All the Things You've Never Been Taught About Homosexuality // Romans 1:24-27

Well, good evening to City Church across all of our campuses. Tonight we're gonna talk about something that nobody wants to talk about. But we're gonna talk about it. And we thought, you know what? In fact, I never do this. I never, ever title my messages. And I never get up here and say, "The title of my message is," okay? Except for tonight, okay, here it is. But the title of my message for tonight is all of the things that you've never been taught about homosexuality. Well, I don't wanna just dive right into it. I wanna first give you guys, give us an incredible story of encouragement of Danny and her family, just the courage it takes to kind of share that story publicly. But here's why I wanna do that, because I know, don't worry, I'll define things and we'll get to things in like 10, 15, 20 minutes. We'll get to a bunch of initiatives. But I know that in this room right now, at our campuses across this church, there are people here right now across our campuses that struggle with same-sex desire or same-sex attraction, we'll talk about all that. And then there's a whole another group of you that you struggle because somebody you love is struggling or you're struggling because somebody you love

is not struggling. And what an example Danny's dad is. Think about this, 22 years later, it still brings her to tears, to tell the story of her dad's response. Can I pray for you? And is it okay if we talk grandma and grandpa and they start praying for you? Here's the big idea for all of us, okay? We're going to be a church of compassion and conviction. We're gonna be confusing to the world because we're gonna be tough on ideas, but tender with people. And I wanna challenge us to stay relationally connected to people, maybe that disagree with us that are living lifestyles the opposite of us, be relationally connected while remaining tethered to truth, okay? Guys, today we're gonna do two things and it's gonna take a while, okay? So I'm glad that there's not another service after this one, okay? It's actually kind of in God's providence. I just said to the worship team, I said, I don't think this sermon is meant to be preached three times. This happens to me every once in a while. I'm like, this was not designed to give three times in one day.

What I'm gonna do is I'm gonna exegit the Bible, so you can turn to Romans 1 in a second here. And I'm gonna exegit culture, that means just expose. And I'm gonna say, what is the Bible saying and what is the culture saying, okay? And by the way, that's why we're having our multiply night a week from tonight. When we get together and we worship and we sing and then I take us through the major stories of 2025. I'm doing that so we can understand the Bible and understand the culture better. And so with that said, oh, by the way, let me say one other thing. We also, this topic is for some people, it's so complex, it's so sensitive, it's so emotional that I recorded another hour-long podcast already that will release Monday morning that will be diving into things we can't even get to today. It's a lot, let's pray. Lord, as I pray right now across this room, I just pray for people starting with myself. But for everyone in this room, just prepare our hearts. This would not have been a difficult text to talk on 75 years ago or 175 years ago. But there is so much relationship, there is so much emotion, there's so much that we're gonna get into that's happened in our nation to bring us to the point where nobody talks about this anymore, but everybody eventually thinks about it. So would you give me the grace to teach and preach the word

and would you give us as a church the grace to be people who are tender with people, but tough on ideas, people who are full of both compassion and conviction in Jesus' name. Amen. All right, grab your Bible, okay? On your app, in your lap, grab it, okay? Now, we're gonna start with the Bible. I'm gonna meet you in Romans 124 in like a few minutes, but here's what I want you to know. At the end of the day, I wanna talk, or at the beginning of the day, I wanna start by talking about the Bible, okay? And that's because the Bible, some people think of the Bible as an old book. You know, you'll hear that, critical people, that's the, the Bible's an old book, incorrect. The Bible's an eternal book. And because the Bible's an eternal book, this is really cool. The Bible transcends every culture. And so in every culture, it will have something that it will commend and something it will condemn. In every culture, the Bible has something I can celebrate that. And at the same time, I have to challenge that. Now, the problem with you and the problem with me is, we like it when we read things in the Bible that the culture already agrees with. You're like, that's like, yeah, you know, we should definitely, I like forgiveness is a good idea.

We read parts of the Bible, but here's the question that you're going to have to ask and answer is, what are you going to do? This is just one area, but sex, gender, marriage, any area that confronts your narcissism in your life, what are you going to do when the Bible disagrees with you? Or disagrees with culture, right? And you can either change the Bible or change your mind and heart. So what I want to do is I'm going to just read the text, okay? And I want you to ask this question as I read this text, what would this text mean if I didn't exist? Forget about the relative you know, that's struggling with SSA. By the way, most relativism happens because somebody has a relative. I want you to just go, okay, if I was an alien, and my alien ship landed here and I was given a Bible when I could read English and I read this, what would I think that it most naturally is saying? That's where we'll start, okay? So let me just read the text, there's a lot here, here's what it says. Therefore, I'm in verse 24, we're just going to cover four verses tonight. Therefore, God gave them up. We've already talked about that, it says it three times. In the lust of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and they worshiped and served the creature

rather than the creator who is blessed forever a man. Verse 26, for this reason, God gave them up to dishonorable passions for their women exchanged natural relations to those that are contrary to nature. And the men likewise gave up natural relations with women and were consumed with passion for one another, men committing shameless acts with men and receiving in themselves the dupenity for their error. Okay, let me just cut to the chase. When you read this passage, you have three options. I just give them to you. There's only three options. I'll give them to you, here they are. Option number one, Paul's wrong. I mean, just so you know, you can go to a lot of universities and they're like, yeah, Paul, he's a product of his time and he's kind of homophobic. And guys, he didn't understand sexual orientation. Paul's wrong. We can't go with that option because we don't believe the Bible is man's thoughts about God, but God's thoughts about himself given a man. So, okay, so say, okay, okay, is that a thought wrong? There, here's the other option. People are very sophisticated in their rebellion. Here's the second option. We've been interpreting it wrong. Isn't that amazing?

You know, from resurrection of Christ until 1970, every Christian everywhere for all time thought homosexuality was wrong. But now it's like, now people are like, no, this was, he didn't know about same-sex marriage. He's talking about non-consensual relationships. He's talking about a relationship with an older man and a child. He's not talking about any of that. So, okay, so then here's the thing. If Paul's not wrong and we haven't been reading it wrong, then Paul's right, so what do we do? Well, we submit to it, we surrender it, surrender to it, we help and serve other people who struggle with it, okay? But here's the last thing and then we're gonna get into the, more into the text, but I need to set this up 'cause our authority is the Bible. Here's another thing. I'm gonna give you a lot of categories tonight. If you take notes, it's gonna be a lot of notes, okay? There's only five places you can find authority. We're saying, so this is a, just so you know, the battle about sexuality and everything, it's a battle about truth and that's a battle about authority. So here's the five places. You come up to me afterwards if you got a six. Number one, okay, here's the, here they are. The only place you can find authority, the state, okay? The government, which you don't want the government

to be your highest authority. I'm talking about your highest authority. It can't be the government. You don't even wanna live anywhere on earth where the government's the highest authority. Nobody in here wants to move to North Korea, okay? But people go, well, if it's the law of the land and it is since the burger fell, then they go, okay, that's the highest authority. Well, no, it's not. Secondly, society. Most of you are not worried about the state and you don't care what they think and, you know, society is popular opinion with the influencer. For some reason, we care about what celebrities think. I don't know. You know, and this is why politicians are changing every year, you know, their platform and the Republican Party, the Democratic Party. They're always changing their platform and their candidates based on popular opinion, okay? So we say, okay, not society. Here's the third one. Science. Listen guys, science is the discipline of discovery. Science only deals with facts. Science can't deal with value. Science can't answer the question you're five year old will ask you tonight. And so, and basically we all look,

can we just say the name on the coffin for science was COVID? Yeah, exactly, that's, yes, you know it was. Okay, so, yeah, trust the science and then worship science and call it scientism, okay? So basically, the fourth is yourself. Do you really want that to be the final authority? It's like, okay, yeah, I've got a three pound brain and I've been on earth for two and a half decades, but it just doesn't make sense to me. I could never believe in a God who? Or the final one is scripture. I think those are the only five options. It's scripture, basically, here's the reformers were a lot smarter than us, okay? And they said sola scriptor, not solo scriptor. Subtle difference, scripture is our highest authority. Scripture is not our only authority. It's the Supreme Court authority. It's what the, here's a phrase for your Thursday night. It's what they call the norma normans. It is the norm that norms all norms. So here's what I'm gonna do with our time left. Okay, I'm gonna do this is very logical. I'm going to make one statement about all of us, and answer, I think, five questions, and we'll get out of here. The first statement that I wanna just talk about, it arrives, it arises out of verse 24. Look at me in verse 24. It says this, "Therefore God gave them up."

Okay, just so you know, that's you. In the lust of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves, before we even talk about homosexuality, he talks about lust in general, okay? Here's what I want you to know. This is where we're just gonna all be together, okay? So we're gonna feel different about different things tonight. All of us in here, including me, including all of our staff, and all of our elders, and certainly all of you, everybody here is a sexual center. So basically, it's not the most encouraging note to tell you at the beginning. We're all guilty. We're all sexual centers just in different forms, and just in different degrees. He starts with lust. Lust is the desire for the forbidden. So great marriage advice for people getting married is, hey guys, before you get married, Satan will do everything he can to try to keep you, to get you in bed with each other. And once you're married, everything he can do to keep you out of both one another. Well, that's interesting. And you talk to any couple that go, yeah, yeah, why is sex is different once we're married, and from when we weren't married, you know why, 'cause it's not forbidden. Lust always wants that, which is forbidden, okay?

So last week, because everything got messed up and worshiped at home and all that kind of stuff, and we just shot it from a camera, and many of you got to see that. I talked about being self-righteous. So here's another thing. Some of you are self-righteous in your heterosexuality. And this is one of the reasons it's hard to talk about homosexuality and all this, because in a lot of ways, the church Christians, we've been self-righteous. We feel superior 'cause we don't struggle in a certain area. So I'm just gonna tell you here, there's like eight types of sexual sin in the Bible, so before we get to homosexuality. Number one, there's fornication. And I know some of you are like, that's an F word, I've never heard before, okay? You call it cohabitating, friends with benefits, Netflix and chill, hook up, shack up, regular culture, and four of the apps on your phone. I mean, do you know what I'm saying, the dating apps. So it's like, that is all sex outside of heterosexual marriage is sinful. The second type is adultery. Adultery is sex. These are all things the Bible clearly talks about. Sex was someone who's not your spouse. What we're seeing now is the rise of a lot of emotional affairs,

as well as the rise of open marriages, which don't work. Will and Jada Smith tried that, and I don't think they're together anymore. The third is polygamy, polygamy is when you're married to more than one person, usually one, and we make whole shows about the sister wives and all of that. Then there's just a whole other junk drawer, I can't get bestiality, incest, prostitution, rape, pedophilia, which is trying to be normalized in our culture today by calling them maps, minor, attractive person syndrome. Okay, so the first thing I want to say is I want us to talk about, okay, all of us have sexually disordered desires. But now I will say that homosexuality and lesbianism gets a unique, long two verses. So let's read them, and then I'm gonna be gonna answer five questions about them. Here's the first thing. Verse 26 says this. For this reason, God gave them up to dishonorable passions for their women exchanged natural relations for those contrary to nature, and the men likewise gave up natural relations with women and were consumed with passion for one another. Men committing shameless acts with men in receiving in themselves that do penalty for their. All right, five questions I think I'm gonna try to answer. Number one, why are we tight? You know, there's, I, you know, one of the things pastors do is listen to other

pastor sermons on the same passage. And almost every pastor that I listened to that talked about this passage did not isolate it. So what am I doing? Everybody else was like, they read this passage and then they skip it and skim it and summarize it and say it's no big deal. And it's kind of like all these other sins. And I'm like, is nothing wrong with me? Like, well, you know, what, why do I feel? That I, that we need to talk about this for a while. There's at least three reasons. Number one, there are three of these five of the seven of that, whatever. Um, it's just how I think. So there's at least three reasons like, cause I had to be like, what am I doing? Why are we spending an entire, I apologize to some of the staff. I'm like, guys, I don't even know what's going to happen. Talking about this, but I just have to. Three reasons why. Um, number one reason, okay, is the we are being discipled by the world in a sexual ethic, okay, it's everywhere. We'll get to this, but basically, so when I went to Duke University, you know, to do ministry there, I, you know, kind of rule, the rule of college ministry is like, okay, go to the center of the campus and meet people. So I went to the center of the campus. And when I was at the center of the campus, I thought, well, the center of the center of the campus is the student union, which is the center of any campus. And then I was like, well, let me just go to the center of the center of the center. A lot of centers there, but you know what I'm saying? So basically I end up being in the very middle. I open the doors at Duke University.

I'm finally in this beautiful top 10 school in the nation. I'm in their student center. I'm brand new. And the first thing I see the biggest office in the very center of the student union is the center for gender and sexual diversity. I'm like, this is the religion at Duke. Guys, it's not, I'm trying to tell you this. You may not believe me because we live in Winston-Salem in Lexington, David County, but like it's, you're not, whatever you believe about SSA and homosexual, I mean, you're, it's not going to be quiet forever. Someone's good. You're going to have to give an answer one day. There's no where you can escape. Okay, here's how, but this is the second reason I'm talking about it. You can't escape this. You're going to be asked about it. The amount of people that have emailed, would you go to a gay wedding? I got my sister's gay, my nephew's gay, my brother's gay. And right, or even less than that. Hey, my, my good friend, she's a nurse. She just got engaged to another woman and she wants us to come and cut the cake with her, but it's a celebratory event. I don't even believe in this or my DEI, part of my HR company kind of called me in and they were like, you know, I had to go sit under this training of a bunch of goofy stuff. I don't even believe about diversity. Or you have to walk into a target and you see the gay pride thing, everything. And then every, every, every June, it's just like for 30 days, every, you know, it's too much. I just, you know, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm just saying, it's not Dr. Mueller said one time he got called it by the New York Times, you know, Dr.

Moore, and he said they called him. The first question I said, oh, it was about gay marriage. The second question was about gay marriage. The third question was about gay marriage. The fourth question I said, why are you so obsessed with gay marriage? He said, you called me and you asked me about this, but here's the third reason. It's for human flourishing, guys. We believe that everything that the Bible teaches is for human flourishing. And, you know, the church has been strangely silent. I actually, one of my mentors who I respect. Told me who I deeply respect told me he's not going to talk about this. He lives in a different state and he just said, yeah, my state, I'm not talking about that. He said, because it's too divisive and this was kind of interesting. And he said, nobody listens to learn. Everybody listens to see what side you're on. OK, so let's get into that. So why are you talking about this? OK, here's the here's the second question. The second question is this. How did we get here? So this is the historical question. I think this for some of you, I think, is going to be the most interesting part of tonight. So when you read versus 26 and 27, I told you this. If I'm Jonathan Edwards, you know, it's like 1748. You talk about this for five minutes and you move on. This is we're all products of our time. Well, you know, because here's a question asked. How did we have a moral revolution in one generation? Here's what I mean by that. They say a more revolution happens when what is celebrated is condemned.

What is condemned is celebrated and those who will not celebrate are condemned. So homosexuality is ancient, ancient. It shows up in Genesis chapter 19, the first book of I'm not trying to be crude here, that's where you get the term sodomy and sodomite. From the Bible. Homosexuality is mentioned in Genesis 19, immediately condemned. Moses writes about it, and Genesis, it's condemned. There are six explicit passages in the Bible that condemn homosexuality, okay? So, in fact, what's interesting is, the word homosexual is only 150 years old. It came out in 1869 in Europe, by this guy who was taking care of a lot of men who struggled with homosexual desire, and he gave it an identity and called it homosexual. Here's what's interesting, okay? Think about this, just for a second. I'm not saying this was right, because there's a difference between sins and crimes. But in 1961, every state in America had sodomy laws. In 1961, my dad was three. And up until 1973, homosexuality was considered a mental disorder in the psychiatric and medical establishment books. My dad was 15. There were still sodomy laws on the books until 2003, when a Supreme Court decision said you can't do that, because it goes against the right to privacy.

So, Obama runs for office in 2008, and says he's against same-sex marriage, even though he was before him, and becomes forward after, and we all knew he was taking it, but you get what I'm saying. He basically said, I'm against it. And then now, guys, I mean, I stand up here, and I'm like, there's gays for Trump. And the Obergefell decision is like, I mean, and everybody's got a gay neighbor, and they're really nice. You know, and it's like, you know, I can hear somebody who's like, leaves the gays alone. It's like, okay, how do we get here? One book, let me show you this book. You can't buy this book. Well, some of you might be able to afford this book. I can't afford this book. This book is out of print. It's called "After the Ball." It's $865 for the edition that's on Amazon. This book came out in 1989, written by cultural elites telling us the plan to make homosexuality normal in a generation. It's part of the reason you can't get it anymore. They said there was three stages that they were going to do. So what I'm trying to do is I'm trying to answer the question, how do we get to the entire world condemns homosexual behavior

to we have Pride Month every June? Three things. Number one, they said we need to desensitize people. So basically they said, show gay stuff. So much people get bored. This is why, you know, broke back mountain comes out in 2005, and we're like, what? And now every, like, I mean, it's become a meme. The episode four of your favorite show has a gay scene. And every character is gay, you know, one of the main characters has to be gay even though they didn't have to be gay, but it's just kind of part of, there's no reason, okay? This is why my boys who are, you know, it gets personal. My boys who are watching "Stranger Things" is like, season five, main character Will comes out as gay. Why? It's because basically they just want you to see it again and again and again till you either get bored at it or you laugh at it, but not in a demeaning way. And like, man, the guys on Modern Family are so funny. Aren't they gay guys so funny? The second thing they want to do is jam it. This is their language. Desensitize you, then jam it. Basically, they said connect anti-gay voices with hateful speech. So basically, out comes the phrase homophobia. So, you know, a modern person like Kyle is homophobic,

which is so genius. The reason I'm talking about this is 'cause I'm scared of them. It's like, I'm not. Oh, you know, he's angry at them. Kyle's a racist. No, I'm not a racist. That's what they, they're like, hey, they actually said this. You can read it, it's on the book if you can afford it. But they wanted to turn it into marriage equality and civil rights. And then the third thing was they said desensitize jam and it's not the best word, but conversion was the word. And they basically said, put our best gays forward. They said, make sure they're professional, monogamous in suburban. And in one generation, everybody's like, why do we even, isn't this just another, doesn't love equal love? Which leads to the third question. The first question is like, wow, my time. The second question is like, well, how do we get here? Okay, it's not, I just, it's different than the other vices that are listed after this that I preached on last week. Because basically what Paul is saying is homosexuality is the highest, or not the highest, it's the clearest picture of idolatry we have. You fall in love with your own anatomical structure, which is interesting why some bodybuilders, there's a higher gay population among bodybuilders.

Well, that makes sense. You have to think about it for like two minutes. If you spend all of your time looking at your own muscles and comparing them with other men's muscles that are fascinated with the male body and you're a man. So homosexuality is uniquely a picture of idolatry. Here's the thing, I want you to notice this too. Homosexuality in Paul's here, he mentions the acts in ACTS, what nobody wants to talk about. And I don't want to talk about it, okay? But what no one wants to talk about is homosexual activity. No one wants to talk about that. No one. They want to talk about love. Well, that makes sense because you feel like an idiot. Well, what's wrong with two guys love in each other? It's like, what is wrong with two guys loving each other? Well, it's like biblically nothing. If you're talking about brotherly love, but we didn't even have a category for that anymore, right? And so basically, here's the thing. There are two things that make homosexuality unique. And two things that make it like everything else. Here's what makes it unique, it's unnatural. Okay, so you can see that, you can read the verse for yourself. Okay, let me just read one last time, that won't be done reading it, okay? For this reason, God gave them up to dishonorable passions,

but I want you to see the word natural. For their women exchange natural relations to those that are contrary to nature. And the men likewise gave up natural relations with women and were consumed with passion for one another, men committing shameless acts with other men and receiving in themselves the due penalty for their sin. So what's interesting is, by the way, this is the only mention of lesbianism in the entire Bible. Lesbianism is way less rare, historically than homosexuality. And there's a lot of reasons for that. One of the reasons is men are willing to give up family for sex. They do it all the time. Heterosexual or homosexual? Like, you know, lots of sex, but they'll get to have kids. They're not thinking right, but they're like, "Ah, I'll do that." Women almost never do that. And so Paul is basically saying, guys, this has gotten so bad, even the women are now engaging in this. We're seeing an increase in this. I'll tell you all the reasons why in a second, but part of the reason is like, you have to understand that the average, like modern secular woman who then goes to like university is taught to hate men. You know, men are, you hate the patriarchy

and men are part of all the problems. So then what's interesting is in lesbianism, oftentimes the woman, I'm not making fun of me this, I'm just telling you, you're gonna know this soon as that. The woman wants to be in a relationship with a woman that looks like a man. What's that about? Don't tell me that's not deep. You want a woman who looks just like a man but doesn't have man parts. What? What is going on? So two things, it's unnatural. Here's what I mean by that. It's against nature, okay? This is as graphic as I'm gonna get. You're not supposed to put an object of life into a whole of decay. It is unnatural. Secondly, it is harmful. I don't know for sure. I'm not a conspiracy theorist, but let me just put my tin foil hat on just for a second. Okay, I think the media and the medical establishment hides a lot from us. Because just from my limited research, there's a bunch of type of cancers that are like 40 times higher in sexually active homosexual men. There are men who engage in this activity

and then have to wear a diaper in their 50s. And this, you can't say it, you can't talk about it. It can't be, everybody loves everybody. We can't actually talk about that it might be unnatural and that it also might be harmful. And we know it's mentally harmful because people living in homosexual lifestyles are more likely to commit suicide and no, not because we don't affirm them. It's the same no matter where they live. And so we have to-- don't worry, it's going to get better. OK, we're going to get there together. OK, but here's the thing. But there's two things that may get the same as everything else, is that it's sinful and it's forgivable. But nothing is forgivable that we can't first call sinful. OK, which leads me to ask the question that we're all thinking about. Why are people gay? Did you see the-- it got 39 million views. So if you didn't see it, you might be hiding under a rock. Did you see the-- you gone to interview where the guy-- it's what's so funny about it is it's so sincere, but it catches the person off guard. So he has somebody on who's living a gay lifestyle. And in the most sincere way, he sits down to interview the person, so sincere, and just says, why are you gay? And the person's like, looks like a cowster and I'm going to go, what do you know why I'm like gay?

Well, I think we have to answer that question. Why are people gay? And people go, was it chance or was it choice? Is it nature or is it nurture? Is it biography or is it biology? Now, it's interesting. We all come into the world because we have an understanding of the sin and the fall and Genesis 3 and all that kind of stuff that we are all not just set. We all have disordered desires then. That's how you're talking about that, OK? In our sexuality, certainly doesn't feel chosen, OK? This is about the most personal story I've ever told from stage, so get ready for it. So when I was about eight or nine years old, I was watching Supergirl or Superwoman. I don't know what to show. It was a movie, OK? It was like the Superwoman-- OK, but it's this like 9, I'm 10 maybe, 8, 9, 10. And this beautiful, whoever played Superwoman back then, I just thought, whoo, you know, this thought she was great. Not as good-looking as my wife, but you know what I'm saying? I was-- I was 9. So basically, I'm 9 years old, and I remember-- this is where I'm being lovable. I remember going to my mom and saying, mom, something happens to me when I watch this show. And my mom said, your dad will be home later.

[LAUGHTER] So 100% true story. So I'm just being real honest to go when it happens to you. And I do think that people find themselves with that type-- I'm just to get real with the answers. I mean, don't think that there's-- I'm not thinking of any one person, but don't think that there's not some 11-year-old boy who one day said, oh, no, why am I getting excited about this? Oh, no, I'm in a Christian church. I'm in a Christian family. You know, this is not what I should be getting excited about. But there's something going on. The reason it's more than just nature, it has to be nurture, is the boomer generation-- 3% said they were gay. Then Gen X said 5% when they started to add some of the LGBT stuff, OK? And so everybody thought, oh, there's 2% of people and they've been hiding, but now that they're free and they've got more categories. Well, then the millennial generation said 14%. And then currently, Gen Z adults, just the adults, 18 and older, 23% say they're LGBTQIA. Now, that's not biology. That's a social contagion. So there's three things I think that can contribute, trying to be careful here, can contribute to the increasing homosexual desires on people, OK? Number one, absent dads.

This is, by the way, this is not to beat up anybody who's a great dad and has the same sex-attracted son or daughter, and I'm not saying you didn't do a good job. Here's the interesting thing. If a dad is in the home, his daughter goes into puberty a year later on average. And we don't know why. There are so many things. We think we're modern people. We understand everything. We don't understand a lot. And what happens is if a man-- I'm particularly talking to men. I don't know how it all works with women. But if a man does not have appropriate affection from a man and knows what physical touch is like, that's appropriate, and has an example of a man loving a woman, then he goes off to college. And some guy puts his arm around him, and he goes, that feels good. Because I never had my dad. Basically, guys, dads-- just young dads, we have a lot of them. We have like 900 kids, fifth grade, and under. Be very physically affectionate with your kids. My dad is 68 years old. He's slightly overweight, he has a scruffy beard, but when he gives me a kiss and a hug, I love it. And by the way, when your kids say dad, stop doing that, when you're hugging, kiss him, that means keep doing it. That's what that means, if you don't know that.

That's really what that does mean. The second, this is really interesting. The second reason that, and I've actually talked to men who told me this is true. So if you have dad deprivation, dad's not in the home. Second thing that can lead, at least to the increase of homosexual desire, is that which is exotic becomes erotic. Let me explain that. If you feel different than other boys, you often find yourself attracted to the boys who are different than you. Think about a kid, I say this, like a 13 year old kid and he's like, I'm kind of scrawny and I'm into art and poetry and I don't really play football, but those football players that do play are strong. They're different than me and I'm kind of attracted to that. This is why a lot of young women who basically they say, going through puberty as a young woman and feeling ugly are the same thing. And so, what they tell you, what they used to tell you is when you go through peers, like, you're gay. There's no guys asking you out, it's 'cause you're gay. Now they tell you you're trans, but you know what I'm saying? It's like, there's, here's the third one. This is the biggest one. This is the multiple, you know what it is already, the ubiquitous nature of pornography. Especially during your sexual formation. There is a difference between watching sex

and having sex, a big difference. And what happens is a lot of people, I was talking to one of our pastors, he said there has not been a person I've met with who has a serious sexual issue that pornography is not at the root. Because you cannot watch, you start watching it for the opposite sex, but then you start seeing your same gender aroused. And people are watching an enormous amount of that kind of stuff. So then we have to ask another question, okay, what is the experience we're almost done? What is the experience of somebody who struggles with SSA, okay? Well, thankfully people write about this, like godly Christian men and women write about this. And I think this is gonna help us. They say there's kind of four stages to this. There is desire, orientation, identity activity, desire, orientation, activity, identity activity, I'm sorry, I'll unpack this. So basically, what you only need to know is that there are certain people who for a small portion of their life with usually one person, they will have same sex desire. It's like, it's a classic example would be like a guy who finally gets a friend at 14 who never had a friend. And he's just never had another guy just be nice to him. And all this parts of him turn on, they say what is going on here? Sometimes it very common to happen with a mentor. I don't have a father, all of a sudden I have a mentor,

I have this emotional relationship in which he's my leader and I'm attracted to him 'cause of it. Their same sex desire, their same sex attraction, okay? This is usually when this is an orientation in which you feel like I'm not attracted to the opposite sex. I'm only attracted to the same sex and it's not going away and I'm praying about it and I'm asking God to do something about it. And then there is identity, identity is when you go public where you, using their words, you come out of the closet and you say, this is who I am and this is the most, usually you leave the normal community and you enter the gay community and then you end up increasing, usually there was some activity beforehand but you increase your activity. And so here's what we're trying to say. We think that genuine Bible believing Jesus loving Christians can struggle with same sex desire and same sex attraction. And basically if there's one message, 'cause there's more and more people that are struggling with that for various reasons, some of which I mentioned in this sermon. If you're struggling with that, I hope I can represent, I know I represent the pastors and elders in our church by saying, if you're struggling with same sex attraction, you don't have to leave our church. We have the resources and the relationships

and we wanna walk with you. And here's how I feel about it. Here's my, just I'm putting my cards on the table 'cause people disagree on same sex attraction stuff. 'Cause it's hard to figure it all out, all the details on how to talk about it. the same time, hopefully you'll hear this, I don't want to normalize SSA. I'm a dad, and I know a lot of dads, and you do not want every 13-year-old boy in this church wondering if they have SSA. Part of the secret of the LGBTQIA agenda is the Q. Do you know what the Q is? Questioning. And so here's how we're going to try, let me explain this. Here's last question, how therefore then do we minister to people struggling with SSA? It's just different than ministering to people who are just living an overt homosexual lifestyle. By the way, when you minister to those people, there's no use even talking to them about homosexuality. They've already watched every video, read every book, their defenses are up. The best thing to do is just love them, talk to them a lot about Jesus, and talk about all the others in their life they need to repent of. But if you're talking to somebody but with SSA, here's basically what we need to do. Number one, we were talking about SSA. You basically need to say the goal in life is holiness, not heterosexuality. We can't promise people, there's no promise in the Bible, you know, you give your life to Christ and you're going to feel strong, constant heterosexual desires for the opposite sex ongoing. But we can say, hey, listen, focus less on I was born this way and focus more on I've been born again. And do not define, I don't like when alcoholics call themselves alcoholics, I don't like it. I don't like being defined by your sin, I don't think you need to be defined by your attractions.

What we're trying to, what we want to do is we want to say, look, there is the way that you fight same sex attraction is the way that you fight every sexual sin. We'll get that, we'll get there in, um, uh, Roman chapter six, you mean you put it to death, you know? So it's like, if you're struggling with same sex attraction, you know, one of the first things to do, like, okay, I'm going to stop looking at all pornography. If I'm looking at it, okay, I'm going to get in an accountability group, but not with everybody who struggles the same way that we do. So when we get together, we just talk about our struggles. I need to talk to somebody who's ahead of me. I need to cultivate relationships with the same sex that are, that are strong and genuine and helpful. You know, I need to, but here's the, here's the thing. I want us just for a moment to, to just talk about change because you know what's interesting? We live in a time right now where here's what people tell you about sex. Sex is the most important. Your sexual identity is the most important thing about you and you could be anything you want. LG BT, you could be anything intersex, whatever you want to be. You can be anything you want and this is what's also, this is what they tell you. This is the message and choose when you're 12. But then if you want to change when you're 16 and then when you can change, it can change in a moment. But it's the most important thing about you and there's 100 options. But here's the other thing, this is what they tell, this is, this is the part, silent part they never say. You can be anything you want and you can change at any time unless you're gay. In the interesting, if you're, if you're straight, you can become, you can become bi. You can become queer. You can become transgender.

You can do anything. But if you're gay, you can never leave. It's like, what is it that once I'm gay, I'm always gay. And we, look, I understand that sanctification is a slow process. I understand that there are besetting sins, but I think the American church has lost any hope for change. And here's what I say, this, this is the only time I'm going outside of the verse that we're in. Let me read this to you. Here's what it says. 1 Corinthians 6, "Or do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived neither the sexually immoral nor idolatrous nor adulterers nor men who practice homosexuality." Okay, so all sexual sins are mentioned there, but he answered homosexuality, dropped down to verse 11, it says this, Paul goes, "There were people like that in the church of Corinth." And he says, "In such were some of you, but you were wash, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the spirit of our God." And so, look, I'm not saying that overnight everything is going to change, but I just want to tell you the reason that it says when it comes to sexual sin, you were washed first is because I know for some of you, you are same-sex desires, you're same-sex attraction, some of you are same-sex activity, the things you've looked at, it has made you feel dirty. That's why the first thing Jesus says is er- And then he says, "After you've been washed, "after you've been cleansed, "then you're gonna be sanctified, "you're gonna be transformed, "you're gonna be changed." Listen, I wanna let you know that you can walk, whatever you're struggling with,

you can walk in a measure of freedom. And there is pathways forward, long-term, for people who struggle with SSA, celibacy is an option that many have taken. And we've seen in our church, men and women who struggled with SSA, you just saw a testimony who are now married to somebody of the opposite sex and have families. So guys, what we wanna be here, as I close, 'cause we talked about so much, trying to give us kind of a tour to Francis. But here's what I wanna say, I want us to be people of conviction who believe in change and are very compassionate. So I'll end with two quick stories and we'll be done. John MacArthur, one of my heroes, okay, he died this year, last year, preached for 56 years in one pulpit. And it's interesting, you know, he's kind of a direct guy. And he was pastoring at Grace Community Church, which is 20 miles, this has become important in a second, it was 20 miles from downtown LA. And he was kind of a fiery Bible preacher, you know, and he would, and he preached through the whole Bible, by the way, I took him 42 years, but he preached through this whole New Testament. 42 years to preach first by verse, line by line through the whole New Testament. And as he would come to passages like this,

he would talk like I am a little different, but he would talk and he would talk about the sinfulness of homosexuality, but he's in Southern California, near LA. So picketed, he'd get protests, he'd get letters, his church was growing, people were upset with him. But he said, he tells the story, I heard it one time, 12 years into his ministry, he was 41 years old, that's why I should. And he said it was around 1980, 1981, whatever it was, and the AIDS crisis hit in LA. (gentle music) And he said, everything changed. He said, men would be waiting outside the door to talk to him. Men would write him letters, men would call him. He said, in every conversation was the same. I didn't like you, I didn't like what you were saying, I was listening to everybody who told me that this was about love, and this is about freedom, but now I have AIDS, and I'm dying, and I didn't know who to talk to, but I know you tell the truth. Part of what we do as Christians is we tell the truth, but we love people deeply, and we wait for God to bring some type of storm into their life that softens the soil so we can have a question. But I want us all to believe in change, guys. You've probably heard of Rosaria Butterfield,

she's a pretty famous lady, lives in Durham, North Carolina. God changed her life, and God is gonna end by reading her testimony, here's what she says. This is her writing, I lived as a tenured professor of queer theology at Syracuse University. I was in a committed lesbian relationship, and I hated the Bible, and I taught thousands of students in my classes to do the same, because I believed gay was good, and I didn't want a new life. I was happy with the one I had, but then a local pastor and his wife didn't just preach at me, they invited me to their table. For two years, I ate their food and I read their Bible. I was looking for cracks in the word to tear it down, but the Bible started to read me instead. I realized that the truth of Christ's resurrection was a truth over which I had no authority. It was gonna be true whether I liked it or not. I remember the day I realized I had to choose. I looked at the LGBTQ community, the one actually I'd helped to build, and then I looked at God who created me, and I asked, "Who's dictionary do I trust?" Coming to Christ felt like a death. I lost my partner, I lost my community, I lost my cultural capital. I stood in a pew for the first time with a butch haircut and extra piercings terrified.

I felt like a lesbian in my body, but I knew I was a child of God and my soul. My sin wasn't just my attractions. My sin was my pride. Wanting to be the God of my own life today, surprisingly, I am a pastor's wife and a mother. I haven't been lobotomized. I still have all my memories. But the miracle isn't just that I married a man. The miracle is that my want to changed. I learned that it is better to be lonely with Christ than to be in a crowd without him. Jesus didn't just take my life away. He replaced it with a hundredfold more. Isn't that a great, yeah, powerful. (audience applauding) So, I didn't look. you're always gay. The same people are telling us take puberty blockers. And I believe in the hope and change of the gospel that's incremental, but is real. And I have seen people set free and to use an old statement to walk in a measure of freedom. And I wanna encourage you, you can do that. I know that some of you saw that video at the beginning and you thought I'm so far away from that being the reality of my life. Or that's so far away from the reality of what could happen in my son or my daughter's life. And I want you to remember such for some of you,

but you were washed, you were justified, you were changed. And I mean, we're gonna pray. And here's, it's like, how do you call people forward? Here's what I want you to do. I want you, all across this room, if you feel led, to come forward and pray that we would be relationally connected, but tethered to truth, that this church would be a place, whatever happens in the culture, that we would be a confusing place, a place of compassion and conviction, who people who are full of both grace and truth, people who love people deeply, but stay tethered to God's word. If you'll stand, we'll pray. Lord, across this room, we talked about a lot of stuff this evening. I thank you that we just have such a great, soft church to speak to, a church that wants to know your word. And I just pray right now. We pray for our brothers and sisters who are struggling with SSA that they would feel heard and seen and feel hope that they can walk in freedom. We thank you, we pray for more stories. Lord, I actually also, Lord, I pray, I just feel led right now to pray, that you would raise up an Apostle Paul to the gay community. Rosaria Butterfield's that in part, but would you raise up just in the same way

that you saved the great Apostle Paul, a religious Pharisee, and brought him out of religion, or would you raise up a generation from within, Lord? The generation Z, where there is so much confusion, would you raise up young men and young women who have a vision of God and a vision of sexuality and a vision of holiness? Because we do know the goal is holiness, not heterosexuality. It's in Jesus' name, we pray. Amen. (gentle music) (gentle music) (gentle music) [BLANK_AUDIO]