The Gay Christian Movement: Part I (Audio Begins at 1:26)

to be balanced and to always speak with words seasoned, as it were, with grace.

And so, Lord, give us understanding this evening. May we not just take a few notes and feel a little better about how we believe, but may we be encouraged to engage our society, a society that is intent upon damaging itself by rejecting your truth.

May we be a people who are used by you to be light and salt. We pray in Christ's name.

Amen. This clearly is a subject that only a few decades ago would have rarely been the subject of conversation.

I certainly can imagine that my grandparents never attended a conference or even a sermon that had any reference to the, quote, gay

Christian movement. And yet, those of you who may have been keeping track of the news even this day may have read the same article that I read.

As you know, ever since the Supreme Court struck down the Defense of Marriage Act, there has been a consistent overturning of every voter -established definition of marriage as between a man and a woman in the various states in which this has taken place.

Kentucky, I believe, was yesterday. And if you read the comments from the judge, you know that it is becoming established thought in a large portion of our society that to believe what every president of the

United States up until the current president believed, what every founder of the

United States believed, what every senator of the United States up until the past ten years, in regards to human sexuality and marriage, to believe that is to be guilty not only of bias, not only of prejudice, but of bigotry and discrimination.

That to even discuss the issue is now being identified as hatred and a basis for legal action.

I have said for many, many years that those promoting this movement will not be happy with equal rights.

They want Uber rights. And as we have seen and as we see in, for example, the state of California, today it is not enough to be tolerant.

Instead you must celebrate what was once considered to be immorality in our land.

And now today we have even something more to deal with, and that is with the release of a couple of books over the past couple of years, one by Justin Lee called

Torn, one by a professor from the

Christian Reformed Camp by the name of Brownson on the

Bible, Gender and Sexuality, and then probably the one you have heard of just over the past month and a half, two months,

Matthew Vine's book God and the Gay Christian. These are not certainly the only books, but they have received a tremendous amount of public attention and present the idea that the

Bible does not condemn same -sex attraction, same -sex unions, same -sex activity, that no one in the

Bible knew what we know today, and therefore those prohibitions in the

Scriptures cannot be made relevant to something that the people who wrote the

Scriptures didn't know anything about. That is the primary argument of what is being called the gay

Christian movement. Now before I launch into a description of these things and a response to these things,

I want to speak to you very pastorally. I am a pastor, though my primary work is as an apologist.

I am an elder in my church. I preach regularly. I teach regularly. I think that is important for apologists to have that kind of grounding in the church.

I want to address right up front, because the words that we speak here will be heard by many people.

We will obviously be placing this and tomorrow evening's talk on the

Internet, and therefore there will be people all across our country and indeed the world who may listen to what we say here this evening.

We need to recognize that there are individuals who experience same -sex attraction.

There are individuals within the church that experience same -sex attraction. There may be people here this evening that experience same -sex attraction.

That was something we didn't admit for a long time. We didn't want to talk about it for a long time. But let's be honest with ourselves.

We know that, for example, pornography is a plague within the organized church.

We know that there are all sorts of behaviors and desires that the

Bible warns us against, that people who sit in the pews who are true believers in Christ experience temptations in those areas.

Let's use a less volatile example. There are men and women who are followers of Christ, who regularly fight the temptation to experience tremendous anger.

The Bible tells us not to let the sun go down upon our anger, that we are not to be angry without just cause.

It addresses the issue of anger and says that we are to allow the Lord to bring about justice.

There are all these things, but we almost never talk about it. And almost no one would say that just because someone is tempted to anger and may experience anger, that that means that person is not a

Christian. And so, why do we treat homosexuality differently, is what many people would say.

Well, partly because I have yet to encounter the angry Christian movement that would identify anger as a gift from God that is to define me, that I'm to embrace it, that is to be something that I am to see as a gift from God.

That might be one part of the reason. But we also know, and I'll speak to my fellow male believers right now, we also know that I, as a married man, whenever I experience lust in my heart, and you can almost not interact with the world, you can almost not go on Facebook anymore without being assaulted by images specifically designed to create lust in your heart.

As a married man, it is a disordered desire on my part when

I experience lust. God has given me a beautiful wife. We've had children, now we have grandchildren.

She's the wife of my youth. We've been married for 32 years. And so, there is something disordered in my sexuality when

I experience lust for someone other than my wife. I'm supposed to desire her.

The Bible tells me to rejoice always in the wife of my youth. And so, all of us experience a brokenness in our sexuality.

It can take different forms. As a married man, we experience that kind of brokenness when we have that kind of lust.

Once again, we don't kick people out of the church for experiencing those kinds of desires that come from the fact that we live in a fallen world.

All of us experience that kind of brokenness to one extent or another.

And, I would say that Christ is active by His Spirit and His Word in conforming us to the image of Christ and repairing that brokenness and bringing conviction when we experience those desires that we should not experience.

Giving us insight into what the Bible says, for example, in Hebrews chapter 13.

Let marriage be held in honor by all and the marriage bed undefiled. God established marriage.

It was the very first institution amongst mankind that God established. It's to be honored.

And so, we gain insight into what that means. I gain insight into what that means to honor my wife.

And she gains insight into what that means to honor her husband. And so, the

Spirit and the Word are at work to repair that brokenness. So, we recognize that Christians experience temptation and desire that is against God's will.

But, hopefully you can see immediately that this then highlights what the real dividing line is between one that the church should be ministering to, that the church should be willing to assist, that the church wants to have in its fellowship, and those that we must exclude.

And it's very simply this. If you experience, if I as a man experience lust, then what is the proper

Christian response to that? Is it for me to embrace that, allow it to define me, and then for me to demand that the

Christian gospel and the Christian faith adapt itself to my nature as a lustful man?

The person who will come to Christ and will say, I bring my brokenness to you,

I realize that it is not right in your sight, I want to do what is right in your sight, that is the person who will find grace and forgiveness.

But, the person who comes to Christ and says, I refuse to accept your authority in defining what is right and what is wrong in my desires, my behaviors, and my actions.

Instead, I want to adapt the Christian faith. I demand that the

Christian faith adapt to me, because I have decided that these desires are the way

God made me, and therefore need to be celebrated by everyone. There's a huge dividing line between those two people.

The one who is willing to recognize that God defines the human being that He has made, and therefore recognizes the fundamentally disordered nature of the desire of a male for a male, or a female for a female, and says,

I do not want these attractions, and I will not be defined by these attractions, is the person that we want to reach out to.

And let's admit, we haven't been very good at doing it. But, the person who says, no,

I am defined by these. Again, there's a fundamental worldview issue here.

A Christian recognizes that we are defined by God's creative act. The world believes we are defined by who we are in our experiences and our desires.

And so, there's a fundamental overthrow of the biblical view of man in a person who would say, well, this is how

I am, and therefore you must adapt to me. You must accept me as I am.

That person has allowed their desires to define their nature, rather than allowing scripture to define what their nature is, and therefore cast light upon the nature of their desires.

The gay Christian movement, obviously, is in the second camp. They want to change the

Christian message, and I will argue by the end of tomorrow evening, fundamentally alter the gospel of Jesus Christ, all based upon what

I have observed over a number of years as the overriding desire of this sector of the homosexual community.

And I don't even like the term homosexual community. I don't like the idea of identifying a community based upon sexual desire.

But since it seems to be a term that now is absolutely unavoidable, a small portion of that community,

I believe, is fundamentally seeking to change the very nature of the gospel of Jesus Christ.

They may deny that, but I think I can provide a very strong basis and evidence for that.

Again, that will be probably more toward tomorrow evening. So, this pastoral word is just this.

If you experience same -sex attraction, and yet you refuse to allow that to define who you are, then you are in a position of listening to what the

Word of God has to say and finding help and assistance from the Church.

But if you come to the Church and say, this is who I am, and I will not accept the authority of God to define right and wrong,

I will demand that you define right and wrong the way I do. That's where the fundamental conflict comes in.

Now, having said that, I would imagine if... And again, this is a subject that is now so commonly on the television, on the

Internet. It is not only a part of the entertainment industry, but now you have it entering into every aspect of our culture.

You have probably heard that there are only six verses in the

Bible that address homosexuality. It has become,

I am confident, having debated a number of advocates of homosexuality, both homosexual and heterosexual,

I truly believe that there has been collaboration amongst the leading presenters of this perspective to press this idea that of all the thousands and thousands of verses in the

Bible, only six address homosexuality. What's the fundamental assertion being made there without stating it?

This is a minor issue. And the Church is majoring on minors.

Just get over it. Six verses out of 34 ,000 or however many there are?

Come on, what's wrong with you people? Why are you willing to be on the wrong side of history for only six verses?

Whenever you hear that kind of argumentation, I hope you see straight through it. Because that is not how the

Bible is interpreted. That's not how we interpret Scripture. And if something is mentioned six times in Scripture, it's not going to be mentioned in a vacuum.

The reality is this. From Genesis to Revelation, every statement, every passing reference to the subject of marriage, to the subject of God's creatorship of mankind, is an affirmation of heterosexuality.

There is nothing positive said anywhere in the pages of Scripture concerning homosexual relationships of any kind.

And even though there are aberrant forms of marriage, we see polygamy in the

Bible. And we see the heartbreak that it brought.

But as we're going to see from the lips of Jesus, that was never God's perfect intention for mankind.

The reality is that we have allowed ourselves to be pushed into a defensive mode.

Yes, those six verses, we have to look at them. Because it seems about every month a new book comes out from some scholar, some somebody, revising the meaning of those texts.

And it is certainly disheartening to me that I see a lot of Christians very much confused by that reality.

We shouldn't be. We shouldn't be. Those six texts do say what we've always said they said.

You can try to revise them all you want. We're going to discover that in reality they do actually, and there are many homosexuals who admit, homosexual scholars admit, the

Bible is absolutely negative toward homosexuality. There's no question about that, but we will need to look at them.

But what we miss, and where we, I think, fail, is when we focus only upon those six, we're telling the world that we only have a negative response to homosexuality.

That's bad. Well, why is it bad? In reality, there is a tremendous amount of beautiful and positive teaching in the scripture that explains why there had to be those six verses, which are pretty much just stated in passing.

Because if you really listen to the biblical text, then you already know why it's fundamentally disordered for one man to lust after another man, because that, in essence, is narcissism.

It's falling in love with the mirror. When you look at the creation narratives that Jesus pointed us to, you discover that when

God creates Eve from the side of Adam and brings her to him, the first thing that happens, gentlemen, is that Adam breaks out in poetry.

Did you ever notice that? For those of you who mock poetry, you need to recognize that the very first thing that Adam did when he saw

Eve, look it up, even in your own Bible, it will be set apart as poetry. He broke into poetry, because that was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen.

And it's perfectly right for a man to view his wife in that way. And it's because she is kenegdo.

She is a helper corresponding to him. He had seen all the animals.

He had seen the maleness and femaleness. But nowhere amongst all of that created order was one that was kenegdo, corresponding to him and yet different.

And so when he sees Eve, his not -yet -sin -clouded mind automatically recognizes the perfection of the relationship that can exist with this one who is made in the image of God.

And yet, when is the image of God in us most clearly and beautifully seen?

When the man and the woman come together, they're united in marriage, and the result of that marriage is what?

More creatures made in the image of God? More life? Is there a more beautiful picture than the beaming mother holding the newborn babe, and the father standing there looking down, protecting, providing, and feeling such a sense of pride?

All of us who are parents, now all of us who are grandparents, cannot help but remember what that feeling was like.

And so, there's so much positive. Let's take a look. Turn with me please to Matthew chapter 19.

Matthew chapter 19, and I will put it on the screen for you as well.

Well, I won't, but the magic man in the back will do that. So often we hear it said,

Jesus never addressed homosexuality. Well, if what you mean by that is that terms like arsenokoites or related terms that are used in the

New Testament are not to be found on the lips of Jesus in the New Testament, that is true. But it is so shallow and so facile to think that because Jesus did not specifically address a subject that was an issue of absolute unanimity in his day amongst all

Jews, there is not a shred of evidence that anyone for centuries before or after Jesus ever promoted anything like what we're experiencing today.

Why on earth would he address it? There would be no reason for him to do so unless you take the gay

Christian perspective. And this is a question that I have wanted to ask.

I've been trying to get Matthew Vines to debate. He said he would.

When he first did his video, if any of you have not seen it, I did a five hour response to it. Well, his is an hour long.

Mine was four hours responding to it, so five hours total. And before his book came out, he said, yeah, once the book's out, we'll debate.

Now the book's out and he won't respond to anything anymore. And here's one of the reasons why.

Why will Matthew Vines not debate? Because one of the questions I would ask Matthew Vines is if he's saying that homosexuality is blessed by God and that the desire for monogamous, lifelong relationships between two men and two women is acceptable and proper in God's sight.

Here's a simple question. Matthew, what do you believe about Jesus? Do you believe he was truly the Son of God?

Do you believe that he truly was the creator in human flesh? If so, then he knew about people like you.

He knew there were people like you in his day. He looked into the eyes of people like you in his day and he talked about marriage, but he never spoke a word to try to overthrow the consensus view that denied to you the very thing you're demanding now.

Really? I think that's why he won't debate. Because there are no answers to those questions.

Here in Matthew 19, you know what the context is. There was a debate amongst the two great rabbinical schools in that day about the nature of divorce.

The schools of Hillel and Shammai would stand upon the street corners and they would debate.

One of those schools had a very liberal view and one had a very strict view. In other words, while both allowed for divorce, one basically said that you can divorce for any reason at all.

If your wife burns the toast, if there's anything in her that's displeasing to you, write her a certificate of divorce and it's over with.

The other school said, no, there needs to be specific violation of God's law involved.

Some type of adultery situation like that. And so what has happened at the beginning of Matthew 19 is the

Jews figure, let's get Jesus into our debate. Let's paint him into one of the two schools.

Jesus, in his answer, as is so often the case, demonstrates that he will not fall into the trap that has been laid for him and in the process gives us tremendous teaching.

Beginning of verse 4, And he answered and said, Now you'll notice on the screen

I have the New American Standard there and the New American Standard indicates

Old Testament citations to the use of all capitals, which has become a problem in using the NASB electronically because when you use all capitals it means you're screaming.

And so on blog articles and stuff like that, when you quote the NASB, people think that you've become a

King James only fundamentalist Baptist and you're screaming at everybody. And that's not really the case. The point is, made them male and female comes from Genesis 1.

And said, and then this comes from Genesis 2. Now can I just very briefly in passing point something out?

Jesus strings together as God's very speech a quotation from Genesis 1 and Genesis 2.

You go to almost any seminary in our land and you will be told that those two sections of Scripture are written by different people at different times and believe different things.

Jesus didn't seem to have that problem. And he recognized that all of it was

God speaking. And said, for this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife and the two shall become one flesh.

So they are no longer two but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let no man separate.

Now, when we are told that Jesus never addressed the issue of homosexuality, whenever you hear anybody say that, you are talking to an ignorant person or a deceived person or an ignorant deceived person.

All possibilities are there. But so often what these individuals will do is they will quote things, they've read on websites.

How many of you remember the famous scene in the West Wing? The Dr.

Laura scene. Anybody remember the Dr. Laura scene? There was a scene in the West Wing a number of years ago where the president goes after this

Dr. Laura character by absolutely demonstrating the most ridiculous ignorance of the holiness code that I've ever seen.

But because Hollywood did it, it's quoted over and over and over and over and over again.

And the sad thing about it, because we'll be looking at these, Lord willing, as time allows, is that if we as Christians honored the

Old Testament law the way our Savior did, all of us would be able to instantly refute that argumentation that was given then.

The fact of the matter is, I would say the vast majority of evangelicals in the United States have never read

Leviticus. Or if they started, they got to the part about leprosy and gave up.

And so this kind of bad argumentation can be repeated over and over and over again.

What you have here is Jesus interpreting the scriptures that he himself, by the

Spirit of God, inspired. And he says to these men,

Have you not read? He again points them back to the authority of the scriptures themselves.

That he who created them from the beginning made them male and female.

Now, you know that we now live in a day where we can't even talk about male and female anymore.

The most common sense recognition of the binary nature of our createdness is now completely up for grabs in Western culture.

And there's a reason for it. It's found right there, that he who created them.

Our culture has no creator. Our law no longer has a creator. This system, this constitutional republic, the founders themselves said, can only function for a moral, ethical, and religious people.

We are now seeing, in the younger generation, the first fully secularized generation.

And they can't tell the difference between male and female. How many options were offered?

What was it? Facebook or somebody? 38 options for gender? Was that the number?

Something like that? I can't even begin to list all of them. But we now have entire cities, counties, and states where, by law, your 12 -year -old girl can go into a bathroom with a 38 -year -old man.

And all he's got to do is say, well, I identify as a female. That is an absolute corruption of simple common sense.

It is absurd on its face. And the whole reason is, there's no creator any longer in our society.

What we're seeing today could not have happened without Charles Darwin. Couldn't happen. That he who created them,

Jesus, believed God created man. Not that God just started a process that resulted in man.

He created them, male and female. There was a special act of creation that defines humankind, and I submit to you that if you don't have an ultimate authority that defines humankind, you're going to fall back upon humankind itself, and the result will be chaos and death.

And that's what we're seeing. Jesus believed in the creator. And he believed

God created man, male and female. Humankind, male and female.

And it's good, and it's right. The feminization of men and the masculinization of women is evil.

It's wrong. If you as a woman ever feel less because the world looks at you, because you happen to love raising your children and love supporting your husband and love fulfilling those maternal desires that are yours, please, don't look at what the world says about you.

Look at what God says. He gifted you to do that. He made you that way. Men, I know.

I mean, they are kicking kids out of school today for going, really?

Can you imagine a state of this nation 30 years from now? We won't have a military. I hope you know how to make borscht, because the people who have a military will be ruling us.

It happens to be good, by the way. I taught in Ukraine earlier this year. It's good. Good stuff.

But I don't want to have that as my primary food, by the way.

He made them male and female. It's good. It's proper. It's right. Don't apologize. Because remember, the other side, we have a big advantage.

They're still made in the image of God. They may suppress that knowledge. They may deny that knowledge. They're still made in the image of God, and they know.

There's a conscience in there, and when you speak the truth, it resonates with that conscience. When they lie to us, there's no resonation within our conscience that what they're saying is true, because it isn't.

There is a truth. It's not a matter of public vote. The Bible does not say blessed is the nation who votes

God as the Lord. It's blessed is the nation who has God as the

Lord. For this reason, a man shall leave his father and his mother.

There's the family. There's a father. There's a mother. You say, oh, but that's so often in this sin -sick world falls apart.

You're right. It does. That doesn't change what we should be striving for.

It's a tragedy. It's a tragedy when a man who is a soldier falls in battle, and the community pulls together.

Why? Because now you have a boy without a father, a daughter without a father, and the community wants to pull together to meet that need, because we recognize that in this fallen world, sometimes parents die, and sometimes mom gets sick, and she dies.

And so others try to come in and to help with the daughter, to help with the son.

But now our society has become so morally and ethically depraved that we are saying that we should allow marriages where children can't be brought into the world through that.

We have to borrow from some other source, of course, because it can't create life. But children will be put in situations where purposefully, on purpose, they will never have the balanced, necessary example of a father and a mother.

What used to be a tragedy we now enshrine as that which is good. It's judgment, my friends.

It's judgment. For this reason, a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.

Didn't David have many wives? Yeah, look at the pain it brought into his experience. What about Abraham and Sarah and his concubines?

Yeah, look at what happened there. Look at what happened with Ishmael. Look at what happened with Isaac. From the beginning,

God's intention, which is then mirrored in Christ and the church, is something

I got to see. I got to celebrate my parents' 50th wedding anniversary before I met them.

And there's something awesome about that. There's something wonderful.

I mean, first of all, those of you who are married know that's a testament to God's grace. Because God has to give you both grace.

I've only got 18 years to go to my 50th. I hope she makes it.

Because it's not easy. But we look at that, and we just know that's good.

That's right. It was sad. My daughter worked for a number of years at Starbucks, and my wife would go in to get coffee.

I can't stand coffee. I'm sorry for those of you who just are addicted to it. Cinnamon?

Almost anything with cinnamon in it. I'm good. That's awesome. But I can't stand the taste of coffee.

But my wife would go in, and they'd see her, and they'd see

Summer and my wife talking. And they couldn't believe that that was actually her mom, because my wife made me sign an agreement in my sleep, shortly after we got married, evidently, that I would do all the aging for the couple.

And I have fulfilled my duties well. And so my wife is beautiful and looks like she's 20 years younger than I am now.

And then they'd start asking her about it. Wow, I just can't believe you.

So does your dad live here? Yeah? Really?

Really? Yeah. Yeah, they're still married. They've been married for, say, back then, 28 years, her life.

They're just shocked. Sad. In fact, when she was in a public high school, she wanted to go there.

She had been in a Christian one. As she put it, I'd prefer my pagan straight up. Thank you very much. And it was good for her to do that.

And in her P .E. class, they had to fill out these cards. She was the only girl in her

P .E. class living with her natural parents. Only one. Only one.

I know that sin has disrupted this purpose.

But what Jesus is saying, you don't lose sight of God's intention simply because sin so often keeps us from experiencing it.

You don't do that. That's what we've done. We've decided, well, nobody can do that anymore, so we'll just go with anything.

We have allowed the utter desecration of the first institution

God made amongst man. He shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife.

My friends, this is the only union that God blesses.

There is no other union. Oh, you can have close friendships, but you don't become one flesh.

There can be two men like David and Jonathan who experience a deep, close, personal relationship without it ever becoming sexual, despite the perverted thoughts of those who try to turn that into a homosexual relationship.

There are women who develop such close relationships that they are like sisters and they experience deep love, lifelong love for one another, but they don't become one flesh.

This joining is not just sexual, but it does not avoid that either. It includes it.

They become one flesh, and that changes the man and that changes the woman, and every person in this room and every person watching this knows exactly what

I'm talking about. Our society finally figured it out when they wrote books called

Men Are From Mars and Women Are From Venus, but that really was not something that we needed to be told about because every man who has been married for 24 hours has already figured that out, and so has every woman.

We don't think the same. We don't have the same ideas about bathrooms, kitchens, all sorts of things.

Now, obviously, from my perspective, only men think rationally and women don't, but the point is we're different.

And that means I have had to change.

Now, I continue fighting that, and most difficulties in marriage come from finding where the balance between proper change and improper change is, but the reality is when you live with one of them, you are changed.

Ironically, there's all sorts of studies right now that are coming out that demonstrate that women have a civilizing effect upon men.

There aren't too many married men running around in street gangs.

Most of those guys are not married. They've not made a commitment to love, honor, cherish, and provide for.

And ladies, we have an effect on you too. We might actually help you to control your emotions once in a while, to help you to recognize that sometimes you've got to do things that emotionally don't feel good, but long -term it's much better.

The point is you don't fall in love with a mirror image. The two that become one flesh are two who are different, not the same.

I cannot become one flesh with a mirror image. It's physically impossible.

I don't have to become graphic to point out that on any logical, rational basis, when you look at male anatomy and female anatomy, they go together.

Male and male and female and female don't work, can't work, and will never produce life, but can produce a whole lot of death.

But even beyond the physical, the union that is spoken of here includes the physical, it includes the correspondence, but it also includes that mental and that spiritual level that when you see those old couples, they've been married for 50, 60,

I saw a picture of a couple that had been married for 82 years. They seem to be the record holders right now. They finish each other's sentences.

I saw this when I was a hospital chaplain, too, when I saw lengthy marriages, and normally the man died because we tend to have shorter lifespans.

You've heard the stories. I saw it as a hospital chaplain so often, even though there really wasn't anything physically wrong.

She didn't live long afterwards because she wasn't whole anymore.

There's been all sorts of studies that have demonstrated that to be the case. No matter who it is that dies. There are exceptions, of course,

I know. The point is we look at that, we look at those couples, and we see that that's right, that's good, and that man will say,

I would never have been the man I am except for her. So they are no longer two, but one flesh.

What therefore God has joined together, let no man separate. My friends, marriage is

God's business. And when any culture, when any nation chooses to, in essence, spit in God's face and say, get out, that nation has no basis asking for his blessing.

None. The scripture's clear. God will not be mocked.

There will be judgment. It's just that simple. We are called to be salt and light, and that includes having a prophetic role of warning any society that can become so depraved that it would say to God, I don't care how you designed us.

We will do what we feel is right in our own eye. So did

Jesus address this? Yes. He addressed it by positively telling us that God had a purpose in creating male and female and joining male and female, and that's what the family is.

And the reason there are only six verses is because once you understand the biblical parameters, once you understand that every marriage, even if it was not

God's highest intention in polygamy, it was still heterosexual. It was still male and female, not male and male, female and female, or male and male and male, and female and female and female.

It's amazing how people can miss these clear indications.

Now, once you see that, once you see that, for example, in the book of Ephesians, the apostle reveals that great truth that Christ and the church, the husband and the wife, this mystical union that is there, why is that only two?

Why is everything two? We keep asking those who are attacking marriage.

Right now, what they're saying is it should be a man and a man, a woman and a woman. Why not three?

They don't want to talk about that. They don't want to talk about that because they know that what they're doing will fundamentally destroy marriage within our society.

It's already happening in certain European countries. I feel, unless God is tremendously merciful in restraining the evil of men, that 12 months from now we will have the overthrow not only of marriage as a male and a female via the

Supreme Court, but I cannot see how they would not also open the door for any type of polyamorous, polygamous situation.

I can't see how it could be avoided. There are already cases going to the Supreme Court for the sessions that will be coming out a year from now.

And given what we've seen, call me a pessimist if you want, but unless there is a major change, unless God restrains this madness, this is what is going to take place.

In light of that, what I would like to do very briefly, and I don't know what the advertised time was.

We got started a little bit late, but unless you all start throwing shoes at me,

I'm intending to go another 30 minutes. Okay? We okay with that? We all right with that?

Okay. When I graduated from seminary,

I could not have told you what the six verses in the Bible on homosexuality were, and I probably didn't know anybody else in my graduating class that could have either.

We didn't talk about it. It was the 1980s. AIDS had struck, so there was, yeah, but still, it was not really a major discussion amongst especially conservatives.

There are other texts that may well have relevance, but it is important for you to know what these texts are.

The first text, of course, is found in Genesis 18 and 19. It's the story of Sodom and Gomorrah. The other two texts, primary texts, are in Leviticus 18 and 20, in what's called the

Holiness Code, where homosexuality is said to be toevah, an abomination before God.

In Leviticus 20, those who engage in homosexuality experience capital punishment under the theocracy of Israel.

Those are the three, in the Old Testament, primary texts. In the

New Testament, most of us could probably, I certainly would have known, the central text,

Romans 1 -26 and following, which is, of course, a part of a larger block of Scripture that we need to understand for many reasons.

Not just this one, but I honestly believe that to understand

Romans 1 -18 -31, I think it's 31, today, may be one of the most important texts of Scripture to understand for many reasons.

Not just about homosexuality, but apologetics, anthropology, law, morality, ethics, science.

It's amazing how foundational the beginning of Paul's discussion of the gospel really is.

But I couldn't have told you the other two in the New Testament, because they're a part of what are called vice lists.

To be honest with you, for most human beings, when we hear a vice list, a list of, you know, those long lists of bad things, our mind sort of goes numb, and you just go, okay, list of sins, and you move on from there.

But it's one of the shorter vice lists, in 1 Corinthians 6, that is the second of the three in the

New Testament. And then the same term is used in 1 Timothy 1. So there's your six.

And you can see why people say, so what does it matter? But hopefully what you're hearing me say this evening is, they are there because of the massive positive teaching of Scripture as to God's creative purpose, and the positive teaching that Jesus gave regarding the nature of the created order itself.

And that'll be very important when we look at all the revisionist stories, all the revisionist ways around dealing with this.

So let's go to Genesis, and I will try to,

I'm going to have to be pretty quick here, unfortunately, but I want to lay the foundation.

You know that in Genesis 18, the Lord appears by the Oaks of Mamre. Yahweh, in a theophany, appears to Abraham, and he is accompanied by two angels.

He talks to Abraham, and those two angels are then sent down to Sodom and Gomorrah. And you remember that then

Yahweh basically has a bartering session with Abraham in regards to how many righteous people will be found in Sodom and Gomorrah so as to not bring about its destruction.

So that's the background, and earlier on, I believe it's in Genesis chapter 13, there was the discussion of the evils of Sodom and Gomorrah that were well known to people.

So then we come to the actual story itself, chapter 19. Now the two angels came to Sodom in the evening as Lot was sitting in the gate of Sodom.

When Lot saw them, he rose to meet them and bowed down with his face to the ground, and he said, Now behold, my lords, please turn aside to your servant's house and spend the night and wash your feet, and then you may rise early and go on your way.

Catch the word early. They said, however, no, but we shall spend the night in the square.

Yet he urged them strongly, so they turned aside to him and entered his house. Now immediately we have certain clues.

Lot knows the nature of this city. And he knows the nature of the danger that these men are facing.

There's nothing in the text about these people being enemies, about these people spying out the land.

There's nothing here about Lot trying to overthrow Sodom and Gomorrah. He wants these men to survive the night and to get out early.

And so they turned aside, entered his house, and he prepared a feast for them and baked unleavened bread, and they ate.

Before they lay down, the men of the city, the men of Sodom, notice the repetition, surrounded the house, both young and old.

This was not a substrata. This represented an incredible cross -section.

This is a people that have been given over. To what? Well, we'll see.

All the people from every quarter. And they called to Lot and said to him, where are the men who came to you tonight?

Bring them out to us that we may, and this translation says, have relations with them.

The term is yedah. The Hebrew term is yedah. Yedah is the normative

Hebrew word to know. Hundreds of times in the

Old Testament, I know your deeds. I know what you have said.

Et cetera, et cetera. Just like we would use the term to know the facts of a matter. But there are a number of times when it's used in a different sense.

God, for example, speaks of the people of Israel as the only people he has known.

And there, the New American Standard translates that as chosen in Amos 4. And it's also used when

Adam knows Eve, and she brings forth a son. So it clearly has reference to sexual intercourse.

And hence, it says, bring them out to us that we may know them, refers to sexual intercourse.

But Lot went out to them at the doorway and shut the door behind him and said, said what?

I've often wondered how Lot had survived being where he was without having opened his mouth before.

Because I certainly have seen the very same kind of reaction that Lot did when you dare make a moral judgment.

First of all, you almost always have Jesus misquoted. Judge not! It's about the only verse most people have memorized.

But Lot judges. And he says, please, my brothers, do not act wickedly.

What did they want to do? They wanted to have relations. Lot says that's wicked.

Now, one of the revisionist arguments regarding Sodom and Gomorrah is that, for example, in Ezekiel, Sodom and Gomorrah is condemned for lack of hospitality, not caring for the poor, et cetera, et cetera.

And that's exactly true. It's there. The funny thing is, most of the time when those texts are cited, they don't cite the very next verse, which says, and you committed toevah, that which is an abomination.

In Levitical law, that term toevah, when it comes to sexual things, is identified as homosexuality.

So they sort of skip that part. This is not the only thing that the

Sodomites did wrong. It's not that they were just gay and, therefore, they were just destroyed for that.

That's rarely a sin that is alone when it becomes a public thing.

And this is a public thing. Obviously, there would have been all sorts of other violations of God's commandments written in the heart of man that Sodom and Gomorrah would have been guilty of.

But in this text, Lot says, please, my brothers, do not act wickedly.

Then Lot does something that leaves us all stuttering. Now, behold,

I have two daughters who have not had relations with man. Please let me bring them out to you and do to them whatever you like.

Only do nothing to these men as much as they have come under the shelter of my roof. Immediately you go, well,

Lot, so much for you being a good daddy. Well, that's possible.

Well, now you do need to recognize that in this day and age, and even to this day, in certain tribal regions, for example, in Afghanistan, once you bring a person under the protection of your roof, you will die to protect that person.

If any of you know the story of Marcus Luttrell, that's what happened with him.

And so this ancient tradition actually continues into our day.

It's certainly not anything that we have any idea of, but it is still a tradition amongst some.

And so possibly that's what's behind it. Possibly Lot well knew that he was simply trying to buy time and that these men had no interest in women at all.

I don't know, but it doesn't get him much time. But they said, stand aside.

Furthermore, they said, this one came in as an alien, and already he is acting like a judge.

If you say that this behavior is wrong, be prepared for the reaction.

It will be a strong reaction. I suggest to you an overly strong reaction, and I suggest to you one reason why.

I believe that to fundamentally understand the mindset that we see in the open, aggressive, in -your -face, you -must -celebrate -what -I -do attitude of the homosexual movement, what you're seeing there is the result of what the

Bible tells us is the suppression of truth. There is a conscience that daily is bringing conviction to those individuals.

And not only are they tired of having to suppress that truth themselves, they want some assistance.

And if you dare say that that conscience is right, they will lash out at you.

And that's why they want you to celebrate, because when you celebrate their capitulation of their sexual desires, you're helping them to suppress.

You're helping them to hold that knowledge down. I think Romans 1 gives us a picture as to why it is that you see the visceral anger and hatred expressed to people who dare say this is morally wrong.

He is acting like a judge. Now we will treat you worse than them. So they pressed hard against Lot and came near to break the door, but the men reached out their hands and brought

Lot into the house with them and shut the door. Now notice what happens next. They struck the men who were at the doorway of the house with blindness, both small and great, so that they wearied themselves trying to find the doorway.

Now, could that be limited to just the people at the front of the crowd? I suppose. But given the fact that they can get out and not be detected, it seems like it was a pretty large number of people.

But have you ever been absolutely amazed like I am at what is said here? I don't know about you, but if I'm with a whole group of people and we're trying to do something that we know is wrong, and all of a sudden

I can't see anymore, that's going to stop me in my tracks.

Not only that, but it's only going to take me a matter of seconds to realize that everybody else is in the same spot.

Because I'm going to cry out, I can't see! And immediately the guy next to me, me either!

I can't either! Can you imagine the cacophony? It would take just a matter of seconds for the mind to realize, we've all been struck blind.

Now, the mind is a wonderful thing, and when it is not absolutely consumed with evil, the logical thing at that point would be to go,

I think we made a mistake. This isn't good.

That's not what they did. You see? So that they wearied themselves trying to find the door.

They didn't stop. You want a picture of being completely given over to your sin?

Go ahead and strike me blind. I'm going to keep trying. Amazing!

Now we know what happens. We know that God brings complete judgment upon this city, and we know that in the prophets, there is a description of the range of their evil, which includes that which was an abomination, that which is to evah.

The revisionist says there's nothing relevant to homosexuality here at all. The only thing going on here is gang rape.

That's all it is. So, if there had only been two men that came to the door, it would be okay.

Lot wouldn't have said, do not do this evil, because then it wouldn't be gang rape. There was two angels, two men, consensual, all be well.

That's what we're told by the revisionists. If you approach the

Bible as a group of disjointed texts, you can always come up with a way around anything.

As long as you don't have to interpret Genesis, along with Leviticus, along with Romans, then you can get away with anything.

I liken it to this. I rode up to the ski station on my bike today, and at one point, between all the heavy breathing,

I happened to notice that I was riding past a section where there was a fairly steep wall next to me.

The thought crossed my mind. Stuff could fall down from that on me fairly easily.

There could be a rock slide down this thing. I imagine that happens, especially during the winter months.

When you think about an avalanche, if you're on the side of a mountain and all of a sudden an avalanche comes at you, theoretically, you could avoid each rock, if you could take each rock one at a time.

But there's a problem with that theory, and that is avalanches don't come one rock at a time.

When you look at biblical teaching, theoretically, you can find a way around any single passage.

It is the combined effect, it is the fact that you take them as a whole, as a unitary whole.

That's how Jesus taught about the Bible, about Scripture. That's where you run into the problem, and that's why, inevitably, revisionists end up with a much lower view of Scripture than that which we hold.

They have to. It's necessary. They can't avoid it. And so what they do is they'll take this text and they'll come up with three, four, five different ways of reading it.

Sometimes the same author will offer two or three different options. But they'll never put it in context with Leviticus.

They'll never put it in context with Romans. They won't allow the whole voice of Scripture to speak. That's the only way they can do it.

They can't allow Scripture to speak with one voice, this matter, because its conclusion will be plain.

And so they'll always cut them up. And you just look. You look at the books. There are chapters on this text. We'll never make reference to that.

We'll never make reference to that, because you can't look at the Bible in that way. You can't look at the

Bible that way. All right. I'm going as fast as I can, but there's so much.

Let's look at Leviticus chapter 18. I almost hesitate, because there is just so much here.

But just as you look through the text, please note something about Leviticus 18 through 20, which is called the

Holiness Code. Some of the most basic, fundamental, moral, and ethical principles of humankind are enshrined in these texts.

Honoring of father and mother. Loving of neighbor. Caring for the poor.

Caring for the elderly and respecting the elderly. Those things are right here.

You never hear the Hollywood elites who mock this section for talking about not touching pigs' corpses and so on and so forth.

You never hear them talking about that. This is the same text of Scripture that will likewise prohibit all incestuous relationships.

Here in Leviticus 18, the nakedness of your sister, either your father's daughter, your mother's daughter, whether born at home or born outside, they're nakedness you should not uncover.

That means you shall not have sexual relationships within that family context.

There is to be no intergenerational love, as it's now being called. And if you don't think that's going to be the next thing they're shoving down your throat, you're wrong.

It's coming. It's already being identified as a sexual orientation.

How else could it be? You don't have a creator anymore to say it's wrong. All you need are people to show up on TV and say, we love each other.

It's coming. It's already here. And so you have all of this discussion about these close relationships.

You cannot have relations with blood relatives. It is lewdness. You shall not marry a woman in addition to her sister as a rival while she is alive to uncover her nakedness.

All of these things are here. You shall not have intercourse with your neighbor's wife. I defile here. You shall not give any of your offspring to Moloch, nor shall you profane the name of the

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

It is toevah. Verse 23, also you shall not have intercourse with any animal to be defiled with it, nor shall any woman stand before an animal to mate with it.

It is perversion. It is confusion. Now, you will, again, encounter all sorts of arguments.

Many today, like Matthew Vines, just basically say, well, Christians recognize they're no longer under the

Levitical law, so these things just aren't relevant to us. Anyone who can say that has obviously spent almost no time whatsoever reading the

Gospels. Jesus taught anyone who teaches you to break even the least of these commandments is least in the kingdom of God.

He said he did not come to destroy the law, but to fulfill. Well, fulfill means do away with. No, it doesn't.

No, it doesn't. What is the nature of the law that is written upon the heart of the believer in the new covenant?

What's that law? Well, but what about pigskins and crayfish?

And because we have to make distinctions between those aspects of the law that identified the people of Israel over against their neighbors, does that mean we can't tell that bestiality is wrong?

That means we can't tell that incest is wrong? That means we can't tell that having sex with a baby is wrong?

Seriously? And yet that's the mindset that people bring to us today. Please note something.

I'm going to switch over on the screen here to, why aren't you there?

Okay, I'll go back to, where's my library?

My notes, my highlights, I recently opened the library.

I wanted to open the Greek Septuagint here. Oh, there it is. Just got to look close enough. I want to show you the

Greek Septuagint. Now, what is the Greek Septuagint? The Greek Septuagint is the

Greek translation of the Old Testament that was made about 250 years before Christ.

If you're not aware of this fact, you need to be aware of the fact that the vast majority of citations of the Old Testament in the

New Testament are from the Greek Septuagint. They're not from the Hebrew text. And Paul, especially, is deeply influenced by the language of the

Greek Septuagint. I mean, he's writing to churches. Those are Greek -speaking churches. And the only copy of the scriptures they'd have would be the

Greek Septuagint. And so the Greek Septuagint is extremely important in the study of the

New Testament use of the Old Testament. Why is that important? When we get to 1

Corinthians chapter 6, tomorrow, clearly, there will be some dispute over the meaning of a

Greek term, arsenikoites. I want you to see something with me. I'm going to show it to you.

If you see verse 22, you can sort of see something.

Well, let's see if I can... Oh, here. Maybe I can select the text.

Select text. There we go. There. There's two little things there to show you where the text is.

The third word is the term arsenos.

Arsenos. Verse 22 says, Arsenos koimei theisei koitain.

Koitis. Koitain. They're related. That's where they come from. You have two words.

Metta arsenos. Arsenos means male. Koitain.

To go to bed with. relationship with, sexual relationship with.

Now, most people believe that in 1 Corinthians 6, when

Paul uses the term arsenokoites, he has coined the term himself.

And where did he get it? Right there. Arsenos koitein, arsenokoites.

Men who have sex with men, homosexuals. It's right there, and it's amazing to me that there are men today standing in seminaries who for reasons other than the biblical text can write entire books and ignore that reality.

On any other subject, they'd see it. Any other subject, they'd point it out. Don't want to have that kind of a strong relationship because now you have an apostle of Jesus Christ drawing straight from the vitical law and saying those who do this will not inherit the kingdom of God.

Can't have that, can't have that, and so we ignore it.

Now, the primary way around this for people is to say, well, yeah,

Leviticus 18 .22 does say it's an abomination, but for the Jewish people, there are other things that are abomination that no one today thinks is an abomination.

And yet, this is the only sexual sin that's described this way. Even bestiality is called a perversion, but it's not called toiva.

And they'll say, well, some of them will say, well, this had to do with the false religions around the people of Israel who engage in this type of thing, and since we don't have that going on today, then it's no longer relevant.

Well, I'm sure that there was homosexuality in the false religions around Israel. That doesn't help your case a whole lot because it still identifies that particular aspect of that type of pagan religion as wrong, and it wasn't just, well, don't do that so that you look like an

Israelite. It is said to be toiva, and notice it, you shall not lie with a man as one lies with a female.

What's behind that? The created order, Genesis 1, Genesis 2.

It is a perversion, it is an abomination because it is a fundamental alteration of the created order itself.

And so we do have to ask the question, okay, then bestiality, verse 23, was that happening in the religions around Israel?

Sure was. We found pottery and stuff like that, images that would tell us, yep, that was going on.

So it's actually okay because that was only something that kept the Israelites from looking like the pagan religions, right?

The background is very clear. The preceding laws regarding incest and inter -family relationships was not just so that the

Israelites would look different from the people around them. Dietary things, clothing things, shaving of the beard, issues like that, sure.

I can understand that because there is not a creation order element that is involved in those things.

But here, if you allow Leviticus to be in the same book with Genesis, and that's where the problem is.

The vast majority of people today will not allow that. All right, I sort of need to at least look at Leviticus 20 before we wrap up here and I'll get to it as quickly as I can here by scrolling because it is the second one and at least it gives us the background to where we need to go.

Leviticus chapter 20, notice what some of the things that are said. We have mediums.

We have people who offer offspring to Moloch. They're to be cut off from their people. You're to be holy as God is holy.

Cursing your father and mother, breaking the family unit.

I wasn't just saying, I don't like you, mommy or daddy. This was to be cut off from the people.

Committing adultery with another man's wife, friend's wife, both shall be put to death.

Lies this father's wife, incestuous relationships, their blood guiltiness is upon them. If there is a man who lies to his daughter -in -law, both of them shall surely be put to death.

They have committed incest, their blood guiltiness is upon them. If there is a man who lies to the male, as those who lie with a woman, both of them have committed a detestable act.

They shall surely be put to death. Their blood guiltiness is upon them. It was a capital offense amongst the people of Israel.

And with unbroken directness, if there is a man who marries a woman and her mother, it is immorality, both he and they shall be burned with fire so that there be no immorality in your midst.

This is the holiness code. Is there anything here about, well, because this would make you look like you're involved in this religion over here.

No, it is the fundamental violation of the relationships that were already defined earlier in chapter 18.

And if knowing what God says in chapter 18 about the sanctity of those relationships, you still do it anyway, then you're to be cut off from this holy people from whom the

Messiah will come. They have committed a detestable act and there is no evidence whatsoever that at any point in time in the rest of the history of the people of Israel up until the day of Jesus, anyone said, eh, this is one of the arguments.

One of the arguments is, well, there is a lessening. I would say it's not a lessening, it's a preparation for the gospel.

They'll say, for example, eunuchs. Eunuchs in the Old Testament law, if there was a damaging to the male, he was not to be in the congregation.

But once you get to the prophets, there's hope for the eunuchs. You see the difference between that and what we've got here?

These are two people who are engaging in activity, not someone who has received a bodily disability.

And the one is actually used as a preparedness for the fact that there is going to be hope for all kinds of people, even people who have been cut off because of things like that, not cut off in the sense of executed, has nothing to do.

There is no evidence that anyone up until the days of Jesus had ever thought, oh, well, you know, this is changing.

This is being lessened. And so when we come to the

New Testament, we come to Jesus. The same Jesus who taught in Matthew chapter 19, quoting from the

Old Testament and holding men accountable to it. Do you think he had a different view of Leviticus 18 and 20?

When people say, never said a word about it, he didn't need to. He held everyone accountable to those words.

And historically and contextually, there isn't the slightest reason to think that those words are to be accepted.

They're to be exempted. And so that was where it stood.

Jesus has come. He has taught about the nature of marriage. We've seen what he said.

Then the church is founded and you have the apostle Paul. And so tomorrow evening, we will look at what he had to say and then talk about the revisions of Romans one, first Corinthians six, make application and see where we can go from here.

Hopefully this has helped you to understand what some of the key issues are and make application especially now that we have an entire movement that takes what the scriptures say is a fundamental disorder and a fundamental violation of God's created order and attaches it to the name of Christian.

So as to say, you need to accept this and revise what has been believed by Christians all along.

The word is clear, but it says so much more and so much more positively because even as we look at these

Levitical prohibitions, folks, please, we look at those words and in our society, they seem so harsh, but you must recognize they protected life.

They protected life. To go against these words is to walk away from the very source of life himself.

It is not loving to allow people to do that without warning.

Let's close the time prayer. Once again,

Father, it is our desire even as we look at these strong words to do so as redeemed individuals because we know that these very words condemned us.

These very words exposed our sin, but we fled to you by your spirit and as a result, we have received forgiveness of our sins.

So Lord, as redeemed sinners, now saints, we ask that you would help us to remember to understand, to be able to communicate to those around us the message of life.

They have been given a message of death, a message that cannot bring forth life.

It cannot confirm life. It cannot grant life. And so Lord, as you call us, may we be prepared.

May we be ready. May we remember. And as we hear people abusing your word, may we not become emotional, but may we recognize the opportunity has now been opened for us to speak a word of truth and that we can trust that your spirit will always, will always honor the proclamation of your truth.

We thank you for this opportunity. We ask that you would give us traveling mercies and bring us back together again tomorrow evening so that we might continue this study and be made better servants of yours.