God Is Not Homophobic Series

Hopefully, that will make a lot more sense by the time we walk out of here today. Before we get to that good to see you and welcome to this place that we call DCC. If you are new here we want you to know that you are safe here regardless of how your story reads and that you really have walked into a place of people today who are exactly like you. We are a community of people chasing after a better way to live that happen to believe Jesus offers that better way to live but perhaps the best news for you is this, you don’t even have to believe that to belong right here with us every single week. We are pumped that you are here, and we hope that you want to come back and do this again with us real soon.

So we are wrapping up a series today called Distortion. We have spent the last 6 weeks talking about lots of ways that we all tend to have a distorted image of God and all of the problems and challenges associated with that. While it’s all been really important stuff, I don’t know that any of what we have talked through has the power to revolutionize this thing we do called church and to change what people think when they hear the word Christian, more than you and me clearing up the distortion that we have on where God really is in all of this stuff that we are going to talk about and talk through together today. I want us to wrap up this series by talking about the fact that God is not homophobic. Homophobia is defined as an unreasonable fear of, opposition to, or dislike of homosexual people and homosexuality. Let me first say this, I am not clear on a lot of things but I am clear about this. God is not like that. We shouldn’t be either.

You need to know that I am not an expert on this subject, still have a lot to learn, and still could do a better job loving like Jesus and living more like Jesus amongst everyone in the world around me especially my friends in the LGBT community. I continue to work hard to understand in my own life and story. In fact, I have read two books in just the past week. If you want to do some additional study I would highly recommend them. One is Redeeming Sex but Deb Hirsch and the other is called Us v. Us by Andrew Marin. Let’s start with a quote from Us v. Us…

ILLUST> Sherry says “I live in a religiously conservative city, and I’m under no assumption the people here will think it’s great if I marry a woman one day. But for how religious everyone is, a gesture of telling me I’m loved every once in a while would go a long way to how I view them and their version of God.” That quote comes from Sherry, a 36-year-old bisexual woman living in Colorado Springs, Colorado

That’s our context, and that hits close to home doesn’t it. Andrew Marin says that unless you have been sexually attracted to someone of the same sex you can never fully grasp, as heterosexual people what that actually means. The truth is that we don’t really have a clue. While I believe that, I also believe that we can continue to get some more clarity on God’s heart for our friends, family members, people in the world around us who identify as a part of the LGBT community and how that plays out in our lives and stories too. We really don’t have a choice. We have been off course for too long and it is time for that to change. See, God is not the real challenge, the people that claim to follow him are the challenge and God continues to get a bad wrap. Let’s see if we can change that. Let’s do this.

If you brought a Bible we are going to be in John chapter 4 today. If you would like a Bible to follow along in but don’t have one, they are on the back tables. Or you can just hit our app, the YouVersion app, or you can just read along with me off of the screens. Let me give you just a bit of the back story so this all makes sense. Jesus has been down in Judea around Jerusalem and is heading back north toward the region of Galilee where he is from. The only way to get there is to go around or go through Samaria. Jesus decides to go through and stops in a town called Sychar which is here around noon. He is tired and thirsty. Okay, so here we go, John chapter 4 beginning with verse 7…