FEB 9 2020 | Genesis: Behind the Curtain S1E3 | Adam

Sea Change Church · Genesis: Behind the Curtain · "Adam" Pastor Adam Stadtmiller · February 9, 2020
Automated transcript. Not reviewed for accuracy.

Good morning, church. We are the Herrings, now a party of three. So, I'm a part of Financial Peace Ministry and we're also in the marriage group run by Devin Garrett. And today we're going to be reading Genesis 1, 26 through 28. Then God said, Let us make mankind in our image and our likeness so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals and over all the creatures that move along the ground.

So God created mankind in his own image. In the image of God, he created them. Male and female, he created them. God blessed them and said to them, Be fruitful and increase in number. Fill the earth and subdue it. Roll over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky and over every living creature that moves on the ground. The word of the Lord. Good looking baby right there. I know a good looking baby when I see it. That's a good looking baby.

Pastors, we kiss a lot of babies, man. I'm just saying. So we just know. Like politicians, you know what I'm saying? Just pray. Lord Jesus, we just love you, God. We bless you. We thank you for what you're doing in our lives and in our hearts today. And so we just surrender our hearts to you in Jesus' name. Amen. Today we are in the third part edition, third episode of a series called Behind the Curtain. Genesis Behind the Curtain.

We're not looking so much at the narrative, the scriptural narrative of the story of what God has done in creation. But, see, you need your notes when you preach. Thank you, Chris. You're amazing. Awesome. So much of the scriptural narrative of the story, but we want to see the actors behind the scenes. And what is God saying in the nuance of those characters? So one of the things, the first character that we looked at was Adam, excuse me, was God.

And then the second character was creation. And now we're to our third character, which is Adam. What is God saying about mankind with the creation of Adam and Eve? And next week we'll be looking at Eve. And then the following week we're going to be looking at Satan. These are five characters in the Genesis story that we will be following through this entire year. The next is going to, as we move on, is going to be the story of Noah.

And then after this series we're moving into Romans. So we're going to be in the book of Romans this year. And we're also going to be in Genesis looking at character studies. Now, today the staff came to me and said, Hey, are you conceited? You're just preaching on yourself. They entitled the sermon, Adam. And wow, it could be an incredible sermon if it was just about me. No, just kidding. It is not about me. It is about Hadam.

And I am not a Hebrew scholar, but I have dabbled. Let's just say I've dabbled enough to get me in trouble. And I've looked at this word, Adam. And Adam is a, as we'll see in a moment, is a singular noun. It is a male noun that speaks to an individual's name. It speaks about a man, not a woman, a man. But it also speaks collectively about mankind, about women and men. And we're going to look at the relationship between women and men and what God's original intention was for the relationships between man and woman.

I think that when you look at how things are supposed to be, if you look pre the fall, pre sin, you can look at the garden and the creation, how man was naked, unashamed with God. You can see women and men living in harmony together. And then we have a fall that breaks things. And then it is bookended by us going to heaven and spending time in eternity with God. If you look at heaven, the culture and the nature of heaven, and you look at the culture and the nature of the pre-fall garden, you will see God's actual intention.

And in between it is a big, ugly, yet beautiful, redemptive mess where God has taken the ashes and turned them into beauty and continues to do so. So, as we look at men and women, we have to say, what is God's original intention? If we're going to see how we're supposed to live after the cross, because the cross broke the curse, Jesus paid the punishment, how are we meant to live after the cross, and should it be reflective of what it was supposed to be in the beginning, and should it be reflective of what it will be in the end?

I believe it's so. Now, so let me, as we begin, posit an argument to you. And here is the argument. Argument is this. God's original intention was for man and woman to rule, to rule together in co-equality and dominion over the rest of creation. Let me say it again. Because there's a big difference between one of the sexes ruling and the other one coming in as a helper, as a helpmate. There's a big difference between that, was that God's intention, and the metaphor would be this.

Because I'm going to paint a house. I'm in charge of painting the house, and my wife is meant to be a helper. So if I don't really want to come down from the ladder, I say, hey, could you get me another bucket of paint? Could you get me another brush? Oh, yes, no problem, sir. And then runs, gets it, and then brings it back to me as a helper. Or, did God intend that woman was meant to paint the house as well, that woman gets their own ladder, and that woman on occasion can say, go get that paint bucket yourself.

I'm busy here painting my side of the house. I believe that as we look at the first chapter of Genesis, we see a model that more reflects each of us, each of the genders having a ladder, and each of them being called to work in co-dominion and rulership together, and in partnership, equal but different, but both painting the house. Now, this is a departure for what we saw after the fall, and what is, in some cases, continued on, I believe, in the church after Christ has redeemed the fall.

I'm going to get too far ahead of myself, but let me just start with that and posit, once again, that God's original intention, according to Genesis 1. Now, we are going to look, Scripture interprets Scripture. Genesis 2 interprets Genesis 1. Ephesians, you know, when Paul talks about, you know, relationships between men and women. This all, we have to see the totality of Scripture. That's why we're blessed that we live in an age with so much Scripture, the entire Bible is there that we can read.

But it all speaks to each other. But in Genesis 1, we really want to be true to what Genesis 1 is saying. We want to, the word is exegete, we want to discern the very meaning of what Christ is saying in Genesis 1. And I do believe that it is a model with two people painting a house as opposed to one painting while the other helps. We'll see that in a moment. Look, let's jump right into verse 26. Genesis 1, 26. Then God said, let us make mankind.

Circle, let us. This is important because this is the second homage to the Trinity in the Scripture. Now, we have God, the character of God, immediately at the beginning. In the beginning who? God. It doesn't say in the beginning us. It doesn't say in the beginning we. It says in the beginning God. First character, boom. We have God. We have a monotheistic God. We have no other characters. We have no Jesus. We have no Holy Spirit.

Just God. But soon, actually by the end of three chapters, we not only have God, but we have the Spirit and we have Jesus. It says that right away that the Spirit of God was what? Hovering over the waters. Boom, we immediately have the Spirit. Now we have a duality of nature of God. It is two in one. But in Genesis chapter 3, right after the fall, which goes in alignment with Jesus' entire calling to be a salvific, sacrificial lamb, God speaks to the enemy and he says, he will come and he will what?

Crush your head. So by chapter 3, we have given an homage. We have given a full call to God, to the Holy Spirit, and to Jesus as the Son of God. Now why is this important? Well, it's important because in this chapter, God's talking about the relationships between men and women. And when he's speaking about it, he could have just said, I'm God. Now let me tell you about men and women. But instead, he gives this idea of a partnering relationship of equality but difference.

He immediately, instead of just saying God, it says, let us. Let us. So the thing that he is saying about how men and women are meant to have, in my opinion, a, and I believe it's a scriptural opinion, a co-productive, co-dominion relationship where one doesn't rule over the other, is found in the very language that he starts addressing, you know, this creative nature from. He starts with an us passage. And so in saying, let us make, and then he goes on to back it up to say the thing he is going to make is going to be like the person who is saying we're going to make it.

Does that make sense? I am a trinity. I am dualistic. I am actually, you know, not more than dualistic. There's three parts God. And now we're going to make something in the image of that. That is so important as we look at Genesis 1. Because what God's intention is, is to make something in his image. And what he has said in this passage is my image is just not mono, theistic. My image is a we, is an us. And we know by chapter 3 it is a trinity.

Very, very important. Let us make mankind. Hadam. Hadam. Hadam and means, it is a singular masculine noun. It can mean Adam, like it means me. It could be a name. The primary, when you speak, it means man. But the secondary meaning, the direct meaning out of the Hebrew lexicon, is a collective understanding. Mankind. Let us make, and we see that God backs this up later when he says, when he continues on, says let us make them.

He's speaking not about just men. And so, some people will see this, and they will say, well, God's just speaking about men. He's not really speaking about women, but he's speaking about men. And the reason that matters is because when he speaks about men, then the calling is more directed towards men and not towards all of mankind, including women. The first would be saying that God said he created one male named Adam.

And to that Adam, he gave rulership and dominion and creative ability over all of creation. And then woman was made as an afterthought to come along and to be a helper to that. But if we see it in the secondary nature that has also followed up what he says, let us make them, and on and on through Genesis 1, we believe that mankind is being used as a collective. Let me once again posit the argument that God's original intention for mankind was not to have one rule over the other, but that they would each rule together.

That they would each be completely equal, like the Trinity is equal, but they would each have different natures and perhaps different characteristics as a collective whole. We'll continue on. There's two stories of creation, and some people really get bungled up with this. They think, well, you know, the one contradicts the other. That's actually not true anymore than the synoptic gospels have four gospels. I see less people arguing about four gospels than I do about two creation stories.

There's reasons behind what they think, the narrative criticism of where that came from, the historical criticism. We're not going to get into that. But what I want to say is God is telling two versions of the same story. And in this first version, in chapter 1, what we see God doing is showing a structural relationship between men and women. He's showing a hierarchical relationship, but the hierarchy, not having man on top, you know, or not having, you know, the women in charge of the men or either, but working together.

He's showing this completely structural. There's not a lot of relational language in this chapter. There's some, but there's not the same relational language you're going to see in the second creation story, which is chapter 2. Chapter 2 talks about woman being formed out of a man and how, like, you know, he has this arm. We'll talk about this week that, you know, she's being formed from the place that he covers with his strength.

Well, that means that men should cover women and protect women. Well, it also says that men will leave their mother and father and cleave to the woman. And when you're cleaving, she's actually covering you, as I think, when I think of children cleaving to their parent. So you have a mutuality of covering and protection in both of those stories. But in chapter 2, you see this radical narrative of relationship. This week, I want to talk about the structural relationship.

I want to show what I think was the original intention, which I think Scripture bears out as the original intention. And that if we don't, that after Christ died on the cross and set us free from the punishment, because Adam and Eve were not cursed, they were punished. And he also set us free from the curse and the curse of the law. The Satan was, the serpent, it says, was cursed. And the land was cursed. Adam and Eve weren't.

But when Jesus died, he broke the curse. He paid the punishment. So my question is, spoiler alert, why would we continue to live according to the curse and the punishment if Christ has set us free from the curse and the punishment? And does he intend us to get back to how he originally ordained us to be? I would say yes. I'll back this up here as we go on. But chapter 2 will express this relational calling. And if you want to come next week, I'm going to be talking about just the beauty of male-female relationships when they're done in the perspective of God and what he's called us to do.

And the power. Can you imagine the power if men and women work together well? Well, the first we see is let us create mankind. We talked about that singular masculine noun, the collective. The male and female then, if you go to verse 27, backing that up. So God created mankind in his own image. Now, this is really important because this imago Dei, this image, speaks about the equality between men and women. That God, when he created, he scooped out of himself and he put his nature, he put the dignity of being a child of God within us before God.

We are completely equal before God. The beautiful thing, too, is that when woman was created, she was created in the same type of way that Adam was created. Remember, Adam was not created ex nihilo, which is this Latin word that I reminded you of last week, which means out of nothing. That when God created us out of the earth, he wanted to give us a dynamic connection. He could have just created them ex nihilo, and then God said, be alive, and they would be alive.

He could have done that, but he didn't. He scooped into the earth, and he took the earth, and he created it and made man out of it, and then he gave the breath of life, so that we would have this incredibly intimate connection with creation. He does the same thing with the creation of woman. He reaches into man, who has the very nature and abilities and understanding as the children of God, that are equal before him, that all the kingdom is open to them, that all the glories and riches of heaven are available to them in fullness, and he reaches out into man, and he creates a woman, so that they might identify with one another.

Unfortunately, we are living in a society, which is drawing a distinction, which no longer sees a connection between man and women, and is trying to break that connection between male and female, that is trying to say that they should stand on their own, and really isn't looking so much as partnership, as for one to either continue to rule over the other, which would be men ruling over the other, or to have women rule over men.

You know, hey, we've put up with this for 6,000 years, or whatever human history has been written, and we're going to change that now. A famous politician said, the world would be a much better place if all the women were in charge, and he has not watched The View, obviously. So where I've seen, it's a joke. I'll just let you just lean on that for a while. I haven't either, tell you the truth. So we see this, what is God calling them to do?

So we see this incredible equality made in the image, but also I would argue that just like the Trinity, because once again, remember, he speaks this by at first announcing that he's part of a collective unified headship. He's part of a collective unified power base. He announces this, but he also says to them that you are created, but they're going to be different. And so Christianity, as a whole, would say that we are equal, but we're not the same.

That we're created in the image. That there are things, the things that really matter, being children of God. All these things of equality matter, but that we are created not to be exactly the same. And God knew what he was doing by creating somebody that could work in joint partnership. Now, obviously, this works with the biological production. Few people, although some, would argue that point. But perhaps God also decided that he was going to take bits of his nature, and then put bits of his nature, and make it more inherent to one of the genders.

Now, this is anathema today. I don't understand why it's anathema, other than the point was, don't limit anybody, which I totally get. One of the things I would say is, because woman was brought forth from the man, that there is going to be nothing, there are going to be no absolutes. Because they're so uniquely connected, there are going to be no absolutes where all women are this way. There is going to be no absolutes where all men are this way.

I've actually looked through the Bible really hard to find it. It's just so much easier to preach. If there was just a chapter in the Bible called the definitive list of men, and the definitive list of women, and I could say, you know, all men are going to be good cooks. They're just going to be phenomenal. They're going to be so much better in the kitchen. And, you know, and all men are going to be this, and all women are going to be that.

And then it would be so easy just to preach that. I don't know why God didn't do that. There's very few places in the scripture that give this collective whole to, you know, or nod to this is the way women are, or this is the way men are. We're actually left to kind of interpret things. So one of the things I would say, and you have to be very careful these days, that you're kind of treading, right? Everybody's like, whoa, what's he going to say?

Am I mad yet? I might be mad in a minute. One of the things I would say is, men on the whole are more aggressive than women. I would say that. In fact, I'd back it up with empirical data to say 91% of the murders committed on the earth are committed by men. 91%. There is not one culture, one civilization, one nation, one continent, where men, where women commit more murders than men. There is something about men, maybe it's testosterone, maybe it's just caught more than taught, or taught more than caught, but for the most part, men seem to be super aggressive.

Does that mean that there are no aggressive women in the world? Absolutely not. God has not, for some reason, boxed himself in to a place where he has made everything without nuance. He's actually, because they're made of one another, you are going to see blurring of the lines. But as a collective whole, are there things that God has said, you know, as a collective whole, I'm going to create a partnership where they're not the same, because when he created Adam, he decided not to create Adam with everything he needed.

He obviously created him with a need for more. Partnership would be number one. Loneliness would be another. We talk more about the need for, you know, well, is one going to be an engineer, and is one more, you know, geared towards the social sciences with men and women? What we often miss is the need for partnership, the need to be together, and to form an incredibly strong, loving bond that has the ability to be reproductive, to be able to create something in their own image, which is amazing, because God only created two beings, Adam and Eve, and then he left the rest to us, to be fruitful and multiply, and to go and to create people in our image.

And when I look at my daughter, you know what? She kind of looks like me. When I look at my other daughter, both of them, one resembles my wife more than me, but we can do that, and it's a beautiful thing. We often miss that point, when we're trying to find, well, what's the difference between men and women, and can we box them in? Let me say there are absolute, there are no absolutes in regard to this with God. There are women who will do things that seem the collective men do more often, or that women do more often.

Let me just give you a little bit of empirical data, because you're going to like that. And the first is this, the Harvard Business Review said, right now, this is from earlier in this year, I believe, that of the engineers in the United States, I don't think this is worldwide, but this is the United States, 87% of the engineers, that would be also like coding, programming engineers, what do you think they are? You know, men or women, they're men.

87% of engineers are men. Now that's a choice that people, no one's forcing people to go into engineering. We're not in Soviet Russia in, you know, 1950, where it's like, hey, you're going to be a cement guy, you're an engineer, and then you just are what the government tells you. This is by choice, 87%. You know, if you go to healthcare right now, 76% of all healthcare professionals are women. That's a caring, compassionate job.

That is where you're caring for other people. If you don't have a good bedside manner, get out of that profession. If you don't have the ability to like think, and to care about people, and to have it be as much, not as much, but very much emotional, to connect with your patients, to care for them, God forbid to say somewhat maternal, God forbid that I say that, but I just said it, then, then you need to get out of that business.

Now, that still means there's a whole bunch of men that are part of that, but over and over, you know, we see as collective whole, that when it comes to people making choices, and you see this in the Northern, Northern Islandic countries, Icelandic countries as well, where they are very far ahead in regard to women having equality, and vote, and to make these, but when it comes to making their own choices, why do they make these decisions?

Why do women make these decisions? I asked my wife. I said, Carrie, is this caught or taught? She said, both. I was like, no, no, I need, I need something more than both, but what is God doing, or what is he perhaps saying? And so what I, what I do believe, and personally, is that there are, there is, there are no absolutes. All, there are women who will excel at that. There are men that will excel at other things, and there is a blurring of the lines, and this is something that God obviously didn't want to make black and white.

Now, we do have a couple, some, some, a collection of New Testament scriptures that make these lines more clear, but I, I want to speak into those, and where I've landed on that, because ultimately, the idea that I'm not going to live according to the punishment of the curse is super important to me, and it seems to make a ton of sense. Now, you're going to see in your notes, women suffered something, and what did they suffer?

They suffered a loss, and what they suffered was a loss of rule. If you want to think about the analogy from earlier, they lost their ladder. They basically lost the ladder that they were given with, the paint creation, with creativity. It was part of the punishment according to the scripture. If you look in your notes, you'll see the loss of rule happens in Genesis 3, 16. To the woman. Now, this is once again, I'd never seen this before.

I had always said that man and woman were cursed. God did not curse men and women. He punished them. Big difference. Before I read this, one of the ways I think we can tie scripture and understand that the, how men and women are, because once again, we don't get a definitive list from God. We have to read into things a little bit. Let's talk about punishment for a second. When I punished my daughter, which is very rare.

When I have to give a, we call them consequences. When I give my daughter a consequence, I cannot say to my teenager anymore, I'm taking away your coloring, but you don't get to color anymore. She's going to go like, epic. Oh, sorry. Oh, that's horrible. No. If I say to her, I'm going to take away your what? Phone. Right. What's going to happen? Ah, three heads appear immediately. Ah, no tick tock. Uh, she freaks out because the punishment, excuse me, the consequence, we try not to use the word punishment.

Um, the consequence has to fit something that's going to bother the person. It's interesting that if you look at the punishment, what, how does God punish man? He punishes him in regard to make cursing the ground. So obviously both men and women, the ground wasn't, it was cursed and it's going to be, but he doesn't say to women or to all of them, why didn't he just say, Hey, it's going to be harder for all of you to produce children.

Uh, you know, men, you're going to be more infertile. It's going to be harder for all of you to, to, to produce children. And you're also, the land isn't going to produce for you anymore. Just to all, to you men and women, this is the common punishment for all of you. No, he doesn't. He actually gives individual punishments that I think actually reflect some of that creative nature that if you were going to write a list of how men and women are different, you might be able to intuit from the punishment what those things are.

And so to the man, he says, Hey, you're a provider. Although scripture that I see only has one place. I think where it says men are called to be provider. Um, but he says, I'm going to curse the ground that you use to product, provide this thing that you engineer, that you engineer, that you put together. I'm going to curse it. That would really bother him. Why? Because it would assume one would assume that if God is giving a punishment that matters to them, then he is going to give it.

So man was meant to go out into the field. See, if you look at a farm, the farm is not just the home, but the farm is the field. And if you talk to farmers, there's a collective whole. If you look at some of these old movies, there's, you know, and talk to farmers, you know, they're both of those have to work together. The man in the field and perhaps the wife in the, in the home. But once again, there's no absolute.

So you could have the woman in the field and the man in the home, but it has to work together. But looking at this punishment, we see that perhaps God said, I'm going to, I'm going to make it harder in your maternal nature. I'm going to make it harder for you to multiply, to do the thing that you want to do. And then he says this in the punishment. So do we learn a little bit about what it possibly is, not only from Imperial data about engineers and nurses, but according to the punishments that reflect how they were created to be.

I think we do. It says in Genesis 3, 16 to the woman, he said, I will make your chance pains and childbearing very severe with painful labor. You will give birth. Now it says actually more severe, which means there was already some pain in childbirth, which was interesting because you would think, well, in the garden, there's no pain. No, God meant, I mean that there's actually a connectivity. When you go through pain with somebody or a difficult situation, you look at marriages, relationships, you know, like I always say a friend is not a friend until I've had conflict with them.

You don't know, you know, or until you say no to somebody, you don't know what the relationship is. It has to be tested through pain. And so there was pain because that connects the woman to the child. We see that. But he says, besides that, and then this is the deal. This verse right here is why you have the ERA. This verse is why you have women's marches. This verse right here. If you're going to have a scriptural understanding, the first says this, and it says, your desire will be for your husband and he will rule over you.

Now, what did it say a moment ago? Now, a moment ago, it said that you will both rule over. He wasn't ruling. If the punishment is that now he will rule over you, it meant that before the punishment, he was not ruling over you, which means that you both had a ladder and you were both painting the house. But now, not only is he going to rule over you, you're going to want him to. Ouch. You want to talk, now for women, that's like anathema.

Like, don't go preach that at the women's march. Okay? Don't go say that because, ah, it's going to be like, I take my phone away from my kid. But the scripture says that you're going to want, now, you want to know what, as a woman, you look at that and you're like, no, that's horrible. I got to tell you, as a man, that's horrible. The last thing I want to do, literally, is rule over my wife. Matter of fact, I don't want to rule over anyone.

I love that we're part of a congregational church, where people make a decision of what they want to do, how they want to do it, not using guilt, freedom of mutuality of relationship. This is the worst thing that ever happened to marriage and female, male relationships ever. And as a church, as you'll see on the landing point of this sermon, I believe that we're called to step into what's been fixed. Not to fix it, but to continue fixing what Christ fixed there.

Because that's the worst thing ever for relationships. One of the things that, you know, somebody has said, I talked to somebody recently and they said, well, somebody has to have the final say. If you don't have the final say, what's, I got to say, I, and you can, you can ask my wife on this. We have never once had a decision where we have not been in agreement that we've made. We've done some things where she's like, okay, I'll allow it.

I don't really like it, but I'll allow it. But she is, that I know of, has never said no. And in 23 years of marriage, I have never pulled, I'm the head of the family card. Let me just tell you why. It doesn't work. Now, it does work if you are with a spouse who's like, then I want to step into that relationship. But for, for me to have a relationship in unity, it doesn't work. And I want to base my relationship with my wife off of the Trinity.

There is never a time once where the Holy Spirit is like, Jesus, I want to do that. He's like, so what, dude, you're the number three. You know, like, and our God saying, you know, Jesus, I'm going to do this. you know, even Jesus in the garden debated. He's, you know, my wife and I do that a lot. He's like, hey, I don't want to do this. I don't want to do this, but I will. I mean, that is this, this, this submission, but it happened with free will.

It's a submission of free will, not a submission of like, you're more powerful than me. Our relationships have to move towards greater equality. What I find is, I don't, you know, if a decision goes bad, I'd rather not own it completely, to tell you the truth. I'd like a little bit like, hey, you wanted to do this too. But we see that in the relationship. How are we meant to have relationships? Let me continue on. So that is what was lost.

Galatians 3.13 says, Christ restored what was lost. This is not in your notes. You can write it down. We're coming in for a landing. It says, Christ redeemed that which, redeemed us from the curse of the law, by becoming a curse for us. Christ, Adam and Eve were not cursed, but Jesus took the curse upon himself. And then he also took the punishment upon himself. That our punishments would be erased. If you can give me a scriptural reason, a scriptural backing, why women should still live under a punishment that came after the fall of man, and now we live after the resurrection of Christ.

If you can give me a scriptural reason, and I have a couple scriptures I do want to talk to, because I think there are some problematic scriptures for this theology. I would like you to show them to me. Let me just, let me just speak quickly to a couple scriptures that I find very problematic. Well, not very problematic, but there's two that are key. One, Ephesians 5.23. Four, the husband is the head of the wife, Christ is the head of the church, his body of which he is the savior.

I would say, how do I answer that scripture? Well, I answer it by looking at the Trinity. When I see the Trinity, I see that there is equal power in the Trinity. They are all completely one. There is never a disagreement, and one never goes outside of a disagreement with the other, never works in, without being in solidarity with the other three, and they have roles, but each of those roles are never used to rule over or over, the Lord.

So if that's the case, and there is a headship, well, then I would have to say that it is in the way that Christ is, and it is in the way that the Trinity is, and that that allows us the ability to have us all work as equal partners with different roles. And this is a little bit cheeky, but somebody asked me one time, they said, well, if you're the head of the household, and I said, well, so you're saying that men are in leadership?

And he goes, yes. And actually, I've been challenged on this more by women than men. FYI. I've had more women challenge me on this idea where I've tried to show the scriptural liberation for women. I would say two to one. Women have approached me on this more than men, which is really, really interesting to me, and maybe speaks to the original punishment. But I say, hey, well, if I'm in charge, and it's up for me to make the decision, then my decision, I can lead any way I want?

Yep. I said, okay, I choose to lead in co-unity, in unity. I choose to live according to the redemption of Christ, and I choose to elevate my wife in equal partnership with me. Because I was the head. You said I was. I can do it however I want. So that's how I choose to do it. And I do believe that as a church and as men, if we are going to live according to the intention and not according to the punishment, then our job is to call women in that, because that's the relationship I want.

That's the relationship I want. And I was talking to some women afterwards, and they were like, hey man, great sermon, great sermon. I was like, sweet, you're my target audience today. even though this one's about men. I said, the amount of horsepower you get from women in a church, goodness, let's just unbridle them and let them go. So, that's how I would speak to that. There's one more, and then we'll finish. Second Timothy, excuse me, 1 Timothy 2.12 says, I, I, do not permit a woman to teach or to have authority over any man.

She must be quiet. Mmm, people love, people that want to keep that, you know, us back in the punishment, love that one. Ah, I feel so good when they read it. And it said, yes. Paul does a few things in scripture. And if you're familiar with scripture, you'll see it. He does this in 1 Corinthians 7.25, when giving thoughts about virgins and, and marriage and, and these different things. There are times when Paul says something, and he'll be like, hey, this is a command from the Lord.

I'm going to tell you straight up from the, from the throne of heaven, this is a command, do this. And then there's these other times where he's like, hey, I've got an opinion. In the 1 Corinthians 7.25 passage, he actually states it. He goes, hey, I'm, I've got an opinion. This is not a command from the Lord, but this is what I think. Here again, in this one particular passage that people love to just like, you know, hammer, like going hammer and tongs with it.

This first Timothy, uh, uh, two passage. he says, once again, I do not permit, you know, I want to, I really, I am in agreement that, that there are situational ethics in regard to these scriptures. The few scriptures, not a ton, but the few scriptures, each one of them, you can give a very provocative argument that these are situationally based. And I believe with Paul, this is a situational, like, Hey, look, I wouldn't do it.

You don't want to know why? Because that church, some of the women that there's like this group of women there and it's a mess. And so like, I'm just not going to permit it. I won't permit it. But I do believe that these two things, one, either we're going to, if we are going to say that man is the head, well, then we're going to be in agreement with the Trinity and man is called to call women back into the original intention.

Or two, it was situational. That's how I answer it. So as a church going forward, this is where I stand as your lead pastor. This is where the American Baptist have stood for 150 years. We left the Southern Baptist convention. You were at American Baptist church, whether you know it or not. Uh, they left the, over the issue of slavery. And then the suffragette issue came in on the heels of that. And they stood up for that and started having women be pastors and elders, which you have, you have two female elders.

And I know that, uh, Andrea or Drea is hoping to one day become a pastor, which is fully allowable here. And something that I am in agreement with because I believe I can prove it in scripture. Uh, you can obviously choose not to go this way, but that is one thing. Here's four things. Uh, literally one minute, two minutes. How do we, where do, where do we go from here? Well, we're no longer going to live in agreement with the curse.

And hopefully you're not living in agreement with any curses or punishments in your relationships and in your marriage. And what would it look like as we're going to speak about next week to have just this beautiful union, you know, this beautiful, beautiful union between man and woman. And it's just such an amazing relationship that Christ has given us the keys back to, I believe next. We want to encourage people to thrive in the roles they're called to.

We're not, you know, just because 87% of men are engineers, it doesn't mean a woman can't be an engineer because God loves nuance. And man and woman is created from man. And there's some, there's a synchronicity. You can walk in whatever calling you want and we want to release you to it. But we also want to lean on the collective whole that are really good at certain things. And we want to lean into that when we can.

But once again, God doesn't give us a definitive list in the Bible. But if you have a passion, we don't want to get in the, in the way of your passion. And then finally, we want to have a church that is fully with fully functioning men and women who are thriving in a world that they are called to tend and to make fruitful. This is a powerful, a powerful calling. We want to stand upon this truth to make our marriages stronger than they've ever been.

We want to stand on this truth to make our family units stronger than they've ever been. We want to stand on this truth that we might thrive and work in complete unity, each having a ladder, each having a brush in hand, but beginning not time just to paint a building, but to paint the beautiful canvas of God's creation and redemptive calling into the world. And this is what we want to do as families. And I hope that you want to join along.

Let's stand. Chris. As a church, we understand there's people that have been in abusive relationships and dominating relationships on both sides of the aisle and both genders. We want to see that healed. And maybe this is the first time I've ever seen this come alive. This is something I wanted to be true for a long time, but I couldn't put it together in scripture. And I said, God, show it to me in scripture. It just came alive to me.

You know, and I'm totally behind it. And what we want to do is we want to help you. Maybe you do need to go away and rethink the way you've thought through this in your marriage. Maybe there's a release that needs to happen on both sides of the aisle so we can live in complete fullness and unity. Be who we are. And this week, my wife called me. She's working on here today. And she said, Hey, there's somebody on campus that is causing problems.

I'm like, yeah, I'm there. A few minutes. I was there. Took care of business. Took care of the role. Came home later this week. And I'm like, I'm just off. I feel like my emotions are stale. She's all, you know, I love you. You want to hug? And I'm like, yeah, that sounds solid. And there's just these, I'm not saying those are definitive roles, but it just made a lot of sense as we partnered and unified together. I want to pray a blessing over you and your families and over your relationships right now.

If you feel comfortable to extend your hands. First, God, I want to pray for those that have been abusive father relationships. What a, we pray that you would heal that God. Abusive spousal relationships, Lord God, dishonesty and trust. God, we want to walk side by side being, being hewn from the very side of one and then coming back to cleave to the other in a mutuality of peace, joy, love, hope. I pray God that this church can be a generator for incredibly healthy relationships.

We bless you. I bless you now with what Christ blessed you with, not only for freedom, but that you would go forth, that you would multiply and that you would bring prosperity as you tend the garden to subdue it. The same way that a tree, which is pruned is subdued to bring more fruit. We release you now to bring joy and hope to the world. You would have prosperity and grace upon every step, upon every breath. Name of the father, son, and the Holy spirit.

Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen.