The SBC is Worse than You Thought

Would you please welcome the newly elected president, Ed Linton.

Ed Linton narrowly won the presidency of the Southern Baptist Convention. He ran on a platform of gospel unity, and that's no doubt his biggest challenge.

Now we've got economic disorder. There's economic disorder. Social disorder. He says there's social disorder. Social disorder, just think Facebook. That's just on Facebook. Then you've got spiritual disorder.

There's spiritual disorder. You could think of that as family disorder. And there's family disorder. No, they're unnamed. That's part of the problem. So unnamed sources are presenting these things.

Hello, ladies and gentlemen, my name is Justin Peters. I cannot fathom any other explanation other than there's a lot more plagiarism out there.

On June 15, 2021, Ed Linton was elected president of the Southern Baptist Convention.

Would you please welcome the newly elected president, Ed Linton.

The convention's newly elected president, the Reverend Ed Linton, barely defeated the Reverend Mike Stone, the choice of the denomination's insurgent right.

On June 21, Reformation Charlotte published a blog post revealing that Linton used almost the exact same wording as the former SBC president, J .D. Greer, in saying that the Bible whispers about homosexuality.

She said we ought to whisper about what the Bible whispers about, and we ought to shout about what it shouts about. And the Bible appears more to whisper when it comes to sexual sin compared to its shouts about materialism and religious pride.

In the Bible, sexual sin is whispered compared to the shout God makes about greed and judgmentalism.

Later that day, Dr. Robert Jeffries brought the issue into the mainstream when he critiqued Linton's theology on The Todd Stearns Show.

Like J .D. Greer, the new Southern Baptist Convention president says the Bible whispers about homosexuality. What are they talking about here, Dr. Jeffries? If this report is true, it is tremendously troubling.

On June 26, an anonymous YouTube video was published of a side-by-side comparison of Linton and Greer's sermons on Romans 1, demonstrating that Linton's sermon copied extensively, sometimes even word-for-word, from Greer's sermon.

We'll give you a warning here that this might be the toughest week that we will have in the book of Romans. This may be one of the toughest passages we face in the book of Romans. Everybody turn right now to your neighbor, look them in the eyes.

If you know them, put your hand on their shoulder and say, this is going to be a really tough week for you, okay? And tell them, say, I'm praying for you to have the faith and humility to receive this word.

I want you to turn to your neighbor right now, and I want you to say, I know this sermon is going to be really tough for you, but I'm here praying that you will listen and obey whatever God says. Go ahead, do that right now.

But y 'all, we believe that God's word is good, do we not? You see, we believe that God's word is good. I compared it to if the earth were to say to the sun, I am sick and tired of you being in the middle of the solar system.

If the earth were to ask the sun in our solar system, I'm sick and tired of floating out here in nothingness, surrounding you constantly. I want to be the center of this solar system. Now we've got economic disorder.

There's economic disorder. Social disorder. He says there's social disorder. Social disorder, just think Facebook. That's just on Facebook. Then you've got spiritual disorder. There's spiritual disorder.

You could think of that as family disorder. And there's family disorder. You see, there are three ways I see us really going wrong with this in the church at large. I'm going to tell you three ways I think we've gone wrong.

Number one, we believe that God doesn't really care about this. First one is that we don't think God cares about this issue. The gospel message is not let the gay become straight. The gospel message is let the dead become alive.

The gospel message is not let the gay get straight. The gospel message is let the dead come to life. And number two, we think it's the worst sin. Here's the second thing I think we do, we go wrong. And that is thinking homosexuality is the worst of all sins.

She said, we ought to whisper about what the Bible whispers about. And we ought to shout about what it shouts about. And the Bible appears more to whisper when it comes to sexual sin compared to its shouts about materialism and religious pride.

In the Bible, sexual sin is whispered compared to the shout God makes about greed and judgmentalism. Number three, assuming it's hard for LGBTQ people to get to heaven. Thirdly, we go wrong thinking LGBT people can't go to heaven.

Homosexuality does not send you to hell. You know how I know that? Because heterosexuality does not send you to heaven. Homosexuality does not send people to hell. How do I know that? Because heterosexuality doesn't send people to heaven.

Rosaria Butterfield, whose story I've shared with you before here, she was a practicing lesbian. She was a practicing lesbian in a committed lesbian relationship.

Later that same day, Lytton's church, Redemption Church, removed at least 140 videos from its YouTube channel. Needless to say, it looked like Lytton and Redemption Church were trying to hide something.

Was this a cover-up? Later that same day, Lytton released a statement admitting that he used Greer's content without giving Greer credit. In this statement, Lytton says that he received permission from Greer to use Greer's content for his sermon on Romans 1, but apologized for not giving Greer credit.

Lytton also said that he received permission from Greer to use the Summit Church's chapter and verse breakdown of Romans, but interestingly, Lytton also revealed that when he reviewed the 46 sermons in the series, he located similar illustrations, quotes, or points of application.

That one sermon shares the same title, and that one has a similar outline. Lytton does not say that he received permission from Greer for the similarities in these other sermons. Lytton's statement did not address the mass removal of videos from his church's YouTube channel.

All of these events drew the attention of national media outlets like the New York Times, Newsweek, and The Washington Times. Since then, more and more instances of Lytton's plagiarizing from other sermons have been uncovered.

And when I first pulled out of the parking lot, he stomped on it to show me who really boss was, and I'll never forget that.

It was discovered that Lytton had also plagiarized Tim Keller's sermon on marriage.

Marriage as a Covenant and Legal Commitment

And we've come to maybe the classic text, the longest, the most famous text in the entire Bible on the subject of marriage.

To Ephesians chapter 5, the greatest passage in all of Scripture on the issue and the subject of marriage.

So far, we've only looked at the first two, and tonight I want to get to the third. And the first two are the power of marriage and the definition of marriage.

We're going to recap the last two messages. The power of marriage, the definition of marriage, and the priority of marriage.

The essence of marriage is a covenant, a legal, legal commitment.

The essence of marriage, we said last week, is a legal commitment, a binding covenant with one another.

What is a legal, what makes a marriage a marriage?

What makes a marriage a marriage?

A priest can marry, a minister can marry, a justice of the peace, marriage is marriage. It doesn't matter whether it's a captain on a ship, it doesn't matter whether it's a justice of the peace, marriage is marriage.

Some people say, well, I mean, I got married by a priest, do I get married by a pastor, a justice of the peace, a judge, or a sea captain? I mean, does it matter where you get married? I don't think that it matters who performs the ceremony.

It wasn't given to only Christians, it was given to human beings as human beings.

So marriage is for all groups, all races, all nationalities, all nations, and frankly, all religions.

What is it that makes you married? What makes you married is this, a permanent and exclusive public legal commitment to share your lives together, all aspects of it. It's got to be permanent, it's got to be exclusive.

What is marriage?

It is a permanent, exclusive, legal relationship.

Some people say it's time to have renewable contract marriages. You get married for three years and you have an option for three more. You've heard that. Now, that might be interesting, but that's not a marriage.

What's actually happening with the Y generation, and it's quite frightening, is that we're now hearing suggested that what marriage needs to be now defined as is maybe a three-year contract with a three-year option.

In other words, a three-year contract with a three-year option for good behavior. That's not biblical marriage.

The Servant Heart in Marriage

What absorbs it? What absorbs it is the servant heart. And let me give you three constituent parts to it. The ability to hear criticism without being crushed.

There are three things that reveal whether or not we have a servant's heart, and these are three important statements. And the first one is the ability to hear criticism and correction without being crushed.

Secondly, the ability to give criticism without crushing.

The second indicator is the ability to give criticism and correction without crushing.

Thirdly, the ability to forgive people without residual anger.

And the third feature that reveals whether or not we have a servant's heart is the ability to forgive without lingering anger.

That's what I mean by a servant's heart, the ability to take your mind off yourself.

A servant's heart is the ability to take your mind off of yourself.

Every human being, Romans 1 says, has got something, some form of religion, something they worship, something they say, if I get that, then I'll be all right.

The problem is, every human being at their core is religious. They're religious. Romans chapter 1 tells us that.

Now, somebody's out there saying, sure, sure. Your wife yells at you, and you're sitting there thinking about Jesus Christ as your brother and your friend, and your cradle of security is the greatest vulnerability.

You say, wait a second, are you serious? I mean, when my wife yells at me or corrects me or says I'm not doing something I ought to be doing, you're saying I'm supposed to go, oh, wait a second,. Jesus is my brother.

He's my helper. He's my friend. He loves me.

What a Christian does, if you love people, eventually you'll come to like them.

The more you act in love toward them, the more you're going to like them.

The more you give yourself, the more you make a decision to invest in them, the more you find your heart tied up to them. You know why? Because the Bible says where your treasure is, there will your heart be.

As a matter of fact, when you act in love toward somebody that's hard to love, I promise you what's going to happen is pretty soon you're going to start to love them. The Bible says where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.

And Oriental and Asian readers who originally read this were probably shocked by it. You're not shocked by it, but you should be. Almost everywhere else in the world and almost everywhere else in history, your obligation to your parents is a tremendously strong one.

If we were Oriental Christians, and probably where Kathy was last week, there are more Oriental oriented persons out there that would get this. They're from a culture where the patriarchy, the family is very important, and the parents are very important.

What it's saying is God did not put a parent and a child in the garden. He put a man and a woman in the garden, a husband and a wife.

God did not put a man and a child in the Garden of Eden. He put a man and a woman.

Here's a man who says, I'll never take my kids to church because my father always insisted on taking me to church even though I hated it. And he forced me every year, week, until I was 19 years old, and I'm never going to take my children to church.

It's like the guy who says, my daddy drugged me to church, I'm never going to take my kids to church.

When you feel that the person you're supposed to be opening up with completely really is probably going to tell the parent much or most of what you've just said, you can't do it anymore.

If you're in a conflict with your mate, and you know that your mother-in-law or your father-in-law is going to hear about this, you're going to be less prone to be transparent and honest.

Paul starts to say, the more I think about marriage, and the more I think about the dynamics of marriage, the more I have to think about salvation and how we're redeemed.

Paul is saying, the more I think about marriage, the more I think about the gospel. Redemption is a fresh start. Why? Because redemption is a fresh start.

Cover-Up Allegations and Conflicting Explanations

Something else that is interesting, if not entirely relevant, is that Lytton is a professional actor who appeared in the popular Christian movie, Courageous. On June 29th, Redemption Church released a statement explaining why it removed the sermons from its YouTube channel.

It said,. Because people were going through sermons in an attempt to discredit and malign our pastor. It is our highest priority to care for and shepherd our church. This statement didn't offer any explanation for the additional instances of plagiarism that were found in Lytton's other sermons.

Clearly, the sermons were removed because Lytton and the church knew that there were more instances of plagiarism in these sermons and wanted to hide them from being discovered. On June 29th, Lytton gave a conflicting and inaccurate statement to the Washington Times about why the videos were removed.

The Washington Times writes,. Mr. Lytton said Redemption Church had removed dozens of his old sermons from its website because of a transition in web hosting and to conserve disk space, stating that the older messages remain available on YouTube.

But as we already saw, these older messages were actually removed from YouTube. On July 2nd, the Washington Times published a follow-up article that pointed out the contradiction between Lytton's statement to the Washington Times and Redemption Church's statement.

It also pointed out,. That same day, Lytton was interviewed on SBC this week and again did not provide any answers about the plagiarism accusations against him. On July 6th, in an interview with WKRG, Lytton falsely said that the accusations of plagiarism against him were made by unnamed sources.

However, in a comment on Reformation Charlotte's video, Justin Peters writes,. Jeff Maples, Jordan Hall, Tom Buck, Tom Askell, Josh Buies, Phil Johnson, and literally dozens upon dozens of others who have been talking about this, along with their names, for at least two weeks now.

There, fixed it. So what are the takeaways from all of this? We have four. First, Lytton is clearly guilty of sermon plagiarism. And the unanswered prayer is, God, why didn't you take this away from me?

Some have tried to argue that sermon plagiarism isn't a serious issue.

He is the diamond.

Others have rightly pointed out that plagiarism is serious because it is dishonest.

D .A. Carson wrote this about plagiarism back in 2010. He says, First, taking over another sermon and preaching it as if it were yours is always and unequivocally wrong. And if you do it, you should resign or be fired immediately.

Second, it seems clear that Lytton and Redemption Church are trying to cover up additional instances of Lytton plagiarizing. However, their attempts have failed since numerous instances of Lytton's plagiarizing have been uncovered.

Third, Lytton needs to follow through on his pledge to be fully transparent and directly address the numerous instances of plagiarism that have been discovered in his sermons. Lytton has not yet done this and is casting blame on unnamed sources and people who are trying to discredit and malign him.

But the evidence has been put out there and people with names are simply asking Lytton to be transparent about what's going on. Fourth, is Lytton qualified to remain as the president of the Southern Baptist Convention?

Unless he provides direct answers to the accusations of plagiarism against him, it seems that he isn't. Will he remain the president of the Southern Baptist Convention? Probably, as long as the leaders of the SBC continue to cover up for him.