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Welcome to Conversations with a Calvinist. This podcast is dedicated to helping believers better understand Scripture, defend truth, and engage culture. Get your Bible ready and prepare to engage today's topic.
Here's your host, Pastor Keith Foskey.
Welcome back to Conversations with a Calvinist. My name is Keith Foskey, and I am a Calvinist. Well, this is our second show in June, and because we're still in June, that means we are still in the month that is defined by the sin of pride.
Yes, we are still in Pride Month, and Pride Month is going strong through this month. We are seeing things all around us, businesses changing their logos, lights on buildings and billboards, and even the bridges in my city are lit up with the colors of the rainbow, which are meant to represent diversity and, in this case, sexual depravity.
So today we're going to be talking about something that I think is an important subject and really a sad subject that goes along with the issues at hand when we talk about pride and the month that is meant to celebrate pride.
Now, if you didn't hear last week's program, I did on last week's program address the issues of sexual sin, what the Bible teaches about righteous sexual behavior, and so all of that, if you're curious to know what the Bible teaches on those things and you want to dive a little deeper, then my encouragement would be to go back and look at last week's program.
But, and also I want to, just for a quick plug, there's also a lesson I did every week I go and teach at a men's ministry, and I did a lesson on righteous sexual behavior, and so I expanded on what I did on last week's program, and the title of that lesson is What Comes After Destruction?
That is on our sermon audio page, and of course by ours I mean the church. You go to Sovereign Grace Family Church, look at our sermon audio page, and the lesson is called What Comes After, or What Comes Before Destruction?
The Bible says pride goes before destruction. But today something else caught my attention, and we may have a little shorter program today. I want to go ahead and say that from the outset, it has been a tremendously long week in the ministry of our church.
This week we have been dealing with a lot of loss and a lot of pain in our congregation, so I've been doing a lot of ministry, and I'm thankful to God for the opportunities to have done that, but so my time on the program this week is going to be a little more brief than normal.
But what came to my attention and what made me want to do today's program was an article that I saw come across the news. Apparently a local bakery here in Jacksonville, one that has been going for many years, and one that has a lot of community support.
A lot of people love this bakery, and it's interesting because my family and I sort of have a history of this particular bakery and getting food from there and things. Well, they're under fire from the local woke community because someone in the family was willing to share on their personal social media page something that was opposed to homosexuality.
In fact, let me say this. It wasn't that it was necessarily opposed to homosexuality, but rather it supported the concept of being straight, and if you haven't seen it, it's a meme. It's pretty popular.
Some people have posted it. I've seen people post it, and basically what it says is straight pride, because when you think Pride Month, it's always about LGBTQ and all of the other letters that associate themselves with homosexuality.
Somebody that was associated with the bakery posted on their social media page straight pride, and let me look up here because I do have some information, something to the effect of, it had a picture of a 50s bride and groom, and again, you may have seen this, had a picture of a 50s bride and groom.
Above it said straight pride, and below it, it said it's natural, it's worked for thousands of years, and you can make babies. Now, for just a moment, let's just talk about that. Is that true? Absolutely, absolutely.
It is natural. Heterosexual sexual behavior is the natural. The Bible talks about everything outside of that as being unnatural. Romans 1 says men gave up the natural affections of the woman and burned with passion for one another.
That's unnatural affections, and so when it says, when the meme says it's natural, well, that's right, and it says that it's worked for thousands of years, well, of course it has. Not only is it natural, but it is something that has been the absolute mainstream for thousands of years.
Everything outside of that has always been considered to be different, to be odd, to be unnatural, to be, you know, the word used to be queer. Queer simply means something that is different or odd, and so it not only is it natural, but it works, and it says, and you can make babies, and of course, that's the one thing that the homosexual community will not ever be able to do, and that is to naturally produce a baby from two of the same sex.
It doesn't work in nature, and it certainly does not work in and within human beings, so the meme itself was correct, but that doesn't matter because when we deal with the woke mob, when we deal with the the proponents of the craziness that is going on in our world today, there is no concern for what is true.
The only concern is for what is felt. The only concern is for the emotions. It has nothing to do with the facts, and as many people have repeated, I think it was Ben Shapiro who made the statement popular, facts don't care about your feelings, and that's true, and so whoever this person was within the family of this bakery that posted this thing has created an absolute firestorm on social media and people calling for them to be boycotted and for them to be essentially canceled, and we know that is the modern expression, cancel culture, and this is nothing new.
We have seen cancel culture, and we have seen it expressed in so many different ways. I mean, even the president of the United States, when Donald Trump was the president, even he was essentially canceled off of social media because of his views being so unpopular with the quote-unquote mainstream, and so the push, and I want to read a few of these statements here because, let's see, it says, and I'm not going to name anybody because I don't know who any of these people are.
These are all social media posts, and I have no idea who these individuals are, but this is one that was stated. It says, I prefer my baked goods without hate as an ingredient. Someone please open a bakery in Jack's Beach that supports inclusion and equality for all.
I'd invest. Really? Really? This is where we are. This is the level of conversation that we are now having, that if someone has a different opinion about who has sex with whom, and they are willing to say that the natural heterosexual relations between a man and a woman are something that they support, and thereby they don't necessarily support the homosexual community, then they are considered to be hateful.
They have hate in their cookies. They have hate in their donuts. They have hate as an ingredient. That's what we see, and they're saying, well, we'll invest in a new donut shop or a new bakery, rather, and another person comes on and says, names a company that's at the, I guess, this place is at the beach, and they say, this place, I'm not going to name them, is doing a fundraiser tomorrow for gay rights in opposition to the bakery, and they named the bakery here.
It says they're doing a fundraiser tomorrow for gay rights in opposition to the bakery. Persecution of the gay community. Oh, so I just can't even, with this line of thinking, and I'm sorry, I realize that as Christians, people think that we are supposed to be soft-spoken and quiet, and we're not supposed to say anything that is hard to hear, but let me say this.
If you think that somebody posting a meme on their private account is persecution of the gay community, then you have lost your mind, okay? You're no longer on planet Earth. This is clown world. We have leveled up again.
I talked about this a while back. We keep leveling up in clown world, and we are now plus 5 ,000 with this nonsense. We have leveled up another 5 ,000, and so there's a company somewhere at the, and I'm going to name them because I didn't get into all that mess, but the company is doing a fundraiser in opposition to the bakery, in opposition to their persecution of the gay community, and then the next, yes, somebody comes along, yes, wow, this is where we are.
Now you all know what has happened, or you, or if you don't know, you can guess. The bakery had to come out and apologize. They had to come out and say, oh, we're so sorry. We love everybody so much, and we did not mean to offend anyone, and we did not mean to hurt anyone's feelings.
Oh, we did not want to break the 11th commandment, and it's the only one that matters, that you have to be nice, and you can't say anything that may in any way have anyone be the least little bit offended, and let me tell you something.
If you're a Christian, you're watching or listening to this program, and that's how you think, let me tell you something. That is not the way it is. We cannot live our lives always afraid to offend. Now, we should not be offensive purposefully.
We should not be offensive in a sense that we should not be, we should not try to be ugly. I do think that there are lines that we shouldn't cross. Your Fred Phelps's, your people holding signs outside of military funerals and things like that, that say God hates fags.
Those kinds of signs are not helpful. They're reprehensible, and so there are certain things that we should say. We don't go there, but my goodness, we're looking at a situation where somebody in this, and they're saying on the media post, it was the owner.
It may have been the owner, but I don't want to say that it was, because I don't know if it was, and again, this is all coming out on the news, but this was on the news. Here's the other thing. This was on the news.
There were news videos. I was watching this with my wife just a few minutes before I came to record the program, and the news video, you know, local bakery under fire for their harsh attitude towards the little outer people, the gay community, the LGBTQ, and the rest.
That's the idea, and again, you heard what I read just a moment ago. They see this as persecution, and here's the thing, beloved, if you are a believer, understand this, that this is what is happening, because the narrative is being written as we speak, and the narrative is simple.
If you are a Christian who holds to Christian values, particularly Christian values regarding marriage and sexuality, then you are a hateful bigot. That's the problem. That's the dangerous problem, because it just ain't so.
That's not the reason we hold to the views that we hold. That's not the reason that we hold to the truth that we hold. We hold to the truth because it's what the Bible teaches. We hold to the truth because it's the way God created the world, and we believe in a God who did create the world, and who gets to decide what's right and what's wrong?
You see, the thing is about the meme. Go back to the meme for a moment. The meme was straight pride. You know, it's worked for thousands of years. It's natural, and you can make babies. I'll make it simpler.
Straight or heterosexual relationships within the bonds of marriage, because that's the only place a sexual relationship should be had, is right, not just because it's natural, not just because it's worked for thousands of years, and not just because it has the ability to make babies, but it's right because the way God made the world.
God made a man, and then he saw that that man was alone. He says it's not good that that man should be alone, and he made a woman for that man to be the companion of that man, and so we have in the Bible a picture of what a righteous sexual relationship is supposed to look like, and that is something to be celebrated.
That is something to exalt, and for anyone to say otherwise, you know that they have been corrupted in the mind and have adopted an ungodly and unbiblical worldview. All right, so let me draw to a close by saying this.
I know that a lot of folks, they hear about companies getting canceled, and they begin to think, well, that's not, you know, cancel culture, but we can be just as bad. We can be just as bad on the other side as well.
If every time somebody does something, we say, oh, well, I'm not going to buy that product anymore. I'm not going to do that anymore because that company or whatever holds a different position. We can be just as bad with the cancel culture stuff, so we have to be careful with, you know, judging, pointing fingers, and that, but here's the thing to consider.
It's not just the cancel culture thing that should bother us. What should bother us is the issue that the reason for this cancel culture mindset is the idea that by disagreeing, we're persecuting them, and that's not the truth.
My goal, and hopefully your goal, is never to persecute anyone because they disagree with me, but rather my goal would be to point them to the truth of the Word of God. Now, that truth may hurt. That truth may cut them to the quick.
The Bible says that it is a two-edged sword that is able to pierce and divide, and the person, yes, can be pierced and divided all the way to the heart by the Word of God and by the truths that are contained in that Word, but if that's what happens, that has to be what we stand with, and we can't step back and be afraid if they come and say, you were being harsh.
You were persecuting. You were awful, and we're going to cancel you. Okay. You know what? They have the power to cancel in the same way, as I said, the Christian community does their fair share of cancelling at times.
You know, we're not going to do this. We're not going to do that, and everybody sort of fights these battles, but the thing I hate to see, I hate to see people come out and say, oh, we were wrong. We were standing up for the truth.
We were wrong. Christian, if you're going to say it, stand by it. If it's the truth, stand by it and know that sometimes it is going to be a painful thing to speak the truth and stand by the truth, and that's my word for today.
I hope that that was helpful, and I hope it was an encouragement to you. Thank you for listening to Conversations with a Calvinist. My name is Keith Fostey, and I've been your Calvinist. May God bless you.
Thank you for listening to Conversations with a Calvinist. If you enjoyed the program, please take a moment to subscribe, and if you have a question you would like us to discuss on our future program, please email us at calvinistpodcast at gmail .com.
As you go about your day, remember this, Jesus Christ came to save sinners. All who come to Him in repentance and faith will find Him to be a perfect Savior. He is the way, the truth, and the life, and no one comes to the Father except through Him.
May God be with you.