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.
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.