What's the Big Deal about Homosexuality? Life of Paul Part 76

When it comes to the issue of homosexuality, a lot's been happening in our world lately. I'm sure you saw in the paper this past week that the Massachusetts Supreme Court has mandated that the state of Massachusetts has to offer same-sex marriage to lesbian and gay couples beginning May the 16th, 2004. Massachusetts now joins Vermont, which also legalized same-sex civil unions back in 2000, but this is now marriage. In the year 2003, California lawmakers granted same-sex couples virtually all the rights of married couples. Also in 2003, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down all state laws across America against homosexual activity by consenting adults. Bravo's Queer Eye for the Straight Guy is a huge hit, along with other shows depicting happy gay couples such as Will and Grace, It's All Relative, and Boy Meets Boy.

Many of us saw on live TV, or if you didn't, you've certainly heard about the tongue-on-tongue lip lock between Britney and Madonna. And Brides Magazine recently featured its first ever article on how to plan a same-sex wedding. Now then on top of that, we have to add the Episcopal Church, which in November of 2003 consecrated the first openly gay bishop in the church's history, the Reverend Gene Robinson of New Hampshire, joining the United Church of Christ as the second Protestant denomination in America to recognize openly gay practicing clergy. In an article on CBS entitled Landmark Year for Gay Rights, Kate Kendall, the head of the National Center for Lesbian Rights, observed, and I quote, by any standard of measurement, 2003 stands out as a year of unprecedented forward progress, visibility, and equality for us. She went on to say we're at the tipping point where most Americans are simply not willing to engage in the fight against us, end of quote.

Now guys, what in the heck is going on in America? Well, listen to Dr. Samuel Silverman, professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, and I quote, homosexuals have not only come out of the closet, they have become militant. They are demanding all kinds of rights, to be fully accepted as normal, to be able to marry, to adopt and raise children, to have their lifestyle presented as a perfectly normal alternative to heterosexuality, end of quote.

Dr. Linda Grinstaff, sociologist at UCAL Davis said, and I quote, gayness is no longer being presented in the media as an issue or a problem to be solved, but rather as simply a part of everyday life, end of quote. And Dr. Silverman again, many of these militant gays are not just fighting for their own civil rights, but they are also attempting to win converts to their way of life, end of quote. Now as Bible believing followers of Jesus Christ here in America, what does this, where does this leave us? What do we do about all of this? Well friends, I believe that it leaves us in the middle of a great conflict that exists on two levels. It exists first of all on the level of a conflict for the soul of America, a conflict for the very moral fabric of our nation, a conflict that has to be fought in the political arena, that has to be fought in the courts and the legislatures and the county governments and the classrooms and the colleges of America. And I say to you, this is a fight we dare not lose. But also it leaves us with another conflict and that is a conflict for the souls of men and women who are caught up and trapped in this sinful and self-destructive behavior. And this is also a conflict that has to matter deeply to us because Jesus Christ loves every one of these ladies and every one of these men and died on the cross for every one of these men, every one of these ladies. And whereas we must be utterly relentless in the political arena of this conflict, we must be just as utterly compassionate in the personal arena of this conflict.

May I repeat that? We need to be relentless in the political arena, we need to be compassionate in the personal arena. This is what I want to talk about today. We're in a little series growing out of Acts chapter 20 called Modern Theological Myths. It grows out of Paul's challenge to the church leaders in Ephesus in Acts 20 and to us today as church leaders, Acts 20 verse 28, to keep watch over God's sheep and protect them from theological error. And so I'm breaking into a small little series, a few messages, about some of the most insidious theological errors that are being shoved down the throat of the American people today. And last week we talked about the first one.

Do Jewish people really need Jesus? We said last week there's the two covenant theory out there that says Jewish people have a completely different arrangement with God than Gentiles so therefore they don't need Christ to have eternal life and to go to heaven. And we saw last week this is theological baloney.

This is totally bogus and if you miss that you need to get the tape or the CD. Today we're going to look at a second theological error that's being shoved down our throat which is also baloney, which is also bogus and that's this, that homosexuality is a genetic predisposition that people cannot help having and therefore we must accept homosexual behavior as normal sexual practice in America. This is what we're going to talk about today. Now folks, whether we like it or not, the Church of Jesus Christ is right smack dab in the middle of this fight over homosexual rights in gay marriage and let me tell you why. The reason is that the traditional taboo against homosexual behavior is one that is firmly rooted in the Bible. It's firmly rooted in the Bible's declaration that this behavior is an abomination against God and degrading to any society. For 3500 years the arch enemy of homosexual behavior has been the teachings of the Bible and yet as we've seen even today the Church is starting to waffle on this. Dr. George Chauncey, a professor of history at the University of Chicago said and I quote, the split that has happened in the Episcopal Church shows irreversibly that there is a debate among people of faith over homosexuality. It will never be possible again for the Christian right to claim there is only one biblical position on this issue, end of quote. Well I can't speak to you today as a representative of the Christian right but I can speak to you as a pastor and I can speak to you as a theologian and I can speak to you as a church leader and in that role I'm here to tell you that without equivocation there is a single unified monolithic position in the Bible on this issue, the issue of homosexual behavior.

I'm going to tell you what it is. Leviticus chapter 20 verse 13, if a man lies with another man as one lies with a woman both of them have done what is detestable. Leviticus 18 verse 22, in the Old Testament you shall not lie with a man as one lies with a woman.

It is an abomination in the eyes of the Lord and it's interesting that here in Leviticus 18, just to show you how detestable God really considers this behavior to be, I want you to notice the bookends that he put around this prohibition. Right in front of it, verse 21, he put a prohibition against child sacrifice and right behind it in verse 23 he put a prohibition against having sex with animals and this is where God placed this particular prohibition which tells us about what level he considers this behavior to be. In Genesis chapter 18, God said the sin of Sodom is so grievous that I will go down and do something about it and we all know what the sin of the city of Sodom was.

It was rampant homosexual behavior and this was so offensive to God that what he came down and did about it is that he wiped the whole city out of existence and friends we could go on with more verses but I think the point is clear that the Bible has a consistent position about homosexual behavior, a position that has not changed since homosexual behavior began on the face of the earth and that position is that homosexual lesbian behavior is detestable and abominable in the sight of God. That's the Old Testament and you know Jesus, I mean he brought love and grace to the world so maybe you know what about the New Testament I mean maybe even the New Testament that's different. Okay well let's look at Romans 1 where I ask you to turn in the New Testament. Here in Romans chapter 1 in the last half of the chapter, the Bible describes for us how human society is the process by which the stages by which human societies deteriorate morally and spiritually, move away from God and move towards the judgment of God and there are three stages that these verses describe. Each one is denotated by the phrase used three times in the end of this chapter, God gave them over and every time God uses this phrase it marks another decline, a lower decline in a society away from God and towards self-destruction. Now I want you to see what those three stages are because homosexual behavior figures very strongly in this process, watch. The first stage is humanism, that is when a society replaces God with man and the things of God with the things of man, watch verse 21, for although men knew God existed they refused to glorify him as God claiming to be wise in themselves they became fools and exchanged the glory of God for images made to look like mortal men and birds and animals.

Verse 25, therefore, here comes our phrase, God gave them over first time so that they worshipped and served created things rather than the creator. This is when a society decides that they're going to displace God as the head of society and they're going to enthrone man instead. This is when a society decides that they're going to displace the wisdom of the Bible as the guiding principles for their society and they're going to put their own wisdom in place of that. And you know folks, for all practical purposes American society is already well through stage one. You go to any public school in America today, you go to any public college in America today and even though there may be wonderful followers of Christ on the staffs and teaching in the classrooms of these institutions they are forbidden by law to teach the Bible in these classrooms, they are forbidden by law to mention God or a biblical world view and make it clear it comes out of the Bible in these classrooms.

Where are we today? You go into those classrooms and you'll hear all about man's wisdoms, man's achievements, man's capacities, man's capabilities stage one of Romans chapter one. Now stage two is homosexuality and not homosexuality as a closet behavior that goes on secretly in a society. This of a stage two here is homosexuality being recognized, approved and normalized by a society as completely acceptable behavior.

Watch verse 26. Because of this humanism next, here comes our second use of the phrase, God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural relations with men for unnatural ones in the same way men abandoned natural relations with women and burned in their lusts for one another men committing shameful acts with other men. If there's any doubt whether God's position has changed on homosexual behavior, look at the adjectives that are used here. Shameful, unnatural, God's position has not changed. And it's very interesting here that the first group mentioned under this stage are the women involved in this behavior.

Which I find very interesting but I think God does this because he's trying to tell us something. He's trying to tell us this is not just as I said a few closet homosexuals. This is a stage that a society reaches where homosexual behavior is so normalized and so accepted that even the women in that society who are normally the most chaste and the most virtuous element of any society, even the women are brazenly involved in this kind of behavior. History tells us that any society that has ever gone over this hump, stage two completely, that no society has ever come back after going over this hump. Every society that has has self-destructive. There was the Sodom and Gomorrah society.

We know about them. There were the ancient Phoenicians and Canaanites and Egyptians. There were the ancient Greeks. You may not realize this but Socrates and Plato were homosexuals. They exalted homosexual love in their writings. Alexander the Great had male lovers. The Spartans commonly had male lovers as well as female lovers. Even the word lesbian comes from the Greek island of Lesbos in the Aegean Sea where this behavior was completely normal in practice during the time of classical Greek. And then we have the Romans. Suetonius, the Roman historian tells us in his book The Twelve Caesars that fourteen out of the first fifteen emperors of the Roman Empire were gay, that Julius Caesar was a homosexual, that Nero dressed up a little boy in a bridal veil and married him in the streets of Rome, that the bathhouses in Rome were hotbeds of homosexual activity, and true story, when archaeologists unearthed Pompeii, the ancient Roman city, the depictions of homosexual behavior on the walls of the houses and on the pottery were so gross and so explicit that they actually put newspapers over them so they didn't have to look at them and they forbid women to even come onto the site because they didn't want them to see it.

The historians Gibbon and Toynbee both conclude that without a doubt homosexuality was one of the clear reasons for the decline and the fall of the Roman Empire. You say, Lon, wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute, stop, stop, stop. Now look, Lon, homosexual activity has existed in every society in the world from the beginning of time. So, you know, the world's still going. Why don't we just live and let live? I don't understand what the big deal is.

Friends, you're right. Homosexual activity has existed in the world from the beginning. But this is not what stage 2 is talking about. It is talking about reaching the place in a society where homosexual behavior is normalized, where it is accepted, where it is pronounced a completely appropriate lifestyle to be practiced. And what the Bible tells us here in Romans 1, it predicts and history confirms that once a society goes over this falls, they never come back. The men may keep going but not that society. And that's why we cannot be cavalier about this and we cannot live and let live because this is the agenda of the homosexual community. This is where they want to take America, to where homosexual behavior is completely normalized and Romans 1 warns us severely about what happens when we get there. Let me just conclude and just for the sake of completeness and show you the third stage and that is spiritual hardness. You say, what do you mean by that? That means when a society gets to the place where sinful behavior is done with such brazenness and such shamelessness and such incorrigibility that there's no remorse about it even anymore.

Nobody even cares. Look at this, verse 28. Since they did not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God in their minds, third and final use of the phrase, God gave them over to a depraved mind as a society. The King James Version translates it a reprobate mind so that they became filled with every sort of wicked behavior and depravity.

They not only continued to do such things but they took pleasure in convincing others to do those things. Friends, this is where a society gets to the place where they don't just, people in that society don't just do wrong things and then feel terrible about it. This is the place where people don't even register that it's wrong anymore. This is the place where there's a flaunting of sin, there's a boasting about sin, there's a defiant mockery of everything that God says is pure and right. Paul referred to this, 1 Timothy 4, when he said their conscience has been seared as with the branding iron, meaning the conscience of that society that was once living tissue and registered remorse and embarrassment about disobeying God, now it's not living tissue anymore. It's scar tissue and it feels nothing.

You say, well Lon, at least thank God we're not there in America yet. Really? Did you see the Super Bowl? Did you see Justin Timberlake rip the top off of Janet Jackson? And he called it a wardrobe malfunction. He said it was unplanned. Friends, if that was unplanned, then I am the next American Idol. That's all I gotta say. And you know that's not true.

That was not unplanned, my foot that was unplanned. Now here's the scary thing, CBS apologized the next day for that, but CBS got hundreds and hundreds of letters and emails from people in America saying, why are you apologizing? There's not a thing in the world wrong with this, we ought to have more of this. Europe's already got it, why are we such prudes?

In fact, one Democratic presidential candidate said he didn't understand what the big deal, what the big fuss was all about. You know, look at network TV here in America. Hey, adultery and premarital sex are as casual as having a Coca-Cola now on television. Murders in every show.

Movies like the Italian job exalt stealing. The show Friends thinks that pornography is funny and cool on television. Hey, foul language on network television's gotten to the place where the beats don't even get in sometimes on time and they're passe.

You don't even need them. You know exactly what the people said. Last week, ER aired a show in which there was a bare breast of a lady on network television, NBC, and there wasn't even a whimper of response from the American public. He said, Lon, what's happening to us? Friends, Romans 1 tells us what's happening to us. We are moving towards stage 3 of a society's descent where it doesn't even register with the people in our culture anymore that things are wrong. It doesn't even, there's not even a sense of embarrassment anymore about things that God says are wrong and inappropriate for our culture. That's where we're headed. And if you can lay these three principles over top of where we are as a nation and not be scared out of your mind for the future of America, then you're in denial.

You're in denial. Now let's get back to the homosexual thing for just a moment and close this up. What's the point with regard to homosexuality and all this?

The point is that the Bible tells us with clarity that when a culture accepts and condones homosexual behavior that is an integral step in that culture's decline and self-destruction. And as I said earlier, once a culture goes over that hump fully, they never ever in history have come back. Now, you know, we went to school and we were taught the evolutionary dialectical model for human development. You say, what in the world is that? Well, that's the movement of the human race, the ascent of man from caveman to civilized man to modern man.

You know what? That's not at all the picture of the Bible. In fact, the picture of the Bible is the exact opposite. The Bible says that if it had to give a title to human history, it would call it the descent of man because the Bible says man began in the Garden of Eden as the apex, the masterpiece of God's creation, intelligent, upright, pure, aware of God's reality, connected to God and ever since then man's been going down. This is the world view of the Bible and that sometimes man has gone down so far God has actually destroyed cultures and sometimes in his mercy God has stepped in with revival and purification and restored cultures back up to an awareness of God and as soon as he did, they went right back down again. Witness the Wesley Revolution in England two hundred years ago. Witness the Great Awakening in America two hundred years ago, two hundred and fifty. And so folks, we need to understand the Romans one road here, that this is what happens to society.

Secularism leads to the normalization of homosexual behavior and other sinful sexual behavior, leads to spiritual hardness where people don't even recognize anything's wrong anymore, leads to self-destruction. Now let's stop there and ask a question, shall we? A really important question and you know what it is. So y'all ready? You still awake? Okay, ready? Here we go.

One, two, three. So what? Yeah. Say, Lon, okay, we understand what you're saying. So what do you want me to do about it? What do you want us to do about it?

Well, I got two suggestions. There are two things I believe God calls you and me as followers of Christ, us as a church family, to do about this. The first thing God calls us to do is to respond on a political level to the homosexual agenda. Now we can't do this as a church, it's illegal.

And it's not even appropriate for us to get involved in political action. But you as followers of Jesus Christ can. And the Bible calls you and me as individual followers of Christ to oppose this agenda.

Because friends, this agenda is leading our nation into self-destruction. That's what Romans 1 says and we've got to understand that. This means that we as followers of Christ have got to oppose gay rights. We have got to oppose same sex marriages. We have got to oppose gay friendly curriculums in our school. And we've got to oppose any political candidate who runs on a platform that espouses gay rights and that courts the gay lobby. I maintain whether they're Republican, Democrat, Green Party, Yellow Party, or Rainbow Party. I don't care what party they are. If they are out to espouse gay rights, we have a responsibility to do the best we can do to see to it. They never get political power.

They never get into political office where they can carry that agenda out. We have the responsibility to teach our children what the Bible says about true sexual behavior, healthy, godly sexual behavior. We cannot abdicate that to our schools. We cannot abdicate that to our family life courses in public school because they are going to teach your children the exact opposite of the word of God. And that's your responsibility. That's my responsibility. And many of us are shirking that responsibility.

We need to teach our children what God says on these issues. We have got to engage politically in the arena or we are going to lose this fight. You say, well on haven't we lost, already lost it?

I don't think so. I think the verdict is still out. The jury is still out but we're definitely getting punched around pretty bad. Friends, we're in the ring and the gloves are on and if we're not careful, we're going to lose this fight. And if we do, if we do, based on what Romans chapter 1 says, the consequences for this nation will be dire.

We dare not lose this fight or if we lose it, we need to lose it with our guns smoking. You understand what I'm saying? Now, on the other level, no, no, no. I appreciate that. I'm not sure it's appropriate but thank you.

I wish you'd clap as much when I said we need to go reach people for Christ. But okay, that's another thing. Now, but there's another level of this that we need to really talk about today and that's the personal level because you see friends, as much as we're against the political agenda of the homosexual community, we need to also understand that real people's lives are involved in this. That real men and real women and real young people are caught up in this bondage that is homosexuality and lesbianism. And it is bondage. It is bondage to despair, to confusion, to loneliness, to depression, to promiscuity and the guilt that comes from it, to self-hating and self-loathing oneself and to self-destructing. And we need to tell these people and offer them help to get free.

We need to tell them Jesus Christ can set you free because they think they are free but they're not. You know, Kate Kendall, the head of the National Lesbian Group, called 2003 the year of our liberation. Well, I'm sorry to tell her that 19 centuries ago Peter talked about folks like her and said she had it exactly backwards. Listen to what Peter said.

2 Peter chapter 2. He said, appealing to the most carnal desires of the sinful human nature, they, people like Kate, entice people, promising them freedom while they themselves are the slaves of depravity. End of quote. And you know a hard look at the homosexual community in America and around the world will tell us that Peter was right, not Kate. Mr. Murray Morris, who's a newspaper reporter in California and did several exposés of the gay community out there, wrote an article entitled There's Nothing Gay About Homosexuality.

Here's what he said. He said, one of the biggest problems with homosexuals is their own loneliness. In homosexuals' own publications, in the writings of psychiatrists who treat them, in the words of ministers who try to help them, there is this constant repetition of the loneliness of the homosexual lifestyle. This loneliness leads many homosexuals into drugs and alcoholism. They head into sadomasochism. They are frequently vicious with their own partners and others. Whoever decided to call homosexuals gay must have had a terrible sense of humor.

End of quote. But not only is there the personal tragedy, the personal sadness of this lifestyle, friends, this lifestyle is self-destructive in an incredible way. Dr. Paul Cameron did a study, he published it in a book called The Homosexual Lifespan. And in this book, what he did is he went and looked at the obituaries in homosexual journals, 10 of them across the nation, of 4,109 homosexuals.

He studied their obituaries and here's what he found. That homosexuals have 20 times the suicide rate of the average American. Homosexuals are victims of murder 83 times more often than the average American and that's not from gay bashing. In almost every case, the perpetrator of these murders were other members of the homosexual community. Homosexuals with AIDS, the average death of a male homosexual with AIDS is 36 years old. The average death of a male homosexual without AIDS is 43 years old. Folks, the average death of a male in America is 75 years old. And he concluded by saying, and I quote, homosexuality plays out as the most deadly lifestyle.

It is far worse than smoking or alcohol abuse or working in a uranium mine. What this means is there are some people for whom Jesus died. There are some people whom Jesus loves that are horribly self-destructing in this behavior.

And we as the church have the responsibility, we as followers of Christ have the duty to reach out with the love of Jesus to these people and tell them you don't have to live this way. There is a way out. Once gay, always gay is not true. And you can be free and you can be healed and you can live a functional healthy life with no guilt, no depression, no self-loathing and hatred.

Jesus Christ can set you free. Now, you say, well, Lon, what about this genetic thing? You know, I've read about this, you know, that it's in the genes that you can't really help it, that God made me gay.

What about this? Well, you know, I want to tell you, I agree with the homosexual community that this is genetic, this behavior. You say, well, you agree that homosexual behavior is in the genes, it's genetic.

I do, absolutely. So is lying, cheating, stealing, murder, adultery, it's all in our genes, folks, every bit of it. We were born with a sinful human nature that we inherited in the genes of our parents and every one of those behaviors is genetic and in our genes. But where I don't agree with them is that we have no choice about this. God says every sinful behavior man has ever engaged in, man has a choice and they have a choice. And that brings hope because if you have a choice to do it by the power of the Holy Spirit, there's a choice not to do it.

And that brings hope. And that's what we proclaim. But you know, it's not just good enough to preach this. We've got to come alongside men and women because yes, the power of Christ makes you free.

But you know what? People made you sick and it takes people to make you well. And we've got to come alongside people and say, not just are we going to preach this to you, we're going to put our arm around you and we're going to walk with you and we're going to help you get free and we're going to support you while you're getting free. And we're going to be your friend through this. And we have a wonderful ministry here called Out of Darkness, which is a support ministry and a healing ministry for people who have homosexual issues and lesbian issues and transgender issues.

And we don't publicize it a lot because it's just not one of those things that you beat the drum about, tell everybody about. But we're helping people already with these issues. And let me just turn now in closing to those of you who are here today and say, I'll bet there are a lot of you here today, unless I miss my guess, who have struggled with homosexual desires, lesbian desires much of your life, who maybe have had one or two encounters.

Friends, one or two encounters does not a lesbian or homosexual make. But it does mean you need help. And we're here to help you. We're here to tell you that we love you deeply and that Jesus Christ loves you unconditionally. He doesn't care about your behavior.

He loves you. And He died on the cross for you so that you can be free. And you know what? We'll help you with that if you'll let us.

That's what we're here to do. Jesus said, if I, the Son of Man, make you free, you'll be free indeed. Now many of you have never told anybody much about this. And you've certainly not told anybody in a church about this because you're sure if you do, they're going to reject you, they're going to judge you, they're going to condemn you.

And I'm here to tell you, we're not interested in doing any one of those three. We're interested in helping you and getting you free. Because friends, it's not any different than me.

I was a drug addict. What's the difference? What's the difference? It's all wrong. It's all sin. And Jesus sets you free from whatever. So if you need that kind of help, we've got some folks down in room 1109 right after the service.

And it's down around the corner. And you go down there and they're there for you. Whatever you want, whatever you need, however far you want to go, they're there for you. And what they'll tell you is the same thing that I'm telling you. And that is Jesus Christ will make you into a new creature.

He'll set you free if you'll give Him the opportunity in your life. So this is what, this is our responsibility. It's two-fold. It's to reach out to people involved in this self-destructive behavior. Tell them Jesus Christ can change their life.

And then walk with them to see that that happens. That's our duty. It's also to say on a political agenda level, we are against this. It's not about civil rights. This is about morality and decency. And nobody's civil rights ought to go to the point where it endangers the very fabric of our society. And this is not a civil rights fight.

This is a morality fight. And that's the level on which we have to attack it. And we have to stand our ground. And if it makes us unpopular, well guess what?

It makes us unpopular. And if people don't like us, well you know I'm not living for people to like me. I'm living for Jesus to say, well done good and faithful servant. And that's what you ought to be living for. And so this is our responsibility. This is your responsibility. And I hope that you'll take it seriously. Hey next week, know what we're going to talk about?

No. Well next week we're going to talk about the Da Vinci Code and why that book is so incredibly wrong. So you come next week and we'll talk about that. Let's pray together.

Let's pray together, alright? Heavenly Father, thanks for talking to us today about this very modern and appropriate issue. And this is a tough issue because feelings run very very deeply in America about this. But Lord, we don't really care what Americans feel, we care what You feel. We care what Your position is.

And You've made Your position clear. And so we pray that You would help us on both levels, the political and the personal, to take Your position and bring that message to the people of America, to the people of this city. Father, help us reach out in love and genuine compassion to folks who are trapped in this destructive and devastating behavior. And Lord Jesus, my prayer is that we might see many of them get free, both here and in eternity. And Father, my prayer is also that You, by the power of Your Spirit, would drop a curtain of steel in American society and in Your mercy say, that's far enough.

You're not going any farther. We're turning this around. I don't know how to ask You to do that, Lord, but we need You to do that before we lose this fight and really subject our country to some of the very nasty consequences that the Bible tells us about. So Lord, help us take both ends of this seriously. And we pray these things in Jesus' name. Amen. Amen.