First, it doesn’t. Nothing in the court’s decision impacts us directly. We are not going to be forced to marry gays in our church. We do not nor will we ever rent our facilities for such a wedding. This is private property, and our policy is clear that you must be a member to get married at Berean, and you cannot be a practicing or an open homosexual and be a member of the church. I clarified open and practicing because we have had individuals in the past who were in the closet for a period of time and then publicly declared their orientation. Those individuals are given an opportunity to repent and then brought under church discipline for a lifestyle which stands in open rebellion to God and His Word.
Second, the ruling further magnifies the need for Christian education, Sunday school, and the consistent and systematic preaching of the whole counsel of God’s Word to children, teenagers, and adults. The difference between a biblical worldview and an American secular worldview is becoming increasingly different as each day progresses towards the demise and destruction of what at one point was the greatest missionary-sending nation in the history of humanity. God will not ignore sin. We have no hope in a great rapture before the destruction of America. The destruction is happening right before our eyes.
Third, while we may be tempted to become angry and bitter, we must recognize that God has permitted these black-robed kings to render their decision as part of a larger global plan. He is still in control. We serve a God who is permitting, ordaining, and orchestrating all things to a predetermined plan that culminates into an everlasting kingdom where Christ is Supreme and there will be no need for a court or a constitution. His Word will abide forever. Peter reminds us that we are pilgrims, exiles, and strangers living among pagans. We are not surprised when pigs act like pigs, and we should not be surprised when pagans act like pagans. America is not a Christian nation, nor has it ever been. A Christian nation doesn’t kill men, women, and children for land. A Christian nation doesn’t enslave other human beings and then take another 100 years to grant people of all skin colors basic human and civil rights. Watch the movie Selma, and tell me we are a Christian nation. A Christian nation doesn’t experience and glorify a sexual revolution. A Christian nation doesn’t abort babies by the millions. A Christian nation doesn’t throw prayer out of schools. A Christian nation doesn’t legalize SSM. It is time for Christians to wake up and smell the coffee, and to start living like citizens of heaven and as exiles in Babylon. Daniel refused to stop praying toward Jerusalem even under the threat of death in a lion’s den, and the three Hebrew exiles would not bow before the statue despite a death sentence to a fiery furnace. Civil disobedience may be necessary in the future. I will go to jail before I marry two men in Holy matrimony before God. The exiles’ reaction to the command to worship the statue is incredibly helpful in how we must think and act. After receiving a final command to bow or else, Daniel 3:16ff records the answer the young men gave King Nebuchadnezzar. As you read it notice especially the following words:
Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, answered and said to the king, O Nebuchadnezzar, we are not careful to answer thee in this matter. If it be so, our God whom we serve is able to deliver us from the burning fiery furnace, and he will deliver us out of thine hand, O king. But if not, be it known unto thee, O king, that we will not serve thy gods, nor worship the golden image which thou hast set up.
May God grant us that kind of faith and grace in our coming day of civil disobedience.
