Summer Session (3) Sunday School June 18

So people are running late, because there's a nice breakfast spread in the foyer. And, but they'll get here in a little bit.

We're going to return to our study of the family, biblical theology of the family, trying to get our definitions from the

Bible, from scripture, how God defined and designed what it means to be a man and a woman, what it means to be married, what it means to have a family, and the implications of that throughout

God's word. So we're returning to that study here this morning. Let's begin with a word of prayer.

Father, we thank you for the day that you have given to us. Pray that you would help us to make the most of it to your glory. Pray that you would help us to love one another as Christ has loved us.

And I pray that as we consider what your word has to say about who we are and how we live, that you would give us the grace by your spirit to give a hearty amen, and that we would rejoice in your truth.

We pray these things in Jesus' name. Amen. So we have noted that we live in a time, not a unique time, but a time in which there is confusion about who people are, what marriage is, what family is.

It's not a unique time because confusion and controversy have been present in various types of cycles throughout the history of the church.

And even in the days of Christ, there was a great debate about marriage amongst the

Jews. More broadly speaking amongst the Gentiles, there were other types of problems, things that Paul would try to address in his letters to the

Hellenistic household, the household of the Greek culture. But when the controversial topic was brought to Jesus, when they invited him to take side

A or side B of the hot button issue, he said no to the whole thing and said, have you not read?

And he went to Genesis 127 and Genesis 224 and said, let's look back at the beginning and the way

God has made us and the way God designed marriage. And that's how we're going to find our answers. By getting our definitions, not from the experiences of the people around us or our own personal experiences, not getting our ideas of family from the culture in which we currently live, but by going back and getting our definitions from the designer himself, and so that's what we've been laboring to do.

We've been trying to understand what does it mean, how does it impact our understanding of family and marriage that God has made us in his image, male and female, he created them.

That's where Jesus began. And then proceeded from there, for this reason, a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife and the two shall become one flesh.

What God has joined together, let no man separate. That was how he addressed the issue.

So, we began with the image of God, thinking about the quote that Jesus gave from Genesis 127.

We talked about the nature of being made in God's image is such that we are a unique creature, the only one created in a three -way intersection of relationships in that we are to love

God supremely, the vertical relationship, we are to love each other rightly, the horizontal relationship, and we have been given dominion over the created order, be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth, and subdue it, given dominion over all things that God has made, and this is our expansive relationship, we're to fill the earth with the glory of God.

No other creature was made that way, the angels weren't made that way, the animals were not made that way, only those who are made in God's image, mankind, and we began to, we explored the image of God as much as we could, but moving on, we need to talk about marriage.

Marriage is the most essential aspect of family. It is the condition without which family proceeds.

You can't have family without a marriage. Marriage is the essential. You must begin there. It is the primary relationship.

It is the most essential relationship. It is the defining relationship, and when it comes to marriage,

God begins to deal with the man first. So, if we're going to think about family,

God deals with marriage first, and in dealing with marriage, God deals with the man first.

So, we're going to follow his lead on that, and just work our way through what God has to say.

Now, we began to study from Genesis 1, verses 26 and 27, and we read there, and God said, let us make man in our image, according to our likeness.

Let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, over the cattle, over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.

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

He created them. So, we discussed, in learning about the man, that the term male, in the

Hebrew, is pronounced

Zachar, as in Zachariah, my

God, remember, but the word for male is the same

Hebrew word for remembrance, which alerts us to the fact that the male is the archetype, and the pattern.

Every family we read of in the Bible is known by the man of the household, remembered by the man of the household, and his name continues through his sons.

We have a practice today of wives taking their husband's last name, that spawns from the

Bible, from God's own definition and description of the male. When humanity falls into sin, though Eve was the first to sin,

Adam is remembered for it. Adam is held responsible for it. Throughout the scripture,

Adam is the one who is pointed at, who gets the blame. And, the hope for all mankind is that Jesus Christ is the second

Adam. He's the second Adam. And so, he truly stands in for all of humanity, whether male or female.

And, we come down to a real question, are we going to be remembered in the first Adam, according to who he is?

Or, are we going to be remembered in the second Adam for who he is? Okay.

And, that's where we left our consideration of the term male, and exploring what does it mean for God to create, in his image, male and female, man and woman, and bring them together in marriage.

Now, when we, the word for man, looks familiar, doesn't it?

You could pronounce it Adam, to try to distinguish between that and the proper name

Adam. But, throughout Genesis 1 and 2, when we read about man, or mankind, or simply the man, the first man that God made, we're getting this term over, and over, and over again.

And, there's a progression that moves along. Now, in Genesis chapter 2, let's look at our Bibles in Genesis chapter 2. Here, we have an intensive look about what

God was up to on the sixth day. And, we find a more description, more definition, as Genesis chapter 2, verses 5 through 8, gives us a progression.

We see that first, there was no man, then God made man. He made the first man as the sum of all mankind.

He put that man into a garden that he planted. So, verse 5 says, before any plant of the field was in the earth, and before any herb of the field had grown, for the

Lord God had not caused it to rain on the earth, and there was no man to till the ground.

So, there were some plants already, you know, trees, and all kinds of fruit -bearing plants already going strong.

But, there were some plants that required man to till the ground, to sow the seed, to till the ground.

And so, work and labor, sowing and reaping, all of this was plan

A, part of the design. Right? Work isn't a bug, it's a feature.

Okay? So, God made everything so that the man would be at work and laboring, and there were certain plants that needed man's hand to till, to sow, to work.

Verse 6, but a mist went up from the earth and watered the whole face of the ground. All gardeners rejoice.

That'd be so easy. And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living being.

The Lord God planted a garden eastward in Eden, and there he put the man whom he had formed.

So, God designed the creation to be worked by mankind. He made man for work.

The man made from dust would work the dust. The man from the ground into whom

God breathed life would labor by God's breath to bring life from the ground. He planted a garden, and then planted the man in the garden.

So, in this situation, you see how dependent man is on everything. He needs

God. He gets his definition from God. He gets his work assignment from God. He gets his life from God.

He gets his sustenance from God. He is absolutely, utterly dependent upon him.

So, Adam's work was not to be done by his own personal parameters, but under God's parameters, under God's authority.

So, man is dependent upon God, and he was not designed to be alone.

So, verse 15 of chapter 2, then the Lord God took the man and put him into the garden of Eden to tend and keep it.

So, he was to work this garden, and he was to guard this garden. The term keep is the same of the

Levites who guarded the tabernacle to keep that which was unholy away from the tabernacle to keep things holy and secure.

And the Lord God commanded the man saying, of every tree of the garden you may freely eat, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it, you shall surely die.

And the Lord God said, it is not good. It is not good that the man shall be alone. I will make him a helper comparable to him.

So, we see that all throughout, God took the man. God commanded the man.

It is not good that the man. Adam, Adam, Adam.

Okay. After he is formed, after the man is formed, after he's given life, after he is put into his particular place and given instruction, suddenly we see, suddenly we see the man, the man being called by his proper name in verse 19.

All right. As, as, and we're going to look in verses 19 through 21.

And as soon as the man is given the kingly duty of naming all of the animals as the paraded, you know,

Noah -like two by two in front of him. As soon as he's given the kingly duty of naming every single one of the animals,

Adam's king gives him his name. Before he's the man, the man, the man, now he's

Adam. Now he's Adam. Look at that, verse 19 through 21. Out of the ground the Lord God formed every beast of the field and every bird of the air and brought them to Adam, first time he's named proper name.

Not the man, but proper name Adam. To see what he would call them.

And whatever Adam called each living creature, that was its name. So Adam gave names to all cattle, to the birds of the air, to every beast of the field.

But for Adam, proper name, proper name, proper name. But for Adam, there was not found a helper comparable to him.

And the Lord caused a deep sleep to fall on Adam and he slept and he took one of his ribs and closed up the flesh in its place.

So, we have the summary of all these events in one verse, Genesis 127. We read in Genesis 127 that God made man in his image according to his likeness and he made a male and female.

That's a very quick summary and then you read the whole story in chapter 2. How did that work? What was that like?

What happened? We get to hear about the whole saga of Genesis 127 in chapter 2.

And we hear the distinction. There's male and female. But so far, it's just Adam. And now, his aloneness is emphasized to him.

So, he sees this parade of animals coming before him and his aloneness is simply being emphasized to him.

As soon as the man's name is used properly, as soon as the man is named Adam, as soon as his situation as an individual is emphasized, the fact that he has no companion is starkly obvious.

Being made in God's image necessitates a three -way relationship. Love God supremely, steward the creation responsibly.

Yes, but who is he going to love righteously? Who is he going to love righteously?

Well, no one yet because he's not been given anybody. He's on his own. He's alone.

And so, God says that it's not good for the man to be alone. And particularly and importantly,

Adam needs more than a fishing buddy. Being fruitful, multiplying, filling the earth is not going to get done by a fishing buddy.

He needs a helper comparable to him, someone who fits together with him, with his purpose, who is from him, who is him.

So, God puts Adam down and he wounds him. And from the open bloody wound of the first Adam, God fashions the first Eve.

So, we see this in verses 23 through 25. Then the rib which the Lord God had taken from the man, he made into a woman and he brought her to the man.

And Adam said, this is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh. She shall be called woman because she was taken out of man.

And at this point, Adam does not say Adam. He doesn't say Zakar.

He says Ish. He says

Ish. Therefore, a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife.

They shall become one flesh. They are both naked, the man and his wife, and were not ashamed. So, the man was just put down into a deep sleep.

It's a picture of death. He's just been wounded. Some part of him is now not a part of him.

All right. That is not something that you could ever say about God.

He is not, God is a spirit, does not have a body like man. He is eternal.

He's unchangeable. You can't cut a part off of God and use it for something else.

But man, you can. A man can lose a hand. A man can lose a leg.

A man can lose a rib. So, he calls himself

Ish. That Hebrew word is a contraction of the word mortal, mortal.

Adam is not God. God could put

Adam down, take a rib out of his side, and do something with it. Adam is definitely not God.

Adam is a creature. And so, something is taken from Adam.

The man gives something up in the receiving of a wife. And when

God says it is not good for the man to be alone, it isn't properly that Adam was lacking something that he needed to add on, particularly.

In other words, that Adam in and of himself, as he was functioning in the garden, that somehow God had forgotten, oh,

I forgot to put a piece into Adam. It wasn't that. It's that something hadn't been taken out of Adam.

Adam hadn't given something up. And the term Ish is given in close connection for the term for the woman, which is

Ishah, meaning out of man. Out of man. As we see the woman first in relationship to the man, there's something about the man that cannot be expressed apart from the woman who was given to him.

How are we going to understand? So, he is Zakar, he is male, he is Adam, he's a man, but now he's

Ish. He's Ish. Because God took a rib from him and made a woman and gave the woman to him.

Now, we've gone about as far as we can go without talking about the actual marriage relationship dead on.

So, we're going to back up in the text now and ask God, what is a woman? Sound good?

We're going to back up in the text and we're going to ask God that question. Yeah, good question.

He invented biology. There we go. Now, God, yeah, loves both fronted with the question of divorce from his peers, from his culture.

You know, this, of course, divorce is man's attempt at modifying God's good design, right?

It's what God designed and here's how we're going to mess with it. Now, Jesus did not choose side

A or side B. In other words, the question was posed to him, should we do violence to women quite often or less often?

And Jesus said, well, how about no? If you read Malachi 2 .16, God said when you divorce the wife of your youth, you do, you cover your robe with violence.

So, Jesus says no and then he says, he asks his hearers, did you, did you fail to read?

Have you not read Genesis 1 .27? Matthew 19 .4,

he's answering, this is the, this is the controversial moment and he answered them and said, have you not read that he who made them at the beginning made them male and female?

So, Jesus uses and embraces the distinctions that God has placed into mankind.

Remember that the Bible gives us definitions by the way of distinctions, not by dualism, not by the didactic, meaning that male and female are not divorced and separate opposites, which putting them together only causes disaster of some kind, thought in Greek mythology.

Spectrum, that you can just kind of grade in from one side to the other, but distinctions, both made in God's image, both, and the

Greek term for male, which Jesus uses, is very stereotypical, it means strong, the guy who, the one who does the heavy lifting.

Okay, that was the stereotypical term for a male in, in the Greek language Jesus uses to translate the

Hebrew word, zakar, from Genesis 1 .27. What about the

Greek term for female that Jesus uses? It means the one who nurses babies.

Well, how stereotypical can you get? The terms embrace the stereotypes of physicality, functionality,

God made man in his image, male and female, and he said of those distinctions, what? He said, very good, he said very good.

We need to give an amen to that in our lives and in our conversations. The only people who have a problem with these kinds of terms are pagan in their thinking.

Now, this comes from what is called an ontological oneness and an alchemical fungibility.

Let me tell you about paganism. Paganism only knows how to count to one.

It's all it can count up to is one. Everything is encapsulated in the world.

If you're, if you're a Hindu, then Atman is Brahman, Brahman is Atman, and we're all just extensions and trying to get back to the one, right?

All their, all their hideous gods are all some sort of form of metamorphosis and blending and, and it's hideous.

If, but if you're a materialist, you know,

Darwin, you've invited Darwin into your heart, okay? You've walked the aisle and converted to materialism, then all is matter, right?

All is matter in various forms and motions, and just one. So, if everything is one, then it makes sense that everything is on a dialectic, and it's just various shades of the one, right?

There's the color green, and there's, you know, 45 shades of green from one scale to the other, you know, but it's all green.

It's all one. That's paganism. So, and that means that if there's something in the one over here, and something in the one over here, it's just fine and completely possible to swap it to do.

This is alchemy. This is the whole idea of alchemy, and in the, in the witchcraft of alchemy, we can, hey, you can turn wood into gold, sure, no problem.

Everything's one, so somehow you can do it, and the alchemy of our day is you can swap it to do male and female, no problem, and this begins with the idea of male and female are fungible, meaning you can trade one out for the other.

You can, you can take your dollar bills, okay, and you can go over to Europe, and you can change them out for euros, okay, fungible.

I can trade my dollars for euros, but the cost of this exchange rate is hellfire.

It's absolute denial, rejection, rebellion against God. It is, it is not simply taking a bite of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

It's shaking the tree, grabbing a ball of the fruit, and turning it into your favorite form of alcohol, and getting drunk on it, okay.

So, this, this is what paganism is up to, so it's a, it's a, it's a oneness.

Everything comes down to one, and then you can just change things out all the time. So, I'll give you a practical example.

A young man stands up, 6 '2", he's been working out, you know, his entire high school life, and he has, he has, he has studied, he's got family history for it, and he announces at graduation he's heading for the

Marines. Everybody does what? All right, good job, man,

I'm praying for you. Young lady stands up, she's 5 '3", 110 pounds.

She announces she's going into the Marines as well. Everybody stands up, woo, yeah, how patriotic.

That is disgusting, that's disastrous, that's an abomination to God, and we're supposed to rejoice and be happy about it, because men and women are absolutely fungible.

Here's a man, unplug him, plug in a woman, no problem, no difference. That is a, that is coming from a pagan mindset, it's not a biblical mindset at all.

God made male and female with distinctions, and he said, very good. Will we rejoice in that, will we give an amen to that, or will we rebel against it?

Now, Genesis 127, let's go back to the beginning, we're going to ask

God, what is a woman? And it says,

God created man in his own image, God created Adam in his own image, mankind.

In the image of God, he created him, male, zakar, and female, nekevah, he created them.

Now, the term nekevah has an unequivocal meaning, there's no way around it, and it has to do with how the wife receives the husband in the marriage act.

There's going to be no fruitfulness, no multiplying, no filling of the earth, unless, newsflash, unless the wife is female.

This is 2023, we have to say that, right? She was made especially for her husband, to the glory of God.

And when you read about the woman in Genesis 1 through 3, she is most often described in relationship to the man, and this has been interpreted by feminists as hatred for women, the religious oppression of women, and so on.

But, Jesus loves women, right? And what did he do?

He pointed to Genesis 1 and 2, when the controversy was going, what did he do?

He said, let's look back at Genesis 1 and 2. Haven't you read from the beginning, God made them male and female? Didn't you read that when

God was joined together, let no man separate? Didn't, God loves women, Jesus loves women, he points to Genesis for their good.

When Jesus spoke against violence to women through divorce, he pointed to Genesis. Now, misuse of scripture by sinful men and sinful women, that's not good.

But, the fact that scripture gets misused and misunderstood does not make the scripture bad, right?

Guns don't kill people, people kill people. Scripture doesn't make bad theology, people make bad theology.

When God makes Eve from the rib of Adam, she is called Eshah, because she was taken out of Esh. Have you read about that?

And this is Adam's own description of her. This is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh, she shall be called woman because she was taken out of man.

It is fundamentally significant, the very first time we see mankind in the plural, first time we have mankind in the plural is male and female, man and woman, husband and wife, very first time.

There's no end to that significance. We're going to be exploring that a lot moving forward. But, notice that she is his help me, verse 18 of Genesis 2.

Genesis 2, 18, the Lord God said, it is not good that the man should be alone, I will make him a helper comparable to him.

So, made to, so man has been made to be fruitful, to multiply, fill the earth and subdue it, made to exercise dominion over the earth, to fill it with God's glory, it's not good for the man to be alone, he needs the female, but how?

How? A man is joined to the woman as husband and wife, constituting a family from the very beginning.

Our English word woman comes from wife one, you hear wife and man in there.

Again, all of these terms are under fire and people are screaming bloody murder about these words, calling it misogynistic oppression, that we would use these terms.

So, we're going to stop saying woman and we're going to start calling them non -men, that'll fix it, please laugh.

God has told us that laughter is the righteous response to absurdity, he laughs, we should laugh, that is worth laughing at.

Now, Adam names his wife Eve, he gives her her name Eve, because she is the mother of all the living.

I don't know why the English is Eve. In the Hebrew it's Chava, where did you get

Eve from that? But her name speaks of one who shows forth life, that's the whole idea of her name, one who shows forth life, she's the mother of all the living,

Adam says, so her name is going to be Eve. By her very design, the woman flourishes in marriage as one who receives life, bears life, nurtures life.

So, what is a woman, ask God, what is his answer, she is the female distinction of the image of God, created to nurture life.

She is the helpmate of her husband in the creation mandate, God rejoices in the woman he made and at last when she is at the man's side, he says, very good.

Herman Baving wrote a book on the Christian family, a long time ago, and he was dealing with the cultural revolution that was coming to the

Netherlands, spurred on by the ashes of the

French Revolution and of course, what were they saying back then? Oh, if you do it right, it will work, this is what he said about the woman, when it comes to the bottom line, the woman can nowhere land in a better situation than the family, at the side of a husband who loves her, surrounded by her children whom she tends and nurtures, her nature is designed for that, her orientation lies in that direction, there she best fulfills her calling and best reaches her destiny, there is then no more foolish requirement and no more unnatural compulsion than to propose to the wife that in the coming political state, she must give up her children, once they're weaned to the community.

What old Hillary said, takes a village, no, it takes a family. The mother for whom maternal love is the unspeakable mystery and inexhaustible power in her life, will never allow herself to be separated from her children in this way, she desires not merely to give them birth but also to raise them and she remains bound to them until the hour of her death, the exceptions to that that we find in our world today are not the rule, they're just evidence of depravity.

All right, so now we're going to think about pronouns, right, pronouns, they, them.

The Bible is God's holy word, breathed out by God, eternally true, authoritative and clear and sufficient for all of our faith and practice, the father speaks of the son by the spirit throughout and so, all of scripture addresses all of humanity who are made in God's image.

We are either remembered in the first Adam or in the second Adam and there is nothing in human existence, no matter how strange, perverted, modern or confusing, concerning which the

Bible has nothing to say, the Bible speaks to all of it. And we may consider that our current battleground is especially difficult but we would not be alone in our assessment.

Herman Bavink again, 111 years ago, 1912, Bavink published this book and he wrote, speaking of his situation in the

Netherlands, there has never been a time when the family faced so severe a crisis as the time in which we are now living.

Many are not satisfied with remodeling, they want to tear things down to the foundation. It was over a century ago in the

Netherlands. So, what shall we do? Well, take up and read.

Take up and read. Consider what Jesus said to those who had embraced the degradation of the family.

All right, they weren't even talking about whether divorce should or shouldn't be, they were talking about how we do divorce. You see how it shifted?

You know, he's talking to those, remember we talked about the dialectical train and the conservatives of today are screaming from the caboose that the people in the engine are too far along, it's absurdity.

So, there are people in Jesus' day who thought they were virtuous because we're conservative about divorce, right?

There are people today who think you should be praising them because they're conservative about homosexual relationships, right?

You see how that works? So, Jesus says in Matthew 5, 31 through 32, furthermore it has been said, whoever divorces his wife, let him give her a certificate of divorce, but I say to you that whoever divorces his wife for any reason except sexual immorality causes her to commit adultery, and whoever marries a woman who is divorced commits adultery.

In other words, divorce itself is a problem, divorce itself is a sin, there's God's standard, then going against God's standard.

And if adultery is the cause of divorce, this is not to say that divorce is not a sin or that divorce is adultery, but there is a kind of divorce that does not propagate a new adultery, that's what

Jesus is saying. Wow, Jesus, why don't you lighten up, man, that's not very

Christ -like to be so judgmental, harsh, so strict, you know.

Why is Jesus putting the matter this way? Because he, once again, back to Matthew 19, the passage where he kind of began our investigation, the

Pharisees come to him, testing him, saying to him, is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for just any reason?

Right, that was the side B, that was the liberal side of it. And he answered and said to them, have you not read that he who made them at the beginning made them male and female and said, for this reason, a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife and the two shall become one flesh?

So then they are no longer two, but one flesh, therefore what God has joined together, let not man separate, period.

He gave his answer, he's done. They didn't like his answer. They said to him, why then did Moses command to give a certificate of divorce and put her away?

He said to them, Moses, because of the hardness of your hearts, permitted, didn't command, he permitted you to divorce your wives, but from the beginning it was not so.

He's right back to the beginning, isn't he? And I say to you, whoever divorces his wife except for sexual immorality and marries another commits adultery, and whoever marries her who is divorced commits adultery.

His disciples didn't like the answer either. And they said to him, if such is the case of the man with his wife, it is better not to marry.

Now, so we're hearing that, you know, from Matthew 5 and Matthew 19, we're hearing, okay, so Moses had given some sort of legislation, some kind of case law concerning divorce.

And Jesus' audience was interpreting those words as approval of and support of the practice of divorce.

And so, Jesus counters their misinterpretation. He localizes Moses' instructions, and he calls for a commitment to God's original standard.

Now, what did Moses say? Deuteronomy 24, verses 1 through 4. Now, there's no period until the end of verse 4, and these are long verses.

Jesus ends his period with, from the beginning it was not so. What God has joined together, let not man separate.

We're just done. Listen to this enormously long, complex, compound sentence with many different qualifications.

When a man takes a wife and marries her, and it happens that she finds no favor in his eyes because he has found some uncleanness in her, and he writes her a certificate of divorce.

This is like, this is ancillary happenstance. This isn't a command to do it. And he puts that into her hand and sends her out of her house when she has departed from his house and goes and becomes another man's wife if the latter husband detests her and writes her a certificate of divorce, puts it in her hand and sends her out of his house, or if the latter husband dies, he took her as his wife, and then her former husband who divorced her must not take her back to be his wife after she has been defiled, for that is an abomination before the

Lord, and you shall not bring sin on the land which the Lord your God has given you as an inheritance.

And does that sound like Moses is saying, well, when you get upset with your wife, here's how you do divorce. But boy, did they twist that scripture to help them.

Does that sound familiar? There are people twisting scripture today to try to advocate for sinful lifestyles, especially when it comes to sexual relations.

By God's creation design and sovereign authority, divorce isn't right. Man ought not to separate what

God has joined together, period. And all the hypothetical situations are also addressed in the scripture so we know what to do.

We'll probably talk about that more later. Why did

God call it an abomination? Here's God's point of view on it.

Moses wrote what he did because the children of Israel were in rebellion to their creator, bucking against God's good design.

And there were these situations in which a husband divorced his wife, and she, looking for support, goes into the home of, into the bed of another man, only to be turned out again if she goes back to the first husband.

She brings these two men into a sexual relationship between the one woman. And God says that's an abomination.

How many STDs would be present in our world today if we just followed that wisdom? Zero. Zero.

Everybody wants to mock God, our creator, our designer, who says, I know best.

So man's devious innovations on marriage are legion, but the roadmap, the single road is just clear.

Jesus says from the beginning, it was not so. You just go right back to the beginning, and you start there.

That's what King Jesus says, so we follow him. So Adam is,

Adam is in the situation. He doesn't have Eve yet, and he's naming all the cattle, the birds and the beasts, and he doesn't find a helper comparable to him in the whole group.

The ram had a ewe. The gander had a goose. The boar had his sow. Adam's alone.

It's not good for the man to be alone. He needed a help who would be his counterpart. The term means a stand out, stand along, an unlike like, the perfect fit to him in all that he means and all that he means to her.

So God takes a rib, and ever since, the wife stands by her husband's side. What, Adam loses something and then gains far more.

He loses something of himself and receives far more back, and we read that the they becomes singular in marriage, only in marriage.

The two become one flesh. Male and female, he created them.

In his image, he created him, Adam. Male and female, he created them.

So the manner in which God made the first woman and arranged the first marriage testifies to that mystery.

A man shall leave his father and mother, be joined to his wife, and they shall become one flesh. There's a sacrifice, there's a loss, a leaving of the parents so that there is a blessing, that there is a gain, that there is a joining.

God makes the man and woman, husband and wife, and he makes the two one flesh, one flesh, meaning to divide the marriage, to divorce the marriage is tantamount to the same level of violence as separating a single body into two parts.

And we see that the leaving of the man from his father and mother is not the same as leaving his wife, right, due to the nature of the man's joining to his wife.

The marriage is sacred by design, and its signifying act is primary.

Relationship between parents and children is secondary, and they're not even close. Not even close.

So, by implication, the man and his wife are to become father and mother. That would be the hope, the design, raising up children to love

God supremely, love one another rightly, steward the creation responsibly. Marriage is the only suitable cradle for children.

But, let's look even closer. Now, the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam, and he slept.

He. Why? For Adam, there was not a fount of help or comparable to him. Okay. We've got a he, him, don't we?

It's used about a male. This is groundbreaking stuff.

Adam slept, and from one of his ribs, God fashioned a woman. She was taken out of man.

God brought her to the man. There's a she, her used of the female. You tracking?

It gets complicated, I know. The man leaves his father and mother and is joined to his wife.

They, he uses them of those he made in his image, whom he also loves as special creatures.

So, we don't have to walk away from the Bible to address the sexual confusion and abominations of our cultural moment.

Let's talk pronouns and rejoicing God's good design. Have you not read?

Marriage is the biblical he and she identified as a they, them.

There's a 2023 definition for anybody wanting to know what marriage is. The biblical he and she identified as a they, them.

One flesh. Now, it's not a surprise, given the way that the

Bible analyzes the depravity of man, that the they, them pronouns are by far the most popular in the current madness.

All right. Similar pronouns substitute a z or an x for the th, zay, zim, whatever.

The new pronouns are simply just a variation on what God already designed. All right.

Evil is not an equal and opposite power or substance. It's simply the perversion of what

God has made. So, all this is being done now in the name of what?

Emancipation, freedom. Right. Marxism always promises freedom through deconstruction.

God's categories of male and female, his definition of marriage, his use of pronouns, all of these are seen as tools of oppression to those who are riding the dialectical train.

And what do you have to do if you're going to destroy a government, a power structure, a system, a paradigm?

Well, you have to undo creation. Stars that govern must be cast at the ground. The sun can no longer give its light.

The moon must fail. Mountains must melt and the islands move away. All navigation and all landmarks must be displaced and ruined until you don't know where the roads originally were.

Freedom today is understood only in the sense that you can eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil however often you want and assert your own divinity by choosing for yourself ultimate categories of good and evil.

And male and female are not on a static spectrum in the minds of the pagan movement today, but put on a kinetic spectrum.

Not only is there movement on the spectrum, the spectrum itself is in motion. So that marriage and family can mean whatever you want them to mean.

Why? The devil hates the image of God. Nobody hates man more than Satan.

He was a murderer from the beginning and he still prowls about like a lion seeking who he may devour, and when you dissolve the distinctions between male and female, which

God said very good, and those distinctions manifest the glory of God in marriage and family. When you dissolve all of that, what are you trying to do?

You're trying to destroy those made in God's image. You're trying to destroy the image of God, destroy mankind. You hate people.

One little note, I know this is kind of going around, it has been noted that the only individuals, the only single individuals in the

Bible speaking as they, them, and we, and us are those who are demon possessed, right?

Now, so Mark 1, 24, Mark 5, 9, the stories, here's one single individual.

Jesus walks up and the guy says, what do you have to do with us, right?

Now, this is not to say, this is not saying at all that individuals who use plural pronouns are possessed by demons, but they are certainly using the language of demons.

If a man says of his waffle, this is ours, okay, he's either demon possessed or he's using a demonic possessive, one of the two.

Both are deceptions, both are lies. So, refusing to identify someone by their demonic pronouns, what is going on there?

It seems to hit way harder than one would expect, but the queer confusion, collusion collapses community into single entities.

Individuals are walking around saying of themself, themself, or a person is saying they, them, rather than I.

I'm a they, them, he, she. What's going on? Collapsing the entire structure of the family into one individual, thereby destroying what it means to be made in the image of God.

Now, to refuse such a person, this delusion is supposedly akin to someone yelling at me that I'm not really married to my wife or the father of my children, but that equivocation is entirely false.

The emotional response of somebody not getting what they want is a learned behavior meant to reinforce the role play, and that such a person who is denied their desired pronouns, that they may not civilly handle a situation like that, that's not surprising, but it does not mean, does not mean that any who love such a person should reinforce that deception.

If someone's going around telling a lie over and over and over again and shouting and throwing a fit when they don't get the lie approved, affirmed, it's not loving to affirm them in that, as any righteous parent will know about their own children.

All right. Speaking of children, that'll be point C on the outline, as the

Lord wills, next week. I'm past the time, so we're going to close in prayer. Father, I thank you for the day that you've given to us.

I thank you for the clarity of your word and the effectiveness of it for everything that we face today.

Lord, I pray that you would give us the grace to give a hearty amen to your truth, we pray these things in Jesus' name, amen.