Doesn’t the Bible Tell Christians to Put Homosexuals to Death?
00:00:00.000 | [Music]
00:00:05.000 | A podcast listener named Luke writes, "Dear Pastor John, I want to first thank you for
00:00:08.840 | the Ask Pastor John podcast and for your obedience and love to the Lord.
00:00:13.160 | One thing I have always struggled to communicate is the difference between the Old Testament
00:00:17.280 | law and the fulfilled law after Christ.
00:00:19.840 | I have many atheist friends who press me here, specifically when it comes to homosexuality.
00:00:25.620 | Why do we as Christians not believe practicing homosexuals should be killed for their sin,
00:00:30.660 | if that is exactly the prescription in our Bibles in Leviticus chapter 20, verse 13?
00:00:36.600 | How would you answer this objection?"
00:00:40.380 | This is huge and absolutely crucial, and we need an answer for it to those who ask.
00:00:50.440 | It's such a common response for somebody who has a smattering of knowledge or has just
00:00:56.180 | read that there are these verses in the Bible like that.
00:00:59.580 | And it's not difficult to answer this problem.
00:01:04.540 | It just takes a little willingness on the part of people to listen for a few minutes
00:01:09.300 | as we describe the nature of the Christian Bible.
00:01:16.260 | So you have to ask for a few minutes.
00:01:20.480 | It might be helpful to start with an analogy.
00:01:23.740 | I think right off the bat, this might be helpful.
00:01:27.340 | You might say to the person who's asking that question, "Suppose a book is written for the
00:01:33.380 | military and in chapter one, it deals with how soldiers should relate to each other during
00:01:40.700 | basic training stateside.
00:01:43.540 | Chapter two deals with how soldiers should relate to each other and to their captured
00:01:49.060 | enemies on the battlefield.
00:01:51.640 | Chapter three deals with how soldiers should relate to each other and to their captors
00:01:57.960 | if any of them is taken captive and in prison.
00:02:02.500 | And the fourth chapter deals with how they should relate to each other and to the enemy
00:02:06.340 | if they are infiltrated behind enemy lines.
00:02:12.100 | Should anyone accuse a soldier of disobedience if while he is captured as a prisoner of war,
00:02:22.580 | he obeys the instructions in chapter three rather than the instructions in chapter one?
00:02:29.940 | No, nobody would.
00:02:32.700 | That's the way the book intends to be used.
00:02:36.580 | Now that's the kind of book the Bible is.
00:02:40.420 | It was written under God's inspiration over a period of 1,500 years or so through various
00:02:48.480 | periods where God dealt with his people in different ways.
00:02:55.540 | Not everything that the Bible designed for God's people—Israel under the judges or
00:03:01.900 | under the kings or that God designs for Christians under the apostles in the New Testament—is
00:03:07.740 | the same.
00:03:09.340 | Putting to death adulterers, putting to death homosexuals, putting to death the sons who
00:03:14.180 | cursed their parents—all these penalties belonged to a particular season in the history
00:03:22.500 | of God's dealings with his covenant people, and those dealings have changed dramatically
00:03:30.060 | with the coming of God's Son, Jesus Christ, into the world.
00:03:35.660 | That's the basic nature of the Bible and of redemptive history that we need to get
00:03:42.660 | across to our critics.
00:03:45.980 | Then if they're willing to take a few more minutes with us to examine the Bible, we can
00:03:55.700 | point them to the very places in the Bible where this becomes plain.
00:04:03.060 | So maybe it would be helpful if I just gave a few of those, and this would be a guideline
00:04:07.740 | for how you—what text would you use if you sat down with your atheist friend who said,
00:04:14.860 | "No, I think you Christians are inconsistent because you're not putting homosexuals to
00:04:18.460 | death because it says right here in Leviticus that that's what you're supposed to do."
00:04:22.140 | So here's a few.
00:04:24.140 | First, the first pointer of how things have changed dramatically.
00:04:28.940 | Matthew 5:17, Jesus says, "Do not think that I have come to abolish the law and the
00:04:34.820 | prophets.
00:04:35.820 | I have not come to abolish them, but to fulfill them."
00:04:39.100 | So all the Old Testament finds its completion and fulfillment in Jesus, and that's a basic
00:04:47.620 | truth that a person needs to understand.
00:04:50.380 | Everything in the Old Testament was pointing toward Jesus as the Son of God incarnate,
00:04:56.420 | dying, rising to save His people, and therefore in His person, in His ministry, the whole
00:05:04.100 | Old Testament reaches a climax and is dramatically altered.
00:05:11.220 | Second pointer, the Bible spells out many of the specifics of this dramatic alteration.
00:05:18.820 | For example, the book of Hebrews is probably the classic place for showing how the Old
00:05:25.300 | Covenant has become obsolete with the coming of the New Covenant.
00:05:32.100 | Chapter 8, verse 13, "In speaking of a new covenant, He makes the first one obsolete,
00:05:38.900 | and what is becoming obsolete and growing old is ready to vanish away."
00:05:45.740 | And for example, the death of Jesus is the once-for-all sacrifice for sins so that the
00:05:53.820 | entire Old Testament sacrificial system of offering animals comes to an end.
00:06:01.180 | Hebrews 7, 27, 9, 12, "Jesus is the final Lamb of God."
00:06:06.820 | The whole Old Testament sacrificial system is over, doesn't apply anymore.
00:06:11.820 | Another example from Hebrews is that Jesus Himself offers the sacrifice of Himself, and
00:06:17.460 | therefore Jesus is the final priest, and you don't need any more priests.
00:06:23.460 | And so the entire Old Testament priesthood is removed.
00:06:27.580 | It's over.
00:06:28.580 | We have one new, final, eternal High Priest, Jesus Christ.
00:06:32.740 | A third example is that Jesus saw Himself as the new temple.
00:06:37.620 | If you destroy this temple, I'll build it in three days.
00:06:40.220 | And He meant, I'll rise from the dead in three days.
00:06:42.980 | So when the temple was destroyed in 70 AD, the place of worship for Christians was not
00:06:47.540 | destroyed because we don't have a place for worship that is limited geographically.
00:06:51.760 | We have Jesus.
00:06:52.760 | And any place Jesus is, we can worship.
00:06:56.700 | So all those specifics are how the Old Covenant was becoming obsolete, and dramatic changes
00:07:04.100 | came about, and hundreds of commands in the Old Testament don't apply to Christians anymore
00:07:09.020 | because this new phase of redemptive history has come.
00:07:13.980 | A third pointer to this dramatic alteration between Old and New Testament is that the
00:07:19.740 | Christian life is put on a completely new footing from law.
00:07:23.300 | Romans 7, 6, "Now we are released from the law, having died to that which held us captive,
00:07:29.500 | so that we serve in the new way of spirit, not the old way of a written code."
00:07:35.140 | A fourth pointer is that Jesus said about the people of Israel in Matthew 21, 43, "I
00:07:42.460 | tell you, the kingdom of God will be taken away from you," political, ethnic Israel,
00:07:47.500 | "and given to a people producing its fruits," that is, the Christian church.
00:07:52.300 | And what that marks is a dramatic change from the old theocratic, ethnic orientation on
00:07:59.980 | one people group, namely Israel, to a new kind of people who are not a political entity,
00:08:06.500 | they're not an ethnic entity ruled by a political or governmental leader, but they are a people
00:08:12.460 | scattered like exiles away from heaven, their homeland, on the earth, mingling among all
00:08:18.620 | the ethnic groups of the world with a king in heaven, not on earth, so that Jesus says
00:08:24.660 | to Pilate, "My kingdom is not of this world.
00:08:28.940 | If my kingdom were of this world, my servants would have been fighting that I might not
00:08:33.660 | be delivered over to the Jews, but my kingdom is not of this world."
00:08:39.500 | And so the church doesn't function any longer, like Israel did, as a national or political,
00:08:46.460 | governmental agency, and therefore does not coerce its beliefs with the sword.
00:08:53.620 | Fifth pointer is the way that Christians are freed from the old theocratic, ethnic orientation
00:09:02.140 | that needed all kinds of cultural distinctives which the Jews had to set it apart from the
00:09:08.140 | nations.
00:09:09.140 | Mark 7, 19, Jesus declared all foods clean.
00:09:16.220 | So the entire dietary law system of the Old Testament is wiped away because we don't need
00:09:24.300 | to distinguish ourselves from all the nations of the world.
00:09:27.460 | We are part of the nations of the world.
00:09:29.420 | We eat whatever we're offered because we're on an evangelistic mission to win people from
00:09:33.900 | all the peoples of the world among whom we are a part.
00:09:38.740 | Another example would be circumcision.
00:09:41.180 | Circumcision was the defining trait of Israel among the nations, and in Galatians 5, 6,
00:09:46.860 | we're told it doesn't longer count for Christians.
00:09:49.300 | It's not required for Christians anymore.
00:09:52.080 | And a sixth pointer to this dramatic alteration between Old and New Testament is Matthew 5,
00:09:58.420 | 38, and 39.
00:09:59.960 | You have heard that it was said, "An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth."
00:10:04.140 | But I say to you, do not resist the one who is evil.
00:10:07.460 | But if anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also.
00:10:11.460 | Or another example of change in moral expectations is where Jesus talks about divorce.
00:10:18.740 | In Matthew 19, 7 and 8, he says this.
00:10:22.620 | They ask him, "Why then did Moses command one to give a certificate of divorce and send
00:10:28.900 | her away if you say we shouldn't divorce?"
00:10:31.300 | And here's what he answers.
00:10:32.940 | He said, "Because of your hardness of heart, Moses allowed you to divorce your wives.
00:10:40.660 | But from the beginning, it was not so."
00:10:43.500 | In other words, even though Moses made this provision, I don't anymore.
00:10:47.580 | So you can see changes coming to the world with Jesus in the moral expectations upon
00:10:53.420 | the people of God.
00:10:55.980 | Now finally, directly to the point about homosexuals being executed in the Old Testament, is the
00:11:02.900 | New Testament, when it is presented with an executable offense, dealt with it differently.
00:11:13.940 | For example, 1 Corinthians 5, the early church was confronted with a man who was having sex
00:11:22.900 | with his stepmother, evidently.
00:11:25.220 | Might have been his mother-in-law.
00:11:27.820 | It was an intra-family, horrendous sexual sin that even the nations around the church
00:11:34.920 | thought was evil.
00:11:36.020 | It goes like this, "It is actually reported that there is a sexual immorality among you
00:11:42.020 | and of a kind that is not tolerated even among the pagans, for a man has his father's wife."
00:11:50.420 | When Paul dealt with that, which was in the Old Testament an offense so egregious it would
00:11:56.700 | have been dealt with by stoning, killing, execution.
00:12:00.700 | And Paul did not, of course, prescribe stoning or execution.
00:12:05.220 | He prescribed church discipline.
00:12:09.060 | And that's a clear example of how dramatic the changes have become between chapter 1
00:12:17.220 | in the military book and chapter 4 in the military book.
00:12:21.400 | So our overall aim in dealing with our critics who don't know their Bibles is to direct them
00:12:29.160 | to Jesus, who is the goal of everything in the Bible, and to try to help them see that
00:12:36.280 | God has been moving through history in different ways at different times to bring us into a
00:12:46.000 | relationship with Jesus for the salvation of our souls.
00:12:49.800 | Yeah, man, that's so important.
00:12:52.360 | I should also point out that this entire argument applies to the popular year of living biblically
00:12:57.000 | experiments, which are just a tangled hermeneutical and ethical mess.
00:13:01.600 | And nevertheless, people all the time try to pull off a living biblically for a year
00:13:06.240 | experiment where they make none of these old covenant and new covenant distinctions that
00:13:10.560 | Scripture calls for.
00:13:12.120 | Thank you, Pastor John.
00:13:14.800 | What is the most terrible thing in the world?
00:13:18.620 | Is it the inability of a Christian to defend themselves with a pistol?
00:13:22.160 | Or is there something worse to be feared?
00:13:24.960 | John Piper will return tomorrow to explain.
00:13:27.920 | You can find our apps and our past episodes, and you can get us a question all online at
00:13:32.760 | DesiringGod.org/AskPastorJohn.
00:13:33.760 | I'm your host, Tony Reinke, and I'll see you tomorrow.
00:13:39.200 | Bye.
00:13:39.700 | [END]
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