In this insightful interview, Ricky Alcantar speaks with Josh Blount about navigating complex issues of gender, sexuality, and pastoral counseling within a biblical framework. They discuss foundational biblical principles, practical counseling strategies, and leadership approaches to equip pastors for these challenging topics.
Headline: Pastor Josh Blount urges shepherds to celebrate God’s design amid cultural confusion over gender
Summary Paragraph: Sovereign Grace pastor Josh Blount is calling fellow pastors to approach gender, sexuality and transgender questions not merely as doctrines to defend but as gifts to celebrate. In a conversation with Ricky Alcantar previewing two forthcoming books with Sovereign Grace Publishing, Blount offered anchor points for thinking, counseling and leading through one of the most emotionally charged issues facing the church today.
Key Points:
- Blount has two books releasing this year through Sovereign Grace Publishing: “Complementarianism: The Glory of God’s Created Design” and “Mere Masculinity: A Christ-Centered Vision for a Confused Age.”
- He anchors pastoral thinking in Genesis 1–2, Ephesians 5, and the New Testament’s pervasive use of family language (sons, daughters, fathers, mothers, brothers, sisters) to describe the people of God — arguing that to uproot this is to replace deep biblical foundations with “shallow cultural sand.”
- In counseling moments, Blount urges pastors to move slowly, thank the person for opening up, ask many questions in the first interaction, and end with an invitation to keep talking — recognizing that “we’re not going to finish this before I go home for Sunday lunch.”
- He recommends Bavinck’s “The Christian Family” (1920s) and the “big blue book” — “Recovering Biblical Manhood and Womanhood” edited by Piper and Grudem — as resources that show this generation’s questions are not as unprecedented as they feel.
- On church governance, Blount argues that while a transitioning member is a challenging case, “carried out to the end, it’s a persistent refusal to submit to God’s word” — and pastors should not let the cultural moment trick them into thinking they’re dealing with something fundamentally different than other manifestations of unrepentant sin.
“You don’t have to be an expert on gender studies or ever read Judith Butler, the theorist, just love your spouse, love your kids. And by doing that, we actually show that human beings can flourish and thrive in a world that says it’s not possible.”
Transcript
Ricky Alcantar: Well, hey guys, we’re here with Josh Blount and we’re going to talk about gender. This interview is specifically aimed at our pastors. The goal is that in the next 20, 30 minutes, we give our pastors in Sovereign Grace some specific tools for the toolbox in leading through an often culturally confusing issue — an issue with a lot of emotion behind it for many people, an issue where we need to be precise, careful and pastoral. And I think the guy that embodies precise, careful and pastoral is our friend Josh Blount. So Josh, thanks for being here.
Josh Blount: Kind words. Thank you, Ricky. Glad to be here.
Ricky Alcantar: This interview is going to function a little bit like a trailer because we’re going to touch on some of the work that Josh has done in writing and in some of his speaking in Sovereign Grace. He’s also currently working on some resources through Sovereign Grace Publishing. Do you want to mention those, Josh, the projects you have in the queue?
Josh Blount: Yeah, thanks. I’ve got two books, Lord willing, coming out this year with Sovereign Grace Publishing. One — we just decided on a title yesterday — Complementarianism: The Glory of God’s Created Design. So that’s a primer on our complementarian convictions. And then I have another one called Mere Masculinity: A Christ-Centered Vision for a Confused Age. That’s my attempt to enter the confusing waters of writing about what is biblical masculinity, because there are dangers in both directions. That’ll come out a little later this year, Lord willing. Hopefully those will serve our pastors and our churches. I love to be able to write for Sovereign Grace.
Ricky Alcantar: Yeah, man. Looking forward to that, brother. Okay, three topics we want to cover, and we’re just going to touch on these. Three topics I think many pastors are facing in our thinking, leading and counseling. So speak to us just for a moment about our thinking. You’ve done a number of seminars and speaking in Sovereign Grace churches on these issues. For a pastor just now beginning to think about issues of gender, same-sex relationships, transgenderism, it can be overwhelming once you begin to wade into those waters. There’s endless resources, endless opinions. What are a few anchor points you would suggest that we have fixed in our thinking as pastors as we begin to navigate these waters?
Josh Blount: Yeah, great question. And the waters are deep. To change the metaphor, the voices are many. So there’s a lot to think about. A category that instantly comes to mind is — for all the cultural confusion around it, let’s not lose sight of the fact that God’s design is good and beautiful. So this is not merely a doctrine to defend simply to defend it, but a gift to be received. I think that anchors us. The whole way we’re approaching this topic is out of the assumption that this isn’t the equivalent of spiritual kale — it tastes bad, it’s bitter, but somewhere I read that it’s good for me and I’m supposed to get a certain daily intake. No, this is actually a beautiful and glorious thing. So when we think about what does it mean to be a man or a woman, only the Bible can give us a solid enough answer to face the foundations that are being shaken in the cultural landscape around us. As you think about it, we’re not just defending, we’re celebrating.
Ricky Alcantar: I love that. And I love that it’s in your subtitle for the book on complementarianism — The Glory. I noticed that. It’s a glorious thing, not just a necessary thing. In our culture, we often think this is very necessary — I need to say this — but it’s also a subject of beauty and glory, which I love comes through in your writing.
Josh Blount: Yeah. I think it gives us encouragement that for all the chaos and the really messy situations this can get us into, just living ordinary lives in our marriages, in our families, shines a light into the darkness and gives us a very meaningful way of responding to the cultural confusion. You don’t have to be an expert on gender studies or ever read Judith Butler, the theorist, just love your spouse, love your kids. And by doing that, we actually show that human beings can flourish and thrive in a world that says it’s not possible — it’s oppression, it’s patriarchy. The simple things shine brightly in the dark.
Ricky Alcantar: That’s beautiful. That’s encouraging. That’s a good word for us as well, because I think we can feel overwhelmed at times like, man, I haven’t read the latest. I haven’t kept up. There’s some new debate, some new controversy I don’t know about, I haven’t weighed in on. But what you’re saying is so freeing. Any other specific anchor points you’d suggest, Josh?
Josh Blount: Yeah, a key text that we just need to know and celebrate — Genesis 1 and 2, the way that functions, Ephesians 5. Those are key places. I’m thinking especially the end of Ephesians 5, but the earlier section speaking of sexual immorality is relevant. I’d also add — just as you’re preaching through the New Testament, as you’re reading the Bible, notice how many times family language is used to describe the people of God. Sons, daughters, fathers, mothers, brothers, sisters — begin to see that they’re not just passing references. It’s a way of — the ordinary gift of the family and marriage becomes the categories by which we understand union with Christ and life in the family of God. If you have those as anchor points, those don’t make sense in a world that thinks human beings are like interchangeable Lego pieces with no fundamental differences. But when you set that lens aside and just look — what does Genesis 1 and 2 say? What does Ephesians 5 say as it reads Genesis 1 and 2 in light of Christ and the church? How many times does the Bible describe people like a family? We see those anchor points and we realize to change that would be digging up a very deep biblical foundation and trying to replace it with shallow cultural sand. There’s no fruit there. No stability — to be consistent with my metaphor.
Ricky Alcantar: That’s excellent. So having that metaphor of the family, having Genesis 1 and 2 and Ephesians 5, that interconnectedness between the two and that divine interpretation of what it means. Anything else you would say for a team digging into this issue or maybe even a pastor in our ordination process — anything else you’d recommend they think about or allow to inform them?
Josh Blount: Yeah. I’ll give a couple of resources to help us orient ourselves in the current cultural climate with those biblical foundations and the priority that we’re celebrating what the Bible says, not merely acquiescing to it. I’m hoping that the book coming out on complementarianism will do that — that’s aimed at a church member or someone just wanting to know what our values are here. I’d also throw in there, for a pastor, familiarity with what we call the big blue book — Recovering Biblical Manhood and Womanhood. It’s sort of the foundational text. If you’re studying for ordination, or if you’re a pastor saying, “I’ve never actually cracked that,” just take a look at it. It’s worth seeing, especially the chapters by Grudem and Piper. It’s edited with a lot of contributions, but they have a couple of select chapters on key doctrines. That’s a good resource that just helps remind us why this is important.
Then I’d add — it’s really useful if you’re wrestling with these issues and want to get an informed perspective — go back and read Herman Bavinck’s The Christian Family. It’s a book from the early 1900s by a massively erudite and informed theologian who I think takes backstage to no one. There will be moments where you think it feels really dated because it’s written in the 1920s, and that’s actually a really helpful counter-corrective to see — what kinds of things did a previous generation, a faithful theologian in our tradition, how did they think about these topics, and where have we culturally moved so that it sounds really strange when he makes these statements about what manhood and womanhood mean? It’s not all 100% relevant. There are a few places where you say we’ve just moved on as a society from that issue, but it serves as a good mirror to see where we’re at. I think that can help give you an anchor point. Just knowing how a different culture looks at things keeps you from getting swept away by the moment.
Ricky Alcantar: That’s great. It’s funny — one of the words we throw around a lot is “unprecedented” in our modern day. Everything’s unprecedented. And almost when we come to these issues of gender, transgender, same-sex marriage, wondering if I’m a man in a woman’s body, etc., we think, that’s unprecedented. Nobody’s ever wrestled with these things. I love that you pointed out, now these faithful brothers like Piper and Grudem a few decades ago, and Bavinck a century ago — and Genesis, by the way, thousands of years ago — it’s actually very precedented, and the Lord has spoken into it in a beautiful way. So good, good correction, Josh.
Now I want to flip what I laid out earlier. As we move on from thinking, I want to tackle counseling next. Maybe we’ll end with some thoughts about leadership. I want to tackle counseling because I do think the most common place that many pastors will face these issues is in a counseling context. Imagine that moment after church where somebody grabs you as a pastor and says, “Hey pastor, can I talk to you? My son has just announced that he’s gay and he is in a relationship with another man.” Or even somebody who is saying, “Pastor, I want to let you know, I think that I am — that I’m not supposed to be married to a woman anymore. I think I’m going to leave my family.” All of these things, all the way down to — I think the most common conversation I’ve often had, we have a number of folks that we’ve had these conversations with and are currently having conversations with — is “my son, my daughter, my grandson, my granddaughter, my loved one is announcing that they’re gay or trans and I don’t know what to do next.” So in those moments of counseling, everything feels like it spins if you’ve been there. You realize the weight of what they’re saying, the heaviness and the emotion behind what they’ve just brought, and it can feel like you need a handhold as a pastor. Where can I hold on here? You’ve done some great work in giving us handholds in those moments. Where would you suggest we find some handholds for those counseling moments?
Josh Blount: Yeah, great setup. That is where this stuff comes crashing in on the ordinary pastor’s life — in those real moments, the rubber meets the road, so to speak. It’s not theory anymore. I think a couple things — sort of both methodological and theological. I’ll start with the method, honestly, because in the moment, that’s what confronts you. In those kinds of pastoral revelations, it’s always a good practice to recognize this is a major thing when someone is sharing this kind of information with me. I want to thank them. I want to move slowly. “Thank you for sharing that with me. I know that’s not easy.” Because — I think we can forget — it takes a lot to approach a pastor and open up that sort of area of your life. It’s a privilege whenever anyone does that.
That then sets the stage for some of the methodological questions that fall after. I’m not going to assume this is going to go quickly. They’ve just unloaded something significant. We’re not going to finish this before I go home for Sunday lunch. This is an invitation to — how can I be involved in your life in an ongoing way? That means I’m just going to move slow, and I’m probably just going to ask a lot of questions in that first interaction. Tell me what you mean by that. How do you know? Can you help me understand how you came to here? I want to know what you’re going through well. And I would probably want to end the conversation with a promise and invitation: Can we keep talking?
And then that begins to shift us into the more theological. Okay, so what’s my goal? Am I just listening to affirm or validate? I think we instinctively know I can’t do that. But then our theology, and all the things we were talking about in the thinking part — how do you think about this? That becomes the North Star that guides me. Where am I going in this? That’s going to be person- and situation-specific. With someone who’s in the midst of “I’m convinced I’m gay and I need to leave my spouse and pursue someone else,” I’m holding up — over time — the mirror of God’s word and saying, this is not going to lead to life. You’re breaking God’s law, and it will always lead to destruction. Please let me appeal to you not to do that.
When it’s the teen who’s saying, “I feel like I’m trapped in the wrong body,” the conversation is going to be much more — how do you know that? Tell me who’s influencing you, what’s helping you think that. If you trust me enough to let me speak into that — and how can I build that trust? That’s part of what I’m thinking as I engage. How can I build that trust? But those theological truths — that’s the North Star that tells me how do I guide my way through all this murk and chaos. And I presume anything that complex, there’s going to be more revelations down the road. The conversation won’t be a simple “I got all the information in one session and now we just sort it out and make it nice and neat.” More is going to come up. This influenced me, this person, this other struggle gets joined in. But I’ve got a North Star because I know it’s good to be a man or a woman. God made you that way. Living against that won’t bring flourishing, whether it’s sexual sin of a homosexual variety or whether it’s confusion about my very gender identity. I know it won’t deliver on its promises. So I’m just going to keep that North Star and then move very slowly.
I think the one other tier I’d add to that is — in my experience, the most common conversation is parents. You have the conversation as a pastor with a Christian whose next tier of their relational network — somebody is affected by this. They’re not in it, they’re wanting to know what do I do there. I just say to a pastor in those circumstances, again, go slowly. Assume this is a weighty thing for them. You’re entering into a burden you want to help bear with them for a long time. And don’t assume that the person is rock solid on the truth of God’s word. There’s nothing like it being a loved one who asks these questions or raises them for you, just to make you think — am I really sure what the Bible says? Just go slow and presume this is bringing suffering, and in that suffering the enemy is going to tempt with the same kind of whisper — did God really say? You need to be alert to that, and don’t think there’s a quick fix.
I think those are some of the things that help think through some of those counseling situations. At the end of the day, we say, Lord, we desperately need you. There’s no magic technique, no solution. We’re dealing with the deepest of issues of human identity, and only the Spirit can bring life. Only the God of all wisdom can guide us through that. If at the end of the day we feel very desperate, that’s a good place, so that we can cling to the Lord.
Ricky Alcantar: That’s excellent. Before we started the conversation, we were talking about counseling that we’ve both done and feel. You quoted the scripture, “Who is sufficient for these things?” For many of us as pastors, there is that temptation to feel “I must become sufficient for these things.” Almost like I must know every single detail about same-sex philosophy. I must know every detail of neurology. I must know every text, every answer to every thing that gets raised by maybe a liberal reading of the text. I have to know all of that before I can care. What would you say to the brother that feels, “Man, I just don’t feel sufficient. I don’t feel ready. I need to read more. I don’t think I can do this.” How would you help a brother in that moment?
Josh Blount: Yeah, great question. Two themes come to mind simultaneously. If you’re listening to this and you feel that — start studying. We’re not going to be able to get away from these questions. That’s not the call to mastery. That’s just to say, I want to have it settled in my heart that what the Bible says is true, good and beautiful. If you start there, that’s an entirely adequate starting place. The Lord may bring other things across the path — other resources, some of the ones I mentioned that are helpful. But if we love what the Bible says and we’re convinced it’s true, then we’re sufficient.
Which brings the other theme — in the moment, nobody ever feels sufficient. I’ve been teaching about these things for a good while now, and every time it lands in a personal way, you feel desperate, you feel your inability. That’s part of how God’s designed us. I’m not meant to be the all-sufficient Savior. I’m meant to speak words that point to Him, and together to lead people to Him. So let us be convinced of the sufficiency of Scripture. This is what we need. Love it, hold to it, and then in the moment, lean into the feeling of weakness, that the power of Christ might be made more strong in us.
Ricky Alcantar: That’s really helpful, man. One other related question — for a pastor wondering, okay, say I’m talking to somebody who is being influenced. Maybe they themselves are dealing with same-sex attraction or their loved one is — their son, their daughter. How much are you thinking as a pastor about the apologetic work of finding what they’re listening to and critiquing it, versus proactively, “Well, this is what the Bible says”? I can see pastors having different impulses — one being, okay, I’m going to get into your worldview and critique it and tell you why that’s crazy and what the statistics are and all these things. Or, I’m not going to engage with that. I’m just going to show you what the Bible says — the Bible says this. Depending on how guys are wired, they may be wired one way or the other. How much would you recommend wrestling with what’s influencing them versus, or alongside, getting them into the word?
Josh Blount: Yeah, also a great question. Many of those things I would probably, in a counseling interaction, turn into questions like — tell me what’s convincing you, what’s persuasive to you, and then help me understand why. Not in a “I’m setting you up for the softball where I knock your arguments down and show you how poor they are.” I really want to get in your world. What has explanatory power?
For the guy who thinks, “I don’t need to do any of that. I just need to show them the Bible” — you won’t know the precise shape that the scriptural message comes to bear in their life if you don’t know what it is about this other alternative that’s persuasive to them. It’s a very different thing if it’s rampant sexual desire — “what is drawing me is excessive pornography use and all kinds of things that are just distorting my sexual desires.” That’s one live category that the Bible addresses, but it’s very different than the person who says, “There’s nothing sexual about this, but these people who say that they’re transgender, they welcome me and they explain why I’m an outcast in my world.” Now I’m bringing a very different set of biblical — let me phrase it this way — the living God comes to address that person in a very different way through his word than the person who’s indulging the desires of the flesh. If you don’t ask those questions, you won’t know.
But then if you’re thinking “I have to be an expert on all of that” — the goal of that kind of information is not so that I can refute everything or enter into a third-party dialogue with that influencer. It’s so that I understand the person right in front of me. Then I can help to bring, as David Powlison used to say, one bit of scripture to one place of life. If it’s “this community online is persuasive to me because they tell me that I belong,” let me show you how God’s word says that belonging to Him is better than any human community. If it’s, “I feel alive when I pursue these desires,” let me show you how God’s word says those desires and that sexual immorality brings the wrath of God, and I want you to consider — on your deathbed, you won’t feel more alive because you pursued every desire of the flesh you had. It’s those person-specific things. That’s what I’m pursuing in asking those questions about influence — not to have an apologetic encounter, but to bring the word to bear on this person.
Ricky Alcantar: That’s helpful. One last — I lied when I said that was the last one on counseling. One last-last one on counseling I have is related to the categories of what our culture would call trauma or difficult circumstances. Because as I’ve sat with people in these contexts, one of the themes that often emerges is some kind of difficult experience of their childhood or life. It can take all kinds of forms — you’ve referenced being an outcast, but feeling accepted by this community, the hurt of “these people didn’t accept me,” all the way to “I had a series of bad relationships with men and considered a relationship with a woman as a result.” Everybody’s story is a little bit different, but one theme I’ve often heard in these conversations is, when you start going back into their thinking, “How did you get here?” they will use the category of trauma. It’s related to what you just spoke to, but I wondered if you would have any specific counsel for pastors related to the difficult things in their past that may be shaping some of their present, using biblical language and biblical lenses. Any thoughts there for us?
Josh Blount: Yeah, that’s a huge topic. I’m going to speak directly to this one situation and not expand the conversation to trauma lingo because it’s saturating all of our discourse. A shorthand in that kind of conversation with someone who’s struggling with these gender issues and trauma comes up — I would assume for them, trauma equals what the Bible calls suffering. There’s been some deeply painful, hard experience in their life and this is a reaction to it. Trauma is a handhold the culture gives — here’s how you can make your way through an experience that seems pointless or impossible to bear. So I’m going to proceed on the assumption that was really hard. That’s why that event keeps coming up and being referenced in our conversation. And simultaneously, whatever handle the culture gives them is not going to be as deep as the way the Bible addresses that topic.
I’m going to go slow because suffering brings in so many layers, but that might become the case where we can see the weakness of the culture’s term. The trauma language brings with it this aftermath of — when you’ve experienced trauma, the goal is just that you cope. That’s sort of the payoff or the redemption offered by that language: we’re going to teach you to cope. The Bible actually has a far deeper vision. We have sufferings that we actually can learn to boast in because we know that suffering does something far deeper. We become a different kind of person. In 2 Corinthians 1, God actually uses that to minister to other people out of the particular shape of His comforts to us. So you’re not going to get there quickly, but again, that’s the North Star — that as I hear trauma as part of my past, I should be interpreting, even if I’m not correcting them. In fact, I wouldn’t for a while. Here’s how I’m going to take that and say — now I can begin to move that conversation towards a deeper biblical view of what suffering does in the life of a human being, and how apart from God, you’re just left hoping to cope. Boy, that’s an inadequate way of dealing with the pains of life — I just want to cope.
Ricky Alcantar: Yeah. Where the culture might say, “Oh, one of the ways you can cope with this is by expressing this kind of identity or thing,” the end result is just coping. And I love what you’re saying — no, our end result is far greater in scriptural categories. It is restoration. It is healing. It is being made new. It is serving others. Very hopeful, very redemptive, Josh.
Now if I could move us briefly to consider leadership in the church. I’ve got maybe one category that may — I do know it has been a category in some churches, but may increasingly become a category — is a member of a church that announces that they are a different gender, or are going to be in a relationship with the same gender. For the first time, some of — I’ve heard this, I’ve talked to pastors — some of these conversations move from second level to first level. It’s a member of the church. So then you’re not just thinking as a counselor. All of a sudden we have to put on the governance hat, the ordering of the church categories as elders. What might be some categories for elder teams? It’s counseling separately — obviously talking to that person in all the categories we’ve discussed — but in the elders meeting, as you’re trying to make governance decisions about, do we move forward with a church discipline case at some point? How do we do that wisely? Would there be any categories you would suggest that pastoral teams be sure to consider or think about related to a potential member, and the governance, who’s expressing these desires or identities, and the church itself? Any thoughts there for us?
Josh Blount: Yeah, very helpful. You’re going to have to think through these things. On one level, the Bible in some ways makes things simpler. Because one of our perspectives on all these struggles is they’re just sins like every other kind of sin we confront in pastoral ministry. Even though they carry more cultural freight, in the end, the person who divorces their spouse to join a homosexual marriage so-called is no different than the man who leaves his wife for his secretary. This is sexual sin that has been carried out and is unrepentant and we’re going to treat it as such. It’s going to carry costs, but there’s a helpful simplicity in — is it against God’s will? Are they breaking God’s law? Are they consistent — all the Matthew 18 sort of “here’s how we’re appealing, here’s the standard we’re using to appeal, God’s word, here’s how we’re expanding the circle.”
We need to just not let the cultural moment let us put a different set of lenses on, where we think, “Okay, now we’re dealing with something different.” We’re dealing with just various manifestations of sin. Someone transitioning genders is a challenging one because that doesn’t fit as clearly in those categories. But I think we’d have to say, carried out to the end, it’s a persistent refusal to submit to God’s word. You’d have to pursue the thread — how do you know that you’re a man trapped in a woman’s body, vice versa? And then that’s where other things are going to come up. “I’m trusting my own instinct. I’m unwilling to hear appeals.” Usually at that point, other things are going to come into play, because you can’t pursue — the flesh will manifest itself in multiple ways as you pursue those things. I can imagine lots of other scenarios where you say, yeah, this is also part of the picture of someone who’s no longer in submission to God’s word.
In a way — as pastors, we carry the burden. Part of our care for the people of God is, when there is unrepentant sin, to say that’s inconsistent with the kingdom of Christ. God’s given us a way in His word that we handle that with broken hearts, with prayers for restoration. But it’s not something fundamentally different than pastors have had to do throughout the ages.
Ricky Alcantar: That’s excellent, brother. I think it’s freeing in some ways. The Bible — its commands on these issues are not easy, but they are in some ways straightforward. That can be freeing at times where you’re thinking, “What about this? What about that?” Well, we’re just reading the Bible and trying to apply it. I think it’s excellent.
One very last category in the leadership section: if a pastor is maybe aware after listening to this that they could shore these things up, maybe not on the pastoral team, but among the members — realizing this is a live issue, an issue regardless of what part of the country you’re in. You’re in West Virginia, and right now doing this interview, I’m down on the border into what normally is supposed to be a liberal stronghold in Texas, where we’ve got sidewalks that are rainbow-colored and big rainbow flags all over the place city-wise. It doesn’t matter. You’re going to face these issues. So a pastor says, okay, we need to begin to equip and shore up the church. Anything you’d recommend for a pastor going, “Okay, we’d like to give some more attention to this in terms of preaching, classes, other means of equipping the church”? Any thoughts there, brother?
Josh Blount: Yeah, the first two that come to mind are preaching and teaching, and we’ve done both here. We’ve set aside time outside Sunday morning context to teach on this from different angles. And then I think you also just have your eyes open as a preacher for — where does God’s word in our regular preaching diet address this? When you start thinking that way, it’s surprising how many different opportunities, without reading into the text, just to continue to reinforce this kind of vision. If you’re in one of those epistles where son and daughter, mother and father language — 1 John 2, “I write to you young men, old men” — you can just lean in. It doesn’t overtake the whole sermon. It’s just a chance to say, look how the Bible addresses us as men and women in the household of God. I think those are mutually self-reinforcing.
We’ve taken it occasionally — a Sunday to devote specifically to this. I can think of one or two standalone messages, or times when you encounter a text that lends itself naturally. We hit the seventh commandment preaching through the Ten Commandments — take a moment and address that directly in a whole message. I would say look for those kinds of opportunities, because our people are getting catechized 24/7 on other sources for lots of different answers to these kinds of questions. Don’t assume that we did it in the membership class and we did a series on it five years ago — that’s got to be enough. It’s not. Just look for lots of different ways to make sure we’re defining and celebrating what the Bible teaches here.
Ricky Alcantar: Amen, bro. A great note to end on. We’ll be looking forward to the two resources you’ve got coming out this year through Sovereign Grace. Thank you, brother, for devoting yourself to thinking and meditating and leaning into this topic to try to serve all of us. I can say it’s a major help to me. This interview, I hope it serves other pastors, but I scheduled it at least to serve me. So I thank you for that. Thanks for serving me today, Josh.
Josh Blount: Hey, you’re welcome. Thank you, Ricky. Appreciate those kind words and glad to serve our family of churches together.