When Thomas Jefferson heard about the compromise of 1820 he responded by saying,
“this momentous question, like a fire bell in the night, awakened and filled me with terror. I considered it at once as the knell of the Union.”
Knell — The sound of a bell, especially when rung solemnly for a death or funeral.
Jefferson, in 1820, realized the far reaching implications of the decision, and could already see, as now an old man, the trajectory to division and bloodshed that the compromise promised. Jefferson understood that the compromise of 1820 was a sewing of the wind that would lead to later a reaping of the whirlwind.
This morning what we want to do is spend just a few minutes tracing out the implications for the Church and Christians of what it means when the public square legalizes and codifies what God says is illegal and immoral.
We do this in keeping with what we’ve been doing in Sunday School where we have been noting that God’s word, as a guide to life, is not merely a private or personal Word but also is a Word for our public civil social institutions and for our culture. In Sunday School we’ve noted that when we allow the Word of other gods to be our guide to life in our civil social and cultural institutions the consequence is that we, as a people, end up being shaped and fashioned in our personal lives by that public law with the result that we find ourselves being conformed to the character of the gods who are dictating the arrangement for the public realm. In brief, if we, as Biblical Christians do not insist upon God’s Word in the public square and culture as a guide to life for our laws then the result will be that some other god’s word will shape our identity and provide the meaning and definition of who we are. No neutrality.
This inclination to realize that Christianity is not a faith that can be cordoned off into some private personal realm is consistent with Scriptures requirement that we take every thought captive to make it obedient to Christ.
5 casting down arguments and every high thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of God, bringing every thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ,
When we examine matters like this it is for the purpose that we would,
not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of our minds, that we may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God.
Christianity, is a faith that does indeed provide the Spirit generated power for each of as individuals
Ephesians 4:22 to put off your old self,[a] which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires, 23 and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, 24 and to put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness.
But while a private and personal faith Christianity is also a public faith that has vast and profound implications for the public square. If these implications for the public square are amputated from the faith that consequence is the sure and certain threat of the dying off of the individual and personal faith that is so rightly cherished just as a species will diminish if you destroy the public habitat where it naturally flourishes.
The public square can never create Christianity. Only the Spirit of God can do that. However the public square can reinforce the normalcy of the Christ faith and ethos. Alternatively, the public square can work to make Christianity look to be a loathsome and vile thing.
What I’m saying here was captured by a couple of our Dutch Theologians,
“The Church is related to life as a whole. It is not a drop of oil on troubled waters. It has a mission in this world and *in the entire structure* of the world. This statement does not arise from cultural optimism. This is the confession of the kingship of Christ. For this reason, too, the Church is the Church of the Kingdom.”
~ Herman Ridderbos
“To be sure, the Kingdom of God is not of the world, but it is nevertheless in the world. The Kingdom does not exist within the narrow confines of the inner closet, restricted to church and monastery. The Kingdom is not entirely “other worldly” but has been established by Christ upon earth and stands in a most intimate—yet for us in many
respects inexplicable—relationship with this earthly life and is prepared by this life. Nevertheless, it is just as true that the Kingdom is not exhaustively present in this life, it is not merely “this worldly.” The Kingdom ‘is’ and ‘becomes.’ ”
~ Herman Bavinck, “The Kingdom of God, The Highest Good”,
The Bavinck Review (2011, v.2), p. 152, trans
So, having tried to lay some of the groundwork of what we will be looking at, allow me just a few more minutes to give the reason why we are looking at this, this morning.
And the answer is LOVE.
First Love for God. If God gives us a clear word about the rightness or wrongness of some aspect of human relationships then we are duty bound out of love to our Father in heaven to embrace His precepts both personally and individually but also to embrace that law Word of God for the public square. And God has given us that clear word for human relationships when it comes to Marriage, family, and human coupling.
1 Corinthians 6:9-11 — Forbidding Sodomy
Or do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor men who practice homosexuality, nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God. And such were some of you. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God.
Romans 1:26-28 — Forbidding Sodomy
For this reason God gave them up to dishonorable passions. For their women exchanged natural relations for those that are contrary to nature; and the men likewise gave up natural relations with women and were consumed with passion for one another, men committing shameless acts with men and receiving in themselves the due penalty for their error. And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a debased mind to do what ought not to be done.
1 Timothy 1:10 — Sodomy as immoral
The sexually immoral, men who practice homosexuality, enslavers, liars, perjurers, and whatever else is contrary to sound doctrine,
1 Corinthians 7:2
But because of the temptation to sexual immorality, each man should have his own wife & each woman her own husband. (Notice the cure to sexual immorality is not for each man to have his own husband & each woman her own wife.)
Jude 1:7
Just as Sodom and Gomorrah and the surrounding cities, which likewise indulged in sexual immorality and pursued unnatural desire, serve as an example by undergoing a punishment of eternal fire.
Mark 10:6-9 — The Definition of Marriage
But from the beginning of creation, ‘God made them male and female.’ ‘Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.’ So they are no longer two but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate.”
So, Love to God is why we are looking at this matter this morning.
But also love to neighbor.
No love is found in supporting a legal codification of behavior that supports and so encourages human misery.
A study done in Vancouver British Columbia observed that participation in the homosexual lifestyle knocks life expectancy for a Canadian male back to what it was in 1871. The Centers for Disease Control reports that homosexuals are 50 to 60 times more likely to become infected with AIDS than other groups. Love for people requires me, as a minister of Christ, to warn people against self inflicted damage against who and what God designed them to be.
Love to family.
And what of the generations that are to come behind. Does not love to my family require me to do all in my power to give them a landed legacy that looks more like the Kingdom of God then it looks like Sodom and Gomorrah? Out of love for my people who have gone before and for my family yet to be we are duty bound to break the mold of politically correct speech and behavior.
So it is love to God, neighbor love, and love to family that compels us to hate that which is evil while clinging to what is good.
Now having said all that as preparatory let us consider for just a few moments what the implications are for the legalization of un-natural Marriage.
1.) The Unraveling of the Christian faith
It is simply not possible to make an attack on Christian notions of Marriage and family without at the same time attacking the Christian faith. The Christian Marriage and family is where the Christian faith is passed on generationally. If the marriage and family can be redefined then the Christian faith will be redefined. If words like morality and immorality can be redefined then the Christian faith will be redefined along with it.
We are seeing this happen already. Books like, “God and the Gay Christian: The Biblical Case in Support of Same-Sex Relationships” are being written that inform us that the Church has been wrong for 2000 years on this issue. The effect of this is to unravel and redefine the Christian faith.
If sin is not sin then what is the Lord Christ dying for? If sin is not sin then what need reconciliation, redemption, or sacrifice? If sin is redefined then the whole Christian faith is redefined and so unravels.
2.) The unraveling and destruction of Marriage
We have to understand that the consequence of what has happened is not the enlarging of the Marriage tent but the destruction of the Marriage tent. If marriage can mean anything then marriage means nothing. If the definitional boundaries are taken away from marriage then marriage as marriage is just a word that has no objective transcendent meaning. The purpose in sodomite marriage, when clearly and rationally thought through, is not to make marriage more accessible to more people. The purpose is to destroy marriage.
Activist Massha Gessen was charitable enough to be explicit about this when she said on radio,
“It’s a no-brainer that (homosexual activists) should have the right to marry, but I also think equally that it’s a no-brainer that the institution of marriage should not exist. …(F)ighting for gay marriage generally involves lying about what we are going to do with marriage when we get there — because we lie that the institution of marriage is not going to change, and that is a lie.
The institution of marriage is going to change, and it should change. And again, I don’t think it should exist.
3.) The unraveling and destruction of Christian family
In allowing unnatural coupling and marriage we have simultaneously allowed the State to regulate and re-define family in a non Christian direction. In doing so we have given the State more control over deciding family relationships. In Christian marriage the assumption is that a child is to be raised by his or her biological parents. But if marriage can be redefined to mean any coupling then it stands to reason that family can be redefined to be any arrangement that State deems satisfactory.
Melissa Harris Perry quote
Gender legal theorist Martha Fineman, calls for state-subsidized care-giving units to replace marriage and the family.
With the destruction of family will come even more destruction of children. With the rise of the divorce culture Children of the past 60 years have not been the same as children of the years prior to that (see Barbara Whitehead’s work). With the rise of unnatural marriage Children will once again bear the brunt of the injury so that the Christ haters can make one more leap “forward” in social engineering the social order.
A missing parent from either gender leaves a child wounded. One could say that when it comes to family life that parents belong to their children more than children belong to their parents. Christian marriage and family, while ultimately is for God, is for the children more than it is for the parents. In unnatural marriage it is the children who are the crushed.
4.) The denial of God’s property rights in us in favor of the State as God’s property rights over us.
Scripture teaches that “the earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof.” God is the one who has property rights over all of creation. As such God sets the parameters of reality. When the State operates to define reality vis-a-vis God the State is operating to seize God’s property rights and seeks to ascend to the most high to be God walking upon the earth.
When the State sets itself up as God then we also lose our property rights even in our own children and property. We exist for the State and are naught but agents of the State. In the state we love and move and have our being. With these kind of property rights over us the State begins to control all. What we now get is social justice in our courts, social gospel in our Churches, and even a social engineering that creates a kind of social predestination where the state assigns all from its suffocating web of diktats. In the States redefinition of marriage there is the work of god who, speaking by divine fiat, is speaking reality into existence.
Christians are to champion God’s reality and insist that they are to be ruled by God’s law,
“Then let us not think that this Law is a special Law for the Jews; but let us understand that God intended to deliver us a general rule, to which we must yield ourselves … Since, it is so, it is to be concluded, not only that it is lawful for all kings and magistrates, to punish heretics and such as have perverted the pure truth; but also that they be bound to do it, and that they misbehave themselves towards God, if they suffer errors to rest without redress, and employ not their whole power to shew greater zeal in their behalf than in all other things.”
John Calvin, Sermon on Deuteronomy, sermon 87 on Deuteronomy13:5
With this Hodges vs. Obergefell we have the testimony put starkly of the Fascist confession; “Everything (including marriage) inside the State and nothing is outside the State.” It is the owner. We, as God’s people, are its property.
The only answer for this is a wise and well thought out resistance by any and all menas. I’d rather die explicitly belonging to God then to live falsely belonging to the Idol State as a piece of property to do with as it deigns.
Conclusion
“When principles that run against your deepest convictions begin to win the day, then battle is your calling, and peace has become sin; you must, at the price of dearest peace, lay your convictions bare before friend and enemy, with all the fire of your faith.”
― Abraham Kuyper
Out of love for the Gospel — a Gospel that begins with the Holiness of God and His opposition to sin — we must resist. Out of love for Christ and His Work — a work that makes no sense if we are not allowed to label sin as sin — we must resist. Out of love for the Spirit who leads us in a sanctification that requires us to have nothing to do with the works of darkness we must resist.