Honoring Christ in Male/Female Roles (1)

Introduction: The Pervasive Relevance of Male/Female Roles and Ethical Questions

0:01 Now, the subject announced for this evening, and then, God willing, again for tomorrow morning, is honoring Christ in male and female roles and relationships. And as I attempt to take up this vast and very vital subject, of one thing I'm certain, and that is that what I have to say to you will, of necessity and infallibly, apply to every single individual in this building, because every one of you happens to be either a male or a female. We have no innocuous persons in this room. And in the day of personhood, I, for one, issue my protest. I do not like being regarded as an innocuous person.

1:06 I was conceived and formed in my mother's womb as a male of the human species. And a male I was conceived, a male I was developed, a male I was brought forth, a male I shall live, a male I shall die, and a male I shall be through all eternity with some alteration of my maleness, the precise details of which are unrevealed, and in that identity shall glorify my God and my Redeemer through the endless ages of eternity.

1:50 Others of you were conceived females, as females you developed in your motherhood, as females you were brought forth, as females you now exist. If you are Christians, as females you live out in gratitude to Christ, the life he has imparted, as females you shall die and be resurrected, and as females you will bring glory to God forever in the eternal state, also with some alteration in the, that femaleness which is not clearly revealed to us in Holy Scripture. And so in taking up the subject, I have no question that anyone will be omitted in the relevance of the subject. Now in approaching any subject dealing with questions of ethics, because that's really what we're dealing with, ethics has to do with human behavior, patterns, patterns of behavior that are right or wrong. What are the norms for human behavior? And in taking up any subject of ethics, particularly Christian ethics, immediately our minds go to the details of ethical concern.

3:18 And I would be very surprised if those of you who have been aware of the subject matter did not come with at least several, if not a lot, a long list of questions, most of which focus upon the particulars of the ethics of male-female roles and relationships. For example, the much agitated question, should women be given office in the Church of Jesus Christ? Or the even more agitated question in society, should women be locked into a fixed role, a role of motherhood and wifeliness and domesticity? Or are these roles up for grabs? And if hubby can wash dishes as well as his sweetie pie, and if husband can use the hoover as well as his beloved, is it all right if they reverse the roles and she becomes the breadwinner and he becomes the bread maker at home? Or it may be, that some of you have come with some very burning questions about the whole question of dating.

4:34 How should I choose those with whom I spend social time in dating relationships? How can I know the will of God with respect to my life's partner? What actions are proper between a Christian couple at various levels of a developing relationship? Is it right, to hold hands, to have a goodnight kiss, to go beyond that in the expression of physical affection?

Foundational Building Block 1: The Nature of Scripture

5:04 And on and on I could go with questions which I have no doubt are present in many of your minds, if not in all of your minds. Now, it's precisely at this point that we face our greatest difficulty in wrestling with ethical issues. We instinctively have our minds and spirits pressured in the direction, of the specifics of ethical questions and concerns, but our answers to those specifics are always built upon the foundation blocks from which we think and reason and deduce and draw conclusions. And so what I propose to do in the time allotted tonight is to totally, totally bypass all of the burning, itching, pressing, specific questions, and to direct your attention to the two major building blocks in all clear thinking about ethical concerns from a Christian perspective. And I wish I had a blackboard, and if I did, on the blackboard I would first of all draw a very lengthy rectangle,

6:27 about a foot deep, and if the blackboard were six feet across, I'd take it all the way across from edge to edge, so if you can imagine in your mind's eye, in fact I'll use what I have here, if you will liken this plank that is about, oh, I'd say about seven inches wide and approximately six feet long, liken that to the foundational building block in any accurate thinking in Christian ethics. And on that building block, I would have you print the words, the nature of Scripture. The nature of Scripture. The moment we take up any question of ethics, immediately our view of the Scriptures is brought into sharp focus. For example, there is a man who claims to be an evangelical, he teaches in one of the largest evangelical seminaries in the United States, he has written what many regard to be an epical work on this very subject, male and female roles and relationships. And in his book, in dealing with certain pivotal passages, he unashamedly states that the Apostle Paul,

7:53 in some places, writes on these subjects as a man whose mind is under the influence of the liberating truth of the Gospel, his mind is under the influence of Christ's Spirit and the blessings of the New Covenant. However, in other places, Paul writes out of the matrix of a mind and a spirit still buried under the rubble of rabbinic tradition, and male chauvinistic prejudice. And yet he claims to be an evangelical. Now you see his ethical conclusions about male and female roles and relationships reflect his defective view of the word of the living God. He has a Bible in which a so-called inspired apostle, a building block in the church of Jesus Christ, can blatantly, patently, unashamedly contradict himself. And then there are others. There is a couple who have written a book in which they have sought to demonstrate that the understanding that evangelicals have had for many years

9:14 about male and female relationships have been utterly defective, and then they proceed to be our instructors, and one does not read long in their literature until one comes to the conviction that their understanding of the nature of Scripture is radically defective. And so what I wish to do in filling in this first foundational building block of all ethical thinking that is honoring to God is to direct your attention briefly to the nature of Holy Scripture as it applies to the questions that we will be grappling with this weekend. And I want to say three things about the nature of Scripture. First of all, I want to assert its undiluted integrity, its timeless sufficiency, and its fundamental clarity, or a word that I like a little better, though it's not as clear to many, perspicuity. And it ought to be a word in your working vocabulary. And as I come to wrestle with you both in public ministry and then in our discussion period on Sunday afternoon and hopefully in some of my personal interaction with you, everything that I assert,

The Undiluted Integrity of Scripture

10:41 every deduction that is made, every observation that is given on male and female roles and relationships and how to honor Christ in them, all of those things are reflective of my conviction about the nature of Holy Scripture, a conviction which I am convinced the Scriptures themselves force upon me. Now let's look briefly then at those three strands of thought. First of all, I assert the undiluted integrity of the Scriptures. In 2 Timothy chapter 3 and verse 16, in this great watershed text concerning the nature of Scripture, the Apostle Paul writing to Timothy, referring of course primarily to the Old Testament Scriptures, which were the only Scriptures in Timothy's possession at that time, 2 Timothy 3 and verse 16, all Scripture is inspired of God. And the word that Paul used literally means all Scripture is God-breathed. In other words,

12:07 Scripture is regarded as the out-breathing of the mind and will of God. All Scripture. All Scripture in its very nature is God-breathed. In another text that is also the handmaiden to this text when dealing with the nature of Scripture, the Apostle Peter asserts in 2 Peter chapter 1 and verse 19, 2 Peter 1 and verse 19, and we have the word of prophecy made more sure, where unto you do well that you take heed as unto a lamp shining in a dark place until the day dawn and the day star arise in your heart, knowing this first, that no prophecy of Scripture is of private interpretation, for no prophecy ever came by the will of man, but man spoke from God, spoke from God, literally being borne along, being carried by the Holy Spirit. Men spoke. There is the human element in Holy Scripture.

13:36 Men spoke. And Scripture reflects very clearly the thought patterns of men, the figures of speech by which men communicate, one with another. Syntax and grammar and structure and style differing from one author to another. Why?

14:01 Because men were speaking in the Scriptures. It was Paul who wrote Romans and not John. It was Peter who wrote 1 Peter and not Paul. And therefore the Petrine element is very evident in the vocabulary, in the sentence structure, in the grammar.

14:27 Men spoke. Yes, but men spoke not as they were carried along by their individual insights, not as they were carried along and influenced by native short-sightedness, innate prejudice or misconception. No. Men spoke, but they spoke as those who were borne along, who were carried, who were under the superintendence of the Holy Spirit in such a way as to make what they wrote to be the very words of the living God, so that what Scripture says, God says, and whatever God says reflects His very nature. And of that God it is said, God who cannot lie. And when all of the mist is blown away from all of the debate about the infallibility and the inerrancy of Scripture, at the end of the day, the issue is this. Is God God enough to take man the creature and so work upon him and in him

15:55 and through him as to make him the instrument of giving us an inerrant and infallible revelation of his mind and his will? And don't let anyone confuse the issue. That is the issue. And you see, if you've opened up Genesis chapter 1 and read the first verse, in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.

16:27 And if you do not stumble over that tremendous burst of supernaturalism that breaks out of the opening words of the Bible, you will not stumble over the Bible's doctrine concerning its own infallibility and its own inerrancy. And so as we take up many of the vexed questions pertaining to male and female roles and relationships, functions and responsibilities, the relative place of men and women in the church and in the home and in society, we do so from the perspective of the book we read, which we hold in our hands, is a book of undiluted integrity. Now I want to press this for a moment at a point where I trust you'll feel the pinch. To claim to be a Christian is to claim that one has embraced the Christ of Biblical revelation as one's own Savior and Lord. I hope we're all agreed on that simple statement.

17:49 To claim to be a Christian is to claim that one has embraced the Christ of Scriptural revelation as one's own Lord and Savior. Well then, that means I'm prepared to embrace the Christ of Biblical revelation with respect to His person. And what does this book tell me about His person? It tells me He is God.

18:19 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God, and the Word became flesh. This book tells me that the Savior whom I embrace is very God of very God, as much God as though He were never man, and yet as much man as though He were never God. That He took to Himself a true humanity, a true human soul, a true human body. And in the great mystery of the incarnation, we have what the theologians call the theanthropic person, the God-man, the two natures in the one person forever. Now, to be a Christian is not simply to, quote, trust some Jesus concerning whom we have some nebulous, ephemeral, undefined concept is somewhere, somehow, out there, a great cosmic deliverer. My friend, if you've come here and that's all you know of Jesus, I'll tell you one thing, you're no more a Christian than I'm Mrs. Thatcher.

19:34 And I tell you, she'd have to be a pretty good disguise artist to pull that one off. No, to be a Christian is to receive the Christ of biblical revelation as to his person. It is to receive the Christ of biblical revelation as to his work. The scripture says that in this person, in the life that he lived, in the death that he died, in the resurrection by which he was brought out of the state of death into a new augmented state of resurrection life and glory and power, the scripture says to receive Jesus Christ is not only to receive the Christ of biblical revelation with regard to the uniqueness of his person, but with reference to the distinct nature and uniqueness of his work. Christ died for our sins. Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law, having been made a curse for us. You say, Mr. Martin,

20:43 this is all very elementary. We know all of this. Don't treat us like Sunday school kids. Listen, I have a reason for doing what I'm doing, and it's this, and I want you to follow it closely.

20:55 As surely as a Christian is someone who's received the Christ of biblical revelation as to his person, the Christ of biblical revelation as to his work, to be a Christian is to receive the Christ of biblical revelation as to his evaluation of the scriptures. And what was Jesus' evaluation of the scriptures? His evaluation was that they were a revelation from God of undiluted integrity. He said in John 10, 35, the scriptures cannot be broken. He said, the Lord Jesus Christ himself said, man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God. What proceeded from Moses' pen in the Pentateuch, Jesus calls words coming from the mouth of God. And that's why Jesus said, embracing him and embracing his words, even his words of assessment about scripture

22:21 are inseparable realities in all saving faith. He that is ashamed of me and of my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, of him shall the son of man be ashamed when he comes in his glory. Mark 8 and verse 38. And so as we come to take up the subject of male-female roles, and relationships, and how to honor Christ in them, our starting point is this fundamental building block in all Christian ethics, the nature of Holy Scripture, first of all, in its undiluted integrity. And I say to any one of you young men or women who in your arrogance and in your pride think that you know something that causes you to withhold unquestioned confidence in the word of God. As Jesus was crucified in the place of a skull, that's where you need to be crucified. At the point of your creaturely arrogance that would cause you to think you know more than Jesus Christ in whom are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.

23:50 All the treasures of wisdom and knowledge are hidden in him. And the Christ of biblical revelation comes to us, if I may state it in graphic pictorial language, he comes to us clutching the Bible. And he says, if you want me, you'll have me with my view of Scripture or you'll not have me at all. If you attempt to separate me from my view of Scripture, you end up with a Christ who is not the Christ of biblical revelation.

The Timeless Sufficiency of Scripture

24:27 But then I must hasten to say, secondly, the nature of Scripture is to be understood not only in terms of its undiluted integrity, but secondly, in terms of its timeless sufficiency. Its timeless sufficiency. And what do I mean by that terminology? Simply this, that in all ages, in all cultures, at all times and in all places, the Scriptures are the sufficient rule for faith and practice in every area of human experience.

25:09 And how do we know that? Well, let's just follow on in 2 Timothy 3 from the statement of Scripture being God-breathed revelation and see what Paul goes on to say. And see what Paul goes on to say concerning the God-breathed revelation. 2 Timothy 3, verses 16 and 17.

25:35 All Scripture is given by inspiration of God and is also profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for instruction, which is in righteousness, literally for child training. It's the word which means to train as one trains a child. The Scriptures are profitable for teaching, for reproving, for correcting, for child training in the realm of practical godliness. Now notice, that the man of God, and that's a peculiar term for Timothy, 1 Timothy 6, 12, But thou, O man of God, that the man of God may be complete, furnished completely unto every good work. In other words, Paul tells young Timothy, Timothy, the very Scriptures which were instrumental to bring you to faith in Christ, and he had mentioned that in verses 14 and 15 of the same chapter, he said, Timothy, it was Scripture under the blessing of the Spirit of God through the instrumentality of your godly grandmother and mother that was used to bring you to faith in Christ. Now, Timothy, I've laid upon you a vast spectrum of responsibility in the church at Ephesus. I've given you a host of directives in my first epistle.

27:02 I've given you more directives in this second epistle. I've told you that there would be tremendous opposition rising up from the spirit of the age, from evil men, from heretics, from those who oppose the truth. Timothy, the very Scriptures that were given to you to bring you to faith in Christ, the very Scriptures which brought you to the knowledge of Jesus Christ, you need look no further for all you need to do all I've commanded you as a servant of Christ. Timothy, there is no problem arising from the peculiar cultural pressures of Ephesus, the great seat of the worship of the goddess Diana.

27:46 There are no sets of problems arising from all of the baggage of pagan paganism with which believers have brought or which they have brought with them into the church. There is nothing you will face, Timothy, but what the Scriptures are able to furnish you completely unto every good work. This is why at the conclusion of the New Testament canon, that is, at the conclusion of the New Testament Scriptures, God gives this frightening word of warning which clearly applies to the book of the Revelation and by comparing Scripture with Scripture applies to the entirety of God's written Revelation. The last book of the New Testament, Revelation 22, the last chapter, verse 18, I testify unto every man who hears the words of the prophecy of this book, if any man shall add unto them, God shall add unto him the plagues that are written in this book, and if any man shall take away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God shall take away his part from the tree of life and out of the holy city which are written in this book. Here we are

29:15 clearly informed that there is an adequate, a complete and inviolable revelation from God adequate for all of our needs. And I have chosen the term timeless sufficiency because the great debate on male-female roles and relationship among many is not what the Scriptures teach. But the great debate is this. Do what the Scriptures teach in the context of first salvation and the second and third century cultural circumstances have relevance for the conduct of Christians in the twentieth century in a totally different set of cultural circumstances. You see the point? The point is not the nature of Scripture with reference to their undiluted integrity. There are those asserted under the first heading and say yes I believe in the infallibility the inerrancy the undiluted integrity of Scripture but they say I do not believe in its timeless sufficiency.

30:40 Oh yes there is no question that male and female roles and relationships are explicitly addressed in such passages like first Timothy chapter two Ephesians chapter five Colossians chapter three no question but you see the problem is those directives are time bound by the culture into which they came and we must not extrapolate principles out of those passages and apply them in the Bible and the Bible is authoritative but not for me now I'm not saying that everyone who does it does it with that kind of cheek but at the end of the day that's what it is it's paying lip service to the authority and inspiration of Scripture while looking at what the Bible says about male female relationships and roles for the Israelites and for the Corinthians and for

32:09 the Ephesians that would be a nice exercise in ecclesiastical antiquity frankly I've got no time to be away from my wife she just came in and left me already what do you think and the family that took her there is on their way back to London with her so she's already on her way but anyway so much for my digression but coming back to the subject at hand you see how easy it is for people how easy it is to pay lip service to the inspiration that is predicated upon this foundational building block with reference to the scriptures not only it's undiluted integrity but it's timeless sufficiency and then thirdly it's basic clarity or perspicuity it's basic it's basic clarity or perspicuity now why do I say that they're hard to be understood in fact I take great comfort it was an apostle who said he found

The Basic Clarity (Perspicuity) of Scripture and the Need for Humility

33:37 the writings of another apostle hard to be understood so whenever I come across a passage that makes me scratch my head and say Lord what in the world was he saying I take great care of you I take great care of you I take great care of you I take great care of you and I take great care of you every single time and know. He was a pretty old man at this time, and whether he had much hair left on his head or whether he stroked his scraggly beard, he picked up some of Paul's epistles, and he read them, and he read them, and he read them, and read them, and scratched and read and prayed and scratched and read some more, and said some things here hard to be understood.

34:47 Not all of Scripture is equally plain, but what I'm saying is that as we approach the subject of male-female roles and relationships and how to honor Christ in them, we start with this fundamental building block of the nature of Scripture, not only its undiluted integrity, its timeless sufficiency, but its basic perspicuity or clarity. For what does Scripture tell us? A verse many of us memorized in Sunday school, Psalm 119 and verse 105, Thy word is a lamp unto my feet and a light unto my pathway. Not thy word is a veil to my pathway, but a lamp and a light. The entrance of thy word gives light. It gives understanding.

35:46 Notice to whom? To the simple. You remember what Jesus said? He said, I thank you, Father.

35:54 It's an amazing passage. He praises God his Father. He said, I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth. You have hid these things from the wise and the prudent, and you've revealed them unto babes, for even so, Father, it seemed good in your sight. God resists the proud, but gives grace to the humble. Humble yourselves, therefore, under the mighty hand of God. Now, I'm going to speak very bluntly. Some of you, God gave you pretty good knowledge. Some of you, God gave you pretty good knowledge. Some of you, God gave you fairly good knowledge. You already know what's happened in your mother's womb. And you know what's happened? You've been raised in a generation that's pandered you and stroked you and made you think you were God's gift to the world because you've got a pretty good brain. Let me tell you something. If you have more than an average amount of gray matter, what have you that you did not receive? Why do you glory as though you had not received it?

37:05 Did you march up to the throne of God the night before you were conceived and say, Almighty God, make sure that when the sperm and the ovum join and I am conceived and in the whole gene pool under your superintendence a mysterious act of selectivity is undertaken, God, make sure that I get more than an average amount of gray matter. Did you do that?

37:36 You could have been conceived a bumbling idiot.

37:43 What are you strutting about, you fool? What have you that you did not receive?

37:52 And furthermore, if God has brought you into contact with the gospel and made the gospel effectual, do you know God's done an exceptional thing? For the scripture says, Not many mighty, not many noble. Behold your calling, brethren. God has chosen the foolish things of this world to confound the mighty and the weak and the things which are not and the things which are despised has God chosen that no flesh should glory before him.

38:25 Now it may be a shock to your preened and pampered ego for me to tell you God doesn't give a hoot about your soul. God doesn't give a hoot about your so-called brilliant mind. God knows more in the end of his little pinky than you'll know in an eternity. Don't forget it.

38:48 Don't forget it. You say, what does that have to do with our subject matter? It has everything to do with it. It means that as we come to the word of God, we must come with the spirit of little children saying, Oh, Father, concerning the things that matter, Father, concerning the things that matter, Father, concerning the things that matter, Father, concerning the things that matter, sin has so clouded my understanding, warped my neurotic faculties, and perverted my will that I cannot know truth unless you take me in hand and teeth.

39:27 That's why David prayed in Psalm 119 and verse 18, literally, undress my eyes. It's a beautiful imagery. He says, God, when I look at your truth, it's as though I look at it with eyes that have no truth. They have veils over them.

39:43 Lord, undress my eyes that I may behold wondrous things out of thy law. You see, understanding scripture is not a matter of intellect. Jesus said in John 7, 17, If any man will to do my will, he shall know of the doctrine. The great intellects of Jesus' day, the doctors of the law, they spent their waking hours studying the scriptures, but Jesus said, You do err not knowing the scriptures.

40:17 What a paradox. He says, you search the scriptures. You spend your life searching them. But he said, these are they which testify of me.

40:27 But you will not come to me that you may have life. They searched the scriptures and never saw the central theme of the scriptures, Jesus himself. And there'll be some of you, unless you are humbled, you know what's going to happen as a result of this weekend? You're going to go out of here rip-snorting mad.

40:45 Who in the world does that Bible thumper think he is? Pontificating about male and female roles like he knows something. No, that's not the issue. I'm not going to pontificate about what I know, but I am going to tell you what God has pontificated.

41:04 The God who made you a male, the God who made you a female, the God who knew in his own infinite mind from eternity what he purposed in maleness, infidelity, femaleness, what he purposed in relative roles and relationships. And unless you are brought to the disposition of that beautiful psalm in which the psalmist said, my eyes are not haughty, my spirit is like the spirit of a weaned child. Oh, my dear younger man or woman, hear me, hear me. If you've not known what it is to be humbled before the God of the universe and his word, before you pillow your head tonight, get down before this God and confess the shamefulness of your intellectual arrogance and confess to God that the very spirit of hell, the very spirit of Lucifer who said, I will ascend, I will be like the Most High, the very spirit that breathed into Eden, turned our first parents out of paradise, eat and you shall know. And it was the itch to know beyond the boundaries of God's will to reveal that became the temptation

42:30 that plunged the human race into sin.

42:35 We come to wrestle with this issue in the context of the confidence of the basic perspicuity and clarity of Holy Scripture. God has not left us in the dark as to what it means to be a man, a woman, what our respective roles and relationships are to be. But then I must hasten and take...

Foundational Building Block 2: The Scriptural Framework (Creation, Fall, Redemption)

43:01 Can you hang in for another 10 or 15 minutes before we go? Are you up to that much? If not, we'll go home and come at it in the morning. But I'd like to lay just one more block in the picture.

43:13 All right? If this plank is our fundamental building block, the nature of Scripture, I would like you to see sitting on it this picture. If we could only bring it down two and a half inches. All right?

43:25 And standing on top of that, the next great building block, and then I'd like you to see it with two lines, dividing it into three equal sections. Section one, two, and three. As we approach ethical matters, it's what I'm going to call the scriptural framework. Isn't that convenient?

43:48 We've got a picture. It's with a frame. The scriptural framework for approaching ethical concerns. We've looked at the foundation, and that's the nature of Scripture itself.

44:01 Now, when we turn to the Scriptures, do we find in the Scriptures a framework within which to wrestle with ethical questions? And the answer is clear. The framework for ethical concerns in the Bible is the framework of ethical concerns. It's the framework of column one, creation, column two, fall, column three, redemption.

44:28 Creation, fall, and redemption constitute the biblical framework for addressing ethical concerns.

Creation: The Divine Origin of Male and Female Roles

44:40 Now, let's touch briefly on each one, and here we'll start to at least approach the subject proper. First of all, creation. In Genesis, chapter one, and in Genesis, chapter two, passages familiar, I'm sure, to most of us. We read in Genesis one, chapter 26, and God said, let us make man, that is, generically, mankind, 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 cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth.

45:24 Now, notice, and God created man, generically, in his own image. In the image of God, created he him. Male and female, created he them. And God blessed them.

45:47 And God said unto them, them, be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish 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 upon the earth. And God said, behold, I have given unto you every herb yielding seed, et cetera. Now, here in these opening words of Genesis, maleness and femaleness come to us, not in a context, of some accident that somehow or another by some great chance just burst upon the scene of the eons of an evolutionary process. No. Maleness and femaleness are the direct result of the determined purpose and creative activity of God.

46:47 You see how central then is the doctrine of creation to man's, male and female roles and relationships. For they are forced upon us in the very doctrine of creation. And then in chapter 2, where we have God taking his zoom lens upon precisely how he differentiated in this creation of male and female. Genesis 1 would give the impression that they were perhaps created in the same way.

47:21 And in no way that would indicate any distinctive roles. The emphasis of chapter 1 in Genesis falls upon their being equally image bearers of God. Equally the recipients of the blessing of God. Equally the recipients of the mandates of procreation and the subjugation of the earth.

47:47 But God didn't leave us with just the data of Genesis 1. We come to Genesis 2 and there God, as it were, takes the zoom lens upon precisely how he created the man and the woman. And we read in verse 18, And the Lord God said, It is not good that the man should be alone. I will make a helper answering to him.

48:15 And out of the ground the Lord God formed every beast, etc. Adam names the beast and we'll get into what that signifies, God willing, in our exposition tomorrow. But notice very carefully what we read in verse 21. And the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man and he slept.

48:36 And he took one of his ribs and closed up the flesh instead thereof. And the rib which the Lord God had taken from the man made he a woman and brought her unto the man. And in that very statement, as we shall see in 1 Corinthians chapter 11, God is telling us something very profound about male and female roles and relationships. And to give you a little hint, it is this very fact of this very verse that underscores that those roles are not reversible unless you're prepared to get God in a hammerlock, take him back to the garden and say, God create the man and the woman in a way different from the way you did it at the first. We'll see how profoundly significant is that statement that the woman was made out of the man, for the man, brought to the man, joined to the man. The doctrine of creation is central in sorting out this issue. In the male-female relationship of marriage, monogamy and the permanence of marriage, when Jesus is asked a question about it in Matthew 19, how does he answer?

49:57 He does not answer in terms of his own wisdom. He says, have you not read that in the beginning he who made them made them male and female and for this cause said, a man shall...

50:13 What did Jesus do? He took his questioners right back to the facts of creation. And said in this thorny, knotty, ethical question of marriage, monogamy and its permanence, the doctrine of creation is foundational. In 1 Corinthians chapter 11 as we shall see, God willing, tomorrow, when Paul is sorting out role relationships among men and women in general and in the church in particular, he says that the woman was made...

50:51 for the man, not the man for the woman. You say, I don't like that. Well, my friend, I'm sorry. Facts are very stubborn things.

51:08 And facts are facts. And revealed facts are reality. And in those realities we come to grips with this whole issue of our roles and relationships. Paul does the same thing in 1 Timothy 2.

51:25 When he said, addressing the specific question of the role of women in the ordering of the life of the assemblies of God. And he says, I do not permit a woman to teach for the man was first created, then the woman. He goes right to the doctrine of creation. Now what about the doctrine of the fall?

Fall and Redemption: Disruption and Restoration of Roles

51:48 How does it enter in to sorting out these thorny questions? Now once again, I don't have time to expound. I want to point and to suggest. Genesis 3.16 indicates that there would be a fundamental disruption in the male-female roles and relationships. And though Genesis 3.16 is one of the most difficult passages to translate, and even more difficult to interpret in this whole issue, nonetheless, one thing is clear. This is after the radical intrusion of sin.

52:26 And it's cosmic upheaval. Unto the woman he said, I will greatly multiply your pain and your conception. In pain you shall bring forth children, and your desire shall be to your husband, and he shall rule over you. Now no matter how you cut it, what it's telling us is that the fall has introduced an element with reference to the outworking of the male, female, husband, wife, procreative relationships.

53:02 That much is clear as a result of the intrusion of sin. And it's interesting in the 1 Timothy 2 passage when Paul is dealing with why women are not to be in the teaching, ruling office in the church. He goes right back to the reality of sin and he says, For Adam was not deceived, but the woman, being utterly deceived, was in the transgression. You say, if I ever heard a bunch of chauvinism, that's it.

53:35 My friend, listen. That's an apostle being carried along by the Holy Spirit, revealing the mind of God. Get off your high horse. Don't even think such arrogant and blasphemous thoughts.

53:51 And when men have PhDs in theology, their thoughts are nonetheless blasphemous. When they call that the effusions of a prejudiced Jewish rabbi who has not yet been sanctified enough to know that woman's place in the fall has nothing to do with her role in the church. I marvel that God doesn't send fire out of heaven to consume the so-called arrogant Christian scholar. So you see the doctrine of the fall enters in.

54:29 Look at the seventh commandment. In the tenth commandment, they take into a realistic consideration that because of the fall, men and women will have a pressure and a tendency and perverse desires to disrupt the sanctity of the marriage relationship and of their sexual faculties. Thou shalt not commit adultery. Look at the tenth commandment.

54:55 Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's wife. You see, there is a realism that takes into account, You see, there is a realism that takes into account, not only the doctrine of creation, but the doctrine of the fall. And all of our wrestling with this question of male and female roles and relationships must face very realistically not only the doctrine of creation, but the doctrine of the fall and then the doctrine of redemption. That is God's gracious intervention to rescue man from sin and its consequences.

55:30 And there, as we shall see, in 1 Corinthians 11, Ephesians chapter 5, and in other pivotal passages, when Paul is giving directions about male and female roles and relationships, he does so in the context of the full blazing light of the fulfillment of the promise of Genesis 3.15, that God would come forth in monergistic, sovereign, unilateral, gracious activity to bruise the head of the soul, the head of the serpent, and to rescue sinners. And then, when he sets forth roles and relationships and norms for males and females in the framework of the coming of the Son of God and the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, those directives ooze with the dynamics of redemption in Jesus Christ. And therefore, we cannot think as we ought to think about male-female roles and relationships unless we think of them in the light of the glorious realities of redemption. Whether we are thinking of the husband-wife relationship and how the husband is to love with a love that mirrors the self-giving, redemptive love of Christ to the church,

56:55 whether we're wrestling with the question of personal purity, why should God endow me with these tremendous urges and appetites for sexual fulfillment and then tell me that I'm not to fulfill them until marriage? It doesn't seem fair. How in the world can I remain pure when there is this tremendous pressure of all that I am as a man or a woman? And yet, here are these prohibitions.

57:23 That's where the glorious doctrine of redemption comes in. That by the Holy Spirit, God can give us grace to mortify the deeds of the flesh, to flee fornication, to keep ourselves pure until, in the will of God, we can enter into the happy, playful, holy abandonment of blessed sexual expression in the bonds of a Christian marriage. So you see, the framework within which all of our thinking must take place is the framework of creation, fall, and redemption. And one thing we must always keep in mind, what God does in redemption only wars against what has happened in the fall, not what he instituted in creation. And if you get hold of that principle, you'll be delivered from all kinds of woolly thinking. Redemptive activity, never intended to negate created realities. That's why redemption is called a new creation.

58:42 It is called a renewal unto the image of God. So when someone tells you, well, in Christ, neither male nor female, Jew nor Greek, so all that baloney about specific roles and subjection, that's all buried in the cross and tomb of Jesus. No, it isn't, my friend. That's a lot of gobbledygook and hogwash is the term my southern friend views.

Call to Self-Examination and Transformation

59:11 Swill, the stuff you feed pigs. No matter how many footnotes there may be in the books that pander that kind of swill, it's swill nonetheless. And you see, if you can get hold of that simple framework, creation, fall, redemption, redemption enabling me to be through grace, what God intended me to be in the original creation, but alas, which I failed to be because of sin in the tragic lapse of the fall, getting hold of that simple framework then helps us to wrestle with the specifics. Now as we close, may I ask a very simple question of every one of you. Have you ever come to grips with the fact that you are God's creature? Made to glorify Him, to do His will according to His word? Has the reality of your creaturehood ever dawned upon you?

60:20 Has the reality of your fall in and with Adam ever dawned upon you? That the tragedy of the fall is your tragedy as well as mine? Has the wonder and the glory of God's redemption in Christ ever broken in upon you by the power of the Spirit, accompanying the word? So that Christ is not a word, the cross is not a wispy notion, the Holy Spirit is not just a name, but that the cross and Christ and forgiveness and the Holy Spirit are blessed experiential realities to you. If you've come here as a young man or woman and you know nothing of having embraced your place as a creature, as a sinner, and having embraced God's redemptive privileges in Christ, I plead with you the first night of this conference, seek out one of your friends, seek out one of us and say, look, I wasn't quite sure what in the world was going to be coming off at this conference, but I've heard things that have blown my mind tonight. I've never thought in these categories. My friend, you're not here by accident.

61:41 You're here because the God who made you has graciously ordered the events of your life that you might face the reality of creation, fall, and redemption. And then to you who can say, yes, Mr. Martin, by God's grace, I have faced those things, let me ask you this simple question. Are you prepared to throw down all your defenses, hold up all your prejudices, and say, Oh, God, teach me your way.

62:17 As a young woman, are you prepared to say, Oh, God, if you will show me through your word that I've allowed myself to be brainwashed by all of the overt and much more of the subtle and covert, so-called feminist mentality of this day, Oh, God, lay it all bare, and by your word and your spirit, purge it from my heart. Isn't that what Romans 12, verse 2 means? Be not conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. You see, your mind must be transformed by the word of God.

62:58 You must think biblically about your identity as a woman, your role as a woman, your identity as a man, your role as a man. I ask you, Christian man, Christian woman, are you prepared to have God overhaul your thinking? Radically and, if necessary, traumatically take you to pieces and then put you back together again in his own image and likeness? You have nothing to fear, for God's purposes in redemption are not only purposes which ultimately result in his glory, but our highest good.

63:40 God is no Scrooge who's out to say to you every time, you think a thought about happiness, bah hum bah. Jesus said, I'm come that they might have life and have it more abundantly. You see, liberation is free to be what God intends you to be, not struggling to be something God never intended you should be. So I leave you with those questions.

64:16 May God enable us to reflect upon them and come prayerfully to the sessions tomorrow, trusting that he by his spirit and his word will teach us. Amen.