“Behold, everyone who uses proverbs will use this proverb about you: ‘Like mother, like daughter.’ You are the daughter of your mother, who loathed her husband and her children; and you are the sister of your sisters, who loathed their husbands and their children. Your mother was a Hittite and your father an Amorite. And your elder sister is Samaria, who lived with her daughters to the north of you; and your younger sister, who lived to the south of you, is Sodom with her daughters. Not only did you walk in their ways and do according to their abominations; within a very little time you were more corrupt than they in all your ways. As I live, declares the Lord GOD, your sister Sodom and her daughters have not done as you and your daughters have done. Behold, this was the guilt of your sister Sodom: she and her daughters had pride, excess of food, and prosperous ease, but did not aid the poor and needy. They were haughty and did an abomination before me. So, I removed them, when I saw it. Samaria has not committed half your sins. You have committed more abominations than they, and have made your sisters appear righteous by all the abominations that you have committed. Bear your disgrace, you also, for you have intervened on behalf of your sisters. Because of your sins in which you acted more abominably than they, they are more in the right than you. So be ashamed, you also, and bear your disgrace, for you have made your sisters appear righteous.
“I will restore their fortunes, both the fortunes of Sodom and her daughters, and the fortunes of Samaria and her daughters, and I will restore your own fortunes in their midst, that you may bear your disgrace and be ashamed of all that you have done, becoming a consolation to them. As for your sisters, Sodom and her daughters shall return to their former state, and Samaria and her daughters shall return to their former state, and you and your daughters shall return to your former state. Was not your sister Sodom a byword in your mouth in the day of your pride, before your wickedness was uncovered? Now you have become an object of reproach for the daughters of Syria and all those around her, and for the daughters of the Philistines, those all around who despise you. You bear the penalty of your lewdness and your abominations, declares the LORD.” [1]
Well might Christians tremble when they read this passage from the pen of Ezekiel. We know Ezekiel as that weird and wonderful prophet who did not hesitate to confront Israel because of their sinful behaviour. The people of his day appear decidedly uncomfortable in the presence of Ezekiel, and we need not doubt that contemporary churches would hesitate to welcome a prophet such as Ezekiel. Nevertheless, there is no question in my mind that modern churches would benefit from a prophet such as Ezekiel.
You see, Ezekiel would never be mistaken as a follower of Norman Vincent Peale, neither was he a clone of Joel Osteen—people didn’t feel particularly good about themselves whenever Ezekiel delivered a message that God had commanded him to deliver. However, if they took his prophetic word to heart, they would draw close to the Living God. On the other hand, if they ignored Ezekiel… Admittedly, Ezekiel’s prophecies are often neglected from the pulpit today. His prophecies demand that we grapple with what he wrote, and they demand that we acknowledge our own sin and cast ourselves on the mercies of the Living God.
This is what I mean. Many Christians will agree that western society mirrors the society of Sodom and Gomorrah before the cities of the plain were destroyed by God. It is evident that contemporary culture is preoccupied with sex. Teenage girls are lured into sexual fantasies on social media, and by ten years of age, few young boys are still able to say that they have never spent time viewing pornography online. Casual sex has become an important part of teenage life. In fact, sexual activity is so important in the mind of many that we are determined to teach even preschoolers how to be sexually active, how to find sexual gratification even before they are seeking such gratification! We even teach kindergartners how to engage in every imaginable perversion as though such activity is normal. There is something highly significant behind our preoccupation with sex, something that we tend to overlook to our own detriment. In our advanced society, we have conveniences that were unthinkable even a generation past.
As a child, I enjoyed reading comics. I don’t suppose I was so terribly different from many boys in those halcyon days of yore. Among the comics I would read was one featuring a detective named Dick Tracy, a master detective that fearlessly faced some truly vicious foes. Dick Tracy wore a watch that allowed communicating via two-way radio embedded in the watch. The concept was pure science fiction. As a child, I could never have imagined such convenience. Yet today, almost everyone has a computer carried in a pocket—and those computers allow communication with people around the world. These tiny computers not only have more calculating power than the computers that first took men to the moon, they allow us to access information contained in great libraries. Of course, we take for granted the smart phone that has enabled us to do so much more than our parents could have ever imagined. We can’t eat a meal without those seated around the table bending their heads to view the glowing screens they hold in their hands. Even watching television, family members will hold their phone, only listening in a half-hearted fashion to what is being said on the big screen on the wall.
Times have really changed. But with the change has come some transformations that are less than beneficial. In fact, because of the increase in comfort, society is becoming a dark morass that will ultimately ensure our destruction. Vocabulary is one victim of our success. We no longer are able to communicate effectively. We lack the ability to express ourselves powerfully, relying on shock rather than precise words. We have taken the most intimate expression of love between two people, reducing that act to a vulgar term that is gratuitously used almost constantly. Though we would be shocked and horrified if the preacher were to say that word from the pulpit, we accept text messages from friends using such language.
My point in making this observation is to note that ease of life has given us time to do whatever we want. And in our freedom, we have forgotten our responsibilities. Consequently, we are no longer able to hold righteous convictions; our convictions are horrible distortions of biblical truths. We have twisted compassion into a form of moral lethargy. We have reduced love for our neighbours to indifference. Instead of considering others as better than ourselves, we have exalted self to the centre of our universe. Thus, we focus on personal gratification, and in the process we have discovered that the self is a horrid master.
SODOM IN BIBLICAL LITERATURE — Let’s acknowledge a dark truth that has become apparent. There are two types of Christians when we think of this business of homosexuality and sexual immorality. There are Christians who realise that those who have chosen an immoral lifestyle need to hear the truth delivered in a compassionate manner; and there are Christians who are convinced that sexually immoral people are objects of wrath and divine judgement. The sexually immoral need grace. People trapped by their own immorality do not need our anger and rage.
Yes, homosexuals and those who are advocate for normalising homosexuality are in defiance of the Living God, but God is well able to contend for Himself. And if He chooses to use one of us to rebuke the wicked, He will equip us to do so and we will speak in His power with words that cannot be refuted. Tragically, God’s people have been forced into retreat from righteousness by the arrogance of many within the homosexual community, and now by those championing the transgender community. Rather than speaking boldly in the Name of the Christ Who delivers from sin, we adopt the spirit of Terpsichore as we dance around the issue of sin. Years ago, we Christians would say that God condemns the sin but offers grace to the sinner. The words we spoke in those days affirmed our confidence in God. We said, “God hates the sin, but loves the sinner.” The homosexual community twisted that attitude to attack Christians, insisting that if we don’t accept their lifestyle, then we cannot accept them. Rather than continuing to show mercy and grace, the churches of this day have retreated into silence.
Then, as if to cow the faithful into an even more abject retreat from engagement with the culture in which we live, suddenly within the culture has arisen yet another movement of people in rebellion against the Creator Who gives them their being. These benighted souls argue that they have been born the wrong sex. They advocate for the right to be whatever sex they wish to be, or even to change their sex at any given time much as one might change socks. They imagine that this is something that is easily done since they have misappropriate the word “gender,” so that today we have scores of “genders,” and in order to be truly sensitive, everyone must declare what pronouns must be used in referring to themselves!
Before going any farther, it is important to say that there are two sexes—not three or twenty-three, but two. The Bible is quite clear on this matter; and all science aligns with the reality that the Creator has given. Early in the history of the creation, we read.
“God created man in His own image,
in the image of God He created him;
male and female He created them.”
[GENESIS 1:27]
Later, as Moses iterates what God had done in creating mankind, the divine author wrote, “This is the book of the generations of Adam. When God created man, he made him in the likeness of God. Male and female he created them, and he blessed them and named them Man when they were created” [GENESIS 5:1-2].
A few churches resisted this novel redefinition of sex, pointing out that biology is immutable; but they were swiftly silenced by the vapid argument that no one could know how a transgender person really felt. Facts no longer mattered; all that mattered was what someone felt, and there could be no argument against this new situation based on feelings. Again, rather than stand with the truth and reveal compassion and mercy, the churches retreated, grumbling in frustration but refusing to confront the devastation that was unleashed on the world.
Arguments such as these are actually quite vapid if anyone took a moment to think about what was said. It was like saying that if we don’t accept the theft committed by the thief, then we don’t accept the thief. Or it was like saying that if we don’t accept the murders committed by the murderer, then we don’t accept the murderer. It was like saying that all norms are rendered meaningless. Of course, such arguments are pretty silly, but the aggressive stance of those in the homosexual community and in the transgender community appear sufficient to silence most churches. On the other hand, this generation is not known for the ability to think clearly.
The glare of Sodom casts garish shadows across the pages of Holy Writ. The rebellion against God was so daring, so disrespectful, that it shocked mankind for millennia. It is only as people had again cast aside God’s restraint that the sinful rebellion no longer seemed so terrible. Still, one cannot read the Bible without coming up against the sin of Sodom as something so wicked, so appalling that it can be forgotten only with deliberate effort and at the cost of all truth.
The overthrow of Sodom is held up as a warning against rebellion against the Lord GOD. When Moses sought to warn Israel against rebellion against the LORD, he would caution the nation, “Beware lest there be among you a man or woman or clan or tribe whose heart is turning away today from the LORD our God to go and serve the gods of those nations. Beware lest there be among you a root bearing poisonous and bitter fruit, one who, when he hears the words of this sworn covenant, blesses himself in his heart, saying, ‘I shall be safe, though I walk in the stubbornness of my heart.’ This will lead to the sweeping away of moist and dry alike. The LORD will not be willing to forgive him, but rather the anger of the LORD and his jealousy will smoke against that man, and the curses written in this book will settle upon him, and the LORD will blot out his name from under heaven. And the LORD will single him out from all the tribes of Israel for calamity, in accordance with all the curses of the covenant written in this Book of the Law. And the next generation, your children who rise up after you, and the foreigner who comes from a far land, will say, when they see the afflictions of that land and the sicknesses with which the LORD has made it sick—the whole land burned out with brimstone and salt, nothing sown and nothing growing, where no plant can sprout, an overthrow like that of Sodom and Gomorrah, Admah, and Zeboiim, which the LORD overthrew in his anger and wrath—all the nations will say, ‘Why has the LORD done thus to this land? What caused the heat of this great anger?’ Then people will say, ‘It is because they abandoned the covenant of the LORD, the God of their fathers, which he made with them when he brought them out of the land of Egypt, and went and served other gods and worshiped them, gods whom they had not known and whom he had not allotted to them. Therefore the anger of the LORD was kindled against this land, bringing upon it all the curses written in this book, and the LORD uprooted them from their land in anger and fury and great wrath, and cast them into another land, as they are this day.’
“The secret things belong to the LORD our God, but the things that are revealed belong to us and to our children forever, that we may do all the words of this law [DEUTERONOMY 29:18-29]. God points to Sodom and Gomorrah as examples of His wrath when His people disrespect Him and rebel against His Word.
The warning delivered in this instance anticipates similar warnings using Sodom as an example that are delivered by Isaiah. Without exhausting what has been written, note Isaiah’s warning that cautions,
“If the LORD of hosts
had not left us a few survivors,
we should have been like Sodom,
and become like Gomorrah.
Hear the word of the LORD,
you rulers of Sodom!
Give ear to the teaching of our God,
you people of Gomorrah!”
[ISAIAH 1:9-10]
Again, Isaiah points to Sodom while warning God’s people [see ISAIAH 3:9]. Similarly, Jeremiah [see JEREMIAH 23:14; 50:40], and Amos [see AMOS 4:11] use Sodom as a warning to the righteous. Nor should anyone imagine that only the writers of the Old Testament were aware of Sodom as an example of divine judgement. We see that even throughout the pages of the New Testament, Sodom is presented as a warning against presuming against the Living God. On multiple occasions, Jesus cautioned that deliberate sin against God’s goodness would bring judgement that was horrible indeed. In fact, He cautions that choosing presumptuous sin against the Lord means that it will be more bearable on the day of judgement for Sodom than for that town which defies His message of life [see e.g. MATTHEW 10:16; 11:23-24; LUKE 10:12]. Again, both Peter [2 PETER 2:6] and Jude [JUDE 7] point to Sodom and Gomorrah as examples of the wrath of God, warning people against presumptuous sin against the holiness of God.
There is a theme in all these references. Yes, superficially, the act of homosexuality figures prominently in each of them. Whether we are comfortable speaking the truth or not, immorality is sinful; and homosexuality is immoral. It is accurate to say that immorality is offensive to Holy God. However, what I do notice, and especially in light of the text before us today, is that an even more dreadful sin promotes the rebellious lifestyle that has become the focus of so much of Christian ire toward those caught up in the homosexual lifestyle. And the sin that is so dreadful makes many of us Christians equivalent to those homosexuals and lesbians and transgendered people that we find so repulsive.
Underlying the rebellion is an attitude of pride. And the pride, combined by relative prosperity and ease of life led to a lifestyle that ignored responsibility to the needy. Wallowing in their pride and ease of life, they grew haughty and began to justify exploring abominations. The pride which the Lord exposed through His Prophet Ezekiel is the same vile sin that contaminates so many of the professed people of God.
I do not deny that the story of Sodom has created a cultural rippling effect throughout history. The glare of God’s righteous judgement horrifies those who know of the fate of the cities of the plain. Because of God’s judgement on Sodom, many churches today believe homosexuality is a distinct and wicked sin, above others, worthy of its own level of punishment and damnation. Consequently, many of God’s people are prepared to quietly assign the downfall of the West on the tolerance of homosexuality. However, without minimising homosexuality as sin, I suggest that we dig a big deeper to discover what truly invites divine judgement. Homosexuality is sin, but the act of homosexuality is an expression of rebellion against Holy God. It is a rejection of His design and surrender to the rebellious desire of broken people.
THE ROOTS OF SODOM’S SINFUL PRACTISE — The text before us reminds us that people are not born homosexual or transsexual. People choose to adopt these particular lifestyles because they have exalted themselves against God. I am well aware that making such assertion is anathema to many supposed deep thinkers in our world today; but listen to God speaking through His prophet. “See here—this was the iniquity of your sister Sodom: She and her daughters had pride, excess of food, and prosperous ease, but did not aid the poor and needy. They were haughty and did an abomination before me” [EZEKIEL 16:49-50a]. With these words, the Lord GOD exposes the root of Sodom’s sin. Pride led to the people choosing wickedness rather than seeking righteousness. According to Scripture, then, arrogance contaminates each of us who permit that evil characteristic to take root in our life. And that is one great fear that each of us should have. Pride will lead us to openly rebel against the Lord. We are not immune from this sin!
It is an undeniable fact that the Bible informs us that homosexuals were living in Sodom. Clearly, these homosexuals living in the ancient cities of the valley engaged in sexual immorality—immorality that was judged as detestable before the Lord GOD. Moreover, the homosexuals living in Sodom constituted a significant percentage of the population. However, the prevalence of homosexuality in the city of Sodom, and society’s tolerance of that particular lifestyle doesn’t give us the full story of why the cities of the valley were destroyed.
Our tendency within contemporary society is to focus on what we judge to be aberrant while ignoring, and even justifying, what has become acceptable and comfortable among most of our contemporaries. This is important precisely because of what is revealed as God speaks through His prophet. In the text, God clarifies the reason for destroying Sodom—and according to what is revealed in the text, the city was not destroyed solely because the homosexual lifestyle was prevalent and tolerated, the city was destroyed because the people had grown arrogant and self-centred. The arrogance of the people led them to celebrate the aberrant—and to be sure, the aberrant lifestyle was identified as an abomination before the LORD. However, pride and ease of life led to adoption of the aberrant lifestyle with which Sodom became identified.
That revelation should give us pause. I would never encourage you to see this statement as an effort to excuse the sin of homosexuality; it is meant as a warning that none of us permit ourselves to become arrogant, to grow proud in who we are, or to exalt our position in life. When we grow arrogant, we are susceptible to tolerating almost any aberration. The point to be taken to heart is that a comfortable culture, a society that is noted for ease of life, predisposes the people living within that culture to accept open rebellion against God Who gives us our being.
With this revelation, the Bible is making it clear that pride precedes exalting oneself against the Lord; and acceptance of a given attitude of exaltation arises readily within a culture that has grown wealthy, which is characterised as proud and self-satisfied. Impoverished cultures reflect a harsh environment and such societies may even be generally godless in attitudes and actions; however, an impoverished society does not have the luxury of focusing primarily on self-gratification. Rather, those living within an impoverished society are focused upon securing the necessities of daily life—food, shelter, and protection from hostile threats. When a society is marked by ease of life because the populace has grown wealthy, opportunities to explore defiance of God and His rule in the lives of the people become more common and easier to justify. With increasing ease of life, people tend to move away from God and from righteousness. Though that society may be religious, it can no longer be said to be godly.
There are a variety of terms that speak of the culture of Sodom, and each of those words continually point to one overriding concept—arrogance! To be arrogant is to be marked by overbearing conceit, to boastfully assert of more than one has a right to claim. The concept would be that one has exalted oneself even above God. Thus, in the Bible, such people are spoken of as “fools,” for they have acted foolishly; they are seen as “haughty,” exalting themselves above God Himself. I’ve said all this to bring us to the point that when we begin to think more highly of ourselves than we ought, we will shortly begin to make accommodation for actions that dishonour God, justifying such acts and attitudes because they don’t directly impinge upon us. At this point, we will no longer be horrified at the thought of defiance against God.
Notice how frequently the New Testament cautions Christians against adopting an attitude marked by haughtiness. When Paul wants to encourage Christians to love, he lists the characteristics that should be witnessed in one who loves. “Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful” [1 CORINTHIANS 13:4-5].
When cautioning followers of Christ against buying into the philosophy of this dying world, Paul writes, “Let no one disqualify you, insisting on asceticism and worship of angels, going on in detail about visions, puffed up without reason by his sensuous mind, and not holding fast to the Head, from whom the whole body, nourished and knit together through its joints and ligaments, grows with a growth that is from God” [COLOSSIANS 2:18-19].
Those who serve as teachers, must not be recent converts for one very sensible reason. Paul insists that those who wish to be overseers must meet the biblical standard, which includes this provision, “He must not be a recent convert, or he may become puffed up with conceit and fall into the condemnation of the devil” [1 TIMOTHY 3:6].
Those who introduce errant doctrine into the teaching of the faithful are exposed as arrogant. Of such errant teaching, the Word of God warns, “If anyone teaches a different doctrine and does not agree with the sound words of our Lord Jesus Christ and the teaching that accords with godliness, he is puffed up with conceit and understands nothing. He has an unhealthy craving for controversy and for quarrels about words, which produce envy, dissension, slander, evil suspicions, and constant friction among people who are depraved in mind and deprived of the truth, imagining that godliness is a means of gain” [1 TIMOTHY 6:3-5].
A culture in which the professed people of God are noted for their arrogance defines a society in which aberrant lifestyles can be expected to arise without censure. Because the supposed followers of Christ are consumed with their own personal comfort, the aberrant is accepted as normal. As aberrant lifestyles are normalised, if the people that are thought to be faithful are silent, then the dark words of Jesus find awful fulfilment. “Salt is good, but if salt has lost its taste, how shall its saltiness be restored? It is of no use either for the soil or for the manure pile. It is thrown away. He who has ears to hear, let him hear” [LUKE 14:34-35].
Has general acceptance of homosexuality been observed in a culture other than one that had grown arrogant through its wealth and ease? There is a corollary to that question that we must consider. Has general acceptance of any aberrant lifestyle become acceptable within a culture in which the people of God were actually serving as salt and light? Contemporary Canadian church life is more known for what we don’t like than what we practise.
It was Christians serving as salt and light who turned the Roman Empire upside down, creating vast swaths of nations known for being godly and holy. When the light of the Gospel began to smoulder in that Roman Empire, the Faith found a home among the valleys of Vaudois where it spread northward and westward to turn nations to Christ. When it appeared that the Faith was settling into mere formalism, God raised up Martin Luther and John Calvin to shake the world from her lethargy. When the fires that were ignited by the preaching of John Wycliffe began to flame out, Irish monks ensured that a spark remained in the Emerald Isles. When England had become known more for the drinking and carousing of the populace than for lives that honoured God, the preaching of John Wesley and George Whitefield set a world aflame with such brilliance that the message of life leaped across an ocean to the New World. When the New World became known more for drunkenness and brutality, Charles Finney and other evangelists were raised up with a message that brought thousands into the Faith. When those revivals began to die out, Methodists missionaries and Baptist preachers spread throughout the New World with the message of life. As the Faith grew quiescent in North America, movements were seen in Asia and in Africa. My question is, “Why not us?” And “Why not now?”
Is it not past time that the people of God should be standing firm in righteousness and practising righteousness while living lives that glorify God as His holy people? Isn’t it past time for us to be known as a people who belong to the Risen Lord of Glory?
Is homosexuality a greater sin than the serial adultery as it is practised and celebrated through the culture of divorce in which we now live? Hollywood starlets and stars notwithstanding, if you’ve experienced divorce, you know that the dissolution of a marriage is not without considerable pain. I’m not saying the divorce may not have been necessary; I’m only saying that when society has made the dissolution of this sacred union of husband and wife so convenient that the act is casual, our culture is dishonouring the Lord Who gave us marriage.
Is transgenderism a greater sin than is the slaughter of the unborn which is quietly accepted as normal within our contemporary culture? According to the World Health Organization, world-wide, around seventy-three million induced abortions take place each year. [2] In any given year, about one hundred thousand of those abortions are conducted here in Canada. [3] Such information makes the figures provided for death of those who contracted coronavirus seem rather miniscule. People dying with CoVid in 2020 amounted to only 1.8 million. [4]
When we surrender our children to public schools so they can be indoctrinated rather than being taught to think critically and logically, are we not sinning against the Lord Who gives us children? I know there are godly teachers who attempt to actually teach. There is an old saying, “Those who can, teach. Those who can’t, become administrators.” While there may be conscientious teachers who seek to honour God, doesn’t it appear that union leaders are less concerned with teaching than they are with indoctrinating? And these parasites have the ear of politicians because they have bought their allegiance with donations generated from union dues. I am well aware that it is inconvenient to teach our children in our homes, but the consequences to our families and to the nation if we continue as we are will be disastrous!
Is the adoption of novel pronouns a greater sin than our attempt to mimic the world through speaking as the world speaks? When our speech is indistinguishable from that of the world, can we say we are godly? It is time to determine that we will cease trying to make the world like us by being “hail fellow well met” in their eyes. When the Jewish Council attempted to intimidate the Apostles into silence, they learned a great lesson. “When [the Council] saw the boldness of Peter and John, and perceived that they were uneducated, common men, they were astonished. And they recognised that they had been with Jesus” [ACTS 4:13].
And atop all this, are we really competent to judge another person? I don’t mean that we should not be discerning, nor even that we are incapable of recognising whether the fruit of one’s life is poisoned or healthy. I do mean that we must avoid becoming critics pronouncing sentence of those who are caught in an open sin. We are not judges! I know, I’ve quit preaching and gone to meddling; but shouldn’t we think about these serious issues that challenge us as followers of the Risen Son of God?
Even Jesus, when asked to render judgement between two brothers, responded, “Man, who made Me a judge or arbitrator over you” [LUKE 12:14]? He will judge, and He will judge in righteousness. But His judgement will be rendered at the appropriate time. Here is the point that we must accept—Christ is the judge, not us. We are responsible to proclaim His righteousness, calling all who will receive Him as Master to do so now. We are to call people to faith, not condemn them. This is our great failing in this contemporary culture.
THE GRAVE DANGER OF LIVING IN A COMFORTABLE CULTURE — Listen as Ezekiel continues pointing out the sin of the people whom God had chosen for Himself. “Samaria has not committed half your sins. You have committed more abominations than they, and have made your sisters appear righteous by all the abominations that you have committed. Bear your disgrace, you also, for you have intervened on behalf of your sisters. Because of your sins in which you acted more abominably than they, they are more in the right than you. So be ashamed, you also, and bear your disgrace, for you have made your sisters appear righteous” [EZEKIEL 16:51-52]. Ouch!
It is what God says following this exposure that is, or should be, particularly disturbing. “Was not your sister Sodom a byword in your mouth in the day of your pride, before your wickedness was uncovered? Now you have become an object of reproach for the daughters of Syria and all those around her, and for the daughters of the Philistines, those all around who despise you. You bear the penalty of your lewdness and your abominations, declares the LORD” [EZEKIEL 16:56-58].
This is stunning! God is saying that the sin of His people is so egregious that they are actually making Sodom look righteous! Is it possible that the real sin that is ignored in contemporary society is our materialism, our pursuit of an easy life, our tendency to ignore real needs? In short, is it possible that the gravest sin that is not being addressed is the failure of our churches to do what we were charged to do in the first place? Christ commanded, “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you” [MATTHEW 28:19-20a].
The same roots that led to the destruction of Sodom are found among the professed people of God. Our supposed favourable stance before the Lord GOD is but a cheap façade. There are two types of Christians in the world when it comes to our response to homosexuality: those who believe homosexuals are people in need of God’s grace; and those who see homosexuals as a target for their anger. Rephrasing what I just said to more closely align with the language used earlier in the message, there are two types of Christians in the world when considering our response to homosexuality. There are those who focus solely on the aberrant behaviour of those who adopt the homosexual lifestyle; and there are those who are able to see the underlying cause of this behaviour. The latter are then able to see that we Christians have contributed to this situation because we refused to be responsible for our own tolerance.
We who follow the Christ need to come to grips with the truth that we are not the judges of the souls of people. We are in desperate need of realising that sin is sin and in the eyes of God, no one sin is more heinous than another. We must confess that Christ Jesus gave His life as a sacrifice for all. Jesus Himself testified, “I came that they nay have life and have it abundantly” [JOHN 10:10b]. We need to remember that the Master has taught us, “The Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost” [LUKE 19:10].
I acknowledge that the insinuation of evil throughout contemporary society is distressing. Much as was true for Lot who lived in the city of Sodom, we who follow the Saviour are greatly distressed by the sensual conduct of the wicked [see 2 PETER 2:7-8], but we must not allow ourselves to pick-and-choose which sins we will tolerate and which we will vigorously condemn. We must never begin to categorise sin according to a standard of our own that we have created. Rather, we must acknowledge that we struggle with our own sinful lives, seeking divine mercy for ourselves and pleading for mercy for those who live wickedly. This is not a plea for us to ignore sin; rather, it is a plea for us to pursue holiness, seeking God’s glory in all things.
The destruction of the ancient city of Sodom was something more than just the tolerance of homosexuality. The destruction of that wicked city was because wickedness had so insinuated itself throughout society that it was thoroughly contaminated. The destruction came because of pride that allowed the growth of a materialistic culture that no longer saw humanity in need of grace and mercy. And I fear that we have witnessed the growth of a similar culture in contemporary society.
Let me be very clear in stating that the act of homosexuality is a sin. I’m also clear-eyed that homosexuality was a final cause of God’s judgement on that culture. However, I speak to the people of God, cautioning that we must not think that we can use the general acceptance of homosexual and transgender culture as the reason for the downfall of the west unless we are willing to include our own arrogance, materialism and greed as proximate causes of divine judgement which must surely come.
Ezekiel teaches us that God’s judgement has less to do with some specific sin which we find abhorrent than it does with the failure of the professed people of God to serve as salt and light in society. While we are willing to say that everyone needs to be saved, until the people of God confess our guilt of being culturally Christian without allowing the Spirit to work to transform us into the image of God’s Son, we are in danger of being swallowed up by what has been created in our world. Our culture is sinful, without a doubt; but the answer won’t be found in judging others or angrily pointing out the world’s sin. The answer will be found in our own repentance. We need revival, and that revival will not come until we acknowledge that the hand of God is kept from moving by our own intransigence. My message is simple—repent or die. Amen.
[1] Unless otherwise indicated, all Scripture quotations are from The Holy Bible: English Standard Version. Wheaton: Standard Bible Society, 2016. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
[2] Abortion, World Health Organization, 25 November 2021, Abortion (who.int), accessed 29 January 2022
[3] Statistics – Abortion in Canada, Updated March 28, 2021, Abortion Statistics in Canada (arcc-cdac.ca), accessed 29 January 2022
[4] Ryan Foley, “Over 42.6M abortions conducted in 2020, surpassing world’s leading causes of death,” Christian Post, January 04, 2021, 42.6M abortions in 2020 surpass leading causes of death | World News (christianpost.com), accessed 29 January 2022
