Scripture: John 14:12-17 – “Very truly I tell you, whoever believes in Me will do the works I have been doing, and they will do even greater things than these, because I am going to the Father. And I will do whatever you ask in My name, so that the Father may be glorified in the Son. You may ask Me for anything in My name, and I will do it. If you love Me, keep My commands. And I will ask the Father, and He will give you another advocate to help you and be with you forever— the Spirit of truth. The world cannot accept Him, because it neither sees Him nor knows Him. But you know Him, for He lives with you and will be in you.”
Even as I prepare this sermon, I do so with a broken heart about broken pleasure in a world of broken people intent on sharing their brokenness with others. It isn’t what God intended for us, and when we stand with God, we find ourselves standing against some very nice people, except that, despite what they claim, they do not love the God who loved them first, and the battle is set, a battle set before the beginning of the world.
Out of my military background I know that the worst thing you can do is to allow your aggressor to shape the battle, choose the ground where the battle will be fought, select the weapons and the rules of engagement. As Christians, we are allowing all of that. Plus, we violate Sun Tzu's primary dictum from his ancient book, "The Art of War," we do not know our "enemy." In spite of numerous homosexually-funded studies purporting to show it is not a choice, all studies have failed to show it is anything but a choice; a choice abetted by lust and aggressive recruiting. We who follow Christ must speak truth to lies and call it what God calls it, sin.
This is not a battle about lifestyles, about bullyism and cultural one-upsmanship such as whites over blacks or men over women, voting or not voting, this is about right and wrong. Let me say that very plainly, this is about right and wrong, and the Father of Lies, who is forever fighting a rearguard action out of the battle in Heaven, is right in the middle of it.
I have a very close relative who claims to be a lesbian. I know why she decided that, I know why she claimed to be leaving it behind, and why she went back to it. I know more than I care to about the physical and mental cruelty heaped upon her by former "lovers." It has caused a cruel, hurtful division in our family, not because we don't love her, but because we will not agree that God overlooks what she and her friends are doing. When you know that Satan is very much in the middle of this, the abuse, the lust, the recruiting, the well organized attempt to force their desiring lust on the rest of us, the foulness of their self-righteousness makes a great deal of sense.
In John 14:15, Jesus makes it very simple for us when he says, “If you love Me, keep My commands." The other half of that is, if you will not obey Him, if you will not do the things He says, then regardless of what you claim, you do not love Him. And I would not be in your shoes for anything in this world or the next. Having known for some time now that great, overwhelming and affirming love that comes near, I would never leave it, I would tell everyone about it, and I would want every living soul to know God.
Some caught up in the lust of same-sex will claim Jesus never commented on this illicit sex, so neither should we. That merely confirms they do not know scripture. You will find Jesus in Matthew 19:4 affirming that the Father made us male and female for a purpose. And as He came to fulfill the law and not to destroy it, He was born under the law of Moses which called same-sex what it is in Lev. 18:22; 20:13; and Deut. 23:17.
Lev. 18:22 – “’Do not have sexual relations with a man as one does with a woman; that is detestable.’”
Lev. 20:13 -- “‘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.’”
Deut. 23:17 – “No Israelite man or woman is to become a shrine prostitute.”
Given that Jesus said in John 16:12-15 that the apostles would be guided in all truth by the Holy Spirit, Paul’s writings in Rom. 1:26-27; 1 Cor. 6:9-10 makes it clear what the truth about homosexuality is.
John 16:12-15 -- “I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. However, when He, the Spirit of truth, has come, He will guide you into all truth; for He will not speak on His own authority, but whatever He hears He will speak; and He will tell you things to come. He will glorify Me, for He will take of what is Mine and declare it to you. All things that the Father has are Mine. Therefore I said that He will take of Mine and declare it to you.”
Romans 1:26-27 – “Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural sexual relations for unnatural ones. 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.”
1st Cor. 6:9-10 – “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 nor thieves nor the greedy nor drunkards nor slanderers nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God.”
And yet, Paul goes on in the 11th verse to say that those engaged in this practice, having been washed, sanctified and justified in the name of the Lord Jesus, as anyone who repents of a sin, can be forgiven.
Let me add that, when I stated at the beginning that as Christians we are allowing our homosexual aggressors to shape the battle, choose the ground where the battle will be fought, select the weapons and the rules of engagement, I had some very specific actions in mind.
We allow them to claim our resistance to agreeing with them is on par with racial bigotry. It is not. We cannot help the color of our skin or the racial makeup of our bloodline. We allow them to make the battle about specific acts of sex. It is not. It is about lust and disobedience to the inspired Word of God. In that context it is no different than if we as followers of Jesus Christ were told we must support sex outside of marriage, pornography, robbery, rape, child molestation, and so forth. Sin is sin, regardless of how it is acted out, and we who love God and follow Jesus Christ can no more agree with what God calls sin than spread our arms and fly. When they demand that we do what we cannot do and still maintain a loving relationship with our God, they set themselves against God, they stand in ego-exalted disobedience to the God who created them. That is not only illogical, it is a sickness; a sickness called sin for which God has created a cure that began on a cross at Calvary. Jesus Christ is that cure. If they will believe in Him, and do the things He says regarding sin, He will solve their problem. We can’t. He can.
If I seem passionate about this issue, it is because I have seen so much of this, for so long, without even mentioning some of the worst aspects of it, that I do indeed have a heavy heart, a breaking heart for those I see driving right off the bridge of life into an eternity of loss for a moment's broken pleasure, in spite of a God who loves them.
Let us pray, and pray hard, that those caught up in this unholy abomination will turn to God, give themselves up to Him, and live. God loves them so. Amen.
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