In this episode of The Sound of Faith, Sharon Knotts delivers a Scripture-focused message responding to the nationwide legalization of same-sex marriage by the U.S. Supreme Court.
Teaching primarily from Romans 1:22–28, she argues that rejecting God’s created order leads to spiritual deception, a hardened conscience, and a culture that increasingly calls “truth” a “lie.” She pauses to explain the role of the conscience—how repeated rejection of conviction can dull moral clarity over time—and why Scripture warns that people do not remain neutral when they turn away from truth.
Sharon then turns to 2 Timothy 4, emphasizing Paul’s charge to “preach
Praise the Lord. I’m Sharon Otts, thanking you for joining us today on The Sound of Faith, because we know faith comes by hearing and hearing by the Word of God. You are about to hear a penetrating word from Scripture addressing the volatile issue of same-sex marriage following the Supreme Court’s ruling to legalize same-sex marriage in all 50 states of America in the name of equality for all. but they have essentially redefined marriage, an institution created by God, not man, because the Supreme Court is not the Supreme Being. So turn with me in Romans, the first chapter. And most of you are familiar with these verses, but we’re putting everything on record. Amen? Romans 1, verse 22. Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools and changed the glory of the uncorruptible God into an image made like the corruptible man and to birds and four-footed beasts and creeping things. Wherefore, God also gave them up to uncleanness through the lust of their own hearts to dishonor their own bodies between themselves. Who changed the truth of God into a lie and worshipped and served the creature more than the creator who is blessed forever. Amen. Let’s stop for a moment and look at this. The term uncleanness in the Greek means aberrant sex. In other words, sex that is unnatural and abnormal. Sex that is against nature, it will go on to say as we shall read, against God’s blueprint of heterosexuality. So in order to accommodate the sin of homosexuality, they had to change the truth into a lie. The only way that they can… practice homosexuality, and try to have a clear conscience, what they would consider a clear conscience in doing so, is to change the truth of God into a lie. Amen? And so that’s why homosexuality dishonors the body. Because it changes the truth of creation, the way God created it to be, man and woman. And it’s a lie against God’s design as the creator who is blessed forever. Amen. Who said, I am God and I change not. Amen. It’s a lie against the creator. and the design that he had created. So homosexuals depart from God’s design, burning in their own lusts. And the sexual act is just the fruit of the lusts that are in their hearts. Let’s read verse 26. For this cause God gave them up unto vile affections, for even their women to change the natural use into that which is against nature. And likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust one toward another, men with men, working that which is unseemly, the Greek word is indecent, and receiving in themselves that recompense of their error, which was meat. So God gave them up to these vile affections. Amen? Working that with one another, man with man, woman with woman. Amen? The word vile means shameful, that which is reproachful. And they became inflamed with these unnatural sexual passions. Amen? Verse 28, and even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a reprobate mind to do those things which are not convenient. And that word not convenient, again, it’s a word that means that which is indecent. Amen. And so we see here that This is why homosexuals think they’re all right. This is why some of them claim that they are Christians and they are going to heaven because the reprobate mind is void of sound judgment. It’s a conscience that’s been darkened by lusts and it’s a result of rejecting truth. It is not possible to reject truth and remain neutral. Every time you reject truth, another layer of hardness and callous is formed on the conscience. Amen? And so after a while… God turns them over to the lie. There is much the Bible has to say about the conscience. I didn’t take the time to get the verses. That would be a good lesson for you to do on your own. Read about the conscience and find out how that a conscience that was once pure can become so perverted, amen, so defiled that it no longer works. See, a conscience is that… internal compass, if you will, that internal alarm system, if you will, that when you go to do something that’s wrong, something in there goes, ah, and you get that uncomfortable feeling. Now, when you get that feeling, you can either stifle it and suppress it and go on and do what you want to do anyway. And if you do that, the next time it won’t be as strong. When you go to do it, you won’t feel quite as guilty. Until after a while, you can do it without feeling guilty at all. And after a while, you can even endorse it. Amen? It’s something that happens as you continue to reject truth and continue to stifle a healthy conscience. A healthy conscience is a gift from God. It is a beautiful thing. Amen. I want a healthy conscience. And even when it’s warning me, when you know you’re doing something wrong, in that moment, you feel sick to your stomach. In that moment, you feel terrible. You know what you’re about to do or what you’ve just done is wrong. And on the inside, I mean, you can feel nauseated. But that’s a good thing. That’s a great thing. Because that means your conscience is working. That means the Holy Ghost can convict you. And as long as you can be convicted, you can come to a place of contrition. And when you come to a place of contrition, you can come to a place of conversion. Amen? So whatever you do, do not ignore your conscience. But if a person has a defiled conscience, it doesn’t do any good to tell them, follow your conscience. That’s not going to help them. Amen? They say, well, my conscience is clear, but their conscience is defiled. That’s a reprobate mind because the tragedy is they don’t know the difference. The Bible says evil workers would wax worse and worse, deceiving and being deceived. Deceiving and being deceived. Turn with me to 2 Timothy, the fourth chapter. One of the most powerful verses on this and probably some of the most sobering words that Paul ever wrote. And it certainly, certainly depicts the day that we’re in. 2 Timothy chapter 4. I charge thee therefore before God and the Lord Jesus Christ. Now this is… Apostle Paul speaking to his protege, Timothy, and he is charging him. Amen. And, you know, Timothy had a tendency to be intimidated. We know this because Paul wrote to him in 2 Timothy 1.7, God has not given us a spirit of fear, the word is intimidation, but of power and of love and a sound mind. In another place he said, he told Timothy, he said, don’t let them despise you because of your youth. Amen. You get out there and preach the word. He was qualified. If he wasn’t qualified, then Paul would not have put him out there. Amen? And so we know that he had a tendency to be intimidated. So he’s saying, I charge you. Because you know Paul could say that because you know what he said about himself? Woe unto me if I preach not the gospel. Amen. Woe unto me. We need some preachers today to stand up and say, woe unto me if I don’t preach the gospel, the whole counsel of God. So he said, I charge you, therefore, before God and the Lord Jesus Christ, who shall judge the quick, that means the living, and the dead at the appearing at his kingdom. Now, in light of the fact that God is going to judge all of us, even Christians are going to stand before the judgment seat of Christ. We’re not going to stand at the judgment seat with the sinners. They’re going to have a separate white throne judgment. We won’t be there. We’re going to stand at the judgment seat of Christ to receive rewards for the things we’ve done in our body. Some people will get more rewards than others. And that’s another message. Amen? So he says in light of the fact that we’re all going to stand before God, we’re all going to be judged. Preach the word! Today we have motivational speakers. That call themselves preachers. And they have a lot of other titles they call themselves too. But he said preach the word. Be instant in season and out of season. That means in the pulpit and out of the pulpit. You not only preach by precept. You preach by pattern. You walk the talk. You live the life. Reprove, rebuke. Oh, motivational speakers don’t believe in that. Reprove, rebuke, and exhort with all long-suffering and doctrine. And it’s important to point out the fact that there needs to be balance. There has to be balance. Amen? And there are some preachers that mean well, God bless them, but they’re out of balance. All they ever do is beat people over the head with the Bible. Amen? You’ve got to have long suffering too. But there are other people, all they do is they’ve got long suffering. And they want to cover everything up and everything’s fine and you’re okay and I’m okay and we’re all okay. And they don’t get out the doctrine. And if you don’t do that as a preacher, then you’re going to allow people to persist in their sins. And God will judge you for that. Amen? So he said you’ve got to have balance. You need to know your doctrine, but you’ve got to temper it with long-suffering. Amen. Verse 3. For the time will come. I’m going to add to the Bible. And now is. When they will not endure sound doctrine. They will not put up with sound doctrine. But after their own loss shall they heap to themselves teachers having itching ears. And they shall turn away their ears from the truth and shall be turned unto fables. Itching ears. What an interesting metaphor to use. I don’t know about you, but I can’t stand it when my ears are itching. Amen. You know, you’re looking for a paperclip. Everything you shouldn’t be doing, you’re trying. Amen? You will not, you could be in the middle of something important. You could be on your computer and totally enmeshed in what you’re doing. But boy, that ear gets to itching and you’re going to find some way to stop it. So it’s a strong metaphor we all get. He says they have itching ears. In other words, they want to hear what they want to hear according to their own lusts. So they seek out teachers and they heap them up. They don’t have to look very far, folks. They don’t have to go very far to find those teachers, amen, who are not preaching sound doctrine, but who are tickling their ears, scratching their ears, amen, and placating their desire to have a message that will agree with what they want to do so they can feel justified in doing it. And all they’re doing is hardening their conscience. Amen? All they’re doing is defiling their conscience. And I’ve preached this before, but we’re going on record today, so I’m going to bring it out. I want to tell you what the Greek grammar dictates, because a lot of times I bring out Greek and you get it, and other times you don’t. Please get this. In the first clause, where it says, they heaped to themselves teachers, let’s look at verse 4, and they shall turn away their ears from the truth. In that clause, the subject, which is they… are performing the action. This is what we call the active voice. The subject performs the action. But in the second clause, and shall be turned unto fables, is the passive voice, which means the action is being done to them by an outside force, by someone else. Amen? And what does that say? This means when they turn their ears away from the truth, something or someone is going to turn them to the lie. Do you see that? That’s powerful. In other words, like I said before, I’ll reiterate, you can’t remain in neutral land. There is no neutral land. When you, with your own deliberate conscious decision, turn away from the truth of God’s word… You make that decision. You turn away from the truth of God’s word. You are not just going to go happily and blindly on your way doing your own thing. God is going to allow you to be turned unto the lie. And you’re going to be deceived. It is so dangerous. Amen? To reject the truth of God’s word, to reject the conviction of the Holy Spirit when he brings that word to bear upon you and upon your situation. Amen? Because what happens is when you turn away from the truth, you’re turned unto the lie and you go into deception and you go into what we’ve read is a reprobate state of mind. Here’s how Paul wrote it. You don’t have to turn there. I’ll quote it in 2 Thessalonians, the second chapter, verses 10 through 12. He said, because they received not the love of the truth that they might be saved, God shall send them. I think they meant to say the devil. Oh, God shall send them strong delusion that they should believe a lie that they might be damned who believe not the truth. Now, folks, I have to point out something very important. We’ve read where God gave them over. We’ve read where God turned them over. I want you to understand the tenor of God’s action is one of great reluctance. Please understand, God does this reluctantly. Do not take on a demeanor of being angry and hateful because that’s not how God does this. He does it reluctantly. The scripture says, Peter said that God is not willing that any, any should perish. Amen. homosexuals, adulterers, murderers, even child molesters, which most of us, that really gets us angry. But God is not willing that any should perish. And so when he turns people over to the lie, when he turns them over to this reprobate mind, he does it with reluctance. And we must always remember that. Amen. God does it with a broken heart. Amen. Because he will never ever revoke someone’s right of choice. Even if it would be better for them if he did. Amen. Amen. Even if it would be better, sometimes we wish that God would. But he will never do that. He will never take away your right to choose. It’s a God-given right, free choice. Amen? That God has given to you. He said, choose you this day whom you shall serve. I set before you the way of life and the way of death. You choose. Amen? So you get to choose what you want to do, but you don’t get to choose the consequences. Amen? And all choices, all choices have consequences. And some were more severe than others. Amen? Some consequences we can get over quickly in a short time. It’s a blip on the screen. But other consequences can cause us a lot of sorrow and heartache that God didn’t intend for us to have. Amen? And the sin of homosexuality has severe consequences. Amen? I want it to be clear. It’s not unpardonable. It’s not unforgivable. I want you to understand that. Amen? But I also want you to understand that it does carry a heavy penalty. Because, as I already brought out, it embodies the potential for deception to blind the minds and hearts of the people to the truth of God’s Word. Now, the example in Scripture that is the most well-known is that of Sodom and Gomorrah. And we are surprised to find out that God made the decision to actually confer with Abraham about what he was planning on doing to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah because their wickedness, he said, was so great that it came up in his nostrils. It’s a filthy sin. It stinks in the nostrils of God. Amen. And so he told Abraham what he was going to do because Abraham had a nephew who had a wife and daughters in that city. Remember, at one time they were all one big happy clan. But then they got the, you know, saying their servants were fighting over the land and the water to feed the animals. And Abraham said, you know, we need to split up into two. You need to go do your own family. And Abraham gave Lot the choice. I think Abraham should have had the choice being the elder, being the uncle. He was uncle slash father because Lot’s father had died. So Abraham took his nephew under his wing. But he gave Lot the decision. And Lot looked out and saw this green, green, green, green, grassy area. And he said, I want that. That’s what I want. I don’t know if that’s where the saying is, the grass is greener on the other side. I don’t know. Usually everything can go back to the Bible. But he chose that and it was right there in front of Sodom and Gomorrah. But you see, it wasn’t very long before he wasn’t there on the outskirts of Where he could feed his animals and cattle and that green grass. He was in. He was in the city of Sodom. He was on the inside. And the Bible says that they vexed the soul of that righteous man with their filthiness. He was surrounded by it. It was in his face all the time everywhere. Amen? And so God told Abraham, I’m going to destroy the city. And Abraham said, but God, you’re a righteous God. Surely you wouldn’t destroy a whole city of thousands of people if there were righteous there. If you wouldn’t destroy the righteous with the wicked, would you, God? And God said, I’ll tell you what, Abraham, if there are 50 righteous people in that city, I won’t destroy it. But there’s not 50. No. And he began to count 45 and go down until he finally got down to five. And it still was not even, were not even five righteous people. And God said, I’ve got to destroy the city. But what I will do is I will send angels to deliver Lot and his family out of the city safely before I destroy it. That’s how I know I’m going in the rapture. God will always deliver the righteous. He knows how to reserve the wicked and the ungodly to the day of judgment, Peter said, but he also knows how to deliver the righteous. And so you know that they sent the two angels came down. And Lot said, oh my goodness, you need to come in my house. Get off these streets. It’s too dangerous out here. So they got in Lot’s house. But you know the men of the city came banging on the door and demanded to have sex with those men. They thought they were just men. Demanded. We want to know them. I already told you that a few sermons ago, what that means. We want to have sex with them. And we know that’s what they meant because some people say, well, then maybe they just wanted to, you know, be acquainted. Well, then if that were the case, why did Lot answer, oh, do not do so wickedly? He said, do not do so wickedly. So obviously they wasn’t just talking about being friends. Amen. And to show you that Lot was already poisoned himself, he said, I got a couple virgin daughters that I’ll bring out to you. But you know what they said? We don’t want them. We want those men. So what happened is the angels blinded, blinded their eyes. But that didn’t debtor them. They banged on the door all night. Until finally the angel said, Lot, tomorrow we’re going to get you out of this city. But first, run to your other daughters and their husbands. Run to them and tell them they must come and get out of the city because God is going to destroy it. And the next day, Lot ran to his daughters and their husbands and the Bible says they mocked him. And that’s what they do to us today. If you say that God will judge America for this, they will mock you and scorn you. Amen. And they mocked him and they would not come. They would not leave. And so they were destroyed. And Jesus said in Luke 17, 28 through 30, as it was in the days of Lot, so shall it be in the days before the coming of the Lord. He went on to say, but the same day that Lot went out of Sodom, it rained fire and brimstone from heaven and destroyed them all. So if anybody has any doubt that Sodom and Gomorrah actually took place, as some may try to say, oh, I don’t believe that, Jesus confirmed it. In the New Testament. And on one of my Holy Land tours. We actually went in that area. And you can pick up brimstone. On this sandy, sandy, sandy area. Just sand everywhere. But you can pick up brimstone. Because it goes all the way back to that time of destruction. And Jesus went on to say that if God did not spare Sodom and Gomorrah. He will not spare this wicked generation. Amen? And as I quoted that Peter said, that God will deliver the righteous out, but he is going to bring the wicked to judgment. And the book of Jude said that these cities were destroyed because they were given over to fornication, which is all sex outside of marriage. However, what form it takes. All sex outside of marriage because of fornication and going after strange flesh. That’s what Jude says. So Jesus confirmed it. Peter confirmed it. And Jude confirmed that Sodom and Gomorrah took place. Amen. Amen. I hope you’re being spiritually stirred and socially enlightened to the truth of the homosexual redefinition of marriage, because that is exactly what the Supreme Court’s ruling legalizing same sex marriage in all 50 states of America has done. But the Supreme Court is not the supreme being. This is not about equality for all people. Marriage is an institution created by God, not man. Marriage is God’s idea, and he created the blueprint, one man and one woman. When he created Adam and Eve, he said, For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother and shall cleave unto his wife, and they too shall be one flesh. And Jesus Christ ratified it in the New Testament. and added the solemn warning, what God has joined together, let no one put asunder. Let no one undo God’s marriage design. Some claim Jesus did not address homosexuality, but in this verse, which was also cited by Apostle Paul, God laid down two pillars of the foundation for marriage, monogamy and heterosexuality. There is no evidence that God created people to be homosexual. He would not condemn what he created, and he does solemnly condemn the practice of homosexuality. The Bible is clear. Any who practice homosexuality and claim to be a Christian going to heaven is deceived. But the good news is homosexuals can change and have changed and will continue to change by the power of the gospel of Jesus Christ. Apostle Paul was an eyewitness to this, and he rejoiced with them, proclaiming, You were homosexual, but now you are washed, separated from your sin and righteous in God’s sight. But the danger for Christians, especially ministers who preach like this, is that the homosexual agenda wants to make it a hate crime to speak out against homosexuality. So even if you read scripture straight from the Bible, you could be prosecuted for a hate crime. They’ve already succeeded in prosecuting Christian bakeries and florists and wedding reception venues who refuse to participate in same-sex marriages. Saints, we must not allow our First Amendment rights of freedom of speech and freedom of religion to be stripped from our pulpits. I urge you to order The Supreme Court is Not the Supreme Being on CD for a love gift of at least $10 to help us keep this program on the air. Request offer SK-180. Mail to P.O. Box 1744, Baltimore, Maryland, 21203. Or go online to soundoffaith.org, where you can also order on MP3s. but to order by mail, send a minimum love gift to Sound of Faith, P.O. Box 1744, Baltimore, Maryland, 21203. Till next time, this is Sharon Knott saying, Maranatha.
