Jeff Durbin Refutes Andy Stanley

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Hi, welcome back everybody to another episode of The Dividing Line. I am not Dr. James White.

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I'm filling in for Dr. White right now. Second show in a row. If you want to check out the last show, just go to AO Men's page,

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Alpha Omega's page on YouTube. You're probably already there right now. And check out the first show we did on Monday.

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No, you actually have to tell people who you are. Oh, that's right. Yes. We know who you're not. Hello, I'm Jeff Durbin.

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Welcome to The Dividing Line. I'm Jeff Durbin, pastor of Apologia Church. You can go see my stuff at ApologiaStudios .com

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and Apologia Studios on YouTube. We're actually doing some cross -pollination here, so actually putting up on our stuff as well, so you guys get to see it over there.

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And so, did a show on Monday, and on Monday I talked a bit about the referendum of the 8th

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Amendment in Ireland. Was it Tuesday? This tells you what my life is like right now.

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The life of a pastor. Always busy. I was, I'm actually, I'm actually, I was worried about how I look today because I was up so late last night dealing with pastoral things, so not a lot of sleep for this guy today.

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So yeah, Tuesday we did a show and I talked about the referendum to the, the 8th

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Amendment in Ireland, the legalization of abortion in Ireland. I talked about the foundations of epistemology.

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That is a truly Christian theory of knowledge. Now, some of you guys are checking out right now when you hear the word epistemology and theory of knowledge, you think, how does this matter?

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How does it relate to me today in my life with my family, my church, the mission that God has me on?

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I want to tell you that it has everything to do with that. When we talk about epistemology, we're talking about how do you know what you know?

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What's the foundation for knowledge? And Christians have a particular epistemology, theory of knowledge, a revelational epistemology, that is to say that we believe that we can be certain or we can know things for sure, or to be true because fundamentally

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God has spoken. God has stepped into time and history. He's reached out, he's touched us, he's spoken to us, he's revealed himself to us.

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And so on that basis, Christians can say, we know. And so when we make knowledge claims as Christians, we're not making them on our own authority.

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We're not basing them on our own pragmatism, our own personal experiences, our own, just simply our own reasoning.

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We're not rationalists in that sense. When Christians say that we know something to be true or we believe something to be true, we believe it based upon divine revelation.

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God has spoken in history. That's a distinctly Christian epistemology. There are other forms of epistemology, other people who want their day.

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And so you have rationalism. We know things based upon reason, human reason, the tools of human reason, laws of logic, and those sorts of things.

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You have, of course, other schools of thought of epistemology and how you can know things. Scientism is big today.

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But you have the school of thought that is empiricism, and that is to say, I have to experience it to know that it's real.

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I have to test it. I have to see it work and test it. I have to observe it. So you have empiricism.

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You, of course, also have other forms of epistemology and how people can know things to be certain or true, and that is based upon personal experience.

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I've experienced this sort of thing, so it works for me. Mormonism is big on that these days.

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Well, it really always has been. I've prayed about it in my own personal experience. I know that it's true because I've prayed about it.

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And so when we talk about epistemology, how do you know something to be true and can we have any certainty?

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Christians do claim that we can know things for certain because God has revealed himself. So for example, just,

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I mean, bottom line, I say this often just to try to get to the point quickly, we can know the difference between whether we should love our neighbors as we love ourselves or whether we should eat our neighbors.

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That seems, of course, like a very big spectrum, but it really is fundamental.

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As Christians, we can say with certainty that we ought to, morally ought to, it's an absolute, love our neighbors as we love ourselves and not actually eat our neighbors.

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Somebody might be saying as you watch this, well, does anybody really think that you eat your neighbors? And the answer to that is yes.

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History is replete with examples of people who believe they can eat their neighbors, and today there are people who believe that you can eat your neighbors.

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And there are people, I don't recommend necessarily diving into this, but there are documentaries out there that show modern cannibals that do believe that they can eat their neighbors.

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And so when we talk about a basic Christian epistemology, we're talking about foundations.

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How do we know what we know? How do we know that it's true? On what basis do we make knowledge claims? And for Christians, it's a revelational epistemology.

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And you might be wondering like, well, how did that wrap up into the discussion of the abortion issue in Ireland? And I'm going to say that it has absolutely everything to do with it.

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Everything to do with it. In this culture that we live in today, in America, and of course, what's going on in Ireland, when the fight ensues, when the conflict rages, when people are face to face in conflict with each other, it's a question of on what basis, by what standard can you say something is true or ought to be the case?

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And what I was decrying on Tuesday was the fact that we have unfortunately handed over the mission to save image bearers of God in the womb, to criminalize the act of abortion.

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We've handed over that mission, that calling to people who have said on record, we have it on our own channel.

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Apologies to do as you can see the leaders of the pro -life movement in North America that have said very explicitly that they don't want to use the

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Bible as a foundation. They believe that we should take a backdoor approach, a more secular approach to fighting against the issue of abortion, that we should not use explicitly

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Christian terminology. We shouldn't talk about repentance. We shouldn't talk about sin. We should talk about Jesus. We shouldn't have biblical definitions and examples that we use when we talk about fighting against the culture of death.

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So for example, I mentioned Tobias. She's the head of the National Right to Life, the president. We had an interview with her at a national conference and she said that she and other women in the movement believe that the women who have abortions are as much victims as the children who are killed in abortion.

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That's not a biblical definition and that is certainly not based upon a Christian view of knowledge and morality, ethical appeals.

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And so we've handed over this fight, unfortunately, to a pro -life movement that refuses to have a distinctly

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Christian epistemology. When we're fighting against the culture of death, on what basis do we fight?

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What do we say? Are we just appealing to human reason? Are we appealing like the left does and the pro -choicers do to emotions, making mere emotional appeals?

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Like, man, I know, you know, we want it to be safe, legal, and rare. Why they would want that to be true is odd, strange.

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We don't talk that way about the removal of say warts, that we want wart removal to be safe, legal, and rare.

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Okay, of course. Why do we say it about abortion? It's interesting. But when we talk about abortion, people will say things like, you know, but what if she was raped?

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You know, I just watched, a matter of fact, just did an episode of Apology Air Radio where we played some of the debates that were taking place before the referendum.

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And of course, six minutes in, we're right at it. What's the, what's the other side, the pro -death side saying?

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They're saying, yeah, but what about, you know, if a girl was raped by her father? I mean, you know, what are we gonna do about that in culture and society?

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You really think she should carry the baby to term? And what we've done is we've handed over that whole argument based upon an emotional appeal rather than just sticking to the brute biblical facts.

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This is an image bearer of God. It has inherent value and dignity and worth because it reflects the inherent value and dignity and worth, infinite worth of the eternal

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God. This is a human being made in the Imago Dei and God commands us not to murder.

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He commands mothers and fathers not to murder their children. This is a God kind of issue.

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And, and, and of course you can do the internal critique, Proverbs 24, 26, sorry, four through five says, don't answer the fool according to their folly or you'll be like them.

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That is to say, don't answer like them. Don't take their presuppositions. Don't stand on their position. Don't act like them.

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Stand on the word of God, be committed to the word of God, or you're going to be like them. And then it says, don't answer the fool according to their folly, lest they be wise in their own conceit.

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So you can, of course, step into their position and demonstrate that it doesn't work. For example, the rape argument using a

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Christian epistemology. I want to oppose that on the basis of the word of God and say that because I believe in God's revelation and I have his word at my feet,

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I can say that that's an image bearer of God in the womb and you morally cannot kill it. You ought not do so.

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And I can say by stepping into their system with a Christian epistemology, I can do an internal critique and I could say, the interesting thing here is that you're using my presuppositions to make an emotional appeal.

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You're acting like rape is wrong, like it's some moral atrocity, that it's something that people ought not do.

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And you don't get to have that. You don't get to have that if you abandon God, because rape isn't morally repugnant.

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It's not something that we can be morally indignant about if we don't have the biblical worldview at our feet.

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If Christ isn't the center, then rape isn't really morally wrong. It's something people do to one another in this time and chance universe.

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It's just stuff banging around. So there's no moral responsibility I have not to rape.

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It might be uncomfortable. It might affect people's nervous systems. People might not like it, but it's not morally wrong.

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As Richard Dawkins says, the universe as it is today shows that there is no good, there is no evil, only blind and pitiless indifference.

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As Will Provine, professor of biology at Cornell said, there is no imminent morality.

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That is to no real morality. This is an illusion. There's no imminent morality. We live, we die, and we're gone.

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We're absolutely gone when we die. That is the unbelieving atheistic worldview.

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You don't get to have rape as morally atrocious, unless of course you borrow from my

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God to do it. But also it's interesting because we live in a culture in the West that has this

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Christian heritage and root to it. So much respect for the word of God. It was just in the atmosphere that we used to actually believe that rape was such a horrific crime that if true, if it actually took place, that God sees that as a crime that's worthy of the death penalty, capital punishment.

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That's how God viewed rape and a just penalty for rape because no harmony can be brought to that situation.

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It's not like paying somebody back something you stole from them to make them whole again. This is a crime like murder that you can't bring harmony in.

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And the only thing that God said was a just penalty for rape. It's so terrible that it deserves a death penalty.

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And so I believe that it's morally wrong because God has spoken to it. And I know what God says in terms of justice in his word in the

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Old Testament. But what's interesting here is that the pro -abortion side will say things like, well, you're inconsistent because you say you're pro -life, but you believe in things like the death penalty.

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And the answer is internal critique. Oh no, we both believe in the death penalty.

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You see, I happen to know the difference as a Christian between a victim and a perpetrator.

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And that's why I believe what I believe about that. But the fact of the matter is we actually both believe in the death penalty.

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See, I believe in the death penalty for the person who goes so far to do something so immoral and evil to rape a woman.

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You believe in the death penalty for the child. You see, we both believe in the death penalty.

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You believe that the innocent victim of the rape deserves a death penalty. I believe that the person who perpetrated the crime deserves the death penalty.

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You believe the victim deserves it. So that's an internal critique. But you see, the point of this discussion in terms of epistemology and foundations is we have to demonstrate,

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I think, to the culture at large, Christian culture at large, that we have to get back to a rigorous commitment to the word of God as the foundation of our lives.

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I'm talking about personal and interpersonal relationships. I'm talking about church life. The word of God should be the standard by which we make decisions as a church in terms of church government, in terms of church programs, in terms of missions.

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We ought not just simply be creative, right? Just simply creative because, hey, like we're the first to take a shot at this thing.

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I remember years ago, I was being asked to be a part of a large

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Baptist denomination. Lots of promises were being made to us.

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We were a struggling and young church. And so it was appealing. And so we were hanging out with a lot of these churches. And I remember being at a local meeting with about,

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I don't know, 12 or 15 local churches, big churches. I'm talking big, big churches. And they wanted to have us break up to have a discussion about church government and how to sort of organize things and keep church order.

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And so they said, break up into groups, and we'd like you guys to talk about how to organize as a local church, maybe as a church plant.

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How do you organize your body? How do you organize your church government? And how do you organize, keep church order? How do you do that?

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So I was kind of excited about the experiment. And so we all broke up into our groups, went to separate tables.

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And I have to tell you that I was so grieved about three to five minutes into this process.

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I was grieved because I sat at a table with people I didn't know from local churches from all over the valley. And as people were trying to discover how should we plan a church and how should we organize and keep order and do church government,

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I noticed that not one person at this table, not a one, not one, that's not exaggeration, not one person was opening their

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Bibles and pointing to passages about how God says to do this. God says, this is how we're going to set up our church.

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God says, this is the role of pastor, elder, none of that. It was very much sort of like, what do you guys think?

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Let's get creative. What do you think? How do you think you should set that up? What's your model? What do you think that model should be?

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What do you think? And I was so discouraged. And I don't mean this in any way to arrogant or haughty, you know, like somehow saying

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I know it all. And I was the black sheep that was just, you know, the Puritan and the bunch or something like that.

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I mean, it was discouraging to see churches, large churches and their staff, their leadership sitting around tables being given a task, an experiment.

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And the question comes to, how do you do this? Is it because God says?

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Because God has spoken and He's given us our marching orders. God has decreed it. God has spoken it, prescribed it.

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Do we step onto that and say, it's because of this? You see, this Christian epistemology, this question of the theory of knowledge goes to my personal life.

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It goes to my family. It goes to my church. It goes to the culture around about us. How do we actually engage the culture around us?

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This is a significant issue. It means so much. And in terms of how we come into conflict with the world today, we all know,

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I mean, unless you're asleep or you've got your head buried in the sand, you know that our culture is going crazy right now.

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I remember watching The Dividing Line, listening to The Dividing Line back around 2002, 2003, somewhere around there.

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And I remember Dr. White started getting into this habit of sort of talking about the fact that he had a folder that he used to sort of put stuff in for, you know, like articles and stuff of just the culture going mad.

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And he was giving warnings then, not knowing how much longer we have before this thing goes completely out of control.

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And I've told James before that, you know, I don't know that I took him seriously. And he said, you know, I don't know that I took myself seriously.

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But it's amazing the breakneck speed that we're going as a culture and society. And I want to say, no matter what you believe about the future, we have to say as Christians that we have an obligation before the

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Lord to be a light and testimony to the culture around us, to speak the truth in love to the world around us in an effort to lead people to Jesus.

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That is our responsibility, no matter the circumstance God has us in, whether he has us in the garden or whether he has us in the desert.

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Our responsibility is to be light to the world around us. And the question is, how?

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How are we going to be light to the world around us? Are we going to be creative? Are we just going to try to lean on our own autonomous arguments, personal experience, emotional arguments, or are we going to stand on the word of the living

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God? When we see sin, wherever we see it, whether it's in the church, whether it's in family life, whether it's in government and unjust laws and sort of the oppressive tyranny that's now being pushed upon Christians in the

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West, do we respond just out of anger and might?

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Do we respond with just our own reason or do we appeal to Western tradition? Hey, this is the culture of the

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West. We're America. Or do we appeal always and in every circumstance to the words of the living

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God? Is it our responsibility to be creative? Is it our responsibility to lean on our own understanding and just make creative arguments based upon our own personal experience or preferences?

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Or is it our responsibility as Christians to live prophetically in a culture that God has us in to speak the truth and love?

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And that is to say, to speak the truth, the words of the living God. And if somebody says, well, that's just uncomfortable.

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I don't really like that methodology because see what's the problem. The problem is the culture around us doesn't accept the word of God.

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They don't believe what he has to say. And I want to say that never stopped Jesus, never stopped any biblical prophet culture they were living in.

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It didn't stop them from standing in the words of the living God. Didn't stop Daniel in Babylon. Didn't stop

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Jesus. Didn't stop Paul, by the way, in a pagan culture and society that he lived in from resting his arguments upon the words of the living

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God, the revelation of God. You see, it might be uncomfortable for us in the culture that we live in to actually stand on a consistent

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Christian position because the world doesn't accept it. I think we have to recognize that God says,

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God says in his word, he says, Romans 1, the gospel is the power of God for salvation.

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That's the means that God uses to bring dead people to life. Open the eyes of the blind to give hearing to deaf people.

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And I want to say that if we look in the book of Acts and we check out that methodology that the apostles are using filled with the spirit of God, Christ is dead, risen, and ascended to heaven.

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Now their new covenant is running and it's in operation and they're preaching the gospel. You see the apostles preaching the gospel and there are consequences.

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They're not living for comfort. Paul says in Galatians 1, he says, am I a slave to men or to God?

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If I was a slave to men, I would not be. He says, am I trying to please men or to please God? If I was trying to please men,

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I would not be the of Jesus. He says that in a context where he's saying some hard things to the church in Galatia.

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But when you look in the book of Acts, Acts 9, the apostle Paul comes to Christ, takes a beeline to Damascus, and he's immediately arguing with the

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Jews in their own synagogues. You say, oh, praise God, Paul, way to be an apostle, way to be a messenger, way to be faithful.

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Well, yeah, but think about the consequence of living like that, right? That's some difficult, abrasive confrontational mission work.

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And what happens is it says that the church is built up, they experienced peace, they were multiplied, and it says some people wanted to kill them.

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You got people actually making oaths that they're not going to eat anything until they actually kill the apostle

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Paul. Or the apostles go into a place to preach the gospel and a riot ensues.

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A whole riot breaks out because of preaching the gospel. Or they're preaching the gospel under threat of a punishment by the civil magistrate.

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We told you not to preach in this name anymore. And what is the word from the inspired apostle?

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He says, we must obey God rather than men. And as soon as they're told, don't speak in this name anymore, they get a beating and they go out rejoicing that they were counted worthy to suffer for Jesus' sake.

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So they're told, don't do this. That's a command from the magistrate. Don't do it.

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And they are taking a beating, rejoicing that God would even count them worthy to suffer in Jesus' name.

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And they continue to preach the gospel. And I ask the question, are we following, in the culture that we live in today, are we following the pattern and model that God has laid out for us in terms of what effective spirit -led and filled evangelism looks like in a pagan culture?

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Because you see, I think, to be fair, we have to say, well, those were inspired apostles, yes.

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But they had the same spirit of God filling them that fills us today. They had the same gospel and message that we have today.

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But they also, to be fair to them, they lived in a pagan culture too. They were surrounded by pagans.

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Paganism everywhere. Temples to goddesses and all these things and priests and orgies and all these things that took place.

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It was all, it was ever people, you know, killing their children in Rome. I mean, there was conflict in Rome where some emperors were like, no, you can't kill your baby.

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And some were saying, yes, you can. People letting their children die of exposure. I mean, this is nothing new to the

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Christian church. We have always been engaged in a conflict with the world and very heavy opposition.

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But the question has to be asked, by what standard do we fight against these things? I'm going to argue it's the words of the living

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God. When Jesus, I said Jesus on Tuesday, had a conflict with the people of his day where they were taking what was seen essentially by them as a divine tradition in Mark 7.

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And they're bringing it against Jesus saying, how can your disciples aren't following the tradition of the elders? Jesus, he could have appealed to his own authority.

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He's God. And he did sometimes just appeal to his own authority, I say to you. But Jesus there, when there's a conflict, two different claims, truth claims made, he says,

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Moses says, so the word of God says, but you say, he says, thus you invalidate the word of God.

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You invalidate the word of God for the sake of your tradition. So Jesus actually takes their tradition, compares it to scripture and says,

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God's word says this. And so you are making God's word void for the sake of your When Jesus had a conflict between two claims or two worldviews, he went right back to the words of the living

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God. And wouldn't you know it, that's because he's our perfect representative and our righteousness.

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He's the law keeper that we are not. And in the old Testament, you see that as the pattern and the model.

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God says, thus saith the Lord. I wonder if that means much to us today.

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Thus saith the Lord. That was what they rested on. That's what they hung everything on.

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Thus saith the Lord. Now, that might be embarrassing to modern evangelicals today to say,

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God says, and that's it. But for the writers of the old

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New Testament, for the biblical prophets, for Jesus, that was where it was at. Thus saith the Lord. Deuteronomy 13,

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I mentioned it on Tuesday. I'll just say one last time. God gives them a test to test false prophets. Deuteronomy 13, one through four, even if they're signs and wonders, even if the ministry looks legit, it looks like it's from God.

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But if he leads you after other gods, gods, which you have not known, that's how you know he's a false prophet.

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So God says this, I've revealed myself. This is who I am. If somebody comes and they contradict what

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I've said about myself, that's how you know. That's how we test false prophets and false teachers.

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But I want to say, that's how we test every truth claim. Does it match up to God's word?

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John 17, 17, Jesus says in his high priestly prayer, Father, sanctify them in your truth.

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Thy word is truth. It's the plumb line. It's what you use to measure.

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It's the standard. If you're building something and you drop that plumb line, that's the standard.

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If the wall is off, you don't bend the plumb line to get to the wall. You take the wall and say, it's not right, and you bend it back.

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And that's exactly what Jesus is referring to. Isaiah 8, 20, I mentioned on Tuesday, to the law and to the testimony.

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If they don't speak according to this word, it's because they have no light in them. Maybe we're not effective.

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Well, I have to always say this because we're good Calvinists here. God is sovereign and he's judging our nations.

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Why is it happening around us? Because he's judging our nations. That's why. But it's not living in a vacuum.

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God's just judging our nations and that's all. Nothing led up to that. Of course, God's been working the whole time.

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He's in the heavens and he does whatever he pleases. But there's always a means to that end.

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And how come we're not so effective today? Could it be? Is it possible that we're not as effective today in the 21st century evangelical

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West because we've abandoned the commitments and the standard that our forebearers stood on?

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They were effective because it was assumed. It wasn't a perfect utopia. It wasn't any utopia.

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They had their sins to deal with too. But how come you see such a contrast between cultures, between the old culture and the new?

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How come? Well, I would argue in many respects, is because those people stood on the words of God, assumed it, proclaimed it, and weren't ashamed.

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We seem to be ashamed of the word of God and the culture that we live in today because we don't want to offend anybody. Well, they don't really accept the words of God.

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So maybe I need to find a new route to convince this person to come to Jesus. And I want to just say this, nobody comes to Jesus.

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Nobody, apart from the spirit's work, God's electing grace, and his power in the gospel through a faithful proclamation of his truth.

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Nobody comes to God apart from God's good news coming into their life.

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And the good news doesn't come into anybody's life, nobody's, without first order important things coming loaded up front.

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And that is what? God is holy and you are not, right? God is good and we're not.

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We're sinners against a holy God. We violated his law and that's why you need Jesus. You can't get people to see that Jesus is the supreme treasure if you abandon him as the supreme treasure.

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You can't get people to submit to Christ's ultimate authority if when you reason with them, you abandon his authority to do it.

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Jesus is worth your whole life. But when I argue for the Christian message,

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I argue in a way where he's not worth my whole life. Maybe he's not really the Messiah.

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Maybe he doesn't have ultimate authority. Hey, let's play neutrality and see if we can get to God, right?

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Something Van Til used to talk about,

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I think it's important in terms of how we try to get people to God, to either believe in God or to believe in his truth.

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Oftentimes, we'll build a ladder, right? To get to God, either the existence of God or some truth from God.

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We'll build this ladder and we have different rungs, right? Like I'll use this evidence and maybe this emotional appeal and maybe this argument and this historical argument.

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And let's get that ladder to get them to God. And the problem is, is that when we get them there to the true biblical

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God, if we're coming to the true God, we'll realize we never needed the ladder in the first place.

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Because when we get to him, we realize he always had the ultimate authority. His authority was already self -attesting.

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He was already the foundation of all truth and knowledge. And so that's not to say, and don't misunderstand this,

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I think some people did on Tuesday. I just saw a couple comments. It's not to say that we don't believe in evidence.

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It's not to say we don't believe in laws of logic and reason and ethics and all those different things and those arguments, that's not to say that.

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We're actually arguing that you don't get science, laws of logic, or ethical appeals, period, if you don't start with the self -attesting authority of the living

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God. Laws of logic are meaningless apart from the biblical worldview. How do you justify appeals to immaterial, invariant, universal, abstract truths like the laws of logic with an atheistic view of the world?

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All they believe is matter in motion. We're all materialists, right? Naturalistic materialism. You don't get immaterial, universal, invariant laws when all that exists is the material realm.

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And in terms of science, you don't get science and things that can be tested. You don't get uniformity and nature and induction.

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You don't get the future being like the past apart from the sovereign God who governs it. And in terms of ethical appeals, if you don't start with the biblical

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God, you don't get the image of God. You don't get absolute standards of morality. You don't get the very character of God to base everything off of, his eternal, unchanging character.

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So what we're arguing for is the entire thing. Jesus is at the center of it all.

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We start all of our thinking. We start all of our knowledge with God at the center.

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He's the foundation. God has spoken. And I think that that needs understood in all of life.

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It matters for everything. Again, for Christian praxis, how do you talk to your kids? Let's do it this way.

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Let's make this intensely personal. How do you talk to your kids, moms and dads? When you and I are raising our children up and we tell them that they ought not do something, on what basis do you tell them that they shouldn't do that thing?

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Well, if you're like me, when that conversation starts, you point them first to God and his authority.

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You say, God says, honor your father and your mother. God says that you're to love your neighbor as you love yourself.

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This conflict that's happening between you and your sister right now, the problem here is you're not loving her like you love yourself.

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You're not her in the way that Jesus loves us. Love does no harm to its neighbor.

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You see what I'm saying? We appeal to the words of God as ultimate with our children in our homes and with ourselves.

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How come you don't watch internet pornography? Is it because it's uncomfortable?

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Is it just because of the consequences? Is it because you're going to get caught? How come you don't?

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Because if it's for those reasons, I love J .C. Ryle's book, Holiness, and he drives that point home.

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If you're not doing those things because you're afraid of getting caught, you're afraid of the consequences, then that's not really holy.

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That's not truly righteous. So why don't you and I go down that route? How come we're not pursuing that lifestyle?

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I would imagine that we do it because God says, because he calls it adultery, because he calls it sexually immoral, and he tells us not to do it.

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What I'm saying is we need to take that standard we have as Christians throughout our entire lives and we apply that across the board to everything.

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I think a faithful witness with the words of the living God is what God uses to bring people to life.

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By his Spirit, through his gospel, he saves people. But he doesn't do it without his word.

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He doesn't do it without truth. Now, that brings me to a bit of Andy Stanley.

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I know that Dr. White did touch on this a bit, and I really enjoyed that.

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It was really a blessing to hear. But I thought that this is something that connects to so much of what's wrong around us in our culture and in terms of what we have to face and be ready to confront.

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I want to say that I want to have love for this man. He professes faith in Jesus.

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But the commentary that he gives in his message online, it's called, Aftermath, Part 3,

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Not Difficult, Andy Stanley. The message that he has for Christians is awful.

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It's deplorable. It's not true. It is contradictory.

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It is inherently contradictory. It is contradictory to the words of the living God. It's contradictory to New Testament theology.

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It does not fit the soteriology of the entire Bible, and I think it's destructive.

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I got from it, and I tried to listen to it with an open mind, I got from it that we need to, as Christians today, to disassociate ourselves from the

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Old Testament revelation, he actually argues, from the whole worldview. He makes a point based upon the text in the

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Book of Acts and the conflict that was going on there where James is presiding over this council.

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He makes the point that, well, let's do this. I'll play through it.

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I'm only going to play about 12 minutes of it, but I'm going to stop at points and just sort of work through it. This is

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Andy Stanley, starting at around 20 minutes. Even that good at this, why in the world would we try to get a group of people who did not grow up in our culture, grow up with our background, how in the world are we going to get them to accept all these laws, all these rules, and all these customs?

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I mean, if that's what they have to do to become a follower of Jesus, come on, guys, how realistic is that?

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And then what comes next is so subtle. I mean, it is so subtle, but it is so important for where we're going and where I hope that you'll go, especially if you're someone who's losing or has lost faith.

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He says to this group of Jewish, Jesus -following people, some are ready to just follow Jesus and leave the Old Covenant behind.

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Others are trying to mix and match He says no. So important. We believe, us

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Jesus -following Jews, we believe that it is through the grace.

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See, when you read the Old Testament, when you read the Old Covenant, when you read the story of Israel, when you read the prophets of Israel, you don't see much of this.

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It's, I will, if you will, I will, if you will, I will. What? When you read the

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Old Testament, you don't see much of this. It's interesting because this contradicts all of what the

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New Testament says about the Old Testament revelation and this covenant God has made and the salvation that we have.

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The Apostle Paul actually makes the point in the book of Romans. He makes the point in Romans chapter 4 to buttress his point about the work of Christ saved by grace through faith apart from works of law, that this is how

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God has always saved people. Not that the Old Testament, they were saved through law.

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He says in Romans chapter 4, what does the scripture say? Abraham believed God and it was credited to him as righteousness.

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To the one who works, his wage is not credited as a gift, but as what is due.

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But to the one who does not work, but believes in him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is credited as righteousness.

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And then he says, just as David, also King David, Abraham and David, the two primary witnesses for Paul, just as David also speaks of the blessing upon the man to whom

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God credits righteousness apart from works. That's David.

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That's Abraham. What do you mean that there's so little of this in the Old Testament?

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It's just, I will, if you will, and I will, if you will, I just have to say this, that's not how God talked about his law.

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I'm sorry. Yes, the law was a curse in a sense to people who are fallen in Adam, in the flesh, they cannot accomplish the law.

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Of course, cursed is everyone who does not do everything in this book. There were, it was a covenant where there were blessings and cursings, but is that how

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God felt about his law? That it was this awful, awful thing that Andy Stanley makes it to be?

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For example, not so much grace in the Old Testament. Psalm 119, verse 29, put false ways far from me and graciously teach me your law.

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Gracious, graciously teach me your law. Here's the psalmist asking for God to graciously teach me your law.

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Give me the grace of that. You know, so the thing that Andy Stanley says here in this message, we might get to it, I'm not sure if it's after where I'm going to end or not, but he makes the point over and over and over again that this law is sort of oppressive, it's violent, it's just gives the impression that it's just all bad.

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It's all bad. And that he says, even the pagans, you know, they didn't have with their law, like morality in their laws.

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They didn't have what we have with the Bible. And I'm going to say that's interesting because that's one of the distinctives between the

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God of the Bible and pagan gods, is that the pagan gods didn't do a lot of talking. There's a reason for that.

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False gods don't do a lot of talking and they just can't do it and they can't control history.

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They can't do what the living God does. But yeah, they didn't have like a very clear, understood, defined moral law in the pagan religions because their gods don't do a lot of talking and a lot of revelation.

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However, the God of the Bible condescends and reveals himself and he tells his people what is right, what is true, what is lovely, what is good, what is just.

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That is a gift from God. That's a gift. For God to condescend and reveal his holy character and to tell his people how to live with one another in a loving relationship, that is a gift of God.

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It is not simply oppressive. It's not graceless. Rich, I see you kind of—yeah, go ahead.

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Yeah, I'm over here itching. This particular clip, I think James has played it before.

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How many times have we dealt with people who, if you look at the assumptions that they make regarding the

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Old Testament, and you ask what is the worldview that they understand the

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Old Testament to represent, you see that in the New Testament in a place that we're not really thinking about very much.

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And that is the place, the worldview of the Pharisees and the

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Sadducees, the way in which they saw and practiced the Judaic religion that Jesus confronted them on, said things to them, you do err not knowing the

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Scriptures. That's right. And I see Andy Stanley applying those same worldviews as he describes the

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Old Testament. That's right. And Jesus' answer to that is, you have a fundamental misunderstanding of God's Word.

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That's amazing. I was going to make exactly that point, Rich. I'm glad you brought it up, because I think that that's the problem is

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Stanley is adopting their perspective, their perverse perspective of the law of God, and he's acting as though that was the case.

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And Jesus corrects them constantly on that point. He talks to them about mercy, right, not sacrifice.

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He talks to them about erring because they don't know the Scriptures. Paul is doing God's work, of course, as an inspired apostle, correcting the misapplication and misinterpretation of the law in his day, the perverse view of the law.

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My point here is this, is not to really harp for a long time on this point, but it's just to say that when

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Andy Stanley makes that comment, that this is some new thing, that God is now saving people by grace.

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It is such a distortion of New Testament theology. The Old Testament, from the very beginning, the first three chapters of Genesis, what do you see there?

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God's gracious covenant. They fell into sin. And what did God say to them? What did he say?

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The day you eat of it, you will die. And what happened that day? Yeah, they died spiritually, but what did

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God say? The first thing he does when he steps into that story, it's amazing. The first thing he does is he doesn't just start swinging his discipline and his punishments.

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What does he do first? He promises to send the Deliverer. The woman's seed will crush the head of Satan.

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The mortal blow will be delivered to the work of Satan. That's the first thing God says. And I want to say this, how is that not grace?

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How is that not grace? The very start of our story and our plunge into sin is all grace.

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It's God's first introduction of the Messiah who's coming. And then that entire book in the book of Genesis, it's grace upon grace upon grace.

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And God is promising in that story, Genesis 49 .10, that Shiloh is coming and to him shall be the obedience of the nations.

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God is promising the Messiah is coming and I'm going to undo all this that has been broken. Again, Psalm 119,

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God graciously teach me your law. How is that oppressive if the Psalmist through divine inspiration is saying,

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God graciously teach me your law. How about in Genesis, Genesis 15 .6, Abraham, the father of our faith, world descendants of Abraham.

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What does God say to Abraham? Abraham believed God, it was credited to him as righteousness. How is that not grace? Or how about this,

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Mr. Stanley, how is it not grace? How is it not grace? How is it just oppressive law when

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God walks through the animals? What's Abraham doing when

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God walks through the parted animals? What's Abraham doing? What's his position? He's asleep.

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He is passive. It's only reception for Abraham. It's only reception.

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It is only gifting. It's all grace. When you look at Deuteronomy chapter four,

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I'll end on this point and get some more of the video. In Deuteronomy four, this is what God says when he gives his law to his people.

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And now Israel, listen to the statutes and the rules that I am teaching you and do them that you may live and to go in and take possession of the land that the

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Lord, your God, the God of your fathers has given you. You should not add to the word that I command you nor take away from it, that you may keep the commandments of the

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Lord, your God, that I command you. And what he says about his law is this. See, I have taught you statutes and rules as Lord, my

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God commanded me that you should do them in the land that you are entering to take possession of it. Keep them and do them for that will be your wisdom and your understanding in the sight of the peoples who, when they hear all these statutes will say, surely this great nation is a wise and understanding people for what great nation is there that has a

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God so near to it as the Lord, our God is to us whenever we call upon him.

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And what great nation is there that has statutes and rules so righteous as all this law that I set before you today. Here's my point,

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Christians, reform folks, we have disagreements over like the extent of the law and like, you know, how moral law and how does that apply today?

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And those sorts of things that, that is not the issue today. The issue today is actually addressing something we can all join together in reformed unity around a man who actually is talking about the old

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Testament in a way that totally contradicts the revelation of God. The old Testament was

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God's grace from beginning to end. It was the perversion, as Rich said, of the religious leaders of that day that led to the idea that this law could somehow justify you.

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That was false. And it's corrected in the new Testament. I don't know why Andy Stanley has adopted it. Well, if you will, that was

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God's contract with the nation. We believe it is through the grace, but here's the subtle part. We believe it's through the grace of our

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Lord Jesus Christ. This is so big that we, we Jews are saved just as they are.

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The implication, let me restate it, this is so big. We, Jesus following Jews must move in their direction and we must stop expecting them to move in our direction.

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Well, that's an interesting way to put that, because it does contradict some biblical teaching that's

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I think important, because again, that's not how the inspired apostle spoke about the situation of Jews and Gentiles now together in one body.

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In Ephesians chapter 2, when he talks about all of our deadness and sin, he talks about us being by nature, children of wrath, and God made us alive together in Jesus.

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By grace, you've been saved through faith and not of yourselves. It's a gift of God, not according to works.

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What's interesting is in that same passage that we all know, and I hope you brothers and sisters have it memorized,

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Ephesians chapter 2, verses 8 through 10, he says this, verse 11, therefore, remember that at one time you

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Gentiles in the flesh called the uncircumcision by what is called the circumcision, which is made in the flesh by hands.

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Remember that you were at that time separated from Christ, alienated from the commonwealth of Israel and strangers to the covenants of promise, covenants plural of promise singular.

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You were strangers, you were aliens, Gentiles having no hope and without God in the world.

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But now in Messiah Jesus, you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ for he himself is our peace who has made us both one and has broken down in his flesh the dividing wall of hostility by abolishing the law of commandments expressed in ordinances, the holiness code.

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Yes, by divine inspiration, we know the holiness code is gone because those boundary markers and those holiness code rules, those separated

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Jew from Gentile in the old Testament, they had their purpose. Paul through divine inspiration says those are gone and you've brought near, been brought near.

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Here's my point. Gentiles, you were strangers, you were aliens to God's covenants of the promise, the commonwealth of Israel.

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But now in Christ, you've been brought near to what? The commonwealth of Israel.

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You've been brought into this. You were brought in, you were a stranger, you were without hope, and you've been brought into the commonwealth of Israel inheriting the covenants of the promise.

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Stanley seems to have it in the other direction, right? It's us need to go over to their covenant, right?

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Like they're saved by grace. We need to move over to them. We need to move away from this treacherous, awful, oppressive law of God and his old

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Testament scriptures and worldview. We've got to get away from that. And we've got to come move over to the Gentiles where God is now acting in grace.

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He's working in grace over here, but that's literally the opposite of what takes place in the new

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Testament. Here's all the blessings. Here's the commonwealth of Israel. You guys are without hope in the world.

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And now in Christ, God's brought you here to participate in all of this here.

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It's not us going over to some covenant God's made over here with them. It's that God has been working and doing things here throughout history.

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And now you guys inherit these blessings. They're coming into you. Just seems like such a strange way to handle the situation in the book of Acts.

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Do you hear that? Isn't that amazing? That conflation? Yes, it's true that this subject is discussed in the new

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Testament. The apostle Paul has a very extensive conversation surrounding this issue of circumcision.

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And if you submit to that, if you take that part and make that commitment to be a part of that, you are now under obligation to fulfill all of that.

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Yes, we know what Paul says in Galatians 5. He says that if you do that, then

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Christ becomes of no effect to you and you've fallen from grace if you do that.

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We understand the dietary restrictions, all of that stuff. We understand that.

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But notice what he did there. He said, these traditions, dietary restrictions, circumcision, all that stuff.

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He goes, so we're going to set aside those traditions. And I would say, okay, good. Yes. That's talked about in a new

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Testament. We see the apostle saying that. He goes, the traditions and the scriptures.

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Well, how do we get there, Andy? How do we do that? How do we get from taking these traditions that, yes, were meant to be temporary.

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They were meant to pass away. They were boundary marker things, separating Jew from Gentile. They were meant to go away. And we have divine, divinely inspired scripture that tells us what to do with those things.

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That's how we know what to do with those things. But how do we get now the scriptures of the Old Testament just tossed in there for good measure?

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The traditions and the scriptures of the Old Testament. You know, brothers and sisters, this is nothing new in church history.

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There's nothing new under the sun. One of the earliest conflicts in the

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Christian church in the second century that actually created quite the stir was the issue of Marcion, the

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Marcionites. And that was an issue that really upset the church. And by the way, this is interesting.

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It was an issue that led to the first formal declaration of canon in the second century by the

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Christian church. It was an issue that was so serious. It was about the Old Testament scriptures and word of God and law that led the early

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Christians to have to formally declare the word of God as the early church.

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That was second century conflict. And of course, this may not be full -blown Marcionism, but oh boy, it smells a lot like it.

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It has the same kind of presuppositions all throughout it. And it's important because of this point, popular text,

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Dr. White has probably taught you as he taught me to know the word specifically, and that is 2

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Timothy 3, 16 through 17, all scripture is, and you say what in Greek, theanoustos.

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We all know that because Dr. White taught us. I love it. Dr. White's used that so many times before, theanoustos, put your hand in front of your face and you can feel the breath touching your palm.

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And that's the expression there of theanoustos. It's the very breathed out word of God. All scripture is theanoustos.

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It's breathed out by God. Very cool thing. The children at Apologia Church all know that Greek word.

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They all know it. If you ask the all say theanoustos, they all know

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God breathed. Thanks to Dr. White. But here's what it says. I need to put this in timeline for us so we can try to think about context.

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Paul is speaking here in 2 Timothy. He's speaking after the life, death, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus.

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So this is long after that. The work of Christ is accomplished. Jesus is ascended and seated on his throne.

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Once for all sacrifice is done, new covenant is running in emotion, right? Apostles are doing their ministry and all that they're doing, they're producing scripture, all that.

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But we don't have the entirety of the New Testament revelation yet. It's not done yet. And Paul says in 2 Timothy 3, 16 -17, all scripture is breathed out by God and is profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be competent, complete, equipped for every good work.

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Paul says that at a time when the New Testament isn't finished yet. So when Paul says to Timothy that these scriptures are able to make you wise for salvation, what's he referring to?

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The Old Testament revelation of God primarily. That these scriptures, the

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Old Testament is able to make you wise for salvation. You can bring someone to Jesus by using the

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Old Testament to do it. And he says all scripture is profitable for training in righteousness, teaching, correction.

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That is post -Christ, cross, ascension, resurrection, and that is

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Paul speaking to a first -century minister of the gospel, talking about God's Old Testament revelation.

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Make you wise for salvation, profitable teaching, correction, competent for every good work. That is the

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Apostle Paul's view of the Old Testament. It's not Andy Stanley's. It's not Andy Stanley's.

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It took him 20 years, but Peter finally figured out that Christianity was not Judaism 2 .0.

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This was not an add -on. It was a stand alone, say goodbye to the past new.

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That Jesus was not an and. Jesus was an instead of no mixing and matching, no blending, no little bit of Jesus, no little bit of Moses.

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It was Jesus only. The law of Moses, God's covenant with Israel was a means to an extraordinary end.

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Really? Well, that is interesting in terms of Christian theology, biblical theology, historic orthodoxy, because the

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Apostle Paul doesn't go there. I want to encourage you to do this. And I don't want to be mean -spirited and unkind to Andy Stanley, but I do want to be a minister of the gospel that says, hey, mark that guy.

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That's not biblical. In Romans chapter 3, when the Apostle Paul gives that catena of verses from the

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Old Testament scripture, by the way, isn't it interesting that the Apostle Paul to preach the gospel uses the Old Testament to do it?

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Isn't that interesting? But when he uses those Old Testament verses to show the universal indictment of sin upon Jew and Gentile, all of us, he talks in Romans 3 .19

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that the law was given to shut the world up, to shut you up, to make you accountable to God, and that through it, by the works of the law, nobody will be justified in his sight, for through the law is the knowledge of sin.

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He says this, watch, but now, verse 21, the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law, watch, although the law and the prophets bear witness to it.

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And then he explains, of course, justified as a gift gift, right? By his grace, through the of God, Jesus is our propitiation.

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God remains just and the justifier, the one who has faith in Jesus. Romans 3 .28, we conclude that a man is justified by faith apart from the works of the law, faith alone, faith apart from the works of the law.

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And you say, I think that Andy Stanley would agree with all of that. And when he says, this is a whole new thing now, we're disconnecting all of this.

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And it would, the law was a means to an end. It was just a means to an end. Look what Paul says in the very passage where he says we can't be justified by the law, faith apart from the works of the law,

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Romans 3 .31, do we then overthrow the law by this faith?

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By no means. On the contrary, we uphold the law. Very different theology, very different from Andy Stanley.

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You see, Paul doesn't have the problem, the disconnect that Andy Stanley does. He sees that Christ is our propitiation.

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He's our righteousness. We're in him. We are credited his righteousness apart from works of law. We're saved through faith.

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That's the instrument through which we're joined to Jesus and God appropriates that gift to us. And it's apart from any work.

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But then he answers the question in the background. He hears Andy Stanley 2 ,000 years later, he hears him and he says, do we then overthrow the law through this faith?

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By no means. Actually, because of the gospel, we establish the law. We uphold it because of the gospel, because we're saved, because we're regenerated.

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And why? Because this ain't no new story. This isn't something to God, just some brand new novel thing

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God's dropped into history in the first century that nobody really expected. And hey, we all got to abandon all this

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Old Testament worldview and revelation to get to this thing with Jesus because it's all new. That's not what the

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Old Testament says. Jeremiah 31, 31, God says he's making a new covenant, not like the one that they broke.

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This is a new one. He says that he will remember their sins no more. And he says this, I will put my law,

01:00:06

Jeremiah 31, 31, which law was that? Oh, that's the law of Christ, like way ahead, right?

01:00:13

That's way later. No, they're talking to Jews here. These guys have their Bibles. They know the word of God. He says,

01:00:19

I'll put my law, where? On their inward parts. Stone tablets now outside of them, no more.

01:00:26

It's now written on the tablet of my heart. It's inside me now. Or how about the passage we always go to as Reformed folks,

01:00:33

Ezekiel 36, I'll sprinkle clean water on you and you'll be clean.

01:00:39

I'll cleanse you of all your idols, all your sin. I'll put my spirit within you and what's he say?

01:00:46

I will cause you to observe my statutes. Which statutes?

01:00:54

This is Ezekiel. It's Ezekiel. He's a Jew. He's got the word of God.

01:01:00

He knows the law of God. Jeremiah and Ezekiel both saying that a constituent element of the new covenant is that God does something new, where now by his spirit, he fills people and he writes his law inside them.

01:01:17

Stanley says, disconnect all of it. The whole worldview, the law itself is gone. You have no obligation to obey the 10 commandments now.

01:01:24

God's saying, don't obey the 10 commandments. It's a whole new thing. The old covenant prophets are going, well, that's not what was promised.

01:01:33

It was something entirely different. It was now God taking his law and putting it inside of people.

01:01:39

Which law? The known law, the law that they had, the law they understood from their God. Very different from Andy Stanley.

01:01:46

And then Peter's done. James stands up and everybody gets quiet.

01:01:52

It's James, brother Jesus. Got any questions about Mary? He's the one to ask.

01:01:58

Okay. James and brother Jesus stands up and he reminds them, gentlemen, we shouldn't be surprised by this.

01:02:08

Our prophets predicted this. Our prophets foretold of a time that there would be a new covenant.

01:02:14

Our prophets told us that Israel was established to be a light to the Gentiles. We should have seen this coming.

01:02:20

And then he concludes with this statement. This statement has been on my desk for 20 years. This statement is painted in the halls and the walls of most of our office buildings, everywhere we build offices.

01:02:30

This is on plaques. We've made pictures out of it. This has been our marching orders for just, you know, for about 20 years as a group of churches.

01:02:37

James says, it is my judgment. In other words, I'm calling this meeting to a close.

01:02:43

It is my judgment, therefore, that we should not make it difficult for the

01:02:48

Gentiles who are turning to God. The implications are extraordinary within the context of this conversation.

01:02:57

Here's what he was saying. God's arrangement with Israel, God's arrangement with Israel should now be eliminated from the equation.

01:03:07

But what he said next is so astonishing and so disruptive, it has been largely ignored in the church.

01:03:16

And I can understand why. Because again, this is so difficult for those of us who grew up accepting and, you know, reading and hearing the

01:03:23

Bible taught the way that most of us have. But this is, I mean, this is James the brother of Jesus. This is Peter, Jesus follower.

01:03:29

These are guys who are right there close to the action. We should take their word for what we need to do as it relates to their scripture.

01:03:38

Do you know what he said next? No. What, what, what can't, this is how, what a big deal this is.

01:03:45

What comes next defines your relationship with over half your English Bible, if you own a

01:03:50

Bible and if you take the Bible seriously. And I remember before I tell you what he says, 300 miles north, you got up hundreds and hundreds of Gentiles, and they're waiting to hear what this group's going to decide.

01:03:59

The men are most nervous of all. Okay. Because it's like, okay, if they come back after this meeting and say, well, we voted and yeah, you got to have a, you have a surgery to be a

01:04:08

Jesus follower. So they're in there, they're waiting. So James says, we need to write them a letter and help, you know, work through and sort out and tell them what we decided so that you don't just go up there and say what we did.

01:04:19

We're going to put it in writing and then put our names on it and send some trustworthy people with you back to Antioch.

01:04:25

So those Christians up there will know what to do and how Jewish they have to be and what they have to do with Moses. And here's what

01:04:31

James says. This is, this is extraordinary. Instead, we should write them instead of telling them they have to be circumcised and keep the whole law of Moses.

01:04:40

They have to be Jewish to be Christian. Instead, we should write to them, telling them that Christians in Antioch, here's what they got to do.

01:04:48

Abstain from food polluted by idols, from sexual immorality and from the meat of strangled animals and from blood.

01:04:58

What? What? Yeah. This is what we're going to tell them. This will help them. This is going to sort of, this is going to solve the problem.

01:05:04

Tell them to abstain from food polluted by idols, from sexual immorality, from the meat of strangled animals and from blood.

01:05:11

Now it looks like when you first read this, that he's kind of cherry picking from the law of Moses. Like, okay, they don't have to do all 600, but let's just give them a few.

01:05:20

Let's, you know, you can't eat meat, you know, from strangled animals and sexual immorality. It looks like he's cherry picking. This is so important.

01:05:26

Look up here. He's not. Because here's his explanation for this strange group of Old Testament -ish kind of commands.

01:05:33

Four. That means I'm going to explain why this letter. For the law of Moses has been preached in every city from the earliest times and is read in the synagogues on every

01:05:42

Sabbath. In other words, in Antioch, there are a bunch of synagogues and there's so many Jewish people living up there. And there are so many

01:05:48

Jewish people who are bought into and kind of hardwired to the dietary laws of Moses. So here's the question.

01:05:55

Why would James suggest they send that particular message to Gentile Christians? What, you know, what does the law of Moses has been taught in synagogues every

01:06:05

Sabbath? What does that have to do with these Old Testament -ish commands? And why these? Why doesn't he say, okay, tell the

01:06:11

Gentiles, um, let's see. Okay. Do not steal. Thou shalt not steal. That's a good one. What else you got? Oh yeah, that's a good one.

01:06:16

Thou shalt not murder. That's a good one. What else we got? Okay. Thou shalt not commit adultery. Let's just go with three. Send them these.

01:06:22

Why the food thing? And then this very general statement and no sexual immorality.

01:06:28

What's the connection? This is so important. Those imperatives had nothing to do with keeping the law of Moses.

01:06:39

Those imperatives had everything to do with keeping the peace in the church.

01:06:46

Now, he is onto something there that is fundamentally a part of the conflict, what's happening there with Jew and Gentile keeping peace in the church.

01:06:57

The problem is where he then goes with it. He then turns it into a discussion of a complete disconnection from the

01:07:05

Old Testament scriptures and the moral law of God, the law of God itself. Isn't it interesting that he actually brings up there as, uh, as an example, like, well, they didn't choose like, you should not murder, you should not commit adultery, you should not steal.

01:07:17

They could have chosen those three. Well, I want to say they didn't do that because it was already assumed that that law was abiding.

01:07:25

That's God's moral law. That law doesn't change. For example, and if you have any questions about that, let me just try to humbly say it to you in this way.

01:07:34

Jesus says that the two greatest commandments are to love God and love neighbor. Well, guess what?

01:07:40

Guess where that's from? That's from the Old Testament. That's not some new thing from Jesus.

01:07:45

He's quoting from the Old Testament. Shema Yisrael, Yahweh Eloheinu, Yahweh Echad. Hear O Israel, the

01:07:52

Lord, our God, the Lord is one. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and soul and mind. That's Old Testament law.

01:07:58

And then of course, love your neighbor as you love yourself. That's from Leviticus. Those are the laws of God. And then Jesus says this, all of the law and the prophets, all of the law and the prophets are built upon these two commandments.

01:08:11

And I would ask Andy Stanley this, I would say, am I obligated in your New Testament to love

01:08:19

God and love neighbor? And if he says, yes, I'd say, thank you for the 10 commandments.

01:08:26

Thank you for the 10 commandments. Because the love of God, love of neighbor is what leads to the 10 commandments.

01:08:32

First table, second table, love for neighbor is what, what does it look like to love my neighbor? Are you ready? Here's what it looks like.

01:08:38

Don't steal from them. Don't kill them. Don't lie to them. Don't covet their stuff.

01:08:44

Don't commit adultery. Love your neighbor, right? Loving God. What's that look like to love

01:08:49

God? I don't know. Do you want to be creative and figure it out? How about loving God looks like have no other gods in God's sight.

01:08:57

Don't make a God that looks like God. Don't take his name in vain. You see what I'm saying? You see the love of God, love of neighbor is the basis of Jesus as all the law of God.

01:09:07

And how come James didn't say, let's take these three because it was already assumed that God's law is abiding.

01:09:16

It's abiding. And it's true that these particular orders were given to keep what?

01:09:25

Peace within the church. That is right. What's not right is where Andy Stanley goes with it.

01:09:32

Therefore, the Old Testament worldview is gone. Therefore, the Old Testament law is gone.

01:09:38

It's all over with now. It's a completely new thing. Move away completely from those words. And you're not even obligated now to keep the 10 commandments, which is where Andy Stanley goes.

01:09:47

Rich? See, forgive me for always looking for consistency. I'm kind of trained that way. I think if you ask

01:09:55

Andy Stanley that question and he's consistent, I think he is logically forced to jettison at least half of the

01:10:06

New Testament. Yes. Yes. I think he has no choice but to look at things that he's already, we've heard him a couple of years ago when

01:10:18

James was reviewing some of his stuff, going through things you might consider to be a fable, or do you really believe that?

01:10:26

You know, really, we only have to believe this one thing. Well, if you only have to believe the one thing, then you don't have to believe any of the other stuff.

01:10:35

And so when you come across the Apostle Paul and he's rooting his arguments into the

01:10:40

Old Testament, which you've already thrown out the window, well, why don't we just throw Paul out with it?

01:10:46

Right. Okay. And then we get Peter, you know, Peter, he gets into some sticky stuff. He gets into the

01:10:51

Genesis 6 stuff too. And we don't really understand that too well. Let's get rid of him too. That's right. And next thing you know, we have sliced and diced our

01:10:59

Bible and that's the problem. What do you got left? A couple of pages that look like you've been doing the

01:11:08

Unabomber. You've got a lot of problems too. Yeah, because, and that's one of the things that's happening. You know this, Rich, in church history.

01:11:14

When people have gone the way of Andy Stanley and there's nothing new under the sun, when they have gone this way, they have had then difficulty saying

01:11:22

Old Testament's completely. Let's ignore that entirely. Now they go, oops, Paul is quoting from the

01:11:28

Old Testament law, assuming that you're supposed to obey it. So is Peter. So are the other apostles. So maybe we need to say

01:11:34

Paul's maybe not a real apostle. Maybe he has to go too. Maybe we take this apostle's writings. We just ignore this whole book.

01:11:41

Maybe that's not really written by him. Maybe that's something different. And so, yeah, this, this, you run into these problems when you don't let the

01:11:49

New Testament revelation define for you what remains, what goes.

01:11:56

And I don't think that Stanley's allowing that to take place. We're almost done here, guys. Just a few more minutes. This next section is actually really, really important.

01:12:03

So I'm going to try to at least play through this. This will be a jumbo dividing line today. He was asking these new

01:12:08

Gentile believers to make some dietary concessions for the sake of unity in the church, because he knew no matter what they taught for a

01:12:20

Jewish person, that dietary law was like, okay, I know we're free and I know Peter had a vision and I know what

01:12:27

Jesus said, but I just can't eat pork. I'm shrimp. I'm just, I just can't. I mean, I love Jesus. Yes, I do.

01:12:32

I love Jesus. How about you? But I just, I can't just don't make me do that. And so they're saying, look, tell the

01:12:37

Gentiles, tell the Gentiles, you make concessions like we're making concessions because we're going to have one church, not two.

01:12:45

This was all about peacekeeping, not law keeping. Now, I want to talk about this one real quick.

01:12:51

This is because this is kind of the outliers, like the dietary thing, kind of odd. And then he says, oh yeah, and abstain from sexual immorality.

01:12:58

Now, if I were to hand everybody a three by five card and I were to say, tell me what you think this means or what this means to you, how many different answers would

01:13:06

I get? About as many answers as there are cards, right? I really hope not.

01:13:15

Not in a Christian communion. I really hope that within a Christian church, the body of Christ wouldn't have that problem.

01:13:24

And this goes back to what I said at the very beginning of this episode, brothers and sisters, if you stand on the word of God as your reference point, if it's the standard by which you measure everything, if it's the plum line, then no, you don't have that problem of not being able to define what sexual immorality is.

01:13:43

Now, this is where it gets really interesting. And by the way, this is where he comes off the rails.

01:13:48

It's where the wheels come off completely. The things that he says next are the reason why

01:13:55

I said on Tuesday that this is a lie. It's lying because Andy Stanley has read his

01:14:02

Bible. And if he has not read his Bible, he doesn't belong in this position. Either way you cut it, there's no excuse for what comes next here.

01:14:11

So what does this even mean? You're going to send a bunch of idol, you know, ex -pagans who, you know, participated in temple prostitution, who have a very different sense of morality and what you can and can't do with slaves.

01:14:23

I mean, the morality of the pagan world, you know, you should know this. In the pagan religions, the gods could care less how you treated other people.

01:14:31

The gods, there was no religious morality. Zero. Zip up. The gods just wanted sacrifices.

01:14:38

Now, there was civil law in terms of what you could and couldn't do, but in terms of religious law, there was no moral religious law in paganism.

01:14:45

It was a completely separate thing. Which is, I'll just say quickly, why

01:14:50

God's giving of his law and revealing his own character was a gracious act of God.

01:14:56

It was a gift. It was a gift from God for him to condescend and to reveal himself to his people.

01:15:03

So to send a bunch of Gentiles this and abstain from sexual immorality, what does that even mean?

01:15:09

This was a, this is so important, this was a general call to avoid immoral behavior, but not immoral behavior as defined by the

01:15:17

Old Testament or the Law and the Prophets. Why? Because they didn't have one. They weren't Jewish. But as defined by the

01:15:24

Apostle Paul had been teaching in Antioch for two or more years.

01:15:30

And do you know what the Apostle Paul consistently tied sexual behavior to?

01:15:36

Not the Old Covenant. Not the Ten Commandments. Nope.

01:15:42

Not true. Not sexual immorality as defined by the Old Testament. Well, let me start this by, of course,

01:15:49

I'm going to go to where Paul does exactly the thing that you say he doesn't do, but let me ask this question. I would love to ask this question.

01:15:55

If I had Andy Stanley in front of me, if we ever happen to see this broadcast, I'd like to ask

01:16:01

Andy Stanley, can I have sex with animals in the New Covenant? Bestiality, is that against the law of God in the

01:16:13

New Covenant? And if he says, well, of course you can't do it, I know he would say you can't, but if he says, well, of course you can't,

01:16:21

I would ask him, says who? Where does it say that? Show me in the

01:16:27

New Testament record where I have a prohibition against sex with animals. Show me where.

01:16:33

And if you then go back to appeal to the Old Testament law and say God said, then I'll say that now you're completely done.

01:16:38

Stick a fork in yourself because your whole premise is over. Or how about this? Is it lawful under the

01:16:45

New Covenant for a daughter to marry her father or to have sexual relations with her father or her brother?

01:16:53

Is that lawful in the New Covenant? Old Testament gone now, Old Testament worldview completely kicked out. I would like to know as a minister of the gospel, whether it is allowed on the

01:17:01

New Covenant to be in that kind of a relationship. And if you then appeal to the Old Testament law and say

01:17:07

God has already spoken on that, I'd say now the wheels have come off once again. But he says that Paul didn't root his definition of sexual morality in the

01:17:15

Old Testament. Well, there are a number of ways to address that, but I want to do it quickly right now.

01:17:20

We're almost done. And I would just point to 1 Corinthians 5. It's a well -known conflict.

01:17:27

And in 1 Corinthians 5, he says, verse 1, it is actually reported that there is sexual immorality among you.

01:17:33

He says, Paul didn't define sexual immorality on the basis of the Old Testament.

01:17:39

Well, he says the word sexual morality, and a kind that is not tolerated even among pagans.

01:17:46

For a man has his father's wife, and you are arrogant. Ought you not rather to mourn?

01:17:53

Let him who has done this be removed from among you. So Paul then, of course, says that he wants them to get the guy out.

01:18:01

He says in verse 9, I wrote to you in my letter not to associate with sexually immoral people. And he says in verse 11, but now

01:18:10

I'm writing to you not to associate with anyone who bears the name of a brother if he is guilty of sexual immorality or greed or is an idolater, reviler, drunkard, or swindler, not even to eat with such a one.

01:18:22

For what have I to do with judging outsiders? Is it not those inside the church whom you are to judge?

01:18:29

God judges those outside. Here we go. Purge the evil person from among you.

01:18:35

Purge the evil person from among you. Boy, that sounds familiar. Where do you get that from?

01:18:42

The Old Testament. So when Paul is dealing with sexual ethics within a new covenant community, he actually says, this is immoral behavior.

01:18:52

And then he says, watch this, here's what you are to do ethically, what you ought to purge the evildoer from among you.

01:18:58

Where did Paul get that from? That was the law in the Old Testament. And he says, this law, purge the evildoer from among you, that is abiding in the new covenant community.

01:19:10

Right? But watch what he doesn't do. He doesn't say, now everyone listen up, I'm about to say something now. We all know that Old Testament revelation is all done now.

01:19:19

We're done with the whole worldview now. All that law is gone. We're done completely now. We just gotta be like Jesus now.

01:19:24

So I'm going to do something here, guys. I'm going to pull a law from the Old Testament now. And I want that, at least that to remain here in terms of ethics and how you guys ought to behave and how you ought to function as a church here.

01:19:35

He doesn't do that. What's he do? He just quotes it. Why? It's the assumption of continuity.

01:19:41

He just assumes it. You're supposed to know. You're supposed to know this. But what else does he do here? He's all talking about sexual morality and purge the evildoer from among you.

01:19:50

That's what you know God wants you to do from the Old Testament law. But then he actually, as he talks about sexual morality in 1

01:19:58

Corinthians 6, look what it says in verse 16, as he talks about prostitutes.

01:20:04

Or do you not know that he who is joined to a prostitute becomes one body with her? For as it is written, the two will become one flesh.

01:20:11

But he who is joined to the Lord becomes one spirit with him. Flee sexual immorality. Every other sin a person commits is outside the body, but the sexual immoral person sins against his own body.

01:20:21

Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God?

01:20:28

Two things there. As he defines sexual morality, one, he says, the two shall become one flesh.

01:20:35

What's that from? That's from the law of God. That's from the book of Genesis. The two become one flesh.

01:20:41

Here's Paul again, quoting the Old Testament revelation. And then the second thing he does here in 1 Corinthians 6 is what? He says this, your body is a temple of the

01:20:50

Holy Spirit. What's Paul doing? He's using the Old Testament worldview and concept of temple and spirit of God, and he's now applying that in a

01:20:59

New Covenant context. He's doing the very thing Stanley says he doesn't do, which is root

01:21:04

New Testament sexual ethics in the Old Covenant revelation, Old Testament revelation. He does the very thing that Stanley says he doesn't do.

01:21:13

That's in two chapters, 1 Corinthians 5, 1 Corinthians 6. The one commandment that Jesus gave us, that you are to treat others as God through Christ has treated you.

01:21:25

So when Paul talked about relationships, he said stuff like this, in your relationships to one another, in your relationships with one another, have the same attitude as Christ Jesus.

01:21:34

Any questions? Kind of covers it, doesn't it? Means I got to put people before me. Yeah. In your relationships with one another, just remember your body is a temple of the

01:21:43

Holy Spirit. Wait, I thought we're not using Old Testament worldview and Old Testament scripture to define sexual ethics in the

01:21:55

New Testament. When you pull from the passage that says our body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, you're once again diving back into the

01:22:02

Old Testament revelation and worldview that you say is completely disconnected now, and we're untethered from, and you're using that now to define sexual ethics in the

01:22:12

New Testament. And so is hers, and so is his.

01:22:18

Any questions? No, I think that about covers it. The Apostle Paul was explicit and specific about teaching on sexual immorality, but he did not tie it to the

01:22:28

Old Testament. So consequently, this letter makes perfect sense because it's going to show up in the church in Antioch, where the

01:22:34

Apostle Paul's been for two years. So basically, they're saying, in order for there to be unity in the church, let's not offend.

01:22:42

Let's not offend the Jewish sensibilities when it comes to the dietary law. They'll move past this over time, perhaps.

01:22:48

And you need to take Paul's teaching on moral purity seriously, because that has the potential to divide you as well, because you have different religious customs when it comes to moral purity.

01:23:02

Paul tied sexual behavior to Jesus' new command. The Old Covenant, the

01:23:08

Old Covenant Law of Moses, was not the go -to source regarding sexual behavior in the church. More importantly, and perhaps more disturbingly, that's a word, or offensively, the

01:23:19

Old Testament, or the Law and the Prophets, as they called it, was not going to be the go -to source for any behavior in the church.

01:23:27

Now, okay, so I'll bite. The Old Testament was not the go -to source regarding any behavior in the church.

01:23:36

He says, any behavior in the church. Well, we have to get finished with the show today, but I'll at least give you a couple.

01:23:43

How about the Apostle Paul in Ephesians chapter 6? Ephesians chapter 6, many of you guys know this.

01:23:50

If you're you've said it a lot to your kids. Children, obey your parents in the

01:23:58

Lord, for this is right. Honor your father and your mother, which is the first commandment with a promise.

01:24:06

Here's the Apostle Paul in the New Testament, after the life, death, resurrection, and ascension of the

01:24:12

Savior, of Jesus, he says, and he just assumes it. He doesn't say, we know it's all gone.

01:24:18

We know it's all over with, and it's all done with. Everyone, this is all disjointed now, and everyone, we're all in a new situation here.

01:24:25

And so I'm just going to pull this one over. He says, children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right. Honor your father and your mother.

01:24:31

This is the first commandment with a promise. He just assumes it. Stanley says, the Old Testament was not the go -to source regarding any behavior in the church.

01:24:41

Brothers and sisters, that's not true. It is standing before the people of God on the

01:24:48

Lord's day as a minister of the gospel. I say that's called a lie, if you know your

01:24:53

New Testament revelation. I don't think that Andy Stanley is an ignorant man, not by any means. And I think that standing before the people of God, when you've read these texts,

01:25:00

I think Stanley hopefully has quoted this text to his children. He knows this text. How about this?

01:25:07

The Old Testament was not the go -to source regarding any behavior for the church. 1

01:25:12

Timothy 5 .19, the apostle Paul says to Timothy, do not admit a charge against an elder except on the evidence of two or three witnesses.

01:25:21

Boy, that sounds familiar. Sounds like the Old Testament worldview. Sounds like the Old Testament revelation of God.

01:25:27

It sounds like God's judicial standards for receiving an accusation.

01:25:33

So what do you have there? I'm giving you two examples now. One, Paul quotes from the Ten Commandments, and he says,

01:25:39

Obey your parents and the Lord, first commandment of the promise. And another occasion, 1 Timothy 5 .19,

01:25:44

Paul actually quotes from the judicial law in Moses about receiving accusations, and he says, you need two to three witnesses.

01:25:52

Oh, by the way, who else did that? Jesus. Matthew 18, church discipline, what do you do?

01:25:58

Go to them first by yourself. If they don't listen, you bring what? Right? You bring other witnesses.

01:26:05

To do what? To follow God's law about judicial standards of accusations. Paul here is now applying a text from God's judicial law about justice and accusations.

01:26:17

And then another one, and this is 1 Timothy 5 .18.

01:26:23

We've got Ten Commandments, obey your parents and obey your parents, honor your father and your mother.

01:26:28

We've got judicial law, don't receive an accusation unless on the basis of two to three witnesses. And now 1

01:26:33

Timothy 5 .18, he says to Timothy, don't muzzle the ox while it treads, referring to paying vocational ministers so they can survive.

01:26:44

You've got Paul now, Stanley saying, not the go -to source regarding any behavior for the church.

01:26:51

And Paul's just assuming it left and right. Children, Ten Commandments, honor your father and your mother.

01:26:57

You over there, don't receive an accusation, God's judicial law. And you over there, don't muzzle the ox while it treads.

01:27:02

That's an animal husbandry law. That's an animal husbandry law. And he assumes the moral foundation built into that law, and that's abiding in the new covenant community.

01:27:14

And Andy Stanley says, nope, doesn't apply anymore. Well, I want to say this, this is not New Testament Christianity.

01:27:20

This is not Christianity. It is just not Christianity. It's not consistent with the proclamation of the gospel the apostles preach.

01:27:28

It's not consistent with the Bible said about the law of God and the new covenant community. And we will end on this next point.

01:27:34

I just want you to hear it in case you haven't. To make this point, because this is so important, I originally in my notes,

01:27:40

I was going to put a screen up here that said, in other words, that means thou shalt not obey the

01:27:45

Ten Commandments. But I knew someone would take a picture of that and it would define me for the rest of my life.

01:27:52

So I'm not going to put it up there, but I want you to hear me say it. Here's what the Jerusalem council was saying to the Gentiles.

01:27:58

You are not accountable to the Ten Commandments. You're not accountable to the Jewish law.

01:28:04

We're done with that. God has done something new. Besides, he would say to them and he would say to you, thou shalt not obey the

01:28:11

Ten Commandments because those aren't your commandments. Yours are better and yours are far less complicated, but they are far more demanding.

01:28:24

Because you see, look up here. When you begin to view every single person you meet, red, yellow, black, or white, rich, poor, vulnerable, not vulnerable.

01:28:34

When you begin to view every single person you are eyeball to eyeball with as made in the image of God and a potential dwelling place for the

01:28:43

Spirit of God. I love all those Old Testament concepts. I just love the image of God.

01:28:52

Where's that from? That's from Genesis chapter 1. I love the dwelling place for the Spirit of God. That's all

01:28:58

Old Testament concepts. You see, this is so broken. It's beyond repair as it is.

01:29:05

The presuppositions are completely antithetical to Scripture. They're not biblical. But I wanted you to hear it.

01:29:11

He says with his own mouth, I didn't want to have it on here in case someone takes a picture of it. He says, but I'll go ahead and say it.

01:29:18

Well, thank God for technology and the ability to do shows like this and to go ahead and play your words for everyone to hear. I don't need the picture to do it.

01:29:24

But we're no longer obligated to obey the Ten Commandments. We have commandments that are far less complicated.

01:29:30

It's just far less complicated, more demanding. Well, that's interesting because that's not the way that God talks about his law.

01:29:36

Psalm 119. That's what I'll point you to. That's how God feels about his law. But I think it's interesting.

01:29:43

Interesting is not the right word. I think it's horrifying that this man can go up there and speak to the people of God in the way that he has, and he can tell them things that are just simply not the case.

01:29:54

He could disrupt the continuity between the Old Testament and the New Testament. He could be destructive in terms of what the

01:30:00

New Covenant promise was about the people of God, the law of God within the Spirit of God within them. He can do it all.

01:30:06

And I think the amazing thing is, is no one stood up in the congregation and said, excuse me, patently false.

01:30:13

Patently false. Complicated, love God, love neighbor. That's the foundation for all of God's law.

01:30:20

What's it look like to love God, love neighbor? Well, how about the Ten Commandments? Those are pretty good.

01:30:26

There's a pretty good rule there. And you see, of course, in the New Covenant documents, you see the apostles doing the very thing he says they don't do.

01:30:34

They don't root the ethics in the Old Testament itself. You see them doing it freely, just assuming it.

01:30:40

Here is a man who has a presuppositional commitment that is contrary to the scriptures itself.

01:30:47

And he's reading that commitment into a passage in the book of Acts that is talking about unity within the church.

01:30:54

That is what it's talking about, unity within the church. And he has a presupposition that he reads in, he eisegetes that presupposition into the text, and he makes that text say more than it's actually saying.

01:31:06

And what does he do? He goes so far as to say, no more Old Testament ethical appeals, no more

01:31:12

Old Testament worldview. We are completely disconnected from that now in the New Testament. We have something entirely new.

01:31:18

Now it's grace. Then it was law. Now it's peace and love and sweetness from God.

01:31:23

And then it was just sort of like violent and oppressive. And by the way, yes, if you keep going through this message, you'll hear him say that.

01:31:30

It was just this violent worldview and God was playing by their rules, but now it's just something so new and something so sweet and so different and so much far less complicated in the

01:31:41

New Testament. No, I would say the New Testament revelation is very clear. This is not altogether complicated.

01:31:48

It's actually, I think, rather beautiful and simple. God keeps his promises. One of the constituent elements of his promises was that he would take that law and put it within people.

01:31:57

And they would now have in the new covenant, the spirit of God to empower them to do that law.

01:32:04

That's the message of Romans chapter eight. Those who are in the flesh can't submit to the law of God.

01:32:10

They're not even able to do so, but you are in the spirit. Christians in a new covenant, not dead in Adam, in the flesh, fallen.

01:32:21

Now they're alive in Jesus, the spirit of God. They relate to the law of God and the word of God in an entirely different way now in the new covenant.

01:32:28

Rich, I saw you. No, a couple of, just one thing I wanted to add on to what you were saying. You mentioned what you don't see about someone standing up and going, excuse me, excuse me.

01:32:39

That we know of. Yes, true. Yes. I mean, I realize I'm speculating at that point, but I would venture to say the environment that he's in, we have seen before.

01:32:52

I would venture to say that he's very well isolated and protected. And so whether, if you look at the prosperity preachers and the healers, where they're, they've got the crew that's hustling out the people in the wheelchair after the show is over off to the side that nobody sees or things like that.

01:33:13

I'm sure that there are things going on to make sure that hand -picked people get to meet

01:33:18

Andy. Sure. And anyone that disrupts or causes him any difficulty is quickly hustled out.

01:33:25

True. I would not doubt that at all. Yeah. Before we close out the show, I want to mention that I want to thank you for coming in this week.

01:33:31

It was my pleasure. And next Tuesday, this coming Tuesday, we're going to have Pastor Dan Cofessi in. Then James should be back.

01:33:40

And I don't know if he's going to be awake because his, you know, his lopsided halfway around the world.

01:33:46

That's right. But he is in Glasgow today. He, I would like to ask folks to pray for him as he comes to the end stage of this particular trip, a very long and grueling trip.

01:33:58

And Monday, not only will he be doing some teaching during the day, which will be a first, the day of a debate.

01:34:05

Oh, wow. And then he is going to be debating Peter D. Williams that night, Monday night.

01:34:11

And then what's the topic with Peter? I don't have that in front of me and suddenly drawing a blank.

01:34:16

So you caught me flat footed on that. But it is on the website. There's a banner up there at AMN .org. The following day, he will be winging his way back here to Phoenix.

01:34:28

Should be back in Tuesday evening. And so we hope to have him on the show on Thursday.

01:34:34

Then he's heading back, not there, but he's heading out town again the following week.

01:34:39

He'll be over in California doing some teaching. So we'll have Dan Kifessi back that Tuesday, and you've made the commitment on the 14th to come in and fill in on that Thursday for him.

01:34:50

And that's kind of as far out as the schedule as I can get. Right on. Perfect. Well, there you go, guys.

01:34:55

There's a schedule over the next month. I want to encourage all of you to go to AMN .org, get connected with Alpha Omega Ministries.

01:35:02

So much amazing and rich content over just decades. And I would bet that you are not even aware, most of you, of just the rich treasure that is deep, deep within the wells of Alpha Omega Ministries in terms of debates and articles and all kinds of stuff.

01:35:23

So I would encourage you definitely to take a look at that. That's what I was raised on, was all the old stuff.

01:35:29

And that's where I got connected with Dr. White. So I encourage you to do that. And go to, of course,

01:35:34

Alpha Omega Ministries on YouTube. Make sure you guys check out some of the debates. Support this ministry. It's a huge blessing to the church all around the world.

01:35:41

And that's it, guys. Thanks for having me. Dr. White, thank you for letting me sit in your seat once again. And we'll catch you guys later.