Christ's Lordship Over Sexuality

God's Law and Human Sexuality in a Hostile Culture

As I noted in the introduction, we are participating as a church with many other believers across the United States, Canada, I would hope in the United Kingdom and other places, in speaking today on one particular subject, and that is God's law in regards to human sexuality.

Now, I do not have to tell anyone in this room that over the past literally two decades, a revolution has been taking place in Western culture. And we have been saying for a long, long time, if it keeps going this way, eventually governments are going to criminalize the proclamation of the gospel of Jesus Christ, and people are saying no, no, no.

I have before me the text of Bill C -4. Now what is astonishing to me, and most of you probably are aware of this, but not everyone has been keeping up with this particular aspect of the news, this piece of legislation was brought through the Canadian legislative branch unanimously.

Not a single person stood up to say no. It was met with applause when it was passed by unanimous consent. It is a criminal act. This is not civil code in the sense of, well, you can sue somebody if you don't like what they said, that type of thing.

This is part of the criminal code, and under the preamble, whereas conversion therapy causes harm to society because, among other things, it is based on and propagates myths and stereotypes about sexual orientation, gender identity, and gender expression, including the myth that heterosexuality, cisgender identity, and gender expression that conforms to the sex assigned to a person at birth are to be preferred over other sexual orientations, gender identities, and gender expressions.

Did you hear that? When you look at this bill, it only precludes seeking to help someone who does not want to experience homosexual desires. It only precludes seeking to help someone who maybe has begun the mythological act of transition, but now wants to go back.

There is nothing in this bill about the other direction. This is the enshrinement in the legal system of the state of Canada, the nation of Canada, of this idea that heterosexuality, that saying that that is good, that that is normal, that's a myth, and it harms people.

How did a nation that began with Christian symbology and Christian common law come to a point like this and so swiftly? You can face up to five years in prison in the nation of Canada now for seeking to give counsel to someone who comes to you and says, I don't want these desires that I have toward people of my same gender.

Five years in prison. And if you leave the nation of Canada and go to another nation so as to obtain the same kind of counsel or, say, bring your children to obtain that kind of counsel in another country, when you come back you can be arrested under this law.

That is how radical, how evil, how tyrannical this law is. Now, most of my Canadian brothers are probably not facing immediate arrest today for the sermons that they preached, but I guarantee you one thing.

Every single pastor in the nation of Canada this morning opened this book and read any number of passages, whether it's 1 Corinthians 6, 9 through 11, 1 Timothy 1, 10, Romans chapter one, maybe from Leviticus 18 and 20, Genesis 18 and 19.

Every single pastor that did that, the thought crossed his mind, is there one in this congregation who is going to be the one who is going to be calling the authorities this afternoon? Every single person thought of it, I guarantee you.

Its primary intention initially is to chill free speech, to quiet the proclamation of what God says about human sexuality. And not a single person in those legislative bodies had the temerity to stand up and say this is wrong.

And you and I both know there are all sorts of those very same types of people in our legislative bodies here in the United States of America who would dearly love to see that same kind of legislation taking place here.

I want you to open your Bibles and I want to talk to you about things you already know. Things you already know. But you must be convinced of them. You must be able to communicate them with clarity to those that would ask you, because you will be asked.

You already have been probably many times. We at Apologia Church, we are an evangelistic people. We want to bring the full weight of God's Word to bear and bring the Gospel and calling men and women to repent and to submit to Jesus Christ as Lord of all.

The Six Clobber Passages and Why the Whole Bible Matters

And that means in our day and in our time, we must understand more than just simply the six clobber passages. What are the six clobber passages? Well, I've told you before, I've admitted this before. When I graduated from seminary, now, when I graduated from seminary, a large number of people in this auditorium were not breathing air yet.

So there's something to be thought of there. But when I graduated seminary, which I did initially in my first master's degree in 1989, I could not have told you what the quote-unquote six clobber passages are.

They are the six passages. There are more than these that are relevant to the subject of homosexuality specifically. But they are passages that specifically and clearly address the issue of homosexuality, not transgenderism, homosexuality.

So, when I graduated, I couldn't have told you what they were. We just didn't talk about stuff like this in good company. This wasn't something you talked about in church. My, how times have changed. Now we have to.

What are those six clobber passages? How many of you honestly think you know right now off the top of your head without looking what six clobber passages? What are the six main passages about homosexuality in the Bible?

Put your hand up. Almost none of us. Right? Leviticus 18 and 20 are the first two. Genesis 18 and 19, Sodom and Gomorrah, you got three in the Old Testament. Romans 1, obviously 26, 27. First Corinthians 6, 9 through 11, and 1 Timothy 1 .10.

Those are the quote-unquote clobber passages. They are specifically on that subject. We'll be looking at some of them today very quickly, very briefly. We've delved into these things many times before.

If we only focus upon those negative statements, however, we will never be able to give a full-orbed expression of why it is this is so important. Because the world says to us, I'll bet, I'll bet there have been many pulpits today where men and women, and especially women, have stood behind those pulpits today and decried the fact that the rest of us were looking at God's Word and what it says on these subjects.

And those people will say, you hypocrites, you hypocrites. There are all sorts of things the Bible says about purity of thought and relationship of male and female. And you don't focus upon those things.

It's these specific things where we're talking about persecuted minorities. And you're focused upon homosexuality and homosexual marriage and transgenderism, and it's just political. You're imbalanced.

Why should you have to have a special Sunday for this? There's all sorts of other topics you could talk about, right? And the reason should be clear to all of us. We don't have entire churches and now entire governments trying to tell us that what this book says on those subjects is evil and wrong and should be punished by time in jail.

Now when we years ago started telling people, hey, these, I remember I first started, I co-authored a book in 2001, as I recall, with my dear friend Jeff Neal, called The Same Sex Controversy. And back at that particular point in time, I kept saying that the homosexuals do not want equal rights, they want Uber rights.

They want supremacy. They want to silence any criticism. And people are like, you are, you are so out of it, you're so wrong, no, no, no, and, you know, I told you so, just doesn't really feel all that good.

But it's obviously the case, is it not? Do we not see it all around us? And we warned back then, they're going to demand to have marriage, oh, come on, 2015. And right now we're sitting here going, you do realize that there are more and more articles showing up saying that pedophilia is likewise just an orientate?

You do realize, no, no, no, it'll never happen, give it five years, give it five years. We could have seen all of these things if we had but listened. But the reality is most of us don't have what would be called a pan-canonical from beginning to end understanding of how God's law is relevant across all of human experience.

So let's remind ourselves of a few things, you ready? Genesis chapter one, yeah, you can't get any earlier than that. Genesis chapter one, verse 26, then God said, let us make man in our image according to our likeness and let them rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over the cattle and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the.

Earth.

And God created man in his own image and the image of God, he created him, male and female, he created them. We all know the verse, most of us haven't memorized. And we all know that today this is just considered to be, well, it's just poetry.

You need to follow the science, not the ancient texts. But you see, this isn't the only, only text that makes, that addresses this. Look just across the page, maybe in your Bible, or if you're on a glowing screen, scroll all down to Genesis chapter two, verse 21, so the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man and he slept, then he took one of his ribs and closed up the flesh at that place and the Lord God fashioned into a woman the rib which he had taken from the man and brought her to the man and the man said, wow.

That's not in the Hebrew, but I'm, I'm pretty sure it's a textual variant, textual variant. That's, that's, that's, you know, that's what he said, it just wasn't recorded. After he said, wow, this is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh.

She shall be called woman because she was taken out of man. This cause a man shall leave his father and his mother and shall cleave to his wife and they shall become one flesh and the man and his wife are both naked and were not ashamed.

Ancient stories written by Stone Age people, right? Well, let me point something out to you and this is what you need to, this, just my suggestion, you don't have to do it this way, but I think it's highly effective.

When someone questions the authority of what we just read, this is what I do. I go to the red letters of Matthew chapter 19. Matthew chapter 19, go ahead and keep your finger there, but look at Matthew chapter 19 verse three and some Pharisees came to him, Jesus testing him and saying, is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for any cause at all?

And he answered and said, have you not read that he who created them from the beginning made them male and female and said, for this cause, a man shall leave his father and his mother and shall cleave to his wife and the two shall become one flesh.

Consequently, they are no longer two, but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let no man separate. Now there was a day not long ago that simply invoking the name of Jesus would be enough for most people in the United States.

Don't you know that Jesus said this? And I still find that for many people, there is a residual respect. They don't want to necessarily say something negative about Jesus, but that's becoming less and less the reality as the next generation rises up.

But you notice what Jesus is doing. He is giving us divine commentary on Genesis one and two. And he gets to comment on Genesis one and two because he was there. He is God, the son in human flesh, and he based his response to the challenge given to him on the reality of the fact that God created mankind and said, it's good.

And he created us male and female, two genders. And in fact, there is a direct relationship between the two. The woman is made so as to be the corresponding aspect to the man. And he finds his fulfillment in her.

She finds her fulfillment in him. And Jesus said, this is what God did. This isn't just ancient poetry. This isn't just Stone Age contemplation. And what you have to do is you have to look someone straight in the eye and say, there is Jesus quoting those words, saying they're true.

Notice he says what therefore God has joined together that no man separate. He's teaching that God is the one who ordains marriage. God is the one who ordains family. God is the one who designed these things.

And may I remind you that Jesus of Nazareth said, I'm going to be crucified and rise again the third day. And there's an empty tomb in Jerusalem. And that means he has all authority and power to define all of these things.

And all of your psychologists and psychiatrists together do not have the authority that he has to tell us who we are and how we are to function. And until you can die and rise again and prophesy your own death and resurrection, you do not have the authority to contradict what Jesus taught.

We live in a day of such confusion.

Genesis, Leviticus, and the Holiness Code

Why?

Because in the secular world, you are now right at the center. You're the one that has to have all knowledge. You're the one that has to make sense of everything around you. You can no longer have God in the center and we are related to him.

Now we're in the center and we aren't smart enough to figure all this stuff out. And so we've got to have our experts. And you know what? You can find an expert to tell you absolutely anything. And so now knowledge can't be had.

We can't know any longer the absolute stupidity of a rejection of God's existence by the pots that he has made. What foolishness it leads us into. So here we have a consistent teaching starting in Genesis, going into the very teachings of Jesus about the fact that we are God's creatures made for his purpose and that from the beginning he has defined what is best for us.

We use the term today human flourishing. Well, the only one who can define human flourishing is the one who made the human. We will always mess that up when we stop listening to what God has said. And so here you have the clear teaching in Jesus's words.

Sometimes people say, well, Jesus never said anything about these issues. He most assuredly did. Anytime someone says, Jesus never said anything about homosexuality, I immediately know I'm talking to a person who has no clue about what Jesus taught.

Because Jesus told men, God's law is holy and just, and you're leased in the kingdom of heaven if you tell anybody to ignore what's found in God's holy law. Not one jot or tittle will pass away, right?

He didn't come to abolish but to fulfill, and what does that law teach? Well we need to know what that law teaches. And so start here, there's where you deal with the overarching authority reality. Because you see, if there isn't any revelation from God on this subject, there isn't, all you end up with is, well, let's just take a vote.

We'll take a vote. Is that how we do it now? We'll take a vote. Well, yeah, that's democracy. No, that's stupidity. How will we ever be able to press forward as a society when you do not have a foundation upon which to stand?

This is a new insanity that has infected us. I cannot imagine any one of the founding fathers, including the agnostics and atheists, coming into our existence today, looking around, listening to what's being said, and not being stunned at the stupidity of it all.

But here you have a foundational reality. God made man and woman. It is astonishing to me that in only less than literally ten years, thanks to the prevalence of YouTube and the foolishness of parents giving young adolescent kids access to such things, that the number of people, the number of especially young women, yes, it's happened to some young men too, but especially young women who have had their bodies mutilated because they were told by this society that that was how they would find fulfillment.

Those numbers have exploded. It was hardly even known before just the modern period. It's astonishing. How can we explain this? We explain it because we recognize that what is happening is our culture has turned its back even upon the remnants of the blessings of the Christian worldview that had so blessed our nation and brought so many blessings up until this point in time.

Turn with me to the book of Leviticus. Yeah, I know. Some of you are trying to read through the Bible, and you all know that the best intentions of men found her once you get to the book of Leviticus.

You made it through Genesis, you thought you were doing real good, you got to Exodus, oh, this is fun, and you get to Leviticus. Important book, Jesus quoted from it a lot. Leviticus chapter 18, then Yahweh spoke to Moses saying, speak to the sons of Israel and say to them, I am Yahweh your God.

You shall not do what is done in the land of Egypt where you lived, nor are you to do what is done in the land of Canaan where I am bringing you. You shall not walk in their statutes. You are to perform my judgments and keep my statutes to live in accord with them.

I am Yahweh your God, so you shall keep my statutes and my judgments by which a man may live if he does them, I am Yahweh. Let's be honest, for most modern Americans, God saying I am God is insufficient authority.

Oh, you are, huh? Well, I'm an accident of the cosmos, so I don't have to worry about you. That's where so many people are today, they really are. God says I have certain statutes and when I bring you into the land, you will not do in accordance with what they did in Egypt, you will not do in accordance with what they do in the land I'm taking you into.

So much of the separation that is found in the Mosaic law is to protect against this very thing. And then what happens, beginning in verse 6, is a listing, and it's not an easy listing to read through, of all of the perversions of the good creation of God that mankind was doing.

These are the things that were happening there in Canaan, these are the things that were happening in Egypt. Most of them have to do with incestuous relationships, inappropriate relationships. But then you also have concern about the worship of Moloch, verse 21, give any of your offspring to offer them to Moloch, nor shall you profane the name of your God, I am Yahweh.

And then verse 22, you shall not lie with a male as one lies with a female, it is toevah, an abomination. There is no question about what it means in Hebrew, in Greek, or in anything else. You shall not lie with a male as one lies with a female, it is an abomination.

The next verse prohibits bestiality. You shall not have intercourse with any animal to be defiled with it, nor shall any woman stand before an animal to mate with it, it is a perversion. And verse 24, do not defile yourselves by any of these things, for by all these the nations which I am casting out before you have become defiled.

Oh, it's just what I do in my bedroom. No, entire nations defile by violating God's law about the blessing that he has given to us in human sexuality. For the land, verse 25, has become defiled, therefore I have visited its punishment upon it so the land has spewed out its inhabitants.

You hear that? The land is personified, in a sense. And the natural realm recognizes the perversity of the actions of the humans within it and spews them out. Now lands don't do things like that. You don't have, you know, it makes for great stories, like you see in movies that are 18 hours long where trees throw rocks and do things and all that kind of fun stuff, but the land doesn't do it.

Our covenantal theology helps us to understand what's going on here. God has made man to rule, remember, Genesis 1, to rule over the creation. And when man perverts himself and defiles himself, punishment is inevitable.

And please notice something. There's no evidence that God sent prophets to these nations in Canaan. Be warned, he sent Jonah to Nineveh, but there's no evidence that he did for these people. And yet the clarity of the perversity of their actions is unquestionable.

They did not have Moses. They did not have written revelation, but God had written his law upon their hearts and they knew because they are made in the image of God that what they were doing was a perversity of the good gifts he had given to them.

And so their land was defiled, defiled, and therefore I have visited its punishment upon it so the land has spewed out its inhabitants. But as for you, you are to keep my statutes and my judgments and shall not do any of these abominations, neither the native nor the alien who sojourns among you.

For the men of the land who have been before you have done all these abominations and the land has become defiled so that the land may not spew you out should you defile it as it has spewed out the nation which has been before you.

For whoever does any of these abominations, those persons who do so shall be cut off from among their people. Thus, you are to keep my charge that you do not practice any of the abominable customs which have been practiced before you so as not to defile yourselves with them.

I am Yahweh your God. What happens to a nation that indulges in the violation of the good gifts that God gives.

To it?

Remember, Leviticus 18 is before the specific giving of what is called the Holiness Code. Leviticus 20 is a part of the Holiness Code and in Leviticus chapter 20 verse 13 you have, if there is a man who lies to a male as those who lie with a woman, both of them have committed a detestable act, they shall surely be put to death, their blood guiltiness is upon them.

And so notice the difference. Chapter 18 is dealing with what the nations before them had done. Chapter 20 is direct law to the people of Israel which includes penology, the penalty phase. But the reality is both describe this perversion of God's intended creation as an abomination.

Now I have read far more books than I have wanted to read that try to explain these things away. Starting in around 2000, I started having to read book after book. I have read dozens of books that seek to get around the Mosaic Law, get around Romans 1, get around 1 Corinthians 6, 1 Timothy 1.

It is amazing what man's mind can do in trying to come up with ways to short circuit what is so plain and clear in Scripture. And I'm sure there are many books I haven't gotten to because I will tell you what, it's not enjoyable reading them.

But fundamentally what they will say is a passage such as Leviticus, that was just, that was just in regards to cultic law, has to do with the priesthood, has to do with the ancient Israelites, doesn't have anything to do with us today.

Now we just read it and you know how that's wrong. But wait a minute, it was saying that the land had been defiled by these acts before the Hebrews even came along, so that means that these are fundamentally wrong things and that's knowable from creation.

You don't even have to have a prophet, you don't have to have Scripture to know that. And God judged these nations, this is one of the reasons they're being driven out. And by the way, what does God normally say to the people of Israel when they go into a particular portion of the land?

Oh, just defeat them militarily and try to be as nice to them as possible and set up nice relationships with them. No, what do you have to do? Destroy them man, woman, and child. Why? That's too much, that's wrong.

Unless the land has been defiled and these people are going to defile you by luring you into their kind of worship, oh that would never happen, right? Except that's the entire story of the Old Testament, because that is what happened.

Israel was the means by which God brought his punishment that he mentions right here upon these lands. And let's just be honest, for the vast majority of people and the vast majority of Christians, the idea of God bringing punishment at any point in time is not something we actually believe he has the right to do.

If we're honest, we much rather have the long-suffering, judgment-will-never-come perspective about God. And oh, he is long-suffering. But if you learn anything from Scripture, there comes a day when God's wrath is manifested.

And we do not do anyone any favors by compromising on that very reality. In fact, we can't understand the cross if we actually believe God's wrath will never be manifested. Well, that's in the Old Testament.

There's stuff in there about not wearing mixed clothing and mixed fibers and not eating shellfish and all sorts of other stuff. If you're just picking and choosing, the reality is if you are careful in examining the reasons why anything was given in the law, you'll be able to discover it was given for a purpose, to communicate something clearly.

And there is no question, none, that Jesus and His Apostles applied these very laws consistently in light of His work as the Messiah and the Savior. What do I mean? Well, for example, the mixing of fibers was meant to be a picture of the fact that the people of Israel needed to be a pure people.

And so we know what that was saying to those people. We know what that was meant to communicate. And we can see, even in New Testament teaching, that we are not, as the people of God, to be unequally yoked with unbelievers.

We are to recognize, but we are sent out into the entire world. We are no longer in one little, very narrow swatch of land along the coast of the Mediterranean. That's no longer the issue. We have been sent out into all the world.

And yet still, do we not guard this table? Do we not warn people? Is there not a clear differentiation between those who follow Christ and those who would reject His commandments? Any meaningful study of all the laws, I spent a couple years, a few years ago, preaching through all the Holiness Code and most of the other difficult texts in the Old Testament, demonstrating the consistency of what God's Word says on these things.

Those sermons are available on Sermon Audio if you want to spend all that much time digging into some of the really challenging texts in the Old Testament. But the reality is, when you look to the New Testament, when you look to 1 Timothy 1 .10, turn with me, turn with me there, real quick, 1 Timothy chapter 1, this one gets passed over a lot because it's just sort of, I don't know, it just doesn't stand up and smack you.

In the face.

Paul on the Law, Sound Doctrine, and Sexual Sin

1 Timothy 1 .8, but we know that the law is good if one uses it lawfully, realizing the fact that law is not made for a righteous man, but for those who are lawless and rebellious, for the ungodly and sinners, the unholy and profane, for those who kill their fathers or mothers, for murderers and immoral men and homosexuals and kidnappers and liars and perjurers and whatever else is contrary to sound doctrine, according to the glorious gospel of the blessed God with which I have been entrusted.

So it's one sort of run-on sentence, and there's so much in there, but think with me as I read through it again what this should remind you of, but for those, verse 9, who are lawless and rebellious, for the ungodly and sinners, for the unholy and profane, for those who kill their fathers or mothers, where do you hear about fathers or mothers in God's law?

Isn't there a, isn't one of those Ten Commandment things about honoring father and mother? Who kill their fathers and mothers for murderers, isn't that the next commandment? Yeah, it is, look at that.

And immoral men and homosexuals, that's right after the one about not committing adultery, and kidnappers and liars and perjurers, oh, not taking the Lord's name, and whatever else is contrary to sound doctrine, sound teaching, according to the glorious gospel of the blessed God with which I have been entrusted.

He's talking about the law, we know that the law is good if one uses it lawfully, and then he walks through the law in order. But notice what he does, when he gets to the law about sexuality, do not commit adultery, he expands it.

Immoral men and homosexuals, rampant in Rome as had been rampant in Greece, and so he makes further application. Oh, but that's just, that's just cultic law, according to the glorious gospel of the blessed God with which I have been entrusted.

You understand why now leftist liberals, why they really don't like Paul? Why they really want to decanonize Paul? And whatever else is contrary to what? Sound teaching. It is sound teaching to recognize what Scripture says on this subject, and that according to the glorious gospel of the blessed God with which I have been entrusted.

Now, I realize that there are people who experience all kinds of temptations. You cannot be a pastor in the church for any period of time at all without coming to understand that reality, and it is a true statement that to any person who experiences desires that God says are wrong, God offers hope.

The church should be a place where any individual, and here's the key, this is, this is where the line has to be drawn today, where any individual who will repent and be willing to follow the commands of Christ will find those who will stand with them to help them.

But what are we finding today? No repentance necessary. What the church is being told today is you need to be an affirming church, and instead of proclaiming repentance and hope in Christ, you need to change the nature of the gospel and the nature of the church so that what the Scripture says is against God's will is now a gift of God.

So if there does not need to be any repentance, or if there is any repentance, it needs to be on the church's part for having ever preached any of these texts at all. That's where we are. That's where we are.

There are those, there is at least one man I know of in this valley, not in this particular city, but a neighboring city, who teaches clearly that there is no salvation possible for a homosexual. I'm sure he's not the only one.

I'm sure there are many others. And he would point to the fact that Scripture says that men can be given over by God, and that's true. God can give men over in many ways, not just in that way. But the reality is that Scripture specifically contradicts that understanding.

Turn with me to 1 Corinthians 6, 1 Corinthians 6, verse 9, or do you not know that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived, neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers.

At this point, you have two Greek words that are used. They can be translated effeminate and homosexuals. I think the current ESV simply renders both as homosexuals. Nor thieves, nor the covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers shall inherit the kingdom of God.

God and such were some of you, but you were washed, but you were sanctified, but you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and the Spirit of our God. Lest I forget, hear me, the nation of Canada has placed itself in the position of condemning these words of holy Scripture.

Canada needs to repent because God takes His Word very seriously. And this nation knows this book exists. Canada cannot claim ignorance and neither can we. You say, what do you mean? They say, look at it.

Such were some of you. That's conversion therapy. Such were some of you, but you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified. And there is no law of any group of men or women that can stop the Spirit of God from washing and sanctifying and justifying in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ those He calls unto Himself, and any nation that stands in His way will be destroyed.