FEB 16 2020 | Genesis: Behind the Curtain S1E4 | Eve

Sea Change Church · Genesis: Behind the Curtain · "Eve" Pastor Adam Stadtmiller · February 16, 2020
Automated transcript. Not reviewed for accuracy.

Hello, I am Christine Garde Denning and I will be reading the scripture today. And I started Could You and this church has been such a gift to the ministry. And years ago when we were ready to give up, a group of people in this church prayed and prayed and prayed. And not only did we not give up, but we grew in this beautiful way. And so three years later, I'd like to say that we're in another really important place. So if anyone wants to commit to pray with us twice a week, we invite you to do that. So just let me know. The scripture is Genesis 1, 19 to 25.

Now the Lord has formed out of the ground, all the wild animals and all the birds in the sky. He brought them to see the man, to see what he would name them. And whatever the man called each living creature, that was its name. So the man gave names to all the livestock, the birds in the sky and all the wild animals. But for Adam, no suitable helper was found. So the Lord God caused the man to fall into a deep sleep. And while he was sleeping, he took one of the man's ribs and then closed up the place with flesh. Then the Lord God made a woman from the rib he had taken out of the man and he brought her to the man. The man said, this is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh. She shall be called woman for she was taken out of man.

That is why a man leaves his father and mother and is united to his wife and they become one flesh. Adam and his wife were both naked and they felt no shame. This is the word of the Lord. You're such a rock star over there in Africa doing all that you do. So awesome. Yeah. Christina, meet Christine. I don't, I actually, I take this very seriously. Like for Joe, for Christine, for Chris, I just vouch a hundred percent for them. They are amazing people.

And if you just get to know them, it's just, it's just inspiring to have you guys around. I just love them so much and what you guys are doing over there and all that. So let me just pray. Lord Jesus, bless this word. Excited about this word today, Lord. Bless it. Let it come alive. Let it ride on the spirit. And let the same spirit that hovered over the waters, God, in the creative narrative, hover over our hearts now and speak to us in such a strong and mighty way.

In Jesus name. Amen. The things you remember growing up in church, I had a great, um, church upbringing was not damaged in any way by the church. People have those stories. I wasn't. And one day I was sitting in, I remember distinctly the thing, the little things you remember. I remember the bell choirs. But once I was sitting there and I was by my grandma in church and the preacher read the bit and then God caused the man to fall into a deep sleep.

And grandma hit me and said, and he ain't woke up yet. And I was like, you go grandma. All right. Now I know where you stand on the issue. Solid. So solid from grandma. We are back into the Genesis story, looking at the narrative and the actors behind the scenes. We're in a five week series. Uh, I encourage you to listen to the entire series. It builds upon itself. If this is your first week here, you're visiting or you've missed the series, you're going to have to go back because there's been so much building.

And as we see in Genesis one, two and three, and actually the entirety entirety of the scriptures is that God builds upon it and he builds upon these different scenes in the scripture. The first scene and the first thing that we look at is this incredible story of creation where God creates man and woman. And, uh, and then it goes into the story where they, they lose, uh, they lose paradise because of that. And it's easy as we look at the narrative to just look at the stories and preach about the story, but miss the characters and what is happening behind the scenes.

If you look at the, the, uh, the, uh, image that we made, we're trying to look behind the scenes to look at some of the things that we oftentimes miss by just reading over the text. We're trying to look at who was God and what was he trying to say as he created mankind. And so I have a friend and he's become, he's one of my best friends from college and he's become a pretty famous artist. And one of the things I realized is that when he is, uh, actually bringing a new piece to, you know, he's in New York and different places.

Now, whenever he's doing that, he shows the exploratory journey as he's making the piece and the way in which he created it actually says perhaps more about the final outcome than the outcome says about itself. And so the scripture is the same way. And if we are going to understand what God is saying to men and what God is saying to women, not only individually, but also as a collective, we're going to have to look a little bit deeper than behind just these easy to find bits in the scripture.

And so last week we talked about Genesis one. Now Genesis one and Genesis two are completely different tellings. They tell the same story much like the gospels do. So the gospels have four, there's four gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, and they tell the story of Jesus and they're very similar. They have some changes and most people don't really think much about it. But when it comes to first and second Genesis, people look at them and they tend to think that these two scriptures are at odds because they speak in a different way about the creative narrative.

As opposed to see them like we do the, um, the four gospels as a collective that are trying to say something together. Now last week's message, I talked about how Genesis chapter one really seeks to talk about the structural narrative and my, you'll have to listen to the message, but the entire narrative. And what I, the entire sermon was meant to prove the point that God's original intention was for men and women to live as co-equals in the world, not for men to be in charge and to have women help out, not for women to be in charge and have men help out.

But that God had that both men and women to be co-laborers in taking dominion and overseeing the tending of the earth so that it might flourish. There is a couple of ways to look at this in the way that it's preached throughout churches. And I think generally the way it's been preached the majority of the time is this, is that man, Adam, men were given this calling to tend the unit, to tend the earth. And that, you know, he wasn't, he needed a little bit of help with it.

So basically the analogy that I used last week is imagine the fellowship hall needed to be painted. And Adam was given a ladder and he got up there and he realized, man, this is really difficult coming up and down this ladder, getting the paint, getting the brush. I need a helper. And so God says, well, yeah, I don't want you to have to do all that work on your own. So I'm gonna get you a helper. And woman comes. And then when he needs a brush, he, you know, he looks and says, woman, can you get me a brush?

Oh yeah, just be right back. I'll go get you a brush. And then she comes and she's just this little helper. That's the way I think it often. And I'm being a little bit hyperbolic, but the way it often has been seen as opposed to that man and woman, as we saw in Genesis chapter one, when it speaks to the collective of mankind, we're told to co-rule, meaning paint the fellowship hall here. Here's a ladder for both of you.

Here's a bucket for both of you. And you can get on opposite sides and you're supposed to take control and do that job as a collective whole man, not ruling over you. You just woman, not just being a helper to the man when he needs a cup of coffee. No, there is a cool. There is a co-rule and a dominion. And we see this now. This totally gets messed up because of sin. And because of sin, which we'll talk about next week in more detail, it says that there's not a curse to men and women, but there is a punishment.

And the punishment, and you're going to have to listen to last week because I don't have the ability to re-preach or the time, or you don't have the time for me to re-preach off last week. But the idea that there was a punishment, and the punishment was a breaking of this incredible relationship. That men and women, God created this beautiful synchronicity. That when working side by side as co-equals, we're called to rule together with dominion and take mastery over the entire earth.

I mean, that is just a beautiful calling. And to have this incredible relationship, chapter 2, which we're in today in Genesis, speaks about the relational. But once again, I'm following up from last week, the structural. And so because of the sin, there is a punishment. And the first thing is that man will rule over, it says that you will be ruled over by men or by your husband, basically. But you'll be ruled over by men.

Now, I also said that as a man, that's the last thing I want in a relationship. The last thing you want in a loving relationship, I think, well, the last thing most people want, some people do want it, is to rule over anybody. I don't want to rule over my children. I don't want to rule over the church. I don't want to rule over anybody. Matter of fact, I have enough hard time ruling over myself that trying anybody else is going to be really difficult.

And so that is actually, I wouldn't say it's a curse, but it's a punishment to man as well. But then it also says, and your desire to the women, you're going to have this desire for men. Now, I heard last week as I was preaching, and I did not preach this, that some people have interpreted that to me. And it says your desire, meaning you're going to want to have this ravenous desire to consume your husband. I don't think the Hebrew actually says that.

So there's this, people that say that there is going to be this war going on between men and women. That men are going to want to rule over you, but you're going to try to, like, destroy him. Actually, I haven't even seen that work out culturally in society. What I think the Hebrew actually says is this, and what I have seen oftentimes played out in my own sociological understanding of humankind, which is minimal, but nonetheless, is that men will rule over you, and woman, I'm going to put something in you that's going to want you to desire man to the point that you will desire him to do so, or that you will find your worth in having that man.

That is what I think happened in the relationship, which completely destroys. If that's the truth, it's a punishment, not only to women. It's an incredible punishment to humankind as a whole and to men because it ruins and destroys the relationship, where one is perhaps, and this isn't true in all cases because there are no absolutes in this, but when it talks about that punishment, I think there's two ways to look at it.

One is women want to devour men, or two, you will have this desire for man, and I think that is what the scripture is saying. This was never intended by God. And what I said last week is that Jesus died on the cross for a few reasons, but the number one reason, to unite you to your father, but also to break the curse and to destroy the punishment. Now, here's what I can't get over when it comes to some of the other texts.

You're going to have to listen to last week, but I mentioned last week. If this intrigues you, go check it out. It's on the website. One of the things that I can't get past is if Jesus died on the cross, and he has brought us back into unity with the father, and he took all of the punishment, which the scripture says, and all of the curse, everything upon his shoulders, and set us free completely, then why are women still under the curse or the punishment?

I just couldn't get around it. And so actually I found this structural idea, and I believe that women have been released of that punishment. I believe the scripture shows this intently, and that we are now called to live in co-unity, together, and to take dominion. And we have an opportunity now to restore marriages, to restore relationships that are not marriages, just male-female relationships, in a way that takes dominion over the world.

Listen to last week's sermon. We're looking at chapter 2 now to speak of the formative process and what God, not only structurally, because that was last week's structure, but what is God calling us to in relationships? How does God want man and woman to be together in a way that brings life, that there is no division, where there's an incredible synchronicity that brings life to the world. And I believe that when men and women get their relationships right, it creates life and blessing to the world.

Right now, in our culture, and I think the enemy loves this, he loves to break apart men and women, male-female relationships. He loves to break apart marriages. He loves to break apart any kind of relational. And so in our world, especially in Western culture, you see this massive budding of heads between men and women, he will do anything he can to stoke that. What I want us to do as a church is to say, hey, is this what God has intended for us originally?

Was the punishment fixed on the cross? And if so, how do I live today as a New Testament believer to bring that life back into creation? And so in the process, we see that God has a relational connection in chapter 2. This entire chapter, this entire verse right here, these verses, speak about this formative relationship of woman being drawn out from the side of a man, a place close to his heart. It sees that two becoming one flesh.

There's all this relational language that you don't get in chapter 1. Chapter 1 is a structural relationship, but chapter 2 is this, meaning is this relational thing. The structure is cool. I was interested in that, but what really intrigues me is how I'm going to relate better to my daughters, how I'm going to relate to my wife, how I'm going to relate to the women that work alongside me here at this church. Some are elders.

You're in an American Baptist church. They've had women be pastors since the 1800s on much of this theology. And what is it saying to us as God created a relational process that he wants us to understand? Well, if we're going to understand the relations that God wants men and women to have as co-beings together, we want to understand, like my friend who is the artist, the way in which it was created. Now, last week I spoke about this.

You'll see this in your notes. This is from verse 19. Verse 19 says, Now the Lord formed out of the ground all the wild animals, all the birds of the sky, and he brought them to man to see what he would name them. That's not as important for our purposes as understanding that man, when you look at man and you look at all the animals of the earth, that in this creative process, even if you want to call it a metaphor, I don't believe it's a metaphor, but even if you do, it's saying something.

What is it saying? That creation, the universe, was created out of nothing. Now, I reminded you of the Latin word that you already knew, ex nihilo, last week, a couple weeks ago, that out of nothing, God created this universe. But then he wanted mankind to be connected to the universe and to the very earth that he is from, to show the relationship about how they should care, have a symbiosis between each other. And so, as opposed to just making man, ex nihilo, he could have just made man show up on the earth.

He actually creates man out of the very soil of the creation. Why? To create a connectivity between us and the earth. You can have to go back and listen to the message to hear all of that. Now, it's interesting that when you look at man, man was created out of the earth. Chachadam means from the earth, you know, mankind, from the earth. My name is Adam, it means from the earth. Man was created from dirt, but woman was not created from dirt, which is interesting.

And maybe you haven't thought of that. Woman was actually created from bone. She was actually created from bone, and we'll talk about that in a moment and what that actually means. But I think it's so cool. I've never seen it. Like, if I'm going to be created, do I want to be created from dirt or from, like, bone? Bone is so hardcore, you know? It's just so cool. I don't know. It seemed cool to me. You know, whenever you're guys just looking at me.

But God is saying something in the formative process. Now, he doesn't create Eve out of the dirt, just like Adam. No. He wanted, like he did with man, to give the connection to the earth. He wanted woman to have the same type of connection. So, as opposed to creating her ex nihilo or out of the dirt beside man, he creates her from the very substance of man to say, you guys are united. You are one, and you are meant to live as one and to have co-dominion and rulership.

The earth was from nothing. Man was from the ground. And woman was taken from man, from his flesh, his very flesh and bone. Now, this word flesh is interesting because the word flesh, it's a Greek, it's a Hebrew word, comes from the root basar. Basar means to bring good tidings. So, when woman was formed from the flesh, the flesh actually has a root meaning that when she was brought out from man, it was a good thing.

Well, how can that be? Because in the New Testament, it says we shouldn't live according to the flesh. The flesh is sinful. Yada, yada, yada. Remember, this is pre-fall. This is before mankind sinned and fell. So, you can live according to the flesh in the garden. Why? Because the flesh is good. And when woman was brought from man, from the side of man, it was as if good tidings. And you can see that the way that Adam receives Eve, he does so with good tidings.

He does so with a reception that was like a party. He was like, oh, right on. This works. You know what I'm saying? And so there is this good tidings and I believe that today the enemy will do anything he can to destroy that. And as a church, whether it be with our wives, whether it be with our children, whether it be men, speaking to men, or the way we, if you're a woman, the way that, you know, we show up or present ourselves, men and women, to each other in these relationships, God wants to be from a place of good tidings.

And so that Hebrew root word is really, really interesting. That women were brought from the flesh, which actually comes from the root word basar, which is good tidings. This is going to matter because there's a lot of verses about Jesus' flesh as we look at the New Testament about how Jesus Christ, his wounds, by his wounds we are healed and different, that speak about how the flesh heals us. I'm getting a little bit ahead of myself.

One thing we want to know is this, in this creative process, as God created, when you create something, how often do you create it insufficient for its task? It's really interesting. Why, God, would you create man insufficient for his task? Why not just create him fully ready? You see, he creates all the animals fully sufficient for their task. They show up and they're there, there's two of them, but then we get to the end of that and Adam basically looks to God and he's like, what about me?

Like, you know, and how am I gonna, how am I gonna do this job that I can do? I'm insufficient. Remember, the process speaks to the purpose and so God creates him insufficient so he knows that he can't do this on his own. He creates him, first of all, physically insufficient. Remember the command, go and multiply and fill the earth. This is something that Adam cannot do on his own. He cannot actually tend the garden.

The garden was too big. He cannot take mastery over and take dominion, which I believe Christians are still called to do in a spiritual way, to take dominion over the entire cosmos. Scripture speaks about that in Ephesians and different places. But we are called to take dominion. Adam cannot take dominion without woman. Now, I believe that is still true today. Although in much of Christian culture, if we go by the helper model where the woman just goes and gets me something so I can get about the work of God, I think we're missing the point and I don't believe that we have the ability without woman working, I tell you, when I paint my house, I want my wife to have a ladder.

I don't know if you ever painted your house, but I want her to work with me as a co-equal and they get released into this. He's completed completely insufficient for the task that God has called him to. God called him to a task. He couldn't do it. He was also emotionally insufficient. Well, what do you mean by that? Are you saying that women are emotional and that men, you know, no, I'm not saying that. What I'm saying is if you were created alone, loneliness, as we know in our culture, is a massive plague upon our culture.

The unconnectivity of people not being connected and not only that, being, you know, isolated with having no one that you can connect to. By just the fact that he was created alone meant that he was insufficient not only physically to accomplish the tasks that God had called him to, but emotionally to complete the tasks that God had called him to. Now, we'll speak a little bit in a moment about Adam and man needing to lean on women for some of those emotional needs.

I believe it's true for women as well. But when we speak and look at the word, what it means to cling to your wife, we'll unpack that in a moment. But I think men, we need to get a lot better at leaning on our wives for some of this support and get away from some of these cultural ideas within the church that we need to be self-sufficient pioneers that if we need help, we'll ask for it. I don't think that that's how it works.

I think we're called to something much deeper and much richer than this. Now, verse 21. Go to verse 21. It says, So the Lord God caused man to fall into a deep sleep. And I keep thinking about grandma. And while he was sleeping, he took one of man's ribs and then closed the place up with flesh. Really? He could have said just took the ribs, but he said flesh for a reason because I believe that it is an homage to something that is going to happen with Christ on the cross later.

We'll see that in just a moment. First of all, like I said, women were created from bone. Strong. Life-giving. Now, if you know anything about bones, the last thing that will ever decay that will last thousands of years are bones. I believe that when God talks about the material that he uses to create, it speaks to the purpose. And there is this thing that, you know, men are the strong ones and women are whatever. But what I think God is actually saying is, women, you are as hard as nails.

You are as hard, you are like bone. And not only are you strong like bone, but what is within a bone? Bone marrow. What is bone marrow all about? It is the life-giving substance of the blood. And if you want to do a study on the blood in the New Testament and having the ability to have strength and the lifeblood within you, that is woman. Woman is an archetype of the covenant that was in the ark that Moses had. The covenant, the word of God was in the ark that was covered and Mary is a New Testament archetype of the ark.

She is a woman and she carried Jesus in the same way that the law, that the word, was carried in the ark of the covenant. Jesus tends to retell the story over and over again, generation after generation. And I suggest you're probably going to have to listen to this sermon a few times with your Bible in your hand to like start going back and unpacking some of this, but you're still going to get the fire hose. We see that woman is strong.

She's life-giving. Now, here's what is really interesting. As you look at John 19, this blew me away because I believe that God's heart was broken when mankind fell. That God was never forgotten of the relationships that he wanted, that he wanted to restore. And when Jesus is on the cross, tell me if these two verses don't seem reminiscent to the creation narrative of woman being taken from Adam's flesh. This is not in your notes, but you can write it down.

John 19, 36 and 37. John saying, now, these things happened so that the scripture would be fulfilled. Not one of his bones would be broken. And as another scripture says, they will look at the side of the one they have pierced. Huh. Jesus on the cross. Not a bone is broken because that's a restorative, I believe, a restorative. Now, I'm doing some, I would say, scriptural acrobatics to get to this. Okay? There is nowhere in the scripture where it actually says this.

But sometimes, I think the scripture is so coincidental in a way. It is so provocative in a way. I do believe, on purpose, that this entire bit of Jesus' death on the cross was meant as an homage to say, I'm healing that wound that I took from. You see, he was pierced in the same place that woman was taken. Not a bone was broken in the place close to his heart. And his heart was pierced, they said, when he was pierced on the cross.

And his heart was pierced on the day that woman and man fell in the garden of sin. And Jesus on that cross is saying, I am healing this. And all of that wound is being healed. It is so powerful and so provocative and the word doesn't actually say, and this means that Genesis, no, it doesn't say that. And I'm not saying that it does. But it's incredibly interesting, isn't it? It's incredibly interesting to see how much Jesus says on the cross about the reconciliation of mankind.

And Jesus wants to restore relationships. He wants to restore marriages. He wants to restore husband and wives of boyfriends and girlfriends and just normal female relationships with men. He wants to restore that and he died on the cross and I believe that he cried out and spoke about it in these scriptures of what he wants to do. Now the question is, what are we going to do about it? What I think is also interesting as we look at this note is if you go to Hebrews 4.12, which you don't have a note for in your notes, Hebrews 4.12, once again, speaks in my belief to woman and what her calling is and there's all this same analogy, same wording in Hebrews 4.12.

You know the passage. For the word of God, that's Jesus and the word of God, which is the Bible, is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword and Jesus was pierced, perhaps with a two-edged sword, piercing to the divisions of what? Soul, your heart and the soul in scripture is together. Jesus' heart was pierced, woman was taken from near man's heart, of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow and discerning the thoughts and the intentions of the heart.

All through scripture, we see this blending that perhaps speaks to women that in many ways, but I would say, I believe, actually does. I believe that actually it says, speaks to the strength of women, to the restoration of women and to the calling of men and women to come back together and to cling. If you go to verse 23 and 24, let me read these. It says, the man said, this is now bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh.

He owns her as if it's part of him himself. And I don't mean own in the word own, but I mean he, you know, identifies her as himself. He sees him as one. And she'll be called woman for she was taken out of the man. That is why a man leaves his father and mother and is united to his wife and they become one flesh. Adam and his wife were both naked and felt no shame. Now I think too often when we look at this scripture, we just think about the sexual matrix of it.

That there will become one flesh and then, you know, this is also the covenant language where after covenant that men and women in sexual intimacy come together and they're united in this. But the word united, actually, the word is not, it means, you've seen it before, the word is actually much stronger than united. The word is actually cleave or cling. Now, this doesn't really sit well in Christian male culture, right?

Being united from a sexual metaphor, that fits. Dudes are like, yeah, yeah, down with that, dude, okay, cool, go multiply, give me another command, please, you know. It's pretty funny, actually. And there's this other bit, if we were to look at it and say that you were to cling and to cleave to your wife, I'm not going to do that, what are you talking about? No, the united bit, I'm down, all right? Cling and cleave. I believe this speaks to the mutual protection that men and women are supposed to have for one another, meaning, woman was taken from the side of man and one could argue that from the side, the rib is what protects the heart and so when God takes the rib, man is actually being made vulnerable, the taking from a place that actually makes his heart more exposed to do this and so his heart now that he has someone that he can love is more exposed and this is why we need to continue to lean into being more and more vulnerable with each other that we would be unashamed and together and that this also is a place where the arm, which is men are known for their strength or physical strength at least, would cover over a woman and so there is this, I believe, myth in Christianity that men are the protectors and I know that men are protectors because in a lot of ways, physically, we have the ability to protect in different ways but we're not only meant to be the protectors and so this idea of clinging and going back to your wife to cling is really interesting because I remember when my children would get afraid and they wouldn't always run to dad.

Matter of fact, they would come and they would throw themselves on my wife and my wife would put her arms around them like a bird perhaps puts her wings around the chicks and cover them and protect them or like a bear robbed of her cubs, you've heard when they spoke about David, the ferocity that a woman can have if someone comes against her children and we know about that in nature as well that I believe that not only are men meant to protect women but women are meant to protect men and we have been in a society, especially, let me just speak to a church society that has told men that it is unmanly to cling to your wife in a way that is vulnerable, in a way that says, hey, I need protection as well.

I say, this is something that I am really working on. I really want to get to the place where I don't feel any blockage that would stop me from wanting to come cling to my wife and to be vulnerable. In fact, I believe that the church has actually given up this ground to the world, that there is very little place in the church for the gentle man, for the sensitive man, for the man who is not all about going to a men's retreat and having steak and banging his chest out in the parking lot, not in the parking lot, but out in the woods or whatever, some cathartic thing, that there is a whole group of men who just don't identify with that.

And the church, I believe in a lot of ways, because of a theology, I think is wrong, has not given a space for a whole group of men who just don't resonate with the linebacker in the NFL to have a place in the church. And I believe we need to recreate and we need to re-own this space, because we give them no other option. And I believe one of the lies of our society today is this. If you're gentle, if you're a man who is perhaps more emotive or maybe artistic or creative or whatever it is, in the church there is no space for you, and the world will say if there's no space for you there, then you know what, then you just, you know, maybe you're just, maybe you're just not a guy.

Maybe you're just not a man. Maybe whatever the options are and they give them a list of other options because the church has no place for them. This is one thing as men I want us to own. I want us to have a place as a church that you don't have to be a certain way. There is no list. If you can find it, there are some homages like I've said in the scripture, but there are no list, definitive list of this is how women are in the scripture.

There is no definitive list of this is how men are. I believe that as a collective we see some traits. I spoke about that last week. But we have to re-own this space. And as men, I want to challenge you to learn in a healthy way once you're married how to cling to your wife and how to have your wife. She might not even have the ability to do that. Not every woman is a caring mother. Okay? I don't know if you've noticed that in society.

She might not. Maybe you'll have to work at that. But having this ability to care for one another. You know, one of the things is if you've come from a broken home, it's going to be really difficult because broken homes cause us to put walls around our hearts. Cause us to have the inability. One of the things my mom and I have started doing is go to counseling together. We started two weeks ago. Woo-wee! I encourage you.

Well, thank you. I gotta say, we just, you know, it's funny. We just made a decision. I talked to her. We're open to talk about this. We just made a decision. We have a lot further to go on our journey. And we wanna go further. And it's just not, we're not satisfied with what we have. And it's really difficult. It's really difficult because when I was 12 years old, massive changes were made that structurally changed our entire family.

Pretty much everybody in our family on both coasts now know the Lord because of a structural change. That didn't fix the first 12 years. Didn't fix it. And so for me to say, hey, it's just good. I'm just gonna hold on and everything's good. Or we can make a change. I wanna challenge you. And this is the practical bit. Is there a relationship in your family that needs to be fixed? Is there a gender difference that needs to go and we need to fix our relationships with our daughters, with our mothers, with our fathers, with our spouses?

How do we make that difference? And how do we cling? I'm not embarrassed to cling. I'm not embarrassed to be vulnerable. And you know, it's hard. It's getting easier and easier. But I do believe that that's what God has called us to. And if you're in a marriage that doesn't have that, maybe it's time to rethink it. Maybe it's time to look. It doesn't mean that you're still not protecting or providing or whatever the thing is, but that you can start working as a unified team.

Coming in for a landing. United we stand. Go to shameless relationships. Verse 25. And it says that Adam and his wife were both naked and they felt no shame. And I believe that shame is so much of what is destroying our relationships. And this doesn't just, once again, we've made this too much about the sexual matrix. It's about an intimacy where you can share everything. I mean, there's some things that, you know, I think you need to be wise and not share everything.

I mean, there's certain things that's just wisdom not to share. But when it comes to the deepest things within, do you have the ability to look your spouse or the person, and maybe this is something you're just hoping for, to be able to look them in the eye and to say, I want to be completely vulnerable with you. I want to say, the more you know Jesus, the more you get comfortable in that space with God. Because that is a really difficult space with God.

I always, not always, I regularly want to run away. I regularly want to push God down the field because I've just got too much stuff. Too much, I just, we'll figure it out. I'll go do some stuff at the church and then I'll feel spiritual. But actually to sit and have God look and to be, intimate and vulnerable, once you can claim that space, let me say the next space that you can claim is this relational space. And so this is a calling to us as church, as church people and as a society.

I do believe that in male-female relationships, there has never been a better time in the history of humanity for the church to make a stand and not in a way that they've made a stand in the past, but to make a stand in our own relationships where people look at it and they say their relationships shine like the stars, like it says in relationships. What are they doing different? That the empirical data on what is happening within the church is so overwhelming, like it says in the scriptures, that they will look at you and they will believe in God because of the way that we live our lives and it's currently not that way.

We have to rethink the scripture, rethink our hearts and make amends and change the lives of ourselves and others. Amen? Amen. Let's stand up if we would. Chris is going to lead us in a final song today with the band and then we will go out. You might not want to extend your hands and that's okay, but if you want to extend your hands and be blessed today, I want to bless you in this word. It's a world full of curses and I never want to let you get out of here without a blessing, so that God would restore these things.

Jesus, as our prayer team comes forward for after, we just bless, some of us have heard from you today. I've heard, I've thought, I've got to change. I want more. I want more territory of the heart. You left us vulnerable, God, as you created a perfect mate for us. Jesus, I pray for all the relationships, all of us had relationships, thoughts come into our minds and I pray for a healing balm upon this church, Lord Jesus.

That you would strengthen relationships here, Lord God. People that are maybe in a second marriage, God, that you would strengthen that. That it would be stronger than it's ever been, Lord God. That it would be healed. That brokenness from behind would be healed. You just bless all that are here, Jesus. Bless their homes, bless their relationship with their daughters and their sons. God, let us reclaim some lost space in the church, God.

That you would just cover us. And so I send them out now with the consolation of your love and your grace and your peace and your hope that they may experience you intimate, naked and unashamed, Lord God. That they could take that to the rest of the world and that you can evangelistically make a difference in this culture. That we speak against the brokenness of relationships that are being highlighted from so often monetary purposes, God, in this society.

That we would heal those, Lord Jesus. And that we bring down the strongholds between men and women in this culture, God. And bring healing that your side was not pierced for no reason, Jesus. That your heart was healed. So we send you out now. In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.