Homosexuality – The Nexus

Digging in Deeper: Romans 1:26-27

January 23, 2025Leave a comment

“For this reason God delivered them over to disgraceful passions. Their women exchanged natural sexual relations for unnatural ones. The men in the same way also left natural relations with women and were inflamed in their lust for one another. Men committed shameless acts with men and received in their own persons the appropriate penalty of their error.” (CSB – Read the chapter)

Hot topics tend to be faddish and cyclical. An issue that is absolutely crucial to have an opinion on in one season doesn’t even register on the radar in another. The issue of the morality of homosexual practice is not the issue in our culture that it once was not all that long ago. This is mostly because as a culture we have decided it’s fine. And as the church has continued losing cultural power and position, most people just don’t care what the church thinks about it anymore. But this doesn’t mean the position of the Scriptures has changed. And it doesn’t mean the culture doesn’t dislike the position any less. These two verses aren’t terribly comfortable to talk about, but here they are, so let’s do it.

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Wading through a Mess

March 9, 2020February 27, 2020Leave a comment

This past Sunday morning we kicked off a brand-new series called, Answers to Tough Questions. For the next few weeks leading up to Easter, we are going to tackle some of the biggest cultural debates going on around us and into which Christians are expected to be able to speak with grace and poise. With the Scriptures as our guide, we are going to talk about what it looks like to respond to each of these issues as followers of Jesus. Yesterday we started with a bang: The LGBT+ debate. Isn’t God anti-LGBT+? Let’s talk about it.

Wading through a Mess

We live today in a polarized culture. We hear that so often that it’s almost cliché to say, but that doesn’t make it any less true. The old adage about polite conversation is that you can talk about anything but religion and politics. Of the two topics, religion covered the most ground and was the most controversial. Politics had a much smaller sphere of influence. Yes, people could get pretty worked up about certain issues, but on the whole, it was the safer of the two. Today…that reality has reversed itself. Religion covers an ever-shrinking amount of territory as it continues to lose the ground it once held in our culture. Politics, on the other hand, seems to intrude into every aspect of our lives. And this isn’t a left-right issue. The truth is that in the hearts of many, if not their minds as well, politics is increasingly taking the place religion once held as the source to which we turn to find answers for the most pressing questions we face. And indeed, when God is not ultimate, something else has to be. The trend for most human cultures over the centuries is that we give the State that place when we don’t give it to God. This is a tension that has been with the church since its earliest days.

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Morning Musing: Psalm 127:3

February 20, 2019February 19, 2019Leave a comment

“Behold, children are a heritage from the Lord, the fruit of the womb a reward.” (ESV – Read the chapter)

We live in a day when children are more and more considered a convenience. Parenthood is something pursued as a right, not a privilege. In other words, couples who embrace parenthood do so not from a sense of obedience to God’s command to be fruitful and multiply, but so they can say they are parents. It is becoming a status symbol more than a duty and calling.

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Digging in Deeper: 1 Corinthians 6:9-10

August 16, 2017August 20, 2017Leave a comment

“Or do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor men who practice homosexuality, nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God.” (ESV – Read the chapter)

– ‭‭1 Corinthians‬ ‭6:9-10

Two things here. First, the list of sinful behaviors pursued unrepentantly which will keep us from access to the kingdom of God is long and varied. There are many, many ways to separate ourselves off from God, some of them large and obvious, some of them small and easy to hide. In some ways it is better to be caught up in a big, obvious sin, because then everybody knows you are doing wrong and you can be called to account more easily. Sometimes the smaller, more culturally acceptable and easy-to-overlook sins can be deadly traps because we don’t believe we are doing anything worthy of repentance or needing of forgiveness all the while we are on a road headed directly out of a relationship with God. That’s the easy part.

Second, this is one of the few passages in the Scriptures that specifically mentions the sinfulness of homosexual sexual interactions. Read the rest…