Apologetics and Sexuality | Dr. James White

now our subject for this evening is obviously one that my grandparents never expected their grandchildren to ever have to address I didn't know my grandfather he died when my dad was I think 14 years old he was he had appendicitis he lived out on a farm and the old country doctor was a alcoholic and after he started surgery he went out to get a drink and my grandfather bled to death on the table I was not raised with a real high view of doctors as for some strange reason as a result of that but but I I know of that generation and I just have to wonder sometimes what they what they must think of where we are today and what we are having to deal with and certainly I think the church can be forgiven for being a little bit behind the ball so to speak many of the things that we're now facing in Western society were simply unthinkable 15 years ago and when certain people like Francis Schaeffer warned us that these things were coming a lot of us looked at him like and not really a prophet are you a little bit little of on the odd side bright guy but you know wearing those later hose and probably has caused you some problems and we just didn't we didn't we didn't understand and now my grandchildren are being homeschooled and part of their home schooling has to be fundamental foundational issues regarding what is a man and what is a woman what is a boy and what is a girl and are those merely social constructs what about my friend at the playground that thinks there's something else these are not issues that were being discussed at least in a biblical fashion in most seminaries only a short period of time ago and sadly and many seminaries today they are still not being discussed in a biblical fashion they're being discussed but they're not being discussed in a biblical fashion and the force of society is coming against the church and this is the area this is the front that is being used to seek well some of you saw I still am amazed I must be honest at how much you folks know about our election cycles in the United States is it just entertaining is it just that you got nothing else on Australian television or is it just the vibe of the thing come on it's just the vibe of the thing you know what I mean man how many of you get that wait a minute I know more about Australian movies than the rest of you do wow that's that's sad that's just sad it's a cultural reference it was a good one wasn't it you liked it okay good all right the rest you just have to go look it up the figure out what the vibe of the thing is but but anyway it does amaze me because when I was I was in Brisbane and 2016 and they had huge widescreen tvs set up in town square and there's Trump and and that other woman who thinks she's still one that's the sad part about that I could win again little confused aren't you but anyway I was just amazed at how much people know about what's happening in in the United States and for those of us who have to live that reality every single day I'd like to escape someplace where that's not taking place personally but I can't and we've still got a whole year to go more of this it's just going to get crazier but you probably saw that one of the candidates running for president was talking about how if churches do not support the LGBTQ movement that their tax breaks will be taken from them and the the rumbling that you heard was all the founding fathers of the United States rolling over in their graves at such a gross misrepresentation of American history the founding fathers recognized that taxation was the power to tax the power to destroy and the idea that the state has the right to tax the church but just doesn't out of the beneficence of its soul is just again another historical absurdity but that's where they're coming from and will that guy be elected now not this time around but eventually but eventually and this is a reality that we simply have to recognize not only in our context but unfortunately we tend to export our garbage to the rest of the world and that's what we're going to be doing and so we all have to make decisions the elders of every church the leaders of every Church have to make decisions where do you draw the line where do you draw the line little church history here I love I love church history and I think one of the greatest degradation of our modern situation is that we are actually so arrogant that we think that we can do this Christianity thing without ever even considering what the Holy Spirit did in the lives of generations after generations after generations of believers before us it's just part of there isn't there is a part especially amongst young people that thinks that if you didn't have one of these your opinions could never really matter much seriously that really is a thought that many people have you didn't have the technology we have today and yet it's obvious to me the attention span of people 300 years ago was about 300 times what it is today really yes look at some of those sermons the Puritans preached you couldn't fall asleep there was a guy walking up and down the aisle is a big long pole he reached out Lackey on the head if he started sleeping that would keep you awake that'll keep your attention but in church history especially the first three hundred years there's much that we can learn from what happened in church history because there is a tremendous parallel between what we're facing and what the church at that time faced they were facing a massive powerful governmental system the Roman Empire that allowed for plurality of beliefs you could have your gods they could have their gods what they did not like was anyone who said our God is the only true God because that causes friction that causes problems and they also required some level of syncretism what do I mean by that well as you know sometime around the same time period as the rise of Christianity it developed within Roman legal system that you were to offer a pinch of incense upon the altar it would be a portable altar it wasn't some fancy big thing but it would be a little all to be set up some coals to be put in it and you were to take a pinch of incense and you were to offer it on that altar and of course it would flame up a little bit you'd have the smell of the incense and when you did so you were to say Kaiser could EOS Caesar is Lord Caesar is Lord now the understanding was not that you were saying Caesar is the only Lord or even your primary Lord but that Caesar holds a position of lordship and authority for you so that you will be obedient to Caesar and so any obedience you pledge to your God has to be joined with the obedience that you pledged to the Roman Empire and once you did that you would be given something called a liebe loose and the liebe loose was a document that said you had offered the sacrifice and therefore you could engage in buying and selling and trading if you didn't have the liebe loose you couldn't do that and so the Jews obviously had a problem with this and they had already worked out an arrangement with Rome that allowed them to get around this but it didn't take long before the Christians were differentiated from the Jews the Romans began to realize this was a different group with a different perspective on things and this became one of the central issues that the early church had to face and in fact most of the early divisions in the church were over the issue of persecution that is once the persecution ended because from about the time of Nero until about 250 so about 64 to 250 persecution would come and go would be in one area not another area then from about 250 to 313 its Empire wide and so during that time period once the persecution would end the big question was well if someone lapsed if someone gave in and now the persecution ends they want back into the church what do we do it and you can understand why that was a problem if you had been imprisoned and you had lost much being in prison you had been beaten and now the persecution ends you've been released and here comes somebody who had gotten out of getting beaten and imprisoned by offering incense someone one of the other areas was the the Romans would ask for the Christian scriptures and if you gave over the scriptures you were called a trata tour you do tribute you gave over the Christian scriptures sometimes you would buy a liebe Luce surah under the table you know there was lots of people you could bribe so you didn't actually offer the incense but you got the document that said that you had and avoided problems that way well what happens once the persecution ends how does the church hold together how do you deal with that and that was some of the biggest schisms that took place in the early church weren't over doctrine they were over what to do with those who were persecuted so today the question for you and I the question that each one of us has to face we have to face it corporately as a church we have to face it corporately as individual local bodies and then we have to face it as individuals family heads individual Christians when is it that the society is forcing you to offer a pinch of incense upon the altar and instead of saying hey sis could EOS Jesus is Lord you are to say Kaiser kudos Caesar is Lord what when is that that's the question that we have to ask and I cannot give you a nice clear unambiguous answer for everyone in every situation because some of you are already in that situation some of you work in fields where already the pressure is being put upon you to celebrate that which is fundamentally in opposition to the Christian worldview you're being forced to celebrate that which you know does not tend toward human flourishing it is not the way God created us to behave or to think or to view ourselves it's not going to bring people into a relationship with God it is going to further isolate them from him and so where is that line where's that line right now in the United States there's a big bunch of stuff going on one of the members of my church I remember two months ago she contacted us I remember I was corresponding with her we were doing electronically would have sort of paper trail well electronic trial something this is what my school district is asking me to do this is all of my students as demanding to do in regards to celebrating transgenderism and i can't do it and this is probably what's gonna happen well she got fired and it's made big news and we're having to deal with it because people are showing up at their home and people of left voice messages hoping she gets brain cancer and dies and all sorts of wonderful loving stuff like that and so some of you are in those areas you know exactly what I'm talking about if you if you work for almost any major corporation in the Western world today you know some of these pressures and so we if we're going to ask the question what's the line when when am I in danger of having to open those fingers and drop that incense the only way to answer that question in a meaningful fashion is to have a biblical foundation of absolute conviction regarding what the scripture says about fundamental issues and so when you look at the leftists and the Liberals in Christianity just I'll just name Union Theological Seminary there's a good example you know the people that were confessing to plants a few weeks ago yeah if you didn't catch that it's easy to find on Google trust me confess to plants that would come right up you know there's a Theological Seminary that went liberal around 1900 even in 1930s when German murder bother when Bonhoeffer visited he he was repulsed this like they don't believe anything what why have all these buildings when you don't believe anything you know and so they're still walking around like zombies and you look at what they believe and they celebrate the idea of rejecting biblical categories of sexuality create marriage the whole nine yards they embrace that and so whatever position we take the other side is going to be able to quote some Christian scholar who is going to be able to substantiate their perspective just get used to it it's frustrating but that's the world we live in so you have to have conviction as an individual as a family as a church that the things you believe especially in the field of human sexuality are grounded in the Word of God and it's not just you picking and choosing what you want to believe and not want to believe how many of you seen means online that point to various times in Old Testament in Old Testament reality where for example the patriarchs had multiple wives and there were there all these different quote-unquote forms of marriage and and the whole idea being well if it's in the Bible then God must have approved of it well it will it will require of us a certain maturity in how we handle the Word of God and to recognize how for example Jesus's words need to be taken normatively when he's interpreting the Old Testament texts as we'll look at as we look at Matthew chapter 19 for example right now if you're long if you want to turn there but that kind of stuff is going to be out there it's going to require maturity on our part and conviction on our part because you may have to leave a field that you have been trained for and you love working in what's more important your soul or your house or your car payment I get it but you need to understand Christians have been dealing have been facing this all the way down to the history of the church I don't know if any that you remember but about ten years ago or so when the Taliban was was extremely active the very name Taliban has to do with the denial to women of the right to be educated based upon particular understandings of Islamic hadith and things like that and so there were schools in Pakistan for girls and that was what the Taliban was focusing on and a lot of people missed this story but there was an attempted suicide bombing at a girls school in Pakistan that was foiled I mean the bomb went off people died but the guy didn't get into the school to kill the girls he was stopped out front by the janitor a male janitor and the male janitor was a Christian because that's all he was allowed to do in that place at that time there was a limitation you're a Christian this is as hard as you can go and so that's what he did and he served the Lord there and he gave his life for those girls to keep that bomber from going inside that's been an a common reality under Islamic rule for many many many centuries that you have the status of dhimmitude and so there have been Christians who have lived with much less than you and I enjoy you and I live as royalty almost every single one in this room that you may be just scraping by okay so I'm not referring to you but most of us in comparison to only 200 years ago our absolute royalty in what we have the amount of food we can take in the amount of clothes we have the conveniences we have we are highly blessed and let me give you one sermon before we go to Matthew chapter 19 and it's mainly a sermon for me so if it doesn't apply to you feel free to sleep for a few moments and have your neighbor wake you up in a moment the only power that this world can ever have against a Christian is the power we give to the world by loving the things of this world you hear me the only power that this world has against any Christian is the power we willingly give to the world by loving the things this cuz think about what can the world did you the world can take your physical possessions those are the things this world they could be blessings from God but they're still the things of this world and we are not to love them they can take your freedom they can imprison your body they can beat your body they can eventually kill your body but they can't touch your soul so if my love is first and foremost for what God says it is to be what power does the world have against me none so as much as I violate first Timothy first John chapter 2 he who loves the world what the love of the father is not in him not it's a ratio thing John doesn't give us that wiggle room if you love the things of the world love the father's of it so as much as I'm loving those things I am voluntarily giving the world control over me if you've never read the story watched the movie I highly recommend to you incredible story called the hiding place Corrie ten Boom and her sister Robins Brook concentration camp world war two their story of refusing to give in to hate in the midst of one of the most hateful places in the world will illustrate what I just said in a into the fullest extent so keep that in mind when the pressure comes the pressure will always be directed toward our stuff and our comforts but if we are convinced that has servants of Christ we must be faithful to him and obedient to his teaching the role can have no power against us they can take our buildings but there have been believers who have met and woods in discomfort ever since the church was founded I don't have to worry about the seeker sensitive Church and the debates about that don't have to worry about the synthesizers going out or wireless mics working or not working because we won't have any and God will still be worshipped God will still be worship Matthew chapter 19 I believe provides to us a foundation in the words of Jesus that place us in a situation of either believing the teachings of our Lord or accepting the teachings of the world around us it is a clear contradiction it is in the context of the Pharisees coming to Jesus tempting him and asking him to get involved in the dispute that took place between the schools of Hallel and Shamai these two Jewish schools at that time Pharisees were arguing with one another about the subject of divorce and one school said that it was permissible to divorce your wife to give her a certificate of divorce for any reason whatsoever so if she slam wrong you're out of here doesn't do the laundry right you're out of here you the man is in full and complete control of the marital situation and that's basically the exact terminology that is used here is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for any reason at all for all reasons they want him to get in the middle of their dispute and as you already know Jesus is very good at avoiding getting stuck in situations like that and so he answers it says to them in verse 4 have you not read that the one who made them from the beginning made them male and female and said for this reason a man shall leave his father and his mother and shall cling to his wife and the two will become one flesh therefore they are no longer two but one flesh therefore what god has glued together joined together let no man break apart or separate and then they therefore they said to him why did Moses command to give to her a literally a a paper of release of divorce and to send her away and jesus' answer is because of the hardness of your heart that Moses granted to this to you but notice from the beginning it was not so from the beginning it was not so now there is no question that the context here is a ancient argument about divorce and so there have been some who have argued that this text is not relevant to any modern discussion of gender or marriage or anything else only has to do with Pharisees argument Pharisees in the first century in Jerusalem but that is to miss the very substance of Jesus's response Jesus begins with a subtle shot have you not read say that to a Pharisee who prides himself on his knowledge description oh you you who keep the scrolls do you read them have you not read he that's not the only time he did hey does that matter chapter 22 as well have you not read that the one who made them the creator and let me begin by simply saying that this truly is the point of departure in Western society today on these issues not only was our legal system you driving it from English common law just as the United States did based upon the existence of a creator and man created in his image therefore man's life is valuable murder is wrong because you are killing an image-bearer of God there is a source of objective morals and ethics and the law of God we share that and now we live in that strange period of time where that has been overthrown it has been overthrown because in the intellectual thought and life of almost every up-and-coming Australian American Englishman Scotsman there is no compelling recognition of the existence of the Creator we are not created we are a cosmic accident the life on this planet random chance form of life on this planet random chance might be somewhere else might not be anywhere else we don't know we're looking spending billions Ping in the universe looking but there's no purpose there is no transcendent value as my fellow pastor utilized as a phrase we're nothing but Stardust because in that particular cosmological perspective of atheism everything that exists here is Stardust all the complex molecules in your body were originally forged in some star somewhere whether an hour's or in another billions and billions of years ago your Stardust you see my debate with the head of the Freedom From Religion Foundation Dan Barker cosmic broccoli cosmic broccoli broccoli doesn't have much in the way of purpose and that's what we aren't cosmic broccoli I like using the term I that I'm a good Trekkie despite the secular perspective of Star Trek as well quick Christian you snuck through once in a while just yeah way to go her you know something that only a few could get that but there was a race of granular creatures that in looking at human beings called us ugly bags of mostly water ugly bags of mostly water also we are we're just chemicals fizzing and you fizz for 75 years then you stop fizzing nobody that the cosmos doesn't care it's irrelevant what you do or don't do is irrelevant who cares that's the world view now we can't live in that world no atheists can live in that world they compromise that worldview all the time they have to that's the evidence they're made in the image of God but that's all it offers and that has become the functional understanding of the vast majority of our fellow citizens there is no creator there will be no judgment two-year-olds still look around when they steal the cookie though not sure why that happens why do a Glee bags of mostly water look around while they're stealing the cookie I'm really you know but this is the point of departure have you not read that and then the first words the Creator the one who made them we know that we are made and s what changes us in our prayers I hope in our prayers truly Spirit lead prayers include the confession that we are God's creatures every beat of my heart every breath of my mouth comes from him he sustains me he made you as if he made you people someday judge you and we all know we all know it so the one who made them implies and teaches creation from the beginning he had a purpose there was order and it was a good order and Jesus uses the technical terms for male and female arson sailu male female there is no confusion about what these words mean the Greeks and the Romans knew exactly who was male and who was female there wasn't any confusion oh they don't don't get me wrong there was tremendous amounts of sexual perversion in the Greek and Roman worlds I could not even in public begin to lecture on the sexual perversions of Nero this man was if he wasn't demon-possessed I don't know what someone who looks that the the gallery and ammoniac looks like an Oxford professor in comparison to Nero okay so I know how he could not have been demonized truly but though they knew those things they that didn't cause them to lose track of who is a man and who is a woman they recognized there were certain people that didn't want to live within those categories but they recognized that that was an aberration that it was not something that was good for anyone the point is there is a creator and he made them male and female and again if you don't have a creator male and female just happens to be the biological mechanism by which our species reproduces and once we can get rid of that brave new world you know once we can get rid of that once we can just do it all in test tubes then does male and female really have any meaning any longer in this context you have a creator he has designed this and that means it is good it is good it is right it is proper it is beautiful can it be abused of course it can that doesn't change its inherent beauty when it is functioning the way that God designed it to function and he made them from the beginning male and female now I'm don't have time to go into what this means in regards to Jesus's understanding of the text he is quoting because he's quoting from the Pentateuch he's quoting from the creation narratives according from those first chapters of Genesis here you have the author interpreting his own works 1400 years later that's pretty cool and so you have creation male and female and on the basis of that created ordinance said so this is the creator speaking this isn't just Moses musing about God as in most seminaries today but God said for this reason a man will leave his Patara and his may Terah his father and his mother again words that have definable meanings and every generation before ours recognized that if you change those meanings you're claiming the same authority as the one who first defined those words because the first human institution that God created his marriage he's the one that said it's not good for Adam to be alone we'll make him a help meet one that is suitable have corresponding him eight-second egg dough different from him but corresponding to him God designed that and it's a good thing and so if we decide that we're gonna change what father and mother husband and wife male and female means and that's exactly what we've done every generation before us realized that required an outrageously arrogant claim of authority on our part that can only be done by a society who has come to conclusion there is no higher authority than us we get to determine our own reality that's when you see the tipping point that's when what had been holding back isn't holding back any longer and now you've got an acceleration down the other side according to Jesus this is the reason that a man leaves his father and his mother and shall be joined to his wife so father mother man and wife or husband and wife husband can be used it's not the term here it's simply a man a man shall leave his father and mother and shall be joined to his wife there is no possible way in the context of second temple Judaism in the first century in the brighting a New Testament - in any way shape or form insert into these words two men leaving your father and your mother and being joined to take guna key cannot be a man there is no such thing as a male who is a wife not in the biblical sense if you want to redefine it just be open about the fact that I will not be bound by the words of Scripture just don't pretend just be open about open rebellion is better than hidden rebellion he'll be joined to his wife and the two shall become one flesh the only two that can become one flesh our male a female a man and a woman a husband and a wife two men do not become one flesh two women do not become one flesh three four five many you want to go God's created intention is the family and the family propagates the people and this is how it happens the two shall become one flesh and Jesus then interprets this so it they are no longer two but one flesh now that he's emphasizing this why because the question he's answering the question is answered he's answering can a man divorce his wife for whatever reason missus the fundamental reality of the unity that takes place in marriage to begin with it's seeing the man as the full definer of all things he gets to define whatever his desires are that's it no from the beginning one flesh two parts one flesh and therefore the whole question that was being debated missed the whole point of the creation ordinance of God to begin with so no longer two but one flesh therefore what God has joined together let no man separate so the point is since God established marriage when we engage in it whether we want to acknowledge him or not it's still what he designed and we will be held accountable to his standards of it not somebody else's not somebody else's what this also means I think very very plainly is that the only union that God blesses is that between a man and a woman that is what is being said here to try to say well God is going to bless my union with another man a woman with another woman or whatever other variations the evil mind of man can somehow come up with over the next three months the speed is going whatever it might be will not find any basis in Jesus's words at all if you want the blessing of God one man one woman that's what marriage is that's how God designed it change any of the component parts you no longer have marriage you no longer have marriage so here's the question how far can we go how far can we go see one of the reasons I think that there is a lot of struggle today in much of what would be called broadly evangelicalism is because we have spiritual eyes the lordship of Christ to such an extent that we in essence can limit the area of his lordship so it does not become inconvenient for us we do this in our own lives I will let Jesus be Lord of Sundays and Wednesday nights but if my team is playing on Monday Jesus doesn't really need that time for me the lordship of Jesus in Western society I mean you're technically in the Commonwealth right and so by the way I think I think the Queen's the coolest lady running around I mean okay I Latta in 2016 I was going make America Britain again Trump Clinton that the Queen yeah I'm ready let's go let's sign up man cuz this is ain't working okay this is not working Oh course unfortunately right now England ain't working too well either if you've been watching the news and could someone give him a comb please just give the man a comb um I like the guy he's great but he's needs a comb terribly but even with the monarchy still in existence we all know it's Parliament that does what Parliament does and we don't have a functional lordship I know the House of Lords and all the rest that stuff but we the the idea of of lordship that existed in this day even the idea of lordship that existed in the offering of the pinch of incense on the altar saying Caesar is Lord this was and this was an authority that had power to define and we now live in a day where we're claiming that lordship for ourselves the entire transgender movement is based upon the the rebellious claim of human autonomy so as to be able to redefine myself as I see fit right now I'm not the creature of God I have no creator I have no maker I get to determine this for myself so I think a lot of Christians have an extremely weak idea of the lordship of Jesus Christ a couple years ago I was teaching apologetics class at Phoenix seminary and CNN called and they had me on the dr. Drew show on the subject of transgenderism well they had me on by Skype first I learned my lesson that's not the way to do it you can get talked over you do there's you can't compete and so they called back and said we got a lot of positive we would like to have you back on I said well yeah I'll do it if I am in studio we don't have money to fly over I said don't worry my wife works the airline's I'll fly over myself well we can't put you up that's fine I can find a hotel too okay fine you know be here at such-and-such time so I flew over and I was the studio and that was an experience I can assure you of that but one of the exchanges sort of illustrated this issue of lordship one of the dr. Drew's compatriots had no idea what the doctrine the Trinity was and when I brought up Matthew chapter 19 one of the exchanges basically went along the lines of well okay well that's so you've got some verses in a in a book what's that against all the Gender Studies programs that we have in our universities today you know and I said why I think it's pretty straightforward Jesus prophesied his own death and then left behind an empty tomb therefore he has an authority that nobody else has he is Lord so if he says this is what marriage is when you show me your empty tomb then I'll listen to what you have to say [Applause] seems obvious now in the early church this seemed insane you must understand the early churches believe in lordship of Christ seemed insane this is Rome you're standing against we're taking your people and feeding them the Lions Nero is is wrapping them in in animal clothes and in pitch and lighting them up and their body parts are falling down and rolling around as amongst his guests and you say Jesus as Lord doesn't that prove Caesar is Lord have you seen Rome recently Christian Church is still doing good here we are down here and in Melbourne we've still got the Christian Church going on and Coliseum not doing so well these days I've got to take the long term view of things short term didn't look good long term Rome bye-bye he's gone we need to take seriously the lordship of Jesus Christ there is something truly exciting about serving the risen king of kings and Lord of lords it is part and parcel the proclamation of the gospel say Jesus is Lord and He is Lord of all when we say king of kings and Lord of lords that also means all the little guys - and that means Jesus has the authority to teach authoritative Lee about his own creation he's the one that made man this way by the way because he's the god man and so there really shouldn't be any question on our part as to what is important in this matter and to whose authority is ultimate the only question is how do we communicate this in the most faithful way how do we not offer the pinch of incense because the temptation is going to be there the pressure is going to be there and how do we with grace as redeemed people stand firmly and say that is self-destruction I will not join you in walking down the path of self-destruction if Jesus was who Jesus claimed to be then any violation of his teaching will be destructive to human flourishing and if you care about someone you will not want to see their life destroyed and if they become deceived by what this world is saying then it is a loving act to speak the truth as they redeem the sinner as one just as deserving of the wrath of God as anyone else but to speak the truth and that may end up costing us everything of this world not everything in eternity in fact the question really would be are we willing to trade all the stuff of this world for everything in eternity by bowing to an authority that can never give us eternal life it's a question every one of us has to answer now I realize there's all sorts of complicated issues here I mean there's there's there's background issues how do we really know that Matthew wrote this how's it represent for Jesus that that's what apologetics does and and you can dig into those things I realized there's gonna be a lot of approaches that people are going to use to try to get around this but the fact is that the consistency of the Christian message on this subject with all the failures that you see down through the histone for the history of the church all the failures all the ridiculously unbiblical doctrines of sexuality and womanhood I mean all you got it you just want an illustration go back and study the life of Jerome relationship of Jerome and Paula if you want to see how biblical standards can become corrupted even amongst people who have tremendous knowledge of the scriptures human tradition can mess things up and there have been times in the history of the church that there is when you've got people arguing about whether women have souls or not something got lost somewhere okay no question about it but that's why we believe in the soul of scriptura that doesn't mean that we ignore church history but scripture is the sole infallible rule of faith of the church you can have fallible rules of faith every Church does with every single Church that says it's just us in the Bible I can guarantee you they have a rule of faith they will not admit it but it's there as obvious as can be scripture is a soul infallible rule of faith and when you believe that it has taught consistently and plainly about the nature of marriage the glory of marriage was a good of marriage and the fact that it's one man and one woman and I'm gonna tell you something just on a personal level my wife never liked the last month of pregnancy so she just skipped it so my son was seven weeks early and my daughter was four weeks early and so Josh came came home at 4 pounds 11 ounces he was a little little thing I think he was 5 something to his born and there's always that little dip after birthing so he was in neonatal intensive care for three days and I was making nothing at that point in time so it took us years to pay that off but as I watched my wife care for our first child and nurse that first child and and love that first child I saw womanhood and it was beautiful and as a man as much as I could try to help I've told the story you know what you know and you really started growing up I love you ain't married yet and if any of you are past 25 ain't married yet I've got some concerns about you we'll meet afterwards we'll have some prayer I'll give you some tips and directions oh I'm tempted when I got married I was 19 she was 18 and that wasn't all that unusual vector now it's almost 30 I'm married 37 years got four grandkids and unless something happens to me like I get run over by a truck on a crazy bike bike ride I'll see my great-grandchildren and I look forward to that and I think that's a good thing I am so thankful that my daughter knew my mom oh I'm so thankful that my daughter and I were standing in my in my mom's hospital room when she died and when she had a massive heart attack right there we were the last people she saw in her I'm glad that that happen I'm glad that they had that relationship but I recognized as I saw my wife taking care of my son that there are things I cannot do I have not been made to do that and when some dude comes along and calls himself a wife or a mother I get angry because that does detract from true womanhood that does detract from what my wife is don't tell me you're you're a mother and a wife you can't do what he did what she did he's not built to do it you weren't designed to do it assess the reality that's sanity now by the way eventually this secular insanity will destroy itself it'll take a lot of people with it I would like to try to keep that from happening but if that's God's intention I'd be a great lesson for the rest of the world look what happened to them when they got stupid and somebody else gets to inherit whatever it is they built that's not the first time that would happen but it will build itself out there is no life in this system that we are seeing developing in front of us there can't be because it doesn't deal with mankind as man really is but one of the greatest dangers of it just in passing is that when you ignore the Bible's doctrine of man and therefore put tremendous power in the hands of a few people not recognizing what sin does the results should be expected and they will be ugly they were under Stalin they were under Mao and now we have the technology to make those guys look like amateurs god forbid it to happen god forbid it to happen but it'll destroy itself we cannot live in any world other than the world we live in and it's God's work and so it's deception we are living in a massive period of deception and as long as we don't get into our minds well we sure are better than the people who are deceived no you'd be deceived - if we're for the grace of God as long as you constantly hear yourself that way then we can speak the truth boldly with grace with love and prayer to be used by God to bring light to a dying world is it important I spoke on this subject in Sydney last Sunday and I had three different people come up to me Christian families saying I'm so glad you addressed this because our family is dealing with this we we had we just had no idea but now our family is dealing with this and we needed to know what does Jesus say is there really any ambiguity no there is no ambiguity and if he was who he claimed he was and this is if you want to see a debate on this subject by the way just a debate button two and a half months ago with Graham codger named dr. Graham Codrington in Johannesburg South Africa and Matthew 19 was it's one of its primary focuses he had no response he had no meaningful responsible well the most articulate people that I've engaged on there there is no there is no other side the meaning is obvious you just have to reject its authority and once you recognize what is said here then you have a basis to begin to see everything else the scripture says on this it's consistent with this and therefore to bow of the lordship of Christ means to start at this place start with his own words I know those family situations are hard it is hard to live in a fallen world but that's where God has called us to minister and giving in to the society going the easy way not only denies the lordship of Christ that shows no love for those around us to show true love sometimes requires self-sacrifice and that is the case with us as well shall I close the word of prayer then we'll move on all right let's pray together our Heavenly Father we thank you for the time we have had to consider your truth once again we thank you that we still have the freedoms to do this we do not take them for granted we know there are many in our societies that would like to see these freedoms restricted we ask that you would continue to give us this freedom to speak your truth the Lord even if that is taken away that we will remain faithful in the ultimate confidence that Jesus Christ is Lord of lords and that someday every knee will bow and every tongue will come that every enemy will be put under his feet and the last enemy to be put under his feet will be death may we live in light of that hope may we be a people to find great rejoicing in obedience to the one who made us and formed us and may we be truly thankful that you have not left us to walk in darkness you have given us a clear revelation in your word increase our faith in it protect us protect us from division protect us from the creeping influence of worldly thought may we be a people who truly are found to be faithful to the commands of our lord and savior's in his name that we pray

Channel: Biblical Clarity

Views: 9,828

Rating: 4.8666668 out of 5

Keywords: Apologetics, James White, Sexuality, Jesus, Bible, Reformed, Australia

Id: KgH01SHUwU0

Length: 58min 7sec (3487 seconds)

Published: Tue Oct 22 2019