Gender and Sexuality

Coming up next on Renewing Your Mind. The culture doesn't see it that way, however. It has rejected God.

It has rejected His Word and thus rejected what it means to be men and women created in His image. Welcome to Renewing Your Mind. I'm Lee Webb. Today and for the remainder of this week, we want to bring you messages from our most recent Ligonier National Conference. Our theme was Upholding Christian Ethics. We need to know how to live with integrity as we engage a world where God is hated, immorality is celebrated, and the truth suppressed. So let's join Dr. Harry Reader as he addresses the moral confusion we see all around us regarding gender and sexuality.

So I want you to jump into this with me. We know the situation around us. You see the LGBTQAI+, do not forget the plus, that tells you it's not finished. LGBTQAI+, a movement that is sweeping the culture.

I mean, it's a tectonic movement. The changes are seismic and its rapidity is overwhelming of what's happening and how it's changing. It has revealed the culture shapers of our progressive secular humanist age, the culture shapers, big business, big government, media, journalism, and the academy.

Those are the five big culture shapers of the day and they are fully at work. And so all of that presents certain challenges and temptations. And in these few minutes, I want to try to at least get you a couple of thoughts about it. So what are you going to do with this? The legal dynamics of the affirmation of the mythology of same-sex marriage or the fabrication of same-sex marriage, the destruction of female sports, the dangers that come in terms of the loss of privacy and modesty, infanticide being embraced.

We see not passive but active euthanasia. Now, why are they there and how do we respond to this? And that's kind of a challenge that's given to me in this matter of ethics and sexuality and gender. But then again, you've got to ask yourself a question. How are you going to respond to this? Are you going to respond to this? There's really three choices that we've got. One is to ignore it.

It's out there and it's not here. We'll be okay. Just kind of circle up the wagons.

Second way is, well, you know, things kind of change. That's what progressive Christianity is constantly saying to the evangelical church. Notice it's not like the days of liberalism and I highly commend to you Machen's book, Christianity and Liberalism. Key word and liberalism is not a subset. Christian liberalism is not a subset of Christianity.

It's a adversary. And the same thing I think is true of progressive Christianity, which is cut from the same bolt of cloth. Different theological issues but cut from the same bolt of cloth. But both of them are motivated by cultural relevance and think the mission of the church is cultural transformation. Therefore, whenever you do that, your message will be cultural accommodation.

So will you engage in accommodation? I mean, the times have changed. Shouldn't we kind of, let's sit back and retake a look at marriage and sexuality and all of those issues.

In other words, let me put it the way my friend R.C. Sproul says in his book Worldviews. Ethics is oughtness. This is what you ought to be. Morals is isness.

This is what's happening. Now we have historically said here's the ethic. That's to inform the morals. Now what we're doing is what are the morals will change the ethics to accommodate it.

So instead of sacred sex, safe sex. That's what you begin to see in society. So will we be accommodationist? Will we be isolationist and ignore?

Will we accommodate? And I'll tell you what the plan is from those five culture shapers is capitulation. You're in a revolution. A cultural revolution is what's taking place all around you. Revolutions are not looking for toleration. They're not looking for accommodation in a revolution.

Those who are making the movement, the whole purpose is capitulation. You celebrate what you previously condemned and you condemn what you previously celebrate. So how are you going to respond? Genesis chapter 1. Turn to your Bibles. In your Bibles. Or turn on your Bibles. You can't get over it.

I'm sorry. I just haven't arrived in the present age. I mean reading my Bible on an iPhone is like kissing my wife through a screen door.

I just I want to read a couple of texts for you. Look with me in Genesis 1.1. In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. And the earth was without form. It was formless. It was unfilled.

It was void. And darkness was over the face of the deep and the spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters. So where did time, space, power, energy, where did it all come from? God created. Then he said the ex nihilo creation of God, everything visible, everything invisible in the heavens and then the earth. Now take your Bibles and go with me to Genesis 1.

Let me just say a word. There's not another book in your Bible that is hated out of the kingdom of darkness more than the book of Genesis. And there's no section hated more than Genesis 1 through 11.

And there is no passage more important than that text. Here all of the issues in this culture you begin to deal with. What kind of a culture do we have?

Let me give you, here's my summation. This is the return to neo-paganism and it always brings a culture of insanity, absurdity, immorality, lethality and it's rooted in profitability. It is a culture of insanity, a culture of absurdity, lethality. We've got abortion, infanticide, active euthanasia, other categories of genocide.

What do those things have in common? Imperfect lives, unwanted lives and inconvenient lives. We found a way to legally kill them. That is insanity, that's absurdity, lethality and immorality.

Sexual anarchy is all around us. My goodness, I pray for our youth staff and our youth pastor constantly. I can't even imagine what it means to step into that ministry today and all the challenges that come from it. So we're not going to ignore it.

That option's off the table. Jesus doesn't let you ignore it. God doesn't let you ignore it.

He tells his people when he brings them out of Egypt, here's what the other cultures are like. He explains it in Leviticus 18-20 and he says, don't let it come in among you because God knows it always wants to come in among you. Satan is always trying to find a way to intimidate, to imitate and to infiltrate.

Constantly trying to do that. So you've got to be ready to deal with it and you've got to know what God says. We've got to go to God's Word and we've got to go to the book of Genesis and to here, sanctity of life, sanctity of gender, sanctity of family, sanctity of marriage, sanctity of work, sanctity of rest, sanctity of the Sabbath.

You just see it just rolled out. Here are all the foundations. Let me ask you to go one other text of Scripture with me. Go to Genesis chapter 1 and verse 26. Genesis 1, 26. Then God said, 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. So God created man, singular, in His own image.

In the image of God He created him, male and female. He created them. And God blessed them and God said to them, be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth. And God said, behold, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is upon the face of all the earth and every tree with seed and its fruit.

You shall have them yet for your food. And to everything that creeps on the earth and everything that has the breath of life, I have given every green plant for food and it was so. And God saw everything that He had made and behold, it was very good. And there was evening and there was morning, the sixth day. Genesis 2, after finishing the seven days, brings us to another text I want you to turn to and let's now sharpen the scope of the sixth day. Look with me in Genesis chapter 2 and down to verse 18. And 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 and whatever the man called every living creature, that was its name. The man gave names to all the livestock and to the birds of the heavens and to every beast of the field.

But as for Adam, there was not found a helper fit or a suitable helper or a completer helper for him. So the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man. And while he slept, he took one of his ribs and he closed up its place with flesh and the rib that the Lord had taken from the man he made into a woman and brought her to the man. Then the man said, now he names her. This at last is bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh. She shall be called woman. Again, the play of words, ish, ishah, reflection of man because she was taken out of man. Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife and they shall become one flesh.

And the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed. So just a couple of thoughts as we dive into this. I want to give you some framing principles.

Boy, this is just rudimentary. Get started right out of this book of Genesis and how you can begin to address ethically the matters of gender and sexuality starting with God's Word. Starting at this point and moving forward. Here is the mission of every church.

I want to say this here. I've explained to you what's happening in the culture, at least briefly. The tendency for the church is to think, uh-oh, we've got to transform the culture. That is not the mission of the church. Well, pastor, doesn't it say that these people turned the world upside down when Paul got to Europe less than 25 years after the ascension of Jesus?

Yes. But Paul's mission was not to turn the world upside down. That was a consequence. Paul's mission was to turn sinners right side up. Fulfill the great commission with evangelism and discipleship.

We've got this narrow mission and we've got a comprehensive message. Teaching them to observe all that I've commanded you. That includes Genesis. That includes ethical sanctities. That includes all of those things.

And then that cuts loose Christians out of the church who have a broad mission. Your salt of the earth. Your light of the world. Your life changes. Your marriage changes. Your family changes. The way you do business changes. The way your citizen changes.

And that's what begins to turn it loose. Therefore you go to passages like this in the church and instead of having the book of Genesis disappear from the pulpit schedule, it regularly appears in the pulpit schedule. Because here now you know where you came from, who owns you, how he has designed you, and what he has decreed for you, and what he has done to rescue you from your sin so that you might embrace him, know him, and make him known. Now here is, this is a theological issue. I had a guy come up to me and he said, Pastor can I ask you a question? I said, now look I know you're busy, but it's not a theological question.

And I said, well, then I'm going to move on because that means you don't have a question. All of life is theology. All of life is theology. What is salvation?

What are we told? This is eternal life that you theology. Know God and his son Jesus Christ and make him known. You've got to start with God's word. Don't start with your mind. Bring your mind to God's word.

Divine revelation. Here God doesn't explain where he came from in Genesis 1-1. And by the way, if the book of Genesis is the most attacked book in the Bible, Genesis 1-1 is the most attacked verse other than maybe Genesis 1, 16, and 17. Why are we attacking all the binaries? Why are we attacking it? Why are we attacking male, female?

Why are we redefining marriage? Why do we call light darkness and darkness light? The creation is binary after binary after binary.

Why? Because it's a testimony. There is a God who exists over, above, and in all of his creation. And the creation exists because he brought it into existence.

He is the one that did that. So how does man, how does man strike back at the binary of the creator over his creation? We attack the binaries he has put into the creation. That's what we do. And so that's what you see in front of us.

So you have now a statement. Here's where you start. Everything here originates from God. He created the heavens and the earth everything that's in it, invisible and visible.

Everything. That's where you start. He is the originator. That means he's the owner. And that means he is the definer.

And that means he is the director. All things exist from him unto him and all things exist by him. That's where you as a Christian begin. Therefore, whether it's sexuality or marriage or whatever it is, these things do not originate from the Supreme Court or the Senate or from big academies or wherever. You know God made it and God owns it and God defines it. God formed it in three days.

God filled it in the next three days. That's what you know. Heterosexuality is the divine decree of God, sanctified, blessed by God, and is the only good and holy and shameless sexuality. The only natural sexuality. Heterosexuality originates from God, is directed by God, is defined by God by his decree, and it stands as a sanctity of God. The Creator has made the creature in his image, male and female, both bear his image and together display the fullness of that image.

As it is the only holy, good, shameless, natural sexuality. Now man in his rebellion will strike out against that binary. We will not have him to be God over us.

So what does man come up with? Oh no, no, no. This isn't the only. And by the way, don't you believe in freedom? I am not kidding with this.

That's exactly how it's sold. Freedom. Here's your current mantra.

This won't last long, but here's your current mantra. That we can do, two consenting adults can do anything they want to, right? I mean don't we believe in freedom? You know what I said when they asked me that? I said why two? Why consent? Why adults?

And believe me, those will disappear. This was the entry point, two consenting adults. You see we actually believe in something called freedom that's defined by God. It's called ordered liberty. We're set free not to do what we want to do, but we've been set free from that to do what he wants us to do. And the reason we do it is not so he will save us. The reason we do it is because he has saved us. What we do is an act of worship and obedience is an act of worship because of what he did to set us free. But man in rebellion says no and he's invented monosexuality. Remember what I said industries, profitable industries of sin? I said a culture of insanity, absurdity, lethality, immorality, rooted and profitable. Do you know how tough it was for Paul at Ephesus? You know why? Because a lot of people made money off idolatry.

Do you know how tough it is to bring the witness of Christ, salt and light into this culture? A lot of people are making money off monosexuality. There's a pornographic industry that is unbelievably profitable. You have no idea of the billions and billions and billions of dollars. Do you know what was being made right now off of killing the inconvenient, the unwanted and the imperfect in the womb?

Do you know how much money is made off of that? Do you know what's happening in transgenderism? This unbelievable child abuse of gender reassignment surgery.

There's another fabrication. This is nothing more than surgical mutilation and chemical castration is what is taking place. And it takes place upon children. And it has irreversible consequences. But do you want to know how much money is made out of it?

There is rooted in profitability where we take children and we put drugs into young men that we use to castrate sexual predators. And I know we have to speak carefully and I know we have to speak thoughtfully and I know we have to avoid provocative language. I'm well aware of that, but I can't be silent because the Bible's not silent. And I know the world is coming after your children and I know the one alone who doesn't simply protect them, he redeems them and turns them loose into the world as salt and light.

That's what I know. The answer to this problem in our culture is the Gospel. It is the double cure. It cures us from sin's power and sin's shame. Man, I read and minister sexual rebellion against God and how you can't even look at each other, the person you use. How sometimes you'll find sitting in a shower just trying to wash away the shame and the guilt.

It cringes you. Crawling up in a bed and pulling the covers over and wanting to be covered up. That's an instinct.

Just like the instinct they went and found leaves and tried to cover themselves up. But 1 Corinthians 6 says, And such were some of you, but you've been washed. You've been clothed. You've got a robe of righteousness that's put around you. And your sins are taken away and it's shame and it's guilt and you're right before God.

But that's not all. Not only has the penalty been removed, but the power of sin has been broken. You've been born again. You've got a new heart. You've got a new record. You've got a new life. You've got a new family.

You've got a new home. And now God with his word by his Spirit is giving you a new mind so that you might live unto him, for him, and through him. I just love to tell them.

We have some folks out of the LGBTQA and I just love to tell them. God did much to save you. But he didn't do much to save you to make much of you. He did much to save you to set you free. And now you can know the joy of making much of him.

It's unbelievable the joy that comes. Jesus became for you what he had never been, the Son of Man, without ceasing to be the Son of God, to make you what you could never be. Now let's follow his paths in his word to the praise of his glorious grace. Amen.

That message of hope is for everyone who realizes that they live under the oppression of sin. This has been such an important topic to cover, and we are thankful for Dr. Harry Reeder's clear teaching. Thanks for joining us for Renewing Your Mind on this Tuesday.

I'm Lee Webb. All week we are bringing you sessions from our 2022 Ligonier National Conference, where our theme was Upholding Christian Ethics. This is just one aspect of our ministry here at Ligonier.

We host conferences, our national conference every year, plus regional gatherings here in the U.S. and abroad. We produce teaching series, publish a monthly devotional magazine, Table Talk, as well as the Reformation Study Bible. One of our listeners, Allison, called us recently to express her thanks for the many helpful materials that we do produce. She told us that her interest in studying God's Word began when she entered college.

My dad said, You're going to have to come to know this on your own, and it has to be your own. And I was really questioning Christianity, and was it true? And I actually read the holiness of God, and it had a huge impact on me.

And in fact, I wrote a letter to R. C. Sproul, and surprisingly got a letter back with a book in the mail. And so, after that meeting my husband, we kind of grew together, and the impact that Renewing Your Mind and Table Talk had had on our family has been huge, and it has been really a propelling forward in living it out even in our community, just simply living out the excitement of knowing God more. So, I just want to thank you very much and appreciate the ministry, and we pray for you best. Thank you.

Thank you, Allison. And it's so encouraging to know of the generational impact that Ligonier has had on your family. Well, if you've benefited from Ligonier resources and see the importance of knowing what you believe and why you believe it, I hope you'll contact us today with a gift to this ministry. As I mentioned, our conference is just one outreach, and you'll support all of our teaching efforts, including publishing, audio, and video resources, as well as the Reformation Study Bible.

You can give your donation online at renewingyourmind.org, or you can call us with your gift at 800-435-4343. Well, tomorrow we're going to hear another message from our Ligonier National Conference, and here's a preview. We're to treat each and every person with dignity. It doesn't matter their socioeconomic or ethnic background. We are to regard them with respect and honor. We are to look at each and every human being, and we are to say, You have the image of God upon you, and yes, you have the dignity that has owed you as a human being made in the image of God. Dr. Burke Parsons on the sanctity of life, tomorrow on Renewing Your Mind. .