Homosexuality and The Bible:
Part 1
Dave Redick
It's true that God made everyone and everything. But there is no indication anywhere in the Bible that God created man to be homosexual or woman to be lesbian. The creation account indicates just the opposite.
Introduction
I'm sure most, if not all of you, have heard (and perhaps you have tired of hearing) what the media has been pushing for the last few weeks. This article comes from Mercury Mail, dated May 1, 1997:
"Ellen" comes out, gays across U.S. celebrate
By Angus MacSwan
MIAMI (Reuter) - Television sitcom character Ellen Morgan announced ``I'm gay'' Wednesday night -- the first lead character in an American TV show to come out of the closet -- and thousands of gays and lesbians across the United States celebrated with her.
``This is a wonderful, historic night,'' said Martha Fugate, Founder of a gay youth support group, Project Yes, told a crowd gathered in a Miami church hall just before the ``Ellen'' show aired on ABC.
It was one of hundreds of ``Come Out with Ellen'' parties organized in bars, clubs, community halls and private homes across the country.
The announcement was no secret after weeks of hype in which ``Ellen'' star Ellen DeGeneres also revealed that she too was gay in real life.
But when Ellen Morgan, a bookstore manager, finally said ''I'm gay'' -- inadvertently speaking into a public address system at an airport waiting lounge -- gays at the Riviera Presbyterian Church Hall in Miami and other establishments across the nation cheered, clapped and laughed.
Other lines, like ``I don't like Richard, I like Susan'', were greeted with roars of approval or nods of sympathy.
Conservative groups have complained the program is an insult and attack on family values. Some advertisers pulled out although ABC was expecting a 20 million audience for a show that has been sagging in the ratings.
Party-goers at a Manhattan night club shrugged off suggestions that the ``coming out'' episode was a play for publicity. Amy Wilkinson, 34, said, ``People who say this is for publicity are people who have never had to come out.''
Gays and lesbians said the show gave them a positive role model, would encourage others to come out of the closet and would increase awareness and tolerance of other people.
Melissa, a 17-year-old student who attended the party in the Miami church hall, said ``Ellen'' offered another image to the lesbian stereotype. ``It gets away from the dyke type. She's a good-hearted, warm person.''
Muffin Spencer-Devlin, an 18-year pro on the Ladies Professional Golf Association Tour, told Reuters in a telephone interview from her home in Laguna Beach, California, ``I'm always happy when someone else joins the corps.''
Spencer-Devlin, who came out of the closet herself last year, making her the first LPGA golfer to publicly acknowledge her lesbianism, said the question of whether to come out is on the mind of every gay and lesbian in the public eye.
``It's something everyone thinks about,'' she said. ``But its an intensely personal decision. There are no real guidelines.''
Alan Klein, spokesman for the New-York-based Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD), said the nationwide coming out party was unprecedented in scale.
GLAAD organized 1,500 ``Come out with Ellen'' parties in private homes in every state. It also hosted parties in clubs in New York, Washington, Kansas, and California.
In Birmingham, Alabama, where local affiliate ABC 33/40 has refused to air the episode because of its content, the Birmingham Pride Alabama gay group downlinked the show via satellite for an audience of thousands at a city auditorium.
Not everyone was happy about the show. An organization called Americans for the Truth About Homosexuality staged a protest in front of ABC's Washington news bureau Wednesday. The American Family Association, based in Tupelo, Mississippi, also denounced it.
``We feel it will uplift and give validity to a lifestyle that is not natural and is against traditional moral values,'' AFA spokesman Randall Murphree said.
But the ``Ellen'' bandwagon, for the moment at least, seemed unstoppable. Big stars offered their support with cameo roles, among them talks show host Oprah Winfrey as Ellen's therapist, Laura Dern as her object of desire, and acknowledged lesbian singers Melissa Etheridge and k.d. lang.
DeGeneres, 35, who has said she wanted the show to be a surprise until thwarted by a TV Guide scoop, has done the rounds of TV and magazine shows in the build-up to the show.
She tearfully revealed how her own parents threw her out the house when she told them she was a lesbian.
But on the Winfrey show on Wednesday she appeared with her current lover actress Anne Heche. ``There are a lot of people out there who think I'm sick. Thank God we're so happy,'' she said.
ABC is boasting that 42 million people tuned in to see this particular episode of "Ellen." This preacher was not one of them. How much of that viewer number is made up of people sympathetic to the homosexual issue and how much of it was just media aroused curiosity remains to be seen. (Given the depth the networks seem to be willing to stoop in order to boost ratings, I personally would need to see hard data before believing their claimed number, but that is another issue.) With that article as a backdrop, let's read some Scripture...
LEV 20:13 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 shall surely be put to death. Their bloodguiltiness is upon them.
1CO 6:9 Or do you not know that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived; neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor homosexuals, 1CO 6:10 nor thieves, nor the covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers, shall inherit the kingdom of God.
JUDE 1:7 Just as Sodom and Gomorrah and the cities around them, since they in the same way as these indulged in gross immorality and went after strange flesh, are exhibited as an example, in undergoing the punishment of eternal fire. JUD 1:8 Yet in the same manner these men, also by dreaming, defile the flesh, and reject authority, and revile angelic majesties.
While some seem to be pulling out all the stops in order to promote homosexuality here in this country, I must remind you that the Bible's position on the issue has not changed from what it has always been and Christian people who desire to be faithful to Christ and His Word will continue to hold the Biblical view. Homosexuality is still a sin and no amount of shift in the popular view will change that.
The extent to which popular opinion is changing is hard to tell. The militancy of those promoting homosexuality is not hard to spot, though. "Coming out of the closet" has become synonymous with public acknowledgment of homosexuality. Movie and television plots present it as an acceptable alternate lifestyle. Those who "come out" are made to seem like heroes in front of millions of ignorant and often young and impressionable eyes. Magazines are openly marketed to a homosexual clientele. Major religious denominations ordain homosexual ministers. Well known politicians, including our current President of the United States, openly and shamelessly cooperate with, if not promote the homosexual agenda. We've been through the "gays in the military" issue early in the first term of our sitting president. We've seen militant homosexuality right here in our home state of Oregon and in neighboring towns like Eugene and Portland. There seems to be no letup in sight as this militant minority seeks to impose their immorality on the rest of us.
What should be the reaction of the Christian to all of this? What should parents teach their children about it? The questions being pondered by many are: Is it a sin? Is it a sickness, or a natural expression for some? The Christian must get answers to those questions from the Bible.
In order to help you do that, I want to share what the Bible teaches about homosexuality. I know I have done this before, but it needs to be done again from time to time because of the ongoing presence of the issue. Those of us who have been around need to be reminded, and new Christians coming on the scene, and our maturing children, need to hear it for the first time.
Before I begin, let me clarify that Bible Christians do not hate homosexuals. On the contrary, the teaching of Jesus indicates that we must have a love for those who sin against God in ignorance. Our job is to reach out to them in compassion while not becoming entangled in the behavior that God says is wrong. Christians do, however, understand that the Bible calls the lifestyle of homosexuality sin and that will God judge those who do not repent of it just as He will judge those who practice any other activity that He calls sin.
Lets get into the issue...
I. To Begin, We Need To Go Back To the Issue of Sexuality in The Creation.
Sometimes people say, "God made gays just as certainly as God made straights."
It's true that God made everyone and everything. But there is no indication anywhere in the Bible that God created man to be homosexual or woman to be lesbian. The creation account indicates just the opposite.
When God had placed Adam in the garden He said in Genesis 2:18, "It is not good for the man to be alone; I will make him a helper suitable for him."
The marginal reference in my Bible says that the word "suitable" means literally "corresponding to." The root word from which the word in the text is derived means "corresponding to the front of." Though it is certainly not limited to physical correspondence, male and female do physically correspond to each other. The male design does not correspond to another male design and the female doesn't correspond to another female. Put in more common terms, God didn't create a husband for Adam. He created a wife.
Just a few verses after that, God said these words in Genesis 2:24 & 25:
"For this cause a man shall leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave to his wife; and they shall become one flesh. And the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed."
That universal statement where God is laying out the issue of sexuality and marriage, we find no hint of homosexuality.
Back in Genesis 1:28 it says, "And God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them."
Jesus later referred to the matter of the creation in Matthew 19:4-6:
"Have you not read, that He who created them from the beginning made them male and female, and said, 'For this cause a man shall leave his father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife; and the two shall become one flesh? Consequently they are no longer two, but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let no man separate."
There is nothing in the creation account which describes the natural order of things that would indicate that homosexuality is a part of God's design.
Indeed, in the New Testament, the natural order of the creation is invoked when Paul says in Romans 1:26-27,
"For this reason 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 toward one another, men with men committing indecent acts and receiving in their own persons the due penalty of their error."
On the basis of what is natural then, God calls homosexuality unnatural and indecent. He calls it degrading and an error.
These things may seem somewhat obvious to most of us, but understand that theologians sympathetic to the homosexual cause are working night and day to reinterpret these passages in an effort to make them say something different than they say. Many people, ignorant of the Bible themselves, accept these bogus interpretations. We need to stay informed and sure of what the Word of God says!
II. Let's Look Now to What The Old Testament Says About Homosexuality.
A. The Old Testament calls homosexuality an "abomination."
Leviticus 18:22 says,
"You shall not lie with a male as one lies with a female; it is an abomination."
The Hebrew word for "abomination" is toebah and it refers to anything that is against the true nature of a person.
B. God considered homosexuality to be one of those activities that defiled the land.
Just five verses after the one I just read, Leviticus 18:27 says,
"for the men of the land who have been before you have done all these abominations, and the land has become defiled;"
C. Some of the homosexual "revisionists" have suggested that this prohibition against homosexuality was only temporary because it was causing Israel to get mixed up with her pagan neighbors.
According to some "theologians," the only reason God was against it was so the Israelites would not have sexual activities with their neighbors and be lured into worshiping their pagan gods.
Here is what is wrong with that line of reasoning:
(1) God prohibited homosexual activities with anyone, not just with pagans. In the same context that God called homosexuality an abomination (Lev. 18:27) He prohibited intercourse with animals. Certainly he didn't mean just those animals belonging to Israel's pagan neighbors.
(2) The prohibition of homosexuality was carried over into the New Testament, making it clear that it went beyond the nation of Israel and the problems they were having with paganism.
(3) In Romans 1, Paul took his teaching against homosexuality back to the beginning - to creation - not to the temporary environment of the Israelite nation.
(4) God destroyed people who committed homosexual acts without mentioning their religious practices.
Sodom and Gomorrah were destroyed because of the homosexual activities that permeated those cities. That understanding of the reason God destroyed those cities has recently been challenged, however. A few years ago a pro-homosexual leader was the first to suggest that Sodom and Gomorrah were destroyed because of an absence of hospitality, not because of the presence of homosexuality. (The idea of lack of hospitality was suggested because the two angels God sent were planning to spend the night in the open square rather than being invited to stay at someone's house.)
It doesn't take a lot of reading to ascertain that hospitality wasn't the issue in Genesis 19. There is no indication that the two angels were going to spend the night in the square because of a lack of hospitality. (My guess is that they wanted to stay separate from the homosexuals who lived there.) Let's read that passage.
(Read Genesis 19:1-7)
Lot knew exactly what these men wanted to do. That's why he shut the door behind him. That word "wickedly" in verse 7 is used elsewhere to refer to homosexual activity (Judges 19:22-23). Peter later referred to the men described in this incident in II Peter 2:6-10,
"and if He condemned the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah to destruction by reducing them to ashes, having made them an example to those who would live ungodly thereafter; and if He rescued righteous Lot, oppressed by the sensual conduct of unprincipled men (for by what he saw and heard that righteous man, while living among them, felt his righteous soul tormented day after day with their lawless deeds), then the Lord knows how to rescue the godly from temptation, and to keep the unrighteous under punishment for the day of judgment..."
D. Some pro-homosexual revisionists like to turn to Ezekiel 16:49-50 to prove that hospitality was the issue:
"Behold, this was the guilt of your sister Sodom: she and her daughters had arrogance, abundant food, and careless ease, but she did not help the poor and needy. Thus they were haughty and committed abominations before Me. Therefore I removed them when I saw it."
The context of these verses doesn't support that understanding. The lack of care for the needy and the "abominations" mentioned here are not the same thing. Later in this chapter, those abominations are defined. In Ezekiel 16:58, just 8 verses later, still talking about Sodom, it says,
"You have borne the penalty of your lewdness and abominations," the Lord declares.
The Hebrew word for "lewdness" is used elsewhere to describe sexual sins. (Judges 20:5-6; Jeremiah 13:27; Ezekiel 22:11; Ezekiel 23:19-21, 27, 29, 35, 43-49). The "abominations" of Sodom in Ezekiel 16:50 are the acts of lewdness mentioned in Ezekiel 16:58. Lewdness refers to illicit sexual activities.
Sodom is used at least 17 times in Scripture as an example to other cities and countries. (Deut. 29:23; 32:32; Isa. 1:9-10; 3:9; 13:19; Jer. 23:14; 50:40; Lam. 4:6; Ezek. 16:46-56; Amos 4:11; Zeph. 2:9; Matt. 10:15; 11:23-24; Rom. 9:29; II Pet. 2:6; Jude 7; Rev. 11:8). We dare not take Sodom's sin lightly. If we allow our nation to became like them, I cannot imagine how we as a nation will be spared from the wrath of God.
"But God wouldn't do that to us, would He?"
Listen, He even did it to Israel and Judah, his chosen people of he Old Testament. Look at Isa 3:8-9,
"For Jerusalem has stumbled, and Judah has fallen, Because their speech and their actions are against the Lord, To rebel against His glorious presence. The expression of their faces bears witness against them. And they display their sin like Sodom; they do not even conceal it. Woe to them! For they have brought evil on themselves."
Did you notice in that passage when Israel and Judah incurred God's wrath? When they finally got to the place where it was coming out of the closet. ("They do not even conceal it...").
III. Finally, Let's Consider What the New Testament Says About Homosexuality.
The New Testament clearly states that homosexuality will prevent a person from entering the kingdom of God. We read in I Corinthians 6:9-10,
"Or do you not know that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived; neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor homosexuals, nor thieves, nor the covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers, shall inherit the kingdom of God."
Notice that these verses clearly indicate that homosexuality, among other sins, will exclude people from the kingdom. But there has been the suggestion that the word "homosexuals" in this verse doesn't mean homosexuals.
The Greek word for "homosexuals" is arsenokiotes. It is a compound word made up of two words: arsen, the Greek word for male and koite, the word from which our English word "coitus" comes ("coitus" is sexual intercourse). Literally the word means sexual intercourse among men.
The Greek word for "effeminate" in these verses is malakos and it refers to men and boys who allow themselves to be misused sexually. (I have heard this word used to denigrate men and boys who wear such things as pink shirts and jewelry, but that is a misuse of it.) The word for "homosexual" is active, the word for "effeminate" is passive. Often there is an active and a passive "partner" in such relationships. Both are clearly wrong.
Homosexuality is not restricted to the male population. Lesbianism is also condemned.
Romans 1:26-27 says,
"For this reason 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 toward one another, men with men committing indecent acts and receiving in their own persons the due penalty of their error."
It is interesting to trace the context of these verses. In verse 18 of Romans 1, Paul is speaking of those who "suppress the truth in unrighteousness." Such suppressing of the truth of man's creation leads people into such things as homosexuality.
Homosexuality is one of the many sins for which the Law of God was made. It stands contrary to sound teaching. In I Timothy 1:8-10, we read,
"But we know that the Law is good, if one uses it lawfully, realizing the fact that law is not made for a righteous man, but for those who are lawless and rebellious, for the ungodly and sinners, for the unholy and profane, for those who kill their fathers or mothers, for murderers and immoral men and homosexuals and kidnappers and liars and perjurers, and whatever else is contrary to sound teaching,"
Notice the words used to describe such people: "lawless, rebellious, ungodly, sinners, unholy, profane..." Homosexuality does not keep good company in the Bible.
The words "sound teaching" there in verse 10 refer in the original language to something that is whole or healthy, well or cured. Sound teaching (like what is coming to you right from the Bible at this moment) is what brings wellness, healthiness, wholeness, and cure. God wants us to be healthy and whole. Homosexuality robs men and women of that.
Conclusion
I would like to bring you one more message on this subject next Lord's Day evening in which we will talk some more about what the Bible teaches and more specifically about how we should deal with what is happening around us.
In this message I hope I have established clearly that homosexuality is condemned by the Bible and is something a Christian should not get involved in. I have a list of verses that deal with the subject that I will make available to you for your further study. It will include the ones I have used in this message and some I did not.
Shall we pray?
Dave Redick is Minister of the Hwy 20 Church of Christ in Sweet Home, Oregon and Editor of The Preacher's Study. He may be reached at pstudysupport@comcast.net.
Copyright © 1996-2008 by The Preacher's Study. Permission is granted to subscribers to use this document in total or in sermon preparation in the context of the local congregation only. Publishing it in a book, on the Internet, or anyplace beyond the local congregation is prohibited.
All Scripture quotations and references are from the New American Standard Version unless otherwise stated.