Welcome to the For the Gospel podcast. My name is Costi Hinn and I have the pleasure of being your host. For the Gospel is all about providing sound doctrine for everyday people. And on today's episode, I want to give you a framework for conversations about gender and sexuality. This primer is going to give you talking points that you can lean back on when people confront you about your view on gender if you hold a biblical worldview on this topic. We can often get flustered or even reactive in a negative way in conversations about LGBTQ issues. So it's important to have some calm and clear and biblical thoughts. So we're equipped to engage more intentionally with these individuals. Always remember the goal is not to win arguments and demolish people in the process. The goal is to win people, if you will. Now we know that God is sovereign and he's the one doing the winning ultimately, but you know what I mean when I say that. If you've been part of our audience for any length of time, we believe that God can and will use our efforts in his sovereign power to reach people with the gospel. It's Romans 10 17. Faith comes by hearing and hearing by the word of Christ. And in verses 14, 15, and 16, even leading up to those words by Paul in Romans 10.17, he says, How will they go unless they're sent? And how will they hear unless there's a preacher? And so we speak the truth, trusting God to do the work. But our goal in the end is to win people and see them won by the power of God. The culture you live in in regards to truth is very relative, not absolute. That means that the culture views truth in a way that is always shifting and moving. It's not concrete. The one problem that we see in this way of thinking is in saying that there are no absolutes, the culture is claiming an absolute. So none of it makes sense, but that is how they feel. And so when people say, Well, I don't feel like it's my right to tell someone if they're wrong, or I don't really feel like this is an issue that we should bring up because everyone should be free to make their own decision. I feel like, you know, I'm just being judgmental if I were to take a position on gender or sexuality to each their own. Well, that is the relative culture pressing in on people to train them to not have a position, therefore, everyone can just do what they want. As a Christian, we know that the enemy is working through that sort of strategy. It's not benign, this idea that it's not really a big deal, it won't harm anyone as long as it's just me and my decision, and I'm doing it for me, I'm not forcing it on anyone else. But the truth is, our decisions have a ripple effect, and it is not relative when we're discussing truth. Truth is absolute, and for a Christian, well, that's where the Bible comes into play. And so we need to realize that the culture is defining gender and sexuality now in a way that is very relative. Let me give you a little bit of an example of that. According to the culture, sex is just the biological difference between male and female. In other words, what you're born as is your sex. And gender, on the other hand, is defined by the medical news as being different than your sex. I pulled this quote from medical news and their website, and it says this in general terms, sex refers to the biological differences between male and females, such as the genitalia and genetic differences. Gender is more difficult to define, but it can refer to the role of a male or female in society, known as a gender role, or an individual's concept of themselves or gender identity. Sometimes a person's genetically assigned sex does not line up with their gender identity. These individuals might refer to themselves as transgender, non-binary, or gender nonconforming. So as you can see, that's the end of the quote. While sex is scientifically and biologically verified to be 100% genetic, as in its binary and set, modern culture has chosen to work around that truth. Yes, there are some cases in which a baby is born with both sets of genitalia, and parents have to make a decision what sex the baby will be, or that chromosome counts may vary, but overall, most commonly, you know, women have 46 chromosomes and including two X's, and men have 46, including an X and a Y, and the Y chromosome is dominant and carries the signal for the embryo to begin growing testicles. That's how men become men. And both men and women have testosterone and estrogen and progesterone. However, women have higher levels of estrogen and progesterone, and men have higher levels of testosterone. This is all biology, the way that God created the body. Now, you don't follow for the gospel for biology lessons, so biology lesson over, but you get the point. What I've just explained is there are major differences between male and female sex. But culture wants to make gender something more fluid. Gender is about how you feel, they say. A transgender person will describe that they're born a boy, but they feel more like a woman. Or they'll say they were born a girl, but they feel more like a boy, so they're a boy, or that they're a girl who likes girls even though they're this or that, and they're always changing, which is where we get the term gender fluid. And so you have a person who has essentially been given the cultural freedom to do what they want with whomever they want, and it'd be okay. This is how we get men who say they're identifying as seven or eight-year-old girls and they want to use the same bathroom as your little girl and my little girl. And that man certainly could molest or do harm to those girls. And see, there is not a benign nature to this. It's not, well, this is just my decision and my truth, and so I speak my truth and I go my way. I'm not hurting anyone, I'm just enjoying my life for myself. Oh no. When you take a worldly cultural position on gender and sexuality, you end up at the logical conclusion of this. Anyone can identify as anything and then go and do and live out anything they would like. Well, as I've just explained, that's going to harm people. And that is really the origin of all of this. It is sin. Sin hurts people, sin is our ultimate sickness. Sin is the twisted ploy of the devil to go to any length possible and be as conniving as possible to assault God's design for his creation. The goal of the kingdom of darkness is to put out the light of God's plan and purposes. God wants men acting like men and women acting like women. God wants men fulfilling their biblical role and women fulfilling their biblical role and to raise godly children who grow up in a healthy, balanced way, fulfilling their life's purpose to bring glory and honor to their creator. The enemy wants men to act like women and women to act like men. He wants men cowering and abandoning their role and women coming to the societal pressure to do whatever they want, and children to do whatever they want, and men to do whatever they want. And so you have men and women and children doing whatever they want. And doesn't that remind you of maybe a line or a truth you've heard in the Bible, even if you haven't read a ton of the Bible, that there are these times where, quote, everyone does what is right in their own eyes. Well, gender and sexuality is a topic in which right now in the world we live in, many people are doing whatever is right in their eyes. And so I want to lovingly push back against the worldly way of thinking. I want to more aggressively push back against satanic subterfuge. We're not going to roll over in fear. We are God's people. We do things and say things God's way. And so I want to explain the first key talking point, and it's this people don't rule gender. God does. People don't rule gender. God does. So you can't make gender fluid. God has already made gender and sex the same thing. It is clear he made them male and female. Genesis 1, verses 26 to 27. Then God said, Let us make man in our image after our likeness, and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and the birds of the heavens, and over the livestock, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth. So God created man in his own image. In the image of God he created him, male and female he created them. There's nothing fancy going on here in the original Hebrew language. It is male and female. God created gender, God establishes gender. Gender is not a feeling, it's a fact. Gender is not separate from sex. Gender is not a social construct. Gender is what you were created as, and that is beautiful, just as it is in God's image. Your life is sacred, your life is meaningful. You have been, as a male or a female, handcrafted by God to be the gender and sex, both the same thing, that He assigned you at your birth. And so the key talking point we want to understand in any conversation we're having is it's good to be sensitive to people's feelings, and it's good to be kind and empathetic, and it's definitely a good and wise thing to understand where they're coming from. But the truth does not change, the truth is not relative, the truth is absolute. God rules gender, not people. Number two, I would recommend that you convey to people that they're God's masterpiece just the way they are. They are God's workmanship, his beautiful, fearfully, and wonderfully made creation just the way they are. Now they may not disagree with you, but that doesn't change your talking point. There in Genesis 126, right at the beginning, then God said, Let us make man in our image after our likeness. There it is again that God's image is held in high regard. Mankind held in such high regard that we would be crafted in the image of God, unlike any other creature. So again, the sacredness of life, the meaningfulness of being created as a human, being handcrafted by God. That's really what Psalm 139, verses 13 to 18 is getting at. But the devil is not going to let people enjoy that truth. He wants to lie to them. He wants to deceive. When you look at what he did to Eve, just over a chapter later, after we see that man and woman are created and that we're made in the image of God, in Genesis 3, verses 1 to 6, the Bible says, Now the serpent was more crafty than any other beast of the field that the Lord God had made. He said to the woman, Did God actually say, You shall not eat of any tree in the garden? And the woman said to the serpent, We may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden, but God said, You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the midst of the garden, neither shall you touch it lest you die. Notice what the serpent did right off the bat. Did God actually say you shall not eat of any tree in the garden? He stretched the truth. Which no matter how far you stretch the truth, it doesn't make it last any longer. He lied. He put words in God's mouth God never said. Well, as you already heard, Eve, the woman, explains exactly what God said, but then Genesis continues, but the serpent said to the woman, You will surely not die. So the serpent goes from alluding to something that wasn't true, like, did God really say you can't eat anything in the garden? And she corrects him. Now he just goes blatantly into deception. You will surely not die, he says. For God knows that when you eat of it, your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil. So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took its fruit and ate, and also gave some to her husband who was with her, and he ate. That the enemy comes whispering. God didn't really say that, did he? No, that's not really what he meant. No, he just doesn't want you to enjoy yourself. He just doesn't want you to live it up and get to experience all that this world has to offer. You know, God's a real kill joy. The enemy will come and try to lie. And you have to be able to combat those lies with truth. We talked about it in a previous episode about biblical illiteracy that the enemy is banking on your inability to wield the sword of the spirit. But when you can combat his lies with truth, you can resist him and he flees from you. And so when one considers all of this in light of Genesis 1 and 26 and 27, and takes the plain meaning of the Bible at face value, there's clearly something extraordinary about mankind. Man's life being precious and meaningful and valuable to God, man being the chief of all created beings, if you will, able to possess attributes no other being created by God can possess. And when Paul the Apostle explains to the Ephesians that they weren't saved by good works, but saved for good works in Ephesians 2, verses 8, 9, and then 10 specifically, he declares the origins of their existence so that they would know how special they were in God's eyes and in God's plan. Paul writes, for we are his workmanship, created where? In Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them. That word created means to bring something into existence. And so it makes it clear that it is Christ who literally brings every person into existence, and of course, specifically believers in this context, saving them. Jesus does not create some who are more human and some who are less. He doesn't create those who are in the image of God and then those who are not. Every human being is created in God's image and is the workmanship of God created for purpose to live for his glory here on earth. And so we want to convey to people that you are fearfully and wonderfully made. You are God's masterpiece just the way you are, physically, your gender, your sex. They are one and the same, they are signed by God at birth. Live according to his design. Don't listen to the lies of the devil through this world, through this culture, and the misrepresentation of what God has purposed for every single person. The final thing that I would include as a talking point is part of the why. There's a lot here that a brief podcast episode can't cover, but I would say that conveying the why is important. Why? Well, God fearfully and beautifully and wonderfully made you. And then how does that look practically? Well, your gender and your decision to obey God's design over the world and the culture matters when it comes to dating, courtship, getting engaged, getting married, and having a family. A lot of those things are something every single person will experience. A lot of people, even now, who follow our ministry are in the next generation and they're already dating or courting, they're engaged, they're getting married, they're having families. We have a ton of growing families that follow our ministry. And so realize this the topic of gender and sexuality is a huge deal because it impacts generations from us to our children, to our children's children. We date and we court, we marry, we reproduce, we raise up families based on a worldview regarding gender. If your worldview is biblical, you'll end up doing things God's way and experiencing the blessing of God's design. When we don't, we experience the broken cycle that this world is spinning in as we speak. And so it's vital that we keep that in mind. Now, maybe that's a talking point more for you and more for me to remember. Yeah, I need to be having these conversations. I need to be engaging people about these issues because this stuff matters. It's going to impact the generations to come, our families and the families around us in our churches, but also helping people who are on the fence or who are wavering on these issues realize this isn't just about them and their pleasures today. This isn't even about their feelings right now. This is about their future. And we're already seeing this. I did one study when I was in seminary where we had to do a particular project. It was a case study. We had to present what we would say in pastoral counseling based on a real situation where a woman who was born a biological woman had become a man, and then got saved. And we had to present our case for the way we would counsel that individual. Would we recommend reversal surgeries? Would we tell them they can't be a member until they changed what they had done through cosmetic surgeries? All of this was included in the paper and the discussion. We did one the other way as well, where somebody born a man had chosen to do surgeries that would make them look more like a woman, taking hormones and doing things that many doctors have even said is very difficult to reverse. And we had to present our case biblically and pastorally for what we would guide that person towards. Why is that being brought up in a podcast on this? Is I'm hoping you'll see that in our generation we are going to deal with situations that nobody has ever dealt with before. Not on a spiritual level. The spiritual condition is always the same. Sin and the effects of sin, and then the aftermath of the church coming around the sinner as the Lord saves them. That always stays the same, that never changes. But the repercussions of the decisions that people are making right now are going to fall to us as the Lord saves them. And so you need to know, I need to know, and even people need to know. The decisions they are making are not just a today thing. We are going to be dealing with the effects for decades to come. Are you ready? Are you equipped? Are you bold enough to tell someone you can know your identity? It's not fluid, it's not uncertain, it isn't defined by the culture. God has provided it. I have good news for you through the gospel. You can be saved. Through the power of God, you can be transformed, and you can enjoy what He has perfectly called you to be. The gospel must enter the conversation when we're talking about gender and sexuality in the world we live in today. My prayers, this episode will give you some baseline talking points and things to think through and discuss, even with your own family and your friends regarding gender and sexuality. Remember the ultimate goal point people to point people to their creator because ultimately they need Christ. Thank you all for being with us today on the For the Gospel podcast. To register for our upcoming conference on dating and courtship in Southern California, go to forthegospel.org and click conferences in the navigation menu. The conference is on Friday, September 24th and Saturday, September 25th. I cannot wait to see you there. Our team is so excited putting plans together and we are fired up. Mission Bible Church is being our wonderful host for this particular conference. And so check out more on our website. For free video teachings, go to our YouTube channel and make sure to be checking out our weekly videos that we're dropping on Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, and Twitter to help you and provide you with resources to share the hope of Christ all over social media. We'll be back next Monday with another episode. Keep on living for the gospel.