Ten Lies

Jr., in an article entitled “Ten Lies of the Devil The World Believes About Bruce Jenner” writes:

The devil is resourceful and hard working. There is no temptation he will not use, no stratagem too tiny to try us with. He does, however, have a few areas he specializes in. He is called Satan because he is an expert at making accusations. He delights to accuse us when we are innocent, and when we are guilty. He is also a murderer and has been from the beginning. Those who hate Him, we are told, love death (Proverbs 8:36). He is also not just a liar, but the father of lies (John 8:44). When we hear a lie we ought to smell sulfur. Every lie has his hoof prints on it. Of late the broader culture has been rather frantic in telling and believing lies with respect to Bruce Jenner, and we Christians too often face the temptation to believe them. Here are ten we must never give in to.

10. Bruce Jenner has become Caitlyn Jenner. No, Bruce Jenner has hired doctors to mutilate his body and present the lie that he is now a woman. He is a man.

9. Gender is a social construct that can be chosen at will. No. From the beginning He has made us man and woman.

8. If our feelings don’t match reality, reality will have to change. I don’t dispute that Bruce Jenner wishes to be a woman. But what needs to change is his wish, not the immutable reality he has found himself in.

7. Having our desires “met” will make us happy. No, repenting and believing on the Lord Jesus Christ will make us joyful. The One who designed us gives us His law not to make us miserable, but to show us the way of life. His law is always and everywhere an invitation to joy, not a burden to be carried. If it feels like a burden to us, we must change, not it.

6. Failing to celebrate the mutilation of Bruce Jenner’s body, and failure to affirm the lie that he is now Caitlyn is mean-spirited, narrow and cruel. No, sin is never something to be celebrated, and to be against something is no more narrow-minded than to be for something. One wise friend recently pointed out the irony that it is Christians who prefer the real Bruce Jenner to the faux one, and his purported friends who prefer the fake to the real.

5. Bruce Jenner’s change is no one’s business but his own. No, public decisions have public consequences. It’s true enough that we have plenty of our own sins to worry about. It’s true enough that Christians have no need to hunt down hidden sexual perversion to shout it down. I am honestly not interested in what people wear in the privacy of their own homes. But Bruce has made his choices the world’s business by seeking the world’s attention, appearing on national television and on the cover of a national magazine.

4. Non-Christians are bad people who do this kind of thing and Christians are good people. No, apart from the grace of God in our own lives we’d find ourselves in the same mess or worse as Mr. Jenner. Even with his grace we yet struggle against and fall into sin.

3. Homosexuality is the same as any other sin. No, not all sins are the same. All sins are rebellion against the living God and are due His eternal wrath. But that doesn’t make them all equally rebellious or equally evil.

2. Homosexuals just want to be left alone to do their own thing in private. No, homosexuals insist that the rest of the world approve of their sin. And many are more than willing to use the force of the state to make it happen, whether through indoctrination at the government’s schools, or intimidation through its courts.

1. God will be mocked. No, God will not be mocked. The unsurpassed swift embrace of sexual perversion in the broader culture isn’t a surprise to Jesus. Rather, even as He ordained the rise of Pharaoh and Nebuchadnezzar for our good and His glory, so He has ordained even this. He will use it for His purposes.

We must guard our minds against the devil’s lies. And we must not lose heart. Jesus always wins.

The Bible and Homosexuality

In this message, recorded at College Church in Wheaton, Illinois on March 17, 2015, pastor and author Kevin DeYoung addresses a difficult and often controversial topic: what does the Bible really teach about homosexuality?

Robert Gonzales writes, “Helpful lecture on a hotly debated topic in our day. DeYoung summarizes the biblical data regarding homosexuality, explains the traditional Christian interpretation of that data, and addresses some of the main objections offered by revisionists. He concludes by underscoring why it’s important for Christians to understand the biblical teaching and how it applies to the debate today.”

What Does the Bible Really Teach about Homosexuality? from Crossway on Vimeo.

A Response to the “Gay Christian” Movement

Is there a basis for the “Gay Christian Movement” as exemplified by Matthew Vines or Justin Lee? What about those who promote these views, like James Brownson or Ken Wilson?

Dr. James White addresses the movement in two parts at the Discern Conference at Gospel Life Community Church in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

The “Gay Christian” Movement: A Response Part I (Audio Begins at 1:26)

The “Gay Christian” Movement: A Response Part 2

Questions for Christians who support “Gay Marriage”

five01Kevin DeYoung read some books, looked at the relevant Bible passages and concluded that Scripture does not prohibit same-sex intercourse so long as it takes place in the context of a loving, monogamous, lifelong covenanted relationship. You still love Jesus. You still believe the Bible. In fact, you would argue that it’s because you love Jesus and because you believe the Bible that you now embrace gay marriage as a God-sanctioned good.

As far as you are concerned, you haven’t rejected your evangelical faith. You haven’t turned your back on God. You haven’t become a moral relativist. You’ve never suggested anything goes when it comes to sexual behavior. In most things, you tend to be quite conservative. You affirm the family, and you believe in the permanence of marriage. But now you’ve simply come to the conclusion that two men or two women should be able to enter into the institution of marriage–both as a legal right and as a biblically faithful expression of one’s sexuality.

Setting aside the issue of biblical interpretation for the moment, let me ask five questions.

1. On what basis do you still insist that marriage must be monogamous?

Presumably, you do not see any normative significance in God creating the first human pair male and female (Gen. 2:23-25; Matt. 19:4-6). Paul’s language about each man having his own wife and each woman her own husband cannot be taken too literally without falling back into the exclusivity of heterosexual marriage (1 Cor. 7:2). The two coming together as one so they might produce godly offspring doesn’t work with gay marriage either (Mal. 2:15). So why monogamy? Jesus never spoke explicitly against polygamy. The New Testament writers only knew of exploitative polygamy, the kind tied to conquest, greed, and subjugation. If they had known of voluntary, committed, loving polyamorous relationships, who’s to think they wouldn’t have approved?

These aren’t merely rhetorical questions. The issue is legitimate: if 3 or 13 or 30 people really love each other, why shouldn’t they have a right to be married? And for that matter, why not a brother and a sister, or two sisters, or a mother and son, or father and son, or any other combination of two or more persons who love each other. Once we’ve accepted the logic that for love to be validated it must be expressed sexually and that those engaged in consensual sexual activity cannot be denied the “right” of marriage, we have opened a Pandora’s box of marital permutations that cannot be shut. Continue reading

Jesus and the issue of homosexuality

Morgan criticized Phil Robertson’s recent anti-gay remarks as “repulsive” and claimed that he should be fired. Apparently, that’s Morgan’s way of handling opposing viewpoints from major celebrity figures.

On his program last night, he decided to invite a Biblical scholar, Dr. Michael Brown, on the show so that he could trap him into admitting that Jesus did not, in fact, condemn homosexuality.

That trap was not set properly.

When Morgan asked Brown to cite just one instance of Jesus condemning homosexuality, he probably thought that he had already won the debate. But alas, he was hoisted on his own petard.

Brown cited not one, but three instances of Jesus condemning homosexuality.

First, Jesus said that He came not to abolish the law, but to fulfill it. In other words, the Old Testament law, even in Jesus’ day, was still in force and Jesus accepted it. That is the same law that condemns homosexuality in the Book of Leviticus.

Next, Brown cited Matthew 15 in which Jesus states that all sexual acts committed outside of marriage defile a human being.

Finally, Brown cited Matthew 19 in which Jesus said that marriage, as God intended it, is the union of one man and one woman.

Game, set, and match. Brown.

Have a look at the video below.