Debating With Unbelievers - [2 Corinthians 10:3-5]

This evening, we're going to do something slightly different, like you to open your

Bibles to Romans Chapter 1. The reason it's going to be slightly different is because there's going to be some interactivity and we're not just going to stay in one particular section here.

But I posted something on Facebook and I'm pretty proud to say I got 45 likes.

That's not bad. I got a few real heavy dislikes, though. All this...

I almost said hulabaloo. All this kerfuffle. All this...

Anyway, all this drama concerning the whole Chick -fil -A thing this week.

I guess Charlie was a big hit on ABC News. Did you hear about that? Took a video at the one up there in Burlington.

And they used his video on the evening news. They asked if they could use it and I said...

So I said to him, I said, didn't you at least, you know, sometimes it'll say, owned by or courtesy of...

No. They wanted all the rights and he just gave them to them. So I thought, okay, well, there was your chance to be famous, pal.

Did any of you actually see what Don Cathy, the

CEO of Chick -fil -A, what he said? Did you see it, Barry?

Yeah. Okay. Let me just read it so I can set the table, as it were. He said,

I think we are inviting God's judgment on our nation when we shake our fist at him and say, we know better than you as to what constitutes a marriage.

I pray God's mercy on our generation that has such a prideful, arrogant attitude to think that we have the audacity to define what marriage is about.

Now, a few rhetorical questions and then we'll get into the real questions here. Are we inviting God's judgment by redefining marriage?

What does the Bible say? What do unbelievers want? How should we respond? Today, I'm going to ask three additional questions, not those three, but three additional questions and we're going to kind of walk through them and examine some of what the scriptures would say about this particular issue.

My first question is, was Mr. Cathy right? Was Mr.

Cathy correct, I guess, because otherwise it sounds like I'm saying, you know, never mind. Was he correct biblically in saying that we are inviting

God's judgment on our nation when we shake our fist at him and say, we know better than you as to what constitutes a marriage?

Do you think he was right? Because I have to tell you, I don't think he was right.

I think Romans 1 is a great place to start, so we'll go there, starting in verse 20, and I'm going to read through to the end of the chapter.

For his invisible attributes, talking about God, of course, excuse me, I have a little bit of a cough, namely, his eternal power and divine nature have been clearly perceived ever since the creation of the world in the things that have been made.

So they are without excuse. No one has an excuse concerning the existence of God.

They can see that he exists. For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking and their foolish hearts were darkened.

Claiming to be wise, they became fools and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things.

Therefore, God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves, because they had exchanged the truth about God, what they knew about him to be true, for a lie, and worshipped and served the creature, meaning these birds and animals, all these idols that they made, rather than the creator who is blessed forever, amen.

For this reason, God gave them up to dishonorable passions, for their women exchanged natural relations for those that are contrary to nature.

And the men likewise gave up natural relations with women and were consumed with passion for one another, men committing shameless acts with men and receiving in themselves the due penalty for their error.

And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a debased mind, to do what ought not to be done.

They were filled with all manner of unrighteousness, evil, covetousness, malice.

They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, maliciousness. They are gossips, slanderers, haters of God, insolent, haughty, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, foolish, faithless, heartless, ruthless.

Though they know God's righteous decree that those who practice such things deserve to die, they not only do them, but give approval to those who practice them.

I think that describes today, right? But is that all it describes?

Was Paul writing a prophetic look into the future? He was describing the world as it was.

And how does it all begin? And this is really the important point. Where does it all begin? Way back at verse 20.

They know what's true about God and yet they turn their back on it. They suppress the truth that they know about him.

They know that it's basically the fundamental problem that Paul's writing about here is the rejection of God as ruler.

The rejection of God as king, as the creator. So my question, my first question to you is, does

Romans 1 apply uniquely to the United States? And I've already given you the answer. What's the answer?

I hear that. I think he's saying no. It doesn't apply uniquely to the

United States. Second question, when did the

United States become the covenant people of God? When I think back of Mr.

Cathy's comment there, we're inviting God's judgment. So before this gay marriage controversy, was the

United States a Christian nation? Were we in covenant with God? I was thinking about that.

I'm just reading that comment and thinking about it. Just consider this. Did we have before this whole thing started?

By the way, I think gay marriage, homosexual marriage, I don't really want to call it gay marriage. Homosexual marriage, same -sex marriage, that contradiction in terms.

I think that we were first in the nation here in Massachusetts. And I think that was maybe 2004.

So let me ask you this. Did we have in the United States before 2004, homosexuals, murderers, liars, gossips, slanderers,

God -haters, arrogant people, those who invented evil, disobedient children, cruel, heartless and ruthless people?

Did we have all that? I mean, it's like, you know, if you just took what

Mr. Cathy said, you just looked at it in isolation, you'd go, wow. We woke up one morning and to our shock and horror, you know, here our perfect society was sliding towards Sodom and Gomorrah.

So my case tonight that I'm going to try to make is mankind has been inviting

God's judgment for centuries. This is nothing new. This is exactly what Paul was talking about.

And I think, well, I'll just say it this way. I don't think I can seriously watch a sitcom on TV anymore unless I'm held hostage at somebody's house.

That's happened to me before. But I think back, you know, when I was blessed when

I first got saved because I'd just given up watching TV, not for any holy reason, just because I didn't have time for it.

And somebody I worked with said, you have to watch this TV show. It's really funny. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

I mean, this is like 1994 or something like that. So I said, okay, fine. So I go home and whenever it was on,

I made up some point of watching it, a little TV show you might have heard of called Friends. And within the first 10 minutes,

I figure out that there's a guy who has a kid with a lesbian and I'm just kind of going,

I don't think this is funny. This is not funny to me. This is a tragedy. This is not humorous.

You say, well, what do you want to talk about that TV show for? Well, because it gets worse.

But I remember watching that and just thinking, when did it become so mainstream to be homosexual? You know, it was maybe 50 years ago that homosexuality was classified by the

Psychiatric Society as a mental disorder, a disease, something to be cured.

And now it's something to be praised. It's something to be celebrated. There are parades.

I was shocked to hear a few years ago, they actually have a, I'll use the word, gay pride parade in Salt Lake City.

The heart of Mormondom. I just made that word up. But there's a new show that they've been advertising during the

Olympics. And if you watch the show, you're going to have the opportunity to see two homosexual men in a family.

And they're going to have a surrogate woman have a baby for them. They call that an alternative family because that's the new normal.

All the nuclear family stuff, you know, mom, dad, and kids, that's all out the window. That's passé.

Now you have to accept whatever society says is a family as a family. And I come back to Romans 1, verse 32, though they know

God's righteous decree that those who practice such things deserve to die, they not only do them, but give approval to those who practice them.

This is worthy now in our society of being praised. It's a good thing, so -called.

But again, I say that there's little doubt that our culture has been on a downward path for centuries.

Even when Ozzie and Harriet and I Love Lucy were on TV, the United States was depraved.

It was filled with sinners who loved their sin and gave hearty approval to others who sinned.

But now we're shocked at it. So that's question number one.

Was Mr. Cathy right? I think he was wrong. Question number two. And this is where we start being more interactive.

How should we frame the issue in a Christian worldview? In other words, what should we do about it?

How should we think about it? And I want to quote part of my post here from Facebook that caused a little bit of anger.

I wrote, I'm accused of being a hate monger. I am not. I judge no one.

It is not my right. However, it is impossible for me to call what the Bible calls sin acceptable.

I can't do it. I'm not out to legislate anything. I cannot change hearts by changing laws.

Homosexuality is a sin. So is stealing. So is lying. So is adultery.

So is fornication. God hates all those activities. He calls them all sin, which means to miss

God's mark of perfection. We have to call sin, sin. We can't wink at it, laugh at it, or tell people it's okay.

Why not? Because God hates it. God doesn't think it's funny.

It's not suitable for the family viewing hour for us to all sit around and watch a TV show where homosexual characters are getting laughs.

That is not right to even think about it that way. And frankly,

I don't care if someone has a homosexual in their family, or if they have a thief, or an addict, or somebody's living with their boyfriend or girlfriend.

Those are all sinful situations that need to be dealt with the same way. Let's turn to 1

Timothy, chapter 1, verses 8 through 11. Now we, this is

Paul writing again, he says, now we know that the law is good if one uses it lawfully, understanding this, that the law is not laid down for the just, but for the lawless and disobedient, for the ungodly and sinners, for the unholy and profane, for those who strike their fathers and mothers, for murderers, the sexually immoral, men who practice homosexuality, enslavers, liars, perjurers, and whatever else is contrary to sound doctrine, in accordance with the gospel of the glory of the blessed

God with which I have been entrusted. What do we do? What do we do with the law?

What do we do with the Bible? Do we just say, well, we have the Bible, you have your sin, that's fine.

How do we take the Bible and make it apply to real life situations? The truth is, what do we do?

We tell people they're in sin. We tell them that they've missed the mark, that they've broken the law, that they stand condemned.

We encourage them, we plead with them to repent. We want sinners to flee from sin and to run to the cross.

We want them to believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and be saved, right? But if we're too polite or too politically correct to bring the light of the word to a particular issue, what are we doing?

What are we doing if we just ignore sin? If we just go, well, you know what, homosexuality,

I could care less. I think one way of looking at it is we're being nice to people while they slip off to hell.

That's about as unloving as you could possibly be. Another quote from my post,

I said, as I said, I was and am a sinner. God calls all sinners to repent, that is to change their minds from believing they are good enough to enter heaven to recognizing their need for a savior and believing on the

Lord Jesus Christ. God is the creator and sustainer of all life. We, of all his earthly creatures, have disobeyed him, meaning dogs are just dogs, squirrels are just squirrels, cockroaches are just cockroaches.

They all do what they're designed to do, but we disobey, plunging our existence and all of us into a life of disease, death, and sin.

Our sin is so abhorrent to God that he sent his son to earth to redeem people by dying for sin, thus reconciling us to God if we believe.

There is no other way to heaven. Every other belief system leads to hell.

Jesus himself said, truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God. We talked about that this morning.

Now as believers, we're not better than anyone else. We're not better than a homosexual, transsexual, whatever kind of sexual there is.

We don't judge, but we have to tell people the truth. We have to proclaim what the scripture says.

So now beyond the gospel, beyond the scripture, how should we respond? And I said,

I have no interest in reforming society. Putting a new coat of paint on a rusty old car doesn't get the job done.

The gospel changed his lives, it changed mine. Giving people rules brings them no nearer to God.

Nevertheless, I do rejoice when God's standard is upheld. What outraged people was the idea that people were liking these pictures of the lines at Chick -fil -A and all this stuff.

That outraged people. Well, I liked it too. Why did I like it so much? Was it because I wanted to be a gay -bashing

Christian? I'll tell you, honestly, my first thought was, when

I saw all the lines and everything, I hadn't even read Mr. Cathy's quote. I had no idea. I had no idea

Mike Huckabee or anybody else was calling for this great big thing. I just saw that it was being done.

Here's what I, here was my first thought was, because all these mayors had said these things and I thought, well, this is, you know, a good thing for free speech.

This is a good thing for upholding the Constitution. I wasn't thinking any of the, beyond that, because I recognized this, that all those people, do you think that all those people who lined up at Chick -fil -A were

Bible -believing Christians? I know they weren't because I read stories about homosexuals who stood in line to buy things just because they were outraged at this idea of freedom of speech being curbed.

But why, I posted in this that I didn't want to debate this whole issue of gay marriage. Why did I not want to debate it?

Was I afraid of losing? The answer is no, I'm afraid of wasting my time. Nevertheless, I spent a number of hours doing it with one guy, but we'll get to that here in a second.

Let's look at 2 Corinthians 6, 14 through 16, and I'm going to read a familiar passage, but I'm going to take a slightly different application from it tonight.

Normally, people wrongly associate this with, directly with marriage. I think there's an application there, that's not the original picture, but let's just read 2

Corinthians 6, verses 14 to 16. Now, how do you suppose this applies, this passage, the principle here applies to dealing with gay marriage?

You're like, I don't know, don't, don't get involved in gay marriage? There's no, what's the intersection between darkness and light?

Where do they overlap? Where does truth and error, where do they overlap?

Where do Satan and Christ stand on equal footing, on equal ground? Where do those things happen?

The answer is, they don't happen. That's what this whole, that's the contrast that Paul's drawing here.

All these things are impossibilities. Light has no fellowship with darkness, why?

Because as soon as light comes in, the darkness is dispelled, it's moved out. What accord does

Christ with Belial, none. What about, you know, the

Holy Spirit with, within us, and demons, none. The Holy Spirit doesn't move over and make room for demons.

And the point is, there are some things that do not intersect, and my application of this is we have the truth, we have the

Word of God. They don't have the truth, they don't believe the truth anyway, and so when we get into an argument with them, what do we find?

If you want to argue morality with an unbeliever, what happens? It's like Lewis Brown used to say about wrestling with pigs in the mud, don't do it because the pig will like it and you'll get muddy.

So we don't argue, we don't argue with unbelievers, why?

Because the unbeliever is getting what he wants and we're wasting our time, we're spinning our wheels. I went on to say this, if you are in favor of gay marriage,

I have no interest in debating with you, you may block me, remove offensive posts, or ignore them, but if you attempt to engage in public debates with me about what is or is not moral,

I will simply remove your posts. Why? Because we have, and this is it, opposing worldviews.

You believe that your worldview is right, I believe, listen, not my worldview is right, but God's worldview is right.

How can I debate what God has said? If God has said marriage is between a man and a woman, how do

I debate that? What's the intersection of that with any kind of marriage is okay?

How do those two things overlap? Where do we come to a common ground so that we can hold the debate?

I wrote this to this friend of mine, I said, you believe that you are the source of truth,

I believe God is the source of truth. We do not have common ground upon which to debate.

Now listen, and this is getting back to what Elder Pradeep taught a couple of weeks ago. In the end, we will both resort to circular arguments.

What's a circular argument? Who can explain that? Wes. An argument that depends on the presumption that the argument is based on, okay?

So it just goes round and round and round. So I say, well, the Bible says marriage is between a man and a woman.

And he says, well, how do you know that's true? Because the Bible says marriage is between a man and a woman. Okay, but how do you know the

Bible is accurate? Well, because the Bible is God's word. Okay, but you keep using the Bible to defend the Bible. Well, yeah, because that's my source of information.

That's where truth comes from. And if I do the same thing to him, if he says, well,

I think it's okay for any two loving people to get married. And I say to him, what's the source of your information?

What does he say? Well, it's right. It's fair.

Who says? Ultimately, he does. He has to do it.

So here are the two systems. I have a system that's of truth that's outside of myself.

I'm saying the word of God is my source of information. This is the arsenal of truth that I'm going to unleash on you.

And he says, well, I've got my own source. I've got my own arsenal. It's my wisdom, my expansive knowledge of the universe, my truth.

How do you argue against that? I'm willing to declare the truth to him.

I'm certainly willing to do that. I'm willing to refute his arguments with the word of God. What I'm not willing to do is substitute my reasoning and my opinion for the word of God.

Why? Because now I've just put myself, I've stepped off the high ground and I've stepped down to where he is.

And we're going to wrestle in the mud and it's not going to be pretty. So again, there is no intersection between those two realms of truth.

I have true truth. He has false truth. He just doesn't know it's false. Let's turn to 2

Peter chapter 1. I keep forgetting.

I don't have to turn there because I've already printed it. Oh, sorry. Professional secrets.

Our worldview as Christians, our worldview begins with the word of God. That is our source of truth.

We could talk about its inspiration. That's all true. But listen to 2 Peter 1 .3. His divine power has granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness through the knowledge of him who called us to his own glory and excellence.

Listen, if we have all things pertaining to life and godliness, if God has given us everything that we need, if we believe that the

Bible is sufficient for telling us how we ought to live, then how can we set it aside and try to use something else?

A Christian has to rely on the Bible and the Bible alone. If we believe what the

Bible says and we believe that the Bible is all that we need to tell us how to live, then that is our circle of truth.

Our circle of truth is fixed. So, again, how are we going to debate with them?

We can't. Okay. So, should we be shocked that people who reject

God reject his standard and embrace sin? Should we be shocked that people who reject

God reject his standard and embrace sin? They don't believe in God, but they're going to listen to what the

Bible says. They might. If he's using it to convict them of their sin.

But I mean, just to give us an idea, a few passages, and you don't have to turn there,

I'm just going to read them quickly. Ephesians chapter 2, verses 1 to 3, And you were dead in the trespasses and sins and whence you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience.

Who are those? Among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind.

So we're going to these people who are the children of wrath, the ones who are following after Satan, they're the sons of disobedience, they belong in the kingdom of darkness.

We're saying, why don't you guys understand that marriage is supposed to be between a man and a woman?

What's wrong with you guys? Well, what's wrong with them is, they've got 20, 30, 40 years of sinful living, sinful thinking, they hate

God, they hate his word, and they're not going to listen to that. That's no reason for them to submit to the word of God, just because you say it.

Colossians 1 .21, And you, who were once alienated and hostile in mind, doing evil deeds, this is all before salvation.

This is who we were, we were enemies of God, Romans 5 says. Listen to 2 Corinthians 10, verses 3 to 5,

For though we walk in the flesh, this we now, Christians, we are not waging war according to the flesh.

And he's talking about spiritual battles. For the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh, meaning they're not, we don't want to engage in fist to cuffs or use martial arts or anything, that's not going to win the argument.

But we have divine power to destroy strongholds.

We destroy arguments in every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God and take every thought captive to obey

Christ. Well, how do we do that? We have weapons of spiritual warfare, and where are those weapons?

Well, the number one weapon is what? The sword of the Lord. Listen to what

Kistemacher says, he says, Sixteenth century Scottish reformer John Knox lived by this motto, With God, man is always in the majority.

With God, man is always in the majority. It doesn't matter what the polls say. It doesn't matter what the election says.

And with this majority, Christians indeed can destroy, this is still Kistemacher, can indeed destroy

Satan's strongholds. These strongholds appear in many forms, but essentially are the same. They are the systems, schemes, structures, and strategies that Satan designs to frustrate and obstruct the progress of Christ's gospel.

Excuse me. We can use all manner of reasoning, we can do whatever we want, but ultimately we have to understand one thing, the only thing we have, we're

Johnny OneNote, we have, you know, this old Bible, three chords and the truth, that's all we've got.

But when you talk to unbelievers, what do they want to do? They will do anything. In fact, I'll give you some more illustrations, some of these questions

I'm going to ask you come straight out of this man's messages to me. They're going to fall back on their own reasoning.

And here's what the Proverbs says about that. There is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way to death.

He was absolutely convinced, he is absolutely convinced that he's right. I'm not mad at him.

That doesn't do me any good. I just kind of keep giving him the truth and we'll see what the Lord does. But what are some questions, this is the third one, what are some questions we should be ready to answer?

Here's one that he sent to me. Why don't you mind your own business and not seek to criminalize other people's love?

How do you want it, who wants to answer that one? M -Y -O -B, mind your own business. Why don't you mind your own business and not seek to criminalize other people's love?

You know what I said to that? I said, I'm not trying to criminalize anything.

I haven't participated in any marches. I haven't written any bills.

I'm not doing anything to ban homosexuality. Why? Because again, going back to what

I said all the way in the beginning, if we come up with more rules, is it going to change people's behavior?

It might. Is it going to change their hearts? Absolutely not. We're out to save sinners, not merely have them behave better.

Jesus, oh, he says this question. Other sinners do not have their marriages banned.

I mean, he went on about shellfish, eating shellfish and all manner of things. Other sinners do not have their marriages banned by law, so why do you single out homosexuals?

And again, I'm going, I didn't write anything about that. You know, what are you coming at me for?

I said, all I know is what the Bible says. I was just Johnny One Note, just plucking away. Why?

Because I have nothing else I can say. I'm just saying, look, if you want me, ultimately, here's the bottom line.

If you want me to say homosexual marriage is okay, I can't do that. I'm not singling out anyone.

And, you know, no matter how many times I said it, it didn't really matter. So next question he asked. Now this is one that will make you think, and I'm going to wait while you answer this one.

Since Jesus, it's not that sad. Since Jesus' sum total of teaching on homosexuality was nothing, why are you so concerned about homosexuality?

In other words, he says, Jesus never taught on homosexuality, so what do you care? What's your answer to that?

Wes? Okay, the black letters are, and you know what,

I said that. I don't think he really understood that. And then he went off on some rant about Paul.

But, you know what, you don't even have to go back to Leviticus or anything like that. I mean, it's in the New Testament.

We read it earlier. But he's like, well, that's Paul. What did

Jesus say about homosexuality? And I said, that's really not the issue, is it?

We're not talking about homosexuality. We're talking about what? Whether two people of the same sex should be allowed to get married.

And I said, now, Jesus did address that. Let's look at, first, Genesis chapter 2.

This is not Jesus. These are the black letters. And then we'll get to the red letters right after that. It is interesting, though, when you talk to unbelievers, how they want to make the differentiation between the black letters and the red letters.

You know, which are more inspired? The words that Jesus said or the rest of the

Bible? It's a trick question. Genesis chapter 2, verses 21 to 24.

And, of course, we're in the creation account here. Moses writes this.

So the Lord caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man. And while he slept, he took one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh.

And the rib that the Lord God had taken from the man, he made into a woman and brought her to the man.

Then the man said, This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh.

She shall be called woman because she was taken out of man.

Verse 24. And this is the crusher here. Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.

So there's the picture of marriage right after the first woman is formed.

Now we go to Mark chapter 10. And the context here,

I won't go through the whole passage, but the context here in Mark chapter 10, he's being grilled about marriage.

And here's what Jesus says. Mark chapter 10, verse 6. He says,

But from the beginning of creation God made them male and female.

Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife. Sounds a lot like what we just read in Genesis.

And the two shall become one flesh. So they are no longer two but one flesh.

What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate. So from the beginning and affirmed by Jesus is this picture of marriage, one man, one woman, till death.

That's the picture. Now what did Jesus do throughout his ministry? I've mentioned it a few times on Sunday morning.

What did he do? I could put it this way. Jesus would say,

You've heard it said, but I say to you. What did he do? He corrected the teaching of the Pharisees.

So the fact that he never addressed homosexuality would make me consider this possibly true theory here.

That the Pharisees, of all the things they got wrong, they had homosexuality right. They understood what it said because they even understood the black letters.

They weren't so dense on those things. They understood that God never approved of homosexuality and certainly did not license homosexual marriage.

He went on and he cited some other things. I'm not even going to get into all these different forms of marriage and how they're not one man, one woman, and how

God sanctioned them. And so I actually started researching them this afternoon. I found out, you know what? He was wrong.

I was shocked. You know, he says, Well, doesn't the Bible condone polygamy?

No, it doesn't. Not even in the passage in Deuteronomy where they capture the women and all that stuff.

When you start researching it and you actually look at what the Hebrew means and everything else, the answer is no.

Men participate in it. And even Abraham's wife, Sarah, encouraged it with Abraham and Hagar, but God never blessed it.

That was never his design. It was never his intent. Now, Jesus certainly doesn't advocate that.

This is another question he asked me. He says, Jesus certainly didn't advocate that the power of the state be used to suppress the human rights of homosexuals.

Why do you? And keeping in mind, I never said any of these things. He's obviously very emotional about it.

And this was my response. I don't want anyone's human rights suppressed. I don't believe gay marriage is a human right.

So his next question. Marriage predates the

Bible by quite some time. And its definition has endlessly evolved both within the

Judeo -Christian Islamic tradition, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And I said, well, it doesn't predate the

Bible because nothing predates the Bible. Next question. So what

I'm doing, I don't really care what his question is. I'm always going to go back to the Bible. And if it has nothing to do with the

Bible, then I'll just give my opinion. For example, he says it's a human right. I'm like, not that I'm aware of. He goes on and he asks this.

He says, same -sex marriages aren't mandatory. Nobody will force you to have one. It's good.

Or to change your marriage in any fashion, should gays be allowed to marry? Does you no harm if all you do is tolerate other people's choices?

I'm like, okay. I said, don't we already have homosexual marriage in Massachusetts? Yes. Do I like it?

No. Do I approve of it? It doesn't really matter if I do or I don't. I'll tell you this.

I won't go to a same -sex marriage. If some relative of mine was getting married to someone of the same sex,

I'm not going. There's a chasm between tolerating sinful laws, which is what we have.

I mean, it's clearly a violation of God's Word, and calling evil good. I'm not going to call evil good.

I'm not going to agree with that. He says, well, polls show that most people think same -sex marriage should be illegal.

Okay. Polls say a lot of things. Who cares? Then this is kind of a good one.

He says, why don't you embrace the core of Jesus' ministry? And then he went into all caps, which is to look to your own behavior and leave the state of other people standing with God to Jesus.

Was that true? Is that what Jesus said? I mean, even this morning, did he say to Nicodemus, Nicodemus, look after your own behavior.

Be good. That's rubbish. That just illustrates he has absolutely no grasp of the gospel, although he does know some

Greek. He was throwing all this Greek at me, and I'm just like, oh, please. I'm not going to argue

Greek with somebody who's not a believer. He says, since the Bible's flawed, why don't you set aside the

Bible as your source of morality? Basically, that's his idea. The Old Testament is filled with examples of flawed morality.

It's not the issue. The issue isn't whether men do bad things. I will submit to that.

But the Bible is not flawed. The Bible is perfect. The Bible is the Word of God. Well, anyway, to kind of summarize, and here's how

I think we ought to handle this, kind of a recap. Don't argue morality with unbelievers.

Why not? Why don't you want to argue morality with unbelievers? What's that?

They're dead. And you know what? If you get in an argument with anyone, heaven forfend it's your spouse or anything else, what's the best possible outcome?

The best possible outcome? You win. You get to flex your muscles.

I won the argument. So now you're debating morality with an unbeliever. You win the argument.

They go, you know what? You're right. I see the light. Homosexual marriage is wrong. Yes! Go home and have an ice cream.

What have I done? Absolutely nothing. I've taken one source of sinful thinking out of this man's life.

Second takeaway. Don't allow yourself to be dragged into a debate over logic or fairness.

It's not fair. Third point.

Just remember you don't have common ground upon which to debate.

You have God's sure word. That is your weapon. He has what? His own fallen reasoning.

His own world view. His own so -called knowledge. I mean, it's rough when you have knowledge and you're wrong.

And then finally, what do you do? I would suggest that you pray for those who mock you. You want to pray?

You want to be gentle? I mean, I want to as often as I can. Give them the word. But here's the other thing, the good thing, the positive side about the

Internet, is that you can sit there and you can think for a minute. It's not like having a conversation with somebody, although I can't imagine he probably would have been turning 15 colors of purple.

And I don't know why. He was upset with everybody else and took it out on me. But that's okay. I guess that's my job.

But pray for them. And pray even while you're responding. And just consider, are the words that I am using now, is this something that the

Lord would bless? If, in fact, I were to stand before God and give an answer for what

I'm saying right now, could I say, Father, I did the best I could? I gave him your word.

I gave him your truth. I told him that he needed to repent. I told him about Jesus Christ, his perfect life, his substitutionary death, his resurrection.

That's what we need to do. Stop smiling. All right.

Well, let's pray and then we'll have communion. Father, I just pray we're so surrounded by all this fervor for really unholiness, unrighteousness, sinful behavior, how people want to celebrate what you have clearly outlined as sin.

Lord, I pray that you would make us all just students of your word with the confidence and capacity to give an answer from your word to every pertinent situation.

Father, I pray that we'll do so in a way that is honoring to you, in a way that is helpful to unbelievers, that they might say, you know what,

I don't necessarily agree with him, but it seems like that book has all the answers.

Father, I pray even in the midst of the demonstrations and the counter demonstrations, that you would be glorified and that you would save some people, even some people out of the homosexual lifestyle.

What a glorious thing that would be to see people renounce their so -called homosexual marriages and come to faith in Christ.

Lord, would you make us a people that are not bitter, that are not angry, that understand that sinners act sinfully and that our response must be

Christ -like, that we must imitate you in every way. We pray these things in Jesus' name.