[0:00] pray. Father, your word says in the third verse of Psalm 100, know that the Lord, he is God.
[0:12] It is he who made us, and we are his. We are his people, and we are sheep of his pasture.
[0:23] Father, as we turn to you right now, let us uphold who you are today, regardless of what we feel you are, regardless of what we are told who you are. Father, help us to grasp how you've made us and your motive that was set before us at the foundation of the world.
[0:51] Father, let us glorify you at this time as we just reflect and become in awe that you have created us for a relationship with you. Let that just resonate within our minds at this point.
[1:11] We pray for your help as you guide us through the scriptures today. We pray this in Jesus' precious and holy name. Amen. Amen. The first point on the table is God's design is under attack.
[1:34] God's design is under attack. Every so often, as I'm doing my manly construction projects, right, as the stereotypes say, I find one point or another those pesky screws that just don't seem to want to cooperate. No matter how much elbow I put on it, no matter how much force, no matter what kind of tools I get out to help, it just won't come loose, right? We've all had those screws, right? Maybe this is just a personal problem I'm finding out. But those screws that you just can't loosen.
[2:21] And so I found it's helpful to probably take a hammer and maybe that screw, maybe just give it a good whack just one time. Not to break it, but just to maybe loosen its fastened position within its location.
[2:41] And sometimes through whacking that, it actually breaks up some rust. It breaks up some corrosion and everything from being seated so long within that position. And I believe within the landscape of our culture today, that biblical doctrine is similar to that. That God has screwed and fastened biblical doctrine within our society. Within our society. We see instances of that in our society. And there's various movements throughout the centuries that have been like a hammer whack, just that have loosened that screw so that you can slowly unfasten that which God has placed. We see that. I don't think I have to go in too much detail about Satan's plan and attack against academia. I had the luxury of being sent to a public school and I was indoctrinated with whatever the government had for me based upon universities because universities teach the teachers that I'm being taught by. And obviously, I was taught a certain way for over 10,000 hours of my life from kindergarten all the way to senior year in 12th grade.
[4:10] And you see that he's attacked those. Many universities are extremely liberal in their beliefs. And if the universities are under this sort of unwinding process of who we are, who we're made to be, what the reality was that God has set forth, if they are teaching the teachers that are all around the world and they're teaching students, you're only a generation from a complete upside down society.
[4:37] And so it wasn't as if one day we wake up in society and realize that the world has completely lost it, right? Turn on the news. I don't know. Maybe it's just, I see it on CNN and Fox News. I mean, I don't choose your weapon. It's both. They're whacked out. And so you see that. And similar to the blunt force of a hammer on a seated screw, what we see in the culture hastily unscrews the biblical reality from the fibers of culture and society around. But in regard to what we're discussing today of recovering God's design for men and women, we see the hammer swing upon that deep-seated screw that God has put there in the rise of feminism. And despite contrary opinions of feminist movements over the last night, at the end of the 19th century into the mid-20th century, it wasn't due because of men being lazy, that the men just wouldn't own up to their part. You know, just the women are the ones that are working and the men are just lazy. The rise of feminism, especially within the hammer swing of 1960s, occurred as a woman's response to strong men. That it came as strong women combating strong men to earn a place. And now I want to preface that the premises and things like that were great. I'm not the kind of person that's very fundamentalist, like women shouldn't vote and everything like that.
[6:16] I think it did give women a voice, but just as anything good sometimes in life, in the name of liberation, it can be taken so far that it kind of just, you start getting into this whole other topic of discussion of actually not giving women a voice, but actually silencing men. I think that the aim was good, the premises were good, of giving both voices. But it kind of went too far, especially through forerunners Gloria Steinem and Betty Friedan. They combated biblical problems with cultural solutions. Consider the argument from Friedan. This was a very prominent activist of the 1960s.
[7:05] She argued that American women of the era were enslaved and were defined by their roles as mother and wife. And she actually went on to say that the family is a comfortable concentration camp, if you know your history. A comfortable concentration camp. That's what she thinks of the family.
[7:25] And her goal was not to eliminate marriage, but, quote, wanted women to insist for more in life, for them to reach outside of marriage for fulfillment. Does that sound familiar?
[7:43] Well, it does in our family. Whenever somebody asks my wife, so what do you do for a living? Oh, I stay at home. Oh. They would respond kind of confused. Well, you don't do anything?
[8:01] Yeah, I'm a mother and a wife, right? And trust me, these conversations happen. And what basically is a question that would be scandalous back in the 1960s is now sort of like celebrated that, you know, the women kind of neglect their families in order to work. Let the daycare raise children, right? It's sad. It's a sad reality. And this ideology comes from Friedan of reaching outside of marriage, outside of marriage, outside of the family to find fulfillment.
[8:33] Steinem says something similar to that. She goes a little bit further, and she says, patriarchy requires violence. Patriarchy requires violence or the subliminal threat of violence in order to maintain itself. And the most dangerous situation for a woman is not with the unknown man in the street or an enemy at wartime, but rather a husband or a lover in the isolation of their home. Steinem, what do you think? Do you think it's because of those lazy men who just wouldn't jump into gear? I would imagine that lazy men didn't help the issue. It only maybe gave them a little bit more time and attention to their cause. But that is a lie from Satan.
[9:30] Fonnie Boncom actually highlights a couple aspects of the effect of feminism that we see in the world today. And this is the attack on God's design, which is our first point, is that the effects of feminism is masculinize girls that no longer were raising women, just raising men who are biologically capable of raising children. We're feminizing boys, and boys are not raised to be masculine any longer.
[10:02] There's delayed, confused marriages more than ever now. Most people are still living at home in their 30s, right? And roles in marriage are confused despite biblical instruction, and we negotiate with God's word, plummeting birth rates, and even abortion, even abortion. Abortion being an effect of feminism?
[10:27] Why would that be? Because the goal of feminism is egalitarianism, sameness between male and female, being no difference between boys and girls. And so abortion is a feminist attempt of being essentially a man, not having children, if they so desire, because it was within their God-given design. It's under attack. We also see gender confusion. I don't know how many genders are out there right now.
[10:54] Complete gender confusion. Normalizing single-parent homes, and Vaudeh ends with the ninth effect of feminism, and it's accepting homosexuality. And obviously, it's Pride Month. I mean, the world's going wild this month, maybe louder than ever. Just everything is red, you know, all these colors of the rainbow. But I'm not talking about accepting homosexuality in the world. It's definitely accepted. I'm talking about the church being accepted in the church. And so, if we date this issue back of feminism and everything, it happened in the 1960s, and there was a lot going on within the culture. Praise God that racism started to get addressed at those times, that we saw equality in those aspects. And those were the good tenets of these movements. And we can see the good in that, but we can also see the bad, especially the rise of what's known as Marxism. And that's originally consisted of three related aspects. The first being philosophical anthropology, a certain study of humanity. And this also stemmed into a theory of history and an economic and political program, similar to just everything works out for the good of all people. Everyone is great.
[12:15] You know, you throw up your peace sign back in the 60s and 70s, and we just get along. John Lennon's song will kick in, right? Marxism looks like redemptive solutions and liberation. However, it is man's way. It's not God's way of redemption, of liberation. It's redemption without Christ.
[12:40] Marxism birthed feminism, and the byproduct of feminism has resulted in several aspects of life that used to be scandalous. Used to be scandalous, but now are celebrated. Abortion, homosexuality, gender confusion, redefining the family. You're confused with gender? Woohoo! Me too! Let's join forces, right? And here we are, folks. Here we are. 2021, and it's here. We see that slow fade within just 50 to 60 years. Just that swing of the hammer upon God's design, and we're slowly still unscrewing that reality. And Genesis is a book of foundations, isn't it? So this is where we're going to begin our travels today. As we look and respond to this landscape of the culture today, we're going to go into the second point in just a moment. And this is where we will learn the fundamental truths of the natural order that God created for us, and he's instilled in the world, whether we like it or not, whether we feel like it or not. And it is also where we see how the fall has distorted also that reality, and how sinful human beings reject the created order. And I just want to take a sidestep for a moment.
[14:09] If Genesis is a book of foundations, and the world is being attacked as God's design is being under attack, no wonder there's so much assault upon sexuality and gender, because within the realm of sexuality and gender, you have the foundation of who we are, what we're created to be. This is Satan's attack on Genesis 1 through 3. So let's look at it in the second point today. And we are going to see where we're at here. Point two is that God's design dates before the fall. It dates before the fall.
[14:52] And we're going to have a couple scriptures here. If you want to open up to Genesis 1, we're going to kind of be cruising through and highlighting a couple aspects within the text. I encourage you to open your Bible so you can see for yourself that I'm not just blowing hot air up here, that this is truly God's word, and that this is God's design. So we're going to look at Genesis 1. We're going to start in verse 26. It'll be up on the screen, like I said, that God's design dates before the fall.
[15:23] Let's look at that design. God said in verse 26, let us make man in our image after our likeness, and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the heavens, and over the livestock, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.
[15:44] So God created man in his own image. In the image of God, he created him. Male and female, he created them. Simply saying, both Adam and Eve were created in God's image. This is true.
[16:03] Equal before God as persons and distinct in their manhood and womanhood. Let's look at his design before the fall. Before the fall, as chapter 2, if you want to flip over probably a page, in chapter 2, we see a progression of the story unfold. Before the fall, God designed man in charge of his word. In chapter 2, verse 15, and the Lord God took the man. The woman isn't created at this time yet. The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it. There you have it. You have a role of men working diligently for the Lord and to keep it. In verse 16, and the Lord God commanded the man saying, you may surely eat of every tree of the garden, but the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat. For in the day that you eat of it, you shall surely die. We see that Adam was entrusted with God's word to preserve it, to protect his word. And then look down just to verse 18.
[17:22] We see before the fall, God designed man with authority and headship. Verse 18 says, Then the Lord God said, It is not good that the man should be alone. I will make him a helper fit for him. Now out of the ground, the Lord God had formed every beast of the field and every bird of the heavens and brought them to the man to see what he would call them. Authority. And whatever the man called every living creature, that was its name. The man gave names to all livestock and to the birds of the heavens and to every beast of the field. But for Adam, there was not found a helper fit for him.
[18:13] So the Lord God caused the man to fall into a deep sleep. So the Lord in verse 21, so the Lord God caused the deep sleep to fall upon the man in order to make man not think that he's doing this. It's all God's causing him to fall into deep sleep. It's all God's doing. It's all his work.
[18:34] And while he slept, took one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh and the rib that the Lord God had taken from the man, he made into a woman and brought her to the man. Then the man said, This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh. She shall be called woman because she has been taken out of man. We see authority in headship before the fall. And so you see distinctions in masculine and feminine roles are ordained by God as part of his created order. It's part of it.
[19:21] And should echo within every heart of every human being. And Adam's headship in marriage was established by God before the fall and was not a result of sin, which is a very popular argument within the evangelical church today. And we'll get into that a little bit later.
[19:42] But before the fall, God made his design distinct with roles. So let's go to point three. God's design was distorted due to the fall in Genesis three. Flip over if you need to another page or two. We're going to be in verse nine of chapter three. God's design was distorted due to the fall. You see, we as a culture today have confused the effects of the fall with that intended design, especially in the church. After the fall, God's design was distorted, but it was still preserved. We see this in verse nine of chapter three. After the fall, they took the fruit of the forbidden fruit. They ate it. They disobeyed God. And now God is coming back to the garden to find them.
[20:36] And it says in verse nine, but the Lord God called to the man and said to him, where are you? He called to the man, not the woman. After the fall, God's design was distorted, but it was preserved with pain. And we see that he said in verse 16 to the woman, he said, I will surely multiply your pain and childbearing in pain. You shall bring forth children. Your desire shall be contrary to your husband, but he shall rule over you. In other words, church.
[21:25] It used to be easy to be fulfilling this God given design, and now it's not going to be so easy for you. There is going to be pain in pregnancy. There is going to be this sort of this submission aspect that's going to be really difficult at various times, and it's going to be hard. It used to be easy.
[21:45] Now it's hard. And the last section I want to look at is after the fall, God's design was distorted, but preserved with pain. And looking at Adam now, and Adam said to him in verse 17, because you have listened to the voice of your wife and have eaten of the tree of which I commanded you, you shall not eat of it. Cursed is the ground because of you. In pain, you shall eat of it all the days of your life. Thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you, and you shall eat the plants of the fields. In other words, it used to be easy, Adam. Now it's going to be hard. It used to be easy to obey his word, but now you have been, you have allowed, you've allowed your wife to speak truth into your life and disobey God's word. It's going to be hard, and your laboring is going to be hard as well. In fact, one more in verse 20. After the fall, God's design was distorted, but preserved with pain.
[22:54] We see it in verse 20. The man called his wife, his wife's name Eve. He's still exercising authority. He's still representing headship. In verse 20, the man called his name Eve. After all of this, and because she was the mother of the living. That's a lot of passages of scripture, scripture, but I hope that you're a Bible note taker, and I hope that you're circling in your scripture of where you need to be in debates regarding who, what biblical womanhood is, what biblical manhood is, and you need to know where to find it. And so, the fall introduced distortions into the relationship between men and women. We see that today. We see in the home, the husband's loving, humble headship tends to be replaced by domination and passivity.
[23:53] It's either one or the other, one extreme to the other. And the wife's intelligent, willing submission tends to be replaced by usurpation, servility. In the church, the church, the church that should have it figured out, right? In the church, sin inclines men toward worldly love of power or failing in spiritual responsibilities and inclines women to resist limitations on their roles or to neglect the use of their gifts in appropriate ministries.
[24:29] Guys, I know I just dumped a lot of scripture on you, and I know you're probably like, bro, slow down. There's a lot there. I'll slow down. But here we are. Here we are in 2021 with a world that has no idea who God is, has no idea what their created purpose is for, and so in trying to make sense of it, they're just whacking the hammer in the name of liberation and justice with no idea what justice truly is. And this isn't just the world. This is also the church.
[25:13] Boy, the church. And we'll get to that in just a minute. So we got to pull out a truth out of all those scriptures, out of everything, all those points of the attack on God's design, the pre-fall design and also the post-fall design. We have to see the first truth today, and that is that God's design for humanity is binary. Adam and Eve were created in God's image, equal before God in persons and distinct in their manhood and womanhood. And the same remains true today. To make us the same takes away God's design, his unique design of each and every one of us, men as men and women as women.
[26:05] It also denies our God-given purpose of glorifying him as either males or females, as we have been created for. And the diminishing happens most often in culture when you see a secular culture swing that hammer in the name of progress, in the name of liberation, in the name of writing something new in the books. Society today is doing everything possible to flatten or erase any distinctions that are known between sexes today. It's being taught even in schools. But one's biological sex, we know as a church, as, I mean, it's basic science as well. I'm no scientist, but it is basic science, that biological sex is not a redefinable characteristic. And the idea that it is incidental to one's personhood is especially damaging to that design, to especially women, especially our children. The second truth that we have to understand today is that there is significant distinctions still in God's design.
[27:14] Distinctions in masculine and feminine roles are ordained by God as part of the created order. And in this truth, Satan has impressed upon man and woman's heart the opportunity to unseat that screw. Just one one turn, one rotation further as it unfastens God's perfect design. And I want you to think for a moment. All right, wake up this morning. This is a time where you wake up. You can have slept before.
[27:45] If his tactic, if Satan's tactic is to usurp the authority of almighty God who casted him out of his presence, if Satan's tactic is to usurp God, then his object of usurpation is the man. And the only way to usurp the man's authority is by using women and to distort women's God-given design in order to rise them up and try to take man's authority. Because if he can do that, he can usurp God's authority that he gave to man in the first place in the garden before women was made, and in so doing, usurp God.
[28:34] And there you have it. You have a very confused culture and society. However, the Old Testament, as well as the New Testament, manifest the equality of high value and dignity, which God attached to both roles of men and women. That's a distinction. We see that. We're going to jump way forward. We're going to go to 1 Corinthians 11. It will be on the screen, but if you like the physical version, I'll give you a moment to flip to 1 Corinthians chapter 11.
[29:08] We see various distortions and distinctions, even in the New Testament church.
[29:20] And in 1 Corinthians 11, verse 7, it says, For a man ought not to cover his head, since he is the image and glory of God. But woman is the glory of man. For man was not made from woman, but woman from man. Neither was man created for woman, but woman for man. That is why a wife ought to have a symbol of authority on her head, because of the angels. Nevertheless, in the Lord, woman is not independent of man, nor man of woman.
[30:00] For as woman was made from man, so man is now born of woman. And obviously, there's a lot of cultural context to 1 Corinthians 11. I've heard all the pushback of using this verse in order to evaluate the created order, because, oh, women don't wear head coverings anymore.
[30:19] But notice the main point of what was going on back in this passage. There was confusion between who were men and who were woman. I could explain it simply that it's as if everyone shaved their head, and you can't pick out even, you know, which ones are men, which ones are women, and everything like that. So Paul is saying that the women should have a covering on their head to distinguish them from man. And so it's just a simple cultural setting. So obviously, I think that we can tell men from women in here, for the most part. But, you know, long hair is usually an indicator or something along those lines. But both the Old Testament and the New Testament affirm the principle of male headship in the family and in the church. And Jesus thought so highly of this church that he used this as an illustration to explain his relationship and his suffering and his sacrifice with the church.
[31:20] The third truth that we have, and then one more after that, is that there is significant, there is significant sameness in God's design, that God's design has significant sameness.
[31:38] And now distortions that followed the fall created problems, obviously, as you see in 1 Corinthians. Corinthians. Corinthian church was quite strange, but not too far from our day and age today.
[31:54] But it still remains true. Now, stereotypes of men and women are often unhelpful. They communicate often, like, this false sense of inferiority of women to men, or man's suppression of women. And, like, just the sayings, like, men protect and provide. And the women, they care and they help and nurture, right? I hope that doesn't come out of any of our mouths within this church. That's weak.
[32:22] It's unhelpful. And it's simply not true. Because this topic is sensitive, very sensitive. And we can't forget, coming out of an 18-message series in 1 Thessalonians, we can't forget Paul referring himself in his ministry to the 1 Thessalonian church. He talks about being a nursing mother in chapter 2, right? So, drop these weak stereotypes of men and women. Among other things, the Bible teaches that both men and women should exhibit courage. You better believe that if somebody tries to hurt our kids, mama bear's not going to sit around and say, well, hang on, don't assault my family yet. My husband's coming home from work as a good husband, right? And he'll be back at 5, and whatever you want to do, he'll address it, right? No. A couple of you would probably give me a run for my money at an arm wrestling contest and being female. And that's the truth about it.
[33:21] Among other things, women should, men and women should exhibit courage, care, hospitality, generosity, leadership, and submission, and not to mention the fruits of the Spirit, right? That's for all.
[33:36] When we understand that sex and gender is binary, many human experiences and characteristics will reveal themselves as simply not. That you don't have this conveyor belt of like, oh, a hairbrush is coming down the conveyor belt. That's a girl. And then here comes the Lego set. Boy. And then here comes the kitchen, right? Girl, here comes a power tool. Men, right? Those are unhelpful stereotypes, right?
[34:05] In other words, if we created like a Venn diagram based on human characteristics and activities, we see that it's not actually binary in human characteristics and activities. That there's a lot of overlap between the circles, similar to the little illustration of the Trinity.
[34:22] And there would be much overlap. And the fourth truth and last truth today is that God's design, God's design preserves dignity with boundaries. And this is important for us, church, especially in a church in our day and age today. And then we'll come to a couple closing challenges.
[34:43] God's design preserves dignity with boundaries. Listen up. While there are overlapping lines in various experiences and things like that, the Bible has also ingrained distinct functions that are to be preserved today that relate and reflect God's design. For instance, we believe that certain teaching roles within the church are reserved for men. Simply that God's ordained design prohibits women from exercising authority. And here within our church, the highest authority is the word of God.
[35:26] And so that brings to light 1 Timothy 2.12. I do not permit a woman to teach or to exercise authority over a man. Rather, she should remain quiet. And if she's remaining quiet, she's listening along with everyone else, men and women. And this is specifically talking about the exercising of that authority authority over a man. And so our authority being the word of God, this is similar to that word of God that was given to Adam to not eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil for, you know, how the story unfolds and how it all came to be. God entrusted that to Adam. So based on the created order, that authority stays and it's not compromised for men and women. And so in both men and women, a heartfelt sense of a call to ministry should never set aside the biblical criteria for particular ministries. Rather, biblical teaching should remain the authority and it should govern, it should test our subjective discernments for God's will, regardless if you feel called, right? Our feelings can lead us lead us astray. The heart's deceitful of all things, right? But a complementarian perspective of the Bible should empower both women and men alike to live out their God-given roles in beautiful submission to the word of God. And complementarian, it's something that will get a spell check on your phones. You try to type it out, it doesn't recognize it. But it is a simple phrase of basically meaning that if you had men and women sort of listed in two columns, you had a bunch of traits and gifts and all these things.
[37:06] And that you put checks among the men's column as you go down the list and check in the women's, well, this would be for, you know, this, you know, particular man or woman, you can have me or my wife, you know, we'll just put us on the, on the judgment here. So you go down through, and it's not saying that one is, is necessarily predominantly a skill set of one column, but when you get to the bottom and you add up the totals, it's an equal amount, that both are equal and they complement one another.
[37:36] Weaknesses for strengths and strengths for weaknesses. And so a man might feel his wife might be a better preacher than him, or the woman might feel like she's better qualified and skilled than her husband to preach. However, by no means would this give privilege to usurp the God-given mandates for women not to hold authority over a man? And now could the whole issue, think about this, if we're talking about biblical theology, could this very issue, it's large in the evangelical community today, this is a big, hot topic. I'm going down to the Southern Baptist Convention. I'm flying out tonight at about seven to go down and you got issues on racial reconciliation. You got issues with women, roles. You got a bunch of these things of sexual abuse and things that are just, it's just Satan is having a field day in the Southern Baptist Convention. But we believe that when we come together at this time to defend sound doctrine, that the fruit of that will definitely be tenfold. And so when we look at this issue within evangelical community that's even close to home today, doesn't the issue of women preaching, for instance, have that same distinct similarity and pattern of Satan in the gardens calling to the woman? Did God really say that you can't preach? That he gave you all these other things to do in the church, but he said, you can't do that?
[39:16] I got news for you. Right? Doesn't that echo back into Genesis? And could that be what is echoing and deceptive in the church today? You see, oneness in Christ does not equal sameness in Christ. Oneness in Christ is not equal to sameness in Christ. And when we travel down this road, it's dangerous. When you make that small incremental compromise, you know that there's probably additional compromises that will occur down the line. It's a slippery slope. But redemption in Christ aims at removing the distortions of the curse. And not the design by the curse. So in the family, husbands should forsake harsh and selfish leadership and grow in care and love for their wives. Wives should forsake resistance to their husband's authority and grow in willing, joyful submission to their husbands and leadership.
[40:21] In the church, redemption in Christ gives men and women an equal share in the blessing of salvation. Nevertheless, some governing and teaching roles within the church are restricted to men. And I got to tell you, we've probably, it's an egalitarian verse. It's kind of like on the banner. It's Galatians 3.28 that says there's neither male nor female and everything like that. If you travel down that theology far enough, you are one step away from accepting homosexuality in the church within your beliefs. It's happened in churches. If you trace history and learn from other people's mistakes, it's an incremental compromise in the wrong direction. And God did not design it that way. Therefore, both our created differences and our created similarities should be preserved to celebrate manhood and womanhood without essentializing either in ways that God doesn't. Amen? All right, we're going to wake up for a moment while we come down to the close.
[41:24] I want us to know, as a church, as a, if you're new with us today, that this is a very important topic. This is a very heated topic and debate. And the world may consider us fitting some archaic stereotype in life that, you know, there's the church, you know, they believe all these stereotypes of the women and the men and binary and everything. Such dated. It's as old as the Bible, right? Well, guess what?
[41:54] Good. Because I am resting upon the sufficiency of Scripture. And when we rest upon the sufficiency of Scripture as a whole, God works mightily to save sinners, to save those lost with the gospel, the good news of Jesus Christ. So we live or die upon the word of God, regardless of the cost.
[42:18] In all of life, Christ is supreme in authority and the guide for men and women. And there's no earthly submission, domestic, religious, or civil, that ever applies a mandate to follow human authority into sin. We see that all throughout Scripture, that we stand up for what is essential issues. And that we're convinced that at the denial of such issues, or the neglect of them, or these principles will lead to increasingly destructive tendencies, consequences in our families, in our churches, and the culture at large. So how do we respond to maybe women pastors? How do we respond to homosexuals? How do we respond to somebody who is confused in their gender? Do we just pull out some stones, right, and just knock them over? Of course not. We respond to these people with the same dignity, the same value, the same respect as image bearers, because they were created in the image of God too. And so the truth is that when we hand this down, it's a slippery slope of liberalism, and by somehow using Scripture to justify their actions, but they're still image bearers.
[43:30] So I have a couple challenges for us. I want, if you're a married woman, I challenge you to support and encourage your husbands vocally and prayerfully, vocally and prayerfully, married women.
[43:44] That a night out with the girls doesn't turn into a gossip session about your third child, known as your husband, right? That's not respect. Well, God sees it all, and it's not funny.
[43:58] Don't turn your night out to that. Respect and honor your husband. Let your husband be the crown of your life. Single women, be vocal, biblical activists to support the preservation of men stepping into roles of leadership. That a vacancy in leadership doesn't actually equate into, well, I might be called. I feel it in my bones. I'm called to it. There's a vacancy. Be patient for the right man when the Lord wills. We have to have a challenge for married men as well. Those who receive the highest authority, highest honor of headship, are usually where the highest degree of responsibility rests.
[44:41] Don't abuse that rank, as many have, and given a bad taste of male headship to much of the culture today. Don't abuse that rank in the name of God. The fruits of the Spirit are for you, too.
[44:53] Be the husband that a wife is to honor and submit to. That it's not hard for her to honor and submit to you. If you're a single man in this room, don't allow yourself to be a doormat of feminine activists. The warning signs are pretty clear today that it is easy to identify. Be a future husband worthy of submission, and find someone who will complement your weaknesses and encourage your strengths. Maybe you're a woman in here who can maybe preach. Maybe a half hour less than this guy up here, right? Maybe you're challenged in this whole thing because you can teach. You can bring the fire, right? I encourage you to find opportunities within your church to teach, specifically men and women, as which was God's design, according to Scripture. God did not make a mistake when he gave you the gift of being able to teach. And it's not a mistake. So encourage that gift within the confines of Scripture. My hope is for you to flourish in ministry within the boundaries of Scripture.
[46:05] And lastly, I challenge men who can't teach. If God can speak through a donkey, there's hope for you. Simply to say, that's what keeps me going.
[46:25] Don't allow your deficiencies, men, to determine your role and responsibility to preserve, to protect, and to uphold God's Word. And this isn't just in the church in a pulpit. This goes to your family, to be a spiritual leader who is raising your family in the trueness and the supremacy of God's Word. So it's only thinking carefully about all of these things, church.
[46:54] It's only thinking carefully about these issues that we can begin to appreciate the fullness of God's design. I hope you see that today, which is beautiful. It's not suppressive, but it encourages men and women within this vibrant, God-gifted boundary line of exhibiting their roles and their strengths and complementing weaknesses and giving encouragement to strengths.
[47:24] This is beautiful. This is robust, and it's very complex. By preserving a robust complementarianism, we affirm that men and women are both valuable and necessary. And God has made sure His design allows both to flourish within their lives as Scripture mandates. So let that be ever true as we go forward, as we conduct ourselves in accordance with Scripture along the lines of our statement of faith.
[47:57] And we know that if we trust the foundations of our faith, we can trust the ends of when we will meet Jesus Christ face-to-face in eternity. And He will tell us, well done, my good and faithful servant.
[48:11] Let's pray. Let's pray. Let's pray.