In the sermon titled '3. The Moral Revolution: Transgenderism', Paul Carrington discusses the rapid cultural shift towards transgenderism, which he views as part of a broader 'moral revolution'. He argues that this shift represents a departure from traditional Christian values and is driven by secular liberalism, which he describes as a new form of religion focused on individual autonomy and the rejection of Christian norms. Carrington emphasizes the importance of recognizing this as a spiritual warfare, where Christians must actively engage and uphold biblical truths. He references Genesis to affirm the biblical view of distinct male and female identities and warns against the dangers of redefining these foundational truths. The sermon also addresses the role of language in shaping cultural norms, particularly through the use of pronouns, and calls on Christians to respond with truth and compassion. Ultimately, Carrington urges the church to remain steadfast in its beliefs and to actively participate in spreading the Gospel as a solution to the moral and cultural challenges presented by transgenderism.

Why don't we start off this afternoon with a word of prayer? Lord many of us were on that hell-bent journey Lord racing towards our own destruction and you plucked us Lord you plucked us from the fire and Set our feet on a solid rock you put a new song in our mouth Lord even praise to your holy name And Lord as we consider this afternoon what we have before us, we so beg you and ask you to have mercy upon us, Lord, as a people, to understand the way your words apply. And we pray, Lord, for our broader culture, the one that we live in now, that you would yet send your word forth, your power forth to save and to shine light in the midst of darkness, that men and women would would bow their knee to you in worship and praise. Lord, May it be so, may we see it increasingly in our time now. So help us Lord as we go through this and just be glorified we ask in Christ's name.

Amen. Amen. Well, this afternoon we're going to be tackling the topic of transgenderism. And as a culture, as a civilization, we're really venturing into an area that no civilization has ever ventured into before. And we've talked so far in the last couple of weeks we looked at the moral revolution in terms of how did we get here.

Last week we spent some time looking at homosexuality and today we're looking at the T in the LGBT movement, transgenderism. And so before I begin though I thought it was actually very appropriate to sing that song while I have is Christ because it is very easy in fact Nothing is easier than to just decry The sins of the of the current times that we're living in and nothing is more tempting to confess the sins of other people. But to take a hard look at ourselves is another thing altogether. It's easy to look at current events and miss what's going on in terms of the broader, deeper war that's happening all around us. And really the goal of what we have today is is to uncover the total depravity of man and the scandalous nature of his sin because only by doing that only by looking at it in the way that it really is can we really wound the conscience of men and women and lead captives to Christ?

And so we're hoping today, we don't want to just gather information. The whole purpose of these sessions isn't just to inform and educate, but it's to equip us, to help us to be able to go into the world and to bring the Word of God to bear to dying men and to dying women. And so, it's when the Emperor sees that he has no clothes that he applies and looks outside of himself for help. And that's what our hope is today to reveal the truth of the matter of what's going on. And so ours is a rescue mission.

That's what we really want to frame everything around. And even with a small measure of the mind of Christ, even if you've just come to a very light understanding of Christ, What you will find is that you will have a burden and there will be a grief for the men and women that we have all around us. And on the one side what we're trying to do is we're living in a culture where we're trying to avoid imbibing All the evils that the culture is just throwing at us and feeding at us feeding us But on the other side it's to go into that world with the gospel light and to bring the truth to bear And so one of the things as I've been going through all of this, you know, there's a temptation to be angry There's a temptation even to despair like what's going on with our world. What's going on with our our nation? But what we need to do is look to the one who is ruling and reigning even right now.

And it's helpful for me, it was helpful just going through all of this to spend a lot of time even in self-examination. Like, where do I stand, Lord? What is my position? Even this morning there was a lot of call to examining ourselves. Not so much am I saved or am I not saved, but what are the motions of my heart?

And I always find when I'm looking at various men who've walked with Christ and have a deep understanding of Christ, one of the ones that come to my mind quite often is John Newton and I just want to read a quote and hopefully this just sets the frame and the theme as we go through what we're talking about today. He says, as to myself, I have had much experience of the deceitfulness of my own heart, much warfare on account of the principle of indwelling sin. Without this experience I should not have known so much of the wisdom power grace and compassion of Jesus I have good reason to commend him to others as a faithful shepherd an infallible physician an Unchangeable friend I have found him such Had he not been with me and were he not mighty to forgive and to deliver, I had long ago been trodden down as mire in the streets. It is of his grace and mercy that I am what I am, having obtained help from him." And so this is what the frame of mind I think we all want to approach this as we go forward today We don't want to again just be educated but hopefully what we're learning is going to drive us to our knees to pray and Not only just drive us to our knees but also drive us to the highways and to the hedges to to call dead men And women to life in Christ and so in this series we've been looking at the moral Revolution and the lightning speed it's as though it's like a horse you can imagine with its ears back frothing at its mouth as it's racing, clamping down on a bit towards a cliff with millions of people cheering it on.

This is the moral or sexual revolution that we're observing all around us today. And what's really happening is we're being exposed to a new religion. And it's the religion of secular liberalism. It's where, remember what we said two weeks ago, man must worship. Man isn't just turning from Christianity or a Christian ethic to nothing.

But what he's turning from, he's turning from maybe a Christian ethic that's cultural Christianity. But he's turning to something else, and that is that secular liberalism, or you could call it Romans 1 religion. It's this active suppression of the truth where man is guilty because he's actively trying to keep down the truth that he knows. He's active in suppressing or insisting he doesn't actually know what the Bible tells him he does know and its chief virtue in this new religion is Autonomy that's really everything that it focuses on and the central aim is to destroy the quote-unquote myth of Christianity that's it has to be banished in order for this new moral regime to take its place. And one of the things we looked at was evolution, right?

We talked about evolution. I really think this is so important because evolution makes this argument in the contention that we're nothing more than matter. The human body is nothing more than a collection of atoms and molecules and tissues. And when you go outside of the human, you get the broader world. And the broader world is just the same thing, just atoms and things colliding into one another.

And to make it even worse is that we say in this modern day that there are no Categorical distinctions and this is very much at the root of transgenderism There's no actual distinction between a human being and an animal A human being is just a little bit more evolved than an ape, but we're still in the same camp. And we have no real special value or status. We're just mammals. We're just animals. That's really all we are.

And the thing, you know, as I was looking at this, The amazing irony of all of this is that society has an increasingly low view of humanity. In its attempt, think about it like this, the irony, in its attempt to put forward humanistic religion, what has actually happened? The value of humanity has come down. Just like feminism, right? Feminism seeks to elevate women, but what does it do?

It actually undermines the woman and destroys the woman. It's amazing. The world's ways are totally opposite to this actual interest that you would think the people purporting it would have they actually Grapple with these things and hold to them only to their own destruction And so this is what we're going to be looking at today, but before we do, we want to actually frame everything also in the idea of this being a spiritual warfare, right? When we go upstream and we actually see what's being aimed at, there's four words that this entire moral debacle we have ourselves in is really focused around and it's those first four words that we find when we open up the book of Genesis the first words of the Bible in the beginning God That is where the war is primarily being waged and we're locked in this spiritual warfare But Paul reminds us in Ephesians that it's not against people. It's easy to look at people and get angry But when we realize that we're not warring against people but against principalities and against powers against the rulers of the darkness of this age, against spiritual hosts of wickedness in heavenly places.

Paul makes that very, very clear. And what he also says is this, is that really the church cannot simply be passive. We're not spectators in this warfare at all. We're not here to see what will happen, but we're here as soldiers. We've been enlisted in this war to fight and to actually bring the truth and the Word of God to bear.

And so based on the premise that we're involved in a spiritual warfare, what does Paul do? He goes on to say this, he says, Therefore, because we're in a spiritual warfare, he says, therefore, take up the whole armor of God that you may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all to stand. So on the one side, to keep ourselves from the encroaching spiritual darkness that is all around us, but on the other side to be girded about with the weapons so that we can actually fight an offensive war. And he goes on later after describing the actual, you know, the helmet of salvation, the belt of truth, and all these various elements that make up the armor. He goes on to say this, he asked for prayer.

What does he ask for prayer for? That utterance may be given to me, that I may open my mouth boldly to make known the mystery of the gospel." And so you see this whole thing. Spiritual warfare, the church is an active participant that goes now boldly into the world to bring the Word of God to bear. Dr. James Anderson, he's a professor over at Reform Theological Seminary, he says this, there is a push to mainstream transgenderism, a word that probably didn't exist a few decades ago, and to normalize it and to require approval of it and it demands a response from the church we must avoid superficial responses we need to address this with a biblical worldview that has an established doctrine of creation fall mankind All of these elements brought to bear on it.

And so today we're going to open up our Bibles. We're just going to take a quick look at Genesis 1. Then we're going to talk about transgenderism and talk about what it actually is. Then we're going to go into some actual examples of the social chaos that we're seeing all around us. And then finally, the pronoun wars.

What's actually going on with the pronouns? And I think they're just as I look at this, it's shocking. And then we'll end on that note. But when we open up our Bibles in Genesis 1, we see the word of the Lord right there at the very beginning. And as I said, the war is being really waged against the book of Genesis and the author of the book of Genesis, God himself.

In verse 27, it says of chapter 1, so God created man in his own image. In the image of God he created him, male and female, he created them. Notice the repetition in order to convey certainty. He says the word created three times. It's the undoing of the evolution argument.

It's in one verse created, created, created. He's leaving no room for, you know, theistic evolution or any other type of philosophy that's been popular today. And then it goes on to say this, it follows with a command, then God blessed them and said to them, be fruitful and multiply, fill the earth and subdue it. And so what was God's intention when he made us? Well, it was very clear that mankind would exist as two separate distinct sexes that would worship him and honor him and even in a fallen world right sex gender Marriage these are some of the most beautiful gifts that are given to humanity and they still exist today But think about man he goes he goes on to describe the animals and how Adam names the animals the only creature That was made in the image of God was man The only creature out of all the millions and millions of creatures.

And what was the purpose of this? Well, the purpose of God creating man in his image was to display the glory of God, the Creator's glory. The very reason we exist is for that purpose. We were made as we hear in Psalms a little lower than the angels, crowned with honor and glory. We were created to rule over the entire earth and not only that but to bring all of nature into subjection to God and how does God how does it end in chapter chapter 1 verse 31 of Genesis it goes on to say this then God saw everything that he made and indeed it was very good That's God's analysis of his creation and man was the pinnacle of that and human life is really all about God but what man has forgot?

Man is not God. We're created in the image of God to display his glory, but we ourselves are not God. And so our existence is utterly dependent on his reality, who God is. Everything that we are rests on who God is. It's so important.

And as a race or as individuals, we either prosper or we decline based on our relationship with this God, with this creator. As a society or as a civilization, we will either prosper or we will decline and decay based on how we actually see and view and worship this God. And so the challenge here is this, man has his own ideas, he wagers this by erasing the image of God that he bears. Man is making a wager that somehow he will be set free, but what does he do? He destroys himself in the process because he's made in the image of God.

He's made as the image of God. And so how do you get rid of the image of God? You can only do that by committing, as it were, suicide spiritually. And so this is what man has done. And this is the challenge with the moral revolution, is that it just doesn't have any breaks whatsoever.

It can't stop at the last abomination, can it? Why can't it? Why? Because it was built on a foundation of no moral absolutes. Nothing is certain.

Nothing is necessarily true. North might be north, but then again, north might be south. Man is totally destroying all of the foundations of simple basic human understanding forget even Christianity in the sense of if someone born again or not but just a simple knowledge that man has by nature That up is up and down is down. We're told now well, it may not necessarily be the case in the sense of man's decision to just define and redefine everything for himself. And so, in regards to transgenderism, this is much like the square circle we talked about last week.

You remember that? We talked about the idea of these two words homosexual marriage are two things that don't and can't go together because God created and defined marriage and just in the same way God created a man or he created a woman. And so for a man to say he may not quite be a man or a woman to say she may not be a woman is the exact same thing of having a square circle. It's an impossibility altogether. But it's this this speed at which things are happening, it's happening so so quickly.

And the reason it's happening so quickly is because it's simply the logical extension of the same philosophy. And what I mean by that is that nothing is just coming out of the blue. Transgenderism isn't just all of a sudden on the scene, but we made that argument at the beginning that things happened over time to lay the groundwork so that now we find ourselves in a situation where all of this is happening around it. But what does transgenderism represent? It really focuses on a statement that the devil made to Eve in the garden, that you will be like God.

And so what's happening today is that laws are now being put into place and entrenched in society that's allowing people to craft their own identities and then demand that society treats them accordingly. The question is, well, why should the structure of my body inform my identity? What is the prevailing thought of today? Well, your sex is just something superficial, but it's not the authentic you. You're someone else and something else.

It's just the surface. It goes on to argue, how do you feel inside? That's who you really are. Maybe you're a boy, maybe you're a girl, but you could be something in between on this spectrum that keeps somehow broadening further and further. And what you see here is this fragmentation of humanity that really has never existed.

This idea of a man but not a male, a woman but not a female. There's this division that you see, a dualism that's happening within, it's almost like Gnosticism, this idea that men can be divided inside of themselves versus being an intrinsic whole who we actually are when you see someone you just recognize them to be a man well that may not be the case because of something that's going on inside of them utter folly and ridiculousness that up until now you would you wouldn't even imagine you wouldn't even be able to envision. But what is the truth? Well, we just saw it in Genesis chapter 1 that there are only two sexes and this is how the human race is divided, right? This whole word gender, by the way, really interesting.

When you were younger, for some of us that are a little older, you'll remember when you're filling out your license or going somewhere, it wasn't asking you what your gender is, it was sex, and you would have an M or an F, and you put a check mark beside it. Well, if you go today, most likely what you'll see is no longer sex, male, female, but gender. And so, man is now making a distinction between sex and gender versus what God has said is the only distinction male and female. This is what's happening in our culture today. And so God was very clear to maintain this distinction between male and female.

It's divinely established in his moral law. In Deuteronomy 22, we read this about man and woman. He says, a man shall not wear anything that pertains to a man. A woman shall not wear anything that pertains to a man, nor shall a man put on a woman's garment, for all who do so are an abomination to the Lord your God." Now the argument is not only dress putting on of apparel but the argument is entire bodily change that people are advocating for. That you change the way your body actually functions, the organs and so on, to represent and reflect what you think you really are versus what God has said that you are.

You know, in the past you would call a man who wears a woman's clothing a transvestite. Well today we've got this other idea of transgenderism. This is the depth that things are going in the pace. And there's a woman by the name of Camille Paglia who's a I would call her almost like the high priestess of lesbianism. She's a woman that you know she's really well spoken.

She's a philosopher and a teacher, a professor at a university. And this is what she says. She says this, that nature made humans a sexually reproducing species, but then asks, why not defy nature? Fate, not God, has given us this flesh we have absolute claim to our bodies and may do with them as we see fit and this woman is very very influential also as an author right there's this idea of no sense of real accountability at all it's this idea of let's be rebels and defy nature but by defying nature they're also advocating for a defiance of nature's God who is the creator of all things, the author of all reality. And so what we're seeing in Romans in transgenderism is really Romans 1 on steroids where the worst that Romans 1 pointed to you could go and look at the book of Genesis chapter 19 and see Sodom and Gomorrah but transgenderism goes into as I said an entirely other world altogether It's it's breaking any bounds that have ever and here to for even been imagined by men transvestites one thing But changing the structure of your body to reflect who you really or who you think you really are is Unheard of and this is it this is the if you think about it it was utterly inconceivable even a generation ago.

And I was asking Scott and Mike their opinions on this, and Scott said this regarding transgenderism. It is the single greatest denial of undeniable reality to come upon our culture in history. And even more than homosexuality, right, this new phase of this moral revolution attacks what it means to be a human being. And even the sodomite wave that we just we talked about last week, it didn't go so far as to deny the basic biological distinctions that exist between men and women. But what does this all say?

Well, Romans 1 on steroids, it says God gave them over to a debased mind. I mean, there's no basis, there's nothing underneath it, so you keep falling without any bottom to hit unless God grants repentance and turning. So what we're seeing here is something that I think all of us need to we need to be aware of so that we have an actual way of thinking about as we go through our Bibles and as we meet with people and talk to them because what does the Bible say in Psalm 139 we use this when we go and preach at the abortion clinic for you formed my inward parts you covered me in my mother's womb I will praise you for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Marvelous are your works and that my soul knows very well." It's not accidental. To be born male is to be male And to be born a woman or a female is to be a female.

It's a direct affront to God It's almost like saying God you got the wiring messed up when you made me or a total denial of God altogether When you think about this whole idea of transgenderism, but God has formed us. It's only the fall and our own sin and the culture purporting and putting forward a false concept that people are now buying into and it's leading to their utter destruction. You know, this is the challenge, right? 40% of people who claim to be transgenders either have tried to commit suicide or have committed suicide. It's tragic.

It's tragic. 40%, that's huge. That's like 300 times the average in America right now. But what is the problem? Well people are trying to to live according to an ethic incompatible with humanity.

That's the problem. And when you try to do that What does it lead you to? Utter despair. To the point where we read last week in Ecclesiastes where you actually end up praising those who have never existed or wish you had never existed. And this is again, Ecclesiastes represents this so well.

You know, Ecclesiastes is really teaching us what Augustine said is that we are restless until we find our rest in him. That's the only and greatest hope that mankind has. The cure for the transgender person is being, right now we're being told it's just that they need social acceptance and if we can just socially accept them then we'll find that the the rate of suicide goes down but that is not the truth is it the cure isn't social acceptability The cure is the gospel of Jesus Christ and a man or woman turning from a debased mind by the mercy of God to understanding who they are created as we said to be true worshipers of God. And so this is the challenge that we have. And we get to the point now though in our culture where social chaos is underway.

It's dominating the headlines. You can't, if you go tomorrow, it's guaranteed somewhere in the country that you're going to find something to do with transgenderism or the moral revolution on the front cover of the newspapers. And this is the challenge that we have because civilizations, the reason I'm going into this right now, the social chaos, is because civilizations tend to follow the logical implications of their worldview. It's important that you see the fruit as a result of what's actually going on underneath the earth. And so it's a time right now where I just think it's important that we behold the chaos that ensues when you attempt to blow apart the created order that God has put into place.

You know, as the family disintegrates all around us, again as a result of the moral revolution that we're in, which was again part of the core goal to undermine the family, What we're seeing is as the family declines, you're seeing deviancy increase or elevate. And this is just simply the the result of untethering from God's intended design. Now we're being told that biology is irrelevant. And if we could look at this, we could go over to New Zealand where there's a powerlifter, a man by the name of Laurel Hubbard who used to be a male champion weightlifter but now is competing in the Olympics as a female. And surprise of surprise he's winning everything.

Or we could talk about Mac Beggs, who's a man who wrestles high school teenage girls, who just happened to win his second straight title in Texas this past year. But even if we don't go far afield, we can look very close, just this past week where a man masquerading as a woman named Christine, he won the primary for Vermont governor for the Democratic Party, heralded as a landmark occasion. And what we also see, by the way, is this, is that politics is always downstream from culture, right? So when a person, a man, Who's now claiming to be a woman has won the primary? For governor that tells you a lot about the culture that we're living in It's not that politics leads politics normally follows the culture You're in the news this past week.

We had Jack Phillips who is in the news again after 2012. You might have heard that name. He runs a place in Colorado called the Masterpiece Bake or Cake Shop and in 2012 he refused to bake a cake for a homosexual wedding. Well It went up to the Human Rights Commission in Colorado, and what happened is that he actually won that case. But do you think they're going to rest and say, well, he won that, we'll try to find someone else this past week?

They go right back to Jack Phillips, but instead of a homosexual couple coming to Jack Phillips, an attorney, a man by the name of Autumn, if you can believe it, she orders a cake or he orders a cake to celebrate transgenderism, you know, blue on the inside and pink on the outside. Well, I want you to listen to this just for a second and notice the inevitable collision that takes place between religious liberty and the new morality. Listen to this. This is the attorney who's now suing Jack Phillips and has brought this complaint. It reads like a tantrum.

Phillips declined to create the cake with the blue and pink design because it would have celebrated messages contrary to his religious belief that sex, the status of being male or female, is given by God, is biologically determined, is not determined by perceptions or feelings, and cannot be chosen or changed. That's what they put in the official legal complaint. Who is to say that there's a God who says who you are is really who you are What an affront to man that people can't choose who they think they are This is it. This is what we're facing now I want to turn your attention to a lady by the name of Hannah, a 37-year-old. See if you can get this.

37-year-old woman, a real, this is a woman now, a woman who is in a shelter for recovering addicts. But guess what's happened? She's been forced now to share a room, A small double room with a transgender man, an actual man. And it's a room that's very small. You've got two double beds that are about five feet apart.

Well, she can't even sleep at night. This 37-year-old young lady. And This man is lying in the bed on the other side of the room facial hair check chest hair Check combat boots Check he's been married before by the way to a woman and right now his fiance is pregnant So when she calls the authorities she was told that she was the one engaged in discrimination for describing her new roommate as a man. And so other women in this home, in this whatever it is, this shelter, a lot of them are abused women Right there abuse there's a reason they're at the shelter and some of them are having flashbacks to abuse and all these different things But it matters not here's the response and this is a quote quote We're all about inclusion and it's unfortunate that you feel this way. Deal with it or leave, end quote.

And so this is the culture we're living in. I want to end with one more here just to help paint the picture. This one is probably to me the most baffling one. There's a college up in Massachusetts called Wellesley College. It's an all-women's college that happens to have a girl who is now asking to be recognized as Timothy at the college.

Well, as a sophomore, what did she do? Timothy, now this woman who's saying that she's Timothy, she decided to run for a seat on the student government as the diversity officer to promote cultural diversity. But things backfired. How did they backfire? Well, how can a white male be put in charge of diversity at a university?

The person blocking her election, there's an actual movement that blocked her election, said this, I thought he'd do a perfectly fine job, but it just felt inappropriate to have a white man there. This is the world. The Conclusion is a woman can't be the diversity officer because she's a white male This is the insanity of a nation and as a culture that is riding off a cliff into the abyss It's it's it's a shame. It's it's Unbelievable to think about this And what are they trying to do? Normalization.

Remember last week we quoted from a book by the name of After the Ball written by two sodomites and what did they say? At the, At least at the outset, we seek desensitization and nothing more. Just make, in their case, homosexuality, or in this case, transsexualism or transgenderism, another thing. And people begin to just accept it as normal. There's a man, a pastor by the name of Carl Truman, he's an OPC pastor, and he went up to Massachusetts actually to go and preach and fill in for a friend of his.

And as he was there, another friend took him to Northampton. What's Northampton? Well, it's the famous home of Jonathan Edwards where he had an early part of his ministry there He wrote an article just the other day and he says this every now and then I'm reminded of just how much the world has changed He says this I was at a Starbucks And there was a lady who was, as we would say in Blighty, he's from Scotland, clearly a bloke dressed as a bird. What surprised them, it wasn't the scene that you see a man in Starbucks dressed as a woman, but look what he says, he says this. What surprised me, however, was how everybody else in the coffee shop, including, I have to confess, myself, simply went about their business as if everything was normal.

And of course, the reason was simple, everything was indeed normal. The sight of a man dressed as a woman is no longer weird. It is part of the rich tapestry of everyday life. My grandfather would have had no categories even to compute such a sight. But now it passes without so much as a snigger or a nudge nudge.

So he went out walking through Northampton and it doesn't end there. He's walking through Northampton and he's getting strange looks as he's walking past. Why? Because he's wearing khakis and he says what gave him away was the wingtips. He was wearing wingtip shoes and to walk in a culture now with I guess wingtips is not all that accepted.

So people are looking at him like, what's wrong with this guy over here? Well, he sends, he ends the article, he says this, Two things came to mind. The beautiful young things of the reformed Renaissance, he's talking about the young, restless, and reformed. He says the beautiful young things of the reformed Renaissance have a hard choice to make in the next decade. You really do kid only yourselves if you think you can be an orthodox Christian and be at the same time cool enough and hip enough to cut it in the wider world.

Maintaining biblical sexual ethics will be the equivalent in our culture of being a white supremacist. This is his evaluation and he's probably fairly accurate. And that brings us to our closing section, the pronoun wars that are taking place right now. And these aren't just accidental, right? I think if nothing else, what did the abortion movement teach us?

That he who owns the language owns the narrative. It's Not a baby, it's a fetus, by the way. Fetus just simply means a baby before it's born, but who's gonna check into that? Dehumanization, you take away what something actually is and you replace it with certain phrases and words. You didn't abort the baby, you terminated the pregnancy.

Well, what's happening now with these pronoun wars is this. It talks about, this lets us know the power of language, right? And the clear target, this is why it's so important for us, is because the clear target is the up-and-coming generation. Taking a page from the poem, the woman honoring poem, the hand that rocks the cradle rules the world, what's happening is that the prime method of communication now, even when you go to children's public schools, books, videos, media, Hollywood, all of it is geared towards shaping this next generation to think in a certain way. And what's so amazing about this whole moral revolution that's happening so quickly?

It's happening so fast that the dictionary can't even keep up with the changes that are happening. There are no longer pronouns like him and her or his sorry him and her or he and she those are no longer sufficient. There are now 70 plus at last count What they call non-binary totally invented Pronouns right and this is again the whole idea. How can we reinforce what we want our agenda? We do it by Controlling the language and it's an insistence that sex and gender are not synonymous But they can be split down the middle.

Whereas God said male and female What is people what are people saying today? It's sex. Yes, physically male but gender could be female And it's now being insisted that this is being built into legislation. Right now in New York City, employers and landlords are required to use the employees or tenants' preferred pronoun. You have a fine if you don't use their preferred pronoun.

And as I was doing some research, I went online and if you do some research you find out there's a thousand websites and they all have the lists of pronouns, gives you examples of how to use them. And the one of them I went to it had in big bold letters warning me as I entered onto the website this is not an exhaustive list any combination is possible and this is really an argument right we don't fit into any category and therefore we have the right to define and make our own categories. So here are some examples so that it's educating people on how to use these new pronouns in real sentences. Chris is the tallest person in class and Z is also the fastest runner. Tyler is going to Hawaii over break with here parents.

I'm so jealous of here. V laughed. Ask Zer. And this is not, this is real, this is people saying this is how we should be speaking. That's Yoss pen.

That's not my pen, that's Yoss pen. Did Co enjoy CoSelf? So currently Facebook has over 71 genders that you can choose from when you go on and you build out your profile. This is the insanity of where things are going. And again, it's not inconsequential.

People are trying to control the language so they can influence downstream the overriding culture. It's a shame. It's sad. It should really again cause us to say what in the world is happening around us and this is now. Just five years ago, we probably weren't having this discussion.

We're worried about homosexual marriage, but now these are the things that are taking place well where do we go from here what do we do with all of this as a church as people of God as people who desire to follow hard after the Lord I think I think where we we go from here is to the truth. Both we believe the truth and we speak the truth with compassion, with an understanding of who we are as sinners, saved by grace, one time estranged from the living God, but going, as Newton said, to recommend Christ to dead men and women all around us because here's the reality right we all know this what is a person's sex it's the first thing we notice about someone and the last thing we forget. It's something you don't even think about because it's ingrained in who you are. Again, you have to actively suppress and go against what you know in order to follow along this trajectory. The facial structure of a man is different Hair length and texture is different shoulder width of a man or woman.

They're different the waist is different And this is amazing thing a human's sex is far more marked upon the body than most any other creatures, right? Dogs, cats, horses, birds, you can find out but it's not instantaneous but a human being was made to be instantly recognized by their sex. Because again, the face is different, the voice is different, everything about that is different. And this is what Anthony Usselin has said, he's thought a lot about this and he says this, He says, to pretend therefore that we do not know what we immediately and urgently perceive is to do violence at once to human nature, language, and the intellect's capacity to apprehend reality. This is where the war is being waged against reality and against the God, the author of reality.

If I cannot say there is a man walking down the street, listen to this, then it is hard to see how I can make any reliable judgment about anything at all that bears on human existence. Do you see how the adversary wins? If you can't identify between a man and a woman, then who's to say that anything can actually be said to be true or false as it pertains to human existence? And so what you'll find is that increasingly the sane are going to be marginalized. But as we said at the beginning, When is the church prospered most?

Usually it's when a church has been exiled most and when it hasn't been seen with all that much favor Jesus says they've hated me They will they will also hate you Don't marvel at these things as you continue to stand for the truth The time is not now to back away City on a hill church to become under a bushel basket church That's not the time but now is the time to to allow the truth to be spoken amidst the blackness and the darkness of the backdrop of our culture. That's where it will shine the brightest. And so we see all of this here. Al Mohler, he says this, the only churches that are going to survive are the churches that hold steadfastly, eagerly, joyfully to the gospel of Jesus Christ. The only churches that are going to survive are the churches that hold steadfastly, eagerly, joyfully to the gospel of Jesus Christ.

The only churches that are going to survive are the churches that are distinctively Christian, deeply doctrinal, confessional, and theological. And what else would we hope for? But that the churches that actually want to follow after Christ are the ones that end up existing. And this is how Jesus in his high priestly prayer encourages us. He says when he was speaking to his father, I do not pray that you should take them out of the world, but that you should keep them from the evil one.

And so that's where we end today is that we're not now to run for the hills. We're not now to again go underground or anything like that. But greater is he that is in you than he that is in the world. And while the world may rage and foam, God is on his throne. And all we need to do is exalt the truth of the author of reality and bring God's Word to bear.

Don't be ashamed of the gospel. That's where we started. For I am not ashamed of the gospel. For it is the power of God unto Salvation to everyone who believes to the Jew first and also to the Greek. This is the gospel Can it save the sodomite?

Can it save the transgender? God can save whomever he will because he is God So let's hold out hope while at the same time keeping ourselves from the evil of this age but realizing what we have in our hands is the actual cure for all of humanity's ills let us exalt him and worship him and honor him so let's pray father it's it's a devastating description of our culture that we even have. These descriptions and terms that we're even at a place right now, Lord, where no other culture, no other civilization has ever been. Oh Lord, we ask you to give us hearts of flame for you. Oh Lord, we beg you to please move deeply at this time that you may send forth your spirit into the church Lord that you would enliven us and give us again a sense of your truth and the beauty that That you possess in yourself Lord and that we would take this word Into the decaying culture all around us Lord.

We see where it goes left to itself and We haven't even seen the bottom yet But Lord, we beg you. Please have mercy upon this nation Lord, we pray that churches would awaken to again speak to truth in love but to speak the truth. Lord, may you be exalted in this time. Lord, may you prevail. May you yet save mightily and bring sinners to a knowledge of the truth in yourself and and just help us Lord shape us and form us to be your hands to be your feet to be an extension of you in this present evil world Lord help us to shine as lights in the world.

We ask you these things, Lord, in Christ Jesus' name. Amen.