Introduction:

Good day to you ladies and gentlemen. Tonight is the fourth of the ten questions that we are studying at Church. This week was delayed because I had something over the weekend and I was too tired to go to Church this past Sunday. Luckily the sermon is filmed and then posted on our forums for us all to see. The fourth question of the ten questions is this: Is the Bible anti-gay? In all honesty I scoffed at this question. In the end I came to the conclusion that I just had to see what our Minister said about this topic.

Jesus loves you so much he accepts you as you are.

What is going on behind the question? It seems that many Religious People are anti-gay but is the Bible anti-gay? Do these Religious People represent the Bible?
There are many answers given to this question. Many are hateful, hurtful and just plain stupid answers in regards to this particular question. If you type in "Is the Bible anti gay" into Google you will see a whole montage of hate straight away. If you get the impression that what those people are saying is exactly what the Bible is saying then I'm sorry to hear that.

The message that the Bible gives is the complete opposite as to what is held up on those signs and montages. The problem that those people seemed to have missed is that the verses that they have up on their signs is that if you look up those verses in context, there is a challenge there from God but it is not to gay people but to all people.
As a matter of fact, some of the particular verses that they hold up is a challenge that is given to the Religious people. God issues the challenge to all people not out of hate but out of love. The Bible is a book that does not hold out hate to the broken world but is a book of love. The most famous Bible verse quoted of all time is John 3:16 NIV "For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life."

When you know this verse you don't see the world through a lens of hatred, you are not blinded by hatred in some way. You in fact see the world as God sees it, through eyes of love and with a heart of love. Jesus loves you so much he accepts you as you are whether you are male, female, straight or gay. He loves you as you are.

Here is a perfect example of this in a story that John gave after that most famous verse. He gives us a story of what God's great love looks like.

Picture the scene. There is a woman who is alone in the desert who has gone out to draw water from the well. It is the heat of the day, it's noon.

Now why do we care about this woman? In that day and age in the 1st century where Jesus stepped in, the most hated people were the Samaritans.
Yet here is a Samaritan that is hated by other Samaritans. This woman is drawing water in the heat of the day because nobody will be seen dead with her. She is hated because she is a sexual disgrace. She has had 5 husbands and the one whom she is living with now, he doesn't even love her enough to commit to marriage with her.
Basically she is seen as an utter disgrace. Here is that story now.

John 4:1-26 NIV Jesus Talks With a Samaritan Woman

Now Jesus learned that the Pharisees had heard that he was gaining and baptizing more disciples than John— 2 although in fact it was not Jesus who baptized, but his disciples. 3 So he left Judea and went back once more to Galilee.

4 Now he had to go through Samaria. 5 So he came to a town in Samaria called Sychar, near the plot of ground Jacob had given to his son Joseph. 6 Jacob’s well was there, and Jesus, tired as he was from the journey, sat down by the well. It was about noon.

7 When a Samaritan woman came to draw water, Jesus said to her, “Will you give me a drink?” 8 (His disciples had gone into the town to buy food.)

9 The Samaritan woman said to him, “You are a Jew and I am a Samaritan woman. How can you ask me for a drink?” (For Jews do not associate with Samaritans.[a])

10 Jesus answered her, “If you knew the gift of God and who it is that asks you for a drink, you would have asked him and he would have given you living water.”

11 “Sir,” the woman said, “you have nothing to draw with and the well is deep. Where can you get this living water? 12 Are you greater than our father Jacob, who gave us the well and drank from it himself, as did also his sons and his livestock?”

13 Jesus answered, “Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, 14 but whoever drinks the water I give them will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give them will become in them a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”

15 The woman said to him, “Sir, give me this water so that I won’t get thirsty and have to keep coming here to draw water.”

16 He told her, “Go, call your husband and come back.”

17 “I have no husband,” she replied.

Jesus said to her, “You are right when you say you have no husband. 18 The fact is, you have had five husbands, and the man you now have is not your husband. What you have just said is quite true.”

19 “Sir,” the woman said, “I can see that you are a prophet. 20 Our ancestors worshiped on this mountain, but you Jews claim that the place where we must worship is in Jerusalem.”

21 “Woman,” Jesus replied, “believe me, a time is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. 22 You Samaritans worship what you do not know; we worship what we do know, for salvation is from the Jews. 23 Yet a time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in the Spirit and in truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks. 24 God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in the Spirit and in truth.”

25 The woman said, “I know that Messiah” (called Christ) “is coming. When he comes, he will explain everything to us.”

26 Then Jesus declared, “I, the one speaking to you—I am he.”

Jesus stepped into this woman's life and what did Jesus do? Did Jesus step towards her in hate and condemnation? No! He steps towards her and offers her a drink for her dry soul.
"Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks the water I give them will never thirst."

That is how Jesus will step towards ALL OF US! There is nobody that he will not step towards in love. He is not fearful, scared or shocked by anyone. Jesus knew everything about this Samaritan woman even when he was offering her the drink.
Something you need to understand is that no matter how other people have treated you, here is Jesus the one who knows you completely and he steps towards you in love. With the Samaritan woman, her life was on display. Everybody knew that she had 5 husbands and everyone was pointing the finger at her and saying isn't she rotten but Jesus knows that everybody has their secrets. We all have this deeply personal area of sexuality, we all have our secrets. If all of that was put on display for everybody to see, the things we've done, thought and our struggles even now, we'd be horrified if people knew that about us.

Nonetheless Jesus knows it and yet he steps towards you in love, offering to quench your thirst deep down in the soul.

Jesus loves you so much he accepts you as you are. He knows we're all dead in the desert place (Spiritually) he comes to us in that desert place and he accepts us as we are. However he does not leave us there because he loves us too much to leave us as we are.
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Jesus loves you too much to leave you as you are.

This is the radical love of Jesus, it is a love unlike any other kind of love. The first thing you must see is that Jesus does not hold up a placard of hate towards you. Yet he does not also hold up a platitude that says you're okay and I'm okay.
What it is is a radical place of loving you exactly as you are, knowing you're in the desert, knowing everything about you and coming there offering to satisfy you in a way that will bring change to your life. That is if we admit that we need it, which we all do.

The Pharisees are ones that like to play the finger pointing game. Yet Jesus is about to point elsewhere as the real solution. So the Pharisees come and they're going to test him and trick him.

Matthew 19:3-4 NIV
3 Some Pharisees came to him to test him. They asked, “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for any and every reason?”

4 “Haven’t you read,” he replied, “that at the beginning the Creator ‘made them male and female.

Jesus is the one who would be holding up the drink to offer satisfaction and never be thirsty again. The Pharisees on the other hand would be holding up the stones. So they come to Jesus to try and get Jesus to say that those people are rotten aren't they?

When Jesus replied it is possible the first thing you noticed was the male and female bit. What Jesus was saying is that God has a plan and he had a plan from the beginning. he talks about the concept of sex and how God designed it as one man and one woman together in a lifelong faithful relationship.
Jesus is saying something much more radical than what you may see. You see the bit that comes before the male and female bit is that he points us all to the Creator. In the midst of all the finger pointing Jesus says no, no stop looking at each other and playing the blame game, you all need to go back to the one who made you, loves you and knows what is best for you.

Jesus is saying that the whole world is in a desert place and we all need to go back to the one who made you and loves you. Yes he does also affirm that God's plan for sexuality is one man and one woman in a lifelong faithful relationship. However when he puts it in the concept of the Creator we begin to realize that none of us have lived out that good plan.
We've all seen and heard the stories about a famous married couple, their marriage ends in days, tears and sometimes even tragedy.

Now what Jesus is saying is that what comes first is understanding the Creator and to be filled and to be satisfied. Unless we do that we're just going to use and abuse each other and it all ends up in confusion. The problem is that when we try to satisfy our soul by how we treat other people we are making a Messiah out of them, we are getting them to try and feed our soul the only way God can and we end up using them when we do that. We took this gift that God gave us away from God and it all ends up in tragedy. Now God had to come down and get us from where we ended up in that desert place. Jesus came to all of us and offered us a drink for our soul. Why? Jesus loves us too much to leave us as we are. Jesus wants to own much more than your sexuality, he wants to own your soul and when you come to him you'll find real love and a real quenching of your thirst.

We've all tried to satisfy our souls in all the wrong ways. The most common theme where this takes place is money. Jesus says that we are running by greed in this use and abuse in this confusion in our society. We try to satisfy our souls in a materialistic world and it never satisfies. We've tried, the next promotion, the big dream of a mansion, appearance, and looks etc. Jesus comes along and says we're trying satisfying our souls in all the wrong ways. Now Jesus offers us the drink that will satisfy our souls and he went to extreme lengths to deliver on his promise. he went to extreme lengths to deliver on John 3:16. He holds himself up on a cross. He is nailed to a cross to deliver forgiveness. This is the radical love of Jesus. he comes to us in the desert place. He accepts us as we are and he loves us too much to leave us there. He offers us a drink for our soul.

It doesn't matter what you've done or who you are. Jesus loves you as you are and he loves you too much to leave you as you are.