479-521-6809
Editor:
Scott Gage
PO Box 3425
Fayetteville, AR 72702
May/June Issue 2012 - Volume 31 Number 3
Gay Marriage Isn't
Wake
Up America
“Then
he came to his disciples and found them sleeping, and said to Peter,
‘What? Could you not watch with me one hour? Watch and pray, lest you
enter into temptation. The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is
weak.” Matthew 26:40-41
The
American people seem to have come under the influence of Pied Pipers who are
leading them blindly along a dangerous course. The television and film
industries are two of the pipers that are playing blatantly unscriptural
tunes. Young and old alike are being lulled to sleep by the incessant and
decadent melodies.
The
word translated “watch” in Matthew 26:40-41is gregoreuo
and is taken from the word egeiro
which means to waken or rouse from sleep. It could be translated “wake
up.” It is still true that so often our spirits are willing but the flesh
is weak. We fall asleep; we doze under ungodly influences. We are like
sleepwalkers. We stumble along but we are not really awake to the things
around us.
I
have a friend and fellow-preacher in El Dorado, Arkansas that I have known
for many years. Dan Williams has hosted an email group that he calls
“Preacher Stuff.” He recently posted this sermon to the group and I
believe it is a message that needs to be heard in America and around the
world today. With Dan’s permission we are publishing his sermon in this
issue of BC.
…lsg
Sermon:
“Gay
Marriage Isn’t”
Text:
Romans 1:21-27
Aim: to
explain the spiritual implications of the political push for “gay
marriage.”
Thesis: “gay marriage”
isn’t – it isn’t “gay” and it isn’t “marriage.”
Introduction:
READ TEXT.
When
you work closely with people, whether in ministry or in therapy, you quickly
learn two related realities: first,
human beings are complicated creatures, and consequently their struggles
have complicated causes. But
second, there is a difference between explaining
sin and excusing it.
For example, a couple of years ago I visited a young man
who was incarcerated in our local lockup for misbehavior associated with
public drunkenness. Now, I will
freely admit to plenty of temptations, but that particular sin is not one of
them: I don’t drink – never
have – never even wanted to. This
young man had a temptation to which I cannot relate – so consequently it
would be have been easy for me to judge him harshly.
In the course of our conversation I asked my young friend
how long he has been an alcoholic. He
promptly answered, “Since I was a baby.”
I thought perhaps he misunderstood my question, so I rephrased it:
“No, what I mean is, how long have you had a problem with alcohol?”
“Since I was a baby.”
Then he explained: “Brother Dan, my parents were alcoholics, and
they thought it was funny to put beer in my bottle and watch me get
drunk.”
Here was a young man who had been conditioned by his
upbringing, on a very deep level – and, because his parents were
alcoholics, it is very possible that he also has a genetic predisposition
towards addiction. Does that explain
his temptation? It did to me.
He had been literally weaned on beer – once I heard his story and
realized that HE had not originally chosen alcohol, but it had been chosen
FOR him when he was an infant, it was easier for me to have compassion on
him.
That explained
his temptation; does it excuse his
behavior? Knowing what I now
knew, did I say, “Son, you don’t have a chance, so just drink up”?
No, of course not – that would only encourage him to
even greater self-destruction. What
I did say was, “Son, you’re
going to have a harder time licking this addiction than most folks, and
that’s why I hope you’ll be in our recovery program at church, and also
in A.A. You’re going to need
all the help you can get.” A
broken background doesn’t make alcoholism any less damaging, and a genetic
predisposition doesn’t make drunken behavior any less wrong.
It is easier for me to have compassion on individuals who
struggle with temptations that I don’t have once I’ve learned their
history, and over the years I have learned to have compassion on men and
women who struggle with same-sex temptations.
I have counseled with these individuals and have learned first-hand
the brokenness in their backgrounds. When
I did I discovered so many people
have been used and abused, have been assaulted in body and soul – I have
talked with women who experienced such mistreatment from men that they felt
it safer to seek fulfillment with another woman – have counseled with
young men who experienced traumas that disturbed and distorted their
experience of masculinity.
I have learned that, just as some people seek to
self-medicate their misery by drowning their sorrows in alcohol, or by
numbing their emotional pain with drugs, others attempt to fill the broken
places in their life with immoral relationships, and some of those immoral
relationships are with individuals of the same gender.
I said I can have compassion on them because I better
understand their background – and it is precisely because I have compassion on them that I will warn them that an
escape into homosexual behavior is not the solution to the past pains they
have experienced. When they do,
Satan uses their brokenness to keep them enslaved in a spiritually
unhealthy, ultimately destructive situation.
The Bible’s evaluation of same-sex physical
relationships is no mystery: both
the Old and the New Testament contain clear and repeated prohibitions.
Many of the inspired authors of Scripture refer to the
awful example of Sodom, including Jesus (see Matthew 10:15 and 11:23-24; Jude 7; 2
Peter 2:6-10; Revelation 11:8).
In our text today, Romans 1 says that homosexual behavior
is a symptom of a larger problem: of
a society’s failure to glorify God, and of its consequent deterioration
into moral darkness. Verses 26-27 describe same-sex physical relationships with such
terms as “unnatural”…. “indecent”....and
“perversion.” There
is nothing ambiguous about those descriptions.
Given these clear statements of Scripture, Jews, Greek
Orthodox, Russian Orthodox, a majority of Protestants, the Roman Catholic
Church – everyone from Mormons to Muslims – in fact, every major world
religion, has, for thousands of years, defined homosexual behavior as
inappropriate, unhealthy, out of bounds, sinful.
Now a small handful of liberal activists are succeeding,
in the space of only a generation, to turn that received wisdom on its head
– they want same-sex unions to not only be tolerated, but celebrated,
sanctified, and if these activists have their way, legalized with the full
weight of the federal government to compel the rest of us to recognize and
accept them. In fact, those of
us who dare to teach the Biblical truth about this subject are now loudly
castigated as hate-filled bigots, and I fear that situation will only get
worse.
President
Obama made a big splash recently by becoming the first sitting president to
promote gay marriage. But he is a politician, and he knows how to read
survey data.
What
he learns from those surveys is that the younger generation is much more
accepting of the concept of gay marriage than their parents.
That should come as no surprise because today’s young adults were
the targets of one of the most sustained propaganda campaigns in history.
For over a generation the homosexual lobby has used the most powerful
and pervasive “pulpit” in the nation:
the television screen.
My
generation grew up on Andy Griffith,
Leave It To Beaver, or the Brady
Bunch. Today’s young
adults grew up watching Will and Grace,
which ran from 1998 to 2006, received high ratings, and featured an
attractive homosexual couple.
And
today one of the most popular shows among young people is Glee,
and one of the most talked-about moments on this year’s program was when
Blaine declares his love for Kurt and then the two young men kiss.
Do you think this has an effect on young people?
NPR
does. It recently explained
that: “In
five separate studies, professor Edward Schiappa and his colleagues at the
University of Minnesota have found that the presence of gay characters on
television programs decreases prejudices among viewers.
Today the
most popular TV show in the U.S. is Modern Family, which not only features a gay couple, but
this couple is in the process of adopting a second child. Schiappa says the
idea of a gay couple with children is much more mainstream now.
More and more gay married couples are
showing up on TV these days — like Grey's
Anatomy, for example — making something of a trend. NBC plans
to roll out more programs with gay married couples next season.”
Source: http://www.npr.org/2012/05/12/152578740/how-tv-brought-gay-people-into-our-homes
The
year before Will and Grace began
it was Oprah Winfrey herself, the high priestess of pop culture, who opened
the door for the media to promote homosexuality by bringing Ellen DeGeneres
on her show so that Ellen could announce that she was a lesbian.
And then, to make sure that even the slowest, most dull-witted of
viewers got the message, Oprah appeared on the Ellen comedy show to play the
role of a therapist who gave her blessing to the fictional character Ellen
as she also came out as a lesbian. Talk about a full-court press!
In
fact, let me share a few examples of just how relentless, and comprehensive,
this propaganda campaign has been: it
has even been conducted in the comics our young people read.
Do any of you remember the “Archie” series of comic books, with
the wholesome, all-American cast of teens:
Archie, Betty, Veronica, and of course, Jughead?
Earlier this year, Archie Comics featured Kevin Keller – the
fictional Riverdale's first openly gay character who is also an active U.S.
military officer – tying the knot with his boyfriend Clay Walker.
Two
weeks ago D.C. Comics (the publishers of Superman and Batman comics)
announced that one of their superheroes was going to come out of the closet
as gay. Last Friday (June 1)
they revealed it is The Green Lantern.
And
just this past week, in the El Dorado
News-Times, the “Doonesbury” comic strip continued a long-running
story line about a lesbian Army sergeant who came out of the closet after
President Obama repealed “Don’t ask, don’t tell.”
After
the phenomenally popular Harry Potter series was completed, J.K. Rowling,
the author, announced that Albus
Dumbledore is gay and had fallen in love with fellow wizard and friend,
Gellert Grindelwald. Friends,
“Dumbledore” is a fictional character – the series is complete
– and this was not essential to the original storyline in any way.
Rowling’s statement served no purpose whatsoever except
to promote a homosexual agenda among her young readers.
I had originally intended to preach this sermon in
tonight’s service, but when our shepherds learned what I was planning,
they urged me to present it on a Sunday morning, because, they said,
“Our young people are being flooded with false information, and we want
them to hear the truth.” Upon
reflection, I realized they are right.
Gay marriage is being imposed on the American people from
the top down, by the judicial and legislative branches.
Even non-religious people instinctively know there is something wrong
with this picture, because the people have been given a chance to vote on it
32 times in state elections, and
the people have voted it down 32 times. But now that
gay marriage has been introduced by a politician running for federal office,
my fear is that this fall’s election will be seen as a referendum on the
issue, and if it succeeds we will have gone irrevocably over a moral cliff.
I said last week that I am emphatically against entangling
the church in partisan politics, and I have not changed my position.
But one of the reasons the church needs to stay out of politics is so
that it can exercise a prophetic voice at those times when culture goes
crazy.
This is one of those times.
If I take the truth of Scripture seriously, I must conclude that
“gay marriage” is based on a lie – in fact, it is based on FOUR lies.
Based on a lie about the Bible: One
of the things that makes my heart sink when Christians, under the influence
of their culture and politics, support same sex marriage is that they are
giving aid and comfort to those who are attacking the book I hold sacred. I
have read the comments that gay marriage supporters make about Christians
and about God’s Word – their comments are caustic and they are vicious.
Based on a lie about marriage: Until
now, there has never been a society in human history that has recognized the
union of two people of the same sex as being a marriage. There are a lot of
good reasons for that, but one is that marriage is about sustaining LIFE.
“So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him;
MALE AND FEMALE he created them.
God blessed them and said to them, ‘BE FRUITFUL AND INCREASE IN
NUMBER; fill the earth and
subdue it” (Genesis 1:27-28)
Marriage is fundamentally about LIFE: the
procreation, preservation, and protection of life. Children
are biologically impossible without a male and a female.
Doesn’t it make sense that they need a dad and a mom when growing
up? I will personally believe in
gay marriage when someone will survey the more than 7 billion people now
living on the face of the earth and find me just one who is the
product of a same sex union.
Based on a lie about the law: Gays
may have the legal right to do what they want in private, but they don’t
have the right to redefine marriage for all of us.
Moreover, when we have a valid basis of comparison, we
find that same sex unions have a much higher rate of breakups, and of
domestic violence, than true marriage.1 “Marriage equality”
assumes the two different kinds of unions are qualitatively equal – they
are not.
Based on a lie about human nature: Homosexuality
is intrinsically unhealthy, in part because it tends to foster promiscuity,
but in part because it uses the human body in ways it was never intended to
be used. There is a reason why
After
reviewing the evidence, here is MY conclusion: “Gay
marriage ISN’T” – it isn’t
“gay,” and it isn’t “marriage.”
Conclusion:
PLEASE TURN to 1 Corinthians 6.
My sermon won’t be complete without
offering four final observations:
First, there is a difference between temptation and behavior.
Even Jesus was tempted (Hebrews 4:15).
Any person who struggles with same-sex temptations, but who wishes,
by the grace of God, to not act upon them will find welcome and support here
at College Avenue.
Second, we saw in Romans 1 that homosexuality is a sin –
but that same passage also lists such sins as envy, greed, and gossiping.
The fact of the matter is, “all
have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23), and all
of us are in need of God’s amazing grace.
Third, because we are all sinners, none of us has
the right to treat any fellow human being with contempt or disgust, much
less with mistreatment or violence. We
absolutely repudiate the ungodly
actions of people like the Westboro Baptist church who spew their vile
hatred towards those who are trapped in homosexual behavior and who picket
the funerals of slain soldiers.
Finally, are you in 1 Corinthians 6?
READ
Verses 9-10
“Do
you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God?
Do not be deceived: Neither
fornicators nor idolaters nor adulterers nor effeminate nor homosexuals nor
thieves nor covetous nor drunkards nor revilers nor swindlers will inherit
the kingdom of God.”
Christians cannot continue in these sorts of behaviors and
expect to go to heaven!
Verse 11.
“That
is what some of you WERE; but you were washed, you were sanctified, you were
justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, and in the Spirit of our
God.”
The church in Corinth had members who once lived in that
lifestyle – but by the power of God they had left that life behind.
...Dan Williams
El Dorado, Arkansas
Marriage does not begin with you and your spouse.
It begins with you and your God.
---Nelson T. Dy
Volume 31
- Number 3 -
May/Jun 2012 BC
is published every other month. Send all inquiries, address changes and
subscriptions to the editor: Scott
Gage, PO Box 3425, Fayetteville, AR 72702-3425
Voice & Fax 479-521-6809 Email:
Lsgage129@cs.com
www.basicchristianity.net