Genesis chapter 2 is where we will be this morning.
And I will just say we're going to cover a lot of ground this
morning. A lot of ground partly because
the goal is to finish get up through chapter 3 before we
begin Advent. So, so we're having to tear off
some some fairly lengthy sections and really what I'm
doing this morning could be two or three messages actually.
So we're going to cover a lot of ground.
And I'm just going to say this morning is not politically
correct. I'm going to say some things
that culture at large would disagree with things that they
would frankly and offensive. But scripture is our authority.
And if scripture is our authority, then it informs our
beliefs and stances on cultural issues.
And I will also say, I think this is probably if I was the
MPAAI would rate this PGI think if I'm thinking correctly about
it, I think it's PGI. Don't think we're in 13
territory this morning. I'm, I'm going to be vague on,
on a number of things because there's no need to be specific,
but just a fair warning that this is APG message.
So parents, my apologies for any conversations that may, that may
come up this afternoon. So if you are able, would you
stand as we read from Genesis chapter 2, beginning at verse 18
through the end of the chapter, 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 out of the ground the Lord God had formed every beast of
the field and every bird of the He would call them, and whatever
the man called every living creature, that was its name.
The man gave names to all livestock and to the birds of
the heavens, and to every beast of the field.
But for Adam there was not found a helper fit for him.
So the Lord God caused deep sleep to fall upon the man, and
while he slept took one of his ribs and closed up its place
with flesh. And the rib that the Lord God
had taken from the man he made into a woman, and he brought her
to the man. The man said This at last is
bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh.
She shall be called woman, because she was taken out of
man. Therefore a man shall leave his
father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall
become one flesh. And the man and his wife were
both naked. And we're not ashamed.
You may be seated. We've backtracked.
If you notice, we backtracked from where you would expect us
to be is last week. We cover with these verses a
little bit, but I wanted to backtrack because there's a few
points that I want to draw our attention to.
First of all, here at the beginning of the text, we see
that the man is alone. Verse 18 said it's not that he
should be alone, I'm going to make him a helper.
And then verse 20 reiterated that again that they're not
found a helper fit for him. The man was alone.
There was no one else like him around.
God created the man to have fellowship with him as well as
with other human beings. And only when the man is able to
love and give himself away to another human is he able to
fully experience personhood. Verse 20 told us there was no
helper for the man. How did Adam arrive at at the
conclusion? How does he know he needs a
helper? Well, he'd spent time with all
the animals. He'd survey what kind there were
around him, both in the garden as well as out in the field.
And these were all of a different sorts than he.
They were most definitely not a Dom that is human.
There was nothing among the animals that could partner with
him in in the functions that he was serving of and reproducing.
This naturally leads us to the next verse where we find the
human exercising authority. Verses 19 and 20 told us God had
formed all the animals and birds from the dust of the ground and
then brought them to the man in order to be named.
And the man's very first act of exercising authority and ruling
was each of the animals. Each kind was brought before
him, examined, probably spent some time discerning their
qualities, their traits, who came up with a name for each
kind of animal. And the relationship between man
and the animals was likely stronger than the relationship
that we experience with animals currently today.
This is the garden, remember? Man and animals weren't yet at
odds. Animals had no need to fear man,
and man didn't have any need to fear animals yet.
Now the central focus of our text this morning begins at
verse 21. I'll reread it here.
So the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man while
he slept, took one of his ribs and closed up its place with
flesh. And the rib that the Lord God
had taken from the man he made into a woman and brought her to
the man. The man said this at last.
His bone of my bones, flesh of my flesh.
She shall be called woman because she was taken.
It's important to clarify that man isn't naming the woman when
he says she shall be called woman.
He's not giving her a name. She doesn't get a name until
actually in chapter 3 here he's actually categorizing the woman.
She's not one of those other creatures.
She's she's like him. The word for man is ish and the
word for woman is Isha. It's kind of like how we have in
English, you have man and woe. Man, man and the animals were
all formed from the dust of the ground, but not the woman.
See, God took the flesh from the man and he fashioned woman out
of it, creating the very first pair of humans.
Now here we see the woman's source is the man.
The woman's source is the man, not the dust of the ground like
Adam and the animals. The man and woman are alike in
that they are both nefesh, that is to to breathe the air of
life. They are soulish creations.
However, they're not like the other nepheshes that that
existed, the other creatures, the animals, and that's
immediately apparent. They're instantly able to relate
to each other in special ways as they connect over emotional,
intellectual, and spiritual dimensions.
These are areas that are specific to personhood.
Now, it's helpful to remind ourselves that our culture is
quite different from that of the ancient Near East.
We gloss over the references to the woman's creation.
One, because we've heard it a lot, so we've kind of become a
little numb to it. And secondly, because we live in
a post title 9 world void of understanding the cultural
context of the Israelites. The telling of the woman's
creation is unique among the cosmogonies the the foundational
stories of the ancient Near East.
See, it's clear from the text that the woman is important in
the mind of God. God is intense and sets on
creating this new creation. Verse 18 it says the Lord God
said and remember from last week, the Lord God means Yahweh
Elohim, that is that is His personal revelation as he enters
into this realm of creating and forming humanity.
The Lord God said I will make him a helper.
Verse 19 the Lord God formed. Verse 21 the Lord God caused a
deep sleep. Verse 22 The Lord God made the
rib into a woman. Here we see that God is very
active in these verses that talk about the creation of the woman.
Now this is contrary to the ancient cultures who often
oppressed women and the emphasis God gives to the woman sets her
up as equally as important as the man in fulfilling God's
purposes. Now, it probably goes without
saying, but alone the man is incapable of fulfilling the
command to be fruitful and multiply.
Only with the woman by his side is Adam able to be fruitful and
to do what humanity was intended to do.
Actually, I think we could go so far as to say that Adam and Eve
are interdependent on each other.
They're interdependent on each other.
The woman makes it possible for the man to achieve the the
blessing that he could not possibly accomplish on his own,
and neither could she accomplish it on her own.
Even more than that, her importance is further
underscored and in chapter 3, in chapter 3 tells us that the
woman's a seed, her, her offspring, which is a prophetic
reference, a future reference to Jesus.
It says the woman's offspring will defeat the enemy.
So the woman is indispensable in the story of humanity's
redemption. Now, in light of what this text
communicates about gender, it's important for us to consider
gender in our own cultural context.
For the next few moments, I want to look at gender through the
lens of science, culture, and the word.
First of all, what makes someone biologically male or female?
While there are a lot of similarities, all those
qualities I mentioned earlier that men and women share in
common, there are some significant differences.
They each have different reproductive roles.
The male contribute sperm in the female's egg is the receptor of
that sperm. Men and women have of course,
different external anatomy. Men and women are differentiated
by their chromosomes. A female has XX chromosomes and
a male has XY chromosomes. Yes, I understand that there's a
a small segment of the population that is born intersex
with both male and female parts. However, the majority of
intersex people first of all are not even identified as intersex
at birth, as only one in 2000 newborns has genital variations
that involve consultation with a sex differentiation specialist.
Intersex people are a genetic anomaly, not a third gender.
It used to be that gender dysphoria was considered quite
rare, but in the last decade it has dramatically increased the
DSM Five that is the Manual for Psychiatric practice.
It defines gender dysphoria as a condition characterized by a
marked and persistent incongruence between one's
experienced gender. Maybe I would say how they
present and their assigned sex. Feelings of being trapped in the
wrong body tend to pervade the thoughts of the person who
experiences gender dysphoria. They feel like they belong to
the other sex, not the sex that their genitalia would indicates
their their birth sex. It's estimated that .6% of
American adults experience gender dysphoria.
And for teens, the numbers trend higher at 1.4%.
From 2017 to 2021, there was a nearly threefold increase in
reported gender dysphoria among children and adolescents in the
US. And I think we could explain
some of that issue. It is interesting for me to also
tell you numbers are now starting to decrease.
Increasingly, our culture has fallen into a state where it has
actually served to uphold gender stereotypes while simultaneously
trying to tear them down. When people talk about living as
trans, they're usually talking about affirming the gender
stereotypes of the opposite sex, and they usually present that
way. When a girl is interested in
sports or cars, does that mean she's actually a boy trapped in
a girl's body? When a boy is into music?
In the arts, does that mean he's a girl trapped in a boy's body?
The answer is no. Nonconformity to gender
stereotypes does not make one the opposite gender.
When we don't conform to gender stereotypes, that doesn't make
us the other gender the other sex.
Gender stereotypes are not the same as gender stereotypes are
culturally and socially constructed and gender is
biologically identified. The doctor didn't assign sex at
birth. The doctor identified the sex at
birth. Sometimes when people are asked
about gender, they'll say it's a social construct.
What's they should be saying is gender stereotypes are social
constructs. Culturally, we expect boys to
wear blue, be tough and play sports.
We expect girls to wear pink, dance, be into music, and look
pretty. These characteristics don't
determine gender. So we need to keep our heads
screwed on and not jump to conclusions that neither science
nor scripture supports. Furthermore, there is objective
truth. Objective truth exists and
gender complementarity is affirmed by science.
I know this is kind of a big word.
Gender complementarity is affirmed by science.
It means that the genders complement each other.
The truth is that scientific scientifically there are only
two genders, male and female. That is XY and XX chromosomes.
Male and female anatomy support this as well.
The parts fit and function together.
The male part was designed to coordinate with the females.
The females incapable of conceiving without a male
contributing sperm to fertilize the egg, Right?
This is science. There's no sperm, there's no
fertilization. So gender complementarity,
genders complementing each other in reproduction is affirmed by
science. Genesis 127 tells us God created
them as male and female. So our next question is what
does the Bible say about being male and female?
Well, Jesus was a Jew, and as a Jew the question of sex was
settled in the Torah. No, the Torah does not contain
other genders. If you listen to this
conversation, you may hear people try to say that it does,
but it doesn't. The Mishnah and Talmud are
reported to have other genders as well, but.
What we see reported in the Mishnah and Talmud is basically
descriptions of what is or isn't present.
It describes a condition of somebody rather than another
gender. Also, it's worth noting that the
Mishnah and Talmud were not written anywhere near the time
of when Moses writes the Torah, so the Torah does not affirm
another gender outside of male and female.
The question of someone's sex wasn't a topic of debate in
Jesus time, so he didn't specifically comment on it.
What Jesus did do was he quoted Genesis in an interaction with
the Pharisees. The Pharisees were looking for
excuses to to divorce their wives for any reason.
So in Matthew 19 verses 4 through 6 Jesus said this.
Have you not read that He who created them from the beginning
made them male and female, and said therefore man shall leave
his father and his mother, and hold fast to his wife, and the
two shall become one flesh. So they are no longer 2, but one
flesh. What?
Therefore God is joined together, Let not man separate.
Here Jesus reaffirms the original order of creation.
Of course he would, since he was complicit in creation, right?
He he was the one creating. But he affirms the original
order laid down in the law by quoting Genesis 127 and 224, and
he demonstrates himself to be in alignment with the Torah's
teaching and the fact that there's only male and female.
In that same exchange, the topic of eunuchs was brought up again.
If you're online and you're listening to some of these
conversations, transgender proponents will tell you, oh,
look at the eunuch, it's another gender.
No, that is not what is happening here.
When, when Jesus is talking about eunuchs in Matthew 19,
he's not talk. He's not talking about another
gender. That is what we would call
isagesis. Isagesis is where we take our
own biases and we start to read into the text what we want the
text to say. And with isagesis, you can
basically make the text to say anything you want.
When Jesus talks about eunuchs. And eunuchs are men who had been
castrated in order to prevent them from sexually abusing the
queen or in order to protect a King's harem.
They were castrated. So when he talks about eunuchs,
he's only describing their physical condition.
He's not creating and advocating another gender.
So how else might Scripture speak to us on this topic?
First of all, Psalm 139, verses 13 through 14.
It tells us who God created. For You formed my inward parts.
You knitted me together in my mother's womb.
I praise you for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.
God formed you and knew you from the moment of conception and
that is why we are also pro-life.
You were wonderfully created and can trust God's good design in
who you are. Also, Scripture tells us that
you're loved by God. Just one example.
Psalm 36. Seven.
How precious is your steadfast love?
O God, the children of mankind, take refuge in the shadow of
your wings. We're loved by God now
unfortunately though, because of sin, this world is is broken.
This world does not function the way that God intended it to
function. So if we look at Romans eights,
there on the screen, for the 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 the hope that the creation
itself will be set free from its bondage to corruption and obtain
the freedom of the glory of the children of God.
For we know that the whole creation has been groaning
together in the pains of childbirth until now.
All creation is groaning, longing for the day when when
things will be made right. It's not just the trees,
everything out there. That means humanity as well.
Right now, confusion reigns in this world as Satan does all he
can to pull people off course and keep them from seeing God's
truth. And as we speak to truth, I
think it's important to say that changing one's gender,
transitioning doesn't bring clarity.
Rather, it only serves to bring confusion.
Transitioning doesn't bring clarity, it only brings
confusion. When people transition, they
expect things to magically get better, but there's a long list
of people now who expected things to magically be right and
only found themselves disappointed and saddened
because they'd done irreparable damage to their bodies.
Culture doesn't want you to hear those stories by the way they
they suppress those stories. But when you hear these people
talk, the stories are are sad to hear what they have experienced
and what was pushed on them. I think Romans 121 through 25
applies here. 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. Claiming to be wise, they became
fools and exchange the glory of the mortal God for images
resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things.
Therefore, God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to
impurity, to the dishonouring of their bodies among themselves,
because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and
worshipped and served the creature rather than the Creator
who was blessed forever. Amen.
Satan's goal is to bring confusion.
He darkens the hearts of people who are just trying to figure
out who they are and they fall into his lies.
They think they've got it figured out.
They profess to be wise, but in actuality they've lost touch on
reality and have have chosen to glorify their bodies and and
self above the creator. This is what's happening in the
transgender movement. Mass confusion brought on by the
enemy. Before we leave this topic, and
this has just been intended to be kind of a primer to this
topic, but before we leave this topic, there are a few things I
want to say. Parents, family member, friend.
I know some of you us have relationships with people who
are going through this right now, people who experience
gender dysphoria or who want to transition.
It's everywhere. Love people well, love them
well. Don't abandoned them, of course.
Treat them with the utmost respect and dignity as image
bearers of our God. But also remember, love does not
equal affirmation. Loving someone well does not
mean that you have to support their choices and affirm where
they are headed. Sometimes love means saying the
hard thing. You can love people without
affirming their decisions and choices.
It's also worth noting that our brains don't stop developing
until we're in our mid 20s. Thoughts and values can
significantly shift during this time and it's completely normal
for youth to feel weird and and to not like their bodies as they
change and grow. Guess what?
These feelings don't mean you're broken, they just mean you're
growing. So when questions about gender
and sexuality arise, there's usually something else under the
surface contributing to to that thought pattern.
Because gender dysphoria, I believe, is a symptom and not a
root cause. Secular psychologists would not
agree with that assessment, but gender dysphoria is a symptom,
not a root cause. Whenever we see gender
dysphoria, we can know that there's something going on,
because this is not how God designed people.
This is a product of a fallen, broken world.
Lastly, the focus of scripture is on our behavior, not our
desires. Focus of scripture is on our
behavior and not our desires. Now I wanted to be careful with
how I said this because our desires do matter to to some
extent and I'll explain that here.
But desire in and of itself is not a sin, but rather what we do
with that desire is what makes it a sin.
Not all feelings and desires are intended to be acted upon, and
bad desires become a sin when you act upon them.
When someone chooses transitioning, they're moving
away from God's desire for them. When someone continues to
entertain ideation of being the opposite gender, they need to
take those thoughts captive, take those thoughts captive,
surrender them to God, and fix their minds on thoughts that are
true, honorable, just, pure, lovely, and commendable.
As it says in Philippians 4/8, actions are what matters most,
but the battle starts in our minds.
The last item we see in this passage is marriage.
Verses 24 through 25 revealed to us the very first marriage.
Therefore a 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, we're both naked, and we're not
ashamed. There are a few points I want to
draw our attention to here. First is leave and cleave.
Leave and cleave. This saying is taken from the
King James Version where it actually says, therefore shall a
man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto
his wife. Now I know we don't use the word
cleave in our in our normal everyday language, but leave and
cleave. Leave and cleave rhymes.
And so when we talk about marital commitments, those are
the words we use. I think it's weird, but it makes
sense. We may have to change that
someday as people get further and further removed from that
word cleaving to something, because then you when you have
to explain it, it just is a little awkward.
But that's the that's the way we talked about it.
Leaving and cleaving in marriage prior familial commitments are
are superseded by our commitment to to our spouse and this
commitment to each other, even parents, especially if you have
little ones. This commitment to each other
even supersedes our commitment to our children.
Our marriages are not to be centered on our children.
Next marriage is to be heterosexual in nature.
Doing my best to get us cancelled here.
Am I doing a good job? I think so.
It's absolutely appalling to me when people try to say scripture
endorses and affirms same sex marriage.
The interpretational gymnastics one has to do in order to arrive
at this conclusion are deserving of a gold medal, if not even
better than that. Not to mention ignoring clear
teachings of scripture. But I'll address that sometime
this winter so you can look forward to that.
You absolutely cannot say scripture endorses a lifestyle
of same sex attraction. The prescription here is that
marriage involves a husband and wife.
Not only does it call out the husband and wife, but it even
goes so far as to speak to the one flesh union that they
experience. Humans experience this one flesh
union in a way that is different, and the true one
flesh union only happens within the context of a male and female
sexually uniting. The next characteristic of
marriage is that it's monogamous.
Marriage involves one man and one woman.
You might be asking, well, what about all the polygamous
marriages in the Old Testament? Well, there's an important rule
in apologetics. It's important for us to
understand the difference between descriptive passages and
prescriptive passages. The Bible contains much that is
descriptive in nature. In fact, I think it's probably
safe to say that most of the Bible is descriptive.
It's telling us what has happened is happening or what
will happen. Just because something is in the
Bible doesn't mean it's a prescription for how to live.
Many men in Scripture had multiple wives, but that is not
God's design. His design is seen here at the
beginning when He created the man and the woman.
Everywhere we see polygamy in Scripture, we see problems the
very first instance in scripture of someone having a second wife
was lamech, and we will see that he was an evil man in chapter 4.
The Polygamy was always problematic in Scripture, but
it's possible. It's possible God allowed
polygamy to exist, since in the ancient Near East it was nearly
impossible for an unmarried, uneducated woman to survive on
her own. Women had to rely on their
fathers, brothers, and husbands in order to not end up
destitute. It's also significant that in
the New Testament, one of the expectations of an elder, a
church leader, is that he's the husband of one wife.
This phrase has been interpreted in various ways, but an
interpretation allowing for a church leader to be polygamous
is most definitely not an option.
And if it applies to our church leaders, then of course it would
be good for everyone else to follow suit right now, why would
I even take time to make this point in a culture that is
driven towards monogamy? First of all, Mormonism's
polygamous roots are well documented and even celebrated
with shows like Sister Wives, which has now had, even though
it's in its last season, has now had a 15 year run.
And that polygamy is problematic is well documented in the show
if you have any idea what's been going on with it and what has
brought the show to an end. Dissolution of the marriages.
Also, earlier this year, I was surprised to hear that one of my
favorite apologists, Mike Winger, had to address the issue
of what has been called Christian polygamy as it began
surfacing online due to a man promoting Christian polygamy and
online articles and on his YouTube channel.
Now, you think this idea wouldn't gain traction in our
western culture, but I wouldn't be surprised to see it catch on
in a society like ours that has distorted sexual mores.
Yes, the tide is turning, but our culture has gone so far with
their distortion of sexuality that the doors open for
something like polygamy to be mainstreamed.
The last point I want to draw our attention to is that of male
leadership. Even before the curse of sin
corrupted the world, God's good design included male leadership,
male headship with female support.
The complementary roles of husband and wife aren't a result
of the fall. Rather, this is God's good
design for the whole. We need not apologize for the
stance, but rather seek to understand what it truly means.
Yes, Ephesians 522 does call for the wife's submission to the
husband's leadership, but don't stop reading there.
Verse 25 tells us what that relationship is really to look
like as as the husband is called to love his wife in the same way
that Christ loved the church and sacrificed himself, gave himself
up for her. The authority structure in a
godly marriage is not that of the husband as a dictator.
The picture we have is the husband being like Christ,
sacrificing himself, serving the wife as he leads the whole today
marriages to consist of a husband and wife, just the two
of them in a sense, forsaking their familial obligations and
committing wholeheartedly to each other as the man
spiritually leads the home to follow after God.
That that's God's design. Fourth season.
That first marriage was everything God had intended.
They were naked and unashamed. Life was easy.
The work was easy, the relationship was easy.
The sex was easy. They were two souls united
together as one, ruling and reigning as God intended.
But then chapter 3 happens. We'll pick that up in a couple
weeks. Let's bow our heads and close
our eyes. God, we thank you for Your word
to us, Your word that is guidance to our lives.
It is not cumbersome. Your word is actually freedom.
Freedom from the world's ways of thinking and doing things.
Freedom from the ways that do not fulfill, the ways that leave
people wanting. And God, may we honor you with
all aspects of our sexuality. May we honor you with the
marriages represented in this room.
May we be a people who hold your ways above cultural desires and
preferences. It's in Jesus name we pray these
things. Amen.