Why Is Homosexuality Wrong? #2

Welcome to the Truth Palpit with Don Green, founding pastor of Truth Community Church in Cincinnati, Ohio.

Hello again, I'm Bill Wright. It is our joy to continue our commitment to teaching God's people, God's Word.

Today, Don is continuing with the second part of a message we started last time, so let's get right to it.

Open your Bible as we join Don now in the Truth Palpit.

Now, people like to say in their ignorance. Have you noticed that? People love to speak out of their ignorance, don't they?

They love to spout their own opinions even when they are completely uninformed.

People like to say that Jesus never said anything about homosexuality.

That's completely false and we'll deal with that more later in the conference.

But notice, turn over to Matthew chapter 19.

Our Lord Jesus Christ affirmed the pattern of Genesis as being the abiding standard for men and women in marriage in the New Testament.

Matthew chapter 19 is a critical passage on this.

And when asked about the institution of divorce, Jesus appealed to the creation ordinance of marriage as being the grounds for his answer.

Look at what he said.

In verse 3, the Pharisees came to Jesus, testing him and asking, is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for any reason at all?

Jesus answered and said, have you not read that he who created them from the beginning made them male and female?

And said, for this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife and the two shall become one flesh.

So they are no longer two, but one flesh, what therefore God has joined together let no man separate.

Oh, the authority with which Christ spoke and how it applies directly to our situation today is frightening.

Jesus, who is God incarnate himself, refers back to creation and says God established marriage in the context of a question about divorce.

He said, let's go back to marriage.

And so you see the pattern for what we're doing here this morning.

When a question about marriage comes up, we go back to Scripture.

We go all the way back to Genesis and we review what God has done.

Because there were ignorant rebellious people in Jesus' day, combating God's institution of marriage.

Jesus took them in their ignorance and rebellion and went back to Scripture.

That's all that we're doing here today. We're following the pattern of the Lord.

Notice what he did. As he speaks about marriage, he says, he says there in verse 4, male and female, this is what God has joined together.

The two shall become one flesh. This is what marriage is.

And notice what he says. This frightens me, honestly, to read it, in light of the world in which we find ourselves living in 2015.

Jesus, speaking as God, says let no man separate this.

Our legislators, our justices, our political leaders, our governmental officials have done just what Jesus said not to do.

They separate men from women in the institution of marriage and redefine it according to their own desires.

That is an illegitimate use of political power. It is an illegitimate use of authority.

Because the highest authority, our Lord Jesus Christ, said no one shall separate this.

And now, here we are. You know what? This can't come out good.

This can't come out good. Humanly speaking for those who are embracing this, those that have authorized it and compelled it upon an unwilling populace, this can't come out good for them.

Because Jesus spoke directly to their authority and said don't you separate this. And they say, I will separate this.

This conflict, listen, this conflict isn't over. One day this conflict will be settled at the judgment bar of God, where judges and attorneys have no one to represent them.

If they've not come to Christ, they will stand alone before the judgment bar of God.

And having exercised judicial authority here on earth, they will find a greater judicial authority exercised against them in that final day.

I fear for them because Jesus could not have been more clear. Don't touch this one.

This is a live electric wire. Don't touch this. There are consequences as a result.

And so God designed marriage to be a permanent union between a male and a female, established at creation, reaffirmed and stated again by Jesus in Matthew 19.

Male and female, don't separate this. Don't play with this institution.

And so God assigned two distinct genders at creation to marry an engage in sexual union, one man and one woman, and that was the pattern for all time.

Now, what else can we say about marriage? Point number two here this morning.

Marriage is an exclusive union. Marriage is an exclusive union.

Go back to Genesis 1, if you would, Genesis chapter 1.

And we see that God designed marriage, God designed the genders, the two genders, to be an instrument for the propagation of humanity, a way that humanity would continue and thrive and multiply.

And in Genesis chapter 1, verse 26, God said, let us make man in our image according to our likeness and let them rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over the cattle and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.

God created man in his own image. In the image of God, he created him, male and female, he created them. And look at verse 28, God blessed them and said to them, be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it and rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the sky and over every living thing that moves on the earth.

So God established marriage in a way that required the men, commanded the man and the woman, blessed them and said, you go and be fruitful, you go and be multiply, referring that they would go and engage in intimacy that would result in the production of children.

And as you read on in Scripture, going back to some things that we've said on Tuesday night, months ago, we remember, I've referred to this multiple times, that Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy, those five books, as we have them in our English Bible, are frequently called a single book in Scripture, the book of Moses, the book of the law of Moses, the law of Moses, referred to in the singular.

We should see it as a comprehensive unit rather than seeing these as distinct books that have no relationship to one another.

When you understand that unifying nature of things, it makes it more important to look at Exodus chapter 20 in light of what we were just seeing in Genesis 1 and Genesis 2.

So turn over to Exodus chapter 20, if you would, as we look at the Ten Commandments, and we see a couple of things in the Ten Commandments that reinforce the exclusivity of marriage in ways that go beyond even in the Ten Commandments, what you're probably used to see.

And so God said, the man and woman shall join together, they'll leave, they'll become one flesh, speaking to exclusivity and permanence.

And in the Ten Commandments, God said, in Exodus 20 verse 14, you shall not commit adultery, you shall not engage in a union outside of your marriage, you shall not engage with a woman who is not your wife or vice versa with a man who is not your husband.

He establishes a strict perimeter around marriage, he builds a fence around it and says, the permanence and the exclusivity which I have assigned to marriage, you shall not violate.

And so the Ten Commandments reinforce the exclusivity of marriage, but notice this, as you continue to read in context, context is everything in biblical understanding.

Look down at verse 17, look at how much even in the Old Testament, God assigned exclusivity not only of body but of soul, not only of acts of intimacy but of affections of the heart in verse 17.

In verse 17, he said, you shall not covet your neighbor's house, you shall not covet your neighbor's wife or his male servant or his female servant or his ox or his donkey or anything that belongs to your neighbor.

God in assigning this exclusivity to marriage said that not only shall you not engage the physical act, but your heart itself shall not covet that which is outside of marriage.

And so you see that the exclusivity that God assigns to marriage is more than a physical one, it is a matter of emotional affection as well, it is a matter of the desires of the heart, Scripture condemns illicit desires as much as it does the illicit act.

This is very hard for people in our materialistic age to understand and embrace, it is going to become important in what we say tonight at our 6 p.m. session.

Jesus reinforced this idea of purity, go to Matthew chapter 5 if you would.

Matthew chapter 5, in verse 27 and 28, this is really Bible basic 101 that we're talking about here.

Matthew chapter 5 verses 27 and 28, Jesus said, you have heard that it was said you shall not commit adultery, he's going to go on and add his commentary about the significance of what that command means.

He says, but I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lust for her has already committed adultery with her in his heart.

And so Jesus says and is basically reinforcing the command against coveting in Exodus chapter 20.

And he says, understand that those who would limit adultery simply to the physical act I want you to understand this, that God in commanding the physical separation is also commanding you to separate your heart from that which is lustful, that which is internal, even if you never act upon it.

If you are actively lusting after your neighbor's wife, you are guilty of the sin of adultery.

That's how exclusive the relationship of marriage is called to be.

And so, as we consider this matter of homosexuality, you start to realize, especially in light of what we said last night, we start to realize how haywire it is.

To call it haywire is really not adequate because it's just so disconnected from reality as God defines it.

It is so messed up.

Here God says marriage, man and woman, lifetime commitment, nothing else.

To the point of such exclusivity that you don't even lust after another woman within the marriage relationship.

Now compare that to what we said last night about the nature of homosexuality by definition, man with man, woman with woman, utter violation from the start of creation.

Utter rejection of God's authority from the start.

Remember what we said last night about the nature of homosexual promiscuity? I won't rehearse it here.

If you missed it on the livestream last night, you can go back and listen to the audio files. They're online now already.

But not only is it a violation of separate genders coming together, the whole culture revels in anonymous promiscuity.

Nothing could be more different and hostile to the intentions of God than what the reality of the homosexual culture is.

It violates gender, it violates exclusivity. It can never be made right.

There is no county clerk under compulsion from the governor or the Supreme Court giving a stamp of the government seal upon a marriage license that can make that legitimate.

In legal terms, the Latin term is void abinitio. It is illegitimate from the beginning. There is never a stroke of legitimacy to it. Nothing can make it legitimate.

All of this, one way or another, from the president to the Supreme Court to the legislatures to everybody that's involved, all of it's going to be shown that they were acting without authority and it will all be exposed one day in the end.

And there will be an accounting to those who have separated what God commanded not to be separated. It's frightful.

Now, stepping another degree into marriage here.

We said that marriage is a permanent union between a man and a woman. It's an exclusive union. Point number three here.

And we're just going to touch on this because it's an important aspect of marriage, but it's not really necessary to the theme of the conference.

And point number three is this is that marriage is an intimate union. It is an intimate union.

Scripture, in what it has said, has made it plain that the sexual union must not be shared outside of marriage, that sexual expression outside of marriage is sinful, whether it is by way of pornography or fornication or homosexuality or any other manner of sexual sin, sexual expression by God's design is limited to within the confines of marriage.

Everything else outside of that is sinful. And I realize that the clarity of that is shocking to the modern era, but you know what, I don't care.

We just want to be faithful to Scripture here. Now, with that said about marriage, what we need to understand is that within the marriage relationship, that intimacy God commands to be shared.

Look at 1 Corinthians chapter 7.

God intends the marriage relationship to be one of physical intimacy between a man and a woman.

And Paul speaks in the restrained tones of the Holy Spirit, so contrary to the profane spirit of our age.

Without going into the full context of this passage, Paul says in 1 Corinthians chapter 7 verse 3, the husband must fulfill his duty to his wife.

And likewise also the wife to her husband. The wife does not have authority over her own body, but the husband does.

And likewise also the husband does not have authority over his own body, but the wife does.

Clearly speaking about sexual intimacy, especially in the context of the prior two verses.

And look at what he says. Verse 5, he says, stop depriving one another except by agreement for a time so that you may devote yourselves to prayer.

He says, don't deprive one another of your physical intimacy. Oh, I'll make a little exception if you're going to set aside some time for prayer.

But once you've done that, you come together again so that Satan will not tempt you because of your lack of self-control.

And so we see that within the marriage union, God commands that intimacy be expressed and it is not appropriate for one spouse to withhold intimacy from the other.

When you got married, you gave your body over to your spouse and vice versa.

And your spouse has a right to intimacy, a biblical right to intimacy and vice versa.

That's probably all we need to say about that. But it's worth seeing that God's intention was for marriage to be intimate and that even in the New Testament it is that intimacy is commanded as part of marriage.

And so we start to see the wonder of it all. We start to see the exalted nature of this institution that God has ordained, that tracing all the way back to creation before the fall of man into sin, God established this relationship between a man and a woman that would address their feelings of isolation and would be a support to the man that God appointed over the head of creation.

And that there would be this wonderful union of coming together that would drive a man and a woman to leave their father and mother and come together and form their own unit together and that they would be exclusively devoted to one another, not just physically but emotionally as well.

And within that relationship of covenant promise established by God in the security of the permanence of that relationship that there would be a free and loving expression of that in intimacy as well.

What a beautiful institution God has made. And that's not all that makes this institution so sweet and sacred, something worth protecting.

Come to point number four, marriage is a loving union. It is a loving union.

Marriage, Scripture teaches us, pictures the love that Christ has for his own people. Look over to Ephesians chapter five.

Really, as we're answering the question, why is homosexuality wrong? Really what you see is that question is answered by a proper theology of marriage.

That's all we're doing here. In Ephesians chapter five, I'm going to read this long familiar passage. Ephesians 5, 22, through 33, wives that his women, female members of the marriage relationship, stunning that you have to be that specific in our day and age but whatever it takes to be faithful to God's Word will do it.

Wives be subject to your own husbands as to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife, as Christ also is the head of the church. He himself being the savior of the body.

But as the church is subject to Christ, so also the wives ought to be to their husbands and everything. Let's stop there for a moment.

Paul is instructing people on how to conduct themselves in the marriage relationship based on a broader principle of what Christ and the church, how they relate together. Notice this, beloved.

Notice what we're doing here this morning is consistent with the biblical pattern. Paul takes the immediate problem of conflict within the marriage and places it in a bigger spiritual context.

A bigger theological context and connects it to transcendent issues rather than isolating it simply to the human issue at hand.

That's how we must respond to homosexuality. It cannot be discussed apart from God's plan for marriage in the same way that marital conflict and scripture cannot be separated from the way that Christ relates to his own church.

We must learn to connect things in our thinking and connect individual issues to the greater context in which they occur.

Verse 25, Paul says, husbands love your wives. Just as Christ also loved the church and gave himself up for her, so that he might sanctify her.

Having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word that he might present to himself the church in all her glory, having no spot or wrinkle or any such thing but that she would be holy and blameless.

So husbands ought also to love their own wives as their own bodies. He who loves his own wife loves himself for no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it just as Christ also does the church.

Drop down to verse 32. I don't know. I don't want to skip it. Verse 30, because we are members of his body. Verse 31, he appeals to Genesis. Just like we've done here today, I want you to see that what we're doing here is simply biblical.

Paul appeals to that creation ordinance. Jesus appealed to the creation ordinance. Apparently it's defining in its impact.

Verse 31, for this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and shall be joined to his wife and the two shall become one flesh.

This mystery is great, but I am speaking with reference to Christ in the church. Nevertheless, each individual among you is also is to love his own wife even as himself and the wife must see to it that she respects her husband.

And so in this passage, which we'll look at more in the course of our exposition of Ephesians in several weeks, in this passage Paul points to marriage as a picture of the love that Christ has to his church, that the care that Christ has for his church, the sacrificial love by which he laid down his life at the cross for sinners so that they would be reconciled to him.

To put their interests ahead of his own, to make sure that their needs were satisfied, cared for, that they were protected, that no harm would come to them, that they would be conformed to the image of God.

That is an expression of the love that Christ has for the church and Paul takes that and says that's a picture of the way that your marriage is supposed to be.

Husbands, love your wives this way. Love them with a sacrificial, self-denying love. Love them like you love your own body. Wives, you respect your husbands just like believers respect and honor Christ.

Well, that has implications. Listen, in creation, marriage had a highly exalted place in God's order.

In the New Testament, Jesus affirmed that place in its order. And then in the progressive revealing of God's word, when Paul wrote Ephesians later on,

we see that marriage pictures another wonderful reality, the relationship of a saving Lord to his people, the primacy, the importance that God places on marriage in his acts and in his words is surpassing.

It is sacred. It is holy. Men should be approaching it with a sense of reverence, taking their shoes off because as we deal with marriage, we're on holy ground.

And we are on ground that belongs to God alone.

And as in the second century AD, men brought pigs into the temple area in Jerusalem.

Men have brought the pigs of defilement into God's holy institution of marriage.

I'm using that metaphorically. I'm not calling men by the name pigs. It's important to understand that.

It's a metaphor that I'm using. Men have trampled in and said, this is mine to rearrange the way that I want. That's not true.

It's a lesser violation if a criminal breaks into your house and takes things that belong to you than what has happened to the institution of marriage over these past 10 or 15 years.

Men have broken into that which does not belong to them and rearranged and taken it and misappropriated it to their own use, to their own desires that which was never to belong to them.

It's shameful. It's wrong. It's sinful. It's criminal. It's treasonous.

It's ransacking. The picture of Christ in the church. It's assaulting the created order.

And beloved, I hang my head in shame at what people in the name of Christ are doing.

The church is gladly hopping on the bandwagon to go along with it.

What is that? How much are men at the center of their own worldview even in the church?

We see what the world is doing. God's design for marriage from Genesis. I'll set it aside as long as these people like me. Christ in the church, that's negotiable.

Of course, that's negotiable. What if these people don't like us? What if they won't come and listen to my insipid sermons in my mainline denomination?

It's with a righteous anger, beloved, that we reject that and condemn it.

Someone, the true Christians need to speak on behalf of God and give voice to what his word says.

Haven't we heard enough from men on this issue? Haven't the courts had their say? Well, isn't it time for God's word to be given voice?

That's why we're doing this. And it should offend you, even if you don't express your passions in the same way that I do.

It should offend your sensibilities. You should be shocked and outraged at what has happened to the institution of marriage in light of who it belongs to and the good that he had designed in it and what it says about the picture of Christ in the church.

No, no, beloved, we've got to think. We have to connect this to what we are. We belong to Christ. We are not our own. We were bought with a price by the precious blood of Christ.

And therefore his affections are our affections. We derive what makes us passionate from that which he assigns importance to.

And he assigns great importance to these things. Now enter homosexuality, man with man, woman with woman in a promiscuous violent drunken culture and calling that marriage.

What a corruption of the purity of what God established of the clean, honorable nature of what God has done according to and for his own good pleasure.

Picture it. I didn't plan this metaphor, but it is helpful to me.

The violation of that picture that some of you have had this happen to you, someone breaking into your house and vandalizing it randomly, wantonly, totally disrespecting everything that you have worked for and treasured.

You say, that's not right. Why did this isn't yours to do this to? And you scandalize that which belongs to me? You would be outraged.

Where's the sense of outrage of what's happened to what God what belongs to God and God alone?

God gave complimentary genders to humanity for their good and as the means of divine companionship.

He wove monogamous heterosexual marriage into creation to ultimately picture the relationship between Christ, his son, and the church.

When you understand things from this perspective, you are far down the road to understanding why homosexuality is wrong.

Homosexuality rebels against God's design. It violates everything that God established for the blessing of man and to express his glory, to express that which is good in the church.

God, as it were, said, it's not good for man to be alone and as it were, he stretched out his hand and gave the gift of a companion and gave the gift of marriage and says, do it this way.

Homosexuality looks at that outstretched hand and slaps it away violently.

He says, we will not do it that way. We reject the creative hand. We will assert our own authority over something that never was theirs to begin with.

And pursues its own fulfillment. It perverts the created order. It perverts the picture of Christ redeeming his church.

Why is homosexuality wrong? Start there. What does God think of it all? That's for the next session. Let's bow together in prayer.

Our Father, we thank you for your wisdom and your grace and your goodness which established marriage in such a way.

That which belongs to you, yours to define, yours to make what you wanted it to be, hours to be the grateful recipient and to respond in glad gratitude and obedience.

And Father, it's all been perverted in our lifetime. Not just in homosexuality, Father, but even by our own sexual sins of one degree or another.

It's not a man or a woman in this room that somehow hasn't violated your commands against lust or exclusive affection to their mate.

And so, Father, we start with ourselves and we confess our own sins and our own shortcomings.

We thank you that in the Lord Jesus Christ, we have a Savior who shed His blood to wash away our sins.

And we rest in Him, even as we confess our sins.

Father, as we look at the broader issues outside the walls of the church and outside the walls of our own heart, Lord, we're...

As I believe it was Daniel said in his prayer, I was appalled. Maybe it was Nehemiah thinking about the walls of Jerusalem, but we're appalled, Lord, at what we see around us.

We see what our fellow man has done in corrupting that which belongs to you alone.

And we look to you, Father, for the solution, which is found only in the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ, found only in you bringing order one eschatological day out of that which man has made into chaos.

You will vindicate your word, Father.

While you are withholding your judgment for a time, we ask you to show grace to those who have rebelled.

Save some sinners. Save those who have participated in this outrage, Father.

Just as freely and graciously as you saved some who participated in the crucifixion of your own son.

We don't understand the marvels of your holiness or the marvels of your grace.

Father, in our own, impetuous ways, we probably would have judged everything already, but you manifest your patience that still a few more might enter into your kingdom and escape the wrath that is to come.

What a marvelous God you are. Holy, wise, gracious, and good.

And, Lord, it's for Your honor and for the sake of Your great name that we have said these things here today.

We pray that You would take them and cause Your word to run and bear fruit in our lives and in the lives of others as well.

In Christ's name we pray. Amen.

Well, my friends, before we go, I just want to say a word of thanks to you for listening to the truth, pulpit, and for the words of kindness and support that we get from so many of you.

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In the meantime, we'll see you next time on The Truth Pulpit.

That's Don Green, founding pastor of Truth Community Church in Cincinnati, Ohio.

Thank you so much, friend, for listening to The Truth Pulpit. Join us again next time, as Don begins a new message.

As we continue teaching God's people, God's Word, on The Truth Pulpit.