PRIDE: When a Nation Does what God Hates | Sermon 01/16/2022

Romans 1 and the Cultural Crisis Over Homosexuality

Today, I'm going to be in Romans chapter 1. If you have your Bibles, you can go ahead and turn there. As many of you may know, we are in a timely moment. Canada's Parliament recently took a moral nosedive on a very critical issue in our day.

Bill C -4 was recently put into effect, and essentially what that means is that, according to Canada's government, what they identify as conversion therapy has officially been criminalized. But the definition for conversion therapy that's been used in the making of this bill is essentially broad enough that if any pastor, brother or sister in Christ, or even a parent of a young one tried to convince their loved one to not act upon homosexual urges, that would be a criminal activity for them to try to do that.

And so that essentially seeks to dethrone and defame the gospel. It tries to put a muzzle on pastors throughout Canada. And so this very day, there are pastors all over the country and even the world who have said, we're going to take this particular Sunday, the 16th of January, 2022, and we're going to proclaim what Canadian parliament says we may not proclaim, which is from the word of God.

While our country becomes further divided on many important issues, amazingly, this one is becoming an issue that is seeing growing levels of approval in every social bracket. I saw a statistic recently that said that 84 of 18 to 35-year-olds, that's 84 of that important age group in America, believe that the government should sanction same-sex marriage.

It's a majority of people in every category, but those decision-makers of the next generation, 18 to 35-year-olds, 84%. There is almost no other issue in our culture that has such great agreement amongst the people.

But perhaps most concerning is that this issue is creeping its way into the Christian church. Some churches have decided to actively promote the gay pride movement, while a growing number of pastors have become hesitant to preach on or even mention this topic with the clarity it deserves.

So how are we as Christians to think about this issue? Well, with God's word open and with our hearts committed to it. I want to go ahead and look at Romans chapter 1 today. I think it'll be a helpful text as we try to uncover what it is that the Bible has for us regarding homosexuality today.

I'm going to go ahead and read through the text that we'll be covering. That's chapter 1, verses 18 through 32, and then I'll pray and then go back through and unpack a couple of verses at a time, concluding with five application points I think that we can take from that text.

So if you have Romans chapter 1, go ahead and go there. I'll read it out loud and then pray. Starting in verse 18. For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth.

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

Therefore, God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the creator who was blessed forever.

Amen. For this reason, God gave them up to dishonorable passions. For their women exchanged 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, 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, they not only do them but give approval to those who practice them.

Let's pray. Father, today as we open your word, we ask for clarity to understand what is written. Lord, help us to understand not only that it would help our knowledge grow, but that it would help us to love you more, to worship you better, to engage with the world around us with greater clarity.

Father, prepare us to deal with the trying times we're facing right now and those times that we expect could become increasingly hostile in the future. Help us to become so resolved around your truth that we can stand firm no matter what happens.

Father, please be with the pastors and the brothers and sisters in Christ in Canada today who are seeking to honor you to proclaim the whole counsel of your word to the world around them, to their brothers and sisters, and even to those who don't know you yet.

Father, please help them to be resilient to the folly that is taking place in that wicked government. And Father, please encourage them to stand strong and to be resilient to whatever may face them in the future.

We love you, Lord. Preserve their faith and help us with this word. And we pray these things in Jesus' good and holy name. Amen. Back to the starting point of the text today, verses 18 through 20. For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth.

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 so they are without excuse.

Humanity Suppresses the Truth and Deserves God’s Wrath

Now, we're going to fly through the text of this chapter looking at it in a very simple way. It's not difficult language. It's not hard to understand what the Apostle Paul is trying to convey. We all know that there is a God.

And that's a starting point that he lists here in this passage. We know God in such a way that we cannot feign ignorance. So if someone were to ask me, Rich, are you saying that there are no people that genuinely disbelieve in God?

No, I'm not saying that at all. I think that there are people today who genuinely don't believe. But this passage tells us that the only way that a person arrives at that state is by previously suppressing the truth.

To be sure, a person today could believe all kinds of lies. In fact, you need to be careful and know for yourself. You can convince yourself of all manner of lies. But that's what it would take to disbelieve in God.

You have to convince yourself he's not real. So in the end, God will not judge anyone who genuinely never knew that he existed. He will judge those who, by their unrighteousness, have suppressed the truth and have refused to accept the truth and so be saved.

And that is all of us. That's why it means no one is with an excuse. So first, again, we all know that there is a God. And second, we all deserve his just wrath. We deserve his judgment because of our ungodliness, because of our unrighteousness.

And now Paul tells us a bit about that unrighteousness. He unpacks what he has in mind. Verses 21 through 23. 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.

Idolatry Is the Root of Human Worship

Claiming to be wise, they became fools and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things. So what's the sinfulness referenced here?

Well, they stopped worshiping God. But notice, their worship did not cease altogether. It just transferred from God to something else. And this is important for us to remember. All people are worshipers.

We were literally made to worship. When God made Adam, placed him in the garden, he made him to work the garden. And that same word in Hebrew is also used for worship elsewhere in the Old Testament. It was an act of worship for Adam to do what he was commanded to do.

You and I follow in that same set of footsteps today that we worship wherever we go. Fish swim, birds sing, stars shine, winds blow, and humans worship. It's what we do. We are intrinsically and inherently worshipers.

This is why, if we were to find a previously undiscovered island in the South Pacific inhabited by an unknown people group, we would not have to wonder whether or not they worship some kind of deity. Rather, we could just ask the question as to which deity they worship.

And how can you know what people worship? Whatever gets your greatest attention and your greatest affection is what you worship. That is your God. It's easy for people today in our modern arrogance to cast aspersions on those ignorant ancient imbeciles that came before us for building their idols of wood and stone to represent animals, while we build them out of glass and aluminum and LEDs and scoff at them for their ignorance.

Yet, just like those ancient rubes, we all know God exists, and still we refuse to worship Him. But we find something else that we deem worthy to receive our worship instead. So what does God do as a result?

What repercussions are there for this insubordination? Verses 24 through 25 tell us,. Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves, because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who was blessed forever.

Amen. So what does God do? He gives them up. Because we all have exchanged the truth about God for a lie, exchanged worship of Him for worship of His stuff, God goes from giving us what we need to giving us what we want.

And that giving us what we want is God's wrath revealed. It is judgment. Like a spoiled child, oftentimes the worst thing that you can do for that child is to give her what she wants. This giving up, this turning us over language is used two more times in this passage.

But He makes it clear what God gives us up to. 26 and 27, through 27,. For this reason God gave them up to dishonorable passions. For their women exchanged 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. Men committing shameless acts with men and receiving in themselves the due penalty for their error.

Homosexual Practice in Romans 1 and Leviticus

So what does God give us up to? Dishonorable passions. And He goes on to define that here as homosexual activity. In this passage alone, in the New Testament, after the days of Jesus, in a letter written to Gentiles and not just religious Jews, God's Holy Spirit inspires the Apostle Paul to explicitly call out homosexual practice as sin in the eyes of God.

What God turns His creatures over to when they worship the creature rather than the Creator. Homosexual behavior is sin. And this is nothing new. It's not invented in the New Testament. It's not as though Paul just had a particular and personal vendetta.

This is building on Old Testament truths as well. Leviticus 18 .22 says,. You shall not lie with a male as with a woman. It is an abomination. Leviticus 20 .13 says,. If a man lies with a male as with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination.

That word is to-e-va. In Hebrew, it is especially utilized to point to the things that God has a particular disdain for. Now, you should know that over the past 10 to 15 years, there's been a shift in the debate between professing Christians that approve of homosexual behavior and those who disapprove of homosexual behavior.

The argument from the pro-homosexual behavior side used to be that this text in Romans 1 certainly does not condemn all homosexual behavior, just non-consensual sexual behavior or homosexual activity outside of monogamous committed relationships.

But those arguments have almost entirely been abandoned. You know why? Because these texts are so clear. They are genuinely undebatable. And that's why the argument has switched from, God didn't say that, to, well, we just don't agree.

Don't be surprised by this. This kind of thing happens all the time. That when the logic of one argument goes down in flames, the advocates just find another argument to justify their original position.

You see, the argument was not a genuine one. It was disingenuous from the beginning. It never was an argument. It was a lie. And that's exactly what verse 25 said. They exchanged the truth about God for a lie, something that is not true at all.

The problem was never ignorance or confusion. Sinful people want the lie more than the truth. And God judges us, often as people, by giving us the lie instead of the truth. God's Word is as clear on homosexual behavior as it is about murder.

It always has been and always will be sin, deserving of His just wrath, or as He says here, the due penalty for their error. Verses 28 through 32 conclude the chapter. They are 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, they not only do them, but give approval to those who practice them. There are plenty more sins that God turns us over to than just homosexuality, to be sure.

And this list is not even exhaustive. There are far more things than what I just listed here, as Paul expresses in this part of the chapter. But notice what he says in that final verse of this chapter.

Verse 32. They give approval to those who practice them. Does that sound familiar? Regarding homosexuality, this is what we are observing today, as you well know. This is no longer a private issue. It's not even a partisan one.

Nor is it one where you can expect to be afforded the dignity of holding your own contrary views privately. It is being paraded in the streets, literally, celebrated by our peers, and openly applauded in every institution in our nation.

And if it has not happened already, the day will almost surely come where it will be demanded of you and your children to pledge your loyalty to this agenda. And I do not believe that that is a stretch to say that that's where we are headed.

Five Applications for Christians Facing Pride

So what are we, as Christians, to do? I'm going to five application points from that rapid fire through the second half of Romans 1. First thing that we are to do as a result. Number one, tell the truth.

We are to be truth lovers, truth tellers. That's what we speak. That is what is to come off of our lips. As believers, we are absolutely committed to the truth. We hate lies as God hates lies. And we must display our love to others by being totally honest with them.

So if you're a non-believer today, if you're somebody who's even hearing this online or on the radio or podcast or something to that nature, and you identify as gay, bi, trans, or something else like that, you need to know what we, as Christians, believe about these things.

You may even just be a simple cultural advocate of this movement. And you don't have to believe what the Christians believe about these things in order for us to love and care for and desire to serve you.

I spent time talking with Pastor Wade today earlier and chatting about this exact point. He and I are in perfect agreement on this one, that our desire would be, if we met a non-believer who identified as gay, come hear the gospel proclaimed.

We'd love for you to hear this. We want for you to know what truth is. You are an image bearer of God, made for his worship. And we will give you the respect of being authentic and truthful with you as believers.

But we have biblical convictions that motivate us to refuse to practice cunning or to tamper with God's word. But by an open statement of the truth, we would commend ourselves to your conscience in the sight of God.

So to the unbeliever who we would invite to hear the gospel proclaimed, brace yourself, because as truth-tellers, we will shamelessly, unreservedly, try to compel you to believe in Jesus. And if you haven't done that yet, you need to, because you are a dirty, rotten sinner as we all are.

And the Lord Jesus Christ declares that to us. All of us are like sheep. We have gone astray. No one seeks after God. We have all turned aside from him. There are no one righteous. No, not one. All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.

And the Bible declares that the cost to pay for our sin is death. But God demonstrates his great love for us in this, that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. This means that although you deserve God's just wrath poured out on you and hell forever because of your sin, if you repent of your sins and turn in faith to Jesus, you can have eternal life.

And all of the punishment due to you will have been placed on Jesus at the cross and will have been dealt with definitively. You will be declared justified before the Lord, righteous in his standing. You will not be judged in the final analysis according to your wicked deeds, but according to Christ's perfect and righteous ones.

And the only way that can happen again is by faith in Jesus alone. If you haven't done that, you need to repent of sins and turn in faith to Jesus today. Don't let another hour go by without talking to a believer about this, that you can be saved.

But even if you're not there yet, you are welcome to hear this proclaimed repeatedly. The unbeliever is welcome to come and to hear the gospel proclaimed, but the agenda of the world is not welcome here.

And here a distinction needs to be made between the individual person who lives a homosexual life and the cultural war machine that is driving our entire nation over a cliff. Do not believe the fairy tale that our nation's cultural elites want what's best for you on either side of the political aisle.

They have proven time and time again that you are just a number to them, a pawn that they will seek to use for their own political and personal gains. And if you doubt that, then just try to step out of line for even a second and they will not merely turn their back on you, they will pounce and eat you alive.

But amongst believers will be a place of refuge for truth, a place where even at great cost, you will hear what is true. So number one application, as we face these lies of our day, brothers and sisters, tell the truth, be committed to say what is true and do not let even a partial lie past your lips.

Number two, brothers and sisters, hold your churches and pastors accountable. There are many churches that claim that homosexual behavior is sin, but play footsie under the table with the gay pride movement.

Romans 12, 2 says, do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind. Those are the options. You can either be conformed and become more and more like the world or you can be transformed into Christ likeness.

Those are the options. And Christ's church should look decidedly different than the world. It is good and right for Christians to hold their pastors accountable to teaching rightly on these topics and don't tolerate any wiggling on this front.

Do not support churches or church leaders who roll over on this stuff. As the Apostle Paul says in 1 Corinthians chapter 14, when he's dealing with a whole host of errors taking place in their place of worship.

He says if anyone does not recognize this, he is not recognized. We have biblical precedent for not recognizing churches that play to the world. There is absolutely no room in Jesus's church for this agenda.

Like every other idol, every other altar to false gods in the Bible, it deserves to be burnt to a smoldering crisp. The godly kings of the Old Testament were commended for tearing down the high places, not just ignoring them.

Because although the people loved worshiping false gods among those idols, that worship was destroying their nation. We have New Testament precedent for this. We have Old Testament precedent for this to refuse to let cultural demands gain a footing in the church.

You may remember the New Testament book of Galatians. Remember the dominant force set against the church during the days of the New Testament was not the Romans. That would come later. It was the Jewish people.

They commissioned the attacks on the early church. They were the greatest threat to the New Testament church as it is. And they demanded that Christians must be circumcised. The Jewish culture was advancing its agenda and they were doing so into the church.

And as long as Christians were generally willing to comply, there could be peace. Galatians 6 .12 says, It is those who want to make a good showing in the flesh who would force you to be circumcised and only in order that they may not be persecuted for the cross of Christ.

You know, that it was not sinful for a person to be circumcised. But Paul knew this was a gospel issue. It was a hill worthy of dying on. Galatians 1 .10, he says, For am I now seeking the approval of man or of God?

Or am I trying to please man? If I were still trying to please man, I would not be a servant of Christ. In our day, the circumstances are different, but the motivations are the same. And there are pastors and seminary professors and evangelical leaders all over our country who are getting exposed by this cultural movement.

They prove by their actions that they are more concerned about what the world says about them than what God thinks of them. They are scared to death of what the world thinks of them. We should be more like the Apostle Paul who said in Galatians 2 amidst that heresy, We did not yield in submission to them for a moment.

Not one foot of ground should be yielded in this regard. For far too long, churches have been trying to please the world. James 4 .4 says, You adulterous people, do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God?

Therefore, whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God. The church needs to make war on this agenda, not cuddle with it. We must get it out of our minds that we can please both God and our sinful fallen world around us.

It's not going to happen. We must stop trying. Churches are supposed to be the light in this world. But every day we hear of more and more churches and Christian leaders who surrender to this godless crusade.

To be clear, under no circumstances should churches or individual Christians for that matter fly gay pride flags outside their homes or church buildings, march in gay pride parades, or otherwise approve of what God calls, in His word, an abomination.

Pastor Wade is one of my dearest friends in this world. I trust him as a pastor and as a Christian brother. And he and I agree on so many individual and particular doctrines. We've walked through so many things together.

We have such a robust agreement. There's only a few minor little details he still gets wrong. But at the end of the day, our commitment to this level of approach to this worldliness binds us together in such unity.

We at the Mission Church are so eager to partner together with the Apologia Utah Church in order to combine forces in this regard. It's one of the things that we love most deeply about this church. It's conviction to stand on what is true.

We're so grateful to be amongst brothers and sisters as you are. For the honor of our Lord and for the love of people, Christ's local churches must be immovable here. Now, I hear the objection ringing in my head.

Some people, some Christians may claim, but Rich, we're commanded to love our neighbor. And when we reject the movement, we are essentially telling them that we hate them. Brothers and sisters, that is a bold-faced lie.

The first application point I said was tell the truth. Number two, hold your churches and pastors accountable. Second, refuse... Third, excuse me, refuse to believe worldly lies. Refuse to believe them.

This is a place to draw on all of your internal stubbornness. We will not believe one lie coming from the world. We will be very skeptical. And just like the villagers who have heard the boy cry wolf 10 ,000 times, we know when the worldly leaders and the influencers have lost all credibility and we are not falling for it anymore.

It is good and right for Christians to be very skeptical of the most dominant influencers in our world. We must not believe the lie that says, in order to love your gay neighbor, you must also love the gay pride movement.

Jesus once said that the first and second greatest commandments are to love the Lord and neighbor, in that order. He even told us to love and pray for our enemies. The Christian faith then is one that is driven by a radical love for God and for people, sinners of every stripe.

But God alone gets to tell us what love is and how to show it. We are not to look to worldly opinions and surveys to find the answers here, to get direction on how to love them. It is not as though Jesus said, love your neighbor and when the disciples asked how, He said, they'll tell you.

The world has lost all credibility regarding issues of love and sex and gender and peace and life. We ought not seek to ask them, what should we do to make you feel loved by God and by us? So to the gay pride flag-waving Christian, Jesus commands us to love all people, even Nazis.

But that doesn't mean we should fly a swastika outside of our homes or churches to prove that we love them. We love the people, but we must abominate the movement. This isn't hard to understand. Each week, we have people on the streets sharing the gospel who hate abortion and love women.

Andrew just shared that a little bit earlier about, come, join us, come on out there, help us to deal with this. We have other groups of believers from both of our churches who gather together regularly to share the gospel to Mormons on the street, any random stranger they pass by.

Why? Because they hate Mormonism and love Mormons. In fact, love for the people is what compels us to hate what is killing them. So we do not grant that lie, that in order to love our gay neighbor, we must approve of the gay pride movement.

We must not believe it for a minute. Absolutely no part of that God-hating, life-wrecking agenda may gain a foothold in our churches or in our homes. Romans chapter 12 verse 9 says this, Let love be genuine.

Abhor what is evil. Hold fast to what is good. That is genuine love. We are to abhor the machine. This political machine is one of the most bigoted, discriminatory, prejudiced, and classist movements in the history of our nation, and it is destroying people.

People that we are commanded to love and to serve. We must tell our kids how awful this stuff really is. We must start young. Many Christian parents have failed their kids by being afraid to engage with the topics of sexuality.

There is a God-honoring way to talk about it with even to your young kids. Talk to older brothers and sisters in Christ about this. Draw on the wisdom of others around you. Figure out ways to do it, but don't just forsake it into the hands of the world or wait until they finally begin asking questions.

We are to lead our kids in understanding these things. If at all possible, get them out of state-controlled schools where they are daily being discipled to love what God hates. Train them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord.

This movement has grabbed the name Pride. What a perfect name. Proverbs 16, 18. Pride goes before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall. James 4, 6 says, God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble.

We may not give approval to those who practice sin. It is not kindness, and it is not loving for us to do so. In order to combat these lies, we are going to need to do something else, and that's number four on our list.

Fourth thing we can apply. Develop a biblical theology of sexuality. Figure out what the Bible says about sex and gender. Understand what Jesus has to say. Know what the Bible says about these things, and know what the world says about these things.

What if your lesbian neighbor develops a close relationship with you and then wants you to attend her wedding? What will you do? What if your third grader comes home and shows you his reading assignment, which is a book extolling the virtues of transgenderism?

What do you do if your boss requires you to wear a rainbow t-shirt for Pride Month 2022? What if you are expected to attend gender fluidity training and in the end express agreement with those views in order to keep your job?

You know there are far more issues that I could possibly cover now and even in ten more sermons than this, but it is so wonderful that we can rely on God's Word. We aren't expected to invent beliefs off the cuff, in the heat of the moment.

So start reading and studying and asking yourself these questions now. Hopefully sermons like this one provide helpful prompting to get engaged, start learning, understand, figure out what you're going to do before it happens.

This is the way that any general in combat prepares his troops. Well, what if they come at us from the left flank? I don't know, we'll figure it out when we get there. No, no, you don't want that guy leading your charge into battle.

Process through what to do when those days come. There's so much more that could be said here, but if you think that you can just not think through these things and hope that if someday you find yourself confronted with a genuine challenge, you can just wing it.

I don't know about you, I don't trust myself well enough for that. You may be sorely mistaken in those moments. Ankle-deep theology will not prepare you to survive a flood tomorrow. So find a unit of trusted Christian brothers and sisters who can help you think through these things.

You don't need scholars, experts on this, just faithful believers who love God's word more than the lies of the world. That's what you need, faithful brothers and sisters who are more committed to what Jesus says than what any influencer of today says.

It's just that simple. There may even be fellow Christians you know who struggle with this stuff. They struggle with these impulses. And it would greatly benefit them for you to have a deep, steady knowledge of these things that you may serve and care for your brothers and sisters well.

On that note, to the believer who finds himself or herself facing temptations of a homosexual nature, a distinction needs to be made between homosexual behavior and homosexual impulses. It is true that we as believers need God's help with both our sins we have already committed and those we are tempted to commit.

But I see no biblical reason to believe that a Christian could not feel desires for a member of the same sex. And I don't doubt that those feelings could feel entirely natural or instinctive to that person.

But technically, the argument over whether or not a person could be born with it is irrelevant on this point. All Christians, all Christians are born with a corrupt view of sexuality. All of us are born with a corrupt view of sexuality.

And we are to repent of whatever ungodly view we have and align our lives to what God says about sexuality. And so we must be very careful to not lump our Christian brothers and sisters that struggle with this in with all the other wicked glorification of sin that we see in the world today.

1 Corinthians 6, 9 -11 says this. This is beautiful for anyone who's ever struggled through these things. Or do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived.

Neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor men who practice homosexuality, nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God.

And such were some of you. But you were washed. You were sanctified. You were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God. There is no such thing as a gay Christian. If you are redeemed by your faith in Jesus Christ, justified, regenerated, being sanctified, being conformed into the image of our God's Holy Son, you are just a Christian.