Zach Lambert's Sermon, "Homophobia and Transphobia," Response Part 1

Alpha & Omega Ministries

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Greetings and welcome to The Dividing Line. We are doing a full response today on the program to a sermon that was actually preached more than a year ago by Zach Lambert at Restore Austin.

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The reason for this is, well, for a while people like Kevin M. Young, Zach Lambert will appear on my timeline on Twitter, sometimes

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Facebook, and many believers are extremely confused by what it is they have to say because many believers have not encountered what we call today progressivism, though I think that's a horrible description.

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Some people call it liberalism. That's what I grew up with. It actually doesn't have anything to do with liberalism.

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It's leftism. It is very much the perspective that I was exposed to fully in seminary, since I went to Fuller Theological Seminary, though, of course, when

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I went there for my first master's degree, Fuller would have been considered quite conservative in comparison to the broad spectrum of theological education, and in fact over the next number of hours, as this program will probably take two episodes to complete since we're going to play the entirety of the sermon, which is only about 48 minutes long, 49 minutes long, maybe, which for apologia is barely an introduction to a sermon.

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But anyway, it's going to take us a while to work through this, and as we do so, you need to understand that what you're going to be hearing may seem very strange to you if you've grown up in believing churches, things like that, but this is, unfortunately, what you're going to see out there in the world.

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This is much more of a majority perspective than you might expect.

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So keep that in mind as we take a look at these things and as we do this.

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Now, I just want to remind you, this is not the first time we've done this. This isn't a matter of some kind of specific animosity toward Zach Lambert.

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I don't know the man. I drove through Austin earlier this year, at some point, to get to Georgetown.

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Don't have any... It's not a matter of the church or the location or things like that.

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We just have done this before. We did a five -hour series when

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Matthew Vines, I think it was 2011 presentation came out from a church in Kansas and started really making the rounds.

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We did a five -hour response, playing his entire presentation, stopping and starting, and responding to it.

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Then when he started the Reformation conference stuff, it was the first or second one.

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He had Dr. Gushy speak, and we played all of Gushy's presentation and responded to that.

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That was six hours long. And so to play an entire sermon may take us three or four hours, grand total.

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There's not nearly as much to respond to here, so we might make better pace than I'm expecting us to.

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But this is not something new for us to do. And the reason we need to be doing it today is, again, to remind ourselves that this is the majority view.

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This is the kind of stuff, you've seen it, it's utterly decimated mainstream denominations.

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It's interesting, I was asking today, because Pastor Lambert will mention this at the beginning of his sermon.

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He mentions the fact that their church was kicked out of a denomination, and I think he said 2018, something like that.

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He didn't say which one it was, and he mentions going to seminary. In fact, what caused me to really make the decision to do this is that I saw him saying to other people, well, why don't you interact with my points?

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I have a master's degree from Recognized Seminary, which is Dallas Theological Seminary, and why don't you actually interact with what

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I said? And so I stepped in, because the arguments that he presents, very few of them,

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I was really surprised at how little of the revisionist perspective was actually expressed in this sermon, especially on the key texts.

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He waited to the end and just skipped over them very, very quickly. But we've been responding to this stuff for a long, long time.

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I was thinking back just recently to Jeff Neal and I sitting in the studio of KPXQ, having the on -air debate with two homosexuals, one of whom had gone to school with Jeff and I at Grand Canyon College.

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And that was, I think, the year 2000. So we're coming up on a quarter century. It might have been 99, but I think the same -sex controversy book came out in 2001.

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So, we've been doing this for a long time, and I've done numerous debates on this subject with people like John Shelby Spong, two with Graham Codrington in South Africa, which are available online.

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And so this is what we do, and what we want to be able to do is for you to listen so that you can do this.

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The people in the audience are the ones who need to be responding to these assertions and these allegations and these claims and these teachings.

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In this instance, for example, you need to know how to respond to and be prepared to respond to the idea that Jesus taught radical inclusion of sexual minorities because of what he said about eunuchs, as if eunuchs are a sexual minority.

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That is the central argument. It really is the central argument of this sermon is that the discussion of eunuchs in Matthew 19 and the

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Ethiopian eunuch in the book of Acts chapter 8, these are the issues.

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Now, all of church history is sitting here going, what? That's what that's about?

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We missed it. Right. You need to remember that for these folks, no one ever needs to have seen the things they see because what we're going to hear, and I will document this.

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I'm not trying to poison the well beforehand. I'm just trying to give you a roadmap. What we're going to hear is one of the clearest examples of cultural eisegesis

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I've ever seen. What you do is you don't start with scripture. You start off redefining language on the basis of modern concepts, and then you weave stories, narrative in, get people emotionally involved.

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You make all of your assertions in that emotional realm with the changed language.

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You literally come to your conclusion and then pretend to talk about the scriptures after you've done all of that.

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I've listened, you know, he mentions that he's read 20 books on this subject. It's about half as many as I've read.

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I got started this whole lot earlier than he did. This is what you will find over and over again as you listen to these individuals.

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This is what you'll see over and over again. You need to learn to recognize it, and serious believing

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Christians need to learn to be able to get past the emotionalism, past the abusive language, and press home the truth.

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That's what you've got to be able to do. So that's why we're doing this program. There's lots of other things we've been talking about.

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I don't think there will be a lot of specific information and material that would make this an adults -only discussion.

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It is about homophobia and transphobia. Those are the terms he used.

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I don't know that we're getting into too much that would be problematic, but it's possible.

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This is a live program, so there you go. We're going to dive into it. Hopefully, it'll be useful to you.

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As I said, we'll be playing the entirety of the presentation, and I hope it'll be useful to you.

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So here's how it started, and let's get into it. I know that Restore, our church, started out in a denomination.

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I'm going to take those blank stares as no. I'm not going to say which denomination in this setting, although it's certainly not a secret, and I'd be happy to tell you if you'd like to know.

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When Restore began, we were a denominational church. You can probably tell from the tense of those words that we are no longer a denominational church.

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Okay, just again for information, this is already provided to me earlier today. This was the

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EFCA, Evangelical Free Church of America. I had wondered, because it talked about districts and stuff like that, you know, headquartered in the

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Midwest and things like that. So again, it's an interesting combination.

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You do get a fairly wide expression of perspectives in the EFCA. If he went to Dallas, of course,

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Dallas is not what Dallas was when I was a young person. It used to have a very strong, dispensational, conservative commitment that really has diminished greatly over the past number of years, and it's unfortunately walking the road into wokeness, as happens with most seminaries over time, sadly.

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But he's talking about the EFCA is the denomination. It's important to know that this was not by our choice.

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By the way, just so you know, on the, and he's going to make mention to them, on the pulpit are a number of books.

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I see Matthew Vine's book. I see Dr. Brownson's book. Remember, we were going to try to have that debate, and then that didn't work out.

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But Dr. Brownson's book, The Bible, Gender, and Sexuality. If you, and I'll try to remember,

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I already posted the link to this entire sermon yesterday or the day before on Twitter, and if you go to the actual sermon on YouTube, all the books he's recommending are listed there.

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These are the most imbalanced, leftist, wild -eyed, revisionist works available.

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Brownson is at least scholarly. It's still really indefensible, but it's at least scholarly.

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Vine's book, of course, remember, Vine's had said he'd be happy to debate me up until he wrote the book, and ever since then, well, not so much.

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We were actually kicked out of a denomination. So I want to tell you the whole story. So when I was in seminary,

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I took a church planting class, kind of interested in starting a church and what that might mean, and there was a denomination that the district supervisor who ran all of Texas and Oklahoma would go to the church planting class and recruit potential church planters because they really wanted to start new churches all over Texas and Oklahoma.

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So I met this guy and talked through everything with him, told him about Restore, told him what we felt like God had called us to do.

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We talked about a couple of kind of hot -button topics, so to speak, which is that we were going to have women in every area of leadership.

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We were going to be fully inclusive of LGBTQ people and that type of stuff, and he was like, well, you'll be the only church in the district that does that, but I guess there's nothing in our policies about not doing that, so it's fine.

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And so I was like, great, and it was very much pitched as like we're a big tent movement, you know, we got the kind of core ancient doctrine stuff right, like we come around 2 ,000 years of Christian orthodoxy, like you can be a part.

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It's great. So we decided to jump in with them. We jumped in with a bunch of other church networks and individual churches sponsor us and all that kind of stuff.

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It's just like getting a non -profit or a business off the ground. You have people that seed into it, and then you launch, and then we became financially independent about year three, which is kind of the goal.

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But our first year, we did something called Bab2Q. I want you to raise your hand if you've ever been to Bab2Q at Restore.

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Yeah, Bab2Q is the best. So Bab2Q is baptisms and barbecue shoved together, and so out on the lawn, we do baptisms, and we bring

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Rudy's Barbecue in for everyone and just have this huge party. It is so much fun. At our very first Bab2Q, we baptized eight or ten people,

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I can't remember, and one of them is this incredible story of this woman named Shana, and Shana had come from just horrific background of growing up in churches where,

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I mean, bad news stuff in these churches, like where black people couldn't come, where they were escorted out, where you couldn't even remotely identify with LGBTQ community stuff.

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I mean, it was intense kind of fundamentalist churches, and so she grew up, for a number of other reasons too, hating

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God. And so when we met, she was still very anti when we met. I remember we went to coffee at radio, and she was like,

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I don't believe any of this, you need to know that, number one. And I was like, great, cool, cool, awesome. But we became really good friends.

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She's actually one of my very best friends to this day. And soon after those conversations led into her saying,

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I think I want to follow Jesus. She had this incredible encounter with him. We actually showed her story once on video.

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It's really... Okay, just breaking in here for a moment. One of the things that causes difficulties in our understanding back and forth here is the regular utilization of the phraseology of following Jesus.

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Now, if you've been raised in a church that believes that this is sufficient in and of itself, that it is consistent with itself, that it is intended to be taken as a whole, then there is a particular meaning to following Jesus, which includes, well, if anyone loves me, he will keep my commandments.

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It includes repentance. It includes an acceptance of biblical teaching on sexuality and marriage and holiness, all of these things.

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And so for us, when we say following Jesus, we're actually talking about following in the sense of take up your cross, deny yourself, you're doing these things.

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You're listening to the apostles as they explicate these things in Romans or Galatians or whatever.

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That's not what progressivists mean when they say following Jesus. Sadly, you can hear some of this in Andy Stanley's recent comments, too.

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And that is, I'm going to add Jesus to my life in the sense of I will be religious to the point of my discomfort.

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I'll be religious as long as it's comfortable. I am not submitting myself to the lordship of Christ.

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You think of Dallas, Dallas has always had a problem with that. For a long, long time, Dallas has fought against lordship salvation.

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And so maybe that's a part of this. I don't know. But it's important to recognize this language and to recognize that for a lot of people, especially if they've been discipled by these types of progressivist churches, they think following Jesus is,

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I'm going to talk about Jesus, but I'm going to define him any way I want to define him.

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And I'm not going to worry about a holistic listening to everything that he said and making application of all of his commandments because that's just crazy talk.

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And that's where we sometimes end up missing each other because we're listening.

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And just like when we're talking to Mormons, you know, they'll use words that don't mean what we expect them to mean.

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So keep that in mind. Beautiful. So we baptized her with all the other people that got baptized at the baptique.

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And now here's something I didn't mention about Shauna. Shauna is a lesbian. Um, and I honestly didn't think that much about it when it happened.

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Um, but there were some other churches in the denomination who got really upset and they got...

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Okay. And so I just have to ask when you, when you say that she is a lesbian, it sounds like she continues to be a lesbian.

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She is unrepentant and that is their position. There's nothing to repent of. Uh, this church expresses, if you watch the

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Gregory Coles debate, that was a debate over side B. And he'll mention this.

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He'll talk about affirming, non -affirming. Uh, that was a debate over side B perspectives.

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This is side A. From their perspective, homosexuality, lesbianism, transgenderism, gay marriage, um, transitioning, it's all good.

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They affirm it all. There is, there's nothing in scripture about any of this stuff from, from their perspective.

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And so this is what you get in United Methodist churches and in PCUSA churches and in, um, the, uh,

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ELCA churches, uh, the mainstream denominations that will all be gone by 2030, 2040, 2050, uh, because they're just disappearing.

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Um, this is the kind of theology you get in, in those types of contexts. Just, just so you're aware of where we're going.

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So upset that they actually took it to the guy that had recruited me. And he said, well, no, we knew that this was, the church was going to be like this, you know, we're okay with it, whatever.

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Well, they, you know, couldn't get what they wanted done with him. And so they took it all the way to the head of the denomination internationally.

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It's based out of kind of the Midwest. And they opened to this huge investigation. Over a period of years, we went through an investigation.

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Our, our leadership team, me specifically, had to give testimony a number of times, all of these different things. And it basically came down to the fact that, well, there was nothing in the bylaws of the district against this.

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And so the denomination basically ordered the district to rewrite their bylaws so that there was something against it.

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And then they came to us and said, you have to sign these bylaws. And we said, absolutely not. And they said, well, then you're out.

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And so they kicked us out. This was summer of 20, or excuse me, March of 2019, when we were officially kicked out.

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But it wasn't just that. The denomination actually stripped me of my ordination. I had to mail my ministry license back.

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I wanted to shred it and mail it back. Amy said I couldn't do that. My wife, she said I wasn't allowed to do it. And then

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I got an email from the executive director of theology for the entire international denomination in which he said, quote,

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I am concerned for your salvation and the salvation of those to whom you minister.

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Now, realize, of course, this is meant to, this is a big, bad, closed -minded, you know, if they had lived in the 1600s, they would have been the

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Inquisition, you know, all that kind of stuff is what is being communicated here. Now, obviously, whoever this recruiter was should have had some idea of the doctrinal standards of the denomination before trying to recruit people, obviously.

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And hopefully he isn't a recruiter anymore. I can't imagine that he would be after all this happened. But this is actually a very good thing.

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Here you have a denomination actually saying we have standards. And, you know,

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I would like to, I haven't seen this letter, but I would like to hope that there was something in there that said, you know, if you had been given the information that this would be acceptable beforehand, you were misled and we will deal with that.

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Because that would need to be said, I think. But it comes down to fundamental foundational, you're going to believe what scripture says, you're not going to believe what scripture says.

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And I want you to be listening because he will enunciate what his ultimate authority is. His ultimate authority is not this revelation interpreted consistently.

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Because did you hear him say earlier, yeah, we're a sort of, you know, 2000 years of Christian orthodoxy, basic type thing, we're all good type thing.

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If you go to Restore Austin's website right now, you will see that their statement of faith is very, very short.

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But it still talks about the Trinity, for example. And I want you to listen when he starts interpreting scripture, ask yourself the question, could the hermeneutical methodology that he forces the text through now ever substantiate the doctrine of the

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Trinity? Or any of the other fundamental foundational orthodox defining beliefs that he's going to mention, or that are mentioned on the website, could any of them be grounded in scripture consistently?

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When you can take the clarity of passages of scripture, like Romans 1 or 1

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Corinthians 6 and 1 Timothy 1 and so on and so forth, and do with them what he does with them.

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I think the answer will be obvious. Now, I wish I could tell you this is the only time that something like this has happened due to our support of full inclusion for the

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LGBTQ plus community, but it's not. We've been called an apostate church, we've been kicked out of not just that denomination, but a number of different church networks, even an office space here in Austin we were kicked out of.

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We lost a bunch of funding over the years, and I've been told I'm going to hell more times than I can count. But honestly, none of that comes close to the joy that we have experienced from seeing

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LGBTQ plus folks who have come to faith at Restore, come back to faith at Restore, and found a church where they can fully participate for the first time in their lives.

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The conversations, and messages, and hugs, and tears I've been able to share with people from the queer community make all of the hate totally worth it.

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Now, I also know that what we've been through is nothing compared to what LGBTQ plus folks have endured.

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The queer community has been called abominations, disowned by their families, condemned to hell, and even tortured and abused through conversion therapy, all at the hands of Christians.

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And these are not just statistics, these are stories. And these stories didn't just happen to random people, they happened to people that I love.

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Okay, so here's where you start seeing... Now, these could be genuine emotions on his part, but what you hear when

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I listen to side B, side A, whatever it might be, you'll notice we're almost seven minutes in, we don't have any scripture.

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And that's fine, sometimes people have long introductions, but the point is, what you need to recognize is the methodology that is consistently utilized in the promotion of this perspective.

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It is not, I am going to lay out a compelling case for people who truly want to have a foundation for understanding why

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God created us, why he created us in the way he created us, how we're to relate to one another, and we need to be able to stand against the world that's going to seek to erode these things.

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You've got nothing like that. What you have is an emotional narrative.

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Before I debated Gregory Coles, I watched the first I don't know, five, six, maybe eight episodes of a pastoral introduction class from Preston Sprinkles group that Coles is a part of, and that's how it started as well.

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The scripture comes later. You start with the stories, you start with the heart strings, you start with the idea that if you don't agree with us, you are a heartless cold person.

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Hopefully, most of us who are adults anyways, and have been taught to live and think as adults, you've come to understand and come to realize the abuse of this methodology in advertising, in film, in the re -education system, it's not the educational system, it's re -education system, the indoctrination system.

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The fact that to be an actual functioning adult in this world requires you to control your emotions and to very often suppress emotion for the sake of truth.

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Very often we have to do things that our emotions don't want us to do. As parents, for example, we have to do what's right for our children even when they're tugging at our heartstrings.

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I remember when, it's unfortunately her earliest memory, but Summer just kept getting ear infections and ear infections and ear infections and eventually they said we need to put tubes in her ears.

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When we took her to the hospital for that surgery, the look on her little face when they took her from us, these masked people she's never seen before.

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Again, if I had the standard emotional maturity of most graduates from universities and sadly even seminaries today,

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I would have rushed in there and stopped them. But I didn't because that's what she needed, that's what needed to be done.

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We're now living in a day where that's just not how things happen.

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He's going to talk about his ultimate authority. He's going to admit this toward the end. His ultimate authority is not the hermeneutical methodology that hopefully he was taught in some class at Dallas Theological Seminary.

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It is, I got to know people and I found out there are really nice people that have these orientations.

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Now obviously LGBTQ plus is a menagerie of rebellious sexual activities that are utterly incoherent with one another.

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As soon as you put the T in it, the whole thing blows up and the plus is just demonic. That's all there is to it.

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So I'm not sure what's going on in there, but all right. Everything okay? All right.

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I was hearing stuff coming back at me. So that's going to be the ultimate authority from his perspective.

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I've gotten to know these people, so I need to see in scripture what will confirm the emotional attachments

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I have made to these individuals. I will just simply ask you, um, take any of the sins mentioned by Paul in first Corinthians chapter six, uh, such as, um, theft, um, well, covetousness.

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That's the one that we, that Dr. Coles wouldn't touch in our debate. Um, and replace any of the

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LGBT stuff with those sins and see if, well, I've gotten to know people who are covetous and there's some wonderful people who are covetous.

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And so I'm going to interpret scripture so that covetousness is no longer, they love

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Jesus and, and, and Jesus made them covetous. And you just go, it turns the whole

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New Testament on its head. It most certainly does, but that's what we're dealing with. And the only way you're going to get there, you're not going to get there by making an argument and appealing to reason and rationality.

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No, you're going to have to start with the emotions and get that engaged first before you can then get people to follow along.

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People in this room, people I consider to be my closest friends.

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One of these friends was locked in a basement and repeatedly assaulted during her Christian conversion therapy. One of my friends was kicked out of a church during their transition and the pastor told everyone in the congregation to quote, treat him like he's dead until he repents of his perversion.

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Now, some of these stories may have elements of truth in them, but we've all come to recognize that the victim card is so important today that how many of these horrific stories have been proven to be false over time?

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How many reports have been made? How many nooses have been found in one place or another or whatever graffiti sprayed on a wall, found out they did it themselves.

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You know, this type of thing has happened over and over again. And if someone in a church that actually believes the first part of Matthew 19, we're going to see he's going to go to the later part of Matthew 19, but actually believes what

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Jesus taught. From the beginning, he made the male and female. And he's going to say there's actually three.

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There's intersex. We'll get to that in a moment. But actually believes what Jesus taught rather than his redefinition thereof.

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And if we had someone in our fellowship, I think I can speak to this.

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If we had someone in our fellowship who came to us and said, I'm in a male body, but I'm a female trapped in a male body.

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I can just imagine Luke's response. But it wouldn't go very far.

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And he would be called to and we would do everything we can to help the individual.

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If they were actually experiencing what's called gender dysphoria, which maybe three or 4 % of these people do that vast majority of the quote unquote trans community is.

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And this is obvious. You know why this is obvious. Just look at the numbers. Prior to 2010, there was one gender transition clinic in the

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United States. Now there are hundreds. Why? Because it's a systemic thing.

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It's a cultural phenomenon. Has nothing to do with actually being confused about what you are.

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It's being made confused about what you are by people purposefully pushing that in TikTok and all the rest of this kind of stuff.

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So if a past, if a group of elders had told an individual, what you're doing is against God's word, it's against God's truth.

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It's against the beliefs of this church and it will result in your being disfellowshipped. And then they go ahead and do it.

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What else are they supposed to do? But see, the whole idea is all just, they're just so, they're just, they're just so harsh and hard.

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Yeah, church discipline is harsh and hard, which is why most of these folks, especially when they read

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Paul, just detest him. They just detest him because he does church discipline and he says we are to do church discipline.

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And he says, these are supposed to be your priorities. But of course, if you had gone back and read

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Moses, what are you supposed to do as an Israelite in covenant with Yahweh? If even your wife tries to lead you from God to worship another

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God, what are you supposed to do? Vast majority of Christians don't know because if they read it in the old

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Testament, they either closed their mind to it or forgot about it or said that can't be what it is and moved on. You're not only to turn that person in, but you're to be the first one to throw the stone in their execution.

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Oh, see? And so there's all sorts of stuff in the Bible that these groups just end up going, ah,

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I don't believe any of that. I don't believe any of that. And it'd just be nice if they were just straight up front saying, we only believe what we think are the nice parts of the

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Bible. That would be really, just put that out front. Just put it out front. Most of this we don't like.

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And we're only going to stick to the stuff that tickles our fancy and the rest of it we're just going to say is a bunch of cultural stuff that we've grown past or that kind of stuff.

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Just keep that in mind. Another one of my friends came out to her parents and the first words out of her dad's mouth were, you've ruined our family and brought the wrath of God upon us.

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But do you know what I find most incredible about these folks? Is that somehow, through it all, they have not given up on Jesus.

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They've not given up on Jesus. This is key. This is key. They've not given up on Jesus.

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What does that mean? Are we talking about the Jesus of the

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New Testament? Are we talking about the Jesus who says, if you love me, you will keep my commandments? Are we talking about the Jesus, the first words out of his mouth when he preached was repent for the kingdom of heaven in his hand?

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Are we talking about Jesus of Matthew chapter 23? Are we talking about the Jesus of scripture?

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Are we talking about a religious phenomenon? Are we talking about a

37:33

Shea Guevara shirt, but it's Jesus? Because you have to find out what we're talking about here.

37:43

What do you mean, didn't give up on Jesus? Jesus says to repent. They don't repent.

37:48

How have they not given up on Jesus? Saying they didn't give up on Jesus is another way of saying they want to remain religious and so they create a

38:00

Jesus that allows them to remain religious. But they demand that that Jesus accept them as they are without repentance.

38:10

That's been the issue all along. There's the dividing line on this issue.

38:16

If you have someone come to the church and they experience same -sex attraction, are involved in same -sex attraction, anything along those lines, the first question is, are they repentant?

38:31

And one of the most horrible things that the church is doing, the church has done some horrible things, but what the horrible things church is doing right now is actually teaching people, you don't have to be.

38:43

Jesus will accommodate himself to you rather than you repenting of what nails

38:49

Jesus to the cross. And so you wonder why when you look at these churches that become fully affirming like this, they don't seem to believe anything that we believe any longer.

39:07

And even the stuff that they say they believe, when you really start pushing it, it's paper mache.

39:14

There's nothing there to it. There's a substance to it. And that's why. The faith of LGBTQ plus Christians astounds and inspires me.

39:27

And Andy Stanley, it seems. Are you catching a theme here? There's no external authority that shines a light and determines what faith in Christ actually is.

39:42

Instead, you look at someone, and it can be a lesbian, it can be a homosexual, it can be a transgender person.

39:52

And why can't it be a pedophile, someone involved in an incestuous relationship, someone involved in bestiality?

40:01

Why can't it be those things? Because the argumentation that will be used to create a category of sexual minorities, why aren't they sexual minorities?

40:13

And the law against those things you've already dismissed from the Old Testament as being irrelevant. So why not?

40:22

Why not? So could you literally have someone coming out and saying, you know,

40:29

I got to know this guy and all the things he's been through, and yet he still loves

40:35

Jesus, and he still reads his Bible, and I mean, he's just a better Christian than I am.

40:41

And finally, you know, we're sitting at coffee one day, and he admits that he's been in a 15 -year -long relationship with his mother.

40:56

What do you do? Well, I don't believe that Zach Lambert or anybody else in this perspective has any ground to say anything other than, your faith in Jesus is amazing.

41:09

That you've been able to, I mean, people have said such terrible things about these relationships and have made you feel so bad about yourself, but you've stuck with Jesus.

41:19

Man, that just is amazing. Why not?

41:25

Why not? Because you don't have the law any longer. And if you look at any passage of Scripture, and you're going to see this when he gets to these passages of Scripture, even though they clearly state, when he gets to 1

41:41

Corinthians 6, that's he deals with. He doesn't talk about his background. He doesn't talk about how it comes in Leviticus. He doesn't do any of that stuff, though he should have been trained to recognize those things.

41:51

He doesn't mention any of that stuff. But you can come to direct, clear text and say, but that's not talking about the loving relationships of the people

42:03

I know. Oh, the Bible says you're not to have your mother, but that's talking about, that's power structures.

42:13

That's neo -Marxism. It's abusive power structures. It's not loving relationships.

42:19

You just need to understand. You just need to get to know these people. They're in loving relationships. You're so mean.

42:26

You're going to drive them away from Jesus. See, it's easy to do it. Easy to do it.

42:32

And that's what this is. It's the same thing with the Bible. Because there is no objective standard.

42:39

It's all, oh, these are just wonderful people. So therefore the Bible can't be talking about them.

42:46

Yes, actually it's talking about them. And if you love them, you would tell them that.

42:54

It's not loving to aid them in their self -deception. Just last year,

43:02

I met a gay man who's been pastoring for over 25 years. He grew up in fundamentalist churches.

43:08

He was actually a student at Bob Jones University, which is one of the most prominent Christian colleges in America. He was there at the time when

43:14

Bob Jones's president marched in Washington, D .C. to oppose civil rights being given to LGBTQ people and said in his speech in front of the

43:23

White House, quote, I guarantee it would solve the problem post -haste if homosexuals were stoned. This gay pastor has experienced more hate than I can imagine and yet still follows

43:34

Jesus with everything he has. Now, again, be prepared and be ready to deal with the not -so -subtle but constant redefinition of opposition as hate.

43:51

Opposition as hate. So if you're not affirming, if you say no, your interpretation of scripture is whacked.

44:01

It would never substantiate the resurrection, the trinity, the deity of Christ, any of the fundamental

44:08

Christian doctrines that we've held to all along. It turns the Bible into a

44:14

Jenga puzzle that you can do whatever you want. And I won't go there.

44:21

From their perspective, that's hatred. That's hatred. And hatred's a emotion word.

44:29

It creates strong emotion when you even use it. And so it's amazing how often it's used.

44:35

The left uses it as a mantra. You're filled with hate, you're filled with hate, you're filled with hate, no matter what it is, if you oppose them, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate.

44:45

They can't define love for their life, but every bit of opposition is hatred.

44:53

That's the essence. Including dedicating his whole professional life to the church.

44:59

And when I asked, how do you keep going? How do you like faithfully persevere through all this junk?

45:06

He said, I'm not going to let anybody take Jesus from me. Okay, see the emotion?

45:14

I'm not going to let anyone take Jesus from me. A number of years ago,

45:19

I debated one of the most intelligent men I've ever debated. I mean, massive

45:26

IQ by the name of John Dominic Croson. And the subject of our debate was reliability in the

45:34

New Testament, but we focused in upon what it said about Jesus and in reading his works.

45:40

And one of the reasons that Dom liked me was I actually read his autobiography and I read his works and I knew where he was coming from.

45:49

But one of the issues that came up was one of the quotes that I used actually in our debate was from someone who was criticizing the historical

45:59

Jesus movement, of which Dom is a rather radical part. And basically what he said was for everyone seeking the historical

46:08

Jesus, it's like looking down a well and finally coming to the conclusion that the image you see coming back is

46:17

Jesus, but it happens to look just like you. So when you talk about who this

46:24

Jesus is, if you don't have an objective standard, then you're going to end up with a subjective standard, which is going to give you a

46:35

Jesus that looks like you need him to look. So when someone says,

46:41

I won't let them take Jesus from me, you mean the Jesus that calls you to repentance? The Jesus is

46:47

Lord over your life? The Jesus says male and female? That Jesus?

46:53

You don't have that Jesus. You rejected that Jesus. I don't know what Jesus you've got now, but he ain't going to save you because he's not the real

47:00

Jesus. And again, the horror here is when people who know the real

47:07

Jesus won't say this. Oh, they won't listen. Well, but you have to tell them the truth.

47:16

When you affirm them in their rebellion, you're just assisting in their own death is what you're doing.

47:25

But the point is, that's using reason. That's not looking at his story as the ultimate authority.

47:35

It's saying there's another ultimate authority out here that judges this story.

47:40

Oh, but he might be offended by that. Yeah. Bible talks about that.

47:46

The cross is offensive to those who are perishing. And so the message of discipleship and Lordship, it's offensive to those who are perishing.

47:57

That's a reality. These folks don't want that offense. And so they changed the message.

48:04

And that's what you've got here. I'm not going to let anybody take

48:12

Jesus for far too long. Christian.

48:17

See, what should have been, if this was meant to be a serious presentation, what should be the course of this sermon?

48:27

If you actually want to try to prove that these people have the real Jesus, then you should be presenting biblical norms that prove that reality.

48:35

They can't do that. And so they don't. Instead, you've got a nameless, faceless pastor, 25 years and with tears and I can't keep talking.

48:48

I'm not going to let them take Jesus from me. So what is that? That is an emotional argument that they already have

48:54

Jesus. You haven't established that. You haven't gone here and demonstrated that. And you're never going to go here to do that because you can't and you know you can't.

49:03

So what you do is you do emotion. And man, that works with people who have no maturity, which is unfortunately a large portion of people today.

49:18

That's why this didn't work in the past. And churches have tried to take Jesus from LGBTQ plus people.

49:25

They have been marginalized, excluded, and even attacked in the name of Christ. And that's why we were spending this morning talking about homophobia and transphobia in the church.

49:37

And we're in the middle of this teaching series called All Inclusive, God's Big Beautiful Family. We've been looking at these stories from the life of Jesus and the early church of how

49:45

God radically included people in his family who had previously been excluded or marginalized.

49:51

Now, I usually spend about a week writing a sermon. I've been writing this one for two months. Okay, I want you to listen to this.

49:58

I want you to hear what he says here. The whole thing is less than an hour.

50:09

So two months. Two months.

50:15

There must be a boatload of serious, in -depth, biblical research coming, right?

50:24

But I want you to hear his own claim. Because we're not—we didn't just pick this one out. He linked to it.

50:30

This was the one he chose to represent his position. And he's going to tell everybody this is going to go a lot longer than normal.

50:39

Okay? So this is his full—this is the best he's got. That's important to recognize.

50:48

I've been preparing for it for what feels like a decade. I spent more time on it than any other sermon

50:53

I've ever preached. It's not even close. Not even close. The amount of time.

51:01

And we are almost 10 minutes in. And you haven't heard word one from God yet.

51:08

You've heard emotion. You've heard anonymous stories. You've heard his personal story of getting kicked out of the certain denominations.

51:20

But we haven't even gotten anything yet. And we've only gotten a certain amount of time left.

51:25

Actually, I just realized it's only 51 minutes. So it's actually only 50 minutes long. So he spent more time—now look, there are people who've preached 50 -minute sermons that were just jam -packed with great stuff that took a lot of time to prepare.

51:43

Great. This is not one of them. Because you see, I come from churches where queer people were called evil and abominations and every slur you can imagine.

51:52

If this was a fair presentation, what he would have said is that homosexuality, lesbianism, transgenderism is identified as an abomination in God's sight because the

52:08

Bible says that. It doesn't say about transgenderism specifically because that's actually beneath.

52:17

That's a level of rebellion and perversity that—let's just put it this way.

52:24

It's a modern first world issue.

52:32

Yes, there was cross -dressing and sexual perversity in that way in the ancient world.

52:38

There were men who acted like women and yeah, that happened. But they didn't have the technology to do bottom surgery and stuff like that.

52:48

And besides that, most people were just trying to get enough food to eat with for most of human history.

52:56

They didn't have the money to be doing the kind of stuff. And then again, I guess today, now like in the military and stuff like that, you just make all the rest of us pay for it.

53:05

That's the perversity we're facing today. I've ignorantly participated in marginalization and exclusion of LGBTQ plus folks.

53:13

And for that, I am deeply, deeply sorry. But about 10 years ago, things started to shift.

53:19

And they started to shift because I met a few gay people who were faithfully following Jesus. And they didn't—

53:24

Okay, then please, please catch that. They started to shift. Why? Because I discovered that I had been using inappropriate hermeneutics.

53:35

I discovered that, you know, I did a study of arsenic coitus and I discovered that just because those terms come straight out of Leviticus 18 and Leviticus 20, that doesn't necessarily mean that Paul had that in mind.

53:53

And given that the end of this, believe it or not, he's going to recommend the 1946 movie.

53:58

He's actually dependent. That blows me away. I'll have to admit, I just thought of this right now. Here's a

54:04

Dallas grad. If anybody should have the wherewithal, the understanding to recognize the utter foolishness of the entire thesis of the 1946 movie, it should be a

54:21

Dallas grad. Because, hey, when I was looking at seminaries to go to, and I'm looking at Dallas, I'm being told, you're going to know your biblical language is right, left, and center.

54:32

Maybe that's not the case anymore. I don't know. But you would think that anybody who has any meaningful training would be able to see through the utter absurdity of, well, homosexuality wasn't a

54:47

Bible until 1946. As if an English translation has something to do with the meaning of a

54:55

Greek term that was written by Paul in the first stinking century that had a clear background from the

55:04

Mosaic Code and the Greek Septuagint. It still amazes me.

55:11

And it amazes me the film's not out yet. It's been shown at some film places and stuff like that.

55:17

But why even put it out there? Because they know. I mean, as soon as it was announced,

55:23

I said, hey, be happy to debate anyone you put forward or any group you put forward.

55:31

I think they know it's going to be ravaged once it's finally widely available.

55:38

But he does recommend it, which is truly amazing. Formed any of the stereotypes, the things

55:43

I've been told about what they were like, right? This caused me to start kind of digging deep into scripture and reading widely from a variety of perspectives.

55:53

So what's the motivation? The motivation to start reading widely and digging deep is,

56:04

I've seen these people and they have Jesus. He's already made his conclusion. He's not coming to the scriptures to find out that it's even possible.

56:14

He's already come up with the conclusion, and now he's going to go to scripture to dig deep and to find out if this is, you know, how can that be?

56:24

Well, he's going to find a way to make it happen. I've read about 20 books on the subject, as well as countless articles and sermons.

56:32

And today I'm just going to share some of that journey with you as we look at scripture to help us understand how God sees sexual and gender minorities.

56:40

Okay, so now you just had a new category introduced, sexual and gender minorities.

56:49

Now, what he's going to do now is he's just said, we're going to look at scripture. But what he does is he goes to modern psychology, modern psychiatric sources, redefined terms to create a lens that will then allow him to take this idea of gender minorities and read it into Matthew 19, read it into Acts chapter 8, celebrate that, and then dismiss the clear texts in just a matter of minutes, rushed at the end.

57:30

That's your methodology here. At least most of the other people we've dealt with actually tried to, you know, when remember when we started dealing with Brownson's presentation on Romans 1, we never finished it.

57:44

But, you know, we played these people. And at least a lot of them tried to go these texts.

57:50

That's not what you're going to get here. But the promise is made.

57:56

It's just never actually fulfilled. We'll also talk about the handful of verses commonly used to justify excluding or marginalizing

58:03

LGBTQ plus folks in the church. Now, my guess is that this message is...

58:08

Notice, they are LGBTQ by creation. It is an inherent reality of their nature.

58:15

It cannot be changed. That is the assumption. And so what's the issue? How is it just presented?

58:22

And you got to be careful because this is how they control the narrative. This is why they're excluded from the church.

58:33

Well, who do we exclude from the church? Those who reject scripture's teaching as to how we are to live in the church.

58:41

Who would reject Jesus's authority to say, this is true and this is false.

58:47

So it's not a matter of exclusion from the church. It's a matter of, is this something that needs to be repented of so as to be a part of the church?

58:57

That never gets asked. In fact, I did do, and I have on my system, and you can do the same thing.

59:06

Go to YouTube. You may not be aware of this feature, but if you go to YouTube, you click on the...

59:13

It's down in the control bar. It'll say show transcript. And you can pull up an

59:22

AI -generated transcript of videos that are on YouTube.

59:28

Really helpful. It's not 100 % accurate, but it's pretty close. And grab it yourself.

59:35

I have it open on my system here. And look up repentance. You will find nothing said in this sermon about a need to repent of these sins because he doesn't believe they are.

59:51

They're not sins. So there's no reason to repent. That should be the issue. But it's already been presented by narrative storytelling and emotion.

01:00:04

So you never actually have to then substantiate it. But it becomes the key interpretive grid.

01:00:11

You didn't get it from scripture. You got it from stories. And in progressive liberalism, leftism, whatever you want to call it, that is how they do it.

01:00:23

And you have to be able to see it and not fall for it. And be able to say, whoa, wait a minute.

01:00:29

You just smuggled a bunch of stuff in there that really you've determined the end of the debate before you've even started it.

01:00:37

Haven't you? Well, they have. I make some people a little uncomfortable, maybe even displeased.

01:00:42

And I understand that. Here's my request. I'm going to pray in just a second. As I do, I want you to ask

01:00:48

God to open your heart, to give you an open mind as we walk through this together.

01:00:54

And I also want you to know that I'm going to stick around here right after we finish today. I'm going to be giving away these books like I have for the rest of the series.

01:01:00

And I'm more than happy to answer any questions you have right now or schedule a time to go get coffee, Zoom, something like that. I'm an open book.

01:01:06

I'm happy to talk to you about this. Now we're going to cover a lot of ground this morning, which means today's message is a little longer than usual.

01:01:13

Look, this is the introduction. We're 11 minutes in. This is the introduction. But it's still only 51 minutes long.

01:01:20

I'm not going to have a song at the end. I'm also going to put a bunch of notes on the screen. So feel free to write stuff down.

01:01:26

Or I'm actually happy to send you the full manuscript of the message today later if you want. You can text me or email me.

01:01:31

I'll send you the whole thing. Sound good? Okay, let's pray and dive in. God, we thank you for this morning.

01:01:39

Thank you for your church. We thank you for your scriptures. I pray that as we dive into your word that you would illuminate it for us.

01:01:49

That you would open our hearts, open our minds to the truth that you have for us this morning. I pray that the words that come from my mouth would be inspired by you,

01:01:56

God. You would lead us as a church family to who you've called us to be. In Jesus' name

01:02:03

I pray, amen. Now, aside from the idea of my words being inspired, which is a little bit weird, that sounds like a prayer that you'd hear at the beginning of most sermons in evangelical churches.

01:02:15

That's what you'd hear from DTS. But it's not what you've heard up to this point. It's not going to be what you hear afterwards.

01:02:23

That's what's really amazing. Now, I'm a big believer in common language helping to facilitate discussion.

01:02:30

So we're going to start by defining some terms. These are from Merriam -Webster. Heterosexual, a person who is sexually or romantically attracted to people of the opposite sex.

01:02:38

And then cisgender, a person whose gender identity corresponds with the sex that person had or was identified as having at birth.

01:02:46

Now, again, what we're going to have here now are modern... None of us had ever heard cisgender before.

01:02:55

These are modern terms, terminology that is not being derived from a

01:03:02

Christian worldview. There isn't a concern about that whatsoever. It's just, we're going to bring this stuff in.

01:03:10

And if it influences our interpretation or it limits our categories, well, hey, that's just the way it is.

01:03:16

So heterosexual and cisgender people, sometimes called cishet for short, make up most of the population.

01:03:23

I am cishet. And cishet people are the sexual and gender majority in the world.

01:03:30

Now, there are also a few terms used to describe people who are not cishet. LGBTQ plus or LGBTQIA plus.

01:03:36

There's actually some kind of controversy inside of the community about whether to include IA. So I'm going to just use LGBTQ plus for the remainder of the message.

01:03:43

Queer or sexual and gender minority. These are all terms used to describe people who are not heterosexual or cisgender.

01:03:50

And notice, assumption being what? That this is normative.

01:03:56

This is innate. And a Christian minister would establish that from scripture.

01:04:03

But no attempt is made. It's just simply, let's use these secular sources and force that on scripture.

01:04:09

Now, most of us know what it means generally to be gay, lesbian, or bisexual. But there's a lot more confusion, right?

01:04:15

About what being transgender or intersex means. And we see this like a lot right now, right?

01:04:21

It's playing itself out in public discourse and in politics where trans people are constantly being weaponized for political gain.

01:04:29

Now, just be aware. He just used the term intersex and he's going to do a ploy.

01:04:39

It's completely invalid ploy of making the genetic reality of intersex individuals, which is a genetic abnormality.

01:04:50

It's a genetic error. It's part of the fallen state. And there are people, very small number of people, but there are people who have genetic issues there.

01:05:02

He's going to try to connect that and make that the same thing as transgender. They are not the same thing.

01:05:10

Almost none of those who claim to be transgender have any genetic abnormality of their sex chromosomes whatsoever.

01:05:20

I would say 99 .95 % of everyone seeking transgender surgery and all the rest of this kind of stuff have zero genetic abnormalities as far as their sex chromosomes are concerned.

01:05:36

So the weaponization of intersex people is by these folks, not the other way around.

01:05:43

And it's a horrific thing. So because of the complexity and the prevalence of this conversation,

01:05:49

I'm actually going to spend a few minutes right now talking about sex and gender. So the first thing that you need to know is that biological sex is not a binary.

01:05:57

Biological sex is not a binary. Now, that is not a... Now, if you're going to, again, as a

01:06:03

Christian minister establishes, where should you go? Jesus said God made the male and female.

01:06:12

That's where you would go. He doesn't go there. He's going to go to modern science rather than to Jesus.

01:06:22

That shouldn't surprise us given what's come before, but that's what he's going to do. Political statement, that is a scientific one.

01:06:29

You see, biologically, there are three major categories of sex, male, female, and intersex.

01:06:35

And again, that's not a major category. That is a very small minority category.

01:06:43

And I'm not... You're saying, well, you're just a... You're just a theologian. You don't care. Pulled it out of my library before I got here.

01:06:53

Science and Genetics, Introduction to Heredity, George W. Byrne's fourth edition. Out of date, obviously.

01:07:02

What's the date on... On this one here? 80. We're talking 43 years ago.

01:07:11

This was my textbook. I was Department Fellow in Anatomy and Physiology. This thing is all marked up, including the entire chapter on intersex.

01:07:20

I had to know the various chromosomal aberrations and everything else. The point is, it's genetic.

01:07:28

And it's a mistake. It's part of the fallen world. It is not just something that normally happens.

01:07:38

It's part of the fallen world. It is not the same thing as transgender.

01:07:44

It is a lie to tell people that they are the same thing. When... When every person walking into a gender clinic and getting a doctor to neuter them and do all sorts of other horrible things to their bodies.

01:08:01

If they have a genetic test done, you will not find any aberration whatsoever in the sex chromosome.

01:08:13

That's what intersex is. So, he's trying to say...

01:08:19

Again, this isn't a sermon. So instead of going, Jesus taught that in the initial creation,

01:08:26

God made male and female. Because what he doesn't want to have to say is, and if there's anything other, it's a part of the fall.

01:08:36

There's the problem. But it is a part of the fall. And people who are truly intersex, people who truly have genetic abnormalities in the church should be treated with respect and pastoral care.

01:08:51

And they should be counseled as to how to live in such a way, given the providence of God in their experience.

01:08:59

Just as we deal with people who have spina bifida or anything else that impacts their life.

01:09:07

But to use them as a cover for the rebellion against God's creative design of male and female is absolutely reprehensible.

01:09:23

Just reprehensible. It's just wrong. Intersex is an umbrella term used to describe a variety of variations that affect genitals, hormones, chromosomes, or reproductive organs.

01:09:35

Now sometimes these characteristics are visible at birth. Sometimes they appear at puberty. And sometimes they are not physically apparent at all.

01:09:43

Now biological males and females make up the majority of people. But intersex folks do account for a significant percentage of the population.

01:09:51

Now studies are like way all over the place on this. Some saying intersex people make up as little as 0 .02

01:09:56

% of the population. Others as many as 4 % of the population. But the American Journal of Human Biology estimates that 1 .7

01:10:04

% of the population would fit under the umbrella term intersex. Now, again, make sure you're hearing.

01:10:13

This is a specific genetic condition. It's not just one. It's an entire... Again, I'd show you, but they actually showed what this ended up looking like with pictures.

01:10:24

So I can't show you. But there are entire charts and have been for many, many years, this is decades old, that give you

01:10:35

Klinefelter's syndrome and this type of... All the hermaphroditic genetic combinations of XXY and XYY and all the other things that can result in these genetic errors.

01:10:51

Which has nothing to do with Richard Levine.

01:11:01

Richard Levine has no genetic issues. There is no XXY, XYY, anything like that.

01:11:10

Bruce Jenner has obviously perfect genetics.

01:11:17

So to even make the connection, again, reprehensible.

01:11:23

Absolutely reprehensible. Which is roughly the same number of people who have red hair. 1 .7%.

01:11:30

From both a biological and linguistic perspective, sex and gender are not the same thing.

01:11:36

Okay. Where is he getting this from? From modern, past 20, 30 years at most, scholastic studies that are a part of rebellion against the

01:11:50

Christian worldview. He's not getting this from scripture because he doesn't get any of this from scripture. This is not a pastor leading a church.

01:12:00

This is an individual introducing a supposed church to all sorts of rebellious perspectives in the name of,

01:12:09

I'm going to get to the Bible eventually. But what's he doing first? First, he's establishing his conclusions so he can then twist the scriptures to substantiate them at a later point.

01:12:21

It's so plain and so obvious. You see, sex is rooted in the things I listed above, genitals, hormones, chromosomes, reproductive organs, secondary characteristics, which usually develop during puberty.

01:12:32

But while gender is influenced by physiology and brain structure, it is impacted by and expressed according to social and cultural patterns.

01:12:42

Meaning, what characteristics define masculinity or femininity vary significantly depending on time and place and context.

01:12:49

We all intuitively understand this. We see it all the time, right? Masculinity in Paris might look like wearing high heels, but in the deep

01:12:56

South, it might look like wearing cowboy boots. You know, I just wonder how well that would go over in Austin, outside of that little room.

01:13:05

But be careful because there are cultural expressions that can change over time.

01:13:15

Men used to wear wigs. You don't wear wigs anymore. Now, there was a reason for that as far as just personal cleanliness and stuff like that and bugs.

01:13:27

But we look at pictures of, you know, paintings, obviously, of generations before us, and they've got fluffy things and wigs, and we just go, wow, you know, what happened to the jeans?

01:13:43

Type of a thing. But don't be misled by that. There are fundamental differences, my daughter was saying that, you know, she's had her first child, boy, that she's still nursing.

01:14:02

And she's like, you know, people say, you know, boys, girls, oh, you know, but I can guarantee you one thing.

01:14:10

This is the first child that I've been nursing while he's stabbing me with his toy screwdriver. Okay. So, you know, and so it's real obvious boys will be boys, and girls will be girls.

01:14:27

And, you know, you can close your eyes to that and pretend that's not reality, but it is reality in the real world anyways.

01:14:34

Femininity in some African communities means fixing the roof of your cottage, but in Austin, it might mean meal prepping for your family.

01:14:41

My favorite modern example of this is pastors preaching about the decline of biblical masculinity while wearing tight leather pants and earrings.

01:14:49

I have never heard that. Have you ever, Rich? You know, Rich is from Prescott. This is a little hard for Rich.

01:14:55

Okay. Rich is struggling a little bit in the other room as he's listening to this. I'm seeing these looks of ghastly shock and stuff like that.

01:15:04

And I'm hoping he doesn't just fall off the chair here eventually. But I'm sorry.

01:15:10

First of all, maybe it's because I don't listen to guys in tight leather pants with earrings. But I can't imagine any of them talking about biblical masculinity either.

01:15:24

Hey, right now, wow. There's a lot of argumentation about that going on in social media right now.

01:15:34

99 .98 % of it is completely irrelevant, but it's going on.

01:15:41

But yeah, I've never seen that happening. That they would not have been caught dead in a year ago or decade ago because that outfit would have been considered feminine.

01:15:51

But now things have changed and so they're comfortable wearing it. Still preaching the same message, unfortunately. It's still feminine.

01:16:00

Rich is going, nope, nope, nope, nope, nope, nope, nope, nope, nope. Now, the degree to which gender is or should be influenced by someone's sex at birth is debated.

01:16:11

And the degree to which gender should be influenced by God's biological design is also debated.

01:16:18

Not in scripture, it's not. And again, what you're going to see is, you know, all these books he has in front of him, see, these are, look at all these people.

01:16:28

They all agree with me. The revisionist perspective exists to create confusion.

01:16:35

One of the great signs of judgment in our day is that God has allowed this kind of apostasy um, you know, when

01:16:46

Christian ministers testify about laws regarding transgenderism or homosexuality and stuff like that, they're always followed up by some rainbow -stoled priestess from a

01:16:59

United Methodist Church to contradict what has just been said. That's a judgment upon a society that there are that many people who would be willing to prostitute the word of God in them.

01:17:11

And that's what it is. It's a prostitution of the word of God. But what we do know is that the call for all

01:17:18

Christians, regardless of sex or gender, is Christ -likeness, defined by the fruit of the

01:17:25

Spirit. Christ -likeness defined by the fruit of the Spirit. Now, where does the fruit of the

01:17:31

Spirit come from, Paul? So, Paul writes about the fruit of the Spirit to the

01:17:37

Galatians. But that's the same letter where he says, of those who would cause them to be circumcised,

01:17:46

I wish they'd let the knife slip. And that's the same Paul who wrote 1

01:17:53

Corinthians chapter 6. And that's the same Paul who was intimately familiar with the

01:18:00

Jesus tradition, which was still being written in the Gospels at that time. And Jesus is teaching that if you teach anyone to break the least of these commandments, you'll be least in the kingdom of heaven.

01:18:13

So, it's selective choosing. Christ -likeness involves recognizing that Christ was the one who gave us the law in the first place, as part of the

01:18:31

Trinity, and indeed, as the one who reveals the Father in the

01:18:36

Old Testament. The one who's seen by Isaiah in Isaiah chapter 6.

01:18:41

That's Jesus. And that Jesus says to Isaiah, I'm going to judge these people.

01:18:48

I'm going to harden their hearts. That's the same Jesus. So, you can't get rid of the holy

01:18:56

Jesus to have the nice, comfy, squishy Jesus. It doesn't work.

01:19:02

And so, the fruit of the Spirit, the Spirit is given to people as part of their regeneration and they are given faith.

01:19:15

And another of those gifts, that Spirit is what? Repentance. God's kindness leads you to repentance.

01:19:23

So, when you leave repentance out, you are no longer talking about the Spirit. We're no longer talking about the fruit of the Spirit. The first fruit of the

01:19:30

Spirit is repent and believe. Mighty important starting place.

01:19:37

There's Christ -likeness defined by the fruit of the Spirit. Dallas Theological Seminary professor and gender studies expert,

01:19:43

Dr. Sandra Gwan, said it like this. Did you catch that? So, Dallas has a gender studies expert now.

01:19:52

Wow. Okay. On our summer mixtape back in 2020. What God is interested in is fruit of the

01:19:57

Spirit. For some, it's going to be the fruit of the Spirit in a female body. For others, it's going to be in a male body.

01:20:02

And for others, it's going to be in an intersex body. But it's going to be the fruit of the Spirit, no matter what your body is.

01:20:10

And if you extend that out to transgender, homosexual, whatever else, you are going beyond any kind of Biblical category whatsoever.

01:20:19

This is very important. The call to Christ -likeness is never gendered in Scripture, right? So, there are no verses that say, here's what it means to be a

01:20:26

Christ -like male. Here's what it means to be a Christ -like female. Really? So, all that stuff about Christ as the husband and the bride, the church, and the differences in the commands that Scripture gives to what, well, for example, and I'm sure they don't believe in anything like this, but the qualifications for the eldership, all male, no qualifications for female eldership, there's a difference in the commandments as to what women are to be doing.

01:21:00

All that, all cultural, all cultural. Don't worry about it. Don't worry about it. There's nothing there, right?

01:21:08

What? Does he know what a woman is? Well, that's a good, that's a very good question.

01:21:15

And in much the same way, there's nothing in the Bible that talks about being transgender or gender nonconforming.

01:21:21

Now, there is one verse that some people try to point to, which is Genesis 1, 27, and it says this, God created mankind in his own image.

01:21:29

In the image of God, he created them. Male and female, he created them. You know,

01:21:34

I know somebody who pointed to that text too, and it's terrible they did it.

01:21:40

Oh, it was Jesus in Matthew 19, and he interpreted it for us.

01:21:47

How did that ever happen? Now, but we already know, right, from what I just said, that male and female, he created them can't mean there are only two biological sexes.

01:21:57

Now, did you catch that? Are you seeing this? You're not getting your theology and your view of the world from Scripture.

01:22:06

You've already gotten it from the world, and now you're saying, well, the Bible doesn't talk about this.

01:22:14

Because I've now introduced a sexual minority called intersex, which is actually just simply a genetic abnormality.

01:22:24

And by the way, there are all sorts of other genetic errors, mutations, abnormalities.

01:22:30

Most genetic mutations are fatal, okay? But there are genetic abnormalities that cause other physical manifestations.

01:22:41

Hemophilia, for example, is a genetic abnormality. It's not a third kind of human.

01:22:48

It's a genetic abnormality. Adam and Eve did not have hemophilia. That developed because of the curse, because of the fall, just as the intersex problems with the sex chromosome developed after the fall.

01:23:05

So this whole thing, we're going to go out here, we're going to grab this, we're going to reel it in here. And now it's the lens through which we look at Scripture and so we look at Genesis 1 .27

01:23:14

and yeah, it says male and female. And yeah, Jesus interpreted that way, but it can't be that way because we've already done this.

01:23:22

You see how it works? Cultural eisegesis. Cultural eisegesis.

01:23:29

It's clear, it's plain, but you've got to be able to see it. And if your critical thinking capacities have already been turned off by the emotion that came first, that's how this works.

01:23:45

And that's why they won't debate. That's why he won't debate. Because you can't do that in a debate.

01:23:50

I don't let it happen. Oh, you can try, but I get equal time. And then we get cross -examination.

01:23:58

And if you start crying during cross -examination, it just means you're losing your time. Because I'm not going to be moved by that.

01:24:06

Okay? It's not going to work. Sorry. Not in a debate.

01:24:11

Because intersex people exist. So why include that phrase in this verse? Well, it's because of hierarchy.

01:24:18

See, this verse emphasizes the fact that in God's design, there should be no hierarchy between humans based on anything, but especially not based on biological sex or gender.

01:24:28

When the world was created, it was God in charge, humanity under, and then all of creation under that.

01:24:33

It was very simply like this. There was no deviation, no hierarchy between humans. So then how do transgender folks fit in?

01:24:40

So what, how Jesus interpreted it, we're just going to leave that out. Look, I hope this isn't what he was taught at Dallas.

01:24:50

I really, really do. Cause I, you know, there've been some great people that have taught at Dallas and they're, some of them are spinning their graves and others are throwing things at the

01:25:01

TV screen or the computer screen when they hear this type of stuff. This is a Dallas grad? Yeah.

01:25:08

But it, yeah. Well, this, well, first the definition. Transgender means a person who feels a sense of disconnection between their sex and their gender identity.

01:25:20

Yeah. And we're going to, where do we go for scripture for that one? There's not going to be anything from scripture whatsoever.

01:25:28

How about transgender? A person who feels they have the right to reject God's sovereign decree in their life.

01:25:37

How's that? Transgenderism at its root is rebellious and immature.

01:25:45

At its root, that's what it is. It's rebellious and immature. From a biblical perspective.

01:25:54

But that's not the ultimate authority in this context. Now the fifth edition of the

01:25:59

Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, commonly called the DSM -5. So DSM, we all, we've all read enough about this, right?

01:26:07

You all know the political pressures and stuff that, you know, they changed the DSM first on homosexuality and now on everything else.

01:26:15

And this is a money -driven, politically created document, but it's given ultimate authority in a secular society.

01:26:26

So it's secular. It's secular scripture is what it is. But it's based upon the utter rejection of biblical categories of human existence.

01:26:36

It is so opposed to Romans 1, it's amazing. It calls this sense of disconnection gender dysphoria.

01:26:43

Now gender dysphoria is a clinically significant distress or impairment related to a strong desire to be of another gender, which may include the desire to change primary and or secondary sex characteristics.

01:26:55

Now there is overwhelming consensus in the medical field that gender dysphoria is real.

01:27:01

Okay, so we have overwhelming consensus in the medical field that evolution is real. We have overwhelming consensus in the medical field.

01:27:09

Well, we had overwhelming consensus that you should get a vaccine, right? Oh, there's all sorts of things.

01:27:15

We have overwhelming consensus. But you need to recognize there is an overwhelming consensus of absolute rebellion against God's having revealed truth about humanity in that same field.

01:27:29

That's just the reality. Are there a small number of people who experience real gender dysphoria?

01:27:38

Small number. They should be helped. They should not be mutilated. But the idea that an eight -year -old should be given destructive drugs, puberty blockers, is so evil that every time someone suggests it, the demons of hell giggle with joy.

01:27:58

They giggle with joy. It's just what they want. Talk about the culture of death manifesting itself.

01:28:07

It's, wow. It's not up for debate. It is like settled science and psychology.

01:28:13

And the vast majority of people who identify as transgender, whether they have begun transitioning or not, have gender dysphoria.

01:28:21

And they usually begin experiencing it as children. According to a recent study published in the American Medical Association journal, 73 % of transgender women and 78 % of transgender men first experienced gender dysphoria on or before age seven.

01:28:37

Now, remember something. Anymore, in our day, when you hear these types of quote -unquote studies being presented, hopefully by now we have come to realize that, remember what made

01:28:57

James Lindsay famous initially? The three of them, Peter, him, and the lady, published, they would write these papers and they would submit them to these journals for publication.

01:29:11

And they got a bunch of them published that were just pure rot. They were made up.

01:29:17

They were fictional. They were absurd. But as long as they fit the narrative, they would get published.

01:29:24

That's where we are in quote -unquote peer -reviewed scholarship today. It has been utterly corrupted not only by the narrative, by the secular narrative, but by something called money.

01:29:41

Money. If you're going to get funded, you've got to go with the narrative. If you find evidence of special creation, don't write about it because you're never going to get funded.

01:29:52

In fact, you'll lose any funding you have. Money and narrative. That's what it is.

01:29:59

Over and over again. That's what it is. On or before age seven. Now there are plenty of debates around transgender issues and the questions being asked are important.

01:30:09

Things like is medical transition an ethical treatment for gender dysphoria? And if it is, what age is appropriate?

01:30:15

And who decides if and when it's appropriate? Is that children? Is it parents? Is it doctors? Is it consenting adults?

01:30:21

Is it legislatures? Questions like should trans athletes be allowed to compete in sports with their identifying gender?

01:30:28

No. And if so, what transition steps must be taken before that is okay? None. Now answering these questions isn't easy.

01:30:35

No, it is. Like anyone. It is very easy for a Christian. Zach, it is very easy to answer those questions.

01:30:42

You don't mutilate healthy bodies. You don't inject them with drugs. You don't let boys play against girls.

01:30:49

This is called common sense and you've lost it. You don't have common sense anymore.

01:30:55

This is just basic common. This is something five -year -olds understand and you don't anymore.

01:31:02

You've been taken over by the narrative. It's sad, but it's true. Plus I have views that are informed by my faith.

01:31:08

But honestly, I've never been a decision maker in any of those situations. So my opinion, it really does not matter that much.

01:31:15

Wow. What a view of the pastorate. I'm glad we don't view things that way. Because what we must remember above all else is that these questions are more than issues.

01:31:28

Transgender people are people first and foremost. See, there's your ultimate authority again.

01:31:34

The narrative, the experience, the emotion, they're people. Well, they're deceived people.

01:31:41

If you love them, you help them with their deception. Don't you? That's what you're supposed to do. That's what you're supposed to do.

01:31:47

It's not what you're doing. They are made in the image of God and loved by Jesus. See, I often come across two unhelpful and polarized responses when it comes to transgender questions.

01:31:59

People who think it's gross and people who think it's glamorous. As someone in relationship with a number of transgender folks and parents of transgender kids,

01:32:07

I can tell you it is neither of those things. Gender dysphoria is real. It's not gross or inherently sinful.

01:32:14

And dealing with it, whether through transitioning or not, is not glamorous. It is hard. It is mutilation.

01:32:21

It is destruction. It is ending a person's sexual life, their possibility of being a father or a mother.

01:32:30

Are you friends with detransitioned people too, I wonder? You know, the people who can tell you the horror stories of what they, they're going to have to go through the rest of their life because of the mutilation of their bodies.

01:32:43

Who say over and over again, I wish someone had been willing to stand up and warn me of the stupidity of what

01:32:52

I was about to do. How about those folks? How about those folks? Like really hard.

01:32:58

So be kind to transgender folks. Listen to them. Learn from them.

01:33:05

And also be kind. Listen and learn from them. What, what do you need? Think about what's this?

01:33:12

This is again, it's a mantra. You hear it all the time. So you have to learn from the people who even he is saying are experiencing a mental problem.

01:33:24

You're supposed to learn. Shouldn't they be able to learn from us? Shouldn't they be looking?

01:33:31

Have you ever found anything in the book of Proverbs that says learn from sinners?

01:33:41

The only thing I can think of is learn from them, not to sin. Learn from their destruction, not to, not to be destroyed.

01:33:49

But I never hear anything. You, you just need to be able. You need to just be quiet and learn from them.

01:33:57

Should we learn from the man in the long -term relationship with his mother? Should we learn from the man in Germany that was arrested for the long -term relationship with a farm animal?

01:34:11

You just need to learn from them. No, I don't. They need to learn what truth is and what goodness is.

01:34:20

Because obviously they don't know what it is anymore. It doesn't always have to be a two -way street.

01:34:26

I'm impatient with people struggling to understand this stuff. Don't condemn people just because they ask a question because they voice some confusion.

01:34:36

Here are a few pieces of advice I've gotten from trans friends and parents of trans youth that I've been told I can pass along to fellow cisgender people, regardless of how we feel about any of the complex questions we've been talking about.

01:34:48

Okay, dumb, stupid cisgender people, because that's how you're treated. Dumb, stupid cisgender people who have no insight, have no access to maybe, oh,

01:34:59

I don't know, divine revelation? Here, listen to us now. Isn't it sad?

01:35:06

Instead of being able to say, there is hope for you. There is truth for you. If you will but be repentant, you will but submit to God's truth.

01:35:17

There is hope for you. No, no, no, no, no, no. It's time for us to learn. Number one, don't post hot takes about trans people online.

01:35:26

Don't do it. Number two, don't go up to trans people and tell them how awesome it is that they're trans.

01:35:32

It's not helpful. Would never cross my mind, I'll be perfectly honest with you.

01:35:37

To judge families of trans kids. You have no idea what they are going through. Don't judge families of trans kids.

01:35:45

Well, I'm going to tell you something. I have seen so many, especially of these women, with some alleged trans boy, and I know who the abuser there is.

01:35:56

It's clear. It's obvious. They are wild -eyed, purple -haired, leftist nutcases, and they're using their child to promote their political perspectives.

01:36:07

I've seen it, and you've seen it. Have compassion on parents who are doing the best that they can for their kids while working through their own struggles and experiencing tremendous external pressure from conflicting places.

01:36:21

Yeah, they're being told by the medical community that it's better to mutilate your child than for them to commit suicide.

01:36:27

Well, if this stuff causes someone to consider committing suicide, then that stuff is bad.

01:36:34

And you do not stop that by giving into that. All the quote -unquote studies

01:36:41

I've ever seen said that people after transitioning have a higher experience of suicidal thought, not a lower experience.

01:36:50

Because it doesn't, it's a lie. You can't change genders.

01:36:58

You will always be what God made you to be, and there's something beautiful in that. And the

01:37:03

Christian church should be the one shouting that from the rooftop, not muting it like this man. In a supposed

01:37:09

Christian church. Number four, don't tokenize or stereotype trans people for the purpose of virtue signaling.

01:37:16

Number five, don't share or tolerate disrespectful jokes about trans people. If someone is being a jerk, someone is saying something mean, call it out, confront it.

01:37:25

Number six, don't associate LGBTQ plus people with higher rates of things like abuse or pedophilia by calling them groomers or predators or anything like that because it's simply not true, number one.

01:37:38

Number two, it leads to violence. So here's the next, again, this is always the narrative.

01:37:44

You have to ignore the guy up there in the drag queen thing who's spreading his legs in front of kids.

01:37:53

That's not grooming. No, no, all those kids parading through your public school with all the rainbow, that's not grooming.

01:38:00

You can't talk about that. And if you do, you're creating violence. I don't know how adults actually can come up with it.

01:38:11

I really don't. I wonder if, you know,

01:38:16

I don't know. We'll see. It leads to violence. In fact, transgender adults are actually four times as likely to be the victim of violent crime than cisgender people are.

01:38:30

In what context? By whom? People are not told. You just throw it out there.

01:38:35

You do your CNN thing, throw out a factoid, whether it has a context.

01:38:42

I mean, that's like saying people who take drugs are far more prone to be involved in physical violence than people who don't.

01:38:52

Okay, that's a fact. Why is that a fact? We all know. We all know.

01:39:00

So might there be something else that is involved in this? Texas leads the nation in transgender murders.

01:39:07

Lastly, do not purposefully misgender people. Okay, here we go.

01:39:16

Here we go. Will you lie to someone to be liked by them?

01:39:23

Will you lie about God's creative decree and God's creative reality to be liked by people?

01:39:32

That's the whole question. Pronouns, the only person, whoever demands that you use certain pronouns of them,

01:39:41

Z, Zer, Bobby, all the rest of the stars, literally has the emotional maturity of a five -year -old.

01:39:47

It is narcissistic. It is childish. It's embarrassingly absurd.

01:39:53

And it's embarrassing that even quote unquote Christian men give in on this rather obvious reality.

01:40:02

You are not going to get it right every time. And that is so okay. If you don't know, ask.

01:40:09

If you make a mistake, apologize. Do your best, though, to use people's preferred pronouns just like you'd use someone's preferred name.

01:40:18

Think about it like this. If you had a friend named Dave, and one day Dave came up to you and he said, hey, I've decided to start going by the name

01:40:24

Tim. So could you please start calling me Tim? Okay, wildly invalid argument.

01:40:31

Wildly invalid parallel. Because that's what we're talking about. We're talking about you demanding that someone use pronouns that will specifically deny the created order around us.

01:40:47

I will never look at Bruce Jenner and refer to him as a woman. That's disrespectful to all women, to my mom and my wife and my daughter and my grandchildren, my granddaughters.

01:41:01

Not going to do it. And it is ridiculously selfish and narcissistic of him to demand it if he were to do so.

01:41:12

Same thing with Richard Levine or any of these other people. I'm not going to do it because you're asking me to do not.

01:41:20

You're asking me to actually affirm that mankind's thinking in his mind determines the reality of the world around us.

01:41:29

And it doesn't. You wouldn't say, heck no, Dave, get out of here. And listen,

01:41:35

I'm never going to do that. And if I see you trying to write Tim on a name tag, I'm going to come up, I'm going to rip it off of you.

01:41:40

I'm going to write Dave in all caps and I'm going to put it on your chest because you are Dave. I don't care what anyone says.

01:41:47

Who would never do that, right? See the utterly invalid, completely erroneous parallel because changing a simple name has nothing to do with the reality that it represents, whether male or female, which

01:42:01

Jesus taught us is God's creative design. Using someone's preferred name and pronouns is not political.

01:42:09

It's not theological. It's basic human dignity. And it saves lives, especially for young people.

01:42:18

I want you to really listen to this one. So it saves lives. So if you give in to the fantasy, you're going to save lives.

01:42:27

This is the fantasy that is being presented. And of course, again,

01:42:33

I'm sure you can come up with studies because there's lots of money in this. Just look at the billions being spent on transition surgery.

01:42:40

And those billions are going to be farmed back in to create studies, to substantiate what they're doing. That's the utter degradation of the medical field today.

01:42:50

That's, we see it. We see the pharmaceuticals. You know,

01:42:55

I just thought it was so awesome when Jokovic won the

01:43:01

US Open because he had been kept out of it. Was it

01:43:06

US Open? Yeah, it was US Open. And who's the primary sponsor?

01:43:12

US Open, Moderna. Why do you think he had been kept out? Why do you think, who's got the money?

01:43:20

It's money, money, money everywhere. All around us. 0 .8 million

01:43:26

LGBTQ youth seriously consider suicide each year. You think maybe we should be warning against the

01:43:34

LGBTQ movement then? Think that might be it? Yeah. One attempts suicide every 45 seconds.

01:43:43

An LGBTQ youth attempts suicide every 45 seconds. See how the innateness, see this is, he hasn't even touched on what scripture talks about this.

01:43:57

But the assumption being repeatedly presented is, this is innate.

01:44:03

It's the way they're made. Nothing can change. None of it has to do with watching TikTok or YouTube or being groomed by their teachers in kindergarten, even though their teachers are doing this and we have them on TikTok talking about doing this.

01:44:19

None of that matters. Oh, don't look at any of that. No, no, no, no. Worse for trans youth.

01:44:25

They are two and a half times more likely to attempt suicide than their queer classmates. But here's the really good news.

01:44:32

Acceptance from just one adult decreases the risk of LGBTQ youth attempting suicide by 40%.

01:44:40

One adult. One safe, loving, caring, listening adult.

01:44:46

See the definition? If you give in, if you will not challenge them, try to lead them, affirm them in their created nature, then you are loving and you are safe and you are all these things.

01:45:07

See, and if you're not, then you're not safe, you're not loving. See how this works? This is communicating to his audience that if you won't stand next to that person and give in on these things, then you're not safe, you're not loving, you're not caring, you're all these terrible, horrible things.

01:45:28

Cut suicide rates in almost half. There's nothing remotely

01:45:35

Christ -like about treating trans people or anyone in the LGBTQ plus community as anything less than a sibling made in the image of God.

01:45:44

Catch that. They are made in the image of God, which is why you cannot allow them to continue in the rebellion that will destroy them.

01:45:55

You can't. You're the not safe person. You're the not caring person.

01:46:01

When you go, image of God, but go ahead and mutilate it. Go ahead and rebel against it.

01:46:08

All is well. I want you to like me. I want you to love me. And as we'll see in just a minute, that's exactly how

01:46:14

Jesus in the first church treated sexual and gender minorities. But before we look at scripture, we needed to find our central topic.

01:46:20

We're 23 minutes in. We're 23 minutes in.

01:46:25

I'm going to stop at 25 because that's about halfway. But we've had no scripture yet.

01:46:33

We've had psychology and we've had studies and we've had a tremendous amount of psyops here.

01:46:40

Okay. But we've had no scripture. Genesis 1.

01:46:48

Okay. Yeah, that's true. That's true. He did. He did quote it. I suppose we should do that.

01:46:54

I don't know about you. I'm watching the external camera and I just saw a car pull in the parking lot with its front end completely smashed in and the front wheels flat.

01:47:06

So there must've been an accident on Bethany home. I don't see anything, but that car is not doing too well.

01:47:14

I think it'll probably still be out there. Well, we should affirm it in its new form.

01:47:22

It'll feel better. We don't want it to feel bad about itself. Or today. Just homophobia and transphobia.

01:47:28

It's a fear of, aversion to, and or discrimination against sexual and gender minorities.

01:47:33

Now this... Okay. These are made up words with made up meanings that are trigger words.

01:47:40

They are meant to trigger emotions in people. That's all they are. When you think about what homophobia means, it means a fear of the same sex.

01:47:51

And they're using it. You put phobia at the end. It's just, Oh, you have a phobia. Phobos means fear.

01:47:59

And so if you are opposed as scripture is to homosexuality, then you're a homophobe.

01:48:07

And if you recognize that, that quote unquote transitioning is a myth, it's an empty hope.

01:48:15

It cannot happen. It's a perversion of perversity against God's created order.

01:48:21

Then you're a transphobe. I have no respect for people who use these terms. And anyone claims to be a

01:48:26

Christian who uses these terms just should be absolutely embarrassed. Should be embarrassed. I hope he doesn't have a

01:48:33

Bible up there. I don't see one. He's got all the wild eyed books, but I hope he doesn't have a

01:48:39

Bible up there because he probably would have burst into flames. This is really important. Because phobias are not the same as believing something is not

01:48:46

God's best. Like for instance, I can believe Christians should abstain from alcohol without discriminating against people who drink.

01:48:54

What do you mean by discriminate? Discrimination biblically is a good thing.

01:49:01

We are commanded to discriminate, to make godly choices, to recognize good and evil.

01:49:10

That's what discrimination, discriminare in Latin means. Yeah, I know we've changed the meaning.

01:49:18

At their core, homophobia and transphobia are discrimination against sexual and gender minorities in ways that restrict them from participating in society with the same freedoms as cisgender and heterosexual people have.

01:49:31

So you have to ignore the complete perversity that marks their sexual lives and their external sexual expression and not worry about the impact that has upon society.

01:49:49

See, that's one place where I go, hey, the founding fathers of this nation would never for a second have even considered that to be a civil right.

01:50:02

So they would say, well, they're homophobes and transphobes. No, they weren't. They're influenced by Christian worldview.

01:50:08

Now in Christian spaces, this discrimination plays itself out in a myriad of ways based on a specific church or organization.

01:50:16

So sometimes it looks like completely barring LGBTQ plus people from attending at all. Sometimes it's a denial of membership.

01:50:23

Other times it's being barred from serving. Well, hold on. Let's see, there's a bunch of stuff being mixed together here.

01:50:29

Attending? I can't, well, okay. I can imagine some IFB churches would do that.

01:50:36

Yeah, I can get that. But the vast majority of sound biblical churches come on in, hear the gospel.

01:50:43

We will call you to repentance. We'll help you to understand what a life of repentance looks like. But notice the immediately, and then serving, you mean, you mean being baptized and participating in the sacraments as an unrepentant rebel against Jesus's teachings?

01:51:00

Yeah, that's, and he said at the beginning, that's what we started this church to be. That's what we started this church to be.

01:51:07

Feeding or sacraments like communion, baptism, or marriage. But regardless of where that line is, there is a restriction from full participation because of someone's sexual orientation or gender identity.

01:51:19

Or because biblically, that is a rebellion against God that must be repented of.

01:51:30

This is where the issues are. And it's amazing that people don't recognize that when they hear this kind of rhetoric being produced.

01:51:41

That is discrimination. Someone can claim that it's God ordained discrimination, but it is discrimination none.

01:51:48

Yes, God ordains discrimination. Every command in scripture is discriminatory.

01:51:55

I am to choose the good. I am to reject the evil. Titus chapter two, God's grace teaches us to live lives of godliness rather than ungodliness.

01:52:06

That's called discrimination. I don't know how he even opens the pages of the

01:52:13

Bible anymore without being faced with his own abandonment of any meaningful reading of the words.

01:52:22

It's astonishing. Alas, and here at Restore, we believe that homophobia and transphobia are wrong.

01:52:29

Which is to say that we believe any kind of discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity is wrong.

01:52:36

By what standard? By what standard? You've thrown the standard out.

01:52:43

You've thrown the standard out. You've just said Jesus was wrong and Paul was wrong and Moses was wrong.

01:52:51

You've just separated yourself from the faith as clearly and obviously as can be.

01:52:58

It's amazing. All right, we're 24 minutes and 57 seconds in, 51. That's almost exactly halfway.

01:53:06

And we've gone almost two hours. So hopefully on Thursday, we will be able to finish this up.

01:53:17

And you might say, but he hasn't gotten into the presentation yet. You're right. Because this was not a biblical presentation at all.

01:53:26

The Bible is not anywhere near central to what Zach Lambert is doing.

01:53:33

He's going to go to Matthew 19. He's going to go to Acts 8. He's going to turn Eunuchs into a minority, all the

01:53:38

LGBTQ plus insanity into religious minorities, say, see, we're supposed to accept all of it.

01:53:44

And then he's going to dismiss the plain text of scripture in five or six minutes at most at the end.

01:53:51

And just skip over everything that has been said in the past. That's how it's done.

01:54:00

And that's how it's done in Austin, Texas at Zach Lambert's church. So we will continue with that.

01:54:06

I hope I'm not even going to I'm just going to let this stay here because Thursday is not far away.

01:54:13

And I already said 24 to seven. So I should be able to find it. We will go into the text of scripture.

01:54:19

So I'm a little worried that we're only halfway through because we will go into the text of scripture. Far more in depth in depth than Zach Lambert even pretends to.

01:54:32

As we continue our response and hey, if we've got to go longer, we go longer. Um, we'll just add this to the

01:54:40

Vines response and the Gushy response, make a playlist out of it. And that should give anybody all the hours of information on this subject they could ever hope to have or ever thought they'd ever need.

01:54:53

I always think about the fact that my grandfather. But I never got to meet.

01:55:01

But he was a poor, dirt poor preacher man in Kansas. He could never, ever imagine that his grandson would be spending hours on a global webcast with a very large global audience talking about this.

01:55:17

He could never, ever have imagined it. But here we are.

01:55:23

Here we are. So thanks for watching the Dividing Line today. As I said, I will be on the

01:55:28

Green Dragon Tavern show tomorrow, which I think drops on Friday.

01:55:34

Talking about some of this very stuff. And then on Thursday, we'll be back again to continue this response to Zach Lambert and his sermon.