September 26, 2016 Show with Josh Buice on “Marriage: Its Definition & Importance”

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Now, here's our host, Chris Arntzen. Good afternoon,

Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, and the rest of humanity living on the planet Earth who are listening via live streaming.

This is Chris Arntzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron, wishing you all a happy Monday. On this 26th day of September 2016,

I'm so delighted to have back on the program Pastor Josh Bice, who is our guest for the full two hours today.

He is senior pastor of Praise Mill Baptist Church in Douglasville, Georgia. He's host of the blog

Delivered by Grace, and he's also the director of the G3 Conference, which we are going to be discussing today, the

G3 Conference, which is coming up January 19th through the 21st in Atlanta, Georgia, featuring an enormously long roster of guests, but they're all very, very impressive guest speakers.

And yours truly will be manning an exhibitor's booth there at the conference, and they'll be joined by my webmaster.

And I'm looking forward to this event more than words can possibly describe.

But it's my honor and privilege to welcome you back to Iron Sharpens Iron, Pastor Josh Bice.

Glad to be with you, Chris. And our theme today is going to be marriage, its definition and importance.

And we're also, in relation to that theme, we're going to be learning more about a new book that is coming out at some point in the future,

God willing, that Pastor Bice is cooperating with, or cooperating on,

I should say, with a liberal, a Harvard professor, who is actually an advocate of same -sex marriage.

And we are actually going to be going into that as a part of our theme today, because is same -sex marriage actually a thing?

Is that really just an oxymoron? And we're going to get into what marriage actually is.

But first of all, Pastor Bice, even though we've had you do this before, I'd like you to introduce

Praise Mill Baptist Church of Douglasville, Georgia to our listeners that have not heard you on the program before.

Absolutely. Praise Mill Baptist Church is a 174 -year -old

Baptist church here just outside of Atlanta, Georgia. So we are west of Atlanta in Douglasville, Georgia.

And I have the privilege of serving this church. We are officially associated with and affiliated with the

Southern Baptist Convention. We would consider ourselves to be more along the lines of a

Founders Church or a Nine Marks Church. So we, as pastors, preach from a

Reformed tradition and lead the church in that direction. And so, again,

I grew up here as a boy. My wife and I both grew up here as children in the church.

And so it's just been an honor and a privilege to serve the people here in these last six years.

Yeah, that's refreshing to hear, because you don't hear about that happening a lot, where someone raised in a church from childhood actually becomes the pastor.

Unless, of course, it's a large Pentecostal church and the pastor dies and his son automatically becomes the pastor.

Yeah, I don't think there's any connection with that at all. And you also host a blog.

Tell us about DeliveredByGrace .com. Yeah, Delivered By Grace is a blog that I write.

And it's simply a blog that was born out of my time at Southern Seminary when

I was a student. It started just as a discussion blog with a group of friends. And so today

I typically write a couple of articles a week, Tuesday and Thursday. But I also do a sermon review on Monday and then a spotlight on Wednesday and Friday, where I just simply link to other articles or sermons that are helpful.

So it's just something that I do as an outlet for writing, but also to just be an encouragement to others in the faith.

Great. And once again, that website address for the blog site is

DeliveredByGrace .com. And last but not least, let's hear about this

G3 conference that I've been advertising on the show. Very enthusiastic about this event, and it's good to hear that some of my listeners have already informed me that they plan to attend, including,

I didn't even realize it at the time, but when I was interviewing Dr. Russell T.

Fuller recently from Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, he, after the show, after hearing the ads that I was playing for the conference, after the show was over, he said to me on the phone,

Chris, I've got to go to this conference. Tell me about the exact date again. And he said that he is going to register because his parents live right near the venue.

So he is planning on making the trip. I hope he comes. But tell us something about the

G3 conference. Sure. The G3 conference is a theology conference.

So this will be year number five coming up in January. And the whole purpose of the conference is to educate, to encourage, and to equip in sound doctrine.

So again, we wanted from the beginning of the conference to establish this idea that it's a theology conference, not a pep rally, not just some type of entertainment outlet for Christians, but it's a theology conference.

So we sing the gospel and we preach the gospel for three full days.

And so it's really a wonderful thing to gather with believers from all across the country and outside of the country.

And then there's a number of believers who join us through a live stream broadcast.

And so we just have a wonderful time taking a theme, a doctrinal theme each year, and seeking to unpack that over three days, which is very profitable for me personally, and I'm sure as others who attend conferences, it's the same type of thing.

So we're challenged and we think through these very intricate details of theology, whatever the theme might be.

But also we have a wonderful opportunity for those of us who actually attend in person. We have the privilege to meet new people, to fellowship together.

And so this year's theme is on the Reformation. Coming up in 2017, again this

January, the conference will be focused on the 500th anniversary of the Protestant Reformation.

So it's not a celebration of Martin Luther or a specific reformer.

It's a conference that's looking back at the subject matter of the

Reformation, looking at what the Reformation was, and then also taking a good look at where we are today and thinking about the future and addressing the idea that the

Reformation is not over today. Yeah, there are a lot of people that I encounter who say that very thing, that the

Reformation is over. That would be predominantly the ecumenical

Catholics and Protestants that I meet, even ecumenical evangelicals who would say that, you know, why are you rehashing the past?

This is really absurd. You're bringing up antiquated, prehistoric kind of nonsense that is just about counting how many angels can dance on the head of a pin or something.

And it's amazing how most of the time when I encounter

Roman Catholics, they seem to be oblivious to the aspect.

And when I say Roman Catholics, I mean ecumenical from moderate to liberal

Roman Catholics who would say, when I bring up the Council of Trent, still having an anathema upon me and that I'm not the bad guy here.

I said, your church officially declared that you have a different gospel than I have 500 years before I was born.

And so therefore, if that still stands, if those anathemas still stand against me and those who believe the same gospel that I believe in, you are in a different religion.

I mean, isn't that the case? Oh, absolutely. And that's the whole issue of the

Reformation. There's a line that has been drawn in the sand, and so the perversion of the gospel historically back in Luther's day continues to be a perversion in our present culture as well.

And so, you know, to protest something, that's what Protestants do.

We protest, and so we are still Protestant, and we still protest against not just the

Roman Catholic Church, but in essence, anything that perverts the purity of the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Yes, in fact, I'm sure that you would agree, Pastor Josh, that not only do we strongly condemn apostate liberal

Protestants, but we would even have a very serious problem with some of what has risen up in the last several decades that comes under the umbrella of Calvinism or Reformed theology.

There are things that are arising from our own ranks that many men, like -minded men, and even some that are speaking at your conference, say, this is dangerous stuff.

I mean, we have to be putting everything under the magnifying glass of the scripture, correct?

Correct. So it doesn't matter if it's same -sex marriage to the perversion of the gospel within the

Roman Catholic Church to the health, wealth, and prosperity, false gospel that's very prevalent today, whatever perverts the true gospel of Jesus Christ, we as Protestants have a responsibility to speak up and to make very clear what the gospel is not and what the gospel is.

And I know that you folks who are listening have been hearing ads, and will continue to hear them, including today, promoting this conference, but just to give you an idea, again, about some of the speakers at this

G3 conference, they include Paul Washer, Stephen J. Lawson, D .A. Carson, Votie Baucom, James R.

White, Tim Challies, Conrad M. Bayway, Phil Johnson, who's the executive director of John MacArthur's ministry, grace to you,

Josh Bice, our guest today, Rosaria Butterfield, who we've had on this program recently, a former lesbian leftist tenured professor at Syracuse University who was saved and transformed by the grace of Christ, Todd Friel, who has become one of my favorite guests, who you have heard on this program,

John Kratz, who is actually the pastor of my last pastor in New York's parents.

My last pastor in New York's parents are members of the church where John Kratz is a pastor.

And I believe that's Sharpsburg, Georgia, correct? Correct. Right. And there are others.

Scott Klusendorf is another who is going to be speaking on the Holocaust, known as abortion, on my program in the near future.

So you have a whole bunch of folks, and that's only some of them that I listed. And for more details, go to g3conference .com,

g3conference .com. If anybody wants to join us on our program today with a question for Pastor Josh Bice, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com,

chrisarnson at gmail .com, C -H -R -I -S -A -R -N -Z -E -N at gmail .com.

Please give us your first name, your city and state, and your country of residence. If you live outside the

USA, you may remain anonymous if it makes you feel more comfortable for some reason. Well, tell us about this book that really spawned the idea of us doing this very topic of marriage.

It's definition and its importance today. This book that you are cooperating on with a

Harvard professor who's an advocate of same -sex marriage. Yeah, Chris, so I was contacted some months back about this book project, and I agreed to it because I have a passion for what the

Bible actually teaches about the subject of marriage. This particular book will be focusing on the subject of marriage, and in particular the same -sex marriage issue that we've seen become a very prevalent issue in our own culture here in America in recent days.

But the other author is Professor Bronski of Harvard University, and so Michael Bronski serves as the professor of practice in media and activism in studies of women, gender, and sexuality.

And so he is definitely holding to a liberal position as far as same -sex marriage is concerned, and so I've been asked to take the opposite approach.

And so the book will not be an actual debate. We will have some interaction in the book, but we will simply be writing from two different positions.

And so we're going to talk about what the definition of marriage is and then we're going to talk about these different issues that are certainly coming to the surface in our own culture presently as it surrounds the subject of marriage and equality surrounding gender equality and things of that nature.

Now, is Dr. Bronski professing to be a Christian of any kind?

Not to my knowledge. Now, I've had very limited interaction with him, but from his writings and things that I know of him,

I don't believe that he's professing to be a Christian. Now, I could be wrong, and we'll find out as we work through.

This book is in the infancy stage. We don't even have a title for it at this moment. So publication date is sometime probably late 2017.

But as far as the project goes now, we're simply working through the first chapter together now, and that's covering the subject of the definition of marriage and the backdrop of what we're seeing not only from a cultural standpoint but from a historical standpoint as well.

Well, if any of you want to keep up on the availability of that book, keep visiting

PraiseMill .com, which is the website of Praise Mill Baptist Church. P -R -A -Y -S -Mill .com.

It's not spelt the way you might think it would be. P -R -A -Y -S -Mill .com.

And that's because the founding pastor's last name was Pray, correct? Yeah, actually, he wasn't a pastor.

He was a man that lived in the community about 174 years ago, and so he founded the church.

And so they named the church after his mill. He had donated the land and lumber and labor for the building of the church.

So they named it after his mill, and his name was Ephraim Pray. That's a great name, obviously.

We do. Let's see. We have a couple of listeners who have emailed us already.

We have Aaron in Indianapolis, Indiana, who says,

First, thank you, Pastor Bice, for hosting and organizing this amazing G3 conference in January.

I heard Chris talking about it on Iron Sharpens Iron a couple of months ago and registered to go all by myself immediately because I could not miss hearing that lineup of amazing speakers.

I cannot wait until January. Next, in the age of postmodernism, where there are no absolutes or authority,

I wondered what might be your advice, Pastor Bice, to help me defend biblical marriage to those friends who do not presuppose that God is the author of marriage.

Where do I even begin in order to have credibility in a discussion of this topic?

Well, that's, I think, a perfect question to start the show off with because you can now define marriage.

Sure. Well, first of all, that's a fantastic question. I think that when you ask how you defend the subject of marriage among a group of people or to a group of people who might not view

God as the source or the author of marriage, I think that you can start in a couple of different ways.

I would start with the sufficiency of Scripture, so you must start there. I think that you start with the authority of God's Word.

So when we approach any subject, especially the subject of marriage, we can't start with opinions or presuppositions or ideas.

We have to start with something that has some substance to it, and so we start with the foundation of Scripture.

And so we work from the Word of God up to the issues that we're discussing.

So ultimately, we go back and we find the foundation of all of humanity is recorded for us in the

Bible in Genesis 1 and 2. We see that. So the institution of marriage has its source in God.

But if they reject that, then you start to then move to say, okay, well, if we're not going to start there, then we move to a discussion of logic.

Now, I'm certainly not advocating that we substitute logic for Scripture.

I'm simply stating that just in a logical argument, we must understand that marriage is good for all people, not just Christians, not just for the church.

So marriage itself from the beginning was created by God and is good for all of society and is essential for human flourishing.

I mean, if you just think about logically, if you do away with marriage as it's instituted by God, then it's going to be very difficult for humanity to continue.

The birth rates will decrease. Society will crumble and fall. There will be all types of problems, and we're already seeing that even presently with our own decisions that have been made with same -sex marriage in our own culture.

So we have all of these problems where we're bending the definition of marriage into a pliable structure that's palatable to a secular culture and rewriting definitions and reinventing something that God himself invented or created or instituted.

And so the results of that type of thing will be astronomical in the future.

So we're only seeing the tip of the iceberg now, but we're going to start to see much of the problems that result from a culture that turns completely away from God and embraces wholeheartedly this cultural depraved idea of same -sex marriage.

So you must start with God. I would say you can't start defending the subject of marriage outside of the foundation of the authority of God's word.

So I would just say you have to start there, and you work from that point out to show logical inconsistencies with the issues of same -sex marriage.

And isn't it just as nonsensical to say even the phrase same -sex marriage as if that's a real thing?

Isn't that just as nonsensical for me to say, let me introduce you to my brother

Bob. He is my mother. I mean, it's really because I'm just totally redefining things, right?

I mean, he is not my mother. He never could be or can be my mother.

He is my brother. He's not my mother. He didn't give birth to me. It would be impossible for him to give birth to me, et cetera, et cetera.

Isn't it just as meaningless? Well, it is definitely meaningless.

First of all, you can't change the definition of marriage. So you can call it relationship.

You can call it some type of partnership. You can call it whatever you want to, but you can't call two males or two females coming together in some type of relationship.

You can't categorize that as marriage. That's a categorical error.

But, again, that's just taking the dictionary and rewriting a definition that God himself has instituted.

So this whole debate has been largely fueled by incorrect understanding of society and culture and gender.

And, you know, when you start to bend all of those things, you end up in a very strange position that I think that most of the people who are driving this agenda, especially as we led up to the

Supreme Court's decision, have not really thought through what it means for two people to be married.

So you can't have, in other words, they're trying to go down the route of the civil rights argument, you know, that the gay is the new black and that type of thing.

But that's simply backwards thinking. I mean, it can't be. For instance, if you have someone that's a homosexual that says,

I have been violated, my freedoms have been restricted, you know, from the legalization of marriage, we would simply say, yes, you have been, and that's a normal thing.

Because if you think about it, someone that's bisexual, you take a bisexual female, she's not granted the same rights under marriage laws in this nation to have a wife and a husband at the same time.

So, yes, there are restrictions because she is operating outside of the definition of what it means to be married.

And the same thing could be said for a man that's 40 years old that wants to marry his 12 -year -old neighbor who happens to be a girl.

You know, it's just his freedom is restricted by law because that's not marriage and he's not allowed to marry someone that's 12 years of age.

So, you know, thinking through what it means to be married I think is a really important subject matter for us to consider.

But when you start thinking about rewriting definitions and reinventing something that God himself instituted, we get ourselves in really big trouble as we start thinking about other people that now want to come forward and knock on the door of the

Supreme Court and say, what about us too? Yeah, in fact, those that are advocates of same -sex marriage so -called, they have no grounds to oppose anyone else that wants to marry any other at least consenting adult.

They might have some kind of grounds for opposing something that could be considered abuse of an unwilling party or a party that's not old enough to make a rational decision of that magnitude.

But they could at least say that, or should I say, we could at least say they have no grounds to oppose a brother marrying a brother, a sister marrying a sister, a father marrying his daughter or son, a mother marrying her daughter or son.

I mean, they really have no grounds to oppose those things, do they? Well, logically, no, they don't.

What our nation has done is said, okay, homosexuality is unnatural.

It's not right. And so that was years ago. That was the position that our nation held to.

And so now what we've done is through political maneuvers, we've taken what we once said wasn't natural and wasn't able to be considered or classified as a genuine marriage.

Now we've completely changed and rewritten our policies, procedures, and rewritten the definition of what marriage actually is so that now we can classify what we once opposed into the category of marriage.

And that simply is just unthinkable. So you're right.

That type of logic leads people to say now all we need now is to have a certain vocal minority that would stand up and say we want to be able to marry a 12 -year -old little boy if we want to.

Or we want to marry our parrot or our dog or cat or something of that nature. And so it's just a matter of time before we're going to start seeing polygamists and others that are going to come knocking on the door saying we want equal status and equal rights as well.

Yeah, the thing that amazes me is why is it that there are liberals and homosexuals or people who are involved in that activity and transgendered individuals and so on and so on.

The list just gets longer. But they will say that pedophilia is wrong.

They will say they will even use words like evil and wicked and grotesque and so on.

And yet they think a child, a little tiny child, has enough mental capacity and developed sense of logic and morality to make a decision about changing their gender.

So why is it that they don't see the inconsistency of that if a little tiny child has the right to choose to be of the opposite gender?

Why on earth wouldn't they see that the next thing is logical that that child has the right to choose whom he has sexual relations with?

It could be an adult, correct? Correct. Yeah, so the logic doesn't make sense and it doesn't add up.

But, again, you have those who are pedophiles who would absolutely protest the idea that they're homosexual.

Or if you call them the same as a homosexual, that's offensive to them. So, again, it's just this whole idea of they want to play by different rules is what it amounts to.

Yes, and they have become all experts on this.

It's amazing how they've all have this defined set of rules and facts that they've come out of thin air that they are all allegedly experts on and we have to be immediately on the same page of expertise to use the same dictionary that they do.

I mean, it's insane. This is really just a grotesque experiment with guinea pigs and some of those guinea pigs are children, aren't they?

They are, and, unfortunately, we're seeing that played out in our culture. We have, for instance, in the news recently in the past several months,

I mean, you have a mother who's shopping at Target and she sees a sign on the aisle of the toy department that simply states,

Girls Building Block Steps, and she's outraged. And so she sends a tweet out and says,

Don't do this, Target. And so then that gets media attention, and now all of a sudden you're seeing this idea, well, we can't categorize a building block step for boys and differentiate that between a building block step for girls because that's bad.

We need for girls and boys to have gender -neutral choices. And so this whole thing is just becoming an outrageous circus of sin that's just unthinkable.

And we're going to a break right now. If you'd like to join us on the air, we do still have a couple of people waiting to have their questions asked and answered, and I thank you for your patience.

We'll get to you as soon as possible. But our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com. chrisarnson at gmail .com.

Don't go away. We're going to be right back after these messages with Josh Bice. Iron Sharpens Iron welcomes

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That's wrbc .us. I'm Chris Arnzen, host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, and here's one of my favorite guests,

Todd Friel, to tell you about a conference he and I are going to. Hello, this is Todd Friel, host of Wretched Radio and Wretched TV, and occasional guest on Chris' show,

Iron Criticizing Iron. I think that's what it's called. Hoping that you can join

Chris and me at the G3 Conference in Atlanta, my new hometown. It is going to be a bang -up conference called the

G3 Conference, celebrating the 500th anniversary of the Protestant Reformation, with Paul Washer, Steve Lawson, D .A.

Carson, Votie Baucom, Conrad and Bayway, Phil Johnson, James White, and a bunch of other people. We hope to see you there.

Learn more at g3conference .com. G3conference .com. Thanks, Todd.

I think. See you at the Iron Sharpens Iron Exhibitor's booth. Welcome back.

This is Chris Arnzen. And if you just tuned us in, our guest today is Josh Bice, who is the director of that very conference that you heard advertised, the

G3 Conference. And again, for more details on that conference, go to g3conference .com.

G3conference .com. Today we are discussing marriage, its definition and importance in the backdrop of the legalization of so -called same -sex marriage.

If you'd like to join us on the air, our email address is chrisarnzen at gmail .com. chrisarnzen at gmail .com.

You may remain anonymous if it makes you feel more comfortable, but we would urge you to give us at least your first name, city and state and country of residence.

We have Tony in Rock Hill, South Carolina, who says,

Thanks for today's show and guest. I'm increasingly troubled when Christians use so -called convincing secular arguments to persuade the lost that biblical marriage needs to stay intact.

Yikes! Of all the apostles, and Jesus himself made clear that the world is blinded and cannot or will not receive the ways of the

Lord. The Holy Spirit is the only thing that can penetrate their hearts of stone, and this is only possible when

God's word is proclaimed to them, viz., thus saith the Lord. So why waste so much time showing a brilliant piece of art to a blind man, and she says,

Looking forward to G3. And, by the way, Tony, I'm sorry if I called you she if you're not a she, but I'm assuming with an

I at the end that you're a woman, but I apologize if I'm wrong on that. So, perhaps our listener

Tony in Rock Hill, South Carolina, may be saying that anything outside of the canon as an argument in favor of marriage is a waste of time or improper.

I think that's where she's going, unless you heard something else. What do you get out of that? Well, Chris, I think that I would agree with that.

At a foundational level, I would say that we can't expect for unbelievers to understand the word of God or to be able to discern what

Scripture actually teaches as an unbeliever. However, when it comes to the subject of marriage, this is something that was rooted and grounded in creation.

And so when we think about unbelievers, even an unbeliever can see the value of marriage.

That's why so many unbelievers are married every day. That's why so many unbelievers have been married for centuries, dating back to ancient civilizations.

So when it comes to the subject of marriage, I would say we must absolutely defend and define marriage according to the biblical canon.

But I would say outside of the Scriptures, we can simply say and point to the fact that there is value in marriage.

No matter if you reject the Bible or not, you have to be able to see the value of it.

And so I think that's the direction that I would go.

I do believe that we have to trust God ultimately to open the blind eyes of the unbeliever to see and understand and to discern the spiritual truths of Scripture.

Yeah, and wouldn't you say that just as if you were giving counsel or chastisement or warning to a drug addict, and if you were to say, don't you realize that, you know, you were created in the image of God and you are making a mockery of it by destroying it, and he says or she says, well,

I don't care about God, you know, I don't believe in God. So isn't it completely acceptable to say, yes, but I love you and you're killing yourself.

This drug is destroying you and you're going to die. I mean, you could use other arguments that don't necessitate using the words right out of Scripture, correct?

Correct. I mean, you can always build logical arguments from the Scriptures, but ultimately we need to be, in conversing with such people, we need to be,

I think as Christians, bringing them back to an understanding of what the

Bible actually says and then try to deal with the issue from that vantage point so long as they will listen to us.

And hopefully at that point we can make some ground as far as, you know, their soul is concerned.

So we're always having these conversations and enjoying these conversations that we can have in the public square as Christians so that we can point people to Christ.

That's the ultimate goal. Because you see, marriage, the whole idea of writing a book about marriage is not just to defend marriage against the

LGBT community. It's far more than that. It's about the glory of Christ.

And so we need to make sure that we're understanding that, you know, again, my passion in engaging in this book is far more than just debating over the issue of same -sex marriage.

I mean, let's talk about divorce. Let's talk about the attacks of radical feminism.

Let's talk about the issues that we see attacking marriage. So it's not just same -sex marriage that's the problem here, that there is an ongoing, perpetual attack on marriage.

And again, we see that from the very beginning of creation. And we have a listener in Kinross, Scotland, Murray, who says,

Is the liberal view that we Christians no longer have a right to define the actual purpose of marriage?

Is it now, in their eyes, an open subject that anyone can state? Or do they now have a working alternative?

Given the much -welcomed advertising for the forthcoming G3 conference and the interest it is generating, is there any possibility of it being streamed live for the benefit of those of us who cannot attend but would love to benefit from it?

So you have two different questions on completely different issues there from Murray in Kinross, Scotland.

Yeah, so what was the question, repeat, Chris, the question on marriage? He says,

Is it now, in their eyes, the liberals, an open subject that anyone can state?

Or do they now have a working alternative as far as a definition to marriage?

In other words, I guess what he is saying or asking is, Do they have a specific definition and set of rules or litmus tests that are necessary to teach what their understanding of marriage is?

Or are they saying in mass that anybody can make marriage anything they want it to make, they want it to be?

Sure, I think that really we're on the precipice of this whole decision as far as the

United States is concerned. I'm not so much up on my Scottish decisions at this point.

As far as here in the United States, the problems, we're on the precipice of all of this.

So we're just in the wake, the aftermath of these decisions. So we really don't know what they're thinking.

But logically, back to the former discussion, we would have to say, Yes, that's absolutely what's taking place here.

It's an open book at this point. So logically, it's an open book. But we're going to start seeing pushback.

We're going to start seeing a lot of decisions that have to be made to really firm up what are the boundaries?

Where are the boundaries as far as marriage? Because certainly some boundaries exist presently because we still have laws that prevent polygamy and various other types of perversions.

So ultimately, we would say from our vantage point, yes, it absolutely is an open book now.

They've really opened the door for all types of different perverted methods and ideas and ideologies.

But right now, we really don't know what the next step is going to be. And that's only going to take some time before we start to see it unfold.

And Murray's second question is, is it going to be live streamed so he can watch it in Scotland? Yeah, well, so, yeah.

Chris, we typically do the live stream. We haven't made a firm decision on that simply because we've changed the venue from our church campus to a convention center over near the airport in Atlanta.

So we'll be making some announcements about that. But I would simply say to my Scottish friend,

I was able to visit Scotland last year, and it's a beautiful place. So we would encourage you likewise to visit

Atlanta, Georgia. Do you know if you were anywhere near Kinross? No, I wasn't.

I was in Edinburgh. I'm not sure where he's located, but I was in Edinburgh. All right, there you have it,

Murray. Why don't you just sell your bagpipes and buy some airline tickets and come out to Atlanta, Georgia?

I would love to meet you in person myself. And I hope anybody that comes, including Tony in South Carolina, whose question

I just read earlier, I hope you as well greet me at the

Iron Sharpens Iron exhibitors booth. You said looking forward to G3, so I'm assuming,

Tony, that you are coming as well to the conference. And you have written to us before,

Tony, so maybe in the future, if you could either put Mr., Mrs., or Miss, because the

T -O -N -I is throwing me off. I'm not sure which you are. So thanks a lot for your question.

We do have, let's see, we have Tyler in Mastic Beach, Long Island, New York, who says,

When it comes to the biblical definition of marriage, why is it frowned upon in our society so much?

Is it due to man's wicked heart? All sin is due to and rooted in human depravity.

So it doesn't matter if it's the sin of laziness, something that we would consider to be very trivial, or if it's murder, or if it's same -sex attraction or same -sex perversion, you know, sexual immorality, pornea in the

Greek. So all sin is going to be rooted in human depravity, so absolutely.

When it comes to the issue of same -sex legalization, we need to understand the issue here,

Chris, and I think that this is extremely important when we think about this. Same -sex attraction, same -sex relationships, all of this is not earth -shaking and new.

This is ancient. This is very old. This has been around a very long time. What is new, on the other hand, for us, especially here in America, is the whole legalization of this new institution that we're calling same -sex marriage, which, again, as I stated earlier,

I don't think that you can rightly classify it as marriage. But when you legalize, now, two same -sex individuals and say that they are actually engaged in what we would classify as marriage, so that's the newness that we're experiencing.

That's the new ground that we're experiencing now. So we're having to deal with these issues and think through these issues.

But as far as the overall goal of marriage perversion,

I think that that's rooted in depravity. It certainly is. And, you know, if you look at Justice Kennedy and this whole decision,

Justice Kennedy simply stated that marriage is a keystone of our social order and then said that the plaintiffs in this landmark case, that they were seeking, quote, equal dignity in the eyes of the law.

Well, that was, again, that was the liberal position among the justices, was that they were seeking equal dignity in the eyes of the law.

Here's the problem. You can't dignify something that's depraved. It's unnatural.

And so that's the issue that we must speak to as Christians and point to and say, you just can't categorize something as marriage that's not marriage in the first place.

And so that's the issue that we're dealing with. Well, when you make those kinds of things the law of the land, you are also robbing

Christians and even Orthodox Jews and others who have a biblical concept of marriage, you're robbing us of the dignity of our faith because what they are saying is that we're going to pass a law that makes your belief system illegal, in some senses, because you're saying that for us to oppose a non -biblical understanding of marriage is illegal.

And we are seeing this happening more and more where people are losing their livelihoods, like bakeries and florists and other things are being fined astronomically high penalties for refusing to participate in these so -called marriages because of their own personal biblical views on them.

You can't say that one group is going to be legally enforced as being accepted as legitimate without having those who for centuries had a different view losing their rights.

Am I right? Absolutely, Chris. I mean, you look at the case that you mentioned, again, the bakery and the complete loss of the business over this type of thing.

It's a violation of their freedom. You want to talk about equal dignity and equal freedoms when you're restricting someone in America from being able to operate a business as they so desire and cause them to violate their own conscience.

That's what you call robbing people of freedom. So the whole idea of giving freedom, they're taking away freedom.

And so this is the very thing that they say that they're fighting for, that they're actually taking freedom away and restricting freedom from other people, such as the bakeries that you mentioned.

But now you spill over into the church, and now you're starting to see the idea of them pressing upon this idea of hate crime as a result of a pastor like myself or someone else or our church, for instance, that would say, no, you can't have a same -sex marriage here in this sanctuary, and one of our elders would not be willing to officiate that type of ceremony.

And so they're going to say, well, then that's considered to be hate crime, and so now you're going to lose your tax -exemption status and things of that nature.

So we're starting to see all of this is going to come out, and it's very much a political hot button right now.

We're only at the very precipice, the edge, the aftermath of what's really taking place here. I was just recently at a town council meeting regarding some laws that are on the table to be passed that local homosexual and homosexual advocates are trying to get passed as law, that they are a protected status.

The irony is that there have been no on -record, no real cases of any kind of discrimination against homosexuals or those practicing that behavior in this area.

There have been no solid, concrete instances of either violence towards them in the last several decades or any other reason that they would be demanding some kind of protected status.

And when I was at the town hall at this meeting, a Christian woman got up and eloquently was talking about how fearful she is to take her little children into public restrooms these days, because she never knows who's going to be in there or who will come in because of these unisex public restroom laws where a transsexual man or transvestite can just simply stroll into a woman's room and use the facilities.

And after she sat down, a woman who is either a lesbian or at least obviously an advocate of homosexuality got up and she said, what that woman is saying is nonsense and it's myth and folklore and it's just total slander against the

LGBTQ community, because the LGBTQ community does not molest children.

It's heterosexual men that are doing the vast majority of child molestation.

So I got up and I said to the panel there, I said,

I hope that you heard through the smoke screen there what is really being said.

These activists who are demanding more rights, special rights as homosexuals, they're not even really asking for equal rights, they're asking for superior rights.

And if you heard what she said, she is really basing this on moral superiority of homosexuals and transgender people, because she is saying they would never molest a child.

We can all relax and rest assured that a child is never going to be in harm's way in their presence in a restroom or anywhere else.

It's people like me that you've got to be looking out for. Basically they're saying that heterosexuals, especially men, are inferior in their morals, because we are the ones who are theoretically or potentially more dangerous than they are.

So they're actually claiming superiority, aren't they? Isn't that the only logical conclusion you can draw?

Yeah, I mean, they are, but again, what stats are they quoting? What studies are they citing?

They're just simply spouting off their opinion. Look, mothers would not typically do something that's beyond their motherly instinct, such as drive their car down a boat ramp with their children in the back seats, or just buckle down and drown their children.

But we see cases after cases of things that happen like that, and so to suggest that someone that's a transgender or anyone in the

LGBTQ community is just simply an advocate for caring for children is just beyond, it's just absurd.

I mean, anyone that would violate their God -given gender and go through sexual reassignment surgery and pursue an ungodly relationship, in essence, spitting in the face of God in the area of marriage, and they're suggesting that they're beyond child abuse?

That's just unthinkable. It's just not even logically possible. Amen. Aaron in Indianapolis, Indiana, is following up with a follow -up question.

She says, How do I answer intelligently when they, her non -Christian friends, come back with the fact that Christians abuse heterosexual marriage by divorce rate being as bad as non -Christian divorce rates?

This is a fantastic issue, and I'm glad that the question was asked. You see, here's the problem with the

Evangelical Church today. We've been pressed into a corner to actually rewrite Constitution and bylaws and set ourselves up to protect ourselves against the whole same -sex agenda.

Here's the problem. Here's the inconsistency. You have churches that are rewriting Constitution and bylaws and having business and members meetings where they're making decisions to completely rewrite these governing documents to protect themselves against this agenda, while at the very same time, for many years, they've been overlooking the issue of failed marriages in their church.

They've been overlooking pornography use in their church. They've been overlooking premarital sex in church.

They've been overlooking adultery in their church. And so you have churches now,

Chris, that have not practiced Biblical church discipline in the past 50 to 100 years, and yet now they're rewriting

Constitution and bylaws to protect themselves against the same -sex agenda. It's a bit inconsistent, if we're really honest.

It's just really inconsistent. So I think the best thing that we could do as an evangelical church is not apologize to the

LGBTQ community. I think the best thing that we could do is to apologize for inconsistency.

We must address all sexual sin. So the idea of, you know, two people that are just living together in the church pews and they're pursuing membership and you're saying, well, you know,

I want to have a growing church, so we're going to allow them to join the church, but they're not married and they're just living together, well, that's a violation of Scripture.

That's sexual sin. It's sexual immorality. And then the same thing with adultery.

You know, if we're going to turn, you know, a blind eye or a deaf ear to the whole idea of adultery, then we really should be ashamed at speaking up against, you know, same -sex sin as well.

So we need to be very consistent across the board, and that's the issue that we're seeing right now in the evangelical church.

We've got to go to another break right now, and if you'd like to join us on the air, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com.

chrisarnson at gmail .com. Don't go away. We're going to be right back with Pastor Josh Bice of Praise Mill Baptist Church.

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Welcome back. This is Chris Arnzen. If you just tuned us in, our guest today for the full two hours is

Pastor Josh Bice, Senior Pastor of Praise Mill Baptist Church in Douglasville, Georgia, and he's host of the blog delivered by Grace and director of the

G3 Conference, which we have been discussing and advertising. And that website is g3conference .com

g3conference .com and our discussion today is primarily on marriage, its definition and importance, and that's in the backdrop of the horrific legalization of same -sex marriage that has occurred in this nation.

If you'd like to join us, our email address is ChrisArnzen at gmail .com ChrisArnzen at gmail .com

And going back to, just briefly, I think we overlooked the reason or the meaning behind G3 and the

G3 Conference. That's gospel, grace, and glory? That's correct, gospel, grace, and glory.

Again, the idea was that we wanted to establish those three pillars to allow all attendees to know that this is a theology conference, so we're not blushing about that, we're not ashamed of it, we're not a pep rally for Christians or an entertainment outlet.

We are existing for the purpose of furthering sound doctrine and encouraging people in the faith.

And people will, most of our listeners, will say, well, yeah, I completely understand gospel and grace, but what are you specifically meaning by glory in the theme?

Yeah, I think the pursuit of the Christian life is to glorify God. You know, I think that we glorify

God, we enjoy Him forever. I think that we need to most glorify

God through the right preaching of the gospel, through the right understanding of who

God is as He's revealed Himself to us in Scripture. So we want to make sure that we're not, you know, perpetuating this idea of just a trivialized approach to the pulpit ministry, but a high view of Scripture, a high view of God, a high view of the

Church, and right proclamation. So that's the goal, that's the idea.

Great. You mentioned something earlier that I wanted to return to.

You were talking about the sinfulness of same -sex attraction.

And I was wondering what your reaction would be to my belief that there is a lot of evangelical

Christianity, or a lot of individuals who would profess to be evangelicals, who in an overreaction, perhaps, to people like Fred Phelps, the late

Fred Phelps and the God Hates Fags group, who want to distance themselves, understandably, 180 degrees away from that kind of hate, which is genuine hate, because they delight in the fact that unrepentant homosexuals are going to hell.

They get a big kick out of it. They just love that idea. They've always got the big smiles on their faces when they're talking about it.

And they don't even call homosexuals to repent. They don't even believe that there is going to be a possibility in their future for that to occur.

They believe that they have been turned over completely and forever to that wickedness, and therefore we're just basically to openly condemn them and not call them to repentance.

So obviously that is an evil, heretical, and dangerous mindset.

But there are evangelicals, I think, maybe you disagree, but it seems that there are evangelicals who are really going too far to overcome that stereotype by being overly soft on the issue.

And they, it seems, even buy into a secular mindset by categorizing the gay community as a group of people that actually have that separate identity from the rest of us, as if they are

African American, Asian, Hispanic, Native American, or what have you,

Western European, and you have the gay community. They seem, there's a lot, and the language that is used by a lot of evangelicals in trying hard not to be unnecessarily offensive when they proclaim the gospel, they use these secular and,

I think, unbiblical categories and even might give the impression that there is nothing really sinful about same -sex attraction as long as you're not doing anything with that.

Like even the Roman Catholic Church basically has that position, that as long as a man is chased, for instance, they welcome him into the priesthood even if he openly confesses to having a same -sex attraction.

It's almost like there's a morally neutral ramification to that if it's not acted upon.

But that's totally unbiblical, isn't it? Well, it is, I think so. I think that there's two issues that you've brought up here in this question.

So the issue of being too harsh or hateful, such as Westboro Baptist. Again, I abhor that group.

I've dealt with them personally in the past. I was once visiting

Indianapolis, Indiana. I was there for the Southern Baptist Convention a number of years ago, and they were protesting on the streets.

And I was walking to lunch, and I was just warned by their approach.

I had seen them on television. I had seen them in print publications before, but not really experienced them face -to -face until that moment on the streets.

As I walked past them, I was seeing them just scream hate into the doors and into the windows of these people that were stopping, you know, in the inner -city streets of Indianapolis.

And when I came back from lunch, there was a little boy standing next to his father, and he was just screaming hate.

But it was all judgment, and there was no grace. And so I started to engage this man with the gospel, and he, you know, he, of course, completely rejected what

I had to say. So I spoke directly to his son, and I shared the gospel with his son.

And then I stood there for the next maybe 20 minutes or so, and then every time he would preach hate and judgment,

I would accent and I would echo the gospel into the windows of those cars that were stopping at the streetlight there.

And so that ended up following up with an interview that I had with Westboro, and all of this was published on my

Delivered by Grace blog site. And then eventually, later on, I wrote an article that asked this.

You know, they're always saying God hates fags and God hates everyone else military and, you know, the

Southern Baptist Convention. So I simply wrote an article that asked this. Does God hate Westboro Baptists?

And so, you know, they're harsh. They have a complete wrong view of what the gospel actually is.

They even excommunicated Fred Phelps before he left this planet. Yeah, I mean, it's just a crazy mixed -up group of people, and it's sad that they would actually misuse the term

Baptist. You know, that's really a sad, unfortunate circumstance. And they also, unfortunately, share our confession, the 1689

London Baptist Confession. Yeah, but they're basically hyper -Calvinists. They're not genuine

Reformed people. Right, right, I understand that. But if you go to the issue of being too soft on this issue,

I do think that you can error by being too soft. I think that you can say to someone that's struggling with same -sex attraction but has never followed through with that type of temptation, and I think that you could give them, by being too soft,

I think you could give them enough rope to hang themselves with it, to be honest. Yes. And so I think that you should speak directly to the issue and say that if I'm, as a heterosexual male, if I'm having some type of temptation for adultery on my wife, well, that's wrong, that's sinful.

But if I don't act on it, I'm not allowed to still harbor that in my mind as some type of, you know, fantasy.

That's sinful. So the same thing is true for someone who struggles with something that I've never struggled with, which is same -sex attraction, but I am aware of the fact that there are people that really genuinely have that type of struggle, that type of issue.

I think the issue is this. They need to find their help in God.

They need to find their help in the gospel of Jesus Christ. And so this whole idea that we can just live as gay

Christians, that category, that's unthinkable. For instance, you can't live with this idea of, well,

I'm just a gay adulterer, or, you know, I'm just a Christian adulterer, or I'm just a Christian, you know, murderer or something of that nature.

You just don't perpetuate, you know, an unconfessed rebellious heart of sin and call yourself a

Christian at the same time. The Bible speaks about people who have been transformed. They have a new heart.

They have a new nature. They've been changed. They've been delivered. In fact, if you go to Corinthians Chapter 6, you see that the

Apostle Paul is writing to a church in the city of Corinth, and he talks about the fact that there was a group, he talks about this church, and he just says that they were, you know, sexually immoral, they were idolaters, they were adulterers, that they had practiced homosexuality, thieves and drunkards, you know, swindlers.

But then he says in Verse 11 of 1 Corinthians Chapter 6, he says, And such were some of you, but you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the

Lord Jesus Christ by the Spirit of our God. The issue is this, that was their lifestyle before Christ saved them, and so this idea that you can just continue as an adulterer and say,

I'm just a Christian adulterer, or I'm just a Christian swindler, I'm just a

Christian, you know, thief, that's just unthinkable. And the same thing should be true for the idea of just being a gay

Christian. Yes, and it's so refreshing to hear Rosaria Butterfield, who is one of the speakers at the

G3 Conference, who is completely devoid of political correctness, and even though she was a lesbian, a very proud lesbian and leftist professor, a tenured professor at Syracuse University, now that she has been transformed, she realizes that a lot of the labels that the secular society has come up with to make homosexuality more palatable, or more praiseworthy even, even the title gay, she does not agree with Christians using that kind of terminology.

She will use gay in certain circumstances when it's just using a phrase that a particular group of people are using in writing to identify themselves, but she does not think that we should use that routinely as an adjective for somebody involved in homosexual behavior.

Yeah, I mean, they take terminology like that, they hijack it, and then they use it for immoral purposes.

So yeah, I would agree with that mindset as well. Yeah, because if you're younger than 50 or 40, and you're hearing some of these beautiful old songs from an earlier era where the word gay is used, young people are probably scratching their heads and wondering, is this guy involved in homosexuality or something?

Is he using the word gay? No, that just means happy, joyful. And they hijack that from our vocabulary.

Yeah, they certainly do, and they also hijack the rainbow, which is a beautiful, wonderful symbol that has its root in scripture, and they take that, and now every time you see a rainbow flag, you have this idea of the

LGBTQ community or an agenda, a homosexual agenda, some type of perversion, and so it's unfortunate.

Yes, and believe it or not, I don't know why I have never done this before, but I just looked up on the

Internet version of the Merriam -Webster Dictionary marriage because I wanted to see if anything was changed, and this is the first time

I've actually done this, so I'm amazed at myself that I've never done this before. But here's the

Merriam -Webster definition, and Daniel Webster would be rolling over in his grave right now if he actually knew this happened.

First it says the relationship that exists between a husband and a wife, and then it says, as a second definition, a similar relationship between people of the same sex.

Now, isn't it interesting? They couldn't even bring themselves, because I think people are still trying to figure this out.

It's such a new thing. They didn't say it's exactly the same thing, did they? They said it's a similar thing.

And then when they lower down and it has the full definition, it says the state of being united to a person of the opposite sex as husband or wife in a consensual and contractual relationship recognized by law.

Number two, the state of being united to a person of the same sex in a relationship like that of a traditional marriage.

So they obviously had to update their definition. Yeah, so the key in all of that, what you just said, was you looked it up online.

So if you take one of the older printed editions, it's certainly not going to say anything about sex unions or anything of that nature.

So we're on the precipice just in the aftermath, and they're already trying to bend the definition of marriage, as I said earlier, into a pliable structure that's palatable to a secular culture, and it's just unfortunate.

Yeah, and it's also unfortunate that people overlook, as if it's inconsequential, that every psychiatry and psychological textbook prior to the 1970s had homosexuality listed as a behavioral disorder, and that it was viewed as a mental illness.

And overnight, it vanished from the textbooks.

But there are even some old -school psychiatrists and psychologists, there are probably very few in number, but those that are not even

Christians, who say that this is a very, very dangerous trend that has occurred and is occurring and getting more and more foothold.

I used to occasionally get emails from a Jewish psychiatrist on Long Island, New York.

His name escapes me right now. But he, in fact, was even liberal in his political ideology, with the exception of this area.

And he was abhorred by... absolutely astonished by these developments where homosexuality has totally been...

not only gained the status of being something on the same par of normality as heterosexuality, but it's something that we should be celebrating and having nothing but exuberant joy and adulation to look at this as some kind of a wonderful, beautiful, and heroic activity.

Yeah. Yeah, again, Chris, I think that this whole thing of the same -sex agenda in our culture is very troubling, but I want to go beyond that to make sure that I address something that's at the heart of this issue as far as this book project is concerned, and that's the issue of divorce.

I grew up in a home that was broken by divorce. My earliest memories of life were my mother and father fighting, and the home was full of chaos.

And so finally my mom told me, at about five years of age, that my dad wasn't coming back.

He wasn't coming home. And so I remember being angered as a little boy. I remember being confused.

And then my mom remarried another gentleman who was extremely abusive to her and I as well.

And so, you know, it was a very difficult time in my life. But by God's grace, years later my dad would become a believer, my mom would become a believer, and our lives are completely different now.

In fact, I have the privilege now of, although both have been remarried for many years,

I have the privilege of pastoring both my mother and my father in our church here in Douglasville.

But the point I'm making is this. An awful lot of people make horrible decisions, and especially those within the church.

When you look at divorce stats, you're talking about 50 % basically across the board.

That's including professing Christians. And I know that there are some issues with the stats, and you can play with the numbers a bit.

But just by and large, I mean, you know, 40 % to 50%, you're talking about an enormous amount of people who are making decisions to just end marriage based on the fact that we can't be happy anymore.

And so this past week there was a specific situation that's presently taking place in our church, so I certainly can't elaborate on it too much.

But there is a woman that's telling me that her husband, you know, wants a divorce, and so he's already moved out.

And, you know, here I am pastoring these people, and so I asked if he would meet with me this past week.

And so we sat down, we talked, and this is what he said. He said, Pastor, he said,

I just can't be happy anymore with her. And he said, I just want to look at my life and say

I have, you know, 30 more years of life maybe, and so I want those years to count for something.

I want to be happy. So I spent the next, you know, several minutes sitting here, you know, at the table with this brother having coffee, and I say brother loosely at this point because I'm not quite sure because I was sharing the gospel.

And when I got to a point, he said, I understand, but. That's a troubling thing.

When someone says, I understand, this is what the Bible says, but, they're willing to make a decision that's not, you know, in harmony with Scripture.

And so finally I got to the very end of the discussion, and before we left I said, listen, I said, I want to tell you something.

I said, this happiness that you're seeking through this divorce, I think that it's a fairy tale happiness.

I think you will never experience it. And I think that if you claim to be a believer, but yet you follow through with this divorce, and you violate this covenant of marriage, and you continue to live in open rebellion against God, here's what

I think you're in danger of. I think that you're in danger of dying and going to hell. And he just looked at me, he was shocked.

As if, no, hang on a second, I'm a Christian, you know, but my point is this, if you can live in open rebellion, let's talk about something beyond just being, you know, a quote -unquote gay

Christian. What about a Christian who just wants to break a marriage covenant and follow through with divorce?

So divorce is a serious issue that I think that we're overlooking, and we think that children, by the way, we think that children are going to just be happy when they think that parents are happy.

No, that's not the case. We're hurting children. You know, every time divorce happens, it hurts everyone involved.

And so I think that we need to keep that in mind as well. So, you know, same -sex marriage, that whole issue, that agenda, divorce, the radical feminism movement, you know, these are all issues that I think that we've been seeing just continually, perpetually attacking the heart of marriage, which, by the way, why would any of these agendas want to attack marriage?

The reason is because marriage was instituted by God for a purpose, and that's to put on display the relationship between Jesus Christ and his bride, the church.

And so at the heart of this whole debate is the gospel of Jesus Christ. Amen.

And, of course, you have a lot of people who go beyond trying to just make their decision for divorce when there's clearly no biblical grounds in their specific circumstances, when they actually will pass the buck on to their children and make it seem like they are actually doing a very noble and courageous thing by saying, we're really doing this for the children.

We're splitting up. We're getting a divorce because we think we have to put the children's interests first.

And we realize that if we remain married, the children are going to suffer and so on.

Now, the only scenario I could actually think of that having any legitimacy is if one of the spouses puts the children in physical danger of some kind, if they're beating them in some kind of sadistic and evil way or sexually abusing them or something.

How do you respond to what I just said? I think you're right.

I think the best thing for children would not be watching mom and dad divorce and break this covenant that was instituted by God to put on display the gospel.

We're going to be covenant keepers, not covenant breakers. So the best thing for kids is for the kids, the children in those homes to see mom and dad who are saying marriage is more than just in love.

It's more than just being in love with one another. It's about being committed to one another in the good times and in the bad times.

And so we're going to work through this. And then years later when those children grow up and they start having marriage problems, they're not just going to push the one call, that's all attorney button to get some type of quick uncontested divorce.

They're going to actually spend time working through difficulties and making sure that their marriage actually lasts.

And we have to go to our final break right now. If you'd like to join us on the air with a question of your own, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com.

chrisarnson at gmail .com. Don't go away. We're going to be right back with Pastor Josh Bice. I am

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Paul wrote to the church at Galatia. For am I now seeking the approval of man or of God? Or am

I trying to please man? If I were still trying to please man, I would not be a servant of Christ. Hi, I'm Mark Lukens, Pastor of Providence Baptist Church.

We are a Reformed Baptist Church, and we hold to the London Baptist Confession of Faith of 1689.

We are in Norfolk, Massachusetts. We strive to reflect Paul's mindset to be much more concerned with the world.

More concerned with how God views what we say and what we do than how men view these things. That's not the best recipe for popularity, but since that wasn't the

Apostle's priority, it must not be ours either. We believe by God's grace that we are called to demonstrate love and compassion to our fellow man, and to be vessels of Christ's mercy to a lost and hurting community around us, and to build up the body of Christ in truth and love.

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Call Linbrook Baptist at 516 -599 -9402, that's 516 -599 -9402, or visit linbrookbaptist .org,

that's linbrookbaptist .org. Welcome back, this is Chris Arnsin. If you just tuned us in for the last 90 minutes and the next half hour to come, our guest has been and will continue to be

Josh Bice, Senior Pastor of Praise Mill Baptist Church, Douglasville, Georgia, who hosts the blog deliveredbygrace .com,

and also is the Director of the G3 Conference that's coming up January 19th through the 21st in Atlanta, Georgia.

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Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals. So I'm looking forward to meeting many of my Iron Sharpens Iron listeners for the first time face -to -face at this conference.

That's g3conference .com. We have an anonymous listener in New York, Pastor Josh, who says,

What do you believe are Biblical reasons to get divorced, if any? Yeah, so that's a good question.

I do think that there are certain circumstances that would allow for us to divorce or to go through a divorce in the sense of looking at reasons that we could find in Scripture.

I do think that if you look at the Bible and you see what the Scripture actually teaches, there are differing views on this very issue.

So there's what you might call the permanence view of marriage, which means that there's no divorce and no remarriage after any circumstances.

And then there's what's called the semi -permanence view, which divorce is permitted but not remarriage.

And then there's the permissive view, one clause, which would be, say, one option for divorce and remarriage based on adultery only.

And then there's the permissive view, two -clause view, which would allow for divorce under the circumstances of adultery and abandonment.

So I've had some time to think through this issue in my own life and ministry, and I think that not just from my own ideas or what

I feel, but I think when you just look at what the Scripture teaches, I think the main idea of marriage is that it be a permanent thing.

But I think that in this world that we live in that's been affected by and infiltrated with sin,

I think that we see things happening such as adultery and such as abandonment.

And you see those very issues spoken of in, say, Matthew's Gospel 19.

You see it in the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew chapter 5. You see Paul referencing this issue in 1

Corinthians 7, that if someone has an unbelieving spouse, remains or allows for that person to remain, then you should because you have an opportunity, therefore, to reach that person with the

Gospel. So I think that I hold to a view that allows for divorce under adultery and abandonment, but I think that remarriage is something that would have to be counseled through.

So I do think that it's possible for someone to even be remarried, but I do think that in an awful lot of the cases where I would counsel with people in my office,

I would have to say to people who have been divorced, I don't think that you should pursue remarriage because of the decisions that you've made or whatnot.

So I think it's a case -by -case issue, but I do think that we have to be very careful in drawing a hard, fast line, just strictly permanence.

And I do have some very close brother, very close friends that hold to this position, but I simply disagree.

Yeah, I have friends on nearly every side of this issue, and I've interviewed folks who have differing views on that.

But it seems to be clear, at the very least, from 1 Corinthians 7, 15, that although pursuing a divorce is not specifically mentioned, but Paul says, if the unbelieving one leaves, let him leave.

The brother or sister is not under bondage in such cases. So would you say that that is a very clear, at least, permission given for the spouse, the believing spouse, to accept a divorce, not necessarily pursuing it, but she's just letting her husband leave, or vice versa, obviously.

Whoever the unbeliever is, if they leave and if they really want to leave, let them leave. Yeah, I would agree with that.

I think that it would be very unwise to counsel people to just say, go pursue a divorce.

But obviously, if they abandon you and they're not coming back, then legally, at some level, at some point in time, not the next day,

I'm not talking about someone that left home mad and then you say, well, you abandoned me. That's not abandonment. I think that that issue of not being under bondage is the key aspect of that passage.

Right, and then, of course, there are even some that say, because of some reason or another, if one of the spouses stops having physical relations with the person, that that's abandonment.

Well, those are things that can be worked through, obviously, correct? Correct. I mean, look, all types of perversion in the ancient world with people,

Jews who would claim that if their wife wasn't appealing or didn't cook a meal for them in the proper way or whatever, that they had violated their marriage covenant, and so as a result of that, they were free to just issue a bill of divorcement.

So there's always been a desire to pervert marriage and to break a marriage covenant.

So I would say we need to be advocates of covenant -keeping, and that needs to be at the heart of how we preach and how we teach and how we disciple people in the faith.

Now, having said all that, about the seriousness of marriage and that the view and the goal is permanence, are there not too many

Christians who are making lepers out of those who have been divorced, even people who are clearly the victims of the divorce that may not have even wanted the divorce at all, may have even fought against the divorce, and yet it's somehow viewed as the unpardonable sin and they are looked upon as something less than sanctified, and so on?

Yeah, it's an unfortunate thing. Divorced people who have been the victim of divorce, as you've stated, they did not want divorce, and they've tried to avoid it with every fiber of their being, and yet having a high view of marriage and seeking to keep that covenant, there was nothing that they could do, unfortunately, and so they were divorced, and so in many evangelical circles you have those people being treated as if it's the

Scarlet D that's been just plastered upon them, and so their identity, unfortunately, for the rest of their lives is the divorced one.

Well, that's just simply that that's just not biblical, and that's, you know, that's not the way you treat people, for one thing, but that's certainly not the way that you should look at someone as having an identity and something that happened to them.

I think that, you know, we need to help people walk through these decisions and make wise, careful, biblical decisions when it comes to the issues of marriage and divorce, and remarriage.

Do you think the root of a lot of marital problems and even divorces, and perhaps maybe all of these problems in some way is at its root is because we who are sinners, we have amnesia about who it was that God saved and what we were like when we were saved.

We seem to, at some point, have this glorious gratitude and thanksgiving and praise towards a merciful

God who saved a wretch like me, and yet when someone that we're married to sins against us, we just reciprocate with, you know, anger and condemnation and, you know, absolutely no humility at times, and we just want, all right, this is over with.

You're out of here, or I'm out of here. It seems like we can recognize that we were fallen, totally depraved, and rescued from our wretchedness, but we don't want to do, we don't want to have that same kind of merciful attitude towards one that we have vowed to love for the rest of our lives.

Yeah, you know, even someone what was the victim of adultery, it doesn't say you must seek a divorce in the situation of adultery.

You can actually forget someone. You can actually work through that, and I would counsel people that if at all possible, salvage that marriage.

Work through these issues. It might take months or even years to work through it, but it's worth it in the end.

Don't throw away your marriage, but unfortunately, Chris, I think one of the reasons we're seeing so much divorce and so much perversion of marriage, even within the church and even churches now who are becoming gay affirming and all of this perversion is because we have this complete lack of church discipline, and we're softening on these issues because we're condoning sin, and we're not practicing biblical church discipline, and we're also not preaching the

Bible in the most effective way. So in other words, we're preaching a series of sermons on cultural issues trying to be relevant and trying to be up to speed with our culture, and we're overlooking sin instead of rightly dividing the word of God and standing upon an authoritative, sufficient word and calling sin sin.

So, I mean, you have, you know, of course, we laugh, and we, you know, Joel Osteen has become the butt of the jokes, especially among the

Reformed community, but let's go beyond Joel Osteen to people like Andy Stanley who preached an entire sermon back in 2012 titled

When Gracie Met Trucy where he was talking about two men who were engaged in a homosexual relationship, and he said in that particular sermon, as he was counseling with them, he said he had to rebuke them, but here's what he said.

He said, you're just involved in what's called just good old -fashioned adultery, and he never called their homosexual relationship a sin.

And so this is what we're seeing today, and so in the evangelical community, we need to remember that the

Holy Scriptures are still the same. The gospel of Jesus Christ has not changed, and the church must be steadfast, immovable on these issues and not capitulating to the cultural agendas of the day.

This is off topic somewhat, but have you heard anything about Charles Stanley making any public comments in reaction or response to some of the things his son has been saying and teaching?

You know, Chris, I've not heard anything about what Charles Stanley has stated or hasn't stated.

I do know that it's been nice, to be quite honest, that I'm not the only one saying anything, you know, in recent days about Andy Stanley.

You know, I took a lot of laps for writing the article, you know, that I've written in recent months about Andy Stanley, but it's not me just throwing a rock at, you know, a megachurch pastor across the city here in Atlanta.

This is a big issue that needs to be addressed, and so James White has been addressing it.

Michael Kruger has been addressing it. Today, this morning, Albert Moeller wrote an article on his blog addressing

Andy Stanley's view of scripture. So we need to make sure that we're standing firm on these issues.

Amen. And especially, you know, people get bent out of shape and think that when you do something like that, you're doing something un -Christ -like even, something unloving, unkind, proud, arrogant, pharisaic.

But the thing is, when somebody especially is a public figure and they're writing best -selling books and they're on national

TV programs and radio programs feeding the minds of countless millions of people, it's a duty of a

Christian to speak up, isn't it? It's our duty to speak up. I mean, look at Galatians chapter 1 when you see, you know, that Paul was writing to the church saying that he's just astounded at how fast they were moved from their position of orthodoxy.

And so we can't afford to be soft on these issues of the sufficiency of scripture, because when we're soft on the sufficiency of scripture and the authority of scripture, out of that type of mindset will flow, you know, an enormous litany of different types of perversions.

And so one of those will certainly be the idea that, well, you know, if the Bible's not completely sufficient, then maybe we need to update it to states that maybe, you know, in our present culture, you know, women should be pastors and elders and we need to do away with this idea of male domination and we need to make sure that we free women from the cage of marriage and children are a bad thing and so we need to make sure that we're supporting, you know, abortion to make sure we free up, you know, women to just pursue their dreams and goals in life.

Certainly don't get married, because then you're going to be under male domination. And you see all of these, all of these horrific ideologies that are coming out of, you know, of the idea in the heart and the foundation that completely rejects the idea of the authority and the sufficiency of God's word.

We have an anonymous listener from Suffolk County, Long Island, who says, what is your reaction to some of the men who may be even in theology and doctrine in lockstep with you, who have become discouraged and even have become opponents of Bible conferences and saying that they are creating celebrity pastors.

I know that you are obviously organizing conferences annually and disagree with that, but how do you respond to that kind of criticism?

Well, first of all, let's not throw out the baby with the bathwater. Uh -huh. You have someone that's guilty of, you know, worshipping, you know, the quote -unquote celebrity pastor or conference speaker.

Look, you know, that issue is going to play itself out, you know, if they just stay in their local church.

So they're going to worship the elder in the church that's the most prominent one or whatever else.

So they're going to have to choose whether they go to conferences or whether they don't go to conferences.

So I think that we need to make sure that we're not trying to fuel the idea and the mindset of the celebrity pastor.

So when you come to the G3 conference this year, you can expect that there will be no cattle gates at the front that, you know, separate from the rest of the attendees.

We're just not going to do that. I understand that there's a security issue and we, you know, we do have security people that have been hired for this conference.

But look, here's the deal. We want to try to put a group of people together that can speak into people's lives, encourage them, and strengthen local churches.

And so that's the goal behind a conference like the G3 conference. And so, yeah, I disagree with the celebrity mentality as well, but I think that just doing away with conferences altogether is not necessarily the best idea either.

Yeah, I am very happy that every pastor that I have ever had very much eagerly and zealously supported conferences.

Every pastor that I've had never was so jealous of his pulpit or attention to him and his own sermons and teachings that he frowned upon the congregation learning and growing and discovering from other like -minded men of faith at conferences.

And let's be honest, as brilliant and as gifted and godly and wise as any pastor is, he cannot be an expert on everything.

And there are other men of God that have studied other issues, certain issues, that pastors themselves are rejoicing to learn and to discover and grow in their own knowledge and be further equipped when they hear their peers bringing forth issues from the

Word of God that they, just because it is impossible to know everything in the unsearchable riches of Scripture, to every issue with equal depth as every other man.

That's obviously one of the reasons that God has given us a gift throughout the centuries of so many gifted teachers and preachers and writers and so on.

Yeah, I would agree with that. Yeah, I always look forward to going to a good conference where the speakers are known for their biblical orthodoxy and, of course, don't always agree with everything that is said or every man.

But, you know, obviously, even if we always agreed with every single thing that any human being says, you might have to check yourself for a cult -like mentality.

You know, just being in lockstep with everything that any man of God is teaching or any professed man of God is teaching and throwing out the admonition that Paul gave to the

Bereans. So, I would like you now to summarize what you most want etched in the hearts and minds of our listeners today before they leave the broadcast,

Pastor Josh. Okay, thank you, Chris. I would just simply say that marriage matters.

And so, at the heart of marriage is the gospel of Jesus Christ. Marriage was designed and instituted by God to put on display the gospel.

So, we are to be covenant keepers, not covenant breakers. So, every single liberal agenda, whether it be divorce or radical feminism or same -sex ideology, whatever it might be, the attack on marriage is an attack on Jesus Christ.

There's a desire to spray graffiti upon this beautiful thing that God has instituted called marriage.

I would also encourage the churches, the pastors, the members of the churches, to not be guilty of being afraid of homosexuals and afraid to reach out to them with the gospel of Jesus Christ.

You know, I'll just share a story quickly. When I first came to pastor this church that I serve now here in Douglasville, I had grown up here as a boy, and I had been gone away for a period of seven years.

When I arrived back the very first Sunday that I was in the pulpit, there was a gentleman sitting in the congregation who was visiting his parents, and he was an open homosexual.

He heard what I had to say in the preaching of the gospel and was angered at what

I had to say and left there that day troubled. But he reached out to a friend, someone that he knew in the church, and sought some counsel there and then eventually wanted to speak with me.

So he called the church office, set up a meeting, and we got together. And here's what he said. He said, what you had to say in that sermon affected me.

And he said, I was angry with you. But he said this. He said, what happened was, he said,

I had traveled to church that day to tell my parents, to tell my family goodbye because he was going to commit suicide.

He had actually, he was a sheriff's deputy at the time, and he had gotten his patrol car up to a high rate of speed the night before and was just going to commit suicide.

He was going to run into a bridge post on the interstate, but he couldn't do it because he wanted to say goodbye to his family first.

So he stopped and then eventually came to church the next morning where he heard the gospel.

So it was through that type of scenario that God used the gospel to convert this man.

He became a believer. He eventually became a deacon in this church, and then he eventually married our church secretary.

And so they have a beautiful family. The point is simply this. As 1 Corinthians chapter 6 states, that we were all

God -haters and sinners, whether it be that we were adulterers or swindlers or thieves or sexually impure or homosexuals.

But when Jesus Christ changes us, when he saves us, when he delivers us, he gives us a new heart, and we have new desires, a new appetite, and our life completely changes.

And so that's what happened in my friend's life. That's what can happen in anyone in your community as well, and it is not through our wisdom or eloquence of speech or any of that.

It's not through anything that comes from us personally, but it's the power of the gospel of Jesus Christ that changes lives.

And so marriage matters. At the heart of marriage is the gospel of Jesus Christ, and so I'm certainly passionate about that.

Amen. And I want to thank you so much, Pastor Josh, for being on the program today, especially because I know that you are a very busy man.

And I am so eagerly looking forward to meeting you in person at the G3 Conference, January 19th through the 21st, and to repeat that website for any of you who are interested in possibly going to that conference or recommending it to somebody else who may be able to attend, especially if they live near Atlanta.

The website address is g3conference .com, g3conference .com.

Also, Praise Mill Baptist Church's website, where Pastor Josh is the pastor, is praisemill .com,

that's p -r -a -y -s -mill .com, p -r -a -y -s -mill .com.

And then, don't forget about the blog that Pastor Josh Bice hosts, deliveredbygrace .com,

deliveredbygrace .com. I look forward to having you back on the program. I also look forward to interviewing as many of the

G3 speakers as I possibly can get on the program. I want to thank everybody who listened to the program today, and especially those who took the time to write with questions.

I'm sorry that there were a few of you that we didn't have the time to read your questions on the air, but perhaps next time.

And I want you all to always remember for the rest of your lives that Jesus Christ is a far greater

Savior than you are a sinner. We look forward to receiving your questions for our guests in the future on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio.