Zach Lambert's Sermon Concluded

Alpha & Omega Ministries

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Well, greetings and welcome to The Dividing Line. We are continuing our review and response of Zach Lambert's sermon on what he called homophobia and transphobia.

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Personally, I have very little respect for people who use either term. They are simply meant to, again, create emotion rather than any type of serious interaction, but Pastor in Austin, Texas, and I'm going to assume you've seen part one, so we're not going to do all the introductory stuff.

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He has made some comments on Twitter since the program last time.

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Obviously, I don't expect that he ever would have ever would actually listen to what we're saying, take the time to do so, but he is aware of the fact, you know, people have made him aware of the fact that we are doing this response and interestingly enough,

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I'm looking here about his he's saying wonderful things about Rachel Held Evans and Matthew Vines, David Gushie.

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Yeah, here it is. Yeah, here's on October 24th, honored to be mentioned alongside two great friends and co -workers like Matthew Vines and David Gushie.

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James, I pray God sets you free from your obsession with trying to build walls to keep people out of God's family.

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You are not a gatekeeper for Jesus. Set that burden down and follow the way of Jesus, the one who made room at his table for anyone who wanted to sit with him, especially those pushed aside by others.

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As soon as you draw a line to exclude people, Jesus goes to the other side of that line with them and invites you to join him there every time, quoting

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Carlos Rodriguez. And of course, as all false teachers, Zach Lambert is a false teacher because if you pretend to speak for Jesus and you cannot even say the word repentance, you will stand before that judgment seat utterly condemned.

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That's what Zach Lambert needs to be told and he won't listen to me, but maybe someone else.

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Because you can, anybody can pick and choose what they want about Jesus from the

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Bible. I've debated all sorts of folks. I remember so clearly when

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I debated John Dominic Crossan. One of the points that I made in my presentation was that these people, and I think

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I mentioned this two days ago, they searched for the historical Jesus. They looked down that well and lo and behold, they find

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Jesus staring back and he looks just like them. Because you're picking and choosing what of the data you will accept.

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And that's what Zach Lambert does. He's not giving you a biblical understanding. He's not, he is not concerned to go, this is my authority.

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This is the word of God and I want to know everything that says, and I want to handle it right. No, he does not care less about that.

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It's pick and choose. And that's what we're gonna see today. Even though he said he's gonna give you a biblical presentation today, we discovered that eunuchs are actually a sexual minority.

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But we gotta get through it. So let's, I'm gonna, I did not even close the program.

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So we are exactly where we were when we finished off last time. No, that should be correct.

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That's why I couldn't hear it before, I would imagine. This should get to us.

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We did not test it. We should have, but we're going to test it live right now. Let's see if it works.

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We don't believe that because it's cool or popular. As I've already said, it's a position so unpopular that it's gotten us kicked out of a bunch of things.

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We think LGBTQ plus people should be fully embraced and included in the church because we see it in scripture.

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We see it in scripture. People will make that claim and you know that he may actually think he sees it in scripture.

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But if you are not seeking to believe all that scripture teaches in a harmonious fashion, then you're not seeking to believe what is in scripture at all.

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And if you do not see the fundamental clarity of the negativity of scripture towards certain behaviors that are destructive to man, then you're not listening to scripture.

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So you may grab a little verse here and a verse there and a verse there, try to tie them together in some way.

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Every cult and ism has ever done that. That's the distinction between those who seek to honor the entirety of God's word and those who have decided to subjugate the word of God to external sources, which is what's happening here.

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We believe the words and actions of both Jesus and the first church amount to a complete rejection of homophobia and transphobia, as well as a complete acceptance of sexual and gender minorities.

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So let me show you. So I hope you recognize what you have here is unqualified.

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I mean, there are all sorts of areas of discussion that people that even affirming people have that recognize you can't do this.

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This is full throttle, 100%. We're going to ignore the fact that even homosexual scholars admit that there is not a positive word to be found anywhere in scripture about homosexuality, that everything is universally negative.

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They've decided we're going for all of it. We're not only going to say there's nothing sinful about it's good, it's right.

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And you think you can establish that in scripture? Of course you can't. You're not even trying. And this next effort is, remember, this is a

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Dallas grad, but that doesn't, that really doesn't say much about Dallas. People have asked me since the last program, do you think they're anti lordship stuff and things like that?

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You know, no emphasis upon repentance. So like they think maybe, maybe, I suppose that's, that's a possibility.

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But normally when people go to this radical level, all that stuff becomes fairly irrelevant.

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What I mean, we're going to start by looking at the words of Jesus in Matthew 19. Jesus has asked a question about divorce.

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Now some claim divorce was permissible by the husband for any reason. And some said it was only legal in certain situations.

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Now remember it's framed this way because wives could not legally divorce their husbands in this culture.

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Women couldn't really legally do anything in this culture. And so these questions are being asked to Jesus. And Jesus says this,

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I tell you that anyone who divorces his wife except for sexual immorality and marries another woman commits adultery.

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And the disciples said to him, if this is the situation between. Can I just stop for a moment? You might say he's right in the middle of reading something.

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Yes. But what didn't he read? What didn't he read?

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He's, he's, he's in Matthew 19, right? And he just said. Transphobia.

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Oh, you know, the Bible leads us to. So why don't you just take a Bible. Turn to Matthew chapter 19.

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And he, he starts with verse nine for some reason. What, what came before that?

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Well, it's true. The Pharisees have answered. They've asked Jesus, they've, they've tried to draw Jesus into the battle that was going on at that time period.

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In first century Judaism. Between Shammai and Halal, the two different schools in regards to the nature of divorce.

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And whether you could divorce your wife for any reason or whether there are limitations given by the Mosaic law.

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Jesus's response doesn't get read. I wonder why? Well, because Jesus's response is utterly 1 ,000 % opposed to both homosexuality and transgenderism.

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It's impossible to read otherwise. So he doesn't even bother to read it. What does Jesus say? And he answered and said, have you not read that he who created them from the beginning made them male and female?

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Oh, but he says there's three genders. Well, Jesus says male and female. And said for this reason, a man shall leave his father and mother.

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Oh, father and mother have actual meanings. Yes, they do. And be joined to his wife.

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Wife has an actual meaning. A man cannot be a wife. A woman cannot be a husband.

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A man has a wife and a woman has a husband, but you can't have a man who has a husband.

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Or a woman who has a wife. This reason, a man shall leave his father and mother, be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.

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That is the only marriage, Zach, that God honors. That's Jesus's words.

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You don't believe that. Just admit it. I just, I think you just need to come out and just be very, very open. I don't believe any of this stuff.

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So they are no longer two, but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together. Let no man separate.

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There's a foundation of marriage and it cannot be for two men and two women. Not possible. Those are the words.

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That's what comes before the section. He jumps over the utter refutation of his entire position to try to create what you're going to listen to.

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Cultural eisegesis. Scripture twisting on steroids. Scripture twisting on steroids.

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A husband and wife, it's better not to marry. This response from the disciples is so chauvinist, right?

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They're basically like, if I can't divorce my wife anytime for any reason, I'm just not even going to get married. It's not even worth it.

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Followers of Jesus, man. But as he often did, Jesus uses their response to make a bigger point.

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Verse 11 is how he responds. But Jesus said to them, not everyone can receive this saying, but only to those who it has been given.

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For there are eunuchs who were born that way. And there are eunuchs who have been made that way by others. And there are those who choose to live like eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven.

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Let the one who is able to receive this, receive it. Now, Jesus mentions three different kinds of people who his statement about divorce does not apply to.

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And he uses the word eunuch each time. So what is a eunuch? His statement on divorce does not apply to.

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Why? Because they can't engage in sexual activity that they don't get married. That's it.

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Eunuchs, as, as the text points out, eunuch actually was normally used as a political term.

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It didn't first have a prior, it's prior, it's priority. Meaning was primarily political.

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Uh, if you had a harem, you didn't, you want to have a man in control of your wives.

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Um, who couldn't be sneaking his own children into the process. And so it was a political thing, but notice

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Jesus' words, born that way, hence, uh, some kind of genetic problem, some kind of, uh, developmental problem, something like that made that way by men that did happen, especially in war, though, there were some men who did that to gain a political position.

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Um, we're not talking about origin here, but origin sort of did that, but not for those same reasons.

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Uh, and then those who choose to live that way. So all we're talking about here, we're not talking about sexual minorities.

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We're talking about, and, and give, and if you actually read Matthew 19 in its context and read the first part first,

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Jesus has already said there's two genders. He's trying to make three genders out of it. Um, that's why

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I didn't read the first part and deal with it and deal with it in context, but he knows it's there by the way. I don't even know how, how do you stand in front of a, of a, of people in something called church and manhandle the scriptures like this?

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I don't even know. I don't know. I don't know how it works. Um, but he's talking about either those who are incapable at birth, that's a fallen state, the intersex situation would fit into that, even though there's nothing, nothing, nothing in the term eunuch that has anything to do with intersex.

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There's nothing, there's nothing about, uh, eunuchs were not allowed into the congregation of Yahweh.

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And while the reasons for that was they were the people that were to bring about the Messiah. So there had to be a continuation of that line.

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Um, but it was considered a disqualifying thing. And then there's a prophecy in Isaiah that even they would be, uh, given the message.

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And we see the fulfillment with Philip being sent to the Ethiopian eunuch, but, and then the other one says the other category is those who choose to live that way.

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So celibacy is a possible choice. Um, as Paul says elsewhere, uh, and, and expands upon what that, what that might mean primarily in only speaking to the

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Corinthians, but it is, it is there. It's a, it's not in the central.

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If you were to lay out the central message of the

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New Testament in regard to the family, celibacy is not a key element of that. It is off on the side and it's always focused on.

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So I can go, you know, minister to the tribes in Africa or something along those lines type of a situation.

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There's nothing here about homosexuality. There is nothing here about unrepentant homosexuals.

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There's nothing here about transgenderism. There's nothing here about any of these things. Um, but it is amazing.

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Once a whole Bible interpretation is no longer your, your, your goal, you can turn any text into the foundation of an entire dogma.

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Look what Rome does with Mary. I mean, there are so few texts to try to work with and they've built a massive effort at edifice on every single one.

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Everything includes, including some that actually aren't about her anyways. Uh, revelation 12, for example, the

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Bible eunuch is an umbrella term used to describe someone in the sexual and gender minority baloney, pure, utter baloney.

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Just laughably foolish baloney. That is not what it's about.

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It's primarily political. It has to do with not being able to mess up your King's harem.

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So yes, there is a sexual aspect, but it's not a sexual minority. This is absolute cultural isogenesis.

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It's twisting the scriptures. He's going to sit there. It's just so clear. No, what is so clear here is not even the

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Jehovah's witnesses are as bold as you are. Not even, not even the heretics, those, the, the, the, the historically well -known ones.

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You're the new kind, but that's pure baloney. So sometimes eunuch refers to people who have been castrated either voluntarily or against their will.

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This happened for a variety of reasons. So sometimes people were castrated actually because of a job. People believed in the ancient world that eunuchs had no sex drive, castrated people had no sex drive.

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And so they were more trustworthy. And so they would be castrated before going to work in like finance or in like a house of royalty or something like that.

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Sometimes it was done as punishment because a young boy did not exhibit enough masculine characteristics by a certain age.

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And so he would be castrated. And then sometimes it was done voluntarily. Somebody chose to do it to themselves or have it done because there was a disconnect they felt between their sexuality and gender.

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Where do you get that? Back it up. Back it up. You're taking absolutely recent gender studies drivel and trying to cram it into the ancient world.

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You're not the first one to do it. Boswell did it years ago. Um, well, when

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I say years ago, we're only, we're only talking last half of the last century. Um, but still it's a, it's a completely modernistic thing and it's, let's, let's, we don't really believe this anymore.

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So we need to come up with Bible 2 .0 and it's, we're gonna, we're gonna rewrite it according to our interpretation of things.

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Um, that's, that's how they do it. And we now call gender dysphoria. Oh, by the way, that, that's why, that's why

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Zach Lambert will not debate this. Like I said, I offered to come to him, no cost, no honorarium right there, his own church.

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We'll debate this issue based upon scripture. And he's not going to do that because this, this kind of drivel is indefensible.

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Can you imagine him? Can you imagine us doing cross -examination? Oh, uh, uh,

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Zach, uh, you said, uh, that, uh, Eunuch is a sexual minority. Can you establish that from scripture?

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He's not going to want to do that. He's not going to want to even try. Zach, why didn't you read the first part of Matthew chapter 19, where Jesus says there's only two genders?

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Uh, yeah, it wouldn't go well. Well, other times in scripture, Eunuch refers more broadly to intersex people and then still other -

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Um, where? Uh, did you skip that part? Didn't, didn't have it in your notes?

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Where? I'd like to know where. Just, just point us to where that is.

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You just used a modern genetic term. You've, you've heard the term hermaphrodites.

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That's sort of overarching. It's not necessarily always, you know,

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I had my genetics book here last time talking a little bit about that element of things.

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But where do you get that? I'd like to, I'd like to know where you got that in scripture. Cause you didn't happen to sort of mention.

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Eunuch refers to people who choose to remain celibate for a variety of reasons. But here's what

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I want us to really understand about this passage, okay? Jesus is acknowledging people outside of the more common cisgender heterosexual constructs.

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Doing nothing of the kind. Doing nothing of the kind. Even, even if you try to sneak in an intersex thing, that's after the fall.

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He has just said in Matthew chapter 19, at the creation, two genders. Nothing about sexual minorities, nothing about gender issues, nothing about, it's all being read into the text without anything in the context.

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This is absolute manhandling of the scriptures. It's horrible, shameful.

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And that's why he won't debate it because he knows. You put this kind of manhandling of the text up against someone who's walking through the text and honoring it, and it doesn't look good at all.

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It doesn't look good at all. This position requires, you know, remember what happened?

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Remember what happened when, when I debated Barry Lynn? This was a long time, this was 20, almost 23 years ago now.

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Um, and here's a guy, he's been on the ABC, CBS, NBC, he's been on all the news shows and doing all this stuff.

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And he's been, people have been throwing softballs to him. You know, they don't know anything about the Bible, so they can't really challenge him.

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Even if they want to challenge him, they don't want to challenge him because they're leftists like he is. He's been getting tossed softballs forever.

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He gets into a debate. He figures he's probably debating. He probably didn't do any preparation for it. He figures he's probably debating some backwoods hick.

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And not someone who teaches Greek and Hebrew. And he absolutely face -planted.

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By the end of that debate, he was so angry. He was yelling at the audience. He tried to sue us to suppress the videos of the debate because he knew he had absolutely lost, right?

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It was horrible. That's why these folks won't debate. They can't.

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They know that the claims they're making are cobbled together and would not withstand cross -examination at all.

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And he's not doing it in a condemning way. He's just saying, eunuchs exist. This is reality.

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Or to put it another way, Jesus is recognizing sexual and gender minorities. So listen, if you're listening to this and you're a sexual and gender minority, a member of the

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LGBTQ plus community. See what just happened here? I mean, it's astonishing that someone can do this with a straight face.

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But he has just taken a historical category of eunuch.

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And he has now expanded that having stuck it, having read into it, he now uses it to explode open anybody in the

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LGBTQ plus community. Jesus was affirming you.

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I don't ever want to stand before Jesus and answer for lying about him like this.

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I mean, this, wow. Talk about a burden that you will have to bear.

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Here's a man with light. It'd be better if he did not have a degree from Dallas. It really would be.

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Here's a man who has been given light and given the tools and to use it to promote such darkness. This is such beautiful proof that Jesus sees you, that Jesus talked about, and that he radically includes you in his family.

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Because you see, those listening to Jesus in this statement, they would have been reminded of an Old Testament prophecy about eunuchs.

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Sexual and gender minorities, you see, were one of the most vulnerable populations in the ancient world. And because of that, scripture says they cried out to God for help.

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I hope you hear what's going on here. Vulnerable minorities, and they cried out to God for help.

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Wow. Again, you're taking modern categories with modern, primarily

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Marxist origination, and you're trying to cram them back into a completely different context.

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Now he's going to, he's going to go, like I mentioned. There is the prophecy of the day coming when the eunuchs who have been, not by bigotry, but by God's command.

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I don't know that he even tries to explain that, but by God's command excluded from the congregation of Israel.

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When there is going to be a message for them. And all these folks, instead of seeing that fulfilled in the inclusivity of the gospel call to repentance for all people.

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See, he doesn't have the repentance part. And you could blame Dallas for a part of that if you want to, but he doesn't have the repentance part.

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This man is one of the most glowing antinomians that's ever walked the planet. The mosaic law has no meaning whatsoever for him.

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It does not represent God's holy being, his holy nature. I don't even know how he even bothers to try to interpret the things

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Jesus said about the goodness of the law, or Paul said about the goodness of the law. We don't do away with law, we establish the law, blah, blah, blah.

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I don't know how he deals with any of that, I'll be honest with you. But he's going to take prophecy of that coming day when male, female,

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Jew, Gentile, Scythian, Freeman, whatever, all stand on one level ground at the foot of the cross.

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And he's going to turn that into something about sexual minorities and unrepentant LGBTQ rebels against God's way getting to be a part of the family of God.

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You can't twist scripture more fully than what you're getting right now.

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It is astonishing. And here is how God responds to the prophet Isaiah in the Old Testament.

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For this is what the Lord says, to the eunuchs who keep my Sabbaths, who choose what pleases me and hold fast to my covenant, to them

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I will give within my house and its walls. Didn't that covenant include something like repentance and following of God's ways, not us telling what, telling

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God what to do? A memorial and a name better than sons and daughters. I will give them an everlasting name that will endure forever.

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I think that's fulfilled in the book of Revelation where we have that name put upon us because we are in Christ.

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And to be in Christ is to be repentant and to have turned from your evil ways and covenant faithfulness.

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And that covenant includes the acceptance of Christ's lordship and his right to define who we are.

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It's all those things. And Zach doesn't believe in any of that anymore. None of it.

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But we're going to claim it anyway. Now, notice it doesn't say that God is going to fix these eunuchs.

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He's going to change these eunuchs. He simply says if they follow him, they will be welcomed into his home and into his eternal family.

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So listen, if you're someone who is experiencing gender dysphoria or who identifies as non -binary,

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I want you to really listen to that promise. God says, even when you don't feel like you fit neatly into the category of sons and daughters, he promises to give you a name better than sons and daughters.

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You know what makes this absolutely despicable? Because it is. It's despicable.

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If you don't find this despicable, then I don't think you're understanding what's going on.

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The promise from Isaiah is fulfilled in the church of Jesus Christ.

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And the hope that is offered here is a hope of redemption and a hope of fulfillment of God's commands.

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And you have a man taking a text that he is torn out of Matthew chapter 19, the eunuch text, and ignoring the reality that Jesus Christ Jesus had started that sermon off, that answer off, sorry, that answer off by referring to the created order.

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And that from the beginning, God made them male and female. That this is

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God's... See, the despicable thing about this is the message you have for people, the small number of people who experience gender dysphoria, and that's not the transgender stuff.

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But for the people who really are looking for a message of hope and are willing to be repentant, the message of hope is

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God made you the way you are. Therefore, there is reason for you to strive to be what

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God has made you to be. You see, the message of these folks is stop. You get to define who you are.

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And that leads to utter destruction, utter destruction.

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That's what's so despicable. About people who pretend to be speaking for Jesus, yet ignore the only words we have from him or twist them into an absolute pretzel.

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It is despicable. It is unbelievable. That is beautiful.

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And the promise keeps going. These I will bring into my holy mountain and give them joy in my house of prayer.

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Their burnt offerings and sacrifices will be accepted on my altar for my house will be called a house of prayer for all nations.

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I love that it ends by saying that my house will be called a house of prayer for all nations. Everyone is welcome.

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Did you know that's the exact same phrase? Everyone is welcome. Who will obey his law and his covenant?

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Who will repent and turn to him? He takes all that out and turns it inside out as a result.

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It's so obvious and clear. And yet we're seeing it all around us.

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Is that Jesus yells out as he flips over the tables of oppression and marginalization, the temple courts just days before he's killed on the cross.

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My house will be a house of prayer for all nations. That's what he yells out. Because there is room for anyone in God's house.

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Because there is a seat for everyone at God's table and because God's family is all inclusive.

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All inclusive, remember for these folks means undefined by any of the characteristics and commandments found in scripture.

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So instead of the reality, which is scripture lays out for us.

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What the family of God looks like, the holiness of the church, the commandments of God, the all the rest of that, that's all gone.

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Now you get all inclusiveness, which means there is no definition at all. And that's a destruction.

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That's the destruction of the church. For the first church, this radical inclusion of a sexual and gender minority wasn't just theoretical.

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It was actually something that they explicitly practiced. So look with me at Acts chapter eight starting. So what have we done so far?

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We have taken a term. We've twisted it. We've now created an entire category, sexual, gender minorities.

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This, this is despicable manhandling the word of God. It's horrific. I repudiate it.

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And that's why he won't debate it because this would collapse so fast in a debate.

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That's the only reason, folks. You got to understand. It's the only reason he won't do it because he knows it too. He said he spent more time preparing this, this sermon than any other.

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Well, it takes a long time to put together this thin, a thread of lies and make it sound believable.

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That does take some effort. There's no two ways about it. So now we've totally messed up both

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Isaiah 54 and Matthew 19. And Hey, we've used the term eunuch.

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Let's go find another use of it. There aren't very many. And let's talk about the Ethiopian eunuch.

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Verse 26 says, now an angel of the Lord said to Philip, go south to the road, the desert road that goes down from Jerusalem to Gaza.

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So he started out. And on his way, he met an Ethiopian eunuch, an important official in charge of all of the treasury of the

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Kondike, which means queen of Ethiopians. This man had gone to Jerusalem to worship and on his way home was sitting in his chariot, reading the book of Isaiah, the prophet.

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Okay. Now let's, let's just stop there for a moment. Um, and think about who this man is.

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He is a very important individual. He possesses the Jewish scriptures.

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So he is, he fits into the category of what we call the God fearers. Uh, we see them a number of times in acts.

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We see that God had been active in the lives of people. Um, you know, uh, the

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Centurion that, that Peter's going to encounter and, and Lydia and those scriptures had gotten outside of Israel because the

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Jews had gone outside of Israel. That, you know, the Roman, the peace of Rome had allowed for that distribution of things.

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Now he's reading the scriptures. So he knows, he knows what the scriptures say. And he knows that as a foreigner and as a eunuch, he cannot be a part of, he cannot experience this process of proselytization so as to become a

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Jew. And yet he still travels all the way to Jerusalem to worship.

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Now he could not, he would know again, possessing the scripture. He literally, you have any idea how rare it would have been for a high level official in Ethiopia to possess the scrolls?

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I mean, that's freaky weird, but certainly that means he was very well aware of what is in those scrolls.

35:24

So he knows he is attracted to the monotheism. Look at the polytheism of the people has never been satisfying to anybody.

35:35

There is something very attractive about simple monotheism. There's one God who created all these things.

35:41

This, this world testifies of his glory. And, um, you know, that, that's what

35:47

Romans one tells us that that revelation gets through. Men know there is one

35:53

God. He made us to be able to see that. And so here's a man who knowing his condition will not allow him to be a proselyte convert, still goes to God's house of worship.

36:09

And he can't enter into the courts. He can't do things like that. He has to be out in the courts for the

36:15

Gentiles and, but he wants to be near where worship is taking place.

36:20

That is pretty amazing. Uh, and we see that a couple of times in acts where God had been preparing people in that way.

36:30

So here's, here's our Ethiopian union has nothing to do with sexual minorities. This guy isn't an

36:35

LGBTQ plus advocate, anything like that. He's got a chariot and he is wealthy and he's powerful.

36:47

Now, Philip, he's one of the main leaders in the first century church. He's told by an angel of the Lord to go meet this person who becomes known as the

36:55

Ethiopian unit. Now, like I said, a moment ago, there were lots of reasons that someone became known as a unit, but what's most important to understand is that they were in this sexual and gender minority.

37:05

So we have to keep, we have to keep repeating the lie because the text is not going to tell us this because you gotta keep, you gotta keep telling people what they need to be finding in the text because they're not going to find it there on their own.

37:20

So you have to provide that. You see how this works? Um, sadly you'll find this in a lot of churches.

37:28

I mean, I just, I just remember a particular context in a church that I was a member of.

37:37

It wasn't anything like this subject, but it was time to preach on tithing and it was amazing what you could find in scripture when you had a multi -million dollar budget to, to, to try to subscribe.

37:56

Um, and so you'd sort of have to tell people what they were going to be finding so that they could find it because if they're actually using the interpretive methodologies that you use normally, they wouldn't be finding it.

38:08

And so that's sort of strange. And so you just have to keep putting it out there. And it's another way of twisting the scriptures.

38:16

And because of that, he would not have been allowed to even enter the temple in Jerusalem, much less worship there.

38:24

Jewish law strictly forbid it. So think about this. Jewish law or God's law?

38:31

Hmm. Like I said, this man's a glowing antinomian. I mean, um,

38:38

I don't hear the slightest respect for God's law.

38:45

Uh, I, I don't, I don't know how he could ever, uh, handle

38:51

Psalm 119. For example, that's pretty bad. Yeah. Yeah.

38:56

The Ethiopian eunuch travels about 1500 miles from Ethiopia to worship

39:03

God in the temple in Jerusalem, only to be turned away, only to be told no one wants you here.

39:12

Okay. Um, where do you get that? There's nothing in the text about him being turned away.

39:19

Do you think this man was so stupid that he had, he had spent the money to obtain the

39:26

Jewish scriptures and to even read the Jewish scriptures and he didn't know what they contained and he didn't know what

39:33

God's law said? This is all making stuff up for the sake of a narrative.

39:41

It's eisegesis, reading into the text, stuff that isn't there. Nothing tells us in acts that he was going, he was so sad because he thought he was going to get to offer.

39:50

He knew he didn't, didn't expect that. He's not stupid. That's not what it's about.

39:57

This text is not about gender minorities. It's not about oppression. It's not about any of these things.

40:04

Stop twisting the scriptures to your own destruction. It's not about any of these things.

40:11

Listen to what it's really talking about. Only to be called unclean and defiled and an abomination because of his sexual and gender minority status.

40:22

I mean, again, it's just like people, you've got to understand

40:28

Rich, Rich is ready to lose his mind in the other room and that's because most of the people watch this program.

40:34

You go to bible -believing churches, you go to churches where the word of God is shown respect, you've got to understand, sadly, this is what you get in the majority of seminaries today.

40:46

I hate to tell you, but this is what you'll get in the majority of seminaries. It is an abusive, abominable twisting of the scriptures.

40:56

But once you don't believe that this is a consistent whole, once you don't have the view of scriptures that Jesus had, then you've got to do something with it.

41:09

And the only way to get around it and then still fulfill all of your weird social justice stuff is just pick and choose, pick and choose.

41:19

And that's what you've got here. So you're now taking a text which is about, the focus, by the way, if you're wondering, here and then in Acts 10, this is

41:35

Luke giving us certain aspects of how the Holy Spirit forced the

41:41

Jewish church out of its, this is only for us attitude.

41:48

You know, Peter's going to have the sheep lowered down three times, smack them in the head, don't call what

41:54

I've called clean, unclean. And here God supernaturally transports, he

42:01

Star Trek's, he uses the enterprise's transporter to get

42:08

Philip to a place to proclaim the gospel to someone that yes, a

42:16

Jerusalem Jew would not think would be worthy of that.

42:23

That's what it's about. It's about the gospel going out to Gentiles and to twist it and to pervert it into something about sexual minorities is astonishing.

42:38

It's astonishing. Put yourself in his shoes for a moment.

42:44

Think about how he must have felt. He travels for weeks in pursuit of this

42:50

God he's been reading about. And when he arrives, the people representing this God completely shun him.

42:56

Let's play the victim card. Let's get the emotions going.

43:02

Let's hope they don't notice that I'm cramming all this into the text and nowhere is it even hinted at.

43:11

Not even hinted at. It's just now for many of you in the

43:17

LGBTQ plus community, you don't have to imagine that you've experienced it firsthand.

43:23

But even after all that, this man is still reading the Bible on his way home.

43:30

Isn't that incredible? He's still pursuing God, even though he's been told you can never be included.

43:41

Again, pure fantasy. He's been told he can never be included. He came expecting one thing, got something else, and they were so mean and they're terrible.

43:50

And there's nothing in the text that says anything like what he's saying at all.

43:58

You would think there'd be somebody in that congregation who would go, yo, wait a minute, dude, hey, um, uh,

44:06

I got one thing. I got one of these two. And isn't it strange that, you know, Philip and the eunuch that they managed to come to, you know, they're using the same text and they're coming to the same conclusion.

44:18

Why don't, where is this? Nobody says a word. Nobody says a word. Oh, you want to get in on this too?

44:24

I wonder if it occurred to him what he just said. Oh no, it doesn't.

44:29

The idea that the man wants to learn about God and where, where, where, where is he looking to do that?

44:37

Um, in the Bible. Yeah, no, yeah. But no, you know. I know,

44:43

I know. You ought to see what I'm seeing. Rich is dancing around the other room, um, just in frustration at what he's hearing.

44:51

He obviously knows what has happened to the Ethiopian eunuch. And that's why he sends Philip to meet him. Verse 29, the spirit of God told

44:57

Philip, go to that chariot and stay near it. Then Philip ran up to the chariot. He heard the man reading Isaiah the prophet.

45:03

Philip said, do you understand what you're reading? And the Ethiopian eunuch said, how can I unless someone explains it to me?

45:15

This question from the Ethiopian eunuch is one of the most powerful sentences, in my opinion, in all of scripture.

45:22

And it is a searing indictment on how the church has so often treated LGBTQ plus people.

45:34

Has absolutely, positively, nothing to do with any of it.

45:43

I mean, like I said, when I listened to this, it was like, this may be the most classic example of eisegesis

45:50

I've ever seen. I don't know how anyone sat through it.

45:56

I really don't. But it's social eisegesis. Take what's current today, don't worry about the language, and cram it back into scripture.

46:08

And say, see, I'm preaching the Bible. How can

46:15

I understand it? He asked. I've traveled 1 ,500 miles. I've tried to worship in your temple.

46:21

I've met everyone that I can. I've asked them what it means, but no one will explain it to me.

46:28

Did that happen? Well, it's fantasy. It's pure fantasy. There's no evidence that any of that happened.

46:37

There's no evidence that he had been rejected. In fact, to be honest with you, given the

46:44

Pharisees, and given the fact that he obviously was a very powerful man, I really, really doubt that that's exactly what would have happened anyways, even if you wanted to fantasize about things.

46:54

But it's all fantasy. There's nothing in the text that says any of that happened. He's reading from a prophecy.

47:03

And prophecies can be a bit difficult if you don't know what their fulfillment is.

47:11

And he has no New Testament to see the fulfillment. And God sends him,

47:18

Philo, to proclaim to him not anything about sexual minorities, but about Jesus, the

47:27

Messiah, the fulfillment. That's what it's about. It has nothing to do with what this man is saying.

47:33

Nothing. Y 'all,

47:39

I've lost count of the number of LGBTQ plus folks who have asked me if they are allowed to be a part of the family of God, even though they're queer.

47:47

And after I say, of course, yes, yes, of course you are. I always ask, have you ever asked any other

47:53

Christians or pastors that question? And do you know what most people say? They say,

47:59

I've tried to, but no one will talk to me about anything other than how I'm living in sin. In other words, they'll start off talking about what

48:08

Jesus said at first. Repent and believe. They don't want to let me get past that part.

48:16

They don't want, they don't want to let me get past Jesus's first priority in preaching.

48:22

No. And so I don't get to talk to them. I didn't get a chance to talk to the folks who would say, you know what?

48:29

Don't worry about any of that stuff. At our church, we don't worry about all that Jesus stuff. We just, we make our own

48:35

Jesus and he just, he has no concerns whatsoever about whether you know his law.

48:42

By the way, I mentioned that to Lambert this week on Twitter and for Zach Lambert, when

48:50

Jesus says, if you love me, keep my commandments, Jesus only gave us one commandment, to love one another.

48:58

Think about that. Think about the utter antinomianism, the utter foolishness of saying that Jesus's only command is love one another without telling you what that means.

49:12

What does it mean to love one another? Well, God gave us law that told us what, you know, you, you don't love one another by killing each other.

49:18

You don't love one another by being covetous. You don't love one another by lying to your parents. You don't, you see, there's this, the law reveals to us how

49:26

God has made us to be when we're in right relationship with him, but not for Zach.

49:32

No, there's only one commandment, love one another. Don't ask us what love means.

49:37

In fact, whatever you think it is, go for it. No problem from his perspective. How can

49:45

I understand? No one will explain it to me. But like so many sexual and gender minorities

49:52

I know, the Ethiopian eunuch is undeterred. Even after experiencing bigotry and exclusion, he still wants to be a part of God's family.

50:02

Why'd you come back to me? So God. You're just, you're just, I was just simply go fantasy, fantasy, fantasy, more fantasy, but you decided to come back to me anyway.

50:10

Sends Philip to welcome him with open arms. And at the Ethiopian eunuch's request,

50:17

Philip climbs into the chariot and begins talking to him about Isaiah, what he was reading. Verse 35, Philip began with that very passage of scripture and told him the good news about Jesus.

50:26

And as they traveled along the road, what the good news about what I thought, I thought it was the good news about transgenderism and sexual minorities.

50:34

That's what you've been saying, but didn't have anything to do with that, did it? No, because he wasn't a sexual minority, first of all.

50:42

And because this was all about the gospel going out to people outside of Israel. So they came to some water and the eunuch said, look, here is water.

50:52

What can stand in the way of me being baptized? What a question. When Philip hears it,

50:57

I'm sure the first thing that goes through his mind is a whole lot could stand in the way of you being baptized.

51:04

Because basically every single thing about the Ethiopian eunuch had historically been used to keep people from being a part of the family of God, his skin color, his occupation, his citizenship, and most of all, his status as a sexual and gender minority.

51:19

Again, more fantasy and more antinomianism. And I bet you, if you, and this is why he won't debate because I would ask this.

51:29

I bet you, if you were to ask him, he would say that the Mosaic code that prohibits the inclusion of eunuchs in the congregation of Yahweh did not come from God.

51:43

That's my prediction. I don't know how these people continue carrying an entire

51:50

Bible. I'm really surprised they haven't Jeffersoned it. It'd be a lot smaller to carry.

51:59

If you cut out all the stuff, they don't really actually believe. But I don't get the, do you get the feeling from listening to this that he actually believes that aspect of the

52:07

Mosaic code was divine in origin? I don't get that feeling. I cannot, I cannot overstate what an important moment this is in the history of the church.

52:17

Because the real question that's being asked here is who can be included in God's family? Who's allowed in?

52:25

After all, that's what baptism represents. Full inclusion into both God's family and a church family.

52:32

It's one thing to read scripture with someone in a chariot. It's another thing to fully include them in the church and in God's family through baptism.

52:39

Right. And that's why we can know that this man is repentant.

52:45

He is in submission to what God's word teaches as to what it means to be baptized.

52:52

That is to believe that Jesus is the Messiah. And that means that none of this, none of this has anything whatsoever to do with what

53:05

Zach Lambert is saying it's about. It's not about sexual minorities. It's not about any of that.

53:12

It's about the fact that the gospel is to go outside of the Jewish community, outside of those who are circumcised.

53:19

And starting with, not sexual minorities, but with the

53:26

God -hearers. The people who are already sitting there in their chariot with scrolls.

53:35

How many people had anything like that? Almost none. But this is chipping away at that barrier, showing this is

53:44

God pushing these people out of their comfort zone. Can't you see how

53:50

Acts chapter 8 is preparatory for Acts chapter 10 and Peter? It's obvious, isn't it?

53:57

It is. I'm making good progress, sir. This is going to be worthwhile. Did I understand, did

54:02

I hear him right that this is the most important moment in the New Testament? In the history of the early church,

54:09

I think is what he said. Oh, okay. Because, you know, the crucifixion and resurrection.

54:14

I didn't even go there, but the whole idea, see what he's actually dealing with, and it is vitally important, is the fact, and people do miss this because we look at it from our viewpoint, is that what you are seeing in Luke's narrative is his documentation of the fact that the church is to go to the

54:40

Gentile world. And it is a process. And it took a lot of work because by the time we get to Acts chapter 15, what are we dealing with?

54:49

What's the Acts 15 council all about? You've got people who are complaining, hey, okay, it's going to the

54:56

Gentiles, but they need to become Jews first. This is all a process of demonstrating, look, the

55:03

Spirit of God has been pushing us this direction in all these things. So by turning this into something about sexual minorities, it is again an utter perversion and denial of the central aspect of the text itself, of the text itself.

55:43

What an incredible, it just never gets taught in the church.

55:50

It makes me so mad. It never gets taught in the church. What he means by that is his utter perversion of it, his divorcing of it from context, his reading into it of all sorts of things that the author and first audience could never have begun to imagine about sexual minorities and everything else.

56:12

The church never teaches that because it's falsehood. It's wrong.

56:19

It's perverse. That's why they don't and shouldn't teach it.

56:27

I think my favorite part is that three different times it says Philip is being explicitly directed by God every step of the way.

56:37

Why? Because he wants to make sure that everyone who reads this understands that the full inclusion of sexual and gender minorities in the family of God is

56:48

God's idea. So that's what Luke's up to. It's a lie to hell.

56:56

Absolute lie to hell. And you see what you do is you get just close enough to the truth to try to borrow some of the light of the truth.

57:04

Because what's actually going on, as I was just explaining, Acts 8, Acts 10,

57:10

Acts 15, it is the process that you have in the

57:15

Gospels. I have other sheep, thou this fold, going out to the Gentiles.

57:22

And there is resistance. There is resistance from Peter. And even after God supernaturally shows

57:29

Peter, he's still going to compromise when men come from James to Antioch.

57:35

Remember? So it's that process. It's the fulfillment of the prophecies. It's right there.

57:43

So there is something going on, and God is showing us something, and it has nothing whatsoever to do with sexual minorities or anything of the kind.

57:54

And so you take a little bit of the truth, and you use that to promote your unbelievable error.

58:01

This is the essence of what it means to be a wolf in sheep's clothing.

58:08

Because he's sitting there, and yeah, okay, it does help that he has a bunch of heretical books right in front of him.

58:15

That gives you, it's sort of a red flag. But he's sitting there, and you've got the stuff in the background, and there is probably worship music, and we're in a church, and this kind of stuff.

58:32

And this is the essence of what being a wolf is. You're preying on the sheep.

58:39

Paul described it in Acts 20. And it's an absolute twisting of the scriptures.

58:47

You're seeing it. It's right there in front of you. That's why I needed to play the whole thing. Excluding and marginalizing people based on their sexual orientation and gender identity is in direct opposition to God's design for his family and for the local church.

59:01

I believe that with all of my heart. And that is his ultimate authority, and he will twist the scriptures to substantiate his ultimate authority in any way he has to.

59:11

And that's what you just saw. He didn't get that from scripture. He's forcing scripture to allegedly agree with him to his own destruction, and everybody else follows him.

59:23

But that's what you've got going on. And that is why we are committed to full inclusion of LGBTQ plus people here at Restore.

59:30

Now, we've done our best to be clear about this commitment for a long time. We've got statements about it on our website.

59:35

We talk about it in the welcome video every single week. But let me put it directly, so there is absolutely no ambiguity.

59:43

Can you imagine being part of a church that emphasizes their rebellion against God's law with that kind of regularity?

59:55

What is that even like? I can't imagine it. Here at Restore, LGBTQ plus people are fully loved exactly as they are, and they are fully included in every part of our church family.

01:00:12

There are no restrictions based on someone's sexual orientation or gender identity. And this is true whether someone is in a relationship or not, whether they are pursuing celibacy or not, whether they have transitioned or not, et cetera.

01:00:25

Now, this does not mean that everyone who is a part of the church family interprets scripture the same way.

01:00:33

Our goal is not theological or ideological uniformity, but we are completely committed to unity around full inclusion.

01:00:43

So notice, theology isn't what's central to us. Our interpretation of the modern societal madness of exalting the

01:00:57

LGBTQ sexual rebellion to the greatest good is what unites us.

01:01:05

Astonishing. Again, I know I keep using that. What other term can I use? Amazing, astonishing, flabbergasting.

01:01:12

That's really not used a whole lot these days. But let me fire up a thesaurus to give me some new words.

01:01:21

And that means that if you are here at Restore telling sexual and gender minorities that they aren't fully image bearers of God, or that they aren't welcome in God's family, or that there's some restriction on how they can participate in our church, we're going to have a problem.

01:01:36

We have drawn a line. At full inclusion of all people.

01:01:42

This is who we are because this is who we feel God has called us to be. For 2 ,000 years, sexual and gender minorities have been doing their best to follow

01:01:52

Jesus, and the majority of Christians have been too bigoted to notice. Homophobia and transphobia have caused immeasurable harm to queer folks.

01:02:03

But it's also really messed up the church. Because when we exclude people that God specifically tells us to include, we miss out on the gifts and talents that they bring.

01:02:15

We miss out on the unique ways in which they bear God's image and fully express the fruit of the

01:02:21

Spirit. So now you're starting to get an idea of how these folks function.

01:02:28

No serious minded person is going to look at what he just did to Matthew 19 and Acts chapter 8 and see it as being sufficient to function as a foundation for this kind of—this isn't even side

01:02:44

A, this is side A on steroids. It doesn't matter what you do, you are accepted.

01:02:54

Because I don't—again, I said this last time, I'll say it again. On what basis, how on earth could he look at someone—I gave the example,

01:03:06

I told the story—of someone in a long -term relationship with their mother? How could he say it's wrong?

01:03:12

He has no law. He has no standard. He's gotten rid of all that. It's all just love.

01:03:20

And as long as there's love, love is love. There's that brilliant absurdity being used again.

01:03:28

Love is love. How could he say anything about any of that? He couldn't.

01:03:35

He couldn't. For far too long, churches and Christians have tried to take

01:03:41

Jesus from LGBTQ plus people. And we are committed to making that stop. So again, you can have

01:03:48

Jesus without repentance, without why he himself—when he himself explains the necessity of his death, forget it.

01:03:57

Forget it. Don't want that. Don't need it. Don't need it.

01:04:05

However you are, God made you that way. You're good. You're good.

01:04:10

Again, you'd have to be able to say that to anybody in relationship with animals, children, multiple partners.

01:04:18

If it's sexual, do it. It's good. You got nothing. What else can you say?

01:04:26

By what standard? He has no standard. He is an antinomian, utterly and completely.

01:04:34

I don't know why Jesus died from his perspective. I really don't. But I want to bring us to a close by addressing the main objection.

01:04:43

Okay, we are 39 minutes and 13 seconds in. And we're now allegedly going to go to the plain text of scripture that actually address the issue of homosexuality.

01:04:59

Not transgenderism, because it's not addressed outside of Matthew 19, which we didn't bother to read anyways, did we?

01:05:06

No. So, here we go. The inclusion of sexual and gender minorities that I've been talking about.

01:05:12

Namely, the six verses, three in the Old Testament and three in the New, that seem to prohibit homosexual behavior.

01:05:18

Seem to. Walking through each of those would be a whole other sermon. So I'm going to summarize the two major viewpoints and I'm going to tell you what

01:05:23

I believe. So, this is supposed to be biblical. We've had precious little

01:05:29

Bible and what Bible has been presented has been twisted in a way that would even make a

01:05:34

Jehovah's Witness stutter. And so, now we're not really going to look at these texts.

01:05:42

No, we don't want to. You don't want to actually interpret them in context, do things like that.

01:05:49

No. We're just going to summarize the two views on these things.

01:05:56

As if that has some kind of meaning. Again, my goal is not to make you think like I think on this issue or really any other issue.

01:06:04

I am a flawed human being with my own biases like all of you. However, I have spent the last decade studying this and reading everything

01:06:12

I get my hands on about it from people from all over the theological spectrum. And I want to share what I learned and I want to be open about what

01:06:18

I believe. So, I've been studying this for a decade so you can trust what

01:06:24

I have to say. Wow, have I heard that one before. Two major viewpoints when interpreting these six verses.

01:06:32

The first is called non -affirming theology. This is the belief simply that scripture forbids homosexual behavior.

01:06:38

Now, even a lot of non -affirming people don't ascribe to the three Old Testament verses. That's because one is about Sodom and Gomorrah, a really bizarre story about a group of men forcing themselves on angels.

01:06:52

Now, we've gone over these things before. And we've addressed all of them in our rebuttals of David Gushy and so on and so forth.

01:07:05

Well, in fact, I'm pretty certain. Didn't we create a playlist that had them? I seem to recall we did once.

01:07:12

We need to. If we haven't, we need to create a playlist that we'll put all of them together. Or maybe we all put them into a single file.

01:07:20

Need to find out. Need to find out. Because the Matthew Vines was five hours.

01:07:26

Gushy was six hours. This is going to end up being around four hours if I get done today.

01:07:31

I'm trying to. I'm literally rushing. Um, and I think that all needs to be available to people.

01:07:38

We've put a lot of effort into it. Um, but this.

01:07:47

That's why I linked. That's what started this, is I linked. Because he said to somebody else, well, why don't you respond to all the things

01:07:53

I said? And so I linked to the sermon that I preached on Genesis 18 and 19.

01:08:01

I wrote the chapter in the same -sex controversy. Um, on Sodom and Gomorrah and its interpretation in the

01:08:10

New Testament. And so that's sort of what started all this stuff.

01:08:16

But notice he keeps saying, and he says this over and over again. The thing's bothering me for a moment.

01:08:22

He says this over and over again. This can't have anything to do with loving homosexual relationships.

01:08:28

Because these men wanted to rape angels. And I tweeted him. He ignored it.

01:08:34

They always pick and choose. But I tweeted to him recently. I pointed out that the text itself says, the men said to Lot, bring out the men.

01:08:50

The Greek Septuagint uses Andrus there. Um, it's technically the males.

01:08:56

Bring out the men who came to you. Not the angels. They didn't know they were angels. But he keeps saying this.

01:09:03

And that's how he gets around Jude. Because it talks about strange flesh. He said, yeah, they wanted, they wanted to have sex with angels.

01:09:10

It's absurd. That's absurd. It was the men of Sodom that surround the house.

01:09:19

They wanted to Yadah, to know them. That was to engage in sexual relationships with them.

01:09:25

And Lot called it evil. And when they did, they tried to get him. And that's when the angels, that they didn't know were angels, struck them blind.

01:09:33

And they still didn't give up. They still tried to find the door.

01:09:40

Even when they were struck blind. Which is one of the most amazing elements of that particular story. But notice the surface level dismissal.

01:09:48

Just, oh, it's a strange story. They just wanted to, with angels, who knows what that means.

01:09:54

That's how you get rid of this stuff. That's not how you treat the Old Testament text. Again, the man's an antinomian.

01:10:01

And not, not that Genesis 18, 19 is namas specifically, but his view of the

01:10:06

Old Testament is astonishingly bad. The other two are in the Levitical law, which

01:10:11

Christians don't abide by. It includes commands like don't eat pork and don't cut your sideburns and don't mix your fabrics and stuff like that.

01:10:17

Okay, that took what, about 15 seconds? That was the most surface level, absurd, ridiculous.

01:10:28

Again, I need to bring up thesaurus .com to come up with more terms. That's in the

01:10:35

Levitical law. That's as bad as when David Gushie, and I was sitting right here. I think

01:10:41

I was sitting in the same seat. We got to replace this chair. It's worn out. But I may have been sitting in this very same chair.

01:10:50

When David Gushie made the statement toward the end of his presentation at Matthew Vine's Reformation thing.

01:10:56

I think it was the second year. Anyway, one of the two. He made the statement, we don't need to be quoting from Leviticus.

01:11:04

We need to be like Jesus who said, love your neighbor. Which of course is a quotation from Leviticus.

01:11:15

Right in the middle of the Holiness Code, in fact, is where that is derived. I just about fell off this chair when he said that.

01:11:23

That's the stupidity of this stuff.

01:11:28

That's why you can't debate this stuff. You make statements like that. I don't care if you stop and go for a moment of silence and put your head down and do the emotional thing.

01:11:38

Doesn't work with me. Not going to stop me from pointing out that you just face planted.

01:11:47

That's why they won't debate this. Because they can't. You see, he's not even going to touch.

01:11:54

He's not even going to try to make his people aware of the fact that it's those two texts in Leviticus that nobody believes anymore.

01:12:02

So you don't have to worry about the stuff about honoring your parents and stuff about paying people what they're due. And, you know, all that.

01:12:07

Oh, we don't have to worry about any of those types of things. Pure antinomian. He doesn't have any more of a view of the law that Jesus or Paul had than man on the moon.

01:12:18

Pure antinomian. But he's not going to tell his people. That it's the

01:12:24

Apostle Paul that referred to people as arsenekoitai.

01:12:31

And those two terms come from the Greek septuagint at Leviticus 18 and Leviticus 20.

01:12:37

He's not going to tell them that. Because that, well, that would hitch the Old Testament and the

01:12:43

New Testament. We know somebody else has been unhitching things recently too, right? Ends up with the same rhetoric and the same false teaching.

01:12:51

But non -affirming people interpret the three New Testament verses at face value. Most popular of these verses is in Paul's letters to the church in Corinth.

01:12:59

He says this. Do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived. Neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor men who practice homosexuality, nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God.

01:13:16

I don't know if that's the most popular of the three. I would think Romans 1 would probably be the one you'd want to focus on, given how blatant and obvious it is.

01:13:28

Yes, this is the one I focused on because when I was dealing with side B Christianity, so I could point out the range of sins there, which included, nor the greedy, that's covetous.

01:13:43

That's an attitude in dealing with side B, Dr. Gregory Coles. But the others in 1

01:13:50

Timothy, and the 1 Timothy chapter 1 one is extremely important because there Paul follows the

01:13:57

Ten Commandments, and he expands do not commit adultery with homosexuality.

01:14:04

So he interprets one of the Ten Commandments. I guess he doesn't have the

01:14:12

Ten Commandments anymore. Zach Lambert, I suppose. Um, he interprets the

01:14:17

Ten Commandments as including homosexuality under the sexuality aspect.

01:14:25

So, you know, but he's still not even going to touch what this one really means because he's quoting from the ESV here.

01:14:31

Men who practice homosexuality. Well, actually, it's Ars Inquieta and the term for effeminate.

01:14:45

And so most translations keep them separate, but the ESV has decided that that's the male, the dominant, and the recessive.

01:14:54

The penetrating and the penetrated in a male homosexual relationship. Which, again, the only way you get to that is to recognize the

01:15:05

Old Testament background. Which he just laughingly dismissed. And he says he spent 10 years studying this.

01:15:14

Well, I would think after 10 years of studying this, you'd have some devastatingly strong arguments to make.

01:15:20

There are none! And he knows it. Gushy knows it.

01:15:26

They all know it. Vines knows it. That's why he won't debate. They all know it.

01:15:33

They're well aware of it. I looked at this verse with a lesbian one time. She was like, I'm off the hook.

01:15:44

Maybe that's why he didn't do Romans 1? Because that's specifically mentioned there?

01:15:51

I don't know. Non -affirming theology looks at a verse like this and it says very simply, this is a list of bad things that we aren't supposed to do.

01:16:00

Homosexuality is on this list. And so homosexuality must be a bad thing that we're not supposed to do. Which makes sense.

01:16:05

And it's the way that this passage has been historically and traditionally interpreted. Good! I am glad to hear something true coming from this man's mouth.

01:16:15

Now he's going to turn around and try to undercut this. He's going to turn around and say, historically that's how it's been understood, but we are so much smarter now.

01:16:26

We know so much better now. But at least he's acknowledging that's how

01:16:32

Christians have always understood this. Yeah, that's true. It's also worth pointing out that there are some

01:16:38

LGBTQ plus people who hold non -affirming theology and choose to practice celibacy because they believe that that's

01:16:44

God's best for them. Side B. So that's Gregory Culls. That's the debate we just did in Mannheim, Pennsylvania last month.

01:16:52

As you can probably guess, the opposite of non -affirming theology is affirming theology. This is simply the belief that scripture does not forbid homosexual behavior.

01:17:01

The foundational belief of affirming theology is that the homosexuality forbidden in scripture is not the same thing as the loving, equitable same -sex relationships we see today.

01:17:13

So again, nothing new here. I have said repeatedly on this program that what we have seen developing, and it was already in existence in 2001 when the same -sex controversy came out, but it has really become the predominant argumentation now, is that, oh, yeah, those texts are talking about something other than my homosexuality.

01:17:47

And so normally the argument is it has to do with power structures and abusive situations and things like that.

01:17:57

But it doesn't have to do with my loving, monogamous, he just used equitable.

01:18:03

That's an interesting one. But we now have homosexual relationships they didn't have back then, which of course is so laughably absurd that it only works as long as you don't debate it, as long as you don't bring it out.

01:18:18

Because there were obviously long -term relationships in the ancient world.

01:18:24

People knew about them. Plato knew about them for crying out loud. Well, Paul didn't know.

01:18:30

But yes, he did. You don't think that that existed in Tarsus? Really?

01:18:36

Are you that naive? Anyway, well, nobody knew about it back then.

01:18:42

They did. And it didn't matter to the church. It didn't matter to the church.

01:18:51

Because that, because the point is when you describe, and this is what has been a lot of the

01:19:00

Twitter conversation. When you hear these kinds of people talking about loving, they're not defining it the way

01:19:12

God defines it. God's love left his son dead and bloodied on a tree.

01:19:22

God's law demanded that because God's law represents God's holy nature.

01:19:31

And when you come along and decide, I don't care about any of that stuff. I'm going to define loving the way

01:19:36

I want to define loving. You're no longer talking about anything that's even remotely connected to Christianity.

01:19:44

And we live in a day where sadly, most evangelicals, partly because we don't have a thoroughly biblical doctrine of the atonement, we don't know how

01:19:57

Hebrews defines that for us. We don't recognize what

01:20:03

I've said. And again, we could look at the transcripts thing to see when I first said it. Well, at least since 98.

01:20:10

But I have said for decades that if you look at the cross, if you do not see the wrath of God, you're not looking at the cross.

01:20:18

And you're never going to see the depth of the love of God in the cross until you see the wrath of God in the cross.

01:20:26

And these are people that God has no wrath. There is, you know,

01:20:32

I cannot even begin to imagine that this man holds the penal substitutionary atonement.

01:20:38

I just can't imagine that he does. And that's why you see progressivism just frothing at the mouth in detestation of things like penal substitutionary atonement.

01:20:52

It is detested. And so, it is a complete canard, biblically, to reject scripture's ability to define loving, but then use it as the lens, your lens, your definition of loving as the lens through which to read scripture.

01:21:17

Okay, that's no different than the cults to come up with their extra books of scripture or anything else.

01:21:24

So, when you talk about a loving relationship, the question for any Christian should be, is it loving by God's standard?

01:21:33

Did God define it as loving? And two men in a sexual relationship is not loving, that's abusive.

01:21:40

It's narcissistic and abusive. That's the biblical truth.

01:21:50

So, this whole idea, well, it can't, it's, that's not my homosexuality being discussed there.

01:21:57

What sin can you not do that with? That's not my gluttony being discussed there. That's not my covetousness being discussed there.

01:22:04

That's not my thievery being discussed there. That's easy to do with everything. And that's why you need the spirit of God to make someone repentant.

01:22:15

And if you're not, if you're not willing to allow scripture to define what repentance is and what sin is.

01:22:25

Yes, sir. I do find it a little trickery in the words that he's using here.

01:22:30

And there are, the whole movement uses the word affirming theology here. The belief that scripture does not forbid homosexual behavior.

01:22:38

That's not affirming. That's ambivalent. Scripture is neither ambivalent nor affirming of this.

01:22:45

But if the way in which he's describing it, the word affirming doesn't, it's not affirming.

01:22:53

And his definition isn't affirming. It's, it's ambivalence is what he's trying to go for, but he can't go for ambivalence.

01:23:01

He has to go for affirming. No, the utilization of affirming and non -affirming is affirming the acceptability of homosexual and LGBTQ lifestyles within the church.

01:23:17

That's the whole point is, is that's what affirming means to them. You're affirming these folks in their continued rebellion.

01:23:25

I mean, that's just all there is to it. Instead, the homosexuality that Paul was talking about is about power and abuse and unrestrained lust.

01:23:33

Because in the patriarchal culture of the first century, men had all the power. That's why it says men who have sex with other men or practice homosexuality.

01:23:41

So these patriarchal men, right, they could have sex with their wives, male and female prostitutes, even male and female slaves without any ramifications.

01:23:50

There were also pagan temples like the temple of Aphrodite in the city of Corinth, where Paul wrote that letter that were famous for encouraging sex as a form of worship.

01:24:00

These temples often kept both adults and children as sex slaves. So affirming theology claims those things are what scripture is condemning.

01:24:10

They argue that monogamous same -sex relationships, they didn't exist in the biblical world. And that's historically accurate.

01:24:15

Even most non -affirming scholars would concede that point, but they would still argue homosexuality of any type is still forbidden.

01:24:21

Okay, that's, again, just completely untrue. Completely untrue.

01:24:27

There's all sorts of references to long -term homosexual relationships in the ancient world.

01:24:35

But man, of course, the vast majority of societies recognized that to confuse that with marriage meant the end of a society.

01:24:44

Because especially in those days, there are so few people on the planet that if you short -circuit the only way you can get people, which is a heterosexual union, that society is going to collapse.

01:25:00

But no, it was well known that there were people who were partnered with somebody their entire life.

01:25:08

That doesn't make it loving. The point is, if this man were exercising any kind of Christian discernment at all, which he doesn't, if he were to do that, then the question would be when

01:25:23

Scripture addresses these things in the entire, not just the negative, homosexuals, if you lay with a man as with a woman, it's an abomination to God.

01:25:36

That's what lies behind Ars Inquietes, 1 Corinthians 6. That should be the key issue. He's not even touching it because he can't, because he knows he can't.

01:25:44

He knows that if he uses the same hermeneutic here, that we would use the resurrection and prophecies in regards to that, and make the connections between the language of the

01:25:57

Greek Septuagint and the Greek New Testament, he knows what the result would be. So we won't go there. It's deceptive.

01:26:02

It's false. It's what a wolf does. It's what a false teacher does. That's what we're watching here.

01:26:09

So he can't go there. He can't do that. If you allow not just the negative, but all the positive teaching about what marriage is and what

01:26:20

God's intention is, you can't even start to try to shoehorn this, well, it's not my homosexuality.

01:26:27

It's that bad homosexuality. Mine's the good homosexuality idea into the text.

01:26:33

You can't do it. It's not possible. Affirming theology also points to the fact that the word homosexuality did not appear in the

01:26:42

English translation of any Bible until 1946. And here we come with the 1946 movie.

01:26:49

I was amazed when I got to this point. I have been teaching

01:26:56

Greek and Hebrew for decades. And I've been reading

01:27:01

Greek and Hebrew for decades. And those aren't the only languages I've studied.

01:27:08

So I know a little something about linguistics. And anytime

01:27:15

I hear someone arguing this point, I just want to scream.

01:27:22

Can you be that stupid? We know what arsenequoites means.

01:27:30

We know what it means. And this is one of the most surface level, absurd, ridiculous ways of trying to cast confusion.

01:27:42

Because all sorts of terms have been used. Sodomites and buggers and all sorts of other terms like that have been used down through history.

01:27:53

What English word you use is irrelevant to the fact that we know that arsenequoites is what men do with men in bed.

01:28:09

There isn't a question about this. Come up with whatever terminology you want.

01:28:16

If a man lies the man as you lie with a woman, it's an abomination.

01:28:25

Period. End of discussion. But not for these folks because they don't believe it.

01:28:32

They don't believe it. So you got to come up with something. So, well, you know, the RSV in 1946 and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

01:28:39

And it's just, it's pure baloney. And that's why the 1946 movie people will never debate it.

01:28:46

We said as soon as we saw about, hey, looking forward to debate y 'all on that type of stuff.

01:28:52

And I haven't even seen the movie. I thought it was coming out last year. It's just making the rounds of,

01:28:58

I don't know, cafes someplace or something. Is that year for the first time, the committee translating the revised standard edition made the decision to combine two

01:29:08

Greek words into the English word homosexuality. In that passage from first Corinthians, we just looked at.

01:29:14

Previously had been translated things like abusers of themselves with mankind or even effeminate.

01:29:21

And not long after the Bible was published, a letter was sent to the RSV committee disputing this translation of first Corinthians six.

01:29:28

And Dr. Luther Weigel, the head of the committee, he wrote a letter back acknowledging their mistake and committing to correct the error.

01:29:36

But homosexuality wasn't officially changed to the more accurate sexual perversions until the next revision, 1971.

01:29:44

And after 25 years, a lot of damage was done. So for 20, first of all, just to point something out, the

01:29:54

RSV was done by the National Council of Churches. And I remember my dad was like, don't touch those 10 foot pole.

01:30:03

So it was not amongst the conservatives that the RSV was being used. So I guess you'd have to theorize.

01:30:10

Well, once it was in the RSV, then the conservative translations borrowed from the non -conservative translations or something along those lines.

01:30:21

I don't know. The fact is, folks, if you just look at what the lexical sources say, there isn't any question about what this means.

01:30:31

There really isn't. And to try to say there is, is to absolutely overthrow any possible way of knowing what the

01:30:40

Bible says about anything, really. And then again, I imagine some of these folks wouldn't mind if they did just that.

01:30:46

Homosexuality had been picked up by other translations and applied to other New Testament verses too. Now, if you want to learn more about this, there's an upcoming documentary called 1946 that tells this story.

01:30:56

Kathy Baldock, who wrote this book, helped with a lot of the research on it. Which explains a lot, because I've read that book and it's horrifically bad.

01:31:05

So that's a quick overview of both affirming and non -affirming theology. There it is, folks.

01:31:11

That, that's it. That's it. That's it. All the information from Leviticus and all.

01:31:19

Romans 1, man. Woo! Out the, whoa! Paul's, Paul puts it into the

01:31:26

Ten Commandments. It's laughable.

01:31:33

It's laughable. To even pretend that you've summarized anything mean.

01:31:39

I've studied this for 10 years. Well, what a waste of time. What a waste of time.

01:31:49

It is no wonder that Zack Lambert will not defend his publicly made statements in public debate.

01:31:55

Because it is painfully obvious that he never could. Because what he's saying is so obviously false.

01:32:05

Now, there was a time in my life when I found the non -affirming arguments to be convincing. But that is no longer the case.

01:32:12

To be very honest with you all, I'm not exactly sure when it happened. It wasn't like a switch that flipped.

01:32:19

It was more like a dam that slowly developed cracks until the whole thing gave way.

01:32:26

And you know what? If that process continues, there's no reason for this man to continue to even pretend to be a

01:32:34

Christian. There isn't. Because the interpretive, well, it's not even interpretive methodology.

01:32:43

The agnosticism he just expressed about that means he could never defend the deity of Christ.

01:32:49

He can never defend the resurrection. He can't defend anything. You can use what he just did with sexual sin to redefine every other sin, the need for atonement, all of it just gone.

01:33:05

And that's exactly what has happened with so many people. So many people just they go the honest route.

01:33:12

Says, I don't believe any of this anymore. I'm out. There you go. There you go.

01:33:18

See, the cracks started forming when I met LGBTQ plus folks who deeply loved and pursued God. And the cracks got bigger when

01:33:26

I met queer Christians who had suffered through the horrors of conversion therapy but still followed Jesus. And they got even bigger when

01:33:34

I met people right here at Restore who'd been kicked out of churches because of their sexual orientation and gender identity.

01:33:39

And yet they still wanted to be a part of a church family. And then when

01:33:46

I began to dig deeply into Scripture, the dam burst. Zach, what you just presented to us is not digging deeply into Scripture on anything.

01:33:58

And I can't believe that you really believe your own words. I mean, that's a level of self -deception that's amazing.

01:34:04

You know better. You know better. I began to apply the same exegetical and interpretive approach to the six passages about homosexuality that I do with everything else in Scripture.

01:34:18

I began asking questions about context and culture and language. And when I did, I came to the conclusion that the homosexuality being forbidden in the

01:34:26

Bible bears no resemblance to the loving monogamous spirit -filled same -sex relationships of my queer siblings.

01:34:34

Did you catch that? That's important because that's... When you get to that point, when you actually deceive yourself to the point of saying that the exegetical methodology that I've used to turn these passages on their head...

01:34:49

And he didn't even bother to go to Romans 1 because he can't. He knows he can't. Oh, I'm sure he's read all sorts.

01:34:55

He's read Brownson. He's read everybody. Oh, it's Stoic philosophy. It's Bologna. And he knows it.

01:35:01

That is not the methodology you use for the resurrection. And that's why you will not debate me in Austin, even though I will come to your church to debate you.

01:35:12

At no cost to you. You won't do it because you know it's not the same exegetical methodology.

01:35:19

You know it. Why lie to your people? Shame on you. Shame on you. I do not believe that same -sex relationships are inherently sinful.

01:35:27

Now, they can be, but in the same way a heterosexual relationship can be. When there isn't respect or equality or Christ -centered love in the middle of it.

01:35:37

I believe that God desires for any relationship, heterosexual or homosexual, to be covenantal and monogamous.

01:35:44

I think that's his best for us. And let me add a quick but important side note. How would you even defend covenantal in that?

01:35:52

How would you even define it? How would you even define covenantal there? I can't imagine.

01:35:59

I can't imagine. But what I can say is the only way you could do that would result in your inability to define any other relationship, including a son and his mother, as anything but covenantal.

01:36:13

You've abandoned any meaningful hermeneutic. I don't believe heterosexual or homosexual marriage is a necessary part of life.

01:36:21

Singleness is good and it is beautiful. And single people are not incomplete.

01:36:27

They do not reflect any less of God's image or fulfill any less of God's mission without a spouse or a partner.

01:36:34

Okay, back to sexual and gender minorities. I really like the way David Gushy says it in this book called

01:36:41

Changing Our Mind. He says, if what we're talking about is blessing and anything goes ethic in a morally libertine culture,

01:36:47

I stand utterly opposed as I have throughout my entire career. But if what we're talking about is carving out space for serious, committed

01:36:53

Christians who happen to be gay or lesbian to participate in society as equals, in church as kin, and in the blessings and demands of covenant on the same terms as everyone else,

01:37:03

I now think that has nothing to do with the cultural, ecclesial, and moral decline and everything to do with treating people the way

01:37:10

Christ did. I don't believe any of what I just said in spite of Jesus in Scripture.

01:37:16

I believe it because of them. And I believe it because of the rotten fruit I've seen come out of marginalizing and excluding the queer community.

01:37:24

And I believe it because of the Christ -like fruit I've seen come from empowering LGBTQ folks to follow

01:37:31

Jesus with their whole selves. How do you follow Jesus when you have no standard from him to follow?

01:37:38

It just becomes you creating a Jesus in your image, and you just do what feels right for you.

01:37:44

There's no way to even talk about holiness, repentance, sanctification.

01:37:51

You've gotten rid of all of it. You've destroyed it. So how do you even do that?

01:37:57

Why even talk about it? Again, sometimes left without words.

01:38:04

Again, I'm not trying to get you to come to the same conclusions that I have. You can interpret Scripture, actually, in a more traditional or non -affirming way and still be fully inclusive.

01:38:13

We actually do this all the time. The best example is with divorce. See, the Bible talks a lot about divorce, including the very direct words from Jesus we read earlier.

01:38:23

But Christians are far from unified about when it's okay and when it's not. In fact, I bet if you asked everyone here their perspective on divorce, you would get as many opinions as there are people.

01:38:34

And yet, we do not feel the need to force our opinion on others. And we certainly don't feel the need to exclude or marginalize someone who's been divorced.

01:38:43

What a horrific, horrifically bad example. He's already done this before on the last program we talked about it.

01:38:51

But they both have to do with human relationships. But we're not talking about the

01:38:59

Bible says this is an abomination. The Bible says divorce is wrong.

01:39:07

But it is a breaking of a covenant. This is not even put in that category in Scripture.

01:39:14

You're mixing categories horrifically. You say, well, see, we can get along this way.

01:39:19

You can be fully affirming. No, you can't. Because to be fully affirming is to fundamentally say that what

01:39:25

Scripture says about this human behavior is no longer relevant to us. It has no meaning at all.

01:39:33

Oh, well, you know, if it's abusive, where do you get that from? Oh, well, if it's not covenantal, you can't define covenant in your system.

01:39:42

You're making it all up as you're going along. That's all you're doing. Even in a way that might confuse us.

01:39:49

In the same way, interpreting the Bible in a way that leads to non -affirming theology is not inherently homophobic or transphobic.

01:39:58

I'm going to say this again. This is very important. In the same way, interpreting the Bible in a way that leads to non -affirming theology is not inherently homophobic or transphobic.

01:40:07

But for here's the but here's here. You might say, oh, we're hearing something we can actually agree with.

01:40:12

Hold on. Seeing LGBTQ plus people to adhere to a non -affirming theology in order to fully participate in the life of the church is.

01:40:21

Okay, so if you call for repentance, that's bad. So it sounded for a second.

01:40:28

Oh, oh, and then oh. So you have to have a church that has no meaningful understanding of how you define sin.

01:40:39

You can't have standards as standards. Because homosexuality is inherent.

01:40:46

It's the way God made them. That's a positive. Notice he's not even pretended to make a biblical case for that.

01:40:52

He's just assumed it and read it in over and over and over and over and over again. That makes sense.

01:40:59

You nod with me. Okay. Thanks for clapping. That's nice. That is why we are fully committed to full inclusion.

01:41:10

We join with God and the First Church in the rejection of discrimination against sexual and gender minorities and the full inclusion of LGBTQ plus folks in both

01:41:21

God's family and in our family here at Restore. So I'm going to close with a message I got this week from a gay member of our church.

01:41:29

It's a beautiful example of what that Christ -like fruit looks like that comes.

01:41:34

Hopefully, I don't have to stop. We're almost done. We're going to get to wrap this up on time.

01:41:40

But what you just heard is a conclusion. Hopefully, we have demonstrated, had nothing to do with what

01:41:48

Jesus taught, had nothing to do with what the early church did. It's totally against what the church has believed historically. It is an abuse of scripture.

01:41:59

Hopefully, you hear the summary and just go, wow. How did anyone sit through that?

01:42:07

Celebrating, embracing, including our LGBTQ plus siblings. This is shared with permission.

01:42:13

He said, my mind seriously couldn't comprehend a world where I could be gay and a part of a religious community.

01:42:20

I had shut myself off from even entertaining it as a possibility. God's love finds a way through, and I was able to find my way back to him through your demonstration of his love.

01:42:32

I found he never left and was simply patiently waiting for me the whole time. The love.

01:42:39

So just so you know, when you have made a presentation that has no actual logical or rational substance to it, the only way to try to have it have a lasting impact upon the audience is to leave them with emotion.

01:42:58

Leave them with emotion. And that's what this is about. Because if anyone were to actually examine what you said, you don't find anything substantive there.

01:43:08

So what you do is you emotionalize. You did it at the beginning.

01:43:13

You finish that way. That minimizes critical examination. Works real well in Western culture today.

01:43:21

Sadly. Receive at restore is why I'm able to share that same love with others. Your love is baffling.

01:43:28

God's love is baffling. And my motto lately is that I want to love in a way that baffles.

01:43:36

Stories like that are why we are so committed to this hard but important work.

01:43:43

And we believe it's how Jesus has confirmed again and again that this is what he has asked us to do and who he has asked us to be.

01:43:53

I'm going to pray. Okay. We played the entirety of it.

01:44:00

You cannot accuse us of out of context citation. We allowed him to define his terms.

01:44:11

Unlike the other side, which never does anything like this. When we respond to Matthew Vines, we played the entire presentation.

01:44:19

We responded to David Gusher, we played the entire presentation. Now we respond to Zach Lambert, we played the entire presentation. We gave it all to you.

01:44:28

And demonstrated the bankruptcy of every single one. The bankruptcy of every single one.

01:44:36

And now you have to take that information and you have to use it because this is taking over entire supposed churches.

01:44:48

Not good sound churches, but there are churches that should know better. That are giving a place to this kind of expression.

01:45:00

And you may encounter true Christians who have bought into the lies of the

01:45:07

Zach Lamberts and the Matthew Vines and the David Gushers of the world. Now I've been blunt.

01:45:17

I've had to be blunt in my expression of astonishment at the twisting of scripture.

01:45:25

You don't have to be as blunt in a personal conversation at Starbucks because you don't want to end up getting arrested for fistfights and things like that.

01:45:36

There's obviously different contexts. There's never room for compromise.

01:45:43

But there's always room for presenting things over time.

01:45:48

Especially in relationships with people where you have those relationships. Let me conclude with what

01:45:56

I concluded with in the debate in Mannheim. When I was dealing with someone who's not affirming in that sense.

01:46:03

Anyways, the side B perspective. Doesn't matter whether you take side

01:46:09

A, side B. Whatever you do with 1

01:46:15

Corinthians 6, what he didn't read is what we need to read.

01:46:22

Because what came after 1 Corinthians 6 is, and such were some of you.

01:46:29

Not such are some of you. I just realized that. I didn't even think about that when the quote was up.

01:46:35

He didn't read this part. Such were some of you. Not such are some of you. Now I know how you'd get around it.

01:46:42

That's the way they all get around it. That's not my sexuality. But you see the message of 1

01:46:48

Corinthians 6, 11 is that there is redemption. There is forgiveness.

01:46:53

There is freedom from that which is destructive of the image of God within us.

01:47:01

Homosexuality, transgenderism, all of the LGBTQ alphabet soup is rebellion against God's right to say, this is how

01:47:11

I made you. This is how you're to live. The beauty of 1

01:47:18

Corinthians 6, 11 is there is freedom. But you see, the

01:47:25

Zach Lamberts of the world steal that and say, just stay the way you are.

01:47:31

And redefine words and redefine Jesus to make yourself feel better. That's not loving.

01:47:38

It's destructive. We stand against it and have exposed it in this series.

01:47:44

So I hope that is useful to you. Thank you for listening to it. And please use it in such a way as to honor and glorify

01:47:54

God as you speak his truth while we still have the freedom to do so. Thanks for watching the program today.