This is a partial transcript of the Exodus Youth DVD called "Truth and Tolerance."
Below is Alan Chambers' introduction, and the Scott Davis portion on Biblical perspectives:
Alan Chambers: The issue of homosexuality is being talked about in our culture. If students don’t learn about it at home, and they don’t learn about it at church, they’re going to learn about it on MTV, or from a guidance counselor, or from a peer, who may not have the Biblical understanding of this issue like you do.
I want to thank you for being bold, and I want to challenge you to continue to do so. What you offer students is critical. They have to know the truth about homosexuality from God’s perspective.
Truth and Tolerance is a series that was created under the leadership of Scott Davis and Exodus Student Ministries. It’s excellent, and something that I encourage you to use as you talk about the issue of homosexuality from God’s perspective, with those under your care. Be bold.
Thank you so much for taking the opportunity to do this.
Scott Davis, Student Ministries Director, Exodus International: When it comes to homosexuality, there are so many perspectives out there, it’s really hard to know what to think. Even when we just look at what Scripture says on the issue of homosexuality, some people are saying one thing, while others are saying the exact opposite. Some folks with tell you that Scripture says that homosexuality is wrong, it’s not God’s design for sexuality, while other people will tell you that, well Scripture really say that, it says something a little bit different, it isn’t really talking about homosexuality.
It’s difficult to know what to think. And often we’ll just jump into specific verses that mention homosexuality, and we’ll argue over nuances and little phrases and Greek words, and it’s very difficult to get our hands around. The surprising thing is that often we’ll get into these arguments on specific verses without even being sure whether we all understand what we mean by Scripture in the first place.
For instance, often we’ll argue about what a particular Biblical author meant in a specific verse, without even necessarily believing that Scripture is even God’s word, or even something that we need to follow. So it’s important that the first step in talking about Biblical perspectives on homosexuality, to first talk about our foundations. What are our foundational beliefs that guide how we’re going to think and talk about this particular topic. Because that’s going to determine to a large extent, what we’re going to end up believing about homosexuality. So, to be completely up front and honest with you, I want to tell you what my foundational beliefs are, and we’ll build from there.
My first belief is that there is a good creator. What I believe is that God made the Earth and made human beings in a great and beautiful and wonderful way. God is a good creator, and so we can expect that His creation is good. And we out to be able to learn about God, from how He made the world. We out to be able to learn about how He wants us to live our lives from how He created our bodies. How He designed sexuality for instance.
Then, on top of that belief in a good creator, I also hold to basic Christian beliefs. I’m not talking about a specific stance on Scripture or Bible verses at this point, but simply the basic Christian beliefs of the Gospel message of Jesus Christ. The message that says that although God created the world good, we’ve rebelled against him, we’re in need of a savior. And Jesus Christ is that savior.
My third foundation is that the Bible is a truthful authority. The Bible is truthful, and by that I mean that it is not inaccurate, it’s not in error, the Bible isn’t lying to us. And also that the Bible is our authority. And it’s an authority in our lives because it’s not just what some men thought about God, or about how we ought to live our lives, but the Bible is actually God’s word. He has revealed to us how He’s made us and how He wants us to live. He’s revealed to us what kind of God he is, and told us about his love for us.
Belief in a Good Creator
And so these are my foundational beliefs. So let’s start, just with my first belief here, that there is a good creator. Maybe you and I don’t necessarily agree on basic Christian beliefs, but we can agree that there is a good creator who has made us. If we look at that, what can we learn on the topic of homosexuality? Well, if there is a good creator, then that means we ought to be able to look at our world, how God has made us, and learn something about how we ought to live.
So we can look at sexuality specifically and we can see that there’s a primary purpose in sexuality, that sexuality is a means of procreation, of making children. Now this is something very obvious. Sexuality isn’t just about pleasures and just about a husband and wife enjoying each other, or two people who love each other, having some pleasure together. Sexuality is primarily a means of procreation.
And so homosexual sex can never fulfill the primary purpose of sexuality. And we see that that ought to teach us something about how we have to think about homosexuality - that it goes contrary to the very nature of sexual acts.
Second we can look at biology. Male and female sexual organs were designed to go together. Homosexual sex ignores the obvious use of the sexual organs.
So if we believe together that there’s a good god who’s made us, who’s made our bodies, as male and female, both of them good. And we look at the sexual organs and see how they’re designed for each other, we can understand that sexuality is designed for male and female. Not for two males or for two females.
So simply on the basis of the belief in a good creator, without even a belief in Christianity, we should be able to agree, based on the purpose of sexuality, and based on our sexual organs, that heterosexuality seems to be the intended design of sexuality.
But now let’s look at the second foundational belief, what I would call basic Christian beliefs. Without arguing over any specific verses at all, what can we learn about homosexuality? Well first of all, let’s look at the basic Christian story, the Gospel message. This the message of Christ that all Christians believe, that holds that although the world was created good, we’ve fallen in rebellion against God, and our desires that originally were good, are now turned and twisted away from God, they lead into temptation and sin, and all kinds of wickedness if we follow after them. But in Christ our redeemer we can be transformed and forgiven of all of all of our sins, and given new desires that follow after God’s, so we can be remade in the image of God.
Now, let’s look at the pro-gay message. The pro-gay message says that these desires that you might experience, of homosexuality or other desires, that you need to fulfill those desires, to pursue them actively in order to find a good life. But this runs directly contrary to the Christian Gospel, which says that many of the desires in our hearts are deceitful and wicked, and we need to deny those desires, and be transformed by God to desire instead, what He wants for our lives. Which is revealed clearly in Scripture. And so, based on this, we can see that pro-gay theology is directly contrary to the basic Christian message.
Next let’s look at church history. We can look at the history of the church and of the Jewish synagogue, before the church existed, and see that throughout 4000 years of history of God’s people, it’s only this tiniest little last moment of history that anyone in the church has suggested that homosexuality is good, and right, and normal. For 4000 years, the followers of God have understood that homosexuality is not God’s design for sexuality. And yet now we want to redefine what God says, as if we are somehow much more wise and knowledgeable than every single believer who’s come before us for 4000 years. I think that an incredibly arrogant step to make if we make that quickly.
Next we can look at the Bible. Not any one or two or three specific verses, but the entirety of scripture, and see, well what does God say about sexuality, just in general. And we can look and see that from start to finish, in every book of the Bible, that God describes and reveals His design of sexuality as to be between a man and a woman in a marriage relationship.
So we can start in the first chapter of the Bible in the book of Genesis, where it says, God created men in His own image. In the image of God he created them---male and female He created them. And He told them to multiply and fill the whole Earth. And obviously it was going to take a lot of sex for them to multiply, and fill the whole Earth. And so sex and gender were God’s good and beautiful design, it was His intention.
In the second chapter of Genesis, the second chapter in the whole Bible, God brings man and woman together, and then Scripture says, it’s for this reason that man will leave his father and mother and be joined with his wife, and they’ll become one flesh, and it’s talking about sex. God designed sex, and He brought man and woman together. This was His design and His purpose. And from that starting point and through the end of the last book of the Bible, every book talks about sexuality. And since it’s always talked about, it ought to be between a husband and a wife in marriage, this is God’s design. There’s no other place within Scripture that promotes any other use of sexuality, whether it’s premarital sex, or homosexual sex, or any kind of sexual expression outside of a husband and a wife. This is very clearly God’s design for sex.
Now what about homosexuality specifically, again, without looking at any specific verses, we can look and we can see that there’s not a single positive verse in the entirety of Scripture that talks positively about homosexuality. Homosexuality was definitely known in the ancient world, It was practiced by the nations around the nation of Israel, it was practiced by the Romans surrounding the early Christian Church, this was something they knew and understood, and yet Scripture never speaks positively of homosexuality. If this was something that was good and natural, that God desired for his people, you would surely expect to find a hint, at least somewhere, that homosexuality was good, and yet we don’t find that.
And so based simply on this basic belief that there’s a good creator, and the basic belief, and the basic Gospel, the Christian message, we find some very strong evidence that homosexuality is not what God designed people for.
But now let’s further. Maybe you’ve followed me this far, and maybe you can take the next step with me to my final foundational belief here, that the Bible is a truthful authority. Not only is Christianity true, but the Bible itself is true, and it holds authority over our lives, and so, it’s worthwhile to look at some specific verses that mention homosexuality, and see what God has to say there.
First we can look in Leviticus chapter 20 verse 13. It says: “If a man lies with a man as one lies with a woman, what they have done is detestable.” Now it is talking about--very straight forward way, is sex between a man and woman. A man lying with a man as one lies with a woman. And it says that the act is detestable, not that the people are detestable to God, but the act is detestable. And it’s detestable to God because it goes against his very design of how He created male and female to live.
The rest of the chapter of Leviticus 20 talks about all kinds of other illegitimate expressions of our sexuality. For instance, having sex with your mom, having sex with your sister, sex with animals, all kinds of other expression of sexuality. Each of these are prohibited as not being God’s design for sex.
But then let’s look at the New Testament. What does the New Testament have to say about sexuality? Well we should look first in Romans chapter 1, and this is a verse, or rather a chapter, where Paul is at an argument where, really all of mankind has turned against God. This isn’t about pointing fingers at one particular person, or at a group of people, or pointing a finger at gays, certainly that’s not what this is about, this is about what all of mankind has done. Paul builds this argument, showing how we have turned against God, we’ve rebelled against his design for us in every conceivable way. We were made to worship God, we’ve exchanged that for worshiping other things. We were made for heterosexual relationships, we exchanged that for homosexual relationships.
Romans 1 verse 26 through 27 says this: “Even the women turned against the natural way to have sex, and instead indulged in sex with each other. And the men, instead of having normal sexual relationships with women, burned with lust for each other. Men did shameful things with other men and, as a result, suffered within themselves the penalty they so richly deserved.” And what Paul talks about here is this fallen world that we live in---how mankind has just completely rebelled against God, we’ve turned away from him in order to live in our own ways.
Each of us things that the way that we want to live is the best way for us to live. And we’ll find life if we reject God’s design, or what He tells us about how we ought to live, and live in our own way instead. The Scripture says there that we, although we claim we’re wise, we’ve become fools. We’ve become darkened in our minds, we become foolish, we loose all understanding. This is the result that all of mankind is under, and as we look around at our world, this shouldn’t be surprising when we see this explained in Scripture. because we look around at our world, and we see that whatever God says we ought to do, the world says don’t do. Whatever God says don’t do, the world says this is what you should do. And what the world says, leads to death.
Now, there’s another passage in Scripture that talks about homosexuality that’s really important. And this is First Corinthians 6, verse 9 through 11. It says: “…Neither the sexually immoral nor idolaters nor adulterers nor male prostitutes nor homosexual offenders…will in inherit the kingdom of God.” And I’ll pause there for a moment. I want you to know here that, it isn’t just homosexuality that’s singled out, he’s singling out all kinds of ways of living outside of God’s design for how He wants us to live. And these are things that separate us from God, that divide us from Him and lead to death if we don’t reject those things and turn back towards Him. All of us certainly struggle with sin at times in our lives, but this about living a life of rebellion, turned away from God and living after those things that we desire more than Him.
Now the verse goes on from here, and it says this: “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.”
And so right here, there’s 2000 year old evidence that in the first generation of the Christian Church, there were men and women who had left homosexuality. In order to follow Jesus, they’d been washed, they’d been cleansed, and they found a new life in Christ. And this is the same promise that is there for all of us. We can be washed and cleansed if we turn from our sins to follow after God.
So if we turn back to our foundations here, we can look first of all at the foundation of the good creator who’s made us and see that there’s a purpose to sexuality, that can’t be fulfilled in homosexuality. That there is a design of male and female sexual organs for another (sic) that obviously isn’t expressed in homosexual sex. Then we can look at basic Christian understanding and see that pro-gay theology is opposed to the basic Gospel message. We can see that throughout 4000 years of Church history has never approved of homosexuality, except for some in our own day who are trying to overturn that. We can see that throughout scripture from start to finish, only marriage between a man and a woman is the only place where sexuality is meant to be expressed, and we see that Scripture never promotes homosexuality.
And finally we look at this taught foundation, a Bible as a truthful authority, and we see what Scripture has to say specifically on the issue of homosexuality. And here we see that male and female were made in God’s image, and meant to multiply. We see that homosexuality is expressly prohibited in both the Old Testament and the New Testament. We see that in Paul’s argument in Romans 1, homosexuality kind of exemplifies His argument that all of mankind is rebelled against God, turned against what we were designed for to live in other kinds of ways, and kind of fool ourselves into believing this is how we should live.
The simple truth is that God designed male and female in his own image. He created sexuality to be between a husband and a wife, and every other sexuality and identity and expression and behavior, is outside of his purpose there. And God’s call to holiness and His promise of redemption is for all people, including that person who struggles with homosexuality.
The topic of homosexuality is so controversial, that often it seems easier to just not have any opinion on the topic. But as Christians we need to learn to stand firm on God’s truth, and not be ashamed of what Scripture has to say. For many of you, what I’ve shared has confirmed what you already believe about God’s Biblical standards of sexuality. I hope you’ve seen that you don’t need to be ashamed of believing that. That even when we look outside of Scripture, to nature and our own bodies, we see that what God says about homosexuality is confirmed in the world.
But for many of you, what I’ve shared may have been very hard to hear to hear. Because if it’s true that homosexual behavior is wrong, that means, that means that the lifestyle that you’re good friend or your mom or your brother is living, isn’t pleasing to God. It and may mean in your own life, that the gay relationships you’re following, are not pleasing to him either. You may think that in order to live a happy and fulfilled life, you need to pursue homosexuality. But God doesn’t give a standard for sexuality just to ruin our fun, or to keep us from living a fulfilled life. God is our creator, and He has designed us, and He knows what’s best for us. He has made our souls, our bodies, even our sexuality. God really is worth trusting. Will you listen to Him, are you willing to listen and hear what God has to say? God loves you, and He really is worth trusting, even when what He has to say is hard for us to hear.
Thank you for listening.
Sunday, May 31, 2009
Exodus Youth: Truth and Tolerance transcript
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