1153. Conclusion

Welcome to The Daily Platform from Bob Jones University in Greenville, South Carolina.

The school was founded in 1927 by the evangelist Dr. Bob Jones Sr. His intent was to make a school where Christ would be the center of everything so he established daily chapel services. Today that tradition continues with fervent biblical preaching from The University Chapel Platform. Today on The Daily Platform, we're concluding a study series entitled Divine Design, which is a study of biblical manhood and biblical womanhood. Today's message will be preached by Dr. Sam Horn. Well, I'd like to ask you to take your Bible this morning and turn to the 139th Psalm.

We'll be spending a little bit of time in that passage and then also in Romans chapter 12. I have, I have to say this has been one of the most engaging and interesting series that we've had on our Monday series since I've been here and I have been blessed as I have listened to the messages. I have been helped and sharpened as we have engaged together in conversation about some of those messages. I know the Monday at six o'clock question and answer time has been a special opportunity of engaging with you and sharpening for me and for others who have been a part of that. And so let me just make a quick announcement tonight because of all of the activities that are going on.

We aren't going to have that Monday evening Q&A time in Levenson Chapel. We will have one next Monday at the same time Levenson Chapel six o'clock and it'll serve as the final Q&A over everything that we've talked about in the series. And really we have had a phenomenal time this semester as we have taken a very careful look at what God has to say about divine design and our identity as image bearers who are called to do two things.

To display the glory of God and to proclaim the gospel of Christ by means of that identity as men and women who by the gracious working of the Holy Spirit have come to know God, love God, and follow God. And so it's been just an amazing time. And I have come at the end of this series to remind myself that it is not what I have learned or what I know about this topic because of our time together.

It's actually what I remember when I need it in the days that come. This past summer, an event took place in our home that sort of changed the dynamic for me. My son who graduated from Bob Jones University last May got married and left our home. And that left me in a house with two women and two dogs. Hopelessly outnumbered. I have come to learn that the proper answer to any question that comes my way is yes dear.

Of course dear. And I have also assumed a new ministry and responsibility in our home. And that is the ministry of killing any insect or bug or animal that comes into our home. Usually it's spiders. I had a massive opportunity to kill a huge spider on Saturday. It involved a ladder and a broom and it was a glorious moment when that occurred. One night we came home and I don't know how this happened but there was actually a bird flying around all through our house. And it was about 11 o'clock at night and I was thinking how do I get this bird out of here short of killing it?

Because that would absolutely destroy my marriage. So we got the doors open and that bird was just flying. We eventually got the bird out. But the animal that I despise the most is actually a biblical animal that we're supposed to look at and learn from and it's the ant.

You know we sang a moment ago all creatures of our God and King. I'm curious about the ant. I actually despise ants.

I hate them with as the Bible says a perfect hatred. When I was a kid in the third grade on a dare growing up in Texas on the playground somebody dared me to eat a fire ant. And in a moment of stupidity I ate one. And I decided I didn't want to crunch down on it because I didn't know what was going to happen so I swallowed it live. And it stung me all the way down and it involved a trip to the emergency room and it involved a lengthy discussion with my dad afterwards.

So I have a very deep animosity to ants. I was on a mission trip to the Dominican Republic way back when I was serving as a youth pastor in a local church. And we took this trip and we had the guys were staying in one place and the girls were staying in another.

You've all been on these trips. And I was laying down in the bunk where I had my sleeping bag and I looked over on the wall and there was a trail of ants just marching along glorifying God in their way. And I thought what am I going to do and I took out a can of hairspray.

Have you ever done this? It's an amazing thing actually. When you spray hairspray on an ant it freezes.

It can't go anywhere. So I spent a glorious half hour delightfully freezing this column of ants as it was making its way up the wall. And so yesterday or Saturday rather I walked out of my house and there were all of the little ants had made a little ant hill in our driveway and my wife handed me a can of raid and I had one of those moments where you have total power over a creature. And I just stood there and all these little ants are scurrying around and I just loaded them up with this raid. And the next day and I scraped off the ant pile and the next day they had come back and they had rebuilt it.

So I did it again. And the reason I tell you that story is that I think sometimes what happens to us, we hear a sermon like this or we hear a series like this and we understand it and it passes through us just like those ants probably understood that something really bad was happening to them. And then we go our way and we forget it and we have it somewhere in our memory banks but when we actually need it most in our marriage, in our home, in the world in which we live where we are called to live out our hope as image bearers by the power of the gospel, when we most need it we forget it. And so what I want to do this morning in our last session is I want to give you three simple observations and I want to try to answer three basic questions that I hope will allow you to retain what we have done this semester in our series so that it isn't just something that you heard while you were a student at Bob Jones University.

It actually becomes a part of who you are as an image bearer. So here we go, what are the three observations? Observation number one, divine design is one of the most important topics you will hear during your four years at Bob Jones University because it will help you find your place in life. This is exactly what David was talking about in the 139th Psalm. I asked you to turn there, let me just put verses 13 through 17 up on the screen and you let your eyes sort of walk through them, but David expresses his understanding of God as a supreme divine designer of his life. And out of David's recognition of God's divine design, we draw the idea that God establishes through divine design the person that He intends for you to be in life.

David talks about God forming him and fashioning him while he was yet in his mother's womb. God determined who you would be and who I would be and what body would be joined to our soul. It's an interesting thing that as we think theologically about being human, there is an embodiment to that.

The only time that you will be separated from your body is after you die and before God raises up that body, you will have a disembodied existence for a brief period of time. But for all eternity, God intends for you to inhabit a body and your body is joined to your soul and that is who you are as a person. And God wants you to know that as you think about the eternality of that, that He has carefully designed and skillfully crafted the body that He intended for you to have. Your physical frame, my physical frame, was not hidden from God while we were being made and fashioned in the hidden places of the womb.

It was according to God's design and God's plan. My gender, my personality, my physical makeup, all of it designed by God according to His plan. So divine design establishes the person that God intends for you to be in life.

And then it explains the plan that God has for your life. David says, your eye did see my substance yet being imperfect before it was formed. In your book, all of my members, all of my physical traits, all of the parts of my body were designed by God, which in continuance were fashioned.

In other words, the days that you planned for me were formed when as yet there was none of them. And then David says, God not only designed my person and the pathway that I am to take, God designed my personality, my thoughts, and my ways. In verses one through six of the same Psalm, oh Lord, thou has searched me and known me, thou knowest my down sitting and my uprising, thou understandeth my thought afar off, thou compassed my path and my lying down are not acquainted with all of my ways. For there is not a word in my tongue, but lo Lord thou knowest it all together. Thou has beset me behind and before and laid thine hand upon me. And then here's David's conclusion about all of this.

This knowledge is too high for me. When David thinks about divine design in Psalm 139, here's what he says, wonderful are your works and my soul knoweth it right well, verse 14. In verse 17, how precious also are thy thoughts unto me, oh God, how great is the sum of them. And then in verse 14 again, I will praise you for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.

So as we wrap up our series on divine design, here's a question. Do you feel that way about yourself? When you think about your body, when you think about your gender, when you think about the fact that God made you as an image bearer and He made you a male and you think about what biblical masculinity looks like after we've learned from the Scriptures what it looks like this semester. Or God made you female and in the beauty of femininity, God intends for you to live out your life. Have you ever stopped to thank God for that? And to say, God, this is too, too great for me. How precious is the thought that you designed me with the body that I have?

And that brings us to the second observation. This is not just one of the most important topics because it will help you find your place in life. It is actually one of the most controversial topics that you will face throughout your life.

And here's why. Divine design, as you've heard it this semester, stands in total contradiction to the prevailing cultural trends that surround your life as you live in today's world. And the reason that is so is that divine design proclaims an authoritative truth that is grounded in the Scripture over and against worldviews that are marked by relativism, which denies the idea of absolute truth, pluralism, which grants validity and equality to competing truth claims, and cynicism, the doubting of any truth claim. And you are going to live in that environment fleshing out what it means to be a biblical man or a biblical woman. And as you live by these realities, actually it will be very costly for some of you. It may cost you a promotion. It may actually hinder your ability and your career path. It may, perhaps, even reduce your ability to live peaceably with all men. But these beliefs that you hold about gender and marriage are not just increasingly becoming unpopular in the eyes of many in the world. They are actually immoral. And you are existing in a world where the divine design that you have heard this semester and that you are living out in your life as you go out and live it will actually be thought of in many eyes as an immoral way to live.

Because it is intolerant of things that deviate from the established truth in Scripture. And that brings us to the third observation and that is this. It's actually one of the most powerful truths you will hear during your time here because it enables you to live a significant life. In the world and in the midst of people broken by sin, cursed by death, filled with people who are slaves to sin, held captive by the fear of death, God has called, equipped, and energized a group of people who as they live out the divine design of their life show a better way to a better mission with a better end from a God who actually loves and cares and sustains and provides to people who desperately need to know that truth. And there's a room full of people like that here this morning who have been called to that mission.

And so as you embrace divine design and as you live it out in your life, it becomes one of the most important ways to fill out and to live out the vocation that God has called you to live. And that brings us to this. So how do we go about doing that?

As we take everything we've heard, how do we go about and actually bring it about? And that brings us to three questions that we want to ask and attempt to answer briefly in our time together this morning. So what are the questions? Well number one, why? Why should I embrace divine design when it is so counter to the world in which I live in 2019?

And that's actually a really fair question. I mean that's actually a really good question because as you think about living out a life that is attractive and authentic for the gospel to people who need to know the truth about God, when you embrace divine design and it is so counter cultural to your mission to what you perceive you are attempting to do, it is a fair question to ask why. Why do I need to embrace divine design when it is so counter cultural?

And let me give you three very quick reasons. Number one, because it is the ultimate display of the wisdom of God. God is described in Jeremiah chapter 10 verse 12 and again in Jeremiah 51 verse 15 as the person who made the earth by his power. He established the world by his wisdom and he stretched out the heavens by his discretion. Proverbs chapter 8 verses 22 to 31, it's too long of a passage to read this morning, but wisdom is embodied. It's personified as being with God in the creative moments when He called the universe into existence. And David reminds us in the 19th Psalm that original creation, the spectacular world in which you and I live, actually is a continual expression of the presence and the power and the skill and the ability of God, which is what wisdom is. But as you read the New Testament, you discover very quickly that it goes back to Genesis 1, Psalm 8, and it reminds you that as wonderful as that first creation is, there is actually a second creation that is the image of God, that actually reveals who God is and what He is actually like.

And that is you. And in the design that God had for your life, male and female, required both genders to image who He really is and what He is like, you become the supreme example of the skill and the ability and the wisdom of God. You also become the supreme expression of the moral authority of God. And that's exactly what divine design does. You remember the very first sermon that Dr. Pettit preached? He took us to Matthew 19, where Jesus was answering a difficult question of His day, and we know that Jesus had authority greater than Moses, and He used it at times.

But in answering this particular question, He went back to the Scriptures, and He went back to the original design of God, and that is where He established authority. And so the original design that God had for men and women is not just the ultimate display of His wisdom, it is the supreme expression of His moral authority, and then it is the highest experience of the goodness of God you will ever experience in your life. Your body, your gender, your sexuality are gifts from God.

And so here's a question that I think you and I have to answer. As I think about my body and as I think about my sexuality, my gender, my gifts and my abilities, do I actually think about them as a gift from God? You know, every Christmas you get gifts, and sometimes you get a gift, and you open up that gift and it's not what you expected. And you don't really know quite how to say it because the person who gave it to you is right there. You're like, you know, this is really nice, this is really interesting.

But it's evident that you really don't think that gift is very valuable. Let me ask you this, do you feel that way about your body? And about your gender? And about your gifts and your abilities? Because if you do, James has a reminder for you in James chapter 1, every good gift and every perfect gift is from above and cometh down from the Father of lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning. God is the all-wise designer, and he only gives good gifts. So whatever it is that you're struggling with, with relationship to who you are as a person, your gender, your body, your physical abilities, remember what James is saying.

This is a good gift coming down from a good father. So that's the first question, why should I embrace divine design? Because ultimate display of the wisdom of God, it is the supreme expression of the moral authority of God, and it is the highest example of the goodness of God. Question number two, how should divine design actually shape my life? And that's where I want you to go to Romans chapter 12 and think through the verses that are so familiar at the start of that passage of scripture, that portion of scripture.

And there are a lot of ways that we can answer the question, how should divine design actually shape my life? But for time's sake, let me go to the primary way that Paul talks about. Paul says you are to use your body in a certain way. You are to use your body to render acceptable worship, authentic, true worship to God. This spiritual service that you are to render is based on the gracious activity of God in your life. Look at chapter 12 verse 1. Paul said I beseech you by the mercies, plural, of God.

In the first 12 chapters or 11 chapters of Romans, he has laid out incredible activity of God in your life and in my life that literally sums up what these mercies are. Justification before God. Peace with God.

Permanent access. Standing in the grace of God. Confident assurance of reaching future glory. We are told that all sinners have fallen short of the glory of God. And all of a sudden we are reminded that there is a future confidence that we have of actually achieving the glory of God through the mercies of God. And then the personal enablement by the Spirit of God. So based on the gracious activity of God, you are to use your life as a living, that's ongoing, daily devoted as opposed to once and done. It's an ongoing way of life. A living, holy, that's the idea of set apart in consecration to God, dedicated to God as opposed to profane and regular, describing a lifelong sacrifice that is acceptable morally and spiritually upright.

And here's the point. All of this is done through the body God gave you and that He designed for you. It's really astonishing because in Romans chapter one, you meet a group of people who are using their bodies, in Romans chapter one verses twenty-four through thirty-two, they are using their bodies for sensual pleasure and sexual immorality.

And by the time you get to Romans chapter twelve, God has taken those people and their bodies and He has cleansed them, He has purified them, He has forgiven them, and now they are to take those bodies that God designed and they are to use them to do the acceptable, perfect will of God. This requires a totally new way of thinking. This is why Paul talks about the idea that you have to renew your mind through the word of God. And that new way of thinking results in a completely new way of living.

That you stop being conformed to the world around you, the way they think about their body, the way they think about their sexuality, the way they think about their gender, and instead you think a completely new way because your mind has been renewed and the renewing of that mind results in a completely new way of living. And that brings us to the final question that is this, what will all of this require of me? So if I'm actually going to do what Paul says, I'm actually going to take this body that frustrates me at times, that I'm having a hard time being contented, and I'm really going to think about it with a new mind that is renewed by the word of God.

How and what will be required of me? And here are three very simple things as we close. You must believe that God is telling you the truth about your body and about your life. Titus chapter 1 verse 2 reminds us that God cannot lie. So you must believe that God is telling you the truth about life and then here's the next thing, you must trust that God is going to do good and not evil in your life. Psalm 84, 11, no good thing does he withhold from them who walk uprightly. And finally you must obey God for all of the days throughout all of the ways of your life with the body and the gender and the role that God has given you. 1 Peter 4, 19, therefore let those who suffer according to God's will entrust their soul to a faithful creator while doing good. Psalm 23, 6 says this, surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life.

So believe God, trust God, and obey God in all of your life with your body rendering him acceptable worship. Father thank you for our series, thank you for what we've learned, thank you for the way your spirit has taken your word and applied it to our life. Lord as we go out living in a world that desperately needs to see the transforming power of the gospel at work in a person, Lord help us to be that person using our gender, our sexuality, and our role in ways that glorify you. In Jesus name, Amen.

You've been listening to a sermon preached by Dr. Sam Horn. This concludes our study series about Biblical manhood and Biblical womanhood and we trust this has been a blessing in your life. These daily programs are made possible by the many friends of Bob Jones University and this radio ministry. If you appreciate these programs and benefit from the faithful preaching and teaching of God's word, would you consider sending us a special financial gift today? You can easily do that through the website thedailyplatform.com and then click on the give button on the home page. We'd also love to hear about how this program is helping your Christian walk. Please send us your feedback using the contact button at the bottom of the website thedailyplatform.com or you can call us at 800-252-6363. Join us again tomorrow for more chapel sermons at Bob Jones University on The Daily Platform.