Pets Are Not People

The Bible Bashed Podcast

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Warning, the following message may be offensive to some audiences. These audiences may include, but are not limited to, professing Christians who never read their

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Bible, sissies, sodomites, men with man buns, those who approve of men with man buns, man bun enablers, white knights for men with man buns, homemakers who have finished

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Netflix but don't know how to meal plan, and people who refer to their pets as fur babies. Viewer discretion is advised. People are tired of hearing nothing but doom and despair on the radio.

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The message of Christianity is that salvation is found in Christ alone, and any who reject

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Christ therefore forfeit any hope of salvation, any hope of heaven.

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The issue is that humanity is in sin, and the wrath of almighty

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God is hanging over our heads. They will hear

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His words, they will not act upon them, and when the floods of divine judgment, when the fires of wrath come, they will be consumed, and they will perish.

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God wrapped Himself in flesh, condescended, and became a man, died on the cross for sin, was resurrected on the third day, has ascended to the right hand of the

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Father, where He sits now to make intercession for us. Jesus is saying there is a group of people who will hear

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His words, they will act upon them, and when the floods of divine judgment come, in that final day, their house will stand.

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Good morning. If you do have a

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Bible, turn to Genesis 2, and we're going to be reading Genesis 2, 18 -20.

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We're continuing our study in Genesis on basic truths. So many of the problems that you see in the world right now, and the confusion that you can see that's very obvious and manifest and plain, is a result of our rejection of our

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Creator, and most specifically, our rejection of His pattern for us that's established in the opening chapters of the

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Bible. So if you do have your Bible, turn to Genesis 2, 18 -20, and go ahead and stand for the reading of God's Word today.

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The basic truth that we're going to be addressing today is the truth that animals are not people, and we're going to be reading

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Genesis 2, 18 -20, and talking through this passage in general. Genesis 2, 18.

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Then the Lord God said, It is not good that man should be alone. I will make a helper fit for him.

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Now out of the ground the Lord 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.

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And whatever the man called every living creature, that was its name. The man gave names to all the livestock and all the birds of the heaven and to every beast of the field, but for Adam there was not found a helper fit for him.

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This is the Word of the Lord. Let's pray. Lord, we thank you for the truth that you've given us in your

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Word, Lord. We know that you were there, that you have spoken, that you've made us, and you've not left us in the dark. You've given us the

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Scriptures to help us to understand ourself and understand our place in the world, and understand our design. We know that we are living in a world that's hostile to that.

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In many ways the church has fallen prey to the deceptions around us, Lord. We pray that you soften our hearts today and help us to learn great things from your

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Word. Help us to be eager to apply these things to our lives today,

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Lord, knowing that you desire to conform us to your image, and you've given us your

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Spirit who will help us to be made more like you. We thank you for all you do in your sense. In your name we pray. Amen.

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You may be seated. As I said, the basic truth that we're going to be talking about today is a truth that I don't know that I've ever really heard a sermon about before.

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So I've never heard a pastor stand up and give really much of an explanation about the relationship between animals and human beings.

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And I don't intend to say everything the Bible has to say about this topic in general, but then if you look around the world you see that this is a topic that there is great confusion about.

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I mean, in many ways it's just utterly strange that we're talking about this in general. And, you know, the title, as I said, is

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Animals Are Not People, and it seems like this is such a basic truth that it should go without saying. And all of you,

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I'm sure, are predisposed to be asking yourself at this very moment, why are we saying this?

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Why are we devoting a whole sermon to this topic and this idea? And I hope by the end of the message you'll understand why we are doing that and why it's relevant for our time and why this is an important thing for Christians to get right in order to better understand the

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God who made us and the world that he made. A couple years ago

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I counseled a young girl who was essentially starving herself to death. Her parents would, she basically was in a home where her dad was out of the picture.

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She had a single mom as a mother. Single mom would abandon her for long periods of time to fend for herself and her younger brother.

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She was a senior in high school. She worked a part -time job. And this poor girl, she was working this part -time job, spending all of her money trying to feed her cat and her brother and obviously emaciated in the process.

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She had a certain understanding of the topic of her relationship between animals and humans that was very difficult to persuade her, was misguided.

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I've been to churches where the members would have gender reveals. I know that these gender reveals are getting out of control and carried away.

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But then this particular gender reveal involved dressing up the dog in a shirt that said, Big Sis, Ronit.

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And so that was their gender reveal. I know that that's meant to be somewhat tongue -in -cheek, but this is a very common phenomenon even within the church.

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The last church I was at, we worked in a university campus. And it's difficult to think about a situation where we were counseling young men who didn't have therapy animals that they needed in order to have emotional security and comfort.

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This is a big thing nowadays. I mean, it's almost shocking to communicate that.

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But then if you work with young people to any length of time, you'll realize that they're experiencing great confusion over the topic of a human being's relationship to animals.

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They're looking to animals to do things for them that they shouldn't be looking to them to do.

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I wish that this was just like a one -off, that I just counseled one young man who had a therapy animal, but that really isn't the way it worked.

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I counseled many young men who had therapy animals, and not even young women. You would expect that it would be the young women who would have the therapy animals, but it was the men too.

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I counseled one young man who was trying to put himself to college and was struggling to know what to do because he had a $4 ,000 surgery that he had to pay for for his therapy animal.

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And instead of being able to pay his tuition, he paid the surgery for the therapy animal. This is obviously a problem.

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I'm coming from Alabama, and we're living in a time right now where furry phenomenon is on the rise.

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I know that you're predisposed to think that that's kind of a straw man, that these things are extreme and out there, but I live in Alabama, and at the university you would have students who would dress up as animals and be put on leashes and demand that you allow them to identify as animals and walk them around.

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These are things that are real. As I said, I wish this was just a problem out there in the world.

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It was not also a problem in the church, but there are so many problems related to the church as well.

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The Pew Research Center has done some studies on this, and with all statistics we may be predisposed to ignore statistics and think that people will just make up whatever they want to make up, but these statistics are pretty startling when you think about it.

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Sixty -two percent of Americans own a pet. One -third have more than one.

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I'm not saying that's necessarily shocking. I'm sure that your eyes can observe that that seems somewhat normal for us today in this kind of society.

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It's definitely not normal in all societies throughout the history of the world, this kind of proportion, but what's more shocking than that, though, is that nearly all, so nearly all, right?

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Listen to what I'm saying here. Nearly all, 97%, say that their pets are part of their family.

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Nearly all, 97%, say that their pets are part of their family. So if these statistics are even remotely accurate,

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I would think that I would be talking about some of us here today that we would also perhaps consider secretly if we were not willing to say it out loud, pets being part of a family.

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Fur baby phenomenon is a real phenomenon. As child rates are going down, people are looking to their pets to be replacement children for them.

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If you go online, you'll see every Mother's Day a demand that you include in Mother's Day services by Christians, a recognition of the pet parents in the room, too, so that they won't feel left out.

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So 97 % say that their pets are part of their family. About half of U .S. pet owners, this is 51%, say their pets are as much a part of their family as a human member.

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So breaking it down by gender, that's 57 % of women say that, 43 % of men say that. So 97 % say they are part of the family.

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57 % say they are as much a part of their family as a human being. Unmarried pet owners and those who do not have children younger than 18 at the home are the most likely to consider their pets to be as much a part of their family as a human member.

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So you notice the member there was used ironically at the end. Here's a summary of the situation from the

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Institute of Family Studies. With delayed marriages, the share of young people who are married has fallen, and they spend less of their 20s and early 30s in marriage than the previous generation did.

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I think if you have ISSC, you know this is obviously the truth, right? Delayed marriages are on the rise.

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You have people who spend less of their early 20s and 30s in marriage than previous generations.

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Meanwhile, singles may also see their pets differently than their families do. Singles often see pets as family members, right?

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While family owners are more likely to see pets as property. But while pet parents may rhetorically describe their pets as children, the correspondent decline in both single -person fertility and marriage among young people suggests that pets may be replacing two different family members.

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For some owners, pets replace kids, but for many, the companionship provided by a pet replaces spouses.

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So pets are often described as providing companionship, emotional support, security, a sense of home, or rootedness for pet parents.

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But these aren't traits that describe a child. These are traits that describe a husband or a wife.

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With my generation, he's a millennial. Postponing the commitment to marriage due to any number of reasons, the need for a reliable companion who is committed to stay until death, do it part, may simply be transferred on to pets rather than people.

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In other words, there's probably two separate connections between fertility and pet ownership. Rising pet ownership may be replacing single motherhood to some extent, but more prominently, young people are pushed by many factors to delay marriage and so to spend more years in singleness without reliable companionship.

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As a result, they often invest expensively so in a truly reliable companion.

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Now, you look at those statistics, I think those are somewhat surprising.

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I mean, they're not surprising considering the world that we live in, but we should, if we have a biblical worldview, be somewhat troubled by the phenomenons that I'm mentioning.

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We shouldn't just instantaneously dismiss these problems and treat them as just a matter of good fun, right?

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I know that you're probably going to be tempted as we go through the lesson here today to think that I'm being pretty dramatic and that it's not perhaps as significant of a problem as what

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I'm saying it is, but having worked with young people for a great many years now, I can tell you that there's a generation that is coming up that is very different than the previous generations and those differences are very much centered on their understanding of the relationship between human beings and animals.

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Obviously, we are not yet at a point in our society where bestiality is normalized and I wouldn't be surprised if we get there.

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I'm making no predictions whatsoever, but more fundamental to all that is there's a dramatic difference in how we understand the relationship between human beings and animals that is showing up even within Christian circles, almost especially within Christian circles.

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We are not immune to these things and it would do well for us today to revisit some basic truths, which almost every one of you will know these basic truths.

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I don't imagine that I'm going to say anything today that's going to be remotely shocking to you, but it's one thing you understand, it's one thing to be able to, as reformed

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Christians, answer the questions right on a theology exam and there's a temptation that you may feel today to say, if I can answer these questions right on the theology exam, then

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I don't need to hear this, but the problem is that our emotions are obviously often triggered in very different ways than our intellect and so we need to pay attention to that.

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These are statistics that affect all of us in some way. None of us have escaped the influence of a secular society that believes that man is a product of random time and chance and just essentially a naked ape.

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None of us have escaped that influence. We have not been spared in many ways from falling into the same pitfalls as the world does as it relates to this topic.

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So what we're going to be talking about today, as I said, is some basic truths, the basic truth.

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First basic truth is that animals are not people and I'm going to provide a biblical case from this and in some ways it's obviously a breathtakingly easy case to make.

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So this is, what we're talking about is we're not necessarily talking about an intellectual problem in certain ways.

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There's an obviously easy biblical case to make and we've already talked about it to some extent in our study so far.

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So the first basic truth we talked about was that God was our creator. Second basic truth we talked about was that he made them male and female and today we're going to be talking about animals are not people.

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So this is a very easy case to make. If you have your Bible open to Genesis, I'm going to point your mind to some of the passages we've talked about already that establish this point.

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So in Genesis 1 -26, God said, let us make man in our own image after our own likeness.

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So notice what we said about man before. Man was created in the image of God. That means he's

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God's vice regent on the earth. God said, let us make man in our own image after our own likeness.

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Man was to represent God in the world. That's why his life is sacred, we said, remember? So whoever spills the blood of man, by man shall his blood be spilled.

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Let us make man in our own image after our own 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 every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.

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So he created man in his own image. In the image of God, he created him, male and female. He created them and God blessed them.

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And God said, be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth, subdue it, have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the heaven and over every living thing that moves on the earth.

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So notice, man is created in the image of God. Animals are not. Animals are not created in the image of God.

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Man is a moral being. This flows from this concept of the image of God.

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Animals are not. Man is an eternal being, meaning that man has a soul that's eternal.

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Animals are not, right? So man is created in the image of God. Animals are not. These are obvious things that every

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Christian knows. You will all answer these questions right on the theology exam. You got it? You understand? We know.

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Man is given dominion over the animals, which are obviously not human. They're two different types of things, contrary to the evolutionary worldview that basically says that we're all part of the same family.

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This is not just a difference in degree, but a difference in kind. Obviously, man is given dominion over these animals and they're obviously two different types of creation.

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Now, experts, they obviously did not deny this. So Darwin, in The Descent of Man, says,

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Man, in his arrogance, thinks himself a great work worthy of the interposition of a deity.

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More humble, and I believe more truer, is to consider him created from animals. So you're obviously living in a world that rejects this basic premise.

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We think that man and animal are essentially the same. We're not some great, special work.

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We're not the crown of all creation, so the world you live in doesn't believe these things. And all the errors that I'm talking about are naturally flowing from that premise in a certain way.

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Darwin also says, in the same book, There is no fundamental difference between man and the higher mammals. In their mental facilities, the difference in mind between man and the higher animals, great as it is, is certainly one of degree and not one of kind.

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So you're living in a world that obviously denies this fundamental point that man is a special creation, created in the image of God, distinct from the animals.

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Thomas Huxley, in Man's Place in Nature, 1863, says, In whatever way we look at the matter, it's impossible to avoid the conclusion that man is in substance and structure, one with the brutes.

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Peter Singer, in his book In Animal Liberation, 1975, says, All the arguments to prove man's superiority can't shatter this hard fact.

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In suffering, the animals are our equals. So apparently, the fact that animals suffer and humans suffer, that means we're all the same.

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So therefore, there's no difference. We're not special. I don't know how that follows, but that's certainly the logic that's being presented towards us.

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So you obviously are living in a world where people don't have the basic understanding of the

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Bible anymore. So America used to be somewhat of a Christian nation. If you talked to a random person on the street, they would know the difference between the

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Old Testament and the New Testament even, right? So you're living in a time right now of a gross biblical ignorance where we've rejected this

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Christian worldview and the worldview of basically everyone around you is more influenced by evolutionary theory at this point than it is by the

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Bible. And this is true even in the Bible Belt where things are increasingly secular for sure.

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So I mean, considering an evolutionary worldview, it all makes sense. Think about all the statistics that I explained before.

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I mean, in light of an evolutionary worldview, yeah, that makes sense, right? Animals are part of a family, aren't they? We're all one and the same.

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All the product of matter, time, and chance. We're all the product of natural selection, right?

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And so we're all part of the same family. Why not treat them as the same family? They deserve the same rights and privileges as us.

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All of that makes sense, but what does Genesis say? Man's created in the image of God. Animals are not. Man's given dominion over the animals.

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They're obviously not the same kind of thing. What does the psalmist say at this point? Psalm 8, 4.

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What is man that you are mindful of him and the son of man that you care for him? Yet you've made him a little lower than the heavenly beings.

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You've crowned him with glory and honor. You have given him dominion over the works of your hands. You have put all things under his feet, all sheep and oxen and also the beast of the field, the birds of the heaven, the fish of the sea, and whatever passes along the paths of the sea.

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So as Christians, we obviously believe all these things. Everyone in the room believes these things, I'm sure. Man's created in the image of God.

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He is a special, unique creation of God. He's been crowned with glory and honor in contradistinction with the animals.

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We are different types of creations. We should all believe this, yes and amen. Third point, and I'm not gonna give you every biblical argument there is to establish this point that we already know.

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I just wanna give you a few. Animals are food and humans are not, right?

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Someone said amen. Genesis 9, and we enjoy that food, don't we?

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Genesis 9, three, every moving thing that lives shall be food for you. As I gave you the green plant,

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I give you everything. So every living thing that moves shall be food for you. And as I gave you the green plants,

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I give you everything. This is communicated to Noah after the flood. Obviously, it's morally repugnant.

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It should be morally repugnant to a Christian to consider the thought of killing another human being because human beings are created in the image of God.

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They are God's vice regents on the earth. The idea of killing another human being and treating that other human being as food should be completely and totally morally repugnant to us.

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But then there's whole classes of animals, I'm sure, where you feel morally repugnant. The same kind of moral repugnance if you were thought of killing them and eating them, and it's because secretly in your heart you consider them to be something different than food, don't you?

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What I'm trying to say is God says in Genesis 9, three, every moving thing that lives shall be food for you.

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And as I gave you the green plants, I gave you everything. You're living in a world that considers it fundamentally immoral to eat animals because we consider ourselves the same, but then

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Christians, we can have the same kind of impulses along those lines where we consider some classes of animals, particularly the ones we put in our home, to be a little bit more human, right?

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Maybe not completely human, but a little bit more human, and then we consider it absolutely immoral, the thought of using them as a extra source of food if you need it in a pinch, and you probably go to jail for doing that too, so I'm not necessarily recommending that.

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I'm just trying to say that we definitely, with most animals,

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Christians, we don't humanize them with some. We give ourselves permission to humanize them to a much greater extent than others, all right?

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So first point, everyone agrees with, yes and amen, animals are not people. We know this. You answered it right on the test.

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Get it? I don't know that our emotions always line up with this, but we know intellectually it's true, and we're wondering why

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I'm belaboring this point so much. I guess there's a reason for it. We'll see later.

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Second point, animals are not family members, right? Animals are not family members. They're not people, therefore they're not family members.

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Now you may be screaming at me, what about non -human family members? We'll get to that, right? What is a family?

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What is a family? Now look, you know as much as I know that there is no universal agreement in the world that you live in today on what a family is anymore.

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You know that. You know that you are living in a world that is trying to redefine family at almost every single point.

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You understand that. It's like there's an absolute rejection of the concept of family.

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That's the world you're living in, absolute rejection of this concept of family, and I think you think that the only relevant attacks on this are related to those sexual deviants who are trying to push their agenda in on this definition of family, but it's a lot broader than that, as can be demonstrated by the nature of the statistics that I provided.

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What is a family? Good verse to go to. There's many verses to go to here. I wanna give you one verse to go to here and think about just one verse, but we could do this at any number of places, but Ephesians 3, 14.

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It says this, right? Ephesians 3, 14.

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For this reason, I bow my knees before the Father from whom every family in the heaven and on earth is named.

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So for this reason, I bow my knees before the Father from whom every family on the earth is named.

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Now I'm gonna read this in Greek to you, and I understand it's all Greek to you, but it's all Greek to me too. It's fine. It's all Greek to all of us.

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So for this reason, right, I'm gonna read it in English for a second so I don't belabor the point. I bow my knees before the

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Father. That's proston, patera in Greek, okay? And then it says ek, oo, pasa, patria.

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So let me read that again. Proston, patera, before the Father. Ek, oo, pasa, patria.

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You have two main words there. Before the Father, that's patera, right? Proston, or ek, oo, pasa, patria.

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Patria is family. So patera, patria. Patera, patria. What do you notice about that? If you know anything about language, you notice, oh, that's a similar root, isn't it?

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Patera, patria, huh? What is a family? Well, notice what

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Webster says. The basic unit of society traditionally consisting of two parents rearing their children, right?

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So you have an arbitrary subjective definition there. What does this word patria mean?

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People linked over a relatively long period of time by the descent to a common progenitor.

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What does that mean? Do you see how the connection between a father and a family is made explicit in the word itself?

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Do you understand what I'm saying? So laden within the concept of a family, a patria is the idea of a patera, a father.

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Biblical notion of family is people linked over a relatively long period of time by a line of descent to a common progenitor, okay?

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When I started out ministry,

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I did a funeral. And this is a while ago.

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You could see the stirrings of a lot of confusion related to this point for many, many years now if you have eyes to see and ears to hear.

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But I went to a funeral, and the man had recently died. He had two young kids who he was survived by.

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And these children he had, I'm sure that they were the pride of him.

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They were his pride and joy. They both were very successful in the business world, and both of them were obviously gender confused.

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And I don't mean that in the formal sense that they identified as members of the opposite gender, but you had a young man who was very effeminate who had pursued his college degree and moved up into his career.

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And then you had the daughter who was very masculine for a girl.

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She kind of chopped off all of her hair, looked like a boy. But she had also moved up into her career as a family, so you had the mom and you had the children coming to the funeral, and I'm there to talk to them.

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And both of them brought their dogs. They treated as family members to this thing.

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So your dad dies, you have to bring the family. So this is a big family meeting. That's the way they described it, big family grieving session together.

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And I'm not, if you hear me to be making fun of their grieving, then you're misunderstanding the point significantly about what's happening.

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The point about what's happening right now is to say that it was a sobering picture, sobering thought to me to think that that man's legacy was a couple of dogs.

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And as I've known this family, that nothing has changed over the past years and years and years.

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That man's legacy is a couple of animals. Was the family.

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Well, we're obviously living in a world that's very confused at this point. The Bible says it's people, people, people linked over a relatively long period of time of descent to a common progenitor, common father.

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What does Jesus say about this? You know, like when you talk about the relationship of human beings to animals, they're obviously not family members.

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And that's not a statement that you make that just, again, you answer it right on the theology exam, you check it off.

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Are animals family members? Well, technically no, but it's okay to kind of treat them as family members. The issue is when

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Christ speaks about animals, he says it's fundamentally immoral to mix these categories up.

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Fundamentally immoral. Matthew 15, 26, in a larger passage, I'm not trying to take this passage and divorce it from context, and if you're predisposed to be cranky, you're gonna say, hey,

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I'm taking this out of context. I know that there's a particular context which this is used in, but this is an axiomatic statement that's used to apply to many different situations.

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This statement is self -evidently true. That's why Jesus is bringing it up. He's bringing it up because it's self -evidently true.

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Everyone in the world would agree about the moral principles involved, and he's using that to apply to a different situation.

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But Matthew 15, 26, Jesus answered, it's not right to take the children's bread and to throw it to dogs, right?

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What is he saying? He's saying that children deserve a certain standard of care from their father, right?

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Their progenitor. And it's fundamentally immoral to mix these categories.

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That's what Jesus is saying. Jesus is saying that children are owed certain things by their parents.

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Parents are responsible to provide those things for them. Dogs don't have the same rights and privileges.

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Now, I mean, the dogs at the time, I mean, they weren't the kind of dogs we have today that are nice and wag their tail and all that. I mean, the dogs that they had at the time, they were a little bit more scary than all that.

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I mean, you can tame some of them, and then they could follow you around. I mean, the woman in question that Jesus is talking to says, yes, but, yes, like, it's not right, but don't the dogs eat the scraps that fall from the master's table?

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She's acknowledging the basic point, yeah. Children are owed certain rights and privileges that aren't owed to animals.

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But don't the dogs eat the leftovers, and isn't that okay? And Jesus doesn't refute that idea.

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It's just to say that there's a different standard of care expected for humans than for animals, and that's the point that we should take away from that.

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What are the entailments of all this? Well, one, it's fundamentally immoral to give animals the same rights and privileges as a family member.

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I know Christian couples who let their dogs share the marriage bed with them at night, and I'm not saying anything scandalous by that, if that's what you're thinking.

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I'm just saying that the dogs are treated as children, indulged as children, because animals are not made for life in the suburbs.

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Christians are spending more and more money trying to make suburban life comfortable for them.

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If you look up statistics, you'll see that they've been on the rise for quite some time. A lot of that is because suburban life is not suited for animals in the same way that it used to be.

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I mean, every time I call up Regions Bank, I have a bank account with Regions Bank. I don't know if you guys have that here, but I think they're located in the south.

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It's in Birmingham. But it's funny. They're trying to get you to take a second mortgage on their home in order to give your furry friend the backyard that they deserve, right?

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You think about how immoral that actually is. I mean, I know it's funny. It's a joke. I mean, it should be a joke, taking out a second mortgage to give your dog a backyard that they deserve.

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But this is an actual commercial, and people are actually doing this. People are actually doing this. But what does

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Jesus say? It's not right to take the children's bread, to throw it to the dogs. Many of us are taking our children's inheritance and wasting it on animals.

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Notice I didn't say that any money spent on an animal is taking your children's inheritance and throwing it to the dogs, but if you are taking a second mortgage out on your home to give your furry friend the backyard they deserve, you've lost track of the plot, brothers and sisters.

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You've lost the plot, okay? Christians today can grieve the loss of animals with the same intensity, if not more, than they do the loss of their human, like their actual family members, right?

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These are not problems that we are sheltered from. We need to rethink our basic premises at this point.

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So point number one, animals are not people. Gave you a variety of verses.

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Man's created in the image of God. Describe that. Animals are not family members.

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Defined what a family member is on the basis of Ephesians 3 .14. What else can we say here today?

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Animals are not companions, okay? Animals are not companions. What is a pet?

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We're talking about pets. You should probably define what a pet is at some point. What is a pet? Merriam -Webster says,

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Merriam -Webster says a pet is a domesticated animal kept for pleasure rather than utility.

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So you understand the traditional concept of animals throughout most of human history is that they have some purpose, they have some value, they have some utility.

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If you look up older definitions of the word pet, within the definition itself of a pet, there's a notion of approbation, essentially, meaning a pet was an animal that was overindulged.

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So there's some disapproval there. You can imagine a church lady who is shamefully saying the word overindulged.

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You shouldn't indulge that animal so much. You shouldn't encourage it. Within the definition of a pet, there used to be this notion of overindulging because animals were seen largely for utility.

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So basically there's been a dramatic shift in our understanding of animals that's occurred over time.

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I'm going to talk about that and talk about the main passage that applies to this in my mind here. So Merriam -Webster, this is kind of more of a neutral one.

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It's a domesticated animal kept for pleasure rather than utility. Dictionary .com gives us a horrendous definition.

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I find it horrendous. I'm scandalized by it. I want to light my beard on fire and run around and turn over tables or something.

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When I listen to this one. But Dictionary .com says, any domesticated or tamed animal that's kept as a companion and cared for affectionately.

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I mean, I'm scandalized and shocked by the companion language. I feel triggered.

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I feel like they should have put a trigger warning there for me to help me process what they're about to say.

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But there's been a shift in viewing animals as companions rather than property.

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And that's happened over several centuries. So in the ancient medieval periods, in many ancient societies, animals were primarily viewed as tools or property for labor, food, or religious purposes.

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The laws kind of reflected this. Animals were often treated as commodities. I mean, there's exceptions to that.

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But the exceptions were, you know, you have some famous king or something like that who, particularly in Egypt, who would treat cats with a particular, they would revere cats particularly but overall, ancient medieval periods, they were primarily viewed as tools, property, labor, used for religious purposes.

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In the Enlightenment, in the 18th and 19th centuries, there were significant changes that were brought about on how animals were viewed.

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Philosophers like Jeremy Bentham began to advocate for animal welfare with the idea that animals could experience pain and suffering, making them deserving of moral consideration.

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This basically started to challenge the purely utilitarian view of animals as property. In the Victorian era, in the 19th century, particularly during the

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Victorian era in England, animals, especially dogs, began to be viewed more commonly as companions. The rise of the middle class, changing urban lifestyles contributed to the shift.

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More and more people were living in the cities, keeping pets for company rather than the labor. Sentimental attachment to animals began to grow.

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Queen Victoria herself was a notable animal lover. The animal welfare movements in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, animal welfare movements gained momentum, promoting the humane, notice that, notice that word, humane treatment of animals, began to formalize the idea that animals had intrinsic value beyond their economic utility.

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And then, you know, as you, if you just look at, you can look up statistics on this and you'll realize that those attitudes have remarkably shifted.

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Even now, I mean, I think most of us in the room, you would say, hey, yeah, okay, Tim, look, I get it, they're not humans.

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I get it, they're not family members. When people say that, they're just kind of joking, you need to calm down, you're taking this way too seriously, you know, whatever else.

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But then, like, the idea of a companion, I don't know, I think many of us are predisposed to think of animals as having a kind of companionship, a kind of companionship there because we, obviously, like, if you name, you don't want to name your food, right?

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Like, if you name your food, then you have trouble eating it. But, like, the issue is to say that, I think this idea of companionship is something that we, you may not formally communicate, but your emotions certainly resonate with.

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And if they don't, then I don't believe you. I think you're trying to pull one over on me. What does the

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Bible say? Genesis 2 .18, our passage we talked to today, the main passage I want you to think about, which is somewhat remarkable as it relates to this topic.

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You have a whole story in the Bible that is designed to prove the point

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I'm trying to prove right here, right? I didn't make it up. It's right there. Genesis 2 .18, what does it say?

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Then the Lord God says, it's not good that man should be alone. Notice what it says there.

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It's not good that man should be alone. I will make him a helper fit for him. So what did

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God do? He paraded all the animals he brought before man to see what he would name them, right? Now out of the ground the

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Lord God had formed every beast of the field, every bird of the heaven, and brought them to man to see what he would call them.

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And whatever the man called every living creature, that was his name. Now notice the order of creation. God made animals first.

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Man was created as the crown of God's creation. Animals already existed. Man, at this point, man is alone, right?

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Like man is created. There's no woman on the scene. God looks at man. He says what?

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He says it's not good for man to be alone. What just happened there? Did you catch it?

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Man is alone. And all these animals exist, do you understand? But man is alone. Man is considered alone because he is the only human of his kind.

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Okay? So God does not consider man, animal to be an appropriate companion for man.

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Man is still viewed by God as being alone despite the fact that all these animals exist.

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All of them are brought to Adam to see what he would name them. The point is he's naming them exercising dominion over them.

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But what happens? The man gives name to all the livestock and to the birds of the heaven, to every beast of the field.

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But for Adam, there was not found a helper fit for him. This isn't just a story that is designed to prove that man has dominion over animals and Adam is exercising authority over them.

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It's not just a story designed to show you that bestiality is wrong, although it does that because there was no helper fit for Adam found among the animals.

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This is a story to say that man is designed for companionship. Isn't it? It's not good for him to be alone.

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If you look at what happens when people pursue being alone, you'll realize the truth of what we're saying.

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A man who isolates himself seeks his own desires. You're living in a world that is increasingly unpersonal.

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There are not natural forms of community in this world, right? A lot of the community, like community is now virtual community.

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So we're redefining the term community to be happening somewhere in cyberspace or something like that.

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So there's not natural meeting points within our society. We're not naturally very hospitable to people anymore.

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When we went to go visit people yesterday, there were very few people who were excited to see us knocking on their doors and trying to talk to them about a church and the good news.

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You're not living in a world and a time that naturally knows what to do with community and yet we have a deep need for community.

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We have a deep need for companionship and we don't know how to fill it, right?

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So you think about marriage rates, our age of first time marriages, they're higher and higher and higher.

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Birth rates are plummeting, right? We're not even replacing our population really at this point.

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We're right there. We're in significant danger as it relates to that kind of thing.

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So the issue is we're people. There's a statement here. What's happening? It's not good for man to be alone.

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Man's not made as an isolated, solitary human being. He's not an island. He's not just made to be by himself with his thoughts, right?

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Pursuing his entertainment and everything else. He's created for a purpose and that purpose is in part going to be fulfilled through community and he needs the companionship of other human beings and so what does

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God do? He makes woman who is the aesir conegdo, the helper suitable for him.

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So aesir means helper. Conegdo means that which is opposite, that which corresponds. Man is alone even though the animals exist.

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He's by himself. He's isolated. He needs community. He needs companionship. God makes a woman for him for that, right?

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So what does this all mean? We obviously live in a world that's increasingly disconnected.

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Family structures have been eroded. Community has become virtual but people have a deep -seated need for companionship.

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They intuitively know it's not good for them to be alone. Even your most self -centered extrovert who wants to spend all day long playing video games, or introvert who wants to spend all day long playing video games, at the end of it all, feels empty and knows that he's created for something a little bit more than all that.

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We have a generation of young people who've isolated themselves seeking their own desire, haven't we?

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What do we tell them? That the goal of their life is to pursue self -fulfillment and that them and their quest to pursue self -fulfillment means they're isolating themselves more and more and more.

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They're seeking their own desire more and more. We praise people, almost, who have social anxiety disorder and have no expectations that they move out of their shell or have any responsibility to meet other people.

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We give them wide berth. You have a generation of young people who've isolated themselves. They don't have a sense of urgency for marriage and family.

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They're off seeking their own desire. They're off seeking self -fulfillment. But they know, intuitively, inescapably, they're made for community.

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And so what do they do? They turn to animals to find it.

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That's what the statistics show. If you don't believe those statistics, all I know how to tell you is

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I've been in counseling situation after counseling situation after counseling situation with young people who are looking me in the face and saying, hey,

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I'm having trouble finding a spouse. I'm just going to go get a dog. And that's exactly the wrong move.

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Okay? Now, if you hear me to be saying it's wrong to have a pet, I haven't said that. I didn't say that at any point.

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You're hearing things I didn't say. Okay? Like, don't accuse me of saying things I didn't say. I didn't say that.

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I didn't say it's wrong to get a pet. I think it's wrong to view a pet as a companion. I think it's wrong to try to get, like, get from an animal what you should be getting from God or other people.

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That's absolutely wrong. The Bible says my people have committed two evils. They've forsaken me, the fount of living waters.

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They've hewed for themselves broken cisterns that can never satisfy. If you're looking to an animal to provide you safety and comfort and community and companionship, if you're looking to an animal to fix your psychological problems if they're your therapy animal, if you can't handle life in the world without having your puppy close to you or your therapeutic peacock, like, the issue is you have, you have turned that animal into an idol.

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And God is a jealous God and he hates idols. That's the point. As I said,

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I mean, I wish that these were, I wish that these were just problems on the outside because then you could just call people to faith and repentance and Jesus and then everything, presumably over time gradually would turn out right.

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But I mean, these are, these are Christians I'm counseling. You understand? These are

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Christian young people I'm counseling. There is, these statistics, they are real. I mean,

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I don't know the exact numbers. Only God knows the exact numbers. But by the virtue of my experience,

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I see that we have a huge problem as it relates to this and we need to wake up.

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We need to wake up or we're going to end up like that man whose legacy is a couple of dogs.

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That's what we're going to do. What do we do with this? One, don't harden your heart towards these truths.

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I know that we all know this. I know that there's a temptation to view all this as maybe slightly dramatic.

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Don't harden your heart. You know, if the shoe fits, wear it. You should look at your life and say, hey, to what extent am

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I really looking to animals to be replacement human beings?

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Like, that's a question you should ask. To what extent am I leaning on these animals for emotional comfort, safety, security, right?

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To what extent do I need them to be okay? To what extent are they helpful to me in my life, right?

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Are they helpful? Are they a hindrance in my life? So don't harden your heart. If I've stepped on your toes today, then the response is the same thing to everything that God says.

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Repent and believe the good news. God's a good God. He sent Jesus Christ to die for us on the cross so that we can receive complete and total forgiveness for all of our sins, past, present, and future.

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We should always think about, well, what is God's design for the world? What has he called us to do? What has he called us to be?

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And when we mix certain things up, we repent knowing that God is a good God.

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He will cast our sins into the depths of the sea and remember them no more. Order your life in such a way that reflects

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God's priorities for you. In the old view of animals, they were meant to help you accomplish

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God's purposes, okay? Not take you away from them or distract you from them.

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Order your life in such a way that reflects God's priorities for you. I mean, I've been in counseling situation after counseling situation after counseling situations where you have individuals who have these sick, codependent relationships with their animals who literally, like the girl

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I'm talking about, is starving herself to death trying to care for an animal. This is the major plot of movies and TV shows where human beings are laying down their lives heroically for their animals.

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It's Man of Steel. This is us. This is a thing, you know?

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This is what you're being taught to do. Order your life in such a way that reflects

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God's priorities. I know people who have these sick, twisted relationships with animals where all their emotions are tied up in a beast of the field, in a beast of the field.

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And if you encourage them to get rid of the thing, to cast that idol down, they look at you as if you're crazy because what they hear you to be saying is that you should get rid of one of their children.

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And they may know that they can't communicate that to you and you take it seriously, but that's where their heart is and that's where their affection is.

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Order your life in such a way that reflects God's priorities for you. Don't let animals take you away from the mission.

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Don't let animals be a means that you use to squander your children's inheritance and waste all your money trying to take care of four.

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And we'll end on this. Remember Christ, who took on human flesh and dwelt among us.

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You know that God, if you're a Christian here today, God loved you and he sent his son to die for you.

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Isn't that amazing? He didn't die for animals. He didn't send his son to die and provide forgiveness for animals.

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Certainly, God has a care for animals. You understand? Certainly has a care for animals.

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But I don't think we think very well about the nature of that care. You know that God, I don't know if you've thought about this before,

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God doesn't just love the herbivores like the nice animals. Like he loves the carnivores too.

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You know that God feeds the birds of the air with the dead bodies of other animals. You understand?

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So God's care for, God created bears that eat animals. He created lions that eat other animals.

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So he cares for them all, but he doesn't care for them like human beings. You understand? He's not caring for them like human beings.

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If you think that God cares for them like human beings, then that care doesn't feel like real care, does it?

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Like in the same way. So God creates predators. He feeds the lions of the field and the bears of the forest, right?

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Like God cares for animals. His care for them is different. He didn't send his son to die for them. You know what?

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At the end of time, all creation is groaning. It's been subject to futility. When human beings are redeemed, like in the last analysis, it will correspond to the natural world.

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So when Christ returns, everything's going to be made right. Natural order is going to be restored. But you know what?

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Like all your pets are not going to be resurrected from the dead and given new glorified pet bodies or something like that.

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They're not eternal beings. God has a different care for you than he does for animals. He has a different kind of care.

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That's the point. Remember Jesus.

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Jesus did not take on animal flesh and dwell among us.

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He took on human flesh and dwelt among us. And when we mix these categories, what we're doing is we're fundamentally distorting the gospel message.

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We're distorting the nature of the love of Christ. The love of God for us, which is demonstrated most specifically in the person and the work of Christ.

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What do we do with this? We should thank the Lord. If you're a Christian here today, you should thank the

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Lord that he loved you and he took on flesh and dwelt among you. You are his image bearer. He sent Jesus to die for you because he loved you.

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That's what we should do. Let's pray. Lord, we thank you for the scriptures you have given us today, which are life to us.

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Thank you for sending us Jesus as a redeemer to forgive us our sins.

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We know that if you would count iniquities, none of us could stand. You sent your son to die for us today.

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We should be thankful for that. If there's anyone here today who doesn't know you, pray that they would come to know you.

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They would come to be included in your elect and trusting in you, asking you to forgive them for their sins.

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Thank you for all you do. Let's pray. If you would like to be

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Bible bashed personally, then please know that we also offer free biblical counseling, which you can take advantage of by emailing us.

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Now, go boldly and obey the truth in the midst of a biblically illiterate world who will be perpetually offended by your every move.