March 21, 2024 Show with Dr. Matthew P. W. Roberts on “Pride: Identity & the Worship of Self”

Iron Sharpens Iron

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March 22, 2024

00:03: Live from historic downtown Carlisle, Pennsylvania, home of founding father James Wilson, 19th century hymn writer
00:11: George Duffield, 19th century gospel minister George Norcross, and sports legend
00:16: Jim Thorpe. It's Iron Sharpens Iron. This is a radio platform in which pastors,
00:23: Christian scholars, and theologians address the burning issues facing the church and the world today.
00:31: Proverbs chapter 27 verse 17 tells us iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another.
00:38: Matthew Henry said that in this passage, we are cautioned to take heed with whom we converse and directed to have a view in conversation to make one another wiser and better.
00:50: It is our hope that this goal will be accomplished over the next two hours, and we hope to hear from you, the listener, with your own questions.
00:57: And now, here's your host, Chris Arnzen. Good afternoon,
01:10: Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, Lake City, Florida, and the rest of humanity living on the planet
01:15: Earth who are listening via live streaming at ironsharpensironradio .com.
01:20: This is Chris Arnzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, wishing you all a happy Thursday on this 21st day of March 2024.
01:31: I'm thrilled to have both a first -time guest and a friend who has been on the program before who is going to be serving as our co -host today.
01:43: The first -time guest of whom I speak is Matthew P .W.
01:49: Roberts, who is the minister of Trinity Church, York, England, a congregation of the
01:56: International Presbyterian Church denomination. He has a Ph .D. in systematic theology from Westminster Seminary, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and has served as moderator of synod and chair of church planning for the
02:11: International Presbyterian Church denomination, also known as the IPC. He is married to Kate, and they now have three teenage children.
02:20: It's my honor and privilege to welcome you for the very first time ever to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, Pastor Matthew P .W.
02:27: Roberts. Thank you very much. I'm very pleased to be with you,
02:33: Chris. Thank you very much for inviting me. Oh, the pleasure is all mine, brother. And we are going to be discussing today the book
02:41: Pride, Identity and the Worship of Self, written by Pastor Matthew P .W.
02:48: Roberts, published by Christian Focus Publications. And the reason
02:53: I even know about this book is because my very dear friend, Pastor David Monreal of the
03:00: Carlisle Alliance Church, which is just about five minutes from where I'm sitting in the studio, we met,
03:09: Pastor David and I, at a Banner of Truth conference a number of years ago and instantly became fast friends, as they say.
03:16: And I've been so blessed by his friendship, and I am so thrilled that he has highly recommended the book we are discussing today.
03:26: And welcome back to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, Pastor David Monreal. Well, thank you very much.
03:35: It is my honor and my pleasure to be here and could not be here to talk about a better book and discuss a very important topic.
03:46: Well, the first thing I want Pastor Roberts to do is please explain in further detail than I already did something about Trinity Church of York, England.
04:01: With pleasure. There aren't very many Presbyterian churches in England. There's plenty in Scotland and Ireland, but England is a little bit different.
04:10: And so most Presbyterian churches that you will find in England have been planted in the last 20 years, and ours, that is true of ours as well.
04:21: I was sent to York by our presbytery in 2009, and I came with my young family, and that was it.
04:31: And so we started a church. Initially, we held services in our living room, in our house, until we had too many people, and then we moved out.
04:41: But we're a fairly normal Presbyterian church, I think. We're now a little bit bigger. We're not just five of us.
04:47: We're normally about 140 or so on a Sunday morning. In England, that's a medium -sized church.
04:54: There aren't too many churches that are much bigger than that. And we're very privileged to meet together week by week and worship the
05:03: Lord. Well, here in the United States, that would be considered a medium -to -large -size
05:10: Reformed church, especially a confessionally Reformed church. You don't typically have—other than PCA congregations, perhaps, you typically don't have
05:20: Reformed congregations from the OPC, let's say, or the confessional
05:28: Reformed Baptist groups. You typically don't have congregations much larger than that.
05:34: I think the church where I am a member, Grace Baptist Church of Carlisle, Pennsylvania, perhaps has a little less than 300 on a
05:42: Sunday morning, but obviously those are not all members. And so it's not an unusual circumstance, the size of your congregation.
05:51: And is there anything unique about the IPC that would set itself apart from denominations like the
05:59: Orthodox Presbyterian Church, like the Presbyterian Church in America, and other more, perhaps, well -known
06:07: Presbyterian denominations? Yes, theologically, not a lot, really.
06:13: We were founded by Francis Schaeffer originally back in the 1950s.
06:21: It was sort of the fruit of his evangelistic ministry in Europe, was that as he founded his
06:29: Labrie centres, a lot of people were being converted and sort of needed churches to go to.
06:35: And as a result, the International Presbyterian Churches sprung up.
06:40: But we remained fairly small, really, for about 50 years, as in really only a handful of congregations.
06:47: But there's been a very, very substantial growth in percentage terms since the turn of the millennium.
06:55: And so now our presbytery, which covers all of Britain, so England and Scotland, and well, we would cover
07:05: Wales. I don't think we have any congregations there at the moment. But we have, we've grown in the time I've been in it from being five congregations when
07:14: I started. We're now 17. That's happened over the last 14 years. And we seem to be regularly starting new churches now.
07:21: We're at a rate of several every year. So we're seeing a lot of growth. We're really blessed and encouraged by that. You asked what's distinct about us.
07:28: Probably what's unusual is that we're not limited to one country.
07:33: We have churches all across Europe, as well as across the UK. And we even have a few churches in South Korea, although that's sort of historical how that came about.
07:45: But we're sort of a reformed denomination, which is spread across Europe.
07:52: But the majority of our churches are in the United Kingdom. Great. Well, if anybody has more interest to explore and discover more about Trinity Church York, England, you can go to their website,
08:08: TrinityChurchYork .org .uk. TrinityChurchYork .org
08:15: .uk. And I'm assuming the reason for the scarcity over the centuries of Presbyterian churches in England is because of the dominance of the
08:26: Anglican Church there. Yes. I mean, there's a sort of slightly amusing backstory to it, which is that King Charles II, who became king after our civil war in the 17th century, he had a schoolmaster who was a
08:41: Presbyterian who he hated. And so when he became king, he decided to be as nasty to Presbyterians as he could be.
08:48: And so basically half of them gave up or became Unitarians or something like that.
08:54: And the other half went to America. So that's you guys over there. Well, you guys are Presbyterians. We came over to you.
09:00: And there weren't that many of us left. But the slightly sadder aspect to it is that there were quite a lot of, there were still a reasonable number of English Presbyterian churches, but they were in the 19th century, they were just overwhelmed by liberalism, really.
09:16: And by the middle of the 20th century, there was really no gospel. Very, very hard to find any gospel in any of them, which is why none of them really existed.
09:26: A number of them merged into what's now called the United Reformed Church. But the word Reformed in there does not mean anything that those of us who really are
09:34: Reformed would recognize these days, which is sad. But the good thing is, is that there's been just a lot of growth recently.
09:42: And it is true that the Church of England has been very broad, but has historically contained a lot of very faithful and fairly
09:51: Reformed people. Yes. But that has become harder and harder in recent years. And sadly, there's been a lot of theological decay in the
10:00: Church of England. And that's probably part of the reason why we and other Orthodox churches are seeing a lot of growth, because the gospel people want to be in churches where the gospel is being preached.
10:13: And obviously, people are converted only in churches where the gospel is being preached. So we're pleased to be used by the
10:20: Lord, but we certainly pray for the church to grow much more in this country. Amen. Amen. And, well, we have a custom here, a tradition on Iron Trip and Zion Radio.
10:31: Whenever we have a first -time guest, such as yourself, we have that guest give a summary of their salvation testimony, which would include any kind of religious atmosphere in which they may have been raised, and what kind of providential circumstances our
10:48: Sovereign Lord raised up in their lives that drew them to Himself and saved them. And I would love to hear your story.
10:56: Very happily. That would be a privilege. I have to start with my parents. My parents are both believers, but that itself is a story.
11:08: My maternal grandfather was a very godly minister, a country minister in the Church of England, but a very good man who faithfully preached the gospel, although he died many, many years before I was born.
11:22: But that meant that my mother grew up in a very strongly Christian, faithful home. My father, on the other hand, was converted to Christ while he was an undergraduate student in the 1950s in Manchester, England.
11:38: But the result of that was that my parents were very committed to teaching us the gospel as children.
11:45: So I grew up with a very, very good knowledge of who the
11:53: Lord is, who God is, why Christ had to die for us, the fact that He rose again, the authority of the
12:00: Scriptures. So I think I was very, very privileged as a child to learn those things.
12:06: For many years, I would have said and believed that I was converted aged 11.
12:15: I remember clearly hearing someone explain the cross at a children's summer camp that I'd been sent on, and I was blown away by the magnitude of Christ's love for me.
12:29: I think the thing that really struck me was that I was responsible,
12:39: I am responsible for Christ's death, as much as the soldiers who drove the nails into his hands and feet, because it was my sins that he died for.
12:48: And I had never appreciated that in all my upbringing. The personal conviction of sin hadn't struck me.
12:56: So that was a very important moment for me, and very definitely was a sort of defining moment in terms of my own commitment to the
13:04: Lord Jesus. I knew from that point onwards that my life had to be devoted to Him, whatever else
13:10: I did. So I'm very grateful for that. But I would look back on it now and say,
13:17: I don't actually think it is true that I didn't love the Lord before that day. I think I don't know—I didn't really know why
13:23: I loved Him, and I didn't fully understand how much I needed His love for me.
13:29: But I think I did, even as quite a young child. I think I had a genuine love for the Lord, as far as I can tell.
13:36: But the Lord knows our hearts, doesn't He, better than we do. Amen. Well, when did you realize—or should
13:41: I say, when did you first discover the doctrines of sovereign grace, also known as the doctrines of Reformed theology or nicknamed
13:50: Calvinism? When did you first discover these teachings and fall in love with them?
14:00: Well, again, I think I need to thank my father for that. Because he taught us to love
14:06: God's Word, and because he made sure that we clearly knew that we had to repent of our sins and that all of our salvation came from Christ.
14:22: I think I sort of instinctively knew that was true. I can't remember the first time that I explicitly encountered the fact that God has, in His mercy, chosen for salvation those whom
14:42: He chooses. I don't remember that, but what I do know is that not only did
14:48: I never find it a problem, I could never see how it would be anything else, because I knew that I was only a believer because of Christ's mercy towards me.
14:59: And so, therefore, to be told, you're only a believer because of Christ's mercy towards you, wasn't a new thing.
15:07: And also, it's just plainly in the Scriptures. So there was never a point at which I kind of discovered it and either rebelled against it or was shocked by it.
15:16: But it was more a process of just sort of seeing things more and more clearly. So I can remember, even while I was still at high school, talking to other
15:27: Christian friends about it. There weren't very many, because there's not that many Christians in England compared to other places.
15:33: And I was always the one who was saying, but the
15:39: Scriptures are clear that God has mercy on whom He will and all salvation is due to Him.
15:46: And it quite clearly says that He has chosen those whom He will save. So I never doubted that was true.
15:55: What certainly is true, though, is that when I went to university, I studied at Cambridge University in the 1990s and spent a lot more time studying
16:07: God's Word there than I had done before, even though I was doing a degree in physics. But I definitely came to grasp that much more deeply and to a much deeper appreciation of the magnitude of grace.
16:23: I was really helped by the writings of J .I. Packer at the time, who is a
16:28: Reformed Anglican. I mean, he wouldn't be Reformed in every way, but in terms of his understanding of the doctrines of grace, he was very clear.
16:35: I found his writings very helpful. Well, now he's very, very Reformed because he's with the
16:41: Lord in entirety. Indeed. He's an enormously influential man.
16:50: Conservative evangelical Christians in England have a huge debt to him. There was definitely a stage in the history of the church in this country where he was one of very, very few people who were doing rigorous theology, but doing it from a starting point of the
17:04: Lordship of Christ and the authority of Scripture. So we're very grateful to God for him.
17:11: Under God, he's been a great blessing to us. And last but not least, according to your testimony, when did you realize that you were convinced that our sovereign
17:22: Lord had placed a call into the pastoral ministry upon your heart? Yes, that's much more sort of definite, really.
17:34: It never occurred to me. I was an enthusiastic Christian as a teenager. When I first left home and went to university,
17:42: I very much wanted to be a faithful Christian and to spread the gospel as much as I could.
17:48: But it never occurred to me that pastoral ministry would be within my gifting or my calling.
17:57: It was at the end of my second year as a student, one of the pastors at my church took me aside and challenged me and said,
18:08: Matthew, I think you should think about this. And I said, don't be ridiculous. It's not what I'm going to do at all.
18:14: I wouldn't be any good at that. And I was quite resistant to it. And he extracted from me a promise that I would at least think and pray about it while I was at home over the long summer vacation.
18:29: And all I can say is, is that the Lord changed my heart and mind. And by the time
18:35: I returned for my final year at university, there was really nothing else I wanted to do.
18:40: And the Lord somehow just convinced me or gave me a passion for preaching the gospel and for teaching the scriptures and spreading the word of God, which just meant
18:56: I found it almost impossible to think of doing anything else. And that's kind of how it's been ever since, really.
19:02: I don't know whether I'd have been any good at anything else. I don't know whether I'm very good at this, but I am. So that would have been around age.
19:10: I must have been around age 20, 21 about then. Great. Even though it was quite a long time before I actually got engaged, before I got ordained.
19:19: It was quite a long time after that till I got ordained. But I think that was when I became convinced. OK, well, before I have my co -host,
19:28: Pastor David Monreal of Carlisle Alliance Church, ask you a question,
19:33: I just wanted to start the ball rolling with why is it that you believed that you should write this book,
19:43: Pride, Identity and the Worship of Self? There have been other books written, some very excellent ones on the themes of our wicked culture and the worship of self and the perversions that have arisen as a result of that, specifically homosexuality.
20:10: Yeah, yeah. It's interesting. It's a very perfect book cover illustration that you have on the cover of Pride.
20:21: Narcissus, is it, that fell in love with his own reflection? That's right. It's Narcissus looking into the pool at his own reflection.
20:30: That's right. Right. But what brought to your mind, you know something,
20:35: I've got to add a volume, even though there's other great things, excellent things out there already in print.
20:42: I've got an ad. I've got to write my own volume to add to the mix, because there are some things that may have not been focused upon enough.
20:55: No pun intended. Christian focused publications. And so tell us about that. What was the original catalyst for you even exploring the idea of writing this book and, in fact, writing it and getting it published?
21:11: Yes, you're absolutely right that there are a lot of excellent books written on the subject of Christian attitudes to sex and marriage and immorality and, of course, on the specific issue, which has been with us for a number of decades of homosexual practice.
21:33: And there are plenty of excellent books that carefully examine scriptures and very clearly demonstrate that God has made us male and female with the intention that one man and one woman should marry and that sexual activity outside of the marriage of one man and one woman is always sin.
21:55: So those things, I think, are very well covered and very grateful to many of the people whom the
22:03: Lord has used to write on those things. But what I wanted to deal with in this book was something which
22:09: I had observed, which is that the arguments about the sinfulness of any form of sexual practice simply don't carry any weight with people who are convinced or just operating with the assumption that what our culture calls identity is a real thing.
22:36: So once people believe that some people are transgender or are gay or lesbian or are any of the other identities that people claim, once people are convinced that is what people are, then the moral argument is over because nothing will persuade someone who is convinced of that.
22:58: And that was an intriguing thing to me. And I realized that that actually carries a huge amount of similarity with the way that the people in the
23:11: Bible who are idolaters, the way that they think about immorality, in that one of the effects of idolatry is that it turns our understanding of morality on its head.
23:27: Worshipping idols makes you think that good things are evil and evil things are good. And more than that, that actually is the purpose of idolatry, that the reason that we invent idols, that we invent false gods, is in order to justify to ourselves the sins that we want to commit.
23:48: And therefore, I just wanted to dig into the reality that the culture we're in is not a culture where people are still basically
23:58: Christian, but they've started doing a lot of bad things. Actually, we've always been in that kind of culture.
24:03: Well, as long as Christianity has been around, because people have always done bad things, however much they've learned the gospel. We're living in a culture where people follow a completely different religion and worship completely different gods.
24:16: And secularism is not an absence of religion. It is a religion. It's a worship of the self.
24:24: And so I wanted to dig into where does the whole
24:30: LGBTQ plus thing come from? Well, it comes from a religious devotion to worshipping the self.
24:37: Yes. And so that's the purpose of the book. Yeah. In fact, Dr. James R. White of Alpha Omega Ministry is a very dear longtime friend of mine.
24:47: He was the first person I ever heard years ago referring to homosexuality, both in its traction and in its consummation of physical activity, that it is, at its core, the worship of self because you are attracted to and pursuing physical sexual relationships with a mirror image when it comes to the biological gender issue.
25:20: And, of course, that is referred to as an abomination in the Scriptures. But when we come back from our first commercial break, which we are entering into now, we're going to have
25:30: Pastor David Monreal of Carlisle Alliance Church ask you some questions.
25:39: He is, to repeat myself, the reason why we're even having this discussion today, because he contacted me and said that this book,
25:50: Pride, Identity, and the Worship of Self, by Matthew Roberts, is a superb book.
25:58: And, in fact, he said it was the very best thing he had ever read on this subject. And so I wanted to make sure that he was included in the discussion.
26:08: And he will be asking you questions. And that's coming up right after this commercial break.
26:14: And if anybody has questions of your own, those of you who are listening, our email address is chrisarnsen at gmail .com.
26:22: C -H -R -I -S -A -R -N -Z -E -N at gmail .com. As always, give us your first name at least, your city and state of residence, and your country of residence if you live outside the
26:34: USA. Please only remain anonymous if your question involves a personal and private matter. And whenever the subject of things related to sexuality are being focused upon on this show, that's very often an area that gives rise to questions that are intensely personal and private.
26:59: So we will honor your request to be anonymous when you submit such questions.
27:06: But if you're asking general questions, general questions about the Bible, general questions about this specific book, worship, please give us your first name at least, city and state of residence, and country of residence if you live outside the
27:21: USA. Don't go away. We'll be right back after these messages. Greetings.
27:38: This is Brian McLaughlin, President of the SecureComm Group and supporter of Chris Arnzen's Iron Shopping Zion radio program.
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28:07: But today, I want to introduce you to my senior pastor, Doug McMasters of New High Park Baptist Church on Long Island.
28:21: Doug McMasters here, former director of pastoral correspondence at Grace to You, the radio ministry of John MacArthur.
28:29: In the film Chariots of Fire, the Olympic gold medalist runner Eric Liddell remarked that he felt
28:34: God's pleasure when he ran. He knew his efforts sprang from the gifts and calling of God.
28:40: I sense that same God -given pleasure when ministering the word and helping others gain a deeper knowledge and love for God.
28:48: That love starts with the wonderful news that the Lord Jesus Christ is a Savior who died for sinners and that God forgives all who come to Him in repentance, trusting solely in Christ to deliver them.
29:00: I would be delighted to have the honor and privilege of ministering to you if you live in the Long Island area or Queens or Brooklyn or the
29:07: Bronx in New York City. For details on New High Park Baptist Church, visit nhpbc .com.
29:17: That's nhpbc .com. You can also call us at 516 -352 -9672.
29:26: That's 516 -352 -9672. That's New High Park Baptist Church, a congregation in love with each other, passionate for Christ, committed to learning and being shaped by God's word and delighting in the gospel of God's sovereign grace.
29:45: God bless you. I'm Pastor Bill Shishko of The Haven, an
29:59: Orthodox Presbyterian church in Comac, Long Island. I hold the Iron Sharpens Iron radio program hosted by my longtime friend and brother,
30:09: Chris Arnzen, in the highest esteem, and I'm thrilled that you're listening today. I'm also delighted that Iron Sharpens Iron is partnering with one of my favorite resources for Reformed Christian literature for decades now,
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31:24: Oh, and make sure that you tell them you heard about them on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio.
31:50: I'm Pastor Keith Allen of Lindbrook Baptist Church, a Christ -centered, gospel -driven church looking to spread the gospel in the southwest portion of Long Island, New York, and play our role in fulfilling the
32:02: Great Commission, supporting and sending for the spread of the gospel to the ends of the earth. We're delighted to be a part of Chris Arnzen's Iron Sharpens Iron Radio advertising family.
32:12: At Lindbrook Baptist Church, we believe the scriptures of the Old and New Testaments to be the inspired
32:18: Word of God, inherent in the original writings, complete as the revelation of God's will for salvation and the supreme and final authority in all matters to which they speak.
32:30: We believe in salvation by grace through faith in Jesus Christ. This salvation is based upon the sovereign grace of God, was purchased by Christ on the cross, and is received through faith alone, apart from any human merit, works, or ritual.
32:47: Salvation in Christ also results in righteous living, good works, and appropriate respect and concern to all who bear
32:55: God's image. If you live near Lindbrook, Long Island, or if you're just passing through on the
33:00: Lord's Day, we'd love to have you come and join us in worship. For details, visit LindbrookBaptist .org.
33:07: That's L -Y -N -BrookBaptist .org. This is Pastor Keith Allen of Lindbrook Baptist Church, reminding you that by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves.
33:19: It is the gift of God, not a result of words, so that no one may boast.
33:25: May the Lord bless you in the knowledge of himself. Hello, I'm Phil Johnson, Executive Director of Grace to You with John MacArthur.
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38:12: Pastor Matthew Roberts, who is the pastor of Trinity Church in York, England.
38:19: We are discussing his book, Pride, Identity, and the Worship of Self. And also we have with us as a co -host today,
38:28: Pastor Dave Monreale of the Carlisle Alliance Church. And please, first of all, tell us,
38:37: Dave, before you ask your own question, why don't you tell us, what was it that struck you?
38:43: What was at the heart of what made you such an enthusiastic promoter, if you will, of this book,
38:52: Pride, that even led you to eagerly recommend it to me? Yeah, definitely.
39:00: I just recently graduated from Westminster Theological Seminary with my doctorate of ministry and pastoral counseling.
39:08: And this was the area of my focus on ministering to people who struggled with same -sex attraction.
39:16: And I was back there just a few months after I graduated for a pastor's conference. And one of the sessions,
39:24: I'd never, wasn't aware of the book or Matthew Roberts, but went to the seminar and was just fascinated by his talk.
39:34: And he mentioned that he had had a book on this topic. And so when I read it,
39:41: I mean, it's the first book I've read that I thought, man, I wish I had this when I was writing my paper, because it was so pastoral in its approach and so biblical in its presentation that it would have been something that I would have just loved to had an opportunity to interact with as I was working on the paper and just addressing some of the things that he brought up in there.
40:10: And so, you know, like you said, I've read many, many books, and this would be the first one that I would recommend on this topic.
40:19: Great. Well, what's your own question to Pastor Roberts? Well, yeah, it's such a big topic.
40:27: And you're coming at it from an angle that I think a lot of evangelical
40:33: Christians don't think of the idea of idolatry and, you know, questions of identity.
40:40: It seems like even within the church, there's a lot of disagreement on that.
40:47: And so I was thinking just to, you know, to begin with, to help the listeners understand where you're coming from as far as explaining identity and how that ties into idolatry.
41:04: Yes. One of the things that I think started me off thinking about this is wherever you go in the world, people identify themselves by their gods.
41:18: It's a pretty standard thing. But if you ask a Muslim, a serious
41:24: Muslim, to describe themselves, then the fact that he or she is a
41:29: Muslim, that is a worshipper of Allah, is right at the top of the list. If you ask a
41:35: Hindu to say, well, who are you really? Then the gods whom that person worships are vital in describing who he or she is.
41:48: And you see that in the scriptures as well. Actually, one of the powerful effects of idolatry is that people describe themselves by their idols.
42:00: So I discuss at one point in the book in Acts 19 when Paul is in Ephesus and there is a riot caused by a perceived insult to the goddess
42:12: Artemis that the preaching of the gospel has caused. But the people of the city shout without stopping for two hours,
42:21: Great is Artemis of the Ephesians. And there's this kind of deep connection between the
42:28: Ephesians' understanding of themselves and their devotion to their goddess. And those two things are kind of connected.
42:34: They're the same thing. And that, I think, is something you can observe in the world.
42:40: But exactly the same thing is going on in our Western culture. But we have tended to miss it because far too much of the time, we are still stuck in this way of thinking that assumes that people in the
42:57: West have no religion. So if they're not Christian and if they're not someone who's a
43:04: Muslim or Hindu or whatever, then they just have no religion. But actually, that isn't true. In the Bible, there is no one who has no religion.
43:11: You all worship something. And so it occurred to me many years ago that this whole thing about having this passionate belief in identity, which is driving everything in the way that modern secular people think, must be connected to an idolatry.
43:34: And of course, there's a good reason why it works that way, because we are supposed to identify ourselves by the one we worship, because we are to worship the one true
43:45: God and we are his images. And so actually what you see happening for people who worship idols, it is something that is a corruption of and a sort of turning upside down and inside out of what is supposed to happen, which is that we worship the true
43:58: God and then we really know who we really are because we're made to be his worshippers. And so that's sort of the background to the whole purpose of the book, is to say that you don't understand what is going on in our culture if you don't realize that we're living in a culture that worships this thing called the self.
44:21: And therefore, whatever you find in yourself, that is who you identify yourself by. That's where this whole thing of having this list of letters that supposedly identify people as being these different categories of people,
44:38: L, G, B, T, Q, I, A, and then the list goes on and on, doesn't it? But it really is the same thing that happens with idolatry everywhere, but we have failed to notice it because in the
44:54: West we've sort of fallen for this idea that you can have no religion, but no one has no religion. You're worshiping something, and the
45:01: Western religion is to worship yourself. Yes, as Bob Dylan once sang, you've got to serve somebody.
45:07: It may be the devil or it may be the Lord, but you've got to serve somebody. And we all do.
45:13: In fact, before any of our Christian listeners may be deceived into thinking that they are off the hook completely, that this is solely an issue involving those practicing abominable sins like homosexuality, transgenderism, transvestism, and the list goes on, are we not, even if you want to say temporarily, not as a way of life, not as a worldview, but every time we sin, aren't we at least temporarily losing our mind and worshiping ourselves?
45:53: We think that we have a better answer than God. We think that we are going to enjoy life more by following something that is pleasing to us, even if it is something that God detests.
46:09: Couldn't that even be, at least in regard to a temporary loss of sanity as a
46:15: Christian, aren't we worshiping ourselves when we sin? Yes, I think that definitely is the case.
46:21: And all of sin has that character. And of course, the
46:26: Apostle Paul says that covetousness is idolatry and all sin effectively is covetousness in that it's all about saying,
46:36: I want something that God has forbidden or that God hasn't given me. And so, yes, you're right.
46:45: But one of the things which I sort of draw out in the book is that idolatry is in human society is multifaceted.
46:51: So, yes, all sin has that character. But as time goes on, it grows layers and sort of grows in strength and forms kind of systems of unbelief.
47:05: And so, yes, that is true of all sin. But it is pretty clear in the
47:12: Scriptures that where the true
47:17: God is not worshipped, that the form that individual sins take is that they kind of agglomerate together and start to form into a system of worshipping something, which is basically a projection of our sinful desires.
47:31: And that's what an idol is. An idol is a God that we have made in order to justify our sinful desires, the things that we want to do.
47:41: And so that's what idols are. So, yes, it happens with individual sins, but it grows within cultures into something that is sort of powerful and deeply embedded and very hard to resist.
47:54: And which becomes powerfully believed and is a great driver of a false understanding of who we are.
48:02: And then that leads to false understanding of how we live. Yes. And as John Calvin famously wrote in his
48:10: Institutes, the human heart is a perpetual idol factory. And that's why we have to be very careful about judging what is determined to be truth on the basis of our feelings and on the basis of what we really believe in a heartfelt manner.
48:37: We have to always test whatever we think is in our heart by what the scriptures have to say. Yes, absolutely.
48:44: That's right. Yeah. And one of the warnings I try to sound in the book is that too often
48:50: Christians have looked at the sexual immorality that has been growing up around us. You know, it's always been there, but it's grown in power as the sexual revolution took root.
49:01: And we sort of look at it and sort of think, you know, aren't those people doing that terrible?
49:07: But one of the things I particularly try to draw out in this book is that because we live in a culture that is obsessed with self and the autonomous self and the freedom of the self, actually, we are often quite deeply implicated in it ourselves in that we too can actually have very strong devotion to the idea of my freedom, my liberty, my autonomy.
49:36: And at times be almost as devoted to that as we are to the
49:41: Lord Jesus. And that is not a healthy thing at all. So that's one of the warnings I try and sound in the book.
49:47: By the way, Pastor Dave, before we go to our midway break, do you have another question you'd like to ask? Well, yeah,
49:54: I was as you were talking, I was thinking about and I know in your book you mentioned about the the idolatry of self and the idolatry of freedom.
50:01: And I mean, thinking how that's permeated our culture, you know, in general, not just LGBTQ, but I mean, it seems to have permeated the church as well.
50:12: And we have a hard time arguing because we have kind of imbibed a lot of the same mindset as the culture in this.
50:26: And, yeah, I just I guess just wanted to I was thinking more about this issue of identity, because even though we reject the
50:34: LGBTQ, you know, we fall into that same trap, whether it's identifying, as you mentioned in your book, you know, well,
50:43: I'm heterosexual or I'm, you know, and we it seems like we, you know, we struggle with this whole category of identities.
50:52: And just wanted your thoughts on that. Very definitely. And an awful lot of the time, conservative
51:02: Christians have actually fallen for the same mistake of believing the narrative that the world is divided into straight people and gay people or to heterosexual people and homosexual people.
51:16: And then thinking, oh, well, then those people are bad and we're the good ones. But actually, the
51:21: Bible never defines us like that. It says that we are men and women and we're men and women made in the image of God.
51:29: And then for all of us, being men and women has wonderful contours of God's creation that includes a right sort of sexual attraction, which is obviously oriented towards marriage and faithfulness and chastity.
51:48: But in all of us, sin has corrupted those desires and it's of no help to anyone to start classifying people according to what, in what way those desires are corrupted and then making that into an identity.
52:04: And far too often, the Christian church has done that. I mean, the Orthodox conservative churches have done that and have spoken about homosexuals as if they are a defined group of people who are not like us, who are, you know, and they are really bad and we're really good.
52:20: And that's a terrible way of thinking. Rather, we should all be saying, we should be saying we're all made as men and women in the image of God with a wonderful design, which can be fulfilled by celibate singleness and faithful marriage.
52:35: But for any of us to do those things and to be godly requires us to resist our sinful desires, to repent of our sinful desires and to cry out to the
52:46: Lord both for forgiveness and for the help of his spirit in order to live and to be what we're made to be and not to live in other ways.
52:57: And so we need to resist the drive to just accept that this idea that your identity is defined by your sexual feelings or your sense of which gender you are or who you, what form your sexual lusts take.
53:22: That does not define you, and it doesn't behoove Christians to speak about human beings in that way, and we should resist doing so.
53:32: Yes, and we have to go to our midway break right now, and please use this time wisely. Puritan Reformed is a
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01:11:37: Pastor Matthew Roberts, as we continue the discussion of his book,
01:11:43: Pride, Identity, and the Worship of Self. chrisarnson at gmail .com
01:11:48: gives first name at least, city and state, and country of residence. We do have a listener who is in Sapphire, North Carolina.
01:11:59: That is Gabriela, or Gabriela in Sapphire, North Carolina, says,
01:12:09: First of all, I'd like to make it clear to your listeners, in case they misunderstood your guest, that there is a truly biblically sound
01:12:19: United Reformed Church in the United States and Canada called the
01:12:25: United Reformed Church of North America, not to be confused with the United Reformed Church that is liberal in the
01:12:31: United Kingdom. Just out of curiosity, Pastor Roberts, are you familiar with the United Reformed Church of North America?
01:12:37: Because I have a number of friends who pastor in that denomination, and it is very solid. I'm very grateful for that clarification.
01:12:46: I'm not familiar with it, but I certainly had no intention of giving a false impression. I was speaking about the denomination.
01:12:51: Of course, yes. But the actual question that Gabriela, or Gabriela from Sapphire, North Carolina, asks is, there has been a lot of controversy around the very bad advice and counsel that Alistair Begg gave to a grandmother on a podcast encouraging this woman to attend her grandchild's transgendered wedding, so -called.
01:13:21: And I was wondering if you think one of the areas of worship of self is that this idea that making people happy is somehow the most loving thing is really, in reality, a hateful thing, even if we are unconscious of it, if it is putting a seal of approval on something that God hates.
01:13:49: Yes, I would agree with that. I'm not sure I understand why
01:13:54: Alistair Begg gave that advice. I'm sure part of his concern is wanting to make it clear that the gospel is the gospel of grace, which we'd all absolutely want to agree, but I think it was very bad advice.
01:14:12: And you've exactly hit the issue, I think, which is that it isn't loving to affirm people in believing something false about themselves and something false about God.
01:14:31: And it isn't loving. I mean, it's kind of obvious why it's not loving. You know, if you're a doctor and you know that a patient has cancer, it's not loving to tell them that they don't because they'll be happier if you tell them that.
01:14:45: That's not the loving thing to do. Or to buy them a pack of cigarettes just if it pleases them.
01:14:52: Yeah, that's true. That's absolutely true. But the question is, it is an important question to raise because this is the reality of the world that we're in.
01:15:04: If we're faithful Christians, we won't be only ever encountering other faithful Christians.
01:15:10: We're supposed to be people who are in the world, but not of it. And so we will have co -workers and likely family members and neighbours for whom this is just a standard, normal part of life that they're engaged, not only engaged in these kinds of immorality, but believe that the whole idolatrous system that teaches us that you are defined by your sexual desires and therefore to be truly human, you must fulfil them.
01:15:40: And that leads to all of the understanding about gay marriage and that kind of thing. So it's very likely that we will all receive those kind of invitations.
01:15:47: And we, of course, don't want to respond in ways that drive people away from Christ. We do want to draw people towards Christ.
01:15:54: But the way that we do that is by communicating to them the gospel and not affirming them in false beliefs about who they are and about what this world is, about who is really
01:16:09: God. And so that's really the issue is that what is going on when people believe it's possible to marry someone of the same sex?
01:16:20: And what's going on for an individual who is planning to do that? Well, there's lots of things going on, but a vital part of it is that this person believes that he or she is defined by his or her sexual desires and that happiness can only come by fulfilling those and fulfilling them in this kind of relationship, which no doubt they're already in and pursuing.
01:16:48: And the message that we have as Christians is not simply to say, no, no, you're wrong.
01:16:56: And you're wrong. And that's all we've got to say. What we want to say to people is you are created by a
01:17:04: God who is infinitely better than any God that you know about. And you've been made to be an image of the most high, holy and awesome
01:17:15: God. And he calls you to be part of his family, to be one of his children, to find in him a truth and a satisfaction and a joy and a delight and eternal life, which is beyond all of those things.
01:17:34: And so what we have to say to people is something far, far better than, yes,
01:17:42: I want you to be happy in this relationship that you think will make you happy, because not only will it, I mean, it might make them partially happy, but it also will introduce into their lives all sorts of sadnesses.
01:17:52: And one of the things I do in the book is try to spell out actually how it is not good for people to believe these things.
01:18:01: And that sin really is bad. And it's not going to make you happy to enter into a gay marriage or to try to change your sex.
01:18:12: These things won't satisfy you, but Christ will. So I think we need to be clear that it's not loving just to go and approve and be a witness and join in the celebration of what is not a marriage and is grossly offensive to God.
01:18:31: Simultaneously, what we want to be in a position to do is to tell people that there is something infinitely better for them in Christ, and we would love them to know what that something is.
01:18:42: And it may be that by not going, but taking the opportunity to explain why we're not going to a wedding, we might have an opportunity to talk about those things, and that would be a really good thing.
01:18:53: Well, thank you so much, Gabriela, for your excellent question.
01:19:00: And please give us your full mailing address. Because of the generosity of Christian -focused publications, you have won a free copy of Pride, Identity, and the
01:19:11: Worship of Self by our guest, Matthew P .W. Roberts. And we also want to thank Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service, CVBBS .com,
01:19:19: who will actually be shipping the book out to you at no cost to you or to Iron Trip and Zion Radio.
01:19:25: So please provide us your full mailing address. And before I go to another listener question,
01:19:31: Pastor Dave Monreale, do you have another question? I do, and I really appreciated your comments.
01:19:38: And there are so many different ways, so many different issues that your book addresses. But one of the things
01:19:45: I was thinking was more on the practical side. I mean, I know that there are—I've met, as I've talked over the years, a lot of pastors who either don't know how to answer somebody who is struggling with unwanted same -sex attraction that's in their church.
01:20:02: This isn't somebody who is not walking with the Lord or not wanting to follow Christ. But maybe they've been told that they feel uniquely broken, or they've been told that their sin is a different category of sin, different kind of sin.
01:20:19: And what would you tell to a pastor to share with them? Or if you were talking to that individual, how would you encourage them or things that—maybe warnings or stumbling blocks?
01:20:31: I mean, I guess it's a very broad question, but I'd love to hear just some pastoral advice to other pastors or those listening that might be struggling.
01:20:43: Yes, I'd very happily do that. One of the key things to grasp is that the message that you are a different kind of person because you experience a certain sort of sexual lust is one that just is not true.
01:21:07: It is a lie. We are not defined by our sins. And that's a really sweet gospel truth that we're not defined by the sinful lusts that arise in our hearts.
01:21:23: And so I think there are a lot of brothers and sisters in Christ who have probably possibly thought for years,
01:21:32: I'm just a worse Christian than everyone else because I know that I desire these things that are wrong, that are unclean and abominations.
01:21:46: And we need to say, you're not wrong to think that those things are sinful and wrong and unclean, and you're not wrong to want to repent of them and to avoid them.
01:21:55: But it's a lie of the devil to say that that means that you are permanently and unchangeably a different kind of person to everyone else.
01:22:02: And we find it quite hard to resist that way of thinking because the whole language of being gay or being bisexual or being transgender has become so embedded in our culture that we find it very hard not to think in those ways.
01:22:19: And so you have young teenagers asking themselves the question, am
01:22:27: I gay? Maybe I am gay. Which actually no Christian would have asked themselves that question.
01:22:33: There have been plenty of Christians 200 years ago who would have known what it is to experience a homosexual lust.
01:22:42: But it would never have occurred to them that that meant that they were a different kind of person.
01:22:49: Rather, I'm a Christian man or Christian woman or Christian boy or Christian girl who has just been tempted by something.
01:22:56: And the thing to do is to take that to the Lord, to repent of my sinful desires and to ask for his mercy and forgiveness.
01:23:05: And then in the power of the Spirit to seek to resist those temptations and to do what is right instead.
01:23:11: And that's what we do in every other area of the Christian life. But it's incredibly damaging to have this sense that you are a different kind of person and it's a fixed aspect of your character.
01:23:24: And so one of the things that I would say to pastors is make it a priority when people, as they surely will, if you're doing faithful gospel ministry, when people come to you and confess.
01:23:39: I do find myself sexually attracted to other men or I do know what it is to feel a desire to dress up in clothes of the opposite sex.
01:23:49: And these shameful things, people find it hard to confess them, but they will do so. And one of the important things to say to people is do not believe that that makes you into a permanently different kind of person.
01:24:02: Try and avoid the language of saying, I'm a gay Christian or even I'm a same -sex attracted
01:24:08: Christian, because that language makes those things sound like, firstly, they cannot be changed.
01:24:17: And secondly, that they just are who you are. But Christians don't define ourselves by our sins, rather we say,
01:24:25: I'm a sinner saved by grace. And that's just a really wonderful thing. And there's loads of ways that that works out in practice.
01:24:31: But I think that that basic thing of knowing that we're made to be men and women in the image of God and Christ thinks of us in that way and he calls us to be those things.
01:24:44: And all these identities actually tell us something about ourselves that isn't true.
01:24:52: And do you want to follow up or should I go to a listener question, Pastor Dave? Yeah, just yeah, just, you know, and and, you know, thinking about that and in the culture, in the
01:25:04: Christian culture, there's a lot of ideas that and especially in previous generations that, you know, if a person becomes a
01:25:11: Christian, they'll no longer struggle in this area or that, you know, if they do, there's something automatically defective about their their
01:25:19: Christianity, you know. And of course, in every other area of life, there is a progression of sanctification.
01:25:27: But it seems like in a few categories that the expectation is, is that if I'm a Christian, this should automatically fade away or instantly go away.
01:25:37: Yeah, absolutely. That's a that's a very damaging thing. And it's sort of bizarre that that idea grew up in the somehow in in some sense, not in all churches, but in some churches.
01:25:46: I think you've got a grip of, yes, kind of the if you become a
01:25:51: Christian and you still find sexual temptation to be a problem or specifically if you still find homosexual temptation to be a problem, then something's wrong and you're doing something wrong and you're obviously not really a
01:26:01: Christian. I mean, that's a terrible thing to say. We wouldn't say that with any other Christian, any other, well, any other Christian, any other sin.
01:26:08: So, you know, people, people come to Christ who have real struggles with pride.
01:26:13: Does that mean you'll never struggle with thinking inflated thoughts about yourself again?
01:26:19: No, it doesn't mean that. Some people become Christians for whom, for whom sexual sin with people of the opposite sex has been a major problem.
01:26:29: Will you never be tempted by that again? Of course not. You almost certainly will be. But by God's grace, it's possible to put those those temptations to death repeatedly and to learn to resist them.
01:26:39: And over time, by God's grace and the work of the spirit, it may well be that they lessen.
01:26:45: But there is no promise in the scriptures that we will cease to struggle with sin in this life.
01:26:52: We are promised that we won't be tempted beyond what we can bear. We're promised that the Holy Spirit will sanctify us.
01:26:57: We're promised that there is always grace to help us in our time of need and that those promises are there.
01:27:03: But there's no promise that we will simply find that our sinful flesh ceases to attempt to draw us away from Christ.
01:27:13: There is no promise of that. And so and so it's very odd that. In some parts of Christian subculture, this was sort of singled out and treated as a different thing.
01:27:24: It was almost a kind of prosperity gospel. You know, the kind of churches that say, you know, come to Christ and you'll never be poor again, which is a false teaching.
01:27:32: That's not true. It is almost a bit like that or the sort of the sort of false promises of healing.
01:27:40: Come to Christ and you'll never be sick again. That's not true either. And so come to Christ and you'll never be tempted again was never true.
01:27:47: What is true is come to Christ and you'll find all the grace that you need to be forgiven and to be enabled to to learn to resist temptation and have your character change more and more to be like that of the
01:28:02: Lord Jesus. Well, we do have a listener question from Burbank, California, which actually is,
01:28:12: I think, a good segue because this may this question may clarify any kind of confusion that people may have in their in response or as a result of Dave's question.
01:28:30: We have Tino, T -I -N -O in Burbank, California, and Tino asks,
01:28:39: Do you address anything about the so -called Side A, Side B Christianity phenomenon that is a part of the
01:28:49: LGBTQ so -called community? The reason why
01:28:54: I bring this up is there seems to be a steadfast belief amongst people on both sides of that issue that heterosexual lust and desire are exactly the same thing as homosexual desire.
01:29:13: And therefore, it is legitimized as even a part of one's nature to have homosexual desires, just as heterosexual people have these desires, even in a sinful way, even if they are the best of Christians and are only consummating their desires in a marriage bed.
01:29:35: There seems to be a view that someone should indeed identify themselves as a gay
01:29:42: Christian, because if it's the same thing as heterosexual desire and can be used honorably or dishonorably, then this is where the problem arises, because there is no difference demonstrated in their understanding of these sexualities.
01:30:04: Yes, I'm grateful for that question too, and I think that is a very helpful question. So yes, I do address that in the book.
01:30:10: I mean, I'm British, and so I focus on some of the terminology on this side of the
01:30:17: Atlantic isn't quite the same, but I do mention the Side A, Side B. And we have a number of people in the conservative
01:30:25: Christian scene in Britain who do advocate for what would, I think, in America be called a
01:30:31: Side B position. Just to clarify for listeners who aren't familiar with that terminology, both the
01:30:39: Side A and Side B are two sides of what is called the gay Christian movement. That is a movement that thinks that it is appropriate to say,
01:30:48: I am a Christian and I am gay, and the Side A is those who say, and therefore it is fine to indulge in sexual activity, homosexual sexual activity, whereas Side B say, no, no, you mustn't do that because the scriptures prohibit it, but it's still okay to call yourself a gay
01:31:05: Christian and to identify yourself in that way. So I do address that in the book.
01:31:13: So your listener has rightly flagged up that there is a problem.
01:31:22: Clearly, the Side A thing of saying, and therefore we can indulge in sexual activity outside of marriage, that is clearly straightforwardly, grievously wrong according to the scriptures.
01:31:32: So I won't dwell any further on that. But the idea that we can say, no, we must obey scripture's prohibitions on sex outside of marriage, marriage of a man and a woman, to be clear, that's the only thing that is marriage, but as long as we obey that prohibition, we might as well admit that some of us are gay, some of us are trans, some of us are bisexual, whatever.
01:32:02: And I think there are serious problems with that as a point of view.
01:32:11: So one of them is what your listener has said, which is that it kind of says that there is nothing wrong with the desire.
01:32:22: There's no sin attached to desiring to sin. Now, that's part of a very old theological controversy, which tends to be discussed using the rather extraordinary
01:32:38: Latin word concupiscence, which just means sinful desire. And the question is, is it sinful to desire to sin?
01:32:47: And the medieval Roman Catholic Church said, no, it's not. The reasons it said that is complicated.
01:32:53: But in the Reformation, all Reformed churches said, yes, it is. Sin lies in the heart.
01:33:00: Sin lies in the heart before it's in the hands. So if you desire to sin, but you don't act on that desire at all, even if you don't act on it mentally, you immediately try and resist it and squash it, then the desire to sin was still blameworthy and you still need to repent of it.
01:33:14: And the nature of sin is that it lies in the heart. But the side B position, which kind of says, as long as you don't act on it, then it's completely fine to accept the identity.
01:33:28: That does imply that actually desiring to sin is not, you've not done anything wrong.
01:33:34: There's nothing to repent of there. This is just a sort of neutral part of your character.
01:33:40: It's something blameless in you. And we can't say that because that simply isn't true.
01:33:48: It is worth saying that we do need to say that very clearly in the scripture, all sexual lusts are sinful.
01:33:58: That includes sexual lust for the opposite sex. So it's not that opposite sex lust is not sinful.
01:34:04: It is true there is a greater level of corruption that's involved in same sex lusts, but it's still, it's very serious.
01:34:12: Sexual lust is a very serious thing. So no one should be congratulating themselves that, well,
01:34:18: I'm not one of those terrible people who longs to do that. That's not the way that sin works. We should see all of us have this same problem in our hearts.
01:34:27: But there's another problem with the side B position, which is that in accepting the validity of the identity by saying, yeah, it's fine to call myself a gay
01:34:42: Christian. Indeed, that's the best way of describing myself or an adequate way to describe myself.
01:34:48: It's actually conceding far too much ground to the whole idolatrous religion that says that self is a deity.
01:35:02: Why would I describe myself, define myself by the lust of my heart? Well, I would only do it if I believe that myself is important enough that it has a power to define me.
01:35:13: And that is exactly where our culture is. And so why do people think I am gay, I am trans?
01:35:19: It's because we have this massively inflated view of what the self is. And because this myself is so important, that is the thing that really matters about me.
01:35:31: And frankly, a Christian worldview just says you're not that important. The things that you are desiring in your heart just are not worthy of labelling yourself by, especially if they're sinful things.
01:35:47: We don't walk around defining ourselves by other sins. I don't know whether this is quite as big spoken in the same way on your side of the
01:35:56: Atlantic, but here it's become very common for Christians to use the terminology of,
01:36:03: I'm a same -sex attracted Christian, or sometimes even abbreviated to an SSA Christian.
01:36:09: I'm an SSA Christian. And my response to that is, have you ever heard a
01:36:16: Christian say, yes, I'm an NWA Christian, standing for I'm a neighbor's wife attracted
01:36:21: Christian? Would we do that? And of course, the answer to that is no, we don't.
01:36:28: We wouldn't say I'm a neighbor's wife attracted Christian, because while it may well be the case that as a sinner,
01:36:34: I have sinful lust for my neighbor's wife on occasion, it would be completely inappropriate for a
01:36:41: Christian to speak of myself as being defined in that way.
01:36:48: Because A, that makes it sound like I will always be that and it can never change. And B, it gives far too much importance to what is in fact a sinful part of my heart that the
01:37:00: Lord is set on ultimately destroying because he wants to sanctify me. And so that I think is the deepest problem with this idea that you can call yourself a gay
01:37:13: Christian or a trans Christian or whatever. As long as I don't act on it, that's fine, but it is really who I am. No, it's not who you are.
01:37:20: Who you are is a man or woman, a boy or girl made in the image of God, called to be part of the bride of Christ and called to honor
01:37:30: God in all your ways and to worship him with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength while you live in this world.
01:37:38: And that's the way to think of ourselves. And the side B way of approaching this really misses all of that.
01:37:46: And that's a great shame. Yes, I arranged a live public moderated debate, and actually
01:37:52: I moderated it, between the aforementioned Dr. James R. White of Alpha Omega Ministries, a dear friend of mine.
01:38:00: And he debated Dr. Gregory Coles, author of Single Gay Christian.
01:38:08: And the heart of Gregory Coles' arguments were that there is really nothing innately sinful with same -sex attraction unless it becomes lust or physical consummation of lust.
01:38:27: So therefore, he actually believed that his same -sex attraction was a gift from God.
01:38:36: And that is why I understand the listener, Tino, saying that we have to be careful about saying that the phenomenon of heterosexual attraction and same -sex attraction are equally wrong.
01:38:56: Heterosexual attraction is a gift from God, and it can be abused when we lust over someone of the opposite sex or have sex with someone other than our own spouse.
01:39:11: Whereas a homosexual can never say, as Gregory Coles does, that his attraction is a gift from God.
01:39:20: Yes, that's right. I think I'd qualify very slightly to say that an awful lot of heterosexual attraction is pretty sinful.
01:39:31: And our desires, our sexual desires are distorted in most of us to some extent, and heavily distorted in many of us.
01:39:46: And I think that that is an important thing to say, and there's an awful lot in the
01:39:54: Scriptures about that. So it would be, and I suspect that there's probably none of us who can just say, yeah, my sexual desires are exactly as the
01:40:02: Lord intended them to be. I think that's an important qualification.
01:40:07: But absolutely, I think there's some very odd things that get said about this. So I'm not familiar with Coles, who you mentioned, but some writers have kind of said, yes, my same -sex attraction, well, it's really complicated.
01:40:22: Some of it is just that I really enjoy male company, and some of it is that I quite enjoy listening to classical music, or I like cooking, or that one author
01:40:34: I read said. And it's like, well, those things have got nothing to do with it. That's a really strange thing to associate with it. The thing that is sinful is sexual lust, and sexual lust is sinful.
01:40:45: So let's focus our attention on what we're talking about. But if you're saying same -sex attraction, you do mean lust, or at least if you don't mean that,
01:40:55: I don't know what you do mean. And so let's name it for what it is. And so this cannot be treated as if it's a neutral part of the character any more than any other desire to sin.
01:41:09: If you find yourself drawn to lying, then you must resist that temptation.
01:41:19: And some people are more drawn to that than others, and some people struggle with it more than others. But what you don't do is say, as long as I don't lie, then the desire to lie is just a neutral part of my character, and it's fine.
01:41:29: And I can walk around telling people, yes, I'm an untruthful Christian, but that's fine because I don't actually tell lies. But that's not an appropriate way to speak.
01:41:37: But it would be true of everything that we're drawn to. We're tempted to dishonor our parents, or we're tempted to steal, or, of course, tempted to covet, massively important in Paul's description of his own sin in Romans, and a hugely common besetting sin.
01:41:58: Coveting is a desire of the heart, and many of us covet without ever actually going and stealing the thing that we covet.
01:42:08: But that doesn't mean that we can say, well, that's fine. It's just a neutral part of my character. Rather, we should say,
01:42:14: Lord, I coveted something today, and no one else knew, and I didn't do anything about it, but I know that you knew.
01:42:20: And so, Lord, I'm here to confess it and cry to you for your mercy because of the blood of Christ. In fact, James White brought up covetousness in his cross -examination with Gregory Coles to reveal his inconsistency.
01:42:33: But, David, if you could ask your question, no, if you could ask it later when we come back from our final break.
01:42:39: Absolutely. We're going on our final break. Don't go away. We'll be right back. We are rural and urban, and we are always about the message of Jesus.
01:43:06: Our mission is to have a noticeable spiritual impact on Long Island, New York, by engaging young people in the lifelong journey of following Christ.
01:43:15: Long Island Youth for Christ has been a stalwart bedrock ministry since 1959. We have a world -class staff and a proven track record of bringing consistent love and encouragement to youths in need all over the country and around the world.
01:43:28: Help honor our history by becoming a part of our future. Volunteer, donate, pray, or all of the above.
01:43:35: For details, call Long Island Youth for Christ at 631 -385 -8333.
01:43:42: That's 631 -385 -8333. Or visit liyfc .org.
01:43:51: That's liyfc .org. James White of Alpha Omega Ministries here.
01:44:03: If you've watched my Dividing Line webcast often enough, you know I have a great love for getting Bibles and other documents vital to my ministry rebound to preserve and ensure their longevity.
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01:45:21: That's ptlbiblerebinding .com. Armored Republic exists to equip free men with tools of liberty to defend
01:45:29: God -given rights against the twin threats of tyranny and chaos. If you own a rifle to resist tyrants and criminals, then you should own body armor and a med kit for the same reasons.
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01:46:27: I'm Dr. Joseph Piper, President Emeritus and Professor of Systematic and Applied Theology at Greenville Presbyterian Theological Seminary.
01:46:36: Every Christian who's serious about the Deformed Faith and the Westminster Standards should have and use the eight -volume commentary on the theology and ethics of the
01:46:46: Westminster Larger Catechism titled Authentic Christianity by Dr. Joseph Morecraft.
01:46:53: It is much more than an exposition of the Larger Catechism. It is a thoroughly researched work that utilizes biblical exegesis as well as historical and systematic theology.
01:47:04: Dr. Morecraft is pastor of Heritage Presbyterian Church of Cumming, Georgia, and I urge everyone looking for a biblically faithful church in that area to visit that fine congregation.
01:47:16: For details on the eight -volume commentary, go to westminstercommentary .com, westminstercommentary .com.
01:47:23: For details on Heritage Presbyterian Church of Cumming, Georgia, visit heritagepresbyterianchurch .com,
01:47:31: heritagepresbyterianchurch .com. Please tell Dr. Morecraft and the saints at Heritage Presbyterian Church of Cumming, Georgia that Dr.
01:47:40: Joseph Piper of Greenville Presbyterian Theological Seminary sent you. Chris Arnson here.
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01:49:49: But today, I want to introduce you to my senior pastor, Doug McMasters of New High Park Baptist Church on Long Island.
01:50:03: Doug McMasters here, former director of pastoral correspondence at Grace to You, the radio ministry of John MacArthur.
01:50:11: In the film Chariots of Fire, the Olympic gold medalist runner Eric Liddell remarked that he felt
01:50:16: God's pleasure when he ran. He knew his efforts sprang from the gifts and calling of God.
01:50:21: He sensed that same God -given pleasure when ministering the word and helping others gain a deeper knowledge and love for God.
01:50:30: That love starts with the wonderful news that the Lord Jesus Christ is a savior who died for sinners.
01:50:36: And that God forgives all who come to him in repentance, trusting solely in Christ to deliver them.
01:50:41: I would be delighted to have the honor and privilege of ministering to you if you live in the Long Island area or Queens or Brooklyn or the
01:50:49: Bronx in New York City. For details on New High Park Baptist Church, visit nhpbc .com.
01:50:58: That's nhpbc .com. You can also call us at 516 -352 -9672.
01:51:08: That's 516 -352 -9672. That's New High Park Baptist Church, a congregation in love with each other, passionate for Christ, committed to learning and being shaped by God's word and delighting in the gospel of God's sovereign grace.
01:51:26: God bless you. Welcome back, Pastor David Monreal of the
01:51:33: Carlisle Alliance Church in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. Please ask your question that you wanted to ask of our guest,
01:51:41: Pastor Matthew Roberts. Yes, I was thinking as he was talking, the first thing was a quote that's attributed to Luther.
01:51:49: I don't believe he said it, but it was, you can't stop the birds flying overhead, but you can you can keep them from making a nest in your hair.
01:51:56: One of the things you point out in your book is the difference between external temptation and internal temptation, which
01:52:03: I think is what side B conflates. And and thinking of this idea that, you know, external temptation is outside of us, but once it's in our hearts, we're called to put it to death.
01:52:18: And just I was thinking about that as you were talking. And, you know, some of this issue,
01:52:25: I think, lies with that conflation of these two different ideas. Yes, that's often it often comes about because people say, well,
01:52:35: Jesus was tempted. He says he's tempted in every way as we are yet was without sin. And therefore, if we were tempted, then that means that but we don't act on it, then we haven't sinned either.
01:52:49: And but the problem with that is that there is more than one type of temptation.
01:52:58: We we can be tempted by the world, the flesh and the devil as the three that often are mentioned in Scripture.
01:53:06: And we can be tempted by the world, which tries to draw us away from Christ to act as it does.
01:53:12: We can be tempted by the devil. He he suggests and lies to us about what would be good for us.
01:53:18: And we can be tempted by our own sinful flesh. And James particularly addresses that in in in Chapter one of his letter where he he says that we're tempted when we're lured and enticed by our own sinful desire.
01:53:32: And, of course, what is perfectly clear from the scriptures is that the
01:53:37: Lord Jesus had no sinful desires of his own. So he was tempted by the devil, sorely tempted by the devil.
01:53:44: But he was not tempted by his own sinful desires. And so we because he didn't have any sinful desires.
01:53:51: He he he he was made as we are. But without without sin, he was he was human, but he was not fallen.
01:54:00: And so his heart was wholly devoted to the Lord. And he loved the Lord, his
01:54:05: God with all his heart, soul, mind and strength. There was no part of him that didn't do that. And so and so it is a mistake to say that because Christ was tempted yet was without sin.
01:54:18: Therefore, when I'm tempted by my own sinful desires, that I haven't sinned if I don't act upon those desires.
01:54:26: No. And it's perfectly clear within what James says that that isn't the case, because James's whole point is that it is a sin to tempt.
01:54:33: And he says, God doesn't tempt anyone because how could God tempt someone because because that would be a sin.
01:54:38: God doesn't sin. So and so. So therefore, therefore, if we have tempted ourselves and whenever we are lured to sin by our own desires, we have tempted ourselves and we're the ones to blame for that and can't blame
01:54:54: God for it. We are to blame. So we need to repent of it. And indeed, that really is what repentance is.
01:55:01: Until we have until we have torn our hearts, as Joel says in his prophecy, and until we've said to the
01:55:10: Lord, not only have I done wrong, but actually I did wrong because I wanted to do wrong.
01:55:17: The desire came from within me. The uncleanness is in my heart. And until we've done that and cried to the
01:55:25: Lord for mercy for that, we haven't really repented at all. And that's fundamental to a Protestant understanding of what repentance is and what the gospel is.
01:55:32: And yes, sadly, that has been lost by a lot of quite a lot of modern
01:55:40: Christian thinking that basically wants to say, wants to give us a sort of false comfort that says, as long as you haven't done anything wrong, you haven't really got anything to repent of.
01:55:52: That is a false comfort. We do need to repent. It's sometimes phrased as, well, if you tell if you tell gay people that they've sinned, even if they've done nothing, then they'll feel terribly unworthy, much worse than everyone else.
01:56:11: But they shouldn't feel much worse than everyone else. It's that all of us need to recognize that repentance starts in the heart.
01:56:17: And so that just is the way that the gospel works. Has that answered your question,
01:56:24: David? I'm sorry, I feel I wandered a bit there. No, no, I really appreciate that.
01:56:30: And I think that's a reminder to every believer that sin just isn't out there.
01:56:36: It starts from my heart. I mean, I wouldn't be drawn to something if it wasn't a sinful temptation.
01:56:44: And I always tell people, you know, yes, a sinful desire is a desire for sin.
01:56:51: I mean, if you desire sin, that is sinful, you know, by very definition of it.
01:56:57: But somehow in our modern world, we have not wanted to admit that to ourselves in this topic.
01:57:05: And I think in so many others. And we are out of time. We do know it.
01:57:12: If we're talking about other sins, we wouldn't say the same thing. You know, if someone said, you know, yeah,
01:57:19: I had this, you know, overpowering desire to murder someone, but I didn't do it.
01:57:25: So, you know, so I don't need to repent. Well, hold on, hold on, brother. You probably do need to repent of having a desire to murder someone.
01:57:32: That is a serious sin. And the Lord Jesus says it, doesn't he, in the Sermon on the Mount. And so, actually, the argument that tries to say we didn't do anything with it, it's not sin.
01:57:43: Really, what underlies that is you don't really believe that the things are sin at all.
01:57:49: And we are out of time, brothers. I'm sorry. I want to make sure that our listeners have your websites.
01:57:55: If you want to find out more about Trinity Church in York, England, go to TrinityChurchYork .org
01:58:02: .uk. TrinityChurchYork .org .uk.
01:58:08: And let's not forget about the church where my co -host pastors, the
01:58:15: Carlisle Alliance Church. If you could give us your website, please, Pastor Dave. Yes.
01:58:23: The funny thing is, is I never log into my own website. So, it is the
01:58:29: CACFamily .org. CACFamily .org.
01:58:34: And if you want to order the book we have been discussing, Pride, Identity, and the
01:58:41: Worship of Self, by my guest, Pastor Matthew P .W.
01:58:47: Roberts, go to CVBBS .com, Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service.
01:58:52: And make sure you mention this is a book published by Christian Focus Publications.
01:58:58: And we want to thank Christian Focus Publications once again for providing free copies of the book that we have been giving away to listeners.
01:59:06: And we're also going to give copies away to those waiting in the line here that didn't have the opportunity to have their questions answered on the air.
01:59:15: We also thank CVBBS .com for sending out these copies of the book.
01:59:20: We want to thank all of you for listening. I want to thank my guest and my co -host for doing such a remarkable job.
01:59:28: And I want you all to always remember for the rest of your lives that Jesus Christ is a far greater Savior than you are a sinner.