The Rancid Fruit of Gospel Coalition

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All right, so I wanted to do a quick video today. And this is something that I've talked about in the past, but hopefully
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I can put a little bit of a finer point on it today. And well, you know, to be honest,
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I was thinking about Ruslan yesterday. Now I know that a lot of you have been instantly turned off to the video, but don't worry, this is not a video about Ruslan, but I was thinking about Ruslan because Ruslan is an influential person and he influences many, many people.
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He's got a very large following on his YouTube channel and elsewhere. And I talked to somebody who's a non -public person.
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And when I got off the phone with him, I thought to myself, this is the fruit of Ruslan. This is
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Ruslan's fruit. And I'll tell you about that conversation. So this man reached out to me in email, was very polite, and he wanted to talk to me about my content on Russell Moore because he felt like I was being uncharitable and he wanted to address that.
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So he called me up and he told me about what his interpretation of Russell Moore was, where, remember when
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Russell Moore had that fake leaked letter that he himself leaked? He was saying, well, that's just Matthew 18.
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You said it was inappropriate and slimy, but it's really, that's just Matthew 18, as if Matthew 18 says, and I told the guy,
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I was like, I think I actually joked about this. Matthew 18 doesn't tell you to pretend to anonymously leak a letter.
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That's a weasel tactic. That's out of the DNC handbook. That's not out of the book of Matthew. Anyway, so we talked about that and we're just gonna disagree on that.
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I don't know where he gets this weird take on anonymous letters, whatever, but that's beside the point.
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So we continue our conversation and he tells me, he says, hey, I want you to know where I'm coming from.
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And he says, well, I voted Republican my entire life and I'm thinking in my head, oh, here we go.
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And he said, except for this election, I voted for Joe Biden. And he starts to go on speaking and I stopped him.
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I said, hey, hold on a second. I said, has anyone confronted you about that? And he says, no, what do you mean?
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Or something like that. And I said, well, here's what I need to say to you. I mean, you do recognize, of course, that that vote was sinful.
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You're in sin for supporting Joe Biden. And he was very taken aback, but he allowed me to explain about why
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I thought that. And I've done that on the channel many times. And he claimed that he was totally pro -life, but he felt like his vote for Joe Biden was a vote in faith, right?
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And I kind of chuckled when he said that and I could tell he was perturbed that I was laughing at him and I understand why he would be perturbed.
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And I asked him, I said, okay, hold on a second. What do you mean faith? Like, what are you having faith in? What was the thing about Joe Biden that you felt like overshadowed or trumped the support for the abortion holocaust that he's promoting?
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And I asked that question, it was kind of a trick question because I know nothing overshadows the abortion holocaust.
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Like, it's just absolutely ridiculous that anyone would think anything would. But what I was expecting him to say was, oh, racial justice or welfare or he cares for the poor better.
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Something stupid like that because all of those things are stupid, but I've heard them so many times before, but he actually didn't say that.
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What he said was, he thought about it for a second, he was hemming and hawing for a bit and I could kind of tell that nobody's ever asked him this question before, right?
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So he thought about it for a second and he said to me, I kid you not guys, here's what he said. This is what overshadows his promotion of the abortion holocaust.
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He said to me, well, I just felt like his rhetoric and the way he spoke was just more unifying than Donald Trump and I was shocked.
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So his nice speech overshadows his support for the abortion holocaust.
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And I stopped him and I said, sir, with all due respect, that's the lamest thing that I've ever heard in my entire life.
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And at that point, he almost hung up on me. He was very upset. He says, you don't know me, you don't know anything about my background, you don't know.
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And he started going on and on. And I said, I don't know you, but what you've said is insane and I said, bear with me for a moment, we'll talk about it.
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And he didn't hang up on me, we talked a little bit more. And by the way, we ended this conversation on friendly terms. I'm not gonna reveal this guy's name, he's not a public figure.
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But the point is, at one point he said, well, how do you communicate these things and with people who disagree and still maintain friendships?
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And I said, well, the thing is I'm not, the friendship is not my highest good, right? So, but let me ask you a question, sir.
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I said, how would you communicate it if one of your friends came to you and said, hey, you know, I've got these same sex attractions, what does the
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Bible say about homosexuality? I asked him, what would you say? Because I would bet that my answer would be similar to yours.
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And I actually was giving him a lot of credit, but my answer was not similar to his at all. He hemmed and hawed again, and he said, you know,
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I've been thinking about this, about how can I say this in a way that doesn't offend them, that kind of waters it all down so that it's more palatable.
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I kid you not, he used these words. These are words that I use on my channel in mockery. But this is what he said, he tries to find ways to, and I said, sir, again, with all due respect, you are trying to make excuses for what
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God has said plainly, that's your bigger problem. Your big problem is not what I say about Democrats, or what
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I say about your vote, or what I say about Russell, your big problem is that you're actually embarrassed about what the Bible says, because if you weren't, you would just tell the man, you wouldn't jerk about it, you wouldn't say, hey, you homo, you're going to, you wouldn't say that, but you'd say, here's what the scripture says, it's an abomination before God, God created man and woman to come together, and the reason he did that, the reason he created the union of man and woman, the physical union, is because he wanted godly offspring.
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And he told us his command was to be fruitful and multiply, and homosexuality is a rejection of that very first command, be fruitful and multiply.
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It says, no, God, I'm not going to do that. And so this is the thing, guys, like when
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I got off the phone, I thought to myself, this is the confusion that people like Ruslan, Russell Moore, Tim Keller, this is the confusion that they're spreading.
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I felt a lot of sympathy for this guy, because this man was a mess of confusion.
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He was offended, he had never been confronted about this kind of thing before, to hear the direct speech to him was an offense.
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He said, how could you just say this? Why don't you say it nicer? I'm like, I'm saying it perfectly nice.
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The Bible says that it's an abomination. You can't support someone who's in favor of the abortion
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Holocaust. That's insane, no matter how good of an excuse you have, and by the way, yours was horrible, you can't do it.
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And so I just, I thought about this, and I just have so much sympathy for this man, because this was not a leader.
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This was not someone who was a teacher. This is someone who's struggling to figure out why is it that the
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Bible speaks so plainly, and yet my leaders are telling me that friendship and being nice is one of the highest goods.
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It's like, he's trying to figure out a nice way to say that the scripture is against homosexuality.
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Guys, there is no nice way to say it. You can say it in an extra abrasive jerky way, but the reality is that the
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Bible is straightforward, it's plain speaking, and like that article yesterday, the
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Kruger article, it's just like, just say what you mean, man. Like, let's not play these weasel games, guys, because it's creating confused people.
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And you know what? You're gonna be judged, since you're a teacher, you're gonna be judged harshly because you communicated something in such a way as to soften and make excuses for God's word, and I don't think he's gonna take very kindly to that.
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And so, you know, when you look at the scripture, guys, like, we don't, it's a cheat sheet, guys.
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We don't have to figure this out. I was listening to George Gammon, and he was talking about one of his favorite economists, Hazlitt, and Hazlitt says that there's this fallacy of economists where they either purposely or not purposely ignore secondary consequences, right?
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And so, hey, you know, let's just give everyone, you know, a universal basic income. You know, everyone will have more money, the poor people will be fine, and they'll be able to get more stuff, and it'll be great.
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And it's like, that's not how it works, guys. I remember talking to Ruslan about UBI. He supported it, and then he stopped supporting it, at least he claims to have stopped supporting it, because, you know, obviously people, when you give them money for not working, they're gonna continue not to work, and he gave the example of, oh,
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I tried to get sushi the other day, and there wasn't enough workers, and so I started thinking, eh, maybe this isn't such a good idea.
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Like, guys, we don't have to figure this out for ourselves. The scripture tells us what's what.
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You should have had, Ruslan should have been able to read his Bible and know that universal basic income would not work.
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And look, you can do extra work to find out exactly why people are incentivized not to work, they won't work.
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You can do all the thinking you want, but at the end of the day, we have a cheat sheet. We can cut right to the chase and say, well,
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God has spoken, and God said, God is good, I recognize that, so if God says it, then it's good.
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If God says it, then it's for our good. If he commands it, then it's better than anything we can come up with. And so, yes, we need economists to explain it and to show us exactly why these things don't work, but every
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Christian, you don't have to understand the inner workings, every Christian should be able to understand what
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God has said and assume that it's good. If God says he doesn't work, he doesn't eat, we need to assume that that's good.
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And it's great to have Thomas Sowell to tell us exactly why it doesn't work, but we don't need Thomas Sowell, we actually have the word of God.
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Thus saith the Lord is enough. And so, what we need right now are teachers that are clear with what
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God's word says. You don't have to know all the details about why it works the way it does, but if God's word says it, we ought to teach it as good and right and holy and just.
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And if God's word doesn't teach it, then we need to assume that it's subpar, it's substandard, it's evil, it's rebellious against what
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God has said. And by the way, obviously, also good and necessary consequences and stuff like that.
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I'm not saying that every single thing needs to have a proof text. What I'm saying is, just like the
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Westminster says, good and necessary consequences are okay as well. And so, the next time the government, this is something that somebody pointed out, it's like, hey,
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Gospel Coalition, what if the government came out with a law that said that all women, when they're in public, need to wear yoga pants, right?
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They're not explaining why, they just need to wear yoga pants. It's like, should I submit or not, or how do
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I know? And the thing is, Gospel Coalition, since they're not presenting anything with a foundation, no scruples in it, they're just picking and choosing whatever the, who knows what
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Gospel Coalition would say at this point. What they would say today, it'd probably be different what they say 10 years from now, or 10 years ago.
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But the reality is, we do know. You don't have to submit if the government said that all women, when they're in public, need to wear yoga pants.
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You don't have to submit to insane laws like that. The God never gave them that authority, so they don't have it.
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And it's just that simple. So, guys, the bottom line is, find a teacher that does not make excuses for what
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God's word says, that doesn't try to soften it, try to think of the nicest possible way to say what the
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Bible just says, straightforward, right? It's just that simple, guys. And if you're looking, if you're thinking about how to say this in a way that I can still be friends with people, then you've got the wrong priorities.
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What you should be thinking about is, how do I say this in such a way that is as faithful as possible to God, that glorifies
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God, the way he has spoken it, communicate that to the people. That's what you should be thinking about.
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The world is watching. I don't care too, I don't care at all that the world is watching.
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What I do care about is that the Lord is watching, and he has spoken, and he is watching what
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I say and what I do. And I want that to honor God as much as possible. I hope that you found this video helpful.