Jesus and Transgenderism

Well again, I welcome you to Calvary Church. The question is asked, and the answer was given, is He worthy? We sang about God's holiness, we sang that ultimately God is the only Holy One, we are unholy, He alone is worthy, and yet in His matchless grace, we who are unworthy become acceptable to the Father through the personal work of His Son. But in the miracle of the Gospel, the righteousness and the perfection, yes, and the holiness of our Lord Jesus Christ is imputed to us.

The question for us is how do we respond? Not only by singing, but by our very lives. Deuteronomy chapter 11 verse 1, here is our response, surely, you shall therefore love the Lord your God. If it's true that He is worthy, if it's true that you've been saved by His grace, you are to love the Lord your God.

How do I do that? By singing about it, by expressing my love, yes. But more than that, you will keep His charge, His statutes, His rules, and His commandments always. Verse 16, you shall therefore lay up these words of mine in your heart and in your soul. This is the Word of God.

What are we to do? We are to love the Lord your God, we are to seek through the power of the Spirit to keep His commands, and we are to lay up these words in our heart and our soul, and you shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. You shall teach them to your children, talking of them when you're sitting in your house and when you're walking by the way and when you lie down and when you rise. Are you listening, parents? This Word of God is not just confined for a Sunday, but is to be incorporated in all of life.

This is so important. We love the Lord, we lay His Word in our hearts, and then we teach them to others, starting with our own children. Verse 20, you shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates. So we're to lay them up in our hearts, we're to teach them to our children, we shall write them on the doorposts of your house and of your gates, that your days and the days of your children may be multiplied in the land that the Lord swore to your fathers to give them, as long as the heavens are above the earth.

We're living in a culture where God's Word is discarded, where we're more impacted, certainly our children, our students, all of us, we're more impacted by the culture than by the Word of God. And even those of us who we say we're following Jesus Christ have to admit to our shame that often our lives conform not to God's Word, but to the world, and certainly on the subject that we're thinking of, of our sexuality. Well, let's pray, and we'll think, and we'll think, we'll continue our study on Jesus and gender. Let's pray together, eternal God and our Father, it is with joy that we come to you. We've acknowledged that our Lord Jesus Christ, that line of Judah, that mighty lamb, He alone is able to open a book, and we thank you for that, Father. And we thank you that through faith in Him, we who are unholy can become holy and seek to live holy lives. This is difficult for us in baptism, possible for us, apart from the power of your Spirit. And we thank you for the clear guidance of your Word, and it is to that Word that we now turn this morning. Help us, we ask, in Christ's name, Amen. Well, a generation is arising which is being told that transitioning from one gender to another is acceptable.

Who would have thought of that even 10 or 15 years ago? You may have heard, as I heard the interview this week, there was in Orlando, Florida, not all that far from us, Florida, not all that far from us actually, a transgender homecoming queen. Here is a 17-year-old young man who claims now to be a woman, and of all things, he is chosen, presumably by his fellow students, to be the homecoming queen.

We don't have these things in Scotland, but I think it's voted by the students, isn't it? And so, this young man who is transitioning to be a woman is now elected a homecoming queen. I thought it very interesting that the interviewer said this, she, referring to the man slash woman, she is living the way she wants and she feels.

And I thought that's it. That sums it up, doesn't it? This person is living according to the way he or she feels and what she wants.

We just read from Deuteronomy 11 that we're not to live the way we want or we feel, but rather we are to live in accordance with the Word of God. Gender dysphoria is the feeling of severe discomfort in a person's body, where the person's biological sex and the gender they feel themselves to be don't match. Now, historically, this condition, gender dysphoria, was a very rare affliction, impacting only 0.01% of the population. Most of the cases, historically, have been young boys between the ages of two and four who feel that they may be a girl, although in fact they are a boy. 70% of them naturally outgrew this gender dysphoria. Prior to 2012, very recent, there was no scientific literature on gender dysphoria in teenage girls. But now, just in the last few years, transgenderism seems all around us, doesn't it?

It's even being touted as the next civil rights frontier. So we hear statements, I am a woman trapped in a man's body. Or, I think I am a woman, therefore I am a woman. A survey estimated in 2016, 0.6% of U.S. adults identify as transgender. It's all around us, isn't it? The Wall Street Journal, in September 20th, had an article on gender pronouns. There it is. Some big business is increasingly embracing the practice of sharing individual pronouns in the workplace as part of diversity initiatives to support coworkers who may be, notice this, transgender or non-binary colleagues who identify as neither male nor female.

Incredible, isn't it? Over a quarter of Americans now say they know someone who goes by gender neutral pronouns such as they. Now, I don't know what you were taught at school in English, but I was taught that they was plural. But apparently, you can refer to an individual now, whether it's a man or a woman, or someone who doesn't know what they are as they. This in the United States of America, gender neutral. What's happening? Let's think of this in big picture. The deconstruction of marriage is being followed by the deconstruction of gender.

Our enemy has been very successful in attacking marriage, as we've seen over the last few weeks. And now, in a sense, he's going further and he's trying to deconstruct gender. Now, you can self-diagnose your gender. I can wake up and say I am now a woman. No one can question it.

You are now your own authority. Some people claim to be gender fluid, and they don't identify as either male or female. It really is so bizarre that people who support transgenderism have difficulty defining what a woman is. That's why, incidentally, the feminist movement don't like transgender because they say, no, this is still a man, not a woman. Transgenderism hit the headlines, didn't it, when Bruce Jenner came out as a trans woman. Some of you saw the interview with Diane Sawyer, and he said he was living a lie. People thought how courageous this was.

Amazing. Didn't get an award for being courageous. He says, for all intents and purposes, I am a woman. But Bruce Jenner is not a woman.

He's a man. Men have XY chromosomes. Women have XX chromosomes. And no one can re-engineer or decode their genetics.

This is the way God created you. But now we're told you can change your gender simply by saying that you're a woman or a man, or you're a boy or a girl. One of the marvelous things about this book, the Bible, is that it is eternal. And that which is eternal is always relevant. So when people ask about transgenderism, what do we do?

We do what we always do. We open this book, The Word of God. And it gives clear teaching regarding so-called gender identity. Now this message builds on the series I preached on Jesus' teaching on marriage and gender. We thought of Jesus and marriage. We thought of Jesus and divorce. We thought of Jesus and the gay debate. Last week we thought of Jesus and LGBTQ+. If you missed any of these messages, they're on our line at CalvaryChurch.com. And today the message is Jesus and transgenderism. I feel I almost have to apologize for preaching on such a thing, but I feel it is very, very necessary. And these, this teaching arises in our continuing study of Matthew chapter 19.

Last week, in a sense, we'll close this particular series and I want you to come back for it because in a sense it's the most important one. It is Jesus and a fresh start. There is hope for you.

Whatever your struggle is, whatever the mess you're making of your life, there is hope. And we'll think of Jesus and a fresh start. Now I want to say, regarding transgenderism, first of all, it's an attack on God's authority. Now as I said, as I began this series, I approached this subject as a follower of Jesus Christ.

As one who believes that the lordship of Jesus Christ is over all areas of our life, including our sexuality. So I come to it from that background. Secondly, I come to it with a strong belief that this book, the Bible, is the very Word of God. That when the Bible speaks, God speaks. It is inspired in the earned Word of God.

And transgenderism then is an attack on God's authority. Let's look back in our Bibles to verses we've seen before. Genesis 1, Genesis 1. Right back to the very beginning of our Bibles, to the beginning of creation.

Here is the eternal Word of God. Genesis 1, 27. So God created man in His own image. In the image of God, He created him. Male and female, He created them.

Notice that. God created us, male and female. I could divide this congregation into two categories, male and female. Chapter 2, verse 21. So the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man. And while he slept, took one of his ribs and closed up his place with flesh. And the rib that the Lord God had taken from the man, He made into a woman and brought her to the man.

You getting it? Then the man said, this at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh. She shall be called woman because she was taken out of man. Therefore, a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, to a woman, and they shall become one flesh. But you say, that's the first book in the Bible, that's really a very ancient Scripture, and I go by the teaching of Jesus. All right, let's go by the teaching of Jesus, Matthew chapter 19, where Jesus is asked about marriage. Matthew chapter 19, which has been our basic text, as we're going consecutively through the book of Matthew. Matthew chapter 19, verse 4. Well, they ask Him, verse 3, is it lawful? The Pharisees came to Him and asked Him, testing Him, is it lawful to divorce one's wife for any cause? He answered, have you not read from the beginning that He who created them from the beginning made them what?

Male and female. Thousands of years have passed in human history and onto the scene in time and space comes our Lord Jesus Christ, the Lord from heaven, God Himself. And when He's asked about this question, He doesn't say something different. He says exactly what was said in the beginning, that in the beginning God created us, male and female. Let's think of 1 Corinthians chapter 6, an interesting passage. 1 Corinthians 6 was like modern Charlotte, a very sexualized society. And Paul writes, 1 Corinthians 6, verse 16. Or do you not know that He who is joined to a prostitute becomes one body with her? For as it is written, the two shall become one flesh. Where is that written?

We just read it. Genesis 2. The two to what? Male and female in marriage become one flesh. But He who is joined to the Lord becomes one spirit with Him. Flee from sexual immorality.

Whoever you are, you hear this? Flee from sexual immorality. For every other sin a person commits is outside the body, but the sexually immoral person sins against his own body. Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have? From where? From God. God gave you your body. God made you male or female. You're not your own.

Do you hear that? You are not your own. For you were bought with a price that is the price of the blood of our Lord Jesus Christ, so glorify God in your body. Paul is reinforcing this fact that our body is given by God, created by God, male or female, and therefore you don't take your body as a believer which is indwelled by the Holy Spirit and join it to a prostitute. Incidentally, this verse, your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit. It's not referring to the fact that you can't take some drug or you can't take the vaccine. Sometimes people are using this totally out of context incidentally. No, you're not your own.

You're bought with a price. Transgenderism is an attack on God's authority. What's happening in our society? Radical individualism is replacing the authority of God. Frank Sinatra's song, I Did It My Way, do you know that's the most famous song sung at the funeral?

I did it. Slightly off tune, but there it is. We're not going to sing it because I don't believe it. It's not the song of the Christian, but it summarizes the spirit of the age, doesn't it? This spirit is rooted in our rebellious hearts.

What happens when there's no king in Israel? Everyone does right in his own eyes. That's it. This has been called by the Canadian philosopher, very, very apt I think, expressive individualism. What's expressive individualism? I'm just following my own heart, so it must be right. I'm just following my own passion, therefore it must be right. My psychological well-being is the purpose of my life, and anything that enhances my personal happiness must be good, provided it doesn't harm other people. Self-fulfillment is the goal in life. My personal happiness, what I want today to do.

So, this radical expressive individualism results in each person being his or her own authority. It's all about me. I was going to bring up my iPhone, but I forgot it.

Aptly named, isn't it? I-phone. I-pad.

I-pod. Center my existence is I, it's me. Increasingly we hear, I'll choose what I will believe. I will do what I want to do. I will say what I want to say. No one is going to tell me what to do.

Don't you hear that more and more? People today don't obey a police officer. Don't obey their teachers. Don't obey their parents. Don't obey the government. Don't obey their employers. Don't obey church leaders.

No. You're not going to tell me what I'm going to do. I'm going to do my own thing.

What's happening? We're putting ourselves at the very center of our existence, and no one is going to discount my feelings. I'm free to believe anything I want to, and I've got to be true to myself. In today's rampant individualism then, people define themselves any way they want. Carl Truman has written a brilliant book, The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self. If you're interested in these things, you need to read it.

Here's what he says. He's a strong believer in Jesus Christ. All of the groups represented in the LGBTQ plus community do share a number of things in common. From the perspective of my earlier narrative, they are clearly psychological and sexual in terms of their understanding of selfhood.

That is very key. People are defining themselves very, very much in terms of their psychological well-being and their sexuality. To identify oneself by one's own sexual orientation or to identify one's gender by inner psychological conviction locates the LGBTQ plus within the world of expressive individualism and psychological man. Reality is inward and psychological, not outward and natural.

Notice his book, the title, The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self, a wonderful book, and I commend it to you. So today, if I say I'm a woman and I now want to be called Joan instead of John, what a thought, isn't it? I don't know how the elders would respond. Well, in fact, I think I do know how they will respond.

But seriously, people do that. They say, you can't question my feelings. You can't question my gender identity. You can't question my reality. This is real for me.

What's happening? Truth is determined by me. That's why I began by reading the Word of God from Deuteronomy 11. For those of us who love God, truth is not determined by you. It's not based on your psychological well-being or your view of your personal happiness. It is rooted and founded in the Word of God. But you see what's happening.

Whether I am male or female becomes a matter of personal preference. Ethics become a function of feeling. But that is not freedom. That is idolatry of self. Remember the first commandment? There's only one God, no other gods. Think of the utter arrogance of an individual putting themselves before God. God is our Creator. God is your Creator. God made you. And God, not you, decides your gender.

That's basic. In the Garden of Eden, what did the devil say to Eve? Did God actually say that?

And from our first parents, we have rebelled against God, against the God who is our Creator and to whom we are accountable. I think it's very, very interesting that when the Pharisees come to test Jesus on this question of marriage and divorce, and when they say to Him, what do you, what do you say about this? He first says, this is wonderful, isn't it? Have you not read? Notice that.

Notice what He didn't say. He didn't say, well, how do you Pharisees feel about this? What do you think about marriage?

I mean, what do you think and feel should be the reasons for divorce? I mean, in terms of marriage Pharisees, what do you think? What do you feel?

Absolutely not. Have you not read? And He goes back thousands of years right to the very creation and says, there is your answer. So for followers of Jesus, our authority, please understand, is not rooted in our individual desires or our prejudices or our feelings or our opinions or our experiences or our traditions.

We all have them. Our authority must be in the inspired Word of God. You see, your feelings can't always be trusted. You say, well, I'm just going to go by my feelings. I'm just going to go by my passion.

That's going to end in disaster. No, you can't always trust your feelings, but you can always, always trust God. God is your Creator. God is the ultimate authority. And we as individuals are accountable to Him. Paul writes in Romans 14 verse 12, so then each of us will give an account of ourselves to God. God made you. And you, you up in the balcony, up in the upper balcony, you and myself, we are all accountable to God.

One day you're going to stand before God and give an account. And it is God our Creator who assigns our gender. He made us male and female. No, your gender is not a matter of personal choice.

It's a matter of God's creation. And transgenderism and queer theory deny the fixed nature of gender, and they believe that our gender is fluid. No, transgenderism is an attack on the authority of God. Secondly, transgenderism is an attack on God's sovereignty. God created us, male and female.

I read from Genesis 127. So God created man in His own image. In the image of God, He created him. Male and female, He created them. Men and women are equal.

They complement each other in a beautiful way. Those of us who are married understand that perhaps as we first get married, we find that a little difficult to be married to somebody who's very different from us and then we begin to realize the wisdom of God. That here is a man, here is a woman and they come together and complement each other in a wonderful way which is God's design for marriage.

Different but equal. And so as I say, it's very significant that when Jesus is asked about His views on marriage and divorce, He goes back to the creation account. Have you not read that He who created them from the beginning made them male and female?

You want to know the teaching of Jesus? There it is. God created us, male and female, and God doesn't make mistakes. Let me speak to our children. Children, God made you either a boy or a girl. Don't try to change God's plan for you. You are uniquely made by God.

You're made in the image of God. And whether you're a boy or a girl is not something that you choose at some point in your life based on your personal wishes or how you feel or what people say to you. No, your gender, whether you're a boy or a girl, male or female, is the sovereign choice of God. God made me male.

I had no say on that. My older brother, she's a brother, perhaps my parents thought would be wonderful. Now, having a little boy, we got a little girl and he got me, which was challenging sometimes. And they got six little boys. And after getting six little boys, they thought God only wants to give us boys and I think they stopped. There it was.

But seriously, you didn't choose whether you're a male or a female. Can I remind you who God is? He's the almighty God as we've been singing. He's the eternal God. He's the holy God, but He's also a God of infinite love.

And I believe in infinite love God created John Monroe as a little boy. And God in His love created you, a little girl, a little boy, whoever you are, and that God is infinitely wiser than I am. Do you think that I'm wiser than God? Do you think as maybe a little three or four year old I thought, you know, God made me, God made me a boy, but God made a mistake and from now on I'm going to be a little girl?

Absolutely not. God decides whether you're male or female and He's a good God. Don't you understand that? This God who made me loves me. The Scripture says in Psalm 139, He knitted us and He formed us while you're still in your mother's womb that we're fearfully and wonderfully made.

And if God watches over the fall of the sparrow, how much more does He watch over you and me, whoever you are. And so accept who you are and understand this, that this book, this wonderful book, the Word of God, is not given to suppress you. It's not given to take your joy away from you.

It's the very reverse that joy and fulfillment and meaning in life is when we embrace what God has done and when we surrender our lives to the Lord Jesus Christ, believing that He is Lord, He's all loving, He's all wise, He's all powerful and I'm in His hands. And to try and change what God has done is wrong in His attack on His sovereignty. And so-called sex change surgery, doesn't that sound awful?

So-called sex change surgery and hormone treatment don't change the gender of the person. It's a deception, it's an illusion. I believe it's an assault on God's sovereignty. It is trying to undo what God has done. Isn't that right? Can you think of it any other way?

Now, please understand me, I understand. There's a tiny percentage of people who because of psychological disorders are confused about their sexual identity. They suffer from gender dysphoria. Traditionally in little boys, towards such people, we show love and compassion.

Absolutely. God created them, we're to love them, we're to care for them and help them in any way that we can. However, so-called queer theory, which propagates the belief that a person's gender identity does not correspond to their biological sex assigned at birth, that queer theory, which is promoted, which more and more people are believing, which is impacting the workplace with these personal pronouns, that stands in direct violation, not only to the creation account, but as we've seen, to the very teaching of our Lord Jesus Christ.

So pansexuality, homosexuality, bisexuality, fluidity of gender are opposed to and are attacks on God's design. God made us in a certain way. We are to surrender to that. We are to bow to that. You are not God.

You're a tiny little speck in the shoes, huge cosmos, and think how wonderful it is that although you're this tiny speck that you are directly created by God, a God who loves you, a God who has magnificent, brilliant plans for your life. So don't mess with it, but surrender to God. When we prayed this morning, as we do every Sunday morning, our deacons and our elders and our pastors, one of our elders was praying that we, Calvary Church, that we would be protected from our enemy. And I thought that is a prayer we should all be praying because our enemy, I believe in the devil, yes, I believe in Satan, he always seeks to destroy what God creates. God made us, God gives us marriage, he seeks to destroy it. God gives us the home, he seeks to destroy it. God gives us a way of government, our enemy seeks to destroy it.

God gives us the church, which Jesus Christ is building, the gates of hell are against it. God gave us gender, male and female. And now, our enemy seeks to destroy what gender is.

The Scriptures are very clear, God created us, male and female. Parents, please reinforce this with your children. And don't be so silly when your four-year-old little boy puts on a dress and says, well, I'm a girl, that you think, oh, maybe it's a fluidity of his gender. Absolutely not. Stop it.

Show him the better way. Help our children and our students to understand the beauty of being a man, that men are masculine, that women are feminine, that women are different from men and that is the way that God created us and this blurring of genders and this destroying of gender is not the work of God, but is the work of our enemy. Now, what's the consequences of transgenderism?

This is very real, isn't it? In schools, even in some elementary schools, we're getting to the place where children can state they're changing their gender and the children, young children, can now decide what name they're going to be called and teachers are not to question children who say they want to transition to live as boys or girls. And apparently, teachers in some schools can't even say boys and girls. I mean, what have we come to as a nation?

What's going on? A teacher in a school can't say boys and girls. I want to say it's wrong, it's harmful, and it's confusing to teach children that they are not boys or girls and they're just assigned their gender at birth. No, it's not a matter of being assigned their gender at birth by their parents, it is a matter of being created by God as either male or female.

And this is not only contrary to Scripture, to me it's contrary to common sense, which apparently is not so common. And there's harmful, harmful consequences of understanding sexuality and personhood as fluid. Compared to members of the non-gender population, members of the gender community are at a higher risk of a variety of mental health problems, including depression and the risk of suicide. Think of the confusion in sport. Think of the choice of bathrooms and locker rooms where boys and girls are going to decide which restroom they're going to go into or which locker room they're going to go into. Think of the impact of transgenderism on girls' sport. Now, a man can claim to be a woman and try to complete, compete in some women's sports. And even if that man suppresses the amount of testosterone in him, that does not eradicate the athletic advantages of men over women.

Now, men, this is fact, not a chauvinist point. Men, generally speaking, are faster and stronger than women. Husbands, are you stronger than your wife?

In a few cases, you've got a strong wife. But generally speaking, most men can run faster, walk faster, and they're stronger than their wives. Do you know the fastest mile run by a woman? The fastest is four minutes, 12.33 seconds. You say that's fast. That is very fast. When I was at school, if you could run five minutes a mile, you were very, very good. So, that's a very fast woman. However, as some of you know, do you know the first — how long ago it was since a man ran under four minutes? It was 1953.

Roger Bannister, the Englishman. He ran the first under four-minute mile. That's what over 60, almost 70 years ago. And since then, not one woman has run under four minutes. Now, that's not a chauvinistic point, it's a fact. It's a fact that we all know, a fact that we all applaud, that men and women are different. And biological sex is one of the single biggest drivers of athletic ability.

This is a matter of fact. Now, only a minority of children who experience cross-gender identification issues continue to do so into adolescence. Here's an article which was in The Economist in November 2020, headed misgender, and this writer, Abigail Shearer, writes a book, Irreversible Damage, and she's been criticized by this, but this is in The Economist, not a Christian publication, but she writes this. A teenage girl who decides to alter her body so that it resembles a boy's commits herself to a lifetime of medical treatments. TOPS surgery, a double mastectomy, is a major operation. She must take regular large doses of testosterone. This may increase her chance of development heart problems. It also causes the uterus to atrophy, often painfully, which may necessitate a hysterectomy. Some of the changes to her body will be irreversible and likely to cause distress if she changes her mind. If she has taken puberty blockers as well as testosterone, she may well be infertile.

Only a few months of testosterone may alter her voice and given her a lifelong five o'clock shadow. Abigail Shearer, in Irreversible Damage. Yes, when you go against God's way, there are consequences. She argues that many of these young people are quote, victims of an ideology. This is another Christian woman. Victims of an ideology which holds that the feeling of being in the wrong body must be affirmed at all costs.

That's where we are. You've got to affirm this, however bizarre it is. Some of the courts in England have wisely ruled that it's highly unlikely that a 13-year-old girl and doubtful that 14 and 15-year-olds are mature enough to consent to such transgender procedures. Irreversible damage. Going against God's design has disastrous consequences. Transgenderism then is an attack on the authority of God and the sovereignty of God.

Well, how are we to respond? Well, for those who have physical or psychological disorders relating to their gender, we as followers of Christ extend sympathy, help and love. We do that to those who have embraced transgenderism. We do that to everyone.

Many of you know an individual who has been impacted directly by transgenderism. What are we to do? To shout slurs at them? To isolate them? To laugh at them?

Absolutely not. We are to do what the Lord Jesus did. We are to embrace every single individual while at the same time standing strong on His truth. Everyone is made in the image of God.

Everyone is to be treated with dignity and respect. However, we must strongly stand against the increasingly popular view that you can choose your own gender. Again, I speak to our children and students, do not, please hear me, do not be sucked into transgenderism. Being a teenager, being a student is sometimes very hard, I understand it, but don't listen to those who say the reason you find it hard is because you're really a boy or a girl or a lesbian or a homosexual.

Do not listen to such talk. Remember who you are made by God, loved by God, made in the image of God, your unique person. The color of your eyes, your height, who you are, all made by God, who loves you. God made you male or female, and God did not make a mistake. And to go against God, to go against God leads to pain, brokenness, shame and guilt.

The way of the transgressor is hard. Into this broken world, and we're all broken, aren't we? Any unbroken people here? No. Anyone not struggling with sin?

No. Into this world of darkness, into this world of pain and struggle, where magnificent, beautiful, sinless Son of God comes. What humility. Paul says this is a faithful saying, and worthy of all acceptance, that our Savior comes to save sinners of whom I am chief. And your greatest joy, I can testify of this, many could testify of this, your greatest joy is found as you receive Jesus Christ as your Savior, as you bow to Him, as you repent of Him, your own rebellion, this attitude that you're going to live as you want, that our attitude that we know better than God right from the garden as Adam and Eve disobeyed God, that we are broken, we are helpless, we have to admit that we are sinners, that's called repentance, and turn and in a sense embrace the Savior who still says, come to me and I'll give you rest. And following Jesus Christ, seeking to do His will is the way, please hear me, is the way of joy, is the way of fulfillment, is the way of happiness if you like, not that being a follower of Jesus Christ doesn't bring us into conflict with the world and we suffer and we have pain as the rest of humanity, but at all times we look to our Lord Jesus Christ who loves us and who's soon coming for us and who still says, I have come that they may have life and have it abundantly.

Do you believe that? Do you believe that you know better than the Lord Jesus Christ? He's saying to you, I've come and I've come to give you this magnificent, eternal, supernatural life and you will live a life not of despair, but a life of abundance if you surrender all to Jesus.

Will you do that this morning? And that God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life. Come to Christ. And some of you who are His followers, you've allowed the temptations of the devil to snare you. And there's that sin you need to, that needs to be broken. And you can't break it yourself when you surrender all to Christ. And He will come and forgive your sins. And through His Spirit, empower you to live that wonderful life that God has for you.

Will you bow as we pray? Father, this is a difficult subject for us, and yet we thank You for the clarity of Your Word. We thank You that Jesus came to save sinners, He came to save broken people. And while many here may never be tempted with this transgenderism, all of us are tempted and all of us are messed up. So we thank You that Jesus still says Him that comes to me, I will in no wise cast out. May some today be coming to the Savior, living in the Lord Jesus Christ, and be saved. We ask it in His name.