And what’s also very sad is we see that the church is being pressured to conform, not to resist the process, not to stand up for Jesus and traditional Christian values, especially in the area of sexual behaviour.
Just last week we had a statement by the Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby. He said, ‘What the Archbishop of York and other Bishops are saying, what we’ve come here to say is that all sexual activity should be within committed relationships whether it’s straight or gay.’ All sexual activity should be within committed relationships whether it’s straight or gay.
So, is that a good thing to say? Well, we should be committed, yes; but can you see the catch there? What he’s saying, actually, is that sexual intimacy is no longer limited to marriage; sexual intimacy in a gay relationship is okay, and therefore the church should bless sexual relations outside of marriage.
What’s happening there? The church is taking on the world’s agenda. Once the church takes on the world agenda, it becomes a salt which has lost its savour and is good for nothing but to be trodden underfoot by men and cast out.
33 So likewise, whoever of you does not forsake all that he has cannot be My disciple.
34 “Salt is good; but if the salt has lost its flavor, how shall it be seasoned? 35 It is neither fit for the land nor for the dunghill, but men throw it out. He who has ears to hear, let him hear!” Luke 14:33-35
And the Archbishop’s is a devastating statement because it makes a clear departure from the doctrine of the Church of England and of every other major Christian denomination across the world including even the Catholic church.
And this formal statement from the Archbishop of Canterbury reveals that he’s openly expressing his disagreement with the clear teaching of the Church of England. Its head creates a problem – especially if you’re an Anglican Christian – and there are many good Anglican Christians who love the Lord and who believe the Gospel and who are preaching the Gospel.
5 And Jesus answered and said to them, “Because of the hardness of your heart he wrote you this precept. 6 But from the beginning of the creation, God ‘made them male and female.’ 7 ‘For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, 8 and the two shall become one flesh’; so then they are no longer two, but one flesh. 9 Therefore what God has joined together, let not man separate.” Mark 10.5-9
We have a head of the church who is himself supposed to be an ‘Evangelical’, who’s now saying that he disagrees with what the church and what the Bible teaches. He disagrees with fundamental Christian doctrine on marriage.
What is the Church of England Doctrine on this subject? The Church of England Doctrine is that sexual intercourse is an expression of faithful intimacy that properly belongs within marriage exclusively. There is that word ‘exclusively’. Sexual intimacy belongs within marriage exclusively. The doctrine of marriage is set out in the Canon Law of the Church of England and states that marriage is a lifelong union of one man with one woman to the exclusion of all others on either side.
One man and one woman, not two men, not two women, but one man and one woman. It’s pretty simple. It’s what the Bible says. You don’t have to be a great theologian to work it out. But, apparently, our great theologians can’t see it and they’re coming up with all these compromises.
Why are they doing it? Because they want to be ‘like the world’, run after the world: ‘Well, we’re just like you! Please don’t reject us! Please don’t let us be cast out, because we just want to be like you.’
The end the world will cast them out anyway but it becomes the ‘salt which has lost its flavour’.
13 “You are the salt of the earth; but if the salt loses its flavor, how shall it be seasoned? It is then good for nothing but to be thrown out and trampled underfoot by men. Matthew 5.13
I believe all this is preparing the way for the coming of the Antichrist as the church goes along with him and you see the woman riding the beast of in Revelation 17
3 So he carried me away in the Spirit into the wilderness. And I saw a woman sitting on a scarlet beast which was full of names of blasphemy, having seven heads and ten horns. Revelation 17.3
There are a few brave souls who dare to swim against the tide and find themselves excluded and persecuted because they won’t bow the knee to Satan and his powers and, hopefully, we can remain amongst those people because they’re the ones who going to be blessed; they’re the ones who got the truth and no matter how many people are saying foolish things, even when millions of people say a foolish thing, it’s still a foolish thing and what we have to stand on is what is the truth of the Word of God: ‘Jesus is Lord’.
There’s One God, one Way to God through faith in Jesus. And, as far as God is concerned, on sexual matters, it’s very clear. He has an institution which he calls ‘marriage’, into which a man and a woman come together and within which, having come together, they’re free to have sexual relations and to produce children.
But if they don’t come together in marriage then, they should not have sexual relations until they do. And sexual intimacy between a man and a man is forbidden in the Bible. Leviticus calls it ‘an abomination’ in God’s sight. You can’t really get much clearer than that.
22 You shall not lie with a male as with a woman. It is an abomination. Leviticus 18.22
And so, you have to stand on the Word of God and don’t be pushed by all this woolly liberalism and compromise because it’s leading you to hell and we can only lead people to Christ if we stand on the Word of God and the truth. Praise the Lord!
