"Homosexuality"
Gen. 19:1-11
May 4, 1997 

Text Comment

v.3 Lot knew his Sodom and knew what would ensue if the men spent the night in the public square.

v.5 "have sex with" is literally "know." A typical biblical euphemism for sex. Again in v. 8, this time in a heterosexual context. "Sodomy," as a term for homosexual sex, is, of course taken from this narrative of homosexual practice in the city of Sodom.

v.8 Virtue can easily become vice: Lot is clearly courageous in going outside to plead the case, but his solution is so repulsive that it warns us of how social conventions can deaden us to terrible evil. An important lesson for our culture!

v.9 The cardinal sin: passing judgment! And here is what passing judgment becomes in corrupt societies! And here too, the human penchant for viewing people in extraneous terms -- an alien -- so as to lower them in hopes of raising oneself. This is the principle of racism, but of many other ways in which people despise others so easily for something that bears not at all on a person's true worth.

Now it was surely in God's providence that we should return to our series of sermons in Genesis, after our time away in Isaiah 53, to find ourselves at Gen. 19 in the very week in which homosexuality has been a topic on everyone's lips because of the "coming out" of Ellen DeGeneres on her TV show. What was certainly made obvious once again by all the public discussion of this subject in these past days was how differently homosexuality is viewed in our culture today from its presentation in the Word of God. And that is true of opinion both on the left and the right.

I will begin by taking certain things for granted.

First, homosexuality is a sin. It is clearly presented here in Genesis 19 as a moral perversion and is so in the rest of the Bible. In Leviticus 18:22 and 20:13 it is grouped with incest and bestiality as sexual sins to be punished by death within the community of Israel. And there it is clearer than even here in Gen 19 that the sinfulness of homosexuality lies first in the very nature of the act -- "of a man lying with a man as with a woman" so the Law reads -- and not in the further perversions to which it leads, such as the loss of sexual restraint and homosexual rape as here in the account of the angels visiting Sodom.

And, because the whole Scripture teaches us that sin resides not only in actions but in thoughts and attitudes, it is therefore impossible to deny that homosexual desire is also sinful, just as heterosexual desire for a person with whom you have no right to sex is sinful by the direct statement of our Lord himself. "He who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart." [Matt. 5:28]

Second, homosexuality is a particularly heinous sin that surfaces more and more in societies that are in the midst of moral collapse. Though the Bible plainly acknowledges that homosexuality is always with us, it also speaks of it and views the practice as a specific indicator of terminal spiritual corruption. You have that here, in the account of Sodom, where homosexual sin illustrates the extent of the defilement of this society and explains why God could endure it no longer and had to destroy it as savagely as he did. It is certainly not the case that this was Sodom's only sin -- Ezekiel (16:49) says that the citizens of Sodom were arrogant, overfed, and unconcerned for the poor and needy -- the point is that this sin of homosexuality, especially expressing itself in such an open way, indicates the moral degradation of the culture. You have this same point made in the similar episode recounted in Judges 19, this time of the men of Gibeah. And you have the point, illustrated in these histories, made in argument by the Apostle Paul in Romans 1. There Paul argues that homosexuality lies, in a way, at the end of a process of moral degeneration and corruption, a degeneration that has proceeded to the point that men and women have revolted against nature itself.

Now, you know well that an increasing number of people have sought to argue either that the Bible does not really condemn homosexuality per se or that modern discoveries have rendered the Bible's teaching on this subject obsolete.

1. In the first case, it is argued that the Bible condemns only certain types of homosexual activities -- promiscuous, violent, and those connected with pagan worship. The writers of the Bible, we are told, either did not know about, had never encountered, or were not intending to refer to monogamous, loyal homosexual relationships, and those are not condemned.

But that argument falls and not only because those who make it have all been guilty of the most shameless sort of special pleading, arguing from silence, errors of logic, and misstatements of fact. This view of the Bible's teaching about homosexuality cannot be sustained because the Bible clearly identifies what it is condemning -- a man lying with a man as one lies with a woman (Lev. 18:22) -- but, still more, because the Bible condemns all sexual activity that is outside of the bond of holy marriage. It doesn't allow heterosexual men and women either to have sexual relationships outside of marriage. The Bible clearly does not take the modern view that sexual activity outside of marriage is unavoidable and therefore moral and acceptable.

2. In the second case, it is argued, in many different ways, that we have learned that homosexuality is "normal" and that, therefore, the Bible is wrong to forbid it.

Here is where the argument is being made in our culture today and it is an argument that is being made in open defiance of information widely available and accessible, but which the media do not distribute, while, at the same time, they trumpet the most egregiously biased and often openly dishonest arguments and conclusions of gay rights advocates.

I haven't the time to demonstrate this to you, but it was all demonstrated to me in a most comprehensive, persuasive, intelligent, learned, and sophisticated way in a book I read this past week. This is Homosexuality and the Politics of Truth by Jeffrey Satinover, M.D. The book is published by Baker and I urge you to obtain a copy and read it carefully. It is an education in many ways, but will clear the mist surrounding so much of what you hear today in regard to homosexuality and public policies in regard to it.

Dr. Satinover explains many things: that homosexuality is not a "genetic" condition, if one means by that that it is caused by genetic inheritance and that researchers have known this for a long time. It is true that both genetic inheritance and the influences of hormones on a baby in the womb can create effects that may render a person somewhat more, perhaps only slightly more susceptible to homosexuality if other factors are also present, but that is hardly the same thing as saying that genes cause homosexuality. After all, in a kind of reversal of fact, if homosexuality were genetic, it would become extinct because homosexuals do not reproduce nearly as prolifically as heterosexuals do, but homosexuality is not extinct, even after all these centuries. Homosexuality is a rare condition -- between 2 and 3 percent of men -- but it is obviously with us today as it was in biblical times.

On the other hand, Dr. Satinover explains, homosexuality is not a "choice" either, if one means by that that at some point in one's life a person simply decided to become a homosexual. No Christian should ever have believed that anyway, with all that the Scriptures teaches us about the complex motivations of the heart and the impenetrable mysteries of human sinfulness.

In many cases -- though not, it appears in all -- sexual abuse has played a role in the development of homosexual orientation, or unhealthy relationships between a child and a parent. But, the development of that orientation is in many ways, like other compulsive behaviors, the result of many steps, with each step making it harder for a person to turn round -- from homosexuality or from alcoholism or from various forms of heterosexual deviancy or other such compulsions -- until the person seems completely trapped, until even his brain has been changed as a result of these behaviors. As Dr. Satinover puts it [p. 176]: "compulsions are neither simple choices nor true illnesses. They are a category unto themselves that includes elements of both choice and disease. There is a process, a way or path by which a life -- a free, moral life -- is progressively, not all at once, undone. It is this erosion of moral capacity that makes these preeminently spiritual conditions." Dr. Satinover describes the pleasures that young people -- especially in certain environments -- can find in homosexual attraction and activity. After all, the Bible describes most sins as pleasurable, natural, and self-reinforcing, until they are, in effect, addictions. [p. 147]

And, with a lovely mixture of truth-telling and compassion, Dr. Satinover puts the lie to so much that we hear today from the gay lobby about the "normalcy" of homosexuality. He gives the facts, sad and bleak as many of them are, the facts that we never hear in the media, which have surrendered themselves to gay advocacy and political correctness: the dramatically lower life expectancy, disease, the much higher incidence of suicide, and the rest -- and all of that, even without the consideration AIDS.

And, then, with calm and deliberate accumulation of the evidence -- easily accessible and widely known to those in the field -- he demonstrates that both secular and religious treatments of homosexuality enjoy a significant measure of success -- the heresy of all heresies to the gay lobby and its advocates. For, you see, if you admit that homosexuals can change, you not only admit that homosexuality is not a fixed, genetic condition, but you open the door for the historic claim that homosexuals ought to change, that their lives are abnormal and undesirable because of their homosexuality. You are perhaps aware of a recent protest, entered in the pages of The Wall Street Journal, of some prominent psychologists and psychiatrists to the new orthodoxy among professionals in the field that homosexuality cannot be changed and no one should make an effort to try to change it. The protesters pointed out the fact, known to a very large number of people who would never acknowledge it in public, not only that many young people who at some point adopt homosexual practices later give them up, but that many longstanding homosexuals have proved eminently treatable. Indeed, Dr. Satinover compiles the major studies to demonstrate that the overall success rate of these secular strategies is about 50%, when success is defined as considerable to complete change [p. 186]. Religiously based programs are as if not more successful, as we might imagine. There is now an organization "Homosexuals Anonymous" akin to AA in its approach to this compulsive behavior.

There is so much valuable information in Satinover's book that I urge you once more to acquire and read it. But, remember, all of that was only to counter the idea, now so widely circulated, that homosexuality is genetic, unchangeable, and normal and so should not be condemned as sinful. Now, once more, to the Bible.

What are we to say about all of this? What is a biblical approach to homosexuality and, even more, to homosexuals.

Well, we have already said that it is a sin and that God condemns it. And I want to say again that, despite all that you hear today, the Bible's condemnation of homosexuality is clear, consistent, and thoroughly sensible. There should be no confusion here. I want to say that again because there is much to say on the other side and I don't want anyone to hear me say only one thing. Homosexuality is sinful, deeply sinful. But, we can say and must say much more.

I. It is also true that it is only one of many sins that God condemns, even but one of many sexual sins that God condemns, and it is not the worse sin!

We must say this to be loyal to our Lord and Master who brought up himself this history of Sodom and Gomorrah and the terrible sins of those cities of the plains. He was discussing the disinterest of the polite, upright, religious folk, church members, in Galilee to his message. And he said, "I tell you the truth, it will be more bearable for Sodom and Gomorrah on the day of judgment than for that town."

In our natural irritation against the misrepresentations of the gay lobby and the demands of homosexuals that their lifestyle be accepted as normal and healthy, we must not betray our faith, brothers and sisters. Sin is sin and guilt is guilt, and there is enough lying on all of us to damn us a thousand times over. It is unseemly and betrays a spirit contrary to true gospel faith and humility for us to speak as if homosexuality were a greater sin than the sins from which our Redeemer has delivered us.

The Bible speaks much more about heterosexual sin than about homosexual sin and much much more about other kinds of sins -- especially the sins of church going people -- hypocrisy, pride, and indifference to the poor and needy. As Alexander Whyte said, commenting on the teaching of Jesus, "the uttermost sinner will always be found in a church not a prison." Today, we might say, the uttermost sinner will always be found in a church, not a gay bar. The point being that the closer one gets to the light the greater the evil of not living in that light.

II. Second, sin being the condition of all men, grace is for us as well, for all classes and conditions of human beings.

It would be a denial of divine grace of the most profound kind to argue that God would not or could not save certain kinds of people -- the kinds of people some people feel God should not want to save. It not only is a denial or our own great need for forgiveness for us to say or think such a thing, but, it is also a denial of the power of God's love.

It also is flatly contradicted by the Bible. I suppose the happiest mention of homosexuality in the Bible is, strangely, 1 Cor. 6:9. I say "strangely" because the text reads this way:

"Do you not know that the wicked will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: Neither the sexually immoral nor idolaters nor adulterers nor male prostitutes nor homosexual offenders nor thieves nor the greedy nor drunkards nor slanderers nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God."

Now, how, we might ask, can there be any happiness, any cheerfulness in that? Well, it comes in the next verse. "And 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 by the Spirit of our God."

There were former practicing homosexuals, even male prostitutes among the congregations of the early church. God's grace had reached down to them and granted them forgiveness in Christ and the grace to lead a new life, a pure life. We are not told if all of them eventually married and had children. It matters not. They were washed of their sins like heterosexual Christians were washed of their many and great sins. We Christians are the company of the washed, and it is, finally, immaterial where the dirt came from that had to be washed off by the blood of Christ. What matters is that we were dirt and we have been washed.

III. And the third thing we can say about homosexuality and homosexuals from the Bible is that their summons, their calling is no different from that of anyone else who comes to faith in Christ and comes, by the Spirit of God, to call Jesus Lord.

This is Paul's point, of course, in the text I just read you from 1 Corinthians, but it is the general point of all the Bible -- from whatever background we come, whatever shape our former lives may have had, we all have the same life to live, the same commandments to keep, the same spiritual warfare to fight, the same Lord and Savior to honor with our lives.

C.S. Lewis writes in one of his letters [A Severe Mercy, pp. 147-148]:

To map out the boundaries within which all discussion must go on, I take it for certain that the physical satisfaction of homosexual desires is sin. This leaves the homosexual no worse off than any normal person who is, for whatever reason, prevented from marrying.... Like all other tribulations, it must be offered to God and his guidance how to use it must be sought."

Dr. Satinover does not claim, the evidence does not suggest, that all homosexuals can change or will change their sexual orinentation. No careful reader of the Bible should have thought so. If Paul is struggling with certain sins still at the end of his holy life, as he tells us he was; if virtually every great Christian through history acknowledges that they could not get free of certain sins, besetting sins they were called; if, as it appears, it is God's way to leave certain temptations to test and exercise the faith of his children, then why would not some struggle with homosexual desire the way so many have struggled with heterosexual desire, or love of drink, or money, or fits of temper, or the like. It is only to be expected.

Of course there are going to be Christians, even very godly Christians, struggling with the temptations of homosexual desire so long as they live in this world. There are Christians struggling with temptations of every other kind, why not this one? Some of us know such people.

And it should not surprise us at all, that such Christians have a great deal to give to the church, gifted by the Holy Spirit as they also have been. After all, homosexuals as a class of people in our society, are no less bright, talented, no less capable of love and self-sacrifice as anyone else. We are well aware of talented athletes, actors, writers, artists, philosophers who are homosexual. So in the church, Christians who struggle here have their gifts and graces to add to the body as do all the other recovering sinners who make up the membership of God's house.

You see, I think we Christians have something to answer for in the rejection of the Bible's true teaching about homosexuality by our culture and by the gay community itself. We are at least partly responsible. For we have too often seemed to say to gay men and women: you are sinners (and that is right, of course), and you have got to stop committing these sins. And what they have heard us say is, "you have to live denying yourself and your sexuality," if you are going to heaven you must live the excruciatingly painful life of denying the cravings of your body and soul. And that is true too, so far as it goes. But wait!

Now, we need to hold out hope for homosexuals who want to change. Many of them can and do and especially many who seek that change through the grace and power of Christ. But, we do say to many such folk, you must deny yourself, there is no other way. What we have not made clear is that this is to be true for every Christian in one way or another, indeed, in many ways, in other words, that this demand is by no means made only of homosexuals. When the homosexual says to us, you seem to be telling me that I must endure a terrible hardship to enter the kingdom of God, we should not only be telling him, "yes, that is so," but, "that is what is true for all of us" and our lives should demonstrate to him not only that this is so, but that Christians can do such things and find their lives and their happiness and their satisfaction in such self-denial because God helps them and because, when God is our portion, our inheritance, we can lose other things, we can do without other things, and still live fully authentic, fruitful, happy, lives in this world.

God is God and he will determine who must give up what. But Christ said, we must deny ourselves if we would be his disciple, and he said that some would be eunuchs for the kingdom of God. That should not be so hard for American homosexuals to believe and accept as it is. But it seems to them that we are asking all the sacrifice of them and making none of it ourselves!

No our message is to be: we are sinners like they are and have found forgiveness in Christ and they can too; and the life that God calls them to live -- if in fact they do not escape their homosexual temptations -- is that same life he has called us to live and that we are struggling to live in this world for our Savior's sake. It is not easy, but for us it is worth any difficulty, and it will be for them as well.

[Home]