The Surprising Truth About Gay Christians | Voddie Baucham

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Enough already with this gay Christian stuff. Will a gay person be accepted into heaven as you see it?

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Well, I believe they will. If we could figure out how to get straight people as excited about serving and engaging as the gay men and women

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I know, we would have a volunteer backlog. And so we end up creating churches where people who are not married feel second class and where people who are gay feel even more ostracized because where do they fit, right?

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In Messiah Jesus, there is no male or female, no slave or free, no

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Jew or non -Jew, no gay, no straight, just beautiful humans made in the image of God who are deeply flawed and who all need

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God's grace. I'm trying really hard to maintain a relationship with God and I don't think that he made a mistake with me.

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And that maybe one day I will actually be grateful for being trans. This isn't some curse, but it's just a different path to the same destination.

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How should Christians respond to people who use terms like gay person, gay men and women and people who are gay?

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Some argue that these terms are mere semantics and that it's acceptable to use these terms and to accept that some people are simply born gay and can be identified as being gay as long as a

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Christian still recognizes that homosexual behavior is a sin. However, there is a big problem with this view.

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How cruel is that? If a man comes to me talking about a desire for a woman who is not his wife,

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I'm not going to tell him to just go ahead and embrace the desire because the desire in and of itself is okay.

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It's okay to feel it. Nobody has ever gotten in trouble for feeling it. Shoot. Everybody say,

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I can feel it. I can't act on it. I'm okay for you to feel horny.

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Oh my God. Want to cheat on your wife?

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Want to cheat on your husband? Feel like leaving them nappy headed kids to make they,

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I'm moving to Hawaii. Feel it? Look up flights. $600.

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I'll be out of here tomorrow. I will be out of here. Everybody say, feel it.

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God wouldn't have given you feelings if he didn't expect you to feel it.

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It's not. God gave them up to dishonorable passions for their women exchanged the natural relations for those that are contrary to nature and the men likewise gave up natural relations with women and were consumed with passion for one another.

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Men committing shameful acts with men and receiving in themselves the due penalty of their error.

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There is the bad fruit is pointed in the wrong direction. It is arising from the wrong source and it is producing bad fruit.

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Therefore it falls into the category of love that is sinful. It falls into the category of love that does not glorify

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God. As Christians, we must remain firm in telling the truth that not only should we not define ourselves by our sexuality, both the desire and the act are wrong.

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When we are dealing with the issue of homosexuality, some will accuse us of being bigoted and mean for saying this, but if we communicate the truth out of love rather than hate, our conscience should be clear.

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Our goal is not to divide, but rather to love people because we care about them.

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And I don't just say enough already. I don't mean this in the sense of, you know, they're over there and I'm over here.

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I mean this in the pastoral sense. God may be a God of love, but at the same time, there are some things in this world that we should not love.

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Beginning in verse 15, do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the father is not in him.

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In light of all of this, it comes as a shock to the system when we read the words, do not love.

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And yet, there they are. Do not love. We live in a culture that idolizes love, so the very idea that there are some things we should not love is offensive to many.

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Even when I just let that sit there, you don't like it. You're like, finish your sentence. No, I want you to hear those words.

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Do not love. It's a command, which means that if we violate it, that we're in sin.

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In other words, love can be sinful. Remember, I told you this is an important word for our day.

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Love can be sinful. The idea that love can be sinful runs completely counter to our culture's belief that love is love.

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However, it wasn't just Luana who caught his eye. After showing the world their unique relationship style, they became the target of a lot of negative comments online.

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As the title of this video says, we are not supposed to judge the fact that this man is in a relationship with eight different women at the same time because, after all, love is love.

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We live in the midst of a culture that needs to hear that. It needs to hear that from us. Because it's coming at us with this whole love is love mentality and how can you be against love?

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Nobody can be against love. But certainly Christians can't be against love because God is love and we are called to love.

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Therefore, how can you stand in the way of any two people who love one another? But our text today makes it very clear that there are instances when love can be sinful.

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Today, Christians are under immense pressure to compromise concerning this idea that love is love and therefore

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Christians should not have a problem with two people of the same sex being in a romantic relationship with one another.

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But why do you care if two gay guys want to get married? And some are actually calling this song an equality anthem because of the following lyrics.

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Let me read them. Quote, and you can want who you want, boys and boys and girls and girls.

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Tell us what inspired this song. Well, the song is inspired by what I love about New York, which is just kind of there's a freedom to and there's a celebration of being unique, you know, and that was something that I was very inspired by.

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And also I wrote the song. I wrote the song kind of kind of following the when when gay marriage became legal in New York.

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And that was something that, you know, so many of my friends had to be kind of scrutinized for who they were in love with, you know, from the time they came out.

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And I just you know, I didn't want to make a big deal of it because I don't think it should be a big deal who you love. It's just called marriage.

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It's a human invented thing. If we decide that gay people can get married, too, I just don't see how it damages anything.

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I don't think it tears down the definition of marriage in any way. It just opens up the possibility that people who are gay won't be discriminated against.

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Bless God and bless the gays. To all those who feel different, if you're part of a group that's called other, a group that does not get the chance to be center stage, build your own stage and make them see you.

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Your queerness is beautiful. Today, I sign the Respect for Marriage Act into law.

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Deciding whether to marry, who to marry, is one of the most profound decisions a person can make.

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However, as Christians, we believe what God has revealed in his word over and against what the culture tells us about love.

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And God has revealed that not all love is good, that love can be directed towards the wrong object, and that when this is done, it is actually sinful, not true love.

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And this leads us back to what I was mentioning earlier, the poignant way in which this is so pertinent to our times because of the love is love crowd, particularly in the area of same -sex marriage.

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How can you be opposed to same -sex marriage when same -sex marriage is just about people who love each other being allowed to express that love?

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That's a love that's pointed at the wrong object. That is not a love that comes from God or that brings glory and honor to God.

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It is pointed at the wrong object. It is a love that arises from the wrong source.

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Romans chapter 1 is crystal clear that some forms of love are unnatural and opposed to God and should be both avoided and opposed because they are destructive and rebellious.

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Look with me if you will at Romans chapter 1, beginning of verse 18, familiar passage, but I want us to look at it.

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For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and the unrighteousness of men who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth.

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For what can be known about God is plain to them because God has shown it to them for his invisible attributes, namely his eternal power and divine nature have been clearly perceived ever since the creation of the world in the things that have been made.

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So they are without excuse for although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking and their foolish hearts were darkened, claiming to be wise.

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They became fools and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things.

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Therefore, God gave them up to the lust of their hearts to impurity. Here we are. These lusts, these desires to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves because they exchange the truth about God for a lie and worship and serve the creature rather than the creator who was blessed forever.

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Amen. For this reason, God gave them up to dishonorable passions, dishonorable passions.

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The desires themselves are dishonorable. Here we read about dishonorable passions that incur the wrath of God.

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And this is exactly the definition that homosexual love falls into a love that is completely opposed to God's perfect design for men and women.

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It falls into the category of love for that third version of the word world, not the first God's created order, not the second people in the world, but that third, that system that is openly opposed to all that God is and that rebels against the reign of God and his kingdom.

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And we are living in a culture today that not only celebrates this kind of sinful love, but is actively pressuring all people, especially

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Christians, to likewise embrace this kind of love. And that is precisely where we are, brothers and sisters.

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And not only that, this rebellion is no longer covert, but it has become overt.

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It is out there and it is in our faces. What's shocking is that there are even many within the supposedly

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Christian church who are advocates of this idea of love is love.

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We already heard earlier from several extremely popular pastors who, at the very least, accept this idea that some people can legitimately be referred to as gay person, gay men and women and people who are gay, even though this way of identifying people is completely contrary to what scripture teaches.

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There are some progressive pastors who go so far as to teach that homosexuality is actually good and right and not even a sin at all.

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Here's Brandon Robertson trying to argue for this position in a debate with Apologia Studios.

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It's very simple. Leviticus 18 verses 1, 2 and 3 talks about God speaking and says, these are laws for the people of Israel.

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Do not do like they do in the land of Egypt. Do not do like they do in the land of Canaan. So what is happening, the list of commands that we have in Leviticus 18 are a list of practices that were apparently common in Canaan and Egypt.

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Do a brief study, please, historically about whether homosexuality and homosexual relationships in the way that I'm advocating for them were common in Egypt or in Canaan.

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And you'll find, no, they were not. So what is, and then we look at the context of each of those verses. And I think

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Leviticus 18, 20 says, as you already quoted at the very beginning of this show, a man, do not sacrifice your child to Molech for this is an abomination.

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The next verse down is do not lie with a man as with a woman for this is an abomination. Then we go into bestiality. The context is these are practices that are taking place in Canaan and Egypt.

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We have no evidence that there was widespread consensual homosexual couples, relationships, families in those cultures.

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But we do have a preponderance of evidence of exploitative practices. You already know these arguments, that there were both relationships between those who were enslaved in ancient patriarchal cultures where men were allowed to have sex with male slaves.

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And it was a way of asserting their dominance. We also do know a few and far between in Egyptian and Canaanite culture.

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We don't know that much about the ancient Canaanite culture, but there is some evidence that shows that there were temple prostitutions.

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There were sexual sacrifices made to appease gods and goddesses. So it seems based on the culture, the historical analysis of litigus 18, that whatever is being referred to in verse 22 is not a broad condemnation of gay male relationships because there weren't those with any frequency in ancient

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Canaanite or Egyptian culture. But instead, where we do see men having sex with other men are an exploitative and idolatrous circumstances.

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And it seems to me that that would be something that God would condemn. But of course, these kinds of attempts made by Robertson and other pastors like him fall far short, because the

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Bible is, in fact, very clear in what it teaches. Here's some of what Pastor James White said in response to what

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Robertson said. Well, so but you just admitted that we don't know very much. Obviously, you're talking about many, many thousands of years ago.

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So it's a very limited amount of information. Isn't it more relevant that in the New Testament, we have apostles of Jesus Christ?

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And you may not you may not even believe that these are words of scripture. It's quite possible from what you've said. But when Paul writes to Timothy and he lays out the goodness of the law and he starts working through the

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Ten Commandments, when he gets the commandment against adultery, he specifically utilizes two terms, pornoes, arsenicoites, sexually immoral persons and arsenicoites.

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So here is an apostle and he is now much closer to us in time than any research you might do in some type of,

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I mean, Egyptian, Egyptian sexuality was pretty wild. But so here's Paul and he includes and he expand on that commandment, sexually immoral persons and homosexuals.

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So was Paul, I'm sorry, that's an inaccurate interpretation of arsenicoites. OK, since it comes from the two terms that are used in Leviticus 18 and 20, and Paul may be the first one to use it.

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There's one other possible text that it's it's disputable, but maybe he borrowed it from a Jewish source or something like that.

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But it's what men do with men in bed. In fact, to quote the Leviticus passage, lies with a male as one lies with a female.

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So this is sexual intercourse. It has nothing to do with all the all the context around it.

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It is the actual act. And unfortunately, it is being urged along by people within the church who are essentially arguing that love is always righteous.

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Love is always godly. Love is always appropriate because God loves everyone and God loves everything.

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No matter how much pressure we face to compromise concerning what the Bible teaches, the

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Bible is abundantly clear in what it teaches. And we as Christians must stand firm and proclaim its entire life giving truth to the depraved culture around us.

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And right here, the Bible says, do not love.

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There are some loves that are out of bounds. There are some loves that are unacceptable. In other words, there are some loves that are not truly love.

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Finally, let's listen to Pastor Votie Bauckham's pastoral counsel to men and women who struggle with same sex attraction.

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And if you're here today and you you wrestle with that, let me say to you that the last thing you need to do is to give in to that love and define yourself by it because that's love of the world.

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Do not love the world. Do not love based on your passions and your desires, but love the Lord your

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God with all your heart, all your soul, all your mind and all your strength, which means your passions are to be turned in his direction and no other.

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We must reject the lie that says there is no love that is out of bounds because ultimately that lie that says there is no love that's out of bounds is a lie that says there is no truth in God.

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I'm a father nine times over. What that means is I am very well acquainted with the fact that love is not defined by allowing those whom you love to have what they want, when they want it, just because they want.

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Some of the most loving moments between me and my children have been moments when

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I have said authoritatively and unequivocally, no. Amen. Like Votie, we as Christians must be both loving and firm in addressing this very sensitive and very serious topic of homosexuality.

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Our goal must be the salvation of souls, and achieving this goal means not compromising, no matter how much people hate us because of this message.

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The loving truth is that if we give in to love that God tells us is sin, we are actually believing the devil's lies, which leads to destruction.

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So our plea to the culture around us is believe what God has revealed about Jesus Christ and about love.

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The world is passing away along with its desires, but whoever does the will of God abides forever.

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You see what's happening here? This do not love the world is not God saying, listen, there's good stuff out there that I want to keep from you.

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That's the lie of the serpent. This do not love says that looks good to you and may even feel good to you, but in the end you will perish.

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I'm calling you away from it because I actually do love you. And in loving you,

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I want you to abide in God, to remain in God and to not perish because our desire is that Christ indeed may have the fullness of the reward for which he died.

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So do not love the world. Thank you so much for watching. If you like these videos and want to help support this channel, the best way to do it is to just watch these videos until the end and click the subscribe button.