God’s Basic Design (Part 2 of 2)

In the beginning, God created. That's how the Bible starts, but what does the Bible tell us about how we were created? And how does that relate to things like gender and sexuality? Today on Truth for Life, Alistair Begg takes us to Psalm 139 to help us understand God's basic design.

We're studying verses 1 through 18. A man by the name of Hendrick Van Loon wrote a book entitled The Story of Mankind, and he began his history of the world with these words, We live under the shadow of a gigantic question mark. Who are we? Where did we come from? Whither are we bound? Slowly, but with persistent courage, we have been pushing this question mark farther and further towards that distant line beyond the horizon where we hope to find our answer. We have not gone very far. Now, whether we are male or female today, those ultimate questions are the questions.

Do you emerge from plankton soup? Because if you do, then frankly, the issues of how well I'm doing in my femininity, how well I'm doing in fulfilling the role of single woman or maternal provider is marginal at best and probably totally irrelevant. So you see, until we address this most foundational issue about which the Psalmist writes in Psalm 139 about the very nature of our creation and what God has done, then the other questions, which are very important questions, are in need of being left on the sign. Now, you don't have to look far to find that there is a difference between the revelation of the Bible and the investigation of man. The New York Times had a review entitled On Being Male, Female, Neither, or Both. And I can't read the article and just use it by way of illustration, but I'll give you one quote from it. Until the turn of the century, Dr. Miorowicz writes, gender was defined through a binary taxonomy of opposites.

In 1910, a Berlin physician, Dr. Magnus Hirschfeld, published a pioneering work on transsexuality and articulated a relatively new modern definition of gender. Quotes, absolute representatives of their sex are, he wrote, only abstractions invented extremes. These two notions could not be further apart.

You cannot merge them, okay? Which is why I'm saying to you what I'm saying. Unless you are convinced of the authority of the Bible, then when you take your New York Times on a Tuesday morning and read this, you are going to be immediately at sea. You're going to be running down the street saying, who am I? What am I? Where am I on the continuum? Am I male? Am I female? What in the world am I? But if you have accepted the authority of the Bible and you believe that God gets the last word on every subject, then you don't disengage your brain.

You interact with the material. You think it out in light of what you know as having been revealed by the Creator God. And there's all the difference in the world. When our friend Dr. Philip Johnson was here and he took questions from the audience, one of the best questions, I think, came from a lady, and the question had to do with the identity and the dignity of man as being created. In the sequence of thought in Genesis, when it says that God created man, he made man, and then male and female, he created them—two components of a single reality. He created man, male, and female.

He made them, so that the image of God is revealed in man—man being male and female. Now, that is, of course, of vital importance. But the lady was asking the question concerning how all that had taken place. And Dr. Johnson had tried to speak, I think, to the issue that in the notion of creation, God has formed with love and with care, if you like, with imagination and with dedication man—that man doesn't just happen, that God breathes him into being. And that as a result of the activity of God, there's no place in our thinking for the idea that we're just here as a result of the mutation of the gene of some other animal. Now the lady stands up, you remember, and she asks the question, well, in defense of evolutionary thought, she says, essentially, aren't you prepared to accept, sir, that there is a close genetic affinity between the man and the chimpanzee? That's a good question.

I don't really remember the answer, but I was still thinking about how good a question it was. And I thought how easy it would be for some of us to say, oh, no, no, no, there isn't. And how wrong it would be for us to say that, because there is clearly a strong genetic affinity between man—not your husband now—man, male and female, and the chimpanzee. Well, you say, this is even worse than I thought it was going to be.

It's getting worse by the minute. No, this poses no problem to the Bible's explanation of things. There is a close anatomical affinity between the man and the ape, and there are close physiological affinities between man and the pig and man and the dog.

And you only need to look in your children's bedrooms to understand that if there was no other indication of it. If you don't think there's a definite physiological dimension between man and the pig, go back to your teenage son's room and have another look at it. But the fact is, we would expect there to be affinities, wouldn't there? We would expect that there would be affinities between man and the other creatures. Don't you think it would be very wise of God to act in such a way as to make possible animal tests that would be relevant and helpful to human medicine?

Don't you think it would be wonderful on the part of God so to constitute the cardiac structure of a pig as to make possible the use of pig valves in human transplantation? None of the notions of this great anatomical physiological comparison between one dimension of living things and the uniqueness of man by creation precludes what the Bible is saying. What the Bible precludes is the idea that man, male and female, exists as a result of evolution, an evolution that has been guided by natural selection, taking place by minute chance occurrences and variations over millions of years.

No, says the Bible. Man, male and female, is the express product of divine activity. And the similarities that we find between ourselves and chimpanzees are not there because man is a development from the chimp, but because God as Creator is free to duplicate his systems in more than one form of his creation. Doesn't that make sense? That he who created can use a gigantic chunk of the process in putting together a chimpanzee that he used to put you and I together?

Because think about it, and this actually is my simplistic analysis of the whole business. I think chimpanzees were put there as something of a divine joke, for when you see these things coming down the road, you see that looks a tremendous amount like my brother-in-law, Bill. There is an uncanny resemblance there to that character, and I think that's exactly it. I think in part what God is seeing is take a look at them and look at what you would be like if I had not made you in my image.

Frankly, you're close to that in some of your habits, and the way you walk is very similar to that. And of course, man looks at that and he says, well, it's obvious that the reason that we are where we are is because it just keeps jumping and bumping along. No, no, says the Bible, God did all of that, and yet uniquely he put you together. Listen, ladies, you are not the product of some chance happenstance, says the Bible. Your fingerprints are unique. They are not the same as anyone else in the room. Your DNA is unique. It is not the same as anyone else's in the room. Indeed, in the whole world it is unique as a result of God's explicit design for you as an individual, and God don't make no junk. So he has fashioned you intricately in your mother's womb, forming your unseen substance, putting you together in an awareness of all that that would mean for you as an individual in the living of your life, in dealing with your physicality, in dealing with your sexuality, in dealing with your emotions, in dealing with your rationality, in dealing with your role in life and everything else. God has purposefully organized that.

And until a woman comes to the awareness of this vast and immense notion, then like a man, you will be left looking in the magazines to try and find out who you are and where you're from and why you exist, and another twenty-four reasons from Cosmopolitan magazine to give significance to your life and structure to your marriage and hope to everything that goes along with it. Or if it's not there, we'll go to one of the other ones. I don't mean to be dismissive. And you say, well, this isn't what we thought at all. We thought we were getting a thing on loving your husbands and trying to encourage your children to pick up their vegetables and all that kind of thing.

Well, as I say, I'm dreadfully sorry to disappoint you. You're thinking, people, you need to think this out. God said, let us make man in our image. If you like, he said, let's make a lookalike. In what sense, then, are we made in the image of God? In what way is God's design patterned in our lives? Well, that's the stuff of systematic theology, you can buy a book through in the shop and you can get all this.

I'll just give you a start on it. Our rationality, our ability to think, to reason, to think logically, sets us apart from the animal world. And I know somebody immediately puts up their hands and said, well, you know, I have a laboratory. It's a very smart laboratory. You know, it's a very thoughtful laboratory.

I'm not so sure that this rationality thing works. Well, I have never yet seen a group of laboratories sitting around in Starbucks and discussing the doctrine of the Trinity. Your children are able to perform tasks that your Labrador can't. You may train your Labrador with little bits of meat and cookies and everything else to perform tasks so he can go on the David Letterman show, but you cannot say to your Labrador, go into the garage and bring the small red screwdriver, but your four-year-old can go get a small red screwdriver, able to distinguish color, size, shape, and function, rationality, creativity, art, music, literature, science, technology, morality, an inner sense of right and wrong, immortality, the awareness that we won't cease to exist, but that we will live forever, and so on. I admit to you that the differences between ourselves and animals in some areas are not absolute differences.

They're differences of very great degree. And this is what people say. They like to dismiss it in this way. And again, it usually comes back to a Labrador or a golden retriever. Well, I have a golden retriever, and you said that emotions are part of it. And I have a very emotional golden retriever. I mean, if I come home and I didn't get home at five, as usual, and he's got a very long face like this, or if he doesn't get his food just at the right time, no, he's very miserable for the rest of the evening and so on. I fully accept that.

I don't doubt that for one minute. But you're not going to suggest to me that your golden retriever can go through the gamut of psychological interaction such as is represented when you go to hear the Cleveland Orchestra about severance, and when you sit down and you say to yourself, oh, goodness gracious, I didn't realize it was Mahler. This is going to be dreadful.

Then the accompanying emotion is, but that was very nice of him to invite me. And then the next thought, how long till I get out of here? And then I wonder if we'll be able to go for coffee, and then starting into the business of the day. All of these multiple processes of thought are going on simultaneously, which is, I suggest to you, a difference of degree between your golden retriever feeling a little bit morose because you came home a half past five rather than a half past four. You see how quickly people think that it's just throughout the golden retriever story. So on the basis of the golden retriever getting his lunch, your view of yourself and your dignity and your femininity and everything else is cast out to the breeze, and the same people who are driving around with their golden retriever in the back of their minivan are reading this on being male, female, or whatever they are, neither or both. And I'll leave the subject aside, but actually at the end of this line, the androgynous differences between male and female are also passed over into the differences between animal and humanity.

This is not a matter of marginal importance. Once you break the link, said Schaeffer, between an infinite personal creator God and his creation, then the door is open to every kind of abuse. And there is a huge difference between the doctrine of creation, Psalm 139, and the theory that man, that is male and female, is the spontaneous result of random variation in organisms over millions of years. And man will think differently, not only about himself, but about everything, when we explain our existence in terms of time plus matter plus chance.

If you think this morning, man, that when you showered and dressed and looked at yourself in the mirror before leaving, you were looking at simply a random collection of molecules, thrown together as a result of a chance process, cast into the great scheme of time without really any meaning whatsoever, then I suggest to you that you will think differently about absolutely everything than if you come to the convinced awareness of what the psalmist is saying here in 139 Psalm. In one of the Exphile editions, there's a fascinating dialogue between Mulder and Scully, and Mulder asks, when science can't offer an explanation, can we turn to the fantastic? And Scully, ever the skeptic, replies, what I find fantastic is any notion that there is anything beyond science. When science doesn't answer, can we turn to the fantastic?

I'll tell you what's fantastic is the idea that there is anything other than beyond science. Now ladies, this is where you're living your lives. This is the basis upon which conversations are taking place concerning human sexuality, femininity, the roles of women. I'm going to show you in the second session how this works itself out, what it actually means in practical terms.

There is a reason for a predilection towards lesbianism that is built into a worldview, and the worldview gives rise to all kinds of extrapolations. That's why I want to ask you in this first session, when you walk out of here or you don't walk out of here—I don't know what you do next, but whatever you do, you just sit and think for a moment. Do I have a proper view of God's design in the first place? Am I just worthless junk, essentially irrelevant?

Am I just a combination of chemicals and suspension, a bunch of grown-up genes? Now again, until you address that question and get a satisfactory answer, how to do the women thing, how to do the mom thing, how to do the wife thing, seven helpful tips for this and nine wonderful tips for that, they will not answer your deepest longings. There is not a relationship on the face of God's earth that can satisfy you with a man. There is not a child that can need you enough. There is not a job that can fulfill you enough.

There is not a vacation that can enthrall you enough. There is nothing that can deal with the deep-seated sense of who you are as you, until first you settle the issue of God's design. So make your choice. You can go with the New York Times and Freud, or you can go with the Bible, but you can't go with both of them together.

You're sensible people, think this out. We need to understand God's basic design for women before we can understand his specific design. After listening to Alistair Begg on Truth for Life, Alistair will return to close today's program with prayer in just a minute, so please keep listening. Our current series is titled God's Design for Women. If you'd like to supplement what you're learning in this study, we want to invite you to request the book Women and God. The author of this book explores God's plan for all women, beginning in Genesis and examining the role God gave Eve. Then the book profiles other women in the Bible, including Deborah, a judge in the Old Testament, and the woman at the well who interacted with Jesus.

To gain a clearer understanding of what the Bible teaches about God's purpose for women, get your copy of the book Women and God. It's available to you as our way of saying thanks when you make a donation today. You'll find the book online in the mobile app or at truthforlife.org slash donate. Now today is the first day of the Basics 2022 Pastors Conference. It continues through Wednesday this week.

The theme is Back to Basics. Alistair will be speaking along with guest Tony Morita and John Woodhouse. There is a live stream of the conference available.

If you'd like to tune in, go to basicsconference.org. Alistair and all of the men attending would really appreciate your prayers over the next few days. Pray that the Basics Conference will bring needed refreshment, that the men will be recharged and encouraged, and that they'll return to their home churches ready to preach the gospel with boldness. Now here's Alistair to close in prayer. Father, I pray that as we consider these things throughout the remainder of this day, that you will guide our thinking.

We need your help so desperately. It would be very easy for us, Lord, to tackle all of these subjects from a very superficial perspective. Indeed, one of the great dangers as a man coming to address women is that we, because of our own proneness to self-assertiveness, think that somehow or another we should tone it down or change it or put it in less didactic form, maybe some more stories, et cetera. Forgive me and everybody like me for thinking wrongly about that. We pray that you would help us then to take very seriously the question of God, your word, and the implications of what it means for you to be the designer. For we would expect then that as in a home where a designer leaves their mark, that in the home of our lives, there would be all kinds of evidences of you. And so we pray then that as we think these issues through, that the Spirit of God may be our teacher. For we pray in Jesus' name, for his sake, amen. I'm Bob Lapine. Join us tomorrow. We'll learn how God's distinct design for men and women includes diversity that is unified and unity that is diversified. The Bible teaching of Alistair Begg is furnished by Truth for Life, where the Learning is for Living.