You are listening to Bible Direction for Life, the sermon podcast of West Side Baptist Church in Bremerton, Washington. We pray that the preaching and teaching you hear on this podcast connects the truth of the Bible to your life, that you would learn more about the triune God who made you and what he made you for. And now here's today's message. Please take your Bibles and turn to Genesis, Genesis chapter 1. Now this is one of the things that we've done over the past couple of years. So every year I spend a good chunk of the year getting ready for men's retreat. But only the men are there at men's retreat. And usually the theme that we have at Men's Retreat also applies to women. And so one of the things that I've done over the past couple of years is take the theme that I address the men on at Men's Retreat and consider how that same theme applies to the women the Sunday after Men's Retreat. And so we have this message this morning. So if you're here for the first time, this is not what we do every week. Normally, we preach systematically through books of scripture. So we do expeditional preaching. And normally, I preach to the whole congregation. But this morning, because I just hammered home these truths at most of the men in our church over the past couple of days, this morning, I'll be focusing in on the women. And we will also have time, here we go, we're gonna need this, this is a clock. Because, so at men's retreat, I had about six hours of teaching time, and so working, trying to reduce that down as I worked yesterday afternoon and evening, and I really was able to get it cut in half, and I really don't want to go longer than three hours this morning, and so that's why I need a clock. But tonight we'll have, it actually worked out this way because usually when we finish a block of teaching then we'll have a Q and A time the next week as we get ready for the next block of Sunday night teaching. Tonight we have a Q&A, and so if we run out of questions on what we talk about this morning, then we'll talk about general Bible Q&A like we usually would for one of those. But I suspect that some of you ladies will have some questions about some of what we're talking about this morning, and so there'll be an opportunity to have some discussion tonight. But this morning we'll try to survey the material and get it done in three hours or less. Let's go before the Lord in prayer and we'll dive in. As I mentioned, I'll be referring to several texts in Genesis, but because of the nature of it, we won't be working through a specific passage because there's too many passages to do that with. Father, I come before you this morning. I thank you for how good you are. I thank you for every man and every woman in this room, that you made them distinctively male and distinctively female. and they will flourish as they lean into your design instead of run away from it. Help us to see that your plans are good for us and your path leads to true flourishing. In Christ's name, amen. Our title for this year's men's retreat was reclaiming reality, the goodness and glory of sexual difference, nothing controversial at all. For many in our society, of course, sexual difference is a problem to be solved rather than a glory to be celebrated. The influential feminist writer Shulamith Firestone argued, the end goal of feminist revolution must be not just the elimination of male privilege, but of the sex distinction itself. Genital differences between human beings would no longer matter culturally. Now no professing Christian I trust would go quite as far as Firestone does, but there are many professing Christians who actively push for sexual difference to be intentionally minimized. To give one example, in their own very influential book, Aletha Scanzoni and Nancy Hardesty describe the sort of genuinely egalitarian marriage that they think Christians should strive for like this. So this, they think, is a good thing. Here's what they say. True egalitarianism must be characterized by what sociologists call role interchangeability. Both spouses can fulfill the roles of breadwinner, housekeeper, encourager, career achiever, child trainer, and so on. And then they say this, a phrase that has haunted me ever since I read it. Specialization according to sex disappears. Specialization according to sex disappears in this vision of human life. Over the past 50 years, these ideas and others like them have made a deep impact on our society. The rejection of sexual difference, the quest for interchangeability is now enshrined in our laws, it is regulated by our courts, and it is celebrated throughout our culture. No matter how much we disagree with it or even think about it, this societal shift shapes every area of our lives as modern Americans. It impacts our homes and our workplaces, shows up in the shows that we watch and the books that we read, and in ways that we may not even realize it still affects even self-consciously conservative churches. But the reality is that sexual difference is not a problem to be solved, it is a gift to be celebrated and a glory to be recovered. In our time together this morning, we'll cover three main points. First, we'll describe the pattern of reality, the fundamental structure of sexual difference that has been revealed in God's word and can be seen in God's word. We're gonna take a look at the patterns of creation. Second, we'll address the problem of rebellion, the obstacles that obscure the pattern of reality. And finally, we'll consider the program for repentance, the hope that we have through the work of Christ of reclaiming the reality of creation in our time and in our place. When we, as modern American Christians, seek guidance from the scriptures, we have a tendency to hunt for specific rules. And when we don't find a rule that addresses our specific question, then we have a tendency to assume, well, there's no rule in scripture to tell me different, so I can do whatever I want to do. This approach to scripture is fundamentally flawed. This is not the way that Jesus or his apostles read the scriptures. In Matthew 19, the Pharisees came to Jesus and they asked him, Jesus, will you parse out the rules about divorce for us? What do you think about these rules? They thought as long as they kept the rules, they were free to do what they wanted. Jesus didn't just tell them they had parsed the rules out wrong, Jesus told them they were reading scripture wrong. Jesus told them they could not understand why Moses permitted divorce if they did not understand why God instituted marriage. Jesus pointed them back when they had a specific question, Jesus pointed them back and said, you should be starting with the fundamental pattern of creation, the reason why God formed Adam and Bill Eve to begin with, that ought to be your starting point. Begin with the pattern, the rules are not the map, the rules are the speed limit. It's to this fundamental pattern of creation that we must now turn. In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. And the text of Genesis goes on to tell us that this newly created earth had two fundamental problems. It was formless and it was void. It was empty. It was formless and it was empty. And what is formless stands in need of being formed. What is empty stands in need of being filled. And the six days of creation in a profound way are God's answer to this two-fold problem. The first three days of creation focus on the initial task of forming. On day one, light and darkness are separated, forming the domains of the heaven above. And if you wonder, why are you making such a big deal out of this pattern, well, The reason why the heavens and earth and the sun and moon are separated, which is something that seems odd to us, is in fact to draw our attention to this pattern. So the light and dark are separated, forming the domain of the heavens above. And on day two, the waters are divided from the waters, and that forms the sky and the seas. And on day three, earth and water are separated, forming the domain of the land. So you have three days of forming in which there's separation and division taking place that forms three separate domains. On the second three days of creation, days four through six, God turns to the task of filling. The three days of filling correspond to the three days of forming. On day four, the heavens are filled with the sun and the moon. On day five, the sky is filled with the birds and the sea is filled with fish. And on day six, the land is filled with creatures, including mankind. The days of filling correspond to the days of forming. This two-step pattern of forming and then filling is fundamental to the creation of the world and the fabric of reality. Forming and filling are equal in value. They each receive the same amount of time. Forming and filling are different in nature. They can be clearly distinguished as different activities. But forming and filling are corresponding in function. The forming prepares for the filling and the filling completes the forming and the two work together to perfect the work of creation. Now God did not create the world on a whim and then add humans in as an afterthought. God created the world with a purpose. As we learned in Isaiah 45, God made the world as a home for humans. Adam and Eve were created to reflect God's rule and to carry out His mission. As one writer put it well, humans are called to reflect, to continue, and to extend God's own creative rule. And it's no accident that the pattern of the mission that God gave humans in creation corresponds to the work that God had just done in creation. He's appointing them as his image bearers, as his representatives to continue what he had just been doing. On the one hand, he tells them they're supposed to continue this work of forming by taking dominion over the untilled earth. But on the other hand, they were also supposed to continue the work of filling by being fruitful and multiplying and literally filling the earth. In other words, the pattern of creation is the pattern of our vocation as humans. God is telling humans go and do likewise. God did not create the world according to this pattern because creating the world was a big project and he needed six days to get the work done. Perish any such blasphemous thought. God created the world according to this pattern because he wanted to teach us what our vocation as humans is supposed to look like. This pattern is not for God's benefit, it's for our benefit. After the account of the creation of the heavens and the earth in Genesis 1, then we're given a close-up account of the creation of humanity in Genesis 2. And in this second account, we learn that the creational pattern of forming and then filling corresponds to the patterned creation of male and then female. So we see this progression. There's a pattern in the days of creation. That pattern is reflected in the mission of humanity and the mission of humanity. is echoed in the creation of humanity as male and female. There's a pattern of correspondence that goes all the way through this account, and it's all connected. You see, the order of creation is not arbitrary. When Paul wants to instruct Timothy about how men and women should function in the church, not the passage that Pastor Scott read, but elsewhere in that chapter, he grounds his teaching in the reality that Adam was first formed, and then Eve. He tells us, if you want to know how men and women should function, if you want your specific questions to be answered, then return to the pattern of creation. And yet there's more gold in this mind that we need to answer the questions that we have in our day. For Adam was not only created before Eve, he was also created differently from Eve. Adam was created from the un-gardened ground. If you look at the sequence of Genesis 2, first God makes Adam from the dirt and then God makes the garden with Adam there to watch. He's created outside the garden. That's very significant. He was formed from the un-gardened ground and he was created outside the Garden of Eden. He was created from the ground because he was created for the ground. He was created outside the garden because he was called to expand the garden by forming the un-gardened dirt. This is why the curse on the man in Genesis 3 is all about difficulties with working with the dirt. His rebellion made his vocation to form more difficult without changing his vocation. But Eve was built from the side of man. And Eve was created inside the garden. She was created from the man because she was created for the man. Eve was created in the garden because Eve was called to help the man by filling the garden with glory. Beginning by filling the garden with children. This is why the curse on the woman in Genesis 3 is all about difficulties with bearing children. Her rebellion made her vocation to fill more difficult without changing that vocation. And indeed, that's one of the things that's going on in Genesis 3 is God is reiterating the fundamental vocations that were given to men and women before the fall are going to continue after the fall. Yes, they will be harder, that's where the curse comes in, but they have not changed and the pattern will continue. and the pattern will be redeemed. That's the hope of Genesis 3.16. The creation of man corresponds to the vocation of forming. This is why Adam was created first. The creation of woman corresponds to the vocation of filling. This is why Adam was created second. The whole idea of subordination within marriage and society that we are taught in scripture is not that women are less valuable than men, or need to be kept down and stood upon, but it's rather that the work of forming is foundational to the work of filling. Men are called to give opportunities to women to flourish as women. That's what all of the teaching about subordination is actually about. I love the way that Alistair Roberts sums all of this up. Men and women are created separately and differently, and there is a correspondence between their nature and their purpose. The man is formed from the earth to till the ground, to rule and serve the earth. The woman is built from the man's side to bring life and communion through union. The pattern of our creation as male and female is the foundation of our vocations as men and women. This pattern of creational correspondence can be summed up in three basic principles. First, men and women are equal in value, of equal dignity in God's sight, and equal importance in God's plan. Both men and women were equally created by direct divine action. Both men and women have been equally called to participate in God's plan for humanity. Both men and women are equally redeemed by the same precious blood of Christ, and as Paul argues in Galatians 3.28, both men and women are full covenant members in the new covenant people of God. Men and women are equal in value. Second, men and women are different in nature. God did not create generic humans and then assign some of them to the role of man and others to the role of women. Humans are not sexless souls who rather unfortunately happen to be trapped in differently sexed bodies. Men and women are male and female all the way down in their bodies and their souls, in their abilities and their responsibilities from conception to eternity. Men and women are different in nature. Finally, men and women are corresponding in function. Adam and Eve were not only made different from each other, they were made different for each other. As Paul told the Corinthians, woman is not independent of man, nor man of woman. Men and women need one another. The man cannot carry his vocation out without the woman, and the woman cannot carry out her vocation without the man. As one writer put it beautifully, without man, woman has no place. Forming must precede filling. But without woman, man has no future. Though men and women are different in nature, they share a common project, a project that neither is sufficient to carry out on their own. Men and women are equal in nature, equal in value, different in nature, and corresponding in function. This is the pattern that we see revealed in God's word, but the same pattern that has been revealed in God's word can also be seen in our world. If only we'll open our eyes. Our bodies are biologically binary, and those bodies correspond to our vocations as men and women. Despite the lies that many in our society believe and promote, human bodies are biologically binary. This is not an opinion. This is not scientifically disputed. It is simply reality. No one has ever seen, think about this, no one has ever seen a merely human body. There are only male bodies and female bodies because there are only male and female humans. Males contain one half of the human reproductive system and females contain the other half. Each was made for the other and each is incapable of functioning without the other. The cells of men and women have different chromosomes, different hormones organize our development within the womb and shape our behavior outside of it. Our bodies and our bones and our muscles are different. Our brains are different. Though disorders of sexual development do occur and those who suffer from them must receive our compassion and care, they do not change the reality of this biological binary. There is no third gonad. There is no third half to the human reproductive system. And these clear differences between our male and female bodies are not arbitrary. God didn't just say, well, I want some to be like this and some to be like this and, you know, we'll see how it works out. Our differingly shaped bodies correspond to our differing vocations as men and women. Our design corresponds to our vocation. The male body corresponds to the male vocation of forming. Among other things, men are equipped for their vocation by a greater capacity for abstraction and by higher levels of aggression. Their aggression enables them to subdue the wild earth and transform it into a domain ready for their women to fill. And their capacity for abstraction serves the same purpose. As Clary put it, men have the unique ability to look at the unshaped world around them and determine how to shape it into something good and useful. The technological innovations of the modern world were overwhelmingly pioneered by men. The female body corresponds to the female vocation of filling. Among other things, women are equipped for their vocation by their higher aptitude for integration, that corresponds to abstraction, and their greater capacity for nurture, that corresponds to male aggression. It's an observable fact that women's brains are more integrated than the brains of men. One of the reasons that women are better able to talk about their feelings than men is because women's brains literally have more connections between the part of the brain that controls speech and the part of the brain that processes feelings and emotions. Women's greater capacity for nurture begins with and is rooted in their unique ability to nurture new life within their wombs. I love the way that Rebecca Merkel put it. On a physical level, women are designed to have babies. Everything about us is meant for mothering, from being attractive to men in the first place, to being able to conceive, to the ability to weave together another little human inside of us without even trying, to the breasts that feed the baby, to all the mothering instincts that are hardwired into us. We live with the reality of our fertility monthly. This is not a minor part of our design. It is our design. As Alice von Hildebrand put it, well, every woman, whether married or unmarried, is called upon to be a biological, psychological, or spiritual mother. Not every woman is able to marry. Not all women who do marry will be able to bear biological children of their own. But all women are called to the vocation of filling the garden. All women are called to be mothers in one way or another. As Prudence Allen reminds us, there is a spiritual and an intellectual maternity, as well as a physical maternity. Mothering can take many different forms, but mothering is what women were made for, and mothering is how women flourish best. Although we live in a world that is marred by sin, the message of biology is not in conflict with the message of scripture. The same pattern of reality that has been revealed in God's Word is also clearly visible in God's world. If the heavens declare the goodness and the glory of God, then every cell in our bodies declares the goodness and glory of sexual difference. The differences between male and female bodies are not arbitrary, they are vocational. Men are called to form, women are called to fill. Men are called to be fathers and to live as fathers, even if they do not have children of their own. Women are called to be mothers, even if they do not have children of their own. There are motherly roles within society, as well as within individual households, and the same applies for fathering. Men are designed to be conquerors. Women are designed to be carers. Men are designed to give women a place. Women are designed to give men a future. This is the pattern of creation. And when God rested on the seventh day, he pronounced all that he had made to be very good. Adam was a living male body with a masculine vocation, and God said this was good. Eve was a living female body with a feminine vocation, and God said this was good. God brought Eve to Adam and commissioned them to work together to continue what he had started by forming and filling the newly created earth, and God said that this, man and woman working together, was very good. Sadly, Genesis 2 is followed by Genesis 3. Adam failed as a man, Eve failed as a woman, and their joint rebellion brought ruin to all of God's very good creation. While the fundamental vocations of man and woman have not changed, indeed, as we've seen, Genesis 3 strongly reiterates those fundamental vocations. They have become much more difficult to carry out. What was designed to be beautiful often breaks down in practice. We no longer can simply return to the foundational pattern of male and female and set to work at building something beautiful. The materials with which we work have been warped and distorted by the ravages of rebellion. There is rubble in the way that must be cleared before we can truly make progress in the right direction. And there's three fundamental obstacles, not just one, but three obstacles that weave together to make it difficult for us to recover the goodness and glory of God's creational pattern. The first obstacle is the moral problem of personal depravity. We're sinners. We are bent against God's ways. The second obstacle is the intellectual problem of false ideologies. We think wrong. The third problem is the environmental problem of, a third obstacle is the environmental problem of broken economies. We live in a world that makes it difficult for us to live in reality, a world in which the technologies and the institutions of society distort the pattern of creation, even when we're trying to follow it. First up is the problem of personal depravity. Sin, most fundamentally, is any rejection of or departure from God's creational design for humans. Because God's design for humans is specialized according to sex, rebellion against this pattern is never truly gender neutral. Men sin by departing from God's creational design for men, and women sin by departing from God's creational design for women. As the Mausers put it, maleness and femaleness are written in our bodies. and masculinity and femininity are written in our souls. To be simply a good person or a bad person is not an option. One is always either a good man or a bad man, a good woman or a bad woman. Because men and women are equal in value, their sin is equally serious. Because men and women are different in nature, their sin is gender specific. Because men and women are corresponding in function, the sin of men harms women and the sin of women harms men. At men's retreat, of course, we focused exclusively and at length on masculine depravity, so the men got a lot of strong words on the ways in which men go wrong. Most, if not all, male sins follow two fundamental paths. The first path of rebellion is that of abandoning our masculine responsibilities. This was the path of Adam. Adam abdicated his responsibility to guard the garden. The second path of rebellion is that of abusing our masculine authority. This is the path of Cain, who killed his brother Abel. Abusive men take shortcuts to get what they want. That's the heart of abuse. They use the strength and aggression that God has given them to take dominion over the dirt and they turn that aggression on the garden. They dominate and harm those they have been called to protect. While depravity is gender specific, it sadly is not specific to one gender. Women as well as men are depraved. And most, if not all, female sins follow two fundamental paths. We address the sins of men at men's retreat. So if you weren't at men's retreat and you're a man, you need to know how you can be depraved and break God's pattern. You need to listen to those messages. But this morning I want to talk to my dear sisters about the ways that you can rebel against God and fall short of God's design for you as a woman. There's two fundamental paths of female rebellion. The first path is that of despising your feminine vocation. Despising your vocation can take the form of snatching at that which has not been given to you. This was the sin of Eve. Adam had informed her of God's command. She knew that the tree of the knowledge of good and evil was not for her. And yet, there she was, staring at it anyways. And as she stared at it, as she listened to the serpent, she began to think that she deserved it. She envied the knowledge of God himself. She envied God's authority, and that envy led her to snatch at what did not belong to her. Just as Adam's sons are tempted to follow in his footsteps, abandoning their responsibilities as men, so Eve's daughters are tempted to follow in her footsteps. Women, to give one example, are tempted to look at the leadership roles that God has given to men with envy. That's what Eve did with God. Eve envied God's authority. And women are tempted to envy the authority that God has given to his representatives. Why, the serpent whispers, are the men called to be the heads within the households, pastors within the church, and leaders within society? After all, such leadership roles are desirable to make one powerful and important. Certainly, the serpent says, God is holding out on you. Just as Eve ignored all the other trees that God had given her, she stared at the one tree that he had not. So Eve's daughters are tempted to do the same. And you are tempted to despise the capacities of your own body, to treat your own vocation as something of little worth, as you begin to envy a vocation that has not been given to you. This is rebellion, and it brings destruction, and it obscures the pattern of creation. Feminine depravity, though, can take more than one path, just as masculine depravity can. The second path is that of exploiting your feminine glory. When Cain abused his masculine authority, he took the strength and aggression that God had given him to take dominion over the dirt, and he used it to gain forcible control over his brother. It was like taking a pickaxe given to break up the rocks and attacking a fruit tree that wasn't doing what he wanted it to do. But just as men can take the strengths and abilities that God has given them for good and use them for evil, so also can women. Though feminine shortcuts look different than masculine shortcuts, because men are different than women, they are both equally destructive to the pattern of creation. As one example, most women have far better social and verbal skills than most men. Women's tongues are the glue that turns an organization into a living community. This is a glory that God has given you. And the law of kindness should be in your tongue, as we heard from Proverbs 31. But what God intended for good, rebellious women use for evil. And as a woman, you can use your skill with words to destroy community by undermining other women. And you can call that destruction a prayer request. You can say that you're concerned, but your words are tearing down, tearing down, tearing down. You can use your words to diminish your husband through constant criticism, to manipulate men and women alike into doing what you want. You're taking the things that God has given you for good and you're using them for a purpose that God has not given those strengths to you for. It's the exact same thing that Cain did, only you're doing it as a woman. And you're tempted to think it's okay. You need to know that it's not. It's easy to see the many ways in which our culture is at war against the pattern of reality that we reviewed a few moments ago. We can go, you can go on Instagram and you can follow all the right people who tell you all the things that are wrong in our culture. And there are many things wrong in our culture. But when you give in to temptations like these, it is you who are at war with reality. Not only the people you dislike in our culture, Your feminine sin, like the masculine sin of your fathers and brothers and husbands and sons, is one of the obstacles that obscures the goodness and the glory of God's creational design for sexual difference. Recovering reality begins with repenting of our own sinful desires. And of course, the examples I gave do not exhaust the way that women can sin any more than the examples I gave for the men exhaust the ways that men could sin. We'd have to do a series as long as the scripture to cover all the ways we can go wrong. But personal repentance alone, though it is always the starting point, is not enough. Good intentions are not enough to protect us against the consequences of bad ideas. And we must therefore go on to do the hard mental work of destroying arguments and every lofty opinion that is raised against the knowledge of God. Taking every thought captive to Christ. In our day, there are three specific and widespread ideologies that must be taken captive if we are to recover the goodness and glory of sexual difference. The unisex ideology teaches the lie that men and women are interchangeable. The macho ideology teaches the lie that men are more valuable than women. The femo ideology, yes, I didn't come up with these labels, but I'm not saying people say, I have the femo ideology, but it's just a way of making the titles parallel. The femo ideology teaches the lie that women are more valuable than men. Don't get me wrong, I don't think anyone in this church believes the extreme forms in which these lies show up in our current culture. I don't think there's anyone who's a member of this church who says, I believe men and women are interchangeable. I think men are better than women. I think women are better than men. I don't think you would ever say that even though there are some in our culture who would. But the real danger comes from the watered down form that these lies often take. But watered down poison is still poison. For the sake of time, I can give you just one example here, and I'll mention another a little later. I trust that no one here would ever say that women are better than men. Women are more valuable than men. You would never say that. But one of the ways, the watered-down ways, this false ideology actually shows up in our culture, and shows up in your life, is by treating boys as though they were defective girls. Even, and sadly perhaps especially in Christian environments, it's all too common for mothers and leaders and Sunday school teachers, to reward boys who act like nice little girls, and to punish boys, not for being wicked or rebellious, but simply for not being as easy to control and corral as the girls. When the young boys in your life show the organizing effects of the testosterone that God gave them in the womb by being rambunctious and loud, by taking risks and playing hard, you must reject the false ideology that tempts you to imagine that everything would be better if they were more like their sisters. As a mom, if you don't understand the lies that are present in our culture, it may not be the secular world out there that feminizes your sons, it could be you. And we have to recognize this as a lie that must be resisted. Boys are not worse because they are boys, and girls are not worse because they are girls, but boys and girls are different. we should have different expectations of them. And we should encourage them to develop differently because they have different vocations when they're done developing. If we're to reclaim reality, we must reject every such false ideology, and again, we could spend many hours working through each of these and all the different forms that they take, but we must reject them no matter how subtle a form that they take, having considered the moral problem of personal depravity. So we talked about the pattern of creation, and now we're talking about these obstacles that are in the way of recovering that pattern, the moral problem of personal depravity, the intellectual problem of false ideologies, bad ideas that influence our thinking, even if we're not consciously aware of them. It's time to touch briefly on the environmental problem of a broken economy. There's so much we could go here, but the structure of our society shapes both the way that we see the world and the way that we live in it. While false ideologies attack the meaning of sexual difference in principle, our broken economy obscures and distorts the function of sexual difference in practice. To give just one example of this, if we back up a few hundred years, running a household was labor intensive. And much of that labor was highly skilled and widely respected. Not always. This could break down. I just want to be clear that societies in the past had their own forms of brokenness and rebellion. But they also, we have our forms of brokenness and rebellion, and sometimes we can see the way that we have rebelled by comparing ourselves to the past, even as we still must be clear, they were rebellious and broken in their own ways. But if we back up a few hundred years, running a household was labor intensive, and much of that labor was highly skilled and widely respected. In pre-industrial societies, men and women simply did not do the same task by and large. There were very few jobs, as Ivan Illich points out, that could be done by men and also by women. Work was gender-specific. There was instead men's work that was distinctively masculine and women's work that was distinctively feminine. Both were equally essential to the flourishing of society and both offered opportunities for genuine excellence in societal respect in both individual households and in the broader community. We saw that in Proverbs 31. This is no longer the case. The industrial and other revolutions of the past 200 years have brought countless changes to the place of the household in society. Two of these changes are especially important for our purposes this morning. First, the household has by and large been transformed from a center of production that it used to be into a hub for consumption. One by one, the skilled activities that once were performed by women as women in their own households, women as mothers and wives in their own households, were outsourced to factories and offices where men and women were treated as interchangeable economic units whose sex did not matter. And all to the greater profit of a few. Second, the destruction of distinctively feminine roles in the home led to the increasing disappearance of distinctively feminine honor in society. So when the household was vital to what was going on in society as a whole, then excellence in the household led to respect in the world as a whole, and it led to roles for women who did not have households as their own. When household labor was important, then help with that labor was important. So there was a place for women who did not marry, and there were roles for women who never had children, and there were places of status for women who had grown their children and raised them well, and now they wanted to expand their capacities in broader ways. All of that was rooted In the value that was in the household, when that was taken away, when the foundation was removed, it didn't just destroy the foundation, but it destroyed everything that was built on that foundation. While the labors of the Proverbs 31 woman are rooted in her home, they're not limited to her own household. As a distinctively feminine woman, as a wife and a mother, she has a reputation and a status that is society-wide. She's involved in the economic life of her society, but she's not involved by putting her womanhood aside, putting her motherhood aside, putting her wifehood aside. Instead, her involvement is built on that. And she's praised in the same gates in which her husband sits. She gains her status not by competing with men, but by excelling as a woman. That is the creational pattern. The changes in our society have made this much harder to do. Our culture often celebrates women who imitate successful men, but it almost never honors women for excelling as mothers and as wives. And so women face this tension, especially women who have a lot of capacity and ability, they face this tension. Do I reduce myself down so I'm just staying at home and dusting the furniture and I don't really have much to do? Or do I pursue excellence but I have to leave all my capacities as a woman aside and I can only do this as a interchangeable economic unit whose sex has been forgotten? This is the way that our economy distorts human flourishing in a way that is profoundly perverse. And we must not be embarrassed to say that that is perverse. It is not liberating. It is destructive. And this brings us, third and finally, to the program for repentance. The creational pattern is clear. Men and women are equal in value, they're different in nature, and they're corresponding in function. Men are called to and equipped for the vocation of forming. Men are called to be fathers, not only biological fathers, but fathers in broader society, intellectual fathers. They're called to be fathers and pursue fatherhood in everything that they do. Women are called to and equipped for the vocation of filling. Women are called to be mothers. Not only biological mothers, but they are called to act as mothers in everything that they do, even if they do not have children of their own. They're still called to live as mothers. That's how God designed them. As we seek to reclaim the goodness and glory of this fundamental pattern of reality, we face the moral problem of personal depravity, the intellectual problem of false ideologies, and the environmental problem of a broken economy. Yet we have no cause to despair. For we do not face these obstacles alone. We are a people who has received good news. And I'm gonna get rid of this jacket. God has not given up on his project to fill the earth with a people distinctively male and distinctively female who reflect his rule and carry out his mission. God has not given up on his image bearers. When God saw that there was no man able to restore humanity to the goodness and glory of the pattern of creation, he himself took on flesh for us and for our redemption. In the person of his son, he humbled himself to be born from the womb of a mother. Though Jesus did not participate in our rebellion, He entered fully into the conditions of our brokenness. He bore our sins in His body on the tree. He paid for our failures. If you think, if you were convicted when I spoke of the depravities to which women are susceptible, I want you to remember that He paid for those. Every sin, if you are one of Jesus' people, if you have turned to Him in repentance and faith, then your sins were placed on His shoulders and they were paid for by His blood. God will not demand a devil payment. Three days later, He rose again, victorious over the power of sin and death and hell. But he did not save us on a whim. He rescued us in order to restore us to the pattern for which he created us. He rescued us in order to restore us to the pattern for which he created us. What does Paul tell us in Titus 2.14? Who gave himself for us. Why? Why did he do this? That he might redeem us from all iniquity Why did he do this? And purify unto himself a peculiar, a set apart people, a nation, an organized family, zealous of good works. We must not miss the significance of this. Jesus didn't die simply to save individuals. Jesus died to purify unto himself a people. And if we look at the context of Titus, it becomes immediately clear That one of the fundamental things that makes Jesus' people set apart is the fact that they have recovered the goodness and glory of sexual difference. And this is why in this very same chapter in Titus 2, we find specific instructions for older men and older women, for younger men and younger women. The pattern by which we were created is the pattern for which we are redeemed. But this isn't just some distinctive thing that just shows up in Titus, is it? No, we see the same pattern in Ephesians. After telling us about the new humanity that God is forming in Christ, Paul goes on to tell us about the specific roles of husbands and wives. The pattern by which we were created is the pattern for which we are redeemed. And as we are sanctified and transformed by redemption, we're returned and restored to the pattern of creation. I could keep going with other passages like First Timothy and First Peter and many others, but I think you get the idea by now. Because sexual difference is central to the pattern of creation, sexual difference is central to the rescue and the restoration of that creation, Jesus rescues us in order to restore us as a people to the creational pattern that our rebellion had spoiled. And this is why, dear brothers and sisters, we do not have to lose heart, even when we face grave difficulties. Though we may often be perplexed in our struggle and unsure exactly what obedience looks like in a given moment, we must never despair. Though we may at times be persecuted and face difficulties from circumstances outside our control, we will never be forsaken in those difficulties. that we may be struck down, we will not be destroyed. For this world, with all its desires to do away with sexual difference, is even now passing away. Those who do the will of God, men as men and women as women, are going to abide forever. That is our hope. And it is a hope that will not cause us to be ashamed. We do not have to imitate the world around us. We are supposed to give the world something to imitate. That is what Christians are for. That's what Jesus means when he calls us to live in the unsavory darkness of this present age as salt and as light. And we do not resist the culture through nostalgic longing for some pastime that will never return. No, we know that God has put us in this place and in this time because his story runs through our place and through our time. God is going not just to bring us back to the garden, God is going to bring us to the glorious end that he intended when he made the garden. The garden was only supposed to be the beginning. There was a glorious end. But rebellion interfered. But rebellion will not get the last word. And God's story runs through Bremerton in 2024 with all of the difficulties of a broken rebellion and ideology and economy that we face. And God's purposes for humans will be accomplished. The suffering of Jesus will not be in vain. We resist our current culture through a firm confidence in a future victory that will certainly come. That is our attitude. Specialization according to sex is not our plan for humanity, it is God's plan. The God that we serve has promised to accomplish his purposes and he has promised to use us to do it. We're not called to go out and burn the weeds, but we are called to be the wheat that feeds the world, the leaven that transforms the world, and the mustard plant that shelters the world. We are called to be the stewards of reality. That's our mission. We're called to live as a city on a hill. We're called to show the world what it looks like to stop running away from the pattern of reality as we start building our lives upon it. We're called to shine as lights in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation. This work of reclaiming reality begins with repenting of our own personal depravities. And sisters, that includes you. If we as the people of God are to recover the goodness and the glory of sexual difference, the repentance of men alone will not be enough. I can preach to the men at men's retreat until I'm blue in the face and they can fall on their knees and cry as long as they want, but we will not restore the pattern by male repentance alone because the pattern is not effaced by male rebellion alone. We need you as our sisters to take your depravity as seriously as God takes it. And he took it seriously enough to send Jesus to die for it. I think that's pretty serious. If you have begun, even in little ways, to despise your feminine vocation, if you've been tempted to envy the vocation of men, to snatch at things that God has not given you, to snatch at things even that God has given to your sisters, you need to repent. If you have begun to explore your feminine glory, taking the strengths and ability and the beauty and the glory that God has given you for good and using them for evil, you need to repent. Your tongue has the power of life and death. You need to choose life. This work of reclaiming reality continues by going to war against every false ideology. We must not think that we have won a victory because the lies that we believe have been suitably watered down. Watered down poison is still poison. It may not kill you as quickly, but if you drink enough of it, it will still kill you. We must not believe lies at all. The truth is, to give another example, that men and women are not interchangeable in any area of life. Women and men are different by nature. Therefore, when our society teaches us that men and women ought to have exactly the same career priorities, treating marriage and children as an afterthought, women and men should go and pursue the same education and the same vocations and everything the same, only women add children. That is a declaration of war against the way that God made the world. Sisters, You must not believe these lies because if you do, they will destroy you and they will efface the pattern of creation. Now we live in a world in which our circumstances are less than ideal. You will notice I did not give any list of specific rules about what women are allowed to do because specific decisions are specific to circumstances. But here is what I will tell you. Your maternal vocation as a woman should enter into every decision that you make in your life. Your priorities as a woman should be different from the priorities of a man. And that applies to every situation, even the most broken. The work of reclaiming reality does not stop until we have rebuilt a life together that recovers the fundamental patterns of creation in the rhythm of our everyday life as individual households, as a community, and even in broader society. This is something we have already begun to do. Look around you. The ratio of small children in this room is not the same as the ratio of small children in Bremerton, if you haven't noticed yet. This is a good thing. This is something we should celebrate. But we must not be weary in well-doing. Yes, we've taken the first steps, but we have much farther to go. As a community, we've vigorously reasserted the goodness and the beauty of marriage and motherhood, and many of the men in this room are making real sacrifices to enable their wives to live, not as interchangeable economic units, but as mothers, but sisters, We can't do this work by ourselves. You see, men and women are corresponding in function. The creational pattern is not a list of things that women are not allowed to do because God is holding out on you. That's the lie that Eve believed. No, the creational pattern is that women were made for glory, and the glory at which women are aimed is good. And so as we put forth every effort to recover a garden, we need you to put forth every effort to refill that garden with every sort of glory. That means as we seek to rebuild an economy in which men can function as men and women can function as women, we can't afford to have you leave your talent buried in the dirt. We need your help. Because recovering children in the household, that first step of motherhood, that's only the beginning. We need to recover the maternal roles that used to abound in broader society. If we're to recover the goodness and the glory of the creational pattern, then we need to discover new ways for those who are not able to have children of their own, or who do not yet have children, or whose children are already grown, to carry out their vocation as spiritual, intellectual, and societal mothers in a way that leads them and others to flourish. And that's going to take all of us working together to include everyone who wants to follow Jesus, no matter how broken their circumstances or how messy their story, we want to work together. to live as a city that is set on the hill, a people who does not imitate the world, but who instead gives the world something to imitate, that as a society, its path of rebellion leads to greater and greater destruction. Our path of obedience leads to greater and greater glory. And they say, I always thought you were sexist, misogynist, but your women are happy and our women are miserable. Maybe there's something to that gospel you say changes everything. There's so much more I'd like to say, but we need to conclude. Here's where the point is. Specialization according to sex is not a problem that needs to be solved. It is a glory that must and will be recovered. The only question is if we will be those who participate in its recovery. Long after the lie of interchangeability has been buried in the dustbin of the history of rebellion, The glory of God's good design for men and for women will only be just getting started. Men and women are equal in value, different in nature, and corresponding in function. This is the pattern of reality. We live in a world that is an open rebellion against this pattern, a world in which it has been obscured by personal depravities, false ideologies, broken economies. But here is our hope. This rebellion will not get the last word. The God who created our world is even now at work to restore it. The pattern by which we were created is the pattern for which we are redeemed, and that pattern is specialized according to sex. It will not disappear. He has invited us to join his family and to share in his mission. He has called us to recover the goodness and glory of sexual difference. He has promised to bless our efforts and to reward our labors. This is what it looks like to reclaim reality. Thank you for listening to this message. If you would like to learn more about the Westside Baptist Church, please visit our website, www.bibledirectionforlife.com. Subscribe to the podcast if you would like to hear new sermons and lessons each week. And remember that a sermon podcast is no substitute for opening up a Bible and reading it for yourself.