WWUTT 565 Q&A Replaced Protesting Eligibility?

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Responding to questions from listeners about what replacement theology is, protesting at other churches, and qualifications for pastors. Visit wwutt.com for all our videos! (This episode has been re-uploaded after having corrected an audio problem.)

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What is Replacement Theology? What is the proper way to express disagreement with another church?
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And if a pastor's child is rebellious, is he disqualified as a pastor? The answers to these questions and others when we understand the text.
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This is When We Understand The Text, a daily Bible study so that we may be thoroughly equipped men and women of God, ready for every good work.
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Visit our website www .utt .com. Now here's your host,
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Pastor Gabe. Thank you, Becky. You're welcome. I noticed right when you started that I don't have my Bible in front of me here.
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I figured that was coming. But you were on a roll. I didn't want to stop you. Hang on, I'm over here.
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I'm over here grabbing my Bible. Uh -huh. It's just an arm's stretch away. Yeah.
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How do I get this show going without my Bible in front of me? Goodness. I don't know. You get distracted.
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Well, we started in 1 Timothy this week, and already I'm getting 1 Timothy questions.
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Awesome. Before we've even gotten to that section of 1 Timothy. Okay. So two questions that I have today pertain to qualifications for elders, overseer, pastor.
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And I imagine we're going to have more of those questions come up as we go along. So before we get to those two questions,
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I've got one that I've neglected for like weeks now. Oh, yes. This is one. Yeah. Michelle Leslie asked this question of me, but I have not arrived at the question until now.
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So she says, Hi, Gabe. If you get the chance, can you talk about replacement theology on Friday?
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What is it? What are the denominations or types of churches that typically teach replacement theology?
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Whether or not this is an issue, people should leave an otherwise fairly doctrinally sound church over.
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How replacement theology might impact other doctrines of the church, how people's eschatology impacts their views on Israel and the church, the biblical view of Israel and the church.
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I've gotten several questions about it, but I feel like you would do a better job of explaining it than I would.
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Well, thank you for your question, Michelle. But I'll tell you right off the bat, I'm not much of a scholar when it comes to explaining replacement theology.
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I can I can give you kind of the nutshell version, which is where I'm going to go with this. And then
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I'm going to turn it over to Becky, because she is an expert on replacement theology. Right.
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I mentioned that because I look over at her and she's got this look on her face going, I don't know what we're talking about.
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I'm kind of glassy eyed right now. Not just because of the subject, but we've been dealing with sick kids all week and are probably about to have another one.
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That's another one of our children getting sick, not another baby. Oh, that's right. Yeah.
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Let's clarify that. So, first of all, what is replacement theology?
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Well, that's the common name that it's known by. It's more specifically as a doctrine or a theology.
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It's supersessionism, the idea that the church has superseded Israel as the people of God or the church has replaced
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Israel. It's also called fulfillment theology in the sense that the church has fulfilled or is the fulfillment of Israel.
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What are the denominations or types of churches that typically teach replacement theology? It's really hard to say, because I don't think there is a particular denomination that you can point to and say, this denomination teaches replacement theology.
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It's kind of like if you're going into a church and you want to know what it is that they teach about Israel in the church, you just have to ask.
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Yeah, you kind of have to do the whole Q &A thing. Yeah. But don't think that a church that is a covenant theology church is also a replacement theology church.
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They're not the same thing. Replacement theology actually has more in common with dispensationalism than it does with covenant theology, because the whole idea of replacement means at one point the people of God was
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Israel. At another point, the people of God is the church. So that's two different dispensations, whereas covenant theology is looking at a continuous covenant.
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It's not the same as covenant theology. So don't confuse the two. Commonly, critics of replacement theology will accuse
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Presbyterian churches or any sort of covenant theology church of being replacement theology, and they're not the same thing.
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So like I said, it can be a random doctrine. People who would identify as replacement theologians might pick and choose different pieces of it that they believe and teach.
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So you kind of just have to ask. I think the only person, the only theologian that I could point to and say, this person absolutely was a replacement theologian would have been
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Karl Barth. He was the only one. Or the only one that I could say with any definitive, you know, he's the one.
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But otherwise, I mean, you've got all different kinds of covenant theology and different kinds of dispensationalism, too.
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You have covenant theology and dual covenant theology. You have classical dispensationalism, progressive dispensationalism, and even supersessionism is not just one lump sum theme.
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There's different bits and pieces of it that some people believe and others don't. So the next question that Michelle had is whether or not this as a doctrine is an issue people should leave an otherwise fairly doctrinally sound church over.
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No, it's tertiary. So you think about denominations being separated out by secondary doctrines.
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So a Baptist church believes one way about baptism. A Methodist church believes another way about baptism.
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Presbyterian church believes another way. That's a secondary issue. So that's why they're divided out into different denominations, whereas with supersessionism, it's not a denominationally identifying doctrine.
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It's kind of tertiary. So it's not something that somebody should leave a church over. I really don't think it's a divisive matter.
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Next question, how replacement theology might impact other doctrines of the church. It's more of a byproduct of other viewpoints.
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So it's not really a doctrine that somebody adopts that affects their other doctrines. It's kind of like they've accepted certain doctrines that have then led them to replacement theology.
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Next part of her question, how people's eschatology impacts their views on Israel and the church.
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And as a reminder, eschatology is the study of end times. So not just when
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Jesus is going to return, but then what's going to happen after that are different viewpoints on the millennium.
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And the eschatological views all have different opinions of Israel. So yeah, the opinion about Israel and the church is affected by one's eschatology.
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And then finally, Michelle says, what is the biblical view of Israel and the church? Well, as I have taught,
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Christ is faithful Israel. So everyone who is in Christ is Israel.
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There is only one people of God. There's not two peoples of God. There's only one.
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And Jews and Gentiles together are one people in Christ Jesus.
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There is no distinction. Right. Jesus made that clear. Right. And Paul made that clear in Romans. And Paul, yeah.
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There is no distinction for all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. So we are all the same in the sense that we've all rebelled against God.
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And we can all be made the same in the sense that we are justified by grace through faith in Jesus Christ alone.
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That is how you become the people of God. There is nothing else that marks the people of God, nothing by the flesh.
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It is only by the spirit that we are made God's people through Jesus Christ.
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Romans 2, 28 through 29. No one is a Jew who is merely one outwardly, nor is circumcision outward and physical, but a
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Jew is one inwardly. And circumcision is a matter of the heart by the spirit, not by the letter.
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His praise is not from man, but from God. In other words, anyone can be a Jew. If you believe in Christ, you've been circumcised of the heart, and that makes you a
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Jew. We have the statement that's made in Romans 9, verse 6. Not all who are descended from Israel belong to Israel, and not all are children of Abraham.
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We are children of Abraham if we are in Christ. That's Galatians 2, 28 through 29. For there is neither
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Jew nor Greek. There is neither slave nor free. There is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.
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And if you are Christ's, then you are Abraham's offspring, heirs according to promise.
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It's also stated in Romans 10, 12 through 13. For there is no distinction between Jew and Greek. For the same
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Lord is Lord of all, bestowing his riches on all who call on him. For everyone who calls on the name of the
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Lord will be saved. Colossians 3, 11. Here there is not Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian,
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Scythian, slave, free. But Christ is all and in all. And this is what was taught by the church fathers.
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So this isn't some new doctrine that's come about, you know, in recent days. But the church fathers believed that the church is
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Israel. Justin Martyr, who lived in the second century, for the true spiritual
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Israel are we who have been led to God through this crucified
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Christ. And so one of the distinctions I think that Justin Martyr makes there is that we're a spiritual people, not a physical people.
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So you think of the things that pertained to ethnic Israel in the
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Old Testament as a type and shadow of who the church is now or who the people of God is now, which is a spiritual people and not an ethnic group of people.
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Now GotQuestions is a great website, gotquestions .com. And I recommend people there all the time.
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I mean, you got a Bible question, type it into GotQuestions because they probably answered it. They have literally hundreds of thousands of articles.
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It's something over 100 ,000 articles. Wow. But anyway, they answered this question about replacement theology.
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They're very dispensational. GotQuestions is dispensational. By the way, I'm saying
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GotQuestions, not God questions. That's with a T, not a
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D. GotQuestions .com. And on their article about replacement theology, they say, if Israel has been condemned by God and there is no future for the
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Jewish nation, how do we explain the supernatural survival of the
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Jewish people over the past 2 ,000 years, despite the many attempts to destroy them? How do we explain why and how
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Israel reappeared as a nation in the 20th century after not existing for 1 ,900 years? Well, the answer to the first question, how is it that the
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Jewish people have survived the past 2 ,000 years despite the many attempts to destroy them? The answer to that question is to show how
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God would reconcile to himself Jews and Gentiles. That's the answer to that question.
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Romans 11 and Ephesians 3 state that. D. James Kennedy, Becky and I are reading a book by Dr.
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Kennedy right now, and one of the things that he talks about is how the walls of Jerusalem stand and the walls of Tyree do not to show that God is true to his word.
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He prophesied that the walls of Jerusalem would be rebuilt and the walls of Tyree would be destroyed and never be constructed again, and that's still true today.
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We can still point to those things and say, see, God was true to his word. Now the second question that is presented rhetorically by gotquestions .com,
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but there is an answer to it. They say, how do we explain why and how Israel reappeared as a nation in the 20th century after not existing for 1 ,900 years?
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The answer is that's not a sign of anything but Zionism. They are forcing something that is not the blessing of God.
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They're trying to say that we're entitled to this land. God gave it to us, and so we're going to rebuild on this land again.
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But in Deuteronomy 30, God said, when you repent, I will restore you to this land. Has Israel repented?
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They haven't repented of anything. They don't worship Christ. That would be true repentance, because it's talked about in the book of Acts that God granted
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Jews repentance to believe in Christ. That's what he granted them repentance to do, believe that Jesus Christ is the son of God who died for sins and rose again from the grave.
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But that's not what the nation of Israel today believes. And I'm not saying that they need to be driven off their property or that the
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U .S. is wrong to defend them. I'm just saying don't point at Israel and think something biblical is going on there. Hebrews 11, 13 through 16 says this.
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When it's talking about the heroes of the faith, it says, these all died in faith, not having received the things promised to them, but having seen them and greeted them from afar and having acknowledged that they were strangers and exiles on the earth.
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For people who speak thus make it clear that they are seeking a homeland. If they had been thinking of that land from which they had gone out, they would have had opportunity to return.
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But as it is, they desire a better country that is a heavenly one. Therefore, God is not ashamed to be called their
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God, for he has prepared for them a city. We're supposed to be looking forward to a heavenly homeland, not an earthly one.
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So our expectation is not for a certain piece of property here on this earth, but rather we are marked by the spirit of God.
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As Paul talks about in Philippians 3, 3, we are the circumcision, we who worship by the spirit of God and glory in Christ Jesus and put no confidence in the flesh.
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And anyway, I hope that helps you out with that, Michelle. Like I said, I'm not a scholar on replacement theology, so you may need to find somebody else that can give you kind of more of the ins and outs of that better than I did.
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But I hope that that nutshell overview helps you a little bit. Next question comes from Neil in South Carolina.
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We've heard from Neil before. Hello, Neil. Hello, Pastor Gabe and Becky. I hope that's his voice.
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He sounds just like me. Awesome. I hope everyone is well and not frozen quite yet.
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Well, we've had some up and down temperatures. Pretty chilly. Every now and again. The fall has been pretty cool.
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We went from nice low 70s, upper 60s to suddenly 40. I don't know how that, you know, we miss the 50s somewhere in there.
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Yeah, we usually do. Now we've come back up into that. So now we're in the 50s as we're heading into Thanksgiving.
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So not quite frozen yet, but it looks like it's going to be an early winter. But it's Kansas. It's Kansas. Eh, you know.
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Whatever the temperature is in an hour, it'll change. It will. Neil goes on. Recently, an article was posted about a pastor being escorted out of a church for loudly protesting a woman pastor.
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How are we to handle disagreements with other churches in our community? Well, for starters, not like that.
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So going into a church and protesting loudly out of order is not at all the example of Second Timothy 2, 24 through 25.
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Paul told Timothy, the Lord's servant must not be quarrelsome, but kind to everyone, able to teach patiently enduring evil, correcting his opponents with gentleness.
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Or you have the often used first Peter 3, 15, which says in your hearts, honor
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Christ the Lord as holy, always being prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you.
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Yet do this with gentleness and respect. Being disruptive is not respectful.
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And it's certainly not gentle, but it's definitely not paying respect to those whom we are gently trying to correct and bring them to a knowledge of the truth.
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Peter also said, with regards to sharing the gospel, this is chapter 4, verse 15, let none of you suffer as a murderer or a thief or an evildoer or as a meddler.
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If you're going into a church and you're standing up and loudly protesting something, you're meddling. Is it your church?
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Well, in this case, it wouldn't be. It seems to be that. That's what I'm saying. Right. A pastor went into another church and loudly protested that there was a woman pastor there.
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So what do you recommend? That he do instead? Mm hmm. I think that an appropriate approach of that pastor at the most aggressive could have been to go into their parking lot.
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And as people are coming out of church, ask them questions about that. Or I mean, go to church. You can sit through the service.
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You can listen to it. And then after church is over, approach people and say, now, you think it's OK for a woman pastor to be up there, despite the fact that in 1
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Timothy 2, 15, it says or sorry, 1 Timothy 2, 12, it says, I do not permit a woman to teach or to exercise authority over a man.
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You can approach that in much gentler conversational ways without disrupting a service because nobody's going to listen to you.
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All they see you as is a disruptor. They don't see you as somebody that's there proclaiming truth, especially not after the last weekend.
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Oh, yeah. With the shooting at the church in Texas. No, nobody's going to be listening to what you're saying that everybody's going to be terrified and they're going to be reacting when that's what they're going to be doing.
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When the nation is is still kind of trying to wrap their minds around a guy running up to a church building in a rural area and opening fire on that church, randomly, apparently.
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Yes. Well, he did have I think he did have in -laws at that church. So he did know the church.
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I heard it was randomly. So that was the last. That was probably early on. Yeah. Yeah, it was.
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But anyway, I you know, that's it puts fear in people's hearts. You know, you're going to church.
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You're going to church now thinking I might die in church today, whereas last week you probably weren't thinking that. And so if somebody's going to stand up in church and start loudly.
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We've had that yelling about something. We've removed people for doing that. I don't have we ever had anybody stand up and yell.
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Not during church, but beforehand. Yeah, we have. We've escorted people out of our building because we knew they were there to proselytize.
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We knew the reason why they came in our building. They were they had previously been warned and been told, hey, if you want to come and worship with us, even though you may not agree with our doctrine, you're welcome to come here and listen and learn.
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But if you start after services over handing out your business card or saying you need to come to this other church or all this,
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I mean, that's proselytizing. We're not going to allow you to do that. So you're you're welcome to come and learn with us.
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But you cannot be here recruiting others to your cause. And in this case, this was a heretical church, right?
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That was telling people, you haven't received a real baptism. You have to come to our church and receive the true baptism.
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So they had a little different, but at the same time, it's it's the same. You go into a church to rile people up and make a big scene.
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Well, in this case, that's what that pastor was doing. That's what I'm saying. Oh, OK. Yeah. In the case in our case, we knew why they were there.
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True. We let them be there. But then they started to do what we warned them not to do. And so then the next time they came, then we escorted them out.
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We said, nope, sorry, can't be here. We told you. I mean, this this was our agreement.
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And you lied in the sense that you said, OK, sure, and then did exactly what we told you not to do.
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And you're not honest people. So so this is that anyway, coming back to this situation with this pastor, this is this is meddling.
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And we have no examples of this in the New Testament. There are no examples of anybody going into a church and loudly proclaiming something.
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You're all hypocrites. What's the matter with you? Or I don't know. Well, I mean, Jesus threw over tables, but that was totally different.
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Not at all the same. And it was also there was a context there, right? With the apostle
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Paul, there there is no example of him doing this in any of the cities where he went and proclaimed the gospel.
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Very true. In fact, it says very plainly that Paul went into the synagogue and reasoned with them.
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That's what it says. He did. Acts 17 to acts 18 for then when he was standing before Governor Felix, it says
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Paul reasoned before Felix. Acts 24, 25. He spoke gently, clearly and articulately when it was his turn.
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So, yeah, I wasn't going into a place and just loudly saying something. Now, when Paul was in the synagogue in Corinth and they wouldn't listen to what it was he was saying, he shook out his garments and said, your blood is on your own heads.
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You know, there was something there might be a response like that, but it's not like he goes into the synagogue loudly disrupting everything and saying,
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I have the true word of God and you must listen to me. He spoke when it was his turn. He reasoned and he debated and he did so in a way that it was proper in etiquette and was gentle in speech so that people would listen to him and not dismiss him as some sort of disruptive person.
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Even when otherwise you come across as a young and having a tantrum.
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Right? Yes. More or less. Who can speak louder here? Yeah. The loudest person wins. Yes. Which never happens.
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Really, you don't get the respect that you need in order for them to listen to what you have to say about God's word, even if it is the truth that you're saying.
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You know, when when people have gotten into discussions with somebody else and tension start getting high, I've advised, hey, if you know you're starting to lose it or you can see the person that you're talking to is starting to lose it, be done.
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There's nothing more to say. Just gently say, hey, look, I can tell this is a pretty personal topic for you.
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Right. So why don't we take a step back, cool off a little bit, then we'll come back and talk about it again later.
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Right. And then bring it up again. But when cooler heads prevail. And you can't really do that in a big group.
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You're going to stop for one person, but the other people are fine until you get everybody riled up. I mean, where's the where's the line you draw?
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Then you get the riot in Ephesus. Right. So that's why that's why it's it's good to do it one on one or at least close to one on one as possible.
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Yeah. Few people at a time. Well, like in the synagogue, it's one person is standing up and speaking. Right. And this is the same orderliness that Paul implements in the church in Corinth in First Corinthians 14.
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Now, there he's talking about the context of speaking in tongues. But he says, if somebody has something, let one person stand up and share it so that it's not a zoo.
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Right. It's not a bunch of people trying to talk over one another. It just sounds like chaos. It's in an orderly setting because God is the author of order, not disorder.
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And everything. Order and everything. Right. Everything has order. Yeah. Yeah. If if this room was in chaos, you couldn't make sense of it.
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I at least have some books on the shelf. And the ones that are on the floor are going to get put back on the shelf.
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More like he numbered the stars. He's numbered the hairs on your head. Yeah. Very good. He's he's got it all ordered.
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Everything has perfect order. Everything has a purpose and an intention. And so it needs to be the same.
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Like even when it comes to a pastor coming up to the pulpit and doing a sermon, it's going to have an intention and a purpose for why he's up there.
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He's not just going to go up there and start randomly speaking. Right. So. So this needs to be the way in which we engage one another in the truth.
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There is an intention to not cause noise, not cause a disruption, but lead people to a knowledge of the truth gently and with respect.
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That's the instruction that's given over and over again. Paul gives it to Timothy. Peter gives it. And so that's that's the way we need to approach one another.
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The Apostle Paul, even when he went to Mars Hill, open air environment and sharing the gospel in that environment, he didn't just go randomly pick a place and start yelling.
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He was invited there to Mars Hill because they heard him reasoning in the synagogue and in the marketplace and not in a chaotic fashion.
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But there was order. There was a specific meaning method to the way in which he did things.
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He was not just out there being hyper or loud. He was there to share the gospel.
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Right. And that's not in any way saying that a person who's a street preacher who goes out and just starts yelling is disruptive.
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That's not what I'm saying. That's different because that's what Paul was interrupting. You're not interrupting anything. That's what
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Paul was doing in the marketplace. So you can go to a place. You want to be strategic when it comes to sharing the gospel in a public place, right?
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You want to be somewhere people will hear you or they might be able to gather around or something like that.
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You want to be where there's people. Can't just go out to the middle of a park where nobody's there and start yelling because nobody's going to have any idea what.
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There's nobody around to hear what you're saying. So anyway, so there's a different situation, different circumstance, different circumstance.
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But like I said, Paul going to Mars Hill and preaching there at the Areopagus, that was that was by invite.
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We want to hear what it is that you're saying about this resurrection of the dead. So they brought him to Mars Hill to hear what it was that he had to say in the presence of the gods.
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Right. According to the pagans, because that was where everybody delivered their orations in Athens. So we always see the apostles delivering the gospel in an orderly fashion.
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It's never chaotic. It's never disruptive. It's never putting people down, belittling them, causing chaos, always respectful.
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It's not in mockery. And so that's that's what it is that we need to imitate. We need to be presenting the gospel the same way of the qualifications for an overseer.
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First Timothy three says that he must be sober minded, self -controlled, respectable and not quarrelsome.
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Likewise, in Titus, he must be self -controlled, upright, holy and disciplined. The word for self -controlled means temperance or an ability to restrain one's urges, standing up and causing a disruption in a place of worship.
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No matter how wrong that church is that you're protesting, that's not temperance.
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And furthermore, we're talking about an issue here that's not even an essential doctrine. I mean, it's as disagreeable as it is that a church would place a woman in the position of pastor when the scripture teaches that's not her role.
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A woman has a very important role in the church, but she cannot be a pastor. That is a position that God has reserved for men to fill.
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But that's not an essential doctrine. I would say that it's an issue that is worthy of leaving a church over if your church starts to ordain women into the position of overseer or pastor.
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But it's not an essential doctrine. And at least from what Neil's telling me here, this pastor caused a disruption in this church over the fact that a woman was a pastor there.
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That seemed to be the reason why he stood up and loudly protested in this way.
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It doesn't matter what the issue was. I'm just curious as to why this seemed to be the one that set this pastor off instead of,
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I don't know, something a little bit more primary. And Paul adds, this is 1
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Timothy 3, 7, Moreover, he must be well thought of by outsiders so that he may not fall into disgrace into a snare of the devil.
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If you're going into other churches and you're causing a disruption, are you going to be thought of well by outsiders?
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Probably not. That's not the best approach. Doing these things gently and with respect to one another, you must respect unbelievers.
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There is no excuse and certainly no command given in scripture that you can treat somebody who is an unbeliever or who is even perverting the word of God disrespectfully.
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You don't have a place to do that. Because as Paul gives that instruction in 2 Timothy 2 about correcting opponents with gentleness, he goes on to say,
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God may grant them repentance leading to a knowledge of the truth. When you are engaging someone respectfully and gently correcting opponents and not being quarrelsome, it's because your faith is in God to change their hearts, not in your ability to be louder than the other guy to change their hearts.
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To get them to listen. Right. So Paul says in Romans 12, as much as it depends on you, keep the peace with everyone.
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Thank you so much for your question, Neal. So this one, this last question here also has to do with qualifications for an elder or an overseer in 1
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Timothy chapter 3, Josiah says, Hello, what? My name is Josiah and I have a question that sadly might affect my church.
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I thank you in advance for your help in the situation and I thank you for all the great work that you do. I will keep it short and simple.
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If a pastor's daughter, 16 years old, living at home, is an active homosexual, does that make the pastor ineligible to be a pastor?
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The answer to that question is yes, it would. He would be unqualified as a pastor.
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Titus 1 .6 says that a pastor's children must be believers. And we read in 1
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Corinthians 6, 9, and 10 that those who practice homosexuality cannot inherit the kingdom of God.
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If he's taking care of the situation, though, that's different. No, I would say...
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If he's actively trying to reprimand and all that? No. No?
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No. Okay. Just clarifying. Thank you. If she's professing that she is a lesbian or a homosexual, then he's disqualified.
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Because she doesn't just decide that overnight. Very true. It was coming to that.
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Very true. So there was a breakdown somewhere in the leadership and discipleship of his family and his children.
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She's not a believer if she's professing to be a lesbian. Now if it's a rumor...
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Oh, certainly. Right. You need to go to them and ask. Exactly. If it's something that's... Don't just rely on rumors.
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Yeah, definitely. So if it's something that's circulating around the high school... Because this is serious. Yeah. This is like, you need to go to the horse's mouth themselves and make sure this is what this is.
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Yeah. As I'm giving this answer, this is not a matter of, oh, Pastor Gabe said this, so you're done. Yeah.
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Oh, no, no, no. There is a manner and a method in which these things need to be approached. Paul told Timothy that if you have a charge against an elder, it must be by the evidence of two or three witnesses.
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Right. So as this is being brought up in your church, it has to include the whole church.
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That's not lightly. That's not supposed to be taken lightly. Absolutely. Right. And the desire here is to bring a brother, and in this case also a sister, back to the path of righteousness.
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So correcting someone with gentleness, not regarding them as an enemy, but correcting him as a brother. Right. And we would desire for that pastor to repent of the neglect that he's probably shown his family and bring his wife and his children back into a place of submission unto the
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Lord. So back to 1 Corinthians 6, once again, verses 9 through 10. Or do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God?
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Do not be deceived. Neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor men who practice homosexuality – ladies, that would apply there as well – nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God.
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Paul goes on in verse 11 to say, And such were some of you, but you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the
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Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God. So among the Corinthians were those who could say, I once was that, but I was washed in Christ.
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Right. So as long as a person is that, like if they've been tested and you would say of that person that this is the sin that they are guilty of, that they are unrepentant of, then they're not walking in righteousness.
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They have separated themselves from the body of Christ. And that is a sin that needs to be handled in a right way.
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According to the instructions that we've been given on how to handle disciplinary matters within the church.
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That's the way that needs to be handled. Right. Now I have, even here in Kansas, there are some churches that are actively accepting people and encouraging people who are of the homosexuality movement, if you will.
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I don't know what you call that. Understood. It is pretty confusing because I just heard a report today where they were referred to as LGBTQI.
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Oh, that's new. Yeah. And sometimes there's even another letter on there, like A. But I'm going, what do these letters mean?
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You know where I'm going. Right. Okay. So like all collectives. The acronym is always changing. That's the point
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I'm saying. And I don't know how to... Anyway. So they're in the homosexual rights movement.
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Yes. Right. Okay. So there are churches that are welcoming them from the outside signs and stuff like that.
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They're flying the flag. They've got it on their sign. Right. So if this is happening in one of those churches.
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If this becomes a church that starts to become accepting of that, which I could see that being a possibility.
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Right. So in order to compensate for... Because it's happening a lot more often. So in order to compensate for this error that exists within his family, the pastor decides, well, maybe we need to be more welcoming of the homosexual community and start to talk these things out, have discussions about them and things like that.
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If that ends up happening and the church starts to swing that way, I would still say that you need to have conversations with people about it.
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Don't just drop everything. Because you could still encourage a heart toward repentance or toward truth and righteousness by good conversation, by good communication, as opposed to just, well, this is it.
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I'm grabbing my ball and I'm going home. So there still does need to be good communication going on there.
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But if this becomes a situation where the church starts becoming accepting of that sort of sin, then yeah, you need to leave.
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Right. Then this would be the whole church's wayward, not just a matter of a pastor and his family. And so then you would probably want to leave that congregation and go somewhere else.
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There's so many different circumstances we could go through a lot. Yes, definitely. Different approaches and stuff like that.
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So just going off of what we know. But thankfully, God has given us in his word the manner in which these things need to be confronted and approached.
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Oh, amen. Thank you, Lord. That way, it's not left up to you. And then it becomes disorder, which is what we were talking about just a little bit ago.
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Right. So if we are in the spirit and we are desiring unity in the bond of peace, then we're going to follow the instructions that God has laid out in his word to handle these kinds of arguments and disagreements.
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And the person that disregards those instructions, who stands up and loudly and disrespectfully protests out of order, is just as wrong as the church that appoints a woman in the position of pastor.
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Neither one is submitting to the authority and the instruction that is given in God's word.
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We all must do these things in the manner in which God has instructed. They must be done and doing it with gentleness and respect.
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Most definitely. Hopefully, God will grant them repentance. That's what we're hoping for. Yes. God grants repentance, leading to a knowledge of the truth.
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So let's go there. Let's go in prayer. And that's how we'll close out. All right. Lord, we thank you for these questions that have been presented to us today.
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And I hope that I've been able to provide some adequate answers according to what your word says.
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I pray and ask that we would be given eyes to see and ears to hear.
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That your spirit would illuminate the word of God to us, that we might understand it. That this isn't just lofty head knowledge that we possess, but we have it written upon our hearts with a desire to please
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God with all that we say and do. And in this circumstance with Josiah's church, I pray that that would be their desire.
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That they would want to do what is right and pleasing unto the Lord, and that this pastor also would realize that his daughter is in sin, and that he's also neglected certain responsibilities in his family, and must correct those—these things must be corrected rightly according to the instructions that have been given to us in the word of God.
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I pray his daughter would repent, that she would realize that she's in sin and come to a knowledge of the truth and the gospel of Jesus Christ.
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We pray also for the previous pastor that Neil had talked about, that he would come to understand the gentleness by which we must present the gospel of Jesus Christ, not speaking out of anger or in disorder or shouting down other people, but we're doing this with gentleness and respect as we were instructed to do in your scriptures.
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I pray also for Michelle Leslie's ministry, and I thank you for the question that she presented whether or not
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I gave her an answer that was good enough for her to share in her own ministry.
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But I thank you for the work that she does, and I pray that you would bless her as she continues in faithfulness to the word of God as well.
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Lord, it is by your sovereign decree that we have been rescued from our sin and lawlessness into salvation in Jesus Christ, and I pray that you would bless us and keep us firm, steadfast in the faith, and growing in sanctification and righteousness until that great day of Christ appears.
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And we pray and ask these things in Jesus' name, amen. Amen. Hello. Hello.
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Hello. Hello. Hello. I'm probably closer to being
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Noah than I am a hunter. So far north. Yes, there's many, many.
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No, you hate animals. Many moose. Many meeses in Kansas.
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You're quite the zoologist. And I'm very adept at English too. Adept. Yep.