TPW 24 | Repentance Unto Life & "Revoice"

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Paul warns that evil men and impostors will grow worse and worse deceiving one another and being deceived.
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The reason Paul told Timothy that was because he needed to be ready to spend the balance of his life in uninterrupted warfare for the truth.
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The most dangerous people alive today are always, always, always ordained ministers.
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They're the most dangerous people in the world, especially the ones that people think are Christians, who will sell you theological poison to the damnation of your soul.
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Folks, I just want to warn you about something. Every heretic in the entire history of the church, without exception, has taught their heresy in the name of being faithful to Scripture.
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That was the day of judgment. That is the day of final salvation brought back in time and applied to us once for all at the moment of our effectual calling when we repent and believe in our unity to Christ.
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Listen Witness, this is Pastor Patrick Hines here at Bidwell Heights Presbyterian Church, and I wanted to go ahead and post a sermon
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I preached this past Sunday night. I've been working through the Westminster Confession for a really long time now.
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I think the sermon I preached was the 54th sermon, and we've been talking about the doctrine of repentance, and that is an essential truth, very, very important, especially since it's not preached a lot today in evangelistic appeals.
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But I applied the doctrine of repentance specifically to the issue of the
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Revoice Conference, and I wanted to address some of those things because I think that the biblical doctrine of repentance and what
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God does to a person when they are effectually called, and how he breaks the power of their slavery to sin and yokes them to Christ, that's really missing, and this whole idea of gay celibate
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Christianity. Now, there's a lot of really, really good articles out there on the internet on Revoice, and people who are very, very able have addressed themselves to these issues.
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I reviewed, as if you've listened to this podcast, a couple of the speakers there at Revoice, and I've sent, you know, an email to the
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Revoice website asking some questions because I noticed that Nate Collins, who says that he is a
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Side B person, meaning that he does not believe that gay sex or gay marriage is okay, he believes that those things are sinful, is speaking at a conference called
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Devoted, and Devoted is aimed at youth, but some of the other speakers there are
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Side A people. What does that mean? It means that they are full -blown proponents of gay marriage and gay sex, and one of the co -speakers there is a female minister who is married to another woman, and also
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I found on her website that she does pre -marriage counseling for gay couples, and will marry them.
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And I thought, how can he, in good conscience, if he is committed to what Revoice says on its website, that they are committed to the traditional and biblical teaching on marriage and sexuality, how can he be comfortable addressing these very issues, the
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LGBT issues, to supposedly Christian youth with these individuals that do not hold his position?
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I don't understand how he can be comfortable doing that. So I sent an email through their website.
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I'm not sure if I'll get a response to it, but just pointing out, you know, the website claims to be a
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Side B proponent, but your founder is speaking at a conference with Side A proponents.
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And I would think that if you really are committed to trying to follow at least the biblical teachings on the actions regarding these issues, that you would not be comfortable doing that.
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So I think that that's an important issue. But anyway, this is a sermon I preached this past Sunday night, and I think that this is probably going to be the last thing
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I have to say about this issue, because I'm kind of getting worn out from it. But when these kinds of issues come up,
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I can't help but feel a sense of obligation to give a good answer to this kind of thing.
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I've listened very carefully to the talks that are on the YouTube channel for Revoice from the conference that was done at Memorial Presbyterian Church in St.
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Louis. Listened to all those talks three times each, and also the church secretary here has been transcribing them with timestamps so we can document stuff.
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So I've done my homework on this. I'm also working through Nate Collins's book, All But Invisible, and there's a couple other books
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I've bought recently. I haven't started working through them by some of the other speakers. I just feel like it's important to to know this stuff and to understand exactly where these folks are coming from so you can hear them and their own words defining their own terms.
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But make no mistake about it, everyone. This is the the sexual revolution. Come to our doorstep.
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There's no question about it. For them to say that they are holding to the historic
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Christian and biblical teaching on marriage and sexuality, I think in and of itself is not true because there's no precedent historically that I can think of of people identifying themselves as gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, along with being a professing
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Christian. It really smacks of trying to serve two masters because these behaviors and desires are condemned in Scripture very, very clearly.
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And so for people to still be hanging on to them, is that really repentance in the biblical sense of that word?
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Now, that doesn't mean that Christians don't struggle with sin. They do. We all do. But I don't identify myself as a particular form of sin because that's completely inappropriate.
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It is an abomination to my God. I serve the Lord. God has has taken me away from sin and has yoked me to his
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Son, Jesus Christ, and I want to serve him. I hate my sin now. I fight against my sin now. I certainly don't embrace it as a badge of honor or or take pride in it or see it as having its own unique cultural contribution.
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No, not at all. The sin that we were saved out of is cast into the sea of forgetfulness and thrown as far as the
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East is from the West. So I hope that this is edifying to you. I hope you find it helpful as the church continues to try to stand its ground against the pull to deny what the
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Word of God teaches. Good evening, everyone. Please take your Bibles and turn to 2
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Corinthians chapter 7. 2
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Corinthians chapter 7 verses 8 through 11 will be our Scripture reading for this evening. 2
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Corinthians chapter 7 verses 8 through 11. This is a sermon on repentance with special attention to what was called the
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Revoice Conference, and I'll explain a little bit more about that in a moment. But we are technically still in the Westminster Confession.
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I just wanted to let you know that this is a special sermon on repentance. 2 Corinthians 7 verses 8 through 11.
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This is God's Word. For though I caused you sorrow by my letter, I do not regret it, though I did regret it.
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For I see that the letter caused you sorrow, though only for a while. I now rejoice, not that you were made sorrowful, but that you were made sorrowful to the point of repentance.
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For you were made sorrowful according to the will of God, so that you might not suffer loss in anything through us.
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For the sorrow that is according to the will of God produces a repentance without regret, leading to salvation.
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But the sorrow of the world produces death. For behold what earnestness this very thing, this godly sorrow, has produced in you.
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What vindication of yourselves, what indignation, what fear, what longing, what zeal, what avenging of wrong.
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In everything you demonstrated yourselves to be innocent in the matter. May God bless the reading of his word.
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Let's pray, please. Heavenly Father, we do thank you for your grace to us, and we know that you are indeed holy and that you cannot look upon or prove sin in any way shape or form in us and in this world.
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We pray that you would help us understand this precious truth of repentance. That you are indeed a
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God who calls us to turn from all sin in our lives, whatever those sins may be.
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We pray that you would help us to recognize the revolution that's going on in the culture around us and that without question that revolution is trying to come into the church and may we stand our ground against it.
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That those who are swept in it may come to know Christ and repent and turn away from it.
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And we pray that you would help us to be faithful to you, no matter what happens and no matter how much compromise or capitulation there is to this revolution.
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We pray in Jesus' name. Amen. In his book, Redemption Accomplished and Applied, John Murray wrote,
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Apart from regeneration, our thought of God, of ourselves, of sin, and of righteousness is radically perverted.
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Regeneration changes our hearts and minds. It radically renews them. Hence, there is a radical change in our thinking and feeling.
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Old things have passed away and all things have become new. While our justification is entirely outside of us and has absolutely positively no reference of any kind to any subjective change in us at all, every justified person, because they have been converted and made alive in Christ, will be marked with a totally new outlook on life.
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When true repentance is granted by God to a sinner, there will be a true and abiding sorrow over their past sins and ongoing struggle with present sin.
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But the repentant person will be looking to the new future before them with a
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God -given resolve to walk in God's ways and to change their thinking about everything in life from that moment forward.
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Where there is true God -given repentance, there will be actions in the direction of righteousness and a desire for true righteousness.
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This is what James chapter 2 is speaking of, when it says, What use is it, my brethren, if someone says he has faith but has no works?
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Can that faith save him? When a person says, I have faith in Christ and I am a Christian, we cannot see their act of belief itself.
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We can't see the mental act of assent to the truth of the gospel. The only thing that we can see is the way that they live their life.
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Why do people get so upset about hypocrisy? Because a hypocrite is merely a pretender.
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In fact, that's what the Greek term hypocrites means, a pretender or an actor. Repentance means changed thinking and changed actions.
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And where there is true repentance, there will be action. Why does the confession of faith call it repentance unto life?
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Repentance unto life. Why doesn't the chapter heading just say of repentance? Instead, it's called repentance unto life.
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Well, that actually is a direct quotation from scripture. In Acts 11, 18, after Peter reports about how
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Cornelius received the Holy Spirit and these Gentile people had repented and come to Christ, the text says,
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When they heard this, they were quieted down and glorified God, saying, Well then, God has granted to the
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Gentiles also repentance unto life. Cain and Judas both repented with regret of the simple things they did, but it was not true repentance that leads to life.
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From beginning to end, true repentance is described clearly as a forsaking of the former way of life and the embracing of a life of obedience and righteousness because that life of obedience and righteousness becomes the desire of the heart of the repentant person.
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You know that someone really has come to Christ when there is that radical change in the way that they live their life, in the things that they desire and want.
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Isaiah 55, verse 7. Marvelous text of scripture. Let the wicked forsake his way.
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Let him forsake the way he lives his life, his actions, his priorities, and the unrighteous man his thoughts.
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We need to forsake our way and our thoughts, the way we think about things and the things we do.
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And the text goes on, And let him return to the Lord, and he will have compassion on him and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon.
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So a forsaking of the way we live and a forsaking of the way we think is part and parcel of becoming a
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Christian. After his resurrection, Jesus taught his disciples what the heart of their message would be when they went out and preached.
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He said in Luke 24, Thus it is written that the Christ would suffer and rise again from the dead the third day, and that repentance for forgiveness of sins would be proclaimed in his name to all the nations beginning from Jerusalem.
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Only when the sinner sees himself nailed to the cross with Christ because of the sin that he is drowning in will they begin to see and to desire in their hearts to live a new life.
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Only when I see that the way I live and the way I think make me worthy of death, make me worthy of being cursed of God, will we then finally start to see and therefore
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I want to be done with these things. I want to turn away from them all. It's a wonderful thing for true Christians to look back at the life from which they were delivered and to look with joy to the future.
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Come what may, I'm going to live God's way now. If you remember your life when you were not a
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Christian, I'm sure that at times you look back and think it's such a wonderful thing for me to know. From now on,
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I'm not living that way any longer. From now on, I'm going to do it God's way. I'm going to live righteously now. I'm going to do what is righteous now.
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Nothing is more important than the glory of Christ in my life now as a Christian. And may
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Jesus Christ be glorified in our lives and our priorities by the way we treat people, especially the individuals that God has put in our life that he's called us to love the most.
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So why the expression repentance unto life? Why did the people say, well,
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God has granted repentance unto life to the Gentiles. Why does it say that? Because everyone who repents like that after godly sorrow and has that indignation, that anger against their sin, a zeal to be rid of sin and a hunger and thirst for righteousness in order to please
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God, they will obtain eternal life. That's why it's called repentance unto life. They obtain eternal life not on account of their repentance, not on the basis of their repentance, but by faith alone in Christ alone through their justification.
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But true repentance always accompanies this justification and is one of justification's surest marks.
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Remember what Paul told the Thessalonian church? I can bear witness that the word of God came to you all and you received it not as the word of men but the word of God and you turned to God from idols to serve the living and true
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God. How did Paul know that the gospel really had gained a foothold in Thessalonica? They abandoned their former way of life.
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They threw away their idols. They turned away from sexually immoral behavior and they picked up their cross to follow
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Jesus. True repentance always accompanies that justification and it's one of justification's surest marks.
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There is a worldly sorrow that leads to death. We just read that in 2 Corinthians 7. But repentance unto life or repentance that leads to life always will represent a noticeable turning point in the life of the believer unless they were converted at a very young age.
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Many people don't remember their life before Christ because God showed them mercy when they were very young and that's glorious when you hear those testimonies.
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There will be the positive existence in the life of every Christian no matter when they were converted. There will be the positive existence of revulsion in their hearts over the sin that they were once dominated or controlled by or still struggle with now.
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They will be revolted by it. They will hate it. They will certainly not want to live in that sin or be identified by that sin.
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There will be a true and lasting disgust with the former way of life. There will be the presence of real sadness, real anger, real zeal and passion to be rid of the former sins that were once dragging us to hell.
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We will hate them. No truly repentant Christian would ever accept a certain form of sin as an identity.
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I just want to say that for the record. No Christian person would ever accept a certain form of sin that is an abomination to the holy
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God as a form of identity. No Christian would ever do such a thing. Our identity is in Jesus Christ, not in our sins.
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Aren't you thankful for that? I am not identified by the sins that I once was drowning in. Those are gone.
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God has taken me away from those. He's liberated me from enslavement to them. Our sins are what we have left behind.
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They are what we have turned away from. They're what we repented from. To repent of our sins means to turn away from them.
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We used to have that one master, our sin, and we turn away from sin to embrace a new master in Jesus Christ.
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And remember what he taught in Matthew 6 24. You can't serve two masters. There will always be love for one and hatred for the others.
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And when you repent the love and hate reverse. Now you love and serve the Lord and you hate the sin.
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You hate the former master. In Paul's indictment against humanity in Romans 1, he uses a very interesting
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Greek word. It only occurs one time in the whole Bible. The term that's translated God -haters, Theostugas, refers to a person who despises and hates
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God. Why do the unregenerate hate God? Because God is who stands in the way of their first love, sin.
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But when the heart of stone is made alive by God, that hatred for God dissolves into love and a new hatred takes its place.
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A hatred of sin. A Christian taking pride in their sin is not only blasphemous.
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It is impossible. It cannot happen. This is very important because there is an organization today that is embracing the idea of gay identity while trying to be obedient to the biblical teaching on sexuality and marriage.
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At least they say they are. It's really a halfway house of sorts. The organization is called
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Revoice and they held a conference at a PCA church in St. Louis not too long ago. It was back in late
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August. Their stated purpose on their website is the following quote, Supporting, encouraging, and empowering gay, lesbian, same -sex attracted, and other gender and sexual minority
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Christians so they can flourish while observing the historic Christian doctrine of marriage and sexuality.
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The irony of the dismissal statement is that it has already discarded the historic
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Christian doctrine of marriage and sexuality. You will search in vain in the entire history of the annals of Christianity, of the whole history of Christian thought.
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This is completely novel and unprecedented. No one has ever suggested such a thing in the entire history of the church.
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Now, how are they already redefining the Christian doctrine of marriage and sexuality? Well, by asserting that there are gay, lesbian, same -sex attracted, and other gender and sexual minority
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Christians. It's critical for all of us to recognize that using this kind of label for people is, as Rosaria Butterfield has said, defeatist, cruel, and dishonest.
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Now, she's a person who is uniquely qualified to address this issue. If you've not read or listened to anything by Rosaria Butterfield, she is wonderful to listen to.
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She is a reformed Calvinistic Christian who was a former lesbian professor of women's studies at Syracuse University, and she is now a
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Christian pastor's wife and a homeschooling mother. Her testimony, I mean, if you can listen to her story without breaking down and weeping for joy, then you don't have a heart.
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Revoice, this organization, is undercutting something that is at the heart of true repentance in Scripture.
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Paul rejoiced in the Corinthian believers having left behind their former sins.
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When Paul wrote that letter to the church of Corinth, he had preached there, he knew these people who had been enslaved in all these different kinds of sins, and they had come out of those sins to embrace
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Christ. Paul says in 1 Corinthians 8, or 6 verse 8, or verse 9, Do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God?
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Do not be deceived. Neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor homosexuals, nor thieves, nor the covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers, will inherit the kingdom of God.
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Such were some of you. Not such are some of you, but such were some of you.
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In fact, there's a website called suchweresomeofyou .com that has testimony after testimony after testimony of people who have come out of these kinds of sins, these kinds of sexual sins, to freedom in Jesus Christ.
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Paul says, such were some of you. You used to be these things, but you were washed.
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You were sanctified. You were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and in the spirit of our
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God. Think about the sins here, which exclude people from the kingdom of God. Fornicators is the first thing he lists there.
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Can you imagine how Paul would react to someone who wrote books and spoke at conferences identifying themselves as a fornicating
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Christian? Or if someone identified themselves as a homosexual Christian, or a covetous
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Christian, or a drunkard Christian? The founder of Revoice is a man named Dr. Nate Collins.
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He has a PhD from the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. His bio, which is on the website called the
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Center for Faith, Sexuality, and Gender, says, quote, listen to his bio, quote, speaking from his own unique experience as a married, same -sex attracted gay man who is a husband, father, and follower of Christ.
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He is a vocal proponent of extending and receiving community with LGBT individuals, both inside and outside the church.
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He has been married to his wife, Sarah, for 13 years, and they have three young sons, end quote. Anything about that strike you as a little off?
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What these folks are promoting today is what's being called gay celibate Christianity. There are a number of terms that you need to be aware of in this whole discussion that's happening today on these issues, and believe me, as much as I do not like preaching on this type of thing,
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I preached three sermons a few years ago. When people ask me questions like this, I'll send them links to those, already covered it, already dealt with it.
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But here it comes again. Here's another thing we've got to deal with. I want to equip you to deal with it. The first term is called
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Side A. Side A, Christians. People will talk about the Side A position.
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That's the position that God blesses homosexual relationships and homosexual marriage, so you need to know that.
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That's what Side A means. Side B is what's being promoted by Revoice. It's the embracing of gay identity, but affirming the biblical sexual ethic and that homosexual practice is wrong.
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Now, guess what our side's called? Side X. Because we just are, we exclude everything.
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No, we just hold to what Christians have always held to, and to what God's Word has taught us for several thousand years now.
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In an excellent talk that Rosaria Butterfield did, and I transcribed this little section here, it's because it was just so outstanding on this topic.
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It's a talk on YouTube called Why Gay Celibate Christianity is Not Reformed and Biblical.
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Understanding the vocabulary and theology behind the new gay Christian movement. Y 'all need to watch that.
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You need to watch it a couple of times. You will, you'll catch right on to it. She is spot on the money on this. She said this, quote, sexual orientation and gender identity as categories of selfhood are inherently secular.
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You hear that? The idea that sexual orientation and gender identity as categories of selfhood are inherently secular.
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Okay, there's nothing Christian, nothing biblical about any of this. She says, you can no more add the gospel and stir this on to it than you could walk on the moon.
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If we maintain that bearing the image of God is what distinguishes humans from animals, we see that sexual orientation and gender identity create fictional identities that rob people of their true identity, male and female image bearers of a holy
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God. If someone ever comes to me and tells me, yes, I'm a gay Christian.
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If a man comes and tells me I'm a gay Christian, I would say, no, you are not. You are a man. No, no,
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I'm a gay man. No, you're not. You are a male. God made you a man and you are created in his image as a man.
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You may have a struggle with this kind of thing, but it is not your identity. It is not your identity.
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Rosaria Butterfield continues, even and I would say here now especially, if you are someone who experiences unchosen homosexual desires or gender dysphoria.
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Now that phrase gender dysphoria is important. What is someone who experiences gender dysphoria? It's a person who's not sure if they're the correct gender.
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Okay, that's it's uncomfortable to talk about this, but I'm sorry, it's coming. You're gonna have to be prepared for this.
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Unchosen homosexual desires or gender dysphoria, sexual orientation, gender identity as categories of personhood are dishonest, cruel, and defeating.
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Unchosen homosexual desires and gender dysphoria come from the fall of man, from Satan's intrusions, from the pit of hell.
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Okay, now remember, this is a former lesbian. This is someone who was in that lifestyle, who has come out of it, and has been renewed by Christ, and she describes this gay celibate
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Christian idea as from the pit of hell. She continues, Homosexual desires and gender dysphoria are outworkings of original sin, and then listen to this next sentence.
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This is so glorious. In Christ, fallen desires are not who you are.
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In Christ, fallen desires are not who you are, even though they may well represent how you feel and perceive the world.
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For those who have or have had homosexual desires or gender dysphoria and are Christians, we know that Christ's forgiveness renders us citizens of a new and different country.
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Listen to this sentence. This needs to be made into a meme or a bumper sticker. Listen to this. The gospel comes in exchange for the life you once loved, never in addition to it.
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Isn't that great? The gospel comes in exchange for the life you once loved.
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It's not bubble gummed or tacked on to it. It is a radical departure from your former way of life.
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That's what repentance means. She continues, We know that experiencing unchosen homosexual desire or any desire that God says no to is one of the ways that original sin has thumbprinted us.
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We know that when we have acted on any sexual sin, it quickly escalates into an intractable indwelling sin, and we know what
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God says to do with sexual sin and any sin flee from it, even if it has been with us from the earliest days of our lives, end quote.
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She is right on. So if someone has struggles with whatever the sin might be, whether it's this kind of sin or any kind of sin, what is our counsel to one another as brothers and sisters in Christ?
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You stand and fight. You stand your ground and fight. Fight the good fight against these things.
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Don't give in to it. Fight. The biblical doctrine of repentance unto life means grieving over, hating, and forsaking your former life.
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That phrase, the gospel comes in exchange for the life you once loved, never in addition to it, is spot -on and exactly correct.
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That's why Jesus said, if anyone desires to come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.
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We lay aside our former life to a new life. No true
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Christian would ever be comfortable identifying themselves with a form of sexual sin.
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Their new heart and their zeal for personal holiness would rule this out.
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When a person is effectually called by God, granted repentance unto life, and given saving faith in Christ, they will pronounce an anathema, a curse, on their former self.
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That self that died, the old man that was crucified with Jesus. They say goodbye to their former master to be yoked to the new master,
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Jesus. And this does not mean, of course, that all of our sinful tendencies and problems suddenly disappear.
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How many of you noticed that all your sins followed you into the Christian life, and now you have to deal with them and fight with them?
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But they will fight. True believers will fight the good fight. First Peter 2 .11, listen to the to the way that this is worded.
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First Peter 2 .11. Beloved, I beg you as sojourners and pilgrims, abstain from fleshly lusts which war against the soul.
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Hear that word? War. Fleshly lusts that war against the soul. Are you at war?
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I've been at war since I was 18 years old. It's exhausting. I'm all bloodied and bruised up from it, too. But you know what?
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You fight. You keep fighting. You don't give in. You certainly don't embrace sinful identities as if that's who you are.
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No, no, no. I'm identified by Christ now. I'm in Him. He's my master, my leader. A Christian is never, ever simply to embrace a form of sin as their identity.
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Such is as contrary to Scripture as it could possibly be. We may have fleshly lusts that war against our soul, but that is a war we wage and fight with God's weapons.
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Scripture, sacrament, and prayer. The founder of Revoice, Nate Collins, has written a book
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I've been reading called All But Invisible, Exploring Identity Questions at the Intersection of Faith, Gender, and Sexuality.
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Everything I've read in this book so far assumes the possibility of real homosexual identity.
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And just to warn you, there is a very serious issue with victim, a victim complex here.
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The millennial generation, I think I would kind of include my own generation in this, the millennials, are victims of everything.
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They are not responsible for anything that they do. They're not responsible for any of their decisions or their sins.
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Everything is someone else's fault. We're all persecuted. We're all victims of society instead of realizing, no,
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I am responsible for everything I think, feel, and do in my life. Listen to Nate Collins. He says this, quote,
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This is a book about an invisible people. People who find themselves at the center of a cultural debate about what it means to be human, to be a person, and to be a sexual being.
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You can't escape the debate. It's everywhere. Unfortunately, he's right about that. It unfolds in public places like workplaces and restaurants, but also in the private spaces of our lives, at family gatherings, and in our living rooms.
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Some in this group choose to remain invisible, fearing rejection and judgment. See, what's he assuming here?
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This is just what people are. That God made them this way, and he's gonna hammer this point throughout the rest of the book.
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God makes people like this. They can't help it, and if they come out, they fear rejection and judgment.
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They keep their orientation private and bear their burden alone. Folks, you got to get rid of the idea of orientation.
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That is not part of what it means to be a man or a woman. We are designed, if you're a man, you are designed by God for romantic and sexual intimacy with one woman that you're married to for life, and if you're a woman, vice versa.
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And that's all there is to it. Our corrupted desires are not our identities. That is not who we are.
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Collins continues, others are invisible because they don't want to rock their social boat or be an inconvenience to others.
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They soldier through the awkward comments and the myriad other difficulties that gay people face in struggling to fit into a straight world.
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But even more specifically, this is a book about our people. When I say our,
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I speak as a Christian believer. Christians who are straight, but who also observe a traditional sexual ethic, are some of the least acknowledged and least understood people today.
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They don't fit into the mainstream gay culture, but neither do they feel entirely at home in your typical evangelical church.
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According to most studies and the smart people who interpret them, gender and sexual minorities account for about three to five percent of the general population, but there is no reason to believe that the statistics are any different inside our churches.
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Folks, you need to understand something. The church does not have gender and sexual minorities. You need to rid your mind of that category.
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That does not exist. There is no such thing as gender and sexual minorities. As if that's just what they are, and it can't be changed.
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God can't even change it. Okay, the church does not have gender and sexual minorities.
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You just need to be aware of that. That is assumed, that kind of speech is all throughout all this literature, and it's to wear you down, to get you to embrace this idea that this is just what these people are.
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They can't help it. He continues, Gay people are the greeter who hands us a bulletin with a smile when we enter the sanctuary.
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They are the usher who passes the offering plate. They are the single man who sits alone in the same pew Sunday after Sunday, and they are the teenage girl who is the twinkle in her father's eye and has a scary secret.
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Gay people are us, end quote. That's hard to read, isn't it? What is being assumed here throughout?
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That there are gay people. It's just what they are. This is assumed throughout the book and throughout all the talks at that Revoice conference.
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The phrases LGBT community, gay people, the gay community, are used constantly for some reason.
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For some reason, this particular sin is being singled out and spoken of as if it simply functions as a person's unchangeable identity, even if they're
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Christians. But remember what Paul rejoiced in, into the Corinthian church. Such were some of you.
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Not such are some of you. Such were some of you. You used to be these things. But if this particular type of sin can have communities of people, why can't any other sin have communities of people too?
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Could we have conferences that were about supporting, encouraging, and empowering discontent, drunkard, lustful, and other covetous, adulterous, thieving, reviling
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Christians so they can flourish while observing the historic Christian doctrine of righteousness? Why not?
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Could a person come out as covetous? I suppose so. If a person really struggles with being covetous, they might stand before a small group
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Bible study and confess, I've never been content the way I ought to be. The temptation to covet is at times overwhelming to me.
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Instead of fighting it, I'm simply going to embrace it as my identity. I've prayed and prayed for it to go away, and it never has.
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I'll observe the historic Christian ethic of contentment, but at the end of the day, I'm a covetous Christian.
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How many of you would think that that's a little weird? You would be right. You would be right. Anyone who heard something like this would likely be left scratching their head.
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How can this person accept covetousness, something that is an abomination to God, as their identity, as a person while still being a
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Christian who has supposedly been granted repentance unto life? And herein lies the problem, folks.
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As Christians, we may have many very difficult and at times very draining ongoing battles with various sins.
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Sometimes it can be the same sin for years and years and years, but those sins and desires do not identify who we are.
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They are not our identity. If Revoice took the following approach, in fact, I came up with a new mission statement.
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It'd be great if they adopted it. Quote, Supporting, encouraging, and empowering God's people to strive together for sexual purity and holiness against all forms of sexual sin.
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How's that? Is that better? Gay as an identity is, like Dr. Butterfield says, it is defeatist, cruel, and dishonest.
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It strikes a blow to the very power of God in granting this sacred blessing of repentance unto life.
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Embracing and affirming gross sexual sin and sexual disorder is not helpful. And will most certainly cause great harm to the precious
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Christian people out there who have ongoing struggles with this kind of sin. In fact, I would think that Christians who have been saved out of these various kinds of sins would look at such language that they're using and be highly offended by it, as Dr.
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Butterfield is very offended by it. I mean, she's a, you know, kind of a petite woman, but she is, you know, raging from a at a talk at a conference saying, this stuff's from the pit of hell.
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So I think it definitely offends her. We do not affirm or embrace the sins that were once dragging us to hell, folks.
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Okay, we pronounce with scripture God's curse upon all of our sins.
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Whatever is contrary to his revealed will in scripture is anathema to me. Whatever he pronounces as an abomination,
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I pronounce as an abomination. Regardless of my experience, my experience is irrelevant. What God says is wrong,
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I say is wrong, too. We look with disgust at our former selves and keep our eyes fixed on Christ and strive for holiness.
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And we look at disgust when we see those sins still in us as Christians. Listen to this wonderful passage, 2
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Corinthians 7, 1. Therefore, having these promises, beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from all filthiness of the flesh and spirit, perfecting holiness in the fear of God.
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Isn't that wonderful? That is what we're called to do. All filthiness of the flesh and spirit. I want to be cleansed from all of it.
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Leviticus 18, 22. You should not lie with a man as with a woman. It is an abomination.
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To confess our sins is to pronounce the same thing as God does. That's what the Greek term confess means.
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Hamalegeo means to say the same thing. If God says this is wrong, I, as a follower of God, as a follower of Christ, I say the same thing.
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That is sin. That is wrong. If God says this desire is wrong, I say that that is wrong, following him.
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I do not bring my desires to God and say, you deal with me. This is what I am. It is just the opposite.
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I come to God with all my experiences and all my sins and all my corrupted desires in my heart and say,
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God, you tell me what I'm supposed to get rid of here. When God's word tells us that homosexuals and sodomites will not inherit the kingdom of God because as sins they are contrary to the character of God and were indeed sins for which the
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Lord Jesus was nailed to the cross, we do not in any way whatsoever want to affirm or encourage those behaviors or those desires, nor to affirm or encourage anything else about them what's often called gay orientation.
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Nate Collins, the founder of Revoice, in his book All But Invisible said this, and listen carefully to this, this is subtly worded, quote, people are diverse, so redeemed fallenness will look different even among gay men and among gay women, just as it does among straight men and straight women.
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You following this? He says, my redeemed gayness reflects the beauty of the gospel when my orientation is caught up in a desire to serve one of my guy friends, for example.
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The collective diversity of redeemed fallenness is beautiful because Christ made it beautiful when he made us part of himself.
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He further asks, will I be gay in heaven? In one important sense, there will be no gay people in heaven because there will be no straight people either.
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Instead, I suspect that everybody in heaven will be awestruck by the beauty of each image bearer they encounter because each will perfectly reflect the beauty of God.
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What we will be has not yet been made known, but we know that when Christ appears, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is.
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He quoted 1 John 3 there. He says, because of our union with Christ as believers, the spirit transposes all the unique elements of our first creation identity.
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Now, you need to understand what he's saying here. Gayness is part of our first creation identity. In other words, it follows us into heaven.
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He continues, including the redeemed aspects of our aesthetic orientation onto a spiritual plane.
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Now, they pale in comparison with the glorious realities that they will become in the new creation. At the same time, it's hard to imagine how the effects of our aesthetic orientation will not influence the shape of new creation personhood when they shape so much of the way we experience our personhood in the first creation.
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Now, listen closely to this comparison. The disciples of Jesus recognized him when he appeared to them after his resurrection, even though he clearly had a different body that was able to move through walls, a body that also bore the scars of his crucifixion on his hands, feet, and side.
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These marks of his first creation identity continued to serve as identifying features of his new creation personhood, end quote.
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In other words, gayness, all this LGBT, QRS, TUV, WXYZ, who knows what else is coming, that's all part of our first creation personhood that will follow us into heaven itself.
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Folks, that is nigh unto blasphemy. I'm sorry. A direct parallel is being made between the scars from the crucifixion of Jesus's resurrection body and a person's disordered and perverted sexual orientation following them in some way into the new heavens and the new earth.
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It goes without saying that such is a false comparison. Rosaria Butterfield's insights are once again wonderful, biblical, right on.
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She says, even, and I would say here now especially, if you are someone who experiences unchosen homosexual desires or gender dysphoria, the ideas of sexual orientation and gender identity as categories of personhood are dishonest, cruel, and defeating.
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In other words, they're not part of who we are. God does not make us that way. They're part of sin.
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They're part of Satan's intrusions, as she says. They come from the pit of hell. She says, unchosen homosexual desires and gender dysphoria come from the fall, from Satan's intrusions, from the pit of hell.
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In Christ, fallen desires are not who you are. That's what all these people need to get.
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The fallen desires that you have, that's not your identity. And in fact, those fallen desires are the very thing that God is calling you to put to death, to be rid of, to pronounce a curse upon.
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And Rosaria Butterfield says, and we know what God says to do with sexual sin or any sin, flee from it.
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Even if it has been with us from the earliest days of our lives, you flee from it. At the end of the day, what's really going on?
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What's going on with this revoiced stuff and the avalanche of books and on this side
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A, side B, gay celibate Christianity, here's what it is. You ready? Experience is being elevated over truth.
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It's as simple as that. God doesn't make gay people, folks. He makes men and women. We come into the world with all sorts of disordered desires and all sorts of sinful proclivities and tendencies in our lives, and God calls us to turn from them, to repent of them all, whatever they might be.
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Experience is being used as a lens through which scripture is being read. And folks, that is exactly backwards.
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No matter how strong our simple tendencies might feel to us, if God's divine revelation identifies them as sin, then whatever those desires are cannot and must not be seen as our identity.
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2 Corinthians 5, 17. Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation.
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All things have passed away. Behold, most things have become new. What does it say?
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All things. We are completely new creations. The old man dies with Christ.
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The old woman dies with Christ. Our persons are redeemed by Christ. He does not redeem our sins.
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Our sins are cast away from us as far as the east is from the west. We don't look for ways in which sinful desires, attitudes, or actions can be redeemed and brought into heaven.
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Sin is sin. Sin can never be good. Sin is the enemy. Sin is to be put to death by the redeemed sinner.
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I do not look for ways to bring sinful culture into the new Jerusalem. I look for ways to crucify sin and to put it away from me.
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We are to hate our sin. Colossians 3, 5 through 11. I'd like you to turn to this passage.
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There's a number of things I want you to see here. Colossians 3, 5 through 11. Colossians 3 verses 5 through 11.
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Listen carefully to this passage. Paul says in verse 5, Colossians 3,
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Therefore consider the members of your earthly body as dead to immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire.
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Okay, stop right there for a moment. Evil desire. These folks are saying that the desires are not inherently sinful.
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You guys realize, of course, that if you desire something evil, that is a sin. If we want to do something that's wrong, that in and of itself is a sin.
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So evil desires are sin. And greed, which amounts to idolatry. Look at verse 6.
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For it is because of these things that the wrath of God will come upon the sons of disobedience. And in them you also once walked.
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Do you hear that? Not in them you still walk, but in a redeemed way. He doesn't say that.
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In them you once walked. You used to walk in them when you were living in them.
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You hear how it's spoken of in the past? You were living. You used to walk in them. Look at verse 8. But now you also put them all aside.
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Anger, wrath, malice, slander, abuse of speech from your mouth. And look at verse 9. Do not lie to one another since you laid aside the old self with its evil practices and have put on the new self who is being renewed to a true knowledge according to the image of the one who created him.
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Folks, I think that's directly relevant to this issue. Do not lie to people by leading them to think that the most perverted forms of sexual sin for which
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Jesus bled and died on the cross can be people's identity as Christians.
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And that they can look for ways to bring that sinful culture into the church and redeem that culture instead of obeying
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God's word that all such evil desires are to be put to death. Verse 11. A renewal in which there is no distinction between Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian,
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Scythian, slave, and freeman, but Christ is all and in all. There is an incredible push in our time to see people who experience gender dysphoria and non -straight sexual desires as victims.
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The victim card works very well in our thinking, emotionally driven culture.
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The victim mindset, as I said, it plagues the millennial generations. Millennials, for the most part, really don't see themselves as responsible for anything wrong with them or wrong in their lives.
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Every problem they have, every negative feeling they have, and even every evil thing they do or desire is not their fault.
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They're all victims. All of them. And I'm sorry, but the word of God thunders against that. God will judge every single human being for every thought, word, and deed they ever did that was contrary to his revealed will, whether they see themselves as victims or responsible for it or not.
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We're all responsible for everything that we think, everything that we want, everything we feel, everything we ever say or do, and everything we ever desire to do.
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We are even victims of our own orientations and desires, these people tell us. Part of becoming a
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Christian, however, is recognizing a sacred truth, folks. We are not victims of our own sin. We are not victims of our societies either.
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We are perpetrators and criminals, every one of us. We are perpetrators and criminals, all of us, who sin because we enjoy sinning and we don't want to live under the lordship of our creator.
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In the final analysis, that's what's wrong here. We must at all times remember our Lord's basic teaching, you can't serve two masters.
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We'll look for every excuse in the book to justify serving sin, but the fact is you either love sin and hate
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God or you love God and hate sin. You can't combine the two things. It ought not surprise us in the least that sinners who are unrepentant servants of their one and only master sin will not want to let that sin go to serve
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Christ. The Christian life is a never -ending battle against remaining and dwelling sin. John Owen said it best, be killing sin or it will be killing you.
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To allow professing Christians to be taught to lay down the godly weapons of the word, the sacraments, and prayer, and to surrender to various forms of sexual perversion, and to allow those sinful desires to define their very existences, is nothing short of spiritually destructive to God's people and greatly dishonoring to our
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Lord's power to free us from the tyranny of our sins. I refuse to believe that God, for some reason in the last 50 years, cannot break the power of sin any longer.
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He still can and he does. We are not victims, folks. In David's entourage of people, the scripture speaks in 1
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Chronicles 12, 32 of the sons of Issachar, who had understanding of the times to know what
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Israel ought to do. There has been an explosion of books, conferences, stories, and people pushing forward the sexual revolution for many decades now in our culture.
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It should not surprise us in the least that these ideas are now trying to make their way into whatever's left of believing
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Christianity in this country. Primarily the PCA, it's one of the bigger, you know, conservative groups out there in the
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Southern Baptist Convention, are special targets for this stuff. It should not surprise us that they're coming after us.
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The reason that groups like Revoice and Matthew Bynes' Reformation Project are doing what they're doing so successfully is not because people have discovered new insights into God's word.
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They exist, those movements exist, and they're making headway because of our culture's moral collapse and the church's silence.
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Rosaria Butterfield's remarkable conversion to Christ is a wonderful example of how a local church community can love people snared by these types of sins to the cross.
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She was a lesbian college professor of women's studies at Syracuse University, the type that had her car covered with bumper stickers, co -exist, and gay this, and rainbow that, and everything else.
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Christian neighbors and friends showed her kindness and hospitality. They let her into their homes, they ate meals with her, they reached out to her, they were good neighbors to her, they loved her where she was, and they did not throw the biblical teaching on homosexuality in her face.
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They didn't even invite her to church. In fact, they didn't even share the gospel with her at first. First, they were friends with her.
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They loved her as she was. They loved her where she was. They listened to her. Now listen, but when the topic came up, they were firm and uncompromising about what
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God thinks of this, but they continued to love her regardless. That's what we should be doing.
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That's what we need to be doing. They were firm and uncompromising when the topic came up.
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Her story is amazing to hear. As the church, we don't need to thunder constantly.
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I don't preach on this topic regularly because it makes me uncomfortable, but there's no need to thunder all the time about homosexual sin.
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When the text of scripture requires it or the topic requires it, we speak to it and we leave it at that.
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We need not be reactionary to our culture's moral collapse, but things like revoice are not helping anything.
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Whatever good they think that they're doing by advancing conversation about these issues, that's what our culture likes to use that motif.
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Hey, we're not trying to put, we just want to open the doors for conversations, baloney. There's a very clear agenda being pushed forward here.
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Their acceptance of LGBTQ as unchangeable, God -given identities that are going to follow us all the way into heaven and that's just the way we are, they can't be repented of, that's unacceptable.
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That's unacceptable. The pastor of that church out there was interviewed on a radio program and he said to the guys interviewing him, you guys are asking these poor people to repent of what cannot be repented of, and I almost fell out of my chair to hear that.
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Really, a sin that we can't repent of, that God cannot grant repentance for, that is so wrong folks, but to say such things is unacceptable and it does not give the watching world a true portrayal of the holiness of God as he reveals himself in scripture.
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I want to warn everyone that would ever listen to this or hear this, God's attitude towards these sins hasn't changed at all and people engaged in them in an unrepentant fashion still go to hell.
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Whether people yell you're a bigot to the people that say that or not, that's still a fact.
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The biblical fact is God condemns and has real wrath against fornication, covetousness, discontentment, and every form of sexual sin, desires, and actions.
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God's message on this has not changed and it never will change, but as we live in a time in our nation which every form of media imaginable is seeking to normalize
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LGBTQ plus desires and behaviors, God's position on the matter remains the same as it's always been, and we must uphold that position in as loving and as winsome a way as we possibly can, even if the whole world calls us bigots and hateful for doing so.
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Remember what Jesus taught us in Matthew 5 10, blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness sake for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
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Blessed are you when they revile and persecute you. Notice he doesn't say if they do, when they revile and persecute you and say all kinds of evil against you falsely for my sake.
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Rejoice and be exceedingly glad for great is your reward in heaven for so they persecuted the prophets who were before you.
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Rosaria Butterfield is very very thankful that she was not given the revoice approach to her own lifestyle of homosexual sin.
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Remember her own words, unchosen homosexual desires and gender dysphoria come from the fall of man, from satan's intrusions, from the pit of hell.
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In Christ, fallen desires are not who you are. Isn't that encouraging to know that? I am not my fallen desires.
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Even as a Christian, the ongoing battles with sin, that's not who I am. Remember what Paul says, it's not me, it's sin that dwells in me.
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He's almost distancing himself from it. It's this foreign invader that's still in here that I have to fight with.
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They're not who we are and we certainly should not be standing up and saying with pride, here let me tell you all my sinful desires that I'm identified by.
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Of course not. Rosaria Butterfield says, and we know what God says to do with any sexual sin and any sin of any kind, flee from it, even if it's been with us from the earliest days of our lives.
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I hope that everyone here who has repentance unto life granted to them will always know that that's true.
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God has called us to flee from our sins, to fight them all. Fight the good fight. Don't get weary. I know it's wearisome.
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Don't you get tired of dealing with the same old sins all the time? But don't be weary. Don't grow weary and keep fighting.
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Keep standing your ground and certainly never accept any form of sin as an identity. Our Lord is better than that.
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Let's pray. Our Father in heaven, we thank you for the gospel and we thank you for repentance unto life that was granted to us when we were officially called.
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That you changed our love for sin into hatred and you changed our hatred for you into love and a willingness to serve and follow.
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And yet we still struggle with sin and it's still there and we fight the good fight. Help us, Lord, to never grow weary.
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Help us to love people no matter what kinds of sins they're into or struggle with. And we do pray,
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Lord, that your church would be firm and uncompromising in biblical truth on these issues, especially as they're being compromised badly in our time.