The Puzzle Of Your Roles – Part 1 of 2

Let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith. While gender activists want to equalize everything between men and women, there are fundamental differences they can't erase. Fact is, men and women are made differently and have different roles in a marriage. Today, sorting out those differences and seeing why those roles complement each other perfectly.

Stay with us. From the Moody Church in Chicago, this is Running to Win with Dr. Erwin Lutzer, whose clear teaching helps us make it across the finish line. Pastor Lutzer, it's really crazy out there, with radicals claiming there are now many genders.

You know, Dave, we don't even really have a lot of time to comment on it except to say that this can sometimes be demonic. Many young people are being destroyed because of these gender issues that are being taught. But when we look into the Word of God, we see not only that men and women are different, but we also notice that they have various roles. And people today oftentimes rebel against that. But as we open the scriptures, we are reminded of the fact that God is the great designer.

And he's the one who prescribes what these roles are. So we're going to be looking into that in just a moment. But at the same time, I want to remind you that we are making these messages available in written book form. And I hope that you take advantage of that. And I'm going to be giving you some contact info at the end of this message so that you can contact us and receive this material. I believe very deeply that these messages are of great help to those who are struggling in their marriage as well as to those who have good marriages.

But those good marriages can even be made better. Well, I begin today with a question. What is a woman and what is a man?

What is masculinity and what is femininity? That's the question we hope to solve in the next few moments and solve it based on the Bible. Many of you know that this is the third in a series of messages entitled The Marriage Puzzle, and it is a puzzle, isn't it? Some time ago this summer, I asked that people would write down red flags that they missed during their dating years before they were married. What red flag did you overlook that became a problem later in the marriage?

Some of you will know that in the first message in this series, I delineated four red flags, and today I'm going to give you one more. And that is two letters from women who married a mama's boy. My husband could do nothing without asking his mother. He either came with us or he got permission from her to go anywhere. He was nearly 30 when we dated, and I saw the writing on the wall. Well, during the honeymoon, he was constantly checking with his mother about everything. We've been married 15 years and have a lot of grief in our marriage. We've had difficulty with my mother-in-law.

Really? We've had difficulty with my mother-in-law in setting boundaries for her. He was in an enmeshing and controlling family and he failed to leave and cleave. But notice this, it took the grace of God and counseling to overcome this obstacle in our marriage. Even today, we have to deal with the weeds and the garden of our relationship, but we are facing them with the united front. We can see how gracious God was in protecting our marriage from divorce. And together we are learning to rejoice in God. So that's a success story.

But here's another like it. We've been married for 17 years and are still struggling with the issue of boundaries and bitterness. For the first 12 years of our marriage, my husband spent more time worrying about his mother's feelings than mine.

He was raised without a dad, no other siblings, but his mother seems to be his ex-wife to me. And although he has changed, we are now believers. I have a hard time trusting that he puts me first. Well, what do we have to say to mama's boy?

Before this message is over, I'll have some words for him. What is a man? What is a woman? I think it is true to say that most women have a better idea of who they are than most men. Men don't know who they are and who they're supposed to be.

And let me tell you why. First of all, I think because of the feminization of our culture. You know, we were told that if you give boys dolls, they will play with dolls just like girls do because it's all conditioning.

So they gave boys dolls and discovered that they bent them in the shape of a gun and then they began to realize, then they began to realize maybe there is a fundamental difference between boys and girls. Now, of course, all of us would agree that women should have equal pay for equal work. We agree that they are equal in terms of value and oftentimes superior in intelligence.

We agree with that. But the feminist movement overreached and by overreaching have confused in a very serious way the roles of men and women. And because of this, men don't know who they are because they thought that all the roles are interchangeable and they aren't. Intrinsic to every man and every woman are certain dispositions, as we shall see. And while they may do a number of different things, the fact is that femininity and masculinity lies at the heart of who we are as persons. But men today don't know who they should be. If they hold back their wimps, if they give leadership, then they are insensitive.

So who should they be? Another reason for this is because pornography has deadened the desire of some men for romance. As a result of that, you find today that men who have seen everything and perhaps even done everything, the mystique is gone. But perhaps the most important reason is the breakup of the family. With a family having broken up and so many homes without a father, boys grow up not knowing who they are, not knowing how a father should act. They bond with their mothers and girls grow up and they, of course, want to fall into the arms of the first boy who tells them that they are beautiful because there's no dad there to affirm them and to give them the guidelines and to know where the boundaries are.

Consequently, we are in trouble today in our families. Now, the result of all of this is that men, and this may also be true of women. First of all, they really are hesitant to commit, hesitant to commit.

I know that there are some women who feel as if boys today, young men, date young women. They build friendships. The young woman makes a tremendous investment, maybe of months and years in the relationship.

And then the guy just walks away as if nothing happened. And he is either unaware of how deeply he has hurt her or else he doesn't care. And so we live today in the day of what we could call disposable relationships. One young woman told me, she says, we are like cars in a parking lot and guys come along and then they test drive this car and then they test drive that car, but they aren't interested in commitment.

They're interested in a friendship that can be disposed of when it is convenient. That's one of the problems of our culture. Another is that you find that a boy sometimes is trapped in a man's body. The guy simply never grew up. And even though he should be an adult, he doesn't act like one.

Somehow his childhood got missed along the way. And of course he gets married because he's interested in sex, but he becomes very bored of that after a while. And he is unwilling to do the hard work of having a good marriage. One time I heard this man say when he was divorcing one wife to marry another woman, he said, you know, he said, I work hard all day. I figure I shouldn't have to come home and work on my marriage.

Well, sorry, but if you don't work on your marriage, it isn't going to be a good one. Rebecca and I actually know a couple, a woman who told us that her husband still played with toy boats in the bathtub. Some have just not grown up now. Yeah, yeah, that's true. Now it used to be in years gone by, it seems to me that men were men and women were women and everyone knew where they fit.

It seems to me that that's the way it used to be, but it isn't. I think that Jesus was a real man. I think that when Jesus was walking by the sea of Galilee and he saw these real men, these disciples who would become his disciples and they were fishing and he was able to speak to them in such a confident way that they were willing to put down their nets and follow him. Today you can't get some men to put down their remote and come to church. And by the way, you know why it is that men love the remote so well, the remote control, because to a man even remote control is better than none at all.

So as a result of that. Now the question is, what is a man and what is a woman? I'm going to take the definition of John Piper and this is based on the word of God, not contemporary culture. John Piper says at the heart of a mature masculinity is a sense of benevolent responsibility. Notice these words to lead, provide for and protect women in ways appropriate to a man's different relationships. That's the heart of a mature man, a sense of benevolent responsibility to lead, provide for and to protect women.

That's the way in which God wired us. Now, of course, there are many women who don't know who they are either and they don't know who they are because they grew up in a culture where beauty was everything. Young girls who are now mothers grew up during the days when Madonna was popular.

So they've come through that phase. Of course, Britney Spears or Paris Hilton and some of these role models, if you can use that word. And as a result, they grow up thinking that they have value only if they are pretty and beautiful. And as a result, all kinds of insecurities, all kinds of marital problems. Rebecca and I know of two instances where wives, mothers have left their children behind. Now, this is even contrary to natural desire and natural affection. They've left their children and they have gone out to seek other men because they they constantly needed the approval of other men and insatiable desire because they don't know who they are either. And what a mess and what a world in which we live.

And the media certainly is partially responsible. Let me give you a definition of femininity. This also is John Piper's definition. At the heart of mature femininity is a freeing disposition to affirm, receive and nurture strength and leadership from worthy men in ways appropriate to a woman's different relationships. The key word there is affirm, receive and nurture strength.

And so that is part of her DNA, part of her hard wiring. Now, this summer, when I asked people to write to me and to tell me the red flags that they missed, I had this note scribbled on the back of an envelope. And I want to read it to you because you can understand that marriage sometimes represents the perfect storm, doesn't it? You've got all of these insecurities, all of these misconceptions on one side, all of the expectations and misconceptions on the other side, and then you put them together and they're supposed to live happily ever after.

This is what was written by some anonymous person with a lot of insight. He said, love is blind by design. Why else would you marry this person who's completely different with different parents, a completely different DNA, with radically different expectations, with radically different life experiences? Why would you do this for marital bliss? He says, you only do it because love is blind. Or he says, is all of this possibly a total setup by the sovereign hand of an all wise God? Perhaps this is the very one we have married chosen by God himself, chosen because this is the person through whom he would chase and scourge and humble us and as a means to conform us to the very image of Christ so that we would come forth as gold. I think he was onto something. Don't you agree with that? Remember this, that in marriage you have the vanity of a woman, you have the ego of a man, and surgery is done on both without anesthetic. There you are, 24 hour surveillance, all of your faults, all of your insecurities, nowhere to hide is just you.

And what an experience it is. Well I think at this point it's time for us to turn to the scriptures and to see who God says we are and to confirm our understanding of femininity and masculinity. And the passage of scripture is the second chapter of the book of Genesis, Genesis chapter 2, the creation account. What you need to do is to go back to the original manual. Have you ever tried to put a bicycle together?

I think I tried that one time and I discovered I couldn't do it. I thought, you know, well all the pieces are there, you just somehow know that this one fits there and this one goes there and then you discover, you know what, this is so complicated, maybe I should look at the manual. The Bible is God's manual.

If we want to know how it is to be put all together and how the pieces should fit, it's all here. First of all in the account I want you to notice how God did it. Let's look at the creation, the materials themselves. Chapter 2 verse 7, then the Lord God formed the man of the dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life and man became a living creature. God just went and took a man and he made a mud man and then he breathed life into it. Ladies, don't you think you expect too much from us considering our origin? We're made from mud. But that's not true of women because the Bible says that, this is very interesting, verse 18, the Lord said it is not good that the man should be alone.

That's amazing. He's in paradise with everything he could possibly want. God said it's not good for him to be alone. Adam had desires that nothing else could possibly fulfill. And then the Lord says, so out of the ground the Lord God formed every beast of the field, every bird of the heavens and brought them to the man to see what he would call them. Well that's interesting, I thought that God was making a helpmeet for him. And whatever the man called every living creature, that was his name. The man gave names to all the livestock, the birds of the heaven, to every beast of the field. But for Adam there was not found a helper fit for him.

None of the animals could satisfy the desires of Adam's heart. So the Bible says the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man and while he slept took one of his ribs and closed up the place with the flesh and the rib that the Lord God had taken from the man he made into a woman and brought her to the man. Now man was made from inorganic material, mud. The woman is made out of organic material because she's going to be the mother of all living. Notice though that what God did is he separated femininity out of masculinity and he took and made the woman out of the man and then he implanted within them a strong unrelenting desire to come back to one another and to be intimately related and connected.

And that also lies at the heart of all femininity and masculinity. And so the Lord God said right from the creation that woman was to come out of the man, the woman was to come out of the man and that she would be the mother of all living the scripture says. Let's look at the way in which God did it. You'll notice in verse seven it says and the Lord God took man and he fashioned him or made him from the dust of the ground and God just made this man and breathe life into him. Actually in Hebrew there is a different word when it comes to woman. This is not reflected in our translation, the translation that we have, but many of the translations translate it more accurately when they say that from the rib the Lord God fashioned a woman. He made man but he fashioned a woman and I think the whole idea there is that a woman being fashioned is a work of art. I mean we as men were kind of just thrown together and given life.

Women are beautiful, symmetrical. The Lord God made Eve that way. No wonder the Bible says Adam said oh at last bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh. I'm sure he said some other things too as God brought her to him. Well this is Pastor Luther and of course there's more to the story so it's very important that you listen to Running to Win next time for the rest of this message.

But I want to emphasize that right from the beginning, right from the creation story, God had different roles for men and women. It's controversial to say that today and of course we have to speak with a great deal of concern, a great deal of tenderness and understanding, but at the same time the Word of God is the Word of God. These messages are so critical that we're making them available for you for a gift of any amount. We're making them available in written form.

As a matter of fact this book also includes questions. It includes links to these messages. We want you to have this material and we want you to pass it along to others.

Here's what you can do. Go to RTWOffer.com. That's RTWOffer.com or pick up the phone and call us at 1-888-218-9337. I'm going to be giving you that contact info again but before I go any further I want to remind you that today is Friday. I hope that you have an opportunity to go to church on Sunday. Let's not forsake the assembling of ourselves together. We need the church in this very confused world but go ahead contact us RTWOffer.com.

RTWOffer.com or call us at 1-888-218-9337. It's time again for you to ask Pastor Lutzer a question about the Bible or the Christian life. The subject of prayer raises questions for Calvin who asks, I want to know this. How does a person know when God is speaking to them or has answered the question? How do I know when God is saying yes or no?

Well Calvin first of all let me begin by saying that your dilemma is a very common one. We've all wondered about God's will. We wish that it were written in the sky but the problem is we're not sure whether God is saying yes or no.

A couple of things. First of all be very wary of the idea that God is going to speak to you directly. I've never had God really speak to me directly regarding a yes or a no.

I believe that God leads us in other ways. First of all through submission to the scriptures be sure that you are in fellowship with God and willing to do whatever he wants. First of all be willing to accept a yes or a no. Next I think it's very important to receive wise counsel from others. Try to get some input into your situation. People who perhaps agree with you, people who may not agree with what you want to do.

Hear both sides. Finally make a wise decision and sometimes I've had to tell the Lord this, Lord I'm leaning toward yes and I'm going to do this unless you stop me. And then as I begin to proceed in that direction God either confirms it or he does stop me and close the door. So that's been helpful for me but remember this God is more concerned about keeping you in his will than you are in walking in his will.

God was more concerned about bringing Jonah back from his disobedience than Jonah was. I've learned this, that if we are willing to be led God has his ways to lead us. Thank you Calvin for your question. Thank you Dr. Lutzer for your answer. If you'd like to hear your question answered go to our website at rtwoffer.com and click on Ask Pastor Lutzer or call us at 1-888-218-9337.

That's 1-888-218-9337. You can write to us at Running to Win, 1635 North LaSalle Boulevard, Chicago, Illinois 60614. Running to Win comes to you from the Moody Church in Chicago. Next time, seeing the pattern God created in the Garden of Eden.

A pattern defining male and female differences and how they complement each other. Don't miss our next program. Thanks for listening. For Pastor Erwin Lutzer, this is Dave McAllister. Running to Win is sponsored by the Moody Church.