Sexual Identity: Have We Taken A Wrong Turn? Series

Life in the Fast Lane

Sexual Identity: Have We Taken A Wrong Turn?

Romans 1:26-27

Woodlawn Baptist Church

November 14, 2004

Introduction

Did you ever set out on a trip only to take a wrong turn and end up somewhere you never intended to go? As much as I hate to admit it, I’ve done it plenty of times. Before Kathy and I made many trips to Dallas, I tried to get her somewhere and made a wrong turn and ended up lost in a neighborhood that I knew I needed to get out of. On a vacation a couple of years ago I took a wrong turn coming out of the hotel parking lot and drove us about an hour and a half out of the way. Then just a few weeks ago, coming home from Six Flags I told Kathy to turn right when it should have been left, and we were headed to Duncanville instead of home.

While those kinds of wrong turns can be frustrating and costly in time, they pale in comparison to the wrong turn that we have made in recent years concerning the subject of sexual identity. Last week I preached a message about role reversal, and spoke specifically about two things that God instituted when He created the first man and woman. I told you that God instituted male and female equality, insomuch that there is equality between men and women as the image bearers of God. The second thing He instituted was male headship: that is, in a partnership of two spiritually equal human beings, male and female, the man bears the primary responsibility to lead the partnership in a God glorifying direction.

As I told you, there was far too much to cover under the subject of role reversal to deal with everything, so we dealt with those two things and now we’ve moved on. But before we get too far, today we will deal with this subject of sexual identity. Now I’ll be the first to admit that sexuality, sexual orientation and sexual behavior are not easy subjects to deal with, not because the Bible has nothing to say about them, but because people on both sides of the issue have such strong feelings and opinions about the issues. Specifically today I want to deal with the subject of homosexuality, and again, because this is such a vast subject, we will only be able to briefly deal with it.

We Have Taken A Wrong Turn

Imagine that we are driving down the highway of biblical morality, and suddenly you hear on the radio some of what people in our culture are saying,

· One lady says, “My lesbianism is an act of Christian charity.”

· A church minister says, “The Lord is my Shepherd and he knows I’m gay.”

· Another man is quoted as saying, “If God had wanted me otherwise, He would have created me otherwise.”

Have we taken a wrong turn? Depending on the reports you read, it is estimated that only 1-4% of our population is exclusively homosexual, but you wouldn’t know it was that low by the way we are being bombarded with all the news about homosexual rights, gay marriage legislation, the homosexual agenda on television and so forth. It is a huge industry, but it is fueled by only a relatively small percentage of Americans who are passionate and committed to advancing their agenda.

Take television for example. You’d have to be blind not to recognize the efforts of media professionals to advance the gay agenda on TV. According to one media consultant, keeping programming with homosexual content in it “gives straight viewers a chance to make friends with gays in their living rooms. It’s like sensitivity training.” Did you know that there are over 2,000 schools in America with Gay-Straight Alliance Clubs? The purpose of the clubs is to make homosexuality acceptable to kids, to teach them tolerance of so-called alternative lifestyles.

Get Out The Road Map

Whenever I am taking a trip somewhere and I realize that I’m in the wrong place, I like to find some sort of locator, like a sign or mile marker, then I want to pull over and get out the map. Once I find where I am, then I can backtrack to see where I went astray. As I have considered the arguments for and against homosexuality, it seems that there have been several indicators of the problem, but they all point back to one wrong turn. I want to use actual arguments for homosexuality to give you these indicators. The first few are indicators concerning the Bible.

The authority of the Scriptures has been minimized

Men have always been guilty of doing this. Let me ask you something: If the Bible says to do a thing, or to believe a thing, and someone or something else says something different, which is right? If the Bible says that homosexuality is sin, but world-renowned scientists say it is biological, which is right? If the Bible says that homosexuality is sin, but you feel like you are right, which do you trust? Listen to what one man said, “I take [the Bible’s prohibition on homosexuality] no more seriously than many others…that do not make sense in the first place.” Do you see what he did? This man’s reasoning was elevated over the authority of the Bible. It doesn’t matter whether it makes sense to you or not – if God said it in His Word, then that’s it.