A Stand on Biblical Sexual Morality

Welcome to The Wrap Report with your host, Andrew Rapoport, where we provide biblical interpretation and application. This is a ministry of Striving for Eternity and the Christian Podcast Community. For more content or to request a speaker for your church, go to strivingforeternity .org.

Introducing Pastor Mike Hovland and His Ministry in Canada

Well welcome back to The Wrap Report. I'm your host, Andrew Rapoport, and I am not joined by my co-host this week. We are bud-free and Jim Osman-free, but we have someone else that is going to come in, and it is a friend of mine up from Canada, Pastor Mike Hovland.

So Mike, welcome to The Wrap Report. Yeah, thanks for having me. So you and I first met, I guess, a while ago. We were in the Grace Advance Academy together. You and I were the two guys on Zoom and everyone else was in class, so while they were talking in class, you and I were just chatting through Zoom.

So that was pretty good, but we've kind of kept in touch, and now you have a podcast that is on with the Christian Podcast Community, so we're glad to have you there. I should admit, so you had your co-host there, and I saw the name come in when he applied, and I saw the name Lauren Dick, and I went, this is just a woman host, right?

That was my first thought. Then I realized, oh wait, Lauren's a guy's name.

That's funny. I never think of Lauren as a possible woman, because he's just got such a great beard, so I just have never even...

Doesn't look like a woman at all, and doesn't look like a guy I want to mess with either. Yeah, but it's the Abide in the Word podcast, is your podcast. You're pastor of Grace Bible Fellowship up there in Canada, and in Alberta, right?

Was that it? Yeah. Lacrete, Alberta. Lacrete, Alberta. Okay. And your podcast that you did recently is what got me to want to have you on and talk about some things going on up there in Canada. You used to be, and for some people, they'll know the name of Grace Life Church up there in Edmond, Canada, which you used to be one of the pastors there before you came out to where you're at now to be the preaching pastor where you're at now.

You were pastoring with James Coates, and you were still a pastor there, if I remember correctly. You were in this transition state when he got arrested. Is that correct?

Yeah, that's right. Yeah. I was an associate pastor with James for four years, and when I came up here, they kept me on the elder board for a while just to kind of... And actually, our churches are still fairly well connected.

I even still draw a paycheck from Grace Life Church because of the way that we've set up the finances and stuff. So we're here. We're pretty much a self-supporting church up here, but we've still got some connections to Grace Life.

Well, that's good. That's good. So, first off, tell us a little bit. For folks who don't know you, they should go and start listening to your podcast, right? Learn a lot more about you. But for folks that don't know you, just share a little bit about yourself, if you wouldn't mind.

Yeah, I don't know what to say about myself. Mike Hovland, 42 years old, I've been a graduate of the Master's Seminary. Yeah, I don't know, I'm a believer, been a believer about 20 years and live in the...

Really we live up here in the almost as north as you can get. A friend of mine said, it's not the end of the earth, but you can almost see it from up here. And that's kind of where we are. It's minus 35 degrees here right now today.

Now that's Celsius, but we're in the cold north up here. That's really cold. Yeah. Yeah. And there's really nothing exciting about me at all, but I love being a pastor and being able to preach the word, study the word, minister to people, just love it.

Bill C-4 and Canada’s Criminalization of Conversion Therapy

There's not much better than that right there. Yeah. So let's talk about what is going on up in Canada. And there is a bill called C -4 that recently passed that first, if you could, for folks here in America that haven't been following with this, could you explain what this bill is about?

And then how in the world did this get passed, especially the way it got passed? Yeah.

Well, I don't know if I can tell you how in the world that got passed like that, but Bill C -4 is a bill against conversion therapy and conversion therapy is defined as trying to change a person's sexual orientation.

And this whole thing goes just one way. So two heterosexual, change a person's gender identity to cisgender or, you know, the gender that they are born with or change a person's gender expression so that it conforms to their birth gender or repress or reduce the same.

So anything that would try to change or repress or reduce anyone in those ways, that is now actually going to be illegal in Canada starting on January 8th. So I think tomorrow that is. So that's that's the bill and the penalty for it is up to five years in prison, I think two years for advertising.

Like so if I if I put up an ad and say I can do I do conversion therapy, that's that's punishable by two years in jail. And the government can take that off the Internet or take those ads down or ask me to do that.

But but any and it's so broadly defined, it's it's any. Practice, treatment or service designed to do that thing, so as far as I understand, if I'm if I pray for somebody who's who's homosexual and I pray for their conversion, I'm doing a practice that's designed to change them, to convert them, to follow Jesus Christ.

And so now maybe they're going to clarify this in the courts or something, but that's the bill. And we can go into more detail on that maybe, maybe later if you want. But it this bill, there was there was an earlier version of it and then the government kind of shut down for the winter or summer or whatever.

And then then they kind of brought this one back after after the election. So Bill C -6 was before that new election. So then they reintroduced the bill and it went through unanimously in both the House and the Senate.

So no, no conservative MPs spoke out against this thing. They didn't say anything about it. And and the way that I understand how it went through is the the Liberals and the the NDP party and the progressive parties in Canada were going to use this thing as a, you know, to to kind of shame the conservatives or whatever.

They were going to use it as a political wedge. And the conservatives said, oh, we're too smart for that. We're just going to fast track this thing through. And so nobody said nothing both times. And so now we've got this this really this horrible bill which.

Which, yeah, puts puts pastors and parents at risk of of five years imprisonment for trying to do any of these things.

That was what you just said. There was the thing that I was shocked at when I heard you on your podcast, when you and Lauren were talking and you mentioned that this is so broad that if a parent has a son and that thinks he's a girl.

And the parent tries to correct them, they're actually it's under the criminal code. They could be arrested under criminal code, that is mind blown to me.

How the Bill Treats Parents, Pastors, and Christian Counseling

Yeah, and, you know, almost even worse in my mind is that and let me just read right from it. Here's here's one of the offenses of this of this code doing anything for the purpose of removing a child from Canada with the intention that the child undergo conversion therapy outside of Canada.

So if you're if your son, like you just said, has a has a problem and you're a parent and you go, you know what, I better get out of Canada so I can help him because it's illegal to talk about it in Canada.

Well, you could go to jail for trying to get him out of Canada to do that. Wow. And again, it's only it's only one way. So if if if if I want to go and if I don't know how what you have on your show, but let's just if I'm a if I'm a pervert and I want to push someone in in these kind of sinful directions against what God says, that's that's OK.

I can I can coach them. I can I can talk to them. But if I try to if if as a parent even or a pastor or even if even if somebody wants help, even if someone says, Mike, could you please help me? Because I am struggling with attractions that that are that are unbiblical.

And I don't want this and I hate this in my life. And can you please help me? Well, of course, I'm going to and we'll talk about that. But but it's going to be illegal now.

And so this is the thing, folks, as you're hearing this, I want you to pick up what Pastor Mike is saying. There's a couple of things. One, the idea here that if you if you have someone who actually is struggling with these sexual sins, their gender identity, their homosexuality, they're struggling with it.

They want to change. They come to somebody and ask for help. They're not in trouble for asking for help. But pastors, teachers, parents could be in trouble for offering the help. And just to think that this is worded the way it was worded, as you guys read it on your podcast, you read excerpts of this bill.

It's clearly one way. It's clearly just bent toward sexual perversion. It's clearly bent toward an anti-Christian view, an anti-biblical view of of sexual morality. The thing that got me was how it's as you already said, you have someone who is heterosexual and they want conversion to homosexual.

That's perfectly legal. It's just the other way around is not. And now that that specific wording. So the wording is not any conversion therapy. The way that they say, you know, it's wrong for conversion there.

It's not because they're accepting one directional conversion. Right. And so this is I mean, as a pastor, I know dealing with it in America, but as a pastor, how does this then affect or how do they maybe think that's going to affect.

Counseling? Well, you know, it's hard to know what they think because they don't say too much about it, although, you know, I think your American listeners would would be helped to understand that Canada's a few steps down the road, more progressive than America.

And and so it is it is very anti-Christian. It's viewed very much as. You know, it's just it's viewed very much as bigotry just to even hold a view of biblical morality and and there's no real discussion that can be had in those things.

And I think that's the same in America. Right. Let's let's talk rationale. Let's talk logically. No, no, no. You're just a bigot. We don't want to talk to you. So. I forget your actual your question already.

Let me see what you just said, that that tactic is just to shut down discussion, right? When you don't have a good idea, if you if you're you're trying to you're trying to convince them when you're right, but they bring up something, you don't have a good argument.

Just shut down the conversation. How do you do that? Well, you're just a bigot. Now, regardless of the fact that most of the people that claim that say Christians are bigots, clearly they don't understand the definition of the word bigot.

I actually have a theme. I have it saved on my phone because I would use it so often when I would engage with atheists because they would constantly call me a bigot because I'm Christian. And I had the definition of a bigot as a meme that just or as a picture that I could just post all the time because I needed to so often because it's like you don't quite get what this word means.

I don't think that this word means what you think it means.

But I'm going to have to look that up.

It does. And when they say all Christians are wrong, that's actually what bigotry is. When you put a group of people in to a bucket that way and then and then say they're all wrong because of because of the group they're in.

And yeah, you're right there, Andrew. It would seem to me that the bill is just designed to to make everyone be quiet about this thing and just let the progressive agenda kind of go forward and get everyone on the same page, because and I think this is important, too.

There's already laws that exist in Canada that would would would have kept out any kind of I don't know what I want to say, unhealthy, unhelpful practices of conversion therapy, like like like, for example, like there's nobody doing shock therapy or there's nobody there's nobody doing wicked therapies in Canada to to torment homosexual people or something like that.

Right. And so we didn't we didn't need this bill for that. So so this bill does seem like it's it really is aimed at the the Christian people that are left in our country. And and it's going to shut us down and keep us out of the out of the social engagement.

And I think that's what they want.

Well, yeah. And I mean, no one's throwing people off of buildings. Oh, wait, I'm sorry. That's Islam. Oh, I'm sorry. Wait, that's they do that. But no one criticizes them. Sorry, but but it is a thing where it's it's shutting down engagement so that only one point of view is allowed to be discussed or or had in public.

And it's as you said, with with promoting and advertising, it shuts down people being able to to promote, you know, I mean, I don't I can just see very shortly after this, the claim that, well, churches believe in this biblical view of sexuality, which contradicts this Bill C -4, and therefore all churches can't promote their churches, can't advertise their churches.

I can see that as a very simple next step.

Canadian Churches, Political Pressure, and Public Silence

Yeah, yeah. And taking away the charity status of churches as well as something that they've already already talked about.

And whatever is happening in Canada, it's coming our way. We were doing Apologetics Live last night and in Apologetics Live, it was Justin Peters and Anthony Svestro and I, and we were discussing our predictions for 2022.

And, you know, one of the things Justin predicted is based on what's going on in Canada, we shortly will see churches in America being removing 501C3 status, their nonprofit status, if they don't believe in if they don't support a homosexual agenda.

This is I mean, that's not farfetched anymore. I mean, with everything else we see in our countries, but as far as for churches in Canada, do you see a lot of churches that are supporting this bill or is it because I mean, I know there's liberal churches there, but are they kind of silent about it or are they coming out and and promoting it?

Because and the reason I'm asking is because I see this in America where you have the churches that are trying to push the homosexual agenda and they're vocal about it. So every time there's something they can claim as a win, they're out there cheering.

Are you seeing that there in Canada?

You know, I don't know. Like, I'm not super up on like the news or anything like that that's going on. So I'm I always tell my friends, you know, if there's like a tornado or a nuclear war or something, just like give me a call because I probably won't know about it.

But. I know during the covid stuff, there was there was liberal churches that, you know, with with female pastors that with, you know, pride flags on their status or whatever and their articles and they were saying how great it was, we're all locked down.

And I'm sure that there's there's churches and I don't even know if I want to call them churches, but there's there's groups like that that meet in buildings on Sundays that would would celebrate something like this as a great win.

Then there's there's kind of like I think there's another group of of kind of very culturally Canadian churches that that wouldn't support any of this, but that but don't want to raise a ruckus, don't want to say anything, just want to they're just going to keep doing what they do.

Maybe they'll even take down their sermons off the website and just kind of keep kind of bunker down and protect themselves. And then there's another group of of pastors that have kind of been have found each other in this last year as far as, you know, being some of the few churches that are open in the country.

And a bunch of us have found one another and have been supporting one another and encouraging one another and got some some, you know, group texting kind of things going on. And we're all going to make a stand against it and and preach on this kind of especially to see what just to see what we can do and to kind of make a stand for God.

And his word. Yeah, and that's and that's where we want to spend a lot of the time today talking about, because that's I think that's a great move that you guys did. And and this may shock some people here in America, but this didn't actually start with John MacArthur.

No, no, he he actually came to it late. He's just he's just promoted it a lot better than anyone else, maybe. But but this is something you guys I mean, I heard it on your podcast first. And so so first talk about the group that of pastors that started getting together, how that kind of came about.

And then what is the stand that people are going to take or that the pastors are going to.

Take? Yeah, so a group of faithful pastors across Canada, most of them, a lot of them are in Ontario. A lot of them are the pastors that got fined, arrested, you know, took took various stands during the covid to keep their churches open.

And I don't know how the group started, but somebody started a signal group and we kind of text on there and just keep in touch and pray for one another as as they're going. You know what? The health authorities are coming to our church this week.

Do you want to can you pray for me and pray for us? And what do you know? What do we do in this? You know, it's been it's been quite a year. And so when this thing came down, some of those guys said, well, you know what, we should we should take a strong stand on this and preach against it.

And some of those guys are just real, real fireball kind of guys. And I really appreciate those kind of guys. And and, you know, they want to if there's a bee's nest, they want to throw a couple of good rocks at it and see what happens.

And so there's some guys like like that that are just great brothers in the Lord. And and they started saying, OK, let's let's let's get together. Let's preach against this. Let's take a stand. And there's a and these are like Baptist, Presbyterian, Theonomist kind of postmill, all mill, premill, just kind of from from.

It's actually a bunch of guys probably we I wouldn't have had a whole lot of fellowship with before, but I've just really come to appreciate them this now that when when there's only a few guys that are even willing to keep the church open, then those are the guys you want to stand with.

Right. Well, that's what persecution does. Right. It just it separates a lot of the people who claim to be Christian from the real Christians. And then what you have left is you have Christians. Yeah, we have differences in our theology.

But guess what? We're standing for Christ. And all of a sudden, some of those things we have as differences that maybe we would have fought over in the past, they're not as important right now as standing on the truth of God's word.

And therefore, hey, we're going to make new relationships. This is what persecution does. Right. So so what?

It's been awesome to see their churches growing and, you know, they'll be telling how many baptisms they did lately. And it's just amazing what what God's doing and just bringing Christians who want to go to church.

And they're coming in droves everywhere except here where I am in the creek, where where really the whole community has taken a stand and has been open. But all of these other guys are in places where where they're the only church in the area and people are driving for hours to be and meet with them.

So, yeah, great, great bunch of guys and decided together that that we would take this stand and then use various means. ARPA is one. I think it's the Association of the Reformed for Political Action, something along that line.

So there's this ARPA group that kind of got together and set a date. And then the Liberty Coalition is also something that came out of that. And that's where it started was with the Liberty Coalition.

And then they, James and James Coates and Andrew from the Liberty Coalition, emailed MacArthur and and kind of got him on board as well.

And he's been really pushing it. I mean, they've used Grace, do you send something out? Master's Seminary, Master's University, the Master's Conference, TMI. I mean, I think I've gotten about a half a dozen different emails.

You know, the MacArthur Center. I mean, they've they've just said, OK, every email list we have get there. So, yeah, it's been kind of interesting. Like I just I started getting them in. It was like boom, boom, boom, boom.

And they were all saying pretty much the same thing.

Taking a Stand Together on Biblical Sexual Morality

Yeah, even today, there's a new video that John put out on it, so he's and you know, it really is a blessing to the Canadian guys to just know there's there's faithful pastors that are out there that support us, even though they're not going to get arrested for this.

But it really is a blessing to know, you know, I'm not standing alone here. And and even it encourages the some of the fainter hearted guys that might be a little bit afraid to do something like this.

You know, what's really interesting is that back several years ago, a bunch of us got together. We wanted to put out a statement about against social justice in the gospel. And someone had the idea of reaching out to MacArthur and seeing if he would do it.

And so we were discussing some of the discussion was, you know, could this be I mean, John MacArthur has been in so many of these battles. You know, maybe this will be his his last hurrah. The last battle that he takes on, you know, is social justice.

And he got behind it. And, you know, and we were, you know, afterwards, we were like, man, it was so good that John MacArthur got behind that. I wonder if this is going to like this may be the last big, you know, battle that he fights.

And we were so wrong. You know, you know, he's been battling churches staying open. Now he's battling, you know, this issue of of biblical sexual morality. I mean, it's like the guy's 81 years old. And it's like he doesn't seem to have any any stop in him.

It's like, no, there's another biblical truth that needs to be fought for. And he's right there willing to fight for him. Like he usually people when they get older, it's like, OK, I've had enough of the fights.

I just want to sit back and cruise. He doesn't seem like a guy that wants to cruise. It's like biblical truth, biblical truth, biblical truth.

Yeah, I love that about him. He is just willing to take a stand and almost looking for the next, you know, almost looking. I don't think he's looking for a fight, but he's not contentious. But he does want to make a stand for the truth.

And it's it's awesome.

Yeah, that's right. So so let's talk about this stand that, you know, you guys up there in Canada decided what what's the plan?

Well, we are going to all preach on biblical sexuality. And and conversion on on January 16th. So that's that's really the plan. We're all going to preach on it and and just kind of draw awareness. I don't know.

We're just going to preach on it in our churches and send a message that we're not going to back down. We're not going to be quiet. We're going to continue to do what what we did. And then it'll be for the government to decide what what do they need to do to us?

Are they going to ignore this? Are they going to charge us? Are they going to? Are they just going to kind of keep this for another day in their back pocket when when there's more public support to to persecute pastors?

But that's what we're going to do is we're going to take a stand and then we're going to do this every year on the anniversary of of the bill coming into law.

On the anniversary of it, that weekend that it.

OK, so now. So, yeah, just January 8th, I think, is when it came into law. So I'm not sure exactly what the date would be next year, but we're going to kind of do this year in and year out.

But so this is a thing that's not just Canadians are doing. There's many. I mean, as I said, when I heard about it on your podcast, I went, you know what? I went to my the preaching schedule and said, OK, I am I'm really close to finishing the gospel of Mark.

And I don't you probably understand and appreciate this when you get toward the end of a book and it's like you're starting to prepare for that new book and you're reading through the new book over and over and over and you're ready for that.

You know, you want to jump into that? You're like, OK, I want to I want to get that. Well, I'm pushing that off a little bit. I decided, no, one more week won't hurt. And because I when I heard your podcast, I said, you know, this is something that we should do here in the States as well.

And and then I found out there's a lot of others. And this was before MacArthur put the emails out. But now there's a lot more men that are planning to stand up on the 16th and preach a message on a biblical view of of sexual morality and here in the States.

And my encouragement, whether you're listening in in Canada, whether you're listening into America and actually the second most listeners we have is in France. I don't know why I don't speak French, but but maybe you're in France.

Wherever you are, if you are a pastor, my encouragement to you is whatever you had planned to preach on on the 16th, maybe put that off and say, you know what? Let's stand together around the world and make a stand that we are going to stand up for a biblical view of sexual morality.

And, you know, mention why we're doing it. I plan to to explain some of the bill that went on in Canada. And if you're not a pastor, we're going to the reason I'm dropping this podcast early is, you know, it should have dropped next Wednesday.

I'm going to drop it immediately. Why? Because I want to give you guys time to listen to this and then go talk to your pastor about the importance of taking up this stand. Now, I will say, if you go to I, it was either on Grace to you or I forget where they had it.

But if you just do a search, a duck, duck, go search, because we don't use Google, do a duck, duck, go search on a stand for biblical sexual morality, and you'll find where MacArthur has asked people to sign to sign for, you know, to say that you're taking a stand.

And I encourage folks to sign that. The more signatures we can get, especially in Canada, will help their bill immediately. But here in America or wherever you are, it becomes a thing where when when more of these bills start to come our way, we have a number of signatures already signed that we want to take a stand against this.

And that gives that that leg up on on some things like that. So I would encourage everybody, every church to be on on January 16th, 2022, that you would take a stand and speak against this agenda, this anti-Christian agenda that we have coming our way.

And right now, Canada is is facing it. So, you know, what are what are some things? Because what I want to do is get into what the Scripture says about these issues to deal with the Scriptures themselves.

I mean, if someone is going to take a stand on this, what I would like to do is say, OK, what what should we be discussing? What is the Scripture's point of view on this? Before we do as giving you time to open your Bible, which is good.

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So go to mypillow .com, use promo code SFE. So, Pastor Mike, let's let's get into some scripture here. What does the scripture say about these issues of homosexuality, gender? And this is something that the whole gender issues that we're dealing with today, I think like we don't have a specific Bible verse that we can go to that explains the difference of cisgender because it's so far to the Bible or any culture in all 6 ,000 years.

Yeah, I had to look it up. I had to look up what is what is the cisgender? And it's the opposite of transgender. So it would be the the and I don't even know if I say it right. But the gender that you you are from birth.

So what does scripture say? And maybe I'll maybe I'll just say this for whoever is interested. When when when the guys first said, let's do this, we we we said, OK, we're going to do it right away. December 8th, I think it was, or, you know, right away that week.

Now, in Canada, when when a new law gets passed, it has to get signed by the queen, the queen signs it. And then 30 days later, it comes into effect. So the guys were talking, OK, let's do it. And we were making the initial plans.

And it was it was Tuesday. And they said, yeah, we're going to go ahead and do it. And then on Thursday, Friday, they said, you know what? Let's just let's wait till after Christmas, after the new year.

And then we'll do it then when it actually comes into law. But I went ahead and preached on it already, because for me, on one side, once I'm going, once I'm kind of planning on on preaching on something and it's kind of fresh in my mind, I want to preach it.

And I don't want to start preparing a new sermon Thursday, Friday, Saturday.

Genesis 1, Genesis 2, and Romans 1 on Male and Female

So that's really good, because now now Ed Litton can just use your sermon because and still preach. I figured Ed Litton would want to preach the day after. Oh, wait, wait, no, wait. That's right. And Ed Litton thinks that the Bible only whispers about homosexuality.

So he's he's not going to preach on that. I wasn't whispering, but but I went to, you know, first I went to Genesis, and I think it's I think Genesis is just so clear God created us in his image. He made us male and female.

There's there's the reality of the creator there. He made us distinct. You know, there's there's a difference between a male and a female. Our biology is different. He made us one for another, and he put the first man and the woman together in the first marriage, Genesis two, twenty four.

And the two are to be one flesh where, you know, we the the woman Eve came from Adam's flesh and they were literally one flesh. And then they were joined together in marriage and became one flesh. And of course, that was designed to be a picture of Christ and his church and his his love for the church.

And so to me, it's just it's really clear God made us the way that he made us. And and we need to acknowledge him. And the place that a lot of this gender dysphoria stuff comes from is just from man suppressing the truth and unrighteousness.

And according to Romans one, we're given over to a depraved mind. And and as we refuse to acknowledge God and be thankful, he gives us over to a depraved mind, even to the extent that it says the the the the men and the women gave up natural relations and and burned with lust for one another now.

So so to me, it's just it's just that simple. The good news is, is that anyone can be saved from a sinful lifestyle, from suppressing the truth and unrighteousness if they would turn and acknowledge their creator and acknowledge Jesus Christ.