I invite you to turn with me in the book of Jeremiah to Jeremiah chapter 30. Jeremiah chapter 30. and we'll read starting in the first verse. The word that came to Jeremiah from the Lord saying, thus speaketh the Lord God of Israel saying, write thee all the words that I have spoken unto thee in a book. For lo, the days come, saith the Lord, that I will bring again the captivity of my people Israel and Judah, saith the Lord. And I will cause them to return to the land that I gave to their fathers, and they shall possess it. And these are the words that the Lord spake concerning Israel and concerning Judah. For thus saith the Lord, we have heard a voice of trembling, of fear and not of peace. Ask ye now and see whether a man doth travail with child. Wherefore do I see every man with his hands on his loins as a woman in travail and all faces are turned into paleness. Alas, for that day is great, so that none is like it. It is even the time of Jacob's trouble, but he shall be saved out of it. Thus far the reading of God's word. The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God shall stand forever. Let's pray once more. Our great God and Father, we come to you this day with hearts joyful in you, but also heavy. Lord, we are in grief over our sin. Grief over our own sinful hearts and the hearts. Of our country and of this world. Lord, we need you. We need your forgiveness. We need your strength. We need your grace. We ask that you would give us of yourself bountifully. We pray that you would help us to think on the words of your scripture carefully this day, that we would rightly look at the word of truth and speak it correctly. We ask this in Jesus name. Amen. Well, we heard this morning that it was a little over a year ago that the Canadian government passed the act called Bill C-4, which criminalized so-called conversion therapy. We heard some of the preamble this morning, and I won't go into that again, but you can look it up at your leisure. But this bill, as we heard, defines conversion therapy, this now illegal category, this criminal behavior under their code. It defined conversion therapy very widely, and it really would include any meaningful, faithful discipleship of biblical sexuality. Concerning that bill, a group of Christians called Liberty Coalition Canada recently wrote this on their website, quote, with Bill C-4 becoming law, our federal government has declared that the biblical foundations for marriage and sexuality are myths and stereotypes. The truth is that God has designed both men and women as well as marriage itself, and his design has been true since the beginning of time. On Sunday, January 15, 2023, we at the Liberty Coalition Canada would exhort you to preach a sermon focused on a biblical sexual ethic and God's good design for marriage. We hope to have thousands of pastors across North America participate in this initiative. We believe the Lord will use this united effort to both declare the sovereign lordship of Christ over his church and transform many lives through the life-changing power of the word of God." Well, it is not yet a crime to preach today's sermon in the United States. I wonder if that were so in Canada. But we want to faithfully preach and disciple now while it is easy so that we are in strength of God to continue to do so when it is not. In his book, Christianity and Liberalism, J. Gresham Machen wrote this. He said, quote, in the sphere of religion, as in other spheres, the things about which men are agreed are apt to be the things that are least worth holding. The really important things are the things about which men will fight, end quote. Biblical sexuality is being fiercely fought over today. And that's the case both inside and outside the church. It's one of those really important things, and it's worth fighting about. There is no sin more besetting, more beloved, and more defended than sexual sin. It is a unique sin. Paul says that every other sin is committed outside the body, but he says that the sexually immoral person is sinning against his own body. The sexually immoral person is sinning at a physical and a physiological level against himself in a way that is unique. And immorality has a way of being uniquely subversive and deceptive. It will blind and skew a person's judgment. And this sin is alive and well in American Christianity. At a Christmas carol late last year, a Zoom church sang God Rest You Merry, gentlemen, and their modified hymn included this verse. Quote, God rest you, queer and questioning. Your anxious hearts be still. Believe that you are deeply known and part of God's goodwill. For all to live as one in peace, the global dream fulfilled. Well, that last stanza sounds like something Klaus Schwab wrote. Professing Christendom is losing its ability to define sin. And here at Covenant Baptist Church, we desire to contend earnestly for biblical sexuality. Today's message, we're going to zero in on one specific thing in this battle. We want to ponder deeply our use of pronouns. I believe that the sexual war wages nowhere so hot as the war over pronouns. And it's vital that we think biblically about this. Here is the thesis statement that I am going to defend this afternoon. Voluntarily specifying your pronouns in any context, even when they coincide with the ones your maker gave you, is hate speech against God. I'll say that again. Voluntarily specifying your pronouns in any context, even when they coincide with the ones your maker gave you, is hate speech against God. Well, this concept of specifying your pronouns was foreign to all of us just a few years ago, so I want to clarify what is meant by this. Social media and business communication tools have adopted a new field that you can fill out, and this will allow you to write your pronouns that you want people to refer to you as. And this field has become ubiquitous on tools like LinkedIn, Facebook, Slack. It's also become very common for people to specify their pronouns in email signatures. And so you now see that Sarah's email signature now says she slash her. Mike's email signature now says he, him, his. So in other words, you have normal people telling you something that you already knew about themselves. Now, for thousands of years, we knew what people's pronouns were without having to have them specify them for us. But all of a sudden, everyone is specifying their pronouns. Why? Why is that? Why all this pronoun talk? Well, let me give you the answer in their own words. There's a website that's dedicated to helping you and equipping you with your pronouns, and it explains the following, quote, pronouns are those words that we use instead of calling someone by their name every time we mention them. Most people use he, him, and she, her. So we automatically assume which one to call them based on someone's looks. But it's actually not that simple. Gender is complicated. Some people don't look like their gender. Some prefer being called in a different way than what you'd assume. Some people don't fit into the boxes of male or female and prefer more neutral language. And then they say this, why does it matter? because of simple human decency." Notice the language that's being used there. If you don't go along with this new revolutionary movement, you lack simple human decency. The website goes on to explain that this is a fight for freedom, respect, and inclusiveness. And we know, as Christians, that they're really fighting for slavery, degradation, and exclusiveness of the worst kind. If your movement excludes God, you may be many things, but one thing you're not is inclusive of the one being before whom you will stand in the day of judgment. And again, why this great interest in specifying pronouns? Let me give it to you from LinkedIn. Quote, we're committed to building a more diverse and inclusive platform. And gender pronouns play an important role in creating a welcoming community for members of all gender identities. Now you can add your gender pronouns to your profile to let others know how to refer to you. End quote. So now we're getting to the root of the matter here. Even if you're a so-called cisgender heterosexual, you're showing inclusivity by specifying your pronouns. And that's why everyone and their brother are tripping over each other to specify their pronouns on all these platforms. And make no mistake, there is enormous pressure for normies to specify their pronouns and to normalize and legitimatize this transgender movement. Unless God intervenes, I think that we're going to get to the point where the only people who have not specified their pronouns are Christians. If you don't specify your pronouns, you're going to be alone. You're going to be a target. And that is precisely why we have got to think about this biblically, brothers and sisters. Nobody stands firm upon something until their mind is firmly settled upon it. And that's why we're talking about this today. And again, my thesis is that if you cave in on this issue, you have committed moral apostasy. And if you do not repent, the church will regard you, should regard you, as no different than a heathen and a tax collector, someone outside the covenant, Now before I make this case for biblical sexuality with pronouns, I want to back up and ask this question. How did we get here? I mean, if you're like most people, this just seems like it came out of nowhere. How did we get here? How did we go from a society that largely ostracized transgenderism to a society increasingly ostracizing the opponents of transgenderism? According to the CDC, nearly one million people identify as transgender in the United States. CDC is a very questionable source, but if that number is true, it only begs the question, how did we get to the point where we have a million people in our motherland who identify, call themselves transgender? Is there something in the water? Well, let's answer the question biblically. How did Sodom become Sodom? Turn with me to the book of Ezekiel. Chapter 16. How did Sodom become Sodom? What was it that made her who she was? Ezekiel chapter 16. We'll just read the 49th verse. Behold, this was the iniquity of thy sister Sodom, pride, fullness of bread, and abundance of idleness. was in her and in her daughters. Neither did she strengthen the hand of the poor and needy." I think this verse describes exactly where America has been at for decades. Pride, abundance of bread, fullness of bread, abundance of idleness, security, ease. That's what's being described there. Decadence. And then this lack of caring for the poor and needy. Now, we have an artificial caring for the poor and needy, but that artificial caring has resulted in the poor and needy being worse off than they started. And for decades, we have overindulged. And what happens when you overindulge? Overindulgence leads to dissatisfaction. It's not good enough. It's not strong enough. When you overindulge, you're trying to squeeze out of something more than was intended. It has a limit, and you're wanting to go beyond the limit. And so the more that you indulge, the more you want, and the more that you want in a stronger dose, in a heightened intensity. That's what happens. That's the cycle. And then in tandem with that, there are certain sins that really can only exist in the context of other sins. The sin of transgenderism really can only exist in a society in which pornography and sodomy are celebrated and ubiquitous. You can be sure that we are at that saturation point when the drag queens and the transgenderism are being given hearty approval to. When man rejects God, this progression into evil that we're experiencing in our generation is inevitable. You see, God is infinite. And man was made for him. We were made to worship God. We were made to worship this infinite God. If we reject the infinite God, that desire to worship the infinite does not go away. Instead, the object of worship changes with the same expectations, the same desire that only God can satisfy. If man turns his back from God, his only alternative is to overindulge in those finite pursuits. But see, he then must pursue them as though they were infinite. And so when you pursue your self-expression with no bounds, what happens? That progression goes from pornography to sodomy and then to transgenderism. Transgenderism is a good and necessary consequence of rejecting God. It's an inevitability. And the next step beyond that is transhumanism. That's where the world was headed with the Nephilim when it was first destroyed. And it's where the world is currently headed at breakneck speed as it prepares for its second destruction, barring God's intervention, as it was in the days of Noah, even so now, things which must shortly come to pass. So that's how we got here. Mankind got here because he rejected God. He rejected the infinite God. He's pursuing these finite things as though they were infinite. He's driving them beyond what they were intended to be, and he's twisting them in the process because that necessarily happens. And this is the exchange that Paul's talking about there in Romans 1. Man's exchanging the glory of the Creator, and he's in turn going for the corrupt creation and trying to get something out of the corrupt creation that can only be expected from the infinite God. So that's how we got here. But what is our Christian basis for rejecting all this pronoun nonsense? You know, we take some things for granted here, but We need to have this firmly fixed in our minds so that we can give a defense for the faith that lies in us. And we saw there in Jeremiah 30, if you can go back to that, we saw in Jeremiah chapter 30 at the beginning in verse six, he asks this interesting question that modern man is no longer able to answer in a meaningful way. Ask ye now and see whether a man doth prevail with child. Wherefore do I see every man with his hands on his loins? as a woman in travail and all faces are turned into paleness. What's he asking? He's asking, have you ever seen a man give birth to a baby? That's what he's asking here. The answer is no. No one has ever seen such a thing. That's the rhetorical answer of the text here. Now, my phone here has an emoji of a pregnant man on it. But that's a hallucination of hellbound rebels. It does not exist. In real life, men cannot give birth. They never have. They never will. We're six. It's interesting how it goes on there. He says, wherefore do I see every man with his hands on his loins as a woman in travail and all faces are turned into paleness. So notice the categories here in this verse. You have a man, and he's asking, have you seen a man travailing with child? And then he says that these men, they're under God's judgment. They have their hands on their loins as a woman in travail. Now, what is a woman? I mean, before we can talk about pronouns, we need to be able to find our terms. What is a woman? And that question has become very hard for society to answer all of a sudden. Have you noticed that? I've noticed that. Everyone is scared to death to define what a woman is. So we're going to answer that question today, and we're going to do it without talking about genetics and chromosomes, too. Our definition does not depend on categories that only began to be defined in the previous century. So we're going to answer the question using scripture. What is a woman? Let's turn to Genesis chapter 2. Genesis chapter 2. We'll read starting in the 21st verse. The Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam, and he slept. And he took one of his ribs and closed up the flesh instead thereof. And the rib which the Lord God had taken from man made he a woman. and brought her unto the man. And Adam said, This is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh. She shall be called woman because she was taken out of man. What is a woman? A woman is someone taken out of man. That's why she's called woman. You know, you'll see in our English These two words reflect what's going on in the Hebrew. The very word woman is derived from the word man, and that's the way that it is in the Hebrew as well. The definition of a woman is dependent upon the definition of a man. They're interdependent. Now, right here, the world would object and say, well, that sounds patriarchal, they say. This sounds like the woman came out of the man. Sounds like there's an order to that or something. And our answer is yes. It's deeply patriarchal. The head of the woman is man, Paul says in 1 Corinthians 11. The head of man is Christ. The head of Christ is God. God set up the human patriarchy at the very beginning of creation here. Fall has not happened yet. He beheld it, and it was very good. Of course, sin made a mess of patriarchy, just like it's made a mess of gender and pronouns and everything else. But at the beginning, it was very good. We make no apology for that. So then a woman is, is someone who was taken out of man. Notice that the end of verse 23, she shall be called woman because she was taken out of man. Notice that when we answer the question, what is a woman that we're answering it in a uniquely Christian way. We confess that God and Christ created the heavens and the earth by the word of his power in the space of six days, and all very good, as the catechism says. That's the creation account, but now listen very carefully here. The certainty of womanhood is as certain as the historicity of the first man and woman. They rise and fall together. If you don't know where we came from, then you don't know who you are. That's what is being said here. In other words, if you can't affirm that Christ created the first man and woman 6,000 years ago, then you really have no basis to define womanhood. She shall be called woman because she was taken out of man. The origins of the human race are vital to the definition of what is a woman. It's Christ or chaos. Now, you've maybe noticed that most people, including most professing Christians, really scoff at the idea of a young Earth. They scoff at the idea of a historic account of how God made man and woman. And they'll say things like, well, maybe it was just, this is an allegory, or maybe they weren't on Earth, but they were somewhere else, and it was millions of years ago, or this is just a story to get ideas across. It's becoming mainstream. I mean, look at what Tim Keller says about what he thinks about this. And they say, you think that God actually made a woman from Adam's rib? That's silly, they say. But you see, if you reject this Genesis account, then you really can't define what a woman is. The very name woman taken out of man, it maketh no sense apart from Genesis. You know, I was seeing something here recently that they're discovering how we came from fish a little bit better and things that we acquired from fish and that we've jettisoned or tweaked or what have you. And I thought, you know, that, that really is consistent with the transgenderism movement because evolution says you used to be a fish. Now you're a man, but you can become a woman. You see, when you reject the account of how Christ made the heavens and earth, you're declaring moral and intellectual bankruptcy. You have nothing left. So as we define what a woman is, we need to define also what a man is, since the woman is someone who's taken out of a man, right? Both man and woman are made of the image of God. They are given dominion over the creatures. The imago dei is something that they both enjoy and are given. But we also recognize that there are differences between men and women. We saw one of them in Jeremiah 30. We saw that a man is someone who can't give birth. Let me give you a second thing, a second difference. Let's turn to 1 Samuel chapter 25. 1 Samuel 25, the context here, David's been taking care of Nabal. And Nabal's not really rewarded him in like kind, he's rewarded him evil for good instead. Let's read 1 Samuel chapter 25 and verse 22. David is, let's start in verse 21. Now David had said, surely in vain I've kept all this fellow half in the wilderness, so that nothing was missed of all that pertained unto him. And he hath requited me evil for good. So and more also do God unto the enemies of David, if I leave of all that pertain to him by the morning light, any that pisseth against the wall. Now what's David saying there? He's saying he's going to kill all the males of Nabal's household. And this is a faithful rendering of the Hebrew here. It's not a crude phrase per se in the Hebrew. God's using this exact same phrase in the Kings to describe who he's going to cut off from Jeroboam's house and who he's going to cut off from Ahab's house in the book of the Kings. It's interesting that this kind of phraseology, this literal Hebraism, it's using a very gendered aspect of the man to differentiate and to specify, specifically, we're talking about the males here. So what is a man? Well, one way we could answer that, speaking from the authority of scripture, a man is someone who can't have a baby and who pisseth against the wall. Can you remember that? Now, we're looking at some specific scriptures here, not to provide an exhaustive definition of biblical manhood and womanhood. Instead, we're doing this simple exercise just to demonstrate this. If you can't figure out from scripture what a man and a woman are, then you're willfully ignorant. When you sing, God rest you, queer and questioning, you're not singing about the God of the Bible. And lest anyone fail to get the point, the difference between men and women is not merely the difference between a few sex organs here. The ability to birth a child and the ability to urinate against a wall, those are speaking very specifically about a few organs. But to simplify it just to those things is a postmodern reductionistic point of view that really is going to rob mankind and womankind of all of their unique strengths and beauty. That's not what we're after here. This is not what scripture teaches. No, you see, when God created man and woman, male and female, he gave them more than just a few different physical attributes. He gave them different emotional orbits, different abilities, different roles. You know, one example, the corpus callosum in the human brain that connects the left and the right hemisphere. It's a much thicker vibe of cords in a woman's brain than a man's brain. This is maybe an older theory, but it's still often espoused that you have one side of your brain that's more your mental, cognitive, logical thinking. You have one side of your brain that's more your emotional side. And so, in that paradigm, a man is literally not as connected to his feelings as a woman is. There are differences that God has made, and there are strengths and weaknesses. You see, when you're a parent of a child, you need compassion. But you also need an unflinching rigor and discipline as well. Those are both needed. Something's lacking if you don't have one of those. God created them to be one flesh. So they complement each other and there are differences. And notice even how there are curses in Genesis 3 that are heavily gendered. You see that. You see the man's the provider of the home. That's assumed. And so what happens? His ground is cursed. It's going to be harder for him. He wasn't cursing the woman when he cursed the ground specifically. That's collateral damage, no doubt, but it's to the man that that's done to. And the same way, the woman as the homemaker has her reproduction cursed. You see that. Even the curses are heavily gendered. So that pronouns website that we quoted earlier that says that gender is complicated, God's word tells you it's not complicated. There's a university that spends an entire semester telling you the difference, explaining the difference between your sex assigned at birth and your gender identity. Well, God's word tells you that those two things, your sex and your so-called gender, they're really one and the same thing. They are from God and they do not change. One of the things that makes this difficult to preach about is that nobody in scripture was confused about their gender identity. If we're preaching about sodomy, there are texts that we could go to and we could exegete them verse by verse and walk out what's happening here. Transgenderism is a little bit, it's so far out there that it's strange to even deal with this. No one in scripture is confused about their gender identity. Nobody in the Bible specifies their pronouns. This isn't hard. It's only hard by sinners who say, yea, hath God said. One of the interesting things that we've learned when we study the brain is that when you see someone for the first time that you've never seen before, within milliseconds, nanoseconds, your brain is subconsciously establishing his or her gender. I mean, you don't even think about that, right? You see someone, you don't say, okay, I need to figure out what gender they are first. You do do that if they're not looking like something you would recognize as a gender. That does happen, and you realize immediately something's off, and you're trying to figure out what that is, but on the normal way of things happening, it just automatically happens. You don't even think about it. And why is that? That's because your gender is one of the most basic aspects of who you are. So in that sense, it's a complete insult to say that gender is a social construct. If you're a man and you call yourself a woman, that's an insult to God as your maker, but it's also an insult to womanhood. It's an insult to my wife. What you mean by that is absolutely not the same thing as when I say that my wife is a woman. And this is not inclusive. This is not progressive. It's degenerative. It is madness. And God will punish it with hell fire. So getting back to my thesis statement, when you willfully specify your pronouns, you are participating in this wickedness. When you specify your pronouns, you're saying that pronouns are specifiable, but they're not. In the words of Paul in Romans 1, what is this doing when you do this? You're giving hearty approval to those who practice this sin. Paul's talking about this list of sins and he says that there are those who do those things and that's wrong, but they're giving hearty approval as well. They give this affirmation, this rejoicing in it. We're called to not do this. Not only are your pronouns not yours to specify, but I would go further and say that people should be able to tell just from your face, just from your appearance, what your God-given gender is. If someone can't tell from a profile picture of you what your gender is, then there's something wrong. There's something that you need to repent of. If you're a woman, grow your hair. What does Paul say? He says it's a shame for a woman to have short hair. That's not my opinion. That's not my social construct. That's not the societal pressures. That's the word of God saying that it's a shame for a woman to have short hair. Grow it as long as you need to until you look like a woman again. If you're a man, cut your hair. Cut it as short as you need to until you look like a man again. If you have a soft face as a man, I would say consider growing a beard. Gird up your loins. Man up. I think it's noteworthy that in lectures to my students, C.H. Spurgeon recommends weightlifting if that's what it takes. Embrace the gender God gave you. Well, this is an unusual topical sermon, but I'll give a few words of exhorting. And to Christians, I say this. Renew your efforts at sexual purity. Do not be deceived. Whoever commits sin is the slave of sin. And if you're not walking in freedom right now, if you're not walking in a life of personal holiness before God, how are you going to be prepared to defend against the evil that is coming? Remember, sexual immorality begins with nothing more than a lustful look or thought, and that will sap you of your energy. Your enthusiasm, your energy to serve God is destroyed with this. I'm convinced that the reason that most professing Christians are not fighting the good fight on this issue is because they themselves are morally compromised. Guard what you think. Guard what you see. Guard where you go. You know, we could look at Colossians 3. It's similar to Romans 6 of considering yourself dead to sin. You can look at that at your leisure. Let's look at First Peter Chapter 4. The New Testament letters really have two themes in them, guarding against false doctrine and guarding against immorality. If you had to sum up the warnings, the lion's share of what is spent talking about are those two things. 1 Peter chapter 4, I just want us to read these first few verses here. For as much then as Christ has suffered for us in the flesh, arm yourselves, arm yourselves likewise with the same mind. It's a call to arms, but you're not picking up a pistol, you're picking up the mind of Christ. For he that hath suffered in the flesh hath ceased from sin, that he no longer should live the rest of his time in the flesh to the lusts of men, but to the will of God. Verse 3, for the time past of our life may suffice us to have wrought the will of the Gentiles. Now, what's he saying there? He's saying you've already spent enough of your life walking in the desires, the lusts of the Gentiles. You've given enough time to that already. It's done. when we walked in lasciviousness, lusts, excessive wine, revelings, banquetings, and abominable idolatries, or in they think it strange that ye run not with them to the same excessive riot, speaking evil of you, who shall give account to him that is ready to judge the quick and the dead." Notice that. were called to cease from sin, to no longer live in the flesh to the lusts of men, but to the will of God. That is what God's word is calling you to do. And as you put away sin and as you walk in Christ, do not be ashamed to take a bold stand for Christ in the marketplace. You remember those wannabe believers in John 12. They believed on Jesus, at least on some level, but they were afraid to confess him. because they were afraid of being put out of the synagogue, because they loved the praise of men more than the praise of God. Don't be like those people. Confessing Jesus is not optional for the believer. Standing firm on this pronouns war is not optional. This is not adiaphora. This is not negotiable. You have got to stand firm. And back to my thesis statement, choose today that you will not specify your pronouns. Don't go along with this. Don't bow down to false gods. Instead, be prepared to give a defense from scripture why you reject this pronoun revolution. Call it for what it is. Call it hate speech against God. That is what it is. You know, everyone wants to accuse us of that. They've got all of it backwards. I'm not saying do this in a mean way. Do it in love. But don't shirk from the truth. Now this might cost you your job, it might cost you your house, your family, your freedom. This does not matter. Do not love your life even unto death. We heard about that this morning. Lose your life for Christ's sake and you will find it. What does Jesus say? He will give the crown of life to those who overcome. He told his disciples, in the world you will have tribulation. But be of good cheer, take heart, take comfort. I have overcome the world. Jesus has overcome the world for us. And we are to walk with him. Well, I closed today with those who are queer and questioning. Maybe, maybe, you know, someone, maybe you have a coworker who's got pronouns that don't match the ones that God gave him or her. The truth is that God does invite such ones to come to him and to find rest. But that rest is going to require that you declare war against your sin. You don't rest queer and questioning in Jesus. You rest at war against your sin in Christ. I want to say this. God did not make a mistake in giving you the body that he gave you. He did not make a mistake giving you the gender that he gave you. In your resurrected state, you will have the same body that you were born with. You will spend eternity with the assigned sex and body characteristics that God gave you. If you're a Christian, it'll be a glorified body, but it'll be recognizable as you on some level. And you will certainly maintain the assigned sex, the sex that God gave you with when you were born. You know, the gospel of Thomas says that the women become men to get into heaven. We deny that. God has given us a book that tells you what gender you have to be in order to get pregnant. He's given you a book that tells you what gender you have to be in order to urinate against the wall. We didn't look at it, but he's also told us in this book what gender someone has to be in order for you to marry them. On a recent podcast, Joe Rogan said that marriage was a man-made institution. He was arguing with Matt Walsh, and Matt didn't give a rebuttal to that. Should have. Marriage is not a man-made institution. God instituted it, just like he instituted the two and only two genders of male and female. And these two genders, and the institution of marriage, and this hierarchical, patriarchal nature of family is ordained of God, and it is good. Taste and see that the Lord is good. Turn from your sin and flee to Christ. forsaking all others. Maybe such a person who calls themselves queer in questioning says, well, I was born with a gender identity that is different than my assigned sex. Who are you to tell me that I have to live with this discontinuity? This is a common refrain that we hear in this movement, is it not? Born this way. And it's as though born this way gets you off the hook. And what is the Christian response to this? You were born this way? Well, very well, you need to be reborn. You need to be born again. You know, the difference between you and someone who is right with God, if you're a transgender, the difference is not how you were born. It's not that they got lucky and so happened to be born with a mindset that more coexisted with their body that God gave them. You see, we were all born in sin. We were all born with diseased minds and hearts, guilty of death and hell, sick with sin. The difference is not how you were born. The difference is whether you were born again. Born this way, you need to be born again. If anyone is in Christ, what is it? He is a new creation. It's a recreation, a rebirth. If you hide behind this excuse of born this way, here's what will happen. You were born that way and you're going to go to hell that way. You must be reborn. That's the message of the gospel. It's not that you're born sinlessly perfect and then you choose as a free moral agent to take on these besetting sins. No, you're born into slavery. When Adam fell, you fell. There's the patriarchy again. He represented you. When Adam fell, you fell, and you were born into sin. You were conceived in sin. But this is the good news of the gospel. That Christ, as the second Adam, is your way, your only way, to obtain freedom from the slavery of sin. As the hymn says, Christ has regarded my helpless estate and has shed his own blood for my soul. Do not neglect so great a salvation. Maybe someone says it's too late for me. I've undergone too many surgeries. I've spent too much time in sin. My mind is too far destroyed with sin. If you come to Christ, he can restore you. He can restore to you the years that you wasted under sin even. What does he say in the prophet Joel? He says, I will restore to you the years that the locust hath eaten the canker worm and the caterpillar and the Palmer worm. Is there any, is there any locust, any worm, any caterpillar worse than the knife of a transgender surgeon? But God can save even you and he can restore to you the years you've lost in service and future service to him. Let's bow in prayer. Our God, our hearts are heavy for the abomination in the land and we are not in a position to throw the first stone in the sense that We are not righteous. In ourselves we are not guiltless. Of breaking your commandments. We have our own sin. That we continue to commit. And we need your forgiveness. We need your strength to be putting away sin to be putting it to death to be walking. In holiness and to you and we ask your forgiveness. But we also ask for your boldness. To stand firm on the truth. So that we would be able to give a reason for the hope that lies in us. Lord we thank you that you can save the worst of centers and we know this because you saved us. And so we pray that you would have mercy. On those who are in this blindness in the slavery. and that you would grant repentance to those who call themselves Christians and who are going along with all these things, that there would be sexual purity within your churches for your glorious name's sake. We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen.