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Sunday School

Lesson 19: God-Defined Sexuality and Gender, Questions

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Greg Ho

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Summary

This lesson continues a series on God’s design for sexuality and gender, addressing practical questions from the congregation. We are reminded that Christian wisdom requires humility—not going beyond what Scripture says and not judging one another’s hearts on matters where the Bible is not explicit. We are called to be lights for Christ rather than culture warriors, recognizing that the ultimate goal is not political change or making people heterosexual, but winning people to Christ.

Key Lessons:

  1. Parents must take personal responsibility to teach biblical sexuality at home, regardless of schooling method, since no methodology guarantees godly children.
  2. The church’s mission is to represent Christ, not a political party—neither party is truly aligned with Christ, and over-identification with politics risks losing the gospel message.
  3. Homosexual desire, like all sinful desire, flows from our fallen nature; the solution is not behavior modification but walking by the Spirit and being transformed by the gospel.
  4. The church must be a safe place where believers struggling with any sin—including same-sex attraction—can confide in others and receive help bearing their burdens.

Application: We are called to engage these cultural issues with both courage and humility, prioritizing the gospel over political activism, creating safe church environments for struggling believers, and equipping ourselves and our children with biblical knowledge rather than relying on blanket rules or external standards of righteousness.

Discussion Questions:

  1. How can we balance standing firm on biblical truth about sexuality while creating a church environment where people struggling with sexual sin feel safe to seek help?
  2. In what ways might our political activism or cultural engagement actually hinder our gospel witness, and how can we guard against that?
  3. What practical steps can parents take to teach their children biblical sexuality while also teaching them to love and show compassion to those who disagree?

Scripture Focus: 1 Corinthians 4:1-6 teaches us not to go beyond what is written and not to pass premature judgment. Matthew 5:27-28 shows that sinful desire itself is sin, not just the outward act. Galatians 5:16-17 instructs believers to walk by the Spirit to overcome the desires of the flesh. Deuteronomy 6:7 and Ephesians 6:4 call parents to diligently teach their children God’s Word.

Outline

Introduction

Thank you for coming to Adult Sunday School. This is the second installment of our lesson on God defines sexuality and gender in the series defending doctrinal distinctives.

Review of God’s Design for Sexuality and Gender

And last week we talked about God’s design for sexuality and gender. We saw that his design for sexuality and gender comes straight from Genesis 1 and 2. Right there in Genesis 1, when God is telling us what it essentially means to be human—which is to be made in the image of God—he tells us the second most important thing to be human is that we are male and female. It’s right there in the blueprint of man, right in the beginning.

So God made these genders. Gender is not a social construct. It is a creation and a mandate of God.

“Gender is not a social construct. It is a creation and a mandate of God.”

We also saw from Genesis 2 that God made woman a helper for man. But critically, woman was not made as a helper for man’s selfish desires. It wasn’t as if woman was made to just follow man blindly. Rather, it was a purpose that God gave man that he needed help with.

That purpose was not only to steward his creation, the earth, but also to procreate and multiply and to worship and obey God. So woman is the helper for man for that purpose, which is to fill the earth and to subdue the earth. That was God’s design for man and woman.

We saw that in the context of marriage—the first marriage in Genesis 1—God gives Adam and Eve the wedding gift of sex. Sex is permissible in the context of marriage. That is the only context in which God permits sexual activity.

So if you think about it, it’s amazing. This is the character of God. He gives you a mandate. He gives you a job to do. But in that job, while you’re doing it, he gives you joy. That is really talking about the character of God and the goodness of God.

We saw that in any other context, sex is outside of God’s design. And why did God paint this picture of marriage? We saw in Ephesians 5 that God tells us: I am drawing pictures over and over again throughout creation all over the world of something very important to God, and that is Christ in the church.

If you zoom out a little bit, you see billions of pictures of Christ in the church all throughout the earth and all throughout history. That is the picture that God is painting. In that picture, the man is to reflect the sacrificial love of Christ, while the woman is to reflect the submission, the devotion, and the respect that the church has for Christ. This is multiplied billions of times around the earth.

We saw that God is preaching the gospel in a very real sense in every godly marriage.

“God is preaching the gospel in a very real sense in every godly marriage.”

That’s why God takes it so seriously. No wonder then that Satan hates marriage so much. Satan wants to attack this very picture of Christ in the church.

When we talk about the topics of homosexuality and transgenderism, we talked explicitly about what the Bible says about those questions. Today, having that background knowledge in the back of your head, we’re going to answer some of your questions.

I want to thank you for sending questions. Many of you sent very good questions—some of them kept me up a little bit at night. So we’re going to do our best.

I do want to give you some time in these questions to talk a little bit. But I do ask that when I open up for comments, you would keep comments to a reasonable length, keep it on topic, and be gracious. Not everybody here probably agrees with some of the answers that we give to some of these questions.

Before we get into that, I do want to level set us with some guiding principles.

Guiding Principle 1: Do Not Go Beyond What Is Written

When it comes to topics like this, I do want to keep in mind two principles by which we can make decisions on these topics. A lot of the topics we’re talking about today are not black and white explicit in the Bible necessarily.

They’re more practical issues. What do I do about this? What do I do about that? How do I react to this? Some of those things are clear in the Bible, but some of them require us to exercise Christian wisdom.

When exercising Christian wisdom, I want to start out with this verse in 1 Corinthians 4:1. If you could just open up your Bibles really briefly to 1 Corinthians 4:1, I think this is just so important for us to get in our head as we begin this discussion.

Let me just read this to you. In 1 Corinthians 4:1, the apostle Paul is talking in the context of the Corinthian church. People were saying “I am of Apollos” or “I am of Paul.” They were raising one up while beating down the other, causing factions and judging essentially the apostles.

What Paul says about this is in 1 Corinthians 4:1: “This is the way any person is to regard us as servants of Christ and stewards of the mysteries of God. In this case, moreover, it is required of stewards that one be found trustworthy.”

But then he says, “But to me, it is an insignificant matter that I would be examined by you or by any human court. In fact, I do not even examine myself.” That’s actually a pretty interesting statement.

What’s happening here? He’s saying that he acknowledges that you are judging him. It’s pretty obvious. You are judging him against the other apostles or against Apollos or against other leaders. And he’s saying this does not really concern him actually.

In verse four, he says, “I am not aware of anything against myself. However, that’s not going to vindicate me just because I’m not aware of it. But the one who examines me is the Lord.”

He’s not concerned about human judgment. He’s concerned about the Lord’s judgment.

But then in verse 5, he says something very interesting: “Therefore, do not go on passing judgment before the time.” He’s talking about passing judgment on him or passing judgment on other Christian leaders in that church. Don’t pass judgment before the time. Don’t be so quick to do that.

But wait until the Lord comes, who will bring to light the things hidden in darkness and disclose the motives of human hearts. What does that mean?

First of all, it means right now, this is what you don’t know. You don’t know everything. There are things hidden in darkness that you don’t know. You also cannot discern the motives of other human hearts. You can’t read Paul’s mind. You can’t read his heart. And so you can’t make an accurate judgment on this. God can make that judgment.

And what will happen when he does that? Then praise will come to each person from God.

In verse six, he says, “Now these things, brothers and sisters, I have figuratively applied to myself and Apollos on your account.” He’s saying he’s using himself and Apollos as examples so that in us you may learn not to exceed what is written, so that no one of you will become arrogant in behalf of one against the other.

1 Corinthians 4:6: “In us you may learn not to exceed what is written.”

What he’s saying here is you stick to what the Bible says and you don’t go beyond that. You don’t invent other rules to judge your brothers and sisters by.

In these questions we’re going to talk about, we may have a diversity of opinion. You may have very strong opinions or very strong convictions in your own heart. What I ask of you here is to follow this guiding principle of not going beyond what is written. Do not invent a whole bunch of rules that you judge others by out of your own convictions.

Don’t pass judgment before the time. Stay humble, and when scripture is not explicit, allow Christians to have different conclusions and different convictions on these issues.

Guiding Principle 2: Be a Light for Christ, Not a Standard of External Righteousness

Second principle, we are called as Christians to be the light of the world.

But when it comes to these social issues, a lot of us have very strong opinions, myself included.

And what we have to be careful of doing is we want to be the light of the world that points to Christ and not merely an external standard of righteousness. That’s a line we have to really balance on. We have to be really careful about it because we do want to stand for righteousness. We do want to speak up for righteousness. But there is a way where we can go too far on that.

Your life and your ministry can become about an external standard of righteousness. You make that the primary thing and people forget that you are about Christ, right? Or you can forget that you’re about Christ. While we need to have the courage to speak up about what God says, remember that our ultimate goal—at least what we believe in this church—is not political change and it’s not culture change. This is not our goal.

What we’re trying to do is win people to Christ independent from any political cause or any cultural cause. I’ve seen this happen. If you immerse yourself too much in activism, there’s a real danger that you can make that activism a primary thing and you become allies with people that don’t believe in Christ, and that becomes very problematic.

Here’s a thought experiment for you. Suppose God gave you a switch, just a button that you can push, and everybody in the world becomes heterosexual. Have you won? Have you accomplished your goal by making everyone heterosexual? The answer is no, because that wasn’t the goal in the first place. They’re still not Christians. They’re still headed for hell, and that’s not what we’re here for.

“Our ultimate goal is not political change and it’s not culture change — it’s winning people to Christ.”

We’re not here to win the battle but lose the war. Why? Because Satan will just come up with another philosophy.

Satan has weapons for every mindset. He’ll just go to Islam. And that’s going to be Satan saying, “Right, you can have this little frontier and we’re going to go all in on this one and we’re going to lose.” That’s what I ask you to keep in mind—these two things as we begin our discussion.

Now, like four or five questions people asked all sort of fall in this category. If you ask a question like this and you don’t see it verbatim, it’s because I just kind of mashed it up and scrambled it up a little bit and tried to get it to fit on one slide.

This is the question for question number one.

Question 1: Preparing Children for LGBTQ Influence in Schools

How should we advise and equip parents to prepare their children regarding the increasing LGBTQ influence in public schools? And related, how can parents and educators provide children with biblical guidance and teaching while also teaching them how to show love and compassion without losing sight of what the Bible says?

Okay, there’s a lot here. I’m just going to tell you what I think first, but then I want to hear what you think.

First of all, this is a very difficult question. There’s no easy answer to this. I really don’t believe that this is an easy thing to answer.

The Goal of Godly Parenting

And as I said from principle number one, we have to be careful to not make blanket statements such as “you just have to homeschool your kids.” That’s the only way to do it, right? We can’t make blanket statements like that.

There is actually no guaranteed methodology or prescription that will result in godly children. There just isn’t a prescription for that. And if you think there is a prescription, then I humbly submit to you that you probably don’t.

This is Christopher Grant. He said this, and it really stuck with me. He said, “When it comes to parenting, the goal of Christian parenting is actually not to raise godly children because you can’t reach that goal. The goal is to be godly parents.

“The goal of Christian parenting is not to raise godly children — it’s to be godly parents.”

Your goal is to be a godly parent and you leave the godly children to God.” And what that means is raising godly children is what we hope to do, but there’s no surefire set of rules or methodologies that can ever guarantee that outcome.

So you just have to remember that. If the child is raised in the faith, we believe that there is an extra measure of grace by being in a unique proximity to Jesus that increases our expectation that they will be in the family of God. But that is not a guarantee.

And Proverbs 22:6 is a very well-known verse. You guys have memorized it: “Train up a child in the way he should go. And when he is old, he will not depart from it.” Proverbs, of course, is wisdom.

In many cases that will be true. But there are some cases where that is not going to be true. And by the way, how do we know that? Who is the most perfect parent? God. And even he did not have perfect children.

“Who is the most perfect parent? God. And even he did not have perfect children.”

So parents are called to use wisdom.

Using Wisdom in Education Choices

And while I think parents can use all sorts of modes of education to raise godly children, you can send your kids to homeschool. You can send your kids to Christian school. You can send your kids to public school. All of these things come with their own challenges.

Every situation is different. Not every school is the same level of crazy. Not every child is going to react the same to these things. Every school is different and we all ought not to overgeneralize.

On a personal level, I’ve done all of these things actually for different periods of time for our kids.

Parental Responsibility to Teach at Home

But I think it is incumbent on the parents to learn as much as they can about what the Bible says about these topics to understand what is coming in from the world—whether even in Christian schools these things can come in, even if you’re homeschooled and completely sheltering your kids. That can also come in, and you have to be careful. You have to know what’s going on, and you have to educate your kids in your house.

As we’ve seen in the last 10, 15, 20 years, gender ideology has completely taken over the schools. Not every school is completely taken over to the same extent, right, but this is just in New York state. This picture was taken, and in some states it’s basically mandatory to be celebrating pride months and celebrations such as this.

However, the truth is you can never protect your kids completely from danger. If you’re old like me and your experience from the public schools is 20 years old, you probably don’t know how much worse it’s gotten. You just have to understand that.

In fact, there are a few teachers in this congregation that can tell you and have experience with it. So take responsibility.

Deuteronomy 6:7 says, “You shall repeat them diligently to your sons and speak of them when you sit at your house, when you walk on the road, when you lie down, and when you get up.” Ephesians 6:4 says to bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord.

At the end of the day, every parent is going to have to answer to God for their decisions. There are many good resources out there today to equip you.

Deuteronomy 6:7: “You shall repeat them diligently to your sons and speak of them when you sit, walk, lie down, and get up.”

We are very partial to the ministry of Answers in Genesis, and as we said last time, a lot of this stuff is based on Genesis in fact. There are many other ministries as well.

Teaching Love and Compassion Alongside Truth

Okay. And the last part of this question, when it comes to love, I would say we have to make sure that in our teaching of our kids, we don’t go too far in the other direction and make them consider people from the LGBT community as an enemy or as an other or be afraid of that community because the goal is always to love and to eventually bring people to Christ in evangelism.

All right, that was my sort of response. I don’t know if we’re going to get through all these questions, so we’ll see. Do you have any comments? Yes.

“We don’t want to make children consider people from the LGBT community as an enemy or as an other.”

Sorry. Give me a second. Come here.

Congregation Discussion on Parenting and Schools

I just thought that as we want to teach our children to the best of our ability what the Bible says, what God’s plan is for male and female and for us, it’s also maybe a good idea to teach what goes on in the world. When you’re growing up in a generation, you think, “Wow, this is it.”

This is what the world is. But the world goes from every fad, and we know that Satan’s behind it. The world needs a cause. The world has an agenda, and this is what they’re pushing.

It’s going to change in 10, 20 years. Not to put stake in that—that’s part of how the world works. It would be good to be wise about that too, instead of thinking, “All right, this is what they’re saying about the Bible, but these people really sound like they know what they’re talking about.” We look up to them. They’re our teachers and our leaders. It’s good to be wise about the world’s ways.

“The world needs a cause. The world has an agenda. It’s going to change in 10 or 20 years.”

Absolutely. Be as wise as serpents, innocent as doves. Anybody else? Glenda, in the line of what you teach your children—because they’re teaching them now that you were born that way.

Do you believe that a baby is born that way, or when they get a certain age, do they develop that character?

What do you think? Were they born that way?

I think that’s question number five. If you just wait a few minutes, we’ll get there. I don’t want to spoil it and ruin my question.

Run faster.

Yeah, thank you, Greg. My children have all been going to public schools. This has been a constant concern for me as a parent. I agree with what you said. Not all public schools are the same. Not everybody is going in the same direction, and it depends sometimes on the specific teacher assigned to the classroom.

The school may have a certain policy and guideline, but if the teacher of that particular class is going that way, there is really nobody who can stop that specific teacher. I agree with what you say—that it’s not our objective as Christians to fight the cultural war and transform people in heterosexual ways. But I would also like to mention that public policy matters.

What we have seen in this presidential period is a standby on all these policies. This month, the pride month was almost non-comparable to the prior administration—there was a huge difference. Voting matters. Public policy matters. It affects us all, and just do not underestimate or dismiss that situation because it has an impact. I would like to see this trend continue, the Lord willing. That’s my comment.

All right, Arthur, and then we’ll move on to the next question, which is a powder keg of its own. I know I concur with the fact that this is a very difficult question to answer. The reason I see it being difficult is that before we can teach our children, we have to teach ourselves as far as our understanding of what’s happening in the world regarding sexuality in all areas.

For example, among black women between the ages of 20 and 30, they have the highest rate for abortion. The highest rate for abortion among black women is among black women that are not married, that are single.

Our understanding of sexuality and what God requires of us has been seriously blurred, as far as I’m concerned. The example I want to give—and some of you already know where I stand on this—is in athletics.

If we are going to focus on the external parts of humanity, that’s one area to discuss. But when it comes to what should be the roles of men and women, if men and women are competing against each other—honestly, there had never been a woman that ran faster than I did. I’m just saying that. But today we see that the difference between males and females is being blurred.

Women are outperforming men. Until we can really get a grasp on those things, it’s going to be difficult.

Question 2: Politics, Party Platforms, and the Christian

Yeah. I don’t know if women are necessarily outperforming men, but maybe women pretending to be men, men pretending to be women are outperforming men. Good points, Arthur. I’m going to move on to the next question. If you guys have some burning question, I’m sure you can fit it into this one.

All right, question mashup number two. Homosexuality has been a highly political issue, or transgenderism has been a highly political issue. Do the official platforms and actual policies of the Republican and Democrat parties differ on this topic? And if so, how, and what does this mean practically for the discerning Christian? How should we engage with the culture?

Why the Church Does Not Endorse Political Candidates

Before I answer this question, I want to answer a different question which people ask me a lot and people actually ask elders a lot: why don’t we take more firm stances on, for example, political candidates that you should vote for? Why don’t we come out and be more political in what we say as a church, and why they’re important issues?

So why don’t we simply endorse candidates as a church? Many churches do that. Many churches have political sounding sermons. So I would point to principle number two, right? We believe that as a church, we are not a political organization.

Who we represent here is Christ, and that is apart from any political affiliation or party. The reason we avoid telling people who to vote for is because, number one, political parties can stand for different things, not just one single issue. Today, even maybe in the past, to identify too closely with any political party risks tying yourself to all of the policies of that party. Since our society is so hyperpolarized today, the truth is that neither party is really about Christ, and you just have to be honest about that.

“Neither party is really about Christ and you just have to be honest about that.”

My primary goal here at Calvary, and I think many of most of you, is not to achieve an external political gain or purpose. This would be a bad place to come to try to expect that kind of change.

While simply telling people who to vote for might seem pragmatic, it might seem easier because then you don’t have to do your own research, you don’t have to search your own soul or come to your conclusion. I believe that’s putting the cart before the horse.

1 Samuel 16:7 says, “Man looks at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart.” The consensus of the elders here is we’d rather arm you with biblical principles that tell you what the Bible says and then trust you to make your own righteous decisions when it comes to these matters instead of just skipping all that and just getting to the voting booth.

Although you should vote, what we’re in the business of is building believers up to the maturity of Christ. Once you’re there, you would know who to vote for without me having to tell you anything, right? To affect a vote is really the wrong goal, I think, for the church. But I think if we do our jobs right, you will have the wisdom and understanding to do the God-honoring thing. That includes things like schooling and opinions on that.

“We’d rather arm you with biblical principles and trust you to make your own righteous decisions.”

I’m always happy in a private sense to tell you exactly what I believe. But I am shy about doing that in the pulpit because that is where you speak for God, right? You got to be kind of careful with that, to be honest.

You can’t just say whatever you want, right? There’s a lot of stuff going on in the world where information changes really quickly. You don’t know exactly what’s going on. You don’t know what the news is slanting this way or the other.

That’s why sometimes there are things that happen where you take a stand on one issue and then somebody something happens the next week and somebody’s like, “Well, why didn’t you take a stand on that issue?”

These are the kind of things where you have to think about where we just come up here. We want to speak through God’s word and we don’t really want to go beyond what is written, okay?

That’s basically the reason, because I know a lot of you are curious about that. Now, let’s answer this actual question, right?

Comparing Party Platforms Honestly

Because I’m not trying to dodge the question. I don’t think it’s a mystery to anybody what these platforms differ on, right?

Neither platform is a biblical platform. However, obviously the Republican party is not as pro-life or pro-abolition as we would like it to be. And they’ve drifted farther from that in the recent past. But it is the Democrat platform that, no mystery from their own admission on their own website. You can just watch it, you can just read it, right?

They are fully embracing of abortion, transgenderism, and homosexuality as core values. And we just have to be honest about that, right? We’re not trying to pretend that that’s anything different than what it is.

And recently one example of this is in Oregon. I don’t know if you guys know this, but this particular week Oregon passed, or I guess Portland passed, a series of laws that recognize or encourage polyamory. And that is, they’re giving legal protection for polyamorous couples. If you don’t know what that is, that’s multiple people with some either sexual or nonsexual relation living under one roof. Sort of gender doesn’t really matter what the gender is, and more than one person, more than two people, right?

And the only reason that passed is because Oregon is a Democrat bastion. It is undeniably a place where really the gospel of Christ has never really taken a foothold out there in Oregon. And that’s why their worldviews are so different.

Okay, that does not mean that everything the Democrats are advocating for on that platform is evil or that everything the Republicans are advocating for is good. We have to be also very clear about that. And whether or not any other issues sort of play into your vote, I believe that’s a matter of Christian freedom, right?

You might decide these are the things I vote for exclusively, or you might decide there are other things that are more important and then also weigh in. I’m not going to tell you what to do, but I just think we have to be honest. This is what the parties stand for.

And as for how we engage in the culture, I think the principle is to be a light for Christ. We engage the culture, we be honest about it, but we do that in the context of Christ. We can’t advocate for these positions but not mention Jesus Christ, right?

So be careful about partnering with organizations that are about the issue but not about Christ. Just be careful about that. It’s not the gospel commission was not “go and make heterosexuals of all nations,” right? That was never the goal, right?

Okay. What is your probably better answer than Mike? Anybody? Mike?

“The gospel commission was not ‘go and make heterosexuals of all nations.’ That was never the goal.”

Congregation Discussion on Politics and Faith

So, Greg, first, thank you for recognizing that the pulpit is a precious platform and that it is primarily and exclusively used for God’s glory. As a called out body, we would just say when you’re up there, sir, we would see Jesus. That’s what we want to know.

Amen.

Jesus also said that we’re called out of the world. So as much as you can say, “Well, I’m Republican, Democrat,” we have no common ground once you’re born again. You have no common ground with the world. You’re not standing on the same platform.

So if I were a politician, I would be under oath to protect the rights of gay, straight, trans, whatever. That’s just my job. And I could show no discrimination there.

The issue is that the world will continue to blur the lines between what they don’t know. God said he’s the one that gives our rights. So they continue to make rights that want to appease the world. We don’t have common ground, and that’s the main thing we have to understand.

We preach Christ crucified. The world preaches peace, but there is no peace.

“We preach Christ crucified. The world preaches peace, but there is no peace.”

Amen.

Anybody else? Okay. And then maybe one more comment after this and then we’ll move on. It’s already 9:40. We’re on question two.

I think I’ll probably be bringing up my own color in most of the questions. I’m wondering if we are all aware of the fact that at least 80% of America’s black Americans are Democrats. It’s a serious problem.

My thoughts when it comes to an area like this: I’ve been ostracized from my family because I’ve chosen not to be supportive of the Democratic Party. They all consider themselves Christians. So it creates in my mind, where you had mentioned as far as principles and judging people’s hearts, I am convinced that they’re not saved and that’s a problem for me. I talk to God about it.

So I’m very cautious when it comes to using politics as a way to determine whether a person is saved or not.

“I’m very cautious when it comes to using politics to determine whether a person is saved or not.”

It makes the issue about politics as opposed to about Christ. Definitely. Anybody else? Last going once, going twice. All right. Nobody wants to weigh in on this power car. I know. I see how it is.

Just let Greg deal with all of these hard questions.

All right, question number three. I see Mr. Caposhia here has been very silent.

Question number three.

Question 3: Is Homosexual Attraction Itself a Sin?

I’m just kidding. Okay, this doesn’t get any easier. Is the homosexual attraction itself a sin or is it only when it is acted upon? Good question.

Right. By the way, that quote is from Rosario Butterfield. Okay.

This is a good question and I will try to answer it in a straightforward way, but then I’ll sort of loop around to what I think is the real question. I think there’s a question behind this question, right?

What’s the straightforward way? Why don’t we put aside the issue of homosexuality and think about this just in terms of desire. Okay?

So what does the Bible say about desires of the heart? Well, what does Matthew 5:27 say? It says, “You have heard it said, ‘You shall not commit adultery.

But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lust for her has already committed adultery with her in his heart.’” So what was the sin of this man?

Matthew 5:27-28: “Everyone who looks at a woman with lust for her has already committed adultery with her in his heart.”

Sinful Desire and the Fallen Heart

Well, the sin of this man is actually desire. It was a strong desire. It was lust. The answer is that even if you don’t act on the desire, it is a sinful desire. That’s what Jesus is saying here.

Where do these desires come from? If you flip over to Matthew 15:19, Jesus tells you where these desires come from. He says, “For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murders, acts of adultery, other immoral sexual acts, right? And these all come from out of the heart.”

Why does it come from out of your heart? Why is that the case? It is because our sin nature comes from the fall. The fall changed all of our desires to be for evil, for things that are aside from God’s plan.

So this is the problem. The problem isn’t that you have a homosexual desire. The problem is all your desires are corrupt. If you’re not converted, all your desires are corrupt as a result of the fall and you’re just swimming in that.

“The problem isn’t homosexual desire — the problem is all your desires are corrupt because of the fall.”

Walking by the Spirit Over Sinful Desires

I think to think about homosexual desire in isolation kind of misses the point. But you might ask, well, what about a Christian? What about the Christian who struggles with same-sex attraction?

And we have to acknowledge that just because you have come to Christ, it does not mean that all of your sinful desires evaporate overnight, right? I mean, you guys probably experienced this.

Galatians 5 tells us what to do about them, right? It says, “But I say, walk by the spirit and you will not carry out the what? The desires of the flesh.” So you still have desires of the flesh as a Christian. They don’t just evaporate.

Unfortunately, I really wish they did.

But what are we to do with them? You are to walk by the spirit. For the desire of the flesh is against the spirit and the spirit against the flesh. For these are in opposition to one another in order to keep you from doing what you want.

And as a Christian, what you want is to honor God. What you want is for your desires to honor God, okay? So we do have sinful desires as Christians.

But the difference is we now have the power to fight them, right? To have victory over those desires. And that is not just homosexual desires. That is all sinful desires.

So are homosexual sexual desires categorically different than that? Do they not fall into that category? Of course not. They’re covered by Galatians 5 as well.

And all these desires can be redeemed. And when they are redeemed, Psalm 37:4 is true. It says, “Delight yourself in the Lord and he will give you the desires of your heart.”

So when you have done that work of mortification of your flesh, your desires can change. And there have been testimonies of people who have come out of the LGBT community who have changed desires, which is very—today in our culture we don’t think that’s possible, maybe, or we’ve been indoctrinated to think that that’s not possible. But that is absolutely possible, okay?

Anybody else have anything to say about this before I move on? Maybe we’ll skip this one because I just want to get through to 3:45. If you have anything burning, let me know. Otherwise, I’m going to go to the next one.

Psalm 37:4: “Delight yourself in the Lord and he will give you the desires of your heart.”

No pun intended.

Question 4: Is Conversion Therapy Valid?

That’s right. Okay. I don’t have a picture for this. I was trying to find something, but just couldn’t find anything. Is conversion therapy a valid avenue for homosexuals, or is it dangerous and harmful as people say?

Well, I don’t have any experience with this. I don’t know much about it, but my impression from some research is that it consists of exposing people to what sometimes can be sort of lewd heterosexual images and thoughts in order to spur or engender a sexual desire for the opposite sex. Right?

Maybe there’s other approaches. I think it’s a very broad spectrum, but that’s sort of what it is. Conversion therapy can be sometimes affiliated with some religious organization but sometimes not, right?

So if that’s what it is, if it’s just basically trying to spur in you some sexual desire for the opposite sex, I would say that’s basically just trading one sin for the other. So again, I’m not going to say anything blanket about all conversion therapy because I don’t know all of it.

But I am skeptical of any program that is apart from the church, apart from the word of God that purports to have secret methodologies or some slick marketing and is not explicitly based on God’s word or has sort of secret techniques that you don’t find in God’s word that they claim works. Right?

And remember that the goal is not to make people heterosexual.

“The goal is not to make people heterosexual. The goal is to make people holy.”

Right. Is to make people holy.

All right. Question five.

Question 5: How Should the Church Help Believers Who Struggle?

If a Christian struggles with same-sex attraction or gender dysphoria, what should he do and what can the church do for believers caught up in these struggles? Very good question.

Creating a Safe Church Environment

Very good question. First, we have to understand that if you don’t struggle with these particular sins, there may be people even in this very room who do struggle with these very sins yet feel like they can’t say anything to anybody because of the stigma behind it. That’s just a very unfortunate thing.

I think we as a church ought to strive to be a place where people who struggle can feel like they can confide in you and that you’re not going to judge them and not talk to them anymore or be afraid of them. Because that’s not the goal. We’re all Christians who sin, right? Sin is a reality and we need each other’s help to bear one another’s burdens.

So if you are struggling with these things and you don’t feel like you can have anybody else bear your burden with you, that is a very sad church environment that we’ve created. We have to think about that.

“We as a church ought to be a place where people who struggle can confide in you without being judged.”

Of course, we’re not accepting the philosophies that come with that, but we have to help individual people who want to honor God so that we can be a safe person to confide in and help and pray with. Don’t just struggle silently.

“We’re not accepting the philosophies, but we must help people who want to honor God.”

Do Not Affirm Delusions, But Love People

And I think the other part of this is we just need to let people know that we love them, right? We need to—we don’t love you because you exude some type of external righteousness. A lot of times I think we can get into this pattern. We come to church to sort of have this veneer of righteousness that nobody can see through, and like we kind of feel like we’re good.

But we all struggle with sin. Let’s be honest, everybody here is a sinner, right? You’ve sinned this week. I mean, that’s just the reality. And maybe you’re struggling with that sin silently, but that’s a foolish thing to do, right? That’s not what the Bible says to do. The Bible never says struggle silently alone, right?

We don’t want to affirm delusions. This is the thing about one example: if you meet somebody with anorexia, would you affirm that? Would you say, “Yeah, you’re actually kind of fat and you need to lose more weight”? Somebody who’s skinny and about to expire, and you affirm that delusion, right? That’s not what you would do. When it comes to things like gender dysphoria, we ought not to affirm a delusion, right? We ought to deal with it in a biblical way.

“We don’t love you because you exude some type of external righteousness. We all struggle with sin.”

There’s a biblical council over there, too. You can ask any quick, brief comments about this one. Okay, Arthur.

Let’s keep it brief so that we can go on to the next two.

Yeah.

I’m not sure what gender dysphoria means. But it’s not being sure what gender you are. Being confused.

Yeah. I’m realizing I have to say this because this is live.

How do I say this without—how do I say this? That is very difficult for me.

Very difficult.

And those who know me personally, they’ll get it—it’s very difficult. I’m feeling more and more uncomfortable.

It’s live.

That means anyone can look at this.

Oh, but we could always edit it if we needed to.

Yeah.

Is that Magna or Steve? Oh, okay. I couldn’t tell that the hand was in the middle.

Well, I struggle with opposite sex attraction.

I’m saying that to be funny, but I want the truth behind that to come out because I think this gets back to what somebody once said: “Are you born this way?” I think with the fall of Adam and that being passed on to all of us, there is—I believe in radical depravity, and there’s not a part of me that isn’t corrupted by sin.

I think as we can confess these things one to another and pray for one another and let the grace of Christ come in us and change us, we’re always going to struggle with sin. I think if you don’t struggle with sin, that’s a bigger problem, right?

Yeah. Actually, a lot of these struggles are not unique to same-sex desire. Like, there’s a lot we all struggle with. I mean, heterosexuals struggle just as much with opposite sex desire. All right, Glenda, here it is. I’m sorry. I got you.

Question 6: Are People Born Homosexual?

There’s a lot of questions on this one, but basically, how do we respond to people who claim that signs of homosexuality can be seen in young children, even as young as three or four?

One might say, if homosexuality is wrong, then why have I felt this from as young as I can remember? This is Glenda’s question as well: do you think this is a born thing? Are people born with this type of thing?

By the way, this is a picture from a gay pride parade where you can see some of these pictures. They bring a whole bunch of kids there. They bring all their kids, and this is a stroller.

Scientifically speaking, if you look at some of the literature and some of the consensuses right now, there actually is no consensus. Nobody knows. Nobody has been able to figure out if there is some sort of biological marker. None has been found. You can’t do a DNA test. There’s nothing like this, right?

There’s nothing conclusive, by the way, whether it’s from birth, despite what people will try to tell you. I’m skeptical about this three to four claim because I don’t know any children who even know the difference between their left and right hand at that point. How would they know that they’re homosexual at that age? You haven’t even hit puberty. I don’t even know what’s going on with this.

I think what’s much more likely is that they’re picking up cues from their parents or from people around them who are telling them that this is the right way to go and bringing them to environments where this is celebrated, right?

That just sounds like a hallucination to me at three or four. The answer is you might not ever know. We might not ever know why somebody is homosexual or not. We just might not ever know that from a scientific way or from a societal way.

But the answer is we actually also know that it’s because of sin. That’s really the only thing that matters. We don’t know all of the causes. That’s sort of in God’s sovereign understanding. He didn’t reveal it to us, but it is because of sin. That’s where all sinful desires come from.

Regardless of how the genesis of this began, the solution is still the same.

“We may never know scientifically why someone is homosexual, but we know it’s because of sin — and the solution is the gospel.”

And that’s the gospel. I don’t know if that’s a satisfying answer, but yes.

All right. This is probably the last question and comment, and then I’ll just answer the last one real fast and we’ll try to end on time.

So as a scientist, that’s based on physical evidence, correct?

Yes. Just like scientific studies, right?

The Spiritual Root of Sexual Sin

Right. It’s spiritual. There’s Satan and his devices. There’s the spiritual realm and the demonic realm.

God in his sovereignty hasn’t lifted us from that because we do sin and struggle with different kinds of sin, and this is one kind. The reason scientists haven’t found anything is because it’s spiritual. Satan has a signature and he doesn’t create anything new. He shows up in the same kinds of ways. It looks the same not just in the homosexual area but in other areas.

If someone who is born again is asking why am I like this and what do I do about it? Prayer is the number one answer. But also, understanding who’s behind it is very helpful and powerful in dispelling darkness and bringing light to it.

It’s knowing what the Bible says about this and meditating on it.

“The reason scientists haven’t found anything is because it’s spiritual — and prayer is the number one answer.”

The Impact of Sexual Abuse on Children

Yeah. Honestly, I feel very uncomfortable with this whole subject because I have to force myself to limit what I’m saying as far as sexuality goes. I worked for the state for 20 years and I’ve gone into homes where children were being sexually abused, maybe days after they were born.

What you find among children that are exposed to any kind of sexual offense is behaviors in children three or four years old that they’re mimicking their parents or they begin to explore their bodies. They have knowledge that they should not have at that age. Sexual abuse does do something to children.

You’ll find when they become adults and they’re being counseled about this, they talk about the early experiences to the dislike of people that may end up in jail because of it. There is a connection between exposing a child to sexuality at a young age and their behavior later.

“Sexual abuse does something to children. There is a connection between exposing a child to sexuality and their behavior later.”

Right. I think both of you are making good points and I think it’s incontrovertible that that can be a factor—being sexually abused and down the generations it’s one of these things that’s passed down. But there are also people who have never been sexually abused who still struggle, so we have to understand that too. It’s not just everybody who struggles has been sexually abused.

I think coming here to America from England, where I grew up in the islands—all my cousins from one year old, two up to about 12, 15 years old—we were wearing grandma’s clothes to go to bed. Everybody said it’s a culture. Oh, grandma’s clothes are so nice and warm. That was our culture.

None of my cousins really ever turned out that way. When I came here and I saw we’re talking about three year olds, we grew up in the culture where you put on your grandma’s clothes, put on your mom’s dresses. Boys would go to bed with grandma’s dress, night dress, mom’s night dress, and there was nothing in their mind concerning that kind of lifestyle.

When I think about three year olds and four year olds, I don’t think they really know what is going on. As they were saying, it’s all a sin problem. When I come here and I see that, I really had to say it’s all a sin problem, right? It’s not a generation thing because you dress up in grandma’s clothes and mommy’s dresses and go to bed and no, we never had none of that.

Everybody, it was a culture. You go to bed and you’re feeling nice and warm. That was it.

Amen. All right, let me wrap this up.

David and Jonathan: Addressing a Progressive Claim

We didn’t get to this question. I’m sorry. If you’re the one who asked this question, you can come and talk to me later.

The question is: David and Jonathan are mentioned by some progressive Christians as an example of homosexual relations. Basically, there are three verses that this comes from: 1 Samuel 18:1, 3-4 and 2 Samuel 1:26. We don’t have time to read it. You can read it yourself.

The problem is that this is a different cultural context. Even today in Middle Eastern society, men can express affection in a much different way than we do. If you go to some of these countries, they’re holding hands. Even back in Paul’s time, men are giving each other a holy kiss. So we cannot take our cultural understanding of being standoffish—like a fist bump—and apply that to that culture.

David and Jonathan had a very close friendship. Part of that reason is because Jonathan gave his life for David in a sense. He gave up his throne that he was going to inherit from his father Saul, and because of that, he actually died. So David was expressing his appreciation for Jonathan. You can read that later on yourself.

The other thing is both of these men have families, and they all very much knew Leviticus 18:22, right? We talked about that last time.

The text in 1 Samuel or in 2 Samuel would not be glorifying their friendship if it was sinful in nature. That’s all I can say about this for now.

“The Bible would not be glorifying David and Jonathan’s friendship if it was sinful in nature.”

If you have any other questions, Pastor Dave is right there. But you can also ask me, I suppose. Let me close us in a word of prayer. I don’t want to stand between you and snacks.

Closing Prayer

Father, we thank you for these weeks that we get to talk about these difficult topics. We don’t really often do this and it’s uncomfortable. Some of this is a little scary.

Lord, we understand that your word is clear about these things and we want to be faithful to those things that you have called us to. We want to leave room for Christian freedom, not go beyond what is written.

But what is clearly written we have to take a firm stance on because you, Lord, are God and you set the rules. I pray, Lord, that you would help us to be a church where people can feel that others bear their burdens for them and so fulfill the law of Christ.

We thank you for what you’ve done for us in Jesus. Jesus has set us free from the law of sin and death. Praise in Christ’s name. Amen. Amen.

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