The NXR Podcast - BONUS EPISODE - Andy Stanley： Unhitched, Empathetic, and Out Of Control

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00:00:40.200 All right. Welcome to a last minute live episode that I just decided to do this morning. I didn't

00:00:46.700 really want to weigh in on the Andy Stanley stuff, but I'm going to. My hesitation for weighing in

00:00:52.480 wasn't because I don't want to talk about how sin is, includes homosexuality, that that is a sin

00:00:58.760 and that homosexuality, not just in action and behavior, but even at the level of desire that

00:01:03.520 that too is a sin to be repented of. And it certainly wasn't, you know, I didn't have a

00:01:08.060 hesitancy of calling Andy Stanley a false teacher because he is, and he has been a false teacher for

00:01:13.220 quite some time. And none of this should have been shocking. The reason I didn't want to do

00:01:16.420 a video on this is because it just kind of felt like a no duh. And honestly, just out of, I mean

00:01:21.440 this, it sounds kind of funny, but just out of respect for my listeners and you guys who follow

00:01:25.220 Right Response Ministries, you guys get this. If you follow this channel regularly, then you're

00:01:33.260 not surprised by any of this. When you got a guy who's been publicly saying that Christians and 0.99

00:01:38.480 pastors and churches theologically should unhitch from the Old Testament, and then that guy later

00:01:43.620 on comes out with affirming statements towards sodomy, it's like, yeah, duh, sure, yeah, you 0.99

00:01:49.160 unhitched from the old Testament and now you're gay. Okay. Yeah, sure. Like there's no surprise. 0.99

00:01:53.820 And so I want to be respectful of my audience and not just have a bunch of no duh episodes.

00:01:58.340 So anyways, so my hesitancy and weighing in wasn't a cowardice or fear or any of those kinds of

00:02:02.800 things. It was just like, Hey, other guys are covering this. This is clear. My listeners know

00:02:06.580 all these things. Um, but I did decide, you know what, I'm going to go ahead and say something,

00:02:10.400 uh, just because I think there's just a couple other correlations that I want to draw for us.

00:02:15.400 So basically the big idea, and I'm going to be brief, but the big idea, and you guys are laughing,

00:02:20.700 Joel, you've never been brief. I'm going to, I'm going to be brief. But my, my overarching thesis

00:02:26.220 is this, all right, you step one, you unhitch from the old Testament. Step two, it's not weather,

00:02:31.300 but which, right? The old Rush Dooney adage, you know, it's not weather, but which. So if you

00:02:35.760 unhitch from God's word and primarily with the old Testament, what I'm primarily referring to

00:02:41.140 would be God's law, right? I think theonomy comes into play with this, but this understanding of

00:02:46.820 God's moral law in the Old Testament and also the civil codes, the civil law of God found in the

00:02:52.440 Old Testament, the general equity of the civil codes. If you unhitch from that, you're going to,

00:02:59.100 you know, substitute that with something else. So, it doesn't mean that like, well, now I'm just this

00:03:03.140 healthy, well-trained horse that's not hitched to anything and I'm just able to ride into the wind,

00:03:09.640 fast and strong with endurance. No, no, no. If you unhitch from the Old Testament, to use Andy

00:03:15.060 Stanley's own words, his own analogy, it's not whether you're hitched to something, but which

00:03:21.080 thing you're hitched to. So, it's kind of a two-step process, all right? So, my overarching

00:03:25.320 thesis is this. Premise one, you unhitch from the Old Testament. Premise two, you re-hitch,

00:03:31.360 you now have substituted the Old Testament for the law of love, all right? Some have called it

00:03:36.620 the law of Christ, the law of Christ. And the Bible talks about the law of Christ, but I think

00:03:40.680 that imputed into that is a very, very worldly wrong heretical definition. So we're getting rid

00:03:46.720 of Old Testament and namely the law in the Old Testament, the moral law of God, the Decalogue,

00:03:51.440 all 10 commandments, both tables of the law and the civil codes, and especially the general equity

00:03:56.840 of these civil codes. We've swapped that out, unhitched from that, and we've rehitched to this

00:04:02.040 new thing, which is the law of Christ. And yes, I do think new covenant theology, I'm just going to

00:04:06.420 say it. New covenant theology is part of the problem. Dispensationalism is certainly part of

00:04:10.680 the problem that chops all these things up and loses a sense of continuity from the old to the

00:04:16.800 new. So I think there's, you know, you can fall into the ditch of dispensationalism. You can fall

00:04:20.840 into the ditch of new covenant theology, but the classic reformed position of covenant theology

00:04:25.500 and a right understanding of law and gospel, understanding that the moral law of God is

00:04:30.780 eternal and endures forever. And the civil codes, even the civil codes, their general equity remains

00:04:36.280 and even the ceremonial law of God.

00:04:38.800 In a sense, we could say the ceremonial law of God remains

00:04:41.980 because Jesus said all of this law,

00:04:44.260 and he's not just referring to the Ten Commandments,

00:04:45.940 but all of this law, every jot and tittle,

00:04:48.520 not one jot or tittle will pass away.

00:04:50.880 Heaven and earth will pass away.

00:04:52.600 I tell you the truth, heaven and earth will pass away

00:04:54.560 before one jot or tittle of this law passes away.

00:04:56.960 The reason why we don't do animal sacrifices

00:04:59.640 at church on the Lord's Day each week

00:05:02.520 isn't because God's law is necessarily erased

00:05:06.260 or God's law, you know, God is changing his mind.

00:05:08.960 God is immutable.

00:05:09.980 Behold, I am the Lord, I changeth not

00:05:11.720 so that you, the sons of Jacob, are not consumed.

00:05:14.040 The reason why we're not doing ceremonial portions

00:05:16.360 of the law, hand washings, animal priestly sacrificial,

00:05:21.080 animal sacrificial system, these kinds of things

00:05:24.100 is because Christ has not only fulfilled this,

00:05:27.080 but Christ has fulfilled it in such a way

00:05:28.960 that this law has been satisfied

00:05:30.960 in a once and for all fashion. Jesus is the final sacrifice. And so to continue making animal

00:05:37.260 sacrifices is to disbelieve in the sufficiency of the once and for all final sacrifice of Christ

00:05:43.460 himself, who is the lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world, that we have been washed

00:05:48.080 by Christ in his blood. We no longer need these washings, that Christ is the better priest. He's

00:05:54.020 the high priest, not in the order of Aaron, the Levitical order, but in the order of Melchizedek.

00:05:59.200 he's a priest forever, that we are being built into a living temple with living stones. That's

00:06:05.940 in Ephesians, right? So we no longer need the temple. So these things, even in that sense,

00:06:10.560 I say that to stress the point, not one jot or tittle of God's law will ever pass away. And so

00:06:15.600 even the ceremonial portions of the old covenant law, Old Testament law, it's not even that God

00:06:22.440 said, oh, well, that was a bad idea, or I used to be too harsh, or I've changed my mind, I've

00:06:27.280 reformed, I've become a different person. No, even that is still, in a sense, in effect, it's just

00:06:31.980 been perfectly, in a once and for all sense, been satisfied by Christ. The civil codes, certainly,

00:06:39.780 those are still at large today. Now, we have a different culture and different technology and

00:06:45.620 practically and providentially, you know, we don't sleep on the roof anymore, right? So, we don't need

00:06:51.080 a parapet around the roof, but go and find one two-story house that has a balcony without railing

00:06:58.540 on the balcony, right? We still follow that. We still understand the general equity, the general

00:07:03.600 principle of these civil codes, and we still enforce them in many ways today. So, all that

00:07:08.880 being said, if you unhitch, right? Premise one, unhitch from the Old Testament, namely the law,

00:07:14.280 and understanding all of the law, then you got a problem, and it's not whether but which. If you

00:07:19.420 unhitch from that, you're going to hitch your wagon to something else, namely a new law. And

00:07:24.180 what guys who claim to be Christian, like Andy Stanley, who are still trying to present their 0.67

00:07:28.740 teachings as though it was Orthodox, as though it was Christian, well, then they're going to use

00:07:33.200 this new label, this placeholder of law of Christ, right? Because it sounds Christian. You got the

00:07:38.520 word law in there. You got the word Christ in there. And yes, that is a biblical phrase that

00:07:43.500 we find in the New Testament, but there's a lot of misunderstandings of what the law of Christ

00:07:47.760 entails. What is the law of Christ? And so, you unhitch from the Old Testament, you hitch to this

00:07:54.640 law of Christ, and I'll tell you what it is for Andy Stanley and a lot of these other deconstruction

00:07:59.540 guys, a lot of these apostates who are leaving the Orthodox Christian faith. What the law of Christ

00:08:06.580 is for them is the law of empathy. That's what it boils down to. It's the law of love,

00:08:12.380 but love imputed in that is love defined by man and to be even more specific love defined by

00:08:21.000 unregenerate pagan god-hating man in the last 15 minutes right not even love defined by man over

00:08:30.760 the course of of the history of mankind right over the course of human history from start

00:08:35.140 to where we are presently. No, love defined by unbelieving men, godless men, and more 0.99

00:08:45.520 specifically, particularly godless men who are very, very modern. Modern godless men. Love

00:08:53.180 according to them. And I think if you could sum up today's godless modern love, what is love

00:08:59.940 defined by non-Christians today, is what I'm getting at. Modern, recent people, and those 0.99

00:09:06.720 who are godless, who are not followers of Christ, who do not love God. Godless, modern people

00:09:13.020 define love, if it were boiled down to one aspect, the pinnacle of love, the climax of love,

00:09:20.080 it would be empathy. And with that, when I'm talking about empathy, and I understand there's

00:09:25.620 some complexity because there's a lot of different definitions, a lot of different ideas,

00:09:29.520 What I'm talking about is the difference.

00:09:31.420 You know, I like the Joe Rigney, Doug Wilson illustration that they provided when they

00:09:35.060 did a, you know, an episode, a video called The Sin of Empathy.

00:09:39.400 And I would agree with them.

00:09:40.260 I do believe that empathy is a sin.

00:09:42.280 Empathy is different than sympathy.

00:09:44.980 Sympathy comes from, you know, the root word, you know, compassion, sympathy.

00:09:50.180 It's to suffer alongside or to suffer with.

00:09:54.260 But empathy, here's the difference.

00:09:55.840 I can sympathize for someone.

00:09:57.460 That's a biblical word, right?

00:09:58.960 The Bible even says of Christ, who is our high priest in the order of Melchizedek, as I said

00:10:04.080 earlier, Hebrews talks about that. It says, because he too was tempted. Now he's tempted by outward

00:10:09.300 temptation. There was nothing in him, right? There was no sin in his flesh that actually had an urge

00:10:15.100 or a desire to do, but there's still a sense of outward temptations. And Jesus, because he took

00:10:20.060 on flesh in the incarnation, in his earthly ministry, and because he was tempted, Hebrews

00:10:24.520 says he's able to sympathize with those. He's a merciful high priest, a sympathetic high priest,

00:10:31.040 a compassionate high priest, because he's been tempted. He can sympathize with those who are

00:10:35.440 being tempted. But sympathy, so sympathy is perfectly biblical. It's even a word used to

00:10:40.160 describe Christ Jesus himself, but that is not the same as empathy. And if I could show the

00:10:46.060 distinction as simply as possible, in a nutshell, sympathy is to suffer with and empathy is to

00:10:51.200 suffer in, right? And the illustration that Joe Rigney and Doug Wilson used was like quicksand,

00:10:57.100 right? You got a big pit of quicksand and somebody's right smack dab in the middle of it.

00:11:01.220 And they're slowly sinking and they're crying out, help, help. And you're standing, you know,

00:11:05.680 with both feet, not one foot on and one foot, you know, in the quicksand, you know, one foot out,

00:11:10.300 one foot in, but both feet surely firmly planted on the solid ground outside on the perimeter

00:11:17.540 outside of this pit of quicksand and to further root your position, you know, to make sure that

00:11:23.120 you're on solid ground, that you're firmly positioned and secure, you know, you even got

00:11:26.880 a hand, one of your hands is reaching on and grabbing the limb of a tree, you know, so you're

00:11:30.920 not getting in that quicksand and that person says, hey, please help, help, help. Well, with

00:11:35.060 your other hand, your free hand now, you're taking, you know, a long branch, you know, or maybe you're

00:11:40.200 taking a rope, you know, and throwing the end of the rope, you hold on to part of it, you even tie

00:11:44.800 onto the tree, and then you're throwing the other end of the rope to the person in the quicksand

00:11:47.980 and saying, grab onto that rope, and I'm going to pull you out. I'm going to save you. I'm going

00:11:52.300 to get you out of here. And the person responds, the average person in our culture today, and

00:11:57.440 sadly, even in much of the evangelical church says, that's not the help I want. You're being

00:12:04.220 judgmental right now. You're being arrogant right now. You're being harsh right now. You know, if 0.96

00:12:10.620 they profess Christianity, they'll try to put a little biblical twist on it. The Bible says, 0.87

00:12:14.800 Romans says, you know, to rejoice with those who rejoice and mourn with those who mourn.

00:12:19.240 Why are you not? See, the help that I want, you self-righteous Christian you,

00:12:24.160 is not for you to get me out of the quicksand, but to come and get in the quicksand with me. 0.99

00:12:30.400 Unless you're willing to drown with me, you're not loving me. You're not empathetic. To which

00:12:37.800 we should respond and say, yeah, you're right. I'm not empathetic. I'm striving for righteousness.

00:12:43.760 Empathy is a sin.

00:12:45.300 There's nothing in the scripture that defines empathy as a virtue.

00:12:49.340 Certainly not the pinnacle virtue that our godless modern culture makes it out to be today.

00:12:54.580 So you've got the law of God on one hand, aka a lot of it in the Old Testament, that Andy Stanley has unhitched from.

00:13:01.940 But again, it's not whether you're hitched to something, it's which, not whether but which.

00:13:05.720 So unhitching from the law of God, Old Testament, unhitched from that Old Testament.

00:13:09.600 and now you're rehitching to the law of christ but you're perverting that it's not really christ's

00:13:15.360 law and a misunderstanding of that and and you're really what you're making the law of christ is

00:13:20.240 really the law of man and not just the law of man but particularly modern man and not just modern

00:13:25.460 man but godless unbelieving non-christian modern man and that love if it was to climax and culminate

00:13:32.520 into any one attribute it would be empathy not sympathy not compassion biblical terms biblical

00:13:39.300 principles, virtues, but empathy, not suffering with someone, but suffering in, in. And the reason

00:13:46.600 why I bring up the quicksand, you know, illustration that Wilson and Rigney have used before is because

00:13:52.620 I think it really helps with this subject matter of Andy Stanley. So now without further ado, I want

00:13:58.640 to read you guys some tweets. This is from Ryan Visconti. Okay. So this is some tweets. We're going

00:14:03.820 to pull it up on the screen so that you guys can see it and follow along. And these are exact

00:14:07.800 quotes. And the reason why I'm reading this is because this was a small private meeting that

00:14:12.740 Ryan initially was not going to share with others. But now that Andy Stanley has come out recently

00:14:17.340 with even more gay affirming rhetoric and language in his recent sermons and all these, you know, 0.81

00:14:23.960 conference lectures and these kinds of things, Ryan has decided to come out. And I'm glad that

00:14:28.500 he has. And this is not just Ryan, right? So, you know, the scripture says, do not admit a charge

00:14:33.320 against an elder. Andy Stanley is an elder. He shouldn't be. He's disqualified. He's been,

00:14:37.980 in my opinion, he's been disqualified for quite some time, but he is still technically holding

00:14:42.360 the office of an elder. And 1 Timothy 5 says, do not admit a charge against an elder except upon

00:14:48.320 the evidence of two or three witnesses. And I want to read Ryan because this is one eyewitness who was

00:14:53.480 in the room. He was in the room. He's providing quotes. And you can look at the comments on these

00:14:59.700 tweets and other guys, not just other guys from the peanut gallery saying, yeah, you get them,

00:15:04.420 you get Andy Stanley, but other guys who were with Ryan in the room also. And it's dated when

00:15:10.540 this happened. Here's the date. This is the place. This is where this happened. There was 15 people

00:15:15.420 in a room. I'm about to read it here in just a second. And other guys who were also in the room

00:15:19.700 with Ryan and with Andy Stanley are affirming that Ryan's testimony in these quotes are accurate and

00:15:25.680 truth. So we have not just one, but we have two or three eye slash ear witnesses who are admitting

00:15:33.220 a charge against an elder who should be removed from eldership. And if he's not, if he's not

00:15:39.060 immediately removed from eldership, he pastors a church of 40,000 people and every single God

00:15:44.700 fearing regenerate born again Christian at Andy Stanley's church should immediately resign their

00:15:51.300 membership and leave. The first thing that they should do is demand that he be fired, that he be

00:15:55.880 removed. And if that demand is not met by the other elders at the church, if the church polity

00:16:01.800 does not function the way that it's designed by God's word to function, and they, instead of

00:16:06.320 removing and holding Andy Stanley accountable for his heresy, it is heresy, if they don't hold him

00:16:12.340 accountable for his heresy and they don't remove him from his office, then every God-fearing member

00:16:17.000 of his church should immediately leave because they are in danger, all right? So that's how

00:16:22.680 serious all this is. We have more. We have two or three. We have more than just one eyewitness.

00:16:28.700 This isn't just hearsay, but witnesses. Here we go. Ryan Visconti, on September 19th, 2019,

00:16:34.880 I was invited to a private dinner with about 15 pastors at a local church in Gilbert, Arizona,

00:16:40.040 to participate in a Q&A with Andy Stanley after he finished speaking at a conference. The subject,

00:16:46.580 of homosexuality came up, and over the next one and a half hours, Andy shared overly heretical

00:16:53.200 views that clearly contradict what the Word of God says. I was shocked to find myself arguing

00:16:59.140 with Andy Stanley. Well, Ryan, I don't know if you should have been shocked, but I was shocked

00:17:04.880 to find myself arguing with Andy Stanley, along with the other pastors, despite our respect for

00:17:10.480 him. Andy Stanley, homosexuality, he says, homosexuality is really, here's a quote,

00:17:17.640 really a disability. It's a disability. I'm going to come back to that here in just a moment. 0.96

00:17:23.820 Using the analogy that telling gay people, this is a quote, Andy Stanley said, telling gay people

00:17:29.420 they have to stop being gay to follow Christ is like taking a wheelchair away from a guy who can't 0.96

00:17:36.000 walk. That is ridiculous. Absolutely vile for Andy to say that. That is such a perversion, 1.00

00:17:47.260 ironically, a perversion of a perversion, namely homosexuality. That is such a tweak, 1.00

00:17:53.080 a twist, a manipulation of what the Bible says about homosexuality. Going on, he says,

00:17:58.460 Andy Stanley said, I don't do gay weddings, but I can't say I would never do a gay wedding

00:18:04.760 if my granddaughter asked me someday maybe i would continuing worst of all andy stanley said

00:18:12.040 we need to make room for gay men who choose to be married to each other in our churches because 0.75

00:18:17.620 that's as close as they can get to a new testament framework of marriage which is not close at all

00:18:23.640 no that's not as close that's as far as they can get that's as far as they can get lastly andy

00:18:29.200 Stanley said, I believe in gay people. Some people are gay, and they can't change. That's a quote,

00:18:36.820 can't change. He said, I know that I shouldn't let my experience dictate my theology, but I have.

00:18:43.120 Maybe I'm wrong. In parentheses, Ryan wrote, yeah, he is wrong. Yes, he is. And you're absolutely

00:18:49.300 right about that, Ryan. So let me go back to this. This is what I want to narrow in. It's that last

00:18:53.660 one where it says, some people are gay. They can't change. That's a quote from Andy Stanley. 1.00

00:18:58.900 here's another one where it says, you know, homosexuality is a disability. Another quote. 0.96

00:19:05.960 It's like telling gay people that they have to stop being gay to follow Christ is like taking 0.98

00:19:11.280 a wheelchair away from a guy who can't walk. That is absolutely unbiblical. And there's the problem. 0.99

00:19:18.480 See, Andy Stanley has unhitched from the Old Testament and the law of God that Jesus said,

00:19:23.300 not one jot or tittle will pass away. Heaven and earth will pass away before one jot or tittle

00:19:28.120 of God's law passes away. He's unhitched from the law of God, and he's rehitched to the law of man

00:19:34.760 in the name of a new covenant, New Testament, you know, law of Christ. But it's a perversion. It's

00:19:41.220 not the law of Christ. It's the law of man, and particularly, as I've already said, modern godless

00:19:45.740 man, which culminates and climaxes. What does modern godless man think about love? They think

00:19:51.000 the pinnacle of love is empathy, not sympathy, suffering with, but empathy, suffering in. Going

00:19:56.860 back to that illustration now of the quicksand. See, to add to this analogy, see, Andy Stanley

00:20:04.380 would say that when it comes to the sin of homosexuality, the person in the quicksand, 0.89

00:20:08.600 you know, you may be righteous and standing on the side, right? And you've got both feet firmly 0.87

00:20:13.320 planted on sure, solid ground. You're not getting in the quicksand and you're extending your free

00:20:17.840 hand as you're holding onto a tree with the other, you know, whatever it is, saying, grab on and I'll

00:20:22.920 pull you out. Well, for Andy Stanley, to add to this analogy, this illustration, the person in the

00:20:28.540 quicksand can't get out. Because see, homosexuality is not a sin. It's a disability. They can't get

00:20:36.540 out. In the same way, notice the quote that we saw just a second ago, in the same way that somebody

00:20:42.400 who is lame, somebody who is in a wheelchair, they can't get out of the wheelchair. A homosexual 0.97

00:20:52.320 homosexual is in homosexuality, that pit, that quicksand pit, the same way as somebody who is 0.99

00:21:01.360 physically disabled is trapped and bound to their wheelchair. That is not a biblical view of sin, 0.98

00:21:10.700 period, much less the sin of homosexuality. Christ in his cross came not only to pay for 0.62

00:21:18.480 the penalty of sin, but also to conquer, and he has conquered, the power of sin, right? It's not

00:21:26.020 just the penalty of sin has been paid, but the power of sin has been broken. So let me read you

00:21:31.340 just a couple verses as I close here. This is 1 Corinthians chapter 6, verse 9. It says,

00:21:35.800 Or do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived,

00:21:41.020 Neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor men who practice homosexuality, 0.96

00:21:48.640 nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom 0.99

00:21:54.400 of God. And look at verse 11, and such were some of you. It doesn't say, well, some of you are gay

00:22:02.920 Christians, right? Like the whole revoicing, you know, it's still your identity, but you have this 1.00

00:22:07.820 dual identity now. Yeah, you're still gay, but you're also Christian now. And so you don't need

00:22:11.880 to be practicing homosexuality. But you can still claim to be gay. You can walk like you're gay, 0.88

00:22:19.340 talk like you're gay. You can have your limp wrist, effeminate mannerisms. You can have a 1.00

00:22:25.320 little lisp in your voice. You can be effeminate in all these different ways, so long as you don't

00:22:30.720 actually practice homosexuality, as long as you don't lie down with another man. But you can still 1.00

00:22:36.800 identify as being gay. That's not what the Bible says. Verse 11, 1 Corinthians 6, 11,

00:22:42.240 and such were some of you, but you were washed. You were sanctified. You were justified in the

00:22:51.500 name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of God. This is not who you are any longer. It

00:22:57.600 is not your identity. And not only has Christ in his death, his work at Calvary by his life,

00:23:04.680 death and resurrection not only has he paid the penalty of sin but he has broken the power of sin

00:23:09.260 and christ is so thoroughly broken the power of sin that it not only provides new creatures in

00:23:15.680 christ jesus by grace alone through faith alone in christ christians with a new identity and a new

00:23:20.880 nature it not only christ finished work at calvary it not only enables us he is not only so thoroughly

00:23:27.500 broken the power of sin that christians are now able to resist sin at the level of behaviors

00:23:32.380 and actions, but Christians actually have the power to resist sin even at the level of desire.

00:23:40.420 That's what James chapter one talks about. I need to go ahead and log off, but James chapter one

00:23:46.240 talks about how the root of sin is desire, right? Why do you covet? Why do you quarrel? Why are

00:23:51.860 there quarrels among you? Is it not because of your desires that you covet but do not have,

00:23:58.080 So you commit murder, right?

00:23:59.220 That the root of sin, before sin is ever an outward manifestation, before sin is found

00:24:06.020 in our hands and feet, our deeds, our actions, our behaviors, it is first found before that

00:24:11.420 in our thoughts and our feelings, the way that we think and the way that we feel.

00:24:18.400 And that, rooted even deeper than that, is our base desires and urges.

00:24:23.020 And the Bible teaches that sin, something does not merely become immoral and wicked

00:24:30.400 and sinful, worthy of repentance at the level of outward behavior, and not even at the level

00:24:36.600 of conscious thoughts, but even at the level of urges and desires.

00:24:41.880 Even an urge and desire is sinful and worthy of hating.

00:24:47.820 We need to hate our sin and seek to mortify it by grace.

00:24:52.120 And so we need to seek to put our sin to death

00:24:54.740 and we need to be fighting even sin at the level of desire.

00:24:59.960 Such were some of you. 0.99

00:25:01.340 There's no such thing as a gay Christian. 0.98

00:25:03.720 There's no such thing as a gay Christian. 0.94

00:25:05.080 Now, there are Christians who may struggle 0.96

00:25:08.800 with same-sex temptation, but every time they do, 0.95

00:25:13.760 they first need to resist it,

00:25:15.800 certainly at the level of behavior, outward behavior, 0.52

00:25:18.160 But even if they find themselves being desiring that same sex perversion, even the desire, 0.95

00:25:26.740 the urge itself, they need to war against that and repent of that and to confess that 0.99

00:25:32.340 to the Lord as sin.

00:25:34.380 This is a sinful desire and there are lots of sinful desires, but this one is also even

00:25:38.880 further unique in the sense that it is a sinful desire, but it's also an unnatural sinful

00:25:44.740 desire, right?

00:25:46.020 Romans chapter one, that men exchanged natural relations with women and became inflamed with

00:25:51.940 lust for one another. This is an unnatural, in terms of degrees of perversion, a further

00:26:00.160 perverted form of sexual immorality that must be resisted at the level of outward behavior.

00:26:07.140 It must be fought against and warred against at the level of our minds and our thoughts and

00:26:11.540 feelings, and even confessed and repented of at the level of base urges and desires. Such were some

00:26:18.980 of you. Not presently, not any longer. You're either a new creature in Christ Jesus, where sin

00:26:25.180 still resides within the members of our body, right? We have a new nature, but we do still have

00:26:28.940 the flesh. And Romans chapter seven talks about a regenerate man that sin still resides within the

00:26:34.320 members of his being. So there still is an inclination, a bent towards sin. But when we

00:26:39.060 are conscious of that bent towards sin, we call it sin, we acknowledge it as sin, and we confess it

00:26:45.480 as sin, and we fight against it as sin. We ask the Lord to increase our love for him, his word,

00:26:52.020 his truth, all that is true and good and beautiful, and by way of consequence, increase our hatred

00:26:57.580 towards that which is perverse and evil and wicked. And Andy Stanley is essentially saying

00:27:03.000 the reason why the church must stop trying to actually help homosexuals to get out of the

00:27:09.800 quicksand is because it's not quicksand that you can get out of. It's more akin to being somebody 0.97

00:27:17.620 who's unable to walk, who's lame, you know, who's a paraplegic and for the rest of their life, 0.56

00:27:24.560 they're bound to a wheelchair and you wouldn't take a wheelchair away from somebody who's 0.93

00:27:29.000 disabled and couldn't walk, would you? Well, in the same way, the best thing that we can do is 0.93

00:27:33.280 stop trying to help these guys get out of the quicksand, but acknowledge that God put them in

00:27:38.420 the quicksand. And it's God's will for them to stay in the quicksand. And maybe some of us should

00:27:42.500 just go ahead and jump in the quicksand with them. Farewell, Andy Stanley. And for the record,

00:27:48.860 I said farewell to Andy Stanley. Well, you know what? I never said farewell to Andy Stanley

00:27:54.780 because I never said hello, because the best of Andy Stanley sucked. I'll just be frank. The best

00:28:01.460 of his stuff was just cheap, shallow pragmatism. He was never that solid. However, he's gone from

00:28:08.520 being shallow to being heretical, and that is worse. So if you're a part of Andy Stanley's

00:28:13.480 church, you need to call him out and demand that he be removed and disciplined for his sin. He

00:28:19.400 cannot, he is not qualified to be an elder. He needs to be publicly rebuked before them all,

00:28:25.460 before the congregation. That's what 1 Timothy 5 says. If the church and the elders are unwilling

00:28:30.460 to hold him accountable according to 1 Timothy 5 and what the Bible teaches, then your only

00:28:35.120 recourse of action that you must employ at that point is resigning your membership immediately

00:28:39.520 and leaving the church. And for everybody else who's not actually physically a part of Andy

00:28:44.020 Stanley's church. You need to mark him as a heretic. Publishers need to take his books off 0.98

00:28:50.000 the shelves. You do not need to read him. You do not need to listen to him. You need to avoid him.

00:28:55.880 He is dangerous. He is dangerous. All right. So there's my two cents on Andy Stanley. I didn't

00:29:02.100 do this video. Like I said, I was hesitant, not because I'm worried about dealing with the sin

00:29:06.320 of homosexuality and sodomy because I deal with that on a regular basis. And I deal with 1.00

00:29:10.100 actually far more controversial topics than even that. And it's certainly not because I was worried

00:29:14.800 to call somebody out by name, because I do that on a regular basis as well. I didn't really want

00:29:20.160 to do this video because I just, I didn't want to insult you, my listeners, because if you follow

00:29:24.100 this channel, I don't know how to say it, you know, but like, if you follow this channel, you're just,

00:29:29.300 you're probably not a new believer, right? You're probably a little bit more mature, right? Because

00:29:36.900 new believers don't like this channel. They don't. You're probably a little bit more mature. You're

00:29:41.280 somebody who has some theological prowess, you know, a little bit of experience, you know,

00:29:45.400 the word of God. And so you don't really need a warning from Pastor Joel about Andy Stanley,

00:29:50.880 right? You don't need me to say, Hey guys, watch out for, you know, you're like, yeah, Joel, we,

00:29:54.740 we had marked Andy Stanley 10 years ago when you did, you know, and every, every other, you know,

00:29:59.180 solid reform teacher. So, but you never know. The reason I did it is because, well,

00:30:03.600 my regular followers don't need to hear it but i thought you know you could share this with other

00:30:08.420 people there are other people who you know maybe they are a new believer maybe they are more

00:30:12.400 immature they don't go to a solid church with you know deep expositional preaching and so you know

00:30:17.180 they don't have as much discernment with these things so you could share this as a resource for

00:30:20.540 others um and also because by god's grace you know the channel keeps growing there's always new people

00:30:25.520 who are finding us and and so i thought you know maybe this will be less of a video for our you

00:30:31.300 know, our OG, you know, listeners, but for some of the, you know, the new guys who are finding us

00:30:36.240 by the grace of God every day, maybe it'll be helpful for them. So I hope it's been helpful

00:30:39.820 for you. And we will see you again with a fresh content daily, not just weekly. We have weekly

00:30:45.960 shows, but we have clips from certain shows and we have more than just one show, multiple shows.

00:30:50.540 On Monday, I go live and I take questions from the audience and I provide answers. So every Monday

00:30:54.940 at 2 p.m. Central Time, we've got our live Monday Q&A show. Every Tuesday at 2 p.m. Central Time,

00:31:01.300 We've got my interview show.

00:31:02.740 It's our flagship show with Right Response Ministries, Theology Applied, where I have

00:31:06.060 a guest and we discuss doctrine, but we apply it in practical ways to all of life and not

00:31:11.400 just the home and the church, but we apply it to politics, culture, arts, you name it,

00:31:15.740 economics, markets.

00:31:17.380 That's our flagship show.

00:31:18.760 So 2 p.m. on Mondays, that's the live Q&A, 2 p.m. Central Time on Tuesdays, that's Theology

00:31:24.220 Applied.

00:31:24.700 And then Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, you're going to find clips, multiple clips, clips

00:31:30.280 from my sermons on Sunday that I preach in my local church as a local pastor, Covenant Bible

00:31:34.960 Church, which is in Georgetown, Texas, I might add. So if you're in Georgetown, Texas, about 45

00:31:39.620 minutes north of Austin, Texas in Williamson County, you're looking for a solid biblical

00:31:44.120 church, check out covenantbible.org, covenantbible.org. I pastor a church there. And so there's

00:31:50.300 clips all week long. Every day, you're going to find a clip from one of my sermons or a clip from

00:31:54.460 one of my long form interviews, theology applied. So every day you're going to find fresh content,

00:31:59.960 fresh videos. But if you want full-length episodes, let's really think about it like this.

00:32:05.720 Sunday, Monday, Tuesday. Sunday, you can find a full-length hour-long sermon. Monday, you can

00:32:11.320 find a full-length hour to an hour and a half live Q&A. And then Tuesday, you can find a full-length

00:32:17.420 interview with Theology Applied. And then basically Wednesday through Saturday, the other four days

00:32:22.800 in the week, those are where you get the bite-sized versions of that full-length content.

00:32:28.020 We take the best clips from that content.

00:32:30.260 So if you don't have an hour to watch the whole show, we'll take the best pieces of

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00:32:35.300 So if you're new to the channel, go ahead and subscribe.

00:32:38.220 Also click the bell so you'll be notified with all of our new content.

00:32:42.820 And I've just kind of explained the roadmap on a weekly basis of how our shows work.

00:32:47.440 And I hope you enjoy it and I hope you learn.

00:32:49.680 God bless.

00:32:50.540 Can I be frank with you for just a second right here at the end?

00:32:53.840 Look, some of you guys, you're financially supporting this ministry.

00:32:56.940 and from the bottom of my heart, I say thank you. I cannot thank you enough. However, some of you,

00:33:03.980 you just, you can't afford it. In fact, some of you, you shouldn't afford it. Let's be honest.

00:33:11.000 I mean, we're living in Joe Biden's ridiculous economy. Our nation and our totalitarian political 0.94

00:33:18.520 elites lost their minds over the last three years due to COVID. We have written checks that we

00:33:26.300 simply cannot cash. It doesn't matter if people change the definition of a recession. We are

00:33:32.560 living in a recession right now regardless. Some of you are struggling to afford a carton of eggs

00:33:39.820 at the grocery store. You cannot support financially this ministry at this time, nor should

00:33:46.340 you, but you could still help us tremendously. I am asking you, please, if you're willing to do so,

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00:34:13.780 our podcast shows up for more people. And the Word of God and courageous theology applied in

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The NXR Podcast - February 03, 2023

BONUS EPISODE - Andy Stanley： Unhitched, Empathetic, and Out Of Control

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