Human Sexuality Series: The Issue of Desire (All of Life for God)
Episode Summary:
One of the core beliefs of Reformed Theology is that sin affects every part of fallen humanity— from our thoughts to our deeds to our desires. Learn how understanding the depth of our depravity answers the culture’s confusion about sexuality from Pastor Christopher J. Gordon on this week’s episode of All of Life for God.
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Well, I invite you to turn tonight to Genesis chapter four, Genesis chapter four, and we will read the first seven verses. If you're a visitor tonight, we are working through a series in human sexuality through a catechism that we have passed out. And in that catechism tonight, I don't know if we have any more copies in the back, but we are working through a few question and answers. And when I wrote this, I went through certain categories and we've already been through the introduction, which dealt with identity. And then we looked at creation and we looked at what it means to be created in the image of God, male and female, obviously a big issue in our day. And then we looked at marriage last time and went through what marriage is and what the design is from the Lord.
And now we're moving into the fall section of this. I'm not going to spend a long time on the fall because we address that a lot, but I want to look at the fall through this lens of desire and the problem of desire because that is the heart, I think of the issue in this movement. It is the issue of desire. And so we'll be spending a sermon tonight on that and looking forward. We'll look at redemption, what the gospel frees, the gospel, how it frees us to a new life in Christ. But in the restoration section, which will be very important, we're going to be asking and spending some time on some really important questions like how do we help people who have same sex attraction? How do we put away sexual morality in our lives? Since we've been delivered from sexual sin, why should we lead a life of purity? What is pornography? These sorts of questions.
And then looking at the family, how are husbands to love their wives? How are wives to love their husbands? And we'll even spend a sermon talking and helping singles through those struggles. And then finally, we need to think about in the building of the family and honoring parents, we also want to think about finally the question of witness in this. So that's where we're going with this and I encourage you to keep that in front of you or bring it since I think we're out.
So Genesis chapter four tonight, and I'm going to read one through seven. "Now, Adam knew his wife, and she conceived and bore Cain and said, 'I've gotten a man with the help of the Lord.' And again, she bore his brother Abel. Now, Abel was a keeper of sheep, and Cain, a worker of the ground. In the course of time, Cain brought to the Lord an offering of the fruit of the ground, and Abel also brought to the firstborn of his flock and of their fat portions. And the Lord had regard for Abel and his offering, but for Cain and his offering, he had no regard. So Cain was very angry and his face fell. And the Lord said to Cain, 'Why are you angry? And why has your face fallen? If you do well, will you not be accepted? If you do not do well, sin is crouching at the door. Its desire is contrary to you, but you must rule over it.'" And there will end on the reading of God's word.
And a few questions on tonight just to think about. Didn't God create us from this to be happy and follow the desires of our own hearts? And the answer is God made us holy and happy. We however, accepting the lie of the devil, have robbed ourselves of this happiness by obeying sinful desires. So that's the heart of it tonight that we'll be looking at. And I think you see all that with Cain.
Well, as I said, we have now looked at some very crucial subjects in the midst of the sexual revolution in which we're living. And I've been encouraged by how many of you have taken interest in this. I think it's so important. We've looked at issues of, like I said, identity and gender and biological sex and marriage. And tonight, I want to say I think we get to the heart of the issue that we are facing. If you're going to boil all of this down, it has to do with the fall and the issue of sinful desire, that's at the heart of this movement, that's at the heart of what's happening right now and things that we have to think about. That is the big issue in front of us. The question comes down to what has the fall done to us? You're really not going to make any sort of segue help to anyone if we're not able to answer these basic questions that really are foundational to Christianity.
Because as we know, if our view of sin is wrong, if we have just a Pelagian view of sin that we're just affected by the environment, which is what Pelagius and these guys taught, if we're just infected by the environment, if our view of sin is unbiblical, if we don't understand what has happened at the root, we have no real foundation to address the issues of the sexual revolution.
So in many ways, I want to encourage you tonight, you're equipped to deal with this. What I wrote here in the catechism are just an extension of what's right in your Heidelberg catechism. And that's important for us to say, because I think we get discouraged. How do we answer all of this? And somebody was saying, walking in tonight, "We're thankful you're doing this. This is not easy," but it's something we have to address. And the dear brother said, "There are a lot of pastors who are I suppose somewhat apprehensive to deal with this," and that's me. I'm one. This is not the kind of stuff you pick to preach, but it's necessary. The times call for it. But one of the important things that I have to do in this is to help you to see you have the categories to answer these things. You just have to redirect it a little bit toward what is the core issue that's coming at us and the issue of desire in human sexuality.
So if we can appreciate what has happened to the human heart with regard to the issue of desire, then we'll be prepared to help people with God's answer. If not, every other solution that we give to people will result from a misdiagnosis of the problem. And you can't misdiagnose the problem, or else you have nothing to offer. You don't go to the doctor and if you have cancer and he hands you a Kleenex because you have a runny nose. He simply gave you, he's just dealing with symptoms. He's not getting to the root causes.
So tonight, we have to consider just briefly the fall and the realm of human sexuality, answering some important questions that I think that are for us. How did we get here? What is our problem and what are the consequences of this? Where does this lead us? And hopefully, that will drive us to seek the Lord's solution because anyone who's listening and paying attention, this is not going well. Society is unraveling before us because of it and it's going to get worse. So we've got to come back to the Lord's answers.
One of the great arguments in our time to justify the moral revolution has to do with the pursuit of happiness. "It's all about my happiness. It's all about me being a happy person." And we live in a time where happiness, we are intoxicated with this question where people think that is the reason for which they exist, their own personal happiness. Who is to tell you different? Ask most people what they want out of life and they will simply say, "To be happy, to fulfill the desires of my heart, to fulfill what I want to do and what I want to be, with the goal of course of ultimate happiness." That of course, means different things to different people, which is the issue, isn't it?
More fundamentally, people use in our context, which is the surprising thing in the church today, people use God for this language. People use God for this all the time, that, "Really, God is just after happiness for me on my terms." And that's why I think question 18 of this catechism is really a crucial one. Didn't God create us to be happy? Didn't God create us all to be happy and to follow the desires of our hearts? That's a really important question, isn't it? Doesn't God want that for you? And I think this is a challenge for our young people and our young adults.
The basic running justification for why people do what they do, the argument is this. When they look at the church and they listen to Christians or they listen to what they think is old school Christianity and... Yeah, what can I say? I've heard a lot of things about this. You're so worried about sin, but these identities and these sexual preferences belong to our happiness. We're not hurting anyone else in the corner or in private. We're not hurting anyone. Why would God care if we're not hurting anyone? After all, he created us to be happy. So what does it matter if we follow the desires of our hearts, if we're happy?
Now, there are all sorts of fallacies with this argumentation of course, and I feel tonight like I'm throwing softballs because this argumentation is so simplistic and so basic, I guess that it's hard to believe people haven't figured the answers out to this yet, but it's nevertheless what constantly comes to us. So we've got to engage it. What about happiness? Well, the sort of fallacious reasoning in it is that in the first place, we have taken the place of God in defining our lives. There has to be a creator and there has to be a creature. If you accept any sort of fact that we are creatures and that there's a creator, then that would have to be that the creator defines life and we don't, unless we are sovereign creators of ourselves, which I don't think anyone says.
But the starting point is missed and the most important issue is missed, and the basic question is missed, which is I want to encourage you tonight that you understand this. The most important question is missed, is what has the fall done to us? What has happened to us in the fall? And the simple answer is, yeah, God made you to be holy and happy in the beginning. Of course, he did. God made you to be holy and happy, and that original garden arrangement when he created Adam and Eve and he created humanity, he created a holy and happy state. That's the whole record of Genesis one and three, a beautiful garden and rivers flowing and peace, and they don't have to cover their shame. They're not running from God. And that state of innocence, we say, look at them. What was that arrangement? It was a holy and happy one. "If we had been obedient to him, well, then we would've partaken of the tree of life and we wouldn't be in this mess."
You see, there was a tree held out there. There was a tree held out for a reward for Adam and Eve. Had they sustained that, we would've all been lifted up to a brand new heavens and earth, if you will. We would have the glory that we want. We would have the happiness that we want. But if you're going to all accept the testimony of scripture about what happened, well, then you know that the tempter came right in. He came into the garden and he presented God's ways as oppressive, Eve. God has constricted you. God has made you miserable in this arrangement. You can be liberated, you can be free. You don't have to live. You can be your own God. You don't have to live this way and you can almost hear since it is the attack today, reverberating throughout history, "This design of marriage is oppressive," and that's what happened. Adam and Eve listened.
So we know that. I don't have to go through all that, but it's completely wrong to say that God desires happiness then as we define it. That's completely wrong. Even if we were in the same position as Adam and Eve before the fall, happiness was still on his terms and that's what was lost. But now the fall has taken all that away and we are what St. Augustine said, "Not able now not to sin." That's our problem. And again, I feel like this is so basic, but it's the same line of argumentation that comes out at us all the time, "God wants my happiness. Who are you to tell me differently and who are you to judge me? Who are you to judge me?"
So we can't make any judgments about anything? Is there right? Is there wrong? Or is the category of wrong completely out and that's determined on how you feel? Constantly have this, "You can make no judgments. Jesus didn't quite say it that way." He said, "Don't judge outwardly. You have to judge with righteous judgment according to the Scriptures," but it incessantly comes at us. "Who are you? You're so judgmental." Well, we come back, but what is happiness? What's our answer to this? Well, it's simply, we don't have the prerogative to talk that way anymore. When we listened to the lies, we had our chance, if you will, and we fell into sin. We robbed ourselves of that happiness by doing what, beloved? We got into this mess because we obeyed sinful desires. That's what we obeyed. That's what we submitted ourselves to. And does anyone want to argue and say that God's assessment of the world is wrong? Does anyone still believe from the 90s as they used to sing, "Listen to your heart." No one really runs around saying that anymore. I think that's over because they know things are pretty messed up.
So this is the challenge that is in front of us. The heart of the moral and sexual revolution is built in on the lie that we are free. As moral individuals, we're free to choose sin now for sure, but righteousness is another issue. Free to choose life on our terms, happiness on our terms, and we have the liberty to define life by setting our own moral terms. What is that standard of morality then?
You see, the problem if you've really jettisoned Christendom, you've jettisoned the scriptures as morality, you got to replace it with something else. What is the standard of morality? Who defines it? What does it become? That's scary. We don't need to go into all the deviances, but I think you get the point. The problem is so basic. We've lost that prerogative of happiness at the fall. And what that means is that what the desires are that are coming out of us, after the fall, they're distorted, they're sinful, they're corrupt, and here's the real problem. We don't even see it. We don't see it. Those desires can't be trusted since we have this now natural tendency because of sin, to be led away into our pursuits of happiness by all kinds of passions. This is what Paul was saying as the old man in Ephesians four, "Don't be led away by various passions, those sinful desires," he said.
So we can tell ourselves that God wants us to be happy, but that happiness now requires someone to save us, number one, but it's forfeited on our terms and the problem gets worse because the desires that come out of us now are fallen. And that's the basic point where the moral revolution breaks down. This is where Christianity provides an answer, beloved. See how basic this is? This is where it all breaks down right here because at the heart of it is still the claim that we can follow the desires of our heart and be happy.
Now, I don't doubt for a minute that when people go sin, they feel happy for a time. Could be wrong to say, "You're just miserable all the time." No, I don't think people will say that to you, but the end game and the end result is not happiness but misery. I think that's why I said to you, even as we're seeing the sort of changing of gender and trans, they say at about seven years into this, the suicide rates go off the charts. So you may have seven years of bliss, you may, on your terms, but it's not the happiness of what the scriptures are talking about that makes somebody truly fulfilled.
So number one is the lie that happiness is on our terms. It's not on our terms. Number two, that we have to basically say is that life is not about our happiness after the fall in the way that we defined it, and maybe we need to make that clear. Maybe we've been too consumed with this idea of our happiness. Maybe that's what we've all become, that that's the end of life is my personal happiness. Well, what of God's glory? Is that no longer the end? That's fundamental to this. Is it our happiness or were we made to glorify God and enjoy him forever? Maybe we need to rethink this whole discussion on happiness. Number three, the problem of sin has blinded us to see what's now coming out of our hearts, and that's how we got here. That's why Cain's important. That's why Cain is important. You know the story. I don't have to rehearse all the details of it, but Cain arises up in jealousy against his brother.
The first event after the fall to show us what's happened here, and God gets to the heart of matters with desire. The first event after the fall takes place, and what do we have a record of? Murder. How sad, Adam and Eve to see the sorrow of sin hit their family. And I don't think we've had anyone here have a son murder a brother. It's the first thing they experienced. Well, when Cain was rejected over the offering, the Lord said something to Cain, "Why are you angry and why has your face fallen? If you do well, will you not be accepted? And if you do not do well, sin is crouching at the door. Its desire is for you, but you must rule over it." That's a fascinating statement. "Sin's desire is for you. You don't do well, it's sitting at the door, crouching there. Its desire is coming after you, but you should rule over it."
"Here's your problem, Cain. Sin itself has a desire. Sin itself has a desire." This is almost interesting to say. It's almost personifying sin as a person, but even more so, it's animalizing sin, which is important here. Sin is crouching. He's characterizing sin as a vicious animal waiting to strike at the door, to get the door open. That crouching beast is waiting in your life to devour you. You remember Rosario? I use it all the time, but when she spoke over here at the school, Rosario Butterfield, and said, it says... And I just saw this the other day, somebody raised a lion and then it got old and devoured him. That's sin. You play with it. It's cute, cuddles, and one day, that lion grows up. It's a beast. It thirsts for you. Its desire is to consume you and you give sin the least opportunity and it's going to leap on you and it's going to dominate everything about you. Well, the problem is that we are sinful. It's not just the beast outside of us, "And Cain, you should rule over it."
Here's the problem. This is where I think this is crucial, that beast is in us. Desire means that the sinful nature is always plagued with desiring to let the sins out of committing actions. So in other words, think of Jesus. Did he speak of sin waiting to get into you? No. What did Jesus say? "Out of the heart proceeds this problem." Evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false witness, slander. After the fall, the whole issue is reversed. At the fall, sin was on the outside trying to get in, before the fall. After the fall, sin is at the door of our hearts trying to get out. Crucial. Sin is like a crouching lion in the heart. Its desire is for you to master you, and what it's doing is it's waiting to break out and strike through desire. "Cain, you've hardened your heart against me and the way I've announced, you're opening the door. I'm telling you right now, you're opening the door to let sin out. Control it. You should rule it."
Problem, no man can tame the heart. "The heart," Jeremiah's 17, "Is an unruly evil, desperately wicked, who can know it?" Sin was at Cain's door, inside, desiring to master him, lingering and lashing out, trying to control us and take us away from the Lord. The title of the sermon should be Don't Follow The Desires of Your Heart. Its desire is for you, that beast is in us. And now after the fall, we can't control it. That's the problem. It's full-grown. And when it fully grows, it lashes out. So what happens here? Well, you can see it in the text, verse eight.
"Now, Cain talked with Abel's brother and it came to pass when they were in the field that Cain rose up against Abel, his brother, and killed him." In other words, that beast got out and that beast was Cain. And then he rose up and killed his brother, all from a premeditated state and desire. He rose up in rage. The anger of desire ended up doing in full what was trying to get out from the inside out. "Where's your brother?" He said, can you hear it? You can hear it today, reverberate through history, "I don't know. Don't judge me. Am I my brother's keeper?" After shamelessly murdering him, he denies any responsibility.
Now, I trust you see the issue that there are real temptations coming at us from the outside but also from the inside. And when we entertain sinful desire and act upon it, it breaks out and it takes every kind of form under the sun that it could, left unchecked. And the issue then, coming back to the pursuit of happiness in our day, is people have this issue that they have to wrestle with of sin crouching on the inside and to find true happiness, they say, this is what we see the expressions today that, "I found true happiness today. If God made me as a man and I desire from the inside to be a woman, it's time to get it out, come out," or vice versa. Or if you want to change your sex or you want to transition or you want to marry the opposite sex. These are all desires that arise out of the heart that are breaking out, thinking and hoping they'll find happiness. When what the Lord says is, "It's a miserable end in the sin."
Behind it is the promise that we can truly be happy and define and choose our way so that all these faulty desires are ready to break out of the human heart, and what they all are are the intense expressions of sin originated from faulty desire. Problem remains, beloved, I wrote the catechism to first go through the fall and the consequences to then give you the good news of the gospel, and I'm not going to leave you without that tonight because there's really good news here, but we need to be really clear as our Heidelberg is clear, God condemns not just actual sins, the whole Side B Christianity movement and the things that have done and overtook the Presbyterian church in America that basically said, "Listen, we may not actually do those sins, but we're okay still to identify in our sin," is the very problem that we're dealing with here.
We don't identify with faulty, sinful desires anymore as Christians. So that the truth of the Heidelberg is true, that even the sinful desires that come out of the heart, he condemns desires as well as actual sins. He condemns both of those. He can sense all of that as the pathway into sin. These desires come out of the corruptness of the heart, even in pure thoughts and desires.
Now, some people are going to come along and say, "Okay, okay, wait, pastor, I didn't choose these desires. Listen, from my earliest days, this is who I am. Who are you to come along and say that?" How do you answer that? It's an important question to be able to answer. Well, it's not hard again, categories. Were any of us born without sin? If we say that God originally made us good, but we threw all that away through the fall. And so that David would say that, "From conception, I'm born in sin." That means that when I was conceived in the womb, sin was imputed to me. Mystery. But like I say, when our kids came out of the womb, they didn't come out smiling.
So it's a pretty easy thing to answer. Well, that's not surprising to us that we would all have faulty desires coming out of our hearts from the earliest of days. All kinds of perversities come out from our hearts, from the earliest of days. "Pastor Gordon was probably a gossip in the womb." See what I'm saying? Nobody come along and say, "Well, I didn't choose these desires," because these desires are the very problem of the corrupt heart in whatever form they take and whatever perverse forms they take. We're not arguing on that point. Why would we argue on that point? They're helping us with the argument.
The question is, are these desires okay? Does God allow them? Is God okay with them? And this is where we have to be very clear today. We've tried now to excise certain sins out of the Bible. We shouldn't excise gossip out of the Bible. Nobody's arguing for that. It's worthy of condemnation. Today we excise homosexual out of the Bible in whatever way we can. Why does that get a pass? All forms of sin and faulty desire, sinful desire that are against God's law render everyone under his just judgment, no matter what it is. Do you not know that wrongdoers will not inherit the kingdom? Don't be deceived. A lot of people are deceived on this point. Don't be deceived, neither sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor men who have sex with men, nor thieves, nor greedy, nor drunkards, nor slanders, nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God. And that is what some of you were, but you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, by the spirit of our God.
As unpopular as it is today, beloved, God is terribly angry with our actual sins and our sinful desires in whatever form they take. He will punish in hell every careless in thought. Think about this, idle thought and word, with a just judgment both now and in eternity. That's the Heidelberg. See, I think to make any progress again, by God's grace, people are going to have to have this kind of fear. And maybe they don't have this kind of fear because the church is afraid to say these things. We are so afraid of offending everyone else but God on these issues. We are so afraid to say it. What are we if we can't say these things? What are we? I don't want anyone to go to hell happy. Everyone has to give an account. So when we have an entire sexual revolution telling us God's okay with this, identifying in these desires, then what we have is the very denial of God's assessment of our problem, and that means it's a denial of our greatest need, you see.
If you can live in these desires and sins and say, "God doesn't care," and we never give any worry about this, and we're just afraid to say anything, this is fundamental to our message. Why were the people cut to the heart in Acts when the first message was preached? It was because their great conviction came over them of the greatest sin that could be committed, that all of us because of our sins crucified the Lord of glory. And this is why the gospel is so wonderful, then I'm excited to get to the next one. It breaks us free of all these lies. It's the truth in this age, the truth, the deposit. And it says, "Jesus that sets us free from all this." And when we come to the one who has the power and authority to forgive sins, what is the testimony of scripture? He gives us a new heart. He gives us spiritual eyes to see what's right and wrong, can no longer go on to justify these things. By the power of the Holy Spirit, we live not for ourselves, but God's glory.
And we no longer run in passion like we did justifying it. I'm not saying we're sinless now. We may still struggle with the same desires. I have a whole question and answer on how to help brothers and sisters who have these desires, still faulty desires, maybe even homosexual desires. How do we help people with that? Well, what the gospel does, but I think in our time, what we need is boldness to simply tell people the truth. And that's where I've tried to aim in this series for answers as we go through, to not just go after these things, but to say there has to be answers. And we're back to what you know how to do best as reformed Christians.
You understand the law of God and you understand what sin has done, and you lead people and show them the gospel. You show them Jesus, you give a testimony of how he helped you and set you free from your own sins. And that if the spirit's work is to convict the world of sin, of righteousness and of judgment, then really, our calling's not going to be different. And he uses us to accomplish that. But we do it in love, let me say, not in anger, helping people to hold fast to the testimony of Jesus. And then as he has renewed us in his image, we do have true happiness. Let me end on that note.
Is anyone here who's been forgiven and loved by Christ and heard about his mercy is going to say they're not happy now? Well, then you need to hear it all over again. That's why every Sunday matters to preach the gospel. He gives us happiness, and then he fulfills the renewed desires of our heart, which are being renewed in what? True righteousness and holiness as we look more like Jesus. And that I think is a good way for us to think about these things in our time and how to deal with this core issue of the movement, which really comes down to sinful desire. And I pray that God gives you all wisdom and help to be able to talk to your neighbors. And maybe it's your children and maybe it's your grandchildren, and you have a good testimony to give them. Don't ever be ashamed of it.
Let's pray. Heavenly Father, thank you for helping us tonight and for giving us your word that gives us great light in the midst of these things and these challenges that also keeps us very humble. For we all know in our own hearts, every kind of corrupt desire has come out of there and still does. And you cover us in mercy. So help us, oh Lord, to be wise, to be loving, to be caring, to tell the truth, to fear you most importantly, and that we might be a help to those walking in this darkness, that we might lead them to the light, to Jesus and that they might be set free by the truth. Hear our prayer tonight. In Jesus' name, amen.
