Welcome back to The Line of Fire.
Michael Brown here, trusting that you're enjoying and being blessed and edified and helped by our month-long series, Can You Be Gay and Christian, and all the questions that relate to this. Friends, it's our purpose, five days a week, to infuse you with faith and truth and courage, to empower you, to equip you, to help you engage on the front lines. Our radio broadcast has been known as The Line of Fire ever since.
It was because I stood in The Line of Fire, tackling the controversies, taking on the difficult issues of the day, and if you called the show, you were joining The Line of Fire. But things have shifted. Things have shifted in society that you're all in The Line of Fire. Every single day, you're in The Line of Fire. And you may be in college, and it's your first semester, and you're all excited, your first class. You've been homeschooled.
You're in Christian school, and you're in your first class, and the professor goes around. All right, let's introduce ourselves. Give us your name and your PGP. PGP?
What's PGP? Oh, your preferred gender pronoun. Well, what do you do? Do you go along with this, which is now saying something that you don't believe is real, that you can just identify as a boy, as you can identify she or her or they or them or them or zerm.
Or something else or neither. I don't say this to mock those that struggle with gender identity, but what do you? If you go along with it, you've now just compromised something. If you don't say anything, have you defied the professor?
Are you going to alienate other kids in a class? That's just reality. It's reality. You're at work. You work as a computer programmer in a big corporate bank, and now they're going through everyone. It's going to be on your bio that everyone can see. Are you an LGBTQ plus ally?
Yeah, and you have to respond, and it's going to be right there on your work record. Anyone can see it, ally or not. You're in the line of fire. You're a pastor, and you're teaching through the word of God, and now you're coming to passages that address sexuality and God's standards, and you've got a couple grandparents, and they have been the most generous donors to your church. Since it's begun, they love you, and they love the church, and their giving helps you care for the poor in the inner city or helps you bring on a new children's pastor or help you support missionaries around the world. But they're very sensitive on these issues because out of their eight grandkids, they've got one boy who identifies as a girl, and they've decided to just treat that child as a girl, and they've got another one that's just come out as gay. And if you're perceived as being insensitive or gay bashing, they may just walk out the building with their money, which means that it affects those that you help and support. You're in the line of fire.
This is the world we live in, and that's why we're talking about these issues. 20 years ago, God laid this calling on my heart in the midst of all the other ministry we do. I've been overseas out of the U.S. a couple hundred times, but overseas about 180 times, going all around the world preaching the gospel. I go to Israel regularly involved in Jewish evangelism and reaching the lost sheep of the house of Israel. This is just lifestyle. This is just what we do day and night, preaching all over America to stir the church for revival, teaching in ministry schools, teaching in seminaries, writing books and articles.
I continue to do all that. I'm not called to pastor. You should be glad I'm not called to pastor because I'm not cut out for it. Pastors do a much better job than I would do.
But 20 years ago, God added this additional assignment. Reach out and resist. Reach out to the gay, lesbian, bi, trans community with compassion. Resist the agenda with courage.
These are the issues now that we can't enjoy. Southern Baptist leader Dr. Al Mohler said it some years ago. The knock's coming to your door.
The knock is coming to your door. And you're going to have to answer where you stand on same sex, quote, marriage and sexuality issues. We can't avoid this.
All right. So we're digging into the word together. Let me remind you that we have thousands of hours of free resources on our Web site, and there's only so much we can cover in our 30 minute teaching series here. There's only so much we can cover every day. And it's so crucial that you get everything that you need. So make sure you visit the line of fire.
Just put in your favorites. You'll see why the line of fire dot org and just start searching for things that you're interested in or wondering about or cultural issues or moral issues or political issues. We're dealing with them. We're dealing with them, putting out new articles, new videos every single week.
We continue with our live show every single week, all archived on our Web site. And then you want to be sure that you sign up for the front line newsletter. If you're not getting it, you absolutely want to sign up for that today. Every month it will edify you and bless you and encourage you and strengthen you. Plus, we'll keep you updated on the latest articles and videos so you won't miss anything.
That's all at the line of fire dot org. Sign up now for the front line newsletter if you haven't done that already. So about 10 years ago, I was on Piers Morgan.
There was controversy about Duck Dynasty and things that Phil Robertson had said. So I got a call from a publicist and he said, Christian publicist, he said, hey, Mike, would you would you like to be on Piers Morgan tonight? They're they're looking to have a panel discussion about this. I said, yeah, if it works out, I can switch a plan and get over there and do it.
Not flying to their studio, but to a local studio, you do it remotely. So, sure. He made one call. They instantly said, yes. He was kind of shocked that it was so easy because, you know, that's what he does for a living. He's a publicist and he tries to get people interviews and things like that.
He's a friend. He said, Mike, I can't believe it was just one call. So they called me. They did a quick pre-interview. They said, great, we want you on.
So I was one of three. So along with Ben Ferguson, whom I didn't know, who is a conservative radio host, a younger man than me. And then Mark Lamont Hill, who was on CNN, then a professor and a cultural commentator whose views would be very, very different than mine. And then Piers Morgan in studio. So that was the that was the panel discussion. So I just want to take you into this little excerpt with with Piers Morgan challenging me and how I responded.
And then we're going to unpack these things. It's a lot from so-called Christian. Well, wait a minute. It's a lot from so-called Christians. I'm a Christian. I'm a Catholic. And I can look at the Bible and say parts of it are obviously utterly ridiculous. There is a part of the Bible that says if you as a woman are not a virgin on your wedding night, you should be stoned to death. Clearly, that is not what Mr. Robertson is espousing today because he would know that is ridiculous. There are lots of offensive things in the Bible.
But let me ask you this, sir. As a Christian man, can you point to a single public utterance by Jesus Christ, the Christ in Christianity, about gay people or about a gay lifestyle? Can you name one single thing? Go to Sodom and Gomorrah.
I'll name three for you, Pierce. Number one, in Matthew five, Jesus said he didn't come to abolish the Torah, but to fulfill. He takes the sexual morals of the Torah to a higher level. Number two, in Matthew 15, he says all sexual acts committed outside of marriage defile human being. And in Matthew 19, he says marriage, as God intended it, is the union of one man and one woman for life. Look, Jesus did not address wife beating or heroin shooting, but we don't use that argument for silence. But in point of fact, he as a first century Jew, of course, he reinforced these things. And Pierce, I'd encourage you to restudy what scripture says. We should love our neighbors ourself.
But that doesn't mean that we approve everything of our neighbor. Alright, so that was about ten years ago, as I said, on Pierce Morgan. Those of you watching it, like, Dr. Brown, you look a little different. Yeah, so I weighed a lot more now.
I'm thin now, but I was heavy back then. And the funny thing is, when you're doing these things remotely, you just go to some local studio, and sometimes just a hole in the wall place, and you go in a room, it's just a little room, and it's completely dark, you've just got a camera light on you, and you've got an earpiece. So you don't see anything.
You're just listening. And when it's time to dive in, and sometimes they tell you to interrupt each other, you know, to make it more lively, right? So you're trying to hear when you dive in, when you're being addressed, and listen, you've just got the camera light on you. So my producer, who's all short notice, he got a friend, a colleague, who had experience putting makeup on and things like that, because you've got to get made up, otherwise you look like a complete ghost in the camera light. In order to look normal, you need to have some makeup, some powder on, right? So she applies the makeup, I sit down in front of the camera, and they said, no, no, it needs to be heavier. So she puts on another layer. Well, in the end, suffice it to say, my wife didn't talk to me about how I did on Piers Morgan, but how I looked. Because who did the makeup? And it wasn't her fault, the guy who did the makeup. They told him, put it on thicker.
Maybe they wanted me to look funny. My joke since then has been, if they ever need to do a remake of The Mummy, then I'm the man. I'm the man. So if you actually watch it, I guess if you just, what's the simplest way? Just go to YouTube, search for Dr. Brown, Piers Morgan, Mark Lamont Hill, Ben Ferguson, and you'll find excerpt. And it got a lot of plays. I mean, it got hundreds of thousands of views, because it was a good excerpt, and we got to get the message out.
So what I want to do is this. In fact, we'll take a quick break. We'll come back, and then I'm going to unpack this question. Did Jesus say anything about gay or being gay or same-sex practice or same-sex marriage?
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Trivita.com Thanks for joining us on the Line of Fire. Michael Brown delighted to be with you. So when Piers Morgan asked me and said, Show me one place in a public setting of Jesus where he said anything about gay or being gay. And of course those terms weren't being used, those concepts weren't being used. Rather the issues were same-sex behavior, same-sex actions, same-sex relationships. The concept of gay or being gay is obviously a more recent concept. But did Jesus say anything about it?
First point is you've got to be very careful with arguments from silence. So as I asked on Piers Morgan, does Jesus say anything explicit about wife beating? Does Jesus say anything explicit about shooting heroin?
Well no, does that mean it's okay? It reminds me of a story of a man standing on a street corner in New York City clapping his hands. Clapping his hands. And someone walks by and says, sir, what are you doing? He said, I'm keeping the crocodiles away. The guy says, there's not a crocodile for a hundred miles around.
He goes, you see it's working. It's the same ridiculous argument here. Jesus obviously believed in UFOs because he never said they were wrong.
They never said it was a myth or a conspiracy theory. You see how foolish that is. Moreover, there was no need for Jesus to say anything about this. Remember, his name is Yeshua. He's called a rabbi, not a reverend. And so he's a respected Jewish teacher or leader in that day. And Judaism was very clear. The Torah was explicit, forbidding same-sex practice. If it's mentioned elsewhere in the Old Testament, it's spoken against.
And Jewish traditions developing in that day were even stronger. It would be like someone saying, when Billy Graham was alive, Reverend Graham, Reverend Graham, we'd really like to know your views on adultery. Do you think that adultery is morally wrong? Do you think rape is morally wrong?
You don't need to ask. So you don't need to ask a first century Jewish rabbi what he believes about this. Because the Torah and then Jewish tradition that was developing taught really strongly against any form of same-sex behavior.
Especially men with men, because that was the more visible and the more prevalent. But, in point of fact, in three different ways, Jesus addresses the subject. In three different ways. First, Matthew 5-17, Yeshua says, do not think I came to abolish the Torah or the prophets. I did not come to abolish, but to fulfill. So when it comes to blood sacrifices, temple priesthood, those kinds of things, he brings them to fulfillment. He becomes our great high priest. He becomes the great and final sacrifice.
His blood cleanses us from all sin. So he brings those to their full meaning. Think of the biblical calendar.
He brings that to its full meaning. Passover is not just the liberation from Egypt, but the liberation of slavery from sin through the sacrifice of the greater Passover lamb. The firstfruits is not just the designating as holy to the Lord the firstfruits of the crops that harvest, but Jesus, Yeshua, the firstfruits of those who rise from the dead, now specially dedicated to God. And then Pentecost, which comes next, the Feast of Weeks, Shavuot, not just the celebration of the biblical calendar, but the outpouring of the Holy Spirit in the New Testament. In the same way, Feast of Trumpets, which becomes Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, will be fulfilled with Jesus coming back with the blast of the trumpet. Yom Kippur, Day of Atonement, will be fulfilled with national cleansing for Israel. Unless the Sukkot Tabernacles will be fulfilled with the ingathering of the nations to Jerusalem to worship the God of Israel. So Jesus, Yeshua, fulfills what's written in the Torah and the prophets pointing to the Messiah's coming and mission. But what about moral standards of the Torah?
What does he do with those? Well he says, you've heard it written, you shall not murder, but I'm telling you, don't even hate in your heart. Don't hate in your heart.
Don't be angry with your brother without cause. When it comes to adultery, I've heard it said don't commit adultery, I'm telling you it goes even further. Don't commit adultery in your hearts. So he takes the moral commandments and the commandments about sexual relations to a higher level than the Torah. So when it comes to a man sleeping with a man, a man having sex with a man, he now takes this to a higher moral level. If it was wrong under the Torah, how much more is it wrong there?
That's the starting point. Next, Matthew chapter 15, Matthew chapter 15, and again these were all the passages I raised on Piers Morgan. Jesus is talking about eating with unwashed hands and if the food is unclean, does that defile you if you eat it?
If you eat it, he says no, no, it just passes through your body and is expelled. But, Matthew 15 and 19, but what comes out of the mouth proceeds from the heart and this defiles a person. That's verse 18. Verse 19, for out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false witness, slander. These are what defile a person, but to eat with unwashed hands does not defile anyone. Alright, the word for sexual immorality there in the Greek is porneia and it occurs in the plural, meaning all sexual acts outside of marriage. All sexual acts outside of marriage defile the human being.
This is a universal principle for all people. All sexual acts outside of marriage will defile you. Then, lastly, in Matthew 19, Jesus tells us exactly what marriage is. It's a question that Pharisees asked him about divorce. So, of course, we know that there were two Pharisaical schools, Beit Hillel and Beit Shammai, the house of Hillel and the house of Shammai. So, the disciples of Hillel and Shammai, two of the major generational Jewish teachers in the day called Zugot. The last of the Zugot, these two men in each generation that were specially known teachers according to Jewish tradition.
So, they would have been older contemporaries of Jesus. And we know there was a dispute among the two houses, Pharisaical houses. The house of Hillel had a very liberal reading that you could divorce your wife really for any reason. And, hey, if you're not interested in her, it's better to divorce her.
Let her get on with life and you get on with life. The house of Shammai said, no, no, it's only for sexual immorality. That's the only reason that you can divorce. So, there was a dispute between the houses. So, the Pharisees come to find out from Jesus, where do you stand? And this is how he answers. Matthew 19, 4. He answered, have you not read that he who created them from the beginning made them male and female and said, therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife and the two shall become one flesh, so they are no longer two but one flesh, but therefore what God has drawn together, let not man separate. So, Jesus is telling us from the beginning, from the beginning, this is how God made it.
One man, one woman joined together for life. So, he's also taking a stab against polygamy here too, saying the two become one flesh and that's it. That's what God established from the beginning. So, Jesus is telling us that marriage is the union of one man and one woman from the beginning. There was no concept in Judaism that day that maybe two men could marry, two women could marry.
In fact, there were Jewish traditions, they may have been known in his day, but they developed in the subsequent centuries. It says one of the reasons for the flood was that men were marrying men. Yeah, that's how much Jewish tradition came against homosexual practice. But, here Jesus is telling us marriage is the union of one man and one woman. In Matthew 19 verses 4 through 6, Matthew 15, 19, Yeshua teaches that all sexual acts outside of marriage defile. Alright, so that's explicit now, marriage is the union of one man and one woman. And, all sexual acts committed outside of marriage defile. And then finally in Matthew 5, 17 through 20, he takes the moral commandments of the Torah to a higher level.
So, even though Jesus did not need to say a word about this because there is no controversy, in three different ways he distinctly addresses this. Not only so, but later in Matthew 19, the disciples think, well, maybe we should not even marry at all. Maybe it's best just not to marry. If you can't divorce except for sexual immorality, that would sound extreme to them.
And he said, well, it's not given to everyone. Jesus said, he said, there are some who are born eunuchs. In other words, they're born without sexual capacity. There are others who have been made into eunuchs by people. So, a man may be captured by foreign armies, then castrated, so he becomes a eunuch.
He can no longer perform sexually. And then, there are those who make themselves eunuchs, obviously meaning metaphorically, for the kingdom. So that they now will live without marriage or sexual relations because they're devoted to the kingdom, serving God for life in that way. So, I've heard gay activists and theologians say, ah, you see, see, Jesus was including us there. Because in that day, if a man did not have relations with a woman, they just kind of assumed he was a eunuch because we know that you didn't have homosexual practice accepted by the Jews in that society. So, if a guy wasn't with another guy, they just thought he must be a eunuch. He's unable to have sex, etc. So, he's just a eunuch, and Jesus is saying, hey, I know you're out there. And I know some of you were born that way. Well, Jesus is not saying here that anyone's born gay.
No, no, no, no. But even if some people who were same-sex attracted were viewed by the society as eunuchs, what does that mean? And what would it mean in this context? No sexual relationships and no marriage.
So, for a gay activist or gay theologian or ally to use this is to shoot themselves in the foot with the argument. Now, there's more about the ministry of Jesus. We'll take that up in the next broadcast.
For now, here's where you get all the information. I hope you're enjoying this. I hope you're being helped by it. I hope you're being edified by it. But it's a lot of material, and we want to go into depth. But there's only so much depth we can go into in the course of a month where we're going to cover so much ground. That's why we wrote this book for you.
Everything you need to know. Can you be gay and Christian responding with love and truth to questions about homosexuality? You'll actually find the books at Page Turner because it's packed with anecdotes, with illustrations, and it's clearly written but based on solid biblical research that's part of my academic background. And we wrote it for you to help you stand strong on the front lines. This is Dr. Michael Brown. Thanks so much for tuning in. Just a reminder that we are listener-supported. If we have been a blessing to you, if you're being enriched in the Word, in prayer, in your own walk with God through this broadcast, then stand with us so that we can reach many, many more and bless many, many more. Together, friends, we're making a difference. So go to TheLineOfFire.org. TheLineOfFire.org. And click donate.
