15 - Biblical Hermeneutics, Implementation, Part 2 Addressing Homosexuality

Well, welcome to the

Striving for Eternity Academy's School of Biblical Harmonetics. We are here again in another lesson where we are taking a look to try to pull together everything that we've been learning to see how to apply what we've learned to ourselves, well, or maybe to hot topics, different issues, because we will be dealing with a somewhat controversial issue.

I say somewhat only because, well, it's really not a controversial issue if you believe in the

Bible. It's only a controversial issue if you want people to like you. So, that's what we're going to deal with today.

We are going to deal with a controversial issue. We have a syllabus that we will not get to.

Why? Because what we kind of are continuing from last week when we looked at the syllabus and we are taking a look and this week as we did last week, last week we dealt with the issue of women's role in the church.

And so, and do that. I was just told that it's too bright. Me being bright, that's crazy.

So, I only have control over certain things in my, they don't kind of keep me caged in right here so I can't move too much.

Anyway, so what we have today we want to look at is, we want to look at, like last week we looked at women's role in the church.

This week we are going to deal with the topic of homosexuality. Homosexuality.

Is it biblical? Is it right? Is it wrong? Is God okay with it? Is He not okay with it?

What's the issue? So, that's what we are going to deal with today. And what we are going to find is that, well, there's some people that think it's a pretty clear cut thing.

Some that think it's not so clear cut. And we're, if we have time, we're going to take a look at one pastor and his view.

So, if you remember where we are in these lessons, we have been going through four keys to interpretation of the scriptures of how to do

Bible study. The first was identification. You want to identify the type of literature that you have.

Second, you want to investigate. That's where we're going to ask five questions. Who, what, when, where, why?

And we're going to start looking back at some different things to see what it is that we are looking at, reading, do some investigation of the text.

Then we're going to do, we're going to pull that together, do the implementation, sorry, the interpretation. That's where we're going to use all those

Bible study tools we talked about to pull this together and help to explain what the text actually means.

And then this lesson is where we start saying, okay, we've taken a bunch of texts, we understand what they mean.

How do we apply that? That's the implementation. Now we've been, as we've been going through this, one of the things we've been saying is that when it comes to the

Bible, there's really two main ways people seem to interpret the

Bible. The right way and the wrong way. And I do it the right way and anyone that doesn't do it like me does it the wrong way, right?

Of course. What do you mean no? I know your address you.

All right. So, but we do, we have two ways. One way that most people actually interpret the

Bible and it's actually a wrong way to do it. And that is that they use experience.

And what I mean by experience is they come to the Bible with a preconceived idea of what the

Bible means, or they come to the Bible with something they wish it means.

And because of that, they take a look at certain passages of scripture and maybe they pull some passages out.

If you remember the lesson we did way back when on the wrong ways to interpret the Bible, we talked about things like proof texting and isolating scripture verses.

That's what people do. And they'll take a verse to make it mean what they want it to mean.

That's the big Greek word eisegesis to read into the text instead of exegesis to read out of the text.

We want to read out of the text to get an understanding of what the text actually means.

What does the text say? What does the Bible say? What does it mean? What is

God's intended meaning of the passage we're studying? That becomes the question.

Now, most people, however, use their experience, they use, it's basically because they're lazy.

Okay, that's the simple reality. People are generally lazy and they don't put the time and effort in the diligence that it takes to show ourselves approved unto

God. Being a workman who rightly divides the Word of God. That's what we must be. We must take the time to study

His Word. If we're not going to use our experience, what do we use? Well, interpretive principles.

That's what we've been studying in this class. All these lessons here is we've been looking at interpretive principles and we have been looking at different things to see what it is that we have, that we want to understand.

The reality is that when we examine God's Word, we realize that there is a simple reality that God's Word is kind of clear but we kind of make it messy.

God has revealed His Word. We sometimes just don't take the diligence.

We don't take the time to study it out and do what we should be doing, which is to look into His Word, do the study that we need to do, and this is what we must be doing.

We must be about, if we're going to say that we have a knowledge of God's Word, we know what

God's Word says, we understand what God's Word is, then we must be men and women that interpret

God's Word correctly. And in order to do that, we're going to have to be mindful of the fact that you and I come to a text of Scripture and we come to it with our own ideas, our own understandings, and that is going to affect the way we're going to view the

Scriptures. We want to make sure we don't do that. We want to make sure that when we come to the passage of the

Scriptures, we're coming to the Scriptures knowing what our preconceived ideas are, but kind of putting those aside.

Because we know that we may have that where we can see something, or want to see something in the

Scripture that's just not there. And so, it's for that reason that we want to be careful to make sure that we're not reading into the text something that just isn't there.

I give that warning because as we deal with this topic that we're going to deal with today, this is really, it's controversial only because our culture is trying to make it controversial.

And it's something that really shouldn't be all that controversial.

But unfortunately it is. And that's this issue of homosexuality. Now homosexuality is something that we understand that our culture seems to accept this.

Our culture says that this is acceptable behavior. And sometimes because of the amount of pressure people give in our culture, it seems as if we must accept this.

And we must, as Christians, to get along, we have to accept homosexuality as a norm.

And I don't think that's the case. I don't think we need to. We need to ask the question, what does the

Bible say on the topic? That's the question that we need to know. Now, I want to give a little bit of a warning with this before we reach this topic.

Because when we look at the topic of homosexuality, there's some things that we have to understand.

And maybe some of you don't have friends or family that practice homosexuality.

There are people who are not homosexuals. They're not born that way. They practice a behavior.

And so, we have to be careful because one of the things is that most people that practice homosexuality don't really know too many

Christians. Because they have been trained from that culture to believe that Christians hate them.

Remember back when I was in college, one of the residence assistants practiced homosexuality.

And he had a homosexual magazine. And he showed me an article in the magazine.

This was back in the 80s. Where basically, what the article was trying to argue is that to be mainstream, for homosexuality to be mainstream, to get acceptance, they had to be a victim.

They had a dilemma. They needed to be a victim but they didn't want to actually be attacked. It was very interesting because the layout this article made was that in order to be a victim but not be attacked, they needed a group that the culture would think was really going to be willing to attack them.

But a group that wouldn't actually do anything. That wouldn't go taking them to court or beating them up.

And they decided that would be Christianity. And so for many years now, 20 -30 years, we have seen in movies and in the media and in different magazines that it is supposedly

Christians that hate those that practice homosexuality. Christians are called homophobic, bigoted and all kinds of other things.

And the reason is, is not because Christians behave that way. Some do, we're going to get to that.

But it's not because Christians behave that way as much as it is that in order to get this taught in schools, which is what they argued, that the only way to get this view to be accepted is to teach it in schools.

And the only way to get it taught in school was if they were a victim because then it's educational to make people teach it at first and second grade.

And that's exactly what we see happening. They claim that Christians attack them. Christians back down. Christians want to get along.

And so what ends up happening is that in that attempt, it actually encourages and reinforces exactly what they want to do.

They make it look like, you know, we are attacking them when we're not.

Well, some are. And we have those, the Westboro Baptists and all of them. But according to the scripture, they're not really

Christians anyway because they believe in their works and they're not showing the love of Christ that God says would be seen.

Now, with all of that said, what we want to do is look at this in this aspect.

What we have here as we go through this topic, we're going to look at some passages of scripture.

And we may even get to this one pastor and his views. It's coincidental that this week I got invited by my cousin to attend her wedding.

New Jersey has legalized same -sex marriage. And in doing so, she's now able to marry her girlfriend.

And she invited me to the wedding. Now, she sent me a text explaining that she knows fully well that there's a high probability that I would not attend.

And she understands that we do have good conversations and we can get along and talk. So it's not like this is an issue that breaks our relationship.

We are still family and we still love each other and we'll still go out of our way for one another. So it's not like we sit there and say, well, we can't talk to each other.

You see, and that's a key thing. Because a lot of people don't want to deal, a lot of those that practice homosexuality don't want to know any

Christians. They don't want to talk to any Christians. And some of those that are Christian act as if homosexuality is the worst sin in the world.

And we're going to get to whether that's the case or not and why some Christians do that. But what we do have is this, that we see is that you get invited to a wedding like this, do you show up?

Well, if I show up, I'm actually giving an endorsement to their behavior and I'm not going to do that.

So we're not going to attend the wedding, but why? Is it because we don't agree with a sinful behavior?

Well, if that was the case, then I shouldn't attend any wedding because everybody sins.

Why is it that some Christians make it as if homosexuality is like the sin that you can't be saved from?

Maybe you know guys that go out on the streets and they carry the signs. Here, let's take a look at a verse that some carry.

This is a verse that deals with the issue of homosexuality. And some people carry this sign, they have the sandwich boards and they're out on the street and people read this.

So what it says is, Or do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God?

Do not be deceived. Neither the sexually immoral, the idolater, the adulterer, nor men who practice homosexuality, nor thieves, nor greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers, will inherit the kingdom of God.

Now, let's stop there because that's what a lot of people have. They have just those verses on the sandwich board. And they always argue, well, there's no room for the next verse.

Hope you didn't look ahead and see what the next verse was. But what we have is that we have a case where people put that up.

And I've met people that practice homosexuality and they say, well, I can never go to heaven.

So they've given up on the idea of going to heaven. Why? Because they read these verses that people go out on the street with.

And they say, see, I can't go to heaven because that says that I can never inherit the kingdom of God.

I remember talking to James, a young man, and he practiced homosexuality.

And he said he could never go to heaven because that's what people have told him based on that verse.

But let's read that next verse and see what it says. Read verse 11 now and see what it says. And such were some of you.

But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the

Lord Jesus Christ by the Spirit of the Lord. You see, some of you practice these things.

Drunkards, thieves, homosexuals, sexually immoral. Why is it that it seems that so many people only focus on the homosexuality?

Oh, wait, I got an answer for it. You know why? Pride. That's right, it's pride.

What do I mean it's pride? Well, it's very simple. The reason that some people focus on homosexuality is if that is a worse sin than any other, is because of the fact they don't practice it.

You see, they don't rail against the liars. Why? Because they lie, probably.

Why don't they rail against those that have committed adultery? Because maybe they've done it.

Or are sexually immoral. Or have wicked thoughts in their minds. Why do they focus on this one?

Because it's one they don't have a desire for. And so they make it sound like it's so much worse. So we've got to be careful.

I know I'm going long on giving, before we get to the issue, I'm giving a long warning. Why? Because the reality is we have to be sensitive to the fact that we're reaching out to a group of people who have been preconditioned to believe that you as a

Christian hate them. Therefore, your job should be to show even more love to them.

I remember when I was out in New York City and met James. And James practiced homosexuality and I was talking with him.

Basically, I asked him whether it's wrong for me to lust after women.

Basically, the fact that the Bible says that I commit adultery when

I lust after women. And he said that it was wrong.

I couldn't just go have sex with every woman that I lusted after. Which is a way of arguing against the idea that just because I lust after men, it means having sex with other men is okay.

But what I said to James was that when I lust after women, I commit adultery of the mind. And when he lusts after men, he breaks the very same commandment.

It's the same sin. Oh yeah, the sex is different, male versus female, but the adultery of the mind is still there.

You see, just because you become a Christian doesn't mean that you're not going to have sinful thoughts. It means that you don't act on those sinful thoughts and you need to put those sinful thoughts away.

And that comes over time. But the reality is that we have to be checking what the scriptures say on this topic.

So we looked at a passage that seems pretty clear that a homosexual can never get to heaven.

But then it said, such were some of you. Which means that, well, I guess by the grace of God, there will be those who practice homosexuality and they'll be in heaven.

So what is a Christian to do? What does the Bible say?

Is the Bible clear on this topic or not? Now why would

I not attend my cousin's wedding? It's not because they practice homosexuality. Okay, that's not why.

And I plan to be getting together with her and her girlfriend to explain why it is that I won't attend their wedding.

Because I want them to know, not assume it's just, oh, for Christian, you know, because of religious reasons. I want them to know what the

Bible says. And we're not going to have the time to delve into all of this tonight. But I'm just going to give you kind of an overview of this so you understand that the reason that we would be, as Christians, be against same -sex marriage.

And notice I say, I don't say homosexual marriage. Because those who practice homosexuality get married all the time to people of the opposite sex.

And then they practice homosexuality. But we're talking about same -sex marriage. People of the same gender.

Why is that an issue? Well, because what they're doing is redefining marriage.

A friend of mine, Eric Coven, posted this week that redefining marriage to accept gays is like redefining a square to accept a circle.

I think that's kind of funny. But the reality of what it is, is that what you're doing when you redefine marriage is you're redefining something that God has established.

Which is kind of the thing I find so interesting. So many people that practice homosexuality want to talk about a separation of church and state.

Yet they don't seem to have any problem with a state coming in and defining a church issue. See, marriage is a church issue.

God defined marriage. Not the state. God. Why did God define marriage as one man with one woman?

Well, for a very simple reason. Because it's a picture of something. In Ephesians 5, God says that it pictures

Christ and His bride, the church. It's a picture of God with His special people.

That God's special people are a bride to God. So it's a picture of something that's important.

And when you redefine marriage, you destroy the thing that it represents. And therefore, those who are going to try to marry, quote unquote, as the same sex, it's not a marriage in God's eyes.

And they're redefining it. And they're breaking the very thing that this is supposed to be. This is supposed to be something that is representing

God and His special people. That's the issue. That's really the issue.

Now, I want to do something because this is a thing where many people, the typical way that we're seeing it nowadays is people argue that they redefine marriage as a loving relationship.

Therefore, it's just about having love for one another. They try to argue that, and this you're going to see where the experience and the eisegesis comes in.

People say that David and Jonathan were lovers. There's nowhere where it says that they were anything more than best friends.

They were very good friends. Being very good friends does not mean you have to be having sex with somebody.

I mean, do you have any friends that you're very good friends with and you don't have sex with them? So just because they're good friends does not mean they're in sexual relations.

So why do they do that? Because they want to read homosexuality into the

Bible and say it's acceptable. And it's not. And so I want to kind of go through in a little bit of time and show you how people don't interpret the

Bible correctly. And then we're just going to look at one or two verses to see what the

Bible actually says. So what we're going to say is when we look at this, we're going to see what this gentleman, who claims to be a reverend, says the

Bible teaches. Now what I'm going to do is I want to play this for this reason. I want you to see the number of things that this gentleman will do.

He makes absolute statements and never supports them. You're going to see that he's going to just make a claim and say the

Bible teaches things that the Bible doesn't teach. You're going to see that he's going to say that there are certain things the

Bible is saying and doing that the Bible never says that it says and does. And that is what we're going to end up seeing as we go through this and look at this.

So let's take a look at this video here. Now, do you see what he just said there?

He said, same gender loving. Do you notice that? The Bible doesn't talk in the same way as the

Old Testament as it does now in same gender loving. Now, that's not what the

Bible talks about when it talks about homosexuality. It's not talking about love. It's not talking about love relationships.

Just because two people have sex does not mean they love each other. Even if you call it making love, it doesn't mean they love each other.

People have sexual perversions all the time. And the Bible speaks about those things and condemns those things.

Let's see what else he's going to say. Scriptures that we find in both the Old Testament and the New Testament are formed around specific cultures for specific peoples.

And that in order for us to really understand what it was that Paul was saying in the New Testament, what some of the

Old Testament prophets were saying from the Old Testament, we need to understand the historical context within which they were written.

There are probably six passages in Scripture that have been used to condemn homosexuality, mostly from the

Old Testament, and then a couple of passages in the New Testament that are attributed to the Apostle Paul. And then there is this whole four

Gospels. So, let's see. He says there's only a few passages, and they're mostly in the

Old Testament, and a few in the New, and they're attributed to the Apostle Paul. How many passages do you need to condemn something?

Oh, just one. I mean, if God says it's wrong, then it's wrong. It doesn't matter how many passages.

And it doesn't matter whether they're in the Old or New. However, here's the issue. The Old Testament talks about things like keeping kosher and stuff like that that we don't do anymore.

Why? Well, because of the fact that when people see that, they argue that the

Bible condemns homosexuality only in the Old Testament. That's why he's making that issue.

But it also does it in the New, and he even acknowledges that. And we're going to see in a moment how he's going to try to argue not from Scripture.

You're going to see this. He doesn't argue from Scripture. Okay, watch. Jesus tells us what his thesis is, what his beliefs are, how it is that we relate to God.

And in those Gospels, there is absolutely nothing about homosexuality. There's a lot about love.

There's a lot about forgiveness. There's a lot about loving God with all your heart, mind, soul, and strength, loving yourself, and loving your neighbor.

Okay, let's look at that. Is there anything anywhere where Jesus mentions about the marriage relationship?

Hmm, let's take a look at one. Matthew 19. He answered,

Have you not read that he created them from the beginning? What?

Male and male? No, no, no, no. Woman and woman? No, no, no, no. What's it say there? Male and female.

And he said, Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh, so that they will no longer be two but one flesh.

What God has joined together, let no man separate. So what you see there is Jesus does speak about the relationship, the marriage relationship.

And he's very clear. Male, female. One man, one woman. He made that quite clear.

So this guy, a little bit off there, isn't he? But I want you to keep seeing, see what he's going to do.

Because he's not, he argues from King James. You know, if you saw earlier, that it's, you know, just the way

King James, he's going to get into this a little bit more. Based off of English and not the actual languages.

Let's look at this. As we examine those scriptures, as we examine the Old Testament and the

New Testament, we find that both in the Old Testament and in the New Testament, what the writers are addressing is not so much homosexual love.

But it's addressing the way in which people abused their relationships and their relationship with God.

And how it was defined within that culture. First of all, we need to understand the word homosexual wasn't even coined in the

English language until, you know. Okay. Let's get back to that.

I mean, we need to address that. He just sat there and said that what the

Bible was trying to address was not homosexuality. But the abuse of it.

Really? Is that, do you, I mean, if you look at any of the passages that deal with homosexuality, not a single one of them, none of them deal with the abuse of the love relationship.

It talks about sexual immorality. It's never put in a context of love.

There's not a single passage that talks about homosexuality as a good thing if not abused.

Okay. And so what he's doing there, if you notice, he just makes a statement. Notice he didn't provide any scripture.

Oh, wait. Actually, if you watch this whole video, there's not a single scripture that he's going to give in a defense.

Why? Because he doesn't have any. But we're going to get at the end. We're going to get at one. And that's all we need.

One very clear one. We've already looked at one in First Corinthians. We looked at what Jesus said.

That's another. I'm going to look at one more to make it clear. But let's see what this gentleman has to say here.

At least a thousand or more years into the after Christ period.

And so whenever we read the word homosexual in scripture, we need to understand that that wasn't the word that was written either in Aramaic or in Greek.

And so we need to. Okay. Okay. So that's not the word in Aramaic or in Greek.

Well, yes, he's actually right. The word, the English word homosexual doesn't appear in the

Aramaic or the Greek. And oh, by the way, Reverend, the Bible was written in Hebrew and Greek.

Yeah. There's like maybe a few chapters at most in Aramaic. But fine.

We won't get nitpicky on that. There is a Hebrew word. See, the Hebrew word doesn't directly tie to our

English word homosexual. It ties to our English word sodomite. Okay. In the

Hebrew. But there are terminologies in both languages for people who had same sex relationships.

And he just breaks it off as there was no word. Now what he's going to do is based on the fact that he's just made this statement that there is no word in the

Aramaic and Greek for homosexual. He's now going to build. That's his premise.

He now is going to build on top of that and make an argument, make a case. But keep in mind his entire case is on something that's untrue.

If your premise is untrue, your conclusion is not valid logically.

Okay. Even if it's correct, it's not valid because it's logically invalid. That's basically what this guy is doing and his conclusion is not correct either.

But he's going to make his case and his case is based on something that's not valid that's here.

The word homosexual was placed there. We know also that the word homosexual didn't get into scripture until the

King James Version. And that the King James Version was written by King James from England who was part of the dissolution of the monasteries.

Okay. Let's look at that. Do you hear what he just said? Homosexuality never came into the

Bible until King James. And the

Bible was written by King James. This gentleman is showing such a complete lack of understanding.

King James did not write the Bible. Okay. King James commissioned a translation of the

Bible into English. But there were several English translations before the

King James translation. Okay. Tyndale had his out. There were others that you can look at.

We have an earlier lesson on English Bibles. And there were several of them that were out. So King James did not write the

Bible. And, you know, King James was not trying to address the abuse of homosexuality.

See, this is where you see people make an argument. And this is an invalid way of arguing. I'm going to see if we can get some more of this in here.

So let's see. Writings into English. And we also understand and know that King James was probably homosexual himself.

And so the word homosexual was inserted into Scripture. And there were many, many reasons for that.

One of the reasons that we know is that at that time period, there was a low mortality rate around children.

I don't know how much more

I can take of listening to him. So, all right. Look at what he's doing. This is a great example of eisegesis.

He's saying that homosexuality was written into the Scriptures in King James. The issue is you can go to any of the

Greek Hebrew manuscripts and see it talks about homosexuality. And it talks about it quite clearly.

And it talks about it as being wrong. Not because it's an abuse. Not because of low mortality rates.

I mean, you see how the person makes a statement and then he builds this whole argument on it.

Okay? And all of that is just for the birds. Okay? What does

Scripture actually say? Let's take a look at a passage of Scripture that's quite clear. This is

Romans chapter 1. Romans chapter 1. And you see here it says,

He gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity.

Now, impurity wouldn't be a good thing. Impurity is a bad thing. This isn't an abuse thing.

This is something that's not clean, that's not pure. To the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves.

Because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshipped and served the creature rather than the creator.

Who is blessed forever. Amen. For this reason God gave them up to dishonorable passions.

Now again, read that. Dishonorable passions. That's a good sounding thing. Dishonorable passions sounds like it's something that shouldn't be done.

For their women exchanged natural relations for those that are contrary to nature.

It's not contrary to abuse. It's contrary to nature. And the men likewise give up natural relations with women and are consumed with passion for one another.

Men committing shameless acts with men and receiving in themselves the due penalty for their error.

And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a debased mind to do what ought not to be done.

They were filled with all manner of unrighteousness, evil, covetousness, malice.

They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, maliciousness.

They are gossips, slanderers, haters of God, insolent, haughty, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, foolish, faithless, heartless, ruthless, though they know

God's righteous decree that those who practice such things deserve to die.

That they not only do them, but give approval to those who practice them.

They give approval to those who practice them. What you have here is you look at this and you see this is very clear.

Oh, but the word homosexual is not in that passage. Do you need the word homosexual to be in that passage to understand that it's speaking of homosexuality, same sex, same gender sex?

You don't need to have the word there to understand the meaning of that passage, do you? That passage is quite clear.

That passage is talking about people that do evil, vile things. You see, we read enough of the context to realize that there was nothing in there about abuse.

Abuse of a loving relationship, was there? No. It's never saying that it's okay, ever.

It's saying it's against nature. That's the issue. The reason that the

Scriptures say that it's wrong is because it's against God's created order.

And this gentleman who argues that we as Christians need to get over it, that the

Bible doesn't speak against homosexuality. Yes, it does. And what you're doing is misleading people.

You who may have the title reverend are misleading people to what the Bible says.

That's the reason he can't give any passages of Scripture. He just gives the imaginings of his own mind.

What does the Scripture say? Well, the Scripture says that it's contrary to nature for women to be with women and men to be with men.

It's contrary to nature, to God's created order. Because God created men and women, as we saw,

Jesus said this is why God calls for one man and one woman to be married. To call them together.

Had to do with his creation order. The natural things.

And you look at that list that's provided there. None of those things, boastful, gossip, slander, none of those things are good.

They're all wicked. They're all evil. That's why he looks at what he says. He's saying that it's unjust.

It's impure. He uses terms like impurity and dishonoring and shame.

That they exchange the truth of God for a lie. Well, what are they doing? They give approval.

Men like this guy we're seeing, they give approval to what God says is wicked.

To what God says is evil. They give approval. Why? Well, actually they do it because they want to be liked.

They want acceptance. They want men to accept them more than they want

God. And they want to redefine what God's word says because they just don't like it. Look, brothers and sisters in Christ, we don't have to like everything the

Bible says. But we're not in a position to say it's wrong because we don't like it.

Whether we like it or not, it's the truth. The Bible is the truth because God wrote it.

Whether you and I like it or not. And we've got to get over ourselves. If we think we're going to find acceptance in the world.

The world hates the things of God. They approve those things which are evil in God's sight.

You're not going to get acceptance from people that are enemies of God. It's like in a battle, in a warfare, to sit there and go to the other side and try to do favors to the enemy.

Like, you know, the enemy is running out of bullets so let's go bring bullets over to them. So that they would like us and accept us and then people could stop dying.

You know what the enemy is going to do with those bullets you give them? Shoot you! That's what he's going to do.

And that's what they continue to do. With all these men like this that try to get acceptance from those who practice homosexuality.

Do they get it? No! It just gets those to sit there and say, oh, we're going to keep up the work.

We're getting more and more acceptance. But they're not looking to get along with God.

No, the way they get along with God is when you give them the truth. See, I started by telling you this story with James.

I told James the truth of God's word, the gospel. That even though I practice adultery of the mind with women and he practices adultery of the mind with men.

We both broke God's law. And in breaking God's law we both be guilty and both deserve eternity in a lake of fire.

However, God made a way of escape. And I shared with him the good news that Jesus Christ died on that cross to make a payment for sin.

That we could be set free. Now, when I got done talking to James, I like to shake the hand of my hecklers.

Those who are heckling me when I'm open air preaching. And I wanted to shake James' hand. His friends did not want him to do that.

I mean, they were grabbing him by the shoulder. Don't give in to this Christian. And they're holding him back and he kind of does a shoulder shrug.

And says, no, I'm going to shake this guy's hand. I mean, this guy treated me with respect. And he really gave me some things to think about.

And I really wanted to shake his hand. So he walks over. I jumped off my preaching box as he's walking over.

And I kind of had my hand out when I asked to shake his hand. And he walks over and he puts his hand out. And you know what

I did? I did what any good Christian would do, right? I pushed his hand away.

Yeah, I did, actually. And you know what I did next? I embraced him and gave him a hug. He wasn't expecting that.

And he turned to me and goes, I'm never going to forget you. I'm never going to forget this day. I said, you could forget all about me.

But don't forget the message that I shared with you. See, I'm willing to show enough love to overcome his prejudices against Christians.

Now, the hug may mean more to him than me. I don't know. But the reality is that we as Christians need to be looking what

Scripture says and not caving in to what the world wants the Bible to say because it doesn't like the

Bible. We have to stand on the truth of God's Word. Yes, God says homosexuality is a sin just like He says lying is a sin.

And we shouldn't sit there and say those who practice homosexuality are worse sinners than those that are liars because both are going to be judged by God.

So we have to keep that in mind. When we deal with this topic, we have to be sensitive to the fact that we're dealing with people who have been preconditioned to believe you hate them.

Therefore, show so much love that that overcomes their prejudices, but don't back down from the truth.

You see, we shouldn't be showing love by throwing out the truth.

That's not loving. That's actually hating on them because you don't care where they spend eternity because you'd rather them go to hell in their practice of sin than for them to not like you.

So what does the Bible say about homosexuality? Well, quite clear, it's wrong, it's shameful, it's dishonoring, it's impure.

That's what God's Word says. We don't have to go to the Old Testament. And the fact that there's

New Testament passages that are just as clear, if not clearer, on the issue of homosexuality?

Well, all that goes to show is that when we went from the Old Testament to the

New Testament, this law did not change. It was not something just for the Old Testament. God still says it's a sin.

Why? Because it's against His creation, against His created order. Now, if you disagree with us, you agree with us, you want to argue with us, that's fine.

You can email us at academy at strivingforeternity .org. Academy at strivingforeternity .org.

If you have any questions about the classes that we have here, there's a place to email.

You want to discuss some ideas, that's the place to go. Email us, let us know your thoughts, questions, concerns, anything.

We'll try to get back to you. But we're here to help to teach you how to rightly divide

God's Word. And we wanted to take this class to show on a hot topic issue how people are handling

God's Order, let me rephrase that, mishandling God's Word. We didn't have time to look in the rest of it where he talks about properly exegeting

God's Word, which is something he doesn't do. But we want to look into what

God's Word says. Now, we wrapped up these keys to interpretation. Now, we're going to start looking at, in the next classes, some different types of Bible study.

We look at God's Word, we want to study God's Word, we now know how to interpret it right.

Now the question is, okay, what are some different ways we can study? Topical studies, book studies, things like that.

We're going to look into those in the next few lessons that we have left. We'll finish up with those.

And so I encourage you to come back next week. I encourage you to enroll at the website down here for the academy, and then you can get a syllabus.

It will be sent to you, and you can pick one up. And you can have one, a syllabus of your very own.

It has all the notes in it and other things. But as we always do on this show is we want to encourage you to encourage other people.

Because, quite frankly, not enough of us get enough encouragement.

We say the most encouraging things about people after they're dead. So we need to say encouraging things beforehand.

And so I would like you guys this week to try to encourage Bill Adams from Sports Fan Outreach International.

That's his website down there, billadams, at sfoi .org, sportsfanoutreachinternational .org.

Well, the .org is the letters. That is also where you can sign up.

There's only a few spots left for the Super Bowl outreach. You can go to superbowloutreach .org.

Bill runs that. You can join us. I think we have 17 people, I think, on my team right now is what

I was told. So it's a pretty big team, but we can fit three or four more in.

So sign up. Tell them you want to be on my team. But what we are going to do is we're going to be going out.

Now, Bill Adams is probably one of the most organized guys to run an event like this.

I run events like this or spreading the fire events, Jersey Fire, Ohio Fire, NorCal Fire.

They're very difficult to plan. There's a lot of things that you got to think about and work through. It takes a bunch of us a lot of time to work through everything.

Bill does all of that. He works with lawyers to make sure that everyone knows so there's no legal issues and there's no problems.

And he goes through a lot of—I mean, this guy is super, super organized. And we want to encourage him because, you know what?

There's not too many people that look to do things with excellence like Bill does. And he really does things with excellence.

So I want you to encourage him. He runs a bunch of different sports events where they do outreaches at a lot of different sport events.

And I encourage you to find out about his ministry. See what he's doing. Maybe there's an event in your area that you can get involved.

Maybe coming to New York this—end of next month, yeah, it's end of January. So maybe that's, you know, too far from you.

But maybe you could do something in your area. Contact Bill and find out.

You can contact him on Facebook or through his website. And he'll be happy to hear some encouraging words from you guys.

He really is a man who—he's a man of prayer. I mean, when you get involved in the

Super Bowl outreach, he's got us praying like six months beforehand as the leaders, the team leaders.

And we're praying for every week for months. And then he has prayer for everyone that attends for months.

Prayer is an important thing with him. He gets up early, very early. He's stayed in my home. He gets up early and prays for hours.

And so he's a man of prayer. And good to learn from him. So I want to just encourage you to encourage him this week.

we'll see you next week. And remember to strive to make today an eternal day for the glory of God.