Theology of Sex+ Week 7: Christian Societal Ethics

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

Theology of Sex+ Week 6: Transgenderism

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

Transgenderism

Chet Phillips

Transcript

Good morning my name is Chad I'm one of the pastors here uh grab a Bible if you will and go to Genesis chapter 1 we're going to be there we've been there for several weeks um as we have tried to wrap our head around uh the way God has designed us and uh what that means for us as we seek to follow him today we're going to talk about transgenderism um and this is something I believe that it's worth us taking some time to consider um the concept of transgenderism and the way that we've approached it culturally has changed rapidly uh in 2014 was one of the.

First times there was a Time Magazine cover 2014 so that's that's 10 years ago nine years ago that said that that was the new area that we needed to grow as a culture was in accepting transgenderism so there was a transgender uh person on the the cover of the Time magazine that said this is the new the new area where we're going to grow culturally this is the next thing that we need to grow in acceptance and and it was that that magazine cover was saying hey this is the future not not this is where we are.

Now but this is the next thing that's coming for us and that was in 2014 so we've rapidly changed how we've thought about this and approached this and so as our culture has shifted on it and as you've heard more about it seen more about it participated more in understanding what's going on around it we think it's helpful for us to take some time to just say what does the Bible tell us uh about this so transgenderism uh if you were to.

Look in a dictionary um English dictionary for most of English History and you were to look up the words gender and sex uh there would be a definition that was the same which is gender or sex dealing with Biology whether whether or not you are male or female but the the new way of thinking about this if you look it up now if you go to dictionary.com and you look it up is that sex deals with your biology your hormones your physical body whether you are male or female and that gender is separate from them that gender has to deal with your internal impression and your external expression of masculinity or femininity.

So that your gender can be different from your biological sex this is what's being taught this is the way that gender is to be understood now and so that someone can be uh their gender can be feminine or masculine and that can be connected or not connected to whether or not they were born male or female on transe equality.org it says it this way transgender is a broad term that can be used to describe people whose gender identity so that's internal impression or external Al expression is different from the gender they were thought to be.

When they were born meaning that they looked at their biology they looked at their physical traits and said this is a boy or this is a girl um painted the room blue and then were wrong that's what this is they grew up and it was that's not what they were their gender is something different than what they were thought to be and that's the way this is being taught and understood culturally now now there's a lot of different definitions this is changing all the time different people have different opinions on how this is.

But this is a a fair General representation that sex and gender are separate and that your gender can be different than your biology and that's what we're talking about this morning is how ought we to think about that is that okay what does the Bible have to say about that how should we inter in in in engage in that and then next week we're going to spend a good bit of time basically asking how do we as Christians live in a culture that disagrees with us on some things what does it.

Look like for you to be a Christian and follow Jesus and be faithful where a lot of people around you disagree with what you think so that's what we're going to do today we'll be in Genesis 1:26 I'm going to pray for us I would invite you to pray with me Lord we ask for wisdom we ask for Grace um none of us I don't think come into this neutrally I believe that we have opinions I don't think anybody just learned the concept of transgenderism just.

Now as I tried to explain it I think we have opinions I think we have interactions with this I think we have uh what our news stations or favorite YouTube people have told us to think and so Lord I just pray that you would help us to see what your word says on this to be kind and gracious and humble towards one another but to hold firmly to what you tell us is true we ask for your help and the empowerment of your spirit this morning in.

Jesus name amen I want to begin by telling us a story that is beautiful and sad Genesis CH 1 we're going to look in Genesis 1 and 2 it says this then God said so this is in the process of him creating everything he says let us make man that's Humanity in our image after our likeness and 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 the earth.

So God created man in his own image in the image of God he created him male and female he created them so we spent some time here God made man and woman in His image we are created in the image of God that you were specifically gendered you were given of biological sex on purpose you were male or female and designed that way intentionally by God that's God's original and design and it says this and God blessed them so this gendered Humanity male and female is blessed.

God said to them be fruitful and multiply and fill the Earth and subdue it have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth and God said behold I have given you every plant yielding seed that is on the face of the Earth and every tree with seed in its fruit you shall have them for food and to every beast of the earth and every bird of the heavens and to everything that creeps on the earth everything that has the breath of life I have given every green plant.

For food and it was so and God saw everything that he had made and behold it was very good so God designed Humanity he designed our bodies he encased us embodies we are meant to be embodied we have a gender and that is built into how we image God uh one of the terms for this is tellos or tellos that we have a purpose that there's an end in mind in our design that there's purpose built into it we are not just set free to be whatever.

But we actually have God had purpose built into how he built us as CS Lewis puts it uh who is a um a writer and theologian philosopher uh in the 1900s he says this Christianity is almost the only one of the great religions which thoroughly approves of the body which believes that matter is good that God himself once took on a human body and that some kind of body is going to be given to us even in heaven and is going to be an essential part of our happiness we believe that your body is good that you were given it on purpose and that we are not going to one day die and Float off.

Into ethereal wispiness where we're free from our horrible Earth carcass we believe that we will be given new bodies and live on a new Heaven and a new Earth that we will en engage in this same sort of thing it'll be a renew Eternal Body it'll be a glorious one but we are embodied and that that is good and blessed so Christopher Yuan who is now a um Bible Professor but he was once a um practicing homosexual who was selling drugs got kicked out of dentist school.

For selling drugs which I didn't know much about dentist school but apparently they frown on you selling drugs I you can tell I don't know much about it cuz I'm calling it dentist school um but he says this in his book holy sexuality and the Gospel so he became a Christian and changed his lifestyle and he says this we know that we are created in God's image thus rejecting our inherent Essence and replacing it simply with what we feel or do is in reality an attempted coup d'a against our creator we don't need to find our identity our identity is given us by.

God so we believe that we're embodied and there's a purpose there there's intentionality there but it um gets sad I said the story was beautiful and sad well let's move to the to the last part of the beautiful part and then into the sad part so Genesis chapter 2: 24 God brings the man and woman together and it says 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 one of the things that we said when we looked at this earlier was that they were perfectly comfortable in their bodies and perfectly comfortable in their gender and perfectly comfortable with the other person's body and their gender that they were naked and not ashamed that everything was fine they weren't concerned about their bodies they felt at home chapter 3 now the serpent was more crafty than any other beast of the field that the Lord God had made and we find out later in the Scriptures that this isn't just any serpent this is actually Satan the Ultimate Enemy of.

God and man so the serpent he said to the woman did God actually say you shall not eat of any tree in the garden so God had planted a garden and he had planted the tree of knowledge of Good and Evil and the Tree of Life In The Garden but in the tree of knowledge of Good and Evil he said y'all can't eat from this one and so so the serpent comes along and he says God says y'all can't eat from any of these trees 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 which the text doesn't tell us that God said that you can't touch it or you'll die just not to eat of it but the enemy has come along and he's begun to ask is God really trustworthy isn't he withholding good from you can we really believe what he says but the serpent said to the woman this is verse four 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 you won't die you'll be like him you'll get to decide what's right and what's wrong you'll be the one who can be the Arbiter of truth and reality 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 desired to make one wise she took of its fruit and ate she also gave some to her husband who was with her and he ate.

Then the eyes of both of were opened and they knew they were naked and they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loin cloths 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 and he said who told you that you were naked have you eaten of the tree which I commanded you not to eat they were perfectly at home in their bodies they were perfectly free God had designed it to where they would just be free and enjoy and delight and rest and work but all in Freedom and all in comfort in who they were and how they were designed and When sin enters the world that's gone they suddenly know they're naked and feel great shame and even after they had covered themselves they still hide and say we were naked did you catch that that they sew fig leaves.

To cover themselves up but when God shows up they still hide and say we're naked cuz that it's it didn't work it doesn't fix the problem there's a couple of things in this passage that have traveled through time and exist in your heart that have that are just innately born into us now one is the lie that the serpent tells is God really trustworthy and shouldn't I be the one to decide what's right and wrong oh if that's not in your heart this idea that ah I mean is he really right about that you ever just reading your Bible and you go nah that can't be right I think I know know what ought to.

Be right here you ever do that like that's in us this idea that shouldn't I be the one who picks what who is he to say the other thing is this this feeling very not at home in our bodies very uncomfortable and exposed there's a reason why there's like a human wide nightmare that you're going about your day and then suddenly you're naked that's what happened to them you know that feeling they ate of the of the fruit and suddenly realized oh I'm I'm exposed I'm out in the I'm not.

Okay you ever you have that moment where you just feel exposed have you ever had that nightmare where Suddenly It's just like this is I was given a presentation and then I was naked and it was not okay cuz that's in US y'all we wear clothes and still feel wildly uncomfortable you know how much you fidget with how your clothes fit you like I have some collared shirts where one of the collars curls in and one of them curls up and I have no clue whether anybody else ever notices that.

But I think about it all day long you ever had like a cold SAR and you're like I just want to cancel my life for a week you see other people with a cold sord and you think I'm glad other people get cold sores you don't care that they have a cold sore really you're just like that's fine I'm not going to kiss you but that's fine but when we have stuff like that we feel it because we don't feel at home y'all this the theological concept here is called estrangement we we don't feel at home in ourselves.

And so one of the things that I think we need to wrap our heads around as Christians is that Christians ought to understand gender dysphoria and transgenderism better than anybody else the idea that you would not feel at home in your body ought to break our hearts and bring out our sympathy more than anything else that should be the first thing that it does to us we should understand oh yeah know I feel that there's things about me that I don't like there things about me that I don't feel at home in there are things about me that I wish were different there things about me that I hate there are things about me that.

I uh long for and crave that I wish I didn't there are things about me that that just never felt right I never liked I never appreciated never could enjoy it always felt like am I sure this was right I was reading someone who was talking about transgenderism and they said there their argument was why should we be beholden to our bodies it's it's like a taxi cab that we were shoved into at Birth and had no choice over and as a Christian part of me understands that feels that you didn't choose how tall you were going to be what you were going to.

Look like what your skin was going to be like how your hair Works y'all know that it seems like and this is I'm not a lady but it seems like ladies really really appreciate apprciate whatever type of hair they don't have I think that's part of the curse I think that's part of the Fall if you've ever said I wish my hair did blank it it's just built into us that we would not feel fully at home and so when someone says I was reading on Pew research and they just did they just got a bunch of people who would identify as transgender and they asked them a bunch of questions and they would all.

Say things like ever since I was little I just never really felt like I was in the right body y'all do you know how hard that would be it it's whatever you felt in all these little ways but it's so acute and so painful and so lifelong and in such a big area of life to feel like you're the wrong gender has got to be extremely difficult and if that's you then you're here this morning I'm sorry that you've felt like that your whole life and I I understand a little bit.

But I don't understand fully but you're welcome here and you're welcome to be here and and and struggle and not feel at home in yourself and you're welcome to be here and to to express that and voice that and to say I'm in the middle of trying to figure this out' we understand and we ought to one of the things that comes along with this this our human bodies designed for good built in intentionally but then Fallen is that we now have birth defects we.

Now have people who are born interx which is a small portion of the population people who are born with both sets of of reproductive organs then there's a wider portion that that will get labeled as intersex where they're born with um physically externally male or female but then there's some internal biological things that go into what would the people would now consider interex and there are some realities to that the the vast majority of are born physically externally male or female and there may be some hormonal or some biological things going on that they can have to take some medicine.

For or adjust and try to figure out how they're going to approach life very rarely is anybody born with with both sets of genitalia but even that those situations they end up usually having to figure out and have some sort of surgery and figure that out as they go forward in life and we understand that that's part of the Fall as well it doesn't mean that there is no male and there is no female it doesn't mean that we don't understand male or female there are some people who are born with the wrong number of Limbs and that's horrible.

But it doesn't mean that most humans aren't born with two arms and two legs and five fingers and five toes it's it's something that happens and can happen and even the Bible understands it happens when Jesus talks about in U marriage in Matthew 19 he refers to people who were born um he says Unix from birth and then there are unic that have been made Unix by by men so he understands that there is some sort of birth process birth defect that can go into this.

But that's part of the Fall as well and it doesn't negate either the the reality of God's intended design for male or female but it also doesn't negate how gracious and kind and welcoming the Church ought to be in understanding that as well and walking alongside people and not not stigmatizing that or making it something you can't talk about or deal with because we all understand that we're all living with some form of the effects of the fall but here's where we are culturally.

For someone who has felt like I've been born into the wrong body has felt this this gender dysphoria this particular type of estrangement culturally right now we come around them and we give them a Playbook we say well here's what you do if you feel that way they they're getting a script that says go this direction and as Christians we have to disagree with the script and it is culturally impacted I want to show you the things that go along in this cultural approach that have gotten us here it's like a all the building blocks that that made it to where this is how we respond.

Now so I want to show you this list we're going to talk through these fairly quickly the fall of Christendom relativism radical individualism Triumph of the therapeutic the sexual Revolution and new gnosticism and I know you're are like I'm so excited for this list and just so you know when we were walking through and making sure the slides were working Josh babone who was up here earlier already called all those as band names he's claimed them so you can't start a band named any of those he's already he already called dips all right the fall of Christendom we've existed in the West in in a judeo Christian ethic.

For hundreds of years and we have rejected that now as the ruling thought process for the West that we are no longer all under a general judeo-Christian ethic which meant that we had a baseline philosophy and a baseline Theos ology for how we were going to live life and we would say we've removed that but the thing is when you remove it you don't just remove it you replace it and the problem with replacing it from our standpoint as Christians who believe our Bibles is that we think we enter into what Paul's talking about in Colossians 2.

So I want to read this to you he says this see to it that no one takes you captive by philosophy and empty deceit according to human TR tradtion according to the elemental spirits of the world and not according to Christ okay we want to know what Jesus tells us we want to follow what Jesus tells us we want to be uh led by Christ and then everything else fits into one of these other categories philosophy it's just them thinking through this is how the world ought to work empty deceit meaning they're intentionally trying to deceive twist things around human tradition ACC according to the elemental spirits of the world meaning that the enemy at.

Work in some of these kind of things and so we we aren't fans of the fall of Christendom in general we want to be genuinely Christian in the way we approach things and follow Christ that's where he says this for in him the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily and you have been filled in him who is the head of all Rule and Authority so we think Jesus is over everything and we're to follow him but that's gone culturally so we get The Replacements relativism relativism is the concept that there is no objective right or wrong you get to decide nobody can really tell you what's right or wrong nobody can really come in.

Tell you how you ought to live it's up to you you do you boo that General thought process whatever you want to do you do as long as you're not hurting anybody as long as you're not bothering anybody as long as you're not oppressing anybody nobody can really come in and tell you you're right or wrong whatever you want to do is fine that's relativism and y'all we we all kind of yeah okay like you just you've been trained in this it's like yeah that that's kind of true like the uh one of the Justice Anthony Kennedy.

And when he was writing one of the majority opinions this is one of our Supreme Court Justice he says this at the heart of Liberty is the right to Define one owns concept of existence of meaning of the universe and of the mystery of human life that's at the heart of Liberty you get to decide meaning purpose existence the mystery of human life all up to you which just if you think about that first of all the in the garden version of us that wants to eat from the tree goes yeah I get to pick the purpose and meaning of existence.

But if we'll just pause for a second you're going to have a hard time picking what to eat for lunch existence and the meaning of purpose in life is way above your pay grade but that's at the heart of relativism and he says it's at the heart of Liberty that that's true Freedom that you get to decide the next thing is radical individualism that we've just been sold on this we bought into this this is the idea that you are the only one you can really trust you are the only one who really knows.

For you you're the only one who really decides every Disney movie every Disney song just watch a preview for a Disney movie and they'll be like and then I suddenly thought have I even considered what I want and we're like yeah I think about you but that radical individualism is that you're the only one who can really decide for you and no one else can really so it's relativism but it's boiled down to ultimately you are the last Arbiter of all things.

Then we have what Carl Truman calls the Triumph of the therapeutic so it used to be 100 years ago 60 years ago you would um you would have to if you went to see somebody and they were trying to help you work through life they were trying to help you change you to exist in the world they were trying to to make you capable of existing out there you you were being bent and molded to reality but when Carl Truman's looking at this and he's tracing this out through history he says we've actually flipped this and what we've started doing is trying to change your circumstances to fit to you.

So we're going to get rid of toxic people we're going to get rid of toxic environments we're going to get rid of any Professor that says things you don't want to hear we're going to get rid of anybody who would come around you and say things that you don't want to hear you get to perfectly mold your environment and this is up to and includ including our physical bodies are now going to be brought in in line with you which goes along with the next two the sexual Revolution which is just our overemphasis on sexual enjoyment and cutting out all of the GU guard rails and guidelines that used to be around sex and Christians.

Aren't anti-sex we believe it's actually more important and more powerful than our culture does that's why we think it needs guard rails it's why we think it needs to be handled appropriately it's not because we think it's bad it's because we actually think it's better than our culture thinks it is more powerful not essential to life essential to the existence of humans for sure um but not essential essential to everybody's individual life you can live a perfect meaningful human life without ever participating in any sort of sexual activity.

But the sexual Revolution the general idea that your body is is a playground the only question is how would you like to play and then the new gnosticism which is connected a lot to the Triumph of the therapeutic and the radical individualism but gnosticism is the idea that your body is in general lower than the spiritual reality and we wouldn't culturally refer to it as spiritual reality as much as we would refer to it as reason our thinking self is more important and better than our physical self uh one author put it this way he said a person's self-awareness is different than and more important than their physical bodies that's this new idea of narcism.

So you can change your physical body to be in line with the way you think because your physical body is less than it doesn't actually give you any indication of anything you can change what you think so there's a Melinda selmies who was a practicing former lesbian who's repented and Fallen the Lord and she wrote this Bute all the pageantry of free sex and self-love there is a fundamental belief that the body doesn't mean anything that it is insignificant in a literal sense signifying nothing you can do anything that you like with it you can give it away to anyone.

For any reason it's just a sort of wet machine a tool that you can use in exchange for whatever purpose suits your fancy that's some vivid imagery but that's the general idea you have a body use it enjoy it change it the real you is on the inside the real you is your reasoning thinking self and that's new gnosticism and gnosticism is an ancient heresy so just so y'all know this is the problem Christians ought to understand understand the tension and the pain and the hurt and the Brokenness in transgenderism we ought to understand gender dysphoria in a very real sense that makes us very empathetic and caring and and gentle.

But the ideology is completely contrary to Christianity yall we disagree with this whole list of the things that come together that give you the script for how you ought to respond if you feel gender dysphoria they're going to come along and say well if you feel that that's internal to you so whatever you feel is right and you're the only one who can really decide and no one should come from outside and tell you that you are wrong that would be oppressive that would be harmful that would be bad.

For your psychology we ought to think well and Care well for your approach to the world and we ought to change your environment and if you if you want to pursue any sexual desires those are good and to be pursued never to be curtailed unless you want to but y'all we're Christians so we want to follow Christ we believe that he's the authority so it's not relative there's a actual reality that we can run up against radical individualism is bad for us we are individuals that need to be to repent and follow.

Jesus there's some amount of understanding that a unique person who who can follow Jesus that God designed on purpose is good but not you're in charge and you're the only one who knows what's right the Triumph of the therapeutic y'all we're Christians we think we should change that's repentance that's discipleship when you say things like well this is just what I'm like the Bible sometimes goes well stop it what you're like is bad quit talking to people like that quit acting like that it's bad.

For you repent so when people just you can't just go I was born this way I'm Italian so I yell or whatever it's like what stop we believe in Repentance and we believe that's good for us that we can change we believe the sexual revolution has been a negative thing for our culture that it has taught us poorly and gnosticism we've hated it ever since it showed up we don't like the new version or the old version We believe that you the physical body is important and good and that God's going to redeem both soul and body.

So here's the problem all of that leads to destruction and so the script that you're given if you feel gender hish Foria is bad 1 Peter 2 he says beloved I urge you as soers and Exiles he's talking to the Church saying we don't fully belong here we'll talk more about this next week but I urge you to abstain from the passions of the flesh which wage war against your soul in considering gnosticism and this idea that you're really separate from your body that the real you is on the inside and has nothing to do with the outer you the physical body Christopher West wrote this and I thought it was a helpful quote he.

Says Satan's fundamental goal is always to split Body and Soul why well there's a fancy theological word for the separation of body and soul perhaps you've heard of it death and we believe that that is where this thought process leads to to death to destruction it's what James 1:14-15 says but each person is tempted when he is lured and enticed by his own desire then desire when it is conceived gives birth to sin and sin when it is fully grown brings forth death this is the Baseline Christian position that all of us have desires that will produce death in us and all of us need to repent all of us need.

Jesus to redeem us to work in us to forgive us so here's the problem whenever we isolate one and say you don't have to repent of that one pursue that one engage in that one we can't go along with it the message to someone in gendered dysphoria is actually the same message to all Christians There's Hope in Jesus there's repentance in Jesus and y'all this is a terrible place to be so as Christians we've got to be kind and gracious and understanding and welcoming and friendly and hospitable.

But we also can't say go for it because we don't think it'll lead to Joy they've they've done studies in 2008 they did another big one in 2015 they did another big one in 2022 the results of the 20221 aren't out but all of your statistics of negative statistics are increased by by being transgender I found that transgender people are four more four times more likely to live in extreme poverty have doubled the rate of unemployment double the rate of homelessness um 41% and this was both in 2008 and 2015.

So the the jump on acceptance changed from 2008 to 2015 it's continued to change I'm interested to see what happens in 2022 study study 41% of survey respondents both in 20 2008 and 2015 reported at least one suicide attempt 41% that's the people who weren't successful the amount of Despair and death wrapped up in this is horrific and we ought to be kind and gracious and welcoming and hospitable and we ought to plead don't follow the path that's laid out for you culturally the argument made is that the reason it's.

So high is that they're stigmatized they're hated they're treated poorly their whole life is awful and look we ought to understand some of that you ever had a bad haircut I'm not trying to be trivial but if you had a bad haircut and you felt it the whole day you walked around you ever been in the place where you were the only person of your race you never really think that much about your race and suddenly that's all you can think about.

For that day y'all if you are in the middle of transitioning I think they feel it I think they feel it when they're not trying to differently portray how they physically appear I think they feel it when they are I think that it's on them all the time and so yeah there's certainly some social stigma and some things that go along with it that make it extremely difficult but they did a long longterm study in Sweden Sweden way ahead of us in acceptance and celebration of this from 1973 to 2003 what they did was they followed people who had gender affirming surgeries.

So people who had actually made the transition which I just have to say somewhere we don't think you can actually do we think you can physically change your body but you have not actually changed your gender you've been given a gender you've been designed by God and we think you can physically alter your body but it doesn't actually change you from a man to a woman but they had gender affirming surgeries and then they followed them for for 30 years and they compared them to the regular population and they controlled.

For things like poverty level gender at Birth what age group that sort of thing they needed psychiatric care at five times the rate of the normal population the suicide rate was three times the normal population no I'm sorry death from suicide was 20 times the rate of the normal population impatient psychiatric care was three times the rate the suicide attempts was five times the rate and the conclusion they have is this this is straight from the conclusion of the study persons with transsexualism after sex reassignment have considerably higher risks.

For Mort mortality suicidal behavior and psychiatric morbidity than the general population our findings suggest that sex reassignment although alleviating gender dysphoria may not suffice as treatment for transsexualism and should imp Inspire improved psychiatric and somatic care after sex reassignment for this patient group meaning that for those who are actually in a place where they change their they have gender affirming surgery and then live in a place that celebrates it it still doesn't fix the problem and as Christians we go yeah.

Because pursuing it can't fix it because that's what we're told is it pursuing any of our desires in that direction won't fix it it might alleviate some of the symptoms it might alleviate some things but it's not going to actually fix the root level problem Paul McHugh who is the the head over the this department in John's Hopkins and they used to do they were one of the leading ones to do these surgeries and then they stopped it under him and they've recently restarted it.

But he says that it's it should be treated more the way we treat someone with anorexia we should say that the way you're thinking is not in line with the way your body actually is and we would do best to help bring you in line with reality because you do have a physical reality and so as Christians 1 Corinthians 13 says this love does not rejoice at wrongdoing but rejoices with the truth so we can't celebrate we can't Rejoice we can't go along with saying this is a fine way to go.

Because it would be unloving so we have to be loving we have to be gracious we have to be gentle we have to be kind we have to be hospitable we also can't just say that's fine pursue what you want because we believe it would lead to death so I have a better option when Matthew 12 is talking about Jesus it says this a bruised Reed he will not break and a smoldering Wick he will not quench that's a prophecy about him from Isaiah and it's quoted in in Matthew a bruised Reed he will not break and a smoldering Wick he will not quench a candle that's just barely hanging on barely blowing smoke.

Jesus doesn't come and snuff that out he's gentle he's gracious Andrew T Walker in his book on transgenderism quotes this from Matthew 12 and then he says this the visual imagery Jesus uses is important to remember and beautiful to see Jesus will not let fragile people crumble and collapse under the weight of their struggles Jesus wants to take those who feel they are close to flickering out and return them to brightness and joy Jesus is tend tender and gentle towards those who think they cannot go any further Church family some of us need to repent.

Because when it comes to transgenderism or homosexuality or anything in the lgbtq plus Zone we've looked like anything but Jesus because we haven't been gentle you can't say we haven't snuffed out smoldering Wicks we've made it seem as if this is one of the most hostile places for someone who needs it the most that we're welcome here in our sin but you aren't we're welcome here in our frustration and our confusion and our our estrangement but you aren't Lord help us help us.

When we stand before the king and he's been so kind and so gracious to us in our sin and we've acted as if there's somehow line between us and them may God have mercy on us for that and I'm so grateful that he's not going to Snuff us out if we come to him in Repentance and ask for Mercy but may we be gracious and kind and hospitable and welcoming people to someone who so badly needs to hear the Gospel and what our culture is telling them to do leads to death y'all it doesn't help it it doesn't fix it we can't celebrate it we've got to love our hope is not in the rejection.

Of our bodies but the Redemption of our bodies Romans 8 this where we'll finish we'll look at this together for just a moment Paul says I consider that the sufferings of this present time and that's all of us are not worth comparing with the glory Glory that is to be revealed to us so that we're to look at everybody and say you're going to suffer but there's glory and there's hope this direction for creation Waits with eager longing for the revealing of the sons of.

God for the creation was subjected to futility not willingly but because of him who subjected it in hope that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to corruption and obtain the freedom of the glory of children of God yeah we're all creation is subjected to futility and a bondage to corruption it's falling apart it's decaying and we're all longing whether we know it or not for this Redemption for we know that the whole creation has been groaning together in Pains of child birth until.

Now and not only the creation but we ourselves who have the first fruit of the spirit grown inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption as Sons the Redemption of our bodies our hope is not in the rejection of our bodies Our Hope is not here our hope is found in the Redemption of our bodies that is going to be worked in Christ on that day where we receive forgiveness and renewal and so we wait patiently but we ought to wait as people who understand the groaning we ought to wait as people who understand the pain and the discomfort and the estrangement and the Brokenness we ought to be the kindest most welcome most hospitable.

People and listen in our culture in disagreeing we're going to be told that we're hateful and so we've got to hold the line on loving enough and holding on to what is true but in a way that silences critique because of how much grace and kindness and gentleness there is for in this hope we were saved now hope that is seen is not hope for who hopes for what he seen disas but if we hope for what we do not see we wait.

For it with patience we believe that our God put on a body that he intended us for have to have a body that he's going to give us new bodies and that he's going to renew all of that in Grace and we wait with patience some of us need to change our position because we've been echoing what our culture says and we're wrong and we shouldn't do it because it leads to death but some of us need to change our posture.

Because we've been saying true things with not a hint of Grace and not a hint of kindness and we don't look at all like Jesus let's pray Lord we ask for we ask for Mercy where we've been wrong where we've supported what will ultimately lead to destruction where we've agreed with our culture on some things that are damaging and lead to death Lord we ask for Mercy where we've not modeled well the way you treated people who needed Grace where we've acted as.

If somehow we've merited or earned something or we're some of the good ones because we think this way or vote this way or act this way or we don't have that desire how dare us Lord forgive us have mercy on us and may we be a people who love like you love so that we hate sin but our arms are wide open to anyone who's coming to you and Lord our culture is confused on this and they're leading a lot to destruction more more and more children and teenagers are headed in this direction.

God have mercy on us have mercy on our nation give us wisdom help us to love help us to plead on behalf of our country so that you might keep people far from destruction and may they see clearly the grace that's found in you in Jesus name amen Church family we're going to sing we're going to praise the Lord if you need to take a moment to repent if you need to take a moment to ask the Lord for help.

For grace and for Mercy do that if this is something you struggle with and you want to talk about it and understand that we're just trying to understand and we're trying to walk in it the same way we walk in all these other things which is that we believe Jesus is better that our passions are at war with us to destroy our souls we'd love to talk with you let's sing.

Theology of Sex+ Week 5: Homosexuality Part 2

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

Homosexuality Part 2

Spencer Cary

Theology of Sex+ Week 4: Homosexuality Part 1

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

Homosexuality Part 1

Spencer Cary

Transcript

My name is Spencer I'm one of the pastors here we are in week four of our Theology of sex plus series and this uh week and next week we're taking a look at the topic of homosexuality so and approaching this and trying to teach on this it feels like a little bit of a game of operation if you remember the kids game you've got the tweezers and you got the guy that's got all the body parts you got to get in there and get his rib out without touching the sides.

If you touch the Sid it buzzes and as a kid I was terrible at that game I would make a terrible surgeon and you just at any given point you move left right front center if you move around too far you're going to actually hit something and it's going to buzz and that's kind of what this feels like because there's a few different things that play into this that make this difficult to teach on the the first is is what Chad was walking us through last week that uh sexuality has become identity and that this is uh been uh has risen to the place of idolatry.

So much so that we worship this in the place of God and if anyone uh speaks about something that's at the core of your being at the core of your identity that's considered harmful or destructive and that makes that difficult to talk about what's also difficult here is that many of us have family members friends co-workers neighbors people we love that identifies as lgbtq plus and many of them are wonderful kind loving hardworking people so it's not a neutral subject that we talk about another thing makes this difficult is that there's whole denominations in the west that have shifted on truth in this area that have failed to speak the truth I came out of.

The United Methodist Church that's where I became a Christian and that denomination has shifted so has the ELCA Luther Church so has the Episcopalian Church so has the pcusa Church and that also makes this difficult what also makes this difficult is that there are a lot of people who claim to be Christians but there all are actual genuine Jesus-loving Christians who have spoken harshly about this so we don't approach this subject neutrally and it feels like wherever you move in this you're going to hit the edges and you're going to hit the buzzer.

So because all of that is true we want to take two weeks to be able to walk through this together in this first sermon we're just going to ask the question what does the Bible say about this what does the Bible have to say about the subject matter of homosexuality and we're going to dive deep into the text a lot of this is going to be super laborious it's going to be in deep into the text to see what does the Bible have to say about this especially.

Because in the west there's been a shift amongst some denominations that have tried to reinterpret the Bible to say something that I would argue it doesn't say and I want to take those arguments seriously and look at what the Bible has to say about this next week will be far more practical be far more applicational but I want us to look deeply into the text this week and I want to end with showing why I believe that our Church can be a a wonderful and safe place to be able to figure this out be able to discuss this to be able to work through any type of sexual identity and Brokenness.

So let me pray and then we'll walk through this together Heavenly Father we thank you for the good word that we have for the Scriptures for your kindness and for the work of the Holy Spirit no doubt there's lots of things swirling in our souls this morning as we approach your word may you help us be present may you help us listen may we respond as you desire in Jesus name amen all right so we've been in Genesis 1 and 2 pretty much every week and this week is no different we won't be in it very long.

But Genesis 1 and 2 kind of establish what is the biblical idea for gender and for sex and then on Genesis 2 24-25 it says 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 are both naked and were not ashamed so we've looked at this multip weeks but it's important to read that out the gate because that is the establishment of biblical romantic love and romantic sex one man one woman and the confines of marriage and the rest of the Bible upholds this picture from Genesis to Revelation throughout the Old Testament.

Jesus in multiple places in Mark 10 and Matthew 19 highlights this as the biblical reality for marriage romantic love and sexual Union so that's the first picture we get out of the gate in the Scriptures and then when you flip a few pages you'll inevitably get to Genesis 19 and that is going to be the first mentioning of homosexuality in the Bible so in Genesis 19 God has determined to bring judgment upon two cities Sodom and Gomorrah he sends two angels to really inspect the City to.

See if it's worth redeeming and not worth judgment he gets there Abraham's nephew lot is there lot takes him into his house really quickly because he knows what this city is like and these two foreigners he doesn't want them to be harmed so he takes them to his house and at nightfall the men of the city surround the house and you pick up in verse four it says but before they laid down the men of the city the men of Sodom both young and old all the people to the last man surrounded the house and they called to lot where are the men who came to you tonight bring them out to us that we.

May know them now that know them is a Biblical euphemism throughout the Bible for sex that we may know them sexually this happens the angels strike the men with blindness tell lot and his family get out of the city now we're going to destroy it they leave and the city is destroyed and these Infamous cities Sodom and Gomorrah become really the prime examples of both wickedness and judgment throughout the Bible you can't read the rest of the Bible and not see that it happens in Isaiah Jeremiah Ezekiel Lamentations Amos Zephaniah.

Jesus in multiple places mentions Sodom and Gomorrah bringing that type of judgment to mind that these cities are synonimous with sin and judgment so the question is why are these cities known for sin and judgment and we get a few biblical reasons I'll point the first one Ezekiel 16 49 it says behold this was the guilt of your sister Sodom she and her daughters had Pride excess of food and prosperous ease but did not Aid the poor and needy and what we.

See there is that like most depraved cities and most depraved cultures there was excess the pride of life enjoying the riches getting fat and not caring for the poor and maybe even building your wealth off of the poor which is wickedness I mean you cannot read the prophets you cannot read the gospels without seeing that the God despises that type of disregard for the poor and the needy now in an attempt to legitimize same-sex relationships some have attempted to say that that's all was wrong with Sodom and Gomorrah that Genesis 19 and the picture of judgment there is only.

For this that social justice is the only reason that Sodom and Gomorrah were destroyed now it's certainly clear from the text that Injustice was a major part of their depravity and that is true but what's been understood for thousands thousand of years from Jews into Christianity what has been understood for thousands of years is that these cities were not only destroyed for the prideful greedy life that they lived but also for the promiscuity and specifically the homosexuality that was prevalent that these cities were known.

For that's clear when you read the text that's clear outside of the text there are extra biblical resources extra biblical historical documents in second temple Judaism so the period of time between when the last Scriptures were written around 500 BC to the time when Jesus came you can look at second temple Judaism and see some of the writings that describe this as as a universally understood truth that Jews understood one of those is The Testament of naftali it says do not become like Sodom which departed from the order of Nature and the Order of nature there is the design.

For sex with men and women they departed from that referencing the Judgment that fell upon them in the Testament of Benjamin another extra biblical historical document it says from the words of Enoch the righteous I tell you that you will be sexually promiscuous like the promiscuity of the sodomites and will perish again in the book of jubile it says and in this month the Lord carried out the judgments of Sodom and Gomorrah and go say they were terrible and very sinful and have defiled themselves and committed fornication and uncleanness over the earth.

Now we don't look at those sources as authoritative like the Scriptures they don't have an authority but what they helped describe was it was universally understood that these cities were known for that type of sexual promiscuity I mean you get to the some of the Contemporary writers of the Bible so some of contemporaries alongside the Bible Josephus a Jewish historian and Pho a philosopher you can even go into their writings and see that at the time of Jesus it was universally understood that this was a part of sodom's downfall.

Now that's important because what also happens with Genesis 19 is people seek to reinterpret this and say that what was really happening with what we read is not the type of consensual loving same-sex relationships we have now that what was actually being articulated was rape and that's the real problem and while that that seems to be the logical conclusion of what was going to happen if those angels did not step in those cities were known for this it was universally understood at the time and that's important to articulate and that's helpful to understand especially.

When the book of Jude at the end of the Bible comes along and references Sodom and gomorah in the same way that a lot of other writings do in the book of Jude near the end of the Bible in verse 7 it says just as Sodom and Gomorrah in the surrounding cities which likewise indulged in sexual immorality and pursued unnatural desire serve as an example by undergoing a punishment of Eternal fire so Jude is doing what some of those other resources outside the Bible are doing judee's made argument in the book of JW we were in this book about a year ago his main argument is against false teachers and the Judgment of heretical false.

Teachers that had come into the Church but in his writing against false teachers he uses something that was obvious to Jews for centuries and was also OB obious to the Christians who were receiving this letter and he mentions just like Sodom and Gomorrah which likewise indulged in sexual immorality and pursued unnatural desire and what he's getting at there is that there is a natural design for sex that we see very clearly in Genesis 1 and 2 and the people of Sodom and Gomorrah rejected that.

For an unnatural desire and it ended up in their judgment and he categorizes that with sexual immorality and that's also very important because sexual immorality is really a broad term in the Scriptures it's kind of a a bucket for all types of sexual sin and sexual Brokenness and it's important to understand that because a lot of times what you'll hear and rebuttal to some of this is that Skeptics will say but Jesus never spoke about homosexuality he never talked about this once why do you talk about it and what's important to understand is that.

Jesus Jesus did speak about sexual immorality in multiple places which absolutely biblically and theologically includes homosexuality and the reason why Jesus doesn't explicitly name homosexuality has to do with his ministry context Jesus ministered the majority of his time in Galilee and Galilee was not a region that was known for homosexuality at all historically now the reason why it shows up more as impos letters is because Paul is writing to GRE Roman cities all over Asia Minor and Rome and those cities were known.

For homosexuality but it wouldn't make sense for Jesus to address something that wasn't in his immediate Ministry context but he does address sexual immorality and that absolutely includes homosexuality so Jude is making a bigger point about judgment but he references something that was obvious obvious to the Christians at the time and that is the pursuing same-sex attraction is sin and next week we'll get more into this there's a difference between same-sex attractions samesex desires and pursuing those one is in the Temptation Arena the other one is pursuing rebellious sin.

But we'll get into more of that next week the Church needed to understand this but also the people of Israel needed to understand the morality of this which is what is clear when you get to the Book of Leviticus in chapter 18 and chapter 20 and there are two verses in 1822 and 2013 that show this to be prohibited in verse 22 of 18 it says you shall not lie with a male as with a woman it is an Abomination an Abomination is just a it's a it's a aggressive word.

For God despises this sin he finds it attestable to him it's often applied to idolatry it's often applied to corrupt money practices and greed but it's also applied to homosexuality in the Book of Leviticus and then in verse 13 chap 20 it says if a man Man Lies with a male as with a woman both of them have committed an Abomination now the language here is intentional if you read all Leviticus 18 and all of Leviticus 20 and you read those chapters you're going to.

See man the word man show up over and over and over again but in these two verses another word shows up male and that's the Hebrew word zakar and when that word shows up it draws the reader's mind back to Genesis 1 because that's creation distinction language male and female showing this goes against the very design for sex now a common objection to even using the Book of Leviticus Leviticus 18 Leviticus 20 to show that this prohibits pursuing same-sex relations Is that the New Testament clearly teaches we don't follow the law.

So a popular rebuttal that I've heard over and over again is okay well if you think that's true then why are you wearing a shirt with two types of fabric in it and why do you eat pork you're a hypocrite read your Bible now I've always actually found that rort pretty clever if I was not a Christian I would probably use it because it ends an argument pretty quickly because I'll be honest a lot of Christians don't know their Bibles like they should.

But you got to do something with that that's that's a fair critique they are correct we don't look to the Book of Leviticus for our understanding we don't follow the law that's we didn't do this like we don't do this like the Jews do so why even mention it when clearly as you walk through ex we walk through Exodus of the last year we said over and over again we live in the New Covenant of Christ we're not under the law it's helpful to mention these two verses.

For three reasons first it clearly shows the Jewish people believe this was sin it's unmistakable even even Scholars that that seek to legitimize samesex relationship ship will say no it's very clear that in Judaism they understood this to be sinful second the text is talking about consensual homosexual sex this is not rape this is not power and balance this is talking about consensual homosexual relations third the Hebrew word used in these passages in Leviticus 1820 becomes Central to interpreting two passages in the New Testament and we're we're going to go there.

Now 1 Corinthians 6 1 Timothy 1 now these like other writings of Paul other parts of the Scripture it's a it's got a big list of sins and the middle of this is homosexuality so First Corinthians 6 or do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God do not be deceived neither the sexually immoral nor idolators nor adulterers nor men who practice homosexuality nor thieves nor the greedy nor drunkards nor reelers nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of.

God then in 1 Timothy again now we know that the law is good if one uses it lawfully understand this the law is not laid down for the just but for the Lawless and disobedient for the ungodly and sinners for the Unholy and profane for those who strike their fathers and mothers for murderers the sexually immoral men who practice homosexuality enslavers liars perjurers and whatever else is contrary to sound Doctrine so in 1 Corinthians 6 homosexuality is translated from two Greek words Maloy and our syoy time.

So two Greek words in 1 Timothy 1 it just uses our syoy time now this is why this is really important I know we're in the weeds you guys but this is it's really important to understand this when you're trying to understand Greek and Hebrew and how it's used you have to look at the immediate context of the bi the Bible book that it's written in the context of its use in other books of the Bible and then you look outside the Bible at other Greek and Hebrew historical documents.

See how that word is being used and when you do a Greek word study on our Senai what you will see is there's not one single use outside the Bible you cannot find one Greek historical document that uses this word nowhere which begs the question okay then what does it mean when you break it apart you have arson and qu it literally means betters of men but more importantly when you look at Leviticus 18 and Leviticus 20 and you look at what's called the septu which is the Greek translation of the original Hebrew.

If you look at that you're going to see that in Leviticus and the Greek translation when it talks about homosexuality the word for it is arenos and cotin which means Paul made up a word that's what he did he took the language of Leviticus brought it into 1 Corinthians and Timothy put it together our syy time and anyone who is familiar with the Old Testament who was receiving those letters would have immediately understood what he was doing that he was bringing in the morality of the Holy that part of the Holiness code in The Book of Leviticus to show this is something that should not be practiced.

Listen even even the scholars that believe that homosexuality is is legitimate form of love and sex they're going to agree on that point and say yeah you can't get around it it's very clear that's what Paul is doing and some of them will go on to say but we know better now and they appeal to an authority of our own authority not the authority of the Scriptures but it's almost universally understood that's exactly what Paul's doing now that brings us to what I think is the most definitive text in the Bible on homosexuality and that is the Book of Romans chapter 1 we were here last week and we're going to be here again starting.

In verse 24 it says therefore God gave them up in the lust of their heart to impurity to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves because they exchange the truth about God for a lie and worship and serve the creature rather than the Creator who is blessed forever amen so we looked at this last week that we as Humanity exchange the truth about God for a lie that we worship created things we worship idols and the place of God and when we reject.

God for created things God says continue in your rebellion and it gives us in and we pursue that all the way to an exchange of the natural design of sex for the unnatural use of sex and homosexuality and that's clear starting at verse 26 for this reason God gave them up to dishonorable passions for their women exchanged natural relations for those that are contrary to Nature see that that when you follow idolatry and are given into to your sexual Pursuits it will ultimate result in this women exchanging the natural design of sex.

For unnatural contrary to Nature sex verse 27 and the men likewise gave up natural relations with women and were consumed with passion for one another men committing Shameless acts with men and receiving themselves the due penalty for their error now the the reason why this text is so important especially in this current context is because one of the most popular arguments that tries to legitimize homosexuality from the Bible is an argument that says that what's really happening in the New Testament what's really happening in the New Testament is not a condemnation of the committed and loving same-sex relationships that we.

See nowadays what's being condemned is pasty and pasty which is very prevalent and the Roman Empire men sleeping with teenage boys it's all over the GRE or Roman Empire it was a common practice and what's argued is is that what's really being condemned is that type of abuse but not the loving committed same sex relationships we have now and that argument is indefensible in light of Romans 1 first off it's indefensible for other reasons that I won't get into but Romans 1 is clear.

Because there is not one history historical example of pasty being practiced by women you cannot find it in the Roman Empire older women did not sleep with teenage girls that did not happen so that's not what's being condemned here at all it's a broad condemnation of homosexuality not a specific condemnation of a type of homosexuality so it's clear from the Old Testament to the New Testament the teaching is consistent that homosexuality is against the very design for sex which is man woman in the confines of marriage biblically there are no same-sex relationships that honor.

God and there's not one example of a samesex relationship in the Bible That's seen as honorable now if you want to argue that there is no God if you if you want to be an atheist and argue that that there is no God and that there's no purpose there's no such thing as meaning that this is all the result of cosmic chance and we're all creating what we want in front of us and nothing really matters so yeah homosexuality should be fair game it happens in nature right like what.

If you if you want to make that argument that because there's no purpose and no meaning and there's no God I think you can be intellectually consistent and do that I would want to argue with you about some other things this will be one of the last things I want to talk about I want to walk you through theological argument to help you see that it's mathematically impossible to believe that this is all the result of cosmic chance but you can be intellectually consistent and be an atheist and argue.

For this but you cannot argue that there is a Christian God that condones homosexuality it is impossible you cannot do it it is intellectually inconsistent to do so and that's very important to establish I know it took a lot to get here but I that's very important to establish out the gate so that we can understand and engage with some of the different arguments that are made in our culture the Bible does not condone this so that's a lot and I I hear the critique of those who don't follow Christ.

For those don't I I I hear the critique when they say that what you're saying is too much to tell someone that they would have to abstain from their desires to pursue chasti to not give in to what feels normal and right to them that's wrong like I've heard the arguments sexual desire is too strong and to tell someone that they can't engage in this is harmful I had a psychology professor in college who called out all the Christians in the room and he called all the Christians in the room and he just he said y'all don't get it sexual drive is too strong of a psychological drive to tell someone that they can't pursue.

This is wrong I've heard that argument that if you understood if you understood what they were going through if you understood the experience if you understood this and how hard it is you wouldn't tell someone not to pursue this said you certainly wouldn't speak so harshly about them that critique has weighed heavily upon me for years and that critique has weighed heavily upon me the last couple of months and that's when God started to lead me to tell you a bit of my own story I became a Christian.

When I was 17 years old and about a year after following Christ I came to grips with the reality that I didn't just struggle with sinful heterosexual lust but that I also struggle with sinful same-sex attraction and at 18 years old as a new Christian I didn't know what to do with that I I didn't know what to to do with this reality that I could no longer deny now when I say that I struggle with same seex attraction that a lot of people have theories on about how all this comes about some will say.

Well they must have been the result of abuse growing up or this must have been uh you must have had an overbearing mother which is not true or that maybe you you were born this way I'll get into more of the Nuance of that next week but I can speak very practically from my own experience where I think this began cuz it's not something I knew when I was seven it began and it kind of formed through years of Internet pornography.

So I came of age probably at the worst time to come of age so when I was uh in the fourth grade we got our first computer in the house when I was in the fifth grade we got dialup internet when I was in the sixth grade we got broadband internet it happened so quickly and if you're around my age I'm 35 if you're around my age 30 to 40 years old and you're a guy you probably have the exact same story story I've hardly met any guy that doesn't have this story.

But at 10 years old I started to look at pornography until I was 18 years old when God freed me from it and in that time period something just shifted in my sinful nature and in high school I started to notice this this creeping desire and I was confused this was in the mid early 2000s and I didn't know to I mean back then South in South Carolina no one was talking about LGBT stuff that wasn't even a phrase that was thrown around in this area and I was confused I didn't know what to do with this that I had this heterosexual Temptations and I like girls.

But also had the same sex attraction attraction that was lingering and I didn't know what to do with that then I became a Christian and I started to understand what the Bible says on this and I started to understand sin and I was like okay by the time I was about a freshman in college I was like I can't deny this anymore this is a reality but I'm never going to talk about it at that point I felt called to Ministry felt called to be a pastor and I I was had some maybe had some unbiblical ideas of what that would mean.

If people found out about this but I'll say very clearly there's a difference between samesex attraction and pursuing it one is Temptation one is disqualifying but I didn't know what to do with it and I was scared and to be honest I've been around Christians long enough to hear some very harsh language I heard the word so many times that I was like I'm not talking to anyone about this ever and that was my goal and for the next few years I continued to just stay quiet to never say anything.

And then going into my senior year the summer before my senior year I was a part of a college Ministry and in this college Ministry I was leading discipling a room full of guys and we were I was teaching them the Bible and I taught them 1 John 1: 7 but if we walk in the light as he is in the light we have fellowship with one another and the blood of his son Jesus cleanses us of all sin same thing I've taught here and I taught them that and I watched each one of them confess sin and it was beautiful and I felt like a hypocrite and I could not live under the weight.

Of that hypocrisy any longer I could not preach and not practice I couldn't do it and I said if I'm going to believe the Gospel and I'm going to believe this I'm I'm actually going to believe what I'm saying and that is when I began to finally walk in the light and I found a dear brother and I I told him it's the first person I talked to I told him and he just he said thank you so much for telling me and he gave me the Gospel and he gave me Grace he pointed me to.

Jesus and then later that summer I talked to two other guys two brothers in Christ and I listened to one of them after I done telling me this telling him this listen to one of them articulate almost the exact same story that I have and I realized I'm not alone and I continue to walk in the light I contined to walk with other Christians I saw God use this I got the disciple guys where this is exclusively was their struggle and as I started to walk with other brothers in Christ I was talking with my mentor back home Andy told him this he acted like a Christian in fact I just go on to say.

This everyone I've ever talked about this has acted like a Christian the Church is a wonderful place to figure this out I talked to Andy and Andy said hey man I I'm proud of you but you're getting serious with Anna and you're going to have to tell her before you get engaged and I was like what I don't like that but I I listen to his counsel and obeyed it and I it's the hardest thing I've ever had to do in.

First semester towards the end of senior year I sat Anna down and I looked at her and for 20 minutes through tears stumbling all over my words I just said I I've begged God to take this and he hasn't and that might be the case for the rest of my life I may struggle with samex attaction for the rest of my life and if you marry me you need to know that and they had been preparing me for this and and talking like.

Listen she might need some time she might need a couple of weeks that's fine it's a lot to absorb and she was patient she let me finish and when I got done she looked at me and she said I love you and I want to marry you this does not keep me from wanting to marry you and we'll have to talk about it but I love you and I'm man and I put a ring on it two weeks later find you someone whom you can bear your soul to who doesn't Flinch who acts like a Christian that's and that's that's.

For romantic love that's also for Christian friendship that where you can bear your soul and they don't Flinch for a moment that's what Christian supposed to do and over the years I've continued to walk in the light never publicly moved to Louisville went to Seminary was part of a Church up there walked with other Christians there had accountability had pastors who knew about this came back down here same thing here with our pastors people I've been in community group with people I've been recovery groups with have continued to walk in the light and the Church is a wonderful place to do that.

But when people say if you only knew what it was like I do I do know what it's like I know what it's like to beg God to take it away to plead with God to take it away Theus that is the that that was the Genesis that was the beginning of why I wrote I Trust You Lord that came right out that first verse comes directly out of this when I wrote I feel the stain of darkness and my sin a headd in voice recounting all my shame I know what it's like to feel that shame I know what it's like to have the enemy come in and Whisper things recounting it I've confessed.

His work and Glory the power of His name but the path of life seems like it has no end I've confessed the Gospel I pray in the name of Jesus take it and he said no and the path to Eternity just feels so long I know what that's like you know who else knew what you know who else knew what that was like if Apostle Paul Paul for different reasons understood this he knew what it was like to beg God to beg.

Jesus to take something away when you get to 2 Corinthians CH 12 there's a thorn and the flesh we don't know what that thorn is for Paul we don't know if it's something physical or it's something spiritual if it's sin we don't know what it is but it's afflicting him and in 2 Corinthians 12 he says so to keep me from being conceited because of the surpassing greatness of the revelations a thorn was given me in the flesh a messenger of Satan to harass me to keep me from being from becoming conceited three times I pleaded with the.

Lord about this that it should leave me he pleads I know what that's like I know it's like to plead and ask God Jesus this is sin will you take it will you take it will you take it and Paul is pleading with the Lord he's pleading with Christ and this is what Jesus says that in verse 9 but he said to me my grace is sufficient for you for my power is made perfect in weakness I've pleaded with Jesus you know what he said my grace is enough my grace is sufficient and my power is made perfect in your weakness and Paul responds.

Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses so that the power of Christ May rest upon me and that's why I'm doing this today this isn't walking in the light I've done that for over a decade but a couple of months ago I was in a doctoral class and I just started to God started to just press into this and what he was saying was it's time it's time for my power to make perfect in your weakness and I was like I I went home and told Anna she's like.

But we prayed for weeks and realized this is exactly what God wants to do that it is time we had fears wrapped in all of this some of them completely irrational some of them more based in reality some of our biggest fears was our kids this is not something they need to know about and we certainly didn't want anyone saying anything harsh or ugly or we didn't want any other kids in the Church to might go up and say something to them we'll have the conversations one day.

When they're ready but we were obedient to the Lord we just said it's time and I think it's time for a few reasons the first is that some of you struggle with same sex sex attraction and you aren't walking in the light some of you struggle with same-sex desires and and you're living in darkness and you're not alone you're not alone some of you are struggling with this maybe you're looking at pornography maybe you're even thinking about engaging in same-sex relationships and I want to tell you that my door is open my door is open to talk you're not alone and there are other Christians in our Church that struggle with this and a few.

Of them have given me their names and taken a brave step so that you can go and talk to them too but Katie Freeman my sister Jordan Sarat my brother also know what it's like to struggle with same seex attraction and choose Jesus is better you're not alone and we're ready for you we're ready to talk to cry but you got to take a leap of faith and you got to step into the light the second reason is that there are people in this city that are pursuing same-sex desires and it is never going to satisfy them it's never going to satisfy them I don't know what's going to happen with the sermon it's going.

To go online I have no idea about a month ago brother of mine said just you need to stop worrying about this and I made a decision right then and there that I was going to stop worrying about it I don't know what's going to happen let me tell you something we're in Casey I don't know if you noticed that Casey is becoming a more gay friendly part of town you can go up and down the Avenues you can see pride flags.

And if this Church gets to be a hospital for the broken which is what Jesus wants his Church to be if it gets to be a hospital for those who are working through sexual Brokenness and they want to come in here and figure this out together Praise Jesus that's what our Church should be and that's what our Church is doesn't matter what you struggle with this Church is a safe place to be able to figure this out together to be able to expose sin and experience the goodness of his grace and his mercy and his kindness and forgiveness this Church is a wonderful place to be to figure that out together no matter what you.

Are struggling with but if you are struggling with same seex attraction I want you to hear something very clearly the most important truth I can say to you today is that if you belong to Jesus your same seex attraction does not define you if you belong to Jesus your same seex attraction does not define you your sin does not define you your savior does I left out a very important part of 1 Corinthians 6 for a reason so let me finish it.

So you can hear this in verse 9 it says or do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God do not be deceived neither the sexually immoral nor idolators nor adulterers nor men who practice homosexuality nor thieves nor the greedy nor drunkards nor revelers nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God verse 11 and such were some of you such were some of you such were some of us that if you belong to Christ you are defined by him that is not who you are that is who you were and he goes on to say.

But you were washed you were Sanctified you are justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the spirit of our God that when you come to Christ you bring your sin and your Brokenness and even your disordered desires and you lay them before the cross and he washes Us by the renewal of his blood that he puts the Holy Spirit in our lives and sanctifies US putting the old person to death and renewing us every day he justifies us which means that.

When God the Father looks upon me he doesn't see my disordered desires he sees the perfect righteousness spotlessness perfect record of Christ that's the truth of the Gospel and if you are a Christian you're not defined by your sin you defined by your savior and if you don't know Christ you can be you can be defined by the goodness of the Gospel and you don't have to be defined by your sin but that means you've got to come to him in faith and you got to submit all of your desires before him I'll close with this Rosaria Butterfield who I think is one of the biggest gifts to the Church in this Arena she was.

A professor at Syracuse she taught feminist queer Theory and she was a lesbian and she met Jesus and left that lifestyle behind you'll hear more about her next week but she says Temptation patterns linger but they do not rule your life anymore and they do not define you Temptation patterns are Outsiders to your true nature in Christ they don't co- with Christ even as they remain I've asked God and I'll continue to ask God to take it and for the rest of my life his answer may be no that my grace is sufficient and my power is made perfect in your weakness.

But that's not my true nature Christ is and though they linger Christ remains and that truth will continue into eternity so brothers and sisters some of you need to take a leap of faith maybe that's talking to me maybe that's talking to someone else in your group some of you need to take a leap and experience the goodness of fellowship and freedom that's found in the Gospel and some of you need to believe in Jesus and need to see that our savior is better than anything this world has to offer and that includes disordered desires we pray Heavenly.

Father we thank you for the good news of the Gospel that saves us that saved me that sets us apart to worship and Delight in you I'm thankful that your grace is sufficient your power is made perfect in our weaknesses we will boast all the more in our weaknesses because that is where your wonderful Gospel is made beautiful so Heavenly Father there are undoubtedly people in this room that are scared there are undoubtedly people in this room that are afraid to talk may you lift that fear and give them Faith to step forward in Freedom and in faith and in trusting you and I pray.

If there's anyone here that is not convinced I pray there's anyone here that does not believe what the Scriptures has to say on this God I pray that you would soften their heart towards truth even when it is difficult Lord help us we love you in Jesus name amen.

Theology of Sex+ Week 3: Sexual Idolatry

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

Sexual Idolatry

Chet Phillips

Transcript

Well good morning my name is Chet I'm one of the pastors here grab a Bible go to Genesis chapter one we're going to be in Genesis 1 and 2 and then we'll be in Romans 1. but this sermon is a little bit different this whole series is a little bit different than what we normally do we usually work through books of the Bible so we just finished Exodus we're going to start Malachi as soon as this series is over and then we're going to be in Philippians next year and the reason we do that is that we believe that the Bible all of it is helpful and all of it is needed and that we.

Often if we just pick on our own ask the questions we want to ask we miss things that the Bible needs to tell us but we don't ask the right questions it's it's one of the reasons why you don't let elementary students pick the topics they're going to learn it's because they won't pick the topics they need to learn there'll be things that they would pick that they're interested in like if you let my third grade son choose what the school curriculum was he would know a lot about dinosaurs and wrestlers and Pokemon.

But he would never have been like teach me math he just wouldn't have asked for it and we believe that that's how we would approach the Bible that there are some questions that we ask that we're interested in that we want to know answers on but there's a lot that we should that we don't ask but in this series we're just taking a moment to say look our culture has a lot of training that it is giving us on sex and gender and sexuality that every single day.

If you ride down the road and look at Billboards if you stand in line at a grocery store and glance at the magazines if you watch your television or listen to the radio you're going to be coached up on some amount of how you ought to think about sex and gender and sexuality and we're taking some time to say hey what does the Bible say does it help us out and can we get our footing so if you came in a little late and you smuggled in a fifth grader or down I would encourage you unless you want to have interesting conversations.

For the rest of the day you may want to take them to kid city that is up to you but we are talking through what the Bible says about sex and we're talking about what our culture says about sex and so it just depends on where you are in those conversations as to where how much you want to be here this morning with those at that age I've that's probably covered it all right here we go um we have said so far in this series we've said we are created image bearing embodied and distinct people made.

For complementary co-rule with God we took the first two weeks to try to flesh that out and say this is the way God designed us and now we're going to take a moment to say where are we culturally in our thought processes what's going on around us and so this sermon even as this series is distinct this sermon will be a little more distinct because we're going to talk a little bit about what the Bible says but we're also going to try to take some time in the middle to Define where we are culturally.

But let's start with the Bible Genesis 1. verse 28. we've read this every week so far he says and God blessed them that's humanity and God said to them be fruitful and multiply and fill the Earth and subdue it so the First Command that we see here given to humanity is to be fruitful and multiply that that part of this design of God that men and women would be complementary to one another is a reproductive design that we for Humanity to move forward need one another we need men and women to be able to reproduce and that was part of the way.

God designed this and that he built this and blessed it sex is not something that Humanity discovered it is something that God designed on purpose and blessed and made it the way he made it on purpose or Genesis 2 verse 24 and 25 it says therefore man shall leave his father and 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 that verse 25 naked not ashamed we said points to the fact that they existed in their own bodies comfortably and that sin has broken that we no longer exist in our own bodies comfortably like we once did.

But that God designed sex and sexuality and he blessed it and he brought them together and that they will come together and they will become one flesh and that's this picture of sex it's also this picture of reproduction that in children you have legitimately taken two sets of people two people and made one new person that is the image the United image of those two people who have come together that God did this on purpose Tim Keller who's a pastor in New York recently passed away.

But he says this he says in Genesis 1 28 God tells Adam and Eve to be fruitful and multiply so procreation is obviously a large part of God's design for sex but he also made sex feel good and the Song of Solomon is full of references to the rapturous pleasure found in a sexual relationship between man and wife sex and the pleasure that comes along with it are designed to reinforce the connection between a husband and wife creating a stable bond.

For a family in a safe atmosphere to raise children the pleasurable chemicals released during sex are meant to remind the participants of their wedding vows that they belong to and are attached to one another that they mutually serve one another if the Covenant of marriage is that all of me belongs to all of you for all of our lives sex is meant to be a covenant renewal ceremony a covenant remembering ceremony it's meant to be that same thing that we're giving all of ourselves to one another and that.

God designed it that way on purpose and made it enjoyable on purpose Tim Keller goes on to say that this is one of the reasons why we uh when we enter into sexual relationships to people we aren't married to it's one of the reasons why we stay in bad relationships longer than we should because we've been telling ourselves through our physical acts that we belong to each other in a covenantal way and it's one of the reasons why when we break up it hurts more than it should.

Because we've been enacting covenantal relational activities rather than keeping that where it's supposed to be so one of the the general views of the way Christians think about sex and sexuality is that we think it's dirty and bad and wrong that the Church teaches sex is dirty and bad and wrong save it for your spouse that's not the Christian teaching on this we actually believe that sex is more beautiful and more powerful than our culture does and therefore it ought to be guarded and not be in the right place and it's to be celebrated and enjoyed in the right context we don't agree with our culture that it is the the only way to have.

A happy life and the only way to to exist the Bible celebrates celibacy and singleness as you are a full human I know culturally we're told if you if you've never had sex you're only like a half a person you don't really exist until you've done this you don't really get to be a real person until then that's not true it is it's a gift but it's not ultimate and you can see how if this is our approach to sexuality We Stand contrary to our culture this and our culture doesn't really like our position on sexuality and this isn't new this is uh C.S Lewis talking 80 years ago in in a completely different continent.

He writes this Chastity that's this approach to sexuality is the most unpopular of the Christian virtues there is no getting away from it the Christian rule is either marriage with complete faithfulness to your partner or else total abstinence he says that's Christian's approach to sexuality and people don't like that he actually goes on to say it's difficult so difficult and contrary to our instincts that either the Christian rule has to be wrong or we have to be wrong and we've we've made it worse.

Because we've added either marriage between one man and one woman to further differentiate and clarify our position with complete faithfulness to your partner or else total abstinence and if you're familiar if you've been in the United States for more than about 30 minutes you realize that's not the cultural approach and so we stand contrary to our culture and we say a thing that's not very popular and most cultures have rejected this approach to marriage because our approach to sexes wrong as C.S Lewis would put it contrary to this ideal that.

God gives us an interesting thing it used to be that as Christians held this position the culture around us viewed us as more moral than them that we were prudish or we were too strict but that this position was more moral so they might would make fun of you or they might would exclude you from things but they didn't see you as less moral they saw you as more moral but recently the cultural position on the Christian view has shifted so the Christians are.

Now likely to be viewed not as more moral but as less moral that our position is actually harmful that our position is actually oppressive that's interesting and I want to take a moment to try to understand how we got there and why our culture views thus that way because the Christian approach to this hasn't changed my grandad's name was Chester Phillips he was a pastor and when he taught on the Christian approach to sex he would have taught this marriage with faithfulness or total abstinence we haven't thrown a curveball in here we've clarified a thing.

But we hadn't we hadn't changed our position but the culture shifted around us so that their view on our position has changed and that's interesting we need to figure it out first I want to explain one quick aspect of where this is and then we're gonna have to spend a little more time on another one the first one is this we've bought into the idea of the pursuit of happiness and honestly we're kind of built that way as humans and God actually designs us to have ultimate happiness in him and he assumes that we're going to pursue things that are good.

For us and things that we see is valuable this is one of the reasons why he'll tell us to pursue treasure in heaven rather than treasure here it's not that he says treasure is bad he says to get your priorities straight understand where you'll have the most Joy the most Delight so we've got this idea of pursuit of happiness but here's the problem when we use the word happiness we often mean two separate things there's happiness as in joy as in contentment as in everything is good and I don't need anything else and there's happiness as in pleasure which is this is really good I want some more.

And if you in the book The hacking of the American mind there's a pediatric endocrinologist who wrote the book and this pediatric endocrinologist argues that we have subtly in the U.S swapped out the word happiness for the word pleasure we've just taken happiness and filled it with the word pleasure and he says the reason that is is that pleasure is controllable and sellable we're consumers we're designed to be consumers that's what America runs off of you buying things and it runs off of you buying more shoes than you have feet like we're designed to own too much stuff as an American Consumer the the culture around us doesn't want you to say I'm happy.

I don't want any more I'm at peace also just so you know that version of joy happiness is harder to attain it's less controllable by you I want to feel content is way harder Target to hit versus the pleasure button y'all sugar caffeine caffeine with sugar in it we know how to press this button and that's our approach to sexuality is just pleasure not contentment stability enjoyment Joy we just know how to press the pleasure button and so we've been sold on happiness as a Pursuit pleasure as a replacement.

For that because that's the one that's controllable and sellable and sex is one of the primary ways to accomplish that and that's where we are culturally that's what pornography is that's what a hookup culture is it's the ability to go after pleasure because pleasure is in some ways controllable attainable sellable achievable and we hope that if I mash the pleasure button enough I'll get the contentment but our skyrocketing addiction and depression shows us that just mashing the pleasure button doesn't make us content all right we need to understand that's going on in our culture.

But the next thing we need to understand and the reason why because that was already happening the reason why our culture has shifted its view on our view is because of this I want to read this quote to try to help you understand kind of where we are this is from Carl Truman and Strange New World and he does a really good job of trying to articulate this but he says this indeed it can seem as if things that almost everybody believed as unquestioned Orthodoxy meaning truth reality the day before yesterday that marriage is between one man and one woman.

For example he says things that we used to believe that we were all on the same page with we were all because of the day before yesterday but give you an example you know how political positions shift depending on what everybody thinks um if you didn't know that there you go uh when Barack Obama ran for president in 2008 that was his official position the marriage was between one man and one woman that's not to take a shot at Barack Obama and try to help you understand how quickly we've shifted our position on this that that idea.

For example are now regarded as heresies advocated only by the dangerous Lunatic Fringe he goes on to say when I was young religious people were often regarded as foolish or hypocritical by The Wider culture but I do not recall any widespread belief that they were as a class dangerous hate-filled bigots who represented a threat to civil order he used to be viewed as more moral now we're being viewed as less moral why the reason why is this we are currently in what some social scientists and philosophers would call the age of authenticity or the age of expressive individualism what started with Renee Descartes saying I think.

Therefore I am placing existence inside of us and then Rousseau who took that and ran with it Russo at one point says I'm going to do something that's never been heard of I'm going to do something that'll shock the world I'm going to write a story but I'm just going to talk about what's going on inside of me is that shocking to us no that's a diary man like that's just that's the way that's the way we think about the world is that I'm the main character and what's going on inside of me is primary and it wasn't something that was new uh Saint Augustine had already done it Christians believe that you have an.

Inner man we're not against this idea but that the seat of reality exists inside of you is new but what we've done is we've said that the primary thing that matters is who you are on the inside so we say things like you have to be true to yourself you need to just believe in yourself we talk about you can't argue with someone's lived experience if they've actually experienced it you can't tell them they're wrong we say things like this is my story this is my truth.

Because it's seated in us there's a Canadian philosopher his name is Charles Taylor and I thought he put it well he says this expressive individualism believes each one of us has his or her own way of realizing our Humanity and it believes that it is important to find and live out one's own and that's what he's talking about one's own way to live out your Humanity as against surrendering to Conformity with a model imposed on us from outside by Society or the previous generation or religious or political Authority I give you the plot to most of the movies you've watched in the last 30 years that's the books we read That's the movies we watch.

That's what we believe is that you have to figure out what's going on in you and you have to express it you have to impose yourself on the rest of the world and that anybody who tells you you're wrong is the enemy you see what we've become to believe and usually that other what we've come to believe is this we can't really know right or wrong we can't really know things about God we can't really know things about eternity we can't really know any of those things objectively all we really know is who we are and what we want and what's going on inside of us and since we can't really know things outside of.

Us but we can know what's inside of us then we might not have right and wrong but what we can have is power and oppression what we can have is someone else who imposes their will on yours and anyone who poses their imposes their will on yours is oppressive and abusive and harmful anybody who tells you that you can't be the you that you want to be is oppressive and abusive and harmful and the Church has been the bad guys from Footloose onward probably before that that's just the one I know about that's what the Church does is it comes in and says no there's actually something wrong inside of you and you need some.

Objective reality to guide you to change you you need to submit your will to something outside of you that's not the stories we tell that's not the advice we give it sounds weird to us to give the exact to say the opposite like if you were coaching someone up and you said look don't be yourself yourself is bad so stop it you go out there and you be what your parents expect you to be high five don't be yourself don't follow your dreams your country needs you submit to the will of your country don't be yourself don't find out what's true to you and express it do not sing a song into a.

Well look at me do not sing you do what your ancestors want from you you do what your religion tells you to do that sounds like a monologue of the bad guy that's what we've been trained in now Christianity believes that you have an inner self and Christianity believes that your inner self you have value and dignity and worth that you are an individual you're not a cog in a machine that you exist individually and personally the Christianity agrees with those things.

But then Christianity steps in and says but there's something wildly broken and wrong and sinful in your heart and you cannot trust yourself which puts us completely sideways with our culture and once you take our culture's approach to pursuit of pleasure and sex and our culture's approach to individuality and self-expression and for lack of a better word marry those things together we have what we have now which is the Church is oppressive and abusive I want to read this this is Carl Truman talking about that coming together he says this in short the sexual Revolution does not simply represent a growth in the routine transgression of traditional sexual codes or even a modest expansion of.

The boundaries of what is and is not acceptable sexual behavior not at all rather it is the repudiation of the very idea of such codes in their entirety so what what he's saying is this the sexual Revolution wasn't saying hey we've made the line too too rigid too too narrow on what good sex is and we need to move it out we need to be able to talk about it a little more we need to be able to change the boundaries what he says the sexual Revolution is is any line drawn is bad we got to get rid of the lines and we currently really only have like one cultural lines left pedophilia and bestiality.

And we're wavering on both of these and you're actually going to start hearing the arguments for why those are bad not based in they are morally repugnant and intrinsically Wicked sins against your dignity as a human it's not what you're going to hear we're going to start hearing more arguments about the problem is consent because we only understand how to talk about power and oppression and it has to do with individual expression and so the issue is not that these are bad on their own.

But how are you going to define consent okay he keeps going more than that it has come in certain areas such as that of homosexuality and transgenderism to require the positive repudiation of traditional sexual mores okay so not just we got to get rid of them we actually now have to announce that any of those lines were actually evil they were bad they were oppressive that's what positive repudiation means it's come to we have to do that to the point where belief in or main maintenance of such views trying to keep the line has come to be seen as ridiculous and even a sign of serious mental or moral deficiency the Church is oppressive.

Less moral he says and to understand this how we got here we need to see the sexual Revolution as a particularly sharp manuscript manifestation of the characteristics of expressive individualism if the individual's inner identity is defined by sexual desire then he or she must be allowed to act out on that desire in order to be an authentic person so when the Church says we think you're wrong this desire is bad the Church is articulating we see you as separate from your sexual desires.

But our culture no longer does that our culture says sexual desire is identity and even when we talk about it one of the reasons you feel uncomfortable is you've been coached by our culture and how to think about this and the younger you are the more coaching you've received this is why people who are older than you can say things that make you go oh you can't say that this is why if you go back and watch old episodes of sitcoms you'll go oh you can't say that and they weren't they're not that old.

But you'll be going and you realize oh I've been trained for example if I said there are most people and they're Chipotle people and chipotle people are wrong you would first of all probably agree with me who wants to pay for chips I don't get it but you would not hear it the way that you would hear there are straight people and gay people and gay people are wrong because Moe's and chipotle is a thing that you desire it's not who you are do you.

See how we've shifted to Identity and Christianity says no no who you are is an image Bearer made in the image of God who you are has desires who you are needs Jesus and we love you enough to wherever your desires are crossed Away With Jesus to say oh please come to Jesus and not because he hates you and not because we think we're better than you but because we think that what you're chasing is harmful and that Jesus is better.

But that's not the language or culture speaking so we come across and are seen as oppressive and abusive because it's a personal attack you are wrong at the core of who you are and anybody who's out there saying you are wrong is equivalent to a racist is equivalent to someone who is saying just by the nature of how you exist you are wrong and it's seen as wickedness and we're right about racism culturally and we're wrong about this so because of this and this we are more sexually liberated than we've ever been in this country you are more free to pursue sex to pursue pleasure and we're told that.

If you can freely nobody's going to put any restraints on you and if you can freely pursue pleasure you'll be happy that's what we've been sold on you gotta get your parents to not tell you what to do you got to get Society to not tell you what to do you got to get religion to not tell you what to do if you can have all those things you'll be happy is our culture happy has it worked we're told that pornography.

For a long time it's just a normal thing it's a social good it'll reduce people who would otherwise commit sexual assaults it um it's a normal craving it's in the privacy of your home like we've been told all these things this is fine this won't hurt us it's good it's a desire it's a it's like an appetite you can just you know you get hungry you eat this is this is fine for us but has pornography been a public good for us we have an increased amount of addiction we have an increased amount of abuse and addiction and depression we have an increased amount of young men who are.

Now having to seek medication because they no longer function properly sexually because of their pornography addictions it's increased depression it's increased social anxiety because it's a very bad representation of how men and women should interact it's increased the objectification of people it's increased the commodification of people the buying and selling of people we have hookup culture which is just find as many people to sleep with and that's a that's a route to Joy visit has it been has this been a good.

For us we have stories now of people who are using apps to to sleep around and they've met somebody they sleep with them and they're in the bed with them and open the app back up because it doesn't lead to satisfaction we were told that if we had the pill and if we had contraceptives and we had abortion we could help cut down on the number of children that are born out of wedlock and the reason why we want to cut down on the number of children who are born outside of a married couple is.

Because all of their statistics are bad they're worse you can you can succeed from that position but your chances for poverty for violence for abuse being abusive and being abused all increase we were told though if we had the pill if we had free sex if we could just get it to where it wasn't we would fix these problems we now have the highest rate of children born out of outside of wedlock in the U.S we've ever had it's nearing uh it's 40.

So it's almost half of all children born or born into a situation that's worse for them we have sexual assault and rape which we've always had the world has had that forever but it's on the rise and we're told culturally that what we need is more we need more freedom we need to get rid of where people are still saying things like we got to get to where we can talk about sex without it being taboo is that our problem that we don't talk about sex enough we're not free enough with how we talk about it every single show we've watched every single movie you've watched every single everything you've participated in has sold you.

On the idea that that sex is free and easy and simple and if you could just have more of it you'd be happy and we're told we need more that this is freedom and this is satisfaction and I think we ought to look around and say if this is freedom and this is satisfaction we don't want it and I think we ought to look and say thankfully that the Bible looks at this and says this is not Freedom or satisfaction this is called idolatry and slavery those are the words the Bible is going to put to this.

So go to Romans 1. because God loves us he helps tell us that things are bad for us I love my children which means that I often stand between the pleasure button and shoe them towards Joy my kids are convinced if they only ate Candy and didn't have a bedtime their life would be magical they're convinced that they could speak to their parents however they wanted to their life would have more freedom they're convinced that if they had to go to school and weren't forced to brush their teeth life would be good and I'm.

Well aware that all of those things will mash the pleasure button and will never ever head them towards Joy and God stands in between us and our Twisted desires in his infinite wisdom and love and says no no no that'll match the pleasure button but it'll never ever head you towards Joy Romans 1. we read some of this earlier we read all this earlier we're going to pick up in verse 21. this is talking about Humanity it's talking about what all creatures under the Earth have done and how this has worked out it says.

For although they knew God they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him but they became futile in their thinking and their foolish Hearts were darkened I want you to understand one of the things that Christians believe is that we have foolish hearts you have lied to you more than anyone else has you have caused you more problems than anyone else has you have caused yourself a problem and then lied to yourself about it we have foolish hearts it says their foolish Hearts were darkened claiming to be wise they became fools and exchanged the glory of the immortal.

God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things so rather than submitting to God worshiping God delighting In God we said no we want something else and we swap it out that's idolatry the idea that I'll be the person who decides what's right I'll be the person who's in charge is not new it's actually quite old that's the thing we did in the Garden of Eden that's Genesis chapter 3. that's where they say no we'll choose right and wrong we'll be in charge of Good and Evil thank you very much we'll decide.

So our culture is saying hey you're the final Arbiter on the right and wrong good and evil it's like didn't a snake tell us that a long time ago that's where we are we exchange God for something else and sometimes this shows up in straight up the way we think of idolatry a totem pole bird something that you're lighting incense to but also we've replaced it for images resembling mortal man my own intelligence my own reason my own Inner Man and also physical bodies of other people and it says.

Verse 24 therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves and y'all our approach to sexual sin is a dishonoring of our bodies and that's what he's talking about he's going to go further and say more about sexual sin he also says that he gave them up to all kinds of sin but that's what happens when we reject God often he'll say you can have which have it and it's not good.

For us it's actually his wrath on us to give us what we want at times it says because they exchange the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator who is blessed forever amen you are worshiping something and you are serving something you are a slave to something this is how Humanity works you have something that you set out in front of you and say this is good this is desirable this is the right outcome this is who I want to be this is how I think want things to work that's worship that's this this is what is most wonderful and delightful in the world.

And then your track to get it and enjoy it is your service or slavery so that Peter's going to say things like whatever overcomes a person to that he is enslaved or later in Romans in chapter six he's going to say you're a slave to the one whom you obey he says it's either God or it's to sin which leads to death and culturally we are told if you can think about yourself and you can think about sex in these ways you'll have freedom you'll have joy you'll have Delight This Is Our.

God come let us worship and Bow Down and we have not been blessed by our cultural approach to sex you have not been blessed by our cultural approach to sex it has not been good in your life or added to your joy for many of us most of us we were introduced to sex way too early it ruled in our imagination way too early our introduction to sex if it was through pornography completely Twisted for us what it is supposed to be.

Because rather than being something that is participatory and covenantal and enjoyable between two people it became voyeuristic and you were separated from it became a commodity it became only about pleasure and nothing about Covenant or sacrifice or the giving of yourself it came only about self-service rather than service and kindness and graciousness and generosity and sacrifice and belonging if we went from relationship to relationship if you're currently going from relationship to relationship sexual relationship to sexual relationship or not even a relationship just sex to sex.

If you're currently looking at pornography daily it might hit the pleasure button but it is not added to to contentment to rest peace it is not added to your joy it's one of the reasons it's so confusing because you've potentially been convinced that it would so maybe you're not doing it right or maybe you need more or maybe it's got to be different or maybe you've got to find the next approach to it that that makes you send out more dopamine maybe next time.

But it will not satisfy more and more when we do pre-marital counseling or when we do marriage counseling we are not dealing with people who have only had sexual relationships with each other and their previous sexual relationships have not added to their Joy it has not added to contentment it has not added to Delight it has not added to the picture of what God had for us our objectification of each other and buying and selling of one another has only added to the Brokenness around us.

If sex and individuality are our God we need a new one because this one has not blessed us this one demands more worship more sacrifice more service always promising to at some point finally satisfy satisfying us saving us fixing us and it will not ever deliver and by God's grace we will see that sooner rather than later Jesus says in John chapter 8 Jesus answers them and he says truly truly I say to you everyone who practices sin as a slave to sin and the slave does not remain in the house forever the sun remains forever and he's playing on a concept they understand here slaves don't inherit the end of the line.

For a Slave is not inheritance rest and Delight that road leads to more slavery but the Sun remains forever and then he shifts and he starts talking about himself and he says so if the sun sets you free you will be free indeed do you want freedom do you want satisfaction do you want joy do you want to learn how to quit just trying to chase after pleasure and find contentment and Delight that lasts not only last for this little life as we walk this out.

But last for an eternity because it has been purchased for us not by us but by him then you need the son to set you free you need Jesus to pay your debt to rescue you to forgive you and to make you his forever one of the reasons we can say that we know with definitive Clarity that God loves us when he stands between us and pleasure is because he sent his son to die on a cross for us that he came to suffer.

So that he might pay our debt and set us free there's a beautiful story in Luke chapter 11. Luke tells us that Jesus is in the house of a religious leader and a prostitute comes she falls on the ground and she begins to weep she begins to weep on Jesus's feet you ever had really dusty Sandy dirty feet and put a little drop of water you know that little line that runs through them that's what his feet looked like but more lines more lines more lines I don't know.

If you've ever just wept and you've cried to where it's just dripping she's just weeping on his feet and she starts using her hair to clean his feet because there's so many tears she had been chewed up and spit out by her culture's approach to sex she had been run racket she had been wiped out she had approached something that was supposed to be good for them and it was horrific and and the religious leader thinks to himself if Jesus was really a prophet he would know what kind of woman this was and he wouldn't let her touch him we're looking in the pages of our Bible and we know that he's not only a.

Prophet but he's the son of God and you're struck at that moment oh he knows exactly what kind of woman this is and he welcomes her and he forgives her and he Delights that she would come to him and in this room right now we may have some significant sexual Brokenness because you have been poorly trained by our culture about what satisfaction and Delight look like and I want you to know that you can fall on your face at Jesus and he welcomes you he does not hesitate he wraps you up and says it's.

For you that I died it's for you that I came that I might cover your shame that I might clothe you in righteousness that you might shine forever with me and all of this can be taken away so do not hesitate do not feel dirty do not feel ashamed but run head long to Christ and to his Redemption and may we be a people who begin to understand what our culture is training Us in so that we might speak well to them.

And so that we might speak well to our hearts to know that we need Jesus to set us free let's pray Lord Christ we praise you and our hearts lie to us and deceive us and lead us astray and Lord we're tired we're tired of biting the hook and being reeled in and being promised satisfaction and being promised fulfillment and being promised that if we just had this we'd be happy and it always falling short and Lord we're hurt we've pursued sexual sin or we've been actively harmed by the sexual sin of others.

Well we're in this room today and we've been marred we feel bruised and abused we feel like we've dirtied ourselves and been dirtied by others and Lord we praise your grace that Jesus shed his blood that we might be clothed in righteousness and by the power of your spirit by the working of the cross may you be at work right now for every person here who is holding on to sin that they might repent that they might weep at your feet and be restored that they might come humbly that they might be lifted up and that we might leave here with new worship and new service in rejection of a false.

God we've asked this in Jesus name amen Matt's going to come up as a Church we're going to sing he's going to take a moment to play while we reflect we're going to take communion and communion is a celebration that Jesus came and that his body was broken and that his blood was shed and that he was made to suffer on our behalf and to cover us through his work and so I'd like for you to take a moment that before you take communion before you come to the feet of.

Jesus she would take a moment to repent that you would take a moment to praise him for his sacrifice for you for his covering of you some of you right now have felt shame creeping up on you and I want you to know that if you're in Christ there is no condemnation there is no guilt because he has paid for it you are made holy and righteous and new if you've trusted in Jesus if you've repented you don't have to dredge all this back up you get to walk free you've never brought it to him come surrender.

So that you might be made new communion is for Christians for those who place their faith in Jesus if you have not trusted in him we'd ask for you to to not partake in it but we would ask you to come to Christ but if you place your faith in him today you can walk over and take communion and celebrate that he died for you that you might be made so take a moment where we are and pray and then Delight in the salvation of Christ.

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.