Latest / Providence Baptist Church - Sermons / Christ and Homosexuality

Transcript

Christ and Homosexuality · Providence Baptist Church - Sermons

0:00
Well, I'm going to give you a bit of a head start this morning.
0:02
We are going to start our study today in the book of Ezekiel, chapter 16.
0:07
And as I know, that's probably not an oft-visited book of the Bible.
0:11
I want you to start flipping now to get to Ezekiel, chapter 16.
0:15
As I remind you that this summer we've been doing a little mini-sermon series called Christ and Culture.
0:21
And we've been discussing together how it is as Christians we should engage culture for the gospel.
0:29
Because we can't avoid it.
0:31
Many people think that they can.
0:33
They can just exclude themselves from culture altogether.
0:37
And by so doing, in fact, create their own subculture.
0:41
We will, in fact, have to participate in culture in one way or another.
0:48
And the question for us is how is it that we do so as Christ would to advance the kingdom of God?
0:55
And kind of our theme scripture for this series has been 1 Corinthians, chapter 9, 22 and 23.
1:03
Paul writes,
1:04
To the weak I became weak, that I might win the weak.
1:07
I have become all things to all people, that by all means I might save some.
1:13
I do it all for the sake of the gospel, that I may share with them in its blessings.
1:18
We find in the previous chapters that Paul is talking about being set free from the law in Christ.
1:25
And as such, he has the ability to live his life as he pleases.
1:32
However, he would rather trade the liberties bought for him in Christ for the sake of the gospel and the greater joy of advancing the kingdom.
1:43
So we've been talking about various topics and we're this morning going to discuss the issue of Christ and homosexuality.
1:55
Kind of a hot topic these days, right?
1:58
I'm told I should say something to get your attention and I think I already did.
2:03
I don't think I really have to say too much more.
2:06
There's certainly much heat about this topic right now.
2:09
President Obama has recently come out and supported gay marriage.
2:14
If you pay attention at all to blogs, you know that the president of Chick-fil-A made an anti-gay marriage statement,
2:22
a stance for the company, which got way more publicity than I think it deserved.
2:29
There are many laws in effect, and the repeal of laws,
2:33
the most famous of which is the Defense of Marriage Act, passed in 1996,
2:38
which defined marriage as the union between one man and one woman.
2:44
In fact, this issue is much larger than it really should be in reality.
2:49
A Gallup poll conducted in May of 2011
2:51
found that American adults think that 25% of the American population is lesbian, gay, bisexual.
3:01
American adults believe that 25% of the population practices this lifestyle,
3:09
when in fact the estimate is more like 3.5%.
3:13
However, we can't discuss just how it is that we ought to interact with the homosexual community,
3:20
but how it is that we should interact with the community at large around this topic.
3:26
Because it's become such a big issue,
3:30
and because so many Christians have dealt with this issue poorly,
3:35
there's a magnifying lens on the church, the American church, and certainly on ours.
3:43
And because this has become such a large issue,
3:47
we have to be so careful how we walk around it.
3:52
Now let me say something political, just to get it out of my system,
3:59
so I can talk about the real issue.
4:01
And let me say that this is my opinion, I believe it's an opinion based in fact,
4:06
however it is my opinion.
4:09
If you value liberty,
4:12
you appreciate the freedoms that you have,
4:15
and you hold to them,
4:16
if you begin to loosen your grip on your liberty,
4:22
the government will take it from you.
4:26
Now I don't know what that means,
4:27
case by case in every situation,
4:30
but we have to think as we enter into political realms
4:34
that are not what the government was designed to do.
4:37
The government shouldn't be defining what marriage is for us.
4:42
As we venture into that world,
4:46
we have to really carefully think about how we get involved.
4:50
If you think that it's the government's job to define marriage for you,
4:56
you are sorely wrong.
4:59
The church, under the Holy Scripture, defines what marriage is.
5:04
If you think that your marriage or your future marriage
5:07
will be in any way affected by how our government defines marriage,
5:13
then your marriage has so many issues,
5:16
I couldn't possibly address them in a summer of preaching on the topic.
5:22
You depending on God to fulfill your God-given role to your spouse,
5:27
that forms a healthy marriage,
5:30
not what somebody else says it is or says that it isn't.
5:36
That's out of my system.
5:38
Let's move on.
5:39
Before we talk about homosexuality, though,
5:41
we need to talk about sexuality just generally.
5:46
Certainly God created us as sexual beings with sexual desire.
5:50
What is sex ultimately for?
5:53
There's purposes, and there's the great purpose.
5:57
There's purposes being procreation, the companionship,
6:01
but the great purpose is to serve as a shadow of what will someday become.
6:08
So we see that to be the case of marriage.
6:10
Marriage is meant to represent the beautiful union between Christ and the church.
6:14
We know that our marriages as Christians are supposed to show the world
6:18
this process that God is in of buying the church.
6:22
And sex within the confines of marriage is meant to show the surpassing eternal joy we will one day have.
6:33
Now, I'm not saying that we will have a sexual relationship with God.
6:38
We won't.
6:38
But it's a picture of the joy that will one day be.
6:46
Let me show you that in the scripture.
6:49
Let me start reading in Ezekiel chapter 16, verse 4.
6:53
I want you to see the language used here.
6:56
And I hope this makes none of you uncomfortable.
7:01
This is God speaking through Ezekiel to Israel, to his bride.
7:08
And as for your birth, on the day you were born, your cord was not cut,
7:13
nor were you washed with water to cleanse you, nor rubbed with salt, nor wrapped in swaddling clothes.
7:19
No, I pitied you, to do any of these things to you out of compassion for you,
7:23
but you were cast out on the open field, for you were abhorred on the day that you were born.
7:28
And when I passed by you and saw you wallowing in your blood, I said to you in your blood,
7:34
Live.
7:34
I said to you in your blood, Live.
7:37
I made you flourish like a plant of the field, and you grew up and became tall and arrived at full adornment.
7:44
Your breasts were formed and your hair had grown, yet you were naked and bare.
7:49
When I passed by you again and saw you, behold, you were at the age for love,
7:53
and I spread the corner of my garment over you and covered your nakedness.
7:57
I made my vow to you and entered into a covenant with you, declared the Lord God, and you became mine.
8:04
Then I bathed you with water and washed off your blood from me and anointed you with oil.
8:10
Let's skip down to verse 15.
8:13
But you trusted in your beauty and played the whore because of your renown and lavished your whorings on any passerby.
8:21
Your beauty became his.
8:22
You took some of your garments and made for yourself colorful shrines, and on them played the whore.
8:28
The light has never been nor ever shall be.
8:31
You also took your beautiful jewels of my gold and of my silver, which I had given you,
8:36
and made for yourself images of men, and with them played the whore.
8:41
You see the sexual language here, that God came along to his people and married her.
8:51
Yet, people betrayed him.
8:54
Played the whore.
8:55
Not my language.
8:56
The language of Scripture.
8:57
Became an adulterer.
8:59
We see it in the book of Hosea.
9:01
Hosea was commanded by God to take a life of whoredom.
9:05
His life was meant to be a picture of what Israel was doing as they betrayed God.
9:12
His wife, Gomer, never named their daughters with this name, ran around on him as a picture.
9:20
And praise God, in chapter 3, toward the end, we see Hosea go to the marketplace and buy his wife out of slavery.
9:28
It's a great picture of the gospel.
9:29
You see the language.
9:33
Song of Solomon, chapter 4.
9:36
I'm going to read to you verses 9 and 10, because it's the only thing out of chapter 4 I can read without blushing.
9:41
Song of Solomon being a great allegory of Christ's love for the church.
9:46
Verse 9.
9:47
You have captivated my heart, my sister, my bride.
9:50
You have captivated my heart with one glance of your eyes, with one jewel of your necklace.
9:55
How beautiful is your love, my sister, my bride.
9:58
How much better is your love than wine, and the fragrance of your oils, than any spice.
10:06
So, sex within the confines of marriage, as it was designed to be, is meant to be a shadow of what's to come.
10:14
John Piper said,
10:15
God made us powerfully sexual, so that he would be more deeply knowable.
10:20
We were given the power to know each other sexually, so that we might have some hint of what it would be like to know Christ supremely.
10:30
So that's what it's made for, chiefly.
10:33
Obviously there are other purposes.
10:34
But chiefly, for that reason.
10:38
Therefore, all misuses of our sexuality.
10:42
All of them.
10:43
Not just homosexuality.
10:45
But all misuses.
10:47
Adultery.
10:48
Sex outside of the bounds of marriage.
10:50
Illicit fantasies.
10:52
Self-gratification.
10:53
Pornography.
10:55
Homosexuality.
10:55
Rape.
10:57
Bestiality.
10:58
Exhibition.
10:59
On and on and on.
11:00
I don't even know.
11:01
I'm glad I don't even know all the things that could be in a list like that.
11:04
All of these things distort the true knowledge of God.
11:08
God means for human sexual life to be a pointer and a foretaste of our relationship with Him.
11:15
So if not done properly, all of these misuses, all of these things, are perversions of what should be.
11:24
So now our main text for today.
11:29
Titus chapter 3.
11:31
Please turn that with me.
11:32
Titus chapter 3.
11:40
I hope that I've drawn your mind to the sexual misconduct of our culture.
11:47
Which we are a part of as a church.
11:50
Very few of us are free of not in some way misusing our sexuality.
11:58
On a grand scale, look at the great controversies, the great scandals in the church.
12:05
As I did some research this week, I came across five prominent pastors who were very anti-gay.
12:15
Who were in fact participating in homosexual relationships.
12:20
I think all of you could probably think right now of some pastor along the way that's been accused of sexual misconduct.
12:27
Stepped down from the pulpit.
12:29
Or possibly not as a result.
12:31
The statistics, which I didn't bring today, but the statistics are staggering how many pastors have pornography infections.
12:40
This is not an issue removed from the church, although it should be.
12:46
Let's read, starting in verse 1.
12:49
Titus chapter 3.
12:50
Paul writing to Titus says,
12:53
Remind them to be submissive to rulers and authorities.
12:56
To be obedient.
12:57
To be ready for every good work.
12:59
To speak evil of no one.
13:00
To avoid quarreling.
13:01
To be gentle.
13:02
And to show perfect courtesy toward all people.
13:06
For we ourselves are once foolish.
13:08
Disobedient.
13:09
Led astray.
13:11
Slaves to various passions and pleasures.
13:14
Passing our days in malice and envy.
13:16
Hated by others and hating one another.
13:20
But when the goodness and loving kindness of God our Savior appeared.
13:24
He saved us.
13:26
Not because of works done by us in righteousness.
13:28
But according to his own mercy.
13:30
By the washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit.
13:33
We need poured out on us richly through Jesus Christ our Savior.
13:36
So that being justified by his grace.
13:38
We might become heirs according to the hope of eternal life.
13:42
The saying is trustworthy.
13:43
And I want you to insist on these things.
13:45
So that those who have believed in God may be careful to devote themselves to good works.
13:50
These things are excellent and profitable for people.
13:55
The theme of Titus is the inseparable link between faith and practice.
14:00
Between belief and behavior.
14:02
The encouragement of Paul to Titus is to begin to work out some erroneous teaching that had worked its way in to the church.
14:09
We don't know exactly what that was.
14:12
But we know of lots of varying erroneous teaching.
14:16
He mentions in chapter 1 verse 10.
14:19
The circumcision party.
14:20
The Judaizers.
14:22
Those who had claimed to believe in Christ.
14:25
Yet said you still had to keep the Old Testament law.
14:28
I hope that seems familiar to you as you think about American Christianity.
14:34
Most people who would claim to be Christians in this country are really moralists.
14:40
And they have added to that.
14:42
They've said, yeah, I am Christ.
14:44
I think that's probably the way.
14:46
I think probably I'm going to place my faith in him so that I can one day be assured of heaven.
14:52
And his teaching seems to line up with what I think is good.
14:57
The really moralists, which is what the Judaizers were.
15:01
They said, yeah, the law of God, we agree with that.
15:03
That's good.
15:03
And this Christ thing seems also attractive.
15:05
But let's not ignore these things still.
15:09
And they don't believe they actually have been liberated by the gospel of Jesus Christ.
15:14
Actually set free from the law.
15:17
So the circumcision party, I think, is who is primarily being addressed as Paul writes to Titus.
15:25
And he focuses us in on good works.
15:30
If we believe what we say we believe, we're going to be motivated to live it out in this world.
15:38
And in what way are we going to do that?
15:41
In verse 1 he says, be ready for every good work.
15:44
We ought to have the knowledge necessary to be every good work, to speak evil of no one, to avoid quarreling,
15:49
to be gentle, and to show perfect courtesy toward all people.
15:55
All includes everyone, right?
15:58
To all people.
16:00
Other translations might say mankind or all men.
16:05
It's a general thing we should do as Christians.
16:08
And he roots the reason for that, the motivation, the fuel we need to live that way in verse 3, 4, 5, 6, 7.
16:23
The gospel.
16:26
Remembering and knowing who we are.
16:29
We were once foolish, disobedient, led astray.
16:36
What were we after that?
16:37
Slaves.
16:41
In bondage to various passions and pleasures.
16:47
The sexual misconduct would be included in this.
16:51
Passing our days in malice and envy, hated by others and hating one another.
16:56
One of the most precious words to me in English translation, verse 4,
17:03
But when.
17:05
But when.
17:07
The goodness and loving kindness of God our Savior appeared when Christ came and saved us.
17:12
Not because of our works.
17:15
Not because of our works.
17:17
You can do nothing righteous on your own.
17:21
Sin has utterly spoiled humanity.
17:24
Humanity.
17:26
And it's in Christ that we're liberated, that we're set free and able to live again for Him.
17:32
We didn't have the ability to do good things to earn salvation.
17:37
It was according to His mercy.
17:40
By the regeneration, He made us new.
17:42
He took parts of stone and put in us parts of flesh.
17:46
By the work of the Holy Spirit.
17:51
The gospel.
17:53
Remembering who we were and now who we are because of the work of Christ.
17:58
Is what motivates proper interaction with the world.
18:04
Particularly today, around the topic of homosexuality.
18:08
Do you love people?
18:17
The quick and easy answer is, sure.
18:19
Do you love people?
18:21
Do you?
18:23
Do you love people who throw things in your face?
18:26
Do you love people who have varying opinions than you do?
18:29
Do you love people who seem to reject all the things you hold valuable?
18:37
I hope you do.
18:38
Paul did.
18:40
Paul was willing to become all things to all people.
18:43
That he might share with them in the blessing of coming to know Christ.
18:48
And if we are to properly devote ourselves to good works, we can see the promise of Scripture that these things are excellent and profitable for people.
19:03
Now is homosexuality sin?
19:06
It absolutely is.
19:08
There's no doubt about it.
19:10
If I've left any room in your mind to think I think otherwise, I'm setting it straight now.
19:14
Homosexuality is absolutely a sin.
19:16
It's a perversion of what God meant to be, along with all the other perversions of that.
19:22
Ultimately, though, it's an issue of our heart.
19:26
It's not an issue of the activity.
19:28
It's an issue of our heart.
19:30
A heart that worships the created and not the creator.
19:34
It's called an abomination in Scripture.
19:36
You hear that quite often.
19:38
Leviticus 18.22.
19:40
God commands you shall not lie with a male as with a woman.
19:43
It is an abomination.
19:44
Abomination is just something that's hated, something that's abhorred.
19:49
Let's not ignore that other places in Scripture are the same language as used.
19:54
Proverbs 6.
19:55
I want you to turn to this.
19:57
Proverbs 6.
19:59
You should see the words for yourself.
20:11
Proverbs 6.16-19.
20:13
We're all guilty of abominations.
20:37
Proverbs 6.16-19.
20:38
Proverbs 6.16-19.
20:39
If you don't think so, you're guilty of the first one.
20:42
Pride.
20:43
And if you told yourself that you're not guilty of them, you're guilty of the second, which
20:47
is lying.
20:49
Your heart is absolutely wicked.
20:52
Your feet run to evil.
20:53
We're through the fourth one now.
20:56
You haven't committed murder yet at this point.
20:58
You've lied against me because you're lying against my own nature.
21:05
And you're creating disunity because you're breaking the narrative, the meta-narrative
21:11
of this world.
21:13
Right?
21:14
We're all guilty of abominations.
21:18
Every one of us.
21:19
And the problem is that as Christians, it becomes easier to point at the sinfulness of other people
21:25
than to admit our own sinfulness.
21:28
It's so easy to point at things that we know everyone's going to agree with.
21:33
It's so simple to go, well, at least I'm not gay.
21:39
Set up strong.
21:41
We make suits of figlies for ourselves to put off the blame of who we are.
21:52
Praise God we're set free in Christ.
21:55
We've been made perfect, but we're still being made perfect.
21:58
I haven't arrived there yet.
22:00
I can't say to the world, you should look like me.
22:03
How dare I?
22:05
You shouldn't look like me.
22:07
You should look like Christ.
22:10
He's the great high example.
22:12
He's the pole position.
22:14
That's what we're trying to be like.
22:17
I think our culture has kind of lost idealism.
22:20
I get blamed for being idealistic all the time.
22:24
Talking about the Christian life all the time, people accuse me of being idealistic.
22:29
And I say, we're trying to be like God.
22:31
He's the ideal.
22:33
If we set up any other example for ourselves, we're going to fall drastically short.
22:40
You shouldn't tell people to look like us.
22:43
You should tell people they should look like Christ.
22:46
They'll fail.
22:47
They'll know they're failing.
22:49
Let me just share the gospel with them.
22:52
If we tell people that they should look like us, we're like some characters in the Bible, aren't we?
23:01
A group of guys called the Pharisees, and Jesus speaks pretty bluntly to them.
23:06
So, I hope he'll speak bluntly to us this morning as well.
23:10
Luke chapter 18, verses 9 through 14.
23:13
He, being Jesus, also told this parable to some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous and treated others with contempt.
23:24
Two men went up into the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector.
23:28
The Pharisee, standing by himself, prayed thus,
23:30
God, I thank you that I am not like other men, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even like this tax collector.
23:39
We can throw in the homosexuals.
23:41
That category for us.
23:43
I fast twice a week.
23:44
I give tithes of all that I get.
23:46
But the tax collector, standing far off, would not even lift up his eyes to heaven, but beat his breast, saying,
23:52
God, be merciful to me, a sinner.
23:56
I tell you, this man went down to his house justified, rather than the other.
24:00
For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, but the one who humbles himself will be exalted.
24:05
And what Jesus is teaching us is that the one who has placed their faith in Christ,
24:09
the one who knows who they have been, foolish, disobedient, led astray, slaves who buried his passions and pleasures,
24:17
the one who has placed their faith in Christ because of who they were, will be humbled.
24:23
We will approach God and the world in that way.
24:27
And that's what the homosexual community needs to see, and that's what those surrounding that issue in favor of need to see.
24:40
They need to see humility in the church.
24:43
They need to see a broken people, the great Savior.
24:48
We don't need to pretend like we have it all put together.
24:51
Listen to what else Jesus said to the Pharisees, Matthew 23, 26, and 28.
24:57
You blind Pharisee, first clean the inside of the cup and the plate, that the outside also may be clean.
25:05
Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites!
25:08
For you are like whitewashed tombs, which outwardly appear beautiful, but within are full of dead people's bones and all uncleanliness.
25:17
For you also outwardly appear righteous to others, but within you are full of hypocrisy and lawlessness.
25:24
And I don't really know how well the Pharisees were pulling this off.
25:28
Jesus said that they were, that they appeared righteous on the outside.
25:32
But I can tell you in our world, if this is us, people see straight through us.
25:39
The world knows how terribly flawed we are.
25:42
Why don't we?
25:43
Here's the narrative going on, the cultural trend about the issue of homosexuality.
25:53
A confession, if you will, a cultural confession about homosexuality.
25:58
Number one, God made me this way.
26:03
Number two, he wouldn't deny me my natural desires.
26:07
And number three, I don't have to explain myself to anyone.
26:15
That's what we're dealing with.
26:18
So how does everything I've said apply to this cultural confession about homosexuality?
26:24
How do we respond to this type of narrative in our culture?
26:30
Number one, God made me this way.
26:33
Well, in a sense, yes, he has, is what I would say to a homosexual person.
26:41
We have been corrupted by sin.
26:45
You were born in sinfulness.
26:48
Validate people's desire.
26:51
But recognize, show them that it's sin and it's corrupted what we were intended to be.
26:58
And as you do so, repent of your own self-righteousness.
27:03
Apologize for the church.
27:05
Kristen, did you know that you get lumped in with everybody else?
27:09
That happens automatically to you, whether or not you agree with what some people may say.
27:14
You get lumped in with them.
27:16
Apologize for the church.
27:18
We see humility in verse 3, Titus chapter 3.
27:22
He wouldn't deny me my natural desires.
27:29
God call us to be holy.
27:33
He would, in fact, ask us not to sin against Him.
27:38
He would want us to live holy as He is holy.
27:41
And if I'm to obey my natural desires, I would look the opposite of what God wants me to look like.
27:50
Think about that for a moment.
27:53
If God's not the standard, the holiness of God is no longer the standard for you,
27:57
and you did whatever you wanted.
27:59
What would your life look like?
28:01
I would be cheap and smug and selfish.
28:10
I would always be self-serving and prideful.
28:13
I would amass things for myself and not give them away.
28:19
I would be a pill.
28:21
I would always want to be right.
28:24
And I would fight you tooth and nail to prove it to you.
28:28
If God weren't the standard, and my natural desires took me where they would,
28:37
I would look nothing like God created me to look.
28:41
I would not bear His image, as I should.
28:48
So we should turn to God and Christ as the great giver of mercy.
28:54
The world needs to hear us say that that's true.
29:01
That my natural desires incline me towards evil.
29:04
That I am corrupt apart from Christ.
29:07
But He is the great giver of mercy.
29:10
He has delivered me from me.
29:13
Verses 4-7.
29:17
This beautiful summary of the gospel.
29:21
But when the goodness and love and kindness of God our Savior appears,
29:27
the simplest way I can present the gospel to you is that I was a slave to sin.
29:33
I was dead, and I was miserable.
29:35
But because of Christ, my faith in Him, I have been set free,
29:39
and I now have life and joy.
29:41
The world needs to hear that.
29:44
They won't always want to hear it.
29:47
We won't always be popular saying those things.
29:49
I'm not suggesting that the lesbian, gay, bisexual community is going to embrace us
29:54
as the church, as we hold up God as the standard.
29:57
And some people fall so short, they won't want to hear that.
30:02
But I believe many will come to Him if we do so.
30:06
We cannot mandate morality.
30:13
Are you aware of that?
30:15
We cannot mandate morality.
30:19
Since the definition of marriage, the Defensive Marriage Act was passed in 1996,
30:24
I'm going to go out on a limb here.
30:25
But I'm pretty confident, safely say, that families have not gotten stronger
30:32
because of the Defensive Marriage Act, that marriages aren't thriving because of a piece of legislation.
30:40
I can spare confidence say that the homosexuality community,
30:46
that community is not decreasing because of a piece of legislation.
30:50
That community, the lost and dying world needs to see Christians living properly,
30:59
putting away our sin, picking up holiness,
31:02
having strong, healthy marriages that have vital sexual relationships that are done properly.
31:09
The third one, I don't have to explain myself to anyone.
31:18
One day, we will all answer to the highest authority.
31:25
The world needs to know that.
31:28
They won't want to hear it, but the world needs to know that.
31:33
I, in younger, fitter days, did a lot of whitewater kayaking.
31:38
And when you begin to paddle class four and five rapids,
31:43
typically you get into areas that are what we call drop-in pools.
31:46
So there will be a waterfall, then a pool of water to recover in, then another waterfall.
31:50
And it's often at the bottom of the waterfall where the water gets bubbly and kind of aerated
31:55
that things tend to happen that you don't want to happen.
31:57
That's where you tend to get flipped over,
31:59
and it can sometimes be hard to roll the kayak back up.
32:02
But when you get into class four and five whitewater,
32:04
it's really not a good thing to swim out of your boat.
32:06
Your boat is big and buoyant.
32:09
It's full of air.
32:10
It kind of protects you in the water.
32:12
Try really hard not to swim out of your boat.
32:18
When you do, you're always trying to think about,
32:21
where do I go?
32:22
Where do I get to that's safe?
32:25
What side of the river is going to be the best?
32:27
Because oftentimes it's not really safe anywhere.
32:29
There's undercut rocks and sieves, places that you can get pushed through and stuck and drowned.
32:34
There's all kinds of dangers in water like this.
32:38
So you're thinking about, where do I go?
32:40
And so as soon as you come out of a boat, you begin to swim upstream.
32:43
Because it slows you down a little bit.
32:44
It slows your progress towards the next hazard you're going to be at.
32:48
You swim upstream.
32:50
And boy, you swim hard.
32:51
I'm not a really hard swimmer, but I've done some hard swimming when I've come out of my boat on a river.
32:55
You're wearing your little booties that slow you down.
32:58
You kick them off and you just start going because you're trying to figure out where you need to go.
33:03
We're all doing that.
33:07
We don't know Christ, who's our safety, our safety line, our raft,
33:13
the one who's going to pull us to the bank.
33:16
This world is swimming desperately upstream.
33:18
But they will go to their destruction.
33:22
So imagine swimming above Niagara.
33:26
You are going to get tired one day.
33:28
You're going to answer the ultimate and highest authority.
33:31
The world needs to hear that.
33:35
Pray that they respond.
33:37
And we should be then image bearers, pointing people to their great need of a great Savior.
33:46
Do you believe this morning that your Savior is great?
33:54
If your sin isn't great, your Savior will not be great.
33:58
You may not have been delivered from a homosexual lifestyle,
34:01
but you certainly have committed many abominations.
34:06
You certainly were an idolater.
34:09
You worshipped yourself.
34:10
At very least, you worshipped yourself.
34:13
You're not the most idolater.
34:14
Has your Savior delivered you?
34:18
When you read with me Titus chapter 3, verses 1 through 8,
34:22
do you feel the weight of the glory contained within?
34:28
Do you see your own deliverance from who you once were?
34:34
I pray that you do.
34:35
If you do, that will motivate a love for all people.
34:44
Don't shoot the hostage.
34:49
Are you with me?
34:51
Let us love people for an advancement of the kingdom.
34:56
In the glory of God.
34:57
Let's pray together.
34:58
Let us pray together.
34:58
Thank you.