(23) Human Sexuality II
Randy Peterman · Mar 19, 2006
Apologetics, No. 24
Holly Hills Bible Church
https://hollyhillsbiblechurch.org/teaching/messages/48262346477369

Transcribed from the recording by SermonAudio, so expect the occasional misheard word.

This morning's topic is one that's near and dear to my heart. We're going to be talking about homosexuality, which is something that, out of personal experience, I know nothing about. Last week I got to talk about heterosexual perversion, but I don't have any homosexual perversion to tell you about this week, so hopefully my lack of experience will be acceptable to you. I praise the Lord, quite frankly, that I don't have any experience there. This week's lesson actually We only have one vocabulary word. I think last week we only had one vocabulary word as well. But it's one that I had never come across the term for it, but I had heard the description of what was going on many times.

It's pederasty, which is one of those words, ped, you may have heard being like a pediatrician, a child. It means sexual relations between a man and an adolescent boy, although often that's the context every once in a while. It was used for women and women as well. It usually was involving some kind of mentoring of an intellectual sort and sexual involvement. I would use the word abuse. The dictionaries tend to be vague on their morality there, but it would involve a man often tutoring, and then also sexually perverse behavior with that young boy.

So that's pederasty. We're going to talk about that a little bit when we get into the history of homosexuality. This is one of those things where I'm going to try to be as G-rated as possible. I hope I don't go into anything that's embarrassing. But the truth of the matter is that this is probably more bizarre for this congregation than the heterosexual perversion that we went over last week. Is everybody in the room familiar with Sodom and Gomorrah? I think that's probably the well-known case of homosexuality in the Bible. If there was any place that people are aware of, that would be the place that they're familiar with things. If you were to read Genesis 18 and 19, which is two chapters, which is probably a bit too much for us to go verse-by-verse exposition, you would see the story play out.

What did God do first when he was going to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah? Do you remember what he did before he destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah? And before the angels went into Sodom? Where Lot was at? He told Abraham what he was going to do. Yeah, he told Abraham what he was going to do. What did Abraham try to do? Well, he knew Lot was there, and his family was there, and he wanted to spare them because of that. What he did, he tried to negotiate with God.

He said, what if there were 40 righteous men? And Abraham's thinking, or 50, and then 40, and he keeps working his way down. And he says, well, what about 10? And he just, if we keep working it down, maybe we can get down to a lot, and God doesn't have to go through this whole business of wiping out the city. But he stops at 10.

And now, I've heard this taught like a million times. OK, that's an exaggeration. What would have been required for the city to have had ten righteous people? Has anybody heard this before? I've heard it a million times and you've never heard it. There's four of them there.

And if you count the son-in-laws, if Lot was righteous enough to have son-in-laws, hopefully grasping the concept of the relationship with the Lord, they would have, if they each one had just reached out to one person, there would have been 10 or 12 righteous people in the city and it would have been spared. Now, God knew that wasn't the case. God said, sure,

10. I'll go down to five, because there aren't five. We've got four. And truthfully, it says Lot was righteous.

It doesn't say so much about his family, which is kind of unfortunate. That's a note to fathers. future fathers and children that are going to be fathers, John and Davis. Maybe they'll be fathers, whatever the Lord's will is. But the idea is you need to pass on your faith with the Lord to your children so they can understand, too. Righteousness is talked about a lot, and it doesn't really say anything about his wife and daughters.

So, God sends two angels into the city to grab Lot and his family and get them out of there. And what happens next? Anybody remember? The men of the city came and demanded that Lot put out the two angels so that they could have relations with them. And Lot says, why don't you take my two daughters?

And I'm thinking, yay to be his two daughters. Hey, we have visitors. You go out. That's a bit rough. That's a lapse on Lot's judgment for righteousness. But he offers his daughters, and the men in the town don't want the daughters. They're not concerned with it just being someone to have sex with. They want those two angels. So homosexual perversion is clearly stated in that context there.

And then, of course, the angels grab Lot, because he's out in front of this house trying to negotiate with these perverted people. The angels grab Lot, pull him in, and then they, through the power of the Lord, blind the men of the city so that they can't find the door. The next morning, they take off, and Lot... Abraham negotiates with God, so Lot decides he's going to negotiate with God, too.

I don't know if they communicated beforehand, or maybe that's just... When God says something, they're like, can we go halfway? And he says, we can't run to the mountain where we'll be saved. Can we run to this nearby city? And the angels say, fine, but don't look behind you.

And Lot's wife looks behind him, turns into a pillar of salt. And then to further the idea that Lot didn't communicate righteousness to his children, his two daughters later on sleep with him to create the Moabites and the Ammonites. So it's lots of fun talking about the city of Sodom and Gomorrah. God destroyed it and wiped it out. And so lots of believers go there as a reasonable proof text to say God has some issues with homosexuality. But can you stop there? Does scripture stop there?

And the answer is no. When God gave His law to Israel through Moses, I've got down here on the law Leviticus 20.13, and He says, If there is a man who lies with a male as those who lie with a woman, both of them have committed a detestable act.

They should surely be put to death. Their blood guiltiness is upon them. That is actually in context with several other perversions, including bestiality and adultery. Just in case people get the idea that, oh, homosexual perversion, that was super nasty, but some of these other things are acceptable.

God didn't mess around. He's like, listen, you've got a man and a woman, that's the deal. You don't sleep with your mom, you don't sleep with your aunt, you don't sleep with anybody besides someone who is, and there's a specific relationship outlined, in Scripture in that if you want to read Leviticus 20 in more detail, you can get some of the details that are involved with the context of the law and relationships between a man and a woman. It's just that simple.

Okay, any questions about the Old Testament? We could probably go over some other things, but I wanted to be somewhat brief because we have some other good things to talk about. And I asked if there were questions last week with heterosexual things, and you guys had no questions too. Okay, let's take a look at the New Testament.

Now this is particularly culture. We'll talk about the Bible verses involved, but I think it's important that we recognize what was going on in the culture at the time of Paul's writing the letters to the different churches. Because Paul talks about homosexuality very explicitly. Sometimes we think that, like, There's been in our culture in the past a tendency to say that homosexuality has always been a minor thing and not happened with any regularity, and it's a recent development. There's been a recent resurgence of homosexuality in popularity, but it's been happening in cultures throughout the history of the world for thousands of years.

As soon as sin entered the world, people got funky. They decided they were going to do things their own way. We talked about pederasty as a definition earlier. Some of you have just come in the room, so I'm going to re-go over that. It's sexual relationship between a man and an adolescent boy. Pederasty in the culture of Rome at the time was common for men to be involved in.

There are lots of different politicians that actually were known for being involved with a young male boy. somewhere in their political careers, that was normal. So I couldn't source it, but I have been told that as long as you weren't on the receiving end of things, it wasn't considered homosexuality. So if you were a higher-up politician, that was fine, because you weren't on the receiving end, the little boy was. I say that with the grain of salt that I could not source that, so please don't go around saying these things to people like it's absolute fact unless you can source it. And if I happen to find the source that can prove that more definitively, I will send an email out so that you can have that. Hopefully your spam blockers won't identify the terminology and cut it out and be like, I never got the email. Well, that's because it happened to talk about something naughty.

So it was common in the Greek and Roman cultures for that to take place. Very important to also note that the Greek military was pretty often saturated with homosexuality. Here's a quote from Phaedrus who was one of the historians of the time. He would prefer to die many deaths while as for leaving the one he loves in a lurch. or not succoring him in peril. No man is such a craven that the influence of love cannot inspire him with a courage that makes him equal to the bravest born." The idea being that a soldier would be willing to die for someone that he loves. And if that person is hundreds of miles away, he's going to be less motivated than if it's the soldier next to him. So they would actually use homosexuality as a motive for what would be considered more brave or fine military performance.

Yes, do ask, do tell. We want you to be. Specifically, the Spartans, and I believe this is on the next page, but I put my hand down for a second. The Spartans, everybody's heard of the Spartans. Remember they had the Olympics and they were the ones that would run around in the buff.

They'd oil themselves down and run naked. wind resistance, I guess, if you're naked, but the Spartans were generally, the military was almost absolutely homosexual. The idea there was that, yes, you will fight better, and this is a good example of that mentality being put into practice. What happens when people are homosexual to the population count? kind of dwindles because there happens to be no procreation happening. You may have sexual activity taking place, but no babies are born because apparently it takes an egg and a sperm.

So what they would do, and this is really freaky, this is just so bizarre, I found variations on this, so also keep this in mind, they would kidnap the woman and they would either shave her head, this is where the variation really came in, they'd either shave her head so she would look like a man or they would cut her hair short so she would look like a man and I couldn't find any good sources that would clarify where the variation came from on that. They'd dress her in men's clothing and they'd bind her and then the soldier would come in to find the masculine woman and he would have sex with her. Basically, he would open up the nether regions for penetration, he would have sex, and then take off, because it was a shame to be seen with a woman.

But that was the only way that they could reproduce. And towards the end and the decline of the Spartan civilization, they actually passed laws that required the soldiers to try to procreate with women because it just wasn't They were homosexual. That was their drive. And it was like, why would I sleep with her? She's a woman. It's like, duh. Even in the Roman times, the Roman men oftentimes looked at having family as a sort of a public duty. Because that mentality in some way was still passed along, continued in the Romans. So it was considered a duty in the culture. Let's take a look at, oh, one last thing here.

There was a group of elite soldiers called the Sacred Band of Thebes. It was a special force of 150 pederastic pairs of soldiers. So you'd have the older soldier and then the young boy soldier. And they were kind of the, I guess you could say the Navy SEALs or the Rangers or the elite force of special soldiers. And they were blatantly and known to be homosexual.

So it's very important that you see that there was a cultural acceptance for homosexuality when Paul writes his letters to Rome, when he writes to the Romans in chapter 1, which I'd like to take a look at again. That's a core passage for apologetics in general, and it's a core passage when dealing with homosexuality and sexual perversion as a whole.

Look at Romans 1.26. It says, God gave them over to degrading passions, for their women exchanged the natural function for that which is unnatural, and in the same way also the men abandoned the natural function of the woman, and burned in their desire towards one another, men with men, committing indecent acts, and receiving in their own persons the due penalty of their error." So God gave them over to their depravity, which was homosexuality. It's important to note also, if we take a look at 2 Peter 2, particularly verse 6, actually cites the story of Sodom and Gomorrah, and if He, being God, condemn the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah to destruction by reducing them to ashes, having made them an example to those who would live ungodly lives thereafter."

So we see God has some issues with homosexuality. Which really brings us to the next question that I've got on the handout here, and we're on page 2. What is at issue spiritually? How has the Church handled this historically? The Scriptures record that some of the people in the Church at the time, in Corinth, were formerly homosexuals, but they weren't living in that sinful lifestyle after salvation. At the time of Paul's writing in the Church, there was acceptance of those who were formerly homosexual without any sort of Ooh, that's a weird person, because there was a recognition that it was a sin, just like many other sins, including thievery and sexual perversion of a heterosexual type.

There is a website, and I've got it listed here, called www.godhatesfags.com. Has any of you heard of this organization? I'm really, quite frankly, shocked. because they preach such hatred to all the world. They actually have godhatesamerica.com too, which is of course a good way to win friends and influence people.

And basically their whole gist, the whole thing behind their movement is that homosexuality is particularly upsetting to God. Other sins they don't seem to focus in on, but homosexuality is the big one that they focus in on. And they go to rallies and they go to protest things. I think I mentioned last week, they went to a funeral for a soldier who had died and they were shouting at the mom that she would see her son in hell because he died for a country that supported homosexuality.

It's a really unique, independent Baptist church, I think in Kansas somewhere. And I don't blame Kansas for it. I think it's somebody who's a teacher there who's screwed up. It's just not Kansas. Sorry, that's a Kansas joke. I apologize if you're from Kansas. I don't like driving through it. Yeah, so God hates fags and now I hate Kansas. I apologize. But the church has been openly antagonistic. They've killed people for it. There's all kinds of variations that the church throughout history has responded to homosexuality with.

But we want to take a look at what does Scripture say. One of the issues that needs to be asked and things you need to put in your mind is, is homosexuality a sin that is different from other sins in such a way that it needs to be singled out? It tends to be much more visible in the lifestyle of those who practice it, particularly in our culture. The thing is that scripture doesn't particularly single it out, necessarily.

If we look at that passage in Romans, Paul doesn't stop there and say, see, they were homosexual, yuck, let's get them. He keeps going, talking about other sins that the people have practiced, one of which is children being disobedient to their which is one of those that is particularly, we tend to ignore that. In our culture now, we have, you know, oh, I don't discipline my child, it will harm their character. I'm like, I have a three-year-old and she knows when she's done something wrong.

But the truth of the matter is that homosexuality is one sort of sin. And when we look at homosexuality and single it out as, like, oh, you've committed that one big sin and that's the big deal, it flies in the face of what Scripture says about sin as a whole.

Let's take a look at Romans 3.23. It's the last sentence on that paragraph in the middle of the page. For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. And that is the crux of the position of the believer.

Whether somebody is a homosexual or somebody is a molester or somebody is a pervert of some sort, if somebody has a propensity for going 300 miles an hour on public roads, whatever it is, they spent a million dollars on a Ferrari that can go that fast and now they're going to do it. It's sin.

The issue is sin, not just homosexuality, which really brings us to to how to witness, but we're going to skip the witnessing to the last section because I'm hoping you will actually have some questions and not feel uncomfortable asking them. But let's take a look at some modern cultural issues and questions first, and then we can dig into the opportunities for witnessing and interacting with homosexuals in a compassionate way. Here's the first question.

Are homosexuals born that way? This one's been big in the last 15 years or so, highly touted in the world you know they've got studies that some people have done that say yep they're born that way and studies that say no they're not born that way and then there's opinions lots of those those float around like belly buttons so let me ask you are they born that way I know Cheryl thanks because she actually already told me yes and no We just saw a program a few days ago, I think it was on the news, where they were reporting on a study that actually male babies are like a foreign object to the mother carrying it.

And the more older brothers a boy has had, the more likely he is to be gay. And it seems to be a hormonal problem, like a shortage of... Okay, so this study was purporting the idea that it is a hormonal issue that the mother's body is short on hormones over time. And so the younger child, especially if there's more older brothers, that there would be a higher propensity for homosexuality in the younger brother or brothers. Is that generally the idea?

Okay. I've got a handout over here on the table. This is one that my dad happened to find. It's definitely a secondary supplemental document. It's 15 pages. Is that what it is? 13 pages printed out. So not everybody has one, but you're welcome to take one if you want it. If we run out, ask for more and we'll print them out or make copies. This actually is a list of arguments as to why it is not something you're born with. But I'm going to take a moderate position. How's that?

What does the Bible teach us about our sin nature? Are we born with it? We are all born with a propensity for sin. That's what the sin nature wants. That's what the flesh desires, is to sin. It sees what is righteous. The righteousness says, you cannot, you should not, do not, do this instead. And the flesh just screams headlong into sin. So being born with a sin nature, there's a propensity towards any kind of perversion of any sort of thing, whether it's sexual or not.

So being born means that you get to be screwed up thanks to Adam and Eve. Like, thanks for handing those genes down. But it's the consequence for being born. You're like, thanks mom and dad, I didn't ask to be born. That's like the classic teenager line. But the truth of the matter is that being born, you are going to have a propensity for sin.

Homosexuals are no different from anyone else in that sense. There have been all kinds of studies done to deal with biology and you find this, that and the other thing. The studies at best have been relatively inconclusive so far that I've been able to read because there will be various test cases and they'll do it on small batches of people where they'll do biological studies and so they'll have one batch where it it proves this, and then they'll do another batch later on and it disproves it. So I think at this point in time for somebody to make some kind of biological statement, there have been lots done and not necessarily quality conclusive reports done to do it, but the truth of the matter is that if the Bible says it's sin, and we have a propensity for a sin nature, it's easy to fall into a lifestyle of sin no matter what it is, whether it's heterosexual perversion, stealing, kleptomaniacs, people who have a propensity for stealing.

It's the sin nature. It just does it. Did you have something to say, Dan? Yeah, really, think about what happens. The sin nature is just the sin nature, and it's not going to change. Because it is always seeking life apart from God. What typically happens is people have a sort of personal preference for this one over that.

Yeah, for sure. So you have the God hates fags thing. Their behavior comes out of sin nature. Yeah. The people who are part of that group, it comes out of sin nature. So all they're doing is saying my sin nature is better than your sin nature. Yeah. Let's compare these. The cultural, did you have an answer to that, Tom? Oh, wow. I'm not going to repeat that for those of you who are getting a recording.

The thing is that gay, back in the day, obviously was a description of somebody who was happy and probably more bubbly in personality, if you will. And there was a movement, you know, once it became more popular in Hollywood, and people became more flamboyant, and it was one of those terms that just kind of got adopted and adapted.

Kind of like somewhere over the rainbow was from the Wizard of Oz, And why did the rainbow get corrupted for that? That's because Judy Garland happened to be married to a guy who later turned out to be gay. Well, she stayed friends with him and friends with the homosexuals. And so they kind of adopted this from the Wizard of Oz to embrace this idea. I think it's kind of ironic, because the rainbow is a symbol of why God's not going to wipe them out for that perversion until the end times, based on what God did in Genesis chapter chapter six through nine there with Noah and the Ark. So, the position that I think is biblical is that homosexuality is not necessarily something somebody is born thinking and being and doing, but sin is, and a lifestyle and a mindset focused on sin is going to lead to that perversion.

Yes, Marilyn? Well, one of the arguments I've heard is from an expression that you're liking non-homosexual males. When did I make my choice not to be gay? So, they say it must be born that way because I didn't make the choice not to be gay. Okay. Well, the idea, that reasoning right there, you know, how come I didn't choose to be gay or not, is a, it is a choice. There are many choices that are involved. It's that moment, my moment. life choice that we make to pursue sins or not sins.

Like my dad said, you may specialize in one sin over another, but if you walk in the flesh, you're going to specialize in sin. One thing that is interesting to note, this is a theory I have, so I'm going to preface it with that, okay? So you can not listen for a second if you want, but when you have been exposed to sexual perversion, And it has been constantly told to you that this sexuality is love. If you feel affection towards somebody and you don't know how to love somebody in an appropriate way, that the only way you've been told love is expressed is a sexual way, then if you care about somebody, your reaction, because you've been trained mentally and you've not thought about it correctly, will be to want to be sexual with that person. Does that make sense? The concept behind that being that if you've been taught one way is the appropriate way to love somebody, then that's going to be your action whether it's one thing or not. Does that make sense?

Or am I speaking unclearly? Or maybe you disagree altogether? The thing is that our culture right now is shoving homosexuality out there into the public forum. and teaching children about it in schools and everything else so that we're getting exposed to it. And questions, you know, there are genuinely teachers out there asking their students to question, am I gay or am I straight, and to think about it, which is causing some students to experiment and look into those things.

Like I said, that was my theory. Tom, you disagree and it sounds a bit deterministic and I'll... concede that. You're not saying it's a justification. No, I'm not justifying it. I'm saying that might be one thing that comes into play. Again, there are actually lots of studies being done by psychologists when I was studying this.

There's actually an organization, NARTH, and it's like North American something or else, talking about homosexual psychology. dedicated to psychologists studying homosexuality and the people involved with it and their attitudes, their lifestyles. I'm going to get into one particular source from that website that talks about this later on, but many, many more homosexuals deal with depression and severe mental disorders than heterosexuals. It was like 50% deal with depression, 53%. And that's really huge. That's a big number of people compared to, I think it was like 13 or 10%, I'm sorry, of heterosexuals might deal with depression. So there's some serious issues involved there, but we'll get into that in a minute.

Is there any relationship between homosexuality and suicide? There was a large increase in that study when I was looking at the report. There was a large increase of homosexuals that had suicidal thoughts and ideas compared to heterosexuals. It was a bigger jump in men than it was in women, interestingly enough. Apparently, guys deal with it emotionally harder than gals. I don't know. Okay. Bestiality. doesn't fit into the homosexual context, but I would consider it to be similar in the sense that the idea that any hole is a good hole is really screwed up.

We looked at Leviticus chapter 20 earlier, and we can take a brief jump back into Leviticus 20. Verse 13 was where I was at, but let's take a look at what God says in Leviticus. The question, for those of you listening to the recording, is how does bestiality fit into all of this? Okay, Leviticus 20, verse 16. Now, this is the law.

Paul actually, to my recollection, and I didn't run into this while I was studying for this class, so someone else may point out a passage, Paul doesn't address this in the New Testament context. He addresses human sexuality with human sexuality, but he doesn't deal with bestiality.

But Leviticus 20.16, if there is a woman who approaches any animal to mate with it, you shall kill that woman and the animal.

They shall surely be put to death. Their blood guiltiness is upon them. Sex with an animal is such a bizarre perversion to me. I can't even comprehend why somebody would be driven to that. Last week I mentioned in Washington there was a guy who died from having sex with a horse. It somehow got a perforated colon and it killed him. I don't know the details and don't care to know the details as to how that totally worked itself out.

But bestiality is... The mindset, and here's kind of fundamentally where some of this comes down to, if something is sexually pleasuring, whatever it is, it's okay. That's the mindset. If it feels good, do it. That actually represents a lot of what our culture is being told today in pop culture. That's what the marketers are hoping that you will think and do.

If you buy our product, it will feel good and you will be happy for five seconds. the old apartment complex that Richard used to live in, Richard who passed away last year, I was driving past it this morning on the way here and it said, now renting, and then in smaller letters below on the sign it said, we specialize in happy. The idea is that if there's pleasure or happiness, and having been in that apartment complex, I would not say they specialize in happy, unless they did some serious interior decorating. The thing is that if pleasure is all that life is about, then there's a lot of things that suddenly become morally okay because your morality is based on pleasure.

Whether it's sex with an animal, sex with a person of the same sex, or sex with people of all kinds of sexual orientation, or lots of people, or some people get off on the idea of not having sex. I'm going to abstain, and this will be my own personal stand against the culture. But it's self-centered. It's not based on the biblical model.

And if pleasure is the ultimate goal, it also justifies various other things, like drug use, and alcoholism, and murder. It felt good to kill that person. I enjoyed it. What could be wrong with that, if you like it? And so the thing is that morality based on personal preference is going to be a serious issue because you can enjoy various things, including bondage. Wow, I'm talking about things in church I never thought I'd say. But there's various perversions and whole industries rising up out of sexual perversion. I could probably list off a lot of things, unfortunately, but the truth of the matter is that all of it is based on the idea that if it feels good, it's okay. whether it's homosexuality or heterosexual perversion.

I tried to kind of communicate that last week, but it's important to recognize that just because it feels good doesn't mean that it's okay. Any other questions on that or comments before I wanted to get to the next one, which has been kind of a hot topic as well? Okay. Again, no questions. All right. Is AIDS God's wrath on homosexuality or homosexuals?

That's one that's pretty popular. I actually grew up at various times hearing different people kind of communicate this idea. Well, homosexuals brought us AIDS, and because if you're a practicing homosexual, you have a higher chance of getting AIDS, therefore it seems like a logical conclusion that AIDS is God's wrath on homosexuals. Just like that God Hates Fags organization is God is causing people to die in Iraq because we support homosexuality back here in the States or some of that effect. The idea being that God's judgment is being poured out now on these people. I think that we can look at scripture and take it in a broader sense and clarify what is said.

Romans 6.23 says, For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord. Given that sin produces death and that homosexuality is not God's design for righteousness and biblical sexuality, the consequences for this and every other sin in anyone's life without Christ are death. It doesn't matter if it's homosexuality, drug abuse, pick 300 miles an hour down the road in your million dollar Ferrari, whatever it is, it's sin and it will lead to death. Sin does that.

Drinking and driving, we could ask Ted Kennedy about that. Sorry, that's a political reference, I should be careful. The idea is that if you try to pin it on one thing and scripture doesn't say it blatantly, scripture doesn't say God gave AIDS to the homosexuals to punish them. So if you start extrapolating and drawing things out, you have to be careful because it doesn't say that literally.

But it does say there are consequences for our sins, even in the life of the believer. How many of you can testify to that? No hands. Come on! But the truth of the matter is that sin has consequences. It leads to death. And so, if someone is in an active lifestyle of sin, there will be consequences, and it will lead to death.

We have really expensive medical solutions to AIDS now. You can take all kinds of pills and stuff, buffer your immune system for so long. I remember I worked at a pharmacy in high school and that was when some of the first drugs were being released in widely use and there were huge federal grants to fund these pills to get them out to people because it was so expensive to get them that most people that had contracted AIDS just couldn't afford the hundreds of dollars a month. I think it was like $500 a month in medication just to deal with AIDS.

So I don't know what that is now. I could have called my old boss up probably and asked. But the truth of the matter is it's very expensive just to deal with the results of AIDS. And it's obviously spread into heterosexual relationships as well. Because if it feels good, do it.

The truth is though, there are lots of different things that have expensive consequences that are way outside of this kind of consideration. Alcoholism, drug addiction can have all kinds of horrific health consequences, but it's not AIDS. There are a number of different, sometimes severe consequences to various symptoms of different categories. Yeah, definitely consequences to those who aren't born like abortion or whatever else, but also the cost for the average American for health insurance has gone up drastically since all of the perversion becomes so culturally popular. The expense to each person and the companies that pay for health insurance has gone up a lot. Yeah, smoking has had some consequences. I have some theories on that, but we won't go there. Any other questions on God's wrath towards homosexuals? Yeah, scripture does say all of sin and fall short of God's glory. It doesn't say that AIDS is God's wrath.

Another thing that's important to note is How many of you have John 3.16 memorized?

Everybody, please raise your hand. Okay, okay. Even if you're lying. No. It doesn't say, for God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son, or it doesn't say God so loved the straight, perverse people that he gave his only begotten son. It says world, okay? So, that's important.

Okay, what about homosexual marriage? That's been really a hot topic in the last couple of years because some states have legalized it and some states have not. Or if they don't call it marriage, they call it a civil union. Some name for it. Any thoughts on that one? I have some stuff I've written down.

Scripture doesn't accept it as an acceptable thing. It doesn't even address homosexual marriage. It doesn't. It's like, listen, this is so wrong, don't mess with it. Don't get around the idea in a positive light. It's not okay. So scripture doesn't say you shouldn't have homosexual marriage. It says in the law, if they're homosexual, kill them. In the New Testament, Paul said that's a former life. It's not part of godliness. So let's not have it. So if your morality is not based on scripture, then quite frankly, there's nothing wrong with homosexual marriage.

It's just as good as anything else. Of course, with the question you asked about bestiality, what's wrong with me marrying my dog? It feels good and I love my dog. What's wrong with me? Any of those things, it's a logical conclusion. If your morality is based on experience and pleasure, there's all kinds of things that suddenly become quite acceptable.

Over in Northern Europe, I forget which Scandinavian country, they had their first three-person civil union, where it was a man and two women got married and they have some strange love triangle that they're involved with there. Marriage between people in any context outside of what Scripture gives, from a biblical standpoint, is wrong.

In fact, it doesn't qualify for the term marriage, because the idea in the biblical context is a heterosexual relationship. So, if you're going to try to prove this from Scripture, you're going to find that homosexuality shouldn't even exist. it shouldn't be promoted. So you can't answer the question should there be homosexual marriage with yes or no. It's like that assumes that there's some level of okayness ahead of time. So it's kind of hard to answer it from a, you know, well scripture says that it's not okay or it is okay for marriage. The marriage question never is arrived at in scripture because it's already wrong.

Marilyn? You hear the argument that they can't go into the hospital room because it's only family and they can't get benefits like health care benefits through lawyers. That kind of thing is the argument I hear about it. All they have to do is designate that that is the first amendment medical decisions. get the paperwork and the legal things addressed.

The thing is that the scriptures don't address the cultural issues the same way because it starts out with the statement that it's wrong. I would go so far as to say the fact that it's wrong because scripture is God's truth revealed to us. It doesn't get into some of the cultural issues. So as believers living in today's modern culture, Our interaction with these things has to default to how has God told us to interact with senders, no matter what the sin is. And the answer is, oh yeah, dad, sorry.

I think it's really valuable to note that, you know, as we get into things like about homosexual marriage, or we make this legal or that legal, that, you know, here's Paul and he goes into places like Corinth and Ephesus, you know, and Rome. His efforts are not pointed in the direction of get the laws changed to make sure that you have good contact with the local Roman governor and have influence.

His efforts are people need to be saved. His efforts are in the direction of people growing in the Lord and and the character of believers not going out and changing the world so that it fits us. We don't bring the world to conform to the Christian image. We reach out to individuals and bring them into a loving body, hopefully a loving body, and not law, but the righteousness of Christ lived out through abiding. We're running out of time, so I want to move on.

How do we witness to homosexuals? I said this wasn't going to be an evangelism series with the apologetics when we first started this thing, but it's important to understand how we should interact with homosexuals in a biblical context. It's really critical, because when I would deal with my homosexual co-worker I had in Texas, He was just blatantly, overtly homosexual all the time, and said he would turn me gay if he could just perform various sexual acts on me.

And I was like, dude, I'm married. I got a daughter. One, if experience was the whole deal, we'd be in trouble. But two, there's lives involved here. But the thing is, how does one interact with a homosexual? How do you witness to a homosexual? They're used to, Christians, focusing in and narrowing in on homosexuality. So they're going to be used to you targeting that one issue instead of the broader issue, which is all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.

I've got here on the second paragraph down, using the Ten Commandments kind of as a prop. Remember, the Ten Commandments were given to the Jews, so we could get into some arguments about that, but because it's something people are aware of, given the Ten Commandments.

Have they had another god besides God? Have they rejected God altogether? Have they coveted, or stolen, or thought lustful thoughts about various things? Lustful thoughts ties in with the sexuality, but there's other issues there. Did they disobey their parents? That's a good one there. They need salvation, not just from homosexual sin, but because they are sinners. It's broader than that.

And the thing is that, remember your life is the third paragraph down on page three. Remember that your life is a testimony of Christ's work. Philippians 1, 20-21 makes it clear that Jesus should be living his life through us. For me to die is gain, but if we're going to live, we're going to live as Christ.

These people are dealing with oftentimes depression. I talked about briefly that these mental disorders that were so much more common in homosexuality, the light of Christ and the love of Christ in your life may be the only glimpse of hope that they get to see.

With that in mind, I've got the last page here, Strategies to Avoid Hate Language. Obviously, that's going to be a bit of a turn-off. They don't want to hear anything you say if the first thing out of your mouth is something rude, like God hates fags, or death. You know, one of the things in conversations I've either had or heard of is that they're often surprised, positively, to hear the message that God loves them. To hear Christians say that is almost shocking. To hear that God loves them and died for them is critical. So hate language isn't going to do it. I've got 1 Corinthians 9, 19-23 quoted here.

Basically, Paul said he was all things to all people. The idea is not that you would be homosexual to homosexuals, but the idea is that you would come into their lives in a loving way and not be afraid to be around them and with them, presenting the gospel in your words and your walk. And the last thing I've got on here, fear. Don't be afraid of homosexuals.

You have reason to be. concerned about sexual predators, child molesters, other things like that. Obviously you wouldn't let the child molester babysit your kid or something to that effect. But as far as in safe public places where these things are not issues, don't be afraid to spend that time with them because that time may be an opportunity that the Lord uses to plant a seed.

And remember that as you're abiding, Ephesians 2 10 is always applicable That God is going has good works planned out for you to do and you will do them Okay, so when you're with Anyone that is a sinner God may use you to do good works in their lives to impact them for Christ We're out of time.

There's actually people waiting at the back of the door there. So let's close in prayer real quick and then we'll We'll break Heavenly Father. Thank you for your word. Thank you for your love Lord. Thank you that we can be a light to the lost no matter what their lostness may be focused on. We ask that you would give us opportunities and have insights into their lives so that we can share your love more personally. We thank you and we praise you in Jesus' name. Amen.