Biblical Framework of All Thinking, Part 2

Introduction: The Biblical Framework for Crucial Issues

0:03 This adult Sunday school class was held on March 27, 1988, at the Trinity Baptist Church in Montville, New Jersey.

0:16 Now, some weeks ago, we began a new series in our adult class under the broad heading of Biblical Perspectives on Crucial Issues. And in this series, ultimately, we hope to discuss together such crucial issues as male-female roles and relationships, the biblical concepts of work and labor, recreation, entertainment, family relations, the training of children, and perhaps other areas of very intensely practical concern to us as the Lord's people. However, since...

0:57 Since the Bible sets all of its practical directives to the people of God in a very unique framework, we have been concerned to articulate that framework before coming to the actual discussion of these particular areas of very relevant concern to many of us. And so we spent the first several weeks looking together at Romans chapter 12, verses 1 and 2, and we found that the Bible sets all of its practical directives to the people of God in a very unique framework. And so we spent the first several weeks looking together at Romans chapter 12, verses 1 and 2, and we found that the Bible sets all of its practical directives to the people of God in a very unique framework. A verse or two verses, a passage which perhaps more than any other, or at least equal to any other in all of the Word of God, epitomizes, that is, brings into sharp focus and expresses in short compass the framework within which practical instruction is brought to the people of God throughout the Scriptures, both the Old and the New Testaments. And in these verses...

1:57 In these verses, familiar to many of us, we find the Apostle beseeching God's people that with a heart and mind feeling the tremendous impress of God's mercy and kindness in the Lord Jesus, assuming a posture in which they present themselves as a living sacrifice unto God, and in that posture, with their goal being to prove in their experience the will of God, the thing that is good, acceptable, and perfect, they are prepared to undergo a constant process of refusing the mindset of the world, be not fashioned according to this world, and positively to undergo a constant transformation by the renewing of their own minds. Now, if these perspectives form the foundation, of all practical Christian living, then I have suggested that upon that foundation, there is a framework which completes the basic house of reference with regard to the Christian and his relationship to the practical duties laid upon him.

Three Pillars of the Biblical Framework

3:21 And I suggested to you that that framework can be expressed in a very intensely personal way, in these three statements. Statement number one, I expressed this way, that I am dependent upon the will of God for my existence. And, we had no more time than to open up, by way of considering a number of pivotal passages, the great truth that we are not prepared to face the practical duties of the Christian life, we are not prepared, prepared to address such crucial issues as the issues of male and female identity, roles, relationships, responsibilities, and all of these other things unless we have a constant awareness of what we are as creatures who owe their very existence to the will of God. And I'm delighted that in God's providence, in my absence earlier in the month and then in two subsequent lessons, Pastor Bob Martin set before you particularly what it means to be an image-bearer of God. If I am a man or a woman and I am such by the will of God, then that has tremendous implications in my distinctive identity as an image-bearer of God.

4:50 Now we want to take... I have set up in complete this morning the other two facets which constitute the framework of our reference with regard to these matters of practical Christian living and practical Christian duty, and I'm expressing them this way. I am not only dependent on the will of God for my existence, but I am dependent on the word of God for my directives, and thirdly, I am dependent upon the grace and the power of God for my existence. And I am dependent upon the grace and the power of God for my performance. Dependent, then, on the word of God for my directives. We ask the question, how shall the creature who owes his existence to God discover the reason for that existence? What shall he do with all that constitutes his existence what it is?

Man's Concreated Needs and the Question of Directives

5:50 And when we turn... to the scriptures, and I want you to turn with me back to Genesis chapter 1, we see God creating Adam and Eve, creating them in his own likeness and his own image, and he created them with what we would call very deep, concreated social needs. It was God who said to Adam, it is not good for the to be alone, Genesis 2 and verse 18, God created sinless Adam with a fundamental burning social need which was not met in Adam himself, but could only be met when God created his counterpart. I will make a helper answering to his needs, and obviously, it was God who gave to man and to the woman concreteness. It was God who gave to man and to the woman concreteness. It was God who gave to man and to the woman concreteness. It was God who gave to man and to the woman concreteness. It was

6:57 and needs. It was God who conceived the whole notion of human sexuality and all of the acts which relate to procreation. It was God who said, be fruitful and multiply and replenish the earth. It was God who made man with physical appetites, for the scripture tells us that God had given man the to them, all of the various things for food. We read in Genesis 1.29, and God says, Behold, I have given you every herb yielding seed which is upon the face of the earth, and every tree in which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed to you, it shall be for food. So here is man with his social needs, his sexual needs, his physical appetites, his aesthetic capacities, as we saw last week and in the previous week in our study on man in the image of God, man with his artistic skills, his rational powers, all of these things were concreated with the creation of man. But now

8:13 the question is this, how shall man find an expression of these faculties, capacities, a fulfillment of these needs? Where shall he look for directives as to how to fulfill the needs, how to express the capacities and abilities in a manner pleasing to God? Now, as we take up that question, what would an astrologist say in answer to that question? If you want to know, how to live, if you want to know in what manner to regulate your life, where do you look?

Refuting Worldly Sources of Directives

8:57 An astrologist says you look where? You look to the stars. And the key to your life is in the stars. Now, I don't mean to be irreverent, but is there any hint that after God made Adam and Eve, he then set them down and said, Now that I've made you in my image, look to the stars, and you will know.

9:19 precisely how to please me. Not a shred of evidence that God said any such thing, that he would substitute the stars for himself as the revealer of the will of God. Now, is there any indication that God said, after he made Adam and Eve in his image, with tremendous rational faculties? I've read some authors who've indulged in a little bit of what I would call sanctified and reverent speculation as to the mental power of God.

9:51 The powers of Adam and Eve before the fall, and what those mental powers might have been. But you see, there is no suggestion that God made Adam and Eve and then set them down and said, Adam, now sit on a rock in the posture of the famous thinker statue. You remember the man sitting there bent over thinking? And find the directives within yourself. You see, that's what a rationalist would say, that man's mind is the measure, the measure of all that he is to know and all that he is responsible to do. Now, let me throw out another question. What would a transcendentalist tell Adam and Eve to do if they're to discover how they are to live? Or an Eastern mystic, what directives would they give to Adam and Eve concerning the questions, how shall we relate to one another? How shall we

10:47 relate to God's world? What would be the answer of an Eastern mystic? Or a transcendentalist? Someone want to venture a guess? All right, sit and meditate. Yeah, just meditate. Just try to rise above all conscious contact with the world around you and get up into this ethereal sphere of pure thought. And when you get floating around up there, then you're going to come to marvelous insights. You've got to get above your rational faculties, Adam. The answer doesn't come from trying to figure, that's a barrier to really figuring out where the action's at. And you see, there's a lot of that mysticism in some forms of the charismatic movement. You've got to neutralize your mind, neutralize your rational faculties, leap up into this realm of pure spiritual experience. Let your mind go. Your big problem is your mind. It stands in the way. But you see, there's no indication of

11:46 that in Genesis 1 or 2. Well, there are some who would say, well, what we need to do is have Adam and Eve do the same thing. We need to do the same thing. We need to do the same thing. We need to do the same thing. We need to do the same thing. We need to do the same thing. We need to do the same thing.

11:53 Adam and Eve go out and make some experiments. And once they unlock the keys to the world around them, then they'll know how they're to relate to it. You see, that's the scientific approach to life. Everything must be based upon scientific investigation. And then how would the pragmatists tell Adam and Eve to relate to their world? What counsel would a pragmatist give to Adam and Eve?

12:16 Live and let live? Not quite exactly. What would they tell them to do, Tim? All right, go on out and experiment. Try this, try that. If it works, it must be good. If it works, it's good. And what is good is what works.

12:32 Now, why have I taken all of this time to engage in this silly exercise? Well, because I want you to see that when we start applying Romans 12, 1 and 2, this is what it means we've got to be prepared to do. Be not conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of our minds. And if we are to think good, publicly about these burning practical issues that we are to address, we must be prepared not only to think in terms of our identity as God's creatures. I'm dependent on the will of God for my existence. I did not come from the primeval pool of slime up through something that crawled and walked on all fours and then stood half erect and then grunted and finally framed the word no. I owe my existence to the creative will and wisdom of Almighty God. And my distinctiveness is that I am an image bearer of God. But we must not only go that far. We must start there. We must go

13:43 beyond that and begin to think exclusively in these terms. I am dependent on the word of God for my directives. Adam and Eve, in their unfallen state, were not left to look up to the stars for their guidance. So don't look at the astrology charts. It's just an innocent diversion. It's a form of wicked idolatry. It's replacing God with a few specks of his creative handiwork. And God hates it. So don't look at it as a little innocent thing some of your friends indulge in.

14:24 And don't you think you can just innocently look at this the astrology charts and dial the number that they tell you to dial after you've dialed the weather number and say, oh, well, it's just a lark. Don't mess with it. God condemns it in the Old Testament as a horrible aberration. Be not conformed to this world. What you treat with innocence in the beginning, before long you may treat with favor and with approval. Don't mess with it. And don't join the rationalists who say, well, we can figure it all out. And don't join the mystics and say, well, we'll just turn inward upon ourselves to the point where we can get up into the realm of pure thought and feel somehow the eternal universal ether that will help us sort out who we are and where we're to go.

Dependence on God's Word for Directives: The Genesis Account

15:15 And we don't go for the collective opinion of the social scientist or to the observations of the pragmatist. But what's amazing is this, that Adam and Eve, in their unfallen state, were given directives by verbal, propositional revelation from God. I want you to turn now, if you have, into Genesis chapter 1 and Genesis chapter 2. Now, remember, this is unfallen man. Sin has not entered. And we read in verse 27, And God created man in his own image. In the image of God created he him. Male and female created he them. And?

16:00 God blessed them. And again, just precisely how that blessing took its expression, we do not know. But God conferred a peculiar blessing, an expression of his good will and favor. With its conferral upon Adam and Eve, God blessed them. And then the first thing he did was to speak to them.

16:25 And God said unto them. And he gave them verbiage. He gave them verbal, propositional revelation of his will. Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it. Have dominion.

16:41 Verse 29. And God said, I have given unto you every herb yielding seed, and to you it shall be for food. And then when we turn to chapter 2, we find God again speaking to man his creature. Verse 15.

17:02 And the Lord God took the man, and put him into the garden of Eden, to dress it and to keep it. And Jehovah God commanded the man, saying, Of every tree of the garden you may freely eat, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat of it, for in the day that you eat thereof you shall surely die. And the Lord God said, It is not good that the man should be alone. I will make a helper answering to him.

17:37 And so here in the garden, where Adam could look out upon his world with perfect vision, God nonetheless gave him verbal directives as to how he was to relate to his world. Now if we can call this the eyeball, there's the eyelashes, of Adam's soul, there are three basic kinds of abnormalities in human sight. Some people have a problem that I have, particularly my left eye, and that's called the stigmatism, and that's where there's some even unevenness over the lens, that when we look out at any object, instead of things coming through the lens and all focusing sharply on the retina, they don't focus right. It's blurry. That's a stigmatism. And other people, they look out, and what comes through comes to a focus in front of the retina, and that's called, I believe you call that nearsightedness, myopia, nearsightedness.

18:47 Everything focuses in front of the retina. And then some people have a problem when they look at an object. It focuses behind the retina. That's called farsightedness or hypermetropia.

19:00 That's the fancy medical name for it. And so we have glasses to correct that. If you have astigmatism, you can always tell it because you turn it this way, and everything goes wobbly and wavy, all right? And then you know what happens with the other kinds.

19:15 They magnify or shrink, as we would say, in order to try to bring things to focus clearly right on the retina. Now, why am I giving this little lesson in eye problems? Well, for the simple reason that you may understand what the eye doctor is doing the next time you go. No.

19:32 So, the purpose is that we consider Adam looking out on his world. He looked out on his world with 20-20 vision. There was no astigmatism. There was no blurring of what he perceived.

19:51 There was no focusing in front or behind the perceptual retina of Adam's mind. He was made an upright man, no distortion of sin. If I may speak again in a very crass and earthly way, all of the natural appetites, the functioning of his hormones, and all of his physiology, as well as his psychology, not a one of them was pumping up any kind of excessive energy, any irregulated and abnormal desires. Because everything about Adam was utterly perfect.

20:32 In its balance, in its impulses, in its perception, here was perfect man, placed in a perfect environment, with a perfect wife, who had a perfect husband. And yet, in spite of all of that, Adam had to say, I am dependent upon the word of God for my directions. He was not put in his world to figure things out. And here I want to quote, quote from a book that would be heavy going for some of you, but as you grow in grace and knowledge, I would heartily recommend it.

Professor Murray's Insight: God's Revealed Precepts

21:11 It's the textbook we use in a discussion course in the academy, in our ethics course, Professor Murray's book, The Principles of Conduct, now out of print. Hopefully, it will get back into print. And this is what Professor Murray observes on this very point on page 24. When we examine the witness of Scripture itself, as to the origin of the standards of behavior which the Scripture approves, we do not find that love is allowed to discover or dictate its own standards or patterns of conduct.

21:48 We do not find that love is conceived of as an autonomous, self-acting agency, which of itself, apart from any external prescription or regulation, defines its own standards, or standards of behavior. What we do find is that from the beginning, there are objectively revealed precepts, institutions, commandments, which are the norms and channels of human behavior. Even man in innocence was not permitted to carve for himself the path of life. It was charted for him from the beginning.

22:32 Man was not permitted to carve for himself the path of life. It was charted for him from the beginning. And even as Professor Murray underscores such elementary urges and drives as that of food and hunger and sexual appetite, they were not left to operate even in a totally sinless, perfectly regulated environment. Externally and internally, to Adam and Eve, those instincts were not left to operate on their own.

23:12 They were to operate within the boundaries of God's revealed will in His Word. God said unto them. God spoke unto them. God commanded them.

23:28 The procreative mandate, for example, has respect. It has respect. It has respect. It has respect to the exercise of one of man's most fundamental instincts.

23:38 Adam as created was endowed with the sex impulse which would have sought satisfaction and outlet in the sexual act. But he was not left to the dictates of the sex impulse and of the procreative instinct. These were not a sufficient index to God's will for him. The exercise of this instinct was expressed.

24:00 The self-dict was expressly commanded, and its exercise directed to the achievement of a well-defined purpose. Furthermore, there was the marital ordinance within which, alone, the sex act was legitimate. The conclusion to which we are driven, therefore, is that the notion that we are opposing, namely, that love is its own law and that at the end of the sex act, there is no love, let alone the command of love. And the renewed consciousness its own monitor is a fantasy which has no warrant from Scripture and runs counter to the witness of the teaching of the Bible.

The Greater Need for God's Word in a Fallen State

24:42 Now, do you see that in the Genesis account? That Adam in his unfallen state, perceiving himself and his world without any of the astigmatism of sin, without any of the nearsightedness or the farsightedness of sin, was nonetheless dependent upon the word of God for his directives. Now then, how much more is man in his fallen state? Now, he is tragically afflicted with spiritual astigmatism, with spiritual nearsightedness and farsightedness, and yet, in fact, somewhere, God says he is spiritually blind. He does not see at all. His appetites, still there, are now all out of regulation. And he has these inordinate passions and lusts.

25:45 He has appetites given by God and pure and innocent in themselves, but sin has so insinuated itself into those basements, basic appetites, that they now become the outlet for the most horrible expressions of man's defection and alienation from God. His affections are polluted until we read in Genesis chapter 6 that the whole stream of humanity became so polluted to such an extent that God said, I'm going to blot them all out and start all over again with one family, the family of Noah. So, in an unfallen state, Adam was dependent, Eve was dependent upon the Word of God for their directives. How much more are we? And therefore, in coming to such questions as, what is masculinity? What is femininity?

26:48 What is the will of God for man in relationship to woman? What is the will of God for man in relationship...

26:56 to His work, to His aesthetic capacities and desires. We dare not take the path of anything from astrology to mysticism to social corporate consensus to pragmatism, but we must take the path that finds its expression in these words, I am dependent on the Word of God for my directives. Now, can you think of one or two verses that clearly teach this very fact? Verses that every one of us ought to have memorized.

27:35 Someone want to suggest a verse that clearly embodies this concept, I am dependent on the Word of God for my directives.

27:49 I'll give you a hint. It's found in Psalm 119, one of the ones I have in mind. Yes, Aaron?

27:59 Psalm 119, what?

28:03 Psalm 119 and verse 9. It may be. I don't know that verse from memory. That's not the one I was fishing for, but it might be equally appropriate.

28:14 Wherewithal shall a young man cleanse his way by taking heed thereto according to thy word? That certainly applies to a specific area. How shall I live a pure life as a young man? The answer is, don't go out into society and ask them, but you take heed to the Word of God.

28:33 The verse I was thinking of was 105. The psalmist declares, Thy word is a lamp unto my feet and a light unto my path. He says that it is the Word of God that will mark out the path by which he should walk. And when we hear people say, Well, I just trust that in this area I know what is best, then we ought to have memorized Proverbs 28 and verse 26.

29:07 Whoso trusteth in his own heart, is a fool.

29:13 Now, you want to declare yourself a fool very quickly? Just naively say, Well, I trust my heart in this thing. God says, Whoso trust in his own heart is a fool.

29:26 You want to be a fool? Then you trust in your own heart. You remember in Pilgrim's Progress, when you have that interchange between talkative and one of the true pilgrims, and they're trying to expose to talkative, the fact that that's what he is. He's a man whose religion is all in his mouth.

29:45 It's not in his heart. It's not in his home. It's not in his manner of life. So when they press him and they ask him, How do you know your religion is real?

29:53 He said, Because my heart tells me so.

29:57 So he had this circular reason that I trust my judgment because I trust my heart. And then he was unwilling to have his assurance shaken by objective criteria. He's a classic example of whoso trusteth in his own heart, is a fool. A fool.

30:13 The thing just feels so right. It must be right. Oh, is that so? You mean your feelings are not liable to lead you astray?

30:26 Whoso trusteth in his own heart is a fool. In all of these things pertaining to the will of God for our lives, we must learn to say, I am dependent on the will of God for my existence. I'm dependent upon the word. I'm dependent upon the word of God for my directives.

30:46 And the way I prove my love to Christ is how? If you love me, keep my commandments. John 14, 21, He that hath my commandments and keepeth them, he it is that loveth me. We will not look up to the stars.

31:05 We will not look out to the experts. Some of us have lived long enough to see the horrible fruit of the tyranny of the experts. After he'd ruined a whole generation, or in great measure contributed to the ruin of a whole generation, Dr. Spock in his mid-seventies wrote an article in which he repudiated most of the things by which he had urged a generation to rear its children.

31:29 What a tragedy when people reared their children by Dr. Spock instead of by Dr. Solomon. And we're reaping the fruits of it.

31:40 You know who's put out the movie, The Silent Scream, in an attempt to convince the conscience of our legislators that abortion is the killing of human life? It's the very man who set up the biggest abortion mill in New York City and was responsible for the slaying of countless thousands. He was the great expert who had declared, you're not killing human life until, without any subjection to biblical revelation, just the facts of watching life in the womb, and convinced him he was dead wrong. But now the monster he created still grinds up babies by the mill.

32:23 You see, that's the tyranny of the experts. And where once he was quoted with pride by the experts that there is no life or viable human life until such and such a point, now those very same experts try to discount his knee-jerk so-called film and his playing on people's emotions, et cetera. Oh, you see, dear people, we're out in that horrible sea of the undulating, ever-changing sea of human opinion. Unless we take this stance, I am dependent on the Word of God for my directives.

33:00 Let God be true about what it is to be a man and a woman, and let every man be a liar. Let every PhD in sociology be a liar. But let God be true. Let God be true.

33:15 And every man a liar. And you come to that place where you say, I am dependent on the Word of God for my directives. I'll frame my thinking about all of these things by Scripture. I don't care what I'm called.

33:31 I don't care how I'm viewed. I'll never have to come to the place where I say, I blew it. Because God says that's the way of blessedness, Psalm 1. Blessed is the man who does not walk in the counsel of the ungodly, no matter how plausible it seems, no matter how many degrees are behind it.

33:51 Ungodly counsel is not made godly because it happens to be given by people with PhDs. Now, some PhDs are well-educated people. But in others, someone has said PhD stands for piled higher and deeper. And what's piled higher and deeper is the folly of man's wisdom pitted against the wisdom of God.

34:18 Blessed is the man who does not walk in the counsel of the ungodly, who does not stand in the way of sinners, who does not sit in the seat of scoffers, but his delight is in the law of the Lord, and in his law doth he meditate day and night. He shall be like a tree planted by the waters. All right? Now, quickly, we must come to the third and final part of that framework built upon the foundation of the perspectives of Romans 12, and that is, we must learn to think and act and have as our constant companion this perspective, I am not only dependent on the will of God for my existence, upon the word of God for my directives, but I'm dependent upon the grace and power of God for my performance. I'm dependent upon the grace and power of God for my performance. And I want us to look together at three texts of Scripture First of all, in John chapter 15, Determine now to take my place as a creature, having been humbled with the reality that I'm a sinful creature, and from the word of God I have learned to know not only my malady, but the remedy in Christ, and out of regard to God's mercy,

Dependence on God's Grace and Power for Performance

35:44 I want to present myself a living sacrifice, I want to prove the will of God, I don't want to be molded by the world, but transformed by the renewing of my mind, but as God gives me increasing light as to what I am to be and to do, I must learn to think constantly, I can only do these things by the grace and power of God. John chapter 15, In this passage our Lord likens His relationship to His people as the relationship between a vine and its seed, and its branches. That is a living, organic relationship, and the branch can only bear fruit so long as it is organically, livingly united to the vine, and is receiving the life which flows through the vine and into the branch, and hence it can bear fruit. Now in that setting, Jesus says in verse 5, I am the vine, you are the branches. He that abides in me, and I in him, the same bears much fruit. For apart from me, severed from me, cut off from me, you can do nothing.

37:11 Now that does not mean that severed from Christ, we cannot think, we cannot walk, we cannot talk, but in the context it means we can do nothing in terms of bearing the fruit, that is, living out the lifestyle that bespeaks our union with Jesus Christ. So that there is a constant dependence upon the grace and the power of Christ to do the will of Christ and manifest the life of Christ. So that is a pivotal passage. You see, many times people think, if only I could discover from the scriptures, I am convinced I am a creature dependent on the will of God for my existence. I am convinced I am dependent on the word of God for my directives, and once I know what I ought to be or do, then I am on my way. Well, not necessarily. I now need power to be and to do what the word of God says to me.

38:19 This I am to be, I am to do. And that power comes only from the grace and direct union and the virtue of that union with Jesus Christ. In the imagery of John 15, without me you can be nothing. Then in Philippians chapter 2, Philippians chapter 2, we have a second passage, verse 12.

38:50 So then, my beloved, even as you have always obeyed, not as in my presence only, but now much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who is working in you both to will and to work for his good pleasure. And here we have that wonderful fusion of things that so often get people confused and hung up in terrible and crippling views of the Christian life. I, as a Christian, am responsible to live a life of serious obedience to the revealed will of God. So then, my beloved, as you have always obeyed, now much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling. But I am to do it in the consciousness and confidence that I am enabled to do so only because it is God who is at work in me to will and to work for his good pleasure. And whatever God promises to do becomes a solid basis of my prayers in terms of what I ask him to do. Does God work in me to will and to work for his good pleasure?

40:13 Yes. Then whenever I see what is the will of God, I am to ask him for grace and plead with him to work in me mightily that I may be enabled to will and to do that which is pleasing in his sight. And therefore I must learn to think in that mindset that I am dependent upon the grace and power of God for my performance. And then a third passage found at the end of Hebrews as the writer to the Hebrews has laid before them some tremendous responsibilities with reference to persevering faith, standing in the midst of pressure and opposition and persecution, feeling the struggle with sin and with unbelief. And in that closing, benediction. Notice the language Hebrews 13, 20. Now the God of peace who brought again from the dead the great shepherd of the sheep with the blood of an eternal covenant, even our Lord Jesus, make you perfect.

41:25 Perfect in every good thing to do his will, working in us that which is well pleasing in his sight through Jesus Christ to whom be the glory forever and forever. It is the God of peace who makes us perfect in every good thing to do his will, working in us that which is well pleasing in his sight. He doesn't say working for us and we're just totally passive, but he works in us that we might do his will as revealed in the scriptures. His will that we've embraced as good, acceptable and perfect, but that which we cannot do apart from his working in us, that which is well pleasing in his sight. Now you see, that's the problem perhaps some of you sitting here will face as we begin to open up the specifics. And you see from the scripture, this is God's description of masculinity. And involved, embedded in that very concept of masculinity as we shall see in Genesis, is what so many would call, are what so many would call feminine qualities of sensitivity and vulnerability and openness.

Application to Biblical Manhood and Womanhood: Confronting Unregenerate Hearts and Remaining Sin

42:54 And some of you will say, there's no way I can live that way. If that's what I'm to be as a man, I can't be. Furthermore, I don't want to be. Well, I'm not surprised because Romans 8, 7 says, the carnal mind is enmity against God.

43:09 It is not subject to the law of God neither indeed can it be. May I say it very bluntly, some of you men sitting here may come to the clearest discovery of your unregenerate heart as we focus on what it is to be a man according to the scriptures. Because it's going to come right smack into the face of everything you've picked up from your own natural unregenerate heart and from the world as to what a man is. And you're going to see that and say there's no way.

43:35 And not only you're going to see it and feel despair, you're going to feel anger and antipathy and enmity. Yes, you will. Because the more clearly the will of God is brought to bear upon the conscience of an unregenerate man, the more he becomes conscious of his enmity against God. The carnal mind is enmity against God.

43:53 It is not subject to the law of God. Neither indeed can it be. Well, bless God, if God uses the standard of what you ought to be as a man to show you you're an unregenerate man and you need to be born of the Spirit, you need to be converted, then, only then, can you begin to be what a man ought to be. Likewise with some of you women.

44:14 It may be that when we begin to examine what is femininity in its fundamental posture and position of receptivity and subordination to man in a divinely instituted hierarchical structure. How are those for inflammatory words? Subordination! Hierarchy!

44:37 Yuck! My friend, you better not say yuck to God. If the subordination and receptivity and dependantness and the hierarchical structure is instituted by Almighty God, some of you women may find that that's the point at which your unregenerate nature is going to come into sharp focus and you'll see you need for God to do something miraculous if you're ever going to be a true woman. Well, bless God if He shows you that.

45:07 On the other hand, we have reason to believe that the vast majority of you sitting here are Christian men. You are Christian women. But you have a problem that I have and that's called remaining sin. And in the light of that, you remember what Paul said?

45:22 I find a law in my members warring against the law of my mind and bringing me into bondage. Galatians 5.16 The flesh lusteth against the spirit and the spirit against the flesh and these two are contrary the one to the other so that you may not do the things that ye would. There's going to be tremendous struggle.

45:46 That's why we need to tell ourselves as the people of God, I can do all things. Through Him who strengthens me. Without me you can do nothing. Yes, but in union with Him I can do all things.

46:01 He does work in me to will and to work for His good pleasure. You mean God can actually give me, if I've lived all my life with this image, that a man is that pillar of total invulnerability, never shows his emotions, never cries, never acknowledges weakness. You mean God can actually bring me to the place where I'm willing to weep before my wife and my children? Yes, He can.

46:31 He can take that whole facade that your false notions have built up and He can dismantle the whole thing and make you a true man who not only has a heart but let your heart show. That's what He can do. Now, it won't come without a battle. The flesh will lust against the spirit but thank God the spirit who lusts against the flesh.

46:54 Greater is He that is in us than he that is in the world. Likewise with some of you women. You say, there's no way I am ever going to be one marked by a meek and a quiet spirit. God didn't put me together that way in my mother's womb genetically.

47:11 The cards are stacked against me. And in my upbringing I had to claw and scratch and fight for everything I got. I'm not going to be meek and docile. I'll be so vulnerable.

47:26 Well, you become convinced that that's what God says you're to strive to have. The adornment of a meek and a quiet spirit. And in Jesus Christ there's grace enough to even make you someone who is clothed with a meek and quiet spirit. Now, dear people, if that isn't so then I'm going to pack up and go back to doing construction work because at least there when I mixed the mud and carried it to the mason I could come back three months later and see the foundation we built and the fireplace we built and the chimney we built and have something to show for my labors.

48:01 And if I did not stand here believing that in Jesus Christ there is grace and power to transform men from what sin and poor models in the world have made them into biblical Christian men I'd give up the class and tell someone else to be exercising himself in a labor of futility. But I do believe there is grace. There is grace to make us biblical men and to make you women biblical women. To make us relate to one another as men and women in a way that is pleasing to God.

48:37 And then as we move into all the other areas from sexual identity and roles and functions into the whole matter of our relationship to work some of you may sit there and say there's no way I can ever regard work as anything other than sort of a necessary evil. Well, may I say something? Some of you when you're done it may sound strange to you you're actually going to regard the most mundane task you do as an act of worship to God. I have confidence to believe that the Word of God and the Spirit of God can do that.

49:09 Where some of you who right now have a most negative worldly attitude work is a necessary evil to get where the real action's at either with your family or having fun in recreation. That's the world's mentality. Work is a necessary evil. Work is a necessary evil to another end where the action's really at.

49:28 But as we come to the Word of God gladly taking our posture as those who are image bearers of God who are dependent upon the Word of God for our directives upon the grace and the power of God for our strength transformation can come as the conformity to the world is shriveled in our thinking and we are transformed by God by the renewing of our minds. So I lay before you then those three very simple statements but when we begin to think in that framework what a revolutionary effect it can have upon us. I am dependent on the Will of God for my existence. I'm an image bearer of God and bring into that all that you've learned in last weeks the last weeks about what it is to be an image bearer of God. I'm dependent on the Word of God for my directives and I'm dependent on the grace and power of God for my performance. Well I did more preaching and lecturing than leading discussion this morning. Hopefully we'll get back into that mode God willing next week when we take up this first line of consideration namely our sexual roles and identities.

Concluding Thoughts and Prayer

50:43 We've got about two to three minutes left. Anyone have a question or a contribution a verse that you'd like to contribute before we close our session this morning? Yes. I'm thinking about you were saying with Psalm 119 on the third verse you said the last one and the answer to that would be Proverbs 23 Proverbs 623.

51:20 Proverbs 623. All right. Let's look at Proverbs 623. Very good.

51:31 For the commandment is a lamp and the law is light and reproofs of instruction are the way of life. Another good text Proverbs 6 verse 23. Thank you Rose for contributing that. Excellent text.

51:45 Yes Jeff. Yes. Second Timothy 3 16 and 17 all scripture is given by inspiration of God and is profitable for teaching for reproof for correction for instruction literally for training child training and righteousness that the man of God may be complete complete thoroughly furnished unto every good work. Yes Gary.

52:14 Okay. Deuteronomy 8 3 quoted by our Lord in Matthew 4 4 man doth not live by bread alone but by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God. Good. Any other texts that have come to your mind in the course of the rest of the class.

52:36 All right. Let's pray together then and ask the Lord to help us by His grace as we enter into the specifics to constantly think in this biblical sphere of reference as we approach these very burning issues. Our Father we are so thankful that we have not been left to ourselves or to the tyranny of the experts to find out who we are why we are here how we are to live so as to please you and we also thank you that you have not only given us in your word a revelation of who we are as those made by you those who tragically fell in Adam but to whom a gracious redemption has come in the Lord Jesus. But we thank you that we have learned from your word that there is grace and power in Jesus Christ and as He gives us the Holy Spirit that we may not only know aright your will but that we may know and that we may actually do what is pleasing in your sight and we pray that you will take from us all creature confidence all confidence in ourselves that we may learn what it is more and more to abide in our Lord Jesus Christ utterly to depend upon you for grace

54:04 to be what we ought to be in every facet of our life lives. We confess Lord that we are we confess Lord that our hearts break as we see our whole society coming apart at the seams because they follow the voice of their own carnal hearts or listen to the so called experts gracious God may we yet live to see your word conquer the minds and hearts of multitudes restoring them to a blessed and marred image and bringing them to the place where it is their joy to frame all of life by your precepts oh may our lives be so regulated by you that we may be light and salt wherever you place us and that we may be a means to awaken interest and concern among those who are strangers to your grace hear our prayer and receive our thanks in the knowledge of this time together this morning we ask in Jesus name amen