Another Helper

Last week I was in Omaha, Nebraska.

I might be here next week.

I'm not sure.

I think I am.

That's assuming that the crop duster that I'm flying out of Billings, Montana, that Uncle Harry remembers to change the oil and so I'll be able to get to some point of civilization and catch a real flight into Denver and then home.

We'll see. That's the point. Yeah, that's why there is a crop duster there.

Yeah, no.

No, actually I remember seeing, actually I'm going to Helena. So I remember going to the Helena airport website and they're so proud of this. They take a picture of this gate and it has a jet at it. I mean, it's got jet engines.

It's like, wow, look at that.

It's just like, oh no.

Because I'll be honest with you, you know what's really weird is TSA agents, big huge airports, are just robots. I mean, you know what TSA stands for. Thousands standing around. That's what TSA stands for.

And they just, you know, I'm a TSA pre-check guy so I go, I've never even had somebody in front of me in the line. You just go up, boom. You don't have to take your shoes off. You don't have to take your laptop out.

None of that stuff.

You don't even have to take your jacket off. You just put it through the thing. You walk through a metal detector. Don't have to sit here and do this thing. And once in a while it kicks you out and makes you go through the other way.

But so far it's been pretty nice. But they just sort of stand around.

Hey, have a nice day.

TSA agents at tiny airports.

The badge is 10 times bigger.

You look like a terrorist to me.

You ain't from around these parts, are you?

Unpack everything.

And I had these jump drives.

I still have them.

And they're these indestructible ones. They're made out of metal. You can drive over them in a Humvee and they still survive in our system. I remember this one guy.

What's this?

The computer jump drive.

Never seen one like that before.

And oh, the thoughts.

Oh, the thoughts go through my mind at that point in time. You're like, don't say it. Don't say it. You wanna get out of this place. Just smile.

Oh, it's fun.

But yeah, it's a little scary going through those little places because I literally have more problem with I'm gonna patch down here in those little teeny tiny places. Because they have nothing else to do.

They're bored stiff.

And, you know, but the guys at the busy place is like, ah, get out of my hair. I don't want you around here anymore. So it should be interesting. But I think, I actually think that I fly a jet into Helena, I think.

So we'll see. I was only joking about the crop duster. But since my hosts had mentioned trying to get a crop duster for me,.

I sort of figured it would sort of fit.

And they're accustomed to that in Montana. I'll be speaking at the Reformation Montana Conference. But Thursday of this week, I'm debating Justin Lee, who is the head of the Gay Christian Network. And so I would imagine he feels like the visiting team in this situation.

I don't know. I really don't get the feeling that I'm gonna face the same situation that Douglas Wilson faced at the University of Indiana when he gave a lecture on the Christian view of sexuality. And the place is filled with homosexual activists that are yelling and screaming and generally acting like spoiled three-year-olds.

I think if you got all of them in Montana together at one place, there still wouldn't be enough of them to really cause a problem. And I was seeing the host pastor, and he's like, whoa, he's just this big, huge guy.

So I think we're gonna be okay. But obviously, I'm more concerned about the debate itself. And it's gonna be recorded. And it's good to have those debates available. So if you remember, I will not be here on Wednesday because I fly up there on Wednesday.

But please remember to pray for that encounter because everyone is useful. And I don't know how many of them we're gonna be able to have down through the years. And his book called Torn, T-O-R-N,.

Is a very good book.

I think it's one of the best presentations of his side that I've read. It's not as a scholarly work, but it's an experiential work. He was raised as a Southern Baptist at church and just basically his story of discovering that he's a homosexual and so on and so forth.

It's very interesting. So it'll be interesting.

I don't think it's gonna be a knock down, drag out type thing. I just can't see him doing that. But hopefully it will be focused upon, well, if I recall correctly, the subtitle of the book is Rescuing the Gospel from the Culture Wars.

And one of his big things is, and it is interesting, I guess there was a Barna poll a couple years ago that asked 18 to 30 year olds to describe the church. And they were given a number of different possibilities.

And they chose none of the above. The primary thing, I think over 90 that they used, the first thing they used to describe the church was anti-gay. And from his perspective, what that means is we're not known for the gospel, we're known for this.

And so I'm gonna focus on that. And I'm going to focus on the fact that a lot of his book was basically saying there's no such thing as an ex-gay. If you're homosexual, you always are, always will be.

That's part of who you are. It can't be changed, et cetera, et cetera. So I'm gonna be focusing on 1 Corinthians 6 -9 and Paul's statement there. And really try to make it a gospel issue because he claims to be a Christian.

So all right, he claims to be a Christian. Let's talk about the gospel. So that's what we'll be doing Thursday. I get to do some really interesting things. This weekend was corresponding with folks down in South Africa.

We're arranging the schedule down there. My goodness, I'm really gonna need prayers for that one because not only am I doing a debate in London on the way to South Africa, but we literally, right now, if I wanted to spend three weeks in South Africa, we could have me speaking every single day, every single day.

We have had to turn down 80 of the invites, which means most probably going back early in 2014 just to try to, and that includes incredible opportunities of debate with Muslim leaders. So it's exciting stuff.

Flying to South Africa is not exciting stuff. So if some of you have done that, I know, but I know that Mr. Broyles does it with children. So I just must be a wimp that, I don't know, maybe the children are a distraction.

Maybe that actually helps. It's just the sitting there for all those hours in the cattle car section is really interesting. But anyhow, we're in John chapter 14. In fact, oh great keeper of the notes, now that you are here, when we were last together, I looked at you and I said, you're gonna write this down for me, aren't you?

And I did.

At verse 15.

Very good.

Which means we have a full understanding of verse 14.

And let's have a little pop quiz.

I'll wake y 'all up.

Maybe I will.

Are you volunteering for the pop quiz, Warren? I was gonna say, we have a volunteer walking right up to the front of the room. Obviously taking over the entire class is Warren. And it's good to have to come all the way up to the front for chairs, but it was still rather unusual.

Anyways, what is the major textual variant of verse 14? Yes, sir.

Me.

Yes, he is the major textual variant of verse 14.

Oh, there you go.

Okay, all right.

That reminds me of the awful story of G .K. Chesterton who I've never quote. I think this is the first time I've done so in public. Smart guy, but got the gospel wrong. But a bunch of Englishmen were asked to write essays on what's wrong with the world.

And Chesterton wrote his essay and turned it and had two words, I am. That was it, I am. Deep insight there. Just too bad he didn't get the right solution as to what the problem was. But anyways, yes.

The King James, New King James will say, if you ask anything in my name, I will do it. All the other translations will say, if you ask me anything in my name, I will do it. This is relevant, of course, the issue of the deity of Christ, prayer to Christ.

And that was the one text that resulted in my being physically accosted by a cultist at one point.

But it was a little Jehovah's Witness lady,.

So it really wasn't all that bad. So, though completely, not only undeserved,.

But unexpected as well.

And I now keep a close eye on all little old Jehovah's Witness ladies. Especially if their husband looks like he's henpecked, then I'm gonna say, keep clear of the purse. The book bags, those book bags look like they could be deadly weapons, I don't know about you.

And most Jehovah's Witnesses look a little buff because they're carrying those book bags around all the time and you carried them around and you're out there in July at 10 o 'clock in the morning and you're not even sweating and you're wearing a shirt and tie and stuff, that's pretty impressive.

They could earn heaven, but you really can't do that. Anyhow, so verse 15, if you love me, you will keep my commandments. I will ask the Father, he will give you another helper, he may be with you forever, that is the spirit of truth whom the world cannot receive because it does not see him or know him, but you know him because he abides with you and will be in you.

Now, it almost seems that verse 15 just sort of floats around there, but I don't think it necessarily does. It's easy to sort of separate it out and consider it separate from these two sections because we certainly see that verse 16 begins a very important section on the coming of the Holy Spirit, the other helper.

And of course, we will be focusing upon who that parakletos, the paraclete is, in just a few moments. But verse 15 follows on from what has come before in the sense that obviously, if you're going to ask Jesus, if you're going to pray in his name, and you may remember last time we talked about prayer, we talked about what it means to pray in the name of Jesus, that it's not just some kind of magical mantra that we tack on for the fun of it, that it means to pray in his character in a recognition of who he is.

And so, what kind of person can do that? Well, it's the person who loves Jesus. Now, there are a lot of people today. There are a lot of people, it's amazing. Certainly, when I was young, almost no one.

The great scandal of somebody like a, oh, what was it, Madeleine Murray O 'Hare. The great scandal of someone like that was that they would be open in saying that they detested Jesus or detested the idea of God.

That's much more common now. I mean, you have your new atheism and things like that. But still, amongst most people, there is at least a slight hesitance to bring some kind of opprobrium upon the name of Jesus, at least in our culture.

I think that's passing very quickly. And certainly, the younger generation doesn't really care what the older generations have done. So, that sounds like a neat thing to do. But there are still a lot of people that claim to love Jesus.

My Muslim friends claim to love Jesus and to believe in Jesus. And they'll tell you you can't be a Muslim unless you love and believe in Jesus. Of course, what they mean by that is that to be a Muslim, you must believe that Jesus was a prophet.

And that much is true. But you also, as a Muslim, cannot believe that he was the son of God, which means you cannot believe well, the vast majority of what he says in the New Testament. All you're left with are the few statements that he utters in the Quran, which is not enough basis upon which to actually love him or even to see him as a person.

But still, there are many today who would profess love for Jesus. I have often made reference to the church just a few miles down the road from us here.

On Indian School.

It's got the pretty rainbow banner outside if you're wondering which one I'm talking about. And I'm sure that many of the people there, almost all the people there, would say that they love Jesus. But Jesus says, if you love me, you will keep my commandments.

In other words, if your love is real, then you're gonna recognize who Jesus is and you're going to relate to him in light of who he is. It's amazing how many people today, for some reason, though they would recognize that in, say, a marriage situation, they would recognize that, well, if I love my wife, then I'm gonna treat her as my wife.

I don't get to redefine her. I don't get to treat her in a way that she finds to be reprehensible, but I find to be great. I mean, they recognize that when it comes to Jesus,.

Jesus is just,.

It's the Plato Jesus. It's the Jesus that you can just form into whatever form, shape you want him to be. And so the object of the love of these people is not an objectively defined person. The Jesus they love isn't defined by what he said.

In fact, yesterday I was driving down to Tucson and it's a little bit of a drive and it's even worse coming back as the freeway was closed. That was fun. But I was listening to one of the most, if I felt that this was really representational of the entirety of the next generation, I would give up all hope for Western culture and Toto.

But Douglas Wilson gave a lecture, sexual by design at University of Indiana last year. And I was listening to the question and answer period. That's about two hours long, brave man. And listening to the collective ignorance of these college university students, it was just amazing what I was listening to.

But many of them would express it along the lines of, you don't speak for me, I'm a Christian. And then would turn around and basically say, I pick and choose what I want to believe out of the Bible.

I pick and choose.

You know, I choose the loving Jesus, but you know, the stuff that Jesus said about this is about, they have this Plato Jesus that they've taken a little bit here, a little bit there and smacked it all together.

Oh, that's Jesus and I love him.

But that's not loving Jesus.

Is it on any logical or rational basis? Can you say you're really loving Jesus when you actually hate what he taught and said? Well, of course not. And so Jesus says, if you love me, you will keep my commandments, which means true love recognizes the object of one's love.

And when we love God, when we love Jesus, the only way to demonstrate that is first and foremost to let them be who they are. And if they are who they claim to be, then I am their creature. I am subject to them.

And therefore I show my love for God when I keep his commandments.

Not when I question his commandments.

Not when I, you know, do our children really show us love and respect and honor. When every time we say to do something, they sit back and go, well, you know, I'm really not so sure.

That that's the wisest thing to do.

And I think in light of my 11 years upon this planet, and the great and vast amount of wisdom that I've gathered in that time, that it would be best for me to eat three bags of Nestle's chocolate chips at one time.

I think that that is good in light.

Of the massive amount of research I have done.

Now, foolish would be the parent that would go, oh, okay, all right, whatever you say, you know, I'll get the bucket ready, you know, but that's what we do. To God all the time, when we question his commandments.

And like I said, I was listening to that, the level of not only arrogance, but abject stupidity that I heard on the part of these people was just, I mean, people driving by me are probably looking at this guy, why is he screaming in his car?

What is wrong with that man in the little blue Nissan? I don't understand. He's so brightly dressed, but he seems so unhappy. And it was, I just, I don't know that I could have, you know, all kudos in the world to Doug Wilson for mere survival in that situation.

I just don't think I could have kept my tongue. I really, really don't think I could have. But there's clearly, and we violate this too. I mean, every time we do not keep his commandments, we are in essence saying, I am wiser than you are.

I am more powerful than you are. I'm more important than you are. But love for God with knowing who God is. That's why idolatry is, isn't it interesting? What is considered to be one of the absolute worst sins in all the Abrahamic religions?

Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, worst sins?

Idolatry. Idolatry.

Worshipping that which is not God as if it is. Denying to God what is rightfully his. That's considered to be a horrific sin. How many times have we heard the prophets railing against Israel for her idolatry?

And it's not just, look at the hideousness of your idol, but there's a whole lot more forms of idolatry than that. And sin at its heart is idolatry. We are in essence saying, I really don't believe you're God.

Because we really, really, really, really believe that. And we really, really, really, really recognize.

That we are creatures.

We're not gonna go against what he says. He holds us in his hands.

And so, if you love me, you will keep my commandments. Starts with knowing who God is. You cannot love something you don't know. Oh, I just love, I mean, you're sort of expecting.

A direct object here, you know?

No, I just love.

So do you love people? No, I can't stand people. So do you love animals? I love to eat them.

You know, you start to scare me when someone says,.

I just love, but they can't tell you what they love.

Love has an object.

And if you love me, you will keep my commandments. You recognize who Christ is. And as a result, there's something about him. I mean, if I said, if you love me, you will keep my commandments, I would be placing my acceptance of that person's love upon their acceptance of my claim of authority.

That's not what Jesus is doing here. What Jesus is doing here is a recognition.

If you ask me anything in my name, what does that tell you about who he is?

And so, if you recognize his natural right as king, then you will keep his commandments. And it will flow. Obviously, there have been people in the past, serfs in the past, who have obeyed the king's command, even though they detested the king.

So there is a power dynamic that can result in obedience. He has an army, he has the biggest sword, or to make it the modern situation, he's got all the technology, and he's got the guys with the M16s.

And so, I'm gonna do what he says.

But I detest him.

I don't love him, or them, or the government, or the regime, or whatever. There can be a power dynamic that results in obedience. But that's not what Jesus is talking about. He's not just sort of saying, once you recognize I'm creator, then just servile, just bow down and do what you're supposed to do.

This transcends that. It recognizes that, as creatures, we should do what our creator commands us to do. We shouldn't be committing idolatry. But Jesus has gone beyond that. In the incarnation, you have had a incredible condescension on God's part that has resulted in a transformation of what was once just a power dynamic into a powerful love dynamic.

And so, the disciples, if you start off going, where are you going, and Jesus is saying, I'm not gonna leave you alone, I'm not gonna leave you as orphans. These disciples who have experienced the love of Christ for quite some time now, they're being told, if you love me, you claim to love me, what will be the result of that?

What is the claim of love upon a believer's heart? You will keep my commandments. Now, obviously, at this point,.

There's a big argument about.

What the commandments of Jesus are. Some would say, well, it's only what you find in the pages of the New Testament, nothing else. Just gotta get rid of everything else. Here's the problem with that, and this is certainly something I've had to wrestle with.

Over the past about 12 years. Why?

Well, the homosexual issue, the homosexual issue. We wrote The Same-Sex Controversy, believe it or not, it was 12 years ago that we wrote that book. And man, it needs an update. It really does, because we hardly even dealt, I don't even know if we dealt with the issue of marriage.

Because it wasn't an issue. That was only 12 years ago.

I realize for young people today, 12 years sounds like a long time. Trust me, it isn't. It really, really isn't. And I don't care if you're 90 years old. Once you get to a certain point, you start realizing, you know, in the realm of human history,.

World War II was yesterday.

And people are already forgetting the lessons of World War II and World War I. And for the United States,.

The war between the states was really not that long ago.

I mean, for our history it was, but we have a very, very, very short history. When I go overseas, especially in places like the UK, I realize how snot-nosed we are, you know? When you go to places in Ireland or in England that have been inhabited for, you know, the number of years is not three digits, it's four digits.

It gives you a sense of, you know,.

How long things really are and that we aren't around for very long. And so for that kind of change to happen that rapidly, something so fundamental as the very foundation of society itself and human flourishing and happiness to be redefined, I mean, they just did it in Minnesota, my own home state.

I happen to be doing a radio interview. I'm doing a bunch of radio interviews. Thursday, I did three radio interviews on the new book. And I did one in Minnesota. And lo and behold, the house there had just passed the Profaning of Marriage Act, it's what it should be called if they had truth in advertising, the Profaning and Redefining of Marriage Act, and it'll become law next week, making that the 13th or 14th.

It's just a domino effect right now to totally redefine the fundamental structures of society in that, at that speed. And it's not because of overwhelming arguments at all. In fact, it's in the absence of argument.

It's only the presence of emotion without any thought about,.

I wonder what this is gonna have effect long-term.

Really?

Now you're just now starting to think about that, hmm. Amazing, absolutely amazing. But anyhow, the, back to the,.

Why was I talking about the book?

12 years ago, I'm gonna go backwards here. What are his commandments? I had to struggle through and have continued because, you know, the homosexuals keep cranking out the books and it's not like I read every one of them, but I have to keep up with at least the ones that are making a splash.

I've read the book by my opponent this week three times. And in that process, I have been forced to really think through.

What does the Bible give us moral guidance?

There's a lot of Christians now today, quote unquote Christians, people call themselves Christians. They're basically saying, you know, and this is gonna be the next, and it already is. You're seeing many evangelicals going down this road already.

You know, we really don't know.

We really don't, we can't really say that there's a sexual ethic in the scriptures. I mean, they've already done it, that was the gospel. They've already made the gospel negotiable. So I have to try to bring Protestants and Catholics together as at least a diminishing, but still a decent voting bloc.

So it makes perfect sense. If you don't know what the gospel is, then it's real easy to go,.

You know, I don't know.

I mean, every one of those verses, those five or six verses you can bring up,.

There are scholars that disagree.

As if the Bible's teaching on maleness and femaleness and marriage and family.

Has to do with five or six verses.

That specifically mention arsenokoites, homosexual. And so the next big thing is gonna be, we really don't know what His commandments are.

We really don't know.

And I've been rather thoroughly convinced by being forced to think through these things that when you look, and we spent quite some time on this, and I know this was what, about a year ago? I think it was about a year ago.

We went through Matthew chapter 19, at least the first part of the chapter. And we talked about Jesus' teaching on the subject of marriage. And His quotation from Genesis chapter two, the fact that He lived in a day where there was no one advocating that homosexuality was acceptable before God.

The most clear, strict society of antiquity on the subject of the unacceptability of homosexual behavior was Israel. You would think if Jesus was who my opponent this week says He was, God in human flesh, that He would have foreseen the need to correct that gross misapprehension, the part of His nation, but He didn't.

And the common homosexual argument for, I'm gonna read you everything Jesus said about homosexuality. Yep, there it is, nothing. Actually ends up boomeranging on them in light of that. Because knowing what the nation was like, and knowing what the perspective of the nation was, if Jesus was who He claimed to be, then He would have had to have addressed this, but He didn't.

He accepted that norm that existed just as He accepted the norm of prohibition against bestiality or incest or all the other prohibitions that were a part of the sexual ethic that were summarized in the fact that God had by positive command established the relationship of male and female in Matthew chapter 19, Mark chapter 10.

When He gave His teaching on that subject. And so, when Jeremiah says that I will write my law upon their hearts in the New Covenant, yes, you will find disagreements amongst solid Reformed men as to exactly where to draw the line in defining what is a ceremonial law versus what is a creation ordinance law.

Okay, I understand that. But the fact that there are discussions about where to draw the line doesn't mean that there is no way of making differentiation, and it doesn't mean that you just have to throw all of it out.

Evidently, that's how a lot of people approach it. Jesus does give commandments, and He says that anyone who teaches you to break the least of these commandments will be leased in the kingdom of heaven.

Gotta take that seriously. Gotta take that seriously. And if anything, especially on this subject, He is more strict than the Jews were of His day. Just something to think about. Now, in light of that, Jesus gives a promise.

And again, this is still future. Remember, the context of this is He has made the statement, I'm going back, I will no longer be with you. And He's going to be explicit in saying I'm going back into the presence of the Father.

And if you'd love me, you would have rejoiced, et cetera, et cetera. That's John 14, 28. Believe me, we're going to spend a fair amount of time on that one. But He says, I will ask the Father, future, so He's talking about the time after the accomplishment of His salvific work.

I will ask the Father, and He will, and literally, it is another paraclete.

He will give to you, plural.

Now, this term, paracletos, has been interpreted in many ways. You have a number of translations that will say comforter. One of the problems I have with that is that in English, we have comforters and they're nice, warm blankets that you snuggle up with on a cold winter's night,.

The few of them that we have.

And when you talk about comforting someone, it's more of a, I don't know, soft, squishy thing. Maybe that's just the Scottish element of me interpreting it, I don't know. But helper, it really refers to someone who comes alongside and encourages and assists.

You know, I can't help but think of, well, y 'all know I'm a cyclist, and so the Giro d 'Italia is going on right now, one of the three grand classic races, three-week races. Giro d 'Italia in May, the Tour de France in July, and the Vuelta a España in August.

And so you watch these stages, and the last stage is won by this, I think a Russian fellow. And he's been out front, they're chasing him, he's trying to get there before they do, and you watch the crowd.

And especially when they're climbing mountains. I could never do this, it drives me insane.

There's all these people, and they're right on the road.

I mean, they're in your face. They're this far away from you. And the crowd only slowly parts to even let you through. Now, they think that they are encouraging you. I can guarantee you, if I was on that bike,.

I would not consider that encouragement.

And there are far too many videos of idiots that don't realize that when you're looking through the lens of a camera, it's a lot closer than it looks in that. Click, ah, and the guy ends up on the ground, and it's like, oh, it's just brilliant.

They think that's encouragement.

I don't think it is.

Now, maybe when the team car comes up and hands you a new bottle or something like that, and they're yelling encouragement, okay, okay. But even then, they can't help you.

They can't give you a push.

Sometimes they sort of do so anyways,.

But that kind of thing.

So comfort, okay, in the sense, Paul does use that phraseology in 1 Corinthians, but I'm not sure that's really what a parakletos is. It's an advocate as well. There's a sense of someone coming alongside, someone representing, someone encouraging, someone helping, someone assisting.

And yes, comfort in the sense of distress and things like that, but there is this active encouragement involved in being a comforter, and this is not a heteros parakleton. It is an alon, so it'd be heteron, there you go.

What does that mean? Well, heteros, you know what that means, different. Different kind of heterogenous versus homogenous, but alas, alas alea alon, that particular Greek term would not indicate that this comforter is gonna be totally different than Jesus.