Dealing with the “Clobber Passages” | Provoked

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Hey, everybody, welcome to another episode of Provoked. I'm Jake, super happy to be here.

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Zach Morgan, Pastor Zach, is not here today. He's on his sabbatical, so hoping that he's getting some great rest, joined, as always, by Desi Mays.

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Desi, how are you doing today? I'm doing good. You know, a little warm, as always in the summer heat, but I'm doing well and blessed to be here.

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Awesome. And also have a special guest as well, Zach Conover. Zach, welcome.

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Thank you, guys. Great to be here. It's an honor. Yeah. Zach is regular on Apology Radio, communications director at End Abortion Now.

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So yeah, really happy to have you on here as well. Great to be here. I got some big shoes to fill for Pastor Zach.

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Yeah, that's his seat too. That's his actual - It's the hot seat. You're in the Captain Zach seat.

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Yeah. Yes. The Captain Zach seat. Hopefully, I can do him justice. He's a solid man of God. Yeah, he's okay.

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Yeah. Don't let it go to your head. You can only say he's okay if you're his sister. Yeah. I know. He's just wonderful and he hates to be complimented.

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So I'm just like, eh. Yeah. Do it when he's not here. All that humility just goes too far sometimes.

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He can't fight back. Yeah. That's awesome. Cool. Well, hey, I want to jump right into the topic here. Before we do that,

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Lord Jesus. Well, I want to jump right in here today. What are we talking about? We're talking about the subject of homosexuality.

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We're still closing out summer. Obviously, June has become, sadly, this month where this idea of pride,

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LGBT, is celebrated. It's really put at the forefront of our culture. So I think this is an important issue for Christians to speak on and to speak on clearly.

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But there's specifically this phrase, and I've heard it from different evangelical pastors, this phrase, clobber passages.

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So I want to kind of zoom in on this phrase a bit and hear your guys' thoughts on it. But kind of to start off things here,

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I want to share this clip. This is from Andy Stanley, famous, it's actually become quite viral in the previous months.

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This is a conference he did talking about homosexuality, but he uses the phrase here. So just to give folks some context,

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I'm going to play this clip. What environment do you continue to step foot in knowing at any moment you may feel ostracized?

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No place. I'm telling you, the gay men and women who grew up in church and the gay men and women who've come to faith in Christ as adults, who want to participate in our church, oh my goodness.

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I know 1 Corinthians 6, and I know Leviticus, and I know Romans 1. It's so interesting to talk about all that stuff, but just, oh my goodness, a gay man or woman who wants to worship their heavenly father, who did not answer the cry of their heart when they were 12 and 13 and 14 and 15,

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God said no, and they still love God. We have some things to learn from a group of men and women who love

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Jesus that much and who want to worship with us. And I know the verses, I know the clobber passages, right?

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We got to figure this out. And you know what? All right. So obviously a lot to unpack there, or not, at least this week, diving into Andy Stanley specifically, but that's an example there of that phrase being used.

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So I want to open it up to you guys. Have you, first of all, have you heard this phrase before? How have you heard it used?

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Just share some thoughts on that. Go ahead, sister. Ladies first. I actually, until you had, we started setting for this episode,

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I had not heard of the clobber passage phrase until you had told me, but I do find it interesting, just an interesting way of saying that because obviously it comes, the whole premise leading up to that then is that what are

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Christians doing with these passages? They're clobbering people over the head with them, right?

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And they're, it's an aggressive thing, right? Where you're like, this is God's word, spoke,

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God breathes. So anything that comes up from it is from the mouth of God.

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So yeah, it's just the whole premise of it's somehow unloving to share these passages and we're using them to just really just beat people up.

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So I think that's a good springboard point. I think there's a lot of assumptions baked into what he said.

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You referenced this before we started recording that he begin with a premise of some kind.

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And in this case, it's an emotional appeal. You know, are you saying that we should tell this person in our church that cried out to God, Lord, change me?

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I don't want to be this way. And God said, no. So what's the assumption that's kind of being smuggled in there is that people are born this way, right?

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And they can't change. And God didn't answer their prayers. And you're doing them no service by coming in with what we clearly know the

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Bible to say about sexual sin, about that, which is a departure from the kind of conduct and attitude and behavior that God wants us to entertain and engage in.

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And you are using these types of passages, as you said, something to bludgeon people over the head with to shame them and make them feel bad.

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When I think perhaps maybe a more accurate label to place on these passages, you know, the

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New Testament authors talk about the word of God being that which sanctifies, that which washes.

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I mean, he put this in the context of worship. So let's stay there. God's truth is what creates

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Christians. It's what sustains Christians. New Testament authors talk about you were born again, according to the imperishable seed.

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This is what made you, this is what brought you into existence. And therefore, this is the very thing that tells you how to live and calls upon you to obey that particular standard.

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So the use of this negative term, clobber passages, I think is an emotional appeal designed to try to get

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Christians to back off of supplying the very thing that people struggling with this need in order to be conformed to the image of Christ.

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It's the means by which that happens. It's the means by which we experience repentance, faith in Jesus and in his saving gospel.

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So there's a lot at stake here, but that's how it's being employed. Exactly. Amen. Yeah, it is.

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And I appreciate what you both said there. This point of these passages are kind of grouped and being used to assault people as if it's like a bad portion.

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These are bad portions of scripture. Right. I want to touch on that a little bit more here, but first, just what are these clobber passages?

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You know, maybe bring in a couple to mind here. And some of these listeners probably know of before I even get to them, but these are a couple of places.

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First one is Leviticus chapter 18, verse 22. This clearly mosaic law here, you shall not lie with a male as with a woman.

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It is an abomination. We see another one in Romans chapter one, talking about exchanging the truth about God for a lie, worshiping and serving the creature rather than the creator.

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God gives sinful mankind up to dishonorable passions. And one of the effects of that is women exchanging natural relations for relations with one another, men exchanging that same thing and becoming consumed with passion for one another.

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So homosexuality is the immediate result of God's wrath and it's condemned here as a sin.

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And then another quite famous one as well is first Corinthians chapter six. Paul, it's actually a beautiful passage.

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He's talking about gospel transformation here, but do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God?

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Do not be deceived, neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor men who practice homosexuality, nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor violers, nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God.

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And such were some of you, but you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the

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Lord Jesus Christ and by the spirit of our God. There's a few others as well, Viticus 20, first Timothy one, you could go on and on here, but it's this group of passages that really speaks clearly to the topic of homosexuality.

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And it doesn't speak kindly to the issue. It's condemned as a sin and it's in no uncertain terms.

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So what do you think this does when you hear this phrase clobber passages?

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What do you think this does to the everyday Christian seeking to live out obedience to Christ and they hear things like this, maybe from people who are professing

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Christ themselves, but believe that homosexuality is completely acceptable. It should even be celebrated.

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What do you think this does to faithful Christians when they hear phrases like this? I think it neutralizes our witness.

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I think it effectively removes the ability to use the weapon that God has entrusted to us to actually affect the new birth.

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It's not something we do. Obviously, God does it by his power and his spirit. But this is the mechanism by which people are delivered from these types of behaviors, which you adequately put are universal prohibitions, right?

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These are clear violations of God's created norms, standard structure.

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He designed male, female, maleness, femaleness, harmonious sexual relationship and expression.

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He wove that into the fabric of the cosmos. Jesus affirms it himself, taking that same view that it's good that God has designed this for the purposes of beauty, the purpose of reflecting his love in the expression of this relationship.

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And in giving this marriage, husband and wife, family, children, he's given us the blueprint for human flourishing, right?

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In that. And so maybe sum it up to say this, it neutralizes our witness.

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And I think another thing that it does is it provides us with a very low view of scripture, a very truncated view in which the gospel itself does not touch sin.

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It can't in this type of scheme that he is positing here. And so it prevents to us an attack on God's word, the authority, the perspicuity, the clarity of it.

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So God's word, it's undeniably clear on this point. So what it does is it takes that clarity and attempts to muddy the waters, make things blurry, make things unclear.

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We introduce the category of emotions and feelings and people's stories. And people don't need to hear this.

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They need to know that you're supportive. They need to know that you're with them. And so I think those two primary things is what it does to the average

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Christian facing this cultural, steady cultural onslaught that we're facing, right?

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That we're being jammed. We're being desensitized to all this, as Vodibachum says. And then we're actually being made allies, which is make no mistake, the trajectory of his methodology, right?

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Jam, right? Desensitize, right? This is just normal thing. These people have grown up in church with us. They might be sitting next to you, right?

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Desensitize you to the horror of it, which is what God calls it, how he speaks about it. And then jam you, make you feel shameful, right?

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When Ephesians says that it's shameful to even speak of these things. Yeah. That's how evil they are, right?

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You should actually bring it to light because you were once darkness, but now you're light in the Lord. And so take no part with the unfruitful works of darkness, but expose them.

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That word there has to do with an inheritance, right? You're a fellow partaker with brothers and sisters in the

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Lord, and you have a common inheritance because of the gospel of Jesus Christ. And the point is you can't have that fellowship, that inheritance, that common partaking when in the camp is the promotion and the acceptance of the very thing which

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God prohibits. Right, right. Exactly. Amen. Yeah. Good points. Any thoughts?

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I just think that it sets people up, like you were saying, Zach, just for a false understanding of what

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God's word is actually saying and that it's actually unloving to tell them the truth about this when it's actually the loving thing to do is to tell them the truth, because like you said, that's what's going to set them free.

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And also just that phrase clobber, you know, it sounds aggressive.

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So I'm thinking about maybe somebody that's a new Christian and they haven't been in the word for years.

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They're just, all they know is that they love Jesus. They want to love people. They want to be loving. Yeah. I don't want to be a

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Bible basher. Yeah. I don't want to be one of those people. I don't want to be mean, but they're truly, I'm talking about the elect.

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I'm talking about the actual truly converted, but is immature in the faith, just a brand new baby

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Christian. And they hear something like that coming from somebody that's calling themselves a Christian. And I remember when

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I was first saved as a 29 year old, and I didn't even know that there was this whole class of people that called themselves

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Christian, but like really hated God's word, really, really pitted people against God's word.

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So what he's doing is he's saying, look it, I'm the loving one. I mean, I love these people.

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Like, how could you not love them? How could you clobber them with it? But really he hates them to the point where he's not going to give them what they need to set them free of that sin and be reconciled to God and the thing that will send them to hell.

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So who's being unloving, you know? And so it's just, it's so infuriating because so many levels because souls are at stake, but also like, what are you doing to the sheep?

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What are you doing? You're confusing people. You're confusing unbelievers and believers, and you're telling unbelievers that what they're doing when they're dead in their sin is okay.

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So it's scary. It's really scary when you think about what lies ahead of him for him if he doesn't repent.

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Yeah. And this is part of why I'm so passionate about the need for those who are in places of spiritual authority, those who are preaching and teaching, especially

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God's word, need to be in alignment with what scripture calls for an elder to be, which

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I'm getting a little guess off topic here. And I don't think so, bro. I think you're right on it.

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Andy Stanley is not the only, man, I'm going to put in air quotes, pastor

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I've heard who espouses this idea of really tying up certain passages of scripture and divorcing them from the rest of scripture and saying these are bad.

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He's not the only one. I've heard multiple who do this. But I appreciate it neutralizes the witness.

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It hurts those who are new and growing in the faith. Yes, I want to touch a bit on that idea of it being an attack on the authority of scripture.

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I think I think that's really important because this is really a how do we view scripture?

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And personally, I don't think anyone very many people I know of have a lower view of scripture than Andy Stanley.

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But this is an important thing to touch on for Christians. This phrase clobber passages,

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I think it's a tactic of the enemy. I think that it's a phrase that's being employed and deployed, whatever you want to say, the world, the flesh, the devil, it's being employed to try to silence faithful Christians by undermining the authority of scripture.

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Because what you're doing when you use a phrase like this is you're saying, OK, here's the

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Bible and this place, this place, this place, this place, Leviticus, first Corinthians, first Timothy one, whatever are bad.

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So I'm going to I'm going to cut those out, put them over here, you know, tie up a rope around them, put a millstone and cast them into the sea.

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And then I'm going to keep the places that I like. And what you do in that moment is you remove the ultimate authority from God's word, which is what should be the ultimate authority.

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You take it from its rightful place and then you replace it with something else. And it's usually you're just replacing it with you.

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Yeah, you know, you're replacing it with your own interpretation of I think that these places in scripture are bad.

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I think that these places in scripture are good. Right. And you just outright reject it. Exactly.

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Yeah. And you say, well, we don't need to listen to these places. Oh, yeah. And then you become ashamed of those passages.

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That's key. And then you're what does that mean? You're ashamed of the gospel. You're ashamed of God's word, because when those ones are brought up, you're like, oh, oh,

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I don't know if that really means what it says. And let's back up. And, you know, no, you're ashamed of God's word.

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Yeah, try to qualify it. I think you hit on a major point there, sister. I think this,

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I'll just say this, depending on what direction you'd like to go next. I think the world has been unashamed of their sin because Christians have been ashamed of the gospel.

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Yeah, amen. And I think that if Christians were unashamed of the gospel, the natural effect of that is that the world would be more ashamed of its sin, because the

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Bible does speak clearly to the shamefulness of this. It's not something

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God speaks to lightly. It's not something he speaks about lightly. And the world is just fundamentally content with wallowing in the mire of this and then giving hearty approval,

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Romans 1, to those who practice it. So they not only do it, but they give hearty approval.

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And the point of Romans 1 there, as Paul says, it's such a fundamental distortion of the creator -creature relationship.

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It's an act of idolatry. So women committing shameless acts, shameless because it ought to be categorized as shameful.

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Right. And men receiving in themselves the due penalty for their error. It's a sign of God's judgment that in engaging in this very act, that in and of itself is the judgment of God upon a people because it demonstrates that the creator -creature distinction has been so subverted and so flipped on its head that now this natural tendency, right, the maternal desire to have children, the biology behind the distinctions between the sexes, maleness, femaleness, it's so out of whack, so distorted and so tipped on.

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It's head that sin even touches us down to the most basic functions of our physiology, of our anatomy, of our biology, right?

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It goes all the way down and even affects the most basic part of us. And so absolutely, man, it's,

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I mean, there's so many things you could say about it. Absolutely. And touching on that,

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I think those are two helpful points that you said earlier of it's neutralizes Christians to attack on the authority of scripture.

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The neutralizing thing, again, I think there's a deliberate nature to phrases like this, to clobber passage.

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And sometimes we forget Satan's an apologist too, right? I mean, he's defending something also.

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First Peter, it says he's prowling around like a roaring lion. There's a deliberate nature to how he tries to pull people away, pull the wool over people's eyes.

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And the more I think about this, I think it's actually a really genius tactic to be able to label something as clobber passages, because we talked about earlier, and this actually dovetails with a previous episode where we talked about the 11th commandment, the idol of niceness.

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And that's a really big sticking point for people is they don't want to be seen as not nice. So if I totally affirm, let's say homosexuality, let's say

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Desi, you don't, just trying to stand on God's word, faithful Christian, and we're having a conversation and you bring up Romans 1 to me, this is actually a genius tactic because I, as someone who affirms this, doesn't think it's sinful.

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I actually don't even have to come up with a defense. If you bring up Romans 1, all

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I need to do is say, oh, are you talking about one of the clobber passages? And a lot of the time that will silence people right there because, well,

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I don't want to, you know, well, I'm not trying to be, exactly. I don't want to be not nice. I don't want to beat you over the head, even just that phrase itself.

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And another thing too, I think is important to note is just how completely arbitrary this is.

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It doesn't seem like it is because we're in a moment right now where this is kind of like the hot topic pressing button issue of our day.

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Sexuality, the idea of gender, male, female, that's really those doctrines that are inherent within God's design are under attack.

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So for us, it doesn't seem arbitrary, but it really is. For example,

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I was thinking about this. Let's say that I wake up one day and I want to be a polygamist and I want to have multiple wives.

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And I... Well, Blake, have you ever met your wife? Because she's like the most beautiful person in the world.

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Totally hypothetical. That would never, ever happen. In case you're watching this. She's like a human mermaid.

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I've never heard that one before. She'll like that one. But let's say I wake up and I'm like, I'm just, I'm going to be a polygamist and I go get three more wives.

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And then Zach comes along and he says, hey, brother, I've noticed recently you have like three women living at your house.

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And I'm like, oh yeah, well, I just, I decided I want to have multiple wives. So that's kind of the direction

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I'm going in life. And let's say he points to Genesis 2, 24, marriage being between a male and a female.

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Let's say he points to Jesus upholding of that in Matthew 19. Let's say he points to Ephesians 5, 1 Peter 3, all of these marriage passages that clearly outline one man, one woman, that's marriage, nothing else.

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Well, all I have to do is say, oh, do you mean one of the mean passages? You know, because it's the same thing.

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I could just take those passages that I don't like that don't uphold the worldview I've chosen and I can just label them as something clobber, mean, whatever.

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And then what can you do now? You know, so it's an apologetic tactic. To which

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I would just briefly respond and say, I mean, was God being mean when he set the boundaries of our sexuality, our creator, who knows what is best for us?

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Do you think that he was somehow holding out on us as to what would be most satisfying, most fulfilling?

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Oh, you do. Well, there was a serpent that entered the garden as well, who tried to convince our first parents that God was holding out on them as well.

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So perhaps we need to consider the origin of your temptation to believe that these are somehow mean.

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Right. Amen. Exactly. It's interesting, too, when you take this in the category of sexual immorality and you use this same argumentation with a professing

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Christian who is affirming that. So I remember I was at a like a reach group at a mega church that I was at and this subject came up and one of the ladies said like, well, what am

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I just not? I mean, I know it's a sin, but like, what am I just not supposed to invite my gay friends over for dinner?

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And I was pretty new in the faith. I mean, not super new, but pretty new.

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And thankfully, like I had enough maturity at that point and then

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God's word enough at that point to be able to respond. And I said, well, of course you should invite them over for dinner, but I hope you're telling them the truth about their sin.

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And would you say that about your friend who was having an adulterous affair? Would you say that about your friend who has had a huge porn addiction or any other form or they were at their boyfriend's house, your girlfriend who's living with her boyfriend and they're sleeping together?

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Would you say that? Well, I can't invite them over? Sure. Invite them over and tell them the gospel. Yeah. It's like it's an untouchable, you know, sexual freedom in general.

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Yeah, exactly. It's not really a sin. Just sexual expression. There's no barriers, no prohibitions. Right. But I would say even a lot of liberal people that are like affirming of LGBTQ still frown upon adultery.

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A lot of them know, you know, that's, you know, you could have as many partners as you want, but there's still a big group of people that I would say, you know, you made a commitment.

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You should honor that. Which I think is the introduction of this separate category that we are seeing and have seen of the monogamous committed same sex relationship.

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So there's still some value on the fact that this is one person. I'm committing myself. Are you saying these people that are in love shouldn't be able to be together?

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Right. Because they're committed to one another. Yep. And then even that goes back to what, why?

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Why one person? Why does it need to be committed? Yeah. Who says? What standard? Exactly. What standard do you, are you pointing to where that's somehow good and something else isn't as good?

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You know, again, it's just the sea of arbitrary. Like if, if this is really your worldview, then who cares if you're committed or not?

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Right. There's one people or five people who cares? Yeah. You know, says who? Yeah. Says who? Anything goes at that point.

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But yeah, I just back to that, that moment, I'm not saying like I was some super wise sage, but I was just thinking that if I had been a brand, brand new

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Christian and she had said that I probably would have said like, Oh yeah, of course.

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Invite them, you know, be friends with them with no stipulation of like, uh, cause it, you know, the whole argument of like Jesus dine with centers.

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Yes, he did. And he told them about them, their sin. And he told them to repent and turn from their sin.

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Dined with centers because it wasn't healthy people that needed a physician. Yeah. He didn't affirm their sin.

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Jesus never affirmed anybody's sin ever. So, and sometimes I think there's this almost caricature of Christians of which there are many.

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I mean, I don't want to paint this picture of like, there's this just small bastion of believers who are barely hanging on to these doctors.

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I mean, there are faithful believers everywhere who have not bowed the knee to this, you know?

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Yeah. So we're, we're trying to encourage and edify those believers. But I think there's this caricature sometimes of like, we just, we revel in the fact that homosexuality is a sin.

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And like, we, we love that it's sinful and we love condemning people, you know, it's, and that just could not be further from the truth.

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I don't think any of us would want to celebrate the fact that someone's lost in any sin period.

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It's just this one, as you said, Desi, has been so exalted, uplifted, where people say, this is not only normal, but this is good.

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And you better think it's good too, or else you're the enemy. We don't celebrate this being, we don't celebrate it.

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We want to call everyone to repentance and faith and that Jesus dined with people argument. Look back to the beginning of his ministry,

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Mark chapter one and Matthew four. What's the message? The time has come. Kingdom of God is at hand.

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Repent and believe the gospel. Right. It's like, we're taking the repent part out.

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Right. You know, we're taking the law part out and only going to gospel. You need the law too.

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People need to be under conviction of sin before they understand the need for, for the savior. Right. Yep. And the woman caught in adultery that's brought up a lot too.

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You know, he, he, who is without, you know, sin cast the first stone. Did you read that part of the

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Bible? Like, yeah, I did. Yeah. And then, and the part where Jesus says, now go and sin no more.

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Did you read that next part of it? So it's just, uh, taking the word of God and pitting

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Christians against it. Really. Right. When you use that type of terminology. That's right. And I think on that note to this idea that Christians somehow find great delight in the particular condemnation of this sin,

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I don't think it gives any of us joy to number one, point out the fact that idolatry has consequences.

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False worship actually doesn't just have spiritual consequences, but it has physical consequences too.

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It will destroy your life. It will destroy your body. It will destroy relationships.

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It will destroy the purpose for which God created you. And so when we think about how we want to draw people with the truth lovingly away from this lifestyle, because Paul says such were some of you, right?

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If this was acceptable as, um, a relationship pattern or lifestyle within the church, it would say, and such are some of you, right?

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But the key is that Paul said, this was once something that you practiced and don't be deceived.

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You notice that warning that comes right in the context of sexual immorality, Ephesians five and first Corinthians six, don't be deceived.

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Don't be lied to about this. Don't deceive yourself, which is the most dangerous form of deception. You're lying to yourself that this will not destroy you.

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You're lying to yourself that you will not be hurt and that you will not hurt others. You will destroy them.

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You will destroy yourself and you will destroy your soul. And the most loving thing that you could be told is that this will destroy you.

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And that's obviously not what we want for any image bearer of God is to destroy themselves, which is what we do when we pit ourselves against the created ordinances of God, right?

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It's like we're trying to jump out of the window thinking that we can fly, but we will quickly find out that gravity is still a thing and that it will carry us to the end.

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And the end is a very unceremoniously hard landing.

32:55

Yeah, absolutely. And we're trying to say, don't jump out of the window. Right, right.

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Turn, yes, the lady wisdom, crying out in Proverbs, turn in here and find wisdom.

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And I love that. And I think the arguments of, you know, Jesus, Jesus did it this way.

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Jesus did it that way. If you look closely at how, you know, the

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Lord handled these situations with people who are caught in sin, it's always conviction, repent, belief, right?

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Jesus did not show up to the woman at the well and said, hey, I'm the Messiah.

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And then she goes and tells everyone, you know, let's, let's deal with the whole, you have five husbands thing, right?

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And then once we've worked through that, that's when the eyes get opened, right?

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You know, there's, there's this pattern that happens, repentance and faith, repentance, faith, repentance, faith. There are two sides of the same coin.

33:53

You can't just cut it down the middle and have one, not the other. Right. I did want to touch on one thing that I think is important because I personally was influenced by this as well.

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And it's the, the notion that we're born gay. And I actually believe this till very recently, just because of my own experience.

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And because I was heavily influenced too, by just the cultural kind of mantra, born this way, born this way, born this way.

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But where did that come from? It actually came from a guy named Alfred Kinsley or Kinsey.

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Alfred Kinsey. It was. So you're saying it was earlier than Lady Gaga? Yeah. 1948. Yeah. It is like at this point, like Lady Gaga theology.

34:36

Yeah. She just popularized it. Yeah, exactly. She popularized it. But if something said enough, you know,

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I grew up in the public school. I went to community college. I went to state college and was very much a product of the government's indoctrination.

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And also I love my sin. So there's that. Also. Yeah. So you want to, you're going to believe what is going to suit your sin.

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I'm just trying to pull it up here. I thought I had it. But anyways, he had this notion. So he came up with the whole spectrum of gender fluidity.

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He wrote a book about, I think it was in 1948, about the sexual behaviors of males.

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And he came up with this scale of, you know, if you're gay or straight or fluid and blah, blah, blah.

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And then he also came up with the notion that babies are born gay.

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Right. But there's not babies are not sexual creatures. You know, there's nothing to support that.

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But if you say it long enough, and I was influenced by that. And so you just got to go back to God's word and go, where is this coming from?

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This is not in the Bible. It doesn't say that we're born gay. It doesn't say that we're born adulterers or fornicators or drunkards.

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These are choices that we make because we're rebelling against a holy God. But the word of God doesn't say anything about that.

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So I hope that I continue to be reformed in my thinking. But I just had to say that because I recently said that on,

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I think, the episode with Juan Riasco that I was like, I think people are born gay because I knew kids.

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I mean, the kids I knew seemed effeminate, but that doesn't mean they were gay. Yeah. The scriptures don't teach that, that somebody is born gay.

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However, in Psalm 51, we do see that people are born in sin. In iniquity, yeah.

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It's in sin did my mother conceive me. What's that? Mother, you say? Yeah. Interesting.

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Conception. Yeah. Birth. Yeah. Interesting. It's almost as if females are designed to perform that function.

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Yeah, exactly. In sin did my mother conceive me. And although we're not told that somebody's born gay, there's a gay gene, there's no evidence to support that.

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But we do see God's word clearly teaching that people are born in sin. And then now, now the question becomes, let's say

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I do have a natural predisposition to something. Does that make that thing right?

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But there are... Doesn't logically follow. Exactly. Children, this is tragic. This is verifiable.

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Children who are born with alcoholic, they have an alcoholic mother. They're born with a predisposition to alcoholism.

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That's a tragic thing. But does that for that baby who's born make alcoholism acceptable and okay?

37:29

Right. No, it doesn't. We're still told drunkenness is a sin. And yet the predisposition is still there.

37:37

Well, it doesn't make it a righteous thing now. It's interesting you bring that up children too, because this

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Alfred Kinsey, the Kinsey scale, and you can Google it yourself. He's praised because he came up with this whole gender fluidity.

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He did all sorts of tests. Yeah, he's a very wicked man. Patients. Incredibly wicked.

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As young as I think four months old to try to sexually stimulate children. So yeah, he's a pedophile.

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And this pedophile and abuser is being praised because he came up with this perverse notion of gender and sexual fluidity.

38:15

There's your poster boy. I think that the point that we were talking about the born gay mantra that we have been led to believe,

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I think you see it culturally manifesting and expressing in other ways, too. There's a lot of people out there that, for example, are on board with the discussion happening right now.

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No, males and male sports and females and female sports, like there's such a thing as biological differences between men and women.

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They're there. And then you take it a step further and you say, OK, so only the kind of marriage that God has instituted, right?

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And they'll say, no, I don't understand it. Why can't men marry men and women marry women? They don't see the connection point and the telos for these created realities.

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And when Jesus says Pharisees come to test him, asking if someone can divorce their wife for any cause, and then he says something amazing.

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Have you not read that? He who created them from the beginning made them male and female. There's your biological distinction.

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But then he goes on and said, therefore, a man shall leave his father and mother.

39:21

Yeah. OK, so there you go. Man leaving what father mother relationship and holding fast to his wife and the two shall become one flesh.

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And what God has joined together, let not man separate. So you see for Jesus, these are not separate categories, right?

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There is the beauty of the creational reality, the distinctions between male and female.

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But that points to the purpose for which they were created, which is the one flesh union of marriage.

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So you can't divide these things out at all. It's intimately connected, right?

39:58

Who we are and what we're for. Exactly. Yeah, that's so good. I appreciate you brought that text up as well in Matthew 19, because another common maybe argument or you'll hear is that, well,

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Jesus never talked about this. You know, Jesus didn't talk about homosexuality. So it must not be an issue.

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It must not be important. Slash that's taken down the slippery slope to it's OK. You know, well, right there, that text in Matthew 19,

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Jesus is speaking to the issue of homosexuality when he upholds the nature that God given

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God ordained institution of marriage between one man and one woman.

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Yeah. You know, sex is a good right gift from God, but it is to be within the boundaries of one man, one woman, one male, one female marriage relationship.

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That's that's what it is. Right. This plays so well with exactly what we're viewing here, because what does

40:58

Andy Stanley promote the disjunction between the Testaments? And so he would say, no,

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Old Testament. It doesn't matter that Jesus is the God that rained fire down on Sodom and Gomorrah.

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He's the author of Leviticus. Right. Yeah. That he gave the law. Yes. The giver of the law is reiterating the law and upholding the standard of God's word and his unchanging truth here.

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So this artificial division between Testaments isn't going to fly. And he's part of the triune

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Godhead. And if he's disagreeing, I think Fadi Bakr said this, if he disagrees with the

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Father, the whole universe is going to implode. He was in complete agreement with everything. The plan of redemption would be impossible.

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There would be no gospel. There would be no Christians. Right. Because the Father sends the Son. Right. And the

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Father and the Son send the Spirit. Right. And the Son and his mission were to accomplish the will of his

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Father. So if there is any disagreement or any discord between that relationship, like you said, the space -time to quote, what is it?

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Emmett Brown from Back to the Future, it would destroy the universe. The space -time continuum would unravel.

42:12

Yeah. It just doesn't. Exactly. Yeah. It doesn't work that way. No, it doesn't.

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If you believe in the Trinity. Yeah. It doesn't work that way. That's why it always like, now when you hear

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Christians say that, only Jesus never said that. You're just like, okay, I got some treats for you.

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Also, all the positive expressions that we have in the New Testament, like, I mean, we know the clobber passages, but the

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Bible doesn't need to speak to this very much, does it? Why? Because God's spoken already. Right. Right.

42:42

Amen. And also Jesus didn't explicitly talk about pedophilia.

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Hmm. Does that mean he condones pedophilia? No, he doesn't. And then it becomes, oh, wait, are you saying, and then we come back to the, are you saying two committed, loving homosexual people is the same thing as a pedophile?

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You know, and then that becomes the argument. Or consent, right? Well, they can give consent. That's the difference.

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And it's like, well, God doesn't operate in a universe based on consent. He operates in a universe based on covenant, which means that he gets to set the standard of the relationship, the boundaries, which we cannot transgress except to our own detriment.

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And so God doesn't operate according to your false artificially constructed standard.

43:24

Okay. So here's the next question, Zach. Okay, then fine. I understand what you're saying. It's condemned in the

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Bible. I'm going to, my friend's going to go to hell then. So what do you want me to tell him? That he has to be miserable for the rest of his life because he can't be with the person or people that he loves.

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And he just wants to love them and have a family. Is that what you're telling me, Zach, as a Christian, you want this person to be miserable?

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They'll probably commit suicide. Is that what you want? No, I think what

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I would want for them is we use the terms like love, family, being happy.

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Do we think that our creator doesn't know what it takes to have us experience human flourishing?

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And the total end of our lives isn't so much happiness as it is holiness, being conformed to the image of God in Jesus Christ.

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And so what that means is there's a God who's spoken. There's a God who's clearly defined love. There's a

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God who's clearly defined family. And the gospel is about turning from the things that will not only destroy us, but will further envelop us in dysfunction in the relationship with our creator.

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We don't want that for anybody. We want them to experience life, peace, blessing, and fellowship with the

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God who created them to function in a certain way. And so with that comes the proper understanding of what love is.

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What is love? First John says, God is love. Do we think that the creator himself knows how to correctly define these things?

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That he himself in himself is the definition of love, that he himself provides the necessary expression of that love in the human family, in husband, wife.

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So to say, are you saying you want them to be miserable? No, I want them to be happy in God.

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I want them to be ultimately satisfied in him, in his glory, in his delight in his children.

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I want them to obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God and understand what it means to be forgiven.

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Understand what it means to be restored to right relationship with him. And unfortunately, that can't happen if this lifestyle is embraced.

45:48

Amen. There's a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way to death. That's right. Yeah. Yeah.

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So it's not about, well, they're gay. You want to make them straight? No, it's about, we want people to be holy and happy in God.

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We want what God wants. And so that's why we don't dare sacrifice the truth about any of this.

46:15

Amen. I think Pastor Jeff, too, made a great point. And I think it was either last week's sermon or the sermon before.

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But he said, if you're really passionate about this subject, that's good because he didn't say this whole thing

46:29

I'm paraphrasing, but it's a good thing to share the gospel, to tell the truth in this culture.

46:34

That's like worshiping this at the drag story times and everything. But if you're sitting here scoffing at homosexuality while enjoying porn, you're missing the point.

46:46

That's a great point. The Bible says to flee, flee from it. So if you're in a homosexual relationship, you should flee from that.

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If you're fornicating and you're living with your boyfriend or your girlfriend and you're calling yourself a

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Christian, you should flee from that. It's hard for you to have moral authority. To tell someone else that this is a sin by God.

47:07

You are engaging in. It's so interesting. In 1 Timothy 1, one of the passages you brought up, side by side, there's homosexuality, arsenekoite.

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So men lying with men is with a woman is what the word means. And then right next to that, you have pornaya, which is sexual immorality.

47:25

So it's like the apostle Paul is taking all these violations of the Decalogue, right? Hurting parents and, you know, murderers and, you know, how the law is laid down for these people for violations of God's law.

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And then those who practice homosexuality right next to sexual morality. So that the issue of it being heterosexual sin or homosexual sin, it's still sexual sin, right?

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That's the point of what he's saying. And so we can't have brave hearts unless we have clean hearts.

47:58

That's right. So you have to be clean here or else you're going to be weighed down by your own guilt, by your own shame of your own sexual sin and sexual immorality.

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And you're going to have no power behind the call of the gospel, which is to call people to turn away from sin because you've sacrificed your own authority by violating

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God's standards yourself. And it's destructive and wicked. And just the same as homosexuality, as far as it will destroy you.

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It will, you know, the sexual immorality that you're in. So don't play the hypocrite and really scoff at homosexuality and come down on it if you're going to enjoy, you know, your sexual sin yourself.

48:42

Hey man, I'm going to land in the plane here. Talked about a lot of different things.

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This idea, you know, we started off homosexuality, clobber passages, getting into these discussions about God's word, you know, kind of these attempts that are made to undermine that, undermine

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God's really his design and the reason we were created. So what do we do now?

49:07

You know, how should we respond to this, these kind of attacks that are staged or these phrases that are used, that try to undermine scripture, that try to neutralize the witness of Christians, that try to undermine what

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God has created us for. What are some things that come to mind of, you know, how we should live in light of what we talked about?

49:28

Whoever is ashamed of my words of him, I will be ashamed before my father in heaven.

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I think that we need to begin by not being ashamed of the word of God. I think that that needs to be our starting point.

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I think that the first thing that we need to do is not be ashamed of what the

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Holy Spirit himself has authored in the pages of scripture. And I think that will put us in a position to know and to recall.

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I hope to remember that this is the same word that changed my life. And so I dare not be ashamed of it because it's what gave me a new heart.

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It's what caused me to be a believer. And I know that if God can save me, he can save this person too.

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And so I think that's the first step is. And then the second thing is,

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I think we need to flat out reject these attempts to A, divide the

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Bible up into pieces and only keep the parts that we like. We shouldn't have problem passages as a Christian.

50:35

There's no such thing. Right. And we need to reject any attempt by the world.

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And unfortunately, by these teachers that are leading many people astray to feel bad for giving people the one healing balm that will actually save their soul, because that's really what this all comes down to.

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I think you're shielding people away from God's gracious gift of shame.

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We experience shame, sorrow for our sin because it turns us away from it and it turns us towards Christ.

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And when you're keeping people from that, we do, our church does work at abortion mills and all of that.

51:21

And what is the primary tactic of those who want to keep this murderous rampage going?

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They want to shield women from the truth. They want to block them. They want to block the voices of the people on the sidewalk.

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They want to insulate this woman from hearing the word of life. And so when you shield people from the very thing that they need to hear, to heal, you're working as an agent of death.

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And as a Christian, that's a fearful thing to think about falling into the hands of the living God who will hold us accountable for buying into the attempt of the world and of the devil, as you said, to insulate people from the truth.

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I would say, just pray that God would give you a love for the lost, that you would love the lost more than your own comfort and your own approval by unbelievers and false believers that are accusing you of being unloving by sharing the truth with them.

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And just ask God, please give me a love for the loss that supersedes my own comfort, that I'll sacrifice being looked at as a homophobe or a bigot or whatever that is going to be called, you know, whatever this culture is going to call you for sharing

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God's word. Ask God that he would give you the love and the fortitude to keep your eyes fixed on the goal, which is sharing the gospel so that these people can be delivered from their sin and reconciled to God.

53:01

Amen. There's an old Puritan prayer in the Valley of Vision. Pastor Luke actually just read it this past Sunday.

53:08

It's one of my favorite lines. This prayer, raise me above the smiles and the frowns of the world regarding it as a light thing to be judged by men.

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If we truly love those who are now perishing in their sin, if we want to please

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God ultimately and not please man, we'll hold fast to this trustworthy word that is entirely

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God -breathed, entirely authoritative, and we will in love preach this gospel to all who would hear that they believe.

53:39

Amen. Awesome. Well, hey, friends, brothers, sisters, all tuning in, thank you so much for joining us.

53:47

Today, I hope this was a blessing to you and was edifying, learned a few things. We'll be back here soon for another episode, but Zach, Desi, thank you.

53:56

Different Zach. Yeah, different Zach, but man, it was awesome to be on here with y 'all. Thank you, brother. It was a blessing.