Can you be Gay & a Christian? | Make Heaven Crowded Ep. 36

In this episode of Make Heaven Crowded, we tackle one of the most sensitive and important questions facing the Church today: Can you be gay and a Christian?

This conversation is not about winning arguments or condemning people—it's about seeking truth, understanding Scripture, and reflecting the heart of Jesus.

What does the Bible actually say about sexuality? How should Christians approach this topic with both conviction and compassion? And how do we navigate a culture where identity, faith, and sexuality are often deeply intertwined?

We explore questions like:

• What does the Bible teach about same-sex attraction and sexual ethics?
• Can someone experience same-sex attraction and still follow Jesus?
• How should Christians engage these conversations with grace and truth?
• What is the difference between temptation, identity, and behavior?
• How can the Church better love people while remaining faithful to Scripture?

Our goal is not to create division, but to have an honest conversation rooted in God's Word and centered on the gospel. No matter where you're coming from, we hope this discussion helps you think deeply, listen carefully, and look to Jesus above all else.

🎙️ Make Heaven Crowded – Episode 36
📖 Topics: Faith, Sexuality, Identity, Discipleship, Biblical Truth
🌐 Learn more at teamfbc.info

Transcript

SPEAKER_03 0:00

Welcome to the Make Heaven Crowded Podcast. We're excited about today's conversation. I'm Pastor Luke. This is Pastor Jordan, and we are have our student director, Tori, joining us today. Also a local legend and podcaster on XOXO Godly Girl. She's way more famous than we are. Yeah, she is. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 0:19

Yeah. And I just to know, I was the first guest on this podcast, and I'm the first reoccurring. Reoccurring. Hey.

SPEAKER_03 0:25

Man, in the first movie.

SPEAKER_00 0:28

That's right.

SPEAKER_03 0:29

A lot of firsts.

SPEAKER_00 0:30

A lot of firsts.

SPEAKER_03 0:31

How about that? So no longer she's a guest on the podcast. Once you like come back, I don't think you're a guest on the podcast anymore.

SPEAKER_00 0:36

I'm like stapled in. This is just like you're part of the family.

SPEAKER_04 0:39

Part of the family. Yeah. Even though you work here, you're kind of part of the family. Now you're definitely part of the family. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 0:44

And so it's another level. Last week it was just you and I, Jordan. Yeah. And I heard some really good feedback from great feedback. But they said we needed a third. And so somebody better than Roger. And that is me.

SPEAKER_01 0:54

Tori.

SPEAKER_03 0:55

How does that feel?

SPEAKER_04 0:56

To know you're better than Roger. I don't I don't think I'm open up. Let us know. Speak your heart. It feels good. It feels good.

SPEAKER_00 1:04

If Roger's listening, it feels pretty good.

SPEAKER_04 1:06

Do you feel that this was a high bar to reach? Or just, yeah, okay, no problem.

SPEAKER_00 1:11

I feel like it's a high bar.

SPEAKER_04 1:13

Be better than Roger?

SPEAKER_00 1:14

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:14

I mean, like, I think it's a very mid-bar to read. Like it's not a good thing.

SPEAKER_00 1:18

It's not that good of an accomplishment. You're saying it, but you're like, I'm going to go to the body.

SPEAKER_04 1:23

You're like, oh yeah, that's easy. No problem. That's more uh I was saying that.

SPEAKER_00 1:26

In some areas.

SPEAKER_03 1:27

No, it's a good starting point, so I'm saying like you should be proud of yourself.

SPEAKER_00 1:30

Thank you. Yeah, you're welcome. Proud. I am proud of you should. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:32

Well, to get this train rolling and on track, Luke, you preached on Sunday again. So um you were following up on your thesis statement. Yeah. Um, as we like to do to kick off the podcast. Was there anything that you didn't get to talk about that you didn't have a whole lot of time for?

SPEAKER_03 1:48

More like Yeah, I barely got to talk about what I wanted to talk about on Sunday. It was such a it's such a large passage with so much in there.

SPEAKER_04 1:56

Yeah, where we sit we have the angle of the clock. We we can look and we can see the time, and obviously you can too. Um and well, but no, I'm I watch it going to the red and then the looks like I'm just getting started, man. Yeah. Well, it I was sitting there thinking, man, he's just getting started. And it is uh 9 58, two minutes to go, and I'm thinking, oh boy, this is either going to be uh doozy long, you even called it a doozy. Yeah, by the way, do y'all know where that comes that that phrase comes from? Oh, doozy? Yeah, the duesenberg car. Do you all know what the doosenberg car was? You know, back in the early makings of the car of the you know, 1920s, when they're really coming in their own, those really long, beautiful cars with the big headlights, you know. The Duisenberg was a car like in the 20s that could go over a hundred miles an hour. And so it was the pinnacle of vehicles in the day of the you know, when vehicles are being made. And so when someone was referring to something as wow, that is nice, it's a doozy. Because it was referring to the Dusenberg car, because it was the top of the list. Interesting.

SPEAKER_00 3:00

Because now when people say something's a doozy, it sounds like it's just a lot. Yeah, which I guess it was a lot of it was a lot of car.

SPEAKER_04 3:07

I mean, there you go look at the original Duesenberg cars and then it's like whoa.

SPEAKER_03 3:10

That's an accurate description of this passage by calling it a doozy.

SPEAKER_04 3:14

Oh, absolutely. Anything that's big and grand and a lot, you're it's a doozy. Yeah, yeah. Insert photo of doozy. Yeah, yeah, insert a duzenberg car. And so they were a lot and they were the best and the fastest. So yeah. But anyways, uh I was sitting there thinking you had two minutes till kind of ten o'clock, which is stop time for the first service. But I was also like you didn't go till 1020, though. Yeah you went maybe only five over or so at most.

SPEAKER_03 3:39

But I started praying around 10 06. 10 06. Yeah, so not bad.

SPEAKER_04 3:42

Yeah. Considering you were getting to your point only eight minutes before that. That's right. So not you landed the plane well.

SPEAKER_03 3:50

Bottom line is there's a lot to talk about today.

SPEAKER_04 3:52

It wasn't a crash landing, but you landed the plane quickly.

SPEAKER_00 3:54

So I think you ended it in a way that was good for open conversations after and for people to kind of want to hear what's talked about today.

SPEAKER_04 4:01

Yeah, especially given the topic that you were going through. It was very sensitive, difficult. Uh I mean my mom even texted this morning saying that how well of a job you did navigating that. So thank you. And she doesn't ever Mom, if you're listening, thank you. Yeah, I appreciate it. No, well, like I won't give the other comment about last week's comment that she made. So afterwards.

SPEAKER_03 4:21

Well, here's like what I would say when it comes to a passage like that, and I know there's a lot there, it is okay, let's boil it down to one thing. Like, why is Paul putting this in the letter? Like, what's his main point in trying to put this in here? And I think we can get distracted from that main point with a lot of different things that are there, uh, which need to be talked about, which is what's great here. But on a Sunday morning, going through, we're doing an exegetical style through the book of Romans. What's the one thing that Paul is trying to get across to here? And that's actually why we took a back step and went to the thesis statement of starting off in uh verses 16 and 17. And you know, we focused last week on hey, do not be ashamed of the gospel. That's the whole point of why he's writing Romans is encouraging them not to. But also the point he's trying to do is equal the playing field because you have this tension going on between Jews and Gentiles. The Jews are coming back to their church after being driven out of Rome. They're finding the Gentiles are taking over, and they're having disagreements on how they should manage their church. And Paul, he's writing to them saying, Hey, the gospel that you guys are a part of now, it's no longer about Jew and Gentile, it's about righteous and unrighteous. And that's what he kicks off there in verse 17 before he starts talking about with 18. But 16, 17, he gives the cure. The cure is us being called righteous before before God. And so that's category number one is the righteous. And how do you, how are you deemed righteous only by the gospel of Jesus Christ and believing in it? Not just believing that there is a gospel, not just believing that there is a God, but believing in it. And I tell you, the insider, like, when I was prepping for this, I had the whole thing prepped, and I was like, Lord, I need something to help grasp the believing in. And that's when he laid on my heart the the image of Duke jumping into the water. And I don't know if it was because we talked about The Ovon and the pool of Bethesda and all of that, but then like my mind went to oh, like a little kid jumping into the pool. He knows that I'm his dad. Yeah, but then he has to actually put his trust in me. You're gonna truly catch him and then not dunk him and drown him. Right. Exactly. Like he there's a there's a point that he had to get to where he starts trusting.

SPEAKER_04 6:31

Right, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 6:32

And but after I do it one time, he and so that and I was like, oh Lord, thank you. And I think that helped land the plane of the passage and get the point across of everything that we were trying to do. So yeah, the whole thing that he's trying to explain right here in this passage is the power of salvation, and that's why it was the title, is because you have two groups, the righteous and the unrighteous. And the power of salvation is we are all unrighteous for all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God and what he would tell us in here in a little bit. But because of the gospel, we are made righteous. So that's the power of salvation. So he levels a playing field, there's two groups righteous, unrighteous, and then the rest of 18 through 32, it's him showing you what unrighteousness look like.

SPEAKER_04 7:09

Can we pause real fast on that whole the gospel is the power of God for salvation? Um, I I don't know if anybody else was like me, but that was very confusing to me. It was just kind of like the gospel is the power of God to salvation. How is the gospel, how is that power that leads to salvation? How is it that a story, how is it that just telling about the story of Jesus and what he did for us? How is there just the power of that to salvation? And what's until you see the examples of it, it's kind of hard to grasp what that means. And you kind of even tapped into that a few weeks ago talking about was it Bobby? Uh what's his last name? Yeah, the Alfred, the sitting on the front row. Yeah, and the what finally connected in mind, and not that I didn't understand that the gospel doesn't have I didn't understand that the gospel had power or anything like that, or that just what um what what was tripping me up was just like how does that just the idea of hearing about what Jesus did have so much power to bring salvation? How is that even possible? And obviously, all my life I'm just like, well, God can do whatever he wants, he can he has the power to do anything. But what finally clicked for me was how understanding what Jesus did for you when you're here and you're as even Paul would say he was the chief sinner, but even for Bobby, he probably met Jesus in jail. Yeah, because of some awful things that he was doing in his life.

SPEAKER_03 8:33

Bobby Sure, he did drugs his whole life, yeah. Three he's been sober for three years, and three years ago is when he met Christ. Yeah. You know, now he comes to church every week.

SPEAKER_04 8:40

Yeah, and so the idea that he heard this message of Christ's forgiveness and love, and uh all you have to do is just trust in that, and God, you're made back in the right relationship with God. Just hearing that took Bobby from being in jail due to drugs, I think dealing as well, doing some rotten stuff, to then going, you know what? I want to believe in that, and I'm gonna put my faith in what Jesus did for me. And then in the process of understanding what that meant, it took him from I mean, because you can't, I mean, to think that you can snap your finger and then now you're no longer addicted to drugs is like, okay, whatever. Or it fill in the blank to any kind of addiction or struggle. But for him, and we've heard this for many, that it is almost like a snap of the finger, and there's this change all of a sudden that happens in their inside of them. They're like, I'm walking away from that. I don't want that anymore. I have no craving for that anymore. And just from hearing that message and deciding to make that, taking a step and making a decision, there was the power in his life to bring him now over here.

SPEAKER_01 9:44

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 9:44

That he's coming to church every Sunday. He's a part of ministry work with the men's ministry. I think he's been out at Rust several times, helping out at Rust. He's all in now.

SPEAKER_01 9:52

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 9:53

And uh for me, it was just that, oh, that's the power. Yeah. That it can take a drug-addicted person in jail that normally is stuck in that loop cycle that will never get out. And usually 10 times out of 10, that leads to destruction and death. It changed the course of his life completely. And it's just amazing that that is the power that that story of what what Christ has done for us. Once you choose to say, Okay, yeah, I'm gonna give it a chance, I'm gonna believe in it. That's the that's the amazing power of the life change that it has.

SPEAKER_03 10:25

Well, that you bring up the story, like I think it's important to define that what that gospel for something to be a gospel, it is what we believe the gospel is good news. For something to be news, it has to be an actual event that people shared and talked about. Yeah. And it for in order to be good, it has to have a positive impact on the people that believe in that news. Yeah, right.

SPEAKER_04 10:47

So good has to be rooted in something truth or good, very good, yeah. Right.

SPEAKER_03 10:51

And so when we hear the gospel, what is that? It literally means good news. Okay, news means it's an actual event. We know that the death of Christ on the cross and the resurrection was an actual event that happened, and it was news, people haven't stopped talking about it for two two thousand years.

SPEAKER_04 11:05

That's right.

SPEAKER_03 11:06

Right, and so and then the passage. There's so many things that are based on it. Yeah.

unknown 11:10

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 11:10

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 11:10

Sorry, go ahead.

SPEAKER_03 11:11

No, like the power of that. But the power that brings. And so speaking of something I wasn't able to talk about on Sunday, my mind immediately as I'm reading this and I'm understanding this passage from now, okay, he's still separating in two two groups, now it's alone or Jew and Gentile. It's righteous and unrighteous. The imagery I immediately have is my mind is Jesus telling the people, hey, this is what it's gonna look like in the kingdom of heaven. I'm gonna separate you by how my sheep and the goats. And he so Jesus separates them into two groups. And that's what Paul is doing here, right? He's saying, Hey, my sheep, these are the ones that do what? These are the ones that fed me, these are the ones that when I was hungry, they visited me in prisons, they they did all these things, and ultimately they believed in the gospel. They are separated one side. But then you have the goats, even though some of them might say, Lord, Lord, but they never knew me, it's because they may believe that there was a God, but they never believed in the gospel of Jesus Christ. And so they are deemed unrighteous. Or acted on it, maybe even too, and then they are deemed unrighteous because now their eternity is based upon their actions. So that's where that comes into play. Yeah. There. And so that's if I had more time to dive into, I would have gone into hey, Paul is just communicating what Jesus was communicating to everybody when he was talking about the end times.

SPEAKER_04 12:25

No, it's just it's um when you see it play out with in people's lives, you really then it starts to have the weight behind it. Yeah. Um, and obviously you can read something in a book and it's just words, uh, but then when you see it in action, or even like hearing from others that they talk about how I needed to go to jail. And we're and you ask, well, why? I'm obvious the you first thought in your mind as well, yeah, because you broke the law, and that's probably why you need to go to jail. Legally, yeah. But then they say, because that's where I met Jesus. And you're like, Oh, hey. It's so funny you bring that up.

SPEAKER_03 12:59

So my dad was in the dunk tank for lane change uh at that Route 66 festival. Oh, okay, yes, past weekend. And he said, you know, you get up there thinking, like, not very many people are gonna be able to hit the target. Um when you put the judge on there, yeah. Put him in jail, but they're gonna be like really good at this. There was a guy that hit it four out of five times. I said, Well, dad, that's because it was personal. I said, Who was this guy? He's like, he came up and rudgered. My dad's like, I was taunting him. I said, You can't hit it. He hits it. He's like, We sure can't do it twice. He did it twice. He's like, You can't do it again. He did it three times in a row. My dad's like, I'm not gonna say anything again.

SPEAKER_02 13:35

He did it the four times in a row.

SPEAKER_03 13:37

And it ended up, the guy's like, Yeah, you put me in prison, but it was the best thing that ever happened to me. And so I was like, Oh, that's why it was personal. I mean, you threw threw him in jail, baby.

SPEAKER_04 13:46

He really was. A lot of times it's not the best thing for people unless they meet Jesus. That's right. And that's just again, you just get to you see in people's lives the power and what it can do for people. And I mean, you think about just the the how strong like I've heard that meth, if you've tried it once, you're addicted. Yeah, and you're done. Uh, there's no going back. To then think that we're that's probably where a lot of these folks have been. Um, matter of fact, we've even had someone here that said his mom introduced him to meth at eight years old. Can you even imagine that? Um and when he accepted Christ, and he was probably in his mid-20s since eight years old, he had been addicted to meth. He said immediately, I no longer had the craving. And you're like, Man, that is awesome. I mean, it just I don't know, you uh you start to understand what that power is, and I'm I don't I reason why I wanted to pause is just because I think that's another phrase or verse or saying in the Bible that I think we can just skim over and truly miss the the gravity and the power, the weight of what what Paul is saying here what is meant by it. So yeah, anyways, I just want to.

SPEAKER_00 15:01

And I do want to note because though that is the story of some, that isn't the story of all. Like whenever you first accept Jesus, for some people it's this thorn in your flesh, you know, you have this thing that you struggle with and that Jesus has to kind of walk you through, and then you seek freedom from as you go through it, which will be some of uh the topic that we're going into in a bit. But when you talk about the power of the gospel to transform, it does sound crazy. Like I've never thought of how crazy that sounds that you hear this story and now your whole life is changed. But it's because it's not just a story and it's not just news, it's not just good news. Like when you read through the list that of all the sins of the unrighteous and you realize you fall in most of those categories, then when you hear a story about someone who loves you so much that they died to take on the weight of that and you recognize the weight of that, you just want nothing more than it. So I I think when you realize it's not because it's just a story that is heard, like it is the story, and it's the reason that we all exist, it's the reason that you know God made us in the first place, the reason that Jesus came down to earth. Something about you when you're able to recognize that kind of love. Um it it changes you not just because of the story that you heard, but because if you believe it and you accept it and you confess it, now you have this key element that is the Holy Spirit. And that is where the transformation comes, the helper. Yeah, because by our own strength, you can I've heard a lot of stories that have impacted me or changed me for a moment, but they didn't invite the Holy Spirit into me. They didn't create this uh conviction or this new way to live or this understanding of who he is or this relationship aspect that I now have. So yeah, when it sounds crazy to hear that a story can change a life, but when you realize all that comes into receiving it and not just hearing it, but accepting it and living it out. Yeah, it's it's impossible to not change.

SPEAKER_04 16:44

Well, I think you highlighted there that everybody's salvation story is different. And I didn't I don't have that kind of a salvation story where I met Jesus in jail. But uh my I mean, I've just I grew up in a Christian family, I've always believed in Jesus, I've never had a doubt that Jesus was real, and so for me, there was never that power of the gospel moment. I just always believed in Jesus and his power. Yeah, and so I was looking at it from another angle because I've never experienced it from the front end perspective. Yeah, and that's where it's just kind of like I that I'm that doesn't compute very well for me. I gotta understand what that means.

SPEAKER_03 17:18

But if we pressed, but did your story and how that story impacted your story, would there be a transformation story? So instead of like the like yours is what a lot of people's is a big salvation moment, like sitting in jail, and how that story but like for me, I'm in the same boat. Yeah, I grew up going to church with my family, I always believed that there was a God. I made a decision even in probably seventh grade to believe in that as salvation.

SPEAKER_04 17:39

Oh yeah, and I'd had those moments of I'm gonna, and I even did the rededication. But like my eye, whatever, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 17:44

But when I was like transformed, like when it clicked, and I truly started, I would say, living in the spirit instead of according to the flesh, was after like I went through the hardest season of my life. Yeah, and that's what I'm saying. Like, some people would say, Hey, I need a jail, I need a prison, whatever. For me, it's like I needed that hard hard season of my life, and even though it was the hardest season of my life, I would never go back and change it because I don't think I would be here if it wasn't for that. But it was through that that the story of the gospel then finally transformed my story. I had already been saved, I was going to heaven, but I started living that transformed life uh when it became real and personal to me. Yeah. So I like I'd wonder about your story. Like, was there a moment when uh like yeah, you yeah, you had salvation, but things start clicking and changing for you.

SPEAKER_04 18:27

Yeah, it was a gradual process over time. Um I definitely believe there was a time where God was calling me back and going through difficult times. I've always seen the markers of God throughout my life and the power of Christ throughout my life. I've always trusted and I knew that when I've screwed up, it's usually me. I'm my own worst enemy. And you know, and I've probably my parents are actually listening to this podcast and they heard me say that I rededicated my life as a teenager, they're going, Really? Oh, you did, did you? How about that? But no, I've always just understood that. No, it was a gradual over time, I think God was calling me back to the true understanding of what a Christian is. Yeah. Um, and so just and that's why I think I'm so uh passionate about Fresh Start. Yeah, is that either I didn't listen, which is probably the case, or it never was really explained in a process of this is where you were, and now this is where you need to go, and here's the steps to get there of living that Christ-like life. Um, it was probably explained in various ways, in bits and pieces, maybe, but in I never clicked it together in my mind. Where now I feel like I want to click it together for people. And so far, when we've clicked it together, they're like, I've never heard it that way.

SPEAKER_03 19:41

Well, I put it that's the power of the Fresh Start, is these are not brought groundbreaking things as people are learning. Right. But for the first time, it's maybe put in their language where they can understand. It's connected, yeah. Right. You know, I just talked to a a kid on Sunday that he's heard the gospel his entire life, but I explained it through the lens of rodeo because that's what that kid does, and it clicked for him for the first time. Yeah, that's what I love about Fresh Start is you're getting these one-on-one connections with people, and you're able to explain the process of this maybe in their language that they're hearing for the very first time. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 20:11

Because in my uh man, 20 years ago, my understood or my understanding or what I thought a good Christian was is you're going to church regularly. Yeah. Um, you're you're reading your Bible, which you know, those are good things, but I never connected it to the whole what am I doing? Uh, the righteousness or the belief the trust and the faith in God. That's actually it's not a check the box, that's what makes you. It's uh where's your heart? Yeah, and how is your heart towards God? And what are you doing then with that? There was this new like reorienting my understanding of truly what it meant to be a Christian, walk with God, and truly be a follower, a disciple of Christ and living it out. Um so, anyways, that still is kind of a am I experiencing the power of the gospel? Maybe. And that's where it was just difficult for me to understand that first. Because just from my perspective and upbringing of salvation, I guess. Um because it just I and I even when we do our growth track classes, when people learn their spiritual gifts, I'm always excited to talk to the people that say that have faith listed as their spiritual gifts. Because I'll ask them, I'm like, I'll say, I'm just curious. You're a spiritual gift, you have faith. Have you always just believed? And I I would say 10 out of 10, every single one, we're at 100%. I'm pretty sure we're about 100% or a thousand. Um they're all like, Yeah, I've just always believed that in Jesus and what he who he is and what he's done for us. And I'm like, Me too. Yeah, and so there's this kind of like, I get it. So it's just I never had to experience that right side of it, and that's where it was difficult for me to understand that passage. So that's a long drawn out explanation.

SPEAKER_03 21:57

Well, and like I think it's good because I mean there's different Routes we we like to think of the person in prison because that's the easiest to see that transformation. But what you explained, it's just a gradual thing over time, even though you've always had that faith. And so it's good for people to recognize that and see it. But also, like the power is now God calls us righteous. And I think that's what where people need to start getting it to click in their head. God is not looking down at you and saying, You unrighteous, dark-hearted sinner. Yeah, no, once you give your life to Christ, the power of the gospel, he's like, No, you're my child, you are righteous. Does that mean every action you're going to have is going to be righteous? No. You're still going to do some things that's that are wrong, but now he's setting the expectation for you. Yeah. Like, hey, yeah, you're deemed righteous in my eyes. You have a right standing before God because of what Jesus did. That's what he's talking about. But I also believe as his children, he is now calling us uh to live with that expectation of oh yeah, we are righteous. It's like me talking to my kids. I can either tell them, when you go into this restaurant, you better not X, Y, and Z, blah, blah, blah, do these bad things. Or I can be like, hey, thank you so much for being a great kid. Thank you for saying yes, sir, and no, sir. Yeah. Thank you for being polite. Thank you for sitting at the table. And you set that expectation and let them live up to it and meet it. Does that mean they're gonna be perfect? No. But then you understand that's how I see them whenever we're going in. So that's power in that. And but then he goes into talking about the unrighteousness. And I think this is where we've got to pause and remember, where's Paul writing this from? Because as he's listing out all these unrighteousness, he's like, what in the world is going on in Rome? Like, what but he's never been to Rome. So how does he know if these things are what's going on in Rome? So I think we have to take a step back and remember where is Paul writing the book of Romans from? He's writing it from Corinth. Corinth. Which we know what about Corinth? Bad. Bad.

SPEAKER_00 23:42

Like the whole letters of Corinthians are just you're doing this wrong picture.

SPEAKER_04 23:46

I mean, well, and that's the other thing, as we talked with the last episode. I love the context before the letter. You go understand context of the Corinthian letters and understanding their culture contextually. And they they have the temple of um uh who's the goddess of love? I want to say Artemis, that's Ephesus. It was Aphrodite. Yeah. And they literally had temple prostitutes that it was not an unusual thing. It was a very common thing to just go to the temple. Yeah. And that was normal, and that was no big deal. And Paul's like, no, no, no, no, no, that's not how you do it.

SPEAKER_03 24:20

I mean, he's in Corinth, which reminds me of another sea city, Camden. Like, that's how I view what's going on in Corinth. Very much. We have some Camden people. But no, like, and it's so bad. Corinth, he actually writes four letters to the Corinthians. Yeah, we only have two. We only have two of them. Matter of fact, the first one is more like his second. Yeah, so really we have letters two and four is what they believe, and we're missing letters one and three. But he writes four letters there. We know that currently when he writes the book of Romans or letter to the Roman Church, he is in Corinth for probably around three months, and so he's there. He's in the middle of this sinful city that has all sorts of stuff going on.

SPEAKER_04 24:57

Just the broad encompassing sexual immorality.

SPEAKER_03 25:00

Needless to say, he's in the middle of the unrighteous capital of the world right now is when he's in Corinth. And so when he's writing to Rome and he's talking about righteousness and unrighteousness, he is literally probably just listing out things that he's seeing go on in Corinth. Right right in front of his face.

SPEAKER_04 25:17

Well, and if Rome is the epicenter of evil to them, then why wouldn't it be going on there as well? So, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 25:23

And so he that's what he's probably assuming, like same struggles Corinth is having on some level, same issues that they're having in Rome. They're called humans, yes. And uh the same ones that are human issues, yeah. Yeah. It's like, holy cow, how did he know we'd be dealing with this 2,000 years later?

SPEAKER_00 25:39

Yeah, because they dealt with it 2,000 years prior.

SPEAKER_04 25:42

We're humans, yeah. Well, and okay, that right there is an opportunity. That is why the Bible is so fascinating because so many people want to say it's not relevant anymore. It's talking about past cultures or old civilizations. No, the Bible is speaking to the human condition that never changes. Yep. We have the same wants and desires today as they did then, and so it is absolutely 1,000% applicable.

SPEAKER_03 26:06

And that's and he starts off in that verse 18. The first words he says in this part, the wrath of God. No, you're for the wrath of God. He says the wrath of God. And we don't talk about the wrath of God very much in our church. No, we don't, right? We we don't. And that's why you know, when we think about the wrath of God, we have to understand, yes, do we have a God that is a just God? Absolutely. And all of this unrighteousness, you see his righteous anger that is poured out upon this. But as he explains, what does the wrath of God look like now? It no longer looks like burning up cities like Sodom and Gomorrah. It no longer looks like sending a flood to wipe out everything. What it looks like his wrath on today's age, what does that look like? Him just removing his divine hand of protection. And we see that start off if you look into the book of Judges, we see that happen in the book of Judges, right? Yeah. Over and over again. And it happens before then, but you know, in the book of Judges, as these kings would rise up, they'd follow the Lord for a little while, or these judges would rise up, they'd follow the Lord for a little while, then they would fall into sin. And what would the Lord do? He would remove his hand and allow them to go on in their sinful ways and pay the consequences.

SPEAKER_04 27:20

Is it at the end of Joshua or leading into judges where either Joshua says, and man chose to do what was right in his own eyes? I believe that's at the end of Joshua, um, or it's leading into judges, but um that's exactly what it is.

SPEAKER_03 27:36

And Paul's just honestly just communicating that again. He's like, hey, you want to know what the wrath of God looks like now? It looks like him just doing that same thing. Saying, hey, whenever you choose your will over his will, his wrath looks like to you as a the hardest thing to do as a parent, remove the protection hand and let you pay the consequences for your own mistakes. Yeah. That's what the wrath of God looks like.

SPEAKER_00 27:54

He doesn't have to intervene to punish right now because we become the destruction of ourselves. Like you can see it over and over again.

SPEAKER_04 27:59

Absolutely. And but then there's an ultimate destruction, that a path that you're heading down that if you don't clean this up before things end, sorry, that's it. That's you don't have another.

SPEAKER_03 28:09

If you don't make that decision to be healed, to move from being unrighteous to being righteous, it's going on. So the context, Paul's right in the middle of Sin City, Corinth, writing this. That's how he kind of gets all of this going on.

SPEAKER_04 28:21

So it's kind of like uh the way I describe it in my class, it's like Vegas, Amsterdam, New York City, uh all combined into one lump. Oh my gosh. Yeah. I can't even imagine. Yeah. Yeah. I just stick because you called Sin City, and that's what reminded me of how I described it. It's like my heaven is like a country road. Like, what's that?

SPEAKER_03 28:40

The outskirts of heaven, like that song? No, that's Corinth. I know, but that's what like my heaven looks like the outskirts. Like maybe that guy had something going on. Like maybe people should just live in the country. Actually, some people should not come and live in the country. They just need to stay in the city. All of side notes. Side note. Yeah. Sorry. But he you know, he gets to the wrath of God is being revealed, and he says, from heaven against all godlessness and wickedness of people. And what does he say that does? That godlessness and wickedness looks like it looks like those people who suppress the truth by their wickedness. And what he is saying is like everybody knows that there's a truth, that there is a God out there. He says, I've revealed myself through creation, I've revealed myself through a variety of ways. And what I truly believe in this, if it they haven't had somebody tell them about it, he's appearing to them to dreams and visions. He's making himself known around the world that people ought to believe that there is a God just from everything. And he's and he's revealed himself in that way. But yet, even though they know that there's a God, even though they know there's a truth out there, the more wickedness you do, the more you suppress that truth. And we even see that for people that grow up in church. The people that, you know, they maybe they spent their entire life going to kids' church, to youth group, then they go off to college, they don't get plugged into the right group, and they start committing sin after sin after sin. Well, what starts happening is they become numb to the gospel that they know and the truth that they know because their sin just keeps suppressing the truth that they know. But that's true for anybody. The more we sin in an area, the more we suppress the truth, and we want to make it seem like, you know what, that's not talking about it. It's not that big of a deal. Yeah, yeah. Right. And so that's that's what he's kind of um he's explaining here of what's going on and how we are choosing those idols, those gods, over the one true God. Yeah, and that's the very first thing he talks about, large part probably because he's in Corinth, and there's literally they have literal idols there that people worship. Yep. And the very first thing he says, hey, they're exchanging the truth about God for these idols. They have they have animals, they have reptiles, they have all these different things that they're bowing down to worshiping.

SPEAKER_04 30:43

And I liked how you then bridge that to our day, how we may not, but there's still religions today that bow down to idols. Um Hindu religion is a perfect example. I and Catholics don't shoot me, but I've recently was in the Catholic church for a funeral, and wow, there's a lot of statues that they do kneel in front of and do the cross um gesture in front of a statue. Yeah. And in my mind, I'm like, hmm, is that okay? I don't know. It's because that that idol is there, that statue is nothing. But why so why are you bowing to it? Yeah. Um, that is not God. And it's even it could be uh a statue of Paul or Mary or it maybe even be Jesus, but it's a man-made thing, yeah, and they're still bowing down to it. And it's like, eh, that's not good. That's right. But then outside of an actual human-looking fixture, I liked how you even got into, and you even said it, I think this previous sermon, you brought up football or sports. Um, these things that we we think are harmless are no big deal. Man, it's so easy for those to actually truly be an idol because we put so much time and focus and energy into them. Go ahead.

SPEAKER_03 31:51

So, how do we stop making God a priority? Is what he's getting at here. And he g shows us the sin, like how we start falling into that sin. And he gives us a list. He says, You stop glorifying God, you stop worshiping him, and you stop giving thanks. Whenever you stop doing those three things, it's probably because you have another idol in your life. You have something else you're glorifying, you have something else you're worshiping, and you have something else that you're thinking more than God. And so in your life, like you gotta look at how much do you glorify God? How much do you worship him? And how much do you just give thanks for who he is, not just what he does for you. And if you are losing sight of those three things, it might be because you have another idol in your life that you're placing above those things that you're putting your trust in. You're distracted. And ultimately what he says is we become our own God. And that's where we're kind of I mean, Satan, he's been playing that playbook for a long time. Well, he wanted to be him, he thought he could be. That's what like around today's culture. Like, they're like, Well, who are you to tell me what I need to do? Or who is like, why do I need a religion to keep my moral values? Like, I am me, like I can choose whatever I want. It's my body, it's my choice, but I can do whatever. What you're saying, you are your own God. Yeah, that you can make those decisions. And they're saying it in the heart, they think they're wise, but they're actual fools.

SPEAKER_00 33:10

I love that verse 22 is just by itself in that claiming to be wise, they became fools.

SPEAKER_03 33:14

Claiming to be wise.

SPEAKER_00 33:15

Because uh I see nothing more true than that today. It's through our own wisdom or or truth, is what we claim is wisdom, but wisdom is only from the Lord. And so when we create our own version of it and then we go based off of that, it looks foolish because if everyone's claiming their own versions of truth, like there is no truth to stand upon. Yeah. It's just a lot of people.

SPEAKER_04 33:32

Did you imagine if everybody had their own truth and that's how the world lived?

SPEAKER_00 33:35

That's how they're wanting to live is the right.

SPEAKER_04 33:38

Could you imagine the total chaos if it was actually let loose to do that?

SPEAKER_00 33:42

But just yeah, yeah. Just envision that. Just picture that. Like there's no you you don't take advice from people anymore. You can't take correction because your own way is right. You um well that doesn't fit within my truth, so I don't have to.

SPEAKER_04 33:55

Yeah. I can speed, I can murder, I can do whatever I want because it's my truth. Is yeah. Oh, could you imagine scary? That is, it is scary.

SPEAKER_00 34:03

Claiming to be wise, they became fools.

SPEAKER_04 34:05

Yep. Yeah. Well, and then we uh you say that the wise, that one also gets me is we always chalk up whys as to a lot of worldly knowledge. Uh they've been around the block, they know understand life, they can give good advice. But biblically, it's the the wisdom. I think the word Paul uses the Greek words called Sophia. Uh, but what God sees as wisdom is understanding who he is and then applying that to your life correctly.

SPEAKER_00 34:29

Which is why it says like you ask for wisdom, you will receive it.

SPEAKER_04 34:32

You will receive it, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 34:33

But if we're not asking for it and we're just claiming to have it, then we're so lost.

SPEAKER_04 34:38

Yeah, but but again, even in that context, ask for wisdom. Well, what's the wisdom? It's understanding who God is and what he wants you to do and applying that to your life. So we think it's this great understanding. I've got the whole Bible figured out and exactly no, no, no, no.

SPEAKER_00 34:53

But you don't know him.

SPEAKER_04 34:54

Do you know him?

SPEAKER_00 34:55

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 34:55

And then are you applying that to your life?

SPEAKER_00 34:57

That's where the transforming wisdom transforming power of the gospel comes in. It's through knowing him. Like it's all connected to that.

SPEAKER_03 35:03

Yeah, well, though that's like the convicting part of this is I had it, I tallied it up because my mind works in numbers. You guys know that. And I'm lit reading all these different sins. I'm like, how many different sins does he list out here? Oh, that's cool. You did add that up. And you put it all on one page. 23. Yeah. And that includes one of them just being, hey, the angels ran out of terms for sin, and then they just said they did they just started doing the evil thing. Like that. And but the first one that's mentioned is idol idolatry. And the key is he's saying, hey, the idols you're worshiping is not so much these reptiles, these birds, these animals. You're worshiping yourself.

SPEAKER_00 35:37

The idol of self, and which is the biggest one today. You all you got to do is get on social media for two seconds to see the worship of self. You have become your own God.

SPEAKER_04 35:46

And I might. But it also points back to the Ten Commandments, and there will be no other gods before me. Yeah. That's how he kicks.

SPEAKER_03 35:53

I think we think about the statues, the animals, and different things.

SPEAKER_04 35:56

That's what we think of as idols. Yeah. In all reality, we look in the mirror, the idols actually us. So then why do you think Jesus says, love your neighbor as yourself?

SPEAKER_00 36:06

Because we're real good at loving ourselves and we think like, oh, I don't love myself. I need to work on this self-love. You need to work on loving yourself in the way that Christ sees you, yes, when it comes to your worth, but we don't have a self-love issue. No, we have a confidence, a confidence issue, but not a self-love, not a pride issue. I mean, we're rooted in pride, but the issue is not that we don't love ourselves.

SPEAKER_04 36:31

Yeah. And man, that can show up in so many different ways. The self-love of the I deserve factor of it is uh I mean, there's just so many things. I'm sorry, that just popped my brain as you said that.

SPEAKER_03 36:42

No, like, but like what Paul is getting into here, and I wish I would have said it Sunday, again, so much to go into, but Satan has one job steal, kill, and destroy. He doesn't care how he does it or how he gets you to fall into that. That's just what he's trying to do. So why does he list out all the sins under the sun? Because Paul is leading up to this point where we all need to recognize for Romans 3.23, for all have sinned and falling short of the glory of God. This is the starting point of him getting to that verse and saying, Hey, you know how I said for all of sin and falling short of the glory of God? Go back to Romans 1.3. Check that list.

SPEAKER_00 37:13

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 37:14

We all fall underneath that. We all were in the unrighteous category at some point. And need to be in the righteous category. And if Satan's goal is to steal, kill, and destroy, he can use any one of these tactics. He doesn't care which one. It might be idolatry, it might be sexual impurity, it might be homosexuality, it might be greed, it might be any of these other evil and wickedness that he has. Satan doesn't care. He's just trying to get you to fall into one of them. And what Paul is trying to get them to say is, hey Jew, hey, Gentile, you are not more righteous than one another. You all fall, we all fall under this unrighteous category. Sin, even though it's all not all sin is equal, it all has an equal result. And we all fall into that. Yeah. And we all need the power of the gospel.

SPEAKER_04 37:56

And if you fast forward to the next couple chapters, he's speaking to the Jews, like you said, he's talking to the Jews, and then he'd walk over here and talk to the Gentiles. Yeah. He's speaking to Jews because they thought they were gold and in because they were the descendants of Abraham. Yeah. That means we're in. No, that doesn't mean anything at all. Or that they were circumcised. No, that doesn't mean anything at all. Yeah. They thought that because of some action by somebody else or some covenant from a long time ago that really didn't kind of apply to them, but not so much anymore. Um, they thought they were good to go. Nope, sorry. You because you will blame people for these things when you do the same things too. He'll talk about that here soon too in the next couple chapters. But yeah.

SPEAKER_03 38:31

And so, like, he starts off. You got now that you see it this way, you're gonna start understanding Paul's flow of his argument. Starts off with idolatry, which says, hey, the greatest form of idolatry is you becoming your own God. Which by the way brings me to the second thing, uh, second great sin, and that is that, hey, God's gonna give you over to your sinful desires, which for many of you your sinful desire, since you are your own God, is you worship your own body. And that's you know what that means is you rely on these sexual relationships and you seek after these things and these sexual impurities because you worship your own body more than you worship the truth of the gospel, and you are looking for those temporary desires for your own body over what the gospel says, which is eternal. And so the very first sins that he mentions is the heterosexual sins. You know, he talks about sexual impurity. The Greek word he uses there is pornea, and it connects directly to 1 Corinthians chapter 6, verse 9, if you're if you're talking about you know, he's in Corinth, and how does it connect directly to 1 Corinthians chapter 6? And sexual impurity, the simple way to explain all of that is God designed his relationship is one man, one woman, and one biological man, I guess we've got to clarify now, one biological man, one biological woman, and a covenant relationship that uh until death do us part, those two, and sex is reserved for that marriage between those two people. Anything outside of that is that pornea is sexual impurity, and that's what it falls into. So that's the very first one that he mentions, but then he mentions goes from there to start talking about the second, the third one, which is the sin of homosexuality.

SPEAKER_04 40:10

And I liked how you set this up in your sermon. Uh that was really cool. How you started just how Paul did, yeah. When you got to this, yeah, and then you asked the question do what should we allow?

SPEAKER_03 40:21

Yeah. Go ahead. Should we allow homosexual couples to come to church? Yeah. And that was you know the only time they gave a round of applause yesterday's message.

SPEAKER_04 40:30

But I liked how you set it up though. And you said, absolutely we will, and you know why? Because we let you in. Yeah. And it's just like, oh, hey, that's good. And then you go back to the script and goes, guess where remember where Paul started? Yeah. He started with homo, or heterosexual sin, which is every single one of us in here is guilty of, whether you truly did it or in your heart. Yeah. So if we're letting you in, we gotta let everybody in. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 40:53

I love that. That was good. And that's what I like. Just because their sin is visible, doesn't make it greater than your sin that is private. And the answer is no. Nope. They all have the same result. And that's what Paul's doing here. He's showing them, like, hey, it is all unrighteous. Um, and so that conversation, we're gonna come back to that in just a second. Uh, because you know, we get a lot of questions about hey, it's Pride Month, hey, what should Christians believe about homosexuality, all of that? So let's let's pause that one and come back. But again, part of that is he says he gives them over to their sinful desires. Yeah. Right? And so, you know, let's go again go back to the heterosexual sins. You see that all the time. People cheat on their spouse, people addicted to porn. And you see God turn them over to their sinful desires. How does that happen? Oh, they get caught. Oh, their marriage gets wrecked because they are more focused on what's on a screen than what's happening in real life. Oh, they get caught by their spouse, and next thing you know, yeah, now they have tension in their marriage, or that's going downhill, it's leading towards divorce. They they're wrecking their lives with those things. And the same thing when he talks about homosexuality, hey, I had to remove my divine hand, and those that turn them over to their sinful desires. And it's so unfortunate, and again, we can get into it more, but you look at couples who are in homosexual relationships, they have a higher rate of suicide, higher rate of anxiety and depression, they have a higher rate of getting some sort of disease or sickness, and what you see there is literally God just giving them over to what the results of the what they are choosing. Yeah, yeah. And as a parent, and this is what I hope people understand, that's not out of anger. But as a parent, there's sometimes as for your children, they're not gonna learn unless they learn on their own. And you have to remove your protection as a parent and just be there ready to cut for when they've come back home. And that's the heart of the father. Yeah. Sometimes the hard way, which is known as the hard way, learning the hard way. Yeah. And so that goes from there, and then he lists out all the other sins.

SPEAKER_04 42:59

Well, he also calls it a debased, a debased or um what is the other debased mind, is what mind I'm in the ESV, I think. But um there's a depraved mind, I think. He turns them over to a debased or depraved mind. That there's just there's something in the brain that's I don't know whether it's allowing you to feel like you can do these things, but there's something mentally wrong with us. Yeah. We mentally think it's okay, but there's something wrong in our brains. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 43:29

Well, I think that's because we don't think of the consequences that are coming, and we get so caught up in the moment of like sin draws us in because part of it is fun and it is addictive. And so I think when you start to get the short hits of like dopamine or satisfaction, then you think, oh, this is good, this is fine. And so that's what we do that again. Yeah, so the depravity is actually just a feeling of like this is okay for the moment. And then you get so used to that okayness that you don't think of headed.

SPEAKER_04 43:57

Sometimes you have to do more to get the same thrill.

SPEAKER_00 44:00

Or hit or if what you're chasing is a feeling, you're gonna constantly be chasing a feeling.

SPEAKER_03 44:04

Yeah, yeah, for sure. Yeah, but so like what off of that, those first two that he mentions, again, it just falls right back into what he's talking about as idolatry. Those have become the idol. Sex has become the idol. Your sexual sexual orientation has become your idol, your sexual identity has become your idol. And that's what we even see in identity. And we even see that in today's society of people bragging about their body account that they have before they get married, you know, talking about how many girls or guys that they're able to talk with or meet up with. And then furthermore, of hey, they even label themselves for their sexual orientation, right? And so it has literally become so ingrained in part of their identity that it has become the idol in their life. And so that's he's all kind of pointing back to you become your own guy.

SPEAKER_04 44:52

And you take a look, you see it. Yeah. And it's yeah, it's wild. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 44:57

It is. Uh, but then he says, furthermore, just as they did not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God, so God gave them over to a depraved mind so that they do not do what not ought to be done. They become filled with every kind of wickedness. And then he goes and lists every kind of wickedness, evil, greed, all of those that he goes down through. So we didn't have time to really go into each one of those. Which one's your favorite?

SPEAKER_00 45:22

I told you my favorite sin to come in.

SPEAKER_03 45:24

Oh, my favorite one that I said it on.

SPEAKER_00 45:27

Inventing the inventing. Yeah, inventing ways to sin. They just had to get creative at that. Like they ran out of ways to sin. They were like, let's just try to come up with stuff sinful things.

SPEAKER_03 45:36

Yeah, and again, I'm imagining Paul sitting in Corinth and watching all of this going on, and he runs out of vocabulary explaining the sin that he is seeing go on. It's like, they're just inventing ways to commit evil. And like, I think not depraved. He'd be sitting here and do the same thing. Like, probably up in Cam 10, he'd be sitting here and like, oh my gosh, they're just inventing ways to do evil up here.

SPEAKER_04 45:58

And so No, what I was getting at was the one of the last ones is and they dis they're disobedient to parents, to their parents. Oh, that that's the one that cracks me up because it is disobedience to parents is ranked with murder. Right. And sexual sin and all these other coming up with you know ways to sin.

SPEAKER_00 46:16

Well, and part of it could just be because people might be like, oh, I'm fine, I'm fine, I'm fine, but you get to that one. Everyone has had a moment where they disobeyed a parent. So it takes you off the pedestal of I'm better than everyone that's not.

SPEAKER_04 46:26

But I mean, I would venture to say you are down to I don't know who. I mean, uh because even Jesus says, even if you haven't done these, but if you've done them in your heart or you've thought about it, you've still done these things. You can't get past all those and then make it all the way to disobedient parent and say, Okay, I didn't do that. You can't symptomatically. You can deceive yourself to think that you have.

SPEAKER_00 46:48

Like I know a lot of people who think that they're in the right because they're not like sinning as bad as other people, that they don't even think the things that they're doing are wrong. Even if it's just in the mind and not through action, then they're like, Well, but I didn't do it. Yeah, so I don't know. But if you're not grounded in the word, you don't need to be able to do that.

SPEAKER_03 47:01

He throws that in as a catch-all. Sure. Like he's like, Oh, if you felt so holy up to this point, boom.

SPEAKER_04 47:06

But like here, but it's also it's the simplest, what we may deem as the simplest of things that yeah, I talked back to my mom or my dad when I was a kid, but no, he's like, No, that's not good. It's not good.

SPEAKER_01 47:16

That's not good either.

SPEAKER_03 47:17

So that's why that's where like we get in the mindset of saying, Well, the Bible says all sin is equal. No, that is actually a lie. The Bible nowhere says all sin is equal. What it does have is an equal result. Yeah. Right? And so that's what he's leveling out here, saying, Hey, all of this, whether you've murdered somebody, whether you've been a slander, whether you are gossip, or you've just dishonored your mom and dad, all of that, it's equal. All of those are deserving of death. All of those need a saving.

SPEAKER_04 47:48

All I've broken the law. Yeah. No matter the littlest of thing, if you you stole the the well, it used to be in my day, one cent piece of gum, a little bubble gum, you still stole. Yes, you're still a thief. Regardless of the level of value, you still stole something. So regardless of what level it is, you still broke the law. Yeah. Um, and so that then that is you're now a lawbreaker in general. So that kind of puts it all on a legal, e equal playing field of where God sees all sin the same. You broke the law. Yeah, you did wrong. It's all the same, it's a sin. So yeah, there obviously we rank things, and I'm sure God ranks some things too.

SPEAKER_00 48:24

Well, I would definitely say he does because you see examples in the Old Testament of different serves are deserving of different kinds of punishments before him or different levels of sacrifices. So I think even in hit you could say stealing a piece of gum versus stealing a child in a court of law, those are very different. Like they're both stealing. So they're all going to jail for the same amount of time. Yeah. They're both sins, so they both create separation from God. Like they're both creating distance. But I think sometimes when we put them on the same pedestal, especially when we go into things like talking about the homosexual community and you're putting them in this lump sum, they don't see it as like, oh, so the Christian sins too. They're saying, You say me loving someone is the same as someone else murdering someone. That is absurd. Right. And then we can, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 49:03

So I think Tori just dragged us into that.

SPEAKER_03 49:06

She did start. But this like before we get there, like I never thought I was going to use Theo Vaughn as a term in illustration. I have no idea who this is. Like if you had to ask me in college, do you think you'll look at Theo Vaughn? No. I'm the only one. I'm the only dark-hearted sinner that's sitting at the stable.

SPEAKER_00 49:19

You must have had a season where you were given to your deprived mind. You know what?

SPEAKER_03 49:21

I had some really funny college roommates that we they just liked watching Theo Vaughn. Maybe if I see his face, I'd know who he is, but I don't don't think. Oh, he's a redneck. Yeah. Okay. And pretty simple, but he has some funny stuff. Uh did you know who he was? Okay, neither one of you. I'm just telling you. Yeah, podcasters in the world. I'm telling you guys right now, do not look him up.

SPEAKER_04 49:44

Well, I just want to see what his face looks like to know if I can even recognize him. But he had it.

SPEAKER_03 49:47

It can be bad if I even just searched his name. So he's gonna get flagged. He is going it's going crazy right now because on his podcast. Because you mentioned him in your sermon, he's going crazy. Yeah, no. I'm Luke brought him viral. I did not at all, but he is going crazy, especially on the Christian reels and Christian TikTok and all of that different things, because you have this number one, one of the number one podcasters in the world live on his podcast, have this come to Jesus moment. And you know that something has been building up inside this guy. And I there's so many levels of this that I think about. Somebody has been walking alongside him or a friend where he's been like, Man, I know I need something more. And they're like, Well, have you tried reading the Bible? And he's like, probably like no. And they're like, Well, I've heard you're supposed to start in John. And so you see just this guy pick up the book of John, and it is the most innocent, somebody that's never touched a Bible, how they would describe what's going on in the Bible, how they're interpreting it. And so that's why he's getting to this point on his podcast where he really does get emotional and he gets to and he even explains it. He tells the story of uh the man at the pool of Bethesda. He starts it off literally, he goes, There's a story called John Five. He doesn't say in John Five, he literally calls it the story. There's a story called John Five. John Five, yeah. But it's so innocent, and it's like, oh my gosh, yes. Have you seen his full name?

SPEAKER_04 51:06

Yeah, I know it's not the Theodore Capitani von Kumatowski III. Yeah, he's makes sense. I hate goodbye. He's ruined it. In an insulting way, but like that's much more easy to remember. Yeah, I mean, he either better be like a prince.

SPEAKER_03 51:19

Let me see, like make sure you're looking at the right guy.

SPEAKER_04 51:21

Well, okay, so is it V-O-N? And then images. Any of those? Yeah, that's him. Okay, yeah. Yeah. But the Wikipedia, obviously, or that's theovon.com. So that's Theodore Capitani von Kumatowski the third.

SPEAKER_03 51:39

Well, would have lost money on that one. Would never have guessed that. But he see, you see him, he gets to this, and he gets to the guy, the man at the pool of Bethesda, who we know has been paralyzed paralyzed for years. And nobody will take him to the pool. And have you watched this episode of the Chosen? Oh, yeah. Oh my gosh, have you? Yeah. And so, you know, he starts from when he tries, he tries, he tries, and just person after person walk past him. Finally, Jesus walked past him and looks at him and asks him a simple question. Do you want to be healed? I mean, can you imagine? This guy's been ignored for years. And then finally somebody asks him, like, Do you want to be healed?

SPEAKER_04 52:17

Well, that's the key there. The, or there's an interesting component of that because you would think the obvious answer would be, well, yeah. But it's almost like Jesus is asking, because you wonder if this guy's this is all I know. He's embracing his acceptance. Why would I care now?

SPEAKER_03 52:34

Right. What's good as a you know, and again, because it can become his identity. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 52:39

Well, and that's where everyone else labeled him as that, so it's hard for that not to be.

SPEAKER_03 52:42

And so he asked him, Do you know the only person that Jesus can't heal is the one that don't want to be. And so in the same way, what Theo was getting at, and what way he reads that is like, I have a lot of sin in my life. I have a lot of things going on in my life that is going wrong and bad. But I have to ask myself, do I want to be healed? Like, because I enjoy that stuff. Yeah. I I I I like the feeling of that stuff.

SPEAKER_04 53:05

It's not so much that you have an infirmity or an ailment or an illness. It's uh you're living in sin. Do you want to be healed of the sin and you're thinking, why do I need to be saved? I like the popularity.

SPEAKER_03 53:13

I didn't know I needed to be saved. I like the glory, I like all that different things. That's familiar. Like I know that because and he goes in to explain. If I want to be healed, that means I'm gonna have to be different. That means I need a new story. And he's like, and he literally says, he says, that's a crazy thing. That's the scary part.

SPEAKER_04 53:29

Yeah, that reminds me of when our church used to do mission trips, mission trips to Connecticut, very wealthy neighborhoods in Connecticut. And we're talking probably some of the wealthiest in our country, and talking to people there, telling them about Jesus, and they're like, No, we're good. Yeah, thanks. So and to them, they had everything they needed. What did I need to be saved from? Yeah, I'm good. My life's great. Uh I don't need I'm good. I don't need Jesus. And it's the same kind of thing. What do I need to be saved from? I'm I'm doing great. I don't didn't know I needed to be saved. Yeah. And that's and that's what he's healed. That's what he's getting at here.

SPEAKER_03 54:00

And he's like, a lot of times I'd answer, no, I don't, I'm good. Yeah, I'm good. But now that you see him get to the city. I didn't know I was broken. He's like, Maybe, maybe I do want a new story. And that is like if I hear anything that Paul's trying to say here, so does he feel he needs a purpose? His purpose is misguided then? You know, I don't I don't know. I think he is just at that point where his stories intersecting with the gospel still not seeing anything.

SPEAKER_00 54:23

So sometimes when you've had it all and you've made it all, you might think I don't need anything else, but something's still empty.

SPEAKER_03 54:28

Yeah, yeah. Yeah. But like it, like he's just getting to that point where the gospel's becoming a reality. Like in in his story.

SPEAKER_00 54:35

It's just the power of the story.

SPEAKER_03 54:36

Yeah, the power of something there. But he's struggling with that. Like, do I actually want to be healed? And this is what Paul is showing them is like, hey, you guys know the truth. This is what righteousness looks like, this is what's unrighteousness. Now you have to make the decision. Do you want to actually be healed? I still think that's what I'm saying. Yeah, the the do you want to continue on this way? Because you can, or do you want to be healed? Because if you want to be healed, there's only one way to do so. And how it made me think, how many people in our church they haven't come to Jesus? Not because they don't know, not because they don't believe, but they simply do not want to be healed yet. Yeah. And man, that's sad. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 55:14

It's a unique perspective of just what taught Paul is taught. And not that I'm saying it's a not the right perspective, but it's the perspective that, ooh, I'd never really thought of it like that. Um, and again, it's the I didn't realize I needed to be healed. Yeah. I'm feel fine. Um, I didn't know I was messed up or needed saving. Again, it's just that mindset, you're so depraved in your mind, you think what you're doing is just fine. Yeah, you have no idea. And then because it that is the other that is the next level of so then when you choose to be healed, you you are you have to be okay with walking away from all these things you think are fun and great or good or no big deal. There's a lot of things that when you really start a looking into your life of how you live your life, you're like, oh wow, God's called me to do that in a whole different way. Yeah, I need to give up some stuff, I need to walk away from some stuff that you you enjoy. Like you were saying, Tori, you enjoy it. I mean, not that you enjoy it, but Tori, you enjoy that. No, no, no. You were talking about how people really enjoy the things they're doing. I think it was well, that's why it's hard to get it.

SPEAKER_00 56:16

Yeah, and you even when you accept Christ, like before it's just your own mind and your own flesh, but then once the Holy Spirit intervenes and scripture talks about you're at this constant war of like your flesh and your spirit, what is right versus what is wrong, and what is right or what feels right can actually be what's wrong. It's just it's just this mental war that's kind of going on inside where you are drawn towards sin, even if you know that it's wrong.

SPEAKER_04 56:41

So it just what I'm getting at is there's this I think there's a level of commitment that people that regular church attenders just don't know about or understand or comprehend to them. As I go back to even my story a bit, I just thought going to church made me good. That I'm being a good Christian, checking the box. I you know, I help out here and there if I can or whatever it is. I'm trying to be a good person. Um, there's another there's level I don't even want to call it levels, but there's an understanding of uh oh that's what you're talking about.

SPEAKER_03 57:15

Yeah, okay. Well that's where like it all came into play because again, he gave us the cure before that's the gospel of the power of salvation. What he goes through in 18 through 32, he gives us a diagnosis of unrighteousness. And that's the question of like, hey, you guys, here's the diagnosis. We all have it. Now you have to figure out if you want the cure or not. And if you do, it's simple. This is how you do it. And that's I think the rubbing point for many people is they don't know if they want the cure, they don't know if they want to be healed.

SPEAKER_04 57:44

And even if you're from this, well, I don't know if I can. Well, that's the power. Yeah, he will help you. If you want to, he will help you.

SPEAKER_00 57:50

You can't in your own strength. You literally cannot.

SPEAKER_04 57:53

Yeah, that's a great point. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 57:55

So uh which is a great launching point to our conversation. I feel like this is almost two episodes. Today, almost.

SPEAKER_04 58:01

This is how it goes. It's all right. Uh, how many times we've said, Oh, this will be a short time.

SPEAKER_00 58:04

May have to split it.

SPEAKER_03 58:06

Yeah, but this is where we're going. We're going for it. We're gonna we're gonna just dive on it. Because verse 32, it ends with this.

SPEAKER_00 58:11

We got time.

SPEAKER_03 58:12

They not only continue to do these things, but they also approve of those who practice them.

SPEAKER_00 58:17

That is the line that gets me.

SPEAKER_03 58:18

That is really loves kind of.

SPEAKER_00 58:19

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 58:20

Well, and this is where, like, really launching into our conversation that we're gonna be talking about today, which is talking about Pride Month and the Christian response to homosexuality, of what that should be and those questions we get according to, I'd say that is probably one of the major problems of going on, even though it's not us the one doing it per se, it's those that are approving of them doing it. And so that's kind of like what I want to use as a launching point to go into. But I'll use it, I'll I'll I'll take a step back. So, Romans 1, you know, as I was in seminary and we were diving into the book of Romans and learning about it. My professor, he he started the class off. We walked in and he already had a question on the board. And the question he had on the board was, Can you be gay and a Christian? And so that's just a question on the board. We all go in, we sit down, and he opens up the dialogue and conversation, said, Here's my question for you guys today. And we're about to dive in and learn about Romans 1, 18 through 32. So here he is with a bunch of Southern Baptist kids that are, like I say, kids, college kids, that are studying to become ministers and pastors. A lot of them grew up in Southern Baptist churches, a lot of them are pastors' kids, and here we are, we see that, and we are all like, Nope, you can't. I mean, to a T, all of us. Right. And you know, even me, I was guilty.

SPEAKER_04 59:36

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 59:36

Like I was sitting there going, Don't think you can do that. Can't live in a sin, can't live in the relationship, and uh, and all these different things, and we're making our arguments, and he's just sitting there listening, blah, blah, blah. Well, it goes on for about 10-15 minutes where we all make our arguments. Then he comes up in a very common it's Rodney Reeves, you know, who we had preach here. And he says, Well, let me tell you guys a story about a man in my church.

SPEAKER_04 59:58

Oh man, I thought you were gonna say a man named Jeb. Yeah. You guys didn't even know what that meant.

SPEAKER_03 1:00:02

No, yeah, that's before our time. We are children. Let me tell you about a man in our church named Jeb. And he he'd come to church. He'd come to church every week. He loved the Lord. He knew he loved the Lord. But he was single. And the reason he was single is because he was attracted to men. And he knew that that was the sin that Satan had dealt him. He didn't choose that sin. In middle school, he'd actually go back and say, like, it was just a natural, like, that's who he was attracted to. And he didn't understand it. When all of his other buddies would talk about girls, that he just didn't, he just he couldn't explain why it was that way. But yet, he loved the Lord. And so he made a decision from the early age that he was going to be single. And even though that was his temptation, he made the decision to be single because he put the relationship with Christ above any other relationship. And so, yes, the society would label him as gay, but he labeled himself as a Christian. So let me ask you this is that person going to heaven?

SPEAKER_04 1:01:04

My first question is, is this a human being or is this made up? No, it's a real story. Because that's I don't know if too many people, if any, can actually do that.

SPEAKER_03 1:01:13

Right, and that's what the thing, like, and that's where he went in to talk about is that man has more faith than any other Christian that he had in his church.

SPEAKER_04 1:01:23

Yeah, absolutely.

SPEAKER_03 1:01:23

Right? Because he's literally putting when it talks about hey, pick up your cross and follow me, like the sacrifices you're gonna have to make to follow me, that guy's actually putting it into action.

SPEAKER_04 1:01:31

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:01:32

And so and so he asked us that question. I'm telling you, you could hear a pin drop.

SPEAKER_04 1:01:36

See, and that kind of goes back to what I was getting at with this whole once you understand what do I need to walk away from or not choose to live by or choose to do, when you factor in the emotion and the feeling and the urges and everything you have going on on the inside, you're having to fight that, fight that, fight that. That's why I even joked my question back is this a human?

SPEAKER_03 1:01:55

Yeah. Because that's not possible. Right. And so, like, that's where he introduced to me for the first time, and I love the way he put it. And he talked about, he said, now my issue is labeling him as a gay Christian. Because you're putting the sin or the temptation that he struggles with above his identity in Christ. Yeah. And he said, So we live in a society that's quick to identify, but we need to be as Christians quick to identify as child children of God. He says, So why wouldn't we just say, hey, he's a Christian who struggles with the sin of same-sex attraction. Or fill in the blank. Fill in the blank. Whatever. Yeah, but he struggles with blank. He is a sin he's a Christian who struggles with alcohol. He's a Christian who struggles with porn. He's a Christian who struggles with, and we don't put that label in front of us as that, because then that becomes our identity. And takeaways, we do that in politics. Like how many people call themselves a conservative Christian? Right? No, you're a Christian who votes conservative. Right? Our our identity first has to be in Christ above anything that we do or our sexual orientation or who we're attracted to and anything like that. But anyway, that one story, him explaining that way, man, it clicked. He's like, you know what? I've been so hyper-legalistic on this one point. And then he goes through Romans and says, Hey, by the way, you who have heterosexual sin and homosexual sin and all these other sins, yeah, all your sin, guess what? It's equal. And like, so I left that, and it was a class that really like transformed my thought in talking about it. So that's how I want to open up this dialogue of talking about.

SPEAKER_04 1:03:22

Well, and I guess I'll repeat myself. I the way you pr presented that to in your sermon to the church of should we allow them in the church? I loved how you responded because well, we let you in. Yeah. And you're we let you and your heterosexual sin come in, or whatever sin or fill in the blank that you have come in. And I thought it was just a great way to approach it. It's not a tolerance thing, it's just exactly what you said. It's all sin. It's we have to, it's the struggle. It's the we love the sinner, but we hate the sin. Right. Uh so I I really appreciated even just kind of as in the moment as you were preaching it, and I hadn't heard your sermon or anything or exactly how you were gonna present it. I knew the text you were going through, and it's like, hmm, here we go. Let's see how he does. I just I was I was impressed. I thought it was really good.

SPEAKER_03 1:04:08

I think people would think we intentionally did that to fall in June when it all's gonna come about. No, that's kind of funny. Honest to goodness, we had zero thought like that's when it was all gonna come into play. That's Holy Spirit again. Yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_04 1:04:19

We've had so many of those kind of we never planned that, but it worked out exactly.

SPEAKER_03 1:04:23

And so that yeah, it it happens the way it did there. Now, but getting into that point of the issue then, why are Christians so concerned about who people are sleeping with and when it comes to legislation and passing laws because we love trauma and honoring about people? I like to look at other people's sin to distract on our own.

SPEAKER_00 1:04:42

So And I also think even though the click of it being tied to an identity, you hadn't heard it that way, I think we still recognize it. So even if you've never made the connection, oh, you're tying this to your identity or putting it in front of who you claim to be as a Christian, we see it celebrated in this, and that's the thing too, celebrated or promoted in this way instead of fighting against it, because whether it's a heterosexual sin or a homosexual sin, the enemy knows the thing in each person that we struggle with the most. And if he can get you to come to terms with that and accept that as part of who you are instead of fight against it, like we're all gonna be faced with that decision at some point. Do I choose Jesus? Do I take up my cross? Do I deny myself? Do I deny my temptation? Do I follow him? Or do I let this be who I am? We may not verbalize it, which is where I think Christians do get so passionate about this topic because you don't verbalize it, you don't promote it, you don't parade around in it, but you're still making the choice. It's this or it's this. Right. And that's why you're like, oh, it feels impossible. It is impossible. But in each of us we have that decision. We just don't choose to promote it. It's silent that we choose this or Jesus.

SPEAKER_04 1:05:49

Right. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I think adding to the question that was asked, not very few, if any, other sins are promoted as identity. That I'm a proud adulterer, I'm a proud liar, you know, and and then so much of it being associated to sex sex or a certain orientation, and then it being promoted and then pushed and then celebrated and then up again promoted and then now brought down to the child level. And then now it's even kind of veered even further into the the transitioning into transsexual type stuff. I mean, I mean, I don't even I can't even tell you what all the LGBTQ once you get to past the first three letters, I'm like, I don't know what that even is. Uh it then it's exploded into just this vast array of what is all that? Yeah. I think that's then where the issue starts to come up with regards to that question are are you know, can they be a Christian because of the how it's been pushed and kind of just crammed down your throats. And if you don't get on board, you are intolerant, you're a racist, you're and you just go down this list of you're a bad person.

SPEAKER_03 1:07:00

Yeah, I think we look at the extreme examples. Uh and so like, but I think there is some people in the camps that you know they just want to love somebody.

SPEAKER_00 1:07:07

And so that's also whenever you hear it in the way of like with every other sin, and you're going through this and you're like, I see how murder is bad, I see how stealing could be bad, I see how this could be bad, but when and maybe it is the depravity of your mind that you're giving over to, but when you're just in a relationship and you just love if I were to tell you guys both, you can't be with your wives, because God says no. Like that's the position that they're putting in.

SPEAKER_04 1:07:26

It's so funny you said that because um Heather on she dropped me off in the morning because we're leaving a car behind for because now I have a driver in my family again. That's crazy. Scary. Anyways, uh she was asking what the podcast was about based on your sermon. I said, So, you know, talking about how this was going to be the hot button topic. I said, literally the way we have to look at this is if God said the two of us being married was wrong, and we would have to turn away from that. We'd have to tell each other, sorry, hon, where we can't be married anymore. We have to break up, we have to get a divorce, we have to, we can still be friends, yeah, but that's it. Yeah. And you're like, uh I don't know if I can do that.

SPEAKER_00 1:08:04

And you need to view it like that because you have to recognize as they don't see it as where we can list the stats of um medically or mentally how it can affect you negatively, but whenever you're just viewing it as the loving relationship that you're in, and then other people are just coming and attacking you and saying that this is wrong because God says it is, and you don't even believe in that God. I think I mean that's why it's a good thing. Well, you're holding back at a standard where they don't admit it. Exactly.

SPEAKER_03 1:08:28

And but that's where you know Jesus even says, You got to be willing to leave your your father and your mother, your brother and sister to follow me. And so like he levels it out like that way, like, hey, that's the priority of where your relationship with Christ comes into play. Yeah, what you have to be willing to do. Yeah, and but like when it comes to this, and you know, talk about this month, you know, we we live in a society that has not just normalized it, but celebrate, promote it. And you know, that started first in 1999 was the first time Bill Clinton instituted it in 1999. He's first the first one to start honoring June as lesbian and gay month to honor and celebrate them. And then fast forward to Slick Willie, huh? Yeah, to the first Bill Clinton, right? Yep, that's right. That's his nickname. That's a good nickname for him. Uh in 2008, uh Barack Obama then adds in the lesbian gay, the LGBTQ side of things in 2008. Um, and then fast forward to 2021, and then that's when I see a pattern. Oh, Joe Biden. Biden. Um sorry, memory. Sleepy Joe. Yeah, there we go. Memory uh 2021. He's the one that adds in the plus, the plus, and the other letters to get us to where we go. Other letters to get into this moment of this month that we set aside to celebrate and see the people who are um within that camp and category. And so they're like, So why are Christians, and we get asked this, why are Christians so concerned about who I'm sleeping with and who I am with? Um, well, number one, I would say my biggest concern is where you're spending eternity, not who you're sleeping with. Yeah. And yes, that may be the you didn't choose your temptation, you didn't choose what you're going through. You may even say you didn't even choose who you love. But my biggest concern outside of all that is where you're going to heaven, if you're going to heaven or not. See, that's a whole different approach than what has happened. Correct. And that and then the next the next thing is is again, if they're asking Christians, I'm just gonna answer on my behalf. And then what why other well also within what is being forced upon our kids, like what is being presented in front of their face. I don't even think it's not just the homosexual sin. I don't think heterosexual sin should be forced upon them from an early age and um and being forced to see that type of stuff.

SPEAKER_04 1:10:54

Or well, that's where parents you'll you're gonna experience this soon that what you think is just PG or PG 13 moving. Sorry, we can't watch that because they like to slip in little things to desensitize and the and and then we're starting talking about young kids being able to come out whenever they're in third grade, fourth grade, or whenever they're able to make decisions to have surgery. Yeah, yeah, or and that's why there's such a big push, like I guess Disney or whoever is usually kind of the everybody's evil villain of they've they're trying to promote certain things in different movies because that's what kids will watch. And yeah, I that's the part that really ticks people off.

SPEAKER_03 1:11:32

Right. And so, like as a Christian, you know, when I when I see all that, obviously that's what I also want to protect. Now, if they were to ask, like, okay, when it comes to voting, what should you vote to to legalize and what should you not? Like, should Christians really force their beliefs upon when they open up and go to the voting booth? And the answer is absolutely. Everybody is voting based upon what they believe in. And if we are as Christians, if you don't want to fall into the ones that say, and they continue to do these very things, but they also approve of those who practice them, if you're voting to allow it to happen, you're voting to approve what is going on. And so as Christians, it makes it simple. It's not because you you hate them, you love them, but because you love them, you're not gonna vote to approve something that's gonna lead to not just their destruction, what we would call death, but as we've seen, you're not gonna vote to approve them to step into a category that they're struggle more with depression, anxiety, that has a higher rate of suicide. And so you're gonna do what you can to help protect them, even in that. Now, here's where I'll push back against Christians is the way I think the tactics they've used in the past is not following how Christ would approach. Yeah, starting with you're gonna burn in hell is not the best starting point.

SPEAKER_00 1:12:48

Probably not.

SPEAKER_03 1:12:49

Or like the whole the preachers that are staying on the side of the thing, you know. You know, I don't think that's Jesus's uh approach that he lays out for us. I think as Christians, we have to stand on 100% truth, but we also have to stand on 100% grace. So we can vote according and we can speak according what we believe in 100% true, but we also can do it gracefully as Jesus did. Gracefully not graceful. And so instead of getting caught I would say no. Oh, choked them up. Yeah, it did choke them. But that's what I would say. Instead of a we spend a lot of time attacking the people instead of the sin. The sin. But what does that look like though?

SPEAKER_00 1:13:30

Like, how do you attack the sin and not the person whenever it's become such a part of their identity? Because there was a friend I was talking to, and she's like, I am just sick of Christian verbiage of I love the person, I hate the sin, and then she's like, I don't feel the need to call out the things you do that I don't approve of to say. I love you, but I hate that you do these things. And she's like, I'm sick of Christian love. And that just made me like, well, how do I represent a Christ-like love when I don't want to fall into, I don't want to stand before God one day and him be like, Hey, of course you did these sins, but you also approved of those who were sinning. So how do you find the balance of I do love this person, I don't approve of what they're doing, but I don't want to push them away by using the same verbiage that they hear from all of the Christian community.

SPEAKER_03 1:14:12

Yeah, and if I was to talk to your friend or whatnot, I would say a large part of that, what she sees, is what is what Christians post on social media, what they see on the news and whatnot, and not so much from personal relationship. Yeah. And that's where I think it comes into play, like where that love looks like. It looks like loving those who are around you that may struggle with that. And stay off of like Christians need to what does it do to go on Facebook and make a blanket post about something? Nothing. Yeah, all it's gonna do is put up walls for people where Jesus He came to tear down walls so he could share the gospel with them. And I think that's where the personal relationship comes into play.

SPEAKER_00 1:14:49

I agree, but I the Christian community d needs to do more to build those personal relationships because the community is not gonna be reaching out to like the LGBT community, they're not gonna come to us to try and build a lot of people.

SPEAKER_03 1:15:00

But just like you and your friend, like you're talking about. She felt comfortable enough to open up to you. Why?

SPEAKER_00 1:15:04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:15:05

Exactly. So, like, because you built that relationship, and that's where I would say us Christians, we do a bad job. You know, when we make those comments that we think we're just joking by calling our friends gay or or whatnot. Like you never know what they are struggling with or dealing with, and what you're doing with those people, you're just building up walls.

SPEAKER_00 1:15:22

Or you're speaking into that identity that they haven't accepted, but they keep hearing people make those jokes because maybe it's a more feminine man or a girl who's into more masculine things, and the more that you speak that, you're creating that question of, Am I? So you yeah, you just have to be careful because you don't know what they're doing.

SPEAKER_03 1:15:37

And that's where I'd say as Christians, there's power in the tongue.

SPEAKER_00 1:15:40

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:15:40

And in those moments, you're you're not building up, you're tearing down, whether it's just a joke or not, because you don't know what they're struggling with. And so you have to be able to speak in a way because people are watching that they're gonna be willing to open up and talk to you.

SPEAKER_04 1:15:51

Yeah. So yeah, definitely there's a some damage control or some rebuilding uh that needs to be done. But uh you were able to baptize uh a gal, Brittany Brittany, um, recently, a couple weeks ago, last baptism Sunday. Um, and I'm curious. I mean, she filled you in on her story and what led her here. What was it that got them to come to church? What got them to kind of want to be curious about Jesus because they've had to have been a part of that, um, hearing these things, seeing these things, feeling like they're part of that, you know, getting the brunt of the Christian message and so they uh they grew up drew them in.

SPEAKER_03 1:16:35

They grew up in church, Catholic church. Um the last time that she went to church was 1999. Um since then, she she got married to her wife, and they actually, I think, believe adopted some kids. And so they had some kids, they were in a homosexual relationship, and then they started coming to church in September. All the reasons I'm not for sure, other than like, hey, they knew they needed more. Their sister was going through some things, so they kind of went to church with their sister, was wanting to bring their kids or whatnot. And it was through just hearing and witnessing and feeling the love of the gospel that they they recognized what was going on, and they, before we even had a conversation with them, they stopped living together. I believe they're no longer married, they're still parenting their kids together, like doing the best they can there. Um, and they still are friends that show up at church together every single week.

SPEAKER_04 1:17:25

So were they reminded of what they understood from long time ago?

SPEAKER_03 1:17:30

I I think it was more so like hey, that the truth of love became a reality. Like it the scales fell from their eyes, type of deal, of what it looked like. That's only the Holy Spirit. Exactly. Exactly.

SPEAKER_01 1:17:43

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:17:43

But here's where I'd say they felt comfortable enough to start coming to church. Yeah. Which is huge.

SPEAKER_04 1:17:47

And that's what that's my that was my question is how how did that even come about after probably everything they've been felt ostracized from even stepping into church? Um, and they're like, there ain't no way we're going back there.

SPEAKER_00 1:17:59

Oh, I can't imagine everything because even though kind of in Gen Z things are so much more accepting, that wasn't how it was whenever they were growing up. So they the Christian hate that Gen Z seems to be receiving right now is nothing like it was before gay marriage was legalized and everything that so like I can't imagine the battle with the faith that they've had to have getting up to this point.

SPEAKER_04 1:18:18

That's right. No, so I'm fascinated by that. That what could have shifted? What could have shifted? What you know, what changed their mind, their heart, what drew them to come here. Um even is that possible for who else is that possible for and but that's the prayer, that's what I'm saying.

SPEAKER_03 1:18:35

Like that's the prayer of how it's able to make connections. But I'll follow up about what you so what do you think that love looks like for those types of people?

SPEAKER_01 1:18:43

Hmm.

SPEAKER_00 1:18:45

Putting me on the spot. That's why I was asking. But and like for my friend, even when you said that in the right.

SPEAKER_03 1:18:50

So I understand what you're getting at. Well, like she asked me, so she's like, hey, because like the love that we say we love them, but we hate what they're doing.

SPEAKER_00 1:18:57

How do you represent that without approving of the lesson? Okay.

SPEAKER_03 1:19:03

But is there anything you would add onto that?

SPEAKER_00 1:19:05

Um Well, I think you just continuing to be intentional and asking good questions coming from a place of understanding or curiosity rather than accusations. Yeah. Because a lot of times we'll hear someone's story or they'll open up to us. Because this is where I wish I could go back in my conversation with my friend, instead of like filling gaps into her just coming out to me or opening up to me. I started to think, oh, maybe it's because of this, or I wanted to problem solve, or I wanted to like, I don't want to approve and I love her so much and I want her to be on the right path. That I tried to have every conversation I could in one setting. Instead of being like, This was really big, she just came out to me. We want to talk about this, but I want to continue this relationship. And then uh not that kind of relationship. Let me like clear that up. But I want to continue in this friendship. Yeah, and we are still friends. Like I think the Holy Spirit um really did guide that conversation in a way that I didn't feel like it was good, but it was parts of what she needed to hear. Um, so I think the best way in continuing to show love is continuing to love them, and not every conversation has to be pointed to that with them knowing where you stand. Like make it clear where you stand. Don't shy away from the truth of the gospel. Like you said in verses 16 and um 17, don't be ashamed of the truth of the gospel. So stand firm in it, but continue to show love, and showing love doesn't look like constant judgment. Judgment. Yeah. I would hate if someone knew I was struggling with something. Let's say that I hadn't even accepted it as my identity, but this is what I'm struggling with, and every conversation is like pointing back to that thing. Or that's just pushing me away.

SPEAKER_03 1:20:37

Yeah, for sure. And that's where I think the church has failed. Yeah. I think we have failed.

SPEAKER_04 1:20:44

And that's what I'm saying. We started with the you're gonna burn. Yeah. I mean, that's not the right step. Right.

SPEAKER_00 1:20:50

We're just we're here's the the issue now, because I don't think it is as complicated as we're making it sound to show love and disprove of a sin, but we're having to undo so much historical damage that now we're just in a place of like how do I find that balance? Because there's all of this that now that she knows I don't approve, there's all of this that I seem to be tied to that I'm not tied to. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:21:13

It's like the whole thing, like, why is it so hard to tell people I'm a pastor? Yeah. It's because they've had a bad experience with the pastor. And they put you in a box. But like that right there, the I would say the answer of your question as Christians, what you need to ask yourself is what's your focus? Is your focus on the sin or is your focus on them as a person and and loving them? Because like in that honest conversation I'm having with somebody, and they start opening up to me about what they're going through and and everything, and I've been like, hey, thank you for sharing that.

SPEAKER_01 1:21:38

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:21:39

But before we talk about any of that, I need to ask about your heart. I I I need you to know, like, now that you told me that, I love you even more. And like get past that, whatever sin that they might even communicate to you, and get to the heart of the person. Because and you're not going to see the change of their sin until you change see a heart change in the person. And we oftentimes as Christians, we want to see the change of the sin before we see the heart change of the person. But no sin, no person do we say, hey, you need to clean yourself up before you come to God and then experience transformation. No, you experience the heart transformation, and then we take care of the sin problem next. Right? So, like all those unrighteousness that he mentioned, it's not, hey, you need to go fix yourself. You need to be healed of all that stuff, and then come to Christ. It's like, no, come to Christ and let him do the healing. And so, as Christians, how can we show love? I mean, start focusing on the just on the person, on the relationship. And as you said, yeah, stay in all truth and be able to tell him, like, hey, I love you enough to tell you, like, hey, this is not right. But it doesn't change how much I love, like, yeah, I love you as a person, and I'm here for you.

SPEAKER_04 1:22:41

Yeah, you can even see Paul's progression to this, and he starts with, hey, first off, let's let's just take whatever sin it is and let's just let's put it over here for a second. Do you believe there's a God? Because there's proof of him everywhere. And did you know he loves you for you? Now let's talk about that first. And do you would you like to love him back? Because he's the God of creation, and he's the one that created you, and he created you for a reason. He created you because he loved you. And that's even kind of how Paul progresses through this. Yeah. That they even we've stepped away from even believing God of creation is our God.

SPEAKER_00 1:23:11

Yeah, I think what you just said was key there. You show love by pointing back to God's love. You show hate if you're pointing to God's hate. So if you're constantly pointing to his disproval of the sin, that's how they're gonna see God is they're disproving of He's disproving of me. Right. Instead of emphasizing, like, hey, but God loved you. He sent His Son to die for you. Whenever That's how much He loves you. That's how much He loves you. Yeah. So how do you love them by showing and by emphasizing like God's continued love of them? And again, that doesn't mean shying away from the truth, but you have to put an emphasis on that because what they're seeking is love. I think you have to keep coming back to that. Like you said with your wife, it would be like if we love each other, but we just have to separate. Like that's all that they're wanting. Essentially, is love. That's what their whole campaign, the whole slogan, love is love, it's what they're seeking. And if we hold what love actually is and we know it's Christ, but we're withholding it because we're so focused on we have to like give all of the truth right now. Um, they may just miss the center of it all, which God so loved the world, he needs one and only son to die for you. Um and so let's start there.

SPEAKER_04 1:24:11

Let's start there. And then from that, we can work, then we can bring things back into the picture and let's start working on these things.

SPEAKER_03 1:24:17

Let's take those to the Lord and see what he does. And that's like the big part, I think, where we're getting at is Christians normally fall in one, two camps. They're either extremely legalistic and nobody wants to talk to him about anything, or they're way too graceful and they're like the tolerance.

SPEAKER_02 1:24:32

It's okay, like, yeah, you know, what's whatever we shouldn't take, you know, what we believe, we shouldn't even vote about it. Like it's okay.

SPEAKER_03 1:24:39

When really God calls us to be 100% truthful, but also 100% graceful. It's not like a middle, it it is it's just how Jesus operated, like, hey, you can stand on truth, but you can do it in a way that's full of grace and loving. Yeah, and that's I think what we're calling the church to do through Romans 1.

SPEAKER_00 1:24:53

And we try, it's so hard though to be a hundred of both because we are us. Yeah, the only one who is a hundred of both is Jesus. So that's where you have to continue to point back to him, even if they're like rejecting of Jesus himself. He is the only one that holds truth and love all together. And I think that's where it's revealed because you don't want to be like, okay, we'll come back to this conversation, we'll do that, we'll do this thing, because you don't want to view them as a project. They're not just someone you're trying to like transition out of this mindset. Only God can. He can give them over to the depravity of their mind or he can renew their mind. But they have you're put in that position to love and to break down those walls. That's right. And then the rest is kind of in his hands.

SPEAKER_03 1:25:30

Yeah, and that's what they're like. So, how to answer that question? Can you be gay and a Christian? My push, my response would be don't label yourself with your sin. And we talked about beforehand how there's I've I've met somebody that they struggle with alcohol, but they had trouble going to AA because they want you to self-admit, hey, I'm so-and-so, and I'm an alcoholic. It's like, why would I identify myself as my sin? Why would I speak that over myself? Yeah. I'm a Christian who has struggled with alcohol in the same way. Like, I would say, hey, don't label yourself as a gay Christian. You're a Christian who struggles with same-sex attraction for those that are struggling. Then the question becomes, well, can you be a Christian and live in a homosexual relationship?

SPEAKER_04 1:26:10

No, just as you can't be a Christian and still want to do other sins too. I mean, it's just it's all the same. But it may take time to work yourself out of that. Yeah. It's not always the snap of the finger like it is for some people that all of a sudden I no longer have the craving for, whatever. But as you take it to the Lord, yeah, I believe God loves me. I'm gonna go back to Him and I'm gonna give this back to Him. Say, hey, if you love me, you're gonna help me with this. You say you're your Holy Spirit will help me. I'm gonna believe and I'm gonna trust that you're gonna do that for me. I'm gonna turn this over to you. I'm gonna lay this sin at the cross and say, okay, help me. Uh, because I know first beatitude, I'm spiritually bankrupt. Uh, I need your help. God's gonna start to work. And just as it was for Brittany and her wife, something changed. That's right. And they had the power and they had the drive and they had the motivation to say, Yeah, we we can't do this and we're gonna quit.

SPEAKER_03 1:27:06

Yeah. And that's what like where I'd say the gospel is not to affirm you, it's to transform you. And that's for anybody, no matter what the sin is. Renew your mind. But like, whenever you do follow Christ and you receive that, again, he doesn't call us to fix ourselves and then come to him. It is a transformation, it's an ongoing process. And so, like, yeah, you may give your life to Christ, like, well, now what? Like, I'm I I'm married. Like, I I I'm in this relationship, but I'm still like have those desires a little bit. Like, what do I do with all that? And that's where I'm saying, you know what, I do believe that person's saved. Now, but repentance shows there's gonna be steps of them now trying to get work away from that.

SPEAKER_04 1:27:46

Yeah, there's gonna be times where you're doing really good, and sometimes you fall back and you do really good, but there's a different mindset and a different course that you've you continue to take it back to the Lord and saying, Oh, I keep messing up.

SPEAKER_03 1:27:57

I still need I need your help. Because that's the salvation, that's the repentance.

SPEAKER_04 1:28:00

comes into play. But there's a difference there. There is uh there's a difference between that and the pride of what my sin is or I'm living in, I guess. Um there's a big difference. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:28:10

Yeah. And I'd say that even w in what you just said in that you have to acknowledge it as a struggle, which is the issue for so many people. Because to say I am a Christian but I struggle with X, Y, and Z, if you don't see it as a struggle, then you just We're starting at a different point. You're starting at a different point. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:28:30

Or if you don't Well and that's even what Paul talks about here is they don't even know. They don't even realize what they're doing is wrong. That's right. So we have to first let them understand hey hey this it's not really how God intended things to be.

SPEAKER_03 1:28:41

We got to get back to that. Okay. And and he's talking about again not just homosexual sin, but even the the heterosexual he's saying like started there, hey, you are glorifying your body, your desires that is your God over the one true God. Whenever you are saying that it's okay you're living in it and saying it's fine. And so yeah I I mean I agree with what what you said. I think the final conversation we have on this and Tori asked more questions go further, Jordan same thing. But is this is like you know we get this a lot is how as parents how do you address your kids that are that might come to you and tell and come out to them. So as a parent try to raise your kids growing up in church but yet they come to you this way but how do you respond?

SPEAKER_04 1:29:29

Love, love love first. Accept accept accept we still you know this isn't doesn't change anything the way I feel for you know love you all that stuff. It's the same thing when I go back to when Levi was a little kid he screwed up he thought mom and dad didn't love him anymore. Yeah. Nobody that is not the case we we will always love or love you no matter what you do. We may not agree yeah with what you do or be disappointed in a decision you make always going to love you and you're always going to be accepted and welcome in this house. So that's the thing that you have to you have to make that abundantly clear to their heart that they know I know I'm still mom and dad still love me. Because I mean it all boils you're representing God. So you better represent him well and God still loves them too. So now let's then once that's established we go to the next level or step of understanding okay let's talk about it. How does God see it? It's not that he doesn't love you and he's he's not angry he can be just he's gonna be just as angry at me over something I'm doing. Let's take that off the table but let's talk about what's God wanting you to do what is God are you willing to trust in God and put God first in your life okay if that's a yes then you're on a good path but if it's a no man a lot of prayer and I think that there's so many deeper conversations that it I go back to my conversation with my friend where I just wanted to have them all at once.

SPEAKER_00 1:30:53

I I'm not a parent but being in the youth ministry there have been more than I can count on my fingers of conversations like this that I have had with students where they've like maybe they don't know how to talk to a parent or they feel like it's wrong. They're hearing that it's wrong or they're hearing that it's not wrong. Because not just socials like promoting Pride Month but the I I won't go too far into this but there was something that blew up on like the term homosexuality was not supposed to be in the Bible.

SPEAKER_03 1:31:19

And so now they've all come to this agreement of yeah yeah it's not it's because the term homosexuality wasn't added to the Bible until the term homosexual didn't exist it didn't exist until 19 it until 1940 something.

SPEAKER_04 1:31:32

And then that's when the people describes it without giving it a name.

SPEAKER_00 1:31:34

Correct yeah and but the actual term was not in the translation like that Paul that word itself that Paul had used, I think it was like Arson Cody or Malicoy, those Arson Cody he was the first one that used that so people were saying like oh it could anyways there's this whole thing of like people are what does it mean? What does it mean? And so then when they come to this with me, the first thing of course is love but then same thing I what I wish I'd approach different with my friend here's the difference whenever the students are coming to me they're not my kids. And so the relationship isn't on that same level of depth as you guys as fathers or as me with my friend where I have that deeper connection and maybe you feel like you have the right to immediately jump to responses or ask questions or make accusations. But in what I have these conversations with the students it really is not interrogation but just good questions. Yeah. Starting with God like do you believe in God? Yeah yeah do you believe what he says is true?

SPEAKER_04 1:32:31

Yeah and do you think a fair question is okay so why do you feel that way?

SPEAKER_00 1:32:34

What would you I do and I think asking when did you start feeling that way yeah because then it shows I'm I'm not just shoving this to the side and I'm not just saying that this is how you feel or this isn't how you feel. I'm wanting to understand where this is stemming from and not so that you can point to it and say aha this is it but so then you also know because there might be some some real hurt or real brokenness tied to that story that they're not ready to open up about with and they may never open up with if you just jump.

SPEAKER_04 1:33:03

I and I can't state the research study but transgender um I believe the study I saw that it was either 70 or 80% stem from a sexual abuse. A very traumatic experience and and I think it can even kind of connect over with the homosexuality something happened where they don't want to be that person that that happened to because if that that happened to that person well I need to change me and be something different so that doesn't happen again. Well that's a different conversation and that's a that's a much deeper okay we need to dig into what that is because that's not truth and you don't need to change who you are. You did nothing wrong kind of thing. Because that's or I mean when you think about that even on the the transgender side of things 70 to 80% are because of that well that's that takes care of a lot of root issues. You can start to dig into the root issue and fix that first I even remember reading an article about a uh from a gal that was in first grade that dealt with that problem and wanted to change start dressing different started acting different started acting like a boy because she something bad happened at home and a teacher noticed it the counselor noticed it and started having the conversation hey what happened yeah hey what's going on and she says she looks back now and says they saved me from going down the path of what today would have said well you just go right ahead and change who you are no no no no no let's fix in your mind let's heal your mind that's what even Paul says you have to heal your mind let's heal your mind and figure out that first because God made you who you are for a reason.

SPEAKER_00 1:34:43

That's it I would say though in the in the role of a parent again not a parent so I hate to seem like I have advice on this but I feel like the biggest role is you are speaking truth. You are speaking life you are telling your kid who they are in the same way God tells us who we are if we're a Christian then we're his child like our identity isn't him. And so as a parent just reminding of who they are in Christ and who they are as your child creates that love with you but also the not acceptance of what they're doing but acceptance of them. Yeah. From God. So I was from a heart level God loves me. Yeah exactly and I think in a in a world full of everyone's truth right that's kind of where we started today. But the scripture says truth sets you free. And um only actual factual truth can set you free. And so reminding them of who they are in Christ will kind of silence the voice of who the world is saying this is who you are or who the enemy is saying this is who you should be. You got to keep bringing it back to who Christ is that they are and they're gonna want to live up to it.

SPEAKER_03 1:35:41

Yeah. And that's what like my encouragement to parents is number one because a lot of times they respond they're upset or angry but a lot of times they're not upset or angry at their kids. They're upset and angry at themselves.

SPEAKER_00 1:35:54

What did I do wrong?

SPEAKER_03 1:35:55

My encouragement to parents would be remove yourself. Like you're responding right now because you are you feel shame. You are thinking what could I what did I do wrong? What did I could I have done different and whenever you're focusing on yourself and what people are going to think of you because of all this you're losing sight on the child that's sitting in front of you.

SPEAKER_00 1:36:14

Yeah and so you have to remove yourself as a parent and just understand like hey Satan attacks and he temps in different ways you can't control that he does but it's also so similar like it's funny to me when you look at back in the garden the first thing is did God actually say that? And that's what they're all asking right now. Did he really say that? Point back to the truth. And then he comes in and he's like you will be more like God like I'm gonna take an attack on your identity immediately when they were the only beings made in God's image. You can be your own God. You can be your own God so it all to me it all comes back to truth but not in a way that you're just sliding verses or like convicting you just have to know the word so that you know how to speak life and speak life and how the enemy works.

SPEAKER_03 1:36:56

But that's what like I say like if if your child's come to you telling this look at them and sincerely just be able to tell them how much you love them. Yeah unconditionally despite all of that but also in that say hey I love you so much I just need you to know this is what's true. And we're gonna be here with you and for you no matter what this is where you know we stand. And then the after you're able to share that grace and and love and and truth you know the parents that we are sitting with a lot of them is like well my kid he's still struggling with it. Like they're they're still going through it. Like now they want to bring their friend over what do what do I tell what do I instruct? And I'm like you can only control how you respond. Yeah and so that's where it's like yay let them bring their friend over but you set the boundaries of can't be doing this. This is not gonna allow we're not gonna allow this in our house this is the parameters we are setting when it comes to this just like you would if you're you're unmarried with a heterosexual kid comes forward and does the same thing.

SPEAKER_02 1:37:54

You're gonna set those boundaries in your house of what you allow what you don't allow what can you can see what you can see.

SPEAKER_03 1:37:58

So like that that is where like I would encourage parents and how they respond is hey remove yourself focus back on the child and you're really gonna understand the hell heart of your heavenly father even more after after those types of conversations. That's a response very easier said than done.

SPEAKER_04 1:38:13

Very much so and but that's where we a lot of prayer involved yeah and a lot of prayer Lord you're gonna have to help me say the right things do the right things lead the right way.

SPEAKER_00 1:38:22

And you might like also be gracious on yourself because you may mess up. You may say something that you wish you could backtrack but don't let a bad response in a moment ruin a relationship.

SPEAKER_03 1:38:33

Yeah yeah yeah well how that's good how do we like land this well this is like where I you you go back and going back to truth and now they're even trying to say well homosexuality wasn't even the Bible they even go with the hey Jesus didn't even talk about it. And like my encouragement to back to them would be you are using an argument from silence. Jesus he does talk about in Matthew what a godly relationship looks like and if he clearly defines what a godly relationship looks like he doesn't have to define everything that it is not. And it's just like he didn't talk about bestiality either. Right exactly or or you know he didn't talk about marrying your sister there either he just defined what it looked like to have a godly relationship anything outside of that is is sin. It'd be like me if I was in a we were in a group of 25,000 people like hey who is your wife I don't have to go around and tell you everybody who is not my wife all I have to do is say hey that right there that's my wife yeah and then you know what everything else is everyone else is not my wife. Same thing in this like he can lay out what it looks like and anything outside of that is not. So it's not yeah that I think exactly what you're saying Christians go back to the word go back to truth but do it out of love and do it out of grace because that's what God does for all of us in our soul. There it is.

SPEAKER_00 1:39:44

Man there we go well on that note Tori you want to send us out I feel like I've had everything I don't know that you can close out well make heaven crowded how do you lay that's how me and Abby do close out XOXO Godly Girl. It's like we're signing off a love note to our uh audience and to God.

SPEAKER_03 1:40:08

Well we don't have a love note but we do have an invitation to come back and join us on Sunday as we continue on in our sermon series over the book of Romans. It's a lot of fun. Romans uh chapter two in the beginning of chapter three so uh can do good people go to heaven is the question that we're gonna be answering. So yeah there we go. Yep it's gonna be a good one. So don't miss on Sunday nine or 10 30. Join us next week for the Make Heaven Crowded podcast. So until then we'll see you. Yeah right on