Micah McCormick: Genesis chapter 1.
Micah McCormick: We're just into this series.
Micah McCormick: On the image of God, Pastor Doug preached the opening sermon.
Micah McCormick: Genesis chapter 1.
Micah McCormick: I want to start by reading two verses for us.
Micah McCormick: Genesis 1, verses 26 and 27.
Micah McCormick: Then God said, Let us make man in our image, according to our likeness.
Micah McCormick: They will rule the fish of the sea, the birds of the sky, the livestock, the whole earth, and the creatures that crawl on the earth.
Micah McCormick: So God created man in his own image.
Micah McCormick: He created him in the image of God.
Micah McCormick: Seek the Lord's help.
Micah McCormick: Lord, thank you that all of your creative work was good and very good because you're a good God.
Micah McCormick: So help us to see your goodness, your authority, your beauty, and loving design for us tonight.
Micah McCormick: In Jesus' name, amen.
Micah McCormick: We're going to have 15 messages on the image of God.
Micah McCormick: And I think if you look down through the series of topics, at least for some people, tonight's title might grab them more than any other title in the whole series.
Micah McCormick: The title for tonight is Male and Female Intentional Design for Gender and Relationship.
Micah McCormick: Why would male and female make you move a little more to the edge of your seat?
Micah McCormick: Well, there's probably a lot of factors, but one reason is because it's a bit controversial in our world.
Micah McCormick: You can ask a public official what's a man or a woman, and they don't want to answer.
Micah McCormick: You could ask a four-year-old in preschool who are all the boys and girls in your class, they could point them right out.
Micah McCormick: But public officials don't want to talk about it.
Micah McCormick: We're not going to talk tonight about the different cultural factors that have kind of led to where we are in our current culture, but we do want to look at the Bible's foundations for gender and what God Himself says.
Micah McCormick: So three headings for us tonight as we think about this intentional design of male and female, the importance of gender, the beauty of gender, and the implications of gender.
Micah McCormick: And we'll consider these again from scripture.
Micah McCormick: So first is the importance of gender.
Micah McCormick: Right here in Genesis 1.27, God created man in his own image.
Micah McCormick: He created him in the image of God.
Micah McCormick: And what's the first thing after it says he created them in the image of God?
Micah McCormick: He created them male and female.
Micah McCormick: So God takes a week to create the world, and on day six, he slows down to create humans and he determines I'm going to have males and females.
Micah McCormick: Let's just pause right there for a moment.
Micah McCormick: That is significant.
Micah McCormick: If God has said, I'm going to design the whole human race to have male and female, who are we to say, I've got some better ideas than God?
Micah McCormick: I've got a lot of other pronouns that would work better than God's ideas.
Micah McCormick: This is God's plan.
Micah McCormick: It's important.
Micah McCormick: And not only did he design us male and female, he designed us again this way in his image.
Micah McCormick: So this evening series is not a series about men and women, it's a series about the image of God.
Micah McCormick: But all that we do to reflect God's image, in one sense, we do as males or as females.
Micah McCormick: That's very important.
Micah McCormick: It's an awe-inspiring responsibility and privilege to be made in the image of God.
Micah McCormick: And some of the things we do require both males and females.
Micah McCormick: Don't worry, I'm not going to give any elaborate biology lessons tonight.
Micah McCormick: But this command to be fruitful and multiply, more people made in the image of God.
Micah McCormick: That takes male and female.
Micah McCormick: That's important.
Micah McCormick: So we really can't say, well, the image of God has great dignity and value, and we should highly elevate the image of God and all those who bear the image of God.
Micah McCormick: Yes, well and good.
Micah McCormick: But you can't say that.
Micah McCormick: And then on the other side say, you know, this concept of male and female, it's really more of a burden, and we can kind of do with it what we please.
Micah McCormick: No, those things go together.
Micah McCormick: So gender is very important in God's design.
Micah McCormick: Second.
Micah McCormick: And we're going to take the most time on the last one, but second, the beauty of gender.
Micah McCormick: It's not only important, it's a beautiful thing.
Micah McCormick: Proverbs 30, verses 18 and 19.
Micah McCormick: Three things are too wondrous for me, four I can't understand.
Micah McCormick: The way of an eagle in the sky, the way of a snake on a rock, the way of a ship at sea, and the way of a man with a young woman.
Micah McCormick: You ever ponder the amazing wonder of God's creation?
Micah McCormick: A bird in the sky?
Micah McCormick: How does that work?
Micah McCormick: Ships that humans design that they can actually float on water, that's amazing.
Micah McCormick: And yet even more amazing, a man and a woman coming together.
Micah McCormick: It's remarkable.
Micah McCormick: Let me just defend romantic comedies for one minute.
Micah McCormick: No, they don't do a great job of sh telling us about suffering in the world.
Micah McCormick: No, they don't usually do a great job of telling us about um persevering through difficult times.
Micah McCormick: But they they show us something about how can two totally different people in some ways magically connect and find themselves together.
Micah McCormick: Well, that's God's plan.
Micah McCormick: Adam understood the beauty of gender very shortly after creation.
Micah McCormick: Turn over to Genesis chapter 2.
Micah McCormick: You can just look at this.
Micah McCormick: It should be the next page over if you're not already there.
Micah McCormick: Genesis 2, starting at verse 19.
Micah McCormick: The Lord God formed out of the ground every wild animal, every bird of the sky, and brought each to the man to see what he would call it.
Micah McCormick: And whenever a man, the man called living creature, that was its name.
Micah McCormick: The man gave names to all the livestock, to the birds of the sky, to every wild animal.
Micah McCormick: But for the man, no helper was found corresponding to him.
Micah McCormick: So the Lord God caused a deep sleep to come over the man and he slept.
Micah McCormick: God took one of his ribs and closed the flesh at that place.
Micah McCormick: Then the Lord God made the rib he had taken from the man into a woman and brought her to the man.
Micah McCormick: And the man said, This one at last is bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh.
Micah McCormick: This one will be called woman, for she was taken from man.
Micah McCormick: The complementarity of male and female.
Micah McCormick: I know that's a that's a silver dollar word.
Micah McCormick: I just mean by that males and females complement each other.
Micah McCormick: They fit together like a left-footed shoe and a right-footed shoe.
Micah McCormick: Okay, that complementarity that God has designed of male and female, it matches the complementarity of God's created universe.
Micah McCormick: Did you notice ever how many pairs there are in the Genesis creation account?
Micah McCormick: It's not just man and woman.
Micah McCormick: There's evening and morning, there's day and night, there's sun and moon, there's sky and there's all of these pairs all throughout God's creation account.
Micah McCormick: People have sometimes associated men with land and women with water.
Micah McCormick: Land.
Micah McCormick: Water.
Micah McCormick: Land.
Micah McCormick: Water.
Micah McCormick: So you're looking at me and it's like, come on, Mike, we need some exegesis here.
Micah McCormick: We're not looking for poetry.
Micah McCormick: Well, the Bible does give us both of those things in his created world and in scripture.
Micah McCormick: Women are associated with wells in the Bible.
Micah McCormick: Water that comes up and gives life.
Micah McCormick: Eve is called the mother of all the living.
Micah McCormick: The Bible tells us Adam was formed from the dust of the ground.
Micah McCormick: It tells us Cain, their firstborn son, worked the ground.
Micah McCormick: This this kind of puzzle piece fittedness of male and female corresponds to land and water and all these other beautiful things in God's created world.
Micah McCormick: Something else that's beautiful about gender is that gender is enduring.
Micah McCormick: This is what one writer says.
Micah McCormick: She's not a Christian.
Micah McCormick: She says the startling similarity of gender roles in societies separated by vast distances of time and space does suggest that there's something fundamentally constant in gender that is grounded in concrete facts.
Micah McCormick: It's not a startling similarity if we believe that God has designed creation this way.
Micah McCormick: If God's designed that, then it would be natural if you go to different cultures, different civilizations, and they have very similar basic ideas about what's a man, what's a woman, how how do they function in society.
Micah McCormick: You can suppress God's design, but it keeps coming back.
Micah McCormick: It's enduring.
Micah McCormick: And that's a beautiful thing.
Micah McCormick: The beauty of male and female extends beyond marriage.
Micah McCormick: You can see it very acutely within marriage, yes.
Micah McCormick: But from the moment of conception, long before you're ever married, you are male or you're female.
Micah McCormick: For most all of you here, either you or your spouse is gonna die.
Micah McCormick: And you won't be married any longer.
Micah McCormick: You will still be male or female.
Micah McCormick: As wonderful as marriage is, Jesus says in the resurrection, they're not given in marriage.
Micah McCormick: Jesus never says we'll cease to be male and female even in the new creation.
Micah McCormick: Gender is enduring.
Micah McCormick: And it's beautiful the way that they work together.
Micah McCormick: When you think about male and female, Doug likes, Pastor Doug likes to use the illustration of dancing partners.
Micah McCormick: A give and a take is a beautiful thing.
Micah McCormick: Or you could think of music and singing, a melody and a harmony is a beautiful thing when it fits together.
Micah McCormick: Importance of gender, beauty of gender.
Micah McCormick: Let's get into some implications of gender.
Micah McCormick: I've already touched on some.
Micah McCormick: You could come up with probably more.
Micah McCormick: I'm going to give you five for tonight.
Micah McCormick: Here's the first one.
Micah McCormick: Since men and women are both in the image of God, we should respect each other rather than revile each other.
Micah McCormick: I know that's kind of like a will duh, Micah, kind of obviously.
Micah McCormick: That hasn't always been thought or practiced well.
Micah McCormick: Even in Christian history, you've got some heavy-hitting theologians, I'll name two, Augustine and Aquinas, who taught that women don't have as much of the image of God as men do.
Micah McCormick: Now, I I don't think anyone today that I know of would say that.
Micah McCormick: But if we're not careful, men and women can speak of each other in demeaning ways rather than honoring ways.
Micah McCormick: You know how men are.
Micah McCormick: Now, there's a way to say that where you're just playfully acknowledging our differences.
Micah McCormick: But there is a way to say that where you're flying right in the face of James chapter 3, verse 9.
Micah McCormick: With the tongue, we bless our Lord and Father, and with it we curse people who are made in God's likeness.
Micah McCormick: Second implication of gender.
Micah McCormick: Men and women should celebrate both their similarities and their differences.
Micah McCormick: There's more sameness than difference when it comes to men and women.
Micah McCormick: I mean, that's true of our bodies in comparison to a bird or a fish.
Micah McCormick: We're both made in the image of God.
Micah McCormick: We can both relate to God and to each other in ways that the animals can't.
Micah McCormick: We're both sinners, we can both be fully redeemed by Christ.
Micah McCormick: There's a lot of similarities there.
Micah McCormick: Sometimes Christians can kind of react against the culture in a kind of pendulum swing where we just only ever want to talk about the differences because the culture wants to flatten all those differences.
Micah McCormick: We don't need to swing all the way to that side.
Micah McCormick: Men are from Mars, women are from Venus.
Micah McCormick: No, they're both from planet Earth.
Micah McCormick: God made them both.
Micah McCormick: One wasn't evolving from apes, one was evolving from chimps.
Micah McCormick: We both together share this glorious common humanity.
Micah McCormick: They're different, and we shouldn't apologize that they're different or try to force them to be different.
Micah McCormick: Why did men are from Mars and women are from Venus sell so many copies?
Micah McCormick: Because there's something to that.
Micah McCormick: There's something to it.
Micah McCormick: Women, you have God's permission to be women.
Micah McCormick: Does someone else want to get up and that's fine?
Micah McCormick: Sometimes I just feel like I'd rather talk to another woman about a certain problem than my husband.
Micah McCormick: You don't have to apologize.
Micah McCormick: It's good to develop relationships with other women.
Micah McCormick: Maybe you've been watching too many romantic comedies.
Micah McCormick: There's not just going to be one person that magically fits all of your needs.
Micah McCormick: So female friendships are a wonderful thing.
Micah McCormick: Cultivate those.
Micah McCormick: Men, you have God's permission to be men.
Micah McCormick: Not to be uncaring or harsh, but it's okay to be a man.
Micah McCormick: I had a teacher once, you have to understand it's a very kind man.
Micah McCormick: One of his jokes was sometimes my wife will say, Listen, I'm a woman.
Micah McCormick: You have to see things from my perspective.
Micah McCormick: And I'll tell her, well, I'm sorry, but I can't because God made me to be a man.
Micah McCormick: Dwell in an understanding way with your wives, right?
Micah McCormick: It's not an excuse to be harsher on caring, but there's something different about men and women.
Micah McCormick: Now I haven't talked a lot about what that complementarity looks like, but let's think again about creation.
Micah McCormick: So there's a lot of similarity, but there's some differences there.
Micah McCormick: And it's a beautiful thing.
Micah McCormick: In the creation pattern, God forms a realm, and then he fills that realm.
Micah McCormick: So day one is light and dark, he forms it and divides it.
Micah McCormick: Then day four fills it with sun and moon and stars.
Micah McCormick: Day two, sea and sky formed, and then day five, he fills sea and sky with fish and with birds.
Micah McCormick: Day three, he makes the land, and then day six, the land is filled with animals and human beings.
Micah McCormick: That's the Genesis 1 creation story.
Micah McCormick: Now, Genesis 2 double clicks on the creation of male and female and expands and explains that more.
Micah McCormick: And when he makes men and women, what does Adam first do?
Micah McCormick: He's first called to name the animals.
Micah McCormick: He has to separate them into groups and form them into those groups.
Micah McCormick: And then Eve is the mother of all the living.
Micah McCormick: She comes and fills the garden with life, forming and filling.
Micah McCormick: Men tend to identify, to explore, to subdue.
Micah McCormick: Women tend to nest, to nurture, to adorn, to beautify.
Micah McCormick: Adam and Eve have different origins.
Micah McCormick: Adam's from the ground.
Micah McCormick: Eve is from a rib.
Micah McCormick: They have different curses.
Micah McCormick: Why does God tell Adam the ground is cursed?
Micah McCormick: Eve wasn't allowed to pick up a shovel?
Micah McCormick: No.
Micah McCormick: Why does God tell Eve your relationship with your husband is going to be hard?
Micah McCormick: Adam didn't have to care about his relationship with his wife?
Micah McCormick: No.
Micah McCormick: But men tend to be oriented toward the work of the world.
Micah McCormick: Land forming.
Micah McCormick: Women tend to be oriented toward the work of relationships.
Micah McCormick: And that's a good thing.
Micah McCormick: You see it everywhere in the world.
Micah McCormick: Every Sunday morning, we have a confession of sin that is for both men and women.
Micah McCormick: But men and women can sometimes have different special arenas of temptation.
Micah McCormick: Let me give you an example.
Micah McCormick: 2 Timothy 2 verse 8.
Micah McCormick: And feel free to write these down if you want to, or you can listen.
Micah McCormick: This is what Paul says.
Micah McCormick: Therefore, I want the men in every place to pray, lifting up holy hands without anger or argument.
Micah McCormick: Also, the women are to dress themselves in modest clothing with decency and good sense, not with elaborate hairstyles, gold, pearls, or expensive apparel.
Micah McCormick: When's the last time you heard two men get in an argument and it culminated with, well, I've got a better head of hair than you do.
Micah McCormick: Hands are for strength.
Micah McCormick: Hair is for beauty.
Micah McCormick: Men tend to be tempted to use the strength that God has given them rather than to lead in worship and protection and care to dominate other people.
Micah McCormick: And God has given women this beauty to reflect his own radiant glory, to bring harmony to the world around them.
Micah McCormick: And women can be tempted instead of using their beauty to point to God's glory, to say, everyone, take a look right here.
Micah McCormick: Then later on in the same passage, he says, For you know how, like a father with his children, we exhorted each one of you and encouraged you and charged you to walk in a manner worthy of God.
Micah McCormick: Paul's comparing himself to a nursing mother.
Micah McCormick: He's not saying women can't exhort.
Micah McCormick: But when he thinks of cherishing and nurturing, his mind naturally goes to mothers.
Micah McCormick: And when he thinks of exhorting, charging, his mind just naturally goes to fathers.
Micah McCormick: There's one pastor in Kentucky, Sam Amadi, he says, men and women have different superpowers.
Micah McCormick: It's a great thing.
Micah McCormick: It's a good thing that we have men and women.
Micah McCormick: Third implication of gender.
Micah McCormick: Gender roles in the home and in the church are not arbitrary.
Micah McCormick: I'm making a little bit of an assumption here.
Micah McCormick: I know with this particular audience, I couldn't do this in a lot of places, but I'm making an assumption that most all of you know the Bible repeatedly says that husbands are the head of the wives and wives are called to submit, that in the church, men are called to be leaders, teachers.
Micah McCormick: Uh wives and women are called to support.
Micah McCormick: That's in our statement of faith for all of our members to affirm, but more importantly, it's in Scripture itself.
Micah McCormick: The point I'm making here is it's not just an arbitrary test of obedience.
Micah McCormick: It's part of the makeup of the design of God's world.
Micah McCormick: God didn't decide I want to have humans.
Micah McCormick: I'm going to give them different bodies and then let's just give them different roles and see what happens.
Micah McCormick: It's not as though after the fall, God said, Boy, we gotta punish them.
Micah McCormick: All right, any meeny miny mo, one gender has to be under the other one's toe.
Micah McCormick: That's not what's happening here.
Micah McCormick: Our roles in the home, in the church reflect something of God's beautiful plan that corresponds to our bodies, our makeup, so many things in life.
Micah McCormick: It's not arbitrary.
Micah McCormick: There's something else even more significant about that plan of God.
Micah McCormick: It's not just that it tends to work better in those spheres when people lean into those roles as men and women.
Micah McCormick: It's pointing us to a picture of Christ in the church.
Micah McCormick: There's gospel image implications of male and female.
Micah McCormick: Listen to Ephesians 5.
Micah McCormick: The husband is head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church.
Micah McCormick: He's the savior of the body.
Micah McCormick: Now, unfortunately, we don't, as men, model Christ as we should.
Micah McCormick: But the opportunity and responsibility is there.
Micah McCormick: Verse 25 goes on to say, husbands love your wives just as Christ loved the church and gave himself for her to make her holy, cleansing her with the washing of water by the word.
Micah McCormick: This is the result of a master architect.
Micah McCormick: Brides are showing something to all of us about our own eschatological destiny.
Micah McCormick: I know that was a mouthful.
Micah McCormick: I said it on purpose to make you think.
Micah McCormick: We all are called to be the bride of Christ, and that's where we're going.
Micah McCormick: Number four, fourth of five implications.
Micah McCormick: Transgenderism distorts God's permanent creation pattern.
Micah McCormick: Doesn't art vandalism bother you?
Micah McCormick: You know, art thieves, that should bother you too, but at least they recognize the value of the piece of art.
Micah McCormick: They're trying to make money off of it by stealing it.
Micah McCormick: When someone just dumps a bucket of paint on a Rembrandt, they are defacing something that has been cherished and loved as beautiful for generations.
Micah McCormick: And that should bother us.
Micah McCormick: When somebody takes a razor blade to gender, they're defacing God's artwork.
Micah McCormick: They wouldn't, I know, all explicitly intend to do that, but that is what's taking place.
Micah McCormick: It's a serious thing and it should trouble us.
Micah McCormick: It's not to say we shouldn't have compassion.
Micah McCormick: All humans are made in the image of God.
Micah McCormick: No matter what you do, you can't make yourself unhuman.
Micah McCormick: Humans remain in the image of God.
Micah McCormick: People can be suffering from all kinds of confused and conflicted thoughts and feelings.
Micah McCormick: So absolutely we should have compassion.
Micah McCormick: But if if compassion is the only note that we ever strike, and if compassion leads to affirmation, we're running the terrible risk of telling someone your own feelings or decisions are more important than what God actually says in his word and about his design.
Micah McCormick: We don't want to do that.
Micah McCormick: People today will sometimes try to entirely distinguish sex and gender.
Micah McCormick: They will say the the body parts you have, the chromosome structure you have, okay, that's one thing that's entirely disconnected from what it means to be male or female.
Micah McCormick: That concept of male or female is just completely culturally imposed.
Micah McCormick: And we we acknowledge there are some features of what is sometimes presumed to be male or female that is culturally imposed, that does go beyond scripture.
Micah McCormick: But but that that claim, well, it's a it's a pretty fantastic and new claim in world history, I'll say that.
Micah McCormick: But more importantly, it goes against the opening pages of Genesis where God formed man from the dust of the ground, male and female.
Micah McCormick: That's his design from the very beginning.
Micah McCormick: Somebody might say, well, okay, but what about people with other body problems?
Micah McCormick: Don't we try to help them?
Micah McCormick: If someone's deaf, we give them cochlear implants.
Micah McCormick: If someone loses a leg, we give them a prosthetic leg.
Micah McCormick: If someone is born in the wrong body, shouldn't we try to help them?
Micah McCormick: Those are very different categories.
Micah McCormick: Deafness, blindness, those are things that came as a result of the fall.
Micah McCormick: Jesus heals blind people.
Micah McCormick: Jesus never tries to change someone's gender.
Micah McCormick: Instead, he actually says God, he affirms that God created them male and female from the very beginning.
Micah McCormick: So those are totally different categories there.
Micah McCormick: Yes, there are some people that are born with some measure of body ambiguity.
Micah McCormick: Unusual chromosome structure, certain parts that are normally male or female could be absent in people or combined in people.
Micah McCormick: That's sometimes grouped under the general label of intersex.
Micah McCormick: And we have to acknowledge that yes, in a fallen world there are all kinds of challenges and difficulties.
Micah McCormick: And there's good news for those who are redeemed in Christ, we're all getting new bodies anyway.
Micah McCormick: They'll all be perfectly restored.
Micah McCormick: Whatever was was we were born with or done to us, or it's renewed and it will be renewed in Jesus Christ.
Micah McCormick: So, yes, we want to have a special compassion for that group of people.
Micah McCormick: It's a very small group of people, but I think we also all know that's not what transgenderism as a movement is about.
Micah McCormick: They're not trying to primarily show compassion to this category of intersex people.
Micah McCormick: They're wanting to assert human autonomy over everything, including their own bodies, including God Himself.
Micah McCormick: Fifth, last implication of gender.
Micah McCormick: Men and women need one another.
Micah McCormick: So I said the first implication was that men and women are made in God's image, they shouldn't revile each other.
Micah McCormick: The Bible takes us a lot more beyond that.
Micah McCormick: You know, it's not just like from a distance we tolerate each other.
Micah McCormick: No, the Bible's design is that men and women should partner together in all kinds of wonderful ways.
Micah McCormick: 1 Corinthians 11, Paul's does write about some differences with men and women, but he says this at one point.
Micah McCormick: In the Lord, a woman is not independent of man, and man is not independent of woman.
Micah McCormick: For just as woman came from man, so man comes through woman, and all things come from God.
Micah McCormick: God in his wisdom created males and females, and he designed them to be together.
Micah McCormick: One writer says, it is always in relation to their opposite that man and woman are what they are in themselves.
Micah McCormick: Chew on that a little bit.
Micah McCormick: Or this is what Alistair Roberts says.
Micah McCormick: It's not about difference from each other, but difference for each other.
Micah McCormick: And I'm using the plural here intentionally.
Micah McCormick: Again, you see it very acutely within a marriage, but God has designed for there to be whole societies of men and women.
Micah McCormick: Sometimes in science fiction books or a movie, there'll be like this undiscovered tribe of people that's only one gender.
Micah McCormick: You know what I mean?
Micah McCormick: It's always women for some reason, though.
Micah McCormick: I don't know why that is.
Micah McCormick: If you have the the Amazon or the distant space, it's always a tribe of women for some reason.
Micah McCormick: But if there was, if there was a tribe ever of only men or women, obviously they wouldn't last very long.
Micah McCormick: But it wouldn't be very good.
Micah McCormick: You might think it'd be no, it wouldn't be great.
Micah McCormick: It wouldn't be very good the way that God designed things.
Micah McCormick: The vision of male and female, it begins in the home.
Micah McCormick: When children are born, ideally, they are socialized to love and respect and honor a father and a mother.
Micah McCormick: Unfortunately, it doesn't always work out that way, but that's the ideal.
Micah McCormick: And then as they grow up, they're introduced to a whole society of men and women.
Micah McCormick: So again, this swells even beyond the wonderful incubator of a home out into the world, this glory of men and women and their independence.
Micah McCormick: Think about our Lord Jesus Christ.
Micah McCormick: His closest companions were the twelve disciples, were twelve men.
Micah McCormick: But read to the gospels.
Micah McCormick: He had all kinds of wonderful, affectionate friendships with women.
Micah McCormick: Some of those women were the ones that were able to announce the resurrection.
Micah McCormick: What a privilege.
Micah McCormick: Or consider the Apostle Paul.
Micah McCormick: It seems like he traveled mostly with men.
Micah McCormick: That's what we read about.
Micah McCormick: Barnabas, Luke, Mark.
Micah McCormick: But then you read Romans 16, you think, wow, Paul had wonderful relationships with godly women, and he honored them in so many ways.
Micah McCormick: So he didn't just write woman's not independent of man or man.
Micah McCormick: He lived that out.
Micah McCormick: And we as a church, churches of the Lord Jesus Christ, have an opportunity to showcase the splendor of a family of God, of brothers and sisters living and partnering together in harmony and joy.
Micah McCormick: That can be an incredible testimony to a world that's confused.
Micah McCormick: We're not in our church trying like a corporation to be like this androgynous bunch of robots.
Micah McCormick: No, it's healthy masculinity, healthy femininity is a good thing in a church.
Micah McCormick: And the world can look at that and say, that's so beautiful.
Micah McCormick: I I I need to understand why that is and what brings them together and how they relate to one another so well.
Micah McCormick: I was talking to a friend of mine once who was a fellow member of a church with me.
Micah McCormick: And he said, Yeah, when I come on Sunday, I don't really talk to the any women.
Micah McCormick: And I said, why not?
Micah McCormick: He said, Well, I don't really have anything in common with them.
Micah McCormick: And I said, What about Jesus?
Micah McCormick: I mean, that that is why we're gathering here, right?
Micah McCormick: We're not gathering primarily for hunting hobbies or you know, whatever else it might be.
Micah McCormick: We're gathering because we have the same Savior.
Micah McCormick: And we have a partnership and role to play together using our corresponding gifts, talents, abilities to glorify our Savior's name.
Micah McCormick: Gender is important.
Micah McCormick: God sets it out from the earliest pages of Scripture as one of the first indicators for how we reflect his image well in the world.
Micah McCormick: It's a beautiful thing.
Micah McCormick: And as we ponder it and ponder it and ponder it, I think we can see more and more and more of the profound beauty of it.
Micah McCormick: Pastor Doug has a nice refrain for male and female, so I'll close with his refrain here.
Micah McCormick: This is his summary refrain.
Micah McCormick: Distinct by design by equal in dignity, united for God's glory.
Micah McCormick: Let's pray.
Micah McCormick: Lord, we confess there are many mysterious things in the world.
Micah McCormick: And we don't ever we don't understand everything about men and women.
Micah McCormick: But we are grateful that you've made us to be male and female.
Micah McCormick: We're grateful that we can serve one another in love.
Micah McCormick: We pray, Lord, for all the relationships in this church, especially the marriages, but even beyond the marriages, how we can love each other as brothers and sisters, that those within our body would be compelled first by your word.
Micah McCormick: We don't let the world set our agenda for what's important or what's not important.
Micah McCormick: Your word does that.
Micah McCormick: And yet we want to showcase to the world a world full of confusion, uncertainty, fear.
Micah McCormick: We want to showcase to them something glorious and splendid.
Micah McCormick: From the beginning, very good.
Micah McCormick: We want to showcase even a redeemed humanity where we lay down our weapons, we don't clamor for power or snipe at one another, but the body builds itself up in love because Christ the head is making us his glorious bride.
Micah McCormick: Thank you for your work, O Lord, in us.
Micah McCormick: And even as we sing, may the beauty of our blended and different voices remind us of your wonderful, masterful architectural design.
Micah McCormick: In Jesus' name, amen.