Homosexuality in Light of Scripture, Part 1

Well, as we dive into this topic, let me give you just a few categories at the beginning here that I want to make sure that you feel the freedom in. I want to give you some space here.

The first thing I would just say, I want to give you some space to be able to disagree. You may hear me today and you disagree with it. That’s okay. I’m glad you’re here. I really am. And my point of this is not trying to win an argument. Here's all I want to ask of you. If you find yourself in a place that you go, “Yeah, I don’t agree with what he’s saying,” I just would ask, would you investigate why you don’t agree?

Would you at least allow yourself to go, “What is it about it that I don’t agree with? It is that the argument itself? Is it what presented?” Because a lot of times we find ourselves in this place, “I don’t agree because I don’t like the implications of that. Or I don’t like how it makes me feel. Or my emotions are leading me in a way that I go, That just can’t be right.” And you may walk out today still in disagreement. I’d just ask you to wrestle with it a little bit.

Second place I want to give you a little space, you may be in process on this too. In fact, for all of us, man, when you come to Jesus every area of our life, we are in this journey with Him, this process that our lives start looking more like Him and as we go through that journey, as the Holy Spirit leads us in that, allowing space for that, God is patient with us.

Now, He always calls us to that truth, but there’s that patient part. And I say that because I’m always amazed in the Church, we give each other a lot of grace in the process on most every other sin, but when it comes to sexual sin somehow it’s like, “Nope, you’ve got to be right there right now.”

And so, you may be struggling in some ways, you may be in process on this. This is the place to do that as we wrestle with God’s truth, as we live in community together, as we call people to truth but we experience that grace.

Final thing I just, category is every one of us needs to realize the whole message of Scripture is counterintuitive. And what I mean in that, if you’re reading through the Bible and if you faithfully read through the Bible, I don’t care who you are, you’re going to hit some part of the Bible that it hits some part of your life that you go, “Man, that is not how I think. That’s not how I would do things.” And maybe that’s the place we’re feeling it most as our culture has moved so much on some of these sexual issues, we start realizing how counterintuitive and countercultural what we are talking about is.

Now, specifically when we talk about the issue of homosexuality, what we want to dive in today is, you know, what does the Bible actually say about homosexuality? We’ve made a commitment that we believe this is God’s revealed truth and so we are looking to it to inform and to lay out for us how do we live in that truth?

We actually believe that it’s God’s Word, we believe He is the designer of life, and as He has laid it out in Scripture, we want to align our lives according to that. And so, the fundamental place that I want to start is let’s see what Scripture says about it.

Here I think is the core question around this. The question is whether two men or two women can date, fall in love, and commit to a lifelong, consensual, Christ-centered,
monogamous union. Has marriage been opened or defined in a way that that could be true? And here again, don’t let your emotions guide you right now. We want to be people governed by Scripture. You have to have a biblical foundation of sex and marriage and understanding that.

God’s design for sex is for a man and woman in a lifetime commitment of marriage. And so, when Jesus was asked about this, and He was asked within that context, notice His definition of this, He went back to the beginning. He says you’ve got to go back to the created design, the way God laid it out in Genesis.

He says, “From the beginning of creation God made them male and female. Therefore, a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife. The two shall become one flesh. So, they are no longer two but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate.”

And so, I just noted this point though, when Jesus is talking about marriage, He is asked about divorce in that, for Him, the standard is God’s original design.

And I say that because it’s easy, some people would say, “Well, yeah, He designed that at the very beginning, but it changed over time.” At least by Jesus’ time, He’s going, “No, that’s still My standard. That’s what I still go back to. That’s what I’m quoting.”

Notice in this, Jesus didn’t just speak off the top of His head either. He said, “Okay, let’s let Scripture define for us.” Now, then when you drill into the topic of homosexuality, there’s really only seven passages in the Bible that speak to it. And, again, some who promote would say in that, “Well, if God only speaks to it seven times, it must not be that important to God.”

You’ve got to be careful making those kind of arguments. One, does it fall under a larger umbrella of sexual immorality that, frankly, God speaks to quite a bit? Two, does He speak to what He actually is designing? And then does Scripture speak directly to these issues of homosexuality? Look at the seven passages; we’ll just kind of walk through. One you’ve got two stories in the Old Testament: Genesis 19, Judges 19.

Genesis 19 is the story of Sodom and Gomorrah when Lot is rescued. And part of that rescue when the angels came, a group of men from the city came and they literally go to Lot’s door. They want to rape these men. And so, there’s sexual degradation, there’s sexual sin in the city in different ways. But it’s a pretty horrific scene.

Judges 19 is almost worse, honestly. And just as you read through these stories you do, you see the breakdown in society as a whole. Here’s the only thing that I think you’ve got to careful though. There’s nobody promoting a monogamous, gay sexual union today that would use those stories to say, “Oh, that’s why it should be allowed.” These stories are horrific in a lot of different details.

The other place you see in the Old Testament is in the Law. Now, just to give you some context, God gave the Mosaic Law. Remember, He called the nation of Israel and He was doing a distinct work through them. And when He called them out as a nation, He gave them the Law. Literally it came from God through Moses. And so, we use that term “Law.”

He’s got two verses. One, “You shall not lie with a male as with a woman; it’s an abomination,” Leviticus 18 [:22]. And then the second one is [Leviticus 20:13], “If a man lies with a male as with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination.”

Now, let me highlight here in both these chapters, there’s a lot of things He is prohibiting sexually in these chapters. So, it’s not like, oh, this is the only thing. And by the way, He doesn’t just use this word “abomination” to only to homosexuality, it’s the worst. But He does, in a very straightforward manner, go, yeah, God does not consider that within the bounds of the things He would say - “Sexually Permissible.”

Now, I know as soon as I say that, anytime you quote anything from the Law and I’ve heard this from people, they go, “Well, if you’re going to go to the Old Testament Law, I mean, weren’t there rules against eating shellfish?

You do have to look at it as a whole and go, “Okay, what was God doing through this Law?” Anytime you’re talking about the Law, there’s kind of three parts, understanding it today.
There was the moral, there’s a civil, and there’s the ceremonial. Remember, God is doing this unique work through the nation of Israel. And so, when He called them out, He gives them this full law.

And so, part of it is His moral law. These are moral standards that help reveal what God is like, His character, His holiness. And so, there’s a moral law. Part of it was civil law. Remember, they were a country and they had to run in certain ways and God said, “Man, these laws impact this country in this time.” And then part of it, it was ceremonial. There were certain ceremonial functions that only Israel did and it called people and made them unique and it made them different. Part of it was the ceremony that went in the temple system and the sacrifice and the animals.

We now come in the New Testament, remember we are not under that old covenant; we are under the new covenant, and we look at those laws, how do you evaluate those laws today? Let me give you three categories. Either: One, some of the laws were realized in Christ so they were fulfilled in the new covenant.

When you came in today, we don’t have an altar up here. We don’t sacrifice animals. I don’t wear high priestly robes. We don’t have a veil. We don’t…all those things that were laid out and they were good in their time, when Jesus died on the cross, He fulfilled them. They were completely realized in Him.

The second category would be some of them were retracted in the New Testament. They are no longer in effect because of the new covenant.  According to the old covenant, you had to be circumcised to be a part of God’s people. Paul says, “No, that’s no longer true.” That’s why the Church in Acts 15, the Jerusalem Council, they came together and they go, “Man, we need to look at this. What has changed in light of this new covenant?” And there have been changes.

The final thing is this category of what was restated in the New Testament. What parts of that Law would still be true because they said it again in the New Testament? So, we look at the Ten Commandments, they were given as part of the Law, but we don’t throw them out now. Why? Because the Ten Commandments are restated in the New Testament.

And so, that’s why we have to go to the New Testament passages to say, “What do they say about homosexuality?” Would they uphold that same standard? We’ve got three passages in the New Testament. The first one, Romans 1. People have rejected God as a culture, He gives them over to their own sin. Look what He says, “For this reason God gave them up to dishonorable passions,” notice that word. It’s “dishonorable.” What they are desiring doesn’t match the honor of what God created.

“For the women exchanged natural relations for those that are contrary to nature and the men likewise gave up natural relations with women and were consumed with passion for one another. Men committing shameless acts with men and receiving in themselves the due penalty for their error.”

Some people like to look at it and go, “Well, Paul is just using specific terms of non-consensual sex.” That’s not true in this passage. He’s talking about the very core passions and the very core activity and notice his key argument when he says it’s unnatural, he is not, like, using it as an adjective. “Oh, that’s unnatural.” He is saying it’s not according to God’s design.
And so, he is going back just like Jesus did, back to that Genesis design: This is how God designed humanity; this is how God designed sex.

And part of that when people are handed over in sin as a culture, when they embrace that, you’ll see this acting out in a way that those natural passions and the natural designs are thwarted. It’s a strong passage reaffirming God’s moral standard.

Again, in 1 Corinthians 6, Paul says, “Do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: neither the sexually immoral, or idolators, nor adulterers, nor men who practice homosexuality, thieves or greedy or drunkards or revilers or swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God.”

This defines their life and he lists all different sins. Homosexuality isn’t the only sin here, by the way. In fact, I encourage you, if you read through the list, you’ll probably find something that hits you. And that’s what Paul’s point is. He says, “That’s not your life.” And then, and I love how he puts it, “But you, such were some of you.” That was your life, but not anymore. Because you are washed, you’re sanctified, you’re justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of God. You have been washed by Jesus, so that doesn’t define you anymore. He is your identity.

One more passage, 1 Timothy. And this is a good one, because remember we had that question about the Law? What do we learn from the Law? Paul says we don’t throw out the Law completely. He says, “Now we know that the Law is good if one uses it lawfully.” If you interpret it the right way, you can learn a lot about it.

It helps show me in my life, man, what is God’s moral standard? “And so, for the ungodly and sinners, for the unholy and profane, for those who strike mothers and fathers, for murderers, the sexually immoral,” that’s that broad category of that, “men who practice homosexuality, and slavers, liars, perjurers, whatever else is contrary to sound doctrine, in accordance with the gospel of the glory of the blessed God with which I have been entrusted.”

All this behavior, whatever the category, but homosexuality was in it, is contrary to sound doctrine. It doesn’t match what God is teaching. And so, if we put all of that together, sexual intimacy between same-sex partners is condemned in the direct passages of Scripture. I mean, it’s clearly there. There’s a condemnation of that activity.

Second summary point I would say is sexual intimacy between same-sex partners is never portrayed in a positive light in the Bible. There is never a place where you go, “Well, this is showing it.” The third thing out of that, there’s no biblical warrant for same-sex marriage.

Now, again, and as I have wrestled with the different scholars on this and different ones that would say, “Yeah, but I mean, it doesn’t explicitly say that it can’t be there. Couldn’t there be a category for that?” Here’s the only problem with that argument. You’re making an argument of silence, from silence.

And just think about it for a moment, this category of marriage that God defined from the beginning, that Jesus pointed back to, that Scripture by the way, anytime marriage comes up, it always goes back to that Genesis passage. It always repeats that passage.

That somehow God has now redefined or added a new category of marriage and He never spoke to it? That He would be absolutely silent about it? Does God do that in any other way? Or could it be that I want it to be that way and so I am going to just go ahead and add that because I want it there, even if the Bible doesn’t say it?

It’s interesting to me, Luke Timothy Johnson is a New Testament scholar. He teaches down at Emory. He says, “I have little patience with the efforts of those to make Scripture say something other than what it says, through appeals to linguistics or cultural subtleties. If you interpret it exegetically, it is straightforward: we know what the text says.” Now, listen though, what he has chosen to do.

He said, “The text prohibits it, but we do in fact reject the straightforward commands of Scripture and appeal instead to another authority when we declare that same-sex unions can be holy and good. And what exactly is that authority? We appeal explicitly to the weight of our own experience and the experience of thousands of others that have witnessed to us, which tell us that to claim our own sexual orientation is in fact to accept the way that God has created us.”

As a New Testament scholar, as a biblical scholar, and he is up there with them, and he would be somebody who would want to read it into the passage, but he said it’s just not there. And so, we have made a choice, do you hear what he said? We made a choice to trust something other than what is explicitly there and we are trusting our own experience and the experience of others.

Frankly, it’s the same thing that a lot of Christians are doing. And hear me on that, when you make that movement, away from what God has said clearly, and maybe on this issue you go, “Yeah, but this is what feels right to me,” where do you stop?