28 Jun Romans #3 – Set Free Escaping Rebellion (Romans 1:18-32)
– Romans chapter one, we’re going right through one of the greatest books in the history of the world. And I have the great honor now, of preaching on what is the most despised, hated, opposed and attacked text of the entire Bible. And I’ll just prophesy in advance, this is either gonna go really good or really bad. That’s the future, that’s where we’re going. And what happens is, every time an issue blows up politically, morally, socially, but ultimately you and I have one of two options. Number one, we can just emotionally react, and just jump on social media, grab the latest hashtag and follow the Conga-Line to hell. The other option is we can, rather than emotionally reacting, we can be mentally reflecting. We can give a little time for us to look at the evidence, to consider the issues, the cause the effect, the problem, the solution, and as Christians ultimately, to bring it to the word of God, and there is very little reflective thinking in our day, and there is very little deep teaching in our day, and as a result, things are not going well in our day. A little later in Romans chapter 12, Paul is going to give us a principle that I want us to exercise together today. He says, “Do not be conformed to this world.” What he’s talking about there is literally a mold, you go into school and there is an educational system that tries to mold you into a certain political sexual orientation ideology and behavior. Just like when you’re making a Popsicle or you’re making something out of jello, ultimately it’s to get everything to come out looking exactly the same, I’m telling you the Christianity is the last great rebellion, I’m telling you that for those of us who will stand up against the cultural tide, there will be great price to pay, and the price of following Jesus is getting increasingly more expensive. But it’s going to take a lot of work for you and I not to be conformed to the pattern of this world, not to think what everyone else thinks, not to do what everyone else does, not to post what everyone else posts. Instead, he goes on to say, “But be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that ultimately worship starts with thinking God’s thoughts after him, and that by testing. so not just assuming that everyone or everything is true or right, you may discern what the will of God is. What is good, acceptable and perfect.” Well, Paul is saying is that things are bad, some things are unacceptable, and some things are imperfect. So as we get into it today, my text is on sex, gender, and sexuality, the three things you didn’t wanna talk about. And if your friend brought you to church for the first time, you probably gonna be former friends in about an hour nonetheless, as we jump into it, let me set a little bit of context for where we find ourselves, because for those of you who are younger than me, and I’m gonna be 50 here in a few weeks, for those of you who are younger, you assume that the world that you were born into is normative, it’s the only world you’ve ever known. But you need to know that there was a mass social experiment sociological experiment that has been underway, and it’s cataclysmic, and it’s only a short period of time in history that this test has been underway, and that test is during my lifetime. I was born in 1970, right at the tail end of the sexual revolution, the false trinity of sex, drugs, and rock and roll, all of the experimental hippie counterculture that is now become mainstream culture. That ideology led its way into culture and also the classroom, those of you who were born later, that’s the only world you’ve ever known. That’s the only culture you’ve ever seen, that’s the only class you’ve ever attended. In 1973, when I was a three year old boy, Roe v. Wade was legalized and it legalized abortion. Roe v. Wade was cataclysmic and how we view gender, marriage, and sexuality. Ultimately, what is interesting historically is that the anonymous Jane Rowe, for whom the legislation was written, she ultimately became a Christian, came to know and love Jesus. She died in 2017, she spent the last half of her life arguing against exactly what she had argued for and she opposed abortion rights. And ultimately she is today with the Lord Jesus in heaven forgiven of her sins, and I believe that there is a great, amazing family reunion with the child that she aborted. Because that’s the kind of thing that our God does. All that to say I was born before abortion was legalized. In addition, up until 1974, there was the diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders that was published by the American Psychiatric Association. It was considered the Bible of mental health disorders, up until 1974, homosexuality was considered and listed clinically as a mental disorder. So think of this, I was born before abortion was legal and before homosexuality was considered a mental disorder. Just look at the great speed of change within our culture. In 1989, I became a Christian, God saved me. At that time, I was not a virgin and I was sleeping with my girlfriend, who is my now wife. I didn’t agree with what the Bible said about sex, marriage or gender or sexuality. I didn’t agree with any of it, I felt that it an old book and I had some good new ideas most of which involved belt. That being said I came to the conclusion that I had a very significant decision to make that would affect the rest of my life and legacy, and it’s the decision that you all will make tonight and that is, does God have a right to tell me what to do with my sexuality? Is there any authority that is external of me? Does anyone have the right to tell me no? And that was the issue that I had to wrestle with, and ultimately that is the Lordship of Jesus Christ. That he doesn’t just rule over my heart, he also rules over my pants. That if he is Lord overall, that means that all than I have and all that I am, ultimately needs to be lived in obedience to him. I then became a pastor in the mid 1990s in another city, we had our first issue with transgenderism 25 years ago. I’ve been dealing with this issue in major urban centers for most of my adult life, for years, I did a lot of media interviews on gender, marriage, sex, family. Most of it was hostile, it was Mother Jones and NPR and lots of liberal outlets that opposed Bible teaching. I had a canned answer that I gave, and that was that, “The Bible negates any sexuality outside of marriage.” That was my canned answer and it worked until 2012. At that time, the state that I was living in legalized same sex marriage, at that same time my wife, Grace and I released a book on marriage called Real Marriage. And we did a media tour, I’m on Fox & Friends, I did an interview with Darryl Hughley on CNN I sat down and went head to head for half an hour with Piers Morgan. We also went and did The view with Joy Behar, Whoopie Goldberg and Barbara Walters. So yeah, I got up one morning and us four girls got our makeup done together for TV, it was awesome. Ultimately, what happened then is in 2015, we had a lot of arguments over gender, marriage, sexuality, and marriage, and ultimately then in 2015, the US Supreme Court made same sex marriage the law of the land for all 50 states. Since that time, some of the pastors that I’ve raised up have become pro-gay pro-transgender. Some of the churches that I helped plant and or buildings that I helped fundraise for they are now officiating same sex marriages. I’ve seen a cataclysmic shift in my lifetime, and recently there was a Gallup poll done in America, asking Americans what percentage of the population do you believe is gay, or bisexual? Americans thought that that constituted 23% of the population, the truth is it’s 5%. It’s 5%, but there’s so much volume in the culture regarding these issues that you would think it was a bigger issue. The number is on the uptick, which is not shocking with the push in media, social media, school curriculum, and also the prevalence of pornography. That being said, we’re gonna talk about sex, we’re gonna talk about marriage. We’re gonna talk about gender. And ultimately I wanna start by putting us all on the same team. And that is that we’re all sinners, who need a savior. What I don’t wanna do is have this sermon be the good people versus the bad people, because human history is the bad people versus God. There’s only one person on the other side of that line, and his name is Jesus Christ, he’s on the savior side, we’re on the sinner side. So what I don’t wanna do is hammer one group of people, I wanna hammer all people because I believe in equality and you’re all naughty. So this this’ll be in the notes, so the notes are at legacy.realfaith.com and there’s comprehensive notes but these are acts that are forbidden in the Bible when it comes to matters of sexuality, I’ll work through them quickly. Fornication, this is sex before marriage, for all of you who are single, this is you, this is dating, relating and fornicating, this is called old town, old town is the Greek word for fornication, it’s the world that we live in. Hey, you knew this was gonna happen, don’t get so sour so quick, we’ve only got a few hours together make the most of it. Now, fornication is what I was doing with Grace when we started dating, I was fornicating, I was sleeping with someone I was not married to, okay? It’s a sin and if you’re here and you’re dating and you’re sleeping together and or you’re living together, you’re fornicating, so what we’re gonna do, we’re just gonna give you a minute to break up and then look at the next one. Oh, seriously, you got a minute, this doesn’t take long. All right, now let me get that cleaned up, number two is adultery, adultery is where you’re married but you’re sleeping with someone else. True or false that’s a problem? It’s a problem, okay? God forbids it, well, what if we have an open marriage? And what if we agree, and what if we’re swingers? You’re still adulterers, you’re just adulterers that are co-conspirators. Number three, polygamy this is where you’re with more than one person, and this is where the trend is going regarding bisexuality, well, if I love a man and I love a woman, why can’t we be polygamous? This would also include polyandry which is one woman with multiple men. Historically, there’s no civilization that demonstrates that because men would kill each other, that’s just how it works. Everything I say is offensive and true. Number four, rape and rape is forcibly imposing yourself upon another human being, it’s an act of aggression, it’s an act of oppression, rape. Incest, this is with a close family member. This is with a close family member. This is growing in prevalence, even old John was a pornography are now promoting this. Homosexuality which we will deal with in detail in just a moment, that’s two people who are of the same sex and should be of the same gender. This includes beastiality human being and an animal life, having some sort sexual connection or contact is forbidden. according to the Bible. This would include prostitution, where you are paying someone for sexual services. This would include sexual immorality, a Greek word in the New Testament used repeatedly called porneia. Does that sound familiar? We get our word pornography or pornographic from it. It’s an open category of sexual sin that can include a number of other sexual sins. So this would include pornography and also your thought life. Jesus said that we don’t just commit adultery with our hands, we also commit adultery with our heart. Okay, if you’re reading the list up until this point, you’re like, “I haven’t done that, haven’t done that, haven’t done that, haven’t done that.” Let’s just say we’ve all done nine. Can we just be honest? This is where Job 31:1 he says, “I made a covenant with my eyes, not to look upon people lustfully,” looking with your eyes lustfully that constitutes porneia, it may not be necessarily even what you do with your hands it’s what you do with your eyes and what you do with your heart, and this also includes pag and sexual activity. Oftentimes when there is pagan, religion, and spirituality, there is also pagan sexual activity. So in Exodus 32, they worshiped the golden calf, and they have lots of sexual relations together. It talks about in the New Testament, there are temples where people go, and part of the worship act is sex. So any sex that is done in conjunction with another spirit being or God is ultimately forbidden by the God who made us, and wants us to be filled with his spirit. My simple point in sharing this list, before we get into the specifics of Romans chapter one we’re all guilty, just in different ways. We’re all guilty, just in different ways. And what I want us to say is that we all need a savior and that we all are a sinner. And as we look at particular sexual acts and misconduct and disobedience and rebellion, I want us not to use the Bible first and foremost as binoculars to see what all the other people have done wrong, but first as a mirror to consider what we have done wrong. Before we judge others, we should judge ourselves, before we examine others, we should examine ourselves. And so within this, I would tell you that based upon this list, just like the rest of you, I’m guilty. I mean I was sexually active as a brand new Christian, and then stopped once I understood what the Bible said, and accepted God’s authority over all of my life. And let’s just say, we’ve all been guilty of number nine, and some of you have more than one or two. Some of you, this list is fairly convicting. I love you, I’m your pastor, my hope and goal today is not to beat you up, but to build you up. I hope pray that my tone would be pastoral, and that it would be more prophesorial that you would know that I love you and I’m trying to teach. If you’re new I usually am funny, so come back next week will be great. And sometimes I get loud and really excited. This week is gonna be more like a dad talk. My hope and goal is that the father’s heart would come through me and that I would talk to you in the same way that I would speak to one of our five kids. We’ve got kids that are high school, college, post-college they’re in that continuum, dealing with these issues continually. That being said let’s just jump into Romans 1:18, and he starts very calmly, easily, smoothly with the wrath of God. For the, I didn’t make it up, for the? The wrath of God. Now let me say this, some of you will get very angry, you said, I can’t believe that God has wrath, you do. Why not God? Democrats and Republicans have wrath right now. Right now our world is filled with wrath. Wrath is what happens when people feel something is wrong, and if we do not allow God to have wrath, what right do we believe that we have the right to have wrath? The wrath of God is revealed from heaven, so it’s a perfect wrath, it’s a just wrath. Against all ungodliness, that means that certain beliefs and behaviors are contrary to God. And unrighteousness, that means that they’re behaving in a way that is unacceptable to God. Of men who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth, we’ll talk about that, for what can be known about God is plain to them because God has shown it to them. For his invisible attributes, God is a spirit being with invisible attributes that are revealed in the visible world that he has made, just like a painting reveal something of the painter or a building reveal something of the architect. So the world reflects something of the Lord have been clearly perceived ever since the creation of the world in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse. So let me just say this, there is no excuse. We live in a world of victims where everybody has an excuse, and we just assume that if we have an excuse then we’re not morally responsible, we’re all morally responsible and none of us has truly an excuse for rebellious, unrighteous, ungodly conduct. First, he tells us about something that’s called general revelation, revelation exists in two forms. The difference between revelation and speculation is this, speculation is us guessing who God is or what God is like. Revelation is God revealing to us who he is and what he’s like. Well, we don’t need is more speculation about God, we need more revelation from God. And revelation from God exists into categories, there is general revelation, meaning that it is common available to all people, and then there is special revelation that is available to some people. Special revelation would include things like the Bible and Jesus Christ, general revelation exists in two forms. Internally, you have a conscience externally, God made creation, this is Romans one and Romans two. Here he speaks of general in Romans chapter one, and he talks about the creation. And he says, if you look at the world that God made it tells you some things about the character of God just simply by way of beginning, God is powerful, God is orderly, God is beautiful, God is meticulously in the details, God cares a lot about life and flourishing. You learn a lot about God from the world that he made, this is why some people who don’t know God, they still enjoy creation, they will tell you when they go out into the world that God made, they feel closer to God, it’s because it’s as close as they get to God. In addition, Romans two tells us about an internal witness of general revelation called the conscience. We’ll get to this in a few weeks, but he says that God has placed a conscience within us, to where we are moral beings, and we know that certain things are right, and certain things are wrong. One of the great hypocrisy is in our day, are people who deny God and get upset, that’s hypocrisy. Because if there is no such thing as a law giver, and there is no such thing as universal laws, then when you feel hurt, frustrated, offended, or that an injustice that occurred, who or what are you appealing to if you deny that there are laws and the law giver. Like I’m very upset this is wrong, no, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, you said there was no God and there was no right and wrong, so why are you upset? Hypocrite, the Christian who gets upset at least is consistent with a worldview because the conscience in us, it connects to the creator over us, and when we get upset and we cry out for justice, we’re appealing to the creator from the conscience that he gave us. In addition here, he is going to talk about truth. And what we have been told, a whole generation is the truth is subjective, not objective, that it does not extend beyond us, and the truth is the Bible says that God is truth and God reveals truth, and here what it says is our problem is that we suppress the truth. The problem that we tend to have is not mental, but it is moral, it is not that we do not know right and wrong, it is that we do not like right and wrong. And this is where we are hypocrites, we will appeal to the truth, when it benefits us, we will deny the truth when it benefits us. If I feel you are wrong I will call you to a moral standard, but if I have done something, I appeal to no moral standard because that’s what criminals do. And this is the world in which we live, when he’s talking here about suppressing the truth it was originally written in the Greek text and there’s a Greek English lexicon that says, that this word suppressed means to prevent someone from exercising power, I’ll get into it a little bit next week with something called critical theory. Critical theory has taken over all the academic disciplines in academia in the West, and it basically says that privileged groups have created institutions to oppress less privileged groups, justice is to rob them of power, to dismantle those institutions, and to redistribute the wealth and the power to those who were oppressed. At first was practicing Nazi Germany and they decided that the Jews were the oppressors. Critical theory does not lead to human life and flourishing, but what it does, it suppresses the truth, it wants to take money, power from those who have it, and it wants to redistribute it to others so that they can suppress the truth. Think of it in this way, we’re not just victims, we’re villains, suppressing the truth is like seeing two people who are fighting, let’s say on the shore of a beach, and one is named truth and the other is named lie, and you decide that you don’t like the truth and you do like the lie. So you walk up, you align yourself with the lie, you grab the truth by the throat and together the two of you drag it out into the water and suppress it under the water until it drowns and dies. That’s what human beings do with the truth. We grab it by the throat and we drown it, that’s suppression. It’s robbing it of its power and seeking to destroy it, so that you can rule over it. That’s exactly what Paul is talking about, it’s not that God has not spoken, it’s that we’re not obey. And truth is this and some of you will struggle with this, truth ultimately is that which corresponds to reality, philosophically there’s something called the correspondence theory of truth, and truth is that which corresponds with reality. Those who deny truth, they don’t deal with reality. So even today, things like, “Well, we don’t need police officers.” You’re denying the truth and you’re not dealing with reality. You’re not dealing with reality, if I told you I am a young Asian woman, okay? What would you say? “No, you’re not,” but if I tell you I’m a woman, you would say, “Okay, well, we’re okay with that.” What if I’m a woman in my heart? What if I’m an Asian in my heart? See this wasn’t funny, but this was. I’m young in my heart, see that’s really funny, okay? If I told you I’m a young Asian woman, you would say that’s not true because it doesn’t correspond with reality. And if I say, but I’m a woman in my heart you’d say, “Well, that’s your reality, we accept your reality,” that’s the suppression of the truth. Just so you know, I’m not young Asian or a woman, if so, pray for that girl she’s had a rough life, right? And so what we do, we exchange the truth for the lie and we don’t deal with reality, we now call this America. And the way the suppression happens, hashtags, movements, protests, candidates, social media throbbing, media bias. And exchanging the truth for the lie is ultimately demonic because Jesus says in John eight, that the lie is birthed by a man who is the father of all lies, what’s his name? Satan, that Satan is the father of lies, so when we exchange the truth of God for the lie, we are welcoming Satan to be the father of our destiny. And then we wonder why it feels like hell on earth, that’s where we live. And so ultimately the suppression of the truth is I acknowledged no authority beyond me, I acknowledge no authority over me. I will not allow a God who made me to judge me, I will make my own God to judge me. And that being said, what Paul is talking about is the human condition that culminates with the response of God in wrath. The many times we don’t talk about the wrath of God, people say, no, no, no, God is not wrath, God is love. The Bible speaks of God with a constellation of images, he does speak of God’s love, the Bible says that God is love, but the number one attribute of God that is mentioned more than any other is the holiness of God. 600 times in the Bible, the Bible uses a constellation of words to speak of the wrath of God. On more than 200 occasions, it’s a mega, not a minor theme. And love and wrath go together, because wrath and love are correlated. If you love someone then you need to pour out wrath to protect them, from that which is going to destroy them. Okay, so I love my children and if a pedophile showed up in their life, they would experience wrath from me. Because if I’m going to love them, I need to protect them and wrath is protecting whom I love from that which seeks to destroy them. And so all it is love and wrath are flip sides of the same coin, I love you so I hate this. If you’re going to be for something, you need to be against something else you need to be against that, which is going to destroy who or what you love. We see this at the cross of Jesus Christ, at the cross of Jesus Christ, we see the love of God and the wrath of God, that the love of God is Jesus Christ dying in our place for our sins, and we see the wrath of God poured out on the son of God, in our place for our sins. God hates sin because it wrecks and ruins his beloved, and because he loves us, he pours out his wrath. We see this at the cross of Jesus, there can be no love without wrath. And when there is wrath that is to protect that which is beloved. When he says that God has poured out his wrath, what he is talking about, is wrath in two forms, there is passive wrath, there is active wrath Romans chapter one talks about passive wrath, Romans chapter two talks about active wrath. Passive wrath is what occurs until active wrath, passive wrath is this, and he describes it this way, God’s wrath is revealed and he says three times in this section of Romans 1:18-32, God handed them over, God handed them over, God handed them over. Part of God’s wrath is letting you do whatever you want. Some people think, “God must not exist, he must not have a problem with my behavior because he hasn’t involved himself and he hasn’t stopped me. I haven’t experienced any wrath.” If he has not gotten in the way of you self-destructing you are experiencing the passive wrath of God. He’s taken a passive position in your life, he did the same thing with Judas Iscariot, the Lord Jesus did when he looked at Jesus, he said, “I know what you wanna do, so I’m gonna let you go do it,” that’s passive wrath. And what does Judas do, he self-destructs. See God not only saves, from Satan, sin, death held the wrath of God, God saves you from you. And God’s passive wrath is where he says, “I’m not going to get in your way, you do what you want.” And that’s self-destruction. That leads to active wrath that he speaks of in Romans 2:5 we’ll come to this next week, but I’ll read it to you briefly, he says, “You are storing up wrath for yourself on the day of wrath when God’s righteous judgment will be revealed.” Passive wrath leads to active wrath, Romans one, Romans two passive wrath is storing up wrath for the day of judgment. What I’m telling you is this, if you have any sin, particularly sexual sin, and you’ve not given it to the Lord, Jesus Christ and had him die on the cross in your place for your sins experiencing the wrath of God, so you could receive the love of God. That is not you, you are getting away with nothing, but you’re storing up everything, for the day of wrath, for the day of wrath. Think of it like a dam that is holding back a mighty river, and then one day the dam comes down and the flood ensues, that’s passive wrath, holding it back until active wrath it is released. Now some of you will struggle with this, because you’ve been told that God is a sky fairy. That God is just a very kind, passive being who lives on a cloud, and just has no ill will toward anyone or anything. God is not a sky fairy, he is a ruling and reigning God. It is a dreadful and fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God, you’re not just saved from Satan, sin, death, hell, and yourself, you’re saved from the wrath of God. You were saved by God, you are saved for God, you are saved from God, okay? And ultimately those who don’t understand the full power weightiness and the holiness of God, don’t have a full appreciation of their own salvation. Furthermore, they take themselves very seriously and they take God very lightly, this is the problem. People get very upset when they’ve experienced injustice, and they don’t concern themselves with the injustices they have committed toward God, they feel free to pour out their wrath on others, but then they have this belief that God has no right to pour out wrath on them, it’s total another hypocrisy, and it’s now an epidemic. So the way this works is either Jesus your wrath on the cross, or you get his wrath in hell. That’s how it works, and some of you would say “The Lord Jesus, he’s nice, he’s loving, he would never do that.” Revelation 14:10, “He also will drink the wine of God’s wrath, poured full strength into a cup of his anger, and he will be tormented with fire and sulfur in the presence of the holy angels, and the presence of the lamb.” Jesus not only rules over heaven, Jesus also rules over hell. Satan and demons rule nothing, they rule nowhere, they rule over no one ultimately and eternally. The only Lord is Jesus, and if he’s Lord overall that would include the wrath of God and hell. The torment in hell will be equivalent to the deeds committed while on this life, on the earth. That God’s justice his wrath, his punishment is perfect. Ultimately you need to know this, this language of the cup of God’s wrath being poured out full strength, this is what the Bible was speaking of when the Lord Jesus was headed to the cross he had his evening in Gethsemane, this garden of anguish, and he was up all night, sweating like drops of blood, and Jesus is kneeling in Gethsemane and he is praying, “Father, if it be your will take this cup from me,” that’s the cup of God’s wrath. Now think of it in this way, think of every single human being who has ever existed has a cup in the presence of God. And your name is on one of those cups, and every time you see an in thought word, deed or motive, every sin of coalition or omission, more wrath is poured into that cup. One of two things will happen, either you will receive the Lord Jesus Christ as your God and savior, and when he went to the cross, he drank full strength the cup of your wrath. That’s what Jesus was praying. “Father, if it be your will take this cup from me,” that was your cup with your name on it. If it be your will take this cup from me, but not my will, your will be done. Either Jesus drank the cup of wrath for you on the cross, or you will drink that cup for yourself in hell. And you will see Jesus as the triumphant Lamb of God, full of mercy, love and compassion, tormenting you forever because you rejected him during this life. You are not a victim, you are a villain. It is not that you accidentally end up in hell, it’s that you suppress the truth. My job is to tell the truth, your job is to make the most important decision you will ever make, and that is who you think the Lord Jesus Christ is, and whether you receive forgiveness of sin or you will receive punishment for sin. Then he moves forward to talking about how for most of us, this real test of Lordship in our life, is in matters of sexuality, and then what happens is, when the wrath of God is poured out, and the truth of God is suppressed, that ultimately sex replaces God, is the new religion. Romans 1:21-25, “For although they knew God,” you know something about God, looking at the role that he made, “They did not honor him as God, or give thanks to him,” no appreciation. “But they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened,” and now they don’t think so because they went to college, and they had futile thinkers called professors with foolish darkened hearts who told them that they were wise, we have entire departments devoted to deception, education is filled with intellect, but not wisdom, “Claiming to be wise,” very smart, very insightful, lots of degrees. “They became fools,” they were very offended by that word. “And they exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images, resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things,” they started worshiping creepy beings. And somebody would say, “That’s really weird,” really? What happens every Sunday, is we we worship the Cardinals and the Seahawks and the Lions and the Bears, “Da Bears!” It’s interesting that even our sports teams that we have with religious devotion, and we build stadiums too they have as their mascot, beast of the field and birds of the air. Next line, “Therefore God gave them up, in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie, and they worshiped and served the creature rather than the creator who is forever praised or forever blessed,” amen. What he’s talking about here is this, the two most important questions that you will ever need to answer in your life, is who is God and who am I? Who is God, who am I? And what he says here is this is a whole group of people, there are not the majority, you need to know that the world in its wisdom doesn’t know God that most of the people have been conformed to the image of this world. They’ve come to the conclusion that God is not worth honoring, that God is not worth thanking, that God is not worth obeying. That God is wrong and that God is repressive, and that God is restricting us from evolving into the next level of our greatness. The only thing holding us back is religion and guilt, sin, shame, tradition, and if we could simply unburden ourselves of those things related to God, then we would grow into the fullness of our full potential. This is the entire human potential movement, this is the entire self help movement, this is the entire self esteem movement. We don’t need self-help, we need God help, we don’t need self-esteem, we need God-esteem. Our problem is not that we’re not achieving our goodness, the problem is that we’re achieving our badness, and we need someone to save us from ourselves, his name is Jesus, the second question is who am I? And this is the decision he is articulating, I’m smart, I’m very wise, I read this and I disagree with it, that just shows how wrong it must be. As a result, I’m a highly evolved animal, and as a highly evolved animal, I should be free to do what I wanna do, because I know what’s best for me. Let me say this God’s plan for your life is better than your plan for your life, okay? So where he goes with this, he goes to the issue of worship. We tend to think of worship as song, song in church, it’s not, it’s lives lived on the earth. Worship is inclusive of singing, but it’s much bigger than that. Worship is who are what is the center of your life? Who or what is prominent or prominent, who are what do you devote yourself to, and make sacrifices for? Some people worship their pets, some people worship their spouse, some people worship their kids, some people worship their beauty, some people worship their spouses’ beauty. Some people worship their zip code, some people worship their grade point average, some people worship their lifestyle, some people worship themselves. We are all created the image and likeness of God, we were created to worship, we can’t help it, so we’re all worshipers, the only difference is who or what do we worship, how do we worship? The alcoholic, worships the bottle, the drug addict worships the needle, the sex addict worships the experience that they enjoy. The person who worships themselves, and is constantly filled with rage whenever they are criticized or oppose, they worship their own reputation. We all live for someone or something and the point is this, he divides here, all of humanity into two categories, we tend to think of things in terms of a spectrum, God thinks very binary like male, female, good, evil, heaven, hell, Holy Spirit, demonic spirits, God’s very binary in his thinking. And what he’s saying here is this, that there really only is two categories. Those who worship the creator, and they enjoy and steward creation or those who worship the created, in place of the creator. That’s it, this explains all religions, this explains all spiritualities, and all ideologies. Sometimes we create a philosophical or moral or spiritual system or even a political system, that’s a created thing. But the thing that we tend to worship the most is sex, because of everything God made, “He said it was good,” but when God made the human body, “He said it was very good.” The apex of God’s creation was the human body, the result is we tend to worship created things rather than the creator. Let me say this, this is the Bible’s language of idolatry. Idolatry is where we worship someone or something instead of God, and you need to know that usually who or what we worship is not a bad thing, it’s a good thing in God’s place. Sex is good, but a bad god Sex is good, it’s a good gift from God, but it’s a bad god. We tend to take a gift that God has given, or a thing that God has made, and we tend to replace it with God and as a result we take something that was good and we make it bad, this is what happens with sex all the time. So the number one thing that we are most likely, according to what Paul is saying, when we reject, suppress the truth, when we exchange the truth of God for a lie, when we live according to the disobedience, that leads to the wrath of God, that ultimately what happens is this. We worship sex, we worship sex. Now you tend not to see it as a spiritual issue, but the God of the Bible does. He’s gonna say this later in Romans 12, give you a thought that comes to mind. For many years I’ve had the honor of pastoring, largely younger people, my primary audience online is younger. I’ve had this conversation with many women but one woman in particular came up one day after a service many years ago said, “Pastor Mark, I don’t know what the big deal is, I’m dating my boyfriend, we moved in together, we sleep together,” she said, “I don’t know what the big deal is. You know, we’re just two consenting adults, nobody’s getting hurt and we’re having fun.” I said, what do you think about Jesus? She said, “Jesus is my God,” I said, “No, he’s not.” I said, “Because Jesus said something, and the boy said something, you decided to obey the boy instead of Jesus all of a sudden, your most important allegiance became to the boy, not to Jesus that means the boy’s lord of your life, Jesus is no longer Lord over your life.” I said so the Bible talks about idolatry in terms of adultery, she said, “Well, it’s my body, I said, “Actually it’s not, he’s the creator, he made your body,” and I said, “Well, you don’t understand is that the bed is an altar, that the boy is a priest, and that sex is the sacrament of pagan religion.” I said, “That’s why it says in Romans 12, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices for this is your spiritual act of worship.” What you do with your body is your act of worship. I said, “When you lay on that bed, he’s a pagan priest, that’s an altar, and your sex act is to a demon god, and that breaks the heart of Jesus, because you’ve replaced your relationship with a creator and you’ve traded it for a relationship with a boy that he created, everything is spiritual, nothing is just physical, ultimately everything is under the Lordship of Jesus. Now let me say this, this’ll be very controversial ’cause I haven’t seen anything controversial yet, so let me just say something controversial. God made us, it says in Genesis male and female, if we worship created, rather than creator we could come to the conclusion that God made a mistake with the way that he made me. Therefore I will remake myself, and recreate my gender my gender identity, my sex and my sexuality. And that’s idolatry, it’s saying, God made me the wrong way therefore, I’m going to remake myself the right way. It’s another way of saying I’m helping God repent of his sin against me, this is the reverse of the gospel. The gospel is we need to repent of what we have done wrong, no God needs to repent of what he has done wrong. See, we tend not to see it this way because we’re the villains, not the victims. Let me continue Romans one, the argument continues, “For this reason God gave them up,” he handed them over, he let them do what they want. Hashtags, parades, even steal his symbol of the rainbow. Everything God creates Satan counterfeits. God gave them up to dishonorable passions, some of you say, “Well, we love each other, we feel very passionate,” is it dishonorable? For their women, this is the only express forbidding of lesbianism in the Bible. The point is, you know it’s gotten really bad when the women are crossing the line. Some of you say, “This is very offensive,” Just consider this fact that you’re wrong and God is very offended. “For their women exchanged natural,” we’ll talk about that, “Relations for those that are contrary to,” what? “Nature, and the men likewise gave up natural relations with women and were consumed with passion,” we love each other, we’re very passionate, this feels right to us, “For one another men committing shameless,” that doesn’t mean pride, “Acts with men and receiving in themselves the due penalty for their error,” some of your translations will say perversion. In this little word, nature and natural, let me just tangentially share something with you that’s very timely, I was planning on teaching this book months ago, and then things kind of shut down on the earth, and now we’re kind of getting back to work, but this language of nature and natural, what it means is, not the way we are but the way that we were before sin entered the world. All the way back I was in college in late 80s early 90s, some of the first studies started coming on biology and gender and sexual identity, I think if memory serves me correct, one of the early researchers was a man named LeVay out of UCLA. And he said, well, we see these genetic indicators, and it’s like, yeah, but this is our fallen genetic nature. Nature is not how I am, nature is how we were before sin entered the world. We recently had a presidential candidate mayor Pete, who was gay and married and said he was a Christian and said, “God made me this way.” Well, the way we are today is not the way we were before sin under the world. So natural law is not the way that we are, it’s the way that we were before sin under the world. Now taking this language of nature and natural law, there was a philosopher and a theologian named Thomas Aquinas, he created something called natural law. And the whole auspices of natural law’s that God is the law giver, and that we have Romans 1:2 external witness of creation, internal witness of conscience, and that certain laws that are created by God are for human life and flourishing, as a result God made us male and female, so that we could procreate fill the earth and subdue it. It’s human life and flourishing. Out of that comes a whole legal theory called natural law. And now it’s the contentious debate point for the Supreme Court, because just hours ago there was a new nominee for the Supreme Court, and the debate will be seen in the upcoming week or weeks. It will be over the issue of natural law, Romans 1:2 is taken by Thomas Aquinas it builds a legal infrastructure and philosophical system called natural law, that then becomes the undergirding of Catholic education in the Catholic church, and if appointed though only 20% of the population, the Supreme court will have six of nine members being Catholic trained in Catholic schools, trained in the teaching of natural law through Thomas Aquinas based on Romans one and two. The battle that is brewing politically started 2000 years ago with natural law in Romans one and two. The point of telling you is this, this is not an old book, it’s an eternal book, because it’s eternal it’s not old, it’s timeless and as a result, it’s always timely. Now what he’s talking about here, he’s talking about sex, gender, and sexuality. So throw out the next slide. Let me explain this, sex until the recent era was biological, biological it was the way you were created male and female. This would include your sex chromosomes, this would include your gonads, your internal reproductive organs, and your external genitalium. 0.1 to 0.2% of children born have ambiguous genitalia. In addition, one to 2% have less ambiguous genitalia. But as a general rule your sex was previously determined by your birth, right? You come out, is it a boy or a girl? Is it a boy or a girl? You could look at them, and if you’ve had a kid, you know the difference, you could look at them, say, that’s a boy, that’s a girl. The result of your biological sex was then your gender flowed from your sex. So guys are to be masculine, and girls are to be feminine. This started in the hospital, the boy would be put in what color? Blue, the girl would be put in? Pink and then they’d be taken home, they’d be dressed in a way that was gender appropriate. And today it is no longer how you were made, it’s how you feel, it’s how you feel. And this is where people will say things like I’m a man trapped in a woman’s body that’s how I feel, that’s how I feel, God made me this way, but he made me wrong, now this contradicts the basic teaching of the Bible, because the Bible true or false, those of you who know anything about the Bible, does it say things to men and women? It assumes there are men and women, does it say things to husbands and wives, and assumes that there are husbands and wives, it says very offensive 1 Corinthians 16, “Act like men.” That’s what it says, that’s what we guys like, “I disagree.’ You need to read it again. The point is the Bible assumes that there are men and they should act like it. So that’s very offensive, not to God. See the point is this, either I will offend you or I will offend him, the question is never, will someone be offended? The question is who will be offended? And then as a result from that flow to your sexuality you’re born male, your gender is masculine, you would be sexually attracted to female. I know I’m talking crazy, okay? Since we’re just doing crazy, okay? You’re born female, your gender is feminine and you’re attracted to males, I’m talking crazy, I’m talking crazy, I know. Today so there’s a difference between the word and the world, here’s what I’m telling you. This is the only thing, only thing opposing complete gender, sexual, marital revolution, that is self destruction. This is the only thing that says no. In the word, sex is binary, male, female, and it’s fixed, it doesn’t change. In the world, it’s sexist fluid on a spectrum, an intersect spectrum, and you could slide on that spectrum, there’s no fixed, you’re not male or female, you’re sex can change. Gender according to the word is fixed, binary, masculine, feminine. Gender in the world it’s fluid on an unfixed spectrum. You may be like this today, that tomorrow, that the next day it’s constantly shifting for you. In the word sexuality is fixed between one man and one woman in marriage. Sexuality in the world it’s fluid on an unfixed spectrum, has nothing to do with marriage, has nothing to do with your sex, has nothing to do with your gender, okay? Here’s what I’m telling you, you can’t believe the word and the world. What does light have to do with darkness? What did those who call good, evil and evil good. That ultimately this is a battle between the world and the word, and you and I will need to decide, if we will side with the word or we will side with the world. Then he continues, let me just say this to you, just to give you, maybe just a practical. What happens is people will feel like God made me the wrong sex. Therefore I cannot act out my true gender, or experience my full sexuality, I have been closeted therefore I will come out, and the coming out is the religion of sex, and they’re counterfeit to baptism. Baptism is where what you believe in here gets proclaimed out there. You go public, you come out of the closet. Within the religion of sex, this is closeted until you have your coming out, and that is your version of baptism. It’s declaring to the world who you really are, okay? Then he continues, seven steps to rebellion riots and other hellish hobbies, Romans 1:28-32. How many of you are glad you don’t have my job today? Some of you like “I really wish I was a preacher next week.” “And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God,” how many people don’t even acknowledge God? “God gave them up to a debased mind, to do what ought not to be done. They were filled not with the spirit, but with all manner of unrighteousness, evil, covetousness, malice. They’re full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, maliciousness. They’re gossips, slanderers, haters of God, insolent, haughty, boastful, inventors of evil.” Does the Bible seem a bit judgy to you? It’s a bit judgy, “Disobedient to parents, foolish, faithless, heartless, ruthless.” Next slide please, “But they know God’s righteous decree, that those who practice such things deserve to die, they not only do them, but they have hashtags and parades, they give approval to those who practice them.” Step one, reject God, there’s no external authority over me, God is a repressive concept, holds us back, very primitive. It’s people in power, suppressing and abusing those who are under power, we need to get rid of any sense of God’s authority. Step two, I reject my parents and older generations and any previous traditions because in addition to rejecting God’s authority, I reject God’s delegated authority that includes parental authority. Step three, my mind is debased, but I’m going to feed it with a lot of things that cause it to think, that it is wise and liberated. I will find my YouTube channel, I will find my social media hashtags, I will find my university professors, I will find the people who tell me that I am right, that everyone is wrong, that I am good, that everyone else is evil, that I am a victim, that everyone else is my villain. Step four, I will rebel by dismantling all external authority, I’m going to fight and war picket, protest loot, and riot against everyone and everything that disagrees with me. Because I refuse to acknowledge any external authority. Number five, knowing that I do not have the power, to cause the change that I would like, I align myself with other people, who are militantly in agreement that together as a mob, we could create total chaos and dismantle everything that we believe is wrong. Number six, we will tear down all the institutions that carry forth the values that we disagree with, in the name of justice. And number seven, we will pressure everyone to approve of support and endorse what we believe, what we demand, and if not, there will be wrath poured out on them and hell to pay, this is a prophetic text that tells us not just what happened in the Roman empire, but what happens in every empire, this is not just telling us what used to happen, it tells us what always happens, this is a prophetic text that tells us exactly what is happening today, and it gives us categories to interpret what is happening in our own day, now saying this I’m halfway through my notes. So let me do this quickly, now, as I teach you this, many of you will immediately try to have an objection. “Oh, but pastor Mark, I disagree for this reason.” Let me run through the objections perhaps briefly, perhaps briefly, number one, some of you will say times have changed and we have evolved, my question would be, have times truly changed? When the Old Testament forbids sexual sin and the New Testament forbid sexual sin, it forbids it because they were doing the same things we are. Times really haven’t changed, under ancient Roman Empire, the Book of Romans was written to the great City of Rome, one of the most dominant cultural contributors to the Roman Empire was Greek culture. Greek culture was very, very pro gay. And in fact it was believed that men were better than women, so the highest sex was between men therefore most young boys were encouraged to lose their virginity to a man who was older. Times haven’t changed, number two has God changed. I don’t think God, God’s the same yesterday, today and forever, when God made the world, he made it right. And number three, are times better? They may be different, but they’re not better. Highest rates of domestic violence and abuse is in cohabitation, cohabitation is not practice for marriage is practice for divorce. Of those who are sexually active 50% will have an STD by age 25. 110 million Americans have a sexually transmitted disease, we abort one out of four of our children, the majority of children born to women under age 30 are born out of wedlock without a father, which is the number one demarcation of who will have a good and a painful future. Sexual assault is the most under reported crime, one in four women reports it, one in six men reports it, and that we have massive sex trafficking, we have an increase in pedophilia with kids online for distance learning and school, predators are absolutely eviscerating children. You know, when my kids were little, they would watch the Little House on the Prairie. There was mom and there was pa’, and they would go to church on Sunday and then the church was open during the week to educate the kids. And today your kids are watching Cuties on Netflix, and I’m not sure things are better. We’ve got little girls twerking in the name of entertainment times have changed, I don’t believe in evolution, I believe in devolution, I believe that God made everything perfect and we’ve been going down ever since. I don’t think that God made everything bad, and we’re fixing his problems. Number two, because God is loving, he must be tolerant, what? An increasingly young generation has done, they’ve taken love and tolerance and they’ve made them synonyms in fact, they’re antonyms. The Bible rarely refers to tolerance on the few occasions that it does, it’s God rebuking his people for tolerating sexual sin. I don’t write the mail, I just deliver it. Romans 2:20, I have this against you God says, you tolerate Jezebel, who calls herself a prophetess and is teaching and seducing my servants to practice sexual immorality. Today, she’s a bishop in some denominations. She’s a professor at some seminaries. Everyone agrees, let me say this as well, the counterfeit of repentance is tolerance. The Bible says you’re wrong and you need to change, tolerance says you’re not, you’re fine. You can’t be a Christian without repentance. Tolerance is the neutralizer of repentance. The truth is this, God loves you so much he’ll take you as you are, but he loves you too much to leave you as you are. The beloved is Jesus Christ and he loves you so much he wants you to be like his son. That God loves you enough to take you as you are, but he loves you too much to keep you as you are. Here’s the point, love does something for someone that tolerance cannot, and it changes them so that the best version of them emerges. Ultimately this issue of tolerance, it’s something that we all do agree is good. Now let me say this, we all agree that some intolerance is good, is it okay to smoke in a hospital? Smokers find that very intolerant. Is it okay for convicted sex offenders to be kindergarten teachers? No, we don’t tolerate that, okay, so you do believe in intolerance. You just don’t like when it applies to you. See we all agree that some intolerance is necessary, and good, and what has happened is, that the dictionary definition of intolerance and tolerance has changed. Tolerance used to be, I think you’re wrong, but I’m gonna let you think what you think, and now tolerance is you’re not right or wrong, I’m not right or wrong, I celebrate you, you celebrate me. That’s why there’s so much pressure today, unless I celebrate and support you, I’m intolerant. Unless I use your hashtag and march in your parade, I’m intolerant, and my point would simply be, if you’re so insecure in your beliefs that you need my approval, you should reconsider your convictions. You can Google me, I’m not very well liked in certain circles. And I don’t care, because ultimately all I care about is what God says at the end, not what anyone says along the way. All right, let’s keep going, Jesus was silent on homosexuality, “Pastor Mark Jesus didn’t say anything.” He didn’t say anything about rape, pedophilia, and arguments from silence is by definition, a fallacy proves nothing, Jesus said nothing about nuclear warheads, doesn’t mean he’s for them. Here’s what Jesus does say, from the beginning, he goes back to what? Before sin under the world and everything went wrong. God made them what? Male and female, oh, he’s back to Genesis one, he’s real literal kind of binary and judgy. Therefore a lot, well, where’s the spectrum Jesus? A man seems very narrow, is it a person who feels like a man in their heart? No a man shall leave his father and mother, well that’s… That’s male and female too. But I mean, this guy’s got a real hangup with this male female thing, hold fast to his wife, the two shall become one flesh. Jesus said we’re male female, and marriage is for one man, one woman. And he did talk about it Luke 17, the town of Sodom and Gomorrah, I won’t get into all of this, it’d be fun, but it’s already been an hour. Sodom was a city where God sent angels, and the men all came out young and old and wanted to sexually assault these angels that they thought were visiting men. Since that time, sodomy has been in reference to the events that they were seeking to have transpired in Sodom. And then some commentators come along and they say, “No, no, no it was in hospitality, that was the sin. Well that might’ve been one of the sins, but that wasn’t the big one.” There’s a guy named Robert Gagnon, he teaches at the seminary in Pittsburgh it’s a very liberal school, he went through all of the biblical texts, almost 500 pages, and as an academic scholar in a liberal, liberal school. And he came to this conclusion, nope. Two men is impossible to arrive at a conclusion from the Bible that is acceptable in the sight of God. That’s just, let me say this, you can have the world, or you can have the world, but you can’t have both. Talks about Sodom and Gomorrah, and he says that Jesus tells us that he will judge similarly at the end of time, Jesus was an Old Testament rabbi. Jesus accepted the teachings of the rabbis, Jesus didn’t make any correction, because it wasn’t in debate. Robert Gagnon says that in the hundreds of years leading up to and after Jesus, there was no debate among the scholars in Judaism about these matters. It was not even debated. Number four, some of you would say, but sex and gender civil rights issues, and these are the civil rights issues of our generation. Well, the problem for the Christian is this that what the social justice warriors will do, they’ll put things together that God does not. The Bible does not support homosexuality or racism, and the problem is when the social justice warriors put them together, they’re like yes or no, and the Christian say yes and no. 1 Timothy 1:9-10 talks about “The ungodly, the sinners, the unholy, the profane, those who strike their fathers and mothers, murderers, the sexually immoral, men who practice homosexuality, and enslavers,” or slave traders the two are together. And what’s happening now for example with Black Lives Matter as a social justice movement, it’s brought these two issues together. I hate this when I read from their website their mission statement, that they’ve sinners rewritten taken down and Google has complicitly worked with them to make it a 404 classification meaning it’s disappeared and been erased from the internet. But I took a screenshot, you’re welcome, so let me just share a few things with you. They said and I quote, “We do the work to dismantle cisgender,” male, female, God-given. “We disrupt the Western prescribed nuclear family structure” mom, dad, kids, which is the only way you get kids by the way. They go on to say that they are, “We are freeing ourselves from the tight grip of heteronormative thinking,” male, female, male, female. These issues coming together, create a very difficult position, especially for black pastors who love Jesus and believe the Bible, this was the man who first employed me as a pastor, was black pastor, first pastor I worked for was a black pastor. I said, he’s gone home to be with the Lord and I miss him. And he grew up in Alabama during the South in the 50s and 60s during Jim Crow and segregation. He knew racism and he knew the implications of systemic racism, generationally firsthand, and he would testify that he hated white people, and then he met Jesus, and God changed his heart. And I remember when he first hired me, he would give me the honor of sometimes of going to meetings with black pastors, I’d be the one young white guy in the room, just there to learn, he’s like, “You’ve gotta come and learn some things.” “Yes I do, so I’m just not gonna say anything, I’m in my 20s and I’m white I have nothing to say.” And the pastors would get together and they would talk about how frustrating it was that the race issue and the gender and sexuality issue had morphed into one issue, and how frustrated they were by that. And he particularly knew this very very well because he was black and he was raised in the South and he married a white woman, she was German, he was black, his joke was always, “We have German chocolate kids.” That was always his joke. I love him with all my heart, I miss him. But for those of you who are younger these issues come together, but they’re separate for God and they should be separate for God’s people, okay? Sex is inevitable, just hit this. You don’t have to have sex, I know this is a crazy idea. He talks about eunuchs, this can be castration, impotence, or celibacy, here’s what I’m telling you, you don’t have to have sex, you’re not having it right now. You can do this. You’re like, “I can’t stop myself.” You go at the grocery store, just keep doing it that. Most perfect life to ever live, Jesus Christ, true or false he was a virgin. Perfect life virgin. The guy who writes Romans, celibate, probably was married previous, I won’t get into all of it. But at that point Paul was single and he celibate, you can worship God or sex, but if you worship sex, you’re gonna deny God, so that you can just pursue your real God. I hate the God made me this way, let me just hit number seven. Sex, gender and sexuality should be open-handed not closed handed, what we’re talking about Genesis one and two, God, creation, gender, male, female, marriage, Satan, demonic, deception that’s Genesis one, two and three. Genesis one two, and three shows us how it was supposed to be, if we get rid of that, we have no idea how we should be. We have no baseline for normal. I disagree with where the Bible draws moral lines, a lot of people say this, well, the truth is we don’t live on an island. If your son feels like they’re a girl in their heart, and they wanna go take a shower in the locker room with my daughter, their worlds intersect. If you feel like the educational curriculum and the K through 12 schools should advance your lifestyle, and I feel like it should advance mine and we both have kids in the school, our ideologies conflict, we’re not islands unto ourselves. If I feel like I’m a woman and I compete in athletics against other women, let’s say it’s MMA, these things are happening, you don’t live on an island, we have to live together, and the point is this, we don’t disagree that lines need to be drawn, we just disagree where the lines are drawn. Seemed like, well, marriage should be a man and a woman or a man and a man or a woman, a woman, here’s what I’m telling you polygamy is next, it’s coming in our lifetime, it’s inevitable, we don’t have any norms or morals, and now there’s this whole movement to change the line for the age appropriateness for those that would qualify as adults. 18, why not 16, 16, why not 14, 14, why not 12? 12, why not Seven? It’s all arbitrary, there is no universal law giver or universal laws. Let me close with this maybe. Sex is a physical issue, it’s not a spiritual issue. See, this is the great lie that you’re a highly evolved animal, you’re made in the image likeness of God. You’re one person, two parts of body and a soul, and sex is not just physical, it’s also spiritual. We’ll give you a revelation that God gave me the other morning when I woke up and I was praying for you. And 1 Peter 5:13, Peter writes to those who are in Babylon, and the Holy Spirit brought it to mind, he was writing to those who were in the Roman empire. The early Christians referred to the nation of Rome as Babylon, it was code word. Babylon was an ancient nation of the Old Testament of the days of Daniel, Babylon took over God’s people and slave them, the first thing they did they took Daniel and they castrated him, they gave him a gender reassignment surgery. They wanted to make him from a male to a non-male. The spirit of Babylon lives on, Babylon was an ancient nation that sought to change, Daniel’s Sachs’ gender and sexuality. But behind Babylon is a demonic spirit that is at work in every nation and every age. This is why long after the Babylonian empire which has mentioned 227 times in the Bible, Revelation 14:8 says at the end of history, “Fallen, fallen is Babylon the Great, she who made all nations drink the wine of the passion of her sexual morality.” There’s a powerful, demonic spirit at work in the world, the name of that spirit is Babylon, and that spirit is trying to get everyone to be sexually confused and addicted and self destructing. And it wants to establish sex as a religion that overtakes God. It says this same thing in Revelation 17:3-5, “In the spirit, I saw a woman sitting on a Scarlet beast full of blasphemy names, the woman was a raid in purple and scarlet,” that indicates power and wealth. “And adorn with gold jewels and pearls holding in her hand a golden cup full of abominations and impurities of her sexual immorality, Babylon the Great the mother of prostitutes, and of the Earth’s abominations.” Sex is a religion that is seeking to take over the earth, and it is ruled by a spirit in the same way that God is a King with a kingdom ruled by the spirit that is supposed to overtake the earth. Everything God creates Satan counterfeits. Revelation 18 tells us that the war at the end will be between God and the religion of sex. “Fallen, fallen is Babylon the Great she’s become a dwelling place for demons, a hot for every unclean spirit, all nations have drunk the wine of the passion of her sexual immorality and the kings of the earth, have committed immorality with her, and the merchants of the earth have grown rich from the power of her luxurious living.” Very rich and powerful this religion is. Amazon web services accounts for 40% of all internet traffic, 70% of their profits come from… Their server farms, the reason that they are able to undercut so much of business is because they host most of the porn industry. Babylon the Great has found her way online. Babylon the Great has found her way global. Babylon the Great has seduced and enticed everyone to join the religion of sex, by sacrificing your sex your gender, and your sexuality on the alter of pleasure. I love you, I got a lot more, I’m gonna give a lecture on Wednesday night for the men, I’ve got the rest of the sermon, I’ll finish it. I’m gonna pray for you now, because here’s what I’m telling you, the spirit of Babylon has in some way, affected and infected all of us. The spirit of Babylon has confused and recruited to varying degrees all of us. The spirit of Babylon has sought to convert in varying ways every single one of us, true or false. Father God, we thank you that you are a God who loves, we thank you that you are a God who creates, we thank you that you are a God who forgives, we thank you that you are a God who heals. And Holy Spirit I declare this a sacred moment, it’s a long sermon but God, these are such important things. So many people are just confused, so many people are addicted, so many people are abused, so many people are self-destructing, and so many people are so proud of things that are harming them. And Lord God, I’m a pastor I love people, I believe that your way is the best way, I believe that your word is the true truth, I believe that your Son is the real Savior, I believe that your kingdom is the only hope, Lord, God, I pray against the enemy of servants their works in effects, I pray that we would see that our war is not against flesh and blood people have powers, principalities and spirits that there’s a war behind the war. And Lord God there’s a powerful religion called sex, that has risen up in this world, it’s found a way to go global, it’s found a way to be profitable, it’s found a way to recruit into entice and to confuse. And so we say in the strong name of Jesus, the Lord rebuke you spirit of Babylon, the Lord rebuke you spirit of Babylon, bringing confusion, bringing addiction, bringing division, bringing destruction, Lord God, we have plenty of sex, we have plenty of porn, we have plenty of parades, we have plenty of hashtags, we have plenty of curriculum, we have plenty of sex, we have plenty of strip clubs, we have plenty of CD massage parlors, we have plenty of fornication, we have plenty of cohabitation, we have plenty of adultery. We need more of the spirit, and Lord Jesus thank you, that we worship a God who died a virgin. And we asked for that same power of the Holy Spirit to live in fidelity and to live in holiness and to live in purity, and to not worship the created, but to worship our creator. And Lord God, I repent of my sexual sin before knowing you, we all have it Lord God, it’s not a good people versus bad people, it’s bad people who all need Jesus. And Lord I thank you for 28 years of faithful marriage, to my best friend, Grace, and I thank you that Lord God, you can heal, you can forgive, you can deliver, you can transform, you can change lives and legacies. That’s why Holy Spirit I ask that you would do that for the people in the room, the people that hear online please replace the spirit of Babylon with the spirit of God. Please give us clarity where we are confused. Please give us freedom where we are enslaved. And please give us Jesus where we have sex, in his good name, amen.
– [Congregation] Amen.
