TPW 91 Worldliness the PCA and the LGBT Revolution

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Welcome to The Protestant Witness, this is Pastor Patrick Hines, here in Kingsport, Tennessee, in Redwell Heights Presbyterian Church, and today

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I'd like to talk about an important subject, the issue of worldliness, worldliness.

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And there's a book I want to recommend, because I think it's probably one of the finest books ever written on the issue of ecclesiology, and that would be this one,

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The Glorious Body of Christ, by R. B. Kuyper, and I keep waiting for someone to put this on Kindle, or some kind of digital format, and it's not out there yet, but I've got several copies of the paperback, and it's just a wonderful book.

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But one of the things that Kuyper does in the introduction, is he lays out three problems that he sees facing the church.

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Now this was written, I believe it was in 1966, so when it was first published, 1967, and this book, or no,

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I'm sorry, it was originally published in 66, by Eerdmans. So anyway, he lays out three major issues facing the church.

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Now he puts them in this order, worldliness, modern dispensationalism, and then doctrinal indifference.

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Now all three of those are very significant, but I want to talk just about worldliness. This is a very short section here of the book, but I think that it's very worth reading,

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I want to make some comments along the way, and I want to apply this to what's going on with the

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LGBT revolution. I know people are probably sick of hearing about that, but this applies not just to that, but to just the temptation to want to look, act, smell, think, dress like the world.

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Now this has been an ongoing problem for God's people, it was a problem for them in the Old Testament, we're going to look at that here in a moment, but we have to shun worldliness.

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Now obviously that raises the question, what exactly do we mean by worldliness? So listen to what Kuyper says here, and this is on page 15 in his introduction.

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The term worldliness is often used loosely. Many who denounce worldliness eloquently are abruptly silenced when asked to define it.

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To some, the word suggests certain specific amusements, to others it connotes little more than a mode of feminine dress.

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That some of such things may properly be classified under worldliness cannot be denied, but the term has a much broader application.

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It's that broader application I want to talk about. You don't just decide, well that person's worldly because they dress in an immodest fashion like everybody else does.

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That can be an indication of worldliness, but that's just one symptom. Listen to what Kuyper goes on to say.

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Now what's a prelate is just a church leader.

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In other words, in the ancient church, they drank their communion wine from the wooden cups of poor people, but the people were made of gold.

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They had faith that shined like gold. He's saying today we have chalices of gold, we have beautiful church stuff and jewels and gold everywhere, but our prelates are made of wood.

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See what he's saying? The people are now made of wood. That church is said to flourish, which grows rapidly in numbers, even though it does not grow in grace and the knowledge of the

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Lord. That church is deemed prosperous, which has a costly stone structure and keeps enlarging it even though it fails to build up its members as lively stones into a spiritual house.

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Instead of faithfully proclaiming the word of God and fervently praying that the Lord may so bless its proclamation that such as are being saved will daily be added to the church and that the saints will be built up in the most holy faith, the pastor puts on special attractions and membership drives in a concerted effort to swell the roles of his church and to realize the ambition that it may possess the most imposing edifice in the community.

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All the time, the requirements for church membership are progressively lowered and the demands of church discipline are progressively ignored.

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And never once does it occur to the pastor that this is the worst possible way for the church to command the respect of the world, nor does he realize that thus his church is forfeiting the favor of God.

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Right on, isn't he? Now listen to this final little paragraph here, just a couple more sentences. The aforementioned is a somewhat subtle form of worldliness found within the church.

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That more brazen forms abound may be asserted without fear of contradiction. How true is the oft -repeated indictment of church members that they can hardly be distinguished from the men and women of the world?

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Isn't that true? So many professing Christians, we do all the same things the world does, we listen to the same music, we watch the same

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TV shows, we dress the same way, we have the same priorities. The most outstanding sin of ancient

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Israel was that instead of upholding its distinctiveness as Jehovah's chosen people, it was ever and anon imitating its heathen neighbors.

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That sin is rampant in the church today. You hear that?

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The people of Israel, what was their biggest problem? What was it they were always being tempted to do?

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Was to be like the nations around them. In fact, God pronounced the ban upon the land of Canaan.

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They were to kill everything that breathes in there. Because God knew that if you have contact with these folks, if you enter into treaties and agreements with them, they are going to be a snare to you and you're going to end up serving their gods and you're going to end up worshiping me in a syncretistic fashion and all the rest of it.

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That was Israel's problem. They were ever and anon. They were constantly imitating their pagan neighbors instead of remaining distinct from them.

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And that's the problem today. You know, the PCA has formed this study committee to study what?

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Same -sex attraction. And you know, I have some questions about that.

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Do we need to study same -sex attraction because there has been new insights into God's word that have been discovered and people are seeing things in the

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Bible that people have just sort of not noticed for a while? Is that why we're studying this issue?

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No. No. Not at all. Well, why in the world are we studying it then? What is being studied?

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Are we studying? How many genders are there? Do we need a study committee to tell us that?

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By the way, in case people are wondering about this, Nate Collins, the founder of Revoice, the founder of that organization, stated that he didn't like that.

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He didn't like the Nashville Statement because it engaged in too much excluding.

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There was excluding going on there and that bothered him. Let me pull up my copy of our very detailed

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Revoice report, if I can find it here. Where is it? There it is. If I can find the report. We did a real detailed report with a ton of documentation and all this sort of stuff.

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I dug all over the internet. I came in early and stayed late and did all kinds of stuff to make this report accurate.

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Nate Collins, the founder of Revoice, was interviewed on a podcast called Sheologians, which

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I don't know a whole lot about. It's some women who are theologically astute and things like that.

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As I understand it, it's a pretty good podcast. Anyway, I'll link this in the show notes here.

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He was interviewed by the Sheologians and I transcribed this exactly as it was.

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It's at the 6 minute and 30 second time stamp. I'll make sure that that's linked here. Collins said this, quote, probably the thing that kicked it off in my mind, because they asked him directly, why did you found

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Revoice? What was the point about this? Why did you do it? Here's what

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Collins said, the founder of Revoice, here's why he founded the organization called

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Revoice, quote, probably the thing that kicked it off in my mind was when the Nashville Statement came out. A lot of us felt that the

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Nashville Statement unfairly excluded people like me, people like Wesley Hill, people who would loosely be related to the gay

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Christian movement. I felt like there was some excluding going on and some foreclosing conversations by this event.

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The idea for Revoice came in the aftermath of that. I thought, you know what, there needs to be some community that will welcome anybody who does not identify as straight, who has some complexity in the way they think about their gender and sexuality, and let's welcome each other.

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Let's have a place where we can get together and enjoy each other's company and find a new community, end quote.

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So he wanted to form a new community composed of individuals who have,

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I guess, a fluid way of understanding their gender and have other identities associated with their sexualities.

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Here again, Nate Collins is full on, pedal to the metal, sexual orientation. Remember, I did the podcast on the myth of sexual orientation.

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Sexual orientation is not biblical, it's not a biblical concept. It's a deceptive concept, it's a secular, anti -Christian concept, and R .C.

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Sproul saw that a long time ago. He knew that. Okay, so that's why it formed, because Nate Collins didn't like the

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Nashville Statement. Now, what exactly in the Nashville Statement would exclude people like him?

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Well, what does he mean by people like me? Well, Nate Collins identifies himself as, quote, a gay man in a mixed -orientation marriage, end quote.

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So he publicly says he's a homosexual, he is gay, and West Hill, all these people, the spiritual friendship people, they're homosexuals, they say that they're gay.

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Okay, we've already covered Article 7, but here's the thing that Collins and Greg Johnson don't like.

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Article 7 of the Nashville Statement. We deny that adopting a homosexual or transgender self -conception is consistent with God's holy purposes in creation and redemption.

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I would deny that as well, and that if you're a Christian, you can't adopt a homosexual self -conception, and you can't adopt a transgender self -conception.

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That's not consistent with God's sovereignty over gender and sexuality. God creates binaries and that's it.

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Okay, here's another thing that would be excluding in the Nashville Statement that Collins doesn't like.

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We deny that sexual attraction for the same sex is part of the natural goodness of God's original creation.

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Okay, I would deny that too. It's not part of the goodness of God's creation. It's not. Okay, sexual attraction for the same sex is not part of the natural goodness of God's creation.

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That's Article 8. Article 10. We affirm that it is sinful to approve of homosexual immorality or transgenderism and that such approval constitutes an essential departure from Christian faithfulness and witness.

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Exactly right. It is sinful to approve of homosexuality. It is sinful to approve of transgenderism.

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That's exactly right. And that article has a denial. We deny that the approval of homosexual immorality or transgenderism is a matter of moral indifference about which otherwise faithful Christians should agree to disagree.

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That's right. We cannot agree to disagree on this one. It's if you're going to go this direction, I personally am not going to have an ecclesiastical union with you.

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I cannot join cause with individuals that don't know this, that actually think that it doesn't matter if you approve or disapprove of homosexuality.

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You need to disapprove of it because God's Word does. It's as simple as that. And then finally, Article 13, another thing that is exclusionary.

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Article 13. We affirm that the grace of God in Christ enables sinners to forsake transgender self -conceptions.

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I would affirm that too. And by divine forbearance to accept the God -ordained link between one's biological sex and one's self -conception as male or female.

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Exactly right. Whatever your biological sex is. I mean, R .C. Sproul in that video, in that talk that's for free that I linked to in the other podcast where he lectures on homosexuality.

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Sproul says that he has had to really push people, like men that have kept telling him

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I'm still a homosexual, I'm a homosexual, I'm a homosexual. Sproul thinks that it's related to, and I think he's right, they don't have any confidence as men.

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They just can't accept that they're men. And Sproul actually at one point in that lecture says, and I've told these guys, next time you take a shower, take the towel off and look at yourself in the mirror, you are a man.

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You're a man. I think of Buzz Lightyear with Woody in Toy Story where in the first one, when

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Woody tells Buzz Lightyear, you are a toy. It's kind of like that. That's how Sproul sounded in that lecture.

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Obviously that was decades before that movie came out. But you are a man, he said. Look at yourself.

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God has given you the equipment to be a man. You're a man. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise. So stand tall and have some respect for yourself.

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You are a man. Okay, and then there's one more denial, Article 13. This is another thing that Collins wouldn't like.

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We deny that the grace of God and Christ sanctions self -conceptions that are at odds with God's revealed will. I would deny that too.

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It is not okay to think that, well, now that I'm saved, I can affirm these other gender identities.

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No, you're either a male or a female. Now, in the extraordinarily rare case that someone is a hermaphrodite or has a genetic anomaly that they can't tell what gender they are.

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That's obviously its own unique pastoral situation and would need to be handled with great patience, love, gentleness, and care.

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But that's not what they're talking about here. They're talking about people who are biologically one thing, but have this mental idea that they're the other gender or something in between.

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Now, I've been introduced to a lot of very weird things in studying the issue of the gay revolution and all this stuff.

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Now you have people that define themselves as gender fluid. They're gender fluid. What does that mean?

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Well, they kind of just sort of drift back and forth, I guess, between male and female. I think that's not the way it works.

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You're either a man or a woman, okay? When someone asks you the question, are you a man? That is a question that is a yes or no question.

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If someone asks me, Patrick, are you a man? Yes. Are you a woman? No. Well, do you ever have any kind of nuance to that?

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No, no nuance to it. No nuances to it. I don't need to qualify it. I don't need to give you some caveats and qualifications about that.

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I'm a man, okay? That's the gender that God gave me, and I'm thankful for it. I'm thankful for it.

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And we should be thankful for our gender. Gender is a gift from God. Okay, so there's what

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Nate Collins was saying here. So Collins founded Revoice because he doesn't like how the

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Nashville Statement is doing all this horrible, terrible excluding and hurting people's feelings and excluding people like him who wants to say he's a gay man, he's a homosexual man who's married to a woman and has three sons.

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That is definitely very strange, and that's something that has... The biblical categories don't even exist for us to make sense of that.

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If someone says they're homosexual, we immediately tell them, as Christians, repent. Homosexuality is a sin against God.

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It's a very serious sin against God, and you can't do that. You're not allowed to identify yourself that way, especially if you are a professing

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Christian. These individuals need to be dealt with by the courts of the church, and of course, we all know that the courts of the church aren't going to do anything.

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They're not going to do anything. And I'm not at all confident that this committee is going to come back saying, okay, we've studied the word of God.

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This stuff's definitely sinful and wrong. Let's bring charges against the individuals that are pushing it. I think we know that's not going to happen.

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And I think one of the reasons it ain't going to happen... Just spitfire in here a little bit.

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I think one of the reasons we know that's not going to happen is the powers that be, and the individuals that are pulling the progressive strings here in the

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PCA, they know full well that if that report comes out and says it is same -sex attraction in and of itself is inherently wrong, is sinful, and must be repented of, okay, we need you guys to stop this and revoice.

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We're not associating with them. No churches are going to be associating with them. Greg Johnson, you got to repent of this stuff.

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They will be slaughtered by the media. They know it.

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They know they will be. If they come back with a very strong biblical stance on this issue,

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PCA is going to get murdered by the media. They're going to be calling us haters. They're going to be suing people.

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They're going to be trying to enact legislation. Who knows what all is going to happen if they came back and did that.

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But I think we can rest fairly sure that that's not going to happen. They're not going to come back and condemn it.

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Why? I'd like to point out one of the reasons I think why. Why are we studying this issue of same -sex attraction?

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Why do we have a committee to study this stuff? It has nothing to do with new insights into the word of God.

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It has nothing to do with anything in scripture. It has everything to do with the fact that Christians still are experiencing a very strong temptation to be worldly.

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They don't want to feel the antithesis with unbelief. And yet,

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I preached a whole sermon once on we live in an age of anti -antithesis. So everything that's a source of conflict,

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Christians are going to be tempted to downplay whatever that thing is. Who wants to be told that they're hateful and that they're bigots and that they're killers and murderers and they're persecutors and you're shaming people and you're horrible.

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Who wants to have to deal with that, right? I mean, no one does. And so what

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I just read from Kuyper where he said, you know, Israel's biggest problem, one of its biggest problems is that it refused.

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It refused to maintain its distinctiveness from the world around it. And they were constantly imitating their pagan neighbors instead of leading them.

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This is something I've emphasized, especially to the younger folks here at the church, is the temptation that you're going to experience is to be a follower.

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You're going to be tempted to be a follower because you are very much going to be alone. In this day and age, you're going to be by yourself and your convictions and you need to understand that.

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You're going to have to stand on your own two feet at times very much alone. And who wants to do that?

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Don't we all want to be, you know, popular? Don't we all want to have friends? Don't we want people to like us and to think well of us?

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Well, in a certain sense, yes, we want to be at peace with all men in as much as it's possible. But on this issue, we can't.

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On this issue, if we are committed to Christ, we can't be at peace with those that are pushing this.

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And when Revoice first happened, when that conference first happened, and I saw it and listened to it,

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I thought, well, of course, this is the sexual revolution come to our doorstep. How could anyone not see that?

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That this is happening. This has nothing to do with the Bible. It has nothing to do with new exegetical insights.

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People are coming up with new wonderful discoveries in studying the

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Bible. No, this is because of the sexual revolution that's been going on for decades in this country.

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That's why Revoice happened. This is the sexual revolution come to our front door. And we need to say, no, we don't want this.

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Because we recognize our obligation before God is number one, to be faithful, to be distinct from the world around us, but also to have compassion on those who are dying in their sins and going to hell.

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We need to have compassion on them and tell them the truth. So Israel was ever and anon imitating its pagan neighbors.

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Kuiper is exactly right. That's what they were constantly doing that. And those that tried to tell them to stop were called haters.

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And they were just despised by the people. I mean, the prophets were hated in Israel because they told the truth and told them, you can't go down this road.

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You cannot go down this road. And I wanted to read a passage here from 1st

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Samuel chapter 8. 1st Samuel 8 is a very important passage because this is the passage where the people of Israel demand a king.

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And their reasons for wanting to have a king are really bad reasons. Because they were actually doing quite well with God as their king.

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Now, granted, they'd just been through the period of the judges. And that was a time of unbelievable apostasy and decline.

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But at this time, Samuel was a very godly man. And he was judging Israel. And we read here in 1st

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Samuel chapter 8. Now, it came to pass when Samuel was old that he made his sons judges over Israel. The name of his firstborn was

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Joel, the name of his second, Abijah. They were judges in Beersheba. And this is very sad, the next verse. But his sons did not walk in his ways.

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They turned aside after dishonest gain, took bribes and perverted justice. Very, very, very sad. Then all the elders of Israel gathered together and came to Samuel at Ramah and said to him,

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Look, you are old and your sons do not walk in your ways. Now make us a king to judge us like all the nations.

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But the thing displeased Samuel when they said, Give us a king to judge us. So Samuel prayed to the Lord. And the

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Lord said to Samuel, Heed the voice of the people and all that they say to you. For they have not rejected you, but they have rejected me that I should not reign over them.

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Okay, so God then tells the people, here's what the kings are going to do. They're going to take your stuff.

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They're going to take your money. They're going to take your proders. They're going to take your sons and your daughters. And they're going to, they're going to brutalize you and tax you to death.

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But the people didn't care. We want to be like all the nations around us. We don't want to be

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God's distinctive people. And you know what? That's the way people are today. That's the way it is today.

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And that was Israel's problem. The church has the same sorts of problems. And the New Testament addresses it directly.

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Whoever is a friend of the world is an enemy of God. Meaning a friend of the kind of worldliness, the kind of infatuation with success, with numbers, with money, with power, with popularity that people are obsessed with today.

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We cannot be followers. We cannot be followers. We need to be leaders.

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And what is this revoice stuff? And every single person that has spoken in defense of Greg Johnson and revoice and the gay stuff, what are they doing?

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They're being followers, not leaders. So that's the question before us today.

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Will we be leaders or followers? Will we be like the ox led to the slaughter?

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Or will we stand our ground and say, no, thanks. There's nothing to study here. We actually sent out a prayer request to our entire church, asking them to pray that the

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PCA would not form a study committee on same -sex attraction. And I would like to point out why. There's nothing to study.

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Nobody needs to wonder, well, goodness, is this still a sin? Yes, it's still a sin.

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God does not change. Our culture's changed. Sexual revolution has brought about all kinds of changes, but God has not changed.

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Scripture hasn't changed. God's attitude about this sort of thing has not changed. There's no such thing as sexual orientation.

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That's a myth. It's a made -up category. It has no meaning at all. It has no basis in the Bible at all.

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None whatsoever. And insofar as we embrace it, we're being worldly.

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We're following instead of leading. The church is supposed to be a light to the world. We're supposed to have more discernment than this.

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And shame on the pastors that don't see this. Shame on the ministers of the gospel who are failing to protect their flocks from this kind of stuff, from this kind of filth.

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Because at the end of the day, what do these people really, really, really want? They want us to stop telling them it's a sin for them to be gay.

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That's what they want. And I think that everybody knows that. And the pressure is mounting.

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It's getting greater and greater. So what do we do? What do we do? We stand our ground.

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We tell the truth. And then you press on with your ministry. I have no interest in this subject.

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It never has interested me. Have I dealt with people like this? Oh sure, sure, over the years. And some stuff that's not even covered in the

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LGBTQ letters. Some things that aren't yet in there. I've dealt with that too.

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And what do you do? You weep with those who weep. You embrace these people who are struggling with this sort of thing.

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You point them to Christ, to the means of grace. And you tell them it is a sin for you to adopt this as a self -conception.

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Because you are not a slave of sin any longer. Sin does not have dominion over you anymore.

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You can't live in it anymore. Because God has broken the power of indwelling sin.

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Now does that mean he's eradicated it altogether? No. I have all sorts of ongoing issues with sin.

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I have sins that I've struggled with since I was 18 years old. They're still a struggle. They're still a struggle.

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But I would never adopt a self -conception using the label of one of my sins to identify what

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I am or who I am. I'm a baptized, adopted child of the living God through faith in Jesus Christ.

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That's my identity. Sin doesn't identify me anymore. Sin dwells there, yeah. But I'm at war with it.

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I hate it. I put it to death with the help and grace of God. So this one thing

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I asked in that Aquila Report article was why would a Christian who, according to scripture, has been granted a hatred of their sin, why would they want to use it as a label?

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It doesn't make any sense. It does not make any sense whatsoever. No biblical sense at all. So are we going to be leaders or are we going to be a bunch of followers?

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Okay, listen to what Kuyper said again here. Whoops. Man, hit the camera.

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My bad. Listen to what Kuyper says here again in this section on worldliness. So the most outstanding sin of ancient

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Israel was that instead of upholding its distinctiveness as Jehovah's chosen people, it was ever and anon imitating his heathen neighbors.

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That sin is rampant in the church today. That sin is rampant in the PCA today. Are we going to imitate our pagan neighbors?

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Are we going to allow them and their emotive, emotional stories cause us to move away from biblical truth?

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Or we stand firm and be willing to accept the insults, the scorn, the hatred.

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You know, I've been preaching through Luke's gospel for a long time now, and at this pace, it's going to take me three or four years to get through it.

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But there's so much in it and it's just glorious. It's wonderful. But in Luke's account of the

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Sermon on the Mount, there's a few things that are here that are not in Matthew, Matthew's version of it. And listen to what verse 26 says.

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This is what I've pointed out to the congregation here, and I've really tried to emphasize to them. Woe to you when all men speak well of you, for so did their fathers to the false prophets.

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See, that's one of the problems is people want all men to speak well of them. I don't want people to hate me.

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I don't want people to lie about me and say, oh, you're a hater. You're mean. You have too much angst about this issue.

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People have said all sorts of things like that. They're not true, of course. Not a one of them is true. People are lying about me and about the people that are standing against this stuff.

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But there's a real temptation. People really want to be popular. It's just like when you're in junior high and high school.

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You want to be like the cool kids. You want to be a part of the in crowd. You want to be popular.

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You want people to think that you're this and you're that. And we as Christians have to say, I want the approval of God.

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I want the approval of my savior. I don't care what anyone thinks about me. I don't care.

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And listen to 2 Corinthians, let's see, where it speaks about whom the

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Lord commends. He is the one who is blessed, if I can find it.

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It's in 2 Corinthians somewhere. He who the Lord commends. Yeah, 2 Corinthians 10 verse 18. For not he who commends himself is approved, but whom the

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Lord commends. That's what we want. We're not trying to please men. I mean, Galatians 1 10 is another great passage.

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For do I now try to please men or God? Okay, if or do I seek to please men? If I were still pleasing men,

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I would not be a bondservant of Christ. You embrace enmity with the world.

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You are at war. If you're a Christian, you're at war with the world. And it's very, very clear. This stuff is trying to take over what's left of conservative

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Christianity in our country. And it's doing it with incredible success. Because people don't want to maintain their distinctiveness as Jehovah's chosen people.

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Instead, they are ever and anon imitating their heathen neighbors. They're a bunch of followers.

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We don't want to be like that. You know, it's really amazing how whatever labels were on the clothes that the so -called cool kids at school wore, everybody wanted to wear clothes with those labels on them.

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Everybody wanted to be like the cool kids. And I say, forget the cool kids, especially in the church.

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If people do not understand what sin is, they're not going to understand what the gospel is.

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And if more and more people are embracing this side B stuff, we're not going to be preaching the gospel anymore to people who desperately need to hear it.

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So I would just say to everyone listening, don't be a follower. Don't be a follower.

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You have been sent out. Jesus said you are the light of the world. You are the salt of the earth.

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And what does it say? What does it go on to say about that? But if the salt loses its flavor, which is what is happening right now, we're losing the antithesis.

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We're no longer standing against the world. We're embracing all this stuff, embracing a gay identity. And hey, you know, when

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Greg Johnson was talking there, you know, Scott Sauls was standing behind him, just nodding along with all these just terrible arguments.

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We don't tell women who are infertile to think of themselves as fertile, as if there's a parallel between infertility and being homosexual.

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One is a physical condition. The other one is a sin. Johnson, I mean, he's utterly sincere.

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We don't tell any other people to do this. We don't tell paraplegics to think of themselves as being able to walk.

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Paraplegia has no parallel to people who are homosexual. Stop using the secular concept of sexual orientation.

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It is a myth. It doesn't exist. Just like Sproul said, what's the problem? People are embracing the myth that they are intrinsically homosexuals.

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But they are not. And God is able to liberate people from it. So just in closing, let's be.

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Let's be leaders. Let's be light and salt. Not, well, we were sort of salt, but then we lost the flavor because we don't want people to think that we're mean or that we're bigots or that we have too much angst.

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We don't want people to think badly of us. Woe is you when all men speak well of you, Jesus said.

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Their fathers were like that with the false prophets. They love those guys. They love the false prophets. They told them, we demand that you tell us lies and not truth.

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And the false prophets, okay, sure, we'll tell you. We'll go along with whatever you like. Whatever kind of sin you're into, we'll find a way to approve of it.

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To be a Christian is to embrace antithesis. It's to embrace the fact that we are now opposed to the world, the flesh, and the devil.

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Listen to what, what is it? First John 2, 14, I think it is, or 15.

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Listen, do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the father is not in him.

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If you're an ally of this compromised stuff, the love of the father is not in you. Because biblical love doesn't rejoice in iniquity.

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It rejoices in the truth, in the truth. For all that is in the world, verse 16, the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, the pride of life is not of the father, but is of the world.

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And the world is passing away in the lust of it. But he who does the will of God abides forever. Don't love the world.

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What is the world saying now? Accept homosexuality. Approve homosexuality. Approve transgenderism.

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Approve of, you know, who knows what's coming next? All the, all the other letters. Approve of it.

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Everyone's getting on board. All the celebrities are approving it. Taylor Swift's approving of it. Everybody's doing it.

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Just follow us. But God has called us to be distinctive. He's called us to be his special people.

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Those who are called out of the world. Those who do not love the world. Those who leave the world behind in its worldliness and its ugliness and its sinfulness to walk in holiness.

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And that means if you do walk in holiness, if you do have a love for the truth like this, listen to what scripture says.

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Listen to what the Lord Jesus said about this. In verse 23, verse 22.

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Blessed are you when men hate you. This is Luke 6, 22. Blessed are you when men hate you. I know,

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I mean, I've experienced some hatred from people because of this issue in the PCA. People hate, they absolutely hate people that stand against it.

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My brother and my friend, Stephen Warhurst, at the General Assembly, experienced some hate for standing up and speaking the truth.

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But blessed are you when men hate you, when they exclude you, and revile you, that means insult, and they cast out your name as evil for the son of man's sake.

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Don't worry about people, how they react to your attempts to be a leader. They'll hate you for it. They'll insult you for it.

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They'll ostracize you for it. Cast you out for it. Scorn your name as evil for it. Make false accusations against you for it.

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Lie about you for it. Rejoice and leap for joy in that day, for your reward is great in heaven.

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For in like manner their fathers did to the false prophets, or excuse me, to the true prophets.

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They loved the false prophets, they did that to the true prophets. So don't be afraid.

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Be a leader. Don't be a coward. Be a leader. Don't be so weak that you can't stand on your own two feet against all the cool kids and the popular people.

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Stand on your own two feet. Be willing to be ostracized, to be hated, to be looked down at, have people talk about you negatively for the sake of what's true and righteous.

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Jesus promised a great reward to those who do such things. So I want to ask pastors, elders, and even

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Christians that are not, that are neither pastors nor elders, what are you going to do? What are you going to be?

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You want to be a leader or a follower? You're going to be like Israel? We want a king like all the other nations.

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We want to be just like everybody else. Or will you be a leader and be light in a dark place?

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Be salt in a place that's filled with rotting meat? I truly hope you'll make the right decision.

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Thanks for listening or for watching. This is

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Pastor Patrick Hines of Brittle Heights Presbyterian Church located at 108 Brittle Heights Road in Kingsport, Tennessee.

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And you've been listening to the Protestant Witness Podcast. Please feel free to join us for worship any

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Sunday morning at 11 a .m. sharp where we open the word of God together, sing his praises, and rejoice in the gospel of our risen

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Lord. You can find us on the web at www .brittleheightspca .org.

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And may the Lord bless you and keep you. The Lord make his face to shine upon you and be gracious unto you. The Lord lift up his countenance upon you and give you peace.