All right, well that was very quick. I didn't expect to get up here so soon. And I feel like I need, is there such a thing as a booster podium? Because when I practice my sermons, I like to be right here, really close. It seems like every place I preach is always really low. All the pastors are short. Which is it? Is it standard? Okay, I guess I'm overwhelmingly tall. Turn to Genesis chapter two. Thank y'all so much for coming out. My name is Monty, and I think I'm probably one of the only ones that preach that's not an actual preacher. You know pastor of a church. I'm an elder But I'm not a pastor that preaches at a church all the time and and has a flock like the other speakers I do some street preaching and I've been doing that for quite a while since probably 2008 and I've developed a an ability, and it's not the kind of street preaching you probably think, it's a lot of talking about sin, talking about God's law, God's broken law, and how people have sinned against the Father, sinned against the God, whether they believe in Him or not, and how to find forgiveness, the repentance and faith in Jesus Christ. And preaching that on the street, in the public, it's given me a certain demeanor of really being forceful, Not like a regular pastor up here preaching to a flock. I'm very, I can insult you very easily in the street. And I insult homosexuals and liberals all the time when I'm preaching in the street. In fact, I'm going to Jerusalem with about five or six other guys in the first part of June, and it's gonna be dangerous for us. We're not going to look at the stuff. We're not going to tour. We're gonna go preach the gospel to the Jews, and they do not like it. They will spit at you. They will throw things at you. They will steal your Bible. They'll burn. Once they get a gospel tract or a New Testament, they will burn it right in front of your face. they will attack you. You will get hit. So I'm fully prepared to do that with these other brothers in Christ. But in order to preach over there, you have to have a certain demeanor. You have to get the gospel out regardless of what people think. And that's kind of how I preach. So forgive me if I'm abrupt. in my preaching today. It's just, I try not to do that, but I wanna try and be loving and show you how much I love you guys and the flock, the servants of Christ, but sometimes I can overdo it, so forgive me. Oh, you're in Genesis 2. To start off, I was gonna give a definition of complementarianism, but I think Bruce did a really good job of that. He beat me to it. When I wrote this topical sermon, it was actually eight days prior to this assembly today. And maybe you're wondering, what kind of preacher, what kind of person, what kind of speaker does his sermon writing so late? Well, many godly preachers will dive into the Word of God weeks, even months, soak up the text, will search the Scriptures, if they're working on a topical sermon, and they will pray and write and pray and write some more and pray some more, maybe get some outside influence from biblical men of God through decade-old writings, and then they'll continue to write. And once they're done, maybe weeks and months, or at least weeks and weeks before, they're to present the presentation They practice, they read it over and over, correcting, memorizing it, well before it's their time to present it. They write up an outline, of course they write the outline before they write the sermon, but they have these points they'll bring up, and they'll put them on the pulpit, and that way they can talk, and they can speak, and then they come back to make sure they hit the point. Well, I can't do that. I'm not good at that. Sometimes those points that they have will help them keep them on track with what they want to say, and hopefully they'll keep them from going over there given time. And I'll try to do the same. But I don't memorize well, so I do a lot of reading. I do a lot of reading, so forgive me if I'm looking down more than I'm looking up. When I took the job, took this, I say job, took this job, What do you call it? Took this challenge, assignment challenge, yes. It was just two weeks ago, and I was on my way with my Ford Bronco, my new Ford Bronco that I've had a year, to San Diego, California. I was gonna meet up with about 20 other Bronco owners. And from there, there's a guy in California that takes people with their Broncos or their Ford Raptor trucks. They take them across the border. They go into Baja, Mexico, and they drive Baja trails. Are you familiar with what a Baja trail is? You ever heard of the Baja 1000? It's a race. It's an off-road race. and it's 1,000 miles. And what we did is we met up in San Diego, we crossed the border, and we hit these Baja trails. Now, we don't have racing vehicles, but they're very well equipped, our vehicles are. So we get on these Baja trails, and we run hard and fast. There's no time to stop early and take a picture, a scenic moment, no. When we get on the beach, we don't jump into the water. We get on the beach, And we put the pedal to the metal. In fact, the first day that we crossed the border, one of the most expensive vehicles that we had with us, a Ford Raptor, had an accident. It rolled three times, and I videotaped it because I wasn't very far behind him. And he tore up, messed up his truck. Probably told it. He was okay. We did stop. That kind of slowed us down. We called the chase truck, made sure he was going to bring the trailer and get the Raptor back on the trailer so he can take it back to the States. And the rest of us were gone. Headed back out. And we probably, you know, watched our gas pedal for a few minutes, but eventually we went back to hard and heavy. That's a guy trip. That's a guy trip. That's the way us guys are. We test the limits. That's probably why we make more obvious mistakes than others, because we like to see how far we can go. We test the limits. And we drove, we went as far as 13 hours south of the border into Loreto, Mexico, staying on these hard roads, going fast. I think we were going upwards. There was sometimes, on the beach, I know we hit 90, 100 miles an hour. We don't do finesse, okay? And that's just a guy thing. That's just, I just think, that's just a guy thing. So you're probably thinking, what's the point of the story? How does it relate to what we're talking about? I really have to give you an excuse as why my topical presentation isn't memorized. Or not as well prepared because I haven't had time to prepare it. I've only had roughly eight days really to prepare. But I am, by God's grace, a man, so I have characteristics that are different than what a woman has. But in case you haven't been paying attention in the last 30, 40, 50 years, Differences between men and women, husbands and wives, have become very difficult to separate if you're seeing what the world is seeing. If you're over 40, you can remember back when men and women, their roles were very, they're very different back then. It was obvious. They were clear. But look at, compare with it today, what's going on. Look where the world is at. Just like what Bruce said, if you can't see the massive change that has taken place over the last 40, 50 years, then you're like that frog in that boiling pot. You're familiar with that analogy? The pot of water that starts off cold, the frog is in the pot, it's enjoying the water. but it slowly gets heated from underneath and that water warms up. But that frog gets a little acclimated to that and can't tell that that water's getting warm, so it doesn't hop out. And the water gets hotter and hotter and hotter, slowly cooking that frog alive, killing it. You could be that frog in the water if you're not paying attention to what's going on today. Now, personally, I think y'all do. I think you know. I think you realize what's going on in the world today. God has created such a beautiful relationship for His creation, and yet the world hates God, and they therefore rebel. They don't want it the way God designed it. And we are being lured in by what the world wants. They're the ones that control the TV shows, the movies, the papers, the comics, the memes, the videos, the music, the social media. Their influence is so great that my girls and my boy, they will never know the true roles that God has designed them to have. unless my wife and myself teach them, unless my pastor teaches them, unless my church family teaches them. Because they're not gonna learn it from those facets. They're not gonna learn it from TV shows or movies or whatever else is out there, TikTok. And these days you can't depend on half the Christian preachers out there. because they've given themselves over to submitting to these godless influencers. There was a time back 30 years ago when you wouldn't find a church that would approve of homosexuality. Now how many denominations out there approve of homosexuality? 20 years ago, abortion. You wouldn't find a church that would approve of abortion or women's right to choose. Now how many do you have? Ten years ago, gender identity. Five years ago, wokeism or critical race theory. Now you have churches right and left that are supporting those things. And it's a dangerous thing just to go to some church down the road because you don't know what they believe. And what they believe is what they're going to preach on. Brethren, The roles of men and women being manipulated have been going on for far much longer than that. Far much longer. And I'm talking about the F word, feminism. It's been around for a long time. The frog in cold water was a long time ago. The water's boiling right now. And at some point in time, we have jumped out. We have been obedient to God and have not given in to the push of the godless ways in this world. But we have not pushed back. We have not fought the good fight. We are failing in this. Don't believe me? All right, let me ask you. Where are your children right now? Other than Sam, other than Sam and the kids, I'm the youngest guy here, and I'm going to turn 50 in two months. Where are your grandchildren? Now, you don't have control over your grandchildren, but how do we raise our children to where they're coming to things like this? Are they taking your grandchildren to a godly church tomorrow? We have not pushed back. And now you're to the point, most of you, since most of you are older, have grandchildren, and it's a hard thing to be able to influence your grandchildren, because if you maybe made a mistake with raising your child and they went the wrong direction, and now you wanna say, well, I didn't do very good with my child, at least I can try to raise that grandchild when I have her or him in a godly fashion, instilling some values, and your kid doesn't like that, they're gonna take that grandchild away from you. You're not gonna see that grandchild very often. We have failed. We have failed. And we need to work on this. And thankfully, God gives forgiveness for our failures. But we need to say, yes, I failed. Now it's time to start doing godly things. Now it's time to start living for God and sacrificing myself in order to instill those values into my kids or my grandkids. As I said, feminism has been around for a long time. The slow push for equalization of the sexes has been around for a long time. I personally think it really started having its grasp in America in World War II. the women having to enter the workforce because the majority of men were sent to war. I don't have a strong knowledge of World War I, so I can't say it really gained traction there, but ever since women were given the idea that they could do a man's job, In the workforce, they were influenced from then on. They were applauded, and naturally, I applaud them for being able to step up and temporarily fill a role that was primarily a man's job during a great need for our country. To work in the garden, to till the garden, that's what they were doing. till the soil. But when the men came home, many women did not go back to the wonderful job that God created for them. But let's backpedal and open your Bibles to Genesis 2 if you haven't already. Now Genesis 1 has a really good record of the creation of man and woman. But Genesis 2 shows us much greater detail of God's design, starting in verse 4. Verse 4-6, this says, This is the history of the heavens and the earth, when they were created in the day that the Lord God made the earth and the heavens, before any plant of the field was in the earth, and before any herb of the field had grown. For the Lord God had not caused it to rain on the earth, and there was no man to till the ground, but amidst went up from the earth and watered the whole face of the ground. This is the summary of what God has done from Genesis 1-1 to the end of day five. And day six starts in verse seven. It says, and the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life and man became a living being. God formed man. The Greek for that word, man, is Adam. Does that sound familiar? Adam. Now, verse 8 through 17 still covers day 6, and it talks about the garden and the rivers that surround it, and then And we're not gonna touch on those verses because I don't think it's important to the topic that we're talking about, just so we can move along. But then in 18, we get back to Adam and his dilemma. And it says, and the Lord God said, it is not good that man should be alone. I will make him a helper comparable to him. Stop right there. He recognizes that it's not good for Adam to be alone. In 19, he summarizes what he has done prior to creating Adam, at least the first part of 19. It says, here's what I've done. Here's what God's done. Out of the ground, the Lord God formed every beast of the field and every bird of the air. He's already done that. That was day five, okay? And now, what he's doing now is he's bringing them Continue in verse 19, and brought them to Adam to see what he would call them. And whatever Adam called each living creature, that was its name. Keep on going. So Adam gave names to all cattle, to birds of the air, and to every beast of the field. But for Adam, there was not found a helper comparable to him. So God brings all these animals to Adam to name them, and yet still no woman. Now, don't get the idea that God did more important stuff because the woman was not important. That's not the case at all. He was teaching Adam that of all the animals, the birds, the beasts, that none of them were going to satisfy his need for a help mate or for a help meat. Read the last part again. But for Adam, there was not found a helper comparable to him. I think the word comparable is suitable here because it defines something that is like Him. A giraffe and a human are not comparable. A man and an ape are not comparable. God already knew this, but He wanted to make sure Adam knew this. But just in case, let's go to King James Version, just to make sure we aren't missing anything. And in it, in the King James Version, it says, but for Adam there was not found an help meet for him. Help in the Greek is azer, which means aid. It is the same phrase we find in my Bible in verse 18. There's nothing in this world that complements Adam right now at this point in time. And now Adam knows it. God is not saying, what do I do? I went through all the animals. We can't find anything for Adam. What am I going to do? God knows. God knows. His plan was laid out before creation. He's not worried. Adam's worried. Because Adam now realizes there's a problem. He sees male and female animals running around, male and female birds, male and female beasts, and he has no one. And God planned it that way. Now to verse 21. And the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall on Adam, and he slept. And he took one of his ribs and closed up the flesh in its place. Then the rib, which the Lord God had taken from man, he made into a woman, and he brought her to the man. And Adam said, this is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh. She shall be called woman, because she was taken out of man." God creates again a beautiful, perfect specimen, a perfect counterpart, to Adam, a being that is just like him, that complements him, not like him in every way, but even more special, because now he has a helper comparable to him, a help-meet. And they are perfect together, perfect because they are from God. And at this point in time, there is no sin, there's no temptation in the world, They are perfect. But that's about to change. And now we jump to chapter 3. And I'm not going to read about this first sin, because you are very familiar with it. You're very familiar with what happened. It's been preached to you. We'll fast forward to the results of the sin, starting in 316. So, up to this point, the woman has transgressed the law of God, God's command. Don't touch the fruit, don't eat the fruit. And then Adam takes a bite. And because Adam is over Eve, he is responsible for the sin. So he curses both of them. And in 16, it says, to the woman, he said, I will greatly multiply your sorrow and your conception. In pain, you shall bring forth children. Your desire shall be for your husband, and he shall rule over you. Okay, so God curses Eve, the perfect help meet, the perfect companion, or the perfect compliment to Adam. The first is emotion. Greater emotion, outright and during conception. The next is more pain and childbearing. And the next one is the desire shall be for your husband. Now you don't take the emotion from the beginning of this verse and apply it to the last part. It is not an emotional desire for the wife to be around her husband. to long after her husband? Let me pose this question to you, to you wives. Do you long and have such deep feelings for your husband to the point that it feels like it's a curse from God to you? No. If you've been married 20-something years, you're probably like, get away from me. Give me my own time. Do you think the love you have for your husband is a curse that God gave you? It's not. because that's not what it means here. The Greek for desire here is te shuk al, which, and I can't say it properly, I'm just pronouncing it out. Te shuk al, from the origin of that being shuk, which means to run after or run over. The curse here is the desire to have the husband's place in the world. This is where feminism starts. And the last part of the verse is the result of how the husband is granted by God to rule over this specific desire of his wife. John MacArthur in his commentary, he says this, Just as the woman and her seed will engage in a war with the serpent, i.e. Satan and his seed, because of sin and the curse, the man and the woman will face struggles in their own relationship. Sin has turned the harmonious system of God, ordained roles, into distasteful struggles of self-will. Lifelong companions, husbands and wives, will need God's help. in getting along as a result. The woman's desire will be to lord it over her husband, but the husband will rule by divine design." So what once was equal is no longer equal. And it seems, based on historical counts, that women have successfully been ruled over for thousands of years. Now, these are not my words. The Bible declares it. God talking directly to Eve. Your desire shall be for your husband, and he shall rule over you. And it has been a success. And then the 20th century came. Feminism reared its ugly head, found opportunity in the world to seduce women, that they are made for more than just having children and raising children, keeping the home, nurturing their husband. Godly values that Satan says are unimportant and worse than a low-paying job. And just as the world chooses Satan over God's ways, government gets involved. Godless men incorporate government because they now see the value of using not only men in the workforce, but women, and even children. I will say this, I do not blame women for this down spiral. I blame the world. And for thousands of years, men ruled government and ruled their home in a very ungodly way. And they went from one extreme of holding the female down, telling them how useless they are, how they have no voice, to the other extreme of supporting and applauding women to tackle the role that God has ordained the husband to have, which is to provide and protect for their wife and their children. Remember, this is not a sin for women to have this. This is a curse from God because of disobedience from Adam and Eve. You know the difference? And for the last 20, 30, 40, maybe 50 years or longer, America has had a booming economy. And we look at this as such a great thing, but what have we sacrificed in order to get it? Less wives raising their children, jobs galore producing products for things that we really don't need and we certainly can't afford. But that's okay, we've got credit cards, right? The bank will give us loans, we can buy it now and pay for it later. We can't afford the stuff we have. In order to keep our economy in America, both the husband and wife must work and must both provide for because of the bills that we now have. And I applaud those men and women, those husbands and wives that can actually sacrifice and say the man goes to work, the woman stays at home, takes care of the home, takes care of the children, maybe even homeschools the children. God bless them. I guarantee you, they're probably suffering a little bit because the economy is so great and everything's so expensive. It's hard for them to live, I would say, normalized. I can't say normal. Normal in America, okay? It's hard to survive with only one income. It is. But some of those Christians are really holding to that and God bless them. God bless them. America, the government, thinks the only way we can keep our economy from collapsing is to keep women in the workforce. America has painted itself into a corner, and they don't know how to get out of it. Oh, and keep this in mind. Because the wife is out there working, helping us men pay the bills, we husbands have relaxed a bit. Well, more than a bit, we've gotten plain lazy with our roles, with our responsibilities. Our curse from God is to toil and till the ground and get very little back. But in that curse, we now have a break because the wife is out there toiling with us and we have gotten plain lazy. So, We now both work and we pay someone to raise our children. Six months after our child is born, the woman goes back to work. the government pitches in to help sometimes to raise that child, but you know they hate God, and they'll indoctrinate your child, so when you think they're just out there in the public school system getting a good education, they'll be teaching them whatever the God-hating liberalism BS that they can find, and most of the time you won't even know it. Not to mention the fact that Public school system takes every child, every child, they don't turn any away. So those children that have been indoctrinated by their parents on how godless those parents are, and their indoctrination, those children become friends with your children, or with your grandchildren, and they indoctrinate each other. So the husband comes home tired, but has no one to nurture him, to help him find rest, so he becomes bitter. The wife comes home tired as well, and then she's expected to take care of the kids' needs from that point on, and deal with dinner, and give her husband some nurturing. Well, you can be sure she's bitter as well. So you have two bitter, married individuals to do what they're no longer called to do, and they'll take it out on each other. And the man, since he is usually stronger, will partially get his way, or he'll leave to get his way, which leads to what? Adultery, divorce, and a broken home. And yet God tells us in his word what we are to do. Why don't we go to this book, God's word, and read what the man's job is to do, and we apply it in the man's life, and the wives look at it and see what their job is, what their role is, and they go do it. That'd be so easy. He shows a wife of noble character in Proverbs 31. The value of a woman's worth in the books of Esther, Ruth, and the Song of Solomon. He shows the noble character of a husband in Moses and Jacob, Isaac, the Book of Proverbs, Song of Solomon. He even makes it simple by giving us one word each. Wives, submit. Husbands, love. And while it'd be easy to dive deep into each one of these words and preach a sermon defining each of these, we simply don't have the time. But I can tell you one thing, that wives don't do a really good job of submitting, and I can personally tell you that men do a horrible job of loving. You see, we've let what I call, I call it Christian feminism, but that's really not a good, that's not a really good term. Women want to submit in what they want to submit to, to their man. They don't submit in the right way, okay? And they also say, well, I'll submit if he is a godly man, if he treats me right. You're not submitting in the right godly way. Men, you are not loving in the godly way. I used to believe that that was how I sacrificed my body, myself, in order to protect my wife. That's pretty much it. There's so much more to it. And I'm failing it on daily, I can tell you. We are to love, we are to love so much that we pretty much submit to the wife and their needs. And don't get me wrong here. We are to hold them up because they are precious. And we're not doing that, man. We're not. from understanding, now there's so much other things I could get into, what time is it? Yep, there's so many other things I can get into, like why the wives are to submit to their husbands as the church submits to Christ, and why husbands are to love their wife the way Christ loves the church. I could talk about why churches are commanded to take care of widows, but not widowers. And why Paul talks to the disciples and specific servants in Christ, in Corinthians, why he would rather them not be joined in marriage, but be like him. There's sermons. There's three or four sermons right there. But I will leave you with Corinthians 7. Turn to Corinthians chapter 7. I will leave you starting in chapter 7. I hear pages turning. Y'all didn't get to it as quick as I did? I cheated. All right, seven, verse two. Nevertheless, because of sexual immorality, let each man have his own wife, and let each woman have her own husband. Let the husband render to his wife the affection due her, and likewise also the wife to her husband. The wife does not have authority over her own body, but the husband does. And likewise, the husband does not have authority over his own body, but the wife does. Do not deprive one another, except with consent for a time, that you may give yourselves to fasting and prayer, and come together again, so that Satan does not tempt you because of your lack of self-control." But I say this as a concession, not as a commandment. But it's pretty close to a commandment, because it is the Word of God, isn't it? This is how we should be living as Christians. And based on what I've talked about here, the way the world is going, you know the job is not just inside your home. It's influencing outside. It's fighting against the things that liberals or the world pushes on us, the stuff that government pushes on us. We must fight against that. If we don't, your children won't see it in you. Your grandchildren won't see it in you. You think they're gonna come to Christ? when they see you not fighting for God, not fighting for your values that He gave you? Most of you are older than I am, so you have grandchildren. Your fight is not over. Your fight is not, it is much harder. It is much harder than mine is right now. Mine's easy. I've got six kids, I've got five of them here. My wife's not even here. My wife, my wife and my oldest kid, they're at OBU in Arkadelphia. This is her last day to be able to register for classes. She'll be a freshman, so they're having to do that today. But this job is easy for me because I still have my kids at home. Once your kids leave home, it's hard to be an influence on them. I mean, it gets bad when they're teenagers, but when they move out of the house, it gets really tough to instill your values. So you gotta figure out ways, grandparents, to love the children, the adult children that you have, and still instill those values, Okay, and if they're going to church still, encourage them. Don't do it in a nagging way. It's so easy to do it in a nagging way. My mom nags me. Oh man, she nags me. She does. Figure out a way to do it in a nurturing way. And then do the same with the grandchildren. Don't spoil them. Don't think of what the world has told you. Grandparents, spoil your grandchildren. No! You have a bigger responsibility now. Especially if I have convinced you that you have failed as a parent raising your children, not instilling the values in them, and now they're not even going to church. Are they? They could be, maybe. I hope they are. I really do. I told you I'm not a very loving preacher. I'm a street preacher. I'm hardcore, I'm sorry. Let me encourage you. Brothers and sisters in Christ, be an influence on your children, no matter how old they are. Be an influence on your grandchildren. Be an influence on your great-grandchildren if you're fortunate enough to have them. Let's pray. Father, we love you. We thank you so much for Jesus Christ. We thank you for the plan that you laid out and you even wrote it for us to remind us so we can go to it anytime we want to, to be reminded of that perfect plan that you gave us. the roles that you gave us, plenty of examples that you gave us. Lord, help us not find examples in television, in the computer, in our phone. Let us go to your word to find those examples and let us be inspired by them. And slap us on the wrist if we are going the wrong direction. lovingly get us back into where we need to be in serving you and being responsible for the things that you've given us, that you have blessed us with. I think all of us see our children as blessings from you, and even more so, and I can't relate yet, but see grandchildren as blessings from you. but help us have the mentality and the Christ-like mindset to raise them biblically and instill whatever we can in them while we have this. And to fight against this government that we hold dear, that we love, that we're thankful to be in, but that we stand against. tyranny, and then we stand against godless ideas that they push from government. We need strength there, Lord. We really need strength there. Call us to the things that we need to, to the meetings that we need to go to, to the protests that we need to go to. to the people, the lost people that you put in front of us, that we can deliver a gospel message to them through witnessing or preaching or whatever way you call this to do it. We need to be that shining light if we are truly saved. We need to let our light shine. And it's not by staying silent and doing good deeds and saying, Jesus loves you. That's not it. We are to be very outward on our appearance and very verbal on who you are and what you've done and what you will do to those that repent and put their trust in you. Thank you, Father. Thank you, Jesus. And it's in your name we pray and ask this. Amen.