November 13, 2017 Show with Tim Bayly on “The Grace of Shame: 7 Ways the Church has Failed to Love Homosexuals”

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This is Chris Arnson, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, wishing you all a happy Monday on this 13th day of November 2017. Well, today we are going to be addressing a very controversial issue in the church today, and that is the issue of homosexuality.

And today we have a returning guest to discuss this issue, Tim Bailey, who is an author and the senior pastor of Clearnote Church in Bloomington, Indiana. We're going to be addressing his new book titled The Grace of Shame, Seven Ways the Church Has Failed to Love Homosexuals, which he co-authored with two other authors.

And it is our honor and privilege to welcome you back to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio,.

Tim Bailey. Here again, and I'm looking forward... I am as well. And if anybody would like to join.

Us on the air with a question of your own for Tim Bailey on this subject, our email address is chrisarnsen at gmail .com, c-h-r-i-s-a-r-n-z-e-n at gmail .com. And please give us at least your first name, your city and state, and your country of residence if you live outside of the USA.

And please only remain anonymous if it is about a personal and private matter over which you are asking. And I could readily see this subject lending itself to those having personal and private questions.

So we will indeed grant your request to remain anonymous if that is indeed your wish, if it is regarding a personal and private matter. But otherwise, please give us your first name, city and state, and country of residence.

Well, before we go into the subject, Tim, since it's been a while since you've been on Iron Trip and Zion Radio, I'd love for you to tell our listeners about Clear Note Church in Bloomington, Indiana.

Well, thanks,.

Chris. We have a church here that is very much young, which I think is pretty much true. And get into my sixth group and an elders group that are about music, that's probably the thing that best known for is that we have a whole bunch of good musicians because Indiana University has, I think, the largest music school in the country.

And so we have very good musicians, and we're in the middle of a project called My Soul Among Lions, writing music and versification and recording them 10 by 10. And so that's been a very sweet work. It takes a lot of time and energy, and sometimes the children and wives suffer because of the amount of time they're gone.

They've gone on a couple of returned from Pennsylvania. And it's just kids under the age of five. So there's always new... Praise God. And I understand that it is an unusual church in.

That it has a makeup that includes both Presbyterians and Reformed Baptists in leadership.

When the church stopped PCA or not, because I was PCA, the men who were Reformed Baptists, and it just didn't make any sense to speech time men come to church. It's kind of interesting because they have not had any division or...

And I think the reason it doesn't...

Well, I have to highly commend to our listeners, My Soul Among Lions. They are absolutely remarkable. I consider them truly one of my very favorite Christian recording artists. I mean, obviously, they're thoroughly biblical because they sing the Psalms.

And the way that they sing the Psalms is, I think, breathtaking and unique, and has some bluegrass influence. Although Jody Killingsworth said that a diehard bluegrass fan might question that assessment.

But I hear that in there, but it's a very unique style for psalmody. And I'm thrilled that the Lord is using them and that they have their second CD out now.

I believe it's only two so far, correct? Oh, okay. I listened to this one yesterday. For them, I can't tell you the difference it makes to have... You know, I have been... Amen. Well, we are discussing, as I already announced,.

A book that you have co-authored with two other brothers. Joseph Bailey and Juergen von Hagen. Is Joseph your son? And tell us something about your son and also about Juergen von Hagen. I have not heard of Juergen before being introduced to your book, but if you could.

Tell us about both of your co-authors. Joseph is named for his grandpa and great-grandpa and great-grandpa and great-grandpa. And if you go over to the Evergreen Cemetery in Gettysburg, you'll find...

Wow, because I do intend to go to Gettysburg for the first time. I've been living.

In Pennsylvania since 2012, and I haven't been there yet, but I intend to go there.

...address. They have a... That's not actually a world cemetery. A number of Presbyterian ministers in the Lancaster County area going back into the 1700s, but rather intermarried with their son. He is in Cincinnati at Christ Church, and he planted a church here in Indianapolis before going and working on his second one over in Cincinnati.

And then Juergen von Hagen is an eponymous in Germany and many, many publications. He has done things and is currently doing things. He pastors a church... Oh, praise God. Well, this, as I have repeated, is a very.

Controversial issue because you have even those who are professedly conservative Bible-believing evangelicals who disagree on the approach to this sin known as homosexuality. In fact, there are even some of our brothers who think that we are compromising by even using the term homosexual.

They think that it would be preferable to use the term sodomy or some other term. But what do you think is the main failure in the church today that drove you to write this book along with your son and Juergen von Hagen?

And then we'll go through as many of the seven ways the church has failed to love homosexuals. We'll go through as many as time will allow. But what was like the catalyst, the initial wake-up call for you that said, wait a minute, there's something going on here that I need to address because it seems that there is a shift taking place even amongst those who believe in the inerrancy of Scripture and who believe that homosexuality is a sin, in fact a damnable sin, but there seems to be a shift going on.

So tell us why this book was needed to fill a void in the literature of evangelicalism.

Well thanks, Chris. On a number of concerns, nationally known leaders were compromising on the issue. And all of us, I think, and pastors tend to change our language in order to show ourselves reasonable, especially if we preach.

And so I noticed a number of years ago that if I would use the word sodomy, people would have a fit. An old seminary professor of mine, when I used the word sodomy on the website, on the blog, he wrote me and explained that he didn't think I understood how.

And of course I don't, depending on the situactuality. Seeing a number of these people repent and knowing them intimately, a lot of leaders today don't know how to minister to people who are tempted by homosexuality.

I've gotten emails from men, specifically, thanking me for using the word sodomy occasionally on the blog. And I think when you have people feeling the pressure of Obergefell, another thing that's a reason not to hire somebody, another, as long as you get publicly and to talk about homosexuality, you don't want to say that it's true of homosexuality, it's true.

And that he excoriated them for saying they repented against Repair the Time, where at the very beginning, Juergen and I were upspending that book together.

And I am assuming, having some familiarity with you, that you would be very opposed to the self-righteous, hateful agenda of the quote-quote God hates fags cult, Westboro Baptist Church, who seem to have nothing but exuberant joy at the notion of homosexuals going to hell.

They don't seem to have any message of hope by proclaiming a gospel to them, by calling upon them to repent, they just want to declare that they are doomed and they seem very happy about the fact that unrepentant homosexuals will be doomed.

There seems to be no compassion, love, or agenda, or mission to rescue these people. And I'm assuming that you.

Would be totally opposed to that kind of a thing. Such were some of you. Every single one of our churches has a number of men who are... Now, I know that saying, you don't know what you're talking about.

We don't have that in our church. And I say, invite me and then see what is confirmed. And so I've been involved with so many churches and so many leaders that the idea that anybody who speaks of the shame of homosexuality is ludicrous, that's what the mainstream media wants everybody to believe, that if anybody's opposed to the sin of sodomy, that they're haters, this, that, and the other thing.

And we don't have to prove that to each other in the church. And I would mention something. In our church, we actually greet one another with a holy kiss that we're commanded to do. And so in our church, the men do greet each other with a holy kiss because homosexuality is being written by...

Well, praise God for that. Well, let's go.

To the first way out of seven that you believe that the church has failed to love homosexuals.

...for John the Baptist. Malachoi means men who lie with males. And so Malachoi is a separate sin from our Senequoia. Well, what the SVD did into one thing, and it said men who, or men who have homosexual intercourse.

And so then in a footnote, they say up in the text, it's in a homosexual sense, that Malachoi is a homosexual. And that's on alcohol with, isn't it true? Almost always, immediately, they'll say you can't have sex before.

And every one of these get men saying, then you move over to women and you... way in which a healthy person... thinking about a hack, stupid... out of our preaching, out of our Bibles, and not wanting to think about it.

Then they say, well, people nitpick, because it has to be a matter of the conscience. They want to write it out. You saying if anybody... we have to be... And that's a perfect place for.

Us to go to our first break right now. If you'd like to join us on the air with a question of your own for Tim Bailey, our email address again is chrisarnsen at gmail .com. C-H-R-I-S-A-R-N-Z-E-N at gmail .com.

Please give us your first name at least, your city and state, and your country of residence. If you live outside of the USA, please only remain anonymous if it is about a personal and private matter over which you are asking.

That's chrisarnsen at gmail .com. Don't go away. We'll be right back with Tim Bailey and more of our discussion on the grace of shame. Tired of box store Christianity? Of doing church in a warehouse with all the trappings of a rock concert?

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It's a $25 book. And make sure that you tell Todd and Patty Jennings, owner of cvbbs .com, that you heard about them from Chris Arnzen on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio. And we are back now with our guest for the day for the full two hours with about 90 minutes to go, Tim Bailey, author and senior pastor of Clear Note Church in Bloomington, Indiana.

Today we are discussing his latest book, The Grace of Shame, Seven Ways the Church Has Failed to Love Homosexuals. Our email address is chrisarnzen at gmail .com, c-h-r-i-s-a-r-n-z-e-n at gmail .com.

Please give us your first name, your city and state, and your country of residence and only remain anonymous if it is about a personal and private matter over which you are asking. Tim, it seems so far that the title of the book, Seven Ways, or should I say the the subtitle of the book, Seven Ways the Church Has Failed to Love Homosexuals, I'm getting the impression that one of the ways that the church has failed to love homosexuals is by being, no pun intended, too soft on the sin, which is in some way or some ways to the modern person, the liberal person, they would equate being softer on the sin with being more loving towards those involved in it, whereas you are, I can gather, are saying that we've been too soft on the sin, which is actually not loving, if we really believe that that sin, unrepented of, will send a man or woman to hell, that we have to be tougher on this issue.

Am I.

Correct in assessing that? Yeah, I think that we're going soft on the parts that we share with people who are involved in the gay lifestyle, and so if you think of being homosexual, you can be homosexual in sexual relations.

A lot of homosexuality is just simply avoiding responsibility, avoiding doing the hard thing, avoiding identifying as a man, being vain about your appearance, and I think that's the reason that it's pulled out of the SDs, that you have about them, we start talking about ourselves, and we realize that in major ways, we, by not being bold and not confessing the Lord, that we are not manifesting ourselves as the men that God made us, and so I don't think it's just that we shouldn't be soft on homosexual intercourse.

Of course we shouldn't be soft on that, it's bondage, but we also should not be soft on the sin that the Apostle Paul says will keep us from heaven, and that's the sin of effeminacy all through history, that's the way it's been translated, and I've noted in my lifetime that the word effeminacy isn't anymore, it's the best, it's fine, the word responsibilities and authorities God has given us.

And you said something before the break that was interesting to me because it actually, in some ways, was a stereotype breaker. It occurred to me while you were speaking that it seems that you are including in this group of soft men, men that the world might look upon as virile and macho, and what I'm speaking of is men who cannot control their sexual appetites, men who cannot wait until marriage to have sexual intercourse, men that cannot commit to one woman, who think that promiscuity is actually a sign of virility, masculinity, and machismo, and you're actually including that group within a soft male category.

They have typical manly traits, you know.

In fact, the Nazi party, as you may recall, one of the very first members was Ernst Röhm, who was a notorious homosexual and pederast. He wasn't even closeted about it, and he was a poster boy for machismo.

He was a very rough and violent man. He had the battle scar, the dueling scar on his face. He was known for wanting to beat people up, and so were his homosexual cohorts amongst the brown shirts, and yet these rough, tough men were actually homosexuals.

Yeah, you look, those guys would have had their pictures on the front of Vanity Fair.

Well, before we go on to reason number two, we do have a listener in Slovenia named Joe, and by the way, Tim, if you could be conscious of the fact to keep your mouth near the mouthpiece of the phone or however you're using it, because sometimes you fade out, so I'm not sure what's.

Going on on your end, but... I'm sorry about that.

That's okay. We have Joe in Slovenia, and he says, Dear Brother Chris, thank you so much for having the courage and love to address the tough topics that we need to face biblically. Please ask Brother Tim to discuss how the sin of homosexuality, sodomy, and how the church has failed to love homosexuals is different from other sins in the church, like gluttony, obesity, gossip, etc., that are accepted, excused, and ignored.

In what ways, if any, is the sin of sodomy unique or different from other sins that our licentious and antinomian culture embraces, even in the church? Thanks again for Christian radio that is edifying and challenging in our walk with Christ.

That was Joe in Slovenia.

What was his list? He said gluttony. What were the other sins?

Let's see. The sin of gluttony, obesity, gossip, etc. That's as far as he went with that.

Well, as far as gossip is concerned, I think one of the things you have to realize is that if you go directly to homosexual intercourse, there could be no context in which desiring it or committing it can ever be good, and that's one of the things that's different about gluttony and obesity and gossip, that each of those things involves the use of your mouth that is hard to pin down when it goes into sin.

We have to eat, we have to talk, we have to pray, we have to share prayer requests, and so we have a tendency when it comes to sins that are judgment calls, that require judgment, okay, to sort of back off on them because we don't want to say where the sin begins and where, you know, we eat, we have to eat, we have to continue to eat, fat people have to eat, and so where does it move into gluttony?

Where does it move into their god is their belly? With homosexuality, that's just not true. This is wrong. You can't have good homosexuality. Honestly, I don't think the Church goes easy on homosexuality or gluttony or obesity.

I think the Church goes easy on every sin. I think in our churches today, most of us, if we don't have any sin and that what sins we have are private and we confess them privately, we don't ask for help, I was just reading about Calvin and Pharoah, that they would announce to their congregations before communion that they were happy to meet with people who had issues of conscience and needed help in working through their sins in any of our churches today.

I think we're clean machines, and so when people say, well, you know, you're harping on homosexuality, but you don't say anything against gluttony, I think that's bogus. I think we don't say anything against any sin.

Some churches, there's some group of men that talk when men, my denomination for many years, I'd say them to be an elder as you are. Well, you know, the ring of truth,.

To take a different angle on it from what Joan Slovenia is saying, I think a very common thing that has been said, that I've heard said frequently, is sin is sin is sin. Who are you to judge? Just because somebody is a homosexual doesn't mean that they are going to be any less likely to enter into heaven than somebody who has a heterosexual lust problem.

But isn't there an enormous difference between a man who is a heterosexual who battles a lust problem and does everything he can from protecting himself, from actually committing the act physically. I'm not saying that he is free from sin, but I am saying that there's a difference between somebody who makes sure that his spouse has the same email address, and he goes through all of these ways to prevent himself from looking at pornography and other things.

There's a difference between that and somebody who has given in and yielded to and surrendered to homosexual proclivities by either fulfilling those desires in physical acts, or by identifying him or herself by that sexual proclivity.

Yeah, I think that that's absolutely.

Right. I think that, again, you don't have to have sex, you have to eat. And so we have to keep these distinctions in mind. Everybody has to eat, everybody doesn't have to have sex, so you can be celibate and not have sexual relations with a wife or a husband.

But you can also be married, and you can move, even with your wife, into a degree of lust and concupiscence. It's a word that actually in the reform world there's been discussion of before, but we don't talk about it today, because actually we don't talk about any sex.

Ask people and work against incest, we don't work against child abuse, we don't work against fornication. You know how many churches regularly ask the children of the elders and pastor, and look out to see if they're being pure with their girlfriend or boyfriend, and ask them prior to marriage whether they're being pure.

Now, coming back to the issue of how we deal with sin, I think that in the reform world today, we've gotten to the point where we say we do, it comes to pastors getting into the trenches. Now, I realize people would think that pastors are dealing with fornication and adultery and incest and stuff, but I think in most churches, pastors are scared out of their wits, and so I think pastors generally are no more involved in condemning homosexuality.

In fact, we'll pick up right where you left off there when we return from our.

Break. This is a rather long break, because Grace Life Radio, 90 .1 FM in Lake City, Florida, requires a 12-minute gap between our two hours of programming, so please be patient with us as we go to our commercial break, and now is a great time for you to write questions in for Tim Bailey, and we know that some of you are already waiting in line to have your questions asked and answered.

We'll get to as many of you as possible, so don't go away. God willing, we will be right back after.

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Because everyone needs a pastor. Welcome back. This is Chris Arnzen. If you just tuned us in, our guest today for the full two hours, with a little less than an hour to go, is Tim Bailey, author and senior pastor at Clear Note Church in Bloomington, Indiana.

We are discussing his new book, The Grace of Shame, Seven Ways the Church Has Failed to Love Homosexuals. If you'd like to join us on the air with a question of your own, our email address is chrisarnzen at gmail .com, C-H-R-I-S-A-R-N-Z-E-N at gmail .com.

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My advertisers for quite a long time have been urging me to make public appeals for donations and new advertisers, and I finally caved in a few months ago because the need is so great, and we are indeed on the precipice of going off the air if we do not have new benefactors and advertisers.

If you love this program, if you listen to it every day, if the guests and topics are edifying to you, please, please consider donating to Iron Sharpens Iron radio. All you have to do is go to the website ironsharpensironradio .com, ironsharpensironradio .com, and click on support.

You will see a mailing address where you can mail a check for any amount you can afford made payable to Iron Sharpens Iron radio. If you'd like to advertise with us, whatever it is you want to advertise, as long as it's compatible with the theology we express on this program, doesn't have to be identical, just needs to be compatible, and send me an email to chrisarnson at gmail .com, chrisarnson at gmail .com, and put advertising in the subject line.

So whether it's your church, your parachurch organization, your business, your professional practice, whether you're a doctor, a lawyer, a dentist, a chiropractor, perhaps it's just a special event you're having, as long as wherever it is is compatible with the theology we express on this program, we would love to launch an ad campaign with you.