The Price Of Telling The Truth
Ezekial 33:1-29 2 Timothy 3:1-5 & 4:1-5
Have you ever been put in the place of knowing the truth about a situation, but you didn’t want to say anything because you knew you would pay a price for telling it. For most of us it could mean losing a friendship, or having a brother or sister get angry with us for coming clean, or getting kicked out of a group. For others, it could mean losing a job, losing a career, and sometimes even losing a life.
The truth can get you into trouble. The word of God teaches us, that the closer we get to the coming of Christ, the more the truth of the word of God is going to set us in trouble. It teaches that people will have a desire for religion, but they will not have a desire to know the truth of the word of God. Today people do not mind you talking about religion or spiritual matters, but the moment you start to talk about the word of God saying something is sin, then you are accused of imposing your values on others.
What does the word of God tell us about truth. It tells us that God does have a standard. It tells us that there are some things that are right and some things that are wrong. There are some behaviors which are acceptable to God, and some behaviors which are not. It tells us that all of us start out in the same category of people, which is a sinner in need of a change that can only happen by the grace and mercy of God. We are all born with a bent toward doing evil. Nobody ever sits down and teaches a child how to be selfish. No one teaches a child, how to rebel and say no. No one teaches a child to say mine. No one teaches a child to reach out and smack someone.
Every one of us came into this world with desires that are contrary to the word of God. Some of us came into this world, lying. We struggle with telling the truth. Some of us came in ready to steal in a moment. Some of us came in willing to hold grudges for years. Some of us came in looking for somebody to control and dominate. Some of us came in struggling with lust the moment we discovered the opposite sex. Some of us came in with a spirit of jealousy. God still loved us, but God loved us with a desire to get us to turn away from that desire and turn toward him.
The truth is, that as we get closer to the ends of time, people will insist that we accept all kinds of behaviors. It says from our Scripture reading. In 2 Timothy 3:1-4 (NIV) 1 But mark this: There will be terrible times in the last days. 2 People will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boastful, proud, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, 3 without love, unforgiving, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not lovers of the good, 4 treacherous, rash, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God—
These are the kinds of people, we have been called to go and make a difference in their lives for Christ. Now let’s be sure we understand, that this line is not a black and white line, where there is always a clear break. The reality is that some of us are struggling with these issues in our own lives and we are going to be wrestling with them to the grave. That is why we are told to work out our salvation with fear and trembling. The truth of the word of God tells us, if we are doing these things, we need to stop, change, and move closer to Jesus Christ in our actions.
You can’t say, I’m just an unforgiving person. Even when I was a little, I had a hard time forgiving people. I never did forgive my 8th grade teacher for that F I got which kicked me off the team. God made me this way. I tried to forgive a couple of times, but it was a struggle and one time I took back my forgiveness. If God truly loves me, God will accept me as I am. As long as I offer my gifts and talents to the Lord, that should be enough.
Well the truth of the Word of God states, “if you do not forgive others, your Heavenly Father will not forgive you.” You can believe anything you want but, the word of God remains the same.
Our society is bent on changing our values to get us to reject the word of God. It never says, warning, here is an attempt to get you to deny the truth of God’s word. It simply involves your emotions in a story, that leads you down a path to accept its conclusions without you asking critical questions.
Last Sunday I turned on the tv. It was on BET and there was this beautiful little black girl about 12 years of age sitting with her father in a restaurant. He was somewhat muscular with wavy black hair and attractive. There was obviously something troubling her from the way she was eating her food. She was spending the weekend with her father, because her parents were either divorced or separated.
She finally looks at her father, and says “Is it true that you sleep with other men.” Her father says, “I’m going to be honest with you, yes I do, do you have a problem with that.” The little girl says, “well I don’t know, some people say it’s wrong.” He says, “I know some people think that, but I feel that the only thing that is sin, is turning your back on someone you truly love. Can you accept me knowing this?” She says, “yes, I can, because some people wanted me to stop loving my mother because she was a dope addict. I still love you. Are you going to come out of the closet. He replied, “I’v’s never been a closet. I marched in the civil rights marches with Dr. King for freedom. However I’m’s not marching in gay pride parades because that’s for your generation to do. II however, wants to keep my behavior private from others.
Then they switch to a scene in which he takes her to her Mom, who is totally spaced out on drugs and the mother is leaving the house to go join a group of junkies. Her hair is wild, her eyeballs poking out, and her speech is nonsensical. (The father is very calm and compassionate toward covering for the mother, and is made to look like his daughter’s hero.) The father then takes the little girl, to his house to be with him and his male lover. They then make a big comedy scene over the girl coming to their bedroom saying she’s starting her menstrual cycle and neither of them know that to do. One wants to rush her to the hospital, and the other wants to know if there’s a manual written to deal with situation.
What we were told in this brief scene. First, that there is no sin in the behavior of two men having sex with each other as long as they love each other. Sin is defined as not loving someone who loves you. Second. That people who say homosexual behavior is wrong, is telling you not to love people who are homosexual. Third. To love the homosexual, you must approve of the behavior. Fourth the only ones who will take care of this little girl is her father and his lover. It is better for a little girl to live with two homosexual men, than to live with her mother who is addicted to drugs or some other relative that may be available. Fifth, two parents are the same, whether they are married or not and whether they’re male and female, or male and male. Sixth, the person who disagrees with this is wrong.
The word of God teaches a different truth. The bible tells us that we are not to have sex with someone of the same sex in the Old and the New Testament. It tells us in 1 Corinthians 6: 1 Corinthians 6:9-10 (NIV) 9 Do you not know that the wicked will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: Neither the sexually immoral nor idolaters nor adulterers nor male prostitutes nor homosexual offenders 10 nor thieves nor the greedy nor drunkards nor slanderers nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God.
There are people today, who say that, yes the Bible does speak against homosexual behavior, but its talking about people going from one relationship to another with multiple partners and living wild. They say it does not cover the situation of two people who are committed to each other and love each other. If you use that logic, you could say the same thing about adultery. If I left my wife and someone left their husband, and we moved to Hawaii and was fully committed to each other and even started a church, at what point would our behavior stop being adultery and become accepted to God. It wouldn’t because God determined that adultery was not His plan for humanity. The way I feel about it in my heart is not the issue, or the peace I have about it is not the issue. The issue is, “Is the word of God true concerning my behavior?”
In the clip I saw, even though the guy was living the gay lifestyle, he was keeping it a secret. This living on the downlow has been the main way AIDS has been transmitted to our African American women. Women having sex with men who are having sex with men. But of course that problem was not mentioned in the clip. The goal was to get you to accept the practice, but not deal with the consequences. God created a man to be married to a woman and a woman to a man, because the reality is, there are some things each sex needs to instill in a child. God’s plan was that we would recognize the importance of each sex being present, and that’s why He required a lifelong commitment to give his blessings upon our sexual behavior.
Being gay is not new. The reality is, every family here has someone in their family who struggles with homosexuality or lesbianism. It would be a rejection of the gospel for you to have nothing to do with the person based on their struggle. If it is you sister, you should love her as a sister, or your daughter as a daughter or your son as a son. You may feel disappointed but you should still love them.
It would be a rejection of the gospel for you to say, “I fully accept your behavior as being okay with God.” Why? Because you are putting that person at ease with what God has called sin. If you know what is the truth and you refuse to share the truth, God is going to hold you responsible for not sharing it. It is a lie to say you cannot love a person without loving who they are or what they do.
All of us are struggling on the journey. I want you to love me, but I do not want you to try to make me comfortable with sin in my life. I expect you to love me, while rejecting some of my behaviors. That’s how I am able to love you. There are people in our congregation that came out of the gay lifestyle, and some still struggling with it. I love them just as much as though of you who come out of living together and those of you who are struggling with it. Sin is sin, and God’s word is to bring us to repentance.
Our denomination is a battle over whether or not homosexuals and lesbians can be ordained as elders, deacons and ministers. Our current policy is this, just because you have a leaning or tendancy toward homosexuality, does not exclude you from being ordained. We all have leanings toward one sinful behavior or another. What excludes you from being ordained is if you are going to actively live out those feelings? Every single person who seeks to be ordained has some leanings toward lust. In ordination you are refusing to act upon those feelings unless you get married. The sin is not in the temptation, or the feeling, or being born that way, but in the carrying out of the feeling. Are you willing to deny your feelings for the cause of Jesus Christ. This is part of the cross you are called to pick up and bear.
We need to let people know, that God can help us change our feelings. God can help us change the leanings we were born with. That’s why Christ died and rose again. If Christ can conquer death, Christ can conquer anything we face in this life, if we want to be changed by God.
You will see articles in the newspaper on why gays and lesbians should be allowed to get married. They will tell you of a couple who has been together for 30 years wanting to be married. By the time you end the articles you will say, what’s the big deal, just let them marry. You will be persuaded just like the tv commercial. If all gays wanted was the right to get married by the civil authorities, I would not oppose it. But that’s not what the gay rights movement wants. What they want is an endorsement or approval of their behavior and a punishment for anybody who disagrees with what they do?
They want to cut off all funding to the boy scouts because they do not approve of the homosexual lifestyle and will not have gay scout leaders. That’s why I do not give anything to the United Way. They want all of our schools to teach that their behavior is acceptable by putting pictures of two mommies and two daddies in all of our kindergarten and elementary school books. So when parents tell their kids, this is wrong, the parents are made to be the ones who are sinful and unloving.
They want to label us homophobic and bigots and the church as being narrow minded and unloving, because we to agree with the word of God as being a truth that does not change. They want to end my freedom to believe and teach the word of God.
Let me share with you some things already happening from Chuck Colsen’s Breakpoint.
“ For instance, a Methodist retreat center recently refused to allow two lesbian couples to use a campground pavilion for a civil union ceremony. The state of New Jersey punished the Methodists by revoking the center’s tax-exempt status—a vindictive attack on the Methodists’ religious liberty.
In Massachusetts, where judges imposed gay marriage a few years ago, Catholic Charities was ordered to accept homosexual couples as candidates for adoption. Rather than comply with an order that would be harmful to children, Catholic Charities closed down its adoption program.
California public schools have been told they must be “gay friendly,” as Roback Morse notes. But it will not stop with public schools. Just north of the border in Quebec, the government told a Mennonite school that it must conform to provincial law regarding curriculum—a curriculum that teaches children that homosexuality is a valid lifestyle. How long will it be before the U.S. government goes after private schools?
Even speaking out against homosexuality can get you fired. Crystal Dixon, an associate vice president at the University of Toledo, was fired after writing an opinion piece in the Toledo Free Press in support of traditional marriage . . . Fired—for exercising her First Amendment rights!
Promoters of same-sex “marriage” seem to go out of their way to target Christian businesses and churches. Their goal, it seems, is not the right to “marry,” but to punish anyone who disagrees with them.
Clearly, there is a spiritual battle going on here: Christians are under attack because they are a public witness to the fact that a holy God created us male and female, and we will always put obedience to Him and His laws above obedience to any earthly demand for loyalty.”
Zondervan and Thomas Nelson books are being sued by a gay man, for printing bibles that claim homosexual behavior is sinful. It cause him emotional distress to hear it at church and repeated by his family members. Think of the money these Christians groups will have to pay in legal fees, for just printing the King James Bible.
I guarantee you, if nothing changes, with the power of the gay lobby in this country, the next litmus test for judges will be whether or not they approve of the homosexual lifestyle. Today you can have a highly qualified candidate for judge in every respect, but if the person opposes abortion, they will have a fight on their hands to get a seat on the bench. Tomorrow it will be the homosexual test for judges. History will repeat itself. Those of us who stand for the truth, will pay a price for our position and will not be nominated or elected.
Truth is not something we can invent out of thin air, when it comes to God. What we know about God, is what God has chosen to reveal to us about Himself. We are all going to want to twist the truth at some point to justify our behavior. All we did was twist it, but we could not change it. As Christians, we either accept what the word of God says about all sexual behaviors, or we cease calling ourselves Christians.
We have turned sex into a personal guaranteed right of freedom for nearly everyone and caused a disaster in our society. But not any of this has caught God by surprise. He told us, that sexual immorality would be one of the signs that the end is near. Two of the seven churches in Revelations were dealing with the approval of sexual immorality. God was calling both of them to change and repent of their ways. When we reject God, we come up with all kinds of things including the worship of idols.
Look at Romans 1:18-32Romans 1:18-32 (NIV)
18 The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of men who suppress the truth by their wickedness, 19 since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them.
20 For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities--his eternal power and divine nature--have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse. 21 For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened. 22 Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools
23 and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like mortal man and birds and animals and reptiles.
24 Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another. 25 They exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator--who is forever praised. Amen.
26 Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural relations for unnatural ones. 27 In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed indecent acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their perversion.
28 Furthermore, since they did not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God, he gave them over to a depraved mind, to do what ought not to be done. 29 They have become filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed and depravity. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit and malice. They are gossips, 30 slanderers, God-haters, insolent, arrogant and boastful; they invent ways of doing evil; they disobey their parents;
31 they are senseless, faithless, heartless, ruthless. 32 Although they know God’s righteous decree that those who do such things deserve death, they not only continue to do these very things but also approve of those who practice them.
None of us can boast about being more holy than someone else. All of us are sinners in need of God’s grace, because we all fall into this chapter. But where we see our sin in this chapter, let us confess it and forsake and become what God intended for us to become.
Sermon Outline Pastor Rick
“The Price Of Telling The Truth”
7/23/2008 Ezekiel 33:1-29
2 Timothy 3:1-5 & 4:1-5
A. Have You Kept Silent With The Truth
1. The Price You Might Pay
2. The Things You Might Lose
3. The Trouble It Will Cause
B. Truth Will Not Always Be Appreciated
1. Desire For Religion—Not Truth
2. Some Truth Basics
3. Right & Wrong
4. Same Starting Line—Sinners
5. Desires, Leanings, Struggles
6. All Came With Something
7. Demanding Of Acceptings
2 Timothy 3:1-4 (NIV)
1 But mark this: There will be terrible times in the last days. 2 People will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boastful, proud, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy,
3 without love, unforgiving, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not lovers of the good,
4 treacherous, rash, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God—
C. The Line Is Not Always Straight
1. Work Out Your Salvation
2 . I’ve Always Been Unforgiving
3. God Has To Accept Me
4. Society’s Ability To Change Our
Values
D. A 12 Year Girl & Her Father
1. Scene At The Restaurant
2. A Problem With Being Gay
3. The Positive Image
4. Sin-Not Loving Who Loves You
5. What’s Wrong With Disagreeing
6. Gentle Persuasion
7. Something Is Wrong With You
E. What Does The Bible Really Say
1 Corinthians 6:9-10 (NIV)
9 Do you not know that the wicked will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: Neither the sexually immoral nor idolaters nor adulterers nor male prostitutes nor homosexual offenders 10 nor thieves nor the greedy nor drunkards nor slanderers nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God.
1. Is There A Good & Bad Homosexual
Behavior?
2. Are There Two Types Of Adultery
3. Not Telling All The Truth
4. Extolling The Down Low
5. God’s Plan For Us All
F. When A Family Member Is Gay
1. Be Faithful To The Gospel
2. Love As Jesus Loved
3. Be Faithful To The Gospel
4. Take A Stand In Love
5. We Are All On The Journey Of
Struggle
H. The Denomination’s Struggle
1. Ordination Issues
2. Leanings & Feelings Do Not
Disqualify
3. Choosing A Behavior For The Cause Of
Christ
4. Sin Is In The Practice Not The Feeling
5. God Can Help Us To Change
I. What About Same Sex Marriage
1. The Argument You Will Hear
2. Marriage Is Not Going To Be Enough
3. Silence & Punishment Is The Goal
4. Boy Scouts & United Way
5. The Desire To Train My Child
6. Parents Are The Bad Guys
J. Chuck Colson & Break Point
1. Government Protection—Enforcement
2. Methodist Retreat Center
3. Catholic Charities Adoption
4. California Schools
5. Crystal Dixon—Univ. Of Toledo
H. Spiritual Battle Taking Place
1. Zondervan & Thomas Nelson Suit
2. The Future Litmus Test For Judges
3. Truth Does Not Come From Thin Air
4. God’s Still In Control
I. Who Has The Right To Speak The Truth
1. God Has Warned Us
2. The Rejection Of God
Romans 1:18-32 (NIV)
18 The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of men who suppress the truth by their wickedness,
19 since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them.
20 For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities--his eternal power and divine nature--have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse.
21 For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened.
22 Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools
23 and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like mortal man and birds and animals and reptiles.
24 Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another.
25 They exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator--who is forever praised. Amen.
26 Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural relations for unnatural ones.
27 In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed indecent acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their perversion.
28 Furthermore, since they did not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God, he gave them over to a depraved mind, to do what ought not to be done.
29 They have become filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed and depravity. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit and malice. They are gossips,
30 slanderers, God-haters, insolent, arrogant and boastful; they invent ways of doing evil; they disobey their parents;
31 they are senseless, faithless, heartless, ruthless.
32 Although they know God’s righteous decree that those who do such things deserve death, they not only continue to do these very things but also approve of those who practice them.
3. All Of Us Are Called To Repentence.
Janet Williams’ mother Lois Rozelle’s service is Thursday July 24th here at Glenville New Life. The wake is at 10:30am and the service is at 11:00am.
Also Michael Milan’s cousin Ann Wagner’s service is Tuesday July 20th at Solon Community Church 33955 Sherbrook Park Dr. Solon, Oh 44139. The wake is at 9:30am and the service is at 10:00am.
