Theology of Sex+ Week 2: Built and Blessed

Use this guide to help your group discussion as you meet this week.

Built and Blessed

Chet Phillips

Transcript

Well good morning my name is Chet I'm one of the pastors here grab a Bible and head to Genesis chapter one should be the first page of your Bible shouldn't be too hard to find but we're going to be there this morning we are in our Theology of sex plus Series where we are trying to as a Church get our footing in the midst of a culture that has a torrent of things to say about how we ought to think about men and women and gender and sex and sexuality that we are just overrun with this is how you're supposed to think about that this is how you're supposed to say that this is what's.

True this is what not I mean it's it's um unending and Relentless and we need to be able to take some time to say does the Bible help us out here does it tell us anything that will give us some clarity so this morning I'm going to say something that uh philosophers historians anthropologists scientists medical professionals theologians and stand-up comics have all noticed and remarked upon men and women are different oh that's what we're going to talk about this morning but we're going to not just say that they're different and not just make remarks about the differences.

But we're going to look at the fact that God designed them distinct on purpose for a purpose that these distinctives these things that go into masculinity and femininity aren't random or evolutionary but that they were built into US baked into us on purpose for a purpose you could say that we were built and blessed or we were designed and destined or you could say it in this long sentence and we looked at last week which is this we are created image bearing embodied and distinct people made.

For complementary co-rule with God and what we looked at last week was created image bearing embodied and distinct and today we're going to look at complementary co-rule with God and we're going to try to wrap our head a little bit around what's built into masculinity what's built into femininity and why is that good because the Bible tells us that it's it's good now in order for this to be sermon length we're going to speak in some generalities so they're going to be some things that I say that aren't always true.

For all men or all women but they're generally true and then we're going to try to rough in some of the Baseline things that are handed as responsibilities to masculinity and hand it as responsibilities to femininity and hand it as gifts to masculinity and hand it as gifts to femininity and hand it as gifts to masculinity for femininity and hand it as gifts to femininity for masculinity and I will try not to say femininity and masculinity that many times in a row again.

But no promises so grab your Bible go to Genesis chapter one we're going to look at verse 26 we're going to pick up where we left off last week kind of looking at this same passage last week and we're going to notice some different things so it says this then God said let us make man in our image so we are designed in God's image after our likeness and let them so this man is not male but Humanity let them and we're going to.

See that fleshed out even more in just a second let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the Earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on Earth so Humanity was made for nothing less than complete and utter world domination that's what we're designed for Authority is built into humanness so if you dislike Authority and reject Authority and think Authority is bad you are rejecting something essential to the nature of humanity that every single person in this room was built to wield Authority and you need to understand that we were designed to exist in authority and to wield Authority.

And to wield it well and to co-rule with God God's going to rule over the Earth but he specifically designed image bearers to have dominion co-dominion with him and co-dominion with one another it is weighty and beautiful that God would lay that responsibility on us verse 27 so God created man in his own image again that's Humanity in the image of God he created him male and female he created them and Genesis 5 is going to say the same thing but it's this picture of humanity being both male and female designed with a purpose.

For this purpose and I want you to know something it's something that we just assumed that we know without knowing that we know it but in our cultural time I need to point it out uh when it says male and female or later when it says that God made a woman and brought her to the man you know what that means this isn't confusing language for us I was reading a book to my children or read at night to my children some and I thoroughly enjoy that do a lot of voices it's a lot of fun um there's a book that we gave up on.

Because it annoyed the snot out of me but one of the things it did early on in the book was it said it was a little Adventure book or whatever and it said that in their Garden there was a thwap and a thwap is about the size of a Zonk and then it just moved on with its hilarious little joke where it tells you two words that you don't know what they mean uses one to describe the other haha you got us I was very angry at this author I still am I shouldn't talk about it here that's not what the Bible's doing.

When it says male and female it's not talking about flaps and zonks that we don't understand what it's talking about when it says man and woman you know what it's talking about you know what a man is you know what a woman is you actually know what a man is and what a woman is with surprising accuracy you you can walk around and spot them and you're real good at it and so when it says this it's distinct creatures that are distinct on purpose and we know built in some of those distinctives we've lived around it our whole lives.

And so when it says male and female and later man and woman we know what those are and that God intentionally from the very beginning built this distinction in so look at verse 28 and God blessed them and God said to them be fruitful and multiply and fill the Earth and subdue it and have dominion over it so this blessing this intentional design that God gave us is to subdue the Earth and he says be fruitful and multiply now you have the healthy human has everything it needs to survive built in you you breathe with your own lungs your body converts oxygen puts it in your bloodstream your heart pumps that around you eat on.

Your own you digest on your own there is one thing though essential to the existence of humanity that God did not give you the ability on your own but split that and he split it based off of gender and that is reproduction and he made our participation in reproduction not just have to have two distinct types of people but our roles in reproduction are very different if you don't believe that you can ask my wife because when I said we should have more children she said it's difficult and I said it wasn't that difficult and she seemed to think that her participation and it was different from mine she told me we could have more.

Kids if I had them because it's difficult it's very different it's wildly different for the way that God designed this and y'all much of human history and the way things have planned out between men and women is built into this one particular design difference that God gave us women get pregnant and men do not women stay pregnant and look being pregnant you are you are I mean doing this amazing phenomenal you're creating a human inside of you it's insane but being pregnant also makes you bad at most everything else it just does.

Look up pregnancy brain my wife one time wore one of my flip-flops and one of her flip-flops for like an hour before she noticed she did not get faster and stronger while pregnant she got to where she couldn't breathe or sleep whatever it's insane and then after the baby's born you don't just bounce off and they don't run off like lizards they cling to their moms forever and have to be fed by their moms the ability for a dad to feed a child it is a recent development and it's not even something that we did in our bodies y'all this is historical fact that has played out and how men and women work.

God built it that way on purpose and here's what it says in Genesis 31 it says it's all what he made and behold it was very good God made men and women distinct from one another on purpose for a purpose and he says it's good this is going to be very good now gender is essential to our design as people this is a quote from Kathy Keller I'll quote her a couple of times a day in her in the book meaning of marriage with Tim and Kathy Keller she wrote the the one on uh the chapter on gender differences and she has some really helpful things to say.

But she says this this means she's talking about this passage in Genesis this means that our maleness or our femaleness is not incidental to our humanness but it constitutes its very essence that from the very beginning we were made male or female God does not make us into generic Humanity that is later differentiated rather from the start we are male and female every cell in our body is stamped as XX or x y and even in situations where there's x x y or xyy there's still this on every single cell this Mark that delineates between male and female is there a y chromosome is there not it says this.

If I try to ignore the way that God has designed me or if I despise the gifts he may have given to me fulfill my calling if the postmodern that's our current cultural approach to things if the postmodern view that gender is wholly a social construct or true then we could follow whatever path seemed good to us if our gender is at the heart of our nature however we risk losing a key part of ourselves if we abandoned our distinctive male and female roles that it is built into your very existence as a human you are human.

But you're not just a human you're a male human or a female human and God did that on purpose now the idea that gender is just a social construct is something that we will deal with more later but gender isn't just a social construct while there are some socially constructed things like how we dress like there's a passage in Deuteronomy or in the Old Testament law where it says men shouldn't dress like women but that changes from culture to culture what what that looks like there's nowhere in the Bible that says that boys have to like the color blue or that pink is a girl color or the girls have to play with baby dolls.

And boys have to play with trucks there's nowhere that says that a man can't wear a green flower shirt even though some of y'all have had a little attitude about it this morning it's not in there there's felinity and femininity that do studies bear this out mean that often little boys would rather play with something that have wheels and if they get to pick they'll pick that and little girls will play with things often even if you give them a ball sometimes they'll treat it like a baby doll it just is how it works and that's some things that you can say.

Well that's culturally poured into them by the people around them and maybe but we are designed differently and you can look there's study after study after study that shows this but that some of the things that we have given to us culturally aren't biblical commands they're just ways that some of this plays out as we try to figure it out and look at it together so if you don't if you're a lady and you don't like flowers that's fine and if you're a man and you don't like hunting that's fine.

And if you don't like football that's fine you're wrong but it's fine that's not unbiblical now culturally we're given a couple of options on how we should treat gender and they're both they're bad so let me share them with you one is to just say there are no differences between men and women just flatten it out there's no differences any difference we see is just culturally given to us it's just what we taught the kids but there are no real differences between men and women that's that's one thing that we're told culturally and what that ends up doing though the more you press on it is it either rounds off masculinity or hardens up femininity.

Is usually how this works out it's usually either trying to press men to be more effeminate or press ladies to be more masculine and it's a rejection of the beauty of the distinctiveness given to us one of the books I was reading said so often one of his problems that he has with people saying that women are just as good as men is that when he talks to them and they play that out they end up just pulling women onto the battlefield he said most often what they're doing is erasing a lot of the beauty of femininity by pressing into this idea that's not always 100 true.

But that's what happens is we flatten it out some way and we reject the goodness of the distinctiveness or the other cultural option we have is to over value one to uh and to demean the other so we say things like men are trash women are crazy men are going to take over the world women are like this men are like this but we mean it in the way that women are dominant and they're going to be the ones who rule everything and they're the ones who are the best and anywhere you add a man you just added stupidity one of the arguments you'll hear every once in a.

While and it boils down to men are stupid women are just as smart as men it's like good what a well-articulated argument this way that we owe value one or demonize the other and so we overvalue men and we demonize women and and neither one of those is meant to be what happens God gave them both distinct but gifted for good so here's what we're about to do we're going to read in Genesis chapter 2. and we are going to just uh make some notes about the things that kind of fit under the man and make some notes about the things that fit under the woman.

And then we'll kind of take those all together and look at them so I'm just going to go that's important that's important and then we'll have we'll kind of compile a little list and then we'll look at it all together all right General same stuff that we just saw in Genesis 1 but it zoomed in it tells us more about how God went about making man and woman this Genesis chapter 2 verse 5. we know Bush of the field was yet in the land and no small plant of the field had yet sprung up.

For the Lord God had not caused it to rain on the land and there was no man to work the ground okay so he's not here yet but we're already told he's got work to do one of the primary things that's going to happen is he's going to work and you can say that well this is the same word for Humanity it is it's the word Adam it's the same word for Humanity it's the same word for Adam the man that they're going to make.

But that God's going to make and then but this ultimately as this story plays out it's he's talking specifically of the male so he says work so if you want to write that down or Circle it or whatever we'll put that under man if you're making a chart man put work under there woman oh I need to say this uh one time my wife was wearing a jacket and I said to her that's a that's a cute jacket I really like that jacket and what she should have done was blushed and said thank you boo.

But that is not what she did what she said was I wore a jacket yesterday did you not like that jacket now maybe I oversold how much I like this jacket I don't know the way I said it it's probably I could have delivered it better when I say as we're going through this this is true about men or this is true about women don't flip it around and say oh so men can't or oh so women can't just hear the direct statement does that make sense Men You're supposed to work we're going to talk about that in a.

Second I'm not saying women aren't that's not but we're just as the essential things that are built in that's one of them okay all right y'all stay focused let's keep going verse six and a miss was going up from the land oh wait is that no not verse six jump two verse oh my goodness that's it's in there and the Miss was going up from the land and was watering the whole face of the ground then the Lord God formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the Breath of Life and the Man became a living creature and the.

Lord God planted a garden in Eden in the east and there he put the man whom he had formed it's going to talk more about the garden where it's located go to verse 15. the Lord God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and keep it so this man goes there and he's got this specific job so it's worked but in this work and keep we're going to look at that in a moment so mark that that's important.

And then he's going to tell the man to not eat of the tree of the knowledge of Good and Evil go to verse 18. and the Lord God said it is not good that the man should be alone I will make him a helper fit for him so you can underline not good if you're filling out the little chart for men it's work and keep and not good now don't get too excited about writing that it's not good that he's alone masculinity is incomplete without femininity.

But there's a real tension thrown into the text when this is said because in chapter one God makes something and it's good he makes something and it's good and then at the end it says it's very good this is the first time where he's made anything and said that's not good have you ever been around somebody and all of a sudden they go uh-oh and you immediately like what that's what this is oh and we're supposed to pause we're supposed to have this moment oh what how what's going on and that's what's happening here is that masculinity on its own God's design.

For Humanity is not going to complete be complete with just masculinity so let's let's look yeah that's where we are and he was made first now that's not said it just it said it's there and you might would think well is that important and the New Testament is going to say yes it is and that's going to play out in the way we're to understand what are the distinctive things for masculinity so that's what we've got all right go back to.

Verse 15. the Lord God took the man put him in the garden oh no sorry verse 18. then the Lord God said it is not good that the man should be alone I will make him a helper fit for him now we don't know that that's the woman yet but that's going to be the woman and so if you want an underneath woman when you're filling that chart out help her fit for him and we'll have to Define what that means.

But that's helpful it's essential to kind of what God has designed for femininity so help her fit for him and we'll Define those words later okay now out of the ground the Lord God had formed every beast of the field and every bird of the heavens and brought them to the man to see what he would call them and whatever the man called every living creature that was its name this is how the world Works God designs God's creates and we get to discover and name and classify he's like the.

First little scientist charting things out it's it's really it's an interesting picture of how God wants to partner with humanity and it shows some of the authority of Adam to be able to name creatures that he has dominion over them the man gave names to all livestock unto the birds of the heavens and to every beast of the field but for Adam there was not found a helper fit for him and I think that sentence is so weird that's what we were doing.

When he was naming all the animals we were also background looking for a helper fit for him y'all do y'all see how much that drags out the tension of this it says it's not good that he would be alone he says I'm going to make a helper fit for him and then it says he made it all of the creatures and not one of them was fit for him none of them could match with him none of them could share life and ideals and hopes and dreams and effort none of them and Adam feels this I think some of it is to show Adam his lack.

Verse 21 so the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man and while he slept took one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh all right so that rib or came from his side that's That's essential to understanding the role of women the role of femininity y'all everything Adam was made from dust everything else came out of the ground Eve doesn't she comes out of Adam she comes out of his side she doesn't come out of the front or from behind she comes out of his side they pulled apart almost breaks him he does surgery he says he cuts him open and closes him back puts him in a.

Deep sleep does anesthesiology and this picture of Eve being made from Adam and for Adam is important and how we're to understand this and y'all this is like Love Song stuff they're made for each other that God intentionally designed it to have this some level of completeness together and and this isn't to say that every single woman or every single man is incomplete we over celebrate that kind of romantic love culturally where the Bible is going to say that no there's there's a wonderful beautiful way to live single a single lifestyle to the glory of.

God and it's actually better in some ways so every lady who says you know what I'm I'm just going to devote my life to Jesus I'm going to go be a missionary and every man who takes on the same thing is a blessed wonderful thing you're not incomplete because you don't have someone of the opposite gender that lives in your house but humanity is incomplete without two genders our country will be worse if we get rid of genders because we need masculinity and femininity.

Okay y'all this is great watch this verse 22 and the rib that the Lord God had taken from the man he made into a woman and he brought her to the man can y'all picture God's face when he's doing this you ever given a really good gift to somebody he's brought every animal that he's created in front of Adam and I can almost see him walking up with the woman like what about this in our search for a helper fit for you in the search.

For a companion what do you think of this it's the best thing that he's brought and we know it's the best thing that he's brought because Adam starts singing or doing poetry one or the other both invented to impress women apparently then the man said this at last is bone of my bones and Flesh of My Flesh she shall be called woman because she was taken out of man yeah he he goes Ella Fitzgerald on this at last and he didn't do that with any other part of creation he didn't go giraffe like it didn't it's not a thing.

God brings the woman forward as this like celebrated Crescendo of creation and we should not have that lost on us when we read this text we were stuck for a long time with we're missing something and then there's a poem a song when she shows up and I can tell you this the men in the room we've felt this before we've had the moment where we were just around guys for too long where we existed in just a masculine world for too long.

And then some femininity showed up and you were like thank you this was needed this was helpful this is so good and that's the way this is written that humanity is the Capstone of Creation in Genesis 1. but then Genesis 2 is like yeah it is Humanity together but don't miss the celebration of the woman verse 24 therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife and they shall become one flesh it's written a couple interesting things in that that passage that verse right there is that the man leaves he's going to set up a new kind of household he's the one leaving is what we're told.

It says that he would leave his father and mother meaning that from the very beginning where father and mother is the ideal and I was reading some sociologists that said that if they had to just come up with it after doing all their study they had to come up with the best way to raise a child they would have come up with this something like this a father and a mother like that you need masculinity you need femininity and that's the best way to raise children.

Now in some situations we're not in that situation and if you're a single mom and you're having to raise children on your own we're where the ideal is lacking Grace abounds but that's the ideal and that's why God made reproduction happen the way it happens 25 and the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed you know they were perfectly comfortable with their gender with their bodies that's one of the blessings that happens in the original design for Humanity he was a man news a man felt good being a man was glad to be a man she was a woman knew she was a woman felt good to be a woman glad.

To be a woman he was glad she was a woman she was glad he was a man it was good that's part of the very good design here all right where are we at where's our man and woman chart that we're working up here man working keep not good on his own it's not good that he's alone he was made first all right a woman is helper fit for him created from Adam's side and a celebrated crescendo of creation Now that's very good and we have never enjoyed the just very good version of this not a day in your life you've enjoyed some glimpses of it you've gotten some taste of it you've seen it.

Work well but you've never just gotten this because Adam and Eve immediately fail and fall into sin so we're going to look at Genesis 3. we're going to look at the curses because they also help us see some of the tension here and some of the way God intentionally designed men and women to function differently all right after they rebel against God God curses certain things and this is what it says in Genesis chapter 3 verse 16. to the woman he said I will surely multiply your pain in childbearing in pain you shall bring forth children.

So there may have been some pain but now it's been multiplied and it does seem also that there's an extended painfulness difficulty in the overall raising of children for women and observation seems to bear this out that women have a lot of care and love and connectiveness to their children in a distinct way from the fathers fathers love their children but there seems to be some kind of distinct thing here that that goes along with the difficulty of not only giving birth.

But also of just bearing and raising children I remember when our son was born I was holding him and my wife said don't you just love him so much we were at the hospital and I said I don't know I just met him give me a minute which I thought was hilarious she didn't think it was funny at all it was a joke I did love him but the reality was she had known him for nine months she had known him like he had existed inside of her he was much more real to her.

For a long time than he was to me and it seems like that's continued that there's some amount of this connection that she has with our children that I love my boys as their father but our approaches and tone on things is just different and so it's cursed and certainly it has a lot to do with just the process but it seems like there's maybe more there It also says this your desire shall be contrary to your husband that he shall rule over you foreign the beautiful design of headship and helper which was celebrated as very good.

Now makes us feel uncomfortable for me to even say headship and helper what was going to be something that we delighted in and knew a beautiful picture of is cursed so that there's friction there's dominance there's demeaning there's all these things that go into this now that make it worse but it's cursed and we'll see in a minute more of how that plays out to Adam he said because you have listened to the voice of your wife he was meant to lead he was meant to be the one who helped protect her like as far as we know.

God only told him not to eat of that tree maybe God told her but we don't see that in the text so it was partially on seems like it was on Adam to help protect them from this to help them make wise decisions together since you have listened to the voice of your wife and have eaten of the tree of which I commanded you you shall not eat of it cursed is the ground because of you in pain you shall eat of it all the days of your life thorns and thistles it shall bring forth.

For you and you shall eat of the plants of the field by the sweat of your face you shall eat bread till you return to the ground for out of it you were taken for you are dust and to dust you shall return cursed for men now childbearing and work existed pre-fall and they're essential to existence but now they're worse they're broken and this headship in helping this design for masculinity and femininity is the same it existed pre-fall but now it's worse it's it's messed up we only have gotten the janky version we've seen some blessings of it we've also gotten it broken apart.

So it says this verse 20. the man called his wife's name Eve because she was the mother of all living and that's another thing that's important for for women um her name is life Giver and that's what he names her again indicating some of Adam's Authority in naming his wife but also this elevation of her as the mother of all living that she's life Giver so let's look at our chart that we've made here man he's the work and to keep not good on his own that's masculinity incomplete on its own which is like one of the things that.

First wave feminism articulated was like we need femininity in the world for it to be good and they were right which is good uh he was made first and work is cursed woman a helper fit for him created from Adam's side a celebrated Crescendo childbearing a relationship with a man is cursed and she's called life-giving or life Giver all right let's just talk to men for a second using the work that we've done so far men you were meant to work and to keep it's part of the thing that's given to masculinity that you should play out in your life this means that laziness and there's some like we know this.

But there's something gross about a lazy man it just is it's just bad it's a rejection of masculinity it's a rejection of humanity is you're meant to work you're meant to labor you're meant to cultivate and here's the thing primary examples of masculinity the old Pagan version this is Tim Keller flesh this out I thought it was a helpful he said you got three kind of versions the old Pagan version is all hardness no softness it's just Warrior that's Achilles that's Beowulf that's the the version of we I want my enemy to beg.

For mercy so I can cut their head off while they're doing it that'll be funny it's the old version of masculinity and then he says you jump to the modern version and it's all softness no hardness it's all gentility he said if you actually look at history the hard version of man creates a society the society gets created all the men get soft and a new hard version of man comes in and conquers them that's how history plays out he says only the Christian version that says we're supposed to be both y'all this this concept of work he's a gardener too much patience gentleness that takes how much control over yourself and over your frustration.

And how much trust in the Lord it takes to Garden but he's also a keeper he's to keep the garden he's to defend it and you're like well it was in the what was there to defend oh he immediately lost it from an enemy that it needed to be defended against that word keeper is the same thing we just read where it says God is my keeper it's like the keeper of a gate the keeper of a castle it's the Watchman is the same word.

So you're supposed to be a gardener and a guard which means that a Godly Man is the best person to hand a baby to and the worst person to try to kidnap a baby from that's the way that's supposed to work out tough and tender now this is what Jesus was he could run everybody out of the Temple in the midst of buying and selling I've always said if you think you're bad go throw everybody out of the Barnyard Flea Market on Sunday we'll find out real quick how bad you are bad as.

Jesus but he also was surrounded by women who knew that he understood him that he related to him that he treated them with dignity and worth he was also surrounded by children who felt somehow oddly comfortable and welcomed around him and that's a beautiful picture of masculinity and this idea that he's made first and that Eve comes out of him and is built for him is where the New Testament is going to Anchor this idea of headship and you're going to.

See Peter talk about it you're going to see Paul talk about it this idea of headship this idea of male leadership and it's going to play out throughout the whole Bible it's assumed throughout the whole Bible but we're going to see some words given to it in the New Testament but this idea of headship that men go first in a way is not men go first in luxury and relaxation they're not first in line to get the dessert they go first like a shield they're meant to to take the brunt of difficulty on behalf of everything behind them that's the idea of headship and the reason we cringe at it we'll get to later is.

Because we hadn't done that right that's what that's supposed to look like there's a reason why I watched Men pull up some today when it was raining harder and drop women and children off and then drive away to then walk in the rain that's how that's supposed to work supposed to be some amount of extra difficulty added to men for the sake of those around them and this does not speak ill of women the idea that we should throw men at things and let them die let them carry the brunt of difficulty let them carry the weight of things does not speak ill of women it's part of the song of at last how wonderful.

My brother's a police officer and he was telling me a story about they had a guy in a house they had surrounded the house he was hiding behind the engine block and the wheel well of his vehicle because the guy had been shooting out of it he said he sat crouched like that for like two hours got to eat some pizza eventually they saw robot and the reason they send in the robot is not that the robot's the best cop they have they send in a robot with a little camera on it.

Because it's less valuable than what was outside and when we say that men should go first as a shield that's not a devaluation of women it's a celebration of a value structure that says now we if somebody's gotta go down if somebody's got to be hurt if somebody's got it then that should be men shouldn't be women that's why I'm when you're trying to figure out what does the Bible say about masculinity and femininity you can look to the places where it talks to husbands where it talks to fathers where it talks to wives where it talks to mothers.

Because not all men will be husbands but all husbands will be men two wives but all wives will be women until it's one of the ways that very practically some masculinity and femininity gets fleshed out and one of the pictures given to men in Ephesians 5 is that they would love their wives as Christ loved the Church and gave himself up for her and it's this idea of sacrifice for the good of another so men do you want others to sacrifice.

For you do you want them to carry the weight so you don't have to do you want them to carry the weight of decision making so that they can be the one who is wrong at the end of the day do you want them to carry the weight of effort and intentionality and work do you say things like well look you just do what you want to with the kids that's fine so that you don't have to to carry that do you shirk at work to let other people do the hard jobs or to you try to walk out what it means to be a shield and to be sacrificial.

For those around you to work and to keep foreign women let's talk about helper fit for him because we have we read helper in a negative sense or like like if my kid was helping me I said oh my little helper as if it's somehow degrading it's not the the primary person that's called a helper in the Scriptures is God we even read it where does my help come from my help comes from the Lord that's that same word it's a Zaire.

And so that this idea of helper is a strong help it's also used for reinforcements in a battle so your help shows up and you get to win because your help is here and that's the way it reads in the text just looking at this text without any kind of historical anything you would just go yeah like this this is wonderful that she's here and this helper can't be like demeaning because of look at how the text reads and the idea of fit.

For him just means complementary across from designed to match together and that's both reproductively and also just skill set wise the way we think the way we approach things uh my wife and I we were we had won tickets from a radio station and we were trying to get the tickets given to us and the communication was just awful it was all over the place and bad and non-existent and eventually my wife said so this radio station is just run by dudes huh there's not a single woman that works here and I busted out laughing.

Because that's really what it felt like it felt like we were just dealing with men because of how bad it was and there's this idea of a woman that's coming in and fixing a whole lot of complimenting a whole lot of where men might be strong they're fixing where all these weaknesses are found this idea of ezer is not condescending there's this picture here of the gift of going second that women get to show up and make things better because men have already roughed in a whole lot of stuff that's that's one of the ways that this plays out it plays out this way in particular in marriage where you get the gift of going.

Second and it's not to be demeaning it's meant to be a gracious gift where you get to go where can I help where can I serve where can I come along and make this better and do things that that you would not otherwise be able to do and this plays out in human history and it plays out in God's good design and it's not meant to be taken as anything but good but there's a reason why it is and that's this curse that comes into the midst of how we relate to one another in gender that he will have dominion over you your desire will be contrary to him.

But he will have dominion over you is how human history has played out so that your desire will be contrary for him is the same phrasing that's used in Genesis 3 when God's giving Cain a warning and says that sin's desire is for you but you must rule over it it's the exact same phrasing your desire will be for your husband but he will rule over you is the exact same phrasing and it means not sin's desire for Cain isn't nice your desire.

For your husband here is this in Conflict desire but it says he'll rule over you but the reason why I think this is given to women the reason why it's a curse said to women is not because they're going to be the primary offenders in this they're going to be the ones causing all the problems it's because they're going to carry the brunt of the curse in how this is going to play out this is the way Kathy Keller puts it as to why she's going to be the only one who writes in this chapter she said we've been writing together.

But I'm writing this chapter on my own and she says it this way when she's talking about gender differences she says I have had more direct experience and talking about and struggling with the difference in gender roles between men and women no surprise there under the influence of the curse in Genesis every human culture has found a way to interpret male headship in a way that has marginalized and oppressed women and it's usually the women who notice and object to this treatment.

First so what was meant to be sacrificial joyful gracious service and celebration in male headship becomes domineering and one of the reasons why we have so much conflict here and pain here and one of the reasons why we dislike so much of what is said when we start talking about what men do and what women do is because of how terribly bad this has gone I've heard a study one time where they asked college students what would you do to prepare to run at night and all the men said stuff like wear shoes get my playlist together a whole lot of the men thought is this a trick question some sort of riddle here.

All the women said things like tell somebody where I was going get a friend plan my route don't listen to music I need to be able to hear my surroundings and most of them said I would not run and that's because men have wielded what God graciously gave us which was a bigger body and strength for wickedness and it's sickening and it's evil and what God meant for every place a man went for everybody else around them to be safer has not been true in human history there was a Twitter thing where someone said hey men don't exist.

For a day what would you do and women were like go out in the world well how in the world and not be scared and that should not be how this has worked but it's how it's worked and so when there's a tension and a rejection of any amount of male Authority it makes a whole lot of sense because if you look historically it's played out really poorly but the response to this is not to reject it but we need it to be redeemed we need the.

Lord to come to work here we'll talk about that in a second the last thing I want you to see is Eve is life Giver there's something intentionally wrapped up in the way that women are meant to be that involves child bearing and child raising and we should not detach that from femininity Abigail favali grew up in the Church she was a feminist scholar and professor she's now professor at Notre Dame but she grew up in the Church and she said.

When she got to college she started trying to figure out who am I supposed to be as a woman and she said she didn't think the Church had good answers but feminism had some really good ones and so she she said she took that on as her new religion until she got pregnant and then she felt like feminism didn't have a lot of answers for the things that she was experiencing going through and she said it is surprising how detached gender philosophy is gender theory is from the phenomenon of motherhood and that we should not separate that out from femininity.

Because it is a beautiful wonderful thing that not all women will be pregnant will get pregnant we'll have children but it's built in this idea of Life Giver is built into femininity so we need a redeemed version of this we need a lot of repentance we need a lot of repentance for where we have degraded the opposite gender or degraded our own gender where we've rejected God's good design and not seeing this as helpful we need a lot of forgiveness for where this has been wielded poorly against us we need a lot of humility as.

Jesus comes in and rescues and redeems us and forgives us and calls us to to faith in him we need a lot of humility and trusting that this is good and that his design for this is good and a lot of humility as we try to figure it out we'll close with this first Peter 2 as Peter is introducing this concept of what it looks like to live out life as Christians and he's going to talk about his uh his call to husbands and wives.

Because he's finishing it up as he's going to give that he starts here and says this beloved beloved I urge you as sojourners and Exiles to abstain from the passions of the flesh meaning we're meant as sojourners and Exiles to look different from the culture around us and to control ourselves and to not approach the world the way everybody else approaches it which wage war against your soul keep your conduct among the Gentiles honorable so that when they speak against you as evildoers they may.

See your good deeds and glorify God on the day of visitation what if our culture said Christians are crazy in the way they think about men and women they're crazy in the way they think about headship and Helper and submission they're crazy in the way this is evil it's broken and then they got to come be a part of your community group and then they got to come be invited to dinner at your house then they got to go on vacation with you and they realized that hold on a.

Second there's something different here there's some Joy here there's some peace here there's some rest here maybe they hate men and then they show up and they go well I don't hate these men maybe they hate the idea of the way this would work and play out but then they show up and they go hold on a second this this is this is something different here and they have no they have no argument against the way it actually plays out but that involves a lot of repentance that allows a lot of humility and it involves a lot of faith as we try to figure out what does it.

Look like for us to be Godly men and women in light of the work of Christ in us let's pray Lord we're thankful for the good gift of masculinity and the good gift of femininity we're thankful for your intentional design there and Lord we have been affected by the Fall that has brought in so much confusion and wickedness abuse manipulation anger hurt and so Lord we thank you for the work of Christ that you forgive that you heal that you redeem.

When we ask Lord that you'd help us to be Godly men and godly women who are comfortable in our own bodies and see and celebrate your good design not only for our gender but for the opposite gender in a way that brings delight and glory to your name amen

Theology of Sex+ Week 1: Reality Check- Created, Image-Bearing, Embodied, Distinct

Use this guide to help your group discussion as you meet this week.

Reality Check: Created, Image-Bearing, Embodied, Distinct

Spencer Cary

Transcript

Good morning my name is Spencer and I am one of the pastors here we're going to be in Genesis 1 and 2 today we're in a series called Theology of sex plus so we did this series uh Theology of sex nearly nine years ago the very beginning of 20 16 a lot has changed since 2016. first off we don't title sermons like we used to there was a there is a sermon title back in the 2016 series called do you even Sports bro which is just not something you hear nowadays in our sermon titles.

But a lot has also changed since then like culture has continued to shift and in that series we approached it we talked about a theological basis for sex and gender and sexuality and what the Bible has to say about those things and some of that stuff is is stayed the same a lot of it has changed because the culture has continued to shift back then if we pulled the room it's quite likely that if we asked and said if you do you know someone who identifies as lgbtq Plus I'd say not just no.

But you have a friend do you have a family member A co-worker I think probably half the room would have said yeah I do I think if you did that now it would be much higher and back then in 2016 I don't even think the Q Plus was a major uh part of the mainstream thought on LGBT issues it was just LGBT and that's even shifted because more things have been added to these identifier letters I think even the language of identifies as was not in the mainstream lexicon it wasn't the language of the day like it is.

Now it's so commonplace to have that type of language I think the phrase back then I am uh I'm a man trapped in a woman's body I'm a woman trapped in a man's body was more foreign than it is now I think if you say that phrase now most people know where that is coming from so a lot has changed in the last eight to nine years and being in this culture we've experienced really a lot of I would say even maybe a bombardment of different cultural narratives that run contrary to the Gospel that are antithetical that run against some of the gender and sexual ethics that the Scriptures uphold and you.

See this you see this in popular TV shows and and film you can't scroll through social media without hearing some of these narratives it's ingrained very much the fabric of our culture and I think that's increased since we did this back in 2016. but also since 2016 even things in that Arena have changed some of the ideas have shifted if you go back and read the lyrics of Lady Gaga's Born This Way if you read them in light of some of the current uh cultural thought on sexuality and gender those might even seem a little bit outdated compared to today's phrasing a lot of the language.

Then was that sexuality and gender were really fixed categories that were you were born this way they were unchangeable but even that has changed in mainstream thought that it's more fluid now so a lot has changed in the last decade and we are in a culture that has a different world view than the Christian worldview and Sundays are a time for the Church to gather together to really reset and to hear what the Scripture says and how it speaks to a whole host of issues.

But it's a time for us to reset remember what's actually true and what's actually good and what's actually beautiful I mean this is not just for the subject matter of the sermon series but this is for a whole host of things the reason we do a give series every year around Christmas time because we live in a culture that's so immersed to consumerism it's so immersed in materialism and we that's so ingrained the fabric of our culture and it affects us that we need to.

Remember what it means to not worship money but to actually be people that worship God and lay our finances down before him it's the reason why over and over again we have to address the issues of hatred and the issues of the Spiral because our culture's so angry right now and so so valid on social medias uh so um fierce that we have to address hatred and gossip and slander and racism and the works so there's a time for us to come and hear the word of.

God and hear what is true and hear what is good and hear what is beautiful and a lot has changed in the last eight to nine years on the subject matter so we thought it was wise to actually cover it again in this sermon series and that's what we're going to do over the next six weeks today specifically what we're going to do is we're going to start laying a foundation for how to biblically approach the subject matter we're going to.

Look at Genesis 1 and 2 to to have a Biblical basis for understanding how to even approach the subject matters that will later get more into topically as it relates to homosexuality gender societal ethics related to that but in the coming weeks we're going to lay that foundation and then we're going to do what we normally do in sermon series that we're going to continue to walk out what's taught here on Sundays in the context of our community groups we will continue that discussion and here's what I love about our groups I love that art groups and difficult stuff that we don't avoid we don't avoid difficult topics in the Bible I love that our.

Groups walk this out graciously that we speak the truth in love that we seek to be not harsh with our language but gracious towards one another we seek to see one another as men and women made in the image of God and Christians seeking to conform the image of Christ and Seekers trying to figure this out and that's what we'll get to continue to live this out in the context of our community groups so it's a heavier subject matter over the next six weeks.

But we invite you into it to walk with us as we seek to understand what the Bible has to say about these matters but today we're going to start in Genesis 1 and 2 to establish that Foundation here's what we're going to see over the next two weeks that we are created image bearing embodied and distinct people who are made for complementary co-rule with our God so I'm only going to focus on the first part of that and Chet's going to pick it up next week and the last part of that.

Today specifically we're going to look at how we are created image bearing embodied distinct people so let me pray for us then we'll walk through this together heavenly father I pray that you would be so present now that you'd speak so clearly to us from your word that we would open our hearts to a subject matter that is difficult that is not foreign that affects many of us who have different family members and Friends and wonderful people in our lives that would think differently about this even folks in our Church family that think differently about this.

God I pray that you'd help us be open to your word we'd receive it and we walk this out in faith and in Repentance and in worship and delighting in you as a community in Jesus name amen all right so we're going to see first that we are created in Genesis 1 26 after God the first Genesis account has the first aspects of creation and how the universe came to be and then we get to the creation of mankind of humanity and it says in.

Verse 26 then God said let us make man in our image let us make now that may seem obvious to Christians that God is creator but it has to be stated God made Humanity God is The Sovereign maker he is the one who rules all things who has made all things who governs all things he made Humanity God made man and it has to be established for a reason that has to be established because we live in a time where in our culture will reject that narrative in favor of its own I was listening to a professor named Abigail Fable she's a professor at Notre Dame she's a background in gender studies and in this.

Interview she's recounting how she went from being kind of an a religious or religious post-modernist feminists academic to where she is now which is a giving critique of that movement from academic standpoint not necessarily from a Biblical standpoint but I was listening to her and kind of her journey of how she's come to where she is now in her academic Pursuits and in even her faith that she's newly found and she's wicked smart and she gave the most succinct definition of post-modernism that I think I've ever heard post-modernism is the world view it's the the world view that we live in it's the very air that we breathe this is how it's How we think.

And how we view the world we are living in a post-modern moment that we're all collectively in and she says that post-modernism is the world view that sees reality as narratives created by human beings rather than an order of objective reality discovered by human beings and I thought she hit the nail on the head that this worldview that we live in in the West is a bunch of competing narratives that all narratives culturally are just man-made all they're all stories all narratives are just man-made and what happens is you have a bunch of competing there there's a bunch of competing stories and what's kind of resulted in is a little bit of a power struggle.

That's why so much of the language in this uh discussion is so hyper charged it's because it's a it's a it's a competition of narratives and it's viewed largely in Western culture as each one of these are man-made and she says as opposed to us as humans recognizing the objective narrative the objective reality that there is no such thing as competing truths there's no such thing as your truth or this truth or that truth there is one absolute and objective truth and we as humans as created beings get to discover what that reality is and I thought of wisdom on that was very helpful insightful we had to establish that.

God made man that God as Creator and we are his creatures we have to recognize that he made us and how he made us so first God is creator the second is that we are image bearers we are image bearing people because on in verse 26 of Genesis 1 then God said let us make man in our image after our likeness so God says let us make man mankind human beings in our image after our likeness this Doctrine is known as the Imago day it's Latin.

For the image of God and this image of God Doctrine this is unbelievably profound and wonderful it's one of the most mysterious and impactful doctrines in all the theology that theologians have debated this Doctrine for the last two thousand years and the Mystery of it and The Wonder of it that we as humans are made like God we are like him in some wonderfully mysterious and Powerful way that unlike any other aspect of creation we are distinct and different that we are like.

God that we are like God in the way that my dog is not there's something distinct about us and what's debated is okay but how are we like God how are we like God unlike any other aspect of creation and there's really really helpful arguments that really help flesh that out one of those is is that there's something about our physical characteristic or physical embodiment the way we look that reflects somehow God's spiritual self if you're with us in the book of Exodus we looked at this a little bit in uh Exodus.

When Moses is wanting to see the face of God there's some aspect of the image of God that our physicalness somehow reflects God's spiritualness the God is Spirit but somehow we're like him in some mysterious way another way this is fleshed out is that there is an intellectual component that somehow unlike the rest of creation God has given us the intellect the ability to reason the ability to think in a way that is more like him unlike any other aspect of creation some will argue.

For the more relational aspect that unlike any other aspect of the animal kingdom that humanity is relational and the ways that we build families and societies and communities some will argue that there's a moral component to the image of God that we are moral beings that you can turn on planet Earth and watch a lion track down a zebra and kill it and it doesn't no one is pounding the TV getting furious that this Injustice has happened there's there's no morality in that.

But someone hunts down another human being and it's absolutely a moral issue they're all there are a lot of different aspects to how we're made in the image of God I think all of those have arguments have different value and Merit to them I think they all capture some of this mystery of how we're made to be like God but you put those all together and what that adds up is that Humanity has unbelievable dignity and value and worth as being image bearers every human being has dignity and value and worth whether you identify as transgender or a Christian every single human being has unbelievable dignity and value and worth as being image bears made.

In the image of God and that gets established in Genesis 1. now what does it mean to what do you do with that as image bears and that's what the Lord continues to show us and as this verse continues let us make man in our image after hour likeness and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and of the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the Earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the Earth that has distinct image bears that have value and worth and dignity we give to co-rule with.

God we get to bring Dominion to the chaos of creation a few years ago we spent time in the Book of Genesis a lot of time kind of like we did in Exodus and and we spent some time in Genesis 1 and 2 you can go back and listen to those sermons you can hear how the different creation accounts come together so beautifully and wonderfully but we established then that part of our image bearingness is to help bring order to the chaos of this world this world has made chaotic and we're meant to subdue it with our.

God and that is wonderful and that's an aspect of our image bearing now we are like God unlike any other aspect of creation but we are not exactly like God as creator we are creature we are created got a spirit and we are embodied and it's the third essential aspect I want us to see as we're establishing this Foundation that we are embodied image bearers we're embodied in the second creation account when it starts to focus more on the creation of man we get to.

See how mankind has made in Genesis 2 verses 7 and following it says then the Lord God formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life and the Man became a living creature and the Lord God planted a garden in Eden in the East and there he put the man whom he had formed that God takes the raw elements of this Earth he takes dust he takes atoms and he forms them into a man he forms them into Adam.

And then he breathes life into him and this is intentional of how God designs Humanity to be embodied that his moral intellectual relational Dominion sharing beings are not just spiritual but they're embodied they have flesh we have organs we have blood that's purposeful that's designed that his image bearers can throw a 50-yard pass for a touchdown that I sort of saw so wonderfully last night from our backup quarterback that are that his image bearers can paint and impressionist painting of the sunrise can build and rebuild an engine can weave a tapestry can smoke a brisket can do all types of wonderful things that help bring creation into order and all of these abilities are done.

Physically with physical body parts and physical Minds there's a reason why we don't live underwater it's by God's design that we we don't have gills we're land dwellers that's all intentional in how God makes us as embodied creatures and that's unbelievably important to establish one of the earliest and most destructive heresies false teachings and the first few centuries of the Church was something called gnosticism gnosticism you can see the early kind of sea bed beginnings of it in the book of The Gospel of John and how he is telling the story of.

Jesus but you can see it in Church history in the centuries that followed an agnosticism one of the core teachings is this aspect of dualism this division between material matter and spiritual matter and in this dualism that gnosticism espouses material matter is intrinsically evil it's it's in and of itself evil and that the spiritual matter is good and really that's the problem that's what Nazism says teaches that Jesus wasn't embodied that he was spiritual because he's not of material Evil subject matter it's this idea of division between matter and spirit and in this teaching that really rage through the Church in the.

First few centuries it taught that really what really mattered is this spiritual self and really this inner spiritual self pitted against the body and that's not the teachings of the Scriptures at all and the implications of that are rather dangerous The Body Matters our bodies matter our bodies are not intrinsically evil we certainly inherit faultliness and evil from the fall but when God made Humanity said it's good our bodies are good we we should not it all espouse that bodies are materially evil at all our bodies have dignity and purpose and value and worth I love it one Theologian says Andrew Walker Professor he says this means matter matters our bodies matter your body is.

Not arbitrary it is intentional while you are more than your body you are not less hear that while you you certainly are more than your body and the older that you get the more that you start to fade and decay that that reality is there yeah I am definitely more than my body but don't hear that you're less than no you're not less than your body we're not just a collection of atoms and synapses that happen to be conscious nor are we.

God aware Souls trapped in the materials of the universe and what he's addressing there is we're not a collection of atoms that just evolve together that just happen to be conscious nor are we just got to wear souls in the prison of a body that's not the teaching the Scriptures he says we are living feeling emotional embodied beings designed to relate to and reflect the Creator with each part of ourselves every aspect of ourselves matters and is designed to as embodied creatures to relate and glorify.

God it's the third thing I want us to see now God did not make generic embodied people he didn't make generic embodied people he made genders man and woman which makes us distinct embodied distinct people that's what I want to say the fourth thing I want us to see is that we are distinct people in Genesis 1 27 it says so God created man in his own image in the image of God he created him male and female he created them that he made two embodied engendered image bears both in the image of.

God and then in Genesis 2 he goes on to show how that happened so we saw what happened with Adam that he takes raw elements real physical material good elements from the ground and puts his image into Adam and then we see the creation of Eve picking up in verse 21 of chapter 2. so the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man well and while he slept took one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh and the red that the.

Lord God had taken from the man he made into a woman and brought her to the man again material here that he he takes a part of Adam's Body and then forms Eve verse 23 then the man said this at last is the bone of my bones and the Flesh of My Flesh she shall be called woman because she was taken out of man and that's poetry which in the English is not all that lovely sounding in the Hebrew it sounds a little bit better.

But what's actually being captured there is that Adam has wandered without a counterpart every other aspect of creation has a counterpart but he doesn't and he's lonely and God makes Eve and he says this at last is the bone of my bones and the Flesh of My Flesh she shall be called woman because she was taken out of man this is joyous poetic I'm not alone therefore verse 24. a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife and they shall become one flesh.

Now Chet later on is going to in the upcoming sermons address this more directly and with more time but let me just say very plainly that that's the first time in the Bible we see in verse 24 that the original design for sex is within the context of marriage between man and a woman and that sex outside of that marriage Covenant as a rebellion against the will of God verse 25 and the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed.

Now you cannot read the creation narratives you cannot read these creation stories you cannot tell our history and leave with the idea that men and women are generic image bears human beings are not generic we are embodied and we are engendered every person is created engendered I know when I say that there's a there's a there's a direct rebuttal from some folks to say wait a second what do you say what about intersexual people and we'll spend more time on that later.

But let me just address that out the gate intersexual uh people intersex is a is a genetic abnormality that the chromosomal makeup your DNA doesn't match your phenotypical your your uh genitalia Anatomy there's a difference there and it happens in about .018 of the population is exceedingly rare if you study this you might see a statistic thrown around that says 1.7 that is not true I can send you the NIH study that backs that shows that there's a lot of other genetic deformations that are thrown in that category.

But the actual amount of people in this world that have a different chromosomal DNA makeup than their than their genitalia that that's only 0.018 of the population it's exceedingly rare and the same way that someone might be born without hands because of a genetic abnormality because of the Fall because the fallenness in a fallen world this happens that's a rare exception doesn't mean that the created order doesn't mean that we're supposed to have hands and what happens a lot of times in these discussions is the rare exception gets upheld to disprove the rule no we're created engendered male and female which means it means men you are male from your external features your Adam's Apple.

Your genitalia your muscular structure your bone structure all the way down to your DNA is maleness by purpose and design that means that women your you are female from your face to your chest to your hips to your genitalia to your muscular structure your bones your womb all the way down to your DNA is femaleness and our differences are wonderful and that is the design of our creator that's as intentional handiwork and how he made us I love what pastor Kevin De Young says about this Genesis 1 and 2 in this regard he says far from being a mere cultural construct which is the argument a lot of times the gender is just a cultural.

Construct which we'll get into more later far from being a mere cultural construct God depicts the existence of a man and a woman as essential to his creational plan it's an essential aspect of Genesis 1 and 2. the two are the two are neither identical nor interchangeable but when the woman who was taken out of the man joins again with the man in sexual Union the Two Become One flesh dividing the human race into two genders male and female is not the invention of Victorian prudes or patriarchical Oaths it was God's idea that the idea of man and woman being distinct and different is God's idea our creator that's his idea and he is Creator.

And we are his creatures this means that we should recognize the reality and how we're made and that's important and valuable and to not do so is actually dangerous I was talking to a few of our doctors this week talking to Mike Goble and Brandon Hannah I was getting their take on when you were diagnosing patience does how much does gender matter and it's very much an essential aspect of the equation and to not recognize those differences can be fatal for instance men who have who come in.

For heart attacks present with what are known as some of the classic symptoms chest pain shortness of breath but that's not the same with women women present differently and if you just take how to treat men and say that's how they're supposed to it's it's chest pain and shortness of breath and you discount what a woman is saying when she comes in having a heart attack that could be fatal a very fatal mistake there's a difference between men and women and we should embrace that wonderfully celebrate our differences a rejection of that through self-determination through I determine who I am I Define who I am is an elevation of self to God-like status and it's.

A rejection of God's special design for our embodied selves Andrew Walker goes on to say in his argument that maleness isn't only Anatomy but Anatomy shows that there is maleness and femaleness isn't only Anatomy but Anatomy shows there is femaleness men and women are more than just their Anatomy but they are not less our anatomy tells us what gender we are our bodies do not lie to us God made our bodies and the difference is tell a big part of the story and we shouldn't reject that broad shoulders are not an evolutionary development that came from cavemen to protect the family and to go and kill the Beast that is God's intentional normative design.

For men that women are created differently broad hips are not some evolutionary development that happen over time to spare women death and childbirth that is an intentional embodied design that God chose and those differences should be celebrated they should never be denigrated they should never be belittled not at all now that doesn't mean that there's not exceptions to the rule of course there is every single woman who fights in the UFC circuit every single one UFC has mixed martial arts every single woman who fights in the UFC circuit could end my life in less than two minutes that is a fact that is an absolute undeniable fact I have a bad back it would be.

Over probably in less than 60 Seconds be nurturing my son this week broke his nose like just you can see him he gets out of kid city it's all black and blue through here because he put his arms in his shirt and his legs in his shirt and his class and then when you fall out of your chair and your arms are in your shirt your face breaks the fall and I and I held him in the Children's Hospital emergency room.

For hours waiting to be seen absolutely I'm gonna nurture him it's different than his mom but those exceptions those times where we rise we do different things they don't disprove the normative creation pattern and Rule they just don't this is how God used men to build cities this is how God used women to build Society our differences come together wonderfully and beautifully and to if we act like there's not a difference between maleness and femaleness if we insist upon an interchangeability between the Sexes that runs contrary to the design of.

God if we do this to deny the created embodiment of human beings means that we're taking more of our cues from this cultural moment and the philosophy of the day which resembles more of a Neo gnosticism than anything else that resembles more of this idea of that your material physical body doesn't matter but your inner spiritual self is what truly matters and that is what is ultimately Sovereign is you listen to that inner self and that's how you determine who you are that is more of a form of neo-nosticism than it is biblical Christianity it means that we don't tap into a secret knowledge we tap into the wisdom of the Scriptures humbly searching what.

It means to be men and women who are embodied who are distinct who are created image bearers brothers and sisters these two indifferent embodied genders are meant to come together wonderfully to fulfill God's creation mandate to subdue the Earth to be to be fruitful and to multiply and to fill the Earth and subdue it literally cannot happen without two different embodied sexes it literally cannot happen because of procreation and it cannot happen because we're made in our differences to come together to co-rule and co-rain and to argue that these two genders aren't beautifully and wonderfully designed to rule together with our.

God and all of our differences is to misunderstand reality and a rejection of reality ultimately is a rejection of the very Foundation the fabric of creation itself and ultimately it's a rejection of our creator altogether we need a reality check humbly I submit to you we need a reality check if I pick up a project at home and it requires 106 foot boards I need to measure every board the original measurement matters if I measure a six foot board I cut it.

And then I take that board and I say well that's being a measurement for the next board and then I cut it I'm going to be close to a blade length off and then I would take the next board and use that for the next measurement and cut it and the next board for the next measurement and cut it and cut it and cut it I'm going to end up with a bunch of six foot board seven foot boards eight foot boards and the design of the project is going to go completely out of sorts and every time in the western Church and I mean the western Church not the global South not the East.

And the Middle East because those parts of the Church are not they're not they're not having a problem with this part of the Bible it is mostly the western Church and just be frank it's mostly the Western White Church one cut at a time one cut at a time over the last century one cut at a time one cut at a time is getting further and further and further and further away from God's created design for Humanity and we need a reality check we need to reset and this series is designed to do just that it is designed.

For us to look at the Scriptures and the wisdom and the commands and the Glorious Wonder of how God made us into sit in that and not ignore it to sit in that and see what is actually wonderfully good and beautiful to trust the Lord with how we are made and how we're to operate this is what we get to do as the Church and I'm if we do this humbly and walk this out as the Church family that we're supposed to be.

God willing we're going to discover something wonderful something good Something Beautiful and how God made us now we get to do that here on Sundays then we get to do this scattered in our community groups throughout the week and we've got a wide range of backgrounds political opinions it's not a neutral subject that we're going to have discussions in a vacuum many of us have family and friends who would disagree with us on this and I just would ask us to not run from this.

But to engage to do so humbly and lovingly to tone down some harsh opinions to speak the truth in love and if we can do this well we can discover God's beautiful good design for embodied engendered different created image bearers let me pray Heavenly Father we thank you for the good news of the Gospel that saves us we thank you that we have you who did not look at us in our sin but became embodied In the Flesh for us so that we could.

Look to your death on the cross your real physical death on the cross for us your real physical bodily Resurrection for us so that we could worship you enjoy you as men and women May in your image got to pray that you would invite us into discussions that are soaked in your love and in your wisdom and in your grace I pray that you'd help us open our hearts I pray that you'd help us receive the good news of the Gospel the wisdom of your Scriptures and your teachings.

So that we can be the people of God that you want us to be we ask this in Jesus name amen Matt's going to come up for us and we're going to take the Lord's Supper on the night that Jesus betrayed he took bread and he broke it and he said this is my body that was broken for you and then I took the cup of the new covenants this is my blood that was shed for you that as often as you eat and drink the this you Proclaim my death until I return.

So as Christians we come to the table remembering the death of Jesus the physical embody death of Jesus what that means for us all of us are sinners in need of a savior all of us are broken and we come to the table joyfully remembering what Jesus did for us remembering that one day he will come back he will make all things new in reality will ultimately be reset and we will worship him forever so if you're a Christian you get to come to the table there's gluten-free in that back corner over there.

If you're a Christian we invite you to consider our sin and our savior and joyfully come to the table and take of this meal if you're not a Christian we ask you please don't take of this meal we want you to take part in Christ to take this meal and not know our savior as an empty gesture we want you to know the good news of the Gospel that Jesus saves Center is in a place of faith in him but we ask you to consider our sin Our Savior and joyfully come to table and worship.

Psalm 19: The General, Specific Knowledge of God

Use this guide to help your group discussion as you meet this week.

Psalm 19: The General, Specific Knowledge of God

Spencer Cary

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Today. So you can go to page 259 in your blue Bibles. The text will also be on the screen. Sometimes with people, you get a very general picture of who they are, but it takes time to get to know them specifically. You listen to their stories, get to hear more about them, and then the picture of who they are gets more colored in. That was true for me with my grandfather.

My grandfather passed when I was 10, and as a child, I had a very general picture of who he was. I knew he was kind of this Titan-esque type figure in our family. I knew that he was a good man, a respected businessman, but as a child, there's only so much you can know about the depths of your grandfather. He passed away, and then in the years that followed, I got stories passed down to me. I got to learn more about him. I got to hear from my grandmother while she was still alive, stories about who he was.

I got to hear from my mom, from different people who knew him, from people that worked for him. I mean, even he's been gone for almost 20 plus years, and about a month ago, I went to a place to get my hair cut that I don't normally go to, and I sat in the chair, and this woman in her 70s started cutting my hair, and we started chatting it up, and sure enough, she cut my grandfather's hair all those years ago and gave me more stories of who he was. And it helps complete the picture for me of who my grandfather was. It happens with people, because you can know them generally, but you get to know more about them.

You hear their stories. You get to know them more specifically, and the same is with our God, as what we're going to see in Psalm 19 this morning. The Psalm is going to start with this general picture of God as revealed in creation. Creation gives us a general picture of God, and that is known as the doctrine of general Revelation. And then the next section, we're going to see that the word of God gives us a more specific picture, that the stories that have been passed down to us in the scriptures help give us a different picture that helps fill in who God is, and that's known as the doctrine of special Revelation that we're going to see.

And then the Psalm is going to close out with what our response should be to this God. So let me pray for us, and then we'll jump into the text. Father, I thank you that we get to worship you, that we get to sing praises to you, and we get to sit under the authority of your word. God, I pray this morning that you would help us be present, that you'd help us listen, that you'd help us respond in faith and repentance and in praise. We ask this in Jesus' name. Amen.

All right, so we're going to be starting off in verse 1. The heavens declare the glory of God, and the sky above proclaims his handiwork. So the psalmist starts by saying, look up, see the heavens, see how it proclaims the glory of God. Now, glory is a hard word for us to conceptualize. It's a hard word for us to really understand. Like, I can tell you that it means his splendor, his majesty, the honor and deference that is due to him, but that's still abstract and hard to picture.

But what we see here is that creation helps us picture glory, that God's creation helps us understand it further, that when you look at the heavens, you can see that. When you look at a sunrise or a sunset, you can visualize the glory of God. Like, when I was in college, I did a study abroad program called Semester at Sea, and got to travel around the world on a ship, and a lot of days on the ship, I'd sit out and look at the sunset that would drop into the ocean, and then I woke up for one sunrise, because all I could muster in college is to get up for one sunrise. I had one sunrise and a bunch of sunsets.

But man, when you see the sunrise and the sunset over the open ocean, it's beautiful. It's unbelievable. There's something transcendent, like surpassing about a sunrise and a sunset that everyone feels when you see it. That's why the author of Sherlock Holmes, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, when he is describing a sunrise, he says, how small we feel with our petty ambitions and strivings and the presence of great elemental forces of nature. Now, he's not a Christian. He was a philosophical rationalist.

But he even says, in the face of a sunrise, how small and petty are our ambitions and our strivings. And he says, in the face of great elemental forces of nature, but someone who doesn't believe in God says, I feel small in the presence of something so big. And he's tapping into something that we just understand. There's a reason that we don't look at the sky and immediately think, oh, what a beautiful array of colors as the light is bending along the horizon. Like, we don't go technical. Even the most hardened atheists would look up at the sky and have to suppress this impressive feeling of transcendence.

When you look at a sunrise and sunset, that is glory. That's what that feeling is. It's we're tapping into the glory because creation declares the glory of God. The sunrise and sunset, the heavens shows his handiwork, reveals who the artist is. So when I'm with my kids and we're driving and we see a sunset, I say, kids, guys, look, look at what God has painted for us this evening.

How beautiful is that? How wonderful is that? To help us see and feel like this is the work of God on display. And it isn't just the day that reveals his glory. It's the night. In verse two, it says day to day pours out speech and night to night reveals knowledge.

The creation isn't just speaking. It's isn't just declaring. It's speaking. It's pouring forth knowledge. And night to night, it's giving us more knowledge of who God is. A few months back, I think I mentioned this in a sermon a while back, that I was reading my Garden and Gun magazine, which is what I do these days.

But I was reading it. And I learned that you could look at the, that you could see the Milky Way with the naked eye in certain parts of the world that don't have light pollution. I was like, you can actually see this thing? I was like, that, goals, I'm in. Like, I want to do that. Like, you can, you can look at, in certain parts of the world, just look up at the sky and see that.

I mean, how unbelievable is that? That's a, that's a, just a camera, you guys. Took that picture. The next one that you can stare up at the heavens in a way that the psalmist probably would have. This psalmist, they don't have light pollution back then. They're not dealing with what we got right now.

Hey, look at that in the sky when it's clear in certain parts of the year and see how powerful that picture is and feels so small. When you see something so beautiful, when you encounter this type of glory, you feel smaller and smaller, like you're part of something that is much bigger. Scientists will say that, they say that the, it's debated, but the universe is somewhere around 93 billion light years in diameter. Okay, so a light year is 6 trillion miles. So 93 billion times 6 trillion equals a lot of math.

And, and that's, and they said that's the observable universe. Some theorize that it's, it's even bigger than that. Like there's a new telescope that's out. This is kind of a new thing that's went online this week. The James Webb telescope took a picture that the Hubble telescope couldn't take as clear as this. That's an actual galaxy.

That's, that's a, that's a picture of God's grand creation. Like God made this. He, he, he is bigger than this. When you catch a glimpse of that and his greatness and his vastness, you're tapping into his glory, you're witnessing the glory of his creation. The, the fact that our God thought this into existence, made this out of nothing. It's incredible.

And that glory echoes across the world in verse three. It says, there is no speech, nor are there words whose voice is not heard. Their voice goes out through all the earth and their words to the ends of the earth, to the end of the earth. One commentator said it this way, that creation resounds with a speech that human beings can neither hear nor understand. We just, we can't wrap our minds around how big this is. The psalmist continues, and then he has set a tent for the sun, which comes out like a bridegroom leaving his chamber and like a strong man runs its course with joy.

But the imagery being here, that it got to set a wedding tent. The sun comes out like a bridegroom who after consummating his marriage is joyfully bursting forth every morn. And in verse six, it says, its rising is from the end of the heavens and its circuit to the end of them. And there's nothing hidden from its heat. In Akkadian and Sumerian mythology, which I'm sure is what many of you dabble in in your spare time. But this is a dead, dead language, a dead religion, people group from, you know, 3,000 years ago.

But in their mythology, they have, they would worship a sun God, and they would use very similar language like this. It would burst forth from the wedding chambers every morning. And commentators theorize that maybe the language being so similar here is a bit of a shot that God is bigger than that. Not an object that we worship as it comes forth every morning, that he stretched the tent out for it. He created all of it and stands over all creation. So this first section of the Psalm poetically paints the picture known as general Revelation, a doctrine of general Revelation.

That when you look at the heavens, you gain knowledge of his power, of his wisdom, of his beauty, of his majesty, just by witnessing creation. That's why in verse 2 it says, day to day pours out speech and night to night reveals knowledge. That creation gives us a general picture of who God is. That's what Paul is getting at in Romans 1. In Romans 1 verses 19-20 he says, for what can be known about God is plain to them because God has shown it to them. For his invisible attributes, namely his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived ever since the creation of the world and the things that have been made so that they are without excuse.

What he's trying to help us see is, is that when you look at creation, when you witness this, that you're getting a general glimpse of the invisible attributes of God, namely his eternal power and his divine nature, is evident in creation. It is why even the most hardened atheists can look at a sunrise and feel something and feel like they're a part of something bigger than themselves. Feel like that what they're seeing and what they're witnessing is transcendent, which shouldn't even exist for their understanding and their worldview. It is because creation points to its creator. That's why he goes on to say, they're without excuse.

That when you experience creation, you have a general understanding and a knowledge of who God is. No matter how hard we try to explain the beauty of that, of a sunrise and a sunset, as some subjective experience, no, this points to our God. Now, let me say one last thing on this. For the Christian that is witnessing this, this helps us picture glory better. This helps us understand glory better. C.S.

Lewis in The Four Loves said, But nature gave the word glory a meaning for me. Meaning that looking at nature helped him understand glory better. I still do not know where else I could have found one. I do not see how the fear of God could ever, could have ever meant to me anything but the lowest prudential efforts to be safe if I had never seen certain ominous ravines and unapproachable crags. Which is really thick C.S. Lewis philosophical language.

But what he's saying there is, is I wouldn't have understood glory, I wouldn't have understood the fear of God had I not looked at some of the scariest aspects of creation. The ominous ravines, the unapproachable crags. What he's saying is, is that creation, that nature helps us understand this. That the sunrise and the sunset helps us see the divine beauty of God. That when you witness a very powerful storm and a fearfulness. I remember years ago I was camping on Lake Murray and we were on a tiny little island and a storm blew through.

And it blew our campsite into the water and we'd get pounded by wind and rain and thunder and lightning all around. And I felt so small and helpless. And that was just a small, tiny taste of the power of God. And that helps us picture, helps us feel, helps us understand what the fear of God and the glory of God is. So as Christians, listen, this means you should get outside a little bit.

Alright? Seriously, get off the phone. Put down the game controller. Get out of the meta. Whatever it is. Whatever your speed is.

And go experience God's creation. Like see it and witness it. So that we can have a better feeling, understanding for glory. So he walks through that. Gives us this general picture of God. And then he gets to the next section which is going to be a more specific picture.

Starting in verse 7. The law of the Lord is perfect. Reviving the soul. The testimony of the Lord is sure. Making wise the simple. The precepts of the Lord are right.

Rejoicing the heart. The commandment of the Lord is pure. Enlightening the eyes. The fear of the Lord is clean. Enduring forever. The rules of the Lord are true and righteous all together.

So, while creation gives us this general picture, the scriptures are going to color that in. It's going to give God definition. It's going to help us see the hows and the whys in understanding who our God is. Which I appreciate. That helps. The scriptures helps us really enjoy God better.

Like years ago, growing up, there was a big song when I was a kid called Closing Time. Right? Love that song. Right? And as a kid, really enjoying it. Good song.

But later, years later, the songwriter, the lead singer said, Listen, I wrote that song about becoming a father. It's not about closing time at a bar. It's about becoming a father where the next chapter of your life is about to start. And it's going to be very different. That's why he ends the song saying, Every new beginning comes from some other beginning's end. And I was like, man, when you understand the depth and the commentary behind that, that's powerful.

It helps us appreciate it better. That's what the scriptures help us do. It helps us see and savor God in new and better ways. And in this poetic section we just walked through, there are six synonyms for the scriptures. It says the law, the testimony, the precepts, the commandment, the fear, and rules. So we're going to work through each of these.

He says in verse 7, The law of the Lord is perfect, reviving the soul. So the law there is the first five books of the Old Testament. The Torah. So that would be Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. That was, at the time, that was their scriptures. Later on, more Old Testament scriptures are starting to be added.

But for them, in this time period, they're looking at the law, which is their scriptures. And the psalmist says the law of the Lord is perfect. It is perfect. It is blameless. And we look, as Christians, at the scriptures, the very Bibles that are in this room. We say it's perfect.

When we say that, there is skepticism that creeps in. Some people will say, yeah, how do you know it's perfect? You don't even have the original manuscripts. And the reality is, is that the longer I study this, the longer I study the scriptures, the more unbelievably compelling this case is. How trustworthy and perfect and true they are. That's why we use words like inerrancy and infallible.

Because even though we don't have the original manuscripts, there are more manuscripts, more copies of the scriptures than any ancient text. And it's not even remotely close. There are thousands and thousands and thousands of those manuscripts all around the world. And now digitized on the internet. And when you overlap each of them, okay, over 99% of it lines up perfectly. I mean, think about 2,000 years or 1,500 years of a copying tradition.

And that lines up perfectly. And the less than 1% where this word is used here and this word is used here. There's an unbelievable tradition of scholars who are way, way, way smarter than me. That have studied the original languages their whole life. And they come up with really helpful explanations for why there's some differences there. It's unbelievably trustworthy and true.

And then other skeptics will come in and say, well, what about the contradictions in the Bible? And I just say, well, where? Show me. Point them out. And a lot of times, look at Google. Find them.

But you can work through each of those. Work through each of the things. You get the commentaries out and some closer study and basic logic. You can work through a lot of them. I remember in college, I studied religion at a school that did not believe the scriptures were true at all. And they knew I was, I did.

And one of my professors, she came at me real hard one time. She's like, oh, you believe the Bible's in error, right? All right, well, tell me the story of Noah. Did they load up two by two or was it seven? And as a new Christian, I was like, oh, no. I'll get back to you.

And I said, no. But a little closer study realizes, oh, wait, no. They did load up two by two and they added seven of clean animals. Why? Because those were for sacrifices they were going to offer later when they got off the boat. God didn't want to have these species go extinct.

Just basic stuff like that. That's a closer study of the text. Over and over and over again, the longer I studied the scriptures, the more I realized the law of the Lord is perfect. It is perfect. It revives the soul. Like someone wandering in the desert with cracked lips, thirsty.

And they stumble upon an oasis and they drink of the water. So the scriptures revive the broken soul. The law of the Lord is perfect. He goes on to say, the testimony of the Lord is sure, making wise the simple. The testimony of the Lord is sure. It's trustworthy.

It's a trustworthy thing. It is secure. It means you can bank your life on it. We as Christians believe that. We believe that our life, our authority is God in the scriptures. It's God's word that shapes us.

It's our foundation for how we live our life. And some people would say, well, why would you choose something so old, so ancient, so archaic? Why can't you get with the times? Why can't you have a more updated understanding? And when that happens, a good thing to do is, okay, well, what is your foundation for belief? What is your foundation for how you live your life, for how you understand the bigger things in life?

And if you can ask some questions like, why, well, where do you get that from? Well, why? And press in a little further. There's typically two main places where the skeptic will land. It will land that they are their own authority, which is what I believe. Well, they are their own authority, or they place their authority in a handful, just a few different, mostly dead, older white guys, Darwin, Nietzsche, Freud.

But it's like, no, I believe that our foundation is more secure than that. I believe wholeheartedly that the scriptures that have guided the people of God for thousands of years still holds immense value. Like, last summer, we spent a summer in the Proverbs. And we looked at the Proverbs, which are, they're not promises. They're proverbial advice, guidelines for how to live your life so that you can stay out of poverty, so that, like, a passionate lover doesn't try to kill you. You know, basic advice for life.

We looked at that, and it's like, no, this is wisdom that is worth building your life upon. And if you do that, it generally goes well for you. There are a lot of young guys who just lost all of their life savings on NFTs. And if you want to know, if you don't know what NFTs are, it's okay. You never need to know what NFTs are. Just, it's basically a Ponzi scheme for people under the age of 40 that like really bad digital art.

Okay? Gambling on that kind of stuff. But they lost everything on that. And it's like if you just paid attention to the wisdom of the scriptures, which Proverbs 13, 11 says, wisdom or wealth gained hastily will dwindle, but whoever gathers little by little will increase it. Man, if you built your life upon that, it generally will go better for you. That's worked well for the people of God for the last 3,000 years.

So when I was researching NFTs, I was like, oh, this feels kind of schemey. This feels a little bit better. If you build your life upon it, it is trustworthy and true. Verse 8, it says, The precepts of the Lord are right, rejoicing the heart. The precepts, these are the rules. They are right.

That if you live your life in line with the will of God, you'll get more than happiness as the American dream defines it. You'll tap into some eternal joy that rejoices the heart. He goes on to say, the commandment of the Lord is pure, enlightening the eyes. The commandments of the scriptures, the teachings, where God commands us to do a thing, that's actually pure and good for us. And it opens our eyes to what is ultimately good. One of my friends from study abroad, her husband, he got an acting role on a TV show that just got released.

And I've been watching, we're Facebook friends, I've been watching him post about it all the last year. He's like, I'm going to be on a show with Chris Pratt. I was like, sweet. So I turned it on, I watched the, it just dropped on Amazon, the terminal list. I watched the first couple episodes. I saw him in the first episode.

I was like, man, this is awesome. And then I was like, oh, this, this is just going to be a super violent show where he just brutally murders everyone who wronged him. I got to look at it ahead of time. I knew there wasn't like sex or nudity and stuff that wouldn't be good for my soul, but I didn't fully realize it was just going to be completely vengeance. He's going to brutally murder everyone. I was like, no, I'm good.

I don't need this. Because if you have a framework for your life that says, if you basically, if you, the prism for how you live your life was basically two basic commands. Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your mind, with all your soul, with all your strength, and love other people, your neighbor, enemies, etc. If you love God and love other people, and that was how you made decisions, you'd realize there's certain things like, no, this doesn't actually help me love God. Does this actually inspire anything that is good for my soul? I'll pass.

It's because the commandment of the Lord is pure, enlightening the eyes. The fear of the Lord is clean, enduring forever. Now, we don't normally see fear as a synonym for Scripture, but here it fits and it's like, oh, this is what he's getting at. The fear of the Lord is clean. And what this is tapping into is that the Scriptures help us fear God. Now, over the last 20-ish years in the American church, there's been like an attempt to say, well, fear of God, when the command says fear God, that actually what it's getting at is it's just saying worship Him.

Just revere Him. Reverence and awe and worship. And it's like, no, not quite. Yes, it does imply that. Fear is worship and awe and reverence. But it also means what it literally says, fear.

There's a command here to fear God. It is good for us to fear the Lord. Yes, He is gracious and good and kind and merciful. And all of those attributes. And also, He is the scariest object in the universe. He should be feared above all things.

We should absolutely see that. Because it is clean and endures forever. The roles of the Lord are true and righteous all together. That's highlighting more of the same things that we just walked through. That's how He paints the Scriptures. With these pictures.

They help us understand God. They help us build our life on something bigger. And then in verse 10, He summarizes. More to be desired are they than gold. Even much fine gold. Sweeter also than honey and drippings of the honeycomb.

Moreover, by them is your servant warned. In keeping them there is great reward. He says they're more desirable than gold. Gold was the most valuable and the most valuable objects of their time. Honey, honey. They didn't have sugar.

Cane, like us. That was the sweetest thing of their time. So He says, the Scriptures are more valuable than the most valuable object you could lay hold of. It's sweeter than the most sweetest thing you can taste. That's what George was tapping into last week when he said delight in the law of the Lord. There is, listen, there is immense value.

There's immense value in experiencing our Creator and His Word. By enjoying our God. By reading the message of the Gospel from Genesis to Revelation. By these Scriptures we are warned and we are rewarded. The Scriptures color in this picture wonderfully. We get this general, big picture of who God is.

We look at creation. And then it gets further colored in. And we get to see more of who our God is. And why He made us. And why He would redeem us. And how He redeems us.

As we look at the Scriptures more and more. And if we do that. If you look at creation. And see how big our God is. And then look at the stories that are passed down. It will help you understand our God better.

In the same way that a 10 year old can't understand their grandfather. I have a general picture. It takes stories being passed down. And we have the Scriptures that are passed down to us. That help us picture who this God is. Just look at the Gospels, y'all.

Look at the stories of Jesus. Over and over again. There's so many stories about our God in the flesh. That are just wonderful. Like I think about Jesus when He heals the leper. In Matthew 8.

When this man that has leprosy comes to Him. And it wasn't just that he had a disease. That he had to be healed. That he was seen by his culture as disgusting. And dirty. And had to live outside the people of God.

He couldn't be in community with other people. That he comes to Jesus. And Jesus puts His hand on him. And says be clean. And He heals him. And changes that man's life.

And that story happens over and over and over again. Even in a more spiritual reality now. For those of us who feel dirty. And broken. In a need of redemption. He cleanses us through His righteousness.

And His blood. When I think about Jesus on the cross. And He is dying. And He says, Father forgive them. They know not what they do. I look at that and say, how could you say that?

Jesus, they're murdering you. You're talking about people who are murdering you. And you're concerned about their forgiveness. How beautiful is that? How glorious is that? I think about even smaller stories.

Where Jesus, even after His resurrection. He's at the end of the Gospel of John. He has this moment with Peter and James and John. Where he's about to teach Peter about the need for shepherding. But they're on the boat.

And they're fishing. And they see Jesus on the shore. This is before He ascends into heaven. They see Him on the shore. And they come ashore. And it's just a simple picture of Jesus making breakfast for them.

He's cooking fish for them. Which is not my kind of breakfast. But if Jesus was doing it, I'm in. And He, just a simple, He's the God of the universe. He could have done it anyway. But He's simply, humbly making them food.

I mean, guys, there is story after story after story after story after story. That helps us see how good our God is. How much He loves us. How much He cares for us. How glorious He is. And how better it is to live with Him into eternity.

And when you finally understand that. When you see the general picture of God in creation. And are overwhelmed by His glory. And you mind the scriptures to see who our God is. Your only response should be how this psalmist finishes. 12 through 14.

Here's how He responds. Who can discern His errors? That's rhetorical. Nobody. Who can discern His errors? Who can call out God?

He says, declare me innocent from head and faults. He says, God, declare me innocent of a sin that I cannot see. And then He goes on to say, Keep back your servant also from presumptuous sins. Let them not have dominion over me. So He says, keep me from the hidden sins that I cannot see.

And keep me from the willful sins. I don't want any of it. The stuff that I can't see. The willful ones that I do. God, keep me from all of my rebellion. Don't let that have dominion over me.

He says, then I shall be blameless and innocent of great transgression. And then He goes on to finish this off with this unbelievably poetic and powerful request. He says, let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in your sight. Oh Lord, my rock and my redeemer. He says, God, let everything. Let everything.

My thoughts. The meditations of my heart. Let the words that come out of my mouth. Let everything. Let all of it be acceptable in your sight. Oh Lord, my rock and my redeemer.

The God who created the universe and created me and has every fiber of my being. Oh Lord, my rock and my redeemer. What a powerful prayer. And as Christians, we read this Psalm. This side of the cross and empty tomb. We know how to do this.

And it's as simple as Romans 10, 9. Because you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead. You will be saved. That is how we are blameless before the Lord. When you encounter how big God is and how glorious God is. And you realize how much we've sinned against Him.

How unacceptable on our own we are before Him. When you realize how our sin earns death and hell. When you realize that part of the gospel. And then you encounter how much He loves us because of His great love. The only reasonable response to the gospel is this. It is throwing our lot in with this God.

And saying, I believe in you, my rock, my redeemer. Y'all, we as Americans are so unbelievably blessed to have access to God. Where we can look up at the heavens and see the glory of God. And have a Bible on our phone. We have unbelievable access to our God. And if you're figuring this out.

If you're feeling out Christianity. You're not sure about this yet. I invite you. Look up at the stars. See the unbelievable design. Of this universe.

I mean, look at the earth. And how it's perfectly positioned from the sun. At the right distance. With the right tilt. All the way down to how the cells in our body are designed. And how the, like our eye and the complexities.

Look at all of it. And see. This points to our Creator. And then I invite you. From that position. Come to the Scriptures.

And see who He is. And if you are a Christian. Witness creation. And worship Him. Search the Scriptures. And delight in Him.

Don't miss that. Life is busy. Okay. It is boom, boom, boom, boom. Death. That's it.

It moves very, very quickly. And we as Americans are very, very busy. And fill our days with all kinds of things. Don't miss this. That when you're driving into work. And you're concerned.

And worried about the things you've got to do at work. And you see the sunrise coming up over. Don't miss that. Look at that sunrise. And be reminded of how big. And how glorious.

And how majestic. And how amazing our God is. And respond like this psalmist. When he says, Who can discern his errors? Declare me innocent from hidden faults. See the sunrise.

And go, God, you're so big. And you're so glorious. God, thank you for redeeming me. Thank you for loving me with a fierce, unbelievable love that I don't deserve. That when you look out in your yard. And you see the birds.

Mining the grass for food. Every morn. Remember. That God provides for His creation. Look at the Scripture. Remember what Jesus taught in the Sermon on the Mount.

In Matthew 6. That's a picture of how God provides. That He provides. He takes care of His creation. That when you are in a storm. And your house is shaking.

Or an earthquake. Because that's a thing here nowadays. When you feel that. And you feel scared. Let that roll up into what the psalmist says. Keep back your servant also from presumptuous sins.

Let them not have dominion over me. Let that fear roll up into God. You're so big. You're so powerful. Don't let the hidden faults. Or my willful sin against you.

Don't let that roll over me. Let that roll up into worship. And praise. And obedience. That comes from a position of deep love for God. Tonight.

As the moon rises. I think it's a full moon. Maybe. As it rises up over. The horizon. You see it against the backdrop of the stars.

And you see how big and vast. This universe is. And you think about that. The God who made all of that. Who stands over all of it. Knows every part of who you are.

Knows your past. Your present. Your future. And holds it all in his hands. Respond like the psalmist. Let the words of my mouth.

And the meditation of my heart. Be acceptable in your sight. Oh Lord. My rock. And my redeemer. Let creation.

And the beautiful. Word of God. Help us. Worship. Our glorious. God.

Adam & Eve

Adam & Eve

Matt Freeman

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Transcript

We're really excited about this new series. I'm Matt. I'm one of the pastors of Mill City Church. And so I hope you enjoyed the video. If you came in late and you weren't able to see the whole thing, we will be putting it up on Facebook and we'll send it out through Twitter so that you can view that. And you've got the handout, so you want to keep that handy.

You can stick it in your Bible. Or again, we've got the paper copies for you over there on that table. For most of us, we grew up with some type of familiarity with the main stories of the Bible, right? So whether you grew up in church or you didn't, these stories are not even unfamiliar to our culture. So even in our culture, there's TV shows, there's movies that are made, there are even musicals.

So an example of that would be Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat. If you've seen that, I'm sorry. If you haven't, don't Google it. It's interesting. And then they just made a movie about Noah starring Russell Crowe, who was the main actor in Gladiator, which I've heard that's an amazing movie, but about the only thing it has in common with the story of the Bible is that there's a guy named Noah. There's a flood and a boat.

And then we're all kind of familiar with the story of David and Goliath, which I love that story because I played defensive line in college, and I'm kind of short. And so I was always going up against guys who were like 6'4", 6'5", and so it was always like, I've got a channel on my inner David, and I can take all of these guys down. But that's what we're going to be covering in this series are some of the main stories of the Bible. And most of you know this, but I grew up as a part of a church, and so I heard these stories all the time. I heard them in different places. One of the places I heard them was in Sunday school.

Some of you might have grown up in Sunday school, which is the worst name ever. Like, kids don't like going to Monday through Friday school. I don't know how Sunday school is going to make it any better. And then you had the week-long adventure during the summer called Vacation Bible School. Again, words mean things, so I don't know who got to come up with all of these names. But one of my favorite places to study the Bible and to learn Bible stories was on Wednesday night, and this group met in the gym, and it was called the RAs.

Oh, some of you are nodding your head. Yes, the RAs. That stands for Royal Ambassadors. Fancy, I know. No, for real, we had a pledge. You look at me like this isn't fancy.

As a royal ambassador, I will do my part to help old ladies with liberty and justice for all. See, I even remember the pledge from when I was in the RAs. So I heard these Bible stories in all kinds of different places, and I don't think this is going to surprise any of you, but growing up, I was referred to as a husky child. And so there was always some kind of incentive to pay attention when the teacher was talking. And in fourth grade, I had a Sunday school teacher that had this big brown bag full of flavored Tootsie Rolls. Let's just say I learned a lot in that class, got a lot of questions right, and my fourth grade picture tells the tale.

I mean, it's just... And even in RAs, the best one in RAs was, if you guys will listen for 10 minutes, we'll go outside and we'll play football. Deal. I'll listen for 10 minutes if we get to go outside and play football. And most of the time, we were studying the main stories from the Bible. So basically, the teacher would begin.

He would tell the story, or we'd read the story from the scripture. And then he would ask us questions, and the aim of the questions was to take us towards some kind of moral application. So you may be familiar with the story of Job and all the terrible things to happen to Job. Well, the moral of the story in Job is that we just have to have patience and wait on God no matter what's going on. Or maybe you've heard the story of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. These three guys were thrown into a fire because they refused to bow down to a statue.

And they walk around in the fire, and they aren't hurt by it, and they come out. And so, of course, the moral of that story is you need to keep your faith in God no matter who picks on you. That's kind of the moral application. And then the one you're probably most familiar with is Jonah and the whale. And so the moral of that story is if God calls you to do something, you better do it or you can get swallowed by a fish. And nobody wants to get swallowed by a fish.

And so I grew up hearing these stories, and here's how I was taught to process them. What's the story? What's the application? And so I get in conversations with people sometimes, and they ask me, How am I supposed to read the Bible? Am I supposed to glean some kind of moral truth from it? Or am I just supposed to be kind of learning the facts?

Am I supposed to insert myself into the story? Or am I supposed to kind of like step out and be a third person and just learn stuff? How am I supposed to read the Bible? And the aim of all of those questions is what leads us to what we'll be addressing in this series, which is how do we properly read and understand the Bible, especially when it comes to some of these big stories. So we're going to be beginning, if you want to grab a Bible, we're going to be beginning in Genesis chapter 3, which is on page 2 in the Bibles that we have for you on the seats.

But before we do, I just want to pray that God would speak to us during our time. Let's pray together. God, thank you that we don't have to wing this, that our faith is not dependent on our ability to somehow figure out who you are, but you've actually chosen to reveal yourself to us through your word. And God, we praise you for that, and we thank you for that. And what we ask for this morning is that your Holy Spirit would open us up to understanding who you are and how we relate to you as it comes from the story of Adam and Eve. We pray this in Jesus' name.

Amen. So again, our story is going to be in Genesis chapter 3, which is on page 2. But since we're at the beginning of the Bible, I want to give you a quick back story of chapters 1 and 2 to kind of get us to the main story that we'll be talking about today. So you can kind of follow along in your Bible if you want to. But what we see in Genesis chapter 1 is that God speaks and things begin to happen.

God says, let there be light. The God of the universe speaks and creation begins to happen so that light separates from darkness and land separates from water and he creates plants and animals and ultimately humanity. And he does it over the course of six days. And at the end of six days, he says that it's very good. And then on the seventh day, God rested. And as it moves into chapter 2, what we get is just a zoomed-in picture of part of God's creation.

So in chapter 1, we see that God speaks creation into existence. But when it comes to humanity, we get a much different picture. As you can kind of see in verse 7, it says that God with his hands takes dust and he forms man and he breathes the breath of life into him. And I want you to get that because it's really cool. God speaks creation into existence except for humanity. God sets the stage for the intimate relationship he desires with humanity, even in creation.

It's just a really cool picture. And Adam exists in relationship with God. And God takes Adam and he puts him in the midst of a paradise in a garden called Eden. And Adam gets to live in relationship with God. God gives him things to do. He has dominion over creation and he's to work in the garden.

There's even parameters to how he relates to God and the things that he does within the garden. God says you can eat the fruit of any tree in the garden except for one, just the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Don't eat that or you'll die. And Adam's like, that's a sweet deal. I can do that. I can handle that.

And in relating to God, God wants to find a helper suitable for Adam. He doesn't want Adam to be alone. It's not good for Adam to be alone. And so God gives Adam the responsibility of naming all of the animals. I mean, you got to picture that for a second. The Adam gets the responsibility of naming all the Adam.

So go with me there for a second. First animal. Adam's ready. Okay. First animal comes in. Rhinoceros.

Sweet. Got it. Nailed it. Next one. Keep them coming. Flamingo.

Next one. What in the duck-billed platypus? We'll call this one. And I guess Adam got bored after a while. There's so many. It's just kind of like cat.

Next. Dog. Next. How many of these things are there, really? I mean, how many animals? And obviously, Adam was speaking English.

Duh. So that's what he called those things. So just erase all of that from your memory. Because obviously, he wasn't speaking English. But at the end of naming all of the animals, there's not a helper found suitable for Adam.

No helper is found among the animals that's suitable for Adam. And so what we see in 21, if you've got your Bibles, it's the same page that you're on. So we might as well read it. Starting in verse 21. It says this. So the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man.

And while he slept, took one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh. And the rib that the Lord God had taken from the man, he made into a woman and brought her to the man. Then the man said, this at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh. She shall be called woman because she was taken out of man. Therefore, a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife. And they shall become one flesh.

And the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed. So what happens is that God puts Adam to sleep, takes the rib, with it creates a woman. And he brings the woman to Adam. And in the original language, Adam sings. That's what that is. Adam is so pumped up about the creation that God had just brought to him that he, homeboy, sings.

He's so excited. And it says that they became one flesh together and they existed in this garden. And I love that God paints the picture from creation of what biblical marriage gets to look like. One man and one woman joined together in covenant relationship with God and with each other. And it was perfect. In the midst of a paradise, there's Adam and Eve enjoying each other, enjoying God's creation.

And they were naked and not ashamed. Amen. Let's pray. I think that's the end, right? That's where we want the story to stop. It's like, oh, don't go further.

But the problem is we actually have to go further because the Bible does. So while we want to stay in paradise where everything's good, we're going to move on to chapter 3. So now I want you to go ahead and grab your Bible. The verses are not going to be on the screen. So I want you to have it in your hands.

It's looking at Genesis chapter 3, verse 1. I'll give you a second to flip there. Verse number 1. Now the serpent was more crafty than any other beast of the field that the Lord God had made. He said to the woman. All right, it's already getting weird.

We've got talking snakes. Hang on to that. We're coming back to it. He said to the woman, did God actually say you shall not eat of any tree in the garden? And the woman said to the serpent, we may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden, but God said you shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the midst of the garden. Neither shall you touch it lest you die.

But the serpent said to the woman, you will not surely die. For God knows that when you eat of it, your eyes will be opened and you will be like God, knowing good and evil. Now, we don't get this right off the bat. We don't, but we should have known something was up when Eve starts talking to a snake. And what we find out from context is that this is Satan in the form of a snake. And what we see in scripture is that Satan was a created being who rebelled against God.

And it's going to use descriptors like the father of lies, deception, schemes, tricks. And so we shouldn't be surprised that when Satan shows up in the garden, he does so in the form of a disguise to talk to Eve. And he comes to Eve and he says, did God say that you couldn't eat of any tree that's in the garden? And Eve responds, no, just not the one that's in the middle, because if we eat of that one, we'll die. And Satan deceptively says, you won't surely die. At least not immediately.

And the reason that God doesn't want you to eat of the fruit is because you'll be like God. You'll be like God. And God doesn't want that. He doesn't want you to be like him. So, so yeah, yeah. It's just the knowledge of good and evil.

He just wants you to be like him. It's really not that big a deal. It seems like Eve takes the bait. Okay. Verse six. So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food and that it was a delight to the eyes and that the tree was to be to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate.

And she also gave some to her husband who was with her and he ate. Then the eyes of both were opened and they knew that they were naked and they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loincloths. And see, now you understand the reason why I wanted to stop at the end of chapter two, because humanity made it two chapters and then blew it. That's what we see in this story is that Eve falls for the deception of Satan and takes the fruit and she eats. And then she gives some to her husband who is standing passively by while she's talking to a snake. That's another sermon for another day.

And he eats of it. And it says immediately their eyes were opened to the fact that they were naked and ashamed. Have you ever had that dream where everything's going good? And then all of a sudden you look down, you're no longer wearing clothes and you're in front of all your friends and families. You ever had some of you are squirming in your seat like, no, that's the worst dream ever. However, they feel that shame for the first time.

And here's why. Because when they, God had commanded Adam, don't eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. So that when he ate, he knew the difference between good and evil. And for the first time, humanity felt the weight of rebellion against God. Adam and Eve knew that they had sinned. It wasn't just that they were naked and ashamed.

They knew the depth of their depravity at that moment because they had rebelled against God. And so they made loincloths for themselves. Pick it up in verse 8. And they heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day. And the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden. But the Lord God called to the man and said to him, where are you?

And he said, I heard the sound of you in the garden and I was afraid because I was naked and I hid myself. He said, who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten of the tree of which I commanded you not to eat? The man said, the woman whom you gave to be with me, she gave me fruit. She gave me fruit of the tree and I ate. Then the Lord God said to the woman, what is this that you have done?

The woman said, the serpent deceived me and I ate. So God shows up again. He walks in perfect relationship with his creation and God's looking for his creation. And he calls out to them. And Adam says that he's hiding because he was afraid because he was naked. And God says, who told you?

Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten of the tree of which I commanded you not to? And Adam just dodges the question. In fact, Adam has the audacity to say, the woman that you, the woman that you put here to be with me, she gave me the fruit. So Adam actually blames God and he blames the woman.

And then God turns to the woman and he says, what is this that you have done? The woman said, the serpent deceived me and I ate. And what we're going to look at in the rest of this story is that because there has been sin, because there was disobedience to what God commanded, there's ultimately discipline and punishment. And so what we're going to see in successive order is the punishment that's handed down to the serpent, that's handed down to Satan, that's handed to Eve, and then it's handed to Adam. Jump back with me to verse 14. The Lord God said to the serpent, because you have done this, cursed are you above all livestock and above all beasts of the field.

On your belly you shall go and dust you shall eat all the days of your life. I will put enmity between you and the woman and between your offspring and her offspring. He shall bruise your head and you shall bruise his heel. To the woman, he said, I will surely multiply your pain and childbearing. In pain you shall bring forth children. Your desire shall be for your husband and he shall rule over you.

And to Adam he said, because you have listened to the voice of your wife and have eaten of the tree of which I commanded you, you shall not eat of it. Cursed is the ground because of you. In pain you shall eat of it all the days of your life. Thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you and you shall eat the plants of the field. By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread till you return to the ground. For out of it you were taken, for you are dust and to dust you shall return.

So there is punishment. Because there is disobedience to God's word, there is punishment. And the punishment for the serpent is that it would be the lowest of all creation. And we see that with Satan. That he is cast away from God. The furthest from God.

The woman would have pain in childbearing. Yes, ladies, you get to thank Eve for that. That she would have pain in childbearing. And ultimately there would be struggle within the marriage relationship. Where the man would abdicate his God-given role of leading in the family. And the woman would fight him for it.

There would be struggle within the marriage relationship. And for men the curse is that he would work his entire life toiling, struggling by the sweat of his face. And very little would be yielded from it. And what we see in the rest of the story is that God makes clothing for Adam and Eve. And he walks them out of the garden. And that's the end of the story.

Now, I want us to time out for a second. And just zoom out. Take a breath. Because the room got heavy. Because we feel the weight of the story. I want you to take a breath for a second.

Remember, the point of this series is to figure out, What am I supposed to take away from this story? So growing up, again, the way that I began to read the Bible was this. What's the story? And what's the moral application? And more often than not, whether it be in Sunday school or RAs or even hearing it preached, This is the way I was taught this passage. Here's the moral application.

The first part is this. The way that we exist in relationship with God is by our actions. The things that we do. That's how we relate. Our actions. The second part is the actions that we can choose.

So we can, God has rules. The second part is we can either choose to obey those rules or rebel against those rules. And the third part is this. If you accept God's commands and you follow his rules, you'll be blessed. And if you rebel against his commands, you will be punished. So let me break it down just a little bit shorter.

God has rules. We obey them. Or there are consequences. And so in the story of Adam and Eve, what we see is that God has rules. They disobeyed God. And so there were consequences.

Everything was going good until they screwed up. And then after they sinned, it was never the same again. And so the application for me was that God has rules. And I have to do good. And I have to be good to exist in relationship with God. Because it's on me to do what I have to do to be in relationship with God.

That's what I got from the story. And so I grew up scared. Scared that I was going, that not if, but when. When was I going to screw up? Scared that I had to earn God's favor or to face his punishment. That in the end, God actually cared more about my behavior than he did about me.

So I started looking at life like it was all a series of tests. Tests to see that if I would honor God. And so that if I was doing well, if I was doing the things that I was supposed to do as a Christian, that God would be blessing me and that I would have an overall good life. But when I screwed up, when I messed up, there would be punishment. And life as I know it would begin to diminish more and more each time. That in the end, I was going to let God down.

And some of us feel that. Some of you, that's the way you understand Christianity to be. So that you feel this burden that you'll never be able to achieve what God has set forth for you. That you're going to screw up. You're going to mess up. You think that the way that you relate to God can only be through your actions.

And if you sin and you're disobedient, that ultimately, you're just going to be punished and cast out. And the truth is, if we read the Bible like it's about us, that's what we'll get out of it. But here's something that's absolutely beautiful about the Bible that we get to see this morning. The Bible is ultimately to reveal God to us. So that the aim of Scripture is ultimately to point us towards Jesus.

The truth that can set us free this morning is that the Bible is about Jesus, not about us. And so from the very first story in the Bible, God's going to set the stage for how we understand Him. And understand how we relate to Him. And I know you're thinking, yeah, but what we just saw was that it's based off of our action. That's how we relate to God, right? So if we're doing good, we're in good stead with God.

If we're doing bad, we're not. I want us to jump back into the story and see the good news that's actually here. So grab your Bibles again. We're going back to the story, to verse 14 and verse 15. Now what we're about to look at is referred to by theologians.

This actually has a name. It's called the Proto-Evangelion. All right, I know, big word. Proto meaning first, like prototype. Evangelion meaning good news. So theologians, guys that study the Bible refer to this as the first good news.

And I know you're already looking at it going, wait, wait, wait. This is the curse of Satan. This is the curse to the serpent. How in the world is this good news for us? How does this teach us about how we relate to God? Jump back there with me.

Verse 14, the Lord God said to the serpent, because you have done this, cursed are you above all livestock and above all beasts of the field. On your belly you shall go, and dust you shall eat all the days of your life. I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring. He shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel. So again, this is the curse of the serpent.

It starts off, it says you're going to be cursed. You're going to crawl around on your belly. Dust you're going to eat all the days of your life. So in comparison to Satan, the lowest of all creation. And then in verse 15, it begins to take a turn. Look at it again.

It says, I will put enmity between you and the woman, between your offspring and hers. So it says enmity. Enmity between you and the woman, between the serpent and the woman. Enmity, another word for that would be hostility. Yeah, we would agree with that. We would agree that there's hostility between us and Satan, the offspring of Eve.

But it seems, if you keep reading, that it's being a little more specific here. Look at the last little bit. It says, he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel. Who's he? I thought we were talking about the serpent and Eve. But now all of a sudden, there's this he.

And if you jump back in the verse, it says that there's going to be enmity between you and the woman. Okay? Between your offspring and hers. And what we begin to realize is that it's not just talking about any offspring of Eve. It's actually pointing towards a very specific descendant of Eve. And if you think about this, what it's saying, it says, you will bruise his heel, but he will bruise your head.

And if you think about it, if a snake were to strike at the heel of a man, it could hurt. But the heel of a man to the head of a serpent would kill it. And what we see is that this very specific descendant of Eve is going to do this thing. And here's what's cool about the Bible. It works together. It connects.

And what we see in Luke's gospel in chapter 3, he's given us a little family history of Jesus. And he's tracing Jesus' line back and back and back. And this is how it finishes. Son of Enos, son of Seth, son of Adam, son of God. So it traces Jesus' lineage all the way back to being a descendant of Adam and Eve.

A very specific descendant of Adam and Eve. And what we see in Isaiah chapter 53 is this. When Isaiah is writing about what he sees, what is to come with the Messiah, the one who would save, the one who would redeem, it says this, he would be bruised for our iniquities. It says he would be bruised for our sins. And as we begin to put the story together, it's like, wait, no, no, this isn't just a curse. God is setting the stage for what he's ultimately going to do.

That Jesus would go to the cross carrying our sin and carrying our shame. And Satan thought he had won when Jesus went to the cross. He thought he had killed him. But Jesus would walk out of the grave three days later conquering sin, death, hell, and Satan stomping the head of the serpent. And what we see is from the very beginning, from the first rebellion of man, that God is setting the stage for what he is ultimately going to do. That this story is not ultimately about the fact that we're going to screw up, that we're going to mess up, we're going to be punished and cast out.

It is ultimately pointing us towards what's true about what Jesus is going to do. This story tells us that it's not about our action. It's not ultimately about our action. It's ultimately about what Jesus would do on our behalf. And it sets the stage for the whole scope of the Bible to be able to point us towards what's true about Jesus and the gospel. And since that's true, that becomes the lens by which we read the entire Old Testament.

It's not what is this story, where do I find myself in the story? It is what does this story ultimately teach me about Jesus and the gospel. It's not how do I need to act, behave, respond, work it out on my own to earn God's favor. It is how do I grow in understanding what Jesus has already accomplished for me and how does that impact the rest of my life as I live with him. Because if we read the Bible without Jesus as the main character, we'll miss the point. And as Christians, we get the benefit of knowing the end of the story before we ever start reading the beginning of it.

And that's a little bit of what we're starting to see in this story. I want you to think for a moment about the movie Titanic. Okay? We all know about the story from history, and you've probably all seen the movie before. You cannot watch the movie Titanic without knowing that the ship at the end is going to sink. Think about it.

So you're watching Jack in one of the opening scenes. Jack's sitting there. He's playing cards. He's playing cards, and they're all throwing in their bets and stuff. And then two White Star Line tickets hit the table. And you're watching.

You're going, oh, no. Uh-uh. That's not good. Jack wins, snatches the tickets, throws everything into a bag, and heads out the door. And you're like, oh, man. Oh, no.

No, that's ain't good. Maybe he'll trip. I don't know. Maybe he'll get hit by a car. Oh, maybe he won't make it to the ship. Maybe the ship will pull away.

Ship, go. Go, Titanic. Go. Oh, he's on the ship. Okay. Great.

Because we know the end of the story. And all along the way, as Jack saves Rose, as Jack and Rose fall in love, as there's betrayal, as the ship strikes the iceberg, all along the way, you know the end of the story. And it informs how you watch the beginning of it. And you know that ultimately, Jack and Rose are going to end up in the water. And Rose is going to say, I'll never let go, even though she does let go. And really, Rose was super selfish.

Because if you watch the movie, there was room for both of them on the door. It's absolutely ridiculous. A little selfish. Right, Rose? I mean, maybe both of you could have made it. But you can't.

You can't watch that movie without knowing the end of the story. The same thing is true of the movie The Sixth Sense. When you've watched the movie The Sixth Sense, you realize that the character that Bruce Willis was playing the entire time was dead. He was dead the whole time. And if you've never seen The Sixth Sense, I'm sorry. I just blew that for you.

But you can't watch it the same again. And the same thing is true for us as Christians. And I want you, let that seep in for a minute. You cannot read the Old Testament without knowing ultimately what Jesus is going to accomplish on our behalf. And we get a picture of it, even in this story. A story where we think that it's all about our action and what we've done in condemnation.

And we get this beautiful picture of ultimately what Jesus is going to accomplish on our behalf. And so as we flip the moral on its head, what we see is this story isn't. This story isn't about the fact that God has rules. And that Adam and Eve sinned. Therefore, they had to be punished. And even though there was this vague forgiveness type thing, that life was never the same.

Chapter 3, verse 15 tells us that the ultimate idea of Scripture is this. In the end, Jesus is the hero. Jesus steps in and through his life and death and resurrection forgives us of our sins. Takes away the debt of our sin and offers us a way back into relationship with God. In fact, it's his perfect relationship that's applied to our account. Paul's going to pick up on this in the New Testament.

When he's writing to the church in Corinth and to the church in Rome, he's going to draw this comparison between Adam and Christ. This comparison between Adam and Jesus. And he's going to say that through one man came sin. Through Jesus came grace. Through one man came death. Through Jesus came life.

So much so that when you begin to think about it, you begin to understand that Adam's disobedience in the garden led to sin entering the world through a tree. And that Jesus ultimately would accept his father's will in the garden and would take our sins with him to a tree. And there he would pay for them. And what we begin to see is that the grand narrative of scripture is to point us towards God's redemptive act that he accomplishes through Jesus. Raz and Josh and Bianca are going to come back up and we're going to spend some time responding and thinking about what we've heard this morning. If your understanding of Christianity has been that it's about your action, that the way that you relate to God is through your action, whether good or bad.

So whether that's you doing really good things, really moral things to earn God's favor, or sinning and rebelling against God, therefore facing his punishment. My encouragement to you this morning is to let the truth of what we've talked about set you free from that. Realize that the story of Adam and Eve isn't ultimately about our behavior and God's punishment. It's about the fact that though we are sinful and rebel, Jesus steps in and saves us. And it's not about our ability to do good things or to act right. And so my invitation to you this morning is to surrender.

To stop. To realize that you have a God that loves you so much that he would send Jesus to take your sin to a cross to die for you so that that could be the way that you get to relate to God. So the invitation this morning is to realize that you get to place your faith in Jesus for the forgiveness of your sins and for salvation. And so I'm going to pray for us and we're going to stand and sing and respond. Let's pray together.

God, thank you that that's true. Thank you that ultimately it's not about us. God, knowing, you knowing that we were going to rebel, that we wouldn't be able to follow your commandments, you step in and save the day. And so that when we stand before you, we're not pleading our case, we're not pleading our morality or our ability to do things well, we're not condemned because of our actions. But this morning we get to stand and we get to place our faith in you for the forgiveness of our sins and for salvation.

God, and I know in this room people come with all kinds of different backgrounds and experience. And so God, while we may know that the gospel is true, that Jesus saves, that even we live our lives in a way where we don't believe that to be true, where we still think we've got to earn it, or when we mess up we feel condemned. But God, ultimately, we are brought into relationship with you by Jesus. And we thank you. And it's in his name we pray. Amen.

Amen.