It has been suggested that the nations who inhabited Canaan before the children of Israel conquered the Land practiced homosexuality and prostitution only in connection with their heathen worship, and that this is what the Law was trying to prevent. While it is true that there were both male and female prostitutes involved in the Canaanite idolatrous worship, homosexuality was also generally rife in many of the Canaanite cities. There is the obvious example of the men of Sodom in Genesis 19, where visitors to their city were vilely threatened - an act described by God's prophet as "an abomination" (Ezekiel 16:50). Sodomy has thus become a widespread term to describe the homosexual act.
Again in Judges 19, there is a similar incident where a visitor to Gibeah in Benjamin was threatened with homosexual abuse by the men of the city, who are described as "perverted men" (Judges 19:22). The age was one where "everyone did what was right in his own eyes" (Judges 21:25).
These two incidents, both of them unconnected with the religious worship of those places, show how homosexuality had infiltrated the very fabric of society in those days, just as it has today. It was never totally removed. Not long after the golden age of David and Solomon, history records that "there were also sodomites in the land: and they did according to all the abominations of the nations which the Lord cast out before the children of Israel" (1 Kings 14:24).
The Law confirmed that homosexuality is an abomination to God. But it also showed that it defiles those who practice it, and the society which tolerates it (Leviticus 18:27) - an aspect to which we shall return in due course. So abominable is it in God's sight that He commanded the nation of Israel that, "If a man lies with a male as he lies with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination. They shall surely be put to death" (Leviticus 20:13).
The key here is in the phrase "as he lies with a woman", and this is why homosexuality is abhorrent to God. For it was God who ordained the relationships between His creatures. Animals were created for the service of man, and man was "to have dominion over" them (Genesis 1:26,28). But nowhere in the animal kingdom was there found a suitable companion" for man (Genesis 2;18,20). Woman was specially created for this purpose, and this was confirmed by Jesus himself, when he said to the Pharisees in his day, "Have you not read that he who made them at the beginning made them male and female, and said, For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh?" (Matthew 19:4,5, quoting Genesis 2:24).
Sane, If you can truly cite sodom as a scripture against homosexuality then you have never read the whole story. If every man in that town was gay, "until every man surrounded the house" Then where did the children and wives come in? They weren't gay. They saw strangers in their midsts and wanted to conquer them. The same way victorious armies would rape the losing side. To show absolute power and control. What do you think rape is? It is power and control. It has nothing to do with sex.
ReplyDeleteAnd in the story you quote from Judges. They took the concubine and raped her until she dies. Yes both cities were destroyed. So if Sodom was destroyed for homosexuality then Gibeah was destroyed for heterosexuality. One town wanted to rape the "male" angels and the other town actually raped the female.
Don't get me started on Leviticus. Becuse if you don't follow all of the purity code then how can you hold onto one or two sentences to condemn me?
"The key here is in the phrase "as he lies with a woman", Did it ever occur to you that gay men don't lie together as being with a woman? I am sure that gay men are not pretending to be with a woman. They know they are with another man.
Which leads me to another thought. Have you ever had sex knowing you wouldn't be creating a new life? Is your wife or partner ever on top? Do you use any type of birth control? Have you ever fooled around even just a little bit when your wife was on her period? Have you ever masterbated? Have you ever allowed your wife to initate sex? If you answer yes to any of these then you too are breaking the law.
Yes he made them male and female. He also made them male and male and female and female. God created us all.
Lindsey,
ReplyDeletebecause the bible says it is more of a sin. All sin separates from God. So in the simple sense, sin is sin. In the text of the Bible there are sins that have greater consequence in God's eyes.
Hill,
To answer your list of sex questions which it always boils down to with homosexual people. No.
The purity code is for Jews living in a gentile world. When Jesus came he did away with many of those laws.
Just because some sins have more dire of earthly consequence does not mean that they are worse in the eyes of God.
ReplyDeleteNote that OT law gave a child being rebellious the same consequence as homosexual acts. Being put to death.
Seriously- where does the Bible state that homosexuality is MORE abhorrent? All of the verses I've seen in which it is called abhorrent behavior it is listed with such things as infidelity, gossip, foul language and gluttony.
Well, there are five kinds of wrath:
ReplyDelete1. There is Eternal Wrath - That's Hell.
2. There is, I guess what we could call, Eschatological Wrath, or the wrath of the last days. The wrath described in Revelation 6-19, all the Seal Judgments, Trumpet Judgments, Bowl Judgments--the final wrath. So there is Eternal Wrath, there is Eschatological Wrath.
3. There is also, what I could call, Cataclysmic Wrath: the flood; the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah; the destruction of the cities of the plain; the destruction of Capernaum; the judgment of God on Korazin, Bethsaida--and in history God has judged whole civilizations through cataclysms that took unbelieving people and catapulted them into eternity, such as Pompeii, which was a city literally notorious for its vice. So you have Eternal Wrath, you have Eschatological Wrath, you have Cataclysmic Wrath.
4. Then you have, what I would call, Natural Wrath. That is the wrath of God that comes in a sowing and reaping fashion. If you are a drunkard all your life, you may die of cirrhosis of the liver; if you live in sexual sin all your life you may shorten your life and die of some venereal disease including AIDS. So there are certain things built-in, "Whatever a man sows he reaps," that's another kind of wrath. But the wrath being spoken of here is the fifth kind.
5. It is the Wrath of Abandonment. It is that judicial act of God whereby He lets the sinner go. In other words, He stops convicting, He stops calling, it's Genesis six, where God says, "My Spirit will not always strive with man." There comes a point when God says, "That's it--I'm letting you go." And when God lets a society go, verse 24 says, "He gives them over to uncleanness"--that's sexual sin. Then verse 26, "He gives them up to vile passions, and women exchange the natural use for what is against nature. Likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust for one another, men with men committing what is shameful." So you have lesbianism and homosexuality. When God gives a society up they plunge into sexual sin and then they sink deeper into homosexual sin.
So while homosexuality is a forgivable sin, and categorically no worse than others, when it happens on a societal level, it is evidence that when a society affirms it, when it becomes normal in a society, that is evidence that God has turned that society over. If you look at America you can look back to the sexual revolution of the 60's, which has now become a homosexual revolution of the 90's in which the homosexuals have redefined themselves as a minority, like a racial group of people demanding rights. So I think as far as individual sin goes no more damning than the other sin and as forgivable as any other sin. When it becomes the pattern of a society it is evidence that God has turned that society over to that sin, it may be at that point an evidence that many in that society are not redeemable because they have gone past the "age of grace."
In response to that, we hate the sin of homosexuality because of its baseness and because of its perverseness, but at the same time we understand that it is a sin like any other sin and we have to call that sinner to repentance and offer that individual sinner the grace and the forgiveness of God. We can't play God and while God may be turning our society over--God may be no longer striving with us; He may have abandoned us as a society, still He is saving individuals who respond to the gospel.