It's going to be Book of Romans, Chapter 1. We're going to read verses 18-32, but this is only a backdrop for the sermon I'm preaching today. What I'm preaching today is actually a topical sermon, and that's very rare for me, but because of where we were in 1 Corinthians, and it mentioned the issue of homosexuality, I wanted to deal with that more fully, particularly considering the cultural climate that we live in today. And so, just follow along as I read. This is for the wrath of God has been revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who suppress the truth in unrighteousness. Because that which is known about God is evident within them, for God made it evident to them. For since the creation of the world, His invisible attributes, His eternal power and His divine nature have been clearly seen, being understood through what has been made, so that they are without excuse. For even though they knew God, they did not honor God as God, nor give Him thanks. But they became futile in their speculation, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Professing to be wise, they became fools and exchanged the glory of the incorruptible God for an image in the form of corruptible man or birds or four-footed animals and crawling creatures. Therefore, God gave them over in the lusts of their hearts to impurity so that their bodies would be dishonored among them. For they exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshipped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever. Amen. For this reason God gave them over to degrading passions. For their women exchanged the natural function for that which is unnatural. In the same way, also the men abandoned the natural function of the woman and burned in their desire towards one another. Men committing with men indecent acts and receiving in their own persons the due penalty of their errors. And just as they did not see fit to acknowledge God any longer, God gave them over to a depraved mind to do those things which are not proper, being filled with all unrighteousness and wickedness, greed, evil, full of envy and murder, strife, deceit, malice, their gossips, slanderers, haters of God, insolent, arrogant, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to their parents, without understanding, untrustworthy, unloving, unmerciful, and although they know the ordinances of God, that those who practice such things are worthy of death, They not only do the same, but they give hearty approval to those who do practice them. The love that dares not speak its name. Have you ever heard that phrase? It was penned in a poem by Lord Alfred Douglas, speaking of homosexual relationships. It entered into popular parlance back in 1895 from a trial, or rather we should say trials involving Oscar Wilde. A little background might be in order. Oscar Wilde was an Irish poet and playwright who was born in 1854 and he died in 1900. He wrote a number of plays and poems. Probably the best of what he is known for is his novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray. And though Wilde was married and had two sons, he was also practicing homosexuality. Now, in every age, there are men and women who engage in this sin, but it's usually, in the past, been kept in the closet, as they used to say. By that, I mean that it was hush-hush, seldom brought into the open. But in Wilde's case, what was hidden in the darkness eventually came to the light. Oscar Wilde lived a secret life of visiting male prostitutes and hooking up with younger men, and one of those long-term partners was the author of that poem, Lord Alfred Douglas. He was the son of John Douglas, the 9th Marquis of Queensberry. And, as is the case with many homosexuals, Alfred had a very poor relationship with his dad. He tended to be on the effeminate side, but his dad, who was a former military man, was an outspoken atheist, and he was known for being an all-around bully. He was also, by the way, a big boxing fan. Indeed, he developed what was called Queensberry rules of boxing. He was married and divorced twice, and he was not an easy man to live with. Alfred also had an older brother named Francis who died of a gunshot wound. And though it was ruled as an accident, his father John was sure that Francis had actually committed suicide because he had been involved with the Prime Minister of England at that time in a homosexual relationship. So you can imagine what thoughts ran through his mind when he heard that his younger son, his third son, was involved with the older Oscar Wilde. He wrote a scathing letter to his son denouncing him and threatening to thrash him with a horse whip. In the second letter he addressed his sons with these words, you miserable creature. He also wrote about the divorce that he had from Alfred's mother saying he did this in order not to risk bringing in more creatures into the world like yourself. And with that he pointed out that when Alfred was a baby, John Douglas decided that he was going to take down the popular wild and so on one occasion he was just simply going to go to the theater where Oscar Wilde was, and throw rotten vegetables at him and curse him from the audience. But Wilde's people got wind of this and they barred him from entering. So he did something else. He went to a club that Oscar Wilde frequented and he left a handwritten message on a business card that said, For Oscar Wilde, posing as a sodomite. Well, Wilde decided to go on the offensive and sue the older Douglas for libel. But that was a mistake because that was going to bring everything else in the open. You see, you could only be found guilty of libel in England at the time if you accused somebody of something that was proven to be false. The problem was what he said and what he accused of him was actually true. Well, the upcoming libel trial made headlines, splashed across the newspapers of London. Everybody was talking about it. When the trial finally came, Oscar Wilde, ever the showman, provided plenty of entertainment using his wit and humor as he sparred back and forth with the defense attorney who questioned him at length. You know, it was like a verbal fencing match. The attorney would thrust, and Wilde would parry, and then that calm debonair Wilde just seemed to relish the smiles and the snickers in the courtroom crowd who were charmed by him. But then, folks, he made an incredible blunder. The defense attorney asked Wilde about a certain young man he had been known to visit. And at one point he asked him this, he said, did you ever kiss him, Mr. Wilde? To which Oscar Wilde replied, oh no, he was extremely ugly. Everyone realized what had just happened. Even Oscar Wilde realized it. The defense attorney seized on this blunder and left Wild fumbling and stumbling over his words as he tried to recover, but he never did. And then the attorney said that he would produce in the court the next day three or four men who had testified that they had had sexual relationships with Oscar Wild. Wild withdrew his lawsuit, but immediately after he was arrested on charges of sodomy and gross indecency. And at the next trial, his own, he was found guilty and sentenced to two years of hard labor in prison. And Oscar Wilde was disgraced. I opened my sermon with a story of Oscar Wilde because of that phrase, the love that dare not speak its name. No one would describe homosexuality that way today, would they? Not only do people dare speak its name, they also accept it, celebrate it, and demand that everyone else does as well. Folks, we're in the middle of a sexual revolution which seeks to overturn the moral order established by God. It's a revolution championed by Hollywood, enforced by our courts, and aimed at our children as young as kindergarten. In their struggle, the revolutionaries are just as dedicated to their cause as the communists were in yesteryear. How do we get to this point? Where are we heading? And how should the Church respond to this movement? Those are the three questions I want to answer as we think about this topic this morning. And because it's so volatile, and there's so much emotion involved in it, we want to pray and ask God for discernment and wisdom as we think about these things. Now, Father God, I do pray for grace and mercy even now. There's going to be a time in the not-too-distant future where the sermon I'm going to preach now would land me or a pastor in jail. And so, Lord, we pray for wisdom and discernment, the right attitude when we're dealing with these issues with people, and yet that you'd help us to shine brightly as light in a culture that is becoming ever increasingly dark. So bless us now as we consider these things we ask in Jesus' name. Amen. Well, that first question, how did we get here? You know, there's that old saying, isn't there, or the joke about the man who stops at a gas station and he sticks his head out the window and looks at the attendant and says, hey, how do I get to Center City from here? And the guy looks and he scratches over here. He says, well, actually, you can't get there from here. You can't start here. Well, where else can you start, then, from where you're at? But, you know, I wonder, if we were to transport us, be transported back to, like, the time of the founding fathers, and we were to talk to them and tell them that someday in the future, the government that they set up, the courts that they set up, would come to conclude that homosexuality was a constitutional right, what would they say? They'd say, there's no way you can get there from here. But you know, our government was started, and our country was started, I don't know if you know that, our nation was started as an experiment. There was a question to be proved out, and the question was this. Can a people be free to rule themselves without turning their freedom into a license to do evil, and thus destroy themselves in the end? You know, the song, America the Beautiful, has these lyrics. America, America, God mend thine every flaw, confirm thy soul in self-control, thy liberty Folks, I want to be quick to tell you that America has never been a Christian nation if we mean by that that the majority of the people we profess are true believers. But it has been a Christian nation in the sense that Christianity has been the religion that has influenced and shaped the moral conscience of this nation for well over 200 years. Do you know the issue of homosexuality even back in the time of the Founding Fathers? Thomas Jefferson, who was certainly no Christian or friend of Christianity, wanted to soften the penalty against sodomy to castration. Because at the time, it was actually the death penalty. And he was the liberal. Now, I hasten to add here, I'm not in any way suggesting that is what the law should be, but I'm showing that the needle of our moral compass is pointing in a very different direction now than it was at that time. Did you know that as late as 1962, all 50 states had laws against homosexual relationships? Sodomy, as it's called. Whether a person sees that change in the last 56 years as a great disaster or an incredible liberation, no one can denounce the massive shift in the legal framework concerning homosexuality. 1996. fearing that the courts were going to go in favor of gay marriage, the Congress, both houses of Congress, and then the President, President Clinton at the time, signed what was known as the Defense of Marriage Act, which was given overwhelming support by both Democrats and Republicans. But of course, it's not just in law, but in public opinion where we've seen a shift. In 2001, the Pew Research poll people found that 35% of Americans favored same-sex marriage, 57% were against. Last year another poll was taken, now 62% favor it, and only 32% are against. In 2008, the citizens of California, one of the most liberal states in the country through a ballot initiative, amended their constitution to define marriages between one man and one woman only. Is there anyone who believes that that could pass today? So this moral change on the issue of homosexuality has come in less than a generation, and honestly, the greatest shift has come in less than a decade. How do you explain this? How did we get to the point where this moral revolution is rushing on like a mighty river, dragging everything along with its current? I think there's a number of streams that have fed into this river. The first stream is the stream of the courts that flowed out of our courts. The Supreme Court laws, or the Supreme Court as it functions today, passes reviews on the laws that Congress passes to look to see whether they're constitutional or not. Now, that seems simple enough. Supreme Court justices are supposed to read the law, look at the Constitution, say, is there anything in this law that would violate the provisions in this Constitution? So if Congress passes a law stating that no one can be allowed to own a gun, the court should step in and declare the law unconstitutional because the Second Amendment says, a well-regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed. Now, the personal feelings of the justices on the court should not play anywhere into their decision. Whether they're a hunter who owns a number of guns, or whether they're a person who had a relative who was shot, should have no bearing on the decision. They should simply look at the text and say to themselves, does this violate the text and perhaps the intent of the text? But increasingly, that's not how justices decide cases. Sometimes they speak of the Constitution as being a living, breathing document, wherein it's not the words of the text that matter, but the spirit of the document. Of course, what happens in practice is that the justices make the decision not on the actual text, but on what they wish the text had said instead. For instance, 1965, in what was known as the Griswold v. Connecticut case. It dealt with a law in Connecticut that prohibited stores and drug stores from selling birth control devices. The court struck down the law because they said it violated a right to privacy. The court ruled that what a husband and wife does and decides regarding this matter is a private matter. I have to tell you, I would agree with what they said. But the problem is the Constitution doesn't address this in any way, shape, or form. And in their ruling, they acknowledge the Constitution doesn't actually talk about a right to privacy, but it might kind of seem to imply one if you think about it in a certain way. What happened next? Well, another case was brought, this time on behalf not of a married couple who wanted to use birth control, but an unmarried couple. In the Eisenstadt-Bard case of 1972, the court ruled that they had to allow contraceptives for unmarried couples as well, because otherwise you're discriminating against unmarried couples and treating them differently than married couples, as if an unmarried couple is not the same thing as a married couple, which it's not. If a married couple has a right to privacy, shouldn't an unmarried couple? If not, you're treating them differently. Well, if there's a right to privacy that covers the use of birth control, what about abortion? That's kind of a private matter, wouldn't you think? And so the very next year, in Roe v. Wade, the court decided that though the Constitution does not mention a right to abortion, or say that you can't pass laws prohibiting it, because there is a right to privacy, which, of course, the court already admitted that there wasn't found in the text, then a woman has the right to take the life of her unborn child. And because the Constitution is a living, breathing document that just always happens to live and breathe in the direction that the judges want it to. Four years later. in Cary v. Population Services International. The court decided that juveniles of at least 16 years of age had the right to buy contraceptives. Here they invoke due process again, claiming that if older unmarried couples had the right to buy contraceptives, then obviously unmarried younger couples or women should have that right. Why 16, not age 12, 9 or 4? Well, because that's just the way the court saw it at that time. But did you notice in the last three cases that I mentioned, they didn't go back to the Constitution, but rather to the previous wrongly decided decision. And so each time, they get farther and farther away from what the text actually says. Well, if the equal protection provision can be used to justify the murder of the unborn and contraceptives for 16-year-olds, could it be used to justify homosexuality? No, said the court in 1986. Much to my surprise at the time. In Bower v. Hardwick, they argued there is no constitutional right to engage in homosexual action. But wait! In 2003, the court changed its mind. Yes, yes, it was there all along, we just didn't notice it before. All laws against homosexuality were then struck down. They argued in the Texas Anti-Sodomy Statute, quote, that it touched upon the most private human conduct, sexual behavior, in the most private of places, the home, and attempted to, quote, control the personal relationship that is within the liberty of persons to choose without being punished. In other words, there's a constitutional right to do whatever you want sexually. Thus the court held that adults are entitled to participate in private consensual sexual conduct. And while the opinion in Lawrence was framed in terms of the right to liberty, Kennedy described it as the right to privacy found in Griswold. And listen to this. The most pertinent beginning point in the evolution of the concept embodied in Lawrence. In other words, this was an idea that had been evolving over time. Now let me ask you a question. Did the text change as their ideas evolved? Well, that brings us to 2015, Obergefell v. Hodges decision, where the court ruled that there is a fundamental right to guarantee to same-sex couples for both due process clause and equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment of the United States. The ruling meant that all 50 states must lawfully perform and recognize the marriage of same-sex couples and on the same terms and conditions as marriage of opposite sex with all the accompanying rights and responsibilities. And folks, I'll tell you, if you remember, celebrations broke out all over America. As one gay couple said, you know, we've lived together for the last 20 years, but it's nice to finally have the courts give moral sanction to our choice. Leviticus 18.22 says, you shall not lie with a male as with a woman. It's an abomination. Isaiah denounced the moral revolutionaries in his day with these words, woe to those who call good evil and evil good, who substitute darkness for light and light for darkness, who substitute bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter. Well, there's a second stream that's flowed into this river, and that's the one played by Hollywood. You know, over the years, even in the earliest years, there were rumors of well-known stars who were gay. But for a long time, Hollywood couldn't put out much of what the philosophy that we embrace today is, because they had what was known as the Hayes Laws. I don't know if you know this, but if you were to look at movies made before 1930, they're actually much more risque and much more suggestive than movies after 1930. The reason is, in the passing of the Hayes Laws, they gave very specific guidelines and laws. For instance, if you ever watched old westerns, first of all, how did you know who the bad guys were? They're wearing black hats and black outfits, right? Good guys who are white. I mean, it's so simple, the fact that. But have you ever noticed that the bad guy always gets it in the end? Do you know why that is? It doesn't work that way in real life always, does it? But it does in the movies, and the reason it worked that way in the movies, there was a law that said you had to show that justice was served in the end. Now, as far as sexual things, You know, if you watch the old programs like Dick Van Dyke and whatnot, you ever notice when they're in the bedroom, or they're showing a scene where they're sleeping, they're in two separate beds? Now, you may do that today in two separate rooms like my grandma and grandpa, because my grandpa snored so loud, my grandma would never have gotten sleep otherwise. But that wasn't the reason at that time. It was illegal to show two people in bed who weren't married. The only people who could have done it legally were like Lucy and Desi Arnaz, because they were married. It's been a great change since then, hasn't it? But then the 60s came, and things became more suggestive and more explicit, and they started to enforce the codes much less. And now, then when cable came, they said, well, it doesn't really apply to cable because it's not broadcast. And once there was a lot of things that were allowed on cable, people said, well, why can't you allow it on broadcast? People get cable anyways. And you know that almost now, to this point, Every television program has a gay character and they're always witty and clever and positive. Someone told me recently that they let their kids only watch a couple of different types of cartoons because there's gay characters in all the cartoons now. What about the schools? They poured into this river as well, didn't they? They joined the revolution. Now, not only in colleges, is there mandatory sensitivity training for all students, but even down to the elementary level, they're rooting out what they call bullying and those bigoted attitudes that foster them. And of course, we know what those are. By the way, think about it. Lots of calls for comprehensive sex education from age kindergarten on. If you wanted to teach somebody the mechanics of sex and how it works, it wouldn't take much more than a week, would it? Why does it have to be from kindergarten all the way up to the graduation? It's because they're teaching you a worldview. They're trying to undermine the worldview that you have. It's propaganda, and propaganda needs to be repeated time and time again. Well, how about corporate America? They're always presented to corporate America as big conservatives and opposed to progressives and whatnot. It's not true, is it? What's happened since the decision on gay marriage? Lots and lots of companies and corporations are jumping on the bandwagon, aren't they, to show that they're gay-friendly. showing that they're sensitive. I know that just recently at a meeting at my other job, they gave a sensitivity training on harassment, and they told us that if you make anybody, despite their sexual orientation or their gender identification, uncomfortable, we're in danger of being let go. They made it very clear that that's the direction they're going to go. So let me ask you a question. How can there be such a strong gay rights movement when less than 5% of Americans' population is homosexual or lesbian? Well, I think it's because that's just one aspect of a sexual revolution that about 80% of the Americans have bought into. Somebody pointed out something in an article that I thought was very interesting. They said there are five steps to those who push this and a lot of moral issues. on their war on ethics and morality. Listen to the steps and see if you can recognize this. The first is a call for tolerance. Just leave us alone. We just want to be left alone. Next, there's a call for an acceptance. Give us equal status. Sure, we won't call it marriage, we'll just call it domestic partnership. Third, promotion. Everyone must agree that our cause is good. Four, forced participation. You must participate in our culture. And five, punishment if you disagree with us. These are the five steps that are being used, and that's where we're at, morality-wise, today. But where are we going? Where do you think we're heading? Now, I have to tell you, outside of this point, that I am neither a prophet nor the son of a prophet. So what I'm giving you are educated guesses, but I trust that they are educated from looking at what's gone on in Europe and Canada, and increasingly in our country, and knowing something about history and what happened in other cultures, particularly under communist regimes. Well, what are we going to have? Let me give you several things. First of all, we're going to see a scaling back of religious freedom. The case of the baker who refused to bake the wedding cake, that's going before the Supreme Court this spring. And they will decide, I'll be surprised if he wins, but even if he does, I'm guessing that victory is going to be short-lived. Christian colleges are going to be forced to decide on whether they are going to take a stand or cave in to the cultural and governmental pressures. You can be sure of this, that they will cut off any kind of federal funding for students who attend these colleges. Supreme Court, in the last case dealing with gay marriage, argued that the only motivation that they could see for opposing gay marriage was animus, which means ill will or hatred. They couldn't see any reason anyone would oppose this other than that. Number two, there's going to be more calls to remove the tax-exempt status from the church. Of course, the church, if it can be taxed, the government has to decide at what rate it will be taxed. Should that be 30% of everything a church brings in, 40%, 70%, or 90%? Well, I would guess for the churches that tow the line, it'll be a tax-exempt status. For those who go against the current, the rates may be 90% to 100%. Hitler taxed the churches. It was very effective. Daniel Webster said, the power to tax is the power to destroy. Number three, there's going to be more pressures at companies, including places you work at, for employees to show support for the revolution. You may work in a place where they'll be flying a rainbow flag outside. or they'll be asking for money to support certain causes. Some of you already work at places where they want money for the United Way, which gives money to support abortion causes. And of course, the companies want to look like good sponsors and good supporters of these things, so they need to have people in their employ who do that. And sometimes even the people at the top. There was a man who worked for Mozilla, which is the search engine. And it was found out that he had given $1,000 to support the Proposition 8 campaign in California. And he was hounded out of the company. That's happening more and more. Here's another thing that's going to happen. You're going to have even more unworkable insanity in our colleges and our schools. Because tied to this, of course, is the transgender movement. And, of course, that means that if you're a boy and you decide you're a girl on any given day, you can go into the girl's locker room and take a shower, even in this school right now. Now, moms, do you want your 14-year-old girl to be in a shower with a naked boy? If he decides he's a boy one day, and a girl the next day, and a boy the next day, and a girl the next day... And, by the way, the colleges are going even crazier. A number of colleges have a policy in place that you have to address the person by whatever gender pronoun they choose. But there's nothing that says which one they have to choose. And as a matter of fact, there's not only two anymore. I think some groups list as many as 21. And you're supposed to remember which one they identify with. And by the way, in one of the states, they've put in place, I think for the colleges, you can be fined up to $200,000 if you get it wrong. Here's another one that's scary. Children being removed from their parents. Now, that used to happen in the Soviet Union, where they would remove kids from their parents because their parents were mentally unstable. How did they know they were mentally unstable? Because they believed in Jesus. You'd have to be mentally unstable to believe in Jesus. Is there a parallel to this? Just recently, a court severed the parental rights of a Christian parent because their daughter or son, whatever it was, who was 17 years old, decided they wanted to be transgender, and they said no. And because of it, the court said that they put the daughter in emotional danger, and so they removed the child from the house, and the parents lost their rights to the child. Let's go on and give you a couple more. This one, to me, just seems obvious. Vandalism and destruction of churches who take an unpopular stand. Quite a few years ago, in Pine City, just up the street, Or more, I guess it was. A pastor preached a sermon on homosexuality and pointed out that the Bible said it was sin. They trucked in people from all over the metro area and from out of state. They surrounded the church during the service and they were yelling and swearing at them. And one of the things they kept yelling is, send them out that we may know them. Now, if you're familiar with the scripture, you know that's what the men at Sodom said when they demanded that Lot send the angels out to them. And that was quite a few years ago. Here's another one. Increased surveillance of Christians targeted as hate groups. Focus on the families considered a hate group by the Southern Poverty Leadership Council. You think that has an effect? Maybe there was a guy who went into the headquarters and shot somebody dead. How about this one? The capitulation and sellout by Christian institutions and well-known evangelical leaders. To me, the fascinating one, it's not a Christian organization, but the Boy Scouts. The Boy Scouts had a policy that you could not have gay scouts. Whether you agree with that or not, that was their policy. And then they also had a policy about not having gay scout leaders. This one went all the way to the Supreme Court, and the Boy Scouts won. Much to our surprise. And then a matter of months later, they capitulated and changed their policy anyway. Isn't that amazing? Now, when I read about that, I happen to see in the same newspaper, two pages over, a story about the Boy Scouts and the amount of sexual abuse that had been in the Boy Scouts for the last 35 years. Is there no connection? Tony Campolo, a well-known evangelical leader, just in the last year and a half, has changed his position after much prayer and much thought, and now he's a supporter of homosexual marriage. Here's the last one, and I think this is where it's ultimately going. A move to define the preaching of the gospel as a form of hate speech. You think, well, that's kind of a stretch. Is it? In Canada, where they've had these hate speech crimes legislations for a while... By the way, in Canada, they also have human rights commissions, which operate outside of the law, which means your constitutional rights or their charter rights, as they call them, do not apply. They have these in states like Colorado now as well. And of course, who's on these things? People who hold those views. But when they first put this forward in Canada, the Member of Parliament who proposed it was asked by someone during the debate, would this allow people to deem the Bible hate speech? Now the man who was himself a homosexual would not answer the question. Though he was asked several times, why wouldn't he answer the question? Because if he said yes, it would be obvious where this was going. And if he said no, sometime in a court case in the future, they'd point back and say, this was never the intention of it. So he kept his mouth shut because that is where he intended to go with it. Well, that brings us to our last point. I'm going to do this one a little quicker. How should we respond? What are we supposed to do? The psalmist struggled with this. He said, if the foundations be destroyed, what shall the righteous do? And I have to tell you, folks, there is nothing more foundational than defining a person as a man or a woman. The first institution was marriage. And so these are fundamental attacks, not only on the church, but on the created order. And it can't possibly end well. But what are we supposed to do in the middle of this? Well, I think here's the first thing. We have to continue to teach and uphold biblical standards. It's that simple. There was a guy, I watched a video recently, a pastor in Belfast, Ireland. This was not about that issue of gay marriage or anything like that, but he preached a sermon where he mentioned that Islam, he believed, was a satanic religion, inspired by the devil. Well, he was arrested. By the way, the guy's name is James McConnell. He was arrested, and he was put on trial. He did win it, but just barely. And then they interviewed him afterwards, and he said, you know, what advice would you have? And he said, I talk to the pastors in particular. Don't back down. Take your stand. And then when they're interviewing him outside, before the court case was decided, he's addressing some people there, and he said, either way, I win. He said, if they acquit me, that's good. It's good. It sets a precedent. He said, we win. He said, but if I go to jail, I win too. Janice Joplin was right when she said, freedom's just another name for nothing left to lose. Do you know what our big problem is? We're scared to death we'll lose everything. Right? But you know, think about it. If someone were to come in just now and shoot down three people here, let me ask you a question. Would we have more people here next week or less? What do you think? You'd think less because everyone would be scared. Uh-uh, we'd have more. Why? If they took your house, would you be more or less willing to witness for Jesus? If they threw you in jail, would you shut up? No, because then all of a sudden everything would become clear. I mean, there was a guy in Canada, he was arrested for this. I was listening to a program. He himself was a male prostitute as a young boy. And he knew what this whole lifestyle was about and how dehumanizing it was and everything. And he ended up getting saved. And so he's witnessing about this out on the street and talking about what this is really about. He was got in trouble for a hate speech. So I'm listening to two people or four people. They're talking about this on a panel and some are conservative and some are liberal from political spectrums in Canada. But all four of them agreed that what this man was saying, that people needed to repent and trust in Christ was a hateful thing. The only question was, how long should he be jailed for? But then they interviewed him and he said, oh, I've been jailed three or four times. I'm going back to jail again. He said, what else can they take from me? They've taken everything. He said, now I might as well stand for the truth. There you go. Hmm. When it comes to the truth, we need to be bulldogs. And then I stopped and thought, no, not bulldogs, warthogs. Go home and watch. Get a YouTube video and see a warthog. What happens when a leopard comes after it? Do they run off? No. They attack. They go forward. Now, I have to tell you, in two or three of those videos, the warthogs got eaten in the end. But they went down with a fight, didn't they? Proverbs 28.1 says, The wicked flee when no one's pursuing them, but the righteous are bold as lions. Now, is this boldness something that we can manufacture internally on our own? Do you just dig down deep inside until you find the courage? Hardly. Rather, we have to remember and count on the words that Jesus gave to his disciples when he said this, But beware of men, for they will hand you over to the courts and scourge you in their synagogues, and you'll even be brought before governors and kings for my name's sake as a testimony to the Gentiles. But when they hand you over, don't worry about what you are to say, for it will be given to you in that hour what to say. For it is not you who will speak, but it's the Spirit of your Father who will speak in you." And as long as we're mentioning speaking in the way we should do it, here's a second point. We have to stand for the truth, but we have to speak the truth in love. Albert Moeller was right when he reminds us that since the fall of mankind, all of us are sexually disoriented. Homosexuality is simply one expression of a fallen nature. Another expression is laziness, or being resentful, or hot-tempered, or boastful. You cannot reach people that you have contempt for. Here's a third thing. We must offer hope to people who struggle with homosexuality by giving them the gospel. Everybody, gay or straight, needs the gospel. And so we should not hesitate to present it. For it, the gospel, is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first, and also to the Greek. Now this is a tie-in to my last week's sermon on 1 Corinthians, because that passage said this, 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 the covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God. Such were some of you, but you were washed, you were sanctified, but you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and the Spirit of our God. When I worked in the restaurant industry, I don't know why it ended up this way, but I worked with a lot of people who were homosexuals and lesbians, who I got to know pretty well, and many of whom opened up to me in conversations. One of the guys I worked with was a guy named Dan. He was at one of the Perkins I was at, and he was into politics. He was a big supporter of Paul Wellstone, so we talked political things, and it came up, the issue of homosexuality. And at one point, he asked me about the issue, and I said, no, it's wrong, it's a sin. And he was just baffled that I took that stand. I think he was baffled because I liked him and I was a friend of him. And he just didn't expect that. And he did open up a little bit and he said, you know, Doug, he said, I have tried so hard to get out of this lifestyle. He said, you think this is the lifestyle I want? And I said, Dan, I have no doubt that you've tried very hard. And I also have no doubt that apart from Jesus Christ, you can't possibly get out of it. I said, you need Jesus. Now, some groups have just given up. Exodus International was a group that helped homosexuals get out after this last decision. They said, oh, we've been wrong all these years. Homosexuality is a valid lifestyle. And they capitulated, just like we're going to see others do. But you know, there's a lot of great videos on YouTube about people giving their testimony who are ex-homosexuals. One of them was a guy who was about a half hour long. He's wearing a T-shirt that says, Jesus Christ delivered me from 27 years of homosexuality. And then he tells the story. There was another person, a woman, who was transgendered. And she had been raised in a very harsh household, a real hard dad, a mom who was quite distant from her emotionally. And she said, I just grew up very mixed up. And she said, I decided early on that you should be a guy, not a girl, because it was so much better. As she got older, when she became an adult, she had a double mastectomy. She didn't do all the rest of what you would do, but she posed as a man. I saw pictures that were put up in the video. She looked like a man. Well, she had gone through this life, or life that way, and she'd taken a lot of testosterone and was into bodybuilding. And she got involved in some churches. Some people had invited her. And in one church where she was involved in, she was in the choir. I think she was helping with a youth group and all that. And there were some rumors going around. Finally, the pastor called her into his office and said, we've been hearing these rumors of what's going on. And she said, well, I'm a... I'm a man who used to be a woman." And they said, well, that may be, but you can't do that here. You have to leave. Well, that in itself was kind of tough, right? So she didn't go to church for a while. She ended up going to another church. Same thing, got involved with the church. By the way, she got involved in several relationships with women at this time. And same thing happened. People are asking, what's going on? What's going on? Finally, another pastor invites, and she said it was all the same thing again, and brought it in. But God had been working on her heart at this point. She'd been reading scripture and being convicted by it. And she said, God kind of whispered in my ear, you're going to deal with this, and you're going to deal with it all in the next two weeks. And she said, the pastor looked at me and said, so what's going on? And she said, I opened my mouth, and this is what I said this time. I said, I'm a woman pretending to be a man. And the pastor said, well, we're going to have to take care of this. I think we'll take the next two weeks to take care of it. And she said she knew it was a God thing. So here's this woman. The effects are still there to some degree. But you can hear her giving testimony to the grace of God. Because she's one of those, but such were some of you. You know, this is just like the abortion issue. Is any woman ever going to admit she's had an abortion? if there's no way to be forgiven? How could you live with it? But we have the best answer in the world to abortion, to homosexuality, to infidelity, to having a bad temper, to being an alcoholic, to 10,000 things. We have a God who will forgive. And then after He forgives, He'll break the power of canceled sin. and He'll redeem people and renew people. And even if they struggle with some of those desires until the end, when they are resurrected, the body will be reoriented and there will be no sin in any way, shape, or form. So what do we have to do? You've got to take a stand at your school, and it's going to cost you. You've got to take a stand at your job, and they may fire you. You've got to take a stand with your family members, and they're going to revile you. But you want to do it in love, in grace, praying for them. Because you know what? Some of those same people who revile you may someday thank you for taking a stand and bringing them back in the direction that they ought to be going. This issue is not going away. It's going to cost each of us personally if we stand for Christ. But you know what? We're going to get opportunities to witness the people we never would otherwise. And I think, as another Pastor McConnell, I'll give you the same advice. Don't back down. Take your stand. Our Father in God. You know, I think about Oscar Wilde. In that book, The Picture of Dorian Gray, it's a story of a person who gives himself into horrible sin. And through the whole thing, the sin doesn't appear on him, it appears on a picture of him. all the degradation. But when he's confronted by it, Lord, at the end, someone asks him, Dorian, he says, is there not some place where it's written, though your sins be like scarlet, they'll be white as snow? Dorian, repent, repent. Father, I always thought that was sad because Oscar Wilde was writing about his own life. And he evidently knew the gospel at least enough that he understood his sins could be forgiven, but there's no evidence that he ever did repent. Lord, I pray that you'd help us to be very gracious people with this issue. All of us have friends, loved ones, or coworkers who struggle with all kinds of issues, and we want to be people who are kind and gentle and loving. But yet, Lord, we have to be hard-headed even while we're soft-hearted, and we can't back down. So bless us in this. Help us in this. Give us grace. And then call people, many, many, many from among the homosexual and transgender community. so that they also can testify to your goodness. We ask in Jesus' name, Amen.