's found in the Old Testament, and it says clearly that the child will not hold the judgment of the father's sin.

When it comes to rape of any kind, and especially rape of a child or a minor, um for me, it's hard to imagine too harsh of a sentence for that.

We should be disincentivizing this with the legal system in the most pointed ways possible.

The question is does the child pay the price for that sin?

And as absolutely heartbreaking of a situation as this is, unless at 10 years old, There is a chance that you could put the little girl's life in danger, like actual her mortality in danger if she were to give birth.

And so that goes back to our early question.

But if that is not the case, then the expectation is that we prioritize that life.

And really, when it comes down to the very, very base of this, the question is do we trust God with these extremely difficult decisions?

And what you would be asking your 10-year-old to do is to carry an unbelievably significant cross.

And everything we believe says that God will bless her beyond measure in her life to come.

Very difficult, and as people of faith, we should stand by that in every single circumstance.

And these are the moments, you know, even less extreme, you're just 16 years old and you get pregnant and you have your whole life ahead of you.

These are the moments where at 15 years old, when you were very certain about what God's word said about the prioritization of life, that when it actually happens, the temptation towards relativism for your circumstance comes very, very strong.

And our expectation is to submit to God's word no matter what.

I've had a few questions about this, whether or not suicide is an unforgivable sin.

There's a lot of question around this, and there are different um denominations inside Christianity who believe differently about this.

What we see clearly, and here's a biblical principle for you to remember.

Um, it is a mistake to interpret confusing passages uh as the lens for clear passages.

Proper interpretation takes what is clear in scripture and uses that as the lens to interpret what is unclear.

Um, things like the unforgivable sins spoken about in the gospels, um, where it says that we blaspheme the Holy Spirit.

That's the only unforgivable sin, and it's a very difficult thing to understand exactly what that passage means.

But what is clear in Scripture is if you have believed in Jesus, you cannot lose your salvation.

Period.

If someone has put their faith in Jesus and then takes their own life, they will have eternal life.

They will have shortchanged the life they were created to live and shortchanged their experience of reward in eternity.

Suicide, in the realest sense, is playing God in a way that we are never intended to.

But will they be disowned by their heavenly father?

Uh, the answer is unequivocally no.

Um there are several questions about uh whether or not people are born gay.

And if they are, why would God allow you to be born same-sex attracted if his requirement for us is that marriage only fits in this very small frame?

And really, this goes to a much broader question of in our world where from the garden on we have fallen into chaos and into sin.

Um, why are we born with all kinds of things that make it more and more difficult to fall under what Jesus has asked us to submit to?

Some people are born genetically disposed to certain addictions, some people are born with physical impairments, some people are born with psychological impairments.

We have all kinds of issues, and many of those issues are there all the way from birth in the area of sex and sexuality and relationships and all kinds of things that scripture speaks to.

And the reality is we live in a world where things are not all exactly what they are supposed to be.

And when it comes to the sexual front, people are not just born same-sex uh attracted, but uh what which is a question that, if you think is a simple question, you're not paying attention or you've fallen into an ideological bubble.

Here's what I say.

Whether or not someone is born gay, what we know, we've we've looked through the whole entire human genome, we haven't found a gay gene, I am not same-sex attracted, and I'm actually not a scientist.

And so if someone tells me they were born same-sex attracted, I'm just going to take their word for it.

At the end of the day, what matters is whether or not you're gonna submit to what God has asked.

And in moral relativism, what we know about sexual desire in humanity is it's virtually unbounded.

Almost all males are born with a sexual libido that far outpaces our scriptural demand.

As I said in week three, you'd be hard-pressed to find a 19-year-old man just living out in our culture whose dream desire for his life is to find and only have sex with one woman for the rest of his life.

Most men have very, very different desires for how their sexual life plays out.

Why wouldn't God create us just designed to only ever be attracted sexually to one person who is our life soul partner that we marry and go along with forever?

I don't know exactly the answer to that.

What I do know is what we're called to do about it.

And in relativism, you can just start numbering the desires and the intentions that people have and what they want for their life, and as you number it, you'll never stop.

It's not actually infinite, but it's near infinite.

The desires of human beings are unbounded.

And so if there is no God, then that's reality.

Our desires are unbounded, and we decide with some cultural consensus for us which ones are allowed and which ones are not.

And it's just our opinion.

We might decide for our culture in this time that stealing, theft, should be outlawed.

Did you know there are cultures in other countries today where stealing is just seen as a part of the society, not something that's immoral.

We have no right without a transcendent God giving us a transcendent law to say that they're wrong and we're right about that.

Sexually, there are other countries and other places whose age of consent is so low it would infuriate you.

If there is a God, we can make a case for objectively while that's wrong.

If there's not, it's just your opinion.

If there is a God and He has revealed His demands to us, then He has framed in how we are meant to live.

And we will either choose to submit to that, or we will choose to live a relativistic life, or the real danger is to live in submission to God until it's too hard.

And then we'll step out to the things that we desire.

And we'll live as temporary, convenient relativists.

And so the call is so difficult.

It's a high calling.

It's why Jesus said, wide is the path that leads to destruction.

Narrow is the way that leads to life.

The abundant, impactful, meaningful, purposeful life that you were created for.

That requires you to deny yourself and pick up your cross and follow Jesus into the adventure of a lifetime.

That's all the time we have.

Let me pray for us.

Jesus, I know there are so many questions still, and I pray first and foremost that we would be a movement that is more than a Sunday movement.

That we would be intentional about getting into community with other believers, seeking the truth together, challenging each other and holding each other accountable to living out the truth as you've revealed it.

Whether that is in a life team or organic Christian community, that we would be people who seek you and follow you no matter the cost, trusting you.

That whatever it costs us today is incomparable with how you will reward us later.

We love you.

We pray these things in Jesus' name.

Amen.

Thanks so much for listening to the message today.

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