I can hear it now. There you go. All right. Let’s find our seats. The small clock in the back says 9:29. I like that it’s on time now. It’s right. The old one wasn’t. All right. Should I wait for it to strike 9:30? I can see it.
Alright, good morning everybody. I’ll get started here. A couple of announcements before we open in prayer and give people a chance to filter back in. This is the last week for the “Male and Female He Created Them” series. Next week, I’ll be out of town, so Ryan McClintock is going to be teaching on a passage from the Book of Luke. And then on November 12th, we’re going to start a study of the Gospel of Mark. I’ll be leading us through that. Pastor Greg will also return to teaching the youth at that time, so just putting those two public service announcements out there.
Let’s pray. Lord, thank you for the beauty of this day, of the rain that we need, the rain that you sustain us with. We thank you for it. We thank you for the time together, the time to be in your Word, the time to fellowship later together, and in between, worshiping you through song and prayer and the Word of God. Father, bless us as we study this morning. Thank you for the eight weeks we’ve had in this book. Thank you for those men that have written this book and an important set of topics that face us as Christians in this world—some of them new in the sense of showing up for the first time, but in many ways, this is exactly what Christians have faced for many years: the onslaught of sin’s ways upon the world and upon the church. Make us strong, bless us as we conclude our study, and I pray it in Jesus’ name, amen.
All right, all right, cats are here. All right, so review from last week, week seven: identity and sanctification. We talked about identity along the way, but we talked about identity as one’s self-understanding or self-concept—how we view ourselves, how we perceive ourselves. And identity, we said, was a psychological concept that has always been viewed historically in relation to the objective world around us. And what do we mean by objective? Objective is something that is substantiated by facts, by reality. Subjective—heard that word before—subjective is something that is defined by opinions, by feelings, by emotions, etc. And what we’re seeing now is really a world that is trying to be defined by subjective reality. In other words, how I feel about it. That’s where you’ll get these phrases like “your truth” and “my truth”—all those sorts of things. You’ll hear that. And that’s the world we’re in.
What does the Bible teach us about a Christian’s identity? We talked about male and female: the reality, this objective reality of being created in God’s image for the purpose of fellowship with God, with each other, sexual engagement, of course, as we’ve studied out over the past weeks, and ruling creation. That’s one of the things we’re created for in our identity. We’re also sinners since the fall. We’re also redeemed in Christ; we’re sanctified, sinners saved by grace. And that’s what we spent the time unpacking last week. That’s what identity is for the Christian.
So how can we ensure that our identities are shaped by God’s word? By being in the word, by obeying it. And we looked at Romans 12:1–2 about being transformed by the word, being changed—this idea of transformation, our identity being transformed. That was a lot we talked about last week. We’re going to talk a little bit about that this week in a practical way in terms of talking to others about these matters. But we finished up by examining the other side of the marriage coin. We talked about singleness and that ultimately, for both the single person and the married person, as Christians, our identity is found in Christ. That’s the summary of last week.
Sexual Sin and the Gospel
All right, so this week’s our conclusion. What is the end game of this entire Sunday school class? That’s really what the last chapter was about. It’s called “Sexual Sin and the Gospel.” So what is the end game of this class for the church, in this book? What are we trying to get to here? Are we trying to eliminate from the world the concepts of transgenderism, pronoun political correctness, the redefinition of sex, gender, and marriage? Are we promoting heterosexuality and—we’ll use their phrase—”cisgendering,” the gender your biology points to? Is that what we’re trying to do? We want everybody to understand those things and get on our side of the fence? Is that really the end game?
Clark? The answer to that is no. Because why is the answer to that no? That’s not our end game. You may be a little bit like, “Wait, what are we spending seven weeks about? Why? What’s the end game?” Honoring God’s order? I think you already said it—I don’t know if everybody could hear it—getting to that issue of the gospel, because these problems are symptoms of a bigger problem. They’re symptoms, okay? They may affect us in society, they affect us in our jobs, in school—we’ll talk a little bit about that towards the end—but these are not the root problem. They’re symptoms of the problem of mankind’s sin problem since the fall in Eden.
They’ve manifested themselves in many different ways over the years. Homosexuality is not new to the world. It is not new. We could go all the way back into Genesis. We studied that through Genesis. We hit Genesis 19. Sodom and Gomorrah alone tells us it was not the first time this has come into the world. So these things are not the root problem. They’re the symptoms of a deeper sin problem. When we go into this discussion with people, we run into these situations. We have to keep that in mind. And we’ll unpack that a little more as we go through.
But if all we do is focus on those goals, why are they a waste of time for the Christian to just focus on? Let me argue with you—I’m just giving you one example. I’m going to argue with you up and down that a man cannot say he’s a woman or a woman cannot say she’s a man. What’s the waste of time in just focusing and driving and driving and driving, trying to convince them? Francine? Because it’s not addressing the heart. That’s right. It’s not addressing the heart. It’s not addressing, again, back to the root problem.
So go to Romans 3 with me for a minute. I’m going to show you two sets of verses. We’ll look at a few in Romans, one in Galatians. And I want you to see the Bible makes this very clear: that this isn’t the root problem. It is a symptom. What we’re dealing with are symptoms of a deeper problem. Doesn’t mean the symptoms don’t have effects on our lives; I’m not saying that. But for us, when we engage society, when we engage coworkers, students, our fellow students at school, or family members, we have to keep this in mind as we’re doing this because it’s pretty easy to go off the track. We’ll talk about that in a minute.
All right, let’s take a look at Romans 3. Just look at verses 23 through 26. Jumping right in here, Romans 3:23: “For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith. This was to show God’s righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over former sins. It was to show his righteousness at the present time, so that he might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus.”
So here, the point that’s being made very clearly is this idea of “all sin and fall short of the glory of God.” The sin problem is the root, okay? And if we went through—and I don’t have time to do this—Romans talks about how this is true of the Jew and the Gentile alike. This isn’t just a Jewish problem, or really as the Jews would look at it, a Gentile problem. This is a Jew and a Gentile problem alike. This is mankind’s problem since the fall. So the problem itself we need to eventually get to.
Flip over to Galatians 2. I want to show you this. This is back to, again, a lot of what we’ve talked about in this book overlaps from other weeks. But this is going to get us at least squared up in terms of this problem, the end game, what we need to get into eventually with someone. Galatians 2:20 says, “I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.”
We’ll see a little bit more out of this in Paul in a very personal way in a moment when we finish our class up in 1 Timothy. But if sin is the problem, if God has provided the solution, what is required of us, or what is the end game per Galatians 2:20? We’re going to use this. Think of identity. If our identity was—and we’re not going to look at it today, because we’ve looked at it plenty—1 Corinthians 6, it talks about, “and so were some of you,” and all that list of sinful actions and behaviors. What’s needed, what is the reality for the Christian per Galatians 2:20? What’s our identity? Randy? Living by faith. Are we what we were per that verse? We’re not what we were; we are no longer. We were crucified with Christ, okay, and we are raised to new life. So this idea of our identity is now in Him—we talked about that last week—but this transformational principle comes through. You were not, you are no longer what you were.
And this, on the other side of the coin, we’re talking to people that are pushing some of this agenda, okay, at school, at work, whatever—this is where we need to get them to: that you need to be changed, you need to be forgiven, you need Christ. Okay, we’ll look at this in 1 Timothy in a minute, but I want to go through a couple of the things here in regards to this. Why are these goals a waste of time? Because people are still left in their sin without Christ. If all we do is argue, argue, argue about the points—about whether it’s homosexuality, transgenderism, whatever—if all we do is try to argue the points, argue the wrongness of it, the sinfulness of it, that’s a piece of it. Don’t get me wrong, that’s a piece. We have to get there, but you eventually have to get to the solution, and that’s why the gospel is good news. Because this idea of the good news being given to them is that there is salvation, there is forgiveness available in Christ Jesus.
But it’s a waste of time partly to just hammer on it because people are still left in their sin without Christ even if we were able to convince them of everything we think they need to be convinced of. If that’s all we were able to do was get an assent from them intellectually, that didn’t do a thing for them. They’re still in their sin. They’re still lost and without Christ. And none of these things in and about themselves bring about the transformation that is needed per Galatians 2, per 2 Corinthians 5:17 about “we’re no longer what we were. We’re a new creation in Christ.” None of that’s achieved if all we do is hammer and hammer and hammer.
Some people do a lot of work in educating themselves on this, okay? And that’s partly what this class was about: to educate you, arm you a little bit on the issues, understand what is said about them, why they’re wrong, where we take it from there and talk to them. And that’s what today’s class, this wrap-up class, is really about: to make sure that we understand how to deal with it. Now, I’m not going to give you a step-by-step, because every situation is different. Every person is coming into the situation in a different way. But some of the bigger principles we’ll talk about here are very helpful.
The gospel is what we must be focused on in regards to the church—meaning building us up in the gospel—and society: their need of it. Same gospel, coming at it from different angles: building up the body in the gospel that are believers, and bringing the gospel to those who do not know the Lord. In other words, we do not want to leave this study as a law-based study or rallying cry for sexual purity. If that’s all we do, we haven’t done much. We haven’t accomplished much. Instead, we should drive toward the mercy and grace of the gospel while today is still the day of salvation. That is what we’re facing out in the world, and that is what we are to bring to them.
So, question for you to consider here. What is the risk facing the church in the face of these radically unbiblical discussions in society? There’s really two paths the church can go down with this. Two risks. What are the risks? There’s two of them. We get into this with people. Okay, we’ve addressed the one: we have to get to the gospel. But what about sexual sin itself? This is going to take us down the path of the gospel itself. What are the risks? If we go too light, what happens? In other words, if we take it and sort of say, “Don’t worry about it,” use the old phrase, “It’s all under the blood, don’t worry about it. It’s no big deal.” We start to dismiss. We start to minimize the seriousness of sexual sin and almost affirm it as acceptable if we’re not careful. So eventually you have to get to the point—this is what I was saying a moment ago—you have to get to the point where you confront the sin itself. These desires—we talked about that weeks ago. Desires themselves are sinful, let alone the actions that are sinful. We have to get there. So we have to be careful about minimizing it.
What’s the other side of the coin? What else could we do with it? Don’t think too hard. If we minimize it one direction… Say it again. Maximize it. Maximize it. So what does that mean? Go to the other end and get really… Yep. We focus so much on it that every other sin pales in comparison in the world. We focus so much on it that it’s actually a point of unredemptive sin that they can never recover from. And we are just lambasting it left and right. That actually has been, in my opinion, the danger zone in what I would call the biblically adherent conservative church. It goes so far, we get so concerned about it—and rightfully so—but we also present it almost in a way as in, “Well, if you’ve been engaged in this, I mean, you’re just… you’re lost. There’s nothing we can do for you.” Nobody says that, of course, but the point is then the message, the tone of it, could be something that’s almost unredemptive.
The Right Approach
So what’s the right approach? All right, turn to 1 Timothy. This is where we’re going to spend the rest of our time today. 1 Timothy chapter one. I’m going to read it in two chunks today and go over some questions here. I want us to see the right way to approach this because Paul comes at it about himself specifically. Interesting, a personal reflection here from Paul. 1 Timothy 1, I’m going to read verses 8 through 11 first and stop there and we’ll talk for a bit.
1 Timothy 1:8: “Now we know that the law is good, if one uses it lawfully, understanding this, that the law is not laid down for the just but for the lawless and disobedient, for the ungodly and sinners, for the unholy and profane, for those who strike their fathers and mothers, for murderers, the sexually immoral, men who practice homosexuality, enslavers, liars, perjurers, and whatever else is contrary to sound doctrine, in accordance with the gospel of the glory of the blessed God with which I have been entrusted.”
Stop there. So, we talked about the right approach; let’s look at it from Paul’s perspective, how he presents it in these verses. Is sexual sin listed there? Twice, two explicit references: “those sexually immoral” and “homosexuality” is listed there. Are other sins listed there? Absolutely. They outnumber the sexual sins, and there are many. There’s many there. So what point is Paul making in totality here? He’s making a point to us that comes into this whole discussion around sexual sin. What’s he making about modern-day matters? Look at verse 10. I’ll help you think through this a little bit, because it’s a little bit of a broad question. When you look at verse 10, you get to that last part, right towards the end of the verse, where it says, “…and whatever else is contrary to sound doctrine.” What’s he saying there? He lists out some. He gives plenty of examples. What’s he saying? Any sin is what? Any sin is condemning.
Yeah. Now, are there degrees? Of course there are. I’m not going to get into that today. He doesn’t go through that. He’s looking at this from the standpoint of anything that is contrary to sound doctrine. In other words, if it’s sound doctrine, it has come from God. It has come from His Word. That’s what he’s pointing out to us here. All sin is contrary to truth and to God and His Word. Verse 11, though, read that: “…in accordance with the gospel of the glory of the blessed God with which I have been entrusted.” So he’s talking about lawbreakers there in the previous verses. Now what’s he saying to us in verse 11? In accordance with the gospel, what’s he saying? If those are sin that Paul just listed out there in verses 8 down through 10, what’s in accordance with the glorious gospel is what? Yes, sin is real, sin must be dealt with. What’s the cure? The gospel, I heard it. The gospel. The gospel is the cure. And that’s the point he’s making here. He doesn’t isolate sexual sin. He also doesn’t let up on it. He mentions it. It’s in the list. This is just a list of things, and he does this in 2 Timothy—lists out different things that mark the day and age. We could sit here all morning from now until noon and list out sins in the world, folks.
The point he’s making here is all of this needs to be dealt with. And his focus only on sexual sin is going to take us down a bad path, as we talked about a moment ago. But this idea that we see here is the good news of the gospel: that Christ is the cure for sin. So what’s he saying here about those who reject? And this gets us into now part of our conversations with people. What does he say about those who reject the idea that sin exists, that they commit it, and that they must repent? If they reject all of that, what’s he saying about it? In other words, “I’m going to take a go-it-alone attitude with God.” What’s he saying to them? What’s the point regarding the gospel? Is the gospel good news to them? I’m sorry, Randy, go ahead. They’re living contrary to the gospel. Yeah, contrary to the gospel. That’s the word right there. There’s the phrase. This idea that in a go-it-alone attitude, the gospel isn’t good news for them because they don’t see their need of Christ to cure them of their sin sickness.
And this is where we have to get to in terms of these conversations. When we have them—it’s bubbled up throughout the past seven weeks up to today—this idea of, we need to get into how do we handle conversations? How do we handle situations? This part—the big part of this lesson—is helping us frame that up. You can talk about the sin, you can talk about the depravity of man, you can talk about all these things—it’s proven out—but they need Christ. And if they reject that, to deny sin, to deny what God has said is contrary to his word, is to deny, ultimately, the gospel of Christ itself. Yes, the gospel contains the message that we’re sinners, but it also contains the cure. The good news of the gospel, meaning good news itself, is that Jesus Christ has come into the world to save sinners. That’s what we’re going to look at here in a minute.
Questions on that point? I think that’s really important. Anything contrary to sound doctrine, any rejection of it—they’re living contrary to the gospel itself, and they’re rejecting the gospel. But we need to get there in those conversations if we’re going to have them with people in depth. And this really applies to anything. It’s not just sexual sin. This applies to the person who’s, I’ll call it dabbling or playing with drugs, alcohol. It could be anybody with pornography. Take your pick on sins. Like I said, we could list them out all morning.
All right, let’s keep moving. So let’s read 1 Timothy 1, start at verse 12. And I’m going to read down through 17. “I thank him who has given me strength, Christ Jesus our Lord, because he judged me faithful, appointing me to his service, though formerly I was a blasphemer, persecutor, and insolent opponent. But I received mercy because I had acted ignorantly in unbelief, and the grace of our Lord overflowed for me with the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus. The saying is trustworthy and deserving of full acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am the foremost. But I received mercy for this reason, that in me, as the foremost, Jesus Christ might display his perfect patience as an example to those who were to believe in him for eternal life. To the King of the ages, immortal, invisible, the only God, be honor and glory forever and ever. Amen.”
What do we have? I think this is what’s striking about Paul’s comment here. What do we have in common with the transgender person, with the person who is pushing us at work on the pronoun issue, on the person who is calling us intolerant, they’re saying they’re gender fluid, they’re homosexual—take your pick of everything we’ve looked at. What do we have in common? We’re all sinners. And if you’re sitting here today and you’re saying, “Yeah, but I’m not like them, I’m not that bad,” I’m going to urge you to take this passage in very deep draughts, because that is what Paul is saying. Paul himself calls himself the foremost of sinners here. We are sinners too, but we also—and this is a summary of everything we’ve talked about thus far—we proclaim the mighty mercy that God lavished on us. That’s what we have to get to.
You can’t jump too quickly to the mercy, because the mercy… everybody wants mercy, even if they don’t know—who’s not going to want mercy, right? It’s just an easy thing to say. But if you don’t realize why you need the mercy, it’s kind of empty and hollow and lightweight. But what we see here was this idea that we are to proclaim the mighty mercy that God lavished on us. And really, in essence, each of us should, from the depths of our own heart, soul, and mind, be able to join with Paul and say, “I’m the foremost.” This should be a battleground for who’s the worst. Who’s the worst first? We all know our hearts and minds. We may—and this is back to one of our other studies where we talked extensively about the idea that desires themselves are sinful, okay—and it comes from that corrupted, fallen heart of ours. It comes from that, and it wells up from there deeply, and as Jesus said, from the heart, the mouth overflows. The life overflows with it.
Now, we may not have expressed everything as some people have. Paul clearly rejected Christ—at least for a time he did, before he was saved. Paul wasn’t just… he was a violent, aggressive, active opponent of the gospel and of Christ himself. But we ought to examine our own hearts very closely in this, and we should be able to sit there with that person who is coming to us with all of these things of ugliness—and I realize if you’ve been a believer for a while, some of these things are like… they’re so… and the Bible describes them as heinous, folks. I’m not trying to take it back. I’m not trying to make it easier on us. They are. These things we’ve been discussing over the past weeks, all of these matters are heinous issues. But we ought to see ourselves—we may not have struggled with those same sins, but boy, we better be willing in our own hearts and minds to admit to the Lord God Almighty where our problems themselves are, where our sins are in our own hearts and minds. And if we find ourselves thinking, “Well, I’m definitely not like these guys,” ooh, you’re with the Pharisee and the tax collector sitting before judgment. Be careful, be very careful on this.
Was Paul truly the worst sinner of all time? Now, somebody will say, “Well, this is Scripture, so he must have been.” I understand that argument. But was he? Or is that his own self-confession? Joe? I would say no, but he did well to esteem himself that way. Exactly. I think that’s the right way to look at this. We don’t know who has committed the most sins in life. We can certainly look at Scripture and point to a few characters that seem to certainly have been far worse than Paul. But this idea here that we’re seeing—Paul was probably not by number of count, by heinousness—but Paul realized the depth and debt of his sin and revels in the mercy and forgiveness of God that he found in the risen Lord Jesus Christ. And we should be the same, and that is what should inform our discussions, our views of others with this, when we encounter this in family, at work, at school, whatever it may be. You and I can declare that same, you know, “most vile sinner” comment. I know my sin debt, I saw my need, and I gave it to Christ. He gave me life from death. That’s what you need too, my friend.
That’s the discussion that we need to eventually get into if we’re going to have that kind of discussion with people. And there’s other things I’ll talk about in a minute and interacting with the world we’ll get to in a moment. But no wonder Paul goes into such a wonderful doxology in verse 17. I think you can see his personal reflection on what the mercy was shown to him when he came to his spiritual senses and saw, “Not only was I rejecting Christ, I was vehemently, actively, aggressively pursuing.” And the book of Acts says Paul was breathing out what? “Murderous threats” to the church. And here he is, one of the apostles, turned around, saved by grace.
Questions, comments on it? That’s the summary of the chapter. We’re going to talk a little bit more about some practical application. Randy? “Do you think we could all make the same claim like that we’re all equally the worst of sinners?” I’d say yes. I’ll tell you why: because we all know our own hearts best, right? We don’t know the other’s heart. We don’t know what they have or haven’t done. But boy, I’m the worst sinner I certainly know. I might know other people in history, and you see what happened in history, but we know the depths of our depravity in our hearts. And I don’t think there’s anything wrong with—that’s why I said, Paul’s saying, I don’t think he’s just being over the top. I don’t think he’s being insincere. I think it’s simply him saying this is how he views himself. And it’s a great set of verses for us to look at ourselves. You have something else to say, Randy? “Yeah, well, I guess in answer to your question, was he the worst? Maybe in that sense that we’re all the worst of sinners.” Yeah, exactly. That’s what I’m saying. We should see ourselves and not just take on a false label. I don’t mean it that way. But we know… I don’t know, as close as Christi and I are, I don’t know what’s in her heart fully. She can’t know mine fully, but I know what’s in my own and I don’t know it as well as Christ knows it and God knows it, we’ll call it. That’s the warning that’s coming through here for us to look at, and as we approach these matters, there’s a call—really what this is calling us to is humility in dealing with it, and not seeing ourselves above it.
Joe, you had your hand up? “Yeah, I mean, doesn’t this go back then to James 2:10? ‘For whoever keeps the whole law but fails in one point has become accountable for all of it.’ I mean, there’s either total light or total darkness, you know?” Yeah, agreed. Yeah, that it is exactly in league with that. It is telling us all these sins that Paul lists through in the end. We’re looking at just a moment ago in verses 8 through 11. Yeah, absolutely. It shows us our depravity. What else? Any other questions? “Hope, because no matter how bad your sin is, like sometimes people get in their head like ‘I’m too far gone’ or like ‘my sin is too great for God’s mercy or grace.’ It’s not. God’s grace… it’s almost arrogant because God’s grace is far greater than your ability to sin.”
I don’t know if everybody could hear that. Clark said that we have to be careful that we don’t say that our sin is too great for God to forgive or make sure somebody doesn’t fall into that. I think that was something years ago. I think nowadays what we’re seeing is almost like a respurning rejection of God’s grace, though. It’s a hardened heart towards it, but your point’s absolutely right. Somebody could get to the point where they say, “I agree with you, I’m a sinner, but there’s no way God will forgive me for this. This is so bad, what I have done and what I have lived and what I’ve thought and what I have,” etc. But that’s what we need to be: well-thought and grounded going into these. Going into these conversations sort of… and I don’t care, let’s say get away from sexual sin for a minute. Let’s say it’s something else, another sin. Going into any sort of conversation with an unbeliever without really having thought it through—now I know sometimes opportunities sort of present themselves and we just have to do our best with it—but that’s the part when we go back to Jesus saying, “Don’t worry about what you’re going to say. I’ll give you the words.” Don’t worry about it. Just back to that transformation principle of Romans 12:1–2; that’s how we become more focused. Other questions, comments?
Things to Keep in Mind
All right, so let’s finish up our study today with a few things to keep in mind. I’m going to try to wrap in some examples here. I have a few points to make. It’s more than a few, but I won’t tell you how many they are, because I know everybody thinks, “Oh, that sounds long” or whatever. It won’t take that long.
First, when we deal with people in general, okay, on these matters, we need to keep before them—I’m going to use the word “objective” again—God is objective reality. God is objective truth. In other words, what you see out in the world today is often, “Well, your God isn’t my God.” I remember somebody at work one time said there was a… somebody was upset that there was a Bible in the boardroom and one of the arguments for getting rid of the Bible was, “We don’t all use the same Bible.” Almost the idea of, “Well, you know, it’s up to you, it’s up to every person to figure out what they want to do with religion and stuff.” And that’s what we have to keep in front of us. I think this is a major thing that the world has left today, that we need to stand very firmly on this idea that God himself—God the creator of the world, of the male-female binary, of marriage, sexuality, etc., everything you can think of, all creation—He is objective reality and that we will meet Him someday. And we need, if today is still the day of salvation, okay—we do not proclaim God as a “possible” judge or one theory. We present Him as Christians as reality: not make-believe, not a possibility. We have to stand firm on that, because one of the first arguments you will get from possibly somebody is, “Well, that’s great. I mean, that’s, you know, that’s up to you. That’s your idea. That’s your idea of God. Good for you. I don’t really care.” Now, they can, of course, they can spurn that. But we have to stand firm on that issue. God is objective truth.
Secondly, God was purposeful in creation and making male and female and marriage and sexuality. We have studied that to the hilt in this class over the past eight weeks, including today. God was purposeful. This is also objective reality. Now this is going to really step on toes when you start talking like this. Because what everybody is being told out there by the media, by the world, by sadly the education system, is this is all either religious nonsense that we’ve now grown past as a society because we’re so scientific, we’re so technologically advanced, etc. This is all nonsense. Again: objective reality of God, objective reality of the created order. There is an order to our sexuality. There is an order to marriage. It’s there because God created us so.
We are sinners. We talked about this today. I’m not going to spend much time on this. We are sinners like them. We must get to the gospel in dealing with the world, but not all will agree. We have to be ready to be spurned. Be ready for that. You have to expect a spurning. Wonderful. If you talk to anybody who’s been an evangelist—I mean a serious evangelist—for years upon years, they will tell you they’ve seen hot and cold streaks, people coming to faith in Christ. It is all as God gives in His sovereign will. But there’s a lot of rejection and spurning, folks. There’s a lot of it. We have to prepare ourselves for that.
All right, the Lord may call us to suffer for our faith. And here we go, we’re getting into some of these matters that we talked about a little bit in the past. But focusing on the arguments themselves—meaning there’s no such thing as, you know, “I identify as a cat, a dog, or an opposite gender than I am”—if we focus on that argument, it is folly. And that is where we find… that’s what we talked about today in detail. But the Lord may call us to suffer for our faith. We may. If something—and this is going to be different for persons, so this is back to where I’ve said a number of times—we can’t convince everybody of every battle. We can’t. We will not win, we cannot convince. We have to think about a few things. I’ll give you a couple things to ponder, and I’ll stop for a minute and take questions.
We can’t convince every person, we can’t win every battle, but the truth of God is on our side, and when push comes to shove, we must side with God. We must side with God. If we don’t side with God in it, we’re siding against Him potentially. We have to be very careful. Now, you’re probably thinking, “Okay, how does that look?” If you’re in it—now, I’ll just speak for my own place, okay? Not everybody’s in this position at work or whatever—but if you’re in a decision-making capacity and you’re sitting there in a meeting with executives, okay, and you’ve got to make a decision on, “Are we going to allow the bathroom situation to be used by anybody who wants to be using it?” Okay, that’s a practical outworking of everything we’ve studied. And I would have to say no, I don’t agree with it. Now, there’s a chance, to the point a minute ago, I may suffer for my faith for this. I may lose my job because, “Wait a minute, Eric, the handbook is now saying this, you’re not in line. You serious? You sure?” You may have to go down that point. And that has a host of applications to it, okay? What’s the line? Where’s the line drawn for you? And I don’t mean you can figure it out everywhere, but you have to realize, we all know whether it’s work or family or school. We know where our lines could come up.
Okay. It might be what Seth brought up a few weeks back. Okay. The idea of, it’s school. What do I do? I see kids that are clearly, you know—I’m paraphrasing what I took from Seth—and that, you know, they’re clearly struggling with something like a transgender issue or something like that. Do I go over and try to talk to them? You could just know that that could get pretty rough pretty fast. And to push and push and push, you’re going to find yourself probably pushed out of school eventually. For work, probably lose your job. You may—I’m going to say it again—you may have to suffer for your faith, depending. It’s possible. But it doesn’t mean we have to go out and dig up problems either. Okay, there’s other ways around it.
Now let me stop there for a minute. Let me give everybody a chance to ask questions or say something. Does anybody think it’s hot in here? Okay, so I’m watching people’s faces. I’m hot. I’m watching people, and maybe it’s just me, but can we turn it down? Yeah, Greg. “I think a good example of the Lord using just the approach that you’ve summarized just now is the example of the testimony of Dr. Rosaria Butterfield. She’s a former professor at Syracuse of English and Women’s Studies… a rabid, former rabid lesbian activist. There was some conference in Syracuse and they got some publicity write-up in the paper and she responded and one of the local reformed evangelical pastors wrote her a letter and invited her to start having some conversations about her allegations and her position and she decided that she would do that. And they formed some rapport because of his graciousness, his gentleness, yet his uncompromising presentation of the objectivity of God and the reality of right and wrong. That eventually resulted in her joining the pastor and his wife in ongoing conversation. She was converted. She went on to marry a pastor herself and become one of the foremost spokesmen for the biblical position. She is now a pastor’s wife, a homeschooling mom. It’s just an example of how the most unsuspecting person immersed in this can do a 180 transformation by God’s grace.”
That’s right. Amen. She’s a well-known individual today in the evangelical world, coming from that world. What are your thoughts? Travis, thanks for doing that.
All right, a couple more and we’re done. So looking for the argument with anyone and everyone is not a test of faithfulness. Be clear about that. You’re looking for the argument. You’re seeking it out. It’s easy to find in this day and age. It is so easy to find this argument with people if you’re looking for it, but it’s not a test of faithfulness. In fact, it’s going to be a recipe for heartache. That’s where I think we have to know: where am I being put on the line in terms of my faithfulness versus where am I just trying to pick a fight? That’s where we have to watch. If somebody’s willing to engage you, you have to also use your mind or use your head in terms of “this is going south.” If somebody’s just there to fight with me and they’re just wanting to just drag the Bible down, drag God down, drag the gospel down, don’t throw your pearls before swine. You’re making it harder. And someday the Lord may turn them and the Lord’s used that to bring them to faith. But again, I want to say it again: looking for the argument with anyone and everyone is not a test of faithfulness. It’s a recipe for heartache. Again, know the lines you can cross. We’ve said that.
One question that came to me—I’ll put this out there—in the course of working through these several weeks, somebody said, “OK, so if… and this was more in the employer’s world… if all we do is, you know, we just confront, we’re constantly standing up and we’re getting fired, it’s going to…” and I agree with the point, it’s going to keep happening because the way the world is. This isn’t like an isolated pocket of a company or two that is doing this. This is becoming a very widespread phenomenon in all—in many, I’d say all, but very many employers. So the question is, are we better off staying there as a witness and standing firm and just kind of avoiding it, or are we better off getting fired every other minute? Well, there’s a practical side, right, to getting fired every minute? Okay, there’s a problem with that. We can’t be doing that. But what would you say to that? I have an answer, but I’ll put it out there just with a few minutes left. This idea—and this works at school, this works with family. I mean, how far do we let family come? Some of you have expressed to me you have homosexual family members, and there’s lines that have been drawn. “We won’t do this, we won’t do that. They’re welcome to come for dinner, but they don’t come for… they don’t stay overnight,” that kind of thing. But think about this for a minute. What about that idea of the witness? And I think it ties into our lesson today.
Frank. “I think for me in school, it is to let them see me act that is different without me being able to say it. Everybody sees it. In my lessons and stuff, they see that there’s something there that isn’t… for example, I’ll use foul language. I don’t use it. And in school, they all know, even though everybody except Seth uses it. Seth, by the way, is at my school. OK. Got that, yeah. For those of you who did not know. I can’t express God. There’s a separation of church and state in the school and I can’t do that. They can still see there’s something different there. So I act godly as a witness by how I present myself. Okay.”
What happens when they ask you why you don’t curse? “I tell them flat out why I don’t. And I’m allowed to say that. That’s my point. I’m allowed to say that. I just can’t teach it that way.” I understand. And that’s the point. Where’s that line? If that line for you is like, “I live it out,” I think that’s a great answer, day in, day out. Somebody says to you, “Why don’t you?” I’ve had that question before. Why don’t you curse? Even when things are not going well, why don’t you curse? It gives you a chance to say something. That’s the issue, though. You eventually, back to the point we made earlier in the lesson today, we eventually have to get to that point where we give the answer as to why. It doesn’t mean the opportunity always presents itself like Frank is saying, but somebody may put that to us, and we have to be ready for that. That’s what I’m saying by that line—where is the line? And it doesn’t mean it’s going to… look, something could come out of the blue we never expected. I don’t know what to say about that. Anticipating within our line of work, within our family, and knowing where those lines will draw.
It was interesting, Christy and I went to Ligonier last year and this exact issue came up in a panel discussion where they were talking about this exact issue. Somebody asked the question to the panel about… it was very much that homosexual family member that was going to come to Thanksgiving dinner or not. And, you know, the one was like, “I think you try to go as far as you can.” One of the, you know, we’ll call it the Ligonier staff members said, “You let it… you take it as far as you can without crossing the line in an effort to get to the gospel.” And that was what one other one said, but you eventually have to get there. And you can’t compromise on other matters. They didn’t give a lot of specifics, but this is really the flavor of it. I don’t have any more ways to explain it that way.
But one other thing somebody brought up with me was pronouns. Okay? We can’t state lies. We talk about them. We can’t say, you know, we can’t sit there and if somebody says, who’s a man, “Oh, I’m actually a woman,” we keep referring to him as “her” or “her,” you know, or the, you know, the female name, you know, he might have taken. You see what I did right there? I goofed it up. If you’ve had to deal with this, it’s very, very hard. It is very hard to keep that square because it is almost like muscle memory now for us. You’re so used to gender-based pronouns that you just don’t even think—the way the English language, the way we speak. To do that, though, there are ways around it. We can’t state lies, we can’t lie about it, but we can deliberately work around it by using sometimes proper names. The one experience I had with this once, the person’s… I don’t want to say the name for being careful, but the person didn’t change their name because it could have gone either male or female. They didn’t change their first name. So I always referred to this person by their first name. And that was the way around it. There are ways to get around it. I will tell you, though, as I said a moment ago, it is very difficult. Your mind does not go there. It is very difficult.
Seth? “Would it be fine to, instead of using like she or he, just like go out flat out if you have to question, like just flat out go to ‘they,’ or is that?” Well, we do that… we did that even before this happened sometimes. If you’re not sure, okay, we’ve done that. You know, if we’re not sure who’s being talked about, we’ll say that. I mean, we’ve done that. So, probably not a bad… to avoid the issue itself is not a bad thing. You’re not stating a lie. It’s a genderless pronoun. It technically is plural, so be careful. But, okay. We’re not getting a great mark off of that. Just be careful in English class, but… But no, it is a very sticky thing, because that’s how you can get yourself, especially in corporate America, it’s how you can get yourself into a really big problem really fast if you won’t do it.
Brandon. “I think one issue that can come into play with using ‘they’ is that now with everyone picking their pronouns, sometimes they pick ‘they’ as their pronouns.” Yeah, it can happen. I know sometimes people get really hung up on this because you’re being sucked into their reality. Some of it isn’t that. It’s us trying to avoid a problem with it because we’re not going to call them what they want to be called—the “he” or “she,” “her.” It’s just difficult. This is sticky. There’s no real easy way around it. I wish I had an easy answer for you. But sometimes you can use first name only. Okay, sometimes you can… I will tell you, I think school and work, they’re similar in the sense that they’re people you see every day. Technically, sometimes we spend more time with the people at work in a week than we do with our families. And it’s hard not to know. It’s different standing next to somebody getting on a plane, and you can tell this is maybe a transgender person, and you don’t have to speak to them, okay, it is what it is. At work, it’s a lot harder. Or at school, a lot harder.
Yeah, Clark. “I just want to mention that sometimes you’re around people, say somebody who’s trans or something. Some of them aren’t necessarily activists, where you never know when you’re actually sitting next to an activist. Because you could say some people are that way, but they’re just living their life. But then some people are that way, but they’re actually more into being an activist than they are even being that way.” Yeah, I mean this idea… I think what we’re seeing here is back to where we looked at 1 Timothy: bring the mercy of the gospel if and when we can. What we will find… one person had mentioned to me that they had a homosexual… he’s an older man. He’s a homosexual member of the family, and there’s now like certain weird clumps going on of like, well, they… they’re all for the homosexual, but they don’t agree with transgender, they don’t agree with the men in girls’ sports. It’s like it’s just getting so mixed up. Everything is just getting so messy.
So, one last thing… I’ll come right back to you, Dan, you’ll be the last for the day. We’re no different in terms of what is facing us than many other believers have faced. First-century Christians faced… you think about people coming to faith, that’s why Paul talks about homosexuality probably so much. He’s in pagan, Gentile areas that had no concept of anything. The Jews did; the Jews understood. The Jews understood what God’s word said; not them. So he had to go after these things specifically. And they were coming away from it. What we’re fighting is that battle. The one difference I would say is that I think that we’ve had so much light in the world of the gospel that the excuses are growing short on it. So, all right, Dan, we’re going to close.
“I said it just now, but in America we haven’t been used to being persecuted for our faith because ‘Christian nation’ and all that—it hasn’t been a problem. But I think Christ in his Beatitudes, at the very end of it, said, ‘Look, you know, blessed are you when men revile you and persecute you.’ Expect it. Because if you are going to be a peacemaker and bring people to a knowledge of God and, you know, have them come to the peace that comes to them by reconciling with Christ, you’re going to have to face your sin, and nobody wants to be told you’re a sinner. But at some point, you’re going to face that, and I think we’re just going to be salt and light and expect that persecution is going to come and whatever.” That’s right. We’ve been on the majority side. In other words, morality, laws, standards of society have been on the biblical side of the fence. It is switching the other way and now we’re where our first-century brethren were. It’s coming. And it’s to your point: we’re not used to it.
All right, got to close it up. Yeah, very quickly. You didn’t say it. Well, look, I’m Paul Pasternak. Everybody look at the clock. So what I’m about to say is I’m coming from the perspective of… I would really, really prefer not to use preferred pronouns and things that I don’t in my documentation and things on charts and things like that. But I mean, if anything, I would like to say, encourage even like anyone who’s going over this question in their head: I don’t think you have to be dogmatic on how you want to approach it. If only because… I haven’t read a book by this person, but there’s a guy named Preston Sprinkle who I’ve heard an interview exchange that he’s had, and he’s immersed himself in that line of ministry. And so he’ll talk about how he absolutely doesn’t believe there’s any… he believes the objective English truth of “she” and “her” and “he” and “them” refers to certain things, but in his ministry and conversation, sometimes it is the only way to move forward in a conversation is to at least base your conversation on the way that person will listen to you for the moment. Now, he never makes an apology that he’s using that, and we’re not in those situations. In work sometimes, I’m not going to use it at work because then it’s confusing for people to think that I’m on the side of that. But I don’t think you have to be dogmatic as long as you know what you’re thinking and why you’re doing something. And I’m saying that from someone who intentionally doesn’t try and change plans like I don’t. So I’m not saying I don’t.
I know we want these nice lines of, like, obedience of, like, Mosaic law saying that “thou shalt do this, thou shalt not do that.” It’s not that easy. So, all right, let’s pray. Lord, thank you for the eight weeks of study. Thank you for the book again. Thank you for giving us, above all else, your word that instructs us on the rightness of God in all things, whether it’s sexuality and marriage and gender, whether it’s anything else in life. Father, you have instructed us well, you have given us your word; may we obey it. Bless us now as we go into our time of corporate worship, praying it in Christ’s name, amen.