The Truth About Homosexuality, Part 1

Transcript

GRM 854
05/25/2003
Homosexuality, Part 1
Selected Verses
Gil Rugh

Periodically I address the issue of homosexuality, and I want to do that today. I do it for several reasons, but foundational is I want to draw us back to our foundations. I do think there are major changes going on in our society as you are aware, and that always has implications for the church. There are major changes going on in the thinking and practice of God’s people that I think we need to be aware of and be sure that we remain anchored in the Word of God. I want to read you a few articles, one a general one and then one more specific to a Christian context. The general one is one I referred to before, I keep it in my file even though it’s 10 or 11 years old because it provides an accurate presentation of some things that are going on. This came from a newspaper in Charlotte and it’s a syndicated columnist writing. Now I’ve seen everything. A prominent psychiatrist has written a letter to the editor of the New York Times asserting that homophobia but not homosexuality is a form of mental illness. Dr. Richard Isay writes that consensus grows among mental health professionals that homophobia, the irrational fear and hatred of homosexuals, is a psychological abnormality that interferes with the judgment and reliability of those afflicted. This is not now a mental affliction that is limited to one area, but it affects your judgment and reliability as a person because you have a mental illness if you have homophobia. Now of course they define the terms. If you believe homosexuality is wrong, that the Bible teaches it is sin, then you have homophobia and you are thus guilty of irrational fear and hatred of homosexuals.

I’m going to skip through the article. Unlike physics and geology, psychiatry is a science that can keep up with the latest political trends and the science in which truth can be decided by majority vote. The real purpose of calling homophobia a psychological abnormality is to stigmatize the moral, instinctual and hygienic aversion to one category of morbid sexual acts. We’re being assailed by a Hurricane Andrew of propaganda for antimonogamous sexual activity, much of it in the guise of news and entertainment, just as Isay’s propaganda comes in the guise of mental health science. Part of the propaganda line is that anyone who opposes the consensus is driven by irrational fear and hatred. It’s in the nature of modern propaganda to avoid argument by overwhelming the public with sheer and empty repetition (to summarize it). Issues are misstated, big questions begged, and dissenters portrayed invidiously. There is a constant implicit threat that if you don’t fall in with the propaganda line you, too, will risk being marked as a bigot. Isay’s letter displays a subtle form of the attitude that used to govern soviet psychiatry, the determination to treat a different point of view, not as a proposition to be reasoned with, but as a disease. Homophobia isn’t a genuine diagnostic term, it’s a curse of the modern witch doctors.

We’ve seen some of this. There was a firestorm in our government when one of the senators, Rick Santorum from Pennsylvania, made some comments that homosexuals took offense to. There was a movement he ought to be removed from his position and on it goes. Tragedies going on in the world. Had an article, we’re not going into all of it, but here……… according to the Centers for Disease Control, today 40 million people are estimated to be living with HIV and aids, 40 million people. It’s a lifestyle disease, either intravenous drug use or indiscriminate sexual activity. What my concern is, what is this doing to the church and the evangelical world.

I want to use just one article, it’s current, it comes from the May 10th, 2003, issue of World magazine. It relates to Calvin College. I’m not picking on Calving College, it’s just that this article is about them. Last time I used a Christian college as an example a couple of weeks later I got a letter in the mail from a board member of that college tremendously upset with me that I would address the college. He never did deal with the issues I raised. I’m going to address Calvin College as it is here. Calvin College is a college associated with the Christian Reform Church, and one of the leading influential people of that and helped shaped the college here, according to the article, their own statements, was Abraham Kuyper. If you read much reformed material, you’re familiar with the name Abraham Kuyper. Well, this article says that Calvin College today is arguably the flagship of Christian liberal arts education. It talks about its academic standards and how it has grown and so on. But it does say Calvin’s commitment, and when I say Calvin, I’m talking about Calvin College not John Calvin. Calvin’s commitment to traditional reform teaching seems to many to be fraying at the edges. On theology-rooted issues such as origins, the issues of creation, feminist theology and homosexuality the school’s policy and curricula have drifted away from Scripture. I find this significant because here is a Christian liberal arts college that has been rooted in the reform tradition and theology, and now on basic foundational matters they are beginning to drift, and not just slightly. There are over 4,000 students who are there to receive an education that is Christian, not only because of chapel services but because all of a student’s intellectual and emotional activities are permeated with the spirit and teaching of the faith.

But after talking about some of the high standards and academic accomplishments they note, on the other edge of the cultural engagement sword, though, are events like an Indigo Girls concert. Indigo Girls is a lesbian girl singing group. In 2001 the school invited the openly lesbian singers to perform on campus. As you might expect conservative students, alumni and donors, and that really gets to you when the donors are upset, were bothered by this. So, what happened is a group of professors added an intellectual patina to the event. They sponsored a panel discussion on Christian engagement with homosexuality. But they still invited the singers to come. Four times as many students went to hear the lesbian singers as went to the discussion group. The thing you ought to note—when the Indigo Girls returned to Calvin’s campus last summer, last year, they met little controversy and no panel discussion. You see what happens. The first time it happens there is somewhat of an uproar. You do some things to pacify people and settle them down. Well, we’re going to talk about how you engage homosexuality. A year later they have the same lesbian group come back and nobody protests, nobody has a problem, and nobody talks about it. It’s just something we do at this college. Vice president for student life explained that since science has not given us a definitive answer on the origins of same-sex attractions, homosexuals deserve compassion. Science hasn’t given us a definitive answer on the origins of homosexuality, same-sex attraction. So, homosexuals deserve compassion. Of course, they deserve compassion, don’t we deal with sinners with compassion, whatever the sin? We bring to them the message, not only of God’s judgment on sin, but of God’s salvation provided in His Son, Jesus Christ, for sinners. This is a special group. The compassion for homosexuals and understanding that they are not sinners in the category of sin as the Bible has traditionally addressed it. This is the vice president for student life making such a statement.

Since 2002 Calvin has observed something called ribbon week, during which heterosexual students wear ribbons to show their support for those who desire to sleep with people of the same sex. Calvin’s President Galen Biker’s rationale for ribbon week might indicate an odd victim mentality view of homosexuality, and it won’t win many points with gay rights groups. Asked why if it is only sexual behavior and not aberrant sexual thought that is sinful, Calvin didn’t sponsor observance weeks for students struggling with other sin. Here’s what he says about homosexuality, because homosexuality is qualitatively different from other sexual sins, it is a disorder not chosen by the person. Having ribbon week, he said, is like having cerebral palsy week. In other words, it’s not sin, it’s the way you were born. Now I may agree that it’s not normal, but it’s like any affliction a person may be born with. They’re just victims and we’re showing our understanding. We could have cerebral palsy week, or we can have homosexual week. He puts them the same. This is the president of Calvin College, the man who is to give theological direction and make sure the school remains anchored, theologically.

Pro-homosexuality material has crept into Calvin’s material. The school offers a gender study minor with a video library that includes Pink Triangles, a documentary that criticizes homophobic attitudes and the enforcement of rigid sex roles in our culture. The leader of the campus newspaper, they were going to have a speaker come who would reflect what we would view as the Biblical view on homosexuality. The senior who was the head of the campus newspaper wrote him an e-mail before his visit, calling him a hate mongering, homophobic bigot from a documented hate group. He’s gotten to his 4th year, the head of the campus paper, and has no more theology than that?

Twenty years ago, the party line blurred on traditional, Biblical theories of origins, resulting in a protracted war. Origins, now talking about how creation and when things begin to crumble in one area of your theology, they begin to crumble in another. You go back and if creation is not as the opening chapters of Genesis say it is and was, then how do we know what the relationships of a man and a woman and marriage and all of that are to be. Twenty years ago, the party line blurred on traditional, Biblical theories of origin, resulting in a protracted ground war. In the end a theoretical détente allowed for the teaching of theistic evolution. Mr. Biker, the President, summed up Calvin College’s teachings on origins this way. We deal with the variety of approaches to origins, and we don’t teach any of these things as the only way to look at it. We teach a deep respect for the Bible as teaching that God created the world, but that the Bible may not have intended as a recipe book for how He did it. Now we’ve come into theological mush. The opening chapters of Genesis say God created the world, but it doesn’t necessarily mean it’s telling us how He did it. If it’s not telling us how He did it, when you read it you would get the idea He’s telling how He did it, how do you know for sure it’s really telling us He did it?

Let’s take another step back. It’s not just telling us how He did it, it’s really not telling us for sure that He did it. This is the president of the college. I’m glad I’m not on the board of that school, we would have had to have a meeting. Now you get in and you change your theology. Religion Department periodically offers teaching on feminist hermeneutics. What you have to do now is you have to reinterpret the Bible through a feminist lens and understand that it was written by those with a patriarchal viewpoint. So, it has to be reinterpreted now to a feminist perspective. Whatever happened to inspiration? This is the Word of God regardless of the penmen He used.

I want to read you one more statement because once you get into bad theology you have to use deception to cover it up. A statement like I read to you a moment ago might shock some of Calvin’s donors, and they quote a person who said they might be shocked. This person is a senior student, for 4 years has worked on Calvin’s phone-a-thon, a fundraising program which students telephone alumni to solicit financial support. The goal is $1 million. This senior student who is now a supervisor this year for this program said that Calvin is losing donors as more learn, for example, that Calvin is more liberal than they are on issues of homosexuality and theistic evolution. Now here is a quote from this person who is a supervisor in their fundraising program. If donors knew they were teaching feminist theology here, all hell would break loose. Whatever happened to integrity? We’re going to call these donors and raise money because they’re going to think we’re teaching the same theology they identified with 50 years ago. If they knew what we really teach, the lid would blow off. So, we call them and raise money on the basis of their misperception, misunderstanding. This is what happens to schools. You know there are people sending their kids to Calvin College today. You know why? They think Calvin College has the same theology it had 50 years ago. They want their kids to go and learn in the context of those who were rooted and grounded in the great reformed theologies of past generations. But it’s not there anymore. But we still raise money on that basis. This happens to school after school, seminary after seminary, and it happens in churches as well. That’s why doctrinal statements stay the same long after schools and churches and seminaries have abandoned those doctrinal statements. They keep them in place. Why? The money keeps coming in on that basis.

I’m concerned. The more it becomes common in the evangelical world, the more those who don’t adhere to that line are viewed as narrow, as bigoted, as unloving. None of us as believers want to be known as unloving, unkind, bigoted people. So, we’re beginning to adjust. How can we convey the message without being offensive? Pretty soon we just don’t address it. Was talking about one person who has been well known in the evangelical world for years, has developed a ministry outreach to homosexuals, but I don’t address homosexuality as sin. All I tell them is God loves you. Well, what does that mean? Is this acceptable or not? So, we have those who claim to be Christian homosexuals. We have the metropolitan church which has become a denomination, supposedly Christian, but it is for those in the homosexual lifestyle.

I want to address the matter both from the broad foundation and then from the specific scriptures. We are not like the psychiatric organization that has a vote and according to their vote years ago homosexuality was a mental affliction. Now they vote that it’s not a mental affliction, but those who oppose homosexuality are mentally afflicted. For them, you know, truth just comes on today’s vote. That’s basically the way the world functions, isn’t it? Isn’t that why every time something comes up, we have to do an opinion poll and now e-mail has driven it to the extreme. Tell us your opinion, we want to know. Then we can know, and you add that to opinion polls, and you find out this many people think this is so. So, this is truth. No, can mean just this many people are deluded and blind and wrong. But we as believers are not looking at opinion polls to know what is right and wrong. We have truth.

Look at Isaiah chapter 8, Isaiah chapter 8 verse 19. Isaiah had to deal with those who wanted to go consult the mediums and the spiritists. We have to know what would be right, what should we do, what does God want. Isaiah 8:19, “when they say to you consult the mediums and the spiritists who whisper and mutter.” Someone wrote a great book, Spirits who Peep and Mutter, because King James has the word peep for whisper. They say consult the mediums, spiritists. “Should not a people consult their god? Should they consult the dead on behalf of the living? To the law and to the testimony.” That’s the Scripture as it existed in Isaiah’s day. If they do not speak according to this word, it is because they have no dawn, no light. God is light and in Him is no darkness at all. The revelation of Himself is light. The entrance of your words brings light, “your word is a light to my path.” We have truth, we have light. It does not change from generation to generation, and when the people of God begin to allow themselves to be conformed to this world, then they begin to move away from the foundation of the Word of God. Jesus said in His high priestly prayer to His Father in John 17:17, “your Word is truth.” That is one of the offensive things about Biblical Christianity. It does not leave room for diversity in that sense. It allows for tolerance, it allows for people to be wrong if they so choose, it allows for people to sin if they so choose. But it does address the issue from a non-negotiable position. What God has said is true, as Francis Schaeffer popularly called it, true truth. Because the concept of truth is being eroded and so diluted that he had to multiply it, it is true truth. We talk about born again Christians. There is only one kind of true Christian, a Born-again Christian. But the word becomes so diluted you have to reinforce it. Born-again Christian, true truths, Biblical truths, truth for time and eternity.

Turn to the back of your New Testament to II Peter, almost all the way to the book of Revelation. If you get to the book of Revelation at the end of your New Testament and then back up a few pages, you have the epistles of John and then you’ll be into II Peter chapter 3. I want you to note what is going on, verse 14, as Peter concludes this letter, and he’s a man expecting execution at any time. He said the Lord had revealed to him his death was imminent. He writes in verse 14, “Therefore, beloved, since you look for these things,” the promise of a new heaven and new earth and all that God has promised to His people, “be diligent to be found by Him in peace, spotless and blameless. And regard the patience of our Lord as salvation, just as our beloved Paul according to the wisdom given him wrote to you, as also in all his letters speaking in them of these things. In which are some things hard to understand, which the untaught and unstable distort as they do also the rest of the Scriptures to their own destruction.” I am not picking out individuals when I say this, but I take it in light of what Peter writes here, the church already as Peter writes had been infiltrated by false teachers who came, as Paul wrote to the Corinthians, disguised as angels of light, as satan himself disguises himself. But what they really do is twist and distort the Scripture and those who follow him in their perverted theology are going to destruction. Peter’s concern that believers do not get confused, that they maintain their peace, being spotless and blameless as he says in verse 14. Think what happens to our colleges, seminaries, our churches. They get infiltrated by men who have never been born again. They can talk about the theology, they may be intellectually superior to most people, but along the way they twist and change the theology and they distort it and corrupt it. Their influence spreads like gangrene, in the Scriptural picture, and soon the schools are not what they were. Would anybody recognize Harvard as started as a fundamental, evangelical institution, and on it goes right down to our day. Christian colleges and seminaries that I have seen roll over in my own lifetime, to say nothing of the multitude of churches that have abandoned the Word of God.

We stand for the truth. It’s not right because we believe it is right because God said it. We do not sit in judgment on homosexuals or any other sinners. God is the judge. But we are responsible to give forth His truth. I’ve been through the book of Jeremiah this week and was impressed again. God told Jeremiah on one occasion that he’s to give the message he gave, and he says omit nothing. Somehow the church desperately desires to be accepted by the world, to fit into the world. It cannot happen if it is to remain faithful.

Go back to Genesis chapter 1. We were here recently, we talked about marriage. We have to come back and review again. The devil relentlessly attacks the Bible. I have read men recently that I at one time admired and looked up to, that are now writing articles to show why you don’t take Genesis literally. It is an intellectually inferior position to think if you don’t understand the genre, the kind of literature creation literature is if you try to take it literally. But I believe it is to be taken literally, that’s the only way the Bible takes it when you move out of Genesis. The opening chapters of Genesis are foundational, and they are consistently, Old and New Testament alike, taken literally. Anybody who says look I believe God is the creator, I believe we can have room for different views on creation, I scratch them off. I cannot judge in the heart of these men whether they have been truly born again and they are just confused by the devil, or they were never born again. I don’t have to make that decision. But I do have to address their bad theology, and I do have to identify them as those who would corrupt the people of God. So, you come to the book of Genesis, and you have the creation unfolding. Then you come to verse 26, “Then God said let us make man in our image according to our likeness.” Man is to rule over all creation. Verse 27, “He created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him, male and female He created them. God blessed them, said be fruitful, multiply and fill the earth.” There’s the basic unit in the human race. How did man as male and female get into existence? Is there any further detail? Yes. Chapter 2 now unfolds the details. Chapter 1 gave you the summary of the creation of man as male and female. God created them and told them they were to reproduce and rule over the rest of creation. Chapter 2 tells us how He created the man as male and man as female. First, He created the man from the dust of the ground, verse 7, “breathed into his nostrils the breath of life. Man became a living soul,” a living being. Then down in verse 18, “God said it is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper suitable for him, a helper fitted to him,” corresponding to him, exactly what he needs. He took the man, put him in a deep sleep, took a side part of the man, fashioned it into a woman. You’ll note there’s only one man as mankind. Adam is directly created by God from the dust, the woman is created out of the man. Verse 23, “this is now bone of my bones, flesh of my flesh. She shall be called woman because she was taken out of man. For this reason, a man shall leave his father and mother, be joined to his wife, they shall become one flesh.” That includes the sexual relationship that we’re going to look at. That is the expression of the oneness that goes beyond the sexual relationship, but the sexual relationship is a physical expression of the oneness that has been joined in the marriage relationship.

Well maybe God doesn’t mean all this to be taken literally. This is not, as the person from Calvin College said, a recipe of how He did it. Well let’s go to Matthew chapter 19 and see how the Son of God understood the opening chapters of Genesis. Matthew chapter 19. The question is asked of Jesus in verse 3 of Matthew 19, “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for any reason at all?” This is the Pharisees; these are the experts in the Old Testament. Their purpose is not to get information, their purpose is to try to trap Christ, as you are aware. But note how Christ answers their question about divorce. He answered and said, “have you not read?” Now He knows they’ve read Genesis. Do you believe what you’ve read? What’s the purpose of reading it if you don’t pay attention to it? Have you not read He who created them from the beginning made them male and female and said, for this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife and the two shall become one flesh.” So, they are no longer two but one flesh. “What therefore God has joined together, let no man separate.” Now what’s the problem? Did you ever read what the Bible says? Do you, do it? Is man able to overrule God? Did God join the man and the woman in a marriage relationship? Does man have the privilege to step up now and say I’m overruling what God said? Then what’s your question about divorce? Read the Scripture, answer your own question. How did He take Genesis? Looks to me like He took it pretty literally, doesn’t it? Just as it says. He doesn’t say well that’s a story to express that there’s a greater being, and however it happened, when it’s all said and done there were two people of a certain species who fit pretty good. That’s not how Jesus took Genesis.

We don’t have time to go on, because if you think Jesus was confused in His interpretation of Genesis, I can’t help you. That’s the way the rest of the New Testament does, and we could go to Paul’s letters to the Corinthians and to Timothy, Peter, and on we go. That’s how the way Scripture always takes Genesis. You go to Romans chapter 5, and you want to understand the issue of sin and how sin came into the world. Paul under the direction of the Spirit explains how one man sinned and how Christ is the answer. On it goes.

Somebody begins to move away from their moorings of accepting Genesis 1, 2 and 3 exactly as it is, their theology is beginning to unravel. They think it is progressing. They bring it as new insights and development and a better way to understand the Scripture. It is a way of undermining the authority of the Scripture. Because most of us haven’t studied the genre of creation literature, or the genre of apocalyptic writings, we have to submit ourselves to the super high priests who through their intellectual superiority have come to understand. You just don’t read it and take it as it is. I mean that’s infantile. It’s Biblical, that’s truth.

One other passage and we have to go back to the Old Testament. Hebrews chapter 13 verse 4. This is part one of the message that will be part two tonight. Hebrews chapter 13 verse 4, Hebrews just before Peter, basically. Hebrews, James, I and II Peter, toward the back of your Bible. Hebrews 13 verse 4, "marriage is to be held in honor among all. The marriage bed is to be undefiled. For fornicators and adulterers God will judge.” Got the foundation here? What is the background for this? Marriage. Where did marriage come from? Opening chapters of Genesis. These are Jews he’s writing to, Hebrews, to the Hebrews. He’s going to build upon what the Scripture says. God intended a sexual relationship in marriage. If a vital, alive sexual relationship is not part of your marriage in the normal flow of things, unless there are physical matters or whatever, something is wrong in your marriage. It’s undefiled, that’s what God intended. Isn’t it interesting? Now everybody wants one outside of marriage. You’re free to do that, but understand the last part of verse 4, “fornicators and adulterers God will judge.” Period. But everybody is doing it.

You know I think it’s verses like this when I used to come home and I did something my dad told me I shouldn’t do, and then I always had an excuse that worked. But dad everybody does it. Everybody doesn’t live in this house; everybody is not my son. What are you supposed to do? That’s a summary. What makes us think we’re going to stand before God and say to God, everybody was doing it Lord. I mean all the young people I know were involved. What’s that got to do with my family? Here’s what is acceptable, and everyone will come under the judgment of God. So, fornicators, a word that includes all kinds of sexual activity outside of marriage, adultery specifically unfaithfulness between marriage partners, and fornication would include everything else.

Come back to the Old Testament, Genesis 19. While you’re turning there let me make a couple of comments. Periodically I listen to Christian radio, I don’t know what moves me, but the last couple of weeks I was moved, so I did. I’m not saying there aren’t some good things, some helpful things on Christian radio, but you know you better pay attention. I was listening to a man that I had thought was a good Bible teacher, I’m not going to mention his name here, and he preached a message this week and I just got in after it started, and I didn’t know for sure who it was. I had to wait until the end to see who it was, and I was appalled. What he really preached was psychological thought with verses sprinkled in, and then at the end he sits there and talks about I hope this study of the Word has been a help. We have to submit ourselves to God’s Word and God’s Word works in our lives. I don’t think he had the foggiest idea that what he preached was not Bible, it was psychology. Preaching on the importance of listening and how listening changes a person and how you become a listener. And you know he’s going on and on and on. I’m not saying being a good listener is not good practice, but he was preaching psychology. He wasn’t preaching the Bible. Then you sprinkle some salt on it, a few verses, you know. Then you call it a Bible message. So, you have to listen carefully—is what he is teaching and preaching really the Bible, or men’s ideas that we are sanctifying by adding a few Scripture verses. I say that because, and you know so many of these are helping men become men, and we have our male bonding and men need men friends, and you need men you’re accountable with, and you need men that are part of your life. You know who I need in my life, I can’t do without? That little gray-haired lady you see me hanging around with all the time. She’s the one who is perfectly suited to me. I need to bond with her, we’re one. All this silly gobbledygook about developing some best male friends I can hug. What do I want to hug a male with a beard for? I have the person. If I need a hug I go home and hug her, and she helps me. I mean we begin to move away from the foundation. We get out here and we think we’re being so Biblical, and we sound like oh we’re having men together and men learn to bond. We need to realize we’ve just walked out into the air; we’re not standing on Scripture any longer. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with having men that are your friends and women who have women who are friends, and you go golfing with the men because you don’t want your wife to beat. That’s fine. I mean there’s a place, but I’m not looking for someone to replace my wife. I’m not looking for someone to tell secrets to that I wouldn’t tell my wife. If there are secrets, I wouldn’t tell my wife I’d better clean it up and be done with it. I don’t need somebody to talk to about. I mean who did the Lord make as perfectly suited for you? That’s the beauty of our marriage relationship. In subtle ways the church thinks we’re being spiritual and moving forward so much, and we’ve just adopted the world. But we add verses to it. That’s not going to make it Biblical. You know the family has become our god. Gary Almany wrote an article in making the family an idol and that’s so true. Where did we get that from? The world’s rattling around out there, we’re rattling around out there. Let’s come back and find out what the Bible says, then function accordingly. That’s what must be. That’s how God made us.

Let’s go to Genesis 19. You’re aware of the ugly situation, we’re at Sodom and Gomorrah. Four thousand years have passed since Sodom and Gomorrah, their name is still proverbial. We have the sin of sodomy that comes from the city of Sodom, that’s where the name comes from. Even in people who don’t know much about the Bible, you talk about Sodom and Gomorrah, it’s become a proverbial expression. It identifies repulsive, sinful sexual behavior. In Genesis 19 God sends some angels to Lot, his servant who lives in Sodom. He’s going to destroy the city and these angels arrive, they go to Lot’s house in Sodom, they go in and have a meal. They’re getting ready for bed and there’s a knock at the door. Verse 4, “Before they lay down the men of the city, the men of Sodom, surrounded the house, both young and old.” Sad, the corruption that takes place. I have an article in my file, didn’t want to bring it in and read it, trying to change the name, and there’s a move to this. We don’t want to talk about pedophilia anymore, we just want to talk about child/adult sexual relationships, because they are not necessarily harmful. It depends on the context. This is actually promoted? I mean you speak against homosexuality you have an irrational hatred of homosexuals. But people can go around and promote such vileness? An adult/child relationship can be accepted as maybe they have some intellectual insights and scientific knowledge that we ought to pay attention to? Here we have the young and old come and surround the house, men bring in their sons, knock on the door. From every corner. This is not just a few of the rabble rousers, they come from all over the city. “They called to Lot and said where are the men who came to you tonight? Bring them out to us that we may have relations with them.” Can you believe it? There are people who write about this, they just wanted to get to know them. I can’t help those people. It’s been clear to people for 4,000 years what they wanted, because the Scripture is clear.

You know what Lot says, and it is hard for us to appreciate our culture and society. He says I have two daughters, why don’t you take them and get to know them? Just can’t imagine. The worst thing that could happen was that somebody under the protection of your house would come to harm. You’d be disgraced forever. The men said that won’t do, and I want you to know what they say in verse 9, and “they said stand aside. Furthermore, they said, this one came in as an alien.” Note this, “already he is acting like a judge.” What do people want to say as soon as you address certain activity as wrong and sinful? What does Lot say in verse 7? “Don’t act so wickedly. Who made you our judge? Nothing changes and we get intimidated. Oh, I don’t want people to think I’m judgmental, I don’t want people to think I’m condemning them. What’s the problem? God has condemned Sodom and Gomorrah, Lot better, too.

Look back in chapter 18 verse 20, God tells Abraham what He’s going to do with Sodom, the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah. Verse 20 of chapter 18 of Genesis, “the Lord said the outcry of Sodom and Gomorrah is indeed great, their sin is exceedingly great.” This is how God sees it. I’ve had my fill. Their sin has gotten so bad I am going to totally destroy them. It’s great, exceedingly.

Look in chapter 19 verse 13, “the angels,” the spokesmen of God, said to Lot, “we are about to destroy this place because their outcry has become so great before the Lord that the Lord has sent us to destroy it.” Then in verse 24 “the Lord rained fired and brimstone down on Sodom and Gomorrah.” Well, that was an Old Testament story and Old Testament situation, things are different. We’ve grown, we’ve come to have greater knowledge.

Well, go to the New Testament, go to the book of Jude, all the way at the end of the New Testament, just before the book of Revelation, a little, one-chapter book of Jude, Jude and we’re just going to break in here. The point he is making clear to the people he’s writing to, because false teachers have infiltrated among the people. They’re teaching that licentious conduct can be acceptable, just like those who have infiltrated the church. Whatever guise they call it, well homosexuals were born that way, they can’t help it, they are victims. On and on. Same thing that Jude is dealing with. False teachers have infiltrated among the people, Jude said. So, he warns them God’s position hasn’t changed and judgment will come on those who persist in sin. Note one of the examples, verse 7, “Just as Sodom and Gomorrah and the cities around them, since they in the same way as these indulged in gross immorality, went after strange flesh, are exhibited as an example in undergoing the punishment of eternal fire.” You know what Sodom and Gomorrah are? They’re an example to us. Jude writes 2,000 years after the events, but he said they are an ongoing testimony to the wrath of God against such sins; and they are a reminder that there are the fires of hell that await those who practice such things.

Back up a few pages into II Peter again, chapter 2. Again, the context is the same. You notice the problem? False teachers will infiltrate among you, just like there were false prophets among the people of the Old Testament. You know what happened because of these false teachers? Verse 2, “Many will follow their sensuality. Because of them the way of the truth will be maligned.” But don’t be deluded, the end of verse 3, “their destruction is not asleep.” It’s not like they’ve gotten away with it so long and so many are doing it, I guess God is not going to do anything. He hasn’t forgotten, His plan hasn’t changed. You want an example? Here’s a list of examples. Look at verse 6, “If He condemned the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah to destruction by reducing them to ashes, having made them an example to those who would live ungodly lives thereafter.” Then you know, verse 9, “the Lord knows how to keep the unrighteous under punishment for the day of judgment.” You think the Lord has forgotten? Forgotten the righteous, forgotten the wicked. He hasn’t forgotten either. That’s the sum of the examples here. Don’t give up and don’t think that because you haven’t been punished for your sin you have escaped the punishment. That time is coming.

I want to read two verses in the Old Testament and then we will stop there. Go back to Leviticus chapter 18. I’ll read these two verses and then make a comment and we are done. Leviticus chapter 18 verse 22. The context is moral things that God forbids. Look at verse 22, “You shall not lie with a male as one lies with a female. It is an abomination.” You see you just can’t do it; it is an abomination. Look at the next verse, “You shall not have intercourse with any animal to be defiled with it. Anyone who stands before an animal to mate with it is a perversion.” It’s not a matter, do you love your dog. It’s not a matter, is there love in your relationship with this man as a man or this woman as a woman. I say that because people want to say oh the only thing the Bible condemns is relationships where there is a lack of love. They are twisting and perverting the Scripture so that they can continue their own wicked lifestyle. Very clear, you shall not lie with a male as with a female. It is an abomination. It is in the context. There are lines drawn that the Creator has made between the animal world and the human world. He has created roles within human beings, a role for the man, a role for the woman. It is an added perversion of the natural when you get into homosexual kinds of relationships.

It’s this kind of sin that brought judgment on the nations of Canaan. In chapter 18 verse 24, “do not defile yourself by any of these things, for by all these the nations which I am casting out before you have become defiled. The land has become defiled. Therefore, I have brought punishment upon it. You shall keep my statutes,” verse 26, “my judgments neither do any of these abominations.” The land was defiled. Could God be any clearer? I realize this is the Mosaic Law, but again we’ll look at the New Testament in our next study and see it repeats and emphasizes just as clearly that the will of God in this area has not altered one bit.

Look at Leviticus chapter 20 verse 13, “If there is a man who lies with a male as those who lie with a woman, both of them have committed a detestable act. They shall be put to death. Their bloodguiltiness is upon them.” Verse 15, “If there is a male who lies with an animal.” You see these kinds of moral things. Who is to say marriage is right? Who says you have to get married? Who says that…God says. That settles it. What right does the clay have to say to the potter, why did you make me thus? The potter has the right to do as he pleases. All we need to know is what God has said and what His intention is and live accordingly and there better be no fudging on it. Well, we hold that, but we don’t have to be out front and be offensive about it. Another way of saying what? We’re going to let the world shape us, the world doesn’t want to hear this, so we won’t say it. The world doesn’t want to hear about sin, so we won’t talk about sin. The world doesn’t want to hear about judgment, so we won’t talk about judgment. Who sets the agenda for the people of God, God or the world? That’s why Paul had to say I am not ashamed of the gospel for it is the power of God for salvation, to everyone who believes. Are we saying homosexuals are so sinful they can’t be saved? No. Homosexuals are sinners, adulterers are sinners, liars are sinners, thieves are sinners. We are sinners by birth and by choice, we are by nature children of wrath, we deserve the condemnation of God and the punishment of hell. The message of the Word of God is that there is salvation. Paul wrote to the Corinthians and said, “such were some of you. You were guilty of these sins, including homosexuality, but you were washed, you were sanctified, set apart by God for Himself. You were declared righteous.” What a picture. We preach against the sin of homosexuality along with other sins because we think they are worse and can’t be saved. No. But it is important people know what sin is, that there is a righteous and holy God who says the wages of sin is death, and” He that hath the Son has life. And he who does not obey the Son will not see life, but the wrath of God abides on him.”

We say oh they were born that way; they can’t help it. We were all born that way, we were born in sin, we were conceived in sin. Sin enslaves, it takes hold of you and consumes you and won’t let you go. “But if the Son shall set you free you will be free indeed.” I’m not arguing that homosexuals are controlled by their passion, they can’t see themselves any other way. That’s true of sin, it so consumes you and takes over. That’s why the Bible says, “he that sins is the slave of sin.” The message we have to offer is there is forgiveness. You can be washed white as snow, white like wool. You can become the precious treasure of the living God and you can be declared righteous by the only one who can declare you righteous, the righteous God Himself. That’s why His Son, Jesus Christ came and suffered and died on the cross so sinners like us could be forgiven, could be cleansed, could be set free.

Let’s pray together. Thank you, Lord, for the clarity of your Word. Thank you, Lord, that you have not written in language that is hard to understand, that you’ve not confused us, that you’ve not limited your truth to the intellectual and scholarly. But you have spoken and intended that we would not only hear but that we would understand. You call us to submit in faith. Lord may we as your people be unashamed of your truth, be unashamed of our Savior, be unashamed of our God. Lord, may we share boldly with love and compassion this glorious message of salvation for lost, sinful, hell-deserving human beings such as we all are apart from your grace. We pray in Christ’s name. Amen.