This message was given at Grace Community Church in Minden, Nevada. At the end, we will give information about how to contact us to receive a copy of this or other messages. Brothers and sisters, if you have your scriptures, let's open to 1 Peter. 1 Peter 3, verse 13. It actually wasn't very long ago that I preached this text. And so today's sermon is almost an extended application of that sermon. If you have any leftover desire and you want to hear the text not so specific to our day today, that was preached in November of 2014. And you can go download that and listen to that. First Peter chapter three, Verse 13, this is the reading of God's word. Now, who is there to harm you if you are zealous for what is good? But even if you should suffer for righteousness sake, you will be blessed. Have no fear of them, nor be troubled. But in your hearts, honor Christ the Lord as holy. always being prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you. Yet do it with gentleness and reverence, having a good conscience so that when you are slandered, those who revile your good behavior in Christ may be put to shame. This is the reading of God's word. Please have a seat. Let's open in prayer. Our Father, we live in a time of sobering developments. And we pray that you would bless your church, that you would protect your church, that you would strengthen us and help us. We pray that we would go forward into this world not ignorant, but wise. We pray that you would help us to be the witnesses to the gospel and to our Lord Jesus Christ that you call us to be whatever the times. We pray this in Jesus's name. Amen. So, Friday, June 26th, the Supreme Court ruled 5-4 that the Constitution guarantees a right to same-sex marriage. I'm not gonna rehash their decision, that's not what I do. My concern for us as a church, for each of you individually, is how do we, as Christians, live in light of the Supreme Court's decision? It's a very practical thing. The decision was out of our hands and the decision was made. And now we are called to live in light of it. How do we do that? How do we do that faithfully? How do we do that to God's glory? It's a big question. And actually, if you've been spending any time on the internet or anything, a lot of our brothers and other churches have been writing and doing a good job of it. So there's lots to read up on. I'm only going to do something of an overview here. I actually expect Brian is going to have some further teaching for us. You're going to find I'm not in this to explain every issue. I'm not in this to answer every objection to whether gay marriage is conceivably biblical. That's just not what I'm going to do. That's not the purpose of what I'm doing here today. Although we should certainly touch on that a little, but I'm gonna move quickly through that, all right? So how do we Christians live in light of the Supreme Court's decision? First and foremost, we stand firm in the truth. We stand firm in the truth. Now the truth of God is really crystal clear in this regard. It's clear for anyone who has ears to hear what he wants for us. Marriage follows the design of creation. That is how God made it. And so as such, it is meant for one man, one woman. Genesis 2.24, we've been forced to return back to that, right? A lot of us have been reading that these past couple of days. Therefore, a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh. One of the things that got away with us, I think, in this discussion, culturally speaking, is we bought into the idea that marriage is about our ability to express love. And that's not what it is. There's certainly love to be expressed within marriage, but that's not actually a discussion here, nor is the discussion whether our constitution can allow such a thing, does allow such a thing. Marriage is about God's design. That is the discussion. It's not about expressing love and it's not about constitutionality. It is about God's design. Marriage is affirmed in the Old Testament. Marriage is affirmed in the New Testament. That's one of those straw men out there. Oh, this is just an Old Testament thing you're talking about. It's not. Marriage is affirmed in both Testaments. In contrast, homosexuality runs contrary to what the Bible teaches both for marriage and for sexuality. In neither light is it viewed as acceptable. God has set forward a universal, hear that word, a universal standard, and homosexuality just clearly violates that standard. The arguments that are made for the biblical acceptability of homosexuality, they just can't stand. There are intelligent people that make these arguments, there are sincere people that make these arguments, but they're laboring under an impossible task. The bottom line is that homosexuality is only acceptable if the God of the Bible is dethroned. That is the only way homosexuality is acceptable. So we then, we must stand firm in the truth of Scripture against the world that is deeply opposed to our beliefs. If you had any doubt about what the world thinks of our views, it's becoming clearer and clearer by the day. Compromise is not an option here. Compromise is something we do with our opinions. I can compromise all day long if it's only my opinion. But we cannot compromise on God's truth. The world cannot redefine marriage any more than it can redefine gravity. It is not within their power. Yet all day long, the world is going to call us to accept its rulings. The world is going to disagree with us, and they're going to do it loudly. They're going to say that we are wrong. They're going to say that we are small-minded. They're going to say that we are outdated. And the reality is that our children are going to face maybe the majority of the resistance here. They're going to face a lot of the things that we might be sheltered from. And as we move forward, much of our strength needs to be devoted to not only protecting our children, but strengthening them, equipping them for the world in which they live. We can't act like this isn't the world we live in. We deal with the reality of it, and we seek to equip our young ones. Because the reality on the ground is that the younger demographics find gay marriage very acceptable. Those are the areas that the surge is really coming, that the passion is really coming. And so that is the environment into which we are going to be putting our children. And this culture of acceptance is going to be enticing for some of our children, You're going to find the world calling to them, come, come be a part of this. Just lay down your beliefs and you can come be a part of ours. And on the other hand, this culture of acceptance is going to be oppressive in other cases. We must prepare our children for the disagreement they are going to face. And that applies to us all. We all have a investment in the children here. It doesn't matter if yours are grown up, if you've never had children, whatever it is, as a church family, we are going to seek to strengthen and equip our young ones. That must be heavy on our hearts. That must be our priority as we move forward, is the wellbeing of our kids going forward. The world will disagree with us. The world won't just stop there. The world will slander us. as they already do. They will cause bigots. They will say that we are hateful. One of the terrible problems in all of this is that disagreement on these issues has been reduced to only the most aggressive of terms. This is not a peaceable, mellow conversation we are having between respecting parties. It is only aggressive. And we are going to be on the other end of that. Whatever we've been experiencing for now, just stretch that out for the rest of your life. Without a mighty act of God, this is what we should expect. More of what we have already seen. We can expect that people will caricature our beliefs. We can expect that they will vilify our character. When we make moral judgments, those will be considered hate speech. Those will be considered oppression. Disagreements become known as wars. Wars on women, wars on equality, wars on love, wars on freedom. It's not a disagreement anymore. It is a war. That is how it's phrased. They will disagree with us, they will slander us. I mean, honestly, I'm pretty sure the world's gonna make us suffer for this too. One thing that behooves us is to acknowledge that sometimes Christians have had a martyrdom complex. We see in everything some godly martyring we're going through, and that maybe is just not the case. And we can recognize that people disrespecting us and people vilifying our character, that doesn't really count as persecution. You talk to our brothers and sisters who have to hide in a bathroom to do a baptism in a bathtub, and you ask them if they think that's persecution. It's not exactly persecution, but I certainly think the world is going to make us suffer. It's hard to imagine that the trajectory that got us to the point that the Supreme Court ruled in the way they did is not going to add up to real suffering. See, I can imagine a society that disagrees civilly, respectfully over something, even something like this, something so crucial as marriage. I can imagine it, but it's not the society we live in. Nothing about how we've handled this debate before, this makes me think it's going to be a peaceable and respectful thing. And as the laws of the land are aimed at Christians, We must be soberly prepared for the day that our well-being in whatever form is threatened. It would be a grace of God, a mercy of God, if it does not go there. And the world is going to call for unconditional surrender. The world will call us to celebrate their relationships. They call us to recognize the goodness of their marriages. In so many cases, it's not even enough that we privately and quietly disagree. The world calls us to condone and even to embrace what it does. But the Lord calls us to stand firm in truth. I think of Ephesians 6. Verses 12 through 18, for we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places. Therefore, take up the whole armor of God that you may be able to withstand in the evil day. And having done all to stand firm. Stand therefore, having fastened on the belt of truth and having put on the breastplate of righteousness and as shoes for your feet, having put on the readiness given by the gospel of peace. In all circumstances, take up the shield of faith with which you can extinguish all the flaming darts of the evil one and take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the spirit, which is the word of God. praying at all times in the spirit with all prayer and supplication. To that end, keep alert with all perseverance, making supplication for all the saints. I think a new front has opened up in this battle. We pictured this applying to a whole number of things. Before this, we may not have ever really pictured it as having to do with the society that thinks gay marriage is acceptable. The truth is not ours to sacrifice. It's just not. The people of God, they can't depart from the truth of God. So how do Christians live in light of this ruling? We must stand firm in the truth. Second answer, how do we live in light of this ruling? We seek to live out a faithful Christian testimony. we seek to live out a faithful Christian testimony. We must love our neighbors with whom we disagree. I remind you of Galatians 5.14, for the whole law is fulfilled in one word, you shall love your neighbor as yourself. We cannot, we will not forsake our duty to our God and to our neighbor just because we disagree about gay marriage. That is not in our power. We will love our neighbors. Now, how do we do that? In this climate, with this subject, how do we do that? How do we love our neighbors who believe in gay marriage? Well, we love our neighbors with respect. We love our neighbors with respect. This discussion has not been characterized by respectful disagreement. Let the people of God go forward and model what respectful disagreement looks like. We failed in the past. Let us succeed as we go forward. And I have to just point this out. Talk radio is rarely the place to go to learn about respectful disagreement. Be wary. You'll listen to who you listen to, but be wary of what they're teaching you. And they are almost never going to teach you how to disagree respectfully. That is not how you drive ratings. That is not how they make a career. Let us model the gentleness and the reverence that Peter's talking about in his letter in verse 15. We will not devalue people who are made in the image of God. We will not. We will not treat people cheaply. Brothers and sisters, the way the Christian community has spoken about the gay community has often been despicable. It has been shameful the way we have talked. And I give you this example. If we truly care about people, about their souls, and about God's glory, we cannot treat their life-defining sin as if it is a joke. And that is literally what we have done. Christians can be so concerned with sin and with salvation, yet when it comes to homosexuality, you will find Christians making jokes that we would barely expect out of grade school boys. If a punchline of yours has ever ended in homosexuality, you have been guilty of this. What other sin do we treat so casually? Do we joke about drunkards and fornicators? Do we joke about adulterers and thieves? We don't, because we're doing justice to the fact that that is serious sin. We cannot joke about this life-defining sin that these people are engaged in. We will acknowledge the innate worth of people, even when they disagree with us. And we will not acknowledge it grudgingly. We will affirm it. Whatever you say, you are made in the image of God. That is how I'm going to proceed in this discussion. We will not spurn that. These people are image bearers of God. We value people because we value God. To devalue people is to devalue God. How do we love our neighbors? We love our neighbors with our deeds. Peter would speak of good behavior that is obvious. It is obvious to anyone who sees it. We will pursue love that is visible that is tangible. We will not proclaim our love for all and only be willing to show it to a few. That cannot be our testimony. I exhort you to look for opportunities to love those around you, particularly those who revile you. look for the opportunities to love. Let our self-sacrificing love be famous even among those who call themselves our enemies. Let Jesus Christ be obvious in the love that characterizes our testimony. And we love our neighbors by preparing to be a blessing in the midst of a dark culture. The key word there is preparing. Because the truth is you're probably on the cusp of facing a number of situations that are new to you. And they're new to most of us. You work out the implications of where society is going to go when your coworker gets a divorce from someone of the same gender, from their same sex spouse, will you be able to offer them love and friendship? You see, because in that moment when they're weeping over that broken relationship, that is not the time to tell them, well, you know, you were never really married in God's sight. That is not the time. You are called to love your neighbor all these new situations that we are going to face. When you have a friend and it's a good friendship and they want you to meet their parents, and it turns out those parents are two moms or two dads, will you be able to lovingly engage those parents as image bearers of God? When a gay or a lesbian couple moves into the house next door, will you treat them kindly? Will you welcome them? Or will you hold yourself back with a self-righteous distance that says, I condemn you? How about this? Will you invite them over to dinner? Will you invite them over to dinner? Is that just outside of your comfort zone? Is that a sin that's just too nasty for you to be around? And can you invite them over, not because you're looking for an opportunity to evangelize them, but because you recognize that they are image bearers of God and you want to know about them and you want to appreciate them and you want to invest in them. One thing Christians are criticized rightly for is how we leverage social things simply so we can get in our good news announcement. We need to be willing to invest in people as people, whatever sins that they are engaged in. I can imagine someday a new believer coming to me but there's tears in his eyes. And he confesses that he believes in Jesus Christ and he believes he's been born again, but he's legally married to another man. Are you ready for that? Are you prepared to be a brother or a sister to the new child of God being brought out of that kind of relationship? Are you ready to help and help in a way that is real and in a way that is substantial? Our preparation demands a committed heart and it demands a steady hand. This is no time to be squeamish. Some of you will find the sins that are going to be publicly on display, you find them repugnant, viscerally so. That is not a reason not to love your neighbor and to engage in the work that your Lord is putting before you. Like doctors need to be able to work around blood, you, child of God, need to be able to minister in the midst of sin. Which brings up one more point. We love our neighbors by proclaiming the gospel. There's going to be a temptation. The more normal it gets out in our society, the way things have gone, there's going to be the temptation to just smile, not put up any resistance. You can hold your own private opinions, but no one's going to know about them because you're just going to be so positive and affirming. There's going to be the temptation to say and do nothing. But we care for people too much to let them just run headlong to their judgment. There's a balance to be walked here. The sin of homosexuality, it's one sin among many. We have to remember that. There are many sins that we should be very aware of, particularly because they're still alive in our lives. But homosexuality is a sin. And one of the things that's so dangerous about it is that it represents a lifelong commitment to rebellion against God. It's the lifelong unrepentant part that is so scary about homosexuality. We cannot accept the direction of our society without writing off uncountable numbers of souls. I think the good news is, and I'm not a prophet, but I have no doubt that our Lord has many children he is going to call out from these marriages. I have no doubt at all. They're going to experience the emptiness of their idols, whether it was that relationship with the spouse or the approval and so-called dignity that the government bestows. They're going to experience the emptiness of that and the Lord will tell them there is more than what you are doing. There is a true God. Leave your idols and some of them will. Let us be faithful to our brothers and our sisters who we haven't even met yet. Let us be faithful to them to help them, to speak the truth, loving truth to them, and to guide them in the ways of the Lord. We talk a lot about loving our neighbors, and we're going to have to spend a lot of effort and energy and prayer in that. but our Christian testimony, it must also exalt God's vision for marriage. We've had this showdown, the world's vision of marriage and God's vision of marriage, and we need to be upholding God's vision. If marriage is precious, let us treat it as precious. Let us invest in our spouse Let us sacrifice for our marriage. And let us teach our kids to do exactly the same. It should be second nature to them how a marriage works because they've been watching you all their lives. And we need to repent of our hypocrisy of giving lessons on the value of marriage while at the same time devaluing the marriages that we have. That is hypocrisy. May our marriages reflect the gospel. May Jesus Christ be visible in our love for our spouse. How do we live in light of this decision? We live out a faithful Christian testimony. Our last answer, our third answer, how do we live in light of this decision? we recognize that the people of God have always been exiles. The people of God have always been exiles. We've talked a good amount lately, both about the Exodus and the exile. These are life-defining, faith-defining events in the scriptures. And to understand them is to understand tremendous things that God wants us to understand about salvation, about how he's worked, The historical exile was the people of God, because of their sin and faithlessness, had exhausted their one millionth time of repentance, and God cast them out of their land. And so the people of God lived in a foreign land under foreign rule, subject to foreign laws and foreign customs. They were far from home. and every day they felt the distance. And yet, even far from home, their God calls them to live as his people. Peter, in this letter, he writes it to the elect exiles, and that's a central theme of the entire book. To this day, we continue to live in exile. We are living as the people of God in a world opposed to God. We are living in a foreign land under foreign rule. We are far from our heavenly home and we feel that distance every day. Yet far from our heavenly home, our God calls us to live as his people. Part of our shock, if you've felt that visceral shock at the developments of this world, is that we began for a short time, for a long time, I don't know, but we began to feel like this world was our home. And for that, we need to repent. The Lord made it so clear that we don't belong here. Our sojourn is through here, not to here. Our citizenship, it's in God's kingdom, and it's not in this world's kingdom. The United States has never been the new heavens and the new earth. It was nowhere close. The Supreme Court is not God's court. Once we accept that, once we accept that we are exiles in this world, we will see things more clearly. We will stop expecting the world to meet God's standards. We should be flabbergasted when the world meets God's standards. We will stop expecting to be the majority opinion. It should be no surprise that the world has a radically different opinion than the law of God. We will stop thinking of this world as merely imperfect. And we will start looking at the world for what it is, completely lost. We will cling to God's promises and not the world's promises. You know, eternity, glory, the new heavens, the new earth, they are meant to be sweet promises. But they are promises that are only sweet. They are promises that are only appreciated by those who recognize the brokenness of this world. So how do we live in light of the Supreme Court's affirmation of gay marriage? We stand firm in the truth. We look at our own lives and we make sure that we are living a faithful Christian testimony And we recognize that the people of God have always been exiles. What we are experiencing right now is what the people of God have experienced across all time. And brothers and sisters, trust your sovereign God. Trust him in these times. He is still entirely in control. And you can trust his perfect plans. There's a temptation to lament that we don't live in some other time, some golden age of times past when things were better and people treated each other right or something like that. God intends for us to live now. And the reason we know that is because we are alive now. If he wanted us to live in another time, he would have. You live now. God did this on purpose. These are our times. God intends for his church to rise up as a faithful witness in these times, not living 50 years ago, not living 500 years ago, I don't know. These are our times and each of us must rise to the calling of God to be a faithful exile in a land of gay marriage. And what's great is that in the adversity, he is refining us. And in opposition, he will strengthen us. And in the darkness, the light of the gospel will shine. Let's pray. Father, we pray that you would help us. Help us in times that we weren't prepared for. Help us for situations coming that we don't even know what to do. Help us to love our neighbors, to not see them as a label or an issue or a sin. Help us to see image bearers all around us. Help us to love. May our testimony not be ruined by not loving our neighbor in this time and help us to stand firm. The world wants very much for us to leave your word and to agree with them. And in our weakness, we will be tempted to leave your word and to join them. Father, hold us tight. cause us to cling to you. We pray that the present darkness, we pray that the present evil day is just the stage on which your gospel is going to gloriously be made manifest. We pray for the salvation of all who are enmeshed in this sin. We pray that they would hear the good news that their sins may be forgiven, that they may have life that they may abandon these worthless, destructive idols, and that they may know the one true God. May the good news go forward like wildfire in this time. We pray all this in Jesus' name. Amen. We hope you've enjoyed this message from Grace Community Church in Minden, Nevada. To receive a copy of this or other messages, call us at area code 775-782-6516 or visit our website gracenevada.com.