Alistair Begg’s Gay Wedding Sermon DEBUNKED!

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Hey guys, Colin here, and welcome back to Fight for Truth. In this video, we're going to follow up on Alistair Begg.

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Recently, the internet found out that Alistair advised a woman in his congregation to attend her grandson's

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LGBT wedding and bring a gift. We already posted one video on this, so go ahead and check that out in the description.

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Our perspective on this channel, and the perspective of many others, is that this is a monumental mistake.

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A wedding is, first and foremost, a celebration of a union between people. And attending a wedding is, at least on some level, participating in that celebration.

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But when the union of this wedding is called an abomination by God, Leviticus 18 .22, then

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Christians ought to avoid attending. It's that simple. This is what many people have said to Alistair in the wake of his comments.

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But rather than own up to the mistake and apologize, he's decided to double down, and now triple down, on what he said.

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In fact, recently, he preached an entire sermon on this topic, defending himself. And in this video, we are going to watch that sermon and debunk it, point by point.

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Please note that I take no pleasure in doing this. Alistair doesn't have the reputation of a false teacher.

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Rather, he has the reputation of being a very solid and faithful pastor for decades. That's what makes this so frustrating.

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But his perspective here is dangerous, in my estimation, so it needs to be responded to. Watch this.

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Let me tell you what I plan to do. I want to say a word or two from the text here, somewhat briefly.

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I then want to give you some of the background to the influences on my own thinking in relationship to these things, and then perhaps some concluding comments.

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For those of you who have just arrived and you say, I don't have a clue what he's talking about, well, just ask someone next to you.

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I'm sure somebody has some idea, and if not, it'll become clear in the end.

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So Alistair makes it abundantly clear what this sermon is responding to. It is directly in response to the things that have been said online about his

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LGBT wedding advice. This is clearly the context of his sermon. And with that said, let's get into it.

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And the Pharisees and the scribes grumbled, and the reason for their complaint was, this man receives sinners and eats with them.

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And so, he gives to us these three pictures—first of having sheep, all of them secure, one lost, seeking it, the joy that follows it.

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Then this picture of either a necklace or whatever it might have been, and the loss of one of these pieces, and then all of the search for it.

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And the joy that is represented in that is nothing compared to the joy before the angels of God, he says, over a sinner who repents.

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So preaching on Luke chapter 15, Alistair brings up two parables from Jesus. First, the parable of seeking the lost sheep, and second, the parable of seeking the lost coin.

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Both of these parables emphasize that God desires to save those who are unsaved. He desires to bring sinners, lost sheep, to repentance and faith in Him.

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So putting it in the context of LGBT weddings, Alistair is effectively implying that you can attend these events as a

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Christian as long as your heart's desire is to bring these people to repentance and belief in the

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Gospel. But this has nothing to do with the passages at all. You see, the parables do emphasize evangelism and joy over the repentance of sinners, and that's true.

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But there is no direct reference to anything even remotely relevant to attending a gay wedding.

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Quite simply, this is not an argument in favor of what Alistair said, not even close. But he continues with the parable of the prodigal son.

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Watch this. And of course the servant tells him, your brother has come and your father has killed the fattened calf because he has received him back safe and sound.

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The expectation, I think, would be, at least on the part of the servant, that this would be a source of real joy for this brother, that he would understand that his brother had been gone, had been lost to him and lost to the family in many ways, and now he was back.

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But the reaction of the elder brother is certainly not celebration. And we're told that he was angry, and he refused to go in.

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He could not celebrate the fact that his brother had come back and that his father had been prepared to accept him.

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He sent a servant to find out what was going on. He could easily have gone himself, couldn't he?

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But he didn't want to be contaminated, I think, by the situation as it was unfolding. So to put it simply, this story is about a young man who sins against his father, who runs away from home, but who eventually comes back as a repentant sinner.

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The father welcomes him back and celebrates his return with a big party. But the self -righteous older brother refuses to celebrate his brother's return.

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The man Alistair is highlighting here, in other words, is one who A. does not have compassion for those who are lost, and who

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B. does not celebrate when the lost are found. And of course, Alistair adds, not so subtly, that the older brother did not want to be quote -unquote contaminated by the event taking place.

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This is obviously a reference to what his conservative opponents have said about gay weddings.

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But just to be clear, this analogy doesn't work on virtually any level. On the one hand, we have a party for a repentant sinner coming back to his father.

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And on the other hand, we have a party for two unrepentant sinners celebrating their high -handed rebellion against their father.

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Surely Alistair Begg should not expect us to believe that these can be compared to each other, as if they're somehow the same.

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That would be absurd. These are complete opposites. But in the next clip, he talks about his wedding advice more directly.

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Watch this. In that conversation with that grandmother, I was concerned about the well -being of their relationship more than anything else, hence my counsel.

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Don't misunderstand that in any way at all. If I was in the receiving end of another question about another situation from another person in another time,

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I may answer absolutely differently. But in that case, I answered in that way, and I would not answer in any other way, no matter what anybody says on the internet as of the last ten days.

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So first, he says that the most important thing to him was preserving the relationship of the grandmother to her

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LGBT grandson. But this, too, is a problem, because obviously, glorifying God in our actions is often more important than preserving a relationship.

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Jesus himself says, And in verse 34, before this, he says,

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And a person's enemies will be that of his own household.

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So clearly, maintaining relationships is not the be -all, end -all of the Christian life, and it is certainly not the most important thing, as Alistair seems to say.

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To be clear, we should seek to maintain all the relationships we can, but not at the expense of participating in sin.

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But Alistair continues, To be clear, yes, he does need to repent, because he advised someone in his flock to participate in something that is an abomination against God.

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Obviously, that's missing the mark of God's Word. But we go on. For this reason, that I am the product of British evangelicalism, represented by John Stott, Martin Lloyd -Jones,

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Eric Alexander, Sinclair Ferguson, Derek Prime—I am a product of that.

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I have never been a product of American fundamentalism. I come from a world in which it is possible for people to actually grasp the fact that there are nuances in things.

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This is perhaps the most insulting clip of all. The fact that you disagree with him is just evidence that you're an

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American, and therefore incapable of understanding nuance. But this, too, is not a good argument.

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Alistair needs to show us from the text of Scripture that his position is correct. He's made a living off of expository preaching, after all.

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He shouldn't be appealing to cultural sensibilities, but to the Bible. And with all due respect, there is not a single genuine biblical argument in anything we've seen so far—at least, nothing remotely convincing.

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But he goes on. Pharisees, actually, is an Aramaic term for separatists.

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And the Pharisees were the religious exclusives of their day. In their determination to conform strictly to the law, they held aloof from any and every contact which, in their view, might defile them.

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This entailed an avoidance not only of Gentiles, not only of Hellenized Jews whom they regarded as liberals, but of the common people as well, who through ignorance of the law no doubt broke it, and as lawbreakers were unclean.

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Again, what does any of this Pharisee talk have to do with the issue at hand? The Pharisees didn't want any contact whatsoever with sinners.

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They were arrogant, self -righteous, prideful. But none of Alistair Begg's opponents are suggesting any of this.

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No one is saying that we cannot attend a baseball game, or a birthday lunch, or a block party with unbelievers or homosexuals there.

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We are simply saying that Christians don't have the Christian freedom to participate in an event that is a direct celebration of rebellion against God.

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Let's make this simple. Suppose a Christian father came to Alistair and asked if he should attend his daughter's wedding.

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His daughter is marrying a Christian man who has an outstanding reputation with his church and with both sides of the family.

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The father has already given his blessing on the marriage, and there's no issues there. But he doesn't want to go to his daughter's wedding because he and his friends wanted to play golf that day.

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Surely, in that case, Alistair Begg would tell this man that he must attend his daughter's wedding, because after all, he is responsible for supporting his daughter's union with his attendance.

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But wait just a minute. When it was a gay wedding, you're allowed to attend because your attendance isn't really supporting the union in any way, shape, or form, right?

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Do you see the problem here? Why is merely attending a wedding considered supportive of the union in one case, but not the other?

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And the answer is, because Alistair has an unbiblical double standard here. He would never tell someone to go to a wedding where the bride was being forced to marry the groom at gunpoint.

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He would never tell a Christian to attend the wedding of a 60 -year -old man to a 12 -year -old girl. But why not?

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Don't you want to maintain a relationship with any of the sinners involved here? Don't they also deserve to hear the gospel?

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Aren't they also lost sheep? This, ladies and gentlemen, is the problem—double standards.

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But he continues. The challenge in this, and I'm going to wrap this up because time goes, the challenge for me in this is

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I just assume, and I'm not going to assume it anymore, I assume that people are able to put two and two together and get four, not five or seven or nine or whatever it is.

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Now again, wait just a minute. Just a moment ago, Alistair was saying that the issue was far too nuanced and complex for Americans to understand.

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But now it's as simple as two plus two makes four? If it is that simple, then why can't Alistair simply show us in the text?

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Why won't he make a direct and biblical argument? There may be one out there, but I'm not aware of it.

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And with all due respect, Alistair certainly hasn't described it in this video at all. So here's the point.

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Quite simply, I don't believe that Christians should attend gay weddings under any circumstances. I believe that this best fits the

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Scriptures and the historic teaching of the Church. And I genuinely hope that Alistair Begg will repent of this and change his mind.

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