WWUTT 865 Q&A Church Clarity, Capital Punishment, and Andy Stanley?

Introduction and Program Setup

What is the Church Clarity Database and should your church have something to do with it? What's the biblical view on capital punishment? And is there a what video about Andy Stanley's comments? The answers to these questions when we understand the text.

This is when we understand the text, a daily Bible study to help you put on the new self, created after the likeness of God and true righteousness and holiness. Find all our resources at www .utt .com.

Here once again is Pastor Gabe. Thank you, Becky.

You're welcome. So at the time that you're hearing this, we are at G3 in Atlanta. Yeah. This was recorded a week before we headed down that way. Yes. And so how's the conference going? How are you enjoying it?

It's wonderful. I feel very convicted. Yeah, how'd you like that pre-conference? Sure. Do you even know what the pre-conference is about? It was worth attending. Yeah. I'm glad to see all my friends.

I have been getting, it's funny, I've been getting messages via DM on Twitter. People asking me if I'm going to be there. It's like, I've been talking about it for five months. Have you not been paying attention?

I mean, not on the podcast. I mean, I mentioned it on Twitter and Facebook. Yeah, that's true.

But I mean, we've been sick and everything. So maybe they're just double checking, making sure. Maybe they've all been sick. Oh, that could be too.

Yeah, there's been a lot going on for us as well. It's a delight to get out.

Yes, yes. Cabin fever was sure setting in for me. That's right. I've been thinking about packing, doing laundry, and cleaning out the fridge, and doing the dishes, and picking up everything, and making sure the house is set, and all the preparations, you know.

I've had a couple of,.

What would you call the projects that I've been doing? Couple of projects. Home improvement. Home improvement projects. Did you mention that? No. Did you say home? Okay, you said home improvement like you said that, and it just didn't click.

No, I have not mentioned that one.

Anyway, so yeah, I've been doing some home improvement stuff, which I've been trying to get done before we take off. So that way, when we get home, the house is set in the way that Becky wants it to be, and she can just jump right into things.

That would be amazing.

I just don't see it happening for my part, because after you get your part done, I have to move all my stuff. So I just, I see it taking a little bit longer, maybe for my birthday? Well, that's what I'm aiming for.

And right now, I'm on a good pace to get it done before your birthday. You are, you are. But then my part, you know, I have to get motivated to do it too. Organizing all of the paperwork, and the books,.

And, you know, doing all of that. With everything that's gone on since Christmas, though, it was a pretty ambitious project to try to get all of this done before. Oh yeah, definitely. We had the time.

We did. If we had nothing else going on, we had the time to get that done. We did. We did. Yeah, there was just too much going on. Yeah. Too much happening in the world of Junction City, Kansas.

Oh, and I was laid up for like two weeks straight about. Yeah, you were, that's right. Had my sinus infection, that was bad.

She was down, and we really did not know why. No.

We just knew she didn't have spunk. No, I couldn't make it up the stairs.

Yeah, you weren't running fever or anything like that? Not really, no. And then there was, I won't kind of go into the details of what happened, but I just convinced her to go to the doctor. Yep. And it wasn't for this, but they found out she had a sinus infection.

Yeah, it was pretty bad. It was like, oh, okay, that's what's going on.

Pretty bad, but I didn't really have a headache. No, you didn't. No. You weren't ever complaining about headaches. No, so yeah, that was interesting, but it's me, so I'm just weird. Glad to see you back to your peppy self.

Oh, me too, it's good to be here. Being Friday, we take questions from listeners, and you can submit questions to whenweunderstandthetext at gmail .com. I am behind on responding to many of those emails for the reasons that we just detailed, so I apologize for that, but hopefully you hear the answer to your question here,.

And then I don't have to email you. You also have a week before they get to hear this, because we're recording this a week early.

Well, yeah, now questions are gonna start coming in while we are in Georgia, and then I'll be backed up even when I get home. Oh, yeah, that's right.

I just figured you'd take your laptop with you and answer questions.

Well, I would, I wasn't planning on answering, like banging out emails while I was there. Well, you never know. You may have some downtime. Maybe. I doubt it. Yeah, not seeing it either. Did I mention the email address?

I think I did. Whenweunderstandthetext at gmail .com. Pretty sure I did say that. Did you? Or I've just said it enough times now that. I don't think you did this time.

Okay. But there you go, just in case.

Write it down. I'm gonna go back and find it and edit this part out, because I already did mention it. We got a different email to start with today. This is actually not an inquiry from a listener. This comes from an organization called the Church Clarity Team.

You ready? I haven't heard of them. Hello, your church has recently been submitted to our Church Clarity database. Your church has been selected by one of our volunteers to receive our verified clear survey.

Having a verified clear score is akin to a Twitter verified check mark. It is the clearest score that a church can receive. Okay, don't be too excited about this yet. Oh dear. In order to be verified clear, we have designed a survey for your church to fill out, indicating your church's policies for LGBTQ plus people and women in leadership.

Your answers will be publicly available in your church entry on our database. You can see prior examples of verified clear churches here. And then there's a link. Verified clear scores are our way of designating that this church is 100 clear and that anyone who visits this church will know what policies to expect.

This is our way of informing the public of the due diligence we've undergone to establish a new standard for clarity. The verified clear survey is available here. Link. Thank you, church clarity team.

Okay. I thought we were pretty clear about that. Well, so here's what I think happened. I went to the website and I looked up our church and it has indeed been submitted to their database. They have 2000 churches in their database right now and another several dozen that they have yet to approve and post.

So someone had seen something that I said on Twitter or maybe read one of my blogs and they took it upon themselves to submit our church to their database. So I've received this email, which has been sent to me personally and also to our church email address.

I found it in that inbox as well. Interesting. Because the form that was filled out on their website came from somebody that was not actually from our church. So they're asking us for someone from our church to verify what it is that has been put in their database.

Interesting. So that Well, I'm glad they're verifying.

Well, yeah. And not just taking it. Because, you know, people lie. Sure.

And over-exaggerate. Of course. Get offended. Especially with somebody with a vendetta, which is exactly who submitted that in Oh, bummer. Those details to that website. But anyway, just letting you know that this is out there and they're building this database of churches and they're doing it for the purpose of letting LGBTQ plus people know what churches are not gay affirming.

Now, on the one hand, you might think that's great. Then we don't get LGBTQ plus people.

I think it would increase the numbers though. Of people coming to the church?

Yeah. Very likely, yeah. You might have some of those militant individuals that will wanna come to your church.

And try to cause trouble. Yeah, like that video of the, I don't know, quote unquote, lady with a pink purse, cussing up a storm and throwing stuff all over the store. Oh yeah, I did see that.

Yeah. I didn't ever get what kind of store that was. Was it a toy store or something? I have no idea. There was a lot of toy store novelty and things like that around, but I wasn't really quite sure what kind of church it was.

That person was very angry though. Oh yeah. Very, very angry. So anyway, I did not go to the database and did not, you know, I looked up the entry. I saw what it was that we had stated there. They're building, oh, hang on, let me bring up the site here.

So let's see, scores. It is, they wanna know what your LGBTQ policies are and what your policies are regarding women in leadership. Those are the two things primarily that they're looking for. Right. And of course, they're just letting people know this church is not okay with women being pastors and this church is not okay with putting LGBTQ people in leadership as well.

So would we not be verified clear? No, we are verified clear.

Oh. We're verified clear non-affirming.

Oh, okay. So we're clear about non-affirming. We're clear that we're not affirming.

Now, when I shared this on Twitter, there were some individuals that were saying, hey, I'm all right with that. I'll put my church on that database so they know that I'm not LGBTQ affirming. Look, this is not going to go well with Christian faithful Orthodox churches.

Right. It's not gonna go well. This would be participating with the fruitless works of darkness. And Ephesians 5, 6 tells us, let no one deceive you with empty words for because of these things, the wrath of God comes upon the sons of disobedience.

Therefore do not become partners with them for at one time you were darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Walk as children of light for the fruit of light is found in all that is good and right and true and try to discern what is pleasing to the Lord.

Take no part in the unfruitful works of darkness, but instead expose them. And if you go to that website to enter your church into it, so everybody knows, hey, fine, I'm okay with everybody knowing that I'm not LGBTQ affirming.

Right. You're actually partnering with them when you do that. I get using the website to go and find a church that you're going, okay, I know to stay away from that church. Right. But you should not be entering your church into that database for it is to partner with those who mean darkness against the church.

And we shouldn't be helping them out with that effort. If they're gonna do this and they wanna mark churches, they wanna put some sort of mark on a church so that you know, hey, these are pro-gay or these are not pro-gay, leave that up to them.

Right. But we as orthodox, godly, gospel-centered churches should not be partnering with that particular effort. Right.

Well, I mean, it's strange that they say the new standard to clarify or for clarity. Clarity. Sorry, I can't read from this far away.

Oh yeah, it's kind of ambiguous. That's a bit nerve wracking. You could read that and go, well, sure, I'm okay. Yeah, and they are deliberately, here's the ironic thing here. So they want clarity. They want a church to be clear on where they stand.

Right. That email wasn't very clear. No, it wasn't. No. So they're completely contradicting their own mission. Yeah. In that they are. That was interesting. Yeah, they're trying.

So what was the old one, the old standard?

You know, I mean. Well, yeah, the old standard was to be in the closet. I guess. Is that what you're talking about? I don't know. Now it's like, we gotta come out of the closet and be clear.

In their email, what was their old standard?

The last sentence. Let's see, this is our new, I'm sorry. This is our way of informing the public of the due diligence we've undergone to establish a new standard for clarity, right? Yeah. So what was the old standard?

Yeah. I mean, we've always been absolutely clear. We have, yeah. And any church that is teaching the Bible and is all about proclaiming the gospel is gonna be absolutely clear.

On where they stand on those issues. And they're gonna know as soon as you get in there. Or as soon as they walk in, they'll know.

If you are teaching the scriptures and you're going verse by verse through the Bible, you can't help but be clear on where you stand on those issues. I just don't get it. But I mean, whatever. Now the way that I

If they wanna be clear as mud, they can. The way that I presented this on Twitter was, they're making a list, checking it twice. Oh dear. Gonna find out who's naughty or nice. Oh my. Gay stop, O is coming to town.

Oh my goodness. That's what they get called. What? Yeah. Really? The gay stop O, right. Because it's like the gay affirming mob. Oh. Because they try to do I had no idea what that was. Yeah. Oh yeah.

Oh my goodness. I mean, it's not like the popular nomenclature. It's just the people will make that reference to the way that these gay affirming organizations will try to bulldoze anything that would oppose that particular mission.

Okay, I get it. So it's, they're like the gay stop O. Or the gay mafia is the other thing that they get called. Wow. That's crazy. It's like, you're either going, you're either for us or you're against us.

And we'll put the hit on you and make sure that And either way you're doomed. Right. Yeah, we're gonna punish you. We're gonna punish you for not being on our side. Right. That's the way that they come at it.

And that's what this database is gonna get used for.

Doomed in their eyes, not to God.

Well, yeah, doomed in the world's eyes. Yes, there we go. In the eyes of God. I wanted to clarify that. Be very clear, you know. Because we're all about clarity here. We are. Fear the Lord and do what he says in his word.

And in the scriptures, it says that those who practice homosexuality will not inherit the kingdom of God. Now, it's not for us to stand in opposition to them in the sense that we're pointing a finger at them and say, you're going to hell, not doing the Westboro Baptist Church thing.

Right. But rather calling for repentance. Yes. Telling them to repent and turn from their sin and worship Christ so that they will be saved. Even sins as dark as this are not outside the grace of God.

Right. And he will forgive those who repent and come to Jesus Christ. Amen. So pray for organizations just like this. But if you go to the website, I think it's churchclarity .com. You can click on advocates.

It's Jamie. The who we are section is under advocates. That should tell you something right there. Okay. On the front page, it says as seen in the Huffington Post and in Advocate Magazine, which is a, that's a gay affirming magazine.

You go to who we are. And the two people that are running the website are pro LGBTQ plus. One of whom is co-organizes a queer communion. One of these individuals at a church. It leads queer communion at a church.

Okay. Anyway. So it kind of seems like they're persons that want some kind of religion, but of course they don't want the true Christ. They want their own version of God. That's most of the world right now.

Oh, absolutely. Yeah. That's the first email on the list today. Okay, next. Be aware that's out there. We're warming up. It's coming to your church too. There's not a way to avoid the gay stoppo, the movement that's going on in our country right now to either draw you on to the side of gay affirming or punish you for not being on that side.

Capital Punishment in Scripture and the New Testament

This next question comes from Jason. What is the biblical view on capital punishment? Thank you. Short, sweet and to the point, Jason. Thank you for your question. Amen. From Exodus 21 to Joshua 1, the phrase put to death appears over 40 times.

So what would you say the Bible's perspective on the death penalty is? I don't think it's boring. Just kidding. I was like, really? Shall I read that statistic again? I'm just kidding. So yeah, the Bible is absolutely for the death penalty.

The first place that we see the death penalty is in Exodus 21, 12. Whoever strikes a man so that he dies shall be put to death. Well, I say that's the first place that we see the death penalty, but that's not necessarily true.

We actually see it in Genesis, first of all, and it's probably in Genesis 2 where the Lord says, if you eat of this tree that I've told you not to eat from, you will surely die. That's true. That's a death penalty.

That is. But the first place that we see the death penalty in the sense that whoever kills someone, I will demand a life for a life is in Genesis 9. And this is after the flood where God has purged the earth of all evil men.

And the Lord says this, be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth. The fear of you and the dread of you shall be upon every beast of the earth and upon every bird of the heavens, upon everything that creeps on the ground and all the fish of the sea.

Into your hand, they are delivered. Every moving thing that lives shall be food for you. As I gave you the green plants, I give you everything, but you shall not eat flesh with its life, that is its blood.

And for your lifeblood, I will require a reckoning. From every beast, I will require it. And from man, from his fellow man, I will require a reckoning for the life of man. Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed.

For God made man in his own image. And you, God says to Noah and his sons, be fruitful and multiply, increase greatly on the earth and multiply in it. So that's the first place that you see a death penalty.

A death penalty, a life for a life. Everyone who takes a life, I will demand that person's life of him or that animal's life. For your lifeblood, I will require a reckoning. From every beast, I will require it.

And from man. And in fact, we do see this in the law of Moses, which comes about in the book of Exodus. You have, even if an animal should kill a man, that animal should be put to death. When an ox gores a man or a woman to death, the ox shall be stoned and its flesh shall not be eaten, but the owner of the ox shall not be liable.

But if the ox has been accustomed to gore in the past and its owner has been warned, but has not kept it in and it kills a man or a woman, the ox shall be stoned and its owner shall be put to death. Exodus 21 verses 28 and 29.

So the death penalty even extends to animals, not just to people. This is one of the ways in which the United States of America has grown further and further away from the law of God. When we're getting further and further away from the death penalty.

Now I am a fan of true crime. I enjoy watching true crime shows. Becky does not watch them with me. Nope. So it'll be one of those evenings where she's gone to bed ahead of me and then I'll pull up forensic files or something like that and watch an episode.

And it's astounding to me the number of times that I will hear of a criminal making a deal with the prosecution to avoid the death penalty. They may still get life in prison, but they're making a deal so that they won't be put on death row.

And then therefore, you know, will lose their lives. Of course, that's gonna end up happening within like a span of 10 years. The death penalty is not handled speedily in the United States. And I would say, honestly, it's a joke.

I remember a year or two ago, hearing about Scott Peterson. Do you remember Scott Peterson? Do you remember this trial? Vaguely. It was out in California. He killed his wife, Lacey Peterson, who was also expecting their child.

Okay. And this was like a big manhunt for a while because they thought she was kidnapped and she was missing. Oh, right. Okay. But then her, you know, I don't know. It ended up being. Yeah, it ended up being murder.

I won't give the specifics, but it was a horrible, horrible case. And so this became national attention with this guy on trial and the guy that represented OJ Simpson was his lawyer. Of course. He's also represented Michael Jackson.

So he had this all-star lawyer that brought this before the entire media and everybody glued to their TV sets over this thing. His mistress even came forward and said, I had no idea that this had been going on and all this other kind of thing.

And so it's just an incredible story at the time that that happened. It's nationally captivating. This guy's on death row and he was convicted of murder in 2004. What? He's still on death row. Wow. This has been, so we're talking 15 years now.

Wow. And I remember, anyway, like I said, I remember watching a thing on him on death row two, three years ago. I think it was just last year, last year or the year before, because it was kind of like it was coming up on the 15th anniversary of this particular trial.

Okay, yeah. And he's playing basketball at the prison and doing fine and doesn't have bills he has to pay. The taxpayers are paying for his way of life. Oh my goodness. And it's like he's got all the amenities taken care of and handed to him.

And this is a guy who's been convicted of murder. The death row and the death penalty in the United States is a joke, even in the places where the death penalty is still in effect. In California, that's where it's one of the most lax places in the country.

Oh, yeah. And people like Mother Teresa had come out and was outspoken against the death penalty. The Catholic church is very against the death penalty. Yeah. And so, yeah, you'll have various persons associated with the Catholic church coming out every once in a while and speaking out against it.

But this is anti-Bible. It's contrary to what is said in the scriptures that for those who murder, it's life for a life.

Now, question, putting you on the spot here. Okay. You read from the Old Testament. Does that still apply for the New Testament? Yes.

Because as we have in Romans chapter 13, let every person be subject to the governing authorities for there is no authority except from God. And those that exist have been instituted by God. Therefore, whoever resists the authorities resists what God has appointed and those who resist will incur judgment.

For rulers are not a terror to good conduct, but to bad. Would you have no fear of the one who is in authority? Then do what is good and you will receive his approval for he is God's servant for your good.

But if you do wrong, be afraid for he does not bear the sword in vain for he is the servant of God, an avenger who carries out God's wrath on the wrongdoer. Therefore, one must be in subjection not only to avoid God's wrath, but also for the sake of conscience.

For because of this, you also pay taxes for the authorities are ministers of God attending to this very thing. Pay to all what is owed to them, taxes to whom taxes are owed, revenue to whom revenue is owed, respect to whom respect is owed, honor to whom honor is owed.

This is why we pay taxes because it funds the government which God has appointed for the purpose of maintaining civil order. Now you can disagree with the civil government. There are certainly a lot of things bad about the government that you can criticize them for, but we still must be in subjection because they exist to keep order and God has placed them in that particular place that they're in.

When we see the government go awry, especially in the United States of America, when those who are appointed to those positions in government are chosen by the people, a government by the people and for the people.

When you see the government becoming as depraved as it is, well, it's actually a reflection of the hearts of the people. So this is the way the whole country is going. So of course, that's gonna be reflected in our American government as well.

As long as we're voting for it. Yeah, sinners voting for sinners, sinners existing in that system of government, but still this is God appointed. Think of how bad society would be without government. It would be absolute chaos.

It would be awful. So as bad as the government is, it could certainly be way worse. And God has established government to keep the civic order. And the Lord says in Romans 13, four, that the magistrate does not bear the sword in vain for he will punish those who do wrong and a person who kills someone else should be subject to the death penalty.

That's what we have laid down in scripture. And that's even stated in the New Testament. In Matthew 26, verse 52, when Jesus was being arrested and Peter tried to defend him, he draws a sword, he cuts off the servant of the high priest's ear.

Jesus says, put your sword back into its place for all who take the sword will perish by the sword. Now, people have used this passage to say, you shouldn't own a gun because if you own a gun, you'll die by a gun, stuff like that.

That's not the meaning of that passage. What Jesus was saying is authority has been given to the one you are fighting against. If you were to lop that sword just an inch or two in the other direction, you could have killed that guy and he would have had every right to put you to death because you killed someone else.

Instead, fortunately for Peter, he only cut the guy's ear off and Jesus goes and picks the guy's ear up and puts it back on his head. So gross. And he's healed.

Hey, he was healed. I know, it's amazing, but I don't wanna think about it. It was fine.

Ultimately, he was fine. Yes, I'm glad. But anyway, that's the death penalty. We have it in the Old Testament. It's restated again in the New Testament and it's become a joke in the United States. In fact, I would even go as far as this.

I know this is gonna be controversial. You will not agree with me on this. All right. I believe that the death penalty should be public. That when we execute those persons who are guilty of murder and what they deserve is the death penalty, those executions should be dealt publicly so that the rest of the people may stand in fear and know this is the penalty that comes upon a person who takes a life.

I'm gonna surprise you. I actually agree with that to an extent. Okay, because back when it was so public and awful of a death penalty, people did not, I mean, they feared. They feared doing wrong. They feared doing that stuff more so than what it is now.

And so I do agree that that would be beneficial to getting order, but at the same time, I'm not one to be there.

I get that. It was not that long ago when executions were handled publicly. I mean, the one that I can think of in particular because it was a story that I read recently was it wasn't even 150 years ago.

It was at the end of the 19th century. So I'd like to know when the last public execution was held, but I'm sure it wasn't that long ago. I know that in the state of Utah, you could still be executed by firing squad.

Oh, yeah. And that's actually a Mormon thing because if you have murdered somebody, according to Mormon theology, you can't actually be forgiven for that murder unless you spill your own blood. So the capital punishment in Utah is by firing squad so that your blood would be spilled and therefore you might receive atonement for the murder that you committed.

That's Mormon theology. Even if I missed, I would still hold that guilt and blame of killing a man and I just couldn't do it. That's why I am in the field that I'm in, which is not medical, not policing, not.

It's mom and educator and yeah. We still have a significant amount of body fluid that we have to handle.

That's my max. Sometimes it's more than my max that I could handle.

That comes with the territory. Yes. But anyway, if you just go to biblegateway .com and put in quotes, so this way it doesn't, you don't get too many random verses, but you put this in quotes so you can keep the phrase together.

Put the phrase put to death in quotes and see how many times that comes up just in the Pentateuch. So you can see the number of laws that were laid out in Israel that required the death penalty. Now, because we're not a theocracy and we're under a new covenant, Christ fulfilled all the law and the prophets.

I'm not necessarily arguing for every one of these put to deaths becoming the law of our government today. But when we see something like Exodus 21 15, whoever strikes his father or his mother shall be put to death, or whoever is guilty of adultery shall be put to death.

What we come to understand here is that the wages of sin is still death. And there is a day coming on which there will be a reckoning if we don't turn from sin and put our faith in Jesus Christ. But certainly with life for a life, I do agree with the death penalty in that sense.

Life for theft, no, I don't agree with that. So if a person steals something and they should be put to death, I'm not in favor of that. You think of the two criminals that were hanging with Jesus on either side, they were thieves.

So they were being put to death and tortured because they were thieves. That's going a little bit out there. What the, and the Old Testament specifies that those who are guilty of theft have to pay it back.

And this is why putting a person in jail for theft, what's the point of that? I mean, what have you solved there? So the person still loses that they stole from, and then that person gets put in jail and they get all their meals and stuff handled for them.

And they have to serve their time and then they get let go again. But, and then a lot of offenders end up becoming repeat offenders. Prison really doesn't do anything to reform anyone. So those who are guilty of theft need to, there needs to be some sort of system in which they're paying it back.

But those who are guilty of having murdered somebody else, yeah, I absolutely believe in the death penalty. I believe it needs to be dealt swiftly. And I think that it should be publicly. And we're not gonna do that perfectly.

You know, I know that some people are, the reason why they're opposed to the death penalty is because we get that wrong sometimes. Right. And people get put to death who actually are not guilty of murder.

And that's another thing, you know,.

Watching forensic files. Maybe that's why it takes 15 years plus.

Watching those true crime shows like forensic files is sometimes they will have people who are wrongly imprisoned. And then the forensic evidence exonerates them rather than convicts them. But that process takes years.

Yeah, it does. And it's ridiculous how long that takes.

And then the state owes them and everything, so. Right.

For that time. But with the way that our system is now, as great as it is with scientific advancement and things like that, and being able to use forensic science to either commit someone or exonerate them, nevertheless, there are still massive mistakes that end up getting made.

So whether you're talking about eyewitness account or you're talking about forensic evidence and science and things like that, mistakes still get made. But the death penalty still should be in effect in this country and it should be carried out swiftly and publicly.

That's the way it was done. That's the way it was done in the Bible. That's the way I absolutely believe we should be doing it now. And like I said, it wasn't that long ago we were doing it that way. But the further and further we get away from the fear of God and even understanding that the wages of sin is death, then even things like our laws as they pertain to guilt and sentencing, imprisonment, death penalty, things like that will become more and more lax or they will also become more and more prejudiced, biased, looking down on the wrong people, favoring the rich, things of that nature.