What Do You Say to Evangelicals Who Affirm So-Called ‘Same-Sex Marriage’?
00:00:00.000 | Last summer, back when we could gather in large auditoriums, about 2,200 APJ listeners
00:00:11.040 | gathered together in one room in Nashville.
00:00:14.480 | It was a wonderful time together, and there we recorded a handful of live episodes, including
00:00:19.860 | the following one intended for evangelical believers on a very perplexing trend that
00:00:25.500 | resurfaces every June.
00:00:28.880 | Here's the clip.
00:00:30.440 | So-called same-sex marriage has never been more popular in America, and whatever garners
00:00:36.700 | cultural popularity seeps into the church, you know this.
00:00:41.520 | According to the Pew Research Center, among white evangelicals in America, 29% now "favor
00:00:48.280 | allowing gays and lesbians to marry legally."
00:00:50.280 | 29% of white American evangelicals.
00:00:54.140 | That's up from 11% just 15 years ago.
00:00:56.480 | So that's a long and steady increase in a rise in affirmation among white evangelicals
00:01:02.180 | in America, up from 11% to 29% affirming of same-sex, so-called same-sex marriage in 15
00:01:08.980 | years.
00:01:09.980 | Bill, who is here with us this morning, asks, "Hello, Pastor John.
00:01:12.980 | As the LGBT movement strives to become mainstream, I've watched more and more believers give
00:01:17.600 | into the culture by posting rainbow-colored affirmations on social media, hanging rainbow
00:01:23.080 | flags outside their homes, and even attending pride rallies in my city.
00:01:28.160 | I want to believe the best, but I am perplexed.
00:01:31.060 | How should we respond to fellow believers who make such affirmations?"
00:01:37.780 | How you respond directly depends on your relationship, but let me hold that for a minute.
00:01:43.900 | Like it might be your wife, right?
00:01:45.580 | It might be your son.
00:01:48.140 | Like your wife decides so-called gay marriage is okay.
00:01:51.360 | Now what?
00:01:52.980 | Or your child does.
00:01:54.580 | So how you do relationships depends on the relationship that exists.
00:02:01.940 | Let's back up from there.
00:02:04.500 | The first response should be to go to the Bible and solidify what God says about homosexuality
00:02:17.460 | and the practice of it.
00:02:20.260 | And what he says in 1 Corinthians 6, 9, and 10 is that those who do such things will not
00:02:26.960 | enter the kingdom of heaven.
00:02:30.540 | And there are other texts that are significantly powerful as well.
00:02:36.260 | That's terrifying.
00:02:38.340 | And then the second thing you should do after solidifying that that's in the Bible is decide
00:02:43.220 | whether you're going to believe the Bible.
00:02:46.260 | That's no small thing today.
00:02:47.820 | You know, Desiring God, we stepped back recently to ask what are we really about?
00:02:53.580 | What are our 10 big things that we would like to see true in 10 years?
00:02:58.940 | And you know what the first one is?
00:03:01.140 | You were part of it.
00:03:02.740 | The first one is we would like to be known as a ministry in 10 years that is unashamed
00:03:08.540 | of everything in the Bible.
00:03:10.460 | So we say it like that.
00:03:19.340 | Probably nobody would have thought to say it like that 50 years ago.
00:03:24.180 | They probably would have said 50 years ago, "We want to be known as standing for what's
00:03:27.480 | in the Bible," or something like that, which is great.
00:03:30.820 | But the reason that feels like the way it needs to be said is because the people who
00:03:35.940 | are caving on social issues like this one are caving because they're ashamed of what
00:03:45.180 | the Bible says.
00:03:47.540 | They're embarrassed by it.
00:03:50.540 | It looks to the world like hate speech or like Neanderthal ethics.
00:03:58.620 | And if you don't have your roots very deep in God, very deep in the Bible so that what
00:04:06.340 | the world presses in on is not controlling you, you're going to cave.
00:04:12.500 | And so the second response is not just know what's in the book, but get on your face,
00:04:19.180 | you know, like Billy Graham up in the hills of California wondering if he could preach
00:04:24.780 | this whole book and just saying, "God, either I can or I can't.
00:04:29.940 | If I can, I will.
00:04:30.940 | If I can't, I won't.
00:04:31.940 | I'm not a waffler.
00:04:32.940 | I'm not going to hang in the middle here and try to pretend I'm a Christian saying the
00:04:37.580 | Bible is true and then go off and just tell what the world tells."
00:04:42.540 | So that's a big crisis that all of you in this room will or should have had, and I hope
00:04:48.140 | you come out on the side of courage that, "I want to stand with this book."
00:04:57.460 | And then the question arrives, "Okay, I've got my position.
00:05:00.340 | I love it.
00:05:01.340 | I believe God loves us.
00:05:02.340 | I believe God loves people who wrestle with homosexuality, and I want to be a loving person.
00:05:09.260 | Now what will love look like?"
00:05:10.980 | Because I believe, like I said last night, that singing in the jail and loving the jailor
00:05:15.900 | – and he may be a gay jailor – that's what you're called to do.
00:05:21.100 | That's what it is to be a Christian, is to trust God, sing in the prison, and love
00:05:26.260 | the jailor no matter what.
00:05:28.980 | And what will love look like?
00:05:30.820 | And you don't listen to the world.
00:05:33.100 | To let the world tell you what love is, you go to the Bible.
00:05:36.460 | What does love do?
00:05:39.380 | You know, I just read this morning in Devotion – let me show you.
00:05:42.140 | It says, "Those who hate a rebuke don't love themselves."
00:05:47.860 | That's a lousy paraphrase, but the idea was that if you hate knowledge, you hate yourself.
00:05:54.700 | Well, most people don't think that way.
00:05:57.460 | Most people think, "No, I'm loving myself if I avoid rebukes.
00:06:02.020 | If I tell my wife, 'Stop rebuking me like that!
00:06:04.620 | I'm not feeling built up!'"
00:06:08.940 | She would have every right to say, "Read your Bible."
00:06:14.860 | So what love is, is defined by God, not by the world.
00:06:20.140 | And love will surely try to keep people out of hell.
00:06:23.100 | If you don't believe in hell, you might as well close up your book.
00:06:28.240 | Love will do anything biblically to keep people out of hell.
00:06:33.940 | And that means telling the truth with love, with warnings, with pleadings, with prayers.
00:06:40.660 | So now we're at the point of relationships, and that's probably where the rubber meets
00:06:46.620 | the road.
00:06:49.740 | So if you're married, and this happens, one spouse begins to just be swayed by some
00:06:56.820 | very foolish things, and she or he may decide, "No, I think the loving thing is to attend
00:07:06.300 | that marriage and to support them and to affirm the rightness of that so-called gay marriage."
00:07:16.100 | What do you do?
00:07:18.340 | And the clearest answer is, you do not divorce.
00:07:23.740 | So there you are in a relationship till death do us part with somebody who believes a doctrine
00:07:31.540 | that sends people to hell, which will make things very awkward.
00:07:36.660 | And there's nothing you can do about it except pray, have one or two good, knock-down, drag-out
00:07:46.980 | levels of theological argument, and then look at each other and say, "We've got to make
00:07:54.820 | this work, honey," and then you work it out.
00:07:58.460 | Then you move out from there to your kids.
00:08:00.420 | That'll happen too.
00:08:02.060 | What do you do?
00:08:03.060 | What do you do if they're teenagers?
00:08:04.060 | What do you do if they're grownups?
00:08:05.540 | And the answer is, you have those conversations.
00:08:08.260 | You have them as peacefully and as level-headedly and as prayerfully and as tenderly and wisely
00:08:13.940 | as you can, and then you find ways to relate.
00:08:20.340 | This would apply to close friendships as well, I think, adult children.
00:08:24.980 | You find ways to relate that do not treat the issue as though it were a small thing,
00:08:32.220 | but you don't pester.
00:08:34.660 | You find ways to navigate the relationships that rejoice in what is truly good and are
00:08:42.660 | seriously sad and what is truly sad, and they know where you stand, and you know where they
00:08:47.940 | stand, and if they're willing, you do things together in a loving way.
00:08:55.700 | They're your kids.
00:08:56.900 | What can you do?
00:08:59.340 | Or church member.
00:09:01.420 | Your pastor, church member, affirms so-called gay marriage.
00:09:05.980 | Now what?
00:09:06.980 | Well, that'll depend on your documents, won't it?
00:09:09.820 | I mean, get yourself sued, which is okay if you're doing the right thing, but you need
00:09:14.620 | to have in place documents that say what membership involves in these regards.
00:09:20.180 | We had to…
00:09:21.180 | There was nothing in our documents 40 years ago that helped us navigate these things,
00:09:30.020 | but now there are, so that's another one.
00:09:33.260 | And so in general, the answer is love will look different in different situations.
00:09:41.620 | Excommunication from the church is not unloving.
00:09:46.180 | Don't ever let anybody tell you that church discipline is an unloving thing.
00:09:52.580 | So adjust the form of love to the particularity of the relationship and stand your ground.
00:10:01.420 | Thank you, Pastor Jon.
00:10:04.380 | Thank you, Pastor Jon.
00:10:06.820 | That was the final excerpt from our APJ Live session recorded in Nashville last summer.
00:10:12.540 | I look forward to doing this again someday.
00:10:15.340 | Maybe we'll do this again when we can all gather in one place.
00:10:19.020 | Thank you for listening.
00:10:20.380 | If you want new episodes to this podcast delivered to you, subscribe to Ask Pastor Jon in your
00:10:24.180 | favorite podcast app in Spotify or by subscribing to DG's YouTube channel.
00:10:29.100 | To find other episodes in our archive or to submit a question to us, do that online at
00:10:32.940 | DesiringGod.org/AskPastorJon.
00:10:33.940 | Well, Jesus told us to bind and loose, but is this practice relevant for the church today?
00:10:43.220 | We'll find out when we return on Friday.
00:10:45.700 | We'll see you then.
00:10:46.580 | [BLANK_AUDIO]
00:10:54.840 | [BLANK_AUDIO]