Well, tonight I want to talk to you on the
subject of what God thinks of homosexuals. It is not a particularly enjoyable subject
to discuss, nor would any sin be enjoyable to discuss, for that matter. But it has become pertinent and essential
and necessary for us to get a biblical view of this rapidly increasing and normalizing
effort to accept homosexuality in our culture. We need to understand what the Word of God
has to say. There is so much confusion on this outside
the church that's explicable. But there seems to be about equal confusion
inside the church. In fact, there is a new kind of evangelicalism
that labels itself, "tolerant, loving, non-judgmental," that is affirming those who carry about and
legitimize these kind of lusts and behaviors and they do so while maintaining the name
of Jesus Christ in an affirmation that they themselves are Christians. I want you to look at 1 Corinthians chapter
6, and all I want to do is just give you a biblical picture so that you'll know how God
views this kind of behavior. And let me say at the very beginning, and
I will show you this, but I want to say it because I want you to understand it. Homosexual sin is nothing more or nothing
less than a perverse sexual act, or acts...it is no more than that, it is no less than that. It is a perverse abnormal sexual behavior. I'm reluctant even to call someone a homosexual
because that seems to identify them with some kind of staple character that draws them into
that behavior. It is no more or no less than a perverse act
or acts. In 1 Corinthians chapter 6, go down to verse
9, the Apostle Paul writes these words, "Or do you not know that the unrighteous shall
not inherit the Kingdom of God? Do not be deceived, neither fornicators, nor
idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor homosexuals, nor thieves, nor the covetous,
nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers shall inherit the Kingdom of God. And such were some of you, but you were washed,
but you were sanctified but you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and in
the Spirit of our God." Here is the good news that answers our question...what
does God think of homosexuals? It is God's desire that they be saved, that
they be justified, that they be sanctified, that they be washed. And that homosexuality and that homosexual
behavior be only part of their past so that it can be said of them, "Such were some of
you." Now the list here is interesting for a lot
of reasons. There are many sins, we're just looking at
the sin of homosexuality, but there are all these other kinds of sins, as well, from which
we need to be delivered and washed and sanctified and justified. Also, this list gives us some idea of the
kind of people who were part of the Corinthian church. Now if you knew that a church was full of
ex-fornicators, idolaters, adulterers, effeminate, homosexuals, covetous, alcoholics, slanderers,
extortioners, etc., etc., it might be the kind of crowd you'd want to avoid. But these are precisely the people who made
up the Corinthian church. And that tells us not only about the church,
but it tells us a lot about that society. It was a society not unlike our own society
which is full of the same kinds of people...fornicators, idolaters, adulterers, effeminate, homosexuals,
thieves, covetous, drunkards, revilers, swindlers, etc., nothing much has changed. So this church, Grace Community Church, like
the church at Corinth is populated by people who fit into these former categories, but
you have been washed, you have been sanctified, separated from those kinds of behaviors and
you have been justified before God because God has set His loving forgiveness and grace
upon you because of faith in Christ. I have baptized and others have baptized in
the waters of baptism right here people who have been delivered from all these sins, including
homosexuality. By God's grace and through His saving love,
homosexual sinners are redeemable and some of you sitting out there are living testimony
to that fact. I remember sitting in the office one day,
receiving a phone call from a man who said, "My name is David Chastane(?)." He said in a faint voice, "I am in a hospital,
I need you to come and see me." I went to a nearby hospital, I walked in the
room, I knew immediately he was dying of AIDS because I know the look, I've seen it enough. He was surrounded by friends, all of whom
were obviously homosexual. He was being attended to by an obviously homosexual
nurse, or attendant. And I came up to his bed and he grasped my
hand as tightly as he could in his weakened condition and said, "I have lived a homosexual
life for over 20 years, I was raised in a Christian family and a Christian home and
a Christian church. I know the gospel. I have rejected it and hated it all my life. Now I'm going to die from AIDS and I do not
want to go to hell. Can you help me?" And I said, "Of course I can." And I began to give him the gospel and the
room was empty in ten seconds. I'm telling you, ten seconds, if that. And he opened his heart to Christ. I prayed a long prayer and I asked God to
be gracious to him and to save him while he clutched my hand, after which I said, "If
you desire to pray, this is your opportunity to ask for forgiveness." And he did and he prayed one of the most heart
wrenching prayers I've ever heard in my life, pleading with God to forgive him for the wretched
life that he had lived in defiance of what he had been raised to know is true. And after this long and passionate prayer,
he stared at the wall and I said to him, "What are you looking at?" He said, "I'm looking at the clock over there
because I want to remember the time of my new life." And he was overwhelmed with a sense of joy. He said, "I have a lot to make up for in a
very little time." I took some books down to him which he read
as rapidly as he could. He gave testimony of his faith in Christ. And I think if I remember right, it was about
five days and he was gone. Not all of the conversions like that are quite
that dramatic. That was one of the most dramatic. I'll tell you about another one at the end. One of the supreme tragedies in our day is
reclassification of homosexuality as a non-sin, as a normal behavior, as an acceptable behavior,
even as a noble behavior because that's the way you're made, instead of defining it the
way the Bible defines it as a perversion from which you need to be rescued. Wrong diagnosis obviates the cure. And the evangelical church must stick with
a biblical definition of sin and confront the sinner with every sin, whether conventionally
popular or not. And there is a massive movement to appease
the guilt of homosexual behavior, and it is a fierce guilt that needs relentless appeasement. There is a massive movement to somehow free
these people from their behavior that is a result of unchecked lust and to make them
feel okay about what they do. There is an effort to redefine it as an acceptable
alternate life style, sexual orientation, genetic difference, or personal preference. But it is not that. It's nothing more than a perverse sex act. That's all it is, nothing less, nothing more. And people who get engaged in it and drawn
into it for a number of reasons, find themselves spiraling deeper and deeper into this kind
of conduct. The same kind of addiction that comes on those
who are addicted to pornography, or for that matter adultery, only this one seems to be
far more intense and far more available in terms of its fulfillment. These people who are so driven to divest themselves
of guilt, to release and free themselves from any assessment that they are sinning are promoting
and selling their perversion as if it's normal on every level in this nation, starting with
elementary schools, TV sitcoms, films, and every other form of media. The government has stepped up to help fund
their efforts and accommodated them in all kinds of ways with non-discriminatory laws. Politicians seek the homosexual vote by campaigning
for homosexual rights. They want us to accept the notion that homosexual
behavior is really something that is natural for a legitimate minority, that it's the same
as being African/American, or it's the same as being Hispanic. These people are a minority who have been
unjustly discriminated against and now are entitled a special treatment under the law
to make up for this long harsh discrimination. The best statistics that I could find indicate
that somewhere between one and two percent of the population in our country would classify
themselves as engaging in homosexual sex acts. But this very small portion of our population
is commanding the attention of the 98 to 99 percent of the rest of us. They're endeavoring to make us accept the
fact that this is some kind of normal behavior. Not only that, they deserve special treatment
because they've been so abused in the past. Their agenda is simple, they just want to
desensitize us to the sinful character of this. They want to desensitize us. They don't need us to become advocates, they
just need us not to care, to roll over, if you will, to acknowledge them as just another
minority who should enjoy same human rights that others enjoy. But this is not a race of people. This is a sexual behavior...nothing more,
nothing less. It is ridiculous to assume that because they
do a specific sexual act or acts, they therefore demand certain rights and should be granted
those rights. I don't know how you can separate it from
giving people the same rights to people who do other deviant acts, like pedophiles, murderers,
rapists, drug dealers. They all have a different orientation, should
they have rights? Wife beaters? Child molesters? Where do we end this? All sin comes because people are bent toward
it. And when a society decides that certain sins
and certain sinners should have special rights, they have moved long and far from the true
understanding of sin and Scripture. Are we going to give the same rights to rapists? Well, this is just the way they're bent. They're drawn that way, they have strong impulses
that way. They should be able to express themselves
in any way that they like and we should give them rights because they're bent that direction. People who are rapists I understand are compelled,
driven. So are those who are child molesters, pedophiles. Their preference has become the cause of the
most devastating public health epidemic in this nation's history. They launched the AIDS epidemic. Their preference, if it continues along with
the other sexual deviations in our culture, will cause the most devastating corruption
that any nation has known since the plagues of the Middle Ages, to say nothing of the
financial eruption in the medical health community trying to take care of all these people. They are very aggressive in recruiting children,
as young as they can get to them in elementary school to draw them into the pit of their
perversion and make themselves feel normal. They now have been given the right to adopt
children so that they can have their own casualties right under their own noses in their own houses. This would be like taking two mass murderers
and telling them they can adopt children and expecting that a normal child would be produced
in that kind of environment. Their behavior is nothing more than the expression
of a sexual lust that is unnatural, twisted and uncontained. And no matter how you try to glamorize it
and make it look normal, and make it look nice and all of that, let me give you some
statistics. Eighty percent of people engaged in homosexual
acts say half their partners are total strangers, one out of two. How many partners do they have? The latest statistics that I can find indicate
that the average homosexual has had more than 500 sexual partners...500. By their own admission, 50 percent of them,
total strangers. Thirty percent have had a thousand partners. Some as many as 1600. The latest that I could find out on the average,
the average has 300 a year, almost one different person a day. The conduct of their acts has no bounds, it
all was launched in what were called gay bath houses where they used to have anonymous contact
with ten to thirty unknowns in one day. Similar kind of behavior is now found its
way into other places. Every conceivable and inconceivable act is
included, none of which we need to talk about. They are one to two percent of the population,
but 50 percent of the people with AIDS. One in twenty of these people is a child molester,
for the normal population it's about one in 500 at the most...at the least. They are one thousand times more likely to
get AIDS, one hundred times more likely to be murdered. Eighty percent of them have sexually transmitted
diseases. The average death of our population is now
75. The average American dies at 75, the average
person engaged in homosexual life dies at 39. Two percent live to 65. Just to take the glamor off of it, that's
what it really is. It is a sexual lust gone mad. It is suicidal. And I can give an almost endless parade of
statistics and a litany of information on the problem which doesn't, after a certain
point, help. What is more important is to understand it
from God's viewpoint for what it really is. Let's go back to our text in 1 Corinthians
chapter 6. There is a mention there in verse 9 of the
word "effeminate...effeminate." Marginal note in the NAS says effeminate by
perversion, malakos is the Greek word. It seems to have been a technical term for
the passive partner in homosexual relationships. Artin(?) Gingrick(?), one of the best of Greek lexicons,
says that the word probably also included men and boys who allowed themselves to become
male prostitutes and were the passive partners. It's more than effeminate in the sense that
we think of effeminate as a kind of superficial style, it is a kind of homosexual prostitution. Then the word homosexuals, arsenokoites, two
Greek words, one meaning sexual relations, the other meaning men. It is man having sexual relations with men,
it means just that. These people practice a sin which excludes
them from the Kingdom of God. They will not inherit the Kingdom of God. They will never belong to God's Kingdom as
long as they continually live in that life style. Amazingly churches today that are supposed
to represent God's Kingdom, open their doors and their arms to these people who do this
kind of deviant behavior and embrace them. The Word Council of Churches, the National
Council of Churches decades ago declassified this as a sin. Major denominations ordain those who practice
homosexuality, both men and lesbian women, to the pastorate. Quakers, of all people, say homosexuality
is no more deplorable than left-handedness. We have homosexuals among the Episcopalians
and a bishop in the Episcopalian church who is openly engaged in homosexual behavior. One pastor of a Methodist church near here
said, I quote, "A homosexual is welcome in this congregation and will have all rights
and privileges." In the emergent church, kind of the new wave
of the church, doesn't take a position on this. They're not sure about anything in the Bible
and they're sure they're not sure about this. In fact there are amazingly, there is an effort
on the part of some theologians to prove that Paul was a repressed homosexual, struggling
with his sexual yearnings which were never resolved and so he became a self-hating repressed
homosexual. There's even a group of churches for Christian
homosexuals, the Metropolitan Community churches, founded by a man named Troy Perry(?), you
may have heard of that name. I had dubious opportunity to debate him on
an occasion and just to be sure, because I know these people can be violent, I took the
starting right guard from, at the time, the Los Angeles Rams with me. I didn't know exactly what was going to happen. Troy Perry, along with another gentleman came
to argue the case for Christian homosexual behavior and they tried to glorify it. And Troy Perry was saying, "I'm monogamous,
and so forth and so on, and this is a loving relationship," and on and on and on. And I just happened to be given by the Los
Angeles Police Department a complete rap sheet on all his arrests for sex in the back alleys
of Hollywood. That's why I had that guy sitting beside me. Needless to say, I pointed that out, it was
the end of the debate, he was infuriated, stormed out of the room. This Metropolitan church, Metropolitan Community
Church, is still around, teaches that homosexuality is a gift from God. That Jesus was not hostile to lesbians and
homosexuals. David and Jonathan were homosexuals, so were
Ruth and Naomi lesbians. And Sodom was destroyed for a lack of hospitality. Exactly what they say. To the pure, all things are pure. And to the vile, all things are vile. So, there are within the framework of Christianity
all kinds of tolerances for this sin and it's tragic. Not because...not because we want to damn
these people, but because we want them to wake up to the fact that they are shut out
of the Kingdom of God until they come to a realization of their sin and seek forgiveness
and deliverance. Paul had to face it because it was everywhere
in his culture. There's the list of the kind of people who
went to the church, ex-homosexuals, Socrates was a homosexual, we are told, a very active
one as were many of the Greek leaders and philosophers. Plato penned an entire section in his famous
symposium exalting homosexual love, We are told by some historians that even Alexander
the Great had both male and female lovers. Some have said the Greek soldiers were believed
to have fought valiantly to protect their fellow soldier lovers. Julius Caesar, history says, had his own lover. Tiberius Caesar adopted young boys and abused
them cruelly, apparently a pedophile. Both Gibbon and no less than Toynbee, Arnold
Toynbee, great historians, write that this was one of the major contributors to the decline
of the Roman Empire and the fall of Rome. Some say nearly all the Caesars were engaged
in homosexual behavior, it was so rampant, at least 14 out of the first 15, according
to some historians. Nero, the current Caesar at the time Paul
wrote 1 Corinthians, had taken a boy named Sporus(?) and had him castrated and then married
him in a full wedding and lived with him as his wife. So Paul's world was not very much different
than our world. Homosexual behavior, like all the other sins
that are listed there, was everywhere. He confronted it for what it is, it is a sinful
behavior. It is a sinful act. He was not homophobic, he was not overreacting
because he was a repressed homosexual himself, he was true to divine Scripture and he was
true to the sinner to tell him his sin for the sake of repentance. Paul knew what Scripture taught. Let's find out, Deuteronomy 22. Deuteronomy 22, now we're going to run fast
through these, the detailed study of these texts we will leave for another occasion or
for your own study. There are some extensive notes in the MacArthur
Study Bible that you might find helpful. You might want to wait and read those later. In the twenty-second chapter of Deuteronomy
and verse 5, "A woman shall not wear man's clothing, nor shall a man put on a woman's
clothing, for whoever does these things is an abomination to the Lord your God." This is what we call today a transsexual,
or a transvestite, or perhaps even another name that I'm not aware of. A person who exchanges his dress for that
of the other sex because it brings on some certain kind of lustful thrill. Literally in the Hebrew it rings this way,
A man shall not...a woman shall not wear that which appertains to a man, that which pertains
to a man, nor shall a man put on what pertains to a woman...clothes, implements, weapons,
tools, anything that robs one of clear female identity or male identity. And we're not talking about the fact that
some of the Bible bangers in the past have said, that's why women can't wear pants because
pants belong on men. Well come on, in the Old Testament everybody
wore skirts. That's not what we're talking about but men
had robes that looked like men's robes and women had robes that looked like women's robes. Men were to be men, women were to be women. God made us male and female and Satan, of
course, seeks to obliterate that throughout the history of false religions, that is obliterated. The ancient writer, Maimonides, whom I mentioned
this morning, also says that a man dressed in fancy women's clothes would often come
and worship Venus and Ashtaroth, and by the way, typically the Greek gods were either
male or female. So a man dressed in fancy women's clothes
would often come and worship Venus, says Maimonides, and Astaroth and women dressed in men's armor
would come to honor the god of war, Mars. Very typical in ancient religions, the satanic
success in causing people to blur the male and female distinction, there's nothing new
about drag queens...nothing new about female impersonators, nothing new about women dressing
to look like men and men dressing to look like women, sometimes in public and perhaps
more often in private. It is a perversion, it is an abomination even
to wear clothes that belong to or implements that belong to the opposite sex. Go to the next chapter, chapter 23 of Deuteronomy,
verse 1. "No one who is emasculated or has his male
organ cut off shall enter the assembly of the Lord." This is a true transsexual, someone who in
the very primitive way had his maleness destroyed. Now this was a kind of ancient surgery. It's enough to say that the word in the Hebrew
translated emasculated is the basic root word for being crushed. I will say no more. There are people who claim that they are somehow
women trapped in men's bodies and go to a doctor to have a surgery. Someone who does that will not enter the assembly
of the Lord. In the ancient times people would have this
done for the gods to become a eunuch and go serve the gods and go to a temple and become
a male prostitute. Parents would do it to boys as young as ten
years of age. To give their children to the gods, to serve
the gods, to gain some merit from the gods they believed in. Someone who was so deeply into paganism as
to do this was restricted from the privileges and rites of citizenship within the nation
because they had defiled the image of God and shown disregard for God's Word and God's
design and God's will. No place in the assembly of the Lord. Was this permanent? You mean to say in the Old Testament if you
did this, if you became a eunuch you could never be saved, you could never be forgiven? Let me help you with that. Isaiah 56, and go over to Isaiah 56 and it's
important, verse 3, Isaiah 56:3, "Thus says the Lord," by the way, the Lord's talking
here, "let not the foreigner who has joined himself to the Lord say, the Lord will surely
separate me from His people." Here we have a window of hope. Let not the foreigner outside the covenant
of Israel, outside the race of Jews descended from Abraham, let him not say the Lord will
surely separate me from His people. Let not that foreigner who comes and says
I want to be a part of this nation, I want to be a part of what God is doing here, I
want to worship your God in your way, let him not say the Lord will surely separate
me from His people, neither let the eunuch say, 'Behold, I am a dry tree, it's over for
me. I have no future. I have no hope. I have no part in God's people,.' For thus says the Lord...verse 4, "To the
eunuchs who keep My Sabbath and choose what pleases Me and hold fast My covenant, to them
I will give in My house and within My walls a memorial and a name better than that of
sons and daughters, I will give them an everlasting name which will not be cut off.'" Now there's a play on words. Is there forgiveness for them? Is there salvation for them? Even in the Old Testament there is forgiveness
and there is salvation. "Let not the eunuch say there's no hope for
me." Don't let that pagan, even the castrated pagan
think he can never have forgiveness from God and never have life from God. God will give him a place in his house within
his walls and the name better than that of sons and daughters, an everlasting name. And this is exactly what God does in Acts
8. You remember in Acts 8...you don't have to
look it up...Philip joins himself to a chariot and in the chariot is a eunuch who was serving
Candace, Queen of Ethiopia. Here is one, maybe from a child, had been
given by his parents and castrated and given to this...this woman, this monarch to serve
and he's reading...what?...Isaiah and he's instructed concerning the Messiah
at salvation. And he asks if he can be baptized and he is
baptized and he is saved and the Spirit of God comes upon him. And so, an unrepentant, unbelieving eunuch
is shut out and God doesn't want them anywhere near His assembly because He doesn't want
them having any of their evil influence. But salvation is open to them. In a sense, we invite all those people who
live in this kind of simple perversion to embrace Jesus Christ as Savior and be forgiven
and receive a new life and a new name and complete salvation and eternal heaven. But we do not welcome you to come here and
propagate that perversion. We have to protect ourselves from that. Let's go back then to Leviticus 18 as we continue
to see how Scripture speaks of this sin. Pretty clear, Leviticus 18:22...Leviticus
18:22, "You shall not lie with a male as one lies with a female. You shall not lie with a male as one lies
with a female, it is an abomination. Like you shall not have intercourse with an
animal, nor shall any woman stand before an animal to mate with it, it's perversion." It's perversion like bestiality. And then he goes on to say, verse 24, "Do
not defile yourselves by any of these things, for by all these the nations which I'm casting
out before you have become defiled." That's the reason that you're going to go
into the promised land and the nations that are there are going to be thrown out because
this is how they conduct themselves in homosexual perversion and perversion with animals. "As for you, you are to keep My commandments,
My judgments. You shall not do any of these abominations,
neither the native nor the alien who sojourns among you." Don't allow it in the land among anybody. How could you allow it in the church? "For the men of the land who have been before
you have done all these abominations and the land has become defiled so that the land may
not spew you out should you defile it as it has spewed out the nation which has been before
you." You open the church to homosexuals and you...you
may find God spewing the whole church out of His mouth. Verse 29, "Whoever does any of these abominations,
those persons who do so shall be cut off, executed from among their people. Thus you are to keep My charge, or commandment,
that you do not practice any of the abominable customs which have been practiced before you
so as not to defile yourselves with them...here's the reason...I am the Lord your God and I
say so." There's absolutely no mistaking. Homosexual perversion and behavior is defiling. It produces God's judgment. God hasn't changed His opinion. God isn't any different now than He was then. He views it the very same way. Chapter 20 of Leviticus and verse 13, "If
there is a man who lies with a 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." The penalty is death, execution on the spot
as it was for adultery. Now there are some people who say, "Well,
Jesus said I am the end of the Law." No, He said I am the fulfillment of the Law. He said, "Not one jot or tittle shall from
this Law be removed." God's moral law is unchanging and absolutely
unchangeable. First Timothy 1:10, "And immoral men and homosexuals
and kidnappers and liars and perjurers and whatever else is contrary to sound teaching." At the beginning of the Bible it is classified
as a sin, at the end of the Bible it is still classified as a sin. Let's go to Genesis 19. Genesis 19 is the most dramatic illustration
of this sin in Scripture. Of course, Genesis 1:27 God made man and made
woman, made them male, zakar, female, neqebah, they were to complete each other, making one
flesh, producing offspring. This is God's unalterable design, a man and
a woman. Satan immediately wants to corrupt that, right? You have that and then in chapter 3 you have
the Fall, then what comes? Chapter 12, you have adultery. Chapter 19 you have incest. Chapter 34 you have rape. Chapter 38 you have prostitution. Part of the history of Genesis is the patriarchs,
another part of the history of Genesis is the development of sexual perversion. And here in the nineteenth chapter of Genesis,
homosexuality is featured. Sodom is the city. And by the way, according to Ezekiel 16, Sodom
was filled with all kinds of wickedness, but none more shocking than this, surely there
was adultery, fornication, polygamy, incest, rape, prostitution, you name it. But notice this, two angels came to Sodom
in the evening as Lot was sitting in the Gate of Sodom. Angels who had taken on bodily form. 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 into your servants house and spend the night, wash your feet that you may rise
early and go on your way. They said, however, No, we will spend the
night in the square." Not a good idea. Two magnificent, heavenly angels in beautiful
form, the likes of which people had never seen. Verse 3, he urged them strongly. So they turned aside to him and entered his
house and he prepared a feast for them, and baked unleavened bread and they ate. He was protecting them. And he expressed kindness to them as heavenly
visitors, as Abraham and Sarah had done in the seventeenth chapter when they were also
visited. Before they lay down, the men of the city,
the men of Sodom surrounded the house, both young and old, all the people from every quarter. The word got out that these two magnificent
creatures were in town and in Lot's house and the men of the city, the men of Sodom
surround the house, young and old men. 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 have relations
with them," literally have intercourse with them. That's how perverse they were. But Lot went out to them in the doorway and
shut the door behind him. Went outside and shut the door behind him
and said, "Please, my brothers, do not act wickedly. Please. 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 inasmuch as they have come under the shelter of my
roof." What in the world kind of bizarre plan is
that? You say, "Well maybe he just thought that
because they were so lustful in the category of homosexual sin, the girls would have had
no appeal to them. Maybe. Probably a more faithful exposition would
be to say that Lot would sacrifice his own daughters before he would allow the angels
of God to be molested. By the way, at this point a man named Bailey
wrote a book, in which he says, "The sin of Sodom was a lack of hospitality." People weren't very hospitable to these angels. Yeah, that's true but it was a lot more than
that. The people said, here's their response outside,
verse 9, they said, "Stand aside, out of the way, Lot." Furthermore they said, "This one came in as
an alien and already he's acting like a judge," speaking of Lot. "Now we will treat you worse than them. So they pressed hard against Lot and came
near to break the door." Now this is really out of control...out of
control. They want the two strangers, their passion
is so strong they storm the door driven by lust, but the men, the angels, verse 10, reached
out their hands, brought Lot into the house with them and shut the door and they struck
the men who were at the doorway of the house with blindness, both the small and the great,
the important and the unimportant. They were old and young and small and great. But look at this, "So that they wearied themselves
trying to find the doorway." Even though they had just been made blind,
they were still trying to get in. You say that lust was out of control? Amazing. You would think if you had been made blind
you'd get out of there. Lust is so compelling, as this kind of perversion
is, they kept trying to get to the door and God eventually burned the whole city to a
crisp. And born out of that was the name that has
been through the years used to describe this kind of behavior, sodomy. Sodomy which appears in 1 Kings 14:24 and
Deuteronomy 23:17 and 18 had its origin here. Sodomite was one who engaged in homosexual
perversion. The sin of Sodom was homosexuality, not a
lack of hospitality. It's reiterated, by the way, in Jude verses
6 and 7. It's really the best term. We should use it. Gay is preposterous as a term describing them. They're anything but gay. Massive guilt, loneliness, no future, no hope,
trying to bury their guilt under some self-justifying campaign, they're anything but gay. Homosexuality is clinical, sodomite is biblical. That shows it for what it really is, the passion
and a lust that is out of control. There's another Old Testament text, however,
that must be addressed. Turn to Isaiah chapter 3...Isaiah chapter
3 and verse...well pick it up at verse 9. "There are certain people who rebel against
God, here they are, the expression of their faces bears witness against them and they
display their sin like Sodom. They do not even conceal it. Woe to them for they have brought evil on
themselves." That's how it is. "Sodomites display their sin openly and publicly,
they don't conceal it and they bring down greater evil on themselves. You say to the righteous that it will go well
with them, for they will eat the fruit of their actions. Woe to the wicked, it will go badly with them,
or with him, for what he deserves will be done to him. O My people, their oppressors are children
and women rule over them. O My people, those who guide you, lead you
astray and confuse the direction of your paths." Here is a picture of sodomy going on in Isaiah's
time which was part of God's judgment of falling. The prophet said Jerusalem is ruined, Judah
is fallen. They have rebelled against the Lord. They provoke the Lord. They don't hide their sin like those in Sodom
didn't hide it. They may well have been engaging in the same
kinds of sin but they were parading their sin like the sodomites openly paraded their
sin. This is flagrant rebellion toward God, it
is blatant. And in verse 12 where it says their oppressors
are children and women rule over them. Interesting statements. The term women there can be a woman-like man,
or an effeminate person. Some lexicons have it a man-like woman. It could be that even in Isaiah's time there
were sodomites in government, positions of power and positions of authority. If they can, they like to get into those positions. The Gay Invasion by William Rogers reports
that there has been at least one homosexual in every presidential cabinet since Franklin
Roosevelt and there are more now than ever. Isaiah likely knew that sodomy was all around
and even in high places, it was part of the life of the Assyrians, the Babylonians, and
the Egyptians. And some historians say the Pharaohs were
engaged in homosexuality. We expect that from the unregenerate world. It took 150 years but finally this sin coupled
with the rest destroyed Israel in divine judgment. What destroyed Sodom destroyed Israel, it
would later destroy Greece, it would destroy Rome and it may destroy America. It is sin. It is deadly. It is destructive. And God hasn't changed His view. Our society refuses to see it that way because
we've bought in to a lot of lies. There was born a man named Sigmund Freud who
among many human behaviors became interested in dealing with sodomites. He determined that it was the psychological
disorder related to a domineering mother. In 1930's there came a man named Ellis, who
published a manual, a sexual book bringing sodomy into the open and pointing out some
famous sodomites. He concluded that sodomites tend to be great
men because they have a special genius attached to their sodomy. He wrote about Erasmus, the Dutch humanist,
sixteenth century, Christopher Marlowe, the English poet, Michelangelo, the Italian genius
who was not a homosexual, Lord Byron who was, Francis Bacon, Oscar Wilde who was, Walt Whitman. He put together this list of formidable folks
to prove the genius of being a sodomite. Freud said, some kind of a quirky reaction
to a domineering mother, Ellis said quite the contrary it is in fact a kind of genius. Then came a real fraud, Albert Kinsey in the
forties and the fifties, publishing the famous Kinsey Report which was a whole pack of lies
which tried to normalize sodomy by saying one out of ten people does this. The American Psychiatric Association declassified
sodomy as a sickness, removing it from its standard diagnostic manual, determining that
it is hereditary. All this has led to the epidemic today. There is no evidence that it is anything other
than a deviant perverted kind of behavior. Are some people drawn to it? Yes. Why are they drawn to it? There could be a lot of reasons why they're
drawn to it. Why is anybody drawn to any kind of sin? I'm not drawn to it. There are some sins I can't comprehend. I can't comprehend that sin. I can't comprehend a lot of sin. I can't comprehend murder. In early America do you know that they used
to give people shock therapy to try to blast blank spots into their brain hoping to hit
the homosexual lust zone? Do you know that once they did radical lobotomies
on people who did this? None of that is going to work because this
isn't something in the flesh of the brain, the tissue of the brain. This is a choice. Why do people choose it? Maybe they had an experience, some kind of
molestation when they were young, a kind of early homosexual experience and it's easy
and it's available, maybe a need for intimacy and an inability to connect with the opposite
sex. The developing sub-culture certainly makes
it acceptable and sucks in many. I don't know all the reasons. Why do people get drawn into adultery? Why do people get drawn into pornography? Choices, not just one but many. A final passage that we have to go to. God is going to judge this sin as He always
has judged it. Romans 1, and this really should have its
own study, but in order not to belabor this pressing theme, let me just give you a little
bit of an insight, Romans 1:18, "The wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all
ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who suppress the truth in unrighteousness." God's wrath is revealed from heaven continually,
all the time against those who suppress the truth. They suppress the truth of God which is known,
evident within them. God made it evident to them through the creation. You know, you're familiar with this text. Even though they knew God by conscious and
creation, reason, they didn't honor Him as God or give thanks. They're futile in their speculations. Their foolish heart was darkened, professing
to be wise they became fools, exchanged the glory of the incorruptible God for an image
in the form of corruptible man, birds, four-footed animals, crawling creatures. Let's just give that one title. Rejection of the true God and idolatry, okay? Idolatry. God's wrath is revealed against those who
make an exchange. They exchange, verse 23, they exchange the
glory of the incorruptible God. Verse 25, "They exchange the truth of God
for a lie." And then they exchange, verse 26, "The natural
function for that which is unnatural and in the same way men abandon the natural function
of the woman, burn in their desire toward one another, men with men, committing indecent
acts and receiving in their own person the due penalty of their error." Reject God, reject the true God, become an
idolater, worshiping a God of your own fashion, and you have exchanged the glory of the incorruptible
God for some other God and idolatry will always result in immorality. It is a built-in judgment. So God gave them over in the lusts of their
hearts to impurity that their bodies might be dishonored among them. Idolatry leads to immorality. You can pair the two up throughout all of
history. Idolatry leads to immorality. God gives them up to their lusts. And where do their lusts take them? To homosexual behavior, women exchanging because
they've exchanged the glory of the true God and the truth of God for a lie, they also
exchanged the natural function for what is unnatural. Men do the very same. And what do they get out of it? The end of verse 27. "In their own persons the due penalty of their
error." I think that primarily prefers to physical
death as well as divine judgment. They get sexually transmitted diseases of
all kinds, some that I wouldn't even mention. They get a shortened life span. They have no hope and no future and they are
living under massive guilt. Tragic life, sad tragic life. Reject God, exchange the true God for an idol,
exchange the truth of God for a lie and you'll exchange natural behavior for what is unnatural. Verse 27, the little phrase, "Burned in their
desire." Burned in their desire. I just have to say this and I'm done. This literally, ekkaio, means to burn out,
consumed by desire, raging desire. They engage in things that are painful. Many mass murderers were homosexuals. One illustration. Dr. Milton Helpburn(?), former chief medical examiner
of New York City, the New York Times said the man who knows more about violent death
than anyone else in America, he wrote a biography called Where Death Delights, did Helpburn,
not a Christian. This is what he said, "It's not my role to
condemn homosexuality as such and I leave it to the psychiatrists and psychologists
to try to figure out why people practice homosexuality, but having performed sixty thousand autopsies,
he said, it is high time that those who deviate from the norms should understand the risks. I don't know why it is so, but it seems that
the violent explosions of jealousy among homosexuals far exceed those of the jealousy of a man
for a woman, or a woman for a man. The pent-up charges and energy of the homosexual
relationship simply can not be contained when the explosive point is reached, the result
is brutally violent. But this is the normal pattern of these homosexual
attacks," he writes, "the multiple stabbings, the senseless beatings that obviously much
continue long after the victim dies, when we see these brutal multiple wound cases in
a single victim, we automatically assume that we are dealing with a homosexual victim and
a homosexual attacker," end quote. Consumed with this lust. Well you say this sounds like bad news. This is really good news. Good news for the perverse cause if you will
recognize this as sin, see it for what it is, quit trying to defend it and sanctify
it, and justify it, confess it as the sin that it is, cry out to God, He'll forgive
you and wash you and sanctify you and justify you. And dear ones, this is the message we have
to give to these people, there isn't any other message. I remember one night on the Larry King program,
talking to Chad Allen, the actor, about this very thing. And I started in 1 Corinthians chapter 6 that
someone engaged in this kind of life, as he is, would not enter the Kingdom of God. And then I went back to that same passage
at the end and said, "But such were some of you, but you're washed and sanctified and
justified." And I told him that God would forgive him
and wash him and justify him and sanctify him. That's the message. That's the only message we have. I close with a story. Sorry to keep you long, but that will mean
I don't have to talk about this again. Psalm 107...Psalm 107, one Sunday morning
in this very auditorium I stood up and read Psalm 107 as I often read a Psalm. And I came to verse 10, "There were those
who dwelt in darkness and in the shadow of death, prisoners in misery and chains because
they had rebelled against the words of God and spurned the counsel of the Most High. Therefore He humbled their heart with labor,
they stumbled, there was none to help, then they cried out to the Lord in their trouble. He saved them out of their distresses. He brought them out of darkness and the shadow
of death and broke their bands apart. Let them give thanks to the Lord for his loving
kindness and for His wonders to the sons of men, for He has shattered gates of bronze
and cut bars of iron asunder." And I went on to read a further portion of
the Psalm. But one verse stood out. Verse 6, "They cried out to the Lord in their
trouble. He delivered them out of their distresses. He led them also by a straight way." Now if you're living in a homosexual world,
the word straight has significant meaning. Sitting right back there was a young man named
Robert Lagerstrom (sp?). He was one of the leaders in the Gay Pride
Parade in Los Angeles. He was dying of AIDS, he said to one of his
friends, "I'm dying, I'm afraid to die. I'm not ready to die. Where can I go to get help?" One of his fellow sinners said, "There's a
church in the valley called Grace Community Church, go there." He came here. I read that Psalm. He was a man crying to the Lord in trouble. He was a prisoner in misery and chains. He was in the darkness and the shadow of death
and I read that Psalm. Later that day he said to me, "You read that
and I knew I was in the right place. You read that and I kept saying to myself,
how do I get delivered, how do I get delivered? Where do I go? What do I do?" And then he said, "You got up and you preached
this really long, long sermon and the more you talked, the more irritated I became because
I wanted to be delivered and you kept talking and talking, I didn't hear a word you said." So he came at the end of the service, came
to the prayer room, fell on his face before God, repented, embraced Jesus Christ as Lord,
was wonderfully saved and I baptized him right here in these waters. Before I did that, he gave testimony to everyone
he knew and his...when the Gay Pride Parade came, all the leaders of the parade, when
it came by because he lived on the route came to his house to wish him well cause he was
dying. Gave them all the gospel, went to heaven. We speak the truth about the sin in order
that we might speak the truth about the Savior who forgives, right? Father, we thank You again for Your Word. It opens up so much to us, so current, so
pertinent. Thank You for the clarity with which it speaks
to these matters. May we be faithful to call these people who
are caught in this vicious sin to repentance, not accepting the sin but loving the sinner
enough to give the hope of the gospel and would You continue to save and wash and sanctify
and justify sinners in this church of all kinds and may we live lives that please You
and honor You as those who are forgiven. We thank You in Christ's name. Amen.
