The Man Christ Jesus (part 8)

Bethlehem Bible Church

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Well, last week we were teaching on something sublime and eventually this morning we'll get into a mildly ridiculous topic before we get into something more sublime again.

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At least that's how I view it. We'll see how it goes. But we talked about how Jesus needed to fulfill the mission of the

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Father in his humanity without resorting, appealing to his deity, fully

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God, but not utilizing the power that he had within him to accomplish the work the

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Father gave him. We talked about peccability, impeccability, and I like what

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Ware said here, and this is really, I think, thought provoking. He says he knew that to rely, speaking of Jesus, he knew that to rely on his divine nature would be to forfeit the mission on which he was sent.

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And last week we talked about a swimmer training to go a great distance who does not, who has a boat following him so that he cannot fail, but he doesn't use the boat.

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So the boat isn't really an issue in terms of setting the record for which he was trying.

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And in that same way, it's analogous that Jesus, although he was fully God, did not utilize his powers as God to complete his perfect sinless life.

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But instead he relied on the same things that, amazingly enough, we have at our disposal, namely the

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Holy Spirit, the Word of God, and these, all the things that we have that we, to gain what we would call our sanctification to work out our salvation with fear and trembling.

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And we talked about that at some length, and then we close with this, the extent and force of Christ's temptations.

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How difficult was his victory over sin? Where, says this, he says, it stands to reason that Jesus was faced with the most difficult and relentless barrage of temptations that anyone ever has received.

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After all, Satan knew what was at stake at Jesus' coming, so he brought upon Christ the most difficult temptations he could possibly conceive.

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And asked the question last week, how many sins would it have taken to make Jesus a sinner, to disqualify him?

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And the answer, of course, is one. You know, how many sins does it take to send one of us to hell?

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Well, one. That's it. And for him, that would have been an absolute disqualification.

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But we also there's no bifurcation, that is to say, there's no division between Jesus as God and Jesus as man, so that his deity would not be smudged, would not be besmirched by the presence of sin.

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So he could not sin in that sense, but he mostly could not sin because he had the presence fully of the

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Holy Spirit with him, and he relied upon it, and he struggled to obey. Ware says, why did

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Jesus pray three times, even sweating drops of blood in his agony over obeying the will of his father?

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Was it not because he had to keep fighting to win? His obedience here, he's talking about the

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Garden of Gethsemane, was extremely difficult, and the fight had to be engaged.

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So now we come to application, and I would suggest that prayer, which we have available to us, knowledge of the word, and learning to trust the

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Holy Spirit to strengthen us against temptation, these things are not automatic for, they weren't automatic for him, and they were not automatic, or they are not automatic for us.

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That's what I meant by sanctification, it's working out our salvation with fear and trembling.

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And I wrote in my notes here, I said, this is why it's dangerous to be a Sunday -only

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Christian. Why would I say that? If the focus here is on, we cannot live a sinless life, and I'm not suggesting that, but if we can sin less, harsh division, sin less, how do we do that?

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It's by being filled with the Holy Spirit. It's by being focused on his word. It's by turning the

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Lord in prayer. And when we think of, you know, Sunday -only, we have a great many

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Sunday -only Christians within Christendom. It's that idea that I do my spiritual business for a few hours on Sunday, and then

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I'm free to go about living the rest of my life. In fact, I think a few years ago, we had a couple over for dinner, and I suggested that many people, and I don't mean here at Bethlehem Bible Church, there may be some, but in all practicality, are practicing

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Catholics. What do I mean by that? You punch your time card.

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I mean, it's like the old cartoon with the rooster and the hound, you remember that one, where they check in every morning, you know, to go to work, and then they beat each other up, and then they check out at the end of the day, they're best buddies, and they go out.

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Well, it's like that, right? I just come in on Sunday morning, you know, they, we might, maybe we should try this,

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Bruce. We'll just set up a little time clock there, a little stamp at the door. You just clock in, clock out, you know.

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We'll just look over your time stamp every month and make sure that you were here for the appropriate number of hours, and you're good to go.

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Now, that's an exaggeration, but sometimes I think that's how people view it. Well, I really can't do that because, you know,

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I'm only available on Sunday. Okay, I understand that, and I can't change everybody's time schedule.

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I'm just saying, if you don't have time for the Lord anytime other than Sunday morning between 9 and 11, there may be a problem.

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Well, there is a problem. Ware says it this way. He says, we may sing, somebody here's favorite,

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I don't know, the Arnold's, I think the Arnold's are in South Carolina. We may sing, may the mind of Christ, my Savior, live in me from day to day, but if we don't read diligently and meditate regularly on the word of Christ, we simply will not have the mind of Christ.

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I want the mind of Christ, but I don't want to do anything to have it. Those two things don't go together.

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As we study the life of Jesus and see what he did in terms of relying upon the word and the Holy Spirit being strengthened in prayer, and we consider he is our example, what should our lives look like?

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I think that is a great question. Now, I said that's the sublime.

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Now, we're going to wander into the ridiculous for a minute, but this is Ware's world of ridiculous, and I see where he's going, and I think this is an issue that has to be dealt with.

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Some of his responses, and you're like, well, what are you possibly talking about? Some of his responses I'm going to go through briefly, so bear with me here.

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Are you ready? Does it matter that Jesus was male?

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He spends a whole chapter on it. Could he have been a woman and still been the

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Savior? Now, it does not seem kind of a little ridiculous, not so much if you bear with me here for a moment.

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In 1995, the editors of the legendary TNIV, which stands for Today's New International Version, or as Lewis Brown liked to say, the

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Nearly Inspired Version, wrote, quote, If the fact that Jesus was a man and not a woman has no

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Christological significance in the New Testament, then neither does the fact that Jesus was a son and not a daughter.

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If Jesus is identified as son, believers of both sexes become sons of God.

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But if Jesus is called child, believers of both sexes can understand themselves as children of God.

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Thus, it is more affirming to women. Now, why do you suppose they would write something like that?

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Okay, to be politically correct, and I think there's a lot of truth and that's my initial response to, but I think there's a deeper reason why they would write something like that.

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What's that? To sell books. Sure. I think it's because they're rebellious, ultimately.

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They will sound pious, they'll sound holy and righteous and all these things while they're writing them, and maybe even scholarly and that kind of thing, but at the root of it, it's rebellion.

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They're subtly undermining and sometimes not so subtly undermining the

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Word of God, and they will undermine the confidence that people have in the Word of God. And I started thinking,

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I just let my mind run wild as it's wont to do, at one o 'clock in the morning last night, and I thought, imagine, you know, you guys are familiar with King James only churches.

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Imagine in the future, a TNIV only church, you know, where now we'd have to go probably four or five hundred years into the future.

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The Lord carries, who knows? Some churches like, oh, those people who did the TNIV, they were inspired.

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This is a newly inspired version, and it is in the inspired Word of God. Yeah, Bruce.

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Well, that's a great point, and that's exactly what's going on here. They don't want to be conformed to the

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Word of God. They want the Word of God to kind of conform to them. I would say, though, that when we're talking about the

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Bride of Christ, I think we need to think as a whole, you know, that's the church, not, you know, individual, but yeah,

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I understand perfectly where you're going. Now, listen to this. They actually cite church history as a reason, these

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TNIV people. That Jesus was a male person was not thought in the early church to have

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Christological significance. Now, I just read that part, and I just thought, well, wait a minute now.

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I'm pretty sure that they weren't, you know, wondering in the first couple hundred years of the church's existence whether or not

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Jesus could have been a woman. I don't really think that hit them, or, you know, they didn't have to worry about the various roles, or, you know,

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I don't think that a lot of the issues that they're concerned about were concerns a couple thousand years ago.

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They go on to say, or had no Christological significance or significance for salvation.

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It was not Jesus' maleness that was believed to save. If the fact that Jesus was a son and not a daughter had no theological significance, then we are justified in rendering the

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Greek word chios, usually son, as child or child of God instead of son when it occurs in a

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Christological sense. So, I'd like you to open your

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Bibles to Hebrews 2 .17. Now, we're in, you know,

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Ridiculous Valley. If this is Pilgrim's Progress, we're in Ridiculous Valley right now.

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We're going to come out of it, but we're going to wander through the muck and the mire here for just a few minutes.

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Hebrews 2 .17. Now, I'm going to read this, and then I want somebody to read it in the, well, yeah, and read it in a real version.

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So, I'll read first, and you just follow along here as much as you can. For this reason, he had to be made like his brothers and sisters in every way, in order that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in service to God, and that he might make atonement for the sins of the people.

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Now, does anybody have a real Bible? Would somebody else read that?

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Go ahead, Matthew. Okay, now that, when I read it, the brothers and sisters, that was the

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TNIV, where it says, this leads to confusion and possible misunderstanding.

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He says, what was Jesus' gender anyway? I mean, imagine if the TNIV is all you've ever known.

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He goes on to say, one wonders just how he was somehow like his sisters in every way.

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This leads one to wonder whether the male gender of Jesus was at all significant in the incarnation and atonement.

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Might our Savior have just as well have been a woman? We're going to see that there are some problems with this, as you might imagine.

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You know, and let's just get back, some of you weren't here first hour, but Pastor Mike talked about hermeneutics, that is the system of the art and science of interpreting scripture.

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And one of the things that we appeal to when we study a passage is the original language.

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What do words mean? And if you, if you're doing an entire translation, you know, we have some translations that are more literal than others, but if you're doing an entire translation and your philosophy is, well, you know, we can take a word like son, and we can make a child.

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Or we can take sons and turn it into sons and daughters. It's not that big of a deal. Well, then what else are you willing to do?

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It's a reasonable question. Turn to 1 Corinthians 15, and we'll see there are other problems here.

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I'm going to read and I won't force anybody else to follow me, but just listen to the TNIV rendering of 1

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Corinthians 15 verses 21 and 22. And I mean, this is worthy of like a murder mystery.

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For since death came through a human being, the resurrection of the dead comes also through a human being.

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For as in Adam all die, so in Christ all will be made alive. It's the gender free

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Bible, gender neutral. I mean, was Adam a woman?

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For since death came through a human being, it's just some random person, unknown.

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Yeah, Charlie. We're getting too far ahead.

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Yes, we're going to get into that. Just hold your horses, but you're right.

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Yes. Where it says, does scripture give us a reason to say that his male gender does or does not have theological and soteriological importance?

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Is it necessary that the Savior be born, live and die as a man? Or could our

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Savior have been a woman? And now he's going to give us 12 reasons. And I'm going to go, some of these

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I'm just going to kind of mention because I just think, well, I think he kind of strained to get to 12 because he wanted to be biblical or something.

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I don't know, you know, nine. What? There's no nines in the Bible. So we had to get to 12.

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I don't know. I would have combined a few, cut a few out, but let's just, let's just go with it.

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Jesus Christ is the eternal son. Number one, he's the eternal son. And we'll see the significance of that in a minute.

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But, uh, let me just read John six versus 37 and 38.

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All that the father gives me will come to me and whoever comes to me, I will never cast out for.

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I've come down from heaven, not to do my own will, but the will of him who sent me.

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What's the significance of this? Augustine said this, he said, for the son is from the father, not the father from the son.

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He's talking about the father sending the son, all the, all the words, especially in John, as I think about it, you know, he sent his son and we see this language all throughout the gospel of John.

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He didn't send his child. Why? Because there's a picture and we'll, we'll get to this here in just a minute.

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I'm kind of skipping ahead, but there's a picture that God wants us to understand where it says the son then is the eternal son of the father.

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And the father is the eternal father of the son. This relationship stands apart from the created order and the incarnation itself.

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Well, it was also true that the relationship accounts for the created order because the father creates through the son.

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What does he mean? He means this, that they always had this relationship.

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And we're, I think we're going to develop this a little bit more. They always had this relationship of father, son, and they created the world to reflect that relationship.

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In other words, um, supposing God wanted to be known as mother.

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Well, then he would have created things and done things all differently so that he would have been a she, but he chose very specific roles for the father, the son, and then imprinted those things on his creation.

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He set up an order within creation. And we'll see some of that as, even as we think about it, but where it points out that God is not in essence male, but that he determined what it meant to be male and female.

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In other words, he set up the system. He created two sexes, not three, not one, two sexes, male and female created the relationship between men and women in marriage, and then used our language to describe himself in the best way that we could possibly understand it.

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Whatever might have been communicated by a heavenly mother sending her daughter to the world is not what

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God wished to communicate. So that's not what he did. Some might describe the language to, here's a phrase

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I read from my liberal friends on Facebook, a word actually, and I just think, how about this word?

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As soon as you hear this, every time I see it on Facebook, I just go liberal. Patriarchy.

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Patriarchy, it's the established order, you know, male dominated patriarchy. And that's true, right?

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If we looked at the Hebrew culture, we'd say, well, that's a patriarchy. You know, you didn't go, when you died, where did you go?

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To be buried with? Your mothers. No, it was your fathers.

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You know, and we see all the names, it's always the names of the sons, you know, not so much the names of the daughters, although sometimes they're the names of the daughters, but it's a very male dominated society.

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And so a liberal will say what? That the Jews wrote about God in such a way to, as to reflect their own culture, their own biases.

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And the truth is what? The theology drove the culture.

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God's word establishes the culture. Why? Because he created them male and female.

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He didn't create them any other way. And we're going to develop that just a little bit more here, because we're going to go to Jesus as the second

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Adam. Well, let me just back up a little bit. Where it says that God made men stronger and bigger as a gender, and he made women more nurturing.

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I mean, some people want to argue with that, but I think for the most part, that's true. Ought we to take something from the fact that he has described himself as father and son?

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I think so. If God invested men with headship and chose male descriptors to apply to himself, then what would motivate someone to want to challenge that?

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And I think it's not just political correctness, but it is rebellion. It's a desire to undermine, to challenge the word of God, to challenge

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God. So the first one was Jesus is the eternal son. The second one is

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Jesus Christ is the second Adam. The second Adam. When Adam and Eve both sinned, who did

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God go to about the matter? Let's look at Genesis chapter three. And when we get there, would somebody read

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Genesis chapter three, verses six through 11? Six through 11. Familiar passage, but good to go there.

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Genesis three, verses six to 11. Yeah. God challenges

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Adam. Why is that? Who was the first one to sin?

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Eve. Now, you know, having raised a few kids and now experiencing it all over again with the grandkids, you know, typically what

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I want to do is talk to the guilty party first. I'd probably go after Eve, especially if I knew, and God definitely knows who did what.

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Why did he go to Adam first and not Eve? Okay, because he gave

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Adam the command even before Eve was created, right? What about the relationship?

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Why was Eve created? Why did she exist? She was a helpmeet, a helper.

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Did she help Adam? Oh yeah, she helped him, all right.

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Took the old credit card and ran out to the stores. She wrote a check.

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Adam couldn't cash, so she helped him. But what was the real problem?

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You know, Pastor Mike spoke about it months ago. The real problem was he did what? What did

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Adam do wrong? He abdicated. He was supposed to be the leader.

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He was supposed to be in charge. And, you know, Satan comes up and instead of, you know, defending his bride, as it were, what does he do?

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It was the ole defense, you know. Go ahead. Have at it.

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See if you can get my wife to fall here. Adam was the responsible party. He was

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Eve's representative, and in fact, he was our representative. Let's look at Romans 5 and listen to the language here.

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I bolded it in the text I put on mine, and listen to how many times,

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I think Adam only comes up once, but listen to how many times one man, those two words comes up.

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Romans 5, verses 12 to 21. Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned.

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For sin indeed was in the world before the law was given, but sin is not counted where there is no law.

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Yet death reigned from Adam to Moses, even though those whose sinning was not like the transgression of Adam, who was a type of the one who was to come.

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But the free gift is not like the trespass. For if many died through one man's trespass, much more have the grace of God and the free gift by the grace of that one man,

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Jesus Christ, abounded for many. And the free gift is not like the result of that one man's sin.

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For the judgment following one trespass brought condemnation, but the free gift following many trespasses brought justification.

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For if because of one man's trespass, death reigned through that one man, much more will those who receive the abundance of grace and the free gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man,

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Jesus Christ. Therefore, as one trespass led to condemnation for all men, so one act of righteousness leads to justification and life for all men.

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For as by the one man's disobedience, the many were made sinners. So by the one man's obedience, the many will be made righteous.

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Now the law came in to increase the trespass, but where sin increased grace amounted all the more so that as sin reigned in death, grace also might reign through righteousness leading to eternal life through Jesus Christ, our

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Lord. Now for just a moment, let's just imagine that Adam was here this morning.

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What are you supposed to be doing right now? He would have listened to that and probably he would be hiding somewhere under his seat right now.

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I mean, it's like guilt, guilt, guilt. We just would have heard his feelings because he's responsible for all this.

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But what was missing in this whole thing, if you think back in Genesis chapter 3, who was missing from Paul's discussion here?

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Eve. I mean, you just go, wait a minute, where's she? Again, Adam.

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Hebrew word for man, so beyond indeed of the second Adam, the second federal head who was to correct the errors of the first were a woman.

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That'd be very odd indeed. But Adam being a man was responsible.

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He was the federal head. He was to be the leader, to be the head, to be the,

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I don't want to say that, but he was held accountable by God. And so Jesus, the second

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Adam did not fail where the first one did. Now again, back to first Corinthians 15 verses 21 and 22.

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Just listen as I read for as by a man came death by a man has come also the resurrection of the dead for as in Adam all die.

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So also in Christ shall all be made alive. And where rights as Adam was head over his race, bring it bondage and death.

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So now Christ is head over his race, bringing it liberation and resurrection life as Adam plunged us into sin and damnation.

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So Jesus raises believers into salvation and glory. So that's reason number two, because Adam, he's the second

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Adam. He had to undo what the first one did. The first one was male. The second

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Adam also needed to be male. Number three, the Abrahamic covenant necessitates the savior be male.

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The Abrahamic covenant necessitates the savior be male. We have a promise in Genesis 17.

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And you don't need to turn there. I'll read it. Genesis 17 verses 15 is 16. And God said to Abraham, as for Sarah, your wife, you shall not call her name

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Sarah, but Sarah shall be her name. I will bless her. And moreover, I will give you a son by her.

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I will bless her and she shall become nations. Kings of peoples shall come from her.

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And how do we know that the ultimate king is Jesus? The ultimate fulfillment is

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Christ Jesus. How would we know that? Well, we could look at the genealogies of Matthew one and Luke three.

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We're not going to do that. But let's go to Galatians chapter three. And when somebody read verse 16,

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Galatians 3, 16. OK, so we know that Christ is the fulfillment ultimately of the

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Abrahamic covenant. But listen to what Henrickson said. He said he knew that Abraham's seed would be as the stars in a multitude.

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However, in keeping with the point which he is driving home, namely, that God promised salvation not to Abraham's physical descendants, but to true believers, to them all, whether Jew or Gentile and to them alone.

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He is saying that this great blessing is concentrated in one person, namely

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Christ. It is in him, in him alone, that all these multitudes of believing Jews and Gentiles are blessed.

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And we're going to see in just a moment they're blessed to him or through him as king.

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Number four, reason number four is the Davidic covenant necessitates a son.

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Davidic covenant is that a descendant of David would again sit on the throne.

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Let's turn to Second Samuel chapter seven, verses 12 and 13. Again, notice the language here.

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Second Samuel 7, 12 and 13. When your days are fulfilled, when you die and you lie down with your fathers,

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I will raise up your offspring after you who shall come from your body. This is going to be a physical descendant from David.

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That's why the genealogies again are important. And I will establish his kingdom.

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He shall build a house for my name. I mean, to make Jesus anything other than a male, you really got to stretch and bend and fold, mutilate scripture.

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He shall build a house for my name and I will establish the throne of his kingdom forever.

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So that was number four. We need, we're going to keep moving. Number five, the new covenant requires the redeemer be male.

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Listen, as I read Jeremiah 31, 31 to 34, behold, the days are coming declares the

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Lord when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah, not like the covenant

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I made with their fathers on the day when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, the great

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Exodus, my covenant that they broke though I was their husband declares the

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Lord for this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel. After those days declares the

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Lord, I will put my law within them and I will write it on their hearts and I will be their

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God and they shall be my people and no longer shall each one teach his neighbor and each his brother saying, know the

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Lord for they shall all know me from the least of them to the greatest declares the

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Lord for I will forgive their iniquity and I will remember their sin no more. Now where it goes on because you just read that and you go, wait, how does that prove it?

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How does it prove that he has to be male? Where asks how it is that the sins of believers will no longer be remembered?

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How is that? For our answer we have to go to the book of Hebrews, Hebrews chapter 10 and I'm going to read verses 4 and 12, for it is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins.

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But when Christ had offered, I thought I was going to read 4 and 12, maybe I'm not because I don't think

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I have them both here. I think I skipped one. For it is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins.

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But when Christ had offered for all time, a single offering for sins, he sat down at the right hand of God.

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Well, may I did have both of them. Okay. He sat down at the right hand of God.

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He had to do it. What is that picture there? Picture is his high priestly duties.

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Well, there was never a high priest who was a female. One more.

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Let's look at Isaiah 53 and would somebody read Isaiah 53 verses 3 to 5. Isaiah 53 verses 3 to 5,

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Bruce. Okay, again, imagine that the

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Hebrew said a person of sorrows, and all these male pronouns again.

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And we're also notice that the death of Jesus inaugurates the new covenant, Luke 22, 20.

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And likewise, the cup after they had eaten saying he passed the cup after they'd eaten saying this cup is poured out for you is the new covenant in my blood.

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This new covenant is a demonstration that he has paid for the sins of his people and that their sins will be remembered no more.

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All that to say that all of these promises necessitate Jesus being male, which actually, yeah, that was number five was the new covenant requires the

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Redeemer be male. Number six, the Savior must be a prophet like unto Moses.

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Moses being male, Deuteronomy 18, 15, the Lord, your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among you from your brothers.

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It is to him you shall listen. And even in Acts 3, 22,

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Peter says, Moses said, the Lord God will raise up for you a prophet like me for your brothers, you shall listen to him and do whatever he tells you.

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So again, we have ample evidence that it would be a male same context pertaining to the

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Abrahamic covenant. Acts 23, 25 and 26, you are the sons of the prophets and of the covenant that God made with your father saying to Abraham and in your offspring, shall all the families of the earth be blessed.

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God having raised up his servant, send him to you first to bless you by turning everyone from your wickedness.

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Number seven, our new and permanent high priest had to be a man. Again, high priest could not be a woman.

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Number eight, the king of kings had to be a man. Can't have a female king.

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Number nine, the ministry of Jesus required he be made a man. Now just think about this for a moment.

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Why would that be important on earth during his ministry? Why would it be important that Jesus be a man? What kinds of things did he do that he could not have done if he was a woman?

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Taught in a synagogue, teaching could not be done by a woman. How about this?

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Who were his assistants? Who were his disciples?

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12 men. A Jewish woman picking 12 men to hang out with for three and a half years.

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That would not have worked. Where said this?

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He said, God designed male leadership and sent his son as a man, functioning and ministering within this very patriarchal structure

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God himself established. Therefore, for social and cultural reasons, many of which themselves were established by God, our savior had to be a man.

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Number 10, the risen Lord takes the church as his bride. As Bruce said earlier, the picture of husband and wife,

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Christ and his bride, the church, you just can't have a female. That's just not going to work.

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Jesus was a number 11. Jesus was a son on earth to his earthly parents. He functioned every way as a male.

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I don't I'm belaboring it, but I don't want to belabor it. Number 12, Jesus referred to himself as the son of man more than any other title, not the daughter of man, not the child of man, but the son of man and words have relevance.

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And if we track all the things that are said about the Messiah, the savior, the redeemer, the prophets, the sin bearer, all these things would lead us to conclude without a doubt that Jesus had to be male.

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And I want to just throw in my own cent and a half because that's two cents. And then you take away the taxes and you've got a cent and a half more or less.

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If we think about it this way, if Jesus is the personification of what it means to be a man, and I think he is, then what would we learn from that?

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Instead of say, you know, John Wayne, Arnold Schwarzenegger, whomever

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Clint Eastwood, we see patience.

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We'd see gentleness. We'd see kindness. Would we see anger?

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Yes. Righteous anger, right? When God's reputation was on the line, when various things were done within the household of God that were wrong, within the house of God at the temple that were wrong, he took action on that.

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Did he, you know, rebuke people? Yes. Did he correct people? Yes. But every time it was not for any other thing than their own benefit, their own good to proclaim the truth to them.

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I would also put it this way. If a man could shape and mold himself after Christ and imitate him, then would it be easier for his wife to submit herself to him?

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And I think the answer is yes, because he would love his wife in a sacrificial way as Christ loved the church.

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If we look at Ephesians chapter 5, if we took that picture and we said, this is what husbands should be like,

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I think it's pretty, it would be a lot more, it would be simpler for a woman to submit to that kind of husband rather than one who just seeks to domineer and dominate and tell his wife what to do.

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And a lot of guys think, well, I'm the husband, you're the wife, your job is to submit and I'm going to give you plenty to submit to.

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That's not the way we ought to think about it. I want to, I need to understand how difficult it is to submit to a sinner and I want to make that as easy as possible.

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And how do I do that? By living with her in an understanding way and living in such a way where she thinks, you know what?

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He really loves me. He really cares about me. I can overlook the times when he's sinful and wrong.

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Anyway, I told you we were going to go to the ridiculous. Hopefully we got a little bit to the sublime, but you can see how scripture itself always points to, if anybody, if there was a woman who came out of the wilderness and said that she was the

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Christ, nobody would have believed that. Nobody would have believed that, you know,

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John the Baptist, there's the Lamette who takes it. Nobody would have believed that. This is entirely a construct of liberal 20th and 21st century thinking that says, you know what, anything's possible.

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And if you don't believe anything's possible, you're putting down an entire class of people and that's the focus of this.

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And ultimately, like I said, if you could point to a TNIV only church four or 500 years down the road, they, they would have ultimately no idea whether Jesus was male or female and they would not care.

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But it matters because scripture tells us that he must be a male. He has to undo all the things that the first man did.

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Right. Well, let's pray. Father, Lord, it is incredible what people would seek to do to your word.

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It's been under assault for centuries, men trying to physically destroy it.

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And now they seek to intellectually destroy it. Men who think they are too smart to submit to a document that was written by an ancient people.

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So they think, setting aside the fact that it was inspired by your spirits, you have preserved it from all manner of attack.

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Lord, would you continue to preserve it? Father, would you lead us to draw lines in the sand, to fight for your truth, to stand up for what is right and to praise you that you are a

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God who is able against all the predations, all the malfeasance of mankind.

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You are able to preserve your word and keep it and leave it for us that we might know you the one true living