TPW 60 Revoice Alternative: Being Jesus to People Who Struggle with LGBT Types of Sin

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of the Protestant Witness podcast slash YouTube channel. I taught a class on apologetics yesterday morning for three hours up at a place called
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Doe River Gorge, which is a beautiful Christian camp. Every year they have about 10 or 12 high school graduates that are interns there, and they teach them all kinds of stuff and have them do all sorts of projects at the camp there.
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We talked about apologetics, and it was a really great group of young people. It gives me hope for the future.
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When you see kids that age that are 19, 20, and 21, whose minds are not idling and are engaged with their environment and want to understand the
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Bible, I mean, they were furiously taking notes. It almost seemed like they were trying to write down everything
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I said. It's just kind of like, wow, that's so encouraging. And then hands raising, asking all kinds of questions about apologetics, and we discussed the whole worldview approach, how to do internal critique, and how we believe in revelational epistemology and everything else.
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And a couple of them said, we would love it if you had a YouTube channel.
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And I said, well, I do a podcast, but no, we like YouTube channels. I was like, okay. And the thing is,
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I have my Yeti microphone, this really nice microphone, plugged into my computer, and I can use it for the sound on these videos.
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And I've got this camera, it's not like a super nice camera, but it's a decent video camera. And I've got it recording,
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I ran a bunch of tests yesterday to get it recording the highest resolution possible without too much delay.
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Like some of the videos I took because the resolution was too high, it had me like talking in slow motion.
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So hopefully this will work. But I'm also trying a little bit different angle here. I set this camera up in some different places.
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And if I put it on the other side of the room, you can see my wall of pictures, on the other side of my office is just all my pictures.
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And behind me is the creative disorder that I live in here.
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I actually have cleaned it up quite a bit, but I just have stuff stacked everywhere and books everywhere.
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There's books I buy for the church's book table and all my other stuff is back there. And of course the bookshelves kind of wrap all the way around these two walls here.
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So it's nice to have access to all my stuff here. So I'm gonna try to bring the video back, the
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YouTube channel back and just call it the Protestant Witness. And when I do podcasts, it'll be, there'll be a video to them too.
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Unless it's posting an old sermon, like I've done, I've posted a lot of old sermons on the
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Protestant Witness on Thorn Crown. Obviously I'm not gonna do that on YouTube. But when I do a podcast that's just me talking about something, we'll try to have the video, the
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YouTube channel back up. And I think I'm just gonna go ahead and do that and just see. Cause I had a lot of subscribers and there are people that a lot of folks contacted me when
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I took the channel down. I felt really bad. I thought, you know, I just figured if they weren't watching the YouTube channel they would just listen to the podcast, but that wasn't happening.
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And people were kind of like, where's the YouTube channel? Where's the YouTube channel? Now, don't get me wrong. I didn't have a lot.
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I mean, I think I had close to a thousand subscribers, which is, you know, nothing. I've seen channels that have like over a hundred million subscribers, like the
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Piano Guys. I love their stuff, their music. And I subscribed to all sorts of music,
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YouTube channels and a few apologetics types of YouTube channels and stuff. So I'm coming back to YouTube.
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I've got some better equipment here and I'm gonna try to do this. And for the students there at Doe River, I just wanted to thank them.
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Some really, really terrific young people. I was really impressed with all of them, really impressed with all of them. And really, it is such an encouraging thing when you see people that age who really love the
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Lord and love the Bible and they really want to study. They really, they have very good questions and you can tell their minds are engaged and they're not just idling.
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So very encouraging. So this first video I would like to go over.
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Okay, I've been very critical of the Revoice Conference and I know there's folks that are kind of sick of talking about that.
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And we have a presbytery meeting this coming Saturday morning. I would ask people to please pray for that because we're submitting our
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Revoice Report and there's also some overtures that we're gonna send to the General Assembly.
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One of those overtures is very important. It's a series of affirmations and denials. And in fact,
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I would like to read that just so people know what we're sending.
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I have no doubt that it will get past presbytery. I'm not so sure that the
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General Assembly will adopt it. But for me, this is a showstopper. This is such an obvious thing that they've got to get this right.
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Okay, the General Assembly has to get this right because this is a very serious challenge that has come at us with this
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Revoice stuff. And a lot of people have tried to downplay it. A lot of people have been very critical of anyone who is against it, anyone who's tried to say that this is wrong.
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People have a big problem with that. And this is such a bonehead obvious issue.
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This doesn't take much reflection. Okay, this doesn't take an in -depth conversation to really understand that homosexual desires and actions are sin.
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And it is not appropriate for a Christian to identify themselves as an
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LGBT Christian or as a gay Christian, a lesbian Christian or a transgender Christian. And once again, we're facing the kinds of things that J.
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Gresham Machen faced in the Fundamentalist Modernist Controversy. Who would ever have thought that he would have to stand up and say, no, we need to believe in the virgin birth of Christ.
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No, we still need to believe in substitutionary atonement. No, we still need to believe in the inspiration and authority of the
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Bible and the deity of Jesus Christ and things like that. Who would ever have thought that he would have to defend such things.
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And eventually Machen, if you know the story, was thrown out. He was thrown out of the denomination that he loved.
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He was thrown out of the mainline church and he was one of the founders of the Westminster Seminary, Westminster Theological Seminary.
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So here we are facing another situation where we have to stand up and say, no, excuse me, you can't say that a person can identify themselves as a homosexual.
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In fact, I had a person come to me and tell me that they had a family member who's a member of a
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PCA church somewhere else in the United States, who is a very godly single young woman.
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And there's a deacon at the church there and she was, who was single. And she was interested in this guy, interested in hearing, seeing if he would be interested in talking or meeting.
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This is a godly young woman. She wants to get married and have a family. And so she actually talked to this guy and mentioned this to him.
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And his answer was, no, I'm not interested in seeing you because I'm gay. And I'm kind of thinking, okay, that would need to be dealt with by the pastors and elders of that church.
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Okay, if you have someone who's a member of the church and certainly an officer of the church who says, no,
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I'm not interested in spending time with women because I'm a homosexual, that is a problem.
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That's a very serious sin. Okay, that is a sin against God for someone to identify themselves that way.
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And that would need to be addressed by the session of that church. And that person would need to be helped to understand and see that it is completely inappropriate.
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It is completely inappropriate for you to identify yourself in this way. So I wanna go over a short essay that I wrote that we put on the end of our revoice report.
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We spent a lot of time gathering citations and documentation. And I might try to upload our report to the show notes here so people can read it if they want to.
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Where it's just citation after citation. From the conference, we had the conference talks transcribed so that we could cite them and give exactly what those folks said at the conference, at least from the
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YouTube videos that are on the Revoice YouTube channel. And we also, I read a number of books and read sections of books and read lots of blog articles by Ron Belgal and Wes Hill.
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I read some of Spiritual Friendship, Nate Collins' book, All But Invisible, Eve Tushnet's book, Gay and Catholic, which is kind of like a one -two punch.
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The whole gay thing is a problem, but you're also having Roman Catholic individuals speaking at your conference, at your church.
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That's not appropriate either. And I made sure that that was included in our report. It is not appropriate for people to put members of a false religion up in front of God's people.
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And once again, who would ever have thought we would have to say that? Who would ever have thought that it would be necessary for us to remind people of that?
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Remember the Reformation, 500th anniversary of the Reformation? The Reformation was a good thing, remember? We're thankful for that.
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Remember Luther and Calvin and all that, the good stuff that happened there in the 16th century with the recovery of the gospel and justification and all that stuff, making a proper distinction between justification and sanctification, et cetera.
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Evidently, a lot of that's been forgotten too. We've forgotten the basics of binaries when it comes to men and women and sexuality.
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And we've forgotten about the gospel. And that shouldn't surprise us because the apostles themselves dealt with departures from the gospel in their own lifetimes.
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Paul, the apostle, had to write Galatians where he said that he was amazed, he was shocked that they were so quickly turning away from the one who called them in the grace of Christ to another gospel.
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Galatians chapter one. So we need to quit saying we're surprised by this.
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It shouldn't surprise us. The New Testament reminds us and warns us constantly that people are gonna do this sort of thing.
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So I wrote an essay that we put on the end because I was asked by the committee to do this. Write an essay on, okay, if revoice is wrong, how should we approach?
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How should we approach the issue, the LGBT issues and people that deal with this kind of thing in their lives?
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What are we supposed to do? If revoice is wrong in wanting to support, encourage and affirm people in these identities, but not the behaviors, just their identities.
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If that's wrong, which it is, then how are we supposed to react to people who come to us as people have come to me and told me that they have same sex attraction or they have other deviant.
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I've had people long ago, there was an individual that told me they were attracted to little kids and worked with someone who had that kind of a problem.
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What do you do? You love them exactly where they are and you point out to them that it's good that you feel ashamed of that because you should be ashamed of that.
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Shame is a good thing. I am regularly ashamed of myself. I am ashamed of the things that go through my mind.
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I'm ashamed of the things that I do and it's good to be ashamed of yourself. It's good to feel bad about yourself.
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It's good to know that you're a wretch and are a bad person. In fact, there's a very famous John Calvin quote.
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Well, it's famous to me. I think it's in his commentary on Psalm 32, which is one of David's penitential
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Psalms where Calvin says that his fear is that Satan would so beguile him, so deceive him as to remove from him a sense of personal wretchedness.
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A sense of personal wretchedness is a gift from God. It's a good thing. It's a good thing. It's something we should feel.
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We ought to be ashamed of the sin that we commit and the things that we do that are against God's law.
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And the things that we desire that are against God's law and against the created order too. So I wrote a little essay.
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It's not very long, but I want to go through it here. I edited it and got some feedback and it was put onto the end of our report.
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And I called this essay, Being Jesus to People Whose Primary Sins Are Sexual in Nature. God's almighty power to liberate unregenerate sinners who are enslaved to sin has not diminished since Adam plunged our race into the estate of sin and misery.
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Just as surely as God justifies and accepts our persons as righteous in his sight on the legal grounds of Jesus's cross -worked satisfaction of divine justice and the imputation of his obedient righteousness to our account,
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Romans 3, 20 through 31, Romans 4, 1 through 8, 1 Peter 2, 24, many other passages I put in brackets there.
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God also breaks the chains of the sinner's grim servitude to all sin in their life.
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Romans 6 teaches us that. Galatians 3 teaches us that. There are no exceptions. John 8, 36, that when the son makes you free, you will be free indeed from slavery to sin.
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That's what the context of that dialogue is in John 8 with Jesus talking to his enemies at the Feast of Tabernacles.
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There are no exceptions to the sins which God can and does liberate every single
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Christian from. And the universal testimony of the word of God is that the newly adopted child of God is called and equipped to forever lay aside every form of sin.
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James 1, verses 21 to 22 says, therefore, putting aside all filthiness and all that remains of wickedness.
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You hear that? Therefore, in light of the fact that we've been born again through the word of God, therefore, in light of that, in light of the fact that you're justified and accepted in God's sight, that you've been made alive in Christ and born again, put aside all filthiness.
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Not most of it, not some of it, not 99 % of it, but all of it. Put aside all filthiness,
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James 1, 21, and all that remains of wickedness. Everything left in you that's wicked, lay it aside.
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Lay it aside. Get rid of it. Anything that you want, anything you desire that's contrary to God's law, that is now your enemy.
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That is now the foe that you're fighting for the rest of your life. All filthiness and all that remains of wickedness, put it aside.
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In humility, receive the word implanted, which is able to save your souls, but prove yourselves doers of the word and not merely hearers who delude themselves.
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Homosexual, bisexual, and transgender desires, attractions, and identities are examples of filthiness and wickedness, which are to be put aside by the
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Christian. Every Christian without exception is called by God to put aside all filthiness and all that remains of wickedness.
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If any form of sin, whether it is sexually perverted in nature or not, is guarded or held onto by a professing
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Christian, they are merely hearers of the word who have deluded themselves.
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They are merely hearers of the word who have deluded themselves. We are to lay aside all that remains of wickedness. Every last thing in us that is wicked, that's contrary to God's law, we are to put it aside.
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The glorious work of being born again by the spirit of God leaves no sin's power unbroken.
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And for this reason, the approach of Revoice and their desire to, quote, support, encourage, and empower, end quote, people in their identities as homosexual, bisexual, and or transgender must be rejected as both hateful and spiritually destructive to the souls of the precious people who are in the vice grip of those sorts of sexual sins.
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God's word teaches us that true biblical love does not rejoice in iniquity.
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Love does not rejoice in iniquity. I've had people ask me, would you attend a same -sex legal, would you attend a same -sex wedding?
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And my answer is 1 Corinthians 13, six. Love does not rejoice in iniquity. No, I would not.
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Love, if you really love them, if you hate them, by all means, go and show your support for their rebellion against God that will take them straight to hell if they don't repent of it.
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Love does not rejoice in iniquity, but in the truth. We do not encourage people who have shown interest in the gospel and in the things of God to look for ways to redeem their gayness, as Nate Collins tells us.
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But rather, we encourage them to look for ways to kill and mortify their gayness, to put to death the sin that is still in them.
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That's what the scripture says, Romans 8, 12, and 13. We are to put to death our sins and everything that remains of wickedness.
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What our culture and revoice calls love, scripture calls hate. The unbelieving world, however, will applaud revoice.
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They'll applaud revoice and those who support it as being loving. They'll applaud them as for being loving.
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Such individuals call revoice loving at the expense of coming under the judgment of God, who still sees sexually perverted behavior as a sin.
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Sexually perverted behavior, desires, actions, all of it. All of it is abomination in God's sight, just as coveting is an abomination in God's sight, just as lust is an abomination in God's sight, just as discontentment is a thieving, lying.
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Those are all abominations in God's sight. Sin is still sin. No matter how many people you can get to stand up at a conference and say, it's okay, it's okay, it's okay, you're fine, you're fine, you're fine the way they are, the way you are, it doesn't matter.
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What God tells us sin still is, it still is, regardless of how many people say it's not a sin anymore, to identify yourself in this way.
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God's mind on this matter has not changed. With our cultural shift, people who are unrepentant in such sins will be permanently excluded from heaven at the last day.
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And those who accept and promote revoice are ushering people to the gates of hell and pushing them in, all the while claiming to be loving them, all the while claiming to be loving them.
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Now that passage, Galatians 4 .16, when Paul very passionately, very forcefully denounces those heretics, those false teachers there in Galatia who had destroyed the gospel by adding one little thing to it, one little thing to faith as a means of justification, namely circumcision,
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Paul said in Galatians 4 .16, have I therefore become your enemy because I tell you the truth? Oh yeah, oh yeah, for many people, everything
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I'm saying right here will be acid on the face and they'll just detest and despise me for it.
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But God's people have always had to deal with that sort of thing. It is a form of persecution for the sake of righteousness.
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Now, it's not physical persecution, I'm not worried that someone's gonna come and try to hurt me, but those who vent their hatred towards individuals who are pointing out the truth to these folks, all they're doing, all they're doing is demonstrating that they themselves do not understand or respect the word of God.
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And they're creating greater rewards for those who are standing their ground and being faithful to the Lord. So either way,
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I'm gonna be faithful to the word of God because of my love for him, my love for the gospel, and my confidence that God is able to liberate people from slavery to these kinds of sins.
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Our duty before God as Christians and as ministers is to be as friendly, as winsome, as patient, and as gracious as we can possibly be towards individuals who have embraced such sinful desires, identities, and attractions or actions as fellow image bearers of God who are worthy of our time, our friendship, and our love.
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Christians and ministers need to be encouraged to love people exactly where they are in a non -confrontational way, to be good listeners, to be loving neighbors who are involved in helping and serving them without the ulterior motive of confronting their sin or inviting them to church or even witnessing to them.
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Conversations about the things of God and about the most sensitive parts of people's lives must be won by a long track record of love on our part first.
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Unbelievers must really matter to us first before we will gain an opportunity to preach the gospel to them.
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Living in a post -Obergefell versus Hodges America, it is in no way surprising that Christian people and ministers who stand upon biblical ground and in loving obedience to Christ are beginning to experience very strong pushback.
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Christian people and ministers who love the lost are already being denounced as unloving, un -Christ -like, and evil for continuing to believe what the word of God has always taught on these things.
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We ought to expect opposition to biblical truth to continue to intensify and the proponents of biblical truth to be more and more vilified by people both inside and outside of the church barring widespread revival from God.
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In the absence of meaningful biblical argumentation to support the false teachings of revoice, and believe me, there is no biblical argumentation.
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None has been offered. I've listened. I've let people try to defend this stuff.
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Really, no one's even trying to. All they've done is say, well, you guys are mean. I don't agree with your tone or something.
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That's all they can do because they can't defend this stuff. They know they can't defend it on the basis of God's word.
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But we should expect that. We should expect people to not be able to defend the indefensible because it's not scriptural.
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In the absence of meaningful biblical argumentation to support the false teachings of revoice, its supporters' only recourse will be, in desperation, to demonize us, which they're already doing.
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False teachers always cry intolerance. False teachers always say the other side is being divisive, unloving, uncharitable, et cetera, because this is the only way that they can shut down critical thought.
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It's the only way they can shut down the critical thought of onlookers. And false teachers can only continue to perpetuate their errors if they are not scrutinized by their opponents, and they will try to sidestep it by playing the martyr.
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You've tried to silence us. This is not an appropriate way to go at this, blah, blah, blah. This is already happening.
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We can expect their attacks to escalate in their viciousness and irrationality as time presses on.
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It ought not surprise us in the least that with the collapse of biblical catechesis and the collapse of expository preaching in so many churches today, that many professing
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Christians and even ministers no longer function with a biblical definition of love. And folks, the church today really does not know what love is.
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It really doesn't know what love is. You will see Christians, I wish the church would be more loving. What do they really mean when they say that?
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I wish churches would preach love. What they mean is tolerate more sin. But remember 1
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Corinthians 13, love, agape, does not rejoice in iniquity.
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It does not rejoice in iniquity. Our culture rejoices in iniquity. Many professing Christians who have been deeply influenced by our sexually filthy culture and feminized culture think that iniquity is something we should rejoice in, but scripture tells us not to, and that love doesn't rejoice in iniquity, but in the truth.
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And so we have to tell people the truth. We have to tell them the truth of what scripture says and what
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God's attitude is towards these things, because it will be very, very, very practical on the day of judgment when people face
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God. So false teachers, all they can do is try to attack the other side. That's what Machen faced too.
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His opponents had no answers to his arguments. I mean, Christianity and liberalism, that book, when
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Machen wrote that, I think it was in 1924 when he wrote that, there was no answer to it.
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And even an atheist, a brilliant atheist named H .L. Mencken wrote a review of Machen's book,
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Christianity and Liberalism, and the atheist even said, any person with a mind, with a functioning brain, knows that Machen has won this debate.
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And yet Machen was thrown out of the church. He won the debate. He won the argument.
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He demonstrated the truth of God's word, but the church tossed him out. Why? It had been overrun with liberals, with progressives, with wicked and evil people.
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And he was persecuted for the sake of righteousness and was thrown out and had to found the Orthodox Presbyterian Church.
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And unfortunately, Presbyterians have split a lot since then and there's tons of little denominations.
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But the PCA is really the largest, I think conservative denomination left.
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So it does make sense that this would be a target for social progressives and people that want to push this stuff now.
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But we need to be aware of this. We need to be aware of this. The other side does not know, cannot defend this, and they know they can't.
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So the only thing they can do is attack the character of people denouncing it, which is what happened to Machen and is happening to us right now.
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I myself have been attacked by people. No substance to any of the attacks and no responses to the documentation, none.
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No effort's been made to try to respond to any of the documentation because no response can be made to it. It's irrefutable.
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So we can expect that and we can expect those attacks and their viciousness and then their irrationality to escalate, which they will.
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They will definitely do that. And it makes perfect sense that with the loss of biblical teaching, catechesis, expository preaching of the word of God, Christians today and many ministers today do not have a biblical understanding of love.
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Love does not rejoice in iniquity, but in the truth. And Jesus himself taught us in Matthew 5 .10,
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blessed are those who have been persecuted for the sake of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are you when people insult you and persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me.
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Really? People are gonna say false things about us? Yeah, lies. They'll accuse us of being mean, terrible, horrible, nasty people who have a bad tone and are just not very nice.
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I just don't like the way you're coming across. Yeah, blessed are you when they insult you, when they persecute you, when they falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me.
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Rejoice and be glad for your reward in heaven is great. For in the same way, they persecuted the prophets who were before you.
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You are the salt of the earth, but if the salt has become tasteless, how can it be made salty again?
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It is no longer good for anything except to be thrown out and trampled underfoot by men.
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It's a great passage in the book of Isaiah. And I came across this not too long ago and preached a whole sermon on it.
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And it's just a glorious text of scripture. I hope that people will listen to this. It's Isaiah 51, verse seven.
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Isaiah 51, verse seven. Listen carefully to this. Brothers who are fighting the good fight, listen to God's encouragement here.
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Isaiah 51, verse seven. Listen to me, you who know righteousness, you people in whose heart is my law, do not fear the reproach of men, nor be afraid of their insults.
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For the moth will eat them up like a garment and the worm will eat them like wool, but my righteousness will be forever and my salvation from generation to generation.
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Isn't that encouraging? Don't be afraid of their reproaches. Do not be afraid of their insults.
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Listen to me, you who know what righteousness still is and few though you may be, listen to me, you who know righteousness, you people in whose heart is my law, do not fear the reproach of men, nor be afraid of their insults.
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For the moth will eat them up like a garment and the worm will eat them like wool, but my righteousness will be forever and my salvation from generation to generation.
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Isn't that encouraging? I love that. I love that. There's so many nuggets of gold in the prophets
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I've been reading through, just Isaiah through Malachi, just kind of over and over again. It's the portion of scripture that I don't know the most about, so I've just been reading and rereading it.
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And there's just glory everywhere in Isaiah through Malachi. So many wonderful, just glorious things are said there.
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So I thought that passage would be helpful. Isaiah 51, seven through eight. Someone needs to make a meme about it.
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Someone needs to make a poster or something. I might pin that up on my wall over here or something. Great, great, great text.
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Okay, continuing on. In order to win the loss of this world to Christ, God's people must be gracious, friendly, warm, and involved in the lives of lost people.
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We must see people engaged in sexual perversion. We must see them not as dirty, odd, or as our enemies.
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Our duty before God is to love all people and to become all things to all people that we might win them to Christ. We ought to listen to their stories and be interested in them as people, as unique people made in God's image.
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As Christian people find themselves with neighbors and coworkers who identify themselves as homosexuals, bisexuals, or transgender people, there must be a winsome willingness to be hospitable and gracious to such people.
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If they are in need of help financially, we ought to freely give to them. If their roof is leaking or their home needs repairs and we can help them, we ought to do so cheerfully, as unto
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Jesus himself. There is nothing more valuable in the entire universe than a human being.
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And no matter what sorts of sin they are held by, they are worthy of our time, our attention, and our love.
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Christian people who are caught mocking this kind of sin, and you know who you are, people who make fun of this kind of thing or try to act effeminate to make fun of or make a joke out of this sort of thing, they need to be admonished by their sessions and brought under church discipline if they continue in such abominable behavior.
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In fact, we ought to question the salvation of anyone who makes fun of and makes light of and jokes about sins for which
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Jesus bled and died on the cross. Were it not for the irresistible grace of God, we ourselves would likewise be drowning in unrepentant sin and under God's just condemnation for it.
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Our love must cover a multitude of sins. Love does not rejoice in iniquity, but rejoices in the truth.
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And love certainly, certainly does not behave rudely and does not mock or make fun of any kind of sin, any kind of sin.
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There's nothing more serious than the holiness of God and that God is offended by sin. We should never, ever tolerate people making fun of anything like this.
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In time, as opportunities are won through loving people to be a witness for the gospel, people identifying as these particular sorts of sexually perverted sins must lovingly and graciously be told the truth.
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They must repent of the desires. They must repent of the attractions.
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They must repent of that identity. This is the apostolic example.
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This is the apostolic example. There's nothing more loving than the truth. And Paul and our
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Lord felt the hatred of their enemies when they told people the truth. Paul said,
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Galatians 4, 16, have I become your enemy by telling you the truth? Jesus said in John 7, 7, the world cannot hate you, but it hates me because I testify of it, that its deeds are evil.
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Pronouncing the world's beloved sins to be evil has been and always will be the occasion in which people have felt the antithesis.
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God pronounced an Eden upon the seed of Satan and the seed of the woman. There is enmity or hatred with a desire to kill that will exist in the hearts of many bound by Satan and sin against those who truly know
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God. If we pronounce their beloved sins to be sin, we will feel their hatred.
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We will feel that antithesis. We will feel that enmity. Count on it. It's going to happen.
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And it's a shame that so many Christian people have so little stomach for that. They don't want anyone to attack them.
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They don't want anyone to say nasty things about them. But I just would point out, if no one ever says anything nasty about you, no one ever has anything to persecute you about, maybe you're a coward.
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Maybe you don't ever say anything that's true. Maybe you're not willing to stand your ground and feel the antithesis.
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And as Jesus said, have all sorts of evil spoken of you falsely for my sake. But we're told that that's going to happen.
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And we're blessed when it happens. They will hate us for no other reason than that our deeds are righteous and theirs are wicked.
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That's why Cain murdered Abel. 1 John 3, 10. By this, the children of God and the children of the devil are obvious.
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Anyone who does not practice righteousness is not of God, nor the one who does not love his brother. For this is the message which you have heard from the beginning, that we should love one another, not as Cain, who was of the evil one and slew his brother.
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And for what reason did he slay him? Because his deeds were evil and his brothers were righteous.
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Isn't that an incredible passage? Why did Cain kill Abel? Why did he kill him? Because Abel was good and Cain wasn't.
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Really? Yeah, that's why he hated him. He hated his brother because his brother was righteous and he was evil.
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And that's kind of what's happening here. It's not that we're perfect or we don't sin, but on this particular point, we are correct in saying this is a sin that you need to repent of.
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You can't embrace this as an identity. You can't embrace this as just something that you accept about yourself.
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You need to stand your ground and fight the good fight. And they hate us for it. Every, all opposition, any opposition to the
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LGBT stuff, any opposition to homosexuality and sexual perversion, all of it is being categorized now as homophobia.
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If you say, I think that that's sinful behavior, you're a homophobe and you're violent and you're mean and you're evil and you're wicked.
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Yeah, that's what scripture promises us. You say, you tell the truth, you do what is righteous, people will hate you for it.
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What, why did, and for what reason did Cain kill Abel? Because his deeds were evil and his brother's righteous. That is the only reason
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Cain hated Abel, because he was good, he was righteous and Cain wasn't. So he killed him.
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That's the antithesis. That's the antithesis. Genesis 3 .15 promised it. That's what that Hebrew noun means, enmity, hatred with desire to kill.
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The very next chapter of the scriptures, Genesis 4 records Cain killing Abel. The enmity being manifested, we will feel it.
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If we stand for the truth, if we stand for the truth, if we are biblically loving and we identify sin as sin, we will feel that hatred, we will feel that enmity.
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You bet. At times, however, God will use our love, our obedience, our testimony to the gospel and our calls to repentance to liberate people from slavery to sin and to deliver them into the glorious liberty of the children of God.
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At other times, we will simply bring down the wrath and hatred of unbelievers upon us because in imitation of our
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Lord, we declare their beloved sins to be evil and they will hate us for it. The scriptures everywhere promise us that we'll be hated on account of our loyalty to Christ and to righteousness.
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2 Timothy 3 .12, indeed, all who desire to live godly in Christ Jesus will be persecuted.
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They will be called evil. They will be called nasty. They will be called having a bad tone, alienating people by their hatred.
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That will be said of them. All who desire to be godly will be persecuted. Count on it. It's a biblical promise.
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John 15 .18, the world hates you. You know that it has hated me before it hated you.
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If you were of the world, the world would love its own. Yeah, if you go along with all this stuff, oh, you'll be praised to the highest of heaven.
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You'll have friends. You'll be invited to come talk at conferences. People will love you for it.
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But Jesus said, if you were of the world, the world would love its own. But because you're not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, because of this, the world hates you.
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Remember the word that I said to you, a slave is not greater than his master. If they persecuted me, they will also persecute you.
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If they kept my word, they will keep yours also. Folks, beloved fellow
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Christians, if no one ever hates or persecutes us, it can only be because we're cowards who refuse to stand for the truth and who refuse to let the world know by our obedience and by our words that we are indeed the followers of Jesus Christ.
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Persecution and hatred is a promise from God to all who know, love, and follow Christ. In summary,
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Christian people and ministers must befriend, love, and express the deepest patience and grace toward people engaged in sexually perverted forms of sin.
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We must be godly and loving neighbors to them first. We must rebuke and silence any and all mockery of them we see coming from anyone in society, whether they are professing
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Christians or not. We should protect people from being abused. We should protect them from being made fun of.
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We should step in and protect them. But folks, it's not abusive and it's not making fun of to simply point out to people, that is a sin that you need to repent of.
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But we shouldn't allow people to mock or make fun or abuse or bash such individuals.
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That is a sin, that is a great evil. And individuals ensnared by such sins must see in us a people who are determined to love and serve them, regardless of whether or not they ever repent and come to Christ.
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We have freely received the love and grace of God while we were yet vile, unrepentant, and utterly unworthy in ourselves.
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We must freely give that same love and grace to individuals entrenched in sexually perverted sin. The counsel and teaching of the
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Revoice Conference is for the most part in grave error and is spiritually reckless and destructive.
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And we fully documented that in the report. The church must support, encourage, and empower people to repent from and put to death their
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LGBT identities, attractions, desires, and or actions with the help of Christ.
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And we must work hard to counsel and walk beside such people as they do so.
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Their battle with sin will be no less consuming and no less intense than our own.
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This is what the body of Christ is for. It's what Christian fellowship is all about. We walk alongside one another, we support one another in our battles with sin, and we cheer each other on as we run the race with endurance.
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There is hope and there is freedom from such forms of sin. Our sovereign Lord has lost none of his life -saving and life -changing power.
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And we must work hard against this growing crescendo of voices who are trying to convince us and the world otherwise.
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Nothing short of the salvation of multitudes of people is at stake along with the glory of Christ and his gospel.
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This is a very serious battlefront. And God's people are going to have to stand their ground because our first loyalty and our first love is
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Jesus Christ and his truth, his word, the scriptures, what God says is right and what God says is wrong.
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And we are to love people where they are, but we must not support, encourage, or empower people to embrace sexually deviant identities.
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It is a sin against God for someone to say, I'm a homosexual, that's just who
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I am, and I will not repent of it. I'm not gonna act on it. I'm not gonna act on it. But you're not gonna lay that heavy burden on me and say that I need to repent of my identity.
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No, you do need to repent of that. You do need to repent of that because it is wicked and it is evil.
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James 1, 21, therefore putting aside all filthiness.
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Homosexual desires are filthy. They're filthy. Just as covetousness is filthy.
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Stealing is filthy. Discontentment is filthy. Lying is filthy. Laziness is filthy.
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Overeating is filthy. Whatever form filth takes in the life of a true believer, they are to put it aside.
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And they are to put aside, as the scripture says, all that remains of wickedness. Anything that God's word says is contrary to the character of God, we are to put it to death and lay it aside, especially for sexual forms of sin, deviant forms of sexual sin.
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It's amazing that it's come to this, that we have to make these kinds of statements, that we have to stand up and point this out to people who should know better.
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But it shouldn't surprise us. We live in a period of unprecedented apostasy. Our culture is being destroyed from the inside by social progressives and by this agenda that is trying to normalize everything that is reprehensible and vile on the side of God.
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But we can't give into it. And if we really are loving, if we have a biblical, not a cultural, but a biblical understanding of love, 1
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Corinthians 13, six, love does not rejoice in iniquity.
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This is Pastor Patrick Hines of Bridewell Heights Presbyterian Church, located at 108 Bridewell Heights Road in Kingsport, Tennessee.
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And you've been listening to the Protestant Witness Podcast. Please feel free to join us for worship any
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Sunday morning at 11 a .m. sharp, where we open the word of God together, sing his praises, and rejoice in the gospel of our risen
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Lord. You can find us on the web at www .bridewellheightspca .org.
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And may the Lord bless you and keep you. The Lord make his face to shine upon you and be gracious unto you. The Lord lift up his countenance upon you and give you peace.