Dennis Tuuri

I think if the church generally were to sing the psalms more, including that one, much of our present difficulties would disappear. Today’s sermon text is Leviticus 18:22. Please stand for the reading of God’s word. Our topic is the Bible and homosexuality. Leviticus 18:22. You shall not lie with a male as with a woman. It is an abomination. Let’s pray.

Father, we thank you for your most holy word. We thank you that it is holy, just, good, an indication of your love to us, Lord God, to instruct us in the ways in which we walk. Help us to understand your scriptures today in spite of all the confusion that seems to fly around today in this country. Bless us with understanding of the basic principles here of your Bible and sexuality. In Jesus’ name we ask it and for the sake of his kingdom, not ours. Amen.

Please be seated. So today is the big float in Portland. I don’t know if you’ve heard about this or not. Kind of a cool deal. You know, we’ve got this great river, the Willamette. And people in years gone by, not so much in more recent years, but in years gone by, there used to be frequently sewage overflow into the river. So there would occasionally be sewage dumps into the Willamette. And so people have been afraid of the river. It’s not clean. And so what they’ve been trying to do in Portland is have events for the last few years to get people into the water because it is safe now.

So today’s the big float and the idea is to get an inner tube or a device of some sort and float down the Willamette River and it’s a good event. I think it’s a really good thing to do and it is a beautiful city God has placed us in the context of with the beautiful river and it has become very clean but it’s an illustration I think of where we’re at with the difficulty over the same-sex marriage decision by the Supreme Court and various churches and Christians seeming to rejoice in that decision.

I think partly what’s happening is probably from say 18 to 30, maybe in that age you know I think that to a certain extent there’s a great temptation to just float along with the culture and there’s a current, right? There’s strong currents and we just sort of float along. I mean, it seems like there’s nothing we can do anyway, so why not just float down the river and not worry about the whole thing? But what you end up with is realizing you’re floating in a particular direction and into particular kinds of waters.

I decided to do a sermon on the Bible and homosexuality because I don’t think we’ve really addressed it as such for quite a long time. And so, the next generation, the ones after my age and then the ones coming up after that. I thought it would be good just to lay a kind of baseline of understanding of what the word of God says.

Ultimately, the situation we’re in, I think represents a serious attack on the reliability of the Bible itself. So, I want to start by revaluing the book of Leviticus, so reevaluating—revaluing rather—the scriptures but specifically reevaluating Leviticus.

So I could have gone to Romans 1 or 1 Timothy 1 or 1 Corinthians 6 or lots of places to talk about homosexuality. There’s a lot of verses in the Bible about it both specifically and using generalized terms that were used at the time of the writing of the New Testament for instance. But I wanted to start with the more difficult texts, the ones that we’re not supposed to talk about because we’re ashamed of Leviticus and it’s kind of a goofy book and who knows what that thing’s all about.

And so there’s just a general attempt to denigrate the book of Leviticus in broader Christian cultures, not just in the culture, the secular culture, but even in Christian cultures. Old Testament book got those crazy things about how you can’t wear a suit with two different kinds of fabric, etc. And so I want to start just by revaluing Leviticus a bit.

I shouldn’t have to do this, right? Because after all, it is part of the holy canon. It’s part of all 66 books of the Bible, spoken by God. And actually, it’s kind of funny. You know, people say, “Well, Jesus didn’t really talk about this topic.” And so, if you have probably people don’t have them much anymore, but there are these red letter Bibles, where you’re looking through the scriptures, you get to the New Testament, you get to the Gospels, and the things Jesus actually says are in red letters.

You’ve seen this, I’m sure. Well, some of you have. And so, we have a tendency to think those are the really important words—the red letter words, right? Because that’s actually quoting Jesus. And the rest, well, you know, we’re not quite so sure. Even if you don’t think that self-consciously, I think that kind of drifts in. I’m not big on red letter Bibles. But if we do have a red letter Bible, if you have one, and if you use one, you should take a light red marker, not a magic marker—what a felt pen, a highlighter—and go to Leviticus and highlight all the direct quotes from God.

No man has seen God at any time, the Father. But the Son has revealed him. So I think that what we see when we see theophanies in the Old Testament or we see God speaking, it’s really the second person, I think. Not sure, but it’s the triune God at least. So it’s a direct quote. Go through Leviticus and with your highlighter and highlight the words that God spoke. It’s almost the entire book. So I really shouldn’t have to revalue Leviticus.

These are direct speeches from God. They’re red letter words in our Bible and they’re part of the canon, but we do have to first talk about Jesus and Leviticus. So, did Jesus have any regard for Leviticus? Yes, as it turns out, he did. Several times in the New Testament, Jesus refers back to Leviticus and what he’s saying. Now, a lot of those times, there’s two specific things going on in Leviticus which are actually found in the same section of Leviticus as the prohibition against homosexuality.

And those two things that you’ll see not just with Jesus but in the New Testament generally referring back to and sometimes quoting directly from Leviticus. Those two things you older folks should know them, right? What are they? “Be holy for I the Lord your God am holy.” The beginning of Leviticus 19. And “love your neighbor as yourself.” These are both citations used by Jesus referring back to Leviticus and other New Testament writers referring back to Leviticus.

So, Leviticus is a valuable book. Jesus thought so. He cited it a number of times. Other New Testament writers did. And it’s the baseline for calls for us to be holy and for calls to us to love one another. So, the Lord Jesus was big on Leviticus. And he even can be said to have incorporated the stuff we’re talking about today when he gives the prohibition for divorce on anything other than porneia.

Porneia was a broad term. We think of it as fornication, adultery, but it was a broad term for all sorts of sexual sin, transgressive sexuality, including homosexuality. That’s what the word was defined as—all these perversions. So when Jesus cites the original marriage plan by God and then says that marriage covenant can be broken through porneia, he’s actually incorporating all these sexual restrictions that we find in Leviticus 18.

So Leviticus was an important book to Jesus. Leviticus is the beating heart of the Pentateuch. So the Pentateuch are the first five books of the Bible. Penta right—pentagram—five. Pentateuch—five books. So these are the first five books of the Bible and they sort of form the original sort of canon, the original kind of structure of the Bible which then articulates what’s going on in the Pentateuch. So the Pentateuch: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy.

And we spend a lot of time talking about Genesis, sometimes about Exodus. Leviticus now we’re starting to get bored. Numbers we’re really bored because there’s a lot of census and stuff. Deuteronomy sort of get interested again because he recites the Ten Commandments. But Leviticus is the heart of that.

Okay. If you know the structures laid out in the scriptures, small structures, big structures, a lot of times the center of something is quite important. And the center, the beating heart of the Pentateuch we could say is the book of Leviticus and the beating heart of Leviticus. Okay, so Leviticus is the center of the Pentateuch. You’ll see this in by the way in RCC Sunday school curriculum we have charts that show this. If you look at Leviticus, it’s the center and then if you look at if you outline the book of Leviticus, the very center of Leviticus I think is what’s called the holiness code in chapters 18 through 20.

So that’s kind of the center of the center of the Pentateuch and our verse today is found in that center by the way—18:22. So 18, 19, 20—18 and 20 a lot about sexual sin. 19 we’ve talked about this many times in this church—70 different kind of sermonic discussions that can be tied back to the Ten Commandments. There’s a chart in our Sunday school curriculum where I do this where I take the specific 70 line them up under the Ten Commandments etc.

So at any event the beating heart—Leviticus is important to Jesus. Leviticus is the center of the Pentateuch. The holiness code in which today’s prohibition against homosexuality is found is the heart of Leviticus. And then if you look at the way 18 to 20 is structured, there’s a really good case to be made that the actual literary center of Leviticus is Leviticus 19:18, which says this: “You shall not take vengeance nor bear any grudge against the children of your people. You shall love your neighbor as yourself. I am the Lord.”

There it is. When we read “you shall love your neighbor as yourself,” that’s where it comes from. And Jesus when he refers back to it is referring to the beating heart at the center of the Pentateuch. So let’s have some estimation. Let’s have some, you know, appreciation. Let’s speak up when people try to dismiss Leviticus as a bunch of stupid things that God said at one point in time.

Leviticus is important. We know that in this church because another chart in our Sunday school curriculum on Leviticus shows how Leviticus is a book about worship. If you want to know about wisdom, you’d read Proverbs—I mean, you’d read Jesus, of course, the New Testament, but you’d read Proverbs. It’s the Old Testament book on wisdom. If you want to know about worship, Leviticus in the first few chapters, you know, Jesus or God at least—the triune God, the second person of the Trinity—reveals how we’re supposed to worship.

Now, things change. It was in a particular administration of Levitical priests. And so, things change, but the basic principle of how we worship at RCC is directly related back to the first few chapters in Leviticus and we think this is found throughout the scriptures but very clearly in Leviticus. If you think that our worship is at all biblical and is aligned along biblical lines and our whole denomination by the way does think that we have a worship memorial and a group of churches that consistently practice what’s become known—wasn’t this when we started it up? We got it. Anyway, it wasn’t always known this, but now it’s called covenant renewal worship. And the whole denomination worships that way.

And that way we worship is all based on Leviticus. So, you know, if you want to just junk Leviticus or devalue it, you’re going to lose lots of stuff. You’re going to lose the right way to worship. You’re going to lose loving your neighbor as yourself. And at the beginning of Leviticus 19, it tells us, “be holy because I’m the Lord your God. I’m holy.” Directly related to statements in the New Testament. So, let’s have some, you know, a high view. Let’s value that. Value Leviticus. If you’ve been tempted because of the sloganeering that’s gone on for the last 10 or 15 years in this country, let’s—if you’re tempted to do that—revalue Leviticus.

So, covenant renewal worship. And then four, Leviticus and holiness. And I’ve got Leviticus 19:2 on your outline and 1 Peter 1:16. We’re going right through this outline today. A lot of material, but we can cover it if we go through it point by point. So, hopefully you’ve got the outline. Hopefully, the little older children or younger children can do the fill in the blanks. Others can do the coloring about the value of God’s law and the significance of it.

But number four on the outline here under revaluing Leviticus is Leviticus and holiness. And as I said, Leviticus 19:2 says this at the beginning of the middle of the book of Leviticus: “Speak to all the congregation of the children of Israel and say to them,” and here’s the quote marks. So if you got your Bible, you got your highlighters, here’s where you start putting the light red ink over the thing here.

“You shall be holy for I the Lord your God am holy.” And by the way, I wanted to read the next verse. “Every one of you shall reverence his mother and his father and keep my Sabbath. I am the Lord.” The very first instruction on how to be holy has to do with commandments five and four. This is a restating, a restructuring, a nouthetic description of how the Ten Commandments apply in terms of our holiness to God.

And so kids, if you want to know how you’re supposed to be holy, you hear that all the time. I got to be holy. Well, one of the ways you’re to be holy is to reverence your parents. It’s a strong word. And the other way you’re supposed to be holy is to keep the Lord’s day, right? The Christian Sabbath, all those Sabbaths of the Old Testament coalesce in what we do on the Lord’s day. There it is. That’s the beginning.

Now, there’s more. There’s 68 more things in Leviticus 19. But the point is again revaluing Leviticus because it really is the book, the preeminent book in a discussion of holiness and it’s quoted of course in 1 Peter 1:16-18 because it is written: “be holy for I am holy” and “if you call on the Father who without partiality judges according to each one’s work, conduct yourselves throughout the time of your stay here in fear, be holy by being careful what you do, understand the holiness code, understand the things God says is bad—don’t do it. It’s bad. Don’t do it. Conduct your time in fear. Be holy. Reverence God.”

Okay. Holiness needs to be set apart to something. We’re set apart to God. God’s character is reflected in the law. We’re to reflect God’s character in the way we walk. And we’re to be holy and thus conduct ourselves in fear, a proper fear of God, knowing that “you were not redeemed with corruptible things like silver or gold from your aimless conduct received by tradition from your fathers.”

So he says that the basis for this—if we’ve been saved, if we’ve been redeemed by the precious blood of Jesus, does that make it more important or less important to think about how we walk? It makes it more important. The basis for our desire to please the Father is the redemption that’s been accomplished in the Lord Jesus Christ. The story of the Bible is a holy God sent his holy Son to redeem a fallen sinful world to make them holy, so ultimately we could live in eternity in holiness with him. And you take all of that away or at least you really dampen a lot of that by removing or devaluing the book of Leviticus.

So holiness and love found right at the heart of Leviticus in the same section—the holiness code—that we’ve talked about in terms of this. So holiness. Okay, so that’s general statements about revaluing Leviticus. And I’ve already done this to a certain degree, but let’s again look at Leviticus 18:22 specifically now in context.

And if you were to look at your scriptures in Leviticus 18, what you would find is a series of increasing prohibitions of increasing, you know, kind of horribleness relative to sexual sin. Now, both, as I said, both before and after Leviticus 19, the other portions of the Holiness Code talk about sexuality, and that’s an affront to modern man. You know, that’s private stuff. It’s really personal freedom.

But God says you’re, you know, how you engage in sexuality is very important because marriage itself is the basic foundational building block of everything else. So all attacks on marriage through improper sexuality, you know, are seen as quite bad. And in Leviticus 18, the verse we read, “don’t lie with a man as with a woman,” is found in a movement of increasingly bad things to do relative to sexuality.

You know, it starts with ritual uncleanness, a statement about that. But then after that, it moves to moral uncleanness. We should talk about uncleanness very briefly. Uncleanness—the things that are unclean—are things that are affected by the fall and death. And you can actually look and I think we’ve got a chart in the Sunday school curriculum. Hopefully you all download it this week and look at all these cool charts. It was fun putting them together. But I think we have a chart that shows, you know, the prohibitions relative to cleanliness or uncleanliness in Leviticus and tie it back to the creation account and the fall of man. And so uncleanness means manifesting death or the effects of the fall.

Now there’s two kinds of uncleanness. Some uncleanness is just—it happens. The fall happened and everything in our lives, sexuality, child rearing, relationships, you know, friend relationships—they’re all affected by the fall. And so there were elements until Jesus came to definitively cleanse the world. There were elements of ritual uncleanness in the Old Testament. A woman, you know, if she had a baby, was unclean, couldn’t go to worship for 40 to 80 days depending on the sex. So, and she didn’t do anything wrong. You know, you happen to touch a dead animal, you didn’t necessarily go out and seek out a dead animal, but uncleanness sort of flowed.

And God was showing us the severity of the uncleanness that happened from the fall and the need for the redeemer to come and roll back all the effects of sin, including ritual uncleanness. So, some of the laws in Leviticus are about ritual uncleanness, resulting not from sin, but just from the fallen condition in which we live. Other acts in Leviticus are unclean morally. There’s a moral decision, you know, as the verse we’re talking about today—a decision to do something that’s prohibited. That’s also an effect of the fall, right? It’s a direct effect of the fall. Now, you’re sinning and that’s uncleanness, too.

But in any event, getting back to the context of verse 22. So, it starts this section when you—if you want to read it later on today, read through the whole chapter 18, chapter 20—but in 18 as in 20 there’s an increasing degree of bad things you’re not supposed to do in terms of sexuality.

So after ritualness, what’s discussed next in Leviticus 18 is adultery. Then it talks about the product of sexual relationships with its children and it condemns child sacrifice. That’s the next thing that’s condemned. Then our verse, verse 22, condemning homosexuality. And then after that the next verses are about bestiality. and then at the end of that section he says “if you do these things this is what the Canaanites did. I’ll vomit you out of the land.”

So if you do these things, engage in these increasingly reprehensible acts of sexual misconduct, okay? If you do that then I’m going to vomit you out of the land. It’s a simple text. All it’s saying is you know adultery bad. Killing your children bad, homosexuality bad, bestiality bad, and these things are bad enough to where if this is what happens to you, I’m going to kick you out of the land because that’s what the Canaanites did.

Now, the Canaanites didn’t just do this stuff in their worship centers. This was not ritual stuff that they did in worship and thus the prohibition would be against what we do in worship. No, the Canaanites did it in the temple, but they also did it in their homes. Using the illustration. All right. So, it’s the same thing here. Sure, there are verses in the Old Testament that talk about ritual acts of homosexuality in worship and speaks against them. This verse doesn’t. This is a blanket prohibition against all forms of homosexuality, whether it happens in the temple or whether it happens in the house. Okay?

And it’s so bad these particular sins as they build up that God will take judgment against them. Right? He’ll make judgment against it. So there are increasing degrees of sexual sin. And the end result of those increasing degrees of sexual sin is if you allow this to predominate in your country, God will spew you out of the land that he’s given to you by spewing out a nation before you that did the same sorts of sins.

Secondly, this verse says it’s an abomination, right? That’s what it says in verse 22. It says, you know, “don’t lie with a man as with a woman” because it says then “it is an abomination.” Now the word abomination is used in the holiness code generally. These are the abominations. These are abominations. Only one verse has a particular act of sexual sin that is singled out as an abomination. And it is verse 22.

So the Bible singles out in the holiness code in chapter 18 homosexual sin as the only one that has the specific reference attached to it. It’s an abomination. Now, there’s a reason for that. And I think Romans 1 makes clear that it’s sort of the beginning of a long really horrible sort of slide into all sorts of depravity. So, homosexual sin is more significant than adultery, less significant than bestiality, but it’s the one that will immediately then begins to say this is an abomination.

So, it’s singled out for that and the only one—the only specific action that’s singled out in the holiness code as an abomination. Now, what’s going on in all of this? Why is Leviticus 18 there? Well, the Bible has given to us in Genesis the way marriage ought to be, right? And we know that we can draw all kinds of implications from the Genesis account of Adam and Eve. And we can build an understanding of how we’re supposed to behave in marriage through that account.

By the way, one of the best things we can do to strengthen marriage is to strengthen our own marriages. Next Sunday is the first in a six-week series going through Sacred Marriage videos and study guides in the Aerie. I’ll be teaching there. And so if you want to come out, you know, if you’ve wanted to pray with your wife or your husband, just has never been able to pull it off very well. If you want to, you know, discuss things about the Bible, this class will do that for you.

Now maybe you don’t want to come. But we will be holding each other accountable to pray with our wives, to read the Bible relative to marriage and talk about it a little bit. Not any big heavy commitments but you know wading in the shallow end for some of us. Okay, but that’s what we’ll do.

Well, in Genesis, God says how marriage should be, right? And now he’s telling us later how marriage shouldn’t be. These are the things that do not define marriage and actually are the opposite of. So Leviticus 18 is kind of the counterbalance—the what you shouldn’t do compared to Genesis chapter 2 with what you should do—and you see that throughout the scriptures this kind of back and forth.

So let me—that’s the next point in the outline. Leviticus 18:22 and the law in Genesis 2. The law is a reflection of the character of God. And again you can—there are great books written and charts I’m sure are available for looking at the narrative accounts in Genesis as the basis for the formalized laws that God gives to his people after their exodus from Egypt. Okay? So, there’s specific laws, right, after Egypt, beginning with the Ten Commandments, Exodus 20, the case laws, Leviticus, Deuteronomy, and these laws really reflect back on and kind of flesh out narratives from the history in Genesis. Okay?

So, that makes sense because people were not—the law was still the reflection of the character of God. God before it was written out in the Ten Commandments. And so people’s lives reflected the character of God in the book of Genesis. And so Genesis 2 is this account as I’ve said—this is the way marriage ought to be. And the law reflects that. Right? So the seventh commandment against adultery protects the kind of marriage that God sets up in Genesis 2. And we see adultery in the accounts in Genesis. And we know it’s a bad thing.

And so we—the law sort of reflects in law code the character of God which is reflected to us in stories, in narratives, true stories in the book of Genesis. And so when we read something like “do not lie with a man as with a woman,” okay. It’s telling us what you should be doing by implication is lying with a woman specifically your wife. It’s taking that Genesis account of Adam and Eve, right? And God creating a woman for man and the complimentary nature there and the fruitfulness that will happen as a result of marriage and specifically through lying with your spouse, right?

It’s taking that account and it’s echoing back to it with that verbiage about lying with a woman. Okay? So, it’s building upon that. And so, Leviticus is an attempt to kind of echo now the Genesis 2 narrative but telling us what we’re not supposed to do. Okay? So, the Bible tells us what we’re to do and what we’re not supposed to do as well. And so, again, in terms of Leviticus, it’s important to understand it’s not just some kind of arcane book thrown into the middle of the Bible somewhere or in the old dusty past.

It reflects the creation account. And so, prohibitions against homosexuality have to be seen in terms of the saying what we shouldn’t do in relationship to what we should do. So it’s not overtly—I shouldn’t say it’s not exhaustively negative. It’s telling us by implication we’re supposed to lie with the woman whom God has us marry. The two of us agree to marry each other. So that’s its relationship to Genesis and the law of God.

So the law reflects these narratives in Genesis. Okay. One other story in Genesis that Leviticus hearkens back to is Genesis 19. In Genesis 19, we have a narrative about men that were engaged in homosexual activity. We know the story. I preached on hospitality a few months ago, maybe. And we said that chapter 19 shows inhospitality. In chapter 18, Abraham is hospitable. Hopefully, you’re being more hospitable as a result of that.

Hopefully, you’re opening your home up more, particularly to people that you don’t know. Well, I really hope that’s happening, particularly after we’ve had three sermons on affirming one another, right? And specifically affirming people that we don’t normally affirm, who aren’t our friends, aren’t in our same social class, don’t have the same interests, right? Hopefully, you’re doing that. But 19 shows the opposite.

Now, so there’s this account of people involved in homosexual activity bringing tremendous judgment from God in Genesis 19. Now, I know that wasn’t the only sin they had going on, right? In fact, I preached about that when we preached hospitality—that inhospitality, the significance of it is in part kind of revealed or focused on in the account of the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah and the cities around it.

And I know that Ezekiel and other places in the Bible tells us that the sin of Sodom was pride, wealth, no social justice to the poor. I know that too. And it’s important to understand those things. It’s important. But it seems like in our day and age, we’ve gotten totally away—because of we’re floating down the river with everybody else. We glom on to those verses and say, “Oh, that’s why they were destroyed. It’s got nothing to do with homosexuality.”

You see, we tend to do that. Well, Jude corrects this. Jude verse 7 says this: “As Sodom and Gomorrah and the cities around them,” okay, so some people say, “Well, it’s because they tried to have sex with angels.” Well, the other cities around them didn’t. There were a few men right there. And plus those angels were there for a reason, right? And it wasn’t what they did to the angels that brought the judgment. The judgment was coming.

Well, in any event, there’s just so many you know misperceptions, nonsense. You have to know your scriptures, and they’re not hard to know. Anyway, okay. So, Jude 7: “So, Sodom and Gomorrah and the cities around them in a similar manner to these, having given themselves over to sexual immorality and gone after strange flesh, are set forth as an example suffering the vengeance of eternal fire.”

It’s supposed to be a cautionary tale about homosexual activity. Yes, about pride. Yes, about the need to care for the poor. Yes, about hospitality too. But Jude tells us that at least from this perspective, the big deal to remember is that homosexual sin when it becomes rampant brings tremendous wrath and judgment from God. And Jude doesn’t say that was in the Old Testament when God was a God of wrath. Don’t worry about it today. He says this is an example to us. It’s a warning to us. It should be a warning to this country.

Now, what does Leviticus say? Well, it Leviticus 18 picks up that narrative and says, “Well, if you do this, an abomination. And then at the end of 18, it says if you do these abominations, God’s going to spit you out of the land. The same way he destroyed the Canaanites, by implication, the same way he destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah and the cities round about it—that’s going to happen to you if you allow this to be the pattern of life that happens in the context of your state and nation.

So you know, so Leviticus again revaluing by looking at what it casts back to and it looked back at the marriage account and it looks back to Sodom and Gomorrah as interpreted later by Jude 7 and it shows us the significance of the law of God drawing a set of ethical standards, requirements as a reflection of the character of God already displayed in the book of Genesis. Not something new.

Now there are some other objections about Leviticus. And so one of the things I should say—now, and now would be a good time to talk about these resources. Well, point of application at the end. Biggest thing you can do is prepare. Prepare for the discussions. They’re going to happen a plenty now or they should for us at least. And there are these two books. Homosexuality: A Biblical View. This is by Greg Bahnsen. Excellent book. Tremendous. If you knew Greg, he was very methodical, very logical, very well laid out.

This book is in our library. See the little tag back there? And then this is a modern book. This is Kevin DeYoung on What the Bible Really Teaches about Homosexuality. And we’re getting a dozen or so of these books in this week. If you want to, you know, get one, you can keep it. You don’t have—it’s not necessarily a library book. If you’ll use it, if you’ll go through it, and if you’ll, you know, study it in a way to prepare for the kind of conversations that are now going to happen.

And and most of you are familiar with a link to a Gospel Coalition video that we put on the RCC web page a couple of weeks ago. I’m telling I watched it again last night and I don’t know why anybody wouldn’t watch it. It’s an hour, but it’s fascinating and it is the best. It would be such an easy little Bible study to have in your home or group discussion in a community group or have some friends over, maybe some neighbors, maybe people from different churches.

Watch that Kevin DeYoung video. Stop it every so often after each of his major points. And I’m telling you, if you did that, you would be ready for practically any conversation out there. It’s that good and that focused. Okay. And he brings up these objections. And one of the objections against Leviticus is that Leviticus 18:22 is it’s not that big a deal. Okay? So Leviticus says don’t do it. But you know the Bible says don’t do a lot of things. It’s really not that big a deal.

But already I’ve told you that 22 singles out homosexual sin as the only place in the holiness code that’s specifically designated by itself as an abomination. And the other side of that is later in the—in the matching chapter around the center—Leviticus 20 verse 13 says this: “If a man lies with a man as he lies with a woman. So he’s already said don’t do it. Now he says if you do it both of them have committed an abomination. They shall surely be put to death. Their blood shall be upon them.”

It’s a death penalty offense in God’s law. Now I’m not arguing for that today. But I am saying that we should certainly look at the civil precepts of the Old Testament and had them inform what we do today. And right now, what I’m trying to say is it was a big deal. Of course, I’ve already made that point with Jude 7, Sodom and Gomorrah, the whole nine yards.

Sexual sin in general in the Bible is a big deal. I’m sorry. Some people are embarrassed. We conservatives are always talking about sex. Well, it isn’t true. If you look at my sermon series work, you know, I did do a series on marriage. Some of those were about sex. But we—it’s first of all, it’s not true. But even if it is true, you know, there are I think I think DeYoung points out there are seven or eight vice lists, lists of bad things in the New Testament and the beginning of and every one of them has sexual immorality.

I think it heads the list usually. It’s a big deal. Paul tells us that every other sin is different than this one because this one involves your body and weird things are going on that we don’t understand, covenantalism, etc. It’s a big deal. Paul says it’s a big deal in the vice list generally. And so this particular form of homosexual sin is even worse than adultery. If we look at the progression in Leviticus 18, Leviticus 20, it’s a big deal.

Is adultery a big deal? Yeah. Is homosexuality worse? Yeah. And if we start getting into bestiality, even worse. So, of course, it’s a big deal. The Bible says it’s a big deal. It’s important in our sanctification. We have to know what the limits are. And the Lord God’s Spirit works with his word to cause us to work in the context of those limits. And this produces human flourishing. There’s no human flourishing involved if we’re continually engaged in sexual sin of an abominable nature to God or any other kind of sexual sin we leave ongoing in our life.

Right? So, it is a big deal. Leviticus 20:13 says it’s a death penalty offense. Another objection that DeYoung deals with is that this isn’t really committed same-sex relationships. The sort of homosexuality described in the Old and New Testament is a different sort of thing than what we’re talking about today. And this simply isn’t the case.

On your outline on F, “Not the same,” I’ve got Romans 1:26 and 27. Paul in Romans 1, where he talks about homosexuality uses, he says it’s against nature, against the natural urges. This was language that was being used at the time of the writing of the New Testament in the arguments going back and forth between homosexual practitioners, which were growing in the Roman Empire, and actually there’s—the beginning according to homosexual scholars of an identity movement the way there is today where you identify yourself as a homosexual by your sexual proclivity as opposed to heterosexual—and the arguments against that movement would use the same language that people are exchanging the natural uses.

So Paul is using language that the contemporary Romans would have absolutely understood. He was talking about the same sorts, all forms of homosexual sexual activity. They would have understood that. Additionally, his Jewish audience would have understood it, of course, but even more than the Romans text, a verse that Paul wrote in 1 Corinthians 5:11. No, 1 Corinthians 6:9 and 10.

“Do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? It’s a big deal. It has to do with inheriting the kingdom of God.” As he goes on then to talk about sins when you’re left out of the kingdom of God. “Do not be deceived. Neither fornicators,” this is one of those vice lists and it begins with sexual sin—”fornication, nor idolators, nor adulterers, nor homosexuals, nor sodomites.”

Now, those two terms are—affeminate, which I’ve never heard a sermon on. Maybe I should give one. What does it mean? I think they were having the same sorts of issues with sexual identity in the Roman Empire at the time that we have today. Okay. So, but let’s leave that alone. And the next verse is “homosexuals,” right? What is that? It’s a term that had never been seen before. At least we don’t think it was in Greek before Paul made it. He puts together two words: arsen—lying or sexual activity—and koites—lying with someone and man—man lying together. And that’s his word for homosexuality.

Now, the interesting thing about that is that in the Septuagint version of Leviticus 18:22 and 20:13—that’s where the Septuagint was a Greek translation of the Old Testament—those were the two Greek words that were put together in those two verses. I mean, they weren’t one word, but they were separate words in the same sentence to describe homosexuality in Leviticus 18, Leviticus 20.

Now, Paul uses that Septuagint version, which every almost all Jews knew. That’s what they use. They spoke Greek. And he uses those two terms and puts them together to describe now what he’s addressing in terms of sexual immorality in the context of first century Christianity. The reference would have been absolutely clear to the Jewish person. He’s talking about the same thing he did in the Old Testament.

Sexual homosexuality of all stripes and varieties. So it is the same. And don’t let people bully you into thinking it isn’t. Don’t misread your scriptures to read things into Leviticus 18 that simply are not there. Don’t do that. Don’t let that happen to you. It is the same thing.

All right, let’s see. Where are we at? “Not fair.” So, this is a thing. Well, you know, how can I be held responsible for the urges I have? That’s not fair of God. Remember here a text that I preached on just a month or two ago, 1 Corinthians 10, right? “No temptation’s overtaken you except what is common to man. But God is faithful who will not allow you to be tempted beyond what you are able. With the temptation will provide the means of escape.”

God is not going to give you a temptation that you have to sin relative to. God is not unfair in that way. Okay? So it’s not fair doesn’t really work because whatever temptation each of us has in all kinds of directions are accompanied by God with the means of escape for avoiding the temptation. Okay. So the “not fair” argument doesn’t really fly under this.

I’ve got some sub points. The genetic lie. One of the reasons why homosexuality has made such political strides in America is they’ve convinced you and me or most people in the country that you know a homosexual is born. He’s not made. It’s in his genes. Now, they’ve been looking day and night up and down spending all kinds of money trying to find the genetic thing that determines or predetermines a homosexual act, lifestyle—cannot find it. Now they found some little strands of genetics that might—they say along with lifestyle and choices and environment might lead in that direction. That’s as close as they’ve gotten.

And let me tell you something, if they had demonstrable proof on this issue, it would be out there front and center in the New York Times. It does not exist. Don’t let people lie to you. It’s not true. There is no homosexual gene. I mean, our understanding of genetics is so incredibly immature yet I’m not even sure what it would mean if they say they found it right—but don’t believe it. All the research is in the other direction. So it’s not fair because God genetically made it this way? No, he hasn’t. You may have genetic predispositions, but even if you do, most men I think if they’re like the men I know have genetic predispositions apparently to multiple sexual partners. We’re predisposed not to be faithful.

I mean, it seems like that’s the way it is with most people I know. Nobody just sort of slides into faithfulness with their wife without some degree of temptation to look another way. And then we start to rationalize the looking the other way, all that stuff. It’s just sin. Don’t let your urges define your rights in a particular area. You just don’t do it. Okay? And you employ the scriptures and the Spirit of God to restrain you from sexual sin.

Even if it was genetic, it doesn’t explain. It doesn’t authorize you to break the law of God and go to your judgment as opposed to be involved in human flourishing. What’s fair is a God who tells you this is the way. Walk in it. This is the path of human flourishing. I know you may not feel like it. I know you’ve got urges that maybe you didn’t choose. I understand that. But fairness is telling you don’t act on those urges. This is the way. Walk in this way. This is where blessing is. This is where flourishing is. What’s unfair about that? Nothing is unfair about that.

So don’t fall for a genetic lie. And so what? Many men appear wired for adultery.

Three, the character of God. God isn’t unfair as I just described. And what he’s giving us is a law that is holy and just and good. It is good. We said the law is holy, right? The law teaches us what holiness is. The law teaches us it’s just—what justice is defined by the law of God. And it is good. The law of God is good for us. The character of God is good to us. And so any law that’s found in the scriptures, including this one, is part of God’s goodness, of his character, to tell us there are dragons there. Don’t float down that river. That’s the goodness of God, the character of God, the fairness of God.

And then we could actually talk also about the value of singleness. DeYoung does that in his thing. I mean, you know, everybody starts out single. I guess in pre-arranged marriages in some cultures where you’re quite young, but I mean, everybody in this church spend a period of time single. Some people it’s longer. Some people it’s the rest of their life. It doesn’t make any difference. When you’re single, it’s not because God is being unfair to you. Even if you have urges in particular directions, we should value the gift of singleness, meaning God’s calling you to be single if it’s just for six months, six years, sixty years, whatever it is—we should exalt that.

And there was a degree to which churches like ours might have idolized the idea of family, marriage, and childbearing and demeaned singleness. And so if you’ve got people with urges in the other—in the wrong direction—and they are actually resulting from that, they end up single. We can’t denigrate them as people. So there is that. But the goodness of God and the character of God and the call of God that Paul makes quite clear in his epistles relating to singleness is that it’s a gift of God—permanent necessarily but for a particular period of time with its particular abilities, upsides, downsides, etc.

So that’s part of the answer to this fairness idea. Now I should say—by the way—when we say that the law is holy and just and good, verse to remember right as people try to denigrate it—that’s Romans 7:12 where Paul says this: “The law is holy and the commandment holy and just and good.”

So it’s a definition of holiness—Leviticus 18; justice—Leviticus 20 relative to homosexuality; and goodness. This is the way for human flourishing, not just for us as individuals, but the goodness of God’s law creates a culture. The law is not just so you and I can individually do things that are good for us. It’s for the good of the culture, the godly culture that God has building. And so, Leviticus 18:22 and the prohibition against homosexual activity is good for each individual and it’s good for the flourishing of humankind and a culture being built.

Negatively, then, the opposite of that—to engage in homosexuality is unholy. It’s unjust. It’s not meeting with the requirements of community and it’s not good. It’s not good for you and it’s not good for the culture. Okay? It has a particular effect on the culture that we live in. The law is holy and just and good.

“Not loving.” Well, this is silly. Of course, God is a God of love. He gives us his law out of love. We’re to love the law of God, right? Because it’s the way God loves us by showing us what’s good for us. So, obviously, the commandment is an act from a loving God.

All right. What time is it? What is it? Eight minutes after 12. Well, it’s been fun so far, at least for me. Maybe we should leave the rest of this till next week. That would probably be good. I know I’ve given you firehose stuff here, but that’s why I wanted the outline. I worked hard to make the outline. The kids handout sheets. Got even got a coloring page again this week.

And maybe what you could do in preparation for next week is to read that second page. We have citations there from RCC’s confessional statement about the relationship of God’s law to civil arena and its binding authority on all people. We’ll talk about that more next week. And then the second half of that page is a letter that we hope to circulate to churches in Oregon City—pastors to sign it.

Brian, who is part of the trip—part of the people that are going over to Hungary to Ukraine, you know, with the ladies from here, Pam and others from here and Lindsay. Are they leaving today, by the way? Yes. Oh, today. Let’s pray for them real quick.

Lord God, bless these women. Bless Father Brian Nolder and the other folks that’ll be going with them to Ukraine and bless that interaction there. Lord God, may your safe travel be upon them as they travel, but more importantly than that may you equip them through that plane ride for dealing with, ministering to the dear saints, brothers and sisters we have in Ukraine and finding other people to evangelize as well.

Bless and particularly bless Bethany for her three months stay over there. We thank you for them in Jesus’ name. Amen.

Well, Brian is going over to teach there at that event. And Brian is a CRC pastor in Pella, Iowa. Brian wrote the second page, that bottom half, that letter about homosexuality or statement from churches in Pella. He got a number of pastors to sign it. They then published it in the Pella newspaper. So, we’ve gotten permission from Brian to use that here in Oregon City. And a week from Wednesday, we’ll be presenting this to the pastors in Oregon City as a part of our follow-up.

So, read that in preparation for next week. And then, let me just close off by—and you could prepare by looking at the rest of the outline as well—but let me just close off with this illustration again of floating down the river. The big float today. So the big float is going on in Christendom now as various people are tempted—either individually or even some churches—to float down the river of acceptance of homosexuals in the context of church without repenting for homosexual activity. So that’s the big float right now.

So if you’re going to float in the Willamette, great. I think it’s a great idea. But you know, if you’re floating in the river that is leading people away from Leviticus 18:22, that river has sewage in it. That river has bad stuff for you. That river has stuff that will hurt your flourishing. And you know what? The Bible says it’s bad. Bible says it’s not good for you. The Bible says you won’t flourish. And then the Bible also says that river is headed toward a waterfall, a cliff—okay? Destruction for people’s lives, destruction ultimately of whole cultures that embrace this kind of activity and approve of it.

Now, so what I’m trying to say is whether it’s each of us individually, our kids, our grandkids, our friends in other churches, our neighbors, our people at work that we might speak to—let’s get prepared for the discussion. Let’s not just see people floating down the river in sewer water headed toward a waterfall and say, “Ah, have a good time today.” Let’s not be those people. Let’s care enough about people to rescue those that are stumbling, Proverbs says, to their destruction.

We have an obligation. We know the truth. We know what the scriptures say. We know the value of Leviticus. We know the value of Leviticus 18:22. We know it’s the repeated message from one end of the Bible to the other. What is Thyatira warned against by Jesus in Revelation? Sexual immorality and being tolerant of sexual immorality. That’s what he says. He’s going to cast him on a sick bed.

Let’s have the love to try to rescue people, to hold firm for the holiness of God, right? The justice of God, knowing that as we do that, we’re bringing the message that’s good for people, that leads toward human flourishing, that is truly fair and loving to all people. Let’s pray.

Father, we thank you again for Leviticus 18:22. We pray, Lord God, you’d help us in our homes, in our small groups, and in other ways to prepare for the discussions we have. Help us Lord God to have love in our hearts as we seek to minister your love through your law. In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.