Devotion on Notable Firsts of the Bible (First Explicit Reference to Homosexuality), 4 July 2015 Anno Domini
INDEPENDENCE DAY
Thou art waxen fat, thou art grown thick, thou art covered with fatness; then he forsook God which made him, and lightly esteemed the Rock of his salvation. 16 They provoked him to jealousy with strange gods, with abominations provoked they him to anger. 17 They sacrificed unto devils, not to God; to gods whom they knew not, to new gods that came newly up, whom your fathers feared not. 18 Of the Rock that begat thee thou art unmindful, and hast forgotten God that formed thee. (Deut 32:15-18)
22 Thou shalt not lie with mankind, as with womankind: it is abomination. 23 Neither shalt thou lie with any beast to defile thyself therewith: neither shall any woman stand before a beast to lie down thereto: it is confusion. 24 Defile not ye yourselves in any of these things: for in all these the nations are defiled which I cast out before you: 25 And the land is defiled: therefore I do visit the iniquity thereof upon it, and the land itself vomiteth out her inhabitants. 26 Ye shall therefore keep my statutes and my judgments, and shall not commit any of these abominations; neither any of your own nation, nor any stranger that sojourneth among you: 27 (For all these abominations have the men of the land done, which were before you, and the land is defiled;) 28 That the land spue not you out also, when ye defile it, as it spued out the nations that were before you. 29 For whosoever shall commit any of these abominations, even the souls that commit them shall be cut off from among their people. (Lev 18:22-29)
Today we acknowledge the anniversary of the founding of our nation. We may take too much for granted that these observances will continue unabated into the distant future; but it is my obligation to remind the reader that this assumption is dangerous and probably unrealistic. Liberty only prevails as long as a brave people stand vigilance over their freedoms. It is only when the citizen begins to trust his government that liberty is in greatest jeopardy. Constant vigilance against the demagogues that populate the White House, the Halls of Congress, and the US Supreme Court today is necessary to safeguard our freedoms.
The far-flung battlefields of our National defense count for nothing if the watchmen on the walls within our own nation fail to keep watch and warn of coming dangers. We are described, nationally, as the one who has forgotten the God who made us as described in Deuteronomy 32:15-18 above. We have turned to the most perverse and degenerate lifestyles described in God’s Word. He will not take such obtuse hypocrisy lightly, but will respond by, first, removing His blessings of prosperity and defense of our land; He may then turn to a more direct judgment by opening the flood gates of invasion and oppression upon the Beloved Land. I actually pray for this judgment if it will turn our faces back to the God whose hand and wisdom oversaw our founding as a nation.
A few years ago, I wrote a strongly worded condemnation of the abominable sin called homosexuality. Not long after, in fact hours, after publishing that letter, I received a call from a man who questioned my understanding of Holy Scripture. He told me that homosexuality was an Old Testament ordinance very much like eating shrimp. As I mulled the comparison, he followed up with the food laws against consumption of shell fish (shrimp, etc). Since, as he insisted, these food laws do not apply in the New Testament; the same is true of homosexuality. When I reminded him of the explicit references in the New Testament, he waned in his enthusiastic argument that God condemned this filthy sin. Instead, he began to berate the veracity of Scripture.
In the New Testament there are at least four passages that refer overtly to homosexual activity: Romans 1:26–27, 1 Corinthians 6:9–10, 1 Timothy 1:9–10, and Jude 1:7. Since Romans 1:22-32 has been expunged from the Lectionary of the 1928 Book of Common Prayer, I will present it here: “22 Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools, 23 And changed the glory of the uncorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible man, and to birds, and fourfooted beasts, and creeping things. 24 Wherefore God also gave them up to uncleanness through the lusts of their own hearts, to dishonour their own bodies between themselves: 25 Who changed the truth of God into a lie, and worshipped and served the creature more than the Creator, who is blessed for ever. Amen. 26 For this cause God gave them up unto vile affections: for even their women did change the natural use into that which is against nature: 27 And likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust one toward another; men with men working that which is unseemly, and receiving in themselves that recompence of their error which was meet. 28 And even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a reprobate mind, to do those things which are not convenient; 29 Being filled with all unrighteousness, fornication, wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness; full of envy, murder, debate, deceit, malignity; whisperers, 30 Backbiters, haters of God, despiteful, proud, boasters, inventors of evil things, disobedient to parents, 31 Without understanding, covenantbreakers, without natural affection, implacable, unmerciful: 32 Who knowing the judgment of God, that they which commit such things are worthy of death, not only do the same, but have pleasure in them that do them.” (Romans 1:22-32)
We do have a stern warning from God that those who allow even the stranger among us to practice such reprehensible sins, that He will spue us out of the land with which He has so richly blessed us. “That the land spue not you out also, when ye defile it, as it spued out the nations that were before you. For whosoever shall commit any of these abominations, even the souls that commit them shall be cut off from among their people.”
You may be inclined to accept as mandatory, any edict issued by the false god of government, but in this you will make yourself accomplice to Mammon and the sins thereof. You cannot blame Caesar because, in America, it is the people themselves who are Caesar and who place such disgusting men in public office who propose these things. People who profess faith in Christ must now decide their allegiance – whether to the Higher Law of God, or the frail law of man. Remember the very center verse of the Bible: “It is better to trust in the LORD than to put confidence in man.” (Psalms 118:8) And for the limp-wristed wimps who justify their cowardice by a false claim of a so-called “separation clause” of the US Constitution (it does not exist), explain the meaning of Acts 5:29 when you meet the Judge of your Soul face-to-face: “Peter and the other apostles answered and said, We ought to obey God rather than men.” (Acts 5:29) A Supreme Court Justice might side with your cowardly defense, but not the Judge of Heaven!
I point out Leviticus 18 as the first explicit reference to the dirge of homosexuality; however, there are allusion made to the same in the sin of Sodom. God destroyed Sodom as a lesson to us. The word ‘sodomy’ derives from that wicked city. God will not treat us with less wrath if we persist in this perversion that is a blight upon the conscience and escutcheon of America: “For if God spared not the angels that sinned, but cast them down to hell, and delivered them into chains of darkness, to be reserved unto judgment; And spared not the old world, but saved Noah the eighth person, a preacher of righteousness, bringing in the flood upon the world of the ungodly; And turning the cities of Sodom and Gomorrha into ashes condemned them with an overthrow, making them an ensample unto those that after should live ungodly.” (2 Peter 2:4-6)
From the earliest recollections of my country, my heart has only swelled with pride to observe her glorious flag passing in review, or to visit the memorials of her God-blessed history; but my pride and patriotism in the present form of that America has suffered a great deal recently. I am now historically patriotic, but not a supporter of the evils that stalk our land today and which are expressed in the organs of our present government gone awry.
Our Lord Jesus Christ reconfirms the legitimacy of marriage, defined in Genesis, as existing only between a man and a woman. “Have ye not read, that he which made them at the beginning made them male and female, And said, For this cause shall a man leave father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife: and they twain shall be one flesh? Wherefore they are no more twain, but one flesh. What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder.” (Matt 19:4-6, also see Mark 10:6-9)
Jesus died for your sins and rose from the grave on the third day. Do you agree? The Old Testament prophets preached against the reprehensible sin of homosexuality and bestiality – do you agree? Do we hear the Old Testament Prophets? Suppose one returns from the dead? Will we believe Him? You may recall the exchange between the rich Man and Abraham when the Rich Man asked Abraham to send Lazarus to testify to the rich man’s brothers so that they could avoid Hell: “Then he said, I pray thee therefore, father, that thou wouldest send him to my father’s house: For I have five brethren; that he may testify unto them, lest they also come into this place of torment. Abraham saith unto him, They have Moses and the prophets; let them hear them. And he said, Nay, father Abraham: but if one went unto them from the dead, they will repent. And he said unto him, If they hear not Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded, though one rose from the dead.” (Luke 16:27-31) Allow me to ask the reader a most intimate and personal question, do you believe Moses and the prophets as well as the One who “rose from the dead?”
