Snatching Souls from Sexual Sin, Part 3 | Snatching Souls from Sexual Sin

Selected Scriptures

 A bill in Canada has added a ban on conversion therapy to its Criminal Code. The bill in Canada is called Bill C4, and it not only rejects what the Bible teaches about sexuality, it threatens penalties for encouraging people to listen to what the Bible says, and to be helped by it. So that will be used to attempt to silence the truth of Scripture and to keep people enslaved to sins.

Canadian bill C4, as I said, it amends the Criminal Code in Canada to outlaw what it refers to as, conversion therapy, conversion therapy. And the bill defines conversion therapy as, a practice, I’m reading from the bill here, “A practice, treatment, or service designed to,” and then it lists six points, “A) change a person’s sexual orientation to heterosexual, B) Change a person’s gender identity to cisgender, or C) change a person’s gender expression so that it conforms to the sex assigned to the person at birth.”

Pausing there in the middle of those points, so first, this is a saying it is against the law to “change a person’s sexual orientation” (that already is capitulation language to the culture), but “sexual orientation to heterosexual.” Second, it is against the law to “change a person’s gender identity to cisgender” (yet more capitulation language to the culture). Third, it is against the law to “try to change a person’s gender expression,” to encourage him to express his gender “in conformity to the sex he was assigned at birth,” or to tell her she must live in conformity to the gender that she was assigned by God, they don’t say that, by God at birth. Crime to do that.

In addition, Bill C4 also criminalizes, quote, “Any practice, treatment or service designed to” here are the last three, “letter D) Repress or reduce non-heterosexual attraction or sexual behavior, or E) Repress a person’s non-cisgender gender identity. F) Repress or reduce a person’s gender expression that does not conform to the sex assigned to the person at birth.”

So, it’s against the law “to change or to repress.” It is against the law to try to change a person’s sexual orientation, gender identity, or gender expression. And it is against the law to try to repress any of the same. In other words, in biblical language, it is against the law now in Canada to encourage repentance. Repentance of any sinful sexual perversions, that’s unlawful. To discourage the expression of sexual perversion, i.e., “Beloved, live holy lives.” Saying that, in this climate is unlawful.

Canadians, Americans, all the rest, listen, don’t let the government, don’t let anybody else lie to you about what constitutes harm and happiness. Don’t let them lie to you about that. The sexual revolution is lying to the world, they’ve been lying to the world for decades. Extramarital sex does not make people happy. Sexual sin may give a temporary pleasure boost to the body, but we’re more than bodies. We’re not animals rooting around in the earth looking to satisfy, gratify sensual impulses. Sexual sin leaves people sad and unfulfilled. It leaves people defiled and unclean, personally degraded, dehumanized, spiritually guilty before God, self conscious of all that, and totally ashamed. So don’t believe the lies of the world.

But let’s just assume for a moment the Canadian government means what it says, that it wants to prevent harm to individuals, harm to society. Let’s assume they mean that. I don’t believe that, by the way. I believe quite the contrary, that these MP’s, these Members of Parliament, especially the conservative ones, they’re either capitulating as cowards, or they’re behaving like political animals, intoxicated by money and prestige and power, and they are not acting in the best interests of the Canadians that they represent.

Anyway, let’s assume for a moment that only a concern for human flourishing is driving this legislation in Canada, that they want to prevent harm to individuals, harm to society, protect the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, and that’s the good that they seek.

First of all, what constitutes harm and happiness has become psychologically defined, and when it’s psychologically defined, it makes it inherently subjective and relative. It atomizes the idea of harm and happiness, and individualizes it, so that no one can say. So what’s gonna happen then? The mob rules. The mob is gonna rule, pursuing any altruistic goal like harm and happiness, preventing harm and promoting happiness, is doomed to futility because it’s gonna be a moving target. Only socially-approved definitions of harm and happiness pass muster. Currently, that which passes muster is that which supports the LGBTQ revolution. All other voices are silenced.

Modern world is the age of the psychologized self, the expressive individual, as Carl Trueman writes about in his book, The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self. You should read that. Promise of material health, wealth, and prosperity has been proven over time to be vapid and hollow and empty. But rather than seeking God, people have turned to a different promise of health, wealth, and prosperity, and it’s in the psychology of the self. So today, people, they make use of technology now, drugs, chemicals, surgeries to conform their external reality to their internal feelings.

External reality, like laws, conform to the individual will of the psychologized self, to shape the body in conformity with the psychologized identity and sadly, their psychological sense of identity is as elastic as their feelings. So it’s not a reliable guide at all. Whatever it is that constitutes harm and happiness, they cannot find it by looking inside. Definitions of harm and happiness are as fluid as today’s plastic people.

But second, we have good news for everyone. We already know what constitutes harm. God told us that sexual sin is harmful, even in some place, mortally so. We also know what constitutes true happiness. Happiness is to be right with God. Happiness is to enjoy his favor, his approval. Happiness is that which comes by faith in Jesus Christ. But listen, to define and frame sexual issues as simply a matter of harm and happiness keeps us all on a human level. Sexual sin is bad, fundamentally, because it violates God’s holiness. But holiness leads to happiness.

So many passages we could turn to, but let’s just go to 1 Corinthians. 1 Corinthians chapter 6, verse 9, Paul says, “Or do you not know the unrighteous will not inherit the Kingdom of God?” “The unrighteous will not inherit the Kingdom of God.” The Bible says, “There is no one righteous, not even one,” Romans 3:10. The Bible says, “All our righteous deeds are like filthy rags.” Isaiah 64:6. We translate that Hebrew word ida with a more polite term, filthy. It actually means something that is vile. I won’t say it right now, but it is intended to evoke our revulsion and discomfort, because that is how God looks at the very best that we think we have to offer him.

Our message to sinners is not about making unrighteous people righteous in and of themselves. Our message is not about making homosexuals heterosexual. We’re not in the business of transforming transgendered people into cisgendered people. That’s why our message really is not conversion therapy at all, and till that’s how unregenerate sinners are going to misunderstand us and misinterpret our message. So be it. conversion, yes. Conversion is the only hope. But therapy? No. No way. Conversion therapy, that’s, just, yet another failed form of worldly psychology methods, deeply infused into this useless psychology.

Many Christian counselors are trying in vain to do the same things, to turn homosexuals into heterosexuals, to turn transgender people into cisgendered people. They are totally in the wrong, they’re not even in the ballpark. Actually quite cruel to give homosexuals, or any of these other sinners, the gospel of heterosexual monogamy: That their only hope is in being happily married with 2.5 kids, living in suburbia with a white picket fence. Is that the gospel? What good does it do to convert a homosexual, if it means turning someone into a heterosexual, if that person remains in his sins, and dies in suburbia, and then stands before God facing God’s terrifying judgment?

We’re not preaching morality here. We’re preaching the hope of true conversion to become alive, to become truly alive. We’re promising the love of God. We’re promising the privilege of partaking of the divine nature itself. The joy of eternal life, an entirely different existence than has ever been known before. We preach a salvation of spiritual regeneration. We preach a new nature, one that longs for righteousness. We preach a gospel that promises forgiveness of sins, of all sins, even the grossest forms of immorality.

So for all who repent and believe the gospel from the heart, longing for righteousness, longing for life, we tell them that the penalty of their guilt can be paid for in Christ, that their shame can be removed from them, that their conscience can be cleansed. They can be covered with Christ’s perfect righteousness. Our message isn’t about the reformation of the sinner. Our message is not a message of moral modification. The gospel is about the death of the sinner, and the resurrection to new life that’s found in Christ and Christ alone. The good news of our gospel is that it’s the end of you. It’s the end of your old self. It’s the beginning of new life in Christ. And so our identity is in Christ, dying with him in his death on the cross, buried with him in the grave, raised to new life with him in his resurrection. That is the gospel we preach.

First Corinthians 6:9, “Don’t be deceived” about righteousness and unrighteousness. “Don’t be deceived” about your condition, your need for salvation. “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.”

Sexually immoral, broad term, pornos, from which we get the term pornography. Porneia is a very broad category covers all kinds of sexual sin. You’ve looked at pornography. Such a pervasive, insidious form of sexual immorality in these days. Well, then, you’re guilty of that, committing porneia. Jesus said, Matthew 5:20, “I say to you, everyone who looks at a woman with lustful intent has already committed adultery with her in his heart.”

Adultery, fornication, any kind of sexual play, and all that stuff is a form of porneia. Galatians 5:19, “The works of the flesh are evident,” and at the head of the list is porneia, “sexual immorality.” And it follows with the result of porneia, which is impurity, and uncleanness, and defilement, and then the driving force of porneia, which is sensuality and idolatry, Galatians 5:19.

 Next in the list, 1 Corinthians 6:9, the sexually immoral are idolaters. Idolaters are adulterers. And the list of sexual sins continues in the ESV with this: it combines two Greek terms in a single category. “Men who practice homosexuality,” that’s actually two different terms in the Greek: Malakos and arsenokoites. Malakos literally means soft or effeminate. In this context, it refers to the one who submits his body to be used as the passive partner in homosexual sin. The other word, arsenokoites, refers to the sodomite or the pederast, the one who is the aggressor, takes the active role in homosexual behavior. These terms graphically portray both the active, passive partners in homosexual activity. You put that into female language as well.

Notice how the terms that describe the sexually immoral precede terms that broaden the scope of what it means to be unrighteous. Sexual immorality is the expression of idolatry. Idolatry perverts the entire personality. So look at your terms there. Thieves, those who steal from others. They’re dominated with a heart of greed and covetous desire. Drunkards, not alcoholics, mind you, don’t use their terms. Drunkards, those who indulge in substances that dull the senses, and weaken the resolve, and shirk responsibility.

Revilers, those who slander, abuse other people with their speech. Swindlers, harpax, literally, ravenous people; rapacious, like wolves, they eat people, devour them merciless, greedy. All those people characterized by all those different kinds of sins. Don’t be deceived, they will not inherit the Kingdom of God. Revelation 22:15 says they’re outside of the Kingdom with the dogs, the sorcerers, the sexually immoral, murderers, idolaters, and everyone who loves and practices falsehood.

Canadians, Americans, it doesn’t matter what laws our government pass, if they are lying to us, if they approve what God condemns, they are loving and practicing falsehood. They’re selling a false hope. They promise happiness when there’s nothing but sadness and sorrow and grief in this life, and eternal judgment in the life to come.

But look at the good news, 1 Corinthians 6:11, “And such were some of you.” If you’ve never rejoiced in grammar, can you join me right now, rejoicing in grammar? Now is the time to love grammar. This is a past tense verb. It is an imperfect tense, which indicates that some of these believers in the Corinthian church used to be characterized by those sins, and they did so over an extended period of time, in the past. “Such were some of you.” Such good news, that you are not defined by your past, no matter how vile, no matter how deep the enslavement, no matter how dominating the sin, and how much it has tormented your heart and your, defiled your conscience, and deformed you, and plagued your thoughts, and ruined all your relationships.

“Such were some of you, but,” strong adversative there, “but you once were, but you are not any longer. You, you once were identified as pornos, as Idolator or race as moichos, as malakos, as arsenokoites, as LGBTQ, but, praise God, no longer! Washed, sanctified, you’re justified in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God. “But you were washed.” It’s an immersion, pictured in baptism, symbolizing the complete cleansing, the full pardon for all your sins in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, by the Spirit of God. Your sins are gone, gone! To be washed, aorist tense, once for all, full, final break from the sinful past. It’s in the passive voice, because this washing has happened to you. This is the promise of Ezekiel 36:25, “I will sprinkle clean water on you and you shall be clean from all your uncleannesses, and from all your idols I will cleanse you.”

Because of Christ’s atoning work on the cross, dying for your sins, because of the Spirit’s power, regenerating you to new life, you are fully forgiven, you are finally free, you are utterly and totally clean. As God promised through the prophet Isaiah, Isaiah 1:18, “Though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow. Though they’re red like crimson, they shall become white as wool.”

“But you were sanctified.” The verb hagiazo, to be set apart as holy, to be consecrated unto God. Again, this verb is in the passive voice, which means this is something that’s been done to you by God the Spirit. It’s in the aorist tense, so it means this is a once for all act. It’s a finished condition. It’s never to be reversed, never to be undone. And now because you’re sanctified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God, as Peter wrote, 1 Peter 2:9, you now belong to “a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, people for God’s own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness and into his marvelous light.”

1 Peter 1:15-16, “As he who called you is holy, you also therefore be holy in your conduct, since it’s written, you shall be holy, for I am holy.” Again, promise of new covenant in Ezekiel 36:26-27. He says, “I’m gonna set you apart. I will give you a new heart, a new spirit I’ll put within you. I’ll remove your heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. I’ll put my Spirit within you and I’m going to cause holiness to happen. I’ll cause you to walk in my statutes, and you’ll be careful to obey my rules from the inside out. This isn’t moral modification. This is regeneration. Because you’re sanctified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ by the Spirit of our God, you’re holy. You grow in holiness. You will live forever in holiness.

You are either Christian or you’re not, and if you are a Christian, we are all set apart by God, for God, to God. We’re all part of the same consecration. And then Paul says, “You were justified.” Dikaioo, it’s to justify, to declare righteous, once again aorist passive. Justification is a past act of God. It’s one that’s declared upon us. It’s declared about us. It’s a once-for-all pronouncement. We are declared righteous. Again, it’s in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, by the Spirit of our God.

Not justified by our own works, but by his works. Justified because of his passive obedience, what he suffered on the cross) and by his active obedience what he fulfilled and merited, living a perfectly righteous life, pleasing God in all things. Paul says in 2 Corinthians 5:21, bringing those two together, “He made him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf, that we might become the righteousness of God in him.” That’s the heart of the battle. The heart of the battle is for the souls of sinners, and it’s to bring them the gospel.

To proclaim the gospel in our day, it’s to the modern sinner. It’s to the expressive individual that based on the psychologized view of the self, wants to make his external reality everywhere around him conform to his internal feelings. That’s the kind of sinner that we have to bring the gospel to. Terribly confused people in the modern world. We exist to snatch these sinners, these sexual sinners, out of a raging fire, promising God’s salvation in Christ and setting them free.

So with all due respect to modern governments, as the Church of Jesus Christ, we stand ready, 1 Timothy 1:3-4 says, to “charge certain persons not to teach any different doctrine, nor to devote themselves to myths.” As governments jump out of their lane and enter into the church, I have to tell those governments not to teach any different doctrine. Not to devote itself to myths. They’re accusing us of the same. I say back to them, “Get back in your lane and do what God has commissioned you to do.” They desire, 1 Timothy 1:7, governments seem these days very willing to b, “desire to be teachers of the law without understanding either what they’re saying or the things about which they make confident assertions,” as they’re passing unjust and immoral laws.

Paul goes on to tell Pastor Timothy, tell Pastor Travis, tell pastors and elders tell all of you as church members, And we know that the law if good if one uses it lawfully; understanding this, the law is not laid down for the just, but for the lawless and disobedient. You know those laws that they just passed in Canada? They’re trying to lay that down for the just, for the obedient, not the disobedient. They’re trying to tell us that how we’re living, and what we’re promoting, and what we’re practicing is wrong and to be punished.

Law’s not laid down for the just, but for the lawless and the disobedient, for the ungodly and the sinners, for the unholy and the profane, for those who strike their fathers and mothers, for murderers, the sexually immoral, men who practice homosexuality, enslavers, liars, perjurers, and whatever else is contrary to sound doctrine, in accordance with the gospel of the glory of the blessed God with which we’ve been entrusted. That’s what the Law’s for.

Beloved, we’re not gonna bow. Not now, not ever. By God’s grace we will stand firm, we’ll plant our flag, we’ll fly that banner high. We’re gonna declare the righteous Law of God to all the ungodly, that they might find salvation in the gospel of Jesus Christ. Why? Paul tells Timothy, verse 5, 1 Timothy 1, because “The goal of our instruction is love. Love from a pure heart, and a good conscience, and a sincere faith.”

Father, so many sinners need your salvation. They need to see and savor and love the Lord Jesus Christ, and to worship him, put forth faith in him. And that’s what we preach, as we preach salvation in Christ, not a moralism. We preach deep conversion. We thank you, Father, for saving us, in Jesus’ name, Amen.