Is Homosexuality a Sin? What should my response be to those who chose this lifestyle?
Pastor Glenn Newton, July 7, 2013
Prayer –
I put a question on our sign this week, “How do you decide what is true and false? And for the answer, I put “We use God’s Word”. So this morning I want to share with you what God’s Word says specifically about Homosexuality…and we will together let the Holy Spirit teach us the Truth. There are 9 specific passages that I found, 4 in the OT, and 5 in the NT that directly speak to this topic, there are many more that deal with the subject of what God desires for us in our relationships and how that relates to our sex life. In this message I will be sharing all nine passages….they will be on the power point if you want to write the references down for your own study this week.
First, let’s start at the beginning….our Creator has a plan for our families, He has a plan for our intimate relationship, we call it marriage, He has a plan for our sex lives. He created us for not only intimate relationship with Him, but He also has made it clear this is what he wants for us with our mates…let’s read Genesis
Genesis 2:18-25
18 The Lord God said, “It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper suitable for him.”
19 Now the Lord God had formed out of the ground all the wild animals and all the birds in the sky. He brought them to the man to see what he would name them; and whatever the man called each living creature, that was its name. 20 So the man gave names to all the livestock, the birds in the sky and all the wild animals.
But for Adam no suitable helper was found. 21 So the Lord God caused the man to fall into a deep sleep; and while he was sleeping, he took one of the man’s ribs and then closed up the place with flesh. 22 Then the Lord God made a woman from the rib he had taken out of the man, and he brought her to the man.
23 The man said,
“This is now bone of my bones
and flesh of my flesh;
she shall be called ‘woman,’
for she was taken out of man.”
24 That is why a man leaves his father and mother and is united to his wife, and they become one flesh.
25 Adam and his wife were both naked, and they felt no shame.
When a man and women come together as God intends, in marriage…they leave their homes, they commit to each other, they bond together physically, emotionally, and spiritually…they become one flesh. Simply said, sex inside the marriage relationship protects us physically, it protects us emotionally, and it protects us spiritually. The opposite is also true. Sex outside of marriage, it destroys us physically, it destroys us emotionally, and it destroys us spiritually when we disobey Gods Plan for us….sin always brings destruction…God’s Wrath.
So very quickly, that is in a quick summary of God’s intention for marriage and I believe it’s clear what it says….that a man will be united to his wife….amen?
After God created Adam and Eve…we know what happened…devastation came upon all mankind when they chose to sin….they chose to exchange the truth that God had given them for a lie….the one Satan sold them…and from that time on we have all been affected by this curse…
Romans 3:23 says, “23 for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,”…. So this morning we are not here to claim to be superior, to be self-righteous….we are all sinners who have had to come to a place where we realized we were lost in our sin…and without Christ we would never experience Heaven…so this morning understand the reason I speak the truth of God’s Word is out of Love…not Hate.
We humans are all broken. We all fall short of the glory of God and are in need of His grace. Thus, Christians recognize that people in a homosexual lifestyle are people, made in the image of God, who should be treated fairly by all.
While it is very important to strive for fairness for everyone, it is equally important to consider an important concept: While all people are created equal, not all ideas or behaviors are equal. Your Intuition tells you this is true, and the Bible also makes this clear….this is a key statement when we are having this debate. Let me give you an example…
Adultery in not morally equivalent to being Faithful sexually. Two different ideas about sex…One is superior Biblically and even in the eyes of our Justice system…To be Faithful in your marriage is a superior behavior…vs Adultery.
Prostitution is not morally equivalent to sex with love….Fornication is not morally equivalent to the virtue of chastity……the Bible makes this clear…we know it’s true in our own hearts, and even our own society as corrupt as it is understands this…. Not all ideas or behaviors are equal.
The point of this is to say that I can oppose a behavior, like the homosexual lifestyle, and still not hate the person.
Let’s let God’s Word speak to us..
Sodom and Gomorrah Destroyed
Genesis 19 The two angels arrived at Sodom in the evening, and Lot was sitting in the gateway of the city. When he saw them, he got up to meet them and bowed down with his face to the ground. 2 “My lords,” he said, “please turn aside to your servant’s house. You can wash your feet and spend the night and then go on your way early in the morning.”
“No,” they answered, “we will spend the night in the square.”
3 But he insisted so strongly that they did go with him and entered his house. He prepared a meal for them, baking bread without yeast, and they ate. 4 Before they had gone to bed, all the men from every part of the city of Sodom—both young and old—surrounded the house. 5 They called to Lot, “Where are the men who came to you tonight? Bring them out to us so that we can have sex with them.”
6 Lot went outside to meet them and shut the door behind him 7 and said, “No, my friends. Don’t do this wicked thing. 8 Look, I have two daughters who have never slept with a man. Let me bring them out to you, and you can do what you like with them. But don’t do anything to these men, for they have come under the protection of my roof.”
9 “Get out of our way,” they replied. “This fellow came here as a foreigner, and now he wants to play the judge! We’ll treat you worse than them.” They kept bringing pressure on Lot and moved forward to break down the door.
10 But the men inside reached out and pulled Lot back into the house and shut the door. 11 Then they struck the men who were at the door of the house, young and old, with blindness so that they could not find the door. (Skip to the end)
23 By the time Lot reached Zoar, the sun had risen over the land. 24 Then the LORD rained down burning sulfur on Sodom and Gomorrah—from the LORD out of the heavens. 25 Thus he overthrew those cities and the entire plain, destroying all those living in the cities—and also the vegetation in the land.
This event in the OT is where we get the word Sodomite..it’s a word that describes homosexual behavior…these cities were destroyed because of their sinful behavior….their depravity…their choice of exchanging God’s Plan for sex, and putting their own desires in its place…whenever we take God and His plan off the Throne in our lives…and chase after our own pleasure..our own desires..it’s sin.
Leviticus 18:22
22 “‘Do not have sexual relations with a man as one does with a woman; that is detestable.”
Leviticus 20:13
13 “‘If a man has sexual relations with a man as one does with a woman, both of them have done what is detestable. They are to be put to death; their blood will be on their own heads.
It should be pointed out that what the Bible condemns is not personality traits such as feminine feelings on the part of a man (or masculine feelings on the part of a woman). However, Jesus taught that sin runs deep. He said, "I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart" (Matthew 5:28) But notice the statement in
1 Corinthians 6:9-11
9 Or do you not know that wrongdoers will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: Neither the sexually immoral nor idolaters nor adulterers nor men who have sex with men 10 nor thieves nor the greedy nor drunkards nor slanderers nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God. 11 And that is what some of you were. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God.
Paul is talking to people who have come out of these kind of lifestyles….Aren’t you glad that we are not stuck like the animals just living our lives on our basic instincts…we have a choice how we will live, and with God’s forgiveness and help we can overcome our temptations to become blameless in God’s sight… Colossians 1:22 says…
22 But now he has reconciled you by Christ’s physical body through death to present you holy in his sight, without blemish and free from accusation—
This seems a clear indication that homosexuals can change.
Let’s look at Romans
Romans 1:18-32
God’s Wrath Against Sinful Humanity
18 The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of people, 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 people 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 a mortal human being 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 about 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 sexual 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 shameful acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their error.
In this passage, Paul is making it so clear what he is talking about….you have to jump through hoops and pretend that most of the words are not really there to misunderstand what his message it…
V. 18.. God’s Wrath…Greek (Orge) it means what we think it means….God’s anger/Punishment…the basic idea is that the people have a irreverence, a disregard for God’s law and a disregard for Him. God’s wrath is the result of the clash of His Righteousness with Sin. God cannot Love good unless He hates Evil.
If you love children…don’t you hate child abuse? If you love Justice don’t you hate Injustice?
In verse 18, it tells us that those who are participating in this Rebellion against God’s Plan are trying to suppress the truth with their wickedness… can you see that going on today? Those that are trying to promote this lifestyle of sin are trying to package it every which way to legitimize it, to make it seem morally acceptable. Here’s the truth…when you remove God from your thinking…Everything is a go…there is Chaos…you are removing the moral compass for our lives and allowing the sinful nature to take you deeper and deeper into the abyss.
How many of you know that sin always moves you farther and farther away from God as you participate in it? Especially sexual sin. It always starts in our mind…then it might be movies that put the sexual images in our mind…then that’s not enough, so we move to pornography..which used to be just pictures in a magazine…but now has turned into a multi-billion dollar business on the internet…and the slippery slide will continue until you are acting out on what you have seen….the thought became act…it’s the way Satan tries to entangle you. You find yourself where you never imagined you would go.
Verse 19…19 since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them.
The truth is all mankind knows the truth….Natural revelation shows that God exists and be clearly seen by all mankind…. In v. 20 it says that men are without excuse…what that means is that men will be defenseless on Judgment day…No one will be able to say… I didn’t know you existed!
So as Christians…we can have confidence that those who we are trying to witness too…we don’t really need to spend a whole lot of time trying to convince them that God exists…they already know in their heart of hearts…they may not want to acknowledge that…but they know, because God reveals Himself to all men. So those that are living in a lifestyle of sin, no matter what that is, they know they are breaking God’s Law….are job is to Love them enough to tell them the truth and not be caught up in the Political Correctness garbage…
Look at v. 21 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.
The greek word for “Knew” is Ginosko…our Tennessee folks should know what that word means…it means to know intimately, to understand…the kind of knowing that a husband and wife share… and the reason they knew God is because He reveals Himself to all mankind…but their thinking became “Futile”.. (Mataioo)..it means “given over to worthlessness.
Friends, sin dumbs you down…have you found that to be true? When your living in sin you don’t want to admit that your living in sin, so you have to exchange the truth for a lie…and you then have to make yourself dumb enough to believe it….so you can live with yourself…
v. 23 23 and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like a mortal human being and birds and animals and reptiles.
They traded God’s Plan…to Worship the One True God and follow His plan, for their own Plan..
Whenever we remove God from our place of worship…we become Idolaters, Idol worshipers. We can put all kinds of things in God’s place, but it all becomes the same…it’s sin against the One True God. If we put our sex life, our relationships, our jobs, our entertainment…whatever it might be, it becomes sin for us.
Look at v. 24-27 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 about 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 sexual 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 shameful acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their error.
This passage twice speaks to “God gave them over”…what this means is that God has given us free will, without this choice to choose God there would be neither love nor goodness…if we were forced to follow God…that’s slavery. God loves us so much he give us the Freedom to choose Him…True freedom comes when we Worship Him….bondage comes when we choose to live outside of His will and protection.
In verse 27, Paul tells us that because of this sin, there is a penalty….not only the physical, emotional penalty for replacing God’s plan for their own pleasure, but a spiritual penalty, separation from God because of sin.
The God of the Bible is not merely a God of love and forgiveness. God has characteristics of love AND justice (among others). Jesus, for example, warns about hell more than any other biblical figure! We must not underestimate the holiness of God, who demands right conduct—in fact, perfection (Matthew 5:48). 48 Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.
I’ve said many times that God will take you right where you are…meaning it doesn’t matter where you have been, what you have done…God will forgive you…but some people misinterpret that and believe that God accepts us in our sin….We can’t clean ourselves up, but God demands repentance when we come to Him…The Holiness of God demands it, He cannot and will not be in relationship with anyone who has Rejected Him and is practicing idolatry. We must not create a God to suit ourselves…this is idolatry and breaks the 2nd commandment
Is Homosexuality a sin? The Bible is very clear.. yes.
How do we respond to those who are living in this lifestyle? We love them. We love them enough to tell them the truth….not with angry and hateful words, but just like Jesus. What did Jesus do with the woman caught in adultery? He loved her, he rescued her…then he told her to go and sin no more. He told her what she needed to know to find true happiness.
