God’s Glory in Our Gender - Matthew 19:4-6 - Let's Be Clear

All right.

Hey guys, welcome. I got to be honest with y'all. I don't think I'm quite over that announcement of 300 middle school and high school students at our lunch last week. I just, I don't know. That just kind of hit me. I mean, it's not that I didn't know that. I do know things like that. Okay.

But just, I mean, I just think about guys, I remember it wasn't that long ago when the high school ministry was three students. Okay. And they named it overflow. I'm like, guys, it ain't really overflowing.

Okay. This was our first couple of years at Mercy Hill. And I mean, we prayed like crazy that one day we would see a really flourishing high school and middle school ministry. And some of you guys have been around Mercy Hill for a long time. Some of your kids were part of that early iteration, man, and they paved the way for what we're seeing now in this ministry. And so we're so grateful for them.

Welcome. If you're at one of our locations today, you're at High Point Northeast Clifton Road. You're worshiping over at Regional North, or you are at Mercy Hill in Espanol.

You'll be at a live campus obviously, but we're excited to have everybody here at all the locations. We're going to be in Matthew chapter 19 today. So you can take a copy of scripture out and turn with me there. But as you guys are turning there, I do have a quick celebration. And I wanted to just say, guys, this, this little candle, some of you guys remember from Tanger. Okay.

This is going to be at my, in my office for the rest of my life. And let's tell you why we just sang about it. We have stories to tell. Okay.

And this was one of them and I got one of these little babies. I know we made y'all turn them all back in. Okay.

But I grabbed one. And, and I just think about how, I mean, you guys could check out the pictures from what we saw at the Tanger Center. Guys, just thousands of people, so many first-time guests. I mean, I don't know if you guys were there.

I know, I don't want to shame you if they weren't able to make it. Okay. But you miss an incredible moment with all of those lights spreading across the whole thing.

And it was just an unbelievable moment. I think for really the triad and for the gospel to hear the gospel, to have the gospel proclaimed in such a way with that many people, heart of the city and all that kind of stuff. And I wanted to just make a quick point here that I think is very important for us as a movement. Okay. Because we're all on mission together here. Okay. And part of this movement, one of the things that I talked to you guys about was you guys remember this when I kind of went through, hey, engagement drives attendance.

Remember if we see the volunteerism, then we'll see. And I didn't do 2020 because that was depressing. Okay.

But we did 2021. And here's what I said, if you remember this, right? I said, guys, if we hit, and God can do whatever he wants to do. I have no idea what he's going to, you know, you don't know exactly what he's going to do, but sometimes you look back and see what he's done. Right.

And you kind of, okay. So I said, I'm telling you, if we hit 585 volunteers, that'll probably end up being somewhere in the neighborhood of 450 first-time guests, somewhere in the neighborhood. And we had never done it. We wanted to break 6,000 for the first time at either an Easter or Christmas.

And that was what we were praying for. Hey, let me tell you what happened. Okay. 585, right? Engagement drives attendance.

You prepare the jars and you just see what God's going to do. 585 people didn't serve 701 people served. Okay. So listen, 455 first-time guests. No, 511. All right. And here's the cool thing guys. 600, 6,500.

No church. We broke 7,000 for the first time. And I know, listen, man, I know sometimes guys, I know sometimes like, man, it's all about the numbers. You're right. It's all about the numbers. Every one of those numbers is a person.

And every one of those people have a story and that story matters to God. And we had an opportunity to come together and to serve in a big way, to serve our city in a big way. And you guys knocked it out of the park. All right. And our teams knocked it out of the park and I just trust God with the fruit of it in this coming year. And so I just wanted to tell you guys how excited we were for that and celebrate that.

All right. Man, that was all really exciting. The rest of this for the next half an hour is pretty heavy.

And it's just the reality of it. Guys, I've been sitting for all week long understanding that this was coming, this weekend is coming, and this is heavy. And I want to tell you, listen, Proverbs 25, 25, 20, 25, 25, and 26 tells us, and this is a part of the verse I read last week.

We're kind of, there's a little bit of a guide for our series here. Like cold water to a thirsty soul, so is good news from a far country. Like a muddied spring or a polluted fountain is a righteous man who gives way before the wicked. And what did we say last week when we started this series? I'm going to say it again today. Guys, clarity is the answer for confusion. And we live in confusing times. And those confusions manifest in a lot of different ways and they manifest in a lot of pain.

And it's coming and it's incumbent upon us. Listen, it's hard to be clear. It takes courage to be clear. It's heavy to be clear, but it's incumbent upon the church not to be clever or coy when what God has called us to be is clear. And so today we got to be clear. And I want to show you that Jesus Christ was clear. And I want to show you the hope that shines from this passage, even though we live at times when what I'm getting into talking about here feels like the absolute darkest of night. And I don't just mean that in terms of some cultural war, a culture war, whatever. I'm not talking about that, man. I'm talking about people's lives. Here's the big idea for this weekend. God created two genders for His glory.

God created them male and female, and He did so, listen, for His glory and for our good, for our flourishing. I wanted to start with Proverbs 25, because I know right off the bat that this might already sound harsh. And our campuses today, college students are back. Man, there might be people who are like, man, I can't stomach this. I can't be here. I just want to tell you, man, that my attitude towards you today, I hope is one that you will reciprocate toward me. And that is an attitude of generosity and an attitude of hearing and wanting to understand. Listen, I want to be toward you in a way that is not harsh. I mean, I prayed literally before this sermon. This needs to be anything but a sharp tongue, okay?

Because there is so much pain that comes with this issue. What I pray that the Bible will be today to you, and through me preaching, is cold water to a thirsty soul. Even if you don't see it that way, I want you to know that that's my intention.

And I want you to know that you've been put in a church here and you've come to church here at a place where that is our intention. Issues like this for us, listen to me, Mercy Hill, you know this, they are not a political football. I don't care about winning an election over this stuff.

I don't care about winning a cultural argument over this stuff. What we're called to do is to win precious people's hearts. That is what God has given us. That's the mission that he has given us.

And we need to reciprocate that in the tone. Listen, this is not us versus them. This issue is us for them, even when they don't understand.

It's us for them. And here's what we got to understand today. Guys, some of us may have an us versus them attitude without realizing that some of them are actually some of us in a church like this. You think this issue has not touched people in our church? You think there aren't people in our church that are struggling with these very issues, that are trying to live the Christian life, that are trying to find truth, that are coming to a place like Mercy Hill to figure out if this place is a refuge for the broken and the hurting, you bet they're here. And we want to welcome them with open arms and show them what the truth of God's word is, all right? And so this is what we've got to get into today. Y'all, there is so much confusion that is in our culture, but when you boil all of that down, all of that down, listen, I understand the cultural stuff.

It's not out there somewhere. Listen, these are Greensboro and High Point, North Carolina. The next show after Mercy Hill Christmas is a drag queen Christmas at the Tanger Center. I'm signing my kids up for rec baseball, not even in the city of Greensboro, but in a prominent suburb. And guess what?

You got to sign up. Are they male? Are they female?

Or is your seven-year-old or eight-year-old, actually, he just turned nine years old, don't tell Anna, okay, that I couldn't remember, is he non-binary? Teenage girls being made to think that they are the problem because they don't want to share a locker room with a man. Y'all, this stuff is heartbreaking.

It's grievous. But our mission is for hurting people to understand there is cold water for a thirsty soul, even if they don't quite understand that. Man, around this issue, we need to bring the gospel as a rescue and a truth.

And they can't, listen, people in our culture, people in our church, they can't hear that if what they see is something that seems like it's us versus them. So what I want to tell you today is this. Man, we need to be clear, and it takes courage to be clear. But that clarity comes with the heart that is broken. That clarity comes with a heart and open hands that wants to see people pull one back into the family of God, not just winning some argument, all right? Listen, if you are here today and you actually are struggling with some of these issues, and what I mean by that is this. Man, you actually are struggling with gender dysphoria or you have been swept up in the social contagion of our culture that is brutal and Gothic and totalitarian. Wherever you are on that spectrum, if you're struggling today, man, we want to bring you the truth, and we want to do it in love, all right?

So let's dive in. Here's what the scripture says. And Pharisees came to him and tested him by saying, is it lawful to divorce one's wife for any cause? Now he, being Jesus, answered, have you not read that he who created them from the beginning made them male and female? And he said, therefore, a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife and the two shall become one flesh. So they are no longer two, but one flesh, what therefore God has joined together, let not man separate. Now I'm going to preach a couple of sermons in a row here, okay? So we're going to be talking about marriage and then we're going to be talking about homosexuality. So that's going to come in the future. I'm not really talking about those things today, but we're going to see that today, what I want to deal with is sort of this idea right at the beginning of Jesus' teaching where he says, really one verse, I told you this series is going to be simple and clear truths.

From the beginning, God has made them male and female. You probably know this already, but guys, culturally, we are in a mess, okay? Some of us, this is going to be a little bit shocking. Do you understand the word transgender wasn't even in the Oxford dictionary in 1973? Okay, so you want to talk about how far we've run with a movement that has no really longevity to it really at all, but this is kind of where we are. Many of us have not even heard of this term until the Diane Sawyer and Bruce Jenner interview in 2015.

That's how new it is for some of us. And yet what we have seen is a movement that has brought sweeping changes to culture and schools. The change is profound.

DEI initiatives, anti-bullying stuff in public high schools. I mean, it has brought this to the forefront and it is really reshaping in a lot of ways some of the culture that we see around us and it's bringing pain. There's families that are broken up, can't sit at the same dinner table anymore, it seems, because the differences are so stark on these issues. Children are being disfigured in the name of compassion, any dissident, whether they're Christian, non-Christian, I mean, scientists, doctor, whatever it is, if you don't toe the line, you're shouted down, maybe fired. We live in a crazy time.

We understand that, right? Okay, where do you go when you're living in crazy? I'm going to tell you. Where do you go when you don't know where to go? When you don't know where to go, you go to the beginning. That's where you go when you don't know where to go.

Because so much of what we see in our culture that we are having a hard time with how fast things are changing and how quickly things feel like the darkness is, and all that. Okay, we've got to go back to the beginning to understand God's intention and His purposes for creation, and that's where Jesus goes. And that's why I started this question last week, this series with one question. Do you guys remember what is the first subject of the first line of the first chapter of the first book of the Bible? It ain't you.

It's not me, right? You go all the way back to the beginning, and that's where you remember, oh, wait a minute, yeah, I didn't create the world. I didn't create myself.

It's bad as I want to. There's someone else who has that position in terms of creation, and this is what we learn, again, from this passage that Jesus Christ has gone back to the beginning. Now, the context of this statement comes out of not a argument or a discussion around transgenderism, okay? The argument here and the discussion actually comes out of a discussion on marriage and divorce. That is not to say that the Bible doesn't have other things to say about transgenderism, although it doesn't have a whole lot to say, but it does have some things to say, all right? So like, for example, Deuteronomy 22, 22 five, it's part of the law. A woman shall not wear a man's garment, nor shall a man put on a woman's cloak, for whoever does these things is an abomination to the Lord your God.

Another place in the Bible that you may have never thought of going to before, but is Jeremiah 30 verse six. Ask now and see. This is a rhetorical question. He's making a point about people that are scared in battle, but here's what he says. Can a man bear a child? When they do, I see every man with his... Why then do I see every man with his hand on his stomach like a woman in labor?

Why is his face turned pale? He's making a point that you can't, and so he's kind of pointing to the fact that these guys are acting that way in this battle. And so yes, the Bible has a couple of things to say about it, but here's the thing, and maybe you've heard this before, if you're a believer, okay? Maybe you're not a believer, you've heard this before as well, I don't know.

But here's what people say. All right, well, those verses you read, archaic, Old Testament, all the stuff that God used to do, don't care about that. What we want is Jesus, and Jesus never spoke to this.

I heard that exact argument about homosexuality too. I was listening to a pundit on a news show, and one of the guys that leads one of the seminaries that we're connected with was on there, and the guy said this two or three times, and finally the president of the seminary stopped him and said, Matthew 19. He said, what do you mean Jesus never spoke to this? Jesus spoke clearly to this when he says God has made them male and female. And Jesus does speak to this clearly. Look at verse three again. The Pharisees came to him and tested him.

Is it lawful to divorce? But what does Jesus say? Have you not read that he who created them from the beginning made them male and female? Now, one of the things we got to understand about this passage, and I don't know where you are in your Bible reading passage for the year, some of you are doing that Bible reading in a year, you're already in trouble. Okay, I understand. All right, we got to catch back up. But three chapters a day will get you there through the whole year.

All right, so just a little bit of math. You can do three chapters a day. But in my Bible reading plan, I just read all the way through the book of Matthew.

Okay. And I haven't followed some of those before, and usually about halfway through the year I get too interested in something, and I just kind of camp on it. But I'm in Matthew. I just finished it. And one of the things you see one of the things you see in the Gospels all the time is that these guys, these Pharisees, these teachers of law, they want to catch Jesus.

That's about, like C.S. Lewis said in a different context, about like a mouse trying to catch a cat. I mean, you see this over and over.

It's like they're trying to catch him, and every time they do, something like this ends up coming out. Now, we're not talking about the whole marriage and divorce kind of idea, but what Jesus ends up doing is something that would be fairly common in rabbinic traditions. So I read, okay, and so I'm told that what he's doing is he's appealing to a greater authority because the authority that he appeals to comes before the authority that they're appealing to. Now, they're appealing to Moses, so he goes over Moses, and he appeals all the way to the created order. And listen, when you go back to the created order, it tells us much about marriage, about homosexuality, about gender roles, about how God has created us. Now, what he's saying I think very clearly is what Moses conceded in divorce, God did not create. Okay, Moses conceded something that was not God's original intention in creation. Have you not read that he who created them male and female made them male and female from the beginning? He goes on to say, Moses ended up giving you this guy's this whole thing on divorce, but that's not what God intended. What God intended was here, that he would create humanity, and evidently, because to create two genders more accurately and greatly reflects his glory than to create three or one. Now, he's God. It's his world, okay?

He does what he wants. We know Isaiah 43 7, he has created us for his glory, and evidently, Max glory comes not from three genders and not from one, but from two that are equal in the image of God, but they are distinct in terms of the way that they are created and even roles that they take on in things like the church and in things like marriage and family. God has created, in other words, he has created gender in a binary fashion. We've got to tell our young people today, listen, if you're in middle school and you're in high school, you're one of those 300, you've got to understand this, binary is not a bad word.

It's a beautiful word. It's the way that God has created because God looked upon his creation of male and female, and he called what he did good, and it's his world. And this is as clear as I can be. Now, I understand that in the fall of man and in sin, things are corrupted. I understand that we struggle in different ways. You know, there may be a church out there somewhere that wants to deny that somebody might struggle with their gender or deny that somebody might struggle with the same sex attraction. You have not found that here. I truly believe what the scripture says, that the heart is so wicked. It is deceptively wicked.

Who can even know it? We can struggle in a thousand, a million, an infinite seemingly amount of things, okay, because of the fall of man, but it was not so in the beginning. And therefore Christian maturity and human flourishing is fighting to align ourselves with what God's original intention is. Now, I know what some of us have heard, and maybe you've even thought this, and maybe this is even where you are, and maybe you even struggle with this literally physically, genetically, chromosomes. I mean, you know, people will say, well, okay, but it's not binary in that there are people who have extra chromosomes and they've got different things, anomalies in their bodies and all that kind of stuff. I'm not denying that in any way. What I'm saying is it was not so from the beginning. That is a hard thing to say in the 21st century.

But what we need to be able to say is, hey, in that situation, there needs to be compassion, care, love that flows from the church, not a false acceptance of what was from the beginning. And if you think you're not talking to somebody who is personally aware, I live every single day with somebody in my home that has trisomy 21. She has an extra chromosome.

Now you guys know it as Down syndrome. This is very hard to say. This is touchy, I understand that, but I'm gonna tell you something.

It takes maturity to be able to say what I'm about to say. My daughter, Faith Ann, is fearfully and wonderfully made. God is going to do something through her and he is. I think about our chosen ministry.

I think about what he's doing. I've got to have the maturity to be able to say that on one hand and also be able to say, man, when she's in heaven, she's not going to have that extra chromosome. I've got to be able to say both of those things, right? And so for us today, if there is someone who is struggling, which there are in humanity, I mean, it's extremely rare.

I mean, 0.02% of the population and most of those that are in that camp still would very greatly identify one way or another. But what I want us to hear is even in that situation, there is hope, there is new heavens, there is new earth. We all struggle in different ways.

The curse has touched every single thing about our lives. Man, see the hope of the new creation if that is you, but we've got to understand something together. And I say this all the time, Christian, if you're going to live in this world, if you're going to raise kids in this culture, you got to be sharp on this stuff.

And here's what we got to be sharp on. We got to be wise as serpents enough to understand that the genetic anomaly argument is a red herring most of the time. Because actually what's being said is like, no, you can be trans for any reason.

It has nothing to do with your biology at all. But then people want to throw the argument out, but what about people that are not conforming one way or the other? You know what it really sounds like to me a little bit? It sounds a little bit like the argument people say around abortion, honestly. What do they say around abortion? Well, what about rape and incest? But if you say, okay, fine, rape and incest off the table. Now, are you willing to concede all the other ones shouldn't be done? They're going to say, no. But it's like, well, then what was the point of you bringing that up?

Like you're bringing that up because it throws off the argument, okay? It's very similar here. Most of the people that we're talking about that are dealing with this, man, they're wrapped up in either legit gender dysphoria or some type of social movement that has kind of pulled them in because of our media, because of the way that we have kind of self-actualized and autonomy and all of that kind of stuff.

And so they are where they are. So it's not, it's not, what I want to say is the vast majority of the conversation is not that about the physical part, about some anomaly or variation. The vast majority of this conversation is who is Lord? That's the question. Are my feelings God? Which comes out of the philosophy of the last 200 years?

That's what it is. My feelings determine what is true or is there a God in heaven, whether we feel it or not, that he has created us. And when we feel something that is not in line with what he has created in terms of our human flourishing, then it is incumbent upon us to wrestle and swim upstream and fight against that to bring ourselves back in line with his intentional, with his, you know, original intent for creation. Even if we never get there, we never abandon the fight.

We never stop trying to grow. This is what I'm kind of getting at here. You know, is this idea of who is God?

Someone that is dealing with absolute gender dysphoria or man, they wake up and they're like, man, I don't feel like I'm in the right body or whatever it is. And it's a very, very small number of human beings. Okay. But if that is actually where you are, then what do you need? You need the love and truth and care from the gospel and the Christian community to bring yourself in line with what actually is true, even if it goes through all of your life as a struggle.

That's what you need. That's why you need the gospel more. That's why you need community more because of the struggle that you may have. Or if you're on the other side, you're swept up in a social contagion that is tragically, maybe even, maybe even tragically since you were a child, and people swooped in because they thought they were doing the right thing, and parents were fed that you were going to, you know, suicide and all this, if they don't do exactly what, and all, and you've been pushed down that road, or you've chosen, if you're older, to go down that road, what do you need?

You need the same thing, truth, love, and care that comes from the gospel and Christian community. To be able to come out of this, to struggle against this, to be able to declare, unlike the animal kingdom, you have the ability over the course of your life to struggle and fight for what is true and good, even against the way you feel. So here's what I want to call you to do, all right? Man, let us glorify God with our gender.

Let's glorify God with our gender, all right? You know, I think some of us might ask the question, how did we get here, man? How did we get in this place where this is the conversation that we're having? And I want to make sure you understand, I'm no professor. A professor might tell you how we got here, a practitioner tells you where we are, okay? If you want the professor side, go read Carl Truman's book. He's got a great book on this, you know, it's called, well, I got some quotes in here from him, but the idea, rise and triumph of the modern self. We're actually going to have a bunch of resources that come off on this tomorrow in our blog, okay? So you can go on my social media, you can go to the church's blog and find that stuff.

And there's some people, Rosaria Butterfield's done a good job, I mean, there's some people that have done a good job tracing some of these things, okay? I'm not a professor, I'm a practitioner. And a practitioner is one who tells you where we are, and where we are is, I do think what Carl Truman says is right. We live in a culture who sees themselves as living in Plato attached to a will. That we can mold ourselves and shape ourselves into anything that we want. And it comes all the way back to this idea of what is the self, and my feelings, and self-actualization. And then you start layering on social media, and then you put in behind that the giant of what is science and the medical establishment, and that's where you end up, where we are.

So I don't know how we got here, know exactly where we are. Culturally wise, we're in a place where men are breaking women's records and sporting competitions, where people want to say birthing person instead of mom, and where Target sells clothes meant specifically to hide parts of kids' bodies. You know, that was the one that got me. That's when I started the boycott. I love a good boycott, okay? It makes you just feel so morally superior, you know?

And then you find out your wife's going behind your back and going to Target, okay? So then you just, the whole thing is over, okay? Parents in agony because they're told if they don't go along with barbarism, their child's going to commit suicide.

Christians that are called all sorts of names, bigots, all the while the broken and hurting people are given more pain to answer the chaos and turmoil that they're already in. So what do we do, all right? Well, what do we do? Well, here's what we do. Man, we got to go, listen, apply the Word in every situation.

This is our only way out. This is our only way to make sense of where we are and to put a coherent worldview, a coherent argument together to help meet people where they are. Again, not about some election, not about some culture war, people. This is what we're talking about. People who are hurting, people who are struggling.

Well, this is what we need. So let me talk to three different groups and I'm done, okay? The first group is this.

The first group, we got to start in the house, all right? Because I've been here, maybe you're there even right now, different social issues, maybe I'm not even, you know, maybe not on this issue, but maybe it's another issue. But generally speaking, Christian, what is your heart posture when it comes to this issue?

And what I mean by that is this. Have you turned into some type of vexation? You know, are you, is there malice? Is there sort of hatred? Do you want to say the word they a lot?

Those people, them, I can't believe that, you know, that kind of idea. Is what's running through your mind sound more like Bible or more like talk radio? Like what, what's, you know, and, and that's, and listen, I've been there, I understand.

You can get hyped up on one and, and we got to understand something in maturity, okay? Mark chapter three, Jesus gets mad and grieved when the religious leaders don't want him to heal on the Sabbath. There's a guy who's hurting.

They don't want me to heal him. You know what the Bible says? He was angry. That's righteous anger.

You know what it says right after that? And he was grieved. See some of us, the problem is, and I'll talk about this in a minute, we're grieved without being angry, but some of us are angry without being grieved. Some of us might just be really, really mad and you want to sort of tell them off and all that kind of stuff.

Let me ask you this. What is your heart posture toward the man who is dressed like a woman who's standing behind you in the line at Walmart or whatever? What's the feelings that come? I want to tell you today, Christian, yes, we're against a movement, but we are for these people. There is heartbreak. There is righteous anger. There is grief. There is empathy. I mean, think about the gospel in your life. Man, transgenderism, sitting in that, going that way, convincing others to be in that way. Is there evil in that?

Yes. Has there not been evil in your heart? I mean, has there not been evil in my heart? Transgenderism is filled with brokenness and sin.

Are we not? I mean, Jesus Christ's blood covered my sin. And here's what Jesus said, those who are forgiven much love much. And if we find ourselves in a place where we want to condemn others, we're probably not that grateful that Jesus Christ, John chapter three, didn't come to condemn us, but he came to save us.

And so that needs to be our heart posture. Let me talk to the other side. There are other folks in our midst that might be leaning more toward, man, you know, it's not angry without grief. I grieve so much so that I don't know how to be truthful.

I don't know. I just am putting my head down and I'm going along and even though this is against what the scripture is saying, I don't know what else to do. And honestly, it's coming from a heart that is like, it's because you love people. And I get that, but there's a lot of people who do a lot of short sighted things in the name of love.

They say they love people, but then they hurt them by the way that they love them. And if that's where you are today, I think we need to have a tiny bit of like a wake up call where we got to say, guys, there is a real serious deal that is going on right now in our culture, people that we know, people that have been touched by this issue. Okay. And I understand if we just want to grieve without righteous anger towards that, this movement and what's going on, but we can't go there.

Okay. So, so we need a little bit of a wake up call here. Listen, like forever in humanity, when there was a discrepancy and something wasn't matching between mind and body, what we would do is we would accept body and try to treat mind. And on this one issue, we have decided to do the reverse.

Culturally, when I say we, okay, I just mean our society. People are starting to wake up to this. I mean, you can't do this for another 10 or 15 years without the tsunami of suing and, and lawsuits that are going to come for doctors and parents and all.

And I know that. Okay. So I mean, that's, I mean, I don't see the future, but I'm just saying, I know that's probably something that's coming and it's starting to swing even now a little bit. I think you can see, but my point is now we've kind of gone in the reverse of that. What we've decided on this issue is we'll accept the mind and we'll treat or mutilate or disfigure the body.

I mean, think about, think about this. What if somebody comes in with anorexia and what they're saying is, you know, hey, I see myself as overweight and you're looking at them and you say, but you're obviously malnourished even to the point of having some real serious physical issues, but I see myself as overweight. Would you put that person on a diet? No, we wouldn't do that. Why? Because we would look at the body and we would say, there's something out of line here. And so we don't go and mess with the, we're going to treat the mind, but we don't do it on this particular issue. Okay.

Remember, I'm talking to the person who doesn't want to speak the truth because they say they love. Okay. Why is this the issue that our culture has decided and it's Gothic barbaric tragic ways that we have said, Hey, we will go, we'll treat the body instead of the mind.

Why? I'm going to tell you why, because on this issue, when it comes to gender, let me ask you a question. What's the first thing that said to any kid in the world as, or when they're born, I mean, what is the first thing that anybody says? It's a boy. It's a girl, right? Why, why do we do that?

There's something in humanity that can never get away from the echoes of the garden, which is humanity is embodied. It is gendered. God has made them male and female. Why is it on this one issue? We want to treat the body and not listen.

I'm not talking about individuals that are dealing with this. I'm talking about a culture that is a raid and rebellion against God. When the culture is a raid and in rebellion guys, I'm patriotic.

I love this country, but I've told you something. It's always been Babylon. It is.

They all are. Now we happen to live in the greatest neighborhood of Babylon, but this world and its powers is Babylon. The world is in a raid and rebellion against God. And so on this issue that is so core to what it means to be a person in God's image, we will say, no, no, no, you can have autonomy even over that. And so we can't just grieve without righteous anger. We can't do either one of those. Man, we've got to be willing to stand up for our convictions and to be clear and to teach our children to do the same.

Guys, this is hard. They need courage. I don't know if you've realized this, our kids are being raised in a pretty wimpy society, okay?

I mean, this week they canceled school because it was raining. There is no other way to say it, okay? So if that's the culture, then we can't control that, okay? But we can control the steel we're putting in their backbone at home. And if they're going to have the courage to be clear, because that is what love is.

Not to be mad, angry, vitriol toward a person, it's to be truthful and clear and to be cold water to a thirsty soul. And finally, let me talk to the parent of a team that is dealing with this, or maybe you've been on this road for a long time, or maybe you have these feelings and you don't even know what to do. Nobody even knows that you're dealing with this. Listen, you've come to a church, if you're dealing with this specific issue, whether you truly are dealing with some type of disorder, a gender dysphoria, or you have been swept up in a social contagion, you're 12, 13, 14 years old, you've been kind of swept up in this movement, now you're further down the road, now you're trying to figure out what all that means. Okay, whichever you are, I want you to understand, you have landed in a church that loves you enough to stand on the Word. I know what's gonna happen, I understand it. Guys, Christian, man, you're gonna be called names, we're gonna be told we're bigots, we're gonna be told all this.

Y'all, Jesus Christ was spit on. What did we think we were signing up for? So we speak the truth. We're gonna love you enough to speak the truth. We're gonna love you enough to put our arms around you, to put you in our community, so that we can speak the truth and walk this journey with you. We're not scared of you.

We're not scared of parents that are dealing with this with kids. If that's where, listen, if this is where you are today, and this is how I want to close, I want to talk directly to those, and I don't know who it would be, those here, those at the campuses, if you are dealing specifically with this issue, I got to tell you, this is what the culture is trying to say. The culture is saying your brain is the real you, and it doesn't match your body. Well, let me ask you this. How do you know your body isn't the real you, and it doesn't match your brain?

Okay? It's like, man, it's, I mean, they're kind of feeding you this line, you are this, but you're not that. Well, how do you know you're not that, but you are actually this? I mean, the whole, I mean, this idea that you can slice yourself up, and I mean that really metaphorically, but then we start meaning it literally, and be something different.

No, no, no. God has created you, every inch of you, to align. This was his created order for you. See, if we can't even know, wait, is it the brain, not the body, or is the body, not the brain? I mean, how do you even make a decision if you don't understand those things? All right? The Bible is going to inform it in just a second, but how could we know, okay, is it brain or body, or is it body, brain? Well, okay, little boy feels like he's a girl.

Okay, does he need less testosterone, or more? This is my point. There is such a confusion, but the culture has picked a side, and you're being swept along in the middle, and I got to make sure you understand this, just from a point of logic. Listen, part of the reason you're getting swept along the way that you are in this culture, is because after our medical establishment has done what they have done, how could they ever say they were wrong?

I mean, you think about that. How could they ever go back and say that they got it wrong, because they would be responsible for, I don't know, probably one of the greatest human rights abuses that has ever been. One of the greatest injustices that has ever been.

How could parents go back and say, I was... You understand? So my point is this, there's this whole wave that's trying to push you. Mercy Hill is not a church that doesn't believe in people's confusion and pain. We understand that there is brokenness that touches everything that there is, but here's the good news that I'm coming to tell you today. Man, is it brain, body?

Is it body, brain? I'm going to tell you something. Actually, the Bible speaks to this. You know how I know?

You know how I know I can say this is who you are? Because Adam saw Eve and knew that's woman. Listen, he didn't see her brain. He didn't get a chance to talk to her either, right? Genesis 2 23. Then the man said, this at last is bone in my bones and flesh in my flesh.

I mean, think about it, y'all. He saw her and he knew. He didn't talk to her. Wasn't a female brain and a male body.

Wasn't... No, no, no. He saw. And so here's what I want to tell you. What God has said is there's alignment between these things. And if you don't feel that, then what we've got to do is go back and trust the creator and struggle against that feeling.

And listen, you can trust him because you know what? Adam looked at Eve and he said, woman, he named, he spoke in, he saw essence. You know, there was another Adam few thousand years later and he didn't just name, but he had a chance to rename every single one of us back into the family of God. And he didn't just name us, but he renamed after he redeemed. Jesus Christ has taken the penalty for all the sin of the world, including the times that you and I didn't align with the original purpose.

We didn't feel the original purpose and God's intention for us in creation. And yet Jesus Christ came to die for every single time that we sinned. And in so doing, he looks upon us in all of our sin and all of our unworthiness, but he covers us with his blood and he renames us man or woman, child of God. And you can step into that today. And I pray that you will admit your sin, believe in what Christ has done and confess him as the Lord of your life. And then begin this journey with us. Man, jump into a community group. They're jumping, they're open now, you know, jump into a group, man, continue in this truth of the gospel, continue to read of your new identity.

Listen, the last thing I'll say is this. And if you are struggling in this area and there's hope for you in the gospel, listen, you got to tell somebody. And we want to know, your pastors would love to know because we want to walk with you in this. All right, let's pray.

Father God, we come before you and Lord, I ask right now that you'll move this weekend across all of our campuses. God, there are people who are struggling with this issue. There are people whose lives it is touched. There's many, many, many of us that probably need a heart reorientation around the way we view people that are walking this road. God, I pray that you would allow Mercy Hill Church to be a church of refuge for people who are struggling, even with this, because we believe in your gospel and in your word there is healing. In Christ's name we pray. Amen.