It's kind of a neat thing to me When we sing those hymns from so long ago, and they're still so relevant because God's truth doesn't change It's like if I'm reading some some Christian writer from antiquity I can understand exactly what they're talking about even though they lived in a completely different time a completely different culture But when they speak of the things of God God's truth doesn't change and I can still really I could probably carry on a conversation with somebody from antiquity when I get to glory and we'd be on the same page together. So it's kind of a neat thing. Well, we're going to look today at Mark chapter 10 verses 1 to 12. And the subject that I'm going to try to get to and through is marriage, divorce, and identity. That's what I want to look at as we look at these verses. Let me pray for the word. Our Father and our God, we pause before your word is read to acknowledge in your presence that we understand we're about to embark on a study of your holy word, the very word of God. And Lord, your word is truth. And so, Lord, we need to be aligned to your truth today. And that's a work that only you can do. So we pray, Lord, that you would do that very thing. And we thank you for that. In Jesus' name, amen. So let me read. I'm going to read the whole text, and then we'll come back and kind of go through it a section at a time. But it reads like this. Then he arose from there and came to the region of Judea by the other side of the Jordan. And multitudes gathered to him again, and as he was accustomed, he taught them again. The Pharisees came and asked him, Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife, testing him? And he answered and said to them, What did Moses command you? And they said, Moses permitted a man to write a certificate of divorce and to dismiss her. And Jesus answered and said to them, because of the hardness of your heart, he wrote you this precept. But from the beginning of the creation, God made them male and female. For this reason, a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife. and the two shall become one flesh. So then they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore, what God has joined together, let not man separate. In the house, his disciples also asked him again about the same matter. So he said to them, whoever divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery against her. And if a woman divorces her husband and marries another, she commits adultery. Thus far, the reading of God's holy word. To begin with, before we get into the subject of marriage and divorce and then identity, just looking at the very beginning of the text in chapter 10, it says that he's in the region of Judea on the other side of the Jordan. And if you have your Bible map, he's on the eastern side of the Jordan. In my map, it would say Perea. is where he's at. MacArthur in his commentary says, it was not technically part of Judea, but the territory ruled by Herod the Great had included both these regions, and it was commonly referred to in this way. But that's where he's at. He's on the other side of the Jordan. It's where the Jewish people would have traveled as they made their pilgrimage to Jerusalem for the festivals and the required times to gather. As they go there, for instance, for the coming Passover. And this is actually the beginning of a new section of the record of Jesus's ministry. The theologians will call what we just left and closed with in chapter 9 as his retirement ministry, which meant he kind of pulled back from public ministry and was teaching his disciples for a time, preparing them for the fact that he was going to go to Jerusalem to be put on the cross and to die, but he would be raised the third day. And now he's back into more of a public setting, still teaching his disciples, but he's also teaching the crowds. And this is the beginning in Mark's gospel of Jesus's journey to Jerusalem that will lead him to the cross. And so that's what we're going to look at as we move forward. out of chapter 10. It's interesting because Mark is the shorter, the more abbreviated of the Gospels, right? And so from the very end of chapter 9, which we looked at last week, to where we are today, the beginning of chapter 10, about six months have gone by. And Mark doesn't include what happened in those six months. If you want to find out what happened to those six months, you can read John chapter seven, all the way up to chapter 11 to see what was going on. You can also read Luke chapter nine, verse 57, all the way to 18, 14, chapter 18, verse 14, which actually comprises about a third of the gospel according to Luke, which is interesting. So Mark flies past all of that and takes us here to Jesus' beginning to set himself, like Flint, towards Jerusalem to go to the cross. You can imagine if the crowds are also caravanning on their way, at some point as we move forward, on their way to Jerusalem for the Passover, you can imagine in your mind what that might have looked like. And Jesus is amidst these crowds, and Jesus does what he does. Now, Jesus healed. Jesus would cast out demons, we know from reading the texts. But it says that he was accustomed to teaching. Jesus was wanting to teach the people truth, and that's what we're going to come into today. So as he's teaching, he's now tested. In Matthew 19.3, the Pharisees, now that he's back out of the lesser populated areas with his disciples, now he's out in public, so of course the Pharisees confront him. It says, the Pharisees came to him testing him. The original language, the word that's translated in my Bible to testing, can also mean tempted him. But I believe testing is probably a good word here. They came to test him, to put him on the horns of a dilemma. They didn't have noble intentions here. So they test him saying, and here's the test, Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for just any reason? Now here I'm reading Matthew 19.3. Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for just any reason? So this region that he's in is currently, in Jesus' day, is currently being ruled by Herod Antipas. who is married to Herodias. And if you remember, John the Baptist spoke out strongly on the subject of divorce and remarriage, and it cost him his head. And so it could be that the Pharisees are asking him this question to put him on the public spot of where do you stand with this subject, hoping perhaps that Herod Antipas would find out about it and would come and gather up Jesus and put him in his dungeon, and maybe eventually even lead to Jesus's death. The dangers here of Jesus answering this, one, obviously angering Herod, and two, he would have possibly, and here's the dilemma, the horns of the dilemma, is there's two basic rabbinical schools of thought about divorce in Jesus' name. Just like today, there's the more conservative view in that day, and the more liberal view held by Hillel, the teaching school. And so the more conservative view would have said, well, the grounds on which you can divorce are limited to just really adultery. If fornication outside of the marriage bond has taken place, then the divorce can happen. Whereas the more liberal school said, well, no, even if the wife just offends the husband, or embarrasses the husband, and even some of the rabbinical writers would say, even if he just didn't like her cooking, she tended to burn the dinner. Or she spoke so loudly, you could hear her out the window, and that was a distraction. All these reasons, you could divorce your wife. You just didn't want to be with her anymore, basically. Those are grounds for divorce. So they come to Jesus and they say, well, what's your view on this? And they're hoping that, well, if he takes the conservative position, the more liberal position was what the crowds really embraced in that day. You'll see his disciples are even a little bit taken aback at Jesus's answer to this. Or if he took the more liberal view, would he offend the conservatives? So it's kind of a difficult dilemma that they're placing him in. Of course, he's the Lord of the universe, so he has no problem with that. And so he responds, not so much with a direct answer, but with what? A question. Let me ask you something, Jesus says. And in Mark 10.3 it says, he said to them, what did Moses command you? So he sends them into the Pentateuch, Moses, the author of the first five books of the Bible, and says, what do you see there? What do you see that Moses commanded regarding this subject? You tell me, is what Jesus says. And they go back to Deuteronomy chapter 24, and in verse 4, they say, well, Moses permitted a man to write a certificate of divorce and to dismiss her. Hendrickson, in his commentary, says it was like they said, if you want to divorce your wife for any reason, whatever, go right ahead, but be sure to hand her a divorce certificate. That was basically their answer. Jesus then adds to that a little bit of a commentary on why that was. Why was that permission given by God through Moses? And he says in verse five, because of the hardness of your heart, he wrote you this precept. God, in his grace, because of the wickedness of man and the hardness of heart, gave a concession, and Jesus will explain as we move on, in situations where the marriage bond and the trust in that marriage was so violently attacked because one of the two had committed adultery outside of the marriage that God, as a concession to that hardness of heart, would permit in that situation for a divorce to occur. So Jesus answers that way. And we'll look at Deuteronomy 24, which is where they turn to, in verses 1 to 4. This is what they're thinking about when they answer Jesus. So this is Deuteronomy 24, verses 1 to 4. says, when a man takes a wife and marries her, and it happens that she finds no favor in his eyes because he has found some uncleanness in her, and he writes her a certificate of divorce, puts it in her hand and sends her out of his house. When she has departed from his house and goes and becomes another man's wife, if the latter husband detests her and writes her a certificate of divorce, puts it in her hand and sends her out of his house, or if the latter husband dies who took her as his wife, then her former husband who divorced her must not take her back to be his wife after she has been defiled. For that is an abomination before the Lord, and you shall not bring sin on the land which the Lord your God is giving you as an inheritance. God gave this concession, and it's worded that way, in my opinion, in the opinion of a lot of conservative commentaries. That was given that way as protection to women. Because you can assume that before that was given as a command, as an edict, as a concession, that they could divorce their wives verbally. And just be able to say, I want you out of here. But your bag's on the front porch. Get lost. I'm done with you. You brought my dinner. But what the concession requires, when it says that you had to present a certificate of divorce, it wasn't like they just scribbled it on a napkin or something or whatever they used back in a papyrus and gave it to them. That was an official document. You'd have to go to the elders and have it drawn up. It would have to be witnessed, much like divorce goes through today. And she would have that official document that she's not just running around with her husband. He legally divorced me, and I'm free now from that marriage. So God did this, in my opinion, to protect women. And I like Hendrickson on this, because it's also a warning to men in that era, that culture, not to frivolously divorce their wife over ridiculous reasons, because it's a serious thing. And so Hendrickson says the real meaning of this passage is this, husband, You better think twice before you reject your wife. Remember that once you've put her away and she's become the wife of another, you cannot afterward take her back, not even if the other husband should also have rejected her or should have died. In other words, there's a permanence to this thing that you need to be aware of. And it should have really had the effect on God's people that, you know what, I really ought to have a second thought about dissolving this marriage. Maybe we can work things out after all. So that leads me to the subject of what is marriage biblically. As you very well know, biblical Judeo-Christian views of marriage have been radically attacked around the world and in our country, in our generation. This is just in our generation, guys, that this has happened. But I'll take you to Mark chapter 10 verse 6, where Jesus is basically saying, OK, I asked you what Moses said, you took me to Deuteronomy. That's there because of the hardness of men's hearts. Jesus says, you didn't go far back enough. Let's go all the way back to creation. Let's go back to Genesis, is what Jesus says. So in Mark 10 6, he says, but from the beginning of the creation, God made them male and female. So, as you have heard probably many times from many preachers, what's the definition of marriage? Well, it's at least this. One man and one woman for a lifetime. That's God's definition of marriage, is it's one man and one woman for a lifetime. Until death do we part, is the obligation and commitment that we make when we get married. So God, I read one commentary, I thought that was clever. But to think about creation, and God could have done the creation any way he wanted to. And he does what he does in creation, at least partially, as a pattern for us. He does that with the Sabbath rest that God creates in six days and rests on the seventh. And he says that's a pattern for you. And he does that in the creation of men and women. And one of the commentaries, I can't remember who it was, said God could have created a whole pile of people. You know, 29 men and 37 women, or whatever, and just said, let's see who connects with who. God didn't give that option. God created one man and one woman. There was no other option. Adam had already looked at all the animals. He named them. He says, there's nobody here like me. And God then creates Eve. There's no other option. Adam knows that. That's God's design. One man, one woman, together for a lifetime. They were designed for each other too. Physically, emotionally, morally, designed for one another. In Genesis 2.18 it says, The Lord God said, it is not good that man should be alone. I will make him a helper comparable are comparable to him. So this helper, this female that God is going to create, is going to be somebody that's perfectly comparable to him. Candlish, the old commentator of Genesis, says, not a servant, that's not who she's going to be, not a servant, Not an inferior, but a companion. Another self. And that's kind of tied to the original Hebrew language. Another one like you, Adam, I'm going to make. Another self whom he must love and cherish as his own body. And that's a reference to what Ephesians chapter 5. Genesis 2.23, Adam recognizes this, and when God brings Eve to Adam, it says that Adam says, This is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh. She shall be called woman because she was taken out of man. So he recognizes that she is completely compatible to him. And in that instance, I always tell when I do weddings, I'm like, God's the one who walked Eve down the aisle. That's a wedding going on right there. And they're brought together by God himself, his husband and wife, in the garden. Now Jesus goes on to talk about this and he's quoting the Old Testament and he says that in this marriage, there's a separation or a leaving that has to take place. And so he says in verse 7, for this reason, and now think about that, just that language, for what reason? The reason being that God in creation has this example, this pattern set forth. Because of that, for this reason, now he's going to talk about men in his era, or men in our era. Because of that pattern, for this reason, a man shall leave his father and mother. When I do counseling for weddings, I always say, you've got to understand, before there's a cleaving, there's a leaving. That doesn't mean that we don't love our children, Karen and I, but, you know, four of them got married, and I let them know. I was like, you know, we're going to give you some space. I'm not going to be, you know, coming to your house every five minutes to check on you guys. I mean, you know, you need your space. We want to, you know, love you and fellowship with you and be with you and visit and go on vacations at times. But there's a leaving, there's a detaching from the family that you were rooted to. And then there's also the cleaving, right? And it says, and after you leave your father and mother, you're to be joined to his wife. And here's an interesting way of putting things in the Bible. The two shall become one flesh. So then they are no longer two, but one flesh. I've repeated there for emphasis. So then, this is Moses' application in the creation story. Because you see the historical recording of what God did in creating, and then Moses gives that application. That's the reason why. You say, well, why do we do it this way, Moses? Well, it's because of what God did in creation. That's why it's done the way it's done throughout the centuries. Jesus adds his own application in chapter 10 of Mark, verse 9, where Jesus says, therefore, because all of that is true, because of the original pattern, because of what Moses said, therefore, what God has joined together, let not man separate. Right? Because God sees this as a one flesh entity in marriage, in this covenant. Therefore, don't go tearing it asunder, what God has brought together. Again, Hendrickson, I think is his last quote I got from, he's one of my favorite commentaries, but he says, this does not mean that a man is committing sin by not getting married. Rather, it means that those who decide to marry must view marriage as a divine institution, a state in which they must so conduct themselves that true union, sexual to be sure, note, quote, shall cleave to his wife, unquote, but also intellectual, moral, and spiritual." In other words, connected in all these ways, because that's what God does in marriage. And then Hendrickson says, "...is not only established," he means in the marriage, "...but more and more firmly cemented." Now, I like that language because I'm thinking of the example of my own marriage with my own bride. And if God allows us to live another year, in November we'll celebrate 34 years of marriage, which is almost mind-boggling to me. Where did the years go? 34 years. And some of you have been married longer than us, for sure. But there is that initial cementing together. And of course, the first year of marriage, you're always working out all these differences, because you grew up in two different households, and now you're coming together. But there is a further cementing together as the years move on, that you grow to the, you're almost to the same piece. It drives me crazy. She ends half the sentences I start with. She's trying to stop herself from doing it. But I'll start to say something, and she finishes. She knows exactly what I'm going to say. I don't even need to talk. I could probably just make old briefings, and she just knows. Because we've been together so long, right? Now Paul adds this illuminating fact. With all that said and in your mind, let's look at Ephesians chapter 5 verse 30. Now think about this. Look at the language we used. For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother. And Adam, when he's in his wedding situation, he sees Eve, he says, now this is bone of my bones, this is flesh of my flesh. Now listen to what Paul says in Ephesians 5. He says in verse 30, For we, he's talking to the church, we are members of his body, of his flesh, and of his bones." Do you see the language of marriage there? He's talking about marriage between a man and a woman, and he begins to work his way through the text, and he gets to this section, and he says that we, the church, are members of Christ's body, his body, of his flesh, of his bones. And then Paul goes right to this. For this reason, a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife. The two shall become one flesh. This is a great mystery, but I speak concerning Christ and the church. So the marriages that God instituted that we now replicate as we follow that model, and one man, one woman, are also a beautiful picture of the relationship of Christ and His Church. To mar the picture is to mar the picture of that relationship with Christ and the Church. That's why it's such a holy thing. It's holy matrimony that we enter into. And it's interesting to me, just as we're told that a man's to leave his father and mother, that John 16, 28, Jesus said, I came forth from the Father and have come into the world. Jesus, in this parallel picture of marriage between human beings and the mystical union that the church has with Jesus Christ, our Lord, that he left the Father. And then he also came to seek a bride, the Bible says. And the two shall become one flesh, John 17, 21. Listen to what Jesus says in his high priestly prayer. He's talking to his heavenly father and he says that they all, he's talking about believers, that they all may be one as you, father, are in me and I in you, that they also may be one in us, that the world may believe that you sent me. It's that beautiful union that the marriage really is a picture of. And if we mar that picture of the earthly marriage union as modeled after that which God laid forth for us in creation, we really mar the picture of the relationship of Jesus and his church. It's one last interesting point. is that Adam obtained his bride through a wound. God opened his side, removed the rib, closed his side back up, and Jesus obtained his bride through his wounds. So there's a lot of pictures, if you will, shadows, types, of that which Christ would accomplish in his rescuing his bride, the church, that you see tucked away in marriage. So biblical marriage, now what's biblical divorce, if you will? Well, first, I've said this before, but it is the tearing asunder of what God has joined. And anybody that has been through divorce knows that it's an incredibly painful thing. As much as people try to say, well, we're going to make it easy and we're going to remain friends and all that, It is a painful, painful thing to go through that because it is a tearing asunder of what God has joined together. There's no way around that. It's a very detrimental experience to go through. And it impacts more than the two people getting divorced. We've had friends, Karen and I, that went through divorce and it impacted us in different ways. I had a situation last week where a woman contacted my company, corporate level, and said, hey, I want my name off this old situation from five years ago. I wasn't an owner of that house, and I wasn't married to that man at that time, but yet my name's on there. And so for her to prove that, she sent me her divorce decree, which I unfortunately had to read. It was pretty lengthy. And that was just in God's providence, prepare me for this. But I was almost taken aback at how much a mess Divorce is. As they didn't only talk about who did what and all that, but now we're divvying up the properties, we're divvying up the house, we're divvying up the money. They had kids. Who gets the kids in the summer? Who gets the kids on the holidays? Whole thing, page after page after page. I thought, now this is a tearing asunder of what God had brought together. It happens. There's forgiveness in Jesus Christ if somebody's divorced for an unbiblical reason. But let's not play around. It's a tearing asunder. It's a painful thing. Now Jesus himself only gave one biblical reason that divorce might be permitted, and he said this in Matthew 19 verse 9, and he said, I say to you, whoever divorces his wife except There's the exception clause. Except for sexual immorality, and marries another commits adultery, and whoever marries her who's divorced commits adultery. So he says that divorce is off the table, except for this one exception. And what's translated in my Bible as sexual immorality is the old Greek word pornea, where we get the word pornography. And so different people take that into different directions to say, does it have to be a physical, actual act of fornication? Or it could be spiritual harlotry against the husband, an internet boyfriend, that kind of a thing. But that's what Jesus said. That's his words. That's the only case he gave for divorce. Now, some will tell you there's a second case that Paul brings about in 1 Corinthians chapter 7, which I have here, but I'm not going to read it all for time's sake. where Paul is giving instruction to the church about these relationships and marriages where one spouse is a believer and the other is not. Maybe one came to the Lord and the other did not come to the Lord. And he tells them they're to stay in those marriages. Because the church questioned about that. Is this a reason? Should I separate and find myself a Christian spouse? Because this spouse I have is not a believer. And he says, no, you're not. You're to stay in that relationship. But then he does say, but if the unbelieving spouse, if the unbelieving husband deserts you, leaves, says, I'm done with you and your Jesus, and deserts you. It says that they're free in that case. That's the language that the Bible uses, that they're free in that case. Some would interpret that to say they're free to get the official certificate of divorce and remarry. It doesn't say that specifically. As a matter of fact, the only time in the Bible that it holds forth that you can remarry is if your spouse is dead, if they've actually gone to death. Now people fall all over the place with what they think is a biblical ground for marriage or a biblical ground for divorce. I'm just telling you what the Word of God says. If you've got somebody that's telling you something outside of those parameters, they're interpreting. I'm not going to interpret this for you. I'm just telling you what the Bible says. So, there is forgiveness in Jesus Christ for every sin outside the sin of a lack of faith and putting your trust in Jesus Christ. So, if somebody has committed an unbiblical divorce, maybe has even moved on and remarried, that's completely forgiven in Jesus Christ if you're a Christian. The blood of Christ covers all of that. And God, in His grace, allows us to move on, hopefully to learn from that and not commit the same sins over and over again. So that's the subject of marriage and the subject of divorce. And I wanted to spend a little bit of time, because I don't like forcing subjects into a text. But when I saw the text that we have here, I thought, well, this text naturally leads me to bring up the subject of identity. Gender identity. Now marriage was under attack several years ago, and I remember good Christians, popular Christian pastors and theologians speaking to this saying, you know, we might eventually lose this battle of marriage. And of course, gay marriage became the law of the land. And that's the world we live in. And that happened on our watch. That happened in our generation, these things. And it's gone so much farther than that now. It's traveling like the speed trains in Europe so fast, I can't keep up with it. And I'm talking about gender identity. Gender, and I'm going to use the term, because this is a term that people use in the industry. Yes, there is a gender identity industry, but gender dysphoria. And I will tell you, I'm going to speak to this a little bit. I don't know this exhaustively, and I don't think I should know it exhaustively. In Romans 16, 19, Paul tells the church, For your obedience has become known to all, therefore I am glad on your behalf, but I want you to be wise in what is good and simple concerning evil." And so I have a simplistic understanding of the whole thing that's going on in our country and around the world over gender identity. In 2015, Mark Yarhouse put out a book called Understanding Gender Dysphoria, which I bought. I've never preached on this subject before. I bought it because I want to understand what is the culture doing here. Because I saw things starting to happen. And that was 2015. And I reread sections of it yesterday. And I was astonished at how far things have gone from when that was written, and we're only seven years farther down the road. This train is hauling, at the highest speed possible, the culture that we live in down this road of gender confusion. In that book, Understanding Gender Dysphoria, he wrote, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, fifth edition, reflected a shift away from gender identity disorder toward the use of the phrase gender dysphoria. And you'll hear that out there if you read the news much. Gender dysphoria. Dysphoria means gender distress. That people are under distress because of who they are physically versus who they think they need to project themselves as in their gender projections. There's a tension, they would say, between one's assigned gender and their gender identity, how they identify themselves and their gender. I want to read you, and this is just an example of the training that employees are being put through in the workplace. And you might not be aware of this. Some of you here are retired. You know this is going on. I know this is going on. But this is just an example for you of training. Remember, a person who identifies as gender fluid doesn't have a fixed gender. And the gender they identify with may change over time because many of us have grown up, oh, because many of us have grown up knowing only two genders, it can be difficult to understand that gender is a spectrum. And that's okay. But just because we don't understand something doesn't mean it's wrong. What we do need to understand, though, is that our gender identity is important to our sense of self. Living a life that is not true to who we are can be distressing. See, there's that dysphoria language. That's why it's important that people must be able to be their authentic selves at work and people should feel accepted and valued for who they are in an inclusive work environment where their gender identity, and listen to this, is believed and respected. We can do that by sharing our own pronouns, asking others what their pronouns are and making efforts to use those pronouns correctly. However, be mindful, we should not use the term preferred pronouns because this implies that there's a preference or that we may have a choice when it comes to our gender identity, when it's not a choice at all. It's who we are. That is indoctrination that's going on across our country right now in the schools. I believe it's happening in some of the preschools, and it's certainly happening in the workplace, and it's unbiblical. It's unbiblical. What does the scripture say? How much more plain could Jesus say? It's not just Moses and the story of creation recorded in Genesis. Jesus himself says, from the beginning of the creation, God made them male and female. That's it. God created you either male or he created you female. God is the author of all that's created and he's the one that says what we are. And any objection to that, any trying to mar the picture of who God had made us to be is rebellion against God who is creator. In maintaining our created gender, that's just clearly taught in scripture. I mean, look at Deuteronomy 22.5 where it says, A woman shall not wear anything that pertains to a man, nor shall a man put on a woman's garment. For all who do so are an abomination to the Lord your God. Or in Deuteronomy 23.1, talking about a man that would emasculate himself, says, he who is emasculated by crushing or mutilation shall not enter the assembly of the Lord. So maintaining our created gender, it's clearly taught in scripture. The loss of any gender integrity would mar the picture that God intended marriage to be of the relationship of Jesus Christ and his church. Our God-given gender is fitting to our purpose, our God-given purpose. Which is more than just this, but in Genesis 1.28, right? The pattern, Genesis 1.28, it says, Then God blessed them, and God said to them, Be fruitful and multiply. Fill the earth, subdue it, have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over every living thing that moves on the earth. Be fruitful and multiply." Obviously speaking of the realm of marital sex and the outcome of that being the production of children. And any other avenue that's being advocated by the culture does damage to that, does damage to that. The LGBTQ, and by the way, that's getting longer. If you looked at that, they keep adding, I heard somebody say the other day, it's alphabet soup now. It goes farther than that. There's two-spirit. I'm not even going to get into all that. I know what some of that is, and I don't need to be talking about it from the pulpit. But that's what's out there. That's the confusion that we live in. And I don't know if you know what a bowl of swill this culture has become with the confusion that's out there. But that's where we live. And they know these passages I just read to you. So they have to explain them away, because there are people in churches, and there's liberal churches that have embraced this across our country, to their own shame, because they're afraid to uphold the truth of Scripture and be true to their Savior, Jesus Christ, and they've capitulated. to the culture because then people will come into the church. Karen and I were on vacation recently and we saw churches that had banners out in front of the church that was basically saying that they embrace the whole LGBTQ community. They want you to come in because we don't judge here. I don't judge here either. There's one judge, but I'm to warn people that this is what the Bible says. So they know these passages, and I've seen how they try to explain them away, and it's not honest to the text. If you just go back today and read these passages, and just read them with your layman's understanding of what the Bible's telling you, you're not going to come away thinking, oh, what he's really saying there. No, what he's really saying is what he's really saying. God created them male and female. 1 Corinthians 2 verse 14 says, But the natural man does not receive the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him. Nor can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned. And I'll tell you what that whole community is doing with Scripture as they're twisting it. And listen to what Peter says here. It's a little bit of a longer passage, but he says in 2 Peter 3.15, it says, "...consider that the longsuffering of our Lord is salvation, as also our beloved brother Paul, according to the wisdom given him, has written to you." So here you have Peter affirming the writings of Paul. He's going to call Paul's writings scripture. It's an important passage for us. So he says, also our beloved brother Paul, according to the wisdom given to him, has written to you, as also in all his epistles, speaking in them of these things in which are some things hard to understand, which untaught and unstable people twist. to their own destruction as they do also the rest of the scriptures. They twist the scriptures to support their own agendas. And beloved, the Word of God is the authority. I don't preside over the Word of God. The Word of God presides over the church and instructs the church in what's true and right and holy. Where did this all come from? It's directly a result of the fall. I was listening to a pastor preach this week on the radio. And he said, now why do you think that Deuteronomy had to have laws? Why did the Old Testament community have to have laws telling men not to wear women's clothing? He says, because men were wearing women's clothing. And God said, stop doing that. So this isn't something that just came up since the sexual revolution of the 60s. This marring of what God intended in his design has been around for a long time, since the fall. And I just quickly run you through Romans 1, because I want you to see the pattern here of what happened to society in the fall. He says that people's thoughts became futile as they think through things. They're futile thoughts. In Romans 1, 21, it says, because although they knew God, they did not glorify him as God, nor were they thankful, but they became futile in their thoughts. Their foolish hearts were darkened, professing to be wise, they became fools. And then he moves on from that. This is a downward spiral that Paul brings up. He says, then they begin with sinful desires. He says, they changed the glory of the incorruptible God into the image made like corruptible man and birds and four-footed animals and creeping things. Therefore, God also gave them up to uncleanness in the lust of their hearts to dishonor their bodies among themselves. And that's exactly what's going on in this whole gender confusion culture. They're dishonoring their bodies. Twisted worship then, he continues, he says, who exchanged the truth of God for the lie and worshipped and served the creature rather than the creator who is blessed forever. Amen. And then it moves into the realm of sexual appetites. He says, for this reason, God gave them up to vile passions. And even the women exchanged the natural use for what is against nature. Likewise, also the men leaving the natural use of the woman burned in their lust one for another. Men with men committing what is shameful and receiving in themselves the penalty of their error, which was due. And then you finally get to the end, and you have people with utterly debased minds. He says, and even as they did not like to retain God of their knowledge, God gave them over to a debased mind to do those things which are not fitting, being filled. And this is always a tough passage for me to read, but let me try to get through it. This is where humanity ends. He says, being filled with all unrighteousness, sexual immorality, wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness, full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, evil-mindedness, they are whisperers, backbiters, haters of God, violent, proud, boasters, inventors of evil things, disobedient to parents, undiscerning, untrustworthy, unloving, unforgiving, unmerciful, who knowing The righteous judgment of God that those who practice such things are deserving of death, not only do the same, but also approve of those who practice them. That's not saying this is that community out there. This is all of us. That's what happened in the fall. That's what we found ourselves when somebody came to you as a herald of the gospel, and you received that word, you believed that word, you repented, you put your faith in Jesus Christ, and you were lifted out of that cesspool by Jesus Christ who rescued us. Robertson speaks of the world in its fallen condition. He says, they rejected God and God rejected their mental attitude and gave them over like an old abandoned building, the home of bats and snakes left to do those things which are not fitting. Beloved, the world's in darkness, but we have hope. It's not as if our Lord's not on His throne, and it's not as if He did not know that this church and the church as a whole that is still committed to Jesus Christ is placed for this very purpose, for this very hour, into this culture. Our Lord is Savior. He's King. He's coming back. He has us here for a purpose, and part of that purpose is to proclaim the truth, even when it becomes almost intolerable to the culture around us. And that's where we are. We're going to get to the point where somebody's going to download a sermon like this, and I'm going to be quartered off to jail. I can tell you that is coming in this country. It's already like that in other countries, Canada. I've had friends arrested in London and England for preaching this very same truth. And the police will stop, hear what you have to say, gather you up, throw you in the back of the car, and off you go in a paddy wagon or whatever. And that's coming here, guys. And we have to be ready for it? I'm ready to go to jail. If I'm told not to preach the truth, I'm going to preach the truth. Because that's what God called me to do. But we're not left in the cesspool. There is a Lord who is sovereign over all of this, who's bringing all of time and space to its culmination when He returns for us. And all of this insanity that I see, all this confusion will be gone. It'll all be gone. And we'll be in His presence forever. This right now, not only is it darkness, it's being taught in our schools, it's being supported by gender clinics. I don't even have time to get into what that is. I can tell you in 2015, I heard there was one gender clinic. And now, seven years later, I think there's 500 of them. And if you want to Google that today, you'll see where they are. There's a bunch of them in West Virginia, gender clinics to help people. And I don't have time to tell you what parents are doing with kids, the injections they're doing prevent them from going into puberty so they have more time to figure out, am I a boy or am I a girl? We don't want to have them start to grow into a man if he's actually going to be a girl. This is going on right now in these communities all around us, every state of the union. That's where this country's at. And somebody needs to speak up and speak the truth to it. The only hope for any of this is the gospel of Jesus Christ. That's it. We were all once lost in darkness. Every one of us. I can't look down my nose at people that are proclaiming this stuff. I just look at them and I'm just a sinner who got saved because somebody heralded the gospel to me. And all I can do is reach out to them and say, let me tell you the truth of the gospel of Jesus Christ. And maybe, maybe they'll come to their senses like the prodigal and turn in repentance and embrace Christ and be lifted out of that darkness. I'll end with this verse, which is John 8, 12. It says, then Jesus spoke to them again, saying, I am the light of the world. He who follows me shall not walk in darkness, but have the light of life. And that's our hope for people that are lost and in darkness. Our Father and our God, what a difficult subject, Lord, but I can just see this all around in the culture. But Father, we have your word, and your word is truth. Lord, we have your spirit, and your spirit empowers us. So Father, we're the bride of this generation. We're the church of this generation. And Lord, you've called us to be truth. You called us to be light. You called us to be salt. So Lord, it's almost a scary thing to think if we turn our eyes away from you for a minute, So Lord, help us to just continue to gaze upon the beauty of Christ as we go forth with the truth of your word. And Lord, may you be glorified in it. In Jesus name. Amen. Receive the benediction of the Lord. The Lord bless you and keep you. The Lord make his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you. The Lord lift up his confidence upon you and give you peace. Go now in the peace of Christ Jesus to a world