If You Don't Like What Phil Said . . .

. . . you probably won’t like much of what Jesus has to say about sin either.  Go ahead, bash away without reading the rest if you want.  Won’t bother me a bit.

And just a head’s up: It’s gonna get graphic up in here shortly.  This is your warning.    

Here’s what got Phil in trouble with A&E:

"Start with homosexual behavior and just morph out from there. Bestiality, sleeping around with this woman and that woman and that woman and those men.  Don't be deceived. Neither the adulterers, the idolaters, the male prostitutes, the homosexual offenders, the greedy, the drunkards, the slanderers, the swindlers-they won't inherit the kingdom of God. Don't deceive yourself. It's not right."

If this bothers you, Jesus bothers you.  You might be mad at Phil.  But you’re also mad at Jesus because this is from His Word.    

Here are a few things that Jesus said that would get Him in trouble with A&E:

“But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart.” – Matthew 5:28

“This is the verdict: Light has come into the world, but people loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil. Everyone who does evil hates the light, and will not come into the light for fear that their deeds will be exposed.” – John 3:19-20

“He went on: “What comes out of a person is what defiles them. For it is from within, out of a person’s heart, that evil thoughts come—sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, greed, malice, deceit, lewdness, envy, slander, arrogance and folly.  All these evils come from inside and defile a person.” – Mark 7:20-23

You see, everybody likes the warm fuzzy Jesus.  But not too many people are comfortable with the holy Jesus.  The Jesus that tells the truth about sin.  The Jesus that tells the truth about what’s evil and what’s righteous.  The Jesus that calls sinners to repentance and says in John 14:6, “I am the way, the truth and the life.  No one comes to the Father except through me.”  The Jesus who says in Matthew 7:13-14, “Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it.  But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it.”

Jesus came to save us from sin, reconcile us to the Father and adopt us as sons and daughters of heaven.  He came to make us holy, pure and righteous. 

Here’s our problem.  We don’t like to talk about how Jesus calls us to holiness and about the reality of the yuck factor of sin.  We want a Jesus who sanitizes and waters down the truth and longingly pats on the head and says, “It’s OK if you love things that defile you and kill you.”

Phil’s in trouble because he speaks candidly about what I call the yuck factor of sin.  In our culture’s attempts to silence the Gospel, our culture has tried to remove the yuck factor of sin.  More specifically, Phil’s in trouble because he talks about the yuck factor of sexual sin. 

"It seems like, to me, a vagina - as a man - would be more desirable than a man's anus. That's just me.  I'm just thinking: There's more there! She's got more to offer. I mean, come on, dudes! You know what I'm saying? But hey, sin: It's not logical, my man. It's just not logical."

Let’s be frank about gay sex for a minute.  God created us in his image.  He gave men penises and He gave women vaginas.  At creation, God tells Adam and Eve to enjoy sex with one another.  We were created to have pleasure from sex.  Just like everything else in creation, we’ve taken what God calls good and defiled it. 

Our culture wants us not just to tolerate, but to celebrate men sodomizing other men. Our culture wants us not just to tolerate, but to celebrate women putting foreign objects inside of other women.  Our culture wants us to say, “You know, I think it’s good and beautiful and wonderful for a man to stick his penis in the anus of another man.  I think it’s good and beautiful and wonderful for a man to take this organ that God gave him for procreation and recreation and stick it in the place of another man that was made to excrete waste that’s full of all kinds of toxins and bacteria.”

Are you disgusted by that?  Good!  You should be, because God is.  Sin has a yuck factor to it, and we shouldn’t try to sanitize it. 

Did you notice something else in what Phil said?  And what Jesus said?  And what the entire testimony of Scripture says?  It’s not just about sex.  It’s not just about gay sex.  It’s about all kinds of sin.

"Don't be deceived. Neither the adulterers, the idolaters, the male prostitutes, the homosexual offenders, the greedy, the drunkards, the slanderers, the swindlers-they won't inherit the kingdom of God. Don't deceive yourself. It's not right."

Idolatry, greed, drunkenness, slander and lying.

Scripture doesn’t discriminate against specific types of sin.  All of it has a yuck factor that we shouldn’t try to sanitize and rationalize.  But we want a God who rationalizes and excuses our sin.  We call this love.  But it isn’t love at all, at least in the way that God’s Word talks about love.  Love seeks to bring out the best in other people – holiness, purity and righteousness.  Love doesn’t turn a blind eye towards sin and bondage.  Love does something about it, and that’s what God has done for us through Jesus Christ!

And here’s why I don’t have a single problem with what Phil Robertson said; why I don’t feel any need to explain it away.  Phil Robertson’s been there.  He knows what it’s like to live far from Jesus.  He knows what it’s like to defile himself sexually.  He knows what it’s like to be a drunk, swindling, slanderous, greedy idolater.  He knows what it’s like to stand face to face with Jesus and be torn apart because of the gravity of our sin, and our hopelessness without repentance.  And he knows the reality of the power of Amazing Grace to save wretches like him and me. 

Even if you don’t have 26 minutes to watch the whole film, watch until the 8 minute mark and you’ll see:

The Good News of Jesus isn’t good at all until we all – me, Phil Robertson and you – come to the realization that we are sinners in need of a Savior.  It isn’t good at all until we realize the wretchedness of our sin and the beauty of what Jesus has done to reconcile us and make us whole.  It isn’t good at all until we realize Jesus did this for us. 

Phil Robertson said that in his interview with GQ, and goes to great lengths to talk about what this mean for him in the I Am Second video.  You probably didn’t catch this part of his interview with GQ:

"If you simply put your faith in Jesus coming down in flesh, through a human being, God becoming flesh living on the earth, dying on the cross for the sins of the world, being buried, and being raised from the dead-yours and mine and everybody else's problems will be solved. And the next time we see you, we will say: 'You are now a brother. Our brother.' So then we look at you totally different then.”

"We never, ever judge someone on who's going to heaven, hell. That's the Almighty's job. We just love 'em, give 'em the good news about Jesus - whether they're homosexuals, drunks, terrorists. We let God sort 'em out later."

God hates sin.  And God loves sinners.  Notice I didn’t say, “BUT God loves sinners.”  It’s not an either/or proposition.  It’s a both/and proposition.  Here’s what Jesus says about it in John 3:16&17: “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.”

Jesus didn’t come to make bad people good or good people better.  He came to bring dead people back to life.  People who are spiritually dead because of our sin – all kinds of sin.  All throughout the Gospels, we see this.  In Luke 15, Jesus was criticized for spending time with “notorious sinners.” Jesus didn’t get crucified because He was a nice guy.  Jesus got crucified because He called people to repentance; claimed to have the power to forgive sins and turned the world upside down. 

I have loved Phil Robertson and what he stands for, and I still do.  Is he Jesus?  Absolutely not.  Is he infallible?  Absolutely not.  But he’s a brother in Christ that loves Jesus, loves people and believes that God’s put him in a position to share the truth of the Gospel.   

Look closely at the life of Phil Robertson.  Listen carefully to his words.  This is really what he's saying: "This is a true saying, and everyone should believe it: Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners -- and I was the worst of them all." - 1 Timothy 1:15. 

He, like the Apostle Paul, isn’t “ . . . ashamed of the gospel, because it is the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes: first for the Jew, then for the Gentile. For in the gospel a righteousness from God is revealed, a righteousness that is by faith from first to last, just as it is written: ‘The righteous will live by faith.’"  - Romans 1:16&17

Don’t feel sorry for Phil.  I can’t imagine him wanting anybody to do that.  I have a suspicion that Phil is far more concerned about being faithful to Jesus than he is about pleasing a television network and tickling the ears of a culture bent on self-destruction.  Are we?