God and Human Sexuality. Part 3

REJECTION OF GOD AND THE CORRUPTION OF MAN

 

The letter Paul wrote to the Christians in Rome has two central themes. The first, it is about God. The second, it is about man, his departure from fellowship with God and his decline into states of life that are little better than that of the beasts, though somewhat sophisticated beasts on the surface. Paul looks at man in his fallen state because he needs to analyse his lostness. He will then write of God’s salvation through the Christ. Forgiveness, justification unto glorification will be the notes of triumph he sounds in this letter. The unwillingness to face the terrible description of man’s depravity found in Romans chapter one will open the door for the church to excuse and justify what God condemns as destructive to the life of mankind. Excuses are put forward to avoid the plain truth of these verses but follow those lame excuses at your peril. They are themselves an evidence of an unwillingness to let God be God and every man a liar.

 

1. Man’s fall and depravity are inextricably linked to his rejection of God (Romans 1:19, 21, 23 & 28).
2. Man suppresses truth about God. This is at the back of all sin and this includes sexual sin of every kind. Refuse God and the result will be a growing confusion as to our true    identity as persons, including the possibility of gender confusion increasing to epidemic proportions.
3. Rejection of God leads man to reconstruct his own distorted version of Him (Romans 1:23) and the result will be human beings themselves twisted and distorted.
4. The first distortion that man constructs is that he forms God into an image of himself. The second, is worse, man makes God into images of animals (Romans 1:23).
5. Remember, man becomes what he worships! No wonder, if not held in check, human sexuality becomes distorted into an animal-like passion. Genital sex becomes an end in itself as and when the passions are aroused, as found in the animal creation (Romans 1:26, 27).

 

DISHONOURING GOD LEADS TO THE DISHONOUR BETWEEN THE SEXES

 

This dishonour produces all manner of sexual vice, self abuse, in particular lesbian and homosexual self abuse, is first against their own body and then the body of their ‘partners.’ It is further exacerbated by abusing the body in various surgeries to attempt to choose their preferred sex if a person decides to change their sex. Actually this is impossible, the body may undergo alteration but what sex God gave when they were, “wrought in the lower parts of the earth,” they remain (Psalm 139:13-14).

 

1. When practiced, this behaviour leads to vain thinking (futile) and the darkening of the foolish heart (a darkened heart cannot see)! (Romans 1:21).
2. The dishonouring of God is certain to lead to the worship of the creature in altogether wrong ways (Romans 1:25). Remember, that in the marriage service, sometimes the words are used, “with my body, I thee worship.” The uniting of husband and wife in physical intercourse is meant to be an act of adoring worship.
3. Man did not approve of God and so God gave man up to a mind that is itself unapproved (Romans 1:28).
4. The result is multitudes who approve of those who practice what God calls sin (Romans 1:28).
5. As they approve of sin of various kinds they will also practice the hypocrisy as evident today when many who are themselves sexually licentious throw their hands up in    horror and try to prosecute those who are accused of child molestation and sex with underage girls and boys. We abhor such sinful acts but can only say that the path              downwards into degradation will continue into the possible legalisation of sex with children who are in agreement to let it occur.
6. All manner of sexual deviations, bondage become practised when our uniqueness in being made in the image of God is rejected.
7. Remember that Israel, having come out of Egypt where calves were worshipped, made one out of the gold they themselves contributed. Note that they called that calf “Yahweh” and “Jehovah” and they rose up to play and shamed themselves in a kind of sexual orgy (Exodus 32:1-8). They confessed, “Israel, these be your gods.”

 

REPENTANCE AND RETURN TO GOD’S WILL MEAN WE COME TO OURSELVES

 

Honour God, put Him in the highest place and there will be a ceasing from sin, including sexual sin of all kinds including what is now called Lesbian Bisexual Gay Transsexual (LBGT) sin. The ‘all sin’ includes heterosexual promiscuity. Ceasing from sin inevitably includes obedience to the word of God, self control and the resisting of temptation. What is required of the heterosexual in the face of temptation to sexual sin is also expected from those who are tempted to same sex acts or transgender ideas.

 

1. The physically impaired must resist the temptation to become embittered against God.
2. The young (or older) male or female must resist temptation to sex outside of marriage.
3. Those who find themselves tempted to same sex involvement must resist temptation and not expect themselves to be a special case exempted from self control.
4. Our apparent sexual preference must not be an excuse for sinning.
5. LGBT should not expect to be accorded special status. They are not a separate category. We are all without excuse and must avail ourselves of the salvation that is in the Lord Jesus Christ (Romans 3:9-19).
6. The plea to special human rights status and the right to practice my sexual preference is specious, it is a deception and has no basis in God’s sight and neither should it be given special place in ours.

 

GOD AND MARRIAGE, THE IMAGE OF GOD

 

All confusion as to human sexuality and family begins with evading the plain truth God laid down in the Creation narratives in Genesis chapters one and two. We must take a long look at how God made us. Those things that are particular to male and particular to female. Look at yourself, your own body, see the perfect complementarity in all God has made. Not only physically but in the inner man as well.

 

1. The narrative of the book of Genesis has been discredited in the thinking of so many, they call it ‘myth.’
2. This has helped pave the way for the doctrine of the THEORY of evolution.
3. This theory sets the scene and makes it easy to teach that human beings are simply more highly developed animal species. This justifies, in the eyes of some, the right to    behave like animals in the sexual realm.
4. Jesus himself grounded the authenticity of everything on the facts of creation as written in Genesis chapters one and two. (Matthew 19:3-9).

 

THE CREATION OF MAN AND THE MYSTERY OF THE IMAGE OF GOD

 

What is the image of God? There are things we know and things we do not. One part of the image we can see is that when God imaged Himself He did so in male and female. Not male and male, nor female and female, but the two, alike but different, equal, but different. This does not imply that God is male and female in Himself, but it most certainly indicates that when He images something of the wonder of His being, He could only do so by creating male and female. Just as, or so it seems, God the Father and God the Son as revealed later in the Bible are equal but different. Two Persons, but One Being and then, the third Person is the Holy Spirit, thus, in order for God to create it was necessary that the Father worked with and through the Son and by the Holy Spirit. The fruitfulness of God involves the complementarity of Father and son.

 

1. We can speak of the creation and further works of God as part of His fruitfulness. God is fecund because God is love and authentic love is always fruitful.
2. So, when He imaged Himself, (let US make man in OUR image), He made them male and female (Genesis 1:26-27).
3. It was essential that man be male and female or there could be no fruitfulness.
4. To be fruitful and multiply necessitates both male and female to come together and become one flesh (Genesis 1:28, 2:18-25).
5. Note, man could not fulfil his calling alone, “it is not good that man should be alone,” (Genesis 2:18).
6. “I will make him a helper fit (corresponding, complementing) him,” (Genesis 2:18).
7. The animal creation God brought to Adam did not ‘fit’.
8. Thus God took the woman out of the man, God did not make two women, only one, and there was immediate recognition, “this is, at last, flesh of my flesh and bone of my bone,” and the two shall become one flesh (Genesis 2: 23-25).

 

All that we have said in this section shows that marriage was made for fruitfulness. Some may retort that nowadays we have mechanisms that can provide male sperm for one of the partners in a lesbian relationship and so they two can bear fruit. But, those two are not becoming fruitful. This is the result of medical expertise by doctors who have failed to understand the moral and ethical implications of what they are doing. The lesbian couple may claim their ‘human rights’, but the day will come when the child born through one of them, and called ‘their’ child, may well sue those two because they prevented him or her having the ‘human right’ of having a father! Then a homosexual couple might enlist the help of a donor ‘mother’ and provide sperm so that they can have a child. But the child is not their fruit, but only the fruit of one of them. Again, that child may well rise up when it is of age and claim its human right that it did not have a mother! Thus is confusion being introduced into our society that will reap terrible results in years to come. The laws and ways of God are being set aside and a litigation for ‘human rights’ is put in its place. But, what about the ‘human rights’ of the child!

 

THE MYSTERY, BEAUTY AND HONOURABLE NATURE OF MARRIAGE

 

Here then we see God’s pattern for human society, it is based on marriage between two persons, one being male and the other female. There is no such thing as a same sex marriage. It is an invention of man and a contradiction in terms. There can be no true physical union, only that which is a distortion of the true.

 

1. Note that Jesus endorses God’s arrangement for family as the basic building block of society (Matthew 19:4&5).
2. See that He does not validate divorce and remarriage. He indicates one man and one woman coming together in the sacred bond of marriage. Two shall become one flesh,    not, three shall become one flesh, or four, or five.
3. In speaking this way Jesus shows that sexual promiscuity for human beings is not God’s way and will be destructive of human society.
4. Faithfulness in a marriage between one male and one female is the norm.
5. Society can only be strong when this marriage bond is held in honour.
6. Note that if a man goes with a prostitute, or with someone not his wife, he does not become one ‘FLESH’ with her, but merely one (physical) BODY (1 Corinthians 6:12-20).
7. All such unions are essentially genital and not of the soul, the mystery that is intrinsic to marriage and one flesh union is absent. They are therefore more akin to the animal creation, dogs with bitches whenever available, for example.
8. Although it is claimed by some in same sex relationships that they love one another, it is,    as is the case with affections that cross over into forbidden areas in a married person, to     these are “inordinate affections,” “evil desires” (Colossians 3:5).
9. All this corroborates the words of Paul when he indicates that in those perversions which occur and become commonplace in a degenerating society, the participants are, “Dishonouring their bodies,” (Romans 1:24).
10. This is not only the case in same sex relationships, but illicit heterosexual relationships also.

 

MARRIAGE IS HONOURABLE, THE BED SHOULD BE UNDEFILED

 

Attack and corrupt marriage and human society will be gradually destroyed. God will judge adulterers and the sexually immoral (Hebrews 12:4). If marriage between a man and woman is the bedrock of a healthy community then the destabilising of society begins with easy divorce. Divorce is the thin wedge that begins the destruction, the breaking of the rock. Jesus indicated that divorce and remarriage constitutes adultery in certain cases (Matthew 19:9).

 

1. These words of Jesus show that divorce and remarriages are in fact tantamount to serial polygamy
2. There were things ‘allowed’ by God in Old Testament days. But He did not institute them.
3. Polygamy was practiced but in every case brought confusion and complications in family life and society. Divorce does likewise.
4. Think of Abraham and Sarah, then Hagar and her son Ishmael and the complexity that union brought into history.
5. Consider polygamous Solomon and the way he laid himself open to be seduced away from the true worship of God he had known in his earlier days (1 Kings 11:1-5).
6. Jesus specifically said that Moses allowed divorce and gave the clear reason, “For the hardness of your hearts,” (Matthew 19:8). A divorce never occurs unless there is    hardness of heart, sometimes in both parties, sometimes only in one, but that is enough         to give the marriage no hope of continuing. We should not be asking “why is there so                     much divorce today,” our question should really be, “Why is there so little forgiveness.”

 

MARRIAGE SEEMS SO HIGH, SO IMPOSSIBLE!

 

This was the reaction of the disciples when Jesus spoke of its nobility, beauty and glory. The disciples lived in a time when divorce was relatively easy to obtain, even among the Jews and certainly among the Greeks and Romans. They thought, “If so difficult, then better not to marry!”

Jesus replies and speaks of eunuchs and this has a bearing on human sexuality.

 

1. He indicates that some become eunuchs by hands of others. They are castrated.
2. Others have no driving sexual desire from birth. They are neither particular heterosexual or are bent toward same sex relationships.
3. Others make themselves eunuchs for the Kingdom’s sake (Matthew 19:10-12). In this case Jesus says that some are able to receive this state of life. They are able to    embrace the single life that includes abstinence from sex.
4. It is likely that some who are ‘born eunuchs’ are drawn by the temptations to same sex

relationships. Often these can begin with simple and good friendships with someone of      the same sex and then gradually, a crossover takes place into that which become    genital, especially if there has been an absence of proper male and female ‘role models’        in their family, or they have been abused as children or the general atmosphere of                society is loose as ours is today, especially in the Western world.

1. In our society, drifting away from godly moorings, bisexuality become an ‘interesting’ option and all manner of foolish and narcissistic behaviour patterns will be promoted as normal.

In our last and final study we shall look at several of the causes as to why mankind is moving into the uncharted territories of perverted sexuality and specify in a little more detail the grossness and blasphemy against God and man involved in these. Thank God, there is power in the gospel of God that can bring about deliverance from all such (1 Corinthians 6:9-11).