Live Free with Josh Howerton - Debunking Top “Progressive Christianity” Lies | Live Free with Josh Howerton

Episode Date: March 31, 2025

What happens when spiritual compromise becomes the norm and how can we confront it with truth and grace? Pastors Josh Howerton and Carlos Erazo welcome Pamela Baltazar for a powerful conversation rooted in Revelation 2 and the challenge to the church in Thyatira. They unpack the biblical warnings against the Jezebel spirit and explore how its subtle influences show up today in culture, the church, and even personal relationships.    From feminism and gender roles to the redefining of marriage and truth, no topic is off limits as they contrast biblical conviction with cultural confusion. This episode is both bold and deeply pastoral—calling us toward holiness, repentance, and God's beautiful design for men and women.   👍 Like, Comment, & Subscribe for more life-changing podcasts! 🔔 Turn on notifications so you never miss an update!     👇 DON’T MISS OUT! Looking for real, honest relationships that enrich your life? Discover a Life Group near you and start building meaningful friendships today -- https://lakepointe.church/groups/     ⛪ ABOUT LAKEPOINTE CHURCH: We believe that Lakepointe is a movement for all people to Know God, Find Freedom, Discover their Calling, and Make a Difference. With 6 DFW locations and programs for all ages, there's something for everyone. 🤝 Support this ministry and help us reach more people with the Gospel: https://pushpay.com/g/lakepointe/    STAY CONNECTED: 🌐 Website: https://lakepointe.church/ 👍 Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/lpconnect/ 📸 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lpconnect  🎥 YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@lakepointechurch      🎧 LISTEN ON THE GO! ▶️ Live Free on Spotify / https://open.spotify.com/show/353ryGdZNlebaiqkCcy3Yc  ▶️ Live Free on Apple Podcasts / https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/live-free-with-josh-howerton/id1669321198 

Welcome to Live Free with Pastor Josh Howardton. Lake Point Church is a movement for all people to know Jesus, live free, and make a difference with their lives. And our prayer is these deep dive conversations about the Word of God equip you to live free in Christ. This is a test drive, and we'll decide whether or not to do more seasons based on engagement. So if this is helpful to you, if you could rate, review, or share, that will help us to know what's helpful. For more digital content, visit lakepoint.church slash livefeworth. free. And now, let's dive into today's episode. Well, hey, welcome back to another episode of the Live Free Podcast. My name is Carlos Arraso.

I'm here with Pastor Josh Howardton. And today we have a special guest. Pamela Baltazar. Let's go. Thank you very having me. Pamela, you have a great shirt on. Oh, yes. Of course, I have the Yo Amo Iglesia t-shirt. We have them in Spanish as well. There you go. What does that mean? Actually, Josh, what does that mean? You know that. It means, I love my shirt. Hey, there you go.

We just told you. You were practicing your Spanish just a while back, right? All right. Yo, me, me, Iglesia. Yeah. I do it. I mean, that's pretty good. Yo Amo.

Yo Amo. There you go. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Man, that's good. Well, hey, that fits the pie. I gotta get the gender of the word right. Yeah. There you go.

Right? Amma. Yeah. That's a gendered word. Yes. We're going to get to that. All the verbs are gendered. Yeah.

And if somebody's asking, why are you guys wearing the same shirt? What is free t-shirt weekend? It's two weeks away, isn't it? It is. One week. Yeah. No, actually, no, no, no. It's this weekend.

It's this weekend. It's this weekend. It's this coming weekend. Yeah. It's right here. Wait, free t-shirt weekend. Is that the week that you're teaching? No.

It's not. It's on the sixth. All right. So this weekend. All right. So here's all we're doing this. It's two weeks before Easter, right? Yes.

That's correct. All right. Two weekends before Easter at Lake Point, all of our campuses in-person services. I think this year, because we run out like every year, I think this year we ordered 20,000 t-shirts. So anybody that's at services, those weeks, we've got free t-shirts, free-shirt weekend. The reason we do it is obviously, number one, it's like honestly been in

these passages, hey man, if you deny me before men, I will deny you before more of my father in heaven. So it's like, it's a way for Christians just to be like, hey, man, I'm the Jesus guy in like a non-weird way. So it's a good conversation starter for your one more. The other thing is two weeks before Easter, if you're like looking for the way to strike up the conversation, submitted to Easter services, 20,000 people walking around with I Love My Church T-shirts. We'll do the job. So we got everybody come hang out at services that weekend. It's going to be a lot of fun.

We'll give your free T-shirt. It's going to be fun, man. And everybody joining right now. Thank you for watching, subscribing, commenting. Pamela, what else do they do on social media, sharing, all the things. Yeah, reposting. Did you share this episode or the, you know, the previous episodes for Lufree? Yeah, only the ones that I show that I mean the episode.

If I'm not in the episode, I don't share it. Well, hopefully other people. share it, you know. Hey, spicy this weekend. We've got, in this episode, we've got feminism, Jezebel spirits.

I hope that's not why you invited me. No, man, of course not. Nothing to do with that. We invited you because you're not that, and you can speak to that. You have a lot of expertise. You've preached on it, right? Yes, I've preached it before.

And we're hitting Snow White, Snow White movie. That's right. If we get a chance to do this. Disney. Tolerance. There's a lot of here. We better get at it.

Let's go, man. So let's dive in. We have a intro video that will love for us to check out on this weekend's sermon series, Revelation chapter two. Let's watch it. Roll. So I'm standing right in the middle of the ruins of what was originally the church at Thiatiraeara, which Jesus mentions in this passage. Now, as you can probably hear, this church is like right in the middle of a modern city center, which it also was in the first century, right in the middle of. the city. Thyatira was originally established by the Roman Empire as a military garrison.

This was like a military town and it evolved to eventually become like a very successful blue collar, swing a hammer, work with your hands, ply your trades type of city. Think Houston, think Philly, think Pittsburgh, silversmiths, copper smiths, and especially textiles. All of these industries prospered. The woman that Paul meets in the book of Acts named Lydia, it it mentioned that she was a seller of purple cloths. Because of the minerals in the water here in Thiatira, they had a process by which they could make a red and purple dye that like nobody else in the empire could make.

So when Lydia is a seller of purple cloths, it mentions she was from Thiatira. Gilds formed around the trades. That's good, man. There were just like ancient unions, but they were also intermingled with pagan false god and idol worship. So if you were a Christian in this church,

you would feel tremendous pressure to participate in these trade guilds that sometimes participated in the worship of false idols and sexual immorality that was part of their pagan idol worship. Jesus critiques this. In this passage, he says, hey man, this I have against you, you're compromising, where you need to have conviction.

And he's saying you're practicing tolerance or you need to practice repentance. Bapah, Bapah. Revelation chapter 2, verse 18 to 19. Church in Thiatira. That's it. Man, honestly, it's interesting to hear that bit on Lydia. That's awesome, man.

I know. I didn't know that. Yeah. So I actually have the references. It's X-16. I should have mentioned that in that video. X-16. So obviously, she gets converted.

And it's a, I mean, specifically mentions Lydia, a seller of purple cloths, Thiatira. So there it is. I mean, it's the only place in the Roman Empire they could make. that one little thing. They did it. This was a little nugget. A couple nuggets. You let me jump in. Please. Let's go. A couple nuggets. I should have, I almost grabbed one of these snails. There's these tiny little snails still to this day all over the little stones. They would take those snails, take like a thousand of those snails and crush them. And it was

like the blood or the secretion of the snails that are still there in Thia Tire. And I could pick them up like they were right there. I should have put that in the video. They also had a specific root that like seeped down into the water and all this stuff that did it. So that was really interesting. Interesting. I've only got two other little nuggets here because we've got quite a bit. We've got a lot to get to here. Two other little nuggets. Here's your, here's your little Bible trivia for the week. When Jesus introduces himself in this passage as the son of God, that's the only time he ever calls himself that in the book of Revelation. It may be the only time he ever calls himself that explicitly. Literally everywhere else he calls

himself the son of man. There's a little Bible trivia. That's a little Bible trivia. That's really interesting. Which was a term used in Daniel. Daniel 7. That's right. Which was Jesus' favorite term, son of man. Yeah, it's interesting. Yeah, so, yeah, Daniel 7, he talks about the ancient of days, one who appeared like a son of man. So that's, yeah, we don't have time to, but if you're ever wondering, why do he call himself son of man? He's referencing the Daniel 7 messianic prophecy. And he's gone, I'm that guy. Which is interesting, because in Daniel's, I think it's, well, you said 7. There's another section in Daniel where basically Daniel describes a pre-incarnate version of Jesus,

and Daniel basically sees this figure with fire in his eyes and the feet like bronze. In Daniel? In Daniel. And then I could probably, Daniel chapter 10, actually, chapter 10 verse 6. I'm going to read it. His body was like barrel, his face like an appearance of lighting, his eyes like flaming torches. Those fires in his eyes. His arms and legs like the gleam of a burnished bronze.

600 years after that was written, Jesus shows up to meet John, and John's like, you got fire in your eyes. You got bronze in your feet. And so again, it's just like, that's the same guy. Dude, I didn't come across that in sermon prep. Where were you this week? I know. There you go, man. It's crazy.

That's amazing. It's crazy. I thought this was one other little tidbit. So I think we're going to talk about Jezebel here in a second. Big problem. and obviously we mentioned about in the message that when it's referencing Jezebel

it's not talking about the person it's talking about the spirit behind the person because it's referencing Jezebel from Second Kings. Interesting little tidbit Jezebel in Hebrew Aramaic cover it's originally translated

in the Old Testament it means two things unhusbanded and it means bail is my prince those two things that's what Jezebel literally means unhusbanded

in other words like my husband doesn't lead me. I don't got anything. That sounds familiar. Unhusbanded and bail is my prince. Wow. This is in Hebrew? Yeah. Probably not a common baby name today. Well, I made that little joke. I'm going to make that. I made that little joke. Yeah. If you're like, you're brand new to Christianity and you're looking for baby names, like Jezebel's off the table. Yeah. Whoops. I hope it is. Whoopsy-d-d-d-a-d-ie. Yeah, man. You want to just click on Jezeba? I mean, I think at this point, obviously, she represents. spiritual compromise. There's so many things. False teaching, sexual immorality. I'm curious to hear, Pamela, what, you know, why? There's a lot here. What does that mean? Let's unpack this. Well, there's a lot to mention, but I think we usually tend to talk a lot about bad men, you know, toxic masculinity and the lack of good God honoring men in our families, in our churches and society,

but we usually don't talk about bad women. And they're also bad women. There are also toxic women. And when we talk about Jezebel in the Bible, she was the wife of King Ahab in English. That's correct. That's how you pronounce it. And she was very controlling. She was very manipulative of her husband. She promoted idolatry. And that idolatry had like what involved witchcraft, sexual sin as part of the worship ritual. So we associate Jezabel with controlling, manipulation, sexual sin. And so when we say now, this is a term that we use, when we use the term of Jesivel spirit, I think personally, women, we all tend to struggle with this or we all tend to like be tempted

in this because as women, we tend to try to control our children. We tend to try to control our husbands. We tend to try to manipulate people around us to just do what we want them to do. And I think in some level, all women, we all struggle with control. role and manipulation. So we all are tempted with this period. It may not look that obvious like a, you know, seductive women trying to do bad things, but it can be very subtle. Like I've spoken with women, you know, in marriage counseling and stuff like that. When women, for example, when they withhold sex from the husband because they're upset for something. And yeah, you may say

it's a valid reason. But if you dig deeper, the motive behind it is because you want to manipulate your husband to get them to agree with you or to win the argument or to get him to do what you want. So that can be very subtle, but it's manipulation. It's a sexual sin or the attention that we like to receive as women, you know, for the way we dress and the poses we do in social media when we take selfies like, you know, the duck face and stuff like that. I mean, why would you do that face, you know, if not to draw attention or when we go to the gym? Well, women, some women go to the gym, I don't, but like, when they go to the gym and they take selfies, like with their fitted clothes and, you know, showing their butts, like, why would you show your butt in social media

if not to just drive attention and to make yourself feel better about your body? That's sexual sin. So I think we all struggle with that Jezebel spirit, and it can be very subtle that we miss it sometimes. But if we let it grow, it can grow into very destroying and harmful ways in our families, in our marriages, with our kids, in our churches. And of course, it's the most obvious way when a woman lives full in in the Jezebel spirit. And that involves a lot with feminism that I want to get into that too soon. But like, it tells us that we can live our sexuality freely. Like, we can dress the way we want. We can explore and enjoy our sexuality. That's a whole other level when you just live like that, you know, you live that lifestyle. But I think we, most of us, we just fall into

that subtle category. So go ahead. Well, so Pamela hit, we hit like in the message. I think I had like five or six. I'm looking at them right now. And Pamela hit these. I thought they were really good. I thought the things Pamela said really good.

I didn't think the things I said really good. So I think one, I just want to click on some things that dovetail to what she just said. So first of all, let me just give a caveat. If women who have been around Lake Point for a little while, they'll hear this podcast. and they'll be like, awesome. This is great. Thank you for Bible teaching on how to be a godly woman.

If you're new to Lake Point, this may be like, or new to the podcast, you may be like, whoa, like they can't say that. So let me just give a quick. No, no, I'm glad you. No, this is a healthy thing.

Okay. What you just did is healthy. You spoke in a straightforward way, straightforwardly from the Bible, to disciple women. That's a good thing. What I want to point out is, if you're new,

you may have a bit of like a reaction because I have, I have an opinion is not why this happened. Somewhere along the way, it became socially unacceptable for pastors to correct women. You're not allowed to correct women.

If you, Carlos has probably noticed this because he helps me with social media. If I do like a post aimed at men, it's like a million likes and, you know, 10,000 comments of clap emojis. You tell them. You tell them, pastor. Wives tagging husbands.

Yeah, oh, bro, that's literally a thing. Whoops. That's a whole different sermon. That's a whole different sermon. if I do, like, I've done maybe one or two, gentle nudge to women. And it's like, you internet freak out. Here's all the TikTok reaction from ex-vangelical female bloggers

that hate Jesus and all the things in the comments. It's like, but what about every exception scenario imaginable? And, you know, I won't go into this here. But it's kind of like as critical theory replaced Christian theology, in our culture, instead of us viewing the dividing line as between sin and righteousness, the dividing line became between oppressed and oppressor. And we just started looking at everything through that lens. And so what happened in our culture was the men are the oppressors and the women are the oppressed. And so it's obviously inappropriate to ever correct an oppressed class

in critical theory. So this is, I think this is where that came from. I think this is like, so here's my caveat. My caveat is, I'm just going to, before we move on and Pamela, we keep talking about this. be just level set for obviously the women of men and women of like point and then any um jesus following person listening like this should be basic non-controversial things and then pamela and carlos please add any color here a basic non-controversial belief that we should have is that women are just as sinful as men yeah i can testify as that so romans three three romans three for all of sin okay so there are bad men and there are bad women. There are manipulative men and there are manipulative

women. There are crazy men and there are crazy women. And while pastors, I think, should use, I can't believe you said crazy women. Bro, there are crazy women. I feel offended. This video is going to get double the views because of that. Amazing. So what I would say is that while pastors should use a different tone for men and women, here's what we say at Lake Point, we refuse to rob the women of Lake Point of the discipleship they deserve to become everything that God wants them to be. So if you're new and you're listening to this podcast, you're like, I can't believe that girl just said that. Welcome to Lake Point where the women of the word love to hear what the word of God says so they can grow in discipleship. So there's my caveat. Yeah. That's a good man.

That's a good caveat. And in the name of all women, I apologize for being so arrogant because, you know, to not accept correction from, you know, not a man from, but from the word of God. And that's pride and that's arrogance and that's a sin that is, you know, rampant in women right now. Sounds like the Jezebel spirit that will keep elaborating on him. So I did, Pamela, I'd love to hear, because you were in, you were probably in Lake Point in Espignal. Yeah. So here's some of the characteristics that we kind of ran through real fast of, hey, if, by the way, one last thing I want to say. If you're around Lake Point, you know, I go very hard at the men of Lake Point.

We did an entire five-week series twice called Act Like Men, you know, double-barrel shotgun, you know, with a word at the minute. So, but here's what I would say. We said, number one, we went, Jezebel comes from the archetype of Second Kings. They have been Jezebel. So Jezebel, they tend to gravitate towards and thrive around passive men. Yeah, totally.

That's number one. That's exactly what you see in Second Kings. number two, it uses the word tolerate here. Here's the theme with Jeze. By the way, a Jezebel spirit can be a man or a woman, but it's typically a woman in the Bible. The other thing that we say says, you tolerate her. And here's the thing, whatever you tolerate,

she will eventually dominate. If you tolerate that emotional manipulation in your family, her emotional manipulation will dominate your family. If you tolerate it in a nation, Second Kings, the emotional manipulation of Jezebel's will dominate the nation. If you tolerate it in a church, it will dominate the church. You see it here. Number three, interesting, this passage says she calls herself a prophetess. So it's not an authority that somebody else recognized. They didn't go, man, here's a godly woman. Let's elevate her into a position of spiritual leadership. She's a person who in an arrogance and

ride went, I'm deciding I'm the judge of everybody else around me and everybody else better recognize what I have to say. It's kind of that I am woman, hear me roar kind of vibe kind of thing. That's, you know, you hear the who rules the world. Girls rule the world. Five. It's the worship leader, Beyonce. There yeah, there you go. Yes, exactly. And I think that's very common in women that, okay, nobody else is going to do it. My husband is not doing it right. then I'm going to do it. And they step up without being called or asked to. I mean, that's a tendency that we as women have to do.

I mean, it's wrong. But like, so I see her totally saying, oh, somebody should say these things or somebody should do this thing. I'm going to do it. Like, that's the pride of a woman stepping into a role that she has not been called to do. Which, by the way, let's take what you just said biblical. We were going to come to this in a second. The Jezebel spirit or type. Like if you're charismatic, you call it a Jezebel spirit.

if you're a Presbyterian, you call it an archetype. But we're saying the same thing. So if we want to get it biblical, she is the manifestation of the Genesis 316 curse of the fall. So remember, if you remember Adam and Eve's sin and then respective curses are given to the man and the woman, I'm going to read it. So here's, I've got it right here.

Let me just read it, Genesis 316, if I can find it. where's all my Dang it I can't find it You shall want for your husband Yeah I'll just quote it Okay yeah It says your desire shall be

For or some of the translations say Against your husband And essentially it's saying After the fall Women will naturally tend towards I want the man's job So it's exactly what you just said He's not doing it right

so I'm going to step in and do his job or resentment that she didn't have his job. So that calls herself three others real quick. Another characteristic of this person is it uses the word she says she's teaching and seducing. Now sometimes that's sexual, it's not always sexual. Seduction, all that is, is this a form of, like you said, manipulation.

So godly leadership is overt, ungodly leadership is covert. So godly leadership, the Apostle Paul says, we commend ourselves by speaking the truth plainly. I'm just going to tell you, man, I'm going to speak to you an assertive, clear way. Ungodly leadership is manipulative. It's behind the scenes.

It's ulterior motives. It's passive aggressive. It's controlling. That's what she does. So a lot of times it's not just sexual. It's emotional manipulation. So I'm a, you know, I didn't get my way. So I'm going to throw a fit until I can control the people around me.

We don't do that. Hey, there are men who do it too. I can assure you. I can assure you. Two other things I'd say, Jesus says, but to the rest of you in Thyatira who do not hold this teaching, Jezebel's divide churches. So there was a faction in this church. The people who were tolerating and being emotionally manipulated by this Jezebel woman.

And then people who weren't, and it created a. division of church. So when you start seeing, you know, highly manipulative people, not just women, but often women, when you see that dividing churches, there's your, there's your sign via emotional manipulation. And then the last one is permissive towards sexual immorality. You see that here. This also did make it in. If you zoom out, let's the last time I'm going to say, and then I'm turn it over to you guys for color commentary here. If you zoom out in American culture, we're going to talk about feminism in a second. If you zoom out in America, American culture. Somebody's pointed out that in American culture, I want to find this so I can say it

clearly. In American culture, which you have right now more and more is you have unmarried, childless women, more and more. That's like on the rise. We got some date I'll show here in a second. Well, here's the thing. All the instincts that are born into a woman, those don't go away just because you didn't get married and you didn't have kids. Now, by the way, not everybody's called to get married and have kids, but I'm just saying. It's biology. It's biology. It's created order.

So then what people have pointed out is when you have a culture where in mass, you have unmarried childless women going, ah, you know, I'm going to be free. You know, I'm going to travel. I'm going to, you know, all this stuff. Yeah. Then they end up channeling the instincts that would have gone towards a husband and children in other places. And what's happened in our culture is the government is becoming their husband. You protect me, you provide for me. And then

victim classes in critical theory, you know, kind of frameworks. They're channeling maternal instincts of Mama Bear protective. So for instance, towards LGBT communities. So if you notice when you watch like a march, who are the primary activists that are like cheering for LGBT activism? I'm going to generalize. It's a lot of like progressive white women that are single and don't have kids. And they're taking those maternal instincts of mama bear. I'm going to protect anybody from hurting the feelings of my kid and channeling it towards those those kind of hurt classes. Ironically, oftentimes too, promoting organizations that are primarily led by men as well.

Yeah. Ironically. Ironically. And so, yeah, it's true. It's true. Anything. But going back to what you said about this deduction, it's very curious to me that in Proverbs 7,

like the Bible compares the seduction of sin like an adulterous woman. And this is not to say that the woman, all women is evil or anything, but it's just like women, we have like a particular set of skills. Like in the movie taken, my husband loves that movie. That's why I use that. But we have these skills or this power to seduce, like you said, not always sexually, but like to seduce or influence or convince someone to do what we want them to do. And we can use this power for good to build up, to bless, to like,

you know, bring spiritual direction to our kids or whatever, or we can use this power to tear down, to control, to manipulate. So it's very, you know, curious to me because I always, I'm very aware as a woman that I'm influencing my husband and I can be adjustable, not, not in a sexual, promiscuous way, but when my husband is like coming to me for advice or something, and I'm just like, oh, you shouldn't talk to that people, and you're just being toxic and enraging him. You just take vengeance and you have like, you know, we have that power and we can just send our husbands to do a bad decision to just, you know, provoke, you know, bad things in our husbands, in our churches, in our families. So we have that seduction power.

And like I said, not always sexual, but we have that seduction power that we need to be very aware of. And that's why I said we all as women, we all are tempted by the Jezebel Spirit. And we should be very aware of our power that we have been given. Dude, people do not. And honestly, what you just said, that is a dignifying reality of how God created women. There is a power that women have that men do not have. Ironically, what you hear from a lot of these movements is that women do not have power, that they need more power, that they need to be empowered.

And a lot of them don't necessarily realize you have God-given power to be who you were created to be. And the thing is, I mean, the women that are feminist, and that's what they say, that we are not weak. We're like, no, we're not. I mean, God in the Bible, he describes us as the Eser Kinecto. I don't know how you say it in English. The helper. Is that Greek? Eser Kenecto is original.

It's Hebrew. Yeah. The helper. Helper. Helmate. Yeah. And the only other position in the Bible or other instances, in the Bible, what that term is used, is for the Holy Spirit, our powerful helper, our defense,

or like a military defense. So he's not describing us as a servant to the husband or a humble week. Like, no, I mean, we are a powerful, powerful helper to our husbands, a powerful helpers in our churches. So, like, we're not, God is not given us a weak mentality or a weak personality. That's, that's the enemy that is trying to confuse us, saying that the only way to get power is if you're like a man. And that's not. true. We're powerful on our own. So we need to be very aware of that power. Dude, I have, so I have so many thoughts. So number one, I think that's really important because I think some people would hear the whole Jezebel thing and go, oh, so strong women are bad.

Oh no, no, no, there's strong evil women and there are strong, righteous women. You know, you have people like, like, I think her name is, I always don't how to pronounce it, J-A-E-L, the one that pounds the, the, J-L, the steak-through-the-the-the-stake through the the dude's head in the Old Testament. She seems like she's a strong woman. She was pretty dang strong. How did she do it? She was strong and assertive, right?

And man, when you have strong, righteous women, honestly, here's what you'll watch. Strong righteous women have the forthrightness and backbone to oppose strong evil women. They, like those women, oh, you do that. Don't be a Jezebel, be a Jeal. Hey, hey, that's what I'm ready. Like Jail's, they like, they, they oppose Jezebel women. And they're like, no, like, you know. The other thing I would, I just want to point this out so that people get this and then we, I know we need to move.

Are you good, Matt, you're good. Me looking at the watch over the clock over there. The other thing people miss, I want to go back to this. Like if, if people are like, ah, so you said that women have a power of men don't have, the analogy I like to use is, I'll use this when I'm preaching sometimes. I'll ask women in the room, hey, you see blue lights come on behind your car and, you know, you're there. How many people have ever seen you or one of your friends whip up a few tears and bat a few eyelashes or whatever, adjust the shirt, whatever you need to do, and to try to, and you can influence,

and you've seen somebody get out of a ticket. If Carlos tried to cry and bat his eyelashes and pull his shirt down a little bit, he's probably not getting out of a ticket. Probably not. In fact, you'll probably get two. So what I want to point out is God has given women a power. It's a power and an influence. Many of not have, and what you'll see is that especially in a family, that, again, you have that power. The question is not whether you have it. The question is, which way will you use it? That's right.

That's good. And what you'll see with particularly a wife and a family is she will either be her husband's launch pad or his lid. One of those two things will happen, launch pad or lid, depending on how you use your power. And the answer is yes. Women have power than men don't have and men have power that women don't have because we're uniquely made and we have our specific role given by God and no one is lesser than the other. No one is better than the other one. We're uniquely made and we have been assigned a specific role. We should be ashamed of that. It's almost as if Genesis 2 is true. We were made for each other. And, you know, Eve was a helper and Adam has a mission and together they're both sent out to make the world a beautiful place. It's interesting. So speaking of, obviously, we're talking about Jezebel. Jezebel was an actual person, but then, you know, in the last book of the Bible, she is mentioned as a spirit, the spirit of Jezebel.

You know, 2,000 plus years later, we're here. Let's apply the text to the context of our surroundings. And then my question would be, how does the spirit of Jezebel express itself today? Obviously, I would love to address feminism. It's an ideology that is very pervasive, especially in our culture. Not just influencing women, but honestly, like you said, Josh, influencing men significantly to the point where, you know, a lot of people talk about basically how our culture has killed masculinity. And, you know, obviously men are, they're in magazines wearing dresses, you know, and younger men are basically looking up to these influences. They're kind of adopting some more feminine traits or, you know, paint nails and, you know, I don't know, makeup, all the things.

And so let's talk about the influence of feminism in our culture today. Yeah. So first of all, a few things on feminism. And then so if you're, I think for most people that are listening, when they hear even what you just said, they're probably like, wait, are they about to say feminism's bad? Because honestly, like, that's the air. If you've grown up in the United States, that's the air you grew up breathing. So let me give a quick caveat. God. Not everything that is associated with feminism is bad. There are some things, like for instance, that men and women are equal in value because they're both created in the image of God, which Pamela just mentioned. You know, you'll hear that. The feminism asserts the equality of men and women. That's a wonderful thing. Now, I, you know, you always got to ask the question when I did debate team in high school and a little axiom for

is whoever controls the terms wins the argument. So one important thing to do is to ask the question, what do you mean when you use that word? Well, hey guys, one of the reasons we are intentional in creating this kind of podcast episodes is because we believe that discipleship happens in relationships. Having said that, what we want to do through the live free podcast is model what it looks like to be in a discipleship group where we come together and open up the Word of God and honestly just grow together as followers of Jesus to live free in Christ. And so for this reason, we love that you're tuning in, but honestly, we don't just want you to be a passive listener. We want you to be an active participant. And so if you have not yet joined the group, whether in person or online, I want to

challenge you to test drive one. And so to do that, just text the word group to 20411 or go to lake point that church slash groups because listen you're not one podcast away one habit away one decision away one book away one sermon away listen you are one relationship away to experience freedom in christ in community and now let's get back to the podcast so i think where there is some differences between christianity and feminism sometimes is for instance what do you mean by the word equality? Because feminists will sometimes mean sameness, sameness, any racer of any concept of gender roles whatsoever.

So here's the caveat. Not everything related to feminism is negative, not everything. Okay. But what I would say is many Christian women don't realize how much the feminist movement has impacted the way we think. I've got, you can tell me, Carlos, I didn't have time to get this into the message. I almost went through because so many in particular women,

they don't realize the underpinnings of the feminist movement. And so I almost went through the four faces of the feminist movement to kind of, hey, let me help you understand where this came from. Should I do it or no? We can do it briefly. Let me try to do it briefly. Let me try to do it briefly. Okay, so we're going to go really fast. Trinity, I may ask you to toss some stuff on the on this on the screen here in a second here. All right.

By the way, we can do it briefly. Train, let's get all the photos and the statistics. You know it's not going to be brief, but I'm ready. Let's go. I do get them. Yes. So basically, here's why I'll get to that. We're ready. Let's go. Here we go. So you got essentially four phases. Right now people say we're in fourth wave feminism. Here are the phases. Proto feminism dates from like 1750s to 1830. its first cause was opposing, this is, you need to understand this. This is how feminism was born. The first cause of proto-feminism was, quote, opposing the orthodox understanding of the creation order found in Genesis.

That's how all this began. Mary Wolfson Craft was a primary leader in proto-feminism. She described, she was aiming for a vindication of the rights of women. This is a direct quote, a woman's role of helper was beneath her. And a woman should be independent

and self-sufficient. So this was the original deal. This is 1700s. 1700s. So what you have immediately, just think about how that language is loaded. God's design for the family and gender roles. It's implying that it's restrictive,

that it's, you know, a negative thing, a negative thing. All right, then you got first wave feminism. This kind of dates from the 1850s to the 1930s. This was the emphasis on things like women's right to vote and own land. There were some good things, by the way, that came from this movement. Here's a little side note, though. I will say this.

If you go back and read some of the stuff from first wave feminism around the women's right to vote thing, an enormous number of women opposed women's quote-unquote what gets framed as women's right to vote. This is really interesting. I don't actually know what I think about this. Here's why. Because in 2025, we frame that decision as being about women's right to vote. that's not how the conversation started back then. How it started was back then families, families voted.

And the husband as the leader of the family cast a vote on behalf of the family. So if you go back and read First Wave feminism opposition, it's a lot of women saying, no, no, we don't want to shift from being the basic building block of society being a we to a me. And they were going, no, we actually love the fact that the basic building building. building block of society is the family, and we trust our husbands to vote on behalf of the family. And they were like, we want to be a we, not of me. So that's really interesting. So you got this. A couple things here. This was Matilda Jocelyn Gage. She was a leader in first wave feminism, leader of the women's suffrage movement. Here's a quote. In order to help preserve the very

life of the republic, it is imperative that women should unite upon a platform of opposition to the teaching and aim of that ever most unscrupulous enemy of freedom, the church. Wow. So this is like key leader, key leader of first wave feminism. Let me give you one other one. Trinity, I'm getting ready to throw up that. It's called the Women's Bible up here. This was Elizabeth Cady Stanton, which she was real tight with Susan B. Anthony.

She wrote this. It's called the Women's Bible. Is it up there? Yeah. Okay, this is a copy of it. So this is what she wrote. What she did is she took the Pentateuch, the first five, oh, I'm not going to read anything on it. She took the first five books of the Bible, the Pentateuch, Genesis, Exodus,

Genesis, Numbers, Deuteronomy. And then she added her own commentary. This is crazy. And reframed Scripture with all of the women as heroes and Satan in the garden as the good guy. Wow. So like, just let this sink in. I don't think people realize where some of the underpinnings of this movement originally came from. I'm going to read a quote.

She said, with a benevolent Satan, Eve's actions in the garden become praiseworthy, and women are superior to men for being the first to heed Satan's advice. What denomination was she? I don't know. Pride methods. Kind of like that's a joke. That's a joke. Kind of like, honestly.

that. Dude, listen, I'm telling you, people do not realize some of the underpinnings of this movement. Honestly, man, this is basically like Thiatira. Exactly. This is literally Zaitaira. That's why I almost did this in the sermon. I mean, yeah, somebody's spreading, you know, making up their own Bible. All right, let me keep going.

Yeah. Let me keep going. All right. So second wave feminists, these go faster. Second wave feminism, this is from the 1960s to the 1980s. Primary aims redefining gender roles. Heads up, real quick. When it says redefining gender roles.

gender roles, the primary thrust of quote unquote redefining gender roles is away from God's definitions and ideals of gender roles. Decreasing desire for marriage and children and sexual autonomy and abortion. This is when abortion became a huge part of the feminist movement. Sexual revolution. Sexual revolution right around here. There was one of the primary leaders here was this is when like fight against the patriarchy. This is when this became a thing. Kate Millett, one of the primary leaders in this era was all about about this. Bro, this is insane. Okay.

Like, this is the kind of stuff. I'm like, there are serpentine whispers throughout this movement. She, so her, when Kate Millett died, her sister wrote a book, like kind of pulling back the curtain on, on Kate Millett's quote unquote feminist leadership. And she talked about she started gathering in New York City. They called them consciousness raising groups. by the way, she got that language from communists. That's what communists do.

Conscious raising groups. Because in her mind, most women were not as aware as they needed to be of the repressive patriarchy. So they would start their meetings. This is nuts. They would start their consciousness raising groups with this thing. It was a call and response chant. She would go, why are we here today?

And they would yell, to make a revolution. and she'd say, what kind of revolution? The cultural revolution. And then she'd say, how do we make a revolution? By destroying the American family. How do we destroy the family? By destroying the American patriarch. And how do we destroy the American patriarch?

By taking away his power. Listen. And how do we do that? By destroying monogamy. And how do we destroy monogamy? and this is the last thing they would yell. By promoting promiscuity, eroticism, prostitution, and homosexuality.

This is how they would begin their meetings. By opposing the Bible. Yes, yes. All right. So that's second way feminism. These get real quick now. Talk about what you're going. There you go.

Okay, so third way feminism, 1990s, 2010s, primary aim, self-expression, sexual liberation, LGBT plus rights, gender theory, and abortion. This is where, like, by the way, the fact that, that, that transgender activism became a part of feminism is one of the craziest and most ironic things in all of human history to me. That's just a side note. Like, that's just a whole different conversation.

So this is when they embrace the idea. Gender is just a social construct. They start fighting for gay marriage. That's the feminism thing. So then fourth wave feminism is where we are now. This is like 2010 to the present. And this is the primary aims, our inclusion in social justice. gay and transgender rights and abortion,

one of their six key pillars, abortion. You know, there's, ah, golly, there's so much here. Yeah, I'll end there. But basically what you get here is what you understand is not everything connected to feminism is bad. That's right. But what wise Christians do is with every ism, with every ism, wise Christians,

they reflect and discern biblically to ask question, what things should I receive? What things should I reject? And is there anything that can be redeemed? And we simply need to be honest. Traditionally, the historical feminist movement is it aggressive odds and attack against the biblical definitions of gender, marriage, and sexuality at quite a few fronts. That's good. That's good. Let me just explain in a different way, everything you just said, some of the things that the feminist movement basically says contrasted with what Scripture says. So feminism will say men and women are interchangeable. Obviously, this is post-fourth wave. The Bible says, obviously, Genesis 1, men and women are

equal in value, but distinct in role. Feminism will say liberation means rejecting traditional roles. Scripture says freedom is found not in self-definition or self-determination, but in Christ. Basically surrendering yourself to Christ. Feminism will say, my body, my choice. First Corinthians 619 literally says you are not your own. You were bought with a price. Feminism says gender is a social construct. Bad idea.

The Bible says God created male and female intentionally. That's Genesis 1. And then feminism today will say authority is oppressive. The Bible obviously says in Ephesians chapter 5, God's design for authority is for protection and flourishing. Again, very different, very opposed to each other. Very different. And I think we need to acknowledge the fact that feminism was

born because in most societies or cultures, you know, throughout history, women have been abused and there's more violence against women than men. And that's, of course, not God's plan. And that's, it's okay to fight against that. We're not saying that. But I think we have overcompensated and we have gone to the extremes where nowadays we cannot question a woman. Like if she dresses provocatively, we cannot question her because she's free to do what she wants and men should look away, even though I have everything outside. Like, you know, Men are perverse. They should just look away.

We cannot question them or we cannot question women or, like you said, reprimend them because they're above the rules. So we have gone to the extremes. That's not, I mean, either way, either extreme is bad. I mean, the only way is, like you said, is the biblical truth and how God designed us to be and the role God assigned to us. I mean, we need to go back to the basics. You know, my theory is that typically, typically when you find somebody who's like an aggressive

feminist. A lot of times what you have, if you look in their history, is a bad and hurtful man. And here's my theory on this is a lot of people don't know. So the New Testament calls Satan Beelzebub, which literally gets translated. It means Lord of the Flies. So the biblical implication is, hey, what Satan does is when you get a wound, if a wound gets infected, it gets full of flies, and when that happens, it can become a mortal, it can kill you. So what the Bible's implying is that Satan will wait for a wound in your life. He'll wait for a wound in a woman's life from a bad, ungodly, evil man. And he will infect that wound.

That's his goal, to get in the wound and then infect it and turn it into something that begins to kill your spirit, your family, societies, churches, That's where you get a lot of Jezebel's. That's the irony, it seems like, you know, when you zoom out and you ask, man, who gets hurt the most out of this ideology? Women. Women. I mean, you have, I mean, if you, and again, if you either know somebody or if you just see on social media, when you see these movements, like, they don't really look happy. Yeah. Feminist women, generally speaking, they look angry.

They're mad. They're upset. They're in fight mode. They're not satisfied. They're not satisfied. you know, and so, and then they just seem angry about all the time. And you'll see women, again, I think you mentioned this, Pamela, there's this idea in our culture that being a mom is lesser of a location, being, being a wife is a lesser thing. And what really matters is a girl boss.

That's right. You need to compete. You need to basically, it's a, it's an idea of, of you're telling women you have to be like a man to be quote unquote successful. You have to be like, I mean, have to be physically strong. We have to be all the things. Basically, you try to be like a man. And it's just, you know, a woman doesn't, it makes a pretty bad man. And so, and then women end up miserable because, again, it's a center that you cannot achieve.

You were not created for this. You see even in our culture, only fans, like all those things where, like, women are sleeping around and they're making a lot of money. And that's somehow empowerment. Well, I make my own money. I don't need a husband to provide for me. And then you're destroying your body. You're destroying your soul. Like, you're not creating a family.

Like you're, again, it hurts women more ironically. One of my best friends that I hung out with this week, actually, is like one of my best friends in the world. He lives in New York City. And so he sees, you know, that's like, that's got its own vibe. And he talks about like a lot of his friends, you know, New York City. He says only fans culture. He calls it good for her culture where he's like, he was like, I was at a party. And this girl was talking about much money she was making on Onlyfans.

and everyone in the circle was like, good for her. Good for her. And you'll notice it's a cheering on, it's Jezebel, is a cheering on of sexual immorality exactly what happens in Revelation 2, Thiatira. Exactly. And it's a relabeling of evil as good and good as evil. You know, you're talking about how, man, they just, you know, they don't look happy. I want to make a quick clarification because I don't want somebody to misunderstand us.

the Bible does not say that a woman's place is the home. It does say that a wife and a mother's priority is the home. So I wouldn't want somebody to get the kind of misunderstand here. In fact, I've got this whole, we probably don't have time for it. I've got a whole reading of the Proverbs 31 woman that kind of gets translated into modern terms. And there's a lot of like ingenuity, marketplace skill, that kind of thing. She's a business woman. Say it again?

She's a business woman. And she's smart and clever and she's good outside the home and inside the home. Like she can do both things. I mean, that's the power of women. We can do it all in Christ in our identity in Christ. So we not have to choose. And that's the enemy's strategy that, okay, if I want to be a CEO or I have success in my job or whatever, I have to let go my home and my priority, no, we can do both and we can be content in both situations if we're secure in Christ.

Yeah. The point you guys were making a second ago, somebody said that feminism, it sometimes can be the idea that a woman is free when she serves her employer but a slave when she serves her family. Wow. Just let that sink in for a second. Sometimes feminism can be the idea that a woman is free when she serves her employer but a slave if she serves her family. Like G.K. Chesterton, I don't know if I should say this, but it's a hilarious quote. So feminism, when G.K. Chesterton was writing in Britain in the early 1900s. Feminism was really taken root in London at the time.

And G.K. Chesterton has this line where he says, all the women stood up and declared, we will not be dictated to and then promptly became stenographers. That's G.K. Chesterton. But sometimes you can just see a little of the irony of what Satan does. Let me just get the women that God has given this unique power to do this nuclear-powered thing that nobody else can do. And let me get them to aspire to everything, except the thing that God uniquely empowered them to do.

Man, recently this movie, Snow White, came out. Are we going there a movie? We're going there briefly because there's still something that I want to address after. Yeah, man, Snow White obviously came out. It was underperformed significantly. I think in the first opening weekend domestically it made $43 million is basically nothing. That's even behind Dumbo in 2019, which says a lot. And a lot of it happened because the main actress Rachel Zegler, who plays Snow White.

There's all these clips on TikTok and social media basically where she's like, you know, this movie's not going to be the same thing. She's not going to be saved by the prince. And, you know, she's going to pursue her own leadership and be all that she can be, basically, she'd be a girl boss. And the movie was terrible. Didn't do good. Yeah. So I haven't seen it. Me neither.

But, yeah, any thoughts on, again, this is pop culture. it seems like people are kind of like at this point like, ah, we don't, like this is, you know, this is not something we want. There's just something that's not resonating anymore in our culture. That's interesting to me. But as a woman, I would say, like, why don't you want to be saved? Why do you want to do all the work? Let the men do the work and defend you. You just be there waiting for him to come and rescue you. Like, I want my husband to open the war for me, to carry the heavy things for me.

Like, I'm capable to do it, but I want him to do it for me. I think that's it. We're in a privileged position. Not that anyone is better than anyone, but we get our husband or our men to protect us, to defend us, to care for us, to defend us. Why wouldn't we reject that? Why are we so mad against that role? I mean, for me, that's just, I don't get it officially as a woman. I don't get it.

I think, yeah, it's interesting, man. So I think sometimes why movies like that don't do as good. And first of all, we were talking about this beforehand. I honestly feel a little sorry for that, for that actress. Definitely. Because she is, she's becoming like the lightning rod for, you know, kind of the entire conservative movement. And that's, you know, that's not fair for a young girl.

I don't love that. What I will say is I think sometimes movies like that flop. Because C.S. Lewis and J.R. Tolkien pointed this out. This is a little tangent. but I'm trying to figure out how far back I want to go. So if anybody didn't know this, C.S. Lewis wrote Chronicles and Arneillian, J.R. Tolkien wrote, J.R. Tolkien converted C.S. Lewis to Christianity as an ardent Oxford atheist, C.S. Lewis was. What he used to convert C.S. Louis' Christianity is C.S. Lewis studied, they were called fairy stories, not fairy tales.

Snow White is a fairy tale. They were called fairy stories in Oxford in the 1920s. And Jared Tolkien pointed out to C.S. Lewis, hey man, have you ever noticed that all these fairy tales in every culture and in every era, they're all the same? And he just pointed this out. He's like, in every culture, it's the brave prince from a far off country that comes and saves the damsel in distress. or places the awakening kiss upon the dying princess, that kind of thing. Fights the dragon.

Fights the dragon. Gild the dragon and get the girl. That's it. Another even criticizing the kiss because he's without consent. Oh, is it? Is that a thing? Yeah, because she was sleeping. Oh, okay.

Kiss her without her consent. Okay. There you go. Well, C.S. Lois, what Tolkien pointed out is he pointed out, man, actually, there's a story behind those stories. And he said that the gospel is the story behind those stories. stories. He said, he called it the true myth that Jesus, Dubrow, I love this. The storyline of the Bible, according to the book of Revelation, is kill the dragon, get the girl. Jesus comes in,

later in Revelation, slays the dragon, sweeps his bride, the bride of Christ, the church, off her feet, takes her, you know, rescues her, brings her back from a far off country, marriage supper of the land, they live happily ever after. That sounds a lot like a fairy till to me. This name basically plagiarized the gospel. They did. Yeah, they did. We read this before. We really like it.

I think that's the root that, you know, that you're fighting against that. That's my point. I think some of these stories when we try to like, I don't know, when we try to like secular progressive eyes these stories that like there's a reason those stories have been like that for 5,000 years. It's because those themes resonate in the hearts of men and women. And yes, there's a gospel true myth thing, but there's also like a, there are some truths about masculinity and femininity that are written into the fabric and DNA of those stories that resonate in the hearts of men and women. Every dude wants to be the guy that kills the dragon and saves the girl.

And there's something in the heart of a woman that's like, I love being pursued and valued and rescued. And yes, there's obviously strong, there's Giles. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But it resonates. And when men refuse to take on that responsibility, chaos happens. So when we refuse to step into the calling that God has given us, things don't work. That's right. Yeah, man, that's really good.

Man, you said progressive ideologies. I would love to talk about. Oh, that's right. So there's obviously, you know, back to this letter, Church in Thyatira, Jesus tells them, hey, you know, you love faith, patience, and endurance, you have grown. He commenced them. And he says something like your works today are better than the ones before. Well done.

But two things tolerated that woman, Jezebel. And then the second thing he says is you have some deep things of Satan. You've tolerated the deep things of Satan. So it seems like in this context, there's this person spreading false teaching inside the church. Obviously, we're talking about culture right now, but in the church in Thiataria, there's this woman Jezebel, she was spreading false teaching inside the church. It seems to me like in our culture today, in some spaces, there are some teaching, false teaching inside the church, especially honestly, if we're just really speaking bluntly here,

like in progressive, quote unquote, Christianity. And so I want to share with you, here's what I want to do. I want to share with you some things that people say or some quote unquote teachings that are false that are shared inside churches. And I want us to respond to these, if that works. Totally. Now, here's what Carlos is going to do if you're listening. We planned what we're about to do because exactly what happened in Thiatira is radically popular right now. People will claim to have new insight into the Bible or, man, here's what's deeper. Here's what's deeper than the traditional reading of scripture. And you'll notice a theme, it's almost always to rationalize or justify sexual sin. So what we're going to do is, is we're gonna like det TikTok all of our listeners. You're getting ready to hear five, six, seven things

that you 1,000% or your kids will hear on an Instagram reel or TikTok or YouTube that is like a deeper understanding of scripture that rationalizes sexual sin. And we're gonna contrast the lie with the truth real quick. That's great, man. By the way, it's fascinating that again, the same thing that you see in Thytaira.

You see today, the Bible is not an ancient book. It is a timeless book because the same thing that happened The Bible doesn't just tell us the things that happen. It tells us the things that always happened. Thank you, Mark. And so, let's go. And so let me just start, man. I'm going to call him lies.

Yeah, do it. Let's rapid fire. Lie number one. Hey, Jesus never said anything about same-sex relationships. Yeah, that's a lie. That's a lie. So I'd say two things. Number one, yes, he did.

I'm going to read Matthew 19, 4 through 6. This is Jesus. He defines what marriage is. He says, haven't you read? He replied that at the beginning, the creator, quote, made them male and female. And he said, for this reason, a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife and the two will become one

flesh. So there are no longer two but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate. There are two ways to, there are two ways to denounce something. You can either list every single thing that's wrong or you can hold up the one thing that's right and say everything that's not this is wrong. That's what Jesus is doing right here. He's saying the biblical definition of marriage is lifelong heterosexual marriage between a biological man and a woman. He affirms all this things right there. So that's just, that's not true. That's good man. And he also affirms the law. He says, I'm not dismissing the law. I mean, can you to affirm it? So, like, he's affirming what is already in the law. Biggo. Jesus never said anything about only fans,

pornography, bestiality, sex trafficking, domestic abuse. Everybody agrees. There you go. We don't believe in that either. That's right. It's like, yeah. I mean, I won't go there. But whenever somebody says that, I'm like, man, can you show me the verse where Jesus, Jesus. has said you shouldn't use nuclear weapons. It's like, you can't have a, he just, he just goes, here's, yeah, we could, line number two, hey, the idea of, quote, a biblical marriage is a modern myth. Yeah, you hear this from progressive, you know, especially like more progressive Christian Bible teachers a lot. Yeah, so what they'll say is, well, man, if you're going to define

marriage biblically, you got to allow for multiple wives and concubines and incest and child brides and da-da-da-da, because in the Old Testament, those were marriages and they're in the Bible. So when you say biblical marriage, that's just totally made up thing. Here's what I'd say. A biblical marriage is not based on Solomon's concubines. It's based on God's design in Eden. So the Old Testament, there's a difference between what the Bible prescribes and describes. And not everything that the Bible describes that's descriptive is prescriptive.

So the Bible is describing hundreds of thousands of sinful people's lives. It's not prescribing everything that those sins. people did. So what we do is we're going to know, it doesn't matter what anybody else did, how did God design it? And when God designed it in Eden, it was one man and one woman for one lifetime. And here's what I would say, too, here's how we know that was a prototype, too, for basically, hey, this is the standard of what a biblical marriage is, because in Genesis chapter 2, verse 24, I'm just going to read it. It says, therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh. This is literally right after God brings Eve to Adam,

and if you read it carefully, if after we see Adam and Eve, and then the verse says, a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, they shall become one flesh. Adam didn't have a father. It's like this is, bro. Adam, this is not talking about Adam.

That's fantastic. It's very obviously prototypical. It's like setting a precedent. It's setting a precedent for what biblical marriage should be because it's in that moment for the original couple, Adam and Eve, they didn't have parents. And so it's not for them. This is for like us.

Anyways. I was going to say marriage is what God did and all the concubines and stuff like that is what people did with it. So it's a difference. Line number three, hey, it's inconsistent. You know, this is actually very common. It's inconsistent to follow the Old Testament on same-sex relationships but not on things like shellfish or mix in fabrics. Because you find that in Leviticus. Yeah, it's like in the same chapter in Leviticus where there's a prohibition on same-sex sexual relations.

you have a prohibition from eating shellfish and mixing fabric. So this is where people say this. Okay. So here's what I'd say is there's a theological thing. And then honestly, this one's actually really easy. One, this confuses the different categories of the Old Testament law. Theologians for centuries. I mean, like, you're just talking like all the way back to before the Protestant Reformation. I've pointed out that there are three types of laws in the Old Testament, the moral law, the civil law, and the ceremonial law.

The moral law is unchanging. Those are the parts of the Old Testament law that are like, hey man, this is just, a timeless moral. The civil law where the specific law is given to Israel about how the nation, the nation state of Israel should function, and then the ceremonial laws had to do with the temple sacrifice, you know, the laws around sacrifices. So the civil law does not apply in the New Testament because now the people of God are not a nation state. They are scattered among every tribe tongue nation and language is the church. The ceremonial law does not apply in the New covenant because Jesus was the sacrifice to end all sacrifices in the temple to end all temples.

But the moral law is timeless and unchanging. Here's the other thing. Honestly, this one's easy. This is really easy because the prohibition on same-sex relationships is repeated in the New Testament. So really, there's not a question here. There you go. And when Jesus is asked about marriage, he basically responds by saying, haven't you read?

Goes back to the Word of God. line number four, somebody would say, hey, actually, actually the word homosexuality wasn't even used in Bibles until the 20th century. Yeah, this is, you see this a lot. There's a, I won't go there. There's a guy that I had to help deal with in a situation that he says this a lot. This is, yeah, it wasn't used until 1946 is what people will say. Say, it's true that the English word,

quote unquote homosexual didn't appear in English translations until 1946. They were just using different words. They used to use words like sodomy that we don't typically use anymore. But some articulation of a prohibition of same-sex sexual relations has literally been in the Bible for 2,000 years.

It's 2,000 years. It's not new. Honestly, that one is like, it's an attempt at like a little magic trick, slight of hand. It's some English, word prohibiting it has been used to translate this for centuries. That's right. And obviously, you know, same-sex attraction, same-sex behavior, that was very

common in the in the Greco-Roman world. And this is why, literally, this is why Paul addresses it. That's why it's in the Bible. Line number five, somebody would say God's judgment on Sodom wasn't a judgment on same-sex relationships. It was actually more a judgment on some other stuff. Yeah, they'll say it was because of lack of hospitality. Yeah. They violated the hospitality laws of the, well, I think this one's also just really easy. It's kind of like, you have to actually read it again. Like it's mentioned, right? Like it's mentioned, right? Like it was like, why would they say that? Like it's mentioned very like specifically.

If you, yeah, if you, if I remember right, if you just read the Old Testament passage, it's like, ah, you know, is it specifically said that it was because of the same-sex relationships? You know, here's the problem. I'm just going to read it. Jude 7 says this reflecting back on. Sodom and Gomorah? Jude 7, Sodom and Gomorrah indulged in sexual immorality and pursued a natural desire. So, man, this one's just really easy. The New Testament is very clear about why the judgment of God fell in those situations. By the way, we're almost finished with these. For our listeners, well, I want you understand, these are Thia-Tyra deep things of Satan examples. This is exactly the type of thing that was happening in this church 2,000 years ago. Like, ooh, let me, something you've never noticed about the Bible

that creates a permissiveness for some form of sexual immorality. This is why we're doing this. This is exactly what was happening. Here's another one. This one became popular some years ago with some authors and books. Some people were arguing, hey, the Bible actually only condemns exploitative same-sex relationships, not consensual.

And so basically not what we're talking about today, when, you know, one man, another man. and, you know, forever, faithful. And they would say, no, no, they're talking about, like, just abusive or exploitative. It's a little different than what we are talking about today versus what the Bible addresses. Yeah, I'd say two things to this. This is, honestly, this stuff is just really easy for a Christian with their thinking cap on. Two things.

Number one, we've already pointed out, Jesus made clear what marriage is. He defined marriage. Therefore, God created them male and female and, you know, husband, leaves his father, mother, joins fast to his wife. So number one, sexual immorality is anything outside of that. Jesus defined what the that is and that same-sex relationships is outside of that. So this is honestly just very, very, very easy. The other thing I would say, I'm going to read this. I'm going to read this from Rebecca McLaughlin. She wrote on this. So here's, this is three, four sentences here. It's worth noting something here that would have surprised the average citizen of Rome. As historian

and Kyle Harper points out the fact that Paul parallels male-male and female-female sex is, quote, strikingly novel and truly momentous. In the Greco-Roman Empire, the primary dividing line in sexual acts was not the sex of the two parties, but their roles in the sex active or sex passive. It was generally assumed that men would have had sexual outlets other than their wives, and it was not considered shameful for them to have sex with other males so long as they took the active role. but Paul says nothing about active or passive roles. Rather, by grouping male-male and female-female sexual relationships together, he is focusing on the same-sex nature of the relationship. So, number one, this is just very clear. Jesus defined what marriage is, and sexual immorality is anything outside of that,

cut and paste. And then McLaughlin points out that's just linguistically not true. I think all these lies is just Satan saying, like he said in the Garden of Eden, did God really say that this was forbidden? I mean, it's what he's trying to do to convince you that he didn't forbid it exactly just to convince you to sin. So I think it's all what it is. Last one.

Hey, Josh, but come on, man. Love is love. I talk to my kids about this already. Love is love. Love is love. That would be like, I'm going to use a gross analogy, but there's sometimes when a gross analogy is appropriate. That would be like me taking Eliana into,

into the men's bathroom somewhere and putting her face in front of a full urinal and saying, water's water. It's like, hey man, there's like, there's pure water and there's impure water. There's pure love that God created, affirms, dignifies, and there's impure love. Yeah. There it is. Amen. I would also say the Bible teaches that God is love, but it does not teach that love is God. Right?

And so I think when you see our culture today, there's good. we flip those things and people will say, yeah, God is love. And our culture will say love is God. So if it looks like love, if it's feelings, then you must affirm it. And so here's what Christians don't do. What we don't do is we don't take our own personal experiences or whatever culture says and then project that unto what we believe God should affirm or bless or encourage. That's what the world does.

We say, oh, well, I feel this. Therefore, God, if he's loving, he wouldn't, you know, forbid me to do this or that. We trust God to define what love is. And ultimately in culture, when people say love is love, really, when you ask, well, what do you mean by love? It ultimately boils down to feelings and desires. That's not what scripture defines as love. We go to the Word. We trust the Word.

We trust God. He is good. He is faithful. Obedience to His Word results in blessing. And that's what I would say to somebody. Maybe that's wrestling with some of this stuff. When God says don't, he means don't hurt. yourself. When God says you need to kill sin, it's because if you don't do that, sin will kill you.

And so Augustine said, sin is believing in the lie that something else is better than God. And Psalm 16, 11 says, in your presence, there is a fullness of joy. And so for those of us, or for the people right now that are maybe tuning in and they're maybe wrestling with some of these things, there is fullness of joy in surrendering and entrusting in what God says is true, not what culture says that is ever changing. Man. Last thing, because I want to make sure that everything that we have said is apply to kind of, you know, our culture today. We've talked about tolerance.

We've talked about some things that God says, yes, other things that he says, no. My question for us to wrestle right now would be, hey, you said, Josh, I think it was a couple weeks ago. Tolerance is the counterfeit of repentance. So you got tolerance and you got repentance. is all tolerance bad? Yeah. So I got this in a couple of the services, but not all of them. And this is a really important framework for Christians to have in their head.

So let me do this real quick, because there are some forms of things that we would call tolerance that actually are Christian ideals that we should practice. And then there are some, like mentioned in Revelation 2, that are forms of tolerance that are wicked and evil. So let me give a couple examples here. Five different types of tolerance. And I got this from a Bible teaching friend that I love here. So number one, Christians should practice legal tolerance in culture. We already mentioned that under the new covenant, the people of God are not a nation state.

we are people scattered among every tribe tongue nation and language. While we should want righteous laws that reflect the righteousness of God that are good for people in societies. For instance, the whole idea of religious liberty, that is a Christian idea that came from Protestants. So that's our thing. Religious liberty is our thing. And that's because we believe that in Christianity, faith is not imposed. it is proposed. We're not Muslims.

We don't do convert or die. It is, you can't, I can't pass a law of this like, everybody love Jesus now. So we're actually the ones who created the idea of religious liberty because we're like, we want people to have the free choice to love Jesus. Yeah, we don't do convert or die. We do convert because somebody else already died. Oh, look at this guy. Look at this guy.

I had a slide over there, man. Oh, wow. All right. Number two, we do social tolerance in the community. So you'll notice, for instance, Paul, like 1st Corinthians 5, where there's the dude that sleeping with a stepmom. And he goes in to like, hey man, he says purge the sexual immorality from among you. But then he says, I'm not talking about judging outsiders. Because he says, what do I have to do with judging outsiders? So Christian should practice at tolerance of, hey, I got lost neighbors. They're going to act like non-Christians. We should clearly tolerate that. It's like my conversation with somebody that's not a Christian, but is

practicing sexual immorality, I don't want to talk to them about their sexual immorality. I want to talk to them about Jesus. That's really good because I feel like a lot of people get that mixed up. You know, they see their neighbor. They don't know Jesus. And then their priority is, no, no, I need to convince them that, you know, they need to change that. Ultimately, you know, what you need to do is you need to share the gospel with them. That's right. And that's what Jesus did with, he was not harsh with unsaved people. He approached them with love and grace when he was hard on religious people, but not on unsafe people. That's good. That's good. So we practice legal tolerance and culture. We practice social tolerance in community number three. Broadly speaking, we can practice

theological tolerance in the church. So for instance, we don't have time to go into this, but every doctrine can be subdivided into first tier issues, second tier issues, and third tier issues. The New Testament talks about 1st Corinthians 15. It talks about how there's a core set of doctrines that comprise the gospel. And Paul says, man, these things are of first importance. Like we can't compromise on any of this and we tolerate no divergence from these things. But like, hey, man, if we had time around this table,

whether it was view of eschatology, when is Jesus returning and what's the order of the events? The rapture. Left behind. Left behind. Kurt Cameron versus Nicolaic. Yeah, or the Nick Cage version. There you go.

or the age of the earth or da-da-da-da-da. Like we would probably find some divergence of opinion on some secondary or third-tier doctrines. And in the church, we want unity around the essentials, the core doctrines of the faith. We want liberty around some of those things that are non-essential, and we want charity among all things. That's a St. Augustine quote. So we can practice some theological tolerance in church. Number four, we do not practice heretical tolerance in the church. So when somebody is teaching something, such as, like in Thyatira, somebody is teaching something that is heterodox that if believed and continued can send somebody to hell, we do not tolerate that.

There are some things worth dividing a church over. there are some things worth kicking a person out of a church over because, you know, a little leaven, leaven's a whole lump. So we do not practice heretical tolerance in the church on first-tier doctrines. We don't. And then last one, and this is what's happened in Thyatira, Christians do not practice immoral tolerance in the church. So we don't look at people who are teaching, perpetuating serious, egregious sin and just go, you know what, man, like we're very loving and tolerant. and diversity and accepting, and it's okay. We just love, nope, we don't do that because we're disciples of Jesus Christ.

So three of those, yes, we practice that type of tolerance. Two of those, no, we do not practice those types of tolerance. Let's call that. I don't say just one last thing about tolerance. Please do. Because we usually just, when we think about tolerance, it's about other people's sin, but what about our own sins? Like, we tend to justify our own sin, but we prosecute other people's sins.

So what are you tolerating in your own life? That's good. So before saying, what am I going to tolerate question? You know, what I'm tolerating in my life, in my own sin. So I think we should start from there. Amen. That's great amount. It's been a heavier episode, man.

It's a lot. It's been a heavier episode. It really has. I think we went overtime. Sorry. No. Perfect timing. Perfect timing.

That doesn't exist. Hey, let me pray. Yeah, that would be awesome. Heavenly Father, we thank you so much for your word. Thank you, God, that you are a gracious God that, well, we were still sinners, you shed your blood on that cross for our sins, in our place, so that today we can find truth and life in you, Jesus. Lord, I pray that you may open our eyes to see those things that maybe in our lives

we are tolerating and we need to submit and we need to repent. Lord Jesus, thank you because you invite us to trust in your truth where there is freedom. And Lord, I pray that that may be true for each one of us and everybody that's listening and tuning in in this moment. There may be a church that you can look at us and by the grace of God, you can say, well done, good and faithful servant. We love you. We pray this in your name, Jesus Christ. Amen. Pamela is awesome, having you. Thank you. Thank you. Thanks for joining us. For more biblical teaching and worship, join us for our Lake Point Church

online live weekend services on Saturdays and Sundays. Also, if this podcast was helpful to you, would you be sure to rate, review, and share this podcast to help get the word out. For more, information about all the digital resources of Lake Point, visit lakepoint.church slash live free.