June 2024
The United States, and several other countries, have made June “Pride Month”. There are festivals, parades, and activities that would not only seek to flaunt sexual sin but also draw everyone, including your children, into it. It has not always been so flagrant. In fact, I believe the LGBTQ+ movement has so much support and is growing in numbers due to the slow, incremental nature in which they have taken ground both legally and morally. When the United States became a country, homosexuality was not only illegal but punishable by death in some states. The argument that death was too harsh a punishment made way for the argument that consenting adults had the right to do as they please without fear of any type of punishment. Once it was no longer criminalized, the call became louder as they asked for the right to share health and other such benefits with anyone in their home regardless of gender or marital status. That soon became a cry for the right of any two consenting adults, regardless of gender, to be allowed to marry one another legally. So many arguments time after time were that they were not hurting anyone else. They were consenting adults and not bothering you, your children, or your beliefs. You were allowed to believe and practice your morals and they should be allowed the same freedom free with full acceptance. Once the definition of marriage was changed, the push came to redefine other terms such as man, woman, gender, and pronouns. In fact, they wanted people to have the right to change themselves into whatever they chose, even if that was the opposite sex or an animal. Now we have open sexual sin flaunted at every turn. It is on social media, television, movies, and as we walk the streets of our town. Everything is out in the open and proudly flaunted for all to see. They are so flagrant as to even state, “We are coming for your children.” They are not hiding anymore; they are full of pride.
Several places in the Bible address pride specifically. Proverbs 8:12-13 says, “I, wisdom, dwell with prudence, and I find knowledge and discretion. The fear of the LORD is hatred of evil. Pride and arrogance and the way of evil and perverted speech I hate.” One well-known verse, Proverbs 16:18, tells us, “Pride goes before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall.” Not only are they living in sin, but they are also haughty, arrogant, and prideful about it. I have heard people not only advocating for the “rights” of those practicing sexual perversion but also openly mocking God. They are hostile to anyone who would tell them they are wrong or in sin. Should we still confront them? Yes! They will face the wrath of God for the sins they are committing. If you love someone in sin, you should call them to repent. Their very soul hangs in the balance. Tolerance, as pushed for today, is not love. Allowing sin to continue is not love. Paul tells the Corinthian Church, “Flee from sexual immorality. Every other sin a person commits is outside the body, but the sexually immoral person sins against his own body. Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God? You are not your own, for you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body.” (1 Corinthians 6:18-20) He also writes to the Church at Ephesus and tells them, “Take no part in the unfruitful works of darkness, but instead expose them. For it is shameful even to speak of the things that they do in secret. But when anything is exposed by the light, it becomes visible, for anything that becomes visible is light. Therefore it says, ‘Awake, O sleeper, and arise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you.’ Look carefully then how you walk, not as unwise bus as wise, making the best use of the time, because the days are evil.” (Ephesians 5:11-16)
The church has not heeded Paul’s warnings and has fallen prey to the lies. Just as the legality of various sexual sins has changed, so has the morality of our culture and the views of many Christians in America. Many haven’t even realized it was changing until a few years ago. I’ve heard the arguments from other Christians that “they are not hurting anyone; mind your own business; and it doesn’t really affect us so why worry.” Unfortunately, over the years, those arguments have led to churches that not only openly accept people in various sorts of sexual sin with no call to repent, but they have also embraced pastors, priests, and elders who wear their sin as a badge of pride rather than repenting in humility. All across America Christians are being called to tolerate sin rather than reprove it. It is well past time for Christians to recall the words of Paul in Romans 1:16-17 which says, “For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith for faith, as it is written, ‘ The righteous shall live by faith.’” We need to call the lost to repentance. We need to share not moral platitudes, but the gospel of Jesus Christ. Don’t be ashamed to call out sin. If you see a couple that claims to be Christians living together without being married, tell them they are in sin. If you see someone who wants to mutilate the body that God gave them to become someone or something they are not, point them to the sovereign God who doesn’t make mistakes and calls them to repent.
Some may think it is overly harsh to single out those in sexual sin. There are so many other sins out there that are also heinous, such as murder. Why call out just this one group? They are proud of their sin. They are presenting themselves to the world unfiltered, unashamed, and unrepentant. They want others to not only see their sin but to participate in it. They want to bring their sin out in the open and on display for all, including children, to see. They want to have kids' story times with drag queens. They want children to dress as drag queens and join the parade. They are openly attacking the Word of God, marriage, family, and our children. We cannot ignore it. Mothers, fathers, and members of the church are called to protect our children and teach them the way they should go. If we do not teach them, if we do not speak out openly against these sexual perversions, if we allow this sin to continue to be accepted and publicly praised as “normal”, “healthy”, and “good”, this is what will teach our children. They will learn to tolerate sin and embrace sexual perversion as normal. They will not fight against the lies of the devil, but believe them to be “their truth”.
We must fight for the souls of our children. We must lovingly warn those in sin to turn away. The consequences are eternal as Romans 1:18-32 warns us:
For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth. For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse. For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and reptiles.
Therefore, God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impunity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves, because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever! Amen.
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. They were filled with all manner of unrighteousness, evil, covetousness, malice. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, maliciousness. They are gossips, slanderers, haters of God, insolent, haughty, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, foolish, faithless, heartless, ruthless. Though they know God’s decree that those who practice such things deserve to die, they not only do them but give approval to those who practice them.
If you or someone you know has believed the lie and is lost in sexual sin, they are not hopeless. Romans 3:22b-26 tells us, “For there is no distinction: for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith. This was to show God’s righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over former sins. It was to show his righteousness at the present time, so that he might be just and the justifier or the one who has faith in Jesus.”