Homosexuality and Transgender 2

If you have your Bibles with you, please open them to the Book of Jude. Don't say what chapter. Open them to Jude. We're looking at the issues facing the church, and tonight I want to sort of continue with the ideas that we talked about this morning. This morning, I had the responsibility and the privilege of addressing the issue of homosexuality and same sex marriage, and I want to address that but from a different perspective because it is true, and we talked about that today. It is true that that is one of, if not the greatest issue confronting the church today. And the reason that I say that is because use the cultural position on the issue of homosexuality and same sex marriage demands that the church be compromised or crushed. Those are the only two possibilities. The Church must absolutely compromise what it believes or in order for our culture to continue down this road, in order for there to be full acceptance of homosexuality and same sex marriage based on the faulty and unproven idea that this is an immutable characteristic like someone's ethnicity. The only way that we can continue down that road is if the church is completely compromised in what it believes, or the church is crushed and basically beaten into submission and beaten into non existence. Those are the only two possibilities if the culture is going to have what it wants right now. So just beware, Okay. That's why I would argue that this may be the most significant issue facing the church today. But tonight, what I want to address is another issue that makes it even more significant, and that is the issue of the attitudes, particularly of the younger generation. When it comes to this issue and other issues like it. When we start talking about confronting the issues facing the church, you need to understand that the younger generation is basically being raised in an atmosphere where there is an eleventh commandment, and the eleventh commandment is thou shalt be nice, and we don't believe the other ten thou shalt be nice. And what that looks like is this. What that looks like is you raise an issue, whether you be in public or you be in social media or whatever. You raise an issue, and you take a biblical stand on the issue, and you say unapologetically what God says on the issue. There will be some person probably between the ages eighteen and thirty five and that person will confront you because they are more offended by you raising the issue than they are by the thing that offends God. They're more offended by you, as a Christian taking a stand than they are by the abomination that shakes its fists in God's face. And there have been more than one instance where I've pointed this out to people where people have come and maybe, you know, want to confront me because of a message that I preached, or because of something that they heard or something that I've written, and they're just upset and they're just defended because it's just not nice and we just had to be nice. And if we were just nicer, yeah, that's the problem. If we were just nicer, all this stuff would go away. But we were just nicer and da da, da da, and then they raised this. And here's what I always want to know. I just want to know before we take this any further. Can I ask you a question. You're confronting me for my sin of not being nice? Have you ever confronted the sin that I confronted? And the answers always no. In other words, the homosexual can shake his fists at God. The abortionist can destroy the very image of God. All of these things can flut themselves before the Holy One. And the only thing that gets you so upset that you have to fire off a confrontational email is if someone has the audacity to say what God says about the sin. That's our big problem. I'm not worried about all of the things that are coming at us from the outside. We will extinguish all the fiery darts of the evil one. Amen. What I'm worried about is when we get down in the foxhole and we raise up our shields because of all the stuff that's coming this way. Those eighteen to thirty five year olds who are right next to us, they're not holding up their shields. They're dropping grenades in our foxhole because nothing offends them more than not being nice. So they will offend you for being offensive. Some of them don't even like the idea of confronting these cultural issues. Don't even like the idea, for example, of apologetics, because it just seems to be not nice. Now, granted, we can all agree that there are those people who engage in apologetics because they just like being offensive. If you can't say amen, you ought to say ouch, right to what teenage boys come up to me. You know, I'm really interested in apologetics. Can you just help me? Just you know what do I Yeah, I just don't do it. Yeah, but you know, shouldn't we all be engaged in apologetics? Yeah, but not you, because you just like the sound of your own voice and you just like to argue with people. So let everybody else do apologetics until you grow up. So Amen, somebody, but those individuals aside. I'm not talking about those individuals who are genuinely offensive, who may need to be, you know, sort of sort of brought to the side and spoken to about the way that they approach things. That's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about people for whom the very concept of believing that we are right about something and that other people are wrong about something is in itself offensive. That's what I'm talking about. So here in Jude, I want us to look at this text and address some of the objections that people have to the very approach that we're taking here this week. Jude writes Jude, a servant or slave of Jesus Christ, brother of James, to whom is he writing this is very important to those who are called Amen? In God, the Father Hadelujah kept for Jesus Christ. If I had another one, I'd raised in praise the Lord. In other words, that's that's us, that's us. What's interesting about this is that for many of us, we have the idea that engaging in apologetics, engaging these cultural issues. And when I when I say apologetics, and I'm defining apologetics quite simply as knowing what you believe, knowing why you believe it, and being able to communicate that through others in a winsome and effective way. So I mean, when I'm talking about apologetics, for most of us, we think apologetics. That's for those you know, special forces Christians who drop in behind enemy lines with nothing but a toothpick, you know, And that's for those people. And they know everything about everything. They know everything about philosophy, they know everything about every world religion, they know everything about they know everything about stuff they don't even know about. That's how smart they are. This man is so smart he knows the stuff that he doesn't even know, so that when you bring up the stuff that he doesn't know, he answers you because he knows that too. And once we make the decision that that's apologetics. The decision that we've made is that it's not for me. I'm not responsible to engage in this process. And so we can have this conference about these things confronting the church, and we can say, oh, I hope the pastors and the elders are listening. Matter of fact, why are they talking to us about this stuff? Because you know, why would I ain't need to know about these things confronting the church because I work at filling the blank and I don't deal with this stuff except you do. But here's what's interesting. This text is most assuredly talking about apologetics, and based on this greeting, it is most assuredly addressing every Christian. You don't get a pass. You don't get a pass, not if you are the called beloved in God, the Father, and kept for Jesus Christ. So there's the first objection answered, apologetics not for me. Dealing with these issues not for me. This conference is fine, and I'm glad that all the church leaders are hearing about these issues facing the church. But I also very glad that these things don't affect me. I'm also very glad that I don't have to be the one to engage on these issues. But you know you do, because if you've been at the conference just last night and today, sixteen or seventeen times you heard something and you went, huh, I remember I had a conversation about that at work. Oh I remember when my yeah Auntie brought that up. Oh wow, My kids came home talking about that. This is right where you live. It's right where you live, and you don't get a pass. Let that settle in on you before we move forward anymore in this conference. This is not a conference addressing issues that church leaders must deal with. We're a dress issues that every believer must deal with because it's in the very air we breathe. Here's the second objection. Notice what he says, May mercy, peace, and love be multiplied to you. Interestingly, one of the arguments against this process of apologetics is that it's not loving. But notice what he says in the next verse, but love. Although I was very eager to write you about our common salvation, I found it necessary to write you appealing to you to contend for the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints. Now here's what's interesting about this. He uses a word here that's borrowed from the field of wrestling at fagonidzo mine. You can't even say that word without making a face, right, Just agonize greatly. I'm writing to you appealing that you agonize greatly. And he's borrowing this term from perhaps the earliest martial art wrestling, hand to hand, man to man combat. So what he's talking about here in engaging on these issues, the word that he uses, the closest thing that he can bring to mind for what we're engaged in is man to man hand to hand combat. And we don't like that because it's not nice and it's not loving. But wait, go back to verse two, May mercy, peace and love be multiplied to you? Come out. If what comes next is not love, why do you juxtapose it with may mercy, peace and love be multiplied to you? Did the apostle just say? What I really want is for mercy and peace and love to be multiplied to you. And the way that I want that to happen is I want you to engage in something that is inherently not loving. Well, as we'd say where I come from, that dog won't hunt. There's a problem here. How can it be unloving to engage in this process of intellectual combat, if you will. If what he starts with is may mercy, peace, and love be multiplied to you, well, the answer lies in the formation of the statement and its antecedenty. The formation of the statement is triune. He doesn't just say may or may love or may mercy be multiplied to you. He uses all three, and he uses this tripartheid statement right after he says, to those who are called beloved in God the Father and kept for Jesus Christ. Now that's a not so veiled Trinitarian reference if you fill in the blanks. Here's what he said, those who are called by the Holy Spirit, beloved in God the Father, and kept by Jesus Christ. In other words, he uses a trinitarian reference to what it means to be a Christian and then a tripartheid reference to what it means to be loved by God. So he's juxtaposing this idea of love with this idea of the Godhead. Here's something that's very interesting. Do you realize, for example, that in you Nitarian religions, you cannot say what we can say, which is God is love. A Muslim cannot make that claim. A Muslim would not make that claim God is love. Even if a Muslim wanted to make that claim philosophically, there would be a problem. You see, their radical Unitarian view of God has God as an isolated unit, not as a triune God who has existed forever as Father, Son and Holy Spirit in perfect harmony and unity within himself, Which means that the greatest thing the Muslim could hope for is the idea that God became love. Why well, because if there was ever a moment when there was no one or nothing for God to relate to, then the concept of love would not have existed. But if there is a God who has existed eternally as Father, Son and Holy Spirit in unbroken unity, an unbroken love in the Godhead, the Son eternally begotten of the Father, the Spirit eternally proceeding from the Father and the Son, the Spirit, as Jonathan Edwards says, the personal manifestation of the love between the Father and the Son, then we can make the statement that God is love and that God has always been love. In fact, you cannot comprehend love apart from understanding the love that God is in himself. In fact, you can't understand your salvation apart from understanding the love of the Godhead. And this is what he does when he juxtaposes to these statements. In other words, your salvation is a byproduct of the love of God. The Father, out of his love for the Son, bequeathed a people to him an eternity past, a love gift to the Son, and the Son, out of his love for his father, wrapped himself in flesh and came to redeem the love gift that the Father gave to him an eternity past, and laid down his life for his bride the Church, as first and foremost an act of loving obedience to his father, who gave him this love gift. The Spirit, in his love for the Father and the Son, actually applies the redemption that the Father bequeathed and the Son accomplished in real time in the lives of believers, as he awakens them and calls them to repentance in faith, so that the love of the Godhead is fulfilled. Every time someone comes to faith in Christ, it is the manifestation of the fathers bequeathing them as a gift, the Son's redeeming them on the cross, and the spirits applying that redemption so that the love of God can actually overflow in creation through the redemption of the elect to the glory of Almighty God. In other words, you and I can't comprehend what love is apart from this theological reality. Love is meaningless apart from this theological reality. And here's the problem. Listen to me eighteen to thirty five. The problem is that you view love horizontally and not vertically. The problem is that you believe love is defined and determined by how you or I make the other person feel. And if we do anything that upsets the other, if we do anything that offends the other, we immediately declare that that's not loving. But once you understand that love cannot and must not be defined horizontally, but must first and foremost be designed or defined vertically. Once you understand that we look to the Godhead to explain to us what love is, and we look to the redemption of God's elect as the ultimate manifestation of what love is, then you recognize that your horizontal relationship, if it is to be a loving one, it must first and foremost be submitted to the vertical relationship between the Father, the Son, the Spirit and his elect. Therefore, there are things that I could do horizontally that absolutely offend you and are absolutely loving. Because there are things that are true because God says they're true, and because God is love. I bring those things to you as an act of love from the God who is Love, who also defines love, who also manifested the ultimate expression of love. And whether you like it or not, it's loving. Once we understand that love is defined vertically before it can be defined horizontally, we address this particular issue. It is not loving. For example, for me to deny a truth that comes from the God who is Love in order to appease an enemy of God, that can't be loving. The only way that that could be loving is if this enemy of God is being allowed to define love for me. Here's the other problem once I do that. Once I say that I am going to tread lightly with this horizontal relationship, I'm going to tread so lightly that I'm not going to offend this person horizontally with the truths that I know vertically from God who is Love. But once I say I am not going to say what God says about this person's behavior because I don't want to risk losing this relationship. You have just committed idolatry. You have just said, this horizontal relationship is of far more value to me than my vertical relationship with the God who is love. I will offend the God who is love. I will offend the God who crushed his only begotten son in order to demonstrate his love for me, because a dead Jesus means far less to me than this person liking me. That's idolatry, pure and simple. And that's what we're guilty of when we refuse to press the truth because of our desire to preserve a horizontal relationship. When we understand this rightly, we get how contending can be loving. Third objection, A third objection is that, you know, we just need to be about We just need to be about the main thing. We just we just need to be about the Gospel and the main thing. We just don't need to be about all these other issues, these other issues that take care of themselves. We need to be about the main thing, not these secondary issues. And these are all secondary issues, because everything is secondary to the main thing of salvation. Right, okay, beloved, Although I, by the way, the eye is an apostle under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. You're good. You got me all right? So the eye there, this is I need you to I need you. I need to know you're following me right here. Okay, this is an apostle under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. I mean you can I just okay, thank you, Thank you the Namibians, they helped me out. Yeah, thank you the rest of y'all. Like, I don't know, you're trying to trick me? Are you trying to? Although I was very eager to write to you about our common salvation, an apostle under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit was eager to write to God's people about salvation main thing, right, Amen, you don't get more main thing than that main thing. That's keeping the main thing, the main thing. Everything that's not that thing, it's not the main thing, right, eager to write to you about our common salvation, I found it necessary to write appealing to you to contend for the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints. Time out. Either this issue of apologetics is more significant than the issue thank you, thank you, than the issue of salvation, or this issue of apologetics is actually a servant of the issue salvation. But here's what we know. It's not contradictory to the issue of salvation. Because an apostle under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit says, I was eager, eager to write to you about our common salvation, but I just had to do something. I had to write to you, and I had to urge you to contend, to wrestle, to fight in the marketplace of ideas. So again, this is not failing to make the main thing the main thing. This is part and parcel of the main thing. The question is how can that be? Look at the next part of this Four certain people have crept in unnoticed, who long ago were designated for this condemnation. Man, we go from agonizing greatly to now he's condemning. It's just not nice, right, Get over it, ungodly people. It gets even worse. You're condemned, you're ungotten. Nice name calling, right, ungodly people who pervert the grace of our God into sensuality and deny our only Master and Lord Jesus Christ. Why is this a first priority issue? Here's why I was eager to write to you about our common salvation. It was really important to me to write to you about our common salvation. However, I had to change gears, and I had to write to you, and I had to encourage you to contend to fight, particularly with some condemned, ungodly people. Why is it so important that you contend with these people, that you fight with these people? Here's why. Because they're turning grace into lawlessness and they're denying Jesus Christ. Why does this become priority number one? Because if you don't confront them, they pervert the Gospel, which is the power of God unto salvation. Do you see how that works? Well, we just want to preach the gospel. We just want to preach Jesus. Yes, absolutely, amen, Hallelujah, Praise the Lord. Preach Jesus. And also those people over there who are perverting the very definition and understanding of who Jesus is, get them. This is why basic requirement for eldership. For example, according to Titus one nine, what is it that we hold firmly to the trustworthy word as taught, so that we may be able to exhort in sound doctrine and refute those who contradict it. Why Because if you don't, the gospel is lost. And if the gospel is lost. There is no salvation. There is not salvation in another Jesus. There is only salvation in the Jesus Jesus Amen. So the reason that we must confront these issues is because these issues are doing two things. And notice that there are two things happening here. First, they're turning the grace of God into lawlessness, and then they're denying Jesus Christ. These two things are happening. On the one hand, they're painting a picture of Christianity that says there is no holiness or righteousness attached to it. And the only way that you can do that is if somehow you paint the picture of another Jesus, not the one of scripture. That's what we contend with. That's where we fight, that's where we agonize greatly, and there is nothing unloving about that. There is a story, the story from sixteen eleven, and we sometimes read it at home and sometimes we listen to it at home. It's called the Hedge of Thorns. Story about this brother and sister sixteen eleven in England, this small town and they are off to school and there's this hedge of thorns, this huge heads. They can't even see over the hedge, and they want to know what's on the other side of the hedge. And they're curious, and they go to the hedge and they try to peer through the hedge, and they get stuck by the thorns, and they get cut by the thorns, and so on and so forth. One day, the brother tries to dig a hole in the hedge and send his sister through the hole. She gets caught in the hedge. He has to pull her back and he almost takes her eye out. He brings her back home. She's being nursed back to help. Their father comes home, here's what has happened and doesn't even speak to the boy when he sees this grotesque scar on his little girl's face, and he goes in and he nurses her, and then he comes back out. And it's not until the next day that he gets his son and he takes him back to the hedge, and he picks his son up so he can see over the hedge, and he says, tell me what you see. He says, I see a chasm greater than any chasm I've ever seen. I can't even see the bottom of it. He brings his son back down and he says, many years ago, there was a young man, or there was a man who had two children, a daughter and a son. They were tending their sheep, and one of them fell off of this cliff. The little girl went after the sheep and fell to her death. The brother, not realizing, tried to go and help her, and he fell and died as well. That man took his grief, and he built this hedge so that no other family would ever experience the loss that he did. Those children looked at that hedge and they thought it was unkind and unloving, because there was something over there that the hedge was preventing them from seeing. They tried to satisfy their curiosity in this mean hedge, cut their hands, cut their feet when they tried to climb. What kind of an evil person would put something like this here? Wasn't an evil person at all. Listen to me. This is our lost world, this is our lost culture. They look at the hedge of Christianity and they say, you're keeping me from something, You're keeping me from my joy, you're keeping me from my passion. All I hear from you is no, no, no, it's mean. It's evil. It's what move this hedge, And we are so backward in our thinking that we've actually come to the place where we think the loving thing to do is to tear it down, when in fact, nothing can be further from the truth. It is not unloving to do everything you can to keep people out of health. It is most assuredly not unloving to tell people the greatest love story that has ever been told, and the love story that makes all other love stories make sense, because without this love story, we don't even have the very concept of love. Don't buy the lie the lie that says engaging in this is only for a select few. No, it's for you. Don't buy the lie it says doing so is inconsistent with love. Don't buy the lie that says doing so is actually majoring in minors. There is nothing more major than the truth of who God is and what He has done through the person and work of Jesus Christ. And don't buy the lie that says contending with those who are destroying the Gospel is somehow unacceptable when the fact of the matter is failing to contend with them is what is unacceptable, because that's the unloving thing. Oh, you're believing in a Jesus that can't save you. You like that, excellent, I'll let you go ahead, and when you die your bust hell wide open. But at least I will not have offended you. Contend for the faith, the faith that was once for all handed down to the saints. For there are persons who were long ago marked out for this condemnation, ungodly persons who, through these very issues we're addressing this week, turning the grace of God into lawlessness, sensuality, and denying our Master and Lord Jesus Christ. And they must not be allowed to do so. And the loving thing to do. Fight Fight for true fight for the Gospel, Fight for souls, Fight for the greatest love story that has ever been told, for the love story without which no other love story has ever or will ever make any sense. Fight because you love lost people enough to fight, because you love the Gospel enough to fight, because you desire that Christ might have the fullness of the reward for which he died and saw you find. Let's pray, Gracious God, we thank you. We thank you for your goodness and your mercy and your kindness toward us. We thank you for the mercy and peace and love that had been multiplied to us we thank you for the love that the Father bestowed upon the Sun by bequeathing to him a people. We thank you for the love that the Son expressed by redeeming that people. And we thank you for the love of the Spirit, who, out of his love for the Father and the Son, applies that redemption to those people, that they might enter into this ever expanding reality of the love of God, who is Love. Grant by your grace that our passion for this truth would far exceed our fear of men, and that as such we might contend earnestly for the faith that was once for all handed down to the saints. Grant this we pray in Christ's name and for his sake name