He Made them Male and Female, Part 2

Well, good morning. If you do have a Bible, turn to Genesis 1 .27,

and we're going to be continuing our series on basic truths, and the truth that we're going to be dealing with in particular is the same truth we dealt with last week, which is the truth that He made them male and female.

So, if you do have your Bible, turn to Genesis 1 .27, and go ahead and stand for the reading of God's Word.

Genesis 1 .27. So, God created man in His own image. In the image of God, He created them.

Male and female, He created them. This is the Word of the Lord. You may be seated.

Now, we live in a world that has obviously declared war on the concept of masculinity and the concept of femininity, and it's unfortunate to say that the

Church seems to be piling on. When you talk about the concept of masculinity in general, you seem to be living in a time that is haunted by the specter of the patriarchy of the past.

And if you do talk about these topics at all, you're supposed to apologize to great length about what you're saying, and be sensitive and acknowledge the fact that these concepts can be abused, and so we need to tread carefully.

It's interesting to note, though, that when you think about the actual dangers that we face today, we're living in a society that has lost track of these basic differences and problematized even talking about them.

If I were to stand before you today and say that my task here today is to, among other things, to train you in the fine art of manliness, you snicker, you smirk as if I said a joke.

And one of the things to realize is that masculinity in general has been declared to be a joke.

It's something that we should apologize for. We should be deeply suspicious about. You know, if I talk about masculinity, if I talk about manliness, if I try to encourage people to be men, to act like men, then what you're trained to think immediately, you're trained to immediately respond to that as if I'm trying to train men to be macho, or I'm trying to train them in some sort of distorted form of self -confidence or self -reliance.

We're deeply distrustful of these concepts in general, and we're living in a world that thinks that our primary task is essentially to protect people today from abusive forms of masculinity.

We think that our primary task today is to protect people from abusive forms of manliness.

But then when you actually look at the state of affairs today, we're living in a very effeminate society.

We're members, in many ways, of very effeminate churches. Our primary problem today is not an overabundance of masculinity.

Our primary problem today is not an overabundance of manliness. Our primary problems today are not that we're living in a patriarchal society that's oppressing women and keeping women down.

In fact, we're living in a matriarchal society where we're facing the exact opposite errors today, where we face, among other things, a crisis of courage.

And if you want evidence for that, just look at our response to COVID, and you'll see that we're facing a crisis of courage.

We're facing a crisis of masculinity. We're facing a crisis of manliness, while we're still trying to shame people for perhaps the errors on the other side.

So we've gone to the exact opposite extreme today. If you were here last week, one of the things that you'll realize is that I tried to give what you might describe as descriptions of what the essence of masculinity and femininity are in the

Bible. And I pointed to some passages which substantiate this, and there's many more that I could mention.

I only gave a few. But if you want to think about what the biblical essence of masculinity is, you need to think no further than the concept of strength.

Paul says this very clearly. It's as clear as you could possibly say it. He encourages Christians to be strong, to act like men.

If you think about the essence of masculinity, it's found in strength. God's made men to be physically strong.

He's made them to be mentally strong. We talked about those things to great lengths last week. If you think about what is the essence of femininity, the essence of femininity is found in the concept of beauty.

So while God has made man to be a strong creation, who is mentally strong, who is physically strong,

God has made woman to be a beautiful creation, who is mentally beautiful, who is spiritually beautiful.

We talked about how this influences man's roles, and we talked about how this influences woman's roles, that both men and women are image -bearers.

They're created in the image of God. They're basically God's vice -regents on the earth. We're designed to rule this world and display aspects of His character to this world.

Like we're representatives of God. We're representing different attributes in particular as it relates to men and women in an unequal way.

So we talked about these things today. But when you think about what happens in the fall,

God's designed us a certain way. He's given us certain strengths and weaknesses. He's made us differently.

He's made us differently, and He's made us differently so that those strengths, men's physical strength, mental strength, woman's physical beauty, woman's beauty, are going to be oriented towards the roles

He's designed them for. We're living in a world that denies all that. So you live in a time where man and woman are seen essentially as interchangeable parts.

That's what you're living in. And the church sees that too. So if you were to ask people, what does it mean to be a man, they're going to tell you something along the lines of general

Christian faithfulness. They'll be deeply suspicious of this talk about strength. We seem to be unable to talk about these creation differences between man and woman in such a way that actually emphasizes those areas but doesn't lead to distortion.

So we're deeply suspicious of all these things. A lot of that is coming from the attacks on masculinity that are happening today in the world.

So the problem here is that it's not simply that you're living... Like if you're a man here today,

I'm talking to you, and we'll talk to the ladies here today next. But if you're a man here today, the problem is not simply that you're living in a world that's trying to get you to identify as a woman if you're a man, although it's doing that, right?

So you see that there's constant pressure along those lines to get you as a man to identify as a woman.

And we think that those are the major problems. But what I'm trying to say is that the problem is not simply that you're living in a world trying to make you identify as a woman.

You're living in a world that's trying to make you think like a woman and act like a woman. And it's a very simple step from there to get you to identify as a woman.

So if the world can get you to think like a woman, if the church can get you to think like a woman and act like a woman, it's a very simple step there to take on that identity.

And now when I say any of that, then you think, well, I've said something wrong, right? So if I say you're living in a world that's trying to make you think like a woman and act like a woman, then you're predisposed to take offense to that and think that I've said that being a woman is wrong.

Like there's something wrong with thinking like a woman and acting like a woman. Well, the issue is there's nothing wrong with if you're a woman to think like a woman and act like a woman.

But there's everything wrong if you're a man to think like a woman and act like a woman. Do you understand?

So the issue is you're living in a world trying to get you very much, very much intent upon getting you to think like a woman, act like a woman.

So God made you a particular way as an image bearer. God made them male and female, the text says.

And those are different types of creation designed for different types of purposes and different types of missions. You have the same mission but different roles in that mission.

But here's the thing. Like you're living in a world that wants you as a man to think like a woman, act like a woman, and take on the roles of a woman.

So war has been declared on masculinity today. Masculinity is seen as a toxic concept.

Masculinity is the butt of almost every joke. Every TV show that you're going to think about watching, every movie that you're going to watch, masculinity is seen as this deeply problematic concept.

If you're a man here today, the world wants you to be deeply ashamed of the fact that you're a man.

And everything that makes you a man in distinction from a woman, you're supposed to reject, right?

When I was growing up, it was interesting. Because at the very beginning of my childhood,

I went to Christian school for a little bit. I mean, I did homeschool, I did Christian school, and then I predominantly was in public school.

But in the beginning of my public school, I do remember this constant pressure that was given to us to get in touch with our feminine side, right?

So there's this constant pressure as men to get in touch with your feminine side. And for us,

I mean, it was kind of a joke because this stuff was introduced to us first, right? So I'm among the generation where this was starting to be influenced.

And so it was kind of a joke at first, but then as I got older and older, going through school, one of the things

I noticed is it stopped becoming a joke at a certain point, and it started becoming real for people. So when

I was really young, we laughed. It was a joke. But then the further and further along, it became a real thing.

So you're supposed to get in touch with your feminine side. It used to be that real men don't cry, right?

It used to be that we say real men don't cry. Now, men are encouraged to have the emotional self -control of a five -year -old girl.

You can watch TV shows where men are weeping like babies over everything, right?

And then we praise that as if it's a virtue. We praise it as a virtue if men weep as much as a typical woman would weep, right?

And then when I say all this, what you're trained to think is you're trained to be deeply suspicious of what

I'm saying because after all, Jesus wept, right? So did Paul. Certainly, there's nothing wrong with crying.

But then it seems to me that it's not entirely difficult to understand how, as a generality, men are made to be a strong creation.

Men are made to have emotional strength, emotional fortitude. Men shouldn't be characteristic.

What shouldn't be characteristic of men is a self -pitying lack of emotional self -control.

That shouldn't be characteristic of men. But then there's obviously things that you should cry about. So you had a generality in the former time, real men don't cry because crying wasn't seen to be characteristic of a man's general response to life that it made exceptions.

And now you're living in a time where we expect that men are characterized by the opposite of the old generality because we have the sense to point out counterexamples, you understand?

So it used to be that you... Growing up, I don't think I ever saw my dad cry.

But maybe once or twice, right? But in those times, you knew that it was a significant moment.

But now you're growing up in a time where the men are crying just as much as the women and possibly more.

And we've lost the ability to generalize along these lines. So here's the thing. War has been declared on masculinity.

We're being taught to get in touch with our feminine side. We've rejected any notion of the virtues of fortitude, emotional self -control.

In fact, emotional self -control among men is viewed as a problem. Viewed as a problem. I've been rigorously taught my whole life that if I have control of my emotions, that that's deeply problematic, right?

I've been taught that that's deeply problematic. I need to let it out, right? I need to express myself. I need to express my feelings.

A lot of the ways in which men and women relate to each other nowadays, there's an expectation that men will be just as emotional as women.

And if they're not, the problem is they're viewed with suspicion, a lack of sensitivity, a lack of compassion, because we don't understand that men and women are made in different ways.

So emotional self -control is viewed as a problem. You have an entire generation of kids who have been test subjects of drug companies, who have been rigorously trying to train the masculinity out of young boys.

I mean, if you have kids, you realize that your boys are different than your girls. They have different impulses.

They have different instincts. For a young boy to not be able to sit still, like we're trained now to think that they have attention deficit disorder or attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, so we put them on sedatives to try to calm them down and train the masculinity out of them, because we view that as problems, because most men today are being trained by female educators who are looking at their masculinity as a problem that needs to be resolved through chemical means.

So you're living in a time where masculinity itself is viewed as a problem. I'm reminded of a time where I went to a pediatrician.

Normally Elizabeth would go to the pediatricians, but then one time

I decided to go because she had something else to do, so I went to a pediatrician, and there was a new mother pediatrician that we went to, and I think it was

Ezra. He was sitting on a chair, like a plastic chair, and if the skin of your leg is sitting on a plastic chair, one of the things that happens is you might get a red mark on your skin, right?

So we're at this pediatrician where she's interrogating us about our lifestyle and our eating habits and interrogating us about how much exercise do they get, how many vegetables do they eat, and then holding over our head all the statistics, right?

It's like, your child is below average height. It's like, yeah, I wonder why that is.

Well, you see, I'm below average height and so is my wife, so I'm not too concerned about that.

I don't have high expectations for them. That's the way it works. But at some point she noticed the red mark on his leg and she was pretty hysterical about it.

She's like, what happened to his leg? Are they fighting? I'm like, I'm sure they probably are. They're boys.

That's kind of the way it works. But I think she was about ready to call child protective services on us, and then

I realized, it's from the chair. It's from the chair. The point here is just to say that you're living in a time where if kids fight and they get bruises on themselves or something along those lines, you think, man, you've got to get them to be calm and sedate them.

So you have an entire generation of kids who are the test subjects of drug companies trying to drug the masculinity out of them.

But it's not just the world, it's the church. Feminist in the church has been embraced as a virtue.

We're deeply suspicious as a church of anyone who talks about masculinity.

As I said, I'm standing here, I'm trying to talk about what does it mean to be a man, and you're probably tempted to think that I'm trying to encourage all the men in the room to be macho, stubborn, pig -headed men who have no sensitivity and no compassion, who run roughshod over women.

And I've said none of that. I haven't said anything like that. But then the issue is I haven't gone out of my way to basically tell you over and over and over again that that's not what

I'm saying. And so we're all basically trained as a church society to think that the biggest danger in the world today is to try to get men to calm down and not be too masculine when really we're so far on the other side at this point to where our biggest problems are.

We're training a generation of limp -wristed effeminate men who have no strength and courage, who are afraid of women.

And the biggest problem that I hear about when I talk to young single women is the fact that the men are so afraid of them that they won't make eye contact with them.

They don't even know how to talk to them. And what does that say about us as a generation, as a society today?

If the stronger sex is deathly afraid of the weaker sex, you know we have a problem.

Do you understand? So last week I read that passage in Isaiah which says that God's judgment against the

Egyptians would be that they would tremble like fear. They would tremble with fear like women, right?

They would be like women. They would tremble with fear. We're living in a society right now where we're under the judgment of God.

And our young men today who are supposed to be strong, who are supposed to be courageous, as the Bible says over and over again, they're afraid of women.

They're so afraid of women to the point where they won't even ask them on dates. They're so afraid of rejection that they won't talk to them.

The Complementary Movement, I said last week, has fed into this notion by rejecting the biological foundation for gender roles in the

Bible. So when we talk about gender roles in the Bible, we talk about them as maybe, maybe, yeah.

Obviously the Bible says it in the church. Obviously the Bible says it in the home. But beyond that, we're confused and we don't really know what to do.

When I was at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, they had a whole commercial at Southern that they put out there, right?

And the point of this was to basically tell people why they were voting for Sarah Palin. And the reason why they were voting with Sarah Palin was because voting for a woman in office was in no way incompatible with arguing for gender roles in the home and in the church, right?

So the argument was basically, well, God says that He's designed men for leadership in the church, and God says

He's designed men for leadership in the home, but then beyond that, He doesn't say anything about it. So therefore, yeah, we'll vote for a woman.

If she's the right candidate, that's what we're going to do. But again, as you read the Bible, one of the things you'll realize is that over and over again in the prophets, the prophets are lamenting the fact that infants are the

Israelite suppressors and women rule over them. It's a sign of judgment on a society if women are leading the men.

So as I said, there's this war on masculinity in the church. It's in the world.

You're supposed to be deeply suspicious of the concept. You're supposed to be deeply suspicious of anyone who tries to advocate these things.

You're supposed to view them with suspicion, and we need to be very careful about it and apologize for these things.

We spend most of our time apologizing for these things, and if we give ourselves to these things at all, we do so very tentatively.

This has obviously affected our homes, as I said. It affects the world.

It affects our home. Most men today have lost the concept of leadership.

We don't know what leadership is anymore. So when we think about what does it mean to lead, most of us have been trained to look to our wives to tell us what we're supposed to do in every single situation we find ourselves in.

We don't know how to take initiative. We've been taught that the way to honor our wives is to basically reject all notion of gender roles and to basically do your wife's jobs for you, and that's a lot of what the servant leader movement has trained people to do in general, and we'll talk about that some more next week.

But here's the point. Man and woman have been created in the image of God. Man and woman have the image of God corrupted in the fall.

What you see is that there's a conflict between the sexes that has been introduced into the world that leads to a temptation for us to reject the mission, reject our different roles in the mission, reject the unique design that God has given us for this mission.

There's been attacks on masculinity to get us to do this very thing, but it's not just limited to masculinity.

There's also attacks on femininity. What's the primary way that we praise women today? Strong, powerful, independent woman, right?

You don't need anyone. That's the primary way that we praise women today.

We tell them over and over again, you're strong, you're powerful, you're courageous. We're so used to doing this that it no longer registers as strange.

Imagine how this would sound if it went the opposite way. Imagine how it would sound if you looked at your sons and said, you're so beautiful and you're so lovely, right?

And you're so delicate. Imagine the psychological damage that you would do to your four sons if you heaped upon them these adjectives every day, right?

You're so pretty. You're so lovely. But that's what we do to women.

That's what we do to women. We tell them over and over again, you're strong, you're powerful, you're courageous, and they know they're not.

But we tell them that because we're told to flatter them. You know what?

I've never had a conversation with a group of guys that involved discussing strategies about how to walk out of a restaurant at night and get to their car, right?

So I've never been in that conversation before. I've never been in that kind of conversation where you discussed how to hold your keys, you know, hold your key in your hand so that you can be ready, look over your shoulder.

I've never been in that kind of conversation. I've never, you know, I've never as a man been afraid of being sexually assaulted anywhere.

Right? I live my life in a relative absence of fear.

I'm not afraid of being kidnapped. I'm really not afraid that some van's going to drive up and grab me and take me in the van.

But I can't tell you how many times I've heard women discuss these things as if they're normal, like very normal things.

And you know what? It is normal, like if you're a member of the weaker sex, living in a fallen world, it is very normal to fear like reasonable dangers.

You understand? So you're living in a world right now, the primary way we praise women is we tell them, like you tell them over and over and over again that they have the strengths that more naturally correspond to masculinity because that's the point of egalitarianism, right?

You have to, everything's equal. So we try to tell them that over and over and over again, you're strong, powerful, you're courageous. They know deep down that they're not, right?

They know that they're not. But then we tell them that. And we're almost at a point in a society where we believe it.

What do we say? Yeah, we say she's an independent woman, right? That's what you say.

Like that's a virtue. Like that's a virtue. She's an independent woman, right? She doesn't need a man. Like that's how you praise women today.

You say she's an independent woman. She doesn't need a man. What does the Bible say? Man was not made for woman, but woman was made for man, right?

Nevertheless, woman is not independent of man, right? Like the whole point here is just to say that woman was not created as an independent woman.

She wasn't created as a strong, powerful creation who is going to subdue the earth with her strength.

That's not the way it works. Now when I say that, I mean instantaneously you think about Proverbs, right?

Proverbs 31, woman clothes herself with strength. And so then you say, hey, I'm saying that women are not made to be strong, powerful, and courageous.

It's like, well, what about that? Proverbs 31, Tim. Have you not read that before? It's like, I guess not. I've never read it.

You're right. You got me. I don't know how I could have overlooked that. Woman's not designed to be a weak creation.

She's relatively weak. You understand? So woman is not designed to be a weak creation. She's designed to be relatively weak as adult human males, or as adult human beings, okay?

That's why the Bible calls her the weaker vessel. She's the weaker vessel. She's not designed to be pitifully weak and incapable of performing her tasks.

That's not what she's designed to do. But she's obviously designed differently than man, right? Now when

I say these things, I mean, obviously

I understand there's a temptation to view what I'm saying like a young boy who has reached puberty, and he starts to realize that he's stronger than his mom now, and so he delights in pointing it out over and over again.

Hey, Mom, I'm stronger than you. You know what? I may have done that when I was younger, right? I may have done that a little bit.

But that's not what's happening right now. Right now what's happening is you're living in a world that you're not allowed to say this.

And I would say that in a sane society, you probably shouldn't spend much time talking this way. Men should not delight in pointing out their superiority in terms of physical strength to women.

It just should go without saying. The problem is when you're living in a crazy world like we're living in, what happens is you forget that these things are real.

I can't tell you how many conversations I have where grown adult human males seem to think, because they've watched so many

Marvel movies, that an adult human female is capable of holding her own against a man.

And that's really... I don't know what to do other than to say that we need to regain a sense of reality.

Do you understand? We need to regain a sense of reality. That's what we need to do. And the only way to do that is to engage in a little bit of foolish talk, like obnoxiously saying the obvious, so we can once again regain a sense of moral clarity and realize what

God made us to do. So God didn't make women as a vessel of strength, did he?

I mean, if you don't believe me, just take a high school weight lifting class, right? So I am going to go into obnoxious detail today and you'll have to forgive me just because I'm trying to say the obvious, because I'm trying to tell people in the room what you're made to do.

You understand? So when I took a high school weight lifting class, you had young men who were coming into their strength, right?

That's what you had. You had men and women in my high school weight lifting class. You look at it like this, you have the first major hurdle.

If you remember, if you ever took a high school weight lifting class, you know what I'm talking about. The first major hurdle for any man was getting to a point where he can lift the bar with a 45 on each side, right?

When you got there, you thought, man, I'm getting tough, right? I'm getting tough. That's 135. And then the next step was when you got about 25 to 45 and 25, right?

So you went from 135 to 185. You thought, all right, that's some progress, right?

Then when you got 245s on each side, it's like, man, I'm like Hulk or something, right?

That's what it is, right? Now, when you look at your high school weight lifting class, that's the reality. Then you look over at what the girls are benching, and what are they benching?

They're benching the bar, okay? And you think, well, that's good. She's doing something, right? And if she's really strong, maybe she got a 10 on each side.

And if she's really like the best, most in shape girl in school, maybe she got the 25s on each side once.

But that's like, yeah, that's good for you. But the issue is we're different, okay? We're different.

And we need to realize that we're different. And why do you point it out? I don't like to point it out just so I can get a laugh or something like that.

Why am I pointing it out? Because you're living in a time right now where women are getting assaulted on the street.

There's videos online of women who are getting punched in the face on the street. And you have videos of men are just standing there watching it happen because they don't realize that they were put in the world to stop that kind of thing, right?

So you have distortions on both sides. You have men who are going to use the strength that God has given them for evil purposes.

And then you have men who are going to reject all that and say, hey, that's not spiritual to focus on that.

And if I focus on that, then I'm boasting in my strength and not boasting in my weakness. And God's obviously made men and women unequal.

You're living in a time right now that there are serious talks about women being deployed in combat situations where the weaker sex is being put forward as the same, right?

So you're living in a world that wants to put women into combat roles because we've so bought into this delusion that we're all the same, right?

But what is the essence of femininity? The essence of femininity, a woman is not made to lift 225 pounds on a bench.

She's not made to work on an oil rig. She's not made to deliver appliances.

The essence of femininity is beauty, as I said. So when you look at the attacks from without, liberalism is kind of a rejection of beauty.

The whole premise of liberalism is the idea that woman is not made for man, right? So women have a natural impulse.

Even young girls that grow up, every young girl, unless they've had some kind of dramatic event happen to them, every young girl grows up wanting to be pretty, wanting to be beautiful, trying to be pretty.

But liberalism basically tells you you're not made for men, right? Reject the male gaze, that predatory male gaze, like you don't exist for men, despite what the

Bible says. You don't need to do that. Basically, liberalism is trying to destroy beauty.

On the other hand, conservatism realizes that's crazy.

And then conservatism is basically uncovering a beauty, right? So you have conservatives on the other side who are flaunting their beauty, almost in pornographic ways.

Not almost, in pornographic ways as a way of sticking it to the left, right? And so you have two temptations.

For the woman, there's two temptations. One temptation is to completely reject it, to go the route of liberalism.

And then on the other hand, it's just to flaunt it, right? And to define yourself completely by it.

But in the biblical world, there ought to be some way to say that both of those things are wrong, right? The Bible isn't encouraging women to utterly abandon and reject beauty, just as the

Bible isn't encouraging young men to utterly abandon strength. Like, you shouldn't trust in your strength.

You shouldn't trust in your beauty, right? Bodily exercise is of some value.

It's not ultimate, right? There is an unhealthy fixation on strength you can have. There's an unhealthy fixation on beauty you can have.

Both of those things are true, but you don't have to reject either one, right? Both serve a function and a place.

What does the Bible say about both? The Bible says that charm is deceitful, beauty is fading.

A woman fears the Lord will be praised. What does it say about strength? The glory of a young man is their strength.

God's designed strength and beauty to be things that are temporary. They enhance, right, at a certain point.

Then they diminish. So the Christian response to both of these things is to not reject either one, right?

You're not rejecting it. You're allowing it to be what it is, but you realize that as an attribute, it points to something deeper than what it's intended to do, right?

So women, like it's taken for granted women are going to desire to be pretty. It's taken for granted women are going to desire to be beautiful.

They're not told to reject all that. What they're told is to focus on the things that matter, that will last, right?

In the same way, men are not told to reject strength. They're told to keep it in its proper place and use it as its intended purpose is supposed to use.

You understand? So true beauty, the true beauty, true feminine beauty is the beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit which is very precious in the sight of the

Lord. Women are encouraged to pursue that kind of beauty most. Like that's the beauty that's going to last.

So as I say, I mean, you're living in a society right now that's very hostile to these differences.

We try to minimize these differences. I'm not really even allowed to talk about these differences. Lest I be accused of crass worldliness.

But it is important that we think about the nature of how God made us. He made us in the image of God. He made us differently.

And if we can understand these core virtues of strength and beauty, you understand your roles. You understand what man is made to protect, to provide, to lead.

You understand these core virtues of strength, like mental strength, physical strength. Then you're going to realize how that is applied to those roles.

Why God put you in those roles. Do you understand? You're going to play to those strengths.

Like that's the point. You're going to play to the strengths that you have. So what's happening is you have a generation of men who are being taught, they're being taught to try to embody all the feminine virtues and strengths as a primary objective.

And what they end up doing is they end up looking like a pitiful woman. Do you understand? Like when a man tries to embody all these feminine virtues as his primary objective, he ends up looking pitiful.

When a woman tries to embody all these masculine virtues of strength, fortitude, courage, she does not look very intimidating, does she?

She makes a joke of herself. It's a caricature, right? It's not real. So the point here is just to say

God's made us different. He's given us different roles. He's given us different objectives. He's given us different strengths and weaknesses.

And we image Him best when we persuade those things to the world. Now, the good news is that despite the fact that God has made us a particular way, and as a society we've certainly lost our way, and as a church in a lot of ways we've lost our way too, the reality is that Jesus has done for us something that we could never do, okay?

So man and woman are created in the image of God. Man and woman have the image of God corrupted in the fall, but that's not the last words, brothers and sisters, okay?

Last word is not a word of corruption. We're not stuck with it. That's not the end of the story, right?

There's more to the story than that. So man and woman have the image of God restored in Christ.

Colossians 115 says that He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation, for by Him all things were created in heaven and earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities.

All things were created through Him and for Him, and He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together, and He is the head of the body of the church.

He is the beginning, the firstborn of the dead, that in everything He might be preeminent, for in Him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through Him to reconcile to Himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of the cross.

And you who were once alienated and hostile in mind, doing evil things, He has now reconciled in His body and flesh by His death, in order to present you holy and blameless and above reproach before Him, if indeed you continue in the faith, stable, steadfast, not shifting from the hope of the gospel that you've heard and proclaimed in all creation under heaven.

The good news is that Jesus has come. He is the perfect image of the invisible

God, and He has given us everything in His Word that we need in order to understand who we are, why

He made us, what His purpose is for us. If you want to understand who you are today, you look to Christ, you look to Christ and you understand

His relationship with the church. You look to Him as a perfect example of what you should be.

You look to His Word and His instructions and He'll tell you what He made you to do. Okay? God is there.

He has spoken. He's not silent. He's given us everything that we need in order to know how to honor

Him and to live lives that are well pleasing in His sight. And despite the fact that you're living in a world that's very hostile to these things in the church, that's very hostile to these things at times,

His Word is enough. Christ has revealed Himself. And we can find our true purpose in being in Him if we trust in the good news that we no longer have to be slaves to sin.

We no longer have to be slaves to the ideologies of the world. We no longer have to be held captive by lies which are designed for our destruction.

You understand that Satan is the father of lies. And he wants to kill you. If we do what we're told to do, you understand you're talking about the annihilation of the human species.

If Satan can get all the men to act like women and identify as women and surgically try to pretend to be women, do you understand that we are annihilated?

He seeks our death like the path to life. He promises the path to life but in the end

He gives death. That's the point. But Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life. And we can look to Him to answer these basic questions.

And that's my prayer for us today that we do that. Amen? Let's pray. Lord, we thank

You for Your Word today which is life to us. We know that You're there and that You have spoken.

Pray that You help us as a church to be lights in a fallen world, to be examples of what it means to be image bearers of You.

Help us to represent You well. Help us to represent You according to our gender and the way that You have designed us.

Lord, clear the fog over our eyes. Help us to see clearly. Help us to be faithful people.