Homosexuality

Tom Shrader addresses the controversial topic of homosexuality as part of his 'Sexuality by Design' series. Drawing from Romans 1 and 1 Corinthians 6, he teaches that God's design for sexuality is permanent, monogamous, heterosexual marriage, and that anything outside this design is sin. He emphasizes that homosexuality is not the unpardonable sin and that the same grace available to all sinners applies to homosexuals, while challenging both the church's harsh treatment and society's acceptance of homosexual practice.

“God has a description and a prescription for our sexuality: it is monogamous, heterosexual, permanent in the confines of marriage.”

— Tom Shrader

Series: Sexuality by Design (2007)

Recorded: February 22, 2007

Duration: 43 min

Themes: sexuality, sin, grace, forgiveness, marriage, design, judgment, acceptance, struggling with sexuality, family member is gay, pastor addressing controversy, parent of lgbtq child, church member seeking answers, counseling sexual issues, defending biblical values, navigating cultural pressure

Scripture: Romans 1:18-32, Genesis 2:24, Genesis 19:4-5, Ezekiel 16:49, Romans 3:10-12, 1 Corinthians 6:9-11, 1 Corinthians 5

Theological Themes: sexual ethics, biblical sexuality, romans commentary, corinthians study, sanctification, becoming holy, biblical worldview, conservative theology

Full Transcript

We are glad that you are here this morning, joining us as we hit the midway point of a series titled Sexuality by Design. Today we look at an issue that is really an explosive issue.

When we put together this series, almost 20 years ago, we tackled eight topics. We talked about consenting adults and fidelity, last week we talked about pornography, next week we talk about abortion, and then we talk about sex in marriage and then sex out of marriage. When I get the series and I'm going through it, I try to anticipate how people are going to respond.

My sense was that the most aggressive negative response would be to next week's message, the message on abortion. Because my position tends to be what would be described as a pretty conservative opinion. I would say—I'll give you next week's line already—I would say abortion is wrong except to save the life of the mother, and then you and the mother have to really negotiate that and work that through. That's pretty conservative because I'm saying I wouldn't do this in the case of rape or incest. That child that's created out of that awful act is not guilty of anything. If I were negotiating a bill and I had the power to wipe out abortion except for that, which is .5% of abortions or something, I'd cave on that issue real fast.

A Surprising Response

I'm thinking, okay, I'm going to come in, especially today at noon. Today at noon is very different than this group. I do three groups that are very different. Yesterday's Wednesday morning is a smaller group. Today is a little bit of a larger group. This group tends to be chronologically a little bit older than the others. Then today is about 330 people, a very different mix at lunch—younger, older, a lot of business people, a lot of unbelievers in that group, a lot of business women in particular.

I thought, I am woman, hear me roar, they're going to kill me on abortion. When I got done with the abortion issue, I got almost no negative response. But this issue lit up the switchboard. The emails lit up and I have to admit, I was stunned by that. I did not anticipate that. It just caught me off guard.

The topic today is homosexuality. As I debriefed it and said, why do we get such a strong reaction? I think there's really two reasons. Number one, almost everybody knows someone—a brother, a sister, an aunt, an uncle, a parent—who has, if you will, come out of the closet or who is gay. These are oftentimes wonderful men and women, very nice, very kind, good people by the world's standards. When you come along and you begin to call homosexuality what God calls it, you get this kind of visceral reaction. That's one thing that I realized.

The Church's Poor Track Record

The other thing I realized is that the church has done a really poor job of dealing with this issue. Because the church, and by the church I mean all churches in all places, tend to be in one of two camps. One, homosexuality is wrong, it's evil, it's dirty, it's nasty, it's terrible, it's awful, it's vile, and all they do is rant and rave about how bad it is, and just so you know, God calls it sin. But that's all they do, and there's no love, there's no kindness, there's no caring for it.

The other side is to say, no, it isn't sin at all, and explain it away. Churches now are ordaining practicing homosexuals, in fact, even making them bishops. So you have these two poles even within the church.

What I'm trying to do, and this is a very uncomfortable position for me, is to give you a balanced view. I'm not used to this. We've said all along, if you want a balanced view, watch Nightline. I am joyfully hampered and enslaved to the Bible and what it says. That's my heart and my mind. But at the same time, my heart and mind hurt for people who are sinning, whatever the sin is. So hopefully this will bleed through in this message. Hopefully I'll be as clear as I possibly can be in all this.

A Changed Cultural Landscape

I will tell you that I don't think 30 or 40 years ago, we would have had a huge debate over this topic. I don't think my father's generation really wrestled with this right or wrong. Did homosexuality exist? I guess it always has.

There are numbers that have suggested that about 10% of the population is gay. Then some people came along and really challenged those numbers saying, well, that was a Kinsey report, and that was done in kind of some really weird circumstances, and in reality the number's probably about 2%. The latest reports are saying, no, that's kind of a bad number. The number's like 15%.

Here's the deal: it doesn't even matter what the number is. It doesn't matter if it's 2% or 99%. What we want to do in here this week is what we do every week, which is to say, what's the Bible say about this issue, and then how do we begin to play that out in our lives?

The Bible as Our Standard

We try to make a pitch pretty regularly that this is the word of God, and that a timeless God doesn't produce dated material, and so this is really a relevant book, important to us. In a world that's ever-changing, you have in your hand truth that isn't changing. So that's really important. We've got to keep that in front of you, especially in our culture where more and more people are not open to the idea of absolute truth.

I was talking to somebody the other day, and they said, "The harshest thing you can say or do to a homosexual is ask them to change. A person who's gay is designed that way. They had no more choice in their homosexuality than you, Tom, had in your heterosexuality, and I wouldn't ask you to change, and you shouldn't ask them to change."

That's missing the point of what does God say. Even in my heterosexuality, God still says, don't do that unless you're married. We're concerned about what God has to say.

Here's some points. Number one, God designed His fulfillment for us sexually, but to take place

God's Design for Marriage

In heterosexual marriage, God writes in His word in Genesis chapter two, "For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and cleave to his wife. The two will become one flesh." The word cleave is one of those interesting English words that has two meanings that are exactly the opposite. We think of a cleaver when we take—well, probably when you think of cleaver, you think of Ward and June and the Beaver. But typically when we think of cleaver, we think of something we take and sever, we separate. That's one word. To cleave is to cut, it's to separate.

The other word is exactly the opposite. It's to bring two things together and to unite them together permanently, unite them together inseparably. God gives us His design for marriage. Here it is: it's to be permanent, it's to be heterosexual, it's to be monogamous.

Now this is really important. You need to listen to this. It's impossible, I've learned, no matter how hard I try, to communicate clearly on this topic. So I'm going to give you a couple of these moments throughout the day. You need to get this—you need to listen to this.

Anything Outside God's Design is Perversion

Anything other than what God describes here—permanent, monogamous, heterosexual—anything other than that is perverted. You get that? Anything other than that is perverted. So if you're a person who's married and you're having sex with somebody other than your spouse, that's a perversion. If you're two people who aren't married and you're having sex, that's a perversion. If you're a homosexual, that's a perversion.

We are not singling out homosexuality. Don't want to make it any bigger than it needs to be or any smaller than it needs to be, but it's sin. Anything outside of God's design for the expression and fulfillment of our sexuality is a perversion.

God's Historical Judgment on Homosexuality

Here's the second thing: God traditionally in His Word judges homosexuality and the tolerance of it. Now the story here is from Genesis 19 and it's a story of Sodom and Gomorrah. It is impossible for me to talk about—I can't even say the words Sodom and Gomorrah without thinking of one of our past governors, Governor Evan Mecham. Some of you maybe weren't around that long, but this was a governor who absolutely was incapable of completing a speech without alienating someone, most people, everyone. He was incapable of it.

There were about ten of us. This guy talked for a half hour, and I'm telling you, for 30 minutes He was incredible. The message he gave was incredible. I thought it was incredible. It was pro-business, pro-capitalism. It was pro a bunch of stuff. And then out of nowhere He drops this bomb in the middle of it, and I'm going, "You've got to be kidding me. That's the stupidest thing I've ever heard in my life."

A Personal Encounter with Governor Mecham

I show up one day at Tucson to teach the Bible study, and there's two guys standing by the door. The doors are closed to the room. I'm going in—two guys standing by the door talking into their sleeves, and I'm thinking, "My gosh, security is exceptionally tight here today. They must know the lesson," because I was getting ready to teach on Sodom and Gomorrah. So I don't say anything, and they open the door, and I go in, and the room is filled, and there's two more security guys and the governor.

He came up—Sodom and Gomorrah at the time was kind of right in his wheelhouse of some of the things He was beating up—and he said, "You know, I've never met you." And I said, "Well, I've certainly never met you, and I'm Tom, and it's an honor to meet you, sir. I honor your position." He said, "Well, it's good for me to be here," and he said—it's exactly what he said—he said, "You know, I'm here, and since I'm here, would you like me to say a few things to the people today?"

And I said, "No, I wouldn't. I don't want you to say anything. Not unless it's 32 degrees in hell." I can't think of the story without thinking about teaching it and hearing him—he really loved the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah.

The Real Sins of Sodom and Gomorrah

Sodom and Gomorrah were destroyed for a variety of reasons. I'm going to give you a reference here. This is a wonderful reference: Ezekiel—it'll take you a half hour when you get home to find that—but Ezekiel 16:49. And I'll read it to you from The Message. It said this: "The sin of your sister Sodom was this: She lived with her daughters in a lap of luxury—proud, gluttonous, lazy. She ignored the oppressed and the poor. They put on airs and lived obscene lives, and you know what happened: I wiped them away."

So some of Sodom and Gomorrah certainly is related to this idea of homosexuality and the tolerance of it, but that was just part of a whole litany of sins that Sodom and Gomorrah was involved in. Not the least of which is they had become proud, gluttonous, lazy, oppressing the poor and the hurting. And when we get to Genesis 19, tolerating a sin like homosexuality—that is not a very different description than the world you live in.

The Confrontation at Lot's Door

What happened in Genesis 19 is that two men have come and they are staying with Lot, and the men of the city come from every part of the city. That's not every person in the city, but every demographic is represented. And they called out to Lot in Genesis 19:4-5: "Where are the men who came to you tonight? Bring them out so we can have sex with them."

Now the more liberal commentators that I've read suggest that God destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah because of a lack of hospitality. Now these guys seem very hospitable to me. I mean, they have their own version of the welcome wagon that they're putting together here, but they're saying, "Welcome to our town." Lot, by the way, who is whacked at about 50 different levels—remember Lot's response? Lot's response was, "I have virgin daughters, take them." So this is not exactly a giant of integrity at the moment.

God ends up wiping out Sodom and Gomorrah. When He does, He wipes out not just those that are engaged in homosexuality or those who oppressed the poor, but everybody in the city. This whole idea of tolerating—

Sin is an abomination to God. We need to be able to call sin sin. It really doesn't matter, and it's very difficult, and I understand navigating these muddy politically correct waters inside and outside the church, but somewhere along the way you have to say whatever it is—adultery, greed, stealing, abortion, homosexuality—you have to say this is sin. This is wrong.

God's Standard Condemns Homosexual Practices

Here's the third thing. God's standard is to condemn homosexual practices throughout the Old Testament, and we see it again in the New Testament. In the Old Testament God writes this: "Do not lie with a man as one lies with a woman. It's an abomination. If a man lies with a man as one lies with a woman, both of them, what they've done is detestable," and then He prescribes the death penalty for them.

Now we're saying that's under that Old Testament law. The point I'm making to you is God never, ever, ever in His word in any way, shape, or form speaks positively about homosexuality.

I'm watching an interview with a man who's in a church and he has been ordained to an office in the church, and what makes this newsworthy is he's practicing gay, and he said, "I'm celebrating my homosexuality. It is pleasing to God." Okay, well, it's never been pleasing to God. There's nothing in His word that would indicate that it was pleasing to God in any way.

God has a description and a prescription for our sexuality. It is monogamous, heterosexual, permanent in the confines of marriage. Homosexuality as a practice is never viewed as anything in a positive way, or certainly something that God would celebrate, any more than God celebrates adultery. He doesn't. God is not pleased when two people are having sex with someone other than their spouse, or two people who aren't married are having sex. That is not pleasing to God.

I cannot imagine a guy getting up in a church and saying, "I am here to celebrate my adultery. God is pleased with my adultery. Ordain me." Now the only way you get there is to take God's Word and begin to distort it. See, and that's what happens in all of this.

The Battle Over Biblical Authority

I was with a guy the other day, and in his denomination, he left his denomination which cost him everything. He was a minister in that denomination and it cost him everything. He's my age. It's cost him his pension. It's cost him his church. It's cost him everything. And he said the whole issue here is over whether we're going to institutionalize heresy, and the whole battle was lost 40 years ago. He said 40 years ago in our church, we said the Bible contains truth, not the Bible is true. And when we did that, it took 40 years for it to surface, but when we did that we opened the doors to any sort of heresy, any sort of false teaching, because at that point the determiner of truth is an individual. It's not the Word itself, and people tend to think the stuff that they like is the stuff that is true. So that door is open.

God's Glory Is Dishonored Through Homosexuality

Here you go. God's glory is dishonored through homosexuality. Open your Bibles if you would to Romans chapter 3, verse 10, 11, 12. Romans chapter 3. By then what Paul's doing here is giving us a summary of what's been written prior to this. So this in a sense summarizes chapter 1, chapter 2, in the first part of chapter 3, and what he's doing in chapter 1, in chapter 2, and the culmination here in chapter 3 is issuing a blanket indictment against all mankind.

"There's none righteous, no, not one. There's none who understands. There's none who seek after God. They've all turned aside. Together they've become useless. There's none who does good, no, not one." Now we've unpacked that before, so if you're here and you're new, I'm going to have to apologize to you because we don't have time to unpack it now. But basically what he's saying is you and I may look at somebody and say they're good, but God looks at their heart and says no they aren't.

What he's condemned here is every person that's born into the world. That's what Romans 1 and 2 is about. So he's saying whether you're a Jew or whether you're a Greek, whether you worship God or gods or whether you're a pagan really doesn't matter in that everybody's in the same boat. They're lost. They're not pleasing to God. And with me, they may please their God—in other words, they may please the God they've created—but they're not pleasing the one true God.

Paul does a wonderful job in the first part of the book of Romans talking about God, who He is, and the answer. Before he ever gets to this condemnation, in Romans chapter 1 verse 16, he says, "I'm not ashamed of the gospel of Christ, for it's the power of God to salvation for everyone who believes, to the Jew first and to the Greek." He's about to say the world's all screwed up, and I'm not ashamed of the one answer that will solve and address man's problem, because man's problem's not educational, so more classes aren't going to help. Man's problem's not economical, so more money is not going to help. Man's problem is his soul's dead, and only God can bring it to life. That's what he's saying.

The Ministry of Reconciliation

And you all who know Christ as Lord and Savior are given the privilege of taking that ministry or word of reconciliation to the world. I have people who I do not know and they will come up to me and say, "Are you Tom Schrader?" Yes, I am. "You don't know me." And I'll say, no, I don't. "I heard your wife has cancer." Yes, she does. "I want you to know that this will help." And sometimes it's a medicine. Sometimes it's a doctor. Sometimes it's a massage. Sometimes it's pressure points. Sometimes it's acupuncture. Sometimes it's an herb or whatever. All wonderful. I love it. Great, I appreciate it. I understand it. Isn't it amazing?

And you know that I love Susan more than any of you or all of you put together. I love Susan a lot. But let me, I want you to get your arms around this. Susan's going to die. If she doesn't die from this cancer, she's going to die from something else. Susan is not going to live forever any more than I am or you are, right? Isn't that right? You don't expect any of you—if I could just look in a mirror...

None of you are winning this battle. You're not going to live forever. It isn't going to happen. So Susan's going to die. If God takes away all the cancer tomorrow, something else is going to kill her.

Here are these people I don't even know who are saying, here's the thing that'll help her with her cancer. And I'm thinking, that's an amazing act of boldness and love. Because they're not trying to sell me anything, most of them. They're just trying to help.

And yet we're walking around in a whole world of people who are going to die and you have in your mind the thing that will save them for all eternity and you think it's either a duty or an embarrassment to tell them about Christ. It is amazing to me. It is amazing to me that you would say to a friend, "I just saw this movie, Amazing Grace, and you need to see it." And you wouldn't say to your neighbor, "Listen, I know life is tough and Jesus is the answer." And I'm in the boat with you. Big old boat.

Paul says, "I'm not ashamed of the gospel." And then he kind of tells us how we got this way. He said, "Here you go. The wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who suppress the truth and unrighteousness because what may be known of God is manifest to them." In other words, God made Himself visible. How? In His creation. You see His divine attributes. His power, His creativity. God's existence is proven by His creation.

God's Existence Proven by Creation

Here you go. I have, we tape now, and this is so cool for me, we tape now onto an iPod. So all those things, we used to hang out and haul around, all that stuff's gone. All I have to do is be able to get an iPod in my pocket and I can tape right on it. This iPod screens of the iPod creator, right?

If I said to you, "Listen, there was no company that made this. Here's what happened. There was a screen and a component and a dial and a light, and they were all separate, and then one time, all at once, they just came together, and the iPod was invented, created, manufactured." You would say to me, "That's stupid." And I would say to you, "Oh, but it took billions of years." And then you would say to me, if you're really thinking, "That's stupid," because you'd at least have to say, "Well, who created the dial? Where did this stuff come from?"

That's what the Bible says. Bible said, are you so stupid that you think that all this happened by accident? Are you so stupid that you think that this just came into existence from nothing, that nothing created something? Jonathan Edwards, the greatest mind that America ever produced, said, "Nothing is what a rock dreams about when it sleeps." Nothing doesn't exist. You can't even think of nothing.

We do this exercise all the time. I'm going to prove this to you right now. I'm going to count to three. I want you to think of nothing. One, two, three. I don't know what you thought of, but it was something. No, there's something that's eternal. It's God, He created this.

The Downward Cycle of Rejecting God

But look at the down cycle here in Romans 1. God's existence proves all this. What do I have to do to not be a follower of God? And the answer is nothing. It's verse 21, "Because although they knew God, they didn't give Him glory and they didn't give Him thanks. They became futile in their minds." So what do I have to do to be godless? All I have to do is not give Him glory and not give Him thanks, and now you're godless.

What I love is verse 21. "Professing to be wise, they became fools." So I meet people all the time who can out-debate me, they're smarter than I am, more degrees than a thermometer, they're brilliant people, but you get them in a certain setting about a certain conversation and they become foolish.

Let me read you a quote, this is a great quote. And is it taken out of context? Sure it is, because I'm not reading you the whole speech. But it's not edited, so you tell me. This is an emeritus professor at Harvard, he's a Nobel Prize winner, he's talking about life. Where did life come from? Here's what he said:

"There are two possibilities as to how life arose. One, spontaneous generation, arising evolution. The other is a supernatural act of God. There is no third possibility. Spontaneous generation was scientifically disproved by Pasteur and others. That leaves us with only one logical conclusion that life arose as a supernatural act of God."

Two more sentences: "I will not accept that philosophical view because I don't want to believe in God. Therefore, I choose to believe that which I know to be scientifically impossible."

Now, this guy's way smarter than you, but you're kind of going, "You know what? You should have taken a few less classes. You've been educated way beyond your intelligence here, pal." You are now embracing something that's illogical, and you know why? Can you hear it in there? Because I will not believe there's a God. Why? Because I will not believe. He's telling you there's enough evidence. He's telling you there's the only conclusion.

The Progression to Sexual Sin

And what happens, and this is back to our point on today's study, is now man begins to downcycle. He changes the glory of the incorruptible God into the image made corruptible by men. So man begins to worship the creation rather than the creator.

And as they begin to downcycle, as you will get to in verses 26, 27, and 28, is men begin to engage in homosexual activities, which at every time we see it in scripture, God condemns.

The Kingdom of God's Standards

Here you go, one more point. The kingdom of God, heaven, is devoid of unrepentant homosexuals. 1 Corinthians chapter 6, verses 9, 10, 11. Every once in a while we'll say, highlight star. This is the passage you need over and over again. This is one of them.

"Do not be deceived, neither the sexually immoral, the idolater, the adulterer, the male prostitute, the male offenders, or the homosexual offenders, thieves, greedy, drunkenness, slanders, swindlers, will not inherit

the kingdom of God. Here's what he's saying. And that's not designed, by the way, to be an all-inclusive list. Here's what he's saying: sinful people, unrepentant, remaining in that state, aren't going to heaven.

He's not saying that sinful people have no hope. They have hope in Christ, but if they stay in and of themselves, there is no hope. And so your sin—I was trying to think about this, this homosexuality. Why are we so violently opposed to this? Well, it's nice to say because it's sin, but we're not equally violently opposed to greed or slander.

Why We React Differently to Different Sins

You know why I think—I think it's because if I say greed is awful, you'll go, "Greed's bad," but all of you kind of go, "I can see me being greedy." And I don't want to be crass here, but it's just hard for me to imagine myself with another guy naked at a Marriott going at it. Not a very good—we got to get that picture out of your mind pretty fast. But I want to let it land. I can't imagine it. So if I can't imagine it, then it's really vile.

Drunkard, I was one. I got a lot of compassion for those guys. What God's saying is, listen, if I'm unrepentant in this sin, if there's not something that happens here to my heart, if God doesn't intervene and save me, I'll spend eternity separated from Him.

A Funeral Message About Eternity

I was talking to a gentleman who had come from a funeral. I'm a fan of funerals, I enjoy funerals. I personally don't like doing weddings, though I think the weddings I've done have been really a lot better since my daughter's own weddings. I think I have more of a respect for the ceremony, but I love doing funerals. I have never been asked to do a funeral that I won't do.

I love to do funerals because they're poignant moments. It's a life and death issue, it's a great opportunity. I can't do anything about the dead guy—he's dead—but you can speak to the living, who at least at that moment, for a second, you can say, "Do you know that this is going to happen to you and are you ready for it?"

This guy had come from a funeral where a 42-year-old lady had died of cancer. And the guy doing the funeral said this: "I want to speak specifically to the parents. Your daughter asked me to speak to you at this moment in this service. She heard you say to her over and over again, 'We'll be together again, we'll be together again.' And what she wanted me to tell you is what she's told you for years now. If you don't repent, you are not going to see her again from heaven."

That's a tough message. That's an important message to deliver. That's a hard message, isn't it? That's a hard message to deliver, especially in love.

What Do We Do with All This?

What do we do with all this? Number one, remember homosexuality is not the unpardonable sin. Right after that section in 1 Corinthians 6:9-10: "And such were some of you"—that's what you were. That's what the church is made up of: broken down old drunkards, slanderers, gossips, adulterers, idolaters, and homosexuals.

I did for a year, year and a half, the best radio show on the air that no one listened to. I was on every Sunday morning. It was called Book Talk, it was a wonderful—and I love books. Well, you know, you read a review, but this was an hour of talking to the author or significant person in the community or the world, talking to the author about, "Tell me about you. What do you like, what do you eat for breakfast? Why are you wound this way?"

One of the shows I did was with a fellow who said he had hundreds and hundreds of gay partners who came out of that lifestyle, who's married, has a wonderful marriage, and now is trying to reach out to men who are caught in that. I don't think it is harsh to say to somebody, "You can change."

The Reality of Sexual Brokenness

It seems to me, when you talk, when you listen to the guys talking, I hear this all the time: "I would never choose to be gay, this is a horrible way to live." And I think what they mean in that is the persecution of the world around them. But I think it's deeper than that.

When you're—let's go back to the picture of two guys at the Marriott—you got to figure out, we weren't wired for this. We're not plumb, one of us is not plumb for this. I think you know. Just like I know when I gossip and I know when I sin, I think you know. And no matter how hard you scream that no, it isn't, yeah, it is. But here's what I want to do. I don't want to tell you to stay in it, I want to tell you there's hope.

So if you're sitting here now, right here today, and you're going, "I don't know why, I just wasted 40 minutes, because I have no problem with homosexuality or lesbianism," okay, I don't care, but you got some sin—I don't know what it is—and the message to you is really the same message to the homosexual as the same message to the whole world, which is God forgives. Come to Him in repentance and faith. Acknowledge Christ as your Lord and Savior.

The Difference Between Temptation and Sin

By way of encouragement, and this is getting bigger and bigger, the younger you are, the more relevant this is, there's a distinction between temptation and sin. There are a lot of young people who are caught in this environment where they're very confused. They got girls gone wild, they got computers, they got stuff, they got a lot of girl on girl, you got a lot of guy stuff going on, and they're going, "Well, that's arousing to me—am I gay?"

There's a big difference between a temptation—Jesus was tempted—and a sin—Jesus never sinned. No temptation, Paul writes, has seized you except what is common to man, and God is faithful. Boy, do you need to remember that. God is faithful. He will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear. He'll provide you a way out.

To say, "I'm engaged in"—and then you fill in the sin, doesn't matter what it is—"To say, I'm engaged in this and I can't stop," is to say, "God's not faithful. God's not true." Some are way more difficult than others. Some things are way tougher than others. I know when I was drinking—and do we have a problem drinking? No, you want to have a beer, you want to have a glass of wine—and then we always...

If you want to have a shot and a bottle of beer, okay, I don't care. And I don't think God cares. He cares if you're getting drunk. Well, my problem was that guys would say to me, "Let's go home, let's stop and have a beer on the way home." I would say, "Here's what I'll do. I'll stop and get drunk, or I'll go home. I see no point in having a beer." Well, that's a problem. Now, God literally took that away from me.

We can talk about all sorts of things, but all I'm saying is, you fill in whatever sin it is, and I'm saying to you, God's faithful, and He'll give you the power to overcome that.

How to Respond to Those Struggling with Homosexuality

Fortunately, there's not a lot of time left, so let me talk about this. What do we do with people in our life who are engaged in this stuff? I think that's a really difficult thing.

Here's the first thing. You need to make a distinction on whether that person's a Christian or not. If that person's not a Christian, then I'm going to respond to them way differently than if they're a follower of Christ.

Paul says in 1 Corinthians 5, he's writing to this church. This church had a problem - this was a screwed up church. It had a problem. It had a guy that everybody knew who was sleeping with his mom, probably his stepmom. Problem. And Paul had evidently written a letter that we don't have where he said, "I told you not to hang around with immoral people." Well, I didn't mean the world's immoral people, because to do that, Paul says, you'd have to leave the world, right? I'm saying to you, if you got somebody who says they're a Christian, who's in the church, you have to deal with it.

Engaging the Culture vs. Running from It

I'm going to make sure you get this. It drives me nuts that we'll send a missionary to Morocco, and we'll spend three years teaching him the language and the culture, and tell him, "When you get there, you have to get into the culture, engaged in the culture. That's the way you reach the people, that's the way you have credibility." And the churches here are trying to get everybody out of the culture. That makes no sense to me - a bunch of Christians who are running away from the culture.

I think God's plan for you includes having friendships and relationships and working relationships with guys who are gay and girls who are lesbian and guys who drink too much and guys that are screwing around - in other words, sinners. How are you going to have a ministry of reconciliation or take evangelism or gospel to the world if you don't have a relationship with anybody? Paul's saying, "I got all sorts of these people in my life."

You ought to have a whole menagerie of sinful, lost, screwed up people in your life. You got somebody in your life that's engaging in whatever sin it is, should you break relationships? No! You build a relationship with them, you let them know you like them. You're not shying away from saying sin's sin.

Dealing with Professing Christians in Sin

But Paul's saying, what do you do with somebody who's in your church, who says they're gay, and says they're practicing? I'm listening to an interview the other night on the radio. There's a guy and they're talking about homosexuality and a lady called in and tried to make some biblical arguments. God bless her heart, she did a lousy job, I thought.

And the guy said - and she said, "Listen, that you're gay, you're gay, this is true, that you're gay, you're gay, that's whatever, okay? If you want to say you're made to lie, it doesn't matter. But God says it's sin, you need to be celibate." That is true, okay? If you're created in the expression of this and you're saying, "Oh, God made me this way," God didn't make you this way, and here's what we're saying to you: there's no way in which we'd say, "Go practice it." That make sense?

This guy, when he hears this, says, "There's no way I'm going to be celibate." That's a hard, unrepentant heart. And then he said, "Jesus is my Lord and my Savior. I'm a Christian." What do you do with that guy? I think you have a very different relationship with that guy than the guy down the street that says, "Jesus - sneezes - I couldn't care less, I love my boyfriend."

And I think with that guy, you have to evaluate the health of your relationship with him. And I think you have to look at him and call them to repentance. And whatever that begins to look like. If it's within the church body, at some point, you have to take that person and isolate him within the church. That's really difficult stuff, isn't it?

Speaking Truth in Love

I'm not running around calling unrepentant homosexuals or gossips and condemning them. You're calling them to repentance. You're showing them the hope in Christ.

There you go. God has a plan for sexuality. And it's permanent, monogamous, heterosexual. Anything other than that is a perversion. You live in a time and a culture that really has grabbed hold of this issue of homosexuality and made it a civil rights issue. It's not a civil rights issue in God's economy.

You may have all sorts of governmental issues, but I'm not into government - that's whatever. What they say, I obey, because I submit to them, and I want to support them and encourage them and make it a better community, country, and all that. But what I do know is what God says. And God says, this is sin.

Now, to you all and me, we need to go out and understand that God's message of hope within the context of that sin. Does that make sense? That's what He's calling us to do. To speak the truth in gentleness and love. Because our tendency is to smash these people with a couple of Bible verses.

These guys that are standing around at funerals of guys who've died of AIDS with "God kills fags" and this - those guys are absolutely - let me tell you something. I am confident that those guys are repulsive to God Himself. God loves people, and He hates their sin, and calls us somehow to do the same thing.

Next week, although numbers are down, I think there's good news. While I think, if I were to treat this issue of homosexuality like a stock, I think it's tracking up. I think it's doing...

Father, help us see this truth.

It's gaining traction. Homosexuality is gaining traction. Next week's issue, abortion, is tracking down. That's a good thing that's happening. About 400,000 fewer abortions last year than has been average over the last few years. Good things are happening. Still something we need to get a hold of. We'll talk about it next week.