The following 6-minute video came from the YouTube site, Ligonier Ministries. Subscribe and get notice of these on your phone.
I listened to it before going to bed last night and while hearing it, I saw it as more than the content which I highlighted below the video. I saw it as a statement of Sinclair Ferguson also.
As recently, when Alistair Begg was justifying his actions of recommending that a person attend a trans wedding, one of his statements noted his affiliation with pastors from across the pond, Ferguson and others. Saying that they are not the same as American evangelicals…. His justification seemed to indicate that those pastors were more compassionate or possessed some other quality that set them apart from the ‘fundamentalists’ of America.
Note how Ferguson talks about the matter of gender and gay weddings in the podcast below. He is in agreement with those people who called Begg out for his un-biblical stance.
Highlight points:
- The topic of the week, ‘what is man’
- Today, return to the idea that God created man as male and female
- That statement is not only the view of Genesis 2
- It was the view of Jesus on the basis of Genesis 2, below; as He questioned the Pharisees:
- Mat 19:4 And He answered and said, “Have you not read that He who created them from the beginning MADE THEM MALE AND FEMALE, 5 and said, ‘FOR THIS REASON A MAN SHALL LEAVE HIS FATHER AND MOTHER AND BE JOINED TO HIS WIFE, AND THE TWO SHALL BECOME ONE FLESH’? 6 “So they are no longer two, but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let no man separate.” [LSB]
- That is, Jesus did NOT adapt God’s teaching from the beginning
- That is, the Christian view, Jesus’ view is that marriage is between a man and a woman
- Another implication: human beings come in only two created sexs; there were only ever two genders
- Anything other than this is some form of distortion and disordering of the creation and God’s purposes for it
- This too, is the view endorsed by Jesus
- Several conclusions follow:
- Our governments are mistaken when they endorse any other view; more than that, they are rejecting the Word and wisdom of God and of our Lord Jesus Christ
- The second is that it is simply not true that love takes a different view today.
- Neither God’s loving Word, nor human anatomy have changed
- The One, who is love incarnate, affirms this view: Jesus’ affirmation of Gen 2 outlaws what is today called ‘gay marriage’
- It also outlaws no-ground divorce: Jesus did not believe that a person’s “happiness” should be the most important consideration
- For incarnate love does not tolerate the disordering of God’s creation order
- We live in a time when not only is that an unpopular thing to say; but powerful forces have been released into our society
- We need to take a leaf out of Jesus’ book, from Jesus’ logic that unmasks the deception that quotes, “love conquers all things;” in this case, all obstacles and barriers to what I want to do
- The following verse is all the biblically instructed Christian needs:
- Mat 19:8 He *said to them, “Because of your hardness of heart Moses permitted you to divorce your wives; but from the beginning it has not been this way.
- End of argument
- Today, in our world, we are told that women exchange relations with men and vice versa for same-sex relationships; and instead of the threatened thunder and lightning of God’s judgment, there is happiness
- But, if Romans 1:18-32 makes one thing clear, it’s this: God’s present day judgments are not usually manifested in cataclysmic destruction, but in giving people over to their own desires, to doing what they want to do
- Three times in Romans 1, verses 24, 26, and 28, Paul tells us this: God simply gave them over to their own desires and to the consequences of them:
- Romans 1:24 Therefore God gave them over in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, so that their bodies would be dishonored among them. 26 For this reason God gave them over to dishonorable passions; for their females exchanged the natural function for that which is unnatural, 28 And just as they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them over to an unfit mind, to do those things which are not proper,
- C S Lewis once put it, there is a sense in which the most terrible words in the universe are when God, Himself, says, “Thy will be done”
- It is very telling how Paul ends Romans 1:18-32:
- Rom 1:32 and although they know the righteous requirement of God, that those who practice such things are worthy of death, they not only do the same, but also give hearty approval to those who practice them.
- Rebellion against God must have company: it must make its own way normal, and if possible, normative
- However, we cannot finally break God’s law, it is indestructible; we can only break ourselves against it
- We need to compassionately pray that our world will soon realize that, before more people destroy themselves
Link to other episodes of Things Unseen, by Sinclair Ferguson:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL30acyfm60fWgA8zL6TjP3KtLhRFNHfxi
Link to Ligonier Ministries YouTube video page: https://www.youtube.com/@ligonier/videos