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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.
Reclaiming Feminine Glory
Series Reclaiming Reality
| Sermon ID | 1110241947146599 |
| Duration | 57:43 |
| Date | |
| Category | Sunday Service |
| Bible Text | Genesis 1-2 |
| Language | English |
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