Apologetics and Sexuality

The Church’s Delay in Facing New Sexuality Debates

Now our subject for this evening is obviously one that my grandparents never expected their grandchildren to ever have to address. I didn't know my grandfather. He died when my dad was, I think, 14 years old.

He had appendicitis. He lived out on a farm, and the old country doctor was an alcoholic. After he started surgery, he went out to get a drink, and my grandfather bled to death on the table. I was not raised with a real high view of doctors for some strange reason as a result of that, but I know of that generation, and I just have to wonder sometimes what they must think of where we are today and what we are having to deal with.

Certainly, I think the church can be forgiven for being a little bit behind the ball, so to speak. Many of the things that we're now facing in Western society were simply unthinkable 15 years ago. When certain people, like Francis Schaeffer, warned us that these things were coming, a lot of us looked at him like, not really a prophet, are you?

A little bit on the odd side, a bright guy, but wearing those lederhosen probably has caused you some problems, and we just didn't understand. Now, my grandchildren are being homeschooled, and part of their homeschooling has to be fundamental, foundational issues regarding what is a man and what is a woman, and what is a boy and what is a girl, and are those merely social constructs?

What about my friend at the playground that thinks they're something else? These are not issues that were being discussed, at least in a biblical fashion, in most seminaries, only a short period of time ago, and sadly, in many seminaries today, they are still not being discussed in a biblical fashion.

They're being discussed, but they're not being discussed in a biblical fashion, and the force of society is coming against the church, and this is the area, this is the front that is being used to seek, well, some of you saw, I still am amazed, I must be honest, at how much you folks know about our election cycles in the United States.

Is it just entertaining? Is it just that? You got nothing else on Australian television? Or is it just the vibe of the thing? Come on, it's just the vibe of the thing, you know what I mean? Man, how many of you get that?

Wait a minute, I know more about Australian movies than the rest of you do? That's sad, that's just sad. It's a cultural reference, it was a good one, wasn't it? You liked it? Okay, good, all right. The rest of you just have to go look it up, figure out what the vibe of the thing is, but anyway, it does amaze me, because when I was in Brisbane in 2016, and they had huge widescreen TVs set up in Town Square, and there's Trump and that other woman, who thinks she still won, that's the sad part about that.

I could win again! What? A little confused, aren't you? But anyway, I was just amazed at how much people know about what's happening in the United States, and for those of us who have to live that reality every single day, I'd like to escape someplace where that's not taking place, personally, but I can't, and we've still got a whole year to go, more of this, it's just going to get crazier, but you probably saw that one of the candidates running for president was talking about how, if churches do not support the LGBTQ movement, that their tax breaks will be taken from them, and the rumbling that you heard was all the founding fathers of the United States rolling over in their graves at such a gross misrepresentation of American history.

The founding fathers recognized that taxation was, the power to tax is the power to destroy, and the idea that the state has the right to tax the church, but just doesn't out of the beneficence of its soul, is just, again, another historical absurdity, but that's where they're coming from, and will that guy be elected?

No, not this time around, but eventually, but eventually, and this is a reality that we simply have to recognize, not only in our context, but unfortunately, we tend to export our garbage to the rest of the world, and that's what we're going to be doing, and so we all have to make decisions.

The elders of every church, the leaders of every church have to make decisions. Where do you draw the line? Where do you draw the line? A little church history here, I love church history, and I think one of the greatest degradations of our modern situation is that we are actually so arrogant that we think that we can do this Christianity thing without ever even considering what the Holy Spirit did in the lives of generations after generations after generations of believers before us.

It's just part of, there is a part, especially amongst young people, that thinks that if you didn't have one of these, your opinions could never really matter much. Seriously, that really is a thought that many people have.

You didn't have the technology we have today, and yet, it's obvious to me, the attention span of people 300 years ago was about 300 times what it is today. It really is. Look at some of those sermons the Puritans preached.

You couldn't fall asleep. There was a guy walking up and down the aisles, a big long pole. He'd reach out and whack you on the head if you started sleeping. That would keep you awake. That would keep your attention.

Lessons from the Early Church Under Roman Pressure

But in church history, especially the first 300 years, there's much that we can learn from what happened in church history because there is a tremendous parallel between what we're facing and what the church at that time faced.

They were facing a massive, powerful governmental system, the Roman Empire, that allowed for plurality of beliefs. You could have your gods. They could have their gods. What they did not like was anyone who said, our God is the only true God because that causes friction.

That causes problems. They also required some level of syncretism. What do I mean by that? As you know, sometime around the same time period as the rise of Christianity, it developed within Roman legal system that you were to offer a pinch of incense upon the altar.

It would be a portable little altar. It wasn't some fancy big thing, but it would be a little altar. It would be set up. Some coals would be put in it. You were to take a pinch of incense and you were to offer it on that altar.

Of course, it would flame up a little bit and you'd have the smell of the incense. When you did so, you were to say, Kaiser Kurios, Caesar is Lord. Caesar is Lord. Now, the understanding was not that you were saying Caesar is the only Lord or even your primary Lord, but that Caesar holds a position of lordship and authority for you so that you will be obedient to Caesar.

Any obedience you pledge to your God has to be joined with the obedience that you pledge to the Roman Empire. Once you did that, you would be given something called a libelus. And the libelus was a document that said you had offered the sacrifice and therefore you could engage in buying and selling and trading.

If you didn't have the libelus, you couldn't do that. And so the Jews obviously had a problem with this and they had already worked out an arrangement with Rome that allowed them to get around this. But it didn't take long before the Christians were differentiated from the Jews.

The Romans began to realize this was a different group with a different perspective on things. And this became one of the central issues that the early church had to face. And in fact, most of the early divisions in the church were over the issue of persecution.

That is, once the persecution ended, because from about the time of Nero until about 250, so about 64 to 250, persecution would come and go. It would be in one area, not another area. Then from about 250 to 313, it's empire-wide.

And so during that time period, once the persecution would end, the big question was, well, if someone lapsed, if someone gave in, and now the persecution ends, they want back into the church, what do we do with them?

And you can understand why that was a problem. If you had been imprisoned and you had lost much being in prison, you had been beaten, and now the persecution ends, you've been released, and here comes somebody who had gotten out of getting beaten and imprisoned by offering incense.

One of the other areas was the Romans would ask for the Christian scriptures. And if you gave over the scriptures, you were called a trodditor. You gave over the Christian scriptures. Sometimes you would buy a libellus sort of under the table, you know, because there was lots of people you could bribe.

So you didn't actually offer the incense, but you got the document that said that you had and avoided problems that way. Well, what happens once the persecution ends? How does the church hold together?

How do you deal with that? And that was some of the biggest schisms that took place in the early church, weren't over doctrine, they were over what to do with those who were persecuted. So today, the question for you and I, the question that each one of us has to face, we have to face it corporately as a church.

We have to face it corporately as individual local bodies, and then we have to face it as individuals, family heads, individual Christians. When is it that the society is forcing you to offer a pinch of incense upon the altar?

And instead of saying, Jesus kurios, Jesus is Lord, you are to say, Kaiser kurios, Caesar is Lord. When is that? That's the question that we have to ask. And I cannot give you a nice, clear, unambiguous answer for everyone in every situation, because some of you are already in that situation.

Some of you work in fields where already the pressure is being put upon you to celebrate that which is fundamentally in opposition to the Christian worldview. You are being forced to celebrate that which you know does not tend toward human flourishing.

It is not the way God created us to behave or to think or to view ourselves. It's not going to bring people into a relationship with God. It is going to further isolate them from Him. And so where's that line?

Where's that line? Right now in the United States, there's a big bunch of stuff going on. One of the members of my church, I remember two months ago, she contacted us. I remember I was corresponding with her.

We were doing electronically, so we'd have sort of a paper trail. Well, electronic trail, something. This is what my school district is asking me to do. This is what one of my students is demanding to do in regards to celebrating transgenderism, and I can't do it.

And this is probably what's going to happen. Well, she got fired, and it's made big news, and we're having to deal with it because people are showing up at their home, and people have left voice messages hoping she gets brain cancer and dies, and all sorts of wonderful loving stuff like that.

And so some of you are in those areas. You know exactly what I'm talking about. If you work for almost any major corporation in the Western world today, you know some of these pressures. And so if we're going to ask the question, what's the line?

When am I in danger of having to open those fingers and drop that incense? The only way to answer that question in a meaningful fashion is to have a biblical foundation of absolute conviction regarding what the Scripture says about fundamental issues.

And so when you look at the leftists and the liberals in Christianity, I'll just name Union Theological Seminary. There's a good example. You know, the people that were confessing to plants a few weeks ago.

Yeah. If you didn't catch that, it's easy to find on Google. Trust me. Confess to plants. It'll come right up. You know, there's a theological seminary that went liberal around 1900. Even in the 1930s, when German martyr Bonhoeffer, when Bonhoeffer visited, he was repulsed.

He was like, they don't believe anything. Why have all these buildings when you don't believe anything? And so they're still walking around like zombies. And you look at what they believe, and they celebrate the idea of rejecting biblical categories of sexuality, creation, marriage, the whole nine yards.

They embrace that. And so whatever position we take, the other side is going to be able to quote some Christian scholar who is going to be able to substantiate their perspective. Just get used to it. It's frustrating, but that's the world we live in.

So you have to have conviction as an individual, as a family, as a church, that the things you believe, especially in the field of human sexuality, are grounded in the word of God. And it's not just you picking and choosing what you want to believe and not want to believe.

How many of you have seen memes online that point to various times in Old Testament, especially in Old Testament reality, where, for example, the patriarchs had multiple wives and there were all these different quote-unquote forms of marriage and the whole idea being, well, if it's in the Bible, then God must have approved of it.

Well, it will require of us a certain maturity in how we handle the word of God and to recognize how, for example, Jesus' words need to be taken normatively when he's interpreting Old Testament texts, as we'll look at as we look at Matthew 19, for example, right now, if you want to turn there.

But that kind of stuff is going to be out there. It's going to require maturity on our part and conviction on our part because you may have to leave a field that you have been trained for and you love working in.

What's more important? Your soul? Or your house? Or your car payment? I get it, but you need to understand, Christians have been facing this all the way down to the history of the church. I don't know if any of you remember, but about 10 years ago or so, when the Taliban was extremely active, the very name Taliban has to do with the denial to women of the right to be educated based upon particular understandings of Islamic Hadith and things like that.

And so, there were schools in Pakistan for girls and that was what the Taliban was focusing on. And a lot of people missed this story, but there was an attempted suicide bombing at a girls' school in Pakistan that was foiled.

I mean, the bomb went off, people died, but the guy didn't get into the school to kill the girls. He was stopped out front by the janitor, a male janitor. And the male janitor was a Christian because that's all he was allowed to do.

In that place, at that time, there was a limitation. You're a Christian, this is as high as you can go. And so, that's what he did. And he served the Lord there. And he gave his life for those girls to keep that bomber from going inside.

That's been a common reality under Islamic rule for many, many, many centuries, that you have the status of dimitude. And so, there have been Christians who have lived with much less than you and I enjoy.

You and I live as royalty. Almost every single one in this room. Now, you may be just scraping by, okay, so I'm not referring to you, but most of us, in comparison to only 200 years ago, are absolute royalty in what we have.

The amount of food we can take in, the amount of clothes we have, the conveniences we have. We are highly blessed. And let me give you one sermon before we go to Matthew chapter 19. And it's mainly a sermon for me, so if it doesn't apply to you, feel free to sleep for a few moments and have your neighbor wake you up in a moment.

The World’s Power Over Christians Is What We Love

The only power that this world can ever have against a Christian is the power we give to the world by loving the things of this world. Do you hear me? The only power that this world has against any Christian is the power we willingly give to the world by loving the things of this world.

Because think about it. What can the world do to you? The world can take your physical possessions. Those are the things of this world. They could be blessings from God, but they're still the things of this world, and we are not to love them.

They can take your freedom. They can imprison your body. They can beat your body. They can eventually kill your body, but they can't touch your soul. So if my love is first and foremost for what God says it is to be, what power does the world have against me?

None. So as much as I violate 1 John chapter 2, he who loves the world, what? The love of the Father is not in him. Not it's a ratio thing. John doesn't give us that wiggle room. If you love the things of the world, love of the Father is not in you.

So as much as I'm loving those things, I am voluntarily giving the world control over me. If you've never read the story, watched the movie, I highly recommend to you an incredible story called The Hiding Place.

Corrie Ten Boom and her sister, the Ravensbrück concentration camp, World War II. Their story of refusing to give in to hate in the midst of one of the most hateful places in the world will illustrate what I just said to the fullest extent.

So keep that in mind when the pressure comes. The pressure will always be directed toward our stuff and our comforts. But if we are convinced that as servants of Christ we must be faithful to him and obedient to his teaching, the world can have no power against us.

They can take our buildings, but there have been believers who have met in woods, in discomfort ever since the church was founded. You don't have to worry about the secret sensitive church and the debates about that.

You don't have to worry about the synthesizers going out or wireless mics working or not working because we won't have any. And God will still be worshipped. God will still be worshipped. Matthew chapter 19, I believe, provides to us a foundation in the words of Jesus that places in a situation of either believing the teachings of our Lord or accepting the teachings of the world around us.

It is a clear contradiction. It is in the context of the Pharisees coming to Jesus, tempting him and asking him to get involved in the dispute that took place between the schools of Hillel and Shammai.

These two Jewish schools at that time, Pharisees, were arguing with one another about the subject of divorce. And one school said that it was permissible to divorce your wife, to give her a certificate of divorce for any reason whatsoever.

So if she cooks the lamb wrong, you're out of here. If she doesn't do the laundry right, you're out of here. The man is in full and complete control of the marital situation. And that's basically the exact terminology that is used here.

Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for any reason at all? For all reasons? So they want him to get in the middle of their dispute. And as you already know, Jesus is very good at avoiding getting stuck in situations like that.

And so he answers and says to them in verse 4, Have you not read that the one who made them from the beginning made them male and female and said, for this reason a man shall leave his father and his mother and shall cling to his wife and the two will become one flesh.

Therefore, they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore, what God has glued together, joined together, let no man break apart or separate. And then they, therefore, they said to him, why did Moses command to give to her literally a paper of release, of divorce and to send her away?

And Jesus' answer is, because of the hardness of your heart that Moses granted this to you. But notice, from the beginning, it was not so. From the beginning, it was not so. Now, there is no question that the context here is an ancient argument about divorce.

And so there have been some who have argued that this text is not relevant to any modern discussion of gender or marriage or anything else, only has to do with Pharisees arguing with Pharisees in the first century in Jerusalem.

But that is to miss the very substance of Jesus' response. Jesus begins with a subtle shot, have you not read? Say that to a Pharisee who prides himself on his knowledge of scripture. Oh, you who keep the scrolls, do you read them?

Have you not read? It's not the only time he did that. He does that in Matthew chapter 22 as well. Have you not read that the one who made them, the creator, and let me begin by simply saying that this truly is the point of departure in Western society today on these issues.

Not only was our legal system, you deriving it from English common law, just as the United States did, based upon the existence of a creator and man created in his image, therefore man's life is valuable, murder is wrong because you are killing an image bearer of God.

There is a source of objective morals and ethics in the law of God. We share that and now we live in that strange period of time where that has been overthrown. It has been overthrown because in the intellectual thought and life of almost every up and coming Australian, American, Englishman, Scotsman, there is no compelling recognition of the existence of a creator.

We are not created. We are a cosmic accident. Life on this planet, random chance. Form of life on this planet, random chance. Might be somewhere else, might not be anywhere else. We don't know. We're looking.

Spending billions. Pinging the universe. Looking. But there's no purpose. There is no transcendent value. As my fellow pastor utilizes the phrase, we're nothing but stardust because in that particular cosmological perspective of atheism, everything that exists here is stardust.

All the complex molecules in your body were originally forged in some star somewhere, whether in ours or in another. Billions and billions of years ago. You're stardust. If you see my debate with the head of the Freedom from Religion Foundation, Dan Barker, cosmic broccoli.

Cosmic broccoli. Broccoli doesn't have much in the way of purpose. And that's what we are, cosmic broccoli. I like using the term, I'm a good Trekkie, despite the secular perspective of Star Trek as well.

Christianity snuck through once in a while. Just, yeah, way to go, hurrah, you know, something like that. Only a few of you get that. But there was a race of granular creatures that in looking at human beings, called us ugly bags of mostly water.

Ugly bags of mostly water. Well, that's what we are. We're just chemicals fizzing. And you fizz for 75 years, then you stop fizzing. The cosmos doesn't care. It's irrelevant. What you do or don't do is irrelevant.

Who cares? That's the world view. Now, we can't live in that world view. No atheist can live in that world view. They compromise that world view all the time. They have to. That's the evidence they're made in the image of God.

But that's all it offers. And that has become the functional understanding of the vast majority of our fellow citizens. There is no creator. There will be no judgment. Two-year-olds still look around when they steal the cookie, though.

Not sure why that happens. Why do ugly bags of mostly water look around while they're stealing the cookie? I don't really, you know, I don't know. But this is the point of departure. Have you not read that, and then the first words, the creator, the one who made them.

We know that we are made, and that's what changes us. In our prayers, I hope in our prayers, truly spirit-led prayers include the confession that we are God's creatures. Every beat of my heart, every breath of my mouth comes from him.

He sustains me. He made you. And the problem is, if he made you, he will someday judge you. And we all know it. We all know it. So the one who made them implies and teaches creation. From the beginning, he had a purpose.

There was order, and it was a good order. And Jesus uses the technical terms for male and female. Arsen, thelu, male, female. There is no confusion about what these words mean. The Greeks and the Romans knew exactly who was male and who was female.

There wasn't any confusion. Oh, they, don't get me wrong. There was tremendous amounts of sexual perversion in the Greek and Roman worlds. I could not even in public begin to lecture on the sexual perversions of Nero.

This man was, if he wasn't demon-possessed, I don't know what someone who looks, the Gadarean demoniac looks like an Oxford professor in comparison to Nero, okay? So I don't know how he could not have been demonized.

Truly. But though they knew those things, that didn't cause them to lose track of who was a man and who was a woman. They recognized there were certain people that didn't want to live within those categories.

But they recognized that that was an aberration. That it was not something that was good for anyone. The point is, there's a creator and he made them male and female. And again, if you don't have a creator, male and female just happens to be the biological mechanism by which our species reproduces.

And once we can get rid of that, brave new world, you know? Once we can get rid of that, once we can just do it all in test tubes, then does male and female really have any meaning any longer? In this context, you have a creator, he has designed this, and that means it is good.

It is good, it is right, it is proper, it is beautiful. Can it be abused? Of course it can. That doesn't change its inherent beauty when it is functioning the way that God designed it to function. And he made them, from the beginning, male and female.

Now, I don't have time to go into what this means in regards to Jesus' understanding of the text he is quoting. Because he's quoting from the Pentateuch. He's quoting from the creation narratives. He's quoting from those first chapters of Genesis.

Here you have the author interpreting his own works, 1400 years later. That's pretty cool. And so you have creation, male and female, and on the basis of that created ordinance, said, so this is the creator speaking.

This isn't just Moses musing about God, as in most seminaries today. But God said, for this reason, a man will leave his patera and his matera, his father and his mother. Again, words that have definable meanings.

And every generation before ours recognized that if you change those meanings, you're claiming the same authority as the one who first defined those words. Because the first human institution that God created is marriage.

He's the one that said, it's not good for Adam to be alone. We'll make him a helpmeet. One that is suitable to him. Corresponding to him. Different from him, but corresponding to him. God designed that.

And it's a good thing. And so if we decide that we're going to change what father and mother, husband and wife, male and female means, and that's exactly what we've done. Every generation before us realized that required an outrageously arrogant claim of authority on our part.

That can only be done by a society who has come to conclusion there is no higher authority than us. We get to determine our own reality. That's when you see the tipping point. That's when what had been holding back isn't holding back any longer.

And now you've got an acceleration down the other side. According to Jesus, this is the reason that a man leaves his father and his mother and shall be joined to his wife. So father, mother, man and wife, or husband and wife.

Husband can be used. It's not the term here. It's simply a man. A man shall leave his father and mother and shall be joined to his wife. There is no possible way in the context of Second Temple Judaism in the first century, in the writing of the New Testament, to in any way, shape or form insert into these words two men.

Leaving your father and your mother and being joined to te gunayki cannot be a man. There is no such thing as a male who is a wife, not in the biblical sense. If you want to redefine it, just be open about the fact that I will not be bound by the words of Scripture.

Just don't pretend. Just be open about it. Open rebellion is better than hidden rebellion. Shall be joined to his wife and the two shall become one flesh. The only two that can become one flesh are a male and a female, a man and a woman, a husband and a wife.

Two men do not become one flesh. Two women do not become one flesh. Three, four, five, however many you want to go. God's created intention is the family. And the family propagates the people. And this is how it happens.

The two shall become one flesh. And Jesus then interprets this so they are no longer two, but one flesh. Now he's emphasizing this, why? Because of the question he's answering. The question he's answering, can a man divorce his wife for whatever reason?

Misses the fundamental reality of the unity that takes place in marriage to begin with. It's seeing the man as the full definer of all things. He gets to define whatever his desires are, that's it. No, from the beginning, one flesh.

Two parts, one flesh. And therefore the whole question that was being debated missed the whole point of the creation ordinance of God to begin with. So no longer two, but one flesh, therefore what God has joined together, let no man separate.

So the point is, since God established marriage, when we engage in it, whether we want to acknowledge him or not, it's still what he designed, and we will be held accountable to his standards of it, not somebody else's.

Not somebody else's. What this also means, I think very, very plainly, is that the only union that God blesses is that between a man and a woman. That is what is being said here. To try to say, well, God is going to bless my union with another man, a woman with another woman, or whatever other variations the evil mind of man can somehow come up with over the next three months, at the speed it's going, whatever it might be, will not find any basis in Jesus' words at all.

If you want the blessing of God, one man, one woman, that's what marriage is. That's how God designed it. Change any of the component parts, you no longer have marriage. You no longer have marriage. So here's the question.

How far can we go? How far can we go? You see, one of the reasons I think that there is a lot of struggle today in much of what would be called broadly evangelicalism is because we have spiritualized the Lordship of Christ to such an extent that we in essence can limit the area of His Lordship so it does not become inconvenient for us.

We do this in our own lives. I will let Jesus be Lord of Sundays and Wednesday nights, but if my team is playing on Monday, Jesus doesn't really need that time for me. The Lordship of Jesus in Western society, I mean, you're technically in the Commonwealth, right?

And so, by the way, I think the Queen's the coolest lady running around. In 2016, I was going, make America Britain again. Trump, Clinton, that. The Queen, yeah. I'm ready. Let's go. Let's sign up, man, because this ain't working.

Okay, this is not working. Of course, unfortunately right now, England ain't working too well either if you've been watching the news. And could someone give him a comb, please? Just give the man a comb.

I like the guy. He's great, but he just needs a comb terribly. But even with the monarchy still in existence, we all know it's Parliament that does what Parliament does. And we don't have a functional lordship.

I know the House of Lords and all the rest of that stuff, but the idea of lordship that existed in this day, even the idea of lordship that existed in the offering of the pinch of incense on the altar saying Caesar is Lord, this was an authority that had power to define.

And we now live in a day where we're claiming that lordship for ourselves. The entire transgender movement is based upon the rebellious claim of human autonomy so as to be able to redefine myself as I see fit right now.

I'm not the creature of God. I have no creator. I have no maker. I get to determine this for myself. So I think a lot of Christians have an extremely weak idea of the lordship of Jesus Christ. A couple years ago, I was teaching an apologetics class at Phoenix Seminary and CNN called and they had me on the Dr. Drew show on the subject of transgenderism.

Well, they had me on by Skype first. I learned my lesson. That's not the way to do it. You can get talked over. You can't compete. And so they called back and said, we got a lot of positive. We'd like to have you back on.

I said, well, yeah, I'll do it if I'm in studio. We don't have money to fly you over. I said, don't worry. My wife works for the airlines. I'll fly over myself. Well, we can't put you up. That's fine.

I can find a hotel too. Okay, fine. Be here at such and such time. So I flew over and I was in studio and that was an experience. I can assure you of that. But one of the exchanges sort of illustrated this issue of lordship.

One of the Dr. Drew's compatriots had no idea what the doctrine of the Trinity was. And when I brought up Matthew chapter 19, one of the exchanges basically went along the lines of, well, okay, so you've got some verses in a book.

What's that against all the gender studies programs that we have in our universities today? And I said, well, I think it's pretty straightforward. Jesus prophesied his own death and left behind an empty tomb.

Therefore, he has an authority that nobody else has. He is Lord. So if he says this is what marriage is, when you show me your empty tomb, then I'll listen to what you have to say. Seems obvious. Now, in the early church, this seemed insane.

You must understand, the early church's belief in the lordship of Christ seemed insane. This is Rome you're standing against. We're taking your people and feeding them to lions. Nero is wrapping them in animal clothes and in pitch and lighting them up and their body parts are falling down and rolling around amongst his guests.

And you say Jesus is Lord? Doesn't that prove Caesar is Lord? Have you seen Rome recently? Christian church is still doing good. Here we are down here in Melbourne. We've still got the Christian church going on and the Colosseum not doing so well these days.

Got to take the long-term view of things. Short-term, didn't look good. Long-term, Rome, bye-bye. It's gone. We need to take seriously the lordship of Jesus Christ. There is something truly exciting about serving the risen King of Kings and Lord of Lords.

It is part and parcel of the proclamation of the gospel to say Jesus is Lord and he is Lord of all. When we say King of Kings and Lord of Lords, that also means all the little guys, too. And that means Jesus has the authority to teach authoritatively about his own creation.

He's the one that made man this way, by the way, because he's the God-man. And so there really shouldn't be any question on our part as to what is important in this matter and to whose authority is ultimate.

The only question is how do we communicate this in the most faithful way? How do we not offer the pinch of incense? Because the temptation is going to be there. The pressure is going to be there. And how do we, with grace as redeemed people, stand firmly and say that is self-destruction.