Today (October9, 2014) at 5 p.m., mountain time, we will know what the courts will say in regard to Idaho’s defense of marriage. In the mean time I’ve received messages like this in response to my calling the church (Eastside Baptist) to prayer.
“OK, well in my place of worship my pastor fully supports gay rights. I’m a bisexual Christian I married a man when I was 19 and that man cheated on me and divorced me and with man or woman I’m happy and God is happy to call me his child and is proud that I spread love throughout the state.. So keep your rude remarks to yourself.. Same sex is here to stay and God is proud of his same sex children.”
When I’m in conversation with someone that goes here I recognize immediately that this person has found a church that will make them feel good about their sin. But the greatest tragedy in this conversation is when she said… “in my place of worship my pastor fully supports gay rights.” As a result of that kind of apostasy, the people begin to assert other lies about God being proud to have practicing bisexuals spread love throughout the state.
She has great capacity to spread love throughout the state as a converted repenter, no longer in the practice of depravity. When the grace of God rests on a persons life it is the result of a costly grace. Few people want to submit to that kind of grace, they want a cheap grace that doesn’t call them out of the sin they are in.
I don’t doubt that she believes what she’s saying. There is little doubt she is passionate about her belief, more so than many professing conservative “Christians”. The problem is that it is a belief based on lies.
In his sermon “Backsliding”, Richard Owen Roberts says:
“The religious leaders had joined the backsliding hosts. The priests failed to ask, “Where is the Lord?” Those responsible for handling the law did not know God. The pastors also transgressed against the Lord, and the prophets joined the forces of Baal. Thus, all the religious leaders engaged in activities totally devoid of spiritual benefit.”
7 “I brought you into the fruitful land
To eat its fruit and its good things.
But you came and defiled My land,
And My inheritance you made an abomination.
8 “The priests did not say, ‘Where is the LORD?’
And those who handle the law did not know Me;
The rulers also transgressed against Me,
And the prophets prophesied by Baal
And walked after things that did not profit.
Jer 2:7-8 (NASB)
Preachers, be sure this Sunday, when we speak the oracles of God that we don’t spew a spiritual poison that makes our hearers twice as fit for hell as we would be for such blasphemy.