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Responding to questions from listeners about why God reveals Himself to some people but not others, is Isaiah 59:19 a test to find a good translation, and what did Rachel Gilson say about marriage and divorce. Visit wwutt.com for all our videos!
Why did God show himself to some people, but not everyone? Is Isaiah 59 -19 a good test for a good translation? And what does the Bible say about same-sex marriage and divorce? The answers when we understand the text.
This is When We Understand The Text, a daily study in the Word of God that we may be conformed to the image of Christ. Visit our website at www .utt .com. And don't forget to follow us on Facebook and Twitter.
Here once again is Pastor Gabe. Thank you, Becky.
And greetings, everyone. I'm flying solo this week. To start off, let's come back to Psalm 68. I had read the beginning of Psalm 68 last week. I'm going to pick up here in verse 5, reading from the Legacy Standard Bible, hear the Word of the Lord.
A father of the fatherless and a judge for the widows is God in his holy habitation. God causes the lonely to inhabit a home. He leads out the prisoners into prosperity. Only the rebellious dwell in a parched land.
O God, when you went forth before your people, when you marched through the wasteland, Selah, the earth quaked, the heavens also dripped rain at the presence of God, Sinai itself quaked at the presence of God, the God of Israel.
You caused abundant rain to sprinkle down, O God. You established your inheritance when it was parched. Your creatures inhabit it. You establish it in your goodness for the poor, O God. Couple this with what we've been reading as we've been going through the Beatitudes.
Remember that Jesus said, blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed is he who hungers and thirsts for righteousness, for he shall be satisfied. We don't dwell in a parched land.
We have been satisfied with the good things of God that have been given to us. We are not poor, though we may be poor materially. You may be from a poor household or a poor family. You may not have much, but we have an abundance in Christ and the promise of his eternal kingdom.
Nor should we even consider ourselves lonely, especially if you are connected with a good gospel, godly church. You have many brothers and sisters in the Lord who love you and look after you. At least I hope they do.
And I hope that you do as well as a child of God looking out for the other children of God. For Jesus said to his own disciples, they will know that you are my disciples by your love for one another. And we read that again in 1 John.
So we see these very things that are talked about in this psalm, Psalm 68, that are fulfilled in his church. So go and do likewise. The Friday edition of the broadcast is our Q &A when we take questions from the listeners and you can submit those questions to whenweunderstandthetext at gmail .com.
So just last night, my kids wanted to play two truths and a lie. Have you ever done this? Where you say two things about yourself that are true, one thing that's a lie. Whatever order you put those things in, everybody's supposed to guess which one is the lie.
So here's what I gave my kids. They wanted Daddy to do this, so I gave them two truths and a lie. See if you can guess which one the lie is. Number one, I was selected to play Iron Man Thor or Captain America in a movie and I turned it down.
Number two, I played in the Little League World Series. Number three, I am a two-time radio personality of the year. Well, I went ahead and put this poll on Twitter and I received 445 votes. I just did a three-hour poll.
It wasn't very long, and that's how many votes I got in three hours. Fifty-five percent said the first one was a lie. So there's the majority that I was not selected to play Iron Man Thor or Captain America.
Ten percent of the vote said the second one is a lie, that I played in the Little League World Series. Five percent of the vote said the third one is a lie, that I'm a two-time radio personality of the year.
And 30 percent said they're all lies. I will tell you the correct answer. Which one of those three is the lie? I'll let you know at the end of the broadcast. Ha-ha! I got something that makes you have to stay put here for the hour that we're going to be responding to questions here.
I want to let you know that the G3 conference, which is coming up in September, rates increase on what would that be, Thursday? When is June 1st? This coming week, the rates are going to increase. So if you still want the reduced rate, you're going to have to register online now by going to G3MIN .org.
Go to the website, pull it up now, do it this week, look at your budget, whatever you got to do, make sure that it all balances out right. If you're planning on attending G3, don't wait until the rates increase.
Do it this week. Do it in the next few days, for this is going to be the end of that early registration period. And then we hope to see you in September in Atlanta. What is going to have a booth there?
So if you're a regular listener, please come by and say hello to us. Becky and I are planning on being there, and we're taking our oldest two, Annie and Zej. Zej has been to a conference with me before.
I don't think Annie ever has. But Zej loves it. He went to NRB with me, National Religious Broadcasters, when my dad was being awarded for 50 years of Christian radio broadcasting, and he's wanted to attend another conference ever since.
So we're going to take our oldest two to G3 coming up this fall. It's fun for the whole family. If you can afford it, take everybody with you. It'll be a great time. How would you like to have 900 free books?
You might think, I don't even have the space for 900 free books, so I better say no. You can have 900 free books on your smartphone or tablet or whatever device you use that you download apps on and do some digital reading on.
You can have 900 free books. No gimmick attached to this. This is not something I'm pitching to you to say, hey, if you purchase this or enter your name here, then you can have all of this. No, all you have to do is download an app, and I've already done this.
It's the Monergism e-reader app. Let me see if I can pull it up on my phone here. Yeah, the Monergism e-book library. That's what it's called. Monergism is spelled M-O-N-E-R-G-I-S-M. It is the theological word that we use to describe how salvation is all the work of God.
It's not a cooperation between God and man. God saves us. He does the work of salvation by his grace. So you're probably familiar with the website, or maybe you've heard of it, monergism .org. It's that same site.
They came up with this app called the Monergism e-book library. 900 books at your fingertips. I think the one catch might be that you have to be connected to the internet. I don't think this is the sort of a thing that downloads it all to your phone or your tablet and then you can have it all the time, no matter where you are or what you're doing.
I think you always have to have an internet signal in order to read any of these books. But they're free books. I just pulled it up here. I've got A .W. Pink, Horatius Bonner, John Bunyan, Stephen Charnock.
I've really been enjoying Stephen Charnock's stuff. John Flavell, J .C. Ryle. You can download stuff from Puritans. You can download stuff from more recent guys. I saw something in here from Sinclair Ferguson.
900 books, free, just by downloading this app. And you can read them on your phone or your device, whichever device you use to download apps and have an e-reader. Monergism e-book library. Again, that's the app that you are looking for.
You're welcome. I just connected you with 900 solid theology books. I hope you enjoy that. I haven't read one on this yet because I just did it today. So I'm going to, when I go to bed tonight, I'm going to pull up my app and read some of these titles.
I've already downloaded to my own library. All right. Let's get to some of the questions here. If you want to send a question, the email address is whenweunderstandthetext at gmail .com. The first two questions come from Johns.
And then my last question is another J name, but not a John. So I tried to go like with an all John theme. No, I've only got two. Anyway, this first one from this John, he says, hey, Pastor Gabe, thank you for your ministry.
I've been a listener of you for many years. I appreciate that. Always educating and refreshing to understand the text. I myself am a student in Denmark, studying theology on the road to becoming a pastor, teaching sound doctrine and leading people to Christ.
Amen, John. And I'm sure that's very needed in Denmark as it is anywhere else in the world. God bless you and your studies. John goes on in a conversation about why Christianity is the one true religion.
I was asked this question. Why does God not reveal himself to everybody? If he is God, he can do this and the world religions would no longer exist. My approach was first to establish the parameter the Bible sets for how God reveals himself.
Natural revelation. Creation equals creator. Painting equals painter. And special revelation through Christ written in the Bible. Thus, those are the parameters God has chosen to reveal himself to humankind.
Thus, logically, the question asked is outside the framework that God has put in place. And thus, the question asked is illogical. Like the ever popular, can God create a square circle? It does not cohere with the reality we live in.
But on the other hand, Saul, also known as Paul, did receive a very special revelation of Christ outside the parameters stated above. I also hear testimonies about Muslims seeing Jesus in their dreams and thus converting to Christianity and contradicting the framework established through natural and special revelation.
Do you have any wisdom on the matter that I can bring into the conversation and help to remove this stumbling block from his walk with Christ? God be with you, Brother John. Appreciate your question, John.
There is a wonderfully deep theological answer to your question. And I don't know what it is. I'm going to give you some thoughts here, certainly. But yeah, with regards to why does God not just reveal himself to every single person?
I don't know that I can just come right out and say, well, the answer is this. But let me walk you through some things. First of all, let me come at this from a personal experience thing. So when I was a teenager, when I was about 18 years old, I went through this same period where I just wondered why God doesn't just reveal himself to me.
Why am I not privileged to see a burning bush type of sign like Moses saw or the Red Sea part or something like that? Why can't I see a miracle? If God would show me a miracle, then truly I would believe or I would deepen in my faith more than I already do.
I seem to feel myself constantly clamoring for answers or proofs or truth or whatnot. So why can't God just show me a miracle and then I would know matter of factly that he's real and all of this is true?
All right. This is the conflict that's going on in my own mind, in my own conscience, deals I'm even making with God. God, would you just show me yourself through this kind of miraculous revelation? Well, I got to studying my Bible and what I came to notice starting at the very beginning and going through it, what I came to notice and recognize, which really kind of like smacked me in the face when I got to Exodus is that there were many, many people that saw God revealed and miraculous signs shown to them, even hearing the voice of God himself speaking from Mount Sinai to over a million Israelites that were gathered there at the mountain.
And none of those Israelites, with the exception of a very young generation, none of those Israelites over the age of 20 at Mount Sinai entered into the promised land, except for Joshua and Caleb, because they all grumbled against God in Moses and Aaron's case, they disobeyed God.
And so they were not allowed to enter into the promised land. So you're talking about a people who heard God, they heard his voice, they witnessed his presence come down on Mount Sinai and cause the mountain to basically ignite with fire, smoke going up like smoke from a kiln is the way it's described there in Exodus 19.
And yet the people grumbled against God. They did not believe him. They did not obey him. And they perished in the wilderness, unallowed to enter the promised land. And so I'm reading that and I'm going, that's astonishing to me.
They saw it with their own eyes, and yet they still did not believe. They still worshipped false gods and disobeyed God and did not put faith in God. So in studying that, what I came to recognize was just how arrogant my demands were.
Why can't I see something miraculous, just like some of the prophets saw in the Old Testament, and then I would believe? Well, I think way too highly of myself when that's my reasoning, thinking that all I would need to do is see something with my own eyes, and then I would have faith.
Because the Israelites saw far more than I'm ever going to see in this lifetime, in this body, and they did not believe. So how arrogant of me to think that if I only saw it, then I would have more faith than they did.
In Hebrews 1, the way the book of Hebrews begins is like this. Long ago, at various times and in various ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets. But in these last days, he has spoken to us by his son, whom he has appointed the heir of all things.
So there was a time in which God revealed himself to his people or spoke to his people through prophets, and that happened with Israel. After they witnessed God speaking to them through Mount Sinai, they were terrified and they said to Moses, hey, let's go back to that arrangement where you go talk to God and you come and tell us what he said, because we can't bear this.
We can't do this thing with hearing the voice of God. It's going to melt our brains right out of our ears. And so the dynamic then went in the direction of Moses being the prophet who spoke to God and then came and told the people what it is that God said.
And so then through the rest of the Old Testament, you have the prophets. God saying something to a prophet or a judge or something like that, and then that person speaking on behalf of God to the people.
Because we have sinned against God, because we are unholy and therefore unworthy to enter into his presence, God does not just commune with us. There is a separation between us and God. He lives in his holy habitation and we live where we are here in this sinful, fallen and corrupt world.
But God, by his grace, will condescend himself to speak to us and would do so through the Old Testament, through a prophet or through a mediator who would speak with God and therefore that person would speak to the people.
And there were very, very unique circumstances through which God would speak to this prophet who's speaking to the people. We're going through Isaiah right now. Remember what we read in Isaiah 9, the Thursday study that we're doing.
In Isaiah 9, God shows himself to Isaiah and Isaiah thinks he's a dead man. He's seen God in his holiness. He's seen God in his dwelling place. And he says, I am a man of unclean lips dwelling among people of unclean lips.
And it's an angel who takes a hot coal from the altar and comes down and touches Isaiah's lips with it, purifying him so that he can stand in the presence of God. Isaiah thought he was undone. He thought he was just going to be vaporized because he's witnessing God in his perfection.
But God made the circumstances so that Isaiah could hear the voice of God and therefore communicate to the people what God spoke to him to do. So there's always very unique circumstances through which God is speaking through a prophet through an apostle to his people.
Paul saw, of course, you know, John, as you mentioned in your email, Paul saw Christ on the road to Damascus in Acts chapter 9. Jesus appeared to him. Paul was on his way to round up Christians and persecute them.
Jesus appears to him and says, Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me? And Saul, also called Paul, says, who are you, Lord? And Jesus says, I am Jesus whom you are persecuting. Tells him to go to a house on the street called Straight and that he was to wait there.
Paul fasted and prayed during those three days that he was there. And then a man named Ananias came, laid hands on him. The scales fell from his eyes. Paul could see again. And then he was baptized. And he went from being Saul, the Pharisee and persecutor of Christians, to Paul, the who was making Christians, who was proclaiming the gospel of Christ to the nations.
The greatest condescension that God ever made, when I said that God will condescend himself to speak to us sinful creatures, the greatest condescension he ever made was putting on flesh and dwelling among us.
Jesus Christ, the Son, who took on the likeness of sinful flesh, but he lived a sinless life. We've talked about this going through the gospel of Matthew on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, and Jesus fulfilling in his life the righteous requirements of the law.
Through his death, he atones for our sins, making us right before the Father so that whoever believes in him, the wonderful, gracious measures of his righteousness are bestowed upon us. We're clothed in his righteousness, forgiven our sins, given his righteousness that we may stand before God as holy.
And once again, as said there in Hebrews 1, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets, but in these last days, he's spoken to us by his son. Jesus has spoken to us. And this revelation of God is the greatest revelation of God.
As said in Colossians 1, the full deity of God dwells in him, in Jesus, bodily. So we have beheld the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. We want to know what God has said? We read his word. Now we can come straight to the Bible, and we know exactly what it is that he has said.
We don't have to have a prophet speaking these things to us anymore, because God has spoken these things to us through his son, which we have right here in the pages of Scripture. The Old Testament being those prophecies that pointed to him, the New Testament showing what it is that he came and did and fulfilled and revealed, and his apostles explaining to us the gospel and the effects of the gospel, how we are to live this out in our lives.
As said in 2 Peter 1, we now have the prophetic word more fully revealed. I know this is difficult to comprehend, but we're actually in a situation now where we have it better than the Israelites and the prophets did, because we're able to see the full picture of what God is doing in redemptive history when we look into the pages of Scripture.
This was something that even the ancients did not have the opportunity to see. Ancient Israel didn't get to see this. We get to see it, because we can go to Genesis to Revelation and see all of what God is doing from beginning to end, continuing to hold fast to the hope of our faith who is Christ, who is returning again to judge the living and the dead.
Now, that was a rather extended explanation, John, but I hope from that, that large paragraph I just gave you, that you are able to share something with your friend about why God doesn't reveal himself to every single person.
He doesn't reveal himself to everybody because, first of all, we're sinful, and he is holy and we are not, so he reveals himself to a select few. We would not all be able to behold the majesty of God.
As God said to Moses, no one can see my face and live. Part of the curse, because we sin against God, part of the curse is that God is harder to see, but he has revealed himself through the pages of Scripture.
So, that's number one, because he's holy and we are not. That's why not every single person is given the opportunity to be able to behold the majesty and the presence of God, but number two, it's arrogant of us to think that just because we saw God, we would believe anyway.
Remember, Adam and Eve walked with God in the cool of the day, as said in Genesis chapter three, and yet they still sinned and did the thing that they were not to do, and thus, mankind has been separated from God.
And, of course, I gave you the example of the Israelites as well, who witnessed the miraculous workings of God in the wilderness, and yet they still did not believe. The warning is given to us in Hebrews not to repeat their same mistakes.
We've been given the gospel, which is an even greater revelation of God's grace than the Israelites had, so how will we escape judgment if we reject so great a salvation, as is said in Hebrews chapter two?
That whole letter is given as a warning, that we would not repeat their same mistakes, but continue to hold fast to the gospel and not fall away in unbelief. In Romans chapter nine, verse 19, Paul says, You will say to me then, Why does he still find fault?
Because who can resist his will? On the contrary, who are you, O man, who answers back to God? Will the thing molded say to the molder, Why did you make me like this? Or does not the potter have authority over the clay to make from the same lump one vessel for honorable use and another for dishonorable use?
And what if God, wanting to demonstrate his wrath and to make his power known, endured with much patience vessels of wrath, having been prepared for destruction, and in order that he might make known the riches of his glory upon vessels of mercy, which he prepared beforehand for glory, even us, whom he also called, not from among the Jews only, but also from the Gentiles?
We have the privilege and the opportunity to see the majesty of God, which we behold in Christ. God gave us his son. This is our fellowship with God, the faith that you have in Jesus Christ, and all of that revealed to us according to his word.
It's even better than if we were to behold our water turned to wine or another burning bush type of sign. It's a lyric from a song I wrote when I went through that season of exploring these things myself.
Now, John, one of the things that you mentioned is that there are some Muslims who in their dreams, they see Jesus and they convert to Christianity. Honestly, I only hear those stories hearsay. That's not how a person comes to faith.
A person comes to faith by hearing the gospel of Christ. So we have to take any of those stories with a grain of salt, with somebody saying, I saw Jesus in a dream and I believe in him and now I'm a Christian.
You become a Christian because you heard the gospel, because you recognize your sin and need for a savior and you know that Christ is that savior. These revelations of Christ in dreams are never greater than what we have in the Bible.
This is what leads a person to saving faith. Romans 10, 17, faith comes by hearing and hearing through the word of Christ. All right, this next question comes from another John. Like I said, we got more than one John on the docket today.
This is our friend John in North Carolina. Greetings, Pastor Gabe and Becky. I will pass on your greeting to her. I hope this email finds you guys and your family and your ministry doing well, because I've been out of work for a while with an injury.
I have not listened quite as much as I would like to, but definitely still enjoy listening to the Friday edition with my wife. Thank you so much, John. I know you were going through Isaiah on the Thursday podcast.
You were only around chapter 20 right now. I just did part of halfway through chapter 22 this past Thursday. He says, I've been speaking with a mutual friend and we were talking about Bible translations.
He said that he uses Isaiah 59, 19 as a standard for judging the trustworthiness of a translation. Now, we all know what it says in the KJV and the NKJV and what's in other translations are very different.
OK, so he's just saying translations can differ, especially on this particular verse. So John goes on. We know that the charismatic churches like to butcher that verse by saying things like when the enemy comes in like a flood, the spirit of the Lord will raise up a standard against him.
So I started checking with different translations like the NIV, the ESV, the NASB 95 and the LSB, and they are all very different on this particular verse, even though the LSB kind of seems to lean more towards the same direction as the King James and the New King James.
I could just wait until you got to chapter 59 on your Thursday podcast and hear your detailed explanation. Oh, not only that verse, but maybe the entire chapter. But I have all the patience of a room full of kindergartners who were fed candy bars and energy drinks.
God bless your wife, John. So would you be interested in explaining the meaning of that verse and which translation is the most accurate? I really do appreciate your podcast and your ministry. God bless you guys.
Sincerely, John. Well, John, you have a way of asking a very complicated question. And when I was looking into the different translations of this particular verse, I realized that there's a certain understanding of Hebrew that one needs in order to give a proper explanation to this.
And I am not that versed in Hebrew. First of all, to give you an overview of what's going on in this particular chapter, it's very simply about how God is going to rescue his people and bring them into an abundant land, just like we read at the very beginning of the broadcast in Psalm 68.
Now, this particular verse, Isaiah 59, 19, here's the different translations that we have. I'll read it to you first in the legacy standard. I'm also going to do NASB, ESV, NIV, and the New King James and the King James, since those are the translations that you mentioned, John.
So the LSB says, so they will fear the name of Yahweh from the West and his glory from the rising of the sun, for he will come like a rushing stream, which the wind of Yahweh makes flee. Okay, there's the LSB.
The New American Standard says, so they will fear the name of the Lord from the West and his glory from the rising of the sun, for he will come like a rushing stream, which the wind of the Lord drives.
Right? Slightly different there at the end. The LSB said, which the wind of Yahweh makes flee. The NASB says, the wind of the Lord drives. Okay? Continuing on, here is the ESV, also pretty close to the LSB and the NASB.
The English Standard says, so they shall fear the name of the Lord from the West and his glory from the rising of the sun, for he will come like a rushing stream, which the wind of the Lord drives. Yeah, sounds pretty similar, almost exactly like the NASB.
Here's the New International Version. From the West, the people will fear the name of the Lord, and from the rising of the sun, they will revere his glory, for he will come like a pent-up flood that the breath of the Lord drives along.
Here's the New King James. Now, you're going to hear from the New King James and the King James a different word thrown in here. NKJV says, so shall they fear the name of the Lord from the West and his glory from the rising of the sun, when the enemy comes in like a flood, the Spirit of the Lord will lift up a standard against him.
Well, that's different. Here's the King James. So they shall fear the name of the Lord from the West and his glory from the rising of the sun, when the enemy shall come in like a flood, the Spirit of the Lord shall lift up a standard against him.
So you hear there from the New King James and the King James that the Spirit of the Lord will lift up a standard. The other translations that I read did not say that. LSB, NASB, ESV, and NIV, none of them said anything about a standard.
It ended by saying which the wind of the Lord drives, not the Lord will raise up a standard. So what is the proper understanding and right interpretation of this particular verse? Well, like I said, there's an understanding of Hebrew here that goes a little bit deeper than my own expertise.
I don't have any expertise in Hebrew. I'll just put it that way. But let me read to you here a note that's in the Cambridge Commentary. Now, the Cambridge Commentary will make a reference to the authorized version, which is the King James, and then the revised version, which is like a British update of the King James.
So it says, with regards to this statement, when the enemy shall come in, the revised version reads, just like the LSB does, for he shall come as a rushing stream, which the breath of the Lord driveth.
The rendering of the authorized version, which is the King James, is based on certain Jewish commentators and is followed by a few in recent times. But that of the revised version has the authority of the Septuagint and the Vulgate and is adopted by nearly all the best modern authorities.
The chief points of difference are these. Number one, the construction of the word, which the authorized version translates enemy, according to the Masoretic pointing and accentuation, it is the subject of the sentence and may be rendered indifferently adversary or adversity.
On the other view, it is an adjective qualifying stream and may mean either rushing or straightened or pent up. Number two, the verb for lift up a standard in the authorized version understands it as a denominative from the common word for standard, as seen also in Isaiah 1018, while the revised version derives it from the verb for flee.
So somewhere in that explanation is is an understanding of translating from Hebrew. That's an understanding that I simply don't have. The the King James looks at a certain word pointing to another word and translates it one way.
And then the well, the revised version, or as we would understand, also today's modern translations, the LSB, the NASB, look at the word pointing to another one and they translate it another way. But according to the Cambridge commentary, it's the more modern translations that actually have it right now in Isaiah.
And let me do kind of a scripture interpreting scripture version for you here. OK, so a very similar phrasing is found in Isaiah 3028 in the legacy standard version. It says his breath is like an overflowing torrent which reaches to the neck to shake the nations back and forth in a sieve of worthlessness and to put in the jaws of the people's the bridle which staggers one to ruin.
So you have a statement there about his breath being like an overflowing torrent or an overflowing stream like the way we have it here in Isaiah 59. Well, in the legacy standard that's translated consistently between Isaiah 3028 and Isaiah 59.
What was it? 19? Yeah. Verse 19. Whereas in the King James, it differs. The translation in the King James in Isaiah 3028 is just like the LSB, but then they don't maintain that consistency in translating his breath being like a stream in Isaiah 5919.
Does that make sense? So you can find it in other translations, a consistent translation between Isaiah 30 and 59, but in the King James, it's not consistent. Yeah. Anyway, that's the best explanation that I can give you.
One thing that I can recommend that you can do is look at some parallel commentaries. And one of the best places to go for a parallel commentary where you're seeing several commentaries laid out side by side is go to BibleHub .org or BibleHub .com, I think is what it is.
And if you type in the reference, so in this case, we're looking at Isaiah 5919 type in that reference, click on comment, and it will give you all the parallel commentaries and look at the different notes that different commentators have written over the years regarding the translation of that particular passage, because there will be more than one commentator that will say, now there's a couple of different ways that we can come at this because the King James renders it this way.
And then there are other translations that will render it that way. So for your own personal study, that's another avenue that you can take. All right. Thank you, as always, for your question, John. This last one, last question here comes from Jaron.
And he says, Dear Pastor Gabe, have you seen the item about a former lesbian named Rachel Gilson, who has been invited to speak at the SBC Pastors Wives and Women's Conference in New Orleans on June 12th?
I saw something where she said that a person doesn't have to be straight in order to be faithfully married. Do you know if she's recanted these views or if the people who have arranged the Pastors Wives Conference are aware of them?
Well, Jaron, the controversy that has erupted over the course of the past week, this actually first came up last week while I was on vacation and I was up in the mountains. If you'll remember us talking about being away in the Rockies where we were, I didn't even have a cell signal.
So when I came back into civilization and I was able to get a signal again, I pulled up social media and I saw that there was this controversy going on regarding Rachel Gilson. Now, I didn't follow it real close.
I know what some of my friends were saying in response to it and then what some of the pushback was. But then when you asked this question, and then Pastor Tom has been in the middle of some of this as well, I went back to the video that people have been responding to and giving this warning that Rachel is not biblically sound in her sexual ethics and should not be speaking at this particular conference.
I thought about playing the whole video for you here, which is about seven and a half minutes, just playing the whole thing and then making some comments. But her answer is so all over the place that I'm going to break this up and respond as we go, just like I did with a video last week.
I think I'm doing her a favor by breaking up this answer instead of just playing the whole thing all at once. So this is Rachel Gilson. She's a member of CREW, which formerly used to be called Campus Crusade for Christ.
And this particular video was played in 2019 at a talk she gave on biblical sexuality. Of course, what you're going to hear is not very biblical at all. It begins with a person asking a question. I think this is at the end of her talk when now it's open to the floor to do a Q &A.
So a man asks a question and now she's responding to that question. So here's the question first, and then you'll hear her give a response. And I'm going to break in and make some comments as we go.
I read the definition of covenant to be an agreement, especially by least deed or other legal contract. I have gay married parents because gay marriage is legal in all 50 states now. So I guess my question is, where should I be in terms of my support of that marriage since it is the covenant of marriage?
Should I be looking for like, should I be supporting a divorce even though God said he hates that as well? Or should I be looking for them to kind of, I don't know.
I don't I don't know. No, I think it's a it's a great question, right? Like we know.
Okay, let me break in here for just a moment. So you've heard the gist of his question and God bless that guy because I can't imagine what this would be like. One of his parents, let's say his mom, is living with a woman whom she claims to be married to.
And he's saying, how do I interact with this in a God honoring way? The laws of our land say that the two of them are married. But do I tell them to get a divorce when God has said that he hates divorce?
That's a reference back to Malachi 2. Now, the answer to this is really quite simple. In the eyes of God, they're not actually married. So for them to get a divorce, God wouldn't hate that because they're not actually married.
What God hates is that they're in a relationship that they're calling a marriage, which is actually a perversion of what he defined his marriage from the very beginning. That a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife and the two shall become one flesh.
And Jesus repeated this again in Matthew 19 when he responded to the Pharisees. Have you not read that he who created them from the beginning made them male and female and said that a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife and the two shall become one flesh.
So they are no longer two but one flesh. What God therefore has joined together, let man not separate. God has not joined this woman in this woman together. That is a perversion of the design that God made and called marriage.
The law has perverted this and claimed that a woman can get married to a woman and now in the eyes of America, well, there you have it. They're wife and wife. No, that's not a marriage. That is a perversion of marriage.
That is the redefinition of marriage that has happened in our culture over the last, well, decade. I mean, it's amazing because this conversation we would not be having with any level of confusion even 10 years ago.
And when I say level of confusion, I'm talking about in the church. Of course, that confusion has been going on in our culture for some time, but as the church, we would not even be entertaining this concept as these two women being married.
Why would God hate for them to get divorced? What he hates is that they're doing this thing that they're calling marriage. So if this man loves his mother and the woman that she is with, he should be telling them what you are doing will incur the wrath of God.
As it says in Colossians 3, 6, the wrath of God is coming against such things. So repent of this. No longer be in this relationship. In the eyes of God, you're not even married in the first place. So honor God with your body.
Flee from sexual immorality, as said in 1 Corinthians chapter 6. This should be the way that he would approach the situation with his mother, showing her what the Bible says and then telling her turn to the Lord Jesus Christ and repent.
The sexually immoral will not inherit the kingdom of God. 1 Corinthians 6, 9, and 10. So repent lest you fall into judgment. How does Rachel respond to this?
Here's Rachel's answer. No, I think it's a great question, right? Like we know that the laws of our country don't match what God's laws say. That's fine. We don't live in ancient Israel. We don't live in the new Jerusalem.
We live in America. So we respect the laws of the land. As we think about, and especially like your parents, like you love your parents. I'm sure you see them all like, I mean, we also get annoyed with our parents, right?
Let's be real, right? But you see them as full people, like you see, which is good. Like we should be seeing all the people in our life as full people.
So when we think about. She's clearly uncomfortable here and does not know how to answer this question. She's probably trying to do it in a way it's like, I don't want to make anybody mad. I certainly don't want to make this guy mad.
But consider some of the things that she said here. She made the comment that America's laws don't match God's law and that's fine. No, that's not okay. It's not okay when a land passes a law that contradicts what God's law says.
That's not all right. And she said, we respect the laws of our land. Well, we do in a general sense, Romans chapter 13, that we're supposed to be subject to the governing authorities, which have been established by God.
And God establishes those authorities, as also said in 1 Peter 2, to punish the wrongdoer and reward those who do good. But what about when those governing authorities pass laws that are this wicked? Because this is a wicked law to say that a woman and a woman can be married or a man and a man can be married.
What if the land that you live in passes a law like that? How do you respect that? What does she mean by that? Respecting that law? I'm not going to respect that law. I am not going to acknowledge that when a man marries, quote unquote, another man, that that's an actual marriage because the law of my land said so.
Absolutely not. That is a perversion. And frankly, we know it's a perversion. There was not a nation on Earth that recognized same-sex marriage as marriage until just a little over 20 years ago when the Netherlands was the first to do it.
And now how many nations are there in the world that are that are doing this? Over 50 that recognize same-sex marriage. This is a new phenomenon in world history. And we don't just automatically change our views about marriage based on the laws of our land.
Our views of marriage have to be established on what God has said in his word, because he's the one who made it. And Jesus even defines marriage as being between a man and a woman, according to Matthew 19.
So don't think of this as being something that, you know, it's just Old Testament and Jesus never mentioned it. No, he talked about it. Marriage is between a man and a woman. And if this man loved his mother, he would tell her what you're doing is sinful and the wrath of God is coming against it.
I don't want you to go to hell. Repent and turn to Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins. But that's not how Rachel comes at this.
I don't know your parents. I'm not going to speak too particularly into it, right? But as we think about the question of people in a same-sex marriage who maybe come to know the Lord, this is a real situation that I've encountered in my life.
I met a woman recently in St. Louis who was actually in a marriage to a woman and was processing what to do because she had come to the Lord, but her wife hadn't. She doesn't have a wife.
Rachel is speaking at a Christian event and using the language of the culture. This woman that she's talking about is not married to another woman in the eyes of God. She does not have a wife. Women don't have wives.
Husbands do. Consider even polygamous relationships that we read about in the Bible, like Jacob, who was married to Rachel and Leah. Would we ever say that Leah was Rachel's wife? No. Leah and Rachel weren't married.
They were married to Jacob. Jacob had two wives. Leah's husband was Jacob. Rachel's husband was Jacob. But they were not married to each other because that's not a marriage. A wife doesn't have a wife.
A wife has a husband. A husband has a wife. And Rachel is capitulating on the direction the culture has gone and using their language, which is very problematic. Her answer is very problematic already because she's not coming at this according to what Scripture says.
She has an unbiblical view of marriage and human sexuality.
I need to recognize in this situation, right, that these are some very tender things. And if we just walk around being like, I've got some great ideas. You don't know anything. You don't know anything about what this relationship has been like, the joys that it's provided, the heaviness it's provided.
We never approach these situations with swagger.
I know it is sexual immorality that God hates and will incur his wrath if they do not repent. That's what I know. I don't have to know anything about the relationship. I don't have to know what quote unquote joys there were in this relationship.
They were the fleeting pleasures of sin, as said in Hebrews 11. It wasn't true joy. It was lust. It was enjoying wickedness. And it's not arrogant of me to say so. It's out of love and affection for you that I would not want you to continue in this relationship that will lead to your destruction if you don't turn to Christ.
If someone is a trust, if we've got a relationship where they're trusting us to speak in and trusting us to draw near, we want to listen really carefully. Like with any person, discipleship is going to be a process.
And so I'd say if someone in a same-sex marriage comes to know the Lord, it's not like, okay, what we've got to deal with first is your same-sex marriage. Like, our discipleship is our whole person.
When we come to Christ, there are a lot of things that need attention, that need forgiveness, that need healing, that need adjusting. But I do hope that over the course of discipleship for someone in that position, they're going to have a chance to examine what the Bible says about sexuality.
And they're going to have a trustworthy person to walk through with them what that means for their life.
Well, I hope that when you've shared with somebody the gospel for the first time, that you've also given them the law. Because the law reveals to us our sin and therefore our need for a Savior. Romans 3, 19 and 20, we know that whatever the law says, it speaks to those who are in the law, who are under the law, so that every mouth may be shut and all the world may become accountable to God.
Because by the works of the law, no flesh will be justified in his sight, for it is through the law comes knowledge of sin. So you show a person their sin according to what God's word says. And then you show them that they can be forgiven their sin by turning to Jesus Christ.
And then by turning to Christ, they don't walk in their sin anymore. They walk with Christ. They turn from their sin to the Lord Jesus Christ, who forgives them of their unrighteousness and cleanses them so that we may walk rightly before God.
So yeah, in that conversation that you're having with somebody who's in a same-sex marriage, quote unquote, I hope that you're showing them. It's wicked what you're doing, and you need to turn to Christ in order to be saved.
Now, where Rachel says, so like discipleship includes walking with them and kind of helping them through this process. They don't automatically come to a knowledge of their sin, but we kind of, we have to walk them through that so that they will repent of those things as they go.
Would she say that same thing if she were to have shared the gospel with a murderer? Like she found somebody, she comes across somebody who's a serial murderer, a serial killer, and says to this person, well, you need to repent of that because it's wrong.
God's word says murderers will be thrown into the lake of fire, Revelation 21, 8. So if you continue that, you're going to go to hell. Repent and turn to Jesus Christ. And he says, okay, sure, I'm going to do it.
And then he goes and he kills two more people. I mean, would she say to that person, well, you know, we got, we have to walk with him. Discipleship, it's a long process. It takes a while. Of course not.
Of course she wouldn't do that. 1 John 3, 15, everyone who hates his brother is a murderer. And you know that no murderer has eternal life abiding in him. A person who goes on murdering, we're going to say that guy's not really come to Christ.
So why would we say anything different about the person who is in a sexually immoral lifestyle? They say they've come to Christ, but they continue in that lifestyle as if no change has ever actually happened.
Repent, put to death what is earthly in you, Colossians 3, 5, for against such things, the wrath of God is coming. Now, I'm not saying that when a person comes to Christ, they're going to be perfect. Of course, I'm not saying that, but we should see a noticeable change, a conviction of sin and a turning to Christ.
And that conviction of sin, once again, it comes through the hearing of the law. And then the turning to Christ comes through the hearing of the gospel.
When you're a child, especially when you're in that weird stage where you're like, for the first time, an adult child relating to adult parents, that's weird, right? It's just weird. You used to be five and they were old.
And now you're like old, but not as old. If you're a parent relating to someone in that situation, you've already got that strange dynamic on top of something that is theologically and emotionally really heavy.
So I would say as their son, you love them and help them in whatever way, right? You love them as you try to follow the Lord, as they try to follow the Lord, to come around the scriptures together and figure out what's going on.
I do think that it's pretty normal for someone who comes to Christ to see, oh, this isn't the way God designed to use my sexuality. They don't have to negate all the good things that they've experienced.
What good things?
There is nothing redeemable about sexual immorality. God will judge all of it if you don't get out and turn to Christ. Would she be saying this kind of a thing to a pedophile? I'm not trying to gate the good experiences you've had.
Oh, please. There is nothing in her message warning about the judgment of God. There are parts where it sounds like she's on the right track, like you love them and you want to walk with them through scripture so that they will recognize that what they're doing is wrong.
Yes. Where does that go if they don't repent? If they don't turn to Christ, he will say to them, depart from me, you worker of lawlessness. I never knew you, and cast them into the lake of fire. But there's nothing about judgment in this message, in the way that she's presenting any of this.
No urgency. It's almost kind of like you can just kind of take your time and walk with them through this, and then eventually that they will come around. You need to be obedient to what God's word says and show them what God's word says.
They're not Christians until they come to Christ. If they love their sin and they persist in that sin, Romans 6 is clear. If you continue to be a slave to unrighteousness, you're not a slave of Christ, and you will perish.
I mean, I've known some people who decide to stay in that relationship legally, but to live celibately, to break off having sex. That has happened with some couples who both come to Christ.
Yeah, I keep hearing this anecdote, but I have never witnessed it before. A man and a man who are in a homosexual relationship, who are quote-unquote married in the eyes of the law, find Christ, and so they stop having sex with each other, but they continue to be married?
If they really knew God and his word, they would recognize that what they are in is not really a marriage. It is a perversion of what God has defined as marriage. So get out of it. Don't encourage the perversion.
Repent.
I've known some couples where one person came to Christ and decided that in order to honor the Lord, he needed to be celibate, and his husband decided to leave him. I mean, Paul talks about this reality in 1 Corinthians 7.
Sometimes if a spouse comes to know the Lord, the other spouse can't abide it, and they leave, and then that person is free.
1 Corinthians 7 doesn't apply here, because 1 Corinthians 7 are rules pertaining to marriage and to sodomites are not married. If one of those men comes to faith in Christ and the other one leaves, good.
But a 1 Corinthians 7 scenario has not played out here. Rachel has, she is twisting the scriptures when she is trying to take instructions regarding marriage and applying them to homosexual relationships as though they can be marriages when they're not.
But sometimes it will mean, yes, sometimes it will mean getting a divorce. God hates divorce. He does. It breaks that image of marriage just as surely as anything else.
A man and a man are not an image of marriage, so how can God hate when they separate? What God hates is when two men are doing something that he has called an abomination, but they call it good. That's what God hates.
It is a perversion of what God created and said is to be good between a man and a woman, not between a man and a man. What heaven would rejoice in, according to Luke 15, is if these men come to faith in Christ and are redeemed from their sin, that would be good.
What's interesting is, though God hates it, it is still sometimes allowed in the context of a broken world. I think it's really challenging, for example, to read the end of Nehemiah. If you're not familiar with Nehemiah, it's after Israel had been sent away, exiled for their disobedience, and they're being brought back to the land, and they're told, like, you were exiled for disobedience.
Be obedient. Be obedient. Draw near to the Lord. This is a beautiful thing. Now, okay, I've got to stop. I've got to stop. It's not a sermon on Nehemiah. But even if they come back to the land and they renew their vows and they draw near to the Lord, they end up marrying these foreign women, which is expressly what God told them not to do.
The Jewish people needed to stay a unique whole so that when the seed of Abraham came, Jesus, he would be able to fulfill the promises about him. They needed to stay a people. It was very important. And they disobeyed, and they got into these relationships, and what Nehemiah did is he broke up those relationships.
Again, this is a twisting of Scripture, because this whole episode that happened in Nehemiah has nothing to do with sodomites. If these men had shown up to Nehemiah with men that they were calling their husbands, Nehemiah would have put them to death.
He would not have said, hey, no, you need to leave your pagan husbands and go marry some Jewish wives. That's not what Nehemiah would have done. He would have put them to death because of the wickedness that they were doing.
This very kind of wickedness that Judah was doing that caused God to send them into exile. They were worshiping false gods and engaging in sexual immorality, including homosexuality. So God turned them over to the hands of their enemies.
These people come back into the land, and they continue in those same abominable sins that drove them out. Nehemiah wouldn't be saying, hey, you husbands need to divorce your husbands. He would have just put those men to death.
That's what he would have done under the law of God. So under the law, we recognize our sin, and having been lawbreakers, we know that we are coming into judgment if we don't turn to Christ who redeems us from our sin and makes us new.
Galatians 2 .20, I've been crucified with Christ, and it is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives within me. And the life I now live in the flesh, I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me.
Now go and sin no more. But you don't find any of that in this talk from Rachel. No understanding, no true biblical understanding of sexuality. No understanding of judgment. No recognition of sin. No understanding of Christ who redeems us from that sin.
The gospel is not in this presentation that she is giving here. She might be coming at it from a somewhat cultural Christianity worldview. There's some Christian-y sprinkled in the stuff that she's saying, but she's not actually coming at it from the word of God.
Rachel Gilson is unqualified as a teacher. I'm not saying she's not a Christian. Maybe she is. So don't hear me condemning her to hell. That's not what I'm doing here. I'm simply coming at this as one who is to teach sound doctrine and rebuke those who contradict it.
That's part of the qualifications for a pastor in Titus 1 -9. And she is unqualified. She should not be speaking at the Southern Baptist Convention Pastors' Wives Conference. What in the world are they thinking?
Rachel needs to be taken off the public circuit and just be a disciple for a little while. Learning true, good, biblical things. And incidentally, never needs to be preaching in front of a mixed crowd anyway, which is what this is because you heard a man ask her this question in this Q &A.
So she is operating as like a preacher preaching in front of a mixed crowd. What does 1 Timothy 2 -11 and 12 say? I do not permit a woman to teach or to exercise authority over a man. Rather, she is to remain quiet.
So you already have a violation of Scripture there, on top of the fact that she doesn't even have a biblical view of sexuality or an understanding of sin in the gospel. So Rachel needs to be pulled off any kind of teaching responsibility and just be a disciple and learn.
And if you cared about Rachel, that's what you would tell her. Because remember, teachers will be judged with greater strictness. I'm sorry, James 3 -1. Not many of you should aspire to become teachers, my brothers, because you know that teachers will be judged with greater strictness.
Out of much concern for Rachel, I hope that she stops being a teacher, she repents of this false doctrine, and she learns under some sound teachers for a while. There was one part of her talk that I went over very briefly.
I didn't even address it at all. I want to come back and find the comment. Let me play it here because I want to make a comment about it.
That it's pretty normal for someone who comes to Christ to see, oh, this isn't the way God designed to use my sexuality. They don't have to negate all the good things that they've experienced with the person that they've been in a relationship with to recognize that God says something else about sexuality.
They might end up making a very big cost. That's the spot.
That's what I was looking for. Did I skip over that? Did I not play that part? I don't know. Maybe I skipped it by accident. Anyway, yes, following Jesus comes at a very, very high cost. Because what did he say in Luke 9?
If anyone would be my disciple, he must deny himself, take up his cross daily, and follow after me. Whoever tries to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will save it. Yeah, you have to lose yourself.
In order to be a follower of Christ and be saved, that is a really, really high cost. It costs you your life, but it is so, so very worth it. Turn from your sin to the Lord Jesus Christ and live. I'm harsh with you because I love you.
Here's one of the 90-second what videos that I did on sexual immorality. Let me play this as kind of a transition piece, and then I'll give you the answer to the poll question that I asked at the beginning of the program.
The Bible says those who practice sexual immorality will not inherit the kingdom of God, but will be cast into eternal fire. What is sexual immorality? It's translated from the Greek word pornea, which means fornication.
The Bible uses the word for any kind of sexual desire outside the covenant of marriage between a husband and wife, for whom God designed sex, that they may be one flesh. Since God created sex, He gets to define it, so any kind of sex outside His definition of marriage is immoral and idolatrous.
Premarital sex, adultery, homosexuality, porn, and masturbation, since sex is not intended for one person but a husband and wife. Jesus said if a man lusts after a woman, he's committed adultery in his heart.
The culture will say sex is okay as long as two people love each other, but causing someone else to sin is not loving. 1 Corinthians 7 says because of the temptation to sexual immorality, each man should have his own wife and each woman her own husband.
When sex is enjoyed between a husband and wife, they protect one another from sinning. In a list of sins, sexual immorality is often at the top. Every other sin is outside the body, but sexual sins are committed against the body.
It's self-destruction, desecrating that which was made in God's image. The body is for the Lord, and for those united with Christ, sexual immorality dishonors that union, defiles the temple of the Holy Spirit, and is likened to sleeping with prostitutes.
Hebrews 13 .4 says God will judge the sexually immoral. Ephesians 5 .3 says that sexual immorality must not even be named among you, as is proper among the saints, when we understand the text. Well, at the beginning of the program, I gave you two truths and a lie.
I said that I was once selected to play either Iron Man, Thor, or Captain America in a movie. I played in the Little League World Series, and I'm a two-time winner of Radio Personality of the Year, which of those three is the lie?
The answer is, number two, I never played in the Little League World Series. I attended several times, because I live not far from Williamsport, Pennsylvania, where the Little League World Series is played, but I never actually played in the World Series.
Yes, there was once a time in my life I was offered the opportunity to play Iron Man, Captain America, or Thor in a movie, and I turned it down. It was an animated film, and I was going to be one of the voices, but I decided not to do it.
And by God's providence, I have the beautiful family that I do now. I consider it a win-win. Thank you once again for listening to the program, and tell your friends about us. That's how we have grown in our listenership is because one person has said, hey, have you heard this great podcast, and directed others our way.
And we thank you so much for your regular listenership and sharing this with others as well. Let me conclude with prayer. Heavenly Father, we thank you for the love that you have shown to us in Jesus Christ.
If we ever have to wonder, does God love me, all we have to do is look at the cross, and we see that you gave your son for us to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins. He rose again from the dead. He ascended into heaven where he is seated at the right hand of the majesty on high.
He is coming back again to judge the living and the dead, and all who believe in him will not perish, but we will have everlasting life. Thank you that this gospel message came to us, and may we have the boldness and the courage to share it with others, no matter how much the culture will hate us for it, for saying, hey, your sin is going to send you to hell if you don't turn to Jesus Christ.
We love people enough to warn them of the judgment that is to come, so that they may come to Christ and live. Thank you for your mercies, which are new every morning. It's in Jesus' name we pray, amen.
This is When We Understand the Text with Pastor Gabe Hughes. There are lots of great Bible teaching programs on the web, and we thank you for selecting ours. But this is no replacement for regular fellowship with a church family.
Find a good, gospel-teaching, Christ-centered church to worship with this weekend, and join us again Monday for more Bible study, When We Understand the Text.