Grace Emmanuel Church

Pastor Sam Chess

What if Jesus had Never Been Born?

(Part 5)

^{(Where the “Sexual Revolution” has brought us)}

I. Christianity’s Impact on Human Sexuality

God is not the least bit vague about his plan for human sexuality

So…if that is what God’s plan is not… for human sexuality what is God’s plan for human sexuality? The answer is… and has for all of time… remained locked up in one word:

Amazingly, every culture, of any account, throughout history has maintained, as the bedrock of their society the institution of the covenant union of one man and one woman.

Some cultures have strayed into polygamy, many have played games with God’s original institution. This thing called sexual immorality, has crept into every society always threatening the very existence of the institution of marriage itself:

Every civilization that has risen to world prominence and moved counter to the institution of marriage has eventually ceased to exist!

We, as a nation, are on a fast track toward the watering down and eventual elimination of God’s for-ordained institution of marriage!

Pastor, you are overreacting…Yes we have moved further away from the old fashioned “one man, one woman, 2 children” view of family… We have become enlightened and experienced a sexual freedom in our modern society, We have learned an acceptance and even an affirmation of sexual activity outside of a traditional marriage covenant, and yes we are now on the verge of approving the homosexual marriage union of two men or two women….but Pastor don’t be Victorian about it all…this new sexual freedom is not going to destroy the family unit in our country, we’ re not going to follow every civilization before us, who took this path, by first fading from prominence and then ceasing to exist…. I don’t agree!!….

When Hitler marched his troops into Austria and then annexed Czechoslovakia, in the late 30’s, the response of the rest of Europe was startling… They did nothing! England Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain decided to follow a policy of “appeasement” where he and his political allies would ignore the threat and hop it would just go away. Instead of just going away Hitler systematically swallowed up most of Europe and threatened England itself…. Chamberlain was forced to resign in shame. England’s new Prime Minister, Winston Churchill, along with the United States and other Allies joined forces to push Hitler back into his hole and free the countries he had conquered, but the effort took several years and millions of people died.

In retrospect Churchill said: “Never was a war more easy to stop than that which has just wrecked the world.”

Today, 60 years later, we are facing another World War. This struggle is not being fought with guns and bombs, but with ideas, with creative uses of the law, and with methods of intimidation. It is a battle for the very soul of the nation!- James Dobson

It is a battle for the family! The 2001 US Census reported that :

Families headed by a single father were up 72%

Families headed by a single mother had increased 25%

In 1940, 3.8 percent of children were born to unwed mothers, in 2001,

33% of all babies were born to unwed mothers!

Households headed by a father and a mother had dropped below 25%

It used to be very hard to get out of a marriage covenant… it was an institution protected by law. In 1969 California signed into law the first no-fault divorce law. In the years that followed all fifty states adopted some form of no-fault divorce. It is now easier to get out of a thirty year covenant of marriage than it is to legally get out of a pool maintenance contract.

In the sixties students demanded that we “make love not war” and so we entered the sexual revolution which brought sexual freedom to millions of Americans… It also brought an epidemic of sexually transmitted diseases and finally the onset of the HIV/ AIDS epidemic.

Oh… the distance we have traveled, in my lifetime, since we found our sexual freedom…Many of us have no idea how free we now are:

At this very moment an epidemic is invading our world. It threatens our very lives, but often goes unnoticed until it’s too late. It’s an epidemic that is raging in every corner of the country, from rural towns to every major city and across the world. Worst of all, it is an epidemic that we have helped to create.

We have created it because the heart of our sin nature that says, “I will do what I want.” One of the results of the sexual rebellion is the escalation of sexually transmitted diseases.. STD’s have increased more than 500% in recent years. Right now, one out of every four sexually active teens is living with an STD. (The price of sexual freedom!)

These STD’s have changed over the years. Not long ago, we had only “VD” or venereal diseases to deal with. Today, we are facing at least 25 new STD’s with up to 100 different strains within each virus. These viruses often stay with the “sexually free” person for a lifetime…there is simply no cure. Perhaps the biggest STD enemy is HPV (human papilloma virus - or genital warts) which directly causes 99.7% of all cervical cancer.

Dr. Meg Meeker is a pediatrician who is alarmed by the epidemic among teens. She has written a book entitled “Epidemic-How Teen Sex is Killing Our Kids.” According to her,

Dr. Meeker tells the story of Sally, a 15 yr. old girl who came to the hospital complaining of abdominal pain. Believing Sally must have appendicitis, Dr. Meeker scheduled her for an appendectomy. But when the incision was made, the doctors discovered an abdominal cavity filled with pus. Sally had pelvic inflammatory disease which originated as Chlamydia - a sexually transmitted disease. The good news about Chlamydia is that there is a cure. The bad news is that frequently there are no symptoms until great damage has been done to the reproductive organs. Fortunately, for Sally, the doctor was able to save her life. She was placed on IV antibiotics and went home one week later….she went home without the female body parts that would have enabled her to become a mother!

III. Sexual Immorality is not a private affair!

We have watched our society, just in the last 40 years, hit a slide of immorality that is now bringing us to the brink of national destruction. All the while, (just like in Rome or Greece, or Babylon, or Assyria, or the Egyptian dynasties) the secularist in our society are declaring that what is happening to our moral fabric is actually progress. We have been removed from the chains of ancient Christianity that has repressed human sexuality.

Christianity has not repressed human sexuality, it has repressed human immorality!

Your body is a temple, not an amusement park! -August

Your body is not a tomb…

Your body is not a tavern…

Your body is a temple!

IV. Our National sexual D-day has arrived!

It came to a head on June 23,2003. The US Supreme Court decided that homosexual behavior (sodomy) was not only not illegal, but was a right protected by the US Constitution. They struck down a Texas law against sodomy in this now infamous case called Lawrence vs. Texas. Nobody asked what the rest of the nation thought about it…Five people determined, as they did in Roe vs. Wade that a previously illegal action was now protected by law. (Well, you say, homosexuality shouldn’t have been illegal to start with…it may be immoral but it’s not a crime.)

What you need to know is that that law was holding back a flood of new challenges to morality in our country. That Supreme Court decision opened a flood gate and we find ourselves now in a raging swirling mess…

In November of 2003, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court ruled 4 to 3 ( 4 people) that the state must recognize the legitimacy of homosexual marriage. They cited as their authority the Lawrence vs. Texas ruling.

On May 17th 2004, Massachusetts began issuing marriage licenses to homosexuals. And there is now no way through the Judicial system to stop it…they are basing their right on a Supreme Court decision.

What was once clearly against the law,… passed by our elected Legislatures in this country has been quickly and completely nullified by just 9 un-elected people and there is supposedly not one thing the rest of the nation can say about it.

That’s why this President, who does believe in a one woman/ one man marriage relationship, is trying so hard to pass an amendment to the Constitution. Only an Amendment to the constitution will be beyond the reach of judges resetting the law by their rulings. Right now, when the first homosexual marriage case reaches the US Supreme Court… Five judges, can in one ruling, reshape the entire definition of marriage for the entire nation, and there is not one thing we will be able to do about it!

We are at D-Day! You say, why are you making such a huge deal about two people of the same sex, who love each other getting married? Because this is about so much more than those two people.

Utah Polygamist, Tom Green, is defending his right to marry five wives and you know what he is using as his defense? Lawrence vs. Texas!….absolutely, if two men can marry then you have unstopped the cork any anybody can marry anyone they want. Some judge somewhere will eventually give some man the right to marry his daughter, and who will be able to stop them???? The cork is out of the bottle.

National Coalition of Gay Organizations: has already demanded the repeal of all legislative provisions that restrict the sex or number of persons entering into a marriage unit”

Even more importantly, Once it becomes the protected right of an individual to marry anyone they chose regardless of sex or number….

….If I try to tell you what I believe God clearly says about sex outside of a one man one woman covenant relationship I will be breaking the law! My sermon will be branded “hate speech” against a constitutionally protected class of American citizens. If a gay couple comes to me to be married and I refuse to marry them, I will be denying them their constitutional rights and I could be arrested and this church could lose it’s tax exemption status.

On April 28th 2004, Canada passed Bill C-250 which criminalizes speech or writings that criticize homosexuality. Anything deemed “homophobic” is punishable by up to six months in prison!

Already, in Canada, a printer was fined $40,000.00 for refusing to print stationary for a homosexual activist group.

If passed, every public school will be required to teach homosexuality as the moral equivalent of traditional marriage. Textbook will have to give equal space to all legal unions even in first grade schoolbooks.

If passed courts will not be able to favor adoption families or foster families with a husband and wife.

Once marriage has been redefined a marriage license will have the status of a drivers license or hunting permit. Divorces will be obtained instantly and not involve a court.

Conclusion:

James Dobson: The old earthen dam that has held and protected the reservoir of Christian values and beliefs since the days of our Founding Fathers has been leaking for decades. With each passing year the structural damage has become greater. In recent days the entire superstructure is beginning to give way.