Basic Truths from Genesis: He Made them Male and Female

Good morning. If you do have a Bible, turn to Genesis 127, and we're going to be reading Genesis 127 and continuing our study on basic truths from the opening chapters of the Bible. Today we're going to be discussing the basic truth that He made them male and female.

So if you do have your Bible open, go ahead and stand for the reading of God's Word today. Genesis 127. So God created man in His own image. In the image of God, He created him. Male and female, He created them.

This is the Word of God. Let's pray. Lord, we thank You for the opportunity that we have to think about the truths in Your Word today. We know that we are desperately dependent on You in order to understand ourself and what You've made us to do.

We pray that You bless our time here today, and You would give us much insight into Your Scriptures so that we may know You better and be more faithful to Your purposes. In Your Son's name I pray. Amen.

Honestly, it's pretty strange. It's pretty strange to be living in the kind of time that we're living in today, where so many people in our society seem to be so confused about so many different basic things.

I mean, I can't believe that I'm standing here today trying to explain to you what it means when God says He made them male and female, knowing that we're living in a world that is actively hostile to all of these things.

So we're so confused as a society that we don't even know the difference between man and woman anymore. And those differences are just lost to us in so many different ways. I mean, I don't know if you've watched Matt Walsh's documentary, What is a Woman?, but it was a very interesting documentary in the sense that you have Matt Walsh with his deadpan sense of humor who is essentially going around and asking liberals, basically he's asking them, what is a woman?, over and over again.

And it's amazing to see how triggered our society is by a question just like that. You can be living in a world right now that is so confused at these fundamental points, but the purpose of the documentary is he's going around and he's asking people, what is a woman?

No one has an answer to the question throughout the documentary, except his wife at the very end. And I don't know if you were paying attention at that point, if you did see it, but the answer that was given was an answer that in many ways is just woefully unsatisfactory.

So the answer that was given at the end was, what is a woman? What is an adult human female? Whatever that kind of answer is, it's just a tautology essentially. It's a definition that basically is using the word woman in the definition itself, right?

So one of the basic things you learn in school is that you don't use the word that you're trying to define in the definition. Well, in that way, when you say, what is a woman? A woman is an adult human female.

Why that's unhelpful is what you're supposed to do then is ask, well, what is a female, right? And now the point of the documentary is to say that female is a word that's tied to biology. So here's the point.

The best we have in our world right now in terms of a pushback on the gender revolution that's happening before our eyes is some sort of appeal to biology essentially. Does that make sense? So you say, hey, what is a woman?

Well, the answer is, well, let's appeal to chromosomes. And that's about the best we have as a society. But then when you think about what God's definition of a man and a woman is, it's much more than just two biologically distinct types of creatures, okay?

So a lot of the confusion we have as a society is related to this basic and foundational point. So the Bible opens up with these words that God created man in his own image. In the image of God, he created him.

Male and female, he created them. Our society, the answer we have to the confusion is basically to try to persuade people to not identify as a woman if you're a man, right? So that's essentially what the conservatives are trying to do, trying to keep people from like if you're a man, you need to identify as a man.

But then our problems with this basic point are so much more significant than that because we don't even know what a man is and we don't even know what a woman is and we don't know what they were designed for and what is their purpose and what God intended them to do, okay?

And I'm afraid that the church really isn't all that helpful in trying to tell us what the answers to these things actually are, okay? So meaning, there's a generation of young men today who have no idea what it means to be a man.

They really have no idea what it means to be a man. And you have a generation of women who have no idea what it means to be a woman. And if you look at them and you say, hey, the answer is related to biology, like chromosome differences.

Therefore, you know, the action plan here is you need to make sure that you identify with this particular set of chromosomes. That may be an answer that's helpful in some sense, right? Like it's helpful in some sense in terms of it keeps you from identifying with the wrong set of chromosomes.

But what I'm trying to say is it's an entirely unhelpful answer in telling you anything about the nature of what masculinity is and the nature of what femininity is. And if you ask church leaders what is the difference between men and women, about all that they're going to give, you know, about all that you're going to get from church leaders today is, yeah, they'll point to biology and then they'll point to roles.

But then that says nothing about the nature of what it means to be a man. That says nothing about the nature of what it means to be a woman. There's no foundation given for these roles other than God just seemed to arbitrarily decide to give man certain roles and give certain woman roles and we don't really even know why.

So if you ask the standard Christian today who even believes in gender roles, what does it mean to be a man, they're basically going to tell you that what it means to be a man is just generic Christian faithfulness.

So think about that for a second. What does it mean to be a man? Just generic Christian faithfulness. That's the answer you're going to get. What does it mean to be a woman? Well, just generic Christian faithfulness.

That's the answer you're going to get. And then, yeah, I mean you have roles. We don't know why God made those roles there. I mean that's kind of what people are going to tell you. There are roles. We don't know why God has given those roles.

But we know that he has given us those roles so maybe we should try to be faithful. And a lot of this is just related to general problems with what I would describe as the complementarian movement. Now I'm going to use some big words today.

I want to express my acknowledgement that maybe not everyone is familiar with these words, so I'm going to try to define them. But I do want to set a little bit of a lay of the land where a lot of the confusion about this basic point lies within the church today.

So there's different movements within the church. Egalitarianism is a movement in society that basically asserts that men and women are essentially equal. They're equal. There's no differences to men and women essentially.

So men and women are basically the same. They're basically the same. If you want to understand what egalitarianism is, it's men and women are basically the same. They can do everything the same. So they're not two different creatures created by God who are designed for different purposes, who have different strengths and weaknesses, and who have been given different roles.

That's not what egalitarians believe. What egalitarians believe is that you have men and women. The differences are basically superficial. A woman can do anything a man can do and probably better. You live in a society that believes that, that a woman basically is an interchangeable part with men.

She can do basically everything a man can do. This is basically the premise in almost every movie that you're going to watch. The guy is kind of the incompetent buffoon. The woman excels at her job, but then she also excels at the man's job.

She's basically omnicompetent. That's the nature of the shows and the TV shows and the movies that you're going to watch. The guy is kind of a buffoon. We don't know why he's here. So a woman can basically do anything a man can do better, and she also has the added advantage of being able to grow babies inside of a womb if she wants to.

I conclude that there's any responsibility she has to do that, because that would reduce her to a baby maker, and we don't want to do that. The idea is that egalitarianism tries to diminish the differences between men and women, asserting that they're basically the same.

Then if you look around the world and you say, It seems like men are gravitating towards STEM fields. Women aren't in the same way. It can't be because they're created with different strengths and weaknesses.

It must be because of oppression. There's a different outcome you observe. You observe a different outcome, and you're trying to explain why is that outcome there. Obviously, patriarchy is bad. We've got to kill the patriarchy, smash the patriarchy, so that we can get those outcomes, because they're both basically the same.

Egalitarianism is that. That's egalitarianism. That's the basic premise that our society believes in contradictory ways. Within the church, there's what's described as a complementarian movement. The complementarian movement is trying to—.

Over the past few years, it was a way of branding a position that's in between what you might describe as patriarchy and egalitarianism. Egalitarianism is all different. There's no different roles. Men and women are basically interchangeable parts.

Ladies just happen to also be able to make a baby. Who knows why? Then, on the other end, you have patriarchy, which is bad. No one knows what that is, really.

It's just bad.

It's a bad thing, so we don't want to do that. That's scary. That's bad. That sounds like Petra's father. That's not very egalitarian sounding. That's bad. Complementarianism was a movement in between.

It's basically trying to say, hey, we're a middle ground in between these two things. Patriarchy, there's some crazy men out there who abuse women. We're not like them. That's the basic impulse. We believe that men and women are equal, but then they're complements to each other.

But then part of the problem with the complementarian movement in general is that it is basically kind of a halfway house between a biblically faithful view and egalitarianism. Biblical complementarians, they basically affirm that there are gender role differences, particularly within the home and the church.

All of your main biblical complementarian movements and organizations like the Council of Biblical Manhood and Womanhood, John Piper is a major complementarian figure. Wayne Grudem is a major complementarian figure.

He wrote the book Recovering Biblical Manhood and Womanhood and all that. So all your major complementarian figures, they're going to basically say there are roles. God has designed roles for men and women in the church and in the home specifically.

Beyond that, in the world, they're pretty, who knows what they're going to say on that, right? But the idea is there are roles, but then over and over again, the point that complementarians are trying to make is we have no idea why God made these roles.

Do you understand? There are role differences, meaning God, like man has appointed as leader in the home and only qualified males can be pastors in church. We don't know why. And this is the point that they're laboring to make.

And they labor to make it in such a way that these roles are just kind of arbitrarily assigned. Okay? Do you understand what I'm saying? They're arbitrarily assigned. We don't know why. So here's some quotes.

Here's one from John Piper. The limitation of eldership in the teaching office to men is not because men are more competent, but because this is God's order in creation. Right? So think about that. God made men.

He gave them a teaching office not because they're more competent than women, right? And so this is the point complementarians are laboring to make over and over again, not because they're more competent.

It's just because God decided to make them, to create man first and therefore put him in that role. Okay? We don't know why, right? We don't know why. It's not tied to ontology. That's just a big word that means being.

Like it's not tied to like their makeup, the way that they're made. They have no inherent strengths that would make them more suitable for that role. God just decided to do it, right? That way. And here's Wayne Grudem from Evangelical Feminism and Biblical Truth.

The issue is not competence, but a matter of God's design. And what he means by that is God's just stated intention for humanity, not anything tied to their being, right? So the issue is not competence, but a matter of God's design.

God could have made women the heads of the homes and the leaders of the church, but he did not, right? The fact that God has given men the responsibility to lead does not imply that men are more intelligent, more spiritual, and more capable of leadership.

So there's a lot of things in there that are all inserted together, right? In terms of like man doesn't have any unique advantages in the leadership department, certainly not any advantages in the intelligent department or competence departments.

God just decided to make men a leader for some reason. We don't know why, right? So that's Wayne Grudem. Here's D .A. Carson. There's nothing about the complementarian view that says men are inherently better teachers, preachers, or leaders than women.

The distinction is rooted in God's design. Not in any difference of ability, right? So here's Alistair Begg from a sermon on 1 Timothy 2. The restriction of certain roles to men is not because women are incapable or inferior.

It's simply that God has ordained different roles for men and women, right? There's no reason given, right? God just decided to do it. He could have done the opposite. We have no idea why he chose this, right?

Do you understand? That's what they're saying in a variety of ways. Here's Tim Keller from a talk on gender roles in the church. Complementarianism does not imply that men are inherently better at leadership or preaching.

It simply affirms that God, in his wisdom, assigned these roles to men while equally valuing women's roles, right? So here's the thing. You have egalitarianism. There's no difference, right? Men and women are designed uniquely.

They're not designed uniquely for anything. A woman just so happens to be able to make a baby, but they're all the same, right? So all these gender role stuff, that's just social construct. The fact that your daughter likes pink and your boys like blue, it's just like, who knows why that's the case.

You just trained them to like that. I don't know why your boys are waving swords around and playing with cars and trucks and making loud noises and your daughters like to play with houses and homes. It's just because you trained them to do that, right?

That's egalitarianism. They're all the same. We're all the same. You can do the opposite. If you trained them to do the opposite, they would, and that's a big social experiment they're running along. Complementarianism is basically saying, hey, there's these roles.

There's these roles here, right? We don't know why they're there.

Do you understand?

It has nothing to do with how God made men and women. It has nothing to do with that. It's just he randomly, arbitrarily decided. And what we're going to be talking about today is what I think is a biblical understanding about what it means when God says, God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him.

Male and female he created them. I'm afraid that what we've been given as a church are some very unsatisfactory answers to what it means to be a man and what it means to be a woman. And as you read the Bible, one of the things you're going to realize is that men and women are not interchangeable parts.

Okay?

Men and women are not interchangeable parts that could perform the other role equally competently. God uniquely made men and women and gave them very specific roles and purposes which he uniquely designed them for.

And we're going to talk about what that means today. As we're looking at Genesis 127 today, as I said, it opens with the words, God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him. Male and female he created them.

I'm not going to say everything that there is to say about this passage. Our subject matter is somewhat constrained today because I do want to talk about what it means that God made them male and female.

So today is going to be a talk about gender. It's going to be a talk about what it means. Like, what is a man? What is a woman? That's what we're going to be talking about. And that's going to give us some understanding of what we're talking about here.

So I'm not going to say everything there is to say about all of these subject matters. We're going to try to visit them one topic at a time and talk about how the opening chapters of Genesis in particular and later Revelation, which is shining upon those opening chapters of Genesis, are commenting on these things.

But today our task here is just to understand what it means when God says that man was created in his own image and what it means when it says that God created them male and female. You understand? So the image of God, basically, there's a theological discussion here about what it means to be made in the image of God.

And this is a discussion that there's a lot of different views about this topic, which I'm not going to cycle through, okay? There's been no shortage of ink that's been spilled on this topic, but I think if you want to understand it in a very simple way, there's a simple way to understand what does it mean that man is created in God's image.

And it's this. I think the image of God makes man God's vice regent on the earth.

That's what it means.

The image of God makes man God's representative. It's our job as men and women, so notice how the text says in the image of God he created them, male and female he created them. It's our job to represent God on the earth.

That's what he's called us to do. We are his representatives. We are his vice regent, God's vice regent. We are acting on his behalf on the earth. So when you think about the nature of what God has called us to do, it says God bless them, and he said be fruitful and multiply, fill the earth and subdue it.

Have dominion over the animals of the land, the fish of the sea. We are God's representatives on the earth. That's what it means to be created in the image of God. We are his vice regents. We are his representatives.

We are carrying out his purposes on the earth, and it's our job to fill the earth up full of people and exercise dominion over the place. That's kind of what God has called us to do. Now what's very interesting here is when you think about what it means to be made in the image of God, because man is God's representative, right, his life is sacred.

This is what Genesis says. Because we, men and women, are God's representatives on the earth, our life is sacred. Therefore, in Genesis 9, 6, it says, whoever sheds the blood of man, my man shall his blood be shed, for God made man in his own image.

The fact that we're made in the image of God means that we're representing God. An attack on us is by extension an attack on God. Do you understand? So if a king sends a messenger to represent him, you kill the messenger.

The king takes that personally, doesn't he? Do you understand? That's the way it works. Because that is his representative. So you kill that person. The attack on him is an attack on who he's representing.

Do you understand? So that's the way it works. So God created man in his own image. What does that mean? It means we represent him. Now, both men and women are image bearers, the texts say. Now, if that weren't the case, if that weren't the case, then presumably it would be okay to, like if only man was created in the image of God.

And not woman,.

Then presumably it would be okay to kill woman because she's not an image bearer and man is. But that's not really what the text says. Whoever sheds the blood of man, my man shall his blood be shed, for God made man in his own image.

Now, murder is equally wrong regardless of the gender of the person being murdered. Do you understand? So the Bible's very clear on this. Both men and women are image bearers. Man is in a direct sense an image bearer.

The woman is in a derivative sense an image bearer. This is the point that's being made in 1 Corinthians 11, 7, for man ought not to cover his head since he is the image and glory of God, but woman is the glory of man.

That's not saying that woman is not also created in the image of God. It's saying she's an image bearer in a derivative sense. Does that make sense? So both man and woman are image bearers. They're worthy of equal dignity and respect.

Can't just casually take their lives because they represent the king. So as image bearers, men and women have a job to represent God in the world and carry out his purposes in the world.

Does that make sense?

So both men and women are image bearers.

Man in a direct sense,.

Woman in a derivative sense. What else do we see in the passage? We see that man and woman are given a shared mission. Now it's almost impossible to understand like masculinity and femininity, like what does it mean to be a man and what does it mean to be a woman.

It's almost impossible to understand these things if you don't understand the shared mission that God has given to man. And we're gonna talk about this shared mission to some length in the lessons that follow.

I'm introducing it today as a concept, but I won't be elaborating on it, okay? But I'm just trying to say that if you wanna know what a man is, you wanna know what a woman is, what does it mean when the text says God created them male and female, you need to understand something about the nature of that mission, which takes, I mean honestly, when you read the book of Genesis and you get to Genesis 128, one of the things you'll see is if you're trying to answer basic worldview questions, who are we, where do we come from, where are we going, why are we here, this is a text that should be screaming at you, why am I here?

God, I don't know what you want from me. People ask that over and over and over again, particularly in counseling settings, like I don't know why I'm here, I don't know what my purpose is, it's like just read Genesis, it'll tell you.

It's right there. So what does God say to man after he creates man? He defines man's purpose, what man is made for, right there. So what does God say in Genesis 128? He says, God blessed them, and God said to them, be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth and 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.

Like this verse is going to help us to interpret everything that we see in the opening chapters of Genesis, this is man's mission, essentially, okay? Now one of the ways to understand what's happening here, and understand the Bible in general, is I like to talk about this as the Great Commission of the Old Testament or something like that.

God's essentially given two great missions to man, okay? So you think about this, what is this mission, like what is this mission that God has given to man? It says, God blessed them, and he said, be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth, subdue it, have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the heaven, and over every living thing that creeps on the earth.

Like this is essentially, God is looking at man, and he's saying, fill this place up full of people, right? And rule it.

That's what he's saying.

Like the Great Commission, if you want to put it in that language of the Old Testament, is fill the place up full of people, build a civilization, that's what God's saying, right? And rule the animals, rule all of creation, that's what you're doing.

What is the Great Commission of the New Testament? Well, it's to make those people into disciples, right?

Isn't that it?

So the earth will be full of the knowledge of the Lord, like the dry lands cover the seas. So like you think about this in terms of two commissions, like Great Commission One, fill the place up full of people, right, and rule over it.

Great Commission Two is fill this place up full of disciples, essentially, right? So man and woman are given a shared mission,.

That's the point.

So God created man in his own image, right? Both man and woman are created in the image of God, and then man and woman are given a shared mission. But here's the thing that we really, really, we don't like that.

We don't like the nature of that mission. We think, well, that's the Old Testament or something, and haven't we already done that? And you know, I don't, maybe I like certain parts of that, but I don't like other parts of that, and aren't animals real special too, and you know, everything else.

We don't really like that, but then we really, we don't like the idea that there are these different roles given in accomplishing these missions, because we really don't understand the difference.

Between men and women.

That's my point today that I'm hoping that you'll come away with. After we get done with the sermon, I hope you come away with the sermon, with the knowledge, at the very least, that God's given us a mission, and we're rejecting it, and we're fighting it, because we don't understand how we're uniquely designed for it.

Do you understand what I'm saying? Okay, so men and women are given different roles in the mission. So notice, Genesis 2 .18, and I'm going to be all around Genesis. You might want to just be ready to turn.

Genesis 2 .18, it says, The Lord God said, It's not good that man should be alone. I will make a helper fit for him. Notice what it didn't say. It didn't say that Adam was desperately lonely,.

And just a mess, right?

Like he was a depressed mess on antidepressants, because he was all by himself. All he had was these animals to look at, and didn't know what to do. He was bored.

That's not what it says.

It says, It's not good for him to be alone. It didn't say he was lonely. It just, he was in a world without sin. He wasn't lonely. It's not good for him to be alone. Why is it not good for him to be alone?

Well, he's given a mission, right? How is he going to do the mission? All by himself, you understand? I'm going to make a helper fit for him.

What is the helper designed to do?

Help him carry out the mission, right? Do you understand what I'm saying? So man's been given a mission. It's not good for him to be alone. He needs someone to help him carry out the mission.

That's what it said.

So he's going to make a helper fit for him. If you read down in verse 21, it says, So God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and while he slept, he took one of his ribs, he closed it up in its place with flesh, and the rib that the Lord God had taken from man, he made into a woman and brought her to the man.

Then the man said, This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh. She shall be called woman because she is taken out of man. Now you read that story, you think, Hey, that's fairly innocuous, isn't it?

It's just, so it's not good for man to be alone. God makes him go to sleep. I don't know why he did that. And then he makes woman, you know, from his rib or from his side or whatever. And I don't know why that's there or whatever, but then there he is.

She presents, God presents woman to man. And, you know, and then you make the preacher joke and Adam said, Whoa, man, right? Like, like that's, that's, so then that's what we do with that, right? And so he was, what a good gift, right?

But what I don't think we do is we don't pay attention, enough attention to the kind of things that are there to understand the entailments of what we just read. Do you understand? This isn't like a, this isn't just a curiosity that God has done.

He didn't just tell us this story in order to give us a neat little cute story about how he made men and women or something like that for sentimental reasons. What I'm trying to say is that story is profoundly theological and it has entailments.

Do you understand? Like it has entailments. There are entailments to that story about the nature of what man and woman actually are and how they're designed. You understand? That are there and you may not see them, but the issue is when later scripture writers are commenting on this passage, they see them and they see what they mean.

You understand? So like if you want to understand what it means to be a man and a woman and what marriage is and everything else, when you look at the way the New Testament comments on these things, like the New Testament writers see a lot more there than you may see at the outset and what they're doing routinely is commenting on these created features and drawing conclusions from that.

The kind of conclusions that should be obvious to us but that aren't because we're living in a society that's so hostile to a biblical worldview. Do you understand? So you may not see anything in there worthy of note other than like a cute little story, but that's not what it is, okay?

So I'm bringing up this story to try to establish the point that men and women are given different roles in the mission. You say, how do you get that from that story, right? Well look, what does Paul say in 1 Timothy 2, 11?

Paul says, let a woman learn quietly with all submissiveness. I do not permit a woman to teach or to exercise authority over a man. Rather, she is to remain quiet.

Why? Why?

That seems mean.

That's chauvinistic, misogynistic. How dare you, right? I mean, I know we just get all the scandal out of you that you feel. You know, just let it out, you know, because you're told you need to let these things out or you're gonna go postal one day.

So I mean, I guess this is the appropriate moment for that. But get it all out of your system. But why, why, why is that the case? That's what you're supposed to ask. Why is a woman not permitted to teach but is commanded to learn in silence?

Why?

For Adam was formed first, it said. What is he commenting on? He's commenting on the order of creation here, right? Do you understand what I'm saying? He's commenting on the order of creation. God made man first.

And then he says, it's not good for a man to be alone, so he makes a helper fit for him. Do you understand? And then it says, then Eve, for Adam was first formed, then Eve, and Adam was not deceived, but the woman was deceived and became a transgressor.

Yet she will be saved through childbearing if they continue in faith, love, and holiness. So he's pointing to the created order. That's the one thing he's doing to establish these world differences. And the next thing he's doing, and this is the thing that we hate even more than the first, is he's pointing to the reality that woman was deceived and Adam wasn't.

Therefore, she's not suited for that role. Do you understand? That's the point that's being made. And that's the point that you can't really say. You can't say, none of the complimentarian authors that I just quoted want to say this, but this is what Paul is saying.