Christ's Lordship Over Sexuality

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As I noted in the introduction, we are participating as a church with many other believers across the

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United States, Canada, I would hope in the United Kingdom and other places, in speaking today on one particular subject, and that is

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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.

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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.

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And people are saying, no, no, no. I have before me the text of Bill C -4.

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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.

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This piece of legislation was brought through the

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Canadian legislative branch unanimously.

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Not a single person stood up to say no.

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It was met with applause when it was passed by unanimous consent.

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It is a criminal act. This is a, this is a, 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.

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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 so on.

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It is based on gender identity and gender expression, including the myth that heterosexuality, cis -gender 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.

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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.

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It only precludes seeking to help someone who maybe has begun the mythological act of transition but now wants to go back.

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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's saying that that is good, that that is normal, that's a myth, and it harms people.

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How did a nation that began with Christian symbology and Christian common law come to a point like this and so swiftly?

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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,

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I don't want these desires that I have toward people of my same gender.

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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.

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That is how radical, how evil, how tyrannical this law is.

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Now, most of my Canadian brothers are probably not facing the same immediate arrest today for the sermons that they preached, but I guarantee you one thing.

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Every single pastor in the nation of Canada this morning opened this book and read any number of passages, whether it's 1

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Corinthians 6, 9 through 11, 1 Timothy 1, 10, Romans chapter 1, maybe from Leviticus 18 and 20,

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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?

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Every single person thought of it, I guarantee you. Its primary intention initially is to chill free speech, to quiet the proclamation of what

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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.

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And you and I both know there are all sorts of those very same types of people in our legislative bodies here in the

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United States of America who would dearly love to see that same kind of legislation taking place here.

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I want you to open your Bibles and I want to talk to you about things you already know.

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Things you already know. But you must be convinced of them.

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You must be able to communicate them with clarity to those that would ask you because you will be asked.

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You already have been probably many times. We at Apologia Church, we are an evangelistic people.

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We want to bring the full weight of God's Word to bear and bring the

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Gospel and calling men and women to repent and to submit to Jesus Christ as Lord of all.

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And that means in our day and in our time, we must understand more than just simply the six clobber passages.

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What are the six clobber passages? Well, I've told you before,

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I've admitted this before. When I graduated from seminary, now, when

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I graduated from seminary, a large number of people in this auditorium were not breathing air yet.

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So there's something to be thought of there. But when I graduated seminary, which

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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.

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They are the six passages. There are more than these that are relevant to the subject of homosexuality specifically.

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But they are passages that specifically and clearly address the issue of homosexuality.

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Not transgenderism. Homosexuality. When I graduated,

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I couldn't have told you what they were. We just didn't talk about stuff like this in good company.

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This wasn't something you talked about in church. My, how times have changed.

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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

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Bible? Put your hand up. Almost none of us. Right?

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Leviticus 18 and 20 are the first two. Genesis 18 and 19, Sodom and Gomorrah, you got three in the

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Old Testament. Romans 1, obviously 26, 27. First Corinthians 6, 9 through 11, and First Timothy 1 .10.

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Those are the quote -unquote clobber passages. They are specifically on that subject.

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We'll be looking at some of them today very quickly, very briefly. We've delved into these things many times before. If we, 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.

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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.

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And those people will say, you hypocrites. You hypocrites.

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There are all sorts of things the Bible says about purity of thought and relationship of male and female.

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And you don't focus upon those things. It's these specific things where we're talking about persecuted minorities.

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And you're focused upon homosexuality and homosexual marriage and transgenderism, and it's just political.

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You're imbalanced. Why should you have to have a special Sunday for this?

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There's all sorts of other topics you could talk about, right? And the reason should be clear to all of us.

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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.

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Now, when we, years ago, started telling people, hey, these, I remember, I first started,

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I co -authored a book in 2001, as I recall, with my dear friend

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Jeff Neal, called The Same -Sex Controversy. And back at that particular point in time,

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I kept saying that the homosexuals do not want equal rights, they want

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Uber rights. They want supremacy. They want to silence any criticism.

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And people are like, you are, you are so out of it. You're so wrong. No, no, no.

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And, you know, I told you so. It just doesn't really feel all that good.

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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.

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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?

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You do realize, no, no, no, it'll never happen. Give it five years. Give it five years.

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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

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God's law is relevant across all of human experience. So let's remind ourselves of a few things.

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You ready? Genesis chapter one. Yeah, you can't get any earlier than that. Genesis chapter one, verse 26.

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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.

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And God created man in his own image and the image of God, he created him. Male and female, he created them.

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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.

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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.

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Look just across the page, maybe in your Bible or if you're on a glowing screen, scroll all down to Genesis chapter two.

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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

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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.

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That's not in the Hebrew, but I'm, I'm pretty sure. It's a textual variant.

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Textual variant. That's, that's, that's, you know, that's what he said. It just wasn't recorded.

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After he said, wow, this is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh.

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

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Ancient stories written by Stone Age people, right?

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Let me point something out to you. And this is what you need to, just my suggestion. You don't have to do it this way, but I think it's highly effective.

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When someone questions the authority of what we just read, this is what

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I do. I go to the red letters of Matthew chapter 19.

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Matthew chapter 19, go ahead and keep your finger there, but look at Matthew chapter 19 verse three. And some

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Pharisees came to him, Jesus testing him and saying, is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for any cause at all?

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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.

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Consequently, they are no longer two, but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together.

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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

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United States. Don't you know that Jesus said this? And I still find that for many people, there is a residual respect.

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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.

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But you notice what Jesus is doing. He is giving us divine commentary on Genesis 1 and 2.

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And he gets to comment on Genesis 1 and 2 because he was there.

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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.

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And he created us male and female, two genders.

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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.

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And he finds his fulfillment in her. She finds her fulfillment in him.

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And Jesus said, this is what God did. This isn't just ancient poetry.

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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

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Jesus quoting those words, saying they're true.

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

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God is the one who ordains family. God is the one who designed these things. And may

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I remind you that Jesus of Nazareth said, I'm going to be crucified and rise again the third day.

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And there's an empty tomb in Jerusalem. And that means he has all authority and power to define all of these things.

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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.

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And until you can die and rise again and prophesy your own death and resurrection, you do not have the authority to contradict what

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Jesus taught. We live in a day of such confusion.

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Why? Because in the secular world, you are now right at the center.

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You're the one that has to have all knowledge. You're the one that has to make sense of everything around you.

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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.

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And so we've got to have our experts. And you know what? You can find an expert to tell you absolutely anything.

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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.

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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

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God's creatures made for his purpose and that from the beginning he has defined what is best for us.

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We use the term today human flourishing. Well, the only one who can define human flourishing is the one who made the human.

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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.

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Sometimes people say, well, Jesus never said anything about these issues. He most assuredly did. Anytime someone says

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Jesus had never said anything about homosexuality, I immediately know I'm talking to a person who has no clue about what

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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.

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Not one jot or tittle will pass away, right? He didn't come to abolish but to fulfill.

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And what does that law teach? Well, we need to know what that law teaches. And so start here.

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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.

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We'll take a vote. Is that how we do it now? We'll take a vote. Well, yeah, that's democracy.

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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?

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

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But here you have a foundational reality. God made man and woman.

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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.

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Those numbers have exploded. It was hardly even known before just the modern period.

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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

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Christian worldview that had so blessed our nation and brought so many blessings up until this point in time.

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Turn with me to the book of Leviticus. Yeah, I know. Some of you are trying to read through the

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Bible, and you all know that the best intentions of men found her once you get to the book of Leviticus.

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You made it through Genesis. You thought you were doing real good. You got to Exodus. Oh, this is fun. Then you get to Leviticus.

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Important book. Jesus quoted from it a lot. Leviticus chapter 18, then

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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.

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You shall not walk in their statutes. You are to perform my judgments and keep my statutes to live in accord with them.

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I am Yahweh your God. So you shall keep my statutes and my judgments by which a man may live if he does them.

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I am Yahweh. Let's be honest.

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For most modern Americans, God saying

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I am God is insufficient authority. Oh, you are, huh?

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Well, I'm an accident of the cosmos, so I don't have to worry about you.

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That's where so many people are today. They really are. God says

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I have certain statutes, and when I bring you into the land, you will not do in accordance with what they did in Egypt.

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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

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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.

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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.

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But then you also have concern about the worship of Moloch.

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Verse 21, give any of your offspring to offer them to Moloch, nor shall you profane the name of your

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God. I am Yahweh. And then verse 22, you shall not lie with a male as one lies with a female.

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It is toevah, an abomination. There is no question about what it means in Hebrew, in Greek, or in anything else.

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You shall not lie with a male as one lies with a female. It is an abomination. The next verse prohibits bestiality.

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You shall not have intercourse any animal to be defiled with it, nor shall any woman stand before an animal to mate with it.

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It is a perversion. And verse 24, do not defile yourselves by any of these things, for by all these the nations which

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I am casting out before you have become defiled. Oh, it's just what

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I do in my bedroom. No, entire nations defile by violating

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God's law about the blessing that he has given to us in human sexuality.

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For the land, verse 25, has become defiled, therefore

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I have visited its punishment upon it, so the land has spewed out its inhabitants.

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Do you hear that? The land is personified, in a sense.

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And the natural realm recognizes the perversity of the actions of the humans within it and spews them out.

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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.

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But the land doesn't do it. Our covenantal theology helps us to understand what's going on here.

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God has made man to rule, remember? Genesis 1, to rule over the creation.

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And when man perverts himself and defiles himself, punishment is inevitable.

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And please notice something. There's no evidence that God sent prophets to these nations in Canaan.

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Be warned! He sent Jonah to Nineveh, but there's no evidence that he did for these people.

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And yet, the clarity of the perversity of their actions is unquestionable.

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They did not have Moses. They did not have written revelation.

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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.

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And so their land was defiled, defiled.

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And therefore, I have visited its punishment upon it, so the land has spewed out its inhabitants.

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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.

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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.

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For whoever does any of these abominations, those persons who do so shall be cut off from among their people.

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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.

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

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Remember, Leviticus 18 is before the specific giving of what is called the

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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 as 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.

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And so notice the difference. Chapter 18 is dealing with what the nations before them had done.

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Chapter 20 is direct law to the people of Israel, which includes penology, the penalty phase.

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But the reality is, both describe this perversion of God's intended creation as an abomination.

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Now, I have read far more books than I have wanted to read that try to explain these things away.

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Starting in around 2000, I started having to read book after book.

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I have read dozens of books that seek to get around the

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Mosaic law, get around Romans 1, get around 1 Corinthians 6, 1

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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.

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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.

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But fundamentally, what they will say is a passage such as Leviticus, that was just, that was just in regards to cultic law.

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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.

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But wait a minute, it was saying that the land had been defiled by these acts before the

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Hebrews even came along. So that means that these are fundamentally wrong things and that's knowable from creation.

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You don't even have to have a prophet, you don't have to have Scripture to know that. And God judged these nations.

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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 land?

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Oh, just defeat them militarily and try to be as nice to them as possible and set up nice relationships with them.

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No, what do you have to do? Destroy them, man, woman, and child. Why? That's too much.

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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?

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Except that's the entire story of the Old Testament, because that is what happened. Israel was the means by which

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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.

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If we're honest, we much rather have the long -suffering judgment -will -never -come perspective about God.

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And oh, he is long -suffering. But if you learn anything from Scripture, there comes a day when

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God's wrath is manifested, and we do not do anyone any favors by compromising on that very reality.

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In fact, we can't understand the cross if we actually believe God's wrath will never be manifested.

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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.

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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 will be able to discover it was given for a purpose, to communicate something clearly.

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And there is no question, none, that Jesus and his apostles applied these very laws consistently in light of his work as the

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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.

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And so we know what that was saying to those people. We know what that was meant to communicate.

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And we can see, even in New Testament teaching, that we are not, as the people of God, to be unequally yoked with unbelievers.

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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

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Mediterranean. That's no longer the issue. We have been sent out into all the world.

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And yet still, do we not guard this table? Do we not warn people?

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Is there not a clear differentiation between those who follow Christ and those who would reject his commandments?

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Any meaningful study of all the laws I, I spent a couple years, a few years ago, preaching through all the

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Holiness Code and most of the other difficult texts in the Old Testament, demonstrating the consistency of what

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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

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Old Testament. But the reality is, when you look to the New Testament, when you look to 1

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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,

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I don't know, it just doesn't stand up and smack you in the face. 1

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Timothy 1 .8, but we know 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

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God with which I have been entrusted. So it's one sort of run -on sentence.

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And there's so much in there, but think with me as I read through it again, what this should remind you of.

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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?

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Isn't there a, isn't one of those 10 commandment things about honoring father and mother?

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Who kill their fathers and mothers for murderers, isn't that the next commandment?

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Yeah it is, look at that. And immoral men and homosexuals, that's right after the one about not committing adultery.

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And kidnappers and liars and perjurers, oh not taking the Lord's name, and whatever else is contrary to sound teaching, according to the glorious gospel of the blessed

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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.

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But notice what he does when he gets to the law about sexuality, do not commit adultery, he expands it.

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Immoral men and homosexuals, rampant in Rome, as had been rampant in Greece.

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And so he makes further application. Oh but that's just, that's just cultic law.

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According to the glorious gospel of the blessed God with which

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I have been entrusted. You understand why now leftist liberals, why they really don't like Paul?

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Why they really want to decanonize Paul? And whatever else is contrary to what?

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Sound teaching. It is sound teaching to recognize what scripture says on this subject.

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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.

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You cannot be a pastor in the church for any period of time at all without coming to understand that reality.

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And it is a true statement that to any person who experiences desires that God says are wrong,

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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.

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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.

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But what are we finding today? No repentance necessary.

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What the church is being told today is you need to be an affirming church.

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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.

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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.

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That's where we are. That's where we are. There are those, there is at least one man

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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.

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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.

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And that's true. God can give men over in many ways, not just in that way.

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But the reality is that scripture specifically contradicts that understanding.

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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?

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Do not be deceived, neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers.

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At this point, you have two Greek words that are used. They can be translated effeminate and homosexuals.

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I think the current ESV simply renders both as homosexuals.

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Nor thieves, nor the covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers shall inherit the kingdom of God.

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And such were some of you, but you were washed, but you were sanctified, but you were justified in the name of the

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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.

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Canada needs to repent, because God takes

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His word very seriously. And this nation knows this book exists.

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Canada cannot claim ignorance, and neither can we. Say, what do you mean?

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They say, look at it, such were some of you. That's conversion therapy.

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Such were some of you, but you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified.

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And there is no law of any group of men or women that can stop the

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Spirit of God from washing and sanctifying and justifying in the name of the

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Lord Jesus Christ those He calls unto Himself. And any nation that stands in His way will be destroyed.

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There were people in the congregation at Corinth. Such were some of you.

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There is hope. There is salvation.

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There is healing, but it's only found in one way. It is only found in being washed.

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You do not seek to be washed when you think that you are pure. That's the grave danger of the leftist, liberal, pseudo -Christianity that is all over our nation, and it's all over Canada.

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They are telling people that their sexual sin is a gift from God. You will not seek to be washed if you do not recognize your own defilement.

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You see, for those in whom the Spirit of God works and brings conviction of sin, there will always be hope.

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You will find Christ to be a powerful Savior. If you turn in repentance and faith to Him, there is great power to be found in His name.

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But you will not find peace, and you will not find wholeness, and you will not find cleansing, and you will not find sanctification.

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You will not find justification in seeking to justify your own sin.

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These words are words of hope, but they are for a specific people who recognize

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God's right to define right and wrong. Anyone who would say, oh, there's no salvation.

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No, that's not what Scripture says. Scripture makes it very plain.

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Such were some of you. That means there were amongst the Corinthians some who had been fornicators, some who had been thieves, some who had been revilers, some who had been drunkards.

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Such were some of you. Some of you were homosexuals. And let me just mention very quickly, there is dispute as to whether this should be nor effeminate nor homosexuals, as in the

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New American Standard, at least the 77 that I'm looking at here, or just simply homosexuals.

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Here's why. The term, the two terms that are used there in the original language.

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One, arsenikoites, comes straight out of Leviticus 18 and 20, which we just looked at. Paul maybe either made that phrase up from the

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Greek Septuagint translation of Leviticus 18 and 20, or maybe a rabbi before him did. As far as we can tell, he's the earliest one to use it.

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And it comes straight out of, you read the Greek translation of the Hebrew and there, there it is, arsenikoites, to lie together.

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It's clearly coming from the Mosaic law. It's what men do with men in bed.

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It's very straightforward, very clear. The other term, malakoi, malakos, means effeminate and soft.

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And it could, it could be saying effeminacy, and boy do we have a problem with that in our society these days.

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Sometimes Facebook will all of a sudden throw up something, it's literally throw up something on the screen, and it's supposedly men dressed as women doing something.

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So don't get me wrong, effeminacy is a sin against God. God made you be a man, not a woman.

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Stop trying to act like one, the other one. But in this context, what we could be seeing is the passive and active partners in homosexual sexual encounters.

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And that's why the ESV renders it the way that it does, is that their translation committee was convinced that these two terms are simply, because there were in the

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Roman mindset, they thought being the aggressor was okay for a man, but being the passive recipient was bad.

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So it could be that what Paul is doing here is using these two terms to say it doesn't matter whether you're the aggressor or the receiver, it's all wrong in God's sight.

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That's a possibility as well. The point is, and I've looked, there is no manuscript that has ever been found anywhere that has anything other than the past tense at the beginning of verse 11, such were.

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There is no manuscript that says such are. And that's what the world is telling us.

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We have to change this too. Such are some of you. That's not what

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Paul wrote. And a governmental agency or governmental bureaucrat that comes along and says that's what you have to believe is putting themselves directly against the authority of Christ speaking through his apostles.

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And they need to be told that. Yes, I'm telling you, that if at some point in the future you, because of your boldness and your committedness to Christ, are brought before a magistrate who tells you that it is wrong, criminally wrong for you to believe what 1

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Corinthians 6, 11 says, that your duty is to look that individual in the eye and say, sir, with all due respect to your position, you do not have the authority to contradict the very word of God that he has reserved for his people down through the ages.

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That word tells me what is right and wrong. That word tells me that God created us in his image, male and female.

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Jesus confirmed that. His apostle says that this is a violation of God's law.

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And if you dare stand against him, you will stand before him someday, and you will have no one to intercede for you.

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That probably won't help you out a lot, but it's your duty.

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It's your duty. They need to hear that. They need to be told that there is a day of judgment coming.

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They have this secular mindset that there will never be a day of judgment. And yet central to Jesus' teachings, central to everything found in this divine revelation, there is a day coming when

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God will judge righteously by a man whom he has appointed, and he gives evidence of that to all men by what?

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Raising him from the dead. And I would look at one of those people and I would say, as long as there is an empty tomb in Jerusalem, there is your evidence that you are going to stand before God, and you will be judged for what you do in this room today.

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How dare you say such a thing? How dare someone tell us that we are to deny the very word of God that our

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Lord Jesus Christ said was the very speaking of God Himself? Will you join with me in praying for our brothers in Canada?

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We already have seen Canadian pastors being put in police cars, have we not?

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Could we see it again? You know we could. Most of us as a part of this fellowship know one of the men who first organized today,

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Dr. Joe Boot. If you have not read Joe Boot's book, The Mission of God, when

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I first started attending here just a few years ago, I was informed by the elders that it was in essence our missional statement.

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So, read it. Deal with it. It's only 530 -some -odd pages long, something like that.

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Actually, I think it's more like 700. I don't know, it's huge. It would be a deadly weapon if you threw it at somebody's head.

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It's a great book, and in fact, he has a brand new book, it's much smaller than that, that's coming out within the couple weeks that I will highly recommend.

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I've already ordered an entire case of them to hand them out. So, Joe Boot, he's

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British, he's living in Canada, and he is a great friend of our fellowship.

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He was at ReformCon a couple years ago, if you were here for that. Pray for Dr. Boot.

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Pray for the Ezra Institute that he directs. I'm a fellow in the Ezra Institute.

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Wonderful organization. But the reality is he could face the magistrate and have to deal with the reality of a tyrannical government that has decided to become openly and avowedly anti -Christian.

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Will that come here? There are many who want it to come here.

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We pray for God's mercy. We pray for revival. But I know one thing.

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Unless the way that the people in this nation think is changed, and that can only happen in here, that's a new worldview.

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Unless that changes, it has to come here. Secularism cannot allow for the authority of Jesus Christ to be exercised amongst the citizens of a secular nation.

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It can't. It drives Big Brother to distraction.

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There are two competing ultimate authorities, and that clash is inevitable.

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That clash is inevitable. But you and I, we must be convinced in our minds, what does this

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Word say? And I say to you today on January 16th, this Word is consistent in what it teaches about God's purposes in having made us male and female.

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There isn't any question about it. Some of us have had the opportunity of debating this subject with some of the best the other side has to offer for hours on end, and we've been able to demonstrate without much difficulty the consistency of what this

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Word teaches. And so for us, this is an open and shut case.

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For us, it can never be a reason for arrogance or pride. Oh, we may see many around us who are completely wrong.

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We're not for the grace of God. You could be just as deceived as they. We must stand firm.

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We must encourage one another. But we also should be the first ones to offer a word of hope when we see the evidence that the

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Spirit of God is working in someone's life, and they are asking, how can I have hope?

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And if the government says, you can't answer that question, we have to do as the apostles said.

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Whether it's better to obey God or men, we leave that to you to decide. As for us, we must obey

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God. And when someone comes to us and says, I don't want this anymore.

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It's destroying me. We have no choice. We must lead them, no matter what it costs us, to the one who can give them freedom and forgiveness and healing.

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And we must say to any government that would say, you can't do that. There is one.

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He's called the Word of God. He has a sword coming forth from his mouth, and he rules the nations with a rod of iron, and he smashes them like pottery.

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Kiss the son, lest he be angry, and you perish in the way. Every secular tyrant that dares to stand against the risen

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One will be judged. We don't want that for anyone, but they must know the truth of what

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God's Word says. Let's pray together. King of kings and Lord of lords, we thank you that you have spoken with clarity in your

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Word. And Lord, we live in a day, you have called us to live in a day where the nations are raging.

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The nations think they can throw your chains off, that they can stand up and rebel against their very maker, the one who gives them every beat of their heart and breath of their mouth.

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Father, you've called us this time, and your servants need to be convinced of what you've revealed in your

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Word. And so we pray. We pray that by your

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Spirit, you are right upon our hearts, only that which your Word teaches. But we would remember that we would be convinced, we would be convicted, be willing to suffer if need be for what your

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Word teaches. Father, we do pray. We pray for Joe Boot.

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We pray for all the faithful pastors in Canada who stood this day and opened your

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Word and did not compromise knowing what it could cost them. We pray for them now.

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But Lord, we pray as well. If the day is coming for us to take that stand in that same context, may we never shirk from our duties before you.

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Father, if there be any within the sound of my voice that experience desires that are in contradiction to your truth,

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Father, we pray that by your Spirit you will grant repentance and that we would be a people willing to direct them to Christ, willing to help them slay their sin.

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Father, we thank you for the gospel, that powerful gospel that has set us free.

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May we treasure it. May we give our lives in its proclamation. We pray in Christ's name.

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Amen. We come now to the table of the