Questions For Andy Stanley

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And so I think that these issues are very, very important. They are vital.

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Again, I have no hatred for Andy Stanley. I have great respect for him and love for him. And I think that what he has to say is very much an error.

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And it is ultimately devastating to the witness of the church in many ways. And so are y 'all ready to get to it?

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Let's get to it. Let me play for everybody a clip from Andy Stanley's sermon on a

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Sunday, I believe. This is Aftermath, part three, not difficult. It's about 31 minutes into the video.

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So I'll go ahead and play this for you guys now so you can hear it. And then I'll make some comments. Paul tied sexual behavior to Jesus' new command.

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The old covenant, the old covenant law of Moses was not the go -to source regarding sexual behavior in the church.

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More importantly, the old covenant law, the law of God was not gonna be the go -to source for sexual immorality in the church.

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The old covenant law was not gonna be the go -to source for sexual immorality in the church.

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Now, it's interesting here, if you listen to this discussion, he says now in the new covenant, it's built upon image of God concepts and your body's the temple of the

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Holy Spirit. And you go, wait a minute, Andy, you said that the old covenant is not gonna be the go -to source when it comes to sexual morality and sexual behavior in the church.

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But when he talks about it, he says, the concepts in the new covenant are image of God and your body's the temple of the

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Holy Spirit. And you wanna just say to yourself, wait, Andy, can you stop and think about what you just said?

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Those are statements that completely collide with one another. The old covenant law is not gonna be the go -to source for sexual morality in the church.

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The new covenant concept is image of God and your body's the temple of the Holy Spirit. And you say, Andy, can you not see how you are flatly contradicting yourself at that point?

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Where'd you get the concept of image of God from? Is it not from those old covenant documents, that Old Testament document?

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Where'd you get the concept of temple and Holy Spirit and temple of God? Is it not from that Old Testament revelation of God?

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So also, I wanna just point out a very, very serious inconsistency here.

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When Andy Stanley says that for new covenant believers, sexual immorality is not defined by the

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Old Testament. It's not defined by the Old Testament. I wanna say, okay, I'll bite.

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Let's ask some questions then. My question then is if sexual morality is not defined by the Old Testament revelation of God, then in the new covenant,

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Andy, can we have sex with animals in the new covenant? Are we allowed to have sex with animals in the new covenant?

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Or how about this? Are we allowed to have sex with our brother or sister in the new covenant?

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Is it permissible under the new covenant for a father to have sex with his daughter? Now, I know these are some heavy, heavy things to talk about, brothers and sisters, but we have a man who's preaching before a church body and broadcasting into the world the idea that sexual morality is not defined by the

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Old Testament for new covenant believers. And so let's ask those questions and let's mean them.

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Can we have sex with relatives like brothers and sisters in the new covenant? And if you say, no,

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I'm gonna say, by what standard? By what standard, Andy? Can we ask those questions?

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Because you said it's not defined by the Old Testament, so we can't appeal to that revelation of God to define what is sexually immoral for new covenant believers for the church.

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And so we can't say, well, because God has said here in his word that no, having sex with animals is an abomination, and no, we can't have sex with brothers and sisters and fathers and children.

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We can't go to that revelation. It's not the go -to source for any sexual behavior in the church.

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That's what Andy says, that the Old Testament there is not gonna be the go -to source for any sexual behavior in the church.

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And so we have to ask those questions. And I think that they're meaningful questions. And I don't believe that Andy's position gives us a solid basis to answer.

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Also, it's internally contradictory and inconsistent when you say that the Old Testament revelation of God, that old covenant, it's not gonna be a basis for sexual morality in the church, for defining it.

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And then you start using Old Testament concepts like image of God and temple of the Holy Spirit to give your platform.

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It's you're just using the Old Testament to do so. So a little bit more here, so you guys can hear a little bit more of his own words.

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And perhaps more disturbingly, that's a word, or offensively, the Old Testament, or the

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Law and the Prophets, as they called it, was not gonna be the go -to source for any behavior in the church.

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Now, to make this point, because this is so important, I originally in my notes, I was gonna put a screen up here that said, in other words, that means, thou shalt not obey the

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Ten Commandments. But I knew someone would take a picture of that. And it would define me for the rest of my life.

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So I'm not gonna put it up there. Rightly so. I want you to hear me say it. Here's what the Jerusalem Council was saying to the

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Gentiles. You are not accountable to the Ten Commandments. You're not accountable to the

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Jewish law. We're done with that. God has done something new. Beside, he would say to them, and he would say to you, thou shalt not obey the

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Ten Commandments because those aren't your commandments. Yours are better. Thou shalt not obey the

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Ten Commandments because those are not your commandments. First of all, that is not what happened at the Jerusalem Council.

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They were not casting out the Ten Commandments in the Old Testament revelation of God of his standards of righteousness, and holiness, and justice, and all the rest.

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It was about keeping peace within the church. And of course, we see in God's new covenant revelation, what they were saying was the holiness code, of course, is done with, because now we've gone from the dress rehearsal of the

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Old Testament. We've gone from the shadows of the Old Testament to now the substance and the body of Christ.

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And so, of course, now the dietary restrictions, of course, now all of those holiness code, Ephesians chapter two, the law of commandments in ordinances, of course, those are passed away.

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And why? Because they serve their purpose as the shadow to point to the body and substance, but that has nothing to do with whether or not the

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Ten Commandments, whether or not the Ten Commandments, which express, by the way, love for God and love for neighbor are still relevant today.

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That's what I wanna ask there in terms of when we talk about the Ten Commandments gone,

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Jesus was asked at a point in his ministry, Master, what's the greatest commandment in the law? And Jesus quotes the

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Shema, Shema Yisrael, Yahweh Eloheinu, Yahweh Echad. Hero Israel, the Lord, our God, the

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Lord is one. You shall love the Lord, your God, with all your heart and soul and mind and strength, Jesus says, and he says, the second is like it.

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You should love your neighbor as you love yourself. He says, all the law and the prophets are built upon this. I wanna ask

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Andy Stanley. Andy, are we still commanded in the new covenant to love God and love neighbor? And if Andy were to say to me, yes, we're still commanded in the new covenant to love

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God and love neighbor. I would say, thank you, Andy. You just gave me all the law and the prophets. You did, because Jesus says so.

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All the law and the prophets built upon love for God, love for neighbor. You wanna know how? Let's just take the Ten Commandments as an example.

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Love for God and love for neighbor. Love for God, first table. What is it? He's God.

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There is no other God. He's God. Don't even make a God that looks like him. Don't even have a

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God in his sight. That's love for God. Do you see that? And the second table, you look over here, the other one, and you're seeing love for neighbor stuff, like love your neighbor.

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Well, what's it look like to love my neighbor? Well, don't lie. Don't lie to them. Don't steal from them. Don't murder them.

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Don't commit adultery and don't covet, right? You're beginning to see now, oh, now I see.

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So love for God, love for neighbor are the platforms from which the Ten Commandments come.

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But then you have now in the case law system of the Old Testament, you have examples of what it means to love

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God and love your neighbor in every area of life. For example, in the judiciary, when God said, here is a just penalty for theft,

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God is showing you how to love your neighbor. How do you love your neighbor when there's theft? How does a judge make sure that neighbor is loved when there's theft?

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How do you love your neighbor when there's a murder? How do you love your neighbor in terms of protection of human life?

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Well, I'll give you an example of loving your neighbor in the judicial system and case law system of the

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Old Covenant. It's not just laws that, you know, they're meaningless laws and God was just throwing this out just for them, you know, no big deal.

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It was about love for neighbor. Jesus said so, you know, God had in his law, he said, many people are familiar with this.

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God said you were to build a parapet around the rooftop of your houses. I love this example because it's such an easy one for us to grapple with.

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God says, build a parapet around the roof of your house, right? And we think like, well, okay, I gotta do that today in the

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New Covenant. No, it's a case law example. You take the principle of the law, that is an abiding principle of loving neighbor.

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And God gives you an example in culture and society. And he says, build a parapet around the rooftop of your house.

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Well, why? Because they used to spend a lot of time on the roofs of their houses to cool off at night, to store stuff up there and all the rest.

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And so because you had people, neighbors, hanging out on top of rooftops, you wanted to make sure that you preserve life.

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Why? Because you love your neighbor. And I wanna say that that principle does come over into the life of the

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New Covenant believer. You ought to care about that. Why? Because the principle is abiding. Love your neighbor, preserve human life.

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How? Well, build a railing where life could, where there could be potential harm to human life, like on your rooftops where you're hanging out.

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The principle abides. So you say, well, how would that look in the life of the New Covenant believer? Well, I ought to love my neighbor and be concerned with the preservation of life.

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So that means if I have a pool, what ought I to do as a New Covenant believer who has a law written in my heart?

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I ought to care about the preservation of life, which means put a railing or put a fence around a pool.

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Or if you have deep wells in your property where little kids can fall into it, make sure you put a railing around that. Why? Because of the preservation of human life.

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You ought to love your neighbor as you love yourself. So when Andy argues that that's not your law, those aren't your commandments, he'll say things like, you've got something better.

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Jesus says, I give you a new commandment that you're to love one another as I have loved you. Now I wanna say this, this is a critical failure,

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I think, in Andy's thinking. And I mean this with all due respect. When he says, well, Jesus gives us a new commandment to love people like I've loved you.

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I wanna say, because Jesus gives a new commandment, it doesn't mean that the old ones are irrelevant. Jesus is now the lawgiver walking among us now,

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God taking on flesh, saying, I've put flesh on this. Here's what I want you to do. Here's a new one, love people the way

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I've loved you, like how I washed your feet, how I've served you, how I've given myself up for you.

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But watch, this is critical. Because Jesus says, I've given you a new commandment, it doesn't logically follow that now

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God's other commandments are irrelevant. He still requires of us to love our neighbor.

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He still requires of us to honor father and mother. And I'm gonna give you proof of that in just a minute here.

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This is a critical, critical failure that I think will create conflict within the church, conflict in terms of our witness to the world and conflict to the scriptures themselves.

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It will make it near impossible to read your Bible and make any sense of it when you adopt

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Andy's perspective here. Those aren't your commandments, Andy Stanley argues.

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