Objections to Sexual Identity, Part 3

Pastoral Exhortation on Worship Preparation

0:03 This adult Sunday school class was held on September 10, 1988, at the Trinity Baptist Church in Montville, New Jersey. Now, while others are taking their places, and before we begin our lesson this morning, there is a brief word of pastoral exhortation that I would like to bring. Periodically, we find ourselves in a position where we must simply remind the Lord's people, as well as inform those who are new among us, of the rationale behind certain of our in-house policies, what we called our house rules, when we moved into Phase II. And one of them is the rationale for the half-hour break between our adult class and all of the Sunday school classes and the morning worship service. You'll know that many churches have a 15-minute break. Well, we began that half-hour break way back when we were having, well, Sunday school in our church building in Runnymede Road, but we had outgrown facilities for our worship, and so we had to walk or take our cars a half a mile away to the Jefferson School.

1:21 And we felt the people needed a half an hour. Well, when we got all under one roof, we wrestled with the administrative decision, should we shorten that time, since no one needed a half an hour to get from here, just to stay. We didn't want to stay here when we were worshiping here, as well as having our Sunday school class here, or from here to Phase II. But we judged that it would be better to keep that half hour, and for these reasons.

1:49 Number one, the growing child population, the baby boom, which is just one continuous boom, boom, boom around here. And a number of you have many domestic concerns that you have to take care of, all the way from changing diapers, depositing children, cramming a banana down their throat. And it's very interesting. If you've never walked down the rear hallway of the Phase II auditorium between Sunday school and church, do it sometime.

2:19 It's quite an experience. But we feel that it's reasonable to give you that time so that, and here's the crunch, so that we may have ample opportunity to take care of our own personal hygiene needs, and then still have ample time to get into the auditorium, and to prepare our hearts for the worship of God. The purpose of that half hour is not for our horizontal dimensions of fellowship. Its primary purpose is to prepare our hearts for our vertical dealings with God.

2:55 And then after we meet God, we have all these places where we can spread out and talk and fellowship and converse with one another, and there's been a gradual drift away, and it's evident, and a delight to see so many of you right after this class, just almost pouncing upon one another in little groups of fellowship, evidently delighting in one another, and we're thankful to God that you evidence such delight in each other. And I say that sincerely. And then many others of you gathering in groups down in the foyer. However, this is not the time.

3:30 It has not been allotted for that. It's been allotted to take care of domestic and personal needs, so that we may still have ample time to get into the auditorium, to get quiet before God, and at least some minutes before one of the elders stands to lead us in our opening directives of worship, to have our hearts quieted, to marshal together all of our faculties, and remember that we are gathering in spiritual Zion, in the place of God's special dwelling among his people, allowing some of those glorious truths, to seep, as it were, afresh into the texture of our souls. And it will make a tremendous difference in our worship. So, this is not a scolding. I think I've had a smile on my face all the while I've been speaking. I'm not chiding you.

4:24 I'm not being heavy-handed with you. I'm simply informing some of you who are new among us, who say, oh, I never realized that. And that's why we're informing you. For some of you, you'd have to say, I really have forgotten.

4:36 Now, I don't know if we've been able to get a clock again for down in the foyer, but I know some of the sliding off was due to the fact that one of the clocks broke down, and I think we've replaced it and put it up here, and that clock will be a helpful reminder. But if you keep personally the purpose in view, then there will be very little problem. And then you see outsiders coming among us will immediately sense that. They'll come in and see the foyer not filled with people, gathering and talking, but people making their way up to the place of worship.

5:11 And then we would remind you that any gathering to talk on this landing, after the Sunday school class, whenever anyone opens those doors to go into the auditorium, all of that noise transfers in. So if you must converse with others, please do it here or down in the lower landing. And once you go up into the upper landing, where the glass partitions are, please do not engage in conversation with one another. Because the moment the doors are opened, all of that noise goes into the auditorium.

5:41 And there's just been a slow, and I don't believe malicious, attrition in these areas. And we just want to underscore these matters so that our worship and our preparation for the same will continue to be an effective means in God's hands to keep our worship at a very high level of spiritual reality and intensity. Now then, let us ask God's help upon our service. Study together in the Word of God.

Prayer for Watchfulness and God's Guidance

6:09 Let us pray.

6:13 Our Father, we do thank you that you are the living and the true God, the God whose ear is open to the cry of the righteous. And we come this morning, many of us, must confess to you the sin of becoming careless in the preparation of our hearts for worship. We acknowledge, O Lord, that we have not willfully or defiantly sought to erode the sanctity of your worship. But we confess that when carelessness takes over, remaining sin always comes to the surface.

6:51 And we pray for grace, each of us, to be watchful and prayerful, lest in any way we should undermine the sacredness and the spiritual vitality of our worship together. You know, Lord, that in our heart of hearts, everyone who knows you abominates, abominates the thought of formal or distracted or half-hearted worship. And we know that in the pursuit of avoiding those sins, you've ordained means, and we ask that we may carefully use those means for our good and for your glory. And now, our God, as we turn to your Word to take up again these matters of vital and crucial concern to your people, Lord, we pray. Lead us, quicken our minds, and may your Word, by the power of the Spirit, be implanted upon the fleshy tables of our hearts. We ask in Jesus' name. Amen.

Recap of Previous Studies on Male and Female Identity

7:54 Now, so that those several who are visiting with us will not be totally at a loss as to where we are, excuse me, where we are presently engaged in our study in this adult class, let me attempt to bring into focus, in just a few minutes, what we've covered over many hours of instruction and discussion together. We are addressing some crucial issues facing God's people in our generation, and the first area of concern is that of male and female identity, roles, and functions. And having established from particularly the first two chapters of Genesis those areas of essentials, equality and distinctiveness between men and women as males and females, we then proceeded to establish the reality of redemptive equality in Christ, Galatians 3, 28. And with those truths always there, conditioning everything else revealed in the Bible, and certainly they ought to be there in all of the outworking of the implications of the subsequent biblical material, we established from 1 Corinthians 11, 3,

9:20 that the Bible does indeed have a clear doctrine of male headship and female subordination. For in that pivotal passage, Paul says that the head of Christ is God, and the head of the man is Christ, and the head of the woman is the man. And that has been done not because at a certain point in time in the first century, a group of men, a male chauvinist pigs, under the guise of Christian leaders, got together and made a decree. The apostle could state what he did because Almighty God had established such a hierarchy of relationship in the exercise of his own sovereignty and wisdom. Now having established that framework of male headship and female subordination, we then went to the scriptures to see its outworking in three areas. In the home, or the domestic, in the church, or the ecclesiastic, and then in what we call general appearance, bearing, and demeanor. There is such a thing as a feminine demeanor, appearance, dress, and bearing.

10:34 There is such a thing as male appearance, demeanor, and bearing. Well realizing, that's why we've called it a crucial issue in our day, that this concept, and its outworkings, is under vicious attack in our day, both from without the church, and from within, realizing that the duty of elders, according to Titus 1 in Acts 20, is to refute gainsayers, to protect the sheep from perverse men within, and from wolves without, we were constrained to take up some of the major objections to this teaching that come from the church. First of all, from without the church, and then having completed that study, which we shall do this morning, God willing, and we may even have time, though I doubt it, to begin to consider the objections that rise against this teaching from within the visible or professing Christian church. And thus far, we've taken up three of these objections. We took up the evolutionary argument, the argument, that this whole concept of male headship, female subordination, is just an accident, or sort of a necessary wrinkle in the great evolutionary process, and we have outgrown it, and our answer to that objection

12:02 is the glorious biblical doctrine of creation, in which God states with exquisite simplicity, and I think what we should call nothing less than ravishing beauty, the wonder and the glory, that God has indeed created male and female with all of their distinctiveness of sexuality. And then we considered the second argument, the inferiority argument. And it goes like this, that any concept of subordination must of necessity mean that we regard women as inferior, and therefore as the proper objects of scorn, as objects, as objects to be demeaned and depreciated. And our answer to the inferiority argument was to show that distinction and difference and diversity do not mean that one is in an inferior position. Any more than a bird is inferior to the squirrel, though it cannot crack nuts and do some other things that squirrels can do. The buffalo is not inferior to the antelope, the antelope is not inferior to the buffalo.

13:20 There is distinct, there is different, there is glorious diversity, and no necessity of inferiority. And then we considered in our last study the religious suppression argument. And that argument states that it is in the Bible that men get these materials for a male-dominated concept of the relationship between men and women. The relationship among men and women.

13:48 God is set forth in dominance of the male. When you've got a god, you're suspicious of any religion that grows out of that, because people become like the god they worship. And if your god is all losing with male, then certainly you're going to have a male-dominant religion, and that will oppress women. Well, that's the sense of the, or at least the synopsis of the religious suppression argument.

Introducing the Fourth Objection: Individual Liberty and Freedom

14:23 It's in the Bible that we have this concept of, you know, the concept of hierarchy and subordination in the home and in the church, and therefore we must rid all of the trappings of a religion that constantly fosters and promotes this oppression and suppression. Now today, we come to take up the fourth major argument that comes to us from without. And this will be the last, though I'm sure we've not been exhaustive. And I want to ask, to question, to see if some of you have already anticipated this, can any of you think of a common objection to the divinely ordained structure of male headship and female subordination, which has not been covered in these first three? Now granted, there is some overlapping, but can you think of a major objection to this teaching that you have personally encountered, whether in talking with someone, or in your reading, or in your observation of what men think and say in the media? Doesn't fit the evolutionary objection, doesn't fit the second inferiority argument, nor the religious suppression argument, but it is a very distinct objection. Has all kinds of tentacles and manifestations,

15:51 but it really doesn't fit under those first three categories. Have any of you confronted one? If so, what is it? Anyone?

15:59 Yes, Cliff? It's not pragmatic, it's not the role in the church, and certainly in the home, and just because, you know, fathers are not at home at times, to take care of things at home, then we ought to have an egalitarian marriage, where male and female both fulfill the same roles. All right, so it is not pragmatic, given the complexity of modern society, therefore, we are free to tamper with this relationship. How many of you have heard that argument in one form or another, in one way or another?

16:38 I'm going to ask you, because that isn't one I'm fishing for, but I have to confess, that is a very dominant one. We'll have to put that down there next week. I don't have any notes to deal with that, see, I've got number four, and that's not the headings. Would you like an assignment, Cliff?

17:02 Chuck? A woman to develop to her full potential. Yes. And then you go into areas where you have a gift.

17:17 All right. I would say that that comes under the suppression. It puts her in such a box, that it suppresses her, and it puts her in such a box, that it suppresses and inhibits her from coming to her full development. For example, as we'll see that this argument coming from within, here's an article I read just this week in a magazine that I read when it comes every month, The Ordination of Women, a hermeneutical question, and this man goes on to say that of course we must ordain women when it's evident the Holy Spirit has given them a gift of utterance, I find women sensing God's call.

17:53 I see God's call in their hearts to prepare for ministry. I see God has equipped them with the spiritual gifts necessary to carry on this difficult task of pastoral ministry. Well evidently, then you've got to let them do their thing, see, otherwise you are suppressing and oppressing them, and even being prodigal with the gifts of the Holy Spirit, so this man would say. So I think that would basically come under number three, Chuck, it would be a subheading.

18:20 And that's why I said a lot of these things overlap. So I think that would basically come under number three, Chuck, it would be a subheading. And that's why I said a lot of these things overlap. And that's why I said a lot of these things overlap.

18:24 And now I want to fish for my number four, because I do think a number of you have encountered this one, I hope equally as many as Cliff's number five. Any other arguments to this position? Yes, Rich? Were you looking over my shoulder?

18:42 Ah, that's right. The argument of inherent rights are constitutional rights. Now would you explain what you mean? You've used some pretty big words.

18:51 I don't think you've done that to impress us. What do you mean by that, Rich? They have as much right as the man. That's right.

19:01 They have as much right as the man. male to serve roles and relationships, and the argument that our Constitution guarantees such things. Okay. All right.

19:09 So, it's the argument, and it's what I'm calling the individual liberty and freedom argument. And, first of all, I want to give the identity and substance of it, and at this point I will lecture to you for about five to seven minutes. But then when we come to the biblical answer to the argument, I want you as a class to be the teacher again. All right?

19:34 First of all, the individual liberty and freedom argument. The individual liberty and freedom argument, and A under that would be the identity and substance of the argument. There are many in our day who, when they are confronted with this biblical concept, and in any way feel its pressure, respond to it. That any composition of rights and freedoms, whether it be the Constitution, the Constitution, the Constitution, the Constitution, the Constitution, the Constitution, the Constitution, the Constitution, the Constitution, the Constitution, the Constitution, the Constitution, the Constitution, the Constitution, the Constitution, the Constitution, the Constitution, the Constitution, the Constitution, the Constitution, the Constitution, the Constitution, the Constitution, the Constitution, the Constitution, the Constitution, the Constitution, the Constitution, the Constitution, the Constitution, the Constitution, the Constitution, the Constitution, the Constitution, the Constitution, the Constitution, the Constitution, the Constitution, the Constitution, the Constitution, the Constitution, the Constitution, the Constitution, the Constitution, the Constitution, the Constitution, the Constitution, the Constitution, the Constitution, the Constitution, the Constitution, the Constitution, the Constitution, the Constitution, the Constitution, the Constitution, the Constitution, the Constitution, the Constitution, the Constitution, the Constitution, the Constitution, the Constitution, the Constitution, the Constitution, the Constitution, the Constitution, the Constitution, the Constitution, the Constitution, the Constitution, the No one has a right to jingle like this, different strokes for different folks. And you see, bound up in that little jingle is this whole concept, different strokes for different folks.

20:53 This one way I stroke mine another. You stroke your femaleness one way, stroke mine another. You stroke your sexual preference in a heterosexual way. That is, as a man, you feel you should find sexual fulfillment in a woman.

21:10 I stroke mine a different way. I'm attracted to men, and I am free to stroke because I'm my own folk. You see, different strokes for different folks. And they say we must all be to adopt and live.

21:28 We must all live out sexual preferences in roles and even in terms of physical, genital, sexual fulfillment. Take in the words on the issue of abortion, but on these matters, and you see what a subtle way this is. That sounds so noble, doesn't it? Gives you the idea of slavery, oppression, people in dungeons.

22:04 With what big clunk clunk the chains go on and you're in the prison. We are. Doesn't that sound so noble? Doesn't that strike at sort of the tap roots of your sense of liberty and freedom?

22:20 We are pro-choice. I tried to get by that nonsense with me, one of my senators. I said, pro-choice for whom? On the issue of abortion.

22:34 I said, what choice does that baby have in the womb? When the courage begins to do its work, can he cry out? And likewise, sexual roles, identity snippet. And that's about all I make, was a snippet of an interview with a leading feminist recently. He said, I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know.

23:23 And when a man asked a question, and this was the way the question went. It's not a verbatim quote, but this was the gist of it. Well, if you say what you want to say to a woman in order to tell them what to do in relationship to this whole matter of a male's identity, what would you tell other women to do? She said, oh, I wouldn't tell another woman what to do.

23:45 She said, that's been our problem. We've had men telling us what to do for centuries. Now, I'm not about to tell my fellow females what to do. I just want to be free to do my thing.

23:56 And have them free to do their thing. She was just for individual liberty. Some even go so far as to say, and here's Rich's precision in his answer, that the rights and liberties mandated by the Constitution and the Bill of Rights demand sexual identity, responsibility, appearance, or any fascism, and an attempt to overthrow rights and liberties. secured by the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. Now, that's the individual liberty and freedom argument. Any of you heard that in any of its forms?

24:50 Yes, a number of you have. It bailed me out, Cliff. All right. Now, we've looked at that argument without beating it thin at the edges.

The Societal Implications of Radical Individual Liberty

25:01 We come now to large letter B, the biblical answer to the argument. If tomorrow afternoon one of you men, in your place of business, happens to be having lunch with a colleague, brings up the fact that his wife is agitating to get out of the confines of her prison, i.e. her home, and away from the demeaning, humdrum, mindless task of just being a housekeeper, I'm using their terminology, and she wants to assert her personhood, and she wants to find herself, and find true fulfillment in her own identity, and go back into the workplace.

25:44 Go back into the workforce, even though she has little children. She says, the state is obligated to provide for the care of my children and not stand in my way of my full development of my personhood. And, dear people, that's the driving force behind the whole daycare movement. That's the driving force to get away from the so-called nuclear family and to leave it such that any woman can, just like a cow drops her calf, and soon can go about her business, as long as somebody has a pail with a false, and I've seen the calves sucking at those rubber teats from a pail, and then the cow can go back and do its own business. Well, that's the whole concept of motherhood. Drop your kid, and after a couple of months, go back into the workforce where you really have your identity, and let somebody else take care of the kid that you've dropped. Now, that's putting it in craft, putting it in crass, animal terms, but that conduct, I believe, warrants it.

26:51 Now then, what is the biblical answer to this argument? If you were meeting such a person, and he brought up this matter, how would you respond to your friend? If one of your women is talking to one of the women in your block, or you may meet them at the supermarket, and you had an opportunity to put some ether over the kids and put them to sleep for 15 minutes, while they are clamoring around in the shopping carts so you could carry on a decent conversation, and this subject came up, what would you say? What would your answer be from the Word of God?

Biblical Answer: True Freedom and God's Authority

27:25 That's my question. What is the biblical answer to this individual liberty and freedom argument? All right, Norman? The biblical doctrine of freedom says that everyone who committed sin is the bondservant of sin.

27:48 All right. It speaks of knowing the truth and truth making you free. And being free indeed when the Son has made you free. All right.

27:57 So one tack might be to seek to open up to our friend the biblical concept of what true freedom is. And true freedom, according to the Scriptures, is not the liberty to do anything that my perverse, sinful nature might desire to do. But true liberty is having both the desire and the ability to do what I ought to do according to the Word of the God who made me. That's true liberty.

28:28 And anything else is bondage. That might be one approach. What might be another approach? May I suggest even more foundational?

28:34 Now of the argument. I'm given individual liberty and freedom to be what I want to be. Everyone knows that is a right that is mine, and my Constitution and Bill of Rights secure that right to me, in the context of my own society. Or who are we?

29:03 How do we answer that? That's a fundamental level. Yes, Julie?

29:23 All right. We might then ask what they regard as the total picture. But I'd say that would be down the road of it. There's something far more fundamental.

29:34 All right, George? All right, that's it. I would say that our kind of solid response would be to address the source and ultimate ground of asserting these things. The sort of men or women in it have come up with the notion that this is the way things ought to be, but rather God's thick role functions were thrown back again a biblical dark creation, and that the assigned relationship is not capricious or arbitrary, but they're accountable.

30:54 It is, judge us in the last 30 and 31, and through revelation, God's fundamental differences between male and female. And therefore, that in existing upon the role, the concept of non-exchangeable sexual identity, that there is to be no genital sexual fulfillment, sexual, a man with his wife, a wife with her husband, we are not infringing, not infringing upon liberties granted by the Constitution, or merely seeking as one creature to force our opinions upon another, but that someone bigger than all of us combined, and someone who has more authority than the U.S. Constitution and Bill of Rights,

God's General Revelation of Sexual Identity (Romans 1)

32:08 that it is the living God who has ordained that the, and it's interesting that in this very area, clear to emphasize, without even submitting to the authority, or being acquainted, I should say, with the authority of special revelation, the Bible, in general revelation, what we see in the world about us, and in the world of our own self-consciousness, God has marked out some fixed lines of human sexual identity and function. For example, turn please to Romans chapter 1. Romans chapter 1. Verse 18, as Paul begins to demonstrate the universal need for that gospel of which he is not ashamed, and which is the power of God unto salvation to everyone that believes,

33:30 he begins in verse 18 this description of one segment of men. For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who hinder or who hold down, who suppress the truth in unrighteousness. Now you see the picture. Here's a picture of people who are holding down, and they're doing it in the context of unrighteousness, a commitment to a lifestyle contrary to the law, is known of God, manifest in them, for manifested it unto them. Nothing of God unless God reveals himself to them. God must reveal himself if man the creature is to know him. And this passage says that God has made a revelation of himself to men, and as we read on, it's evident that that revelation is not referring to the scriptures, but to his work of creation.

34:41 Notice, because that which is known of God is manifest in them, for God manifested it unto them. For the invisible things of him, since from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being perceived through the things that are made. See. You see that in the passage?

35:16 Being and his divinity. They know something of the might and the godness of God. It's probably the best way to try to convey the concept of that word divinity, so that they may be without excuse, because that, this knowledge of God, his self-revelation in creation, they did not glorify him as God, neither gave thanks, but became vain in their reasonings, and their senseless heart was darkened. Without going into all of the details, there is a clear sense of what the theologians call the doctrine of general. And one of the things that he's revealed is, is men and women look at how they were created, and how they were created by God. They can make certain assumptions about their sexuality.

36:35 Verse 24. Wherefore God gave them up in the lust of their hearts unto uncleanness, that their bodies should be honoured among themselves. For they exchanged God for a lie, and worshipped and served the creature rather than the creator, who is blessed forever. They look out at God's creation, and they know something of the vastness of the power, of the God who could bring all things.

37:04 They know something of the Godness of God, something out of wood or stone or prairie, and call that God. They commit a capital and spirit on themselves. They have this at their heart that could be called originality. And they deliberately believe a lie.

37:41 And because they changed the truth that is into a lie, and worship and serve the creature, what does God do? Verse 26. For this cause God gave them up unto vile, for their women changed this now, not scripture, but nature. And likewise all of the woman, blessed one to another men with men, working unseemliness, and receiving in themselves that recompense of their error which was due, and even as to have them up unto a reprobate mind, to do those things which are not fitting, and in the midst of the description of all of these horrible sins, you will notice that some of them impinge very, very much upon what we would call the existence and function of the nuclear family. Verse 30. Insolent, haughty, boastful, disobedient,

38:59 apparent natural affection, unmerciful. And when you think of the unnaturalness of killing, of killing the fruit of one's womb in the womb, into the jaw of the room, and we love, bend over, you don't see them in eating them. We know certain animals have an instinct to eat their young in points of danger. I know that. But in this analogy, to see them sitting there, and then when they hatch, all day long, papa fluttering in and out, and I tell you it's comical, because when we go over and try to sneak up and look out the window, we see their eyes, as it were, you can almost read the defiance, as though they were saying to me, don't you dare touch my little ones or you're going to get it.

40:20 Well, it's laughable. What's this little bird going to do to me, going to do to my wife? But to hear them chirping and screeching, and they get up on the telephone wire and look down at me as if to say, don't you touch my young'uns. And then in that little nest, for two years in a row, the house wrens have hatched five babies.

40:38 And they're there providing, caring, nurturing, until those babies have developed to where they can fly the nest and make their own. God's put that into the bird. And as the animals care for their young, without natural affection. Without natural affection.

40:59 You see how these things, upon the matter of role concepts, without natural affection, disobedient to parents, covenant breakers, and then of course, the things that one is almost embarrassed to read in a public mixed meeting in verses 26 and 27. And the only reason I'm bold enough to read them is this epistle was written to a Christian congregation with no instructions to the elders to omit the reading of such sordid things. And that's the only reason I'm bold enough to read them. But you notice the underscoring of this principle.

41:38 They've left the natural use. A man and a woman do not need a manual deposited from heaven to know what is normal, heterosexual, genital content. Natural use into that which is us. It's not a matter of saying different stroke folks.

42:18 It's a matter of creation about me and of my own body and the body of my fellow creatures. And I will defy God and bodily functions which guise women. And you see, when people give us this argument, well, I must have my liberty and my freedom to be my established authority of the word of God. I need you to be genital sexual contact only with a woman in the natural use. And anything else is perverted. It's an indication that you have already put down much of what you know about God.

43:31 And that you can even talk about sexual preferences as an indication you've already preferred to put down what you know. And God is giving you up to a perverse mind. You're not enlightened when you speak that way. It shows you are degraded and at least partially given over to a perverse mind.

43:51 Now I'm not saying that anyone who is given over to homosexuality cannot be converted. Because Paul goes on in Corinthians to describe some of these very sins including homosexual activity. And he says, such were some of you. But you are washed, you are cleansed, you are justified.

44:11 We do not have homophobia nor do we have the attitude of the mercy and compassion of what we are. We will not stand silently while people say why we must give everyone his liberty to be his. We will not give people their liberty to destroy themselves and defy our God and be silent. So the biblical answer to this argument is to address the source and ultimate ground of our authority which is God, God's word and God's general revelation.

Nature's Teaching on Sexual Distinctiveness (1 Corinthians 11 & 16)

44:55 Notice how Paul uses this even with regard to appearance, 1 Corinthians 11. And though there may be much that we don't understand in the implications of it, let's simply take the text at face value. 1 Corinthians chapter 11, the chapter from which we get this marvelous statement of the divinely instituted hierarchy which God has revealed. 1 Corinthians 11.11 Nevertheless, neither is the woman without the man nor the man without the woman in the Lord. For as the woman is of the man, so is the man also by the woman, but all things are of God. Now these are things that everyone knows. You don't even need to have a Bible to know that the woman never appears unless the man has been involved.

45:51 On the face of the earth is a woman because in her mother's womb male sperm was deposited. That's a reality. You find people seriously at work trying to overturn that reality. I spoke to Dr. Gary Rule a couple of months ago about some of the far out experimentation being done by radical or by people aiding the radical feminist movement to even try to overturn that reality genetically. But as we observe life, the woman is never without the man nor the man without the woman. How can a man go around strutting saying I'm number one? Hey, where did you get your start, man?

46:38 In my mama's womb. You never have existence or being apart from the woman and both origin ultimately traced to God. Judge in yourselves. Is it seemly that a woman pray unto God unveiled, now verse 14, doth not even nature itself teach you that if a man have long hair it is a dishonor to him?

47:05 But if a woman have long hair it is a glory to her? Doth not nature itself teach you that sexual distinctiveness even in terms of relative hairline embedded in femaleness? Now again, that may raise a hundred questions and I'm not prepared to answer the questions and I'm not desirous of answering the three or four that perhaps I could answer, but this is what the word of God says. Doth not nature itself teach you certain things regarding sexual identity even in terms of what we call the external appearance, demeanor and bearing?

47:46 And likewise in 1 Corinthians 16 as I was preparing for the scripture reading in the morning worship service, this passage was fresh in my mind as Paul comes to the end of the Corinthian letter and he's giving an exhortation to men and women, to the entire Christian church at Corinth. He says in verse 13, watch, be continually watchful. Then the 1, 2, 3, 4, 4 English words quit you like men are an attempt to translate one Greek word which is the noun for man put into verbal form it's the noun for man put into verbal form it's the noun for man and what it means be strong that you do be done in love something distinctive of men in the area of strength and Paul is taking that natural quality observable by natural revelation and is bringing it over into the spiritual realm. So in that sense

49:09 women are to have strength but it's to be strength in the realm of spiritual commodities, spiritual courage. She's to have a spiritual masculinity in that sense. Do you see? Just as men are to have certain feminine qualities in the realm of the spiritual.

49:32 Paul could say I was gentle among you as a nursing mother with her own child. Does that mean he was a feminine? No. But he saw a Christian quality of tenderness and gentleness, epitomized more in the feminine or he says I incorporate that quality into my ministerial relationships.

49:58 You see here is the only strain of truth in the matter that says don't stereotype maleness and femaleness and we've already attacked that idea of the macho man and the weak, mindless, poor, pregnant woman concept. No, we have no sympathy for that caricature but if it is not true that men in distinction from women have certain natural qualities and I think in the context particularly strength what's the meaning then in acting like men? There are many in our church who with this passage came to them in their churches they'd have to raise their hand and say to the reader or to the elder sorry. What men? The one who chose and adopt the feminine characteristics of gentleness and caring for the children or the men who are the symbol of being the providers and protectors of their families. Pastor Nichols is addressing it in this series of sermons and I pray God that this place will never be the same as a result of it.

51:21 What a tragedy. Paul assumes that the people saved out of the raw paganism of the first century would understand him when he gave a quote sexual stereotype and he understood they had quote a sexual stereotype and he did nothing to neutralize it. In fact by the Holy Ghost he's forever embalmed it here in the inspired record of the word of God. And likewise as I've already indicated the first Thessalonians passage.

Societal Disintegration from Radical Individualism

51:54 Well very quickly in the three minutes that remain because two minutes in the light of the exhortation I gave you I determined I'll make more conscience about stopping on time. I'm sure we could pull it out of you but the second great matter that we must address when people talk about this individual liberty and freedom argument is that living in a community context the moment you get off an island on which you alone exist the fact is that this position of individual liberty and freedom argument leads to the total disintegration of society. It says in Judges 21-25 every man did that which was right in his own eyes. And you read the book of Judges and it's horrible. Everything from gang rape to hacking and hewing the poor woman in pieces and sending her bodily parts all over. I tell you it's a horrible book. It would be R-rated if anyone tried to take a movie of it make a movie of it.

52:59 In 2 Timothy 3 1 and following 2 Peter 2 10 and following Jude verse 7 and following you read what happens when men begin to live. What would happen next week if you went to fill up your tank with gas and you said 10 gallons please and your needle was on empty and after the man said 10 gallons in charge and you saw it only moved about a 16th of an inch off empty and you had your gauge checked out and it was fine and you find out the guy only put in a gallon and you went back and said hey I asked for 10 gallons and he said well you know I just was feeling kind of bound by this notion that a gallon is a fixed amount of liquid. Four quarts equaling so many ounces and I thought for one day I'd operate by a different standard than always being a gallon. And then you go to the market and get three pounds of apples and you go home with one little scrawny apple. You see where I'm going? You see you apply this across the boards to weights and measures and sizes and distances and society could not function.

54:04 And what is true of weights and measurements and sizes and distances there's got to be a common agreement in any given society if they're to function at all. How much more is it true in the very function of society than it is in the very function of society. The fundamental moral and ethical realm of what is a man and what is a woman who is to do what and how and why. And when those things go you have the disintegration of a society and some of us have lived to see it in our own beloved America.

Concluding Prayer for Transformation

54:41 God have mercy on us. Let us pray. Oh our Father in mercy and in pity look down upon us all in the street as those who put down the knowledge that they have of you. Become the great spokesman for our society.

55:12 Lord our Donahues and the Oprah Winfrey's and the Dr. Spock's are molding a generation rather than Paul and Moses. Oh our and that we people may not be conformed to this age but transformed by the renewing of our mind for Jesus sake.