The NXR Podcast - February 03, 2023


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

Topics
homosexuality and Christianity financial support and podcast reviews
Hosted by
Joel Webbon Harrison Smith Antonio Griffith Dale Partridge Wewsley Todd Calvin Robinson
Mentioned
Andy Stanley Ryan Visconti Doug Wilson Hebrews Joel Jesus Christ Joe Rigney Joe Biden Farewell Behold Aaron
DAILY TRUTH - How Does God Speak Today？ BONUS EPISODE - A Parable For Conservatives ｜ You’re Not Fearful, You’re Just Wicked

Episode Stats


Length

34 minutes

Words per minute

185.38

Word count

6,389

Sentence count

379

Harmful content

Toxicity

26

sentences flagged

Hate speech

36

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

In the wake of Pastor Andy Stanley's recent comments affirming gayness in the Old Testament, I decided to weigh in on the matter. In this episode, I discuss a two-step process to unhitch from God's Word and replace it with something else.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
Topics generated with Qwen2.5-3B-Instruct.
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
00:00:00 All right, listen, guys, I get it.
00:00:01 Many of you are unable to financially support this ministry
00:00:04 because you're spending your cash and your lives
00:00:06 on raising young children
00:00:08 in the fear and admonition of the Lord.
00:00:10 Praise God for you and that endeavor.
00:00:13 However, algorithms are a thing.
00:00:16 Shadow banning, sadly, is a thing.
00:00:18 And one major way that you can help to expand
00:00:21 the reach and effectiveness of this ministry
00:00:24 that doesn't cost you a dime
00:00:25 is by spending just a few moments
00:00:28 leaving us a five-star review. Also, perhaps even more effective than that, you can share our
00:00:34 podcast with a friend. We hope you'll take the time to do so. Thank you so much. God bless.
00:00:40 All right. Welcome to a last minute live episode that I just decided to do this morning. I didn't
00:00:46 really want to weigh in on the Andy Stanley stuff, but I'm going to. My hesitation for weighing in
00:00:52 wasn't because I don't want to talk about how sin is, includes homosexuality, that that is a sin
00:00:58 and that homosexuality, not just in action and behavior, but even at the level of desire that
00:01:03 that too is a sin to be repented of. And it certainly wasn't, you know, I didn't have a
00:01:08 hesitancy of calling Andy Stanley a false teacher because he is, and he has been a false teacher for
00:01:13 quite some time. And none of this should have been shocking. The reason I didn't want to do
00:01:16 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 this, it sounds kind of funny, but just out of respect for my listeners and you guys who follow
00:01:25 Right Response Ministries, you guys get this. If you follow this channel regularly, then you're
00:01:33 not surprised by any of this. When you got a guy who's been publicly saying that Christians and 0.99
00:01:38 pastors and churches theologically should unhitch from the Old Testament, and then that guy later
00:01:43 on comes out with affirming statements towards sodomy, it's like, yeah, duh, sure, yeah, you 0.99
00:01:49 unhitched from the old Testament and now you're gay. Okay. Yeah, sure. Like there's no surprise. 0.99
00:01:53 And so I want to be respectful of my audience and not just have a bunch of no duh episodes.
00:01:58 So anyways, so my hesitancy and weighing in wasn't a cowardice or fear or any of those kinds of
00:02:02 things. It was just like, Hey, other guys are covering this. This is clear. My listeners know
00:02:06 all these things. Um, but I did decide, you know what, I'm going to go ahead and say something,
00:02:10 uh, just because I think there's just a couple other correlations that I want to draw for us.
00:02:15 So basically the big idea, and I'm going to be brief, but the big idea, and you guys are laughing,
00:02:20 Joel, you've never been brief. I'm going to, I'm going to be brief. But my, my overarching thesis
00:02:26 is this, all right, you step one, you unhitch from the old Testament. Step two, it's not weather,
00:02:31 but which, right? The old Rush Dooney adage, you know, it's not weather, but which. So if you
00:02:35 unhitch from God's word and primarily with the old Testament, what I'm primarily referring to
00:02:41 would be God's law, right? I think theonomy comes into play with this, but this understanding of
00:02:46 God's moral law in the Old Testament and also the civil codes, the civil law of God found in the
00:02:52 Old Testament, the general equity of the civil codes. If you unhitch from that, you're going to,
00:02:59 you know, substitute that with something else. So, it doesn't mean that like, well, now I'm just this
00:03:03 healthy, well-trained horse that's not hitched to anything and I'm just able to ride into the wind,
00:03:09 fast and strong with endurance. No, no, no. If you unhitch from the Old Testament, to use Andy
00:03:15 Stanley's own words, his own analogy, it's not whether you're hitched to something, but which
00:03:21 thing you're hitched to. So, it's kind of a two-step process, all right? So, my overarching
00:03:25 thesis is this. Premise one, you unhitch from the Old Testament. Premise two, you re-hitch,
00:03:31 you now have substituted the Old Testament for the law of love, all right? Some have called it
00:03:36 the law of Christ, the law of Christ. And the Bible talks about the law of Christ, but I think
00:03:40 that imputed into that is a very, very worldly wrong heretical definition. So we're getting rid
00:03:46 of Old Testament and namely the law in the Old Testament, the moral law of God, the Decalogue,
00:03:51 all 10 commandments, both tables of the law and the civil codes, and especially the general equity
00:03:56 of these civil codes. We've swapped that out, unhitched from that, and we've rehitched to this
00:04:02 new thing, which is the law of Christ. And yes, I do think new covenant theology, I'm just going to
00:04:06 say it. New covenant theology is part of the problem. Dispensationalism is certainly part of
00:04:10 the problem that chops all these things up and loses a sense of continuity from the old to the
00:04:16 new. So I think there's, you know, you can fall into the ditch of dispensationalism. You can fall
00:04:20 into the ditch of new covenant theology, but the classic reformed position of covenant theology
00:04:25 and a right understanding of law and gospel, understanding that the moral law of God is
00:04:30 eternal and endures forever. And the civil codes, even the civil codes, their general equity remains
00:04:36 and even the ceremonial law of God.
00:04:38 In a sense, we could say the ceremonial law of God remains
00:04:41 because Jesus said all of this law,
00:04:44 and he's not just referring to the Ten Commandments,
00:04:45 but all of this law, every jot and tittle,
00:04:48 not one jot or tittle will pass away.
00:04:50 Heaven and earth will pass away.
00:04:52 I tell you the truth, heaven and earth will pass away
00:04:54 before one jot or tittle of this law passes away.
00:04:56 The reason why we don't do animal sacrifices
00:04:59 at church on the Lord's Day each week
00:05:02 isn't because God's law is necessarily erased
00:05:06 or God's law, you know, God is changing his mind.
00:05:08 God is immutable.
00:05:09 Behold, I am the Lord, I changeth not
00:05:11 so that you, the sons of Jacob, are not consumed.
00:05:14 The reason why we're not doing ceremonial portions
00:05:16 of the law, hand washings, animal priestly sacrificial,
00:05:21 animal sacrificial system, these kinds of things
00:05:24 is because Christ has not only fulfilled this,
00:05:27 but Christ has fulfilled it in such a way
00:05:28 that this law has been satisfied
00:05:30 in a once and for all fashion. Jesus is the final sacrifice. And so to continue making animal
00:05:37 sacrifices is to disbelieve in the sufficiency of the once and for all final sacrifice of Christ
00:05:43 himself, who is the lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world, that we have been washed
00:05:48 by Christ in his blood. We no longer need these washings, that Christ is the better priest. He's
00:05:54 the high priest, not in the order of Aaron, the Levitical order, but in the order of Melchizedek.
00:05:59 he's a priest forever, that we are being built into a living temple with living stones. That's
00:06:05 in Ephesians, right? So we no longer need the temple. So these things, even in that sense,
00:06:10 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 even the ceremonial portions of the old covenant law, Old Testament law, it's not even that God
00:06:22 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 reformed, I've become a different person. No, even that is still, in a sense, in effect, it's just
00:06:31 been perfectly, in a once and for all sense, been satisfied by Christ. The civil codes, certainly,
00:06:39 those are still at large today. Now, we have a different culture and different technology and
00:06:45 practically and providentially, you know, we don't sleep on the roof anymore, right? So, we don't need
00:06:51 a parapet around the roof, but go and find one two-story house that has a balcony without railing
00:06:58 on the balcony, right? We still follow that. We still understand the general equity, the general
00:07:03 principle of these civil codes, and we still enforce them in many ways today. So, all that
00:07:08 being said, if you unhitch, right? Premise one, unhitch from the Old Testament, namely the law,
00:07:14 and understanding all of the law, then you got a problem, and it's not whether but which. If you
00:07:19 unhitch from that, you're going to hitch your wagon to something else, namely a new law. And
00:07:24 what guys who claim to be Christian, like Andy Stanley, who are still trying to present their 0.67
00:07:28 teachings as though it was Orthodox, as though it was Christian, well, then they're going to use
00:07:33 this new label, this placeholder of law of Christ, right? Because it sounds Christian. You got the
00:07:38 word law in there. You got the word Christ in there. And yes, that is a biblical phrase that
00:07:43 we find in the New Testament, but there's a lot of misunderstandings of what the law of Christ
00:07:47 entails. What is the law of Christ? And so, you unhitch from the Old Testament, you hitch to this
00:07:54 law of Christ, and I'll tell you what it is for Andy Stanley and a lot of these other deconstruction
00:07:59 guys, a lot of these apostates who are leaving the Orthodox Christian faith. What the law of Christ
00:08:06 is for them is the law of empathy. That's what it boils down to. It's the law of love,
00:08:12 but love imputed in that is love defined by man and to be even more specific love defined by
00:08:21 unregenerate pagan god-hating man in the last 15 minutes right not even love defined by man over
00:08:30 the course of of the history of mankind right over the course of human history from start
00:08:35 to where we are presently. No, love defined by unbelieving men, godless men, and more 0.99
00:08:45 specifically, particularly godless men who are very, very modern. Modern godless men. Love
00:08:53 according to them. And I think if you could sum up today's godless modern love, what is love
00:08:59 defined by non-Christians today, is what I'm getting at. Modern, recent people, and those 0.99
00:09:06 who are godless, who are not followers of Christ, who do not love God. Godless, modern people
00:09:13 define love, if it were boiled down to one aspect, the pinnacle of love, the climax of love,
00:09:20 it would be empathy. And with that, when I'm talking about empathy, and I understand there's
00:09:25 some complexity because there's a lot of different definitions, a lot of different ideas,
00:09:29 What I'm talking about is the difference.
00:09:31 You know, I like the Joe Rigney, Doug Wilson illustration that they provided when they
00:09:35 did a, you know, an episode, a video called The Sin of Empathy.
00:09:39 And I would agree with them.
00:09:40 I do believe that empathy is a sin.
00:09:42 Empathy is different than sympathy.
00:09:44 Sympathy comes from, you know, the root word, you know, compassion, sympathy.
00:09:50 It's to suffer alongside or to suffer with.
00:09:54 But empathy, here's the difference.
00:09:55 I can sympathize for someone.
00:09:57 That's a biblical word, right?
00:09:58 The Bible even says of Christ, who is our high priest in the order of Melchizedek, as I said
00:10:04 earlier, Hebrews talks about that. It says, because he too was tempted. Now he's tempted by outward
00:10:09 temptation. There was nothing in him, right? There was no sin in his flesh that actually had an urge
00:10:15 or a desire to do, but there's still a sense of outward temptations. And Jesus, because he took
00:10:20 on flesh in the incarnation, in his earthly ministry, and because he was tempted, Hebrews
00:10:24 says he's able to sympathize with those. He's a merciful high priest, a sympathetic high priest,
00:10:31 a compassionate high priest, because he's been tempted. He can sympathize with those who are
00:10:35 being tempted. But sympathy, so sympathy is perfectly biblical. It's even a word used to
00:10:40 describe Christ Jesus himself, but that is not the same as empathy. And if I could show the
00:10:46 distinction as simply as possible, in a nutshell, sympathy is to suffer with and empathy is to
00:10:51 suffer in, right? And the illustration that Joe Rigney and Doug Wilson used was like quicksand,
00:10:57 right? You got a big pit of quicksand and somebody's right smack dab in the middle of it.
00:11:01 And they're slowly sinking and they're crying out, help, help. And you're standing, you know,
00:11:05 with both feet, not one foot on and one foot, you know, in the quicksand, you know, one foot out,
00:11:10 one foot in, but both feet surely firmly planted on the solid ground outside on the perimeter
00:11:17 outside of this pit of quicksand and to further root your position, you know, to make sure that
00:11:23 you're on solid ground, that you're firmly positioned and secure, you know, you even got
00:11:26 a hand, one of your hands is reaching on and grabbing the limb of a tree, you know, so you're
00:11:30 not getting in that quicksand and that person says, hey, please help, help, help. Well, with
00:11:35 your other hand, your free hand now, you're taking, you know, a long branch, you know, or maybe you're
00:11:40 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 onto the tree, and then you're throwing the other end of the rope to the person in the quicksand
00:11:47 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 to get you out of here. And the person responds, the average person in our culture today, and
00:11:57 sadly, even in much of the evangelical church says, that's not the help I want. You're being
00:12:04 judgmental right now. You're being arrogant right now. You're being harsh right now. You know, if 0.96
00:12:10 they profess Christianity, they'll try to put a little biblical twist on it. The Bible says, 0.87
00:12:14 Romans says, you know, to rejoice with those who rejoice and mourn with those who mourn.
00:12:19 Why are you not? See, the help that I want, you self-righteous Christian you,
00:12:24 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 Unless you're willing to drown with me, you're not loving me. You're not empathetic. To which
00:12:37 we should respond and say, yeah, you're right. I'm not empathetic. I'm striving for righteousness.
00:12:43 Empathy is a sin.
00:12:45 There's nothing in the scripture that defines empathy as a virtue.
00:12:49 Certainly not the pinnacle virtue that our godless modern culture makes it out to be today.
00:12:54 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 But again, it's not whether you're hitched to something, it's which, not whether but which.
00:13:05 So unhitching from the law of God, Old Testament, unhitched from that Old Testament.
00:13:09 and now you're rehitching to the law of christ but you're perverting that it's not really christ's
00:13:15 law and a misunderstanding of that and and you're really what you're making the law of christ is
00:13:20 really the law of man and not just the law of man but particularly modern man and not just modern
00:13:25 man but godless unbelieving non-christian modern man and that love if it was to climax and culminate
00:13:32 into any one attribute it would be empathy not sympathy not compassion biblical terms biblical
00:13:39 principles, virtues, but empathy, not suffering with someone, but suffering in, in. And the reason
00:13:46 why I bring up the quicksand, you know, illustration that Wilson and Rigney have used before is because
00:13:52 I think it really helps with this subject matter of Andy Stanley. So now without further ado, I want
00:13:58 to read you guys some tweets. This is from Ryan Visconti. Okay. So this is some tweets. We're going
00:14:03 to pull it up on the screen so that you guys can see it and follow along. And these are exact
00:14:07 quotes. And the reason why I'm reading this is because this was a small private meeting that
00:14:12 Ryan initially was not going to share with others. But now that Andy Stanley has come out recently
00:14:17 with even more gay affirming rhetoric and language in his recent sermons and all these, you know, 0.81
00:14:23 conference lectures and these kinds of things, Ryan has decided to come out. And I'm glad that
00:14:28 he has. And this is not just Ryan, right? So, you know, the scripture says, do not admit a charge
00:14:33 against an elder. Andy Stanley is an elder. He shouldn't be. He's disqualified. He's been,
00:14:37 in my opinion, he's been disqualified for quite some time, but he is still technically holding
00:14:42 the office of an elder. And 1 Timothy 5 says, do not admit a charge against an elder except upon
00:14:48 the evidence of two or three witnesses. And I want to read Ryan because this is one eyewitness who was
00:14:53 in the room. He was in the room. He's providing quotes. And you can look at the comments on these
00:14:59 tweets and other guys, not just other guys from the peanut gallery saying, yeah, you get them,
00:15:04 you get Andy Stanley, but other guys who were with Ryan in the room also. And it's dated when
00:15:10 this happened. Here's the date. This is the place. This is where this happened. There was 15 people
00:15:15 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 with Ryan and with Andy Stanley are affirming that Ryan's testimony in these quotes are accurate and
00:15:25 truth. So we have not just one, but we have two or three eye slash ear witnesses who are admitting
00:15:33 a charge against an elder who should be removed from eldership. And if he's not, if he's not
00:15:39 immediately removed from eldership, he pastors a church of 40,000 people and every single God
00:15:44 fearing regenerate born again Christian at Andy Stanley's church should immediately resign their
00:15:51 membership and leave. The first thing that they should do is demand that he be fired, that he be
00:15:55 removed. And if that demand is not met by the other elders at the church, if the church polity
00:16:01 does not function the way that it's designed by God's word to function, and they, instead of
00:16:06 removing and holding Andy Stanley accountable for his heresy, it is heresy, if they don't hold him
00:16:12 accountable for his heresy and they don't remove him from his office, then every God-fearing member
00:16:17 of his church should immediately leave because they are in danger, all right? So that's how
00:16:22 serious all this is. We have more. We have two or three. We have more than just one eyewitness.
00:16:28 This isn't just hearsay, but witnesses. Here we go. Ryan Visconti, on September 19th, 2019,
00:16:34 I was invited to a private dinner with about 15 pastors at a local church in Gilbert, Arizona,
00:16:40 to participate in a Q&A with Andy Stanley after he finished speaking at a conference. The subject,
00:16:46 of homosexuality came up, and over the next one and a half hours, Andy shared overly heretical
00:16:53 views that clearly contradict what the Word of God says. I was shocked to find myself arguing
00:16:59 with Andy Stanley. Well, Ryan, I don't know if you should have been shocked, but I was shocked
00:17:04 to find myself arguing with Andy Stanley, along with the other pastors, despite our respect for
00:17:10 him. Andy Stanley, homosexuality, he says, homosexuality is really, here's a quote,
00:17:17 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 Using the analogy that telling gay people, this is a quote, Andy Stanley said, telling gay people
00:17:29 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 walk. That is ridiculous. Absolutely vile for Andy to say that. That is such a perversion, 1.00
00:17:47 ironically, a perversion of a perversion, namely homosexuality. That is such a tweak, 1.00
00:17:53 a twist, a manipulation of what the Bible says about homosexuality. Going on, he says,
00:17:58 Andy Stanley said, I don't do gay weddings, but I can't say I would never do a gay wedding
00:18:04 if my granddaughter asked me someday maybe i would continuing worst of all andy stanley said
00:18:12 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 that's as close as they can get to a new testament framework of marriage which is not close at all
00:18:23 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 Stanley said, I believe in gay people. Some people are gay, and they can't change. That's a quote,
00:18:36 can't change. He said, I know that I shouldn't let my experience dictate my theology, but I have.
00:18:43 Maybe I'm wrong. In parentheses, Ryan wrote, yeah, he is wrong. Yes, he is. And you're absolutely
00:18:49 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 one where it says, some people are gay. They can't change. That's a quote from Andy Stanley. 1.00
00:18:58 here's another one where it says, you know, homosexuality is a disability. Another quote. 0.96
00:19:05 It's like telling gay people that they have to stop being gay to follow Christ is like taking 0.98
00:19:11 a wheelchair away from a guy who can't walk. That is absolutely unbiblical. And there's the problem. 0.99
00:19:18 See, Andy Stanley has unhitched from the Old Testament and the law of God that Jesus said,
00:19:23 not one jot or tittle will pass away. Heaven and earth will pass away before one jot or tittle
00:19:28 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 in the name of a new covenant, New Testament, you know, law of Christ. But it's a perversion. It's
00:19:41 not the law of Christ. It's the law of man, and particularly, as I've already said, modern godless
00:19:45 man, which culminates and climaxes. What does modern godless man think about love? They think
00:19:51 the pinnacle of love is empathy, not sympathy, suffering with, but empathy, suffering in. Going
00:19:56 back to that illustration now of the quicksand. See, to add to this analogy, see, Andy Stanley
00:20:04 would say that when it comes to the sin of homosexuality, the person in the quicksand, 0.89
00:20:08 you know, you may be righteous and standing on the side, right? And you've got both feet firmly 0.87
00:20:13 planted on sure, solid ground. You're not getting in the quicksand and you're extending your free
00:20:17 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 pull you out. Well, for Andy Stanley, to add to this analogy, this illustration, the person in the
00:20:28 quicksand can't get out. Because see, homosexuality is not a sin. It's a disability. They can't get
00:20:36 out. In the same way, notice the quote that we saw just a second ago, in the same way that somebody
00:20:42 who is lame, somebody who is in a wheelchair, they can't get out of the wheelchair. A homosexual 0.97
00:20:52 homosexual is in homosexuality, that pit, that quicksand pit, the same way as somebody who is 0.99
00:21:01 physically disabled is trapped and bound to their wheelchair. That is not a biblical view of sin, 0.98
00:21:10 period, much less the sin of homosexuality. Christ in his cross came not only to pay for 0.62
00:21:18 the penalty of sin, but also to conquer, and he has conquered, the power of sin, right? It's not
00:21:26 just the penalty of sin has been paid, but the power of sin has been broken. So let me read you
00:21:31 just a couple verses as I close here. This is 1 Corinthians chapter 6, verse 9. It says,
00:21:35 Or do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived,
00:21:41 Neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor men who practice homosexuality, 0.96
00:21:48 nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom 0.99
00:21:54 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 Christians, right? Like the whole revoicing, you know, it's still your identity, but you have this 1.00
00:22:07 dual identity now. Yeah, you're still gay, but you're also Christian now. And so you don't need
00:22:11 to be practicing homosexuality. But you can still claim to be gay. You can walk like you're gay, 0.88
00:22:19 talk like you're gay. You can have your limp wrist, effeminate mannerisms. You can have a 1.00
00:22:25 little lisp in your voice. You can be effeminate in all these different ways, so long as you don't
00:22:30 actually practice homosexuality, as long as you don't lie down with another man. But you can still 1.00
00:22:36 identify as being gay. That's not what the Bible says. Verse 11, 1 Corinthians 6, 11,
00:22:42 and such were some of you, but you were washed. You were sanctified. You were justified in the
00:22:51 name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of God. This is not who you are any longer. It
00:22:57 is not your identity. And not only has Christ in his death, his work at Calvary by his life,
00:23:04 death and resurrection not only has he paid the penalty of sin but he has broken the power of sin
00:23:09 and christ is so thoroughly broken the power of sin that it not only provides new creatures in
00:23:15 christ jesus by grace alone through faith alone in christ christians with a new identity and a new
00:23:20 nature it not only christ finished work at calvary it not only enables us he is not only so thoroughly
00:23:27 broken the power of sin that christians are now able to resist sin at the level of behaviors
00:23:32 and actions, but Christians actually have the power to resist sin even at the level of desire.
00:23:40 That's what James chapter one talks about. I need to go ahead and log off, but James chapter one
00:23:46 talks about how the root of sin is desire, right? Why do you covet? Why do you quarrel? Why are
00:23:51 there quarrels among you? Is it not because of your desires that you covet but do not have,
00:23:58 So you commit murder, right?
00:23:59 That the root of sin, before sin is ever an outward manifestation, before sin is found
00:24:06 in our hands and feet, our deeds, our actions, our behaviors, it is first found before that
00:24:11 in our thoughts and our feelings, the way that we think and the way that we feel.
00:24:18 And that, rooted even deeper than that, is our base desires and urges.
00:24:23 And the Bible teaches that sin, something does not merely become immoral and wicked
00:24:30 and sinful, worthy of repentance at the level of outward behavior, and not even at the level
00:24:36 of conscious thoughts, but even at the level of urges and desires.
00:24:41 Even an urge and desire is sinful and worthy of hating.
00:24:47 We need to hate our sin and seek to mortify it by grace.
00:24:52 And so we need to seek to put our sin to death
00:24:54 and we need to be fighting even sin at the level of desire.
00:24:59 Such were some of you. 0.99
00:25:01 There's no such thing as a gay Christian. 0.98
00:25:03 There's no such thing as a gay Christian. 0.94
00:25:05 Now, there are Christians who may struggle 0.96
00:25:08 with same-sex temptation, but every time they do, 0.95
00:25:13 they first need to resist it,
00:25:15 certainly at the level of behavior, outward behavior, 0.52
00:25:18 But even if they find themselves being desiring that same sex perversion, even the desire, 0.95
00:25:26 the urge itself, they need to war against that and repent of that and to confess that 0.99
00:25:32 to the Lord as sin.
00:25:34 This is a sinful desire and there are lots of sinful desires, but this one is also even
00:25:38 further unique in the sense that it is a sinful desire, but it's also an unnatural sinful
00:25:44 desire, right?
00:25:46 Romans chapter one, that men exchanged natural relations with women and became inflamed with
00:25:51 lust for one another. This is an unnatural, in terms of degrees of perversion, a further
00:26:00 perverted form of sexual immorality that must be resisted at the level of outward behavior.
00:26:07 It must be fought against and warred against at the level of our minds and our thoughts and
00:26:11 feelings, and even confessed and repented of at the level of base urges and desires. Such were some
00:26:18 of you. Not presently, not any longer. You're either a new creature in Christ Jesus, where sin
00:26:25 still resides within the members of our body, right? We have a new nature, but we do still have
00:26:28 the flesh. And Romans chapter seven talks about a regenerate man that sin still resides within the
00:26:34 members of his being. So there still is an inclination, a bent towards sin. But when we
00:26:39 are conscious of that bent towards sin, we call it sin, we acknowledge it as sin, and we confess it
00:26:45 as sin, and we fight against it as sin. We ask the Lord to increase our love for him, his word,
00:26:52 his truth, all that is true and good and beautiful, and by way of consequence, increase our hatred
00:26:57 towards that which is perverse and evil and wicked. And Andy Stanley is essentially saying
00:27:03 the reason why the church must stop trying to actually help homosexuals to get out of the
00:27:09 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 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 they're bound to a wheelchair and you wouldn't take a wheelchair away from somebody who's 0.93
00:27:29 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 stop trying to help these guys get out of the quicksand, but acknowledge that God put them in
00:27:38 the quicksand. And it's God's will for them to stay in the quicksand. And maybe some of us should
00:27:42 just go ahead and jump in the quicksand with them. Farewell, Andy Stanley. And for the record,
00:27:48 I said farewell to Andy Stanley. Well, you know what? I never said farewell to Andy Stanley
00:27:54 because I never said hello, because the best of Andy Stanley sucked. I'll just be frank. The best
00:28:01 of his stuff was just cheap, shallow pragmatism. He was never that solid. However, he's gone from
00:28:08 being shallow to being heretical, and that is worse. So if you're a part of Andy Stanley's
00:28:13 church, you need to call him out and demand that he be removed and disciplined for his sin. He
00:28:19 cannot, he is not qualified to be an elder. He needs to be publicly rebuked before them all,
00:28:25 before the congregation. That's what 1 Timothy 5 says. If the church and the elders are unwilling
00:28:30 to hold him accountable according to 1 Timothy 5 and what the Bible teaches, then your only
00:28:35 recourse of action that you must employ at that point is resigning your membership immediately
00:28:39 and leaving the church. And for everybody else who's not actually physically a part of Andy
00:28:44 Stanley's church. You need to mark him as a heretic. Publishers need to take his books off 0.98
00:28:50 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 He is dangerous. He is dangerous. All right. So there's my two cents on Andy Stanley. I didn't
00:29:02 do this video. Like I said, I was hesitant, not because I'm worried about dealing with the sin
00:29:06 of homosexuality and sodomy because I deal with that on a regular basis. And I deal with 1.00
00:29:10 actually far more controversial topics than even that. And it's certainly not because I was worried
00:29:14 to call somebody out by name, because I do that on a regular basis as well. I didn't really want
00:29:20 to do this video because I just, I didn't want to insult you, my listeners, because if you follow
00:29:24 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 you're probably not a new believer, right? You're probably a little bit more mature, right? Because
00:29:36 new believers don't like this channel. They don't. You're probably a little bit more mature. You're
00:29:41 somebody who has some theological prowess, you know, a little bit of experience, you know,
00:29:45 the word of God. And so you don't really need a warning from Pastor Joel about Andy Stanley,
00:29:50 right? You don't need me to say, Hey guys, watch out for, you know, you're like, yeah, Joel, we,
00:29:54 we had marked Andy Stanley 10 years ago when you did, you know, and every, every other, you know,
00:29:59 solid reform teacher. So, but you never know. The reason I did it is because, well,
00:30:03 my regular followers don't need to hear it but i thought you know you could share this with other
00:30:08 people there are other people who you know maybe they are a new believer maybe they are more
00:30:12 immature they don't go to a solid church with you know deep expositional preaching and so you know
00:30:17 they don't have as much discernment with these things so you could share this as a resource for
00:30:20 others um and also because by god's grace you know the channel keeps growing there's always new people
00:30:25 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 know, our OG, you know, listeners, but for some of the, you know, the new guys who are finding us
00:30:36 by the grace of God every day, maybe it'll be helpful for them. So I hope it's been helpful
00:30:39 for you. And we will see you again with a fresh content daily, not just weekly. We have weekly
00:30:45 shows, but we have clips from certain shows and we have more than just one show, multiple shows.
00:30:50 On Monday, I go live and I take questions from the audience and I provide answers. So every Monday
00:30:54 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 We've got my interview show.
00:31:02 It's our flagship show with Right Response Ministries, Theology Applied, where I have
00:31:06 a guest and we discuss doctrine, but we apply it in practical ways to all of life and not
00:31:11 just the home and the church, but we apply it to politics, culture, arts, you name it,
00:31:15 economics, markets.
00:31:17 That's our flagship show.
00:31:18 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 Applied.
00:31:24 And then Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, you're going to find clips, multiple clips, clips
00:31:30 from my sermons on Sunday that I preach in my local church as a local pastor, Covenant Bible
00:31:34 Church, which is in Georgetown, Texas, I might add. So if you're in Georgetown, Texas, about 45
00:31:39 minutes north of Austin, Texas in Williamson County, you're looking for a solid biblical
00:31:44 church, check out covenantbible.org, covenantbible.org. I pastor a church there. And so there's
00:31:50 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 one of my long form interviews, theology applied. So every day you're going to find fresh content,
00:31:59 fresh videos. But if you want full-length episodes, let's really think about it like this.
00:32:05 Sunday, Monday, Tuesday. Sunday, you can find a full-length hour-long sermon. Monday, you can
00:32:11 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 interview with Theology Applied. And then basically Wednesday through Saturday, the other four days
00:32:22 in the week, those are where you get the bite-sized versions of that full-length content.
00:32:28 We take the best clips from that content.
00:32:30 So if you don't have an hour to watch the whole show, we'll take the best pieces of
00:32:34 the show and put it out there.
00:32:35 So if you're new to the channel, go ahead and subscribe.
00:32:38 Also click the bell so you'll be notified with all of our new content.
00:32:42 And I've just kind of explained the roadmap on a weekly basis of how our shows work.
00:32:47 And I hope you enjoy it and I hope you learn.
00:32:49 God bless.
00:32:50 Can I be frank with you for just a second right here at the end?
00:32:53 Look, some of you guys, you're financially supporting this ministry.
00:32:56 and from the bottom of my heart, I say thank you. I cannot thank you enough. However, some of you,
00:33:03 you just, you can't afford it. In fact, some of you, you shouldn't afford it. Let's be honest.
00:33:11 I mean, we're living in Joe Biden's ridiculous economy. Our nation and our totalitarian political 0.94
00:33:18 elites lost their minds over the last three years due to COVID. We have written checks that we
00:33:26 simply cannot cash. It doesn't matter if people change the definition of a recession. We are
00:33:32 living in a recession right now regardless. Some of you are struggling to afford a carton of eggs
00:33:39 at the grocery store. You cannot support financially this ministry at this time, nor should
00:33:46 you, but you could still help us tremendously. I am asking you, please, if you're willing to do so,
00:33:53 take one minute of your time. Leave us a five-star review on your favorite podcast platform,
00:34:00 iTunes, Spotify, whatever that might be. This is the way the system works. We want to be innocent
00:34:06 as doves but shrewd as vipers. We need to be strategic. You leave us a five-star review and
00:34:13 our podcast shows up for more people. And the Word of God and courageous theology applied in
00:34:21 practical ways to every realm of life gets out there. Help us get it out there. Thanks for tuning in.